Midnight Dragon Musings #1

I typed a bunch when I separated from my wife. I found a used Brother manual typewriter in a pawn shop, and I would spend evenings after work drinking Midnight Dragon malt liquor and tapping out my suffering and loss, as well as my hopes and bombast.

Four years ago the loss of the Seahawks to the Falcons in the divisional round sent me spinning. So wedded I was to that team, to Marshawn Lynch and Russell Wilson and the read option, I went searching for a collection of old writings to figure out who I was.

I was looking for a spontaneous prose document called Shit Stinks. I had written it the spring and summer of 1991. I ended up finding, in addition to Shit Stinks and other notes, a collection of letters I had written my first two years living in New York City at the end of the 1980s, which were also the last two years of my marriage. As an experiment in remembrance I entered them on this page with the title of "The Colt 45 Chronicle." It took me longer to do that than it took to write them in the first place.

The manual typewriter typing directly follows "The Colt 45 Chronicle." I had moved to Seattle to work for a drywall contractor who had previously employed me for a couple of summers in the Bay Area. His company was headquartered in the Emerald City.

With the Seahawks manhandled today, and once again bounced out at the divisional round by the Falcons in Atlanta, I thought it would be appropriate to return to these old writings of a young man looking for a way out. I don't feel the emotional connection to the Seahawks I once did. Marshawn Lynch retired at the end of last season. But today's loss is the occasion for some sadness. It is the end of an era. The era of Seahawks dominance.

So here goes. Glued to the folder that contained the Midnight Dragon Musings was a typewritten page:

SEATTLE -- spaceship earth/man made the planets/green grass earth blue round sky.

NEW YORK CITY -- further back in history/brown light bulb of childhood spent with grandparents/the spaceship is gonna land and I gotta find the heart of the planet/diamond black earth electronic sky halo.

As Nietzsche says of suicide, I think of tomorrow as an idea, and it is a great consolation.

Fuses blowing in my hand. My life and the real world. The young witch in training by my side. Quiet. Waiting for the big jolt to send me to the next weigh station.

EXCREMENT OF JOY. Hard Lake. Black pit. Recalcitrant halo. Hope against hindrance. Dreams of the future. Imagination of significant events. Why all this tense rage in the here and now?

Bruised knuckles; skinned, too. Back. Tooth. Hand. Finger split. Hemorrhoids. Hamstring stripped. I'm overwrought and beleaguered. By the whole setup.