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November 21, 2002  Texas. Texas, Texas, Texas. Texas the forever endeavor to cross it. Texas now as Texas last week and the week before that but different now, as different as a new stretch of highway. Yesterday coastal Texas - now inland. Hondo Taxidermy Catfish Lake. Sign says we're on the I-90 West. I don't know where the fuck I am. Texas. That's where the fuck I am. Reduced speed ahead. Now there's a sign I could do without. My right leg a candy cane of pain, like a stick whittled down to a sharp point pain. Like fishhooks diggin into the flesh of my knee. Another sign: "This is God's Country. Please don't drive through it like Hell. Very funny. These Texas highway sign-makers sure do have a sense of Intersection now of Farm Road 462. Small town. Blinking yellow lights say caution children. Fuck this small town backward ass road digging fishhooks in my hamstring. LETS GO! LETS GO! Gimme that wide open stretch of empty Texas road to roar and rumble and thunder upon. Never would have chosen this road myself, but I figgered Tank Girl would know the right route. Seems she's more partial to scenery than me. Fuck scenery! I've seen more scenery in the past year than Marco Polo, Michael Palin and Captain Cook combined. It's been a long summer. It is still summer, ain't it? I could swear. But the little blip-blap zip zap lithium ionic symbolic surreal readout on my cell phone tells me it is November, and quite far along at that. Now how did a town way out in Texas oil-n-cow country get the name Uvalde? or D'Hanis? I'll give you de heinous! The pain in my accelerator leg is d-fucking heinous! And I wouldn't even be noticing it right now on the I-10 because that other little pedal, down there on the floor, the one they call the brake? I'd be like, "What's that?" Break what? Okay. So it all started... gosh, how far back should I take you? Well, I believe I brung'd ya'll up to Texas date a few days back. So we'll start with Monday. Now Monday being named after that big round white ball in the sky called the moon, well, naturally Monday a certain someone I know had a moon-cycle psycho spitball fulla ire and unloaded it on me with all guns firing. I was accused of stealing and dirty dealing and intentional misinformation and blah blah blah. Now being the zen dojo monkey monk that I am, I took it all in stride and sipped my morning coffee as I absorbed a catshitbox fulla character bashing, hung up the phone, stared out at lovely Rollover Bay, smiled and proceeded to flog myself into a fit of sketched-out freakorama horror show ass-sucking bad moodedness. And that's where I stayed all day. Now mind you I tried not to take it all in, or on, as the case may be. I tried to zen away the evil from the east and go forth in peace and harmony and all that hooty. But I failed miserably. And by Monday night I was in such a funk all I could do to kick it was go to bed early. One person that day said the words that I, in my self-loathing state, needed to hear. That was my good friend Dave. When I said: "Dave, I hate my damn life," he said: "You've got a great life. You've got more friends in more places and more invitations than anyone I know." And when I said: "What am I doing out here on the edge of nowhere with no friends?" he replied: "Sometimes you just have to forego the fun and the friends and get through it, and you will get through it." And when I said: "Can you believe I just spent another four hours working on my damn car (artwork) when I shoulda been... (insert germanic activity here)? What the hell is wrong with me?" he replied:  "You're beautiful man. You're one of a kind." And most importantly he said this magical five-word phrase that we so often forget to tell one another in time's of need: "Everything's gonna be all right." That was Monday. Monday sucked. But all that suckage was, in retrospect, worth Dave's reassuring words. [All of the above text was written whilst driving the 10-hour jaunt to Alpine, a small West Texas town at the northern gateway to Big Bend National Park and home, this weekend, to the, um.. the gallery night thingy and parade in Alpine at which the Chevy de Los Muertos paid for itself yet again to the tune of $300 in gas money, an amount sufficient to support a much-needed return to Albuquerque to solve the "Duke Problem," make peace with Cricket, and pass many a reckless night snorting Ritalin with Dave FOR NO GOOD REASON AT ALL.] To Be Continued...!
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