Smith - Year of the Monkey

It was well past midnight when we pulled up in front of the Dream Motel. I paid the driver, made sure I left nothing behind, and rang the bell to wake up the proprietor. Its almost 3 a.m., she said, but gave me my key and a bottle of mineral water. My room was on the lowest floor, facing the long pier. I opened the sliding glass door and could hear the sound of the waves accompanied by the faint barking of sea lions sprawled out on the planks beneath the wharf. Happy New Year! I called out. Happy New Year to the waxing moon, the telepathic sea.

The drive from San Francisco was just over an hour. I had been wide awake but suddenly felt beat. I took off my coat and left the sliding door slightly open to listen to the waves but immediately fell into a facsimile of sleep. I awoke abruptly, went to the john, brushed my teeth, removed my boots and went to bed. Maybe I dreamed.

New Years morning in Santa Cruz, pretty dead. I had a sudden desire for a particular breakfast: black coffee, grits with green onions. Not much chance for such fare here but a plate of ham and eggs would do. I grabbed my camera and walked down the hill toward the pier. A sign partially obscured by tall, slim palms loomed, and I realized this was not a motel after all. The sign said Dream Inn, punctuated by a starburst reminiscent of the Sputnik era. I stopped to admire it and took a Polaroid, unpeeled the image and slipped it in my pocket.

Thank you, Dream Motel, I said, half to the air, half to the sign.

Its the Dream Inn! the sign exclaimed.

Oh yeah, sorry, I said, somewhat taken aback. Even so, I didnt dream a thing.

Oh really? Nothing!

Nothing!

I could not help feeling like Alice interrogated by the hookah-smoking caterpillar. I looked down at my feet, avoiding the signs scrutinizing energy.

Well, thanks for the picture, I said, preparing to shove off.

However, my departure was derailed by a sudden popping-up of animated Tenniel: The upright Mock Turtle. The fish and frog servants. The Dodo decked in his one grand jacket sleeve, the horrid Duchess and the Cook, and Alice herself, glumly presiding over an endless tea party, where, pardon us all, no tea was being served. I wondered if the sudden bombardment was self-induced or courtesy of the magnetic charge of the Dream Inn sign.

And what about now?

The mind! I cried out, exasperated as the animated sketches multiplied at an alarming rate.

The waking mind! the sign chortled triumphantly.

I turned away, breaking the transmission. In truth, being somewhat wall-eyed, I often witness such leaping about, most often to the right. Besides, once fully roused, the brain is receptive to all kinds of signals, but I wasnt about to confess that to a sign.

I didnt dream anything! I shouted back stubbornly, heading down the hill flanked by floating salamanders.

At the bottom of the hill was a low-slung joint with the word coffee horizontally spelled out in letters over a foot high across the glass, with a sign beneath that said Open. Having devoted so much window space to the word coffee, I reasoned they might serve a pretty good cup and maybe even donuts dusted in cinnamon. But as I put my hand on the doorknob, I noticed a smaller sign dangling: Closed. No explanation, no back in twenty minutes. I had a bad feeling about prospects for coffee, and zero for donuts. I supposed most people were tucked away with a hangover. One cant begrudge a caf for being closed on New Years Day, although it seemed that coffee would be the exact remedy needed after a night of excessive reveling.

Coffee denied, I sat on the outside bench going over the edges of the night before. It was the last of three nights in a row performing at the Fillmore and I was pulling the strings off my Stratocaster when some guy with a greasy ponytail leaned over and puked on my boots. The last gasp of 2015, a spray of vomit ushering in the New Year. A good or bad sign? Well, considering the state of the world, who could tell the difference? Reminded of this, I rummaged through my pockets for a witch-hazel wipe, usually reserved for cleaning my camera lens, knelt down and cleaned up my boots. Happy New Year, I told them.

Softly treading past the sign, a curious chain of phrases came zipping in and I dug into my pockets for a pencil, thinking to get them down. Ashen birds circling the city dusted with night / Vagrant meadows adorned with mist / A mythic palace that was yet a forest / Leaves that are but leaves. Its the dried-up-poet syndrome, necessitating plucking inspiration from the erratic air, like Jean Marais in Cocteaus Orpheus, shutting himself up in a baroque garage on the outskirts of Paris in a battered Renault, tuning in to the radios frequencies and scribbling fragments on slips of papera drop of water contains the world, etc.

Back in my room I located some tubes of Nescaf and a small electric pot. I made my own coffee, wrapped myself in a blanket, opened the sliding doors and sat on the little patio facing the sea. There was a low wall partially obstructing the view, but I had my coffee, could hear the waves and was reasonably content.

Then I thought of Sandy. He was supposed to be here, in a room down the hall. We were going to meet in San Francisco before the bands run at the Fillmore and do our usual things: have coffee at Caff Trieste, peruse the shelves of the City Lights Bookstore and drive back and forth across the Golden Gate listening to the Doors and Wagner and the Grateful Dead. Sandy Pearlman, the fellow I had known for over four decades, with his speedy cadence breaking down the