The myth of living

Some cosmologists now say that time is an entirely human construct, a fantasy that we tell ourselves and agree upon with one another. Gravity is too weak to cause significant interaction with particles at the atomic level, and there is little agreed upon science or math that posits it as the implacable one-way force that it seems to be, which in one sense it must be for it to affect the structure of the universe in the way that we have sensed and claimed. The time-cone is just a way of humans understanding their lives in the vastness of space. 

I am paraphrasing an article I read that I could not find again by a Google search. Somebody posted it online and I am too lazy to go back and find it. 

The cosmologists are putting themselves to the task of eliminating it from the discussion so that we can move on without it impacting how we understand the structure of things as they are. If they succeed then superposition will not seem nearly so bizarre any more. 

For me, it is impossible to consider anything outside of time for very long. I mean, I can do it in the abstract sense but as soon as I think of myself in relation to the universe, which I always do, then time leaps back into my limited conception of things and I am right where I was when I first drifted off.  

I waste a lot of time. I lounge around and read books, watch clips online, listen to music, write posts here against the imaginary wall of the internet, then fall in love with women who do not yet know me and probably never will. It is a way of multi-tasking - I am able to be productive and procrastinate all at once. 

The clouds just parted here in the valley and I wish only to spend my time in a way that might cause the universe to smile upon me and my silly subatomic vanities. 

Still, death announces itself with the sound of rumbling in the distance on an otherwise perfect day.

.

Advancements

(Witches' Sabbath, Goya)

Oh yeah, I received a promotion at work. I'm an overlord nerd, now. It is very exciting, and much hard work will follow, new tasks, etc. I have worked from home for so long now I can hardly imagine doing otherwise. I fear that I have spoiled myself through absence from the office. But difficulties faced alone grow in inverse proportion to the proximity of others. Troubleshooting is aided by fresh eyes. I am surrounded by very bright people at the office. At home, there is only me.

Nothing will really change. I'll be tasked with more difficult problems, ones which can not be passed off to a team above me. There will only be two types of issues now, ones that I must solve or else documenting the issue with precision for it to be sent to the Dev team for possible code correction. 

Onwards and upwards.

I never write about work here, for obvious reasons. I adopt the voice of chaos too often. I push buttons to see if what sort of mayhem can be derived from the unhindered use of fancy and whim. My whim seems to have a problem of sorts. So, no more work talk. That way lay the demons.

I go now to the airport, SFO. A friend is arriving from London. She and I will endure the tremendous traffic from there to Sonoma. Perhaps we will stop and get a drink to let the traffic ease up a bit. We'll have to see. There is never enough room in the universe, when viewed from a car stuck in traffic. It damages the spirit of man, the daily industry of commuters and commuting. 

.

Occultation time, again

Caring about anything is exhausting. I wrote a semi-screed the other morning after watching the last half of the debate but was unable to see it through to the "publish" button. What use are my opinions on such a disappointing circus of personality? The only way to shut it down is not to go. Stop paying to see animals in iron cages. 

I hear a lot about how important it is to vote and I want to believe it, but I don't. We live in an age of totalitarian democracy. It's both a technical term and a slur. As ol' H.S.T. said, There's no such thing as paranoia. Your worst fears can come true at any moment. Whatever you think there is that can possibly go wrong, it's already happening. Just name it and it is out there waiting to pounce, if it hasn't already.

I give up, for now. I look around me and am in disbelief at so much of what I hear and see. The internet has done little to improve either opinion or knowledge. I would go into detail, but that is useless and might only prove the thing that I am most against. There are always other facts to consider. The pushback from the emergence, and some would say triumph, of the scientific process has created a new structuralism around the sanctity of personal opinion. Everybody has become their own religion. Nobody is wrong any longer, because feeling wrong feels bad and we know that feeling bad puts you on the path of demons. 

So, I don't feel bad about what's happening, I laugh like a man possessed. 

We live in a world that is daily increasing in bullshit, particularly for those just entering. Every age has had its share of people who must feel this way, but the West is not enjoying any upswing in cultural importance. It is using its own devices to dismantle itself. I would never speak out against decadence, but it extracts its toll. Who survives the luxury of self-examination. 

Ah well.

Example: Is it just me, or is Obama only the most divisive president in history, for closet racists? 

Because the open and public challenging of that opinion on the most popular social media platform ever created just happened to coincide with strong feelings concerning the divisiveness of the first African-American president. That was all coincidental, I guess. It startles the senses to watch public opinion make its way through the public. We are increasingly being corralled into a world without nuance. I'm certain that the Facebook algorithms push divisiveness as a commercial interest. There are only two ways to feel - agreeable or angry.

I should probably not even post this, a grumbling about past and future grumblings. 

Dissatisfaction is useless, a salve made of salt.

When will I become the modest Buddhist that my sensibilities push me towards, or sometimes taunt me with. There is too much mumbling in everything around me, and within me. I await the return of calmness and wonder that I had as a youth, senses long flown. Looking up at stars, instead seeing the lights of Jesus' eyes, a rainbow exploded over again, long ago leaving its shrapnel spread through the heavens, the champagne tickle of remnant savior blood.

.

Make America Great Against

(Preparing to be Perfect)

My new Ethiopian coffee is brewing as I begin this. Sightglass from SF, a remembered recommendation from my buddy in Washington. It's a Sunday, so I will depart from routine and taste exotic things. Beyond the coffee, I'm not sure what else I can try that might qualify. Maybe a crumpet. Does England still qualify as being exotic? I mean, after Brexit are we able to just refer to them as foreign now? The term exotic seems too praising, to discover that they are enduring their own educational crisis. 

What next? Maybe France will start limiting religious freedoms. Liberties, as they were once known. "Religious freedoms" is an odd term to describe the wearing of the burka, or the burkini. I mean, it qualifies, but almost in that sense that you can't defeat religion with reason. It's institutionalized misogynistic nonsense protected under the banner of freedom that men insist is the way their god would want it. Does want it. If you want a population to grow then hide your women underneath burlap. It's a guaranteed aphrodisiac, just look at the numbers. How many rapings does it take to restore a village's honor? 

As for criticizing or supporting religious freedoms, I would not even advise trying. If Facebook can't solve your problems easily enough then you are living deeply within the enigma of opinion. 

The reality of a Trump presidency is beginning to emerge. The shape that it might take, which is hourglass. The left would have to try to stonewall him from a legislative angle for four years, the courts would have to try to stop him judicially, and one is left to wonder what the media might then be able to do. I suppose they could sit on their hands and act as if they were not the cause of all of this. They have created a cartoon monster and now they're looking around for superheroes to protect Gotham. As if.

If he isn't beaten then America will get the president it deserves, and the supreme court that it's been praying for. You wanted democracy, you got it. It's quite a relief that Gary Johnson is proving that there is no such thing as a 3rd party. His interviews are becoming increasingly informative concerning his abilities. I do not mean his not knowing what Aleppo is, that has (or should have) no bearing on a general election for the presidency. It's his inability to maintain his own sensibilities. Did I see him speaking through his tongue at an interviewer?

What the fuck. We live in lucky times. 

As for the Aleppo "slip"... The New York Times didn't seem to know what Aleppo was either. They first referred to it as the "de facto capital of the Islamic State" then as a "stronghold of the Islamic State" then as "the war-torn Syrian city" and then finally printed a correction in which they identified Raqqa as the capital of the Islamic State and went on to misidentify Aleppo as the "capital of Syria," presumably forgetting all about Damascus, or having never known.  

They need the internet over there at the NYT. Have they never seen Lawrence of Arabia? Shameful. It's no wonder that Trump has ascended to the great but terrible height of the republican nomination. When The New York Times fact checking department can't be bothered to critique their own critiques of candidates with what might be considered "facts," and when their corrections are as abysmal as their initial mistakes... Who knows. Or, maybe their fact teams have their hands full with Trump. 

It is not all the news that's fit to print. It's the liberals being too aggressive in their deep-rooted need to denounce. The voice of democracy needs a much better team than that. They are all cool cats, you see, rolling around together, high on factnip. 

There is a sense of exhaustion among everybody that I talk with. Some women seem to support Hillary, others look ashamed to admit it. I would be. I was going to vote 3rd party just to try to show support for anything else, but I have a child and now must vote for Hillary. I accept my doom. 

It' feels like I'm leaving my infant with grandma for the first time. She'll probably be okay, right? What if she coughs when we need her most? I'm waiting for Hillary to let free a fart during one of her coughing fits. What sort of grandma doesn't fart when they cough? It's suspicious. 

If Trump were to be assassinated then "the right" might be tempted to gloat that they're not the only ones in support of gun rights. They really need a new liberal to paint as crazy. If they're lucky maybe they'll get one that just arrives that way. They might need to be reminded by everyone that "guns don't kill people, people kill people..." and that one lone, crazed, demented liberal individual doesn't represent the values of millions of gun-loving, god-toting, devil-fearing, non-immigrant Americans.... 

All of that.

I love the phrase, people kill people. Not persons, but people. Persons kill people. Nobody seems to see the hidden disparity between the intent and the meaning of the statement. 

Ah well, phrases don't kill people. Unless it's Don't Tread on Me, Darky.... If you see something, shoot somebody. Everybody knows that you don't draw your weapon unless your intent is to kill.  

"Great Again" sounds like a Krakenesque monster. The biblical Gratigan. 

Or, its nemesis: The Gratagainst. 

The right would still be able to get enough garbage legislation through his desk with the Trump presidential stamp on it that I worry about the past, you know, America's legacy.

I can't tell which part of that sentence makes the least sense. There's very little to find funny in it, and I gave it a try. I wrote gave it a shot at first, but then realized the dark implication. Nobody is advocating assassination over here. This a peaceful site, dedicated mostly to nonsense and the editorial opinions derived from said nonsense. Damascus is still the capital of Syria.

Well, my coffee was first-rate. Really quality stuff, almost as if it was Made Great in America.

.

"... redolent of orchids..."

For Daisy was young and her artificial world was redolent of orchids and pleasant, cheerful snobbery and orchestras which set the rhythm of the year, summing up the sadness and suggestiveness of life in new tunes. All night the saxophones wailed the hopeless comment of the "Beale Street Blues" while a hundred pairs of golden and silver slippers shuffled the shining dust. At the gray tea hour there were always rooms that throbbed incessantly with this low, sweet fever, while fresh faces drifted here and there like rose petals blown by the sad horns around the floor.

When I can not sleep I'll sometimes pull a book of of the shelf and flip through, looking for a passage or phrase that jumps out, or for those that try to stay hidden. Last night was Gatsby, a book that I haven't picked up except to move from place to place in some time. Any page will make me stop flipping and draw my eyes from line to line. 

My old copy was purchased used and has the underlining of another. When books are read this way - without knowledge of the previous owner or owner's gender - it is fun to try to guess, to see what is significant to the eyes of another reader. It gives the reading a lopsided emphasis, as if you are not alone.

Jordan Baker instinctively avoided clever, shrewd men, and now I saw that this was because she felt safer on a plane where any divergence from a code would be thought impossible. She was incurably dishonest.

You tell me. 

CS reminded me that none of the women in the book are meant to be liked, but neither are the men. Nick Carraway is the character with whom we are meant to align, if at all. He, at least, has enough sense to stumble home, to collect and narrate his thoughts. Pulling us away from the party, then back into its aftermath. As safe from the coasts as the midwest itself. 

The descriptions of the carnivalesque jazz fading into the night are a part of why we are there, as if a hundred-headed monster is dancing next door in darkness. 

The book is a natural magic.

"What part of the Middle West?" I inquired casually. 

"San Francisco."

I should re-read Tender is the Night. There are few things more beautiful and sad, none in that way.
The idea that I have time to re-read things shows how luxurious my life has become, as if there were nothing left but time, so none of it matters.

I realize now that under different circumstances that conversation might have been one of the crises of my life.

The lines that I have nearly randomly chosen here are not meant to be part of this post any more than my own. They were all underlined in my copy.

I am disjointed and have been up since four score and seven hours ago. I drank a pot of coffee. All that it has accomplished is to have made me nervous on an empty stomach, brittle at any pace.

He had passed visibly through two states and was entering upon a third. After his embarrassment and his unreasoning joy he was consumed with wonder at her presence.

What menace, the romantic dream.

My life has been an attempt to test my own love. To prove it worthy, I do not let things end, as if longevity grants it greater value.

To determine if I am loved by those who make the claim I have pushed them past where I might have otherwise, beyond what could be considered fair by the rules of the game. There were some who once adored all of the pulling and the pushing, though took none of the blame for having done so themselves.

Love forgives everything, except maybe the shame of remembered joy.

A universe of ineffable gaudiness spun itself out in his brain while the clock ticked on the wash-stand and the moon soaked with wet light his tangled clothes upon the floor.

. 

The Image Problem

I wonder what sort of books she's into. 

Yesterday, I took some time off in the middle of the day to run some errands. I had made an arrangement with the bike shop to drop my bike off so they could do its one month adjustments, even though it has been two months. I called in advance and made sure that they could do it while I waited, and had planned on going to buy the new iPhone or get the screen on my old one fixed. Of course when I got there they knew nothing of this plan and told me it would be a couple days. I negotiated it down to one day and I should be picking up my bike later today.

I stopped by the Apple store but didn't feel right about buying the new iPhone. Phone providers used to subsidize the cost of a smart phone for their customers that were willing to sign a two year contract. Now, they offer the same monthly fees but no subsidized phone and no discount on monthly service. The moron that AT&T had hired to conduct their phone scams had a very difficult time grasping how this did not work to my advantage. No amount of layman's math could convey the idea to him that I will be paying more money now, as the entire cost of the phone will be my responsibility and I'll be taking on an additional $40 a month in fees just to have the phone, where that used to be partially included in my same monthly bill.  

I finally had to explain to him that we were done talking. I didn't buy the phone. There are bikes that need to be purchased. Not right away, of course, but soon I will need a carbon-fiber road bike. A nice one. The mountain bike has already paid for itself in sweat and money saved on alcohol. Well, maybe not yet, but soon, probably in another month or so. 

All of this resulted in me jogging to the gym yesterday, a thing I have not done in some time. I arrived already nearly soaking in sweat, then did another 20 minutes on the Nordic track, my full regular workout, and then jogged home. I was drenched, but still sit just above 200 lbs. My periodic return to episodic drinking has precipitated ups and downs of weight loss that have kept me just above 200. I'll get close and then I'll start enjoying the occasional glass of wine or more, then a pound or three will creep back onto my belly. 

I give it up and I start to vanish again. 

I'm beginning to suspect that alcohol and weight are somehow related. Ah well, my legs are just the slightest bit sore today from the short jog there and back. It was just over a mile, both ways, when totaled. 

So, today I will buy the most expensive pair of running shoes that I can find. It is how I conduct my consumer impulses: buy something that will guilt me into increased participation. If I can get below 200 pounds then I'll buy a whole new wardrobe, also. It will cost several thousand dollars, but it's the only way to keep the weight off. I'll throw out all of my older clothes and wear women's skin tight exercise apparel everywhere I go. Yoga pants are great for the office and nobody gets to tell me otherwise, etc. I'll drink fruit smoothies and talk to strangers about how my cross-fit regimen has been going, what my next personal fitness goals are, the vital importance of cardio, etc.

People will love me, like the presumably smart girl in the image above. I say presumably because she could be a retard. Sorry, I meant: she could be retarded. If you take the "ed" off of the end of the word it feels different, almost wrong.

Well, that's one of the joys of getting older, the curve of slowly mitigated and age appropriate bigotry. Once past a certain age you can say the word Negro at Thanksgiving dinner and most of the time people will just look away. That is, unless you happen to be at a black friend's house with their family. They'll just laugh at you, depending on context and of course tone. 

Why do all of my conservative friends understand the "problem with black communities" better than everybody else? It's as if they're the only ones that even seem to notice or understand what is really wrong with black people, while all the liberals seem to know how to do is to care, which is useless in the grand ol' scheme of things.

I still like to use the word Oriental, but I only use it when somebody is being really Asian about something. They can try to disoriental me but after a few glasses of wine on Thanksgiving at a black friend's house... nobody will really care. 

If anybody gives me any grief I'll throw my hands up and beg forgiveness:

What, I'm being Occidental. What did you expect?

Forgiveness must be granted on Thanksgiving. It's the law. Otherwise you're being an ingrate, which just flies in the face of all civility.  

If you think I'm being presumptuous here, well... you may have assumed that the image above is that of a female. It's not. It's a man with a 10" kneeknocker cock tucked underneath that book. He was also black if I remember correctly, though he had the softest white skin on his legs and loved to wear patterned dresses and to paint his nails. He said he related to the femininity of it, that it was likely because he didn't know who his father was and was raised only by his rather manly black mother. I suspect that he claimed this only to provoke me because he was a closet conservative, or perhaps because he thought I was being too white about it. You know, an easy target. 

.

.

Fixin' it

(Last Responders)

I woke up with bits of The Ramone's "It's Alive" album playing through my head. It's no wonder I'm so fucked up. I don't even like The Ramones. They're the Molly Hatchet of punk. I mean sure, I get it, they are somehow important, but fuck... so was World War II, and WW I, and 9/11 I'm told. I'm just supposed to take everybody's word for it? This is how Heroes are made. 

If you ever hear anybody ask where are the heroes now? then just tell them we need a new 9/11. That should resolve the remaining conversational nonsense, but it won't. 

Whatever national crisis occurs next I propose that we send in Molly Hatchet, maybe prep Ted Nugent to provide backup crossbow support. I have often wondered how their flirtation with disaster panned out for them.

Now we know: they got hitched. 

I had to explain to a close friend the other day that The Replacements were not The Lemonheads. It was dispiriting. I thought to myself... if he and I can be friends for all this time and there is still any lingering confusion about a band like The Replacements then I have failed. I haven't been a very good friend. 

I used to make collections. Single disc "albums" on the subjects of my choosing, arranged carefully for the enthusiastic music listener, though perhaps for those that are novices on the subjects in question. The intention was to introduce my friends to artists whose catalogs did not allow immediate access to their work. I would revel in the unapproachability - the electric Miles, odd electronics, Bowie's obscure stuff, Krautrock, Prince, Country, and even once there was Neil Young. I'm not an historian, but there were just too many bands and genres that didn't exactly invite new listeners, and their compilation albums were failures thrown against the record label wall by executives who hardly gave a shit. 

I was different, and determined. 

Fuck it. I also used to print out sheafs of my poems and give them to friends, so there is that... I was just a kid. I didn't know any better, and didn't get everything right on my first run.

I'm tempted to put a lot of work into a new collection of music now and only give it out on cassette tape. That'll teach people to mock me. Better yet, 8-track. Or, one copy and that will only be reel-to-reel. I'll call it "Scotch," after the magnetic tape, of course, or a reference to the semi-autonomous country from whence the delicious brown liquor arrives. In my heart that magical place will always be the free and sovereign: Scotchland. They should build a Panama Canal along their southern border with England.

I get it, I'm hardly holding on to anything here any more in terms of topical coherence. It's all falling apart, like the moment that you accept that you're tripping too hard. You sit down and try to give up, but no. 

No, that doesn't work. 

Was I different? I sometimes wonder how that worked out for me.

Being unique is hardly a value that can be effectively encouraged. I worry about it when I have nothing to read and only a phone in my hand. The best examples are a click away, which is too close to be useful. Maybe it was always that way, but did not seem so in the young and dawning Orlando that I knew. I want to believe that there is a vital difference between shopping for weird books, then reading them,  and clicking on your Facebook friend's weirdo links, but my wants are increasingly anachronistic and perhaps my perceptions only aligned with different times. 

Weirdness used to be a secret. It gets too many Likes now, makes weirdness impossibly accessible.

I've given up, I guess. I'm akin to a drag queen that has let themselves go. Pale fat has coalesced around the line where my pantyhose strictly meets my abdomen, my lipstick has performance smears, my hair a mess. I need new Spanx. It is all unsightly, this slow accretion of flesh, but the show must go on. I only wish that I hadn't made a career out of the harsher side of strip-tease. It was a youthful indiscretion, this brutal burlesque, and one that I now seem stuck with. Dedicated fans of form become insufferable. I mean myself, of course. 

I really should buy some fresh underwear. It could be a write-off.

Panties as they are called in the biz.

Listen readers, I agree with you, this is a crisis in writing. You know that, I know that, but maybe we should disagree on what can done about it. It's easy to just say "fix it!" 

Anybody can say that, I just did.

.

Everywhere

(Proof of Jesus)

It can be the simplest things, and often is. Living a life that invites reflection and leisure time spent indulging one's own interests. Riding the bike has done tremendous things for me, though evidence does not always make its way to the surface of my behavior and thought, or here.

Today, as I was riding, I tried not to spend too much time wrapped inside my own head. I took note of the the skies, the migratory birds above, the sounds, the clouds, the fields and hills, and of course the contours of road. It is easy to sometimes take for granted how beautiful California can be if you let it, and take the time to go where the other people do not. 

It's so simple, easy at times; the place is golden. 

There was enough wind climbing up the mountain that it was impossible not to notice, to fight through it, to have it cool me. To have it promise and fulfill all of the standard seasonal tropes. Then, to have the same wind at my back as I coasted back down, promising nothing at all. 

Everywhere I saw something else, something worth noticing or pursuing. I wished only to spend the day peddling and gliding along, as if anew. 

.

why not write a poem

life is such, 

poorly traced, 

glimpsed opaquely 

'neath paper starch

rice untouched,
so much of it arch

dearly imitated,

a children's tracing

selves the subject
of many tracings, 

abbreviated line

wrongful loss,

some lifeful gain
sensual loss

dated with
costs, then the

a type of sensuality exists, too
sensed, felt

knew

we few return, creating rifts

whose expectations? traces

hidden lives;
the lift of this
as if, the gift

brought to, 

sought that,

brought again
towards this:

nothing missed

nothing this

nothing is

.

Another day, another dollop

Put cream in my coffee this morning. Little white particles floated to the surface and tried to colonize my cup. I was too tired to care. The facilities team in my office came in a little bit later and threw that cream out and replaced it with a brand new carton. It's disgusting, but what can I do now? I would go purge but I am too often in danger of adopting another disorder. I've been told the eating ones are best to avoid and result in the least sympathy. 

Have you ever met an addict of any kind that didn't also exhibit hints of that behavior in their diet? I have. They are monsters: addicts that eat well. It requires an immense inner strictness, a balanced rigidity. It distorts something in a person to only be addicted to specific things. One must choose their imbalanced passions carefully if they ever hope to succeed. 

Since trying to lose weight, and doing so through increased exercise and decreased drinking, I've come to terms with a few troubling and recurring realizations. That I am a fucked up guy is one of them. I don't feel that much more so than others, comparatively speaking, but talking about it openly does make it seem so. I don't have to be fucked up, but I don't seem entirely capable of either stopping it or managing it on my own. I am driven by forces that I can neither control nor understand. My only options seem to be to embrace or deny those impulses that define me in this regard. 

Then, there are times where it is best to simply obey your compulsions. Why spend your life fighting? It makes little sense. 

People will tell you all the time to learn to accept yourself. I guess I never listened, or perhaps they meant something different, at least in my case. I don't think the idea is to accept yourself, at all. If that were true then we would all revert back to the cruel lying little shoplifters that we all were when we were children. Sort of. Accepting yourself is only viable if you are free from interests and passions. A little bit of Buddhism is a dangerous thing. 

Or, maybe they only meant "Don't hate yourself..." which I don't. 

I've reached a point where I can't tell which version of myself I should choose to nourish, the drinking one or the more clearheaded one. Left to my own devices I'm not the best abstainer, I'm the annoying vegan-atheist-cycling kind. I am good at it, at best, but have a secret compulsion to export my values upon those who have their own. I give in too easily to the temptations of self-righteousness, a state which can only be temporary for any honest drinker, at least when you drink in the manner that I have adopted. 

Periodic bouts of shame and guilt seem to be the state in which I am most comfortable. Perhaps comfortable is not the right word, familiar is more close the the truth. Familiarity and comfort seem to be the dividing lines between the states that I most fluctuate. Then of course there is alienation and discomfort. The other sides of the other coins, which somehow result in the coin tosses always needing to be done over, to verify. 

Shame and guilt, augmented with delusions of force majeure and aspirations of force raconteur. Now that is a prescription for writing. Or, a certain kind: confessional. I daily choke confessions out of myself a' la French Connection. 

Speaking of, I was going to try to fit a delusions of voyeur in there, as I do like to watch women getting dressed. That is perhaps a secret best kept close. 

Don't tell. It'll be our next little secret. A sort of French Confession. 

.

Truth is Wasted on the Trying

I can't wait to take a selfie with my new iPhone. I don't have one yet, but I will, then I'll be Instagraming and Snatchchatting with other kids my age. 

I spent the better part of the day yesterday with an old friend, we were noting the sometimes unexpected ways in which life unfolds - how you just get older and drift away from previous social circles. Well, I was saying that. My friend owns a yoga studio so she has a built-in social circle. Which is not to say that yoga is merely social, but you know what I mean, I hope: there are regular and friendly people in her life. I suppose that the social circle thing was my contribution to the conversation. 

She was commenting more on the realizations that age can cause you to make and confront concerning aging itself. You must feel your way through life if you are to approach it at all humanly. We agreed that parenting is the point of no return, the Rubicon of Rubicons. We are our own 12-step program, without the steps or the program, but we have it mostly figured out. There is a system somewhere in need of attention and interpretation. 

We decided that everything is subject to our approval. Not our collective approval, but rather individually. That's part of it, with age comes the sense that things are somehow changing for the worse, just beyond your control, and yet still somehow requiring your judgement or criticism. How else are things meant to improve without the vitality of voice that people in their middle years can offer. If things don't change then just retreat to letting them be. You'll be back.

I think young people should get two votes, people in their middle years should get one, and old people should be held under pillows until their opinions gently disappear from the universe. It's a sensible version of "progressive democracy." 

Jesus Heroin Christ... why are the DTs leading the polls when a great political thinker such as myself is here writing daily on this site. I'm not saying that I should be a candidate, or even a speech writer for a candidate, but euthanasia polls very well among certain demographics - the quietus campaign. The Pillow of Dorian Grey. 

Okay, I'll try to stop. That was hideous. I was only wanting to relay what an unexpected and pleasant day I had yesterday. Not sure how I got derailed into putting retirees down with pillows. Mitt Romney's self-deportation program, stage 2. Though, pillows are everywhere, and cheap. Worse ideas have already gone viral. Old people do possess many valuable resources that can be utilized to usher in the new era. They have been hoarding pillows for decades. 

.... Let me try again.

We took the kids to a park, then to lunch, then back to her house for swimming and trampolining. Then dinner, a casserole which we all joked reminded us each of growing up in the 70s. The parental group did, anyway. Four cans of something and a glass dish is how her boyfriend very aptly described it. Comfort food, as long as you don't think about it too much. I don't mean my friend's casserole from yesterday - it was quite good and not drenched in canned soups - but the industrial versions advanced in the 70s as part of the American myth concerning the newly created convenience of health. The Campbell's Heart Association. 

Health can be inconvenient. There are many who seek to make it even more so. Diet is the religion of self, so there will always be people wishing to lord theirs over yours, make it exclusive to the point of prohibitive entry. The pearly gates of supermarketing. It is iniquitous to eat poorly, particularly if you happen to be poor. It is only socially disgraceful to do so when wealthy. One need not burn in hell over the infrequent dietary indiscretion. Being poor is the real sin, and some hate poverty almost as much as wealth. Those who balance their hatred of hunger with their disgust of obesity. Moderation is salvation. 

I typed salivation, at first, there. 

The point about moderation was mine. I was relaying to my buddy how I feel, as if I have finally found this precarious place where I am enjoying my pleasures mostly moderately. One never knows when the train will break off the tracks of the midnight express, barreling through open canyons and prairies in search of anything unwanted, the unexpected sunrises. A dehydrated vampire that is too chaotic for the vampire community. The warning letters have been sent. The Castle Owners Administration is in pursuit. There are standards everywhere and at all levels that must be honored. 

 

Still trying....

Parents are being arrested across America for letting their kids play safely unattended. Other diligent parents call the police and turn them in. It's called child endangerment, a household version of the seeing-something-and-saying-something brand of preparedness that neighbors can really sink their teeth into. The cops show up and kids are playing, so a parent needs to go to jail for ever having allowed such a thing. If you were wondering where the new fascism will emerge then look no further. It's all part of America's war on wars. If we can't count on the standards of our Neighborhood Watch teams then how do we ever expect to curb police brutality. 

I want the term "House Arrest" to grow some legs.

It's the coffee that prevents me from sticking to a subject, I swear. 

To enjoy relative moderation in diet, exercise, sleep, and intake is unusual for me. I can at least now see how other people more easily sustain a state they call happiness. The deep satisfaction of closing a checkbook with an account well balanced. 

I read that they've recently approved 60 year mortgages for children as young as ten years old. It's part of a governmentally approved diet-to-debt plan. Each house will be sufficient to store ten years worth of canned foods and a single glass baking pan. Pyrex. No longer will you have to wait for adulthood to ruin yourself with an unpracticed cursive signature. Freedom may not free, but it does offer some very enticing interest rates. No, wait... I might be confusing a few different articles that I saw. It was OxyContin that they approved for children. 

.

Saving Hetty Green

(The Witch of Wall Street)

Death is everywhere and for all time. I recall the memory of death's foreignness when I was a child, that it was somehow an unusual event - something rare and ominous, something not to be touched. It isn't rare. It was only hidden, nearly as quotidian as birth, celebrated in inverse. It is the standard by which most lives are measured when a certain quality of living is assumed. Then, there is the quantity by which we all nod our heads in approval or disapproval at the other having had their fair or unfair shake at it. Anything over 50 is sad but not as sad as dropping out before. Anything over 70 is accepted. Anything under 20 is horror, whether sudden or predictable. 

The only thing more pathetic than death is outliving your money. I shudder more at the idea of outliving my life. We discuss death of the wealthy as if the notice was printed in a special supplement to the weekend newspaper. Any fool can work their way into the obituaries.

Yesterday, my brother told me some news. The son of my father's wife, gone. Does that make her my step-mother, still, even if my father is dead? She was never really a mother to me, just the wife of my father after my own mother passed. Can we just call the family thing off, now that my dad is gone. 

Just. What an awful qualifier in just about any sentence. 

I was never that close to her, though I had no problems with her at all. In fairness, my father did wait two weeks after my mom's passing before he married her. She just did not interest me very much. Most people don't. My father didn't interest me very much either, until towards the end. That may have been my fault. My interest in him was probably selfish. If he were not my father than I might not have ever noticed him. He was a good guy, he just lived by different principles than I have, perhaps ones that were more agreed upon among a certain type of person. Or, maybe we were both just certain types of people. Just.

I do miss him sometimes. There is the recurring sigh of love in that. He must have missed me from the age of about 12 onwards. We each might have carried some regrets, held aloft by the load-bearing lies. 

Well, I woke up thinking about it, the death. There was a head injury, then a spiraling into drugs and alcohol. Pain killers will be blamed, of course, and perhaps that is where the blame should rest. You know, the Big Grim Pharma. 

The last time I took too many pain killers I also pondered the dying. In some mid-morning delirium I remember trying to tussle the terms of my own, sent some cryptic texts and then went to sleep. It took days to decipher the possible meanings of my messages, or even to find all of them. The pain was clear enough, perhaps too much. Nothing quite aches as does loneliness. You lose a leg or an arm or heart or two but can still feel them itch, everywhere. Phantoms can neither be stabbed nor scratched. You can kill off the senses, the air in the room remains. One must treat heavily the mind and body to blanket the symptoms, which then justifies their continued treatment. Some people have never felt it. You know because they insist upon its cowardice. Only the strongest of souls can muster the courage needed to openly accuse the suffering of others. 

All of this specialized medical knowledge I give away here freely, without apparent head trauma.

There are many things worth mocking and Death is the best. The gesture is empty of course, at first. Death can not be ridiculed with adequate cruelty for it to matter very much. It's impossible to get a response, until it becomes quite easy. It can be stolen from but not for long. Death is just, if nothing else.

It is no surprise that people are so selfish in life. They perhaps know something that I have fought to ignore: You can't take it with you. You might as well hoard it while you're here. The only thing a miser can't hold on to is the secret about who they are. 

.

Youth is not wasted on nature

(T. Rex and the Monsterbot)

A politician becoming ill is a very bad sign. Who is to say whether it will be drought or locusts, but this year's crops will be completely wiped out. It's a sign from Zeus, rolling down Mt. Olympus like thunderclaps. 

They have not yet ruled out menopause as being Trump's affliction. 

After losing a third pair of glasses (my original and only pair left) in the last four months I began to question my own memory. Then, my son found my glasses at mom's house, where I suspected they were all along. Somehow, I then forgot to announce this important update to my loyal readers, which is another bad sign of a failing memory. 

I might forget that I've typed the above in a few days and tell you the story all over again, then we'll know for sure. I may be prematurely senile. I have started to complain under my breath about the rising cost of McDonald's coffee. 

The boy and I went to the Farmers Market at Sonoma Square last night. We wandered around, climbed trees, drank wine (me), and ate all types of delicious food stuff, ahi poke bowls, corn dogs and root beer (boy). We met up with the mother of one of the boy's friends and chatted wittily as the sun moved beyond the buildings, as their shadows moved towards and then beyond us. 

Do not let the picture above fool you. The only water near here is the duck pond. A surface that is best not breached for the purpose of leisurely swimming. 

I believe they may have just practicing running on pool decks.

It is beginning to become cold here, though the weather computer says it'll be warmer this weekend. I hope so. I wish to cling to the feeling I have when riding my bike up into the heated hills, desperately. The cold and wet winters here might destroy the weight that I have lost, calling it back in from the distance to collect again around my vitals. Winter creeps over me as kudzu does the south. 

I'll need to find some exercise I can do through the winter months so that my abiding passion for being fat does not coil up inside of me like a boa constrictor that has already discovered its dinner. After months of independent research I've determined that it is not only alcohol that carries calories where they are most needed, but that food can also cause one to balloon into the full American form.

It's all a sham, that life presents its fullest richness to us when we have less capacity to understand it. We are condemned to merely enjoy youth, to let it overwhelm us into creation, right as we start to think we have things figured out. 

If I were somehow granted my younger body again - knowing what I now know - then I might just re-enjoy every single mistake that I ever made. 

.

You say pneumonia, I say draft dodger

(The Stars and Streps)

Trump is coming. You can hear his gargantuan footsteps in the distance, like thunder along the north shore of the Rio Grande. 

His first official act will be to appoint Ronald McDonald as chief justice of the United States. 

He makes the greatest hamburgers. Very successful. Ronald's a close friend of mine. I donated to his campaign to build his hamburger house.

You'll see. 

The Emperor Clownigula has arrived. 

.

The sun is the greatest bullshitter

My shoulder kept me from riding for nearly a week. It didn't actually prevent me. The pain kept me from caring about riding, that's all. The skies have been graying. It has been a long time since I have just relaxed, too long, so I did. It lasted almost a week. Sleeping in bed, eating the boy's pudding and fruit cups as if I was performing some offsetting personal favor to myself. Balancing the appropriate amount of lethargy with the smallest and healthiest food stuffs that I had.  As if.

Early this morning, after my hiatus, I began my ride in a typical light shirt and shorts combination.  Ten minutes or more from my door, when I started to hit the first small inclines in the route, the season had changed. The fog, moisture and chill denied access to sky. Autumn appeared, crowding summer.  My eyes scoped the ambit, the horizon line - summer: going.

I worry that I will lose interest in winter. I always do. Nobody should have to live like this. To have everything taken away from you, only because it is always moving. 

I tried to explain the seasons to the boy - the tilting of the earth, the heat of the sun, circles around circles, proximities, the measuring of the years. He nodded at me as if it mattered, took off running in direction of a newer moment. 

The galaxy opens, swirling with the sense of being loved.  

Seasons be damned. 

Senses be praised

.

On the self-portraits of others

(Laura Williams)

What next.

I just started writing here and then had to be pulled away to work for a couple hours. It saps the energies, working does. Then, I tried and failed at a few other things. Things that should be so simple. Could be. 

Being on-call on the weekend has me on-edge. I'm sure that I'll get used to it but at the onset, like most things, there is an unsettling in period. 

I like the image above, a friend pointed me to it. Cool stuff. I love images that say something that can not easily be verbalized, or at all. They result in an evocative silence. There is always the temptation to speak. So strange to forego it, like the giving up of coffee, or an unnamed sin. 

.

"I've got a bike. You can ride it if you like."

A blank weekend is closing down in front of me as I write this. 

I am on-call, having accepted a new position at work, so I have a limited range of activities that I can enjoy, or even attempt. I have to always be within a few minutes of my computer and a wifi signal. They gave me a personal mifi, so I really shouldn't be too concerned, but I've found myself sitting in front of my computer and working anyway. Hopefully that will pass, once the newness wears off. 

It is an odd situation to be in, to not really be able to ride my bike with any sense of freedom. Or, having to ride with a backpack with my work computer and the mifi in it, ready to pull over and get to work on the side of the road, hopefully in the shade, sweating all over everything, hoping that the salty fluid doesn't make its way onto the logic board of the unit through the keyboard. One drop being all it takes to render me meaningless in that capacity.  

Aren't the details of my new role simply fascinating to read about?

There is nothing new to report on. I will lounge around the house today, maybe pick a nice spot to get some lunch, go for a late ride once the final hour of my responsibility has passed. It has been days since I have done any riding, or exercise of any kind. I was stricken with some sort of pulled muscle or pinched nerve. It's difficult to say which. It happened deep inside the mystery of my shoulder. 

I have eaten all of the pain killers I had, which I'd been saving for the holidays. There were lots of different colors, like little Easter eggs that have a very chemical taste when chewed. Now, I will be forced to restock. How else is one expected to endure the upcoming annual season of gratitude and glee. The nights drifting away, one after the other. The morning should bring some choreographed expectation of me. 

Pain is intense at night, like love - when it is working, and when it is gone. 

.

Sitings

(Boy)

My shoulder has kept me from the gym and from riding my bike. I feel like the Wicked Witch of the West after being doused. I'm melting. I'm melting. You cursed brat, look what you've done.... What a world, what a world....

Not going to the gym for a few days is manageable. It's only a bit uphill once I return. The not riding of the bike, however, that depletes me. The lyricism of the land can be felt by tracing its contour. To ride in a car is to abbreviate the shape of the earth. Once you become accustomed to the daily exuding of depravities then it begins to feel as if they are backing up inside of you where they linger and can do the bidding of wrongness. Stale sweat stews in the glands, making itself available to the great tempter, the wings of lethargy. 

It is a good and healthy thing to work issues out while riding, to have an hour or more of uninterrupted me time. It was the best of times, it was the me-est of times. Without it, I become dangerously less self-absorbed, which detracts greatly from my natural wit and charm. 

I need some woman-sugar, also. I've forgotten what a naked butt feels like in my hand, to squeeze it while kissing. The flesh cold, the curve promising. I remember it all being so very nice, a woman's welcoming. The combined warmth of one body along the length of another, flesh to flesh. The waking next to them to experience anew the trembling, the motion, the delight in movements, the temporariest of unions.

Well, this site is no longer dedicated to the subgenre of awkward erotica. There comes a time in every blogger's life that they must bind up their sexual preoccupations. 

You, dear readers, will be the last to know when I do.

"Blogger" sounds turd-ish, because it is. It seems to combine the British euphemism of "bog" with the American substitution of "log" and yet somehow has something to do with writing. It fits, but it feels vulgar. To call oneself a writer, though, is far worse. It is okay to write, but to consider yourself a writer then there must be something wrong with you. Something beyond simple self-absorption. If you wish to be any good, anyway, there must be something very faulty within you and you must find a way to present it as if it were a secret in the act of giving up its own privacy. A lifetime emptied of the sub rosa. 

That is an excerpt from my latest work, A Blogger Blogs on Blogging. 

I usually refer to this as a "site" but I can't rightly say that I'm siting, a term born wingless, forever damned to the parentless nest. 

Yuck, that is an absolutely horrific image: an orphaned bird born flightless, destined to die in confused and lonely misery. 

Okay, I'm leaving now. I've ruined the pre-party. 

God only knows what horror I'll conduct when the real guests arrive.

.

Travis Belt Buckle

I definitely fucked up something in my shoulder. I have very limited mobility, though not enough to stop me from shaving my head last night. I started off just trimming my hair a bit, using a beard clipper, with guards. It seemed like it was working pretty well and I had it looking nearly normal, which caused me to be a little bit more emboldened than I might have been otherwise. I just kept cutting away and more kept coming off, but I couldn't seem to find a way to make it appear uniform, so there arrived a point at which shaving it off was the only option I had left myself.

Here is the result of my dalliance with uber white power fashion:

Fuck, speaking of... I engaged in an online conversation concerning race (sort of) with a friend of mine and it didn't take very long for the entire thing to slide off the side of the table. I blame him, of course, but looking back over the conversation I now realize where I fucked up. When you are a natural-born liaison for the white power structure it is best not to discuss the actions of a person of color in the U.S. My buddy - who we'll call Ché for the purpose of this post - wasted no time in pointing out that for me to have an opinion on the actions of a person of color is an indictment against all persons of color, and has foreboding racist implications. So, I shaved my head.

No, I kid of course, but it is becoming increasingly difficult to stomach the self-righteousness of some. The indignation is much easier to suffer, because it at least seems justified. I'm no stranger to the impulses of self-ness, but the partisan polemics of social media has created a nuance vacuum. There is only one way to feel: in support of good things. Or, you could choose to be against bad things. Those are your options. America, get used to it. 

So, I took the conversation offline and sent him what I believed to be a thoughtful private message discussing my ideas and pointing out his many logical fallacies, though only to the point that was necessary for me to continue the conversation. Nothing. No response. His much anticipated race war must already be underway. Ah well, I try to understand that some do not possess the requisite neurosis to discuss anything with me at length. My conversational style has been likened to that of following someone else on a never ending bender for reasons that never quite become clear. Ché has indicated in the past that he is only willing to discuss something with me if I am also willing to follow his ideological positions to their inevitable conclusions. Afterwards, I suppose that we might both be able to glow in the warmth of our newfound and allied righteousness. The effect of post-structuralist thought has been both pervasive and incomplete. When I did keep the conversation on topic he didn't seem to like that any more than the other. 

Who knows. The conversation did have me in the very unusual position of treating cops as humans and refusing to see them as a unified whole worthy of symbolic derision. It is a position that I don't agree with either. So, as you can imagine, I was outside of my comfort zone. 

I have another friend on the other end of the race issue spectrum with whom I am having an equally challenging conversation. Let's call him Adolph. I harmlessly meant Adolph Coors there, of course, you little fledgling fascists. 

There are actually two of them, and they are both slightly different versions of Archie Bunker. One is thinner. Both advance a sort of Reader's Digest Condensed version of the main bullet points that can be gleaned and enjoyed from Fox News. They are happy to offer their opinions on anything from enforcing current immigration laws to what exactly might be the problem within black communities. It is spellbinding to watch it all unfold. 

The biggest impediment to conversation, for me, is humorlessness. I can stand all of the logical leaps and fallacies, the accepted biases, the shortcuts through any data that doesn't support the preferred leanings. It's the abject seriousness which people regularly export, and also expect to be afforded in return, that I find so objectionable. Perhaps they believe their own opinions to carry the same gravity as the issues in which they are they are free-association opining. Everybody is correctly aligned with the aggrieved and the oppressed, no amount of caution allows approach to the sanctity of their well refined and deeply moral opinions upon the unjusticeness of everything. There is only damnation towards the listener for having listened wrong, again, or not adapting quickly enough with the subtly changing tides of the struggle.

If I were any less of an observer I might be tempted to believe that being white is fast becoming the toughest job there is. If. 

Well, here I am once again, writing about things in which I can not fairly provide context for, nor give specificity in the details that might matter. It is a poor habit of mine, though it would be unfair to give only the details that supported my side of the conversation. I mean, I did shave my head, I must be a racist by now, or soon, because it enters through the head and exits through the mouth, where it often multiplies through misuse. All race is a copy of a copy of a copy, so there will be some unfortunate blurring. They're not white or black, they're just a copy of other people who possessed those same qualities with greater clarity. 

That alone should help bring a calming sense of closure to my conversational counterparts, but no.  I would call them equals, but fuck... my assumptions have done nothing but damage in that regard. Some are still more equal than others. 

Don't worry, my timid readers, by tomorrow I will have wandered back to the safety of amber level white privilege. Until then, I'll wash my dishes like any other Mexican, one at a time.

.

Petaluma, home of the fighting Lagunitas Brewers

I'm not sure how I did it, but I knew it would get worse. Yesterday, intermittently, I felt this very sharp pain beneath my shoulder on my abdomen almost on my back, along the right latissimus dorsi. It didn't stop me from riding my bike to Petaluma in the evening, nor from going to the gym afterwards. 

Then when I awoke this morning, something announced itself as being very wrong before I had even made my way out of bed. The arm had limited mobility and the shoulder ball and joint socket was very sore. My glenohumeral was failing me, as if the entire cavity had been agitated from within. I took aspirin, Alleve, probably a few Xanax, who knows. I have one prescription bottle that operates on the Secret Santa meets the potluck principle. I only put things in there that I know will help me, though the dosages can be wildly unpredictable. Pill size does not equate to the philter's effects. 

And the ones that mother gives you don't do anything at all.

Nothing has helped. I'm typing this out now with only my left hand, hunting and pecking as always, though with extended caesural pauses between each key strike. Each word a temporary victory, each sentence wrought from a paragraph's time. It's like a nightmare in which you are being chased by the future, and it's gaining on you, and growing.

I want to get away. Cato and I are considering doing some damage this weekend, though he is reluctant to tent camp, having just returned from Burning Man with all of the other filthy heathens. I don't mind sleeping in a tent, at all, though I understand how much one longs for their own bed, or the bed of another, after returning from the desert. Any bed, some space that is cool, dark, and soft. 

I could sleep for a thousand years...

I have been sneaking onto camera sites and looking at expensive lenses. It is the most perverse impulse that I can muster right now. I've been doing the same with bike sites. They seem to be corollary interests, but I want to keep them separate. I did buy a bike rack for my car, gets here on Friday. 

I would say that "I need a girlfriend," but that is silly. I am happy having time and space to myself. Oh no... as I was typing that last sentence the below song came on as YouTube was trying to sell my attention to somebody. 

When the truth is found to be lies

And all the joy within you dies

Don't you want somebody to love?

Don't you need somebody to love?

Wouldn't you love somebody to love?

You better find somebody to love...

Far out, man. The universe does not only speak to crusty burners stumbling back in from the desert like a plague, pockets filled with locusts, murmuring about the goodness of gratitude. The stars send the radical self-refrainers the occasional twinkle, too. 

Next up, Joplin's Piece of my Heart. What am I expected to do, just take another little piece of her heart? 

.