How Much Would It Cost To Use 'Dueling Banjos' As Our Theme Song?

We've been thinking about making changes eventually. Moving somewhere else maybe. Switching things around. Monica staying home with Violet while I bring home the bacon. Or, in my case, the Bac-O's. A couple Sundays ago we drove up into the mountains and rode a half-circle around a lake talking about the future and what we should maybe do. Well, Monica talked and I just mostly listened. I did point out some deer though.

"You're really good at spotting wildlife," she said, caught up in the bitty moment.

I swelled with deep organic pride, the good stuff. We aren't big complimenters. So, I'll take the animal spotter thing to the bank.

I find it both inspiring and overwhelming when my wife gets a notion. And this time she's got a doozy. We should get rural, cut out the cultural fat...the cable TV and the internet, maybe. We could grow vegetables. You could fish all the time. (I'm listening). We could make our own clothes out of old Christmas wrapping paper.

"You could hunt deer for meat," she said.

She did. She fucking said that.

I am down with that, I've done it already. But this was pretty out there for the woman I know; Monica doesn't fish with me because she doesn't want to put a hook in a fishes mouth. Those types don't usually throw the hunting thing into the "lets quit this town and get country" equation. Raise goats for Rip-Off Farmer's Market Cheese, maybe. But pop a deer? No.

So, it looks like I need to get all this writing stuff wrapped up pretty soon, folks. See, where I'm going the world creeps slow as Honey Wine. There's electricity, but not much. So, I might not be able to blog to you as much. Plus, I'll be working like three full-time gigs to make up for my lack of value in any field. Probably: Wal-Mart(guns or plants), T.G.I.F. (yeah, there's one in town next to the Wal- Mart), and either Dairy Queen (Blizzard King) or T/A Truckstop (dude with mop and lazy eye and untucked uniform staring at traveling sexy ladies from behind the Louis L'Amour audio books).

At the lake, Monica talks with eloquence and real passion about her vision for the future. I admit to you here that I get turned on by a visionary woman. And all that fresh alpine air; I get super stoned on it. Rocky Mountain High. I make an advance on a country road while driving. I get shot down in an embarrassing mess of flames. All this while Violet naps in back in her car seat: oblivious to the serious shit going on up in the front. Decisions are being bandied about. Lives are being simplified. Christ, deer are getting shot. By me.

I fail though. I fail in keeping up with Monica's soaring spirit. In my head I hear her and like what she is saying and want to commit to the plan. But I am not sure what to do or how or even if I'm allowed to get all Dreamer Dude again in this lifetime. I've done so much Dreaming. I Dreamed things and they came true. Maybe I used up all my Dream Juice? Maybe I might get hit by lightning just for daring to Dream some more?

So, I keep mostly quiet. I feel dazed. Discombobulated. Someone I love is Dreaming big for the two of us and I ain't helping much. I think maybe if I put the cable TV back into the mix it might poke the fires a bit, ya' know?

After all, this whole Dream is one of two things:

A) The best most wonderful Dream of Love and Family and Quality Life ever conjured up by two parents/lovers/sparring partners.

Or.

B) The best reality TV show on during the 2011 Fall Season! MONICA,SERGE,VIOLET,AND WILBUR (our son)....an American Family who move to the country for a simpler better life. The ever shifting breezes of love. The tumult of family, of blood. Cute kids raised with chicken shit matted in their corn silk hair. Daddy's drunk on Turnip Whiskey. Mama's high on her homegrown stuff. There's somebody else living in the shed out back. An old man. No one knows who he is. Viewers love him, so the family does too.

Hollywood,call me. We can sort out the details by Monday a week. We are The Bielankos. We are your next American Family. Affected by the Recession. Funny without wanting to be. Decent Looking. Blah-blah-blah.

Call. Me. Now.

Scrape Me Off The Walls And I'll Still Be There.

Six months ago any day now, I cut the cord. The nurses ragged her little face as she gasped and snotted and then drew her first breath. I cried as she breathed in for the very first time. No, I WEPT. Crying was something I'd done before in my life: when I held my Mom-Mom's hand as she died; when my Mom spanked my ass; when I was blitzed on strong ale and trying to impress Monica with my sensitive Rhythm Guitar Player bullshit. But I had never wept before.

I had never seen my child enter the world on a weekday afternoon when other people were hitting 7-11 for Taquitos and USA TODAY and Cokes. You hear the stories/every Dad has 'em/they're boring as sin, but they're true too. The weeping comes from outer space, from Heaven, and it travels many many miles to wherever you might be standing at that big moment; zooms down like the start of some movie where you see the Earth from the stars, then you move in on the USA looking bumpy and green and brown; faster now: to some specific city skyline from above; falling falling falling toward a certain part of town; a certain building; a specific window; and then hurdling though the thick hospital glass and directly into the spot between my shoulder blades. Into the heart. My heart.

I stood there shaking, spinning, ecstatic. Scared. I watched her slip out. Somehow I managed to hit RECORD on the fucking camera and so there's video, gorgeously shot I might add, of Violet having her cord snipped by Papa. And of her first wonderful sobs. Then that spiritual dart came sailing through the window I guess and I started weeping Mach 10.

Sitting here on my four foot ledge/porch on this hot summer evening, it's a little sad to think that no matter how much I might describe it all to her someday Violet will never remember a moment of it. Not the sounds of the nurses as they weighed and cleaned and checked her. Not the voice of the doctor as she explained to my surprisingly lucid wife how she was about to stitch her up. She won't ever have flashbacks to the colorful world wiping her blurry peanut eyes to reveal a dude in a skimmer cap holding a little Canon in one hand and a pair of medical scissors in the other, his face the color of a country radish. I guess I'll just have to re-live it for her over and over again. Not a problem.

Six whole months of bawling and pooping and learning to smile. Six months of guzzling milk from her Mama's tit, then the bottles we shake by the sink in the pre-dawn darkness. Six months leading up to grabbing for the little spoon and fingering the whipped squash headed toward her gaping baby bird mouth. Six months of two grown-ups in love with a baby so much that they just have to ease their love for each other behind the fridge for awhile. With the avoided dust and the lab hair tumbleweeds.

Six months of heavy ass beautiful true Biblical Koran Yahweh Jesus Torah North Pole love. Born inside Monica and me probably way back on the days we were born. Days we could never really visualize until now. Born back then inside of our babyguts but laying dormant all these years: unable to even consider surfacing during tempestuous love/sex affairs or at funerals or anything. Nothing Earthly could wake it up. Hard Love coma-sleeps until its time.

I wish I could live forever. I wish I could be here until the day Violet draws her last breath and that we could draw them together at the exact instant, out in a field of flowers, holding hands. Smiling.

Warren Zevon was dying of cancer when he went on Letterman and said the best thing I have ever heard anyone say ever.

"Enjoy every sandwich," he said.

I cried a little that night. I didn't weep, but I cried. I kinda knew what he meant.

These last six months though: I know damn right well what he meant. Take every dirty diaper, every teardrop from her cheek, every single giggle she ever lays at your feet. And hold them tight to your face...to your eyes...to your ears...to your nose. To your lips. Now, boy, you're living.

All I Want Is A Little Dangerous Joy.

Sometimes I get a taste for booze. Sometimes when the sun sinks low I imagine a cold glass of beer and I can taste that first electric hit. Cold glass on my lips, fluttering evening fairies swimming through my mouth towards my low heart. A water slide for dream weavers down my gullet, laughing/carousing, splashing out of the tunnel and spilling all out into the pool of blues I call My Guts. Beer Drop Kids on rafts and inflatable sea dragons start splish-splashing around down there and right away. RIGHT AWAY. I feel fucking superb.

Nothing beats the first little sip. Especially after a tough old day. Deserve. Deserve. I kick it around. Deserve. I Deserve a beer. A drink. I've have told myself that so many times in this life that I'd be unsurprised to find out that it's tattoo'd on the inside of my chest.

Ahhh, but shit. I hardly drink much anymore. I get afraid of it. Of me. There's too much I can fuck up without the sauce in me. With it, I am toast. Don't get me wrong: I still have a drink. But not a hundred like I used to. I don't DRINK per se. Not like the young man I was.

Violet in her swing stops me in my tracks a lot. What am I gonna do if the swing starts spinning over and flipping like some 1970's neighborhood park stunt? Huh? Or if she starts shitting nonstop? Or speaking in Appalachian Tongues? You have to be ready for stuff like that. You can't be three Stellas deep and expect a hero's response. I see me in her time of need, two blocks past buzzed, hurling myself through the big bay window at the front of the house. I've come close before. Without alcohol. Should something happen when I'm all wino: I might just run. Flee.

Still, there are times when I have a splash or two of cheap red wine and the old feelings come again. Warm fires of home. Christmas innards. I look over at the swing and the Violet swinging in it and damn-it-to-hell if the whole scene isn't just euphoric. The wine I swallowed wears a tux, jacket off and saunters over across the bare dim-lit floor of the hall in my belly. He reaches into the shadow'd corner and gently pulls forth the exquisitely sexy lady who hides behind my rotting ticker: Ms. Pride. And oh: how they dance. Captain Wine and Ms. Pride moving to the sly music that oozes from my basement walls; holding one another in the night jazz; cheek brushes cheek: they near-miss kiss; then they kiss. And I feel it all inside me as I watch my little baby in her swing, sleeping. Bless her heart.

It's dumb poet crap, I know.

But, you see...that's the beauty of just a little wine. For a moment, all is revealed as true/wonderful/and real. Ms. Pride gets led out onto my dance floor. All that time spent lurking in my darkness...and it's Captain Wine who finally lures her to the faded light. Well, Captain Wine and Violet.

Ok. The real reason I wrote this was to justify me intending to drink the two glasses of red I have sitting in a bottle over on our hutch thing. I don't know if I deserve it or not. And frankly, I don't care. My daughter is in La-La Land. Her Mom will be home any sec.

First sip.

Oh dear Lord of Lambs in Daylight. So very very nice for me.