The fear has grown from the west and spread. The bio-mass wandering ever westward giving life to the cancer, whose faint aches have defined the american century. The last terrifying minutes of the american dream are here.

The cowboys run the show now. Ask any rodeo clown and he'll tell you the cowboys are the real idiots. They ride the inevitable, judging success by how long they can stay on a terrible insane beast. It's a bizarre sport that best defines the leadership of these last days.

It's time to seriously ask where we go from here. We're facing the dark, our backs pressed against whatever last patches of dim light we can find. In that darkness we'll be tested. The fear will grapple with us and try to force us into a long fight on the ground where it has the advantage. This is the test, how long we can keep out of the dirt and off our backs.

Where do we go from here? There's only one choice, and maybe if we really are tough enough we can make it out alive. There's no running from it. There's no real debate. It's all up to what we really have deep down inside. What we're really capable of.

When I have nothing else to write I write short stories that go nowhere.

The fountain of youth

The mountains behind us parted and the sun shone through. We expected gold and marble behind the vines and thick jungle cover. This high in the world, a long journey behind us and only the daunting task of returning before us, perhaps. If we lived as no one else had. Survived this quest for the fountain of youth.

We have known for some time that we have found what we sought. The fountain of youth must lay not more then 30 yards ahead. The jungle was so dense that we couldn't see more then a few feet, but we knew this was it. Decades of research had already told us where we needed to go, how to get there and that no one else took the information, we had compiled, seriously. It's something of stories after all, mules and Spanish conquistadors, Disney cartoons and fairy tales. Not the sort of thing that you expect to find with a land rover and GPS. But here we were.

The machete cut back the last bit of overgrowth, parting it like, as I had hoped, the curtains of a great play. My own fantasy become real. But no marble columns, gold strewn pathways or lost society of the forever young were here. There was a clearing of dirt and a musty smell. Artifacts of other explorers, rotten and disheveled revealed a sort of saga that I became overwhelmed with. Feelings of being part of a secret history. But nothing grew here. No animals or insects lived here.

What we found was well preserved. In the pool were dozens of babies, drowned in the water. Pulled down by adult sized armor, Spanish conquistadors, english knights, Victorian explorers and adventures. Centuries of men, how upon finding this had run and dove in the water. The scenes horror calmed by the lack of the stench I would have imagined. It was like seeing it on TV. No flies circled the bodies, no decay was evident. Well preserved, slightly bloated infants trapped beneath the waters of this fountain, or as it actually appeared, this pond of youth.

Silently, all there agreed that this was not a tragedy. Perhaps because we were shield from it by the calmness of it all. It didn't feel real. So we silently went about our business, filling containers for study and experimentation. Taking pictures and video. Calling investors, family, support staff at base camp. Fighting the desire to drink this. A pestering thought at the back of my mind, wondering what It would feel like to die backwards like these men had. The entire situation and reality began to dawn on me.

Days later, on the long journey back I would feel every moment of this day. I would shake and panic and be haunted by that timeless pool, that transparent mausoleum.

I was sure that I'd get over it in the centuries to come.

In my dreams the skies are always southwest perfect and desert big. The cities are always California sprawls. The cars are 50s steal. The people are 30s chic, 60s friendly. The highways are innocent and go on forever. I know that a world exist behind the rocky mountains, but in my dreams the west goes on forever.

The sky is slate and the air doesn't move. Like being inside outside. The whole world moves in frenzied bursts and sure let downs. No danger, no outrage.

Here is where the street ends. Gravel leading to dirt at the last dead end in the world. Her breath smelled of orange soda, her face always said I hate it here. She asked on that last leg of the trip, where the streets became familiar "what the hell are we gonna do after we're dead? Convince me I'm not wasting my time."

Legos and Lincoln logs. Our future and past. Our struggle and our heroes mixed together on the floor of a 6 year-olds tiny bedroom. A commercial plays in the background down the hallway and the smell of cheap magazines, old dust and plastic fills house. Sunlight patches on shag carpet and a lazy nap on a summer day.

He threw the brick down the alleyway. It made conspicuous noise. No cats screeched like in the movies. No one yelled out their window.

And what do we have to look forward to?

Languishing in some confusing utopia. Children genetically engineered into monsters, ultrasonic pop music you feel but can't hear and gives anyone over 60 diarrhea, robots that always get your order wrong at restaurants, teenagers telepathically telling jokes about us on elevators and laughing at our discomfort?

The future is no time to be old. The young will be young forever and our grandchildren will watch us die with a detached curiosity of immortal gods as the past slips away from them. We will not suffer except to know that we missed eternity. An eternity that they will be privileged to waste on cheap drugs and morbid cynicism.

Our lives will be the butt of lightbulb jokes and sarcastic cliches. The worst generation, the dead generation. The last ones to die, the last to get cancer, the last to be fat, the last to stay on earth.

A dentist from hollywood

Maybe in a conventional way she deserved his love. Maybe he deserved to love her.

The streets had glitter on them. The look of a river panned of all its gold. How could this be more beautiful? The neon, the cheap yellow street lights, the sounds of cars splashing through puddles. A dim blue television aurora borealis in every other window. Somehow this ugliness has crashed against us and made art.

They were married. They had children. They had roots that dug deep and sustained them. They had a life that protected them and made them happy. He could be happy and he was.

The city drifted away. Dipped below the horizon as the freeway lead up and out. The grid smoothing out into a long road that lead straight into houses, apartments and parking lots.

He sat alone, at night. Sitting on the toilet with the bathroom lights off. He thought that he did feel deeply for her. As deeply as he could. What he couldn't do was love her enough that he was at risk. He always kept his distance.

Cars drove by, on their way home from night shifts, to morning shifts, back from parties or 24 hour diners. He could only guess as he heard car tires crunching the asphalt. Kids out late, old people getting an early start, disabled newspaper men in station wagons, raiders jackets and thick glasses.

He visited a councilor. She said he was a good husband and shouldn't worry. His only problem was that he thought to much about it. He did love her. He didn't. No one could quite understand that. They were afraid to take it to seriously, "It's just the way you're looking at it" they told him. Friends, professionals, family.

Why does anyone get up this early. The sun is so bright it's almost pure white against the stucco and concrete. Every other car has it's cup of coffee. People are dressed up and on their way back from church or a reluctant family brunch. This is the calm before the storm. Before the lattees and speed kick in. Before this suburb will explode out towards the corporate plazas and malls.

He wanted to feel, whenever he fell asleep, or finally died, regret. Because that was substance. He didn't want to go peacefully. He wanted the regret to wake him up, tear him from the light or hell or the darkness of death. He wanted to feel chained to his life, to know it was real. The way you know fear is real, it overcomes the circumstances. Irrational fear, love. And that is going to hurt.

Finally home. Parallel to your work. This is when you try to forget and ease into your real life. At home, turning the lights on as you find your way to your coffee table, to your magazines, to your tv, your wife, your kids, your bathroom.

The asphalt swayed under the 45 minutes of sleep. The car cut through traffic like a sort of dull knife that happened to find it's groove. The worst thing in this situation is to mistake it for sharp, it's merely lucky. This time.

Every car tells a story - a sad story.

The yukon. I could only see the enormous lcd display hung just above and between driver and passenger. It played an early morning show aimed at marketing values to toddlers and bored stoners up too early or up too late. It must have been a dvd because it was about 9pm. I imagined a mother - dressed in suburban casual camouflage laughing with her cell phone, driving the 10 miles home. Deep in the burbs, beyond the strip malls in car dealership territory. I thought I caught a glimpse of her husband or older son, also on his cell phone. Maybe he was talking to his girlfriend, trying to simultaneously be romantic while also hiding his conversation with the rest of the suv. Siblings, three years apart in the back. They probably smell like soap and saliva. At school they probably drink capri sun and push fat kids down stairs. In a few years maybe they'll own a yukon as well.

The white caprice. hovering between the islands of traffic on the highway. Smirking because he knows we're all worried he's a cop.

The ford pickup. three mexicans off to work far to early. Weaving as the driver looks behind him, hoping no one notices his out of date registration tags. Three friends, two of them roommates off to some service job. 8am in the morning and for what? So they can be glared at by white 30 somethings on their lunch break. Each worried that the other will know they're scared to death of this sprawl. Driving from way out beyond the thunderdome, past the nice houses into downtown wherever. San something, santa this or that. Another bay area city, another sandwich shop or taqueria. If I were them I'd kill every fucker who ordered a buritto with no hot sauce.

The highway runs straight. I'm scared to death that this is the future.

A democracy walks into a bar and says "I'll have what they're having"

What I said to st. Peter

Like sunrise on the mesa, dirty and brown. I froze my tea as it brewed and now it fades from black bags at the opening to a light brown at the bottom.

I haven't watched the news since I suddenly realized the war was being fought on a studio lot with dead bodies being flown in direct from baghdad. Power was invented on bloody deserts. Deserts that break civilizations and ruin big dreams of the vicious elite.

A man named gorgeous juan once asked his cousin, a dentist from hollywood why he was so angry.

They drove nowhere all day long. The sky runs beneath the tires of a giant cadillac as it spins head over ass caught in five minutes of a sheer drop. The gamblers laugh while their white knuckles grip the leather interior and they imagine the headlines. They bet they would survive and live to be 200 years old. A bold bet that god would be a fool not to get a piece of.

No one has ever died. They all just walked off stage, left the theater and are standing in the rain outside smoking and ordering coffee from that one guy someone told them is making a run to original grounds on 5th and riverside. I told a child that when their brother died and they said I was wrong, we are the ones who are dead.

Prozac sunsets

Small towns have always been strange gas stations along the interstates to me. They're entire populations in my mind are comprised of twenty teenagers in mesh hats and big gulps, five bearded laughing 40-somethings drunk in their truck beds and an old couple sitting in their white american coup chaperoning this mess of a night life. Small towns at night, at the local truck stop, gas station or arby's is a desperate scene. There is a violence there just behind the giggling nervous laughter. One wrong move and it's gonna be "What are you looking at?" And "you got a problem?" There's no law on a wednesday night in population 2000.

The medium sized city is summed up in my mind by me sitting in a coffee shop at 4am. She says she bought her shirt at hot topic. In a small town hot topic might be fashionable, in a big city it's laughably low class, but everywhere between it's all there is.

The big city is a moving in circles. It's like a merry-go-round of class war and ruin. It's a destination. The trip is over in the city. There are more dead then living, it's the few that travel, the few that are alive, the few that are learning. Large cities are a snow globe - stagnation's only enemy there is entropy. Maintain is the mantra that you hear between the shouting and car horns.

Suburbia sprawls. It's the attica of lifestyles. Concrete and plastic. New cars and clean clothes. Franchises and glass landscapes. Mood control that escaped the laboratories and has influenced everything far more then feared. Prozac sunsets in mild country.

Blood and guts and human confetti.

Notes from tv today:

She's standing there in front of iraqis loading trucks. The scene switches to a bombed city as the weather in honolulu tickers by. The un is all talk and the streets still don't burn hot enough.

She's on every channel. "Humanitarian aid", "live"

This is television, this is war. Cnbc, "the cost of war", cnn, "humanitarian aid", winamp is loud and punk. Cnbc "bank of america and consumer confidence".

I can't even see what I'm typing. I'm half asleep and have my tv card on over my text, "always on top". I'll edit later.

War alert on fox news. No shit. It's day what? Three, four, sixteen. Who cares. Cia says they know where saddam sleeps. The language of assassins.

How many microphones are there pointing at the iraqi vice-president. Each one must represent a 100 million people. That's the sieve through which lies are distilled from the truth. Not that I believe in the truth or even want it.

It's late.

The soldiers behind the iraqi vice-president look insincere or tired.

Msnbc shows the same thing as fox news from five feet away. The ticker goes by faster. Msnbc has a lot of balls to think anyone who watches msnbc should have to read this fast.

Back to cnn, "live" "baghdad" "web cam" and the iraqi vice-president, who I have now officially seen more of in the last five minutes then our vice-president in the last year, is in a little window in the upper left. He looks proud and far more aware then either our vice-president or president. Scary and surreal? He's just an actor, it's his job.

Cleveland weather scrolls by, rain clouds . Dark and foreboding like the weatherman is trying to tell us something. A poet with subliminal iconography.

Vietnam, masks, mysterious flu. Cnbc, tickers scroll by too fast. Trying to read it: "recovery lift protests in market war add worries more then lowest other major gains."

Sleep and the realization that a post like this can not stand on it's own so now I have to post again tomorrow.

Watching the world

The cities burn, but not hot enough. Action in the streets, the riot show. The world tunes to channel 56 or 23 or whatever their local eye-of-the-world happens to broadcast on. The deserts glow with night vision fireworks, a webcam sits high atop a shaken building in baghdad. "War live" scrolls across images of the old rulers and the young soldiers who play out their strange strategies, the half-awake ravings of a seriously disturbed government.

Points ticker by. What did the tech who chose the fonts for the names of the dead think about? The tickers on msnbc have become a three minute monument.

They interrupt the lulls in action with well rendered stats cards for our heroes, the bombs and high-tech smashing machines.

The war started at prime time. A target of opportunity. Neilsons families started the war.

A violent sort of apathy - not unlike depression but closer to the reluctant feeling before a bad drug hits home "I'm going to regret this, but it's too late now."

Well, that's it. It's all over. Everything from here on in is just icing on a very strange and bitter cake. I knew one day I would hear, actually hear, the first nail being driven into the coffin. The country laid to rest. I saw them dig the grave, pay the funeral home in anticipation and even chop down the forests for a coffin of suitable size. But it was that first early morning knocking, the sound of hammers working that I was waiting for.

No one would be there, I knew, when the country really passed on. It would be quiet and in the night. The morning would bring awful news if I heard the knocking of that first nail into the pine and oak and chestnut box. The coffin stamped with approvals from a million different offices and work orders from a million different contractors all fat from the cannibalistic orgy of the greatest pyramid scheme known to man.

This country has become the sort of comic book crazy that isn't even believable. As a wise man once said, paranoia doesn't exist anymore, it's all true. Welcome to the double zeros, the day after the end times when all the good and boring people have been taken away and we're left with only the cynical screwballs and ugly murders to wage war for the world. This goes beyond the country, we're looking down the barrel at a war for the whole world.

Your life is over, a prison has been built around you. You're crime was letting it happen and now you will live under the idiot gaze of the information kings. Their half retarded stooges will masturbate while you take a shit and take notes when you're asleep and dreaming, cataloging every twitch and sigh.

Soon enough we'll hold the funeral. It will be a horrible event of drunken fist fights between ronald mcdonald and cthulhu. We'll be the pallbearers and naked corporate jaba the huts will throw their waste on us as their greedy yuppie dogs wrestle againt their chains trying to bite our ankles and tear at our calves. We'll be somber, reverent. But it'll be hard to keep a horrified look off our faces when the corporate priest hood circle jerks on the casket and a genetically modified red white and blue goat is slaughtered and raped, in that order.