Migration

The Island Republic of Labrador

I don't want to make the same mistakes of the past, saving money for an implausible adventure, grinding my teeth on the reins of insanity, chasing shadows across the tundra, realizing my checking account is under review for negative balance and then eating cold ramen noodles in a junk yard parking lot while defending my mockery and dreaming of a piano. If I look back into my life with the perfect vision of a crippled man I think the goal was to have something to write about, to meet people, work a variety of jobs, try to assemble a universal perspective, a noble world view that would enrich my writing with authentic experience...and alienate everyone.



Flash forward to waking up in a puddle of motor oil under a engine-less Pontiac Firebird, penniless, bleeding, hopeless prospects of work. No electricity. No writing. No audience. Nothing but back pain and pre-diabetic slurred speech. Plan A didn't work...or it partly worked because moments before falling into a coma from the heat I would visualize the book I could write if only the pieces were in place...if only I had electricity or light. I had done part of the homework necessary to write something worth writing and not these redundant narcissistic diary entries. But life got in the way and the life required to experience something worth writing about has crippled my spirit and body and even after a gallon of beer and a back massage by the local police I don't gravitate toward the keyboard. My Santa Cruz book has become like Brian Wilson's Smile. He knew it would be good if he could finish it but the process of working on it made it more impossible to finish.


Guess which of these characters is Oggy.

I had 4 months to work on Crystal Circus and I spent one month in bed learning to move my right arm again, another month in Mexico chasing Carmen's charming ghost, March was spent at a garage doing required maintenance on my escape hatch and now I have the chance to go back to work or sit at the piano and alternately write. The pieces are finally in place but knowing my past mistakes I can't risk another decline into insanity and homelessness. No one living actually will read my Crystal Circus book so why should I pass up a job opportunity to write it? I'm trying to learn practical job skills that I neglected for the last 25 years. I'm not like some quippy whore who writes for Time Magazine and thinks that's contributing to the world. Normally men go to trade school to learn industrial electrics but it's too late for that now. I need to learn on the job and fortunately that's where I learn best.