august 28 2020

 I know it isn't 1995 any more.  I know it isn't a couple of years ago or ten, anymore.  

I know that three years one month and seven days ago my world was changed when we were evicted.  Not only did we have to deal with the eviction, but we also had to deal with a drastic increase of homelessness in the Lake, Sonoma and Mendocino Counties as well as elsewhere.

The legalization of marijuana didn't really help my life.  It made it okay to smoke pot, but the sales i made and the money I made from said sales stopped cold dead.

No more were the nights of making 3 to five hundred bucks from nine thirty PM to three thirty AM.  Gone were those days.  Gone were the days of heading to a dive bar with a bunch of joints in a cigarette pack and making an easy hundred and getting a good buzz on.   Ah the old days.  When a guy could sell a twenty bag for about twenty five and roll on down the line in a smooth way.  Back when you could get four (4)  thirty-two ounce beers for around five bucks and a pack of papers.     Those days are gone.  Pretty soon they will have effing machines that deal smoke for you, like a vending machine.  Checks your ID, POP In the ATM card or cash through the dollar bill validator, and toke it up, no problems.

Taxes inserted installed and marginalized, robots computers and databases selling us our pot, instead of our friends and acquaintances. 

The system itself travwels on slow wheels that I'm mad at.  Why the hell wasn't it legal in the 1990s when I started smoking it?  Why wasn't it?  Why was it that I had to pay fifty dollars an eighth every time I turned around.  Thank god that some of my friends were growers and I eventually didn't have to pay through the teeth for some decent smoke.

 Some times I get "trim", sometimes I get good bud, both work wonders on the stupid pain I deal with due to head injuries from being beat up too much.

 The high isn't that "high", of a high, it's more than likely just there to be a buffer between me and pain and stress.  I love video games and music when I'm sober, but if im stoned, I enjoy them a whole eff ton more.

 

 "you smoke shit weed", friends of mine have said to me on more than one occasion.

 

 I remember this because it happened to me on more than one occasion, thereby repeating the previous statement of previous occasions.

 

 We all talk a lot in the bars,  we talk a lot in the bus stops, train stops, and airline bars,  we lie in all these places.  We joke and laugh at the things we shouldn't laugh at.  Problematic lies oozing from our addiction.  no reason to hunt for anything less or more than what is needed.  

 

 Why do we need people sometimes?  we have to need them from time to time.

 

 We have to get drugs from them and cheap Tee Vees. 

 We have to get dates from them, we have to make music with them, we have to discuss politics with them, we have to talk about holiday gifts, car repairs and new stereos. 

 

 We have to do our part as citizens of this planet to make the real illusion become that which it has needed to be for eons.  Truth.  Scatterbrained anger and blasting truth.  Not stopping.  This is the time of the New Vision.  ` Burroughs and Ginsberg and Kerouac  and Lucien Carr started the ball rolling.  It's my time and our time to continue.  HST as well.  We will never have a trip like they did, but bless us for the trips we've taken, the walls broken down, internal fires started, bands made, bands ended, yet ...  there is still the sound.  It isn't America.  It's true freedom.

 

 

 We've only just begun, my friends.  We've only just begun.

 

 Oliver Clinton Mattson / +OCM+  August 28, 2020