Last Saturday, I was sitting around here in my homestead, drinking a little wine. It was about ten p.m. and I was early with this.
Gunshots from just down the street. Maybe two blocks down? I had no idea. I do not know shit of the sounds of guns. I’m an amateur about that.
One shot. Several seconds. Nine shots, then. Very consistently. About just a little more than a half second apart.
I’m back here in the back of my house where I live. No windows with lights. It’s about ten PM.
I do not know shit of the sounds of guns, but I know a few things about guns.
First: pellet guns do not sound so resoundingly.
Next: shotguns don’t go off in nine rounds so nicely, and also they are more loud.
After this interesting repeating gunshot event, I cowered in my house. Then several minutes later I heard dim gunshots from maybe ten blocks away, briefly.
Then I stayed in my little house with my dog. No, I didn’t call the cops. I thought the gunshots were from a couple of blocks away.
Apparently not, the cops came in a phalanx of squad cars about 20 minutes or so later (I was watching through the dark side of the house).
No sirens. No ambluances. No fire trucks.
Apparently nobody got gunned down. Just somebody doing their semi thing.
The cops walked around and talked to some guy down the street a few blocks. I watched through the window of the door.
Very quiet.
They laughed some, as they eventually walked back to their cars.
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It really tweaks me.
Here I am trying to figure out how to be a half-reasonable blogger, let alone sane person. And meanwhile there’s these crazy freaks running around shooting up nothing. I mean nothing; there’s nothing in the paper. I’m watching.
At the same time I don’t trust the cops, either.
Fuck this shit. Fuck these laughing gendarmes.
Some poor bastard on the other side of the street called them in. They all had a nice chat.
I thought up front that it was a drive-by. That somebody came by to take someone out, with twelve bullets handy.
I fully expected that. I expected there to be some dead guy or girl out there.
But no. Maybe it was just blanks. Maybe it was just COWBOY shit.
Oh, and my neighbor? Did I tell you about my neighbor, my nice 80 year old Indio neighbor, whose youngest son the narcos got a year or so back?
About how they called her to let her know they cut him up?
I like my neighbor; she’s cool. I give her squash and tomatoes in the summer, that I grow. She gives me cans of generic spam and mint green polyester T-shirts.
She has a heart of gold, and a heart of flint.
She’s still here, though. Also the East Texans are still here. They got their truck’s tires shot out several months back. They don’t know what small words mean, like “nitrogen.”
Maybe the East Texans were the ones who got shot at. But I don’t know. They are always getting visits from the Sheriffs and the Game Police.
And my Hispanic neighbor used to always get visits from the police. They were her friends. But I think her son got cut up by the drogos. I heard something about that.
Anyway, I have heard that silence kills. So I have written this, though it scares me to write it. But I am in my 50’s, and I have no children, so I should feel responsible for these writings.
So, I will post this here for you, Dharma bums, and then I will post it in other places, to be righteous.
And I will still be working on the Mexican drought essay, and other pieces I have promised.
Miep
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Nick Drake, Which Will
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running a series along the lines of;
“Did your sister die this morning?”
Or something like that. Your sister, your brother. Your kid. Something that would be really hard, and honest.
I’d like a lot of brutal photography , that was real.
I’m interested in doing this.
Author
And thanks ek, for putting up with me like a brother.
Because that’s what you’ve done, ek.
You put up with me like a brother.
I trust you with that.
I trust your honesty.
I trust you not to lie.
You have changed me some.
You owe me nothing, ek.
But you have been a good teacher.
You have changed me, you have been a good
brother.
I would wake up the next day, jump on my bike, then seen hundreds on bullets on the ground, with yellow tape around it, some blood or maybe a chalk outline. I never felt scared but I imagine some did. I felt like it was another world, something that I had no connection to. You had to be involved if they, whoever they were, were going to shoot at you. But you hear all the time about people getting caught in the crossfire. But it sounds like you have more of a connection to the people there, and it seems right that you should be pissed off and looking for a way to change it. Seems like something you should talk to neighbors about. Because you are kinda right, cops don’t offer much of a solution. I guess it depends on what you and your neighbors can do about it.
was commonplace–drug dudes shooting each other mostly. I remember once multiple murder a couple of doors away when I lived on E 10th St.. I was shot at once, too, but that’s another story.
They have this new technology now that detects the sound of gunshots and pinpoints the location. It hasn’t been deployed everywhere yet, but they’re using it in the county I live in.
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It makes it easier to get feedback from people. It helps to give it some perspective.
I find that the more I blog, the more I tend to just do this when I get stressed out by something, just madly write up some piece of outrage. At the same time, I tend to feel like I shouldn’t be doing it, that it’s over the top. That it might upset someone.
And I get scared and go away for awhile.
Then I come back and I find that nobody is angry at me for writing about this shit.
That helps. Thank you.