I discovered that I’d written the following down in the back pages of an old wallet calendar. Sometimes in college a situation or discussion seemed so important I decided I must write it down right then and there for a later assignment or personal project. It bothers me no end that I have no idea what this was about now, or even when it was that I wrote it down… OK, so checking out the clues it appears this was when Mom drove me up to Redwood City for my internship at Sunset… but what in god’s name was I going to do with it?
tide box
end of the world
“That’s it dude. 3 squid.”
plastic bag in mouth
no cares
they’re not kids anymore
I don’t think I’m a man/ woman/ etc.
I think I am a… well, I don’t think I’m a man until I sleep with 15…
discussion of 90210
huevos viejos
social area
No Woman No Cry
the unadulterated dust of the equestrian centers… the road monsters and how once they were all I saw [ed. note: I used to call the power line supports road monsters. I drew them as we drove from Maine to California on my first big move.]… the map is crazed with meaning, my life, laid out over a state, denser in places… Morro Bay + the mud…
Is it that everything has been bleached + so it seems like a canvas + there is so much you can paint but it’s depressing because it’s so hot
Mom narrates the drive. “Ventura is where most of our produce comes from… celery, as well as strawberries, but that’s not as well known.”
“Last time I checked Ventura had only one tall building… Up around the mountain there is Rancho del Cielo, that’s Ronald Reagan’s place… (I tune out, and when I come back in, she says) This is where we mine the animals that died and have been decomposing in the sun for years… (I don’t respond) And then we burn them and let out the sun again. Someday we’ll run out, and we’ll have to find some other way to let the sunlight out. (pause) Something else to burn.”
She turns on the radio, because I’m not talking. I turn channels and find something we start dancing to before we know what it is. (It’s Sublime.)
a mixed bank of CA poppies
Icelandic ponies in the blond hills
broadleaf fields w/herds of ppl bent + scattered… port-a-potties and stacks of plastic crates between rows… then coming over a hill, a pink, red, orange, yellow, white field
Most hills subtle variations on yellow — beautiful, + then you get up close and see what ugly scrapple it is
Madonna Inn [a pink-painted hotel at the edge of San Luis Obispo]
Your Beauty Is Your Smile in big Disney letters
… “He was just a man with excruciatingly disgusting taste — real American taste” + into neckties. “He had more neckties for sale than you would ever wanna see”…
gilt mirrors
huge goblets
just outside of [San Luis Obispo] a few shadowed hillsides of live oak
trunks recently burned black
taller trees among them that didn’t grow back — hardy oaks
* * * *
Number one on the list of things to absolutely never do if you want to accomplish something on a given day: Pick up an old yearbook. Yours or anyone else’s.
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