Valley View

Earlier today, Eleanor & I visited a friend way out on Nowhere Road. His name's Jerry and he's good people from back in the day. Practically family. Anyway, now he & his wife have a huge house on a dried-up river - the once-mighty Oconee - that looks like some kind of privet-choked chocolate stream right outta Willie Wonka's fevered nightmares.

Jerry's in his Sixties now and has a gigantic Rottweiler named Daisy who's on her last leg. Daisy like the bb-gun. This morning Eleanor played while Jerry & I sat around and talked about Iowa and how cool and then how fucked-up the world is. He was in "the shit" in Vietnam and said, "At last people protested Vietnam. No one seems to mind this fuggin' war." Daisy howled like a hound. "That's her death song," Jerry said.

I wonder how this is all gonna pan out. The war and the election and the hours and the babies and me and the world and just all of it, right down to the forks and spoons in my cupboard. Most likely, things'll get worse before they get better. I know I may be a bitter person, but my forks & spoons know that I carry a private exuberance that no one can steal. At least, no one has yet. And I suppose that if that was gonna happen, it woulda happened by now.

The animal-humans are involved with the weather. This one is shaking rain out of 2 clouds, like dishwater out of a sponge. I once saw this happen in Durango, Colorado. I was on my way to Valley View Hot Springs after a long day of wrong livelihood.