Shangri-La

Right off the bat, there are a couple things that you ought to know about my friend, Bi-Po.

The first is that when it comes to bipolar people, Bi-Po is the bipoliest. His depressions are the deepest and the most depressive. His manias are the highest and the most maniacal.

One morning, we’ll find him comatose on a downtown bench, looking like he hasn’t eaten or bathed in forever. Then, only a few weeks later, he’ll come running up to us full-speed and unannounced, lecturing us – complete with charts and with graphs – about how the mayor is spying on him by means of the city’s sewer rats.

The second thing you should know about my friend, Bi-Po, is that when he tells you the thing about the sewer rats spying on him, after about a half hour, you almost start to believe it. This guy can find connections anywhere. He could have been the World Champion of the Kevin Bacon Game if only his life had turned out a little different and there was such a thing.

City of the Nephilim

What the Rail Boys say is what Rail Boys have always said: That someplace, out, out down the line, there’s a place that’s different. Better. That the tracks will lead them there, to that untouched corner or abandoned station and that they’ll know it when they see it. That when the train goes rumbling by their utopia, they’ll recognize they’ve found it and that they’re there.

When they’re there, then the Rail Boys will leap out of their traveling closets and they’ll take up a new, perhaps more sedentary life in the perfect place they’ll have found.

They say meanwhile, we’ll all still be huddled and hiding our lives away back here.

Back here, in the City of the Nephilim.

Evicting Dr. Clitoris

In my lifetime, I have stayed in all kinds of places. I have slept all sorts of ways.

Like in drain pipes & abandoned sheds. Beneath the overhang at the local Denny’s. Like curled up in a downtown alley, where your alarm clock is the morning garbage truck slamming the dumpster you’re sleeping behind. Like a begged-for three hours’ shut-eye on a friend’s loveseat just to get kicked out after two.

I’ve snoozed in homeless shelters where they’ll steal the shoes right off your feet as you sleep, so you’re best off crushing your footwear beneath the bedposts for the night. I’ve slept business hours in the reference section at the Houston Public Library, which comes with free air conditioning, a water fountain, a toilet, & a sink.

There have been the park benches & there have been the city buses – places where you hope to enter REM before they come & chase you off.

You learn to sleep on the go, eventually.