Radio-Baby

Do you see? 

I woke up and read yesterday's post, and I liked it. I seem to be happiest when being a contrarian, particularly when I am depressed. It gives me something to fight through, I guess - a sense of engagement. I don't sit and wonder what to write about. I simply find something or someone to disagree with and then I am off and running. Ah, freedoms....

Enough about me. 

Yesterday Rachel had a meeting to attend in the evening. I was tasked with putting little Rhys to sleep. It was much easier than I thought it would be. I just found toys and books to occupy him with until he started walking wobbly and diving into pillows, half-slumbered like a miniature drunk. Then, I put him in his crib and Ssshhh'd him a little, and he was off, to the sounds of Music for 18 Musicians. 

How simple, I thought, with minimal effort... 

But then I went downstairs to read, keeping the radio baby monitor on, listening for awakenings, dissatisfaction. None came.

It was like being in an Edgar Allan Poe story. Every little sound became a possible danger. Silence stretched out and yawned before me. I couldn't read. Why was he so quiet, how? Was he alright? Fuck, please don't let anything go wrong while I am watching him. 

What is he doing up there....?

I didn't re-enter the room to check, not wanting to wake him if he's sleeping so perfectly, but I couldn't relax. I sat in the kitchen, listening to the monitor, staring at it, waiting for any indication that he was alright. 

Nothing.

I laid down, downstairs and tried to relax. Rachel came home and asked how everything had been.  Fine, fine good, I said. She didn't seem worried. But how?

I went to sleep but couldn't sleep, I had only made it to bed. It had unnerved me, sent me spiraling. 

What the fuck? I thought. How can this be? Everything went well.

There is no solace. It is why the distant moon stirs and drives some as a celestial speedometer.

If things go perfectly in the film of your life then the bus is about to kill a pedestrian, possibly you. Everybody knows this. Never go to lunch and laugh with old friends. When they cut to the exterior scene you're about to walk into traffic, looking backwards as you smilingly wave goodbye.

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Without Consent

Well, I got what I wanted, I guess. Yesterday's post stirred some minor online controversy. I proved myself to not be adequately against rape, somehow. I knew that by discussing a hot button topic (the media) in a mildly ambiguous way it would bring out a few Inquisitionists. I have been feeling low and have had nothing to write about. Controversy stirs me.

I went so far yesterday as to use the word "victim" to describe the football player / rapists, pointing out that they are also victim to their own actions. I offered that a person can be a victim to their own self-abuse. A friend told me that I was minimizing the meaning of the word "victim" by doing so. I suppose in a postmodern sense, maybe. It is a component of deconstructionism, to render a text or term overly meaningful, or unknowable in a strict sense, by exploring all of the possible relational meanings.

Thankfully, my use of the word victim has not exhausted its significance and purpose.

We are all anti-rape. Nobody is pro-rape or filled with rape sympathy or rape apologies, except perhaps the rapists and their lawyers. But once you allow people to tell you what you can and can not consider, what is appropriate or inappropriate to discuss, or in which ways it may or may not be acceptable to do so, then you have knowingly allowed someone to censor you. It is a way of telling you that you are not qualified to consider or speak about a given subject. If it goes so far as to be gender based, which discussions of rape sometimes are, then you have also knowingly engaged in sexism, often as the victim of that sexism.

Try telling that to the rape-baiters.


A politically correct attitude in the media will do no more to help people understand rape motivations than enforced behavioral and conversation norms. Interestingly, the friend who told me that I was devaluing the meaning of the word "victim" is also very anti-political correctness, or has claimed to be so. 

The two football players are rapists, convicted rapists. They will rightfully serve their juvenile prison time and then live the rest of their days as registered sex offenders. For some, this sentence is far too light, there is no punishment that would be too severe, that would satisfy the anger, pain and confusion at such an act. This is why we have a judicial system, so that the punishment for a crime does not rest with the victims of that crime.

If ever you are caught discussing the lives of the perpetrators, and the actions that may have led to their offense, then you will likewise be known as a friend to all rapists everywhere, so be warned.


Approximately 1 in 10 rape victims is a male, though 99% of the perpetrators of rape are male.

For some, the act of rape is simple and brutal, and they are against it. For others, it is a very complex dynamic, they are also against it. Rape seems to be many things to a few people and a few things to many people. We know that women are overwhelmingly the victims of it. This does not, by any logical or illogical extension, make all men responsible for rape, much less guilty of it. Be very attentive when listening to people discuss it. Once you allow vague accusations of complicity to silence you, well... we all know what that leads to.



A friend once confided in me that, in an angry moment, he had called his girlfriend a cunt. He was shamed and saddened by his actions, seeking some consolation or understanding. He went on to say that there is no term, anywhere, that is so awful that a woman can possibly call a man.

"Rapist," I said.

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The many stones of Rapeville

Today ends winter, the astronomical accounting of it anyway. The earth here seems to still be holding on to the last wetness of Winter, the slight chill. 

I slept for close to 10 hours last night, off and on. Sleep is a common issue for me, one that often fuels or starves others. I think I've mentioned it before. 

I've run out of things to write about. For some time now I've felt devoid of interest. Bankrupt, as "the moderns" called it. I"m happiest when I'm reading. 

Yesterday I read about rape. I don't pretend to know the details. Keep that in mind here, that these are just musings:

There were some high-school kids, football players, who had uninvited sex with a girl classmate of theirs who was passed out, then one of them published naked photos of her online. It made national news. Then the news outlets were reporting on the other news outlets' reporting. "Rape Apologists!" went at least one accusation, because they had the temerity to note that these boys' promising lives were also ruined by the incident, as part of what they were reporting on. 

Or, only that it has ripped this small town apart....

Little matter that you can't really report on a minor who has been raped, it being illegal (if not a lack of journalistic decorum) to state the victim's name. Though that didn't stop Fox News, apparently. 

I mentioned it to Rachel, whose stance could fairly be described as anti-rape, and she said that it's the whole 9/11 phenomenon, that you're not allowed to mention anything other than evil, Evil, EVIL!!!!  To do so is sympathizing with the terrorists. 

To flesh out any story with information on the perpetrators (now convicted rapists), that reveals them to be anything other than depraved monsters is a line that some will not allow to be crossed. There seems to be some confusion between what is acknowledging and what is sympathizing. To describe the courtroom scene, in which the parents are seated, the only adequate phrase for them would be "rape primogenitors."

Some seemed shocked at the statistics of sexual assault among high school athletes. 

Most people are anti-rape. There are very few who seem "pro" on the subject, though I suppose they're out there. I read one account in which an individual tried to entirely blame the young girl for what these boys had done, noting her clothes as being the inciting event, etc. The old, she was asking for it. There are some who will not be happy until all signs of femininity are sealed off from view and hidden from an otherwise perfectly healthy old-testament society. 

Being anti-rape is not good enough for some, though. There is no room in this new world for those who are soft on rape, or for those who have the audacity to do anything at all other than eternally denounce the two boys and send them to hell or somewhere far worse. To some, mentioning their lives as being anything beyond utter depravity is being an accomplice to rape. 

Stop apologizing! goes the repeated cry. Now is the time to burn the evil-doers, then stone them! Those who are unable to find large enough stones are probably rapists themselves. If you want to prove that you're not a rapist then you must find a stone so large that it can not even be lifted. That's the only way to be certain. 

There were many witnesses to the event. The law is turning towards them now. There will be a grand jury convened, to ensure that no stone has been left un-thrown, that no one culpable escapes. It is a grand old time for righteousness in town. Once the stones start flying the idea is to be thorough. Partial stonings are the hallmark of an uncivilized society.

It's tough being a kid... one night you're just drinking beer and watching your friends finger a passed out girl, the next thing you know you're in some sort of trouble. Coach is in trouble too! These sure are complicated times. 

The girl has received death threats for having been raped. That must spark the occasional grim chuckle in the Muslim world. 

In the little town of Steubenville, where football is everything.

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The tamer of wild creatures

Another weekend conquered. For Rachel's birthday we took Rhys to the aquarium at the piers, Fisherman's Wharf. He was as interested in exit signs and baby strollers as he was in aquatic life, and there was much of each to go around. It was quite fun to watch him pick out a stuffed octopus for his immediate playing pleasure. We kept trying to direct his attention to sharks swimming over head or little rays that can be petted in a pool surrounded by other kids. He's too young to really care, though he sure seemed to like the stuffed toy area. Now, he's the proud owner of a soft cephalopod mollusc with four pairs of fluffy arms. He was wearing it on his head when he fell asleep in the car.

Barkley, the pup, is already eyeing the mysterious aquatic beast.

Later that night we ate shrimp and clams and mussels, with white and red wine. It was our victory over Poseidon, celebrated with a chocolate cake and birthday singing. Rhys and his little buddy played and screamed and screamed and cried and screamed and played. The beginning signs of competitive behavior seem to be appearing. It is a little saddening. One wishes it could be stopped, or held off for a while, but it is a thing that can not be easily diverted, only hopefully contained, with practice and dedication. 

Through maternal magic and sorcery Rachel has figured out a way to get little Rhys to sleep past 6am. She's a natural. We watched an entire episode of tv together last night. House of Cards. 

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Possession, I guess.

(William Schmidt)

I enjoy writing more when I am in a manic phase. Or, a hypomanic phase, rather. I never tire, I never search for subject or content. It all just comes to me, pages of giggling gibberish. Sure, I often wince when it's all over, if I ever look back, but I enjoy the feeling more as it's happening. 

What am I talking about? I enjoy everything more when in a hypomanic phase. It's the following state that causes trouble. The unstoppable swing upwards towards frenzy, the vexation of mania. Two states in which I can not tell the difference as I am transitioning through them. One secretly passes off the lie to the other, without my knowledge. 

It's an interesting curse.  I have a mild pity for those who have never felt it. It is among the best drugs I've ever been subjected to, though the comedowns are horrendous. It is convenient for people to just believe that you don't really have it. It is difficult for many to separate what is you and what are the effects of the illness. I sometimes question whether there even is a line dividing me from it. I can see that it is incredibly tiring for those around me. It steals others' energy, with their knowledge but without their consent. 

It's much stronger than coffee, and also lasts much longer. Days, sometimes weeks. Entire seasons pass sometimes before I look back and realize that I was involved in a long upwards swing, or an extended descent.

It is hellish, those lasting spells.

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Today is Rachel's birthday. We will go into the city, to the aquarium. Last year we briefly stopped by a pub, where some friends were, we were with 2-month old baby Rhys. I walked him carefully through the bar to a back patio area. Rachel was not very comfortable with the situation, understandably, so we left. St. Patrick's Day in San Francisco, in an Irish bar, with a newborn. You get the idea. 

But we will go in to the city and brave the drinkers again. I have never enjoyed this day much. I do not understand what is being celebrated. It's a religious thing, but it happens almost exclusively in bars, right? Tonight, we will go have dinner over at our friends' house. Seafood and white wine. Deliciousness.  

I love the picture from today. It is one that I had asked if I could use here some time ago. There are at least two invisible men involved in its making, that much we can be certain of. One of them I know. But it does a strange thing to think of the other. It affects something about the image and it bothers me that it does so. I do not want to know about him. I do not want him involved in this. It feels as if he is invading the privacy of the image, which is a silly way to feel. 

I prefer to just look at what is there and enjoy it, its tender simplicity, its vulnerable carnality. I'm not entirely certain why the idea of the other has its effect. 

But it does. 

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The dreams of others:

I remember the dreams I've had the last two nights: the first: trying out for a play and being in a huge gymnasium where the clowns and actors were practising. Everywhere there was the heavy circumstance of menace: I ran, huge weights were dropping on my head; I crossed the slippery floor, and afar off, laughing hobos bowled large black balls at me to knock me down; it was a terrifying time of jeopardy: similar to those moments caught between traffic, lumbering trucks and busses and bicycles coming from all angles, when I can only stand fast and shut my eyes, or blunder into a tangle of traffic and hope for luck. Blacked balls, blacked weights, wheeled vehicles, and the slippery floor: all trying to crush me, moving in heavy blundering attempts, just missing. 

Then I was in my black coat and beret: Isis bereaved, Isis in search, walking a dark barren street. Into a cafe´, searching, searching and in a chair, hiding his face behind a newspaper, sat the dark one, suave, grinning. I stood, appalled, and he uncurled, and came with me, dark and sweet. Another dark man with the face of a slavic cretin, or a yellowed spaniard, of some indeterminate race, accosted me and said in a thick, furry voice "It is night" He thought I was a whore; I broke away, running for my Richard, who walked ahead, his back toward me. 

Men's voices downstairs. I am sick, sick. With this desperate fury. God knows what will happen to me in Paris. Love turns, lust turns, into the death urge. My love is gone, gone, and I would be raped. "It is night."

-Sylvia Plath, Journals March 10th, 1956 (postscript) (excerpt)

For anybody who ever wondered if their own dreams were at least as deep and meaningful as those of Sylvia Plath.... I told you that there was little mystery to dreaming. It is all there for the knowing: rape, racism, misandry, and all else.

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Number Nein Dream!

(in dreams, a girl is often a girl)

Mainly in dreams do I lately find new material about which to write. Others' dreams are boring, so I'll desist. I've been writing about mine too much here recently. The meaning of dreams as the succession of emotional ideas and fantastical sensation has always seemed clear enough to me; unadorned by, and not in need of, ancillary enigma. Only the mystically disabled care about the dreams of others, seeing significance and usefulness among the figments and phantasms, finding signs in the signs, riding the liquid language of the sleeping mind in search of heretofore hidden meaning.... I can still hear the distant chatter, the oohs and ahhhs of supposed otherworldly comprehension, as if everyone is somehow more self-psychic in their dreams, tapped into the paranormalcy of their own boredom. Or, should it only be said that they are magically less charlatan in dreams than elsewhere? Or, should that not be said....

Either way, for some the darkness of the mind must be pleasured and then preserved. 

... speaking of darkness.

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... what a circus!

Nothing to report so far this morning. 

I slept in. That is, if laziness and wakeful dreaming can be called sleep. I drank a coffee and it was time to start working. 

I am ready for another mountain trek. It is time to hike a peak, to experience a mostly unhindered view; winded, with modest accomplishment beneath. 

"We're all going to die, all of us, what a circus! That alone should make us love each other but it doesn't. We are terrorized and flattened by trivialities, we are eaten up by nothing." - Bukowski

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Just snapshots

Our lives are constructed for us, haphazardly, from splintered fragments of memories, half forgotten episodes that caused us something, occasions combining without mercy to form love - recurring chance. Slivers of life becoming full and then receding, memories invoked and then re-written, like the moon's monthly illusion, often lit but full of visible darkness, as heavy as a little planet stretching the tides, vast oceans rising up in hope to meet it.

Thinking back to my childhood is a strange but reoccurring adventure. Trying to somehow piece together the past, incidents that supposedly contributed to me feeling the way that I do. So much is lost, there are now only the vague prejudices that remain, the echoes of vanished experience, misplaced by a handful of noisy ghosts. We use anything to justify anything, without apology or explanation. The causes are mainly inaccessible, kept hidden and beyond reach. There is only the effect to contend with, with no route back. The forest is haunted by orbital sentries, the waning paths all lead back into unlit mystery. 

I walked out early this morning, searching the dark sky. It is invisible, I thought, chasing the sun slowly in its crescent phase, losing sky each day as it goes - it will rise in morning light and cross the sky today unseen.


Tonight, I thought again - just after the sun sets, and then for the next few weeks.

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The Battle of Milvian Bridge

Time, like money, begins to represent all things. Having some is no guarantee of happiness, or love. But without it there is little chance of either. Everything requires time. 

Yesterday, after work, I lounged and read about the Roman Empire, Constantine, the consequences of a growing cult. I stayed up late and watched television. I slept in well past my normally hideous hour to awake.

I began work 17 minutes ago. Life keeps us busy enough to spend when we can.

"Time is a game played beautifully by children." - Heraclitus

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Miss Poppins wears garters

It is good to be home. One can not live at Disneyland forever. A single day nearly killed me. I thought of the irony of such a thing as the day waned. Perhaps it was only the Daylight Saving Time loss.

This morning when he woke up little Rhys stood at the top of the stairs, behind his safety gate, and cried for "Dad-dy!... Dad-dy!!!..."

It's a very unique feeling, that. The words are starting to form, and the word for me is often towards the top of the list.

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48 frames per second, or more.

(that sinking feeling)

I tried to be young again. I was barely recovering from a sinus cold when I went out on Friday night. I made it home late last night (Sunday) after a night out at a dance club, an after-party, bloody mary's all day at the pool of the Chateau Marmont, a failed attempt at an early night's sleep, awoken from near-sleep by another party in the hotel room, much heightened talk, barely more than chatter, the eventual dwindling attendance, late night chats, more wine, yet another failed attempt at sleep, then a full day at Disneyland, some of it also spent drinking (yes, it can be done), an hour-long search for a parked car that was only 20 yards from where I thought I had left it, the fatigued drive home.

Oh, I tried to be young again. I advise against it, youth, especially at this age.

The spirit was willing but now the spirit is cracked and leaking along the seams, the body will require weeks to recover, the strength to mend has abandoned me.

I exaggerate a little bit. My attempts at being young again were less than heroic. I merely needed a little running room to build up some speed, shed some past. Making the leap is never easy, but it doesn't help when your foot slips from the departing side. The slow motion descent as the arc of the jump heads low towards the opposing canyon wall, the one you had hoped to land with feet side down, perhaps having succeeded in a forward flip. Now even the lip is beyond reach, the collision with the approaching chasm wall is not what frightens you, it is the descent that immediately follows. 

It is always the descent that follows. Only memory and dreams enjoy the luxury of falling in slow motion. 

All else is just a trick of Hollywood.

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News from Manhattan Beach

It is supposed to rain all day today in LA. It never rains here, hardly ever. But I've somehow managed to hit the lone day that it does. It had rained similarly in the Bay Area a few days ago. It must be the same front making its way southwards. The flight last night brought my sinus cold back. Or, perhaps it is only the rain following me, chasing me along the coast. 

Selavy relayed to me yesterday how he was once in LA for Thanksgiving, after a trip to Joshua Tree, driving the empty streets of the city like a madman, thinking himself quite lucky to be here on such a day and with such conditions. He raced from one side of the city to the other, with nobody stopping him, miles of open highway, looking for something to do, anything at all. He ended up eating Chinese food while seated at a plastic table, with plastic utensils, accompanied by the only other people in LA that had nowhere else to go. 

Then , there was the next day in which the city returned to normalcy... all traffic congestion and the hellish invitation of apocalypse. 

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Precipitation: solid

It rained all night the night before last, then much of the day. A hail storm at noon. Ice falling from the skies. 

I leave for LA today. This time I will bring my camera. I will try to capture the essence of canine. We have a photo-shoot planned for my friends' dogs. Shit! I just realized that I have a fresh roll of film in my camera that will be ruined by the x-ray machines. I need to take 36 pictures before I get to the airport.

I like being able to work remotely. It affords me the ability to travel without consequence in employment. All I need is relative peace and a wi-fi connection. So, if you want me to come visit your house.... those are my demands.

NyQuil continues to plague me, though with diminished effect as each night passes. This morning I only dreamed of runaway advertisements on my phone while I was desperately trying to text. They were infuriating, but also easy to let go of once sleep lost its hold on me - nothing like the nightmare visions from the morning before. Maybe it was the rain...

Fuck. I have nothing to write about. That is the effect of NyQuil. It is mind-numbing. 

A friend sent an article yesterday instructing blog-writers to write "Epic" content if they want to increase traffic. I sent her back a screenshot of the definition of "epic."

She seemed pleased with my response, says she misses me. 

"Epic content doesn't just happen" says the author of the article, Corbett. I suppose that's quite true. It requires intent, purpose and much skill to produce epic material. He seems to have given this a lot of thought. 

Epic thought, it's called. 

I wonder how my modest audience would respond to such a shift in content here. It is inexplicable, but it would seem that people actually do come here to read the irrational ravings of a self-deluded lunatic. What other explanation could there be? I suppose it could be the cops, keeping an eye on me, for public safety. I mean, I have recently angered a member of their sorority. But how many cops does it take to monitor a website? I believe them to be mainly incompetent, but like many others they are also underfunded. 

The idea of hordes of epicene cops clamoring to this site every day, monitoring it in the hopes of making a bust, is a humorous one. It's a very Spy vs. Spyette scenario.  Looking at traffic sources, gathering IP addresses, and them reading through gibberish, hoping to make some sense of it all. 

Now, that is truly heroic adventure.

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A mistake in usage

(Goya - The Madhouse)

Nobody seems to believe what they claim to believe; it's as if they are incapable. 

Last night I dreamed of vile crime. The accounting of the tale was jumbled and barely coherent, adding to its disturbing effect. There was a main character. He had been suspected of having committed a few stabbings. He spoke of Jack the Ripper and the deeply personal nature of such a thing. How much evidence is left, forensics, how close the perpetrator must get to the victims, to become one. There were visions of blades and blood. The memories of faces at the precise moment when the faces become memories and nothing more. To own that moment, he emphasized, A thing that can not be taken away. 

Pages turned carefully from an old book, descriptions. We walked freely through an abandoned building with high arches. He explained that all of the people there used to be writers, those who had used precise language. He misdescribed them as "exacting," though with a wryness in the telling. It was carnivalesque, and well past midnight. The faces appeared as nearly bodiless apparitions drawn forth to witness our passing in an open asylum. Smiles emerged from the shadows and became sinister; starless laugher, the bulging or lost dark eyes of the deeply troubled, howls off in the distance, summoning. A hideous woman hobbled her way to us, she appeared as a transvestite trapped in a madhouse. Her makeup was twisted and ill-applied. Her face grew in size until it occupied the entire dream, just red lipstick smiles and pupils taunting, melting from one into another as they spun. 

I awoke with a start, surprised that I had caught a character in my dream having made a mistake in usage, wondering what such a thing might indicate. Nothing good, I told myself. 

NyQuil truly is a wonder drug. I don't imagine they recommend it for daily usage. I am afraid to read the warning on the side. I fear that it might relay nothing of true consequence, it would create a daily monster. The feeling of morning sluggishness must come with a price. My mind forces strange dreams on me, only trying to get me to wake, after many hours of beloved lethargy. But no visions of that dark nature come freely. It's as Nietzsche said: When you peer into the darkness, the darkness also peers into you.

The idea of drinking coffee in the morning used to disgust me. 

"... nothing contributes so much to tranquilize the mind as a steady purpose..." - Mary Shelley, Frankenstein

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Only bacon...

(Whistler)

I am a helpless wreck. I spend my afternoons arguing online. Imaginary scenarios involving gun crimes. Silly plots that always seem to favor the bad guys getting shot. The pro-gun crowd is tireless. It is no wonder that they watch so much tv. It must be fun for them to imagine what they would do differently in every scenario involving guns. The only thing that is surprising is how many "bad guys" there still are on the streets, considering the ceaseless imaginary heroic actions of all of them combined. 

Truly, it is crazy, the way they think. 

Have I ever told the story here, when I was shot at in Florida? I don't think I have. Five shots from a handgun. The brother of my girlfriend opened fire on me one night. I still have one of the shells that the cops didn't find in the grass. 

I survived. 

Shit. Now I have to work soon. I've wasted my morning arguing guns, when I could have been writing, or drinking martinis like my old buddy, S.  

I am supposed to go to LA this weekend. I am feeling under the weather a little bit. It happens often when I suddenly get an urge to get back in shape. I deplete my body and get ill. I can abuse it in any other number of ways but exercise is toxic, guaranteed to whither me. Only bacon, with its healing recuperative powers, can possibly save me now. 

"I am not arguing with you - I am telling you." - James Whistler

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The price they payed

Weekends are too short. They are designed for midgets, dwarves, and children. 

We made it in to SF but did not go to any drug-fueled after-parties. We went to a nice bbq. We're at that age. We were the only people there with a child. He didn't seem to notice or care that it was all adults. He has fun most everywhere he goes, and he's very cool about age and height issues. 

I got a stain on my white shirt on the way there. Fascinating, I know. It is uncanny. I left the house with a newly washed shirt on. I did absolutely nothing on the way there that could have caused this stain. But when I emerged from the car there it was. A mystery stain, like Elvis. Somehow the spots always seem to draw attention to my ever-increasing belly, in addition to them just drawing attention to me in general. A brown liquid shit-colored stain perfectly placed on the center of my shirt. 

In this regard I am just like a child.

Speaking of... Rhys is getting to be a lot of fun. Admittedly, it's a pain to always have to have to triple or quadruple our normal considerations when going anywhere, but there's starting to be a big payoff. It's as if we are engaged in constant responsibility acrobatics - doing backflips and passes and tosses, all with little practice and barely a safety net below. The fumbling family on the flying trapeze. 

But Rhys is great to have around - among the most charming events in my world can be he and Rachel just getting out of the car, preparing - when laughing he makes it all feel worthwhile. He is curious and energetic and happy, everything that I want to be, shirt-stains and all. 

I have not exactly solved the case of the missing box (or boxes) of books, but I have confirmed that they are gone. I pulled every box out of the closets and inspected them yesterday. There were thousands and thousands of back-breaking records, but no books. I have begun making a list of the ones that I once had that I might now try to replace. I believe I have a picture somewhere of my old bookshelves in NYC. Perhaps the resolution will be high enough that I'll be able to figure out which books are missing. 

So, this is my fascinating life-update for the day. It's true, this site is more self-involved than it should be. I mean, it's truly a mystery why people come here to read this tripe, and I don't mean a cow's first or second stomach, I mean the paragraphs of gibberish just above. 

I recently found two examples in past posts where I spelled the word paid as "payed"... If nothing else, this site at least stands up to the subscription price. 

"A child can teach an adult three things: to be happy for no reason, to always be busy with something, and to know how to demand with all his might that which he desires." - Paulo Coelho

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.. to roam

I was supposed to go to bed early, wake up around 2am-3am, and go into SF - another friend is dj'ing in town. I woke up late, now it is is 6:30 and I don't feel like driving in. They would force drugs on me, I know this. It is how they are. They are "pushers."

No, I kid.

I am trying to make arrangements to go to LA this Friday, the dj that I missed here on Thursday night is playing there next week. I'll be doing a makeup date. 

As the clock ticks I feel more and more guilty about not driving in to SF. I'm hoping that feeling passes before it takes over. I want some breakfast and a normal Sunday morning, reading a book. We are meant to attend a bbq later today, also in SF. 

All roads lead...

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the pasha of the moon

(my desert disguise)

I've lost a reader, just as I was  in the home stretch, approaching a thousand posts and one hundred thousand page views. He told me my blog was boring and self-obsessed. He's right, of course. I think he also called it pointless. I wake up and write about what's on my mind, usually nothing. It is a lot of difficult navel-gazing. What could be more pointless and self-involved? I suppose that I could read the news first, then write my reactions; opining, as I've been warned against. 

I probably do enough of that already.

The original intention of the blog was to be an open email to my friends. There reached a time when so few people were responding to emails that I thought I would save myself some time by just writing a blog and treating it as an open email. What am I to write about in such given circumstances? 

Myself, I guess.

It's too bad though. I liked knowing that he was reading. The sense of separation from my old life has been huge over the last year. The new life has not yet appeared entirely complete underneath my feet.

I got a copy of "Rome" by Robert Hughes, in preparation for a hopeful, upcoming trip to Italy. I want us to go for 3 weeks. Now that I work a normal job I want the things that normal people want. I want to save towards something, an event off in the distance, something large. I will diet and we will save for many months, in preparation for the transatlantic journey and the rich foods we will eat. 

Perhaps we will take a cruise ship around the Cape of Good Hope, ride camels across the Sahara, wearing keffiyehs as we go - disguised and armed as rebel infidels - a final high-speed midnight inter tube ride across the Mediterranean where I will become the pasha of the moon, only to arrive with a massive morning speed boat wake into the canals of Venice, where I will hijack a newly painted gondola and spend my days drinking local table vino and salivating over the passing of young girls' breasts, leering uneasily, toing and froing with the coming tides like the motion of life itself.    

Adventure, etc.

Of course I will begin forming my pretensions of Italy well in advance of the trip, all of you will see. I will be an expert long before we depart. When we return I will legally change my name to Giovanni Antonio Mario Giuseppe-6, of Tuscany.

I got an email from a potential job opportunity. I have considered working two jobs for a while. It would be a genuine killer, but if I did it for only one year then we would be close to being debt free (excluding the house). Then, I could reward myself with a fancy new camera and a three week trip to Italy, putting the entire thing on high interest charge cards, or American Express. I will be the proud possessor of traveler's cheques awaiting my signature. 

Or, I could just stay home and vomit on piles of cash like old Steve Rubell. 

I need to put less sugar in my morning coffee. 

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Jungleland Amusement Park

I exaggerated a little. I need to lose weight, but not 75 pounds. 35. I am obese, by definition. I checked it on the internet. It makes me cry and masturbate often. If I lose weight the crying might cease.

The masturbation is starting to hurt my elbow. It's not quite a straight shot any more. It feels unnatural. 

Enough about that, for now. 

A friend was dj'ing in SF last night. I didn't know about it until yesterday. I wasn't able to make it. I was in bed and half-asleep when he called and texted at around 8pm. I awoke at 2:30 and thought how funny it would be to go then, but fell back asleep. My sleeping patterns match Rhys' as closely as possible. I would have gone if I did not have to work the following day, today, though I would have been tempted to artificially stimulate my nervous system.

I wonder when my car will start leaning to one side. 

Okay, I must escape these thoughts. 

A friend wrote this morning about the loss of Romantic Rebellion, that all that is left now is deviance. He is right, of course. The posture of rebellion is laughable when not tedious. 

The Tea Party perhaps see themselves as rebels, patriots. 

Or Libertarians, a term that I am becoming increasingly suspicious of. They have reduced politics down to a single issue and apply it wherever and however they can, believing themselves to be "principled." I only see a vaguely more sensible form of fundamentalism there, if that's possible. They claim that their position somehow acts as an alternative to the left-right dichotomy, but it seems to me to be the embodiment of that predicament, containing both far-left and far-right ideals. 

Looking for political rebels is foolish. There is no fuel left for them. None of them fly, none of them soar. The dreamers have all been grounded. 

Where are the dignified rebels, the heart of forgotten worlds, the artists and writers? They disappear into processes and terms and styles, unable or unwilling to engage outside of their imaginary spheres. 

As old Springsteen once hoarsed: ... and the poets down here don't write nothing at all, they just stand back and let it all be.

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Testy

(my head just before it eclipses the sun)

The clock that rolls forward does not easily wind back. The gears do not allow it. 

Working out is hard. I get more noticeable results from just eating whatever I want, mostly high-fat foods. But the results have become too noticeable. Each time that I say I'm fatter than I've ever been before I'm telling the truth. I would not lie about such a thing. The number is so high now that I am ashamed to post it. I've set a personal record.

I need to lose 75 pounds. Never before, in all of my weight fluctuation, have I been able to say such a thing. But not too many years ago, in my adult life, I was 75 pounds lighter than I am now. Some said I was too skinny at the time. A friend told me that I was getting a "lollipop head." As you can see from the picture above I have an unusually large skull, but at least my nose is not so small that it looks odd. The picture was taken from 30 yards away. I have to sleep in the back yard now, where this picture was taken. I am happiest when floating in a pool, or drinking beer, or below 200 pounds. But that last happiness is still a long way away, like Oprah distance. 

I've tried dieting, it makes me moody. Testy.

I've told myself that I'm not going to shave until I lose 10 pounds. Shortly after the picture above was taken I shaved. My face looked fatter than I remember it being. It sagged in most places and seemed to be made of something other than skin, some additional and weighty substance appeared to be inflating from within it, insulating it against fitness.

Okay, I have to start working now. I better grab a quick bite.

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No person with insurance

Finally sleep comes, lots of it. So much that I just kept falling back in, as if the motionless pool of it was expanding around me. I couldn't ever seem to reach the shore. Without a sound I just kept sliding back into the submerged dreams of it all. 

There must be something wrong with me. Who fluctuates this much in sleep? No sane person would stand for it, not one with insurance anyway.

But I feel good this morning, rested. 

Rhys is climbing, running and walking now. Everywhere he goes, doubling his overall speed in the span of a month. 

A few nights ago Rachel and I were standing in the kitchen/dining room area. She went to distract him from playing in the dog food bowls (a favorite pastime of his), he turned to run back towards me but tripped, an open drawer was between his forehead and the ground. He hit hard, the corner. The effect was instantaneous. Rachel snatched him up from behind as the tears and wails were starting to burst. We were both desperate to check. His eyes were fine, at least. He was really screaming but the skin wasn't broken. I prepared for a trip to the emergency room. Within a few minutes a nasty purple/black welt had emerged on his forehead. 

It was barely noticeable the next day. It seemed impossible. His recuperative abilities are nothing short of magical.

Mine are non-existent. Every ailment I take on has become a permanent one. The main difference between normal aging and having AIDS is primarily just an issue of time. The body's ability to protect and heal itself just starts to slowly diminish, eventually stretching on into infinity, never to heal again. All things become a threat. It is impossible not to notice. I want to take the day off from work but know that I will soon need them all saved up, safely squirreled away. 

We want to go to Italy, where people drink wine and eat rich foods all day with lots of oil, and then live to be a thousand years old. 

Or is that France?

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The Hunger Moon

Could not get out of bed easily, fatigued without knowing why. There is a hollowness in my chest; not empty but filled with a ghostly pain, an inability to breathe. Taking aspirin is but one clue to fear, of age.

It is not despair, I have yet to calm.

Last night was the Full Hunger Moon; the Full Snow Moon, depending. We slept in its light, crawling across our sheets as it stretched. February is haunted with chills, always seeming to be elsewhere, even when it approaches. 

Look what your wind has made of me.

We must travel soon. The morning, lying in bed, remembering when a glass of water would help me. Now it is only a prayer passing near, an asking of the universe. 

Please, let this work.

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Dancing with gravity

Fuck. A friend accidentally took a picture of me standing at a park, watching Rachel play. My jeans are baggy, yes. But there is more.... I have a noticeable "muffin-top."  It is hideous. I have committed to going back to the gym, but this will require more than just working out. It will require a change in behavior, in eating habits. I don't really want to change my eating habits, but the evidence is circling up around me. 

Speaking of evidence... I believe I've put down the cop insurrection, for now. He was becoming really creepy. He had done a bit of background research on me, and Rachel. He kept dropping little bits of personal historical data into the thread: how long it took me to get my a.a. degree, when my arrests were, where we live, where Rachel works, etc. As I said the other day, if you give them a chance to prove who they are then they usually will. 

I'm watching the clock tick, with nothing to write about. The gym opens at 6am and it is only 5:25 now. I feel like I'm getting fatter just by sitting here. I wouldn't mind being a few pounds heavy if it didn't look so bad. But it does. It is difficult to align your idea of yourself with the reality when pictures like the one I referenced above make their way onto the internet, you find them accusing you in the early morning hours when you are defenseless.

Weekends are a day shorter than they should be. This one went by too fast. I would bet any amount of money that the two most popular days to call in sick are Monday and Friday. It's the only way that you can possibly have a day to yourself, and when else are you going to learn to hula-hoop?

... and dreaming is nursed in darkness"

Today we go into Sausalito. A big dual-family day. I'm on the run. The ex-cop is still investigating me. I figure the best way to disguise myself would be as a law-abiding father and husband. That should throw him off my trail for a while.

He continues to post veiled information about where Rachel works and where we live in a presumably threatening way. You can imagine how many times I shit myself last night. I had to wear one of Rhys' diapers.

It's interesting, if you accuse cops (or in this case an ex-cop) of impropriety, or abuse of power, that pretty much guarantees that they're going to prove you right. This is no surprise to anybody who's had any level of interaction with them. But it amazes me: all of the things a detective is unable to detect, like why ex-firemen keep kicking his ass at online poker.

It must be a dejected feeling to sit at home doing investigative work from your aging computer, "hiding behind a keyboard" in a way... remembering fondly the days when you actually could abuse your power with relative impunity.

Stepping slowly away from the stench of the forcefully misguided...

 I already miss Thomas Jefferson. I might read another history book, though maybe not one of the founding era. A friend suggested Manchester's biography of Churchill, but it stretches on to three volumes. That might be too big of a commitment right now, with prison impending. I suppose I could read the war years, 1932-40, but I've never been much interested in war history. I have Keegan's "The First World War" and "The History of Warfare" but have not been able to bring myself to read them, I've only skipped through. I prefer reading about the lives of individuals to that of nations. Perhaps this is why I am such a graceful diplomat and not a warring general.

Maybe it is time for some more fiction. It might benefit me to study my nemesis more carefully, reading Genet should cover it, peering into the mind of his oft repeated fixations. Investigate that.

I paid for a year membership at the gym, hoping that guilt will serve as a motivating factor. I know that it doesn't last, but at least it can help get me started. I went yesterday and did light cardio and weights, then a moderate bike ride. I didn't think that I would be sore today. I was wrong. I was wrong.

Something must be done though, the middle years have pooled around me and the keystone cops are closing in.

The patriot acts

The battle dwindles on. The retired cop that I've been arguing with online has resorted to doing background research on me. Apparently he used to be a detective. The one thing he has yet to detect is what an enormous douche-bag he is, and where exactly that smell is coming from.... He's found this to be a very pro-Xanax site, as he seems to have latched on to the one observation that really seems to stick in his craw. So, that was for you, my brown-shirted patriot of preservation.

Who knows what he does to blow off some steam. Maybe he just reads arrest reports, mine. Who can possibly guess.... He's just biding his time, salivating for torture to trickle down to the local level where it can actually do some good.

He's threatened to print out my statements online and fax them to the local police departments, so that my thoughts on police abuse of power will be well documented with those who might need it the most in a time of trouble. They should be notified that a dangerous "leftist" is living amongst them. 

He has accused me of "hiding behind my keyboard"... I'd offer to debate him publicly but it seems a great expense and an unfair competition. Beyond that, I'm not quite sure what he could possibly mean. He insists that he's not threatening me, or hasn't yet anyway. So, I'm not precisely sure what it is I could be hiding from. 

This is the kind of person he is.

I should contact my old buddy from Texas and let him know that a cop doesn't treat private domains as copyrighted material, see what his squadron of lawyers has to say about it. 

A mutual friend assures me that the ex-cop is a "good guy." But aren't they all, really? I mean, there are no assholes among them, they're just doing what they have to do. What would you do...? They have been trusted with a great responsibility and all of them treat the law with such high regard. If a loud-mouth stands in the way of a little routine police business then they do what has to be done to neutralize the danger. Mace is cheap and paid for by the people they use it on. When bought in bulk it just makes sense. It does have a shelf-life, for all goodness' sake.

Oh well, the weekend moves on.  

Rachel's grandpa arrives today. We will hear stories of a simpler time. Or, they at least seem that way when put in story form. 

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The battle of medicinal half-life

 

 
Up late last night. Couldn't sleep. Finally, the anxiety of the coming day got to me and I drank a cup of Nyquil, am still fighting my way through the murkiness of morning.

Big day at work today. I will describe it some other time. It is in "the news"... the tech-news anyway: Wired, CNET, PC World...

Nope, just checked again. It made it to CBS.

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