Even under the pink sky in Tennessee during the summer solstice I wasn�t able to relax until I lay on the bed and fall asleep. A long thin state, a homeless man in the Waffle House asking if I can drive him from Knoxville to Nashville, apprehensively�I said no. I almost wanted a traveling companion. It had been 4 days since I talked to a human being that I was familiar with outside of a couple of calls to family members here and there. The way the heat envelopes you when you�ve been in an air conditioned car driving through mountains and smoking pot and drinking coffee for 11 hours is a bit much to me. I want that heat again though. I don�t care how miserable I was, or how much slower it made me think. Sitting under an umbrella reading the Nashville newspaper to find something to do, drinking some expensive coffee, I decided to see a movie instead. Whatever blockbuster was out, I honestly can�t remember, it�s not that it was something embarrassing like the time I was taking a road trip by myself previous to this one and I went to see that movie where Steve Martin adopts a little girl or her parents die and she�s left on his doorstep or someone�s puppy gets killed by a bull and he rehabilitates the girls emotional network. Far too lazy to go to IMDB to see what that movie was�actually, let�s see�Simple Twist of Fate. I saw that movie, in a movie theater by myself, in Palo Alto, CA in 1994. Don�t ask. I like that you can buy movie tickets over the phone now, and pick them up at that little ATM looking machine, this is good when you want to go see the Britney Spears, or Olsen Twins movie. The best though, is when you come out of the theatre from seeing an Olsen Twins movie, and since you are thirty-three years old, you run into some woman you graduated high school with and her 12 year old daughter. That�s when you say, without a wedding ring on, �My daughter is in the bathroom�, or �my daughter is still in there watching the credits, you know how kids are!�. Not that I have ever seen an Olsen Twins movie in my entire life, but I imagine if you were some sort of sick pervert, and you had no shame, you could possibly experience something like this. The only man with a cowboy hat I see in Nashville is a homeless man. I �figured out� Nashville within 12 hours. The following morning, I was in my Toyota driving through downtown cowboyless Nashville, listening to the Wu-Tang Clan smoking the pot out of one of those straight �one hitters� or whatever you want to call them. I arrive at a red light, and realize I�m lighting the thing. Glancing over I see this older couple staring at me in astonishment. I then realize anytime someone sees someone smoking a pipe of any sort other than a �Sherlock Holmes� pipe, will automatically think the person is smoking crack. Not sure if it�s an urban legend, but a friend of mine once told me that his buddy experienced the same thing on the highway, and someone called the police on their cell phone and told them they were on the highway in such and such a location and that the man was �smoking crack out of a glass pipe�. He ended up getting arrested for the marijuana. A well-curtained motel room for 4 days helped any exhausting afternoons on an uncomfortable bed and 11 channels of television. Didn�t see Kenny Rogers, wait where is he from? I wonder if a woman named Lucille really left him, and if so perhaps someone should tell him that BB King has been putting his fingers all over her. I wonder how Bill and Helen downstairs feel about Bill Bruford�s bass drum at 1:38 AM EST on Wednesday, February 05, 2003.

Tonight I will not see any navy blue snake fly across the room as I forgot I always sleep on my side so it must have been a dream.

before & after