Story Forthcoming

I've been working on a story that will probably appear here soon. It is set in the year of 1998.

A well fed Harold probably has little to fear,

from feral animals...

At first, it was just going to be some background information about a girl that I had a dream about, but the more I tried to explain who she was, the more I had to introduce other characters and events, and so, that is where it sits.

That was the year that I lived with my now "ex" Russian wife, Nina, in Jacksonville, Florida.

I found myself dredging up memories and making connections for the first time, given the benefit of hind-sight.

This will hopefully make for a better story.

One of the "self help dialogues" out of the book that I am still using, called "Awaken The Genius" has to do with transporting yourself back in your imagination and, in a sense fixing things that you would like to change, in order to learn from the experience and create a better future, type of thing.

And, so I am not surprised to have been brought back to a time twenty years ago when I was skeezed by a couple of roommates whom I sort of trusted.

It will be a tale of being skeezed, I suppose, when I publish it here.

Tracy, the girl in the dream lived, in the other half of the duplex that I moved into with two skeezers who wound up stealing whatever stuff I had back then.
This kind of freed me up to hop on a Greyhound bound for Phoenix, Arizona, which I did.

The year was 1998, and I left Jacksonville on December 20th.

My goal was to go out into the desert to fast on only apple juice and water- and maybe a locust or two- for the ten days leading up to the new year, which would also feature a new moon, as if the symbolism of starting afresh needed to be further underscored.

I would then enter the city and find a job, I thought.

I had just turned 36 years old a couple months prior, had all my stuff stolen by a John Lepley and his buddy, "Joe," and was thus only burdened by a large duffel bag with a shoulder strap. Homelessness doesn't get any easier.

But, the bag sufficed to tote the two gallons of apple juice and one of water "out into the desert," which turned out to be up Dobbins Peak.

I had managed to sock away almost 12 hundred bucks, delivering pizza in Jacksonville, while living rent-free with Nina, and had almost a thousand left as I retreated into the desert to freeze my ass off when it would get to be 38 degrees one night.

Phoenix, in 1999, was infested with skeezers, I found out, once I went into the city to try to get a room at the YMCA for 85 bucks a week.

I had actually flashed the nine hundred and something dollars that I had to an Asian cashier in a little convenience store who had barked "Do you have money? If you don't have money you can't come in!" at me, upon seeing the bag over my shoulder.

This was understandable since there turned out to be a beggar usually on all four corners of every intersection in the downtown area.

You would be skeezed by someone as you waited for the light to change and then by another as soon as you got to the other side of the street.

What It's Like To Skeeze

These were some really clueless skeezers.

One of them was skeezing in front of a place and some other nearby skeezer had a boom box and when a certain song came on, this skeezer whom it was obvious had used some of the charity towards the purchase of alcohol, bellowed out: "Turn this up; I want people to hear this!!"

It was a song that I hate by a band named Everlast called something like "What It's Like."

The song tries to suggest that the dirty, ragged guy in front of the liquor store, doesn't need to take a bath and get a job.

No, were you to "walk a mile in his shoes" then you would know "what it's like" to be him and you would give him free money at your expense. Except, once he gets drunk off your money he might turn into a more and more obnoxious aggressive panhandler who acts as if you have harmed him and are trying to punish him in some way if you don't give it to him.
And he might yell, "Turn this song up, I want all these people to hear it!" when that song came on.

The guy was too obtuse to see that he was merely identifying with the persona of the guy in the song, and that if anyone actually did walk a mile in his shoes they would come to understand that he was a skeezer who was full of crap.

"God forbid you ever have to walk a mile in his shoes; 'cause then you'd really know what it's like to sing the blues."

The song talks about bona fide victims of tragedy, and so how pretentious of this guy who opted for a profession of begging, aspiring only to stay intoxicated to yell, "Yeah, turn this up!!"

A Tale Of Idleness

I didn't go out to busk last (Wednesday) night. The temperature was 51 degrees at about 11 PM, when I stepped outside.

I could have put on a few more layers and gone out, but decided against it.
It had the feeling of a six dollar night.

I had gone out that morning, basically looking for loose tobacco, and had come across an unopened pack of Benson and Hedges cigarettes which had been laying in a bank parking lot, and a lemon, laying somewhere else.

Bobby had just given me a bud of weed, and Jacob was texting me telling me that he had made fifty bucks doing an odd job and would buy me a kratom shot if we were to meet and jam for a while at his house.

So, I stayed in and soon realized that one big thing that I had overlooked was getting Harold the cat a can of food.

He was turning his nose up at the dry food which was the only thing that I had left.
Had I gone out to busk, I would certainly have been returning at about 2 in the morning with a can of food for him. For, even if I hadn't made a dime, I could have told Michelle the cashier that I hadn't made a dime and asked her for a can of food on credit -one of the perks for having busked in that neighborhood for going on eight years...

I wound up letting Harold out at about midnight. He was eager to go. I think he has some kind of food supply out there, perhaps the bowl of a neighborhood cat or a place where people put food out for the feral cats.

One might think that the feral cats could kick Harold's ass and run him away from that food, them being so "wild" and everything, but perhaps Harold, being so well fed in general, might have the advantage. He certainly hasn't come home with any damage to his face, since the time I got shot with a paintball in the face the same night -a synchronicity that manifested itself about 3 years ago, already.


I experimented with some music that I wound up deleting, maybe 2 hours worth. I had been messing around with the odd time signature of 7/2 trying to "feel" the beat. Seven beats in a measure with an eighth note getting one beat. A time signature for the likes of the group Yes, or King Crimson, perhaps, but one that I have never seen on sheet music before.
My music is weird enough in common time without messing around with poly rhythms, I concluded, before hitting the delete button...

Today is Jacob's mom Donna's birthday

I felt guilty and a shirker for not having gone out to play. I tried to produce something in order to have something to show for the night. But the truth is I got baked on Bobby's weed and vegetated. I did get some excellent relaxation in, though...

My yellow bike, sitting idle near the door, seemed to be symbolic of my cowardice in having let the cold temperature dissuade me from pursuing my livelihood.

Jacob has just given me the recordings from our session yesterday, the day before his mom's birthday.

I should be able to make a song out of the almost three hours of music with myself on acoustic guitar and vocals and Jacob on drums and keyboards and backup vocals...