The known and unknown

A friend has chosen to end their life on Sunday. They have cancer. The state they live in allows death with dignity. They cannot leave the hospital currently. Their oxygen needs are beyond what the portable tanks can supply. There is nothing more to be said about it, for now. It has all come as quite a shock, and reminder. 

North Carolina has no dignity, though of course plenty of death. There is a resolution (H410) being lobbied for at the moment. I'm thinking of myself now, if you can't tell. It might have to be suicide the old-fashioned way, if things come to that. I've given up California residency, and it takes a year to re-establish. There just might not be enough time, when the time comes. Perhaps I can challenge Death to a chess match on the beach. 

Of course I'm thinking of myself, that's what death is for. I have a friend that could hardly stand to discuss our mutual friend's condition. It took them less than two sentences to shift the conversation towards themselves when confronted with the information. I'd say, despicable, but I'm no better. This blog proves it. It is useless except as a resource of evidence against me. Since returning here I have tried to write more anonymously, as CS does, but the cat is already out of the bag, as they say. If you prefer your idioms to reference livestock fraud. 

So, here I am again, stepping bravely once more into the known. 

Your love, thanks, and adoration is what feeds my soul. 

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I've said that

I have no new images. I've already said that. 

I could write about the books I'm finishing up, three of them. That might not be very interesting, except perhaps for the Houellebecq. I've read all of his books now except the latest one. There really is no need. He's not a great writer in the normal sense - that his books tell unique stories well. In that regard he is rather limited. The settings are always different, but they seem the same. The main character often has a different name, but they are presented to be some form of the writer. That is an assumption, though. I know very little about him as a person. He advances a similar position in most of his books on social and political issues - that liberal ideals are often deeply flawed, to the point of absurdity. Yet every so often he surprises me with some insight dragged up from the chthonic.  

That's all I have today, but I've said that, too. 

Beware the tides of August

(digital, trying to look like film)

One of the boy's friends is arriving tonight. A first time lone cross-country traveler coming from California. Tomorrow, myself and the boys go on a day-adventure. Then to a football game in the evening that Raquel the mom arranged. She's a very good mom. I probably tell her that too much. I like to oversell some ideas. Keeps everybody off their toes. Love is lost lulling. 

Both boys are of course much older now than they appear in these pics. Soon they will be "young men" though there are still a few months left for them to be boys. I will but them some fireworks and lighters, show them where the bridge crosses the interstate and let the exuberance of inexperience deal with the future. 

(Ilford HP5+ - looking like film)

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And yet

If there is a trick to living then I have yet to figure it out, or to have completely done so. I seem to have done some things correctly, or right - there is adequate money, the things I desire have surrounded me, several hobbies, variable talents, a wife, a son, a dog, a family in Canada. And yet. 

There must be many tricks to life and living, the set of which changes in perpetuity. I will occasionally be forced to overhear people tout and wheez their virtuous lifestyles, how it presumably staves off the feelings of being old, but then minutes later they will also catalog their infirmities, ad infinitum. It is the Sisyphean vacillation of virtue and suffering that they perennially insist impressing upon others. They confuse manners with morals, and consistently over-value their own. I have spent my life trying to escape the virtues of others. It's a nearly universal bore, my escape efforts. Any room can become a panic room if you've shattered every nerve in your body.  

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"I am big, it's the pictures that got small."

I know what tremendous fans of pet pics some readers are. They can't seem to get enough, some of them. 

Fiends rarely understand the pleasures of others, the simple joys most of all. It is the less than sympathetic nature of fiendishness. Happiness in others arise as cruelties meant for them. 

What can anyone oh ever do?

Speaking of cruelties - my home studio is nearing completion. It is as if I have taken on another career, one that costs rather than pays, always preparing to prepare. What you see below are the processors. There are synthesizers also, devices of all kinds, large and small, guitar pedals that few would have believed possible. Never enough, there's never enough. My demented mantra, the source of some dissatisfaction. 

N+1 - the hope of eternally recurring redundancy. The fiendish pleasures of obtaining and duplicating. 

Speaking of, tonight Raquel and I go to see Sunset Boulevard. 

A noir. 

".... it's the pictures that got small."

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Doing Nothing and Learning Little

(filled with lights, lost bells)

There is little to say today. The sun is setting behind the house. The last of the light flittering in the leaves of the trees.

I spent most of the day on piddling concerns, playing with audio and recording gear. Doing nothing and learning little. I did how ever watch Tarkovsky's Solaris. That is at least something. It is always something to watch his films - pensive, poetic, meditative. All of that. Don't worry too much about me, I didn't engage in very much intellectualism. Almost none. I also watched several episodes of South Park. Etc.

Tomorrow I start adjusting to my new role at work - meetings with engineers, onboarding, reviewing the roadmap. I already know all of them and have a good relationship with most of them. I of course hope they feel the same. That makes things a bit easier, most of the time. 

At sunrise tomorrow  I'll go for a bike ride, maybe 15 miles or more. Our new city has hills everywhere and in all directions. It excites my heart and lungs to climb and coast, over and over until my legs abandon me. We moved here a year ago this month. Time still flies of course, but it seems to fly further and further from me and in all directions. 

Save me, save me, save me from this squeeze.....

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A Life Aquatic (gypsies and joblessness)

Some good news at work. I'll be taking over a team in Krakow, Poland. Taking over... what a phrase. I'm not invading Poland, don't worry. No panzers will be obliterating the border. It should all be very peaceful. I'll just be the Product Manager for another team. This will mean a new job title and a raise. It's a portion of the product and a team to which I am already familiar. The transition should be relatively easy. I'll be returning to Krakow, at some point, I would assume. I went there a few times many years ago when I was a minor rock star - worse: a DJ. 

I've had at least two kinds of adult life so far - an entrepreneurial one and a more formal one, restless joblessness and now a career, running with the gypsies and then this job, in that order. There was that third type of life - childhood. I was neither entrepreneurial nor motivated by any of the tradeoffs that now seem to prompt my days. Ah, what I would not give to be once again ripened with legends anew, etc.

My heart of silk

is filled with lights,

with lost bells,

with lilies and bees.

I will go very far,

farther than those hills,

farther than the seas,

close to the stars,

to beg Christ the Lord

to give back the soul I had

of old, when I was a child,

ripened with legends,

with a feathered cap

and a wooden sword.

- Lorca

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Death creeps In from the lips

A trip to the dentist today, where I discovered that my last trip to the dentist involved some insurance fraud. They charged my insurance for x-rays that they never took. Ah well, where would we be without a little crime on crime. The dental hygienist was encouraging me to spend much of my future time at the dentist office, and to finally get rid of my wisdom teeth once and for all.  

I quipped - Well, you know what they say - death creeps in from the lips.  

She corrected me. 

Oh, no. I was making a joke about love.

She thought that I was perhaps too dark. It is, after all, only the South. 

But she had a job to do. She introduced some death to my gums. 

I came home and went for a pre-rain bike ride. Even losing weight isn't as much fun as it used to be. It hurts to gain weight and it hurts to lose it. The years just seem to push you into the creek over and over.

Google Blogger ate my post again last night. Luckily I had prepared by copying the text. Though it took me several tries to correct it on the platform and get it to publish. 

It ate my photo, too. It was like me when I was younger. I ate them once and for all. 

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The rain, even, reminds me

There is nothing but the past available tonight. It's everywhere I look. The rain, even, reminds me. It's falling everywhere and from all sides. We are in the swamp of summer here in Charlotte. In the mornings I go for bike rides, just like I used to do. That, of course, reminds me of my age even as it is making me feel marginally younger. It feels like I'm breathing moisture, even at sunrise. I go blind from the salt that pours across my eyes. Perhaps I've seen everything that I want to see. 

Before life takes it all, it takes everything over time. 

I recall: "At 50 everybody has the face they deserve." 

 

I hope that I don't look surprised. 

Oh, the heavy word is frightenin'

Raquel and I fell asleep last night to thunder and lightning. I would write about it but everybody already knows what it's like to lie in the dark and watch the room become suddenly illuminated, then to wait for the thunder. All the suspenseful movies become an amalgam of the present darkness. I loved it, couldn't stop myself from masturbating, didn't even try. I'm not sure how Raquel felt other than annoyed with me. We were there together, but who knows where anybody else ever is or was and will be. Life is a stupidly temporary mystery.

 

The boy was spending the night at his friend's house. He probably left the very nice and expensive mountain bike that he borrowed from me out in the rain, unlocked and visible from the road. Kids, etc. For him life is probably equal parts adventure and mystery. He is starting to live his life without us, soon departing on his chariot of fire.  

The boy being here less doesn't seem to have changed very much between Raquel and I. It must be our age, my mind keeps haranguing me.

Oh, palomino - oh, thunderclap.

Oh! Sweet nuthin'... 

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It's all very simple

I didn't go see Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan last night. Something was off between R and I. Things have been off for about two weeks. I couldn't take it any more. I wanted to reprieve. I guess two weeks is my limit. I stayed home and watched films - Blood Simple and Aparajito. There was no apparent theme to movie night. I just wanted to be taken elsewhere. Not quite Ray's first film, but an early work. I know very little about his career, only that is is held in high regard. I can see why. The film was unique, unlike most films. It had a sensitivity to it that is lacking in many films. It is a manufactured contrivance, but its intentions seem less polluted by something... It's not intellect, because that is there, but something else. Perhaps a need to be regarded a particular way. Its sincerity is also its boldness. 

Worth a watch. 

 

Well, I had not sat down here this morning to write movie reviews. I am preparing to leave for a bike ride soon. I want to return to wearing headphones when I ride, listening to music, but getting hit by a car will change a person. It has made me more defensive and careful, cautious almost to the point of hesitancy. It aged me suddenly. Not like Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan - I grew older in an instant.  

The last six years has been pure gravy - fattening and difficult to consume on its own. 

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The stamp of the doomed

I'm re-using pics from years ago - so what. I'm likely restating the obvious, also. It's what happens when the mind ages and surrenders. Try it, it's post-modern. 

Today we go see Willie Nelson and Bob Dylan, if they can both bear the heat. It'll be about a hundred degrees or more. I almost don't want to go, but the tickets were expensive and we both want to show the boy what effect the 20th century had on people. I just received a text message warning me about the hundred degree heat. It made no mention of the humidity. A youth must have sent it. 

I re-stringed one of my acoustic guitars this morning, the one that I play the most. It's a nice guitar though I treat it like an old "beater." I am often surprised at how long ago new strings were needed, but that I've acclimated to the sound of dull and aged strings. I become lazy about so much lately. Everything becomes a type of work, the philosophers call it play.  Philosophers - will they ever finally figure things out. They should get to work, pull their thumbs out. 

I must have stated all of this before. It seems impossible that any of this is novel. 

Predictability is a hallmark of the cursed.

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It's God shining through to me, I guess

Raquel and I went to see Ryan Adams on Wednesday here in Charlotte. He didn't even bother playing any of his big hits from the 80s.... He also lectured the audience relentlessly, offered to fight a few people, made up songs on the spot about Top Gun because he misheard something said from the audience, told funny anecdotes, mumbled endlessly, instructed everybody how to listen to his music and why, invented punchlines that apparently only he thought were clever, and then was also brilliant for the rest of the night when he wasn't talking. 

The couple sitting next to us bought tickets believing that they were going to see Brian Adams. They left about an hour into the show. I suppose they could not take all of the extended and uncomfortable confrontation between the audience and the artist. In many ways he is a complete bore. But there are the songs, performed by him alone. Raquel didn't want to leave. When he would shut up long enough to play a song he was like nobody else I'd ever seen before. Yes, I've seen many artists with talent, but none quite like him. He is a truly broken and shattered man, vulnerable and apparently dangerous.  

He played the Heartbreaker album almost in its entirety, acoustically. If you don't know this one... - well, I recommend it. It was written and recorded when he was 25 years old. It is one of those albums that might just save your life some nights. When the moon is just right, and so on. Other nights it might certainly destroy you. I've destroyed parts of myself to it. 

Is God playing evil tricks on me?

Is he?

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A gust inside the ghost

The wind, some rain, a little nothing. The day was wasted with employment, lost now forever. The rain arrived - thunderous applause, torrents, and all of that, etc. I stood looking out at it, this modest forest, watching the leaves of the trees glimmering with the raindrops, a dance of greens and blues and light, so many millions of bits of information moving in seeming unison, a dance that television static does just to do, unchanging and dynamic all at once - endless in boundlessness. So many gusts inside the ghost.

If any of us were to be free.

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Being old is of course disgraceful

It might not be a great idea to write here now. I am at the end of a very long day, filled with frustrations and disappointments, some work-related. Everything will work out, I'm told. It is best to only want things obliquely. Too much passion to do anything directly and well is suspect, especially from somebody as old as me. 

Being old is a disgrace. 

If you want to glimpse how disgraceful being old is, and you are past a certain age, then express some outrage or disgust. It doesn't even matter what at, it can be anything, but it is of particular interest to lash out at something that is perceived to represent youth in its current form. Even the things they claim to hate - they will not suffer you hating those things also. 

I'm no longer talking about work, by the way, but I'm glad I said something about it earlier - busy, long day, etc. 

I know you care. 

Back to the indignity of aging... youths will not permit you very much without openly regarding it and you as disgusting - sex, anger, passion, doing drugs, driving drunk. To enjoy once again any of the shameful and sloppy joys and mistakes that you made abundantly when young... at this age... you will get a glimpse into how much the young casually dictate to the old what behavior should be. The unstated expectations are tremendous. For all of their youthful energy rebelling against being told what to do, just look, and look very carefully, you will see the maelstrom of entitlement and hypocrisy. The little hearts of darkness.

They can not stop themselves.   

So, use your money to fuck a few of them at a time. Never let them forget why they hate you. 

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Polar Bear

Well, let's try this again. I'm on my work computer, so everything I write may be entirely ephemeral. Or, more so than is to be expected. Perhaps my computer knows best. I'm still pissed off that it stole my Fitzgerald post. I was happy with it. I suppose it only shows that, like writing, happiness cannot last. 

I have tried to explain to Raquel that sensuality and eroticism are about as close a state to happiness there is that can be recalled at will, but she is in a different stage of life than myself. I'm still enjoying a form of puberty. She appears to be leaving it for good, and without regret. Ah well, such is the life of the sexually opposed and dimorphic. I'm her polar bear. 

The other day I found myself explaining to her why men find young women attractive - which was the easy part - but then I offered a few sentences to explain why women of a certain age start to lose interest in sex and become more assertive. I may have said aggressive. I won't try that again. 

I confirmed right away for her why I was wrong. I explored that wrongness for her as quickly and thoroughly as I could possibly run. Nothing helped. 

Some women you just can't reach. 

Ok, I'm about to click the Publish button. 

We may never see each other again. 

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Oh, my Zelda

Again last night I wrote a post here and most of it was consumed by this same platform. Eaten, gone forever - Google had a job, to preserve what is written here. The post makes no sense without it, and the refrain is destroyed by the loss. 

Google, always Google.

I suppose it was my fault. I should have known or at least predicted that this might happen. Perhaps something has failed with the browser cache on my work computer. An invisible fault has become my undoing, my erasure. I forgot to copy the post before publishing. Everything except the final sentence was lost to the bytes. I was pleased with what I had written, and now this - yesterday's whine. 

Moving onwards. There is this post documenting that something better once happened. As if proof is required. It was a passage attempting to imitate Fitzgerald's writing from The Crack Up. On that I suppose it is perhaps best to have ambivalent feelings. Though, I liked the passage and nobody had to know, though it was hinted at in the title. 

Zelda died in a fire in Asheville, suffering from schizophrenia and the treatments they had for it at that time. The hospital is still there. Scott had died almost a decade before, believing himself to be a failed writer, which at the time I suppose he was. He was one of the very few things that WW II helped restore.  

"The fruits of victory are tumbling into our mouths too quickly." - Emperor Hirohito

Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her; If you can bounce high, bounce for her too, Till she cry 'Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover, I must have you!' - Thomas Parke D'Invilliers 

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We will waltz once

She insisted once, and then once again, on this new full measure of hysteria.

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I've said that

The image and the first paragraph from last night's post vanished. I used italics, which has apparently caused Google more problems than they are willing to address, at least on this platform. Well, I hope it's not only me that's experiencing weirdness from the itals... Oddness around and inability to add italics has appeared on multiple devices and multiple browsers now. I am too lazy to research if it is a known issue. Besides, it makes me feel special, even if a bit inconvenient and results in occasional loss. It gave me back this paragraph, just now.

People become terrified of change. Slowly, I am. It has been much more sudden than I expected, but I still like to pretend I have much more to fear in the future. Fear of change is one of my anxiety leitmotifs. I should probably italicize that, or misspell it out of spite, but I'll let it be. What's done is dumb. 

Perhaps I am in fear of the past changing, also.

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I Fall To Pieces

Raquel lies next to me now, trying to go to sleep with some podcast playing softly in her ear. It's her trick.I can't imagine how it possibly works for her. It would keep me awake, I'm sure of it. 

The picture above was the boy wearing one of my Burning Man boilersuits, in the old apartment in Sonoma. He and I had a lot of fun there together. Looking back I see now that I learned something important there, that my happiness wasn't dependent on very much, but could still be easily taken away.

Not the most profound lesson of course but there were others. I was making good money and was free to do as I pleased about 50% of the time. I developed a renewed interest in photography, and began to enjoy a more solitary existence. I recall evenings watching movies in the living room, either by myself or with the boy. Waking before sunrise and going for a bike ride and to the gym. Reading in bed all day on the weekends without the boy. I learned to cook in a rudimentary way. I became pretty good at making a small handful of dishes - lasagna, coq au vin, whole baked chicken with potatoes and gravy, stews, baked fish, pasta dishes, all sorts of meats and vegetables on the grille. I possessed a modest but ever growing set of kitchen utensils. I started to improve at weekly shopping in such a way that I could plan basic meals. It lasted for about three years. 

Don't expect anything new.