I want to go outside and feel the wind on my face. I want to watch the early sunrise or be like the great writers, like Kerouac , or the great ones to me, like Carroll. In some way, if I can, I’d like to reach the greatness of O’Hara and recite poetry, nearly half as well and, somehow, I want to find myself out in some new town or living in some new place, and like a lunch that I recall during one of my last visits to Los Angeles, I want to blend into a new scene and be a complete and total stranger. However, the comfort of my new anonymity offers me a familiar comfort, which is rare and old, like a lifelong friend who never turned away from me or strayed.
I want to try some new food. I want to eat something that I never heard of before and, maybe, there could be a walk, or a long stroll, or some trip on foot down Hollywood Boulevard.
I did this –
I want to see the sun as it was or how it looked when the sun went down around the boardwalk near Venice Beach.
I was free for the moment. And there was nothing holding me down or back.
I want to walk the streets, as if to be a stranger in a strange land yet, I could walk without a care in the world. Better yet, I could walk with hopes that I can live in this fantasy and thus, I could make this real so that reality would never return. Hence, I could put aside my attachments to jealousy or the sharp edges of a harsh or unfair reality.
Fuck you, “Timing.”
We’ve never been good to each other.
But now –
this has to change.
I don’t want to hide here.
No.
I want to live here.
I want to go and run or to escape or shed my skin, like the so-called, “Expats” or someone who lives outside or away from their native country—and yes, I want to walk to the market when the sun comes up and go for coffee.
I want to find some little place that sells pastries or something like that, so I can bring them back to my new, so-called home, which is far from my past and far away from my old or typical self.
I want to find a stray dog and make him my own, the two of us, or three— that is, if you’d choose to come along with me. We could walk through old or cobblestone streets, down by Panama, and we could stroll through the market, with our new family member, the dog, happily wagging a tail, and walking beside us—a dog amongst friends, or a new-found prince amongst the rubble of unfortunate life. Perhaps we could assign the dog with a name like Hobo, or something catchy, or something fitting to match the travels the dog might have seen, a long and hard days, like a worker in a field, or an apple-picker, or again, like a hobo in a box-car on a freight train, sipping from a cheap bottle of apple wine.
Hobo . . .
What a great name for a vagrant dog who would finally have a home, happy and loyal, and whether the city we chose would be Boquete, or Panama City by the sea, or Coronado by the Pacific, Hobo would be along for the walk, looking through the different avenues and eating street food from vendors who spoke little English but smiled more often than anything else.
I love this fantasy.
I would love Hobo too. And he would love us. I can promise you this. I would love the idea of this great escape, as if to defect from the backgrounds of toxic environments, and to jump to some peaceful atmosphere where politics is hardly discussed, the air is warm, the water is blue, and the skies at twilight shine on with than orange hue, magical and endearing, like something out of a movie.
I want this. I want to be rid if the “what now,” questions which have become a virus. I want to escape the hard facts of everyday life.
I want to live where people are genuinely happy and they do not lament or complain like the way they do around here, in our reality.
I want to meet real people who do real work without complaint. Yet, whether their siesta time is at noon or if they allow themselves the occasional snooze, or if at all, at least I want to go where people understand how to live and they allow themselves the rites of life, to which they have come to an understanding. The understanding is simple – not everything is so goddamned intense or necessary to fight over. Yes, I want to escape.
I want to tell all of my creditors, “hey, remember me? Good…. now go shit!”
I want to walk away with a plan in my hand, as if to be the blueprint to my new life. I want this to be my roadmap to find my new sanctuary of peace, with you and Hobo too, of course. I want to be rid of every regrettable yesterday. I want them to be gone, or “Off with their heads,’ like the crazy queen used to say.
I want to take notice of the palms and the palm trees and the coconuts. I want to be here and then realize, as if to take notice that I have not had the need to wear long pants or closed shoes since, “I don’t know when.”
Nothing can reach me here. Or you. Or us.
No arm of the corporate system. No Americanized version of some robo-calling telemarketer with their annoying pitches to sell me some kind of health insurance. No more phone scams. No more meetings that could have been avoided or meetings that could have been solved by a phone call.
No more emails or unanswered emails with a mounting number of work-related drama, which means this would be the greatest escape.
This would be the adult equivalent to what we said when the summer came around and we finally escaped the hallways of grade school, middle school, or high school.
As if to say ”School’s out!”
“No more teachers. No more books.”
“No more teacher’s dirty looks!”
No more bosses. No more traffic.
No more Midtown bullshit or the nonsense on the subway.
No more rush hour and no, I’m not saying that there wouldn’t be work—but, of course, there would be work.
However, I have this idea of renting little boats and bicycles to tourists and selling shells or opening up a little café and serving coffee—until nightfall, and then when the sun goes down, we could play a little music in the café, but the kind that brings love together and the kind that makes people dance a slow dance. But more, I want to create moments like this to which any lover could never forget a place like this and say, we have to do this again . . . before it’s too late.
I want this too.
I want this the same way I want to watch the sun go down across the sky above Marina Del Rey.
I want to wake up to see the early morning boats as they head out while we sit for brunch.
I want to meet Hobo.
I want to meet my dream, halfway, and grab on to this so tightly that nothing will ever escape my grip, again. And I will have this.
I will live this way without regret, and without looking back, and no, in a million years, I would never grow tired of this, or you. Furthermore, I would never grow tired of Hobo—the dog of all dogs, and the life of all life’s.
What now?
I don’t know, kids.
But I know it’s out there.
And Hobo . . .
Sit for a while.
Good boy.
I’m looking for you too.
Just know it.
The Written Addiction 