Qcumberz

I think I need one of those voice activated keyboards because whenever I’m driving around town or walking or riding the light rail; whenever my body is still, but the world is moving, my mind is running running on words. And then I get here and I forget all of it or the weight of work settles over me and flicks another switch on.
Last night I had a dream I was watching my brother as a little boy walking next to my father, but my brother had long blonde hair that he pulled into a ponytail and so it looked like I was watching myself walking with my father. I was supposed to be taking a nap, but I was watching them through my dad’s garden.
I texted my dad drunk this weekend. That seems like the best way we can communicate with each other, when that extra layer of sense is removed. But Pat, some friends and I were at a street fair and I saw an old green Chevy truck and it made me think of him and the weekends that were “his” when he’d take me to car shows around Napa Valley. I didn’t know shit about cars or their engines, but I loved looking through the windows. I loved how shiny they were and their Crayola colors. My dad had, still has, a 39 chevy coupe that he painted “Candy Apple Green” and he would take my brother, cousin and me out on Sunday afternoons after church. The upholstery was a brown, scratchy felt material, the walls were crushed velvet torn in multiple places. They hung down like flaps of skin. He never finished the interior, which says a lot about my dad, but from the outside you couldn’t tell. From the outside, people would honk as we passed and give him thumbs up. And I loved how it made me feel, driving down the streets near his house, the windows cracked open, on-lookers gazing and gawking at something that, even if it really wasn’t, felt like mine.