Chief Nojoke of the Fugawi

I am too tired so let me list the following words in order of appearance… the spiral’s thinning diameter… Ishmael the lost gorilla … a darkened box … a beehive fetishised … an old flame farted upon … a schoolyard monopoly … the things we learn from being bad … how to drive like you have cataracts … the finer points of Ethan Hawke’s cheekbones … the shed hair of American jazz … the gift of a graceful irritation … gelato is iced milk and there is a reason most people ice cream … the best news that I’ve ever heard … frequent dining is well rewarded … avocados are not good with everything … it is easy to slay an hour but hard to strangle a second … will next year be hotter? … who will benefit?

What does it look like? I asked.  Like cake, he said.  It looks like cake.  It’s not, I said.

Today I feel like I’m climbing a mountain.  When you’re trying to reach a peak, you look up and the peak always looks near, relatively.  10, 20 minutes is how far away it looks.  You throw a hand up and flex your thigh to pulley your weight up, you do this a thousand times and you get to the peak you were eyeing before but now its not a peak, it’s just another step on the way to the real peak.  When you climb over the faux peak, you encounter a mystery.  Above it could be a terrain much like the one you had just scaled, same slope, texture, vegetation populous – or – it could be something entirely new, red shiny rocks, brittle and they break easily and splinter into your hands, thick bonsai shrubs, snow.  And who knows how much further up the next peak will appear?  So, as if you haven’t guessed, this is a metaphor for something.  I think I am near a peak right now.  I don’t know what will be found above it.  I don’t know why I’m even climbing toward it.  I don’t know why I’m writing this right now except that it was what I felt like doing.  I don’t know why I went to work today except that it was what I did.  There is something to be said and I don’t know what it is.

Those pictures, by the way, are of Guy & Dirt, circa 1994, courtesy the Jim Winship archives.