Work has sought and found me every day. I've picked up more shifts at the French restaurant and I enjoy it well enough that I am going to hang up my bread slicer and quit the bakery. It was almost time to move anyway. I have mastered the art of slinging muffins and acquired the obligatory work-related keloid scar (pancakes got me this time.)

I have another grey hair as well. I am displeased because there is still no discernible pattern to the grey. I needs me some crazy wild silver hair so I can sit on my porch and harangue passers-by and regale reluctant audiences with outrageous tales of my youth.

"Gather round, ya unkempt youngsters. I'm gonna tell you the time I ran away from the Army. The Army is what we used to have before America became a police state, see, and it used to be for stopping people from killing each other. Well, to tell you how I got away I need to tell you about a man named Sibbitt. Yep, I knew him. Eight feet tall he was, with arms like tree trunks. Hair bristled from his every pore and he had teeth like a wild boar.

Now Sibbit was diabetic. Some say his genetic makeup was such that his body failed to produce the required amount of insulin to utilize glucose, but I know different. See, when the gods was putting Sibbitt together, they got rid of his pancreas to make room for more guts. Hush boy! I know pancreases is technically "guts!" I'm speaking metaphoric-like. Now where was I? The man has more guts than anybody I ever known.

Yes now, we packed up and headed out the Sierra Nevada and patrolled the mountains helping lost travelers, caring for local wildlife, mapping uncharted regions, and battling criminal woodland critter elements like the Marmot Syndicate and the Nut Hatch Mafia.

Naked I was in those days, naked and fearless. I had a baseball bat that I had carved myself out of a slightly larger bat and it had a laser sight. Lasers? That's a concentrated beam of light. Were pretty common when science and technology were still legal. Yep, the last thing those marmots saw was a little red dot on their fat evil snouts and then BAM! I would have me a new marmot hat.

Now let me tell you about the time Sibbitt climbed two mountains...at the same time..."

From the journals:

11-9-07 (sort of)

The dull red glow of my ancient alarm clock threatens to say 1 am. Only a few hours until I open up the bakery. It isn't my bakery. It belongs to a gentleman named Lewis. I glimpsed him once, but we were not formally introduced. I doubt we could pick each other out of a police lineup.

Opening the bakery requires no baking on my part. The complex chemical reactions that turn ground wheat and live yeast into proud golden loaves of bread has taken place while I've slept. I pull out rows and rows of pastries and muffins on segregated metal pans and arrange them in a manner that a laminated piece of paper assures me is aesthetically pleasing.

I work with a girl named Jamie. I meant to speak of only Jamie.

Her voice and manner, while wholly her own, stir in me memories of Kendall. I believe Kendall no longer cares for me.

Jamie's voice on the phone sounds like Kendall's. It is a wool blanket, rough and warm. Her uneven tones strike more than my ears. A long way away, there is a time and place where I have never caused Kendall pain. Wherever that place is, that distant Guillermo hears Kendall's voice tries to call out across the possibilities that have set like concrete.

That distant Guillermo has injured hands from scrabbling against the dual barrier of time and regret.

Perhaps this, too, shall pass. I hope it is soon. Memory is vulnerable and I wish to keep some untainted. I have need of them yet.

This is my motorcycle.




I am pleased.

Sorry. Been working a lot. Days of the week have lost their traditional names and become BakeryDay, RestaurantDay, BakerestaurantDay, or WashWorkClothesDay. The weekend is a long day that starts on Friday morning and ends Monday afternoon, with a bit of sleep and more laundry sprinkled throughout.

I'm not enjoying it per se, but I'm glad I'm doing it. I'm growing closer to my independence. I am rebuilding my work ethic like a Frankenstein's monster, sewn together from dead lazy sleeping old parts of me to be shocked into life by the threat of financial ruin and the desire to understand what I am.

Calling upon friends has slowed from an already reclusive trickle to a water-torture drip. These days I spend time with people who don't know I exist and some which aren't any more lively themselves: Tolstoy, Raymond Chandler, Phillip Pullman, The Beatles, Frank Miller.

I travel the world and meet new people through my books, but not in the literal way that Gumby did. No, I mean in a metaphorical sense.

It reminds me of my youth.

I still ponder love, but not as often. It seems a distant thing and grand romantic thoughts do not stick well to a brow beaded with sweat and bread crumbs.

Akin to Kafka's hunger artist, I am learning that being alone is easy, so easy. Co-workers ask me why I'm always in such a good mood. I think I know. When I'm at work, I'm with people. All kinds of people, and they all come to me. Only for a short time, but there are lifetimes nestled in those moments. It's not enough to keep me strong, but I won't starve. I don't think I will.

I'm a voluntary pauper at the moment. I pay my bills and dump the rest into paying back my four credit cards. The two cards with the highest interest met their demise at my hands. They are almost paid off. The other two are coming along nicely.

A little under a hundred bucks in my main bank account and the rest hidden in savings fools me into frugality.

Respective to the average American, I don't have very much debt. Around 2000 smackers or so. If this nose stays pressed to the grindstone for a couple more months, even that will be gone.

I am afraid of that day.

Even now, when I make well above my minimum payments and throw some more money towards the next payment, I feel unsettled. A bill is a concrete motivation, both a carrot and a stick. When it's not dangling in front of me or striking behind me, the path blurs. Like some farmer who has been long bent over a plow and suddenly looks up to find himself far from his field in an alien land.

What next?

How can I know which way is up without something trying to push me down? Without that weight, I might just float off, and up, and away into the frozen ink of space.

I guess we'll see.

I agree with most of this.

Secret Shame time again. This song snagged my ear from a mouthwash ad on television that shows bottles swinging on vines through a jungle.

Where would mouthwash go in such a hurry?

This guy is amazing, though. I don't know who he is, but I consider him the poor man's David Bowie, or possibly the straight man's Freddie Mercury.

Meet my monkey! The daemon dealie allows people who know me (or, I guess, don't) answer a few questions. If I answered a question dishonestly, such as "Guillermo loves licorice and I responded "Strongly agree", someone else could see it and say, "Oi, Guillermo hates licorice." Their new answers may change the appearance of the daemon.

So now it's a monkey. I like the chimp. She is strong and has opposable thumbs. We're made for each other.