4:57 p.m. - 2004-08-12
walking home
Walking down an empty Temple street at 2AM; my right shoe worrying a new blister on my sock-less foot. It seems that the trusty in charge of inventorying my street clothes hadn't deemed my socks worth saving. He'd made it up to me though- a vintage looking pair of Air Jordans had somehow ended up in my property bag. Like I'd been booked with two pairs of shoes? Considering the condition of the work boots I'd been picked up in this was a favorable trade, but I blanched at the thought of chancing my naked foot to sneaks w/such dubious history. So I tossed the Nikes and it was in my own beat shoes that I made my way home upon release from the Los Angeles County Prison.
The air was warm and carried the occasional prison-whiff (piss stained dirty concrete floors, fear, rancid chow, aluminum shitters that double as water fountains). I smelled my arm. It was me.
Walking, sober...memories rolling fixed and beautiful like the grooves and ridges on a vinyl record- driving around Makapuu point in the back seat of my parent's convertible, the blue green pacific exploding on black rock, jazz on the radio as me and my sister rummaged through an ice chest for cokes...sitting with my Grandmother on the back porch in Texas, sippin' jam jars full of Lite beer and watching in silence the blood red pagan majesty of a lunar eclipse...Candy on the golf course. Tina in her room. Thanksgiving w/Angela. Everything w/Angela. A blue ribbon of sky far above Boquilles canyon as wild ponies charged across the Rio Grande. Sea otters, dogs, kinfolk, guitars and BBQ. And then, as if someone had taken a piece of sandpaper hard across this amazing spinning continuum, one ugly disconnected burst of memory. Jail.
Back home, as the sun came up, I had the best cup of coffee ever.
