There is a bee going pink flower to pink flower in the back garden. There are other insects swarming above the bee. Looks like they might be fucking. My eyes are not quite strong enough to make out what they are doing for sure. Quick little fuckers they are.
I think what Lou Reed said on his "Take No Prisoners" record was right. "We're just here to make out...so I'll stick the head in..." We find other things to do between our make out sessions. We go to the racetrack, go to the roller derby, go insane.
Worst of all, we go to work, early in the morning. One of the guys at the gym told me, "I saw you going to work one morning. On the highway. You drive like a beast. How fast does that old car of yours go?"
"How fast do you think I was going?
"Over 100."
"Sounds about right. Most of the time there's too many cars in the way to drive how I like. That's why I head into work real early sometimes, when you saw me probably, to remind me of the good old days before the world showed up here and got in my fucking way."
"It's crazy. Fucking accidents everywhere, road rage, smog..."
"If we were serious about getting a handle on it we would make immigrants agree to never drive in this country before we let them in and stop giving out new driving licenses."
"I don't know Beer. Sounds Communist to me."
"I guess I'm a fucking Communist then - Groucho-Marxist."
6 comments:
the gym.....
wtf?
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Many years ago I had a conversation about physical fitness with a notorious, now dead, punk rocker who eventually came up against something physical fitness is powerless against. We both agreed we could not lay off the booze and the drugs so we exercized to prevent ourselves turning into fat slobs. Guys like Lou Reed and Iggy Pop really are my heroes. They have not survived entirely by accident: they exercize. I suppose that is why roller derby girls get my motor running as well. Nothing wrong with a little vitality.
Sonja and I stopped by a popular book store yesterday. All the kids in the store looked like the little German fucker in the original Willy Wonka movie. They are all going to explode too.
Fair enough.
And a pretty fair pact entered into with the formerly notorious one.
.
You're right of course, Beer. The problems come when you stop excercising or quit doing manual work. My biceps and pecs are pronoucedly barrel-shaped and firm - considering I used to be such a skinny fuck as a youth - but the beginnings of a belly are just as unmistakable.
I need a tread-mill. My calves are okay, merely because of consistent walking, but there can be little doubt I am beginning to resemble a retired marine. The bitterness and short temper is already well-defined, too.
I look at Iggy and think: I really should've taken up swimming a long time ago.
I think I'm a little older than you. Last year, within a few days of each other, one of my oldest friends, my best friend and my cousin, who I grew up with all dropped dead. They had (sorta) stopped taking drugs and they weren't drinking "as much", so they figured they were OK. They were also not exercising or giving much thought to what they ate. They were all a year younger than me. My cousin, Jimmy's, death was the worst. He was badly hung over and fainted in the heat while working in the yard. He lay in the sun, while all of the fluids were cooked out of his body until his heart finally quit. Beer, drink plenty of fuckin' water too. That, along with the sudden onset of very serious type II diabetes has scared me pretty good. Unlike many of our peers, we made it through our teens and twenties. Now the challenge is to make it past sixty. If we can pull that off, we stand a good chance, statistically, of making it to 80. I used to spend a lot of time contemplating suicide. Nowadays life has gotten really sweet and I think I want another twenty or thirty years of it.
Used to be people in my line of work died shortly after they retired at 65. Technological change and a shorter work life has increased our viability by many years. Now most of us retire sooner, often 10 years sooner, if our mills or logging camps do not do the retiring for us. We're mostly fat fuckers though; and the ones who are not get by mostly on whisky, cigarettes and coffee. No one would mistake me for Iggy Pop when I walk into a room but at least I do not have to grease myself up to squeeze through the door.
My croaker has me aimed towards 80 or so years of life. I figure if I get a few more years in than Bukowski that'll suit me fine.
I have seen people live too long as well as those who hardly lived at all. There is sadness common to both those stories.
One day a few people will notice I have not been to the racetrack that particular meeting. They'll figure I'm gone, same way, after a time, I figure the inevitable fates that have met my fellows when I do not hear them cussing their favourite jockeys. Until then I try to keep myself healthy enough to keep on buying the form lifting my set of binoculars to my eyes.
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