Siberia With A View

Donnie forks a load of material through the entrance to his chow chute.

The governor issued an order requiring restaurants to close indoor seating service and go to take-out only. It’s pandemic time, kids. Wake the fuck up, and shelter in place!

We’re not quite awake.

Donnie’s in the driver’s seat of his 2017 Nissan Juke. I’m in the opposite-side, rear passenger seat, as near to six feet distant from my host as I can manage. The windows are open.

We’re eating breakfast in a car, in the parking lot of our favorite cafe, our food delivered in large, styrofoam containers. Continue reading →

Recent events have me thinking.

More or less.

A theory: head injuries are a factor, if not a major factor, influencing the course of personal and collective human experience and history. The head injury holds its own with disease in this regard.

What say you? Continue reading →

Following receipt of a stern text from Wanda, my personal physician and mentor regarding the many legal ways to prolong a problematic existence, I swallow a substance that causes profound side effects.

I am no stranger to substances that produce unusual effects and, in fact, consider myself (similarly inclined peers being long dead) to be one of the few tested adepts remaining in action. For more than six decades, I’ve sampled and enjoyed a variety of treats that produce off-kilter experiences, and I show little sign I’ll stray from the path.

But, in this case, recreation and enlightenment are not in the picture. Continue reading →

I’m at the bottom of a deep hole.

I have things to do: pieces to write, paintings to finish.

I can’t get to them.

I’m in a hole.

It’s dark down here, torturous. Reckoned in terms of pain produced, each minute spent in the hole equals eight uninterrupted hours of TED Talks. Continue reading →