Since I was up until four or so this morning, I kept putting off getting out of my warm bed with its horse blanket cover (really: I'd mentioned to the landlord that I was cold at night, and she goes to WalMart and buys this pretty blanket in desert corals and purples, except that it has the texture of a horse blanket, albeit one that would disintegrate before one had a chance to wash it), even though the room screamed of daylight and rattled with traffic outside. The cat kept running in and out, in and out, making a ferocious noise for such a small animal. I got up, dressed, was going to go first to the greasy spoon--so greasy one must, or should, mop one's food, and again--before catching a bus downtown, but caught sight of myself and my weed-whacked hair. I combed the mess into a sort of submissions owner, gathered money and keys, and left.

The restaurant was closed. It allows some old guy who was dropped on his head by King Kong to pretend that he works there. He was outside, preparing to drive the billboard away. I stopped him, asked him why the place advertises that it closes at three and is always locked by two thirty. Didn't stick around for an explanation; heard a bus coming, but that bus wasn't gonna wait on me.

Began to cuss, softly, but that didn't last. May the canon strike me dead, or at least silly--the day was simply too pleasant, more than half-full with something that smelled like old promise that hadn't begun to go bad. I needed to get this week's rent. Needed as well to exercise a bit; since I'd quit the job that required that I walk some ten-fifteen miles a shift, I'd almost immediately gained five pounds that to me looked like ten. So I conceded the battle that had probably already been won the moment I left the house. (The roommate D. had been out back, on the deck, growing his remarkable cigarette butt garden. We'd talked about the funny little cat. He'd worked all that time I'd been watching televison, and then gotten up, to smoke, of all things! Such a slur on all that beauty.)

So I walked, toward town. Took a street I was familiar with, but from another angle. It was a street like mine, if somewhat better kept up, historical-district houses sandblasted into small, arty businesses, homes of the wealthy, and the occasional sprawling shared dwelling, these less-kempt, their dying lawns overgrown and mossy with dead leaves, their occupants on porches drinking tall boys at three in the afternoon. *That* is where I've been going with this: first I heard, and then noticed, two men, one about twenty and the other closer to my age, almost sunning themselves like lizards, loudly conversing. The young one brandished a naked tallboy--couldn't make out the brand--that could've gotten him a one-way trip to jail, if a cop who cared had been riding by. Open-container: had the can been partially clad in brown paper, or a doggie sweater, or anything, even, there would have been no problem. This is a strange little town.

It was at this point that I almost collided with a tail of electric wire, dangling from the kind newscasters warn ppl to stay away from when heavy winds or wayward cars bring them down. Seems that I had been too preoccupied with the idea of drinking beer at three p.m. that I failed to notice the thing hanging in front of my face like some sort of mutant flagellum. This was not good, not good that the thing was hanging there, impotent as it may have been, and not at all good that I was so wrapped up in my whiplash of bad thoughts that I could have walked right into it, my last active set of synapses crowing something about the day's first beer, the many pleasures of watching the working world, from day laborers all the way on up to the gals in--gaack--gauchos and knee-high stiletto boots, guys in cell phones and priceless, if only because I never bothered to price them, suits--marching around town round about the noon hour, the civil servants in their power clothing and those who can buy almost-almost-anything, riding around in the back of cars that cost more than many ppl in this town could realistically think of earning in a year.

I think I got sidetracked. Also, I think I am really nervous, about not drinking, for one--if I want a place to stay, I cannot afford to do so. Literally. Also, if I want a job to tide me through, it is quite possible that if I drink, I just might not deserve to get one. Didn't drink last night--was a battle right down to the cold and absurd hour of midnight--but took a trazadone at one a.m., didn't sleep 'til four, and hence, couldn't, or wouldn't, get up until almost twelve hours later. Mired again in a suckpit of fear. That's what got the mastodons, no? I'm pretty much convinced that that, not clinical alcoholism, is gonna sink me.