and some nights you just lock your itunes on Daniel Johnston and call it a day...

...you just lay back in the recliner in the living room with your eyes closed and your mom puts hot towels on your face to make your eye feel better and it makes you feel a little better too and in-between songs you here snippets of Fox News People a-preachin' 'bout palin and then a line from a commercial about viagra as you get lost in that lo-fi and lonesome sound. lost right along with "dem blues, dem blues, dem blues, dem-damn-blues" and at first you think you might loose them there but really you just get a better look at them and yourself by not looking at them and yourself so much and just being lost in the songs that were recorded on those cassette tapes. and when he sings you an encouraging song it sounds honest and believable

               

                                      "you're gonna make it joe"

and you feel a little better too.

before all of that, and during it, i was thinking of this part in the book Travels with Charley where John Steinbeck and his trusty french poodle Charley have been driving across the country for a couple months and they've just left John's friendly childhood home of California, flown through Arizona, and started across New Mexico when they get a bad case of the "mullygrubs". John tries to pick up their spirits by making Charley a birthday cake, which is really just hot cakes and lots of syrup with a candle on top even though Charley tells him he doesn't know when his birthday is (Charley talks by wagging his tail by the way). ol' John even tries drinking to his loyal french friend's health in straight whiskey but still Charley just licks his whiskers and asks 

                                         "What makes you so moony?"

"It's because i've stopped seeing. When that happens you think you'll never see again." 

He stood up and stretched himself, first fore and then aft.  "Let's take a stroll up the hill" he suggested,

                                                     "Maybe you've started to see again."

and i know i will see again.

with my bad eye and my beat up heart too. i'll see again. and it's not so bad, somedays when you can't see your friend even gives you her login info for her netflix and you watch a couple episodes of the office and you laugh and then you have people you can call who'll always share in your lot, be it good or bad, and you'll get a good night's sleep and you'll feel better in the morning.