The Tragedy of the Leaves

Home again. I woke up today not feeling nearly as bad I had yesterday morning.  One must be careful of ingesting too much of any liquid that is flammable. There should be a warning on the bottle, there probably is.  It seems an obvious truth that nothing good will come of it, even if you follow it up with beer in the hopes of neutralizing its potential hazards, there is still much danger.  I'm no expert, but my anecdotal experience brings me this simple homespun wisdom. 

I have the day off today, then another one just like it tomorrow.  The two days stretch out in front of me like a cliff-less plateau. Today I will lie around the apartment reading (Dostoevsky's The Brothers Karamazov), tomorrow perhaps the shores south of SF or Lake Berryessa, north of Sonoma. 

  

Today is a friend's birthday. She just unexpectedly sent me a gift, a cd of poetry, for the long rides to and from work.  As this is one of her favorite poems by that author I will leave it here for any who care.

The Tragedy of the Leaves 

I awakened to dryness and the ferns were dead, 

the potted plants yellow as corn; 

my woman was gone 

and the empty bottles like bled corpses 

surrounded me with their uselessness; 

the sun was still good, though, 

and my landlady's note cracked in fine and 

undemanding yellowness; what was needed now 

was a good comedian, ancient style, a jester 

with jokes upon absurd pain; pain is absurd 

because it exists, nothing more; 

I shaved carefully with an old razor 

the man who had once been young and 

said to have genius; but 

that's the tragedy of the leaves, 

the dead ferns, the dead plants; 

and I walked into a dark hall 

where the landlady stood 

execrating and final, 

sending me to hell, 

waving her fat, sweaty arms 

and screaming 

screaming for rent 

because the world had failed us 

both.

-Charles Bukowski 

The Haight

This morning I awoke on a friend's couch about a block off of Upper Haight.  My cranial fluid had been removed and replaced with kerosene sometime during the night.  I was afraid to move. It was as if there was a bicycle pump attached to the pain center in my brain and there was a team of monkeys on the other end taking turns pumping my mind full of misery while screeching in delight.  

I have no memory of this but at some time during the night I took a can of tuna out of my friend's kitchen closet and put it in my shoe, supposing that I might be hungry when I woke up and perhaps wanting to remind myself of it in advance.

Hunter's Moon

The night of the Harvest Moon my wife and I went up onto a hill to watch it rise over the valley.  Once we got off of the main road, which is already quite rural, we were on a dirt road heading up into the hills on the West side of Sonoma Valley.  There were just small houses and farms peppered along the way.  As we were driving further up the hill towards the summit we encountered a guy who appeared to be a farmer driving a 4-wheel ATV down the same small dirt road we were driving up. I pulled towards the right side and slowed to a stop. He could see that I had done so and he likewise slowed to a stop at the driver's side window.  I explained that we wanted to watch the full moon rise and where did he think would be a good spot. He pointed to a road that led to a gate perpendicular from where we were stopped.  This was sensible and we were happy to find a place to settle, the moon was nearing its rise.

We pulled down the road almost to the end, which was only about 150 feet or so and parked the car.  There was a vineyard to our right when we got out of the car, an equestrian pen in front of us and slightly to the right, an open cow field in front of us and somewhat to the left, a few rusted trucks in the open field, as well as a couple cows.

Here's a pretty good overview image, minus the cows, which were too far off to the left to be seen.

My wife had made some food for us and I opened a bottle of wine and we sat and enjoyed the vista with our dog Barkley sniffing the air suspiciously towards the unfamiliar cows. 

All was well and nice.

There was a lone house behind us and a row of tress leading back down the hill from the way we came with some houses obscured behind them.  I include the picture below to attempt to flesh out that part of our surroundings.  To the right of the picture, just of the edge of the frame is the road that we drove up on. and parallel with that road, behind the trees, are some other houses that we couldn't see very well.

As I had described earlier we had driven down a small dirt road to a gate so that as we were leaving it was necessary to make about a 6-point turn to turn all the way around.  As the field was relatively flat I decided, once I had put the car in reverse and was about to begin the process of turning around, that it was much easier to just drive slightly across the field to accomplish this meager task.  So I did.  It excited my wife in that Oh no, you shouldn't be doing this  kind of way, but there was no harm in any of it, just a little bit of innocuous excitement. 

We made it quickly to the end of the road we had been on and turned right to head back down the hill towards home. Just after we had made the turn I heard three gun shots in very rapid succession, probably from a small gauge rifle. In unison with the shots going off a massive black-ish bird in the tree next to us spread his wings and took immediate flight away from the car.  We could hear the sound of his immense wings flapping to achieve sudden flight.  Two of the bullets I heard hit the grass towards the front of the car.  I don't know very much about rifles but this didn't seem to have the boominess of a shotgun. It sounded more like a .20 gauge, or maybe even smaller.  The rapidness of the shots also made me suspect something other than a shotgun, as did the number of shots, 3. 

Again, I know very little about guns, but this was my assessment at the time.

The estimation that I made to my wife, 23 weeks pregnant, was altogether different.  

Lying, "I don't think those were gunshots, they sounded too thin. I think it was somebody just hitting a piece of metal with a hammer or something."

I didn't speed up noticeably nor did I twist my neck back out of the window to give him something better to shoot at, but I did glance over to the left to see if there was anything to see.  My head swirled with gun-toting visions of ignorance and evil and legal murder for trespassing. There was nothing there to be seen, the trees were blocking any view we might have had and the sun was all the way down. 

The pictures I've included above are misleading, they were shot as much as a half hour before this incident.  Here is a more telling image, shot only minutes before, with the flash on. That's a rusted out old truck in the foreground, only 20 feet away from me or so.

It wasn't quite that dark to the naked eye, but you get the idea.... The sun had set.

Later I relayed the story as I knew it to be to my wife and our friends.  They've lived here for 11 years and they claimed that nothing like that has ever happened to them.  If it had not been for me hearing the bullets hit the grass outside the driver's side window I would have rationalized away the experience as well, convincing myself of anything convenient to avoid coming to terms with what had actually happened. 

When I say that we are going through much transitional anxiety to live here, for once, I'm not overstating. 

This is the second time in my life that I've been shot at. The first was a much closer scrape with death. Perhaps one day I'll tell that story as I remember it.  It involves a handgun, 5 shots at close range, and then an arrest for attempted murder along with a few other charges.

Life is short.  At this rate I'll probably get shot at once more before it's all over.  Somewhere out there is a gun and (probably) a man that will point the gun towards me and pull the trigger.  My only hope is that the thought of doing so has not already crossed his mind. I'd prefer if it was something thought up on the spot as the last two were, though with even feebler intent and marksmanship.

.

Breaking news, breaking hearts and laws....

(Recovered work of art by L. Murray)

Breaking News from AP : "A stolen piece of artwork by Sonoma artist L. Murray was recovered by a lone agent, operating independently, from a San Francisco home late last night. The alleged suspects are being beaten in place of traditional questioning."

That was all that came across the wire.   There would be more, there always was. This case had been opened for 5 years or more. There had been no new leads in years.  The file had grown cold.

It began in Sonoma, approx. 2006.  Famed and beloved New York resident, wine and art lover, Q6, was visiting on business.  At a dinner party the piece in question was given to him as a gift by the artist, L. Murray, for his suggested and imaginary philanthropic works.  He returned to San Francisco the next day, leaving the piece at Ms. J.K.'s house.  She was a trusted though troubled friend. He emphasized that the well-being of the piece was paramount.  He made plans to retrieve the piece upon his return where it could be transported more safely.

Months went by. He had believed for there to be no reason for him to check on the piece, so he didn't. He went on imagining other charitable causes he might one day speak of, or mention casually in conversation, hoping that the idea might snowball into something of substance.

When he finally did return to San Francisco several months later he made all the necessary preparations to retrieve the work.  It was nowhere to be found.  J.K. played traditionally dumb, but this time suspiciously well.  She had him search the entire apartment in vain desperation. It took him nearly a day to inspect each and every closet, crevice and crawl space in the apartment.  It was gone, vanished without a trace.

After much consternation, worry and verbal pressuring it was finally revealed by J that she believed that maybe I. Meron, a mutual friend, had "borrowed" the piece.

Now here is where the story begins to get suspicious.... Q asked J over and over again how she could possibly know of, and have allowed, such a thing to happen when her responsibility was to watch over the piece and keep it safe?  She hemmed-and-hawed and looked nervously away but provided no real answers or clues as to what might have actually happened.  Again, she played even more witless than before, though the cracks in her performance were beginning to show.

Q asked I. Meron what had become of the piece. He also acted in a likewise manner, silent and nervous, claiming that he did not have it and he was not quite sure what had become of it. Though he did seem to express some vague knowledge of the work's whereabouts, but without any of the necessary information to retrieve the piece. He had already begun to weave his web of accusation, deceit and denial.

The petty art-thieves, I. Meron, and an area SF Cop who had been assigned to patrol the many faltering bathhouses of the SF area, working under-many-covers but mainly as a free-spirited towel boy, moved in together and began decorating their place without raising any suspicions or alarm.

The case was nearly forgotten for many years.  During that time Q had a wedding ceremony in Sonoma with the woman he had previously eloped with, R.C.  The artist, L. Murray and I. Meron. were both in attendance... what irony.  At this time the case had been shelved and suspicions ran relatively low, at least as far as stolen art was concerned, which was very lucky for Meron, an unknown art-thief and international lover of both meat and style.


Two more years passed.  R.C. and Q visited SF/Sonoma the following year to celebrate the artist's 40th birthday in Sonoma and to play the part of two New Yorker's on a night out in SF for a Halloween boat party the following night in San Francisco Bay.  They visited the home of Meron and The Cop, hurrying to get ready to go out for the evening, sitting in the kitchen chatting over a bottle of wine, even.

The case was so cold as to practically be closed.

The victim, Q, and his wife, eventually moved to Sonoma in late summer of 2011.  On an overnight trip into SF he came by Meron and the bathhouse Cop's domicile of art iniquities.  These two will hereafter be referred to as either the mutual perpetrators and/or co-conspirators. While sitting in their kitchen Q glances up at the yellow wall and voila', case closed. There was the stolen piece hanging in full view, where it had apparently been for several years.

He immediately called the FBI and they came by with a couple goons to arrest the two "alleged" thieves and take them to a sealed basement off of Mission St. where they took turns negotiating the terms of a confession out of them.  There were no witnesses outside of law enforcement to hear the confessions made from hospital beds later that same day.  It was a tragic turn in a case with few clues, and even fewer truths, as to what might have happened.

They of course turned on each other like two water rats deserting a sinking ship.  They started giving state's evidence on one another like bickering rodents stuck in a whirling cesspool of public shame and sexual humiliation, though no strangers to those feelings, they eventually cracked.

When confronted by Q neither of them showed the slightest sign of remorse or regret... at first.  In their confused, beaten and drug-addled condition they actually tried to assert that J.K. had "given" them the piece, each unable to understand that it was not hers to give, so it could not have possibly made any genuine transfer of ownership.

Criminals never seem to understand that what they have stolen never really becomes theirs.  It is a very sad thing to witness.  Don't do the crime if you can't deep-throat a lime... someone once said

Charges are still pending against J.K. : obstruction of justice, bad hair days, perverting the course of art, blonde-ness, etc.


The work was returned to the home of its rightful owner and his wife where it is now protected by what many consider to be the most ferocious guard dog ever naturally bred.  This inhuman beast stalks the perimeter of the compound searching only to kill and then devour any suspiciously acting strangers that happen to end up in the grip of its jaw of terror.

The co-conspirators returned home on bail briefly and posted this image, of the blank wall where their shame used to hang openly for all to see, as if by some magic turn of events they themselves had somehow become the victims rather than the petty art thieves and bathhouse towel boys that they actually are... Notice the skewed vision of the photograph, the tell-tale sign of a twisted criminal mind, unable to align its vision with the rest of the world's, forever doomed to exist on the periphery of good taste and simple American honesty and decency....

(where their shame once hung freely)

The city of Sonoma is rallying together behind the actual victims of this case to raise money to keep these two miscreants behind bars and to educate children on the many evils of art.

Q and R.C. are just happy to have the piece returned safely home. He has continued his work in charitable imaginings.

L. Murray is likewise relieved to have the piece return to its intended owner after so many years away. She has dedicated a weekly meditation class to recovering all stolen art everywhere.

J.K. is completely unaware of any new developments in the case. She is preparing her legal defense by watching CSI: Miami.

I. Meron has turned to god and swears to one day make restitution to the victims of his crime. In fact, he has promised to return double, possibly triple, the total value of the piece to them in hard-earned US Dollars, including interest and factoring in for inflation.  He is committed to a vow of celibacy for the remainder of his days, saying, "It's the least I can do."

The "Cop" has become a favorite prison plaything, being renamed "June" after only his first week served, a term of endearment he earned shortly after being de-loused in the prison's shower facilities.

  .

  

Open apology for last post

This morning's post was horrific, just awful.  I went back and re-read it at work and was mortified.  It's terrible. I wrote most of it a few days ago, then kept adding a paragraph or three each day, without editing, then didn't want to feel like I had wasted my time, posted it in a rush before work... well, you know the rest.  I won't bore you with the details twice.  

I apologize for the whole stinky mess.  I couldn't even finish it when trying to read it at work and I am unnaturally smitten with my own posts, usually.  It must have been torture for any of you that finished it.


That's all.

Everything is replaceable

I wrote this a few days ago but didn't post it.  After Selavy posted that I had mentioned attacking his grammar, a joke, I thought that he would think today's post about him and further perpetuate his already shameful behavior.  Grammar just happened to be on my mind and I blurted it out, my mind fuzzy with wine, celebrating the third harvest moon in a row.

A friend recently pointed out that I am not actually from New York, that I am just a hillbilly from some place called Lumberton.  I checked into it, it turns out that it's not true.  He laughs at my struggles to acclimate to a more rural lifestyle. I suppose it is funny, to witness from a distance.  It's not as if it is that difficult to adjust.  It's mostly the people I'm forced to interact with now, not so much in Sonoma but in Corte Madera.  I mean "the others" from across the river and beyond the hills.

Today Rachel was working at a yoga studio and the guy who previously worked there, who is leaving for an 8 month program at circus school, arrived to help ease the transition, riding a unicycle.  After realizing that he wasn't really needed there he departed in similar fashion.  When I tell you that this place is surreal it's not because I'm smoking an unusual amount of pot.  It really and truly is a strange place.  

More on rural uni-wraiths later.

I have given some thought lately to grammar, what it means.  I'm divided on the subject.  I prefer my misuse of language to the misuse of others, predictably.  

The purpose of grammar is to assist in the conveyance of meaning, its intention is to help aid clarity by generating useful recommendations for composition.  There are some grammatical suggestions to help improve clarity but we can use language to suggest freely, as we wish to.  The English language has been exhausted neither of mistakes nor of beauty, nor purpose.  There is no such thing as a grammatical "rule," any more than the bumps on people's heads give us insight into what "race" they are.  Grammar is a failed pseudo-science.  Each person has their own set of grammatical choices, though there is a large collective set that people commonly draw from and mistakenly refer to as "rules," which they then confuse with natural laws, always as a way to correct someone else's usage.  It is prohibitive and corrective, its purpose is to constrict as much as it is to assist.  In pronunciation one need only consider the "Queen's English" to see this impulse in fully disastrous effect.

There are only "stylistic choices", some that work, some that do not, like putting the comma outside of the quotation marks in this sentence, or using commas to make an extended sentence that might otherwise be divided into several shorter sentences, like Jose Saramago, Nobel-laureate, from Portugal. To speak a language is to own it, part of that ownership includes the right to change the language.  If there were actual rules to language that must be adhered to, punishable, then there would be no poetry, no song, and very little literature worth reading.  Bob Dylan and William Shakespeare would have been taxed out of existence long ago.  Lie Lady Lie...

If we have an obligation to correct the use of language then certainly we must also have an obligation to correct literature, arguably the richest source of language. We should be impelled to rectify the past, to align it with our developed understanding, to update it to our advanced standards.  But very few argue for modifying literature to make it more appealing to a current audience, more palatable to the modern mind, advancing it in step with the times.  Ignore the efforts to "correct" Mark Twain's masterpiece.  It is a different category of mistake occurring there.

Conversely, if we are to respect the past by leaving it as it was, or is, we have no such alternate obligation towards the future. In fact, it becomes our responsibility to pro-actively affect language and make changes that reflect our time, its various needs and changing uses.  Somehow texting fails this task.

Pedants argue that misuse transmits unintended meanings. But that is perhaps only true to the pedant. To correct assumes that the pedant alone understands the intended meaning. "Correction is the vicious idol of snobbery." - Jacques Barzun, From Dawn to Decadence

The other examples I feel contrarily about.  If you're going to abbreviate or compress meaning then it should result in something "more" than it was otherwise.  If you sacrifice clarity for brevity without producing beauty, or something more suggestive, then you've detracted from the world rather than added.

For the sake of convenience many of the people that I know argue for an extreme version of mitigated literacy: text-speak. With the omission of vowels, or the use of vowels as a substitute for words, they communicate using the same set of letters but in a supposedly economical way.  "r u" substitutes for "Are you?"  It seems sensible when one considers the danger of texting while driving, or the inconvenience associated with any excess time spent typing out a message in text, or even an email, especially when done on a phone, in a car, at high speeds, drunk.  The sheer burden of language overwhelms the owner of one of these modern devices.

But letters are free, sort of.  If you get charged per individual text then one would think that the sender would include as much information as possible in each transmission, rather than cheating themselves out of entirely unused alphabets.

Also, much of what passes for language now is merely auto-correction.  It is acceptable to transmit errors because we all understand that it is the fault of the device and not the user.  Guns don't kill people, etc.  If you bother pointing out to somebody that their text was error-ridden and caused you some pause in trying to decipher its meaning they will actually get mad at you, as if it somehow reflects poorly on them to have had their device not convey only the highest standards of grammar at their unseen behest.  To make known an error in communication is to question the sender's ability to purchase devices that adequately reflect their education and sophistication. 

David Foster Wallace perhaps missed his true medium.

Some of it is cute, texting, I'll admit it.  I have gotten texts at just the right time, consisting only of letters that have melted my heart: "lv u"   Less is more, etc.  But it's as if this replacement language, even when confusing or misleading, is defended as pertinent by those who use it, as if the real language that it ostensibly reflects is too burdensome and unwieldy for actual use.  We are expected to have known the author's intentions based on their abbreviated misuse and in the context of which it was employed.   

Ah, I see... you were in a rush so you didn't have time to type something that I would understand, instead you thought that I would intuit your meaning based on the lack of information presented.  

Gotcha.

I've long argued that rappers not only have the right to change the use of language, they have a responsibility to do so.  If language, as it is, does not adequately reflect them and their condition (as the claim goes) then it is up to them to change it as needed.  Many of the most clever, creative and informative verbal (mis) usages I've been exposed to have come from rap.  However, I work at a place, and with many young people, that only seem to know how to speak in rap terminology,  There are times when I can't understand a single meaning they are projecting, except by body language and reaction.

The burden of clarity falls more fairly on the speaker than the listener.  All of the words they use are within my vocabulary, but their intended meanings have been stylistically obscured beyond recognition.  They seem to be having fun, having no problem conversing in this way with people born in their decade, or the one before theirs.  It is trying to make that multi-decade leap that seems to cause the breakdown.  I try to understand, but can only accept so much responsibility for failure to do so.

Tupac Shakur was from Lumberton, I learned earlier today.  I wonder how much of Shakur's vernacular I've adopted without knowing it.  I often bait people with the effect of rap on our culture. Most people that I know cite its perceived damage to language, theirs.  Few have given it the consideration it deserves, or if they have they do so only placatingly so.  Teachers nearly universally hate it, fight its effect.

But has there been a great text-speak work yet? Is the Nobel committee adequately examining this new force of language?  Dunno.

I realize that the various assertions I've written above are incompatible and in some ways assert different sides of the same subject, presented conversely.  Sobeit.

All words are fiction, hazy suggestions, chimerical structures, buildings made of rivers, machines made of ghosts.


R'nt u 2?

Born In The U.S.A.

I recognize that each generation must have their prophets, bow to their gods, salute anthems, raise flags, revere their present, then their past presence... they curse their demons, then collect, coil, execrate, anathematize, and one day praise.

Each generation must moan, all too often on Mondays.

I was 14 years old when "Nebraska" came out, the acoustic album by Bruce Springsteen.
I didn't mean to suggest that the state of Nebraska "came-out" of the closet, they haven't, yet.  

The album spoke to me, in a way that only a few albums had, many of them just before my time.

The Clash's "London Calling" was a notable exception. These two albums genuinely constitute "my time."

The depth and width of Nebraska continues to speak to me today, as does London Calling.  Who would have ever guessed that the spiritual vacuity of London was somehow parallel and corollary to Nebraska in 1984....

Check it out, it's true.  Thatcher, Reagan, Crack, Nancy Falklands, etc.

I could be wrong, but the albums speak very similar messages.  One focuses on the inwardness of others, the other mediates the necessary  outwardness of the inner self.  Then they both alternately accomplish, and assume, the task and role of the other album, gracefully, to the end.

Both albums are works of genius and among my all-time favorites... full-moons be damned, fuck the facts.

Long live the A-B-C's

That might be an over-simplification, and it might only make sense to me, but I doubt it...  They are human albums, made for humans, by humans, within a stone's throwing towards sacred, towards me. 

My best-friend from the neighborhood in 1984 was Bobby Williams.  The release of Bruce Springsteen's "Born In The U.S.A." was a nearly unspeakably shared triumph for us, the vindication of an artist we mutually loved, adored, imitated, worshipped, believed in.  We blasted these rock-and-psalms up and down the Wekiva River.  Glory Days, indeed.  


Like a river that don't know where it's flowing....

With success comes sadness. With triumph comes loss.  All is loss, love most of all.  

Beauty, privacy, youth, death.  All.

It is gone in an unseen tender flash, like the receding of a great wave, then an unrelenting undertow, nothing else...


The following year, 1985, I met Selavy, as is recorded by the numerous county arrest records.

I spoke with Selavy tonight.  He assured me that he was going to take the "high" road about his deviated Septumber "harpy-moon" debacle.  We'll see.... I really want him to have that high road, he could use a little less oxygen, his handlers keep a gaseous eye trained on the neon noble dials.  He assures me that his endless humor about science is undaunted, untainted, soon-to-be-expunged, exorcised back to health.

Long ago he took the time to ask me about a book I was reading, in 1985.  Rimbaud,  A Season In Hell.


The high road.  Indeed.

I want it for each and every one of us. I want it when I don't know where else to turn, when I am weary and searching for an unfamiliar freeway or fjord that is meant to bring me homewards, inland, when it is dark, when I am already home, when I am also lost there, when I awake suddenly with questions that sinister sleep slips towards my susceptible senses... snakes and sinners and saints and saviors and soldiers and sinners and sailors and suckers and sinners, and spirits, or sponsored souls, along with allied associates, dead or living, freshly, newly, or never forgotten.  Ought'n that be the simplest situational solution, like the hissing of pissing answers...

It is all just a sad neither.

I want the lives of those around me to be as great as ever-returning youth.


But I won't wait for that, or truth, either.

Harvest Moon again tonight, or any night

Ok, I've tried to be reasonable about this moon issue, but Selavy has challenged me on it again. He was once my science teacher so it becomes increasingly frustrating to have him be so perpetually wrong about something, and even more so for him to site an internet article as defense for his mistake.  It's understandable how and why he and others often accept the evening that follows a full moon to be the night of a full moon. But in this case he, and ABC, and many other people worldwide, were wrong.

Here is how it works... The moon is full at an exact moment.  It is the moment that the moon is reflecting the maximum amount of light back towards the earth.  If you look on a calendar it will often show the date of a full moon. Naturally many people assume that the evening of that day the full moon will rise.  This is an easy mistake to understand.  But if the full moon occurred at 2:27am (PT) and 5:27 (EST), then it was no longer full by the time that it rose later that day as the sun was setting, it was already in its waning gibbous stage.   The previous night would be considered the night of the full moon and the moon-rise that could be witnessed on that night would more appropriately be the rising of the full moon. 

As for what night will be called and accepted to be the "harvest moon" I will leave it to the farmers to figure out.  Do not look to ABC, or any other news agency, for information about full moons. They admittedly used the farmer's almanac as a source of information.  The agency to rely upon for the Universal Time of moon phases would be NASA, the people who actually put men on the moon.  They are a more reliable source of information concerning our solar system and beyond.

For this last full moon it did occur at the times that I listed earlier. If you look at the NASA page that I linked it will seem to be off by an hour, that's because of daylight saving time. If you use the UT or UTC standard and the NASA list of full moon times it's easy to see that the night of the full moon was the night that spanned the 11th and the 12th of September, not the 12th and the 13th, though many would lead you to believe otherwise, and cite the general assumption of fallacy as proof.

Even though a full moon actually only occurs at a specific moment it is generally accepted to precede that moment by 12 hours and to continue for 12 hours afterwards, making up the "day" of the full moon.  Even by this general acceptance the moon that many witnessed rising on the evening of the 12th was not in fact a full moon, nor would it correctly be called the harvest moon, though the colloquial terms applied to the event don't really matter that much to me.  They are mainly for use by farmers, hippies, and bloggers.

I've linked a video of the harvest moon here, which documents the moon in all of its "fullness" on the night of Sept. 12, 2011.... Notice how full it looks in the beginning of the video...?  It's astonishing that the full moon, recorded on the night of Sept. 12th, would be missing a portion of its complete roundness on the right side, towards the bottom.  It might be because the moon was full the night before, a night that many people questioned me on, presumably because the calendar listed it as happening the following day, at 9:27am (UT), which used to be called Greenwich Mean Time (GMT)....

Now, Neil Young wrote a lovely song called Harvest Moon. I don't know if he's ever been to the moon or not, or if he knows or cares about the phases of the moon.  But one thing I do know, that if he looked at the image of the moon at the beginning of his video he'd agree that that moon isn't full.

No, I kid... the video was shot long ago and doesn't actually show a harvest moon because it isn't full. I can only assume that Neil Young's producer made the same mistake that many people make. About half of all full moons are celebrated and witnessed on the wrong day, the day after a full moon. It's simple math, half of them occur in the early a.m. and by just glancing at a calendar people suppose the moon that rises that evening is the full moon.  I'm assuming that's what happened to Neil Young.  As for my science teacher... I have tried and tried to reason with him on this issue.  Some people you just can't reach...

If nothing else we'll have more to argue about later if he continues in his willful errant ways.  By my reckoning we'll disagree exactly half of the time.  But at least he won't be alone, he'll have ABC's team of journalists to back him up.  I'll be forced to rely on science as a meager crutch for understanding.


I expect him to publish a retraction and full apology tomorrow morning.  I accept his apology in advance.

"They misunderestimated me."

I keep wishing everybody a "Happy September 11th!"  Nobody thinks it's very funny. It isn't, I suppose. It gives everybody a chance to trot out their patriotism and conspiracies though, so that part is funny, I guess.  I have never had much faith in our government. Their failings, though serious, don't usually surprise me.  When I start thinking about it too much it makes me angry. I get very apocalyptic when I let myself wander into thoughts of politics and power.

I was with Rachel on the afternoon of September 11th 2001. We were in Manchester, England so the day was already well under way.  I was working in the studio, making a dance track, one that upon later reflection I found to be somewhat ironical. It would sometimes leave me with a weird feeling when I would hear it getting played out, having nothing at all to do with the events of that day for anybody else.  The track is fun and funky, somewhat different from the other, more serious, tracks I was used to making. 

I got stuck in England for some time. British Airways lost my passport when I went to the airport to return home.  Because of this they didn't let me home without some substantial questioning and the missing of a few flights, being detained in Heathrow.  They held me in the British Airways office, called the embassy, then called my brother, had me answer some security questions, inspected my body for scars, scrutinized my luggage and belongings, appraised my anus, etc.  They asked me the same questions over and over, phrased slightly differently each time, as if I would crack under this elusive psych-out technique.  It was surreal. 

Perhaps I'll tell the whole story here one day. There are few funny twists in it.  Others not so funny. It was a trying time for everybody.

I lived in New York at the time, had a friend living in my apartment while she was supposed to be looking for her own apartment. That never happened.  Instead I came home and we fell in love, for a little while.  It didn't last.  Perhaps one day I'll tell that story too.  It also has a few funny twists in it, others not so funny. It was a trying time...

Something occurred to me after writing yesterday's post.  I have not been surrounded by soccer moms mainly for that last decade.  That has all changed now, that's all.  I'm not sure what those people are so unhappy about, but it's a shock of change for me.  New Yorkers are known for being gruff, but very little that I experienced in New York prepared me for the intensely misdirected animosity of the people that I am now expected to share space with. They seem to approach everything with a frustrated anger and the assertion that something is owed to them because they actually went out of their way to stand in front of you, or cut you off in traffic, or bump you in the supermarket from not looking where they were going, or from being too large and unable to help themselves.  

They seem reasonably affluent and mostly living their lives in leisure. I don't understand what they're so angry about.

I suppose I've found yet another model of the type person I don't want to become. 

"Our enemies are innovative and resourceful, and so are we. They never stop thinking about new ways to harm our country and our people, and neither do we." - George W. Bush Washington D.C., August 5th 2004

...like an unscheduled nightmare

(The carcass of a New Yorker, abandoned by zombies)

Work and then more work.  It is soul robbing. In New York I spent only 4-6 minutes in transit each direction to and from work, on my bike. Now it is up to an hour and a half.  Time spent not just wasted, but expensively wasted, in a car, burning gas.  I must figure out a way of making the time more productive, otherwise I will lose my mind.  Yesterday it defeated me.  I had big plans of things to do when I got home, but an hour and a half later I was beaten, all I could do was drink a beer and complain about traffic. 

I'm beginning to see yet another side of California emerge, this side is even much worse than the "surreal" side I had seen before.  It is glimpsed in people's normal daily behavior.  As I drive closer towards SF I see more of what could be described as your standard "angry-rich-white-people."  Housewives that are fat and pissed off at life and everyone living, mayonnaise coursing through their veins, ready to shake their jowls at anybody that gets in their way, affixing their blood vessels on anything between them and what they angrily believe they deserve.  I thought all of those people lived in no-nonsense places like Oklahoma and Idaho and Arizona.  I had greatly deceived myself about California in some ways.  I have visited many times in the past and I wrongfully assumed that the state was filled with the type people that I met here when I was visiting: young and fun and well-dressed liberals and drug aficionados, with nothing but free time and expendable income.  I though that maybe the whole state went to Burning Man every year...  

Nope.

Who would have guessed that so much of "middle" America was all crammed over on one side of the country, and pretty pissed off about it as well.  No wonder they say that California's going to slide into the ocean one day. It feels like that fate is only a single bologna sandwich away.  I had envisioned a liberal, forward-thinking community, filled with free spirits, and progressive ideas.  It's actually just a very beautiful version of Texas. The people are angry, self-important, demanding, rude, fat, pale, and ugly.  Well, some of them.  But it seems that since I've been going towards the city I somehow can't avoid those people. I'm surrounded by them.  Any second they're going to devour me. It's as if they're zombies that eat not just human brain tissue but any fatty part of the body, sometimes the whole thing, eyes and ears and anus and all. 

I used to claim that New York was where people went to blossom into the assholes they always knew they one day could be.  I guess California is one of the places where people just stay and make-do with whatever asshole ambitions they have, expanding out into their own cozy environment to wreak the havoc they can on the lives of others in close proximity to them, with their inflamed pudgy asshole wrath.  

"He had long nostril hairs, powerfully intimidating, like an unscheduled nightmare." - Bukowski

My first "weekend" here

(spotted on the way to Point Reyes Seashore)

Yesterday I had the day off from work. It's my first "weekend" off from work since I've been here. It flew by as if I wasn't even there, as if it was trying to get away from me. I slept in far past when I ever sleep in, almost to 10:30, even after being woken up early by repeating car alarms right outside our bedroom window at 6:20. They were going off so much that I went out to the parking lot to try to help the neighbor that was having all the problems. I don't know why I didn't just call the police and report that my neighbor's car was getting stolen. The police would have, at least, got her to stop trying and subsequently setting off the alarm, something that my visit most decidedly did NOT accomplish, though not for lack of trying.

The neighbor is a nut.  This was my first interaction with her but my wife had a previous interaction that set the tone for how our relationship with her will unfold.  Perhaps I will go into more detail on it some other time. I don't have it in me to write a screed again on my California experiences.

One funny thing has emerged from going back to work: a fellow employee there told me that his sister works in California's premier sex shop, Good Vibrations.  Hilarious.

This morning I read an article in Wired magazine that says that studies on the female orgasm are still inconclusive, that they make little evolutionary sense.  They are apparently not elusive enough to limit studying, but more that they serve no apparent evolutionary purpose, that they exist merely because women and men share so much biology.  It would be nice to finally get some clarity on this matter... No, I jest.  It is merely an area of concentrated curiosity.

Each day here seems more beautiful than the day before, or at least is its equal.  There is nothing but perfectly clear blue sky from horizon to horizon, or what would be horizon if there were not beautiful golden hills rolling in all directions, peppered with lush green trees and occasional vineyards.  It's as if I walked into a dream.  Even when it is hot, which it was yesterday, it is not humid and unpleasant.  Yesterday it got up to 93 degrees but we never even noticed, we had the windows open, there was a nice breeze all day. Not once did we even consider turning on the air conditioning, at home or in the car.  Perfect.

Each night for the last few nights I've watched the growing moon move further and further across a crystalline sky towards fullness.  After living in New York for so many years it is quite a novelty to be able to just look up and see the moon without impediment of any kind.  Even being close to sea level it is clear in a way that I had almost forgotten it could be.  It is as beautiful and untouchable as I remember it.

Here is a song I love that equates the moon with a lover that can not be held.

We love it here, but there are adjustments to be made.

California is like a dream, but filled with people that you don't want in your dreams.  Or, so I claimed a few days ago.  It has been a little bit of a culture shock moving here.  I had thought that once we got out of New York we wouldn't be subjected to such a high degree of aggressive self-importance any more. Nope.  It's projected in a slightly different way here but the result is the same. It's almost as if a handful of NYC subway commuters were set free in paradise, then given cars.  Each individual is further away from you, so you don't feel as cramped, but any one of them could potentially do much more damage, and they've figured that out.  They've also figured out that they are not only dangerous in their cars but that they are also protected. So a slight sense of selfishness quickly grows into an unwieldy attitude.

I have felt more in danger riding my bike here than I ever felt in NYC.  The people here drive like NY taxi drivers, with very little regard for the life of a bicycle rider.  More than once already I've had somebody pull over to the side of the road while I was between their car and the side.  I suppose it's just a given that I will seek to preserve my life and move out of their way by doing so. 

I'm trying not to develop ride-rage, but it is a struggle at times.  The angry head of a New Yorker emerges and I see blood-visions, find my animal spirit, etc.

   (Point Reyes National Seashore)

Meatball

Yesterday I went to get a sandwich at the Safeway deli for lunch. Harmless, I thought. 

If I had not just sent a text to a friend as I was ordering I would have had no way of verifying what was about to happen. But as it was I had time-stamped the beginning of one of the strangest experiences of my life. 

I wasn't even sure of what I wanted but when the woman seemed to indicate that she was ready to take my order I glanced up and picked the easiest and quickest thing on the menu, a meatball sub.  So I told her and she scurried over to a drawer where she pulled out a roll which she then cut in half, and then again started to slice one half of that down the center.  I asked if she could slice just one side to make the sub more of a sub sandwich, rather than cutting it in two pieces. She seemed perplexed.  It was at this point that I surmised that English was not her first language.  In fact it might not be her language at all.  

No problem, I thought.  

I held my hands up and made a slicing motion on one side of my hand and then held them together almost prayer-like opening them to make a V-formation to simulate a single piece of bread and how it might be used to make a sandwich, with meatballs and cheese.

Nope.

She took out a fresh piece of bread and cut it exactly as she had cut the other one, directly down the middle and in two pieces. I nodded approvingly, that would be fine.  Onwards.  She then took off through a doorway on the opposite side of the deli counter.  Another Safeway employee came up and took the order of the next person in line and he started working on their sandwich.  Progress.  After a couple of minutes I thought that maybe something had gone wrong.  Just as I was starting to wonder, and to genuinely consider the amount of free time I have to enjoy my lunch, the guy finished the sandwich he was making and came back over.  As I was getting ready to ask him what might have happened she appeared in the doorway holding something and rushing towards me happily with her find.  He helped the next person in line without much apparent thought.

Sure enough, she had found some meatballs.  They looked as if at one time they might have been in some sort of red sauce but that would have been some time ago.  She proceeded to slice them in half, all the while looking up at me to seek my approval.  I had to admit it, she was thorough and seemed to be enjoying it all.  We were well on our way to making a meatball sub. Almost as soon as I had this thought she put the other piece of bread on top of the dry meatballs and started to wrap it up.  I eagerly indicated that we weren't quite done.  She looked at me quizzically.  I said one word: cheese.  Her face lit up and she smiled and laughed.  I had tapped into a word that must transcend all languages.  I believe it's called a cognate, many languages have them, though I wasn't aware of many existed between English and Cantonese. 

I said, "Provolone, please."  Not a clue... This was clearly a language hurdle to be traversed at another time. She pointed at the cheese container and together we went through a few examples with her holding them up for my satisfaction or dismissal.  Finally we agreed on provolone.  She peeled off two slices and placed them on top of the sandwich, then with a little afterthought she placed a third slice.  It was at this point that I became genuinely suspicious of the meatballs. I pointed to the meatballs and asked, "needs heat?" with just the right omission of syntax when there is a mutually shared ignorance of the other's language. She looked perplexed.  Luckily there was a cardboard ad there on the countertop that had several sandwiches displayed, one side was for hot and the other for cold. The hot sandwiches had a red star that sensibly said "hot" in the center, next to the picture of the sandwich. I pointed at it and a wave of realization came over the woman that was both touching and encouraging. 

I began to become more and more aware of exactly how much time this was taking because the other guy had begun to help yet a 3rd person.  They were ordering sandwiches, tailor made, from start to finish, hot and cold, with their choice of condiments and add-ons, and so far all I had was dry bread, cold meatballs, and unmelted cheese.  We were a good team though and I was going to stick with it.  There is a sacred bond that forms, etc. 

As she put the entire sandwich in the microwave I gesticulated wildly that the bread perhaps should go in the toaster and the meatballs in the microwave, without the cheese for now, maybe.  None of this came across and my sign language skills were beginning to show signs of weakness with the added complexity of multiple process-oriented tasks to be communicated and performed. 

The other guy seemed completely oblivious to the fact that I was having to train his fellow employee on the intricacies and simplicity of making a meatball sub, a job for which she was presumably pre-qualified.  This guy could have made my meatball sub without even blinking, but he was just letting nature and international relations take their course. I was about to go hungry, perhaps even starved for the day, at this rate.  

A meatball sub, the way that I was trying to order it has 3 elements: bread, meatballs, cheese.  That is, assuming that the meatballs had already been prepared in a sauce.  So, I suppose the route we had taken we were going to be forced to make a 4 ingredient meatball sub. But I hadn't quite been able to figure out how to communicate the idea of "sauce" to this woman, though my mind was enjoying a flurry of possibilities.  

I was starting to get visibly frustrated and our fragile communications were beginning to fail altogether. People were walking around me with their multi-component and well-made subs already completed, picking out their chips, pouring their sodas at the fountain.  It was then that she really started to try to talk to me, to help move things along.  What emerged was a continuos miasma of the letter "r" and a combination of various vowel sounds, usually in tandem.  I'm not being bigoted here, I simply couldn't understand a single word that was being said.  She wasn't speaking any version of the English language that I'm familiar with.  It was a Cantonese-English hybrid of some sort, of which I understood precisely nothing.

I'm not sure why this didn't dawn on me sooner, as it was right there, and it already played a part in our sandwich dance, but the sign, the one with the red "hot" stars. I picked it up and pointed to a meatball sub, completed with red sauce and melted cheese.

She found a kitchen spoon, dipped it into some pre-made chicken pan, possibly chicken parmigiana, and covered the meatballs with it, put the cheese on top, folded it all together and then put it in the sandwich press machine.  Not perfect, but we were really getting closer. I would have preferred to have the cold meatballs in the microwave for about 30 seconds, but I knew that I just might luck out here, if she leaves it in there long enough, and if I let the sandwich sit for a minute or two, then it just might be edible.

After what seemed like an eternity at the end of several other eternities, the sandwich emerged, steaming, golden-brown, pressed, with red sauce gingerly dripping over the side.  I was amazed.  It actually looked delicious.  With the extra time spent there being hungry, looking at all of the other food, smelling other people's sandwiches as they walked by (Not actually sniffing them, but getting a waft of sandwich goodness as they passed), and with the clock ticking on my hunger, I was starved.

Thank the stars that it was the other guy who happened to be at the register, ringing up his 4th customer from the same time period, who was ready to finalize this incident. He had a laser in his hand, never even touched the sandwich, I swiped my card, all was paid. I was ready for lunch....

In my decades of witnessing the inept slowly take over the world this day marks the occasion of one of their greatest individual victories. For too long I have bemoaned the increasing automation of the world, thinking that it de-humanizes everybody involved....  I was wrong, very wrong. I take back everything I've ever said.  No more sandwiches made by hand. From now on I will only buy my sandwiches from a machine, chosen through glass, where they belong, the way the gods intended.


17 minutes.  

Blue Velveteen

I ride my bike about 4-5 days a week now, about an hour each time.  The valley here is beautiful and there are just enough slow inclines to make the ride challenging. Each day as I am riding I feel as if I'm encountering more and more of what might be described as the Sonoma underground.

Once I had found out that there was a healthy crystal meth scene here I started noticing people wandering around in the daytime, mostly men, always alone, usually somewhat frazzled.  They don't exactly stumble along but you can detect and inner-stumbling as they walk, they seem to be leaning slightly too far forward, so as to almost offset their balance, or at least to give them a sense of inertia, but not always of their own, as if they're being pulled steadily forward by a hook at the top of their heads, though their legs seem to have somewhat less ambition. They are always looking straight forward, a destination clearly in mind, and a glazed intent to get there.  They wear button down shirts but there is usually a t-shirt underneath those as well, both not exactly dirty, but definitely worn. The outer shirt buttoned about halfway up and not tucked in.

I could be imagining all of this, of course.  Not actually imagining the people walking the streets but their atrributes. Perhaps I am animating them beyond the reality of it.  They could be perfectly normal people walking to work, ignoring me, just wanting to get there on time.  But I doubt it.

There is a strange surreality to this place.  It's as if I am riding through outtakes from Blue Velvet.  It is an immensely beautiful place to be but I sense that around every corner there just might be somebody huffing on a gas mask, obsessed with some sadomasochistic desire, addicted to the ghost of delight, indulging in vapors. I keep hurrying around corners and looking to see if it is really there, to capture just a glimpse, to confirm my suspicions.  But alas, no Frank Booth's yet.  I'm not entirely sure if it is my curiosity or voyeuristic sensibilities that are being triggered here.  I'll let you know if I catch anybody in some strange pursuit, and what the result was... pleasure, preference, revulsion, or otherwise.

More on local drug addiction and sadomasochism later.

I was riding up the gradual hill to the tasting room at Gundlach Bundschu, pumping along at a pretty good pace, when out of the vineyard came a large rabbit, a jackrabbit I assumed.  This thing was really trucking.  He and I were at a full pace trot.  He on the left side of the road, prevented from entering the vineyard on that side by a drainage ditch, I just watching in amazement.  Clearly the creature was avoiding me, but watching him tear along the road like that was too fascinating for me stop.  Its strides were impressive and this bunny was huge, 3-4 times the size of my dog, and sprinting as fast as I could ride my bike.  Eventually it decided that outrunning me was not an option and it had to leap across the ditch. It stopped and hesitated for a split second then leapt about 8 feet from one bank to the other, then off into the vineyard, little bits of dirt going airborne with each gallop of his distant sprint.

It reminded me of Willem Dafoe's character in "Wild at Heart", another Lynch film from around that time.  When he is talking to Laura Dern's character and he says, "Like a big 'ol jackrabbit bunny, jump all around that hole."

I think that's where I got the Blue Velvet thing today.  Riding the bike does strange things to the mind. It exhausts the body and the mind escapes, trying to save itself.

I hear the train a comin'....

Transition fatigue.  There is so much to re-learn and adjust to.  Little things.  I know how to do what I'm doing but I don't know where I put the parts, either in boxes or in a new and different drawer.  I look, I look again, it's been moved, again.  

Each day I drive to and from work through some of the most beautiful country there is.  I'm sure that soon I will tire of the commute but for now it is beautiful and I love driving with the windows down, music blasting or not.  Once I enter Sonoma there are two ways to get home, basically.  One is a little longer but it is perhaps the best part of the drive.  It is through vineyards framed by beautiful golden hills,  peppered with green trees. As the sun sets the color temperature brings out the most amazing colors and shadows of the rolling mounds.  It is a delicious place to live.

I work across the bay from San Quentin State Prison. It is almost all that can be seen from across the bay, that and the mountains and clouds behind it.  It is a very serious building and one clearly not to be trifled with. Scott Peterson is there for having killed his pregnant wife just before Christmas.  He is in like-minded company, presumably.  There are many infamous inmates there: the "Dating Game" killer, the "Night Stalker", Charles Manson was once imprisoned there. 

Art Pepper, troubled jazz musician and drug addict, a former resident.  Merle Haggard was also once an inmate there.  He wrote a song about it,  "Mama Tried"...  Two of California's best.

Black Bart, celebrated "old-west" outlaw, stage-coach robber, and poet.

The last execution by hanging was done there in 1942. The most recent execution by lethal injection was Stanley Tookie Wiliams, leader of the "Crips" street gang (formerly), and celebrity author of children's books concerning San Quentin (written once imprisoned).  Barbara Graham, whose story was fictionalized in the movie, "I Want To Live!", and also met her end there in 1955.

It boasts the largest death row in the country. Take that, Texas....  Well, sort of.  The Texas death row system is fully functioning, they've recently added an express lane.  It is a very pro-death state. One might assume that they'd be happy to take the Gitmo transfers. Who knows, perhaps ol' Gov. Perry will solve at least one problem, Texas style.  I'm with Selavy on this one. If they elect that fuckwit into the presidency then I  don't just tremble for the future, I grand mal for it.  Didn't Bush do enough damage in his 8 years?  How could the country so soon be ready for even more of that?  It doesn't seem possible. Yes, we did.

It is a grim place, that prison across the water, in great contrast to the beautiful weather that surrounds it nearly perpetually. Yesterday I looked across the bay at it as I was getting in my car and I imagined the Johnny Cash concert there in 1969.  Those guys must have raped each other for weeks after getting a glimpse of June Carter, an actual woman, in the flesh.

"In this here cell you're gonna be June for a year...."

Ok, more on rape and land and Texas later.

b-low profile

I have been riding my bike all around Sonoma.  After 25-30 full pedal strokes I am in a different city.  When I tell you that I live in a small town I mean that Google offered to pay us if we'd simply never mention the name to anybody again.  We don't own property here yet, so they haven't actually offered us any money.  But, they've reached out and telegraphed their intentions, if we have intentions, etc.

Wait. I've been moonlighting on another blog, so my senses are dulled, my wits twisted.

ok, Let's start over, ok?

I ride my bike as far and as wide as the land and my legs will take me.  It feels so good to push my heart around like I'm just another high-school bully, demanding lunch money from people who stupidly live in my feet, I tell my calves they're fat because they come from cows.

Jesus,  that's not what I'm doing at all. That can't be true. I'm not a monster, it's just that monsters have leased the televisions that tell me where to turn, they whisper my directions, they know things I don't want to hear.

Manstra!!!!  Where is all of this negative energy coming from?  It must be Burning Man.

All they're burning, man is my karmic vibes out there.  Some young-ish-neo-hippies are getting ass and getting high, and doing who knows what-else, with what used to be called "my drugs."

It's almost as if they've completely forgotten that I too am very pro-symbolic-human-scarifice-art-festival-desert-history-culture-etc.-event.

Well, I suppose that is the natural way of things.

Passing out on the torch and what-not. 

Ok, I have a great story to tell, but tonight is not the night, clearly.  I am weary and tired, some would say old, or worse.  Some have said even worse than age.  But, fuck 'em, they're getting older too.

Sssshhh.....


Sssssshhhhhhh.......

I have only the strength of this next crescent moon to guide me... 

never new, never full, never shared, always cold.

The moon is the greatest bullshitter, and fighter.

I want to pray, but in the darkness I'm so afraid that somebody will hear me, find me.


In the light I wouldn't dare, in the sun I shouldn't care.


In your arms let's pretend , let's

let's see, where let's.