Mile Marker Zion

[stilltrucking]

"Went off"

Thinking about what you meant by that.

So I tried to surf the net for some more data. Checking out slang.

I found a lot of "going off" but not much on "Went off"

this from the Princeton University web definitions site

Went off the reservation. Simple past of go off the reservation.

A conundrum the more I ponder the less I know.

Lost in syntax and grammar maybe.

Well anyway I am pretty blessed that I work alone these days.



.

Yeah I went off at a guyat work one night. I Felt bad about that. But I feel even worst that it happened in front of "crispy critter" a driver I had a lot of respect for and liked. He got the cb handle in vietnam, he always wore long sleeve shirts summer and winter.
I could not get crispy critter to slow down, wife dying at home of cancer, he strung out on the road. Always in trouble with the boss.



Crispy Critter looked pained to see me act the fool. I was more sorry about that than I was about the guy I went off at. He was too whacked to even notice.

Yeah I worked there two years. And I lived in a 28ft travel trailer about a half mile from the big road, I could hear those big engines whine.

Shoot
what hell were talking about
went off


Oh yeah I was thinking about Spalding Gray taking that ferry ride

Such an uncanny feeling to watch the sun sink into the ocean after spending all my life seeing it rise out of it on the other coast.
I have not been having as many suicidal thoughts of late. Maybe I am repressing them, cause I am still smoking a pack a day.
But I don't think about walking on a beach holding Virginia Woolf's hand with my pockets full of rocks and lungs of cancer.

Seems as I may have rambled off topic. sorry again about the digression,
what were we talking about?

Yes went ing off on someone

I did not go off on a guy last week. But he was talking to me like it was 1927 and we were in Alabama and he was the white store owner, and I was the black man.
Took all I could do to stay cool on my stool. Then I gave him a good look as I went outside and he looked like he was in pain.

well that is about how it is on this end.



see ya round like a donut
a banana flavored donut.

[the mingo]

Spent all day yesterday changing a water pump On a 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee. All day. Modern engine compartments are no place for walking anachronisms such as myself. Didn't quite finish when we called it quits after dark. Got to put the fan & shroud back in place and the top brackets for the radiator. Then in goes the antifreeze for the test. I saved myself a ton of labor charges - the sole reason I ever covet money is that I would never have to work on another car again. I could just call a tow truck & say "Take it to the Monkey Wrench garage and tell 'em FIX IT" Mechanic labor charges here in the great state of Yew Nork run $55 to $90 an hour. You walk in to a service center and these guys got certificates like wallpaper on their walls PHD all over the place. As it is I pray, O Jesus, Son of David, save me from the evils of car trouble and do not deliver me into the hands of the Mechanics! Anyways it should be done sometime today. I used to love cars but if I could get along without one now I would. Maybe I shouldn't say I love cars - it was never the car but the driving I loved. I could do it for hours. I still like that but I don't love it anymore. Too many other people on the road that are more than willing to take your life in their hands and involve you in their foolishness without asking you if you WANT to be involved in it in the first place. That kind of thinking on their part always places you in danger of being hurt or being dead. Like it best when the woman & I fill the tank with some of that evil Sweet Light Arabian Crude & just take off to find us a backroad to roll down. That's still good and it's the only reason to be bent over an engine compartment with a wrench in one hand & a hammer in the other. PS - Now I have a Jeep - Ho Ho Ho.

[stilltrucking]

Jeep Cherokee
a good ride.
Happy motoring mingo.

Too many other people on the road that are more than willing to take your life in their hands and involve you in their foolishness without asking you if you WANT to be involved in it in the first place

.

Interstate 10
In the desert east of Geronimo's strong.
Halloween night.

I loved driving the desert at night
I lived for Camus' starry sky.

I watched a tanker driver learn a lesson
Just like the old west where there is always someone a little faster on the drawl there is always some son of bitch who is crazier than you are.

A big sixties Oldsmobile convertible, a 442 if you remember those. Painted in gray primer with a sharks mouth in white spray paint on the front fenders.

I am cruising at sixty five when the Olds passes me. It gets in front and slows down, to 55, 50, 45, 35. I pull out in the left lane and pass him. Back up to 65 again. Here he comes back and passes me again and gets and front and slows down to 35 again. I drop back farther and farther till he gives up on me because I am no fun. Up ahead is a Exxon gasoline tanker, he passes the tanker and slows down. The tanker passes him and speeds up. The Oldsmobile passes the tanker and slows down again. The tanker passes the Oldsmobile again but this time the tanker driver slams on his breaks. Going to teach that got dam four wheeler a lesson. The Oldsmobile swings around the tanker and gets in front and this time he...

Slams on his breaks to a complete fucking stop in front of the tanker. The tanker smokes his brakes his trailer fish tails as he tries not to slam into the Oldsmobile.

"It is a big old goofy world"

[the mingo]

God bless it. Sometimes ya just wanna go WHAM! on something like that Olds. Clear the highway of all headless roosters & be done with it. Not allowed in the land of law though. So we grow ulcers & take pills.

[stilltrucking]

Well that 442 convertible was always my favorite model Oldsmobile after the 1956 StarFire convertible. And I always loved a rocket 88

But what about the fucking idiot in the tanker. That is the guy who needs to get a job in an office far away from trucks.

They screen those guys with the psychological profile tests to make sure they are all eagle scouts not idiots. That they have safe attitudes.

Ten thousand gallons of gasoline makes a hell of a bomb. And an eighteen wheeler is a dam fine weapon too.

I took one of those psychological profile tests to see if I was a good safe driver. I flunked. I still remember the three questions I got wrong.

1)People can often feel my power. T/F
2)I know why stars twinkle T/F
3) I know how to use a microscope T/F

No shit those are three of the actual questions I still remember them.

Can you feel my power?
_________________________

re: starry nights in the desert

No ulcers, it was such a beautiful night to be alive, stars from every horizon to horizon. I can moo like a Camus when I am in the desert on a clear night.

There is no darkness here, a senior citizen center full of old women and one old man. I am a stud muffin in my dotage. But these old ladies do not like darkness. So many electric lights you can not see the sky, so many structures you can't see the heavens. Can a man wither a way for lack of star views.

[the mingo]

Star views - yeah something would be missed for sure - fire from stone - mutated genes : dreams as traffic patterns ahead of dawn ...
a car waiting in the dark - the speaking of wheels ...

flesh attached to bone

hearing the turn of wheels on asphalt

asphalt floating on the Dead Sea -

first thought best thought only thought no thought
thought is to cousin as flag is to corn
or every ruin has a desert to live in

the tombs of the patriarchs
holy bread ...
peyote buds
my country 'tis of thee

the varnish of life
is peanut butter

peanut breath

[stilltrucking]

I don't care if the money's no good
but they never should have took my peanut butter away

Oh Lordy when the sound of the swish of 18 wheels on a wet black top road turns to silence, you know it is bad...

Where is the tomb the matriarchs?

[the mingo]

the tomb of the matriarchs
is the womb of us all
by each of our mother's wounds
we are sealed ...

[the mingo]

.
Matrix: something within or from which something else originates, develops, or takes form - /pregnant animal/womb/source,origin/

madrigal - short love poem, from the Venetian, meaning "simple, ingenuous," invented, original - of or from the womb - I'm getting a lot of womb words here this morning. Everywhere I look. Sweet Mary, Mother of God.

I have a betta fish here on the counter next to me in his artificial puddle. I've had him about three years. He's old in fish years. Ancient. His time is upon him. We are both waiting.

Mary can't save anybody. She needed saving herself.

Fish Madrigal

Words are the bones
of fish that have died
and been fed back
into the matrix.

[mtmynd]

may man never run out of womb

[the mingo]

A childhood friend of mine was born on Halloween. His mother told him one time that she had never carried him in her body but that he had popped out of a pumpkin. It used to bother him. He'd ask me about it from time to time. "Do you think that's true? That I was born from a pumpkin?" ... If he is still alive he is probably still thinking about it. The Womb of the Pumpkin Kid - interesting title that. Hell, mt, I've no conscious memory of a womb myself - it could have been a pumpkin for all I know. I asked my own mother once, "Ma, if I came out of a pumpkin would you tell me?" She was doing the dishes. She just stopped and looked at me. Sideways. Just her eyes. Without turning her head.

[the mingo]

6:38 a.m.
outside temp - 45.3

Woke up at 4;30. Rolled out of bed and the woman snuggled up against me made a whining noise. It was no use. My eyes were open & no way was I going to just lay there. Made coffee & waited on it.

Thought about wombs. Their relation to things. Took the first swallow of coffee.

Next thing that came up was Robert Kennedy. How he came to meet his Maker in a hotel kitchen. Kitchens = Mothers = Wombs. Who would want to waste time understanding in the face of the wonderful? That's how I see it, anyways ...

Technically my mother is dead. She is not here or anywhere in this world. The womb that held me has been matriculated back into the dust. Not entombed. I'm talking of a moving thing here.

7:07 a.m. - second cup of coffee
arm-hand-fingers - unit
matrilineal - reckoned from the mothers
My second cousin, in her nineties, once told me I have my mother's hands.
The finger - the New testament bears witness to the fact that Jesus, confronted by hypocrisy & the schemes of men, bent down and wrote on the ground with his finger. When he stood up again He spoke of sin and the throwing of first stones. He then refused to condemn a woman.

My second cousin lives in a house of creatures. Cats & dogs & fleas. The house was built before the War between the States. We share a grandfather & grandmother. Share - not as in the sharing of a load or work or food but a sharing of circumstance or situation. Forces we had no control over gave us to share in this. In this my second cousin & I share in what is true for everyone.

My second cousin's mother was, of course, my great aunt. Words only describe relationships. Love makes them. Gravestones do not say the end to them, they but mark a stepping off place.

Assume before the womb there was love.

7:40 a.m.
ouside temp. 44.8

[the mingo]

Animal Dream

[the mingo]

I was talking to Obama last night. I remember being invited there. We had some serious then we laughed. We were three times penis to the wind then both of us called home. Scarlett was waiting. The cloth hanging in the window was driven by a passing breeze. He indicated surprise about the Spanish influence in Texas. I told him about the Indian ruins located on the tops of cliffs in northern Arizona. Then we woke up. He next to Michelle and me going downstairs to turn on the coffee & hunt for my cigarettes. Dreams are oceans studded with little boats or creeks finding their way thru the trees.

[the mingo]

I need some flat
gimme some flat
I'm goin' out for an hour
to get me some flat -

spring has come and flat animals are beginning to decorate the asphalt - I ran over my first bullfrog of the season two days ago - sure sign.