SPEW :: to fortin

Tis been a while, no? Seems like only 2 weekends ago that you and the Pig were here in the pit. Yet it was 5. It was good to hang with y’all. I really found it theraputic to see who I’m talking to and then to say the things that I guess we all need to hear ourselves say. You two are good people. I’m glad that there has been some contact between us. When I realize that I havent talked to Margo in like 5 years, I immediately thinks that

A) I have a fuck-load to tell her
B) Its been too long to just drop a line.

As you can probably figure out for yourself by now, it’s B) that I have such a hang-up with. I did it with Jesse. And while there’s not too much e-mailin goin on between us, at least we know where each other is in our lives. I mean, I really liked Margo in those first two years. I REALLY liked her. I think she may have felt the same. I was just to “out there” in this new and fascinating world to come back down and just let her know I felt the same. I guess I’m the type that would rather just, somehow, find the person with whom there has been a massive gap, and just show up. To actually SEE the look on their face. Hey, theres a big electronics and video production convention comming up in Nawlins soon. Maybe then. Could you give me any and all info you gots for her?

Went to SF for ID4. Had a purdy good time. Spent hardly ANY time in the city and just spent it all in the pubs and breweries of Marin. Sausalito and Mill Valley to be specific. The 4th was a parade in Sausalito that Anna’s parents used to drink and revel in/with when they were our ages. The 5th was, needless to say, spent in a very slow and low-lit tavern where I could not only nurse the Shaman back, but to remember. Is it loathe to say that I remembered “his” day with a microbrew and a case of the chills? There are some out there that celebrate the day of death as if they finally made the transition to the greener pasture. I dont know. None of us do. NONE of us have our shit together well enough to be critics. Yet, there is the double standard in the case of the Parkers.

We (you and I and a hoard of others) say, with complete selflessness, that we want him back…that no matter how illicit and dangerous and painfull for both sides his life was, our world was better when our memories of him had a chance to be outdone…that someday, he’d make me laugh harder or increase respect or make each other proud or whatever. You have the priveledge of the details. I mean, i saw the picture of the Caddy, but where, exactly was he headed so in the AM of the 5th? Parkway Calabasas, right? I only know one place he’d be heading out that far. Was he THAT good of friends with the man?

Yet, there is, way off in the depths of thoughts like these, that notion where we must admit that he finally flew away. Brian, how many times did he, himself, say that all-too-common phrase among strong spirits that he knew that his life had a cap on it…that somehow, he’d not last as long as the average, so therefore had to cram a wee bit more into the same space?

He was your brother. He was one who you looked up to and you knew it. Thats a powerful feeling where…someone that you love and respect and revere and protect…thinks the world of you. He was more a member of your tribe and your life than I’ll ever understand, and I am trully sorry for your loss. All I can say is that I love the kid and that while I feel a void where his presense;his life was…his pass brought things to the surface that I dont think I ever would have remembered.

GO BACK TO THE SUMMER OF 93…
Alright, you and Josh and Jake are living somewhere East, I think, of Swan off of Ft. Lowell. It’s hot…cuz it’s Summer. Sej is in town, and there’s camping in the future. You and I dont know who else, had earlier found a place 1/2 way up to Mt. Lemmon that was a hike in to a gourge where an old river forked…that river since dammed to a fishing hole that up where we were to park. We were You, And I, Johnny, Jake, Sej, two dreadheads from G.Bens where you worked, and Allyson (?? your friend from KC…her name has ALWAYS eluded me..the ARTwelder with the PathFinder and the Mom in Tucson). I recall bits and peices of the trek in:

* Paying two old campground tendants to park who Sej dubbed Ma N Pa Kettle.

* Hiking thru a dry creek bed full of last flood seasons shit: boulders, branches, trunks, and the shaddows they cast from the 3/4 moon.

* We ALL dropped about 30 minutes from the gourge that only you and, I think, Jake new of. Jake…remember his eyes playing tricks on him when he walked into what he thought was just another 3 inch deep puddle and actually wading waist-deep into a 3 FOOT deep puddle. SOAKED and cold. Johnny’s cackle and taunts met with Jake’s baritone: “Yeah, HA HA…Fuck you all…”

We had eaten earlier, cuz there was no grill. There was a campfire, but we all were tripping daisies by this time. Remember the drum. That steel gourd-shaped drum that the blond-dreads played like a king! Only one source of percussion was producing amazing complexities. Allyson, wanting so much to make that beat last forever. She couldnt carry the rhythm, Blond-dreads’ hands hurt, none of us wanted to even try, so she began to loose it. This is where I remember first beginning to wander…the moon was now over our heads deep in this gourge lined canyon.

And it is here that another in the long list of the hiliarious that was to come from the young Parker. He’d been wearing the cap the whole time. So now, in that dark blue ambient light of the pre-dawn, he takes it off exposing what was, for me the first time, the jet black wonder-hair. Once again smacking up in the front, he was like a buff Elvis. You were making fun of the pens and pad of paper he kept in the sleeve of that flight-jacket he wore. Always playing into that shit, he whipped both out as if you were one of these pricks in Hollywood that Sej was to do a “favor” for. “Wadde-ya need, hm?” With the eyes wide with interest…pen to paper…trying no to smile…hair sticking up…always the comedien…head snapping back N forth between you and Jake…”Hm? Hm?”…trying not to laugh…you, literally on the ground…he joined and broke up to. YOU know how little snippets of life like that…that arent THAT funny by themselves are gold when looked at under the right circumstances.

The rest is a random spew of recolections…
Sitting in what nature had made…a skull-shape that was at the top of a 100ft+ spire. Complete with eye, nose and mouth sockets…we entered this we chamber via the ears…too crouded to sit in the cranium, we all sat on what was probably the mandibula (sp?) right in front of the mouth in some sort of odd underbite.

One of the dreads tripping so well that we willingly, upon his own volition, waded into the pool of stagnate water. Too tripping to care how cold he’d be, I remember his name as Sean. Sej saying “man, that’s just plain fucking ignorance.”

Getting back to the Jetta after all night. There we found the oranges we’d forgot. One of two disks I had was Gish. Sej putting it in, turning it up, and all of us, with some sort of 5th wind, dancing around a hollow camp site at 7 in the morning… Just BAFFLING the HELL out of the lazy-campers.

I had Sej for the winding road down. The other disk I had was Undertow. Sej had never heard of TOOL at this point, and I remember trying to describe them before the first notes of “intolerance” kicked. “Kinda-like an angry Soundgarden, yet more dark…lyric-intensive…very energetic.” Something like this. Later on I was to hear that he was palling around with MJ Keenan.

Walking into the courtyard @ UniHeights where I lived out by the pool at like 10 on a Sunday. Stinking, Residual tripping, tired, hot, satisfied. The primidonnas out at the pool were alarmed and confused when I bathed in the hot tub, layed out a towel and started to snore.

It’s late now. My ass and brain hurt. I want you to give my love to Jake and Pig and Storm. Finish the book. Move North. Love her. Ride safe. Ride far. Appreciate your fucking ride. Savor Tucson. Pour strong. Wear headphones. Render in PHONG, not GOURAD. And most importantly, WRITE ME BACK!!!!!!!!!!!

Peace be with you
SHAMAN