november 19

Somewhere south of waco. Well south. Sitting here in crickets and fireflies bellygazing, evening coming on, sided for a solid hour now. No buildings no body, just the trees and the crickets and frogs. Yeah I was lying about fireflies, so what. Maybe I'll write some while theres still light to see by. This quiets getting me all lonesome and feeling dead as dog shit, nobody to talk to now. Ditched the tramp I rode out this way with and I think it's gonna be a few days before I get used to being all by myself the way it was back in august. Was even thinking about calling up someone I met last year on the oregon coast, but I don't have any service out here and I didn't think I would. Maybe when I get to Hearne.

Hitched up the one from Angell. Not that you know what or where that is or would remember in the case that you did if you ever get this. Too many teenagers, made me feel strange like I ought to be able to take a few of them under my wing like their mommys and daddys never did and get along better than I'm cut out to. Some day maybe. That was the kicker for me though, too old in my guts for the program. I felt like one of those freaks they'd tell us about in middle school nobody ever but heard about, kids who'd somehow been held back for years and you wouldn't want to know what it'd feel like to be them if you could. And I guess I got to know then something of what it would have been to be one of the storybook legends. Lonesome. Lonesome like you're tom hanks cast away, captive in the gulf between yesterday and next year. Lonesome and just... too damn old. They'd cut the welding program I'd been told they still had, actually, and that's what decided me. There wasn't a whole lot else offered there besides.

So up the one I went, up the coast. Time of my life being broke and soaked to the bone for weeks before I got bored of the beach and rolled over to the other shoulder, over those sleepy coastal hills to winter over in our city of roses. That was a mid-november too though, wasn't it. Do you remember the stairs at the station?

Ah but there is no stairway, they're steps. Neither was there ever any coriander in may... nor light at the end of the tunnel, nor anything but sweet sweet nothings at the holoscene in June. But don't you remember those stairs, though? Water it, don't let it drown.

There was another reason I've got last november on the mind. I know what it was. The wilderness I'm sitting in the middle of now. Hah. There not wolves or bears or anything in texas but hogs and deer I guess but thats not stopping me from thinking what else there could be nobody knows about all the way out here in the frogs and chiggers and god knows what just like there must've been god knows what all else on the highway north of tillamook that guy at the bus stop I'd sat waiting with said he'd walked all by himself and heard something big crashing through the trees alongside the road, something big following him for unthinkable miles. But I guess probably that's just drugs for you.

Times up, can't see much anymore. Goodbye you, november. Next time.