typing test wpm: Kasım 2012

30 Kasım 2012 Cuma

I'm Always Chasing Rainbows

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One of the great pleasures of the last year or two has been performing at long term care facilities. Not only do I get a chance to play nice pianos for a captive audience but once in a while a resident will interrupt the final chorus of "Moon River" to request a song. At the Clipper Home a man as white as a bed sheet croaked up, "Do you know Honeysuckle Rose?" and I really had to work to sight read that one but on the third try I played a passable melody. Today the song was the obscure "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" from 1918, revived by Andy Williams in 1965 and then forgotten...except by 90 year old Texas gentlemen.

Honestly, the request was more like this:
"Do...you...melody...something like that...up...down?"
Oggy thinks, "I need a bit more info, old chap."
"Good song..."
"Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head? By Burt Bacharach? I've got that."
"No."
"All of Me?"
"No. The melody..."
"Is it from Broadway? Some Enchanted Evening? I've Grown Accustomed To..."
"Rainbows....Chasing Rainbows..."
"I'm Always Chasing Rainbows?"
"Yes. Do you know that?"
"Not from memory."

It's been 4 weeks of trying to play piano at this place that is directly across the street. I basically ignored any problems with the apartment (rats running like uncaged bats in the attic, bi-curious landlord, no shower, a mattress with springs popping out of the fabric, 30 year old decor) because when I visited the old age home there was a nearly brand new baby grand piano in perfect working condition. I played two notes and my knees melted. It's a $30K piano that the family of a resident who has passed on donated in typical Texan fashion by going to a piano showroom and asking for the most expensive piano in stock. Few instruments make the player better but this is one of those instruments and out of courtesy I tried to get the entertainment director to call me back to no avail. 4 weeks of me going over there every other day and leaving notes with my phone number and knowing no one is playing that fine piano like a beautiful stripper hanging out alone and naked in a bathroom. Finally, I figured it was Friday and I had a day off and instead of getting my driver's license switched to Texas I took my sheet music and put on a clean sweater and marched over there. Of course she took an early day off but the RN took mercy on me and said, "Come back at dinner. 5:15." I nodded and showed up at 5:15 with an arm full of sheet music. I found a whole crowd of crippled men and women with walkers wearing baby blue cardigan sweaters waiting for me. I fumbled around with my books and heard one of the women whisper, "I don't think he's ever played before."
Ok, it would be a tough audience and as my opening song I played Pachabel's Canon in D because I can fake that song all day long and get the audience on my side.

My internet access is too limited to upload video but trust me when I say it was a safe performance. No Jerry Lee Lewis or endless verses of the Layla piano outro. That will come later. Today was safe pieces like "Bill Bailey" and "Weekend in New England" by Barry Manilow. I kept them entertained for a while and tried to remember how to play piano. Some people turn 30 years old and plan their careers and their families. I plotted out how exactly I would play pop piano at old age homes and believe me it required some severe austerity measures considering I could only play one song ten years ago. Like I tell adults when they ask me to teach them to play blues guitar. "You can do it, but it will require total commitment to irresponsibility."

The request for "I'm Always Chasing Rainbows" is funny because as soon as he requested it I knew I owned the music since I specifically purchased an Andy Williams songbook for that song thinking I could turn it into an Oggy theme song. "My schemes are just like all my dreams, ending in the sky." Of course it's not a song for solo guitar and I've had no access to a piano because society views me as a disgusting dirtbag, so I've carried this stupid Andy Williams songbook from New Brunswick to Texas but I didn't take it to the old age home so I told him he'd have to wait. Then a woman stopped by the piano to thank me and browsed my books of sheet music.
"Bob Wills?" she immediately exclaimed.
It's hard to imagine these men and women lived during the western swing dance era when basically 100% of Texans would swing dance for hours a day as recreation. Western Swing was invented in San Antonio. This was before Big Red soda crippled the health of the South. It's a rare day when all the handicap wheelchairs are not occupied by wide-assed 400 lb folks at the supermarket with crates of Big Red ("The Official Soft Drink of The Texas Diabetes Society") in their basket. It's pure poison and I'm not in favor of prohibition but this shit is more dangerous than crystal meth. It's bewildering how it is not illegal. I took a sip of someone's soda at work and literally had to spit it out. I've never been so repulsed by something so popular except when it comes to Hannah Montana and Justin Beiber and Twilight.

But I digress. I got my Bob Wills book and looked at the 90 year old woman, "You want to hear some Western Swing?" I felt it would be violating some rules but I quickly acquiesced. "Ok."
And I had never played "Bring it on Home to My House" except on guitar but that song really swings on the piano. I had to sing it because the proper tempo is beyond my sight reading abilities to play the melody. My painfully slow rendition of "You Are So Beautiful" pretty much put everyone to sleep (I actually heard snoring in the dining room), but this Bob Wills song woke them back up. I ended with "The Night Life ain't the Good Life, But it's My Life"

If anyone wants to sing with me that would be great. This is one rainbow I finally caught.

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I'm Always Chasing Rainbows

Ac-cen-tu-ate The Positive

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A buddy wanted me to fix his guitar so he brings me a bone nut. The crappy laminate guitar is worth about $30 and the nut costs about $25 so I'm puzzled by his math. Now I have to shape the thing with none of the proper tools. I used the file that I normally clean out my wood stove with.

Months after buying all this ancient sheet music (one song from 1908) I finally had a chance to lay it all out. Again, my goal of being able to play some of this music and write an essay about the experience is still valid but I'll need an extended vacation in Ceylon with a piano before that is realized. But I went back to the old age home and happily played "After The Ball" on the Yamaha Baby Grand. Most of this music I own was introduced by Bing Crosby or Al Jolson...a bit before my time, but I'm game to learn. I really don't know if I'll laugh or cry when I'm in a wheelchair and a fresh faced kid walks into my long term care facility and I ask, "Do you know any Billy Joel or Lionel Richie?" and he will return a gaze of total non-recognition.
"Lionel Richie? Hmmm. Can you name a song?"
"Hello."
"Hi, can you name a song."
"Yeah, Hello, it's one of his songs."
(irritated at the foggy headed old man) "But what's the name of the song?
"That's...oh forget it. How about..."Easy". It's in Ab Major."
"Sorry. I don't know any oldies."
"It's from 1984, son. That's not too long ago."
"Sir, that's 60 years before I was born."
Wrinkled old Oggy weeps for his lost youth.

A number of these published sheets were to benefit the 1942 war bond effort, which makes me wonder how we are paying for the current wars in the Middle East oil fields.

Fracking Bonanza

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I went to that ever reliable new source CNN and for once saw myself in the spotlight and not in a story about homelessness.

The comments to that article are totally about the end of the world caused by hydro fracturing. Some predict it and some deny it and some wish it would happen and some don't care but will insult others just because they can. My current position is that we don't get to see enough of time to get outside our own self-consciousness. 80 years is pitiful compared to the 2 million of human history or the 4 billion of earth's history. Imagine that 100 million years after the creation of earth there was still 900 million more years before the earth was "only" 1 billion years old. Sort of makes going to the store to save $10 on a iPad kind of insignificant.

This has always been a philosophical debate for me that gets misunderstood as a practical debate. I do sympathize with the wolf and the polar bear who are certainly doomed. But they'd be doomed anyway along with the dinosaur and the giant octopus and dragons if they ever existed. Humans are having their moment in the sun but plants will probably mount a comeback. The question is how to conduct oneself while you are here above ground and the tradition has basically been self-delusion in pursuit of fleeting pleasures...which kind of makes sense except when Hermann Hesse is considered and we agree humans can be capable of greatness and not petty just meanness for cause of our regional prejudices. That's how we romantics think in times of sorrow.

So if we accept that not just humans but all mammals will eventually become extinct then does it matter if we mammals sped up the process by a few centuries? Hell, maybe soap-on-a-rope ethics actually slowed down our demise. I'm no expert. But the real debate I have is if indiscriminate waste, holocausts, sloppy living, greed, Hannah Montana etc. are good or bad a priori, that is, when examined separately from result. I'm the master of slippery slope diagnosis and my feeling is that quality must be valued over quantity. For instance, if you can raise one kid well but if you have 7 kids then 2 of them will be delinquents then you should limit yourself to 1. But that's totally antithetical to the dominant "fuck and chuck" propagation policy of our species. Has it worked so far? I'd say absolutely not. It's led to a completely untenable prison population, lawless streets, corrupt politics...etc. We've basically manufactured criminals on top of the criminals who are authentically pathological misanthropes. That's all wrong in theory and practice but now it's too late to do anything about it. For me, ideal living always takes the form of a Trappist Monastery I lived in once in Iowa. The devout itinerary was as follows

5 am - chant in Latin praising God as dawn light radiates through priceless stained glass windows.
6 am - pray for world peace quietly in private cell
7-10 - make grape jam for sale at roadside stand
10-11 - dust fancy wood scrolls and bannisters
11-12 transcribe Thomas Merton texts to inspirational parchment paper posters
1-2 rest and reflect on universe
3-5 chant in latin
6-8 study bible in groups
9 sleep

Notice the absence of gangbanging and car jacking and snorting crystal meth? That's not an oversight. It's a culture of purity and devotion that still exists like cowering dens of arctic wolves

The number one threat to humanity is probably our disregard for water quality. The ignorance that we betray regarding the oceans and rivers is mind boggling. Only a corrupt public school system could manufacture citizens who pollute the water they drink. Just basic animal instincts would eventually kick in and make us think twice before building industries on rivers..unless the titans of industry got to our teachers first and trained/bribed them to push the turkey and gravy.

But engineers are going to solve the water purity problem at great cost to our energy supplies and kids can go back to playing their online games because those are what God put us here to do.

I had lunch with a guy who told me up front, "Soy Espana. Not Mexican."
"Is that right? You were born in Spain?"
"No. My father was from Spain and my mother was a Comanche Indian."
"Congratulations."
"I hate Mexicans*."
"Well, I'm in love with a Mexican** so we might have a problem there."
"And I hate Niggers."
"Really? All black people."
"Yes."
"How do you feel about Yankees?"
"I hate them, but they are better than Mexicans and Niggers."
"I see."
"I've had Yankee friends and they were not so bad."
"I guess I'm in the wrong state. Mexicans hate Whites, Whites Hate Mexicans and everyone hates Yankees."
"Yes."
"Mexicans have their bars, Texans have their bars, but Yankees should get out of town."
"That's right."

I feel like this is the destination of conventional wisdom. Eventually your brain will break down into regional prejudices and tastes that are trained by your school board and dumb parents until you will defend your prideful selections like a pregnant Sun Bear. But I think if you wash your ether regions of all federal indoctrination and examine life as universal speck of dust then you will be ostracized and outcast but you will be liberated like Mark Twain and see what is. You will be an Innocent Abroad...not a cultural crusader...you will love or hate as your heart dictates and the idiots will come out of the woodwork to tell you why you are wrong and stupid.

Blah blah blah. I'm exhausted by all this and have to clean my clothes now as a work week approaches. I have petty complaints about my bank that I won't bore you with except to say that now I have enough money to merely shrug when my evil bank changes the rules on me to steal my money...kind of like the criminal justice system.

Hydro-fracturing will plow through all life forms including humans but we will get light speed fiber optic communication lines that span the globe and eventually some electric cars that run on sunlight or hydro power. Artificial Intelligence is predicted in the next 20 years but I prefer the old fashioned Socratic kind of Intelligence. Maybe we had the Renaissance so there is no need for artistic expression anymore. Video games and amateur porn are this generation's crowning artistic accomplishments...and let's be honest, no one living could match Leonardo D'Vinci anyway so why bother trying?
And since I'm one of the few who is trying I'll answer that question as follows: I feel my talent/spirit/soul is best expressed/realized translating pop songs on the piano to the elderly. I'm like a forest sprite leading them merrily to the grave with Barry Manilow songs. It's taken a long time to accept that destiny but I'm certain it's a good fit. I have also found a voice that my spider-like fingers correspond to keys on a computer that has a fiber optic cable harness in my decaying brain....so I obey the voice that tells me I have something important to contribute to the global conversation that hums like bees in an angry hive. I'm not sure Politicians have the final say in mass movements...it's more complicated than that. Commoners don't live to support the queen bee...often we see ourselves as the queen bee that others are supporting and who is to say we are wrong?

* By "Mexican" he means, "naturally brown Texan"
** By "Mexican" I mean "woman who is a Mexican Citizen"

24 Kasım 2012 Cumartesi

I'm Always Chasing Rainbows

23 Kasım 2012 Cuma

I'm Fine. How Are You?

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Many mysteries were revealed in my first day at work. It's like all the practical projects I've been involved in for the last few years have culminated in making me custom fit for a job in hydro-fracturing and gas recovery. How did that work out? Because I'm an assembly fiend who also likes standardized installations. But philosophically I'm torn. I like difficult jobs where I can think about other things and in a few weeks this will be one of them.

It is sort of like being an astronaut because if you break down the duties of an astronaut then it's basically.
Step 1) Hold on for dear life.
Step 2) check instruments
Step 3) move a toggle switch back and forth
Step 4) walk around on moon
Step 5) Aim For Earth

I mean, really, does that sound so hard?
And in a similar fashion I was inches from a Hydrogen Sulfide vent that could explode at any time spewing deadly gas but I'm wearing an air tight respirator so I could hear my own erratic breathing. Flying banshee demons could erupt and I would be safe. And did I mention that I was on a steel gangplank 50 ft in the air? On top of the oil well canisters? But my mission was basically a straight-forward assembly of 5 wires in small holes. But the sun was directly in my face and actually reflecting off the metal actuator body into my eyes and the plexiglass mask of the respirator was scratched like a cocktail Mrs. Pac Man video game top at Pizza Hut so it was like trying to read a small menu through a thick fog haze in a blinding sun...while being inches from death and in the middle of nowhere. There aren't many times in my life when I focus on my immediate task but that was one of them. I was in the moment like a zen fucking master. I guess if you are indifferent to life and circumstances then this job is "easy" but I like to say it is straight-forward. Like being an astronaut.

The "common sense" platitudes have been thrown around and I've already voiced my disdain for those.

Common sense would suggest we just leave the fucking hydrogen sulfide gas where it belongs 5 miles under the earth's crust. But no, we must have our energy so after 200 years of research and development now common sense means making sure no wires are crushed when you bolt closed the actuator body halves. Sure. That's common sense.

It's like saying, "When you are drunk and driving 120 mph in congested traffic on the sidewalk and trying to finger fuck your girlfriend you should obviously try to stimulate the most sensitive areas of her vagina. That is just common sense!" What the fuck? back up. you are drunk, and driving 120 mph...and it's heavy traffic on the sidewalk. and you are still trying to finger fuck your girlfriend? And you think that common sense applies to how you fuck her? Are you stupid?
That's how I feel but I'm pretty much the only one who thinks like that so I'll keep my mouth shut.

We're flying faster than our angels out here and no one cares. I rode my moped to town looking for tools (the van's transmission is in dire need of attention) and was immediately flat on my ass in a gravel ditch as a huge truck rolled past me at 90 mph carrying fuel. I only crashed my moped once before riding rocky motorcross trails after drinking white russians...and it was "common sense" that when you are drunk and riding a 1974 vespa ciao through a 1' deep lake that you should try to keep the throttle wide open so you don't bog down in the mud. Yeah. That's common sense. Common sense just suggests I don't ride the moped around the highways anymore.

But I'll tell you that my status as a mechanic was no less dangerous and provided no security or recompense.

I'll abide by the lexicon of the region but I won't adopt it.

Thanksgiving

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I'm spoiled and a brat and a hypocrite and I don't wash my clothes enough. I have psoriasis and arthritis and halitosis and psychosis. I get back spasms that awake me like a Medieval torture rack. I surpass the recommended daily limit of Ibuprofen before 5am. My mouth has wrinkles that look like an old woman so I'm doubly troubled because I'm too vain to ignore it and too old to do anything about it. I spent months and recent years without two nickles to spend basically surviving hand to mouth at homeless shelters and getting mishandled by the police state soldiers. The trouble was my crippled pride and also my basic math skills that determined a poorly paying job was actually worse than doing nothing at all. I was more broke struggling to keep a shitty job than just quitting the job and playing guitar. That's the state of the Economy as one thing the Right Wing Big Mouth Radio Pundits have correct is the welfare state that rewards poverty as long as you play by the rules of the loathsome impoverished and don't rock the boat or join any unions. The working resentful poor are so much more fucked than the lazy check cashing sloth because they are broke and the police know they are pissed off and near the breaking point in a cycle of decline. And because they have to take a cocaine piss test to work they must use only stolen prescription pain medication to get through the day.

I haven't really give this ironic conflict any thought because I don't get welfare or mix with the welfare crowd. The homeless folks who always amuse and entertain me are so far beyond welfare that some of them don't even know what food stamps are. The professional homeless are generally the junkies and single mothers who lay in bed all day smoking cigarettes and stealing money from the honor system coffee bin at the supermarket. I don't have anything to do with them. But the truly broke folks with health problems that prevent them from even getting health care are the ones that I keep coming back to. Their tales of woe at the Salvation Army lunch table make me smile with the deep honesty and tragedy that is totally absent from modern hypnotic entertainment designed to sell beer and cigarettes.

I've had pride for lunch quite a bit this past summer because I was spinning my wheels for people who repulse me but I needed a few pennies in my pocket to pay off the $4 yoghurt I bought 7 months ago in Labrador. Butter literally cost $8 a pound. Milk was like $8 and I paid $9 a gallon for gas on a trip that was about 3000 miles. My van got 10 mpg. I guess that's what it's like to pay child support for a kid you never see. I was paying child support for the irresponsible 39 year old Oggy who decided to cross the entire continent in a 40 year old van and promote wolf awareness. Well, that wasn't free and it cost every penny I had plus money I earned at a semi conductor wire harness factory and picking futile orders of hockey equipment and also processing lobsters and raking lawns. And that still left me in debt to the past and haunted and hunted.

Yes, the trip to Labrador is legendary, something worthy of the van and the destination, but it was almost a swan song because it left me with nothing but memories and the conviction that my worldview was completely out of sync with the rest of the world. Imagine how that would feel? Imagine being so broke that you are counting live 3/4 lb Maine lobsters at 3 in the morning on New Years Day in borrowed muck boots as the ice collects on your gray beard and receiving emails calling you an asshole and a piece of scum and when you limp back to your van you have to light a fire using broken pallets and pieces of your wooden leg in the wood stove you installed because there isn't a 6' by 2' plot of carpet anywhere in the state that you are welcome to sleep on. And knowing that every penny you are earning WAS ALREADY SPENT near the arctic circle. The situation was bleak bleak bleak...and now imagine that the situation ONLY GOT WORSE for the next 7 months until you were near death on a deserted beach near Mexico, poisoned by oil and corexit oil dispersant and other pollutants we pour daily into the Gulf of Mexico....and you are totally penniless, the police have already tried to tow your van...no employment agencies call you back...your throat hurts...you have one package of Ramen noodles....and the van is infested by chiggers from a train-hopping street geek from Austin...and the temperature is 124 degrees and the humidity has turned your stove into a rust hazard as your sweat-reeking bed sheets with chiggers and fleas bouncing around your gaunt rib cage harbor more resentments than a prison cell in Cuba.

But the horror wasn't over because in desperation I reached out to the Christian community and ended up living with a woman who was in the final stages of total collapse and the signs of danger and depression were so abundant that when I fled to the roach covered floor of a Salvation Army I felt like I was living in the lap of luxury. The lady hoarded resentments like they could be redeemed for prizes after death and it was like a visit from The Ghost of Christmas Future who demonstrated what my life would be like 30 years hence if I insisted on clinging to a technically ethical worldview that in practice would destroy me without making any difference in the world. This particular experience was totally not amusing.

I'm trying to isolate the exact moment when I reached rock bottom but there was always some moment that was even worse than the last. I guess it would be the deserted beach and the oil poisoning complete with vivid bowel eruptions and parasitic vomiting and crying and desperation with sweating and exhaustion and dehydration and being too tired to eat or even close the barn doors to keep the pulverizing sand from blowing in my wrinkled mouth. People don't die when they are nervous and panicked and moving; they die when they give up and stop wiping their mouths when they vomit and that was the stage I was at. Hell, I didn't even make a video because I couldn't move my arms to hold the camera. And I really felt it was fitting that I would expire on a beach in the van. My work was done and my function in society had clearly been defined as an outcast. I was at peace with death under the limitless stars that I've studied for 20 years. Cassiopia and Alderbaran and Castor and Pollox and Pleiades. These were my constant and unwavering companions in the fluctuating field of friends. My sweat-induced visions were peaceful and I was content with any outcome. My unfinished manuscripts and unwritten love letters were a mortal concern but I was destined for immortal lands.

That was in July and the 5 months between then and now made the trip to Labrador seem predictable and common place. I managed to navigate an economic landscape of total and abject poverty in a time when poverty has grown to endemic proportions...the human detritus all end up in shelters, forgotten veterans, wounded soldiers and junkies and convicts and whores and pimps and children and retards. You don't know the state of the nation unless you've spent some time in the shelters of this land. Something has gone terribly wrong and I'm running out of time to figure out what it is. I know that a mind control experiment is being blatantly pursued and the environment is being sold like a Mexican virgin to the highest bidder but I can't quite grasp how people got so dumb so fast. I know our public schools are willful accomplices to the destruction of free thought but who is the mastermind? The elephant in the room is sucking all the wisdom out of our brains while one stupid reality show after another is dumped in our laps. The more I learn of our culture the less impressed I am. It's obviously a ruse and the economy is a fraud...if a mass murder involves fewer that 100 people then it is instantly forgotten about. I've seen shit fights at a monkey cage more organized than our political parties. An apocalyptic storm is on the horizon. Still we survive and look to the future.

I've got to go take some pain medication so I'll wrap this up. When a lonely man finds himself at the end of the road with no money or food or support or family or friends then he either dies or he prays for salvation. My main directive has been to selfishly develop broad skills that amuse and fulfill me. Because I can't pretend conventional applications like computer programming or wire harness manufacturing are important in the greater sense. There is no universal reward for choosing architecture over the saxophone. You might fit into the circus society better but the years will not slow down and the wind will blow sand in your mouth regardless. Scarlett O'Hara followed her heart. She obeyed her heart...not convention...for good or ill. I've followed my heart to this point with probably as much controversy and conflict as Scarlett but far less prosperity...until lately. My prayers were answered in the form of the one industry that I've attacked repeatedly in the past...modern hydro-fracturing. I'm a bohemian and an artist and I'm a bad businessman so that's a recipe for a broke hippie playing guitar for free. My craft-work is too valuable to sell so I give it away. But when it comes to isolated fabrication of wires and metal I have no limit as long as I can focus on the problem and not daydream too much...and as long as I can ignore the environmental degradation that I'm a part of. I'm searching for an ethical utopia populated by artistic philosophic vegetarian snobs who have evolved beyond politics. Is that so hard to find??

When I was offered this job as an instrumentation field service tech I was basically working for free at a repair garage doing work on cars and motorcycles, learning the repair trade and rapidly losing weight. The money dangled in front of my face was, flat out, life changing. The prospect of making more money in one hour than I could make in a whole day was too tempting to resist. But it was also a challenge in another dimension but similar to the choices I had to make to cross the continent in search of the white wolf. But now I was going to jump economic trains while in motion and if I could land on my feet then I would be going from one extreme to another. Never mind that ethically I was burning every bridge I had meticulously built for a decade but culturally and historically I had the chance of a lifetime - no, I had an unprecedented chance to go from rags to riches. Literally, I was wearing oil soaked rags and patching my pants with shoelaces and looking longingly at the woman serving food at the Loaves and Fishes homeless kitchen before I got on my rattling moped with no light and flat tires. Like I'd never actually met someone with a wood stove in their van or someone who had gone to the upper limit of Canada from the tip of Mexico, the story I would have to tell if I jumped from one train (destined for disaster) to another train rolling into an uncertain future pushed by the energy of a million trees and lizards from the Pleistocene era couldn't be missed. Well, I jumped for many reasons, money, love, hope, a guitar, adventure, experience but also for a chance to be a part of history.

I'm neck deep in history right now and it's the story of America that I've been looking for. Desperate Man with Diverse Skills Finds Fortune in Deserted Plains. Mankind inches forward, following our collective crazy heart. The oil we're sucking from the earth has already been purchased by Australian investors. Acreage rent on ranches went from $150/acre to $10,000 an acre in less than a decade. Wages went through the roof. Fortunes were made overnight and what was once a dusty town on the edge of a spinach and cotton field became a hub of international commerce. Debt got paid off, land was purchased, businesses grew. The cities I've lived in like Los Angeles and Boston and Saint Louis have all had their boom era. They are either in decline or are in stasis. But this part of Texas is comparable to a small hill that has the potential to be a 20,000 ft mountain. Geology is a big part of this area so the comparison is apt. The White Mountains were once as tall as the Alps. The Alps will one day be as flat as the Florida coastline. To grasp the great distances and time spans is almost beyond my imagination but here in this dusty town of narrow streets and unpainted highways I can sense the eruption of prosperity that will lead to millions of people coming here for work. They will transform the land here until it is unrecognizable. They come with dreams and prayer and deceit. They are running from their past and caught up in the rushing tide of economic boom. They are totally ignorant of the hard times gripping folks in Cleveland and they are ignorant of the destruction on the east coast. This is our time right here and we are devoted to progress at all cost because when this is a thriving metropolis then no one will remember the lies and the cons and the fraud and the broken treaties and failed partnerships. All that will remain is what worked at the time...what was better than the rest.

I've spanned the continent to learn the truth about America and mostly what I've seen is despair and a beaten, confused people in decline. On that polluted beach I had given up hope. But then I found this job and am not only a witness to the rebirth of the elusive dream but I'm actually a participant as my bank account swells to unprecedented heights. When you jump from one train to another it's impossible to follow the path of the first. It passes over the horizon and beyond your influence. I'm on this train now and it would be unsophisticated to say it is better or worse...but the historical significance is what amazes me. This train seems bound for glory in the eyes of the grinning passengers. But I know it's really bound to become exactly like the train I just left, like the Alps will one day crumble to dust. But my memory is getting as bad as my eyesight and eventually all we here in the oil field will remember are the good times, the salad days, the boom. Our kids have good chances to survive. The depression and zombie apocalypse is someone else's problem. For that, I'm thankful.