WESTWARD CH 4 : Culture Shock

[The Urbane Spaceman]

This intro is dedicated to a good friend. Tomorrow he dies. I grilled him a porterhouse steak and cut it up for him. He’s been a best man’s friend for 13 years, and them Goldies wear out about this time.

Let’s each and all have a sip simply because we can, shall we?


*CLINK*




However you have arrived at this place, this nexus of good enjoyment (which is a French term for bouteille de joie)

it is a good thing to recognize the path that has brought you here.

We grow from the dust of our youth; our memories and instruction,
…influenced by the experiences of our parents and their parents and what they have witnessed and done.

Understand this: it is in our human nature to grow. We are unstoppable.

We grow.

Inevitable, undeniable, irrefutable.

We are children of the ashes, like the mighty Phoenix bird. It is from ashes that we arise and take flight, reborn and new, with gleaming wings.

You nailed it, Oett. Thank you bud.


WESTWARD CH 4 : CULTURE SHOCK



In the hard, cold apartment, we hid from the heat of the desert. We did not accept it. We did not feel welcomed by it.

Looking back, form the vantage of an old man sitting by the hearth in the night of this telling, I tell you that it was not our nature.

Back in the cold upper part of the northern hemisphere of this tiny blue marble, alone at the end of a finger of our galaxy,

…well,

We’d always welcomed the cold of autumn after the short length of fickle summer sun with our outstretched arms. The sun lay low on the horizon throughout the day as them trees blasted their perennial existence with explosions of yellow and reds in their leaves,

and the orange light that heralded the oncoming of pumpkin time (All Hallow’s Eve).


Old saying:
When the weather’s warm and sticky
is not the time for dunkin’ Dicky.
When the frost is on the pumpkin:
that’s the time for Dicky dunkin’.

Winter is for the telling of true tales.

We had not done anything to deserve this air conditioning in the summertime. There was still work to do, and we had done nothing.

More important: we had not acclimated to our new surroundings in this high desert valley, nor here in our new life.


After one week, Mom woke us up and made them scrambled eggs, but this time, without sunflower seeds. We couldn’t afford them.

She said, “It’s time for us to take a walk.”

We got all dolled up in our wrinkly, dirty finest (it wasn’t wash day yet) and we went out of the apartment into the hot, dry desert air.


drinkdrinkdrinkdrinkdrinkdrinkdrinkdrinkdrinkdrinkdrinkdammit


I tell you now, that we met many strange and interesting people, but none of them would be invited to any dinner party nor any wine tasting, unless it was form a paper bag. However, this here Injun will always tell you that life is too short to be wasted on falsity and bragging and the showing off of new purchases. Some folks have a hole that can’t seem to be filled, and their wealth that they seek in their own lives doesn’t exist unless there is someone to witness it.

That’s an expensive way to live, and it’s a cheat.


*AHEM*



Ape-ologies. Time to get off the soap box and DRINK.


Let’s get back to the true tale, cool?


I grew up to become a proper teenager. What this means is that I properly irritated the living hell out of every adult within a five mile radius. That’s how teens are. If you are a teenager reading this: two things.


1. Folks hate you now. But you might grow out of it. Everyone at that time in their life is irritating unless they are doing it wrong or something is wrong with them.

2. What the hell are you doing reading this sort of thing on a site dedicated to drinking? Stop wasting your single parent’s limited resources on the internet and go get a friggin job and contribute! Go to bed.



There was one person who enjoyed my youth, and she was the mother of the boy who lived next door in the apartment/duplex/ghetto complex. She took my cherry, but only the front one. The rear one is still intact, truth.


Tonight, I will enjoy the company of my dog, and very soon, quite soon, I will continue with this. It won’t be a friggin month. It’s just that it has been a friggin month.


Tomorrow, that ends.



Cheers to my old dog, Skeedub.


It means The Dude. it really does approximate to that meaning.


Fucking DRINK. It means a lot to me that you do right now.

.

[Dear Booze]

Goddamned dogs. They're just too good. You bring one of 'em into your life and you change each other's lives forever. And you're both better for it.

Here's to Skeedub.

And here's to you my friend. My heart goes out to you like you wouldn't believe.

[The Urbane Spaceman]

Amen brother.

We held his head as the second shot was administered, so that we were the last faces that he saw

Tahoo.