As I loosened my tie, another shift over, that I would do as I thought earlier, and come home to write about politics. But then I live in California and under Dubya, it's too easy. Will Rogers once said, "There's no trick to being a humorist when you have the whole government working for you." My MUNI pass slides through the turnstile and I walk down the steps to the platform, and I know I won't write about my dad, or Seattle. I wouldn't be composing, I would be dwelling. I'm too tired to defenestrate myself over the angst of battling my father, and I won't tear any more chest hair out about it; since I have so little chest hair in the first place. I let a crowded car go by and wait for the next one where I can sit. What will I write about? Am I forcing myself to produce for the handful of my readers, and not for myself? Am I just tapped? What do I have to say that is fresh and captivating? It's hard for me to accept that most of the time, I talk so much, but have so little to say. I give up on reading Bracken's General Theory of Civil War. A situation comedian reading situationalist ideals. The week without cigarettes impacts me as my returning sense of smell reteaches me how pungent city life can be. I slide across to the other side of the train to escape the strata of odor, with a car's full day of workload perspiration, the saccharine of clubgoer haircare product, all shallowly covered by stale urine. My reflection in a window. Existential moment. Then I look away and think on that moment, and lose it.. like you lose Zen by trying to be Zen. Last lollipop in my backpack. Watermelon. Echo Hill Ranch Camp, where my parents sent me each summer for five years. I think again of writing Kinky Friedman. He was the first real individual I remember ever meeting as a kid. I just want him to know. I am not going to walk home the same way I always do. If I don't base my life on conflict with Dad, what will I base it on? Urine again. Blech. Homeless camp. I veer wide of that as much as I do the issue of what will happen if I don't find work in Seattle. I decide to remember the street I walk down. The Brazilian resturant where I went to dinner with the gay ex-Jehovah Witness who is the friend of another ex-Jehovah witness who is now a Unitarian heathen. The intersection where I waited twenty minutes for the anti-war march to come by so I could join. What is with the pungency here? Rotting produce and spoiling leftovers from the fancy restaurant. The chalk coating in the nostrils from the settling construction site just around the corner from home. Fog off the spire of City Hall. Must be the end of summer. Keys. both doors. There is a big mirror along one side of the lobby. Without the tie, and the collar loosened, I look like I just got home from a gig as a cheap Bar Mitzvah band. I wonder if I do weddings. Elevator. Floor. Front Door. Safe.