Journal Excerpt (Unedited) - Writers Forum

OzzyShiraz · 02-02-2008, 05:03 PM

I have no delusions about this being of any literary value...syntax and grammar all ajumble and that sort of nonsense. Still, I´d like to continue sharing with the Riding Varoom, so in the face of mild block I thought I´d present this journal entry...from last year, before I decided to take some time off the drink.
Where I come from, ¨Old Man¨ means yer dad.
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And, well, now it´s about 2am and I´ve got nothin´ to do but sip on this bottle and give the pen a workout so I´ll tell you about a little trip I took last weekend into the countryside.

Ha! The ´trip´ actually began on Friday, Shabbat, my regular no-holds-barred tipsy day, when I started doing laundry a la vodka, grinning and yapping at everyone, absolutely everyone. Somewhere in the late afternoon there was a girl who looked awfully Euro and had a German name but was local chica. I sat in her kitchen -- all suave at the beginning -- and rapped humorous to her until I felt Mr. Hyde nearby and made my well-timed exit. Actually, I don´t think I left soon enough, but aaaaah!, it was Shabbat. Swerved my way back to my abode quipping to every man, woman, and beast along the way. Felt like a million. Back at the Ranch I slurred my way into a conversation about music with a neighbour and by and by he produced a jazz documentary, insising it was excellent, but it bored the dickens out of me. Seeing as the lanky young lad was a jazz-head, I wracked my brain for a jazzisto I could get into, there three sheets to the wind. I knew the guy but couldn´t think of his name. Guitarist, maestro, always buggin´ on the octaves. What was that record ol´ Lapalopo used to have? Movin´Wes...Wes Montgomery! And Eureka!, the kid did have a DVD of ol´ Wes, and he put it on as the world started to get truly fuzzy.

Then the kid laid some funkiness on me. Said he was a clown with a troupe and invited me to see a free performance that night. Grand!, I said. Hours passed, a new bottle materialised and began to disappear. I have no idea how I held it together so long, but I did make it to the theatre where the door guys didn´t want to let me in. No idea what I said to them, but I saw the show, a sort of vaudeville, and somehow made it back home. Forget solid memories from there; as usual there´s a vague impression of faces, rooms, ideas I was spitting out like shells of sunflower seeds to anyone who would listen, someone tried to get me to watch ¨The Departed¨ but after about twenty minutes (best guess) of wakk Boston accents I told them how it sucked and watched Wes again instead. I only minutely remember my clown-neighbour coming home and telling him how much I enjoyed the show.

Woke up hammered. Hammered. I took my sweet time with everything, thought about cancelling the trip south, but kept to it, walked the long walk to the bus station like a horse with eyeguards on, looking at no one, clop-clopping my hooves forward like there was some jerk behind me with a whip until I made it to the station, caught a reflection of myself somewhere, and decided to eat something. At my favourite restaurant I ordered a hearty beef stew, ate everything but the beef, and crawled on the bus feeling really very sorry for the woman next to me for I knew I smelled like an accident at the distillery. It was a tough trip, somehow I couldn´t fall asleep, though I was wretched tired, so I just sat there feeling the tide of drunken-ness slowly -- so slowly! -- recede, watching the mountains in their solemn stances through the windows.

When I reached the ´big city´ I still had a Metro trip ahead of me, but I made it, and stepped out into the busy sunny street to search for the Old Man who was already cross at me for taking so long that morning. He pulled up in a car full of people. Great, I thought. Just what I need. I breathed as deeply and often as I could through my mouth on my way to the car, crawled in next to the cutest girl I´ve yet seen in this country and lowered my window so I could breathe out of it and not bother this surprise of a precious creature pressed against me. Of course, that wasn´t easy either. ¨Why you have your window down when I have the AC on?¨ , the Old Man asked. Christ! I kept talking out the window, ¨Fresh air is better.¨ Of course he said, ¨No.¨

We arrived at so-and-so´s house, and I excused myself immediately to the shower where, again, I took my sweet time. Came out feeling better, but it was hard not to gawk at the girl who really was too young (16) and too pretty (9.9!) and too eager to unleash her smile that made me feel schplitzy drunk and dizzy all over again.

Eventually...finally, at my suggestion, the Old Man and I bid adieu to whoever those shadows were who lived with that girl, and we headed south...

We set out for the south in the racing car like two unacquainted devils, him with his two horns yellow long and sharp, me with my eight still growing. It was hard to tell if we were passing by the countryside or if it was passing by us; you know that travelin´ feelin´.

We passed by a joint that advertised Argentine Barbecue and remarked how good that would be. The ´big city´ slid away behind us, and the spinning wheels brought us into such greenery and mountains and sunlight. Along the highways out here the mountains insist their companionship, they sit in your lap, and you rub them under the chin and take them with you.

After a while and a few tolls we turned off the main road and suddenly the green got greener, there were horses and riders everywhere, and the Old Man was telling stories of his youth in the very same mountains. At first I thought he was full of it, but he started naming and describing places before we came to them and I realised, Heck, the Old Man really is from here.

We bought charqui, horse meat cured like jamon serrano, and it was deliscious. I kept guiltily thinking of cute horses, but it tasted so good I was constantly ripping myself a piece, and the Old Man wanted some more, too.

Eventually we were coasting down the main drag of our destination, a little ville. The Old Man had told me it would be far prettier than central Massachusetts, but it really wasn´t. Central Massachusetts is quite pretty, don´t let any uppity jackals tell you otherwise.

All the same, it was quaint, charming even, and there was a cool, unique little chiming clock tower in the town centre that was exposed so you could see the gears churning...supercool.

The Old Man kept saying that the girls were looking at me, but I didn´t feel any gazes.

We bugged around, we ate rabbit, and I couldn´t sleep at all because the Old Man snores and we shared a hotel room. So tossing and turning into the morning the Old Man brought me to a farmhouse he was thinking of buying. It was mighty handsome but needed tons of work. There was a Shepherd-mongrel that followed us along the grounds, stopping to look at palms and vineyards just as we did, seemingly thinking the whole scene over as we were. We left deciding it was too much work --years-- but I think we both wished that that dog could have come home with us.

Back on the highway. We stopped, this time, for the Argentine Barbecue, and the black sausage was so good. So good. Made from blood. Could live off that stuff.

The Old Man lost his keys in the park, where we had yapped with the pony-riders about horses. He had said something about local breeds, and I rudely told him that there were no local breeds, that they all came from Europe, and he agreed.

We ate so much meat, so much sausage, so much intestine and tripe and udder that the Old Man said he wouldn´t eat any more meat in South America. Hahahahahaha! I said the same thing ´bout drinkin´, didn´t I?

We got back to the ´big city´ and I took the bus home, thinking of the Old Man and his dream to come back to mountains and rivers and valleys that are now very different. And I wished that I could coddle him, and change everything back, and run alongside him in the open country.

Alas, no, time and humans progress, and now the Land is different, just like VT back home...different. Like Whitestone, or Jewish Brooklyn, or Dorchester. Just plain different, and our memories of the old life are what we have...strong as an idea...

Ya! Now I´m getting weird.