party the verb

1. the brief and abstract

stanley and blanche were on tv in the corner room at the villa sur, two calexico blocks from mexicali, the most private of three motels, nearly across the street from the old hotel d'anza where a timely nightclub soundcheck shook a room i'd have taken, after popping a few at dusk in some ripe imperial valley field, on the road an extra hour, none of it interesting except the plain old stone walkways of the downtown & only corner of brawley. it had been blowing since the night before, all that day, and down along the dusty national boundary it was howling. i got into the last fairly plastic room, showered and walked old plain calexico walkways then more extensive ones on foreign soil, some of which, as i beered and taco'd, whistled illegally through a reinfoirced chain link fence; a somewhat wide road went off one way towards a race track, in the other direction a residential hollow, are you a truck driver?, they asked when i walked back across (down steps, up steps). Later, behind the curtains i thought up sample border guard questions like: to which code does kowalski adhere, and what bird town is the canary from?

2. the covered walkways

of calexico and mexicali: the former i quickly overpeddled on my l.a.-geared bike, the latter i'd undersold on a windy night. i was tired, inexpert at pacing myself, i join the con of names. yea though i pace the valley of the imperial, i will park with a busload of older brits at carls. retracing the old to-the-coast route. 3/5s of a mile in an airplane second.

3. in a motel

room, windy night down by the border, when who should show up on my tv but stanley and blanche. i don't know what i was doing down there. you drive truck? asked our guard when i came back across, i'm here, i say, because the words match so nice. open your jacket, he said.

4. a discretion

past the hiltonized, la quinta-ized golf towns, past palmtree farms, finally turn right and start to get down and real farmy, in a line past coachella (where female crims vacation), to a stillwater smell, vast puddle on geologic salt basin, motel ruin up a street layed out
with small stakes, keep it on my right for an hour, the odd signs promise birds, at best it looks like a beery makeout spot on the edge of the bayou, the highway halves fields, the sea a forgotten feature, right angle at a remote crossroads, a few bldgs with flaps, an
abandoned structure, a little further in the remaining light off side dirt road slightly above two vast fields, through a clump of trees, right between two more ditches, out in slightly spongy earth, wrapped in clothes in the wind cold with cold beer, the nearby body of water whipping itself lightly out here behind la.

5. in palm springs

i peddle obliviously into an off neighborhood of house-scaled lodgings with signs like idle wild or joshua tree (later, nurses enlightened my dumb ass about local hospice activity), gears to waste in this flat oasis, dusk, low dwellings, no one sitting out, i smoke boo near a low, piled stone house, no sinuses, i'd be getting drunk. that later.

6. brawley

there are crude, simple covered walkways marking the towns main corner, there was inordinate wind, darkness, not even edward hopper figures, but a bar, a mex joint, a turning cop, a small bank.

7. ps

la radio is still coming in out past riverside, i pull up a canyon road to see a sliver of peris, after that, the talk is the oldest and scratchiest of shellack, i hang till the last wavers of the signal. later see 40 7-year old grouchos on parade, my knees bend, i pull a fake cigar up to my mouth, the next day i chat with the old doll at the theater and the ghoulish desk guy at the home of the hollywood stars of yesteryear, fresh bagels great cream cheese sold by an asian in this working oasis, with the one class next to the other next to the other, I refer to the good, the bad and the slightly ugly, the dry, the intimate, and the old walking sizeable distances heads bent reasonably, car bouffant babes, losers with clean shirts, or dirty ones that aren’t that dirty. and except in the case of a tall starbucks gen x modigliani with small face and long legs, a refreshing non-interest on the part of persons in general. one vain cop with high bike seat looked; from the fish drive-thru he raced away. later, the wind is blowing hard at boulevard motors, thinking of my old home in h, florida, and the ditches around golf courses, both marx are talking to me.

8. salt peanuts

bird boticelliism, kleefish joining in, the great die off of 96, the pesties in the fields could stand adjustment. according to the paper, two rivers were also involved. at tourist info coming into palm springs bob barker said there may be something down there, it’s a truck route.

9. dirty karl

Do you feel like the people need to control the means of production, punk? well, do you?

10. mein doppleganger, nein

from the vista point tower up in the first eastern san diego mtns you can see a piece of the salton sea, and the mountain face behind palm springs. it's an hour or more to any town in either direction but a young guy traveling alone is knotted up in a tie. it's saturday.