(20 ramadhan 1426) serial times

The Pkg

Then

It was a Wednesday morning in southern California when I woke up with a mouth as dry as desert cotton and my mind as clear and structured as reindeer diarrhea.

To be precise, I was in El Segundo, CA, which is a beachside suburb of the zillions of suburbs that comprise greater Los Angeles; El Segundo is just south of Playa del Rey, next to Marina del Rey, which is tucked next to Venice Beach, which is just under Santa Monica, which borders west Los Angeles; all of the coastal suburbs blend together into the big mirage that is Los Angeles, even when one is sober.

I had a long day ahead of me, one that would see me end the day (and skipping Thursday) arriving at my destination on Friday on another continent halfway around the world, so I rolled off the couch onto the floor and crawled over to the coffee table where I grabbed and took a hit from the still-moist bud tucked into the bowl of a pipe.

It was a “wake-and-bake” Wednesday, as my buddy, Y, would have called it. Wake up and bake yourself in the leafy wonders of a still-packed bowl from the night before.

I needed a bake badly because I had a long and stressful day ahead of me, to which I believe I’ve already referred.

The clock next to my couch read 8:13 Pacific Daylight Time. It seemed that it would be my day because the sum of the numbers in the time displayed equaled a number divisible by 3, which was something of a superstition of mine. Any number—whether it was a ball score, a price, mileage on a road sign, time, the day’s date, the alphanumerical sum of the letters in one’s name—divisible by the number 3 I considered as a signal of impending good karma. I’d learned this mathematical fact—any number whose sum of its digits was evenly divisible by 3 meant that the number itself was also divisible by 3—in elementary school and it was something I’d thought so fascinating that I decided instantly that all numbers divisible by 3 were going to my benign superstitious quirk, the number 3 itself, of course, being the number one fortuitous number.

I puffed on my pipe and thought of my insanity with numbers. I wondered if other people had such stupid little quirks; I wondered if my friends would want me committed if they ever found out such a thing about me. I smoked and thought more about this while I took the biggest bud from inside the sandwich bag and set it aside for the rest of the day’s use.

As I think I’ve said before, I had a long day ahead of me and needed something to help me keep an even keel, so my attention to and needs of the present took precedence to the needs of the coming future.

I rolled up the bag inside which the remaining ganja resided and Scotch-taped the bag so that nothing could intrude upon the contents therein. I went over to the box in which I’d be sending the marijuana. Inside the box lay the tools and paraphernalia that I needed to use in order to the escape the suspicious eyes of the vigilant Customs officials on both sides of this mail exchange (unfortunately, reader, I can’t divulge these secrets on the off-chance that some of the law enforcement personnel around the world can actually read. If my secrets of sending marijuana from the United States to myself in another country were ever exposed, I’d obviously not have any of that wonderful Cali Jamaican Red to aid me through any given day).

I finished my packing job about a half hour later, all the while inhaling a huge dent into that last big bowl, potentially the last bowl I’d be having for a long while, depending upon whether or not my pkg made it to me. I looked at the clock again, which now read 8:52, another number divisible by 3 and the second one of the day. I smiled to myself at this.

I might have mentioned already that I had a long day ahead of me, and I thought about how nice it was that the long day was going to be full of good luck.

(to be continued...)