My wife took me to my first Cleveland Indians game. I think I was 100 or something. Heavy rain, awe. There was a double-header the next day. It didn’t matter who won or lost. Thanks for the memories.
I went home and cut Ottis loose. It was enough of the utter nonsense. Daniel Blowden retired, but not before he taught me about pipes after the show. I got drunk as a skunk, and the good native got high. When he got high, the world didn’t sharpen or glow — it simply loosened his way, like a knot being untied in slow motion. In that softened space, a strange idea drifted into his mind: what if he packed his bags and moved his life to the eleventh floor of the sky? The thought wasn’t a plan, just a wandering image, the kind that floats to the surface when reality relaxes its grip for a moment. Almost rent-free.
On the imagined eleventh floor, he saw a quiet hallway lit by soft, late-night shadows. In that mental picture, he unlocked a door to a room he’d never lived in, but somehow already knew. It was a space untouched by the day’s worries — a place that existed only in his drifting thoughts. When he sobered, the idea faded, but the feeling stayed: sometimes the mind just needs a different floor to stand on, even if the body never moves at all. Daniel would meditate like a good native from Hellstead.
Video calls got pretty heavy. I could almost smell the dude through the monitor. Ottis interrupted “Goonies” on the screen. I told him to watch fifty episodes of “Friends” and try edibles instead. He took a haul from his pipe and just nodded. Sure, his drug problems worried me, but there was nothing I could do except watch from the sidelines and hope he’d find his way back. I tried offering help, tried being present, but every attempt felt like throwing a rope into a storm. In the end, I had to accept that a person can only change when they decide to, and all I could offer was concern without control. Whoa bro!
That’s how I got hooked on Ottis. I wanted to help, but it was hopeless. Every attempt slipped through my fingers like pixie dust. In the end, all I could do was step back and accept the limits of what I could change. In the role of a lifetime as Daniel, I tried to help the poor bastard. “My Little Pony” conventions exist. I’m sort of digging Rose as his assistant, and just to drive him crazy by getting him to write his own comic book. Another roll of toilet paper. A silly symphony and a fuck you to Disney.
This was just a fucking radio show.
Technossance Magazine 