American Brainworm

I’m not a tweeker by a long shot but the desert has givin’ me tweekeresk tendencies. The slight hint of paranoia, the constant movement and fiddling about, finally making’ much ta-doo of projects that seem senseless in their insignificance. I think it might be outright annoying being on the outside lookin’ in. But I’m not; I’m focused downward as I tend to my cactus garden and organize broken glass and rusted metal into ground covering. Kickin’ stones around in the moonlight I build small temples to insignificant Gods for no other’s pleasure but my own. Fuckin’ tweeker…but no Meth involved.
The high desert, although I am not completely off the grid yet, is an environment that will either make or break you. You’re goin’ to lose your mother fuckin’ mind or you won’t if you just do things that make you look like you have. I have gone the latter…I hope.
There ain’t shit to do out here so you end up doin’ a lot of shit. Most of which seems meaningless until the whole picture comes into focus. The picture I’m fuckin’ with is really comin’ along but I have to admit it gets a bit wacky. The things that while away the hours are not things you pay attention to, they are just the things that you find yourself having done. Mindless zombie-like abandon that culminates into completed projects that seem completely useless but on the other hand completely cool…to you.
When I moved out here and nestled my $600 travel trailer into Porns back forty it never really occurred to me that I would actually end up living in it. It was a thought but not one that I thought through very much. It just showed up and then just sat for about a week before I even checked to see if the windows opened.
The Danger Hut was structurally in good shape but it had been sitting in the middle of the Queen Creek desert area for about ten years with one window open. Dust and lots of it blew into that window filling the place with a thick film of clay that needed to be removed. Fuckin’ thing looked like it was made out of Adobe for fucks sale.
I was quite daunted by the task but once I got into it I just kept rollin’ with it. The carpet and tile that were in it were shot so I wasn’t worried about fuckin’ them up so I went at it with a a couple or ten buckets of soap and water and rags. I could just start anywhere because anything would be an improvement.
The hardened clay-like substance that adhered to every surface ran down each wall like muddy washes. I splashed and wiped and scraped and chipped until the actual surface beneath it started to rear its head and then I would step up the process a notch. I moved from chisels and scrapers to soap, water and rags, to paper towels and Fantastic until the Hut was clay free from the broken vents in the ceiling to the carpets that were now thick with the crud that had previously encased the interior of the structure.
The floor covering was shot so I just cut and pulled, ripped and tore anything that was under foot. The substructure of the floor was in perfect shape. Nice dry ¾” inch actual plywood without a stain on it. I just pulled out the nails, shop vac-ed the shit out of everything and left it bare wood. I might eventually stain and varnish it but there are other issues that needed to be addressed first.
For instance…it was a few days into the decontamination portion of the project and it was evening. I was hangin’ out on the couch which is on the north east side of the trailer. The wind started kicking up from the south east side as I burnt a fatty. I listened to the wind as it gusted and was surprised at how comfortable the old built in couch was. It became more and more comfortable as I settled into it…ridiculously comfortable.
The wind was whippin’ and I felt like I was in a Laz-E-Boy recliner instead of a cheap trailer couch. About the time I was wondering just how good that pot was, the wind suddenly died and the whole trailer came down in a thud as it set back down the two wheels on the south side of the trailer.
The fucker was riding the wind storm on just the wheels on the north east side the others were just dangling in the breeze like an old man’s nuts.
I would have to address this before anything else. The next day I attacked it with a high lift jack, a level and cement blocks. Four or five hours into it the Little Aluminum Juggernaut was dead level and doesn’t budge no matter what the weather.
This project lead to the next and the next and the next…and so on. Each project in varying degrees of importance until the problems seemed less life threatening.
Each day that went by the work continued until the work never stopped. Anything that kept me busy was a good enough reason to keep working. I came up with a passive way to fight the “illegal” problem in this area. I made a compass in the cactus garden in front of the Hut that pointed south but was marked north. I figured that if one of ‘m got in the yard they would see the compuse and head south seeing the compass facing north. Stupid huh?...well it gets worse. I found that my compass was actually about ten degrees off I turned it. The compass consisted of an array of rocks and broken glass…each moved so when completed they point DEAD south. This whole ordeal took about eight hours. Fuckin’ tweeker.
The Latowski is back in the mix, my shit is now in the never ending trailer project and I was relaying on a compass that faced the wrong direction. Yea, it’s funny but realistically I needed to arm up…so I did. I sold off the CB project and got myself what I really needed a Springfield Arms EMP .40. See, paranoid…total awareness.
Whatever…I am now a desert dweller, with a couple of bikes and a nice gun. By next summer I hope to be off the grid but I think I will get the plumbing working first. Later Fuckin’ Gators…”GTP”