Being useful to loved ones and visitors
from the sad bastard part of town
can be exhausting after awhile. I wake up and feel
sixty years old. I always need a few minutes
to have a cigarette and adjust my eyes to the speed of sound
slipping in through the cracked window that overlooks highway-40.

By nine a.m. I’m back to my mid-twenties. Work comes as easy
as it usually does on a long stretch of being amazed that so many cars
and trucks pass by on their way to America. I’d like to imagine
there’s a better scenic route for them. My own travels have found
dozens of those places on hundreds of streets.

There’s more than one middle ground, serious compromise
to get you from the thousandth point of light to the thousand-and-first
with only a minimal descent into darkness. I know for a fact that it’s possible
to find a place to park your car, sit on the hood and finally be knocked speechless
by the beauty of nothing in a grand scheme and everything in the details.

Although the devil has been known to catch up with me by noon
and no amount of careful attention to children’s hymns will slow him down.
By then I’m somewhere in the mid-forties and gave up years ago on pretending
the afternoon is better for anything beyond falling asleep in my recliner
and assuming it’s entirely possible that both myself and the chair
will wake up in some forgotten town. Surrounded by Catholics and working girls
who write clever songs for burnouts about getting older and building a new Grey Gardens
on the site of where Reno, Nevada used to be.

It gets worse as the day goes on. That’s the way people like their comedy
these days. I’m obliged to be grateful for the insight
and to dress appropriately at all times. I jump around the twenties,
thirties and forties and dare you to pay attention to the team of specialists
behind the aluminum foil curtain. Eight p.m., and I’m suddenly seventy
brilliantly pretending to be twenty-five for the rest of the night.

You gotta be young
if you’re going to get through those ravishing indie music girls
and high-speed chases with either the cops, the white boy dealers
dressed like cowboys pretending to dress like Indians
or some kind of combination that’s bound to be on YouTube by dawn.

You gotta be young
if you’re going to climb eighty flights of stairs
in order to leap from the top when the drum roll cues you
and punch that breathtaking view right out of the L.A. skyline.

I’m young in theory,
but you’d be amazed at the gains I’m making
on hitting retirement thirty years later than my best friends.

11/01/2010

Posted on 11/01/2010
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