Turning into twilight on this eve of shit...less tha 12 h before i submit myself to the slime grubbing and sleaze of the locals...I have to face the dumeroo court tomorrow...maybe for a month I give up to the pettiness of an empty community...

I still cling to the summer of 2003...the summer of my friend, my son, my buddy. It was a time of adventure and fun. Nights of riding bicycles, walking in the moonlight to trees by the pond, the time of Chicago and the city with the tall overlook. And the Louisville football games. The sports show on the local radio was fun with the complex names for the Drew guy; but that faded into the fall and the selling of timber.
I remember the night at the post office when a tabby and orange cat were caught. The orange got away, but the tabby was named "Hamstring". Days later "Skunk" appeared beneath our tire and with "Ozzy" there were three-in the house, which drove me and maybe you crazy.

My dog is barking and I ate after cat...The chicken I had on the couch was eaten by a fat cat who is fed twice a day by a dear lady...I should be so lucky...

I try not to think about the script of life--the dice roll, the affects. I am caught up in my self-made purgatory: struggling to break loose from the quicksand walls. I have found there is no great white hunter wandering through this jungle able to throw a stick to me to climb out from my suffication. My step was wrong when I fell. Now, if only I can secure the strength, I have to find my own limb to pull myself free..

April 3...yesterday, was the fourth year anniversity of buying our truck...seems yesterday was much closer...4 years ago today...April 4...Mom left for the final time...

Time has a silent affect, gradually moving precious memories into a dark dank vault of melancholia. Showers of tears wet the roof continuously. Outside the vault life has a rapid and unforgiving pace never stopping to talk about what exists within...

NOTE: From a July 2005 vacation.
Floyd Va. is a small desperate Blue Ridge town in the southwest corner of the state. The indigents seem to travel begrudgingly day by day with the northern yankees, who migrated here for the cheaper land prices, the small and hopeful bohemian group whose visibility glares like a neon light through a cloudy pool of oil and water, and the tourists with wide eyes and cameras and kids drawn by the 46 year old legend of the Blue Ridge Parkway where one unopened can of beer in the trunk can make the driver a felon. By no means is it "Paradise" but, by-God, one will never really know until the word's definition is posted on the interstate.
I came into town fiercely late to see my son on his 16th birthday (He lives now with his mother--the only reason I would come to this back-corner of the earth). I thought I could slip into town without the confrontational cheetas coming at 60 mph ready to rip my face and scalp, complaining all the while about my tardiness and how the 24 hours from my original time had screwed with their daily routine and changed their life forever, but I was wrong. I was like the James Gang in Northfield, Minnesota. There was a gun in every window. I felt like a baby zebra encircled by a pack of vicious and snarling hyenas ready to rip flesh and crunch bone. I was doomed--I thought.
The fail-safe instincts kicked in. Years of living in a "good ol' boy" environment with their salt in the wound acerbic attempt at wit had seasoned me. I had developed an emotional flak jacket. The bullets would hit, sting for a while, but never come through. When I got on my feet I would go over and pat the shooter on the head and say "go screw your self Jimmy Joe", and leave with a smile.
Zenophobic locals have never known my combination. Nor will they ever. Because if one cannot talk about Milton, Locke, Shakespeare, Hawthorne, Hemingway, Yeats and the brilliant Hunter S. Thompson in place of driving a truck or working on a worthless car, then it is the bottom of the ninth with two outs, and a third strike has been called. Stay out of my ball park...dude.
Going to the Express Mart in town is like a cross-cultural adventure that transcends the garden variety exposure to large city mixes. Hey! This a small Virginia town. One does not expect to meet anyone other than a John Deere cap fanatic or some grease faced wrench monkey. But as I came out with my cup of ice and pint of milk a white Bob Marley with corn rows pulled up in a ten year old Land Cruiser and brushed in and out with the swiftness of one with a coca leaf in his blood stream. I looked as he left at the old ladies at the pumps getting their Wednesday gas and the home grown good old boys coming out with their double-deuce bottles of Old Milwaukee and I thought about John Milton's Satan from "Paradise Lost"--"I would drather rule in Hell than serve in Heaven". Which one was it for these people? Were they ruling or serving? Was this Heaven or Hell? Or did they even give a damn?
There are thousands of smallvilles across the country. I live in one in Kentucky. But there are only fast food shops and country cooking. No tofu outlets or latte stops with wireless routers. It's a dull place where there is an abundance of Ford F150's, and the mullet-headed locals have become meth cooks. They can't even spell "bohemian". I have to give Floyd credit . There is an attempt at creativity.

Half close your eyelids, loosen your hair,
And dream about the great and their pride...
I ranted to the knave and fool,
But outgrew that school...
Fine manners, liberal speech turned hatred into sport...
--William Butler Yeats

The cheetas have been active on my tenth day here. Maybe they are hungry, but more than likely drunk. Drunk cheetas. That sounds like a defamation, and I don't like to offend nature or the World Wildlife Fund. Especially since they are through with Vince McMahon after making him change the WWF to the WWE. What a strike for purity against that synthetic world that entertains the camo crowd twice a week and one a month for 40 bucks, if they have sattlelite.
Back to the cheetas. In nature they are the fastest land animals on earth with their top end at 70 miles an hour. They are cunning and calculating and their satisfaction comes with the prey they catch and a nap after...and an occasional lay when the estrus pops up. They stalk and eat and procreate. A simple plan with nothing complaining but the gazelles. The cheetas in the wild attack from the back, the front, the flank--anywhere they can get their claw in the meat. Like all animals in the wild they are Darwinian pragmatists with only an instinctive will to survive. And they won't blindside you. The cheeta that lives in a house on the outskirts of America is a different animal that has developed a carnal attitude: "Yo ass is mine as long you're back is turned." It is an aberration of the natural order that this animal has two faces--one for smiling, one for ripping.
The "Koran" is by my side thanks to a trip, with my son, to the the local county library. I have not read it but I am sure it is full of benevolent Islamic beliefs, for the most part. Just keep the "Infidel" erased. I will have to go to a ravenous web site to find out how to pack 2 pounds of C4 in a Hefty bag and drop it off at the cheeta's with a little pink heart and a note "do you believe in the big bang theory?" That's one way of getting rid of those damn animals. Really! I am peaceful and melancholy, and never would do something so violent...but like Jimmy Carter I have lusted for it in my heart over the last few days.
My days in Floyd are rapidly ending and I will miss my son until Christmas, about 4 months away. The days will be long, boring and usual in Kentucky. I will be there this Sunday if nothing happens. How unfortunate. But to a certain extent It will be a relief to get away from the cheeta and the rambling mouth, relentless in its pursuit of stupidity.

The first of April came and went without incidence...no tricks on this end...
What a mild first week of spring it has been--some twenty degrees above average...61 degrees now, and the moon is gibbous with all the the young peepers singing in its shadowyesterday light...

Yesterday was the first day of the long baseball season and I am back in the T2 fantasy league---first time since the long ago days of 2002...I look forward to the challenge...

The "wee-hours" of the morning covers one with a melancholy blanket warming the lonely and innermost parts of the soul...