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$11 in the Bank

All I have been writing about, it seems, is the depression of this crummy town. Perhaps you think, 'Dave is lucky, my town is so boring and he gets all this juicy material with which to work.' The truth is that I am bumming myself out. Big time. I felt it today, going down the Interstate at 60 mph, closing my eyes for up to four seconds at a time. Count them down right now. When you've had your nose rubbed in the prospect of poverty, it is all you can see sometimes. I guess in the same way an architect's eye gravitates toward building's structures and then numbers and two-way arrows and listings of materials all flood the mind. Or a sociologist in an airport. Weather man. Fashion designer. Plumber. Electrician. Border Patrol agent. When you see how the lowest income lives, you can't help but feel the jaws of it all closing down on your head and grabbing underneath your ribcage. It is wearing. It is tiring. The bands in my headphones at night, Biohazard, SOIA, Rollins, never have worked so hard in their touring lives as when they play in my head. Believe me when I tell you. The tear-choked truth is that I wish I was totally contented with writing the same crap as everyone else about trees and old barns and spring weather and past ghostlike and dreamy lovers. It is just me when the caffeine fades and the headphones come off. Hollow-eyed, spent, defenseless. Please mother not this. Not all the time. I am so tired of the sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach.