medicated ramblings
It was a damn busy week that was compounded by a sickness not unlike that bird flu that has yet to materialize. Perhaps this is the materialization. Perhaps I am the first and they will christen it Rex L. Camino's disease. It feels like your typically seasonal coughing, aching, stuffy head, fever, pray for death sort of fair, but there is an added element of slight vertigo that makes the morning rush hour a bit more interesting.
Also, I am hallucinating more than usual.
As if this wasn't enough, there was also some recurring insomnia that probably stemmed from my body wanting to breathe. I used that time to read from whichever of the Ross McDonald "Archer" novels I'm up to, but the lack of sleep only worsened the vertigo and hallucinations. I tried to make coworkers don little signs stating that they were real, but the hallucinations quickly emulated this technique and thus thwarted yet another attempted at feigning sanity.
However, your day will come, hallucinations.
No, it won't.
Anyway, the icing on the whole week was that I had to drive to Huntsville for a bass playing gig last night after working late. I took the back way through Shelbyville that then leads through narrow and winding roads littered with dingy trailers still wrapped in Christmas lights and the occasional crumbling Antebellum estate. There was an eighteen wheeler clogging the road, but it did not delay me and keep me from having to sit around in a smoky bar drinking orange juice and trying to suppress my disease for a good two hours before going on.
Huntsville was always the Mt. Pilot to Florence's Mayberry when I was growing up. They had foreign restaurants and a mall with an escalator. I don't know what it tells you about my childhood, but the highlight of every Huntsville trip for me was getting to ride the mall escalator.
They also have a space and rocket center somewhere that sells genuine astronaut ice cream.
As I got older, I didn't care too much for Huntsville. There are all kinds of people there, and I'm sure that most are decent human beings, but they generally fall into one of these camps:
1. Rocket scientists and those who assist them.
2. People who imagine that they are living in a Bob Seger song.
Rarely will you find anyone who falls into both categories. Bob has rarely written from the point of view of a rocket scientist, and it is quite difficult to build rockets while working on "night moves", as it were.
I don't mean this as a slight to Huntsville, Bob Seger, or the field of rocket scientistry, and I certainly hope that I do not offend those factions. I am merely making an observation.
At any rate, I will not complain about having to play music. That part of it was fun, as always, but I will try to keep from focusing on the fact that I probably made less than forty bucks for a total of four hours driving time. Logic tends to only get in the way if you try to apply it to music or any other artistic pursuits. The math doesn't always work in your favor, but there are worse ways to make forty bucks.
Besides, it was probably good for the hallucinations to get away for a while.
Also, I am hallucinating more than usual.
As if this wasn't enough, there was also some recurring insomnia that probably stemmed from my body wanting to breathe. I used that time to read from whichever of the Ross McDonald "Archer" novels I'm up to, but the lack of sleep only worsened the vertigo and hallucinations. I tried to make coworkers don little signs stating that they were real, but the hallucinations quickly emulated this technique and thus thwarted yet another attempted at feigning sanity.
However, your day will come, hallucinations.
No, it won't.
Anyway, the icing on the whole week was that I had to drive to Huntsville for a bass playing gig last night after working late. I took the back way through Shelbyville that then leads through narrow and winding roads littered with dingy trailers still wrapped in Christmas lights and the occasional crumbling Antebellum estate. There was an eighteen wheeler clogging the road, but it did not delay me and keep me from having to sit around in a smoky bar drinking orange juice and trying to suppress my disease for a good two hours before going on.
Huntsville was always the Mt. Pilot to Florence's Mayberry when I was growing up. They had foreign restaurants and a mall with an escalator. I don't know what it tells you about my childhood, but the highlight of every Huntsville trip for me was getting to ride the mall escalator.
They also have a space and rocket center somewhere that sells genuine astronaut ice cream.
As I got older, I didn't care too much for Huntsville. There are all kinds of people there, and I'm sure that most are decent human beings, but they generally fall into one of these camps:
1. Rocket scientists and those who assist them.
2. People who imagine that they are living in a Bob Seger song.
Rarely will you find anyone who falls into both categories. Bob has rarely written from the point of view of a rocket scientist, and it is quite difficult to build rockets while working on "night moves", as it were.
I don't mean this as a slight to Huntsville, Bob Seger, or the field of rocket scientistry, and I certainly hope that I do not offend those factions. I am merely making an observation.
At any rate, I will not complain about having to play music. That part of it was fun, as always, but I will try to keep from focusing on the fact that I probably made less than forty bucks for a total of four hours driving time. Logic tends to only get in the way if you try to apply it to music or any other artistic pursuits. The math doesn't always work in your favor, but there are worse ways to make forty bucks.
Besides, it was probably good for the hallucinations to get away for a while.
posted by Rex L. Camino at 2:13 PM
4 Comments:
You make me think of my pop. He was always in a band while I was growing up and I would often travel with him to points including Eufaula, Alabama to help him lug his equipment around and set it up.
He would sometimes find himself with about the same paltry sum of $40 after gas and food. Except he would then pay his "roadie" $40 for the hard work.
But then, it's all about the music anyway, right?
It indeed is.
I have been through Eufaula a number of times and seem to recall a number of really good roadside restaurants in that general vicinity.
I know Huntsville well, Huck. It is just like the rest of Alabama except in that it has the additional category of 'rocket scientist".
It seems like one of the banks downtown has one, but I can't remember which.
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