Anonymous asked:
"What is your favorite place to eat mexican food?"
Favorite Kitchen That’s Close By For A Quick Lunch:
Tarasco’s on Sunset. I get a chicken burrito and a chicken taco, and the simplicity is sublime. Also, three small tubs of salsa, of varying degrees of friendliness.
Favorite Local Americanized Mexican Restaurant With Overpriced Drinks:
Casita del Campo on Hyperion. Shiny chips and chunky tomato salsa that I crave, but if you call your drinks, expect to pay.
Favorite Late-Night Stumbling-Around Burrito For Medicinal Purposes:
Either El Gran Burrito on Santa Monica & Vermont, or any of the Tacos Mexico locations with the red and white logo. Open until rather late.
My brain still performs a melodramatic little swoon (replete with arm draped over brow and Victorian-era couch in readiness underneath) when faced with the idea that someone, somewhere, chose something I wrote out of a collection of others. It gives me hope that I’ll get more words between the covers of a book, like in Bianca’s hoodie pocket above.
(Do those books have my words in them? Oh, no, no. That’s a couple of Hemingways and a Ginsberg, freshly purchased from a stall at our local farmer’s market.)
I’ve updated the Published Works page, as if to prove it to myself.
I am scheduled to have two wisdom teeth evicted tomorrow, by force, and am feeling apprehensive about it.
More than apprehensive. Such a procedure typically uses general anesthesia, which is a fairly common thing to be phobic about, but which I have never in my adult life experienced.
A secret truth about this shell I inhabit: I have a poor memory, and an abject fear of memory loss. This is probably why I never developed the habit of drinking myself into a stupor, and have to date never in my life really been drunk. The worst of all possible results of aging would be to lose myself to dementia or Alzheimer’s.
Perhaps related to this, I possess a strong desire not to “miss out” on something: nights out, laughter, life experiences, food, play, sex.
Anesthesia, in all its cold professionalism, taps into all this. For a time, it is an utter removal from the world, unlike sleep, unlike sickness, with no memories and no dreams. I have unreasoning fears of risk and loss, of returning with something missing from myself, or something switched off, or something awakened.
All this shouldn’t happen, of course. Standard procedure, very common, well-trained staff, sign here, count down from one hundred, medication for when I am returned to the world groggy and sickened.
I just do not like being at the total mercy of substance.
I have too much yet to do.
The oak tree probably doesn’t need me at all; it’s been there for generations. But it’s alone on this plateau, and it’s special. I’ve watered it every few days, laboring under this arid sun with a sloshing bucket in my hands. Today’s the last day. Sam Conrad’s come back to Rainbow Gulch, and Sam Conrad needs to die.
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