Trailer for sale or rent, rooms to let fifty cent

No, actually, I'm not looking for a roommate. I know, sorry to get your hopes up. I'd let you all live with me as you undoubtedly all want to, but there'd be issues--jealousy over my attentions, fights over who gets to pay my bills and do the laundry, not to mention the living space is way too small for an entourage or harem. Alas, it's better this way.

Besides, there's the train. You may have lived by a train before, I have several times in my gypsy-like past lived in auditory proximity of the tracks. We'll just leave it unsaid whether or not I was on the right or wrong side. But, my current abode is a mere thirty feet from the railroad. Have you seen the movie Seven? Remember when Morgan Freeman laughs himself into teary splutters upon visiting Brad and Gwyneth's apartment after dubbing it "the happy little vibrating home?" That's where I live. No need to insert quarters in the beds here . . . just wait for that tell-tale whistle and low rumble and you can soon be on your way to bed shaking bliss. All by yourself even.

I've gotten quite used to the noise that would assuredly drive many people quite batty. It's actually kind of comfy, in a weird, loud way. And for you aspiring hobos out there, the train does stop right by my place, giving ample opportunity to start your adventuresome life of freedom riding the rails.

But you gotta pay me first.

I only dream in infrared

We've all had this one, right? You're applying for the great job or getting a promotion or at the front of the class or buying suppositories at the drug store or something important. All is going well when you realize your in your underwear. Or, better yet, nekkid. Suddenly, you're horribly mortified and it's all you can do to wake up and shudder with peals of mocking laughter ringing in your ears. Ehh, it's a normal dream. But, have you ever just gone with it when you realize you're in the buff in a public place? Try it next time you have this one, just act normal and see if all the characters in your dream world don't also act as if nothing is out of sorts. It's worked for me, but, then again, I dunno if I'm an example worth following or not.

Dreams are weird though. Mine are, anyway. I know I'm weird, but I think that even normal people have weird dreams. Some claim that they're important visions and clues from some other plane of existence. Others say they're nothing more than the tired regurgitations of our brains. And still other people watch Fox News. I'm not here to tell you what to believe, I just think dreams are weird, and kind of cool, even when you don't know what they mean. Like this one where George W. Bush was wearing a pink tutu and skipping down the road towards his own execution and Dick Cheney was being forcibly sodomized by a giant ogre. Wait--that was a daydream. Sorry, my bad.

I have had a few strange dreams involving deceased friends or relatives. This is not so disconcerting as you might think, at least it wasn't for me. These were actually quite enjoyable, as I shared fairly normal, everyday experiences with these people. Nothing seemed amiss, other than the usual strangeness that exists in the subconscious. Even the few times that I remembered the person I was kicking it with had passed on weren't bad. Kind of cool really, with a feeling of peace. Death can change people, in dreams at least. I've gotten drunk and even smoked some reefer with my late father, who was a devout Mormon all his life. And it was all good.

I also find that I dream more vividly on weekends, or anytime I've slept beyond my normal waking time. Or, I remember my dreams better then. Does this happen to you? Do you have strange dreams? Do you dream at all? Do you even care? Are you paying attention? Am I asking too many questions? No one told me there'd be a quiz . . .

I am a big man, yes I am, and I've got a Big Gun

I am currently working a temp job roofing a large building. The company I'm temped to is based in a city two-hours away, so the bulk of the crew, who aren't temps, commute over here for the week then go home on weekends. They are all pretty good fellows, for the most part, as are the other three temps working with me. The one thing that separates me from them--well the one of many that I will mention here--they are all avid hunters and gun freaks. Indeed, much of the "water cooler" talk is about different guns, scopes, animals to kill and the like. I've run into this sort of thing before having worked long in the testosterone-ridden construction industry. I grew up in southern Utah (lovingly remembered as planet Utahrd) surrounded by right wing gun freaks so I have shot my share of guns as a youth. But, I'm not so big on it now. Never really was, actually.

I am mildly surprised to find men like that here in the more liberal pacific northwest, but I guess I shouldn't be. There's rednecks and assholes everywhere. I go along with them quietly through these conversations, nodding at the right time and oohing appropriately when they tell me of a new expensive gun or how many birds they shot at coming over the pass on the way to work. I do this so they don't take it into their heads that I'm a pansy and throw me over the roof again. Then I try to turn the conversation, gently, to what I consider more manly pursuits, like beer or crude humor.

I don't consider myself less of a man because I don't feel the need to have huge firepower and kill animals. If I need to kill something, I have a short list of humans whom I feel deserve an end to making me miserable. Well, it's short relative to the population of the earth. And I usually find release in thinking happy thoughts of them humiliated in various ways rather than acting on a need to kill. Usually.

I read recently a post by some bastard about men and their need for big trucks, and this obsession with guns is closely linked to that, I believe. Not only do they need the big trucks to haul their huge manhood, they need weapons to defend themselves against jealous, lesser men. It's really kind of funny in a sad, pathetic way.

If I've offended your manhood with this post, it's ok to print it out and use it for target practice then beat your wife. That should make any manly man feel better. For the rest of you, keep the faith and hope that these men will soon discover the little girl inside them as the rest of us have done.

Follow men's eyes as they look to the skies, the shifting shafts of shining weave the fabric of their dreams . . .

The weather's warming and I've got work again. Both good things. The money's still short, but it always has been. The boys are growing, becoming men more each day. I feel my inadequacies as a parent as I feel the age in my body. I don't bounce back from manual labor so readily as I once did. Still, it feels good to be tired from working hard, even as it hurts. Helps to keep the mind off the emptiness inside. Distractions are sometimes necessary and idleness can sink one in despair. Now if I could only summon the motivation to clean my house.
If you stop to think of all the people in the world it's easy to feel small. So many threads in the great pattern of existence, each with their own wants and desires of life--with all that, how can we possibly expect our own hopes to be fulfilled? Yet, it can happen, the cosmos has room for happiness for individuals, even as it allows suffering.
Damn, I always want to write something profound and moving, but I always fall short. Oh, well. Maybe I should put some more forethought into my posts rather than simply expecting the words to come.
At any rate, I hope all is as well as can be with all of you out there.

Is this not enough, this blessed sip of life?

Strange, how we move our lives for another day. And strange how our lives are like waves, behaving as waves are want to: up and down. Cresting, falling, rising, breaking, crashing, receding to rise and crest again. Watching waves break on the beach minds me of how our own waves are influenced and affected by the waves of those we know and know of. It's a hard thing for me to encompass mentally, a hard thing to grasp and hold, catching only the briefest glimmers with that tickling sensation that it may be a profound metaphor for reality. Or it could easily just be drivel spewed by some internet junkie (me) for other junkies (you) to read as we all neglect the more important things we should be doing with our time. Like watching Simpsons reruns.

It's crazy how easy we get caught up in the normalcy and routine of our lives. How easy we waste eons just living and not really living. I am sometimes astounded at the strangeness that I and everything in the world actually exist. It's been like that for me since I was a young child, thinking about the weirdness that is our reality. We take so much for granted in our daily lives, we forget, overlook, and ignore so much. I'm not trying to get religious, philosophical, scientific or anything silly here. I'm just thinking and asking you to think on this, feel this. With all that's gone before, all history, and all that's yet to come, all future, right now you're alive. You're alive. Living. Experiencing. Isn't that crazy? It's a wonderful, beautiful thing. Simple. Complicated. Profound. Fabulous even.

I appreciate all of you who read these ramblings of mine, I know it may be painful and boring. You don't really have to, I do it more for self indulgence than anything. I'm just taken by a mood today to feel that I'm really alive and I wish everyone could feel that, or at least acknowledge it more than they regularly do. I feel Mr. Matthews captures it in his lyrics which I have borrowed to title this piece.
"Is this not enough, this blessed sip of life? Is it not enough staring down at the ground?"
That touches on it. But again, it's like the glimmer of the wave metaphor, hard to articulate in speech. Hard to comprehend verbally. Van Morrison gets a bit of the glimmer in one of his songs as well. If you'll indulge me further.
"Why can't it be that I who am
Wasn't before I was?
And that sometime I, the I, I am
No longer will be the I, I am?

I know this is all disjointed and may not make much sense to many people. It's just how I think. It doesn't always make much sense to me either, but then again it does. I know, I'm weird. So are you for reading this! Haha!