And it's Ashley the dog musher, the muscle-bound blonde beauty punching me in the arm and saying, "Well, you're a cute sucker, aren't you?" It's Richard Dreyfuss going mad shoveling dirt into his kitchen window and building the tower that a turn of my head reveals in this Wyoming night. It's Ned and Chiquita sitting rapt in the rain to see the aliens descend upon the Tower. It's..

damn! It's late now. Get caught up in the action and you never finish the story.

Tex and me just had free ribs and barbecue beef sandwiches compliments of Gilly, the best bone in the basin. Gilly, who while we ate elucidated on the finer points of sheep fuckin'. "Nuttin else to do in Wyoming," he said. Gilly and Dale with their portable smokehouse on wheels parked in Ellen's front yard here at the KOA Devil's Tower.

Ellen invited us for a comped lunch, then lodging

[transmission interrupted by the arrival of alien spacecraft]

Garbage...

Rain. It is everywhere I am these days. Or so it seems. Rain like dogs through garbage. Rain like flies on fruit. Rain like sea water over the bulkhead. Drowning rain. Death ray rain. Rain that comes and stays, makes everything a damp, dreary pain in the ass and hooks you on SRIs to keep you from holding your breath too long.

In Oregon I forgot how to breath. It was as though I held my breath to keep the rain out, to suspend animation until the sun came out and shined and spat out light and energy like an arc weld, so bright you can't look straight at it without it blinding you.

Now where am I? Wyoming. The base of Devil's Tower and the rain's here too. The rain and the garbage trucks. Eight in the morning in a National Park campground and what arrives to crush the doe-in-the-grass silence but a fucking garbage truck. Garbage trucks and a battalion of other publicly-funded industrial noise-makers ruled my early morning hours in Corvallis, beating my head bloody at the start of every depressing day there. It is no small wonder to me that I didn't check out of that hotel a lot earlier, perhaps even by some permanent means.

Drizzly rain and garbage. Welcome to my head this 4th day of August, 1998, semi-sorta lost in The Yellowstone State, severed from the caravan, contemplating car troubles with Duke and struggling to kick the mood drugs, the Wellbutrin and the Klonipin that I've been on for months. So much for the elation of just two nights ago, eh? Ah, hell, I'll get over it. It's a good sign at least that yesterday while feeling down and expressing that to Tex and Seven, I called it the blues rather than "being depressed." The blues sound more like something you can get over, something classical, something we all go through, unlike its more clinical cohort depression. Sure, depression is something society needs to recognize as a bonifide illness and not just someone's self-indulgent escape from the responsibilities of the world. But perhaps it would still be better called the blues.

A few days ago while talking on a phone near Mt. Rushmore with my dear mother in Fallbrook, California, I told her about trying to kick the drugs I've been on since I no longer feel that I need them.

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Last update April 1, 2004