Dust On My Boots: You Can’t Zoom There From Here
I’m sittin’ in my dirty ol’ truck parked outside of the general store. I was on my way back from “town”, a dull mid-sized middle-of-the-road place whose mascot is the all-too-fittin’ thick-browed club-wieldin’ “Caveman”, about a half an hour from here, when the engine’s temperature gauge was gettin’ high and I started smellin’ some burnt radiator coolant. So, I pulled over and parked at the center of the tiny rural off-the-beaten-path hamlet closest to my mountain home. I’m gonna hang ‘round a lil’ while an let’er cool down a bit ‘fore I head up the mountain to my relatively “safer space” in the woods.
It’s a late Winter day that feels more like mid-Spring. All sorts of clouds are movin’ ‘round like excited kids at carnival. Wetness is in the air, sometimes thick enough to temporarily come together as misty light showers while a faint rainbow keeps tryin’ to annoy me with its always-fleeting illusory spectacle of optimism. It’s a typical, somewhat active, day at this little junction they call Billtown. There’s a few locals millin’ about, some people go in and out of the back entrance of the store pickin’ up supplies for their middle-of-nowhere rural livin’, some guy’s fillin’ a rusty propane tank, an elderly woman’s pickin’ up a package from the tiny post office, a stray mangy lookin’ dog with an obnoxious green bandana around its neck is lookin’ for somethin’ to get into, some dude’s yellin’ at a ghost from a previous life on the other side of the parking lot, and a lil’ weathered pixie-like character wearin’ a make-shift glittery crown and holdin’ a day-glo hand-painted sign with daisies on it that reads “SMILES FEAL GOOD!” is in the middle of the road dancin’ and directin’ traffic that’s not there. Yup. Seems about “normal” for ‘round here.
I’m flippin’ through the static-smothered radio, but I can’t find anything interesting. On FM someone is whining about somethin’ not bein’ fair and its “all so disproportionate”. On AM some guy’s yellin’ ‘bout how someone is to blame and “they ain’t gonna take it no more!”. And the music, damn, don’t even get me started. Don’t anyone play Hank or Waylon or Merle anymore? Or maybe some late sixties or early seventies Stones? How’s ‘bout some Mingus or Monk? Damn, I’d love to hear somethin’ that moves me just a little, some sonic prunes to keep my soul somewhat regular, to keep me goin’. Ah hell, I don’t need to drain the battery anyway, so I twist the knob down and switch off the key.
I’m sittin’ there for a few minutes starin’ out the windshield in a sort of midday bleary meditation, not really focused on anything in particular, lettin’ my mind stretch out and smooth over everything like some kinda cosmic candy-coating, when, BOOM. Damn, Bernie is there at my truck window.
“Hey man, can I borrow your phone. I can’t find my charger and I got a Zoom meeting with my new therapist, my ex-girlfriend, and my mom in a couple minutes.” Bernie says this with the stupidest look you could imagine plastered on his scabbed-up face. He’s wearing a purple and blue tie-dye t-shirt over a red hoodie, slightly askew camo trucker’s hat with a patch on it that reads “Righteous Redneck”, a pair of green and very “off-white” basketball shorts, and one untied construction boot and one flip-flop with a grey sock. He looks like he just woke up or never went to sleep last night, and its almost 2pm.
“Man, leave me alone. You gotta be at least 40-years old, ya got two arms and two legs and almost half-a brain, you’re in one of the easiest to live places on the planet, and I just don’t give a damn” I say out of the corner of my mouth in a cold and gruff voice. The truth is, this moron always annoys me. I don’t have a cellphone and I sure as hell have no idea what a Zoom is.
Bernie stares at me with a confused look and says “A’ight brah, guess yer not in a giving mood today” and walks away in pathetically extra-slow-motion. I can hear his feet draggin’ through the gravel parking lot and his under-breath muttered sighs and disjointed syllables. As his obnoxious form moves further and further from my view, I take a deep breath and shake my head.
I feel like a perpetual outsider in this world. Even in this dinky backwoods town, the alienated, post-modern, artificial, dysfunctional reality penetrates. It infects, distracts, dictates, and leeches. Every pore of reality is clogged with this civilized garbage-quality culture like the micro-plastics that are now in all of our organs and in every square inch on the planet. But I face off with it. I see it for what it is. I look it directly in the eyes. I say No. Well, I try at least. And in today’s almost complete acquiescence, endless excuse makin’, and digitally air-brushed performances, that is an enormous feat. Somethin’ I catch hell for in minor and very significant ways. But damn, our integrity is one of our few real possessions in this bankrupt world. At least around here there’s some elbow room and enough disjointed freakishness that I don’t stick out too much. I even have a few deep relations.
As I ponder all of this and pat myself on the back (a lil’ too hard perhaps), a friend of mine struts ‘round the corner. Willie is one of the few truly kindred folks I have crawlin’ ‘round down here in the desolate lowlands. He drinks a lot, chain-smokes, doesn’t always eat what his body requires, and dresses like he’s ready for either a 1930s bank robbery or World War III, but his heart is kind (sometimes too kind, at least to those who don’t deserve his precious time and energy), his eyes are incredibly perceptive, and his brain is always movin’. He also doesn’t ask for anything from anyone. He’s what those soft-lil’ college kids and online pop-philosophers call “a rugged individualist”, the best kind in my mind.
“Was’up?” he says as he lights another cigarette from the one he just finished.
“Oh, just givin’ my truck a coolin’ and tryin’ not to punch Bernie in the face again.” I say with a sinister chuckle.
“Well, don’t do that. Ya know he’d call the cops again. Ya need any help?” he responds in a brotherly, protective way.
“The truck’ll be fine, and yeah, I won’t waste my time on Bernie, but I do have a question for ya…”
“Shoot.”
“Do ya have any idea what a Zoom meeting is?” I ask with a confused face.
Willie takes a long drag from his cigarette, almost sucking the whole thing down in one contemplative pull. He scratches his head and looks off into the mountains.
“Well, I think there was this episode where Shatner had a meeting with some Vulcans from another dimension….no, that’s not it. Sorry, I stayed up too late last night reading and I am only on my fifth cup of coffee, so my mind’s not quite right yet.”
“That’s ok, it doesn’t really matter. It has to do with Bernie and I think its one of those damn internet things anyway.” I flatly respond.
“Oh. Fuck dat.” Willie flatly declares, putting out his cigarette on the bottom of his boot and stuffing it in his pocket. “I gotta head back to work, maybe I’ll see ya later tonight. There’s that thing we gotta take care of” he says as he winks at me with a weirdly serious smile.
“Ya, ok. Take it easy. Don’t kill yer back again chasin’ their script.”
“I’ll try, but damn, my rig’s actin’ like its gonna croak this time. I gotta stash some cash away. Catch’ya later.”
We pound fists and he struts off across the parking lot.
I take another survey of the scene, which now includes an old school bus which just broke down in the middle of the road while turning into the parking lot. It is painted dull red and bright green with puke purple designs all over that look like a pre-school art project. In giant golden letters one side of the bus declares: “We Are One! Join Us Forever!” This notion turns my stomach and I start to dry heave as I see that Bernie is quickly making friends with the glazed-eyed passengers and they seem to be pullin’ an assortment of hand drums out of the undercarriage. I let out another sigh and close my eyes.
I grab my jug and take a big chug of the mountain spring water that is pretty much the only agua I have drank for almost two decades now. It is unfiltered live swamp water from up above my cabin. I swear it keeps me healthy and regular and full of piss and vinegar. The few times that town water, or even worse city water, has touched my lips I have gotten sick. Extremely constipated to be exact (between #1 and #2 on The Bristol Stool Chart). I’ll take a microbial, mycological, cedar needle-infused, bear-fecal-matter stew any day over their metallic-tasting processed H20 recycled chlorinated sewage slop. My swamp water has not only kept me alive for years, it has helped me thrive. It has also nourished my horticultural habits and even gives me a small amount of electricity when its flowin’ steady. And its free! Drinking it has also meshed my life with the dynamic ecosystem of my forested mountain home.
I don’t expect most people to understand my addiction to my mountain swamp water, just as I don’t expect them to understand much of my life. In fact, I don’t expect them to understand very much at all. All most of them can do is access data. Even if that was in any way relevant, they don’t know what to do with any of it, except regurgitate it and perpetuate stupidity in a circular echo-chamber of ignorance, actually more of a spiral of exponential uselessness and alienated nothingness. Anyway, I start to count to ten in an attempt to calm my impending rage over all this, which will only lead to bad decisions at best, or at least one’s which will fuck me over later. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6…. as I’m gettin’ to seven Catnip walks up to my truck.
“Hey dude, you ok? You seem a little stressed out. Wanna talk about it?”
Now, if there was someone who annoys me more than Bernie, more than the endless flood of bottomless bloodsuckers, more than an impromptu drum circle, it would be Catnip. After years of watching him from a distance, a handful of brief interactions on the street, and many many arrogant and know-nothing-all-knowing nods from him, I’m still not exactly sure what his angle is. He hovers like a wounded turkey vulture, circling around the tiny library near the general store waitin’ for the even weaker and more damaged to prey upon, and he seems to have nothing but time on his hands. His look is a mash-up of wizard and genie, and most annoyingly, he seems to consider himself part oracle, part conspiracy decoder, and part life-coach for a certain demographic of the local disenfranchised who are tucked into various nooks and crannies around the rural town and in the woods which surround it but who mostly congregate between the general store and library during the daylight hours. From middle-aged drunks to tweakin’ hippies to cracked butterflies to over-fried huevos to abusive assholes to perpetual leeches, Catnip’s impromptu patients and haphazard apostles always have an open ear, words of eternal encouragement, and incredibly perceptive wisdom from this self-anointed sage therapist… cough, cough.
Catnip holds informal “office hours” at his car most days. He must have been on one of his coffee breaks or ran out of organic shade grown free trade raw cacao energy bars when he spotted me as he was coming out of the store and gravely mistook me for someone who could use his profound assistance.
“Keep movin’!” I abruptly responded to his “altruistic” kindness without even looking up at him.
“Wow. You really got some demons in there, huh bud?” he says in an exaggerated shocked tone. “You know what I think?” he adds.
“No. And I don’t care.” I say still looking down.
“Nazel, I know you think…”
I lift my head and protrude a stern glare into his beady little eyes, “Look Catnip, you could not fathom what I think and you don’t know a thing about me. Let’s keep it that way. I am not one of your mindless drones who think yer shit is gold. I see through your shit, and well, its just shit, through and through.”
Catnip stays calm and collected, takes a deep breath and says “Ok. I can see we have a lot of work ahead for us.”
I’m about to get out of my truck and start to work on his nose when I stop, think of my family and friends and my humble and secluded wooded sanctuary away from all of this stupidity and in that moment, once again, decide its more important to me than some instant satisfaction followed by possibly years in a concrete box. I take another deep breath.
“Ok smart ass. You want to help me so bad?” I grumble.
Catnip starts to get excited, “Well I sure do friend!”
“Ok. I gotta get goin’, but before I do, can you tell me what the hell a Zoom meeting is?”
His eyes light up like one of those creepy fortune tellin’ machines on the boardwalk. “Well, I am glad you asked. I Zoom a lot. I have friends and family and people I help all over the world, and I couldn’t stay in touch with them without Zoom. In fact, I have over forty-thousand Zoom minutes under my belt, and that’s on top of my three-hundred and thirty-thousand YouTube minutes. I am practically a virtual black-belt. I am also working on three online degrees: one in psychological realignment theory, one in radically subjective sociology, and one in magical trance persuasion, or mtp.”
“Hmmm. Ok. Very interesting indeed. And Zoom…” I interrupt, respectfully, of course.
“Yes. Yes. I am getting to that. Well, Zoom is this amazing way we can all be united over great distances. It brings people together.”
“I don’t like the sound of this.” I snarkly interject.
“No, it is great. You can even do it from the privacy of your own bathroom! In your pajamas!” He goes on to explain in way too much detail the technical, social, and cultural significance of all of this, and all of the “amazing new advancements coming online everyday”. His description builds and builds as does his excitement, like a virtual Tower of Babel.
I realize that I too am rapidly escalating in emotion as each of his pathetic words leave his mouth and I am starting to work myself up in an internal frenzy in my mind again and I can feel my blood pressure going up steadily, so I take another gulp of my swamp water, suck in a deep breath of their stinky town air and turn the key of my truck. It starts up and I put it in reverse, almost running over Catnip’s Birkenstocks and pull out onto the road that leads up the mountain, back home. I see Catnip standing there confused and offended in my rear-view mirror. A get a little tickle in my throat and smile a bit as I watch him get smaller and smaller until he disappears.
It has gotten darker and more overcast and it looks like it might start raining hard. I hope it pours down real good right now and doesn’t stop for a long while, drenching this entire scene, soaking these troubling times. Floods beyond what Noah could possibly navigate. Perhaps washing it all away forever. Wiping the slate clean. All of the dysfunction, the performative overcompensation, the miserable alienation sloshing down the ditches and into some deep dark hole far away from this world.
But I know that won’t happen. It won’t because most people seem to want all of this, all of the technological nightmare and its devices and values and expectations and promises and excuses. That is what this culture IS at this point. The domesticated petri dish is a sticky cyber web and everyone is trapped in it and it has become difficult to tell if the expression on everyones face is fear or happiness or confusion or defeat. But there is no monstrous spider to put them out of their misery and feed on their flabby flesh, for they are their own petty monsters, their own enslavers, their own victims and victimizers in a masochistic slow-motion feeding frenzy. And, for as much as they ritualistically file complaints about specific isolated aspects, they are addicted to it all. It has seeped into their bones so deep that they not only crave it to fulfill them, to fill their gaping holes with its emptiness, but they need it to go on. They are dependent on it. They can not imagine life outside of it or without it. They lust for their chains more than they could possibly care for each other or love themselves, or so it would sorrowfully appear. So as I ponder Bernie and Catnip’s Zoom meetings, zooming off into the seemingly inevitable ever-accelerating cyber-darkness of virtual oblivion, I choose to chug and sputter and clatter and boom down the road at my own pace and go on with my own unplugged and offline life and put all of that behind me the best that I can.
In a moment of brief nostalgia and habit, I flip on the radio. Still, absolutely nothing. I slam it off. As I drive, I stare at the more desirable terrain that I am heading back into. To one side I see almost completely pristine forested mountains and to the other, ravaged clear-cut carnage. I live somewhere between them.
I begin to hum a melody in my head, something dark and ominous, and I recall some poetic pessimism that I scribbled down late last night after a half a bottle of rye whiskey. I sing them in my gravely voice to the melody in my head:
gonna lay myself down
with dust on my boots
bones gonna crumble
skin harden’d leather
ramblin’ this world
without chain or tether
gonna lay myself down
with dust on my boots
cover up my footprints
gonna leave no trace
just scrambled words
crooked smile on my face
gonna lay myself down
with dust on my boots
don’t need no bible
don’t want no laws
gonna live my own way
with stumbles and falls
gonna lay myself down
with dust on my boots
come high or come low
go up and go down
gonna ride this ol’ bronco
like a damn rodeo clown
gonna lay myself down
with dust on my boots
give no apologies
no empty regrets
with my gun in hand
and my boots facin’ west
gonna lay myself down
with dust on my boots
worms eat my flesh
crows pick my bones
i’ve loved many
but we leave this world alone
….all alone
……..leave me alone
Nazel Pickens, a cosmic-anarchist-cowboy with backwoods, home-spun, divergent, deviant, rebellious, sorrowful, cynical, silly, and celestial commentary on the world at large and his forever cluttered and dusty lil' place in it. Ol’ Nazel doesn’t have a cellphone (they’re gonna pry his rotary landline outta his cold dead hand) or internet connection, but he sure does have opinions about this psychotically alienated technophilic postmodern mess of a world and of his perpetual pursuit of authentic anarchic freedom, and loves to pound them out on his typewriter, some of which is available as the somewhat regularly reoccurring column “Dust On My Boots” from The Rogue Writers Guild’s online magazine (www.roguewritersguild.com). From essays to poems to rants to short stories to songs, Mr. Pickens emotes with words in the dust, and lets the wind take it all away. He sometimes joins forces with another voice in his head, Invecchiare Selvatico, who writes from a more sophisticated, sometimes more analytical, voice. They teamed up to put out a book, Black Blossoms At The End Of The World, available from underworldamusements.com.
Messages to be passed on to Nazel (and requests for a free catalog of his own distro) can be sent to nazelpickens@gmail.com.
Nazel also puts out music with his (probably now defunct) cosmic-outlaw-country band, which can be heard at distilledspiritrebellion.bandcamp.com