Life is Special In California

Lately I haven’t been feeling myself. I’ve been more short-tempered, ponderous.

Existential and angry.

Like life is nothing but a glancing thought and the Nihilist have got it right. Thinking to myself, why pay a man to kill the already-dead?

In a flashing, synthetic, chemically-addicted culture, what’s it mean to breathe all that carbon, the newsprint, the radio waves; what’s it do to us to drink down the plastic?

I’m not sure what all the Rimbaud morbidity is about?

Life is pretty good. I’m well-fed, maybe too well, and I’m married to the love of my life. We’re saving for a house even, everything should be fricken’ peachy.

Perhaps it’s the stress of the campaign, the uncertainty of our times, the voices at work, trying to save up for a house, but I feel like my brain has been under a gentle assault that’s picking up steam, and it’s all weighing on me something heavy.

Like the gravity is twice as strong as normal.

I look in the mirror and my eyes look tired, older, somehow, in the last week.

The open road is calling, and I’m answering it, tomorrow. Setting north on the 5. Through the Central Valley and Steinbeck Country.

Road trips let me think: behind the wheel, a good mix tape playing on the stereo, watching the landscape blur, the trucks moving the world around. I get my best thoughts out on the road. I lose myself in them. Lose myself in the world I’ve created in my head. I am not the writer but the character. A bottled-up philosopher. Wondering what it means to exist… after all, reality is nothing but layers you peel away, like a blooming onion at Outback Steakhouse. Our lives spool like twine, and time pools in our eyes… what’s it all for? Is there a God? Is Suffering the Noble Truth?

We are One with the Sky and the Rock and the Ground… and then again, we’re not.

I’m eating at Outback Steakhouse, a typical American Restaurant, Australian themed, boomerangs fixed to the walls, surfboards hanging from the ceiling — but also, at the same time, I’m driving in the middle of California, the middle of nowhere — and the waitress comes over and takes the plate with the discards of the blooming onion on it, after I devoured every layer until what was left was nothing but the fried batter crumbled on the plate, and she asks if there’s anything more?

I tell her, “Cogito ergo sum.”

I’m heading to San Francisco for the night. The city by the bay.

Golden Gate Bridge, trolleys, surly homeless people, mysterious misty nights, all that stuff. The plan is to visit some friends, drink some micro-brews and quote George Saunders.

Maybe I can change my mood around, you know?

I’ve already got a story going and I haven’t even started driving. A story about a man eating a Blooming Onion. What should he do next? Mope some more? Any suggestions?

I’ll pick it up later, when I’m on the road.

Right now I’m just settling in from work, starting to type, deciding what to put on the I-tunes playlist. The one titled Stunted Wonderment©. I try to relax by detaching myself from the media onslaught, the technological blitz, but at same time I’m feeding it. I write diatribes designed for deaf ears. In many ways I’m the worst offender, a bottom feeder. Blogs and Reality Shows, Links and Videos and Flickr flicks.

Turtle shit all the way down.

A series of disappointments, one after the other.

Did you know Yertle the turtle is based on Hitler?

Isn’t that a twisted thing to do to a child?

See what I mean?

Just plain crankiness; really unbecoming of me.

I’m beside myself like a Siamese twin.

I look out the window at the hills, but it’s so foggy it’s hard to see the expensive glow of the million-dollar homes perched perilously on top the craggy ridges of the Santa Monica Mountains. The only West/East mountain range in California. Proof that the Los Angeles Basin has been spinning around in circles forever, and it’s nothing new. There’s no heaven above, just the thick, soupy fog reflecting the amber city lights down on us, so everything stands sepia-drenched and blurry, like fossilized saplings, in a dripping, waxy smear. It’s like looking through scorpion eyes, I’d imagine.

This is the view on a clearer night.

And that’s when it comes to me… what I need.

What my soul is craving at this precise moment.

There’s one song that always makes these February Blues go away… this philosophical bummer-kick… this traveling solipsistic cliche’.

• California Stars, by Billy Bragg and Wilco.

I’d like to rest my heavy head tonight
On a bed of california stars
I’d like to lay my weary bones tonight
On a bed of california stars

I’d love to feel your hand touching mine
And tell me why I must keep working on
Yes, I’d give my life to lay my head tonight
On a bed of california stars

I’d like to dream my troubles all away
On a bed of california stars
Jump up from my starbed and make another day
Underneath my california stars

They hang like grapes on vines that shine
And warm the lovers glass lke friendly wine
So, I’d give this world
Just to dream a dream with you
On our bed of california stars

It’s not the best video, but the sound is good and it’s at the Greek Theater, here in L.A, underneath the stars… so you gotta love it. Every time I hear California Stars, I picture Woodie Guthrie, who penned it, riding the rails, camping out with migrant workers, smoking hand-rolled cigarettes, playing his ‘This Machine Kills Fascist’ guitar, and scribbling the lyrics in a weathered, dusty journal.

The image makes me smile.

Don’t worry, I tell myself.

Everything mellows out eventually.

Remember, life is special here in California. That’s honey in the sky, kids.

ENJOY