The Stealth Bomber

Yesterday was opening day at Dodger stadium and to bring in the new season a B-2 Bomber flew over the stadium. I was driving toward the sunset when I noticed it. At first I was impressed by it. It was black and flat and nothing like any other plane I’ve seen before. It made a sweeping turn over downtown and it seemed to struggle to get to attitude. It was nothing like a hawk, but more like a crow as it flew toward the ocean. My excitement quickly subsided and I began to think about the fuel it was wasting.  What a waste of money I thought. It’s okay to spend money on a fly over for a baseball game, but if some kid wants to go to college he’s crap out of luck. I like baseball and all, but what about the children?

The Cell

I’m at my lady friend’s house. Wednesday nights we’re on. Friday nights we’re on, most other nights we’re off. But we talk on the phone a lot. Not as much as we use to on account of my new phone plan. I bought a pre-paid phone just for emergencies. I was thinking that I could get along without a phone all together. I’m not much of phone talker. But I do talk to my lady friend, but now that I’m being charged by the minute I find myself rushing through our conversations. She calls way more than what is reasonable, and if I pick up on the fact that she’s calling for calling sake, I cut her loose as soon as I can. We’ll joke about it.

“I’m going to have to cut you loose,” I’ll say.

“No! Okay,” she’ll fake pout.

“Good-bye”

“Good-bye.”

We joke around a lot.

Often times the phone drops out all together whether I talk or not. It deducts minutes without providing a service. It’s quite the racket. I lost three minutes the other night just trying to make a simple phone call. The phone would ring, my lady friend would pick up and then the phone would drop out. I fell for this trick three times before I finally gave up. I find myself wishing for a land–line. I’m not much of a phone talker, even less now.

Canes

My mother invited me to dinner tonight. She’s a good cook. I was surprised to find my old aunt sitting in the living room when I arrived. She’s pushing ninety. She’s lucid, but she’s missing some marbles. She uses a cane to walk, but when I opened the front door she was sitting erect on a recliner.

After dinner I went into the bedroom to check some scores on the television, My mom and my aunt were watching a Jean Harlow movie in the living room. I was on the bed watching the highlights, when I heard a clop, clop, sound coming from the hallway. I figured it was my aunt walking with her cane down the hallway to the bathroom. The sound was moving closer and closer and even though I knew for certain it was my aunt walking with her cane, for a moment there as the sound neared I was scared. It was such a haunting sound. The rhythm of it as she approached me made me think there’s nothing scarier.

I’ve never seen a horror movie with old ladies walking with canes as the villains. But try to imagine for a moment, you’re in an old house with wood floors and you hear this sound clop, clop, clop, as you lay in bed. The sound is coming toward you ever so slowly. It’s repetitive and persistent. Clop, clop. You have no idea what it is. The sound grows with intensity and then suddenly stops. Your bedroom door swings open. You look from under your covers to see who it is. There’s an old lady with a cane standing in the shadows.

“Where’s the bathroom?”

The Dog Boxer

The day started off with instant coffee. My lady friend ran out of the good stuff, and beggars can’t be choosy so that’s what I had. It always reminds me of camping when I have instant coffee. Had I known, I would have picked up a can of the good stuff on the way over.

My lady friend has a sister and her sister has a furniture store on Beverly Blvd. A nice store. She sells tables and her father’s paintings. It’s a solid enterprise. There are no leisure pursuits there.

The sister has a little boy who I like. He is both amusing and nerve racking all in one. He’s two and half almost three now. He is entertained by thin air. It doesn’t take much to get him going. But there is something about him that gives me anxiety. I think it has something to do with the uncertainty of his behavior. It can turn in an instant, from joy to sorrow, depending on his mood. I’m not much different. But when I cry, I tend to cry on the inside.

I did some more gardening. I was out front pulling weeds when two young ladies walked by with a Boxer. One of the girls was attractive, the other looked book smart. The pretty girl was holding the dog and the leash. The dog came up to me.

“Cool dog,” I said.

The conversation didn’t get much further than that, before the girls walked away. Not a “see you later,” or “take it easy,” nothing. The girls just turned away and walked off. It got me thinking that maybe the idea of social skills has been depleted. Granted I wasn’t helping matters any. I was focusing more on the dog than talking. It struck me as odd. But then again I’m odd and when the odd meet the odd, you get a strange kind of normal.

The Bush and The Squirrel

I spent the night at my lady friend’s house. She had to attend an AA meeting at ten in the morning so I was up and about at a decent hour. I drove to my house and played some Big Bill Broonzy on the guitar. There is a lot to the Saint Louis Blues, it’s not a song you can learn in a day.

My mind can only handle a little at a time before it feels like its going to explode. I was beginning to feel like I was watching the Inside Job. That movie should have been called The Hand Job, because that’s what Wall Street got from the American people. Actually, Wall Street did much better than that. The corn hole job is more to the point.

I took a break from the guitar and went outside to do some gardening. I was cutting back some bushes when an older woman pulled up in her car and parked. She got out of her car and walked up the road a bit before she stopped and bent over to pick something up. She had a plastic bag in her hand and I thought she was picking up after a dog, but then I noticed some kind of animal hanging out of the bag.

“What’s that?” I asked

“A dead squirrel. I can’t leave it there. It will get squished by cars and I’ll feel bad about it when I drive by.”

What a nice lady.

“I’m not sure what to do with it,” she said.

I wasn’t sure what to do with it either. My mind went blank. I had no answers. No solutions. How can I be helpful? I felt selfish just standing there with no resolution to offer.

“I’ll take it to my backyard and bury it,” the woman finally said.

I nodded my head.

The woman put the squirrel in her trunk and drove away.

Big Bill

I went to the studio today to over dub some vocals. Martin and I wanted to experiment with a doubled vocal track. Martin mentioned that John Lennon doubled all his vocals, and that was all he had to say to convince me to try it.

The word studio is funny. It sounds so grand, when in reality Martin and I record in his bachelor apartment in Silverlake. It suits my needs, and it’s close by, and Martin is giving me the bro deal, which is nice. Beyond that I didn’t get much done. I ran some errands and cashed a check and watched college basketball March sadness. My teams seldom if ever win. I find myself rooting against teams, and getting worked up about it. It’s silly, but I do the same thing every year.

I’m learning Saint Louis Blues by Big Bill Broonzy on guitar. It’s a nice song a real classic. It’s the end of the day. Bye for now. End dispatch. AB

Hello Once More

I haven’t posted in a while. I’m not sure what to do with this Blog thing. I’m insecure about my English skills. I’m not the greatest self-editor in the world, and was never a great student in school. But oh well, here I go again.

I’ve been spending much of my time working on the business side of books and music. I haven’t written much lately by way of prose or poetry, but I have managed to write a few songs. Three or four in last few months, which is a lot for me. I’ve gone years without writing a song. I’ve never been one to push the creative process. I’ve tried to when I was younger, but learned rather quickly that when you force it; it seldom if ever turns out any good.

So I’ve been putting books together and writing and recording songs at my friend Martin’s house. I’m still building my cabin, and things are pretty good, pretty, pretty good. I’m working on a Bandcamp site, but I don’t have but one song recorded so I’m waiting until I have at least two. My goal is to create two styles of music, traditional songs with lyrics and less traditional bass driven pieces with less form and predictability.

I hope everyone is well out there. I’ll try to be more consistent and post more regularly. I guess I’ll use the Blog more as a public journal. Public is not really my style, but I’ll give it try. Love.