Man, so continuing on my 2010 tour of bitterness and dismissal of everything and everyone, about 2,280 miles off from devolving into a total bore I reckon...nah, just checked, I'm already there.

I woke up too early for important business matters. After I went cruisin' around old haunts for no real reason. No special memories really attached to this places as I've always put a roadblock between my heart and emotional connection to this region, all I was sure I was suited for as a kid was "getting the hell out of here". I still think that, but haven't the gall at the moment, nor the direction. All that time spent pouring over atlases, guidebooks, and my now outdated globe, lazily dreaming of road trips through Western Australia and explorations of lesser traveled coasts in countries with strange names, and what for!

Of course, there's always exploring places I've been a hundred times before.



I drove through Lynn, hell city, to Nahant Beach. I used to go to that beach often as a kid and also when I skipped class when I was putting in my dues at community college. I remember getting out my writing pad and going down to the beach and looking out and being well, totally uninspired to write anything other than a somewhat critical review of my present experience sprinkled with some big words I've forgotten the meanings of. It was a lonely time, not unlike now. Going to beaches, especially in September, instead of frolicking through meadows in the nude and bursting jewel weeds and trying to convince everyone of the greatness of Dutch hip hop or knocking knees with Adam. Today I was alone, no music. I tried to listen to the waves but it was the same old, crowded out by thoughts. Well I thought it was just me and a pair of broken sunglasses but then a spied a gaggle of teenaged hooligans hanging out on the breakers smoking and probably about 30 feet away from making rude remarks so I retreated back to my car. I wasn't feeling particularly witty.

<---- look at dem shells!

I couldn't do the drive back through Lynn again. In fact, I decided that the drive today was the absolute last time. It's conceivable that I can avoid that as I have no business there, seeing as I don't have any special interest in drugs, nor do I have an interest in prostitution or joining a gang or being a teen mom or any of those fates I may have narrowly avoided. On the way to the beach, I saw this funeral procession headed the opposite way and the cars were all out of order because people don't yield for such things there and they had these little white plastic signs on top that said "FUNERAL". With a steady shot and a winter backdrop it coulda been straight out of a Kaurismaki film. That seems like it could be spun into a good detail for a story someday but not now, now I am just focused on getting the hell out of this place.

I took a circuitous road home, looping 'round cul-de-sacs in Swampscott and Marblehead, the ye olde historic and weird as fuck (in a good way) Salem. I turned the cd player off, windows down. Uncomfortable silence and unable to turn off the constant interior monologue, I put on college radio 'cause I decided I'd rather be aurally violated by limpdick indie rock than blaring commercials for like, used cars and football, and whatever is top 40 right now or a half hour of silence. Lots of forgettable stuff these days (as ever, I suppose), why even bother, but then I came across some station coming in clear playing "Psycho Killer" by the Talking Heads. There was a time when I reflexively thought I didn't like the Talking Heads but I didn't have any respect for my elders then. And then when the song was over it was college kids messing around talking about music they were thinking about playing but just decided to talk instead. I wanted to change it. But they were just so... jocular. Gosh I just love college djs. "Oh who cares what we do, no one's listening anyway." I wanted to call them and tell them I was but they were just so into the idea of it being only them talking to dead air, broadcasting all this newfangled stuff, I couldn't bear to disillusion 'em! Then one of them got the other all excited teasing him about a motivational song for the one who had to cut out for class, getting all hyped up in that great pure way all "what is it what is it" and then the other one played this song and well, I didn't hear his reaction but I bet it got him through class. It was a song that used to do it for me in a way I guess I was pretending to like, "This Year" by the Mountain Goats and well, it's just too overblown, overwrought, overemoted, I don't know, I always found that guy's voice to be entirely too much. I wouldn't go so far as to call him limpdicked though.

Then I came home and thought some more and made some decisions about more roads to never go down again, literally and figuratively. Now just where was I headed?