Road Trip!
I'm traveling to Mexico with my best friend, Patrick. We're leaving at 6 am tomorrow morning, driving like hell to Ensenada, and returning tomorrow night. It will be my last birthday with him in this lifetime. He has things planned, crazy Baja mystery things, he won't tell me what they are. I pick him up at the appointed time, that's all I know. Bring your swimsuit, he said. Bring Mexican driving insurance. Bring a hundred bucks in pesos. Bring an open mind!
So I vacuumed my crappy van this morning and spritzed some Avon Pumpkin Spice Room and Linen spray across the backseat where the boys sit and drop greasy French fries, swung by the AAA to get a day's worth of travel comfort, and changed one hundred American dollars at my bank. I popped my Chris Isaak "Baja Sessions" CD in the player and stuck my Roger Cline and the Peacemakers "Americano" CD in the backup slot. I'm ready!
I do know one thing about this trip. I don't know how I know it, but I feel it like I feel the earrings dangling across my shoulders, just a shutter fling of a thought. Something cool and unexpected and transcendental will happen! It must! Because it's me and Patrick, carrots and peas, Laurel and Hardy, and it's our last picture show, our Game Seven, our High Noon.
"Birdie, I'm going to tell you something important tomorrow so you have to listen to me, OK? No making fun of what I say, it's my death wish for you." Patrick explained this over the phone, told me that he figured out the meaning between our meetings, the why of our grand romance of breakfasts and time. "And when you hear it, you'll know I'm right. It's what you were meant to do, and it's taken me all these years to figure it out. I've always felt like I had to give you something, so I keep giving you things, like all those books and things, but I didn't realize it was an idea. Not until this week."
I didn't bother saying "Oh no way man, it's not your death bed wish," because all that pretense dropped away over the last eight weeks, and I've already been given the one line I am to say at his memorial, already agreed to help him leave the planet if the pain is unbearable, already watched him change from gray to something even grayer, older, something more human, albeit grating ruffled human. So tomorrow I hear what I'm Meant To Be, and we'll eat lobsters and swim in agua caliente and knowing Patrick, engage in some kind of illegal behavior.
In memory of my almost dearly departed friend, in hopes for a grand tomorrow, in all the love I have for this warped irreverent grumpy old man, I leave you with the song I always sing in my mind when I think of him. I played this song on my travel guitar last October when he celebrated his last birthday, and I couldn't finish it, couldn't stop crying, and then all at once couldn't stop laughing. Awwww Damn You Patrick.
Steve Earl:
When I Fall
Late at night on some dark deserted highway
On my way to another lonesome town
I thought I might see the first light of a new day
As it lay like fool's gold on the ground
Chorus:
But whenever I'm feelin' low
I won't have to cry alone I know
'Cause you will answer when I call
If I soar above the clouds and then
I come crashin' back to earth again
You will catch me when I fall
All these years I've watched you trip and stumble
There were times that I feared that you were lost
But every tear that I dried after you tumbled
Comes to mind when I'm considerin' the cost
(Chorus)
In my heart there's a place for you to run to
Anytime you're tired and hurt and blue
For my part I have only to remind you
You will find me waiting when you do
(Chorus)
11:20:06 AM 
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