The Unemployed

Griffins and lovely silver airplanes. Smooth ass train rides. Brief and well ventilated buses, particularly on exhausted afternoons. Half empty subway cars. Driving spans of large countries, before you even are old enough to have a license. Listening to music that you usually can't realize you like while in a car. Scrolling highway. Summarized cities. Walking through the barrio, not giving a fuck about not being able to afford anything on Madison, and going in and telling them that you want, 'pants' without any further description. If they ask more, you explain that you'd like them to fit. Realizing that you have stumbled into the late night rush hour on St. Denis, and that explains all of the available real estate in such a convenient place as the 2nd. Sleeping outside in Barcelona, comfortable because you have nothing to steal, and look hurt enough that a villain would certainly choose a better prospective victim or at least have a little compassion. Not being able to stand being dirty, but taking messy showers without curtains and having water in the bathroom for stepping in in your socks for the next 24 hours. Early morning olive oil fires while you fry potatoes or make your special fried flour flatbreads with flour you have convinced the boulanger, who is a lovely Italian girl and adorably nervous but a compelled conspirator. The first fire you ever lost control of happened in a pan, and took care of itself more or less. You tried to discretely fan the house out, while concerned about missing class because you would be late dealing with your kitchen fire. Your mother showed infinite tolerance. You dared her to show less. Someone has needed to smack that grin off your face for your entire existence, but for some reason it always comes back, no matter what.

Thinking you lost your passport one wrathfully hungover morning, you giggle to yourself knowing how wonderful an excuse it is to become a farmhand. Think of all the bureaucracy you can reasonably evade. You miss drinking pitchers of sangria, but know that you can only ever drink too much. Drinking too much is bad. Proven so.

You read in some newspaper about a guy that knows people that have been featured in the lenses of bancs, shot themselves, believe for real as far as can be determined that they have been abducted by aliens, old money, dirty laundry, cuban mages who work the cuchifritos counters, gentlemen who are very careful with the straight razor, a woman that is just impossible to please, coots, kooks, docs, dock workers, and omelet cookers.

Yesterday you took a walk and ended up in the ghetto, again. Always the ghetto it seems. Hopped on a perimeter bus and hoped that you would find an escape route from this lukewarm city. Found a nice suburb, previously neglected but being industrialised, with old buildings. You notice a perfectly commandeerable one, but notice also that it seems inhabited even though the front door is masoned up quite sloppily. A man asks you in really rapid language you don't understand what you think of this building when you see it and no one lives there. You tell him you think that it is sad, and he proceeds to explain that three months ago its inhabitants were 'evicted' by the police because the city began to reinforce it's summertime and I suppose perpetuated policy against the adoption of homeless houses. You wonder why this is so bad since it looks like the city will allow the perfectly sound building to deteriorate otherwise until it will be destroyed. If I only had a camera.

He tells you that he's looking for a house too, but he appears to have the resources and intention to buy or rent one. You say goodbye and he asks you where you are going, and you explain that you will find a new house. You don't trust him anymore.

***

Where can I get a boat? Where can I get some cash to pay my rent. Where can I get a boat again? Nothing fabulous, just a bit better than a Gargantuan AirStream Jiffy Pop style trailer. Silver will do. Maps, a satellite net connection, a month supply of salted fresh pistachios. No pink or red shit though.

Better yet, a job.

How can so many people not have jobs?

Pate pur Canard

Relishing ancient memories. Makes me almost want to eat those cheeses which are far too expensive for me to buy and that I'm afraid of anyway. Sad about eating pate pur canard because it seems perverse to relish flesh in a form so mangled. Like you're not really appreciating it, you're making mush out of a part of a creature that could be honored with a little more recognition than a little duck icon.

Amazed at the altitude of mausoleums, wondering how long they will really last, and what happens when they fall. Tempted by the idea of finding ancient chambers run through by subways. Curious about how outdoor plumbing with the lye, or whatever it is, works.

Where is my vineyard and how should I find it? Some would probably say that it is impossible to grow garlic and grapes on the same land, but to them I say, "we shall see." They haven't said this yet, and I have not said it either, so it is sort of insignificant. Feel free to IM me your suggestions at "scrapplelove", my omage to meat products that have been wrought through the griffin fingers of our culinary conventions.

I could grow garlic and even a few bales of cotton.

I was laying in bed, thinking about what I should do and fairly certain that would be to go to sleep. I ate more pasta than I actually had an appetite for. Thinking about how impossible it is to sleep in the city, and that I could grow garlic and even a few bales of cotton.

The truth is that I should have stayed in bed. My right hand is fully operational again. Been for a while. Heckling poets gets boring quickly. Should have made some phone calls. Did not. Wondering why it is that I always get ripped off in public transit systems. Not by the passengers, by the payment control systems.

What are we going to do on this planet? I don't think I am going to be able to get off of it. Who wants what? Why. Is it possible? How can the impossible be made more possible.