RETREAT!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

 "Even without a recent advance, retreat is so often the sensible course."

From A Good Day To Die, by Jim Harrison

In Addition....................

I want to take a deranged road trip, maybe with a couple of other lunatics.

We will drive. We'll drink and drive, and drive fast. Marijuana may be involved. The car will be old, beat up, but strong. Kind of like me.

Every  night that we stop along the way will be a mad adventure involving food and drink and borderline psychotics. We'll find casual restaurants with funky waitresses. We'll eat Mexican food and burgers and spaghetti. We'll drink wine and whiskey and beer.

Then it's off to the most insane bar we can find, preferably with live music and relaxed standards. To bed at 4 am, up at 1 pm, breakfast at 2, and then on the road again.

I want to have meaningless conversations, ridiculous arguments and a whole boatload of laughter. Peals and peals of laughter.

The most important piece of the whole trip will be that we spend some time - some extra time - in Arizona. Maybe a month.

I want to stay in Adobe-style rental houses and cheap motels. I want to eat pork and beef with plenty of red and green chiles. I want to eat huevos rancheros and tamales and Sonoran hot dogs. I will need plenty of ice cold beer and Dos Tierras Reposado tequila.

I will carry a jug of Xtra strength Tylenol with 1,000 tablets.

I will buy a pair of Abilene cowboy boots - black, none of that floral shit. I will crush scorpions with my new boots.

I will bask in the Arizona heat as it bakes into my bones until I am 100% convinced that I can never be cold anywhere on earth ever again under any circumstances.

Then we'll head home.

Wait - who am I kidding? Once I get a taste of Arizona........................

I will never leave.

Hafta

 This morning and yesterday morning are similar.

The sun is not shining brightly, which creates an atmosphere of honesty. Especially in the house, which tends towards darkness on days like this.

I am reading A Good Day To Die, by Jim Harrison, as I was yesterday.

Sipping coffee.

Yesterday was Sunday. I did not have to work. Today is Monday. I have to work.

There is a suffocating aura of sadness and loss about today that was not evident yesterday.

A Delightful Lifestyle Adjustment

 One lifestyle I have not tried is living in bars.

Like Bukowski. Or Jim Harrison, a "new" author I am currently digging. New to me. He died in 2016 at the age of 78.

My ass is comfortable on barstools, and I can shoot the shit with the best of them, so the habitat is comfortable to me.

I have consumed whiskey with some regularity, and excessively, for most of my life and it has done me a world of good. Although, since October - four straight months now - since I contracted The Black Death, I have consumed precious little alcohol, sometimes going DAYS without a drop. Remarkable.

I worry because my tolerance may drop off. Even worse, what if this is another fucking concession to old age? I do NOT need a life without alcohol.

I have consumed alcohol liberally, but always within the confines of a life lived within the established parameters of fucking rules. I had to get up in the morning, I had to go to work.

What I want is six months (or the rest of my life) with no obligations. Get up in the morning and head out to my favorite bar to drink all day. With a host of morons, psychopaths, and mental defectives. Make money shooting pool and playing cards. Lose money shooting pool and playing cards.

Run a tab and pay it off in painfully negotiated chunks.

Live on greasy bar-burgers and fries.

Sleep on random couches. Wear threadbare thrift store clothes, shower when I get a chance, shave every nine days like clockwork.

Get up in the morning, pop four xtra strength Tylenol, down two quick shots of vodka and two bottles of water, and head out to Murphy's bar to do it all again.

I could live a life like that. I could enjoy a life like that.

All I gotta do is get Carol's permission.

Working Sucks

"John Madden was raised in Daly City, a few miles south of San Francisco, the sports-loving son of a mechanic who had once given him some very sound advice, the kind of wisdom that most fathers are too dumb, or afraid, to impart: "Don't start working until you have to. Once you do, that's it. Put off working as long as you can."

From Badasses - The Legend of Snake, Foo, Dr. Death, and John Madden's Oakland Raiders, by Peter Richmond.  

A great fucking book. More importantly - amazing advice. Perfectly honest. John Madden's father told his son the truth about life.  Working sucks. Put it off.

Ironically, Madden grew up to do a job that he loved, a job that requires you to work 8 days a week.  

But his father wasn't wrong. A parent can drive a kid to succeed, giving them the impression that life is fair and rewards await. Or a parent can be honest and tell their kid that a large portion of life is sheer drudgery and all you can do is find ways to maximize your happiness and hope for the best.

Maybe Madden succeeded because his father told him the truth. Who knows.

Personally, I think his Dad was a genius.

Otto

I'm glad my name is not Otto.

Although I would like to evolve like Otto did - before it's too late.

We saw A Man Called Otto a couple of days ago. Carol had to hand me kleenex during the movie because my emotions were out of control. I was holding off blowing my nose, because when I do it sounds like an airhorn going off, which is annoying to movie watching patrons. When the sniffing got out of hand, Carol took charge.

The movie got to me because it resonated with where I am currently living in my head.

I have come back alive in 2023; proof is that my emotions are jerking me around - I no longer feel numb. This is a good sign.

When David Crosby died I was devastated. Because the man lived a life. I am a spectator to my own life. Worse than that, I am a spectator to someone else's life - the life I am leading is not my own.

His death jolted me - I am trying to become more reckless in a beneficial way because of it. A lifetime of numbing down and dumbing down has turned me into a fucking zombie. Which is horrifying because it allows others to control my life. Fuck that.

I will take more risks, I will speak my mind, I will hear more music - LIVE - I will drink schooners of whiskey in clinically-controlled situations, allowing the nutcase in me to spring free. I will have more fun. Before it is too fucking late. Some would say it is already too fucking late and there is a large amount of truth to that but I gotta fucking try. No?

I am also aware that all of my problems are in my head. This is where Otto comes in.

I am a fucking God and nobody knows it. I need ayahuasca. But that ain't gonna happen so I need to shove a stick of dynamite into my right ear and blow my brains out to simulate ayahuasca's effect. Then I gotta move into my head like a pilgrim moving in to a cold-water flat, and refurnish the space with shit that makes sense to me. Shit that resonates with my soul so there is no disconnect between mind and essence.

Otto approached life in a way that made sense to him because he was reacting in specific ways to events that occurred in his life. His approach was not pretty. But other humans and other events intervened to show him that his approach was wrong. His approach was wrong because of his mind - his mind skewed his point of view to set him on the wrong path.

That's me. Can't you see it? That is fucking me.

Your own mind can fuck up your own life. In contradiction of the facts. In negation of other options. Not what happens to you, not what people do to you, but what you do to yourself. Do you know how many peoples' lives suck solely because of what is in their head? Approximately 7,942,645,085.

As I watched that movie I was Otto. That's why the tears flowed.

It is not a good sign when you look in the mirror and cry.

A change is gonna come.

Like a dam bursting.

I Cannot Improve Upon This

 "Every man is the sum total of his reactions to experience. As your experiences differ and multiply, you become a different man, and hence your perspective changes. This goes on and on. Every reaction is a learning process; every significant experience alters your perspective.

So it would seem foolish, would it not, to adjust our lives to the demands of a goal we see from a different angle every day? How could we ever hope to accomplish anything other than galloping neurosis?

To put our faith in tangible goals would seem to be, at best, unwise. So we do not strive to be firemen, we do not strive to be bankers, nor policemen, nor doctors. WE STRIVE TO BE OURSELVES.

But don't misunderstand me. I don't mean that we can't BE firemen, bankers, or doctors - but that we must make the goal conform to the individual, rather than make the individual conform to the goal. In every man, heredity and environment have combined to produce a creature of certain abilities and desires - including a deeply ingrained need to function in such a way that his life will be MEANINGFUL. A man has to BE something; he has to matter."

Hunter S. Thompson