He Is Riven!

(Ol' Gordon's)

Happy Easter everybody!

The wandering drunk seen above was twisted on gin and scaring all the kids in the park yesterday, demanding to have his picture taken, explaining that he 's currently out of work.

It was a little bit creepy for 10am.

We bounced from the first egg-hunt to another where everybody had the more civilized mimosas and the bunny was a little bit cuter. Though word did get to us that somebody, allegedly the bunny's mother, was gettin' heavy about when he was was gonna' get paid his $20. 

It took some of the magic out of the day for the kids, I hope.

I kept warning them, Stay away from him, Don't get too close!, He might have rabies. To the mothers that began to express concern:  You know that Christ doesn't approve of intercourse outside of marriage, right?

Be very careful, I warned. Once they start burrowing they're just like dangerous rats, maybe worse... don't let the cute fur fool you, they are rodents through and through. Right now his fangs are retracted but if you make him angry he's likely to go into a rape-frenzy, possibly mistaking anybody here for a female bunny, or even a male, they don't care. Chocolate eggs are worse than crack to these fuckers. If he gets 'a hold of one of those he'll ravish anything he can grab onto, faster than you can blink. Strongest grip I've ever known, claws like sabers. The man-sized ones can leap 30 yards from a dead stop when they need to escape, even when they've got hold of a victim. There's a whole husk of 'em just up in the hills.

Once they had corralled me away from the kids I was chatting amicably with the other fathers surrounding me. It's a big problem this time of year, I swear. But don't worry, I'm packin'...licensed carrier (glancing from horizon to horizon). You guys hunters too? (trying to make eye contact, feeling sleepy).

It's the only time, to my memory, that mimosas have ever made me act that way.

(he wants his $20)

.

Antediluvian

No stories from an abbreviated evening in SF. None worth telling.

It is Easter weekend here.  I believe that we're the only ones celebrating. I haven't checked my facts yet.  I don't care for the unfortunate way in which facts sometimes cause discord. There appears to be another flood on its way. It will rain all weekend. The famed deluge. 

I heard a good youtube clip the other day from Christopher Hitchens. I have never read his book, God Is Not Great, though I've felt that the title goes on one word too many to make its point. 

If you decide to watch the video do so without watching it. The audio is better than the video.

I'm not in the mood this morning to discuss theism, or the lack thereof, with myself. There will already be too much of that to go around this weekend. He is risen yet again, unlike clockwork. Easter is a moveable feast, it seems to sneak around the month of April, occasionally rising in March.

I had looked forward to getting pictures of the little waddling Rhys, searching and hopefully finding a few colored Easter eggs. I have no desire to rob him of that experience, at all. Children should be safely exposed to the fantastical and improbable. A human sized bunny... what a thing that is.

I couldn't decide if I preferred the black and white version of the image or the color. Not wanting to be an unwavering fundamentalist I've published them both. 

I wonder how long I'll live. 

.

1001 posts you should read before you sleep

We did it!

I have to drive in to San Fran very early today, for work.

This means that I won't be writing much of a post today. But don't worry, you've got another 1000 posts almost as good as this one.....


If you think that I've run out of things to say that's because I have. My life is somewhat uneventful, which can give rise to dull and repetitive writing.

I had meant to write this morning about yet another interaction I had with a police officer online. Perhaps tomorrow. Or, who knows, maybe tonight will be eventful and I will have a few new stories to tell.

I'm going to try to write for the Laziest Nerd Ever again soon.

I was raised by the praise of a fan.

"Is it strange I should change? I don't know, why don't you ask her?"

.

Undreamed

(unknown)

Tomorrow, I go into the city. In the evening Rachel will come to meet me. We will see a play: Eugene Ionesco's "The Chairs." There was a time when I would jabber to the mainly uninterested about the Theater of the Absurd, Samuel Beckett, Antonin Artaud, Jean Genet, but not as much any more. There is little reservoir of nonsense left in reserve, except here. That age has disappeared for me. It is strange. I love literature, but I never openly discuss it. 

Rarely, I should say, not never.

When people find that I have an interest in reading and begin "discussing the beats" towards me... well, a mighty pair of eyes glaze over within, and then slowly roll. They exclusively discuss the lives of the beats because the writing was mostly poor. They are somehow trying to show that they are initiated with hip knowledge. It is tedious. 

Dada and Surrealism have vanished from me. They seem little more than silly distractions, though distractions from what I do not know. They should not be explained away so easily, particularly without the "explanation" component, but that is mostly how I feel about them, as dreams that are not worth considering.

A good friend, one of the few friends I have with whom I ever discuss literature, recently described house music as having been "birthed" from disco. He never liked disco, or so he has often claimed. His experience with house music, at least as far as the social dynamic of it goes, is derived mainly through mine. 

Perhaps I am becoming more like him, presumptuous and dismissive. There are those who will always doubt the truth of ecstasy... 

No, I kid. He claimed that his claim would likely anger me, so I'm playing along a little bit.

When I was younger I was intelligent, or so I was told. That quality has somehow given way to being opinionated, argumentative. I like to believe myself a contrarian, but the truth is probably closer to something less formal. It is rather lucky that I have never been put in the position of being responsible for anybody's economic growth through speculation in stock trading. The contrarian impulse is only revered in finance when it survives, or thrives. Otherwise, it is not recognized and revered as such. 

A woman asked me recently how I feel when people criticize my writing. It occurred to me that nobody does, or only very rarely. There is probably a reason for that. Cato will praise those posts which he likes. The silences must also speak, I guess.

When I worked at Apple, one of the yearly "reviews" I received claimed that I showed proficiency at incorporating correction into patterns of improvement, a willingness to share the lesson of mistakes with others. So, there is that. One of the mightiest corporations on earth values my ability to be criticized, or corrected. They compensated me financially, in part, for this very quality. So, there is that. When I think about how well I accept criticism, I will always think of Apple. 

So, there is that.

I woke at 3am. I had been dreaming. It was a sensual dream, tender though not explicitly sexual. There were caresses, quiet mumbling, proximity. Nudity, but no imaginary intercourse. It was warm. When I awoke I recognized the sensations and felt guilt, relieved that the experience was not "real" for others and chuckled at that. The woman involved was unknown to me, though somehow familiar, a dream amalgam. 

It is odd, that. The mind generates these apparitions in sleep, absurd and surreal, from unknown impulse. Out of the mind they leap, dancing across the heart fantastical. Dreams have the odd power to palliate the senses, to briefly remove the pains of life, they are as opiates unleashed on waves of memory. The internal fluctuations, from desire to fear, palatial to punitive, from chase to being chased (never chaste)... visions speaking their unique truths, pirouetting in the dark.  

Dreams rarely resolve the mysteries they generate. Instead, the dreamer only awakens, either eager to flee the menacing visions or to return to a barely requited love; never bored, though the dream may have already exhausted itself, fled from the forest upon awakening. Even apparitions must sometimes be seduced. A dream's self-replication constructs entire architectures of fantasy at sudden unknown whim.  Elaborate emanations effortlessly emerge.... 

Ha! Can you see now why I don't discuss literature?

The effect of certain dream-inducing drugs appealed to me greatly when I was younger. I would drift for hours, building many castles in Spain.

.

"...cats and rocking chairs"

To wonder, to begin again to yearn. Lately, I have been given to a vastness of spaces, by indeterminacies. The unknown seems everywhere. The ground in all directions climbs up and away, steeply becoming untouched above. Each way, it envelops me, rises, then gives way to open sky. Along the map there are hills and paths, giving way to other hills and other paths, other valleys.

The last hike I took was to the top of Bald Mountain, almost 6 months ago. The winters here last longer than I would admit, longer than I would relay in conversation. Having a terrible sense of time hasn't exactly saved me from it.

This site helps lessen the loss. It makes possible a new sensing of time's passing, for me; an external memory, one that I can freely re-examine, rather than the other way. 

My day has begun again, and I must now go to it.

.

This Immortal Coil

(thinner days)

Yesterday's post was a joke. The science was impeccable, of course, as always. But all else, well... it was a special request from an old friend. Both the requester and the subject were quite pleased with it, each reportedly laughing out loud at work. I think that for my nut-hugger friend he was happy to just be talking about his condition openly again. He is a dentist, so his nut sack probably only comes up in conversation naturally on occasion, just as a patient is drifting off under the gas, etc. 

Another friend told me yesterday that I write often about being fat.  

Well, it consumes me. 

She sent a picture of us when we were both much younger and thinner, to torture me. I told her that youth is a cruel stratagem, one employed almost exclusively on the aging. 

That would be us ^ ^.

As for recurring subjects written here: It is difficult. I wake each day and try to sit down and write, rarely ever planning or knowing what I will write about, often with a child seeking my attention, or insisting upon my energies being elsewhere. You try it... After several years it becomes difficult, particularly when there is very little of significance occurring in your life. I mean, it is all significant, but it resembles the previous day, and the one before that, and on and on. 

I'll take requests. Honestly. If there is something that you'd like me to write about, then just say so. I'll become the blogging equivalent of a jukebox. 

Yet another old friend (I am getting to the age where that is all that I have) sent me a link yesterday morning. This was a story, and a name, that sounded vaguely familiar but I hadn't read much about it/her. I sat up in bed yesterday before the sun rose and read a few sites, with each I became more shocked and engrossed.

Henrietta Lacks. She died in 1951 from cancer. Cells that were taken out of her were used to form what is known as an immortalized cell line. The cells, through mutation, continue to divide in vitro, creating an important opportunity for cellular biologists and biochemists to research. These cells were used by Dr. Jonas Salk to study the polio vaccine, in addition to other studies on AIDS, the parvo virus, radiation, toxicity, etc.. There are about 300 papers written each month that concern the use of the HeLa cell line.

The dilemma, for a few, is that these genes were taken and used without her knowledge or permission, while she was alive. Her and her family received no compensation whatsoever for this. They only found out about it because researchers were harassing them, trying to get cell samples from them also. 

You've probably already figured out the next part: she was black.

There are so many that are willing and eager to assist science in its various pursuits. A common secular sacrifice being the claimed "donation of one's body to science" once the breath has fled. The advancement of scientific research, for some, being similar to that of a crusade. What, many might ask, could be more important for all of society? The infidel of sickness must be banished from the holy land, the temple. No moral consideration should stand in the way of saving lives, or so goes the argument. 

Most people are not aware that their genetic code, or as many isolated gene sequences as have been found to be useful in research and development, are already privately owned and protected by patents. The stuff that makes you you, and your children your children, all of us all of us, our genetic sequences, are privately owned by a handful of various groups who have claimed the patents.

There seems to be a disconnect between the fight for the rights of individuals and that of groups. The human race seems wholly unrepresented in a legal sense.

This mainly unquestioned biopiracy trucks right along while most seem more concerned with shutting down Monsanto offices, convinced that they have discovered the greatest source of potential corporate evil in our world. An important concern, to be sure, but little matter that the food you eat is wholly owned by a corporation when so are you, or soon will be.

There is big money in owning people. It would only appear evil if they asked us to work for our lives.

.

Emperor-Gaius-Julius-Caesar-Augustus-Germanicus

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

The old municipal wharf

I got about 8 rolls of film back yesterday, mostly black and white. Shooting film is, of course, more expensive. Some of the money that was lost was done so through drinking while shooting. What otherwise might have been a great or even usable image is slightly out of focus, framed poorly, or there were simply recurring shots of something that isn't worth looking at. Still, there were some corkers in there, though fewer than there might have been otherwise.

What struck me the most in these images is how unpleasantly fat I've become. I don't often step to the other side of the lens, but there was a series of me holding Rhys. We had taken a little mini-vacation and it didn't seem fair to deny Rachel a picture or two as the sun was setting at the pier. But I was wrong. I should have said, "No, not a chance..." and then gotten some other, younger man to hold Rhys while I took pictures. 

Wait, that can't be an adequate solution. It's only a matter of time in this scenario before this wandering model beach hobo is banging Rachel and has a great job in advertising. She never mentioned liking tattoos before.

I have to lose some weight, the only other option is to gain. I've been blossoming in slow motion for about 3 years now. It works out to approximately a pound each month. Even if I reverse this trend slowly it will take a very long time, too long.  I tend to function better in extremes. I can stick with extreme behavior longer. It gives me a new sense of identity and a different perspective from which to pretend. Somewhere just underneath the folds of my mind there lurks a light-hearted masochist that enjoys some healthy self-torture and ferocious bouts of masturbation.

If I start to sound like a speed-freak on this site it's because I've resorted to a combination cocktail of diet pills, strawberry Jolly Ranchers, and Adderall.

Christ, there are toys everywhere I try to step, the boy is screaming wildly while trying to climb into the fireplace, Rachel just dropped his oatmeal on the kitchen floor with a percussive explosion, the dog is eating the disaster with desperate but joyful abandon. Our house has lost its collective mind. It's a few naked midgets shy of being a boring Fellini film. I'm sitting here pretending to write in this chaos. The problem is that I should be thinner, dark haired, with sunglasses on, and dressed in an Italian suit, vaguely suspicious of this new skate-boarding, tattooed beach guy.

.

Mac's Club Deuce

A handful of my friends are in Miami right now. There is a yearly Bacchanalian "music conference" in which there are many parties, all day and night for a week straight. Miami is a great place for it and has very little use otherwise. Fifty-One weeks out of the year it is the most mind-numbingly boring place on earth, and this week is for strictly pro mind-numbing. South Beach mainly attracts the illiterate wealthy. Up until a few years ago it had no book stores at all. I know, I once needed one. You can tell a thing about a place by the amount and quality of books stores that can be found there. By that single standard Miami has rendered itself nearly meaningless. Though this alone makes it a great place to have a music conference. Selah!

There is a dive bar on South Beach that becomes a frequent watering hole for conference attendees. It serves as a home-base for many, almost as a hotel for others. I have witnessed more than a few heartaches there, with a front row seat, even my own. The bar is arranged in an amorphous circle that consumes about 2/3rds of the inside space. It is very easy to interact, or watch, and nearly impossible to hide. The rest is just booths and a pool table, a charming jukebox and some less than charming bathrooms. I miss this bar more than just about anything else at the conference. I pine for it, truly. Sure, there are parties on the roof of the Sony building, pool parties, and restaurants galore, but this little throwback from the 30's is solitary consolation that the world is an older and better place than some will ever know.

It is both noir and pulp. The right place to have fun finding trouble. A place designed to celebrate deficiencies in character. Moral ambiguity being the standard and currency. There is no legal limit here, only loosely enforced guidelines. The best sandwich shop on the beach is located conveniently across the street, if you can brave direct sunlight for a few minutes, to bring some sustenance back to the liquor cave where it might be safe. 

Once inside it is difficult to believe that the exterior is getting any direct sunlight. It feels as if it is lit by shadows and neon, like the memory of a fetish. The bar is never quite dirty, though it seems to have not been cleaned in decades. It's not sticky, even though it looks as if it should be. There is no sleeping allowed, not even for a minute. This bar is impervious to insult. Its standards have slid so low as to make snark meaningless. 

I don't think I've ever even seen somebody drink a beer in there. Maybe once or twice, if they needed to sober up for some unspoken reason. 

I once saw a girl use an online arrest pic as photo ID, a victory for smart-phones.

Well, perhaps I have described it too crudely, though somehow not enough. 

.

Call Me Ahab, Ishmael

(dr. phoenix, no relation)

"... for there is no folly of the beast of the earth which is not infinitely outdone by the madness of men." - Herman Melville, Moby Dick

It was those filthy Russians that lost, or stole, my box of books. Okay, perhaps I'm being a touch nationalist, but they had the most disdainful attitude about moving our stuff. Those godless savages might have just tossed them in the garbage. Who can possibly know.

Let me go back... even though I'm certain everybody here is already sick of hearing about the lost box(es) of books: 

When we moved from NYC to Sonoma we had a series of movers assist us. One set, the Russians, helped us get our stuff out of the 3rd floor Easy Village apartment and into pods, which were then put on a cargo train and sent across the country. Another set unloaded them from those pods into an apartment. A third set moved them from the apartment to where we live now.

Everybody was friendly except the initial set, the foreigners. They were surly fuckers who grunted and nodded more than spoke. I wanted to commit them to cages where we could perform animal testing on them, even at the time. Nothing truly horrible, just an occasional squirting of deodorant in the eyes. Caffeine poisoning, or something like that. Necessary evils, etc.

Perhaps it's a cold war thing, but I believe it was the Russkies who lost, or more likely stole (though possibly just tossed out) the box or boxes of books... even though it makes much less sense to suspect them. They all arrived without a car and left likewise, mysteriously in plain view. 

Their hatred for the written or spoken word insisted upon itself. The absence of all signs of language informed the moment, as it still hauntingly does.

"Russkies" is also a 1987 film starring Joaquin Phoenix, which doesn't help their case any either. Anybody that's ever seen the documentary "Dr. Strangelove" will understand the very real and genuine threat.

It might have been a glimpse of Moby Dick - that American classic that competes with some of the lesser Russian novels - that really riled them, sent them into a book burning frenzy.

Well, wait... let's just hold on here. There's no evidence yet that they burned the books. That was a bit harsh, admittedly.

It could have been Kant as well - their 20th century hatred of Germans, bubbling up through the patronymic, and finding form in one final moment of larceny. Perhaps it sent them on a national crime spree. That's what I would like to believe. 

I can still see them all standing around once the pods were loaded, all shuffling of feet and unhappy grumbling in foreign languages, shifty-eyed, like they had done nothing at all wrong. 

As with most heathens and addicts: the love of truth is the first to go.

.

Radio-Baby

Do you see? 

I woke up and read yesterday's post, and I liked it. I seem to be happiest when being a contrarian, particularly when I am depressed. It gives me something to fight through, I guess - a sense of engagement. I don't sit and wonder what to write about. I simply find something or someone to disagree with and then I am off and running. Ah, freedoms....

Enough about me. 

Yesterday Rachel had a meeting to attend in the evening. I was tasked with putting little Rhys to sleep. It was much easier than I thought it would be. I just found toys and books to occupy him with until he started walking wobbly and diving into pillows, half-slumbered like a miniature drunk. Then, I put him in his crib and Ssshhh'd him a little, and he was off, to the sounds of Music for 18 Musicians. 

How simple, I thought, with minimal effort... 

But then I went downstairs to read, keeping the radio baby monitor on, listening for awakenings, dissatisfaction. None came.

It was like being in an Edgar Allan Poe story. Every little sound became a possible danger. Silence stretched out and yawned before me. I couldn't read. Why was he so quiet, how? Was he alright? Fuck, please don't let anything go wrong while I am watching him. 

What is he doing up there....?

I didn't re-enter the room to check, not wanting to wake him if he's sleeping so perfectly, but I couldn't relax. I sat in the kitchen, listening to the monitor, staring at it, waiting for any indication that he was alright. 

Nothing.

I laid down, downstairs and tried to relax. Rachel came home and asked how everything had been.  Fine, fine good, I said. She didn't seem worried. But how?

I went to sleep but couldn't sleep, I had only made it to bed. It had unnerved me, sent me spiraling. 

What the fuck? I thought. How can this be? Everything went well.

There is no solace. It is why the distant moon stirs and drives some as a celestial speedometer.

If things go perfectly in the film of your life then the bus is about to kill a pedestrian, possibly you. Everybody knows this. Never go to lunch and laugh with old friends. When they cut to the exterior scene you're about to walk into traffic, looking backwards as you smilingly wave goodbye.

.

Without Consent

Well, I got what I wanted, I guess. Yesterday's post stirred some minor online controversy. I proved myself to not be adequately against rape, somehow. I knew that by discussing a hot button topic (the media) in a mildly ambiguous way it would bring out a few Inquisitionists. I have been feeling low and have had nothing to write about. Controversy stirs me.

I went so far yesterday as to use the word "victim" to describe the football player / rapists, pointing out that they are also victim to their own actions. I offered that a person can be a victim to their own self-abuse. A friend told me that I was minimizing the meaning of the word "victim" by doing so. I suppose in a postmodern sense, maybe. It is a component of deconstructionism, to render a text or term overly meaningful, or unknowable in a strict sense, by exploring all of the possible relational meanings.

Thankfully, my use of the word victim has not exhausted its significance and purpose.

We are all anti-rape. Nobody is pro-rape or filled with rape sympathy or rape apologies, except perhaps the rapists and their lawyers. But once you allow people to tell you what you can and can not consider, what is appropriate or inappropriate to discuss, or in which ways it may or may not be acceptable to do so, then you have knowingly allowed someone to censor you. It is a way of telling you that you are not qualified to consider or speak about a given subject. If it goes so far as to be gender based, which discussions of rape sometimes are, then you have also knowingly engaged in sexism, often as the victim of that sexism.

Try telling that to the rape-baiters.


A politically correct attitude in the media will do no more to help people understand rape motivations than enforced behavioral and conversation norms. Interestingly, the friend who told me that I was devaluing the meaning of the word "victim" is also very anti-political correctness, or has claimed to be so. 

The two football players are rapists, convicted rapists. They will rightfully serve their juvenile prison time and then live the rest of their days as registered sex offenders. For some, this sentence is far too light, there is no punishment that would be too severe, that would satisfy the anger, pain and confusion at such an act. This is why we have a judicial system, so that the punishment for a crime does not rest with the victims of that crime.

If ever you are caught discussing the lives of the perpetrators, and the actions that may have led to their offense, then you will likewise be known as a friend to all rapists everywhere, so be warned.


Approximately 1 in 10 rape victims is a male, though 99% of the perpetrators of rape are male.

For some, the act of rape is simple and brutal, and they are against it. For others, it is a very complex dynamic, they are also against it. Rape seems to be many things to a few people and a few things to many people. We know that women are overwhelmingly the victims of it. This does not, by any logical or illogical extension, make all men responsible for rape, much less guilty of it. Be very attentive when listening to people discuss it. Once you allow vague accusations of complicity to silence you, well... we all know what that leads to.



A friend once confided in me that, in an angry moment, he had called his girlfriend a cunt. He was shamed and saddened by his actions, seeking some consolation or understanding. He went on to say that there is no term, anywhere, that is so awful that a woman can possibly call a man.

"Rapist," I said.

.

The many stones of Rapeville

Today ends winter, the astronomical accounting of it anyway. The earth here seems to still be holding on to the last wetness of Winter, the slight chill. 

I slept for close to 10 hours last night, off and on. Sleep is a common issue for me, one that often fuels or starves others. I think I've mentioned it before. 

I've run out of things to write about. For some time now I've felt devoid of interest. Bankrupt, as "the moderns" called it. I"m happiest when I'm reading. 

Yesterday I read about rape. I don't pretend to know the details. Keep that in mind here, that these are just musings:

There were some high-school kids, football players, who had uninvited sex with a girl classmate of theirs who was passed out, then one of them published naked photos of her online. It made national news. Then the news outlets were reporting on the other news outlets' reporting. "Rape Apologists!" went at least one accusation, because they had the temerity to note that these boys' promising lives were also ruined by the incident, as part of what they were reporting on. 

Or, only that it has ripped this small town apart....

Little matter that you can't really report on a minor who has been raped, it being illegal (if not a lack of journalistic decorum) to state the victim's name. Though that didn't stop Fox News, apparently. 

I mentioned it to Rachel, whose stance could fairly be described as anti-rape, and she said that it's the whole 9/11 phenomenon, that you're not allowed to mention anything other than evil, Evil, EVIL!!!!  To do so is sympathizing with the terrorists. 

To flesh out any story with information on the perpetrators (now convicted rapists), that reveals them to be anything other than depraved monsters is a line that some will not allow to be crossed. There seems to be some confusion between what is acknowledging and what is sympathizing. To describe the courtroom scene, in which the parents are seated, the only adequate phrase for them would be "rape primogenitors."

Some seemed shocked at the statistics of sexual assault among high school athletes. 

Most people are anti-rape. There are very few who seem "pro" on the subject, though I suppose they're out there. I read one account in which an individual tried to entirely blame the young girl for what these boys had done, noting her clothes as being the inciting event, etc. The old, she was asking for it. There are some who will not be happy until all signs of femininity are sealed off from view and hidden from an otherwise perfectly healthy old-testament society. 

Being anti-rape is not good enough for some, though. There is no room in this new world for those who are soft on rape, or for those who have the audacity to do anything at all other than eternally denounce the two boys and send them to hell or somewhere far worse. To some, mentioning their lives as being anything beyond utter depravity is being an accomplice to rape. 

Stop apologizing! goes the repeated cry. Now is the time to burn the evil-doers, then stone them! Those who are unable to find large enough stones are probably rapists themselves. If you want to prove that you're not a rapist then you must find a stone so large that it can not even be lifted. That's the only way to be certain. 

There were many witnesses to the event. The law is turning towards them now. There will be a grand jury convened, to ensure that no stone has been left un-thrown, that no one culpable escapes. It is a grand old time for righteousness in town. Once the stones start flying the idea is to be thorough. Partial stonings are the hallmark of an uncivilized society.

It's tough being a kid... one night you're just drinking beer and watching your friends finger a passed out girl, the next thing you know you're in some sort of trouble. Coach is in trouble too! These sure are complicated times. 

The girl has received death threats for having been raped. That must spark the occasional grim chuckle in the Muslim world. 

In the little town of Steubenville, where football is everything.

.

The tamer of wild creatures

Another weekend conquered. For Rachel's birthday we took Rhys to the aquarium at the piers, Fisherman's Wharf. He was as interested in exit signs and baby strollers as he was in aquatic life, and there was much of each to go around. It was quite fun to watch him pick out a stuffed octopus for his immediate playing pleasure. We kept trying to direct his attention to sharks swimming over head or little rays that can be petted in a pool surrounded by other kids. He's too young to really care, though he sure seemed to like the stuffed toy area. Now, he's the proud owner of a soft cephalopod mollusc with four pairs of fluffy arms. He was wearing it on his head when he fell asleep in the car.

Barkley, the pup, is already eyeing the mysterious aquatic beast.

Later that night we ate shrimp and clams and mussels, with white and red wine. It was our victory over Poseidon, celebrated with a chocolate cake and birthday singing. Rhys and his little buddy played and screamed and screamed and cried and screamed and played. The beginning signs of competitive behavior seem to be appearing. It is a little saddening. One wishes it could be stopped, or held off for a while, but it is a thing that can not be easily diverted, only hopefully contained, with practice and dedication. 

Through maternal magic and sorcery Rachel has figured out a way to get little Rhys to sleep past 6am. She's a natural. We watched an entire episode of tv together last night. House of Cards. 

.

Possession, I guess.

(William Schmidt)

I enjoy writing more when I am in a manic phase. Or, a hypomanic phase, rather. I never tire, I never search for subject or content. It all just comes to me, pages of giggling gibberish. Sure, I often wince when it's all over, if I ever look back, but I enjoy the feeling more as it's happening. 

What am I talking about? I enjoy everything more when in a hypomanic phase. It's the following state that causes trouble. The unstoppable swing upwards towards frenzy, the vexation of mania. Two states in which I can not tell the difference as I am transitioning through them. One secretly passes off the lie to the other, without my knowledge. 

It's an interesting curse.  I have a mild pity for those who have never felt it. It is among the best drugs I've ever been subjected to, though the comedowns are horrendous. It is convenient for people to just believe that you don't really have it. It is difficult for many to separate what is you and what are the effects of the illness. I sometimes question whether there even is a line dividing me from it. I can see that it is incredibly tiring for those around me. It steals others' energy, with their knowledge but without their consent. 

It's much stronger than coffee, and also lasts much longer. Days, sometimes weeks. Entire seasons pass sometimes before I look back and realize that I was involved in a long upwards swing, or an extended descent.

It is hellish, those lasting spells.

-------------------

Today is Rachel's birthday. We will go into the city, to the aquarium. Last year we briefly stopped by a pub, where some friends were, we were with 2-month old baby Rhys. I walked him carefully through the bar to a back patio area. Rachel was not very comfortable with the situation, understandably, so we left. St. Patrick's Day in San Francisco, in an Irish bar, with a newborn. You get the idea. 

But we will go in to the city and brave the drinkers again. I have never enjoyed this day much. I do not understand what is being celebrated. It's a religious thing, but it happens almost exclusively in bars, right? Tonight, we will go have dinner over at our friends' house. Seafood and white wine. Deliciousness.  

I love the picture from today. It is one that I had asked if I could use here some time ago. There are at least two invisible men involved in its making, that much we can be certain of. One of them I know. But it does a strange thing to think of the other. It affects something about the image and it bothers me that it does so. I do not want to know about him. I do not want him involved in this. It feels as if he is invading the privacy of the image, which is a silly way to feel. 

I prefer to just look at what is there and enjoy it, its tender simplicity, its vulnerable carnality. I'm not entirely certain why the idea of the other has its effect. 

But it does. 

.

The dreams of others:

I remember the dreams I've had the last two nights: the first: trying out for a play and being in a huge gymnasium where the clowns and actors were practising. Everywhere there was the heavy circumstance of menace: I ran, huge weights were dropping on my head; I crossed the slippery floor, and afar off, laughing hobos bowled large black balls at me to knock me down; it was a terrifying time of jeopardy: similar to those moments caught between traffic, lumbering trucks and busses and bicycles coming from all angles, when I can only stand fast and shut my eyes, or blunder into a tangle of traffic and hope for luck. Blacked balls, blacked weights, wheeled vehicles, and the slippery floor: all trying to crush me, moving in heavy blundering attempts, just missing. 

Then I was in my black coat and beret: Isis bereaved, Isis in search, walking a dark barren street. Into a cafe´, searching, searching and in a chair, hiding his face behind a newspaper, sat the dark one, suave, grinning. I stood, appalled, and he uncurled, and came with me, dark and sweet. Another dark man with the face of a slavic cretin, or a yellowed spaniard, of some indeterminate race, accosted me and said in a thick, furry voice "It is night" He thought I was a whore; I broke away, running for my Richard, who walked ahead, his back toward me. 

Men's voices downstairs. I am sick, sick. With this desperate fury. God knows what will happen to me in Paris. Love turns, lust turns, into the death urge. My love is gone, gone, and I would be raped. "It is night."

-Sylvia Plath, Journals March 10th, 1956 (postscript) (excerpt)

For anybody who ever wondered if their own dreams were at least as deep and meaningful as those of Sylvia Plath.... I told you that there was little mystery to dreaming. It is all there for the knowing: rape, racism, misandry, and all else.

.

Number Nein Dream!

(in dreams, a girl is often a girl)

Mainly in dreams do I lately find new material about which to write. Others' dreams are boring, so I'll desist. I've been writing about mine too much here recently. The meaning of dreams as the succession of emotional ideas and fantastical sensation has always seemed clear enough to me; unadorned by, and not in need of, ancillary enigma. Only the mystically disabled care about the dreams of others, seeing significance and usefulness among the figments and phantasms, finding signs in the signs, riding the liquid language of the sleeping mind in search of heretofore hidden meaning.... I can still hear the distant chatter, the oohs and ahhhs of supposed otherworldly comprehension, as if everyone is somehow more self-psychic in their dreams, tapped into the paranormalcy of their own boredom. Or, should it only be said that they are magically less charlatan in dreams than elsewhere? Or, should that not be said....

Either way, for some the darkness of the mind must be pleasured and then preserved. 

... speaking of darkness.

.

... what a circus!

Nothing to report so far this morning. 

I slept in. That is, if laziness and wakeful dreaming can be called sleep. I drank a coffee and it was time to start working. 

I am ready for another mountain trek. It is time to hike a peak, to experience a mostly unhindered view; winded, with modest accomplishment beneath. 

"We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing." - Bukowski

.

Just snapshots

Our lives are constructed for us, haphazardly, from splintered fragments of memories, half forgotten episodes that caused us something, occasions combining without mercy to form love - recurring chance. Slivers of life becoming full and then receding, memories invoked and then re-written, like the moon's monthly illusion, often lit but full of visible darkness, as heavy as a little planet stretching the tides, vast oceans rising up in hope to meet it.

Thinking back to my childhood is a strange but reoccurring adventure. Trying to somehow piece together the past, incidents that supposedly contributed to me feeling the way that I do. So much is lost, there are now only the vague prejudices that remain, the echoes of vanished experience, misplaced by a handful of noisy ghosts. We use anything to justify anything, without apology or explanation. The causes are mainly inaccessible, kept hidden and beyond reach. There is only the effect to contend with, with no route back. The forest is haunted by orbital sentries, the waning paths all lead back into unlit mystery. 

I walked out early this morning, searching the dark sky. It is invisible, I thought, chasing the sun slowly in its crescent phase, losing sky each day as it goes - it will rise in morning light and cross the sky today unseen.


Tonight, I thought again - just after the sun sets, and then for the next few weeks.

.

The Battle of Milvian Bridge

Time, like money, begins to represent all things. Having some is no guarantee of happiness, or love. But without it there is little chance of either. Everything requires time. 

Yesterday, after work, I lounged and read about the Roman Empire, Constantine, the consequences of a growing cult. I stayed up late and watched television. I slept in well past my normally hideous hour to awake.

I began work 17 minutes ago. Life keeps us busy enough to spend when we can.

"Time is a game played beautifully by children." - Heraclitus

.

Miss Poppins wears garters

It is good to be home. One can not live at Disneyland forever. A single day nearly killed me. I thought of the irony of such a thing as the day waned. Perhaps it was only the Daylight Saving Time loss.

This morning when he woke up little Rhys stood at the top of the stairs, behind his safety gate, and cried for "Dad-dy!... Dad-dy!!!..."

It's a very unique feeling, that. The words are starting to form, and the word for me is often towards the top of the list.

.

48 frames per second, or more.

(that sinking feeling)

I tried to be young again. I was barely recovering from a sinus cold when I went out on Friday night. I made it home late last night (Sunday) after a night out at a dance club, an after-party, bloody mary's all day at the pool of the Chateau Marmont, a failed attempt at an early night's sleep, awoken from near-sleep by another party in the hotel room, much heightened talk, barely more than chatter, the eventual dwindling attendance, late night chats, more wine, yet another failed attempt at sleep, then a full day at Disneyland, some of it also spent drinking (yes, it can be done), an hour-long search for a parked car that was only 20 yards from where I thought I had left it, the fatigued drive home.

Oh, I tried to be young again. I advise against it, youth, especially at this age.

The spirit was willing but now the spirit is cracked and leaking along the seams, the body will require weeks to recover, the strength to mend has abandoned me.

I exaggerate a little bit. My attempts at being young again were less than heroic. I merely needed a little running room to build up some speed, shed some past. Making the leap is never easy, but it doesn't help when your foot slips from the departing side. The slow motion descent as the arc of the jump heads low towards the opposing canyon wall, the one you had hoped to land with feet side down, perhaps having succeeded in a forward flip. Now even the lip is beyond reach, the collision with the approaching chasm wall is not what frightens you, it is the descent that immediately follows. 

It is always the descent that follows. Only memory and dreams enjoy the luxury of falling in slow motion. 

All else is just a trick of Hollywood.

.

News from Manhattan Beach

It is supposed to rain all day today in LA. It never rains here, hardly ever. But I've somehow managed to hit the lone day that it does. It had rained similarly in the Bay Area a few days ago. It must be the same front making its way southwards. The flight last night brought my sinus cold back. Or, perhaps it is only the rain following me, chasing me along the coast. 

Selavy relayed to me yesterday how he was once in LA for Thanksgiving, after a trip to Joshua Tree, driving the empty streets of the city like a madman, thinking himself quite lucky to be here on such a day and with such conditions. He raced from one side of the city to the other, with nobody stopping him, miles of open highway, looking for something to do, anything at all. He ended up eating Chinese food while seated at a plastic table, with plastic utensils, accompanied by the only other people in LA that had nowhere else to go. 

Then , there was the next day in which the city returned to normalcy... all traffic congestion and the hellish invitation of apocalypse. 

.

Precipitation: solid

It rained all night the night before last, then much of the day. A hail storm at noon. Ice falling from the skies. 

I leave for LA today. This time I will bring my camera. I will try to capture the essence of canine. We have a photo-shoot planned for my friends' dogs. Shit! I just realized that I have a fresh roll of film in my camera that will be ruined by the x-ray machines. I need to take 36 pictures before I get to the airport.

I like being able to work remotely. It affords me the ability to travel without consequence in employment. All I need is relative peace and a wi-fi connection. So, if you want me to come visit your house.... those are my demands.

NyQuil continues to plague me, though with diminished effect as each night passes. This morning I only dreamed of runaway advertisements on my phone while I was desperately trying to text. They were infuriating, but also easy to let go of once sleep lost its hold on me - nothing like the nightmare visions from the morning before. Maybe it was the rain...

Fuck. I have nothing to write about. That is the effect of NyQuil. It is mind-numbing. 

A friend sent an article yesterday instructing blog-writers to write "Epic" content if they want to increase traffic. I sent her back a screenshot of the definition of "epic."

She seemed pleased with my response, says she misses me. 

"Epic content doesn't just happen" says the author of the article, Corbett. I suppose that's quite true. It requires intent, purpose and much skill to produce epic material. He seems to have given this a lot of thought. 

Epic thought, it's called. 

I wonder how my modest audience would respond to such a shift in content here. It is inexplicable, but it would seem that people actually do come here to read the irrational ravings of a self-deluded lunatic. What other explanation could there be? I suppose it could be the cops, keeping an eye on me, for public safety. I mean, I have recently angered a member of their sorority. But how many cops does it take to monitor a website? I believe them to be mainly incompetent, but like many others they are also underfunded. 

The idea of hordes of epicene cops clamoring to this site every day, monitoring it in the hopes of making a bust, is a humorous one. It's a very Spy vs. Spyette scenario.  Looking at traffic sources, gathering IP addresses, and them reading through gibberish, hoping to make some sense of it all. 

Now, that is truly heroic adventure.

.

A mistake in usage

(Goya - The Madhouse)

Nobody seems to believe what they claim to believe; it's as if they are incapable. 

Last night I dreamed of vile crime. The accounting of the tale was jumbled and barely coherent, adding to its disturbing effect. There was a main character. He had been suspected of having committed a few stabbings. He spoke of Jack the Ripper and the deeply personal nature of such a thing. How much evidence is left, forensics, how close the perpetrator must get to the victims, to become one. There were visions of blades and blood. The memories of faces at the precise moment when the faces become memories and nothing more. To own that moment, he emphasized, A thing that can not be taken away. 

Pages turned carefully from an old book, descriptions. We walked freely through an abandoned building with high arches. He explained that all of the people there used to be writers, those who had used precise language. He misdescribed them as "exacting," though with a wryness in the telling. It was carnivalesque, and well past midnight. The faces appeared as nearly bodiless apparitions drawn forth to witness our passing in an open asylum. Smiles emerged from the shadows and became sinister; starless laugher, the bulging or lost dark eyes of the deeply troubled, howls off in the distance, summoning. A hideous woman hobbled her way to us, she appeared as a transvestite trapped in a madhouse. Her makeup was twisted and ill-applied. Her face grew in size until it occupied the entire dream, just red lipstick smiles and pupils taunting, melting from one into another as they spun. 

I awoke with a start, surprised that I had caught a character in my dream having made a mistake in usage, wondering what such a thing might indicate. Nothing good, I told myself. 

NyQuil truly is a wonder drug. I don't imagine they recommend it for daily usage. I am afraid to read the warning on the side. I fear that it might relay nothing of true consequence, it would create a daily monster. The feeling of morning sluggishness must come with a price. My mind forces strange dreams on me, only trying to get me to wake, after many hours of beloved lethargy. But no visions of that dark nature come freely. It's as Nietzsche said: When you peer into the darkness, the darkness also peers into you.

The idea of drinking coffee in the morning used to disgust me. 

"... nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose..." - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

.