The arthritis in my neck keeps my head bowed in reverence for the demise of humanity. But it's not on purpose. I spent too much time looking at my past below my feet and my neck got stuck in that position. January 1st is a time to look forward because regardless of whatever Irish or Chinese railroad crew was slaughtered because the contractor didn't want to pay them, time plods on and the living can either gripe about past injustices or move on.
I trained myself to methodically record every event in my life so I could later write about it in profound and original ways. This proved to be a double-edged sword because while I got all the details right I couldn't find the pause button on the universal remote control of my life's narrative. I still can't and small gestures and slights and smells and dogs licking lips and paws bleeding and tones of voice in deceitful packages still return to me unwanted when I'm merely laying in bed dreaming of Mexico or mocking television programs. Simply put, I don't have more than five minutes of peace in any day. This burden allows me easy access to the past like a painter using a limitless canvas but imagine if that canvas followed you around all day every day and haunted your dreams... My determination to extract the narrative of my life into a Nutria Cajun Moonshine Sauce has gone too far and I don't see a solution. If it means a decline in my writing then I can't compromise. Nothing will deter me from the completion of my Oggy Saga. But the pursuit of my Oggy Saga is poised to ruin everything.
I've been watching survival shows and the Acronym "STOP" means
S---Situation
T----Threats
O----Observe
P----Plan
Ok, I'm going to apply that to my present survival situation. Usually I trace my path to my present situation on New Years Day and make absolutely no plans for the future. I know it's amusing to watch me go from processing Lobsters in Maine at this time last year, through a tornado ravaged N.Y. and Penn to a Missouri basement and processing IRS tax returns and then fleeing to go to Guatemala through the drought blighted Oklahoma to Austin where I suffered beyond all my limits in 120 degrees and in desperation and penniless going to the desert to slaughter hogs but ending up on the beach in Corpus Christi sick as a poisoned dolphin, alone, deaf, blind, dying...and then becoming a maintenance man at a trailer park and then fixing Goldwing motorcycles at a junk yard... washing from a hose...until the oil field beckoned and I followed the money into hazard beyond hazard that only ended when the whole company was charged with $8 million embezzlement by a notoriously crooked energy company who is actually destroying the global atmosphere while the world watches Storage Wars.
It's enough to make me forget that in 2011 I managed to drive a 41 year old van to Labrador after 2 years of struggle and border wars.
I don't think it's inaccurate to say that if I had done any planning at all then my whole 2012 narrative would've turned out different. But the problem with crisis situations is that there is no time to plan, no money, no energy and no experience. I'm a child raising himself in a carnival.
Survey Situation -- I'm in a small town in the desert in a house with a tiny bit of heat from an electric furnace that I fixed. I have ordered new restring elements that should solve the heat problem for this winter. The room is cold but it has electricity. The van has a worn transmission. The bands are all slipping. But I have my moped and I have the money and time and skill to rebuild the transmission. I have no pressing engagements.
Threats - arthritis in the neck and spine may prove my undoing. Too much sitting in a chair typing/jerking off and too much driving in futile circles. 8 hours of driving to do 3 hours of work. I got a $600 check for two days of work and all we did was dig two holes. But those two holes were 700 miles from here and we were surrounded by Hydrogen Sulfide gas released by fracking projects. But H2S isn't present in my bedroom. Brown Recluse spiders are all around me. My Tinnitus is going to make me go crazy and I'm looking at a $3000 hearing aid in the hopes it will help. The three dogs are safe now that I have bribed them with biscuits. Two are on death's door.
Observe - Uvalde has few resources but with some networking I can get a garage to use for the transmission project. There's a pawn store where I can hawk my remaining pride. I need to be mobile because if I can't find a job in January then I have to make plans. Also, there are no music teachers in Uvalde.
Plan- Get the parts for the transmission project. It's $150 for all the gaskets and bands and pads. a total rebuild will cost around $300 in parts and two weeks labor. Find a place to do this with a transmission jack.
*Tune the piano. I could easily make money teaching piano in this town. the closest music teacher is 60 miles away. Tuning pianos isn't fun. if it were fun it wouldn't be called a job. there are 88 keys. half of those have three strings each. You have to tune about 200 strings total in a mathematical stretching of octaves and counting beats and hammering each note fifty times to set it. But get it done because right now I've tuned 1 of 6 octaves and the piano sounds worse than ever if I deviate from the 12 keys in tune.
*The two best screenplay ideas I've got need to be finished this year.
*The Crystal Circus has become a circus trying to write. If I really wanted to finish this story then would I keep leaving places with electricity? Please make this a priority.
*If the oil field job calls back then don't answer the phone. I'm lucky to have gotten out alive.
*Having just received $500 in music software along with a new computer I need to record the few songs I have written...especially the Bread and Circus song. There will be no money earned but it's my contribution to the world of art.
Planning isn't hard.
*Shit, I totally forgot that the whole reason I got the new computer was so I could edit the 50 hours of footage from the trip to Labrador....which is rotting in a digital vault. Has anyone noticed that I don't have my shit together? Why didn't anyone say anything?
Tuesday, January 1, 2013
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