Getting Nowhere at the Speed of Sound

7-6, 1xx am, Philadelphia

It's gotten so hard to relate road stories, to find the time and patience to carve details into wood, and I relish instead these abstractions, cascades of emotional response triggered by the images and situations into which I've been thrust. Plenty to say about Virginia and the ocean, about the traffic bleeding into DC as we boiled alive in the van, about the steaming basements and filthy Chinese restaurants, but all I feel is a moment upon Philadelphia rooftops, not my first time, but there I am perched in a broken chair pondering the Philadelphia skyline and slapping at mosquitoes and licking hash oil from my face and fingers and I am only here and I have nothing to say about it because you will never know my horrors and joys, just as I will never know yours, though not for lack of trying. I could ring a bell of night and let loose a sea of flies and fleas and scratch my ankles like oars rowing and get nowhere at the speed of sound, my heart is aching at the bottom of everything and I hate everything I've written and done and tasted. She'll always be right, Shea reminded me at 6 o'clock this morning as I burned my left wrist with a cigarette and blew away the ash and agreed a thousand times and laughed my heart over the ocean and drank more wine and watched The Real Housewives of New York until I couldn't decide whether to laugh or cry or stick a screwdriver into my ears and up my nose until I sneezed brains.