Mark Kozelek - This Is My First Day And I'm Indian And I Work At A Gas Station lyrics

Fell asleep last night listening to a train whistle blowing across the Carquinez Strait And to the wind blowing through the eucalyptus trees Watching Paolo Sorrentino's "The Great Beauty" Fell asleep last night listening to a train I want to visit my friend because she's in a lot of pain It was the shingles, then C. diff, now they're saying lupus She's a single mom with two kids and she don't deserve any of it I'd like to go out there when I can But I'm just back from Finland and soon I'm off to Switzerland For a part in a film, but when I get home Gonna go see my friend and keep her company for a week or so I feel bad for not going there now But I got a life out here, I need to hold the fort down Got hardwood floors buckling up and an old leaky pipe I got thirty yards of fallen fence that I need to put back upright And I broke a tooth on a bone in some beef stew I was eating in Belgium and it cracked right down to the root My gums are bleeding and they're turning blue And I've got a dentist appointment on Tuesday Went to a 7/11 and the clerk, his hands were shaking I said, "Are you all right?" and he said, "It's my first day and I'm Indian and I work at a gas station" I said, "you'll be fine," got my change and as I turned He said nervously, "Yes, sir, thank you, have a good day, sir" It's a nice spring day, April 19th And the flowers are in bloom and I did yard work until my arms turned pink And my girl broke my laptop while making the bed She went right to Best Buy and bought another because she felt so bad Then we went and bought and an old Victrola I liked Then we went to an open house, built in 1902, had been kept up real nice It had a nice back porch and the walls were original old brick And it was a great old house, but I didn't like the way the cars blew past it Fell asleep last night here in Flims, Switzerland Reading the John Connolly book "The Wanderer in Unknown Realms" Book dealer goes missing, a detective sets out to find him And he ends up on a murder spree, or was it a hallucination? Fell asleep last night here again in Flims, Switzerland Said goodnight on a hotel phone to my girlfriend, Caroline This movie set's doing weird things to my head I'm not Italian, I'm not Swiss, and I can't act, and I don't exactly fit in Went to sleep last night again, yeah, again, here in Flims, Switzerland And woke up to the sound of Michael Caine's voice, echoing Down the hall and just like Martin Sheen in Apocalypse Now I was doing push ups and sit ups and I was going f**ing crazy and crawling the walls Walked down the street and I pet a little kitty cat She was sweet for a second, but then she turned into a little f**ing brat And I came back and Jane Fonda was in the lobby And we talked about her father, and she was lost and couldn't find anybody And we talked about the movie with her and Jon Voight, "Coming Home" She said she produced it, and that was a fact that I didn't know And I asked her to dinner and she said, "I'll take a rain check" If only I had cla** like Ted Turner or Gregory Peck Here I'm falling asleep again in goddamn Flims, Switzerland In a closed down ski town with one coffee shop and a field of dandelions And I look at the snow covered Alps and I'm here until June 9th Got some scenes this week, which is great, because at this point I'm losing my f**ing mind Never mind all the other verses I've written about Switzerland There's new things going on in my life, like my girlfriend got a new kitten And a friend of mine gave out my number to some crazy motherf**er And I got all pissed off and she said, "who do you think you are, Mick f**ing Jagger?" I fell asleep last night in New Orleans Just back from Switzerland, where like I said, I was going insane And I went and got oysters on the half shell and some blackened alligator Then I called my friend in Ohio and I flew up there and I stayed with her Went back to Europe for a tour and I was watching TV There were missiles flying back and forth from Gaza to Tel-Aviv And it concerned me cause I've got friends over there When I talk to them on the phone I can hear it in their voice that they're scared Some sh** went down on tour and I had to let go one of my band guys And it hurt me so much that for a solid forty-five minutes I cried Came to my room and he said, "Mark, I really needed this job" I said, "it's tough love my friend, take some time off and we'll make music again one day I promise" Got back from Europe and it was Labor Day and I went walking And I laid in the sun all day and I called my friend Jude and we got to talking Jude's the widow of my old friend, Tim I said, "whatever you do, please, don't ask me about Switzerland" Then my dad called about someone we love I put a check in the mail, gotta do what I gotta do when push comes to shove I hear her voice sometimes and it's an octave higher Cause she gets weak from the d** that dehydrate her It's hard to handle but I just keep keeping busy Traveling and playing and writing 'til I'm f**ing dizzy Some people love what I do and some get f**ing pissy But I don't give a f**, one day they're all gonna miss me One year ago I was in a car with a handicapped kid I said, "so what are you gonna do with your life?" and he sat there blank And I said, "okay you think about it a minute" And a few minutes pa**ed and I said, "so what are you gonna do with your life, it's been a minute" And he said, "I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna, I'm just gonna live it" I'm going to sleep tonight and I can't fall asleep Listening to the high pitched foghorns of the Carquinez Strait They sound like a cacophony of piccolos and flutes, they echo all night And I just turned forty-eight and I spent seventeen grand on the Mayweather-Pacquiao fight Going to sleep tonight with a goddamn ear infection I broke another tooth on a piece of hard bread, and my gums are f**ing hurting And my friend Ben went on a 50k race and he broke his wrist And he called me up the other day and he asked me to join him as his guitarist To play with him in San Francisco, February 23rd And I said, "yes, sir, thank you, have a good day, sir" So, I played last night with Ben at the Swedish American Hall, and, man, I was so nervous that I was gonna hit the wrong guitar chords, but Ben sang beautifully and everything fell together pretty well. What a nice combination that was; Ben singing, me on guitar, and a great pianist named Zac Rae. Caroline was there, and so was Ben's girlfriend Rachel. They both loved the show. I talked to Bob Mould afterwards, and I told him about how me listening to Candy Apple Grey on a sunny day at an old girlfriend's house made it into some lyrics, and I hoped that someday they'd make it into a song. It was a pretty funny night Earlier at dinner, I got picked on a little for still having a flip phone, but after the show some guy walked into the backstage area and was introduced to me as the smartest guy in the world. They said he was a physicist or something like that, and I pulled out my phone to check the time. He pulled his phone out and pointed out that he had the exact same phone that I did. Everyone was laughing, and there was some girls looking at us like our phones were really gross or something We were all getting pretty tired. Ben and his friends took off. Caroline came back to my apartment. We watched part three of the HBO series The Jinx: The Life and d**hs of Robert Durst It's February 24th, and I still feel a little high from how good everything felt last night