another roadside attraction

when you don't think anything is going to happen, and you resign yourself to it and are content, to just help build a fire, and sit around talking with friends, sipping on cold ones, next thing you know all hell breaks loose.

we've been living in this little shack cabin for days, it was build by jill's uncle she revealed to me last night. movie junkies, bringing home fresh rentals from the mom and pop video shop in town, we sit around the light box, shooting photons at our eyes, mesmerized.

we listen to music. the stereo has speakers inside the house and out. you can turn one set off or the other, having them both on halves the power being sent to all. then you crank up the volume, and listen to break beats and drum and bass and tribal chanting reverberate on thru the forrest.

i am sitting in a coffee shop in potsdam new york. upstate. the coffee shop is called scoopachinos. i've been doing this project of trying to document my latest adventure, from albuquerque to new york to got knows where, over the rest of this summer, in the fine year of our lord, 2007.

the seventh day of the seventh month of that year, 07/07/07, came and went by us to little fan fare. we remembered it only later, after the day had already transpired. i had somehow expected the wall calendar to register, "jackpot!" and spout out a collection of euros and dollar coins, and arcade machine tokens to redeem for food stamp cards and tobacco. but no avail. we're all running out of money holed up here in potsdamn, and the first of the month has come and gone so hopefully the food stamps will hold up for a little bit longer.

i am enjoying the comforts of a leather love seat sofa. i ate a donut, and drank a large cup of coffee. came out to under a couple bucks. looks like a movie is starting on the television in the café, "daredevil" i'm thinking. it's a nice background distraction but really not of my interest right now.

i've been reading the same book, "another roadside attraction," for a long while now, because i've fallen out of the habit of reading books and it's taken me forever to follow up on it, dedicating only a few minutes every week or so to it didn't get me very far. i started in march. by may i was starting to get into the middle of a slim 350 pages, by june i was identifying with the protagonist. the book was recommended and lent to me by a girl in albuquerque, a young woman, blonde, gorgeous. free spirited. alcoholic. at times, a fast paced party girl. tendencies that drew me in and repulsed me after a little while. on my bus trip from albuquerque to potsdam i thought of her, and her cousin in crime, the gypsy dancer girl who managed to wedge her way into the hearts of myself and two other men that i was involved in a warehouse adventure with, in which we helped artists show their work, and threw some kick ass parties, and made a good run at holding it together. before things fell apart and my role became limited. the core party members reduced to 2 from the four of us, my male peers and the woman who we all harbored an attraction. she introduced me to the other girl, the blonde intellectual 21 year old in the white bridal leather cowboy skirt, who gave me this book, tom robin's first novel. Another Roadside Attraction.

i thought of those girls, on my long bus trip, and remembered the good times and felt fondly, and also the treacherous times of loose moral conviction and powdery substances, and my heart hurt a little bit. i could have wept, but i was too tired. i wanted to be with people who loved me unconditionally, and wouldn't hurt me deliberately. that was another reason to be on this bus, going to reunite with my heroes, my friends, the people who believe in me as an artist, and put my songs on mix cds for their friends and evangelize what i'm doing, and introduce me to new people as "robotson, the famous traveling poet." of course i want to be around people that do that. i need as many people like that in my life as possible.

it's a festive time in potsdam for us, a time of reunions and new connections, where we talk each other up, and joke about how we will take over the world, or alternately how we will survive the apocalypse. either way for me, it involves a lot of traveling around and having a good time, trying to neck with country maidens, and the deliberate derangement of the senses to induce a breakthrough of consciousness. my grandma back home told me that i had learned everything i can from drugs. there is truth in that, though i don't believe in the entire truth of anything. but in practicality, the most common pleasures have all already coaxed their mysteries to me. now i am anxious to run headlong into new mysteries, or just be swept along in the grander mystery of this life in this place, the world, the universe, america, new york, the northeast, potsdam. it doesn't matter where exactly. moreso important is the caliber of relationships you have with other humans. so here i am because this is where my friends are. later i'll go elsewhere because there will be other friends, who i haven't seen in as long a time, and i will circulate around like that, for as long as i can.

and if i can make enough friends, i am confident i can do it forever.