Golden Orb Claims Its Tribute

Better off with the Son of God…

Hesperia, California. Today.

Shrimp ceviche verde and a tall michelada. I always add in a good spin of habanero to the michelada to bring it up to the necessary level. They never make it hot enough. Not even mephistopheles could make it hot enough, And that is part of the problem.

Today the sun, in desperation, puffs itself up as the San Gabriel mountain range prepares to claim its daily tribute. A battle of all time to the end of the universe. The golden orb ultimately retreats, surrendering to rise again another day. Those final flames above the horizon flicker and burn, knowing that behind them comes cold nothingness.
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My brother, who I never see outside of tragedy, stabs a fork into the green marinated raw shrimp. Our first meeting in three years. He looks at the fire star and casually lowers the blind that dad installed so many years ago. Before he was dead. Because of this action the sun progressively disappears from mother's head then forehead then eyes. She looks up and said it's good so he stopped lowering the blind.

We could still see the San Gabriel mountains in the distance as the sun made its final pass. All that coriolis force or whatever you want to call it has sent that cheeky little bastard off to his own room to contemplate his next appearance. The same again. Won't you be back tomorrow?
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All of a sudden today I am Californian again. A bloody curse. I never want to be here again. It is the place of deadly dark and a sorrow trail of years blown about by sand. Endless wind. Mother looked out at the blowing sand from all four corners when we landed as if from outer space in 1979 and could only cry to herself at her unenviable fate: "I've been there and I've been on the road and I've faced shame and all that. But here it is something different. Please God do not settle me here."

But God did not respond according to her prayers, for reasons we cannot understand.
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My brother doesn't care about the wind nor does he care about the sun. He is positioned with his back to all of that. He stabs a shrimp and says, "it has a kick." He is slowly sipping the last bit of awful 'Chardonnay" we put up yesterday, Nothing bothers him; they don't give a shit.
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Later, at midnight, a final train can be heard in the far distance, echoing off the high plateaus beyond Summit Valley Road toward Silverwood Lake and the other mountains near Lucerne Valley. The competing San Bernardino mountain range. We both exit the front door and breathe in deeply the cold and dry nighttime desert air. All the constellations are there, as they were when we first laid tracks in 1979.