Greetings from Tucson

hello, stranger –

this is not the post that I had thought i would be writing, but it's the only one i have in me right now.  when i got back from my last trip i was thinking i'd write about Tucson and all the unique and weird things that make it the place that it is.  the first weekend was Cyclovia, a bicycle street fair of sorts, where they shut down a corridor of streets in the city so that anyone with a bicycle or unicycle – or rollerblades, for that matter – can ride around in a car free environment and enjoy music and corn dogs and beer and whatever else comes out of a food truck.  it can be a little underwhelming at times in terms of the actual experience, but the creativity of the people here and the dedication to fostering a sense of community out here in this little patch of desert always lifts the heart far higher than whether or not the snow cones were any good.

but this year it was so hot it was not much fun, and when i met with my friends it felt like basically just a slug to get through the route.  i was actually just glad to get through the endeavor without encountering one of the minor disaster headaches that each of my friends were their kids had, and be able to retreat to my house without incident.  so i thought i would really dive into shit here the next weekend at the day of the dead, which is a huge, beautiful festival here.  but it was not to be, as we had an unseasonable rain storm that day, and it pretty much washed me out.  and then a couple days later we had the election, which left me pretty much astonished and dismayed – to say the least – about the state of things, and the mindset of the people around us.  and then a couple of weeks after that my mother died.

so i'm sitting here writing and having my Bukowski moment on the porch, the morning after, because I really don't know what else to do.  and even if i did i don't think i would want to do it. i've been drinking pretty steadily since i got home from the hospital last night, and i don't see much reason to course correct right now.  no one knows yet.  i don't have any obligations. i'm not hungry.  what the fuck am i going to do, watch tv?  the only things i have right now are the pen and the bottle.  fortunately for me God gave me two hands, so i don't need to choose.

not that i condone alcohol abuse as a way of dealing with problems.  i know far too well that's been an ugly crutch i've fallen back onto in the past, and i'm not kidding myself that this is somehow going to make anything better.  just a couple of days ago i actually made a promise to myself to sit up and fly right through this thing.  but this thing was so much harder than i thought it would be.  it was not unexpected.  but you can expect a punch in the face, and it doesn't mean shit when that fist hits your skull.

and besides, i'd feel like a bit of a psycho if i didn't - teary eyed, carrying on like it's just an average day without a drink in my hand.  fuck that.  the world is full of psychos already.  add on top of that the run-of-the-mill disconnected, disenfranchised, screen-time device clowns out there, and you have a big enough army to take over the world.  i see it on the streets with the loud ass muscle cars and pick up trucks revving by right now.  they’d rather be caught trying to stick their dick up their own ass on TikTok then search the world or themselves for any type of meaning and substance about this life they've been given.  that's what we're up against.

for her part i think my mom would actually be pissed if i wasn't drinking right now.  i feel like she'd see it as some kind of disservice or discredit for what she's had to go through, and i’m completely okay with obliging with that.  during her time in the hospital one of her memorable complaints was that they weren't serving drinks.  it might have been hilarious – sitcom scene worthy, even – if it wasn’t five seconds sandwiched somewhere in the middle of the most painful days i’ve ever known.

to honor her privacy, and the rest of family matters, that's all the detail i'll say about that.  i had, in truth, been hoping to skirt this issue altogether if things had turned out better.  but they did not.  and I don't think i could jot down another word in a post and feel honest about it without putting these cards on the table.

so that's where things lay.  it's the bottle and the pen for now – but as I go the pen is starting to feel better.  lonesomeness is a strange thing – i'm neither making any calls, or accepting them right now.  but at the same time this feeling of isolation is making things all that much harder.

i guess that's what the pen is for.  when i woke up this morning i could hardly bear to open my eyes.  i didn't want to face this world of people, doing shitty people things – the self absorption, the cowardice, the neglect, and just the general transitory nature of things.  i didn't want to face it because then i'd be part of it – as we all must be out there – and i don't want to dilute this pain just yet, because even though it sucks it's all i got right now, and the only thing that feels real.

so apologies on the delay in writing, but things have been hard lately.  it's been in my mind even to just quit the traveling and project altogether, and chalk it up to just another fruitless pipe dream.  but then i picked up the pen again this morning, and something positive clicked back.  not awesome, but at least in the right direction.  and that's something else my mom would have been happy to see.  she was at least a fighter, and no one can say otherwise.  and there are still a lot of good things worth fighting for out there.  so I want to take this thing all the way.  and as Bukowski puts it “that's the only good fight there is.”