I feel the portal walls wrap around me like a sudden hug from a long-lost friend. I’m beginning to feel hints of normalcy since taking the holiday COVID dive. What kind of world have we allowed ourselves to live in throughout the previous five years?

I typed that with minimal flinch, like it’s some normal shit we’d say in daily speak. I’m not sure which years my brain defaults to when it comes to the frequency of disease debates. Music? The late eighties. Film? Early eighties. Diseases? Whichever ones had the dudes in the bird masks. I love those! I purchased one during the pandemic and wore it to the grocery store. Just once.

I caught the music bug around midday, so I slung the Les Paul over my shoulders. My upstairs neighbor has been MIA since before the holiday, which gave me the unique opportunity to see how loud this tiny, doo doo brown Fender amp could go. Then, the epiphany.

What if my super sad ballad about my dead friend was more of a punk-ish tribute to the rebel she truly was?

I belted out the familiar lyrics into something resembling Green Day’s “Welcome To Paradise”. My post-sickness “borrowed” voice sounds something like RFK Jr. pleasuring himself with the Harley Davidson of cheese graters, but it felt nice to release some energy. I’m not sure it’s something I’d perform in public, especially at my preferred venue. It’s bad enough I make those poor kids endure my acoustic glam-metal rooted whiners.

At this point, I’d do just about anything to keep from obsessing over how our military became pirates. Oh, Great Pepaw of the Pinkish Pigment must’ve gotten the Pirates of the Caribbean box set on Air Force One. I was always more of a “Barbosa” fan. I could relate more to his character’s motivations. Penance.

Every night, I fall asleep with my nose five feet away from a Christmas tree. It’s a real tree, and the scent soothes my mind. No visions of sugarplums or family gatherings, but more like a stumbled-onto memory from my road days.

My co-driver was driving me insane on a trip once, so I volunteered to sleep in the truck. I’m sure he enjoyed a hotel room to himself as well. He was kind of a horn-ball for an older guy.

Anyway, I had ulterior motives, too, just not as messy.

It was January, we were in Yellowstone, and I’d never heard a wolf howl in the wild. I did that night; dozens of them. I literally wept.

I’m not sure where I am in my head in this exact moment, but I know it’s the furthest place from where my mind was on that frigid, snowy night while sleeping in a truck full of fine art. The metaphorical disease itself, hunkered down for the night in nature’s parking lot.

Hard times are coming, says the voices of my ancestors long passed, and I await the dropping of the second shoe. Bad thing is, weve all lost track of which shoe we’re rooting for.

I guess whichever one legalizes weed in Texas. It’s the only one in which I receive some sort of personal gain. I’m not even sure why it matters at this point in the game. I think it glitched. All of it.

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