page 5

Did I say sleep?

I meant a stasis surrounded inside and out by a feeling of slowly slowing down from 74mph. Hours. The day's charge expanding out through my body and diffusing itself into the walls, or whatever.

I scare -myself-.

...

The 20 runs out of exits and miles, and then there's the I-__. The only stretch of it I haven't been down, I guess.

I think I'm going to have to quit the English language. I'm sick of it, and the way I've used it.

It was never really the land, though, that my descriptions were about. Not memory as the proof or the facts that have passed.

Just like the rest, I guess. The land is no more than what it is, but our thoughts and dreams and inventions and tools create an overlay that we use, and use to see it.

I look up out of my head and say,
"Get me out of the mess I'm in."

A little girl creeps up to the edge of my table and looks at me with the cutest smile. Her eyes are turned way up. They're so bright. I smile as wide as she does. Her dad looks at me from under the brim of a clean cream-colored cowboy hat, out of a pair of lightly tinted sunglasses with warm eyes.
And all the children run around and giggle, talking excitedly in Spanish.

The more I think about it, the more I realize that all of law is curing the symptom, not the problem, if there is one. And law has no knowledge of that. When the Way is lost...

...
(midicronica - S501)
I sit in a Shell station and stare out at the sun-baked desert, watching shiny cars shoot through the El _____ freeway. Ah, who am I kidding? I can't stay sad. I can't be broken like this.
It'd only make you sad, wouldn't it?

Besides, I'll get my chance to see you again soon. And that thought carries me a long way.

She smiles at me. I finish my drink, fill my tank, and walk over to her. I say,
"You know? You're very beautiful."
She laughs in a honest way, her voice full of gratitude, and says,
"Thank you."
I turn around and let the second shut like a small intricate thing on a spring. She calls out,
"Bye!"
and I raise two fingers up above my shoulder.

Welcome to the West, T____. Two girls have smiled at you for free today. You big dumbass.

I only have a couple more chances to think my thoughts before I'm among people who aren't just travelers with the same quiet in 'em, but already it feels like I'm zooming out again. Anticipating a loss of momentum.

...
(midicronica - islam radio)
The wind blowing across the desert leans me over as I cross the state line, and I get a little warmed up, a little less bored.

I'll say it one more time, because it's on my mind...

I'm so glad to hear Spanish again. What a beautiful language, or maybe I just missed it.

On my stops in the desert I've had laid-back rancheros talk story with me, one of them even telling me about how there's large demand for bikes in China now that the 100cc restriction has been lifted. All of them easygoing and laid-back in a way that only lives around here, where it's hot and sparse. Or maybe the people here are just that cool. All of 'em telling me,
"Take it easy, man."

Well, the story never ends (until you're dead and then they start making really good stuff up, like how my grandpa once grabbed a rattlesnake that was giving him trouble and cracked its head clean off like a whip...but I think that one is actually true), and so I head for Tucson.

(midicronica - san francisco)
I won't describe T______ to you, since you've seen it already. But the mountains slowly assumed that familiar shape, you know, velvety shadows on the sheen of a clear blue sky.

Again I get here and it seems like I never left. Oh, it's not so bad I guess.

I'll leave you with a little quote:

Now all your bitter regrets are in the past, blurred sweet streetlights speeding past fast...
-True Tom

To arrive and to wear are written with the same character in Japanese. To arise and to wake up are written with the same character in Japanese.

Arrive in Tucson. Don't even bother looking at the street lines, you know them all from memory. Don't stir up the dust, you'll get your finger marks everywhere. In your mind erase all the magic that has ever happened,

(midicronica - blue velvet)
And tell no one what you've done.

There's nothing else I have left to meditate on, nothing that survives the turbulence of the wind caught in the small impassable distances between people who are all separate. If even I've managed to elucidate anything here (me, make something lucid? Who are we talking about here?) it doesn't show on my face, or in my hands. It might show in my eyes,
But sometimes people just see what they like in the reflection there.

I'd say I hope you learned something. But I don't really know anything. Nothing more than what everybody already knows.

I wish I knew some way to settle it. From awake to dreaming, there's a part of me that never sleeps. That I'm always awake. Like that, I haven't slept since...I can't remember when. But like this, nothing but loose ends. Shinobi's (write 'sword' above 'spirit') loose red scarf always floating in the wind.

So I guess this has arrived at your door, into your hand, by some way or another.

And that's that.

I do love you.

Love, joy, and admiration,
a world of confusion,
a million sights and sounds and places,
and a whole lot more.
-T.

Midicronica - 06 - Blue Velvet
- 07 - Jet Set Radio
- 08 - Lost Highway feat. 601 aka Kazoku Alpha
- 09 - Skit
- 10 - Pillow Jam
- 11 - Steroid
- 12 - Islam Radio feat. 343 aka DJ Shunsuke
- 13 - S501
- 14 - San Francisco