Cluster

I want to import a shitload of alligators to California. I know they'd do very well here. For a while. I have faith. The doubt has fled. I dream of massive semi-tractors filled with the prehistoric beasts, slithering and snapping at one another and the dumb cruelty of their situation. Four days across the country without being fed. You'd be sure to have a hearty population remaining. The heartiest. I'd spread them around in the local lakes at night, always trying to pair them up together as male and female. Nothing hateful, just thinking about population more than individual gator needs. I'd scatter them about like they were Starbucks stores. Where the popular lakes between would become gator territory just by being caught in the middle of a plan. Clustering. 

This is why I never make any money. These are my business dreams. I do pretty well in the stock market. 

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Home again, home again

I don't have any new pictures. I didn't take very many while on vacation, though I packed as if I was on assignment from National Geographic, except with mostly prime lenses. I've almost already run out of pics from our few days in Tahoe. I shoot often with a 17-35mm f2.8, but those shots all tend to be of a certain type - expository. They establish a location, mostly, and if I am lucky capture some action in forced perspective. 

Has anyone ever spent more time and money taking family snapshots than I? I'm sure there has been. Nobody that I know. If I had more time and space then I would start taking portraits of others, but everything takes so much time. 

The boy is in Cub Scouts and I have offered to take pictures of the various events we go to and post them online for the other parents, but I tried to check into Scout guidelines for such a thing - assuming that there are regulations to posting pictures of kids online, etc. - but none of the scout leaders responded to my question when I asked. Maybe they thought I was a pedo. 

Who knows. People do get nervous when there are cameras near kids, which is both understandable and neurotic. Would a pedophile advertise his lusts so openly? Maybe. I don't know that much about them. There was a show about catching predators but who watches that sort of thing? I just tried to watch a video and couldn't get through the first encounter. People watch that sort of thing for pleasure? I posted it there so that you can decide for yourselves. I made it all the way up to the moment when they referred to the young girl as a "decoy." A term that appears to be quite technically true.

Well, I am not here to tackle Barbara Streisand's problems today.

I am eagerly awaiting the moment where I can be entirely written off as old and confused, so that I can openly say anything that I want to say. Sort of like what I do here, but in people's faces. I want Thanksgiving to come early this year. I've started asking Rhys' friends if there are any "gay" or "black" kids in their school. When they look confused I just mumble to myself, None, oh that's good. It's stupid and evil, but what the fuck. How else is he to know when racial or sexual jokes are funny or not? The boy needs me.

I hear people talk about how "hatred is taught" and "kids don't know what racism is," but that's all a bunch of bullshit. By the time they are my son's age they are quite aware of any differences between them and they do whatever they can to advertise and exploit those differences as shameful weaknesses. I see them do this all of the time.

Maybe they weren't little tyrants for the first five years or so, but nobody that has witnessed children up close would make a claim about them being free of the sins of bigotry by the time they are all corralled together in elementary school. It's virtually all they know at that age and it must be constantly fought if you ever hope to defeat or discourage it. There are so many commonplace lies people will repeat about the purity, sanctity, and innocence of children, even as you are mounting your full psychological resistance to extinguishing the very issues that some claim do not even exist. It's what parents do, all day long.

It's not an entirely ignoble lie to advance, I guess. Though children contain all the kernels of awfulness there are and ever have been. If not then parenting would be a relative breeze.

But it is not a breeze. It's not even breezy. 

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Derek

(A recent pic)

Another friend passed away. I'm not sure but based on the posts mentioning depression - his - I have assumed the worst. Is it the worst thing to assume - suicide? I don't know, but it does provoke some very bad feelings. He was a nice guy. He gave me my job as a manager of a local record store in Orlando many years ago, a position I took with all of the seriousness that you can imagine. I was known for sleeping on the futon during the days. Like so many of us he had his own problems. He and I were always happy to see each other. There is that to remember. I could tell more stories here about him, but they are mainly illicit memories. We were younger and none of them, I do not think, would shed favorable light on his recent demise. 

Unlike some of the other deaths recently, I had not seen this one coming at all. What is to be said when you reach an age that you can nearly predict the unfortunate deaths. If not the specifics, there is a sense that tells before you know. Do other 50 year old people feel this way? 

Last week or the one before there was a death which appeared at first to be a suicide. All of the music that had been posted by them to social media before the person's death certainly seemed to suggest that there was some messaging going on beforehand. Then the news broke that it was not a drug-overdose and it was not a suicide, it was accidental. Ignoring that it could have very well been accidental while still being both of those other things, also. It was definitely an over-dose, just not the recreational kind. What sadness is spared by the clarifying claim?

If I was to die soon then my entire life might seem like one long suicide note. So, live every day like it's your last, write a suicide note today.

We mis-booked our condo here in Tahoe and we're supposed to check out in the next couple hours, and that's not even the worst thing that I have to deal with this morning. 

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"90 miles an hour, girl, is the speed I drive"

We slept in late, now there is a rush to get out on the slopes. I have drank coffee, but it did not solve the issue of my lethargy. Now, I poured another cup but left it on the other side of the counter. I would rather type this sentence than get up and retrieve it. 

Well, I brought a camera out yesterday, and shot a few pics of the boy and mom. Shooting in snow requires some minor adjustments, which are easy enough to make, though getting a very well exposed image of snow is challenging. The computer's assessment can not be always trusted. 

I should be less of a twat and buy a good multi-purpose zoom lens, as that is what is needed in this environment. Carrying around even two primes, one on the camera and one in a lens pouch, becomes tedious and prohibitive. Add to that the other camera - 35mm black and white film - and you can imagine what a drag I was yesterday getting these two shots when I could have just been sliding my 200+ pounds down a snowy hill with my giggling son, as mom looks on, still worried that we're both going just a little too fast.

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Day 3 in the Snow

Don't worry about that bit of psychedelia running along the side of my face. I had eaten a handful of candy edibles before we departed for snow stuff and it seems to have affected my phone's camera function. It's as if one of my acid flashbacks had a stroke. 

The boy and mom and I had a great day just getting up to speed on our new winter sport - snowboarding. Mom stayed on skis, but the boy and I have learned some basic maneuvering skills in two days. There are some motions that are counter-intuitive and it takes some getting used to to slice a curve while drifting backwards, but once the sound of your nervous system screaming subsides a bit it begins to all feel quite graceful and even... natural, when it is anything but. 

My friends are, of course, all proud of my parenting and courage and bravery for learning a new and dangerous sport at this age, but what the fuck... when I told them I like to wear women's underwear they told me to shut up! There were no renegade accusations of bravery and courage then. 

CS is right. The Dems are going to find a way of getting tangled up in conversations about Caitlyn Jenner and Ted Nugent next year. You can feel it all coming a million miles away. The Repubs are going to try to mostly keep their heads low and ignore their choice of president. Then they'll start minor arguments over which federal agencies should take on responsibility for funding sex reassignment surgery for non-active military. The Demmies can always be counted on to stick to their platform leading up to an election. 

They chose a poor enemy: other Americans. At least the GOP was smart enough to create a threat built on the idea of foreign enemies, LOTS of them, EVERYWHERE. My favorite part of purely partisan politics is that you'll never run out of idiots, no matter which side you vehemently oppose. 

Ok, day three in the snow. 

Don't worry about that bit of psychedelia running along the side of my face.

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Hearthy

(Day One, Truckee)

There's nothing much to take pictures of here anyway. Just snow, lots of it in all directions, peppered with smiling white people here and there.  It is supposed to snow tonight. We will ski and snowboard again today. Then we will watch the snow fall tonight through the bay windows of our rental property, with the fire going. We will see what the result is tomorrow - either more skiing or none at all. The boy seems to have really attached to snowboarding, as I suspected he would. He had all-day instruction yesterday from a very patient expert in the emerging sport of snowboarding. They are everywhere here, the specialists. It is why some smart people hate things like this: the field of experts is already overpopulated with the worst kind of the intellectually incurious - the healthy and young. 

Yesterday, after swimming a bit in the heated outdoor pool we (I, mainly) decided that we could take a shortcut through the snow to get back to our clearly visible temporary home. It wasn't very far to go, but the snow was much deeper than it first looked, and was also a very uphill climb. I had to take my shows off for fear of losing them in the snow, which was a good example to teach my son when it comes to doing stupid stuff in the snow. The snow was weakened underneath, so every step that mom took in front of me she sunk up to her waist. I tried to step in her footsteps but dad is much heavier than mom. I was sinking to my chest, in wet swimming shorts and no shoes. You get the idea. The boy seemed to love it. Mom, not nearly as much.

We survived. The boy instinctively latched onto the joy of being in the snow without shoes, to make sure there was not any confusion about exactly how right mom was. We are different sorts of frontier people. 

I make it seem worse than it was. It was silly, borderline foolish. No one suffered more than myself, and that seemed fine with all of the witnesses.

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Don't tell, don't ask

We arrived in Tahoe - well, Truckee, which is north of the lake.  We went shopping for the week for food, we went by the ski shop and got kitted out with snowboard gear, we ate lobster rolls and had wine for lunch, we settled into our rental condo and couldn't figure out how the television worked. Vacation stuff. 

The pic above was sent in a group text among some old friends. I barely remember being asked to put the sweater on a few years back, to have my picture taken, but I did. Now, I have this  little memento to celebrate Spring Break with. Yesterday was Rachel's birthday. I am prohibited from discussing the details, but her age in relation to mine would have pleased the honorable Elijah Muhammad a decade ago.   

Don't tell.

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Will there?

I don't know what I'm doing sitting here at this computer. I should be packing. I have put it off to the last moment, and the last moment has now passed. I will rush and forget things that will seem more important than they could be once I realize they have been forgotten. I will bring too much camera gear and strain to use all of it, making decisions that make no sense, setting out for hours with a speciality lens, shooting film when I should be shooting digital. 

Okay, I will ingest a significant amount of THC for the drive to Tahoe. It will help keep me happy and enthusiastic about the music that I am choosing to play, some heavy 70s dub, the deep cuts. It's what I've been into lately, and the last Cat Power and Warpaint albums.  Like any good feminist, I look down my nose at art made by men as stories that the world has already heard and that we have no further need in that regard, probably never did. Except, I did slip recently and read a novel by a man that wasn't transitioning. It was exciting to be such a toxic misogynist, feeding on the pastime of the enemy, like masturbating in the dark with chocolate smeared on my hands. It's not for everybody, starting with the skinny. 

Will there ever be an end to our many differences? 

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A distance apart

We leave for Spring break tomorrow. Tahoe. Truckee. Northstar. It's a vacation place, for families. We are guaranteed to have the famliest of fun. I poke some sarcasm at it, but it is the type place that lives up to its modest promises of semi-expensive distraction, to the exclusion of fascination. I'm certain Tahoe features heavily on Stuff White People Like. I know this without needing to check, but if you don't know that site then browse it. It was from a more innocent racial time. 

My dilemma is the same as always - which cameras should I bring, all Nikon makes sense, but I love the Fuji so much and it is easier to travel with, but what of the instant, and but I love to shoot film, which requires Nikon lenses, so then why not bring the Nikon body... maybe I'll bring every camera and lens that I own, but I wanted to bring my guitar also, and was looking at new ones the other day, though mom, the trip sentinel, said there's no room in the car, and that maybe I could bring the ukulele, and I haven't tried to put the bike rack on the back of Rachel's new car yet, and part of me wants to stay home and have a week to myself, though I know I would regret doing that, because it would unnecessarily hurt the feelings of others whom I love; I need to buy some ski clothes though I'll be snowboarding this trip with the boy because teaching him to ski would be anachronistic, everything is expensive, the thought happened to me that if I brought my mountain bike I could just ride and ride and ride until I felt tired or hungry or both and alone enough that I wished to return and had reached a distance apart in which I couldn't possibly know where I was going any more.

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... an otherwise blameless life

I just found myself standing on the scale while eating a piece of chocolate. 

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I promise

Slight misreporting yesterday. The family reports that it was not a suicide, was not an overdose. 

Consolations never seem to equal the thing for which they are meant to bring comfort.

I am not in an unhappy mood, even though the rains are washing at me tremendously. I have a meeting, then a bike ride in the sun. I promise.

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Sundays with jazz in other rooms

I finally went for a bike ride. It has been about a month since I have been able to ride regularly, which is a big part of what keeps me happy. Without it I am suicidal just like everybody else. 

Well, I can say that, sure. An old friend from the prehistoric world of nightclubbing committed suicide last night. I wasn't that close with him but that specific news always tends to send shock ripples through the survivors, what's left of them, the remainders. Some thoughts become more difficult once you have children - like this one. You want everyone to be happy and safe. It's silly. You know it can't happen, but you tempt things so much less now. You understand life differently. The old things seem so foreign, far away, and yet dangerous. I used to romanticize decay as long as it wasn't sullied with any desperation. One lets their guard down every now and then, things begin to slip, the old standards become the augmented new. 

The first thing I always want to know whenever I hear the news of a suicide is: did they have children? As if that's the only thing that matters after something like that.

I could be wrong. You tell me. 

I am like an opioid crisis when waiting for clouds to clear. If you've ever wanted to die in your sleep then you might understand what I mean. I mean, when people say, How would you like to go?

You tell me. Have you ever, in your sleep, wanted that.

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And do you have any?

Okay, I've come to accept it. The new pup is a very sweet burden. So be it. She, at least, affords me the opportunity to go to the dog park much more often now, where I can take pics of dogs. They are animated and fun. This will occupy me a few times before I grow tired of it. 

Yesterday, after taking a few pictures of dogs at the park a few people asked me to see the ones of their dogs, and I offered to send them the pics if they would write their email addresses in my phone. There was one mom that seemed quite skeptical of me. She was the best looking woman there and before she wrote her email address in my phone she felt compelled to ask me if I had any dogs at the park. I guess she wanted to verify that I belonged there and wasn't some creep taking pictures of young dogs for who knows what perverse pleasures. I should have sent her a nice, juicy dick pic.

It is not the woman in the picture above. I pissed her off trying to get into the parking lot. I was tailgating her a little bit, mostly because I had been drinking and felt a sense of urgency to get to the park where I would be safe from police officers, I told myself. Public parks are always a great place to hide from the cops, especially when there are moms at the gate checking IDs. Who would think to hide there?

People are crazed endlessly with excess of accusation.   

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Being

Jesus, that dog is driving me a little bit crazy. I can't escape it's sweet, loving yowls of anxiety. I am, quite literally, hiding inside a restaurant right now and having a beer with lunch, where she can't see me. It'll only be fifteen minutes of sweet escape, but some much needed time. Maybe one day I'll be able to have two beers with lunch, then three, then who knows. 

I love the pup much, but Daddy needs a day off, soon.

There is more to write about, but fuck it. 

The boy loves her so much, and she loves him. To watch them together is a splendid thing for a man my age to do. What else is there? 

One of my lifelong friends is retiring soon. Maybe he'll move here and watch my dog and kid for me.

I would let him drink all day and complain all night. I'd encourage it. 

What else is there?

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Want: More

I sit here with my first glass of red wine of the day. I went to the dentist earlier - a crown was needed. Not nearly as bad as a root canal but the sound and smell of a drill being used on one's teeth is not anything that easily extinguishes itself. The wash is only to spit, the unpleasantness of the mind remains. So, there is the wine and the memory of the smell. It will likely drip down the left side of my face and onto my white shirt, because I'm still a little but Sylvester Stallone'd from the local anesthesia. My lip droops Lidocaine. 

I often chat with my dentist about the various drugs that used to be used as compared to the ones that are now. Amazingly, they have generally less abuse potential and are more effective. He will tell me illicit stories of when his office used to get broken into by ravers desperate for tanks of nitrous oxide. 

No, I told him that story, but he had stories of his own, as well. 

Nitrous oxide makes me feel like going better places than just the dentist, though I never arrive. The feeling wears off. Even when I was a kid I used to relish the atmospheric walks home, down the familiar streets that felt so suddenly unfamiliar, thinking of an album that I should listen to.

I want everything, life, and some more of it. 

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Skate Tough or Go Home

Never a Dull Moment, the curse sent to us in album form from English rocker Rod Stewart. It was the last of his listenable full-length efforts. But I meant the new pup - she's a real dynamo. There is still much adjusting to do. 

CS is right about it being a lot to undertake of course, though I feel as if he is enjoying the luxury of complaining about what taking on a pup means without having to do any of the work. 

We're dropping her off at discipline school and going to Tahoe for a week. It is the boy's Spring break. I suspect that we will miss her in equal proportion to how much we enjoy the relief from caring for her. She is trying very hard, you can see it in everything she does.

Yesterday, we went to the local skate park. I tied her to a tree outside. I'm from Florida, that sort of thing is still permitted. She whined and yowled for a little bit but then settled down and accepted her fate. After a while it occurred to me that she could run around with the kids in the park, no one else was there. So, I brought her in and closed the gate.

Rhys was standing at the bottom of a bowl. She had run around to the top side. When she saw him she just darted for him, I tried to yell no, but she had already launched from the upper rim into a full breasted dive into the bowl. She disappeared from my site and I expected to hear a snapping sound and her immediate howls of pain. But somehow she landed it. She tried to run up the sides to get out but kept sliding back towards the bottom. I showed her which side she could run up to get out of the bowl and then that's all the kids wanted to do with her after that, just to run and laugh and run. What a wonderful thing is youth. 

Everybody loves a puppy.

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