notes from the tour

her sister died and became a tornado. the dead tornado's sister took the last spot at the campsite that night. is it okay if they sleep here, Laura? sure, she told the park ranger. and give them that hand-rolled cigarette, Bill. neither of us really wanted it but it seemed rude somehow to refuse. like she had offered us a freshly slaughtered guinea pig in peru and we would be insulting her people to snub the gift. she's homeless and sleeps here and other sites along the coast for $3 a night. up and down the beaches with a yoga mat and her crap...she surveys it and shakes her dirt-thick, dirty blond hair. "i have too much stuff. I need to get rid of some of my clutter."

she can fit all of her belongings into a small shopping cart.

Time! Now you know.

there's something strange about the distribution of time. there are supposed to be 24 hours in every day, measured in the same way the world over by factory-inspected clocks.

clocks must be a part of the conspiracy.

lately, i feel like my time has shifted--jumped off the tracks it was on. as though i were a person once, became a character in a book, and am now a person again--but without a past. all of that got trapped in the book's chapters, in that track of time.

there are globs of time, dense little pockets that you have to purposefully work yourself thru. everything sticks, cement-like in your memory. molasses in the winter. then, patches as light and thin as new ice on a fall pond. you can't trust anything, the experiences are moving too quickly to get things properly underfoot. memories don't form as cleanly...a thin fur covers the conversations, blurring what was said, how you felt. i've been ice-skating through the last few weeks. but things are starting to firm up a bit.

funny. "Time" by rolling stones came on as i typed this.