The Southern California storms have finally moved out after a week of rampage. The desert was ravaged by flash floods. The roads in a tangled mess of dirt and debris. I’ve been rolling around for the last couple weeks with my girl who flew out from Chicago. I haven’t been in such a close proximity relationship for quite sometime. Been living semi alone like some vague sex starved recluse, on and off for a few years. Working a day job to financially support the music job. Chasing the muse and trying to be involved with my daughter that I give money towards and attempt to help raise. I am, in all likelihood, I poor remodel and more of a “fun and games” daddy figure. I do pay my child support though. And I buy the new school shoes. I can’t be all that bad. I keep telling myself that. The problem is I keep trying to believe it.

What I’m really getting at is time. If asked what you would want more of, I think everyone in the civilized world would say … money! Unless you’re a United States Republican or the son of a Bush. Then it might be war and oil. But those things are just slang for … money! If I could have more of anything it would be, time. Time I tell you! Not just more minutes to be idle and relaxed. I mean time to do the things that you decided you were put on this planet to do. Those things you want to do and all those moments to devote to the people you desire to devote it to. I spend the most time with people that mean the least to me doing the things I don’t truly love and don’t define myself by.

Relationships are damn hard to. Because they are feed and watered by time. They are measured in moments. Both in the past and present. Even the future. It’s a tricky game. People get away from you. They are as slippery as bull frogs slathered in pond water. If they are not feed enough with your time they grow restless and fancy free. Attention is a time term in the relationship paradox. Quality versus quantity is also a factor. This shit is tough people. No wonder the great majority of relationships fail. Perhaps if your not good at equations and your algebra scores were low in school you might never figure this relationship stuff out. Someone should event the “relationship calculator” for all of us that are mathematically impaired. Level the god damn playing field.

I’m not just referring to love relationships. All types of relationships work in the same capacity. Family, work, friendship … just to name a few. They all require the same components. The give and the take. The time and the proper temperature. It’s a pain in the big ass booty, but, necessary. Because, like the gift of time, people are more precious then things. Yet, we rarely treat people with the same care and respect as we do our “things.” Take care to wash the car but not the baby. Dream of the latest cell phone model but not a profound conversation with a friend. In the end, all that remains are people and the moments spent with them. This includes even ourselves and the quality time we sat down inside our own skulls and just dug hanging with the ego and the id and the imagination.

I can feel my girlfriend growing restless in the other room as I type away at this. She needs some of my time. I am happy to give it to her. I can also feel the restlessness from far away. An energy that floats back to me from the bouncing life force of the Universe. From you, dear reader, who has perhaps wondered when the fuck I was going to place another passage onto this “page o’ blog.” I am mucho happy to be able to devote some of my time towards you. So here it is!

I had a dream the other night that I was sitting in a dark room in a chair I could not see but could only feel around my ass checks. I could hear a tolling bell chime loudly every 15 seconds. This went on for awhile. At last the darkness lifted and became a hot white light. I could see a mirror floating in front of me. When I stared into it I could see nothing but the empty chair. The chair was made of cherry wood colored bones and horse hair twine. In it sat a solitary orange fortune cookie. I lifted the cookie from the chair. I cracked it open. The fortune inside read: “Beware of becoming to much to many. They are hungry for your time and they will chew you apart.” I guess I was feeling a bit hungry because I ate the cookie. It tasted pretty good. I tried to slip the fortune into my pocket, but suddenly realized I was standing stark naked in the garden. I felt the omnipresence of God. And I could hear him laughing.

The new year has blown in. So what for resolutions! Who gives a crap about getting it over the plate anymore. Didn’t need any god damn resolutions this new years. It was already a lock when the guns went off at midnight. All that I was in need of had already been nursed to salvation for the most part. My soul transcended and healed. The new year rang in thousands of new laws and legislations and innumerable hangovers. And really a strange sense that the party has been long over for some time. And we’re all counting down to some strange and horrid post modern prohibition. A radical policing of human behavior. All the great taboos have been dissolved and the bedroom doors are wide open. So now we demonize and hunt down such boogiemen as smoking in a bar or holding a cell phone to your ear while driving.

The sense has been sucked out of the balloon and we are all deflating. The madness has slunk back into the shadows and the sanity is eating us alive. I have given up on bars for it feels to much like sitting in Best Buy and drinking beer. Television screens and khaki shorted patrons watching reality shows and basketball. Instead of wild talk and cigarette smoke you now have Ahi shrimp platters and free Wi-Fi. The toughness and roughness has been smoothed out. The exotic dangers of the dark saloon jungles have been tamed. Hence forth, the desire has dissipated. Let’s raise our glasses one last time to the changing times in the death throws of this final year of the first decade.

Let’s start off with a big fancy word today kids … bonhomous. Something to fool the shit out of my computers spell check. That’s what I thought you dirty machine! You’ve boldly underlined it red! Not a clue my cold mechanical buddy? Well let me tell you. It’s a term that describes someone with a pleasant and or affable disposition. One could coin the big guy in the red suit, that must likely laid waist to the brick work inside your chimney as he squeezed his fat ass down it last night, as bonhomous. Right! Wrong?

Well, it’s Christmas morning and there is not a single present in my house. There is no tell tale signs that anyone tried to jimmy the lock on the front door. All the windows are still shut and there is no deer shit on my roof. Being that I’m not a Muslim or a J.W., I can only assume that I was bad again this year. Bummer. No red tricycle for Shawney. Perhaps you shouldn’t drink so much and beat your dog. Lesson learned.

I remember, a December or three ago, being at Standee’s in Chicago. A greasy spoon dive kind of at the corner of Broadway and Granville, with all the amenities of a flop house with a working stove. It was late in the evening. Outside, the snow was coming down in a light showering stillness. It was cold and the wet neon of Standee’s sign was a pink and green beckon of a forgotten promise for all those wandering lost in the gutters of Rogers Park that evening. I was with my sweet Dana sitting in a booth juxtaposed to the counter and facing the coat rack and juke box. A homeless black woman was sitting at the counter across from our booth. I do surmise this owing to the manner of her hygiene and fashion choices. She was very dark skinned in complexion, so I use the term “black” instead of “African American.” She could’ve been Guatemalan for all I know! What can I say? She was dark as shit. So choke on my turds P.C. police! A man has got to make assumptions to survive.

I was half in the bag and ashing in my fried chicken. You could still smoke in the joint at that time. It was right before the nicotine curtain came down on Chicago. My sweet Dana was across from me talking about Pablo Neruda or make up secrets or some combination of the two when I barred witness to a quick and moving scene. The homeless, black women had been drinking coffee only. For that is all the bang her coin could buy. Suddenly, the waitress walked up to her and plopped down a big steaming plate of hot turkey, gravy, and mashed potatoes. A lone gentlemen, sitting a few seats down from her at the counter, got up and turned and said, “Merry Christmas.”

The homeless woman was speechless for a few seconds. The man gathered his coat and hat and paid his bill. As he went for the door the homeless woman called to him, “Thank you so much sir!”

The man waved and exited. I thought to myself, as I took a drag from my cigarette, “oh that was a nice thing to do.” The homeless woman was very still for a moment. I heard the waitress whisper to the cook, “That man just bought that lady dinner.” Ol' Blue Eyes was crooning Silent Night from the juke box and the homeless lady started weeping over her dinner plate. Slowly she escalated into a full on fit of crying. The tears just streamed down into her mashed potatoes. The other patrons in the diner fell into a spell of silence. The sobbing lasted for a long time. Those tears were certainly mixed with both sorrow and joy. Tinged with a nameless emotion slightly beyond my comprehension.

I hadn’t thought about that scene for quite sometime. Later on I will drive over to my relatives house. Exchange gifts bought on credit and wrapped by a perfect stranger at the department store. Not much goes into it. But like myself and many, many countless others we will expect a cheap pop of emotion by the recipient. A quick fix of holiday feel good. That’s what we’re all after on this day of December 25th. I can guarantee you that no one I encounter around the Christmas Tree today will be as moved as that homeless lady was over a simple plate of food. And nothing will come close to that feeling I had from watching that scene unfold in Standee’s on a cold December night in Chicago. We’re constantly on the hunt for quick, effortless emotion. When faced with the real mccoy it can often times be very unnerving. For me, it was a real nut-cracker.

Well, time to shower and shave and go where the champagne flows. Another dry, day in the Mojave desert. Looking out my window you couldn’t tell December from July. I got a hankering to call my sweet Dana in Chicago. I bet it’s a damn winter wonderland out there. A proper back drop for the Christmas scene to unfold. I got a Yule log in my pants just thinking about it … and her! I’ll be home for Christmas, baby, if only in my wet dreams.

Shawn Mafia enjoying some dis-jointed Chicken and a cigarette

at Standee's in Chicago, Illinios!