Jackson

(They'll lead you 'round town like a scalded hound...)

My body isn't the right shape any more. Something went terribly wrong in its advancement. It has to do with aging, I'm certain of it. I just glimpsed myself in the bathroom mirror in my underwear, from an odd angle. Not exactly from behind but sort of a 2/3rds view from the side while I was twisting to reach something, with my naked back facing the mirror. I turned and caught sight of something pale, hideous, speckled with uninviting man hair, a smattering of dark-ish spots, etc. 

It was just me, of course. But it looked unfamiliar, grossly comical. I felt like Capt. Ahab.

It was something that perhaps only Rachel has seen and had the time to contemplate, to really enjoy; a site of time's cruel distortion, the tragedy of years, the slow accretion of aged flesh. 

I almost want to go back and photograph it for this post. People already accuse me of being far too self-involved, though. But I find some humor in it. I don't mind people laughing along. I would.

Well, I am getting sick. Perhaps it was the approaching malady already gripping my mind, distorting my body perception. Everybody around me has already been sick. Now it is my turn, I guess. I blame all of them, those who were sick prior to me. It was they that caused this. Who else to blame?

I often get sick last. I must not seem like a very attractive host. That, or my body fights it off slightly longer than others. It looks as if it's been fighting and losing something now for decades, like a galaxy of Ho-Hos swirling in a whirlpool vat of caramel. 

Well, we'll see.

I always seem to get sick on the weekends. I only have a 2/7ths chance of it, but I'll nail the weekend with sickness about 9 out of 10 times. It is why I don't live in Vegas. 

I'll sense its onset about midday on Friday. By Saturday morning I won't be able to get out of bed. By Monday morning I'll feel just good enough to work. 

Jackson, pictured above, will keep me company.  

He is a good fellow and I admire him greatly. He has taught me the unrestrained joy of a walk around the neighborhood, along the little river that cuts between the back sides of the houses. There are ducks there each day that take careful, quacking note of our passing. 

That's all. Quack, quack.

.

Booger

(Get a haircut, hippy, and wash your face!)

I took some pictures yesterday but I left my camera behind. Oh well, they were just pictures of the turkey and the table, the boy. The internet will have to survive without them.

I found the picture above, which I believe was taken just before he got his first "real" haircut. I was against it, sort of. I wanted to let his hair grow for as long as we (or he) could stand it. Who knows what negative effect it will have on the kid to have his hair cut early and often. He'll be in the ROTC in high school, I'm certain of it.

The picture of me from yesterday's post was actually taken by Rhys, his first. A few people refused to believe what a genuine marvel he is, a technical wunderkind.

I taught him the word "booger."  I hope it sticks.

A few days ago I was visiting the cnet.com website and I accidentally hit a key-command that changed all of my home pages to yahoo on all three browsers (even though two of them weren't open), changed the search field to yahoo also, even on Chrome, added an amazon.com and ebay.com button to two of them, then closed all open tabs and windows. I had never even known such a thing was possible. 

But the deals on amazon are simply amazing.

The world of the internet is becoming more and more insidious under the guise of convenience. The government is spying on everybody and then charging them to do so. Some of the bigger internet companies want to adopt an encryption standard, which would nix some of the government spying, or at least curb it, but of course that will never happen. 

Small violations of the law are going to become more regular and their discovery more mysterious. Traffic tickets will appear out of nowhere and they will become more trouble to fight than they are worth, though their worth will also grow. Already the punishment and cost for asserting your innocence has been growing and becoming more dangerous. Soon, the presumption of guilt will completely replace the presumption of innocence. It has already happened with several key crimes.

What amazes me is how much the supposed "conservatives" are often clamoring for more law enforcement, local and otherwise. They haven't thought that through very well. But the liberals are no better. They seem happy as long as government power is growing to accommodate their new programs. That should pan out well.

What am I talking about now, and on this most beautiful of all the Lord's days?

I was asked to say "grace" at dinner yesterday. It was not the triumph that I had imagined it to be. My only caveat was addressing it to the "Lord of many people…." Rhys was watching me, as was his mother, and her mother, and through magical christian proxy her mother's mother too, like the book of Numbers being read backwards, in space… 

So, I made the prayer child-friendly and ended it with a sincere thanks for our pup, Barkley.

What else was I going to do? 

Have you seen what happens to heathens?

.

Thanks!

(Rhys' first ever picture)

I have been saying it to the boy for some time now: "Rhys, I love you..."

He seems to understand, but I haven't been able to get him to mimic or repeat it back to me very well.  I seem to be getting closer.

Today, we went for a nice long walk together with Barkley, the pup. We needed to give Mom some alone time in the kitchen to prepare dinner, one that will be served as an elaborate late lunch. 

We came to a familiar place in our walk where we often sit on a bench and watch the world. 

As we sat there chatting, enjoying the moment, Rhys took out his binky "bebe" so that we could speak more easily, with greater clarity. I seized the moment...

"I love you, Rhys."

"I love you, Mommy."

(Rhys, asking to be picked up, T-Day)

.

Horror Vacui

(Nature's attempt to fill the void)

I've been writing posts here, almost every day, for four years. Well, three and a half, in truth. I didn't start writing daily until about six months into it. 1250 posts yesterday. I hadn't checked the totals in a while. 

Like Carnivale Selah, I have also been wondering what I am doing this for. I have lost some of my verve for it. I find that I repeat myself, re-tell already told stories, etc. 

If nothing else, Rhys will have a document of a time that he could not ever possibly remember, a time of which he will one day find himself curious. 

What were Mommy and Daddy like...

You spend so much of your life preparing and planning to make good memories. You attempt to arrange life in such a way that you will be able to look back on it happily. But sometimes something gets in the way. Sharing life can be difficult, two or more wills come into play and each has their own ideas about how things should be. Or worse, how it will be next time. You tell yourself what you deserve, what you are owed. But then one day you awake to find that you were owed nothing, and that you got pretty much what you deserved. 

Love has an odd way of balancing itself out. It is far from being an exact science, but you tend to derive happiness best when you are providing it most effortlessly. 

It is easy to forget that, too easy. You turn to the elusive struggle of happiness and it evaporates around you.

Nobody's perfect. Everybody is flawed. Though that in no way defines them, or yourself, completely. We are made up of more than just our mistakes and pains, and past. It is a struggle, getting older, recognizing the simple fact of selfishness, yet also needing kindness from others in new and challenging and simple ways, more than ever before. From where is the necessary love in life found? You must have been building it, preserving it along the way, to draw upon in times of need. We all need imaginary storehouses of love, to lean and draw upon in times of duress. Like so many other things in life, you recognize the lessons too late. 

You finally sit down and calculate the meaning of a 401k plan in your mid-40's and say to yourself: uh-oh.

Nature abhors a vacuum, and punishes the idle and the swift alike.

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The secret to my success

(Nelson, the gentle giant)

I have recently become the provisional provider for three dogs and three cats, at two different houses. Some friends are out of town. I am staying where most of the animals reside, and there is another dog in need of my care across town. I will be running from one place to another this morning, and then back again, measuring out dog food for their bowls, dispensing morning medications, making sure that they are all adequately loved and petted and encouraged to eat with tails wagging. 

I don't mind it. It is nice to feel needed, loved. 

Maybe I will become a male cat-lady, a spinster, an animal hoarder.

Is it possible? I suppose there would need to be some sort of sexual reassignment involved. Not just for me, but for all of the cats also, etc. I don't know if I could live in a house with 50+ cats and have them all be different genders, particularly with what I had just gone through. We would need to institute some rules. I suppose making them all female might be cheaper than trying to go the other direction. I'd have to look into it.

What a phrase: sexual reassignment.  And jeezus, what a horrible thought... inflicting some half-baked sexual reassignment program on a bunch of poor cats. It is still too early to ponder such diabolical tangents.

The Feline Solution. 

Yikes.

Where is all of this coming from? Ah, I see now, it was the phrase "male cat-lady." It sent me into a spiral involving group sex change operations for unwilling cats and kittens. I doubt there even is such a thing, though I don't see why it wouldn't be possible, for the right price. The most difficult part would perhaps be getting their consent. It would require some deft legalese and the acceptance of a paw-print signature.

I don't know. Seems like a horrendous waste of time, among other things. It might be easier and cheaper to just exclusively accumulate cats of a certain gender. It would keep me out of Dutch with PETA, too.

Didn't the character, Alex, from A Clockwork Orange kill a cat-lady? Wasn't that what finally got him in trouble, so that he had to go to behavioral reassignment? I wish I would have thought of that sooner. I might have somehow tied that in to this lost screed.

Let me try this post writing thing again:

I have set my sites on a new goal: financial freedom. I want to be debt free within two years. I'm not sure how it happened, but I fucked up. I ended up with a bunch of debt that I never wanted and does nothing for me. It just sort of crept into my life while I wasn't paying enough attention. Now it has me by the throat. 

Not any more. I am on guard against it now. I have a plan in place. It's not going to be easy, and it will take me about 10 months before I can even get to a point in which I can start taking big swings at it all, but there is a future out there somewhere, waiting for me to be free.

I try not to live with regrets, but it didn't have to be this way, truly. None of it did. But now it is this way and there seems to be no easy way out. 

It is insidious, how easy it is to get in debt, and how little you get for it, and how difficult it is to escape.

When we are young we are told that we can do whatever we want, we can be whomever we wish to be. Very few bother warning us that one sure way to prevent yourself from achieving either of those things is by willingly becoming a slave to debt. 

What the fuck am I talking about now, and why? Cat castration was better than this swill.

Starbucks opens in 20 minutes here, maybe some sweet caffeine surging through my veins will focus my thoughts some.

I awoke on my friends' couch this morning and I sit here typing these words like a fumbling curmudgeon.

Give me one more chance, readers. I promise I'll find something to giggle about before it's all over.

Okay, Starbucks coffee has made its way into my system now.

Here goes, my last chance:

I stopped drinking about two months ago. Almost two months ago. I got tired of waking up and feeling as if my head was filled with used kitty litter. I don't miss it, in general. It is in the specifics where it sometimes becomes a minor issue. Much of my social life was centered around drinking. The local pub was a regular place for me to interact with others. I liked going there daily and having a few pints of beer. 

Now, I am left with no regular outlet for normal human interaction. I mean, I know that there are things to do out there but I have yet to pursue them. I spend a lot of time reading, waking up in the early morning hours and then documenting that here, etc. 

I went to a few meetings that were dedicated to abstaining. Those people are obsessed with alcohol. It's nearly all they talk about. They insist that they have a disease and that they are powerless over it, and yet also recovering from it. But no other disease, I don't think, requires such obsessive attention to its denial. Imagine if the only way you could cure yourself of cancer was to gather together and discuss its presence in your body, previous or present, and then collectively agree that cancer must be avoided to be beaten.  

Odd, that. But maybe it works. I do not pretend to know all of its secrets, even after years of informal research. What is interesting is that a drinker accumulates many opinions on drinking through the years. Those opinions are only welcome to be shared if you are still drinking. Once you have stopped, then sharing them among non-drinkers is the sole place for your opinions forever afterwards. I find that division of thought and discourse on the subject to be an odd one.

If you stop drinking you will notice strange things about people that you used to drink with, just as they are certainly noticing the changes within you. Nobody has seemed to really mind it here in Sonoma, yet. In NYC that was not the case. I stopped drinking once for about a month and it seemed to be a personal affront to some. A few of my close friends nearly panicked at the mention of it. When I decided to start drinking again I did not step gently into it. I chose to jump in with both feet and quickly sunk well past my head into the depths. I ordered a pint of beer and a whiskey shot, to start. Beginner's luck. Many hours later that night I had found my way towards other, sobering intoxicants.

I hadn't decided to jump in that deep, truly. I had only decided to jump in. It is not like swimming, or riding a bike. It is more like swimming or riding a bike drunk. It takes a fair amount of practice just to survive. You never excel, you only marvel at your ability to approximate. Few others are impressed. 

Cops, etc.

It was a lesson learned, for me. I assume that it might be similar to how vegans feel after years of not eating certain foods and then ingesting some. They describe the sickened feeling they have in their abdomens, as if they have been poisoned. Mostly imaginary, I'm sure, but real enough to them. When you base your life on denouncing something it becomes nearly impossible to be honest about it. In that same way the opposite is also true. To love something or someone blurs your ability to know it or them as others do.

I have no idea how long I will go without drinking. The idea excites me in a way that the thought of continued drinking never quite did. But nobody, I don't think, counts how many unbroken months and years it's been since they've been drinking. For some reason those who stop do. That is troubling.

I do not want to be a calendar watcher. The forward march of time is not a victory for me. 

One thing I very much do look forward to: I want to wander around Christmas parties telling people that they drink too much, rather than just showing them what that looks like. Loudly announcing, Oh, I'll just have a soda, or juice. Do you have any coffee? Listen, if anybody needs a ride home because they've drunk too much of that poison alcohol, please, dear god please, let me know… I'd be more than happy to drive you home. I'd hate to think that I let any one of you be slave to your own demonic impulses….. etc. etc.

Yes, I find sobriety almost as loutish as drunkenness, with some. 

Between cat castration, financial debt, and inebriation cessation I have run out of topics.

Email me privately if you'd like to know my secrets.

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Overcome

(Rizzo, the destructor)

Well, I've done it again.

I awoke at 3:30am and it is now 9am. I accomplished little to nothing in those hours. I didn't even read. Somehow I have no time left, though by outward appearances it would seem that is all that I have.

I've also managed to screw something up on my computer. In the process of trying to fix it I've disabled something that seemingly can not be easily re-enabled. I'm certain this will mean that I won't be able to function normally for some time.

Hours peeled away from my life, as if time makes no difference.

I have too much of it when I don't want it, never enough when it counts.

.

The Greatest Show on Earth

(Zora, the thunder dog)

The more time I have the less I manage it, or the less well I manage it.

I woke up at 2:30 this morning. Somehow, I still managed to spend my time in such a way that I didn't have any left to write a post.

Improving my habits doesn't actually improve my habits.
 
I'm going to start meditating again. Well, I've been thinking about it anyway. I need to unclutter my mind some, to straighten its errant shuffling. Exercise only goes so far. I used to dabble in mediation when I was a young man, more of a boy really, somewhere between the two states. Seventeen years old, approx.

I remember experimenting with lots of stuff back then. I had a greater willingness to try a variety of things. Somewhere along the way that willingness started to repeat and eventually led to habits formed, and Zeppelin.

If "You can't teach and old dog new tricks" then I wonder if you can remind them of any. We learn most of what we need to know pretty early on. The rest of life tends to be reminders: painful, joyous, unsuspecting and otherwise.


I looked into it: you most certainly can teach an old dog new tricks. They actually learn much faster than young dogs as they are less distracted and more focused on the possibility of reward.

So, there is that.

I'll be sitting, shaking, fetching, and rolling over in no time.

Ringling Brothers and Barnum and Bailey will demand to know my secret.

 .

Like a complete unknown

(Daybreak, Maxfield Parrish)

A friend tried acid for the first time yesterday. LSD-25, that is. I enjoyed the stuff very regularly when I was an aging kid. Some might say a little too regularly. But who am I to judge?

Them, that is.

I thought that magical life was made of the stuff, that I had discovered a secret key to the universe, neither of which quite turned out to be true. But I sure got my kicks for a while.

I told myself all sorts of crazy things, some of which I still believe. I told myself that as I got older if I still did not regularly trip every now and then that would mean that I had caved in and had become old, too set in my ways, unable to face myself, afraid of what I would see there in that compressed and private world.

Was I wrong? 

For anybody who wishes to know what the visual aspect of the drug is, there is this. It approximates that one part of the experience pretty well, though it doesn't last very long.

Think about what your mind must endure visually in that experiment to "trick" it into seeing that way for a few seconds, and then reflect upon how long the acid trip lasts…. It is thoughts like that which keep me from re-imbibing, I think. That is one king hell powerful drug. 

Every day is burning, man.

It is beginning to look like I might be able to attend Burning Man this year. So, there is that, anyway. I will have to check into camp sites for lone retirees. I will insist that a few friends of mine who have yet to go will be there. I will approach the festival with a religious fervor. 

Maybe.

My life is changing. There is no going back to the way that it was. There never is, but it is what we tell ourselves we might want, the comfort of the past. 

Dylan warned us about thinking that way:

You never turned around the see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns 

when they all come down and did tricks for you

You never understood that it 'aint no good

You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you….

The painting above is what my friend sent to visually approximate her experience. 

Maybe I should give it a try again, acid. Maybe I have forgotten the keys to the kingdom.

Perhaps it will make it possible for me to come to better terms with aging. Because nothing seems more appealing right now then a nice strong liquid dose of the stuff and a long gaze into the mirror of my own eyes.

Right?

Then take me disappearin' through the smoke rings of my mind

Down the foggy ruins of time, far past the frozen leaves

The haunted frightened trees, out to the windy beach

far from the twisted reach of crazy sorrow

Yes, to dance beneath the diamond sky with one hand waving free

Silhouetted by the sea, circled by the circus sands

With all memory and fate driven deep beneath the waves

Let me forget about today until tomorrow

Hey!…

… I'm not sleepy and there is no place I'm going to... 

… in the jingle-jangle morning. . . .

.

On epiphany

On returning, I got out of my car and started across the parking lot in the darkness, a pre-dawn phantom with keys jingling. The sky was wide, dark, clear, framed by trees. The bright band of galaxy and moon seemed somehow closer than before. The milky way pulled across it tightly. Gravity never pushes.

I stopped, still. I could nearly sense the movement of the many stars, though not through senses. There is also that sense of sense that the mind makes; a repository of experiences, a cache of half-remembered adventures. Memories inform, haunt us.

Just another morning, spent alone.

It is a déjà vu.


I have already seen it all. It has also appeared before me, on departing.

 

.

Hammer Time

Still, desperately trying to make some sense of it all. Life gets confusing and then, somehow, simple again. You prioritize your needs, your wants, your fears… then submerge them in repression and denial, where they're safe.

Starbucks will likely help me with all of that.

My anxieties find solace in the murky depths of morning coffee. 

I found out yesterday that I am getting a promotion at work. It was anticipated. I had interviewed for it several times and the decision finally came down… I was going to be rewarded for my dedication and hard work. 

I had hoped to never say that last sentence, but there it is.

I always fashioned myself to be more of a lottery-winner than one who achieves anything through sustained effort. 

I was born free, etc.

If I ever win the lottery, here is what I will do:

- Hire a film crew 

- Fire them for having attitude problems

- Repeat

- Take all of my friends on an emergency European culinary tour. Hotels, exteriors, etc.

- Film the whole thing in costly handheld video

- Hire an editing team

- Make a documentary about the fastest lottery winnings loser of all time

- Make my money back on the college film festival circuit

- Challenge new lottery winners to beat me

- Film them, or video

- Repeat.

I haven't worked out all of the details yet. It is my American Dream: to document the sudden financial loss of others.

"You can't lose if you don't play" 

That's my motto.

I also thought of a way to make money if I ever discovered the key to traveling backwards through time: I would buy a box of sports almanacs and then go back and sell them to all the rubes. 

I'd make a freakin' killing.

You see? I've never been very good at keeping money, even though there have been times in my life when I made lots of it, more than I knew what to do with, obviously. It's all gone. Making the money was never dependent upon my economic sense, however. It was all circumstantial.

Right place, right time.

I just tried to spell circumstantial as circumstansial and then circumstancial. 

See what I mean?

Starbucks will likely help me with that.

Here is the key to my financial success: stay out of debt. 

It's very simple. 

- Don't get into debt

- Get out of debt

- Stay out of debt

That last one's important.

Do you see now why they promoted me? When you possess the capacity for high level problem solving like that… well, it's what's commonly known as a "no-brainer" in my chosen industry.

That word is funny: industry. There's no such thing any more, not in my field anyway. It is mostly imaginary, a realm where I can pretend to excel. 

I had meant to write a more honest accounting of my feelings this morning but couldn't bring myself around to it. Life is tough, and no true story-teller would suggest otherwise. But that's what I've done.

For additional insight on how to lose money and yet still stay out of debt, check here.

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topsy turvy

(Trust in Damon)

All night, the winds, delivering their message. The front window of a local restaurant blown out. Reports of trees down everywhere, power blackouts, chaos and wonder. Strange times for the darkness. It is a yearly message. Time to invoke, I suppose. 

The social webs would have you believe that their nuclear experts know the real Fukushima story. The mainstream press and science are covering something up, again.

"...susceptibility to conspiracy theories isn’t a matter of objectively evaluating evidence. It’s more about alienation. People who fall for such theories don’t trust the government or the media. They aim their scrutiny at the official narrative, not at the alternative explanations. In this respect, they’re not so different from the rest of us."

Yesterday's post was quite popular. I have re-conquered my readership, wowed them with salacious prison-love stories. My numbers are soaring…. People simply adore a serial murderer, though Manson does not qualify, I do not believe. On Wikipedia he is listed only as an "American criminal." That must really burn him up, if he has internet access. 

An online friend yesterday brought my attention to this site. Creepy stuff, to be sure. If you are interested in receiving Manson's wisdom directly then that is the place for it. I could not stomach much of it. 

It is striking how one of the most famous and notorious cult leaders of the 20th century sounds like a whining teenager when you put their words up on the internet for all to see. 

Haters be hatin', says Charlie. They be hatin', 'cause they jealous... 

IMHO, he takes the whole "counter-culture" thing a little too far. 

Matt Damon is a big believer in his nouveaux helter skelter theories of "topsy-turvy" (see above and below).

Perhaps we are still not ready for Manson's wild celestial wisdom. 

Just look at what he was trying to do for race relations… and the white people never even bothered to thank him:

.

Miss Manson

(Star)

Tough times for ol' Squeaky Fromme... Charlie Manson has a new squeeze. 

Charisma, the kid's still got it.

Hollywood really does know what to do with unfiltered talent. 

Who are we to judge true love, when it blossoms under the most unlikely of conditions. I'm sure that Star, 25 yrs old, is just after all of the exhilarating dual near-death sex with Manson, now 79. It must be exciting to wonder who's going to end up sliding into the great beyond first, by will or by fate.

She claims to be attracted to his very pro-environment writings. 

"Charlie's put most of that apocalyptic race-war stuff behind him. We just want to make a nice home together now. The earth needs our help."

She was kept in a closet and beaten with wooden bibles for her first 20 odd years on this planet. Then, to think... by the grace of god's tender hand... she emerges from that loving dungeon and finds true purpose in the eyes of a visionary. Those eyes are, of course, situated just below the swastika tattoo found on his lower middle forehead. 

That's some face to have hanging over you in the act of coitus delicti. 

What a genuine wonder is god's guiding hand, or hands. Perhaps this will be the subject of my Thanksgiving Day speech/prayer: "Love will find a way out" 

(Audio download available here shortly after Thanksgiving dinner).

When I was still in high school, the year I dropped out, I was asked to give a speech to our advanced English class, part of the school's "gifted program."  I hadn't prepared anything, but I had recently read Vincent Bulgliosi's account of the Manson murders, Helter Skelter.

Now, the school was under review for additional financial aid and there were inspectors walking the hallways, dropping in on classes, inspecting, etc. We had been warned that this might be the case. 

The subject that I was given to produce a speech on was, "Somebody you admire!"

Let's be clear: I never admired Charles Manson. Ever. But I was a youthful rabble-rouser, or so I thought, and I had frightful powers of memory. I still do, sometimes, though my powers have been flagging lately and in need of some repair. Now, I am more comical than astonishing. 

But, I had been quite taken by a courtroom speech of Manson's. I believe it was as part of his pre-sentencing conviction statement. 

Mr. and Mrs. America - you are wrong. I am not the king of the jews nor am I a hippy cult leader. I am what you have made of me, and the mad dog devil killer fiend leper is a reflection of your society. Whatever the outcome of this madness that you call a fair trial or Christian justice, you can know this: In my mind's eye my thoughts light fires in your cities.

Cool, I thought. This guy has a bit of a Jim Morrison vibe. 

Sort of.

I went on to discuss his willingness to do what he thought was right, and needed, even though it flew in the face of traditional mores. Blah, blah, blah... I was just making stuff up, nonsense of course. But I may have believed some of it at that time. I was moved by my impassioned words of dedication to a cause. He seemed to be a sort of anti-Gandhi. By association, so did I.

I believed in righteousness, brother.

Not any more, it has been beaten out of me. I just want to pay my taxes. If it were possible to pay them directly at the local police station then I'd be the first in line and would offer to help clean up afterwards, serve coffee, etc. I am a model citizen.

But, I look on Facebook and see similar sentiments to the one spoken above by little Mansons everywhere. That whatever horror befalls the people of America, it is all their own fault. Not only do they deserve it but there is pleasure to be had in them unwittingly getting it. People love to see a graceless fall from imagined grace. Then, there is only left the matter of questioning the true height of the fall. People hate the feeling of obligation, to watch others lose, particularly if they don't openly admit losing. They will resent you for it, having to explain your loss to you. It is beneath them, or should be.

If the pic below doesn't look like a Facebook "couples cutie pic" then I simply don't know what does? 

Manson says, "Oh, that..." when asked about a possible marriage between the two. 

But you know how guys can be about commitment.

("Stars")

.

So much

Up with the moon. It hangs somewhere behind the clouds, beyond the rain. The next season is already here; the wet one, the cold. It can be felt arriving in the silence of the early morning. 

I look for autumn, though it is missing. That is its way. It always feels almost.

This will be the boy's second winter. He now recognizes the leaves that fall from the trees. The colors he knows, the reds, the yellows. Two months ago I was pointing up at them, like a fool, then showing them to him, fallen to the ground. So much has changed.

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


XXII

so much depends
upon

a red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens


- WCM

.

Quiet Night Thoughts

(Cato)

   Before my bed

there is bright moonlight

   So that it seems

like frost on the ground:

   Lifting my head

I watch the bright moon

   Lowering my head

I dream that I'm home.

- Li Po

.

Kugeln, I say, Kugeln…!!!

Strangest thing. I get in my car and am driving somewhere. Several minutes into the drive I notice two things, inexplicable as they may be: my seat belt isn't on and the annoying warning tone isn't going off. To my memory this has never happened before. 

I drive on, trying not to move, thinking that it must have gone off already and I just didn't notice it. My head has been elsewhere. I start trying to put the pieces together. I must know precisely what I did differently that might have caused this blessing... I had stopped to get gas. Perhaps there is some strange combination of releasing the fuel door and starting the car again that keeps the damned thing from alerting me to my own self-danger and recklessness. Nobody likes to be reminded, etc.

It felt as if hours passed: no bell. 

I sat as still as I possibly could, having unlocked one of the mysteries of the universe I didn't want to disturb my heavenly luck. This is a Volkswagen. It made no sense. I was beating them at their own game. 

I can't wait until Facebook finds out about this. 

Balls to German engineering…

Balls!!!

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Stuffing and Gravy

No time to write this morning, though I've been up since Zero. 

I sit at the counter of a local diner, waiting. Soon I will be devouring bacon and eggs and biscuits, to slow the advancing coffee.

I am feeling artless this morning. 

It is probably the effect of too many prayers directed towards me through the aether. 

I have been preparing my Thanksgiving Day speech. 

My imaginary audience is really in for a treat, as the turkey slows their dreams and the cranberries take orbit. 

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A Franciscan Friar

(San Castoreum)

A post in the middle of the night, or early morning (for me). Now, I feel guilty about writing another. Am I being excessive?

Guilty. Well, no. Perhaps not that feeling.

With Thanksgiving coming I have been trying to make a list of the things that I am grateful and thankful for, in the event that somebody asks me to pray during dinner (one of my favorite requests, perversely). It is me talking to their god, in front of them. What could be better?

The full Beaver Moon is hanging outside my window. It will reach its fullest here in a couple of hours. I am thankful for it. I will have a bellyful of coffee by then and perhaps some yogurt. 

The gym calls from a great, dark distance. Perhaps I will ask Juan, the owner, what the word for Mexico is, in Spanish.

I will then cleverly relay that information to Rhys: Meh-He-Co.

Dios mio…

I am thankful and grateful for self-examination and mildly self-deprecating humor. Combined, they allow others to more easily forgive you of your less egregious errors. Without those qualities, some are lost, wandering within. They insist on the sole supremacy of self. Their sense of value is a punishable challenge, unable to laugh at, or with, themselves.

Poor, vanished souls.

If I were a praying man, then those helpless creatures would be the object of my daily celestial mutterings. They never even seem to know who they are. It is a sickness of self. 

Ask anybody if they have a sense of humor about themselves, nobody will claim its absence. It is like driving well and being loved by animals, everybody wishes to believe it about themselves, wrongly believing that belief in a possessed quality produces said quality. 

The world is full of bad drivers and those whom animals systematically avoid, just look around.

Those are whom I will pray for on Thanksgiving, if asked. The unrecoverable among us. The bad drivers and those who remain unloved by animals. I will openly thank GOD for my nearly flawless driving record (the facts don't matter here) and for hedging my way towards the top rung of the Saint Francis of Assisi heaven.

I will be President of the "helpless beasts" fan club. 

Never ordained, but widely recognized as a lover of dam-buidling beavers everywhere. 

That will make its way into my Thanksgiving prayer. 

Count on it.

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Rio Pequeño

I was not kidding about falling asleep earlier and earlier. Tonight - well, sort of tonight. It barely qualifies... I fell asleep at 7pm. Then, I awoke at 11pm. My sleeping patterns don't even cross the threshold of midnight any more.

I did get to "peep" the full Beaver Moon before all of my sleep excitement. 

It must be riveting for my readers… Where is he going with this…?

Well, as promised, we went on a hike yesterday. No story to tell, really, but as we were walking along I pointed out a little river to Rhys. I called it "Rio Pequeño," thinking myself clever. A good dad, etc. 

It reminded me of a time recently at the gym. I was chatting with Juan Zaragoza, the owner. He was telling me a story about a time recently that he went to visit his family in a small city in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. He was describing the house that he stayed in and how it was situated to the city below. He described a small river in the valley near the house. 

No kidding, I could not make this up: I interrupted his story to ask him what the word for "river" was in Spanish.

That is not a joke. Stinkin' Fucking Gringo…. What is the Spanish word for river? …Jesus Christo.

I may have even said, "What is 'river' in Español?"

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Phuck Fair

(St. Steinbeck's)

Steinbeck has proven to be just as I remembered him. Not that I disagree with what he has to say, this time, he only says it artlessly. 

He needed a blog... a site like this, perhaps.

He "proselytizes too literally" says CS. I agree.

I awoke at 4:20, my brethren. 

A.M., that is. 

The nearly full Beaver Moon shone through my window. Through the clouds, then through my window. Now, it dips behind the neighboring roof, heading towards tomorrow.

This autumn passed without me, nearly. I barely noticed. A drive up through the valley reflects that it is over. Most of the leaves have changed and fallen. The vines are bare and wicked.

Here is how I felt about it nearly two years ago. A poem, dancing for its life.

Today, we will go on a hike. We will find an appropriate one, we will go. A new experience, something to put in our lives. I will perhaps tell a story about it tomorrow.

Famous moralist Ken Starr has gone to bat for a convicted child molester, an admitted child molester. He's recovered, say the many testimonials. He hasn't molested a child for 30 years now, since he's been in prison anyway. 

Jesus must have healed him in his dirty spot. 

It's nice to know that Starr is applying his famed moralism liberally. He and ol' Steinbeck.

Remember when they tried to take down Clinton with that fat fellatio girl? She turned 40 this year. Funny.

That's a lot of "f" sounds... with room for one more.

Ah... Paula Jones, Linda Tripp, etc. 

Let's now forget how the world first came to hear from Ann Coulter: She was an unpaid legal adviser to the team that propped up Paula Jones' case against Clinton. 

Coulter was the one who "leaked" details about the President's cock being crooked. She rode to fame on a bent carriage.

Fun times. 

Coffee next, and soon.

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East of Eden

     "I don't know how it will be in the years to come. There are monstrous changes taking place in the world, forces shaping a future whose face we do not know. Some of these forces seem evil to us, perhaps not in themselves but because their tendency is to eliminate things we hold good. It is true that two men can lift a bigger stone than one man. A group can build automobiles quicker and better than one man, and bread from a huge factory is cheaper and more uniform. When our food and clothing and housing are all born in the complication of mass production, mass method is bound to get in our thinking and eliminate all other thinking. In our time mass or collective production has entered our economics, our politics, and even our religion, so that some nations have substituted the idea collective for the idea of God. This in my time is the danger. There is great tension in the world, tension towards a breaking point, and men are unhappy and confused.

     At such a time it seems natural and good to me to ask myself these questions. What do I believe in? What must I fight for and what must I fight against?

     Our species is the only creative species, and it has only one creative instrument, the individual mind and the spirit of a man. Nothing was ever created by two men. There are no good collaborations, whether in music, in art, in poetry, in mathematics, in philosophy. Once the miracle of creation has taken place, the group can build and extend it, but the group never invents anything. The preciousness lies in the lonely mind of a man.

     And now the forces marshaled around the concept of the group have declared a war of extermination on that preciousness, the mind of man. By disparagement, by starvation, by repressions, forced direction, and the stunning hammerblows of conditioning, the free, roving mind is being pursued, roped, blunted, drugged. It is a sad suicidal course our species seems to have taken.

     And I believe this: that the free, exploring mind of the individual human is the most valuable thing in the world. And this I would fight for: the freedom of the mind to take any direction it wishes, undirected. And this I must fight against: any idea, religion, or government which limits or destroys the individual. This is what I am and this is what I am about. I can understand why a system built on a pattern must try to destroy the free mind, for that is one thing that by inspection can destroy such a system. Surely I can understand this, and I hate it and will fight against it to preserve the one thing that separates us from the uncreative beasts. If the glory can be killed, we are lost."

- John Steinbeck, East of Eden

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That one

The voice in your head that tells you whether you are happy or not is the best chance you have. 

Not the one that tells you that you are right, or that you've been wronged, but the other one. 

The one that somehow keeps getting interrupted. 

That one.

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… all hope

(Cato)

It's as if my body is attempting to return to being nocturnal after several years away.

I used to stay up late by choice. Years later, I would religiously wake up late and work all night, monastically. Now, my body is trying to get back to the other side of the evening. I am crawling in counter-clockwise circles towards the dark.

I fell asleep around 8pm last night, awoke around 2am. I just keep going to bed earlier and earlier. I am pulled forward in time by something I can not see. Soon enough I will be asking to leave work early. My afternoon naps will stretch into the evening's hours.

I've been lying in bed pretending that I am normal for a few hours now. The bed is both the best and the worst place for such a thing: pretending to be normal. It seems easily plausible, so easily lost. 

If you want insight into the dual nature of the bed, as a space, just watch the morning care that women put into setting it apart as a special space within the home, then await the evening's arrival. It is a fun game to play, that sport. It invites a thing that seems to resist the thing.

Defiling the bed is a strong metaphor, one that many seem capable and willing to abandon themselves to. I don't mean that type of defiling. I mean tarnishing the sheets with physicality, bringing them to sudden ruin, giving oneself over with another to the chaos of impulse, the anarchy of desire. 

Naughty or not, here I come…

Women…. A friend is struggling lately with the concept and the fact. I have given him my best advice - expert in the area that I am - but he will not listen. I know this.

Wait, now that I think about it… I may have given him very contradictory advice. Oh well, that's fine. A man's mind is dynamic and in tune with the swirling stars and inconstant moon, privy to unseen forces. A man should always be free to change his wishes at whim or will. It is part of what makes a man delicate and special, magical even - like a princess without the ss. He should always be encouraged to follow his intuitions, wherever they may lead him, even if into the arms of another. It wasn't or was meant to be... The great mystery of manhood is their abiding capacity to love, increased in appetite and duration by choice and leisure. 

A man's art is his being, his unending giving of himself to another. 

Abandon, abandon, abandon… who enter here. 

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… with lost bells

I can't remember what I've posted now, and what was destroyed.

Perhaps "destroyed" is not the right word for it, not in this new age. Deleted. It had not yet been "built," it can not be destroyed.

No time to write today, there is only the forward pull of time's endless disappearing.

My heart of silk

Is filled with lights

with lost bells,

with lilies and bees

I will go very far

farther than those hills,

farther than the seas,

close to the stars,

to beg Christ the Lord

to give back the soul I had

of old, when I was a child,

ripened with legends,

with a feathered cap

and a wooden sword.

-Lorca

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"Please don't be long"

(Rhys, pointing the way)

I wrote a few pages this morning and then deleted them. Again. It is becoming good practice for me. Very Zen, like shooting photos with a prime lens, or just framing within the camera but not "taking" anything. Moving my body to create, or to get near the shot. To fashion a moment that I can then let go.

It is instructive, these life lessons.

Below is a record of my wisdom:

The hemisphere that speaks does not know and the hemisphere that knows does not speak.

Some do not appreciate the dual blessing of contradictory impulses, so they resist, or move along one side of them, denouncing the other. It plagues them, choices - or the alternate moral sense that there isn't even a choice to be made, really...

In its confusion, or near it, there is sporadic truth to be found. It teaches one about the close proximity of certain emotions: insecurity and desire, fear and anger, happiness and denial, et al. Emotional conditions that can sometimes be connected with invisible but very resilient thread. The familiar movement of emotions should perhaps be taught above all other subjects. Though by whom we do not know, and can never agree.

Why can't we have both chaos and order? It is a perpetual wonder, a perennial question that never answers itself, even though it seems to by the asking alone.

Why can't we. Why not.

Many people prefer, and then suffer, a singularity of purpose. They even insist upon it as virtuous. It must give their lives a strong sense of meaning and direction. Though meaning and direction are  connected this way mostly through fallacy. At times I still have some admiration for this, like a great picture that someone else has taken and yet clearly means something else to them.

But, be careful, admiration can lead to....


See? A completion of the thought comes to mind, if not several - one, then another, then another. They float among us, sometimes blocking the way.

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