Notas de John Pine

I should point out one thing:

I hate people making judgments on me by what I write.  Do not assume you can armchair psychologize any of these pages and even come out half right.  On one hand, I am incredibly more sane than any of this writing makes me sound, on the other, I got patches of unheard of crazy I have yet to mine.  So, don’t do that. 

Also:

I have been posting newer John Pine stuff (on the sidebar, scroll down).  Now, I know what everyone thinks when they read it.  And you are wrong.  It is autobiographical in no way whatsoever.  I can empathize with the character, but I am not that guy.  I hate cabinet building and I don’t like gas station beer. 

The only reason I’m saying all this now is that I have a completely new readership from when I started in on that project.  You haven’t had a chance to get the disclaimer, yet.  I am not John Pine any more that I am The Highwayman (which was rejected for publication–BASTARDS!), so don’t tell me how you think I should deal with his problems.

Also:

I have no idea where I’m going with the plot.  I can tell you this much. Every single motherfucker drowns in the end if you so much as ask me about it.  Everyone.  Even the bus driver will get it.  Besides, I’m tempted to go somewhere totally divergent with it. 

Think unhappy and destitute VA hospital Cannery Row.

And if you have read Cannery Row and loved it, and you have female equipment, you may marry me now.  That does mean you’ll have to put out often and occasionally cook.  I can have the papers drafted up by Monday.

3/30

I woke up hearing rain on my windowsill and a few drops hitting my head.  Even with the gray overcast, I can say that things looked good.  Had a couple emails from some nice people I can write to.  My guitar looks good and I feel ahsamed for neglecting her (again) for another woman when just one of those train tickets could have landed her in the luthier shop getting nipped and tucked and refretted.  I am a bad husband.

I got up to sift through my growing pile of semester related papers, found a phone number I had received and discarded months ago (in the throes of honorable commitment), laying among the maps and lab handouts.  My dialing thumb got itchy, but honestly, I have never been good at working up the nerve for that sort of call.  Women take note:  men are generally more shy than you think.  So I probably won’t call.

Besides…

I’ll just leave it at that.  Besides.

I went outside and fired up the Scout to let it settle into a low idle.  With automatics, you’re supposed to idle them up to around 800 RPM to counteract the power draw of the torque converter engaging.  It keeps your engine from dying at a stoplight.  The Scout is an auto (my one slight dislike about it), but IH was wise in putting agricultural power plants in their vehicles.  I could dump straight cowshit down my carburetor, pee in the oil filler, and still pull out a stump wihout revving it above a grand.  Then I used my pocket knife (damn Holley and their tight clearances) to lean out the mixture.*

I walked back in the house and greeted my convalescing room mate and my antisocial dog, both laid down I the living room.  Me and the late Edward Abbey shared some time reminiscing about the West long gone and lonesome blue.  I wrote down in my journal “long gone and lonesome blue–use it!” right under “choking on the blues.”

I pushed away an open bottle Sailor Jerry and remembered friends gone and still breathing, and some not breathing.  See, me and those guys got something in common.  We’re all gone. Solid gone.  We both made our trips North that fall, but our luck didn’t change, and we never come back at all. 

And so it goes. 

I checked for missed calls and had to chuckle when I saw the readout.  Not all bad decisions and terrified mistakes turn out all bad.  I have some fire starting capabilities, and don’t a few know it.

I swear to you people, it’s like Easter up in this motherfucker. 

When I think of the women I’ve known or I am yet to know, I wonder a little if sometimes I’m the fire, or if sometimes I’m the fuze.  Either way, I enjoy a pleasant cataclysm.

I still have those orders sitting on my end table.  I say yes, I’m fucking gone, college is paid for, and I have a chunk of cash in my pocket to start over.  It’ll just cost me a year of living and dying rock and roll.  Shit.  Or I could stay and gut it out, poor as fuck, trying to reclaim every living memory I’ve made in the better part of a year.  And that Rocky Mountain Element I more or less ignored for the new and former woman needs some legs run into it.

This morning I took the breath of Jesus and old John Henry in, and I warn you, I may not be completely sane, but I am fucking motivated. 

Right where I left off months ago.

 

 

 

Contest: Spot every reference above, there will be a prize.

*If you need me to decode any of that, just ask. 

The Letter That I Wrote (2/30)

Have you ever woke up from a nap completely fine and over shit?

It has been a great afternoon. It took more than 16 days, but thank fucking God all that is over. things make sense again and all is more or less stable. I apologize for being such a bitch. It was really not that big a deal, looking back. Shit, grownups have to be ready to get some teeth kicked out once in a while.

More important than that over dramatized, beat into the ground subject that covered all of last month, I wrote a letter. The motivation was the realization that I have been guilty in the past of any supposed crime or trespass committed against me lately. The letter:

Hi, M.

I don’t know of this email will still work for you or not, but I hope it does. It has been a long time since I talked to you, and I really did try when I got back to Colorado, but it seemed like it just never worked out.

You’ve been on my mind lately. Looking back now, I don’t feel like I done you right. You caught me at such a terrible time in my life that I was just not available and, honestly, an asshole. Who I was right then was coming from a place of pain, and it affected everything I did. That is not to say that you were some trivial free therapy. There were a lot of times I wish I could have told you how I felt about you. I never could.

I should say that this is not an effort to get back together with you, even if it sounded like it for a minute. Your friendship was always valued by me, in a true, deep place that I didn’t have access to at the time. Even when it seemed like I did not, I always cared deeply for you. I’m sure you moved on to great things. A person like you can’t help it.

I guess just wanted to say Hi, and mostly, that I’m sorry.

Casey.

And, almost without delay, and with no bullshit hand-wringing or attempted manipulation from her, I got a reply:

Hi Casey,

I really appreciate the apology. I’m so glad to hear that you are doing well.

I have been back with my husband for two years now and we just had a baby girl in November. I changed my career course and will be graduating in December with my BA in history. Things are busy, but great and I hope your life is going great for you :)

Take care and Thank you,
M.

Though you run into a few bad and childish apples (a minority I seldom encounter), you also run into some critters blessed with real class (also a minority).

Take note, mortals.

1/30

Sprang for an mp3 player. It’s not an iPod. Thank you.

The routine:

• • Reveille: 0700
  • Breakfast: Two scrambled eggs. No toast. One-half cup of coffee (aggression issues have been previously noted)
  • 0800: First thought of drinking. Do not.
  • Class: 0900
  • 0950-1200: Study, bullshit with MA, walk Mabel, load mp3 player with the entire RATM catalog. Also load NWA, Motorhead, Blitzkreig, Queens of the Stone Age, Jimi hendrix (the loud ones)
  • Lunch: Pot roast w/ astd. Vegetables frozen last week
  • 1300: Class, think of getting drunk
  • 1350-1700: Draw maps, walk Mabel, hate self
  • 1700-1900: Read, do not drink, sulk, hate life, etc.
  • Dinner: Stir-fry chicken and peas, attempted Vietnamese lettuce wrap. Fail.
  • 1930-2030: Allow food to vacate immediate stomach area
  • 2030: Gym (appendix A)
  • 2145: Begin Laundering process
  • 2200: Budget. Lose Hope
  • 2154: Set alarm. Do not drink. Think heavily about drinking. Wonder how far downhill blog will go with sobriety generally mussing a creative area with linear thought.

Appendix A.

Stretch all Bourbon singed muscles and groan a little at the damage from last months psychotic regimen.

Give up on the bike. It is too peaceful.

I. Run

A. Sprint

1. Bullet In Your (Fucking) Head

2. (We Are) The Road Crew (hate self)

3. Straight Outta Compton (Do you have street knowledge? Would have came in handy)

B. Jog

1. Murder

2. Slackjaw Jezebel (congratulate self on including Govt. Mule)

3. Killing In The Name (contemplate murder)

C. Bitterly Sprint (Fucking Women, man)

1. The Distance (Question inclusion of Cake on a workout mix)

2. Wax Museum (What the shit? Oh, you forgot to get rid of the bullshit songs already loaded on the new mp3 device. Hate self.)

D. Give up on sprint (midtempo bullshit hipster pap ruins motivation). Jog.

1. Cobblestoned Waltz (What fucking tool at ScanDisk picked this shit out? Skip!)

2. Fistful of Steel

E. Resume angry, angry sprint. Use the word bitch in your head.

1. Fistful of Steel, continued (note pain in right knee. Fucking Navy)

2. Bullet in the Head (At least the whole decade of the 90’s wasn’t gay)

3. Wake Up (Is this really random play? Fuck it. Run harder.)

4. That badass breakdown about three minutes into Wake Up (Run harder).

F. Resume ponderous limping jog, consider billing Rage for a new knee.

1. Some more stock ScanDisc crap (consider billing the woman–not you, reader–for the knee)

II. Lift

A. Use 25# dumbells in every possible fashion with endless repetitions until muscle failure.

B. Lat pull down at about 70# until muscle failure. Reallign for lat row-back (is that really the name of this?), 70#, endless reps until muscle failure.

C. Consider squats. Knee says, not tonight, bitch.

The Month of Suck

March is not my favorite time of year.  The biggest problem (I’d say a good 75%) this Month was the fault of a woman. Obviously.  The other 25% is equally shared between having to deal with another five year anniversary and the four year (doing mental arithmetic), yes, four year of a painful parting of ways with a former spouse.  Yet another casualty of being a passionate youth. 

Anyway.  I have not been fully sober or not hungover in a month at this point.  Everything sort of went to shit the first week of March, and while colossal blunders or misjudgments on the part of others have cost me dearly before (see above), this one is a little worse.  I guess.

So, I figure three barfights, a hospitalized room mate, and some close calls with the five-o are enough to show me where this needs to go.

March was not The Month Of Suck.  No, that will be April.  Because I will not imbibe at all.  That’s all kinds of suck. 

 So, shit.  No drinking for a month.  I may make a one beer exception for when my good friend’s first batch of beer comes off the rack.  Shit, and I’m camping next weekend.  Probably best, I got memories in that particular maroon desert that would jump me if I was drinking.  I also have the totally vain reason for this puritanical bullshit of needing to do some physiological Spring cleaning.  Someone challenged me to get down to 175.  I should point out that my eighth grade wrestling weight was 170.  I’m a stocky built guy, bone structure wise.  Neandertal would be a little more accurate.  Fuck.

That’s all I got today.  Fuck.  This really ruins my bacon and whiskey breakfast.

Serious Sunday (OMG!)

Nonfiction:

• I once saw a deer make it three miles with both lungs blown out and its shoulder broken.  When we finally caught up, it was still breathing, at least for a while.  Finally it was put down with three .357 rounds to the head and neck. 
• I once saw a sick pitbull take a .22 full in the forehead, turn and run.  I drained the next nine rounds of the clip and hit him eight times at 50 yards while he was running hard and quartering away.  I thought I had missed him until he turned the corner and groaned out the most awful moaning howl I have ever heard in my life (then I remembered how shooting on the run works).  He bled out into the soil while I rubbed his head.
• I once saw a grayscale spectre make it 75 yards with a large fraction of what used to be his body missing; pulling himself away from a burning wreck with his remaining limbs.  He didn’t stop until he turned cold and began to blend with the sand.

But: 

• I once saw a person vomiting jet black bile, loaded with charcoal and sorbitol.  I held her blonde hair out of the way.  She was heartbroken and decided o die, but I didn’t respect her decision making abilities enough to let her.  With no bodily injury, she was hurt enough to give up what the spectre and the dog and the deer had held on to until it was forced from them.
• I once saw a husband widowed by the Sea and the life it requires cut himself from elbow to wrist on a catwalk and his warm blood ran off of him and down into the silver-green Gulf of Arabia.  He should have just jumped off the fantail and into the churning screws of the boat.  We were there to carry him down to get stitches and, presumably, drugs.  He was mortally wounded.

But:

1. I walked through the park the other day and watched the hippies with their signs and the college kids with their parent financed passion.  The worthless yuppies in their Crocs and Columbias and earnest entitlement.
2. 4,000 paper crosses stood out of the greening brown grass like a field of wildflowers.  Cut down children (jesus, we were all fucking kids) who had the decision to continue breathing in and out made for them.
3. I wondered if they got off easy.

Unto The End (Inaccessible Ramble)

 And on.

 

She stood out of an unmade bed, sweat shining and polishing brunette hair into mahogany plaits and a sea current of sackcloth. Her body, small and perfect, like a Picasso lithograph, one single line running from heaven to the End stood away from me. She looked at me and looked away. I reached up to her, called her name, swallowed cold fear, and told her,

 

And on.

 

We stood on a high mountain, sulfurous hydrothermal mounds of beauty spewed out around us and churned by the godhands of machines. We found pyrite, sphalerite, quartz in abundance and irridescent chalcopyrite all around. She stood and stretched and the blown out valley of some ancient temple to all Vulcanus pulled in on itself, drawn into the gravity of her skin. I smiled up at her and then the thought of my hands and her body and my body,

 

And on.

 

We stood on Precambrian bouts looking into the great mystery of a lake that drains away from its center and loses itself to the questions men think to ask. The clouds blew up through the valley and curled over us with hardy breakfast going over the charcoal fire. The fabric of the tent, caressed and molested by the moist and heavy mists snapped and bowed and she lay there without shame. In the cool of the morning, I laid my

 

And on.

 

The Earth holds life because it is living. Were it not for the constant engines churning her, the gravity pulling her into herself to generate life anew, the olive and maroon skin collapsing and quaking and telling us the truth of convection, there would be no green and lovely Life. There would be no blue oceans teeming with a hundred shaded highways smoking black into the Life. The Earth lives and turns and churns in on herself, a sensual and loving god, rubbing her skin in the light of a new sun, and in the pockets of the skin live the kindred creatures of her bounty. Her caressing fingers of water trickle over dry valleys and cottonwoods reach in abject desire to the sun. They tremble with sensation in the wisping canyon winds and I think of Her. But not only her, I think of

And on.

And on.

And on until The End, I loved you.  And next to the riparian tailwater stream,

And on, until The End.

 

 

Update!  Busted up my room mate, he’s in the emergency room.  Austin Nichols warrior mode activate!

Robots in Disguise!

So, I decided I was starting a new department around these parts.  Inspired by this sweet post, I will be putting out Craigslist Fridays from here.  It will be it’s own label and everything.  Incidently, all you people searching for “pet mabel craigslist,” please leave me alone.  Whatever you want, I can not possibly have it.

Without further ado, this weeks fake Craigslist ad:

http://denver.craigslist.org/m4w/629710110.html

Steak Pizzioli

 

One of my favorite dishes.  I used roasted chile pasillas this time instead of green bells.  The romas, garlic, basil, oregano, and thyme (probably wouldn’t have used this combo without a lot of acid kick from the peppers) are from my mom’s garden last year.  The freezing actually makes them a little easier to use.

Usually, I like to use an elk roast for this recipe, but that was not an option.  I need to get out shooting again so I can reliably expect to bring home some meat this winter.  There is nothing better for this recipe than an elk rump and some chianti.  I also like to to flash roast it, but as you see, I have no pan capable of such a thing at the moment(Lust, lust).  Unfortunately, I had no bacon grease to sear the meat in.  Quite possibly my favorite aroma in the world, short of the shared sweaty, exerted smell of a hot high altitude afternoon of immoral activity, is basil and garlic hitting hot bacon grease.

Can you believe this guy is without regular female company?  Justice and this existence are strangers, I swear it to you.  I mean, shit, I look good in Carharts and red Georgia boots.  Who can honestly say that?

Discussion: Rationalism vs. rationalizing

Castles Made of Regret and Warm Beer

Look a golden winged ship is passing my way. 

That’s got to be worth something.  I mean, even if it does or did pass by, how many people get to see a golden winged ship?  Not too many that aren’t shrooming heavy.  Now there is a writing experiment.  Mushrooms and FoxNews.  I have been a little addicted to FoxNews lately.  It’s like a sort of opera.  Everything is over the top.  The exploding graphics and screaming hosts, the pointless broadside attacks on people instead of position, FoxNews should be on Telemundo.  Ann Coulter looks a little like that one evil chick on La Prisionera a few years ago.  What?  I needed help in Spanish class.

But then Anger, he smiled towering in shining metallic purple armour.  And I lost that semester.  Angry at what?  Mortality, kids.  I had survived more than a few scrapes and then a doctor told me I was going to die from something too small to see, ironic since it was that misdiagnosis that kept me out of a reactivation and return to Iraq.  I had to tell someone else she was dying too.  You know, she never once gave up.  She never broke it off or let me down, not then.  In love and in death, she was there.  But, in spite of all that, we weren’t meant to be.  We both knew it.  Sometimes you know when fate has you in the tongue of its river.

Then there’s other times you know that fate was given the shaft on a whim and the golden winged ship didn’t pass by, it was neglected and abused and piloted incorrectly.  So, then it gets hung up on a reef and the prevailing currents tear it apart and capsize it into the aragonite coral, forever the property of the sea. 

I’m not sure if it’s better to be standing on the dock watching the carnage or to be piloting the boat, knowing you were responsible. 

One time a Viking crashed on the Constellation and the aircrew ejected.  The two chutes caught the air and the crew drifted about 300 yards to port and went in the ocean.  We all ran up to the scupper and stood helpless watching a couple shipmates drift away.  They were in no real danger, there were H-60s and boats that could easily reach them.  But I remember seeing them out in the whole silver blue ocean and knowing they were part of our crew, part of our ship, I was compelled to swim out to them.  I was not alone in that motivation.  You could feel it. 

So, while the culpability is imagined, the empathy is there.  You can feel the stomach sinking on that golden winged ship, and you can feel the fear that all is lost (that they fucked it all away). 

Unfortunately, I don’t swim well.  I can bullshit like no other, and when it comes to flirting with a keyboard, I could write a manual.  With those abilities, I can not for the life of me figure out the motivations and logic of women.  I can’t say a damn thing to them when they give me that one look.  Probably why I like them so much. 

Except Ann Coulter.  That woman frightens me.  If she was piloting the ship, I would laugh when it ran aground.  She probably wasn’t bringing any good booze or good tail anyway.  Let it go under. 

Now the kayak skimming the Sea of the Cortez, I want that one to pick me up.  She’s probably got loose morals and some decent wine. 

No I don’t.  And Jimmy Page still does not understand the Ocean.