(24 ramadhan 1426) serial times, pt 5

The Pkg

(continued from before...)

I was really too tired to do it. I was barely a hundred meters away from having left the bus stop when it dawned on me that I wasn’t going to be able to continue.
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I stopped. There was no way I could continue. I thought maybe that I should right then and there turn and walk back to my friend’s apartment and just pass out (but not before toking up on some of that green inside said pkg, of course).
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I couldn’t go on. I didn’t care about being high the next week; I was scared to death that I was going to fall asleep right then and there on Sepulveda.
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I didn’t want to go on. I wanted to be weak and I wanted to be laughed at later when I told my pathetic story of being so lazy on this, the day of deliverance and arrival.
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I wasn’t able to continue.
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I had to, though. I was a ganja soldier. I had trained for occasions such as this, I was mentally prepared to push myself to the limit, I was going to reap the benefits of my march. I wanted my purple heart for a heroically stoned effort, I told myself I wasn’t going to sleep until my mission was accomplished, I cared very much about being high next week, I needed to save my admissions of laziness for more important instances (though what those were—are—I cannot, even now, begin to imagine), I was going to deliver and arrive.
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I pushed on again, Kinko’s still my destination.
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I walked past Ralph's, Robek’s, and Starbuck’s. I really wanted some chips or a juice smoothie or a piece of tiramisu, but I was focused. I was becoming a warrior of mythical and smokey proportions. Legends would abound about this heroic deed I was on. I would be in history books on the travails of ganja soldiers. I was the Che Guevara of the ganga revolution organized to step up the pressure on and resist the global occupation being advanced by imperialists on the unsuspecting users of all things green, leafy, smokey, and heavenly.
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I would be the subject of a major short story by some obscure and unpublished author, or perhaps of a short indie film by some famous Hollywood-type, I would be a character in a Charles Bukowski bit (you know that bastard is still writing his great stories in some other parallel world).
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There was nothing that could impede my progress toward Kinko's and I knew looked fearsome.
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I stood momentarily at the corner of Sepulveda and Mariposa, stopped by the red street light and my hunger.
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Western Sizzlin’ stared back at me with inviting eyes, but I ignored its advances and my hunger; I was still on my mission.
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Of course, in a few minutes, when I left Kinko's, I was going to have to double back the way I had just come and pass again the Sizzlin’ and the other two beckoning eating and drinking establishments that I’d passed just a moment earlier in order to get back to the apartment, which left open the option that I’d stop at all three places for a steak, a tiramisu, and a smoothie.
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The light changed to green and I crossed the street, not too many steps from Kinko's.

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(to be continued...)