Morning of March 5, 2015. Thursday.
Johnny Cash sings in the background, sounding somewhat distant yet somehow close at the same time, like an old anachronistic Buick with a loudspeaker atop following me from perhaps a block away. "I ride an old paint, I lead an old Dan, I'm off to Montan' for to throw the hooley-ann." The voice is somewhat familiar in a different way, somewhat melancholy, the nature of the "reality" of this deserted 1800s half-defined world. Not much to look at but a pale brick wall in the late evening, a wall that flows past me as I ride a weird clay-like bay roan horse into an eerily empty town. Or so it seems. There are only a few men in the streets of the town, as it is so late at night. Is this Laredo? "I spied a young cowboy all wrapped in white linen, wrapped in white linen as cold as the clay..." (As cold as a clay horse?)
I confess that I was never a fan of "Gumby" and went out of my way to avoid it whenever I could, even as a child. I found it too unnerving and over-the-top irritating to watch. It was like a trend in society to force children to watch certain things as a form of punishment - and many forms of "entertainment" still seem as such.
However, without explanation, without a back story, without even a false memory to build a nonsensical foundation to explain my location and direction, I find myself riding Pokey into an old western town. My clay horse will not behave. His mouth grows and "roars" like the "roaring worm" from "Eraserhead". Johnny Cash's singing remains a statement of fact in the background. These cowboys cannot live here. My horse will swallow them.
Eraserhorse will eat everyone eventually, and I cannot do much to stop him.