So we sat around, the missus and Dean and Kurt and his wife Joy and talked and mused of Colorado and Big Al would saunter in full of sweat and talking excited like the boy he was and on to further projects but he always called me Price like Dean did, like he was just one of the thugs talking across an even table...”Price what are you doin’ these days?”, with that horsey smile and funny delivery...but he always listened with interest to what I had to say…maybe big Al was a Buddha in roebuck and grit showing us some wrongs that we might do right and smiling that 40 hand horse smile... and while Dean and I secretly planned our meeting with the coeds by individually digging the possible scenarios while carrying on the subtleties of casual idle-speak, it was decided that tomorrow we would take out the boat with Manny, their do-all local guide at the wheel…We’d do some diving, fishing, and beer drinking along with a seaward picnic lunch of some kind... big Al was going to do some bone-fishing and there was going to be a couple cases of Belikan consumed…which could bespeak a certain vanity but like I say when it is appropriate to be abstemious then be abstemious but when the tables swerve just indulge, veil your light and manage to shine…
Mrs, Sharpe would stay at home while the hombres were being hombres, running the two-way radio to keep us in radar range and safe should there be some divine question to ask or freak storm to avoid...we would set out at the red hour of six, ours being a two hour journey… it was decided that I should stay in the great downstairs guest bungalow in order to be steadfast and boot-shined by the time Mr. Sharpe was ready to roust... “In the day of prosperity be joyful”
I could see Dean getting antsy for our now fully-developed plan to travel by four-wheeled moto-vehicles down to the resort where Lydia and Candy were staying…excitement was beginning to get under our skin and we both felt the holy anticipatory rendezvous cum shot lightning in our ears...Dean got up and proclaimed that we were heading out, and by now it was early evening and the birds outside squawked and the light drooped down upon our eyes like great Los Angeles, the hazy dream light and heavy wet air loitering like street corner bums without reason, without soreness, that only southern clamorfornia sundown weeping-hour feeling was out there...this white manila canvas laid over with blue red orange fuchsia and green emotion, oh art, for hell, it's the beauty of beauty of course, getting my gun off this a way or that a way via color, and color being nothing more than refractions of light and this hincty L.A. light had delusional refractions, see, maniacal bendings, light creating the colors but also creating moods that no other light could, you see, because Colorado light for instance is sharp and vivid and lean and there's certain feelings triggered by those qualities ,say, palsy or thrifty-ness or exactitude or patriotism if you live in Colorado Springs...But this tropical light, when it's framed by paranormal Zen Americana hip west coast, it's the light of the melancholy of Coleridge, the grip of Bird's habit,--"Peckinpah’s Light"—
And it's in this terrarium that Sharpe and I set out, removed from the family quaintness and security into a world willed by our base senses…two men showered and ready, seeking poison to earmark the possibility of history in make--we were calculating, cunning, & so on--and so we left...Dean had me on back of another motorized terror vehicle, designed to tear up and go over whatever was in the way…sure I myself used to tear up hills and dales in my youth but here we were reaching for 35 and these Sharpes had all the toys America deemed necessary for the male...and along with sports, this made up the 88% brain matter usage...
-Michael Price
