:: My Reality ::

:: Saturday, March 06, 2004 ::

I remember San Francisco the Winter after the Summer of Love, January 1969. I was in the Army, head shaved, up visiting Dale who had tuned in, turned on and dropped out to work at the Post Office and had an apartment in the Tenderloin district. Dale bought a pound of pot, had hidden it in the top of the living room closet. He worked nights I and would stay up late with headphones on, listening to KSAN, smoking his dope. The Mothers, the Airplane, Big Brother, the Fillmore, the Haight, Zap Comix. Too bad the dope was not really that good! Maybe it was male hooch, no buzz. It didn't matter.

Dale and I would go for walks in the Tenderloin and eat noodles in Chinatown. We'd marvel our good fortune to be stoned out hippies in San Francisco. I would comment on the beauty of the women we'd pass by, Dale would explain that they weren't actually women. Dealers would peddle their dope in a monotone multisyllable word, "speedhashacidmesclinegrass." Down in the Haight, longhairs would openly stare at my military shaved head.

Barbara lived there with Dale too. That was before I knew what a nervous breakdown was. She had one. She would stay in bed for days. One day, a better day, we all went to Mill Valley across the Golden Gate, past Sausalito, up in Marin County. Barb knew someone who had a house there. It was cold, foggy. The house was vacant, heat turned off. We all piled into a big bed and covered up with down comforters to keep warm. In an open bedroom window suddenly appeared a wild animal, a ferrett or weasle or otter of some kind. We freaked! The creature freaked! We laughed.

It was Richard Brautigan's San Francisco, R. Crumb's San Francisco, City Lights Bookstore, where Dale sold his self published poetry chapbooks. Where Ginsburg recited from Howl and Ferlingetti wrote She.

I was scheduled for Nam but by hook of fate didn't go. After San Francisco, I ended up in Germany. And then it was just a year after that I learned all about nervous breakdowns.

Barbara became owner and and CEO of a boutique, The Joyful Alternative (see photo below) which recently closed after 34 successful years. Dale went on to have a great many misadventures and is currently a screen writer in Burbank. Me, I just sit and play this here guitar.

:: Tom 2:19 PM [+] ::
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The Real Estate transaction fell through, I knew it would. One thing I learned from my ex-wife, Karen, never-no never ever, do a real estate transaction without an agent! Buying or selling, that's my advice. Well, cut to "Plan B" which is to refi and pull some money out to fix the place up, relieve cash flow problem.

My daughter Cole's advise: Forget guitars, take my $8.64 an hour from the library and take my wife to dinner! Ain't my daughter great! Really, someone did something right in raising the girl! You can see her pix below.

Almost noon, here at the library till 2:00. The school is closed for Spring Break...So why are we here?! This happens every year, me working on the Saturday of Spring Break at the college. I hope all the kids enjoy their Tequila in CanCun...BTW, watch out for a bumper crop of GGW by July!

Just talked to Cole...Her mom the Real estate agent says we should talk to the agent who has the commercial property strip that borders ours and see what their thougts are on the property. You know, the financial world is full of options. A lot of the time it's a matter of timing. Mine has been especially piss poor for the past 10 years!!! Could it be that during that time I have learned a few things? Yes, I think so.

:: Tom 1:05 PM [+] ::
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Last night's bout of insomnia was followed with my daily regimine of vitamins and supplements leaving me Eyes Wide Shut! I'm having cold sweats and chills but the whole time all I can think of is that I'm working at the library with no backup. My ears are running at about 30 decibels in the key of A. The atrium is spinning like something out of the Enterprise contacting the Cybourg. And I'm getting paid $8.64/hr. That's just enough to buy the gas it takes to get here and home. I'm losing a lot more than money here. I turn on the TV just in time to see Chris Moneymaker go all in and grab an inside straight on the River Card.

I took a break from my guitar obsession but it's no use. I think/eat/sleep/shit acoustic guitars. My internal monologue is a running debate between the Blonde Alverez for $500 and the Taylor 510 for $1095 which happens to be the same guitar I sold to the music store for $600 last May. The Taylor sounds infinitely better than the Blonde but has a documented mean streak. The Blonde has the same curves as my wife before she lost the 50 lbs and any interest in me. Meanwhile fans are pleading with me to get my digital camera out of hock so I can post pictures of of all the great guitars I write about.

I don't know who I am anymore. I think I'm a composite of all the different foods I eat. Tommy Love is long gone and we don't know who is running the show right now. Whoever he is, he is one clever son-of-a-bitch! He says all the right things at all the right times. Problem is, he never sleeps! We're up all night watching infomercials for Human Growth Harmone and Girls Gone Wild. When we do find a good movie he'll switch between two or three others the entire time. This has so infuriated his wife that she now comes home and immediately goes up stairs to watch TV alone. Sniff, the big red dog is heart broken, thinks it's somehow her fault and has taken to biting her haunches, gnawing them raw.

Chuncks of my brain are now falling out of my eyes and ears and falling "Clump, clump" on to clean white paper in front of me. I think I'd better go, now.

:: Tom 8:28 PM [+] ::
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