The desert.

What the hell do people think they know about the desert?

Do they picture a beautiful oasis, a pool of bright blue water amid lush palm trees, rolling dunes?

Maybe a fun place to golf, get drunk in Palm Springs on the weekends, a place to retire.

I’m sure they don’t think of massive dirt storms, happening outside my window as we speak- the dirt grey sky so thick it erases the horizon.

This certainly is the Wild West, the final frontier- the last place to be discovered on earth. The place everyone was searching for, scrambling, dying to get to for as long as the explorers can remember. What a joke that there’s nothing here; lots of sand, a few scrubby trees and, oh yes, the blazing leering sun, nowhere to hide from his molten reaching fingers.

There’s no one here. Everyone with a brain, or lots of money-which people seem to think is the same thing- they all leave, go off to college. And when they’re finished with that, mom and dad will pay for their apartment somewhere in San Diego or Long Beach or wherever. The only people left is here are suckers like me. Bum luck.

“There’s nothing to do there’s nothing to do there’s nothing to do,” everyone says over again. The sad truth, there is nothing to do.

Who am I out there in this blank slate of a place? Why don’t I embrace being from here: a desert rat- erupted from the womb in a blazing hot 120-degree oven circa July 9^th 1985? Is this place really so horrible?

Who am I out here in this desert? Those beautiful mountains. I used to think the ocean was right on the other side of them. That I could see the rest of California from the other side of them. That one day, I really would get to the top, climb to the top, and not quit with Dad, Rose, and Joe when we went out walking- and I can see everything from up there.

That black sky, those stars. Fields of noncolors. Plane blue. Plane brown. Nothing. Mirrors. They are giant mirrors. There’s nothing to see nothing to look at, where you stare at nothing all you see is yourself. More of yourself.

My brain is hot. Air-conditioned point A to Air-condition point B. HOUSE CAR STORE CAR HOUSE. Do I really live in the desert? I’m not really a Gila monster am I? I’m a human living in an air-conditioned house, in the middle of nowhere. Does it really matter where my hole is?

So many empty buildings. Seas of sparkling asphalt, stretching out. Sparkling, crackling. There’s no cars because there’s no people. No one wants to buy anything, and there’s nothing to buy anyway, and no money to buy it with. Everyone with money went back up to Canada for the summer. Remember when you could go 80mph on hwy111? Why the hell are there so many cars on the road- people bought houses out here and realized they had no more money to move anywhere else so they had to stay. Go back to fucking Orange County and LA and take your fucking strip mall with you!!

“There’s nothing to do there’s nothing to do” there’s nothing to do because you’re the ones making it boring, why don’t you do something if you’re so bored? Stop telling me how bored you are. You’re depressing me.

This place is beautiful I don’t care what anyone says. There’s nothing to do anywhere if you have no friends or money to buy things and friends. Just distractions. There’s nothing here, just us. Sky and dirt, no distractions. What is this place this place is me. I’ve lived here long enough to know haven’t I?!

What is this place?