The Unbearable Bobness of Being

At Night You May Hear the Clackety Clacking of Aluminum Ingot Filled Ghost Trains Bringin a Shine to the Thunderous Fist of America's Fury

Last Friday, I rushed from Rainytown to the Valley of the Beautiful Spokanes where my 17 year old was getting an emergency appendectomy. I got there a couple hours after and he was sitting up and gabbing in his room and everything came out dandy. That weekend plus the prior week all added up equalled a lot of stress for me. So how do I handle stress? Well, lots of ways and some are actually productive!

I went for a Sunday walk down on the Centennial Trail, a paved asphalt ribbon from Anchorage, Alaska to Trenton, New Jersey winding along rivers all the way. In our neck of the woods that would be the Spokane River.  So I got out on a kinda sunny, kinda blue sky day, it was cold and crisp yet strangely chilly except in the sunshine when it was more warmish, and the trail was essentially under snow. But that's fine because it was packed down by hundreds of prior hikers and plus I had on my Merrell Polar Tec Winter Boots.

I always enjoy the Centennial Trail down in the Mirabeau area of the Valley of the Beautiful Spokanes, as I've been going there since I was a teenager, mostly to drink and smoke and break shit, it used to be a remarkable graveyard of old cars and freezers, but that was before they enjoined the once dirt road of neerdowells and stoners to the mondo grand and trans-continental artery of the Centennial Trail. I actually once camped overnight with a girlfriend in my 65 VW microbus on a hill above the river and got rudely interrupted  in flagrante delicto by a Sheriff's Deputy asking why we were overnighting there. When I explained we were both out of our heads on angel dust and formadehyde cigarettes and we were staying put rather than pillage and loot "stop n rob" convenience stores with our unstoppable strength of 10 men, he said "well, you can't camp here, so leave in the morning." That's how special this place is to me!

So while hiking I came across this majestic bridge (see pic below). This is the historic Evergreen Spur Bridge #38. Burlington-Northern Pacific Union Railways uses it still. It was built back in the 40s as a spur to haul aluminum from Kaiser Aluminum for use in the war effort, they made cheap and light bombers out of aluminum, they called them "Kaiser Bombers" they were so famous. 

Anyhow, a few years ago the railroad company was gonna demolish this magnificent specimen of a Pre-War Rust Expansion Joint Girder Spanner bridge. They used to build a lot of these to move war munitions and cows but most have been removed. Not this one! The Valley of the Beautiful Spokanes Port Township Authority formed a Bridge Preservation District and sold bonds to save it. They used to take grade school kids on field trips down here to see the bridge and draw pictures of it and send post cards around the world to show what a fantastic bridge we had here. The field trips ended, tragically, when a 3rd grader from Sunrise Elementary got his arm tore off by a pitbull being run off leash by some gangsta. 

Speaking of which, I have this theory that there are so many pitbulls bred now that we've passed the tipping point of pitbulls. And that whenever I go on a hike in an area that is public and accessible to exurban and suburban neighborhoods that I expect to see at least one (1) pitbull. I will say on this hike there was nobody on the trail at all on the outbound. When I came back the FIRST PERSON I SAW, some tall, thin woman, had guess what? What do you think she had? Had running OFF THE LEASH? Why yes! A pitbull. God, I'm so tempted to buy a heater to strap on my hip just for pitbulls. I fricking hate them on my hikes.

Well, there you have it. My stress reduction and bridge appreciation hike. It was lovely. 

What do you do for stress reduction that one might call "healthy"?



Evergreen Spur Bridge #38. The graffiti script is gangsta code for "We love this bridge and wish it a long, resonant future of magic and wonder" (Photo taken by Blackberry Storm)

My Muse got Zapped!

She smiles bemusedly at my youthful optimism and impossible inventiveness ...

I completed the first draft of the storyline for the script. Too big and detailed to be a synopsis but small enough to use as a map. I'm very pleased with it as a first draft. I read it to Poetivity over the phone and she digs it and thinks it will be easy to write our script from it.

She also laughed out loud. This is a big thing with her, as she only laughs out loud when I read something I've written if it's very funny or she wants something from me and is sucking up.

I bet we'll get a first draft script done by March or sooner. I'm feeling very optimistic and encouraged.  I'm going to go down to Portland this weekend and shack up with Poetivity and her kid who says YOU CAN'T TELL ME WHAT TO DO YOU'RE NOT MY DAD! ... WANNA WRESTLE? (she has a wicked distracting move where she rips the bandanna off my head and flings it as far as she can).

I want to brainstorm scenes and plot details and characters with Poet on Saturday. I was also invited to a fantastic dinner by my excellent foodie and wino friend Etherhuffer on Saturday. Fantastic is the only kind he preps. Sigh. Etherhuffer is a wicked good cook and I would dig hanging out with him and his talented and lovely wife and their friends but Poetivity and I need to get busy getting rich, man.  Plus, she gives sexier back and neck rubs than Ether, although his are pretty close.*

120 page countdown to ecstasy.

 

*and what I mean by "close" is "nonexistent" as he doesn't actually give me back or neck rubs in the standard existential sense as measured by the metrics (or calculus if you are really trying to be snooty) of reality, man.

One Stupid Week at a Time

This post is to commend my friend, Poetivity, for her FIRST WEEK werkin' a new job. A.real.job. Forty hours.

Poetivity hasn't worked many real 40 hour a week jobs in her life, like almost none. She's an artist. A self employed artist.  And she makes some decent money at it. But it doesn't pay the medical insurance - thus - the job.

I know that after  ONE WEEK OF GETTING up and going to work she is probably a bit worse for the wear. Stupid clocks!

Now, don't take this post to imply Poetivity doesn't work incredibly hard as an artist, she sometimes puts in 18 hour days. This is more about the daily grind of scheduled other-employed work.

I've worked since I was 18. That's 31 years. Days, evenings, graves. All those shifts. Before, during and after undergraduate and graduate school. I've done all kinds of hideous work. I've done some really cool stuff too. I've seen the aurora borealis from the parking lot at a state hospital one summer night as I was walking in to work my night shift on a criminally insane unit full of axe murderers, baby killers and fire starters. I've seen people die and I've seen people live. I once had a double barreled shotgun drawn on me by an old man dying of cancer furious after me and another social worker told him he couldn't have Peaceful Valley whores in his house anymore because they were slapping our elderly old female client around.

I've written thousands of pages of reports and conducted hundreds and hundreds of meetings. I've been late, I've been early, I've called in sick and I've called in sicker and I've yawned during phone calls. I've drank busloads of coffee and smoked trunkfulls of ciggies. I've ridden a ten speed to work and I've punched the gas on a 72 Formula 40o Firebird with rear tires as wide as a conference room whiteboard with a mission statement written in unleaded premium. I've promoted and I've lost jobs. Behavior modification and budget monitoring. Fire and hire. Once fired a guy on Friday the 13th. I know.

But this isn't about me. This is about Poetivity and HER FIRST WEEK OF WORK!

Sucks, huh? Don't worry it gets better then it gets worse then it sort of plateaus at worse for the rest of your life!

Or as my favorite French novelist and existentialist Albert Camus once wrote:

Where there is no hope, one must invent hope.

And sort of related to that, I've set up a super secret password protected blog for Poetivity and I to use to post and draft and edit and brainstorm our script together. I've had a burst of writing tonight on the synopsis. I just needed a kick in the ass.

WE'RE GOING TO BE SO RICH.