Cartier is waking up, dude, and it is a beautiful morning to be alive. Walking to my window, my makeshift curtain constructed of greasy towels and knotted garbage bag ties, letting the sun in man - the sun is sitting on the horizon, my window is permeable to only the loveliest rays. My face is tanning man, in a couple of minutes now and I'll be Cartier bronzed and beautiful women will flock to me, and I can feel the skin cancer already spreading across my cheeks, dude, eating away at my skin. No man, I had better close the curtain, don't want to kill yourself dude. I've heard that Lukemia is a terrible way to go.
The clock by my bed is blinking to get my attention, telling me that it is noon, over and over, letting me know that I slept in, dude. I don't worry man, the day is patient, the sun is beautiful and sinking beneath the Earth as the afternoon wakes up. There are a couple of clouds in the sky, it should rain today man, I can feel it in my feet. I should make sure that my shirts get clean today, dude, and rather than taking them down to the laudromat and spending my afternoon watching them spin, spin, spin, I will open the window and hang them outside, watch the cuffs flip to and fro in the breeze, waving goodbye as I head outside. It's getting dark outside man, so I should quickly grab my bag and head for the door at a hundred miles an hour to make up for lost time, picking my way through piles of broken tape records and VCRs and televisions and musical instruments and rags and dirty clothes and paper plates that I might need to use again when I have company over. All of these objects are essentials, I need them, most I can take apart and combine to make new things entirely, others are there just to give me peace of mind.
Outside it's nice and crisp, I feel like I'm floating, dude, Cartier's feet aren't touching the ground and I fly from my building to the park three blocks down the street, with my bag and my sandals which are woven from chinese thatch, honest-to-god thatch taken from the roof of a hut in the heartland of China while the owner was out worshiping his thousand buddhist gods. The park is beautiful, dude, and oh so dark, just like mid-afternoon in the middle of an eclipse. The street-lights have all turned on, they're confused as hell by the eclipse, the moon overhead is drawing electricity out of the ground and into the street lamps like high tide on an ocean shore. The street-lights are all confused, dude, and so am I.
The park is full of life, it's only an hour past noon and everyone is out enjoying the nice day. This girl walks by me with her dog and her fancy white earbuds, I smile at her and she smiles back at me, wants me, I can tell she does man, but her dog is hurrying her home. The dog wants to be fed, dude, doesn't want to wait outside the door while I screw his owner man, one more selfish canine that reinforces my hatred of dogs. These dogs all stifle my free spirit man, and Cartier is an artist, an artist who must be FREE.
Cartier stops at the base of a big tree, dude, sits down, opens my bag. What am I looking for man? The fluted recorder painted with chinese characters goes on the ground, followed by the sunglasses, the hat, a magic umbrella the size of a billy club, the buddha box that chants at me in 20 second segments at a time, summoning beautiful mind-bending chants from within its corroded batteries. I switch on the buddha box, it cost me four dollars, worth every penny. One day I'm going to buy a hundred buddha boxes and turn them all on at once, and charge admission. Ten cents a head, dogs will cost their owners a quarter becuase I can't stand them man.
I take out my spy disguise kit, a big nose and a moustach and glasses with glued-on eyebrows which I set upon my face, rendering me unrecognizable to even my closest friends. My mother wouldn't recognize me man. Cartier reaches back into his bag, dude, a big leather satchel with bronze buckles, and AT LAST I've found what I'm looking for. Carefully pull out the tin containing the japanese leaf, ground into budbits, which I have now stashed in my english pipe, dude, which was stolen off the set of Mary Poppins. I can smell it, god, its wonderful, and my Buddha machine is chanting at me find a match, find a match, find a match...
There's a lighter from mount everest in my bag, it takes forever to get a flame going but its worth it, its a blow-torch, a laser that can slice through anything, and it doesn't need any oxygen to produce a flame, which is important when you're high up in the mountains and can't count on your Sherpa to share his breath with you. Tonight, I must have left the flame back home, because I can't get the thing to turn on, dude. PROBLEM, dude, if there is no flame then there is no smoke, and without smoke signals man, I will lose my way.
The corner of my eye sees something that Cartier's brain registers a moment later, its Hans man, Hans who says hello and asks me what I'm doing, eyeing the pipe dangerously, dude, you have to be careful about Hans, he's always looking about with his shifty Danish eyes.
And I say, "Ho, Hans, glad you could make it in this weather."
Hans laughs and remarks that it's is dark. Yes, it is dark, dude, its the rainclouds that I felt in my feet, those clouds which have now covered the sky and shut out the sun. Soon they'll wet down everything, but its a good thing you're here Hans, my Everest lighter can't alight because there's too much oxygen down here, its choking the flame, and there's sumo wrestlers from Japan that need to be cashed before they push me out of the ring or get too wet to breathe. They're not fish, Hans, so maybe you brought some fire to keep them warm?
And Hans, who knows me so well that he recognized me even though I had my spy disguise kit on, proves his worth by producing a BIC lighter and we smoke the good japanese weed man. Neither Hans nor Cartier is Japanese, but today, this afternoon we're both sumo stars with hundreds of hamburgers in our bellies.
Which REMINDS me, by all the buddhist gods, I'm hungry. So hungry I could eat a chinese farmer who might be wondering why his roof has two sandal-shaped holes that let in the rain. Hans reminds me that nothing is open at this time of day, but of course nothing is open, dude, all the storeclerks are probably out watching the eclipse, and besides, it's a Budhist holiday for one of the one thousand buddhist gods man, and to be open on such a holy day would be sacrilige. But there's a convenience store tha's owned by heathens just on the other side of the park, dude, and I know they'll be open, they're always open, dude, so I return my essential belongings to the sack and take off my disguise kit, leave Hans sitting there under my tree under my cloudy evening sky. It's getting late now, I can feel it, my Chinese sandals feel heavy but there's a convenient store open nearby and they're ready to stop the knawing in my belly.
Inside I watch hot dogs, beautiful shiney hot dogs roll about in the machine, god would I love a hot dog, so tasty and pure beef, swimming in Ketchup and Mustard, a true american tradition, this greasy hot dog that would plug up my veins and leave Cartier out to die in some hospital bed, a disgusting terrible hot dog that would give me skin cancer, dude.
No, thank you. A roast beast sandwhich, please. Yes, I have the money right here, three crisp bills, but dude would you like to barter instead man? Here I have this lovely buddha machine which I bought for four dollars, and I would give it to you in trade for this sandwhich, dude, losing money on the deal, which is good for my soul, bringing me closer to Buddha in the process. No, thank you, it's a nice gesture but I'll just pay cash, I don't want to rapture myself straight to Nirvana right here. Not if I can't take my spy kit and my buddha box with me.
It's a good thing I removed my Cartier spy disguise kit man, specially designed to make me look like an average nobody, make me invisible for all practicle purposes. If I was wearing this disguise, the clerk wouldn't have been able to wait on me since he couldn't focus on me, and then I wouldn't have been able to enjoy this lovely roast beast sandwich which is filling up my corners oh so nicely.
Oh, it's late now, it's dark, dude, and the sun has gone down, the stars are out, and I'm so satisfied with my full belly, it's been a long day and I've seen so much, I should head back to my apartment, it's getting late. On the way I meet this gorgeous girl without a dog; Cartier smiles at her, and she looks right at me and smiles back, dude. She is lovely. We sit down at a park bench together and give my english pipe some exercise; it's a good thing she has matches from a sushi joint, because my everest lighter is afraid of the rainstorm that's been brewing all day long. Hey babe, have you ever seen my photo collection? I ask, and she shakes her head, sees right through my question, dude, knows we're going to sleep together. It's been so long, weeks man, weeks I've spent without and I can't wait to get her home, so we take this shortcut through a fenced-in-yard. There's a 'beware of dog' sign on the gate but the dog suffered a fatal accident a week ago, dude, struck down in its prime, poor thing, and now there's nothing keeping me from using his yard as a shortcut so that Cartier and his girl can beeline straight home to bone.
The key slides into the lock and we enter, she is peering at the ratty old furniture that Cartier has dug off the street when he moved in to this lovely apartment, the nicest apartment he has ever owned. The girl laughs in a tinny voice and tries to flip the light switch which I removed when the bulbs burnt out a week after I moved in. If the landlord was so cheap that his light bulbs only lasted seven days, dude, then there was no use asking him to buy new ones, no, it just wasn't worth the hassle, better to just remove the light switch so there's no need to have the bulb replaced man. Surely she understands that, dude, I don't need to explain it all, there's too much to say and it's getting later. Take her hand and lead her through the collections of essential objects, piles of esssentials each five feet tall, but there's enough space for a path so the going is easy, into the bedroom, where the clock is blinking midnight, midnight, midnight at me, it's so late, we should be getting to bed don't you think?
But she hesitates, doesn't like the look of the bedsheets which are caked with dirt and sweat of weeks of unwashed devilry; I can't be bothered when there's so much to do and so little time. She looks out my westward-facing window, looks at the view of the mountains in the distance, my shirts hanging on the edges and flapping at her, as if shooing her out the door. "I think I should go," she says, and soon she's gone, leaving me alone with my trecherous shirts.
Not that I care, dude. Tomorrow is another day man, and there will be more beautiful girls without dogs to sleep with when I wake up. I drop my bag at the foot of the bed and leap under the covers. Soon, Cartier is sleeping, dude, fast asleep and dreaming of sumo wrestlers.
