Dead Baby Goats, Falafels, and Lap Steel.

I awoke this morning at 6 am. My eyes just popped open. I was in the top bunk underneath a Kokopelli blanket reeking of febreze and dog. It was freezing cold, Sandy below me has had her blankets for a while and has a collection, so she was warm.

I instantly started clicking my fingers together- I had fallen asleep with my finger picks on again. A form of comfort or something. Replaced a needle with that, that's not so bad. I have dreams of beautiful art-deco lap steels, and the sounds they can create to make me feel human again.

I had an early-morning run-in with our resident neo-natzi, who offered me coffee "black, like how he doesn't like his women". Real charmer.

I hitched a ride with Adina into town, sun coming up over disgusting and bleak mud-puddle-for-a-town Ferndale.

Got to DSHS for my psych eval.... you know... answer the questions, Jenna. Over and over. How many times must I tell you how I was molested, raped, beaten up, beat others up, Madeline being beat, relapse, recovery, relapse, recovery. Take the blue pills the green ones, no controlled substances you beg them... "but it will make you feel better."

Bloodsuckers.

I walked across the road and FINALLY got my hair dye. The nice kind. for a box. Feria's bright black. The girl on the box looking like a mash-up of a hooker and a geisha. Fuck-me-red-lipstick color on her airbrushed lips.

I walk in 39 degree weather over to Barnes and Nobles, waiting since only 2 buses come a day back to my recovery house. I have 2 and a half hours. I've already thrown up today twice due to anxiety and nerves. They have a pill they would love to give me for that...

The sky is tinged like a bruise as I peruse B & N, and pour over "modern contemporary art", my faves like Ryden, Rose-Garcia, Heimstra, the Clayton Brothers, Liz McGrath, John John Jesse.

Then I pour myself into a blues-guitar book on what greats are considered the greats, as far as the UK is concerned.

Jeff Healey. Michael Landau. Aynsley Lister. Gary Moore. Bonnie Raitt. BB King. Eric Clapton. Susan Tedeschi. Chris Rea. Phillip Sayce. Robert Johnson. Seasick Steve. Derek Trucks.

I stop at John Mayer. It made me want to throw up again. And fuck Clapton. I'm sure ol' Willie Brown and Skip and McTell would be rolling in their graves. Johnson would be fist-shaking from his throne in hell.

Ilook at pictures of guitars I want to someday own; Gibson ES-335, Gibson Firebird, Martin 000 Range, Danelectro DC, and of course the National Resonator.

I kill hours putting more endless, wasteful by societal-standards knowledge into my puny little woman-brain.

I stride up to the Co-op but not before seeing and photographing a humongous billboard that says "Optimism is Contagious". No it's not... because that's all I ever try to spread... but it has an expiration date that goes bad faster than milk in the fucking Sahara.

I eat falafel and tzatziki and green tea and feel full and sick again. I tear up a bit just thinking of how beautiful it is that I get to live here. And that God blesses my socks off every which way I turn. In most unexpected ways.

I catch the bus. I drive through Bellingham. Ferndale. Up to Blaine. Then Birch Bay. I get off and started walking home.

Along the way I find a skull-and-spike Halloween costume glove, rubber and magnificent, 246 beer cans, a thermos,

and two decaying baby goats. One's eye is just slime and reflecting like that of a salmon. I feel that twinge of nausea thinking of those dead girls in Mexico and Brazil. I feel the lunch coming up to my throat. Hot and burning. Instead, I call Ace and he talks me down. I snap a few photos and decide to go back later to adorn them with roses. If you have never seen THE GIFT, the early nineties movie by Jane's Addiction, I suggest you youtube the scene where Perry sanctifies his overdosed-dead-from-heroin girlfriend.