Wildly Dizzy

I started to write something about how windy it’s been here in Albuquerque. I Googled “Winds of March” and ended up on a spiritual path with the band Journey. While I liked that song (though don’t remember hearing it… ever… and thought I knew just about every Journey song) my favorite song is still “Lights”. I totally lost myself in listening to every version on YouTube. That song reminds me of some very special moments in San Francisco and the early days of my pioneering soul.

The first memory to come to mind is on the steps by the bay just down from Ghirardelli Square. I was about 17 and some friends and I went into “The City” for the day. We had rented some roller-skates and skated up and down the steep streets of San Franscisco. I could barely drive (stick-shift!) in SF and remember grabbing street signs at the bottom of the hills to keep from skating into traffic. Wild. We landed at Ghirardelli, had lunch, and went down to the steps where there were street vendors, musicians, magicians, and lots of people shopping, dancing, and watching.

I bought a silver and tiger-eye ring and was wearing my love beads. We drank Heinekens (how we got them… I don’t remember) that I had been carrying in my backpack; each bottle exploded when opened from all of the swirling around street signs and slamming into buildings to slow or stop our skating momentum. We danced, on skates, to the Reggae music. We pretended to be drunk but, really, only just smelled of beer because we were wearing more on our chins and shirts than actually made it into our bellies.

We stayed in the city all day and half the night; skating and riding buses all over the city.  We went to a 2AM showing of Rocky Horror Picture Show at The Strand. It was in the red-light district and, boy-oh-boy, what an education that was! I’d never seen hookers or transgendered people or totally-out gay people or so many Transylvanians ever before. I felt kinda butch and shared a joint with the girl sitting next to me in the theater. She gave me a shotgun and kissed me! (I kissed a girl and I liked it… That song is about 30+ years too late for me.) It was all so strange and exhilarating and scary and exciting. I have never liked pot but that night I smoked because of the cute girl sitting next to me (and next to her was her boyfriend and next to me was my boyfriend…HA!) I remember feeling wildly dizzy from everything.

We got home around 6AM and promptly flopped. Ah… Youth! Spend it while you’ve got it.

Anyway… Great memory!

It’s been really windy for the past several days. So much so that you can’t see the mountains from the mesa or the mesa from the foothills or the Walgreens from the mall. Wind makes me feel wildly dizzy. Might be that inner-ear thing or maybe it’s a flashback… who knows?

Juniper and many other irritating irritants have been flying up my nose at an alarming rate. Actually, what’s alarming is the amount of mini-heart-attacks (aka sneezes) I’ve been experiencing. They come in 9’s and, if I’m driving, I’ve closed my eyes at least twice as many times. Talk about alarming at 75 mph! Then there’s the piddle-factor that coincides with each mini-orgasmic-heart-attack. While I can usually be successful at making it home just in time because I should have gone before I left work but had been so busy I couldn’t even take a pee-break; multiple orgasmic sneezing makes it very, very difficult. TMI? Eh…

I was driving home from my mom’s house and the dust/dirt/sand was swirling along the road like snowfall on a blustery winter’s day. Impromptu sand dunes created amazing Sahara-like shapes along gutters, washes, and Petroglyphs. Everything was covered in a brown-gray hue. It was beautifully ugly… And oh-so-damaging to my truck’s exterior… Not to mention what it did to my hair.

That same night, I helped D-man with his shower and, while washing his hair, I could feel chunks of boulders trapped beneath his tight curls. The strong stream of water couldn’t coerce the playground sandbox from his afro; I had to comb and rake it out with my fingernails.

Last weekend I moved all the furniture and rearranged the living room. This weekend I’ll be dusting everything… again. By tomorrow, it will all look the same: dusty. I’ll also be giving poor little Mojo a bath. I’ve been slowly cutting away his matted fur and will have to cut his hair short in order to get the backyard out of his afro. I’m thinking of doing the same thing to D-man. I use the same clippers for both. Sounds gross, I know; I’m not sure which is worse, D-man or Mojo. In any case, I’m thinking the clippers will get the raw end of the deal.

Two days until 50.

I want my cake now before the grit sets in…