Chagall

Leaving for LA this morning, might not be able to post for a few days.  Thought I'd leave you, for now, with this simple image, a Chagall.

Yesterday I went into SF to meet up with Selavy.  We drank too much, and of too many varied liquors.  I feel ill today.  Not exactly hungover but there is definitely a sense of lost vitality.  There will need to be a time of recovery.  Seven hours in the car to LA, if all goes well, should just about do it.  I hope.

We visited several galleries, Rayko, and then the MOMA.  A thing occurred to me while we walked through the permanent collection.  Modern art, that is art from the modern era, doesn't really do much for me any more.  After having lived in New York for more than a decade, seeing many modern masterpieces on a consistent basis, I am now much less interested in them than I once was.  Selavy pointed out that perhaps I have only become accustomed to their messages.

What I speak of is not a complete condition, and it is not that I do not hold much of it in high esteem, but only that I do not get as excited as I once did to consider it carefully, to see it up close.  We walked through the gallery of the permanent collection quickly, without much conversation, stopping here and there to note a familiar piece.

The trouble I have is that there is not much to replace it with.  I find much contemporary art interesting but not as a collective movement.  I have less consistent enthusiasm for most of it.  Post-modern art leaves me cold much of the time.  I find myself considering motives, strategies and techniques rather than themes.  Yes, of course, that is often its intention.  Boring.

It is time to search again, to look for new meaning, to find new themes, to become excited for a time at something new.


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Speaking of (sort of): Selavy unsuccessfully tried to convert me to agnosticism yesterday, claiming that there is as much evidence for there being a god as there is for there not being a a god, none at all.  More precisely, he called it a "conscious ordering of the universe", not precisely "god".

But there being no evidence of there not being a thing does not function in the same way as there being no evidence that there is.  I don't claim to know with complete certainty that there definitely is no god, I only claim that those who claim there is have offered no substantiated evidence for their claim.  I choose not believe in a thing that gives no signs whatsoever of its existence.  My assertion that there is not currently a knowable god in the universe is based on that simple lack of evidence.  I'm happy to reconsider at any time.

Likewise, I don't claim that man knows all that there is to know.  But I can say that not knowing of a thing is not the same as claiming to know of a thing, with certainty, that can not be evidenced.  Faith is not a substance, it is a quality of the imagination.  That it can be generated and sustained does not prove the existence of the thing it imagines.  That would be like claiming that all fairy tales must have actually occurred because somebody thought of them.  How could thought be possible if it is not based in tangible reality?  That absurd claim answers itself, we do it all of the time.  But there are no flying spaghetti monsters, yet.

I'll happily convert to whatever worship system the "conscious ordering of the universe" requests of me.  I just need to see the request, preferably with some grated parmesan and a nice glass of chilled chianti.

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REPTILE FEST 2012

A trip into SF today.  Selavy will be here this morning.  After he visits a few of his favorite bathhouses then we will tour the city, in search of weirdness at a photographable distance.  Maybe a light lunch and some chilled white wine, afterwards we will go brutalize the art world.  We are dangerous, clever characters.  If the nerves in my lower back hold out maybe we'll make it to North Beach, to City Lights book store, for an afternoon poetry reading.  As T.C. Boyle says, we read too much Andre Gide when we were young, it has ruined us for life.  Crime is our only remaining passion.  Jaywalking, littering, parking violations; you name it, we're in, etc.

Well, maybe not littering.  One must have some sense of community, else all is lost.


"It just does, Mom. I can't explain why it feels so good to be a gangster."


Speaking of weirdness.  I was in the car yesterday, running minor errands with the boy, listening to the radio.  I listen to a few stations in the area, most of which have their various charms.  There's one station that often has interesting talk programs on, mostly with a decidedly liberal bend to them, but often hosting well-informed discussions.  Then, out of nowhere a commercial came on...

Get your tickets now for Reptile Fest 2012....!!!  Extreme Herps!!!  You won't find lizards, snakes or amphibious moccasins like this anywhere in the far west this time a' year, at least not until REPTILE FEST 2013..!!!  God-damn it out there, are you faggots listening?  We're talking Tarantulas, Gator Wrestling, Monster Snake Shaft, Poisonous Heads, FANGS, COLD-BLOODED KILLERS...!!! Are you out of your beer-addled minds, HURRY THE FUCK UP...???!!!  There's gonna be Bud-Tubs every 10 feet at this event as mandated by our state license.  Don't waste this moment of your life.  Don't be a further disappointment to your children.  If you have to then drive the tractor to the store to get tickets, NOW!  Nobody cares. APOCALYPSE PYTHONS...!!!  Pull over at any and every gas station and demand to know if they have tickets for this once-in-a-lifetime event.  If they DO NOT, then threaten to blow those gas-peddling muslims off the face of this precious green earth.  Because this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to watch someone get bit by a baby rattler.  GOOD GOD PEOPLE, are you out of what's left of your minds? This event only happens once a year, so this is a once-in-a-lifetime chance to see somebody die from venom, right in front of your very eyes.  There's gonna be a Molly Hatchet cover band there, we've had sand shipped in from the desert, mud from Mississippi, and an above-ground Olympic size swamp pool with genuine cajun cedar slime.....  You'd have to be a god-damned gay retard to not have your tickets already.  Now, are you people out there lining up to vote for Osama or are you out there buying your tickets?  We're gonna have shotguns in the shapes of Boa Constrictors, Gila Monster Grenades and Semi-Automatic Assault Cartridge Cobra's...  POISONS, TOXINS, VENOM, FANGS...!!!!!  GET BIT...!!!


... and on and on for the entire time I was in the car.  It was like a monster truck rally for snakes.  To my memory I had never heard a feature length radio info-mercial before.  Eventually they had celebrity interviews, advocates from the scientific community, even a famous local pastor came on and blessed the event and all those who would attend, and all those who were currently considering attending.  It was so far beyond surreal I rushed home to see if I had any acid left.  I have never heard anything like it before and I grew up in the south, not far from the deep south.  I mean, it was nutszilla.

Luckily, by the time I got to the Circle K they still had plenty of tickets available.

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Twitch

(Larry Towell)

The crazed dreams continue, disturbing visions that the mind forms to wake me, to tell me to get out of bed, to piss.  My only fear being that one day I will learn to sleep through them, that they will exist unquestioned, under the surface like some dark wandering disease, as I dreamily piss the bed around me.

Last night's visions were so disturbing that I can not repeat them here.  Many of you might worry about me if I confessed to their formation.  The sequence ended in a crowded hospital waiting room.  There were many misshapen there, waiting, trembling with their maladies.  Their desperate eyes followed me.  I felt ill looking closely at their elongated dream afflictions.  Before I had time to run my sleeping mind pulled me up and away from them.  I limped off lazily to the bathroom, then back to bed.  

Moving on.  Today is a big day, then tomorrow another, then the big days of the long weekend in LA begin.  It will be our first road trip with the boy.  Seven hours each way, if all goes as planned.  Two days in the sun.  LA frightens me the way that avian influenza frightens me,  that it will one day suddenly catch on and overtake the world.  There are areas of LA that I enjoy, though none so much that I would fight to see them saved from zombies.  I only vaguely wish them to be preserved in the impending apocalypse of the lifeless.  It does seem fitting that LA be destroyed in zombie doom.  LA requires a catastrophe commensurate with its leprous appeal.  

No, I only kid.  LA is a great place to smoke speed, lots of strip-malls and parking lots to wander around in.  One needs wide open spaces when in that condition.  

I am beginning to understand why men like to drink whiskey alone as they get older.  I will, hopefully, drink it more slowly when sitting alone than how I would when talking with others.  The effect of that particular alcohol is quite different when drank this way.  It carries a misty warmth that marks itself as opposed to what occurs when drank rapidly.  

Never tilt your head back when drinking whiskey.  That is what I've learned, it is my wisdom.  You are gulping the stuff when you do.  Always tilt the glass towards your lips, keep your head as straight as a toltec mask, eyes locked on an imaginary horizon.  Let your head be a stone altar piece, anything less results in upsetting the whiskey yahweh.

When drinking it with others there is much more room for trouble.  It is trouble lubricant, made of kerosene, WD-40, and trace amounts of alcohol.  Because one urinates less when drinking whiskey it creates more time for mischief, danger.  That is why beer is somewhat self-regulating.  Having to go the the bathroom creates an opportunity to reset, to reconsider.  People talk to themselves when pissing, or to god, or to mommy's little dancing soldier.  It is helpful to use that time wisely.  Also, there are often mirrors in bathrooms, a conditional glimpsing of oneself can have an occasionally sobering effect.  If everybody made it a habit to always look at themselves in the mirror when drinking then some of the world's evils would be cured.  It would, of course, birth other dilemmas, but we could get around to those as needed.

I used to get handed little bags of cocaine after dinner in restaurants.  I would then wander off casually or hurriedly to the bathroom to snort some.  For a time I got in the habit of looking directly into my own eyes for 30 seconds before doing any of the coke.  If, after 10 seconds, I still wanted to do some then I would.  But not every time.  Sometimes I would walk back to the table, pass the bag back in the direction that it came, and nobody would ever notice.  

Hard to believe, I know, but it is true.  It gives a different perspective on drugs, to watch others do them when you are not.  Much like alcohol it makes them less appealing.  To sit in a room full of people all jabbering away on cocaine, drinking to match their newly found intake levels, is a genuine eye opener.  You can watch a table, or room, full of friends reduce themselves to yammering demons, twitching with cravings that pass for desire.  Like the ones in my dream, only older, inflated with years, and twitching towards different things.   

I shudder at how I must look running, when seen from a dream.

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"It is necessary to fall in love..."

(Morten Andersen)

It has been a year since Rachel moved to California.  Next month will be a year for me.  My, how things change.  I'm glad that I left Apple.  Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I got the job at Apple but I'm also glad that I left.  Five years is enough time dedicated to such a thing.  Now I stumble and struggle with what will come next.  It is time to reinvent myself but there seems to be a shortage of raw materials to work with.  Somehow I forgot to put in my order in time.

I keep asking myself if leaving Apple was the right thing to do and the answer keeps coming back "Yes!" so that is something.  Certainty is comforting, even if it is unpleasant job certainty.  Even if it is the daily annoyance of working with the type people that a retail corporate environment attracts.  Maybe one day I will tell the stories, but for now it is still where I get my computers fixed, so.... best to leave it alone.  

"But are there not many Fascists in your country?

"There are many that do not know they are Fascists, but will find it out when the time comes."

-Hemingway, "For Whom the Bell Tolls"

The things we endure for a paycheck and health insurance.  It is almost a "which came first?" scenario, the working or the stress-related illnesses.  Dickens has a few things to say about it.

I've been trying to read but as anybody who has a 6 month old baby will tell you, it 'aint easy.  He's sleeping now, of course, that's the only thing that grants me this time.  

I accepted hundreds of new friends on Facebook yesterday.  I was bored.  That should keep me busy for a while.  There was a stalker who was writing very predatory and threatening emails to myself and Rachel for a while so I just stopped accepting new friend requests, then yesterday I felt like changing something about my life.  Sure, a few new friends on Facebook might not be much but it's much more than I did the day before.    

Whatever.  I was going to write about how my relationship with Rachel has changed in the last year but  everything I thought to say was somber.  It is a time of difficult transitions for both of us.

Cato sent me this quote yesterday: "It is necessary to fall in love... If only to provide an alibi for all the random despair you are going to feel anyway." - Camus

I wonder if alibi is the right word.  

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Big Plans, Dancing Harlequins

(Bruce Davidson)

Big plans, strange dreams.  So, Rachel and I have honed in upon a few possible income streams.  While I gravitate towards the wild-eyed pipe dreams (magically divined number combinations) she tends to reel me back in and focuses on projects that have foreseeable future income (work).  Such is our nature.  Somewhere in the middle we find projects to commit to together.

Everything requires research and education though.  Luckily, they are all subjects that I would like to learn more about.  But still, there is the time and dedication that it takes to get there.  With this new world there is always much to learn, always there are things that are changing.  

Many years ago I used to sit in a record store and sell records to the baggy-pants'd kids that would come in.  In the mornings it was not uncommon to have long stretches of time in which nobody would visit the shop.  When I was not sleeping I would read.  So, I got about a 700 page Netscape book and began to learn about how websites are built and maintained.  All of that information is now either lost or useless.  Everything has changed.  

But I know how to study.  I am still capable of it, I think.  Sitting and reading for hours on end doesn't bother me.  That is precisely what I will be doing today.  Well, part of the day.  There are the many errands and chores that I've accepted or have had thrust upon me.  I know what it is like to be a housewife now.  I get it.  I feel like I'm wanting to take night courses at the community college and my husband is openly suspicious of it at the dinner table, wondering who will make dinner on those evenings.  Sort of.  

Well, no, not at all, actually.

Mixed in with all of these wild hopes are the other developments.  I have a dj'ing gig coming up soon in Costa Rica.  Between now and then we will drive to LA to watch the beginning of the end of the world, then I might drive to Yosemite to meet up with Selavy (if he's still talking to me), then I must get on a plane armed with a usb-drive and plan to wow people with my musical taste and mixing proficiency, using a familiar device in an unfamiliar way (mixing without using discs of any kind, just playing off of the memory stick, scrolling through tracks on a small screen all night, hoping that I recognize the ones that I like, the ones that make sense to play in a particular order).  The last item mentioned on this list will happen in the middle of the night, by the way.  When I say middle, I mean early morning, 2am-10am.  This is a time that I have only recently glimpsed, through the weary and tired eyes of fatherhood, stumbling downstairs to fall sleep in the other bedroom.  

I will be expected to never act tired through all of this, of course.  Showing fatigue is an unacceptable admission of frailty in the nocturnal world of nightclubbing.  

Perhaps being near the equator will help.  I will be moving through space faster, literally.

Once, many years ago, I was on the phone with an ex-girlfriend.  I was letting her know that I was thinking of ways of getting out of dj'ing, trying to find something else lucrative to do with my life that I might enjoy.  She is a clever girl, and never one to let an opportunity pass, she responded, "Yeah, you finally gettin' tired of being cool?" 

That was close to 10 years ago now.  

I suppose I have not completely tired of it yet.  Or, to be more accurate I should say tired of the trying.  How many must look at their artifacts of youth and say to themselves, "I bet I can still ride that thing."

Then, the humiliating trip to the emergency room, filled with questions from the wife, "What were you thinking?", "Have you been drinking?", "Where did you even find that? I thought we threw that out, or gave it away at the garage sale.", "What, did you think that you were still a teenager?", "How would you have felt if you would have killed the neighbor's cat?", "If that car wouldn't have swerved you might not even be going to the emergency room. You know that, right?", "My God, you're lucky the tire didn't pop before you got to the fence. You should have seen it.  How much weight have you gained since high school?", "What am I going to say to the Henderson's about their begonias?", "Did you see the look on Paul's face when we were putting you in the back of the PT Cruiser?", "What's that smell?  You didn't?  Oh God, No!  Please tell me you didn't, not in the PT Cruiser...."

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Argentina, Panama, Oklahoma or bust

(Stanley Kubrick for Look magazine)

The offers keep rolling in.  I've just gotten another dj'ing gig in Buenos Aires.  Panama is still pending.  Any day now I'll have my own reality tv show.  The continued slow-motion fall of an already limping lion.  

My show could be called "Tarantulas and Tranquilizer Lawn Darts..."

It's a good thing I got a new passport.  I'll be stamping it up in no time.  I might make a stamp of my own, treat my townhouse as a sovereign nation.  Pretend that I'm at EPCOT for world beer day.  Who knows.

Well, we'll see.

I am beginning to think that I just might need a job, in the event that the dj'ing career doesn't work out for me again.  We will be running out of money soon and none of my projects have made it past the concept stage.  Some of them haven't even made it that far.  It's too bad, really.  I had hoped to sit back and watch the money just roll in through the front door.  I willed it that way at my yoga class.  Now - with the return of DJ Wile E. Loman - I'll have to be out that front door, hitting the bricks, as they say.

If anybody is looking for an aging entertainer with a set of badly crushed nerves in his lower spine and one balding testicle, then I'm your man.  I do vaudeville, sideshow, freak show, burlesque,  strip-tease, hair and makeup, all of it.  You will be entertained to the point of confusion, fear and desperation... never knowing which survival instinct will arrive first.  I promise.  Look into my favorite eye.  It's a double your money back guarantee.  Fuck it, triple your money back guarantee.  You have my oath, my very word in writing, floating there on the screen in front of you, sort of.  

If you can find better odds anywhere then my name still 'aint Nathan Arizona... 

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Anonymous attachment

(Gregory Crewdson)

My life is terribly uneventful.  It is becoming problematic for me.  I can feel a restlessness growing; the desire to seek, to wander somewhere.  But there is the boy, the wife, the family.  There will be less and less wandering for me.  There will be planned trips mostly, if not only.  Nothing sudden will occur in my life any more, nothing sudden and good, that is.  There will always be the future unexpected news from a doctor.   The shock of test results that one day await many of us.  There is that, then the other, sudden kind also.  

"I do not know which to prefer"... Grim thoughts on a Saturday morning.

Taking care of the boy all day is difficult, it can be.  It is far more difficult than I thought that it would be.  We had a bad day yesterday.  He wouldn't sleep and was unhappy with me most of the time.  Finally he fell asleep on the bed next to me after much playing and distraction. When Rachel came home I went downstairs and fell asleep myself for an hour and a half from the stress of the day alone.  It is exhausting.  There are some days when I would gladly go back to work at Apple, I tell myself.

I have been preparing for my dj'ing gig in Costa Rica.  I am very excited about it, almost scared.  That was sudden and unexpected and good, in a way.  I knew about it some time in advance.  But it was unexpected and good.  It has been a long time since I've traveled anywhere, a couple years.  

The passport agency eventually did return my old passport.  It was mailed in a separate envelope a few days later, as some had said it would be.  I was relieved.  Now I won't have to write Rhys a journal in any leather bound notebook (comments section).  Aye, people... Save me, Sartre...

I must be bored.  I am picking pointless fights.  Ones in which there is no possible way of winning.  Is there ever?  No.  Though I don't suppose I am arguing to win.  I am only arguing to argue.  It must be a joy unto itself, otherwise what is the point?  Truly.

It is a grey day here.  Our friends have left for Wisconsin for nine or ten days.  We must watch over the garden while they are gone, harvesting the squash and beans and zucchini and lettuce.  We must pull the edible basil flowers from the plant to encourage continued growth.  I am learning more and more though not through study, but rather through observation and experience.  My observation, their experience.  

I will, of course, snoop through their house while they are gone.  It is an obligation one has when given the keys to watch over somebody else's place.  I forget if it was Richard Ford or Raymond Carver that wrote about a man who becomes obsessed with "watching" a neighbor's house while they are gone.  I believe it was Carver.  But the story stuck with me, the awkward familiarity of an almost anonymous attachment. 

Who knows, maybe I will move in for a week and pretend that my life is another's altogether.  I wonder if they will read my site while they are gone.

"What good are insights? They only make things worse." - Carver

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Guarding my corner

Horror.  Everywhere there is horror.  A fuel truck explodes in Nigeria, killing at least 95.  Many villagers had rushed to the overturned truck trying to collect fuel when it crashed into a ditch, then it suddenly caught fire, then exploded.  Children, charred beyond recognition.  

I spend my days arguing with a lonely retarded woman from Belgium.  What is the point in any of it.  Everybody tells me there is none.  But I feel like I'm right on the verge of winning, for once.  The whole world gets to harangue me into submission on a daily basis.  Can't I win just one fight?  Even when I'm dueling with a deformed moron, I still want to win.  Even if it is me.

Yesterday I drove to Napa to have lunch with Rachel while she was on her break from work.  It felt good to be alone with her, without the responsibility of the baby boy.  It is constant, any relief from it feels good, though we love the boy much.  Still, it felt like we were getting way with something naughty.  I wanted to have sex with her in the car, in the parking lot.  We both thought better of it.  It is, after all, where she works.  But the idea of it was quite pleasant, of course.  I am still thinking of it this morning.  There is that, at least.

It was on the way home, through a steep twisting mountain pass called Trinity Road when I heard the news of the fuel truck exploding.  It was NPR so their report came from a correspondent that had called in.  It was a very brief interview.  You could hear the distress in his voice.  His stark description of the many dead was heartbreaking, is heartbreaking.  The idea of such a thing, a stroke of incredible luck for an impoverished village that results in more suffering, ever piled on.  There is no end.  

It is a common symbol, I suppose, the division between the world's poor and the wealthy.  The poor are always getting fucked.  This time, in desperation, 95 of them being burned to death.  It was difficult not to imagine the little children scooping up the oil into whatever cans they might have had, thinking themselves so lucky, until the flames came.  Some were positioned in such a way that they seemed to be trying to outrun the sudden fire, with their backs to the truck.  

About the same amount of people died in a nightclub in Rhode Island many years ago.  There was a pyrotechnics fire that engulfed a small bar, trapping many inside, 30 or more in the exit hallway.  It received extensive coverage on the news for quite some time.  A tragedy of excess, it could be called.  A bunch of drunk Americans enjoying a rock and roll show, unable to get out in the smoke and the panic.  These little Nigerians were running in, thinking somebody might have dropped some pennies in the panicked confusion.

A friend from Tampa called yesterday. He's planning a trip out to San Francisco. We were trying to arrange to see each other.  He told me of a book I should research concerning the Casey Anthony story.  The book claims that she was innocent, though deeply troubled, the repeated victim of incest.  It tells a very different story from the one popularly presented by the media and accepted by many.  You can read an article about the book here if lurid stories of incest and child murder interest you at all.  I couldn't read all of the article, but had to admit that my perception of Casey Anthony, if I thought about her at all, was that she got away with murder.  Who knows.

Ah, the great freedom of the press.  If the pen is mightier than the sword then a keyboard must be about equal to a set of nail clippers and the internet is engaged in the most protracted and endless civil war ever.

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A few of two....

(JhEngstrom)

"It is only a few crazies who have from the crazy place outbroken."

-William S. Burroughs

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Death to Tyrants, eventually.

(JhEngstrom)

Visitors arriving today, lots to do.   We are still far from having moved into our place, there are boxes everywhere, the closets are filled with them from floor to ceiling.  We need to build bookshelves but everything costs money, lots of it.  I suppose I could have lived my life with much less expense, but I wouldn't have wanted to, if given the choice.

I might have found a way to live more elaborately.  I might have learned to throw things out also.  I am not quite a hoarder but I am a collector of books and records, thousands and thousands of them.  They fill the closets, hallways and walls of our townhouse.

Fuck.  I just went to put the little boy to sleep.  After several minutes of rocking him, then swaddling him, putting him in the crib, petting his head, keeping my hand on his chest to calm him down, then he finally went slowly to sleep.  When I went to get up my aging knees both popped and woke him up with a startle.  He immediately had the hiccups.  Is there no winning left in life?

Ok, I don't want to promise anybody anything - we'll have to wait and see - but I might have lured the Belgian misfit, Nadja, over to my site to engage in some light international banter.  I don't want to get my hopes up, but with a little luck, this might be a lot of fun, for me.  We'll see how it all pans out.

Nope, she's decided to continue being a nuisance over at Selavy's site.  She just responded, disappointingly, that she would greatly prefer to continue being annoying there rather than here.  Oh well... such is life.  I knew I shouldn't get my hopes up.  I'll just have to continue tracking her outwit herself over there each day.  It's always just a click away.

Well, then she did post on my site....  She is one of the most elusive nincompoops I've ever encountered.  Who can possibly understand her mysterious European ways?

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Fresh New Bills

I had to stop reading about economic corruption.  It was driving me mad.  I would awaken with words and phrases like speculative markets, derivatives, and adjustable rate mortgages going through my head.  

Today I will join the National Rifle Association, though I really only want a handgun.  I want to do things right.

I had considered writing a post concerning why I hate heavy-metal but bored of the idea before I got around to it.  I have to be in a semi-manic state to write about music.  It is almost all that I have left to offer the form, my occasional mania.  A friend reminded me recently that music is mostly by young people and for young people, to be careful with it now, etc.  

In thinking about economic inequality one thing did occur to me.  Why isn't there a bigger push to get professional athletes to patronize the arts?  Some of them have enormous reservoirs of money that they seem intent on spending on their varied aesthetic concepts, through homes and the design modification of those homes.  There are several television shows seemingly dedicated to featuring the successes and failures of those attempts.  Why not propose to them that one way that they can truly "make a difference" would be to patronize the arts.    

Funds for artists are drying up on all sides.  An obvious market for fundraising would be from those who wish to express their social power, especially if it could help struggling artists from the neighborhoods in which they came.  All that it would take would be a television program dedicated to it and you would have athletes clamoring to get on board.  It wouldn't matter if the program was touching to some and hilarious to others, as long as people watched.  There is a constant push for athletes to support underprivileged athletic programs, nobody would even see this idea coming.  It could be called "Underdog..."

It's what America needs next.

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Alan Greenspan was criminally inept

(One free visible hand of the market)

I spent Sunday reading about the various bubbles that have arisen in American markets, the reasons for them, and the likelihood that they will continue: sponsored greed and government intervention.  You hear the Occupy movement rattling their imaginary sabers over it but I haven't stopped to really think about it until I examined the amount of overall wealth the upper 1% has increased and accumulated over the last 20 years, and how.  I've tried to make the point on this site before that what people should really be angry about is the collusion between government and high finance to defraud the American people out of their savings and homes.  When you take the time out to do some research about the issue it becomes maddening, beyond maddening.

You've got a certain group of assumed patriots on the right convinced that America's ills come almost exclusively from welfare programs.  They feel that people who are not contributing to the system should not be extracting from it.  Then you've got the left convinced that the solution to society's ills rests in taxing the wealthy more heavily and redistributing that wealth.  Neither side is quite accurate, and neither solution will produce the desired results, but as long as the media has some conflict to report on then the juggernaut of American complacency just keeps rolling back on poor old dumb Sisyphus. 

The reality of it is that everybody is getting screwed by both the government and the banks, and their relationship is already post-criminal.  They've modified the laws to allow the most historic economic raping ever committed.  It is fraud on such a grand scale that it is difficult to imagine, impossible to grasp in just one sitting.  Alan Greenspan manipulated the interest rate and printed so much money to fight of perceived inflation that over time he has devalued the dollar to such degree that there is very little left to save.  It's nearly impossible to imagine how America will ever bounce back from all of this corruption and fraud, especially considering that the attitude of most politicians is to continue letting it happen, that the best policy seems to be "the free hand of the market."  But these people are not industrialists and manufacturers producing goods then distributing and selling them.  Their sole purpose is to find ways of shaving more money off of everybody while making it seem that everybody is benefiting from it. 

No single president is to blame, they were all accomplices.  The media has the left blaming the right and the right blaming the left.  But the person who controls some of these variables and is often able to effectively push for legislation, who functions in a highly advisory way to all presidents, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, answers only occasionally to Congress and can not be removed for policy positions no matter how misguided or stupid their decisions might be.  It's the closest thing we have to an emperor disguised as a court jester.  

Well, Phil Gramm would fit that role better I suppose, and perhaps he's even equal in blame.  They're just about neck-and-neck for first place in the potato sack race of blundering stupidity.  How could any reasonable person believe that Wall St., or any other industry, is capable of self-regulation?  They effectively let the entire nation's finances be run on the honor system.  

Those two crippled old pterodactyls should have been silenced with tranquilizer darts.  

It's all beyond me.  It becomes so infuriating reading about the various systemic and personal blunders that it becomes difficult to sleep.  I am an excitable person and these things worry me now more than ever.  I was almost pulling out our mortgage papers and going through them late last night, just to make sure we hadn't been tricked into one type of interest rate when we believed it to be another.  

The most effective anxieties are the ones that can be easily tickled from a distance.  Pain-killers were all that would palliate my torment.

So, that's what I did with my Sunday: read about grand-scale fraud, verified that America was on the verge of collapse, enjoyed a little late night paranoia, then tossed and turned all night.  

I'm not just getting old.  I'm already there.

Well, the tossing and turning has another source, there is the pain.  I won't write about it any more here today, but it is currently persistent.  I have a bundle of pinched nerves in my back that periodically cause me great torment.  Pain reduces one's imagination.  It is difficult to allow your mind to wander, or to escape fear, when it is so frequently brought home by the command whistle of discomfort.  Or worse... the mumblings of misery and woe still flapping and screeching high above. 

"What I've learned at the Federal Reserve is a new language which is called 'Fed-Speak'. You soon learn to mumble with great incoherence." - Alan Greenspan

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... there is the making of

Awake before the child and his mother.  The house silent.  The disseminating moon still visible above as the dawn grows, passing slowly from the bed.  The light expands into another thing, daybreak disappearing as it goes.  The morning tea cools.  Alone in a rare moment of peace. 

No dreams remembered, just the mild grasp of waking, of returning from a great but friendly distance.  The light that fills the house as natural and soft as the curved earth.  

A simple day ahead, one hopes.  Simple things done, simple things desired.  A day, perhaps, without things.

  

The book was finished last night, one read before, one that will be read again.  How many, how long; does the morning always wonder.  

Today might only be the casual search for a new book, a thing.

The avoidance of pain, the having or the giving of it, the making of.  

Always there is the making of.

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Who among you...?

(free spirit)

Everywhere I go people keep telling me how beautiful my daughter is.  I just smile and say, "Oh, isn't she?  It's her eyes, so blue."

Rachel wants to cut his hair but I am insisting that we do not.  I know that there will be no return from it.  From that moment on he will be a child and not an infant, on his way towards some other stage of development.  I do not care about the actual delineations between those two terms; it is how it will make me feel.  I love his hair exactly the way that it is.  I picture him with a little haircut and I cringe, though I know it will happen eventually.  It's not as if he currently has any job interviews to go on.  How could Rachel possibly take him to Christmas Mass looking like this?  

Our little wild savage.

A friend of mine's son had alopecia.  In solidarity my friend shaved his head so that his son would not alone feel the shame of hair loss.  His son barely noticed.  He continued on just being a happy little boy, almost entirely unaware that he had any reason to feel one way or another.  My friend, who works in investment banking in NYC -  you know, the bad guys - then carried on looking like a rather tall white supremacist for a few months.  I encouraged him to get a forehead tattoo but no luck there.  It didn't have to be overt, not all forehead tattoos demand such a thing.  It could be a benign message, or even an ambiguous one.  A swastika, or the word "hate", certainly conveys its intended message.  But he could go with something like "explode" or "live feed" or "commission."  

He could also do the past tense "commissioned...", with the ellipsis.  That would still be threatening enough, though perhaps not so much to his work colleagues, more to the 99%ers.  His work colleagues would likely find a way of marginalizing him and his unexpected ambiguous forehead message.  

Ok, I just got an email from my old Scottish anarchist buddy, telling me how happy he is that I've discovered Rosa Luxemburg.  Like me, he fails to understand how the masses are not enraged.  The only thing that many people are willing to become enraged about in America is the very idea that poor people have a say in the process.  

One explanation is known as the Fox Effect.  

That last link is a poorly written wiki-post but here is one that is more exhaustive and (should be) more enraging.  I have a friend that often cites Fox News reports as a counter to any claim by the left, particularly climate science and the meaning of The Constitution.  My friend was educated in the sciences and has read The Constitution, you see.  He wields these facts as an online scimitar in vague warning towards others that he is not to be trifled with.  He disagrees with the Supreme Court's decision on the ACA because he is an expert in liberty.  He professes to know the scientific method yet oddly ignores the last two steps when it comes to Fox's reporting: Test and Analysis.  

I suppose it is convenient that his dogma is supported by Fox News and citing them freely as a reputable media outlet plays well into that.  I mean, why not?

It is maddening, but what can be done.  Perhaps a reminder of the scientific process will suffice.  

That, and a simple forehead tattoo.... "confirmation bias"

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... a respectable word count

Last night I dreamed of the Higgs Boson.  I'm not even sure how one can dream of such a thing with no knowledge of it.  A description from an article on the internet must have stuck with me.  I dreamed of particles moving through molasses. I could see them slowing, taking on mass.  There was music.  I regret to admit that it was Pink Floyd.  I awoke and was immediately ashamed of my dream, the soundtrack anyway.  The dream itself was a sublime vision of the process, I think.  It was the Pink Floyd that had to go.  How did my dreams turn into a laser light show.  Why.

I blame my old friend, Bong-Swat.

This morning, walking the dog and Rhys, I began to realize what my life will become.  I will have to start spending much more time managing others' lives, and Barkley.  Rhys has gotten big enough to start grabbing Barkley's hair and kicking him when he gets excited as we're lying together on the bed.  Barkley has responded in kind and has growled at Rhys twice and once took a warning snap towards him.  It's a difficult position to be in.  I'm having to scold the poor dog verbally while assuring him that I love him and he's still who he thinks he is on the local pecking order.  But he's not.  He knows it and so do I.  He's probably thinking my spot's open.  This is his big chance.  He's reverting to his wolf instincts.

Nothing gets done any more.  My imaginary list of things to do just keeps growing and growing. There are objects all around me that need tending to but they just pile up.  They serve as reminders, I guess.  But I don't want to be reminded.  I want time to do things but when I get time I choose to do nothing, convincing myself that it is best to do nothing, that nothing is the one thing I haven't been doing enough of.  It's all true, of course, the doing or not doing as a benefit or imaginary luxury.  But the stuff piling up is maddening.  Why can't I do nothing and also not be reminded of it.

I've been meaning to write more focused pieces.  I want to have a modest body of work that I can submit to an editor in the hopes of getting some writing work.  But I write these pieces while Rhys is sleeping.  I never know how much time I'll have.  Most days it never seems to be enough.   Or, I'll write a piece very quickly and then Rhys will "sleep like a baby" for 2 hours.  There is no way to know, to predict.  So I write from paragraph to paragraph, always ready to wrap it up quickly.  It is sloppy, giving rise to blurry, jumpy posts.  

Every day I tell myself that I will do things differently that day but the sky will be overcast and that will be a good enough reason to just do things the way I did the day before.  Any reason will suffice: my shoes are upstairs, the stroller will already be in the car, I can't find my keys, my t-shirt is dirty, etc.  The next thing I know I'll be in the drive-thru at McDonald's, looking at the required calorie count on the menu, convincing myself that it's not as bad as it really is.  Calories being such a poor reflection of what it is you're ingesting.  It flattens life into one misleading quantitative judgement alone.  It's like judging the value of a novel by how many words are in it - not even separating them into verbs, nouns or adjectives. 

"Mr. Ford's new novel 'Canada' represents a sizable addition to the world of literature with a page count of 432, clocking in at a respectable 108,000 words... Quite impressive Mr. Ford, well done...."

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... you might believe

It is everywhere.  I do not mean god.  I mean the elastic painful absurdity of life.  The many moments we try to arrange, to direct.

When I am putting Rhys to sleep - I am there by his crib, kneeling, trying to calm him - I assume a posture similar to that of prayer, the archetype of a praying man.  But I am not praying.  If you saw me you might believe that I was.  If believing is what you like to believe. 

(photos by Lisa Murray)

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Victory...

The government has really pissed me off.  Everybody told me not to worry about them sending my old passport back.  With knowing faith they all told me how it would be in the envelope with my new passport, not to worry.  It wasn't.  I knew I should have listed it as "lost or stolen."

I'm not being precious about this but it was the only physical evidence I have of all the places that I've been.  All over the world, several times over.  Lost now, and gone for good.  Rhys will have to take my word for it, rather than have any proof that he can sit and marvel at.  

I have an even older passport that was filled with stamps, the one that British Airways lost, but it was only the 24 page book. The one they kept was 54 pages, I think, a much better representation of my travel decade.  Hundreds and hundreds of different trips.  More than 100 just to Mexico.

Shanghai, Tokyo, Seoul, Moscow, St. Petersburg, Prague, Budapest, Bucharest, Buenos Aires, Tunisia... All gone, wiped off the map. 

The Chinese Visa alone makes me angry.  It was beautiful.  Russia and Brasil too.  A document of all of the places that I had been outside of America, stamped with the dates of arrival and departure.  I'm gutted, not so much for me but for Rhys.  

People who tell me to trust that the American government will do something right really fucking piss me off.  I understand wanting them to do something right, but the reality is far from it.

Fuck the various agencies, they are worse than evil, they are inept.

But, on the bright side, at least I can go to Costa Rica now.... July 28th... the date was rescheduled to give me time to get my new passport.

Victory.  

Bunions in the Sky

(The Full Buck Moon)

My days are becoming less and less eventful.  Perhaps I just don't have the same verve to tell stories any more.  I don't know.  I went in to drop my computer off yesterday.  At a different time there would have been any number of details that I might have expanded into a story.  Today, as I sit and write this, there are none.  I just want my computer back, fixed.  Hopefully today.  Tomorrow is the 4th, so if the repair lingers it will mean that I won't get the computer back until later in the week.  I feel naked and hungry without it.  I sit at my desk and stare at the spot where it was, sipping my morning tea.  

Well, I was, then I came upstairs to the "other" computer to write this.

It's not depression that I'm slipping into but something like it.  Everywhere within me there is a listlessness, a boredom at my extremities.  I need an adventure but I don't feel like inventing one.  Perhaps when the boy wakes up I'll take him on a photo hike.  Anything.  I tell myself to move but I can not seem to make myself do so.  It is just a disembodied voice echoing through the empty canyons of my mind, "Remember to brush your teeth...", "Browsing the internet is not a career....",  "Don't listen to them, Cheetos are a type of food...", "Pornography is mostly fiction..." , "Change your underwear... after you've showered..." , "That shirt is old and should be thrown out...", "You're too fat to sit on that..." ,  "You probably shouldn't smell that..." , "What are traditional fetish objects...?"

No, I kid.  I've only had anonymous voices scream a few of those into the labyrinth of my thoughts.  Those and, "Demographics are not just for display purposes....". "Don't look in the mirror... it's a goblin...", "Cry when you're jacking off, I like it....", "Can I please see your receipt for that...?" , "Cocaine is your caloric friend..." ,  "Aerosmith was overrated, but not nearly as much as AC/DC..." ,  "What are bunions...?..."

Those are the screams that I daily endure echoing through the angled narrows of my imagination.  Indeed, what are bunions?  Sometimes I just want to scream answers back.

I'm half kidding.  Selavy claims that everybody is fucked up.  He's probably right, this observation could be easily supported, with nearly ubiquitous evidence.  But does everybody feel fucked up?  It doesn't seem so.  Some people seem well-adjusted, or at least it seems that they believe themselves to be well-adjusted.  Why couldn't I have been one of those assholes.  They're everywhere.  They walk around telling themselves that all of the hard work they do for company "X" is a form of virtue - what makes it a virtue is the wife and kid, or kids, they have at home - but also that they really believe in what they're doing, even proud of it.  They crave reasonably meager products that are just out of their price range, but they're always willing to work hard and save and sacrifice to get them.  Their cars always seem washed, even at the beach.  They appease the people they believe to be their superiors, to the collective chagrin of their assumed equals.  They prepare for mandatory company meetings and expect others to do so also.

Wait, I wasn't going to write about Apple.  I forgot.  I should at least wait until I get my computer back.  When I go in to pick it up I'll ask.  Maybe they'll know what bunions are.

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Fern Hill

(... under the apple boughs)

My life has become too much of one thing.  I make crass jokes to avoid the other.  It is tiring, for me most of all.  Today I will have some time to divert, to read beautiful writing, and to hope that it brings some small change to my life. 

Also, today I will bring my computer in to get it fixed.  I will visit the place that I used to work.  Having been a technician at The Apple Corporation I am always amazed at the marketing feat they have pulled off in the last 5-7 years.  They have convinced the public that their computers are actually worth much more than other companies' computers.  Yes, the Apple Operating System is preferable, but the hardware, other than being a nicer design, is comprised of the same useless pieces of crap they use in other computers, mostly.

Apple computers used to be hailed as the computers of choice for design firms.  Anybody in the "creative" fields were told that Apple computers were the only option.  Well, the world wanted it that way, now they've got it.  Except that a lot of people are starting to notice that the computers still cost 3-4 times as much as other computers but aren't delivering that type of performance and longevity.  People marvel at the concept and service of the "Genius Bar", never stopping to ask why it is so necessary.  

I am just mad because I'm having to bring my $2500 desktop computer in for yet another repair.  A major component, the LCD, has failed, again.  Once the extended warranty that I purchased for the device expires the solution will be simple: they will tell me that it is time to buy another $2500 computer.  It's absurd and very few people even seem to notice.  The Orbitz corporation was caught selling higher priced tickets and hotels to their customers that were accessing the site using Macs.  Hilarious.  Can you blame them?  When you've got a captive sucker market then why not exploit it.  

Ok, enough.  I really should decided what I want to write about before I sit down to do so each morning.  It is becoming a problem, ranting and vulgarity being all that I seem capable of lately.

Speaking of,

Cato, the kid who ambushes me with questions on any recent subject that takes his interest, was admitted to the hospital a few days ago.  They needed to remove a gerbil from his rectum, I believe.  He was in the hospital for a few days while they performed their rodent removal procedures.  A young friend of his, a very sweet girl, brought him a book of poems to read by Dylan Thomas.  Cato was quite mad that I had not told him about the great poet yet. I explained that it was not possible for me to transfer 35 years of reading over to him in a single summer, that those things take time, and he must have a reading appetite to match mine, and to do so for decades before he could reasonably catch up.  He harangued me anyway.  I told him to read the poem "Fern Hill" from the collection.  

He said that he wanted to become more familiar with Thomas' themes before jumping into his most notable poems.  

I told him to do as he wished, but that the trained professionals at the hospital might be able to remove the gerbil faster than he supposes, and once he was back on the outside who knows what foul and godless pursuits might keep him from reading it then.  He relented and read the poem.  He was unsurprisingly impressed.  I encouraged him to memorize the poem.  It is a reasonably difficult one to commit to in that way. The rhythms of the poem make it very easy to accidentally jump from one verse to another, disrupting the structure of the whole.

It was a poem that I memorized years ago, in part at one time, then through to completion at another.  I tried to recite it from memory the other day after breaking off communication with the gerbil killer.  I made a few mistakes but had the main of the verses adequately memorized.  It is one that is well worth keeping within.  

I once remember reading an interview with Dylan Thomas and he was asked how he created a poem in which its rhythm feels and reads so effortlessly.  He said it was easy, all he had to do was re-write it about a hundred and fifty times.  

Now as I was young and easy under the apple boughs
     About the lilting house and happy as the grass was green,
       The night above the dingle starry,
         Time let me hail and climb
       Golden in the heydays of his eyes,
     And honoured among wagons I was prince of the apple towns
     And once below a time I lordly had the trees and leaves
         Trail with daisies and barley
       Down the rivers of the windfall light.

     And as I was green and carefree, famous among the barns
     About the happy yard and singing as the farm was home,
       In the sun that is young once only,
         Time let me play and be
       Golden in the mercy of his means,
     And green and golden I was huntsman and herdsman, the calves
     Sang to my horn, the foxes on the hills barked clear and cold,
         And the sabbath rang slowly
       In the pebbles of the holy streams.

     All the sun long it was running, it was lovely, the hay
     Fields high as the house, the tunes from the chimneys, it was air
       And playing, lovely and watery
         And fire green as grass.
       And nightly under the simple stars
     As I rode to sleep the owls were bearing the farm away,
     All the moon long I heard, blessed among stables, the nightjars
       Flying with the ricks, and the horses
         Flashing into the dark.

     And then to awake, and the farm, like a wanderer white
     With the dew, come back, the cock on his shoulder: it was all
       Shining, it was Adam and maiden,
         The sky gathered again
       And the sun grew round that very day.
     So it must have been after the birth of the simple light
     In the first, spinning place, the spellbound horses walking warm
       Out of the whinnying green stable
         On to the fields of praise.

     And honoured among foxes and pheasants by the gay house
     Under the new made clouds and happy as the heart was long,
       In the sun born over and over,
         I ran my heedless ways,
       My wishes raced through the house high hay
     And nothing I cared, at my sky blue trades, that time allows
     In all his tuneful turning so few and such morning songs
       Before the children green and golden
         Follow him out of grace.

     Nothing I cared, in the lamb white days, that time would take me
     Up to the swallow thronged loft by the shadow of my hand,
       In the moon that is always rising,
         Nor that riding to sleep
       I should hear him fly with the high fields
     And wake to the farm forever fled from the childless land.
     Oh as I was young and easy in the mercy of his means,
         Time held me green and dying
       Though I sang in my chains like the sea.

-Dylan Thomas, Fern Hill

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Floating, flying, quitting, etc.

We failed.  My readership abandoned me at the critical hour.  I had even tried to help them cheat a little bit, posting a secondary link on the final hour, hoping to rake in the last few views.  We fell short by a small handful, less than 20 pageviews.  It was to be expected.  It was a weekend day.  I am listening to Radiohead's "Kid A" album now, in mourning.

But life moves on, so we must also.  There is always this month to consider, already off to this melancholy start.

No, I just kid.  None of it truly matters to me.  It is only something I notice because Google gives me a glimpse into those things.  It is satisfying knowing that what I write is being read, that is all.  

Last night, before going off to bed late, it occurred to me that I don't even have the vaguest idea of what I'm doing in some regards.  Getting a job, being interviewed, etc.  I went into SF to meet with a job recruiter.  He went over some basic practices with me. One of those was to get the names of the people that I meet and send a follow-up email thanking them for their time, when appropriate to do so.  We practiced some interview techniques and he directed me as to how to answer certain questions, what to avoid, what to focus on.  After the meeting I was going to meet a friend in town for a beer but I decided instead to make my way home and beat the commuter traffic fleeing the city near 5pm.  I got home and thought some more about what he had said, practices to practice.  So, what was the thing that I forgot to do with him: send him a thank-you email.

Ooops.  I haven't heard from him since.  I'm even on LinkedIn now.  I had thought that the job offers would just come pouring in.  Maybe it was a mistake to use this site as a reference point for various other interests that I have.  Mentioning Traci Lords and Bath Salts in my subject heading could somehow work against me.  Who knew.... but I see that now.

It's too bad that there's not a job out there that involves me writing for this site every day.  That would be ideal.  I would go out and take pictures and have experiences, then come home and write about them.  Why isn't the world structured in such a way that I can do that?  Why readers, why? 

Though, it remains possible that by doing so I would grow to resent having to write for the site every day, treating it like a job, hating my inner voice as an authoritarian manager of some sort, questioning my work ethic and on-site behavior.  Before long I would start to slack off, taking 20 minute breaks when I'm only allowed 15, making pointed jokes about any new policies I've put in place, clocking in late and calling out more often than the allotted amount, claiming to be sick when I was really only tired.  Hiding upstairs in the bedroom hoping my computer doesn't see me.

What this site needs is a human resources department - somebody I can talk to, without fear of losing my position, or worse.   A pin-up HR girl-next-door that I can confess my secret dirty deeds to.  That was one of the things that got me in trouble at my last job.  I suggested doing a company-wide calendar called, "The Kinky Girls of H.R."... Only my buddies thought it was funny, management however, did not.  

No, that was only one of my project ideas that I refrained form converting into a formal proposition.  I confess everything to Rachel now, she's my unofficial HR manager.  She has a file on me that includes company secrets, strict policy and procedure stuff.  An ever-expanding file of would-be grievances, swelling at the seams, bursting with behavioral overflow.

Wait.  That can't be right.

Quitting work felt good but now there is a vaguely unsettled feeling of floating, drifting.  There is no clear end in sight, the mind begins to grow tentacles.  When I left the job it felt great.  It felt like I had cheated on everybody's taxes, like I was flying in a dream.    

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