You Can Cover Our Ears But We Won't Stop Screaming (Day 4).

I'd like to say thanks to the extremely nice show of support from everyone in this last Sunday's Navel Gazing (My user name is Dudley_Shale). Especially, if she ever reads this, Rebecca. That was extremely nice of you to take time to tell me your experiences.

So a few years ago, I had a little bit of a breakdown. Whatever, it happens.

The thing is, all my life I'd been entranced by those who just picked up and left. Went to somewhere new, where they could recreate their identity, and fix all the things that were wrong with their old life.

Just look at Jack Kerouac. On the Road reads out like scripture for those youth with a pioneering spirit, and cavalier attitude.

And God, I'd day dream in class of waking up in San Francisco one day, and Portland, Oregon the next. To see these places that are enshrined in those places, as a haven for those wayfarers...was all I'd ever wanted out of life.

After my breakdown at work (referenced in the inaugural update of Days Gone By) I got a call from a friend, who asked if I'd like to go to the airport to pick up her father.

I'm kind of weird in this aspect. While everyone else seems to abhor airports, airplanes, and the whole tyrannical excursion of the depths of ones soul in the confines that this particular building seems to exploit, I've always been enthralled by them.

Theres something freeing about airports. Somewhere in this world is a black tarmac, and you hold a ticket to a destination. No matter how much you try to plan whats going to happen when you land, circumstances will gladly take the reigns where it sees fit.

The adventure, the world left to discover for yourself....Why just take the word of someone else. How do I know that there are pyramids? Those could just be oddly shaped candles. How will I ever actually know Timbuktu exists unless I pass out drunk in a hotel room there?

I want to visit Charles Bukowski's grave. I want to visit Edgar Allen Poe and Billy Shakespeare's graves, and make sure that those assholes are really dead.

So I went with her to the airport.

As we were walking to her fathers gate that he was coming in, I found myself running to a ticket counter and throwing my money at the ticket lady, demanding a ticket to Los Angeles; a place I'd never been before.

Two weeks later I was on a bus from LAX to Hollywood and Vine. Not necessarily my intent, it's just the only place I could find a hotel that was under 100 dollars.

But as circumstance dictates, that hotels price got awfully steep when the old Mastercard hit the counter top. As a result, I wound up lugging my back pack down Sunset Strip looking for the dirtiest place I could find. Dirty equals cheap, and to be honest...I don't mind sleeping against a door because the lock was MIA, as opposed to meandering the strip and rolling the dice with the night life.

I ran out of money, I didn't eat for week. I wound up sleeping in the International wing of the LAX for three days straight, huddled with some endlessly delayed Aussie's for any semblance of warmth. During the day, it was exploration by bus and foot.

My last 37 dollars went to a motel that served as a temporarily-permanent lifers of the Worlds Oldest Profession, a footlong subway sandwich, and all my change to a man who refused to be called anything less than Nigga James.

Nigga James was a cool fucking guy, though. We sat outside of my hotel, him smoking cigarettes faster than Paul Mall could roll 'em, me wishing the alcohol fairy would bless me with a forty, talking about our lives.

Nigga James was born and bred in Los Angeles. A self-made product of meth abuse, and a trepidation towards holding down a job, he'd eventually wound up on the streets doing what he could to get by. Some of it wasn't so great, but some of it was quite creative as well.

Nigga James took advantage of the performing arts. If you've never been to the Sunset Strip/Hollywood area of California (really, why wouldn't you have been there?) about, oh...every four feet theres a gangly individual who didn't get the memo that a) they aren't Jimi Hendrix, and b) this isn't Woodstock '69.

But theres something honest about playing music for any random person to hear, without expecting to yield any sort of financial result.

Of course, theres still that guitar case propped wide open, and she's begging for your spare change. That spare change thats been slowing you down...it'll fit nicely next to the tie-dyed bandanna and rogue picks that've seen better days.

Nigga James took an alternate course, between break dancing and free style rapping. While it's not enough to afford even a Dodge Neon, or soap box apartment...or even soap, really...it's enough to keep liquid bread in your guts, and a double cheeseburger at arms length.

And really, at that point...what else do you really need?

The next day I wound up in Santa Monica. God bless the Los Angeles Metro.

But I wound up in Santa Monica.

Good or bad, no matter what the story in soil might be, seeing the Pacific was one of the most examinate times of my life.

Despite everything, to see the Pacific Ocean...I mean, to really dig your toes in the sand and feel the water rush over your feet is something most people would take for granted. Lives were lost to secure this bit of beauty. And somewhere over that ocean theres a kid experiencing a heartbreak you could never fathom. But theres joy there, too.

And theres so much left to live for once you cut through the muck and mire.

That was one of the best days of my life.

Somewhere along the lines, that moment of sanctuary slipped through my fingers again. But I'm bound, and god damned determined to find it again, because life...it gets so much better. It gets so much more fun, and amazing.

So maybe coaxing my brain with psychotropic additives isn't such a bad thing.

I don't see how it could if it leads me back there again.

But you gotta be willing to make that move. This worlds gonna keep spinning, time waits for no man, woman or child.

I'll be god damned if I let it get much more of a head start.



Until tomorrow.