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February 26th, 2000 at 9:41 PM

Cactus Juice      

 

It was a long full workweek and I logged over forty hours at the office, not even breaking for lunch at all, typing and sipping and talking more than last week, and coming home to cook food and rest without much posting to the old web log, but on Thursday night I started writing this big long message to send to the Saturn-List about education and boy did I really get into it, and the essay I think became somewhat overbearing for such a casual list but I posted it anyway after writing it all night and I only slept for about ninety minutes before heading off to work listening to the Flaming lips, and really not until later that day after work when I came home to see that only a couple of people responded to my big long message did I start to wonder whether I was just full of myself and wanting lots of attention and of course once a moment of self doubt gets started it can consume me a bit, but I don't need to go over this again, so then, on Friday night I called Kariann back in Pennsylvania and she was in her apartment with friends having a good time, since they had all just come from happy hour and me I was tired but it still made me happy to hear her voice and she said she had ordered a plane ticket but she still had to confirm it, and really I can't wait until she gets out here because I think I really need her even more than I'm aware with together in the desert driving zig-zag through counted states holding and straining in trashy motel rooms watching her smoke and laughing my stupid voices hard believing so eternally single me but from here head to there family somehow grounded, soft-bellied, years flowing a giggling orgasm of stories shared and change of thought hearting hurt so never alone again, whine, wine, win.

Today I awoke at about 10 AM after sleeping for something like 16 hours and I felt week because I hadn't eaten in so long and I had some of my homemade chicken soup and at one o'clock Joshua got home from work and we went to the library to return some books and then went to TGI Friday's for some yummy fish and chips and talked about the satisfying and the unsatisfying, and after hanging out back here at the apartment for a few hours we decided to drive west toward the small mountains to watch the sunset, so we hopped in the old van and drove on Olive Ave all the way, no music, watching as the light got heavy and my head went out of focus until it all felt like a well directed movie, shadows lining up just right with the lines in the road and Joshua's self-chuckles punctuating my silent thoughts and I felt years younger in an old, matured body, in this 30 year old van, slowing to give a donation as we entered a state park rolling with gentle hill-curves and stuffed with saguaro cactus and crumbly Legend of Zelda brush-trees, the engine growling as the tools and junk behind our seats rolled and clattered until we parked in a field of sand and jumped out into the blazing silence, walking toward a trail and watching the awkward plant-life, no one around for miles, needles sticking sharp to my shoes, each of us beating cactuses with lengths of dead wood and jumping through seemingly ancient riverbeds sparring like fictional desert-samurai until the sky fell and the ground rose dim, and we turned to head back, prodding along dusty floor until we climbed into the van to the sound of a woman screaming in the white-trashy distance, climbed into the van within the sight of a family collected around a campfire, climbed into the van for an unspoken return to the city and the lives we needed to continue.