Tell me how to get the hell out of Sesame Street

Joseph often had one of three recurring dreams as a child. One was a small him bring thrown out a car window over a bridge crossing an autumn valley, where he would fall with his heart flipped in his chest until he woke up landing on the soft padding of his mattress. Another was the visitation of two characters from Sesame Street that brought compound words together. They were aliens, and would take turns, "Tele," ... "Phone," until they completed the single compound word. Those two fuckers would be bouncing against the door window in the living room where he slept at the Waddells' house like a moth on a light bulb, singing, "Jos," .. "Eph." That frightened the fuck out of him. He did not want any late night messages from aliens, puppets or not. Their mouths circulated in a perverse oscillating ovulation, and they chorused, "yip yip yip, uuuuhhuuuh uuuuuhhuuh." The third dream was that he was able to breathe underwater, like Jacques Cousteau but without any mortal breathing apparatus. He loved Jacques Cousteau and the whole underwater world. He would want the ability to breathe underwater at that point in his life if he could be given any superpower. He would pray for it.

Mania?

What bloody mess it all can be. Other times, it's like a long and beautiful nascent garden on a perfect first spring day. A waxing moon, a cool night with thin air. Sometimes the universe rings its magical bells, sounds harmonize in resonance with your heart. Your eyes are full of stars. You are mad with inspiration, but the Universe is having it that way. Your synapses fire like bullet tracers in some ancient war to establish order. Yes, you. You are custodian of your Universe, though it's not yours and you didn't hire yourself. You were appointed in an ancient and magical ceremony that has been long without reference or reverence. You're all hopped up, your eyes are clean & sharp. You can tell that something is crystallizing in the ether, like it may shatter if you breathe too hard. Like it could flex if you poked it. Like you maybe could lose a finger.

So you run a labyrinth of ideas, everything shining golden and brilliant like the sun. And in this labyrinth you are not lost, it's like you're coming home from the longest, most epic journey to a home that you've long forgotten the splendour of, running from corridor to corridor bathing in the coimfort and ease you sense in the brilliant warmth of the light and soothing cool of the air. Like you are a motherfucking fish that has been thrown back into an Ocean of brilliant and eternal depth.

"Don't steal, [but instead] drug deal." - Ted Black

Readers, friends, if you turn these pages
Put your prejudice aside,
For, really, there's nothing here that's outrageous,
Nothing sick, or bad — or contagious.
Not that I sit here glowing with pride
For my book: all you'll find is laughter:
That's all the glory my heart is after,
Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you.
I'd rather write about laughing than crying,
For laughter makes men human, and courageous.

- Rabelais, intro to Gargantua & Pantagruel

Joseph would walk to school in the morning. He can't remember how long it took him, but he did know that he didn't have extra time to mess about. On the walk, he would cross a nicer neigborhood and a stream on the far side of which were grapes growing on a wall. The climate never had the grapes come to ripeness that he knew of, and definitely never had them so during the winter school year. Still, they were supremely sour like a natural candy. He would usually stop to eat them on his way to school, using the cringe that the overwhelming sour provoked to propel him running up the hill. A la "Sour Power". Oh indeed.

At the top of the hill was a traffic utility box, inside of which he was certain that there were little men pressing buttons to change the lights. They did not like if you knocked impatiently on the box, so he avoided that. But he could hear them doing their work, and was always pleased when they accommodated his need to cross the street to get to school.

Once at school, for 4 of 5 days, he would sit at a desk in the back of the room and do whatever the very nice teacher who was always very nice to him asked. Spell things? Sure. Practice cursive? Sure. Read? No problem. Then one day she sent him across the hall to the grade above for reading. He felt smaller than he normally did. Still he read. That's what they asked him to do. And so he did. Then he returned to his class.

One out of 5 days, he would go to his classroom and then go back to the lobby. A big, fuckoff yellow schoolbus would pull up in front of the school and he would climb into it. Then it drove him somewhere else, where he would have other classes. Just him & the driver on the big, fuckoff bus. It was always very surreal, but as a child, everything is magical & surreal. The other students told him he was retarded. He didn't talk. There was something wrong with his shoes, they said. He didn't understand, but believed them, since they seemed to have a consensus about it.

A photo of him at this time shows him with tall white socks with colored bands around the elastic. He's wearing a shirt & tighty whities, and he has a young olive complexion with huge dark circles around his eyes. The circles around his eyes are almost blue. He looks sleepy in the photo, but you can tell it's morning. It's taken in a bedroom he lived in. His desk is very organized, with a small elevated book shelf that looks like a reappropriated dish rack.

What he did with his time he can't remember. He would buy baseball cards, not because he really cared or knew who the people on the cards were, but because they were numbered and he understood that it was good to have a complete set. And opening them to find new players that he didn't have and gum was a bonus. As much a part of that was the adventure to the store. They didn't cost more than 50 cents.

Another interest he had was experiments. You know, like attaching a paperclip or a wire to both ends of a battery and seeing how warm it all would get. Warm enough to melt crayons, not warm enough to explode as he had hoped. That was fortunate. He hadn't considered that a battery explosion would likely harm him. So he was very close to the anticipated action. He took things apart. Watches, electronics, small machines like a record player might be made of, they all held secrets. He hid things, like money. Sometimes he forgot that they existed, the hidden things, and they were totally new to him when he found them. He may very well have been retarded, and people did not make sense to him. Other children were the most confusing, but adults knew and behaved strange things & ways.

His favorite thing was falling asleep.

Waking up in the morning to realise you've created a fresh crop of enemies and don't have the certain stamina to withdraw another breath reminds you of the beauty of life. If you could speak, and remembered that you have a mother, her name might be whispered as you force that one breath out. You're glad to be alone, since you can't bear the sound of your heart beating, or if you live in the city, traffic.

When I used to end up sick, I'd hurt more from the traffic than anything else. 4th Ave. & Warren. Horrid times.

Catch me, Motherfucker.

Chocha Pelon: "Don't cry for me Hialeah"

Ok.

1. Death
2. Blood, Broken Glass, Police, and Stupid Gift Games
3. Leases, Deposits, and Other Next-to-Impossible Challenges (for the half-feral)

Not the best week. I didn't drink, I didn't get high, I just slept and worked.

I have no money, I have no clean laundry (because 4. the Washing Machine Broke), I don't really have anything to eat, and I'm tired of being nice. I'm trying to convince the people I work with that I was born without a sense of Guilt. Like I just don't have one. It's a total lie, but in trying to prove it I've been able to be a total dickhead and smile and they're amused when I remind them that I am actually right and that I was born without a sense of guilt. I'm not sure it's a winning game but it's been fun today.

I was also told by the person that I asked if they were in a better mood that I was the one with an attitude problem not them. And that she'd heard it from more than one person that day. I was like, "Oh yeah, right, whatever."

Anyway, Chocha Pelon died last week. She lives on in Spanish vulgarities. Every time you call someone panocha, chocha, maricon, co~no or whatever, she lives.

Also, bunnies have a funny way of dying. Witchery?

Tom Waits makes me feel like a strung out Psychopomp

It's 7:30 am.  I found out last night how my dear waiter colleague Chocha Pelon had an accident and is in the hospital.  He had brain surgery.  I was just tweaking his nipple the day before yesterday.  The Haitian food runner accused me of being gay.  He's a small man.  I've seen him eyeing up the coconuts in the trees at work.  Literally.  There is no figurative language here, he was actually staring at the coconuts with longing.

I took a train last night to West Palm Beach.  I shared a few things about what happened to me in the past year.  Someone thanked me for it.  I was grateful to be able to share it.

I fell asleep last night after two, yet woke up at 6:50 this morning.  I woke up because I had a working dream where I had two restaurant checks in my hands.  I was all disorganized about my tables and who had what.  It had started raining.  A man came up all angry demanding his check.  I said, "Well, what did you have to eat sir?" which is strange because I normally would ask him where his table was or who his server was.  He refused to tell me.  I suspected that his check was one of the two that were in my hands.  Neither were for much money.  It's not unusual that some bastard orders an english muffin and a glass of water and then acts like he's been drinking Dom all day.

I was smoking a cigarette, also strange, then had to ditch it so I could run into the restaurant to find his server / a manager.  There was a waiter taking a crap with the bathroom door open so I threw my cigarette between his legs.  He was like, "YO!" Heh.  That shit's funny. 

I went back out to the man and asked him to wait a minute.  He walked out of the restaurant.  I ran up and had an impulse to kick him in the back of the head.  But I didn't.  I said, "Sir, you're going to have to pay your check."  He ignored me.  I ran inside and found Vittorio and he lumbered down the steps and around the restaurant.  As I was coming round to the imaginary parking lot I saw taxis and a feeling of dread that this bastard escaped came over me.  I looked in a frenzy at all the people standing around and none had his stupid moustache.  I looked again at my two checks, still in hand, and woke up.

So tell me, Doc... what the hell does it mean?

Bless you, Chocha Pelon.  We're all singing "Don't cry for me, Hialeah".