Cock-a-doodle-doo (June Draft draft Page 2 of 2 without breaks)

We arrived here the other day. Being the first one up I’m talking to Billy the cow. He doesn’t say much but he’s good at listening. Billy’s a slow chewer, and maybe he’s only a cow, but he’s a good cow. I’m going to miss you I said. Billy didn’t care. He walked away and went over there. Whatever cow I said, and damn I was goofy as shit. Still being half asleep I forgot the fence was charged. I was proud of something and leaning back I was looking at the early day. I was getting ready for the blue air and white clouds. I was taking it all in.-The sun wasn’t even out yet and the sky was navy. Reaching out my arms I was stretching to gather enough motion to keep the rest of the day moving. Being a terrible morning person I forgot how to walk and tripped over a brick of hay. Reaching out to catch myself I grabbed the plastic strips of the pen that were weaved with wire. The fence was a river where patterns of random electric currents acted as a deterrent to keep Billy the cow from slowly walking down the street. Losing my balance I forgot and tried to catch myself.  Now there’s no more night, there’s no more navy and it’s time for the sun. With tired muscles my teeth hurt and the tips of my right-handed fingers are purple. Great, this is how I started my day, with an electrocution. –And I wonder if I’m weird. I wonder how long it takes most people to gather enough momentum to steady-out their thinking. I wonder how long it takes you to wake up. Billy the cow is definitely a morning person. He’s easy going and never seems to have much on the mind. I’m the exact opposite.-You get no choice in the cycles of life. You are what you are and my head hurts. I feel terrible so I dunk my head into a metal bucket of well water. I did this to wake up. I think it’s true that sometimes to feel alive you have to remind yourself how easy death is. I don’t know. I wonder if I’m weird. My stomach hurts. I don’t know, it just takes longer for me than it does for most people, but once my eyes are open oh I’m awake and ready to go, and as if a student who’s always in school I’m blazing with the sun and once again learning brand new ways how to fight. Before the war not too long ago I was a young man, and as if I’ve been born again I’m turning into a warrior. Every day I learn more about something that makes all of this nonsense feel like nothing at all. More and more I feel like I’m playing with children. –Today isn’t much different from yesterday. I woke up at five in the morning a day after driving around for two days, and on this morning I’m waking up to go say hello to Morris the horse. Later today we’ll leave the farm. They liked us here. They needed the help. We needed to say hello…-We were looking for something slower, and that’s why we were doing what? I’m not sure. We were just driving around, five cities in two days. I got in the car and was gone. –The same roads look different with new faces. We were driving with a soundtrack of folk and indie music. Often we took the country roads, the back roads, the roads where gas mileage is bad but where the land seems foreign. We stopped at gas stations and asked for directions just to talk to people. We turned off our phones to listen to the wind. We laughed for no reason because we wanted to laugh. We got dirty and fell into small rivers. We climbed trees and felt ridiculous. We took turns. I slept-she drove. I drove-she slept. Most of the time neither of us slept, because it’s also true, that the melancholy of rest is for the local. –We weren’t far out there, only a couple hundred miles from home, and the only part of the plan that was outlined before we left was not to know where we were going. We wanted it to take longer so we drove slower than the speed limit. We wanted to enjoy something familiar, but at the same time new, and before we left both of us admitted to each other that neither of us were very happy. It’s not like you might think. It was more than just that simple sort of unhappiness that’s based on not having enough of something. Our unhappiness was natural. Our unhappiness was because we were hungry. We didn’t want to move too fast. We wanted to respect the down time as much as the good times that quickly without thinking just go by. We wanted to enjoy being bored.-And we didn’t talk about our unhappiness…no. We just drove and parked the car whenever we felt like it. Sometimes we would pull into a driveway, and instead of doing a quick turnaround in the country like so many people do, we laughed, we turned the car off, and it’s your turn one of us would say.-This time it was my turn. I got out of the car and knocked on the door. Someone’s feet were heard and then I said hello. They said hello. They were always so nice.-Can I help you they said? Yeah. Were lost I said. For about twenty minutes the new stranger explained everything about how to get somewhere. We weren’t lost. We knew where we were going. We only did this because maybe we were crazy, but not really. We were just trying to live. We met five new friends that day, and later in the night before we went home we got the best meal I’ve had in a long-long time. It wasn’t so much the food. It was the meal, it was dinner, it was so full of voices and warmth.-We found what we were looking for and it was time to move on. They wanted us to stay for another week. We had to leave. That night we camped out on the farm, and it’s true, those damn roosters are loud.-She sleeps in. I wake up to think and write, and so after I woke up I helped the wife gather eggs from the cage. The birds seemed so happy. They were ready for breakfast too.