Where to begin... the loss of my friend Gulfboot Johnson, to be honest, has been one of the more difficult things i've ever had to deal with... Gulfboot left an indelible mark on my existence and thinking over the last 30 years, the things i'd missed, the things i'd forgotten, the good times and the bad, the things maybe i could have done to help... it makes me think and question and ponder what if anything i have gotten right in this life but then i remember that Gulfboot loved me like a brother which means i had to do something right to cultivate a friendship with a brilliant albeit troubled soul who i miss every fucking day... yes there were the lean years when we didn't speak much and there were the days when we were inseparable and then there were the last few months before his passing where our communication was almost daily... now there is a void... i miss my friend...
There was a part of me after his passing that pondered the thought of shutting the lounge down... it was Gulfboot who set it up for me, designed it, came up with the name due to my frequent references to certain people as asshats and so it occurred to me that maybe now was the time to shut it down, to let it drift into the vast and expansive wasteland known as blog heaven, where on occasion someone might stop by to see if anything new had been posted or just to see if it was still there, i know there are a few i still hit just to see but alas none are active anymore... i'm roughly six months shy of 20 years here at the lounge and while some may scoff at the notion of some shut-in, some social misanthrope, typing out whatever the fuck this is into the ether, i still feel the need? the compulsion? to do it... though having planted so many seeds so to speak i now mine the lounge for old posts i like to rewrite or rework with the thought of maybe trying to place them somewhere else... and part of me feels i owe it to my friend to keep it going, not as a tribute but maybe more as a way of thanking him and keeping his memory alive or as the esteemed Kid so aptly put "i write for people who will write no more..." and so while it may not be as active as it once was it will go on, at least for now, albeit a bit more sporadic as i turn my attention to working on various other things... having retyped The Veronica Chronicles to send to Veronica herself, i see the need for rewrites and revisions, most of the "stories" here are basically first drafts with a small bit of cleaning up so printing them off and rewriting, reworking, revising has given me a bit of satisfaction, seeing what's good and what works, seeing what's dogshit and doesn't... maybe it's finally maturing as writer but who fucking knows, damn sure has taken me long enough but i always was a slow learner...
So where are we now? to steal a line from David Jones... we are where we are and like most things it's part shit show and part beautiful (though these days it seems to be leaning a bit more towards the former but i always remind myself to remember the good things)... coming off the heals of another bourgeois vacation, a trip where i have time to think and take an honest assessment of things is always good for the head and indirectly the soul... it helps to clear away the everyday noise and oddly for me on this trip i got to spend a good deal of time on my own being able to ponder things while the boyos were off boozing and getting stoned and the BW took her usual afternoon naps... floating in the Caribbean Sea, salt on my lips and toes in the sand, nothing but the sound of the water and the wind can be an excellent catalyst for thought... especially if one tries not to think about anything in particular...
The bright side of these vacations is that for the most part they give a respite to the daily grind of non-stop nonsense... that down side is that it seemingly only took a few short hours before those routines, behaviors, whatever, came roaring back as if one had never left... some of those were welcomed back... the reading and writing, my beloved cats, the ritual of cleaning and putting a record on the turntable to listen to some tunes... the flip side (of that record) was all the other shit... and shit is probably the most apt term to apply to it... there really is no debating anymore the state of things around the old home these days, it's a business, nothing more nothing less, the whole "her money" thing was subsided somewhat put is still pulled out and bantered about and it seems someone is completely unaware of how it sounds (even when in an argument with her beloved first born son), the thought that this is some sort of partnership is laughable as it is clearly more an authoritarian hierarchy than joint venture... my job is personal assistant and i understand the duties and obligations of said profession which goes as follows... listen and nod, try to speak or add to the conversation as little as possible unless otherwise instructed, don't broach any subject that might be of interest to myself which the BW doesn't share as it will be met with a resounding disinterest while usually be told "i'm watching a show" on her phone or otherwise, no physical contact at all because one does not hug or touch their boss... this point was distinctly driven home on an a little e-bike trip where the guide was taking pictures of the crew and told the parents to give each other a kiss so he could take a picture, the actual shriek of "we don't do that!" was both belittling and embarrassing... either i'm incredibly repulsive or someone has no interest in me other than as a useful idiot to drive them around and act as something of an emotions support animal while they shop... i don't believe it's the former because other women don't seem to have that reaction but so be it...
None of what has been described previously is a surprise or shock, it's been well documented here and i've understood it for a while... the difference now is that i accept it for what it is and live my life accordingly, i understand i have to put in a certain amount of hours "on the clock" but once those hours are over i get back to those things i enjoy doing and want to be doing, reading and writing being at the top the list... re-reading old stuff to re-work, actually starting the process of writing short pieces to put in the books and records i own so that someday when the boyos go through them they will be annoyed by all the pages that fall out only to realize their old man was leaving something behind, something i'd say far more valuable than money, glimpses of his life and what certain pieces of art meant to him... being a bit of a realist i know i'm on the downside of shit here, i ain't gonna live to be 110 so i need to get to work, typing out the things that matter, that i want to get done... and with any luck i'll get it done, it'll take a certain amount of discipline but it's not as if i'm incapable of such things... (just look at my religious like swimming regimen)...
Every now and then something happens around here that brings a big fucking smile to my face... a few days before the trip is was Father's Day and while i'm not one to expect or want anything (other than maybe an afternoon of peace and quiet) i was surprised by my boy Disaster who on the Saturday before had called to ask if i had ever heard of this guy (he never mentioned what the guy did) and when i said i hadn't he said okay i was just wondering and that was it... the next day, he rolled down the steps and handed me a book that he had picked out... to say i was pleasantly surprised would be a massive understatement, as the BW would relay he did it all on his own, drove to the bookstore, wandered the aisles and found something he thought i'd like, funny thing is i had been told about this book while in Grenada by a woman with two teenage sons who said it was a great read, now i could say i'm not into self help books but what then is philosophy? and i've got enough Alan Watts on the shelf to start my own little bookstore, so when Disaster handed it to me i smiled and he asked if i had ever heard of it and i told him i actually had and wanted to read it... the smile on his face was priceless and while i have a stack of books to read as tall as i am i let this one jump the que... more coincidence, the book originally started as a blog... even more, it starts off talking about Bukowski and then Alan Watts in the first ten pages... yes right up my alley... and i'll admit it gives a fresh perspective on a perspective i sorta already have but it's interesting to see it from a different point of view... that said i dig the book and love it for the reasons laid out above...
Disaster has always had to deal with the fact his brother takes up a lot of oxygen in the room and has damn near monopolized his mother's energy from the day he was born... the kid sorta flies under the radar except when it comes to his old man and his father has told him that he's well impressed with the human being he's becoming, he plays it close to the vest but he's an intelligent kid who is a lot more thoughtful, sensitive and emotionally intelligent than he let's on... yeah he doesn't go into 10,000 word rants like his brother about all his thoughts and feelings cuz that's not his nature and sometimes i explain to him it's good to talk about shit but the fact is he's a good kid with a good grasp on things... (and the kid reminds me of someone i know... i'll give the reader three guesses who that may be...)
As for the I-mac? that will most likely be a post in itself... i'm a concerned about where the oldest boyo is heading, he's got some major things to work out and unfortunately his mama is probably more of a detriment in that department than anyone would care to admit... she basically took a class online for him this summer in order to help him move towards a degree and it was well documented what i thought about the whole situation... as i explained to the BW it was not helping him and that if he doesn't do the fucking work than he needs to fail and suffer the consequences... one of the main points of the book Disaster bought me is about people actually taking responsibility for their lives and the things and problems in it and the I-mac is currently world champion level when it comes to blaming everything that goes wrong on someone or something else... his old man being ever the thinker sees that the boy is a bit lost and needs to figure out where to put his energy, not in the what "career" does he want but as in who do you want to be? what do you want to do? but the problem is the only way shit changes is if the person involved decides to consciously make that effort...
Years ago most of my identity was tied up in being a basketball player, then an injury and some time to think made me walk away from the game (not totally but in the sense i was done playing in college as it just wasn't worth it anymore, wasn't enjoyable or beneficial to my grades and what not) which led me to having a bit of a mental breakdown? crisis? maybe both... the fact was i didn't know who i was cuz i'd been "a basketball player" my whole life... then i started reading... yes the usual white boy suburban nonsense like No One Here Gets Out Alive (i have a theory about white kids from working class suburbs taking acid and listening to The Doors but i digress) which in turn introduced other authors that piqued my interest which soon had me writing my own shitty poetry and painting my own horrible pictures and one could say ending up here in the blogsphere some decades later typing away into the ether... but the point is i took all the energy i used to have for hoops and directed into something else, the I-mac has seemed to have that same issue since he stopped playing the futbol, and since then he really doesn't seem to know who he is or what to do (and that's probably only just the tip of the iceberg as his ADHD and anxiety need to be addressed but i feel that also coincides with the other stuff), i know he doesn't feel good about himself as he's gained a large amount of weight and has stated at times he feels like a failure but as i've told him nothing changes until he decides to put his mind to changing shit...
So here we are... mid July on what will be the new hottest summer on record and drifting through the days making the best of the hand that has been dealt while simultaneously doing the best i can to enjoy things, namely the writing and reading and lounging with felines (and i have to say World Cup though the Orange Shitgibbon and Crooked Gianni can get fucked) while doing my best to keep things running smoothly or as smoothly as possible, around the business known as my house (or more correctly the BW's house)... au revoir until the next post... whenever that may be...
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