ain't no place like home

baby love

flying high

first dream i remember in detail for quite sometime and it was a doozy. there were some previews before the main feature, one involving a very cool old lady who was sitting at the end of my bed when i awoke. she was very "un-old-lady-like" meaning not the stereotypical grouchy, wrinkled, nay-saying nelly. more like a fairy or a goddess in an old lady costume. she smiled at me and giggled when i yawned and stretched. her suitcases were packed and sitting by the front door. she was wearing a suit  the color of ripe pinot noir grapes that had shimmering gold thread woven through the fabric. it seemed bereft of the seemingly mandatory polyester worn by most people over fifty-five.

i didn't ask who she was or why she was in my home partly because she posed no threat but more so because i felt as if i should know her and it would be rude to ask. 

she finally spoke as i got dressed and came out into the kitchen to join her for coffee. she said, "i can tell you're unique because i saw the bullet." 

i searched my mind for what that might mean and she went on to explain how the necklace i used to wear around my neck (in a past life?) was the bullet that killed my husband in battle and the only reason i sold something so valuable was because i needed money to feed our child.

i sold it on craigslist.com, b.t.w.

pretty cool idea now that i think of it, sort of akin to billy-bob and angelina's blood filled amulets professing their endless-ish love. 

my old lady-muse must away as her people come for her. they're going to disneyland and i question how that can be possible when we're in the east.

"you must mean disneyworld," i say and they smile politely and say, "no dear, there's a small branch of disneyland over at the biltmore house." of course there is. i'm dreaming.

guess that was a rather long preview, makes me want to see the actual movie when it comes out.

pop to the scene where a girl in a lime green spandex tank top is driving a jeep with its top down on the freeway. she's tan and her long, sun-bleached hair is whipping spastically around her face.

i believe i'm watching the scene from another car but it doesn't take long for me to figure out that she is acutally me. 

she/me starts speeding and looking around. i see that there's another car pursuing her and she doesn't look happy about it. it's some guys in a pimp car, something white or gold circa 1970-something. 

she steps on the gas and the jeeps v-6 picks up and gains her a little ground but the boys are relentless and floor their beast too.

suddenly the girl makes an executive decision and pulls a hard right onto an off-ramp, throwing the pimps off for a second. it all seems to happen in slo-mo. as she accelerates into the curve of the hairpin turn she looks back quickly to see if they're following behind. in that instant the car hits the apex of the improperly banked curve which make her slightly under-inflated good-year 

tires give just enough to throw the whole jeep out of balance. before she can correct it she's toppling over and over, grabbing wildly for the rollbar and praying to jesus-god-buddha-mary and oprah to make her a happy statistic.

she notes that she is not only conscious in this moment, but strangely calm.

the jeep finally comes to a hard, final slam down on the pavement near a big white building across the freeway. so hard in fact that it manages to disengage her from the vehicle while she's still wearing her seatbelt, the seat and a sizable portion of the car's metal frame.

people have stopped their cars on the road and are standing with their mouths agape, some have the sense to call 911 but most are in shock and stand silently like deer. 

when the girl realizes she is alive and unharmed for the most part, she stands up with much effort, pulling the seat and frame with her. her eyes are wild and her hair is knotted. her clothes are torn. 

she looks like a feral cat as she begins walking purposefully towards the big white building. she looks like the hulk in her dirty green tank top with her muscles straining to pull the metal enhanced chair behind her. the boys who caused it all are there and they chain-smoke guiltily but can't stop watching, amazed. they walk towards her but she picks up her speed and begins to run. it gets very movie-like at this point as she runs like a cheetah and of course it's magic light and jimi hendrix begins to play. not sure which song but i'll leave it up to mark mothersbaugh to choose when he does the soundtrack. 

end scene as we lose sight of her and all the rubber-neckers are standing around the building, now joined by firetrucks, policemen and a news crew.

flash to a close up shot of girl inside building, which is really like a huge hangar and she's running fast, faster, speed-of-light fast and becomes almost a blur as she jumps, superhero like into an enormous jumbo-jet. the car seat she's in becomes the airplane seat and the metal from the ex-jeep melds into the plane perfectly.

she sits there breathing heavily, a huge smile on her face. tears roll down her cheeks and she begins to laugh maniacally. 

it's an international airplane and she's the only one on board. she's never flown before, which was why at the moment she was tumbling through the air in the jeep, thinking she was going to die, she wished for this one last thing.

she thought of all the obstacles that had been in her way for so long, how many men she had blamed for her loss of time, self-respect and money. how many excuses, reasons, justifuckations.

god it had taken her long enough. 

but she finally did it. she alone. she and her mind and her will and being pushed to the very edge of existence.

she reached for her glass of champagne and nodded to the pilot who looked a lot like bob marley and they flew off into the sunset. 

as she looked out the window she saw the people below looking up with awe-filled faces. she saw the place where she had emerged from the wreckage of the jeep and noticed that an ambulance was there and a gurney was being loaded into it. she saw her family there and remembered she hadn't talked to them in quite some time. in fact the last time they had seen her she was angry and depressed. she made a note to call them as soon as she got back.

the last thing she saw as the plane rose higher into the wild blue yonder, as the people and cars below started looking like miniatures of themselves, was the obvious lump of a sheet-covered body on the gurney. the wind blew and she thought she saw a flash of green underneath it where the wind tossed the sheet aside, but it was hard to tell for sure. 

she sat back and finished her champagne and let the metal dream bird take her wherever it was she needed to go. 

do a little dance

the things we do for love

we're talking loudly across the dog park (meaning: he's talking to me and i'm being nice and responding from the plastic lounge chair where i'm attempting to read the journal i wrote when i was 9).

he's enthusiastically telling me about the "soapy-suds" dog wash place and describing each step in great detail.

there's a girl standing next to him but she walks away and he gravitates towards me.

his dog is a 4 month old, 55 pound st. bernard named layla moon and she is the cutest thing i've ever seen.

of course bodhi fell for her hard, and within a few minutes had her down on the ground, stroking her face gently with his paws. 

derek continued his saga of drug dealing parents and friends who died of o.d.s

we discussed our many tats and talked about how harshly we're judged, even in a place as "groovy and progressive as asheville. it's time to go and as i leave i see the obvious turn of heads, that "oh no, don't let them see us staring," look.

it was cluster of soccer moms and yuppie dads...and yes, i may be judging but their clothes and mini-vans pretty much screamed republican.

they were very concerned with their dogs and who they interacted with when all derek and i wanted was a moment of peace and for our dogs to run and jump and play and get their ya-ya's out.

one of the soccer mom's neurotic dogs hunches down and pinches out a big long turd and bodhi promptly eats it.

derek and i laugh as the s.m. runs over and scolds the dog while picking up the poo with a green plastic doggie bag. she looks so irritated and i wonder if she's off her meds.

when i get back to my car bodhi gives me a big wet lick/kiss that smells faintly of foreign

shit. 

the things we do for love.

Not a Crowd

extra credit

tiny bottle, mighty clean

this is the color i dreamt about last night. as well as the grateful dead. nice to have my dreams back after a day of detoxing. yes, you heard me right, detoxification. you see, while many (even most or "all" according to some people who live quite happily in the confines of their own deluded minds) white people choose, no, are actually bound by the very d.n.a. of their inferior race to do ridiculous thing like drive mini-vans the moment they pop out a kid or 2.5., buy cartloads of unnecessary shit from wal-mart while doped up on prozac then have to pay for off-site storage 'cuz amazingly enough it won't fit- in their 3k+ square feet of scotch-guarded beige wall-to-wall carpeted suburban space. oh, and most importantly of all, they (we) regularly vacation at the slightest hint of a "holiday." everybody who's anybody my friends, is . working for the weekends. tack an extra day or two onto those sat/suns. and it's like you won the fucking lottery.  a christmas eve, disneyland, sick day, soggy wet twenty dollar bill found in the pocket of your girlfriend's jeans when she's not home kind of happiness. i mean, come on, dumb-ass shoulda checked her pockets first, right? fine, buy her some goddamned flowers with it. she'll be none the wiser.

and how, my sober inner editor asks my not so sober anymore self...do one-day-detox and suburban stereotypes jive? 

hmmm...my third fantastically perfect pink drink say they a. don't and b. don't have to. so neiner, neiner, neiner.

very mature whit.

if i may step out onto the slippery slope of controversy and lay, no slam my fifth amendment card down on the table with the safety net of carlos mencia, and all those other comedians i love who speak of stereotypes in a way that's acceptable (by the folks who will dare to even watch them) because they speak of every race and religion and creed (?) including themselves which must obviously cancel them/it all out...i will say that jesus, mary and joseph must have hand chosen me on this holiest of holidays known as "labor day" (um, which means we don't work to appreciate the fact that we have a job but those who have to work get time and a half and the ones who don't must just have jobs that suck...?)

because i was the advocate, not only of obsevation, but the patron saint of "smoothing it over for all races in spite of my white-but now summer golden skin."

here is what occurred.

1. upon awakening and escorting my leashed canines to the fecal depository in the rear of the crack apartment complex i encountered a gentleman with skin the color of dark chocolate, teeth as straight and white as any laser whitening billboard and yes, a big gold initial hanging from a chain around his neck.  he complimented the beauty and intelligence of my dogs then proceeded to tell me the heartbreaking story of the recent poisoning of his beloved pit bull puppy, a rare, all white male with one "carolina blue" eye (yes, he said that) and one brown one.  so horrifying and controversial was this travesty that it was allegedly on the news. he wrapped up said story by showing me multiple photographs of his dead baby on his i-phone. *side note that may or may not be pertinent were the items he had just acquired from harris teeter which consisted of 2 large plastic bottles of hawaiian punch (goes great with vodka i discovered in the not so recent past) a flat of ramen noodles (chicken) and enough t.p. to mummify the entire complex twice. again, just noticing.

2. when the dogs were whining due to lack of food and i dragged my sleepy ass to "pet supplies, plus more" (??!!) and hefted a 40 lb. bag of human-grade food containing oatmeal, lamb and, i swear to god, amino acids...i was sucked into the incredible magnetic force known as wal-mart and zombie-d around looking for things no one ever needs...when i was confronted directly by two cute, almost anime characters, a mother and a daughter who seemed to be having a crisis involving TIDE. 

"excuse me..." the mother said ever so politely and for a moment i wondered if i looked like i worked there. was i wearing blue? a vest? were my roots showing or were my jeans pulled up too high? did i mutter phrases like, "didja find everythin' you was lookin' for?" 

but i let it go and decided to be of service to these lovely ladies.

i took a deep breath and was there now. mom put two orange plastic bottles of TIDE down on the shelf in the furniture section i had been wandering around in for no apparent reason. 

"can you tell me what  is TIDE with fabric softener?" she asked, looking me in the eyes so kindly and lovingly i wanted to hug her.

she pointed to the other one and sighed. 

her beautiful daughter (16?) took out her earphones and smiled at me. "she wants to know what the difference is." she said.

she went on to talk about her husband wanting something and kept pointing to the two orange bottles and looking at me with increasing desperation.

"well," i began, speaking slowly and loudly to make up for my failure to know even one word of japanese (not counting domo aragoto mr. amato) "this one," i said, pointing to the one that didn't contain fabric softener, "is just laundry detergent." she smiled and bowed. 

"and this one," i said, pointing to the other that had a splattering of lilacs and fluffy words with exclamation points touting the softener addition, "has a softener in it." she cocked her head sideways and i imagined her in japan, with all the noise and chaos and crazy weird language and knew i should pay attention because this moment was surreal. 

"you know, like those dryer sheets" i said, miming the box and the sheets and looking at the daughter who had re-inserted her earplugs but was smiling at me like i was the queen of the world. 

and here, i couldn't help myself..."dryer sheets," i said, "those nasty things you put in the dryer when you're done washing your clothes, the things that smell bad and have lots of CHEMICALS in them..."

they smiled and bowed.

mom pointed to both bottles again.

"so if i put this in this then this is not for this?"

her daughter patted her on the shoulder and i tried again.

"this one," i said, gesturing to the plain one, "is only for doing your laundry." 

"this one," i said, pointing to the lilac chemical added one, "is like if you added dryer sheets, you know, to make the clothes softer." 

she shook her head vigorously as if she understood.

"if you want to make your husband happy" i said, "you could buy the one with the softener."

daughter went into story about dad not really knowing or caring what was going on domestically after all so i continued.

"but if you want my opinion" (which i assumed they did as we were 20 minutes into a discussion in wal-mart about laundry detergent) "you should get the one WITHOUT so many chemicals."

"i personally hide the dryer sheets that MY husband buys all the time." 

she giggled and i wondered if she had a clue as to what i was saying.

"they are bad, they are evil and they give my children rashes on their legs."

at this point i considered for one millisecond telling her about the $7 dryer sheets annointed with essential oils of lavender and gardenia that i splurged on then ripped in half as if they were pure columbian cocaine but she seemed to be having an anxiety attack about the two orange bottles already so i abstained.

i told her again what i thought the difference was, gave her my opinion in the nicest way i could then ended with a compliment on her english skills.

i imagined myself in a wal-mart in japan asking some japanese housewife about some products i didn't recognize with foreign writing on the bottles. 

then i wondered if her daughter attended my son's prep school.

3. driving back from half-way to boone to deliver my surrogate son to my friend whose dad is dying and my own babyone is trying to engage me in the "who wants to be a millionaire" boardgame and i'm trying to pretend like i'm present...we see a plethora of cops with their blue lights swirling and we rubber-neck enough to see...a black guy with his shirt off (come on dude!) so i start singing "bad boys bad boys whatcha gonna do?" and i wonder what he did, if he lives in my apartment complex, why he would be so stupid as to walk around shirtless doing anything worthy of po-po intervention on labor fucking day...

and just like carlos i end this post, this day, these thoughts with the groovy, un-deniable fact of unity, one-love, that thing that bob marley so aptly wrote about.

let's get together and feel alright

one love

one heart

give thanks and praise to the lord

and we will feel alright

happy labor day