Just as it does in memory

Try to find once familiar places on Google Maps, when you are bored, when the mood for such a thing grips your interest. Some, of a certain bent, become curious about themselves at times, I guess. Curious about their past, wishing to see the places they have walked and wandered once more, in abbreviated outlines.  Simulacrum of place, of travel.

I am perplexed at the extent the world has changed when viewed from above. The internet is wrong on walking distances between then and there, and now. History is unrecognizable, particularly in the once familiar places where it dwelled. Implacable it - disappearing at a consistent ratio. Ancient streets, pre-automobile, drifting out and away from fact, spiraling together as inverted labyrinths, opposing each that enter in the benignest of ways, outliving the participants. 

The streets of Barcelona have become upended. Honest viewers becomes disoriented quickly, as if there and walking, without buildings to guide, without senses. A two-dimensional way to become more easily confused, sans Español. Streets, when zoomed in and out from - an aging god trying to focus without spectacle - have no corollary elsewhere. They make no sense at any resolution. 

The world has been ruined by being in the wrong place at the wrong time, streets going the wrong direction, not leading anywhere important, ending in other streets with unfamiliar names, or by splitting cities in ways that they did not used to dare. That anybody even bothers traveling is a mystery. The same maps there are available here, they can't be memorized any longer, maybe never again. Maybe people from the past will one day reappear, they will explain our maps to us, and we'll believe them. We will have grown very tired of the mapmakers, by then. 

My friend's father passed. He, my buddy, was in South America when he got the news. Bolivia, I think; he had recently been in northern Chile. He was off-map, at the time. He has brought back to Ireland, to face this. All do. Every map will get you there, anywhere.

Not Ireland, but you know what I meant. The place that you call Ireland, when you are bereft of map. 

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Polaroid Boy

I'm convinced that I am a different person by noon than I am in the early morning hours. I wrote several pages early yesterday, but then became busy with work and never quite finished. By mid-afternoon I was appalled at the memory of what I had done, happy that I had not finished it, had not published it. It was an explanation of sorts for my last published post, which nearly required one. It was a mental experiment. I wanted to see if I could still enrage myself and pretend as if someone else had done it. 

By the afternoon, as work is starting to come to a close, I feel differently than I do in the mornings. I'm less interested in my own opinions, which is helpful for someone like me. I think that I can only argue for things or against things, with so much passion, for any given time. I am in middle life now, everything has changed. If this is the only good thing that comes out of the Trump presidency then I accept that. Trump has forced me to accept my age. That, and having a child of course.  Those two things combined somehow while I wasn't paying enough attention and they performed a sort of intervention on my delusions concerning my own evaporated youth. 

If they still offer grave sites when I die I want my tombstone to only read: Sean, Never Intervened (1968-20**)... And yes, I want two asterisks, rather than letting anybody know the exact year I died. Maybe a footnote, explaining that I purchased in advance, they were having a sale on the engraving and I didn't wish to feel stupid after it was too late to take advantage of it.

The closest I ever came to conducting an intervention was in the bathroom of a well-loved nightclub in Florida one time, high on designer drugs. This little Jewish girl pulled me into the stall with her, said she needed my help, which I was happy to offer. Then shit got real, as they say. Another friend was pulled into the makeshift cubicle with us, at which point I believed we were going to all snort some sort of crystallized powder that would help explain the next few hours of music for us, wherever we may be.

But no. 

The little girl started explaining to my other friend - who I just started to notice looked as if he didn't exactly need another indeterminate dose of whatever it was I knew she had in her purse - that he had problems and his health is on the line. She even told him that he needed to lose weight, which I thought was a bit off topic, but she looped it in anyways as a bit of supporting evidence. 

She proceeded to intervene. A miniature miracle worker, channeling the power of the people that produced Jesus for us. Just like that, voilà, he was healed. I should have notified the Pope. I won't say that he never did drugs again, though I did start to keep a more watchful and suspicious eye on him. Over time, I was able to detect that drugs were being diverted towards me in greater supply, after his successful recovery.

He is now a happy father that I regularly see on Facebook. I sometimes ask myself if he ever even thanked me. Like, now.

Sort of. 

That's the basic outline of the story. There was more involved. Because his condition improved, mine was only made to seem worse, which I never quite forgave him for. Few things aggravate the mind of an aging dullard more than the improved health of others, especially at that young age.  

Those sure were crazy times. I try to go relive them every now and then, but I get so tired after the sun goes down. That bathroom stall is now long gone, with its haphazard attempts at graffiti and stylistic self-expression. The speakers and disco ball have been unplugged, retired accoutrements of the never ending rave. The after-party lingers on somewhere, more after than ever, but the people have been all replaced with imposters, or duplicates of imposters. 

When I go out people treat me like a mummy that has unexpectedly broken free from his sarcophagi. They seem afraid of any unravelling that might result from my becoming ambulatory.  

But isn't that why people do drugs? To live in the moment is to shed your past, otherwise you're just compromising with time.

I was only ever involved in the dance music scene because I liked to hug people. This was the environment that seemed to encourage me most. That, and bible camp. You can always hug chicks when they find Jesus. Hugs are what they want the most right at that moment, when they come out of the water all dressed in white, crying through their laughter and happiness at being free. I'll be waiting there, ready to hug them into the fold. 

Okay, before this post veers into the regrettable territory, I'll stop.

Perhaps I'm becoming a prude. Too much self-consciousness. I spend much time gazing inward now, rearranging my prejudices and preferences in place of conducting any actual thought. I'm not changing, I'm adjusting. This is perhaps the best that can be hoped for after a certain age. Some can't even seem to get that part right. I don't want to be one of those aging men that just insists the past was better, though life is structured in such a way that it can always seem that way. It is the easiest of conclusions to draw, the evidence is everywhere, and growing. 

Never before has the future seemed so dim, so hopeless! Middle age must demand these feelings of everyone who enters. I don't blame Donald J. Ahab for this. He is perhaps the logical result, not the cause. It's the way of things, I suppose. People have been spooked, now they are panicked. Animals kill for less. 

Why does the sky fall so unequally for each of us, my dearest chicken little?

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Others like me

(Aloha Akbar!)

I've figured out my problem. Or, one of them. I start writing before I post a picture. This reaction to the horror of an empty page, to emptiness itself, produces all manner of morning monster. The blank page invites opinion for some reason, which is where things begin to go terribly wrong for me, because nobody asked.... Then, there is the realization of said opinion, which confirms the suspicions. 

Best to post a picture first, it has a guiding effect on the page.

I fear that my son is adopting terrorist sensibilities. In the picture above he had just detonated his first homemade roadside incendiary device. It was a great non-military success. I'm considering putting him in one of Mike Pence's prayer rehabilitation camps. My concern is that the only way to bring a five year old back into the fold is to have them ask an invisible entity the penetrating questions concerning their nationalist affiliations, sexuality, and of course gender identity. Surround them with white, presumably heterosexual, Christian men, then let God's divine anointing take place in his heart. It's important that the men surround him, and touch him with their eyes closed and prayerful hands. 

It's what the Huckabees pray for:

(Scars and Stripemarks)

I'm reasonably certain the girl has begun her transitioning in this picture. The long hair is only temporary, part of Arkansas law that her family wishes to uphold. She's awaiting her SRS induction. It's why there are four pillared phallus in the background, not three. That's known as symbolism, because the three dressed in buttoned-down prison stripes have rendered their gender irrelevant long ago. The upright symbols being all that remains of their once erect manhood, last dimly felt as part of the tickle of early onset puberty. Their penises were removed over time by a 4000 calorie daily diet, resulting in the soft accretion of flesh that sometimes resembles a woman's breasts. 

Why is their bench placed so unevenly in the walkway? Vertical stripes make some people appear thinner than they actually are, though it is helpful if your physique does not upend the illusion by force. This photographer perhaps had a cruel streak, or more likely this represents a victory for the tripod industry, and the announcement of stylishly patterned Spanx outerwear. All of my form-fitting habiliments have reinforced denim patches on the knees and elbows. 

Quite inexplicably, there appears to be a normal, middle-aged woman posed with a dog in this picture, a happy canine that is being playfully choked. Its current captor might be a hired mom-model, hard to say with any certainty. There are numerous agencies for that sort of thing peppered across the great Ark state, all of which are currently seeking to expand their client base. 

If not, and she is an actual member of this amorphously shaped clan, then every now and then she must look around the estate and whisper quietly to herself, Jesus, I would love to get laid just once more. What the fuck happened? Her masturbatory fantasies stretch all the way back to early middle school, to the very last time she felt as a fully developed woman might, when she was being fingered at the local premiere of Lawrence of Arabia.

Do you remember when transgender people were quietly encouraged to wait until early adulthood to make their decision to transition? That must have been almost a decade ago now. Those were primitive times, before Facebook took over as our ethical lodestar. We have supportive families now, ones that are willing to encourage their children to be the gender they feel, and I am grateful for them. When I was a kid I was screamed at for wearing my mother's underwear on my face. I guessed they were angry because I didn't have a sister. 

Facebook is the only support I get in these matters. They understand me and are willing to denounce all those that don't.

Some people falsely mistake my conversational tone about such things as mocking derision. It's not, at all. I support everybody's rights to make their own choices, truly. Also, I love wearing women's underwear far too much to take the subject lightly or to denounce others who feel similarly. Why does women's underwear feel so good when you put them on, as they move across the hair on your legs and even north of there? Well, don't answer that. I know why. It's because they're irrationally soft and delicate. 

Feeling special is expensive. 

Okay, see? This is why I shouldn't be posting my first draft. If I stopped here then I could dash out a couple quick sentences about the joys of fatherhood and the lonely passing of time. Instead, I have people thinking that I'm an intolerant panty-sniffer, when that's not the case. I'm tolerant, some have suggested far too much so. It's almost as if I invite controversy to prove my tolerance. If only there were a social media platform for others out there like me.

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"Sometimes I'd like to quit, nothing ever seems to fit"

There's something wrong with me in the mornings. Again, I wrote an entire post. Again, at midday, I hate having written it. It insults my noon-glow. 

It will go the way of the Dodo. 

Why do I wake up in such a foul mood, and why do I suspect anybody needs to read about it. I don't feel particularly distasteful at sunrise, or before. Though my midday sensibilities are different - softer, kinder, more understanding. 

Maybe it's best to write only of the joys of fatherhood here. That should keep me safe. There are many. 

As the day skips past, become as handfuls of sand, tossed in reverse, as if caught from the wind by children passing through childhood. 

Talkin' to myself and feelin' old....

Nothin' is really wrong, feeling like I don't belong.

What else is there? 

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The Underwear Men!

Silliness last night, running around the house, jumping on the bed, from the bed. A night of impromptu play, the best. We both took many pictures. They are sure to arrive here soon in serial form. I had felt under the weather for a couple days. It was needed, to break out a bit and run around, giggles erupting and escaping, as little miracles. It all seems so easy when at play. 

Okay, the coffee kicked in. I didn't go through all of the pics, but I grabbed a couple just for today. Not the best, but they capture the moments well enough, in at least the one way. 

We traded clothes, I fashioned a scarf out of one of his long sleeve shirts, we made capes out of towels, he wore my shirt and pants and shoes. I might not have grabbed my camera at all, except that when I mentioned it the boy responded enthusiastically. He is perhaps beginning to embrace the magic of photography. Still far less interested in capturing moments than myself, of course. The twofold trick of time, the more you have the less you need, the less you know the less you care. So much time to squander, the sense of its departing yet to take hold. 

I am sitting here with him now, discussing the various colors that one might use to color a fire truck. So far there are blues and yellows and greens and pinks and oranges, even a flash of red here and there. A patchwork of crayonful purpose. All the colors of a Christmas tree, then some more.

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Pissing in the winds

(Sebastian)

I've discovered why I'm not publishing posts any more: there's nothing going on in my life. When that happens, I look elsewhere, outwards. My standard opinions of the world become boring over time, so I experiment with extreme opinions, on subjects ranging from silly politics to the seriousness of Caitlyn Jenner to variations of the acronym GOP (Guano of Paradise, Grand ol' Poobah, etc.), though nobody should be allowed to read such things. It is all hideous nonsense. I have substituted thought for the absurdity of opinion, again. Then, I become bored with the opinions as they are, so I augment them almost beyond recognition, like Caitlyn's face. 

I'm not entirely sure what I'm talking about any more, I'm just writing to incite, even myself. So, for now, I'm done with all of that. At least for today, I've grown bored of exaggeration. The world is doing fine in that regard without me. 

Without looking outwards and with nothing going on in my life, there remains only inwards left to glance, where ill-mannered monsters prowl, even in their sleep, lingering amidst the dreams they encounter. I've spent my life entertaining and appeasing them, like imaginary friends in childhood. Invisible to all but one. 

I've been listening almost exclusively to flamenco guitar players for the last few days. Just the rhythms and melodic runs that happen nearly faster than they can be heard, flurries of well articulated notes that find their way back into the strummed and scraped chords, themselves disappearing and reappearing around the rhythm, tirando and picado and much more. 

I roam the house, my mind in scarves and jewels, a gypsy wandering wide, as far as these four walls permit. 

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Go, Go!

Sunday is here, if you had not already heard. I wasted a part of it by writing a series of personal errors in the form of paragraphs. I'm finally embracing the method of writing out my grievances but then never publishing them, never sending. It's therapeutic, I'm told. It's almost like writing anonymously, but I won't burden anyone with the task of reading, trotting through my litany of internalized complaints. Instead of writing anonymously here I'll just accrue a few non-existent readers. 

Chuck Berry invented the language of rock guitar. At the very least he created its early syntax. Like so many other kids, Johnny B. Goode was one of the first that I ever learned to mangle on the strings. Never quite playing the intro correctly, then spiraling downhill from there across the track's verses, never quite recovering from the poorly played opening notes.

Strummin' with the rhythm that the drivers made....

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Underwear Man!

I'm becoming quite prolific in the unpublished posts category. I wrote what I believed to be a wickedly funny essay about fucking trannies this morning, but my finer sensibilities prevented me from publishing it. There are many that are essentially incapable of laughing at such a thing, and denounce all those who can. I am of the other sort.

Not just fucking them, but all sorts of stuff. Maybe I'll post it another time. It disagrees with the rest of this morning. I'll let it linger there; Lugosi amidst the rafters.

The boy and I took mom out to dinner last night for her birthday. It was a tremendous success, everybody involved agreed. Rare moments are precious, so I'll not be precious about it here.

Not today, anyway. We were all smiles, laughter. 

The boy had just received his passport. Mom and I brought ours out, to let him build an idea of us, the countries that we had traversed. Of course a narrative unfolded around the shared stamps, visas, and dates of ours. It wasn't planned, though there was a palpable cloud of wonder that grew inside the boy as we each told the story, acts separated by oceans, other acts not.

This morning, I took the boy to a pornographically proportioned breakfast and let him eat piles of chocolate pancakes. I ate some prime rib scramble that was described as being a special. I began a kind of penance shortly after ordering, well before it arrived, then long after it was no more.

When we returned, I shaved my head and used a towel as a cape, ran around the house as Underwear Man!, singing an impromptu theme song which touted my virtues, the last in a series of which was my mysterious ability to disappear, enacted by my flight out of the doorway to another elsewhere. The boy could hardly contain himself, and I. Now, he has a fresh identity from which to draw, places to use that new passport, people to be.

He wants to go to the North Pole, first, to thank old man Santa face-to-face for his cryptic generosity, and I have expressed interest in going with him. 

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The Element of Supplies!

(Gervais bathtub challenge)

I keep trying to restructure my life, but it's a waste of what little time I have. I don't make decisions about my life any more, those things are all controlled by the various needs that comprise that life. I'm lucky to have any time at all to myself, I should not also expect much control over that time when it does magically appear before me. 

To wit, a friend of mine has a girlfriend with whom he understandably wants to spend time, particularly on the weekends. Problem is this: he has a cat and a dog which need to be fed and loved and cared for. This is where I come in. My buddy's been asking me to stop by and feed the animals. At first it was a novelty, and one I relished - I was needed. Few things speak to a man's sense of worth as does being needed, though that feeling wears off pretty quickly.

I had to tell my buddy that it was becoming a burden. 

Now, I have to live with useless guilt. I keep going over in my mind how he would do the same for me. I know this to be true. He would. He's a good guy, just like me. The problem emerged when he asked me twice in one month, both times the day before I was coming into a weekend in which I didn't have the boy. My time. My only time alone, where I'm not taking care of my son and not working. I had a mini-meltdown over it. I was torn between being a good friend and being able to breath a bit at the thought of having no responsibilities. Not few responsibilities, but none at all. 

These are not similar states, they are opposing states.*

That little added responsibility became too much for me. That's when I realized that something's wrong. I don't have any luxury left in my life, almost everything is either an obligation or has begun to feel like one. To have fun is to plan ahead for it so that I know it's coming and can acclimate to that expectation with no escape, as if I'm an inmate complaining that I don't get enough alone time in my cell. 

There's no fix. I have to work, my son is here to stay. So, it's the exercising that has to go. It takes up too much of my free time. It's not worth it. My fear is that I'll find myself on my death bed wishing I wasn't in such good shape, knowing that I had wasted my best years. I don't mind the idea of dying so much, though I do not wish to feel unnecessarily stupid about it when it happens. 

* -  at least according to Cato. He seems to believe that states experienced are of an either/or nature and exist solely on a logarithmic spectrum, not part of an holistic or amalgamated whole that comprises the human. Perhaps more on that later. 

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Comma Chameleon

something new today, to try, no real reason, liked it a lot, perhaps dangerous, sort of, riding with headphones on, listening to music, a relatively new album, while I rode my bike up into the hills, 700 feet in elevation or so, after work, changing the whole experience, slowing the inner narrative, if it can be called that, a series of disconnected, half-finished, nonexistent conversations, in which I am often the hero, or, if not heroic, somehow the one that wins, the one that makes the most sense, whose logic lines up favorably in a series of fragments that would be chaos to a listener, making an imaginary whole where there was none before, so, it was nice, to divert my attention a bit, towards the rhythm of the road, augmented by the strange musical landscapes which lasted perfectly at an hour, then there was the gym, then 35 minutes swimming 900 yards, now, at home, wondering what I might do for dinner, do not feel like cooking, but know that if I stop for too long then I will grow tired, when the body naturally produces its sleep hormones, the early evening pause, deadly to the body, an abrupt period to the end of day's worth of sentence

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An up-valley vineyard

Kids are such fun. 

Had I known, I might have had more of them. Why not? 

Some people say the world is already overpopulated, but what's a few hundred more kids added to that. 

Maybe three hundred, at the most, enough for some sort of pyramid scheme, me at the top, like a pharaoh. 

I'd also need to own a lake, so that they could all bathe. 

A lifeguard could oversee the operation, creating a fake whirlpool, to assist with the bathing. 

Hundreds of kids, floating gently in a circle.

There would of course be strict rules to ensure that none of them escaped.

That's all that I have this morning, one weekend's worth of nonsense. 

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Three Easy Steps to Betterment

Nothing and then nothing and nothing. A day to myself yesterday, spent doing nothing. There was a ride up the valley, to St. Francis, and the gym, but then nothing, just lunch and lingering. I learned nothing, taught nothing, oh yeah, and killed no one. 

Today will be more of the same, a bike ride with two local ladies who are likewise training for the triathlon. Then, also jogging a few miles with them afterwards. All of the pieces are supposed to have fallen in place by now. I need to spend a few minutes stretching out this morning. I never do the things that I'm supposed to do. Always, there is some new magazine article, documenting where I have failed at increasing my personal success. Everything seems to start with Three Easy Steps to a Better.....

1. Stop What You're Doing

2. Start Doing Something Else

3. Be Happier This Way

I have been reading online articles again, since getting my new phone. They are mostly terrible, really terrible. It's no wonder America hoisted an aging retard up onto the presidential sedan to have a look around at the boundaries of the empire that he'll soon need to secure. It should surprise nobody that can read, anyway. The rise of Trump coincided neatly with the complete collapse in the valuation of fact. The worth of many online pieces can be measured by the care with which the copy editor made changes before publishing, often not at all. Some of the biggest news organizations here - The Washington Post, for example - are riddled with typos, poor phrasing, and bad syntax. I get it, they can't spend the same resources on editing their online stuff as they do the articles they go to print with, but still, they hire journalists that seem incapable of basic self-editing, ones that are all too willing to go to press with an unchecked first draft. 

My computer underlines misspelled words in red, not sure what theirs' does (that was one of the mistakes I found - the "possessing" of a word that is already plural possessive). I don't like finding typos and mistakes, but I do it here nearly every day. When I do find them, I try to correct them. I'm try not to be anal about it, but bad is bad. 

Yesterday or the day before, I used the word site when I meant cite. I was motivated to correct it, because it's incorrect. I've seen articles in the WAPO that have gone weeks without any correction, articles that are being shared online like STDs in a bathhouse. I'm surrounded by bad writing, drowning in a sea of bad readers. I can see why so many semi-or anti-literates on the right are suspicious of such an organization. News outlets need to fix it, quickly and correctly. 

The NYT is still basically good, they at least still print corrections, though they are under much fire from the Prez as well. He has waved his magically small hands across the lectern and declared them as #Fake. So it is, and so it shall be. I wonder how many months separate us from video clips of mobs beating up people wearing glasses in New York City. Now that the blurring of the distinctions between elite meaning rich and elite meaning educated are complete then it won't take much to rally the pitchfork crowd to do the bidding of their el commandante en juevos. 

As long as the Make my fucking burrito, mother-fucker guy and his friends are organized and motivated then things will fall naturally into place. He sure gives the whole "white power" argument a compelling new twist. He seems to maybe believe that cultural supremacy is achieved first on the bench press. I wonder if he also believed that those tattoos might grant him the power of flight. You can almost see that connection happening for him on some level. Getting high does different things to different people, I've found. 

Well, he's part of the Trump Army now. The Southern Guard, as it were. They're already putting Trekkies to death, they'll move on to the Jedis next. 

He could have started as a non-commissioned officer, but he never quite finished summer school at the community college. He blew all his roid-rage grant and tuition money, wasted it on bad Anadrol. Over the years he's screamed his way up the flagpole to become Corporal America. Who needs a cape, captain, when you have patterned back tattoos that suggest a cape of sorts. He is somebody that has clearly grown tired of all of the intellectualizing that's been going on, and he is not going to take it any more. 

His candidate has the mandate.

If you made the mistake of clicking on that link and you're still recovering from his demand that somebody go "cook his burrito" for him, then here, maybe this article will help calm you down. It outlines a few possible scenarios for the lines upon which the "virtual secession" might be drawn. 

Happy Sundays!

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Hitchhikin'

One of the first books I read that had impact on my young mind was, perhaps predictably, On The Road. It was the first book I read that felt like a secret between the writer and me. As if by reading the book we shared a thing barely known, a thing that I would popularize among my friends, just as I did with the Velvet Underground. I falsely believed to have discovered many things, though I was a fan of both Jane's Addiction and The Pixies long before others around me. So, I have that little victory that nobody knew about until now. You're welcome.  

I remember sitting in my bedroom on my little dusty dirt road in Altamonte Springs, Florida, thinking that I would fill my backpack with a few bits of clothes, some socks, and then walk to the end of that street to hop the barbed-wire fence where the interstate awaited, to just one day take off into the unknown. I was convinced that I would have my own OTR experiences. And I did, in a sense.

But, by that time (circa '83) it was already illegal to hitchhike, I believe. I remember that cops were harassing hitchhikers. I guess it being illegal isn't a requirement for that sort of thing. The land of the free, etc. Picking up somebody that happens to be traveling the same direction as you and giving them a ride exists somewhere outside of what some would allow. It has to be socialism, no other explanation for it.

Well, if it wasn't outside of your legal rights, then it was something the cops were willing to pretend about and intimidate you into accepting as fact. Between the 70s and the 80s the hitchhikers all seemed to disappear, leaving the lingering question: where do people even go to get killed now? 

There were the Gainesville murders, but those came later. Between Ted Bundy and Danny Rolling the hitchers were all scared away by the cops or the roadside rapings. The stories still make me think twice. It just never seemed worth it - being beheaded by some crazed killer that was sure to perform satanic rituals on your unbodied skull just as soon as you pulled over and said, Hey, how far you going?

I remember that Danny Rolling was put to death on my birthday about a decade ago or more ago, and that Ted Bundy was put to death the same week that Salvador Dali died. I could be wrong about both of those, but that's how my memory has stored those barely related facts. 

Have you noticed how Americans seem to have temporarily lost their interest in serial killing. You don't hear as much about them now as you did twenty years or so ago. The spree killing of children has overtaken the moribund mind of the nation. I guess it's easier to react with self-righteous and indignant morality than with unexplained morbid fascination, though not by much. 

One of the oddest compliments that I ever received was from a little woman that I had a temporary but abiding crush on. Once, when she was describing her feelings towards me she said that I had very penetrating eyes, intense, a Bundy-esque charm. Those observations didn't quite prevent her from having interest in me, but I'll never forget how unfair it seemed as an observation. There was nothing to do about it, it was still flattering, leaving me defenseless, trapped. I have severity issues.


Turns out that I didn't kill her.

Fukushima? No, Fuk-u-shima!

The boy and his mother leave for Tahoe today, a weekend skiing trip planned with the boy's buddy and the boy's buddy's mother. Moms and sons, off and up into the semi-wild Sierras to go snow chasing. The boy loves snow, talks about it in his sleep.

I will take the boy to the mountains soon, also. Denver, in mid-April, the Easter-Tax weekend. So, he will get his fill of snow sports before the climate deniers have it their way. 

CS sent me a link this morning documenting the wild radioactive boar problem at Fukushima. I was tempted to go change the hyperlink color to red for this post, but fuck it.... I might not ever change it back. Then you, my dear readers, would be stuck with distractingly colored hyperlinks. The editorial team here at seanq6 would be forced to cite our standards and practices manual. It's just not worth it, the bureaucracy that goes into living simply and easily. I'll file a Feature Request rather than a Bug Report for this one. It is my job to document the details of the apocalypse. 

The only thing that would make the wild boar story better is if they had all become sex-crazed and were multiplying at a heretofore unseen rate. The little radioactive boar babies could be terrorizing everybody that tries to eat them. Oh yeah, boar is a delicacy in that region. What could possibly go wrong. They've run out of land to be used as mass graves for them. 

The free market has spoken.

"There is no end to the shame of being human." - CS

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Love is all you need, and works pretty well with cash

Nope, again I wrote an entire post but couldn't click the Publish button. Just hideous explanations and observations about how some women chose to use International Women's Day to objectify the Prime Minister of Canada. 

Well, that and some other stuff. 

Somewhere in the middle, though, I lost grasp of my sense of humor and tried to explain the world to its own inhabitants. Explaining things is a terrible way to write a personal essay. The world has never been more unconvinced in the face of evidence. Rhetorical times demand persuasion, not damnable data. 

My conclusion was that civility is a suggestion, at best. Few are able to abide by their own rules, which are of course made pre-broken.

Well, the boy is soon to be up. I sit here with the morning sun, awaiting all that will arrive. Another night of diminished rest, a small handful of hours spent unconscious in the dark, the rest spent in the darkness, awaiting the first hints of light. 

Death to the Infinitedels!

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Editorial Correction:

(Whizzardry)

I should have clarified: I don't work at Apple any longer. My post yesterday went about as viral as a post on my Facebook wall can go. It was "liked" by many, loved by a few, despised by all others. I neglected to mention that I left Apple about five years ago and now work for a company that suits me even more: Zendesk. 

I don't normally advertise where I work, because my behavior can be so erratic at times that I did not wish to unwittingly make them appear to be an accomplice to any of my many heresies. It was there, Zendesk, that I meant when saying that I am fortunate to work with such bright and lovely people. The culture of sharing, helping, and education there is like nothing else I've ever seen or felt. I have learned much, and have a much greater vantage point on what there is next to learn. The world is a more exciting place to me now, through my proximity to these very smart and helpful people.

You see? Talk of work is boring, especially if you're happy at your job. It's why I hardly mention it, most people are unhappy in what they do. My only complaint is that it is the same drain on my time as if I was unhappy there. I just happen to feel the other way.

If by doing a really good job at work it was somehow possible to not only get paid in money for it but to also get my time back each day, then you would never hear me complain about it again. I would become the smartest writer on this site.

Age does take a toll; the slowest moving marauder to curse the life of man. 

I wish that I would have fallen into a position like I have now much sooner in life, when my mind was more malleable and could be used as something other than a caged carnival oddity. The decades of drugs and alcohol do take their toll, also. Though you are, of course, welcome to draw your own conclusions about such things. If you suggest that it's my age then we can discuss it in the corporate HR offices here at seanq6.blogspot.com. I happen to have a friend that works there and I'm not above pulling some strings. 

Few things excite me as does the attempted misuse of imaginary power. When I'm ratting on people in the HR office I have a special blue felt wizard's hat that I like to wear, it's covered in stars and crescent moons. I tried to find a matching wizard's robe, but instead I just stole a mauve one from an odd roadside motel one irriguous afternoon in north Florida in the late 80s. I go by the name Gonadalf, Gandalf's half-testicled, half-brother, a warlock that barely bothered studying. The grey sheep of a greying flock of guru magus. 

Oh, I just jest... I possess no supernatural powers. The only specific incantation that I know is the one described best in the song I left here the other day: Hocus Pocus, which can cause an erection that lasts up to four minutes.

Okay, ex-lovers and future friends. I can't sit around here all day reporting imaginary co-workers to an fictitious human resources department at a nonexistent startup, one that specializes in electronically mimeographed screeds designed mostly to distract you from your day job.

Speaking of, that is a funny trend that I can see here at this site. When I used to pay more attention to such things, I would see surges in traffic on Monday morning here, much of which would occur right around 9am and thereafter on the east coast. Just as people were arriving to work I could see a spike in readers, many of whom were reading three posts or more each, which seemed to suggest that people would mostly read this site only while at work, and catch up on posts made over the weekend. For a long time I could even see that a fair amount of traffic was coming from Apple's networks, so I knew my co-workers were catching up on my more recent undoings.

Now, I've stopped paying attention to such things. It does no good to watch people reading or not reading posts that you make. It starts to feel as if you're jacking off in a department store, and not even in the women's underwear section, but somewhere weird.

Oh, that made me giggle. You know, not there, but somewhere weird. 

If you really want to have some Krautrock fun, try this.

Tomorrow we will discuss the many merits of their album, Future Days.

If you don't know the band Can then I'm going to have to ask that you to stop reading this site at work and dedicate those newly freed resources to studying them, as the clock on the break room wall ticks off the particles that comprise the remainder of eternity.

Repeat: I think I Can. I think, I Can....

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Ten Years Gone

(Gainfully Employed)

To the day, ten years ago, I started working my first "real" job. Apple Inc. My dj friends at the time made jokes, betting on how long I would last. Nobody gave me more than 90 days. It's been 3,652 days employed (two leap years), one child, a move to California, some other stuff.

Days worked in numbers mean nothing, of course, until you look at the cumulative effect of them. Ten Years Gone. I have met some great people, so there is that. I had considered myself pretty bright, and I can seem that way when I don't obstruct that aspect of my character. I work with people now, though, that are very bright and in a quantifiable way. They're not just witty when sunk in some afterparty drug dungeon. They're bright in the way that makes me envious. They have time left, lots of it. 

Speaking of, I've run out of time this morning to write. I've been trying to adjust my sleeping schedule so that I occupy more of the day, with others like me.

So, yen tears gone.

If you listen very carefully then you can hear the pedal on the bass drum squeaking on the track below. It's even more pronounced on Since I've Been Loving You. Only the most avid fans have ever noticed it. Even when I point it out some people have a hard time hearing it. That's how much I was into them, when my ears were hanging on the head of an unemployed man.

Changes fill my time, but baby, that's alright with me

In the midst I think of you, and how it used to be.

I don't care what you think about Led Zeppelin. Chances are, I've thought it too.

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DUDE

(Focus)

Today will be the boy's first day at Kindergarten. His mom and I will take him to drop him off. I will leave my cameras at home and just be a dad, rather than also being a documentary-style photographer, one whose focus is presumably about being a dad.

The school is Waldorf-themed, so we had to buy him some new clothes, ones that had no brand labels on them. Also, we had to go to his doctor and ask if it's possible to reverse his immunization shots. After we had done all that, they said that he's ready to be around hundreds of other un-immunized kids.

No, that's not how immunity works, I do not believe. The immunization rates at this school were an initial concern, upon further research we found that the state of California did away with the parental preference exceptions, so they now require a doctor's note. Which forces parents to go in and explain to a medical professional why they're against vaccines, which has effectively done away with the problem, we hope. They let the kids rub each other's faces in polio-filled petri dishes here, just to prove their point. They are all quite liberal, we're told. 

I can stomach deniers and pseudo-theorists of all kinds, up to a point. The best way that I have found to deal with these types is to nod and agree with everything they say, then add something ever so slightly on to the top of their conspiracy, something uninvited like a cherry on a turd. They will trust lunacy right up to the very point at which they stand on any issue, but not one drop of stupidity makes it past their own. So, with the slightest possible use of the imagination you can usually unravel them in conversation a bit. 

Sometimes it's just easier to say, "I'm an atheist. I don't believe there is life anywhere else in the universe." This two-fold break in reasoning disarms them and let's them know that you're one of them, even if they don't agree with you, which they never do. You can always come around and be brought back into the fold when you tell them the story of how you went about having your child's vaccinations reversed. 

If all of that fails then I'll just respond to everything they have said with, Not sure, I'll have to check with my friend and nautical clairvoyant, Nessy. 

If they persist, I'll go on to explain that the Loch Ness Mother (yes, she's pregnant and has been for over four hundred years) is my nocturnal spirit animal.  

Few would question such a claim. I mean, really, how could you?

(Soft Focus)

(Lost Focus)

(My Locus : Hocus Pocus)

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"... we owe a cock to Asclepius"

Sitting here, Sunday morning pre-dawn, listening to the rain mix with soft country music. What a morning. I had just enough milk for two cups of coffee, nothing more. I wish this moment could stretch out towards forever. I am as contented as I've ever been. You may remember what Lao Tzu said about it: He who is contented is rich. 

My life lacks nothing intangible. Of the material, I can live without.

Yesterday, I wrote a post concerning the feelings of aging, of becoming old. It was written in part from memory, part from imagination, the rest from first-hand knowledge, not from any coherence concerning my current emotions. It was an experiment, based on the knowledge of feelings rather than essences felt. The spectral curse of age has only hinted at what will arrive. 

My main hope concerning aging and death is that I will not be given much time to complain about it. 

The birds have vanished down the sky.
Now the last cloud drains away. 

We sit together, the mountain and me,
until only the mountain remains. 

- Li Po

I have regained something about myself, a sensibility lost and now recaptured. For the moment, I have ceased my devotion to the inessential. This is how many must feel when they give their lives over to the numinous, to be held in the godness moment. Liberated from trivialities, left to wander the moment that matters. This one. 

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"... across the porch as the radio plays"

(What did I come in here for?)

I'm losing my edge - my life is boring, satisfying. I want to travel, I want to buy a new lens for my camera, but I should buy a new couch and a new kitchen table and chairs. I can hear my inner voice telling me to do the responsible thing. It drives me mad that an old man is now trapped inside of me. I heard the voice yesterday, after a particularly depressing bike ride. Nearly the entire ride I kept stopping myself from my corkscrewed line of thinking after having found that I had once again gone down another dim spiral, many of which were ending in darkness, fear, or death. Thoughts to which my youth had some immunity. 

At middle age, a week is no longer a material unit of time. They pass by the window as successive wheat fields stitched across the open plane of horizon, each one more like the last than the one before. A week is barely a day or two, now. The only thing that allows me to recognize their passing is by scheduling non-recurring popup events in my calendar. I randomize them so that every couple days something dings on my also vibrating phone. A message pops up to say, "You're probably still alive. Hurry up, do something about it."

If I don't actively take steps to mark time's passing then it forgets about me. I'm the dejected girl left waving on the front porch of Thunder Road. February's ending surprises me more and more each passing year. The stars lift pages up and off of the calendar, disappearing into the nights above.

The days used to move slowly, any one of them could be used to accomplish a thing if you focused on it. Now, a month is the standard by which I can sense the forward motion of implacable time. Secular time that is, of course; sacred time awaits me, still. With my last breath I'll try to pledge eternal allegiance to Aquaman, or some approximation of a god. I promise.

I give my heart to Uranus!

Aging is like being in therapy without a therapist. You know that you're there in part to address the problems you have with self-love but you're not entirely sure if the relationship is going to work out. At some point you must concede that you can neither fight with nor convince your better days to return. When it comes to better days, they must be made anew.

There are so many books on my shelf that I haven't read yet, some that have been there ten years or more. I had thought that by this point in life I would be reading Beckett's minor works, that there might be young people straining to hear me speak, to swoon at my mature erudition. Middle age does a horrible thing to everybody, but the costs for an intelligent person are particularly galling. Your mind is racing your body, trying to artfully document its descent, knowing that it can never quite match such a well cataloged youth.


Now, I wouldn't say that I've been the unwilling victim of age discrimination, but there have been a number of people who, in their friendly joking, have made me feel stupid for being old. Old for being old, also. Working with so many bright young people is a tremendous life benefit, though some of them can be much like me: honest. Nothing stings more across time than does the truth. Truth is how love begins and ends, every time, most of all when its hand can not be seen but rather only felt. 

I have become more at ease in joking as I age, there is that. A comfort that I should have perhaps been more wary of. That comfort invites all sorts of changes, few that are directly beneficial to me. The main change being that I have become an easier target for derision. I see it happening all around me. It would be foolish to claim that some of it isn't well deserved, but still... I was the cool guy in the room not so long ago. Irreverence becomes a type of curmudgeonliness sometime during the decades that pile up at mid life. What was once a cool and measured disdain for anything outside of my manufactured sphere of influence becomes another middle man arguing against the first appearance of unwelcomed ghosts.

Wit rarely hesitates, the best of it never fumbles. Yet midlife seems to be little else but hesitation and fumbling, as if I'm being prepared for something else, something less graceful even than this, some new shame that will appear to also be my own doing, a result of some forgotten but poor choice. I hesitate now more than I used to, which causes all manner of embarrassment, as it occurs in no apparent relation to risk, just the mind stuttering at the vague ignominy of age. In growing older the dangers multiply, moving together as shadows stretching at dusk, and then just after.




(An experiment in writing. Ignore most of it. It's all just made up.)


Help! I'm trapped in a post factory...

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A visceral life

(Kellie Straw)

There is no escape from politics. It dominates everything now. I wish to retreat into music or literature or art, but even there it finds a way to creep in to my inner monologue. We live in terrible times. It doesn't seem that we will be free from our pseudo-elected leaders anytime soon. Yesterday, I wrote a post but couldn't find a fitting image, so I let the post sit, where it began to rot. I couldn't bring myself to publish it. Everything smells of stale feces, a zoo that needs a rainy season followed by a long period of sunshine. 

America seems to be getting what it deserves, a celebrity outsider as its contested spokesman. Almost everything that is rotten about America, from repressed racism to naked greed, has risen to the surface where it can fester. 

Middle age must be the feeling of recognition that there are no paths back to youth. The so-called spokesman seems to have sealed off the passageways once used to regress into delightful immaturity. 

Ah well, middle age is not so bad, if you can ignore the nearly perpetual whining and body aches. My own, I mean. I only wish to be happy, to feel happiness, to feel loved. To give the same. Life is too detailed to sustain simple pleasures for very long. It is easy to become distracted, far easier than maintaining focus on something that neither requires nor requests it. I want to return to a life of being, the doing can always follow.  

I have started jogging again, to try to silence the inner voice of cycling. Something has changed about the voice I use when riding. It has become a nuisance to me. Too much time wrapped up in inner silence. Not the good, meditative kind, but rather the spiraling voices of self-questioning and doubt. Fear.

I suppose that the past year of exercising has had its benefits, but now I have acclimatized to these new feelings of healthiness. My fluctuating pattern of emotions has finally caught up with me. The new normal feels like the old normal again. Health becomes just another almost arbitrary component to the life lived - easy to take for granted, missed greatly from a distance. 

I bought the paintings above and below from an old friend from childhood - one for the boy's room, one for the bathroom. She seems to live a somewhat enviable bohemian life in Texas, the life of a working artist. This is just a guess, based on what scant interactions I've had with her on Facebook. I wanted to fill the apartment with some nice artwork. I also have a picture of mine waiting at the frame store. The same one that was sold here on this site to a regular reader. 

I am trying to determine the best way to frame a large picture from CS, sent as a gift. The boy has become fascinated with all forms of nudity, so we'll have to see how that goes. The image highlights the curve of a woman, seen from behind. I think it is beautiful, though it has erotic punch to it also. 

In the boy's enthusiasm to use newly discovered "potty words" I have been helping him along a bit. He has an abiding fascination with both form of genitals, butts, pee, and of course poop. I asked him what poop is called when it's found on the backside of his underwear. He seemed puzzled but was happy to report, that's just poop! 

So I gave him a new phrase that he took great excitement in: diaper daffodils. 

We laughed and laughed, and why not. Neither of us entirely understood what was meant by it, nor did we need to. It made sense because it was funny, and who can't use a sensible bit of nonsense here and there.  

(Ibid)

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