The other day, I made a drive out to Palm Desert to see an old friend, an old flame. In Western parts of this Western World, gas has dipped to under 2 dollars a gallon. I still can't get over it, am still trying to figure out what to do with all this free time - this freedom to get in the car and go, just to drive 50 miles, 100 miles, 500 miles and find a beach or a person or whatever and wait for the stars or sun or...
Anyway, me and Ash Clark go way back. Back to Lake Forest, back to Durham, Champaign, San Jose, New York, Los Angeles...London, Florence. Now I guess Palm Desert, for dinner...fighting the rain. It took me 5 hours to get there and so few people in my world would have been worth it. She is. For stretches of this life, she's been everything to me...incomparable to infamous. Thousand tears and a thousand smiles. Hence, the title. And the back half isn't a knock. Actually, far from it. I find the keepers to be capable of both good and evil...and evil is usually born from goodness gone awry, usually...so in her case, both halves serve as a compliment, no matter which way you cut it...
I'm sorry I'm so difficult.
Now, sitting on my computer, removed, she's solid - like this rock in my mind - and always will be. That's a big word to me, solid. I don't know many people who could fill it.
We talked about the cuts and crushes and chases and everything and anything that you could wrap into an evening in a early to bed southwestern town. And forgiveness...lots of forgiveness. She had a hand in shaping some of the best parts of me...and other parts...and it's amazing to be able to sit in front of something like that...
The things that marvel me in this world.
...
I got back on the highway sometime after midnight. And it was still raining, and black, and late. And all I could feel was my drift, this lately inescapable drift pulling me back. Home. And I can't shake this feeling, would be fucking nuts to want to, of a world lining right, for now, for me...moving and turning. And the footing beneath my feet has finally thawed, and I'm taking my stake and driving it in.
Everything I got.
