Two years ago, almost to the day, I scribbled into my notebook a single line: "When in doubt fall into those old rituals"
Two weeks later I was sober for the first time in eight months.

This morning I put whiskey in my coffee and took a pull from the bottle besides. I catch cold easier when I'm not drinking, my bones shake and rattle, I can hardly read.
If you know me more than most,
you know how desperate not reading is.

When in doubt, fall into those old rituals.
Smoke rising in the diner, two hands with a cigarette each hovering over two respective cups of coffee.
A plate of fries or perhaps an omelet and of course coffee after coffee after coffee, no cream, whiskey from the flask.

Cigarette after cigarette after cigarette.

The newspaper this morning read
"Annual Steamboat Children's March"
My bar won't open till 3.

.

forgot how to love
she said 'spank me, man'
i spanked her too hard

I tried to kiss her kneck like James Dean
she didn't feel it.

i made her bed while she was showering,
i made her coffee while she dressed,
i held her hand at the bustop and then walked home.


i found a note in my pocket
a drawing of a flower,
a drawing of lips kissing,
her handwriting


again I'm in high school learning how to love
this time my lover already knows
and so it is easy to remember.


her makeup stained my favorite shirt,
the one my dad bought at a brewery in Berkeley but to be fair, the blue one that says 'Truckee' was my favorite until this morning

Closed off
     unknowing
unfeeling
floating just under the clouds.

Open
      arrogant
overwhelmed
sinking into the mud

Knee deep in nostalgia
floating across an ocean of melancholy.
Dreams of Broad Street
nightmares of Nevada Union.

Falling in love with you was an often and legitimate experience.

Sitting on the National balcony
watching the clouds shape.
Iced coffee from Foxhound Espresso House
bent paperbacks from Toadhall Used Bookstore.

California, you'll never let go of me.

******, driving Newton Road
the long way home (I always took it).
******, driving home from the Yuba
sun baked but hydrated.
Drunk, making love in the guest room
after sitting on the porch
smoking, drinking, sometimes snorting
later, making love.


God talked to me the other day
at first God's voice was my own
but I've never given my internal monologue too much air time anyway.
When I wouldn't listen God's voice became my little sister's.
God say "full of hate, full of apathy, also full of love, also full of patience, your heart can't take it. Go back to California and fall in love with her again." Laying down in a patch of grass I asked God "Again?" but she didn't answer, she spoke again "full of hate, you must fall in love with her again"
I closed my eyes and God showed me Liam and Lukas and Sam Hughes cuddling together halfway through a mushroom trip. "Love" God said.
God showed me the Yuba river, fit to burst. "Love"
God showed me my mother reading Audrey "Ricki Ticki Tembo".

Dreams
Dreams of Grandmas house
Dreams of The Pond
of Nahla the golden dog
of Mohka the black dog
of Pablo the horse
of Abraham the donkey
and ******* if I can't remember the cats name.
I do remember how I would only see it around meal time and then only briefly; descending from the attic to eat Fancy Feast.

Cutting cold hot dogs to mix in with the dog food, taking a bite or two from each dog, hot dog that is.
Stacking
Stacking
and stacking more hay.
Then, slowly, one bail, split in two, half for the *******, mixed with Alfalfa the other half for the horse.


I was, maybe (I'm a little too drunk to remember), 7 or 8, when my sister and I captured a box full of tree frogs from The Pond. Excited with our new box of living toys, we brought them back to the red house/trailer Frankenstein. Sitting outside in the sun we attempted to count them, fruitless, but convince a couple of dirt stained, sun baked, white trash kids of that.
Yelling (always yelling, never brash, rarely angry, always loving yet, always yelling) our Grandma called us in for lunch, stouffers lasagna with Truckee Sourdough Company bread greased thickly with tube garlic butter.
We ate, drank our whole milk, did our best to avoid the tantalus sin of sunscreen, and scrambled back outside, no thought or worry for our frogs.

It must have been July or August. the famed drought of the Western United States, aided by childish disregard, had slaughtered our maybe two dozen tree frogs.


I'll tell ya, I don't remember when or how Grandma (a lover of all things living, besides Bush 1 or Bush 2 perhaps) found the frogs but I do remember her often and automatic exclaim of "Son of a gun!" was replaced with the real version, replaced and amplified and aimed.
I can't remember our punishment or if we received one, but, rest assured, Joslyn and I never jammed a plastic handheld aquarium full of tree frogs ever again.

Thank Grandma Vicki for that one.
Thanks Joslyn, for reminding me of the attic cats name: Poe

The snow hit this town in a way not dissimilar to Xtra Strength Mucinex PM hitting the nasal passage of someone with a severe head cold.

You could feel it;
on the bus,
on the slopes,
in the employee dining room;
Everywhere the same:
you, me, this town,
we need the snow
our livelihoods all depend on it.

It's simple: no snow means no skiing.
No skiing means seventy percent of this town immediately looses their jobs. Another twenty percent looses their job when they can't sell **** to tourisists. The last ten percent will continue to grow pumpkins and heard cattle, but for how long?

The snow came like a scalpel to the eyeball infected with a cataract.