Sunday Morning Rising Up

A friend pointed out that Bettie Page has been dead for a few years. I don't see where that matters much, the post yesterday was not really about her. In writing it is known as subterfuge, a trickery designed to serve one's greater goal. Also, another correction, she became a Christian before she lost her mind, not after. I fail to see much of a distinction there, and even my friend admitted this as he was making the point.

There is little difference between believing there are angels and demons floating around you, engaged in an ongoing battle for your soul, and schizophrenia. In both there is a breakdown in the relation between thought, emotion and behavior; both are characterized by fantasy and delusion. 

To enjoy this site you must believe everything that is written here, accept it into your heart as fact, just as if it was Jesus' forgiving blood. If you begin to question any part of what is written here then that's just the devil trying to find his way back into your life. It will eventually unravel you and you will one day have to blubber your way back into His arms, preferably in front of likeminded others.

Or, all by yourself in desperation, where you can later give a heart-stirring testimonial about it.

Speaking of, some of you might remember that I lost a friend a little while back, a Texan in Christ and the Mighty 2nd. He didn't pass away, he just threatened me with a lawsuit for quoting him. He wanted to reserve the right to protect his folly. I forgot to mention, among the many things that he was dead wrong about, one of them that emerged in full after the dissolution of our friendship was Lance Armstrong.

He once told me that I had no idea what I was talking about when I said that it seemed pretty obvious that Armstrong used steroids and other drug enhancements. My erstwhile friend shares the same given name, and as I mentioned, is also a Texan. He would rail and rail about what a great athlete Armstrong is and how I simply have no idea what I'm talking about: I wouldn't understand the winning spirit that he possesses, being of good stock and athletic breed. Training in Texas isn't like training other places. A Texan is incapable of such untruth. I would never understand such a thing. 

I hope that conversation comes back to haunt him, particularly when he's praying. It's good to have some doubts, except when it comes to the factual nature of this site, of course.


The devil is sneaky, always trying to worm his way into your underpants for some reason. There are lots of things you can do to try to stop yourself from masturbating, but none of them will work. If you think you can outsmart the devil, well... that's just pride talking and it means that he's already found the way in that he needs.

You see, any thought you might have that does not glorify god is from the devil. There is an eternal battle going on, with god and his army of angels on one side trying to keep you pure for your future (or next) husband or wife, and the devil, who is obsessed with making you masturbate. Nobody is quite certain why the devil enjoys forcing your hand so much, it is part of his evil nature. Questioning this is just another path he has back towards your genitals, up through your abdomen and into your head, though he's just as likely to try the opposite route. His vileness is like lightning, or water, it always seeks the path of least resistance. That's why Christians must always be so vigilant against pleasure.

I am, quite apparently, a lost cause. I'm like the devil's water park, a virtual Wet N' Wild of demonic transgressions; Beelzebub on Spring Break. The brute of darkness has gripped me since early adolescence. I remember the moment quite well, it was August 16th 1982, his evil struck me in the bathroom of my parent's house. He has had his cruel and wicked hand around me ever since, clutching at my genitals. Well, since he taught me the upstroke anyway. You can tell that it is the devil when your grip begins to tighten as you stroke upwards along the shaft and towards the head. Only the devil would function in this insidious manner, working in pernicious partnership with Farah Fawcett, two evil shape shifters, alike in both wickedness and manner.

It's only foolish pride that makes a teenage boy believe that he can outsmart the Farah Fawcett.

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Bettie Page, I learned it from watching you

I saw that Bettie Page is finally asleep in Jesus. She had become a born-again Christian before suffering several breakdowns and being hospitalized for almost a decade with acute schizophrenia. But that's not why people love her. She is best known and loved for having popularized pop-sadomasochism.

I'm not sure how I feel about sadomasochism. I mean, I like being tied up and having my cock and nuts spanked with a whip by a girl dressed in black heels and garters as much as anybody, I'm just not quite sure why. I've never read enough on the subject to understand much of it. I've read pieces of the Marquis de Sade, but somehow I still feel less than informed, as he primarily engaged in the first part of the term exclusively, sadism. He enjoyed raping people, forced sexual violence, etc. That behavior doesn't embody the acts that most interest me. It lacks the needed playfulness for pleasure to emerge from pain, for me.

Some have said that it is a form of sickness, a compunction derived from self-hatred. Perhaps. Though there seems to be more to it than just that. It is also a mechanism for release from the same. It is a common fact that pain and pleasure are two of the most basic aspects of life and are often surprisingly interchangeable, depending on attitude and desire. Converting pain to pleasure is a choice, when done during a sexual act it is considered masochistic. Delivering sexual pain is considered sadistic. Bad words, both. Beware!

The simplifying of those two experiences to the point of engaging in sadomasochism seems to me to be the enactment and conversion of a banal life drama, one in which the experience of pain and pleasure is imbued with and charged by sexuality, for the purpose of relief. People hate their jobs but they go, they take it out on their families, who they claim to love. In sadomasochism there is an acting out of something that provides release from the mundane. It is the reduction of a thing to a focal point, like car accidents, or the loving of orchids.

"The world is so huge that people are always getting lost in it. There are too many ideas and things and people too many directions to go. I was starting to believe that the reason it matters to care passionately about something is that it whittles the world down to a more manageable size. It makes the world seem not huge and empty but full of possibility." - Susan Orlean, The Orchid Thief

It just makes good sense.

I have never found myself attracted to women who did not at least, to some degree, enjoy the physicality of sex. Of what use is a girl that does not occasionally enjoy being spanked? Truly. There is a sense of the naughty, a shameful pleasure derived from it. That must be a component for me to develop any interest at all. That impulse taken to its logical extreme results in occasional sexual drama, a projection and shedding off of orthodox and unorthodox codes. 

The impulse towards sadomasochism is evidenced in daily life. I see it in very ordinary behavior all around me. I doubt that many of the people who exhibit the behavior are even aware of it, but it is there and not a product of imagination. There are also those that have the need to advertise their deviant wishes, for whatever personal reasons. That does nothing for me at all, or very little. It is the darkness that lurks unknown in the unsuspecting that has always drawn me, the hidden desires that constitute the substratum that act upon me as a siren in need of a serious spanking. 

Remember, if you get scared, just say "Palomino..."

... the sleep of neither

(Goya)

I left out the Bush's from yesterday's post. What more need be said about them, really? Great example of a family political dynasty though: lots of corruption and dark secrets. I thought of the title for the post last and didn't have time to go back and add them. I couldn't think of the single word that means family political dynasty... I still can't. 

Despotism, no. Oligarchy, not really. Aristocracy, decidedly not. Cronyism, not family oriented enough.... Regime, maybe?

What is the word that means political power that is handed down or shared from generation to generation, or laterally to other family members? I can't think of it.

A mental block. The word "dynasty" was the closest I could recall, to define.

Ah, well, age, I guess. I've been telling everybody at the local pub that I'm 53, if they ask. I like to watch them marvel at how well-maintained I am. When I ask them how old they thought I was they always say "44."

So, there's always that. A game whose clock is loudly ticking.

My father turns 84 today, I think. I mean, I know that it's his birthday. I'm just not sure which one. I think it's 84. So, I have longevity on one side of my family.

Ok, I'm rambling. People seem to enjoy my posts more when I choose a subject before I start writing. Yesterday's post was well-received, in terms of response and total pageviews. Certain people really seem to enjoy it when I'm politically inclined, and slightly angry. I had a few visitors last week from Indonesia that must have read every single post on my site, and then they left without a word. My daily pageviews jumped by about 1000 a day for three days, all from the same region of the world, all reading individual pages... then they were gone without a word. It makes me wonder who would anonymously peer into my life like that and then just leave without comment. Seems strange.

Strange maybe, though I have a friend who semi-anonymously peers out from his site. So, there is also that.

Many years ago I used to write a column for a popular music website out of Amsterdam. It got quite a bit of attention within the confined community of electronic dance music. People, my readers, seemed to love my occasionally acerbic wit. Humor is often sympathetic, wit alone is likely to be cruel. Wit loves a victim, it thrives on intellect and distance, the very reason that people confuse snarkiness with it, being unfamiliar with the former and trapped by the latter. 

So, these fans would often encourage me to anonymously engage in heated, comic conversation on some popular chat boards at the time, wishing me to do their bidding. I could never understand it. What would be the purpose of posting anonymously, I thought.

Now, I see the charm. I have been writing anonymously elsewhere for almost a year now. Nobody has noticed, or discovered me yet, as far as I know. 

I am a dirty little Dutch schoolgirl named Lotte Poepjes.

Ha, no. A little poop joke for any Dutch readers that might still cling on here..... It is in me and I am trying to get it out.

There was a time when I would have moved to Amsterdam, or perhaps Prague. Hard to imagine now. I wonder if I'll ever go back again. I used to love both cities, though I could see myself getting into trouble in either, or both. Not the harmless type of trouble either, the terrible sort. Left to my own devices too often I wrestle with the demonic and angelic impulses. I have a poet's sense of justification, just shy a few pages of poetry, that's all.

Man, I am rambling... The breakfast of champions becomes the lunch of losers, the dinner of dregs, the sleep of neither produces monsters. 

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What possible harm in yet another dynasty?

Two of my earliest childhood memories were of the Watergate hearings and the fall of Saigon. Or rather, two of the earliest memories I have are of my mother's reaction to those events. I remember her being very angry at the corruption, the open audacity of the abuses of power, the very challenge of Executive Privilege. 

"No one is above the law!" she would scream at the television. 

The hearings occupied the hours of daytime tv, hours she normally might have spent watching soap operas and Dialing For Dollars. For many years afterwards my mother could not speak of Richard Nixon - or the criminal midget who pardoned him, Gerald Ford - without complete contempt. It would astonish me, the way her body would transform in anger at the wretchedness of their corruption, the flagrancy of their abuses.

She would implore the airwaves, "How was he ever permitted to appoint the very man who would pardon him!"

Likewise, she was deeply embittered at the loss of the Vietnam war, the many men and boys that were coming back in pieces, or not at all. She would discuss Canada with me, or other places, if the war dragged on into the 80's, or if a new one started. She was not a woman who was ever in need of a crazed life-plan involving midnight flight, she might have possessed those in excess of others. The impulse was to protect my brother and myself. She never let us forget that.

For me, it was the Iran-Contra scandal, though my reaction was quite different. I was happy that they had finally caught the rotten fucker, and that they were going to nail his stinkin' carcass to the wall with it this time. Then, the country actually seemed to accept that Ronald Reagan had reached a point in which he simply didn't remember what had happened. This wasn't after his presidency, remember, it was during. We allowed a person to remain in office even though he was experiencing the beginning symptoms of dementia. If you watch the 1984 Reagan-Mondale debates you can already detect a sense of loss and bewilderment. 

So, I do believe that he couldn't remember. I just can't believe that we accepted it.

Then it was Bill Clinton perjuring himself to a grand jury and obstructing justice. It very well may have been a witch hunt, but let's not forget that a witch still escaped.  He might have been acquitted by the Senate but he still should have been brought before a judge to stand trial for perjury, obstruction, and contempt of court, where he likely would have been hauled off to jail were he not the President, at the very pinnacle of the executive branch of government, overseeing the department that presumably administers and applies justice. 

At the time, nothing would have made me happier, the jailing of a president. I've never been saddened by the failings of supposedly great men in high office. Their desire to be there alone raises deep suspicions in me. Clinton was no different, he is and was sleazy, politically and otherwise. His efforts in charity are applaudable but also seem an apparent attempt to divert historical examination towards his accomplishments after office.

Who can blame him, really? 

It's not as if he could easily return to any substantial form of legal work. The Supreme Court has barred him from practicing in their court. It is mostly a dishonor, a shaming meant to admonish, but he's become quite familiar with those. He seems to almost relish in them.

About this time, in the mid 90's, I began to realize that many of the people around me who were older didn't seem sufficiently outraged at this recurring political behavior, at least to my sensibilities. These were the people in whom I had felt had fought the good fight along the way. These seemed to me to be the people that understood the high ideals that need be cherished to survive, those who were willing to fight injustice even when it wasn't committed against them, those that... blah, blah, blah... I began to understand. It was corruption fatigue, in all directions, long before I had arrived there. There is only so much fighting, then there is mostly silence.

And now this....

Obama. His presidency will be remembered for a few things among the many, like most others; drones, assassinations, surveillance, paranoia, scandal, corruption, the jailing of journalists, spying on the media. He did not reform the health care industry he merely streamlined the revenues. Until we are able to shop for health insurance across state lines, in a competitive market, then there has not been substantive health care reform. It is only tyranny divided, so that it can later be multiplied. I would have preferred a little less audacity this term, a little more hope, a little less myth.

But I have tired of it also. I find myself less and less engaged, less willing to take partisan stances, even though I do so somewhat playfully, to prevent relaxation. I enjoy the excitement of an argument, especially when I am down and scraping, after having been gutted by facts. It is an ailment that is fed every two and four years, like the Olympics, and the World Cup. It is a form of team sickness.

I have run out of time again today....

Hunter S. Thompson described Richard Nixon's departure from the White House as well as it can be. I am paraphrasing here, so don't hate me: He should be well on his way to Easter Island by now, in the belly of a hammerhead shark...

All this being said, I would probably vote for Hillary; she's proven herself to be capable of this level of corruption. She deserves a chance just as well as anybody else does, any man that is. I don't care that some might call it sexist but I'd like to see a woman attain the highest political office this country has. If for no other reason than to dispel the absurd myth that men are the only ones susceptible to the power of corruption, and the corruption of power.

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The Great Pit of Carkoon

I went to the doctor yesterday. It was time for my bi-annual checkup. I had gotten blood work done a few weeks ago. He said everything was fine, told me that I am (once again) the very image of health and fitness, and to double-down on everything that I'm doing, that it must be right... there's no other simple explanation for it. Same thing a different doctor told me two years ago. So, that means that my steak and whiskey intake has quadrupled in only two years, or will soon. 

Doctor's orders! Fuck, I knelt there on the office floor and raised my arms to heaven, chanted the Hippocratic oath at double speed, I (still) swear by Apollo.... He was such a gentle man, with soft eyes.

No, I kid. He did tell me to just keep doing what I'm doing. The only thing that came back even slightly off was (hard to believe) that my cholesterol level was too low. I had never heard of such a thing, a man in his mid-forties who eats whatever he pleases and drinks red wine as if he's Nero in a fire, having a cholesterol level that was "too low." Then he explained, this is not "that type" of cholesterol. He said that diet will not likely have an effect on this level, that there's nothing that I can do about it, except maybe lose some weight and continue exercising.

Then something rather strange happened. When he was looking at my blood report he kept muttering nervously about how thoroughly impressed he was, then he suddenly asked if he could masturbate while I did pushups. 

"I don't see what harm could come from it, doc."

"Could you pull your underwear partway down, please?"

"See, now you're getting creepy..."

He screamed at me, "YOU GET DOWN THERE AND PUMP, FAT-BOY!"

It was weird, man. I told him I'd give him 50, but then that was it. He had better be done with whatever evil he was producing by then.

When it was all over he looked me in the eyes and told me that he really looks forward to my next physical, it will include a rectal exam of some sort. He hasn't exactly figured it out yet. He said not to worry, there'll be wine.

Jesus, that's just horrible. I made the joke to Rachel yesterday at the market and thought I'd relay it here, but it's just too horrendous, floating there on the screen in front of me like a public bathroom wall. It seemed so innocent and carefree yesterday when I invented it, funny even.

My doctor did not suggest masturbation while I playfully taunted him with my muscular physique. In fact, masturbation is the one thing he warned against, said it was my only genuine health risk. He went on to explain the difficulties of blindness and how no local grocer would ever want to hire a stock boy with hair-hands.

Fuck, even when I try to stop it, I can't. He asked me if I wanted to see a picture of a nurse naked, putting things in her bottom.

Ah, good ol' scatological humor. What an unexpected wonder and marvel the anus is.

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A morning full

Terrible dreams last night, the worst yet, much too close to actual panic. Rhys could not be found. Impossible to tell in that imaginary state if it was abduction or he was lost. The dark fears stretched into infinity, yet held me paralyzed in sleep. The effect, whether the boy was lost or taken, was almost the same. He was gone. The imaginary terror and guilt fluctuated back and forth behind my eyes. My mind raced into fantasy panic. It was my fault, somehow, I knew that. I had let myself drift away in the dream, now he was gone. I was frantic, searching and questioning the smallest and most dreadful places within. There was nothing there but the shape of empty darkness. I might have even prayed in desperation, there being no reason not to within a dream. 

I know the source, an argument last night, unpleasant things were said about an uncertain future.

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I've had to watch him alone this morning. Rachel had an early meeting. So far he has had a piece of ice for breakfast, and he had to show me where those were found, etc. Barkley the pup, Rhys, and myself are all on similar diets today. Barkley's half finished piece of ice is resting on the carpet behind me, waiting to find the arch of my un-socked foot.

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I just dropped him off at the day-care. He hugged and held me tightly, not wanting to let me go, calling me "daddy, daddy, daddy..." When he finally hit the ground and got distracted I took the opportunity to depart. His cries and tears came bursting through the door after me, chasing me in a way that dreams can not.

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Lethargy

I have been sitting here staring at the internet rather than writing. I woke late, no gym this morning, maybe later. I must make another big push soon and try to lose another 10 pounds. Not only have my weight loss efforts leveled out, they have started moving in the wrong direction again. It is the drinking. No matter how strict I am with my diet and exercise I tend to notice the greatest gains in fitness and weight loss when I strictly limit the drinking, or abandon it altogether.

The problem with complete sobriety is obvious. I tend towards boredom, and that is dangerous. The idea is to cultivate moderation, even in danger. It is not easy, but neither is occasional drunkenness. Who would be making these mistakes if not me? Somebody else would be getting all the credit for them.

I drank yesterday for the latter half of the day. We had friends over and made seafood and listened to Van Morrison. It was pleasant and the food was good. I ate all that I could, and matched that intake with drinking.

Now, the lethargy. The strong desire to just go back to bed. 

But there are problems to be solved. I am needed, somewhere out there in the imaginary.

A few coffees from now and it will seem as if today really is a new day. 

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The shape of self

Weekends are wonderful. Nothing pollutes the mind upon awakening the way in which a weekday does. There are only the clear, untroubled, half-formed ideas of the day, in leisure.

Well, I took my camera with me everywhere yesterday, testing its various functions as well as I knew how. There was only one thing that seemed amiss with it. The makers, Fuji, had put one feature in the Setup menu when it really belonged in the Shooting menu. I had flipped the setting at some point and forgotten about it, not even really knowing what it did. It caused the camera to "jump" in to the focus area when focusing manually, a thing that it had not done previously. As the majority of the wine spill happened on the lens area where the aperture and focus rings are, this had me a little worried. I was fairly certain that this was a feature and not a malfunction, but it still kept me busy for a half an hour or more.

In the end it would seem that the camera sustained no real damage. I ran alcohol wipes underneath the dials and some wine residue did come out from under the Exposure/ISO knob, but it was fairly faint and the knob still works as expected. The perpetrator of the spill is likely coming out to Sonoma today with his wife, both were managers of mine at Apple. I have told him that I will be dispensing his wine in one of Rhys' Sippy-Cups, if at all.

He has been warned.... Maybe I should write him up, make him sign a disciplinary document of some sort. We might go to Jack London's house today, the old vineyards of which are pictured above and below.


Rhys is a joy to be around. All day yesterday I had so much fun with he and Rachel. Sure, he's a toddler, so he only has a few different modes of communication, one of which is to whine or halfheartedly cry, seemingly in perpetuity, but even that I find laughable or at least occasionally charming. We went to buy him some clothes and I ran around the store with him, watching him do his little galloping two-step in an endless attempt at escape. Who knows where he thinks he's going. But it is adorable.

It's the little things... impossible to convey their full effect. To wit, whenever we see a yellow car now he says, "Dada!" The car I drive is a yellow VW Bug. People find this fact endlessly amusing when they come to visit. Sean, the deeply cynical New Yorker, drives around California in a stinkin' hippy-mobile. Hilarious to them, for some reason.  I like it. It's fun.

Just wait until we buy a VW camper, a Westphalia.

But Rhys is beginning to interact with us in a way that more closely resembles the interactions we are accustomed to, through language. He emulates forming sentences. It sounds like gibberish to us, mostly. But every now and then we'll be able to hear little ideas forming there. Rachel is admittedly better at this than I am. He's beginning to piece the world together.

He is starting to recognize the difference and separation between us also. I had read, or had been told, that it occurs about at a year and a half in age. Sure enough, when I'm walking him around the house now and we stop in front of a mirror, he will excitedly point at my reflection and say "Dada!" I will point at him and say" Rhys" and he will look into his own eyes and then back at mine, happy. It is there, a glow of recognition. The tender spark of identity around which personality forms.

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Fuji vs Cabernet

Well, I brought my camera in to the city to feel cool. I wasn't able to instigate any bum porn as I had hoped, but a glass of wine did get spilled on the camera. 

Total cost of bringing camera into the city: $1550, approx.

No, luckily the camera still seems to be working as expected, and the glass of wine wasn't full. But to see your cool new camera doused in red wine... Well, I was a computer technician for many years, it's an all too familiar sight, and it rarely ends well for the victim. We'll see how things go in the next few days. Of all the things that you can have spill on a piece of electronics red wine is among the more favorable, oddly. Because there is so much sugar in it the tendency is for it to crystalize rather than spread, like water does. 

That's what I keep telling myself.

If anything starts to sound a little "crunchy" in the next couple of days, like the aperture ring, then I'll know: the damage is done. I have not read the specs sheet but I do not believe that this model was designed for underwater or liquid-based photography.

It was an accident. What can you do? It was an expensive purchase. There was a two year "drops and spills" insurance that I could have bought for about $180, but it was already a lot of money. I just told myself that I would be very careful. Well, I was, sort of.

Okay, I don't want to make my friend feel bad. So far everything seems to be okay. There is that to bolster one's hope. 

That, and more wine.

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"Sean is the champ...!!!"

Man, I've probably fucked things up here in our little hamlet. Last night I went and spoke with the neighbors, letting them know that there was soon going to be a coup d' état in the H.O.A. One of the neighbors that I spoke with is on the board and they're being ousted, etc.

They are power crazy. It was like I was macing two caged animals; exciting in the way that cruelty in dreams is disturbing but upon awakening has caused no real harm. You are just left wondering why the mind would do that.

Oh well, they are all crazy here, for power and for other things. The neighbor on the far end of our set of townhouses attempted suicide yesterday. So, there's that.

There are problems, no matter where we go. Our life is like an old blues song.

I go into SF today. I like working from the office, sometimes. There is that sense of combined purpose there. I know it sounds silly, and goes against all that I have ever written here, but it's true. The product that is made by the company I work for is a product almost entirely of the imagination. I mean, there is a reality to it, but not like other things. It is barely a thing at all, just a collection of functional ideas, taking place over vast distances. To watch it grow and adapt in the short time that I've been here has been fascinating. Those involved have truly created something where there was nothing before; ideas that have formed into function. 

The end result is perhaps dull, as it involves customer service - understandably, not the most exciting of concepts - but from there one can gain perspective into other areas of the collective imagination. The way that the digital/online world works is a perpetual source of wonder for me. It seems impossible, but it is there, it works. I have seen it.

I'm not as productive when I go into the office. There are far too many people to talk to there, too many distractions. I like it, now that I don't have to do it every day. But being around intelligent people is important. It is a charge.

I will bring my camera, of course. I'll do a little street shooting, pretending that I am cool again, inventing the genre of bum-pornography. I'll let you know how that goes. I'm going to offer to pay two crackheads to have sex and get some real gritty urban images. Just stinky, dirty, bum-sex. The purpose of this project will be to produce a strong sense of sadness in the viewer. Maybe I'll smoke some crack with them, to gain their trust, then pay extra to mace them while they're fumbling to give each other diseases. I'll teach them to sing "Sean is the champ, Sean is the champ....!!!"

It's my dream, so why not?

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... No Navy, I presume?

Evening. The two pictures from tonight have been posted into a blank slate, almost. When I wake maybe I will feel like writing in a way that suits them. The pictures are likable, I think. The new camera does make me feel cool. Have I said that?

The one below is worth clicking on. Trust me. I mean, why not? You're already here aren't you?

Morning. The later into the evening I stay awake, tempting my fate, the more difficult it is for me to sleep at all. It is a special type of nervousness, the apprehension towards sleep. I was up well past 10pm last night. So, of course, I arose at 4am, having slept lightly or not at all. It is like science. 

I have been sitting here and staring at the screen for about five minutes now. The sentences above accomplish nothing. But this one depends on them, so they will stay.

Nothing.

Coffee. I have begun the process, again.

Going to the store last night, eating dinner there. Sushi. Afterwards, shopping for more food, without knowing why. Two thick steaks and a competing chicken breast, a bottle of wine. There is a temptation to drink the bottle of wine this morning, free from care. It has been a very long time. What a great luxury it is to lie in bed and watch a film in the morning, drinking a bottle of wine, alone or otherwise.

... as if time didn't matter.

It requires doing much nothing, practiced often, for one to become any good at it. Time is like the writing of sentences, in that way. There is a special luxury to life passing slowly, to allow it to pass before you, hung in a suspended state of leisure. Only the very wealthy in spirit can do it well, or for very long. Its prerequisite is the careful study of household pets: cats, dogs at their best.

The humorless, and anyone who bores easily of contentedness, should always be kept from power. They are a threat to everything that is good and noble. That is my eternal wisdom, free for you.


Chatting with Rachel last night, discussing my age, Oh my..., I will be 45 in October. It appears monstrous on the screen, the number, taunting me with its greatness. That is a thing that is always guaranteed to let one sleep well and sound: discussing the coming crisis of years.

I opened a new bag of sugar this morning. It seems implausible that I will devour it, but I must. Like a hill of ants I am obligated to these newfound crystals, to the very concept of colony. The spoon drops into the bag, there is no matching sound at the cup, save that of a tiny army's marching.

For I have known them all already, known them all:

Have known the evenings, mornings, afternoons,

I have measured out my life with coffee spoons;

I know the voices dying with a fall,

Beneath the music from a farther room

  So how should I presume?

-T.S. Eliot

Sasquatch vs. Sir Gallahad

Went to the local Farmer's Market again yesterday. Not much to tell about it, except that - and this is no lie - as I was walking around hoping to keep Rhys out of the duck pond I saw a guy reading Sky Mall magazine. 

I know. It seems impossible, and I'm still struggling with it, but I am certain of the fact. He was actually marking items, I'm assuming for possible purchase. I was deeply perplexed, as I'm sure you are now.

I really never imagined that anybody would look at that magazine unless they were trapped on a plane with it for many lost hours. Even then it is to be looked at only in disbelief, with an eye for comedy. Seeing somebody look at it in the park was inexplicable. I thought that the paper they're printed on could only survive in the special atmosphere of a plane, that it thrived in an oxygen deprived environment. 

Then I remembered, that once when looking at one, there was a note encouraging the viewer to take it home, that they were invited to keep the thing. 

I never dreamed that somebody would actually do it. 

If anybody is genuinely interested in buying a life-size statue of a medieval coat of armor then please let me know, I can get you much better prices.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, says that you are a person of serious culture like having one of those standing in the foyer to your castle.

Well, there is one thing....

"Ever wonder where those strange noises in your garden come from?"

Please, stop that...

(The pup is feeling punky)

I spend half the night awake, lying in darkness, wishing that sleep would pull me into its unknowing fog. It is a terrible way to make it through, wishing. There are others that are far worse off though, so... of what do I have to complain? But, complain we must. It is one thing that informs our inner-selves that we are still alive. 

I hope that my last words are, "Please, stop that..."

We've run out of sugar, so now I drink coffee with non-dairy creamer. Most of the improvements in my diet occur as a combination of accident and sloth. Eventually we'll run out of creamer, then coffee. I wonder if I'll recognize what water tastes like after all these lost years.

A friend sent an excerpt from the New York Times giving advice on how to write: Show, don't tell. Avoid cliches, and to try not to repeat yourself.

Well, regular readers here already know my response: If I had a nickel for every time I've ever said that.

I dreamed that I saved my father's life last night. I was proud, quite rich in dream currency, as you can imagine. He had fallen and was hanging on to a rope, beneath him were deadly rocks and a substantial fall, an irrecoverable prospect. I leaped and grabbed on to the rope with him, was able to swing both of us to safety. 

It was then that I realized I was in a dream.

My father is quite old, unwelcome news could arrive any time. I don't remember dreaming of him before. Were I superstitious then I would say so, but it is not that. It is just fear alone, not wanting him to die. 

Rhys just woke a little. I made it to his room first, he was standing in his crib with the fading dust of sleep still in his eyes. I picked him up and he fell half back asleep, his head resting on my shoulder as I held him. It is one of my favorite moments of the day, to greet him at his crib. He is all loving sleepiness and hugs. It hasn't yet occurred to him that he can demand his Mommy!... In these moments he is perfectly content with me and I with him. It is only a small thing, but so much of life is.

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Well, I wrote what there is above before going to the gym, then came home and read a friend's blog. I feel like I should perhaps qualify: it was not written as a rebuttal of his, nor was yesterday's (only as commentary). 

There are simple things to enjoy in life with children. Admittedly, the simplicity sometimes comes at a higher price, and with perhaps more pre-effort applied to it, but it is there to be enjoyed when it can, the same as the other life. If not the same, then not entirely different. Life resembles life.

The house is chaotic and not entirely of my own making. I'll admit, it sometimes drives me crazy. I have new fears, one partially chronicled above. In sleeplessness the night is filled with the chattering of fresh ghosts, though so often in the mornings they have fled.

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Always consult a toddler

We accomplished the beach with some concerted effort. There was very little that was relaxing about it.  I took about six pictures. My contribution was staying out of the way and not talking too much. Taking kids to the beach is not like going to the beach with peers or with a lover, at all. It is all work and consideration and concern and effort; impossible to simply lie in the sun and relax, pleased in its warmth, with the sound of the waves providing their earthly aura.

A 16 month old boy, pictured above, was tossing sand everywhere. What seemed to make him happiest was to fling it wherever I was lying. The beach is made mostly of sand, as some of you may have noticed. Rhys, for unknown reasons, was trying to ingest handfuls of it every so often. When sand and saliva mix it unsurprisingly makes mud. Somehow this simple fact had escaped me, until yesterday.

When all is said and done the kids were cheerful about it. I suppose that is why people do it. 

Well, I can't speak for others. Perhaps Rachel and Lisa (we also went with Lisa and the child they are fostering with hopes to adopt) were very content with having gone, and perhaps enjoyed the day immensely. It was, after all, their day. It just seemed to be constant effort without much relief for them. 

I was prepared to drive a stake into the ground and put them both on elastic leashes, possibly leave them there. If a pirate ship had anchored offshore I might have taught them how to swim.

A friend wrote this morning about a study that shows that having children does not make people as happy as they believe it will. If he is referencing the study that I believe he is then the scientists (economists) measured the various activities throughout the day and assessed which ones make people the happiest. Sex seems to make people merry, caring for children does not. Their assertion is that we tell ourselves that having children makes us happy and it is a mainly unquestioned assumption, bolstered by societal pressure. So, they questioned the assumption. 

I have had times in which I was prepared to eagerly agree with their findings.

In fairness though, towards the end of the day, I took both kids to the water and was playing with them, letting them run into the surf a little bit and then back again, excited at the oncoming water, shrieking with joy, probably pooping their pants. Then, I would pick them up and run again into the oncoming surf; 50 pounds of cackling children. One on each side, and me. Them, kicking and shrieking as we went. It was fun, and I was very delighted doing it. The giggles of a child can go quite a long way in making things seem worthwhile. That is what I remember mostly from yesterday, truth be told.

I'm not quite sure how they measure that as an activity when assessing happiness, a child's unrestrained laughter. They say that it is the best medicine, rarely ever mentioning that it can be administered by unlicensed youngsters in wildly unpredictable doses, nor do many ever cite its rather impressive shelf life. 

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Mother-Day

(Rhys, celebrating a day early)

Mother's day... or Mothers' Day.... 

I've decided to call Rachel "Mother" all day today, just to save the grammar of the event. Likewise, I will not be wishing anybody else a "Happy Mother's Day!" as that would prove me incorrect, and toss me on the misshapen lump of writhing humanity. 

Nope, off to a bad start today already. But, is it a celebration of mothers and motherhood, or of Mother? 

Like most things, the world has gotten it wrong. Or, is it just Americans, in their obsession to assert the individual over the collective? Are they trying to honor the idea, the individual, or the shared? It should come as no surprise that the error is one of possessiveness. 

My mother's name was Stella. Should today be Stella's Day?

Let me try again: we're going to the beach today. 

We need a beach umbrella. It will be a scorcher. I meant to get one yesterday but somehow slipped it. We went for a hike through Jack London's property (above) and to the grocery store (below).

I will bring the new camera with me to the beach today. 

We will see how well it does in very bright light. There is an ND filter built in to it, so I might be able to get fun shots in which the aperture is wide open in full daylight.

Jesus, I'm a freakin' nerd. But honestly... look at how well balanced the image below is. This is in a grocery store.... the glass on the camera is nice, it does well with skin tones in difficult lighting, the overall image seems less "clinical" than with my Nikon, somehow softer and more inviting.

Perhaps soon I will also begin to reflect those qualities. Who knows, maybe by next Fathers' Day.

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An object in motion

With this new camera I am the coolest guy in Sonoma. I'm just not sure how to adequately convey that to everybody yet. I would wait for them to figure it out, but who knows how long that might take. It's a toss up. I suppose I could just be seen around town more. That usually helps.

I am still taking pictures as if I just got my first camera, but I like them, so... I have gotten used to shooting in an almost "sports" style with my other camera such that I had forgotten that many cameras are not really designed that way. With this one, so far, I have either gotten one shot that is not blurred or several that are, but hopefully one that is likable among them.

Like above. 

I would have likely never gotten that image with my other camera. It would have been sharp and in focus, about 10 of them covering 2 seconds in time, all clarity and frozen motion. It's been nice to be reminded that there are other ways of shooting. I've been attuned to trying to capture the boy in motion but somehow forgot the motion portion of it. Neither style being quite what the mind or the eye see, but both instead becoming that. The mind and the eye recognize the truth as well as the distance from it. It is seen in the shards of implied continuity. 

Well, those are the two tools I currently have at my disposal, anyway. I am a very limited photographer. I simply shoot a lot and hope for the best. 

The new camera has made me a little bit more "zen" in my approach. I have had to show more patience. I have been willing to lie in the grass and wait, recognizing truths, distances, etc.

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Gravity gains

Temporary victory over sleep. Recovered from illness, for the most part, but decided to have a little sip of NyQuil last night anyway, because Jesus would. I turn medicinal cherries into thick urine, it's a miracle whip. What do they put in that stuff? Its effectiveness is its proof. 

I awake a pleased dullard. 

No time to write today. Filled with sarcophagus dust, I rise slowly, or not at all. Gravity gains on me at night. 

I never used to care; lying in bed all day, watching movies. I'm not quite sure if anybody even makes films any longer. If they do, no one has bothered to tell me about them.

What could they possibly be about? Standing places, looking at things, walking through rooms, wanting to leave. Events. Another character, perhaps, wishes that they would stay.

Denouement.

 

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The fun in error (if memory serves)

In learning new things there are always mistakes. I have become so used to taking a certain kind of picture with my other cameras that I had forgotten how much fun making common mistakes can be. Not that I am even approaching proficiency with them, still very far from it. But I have learned how to adjust more quickly. Yesterday, I ended up taking pictures that resembled the images I made when I first got my point-and-shoot: overexposed, blurry, out of focus, and plenty to choose from.

I wish I had been more careful when building my photo libraries. The command to send a picture to the trash in iPhoto is Command-Delete. That is the same key command that is used to return them to the library from the trash, without any warning that you're doing so. Go Apple! 

So, only after amassing one 200GB photo library did I realize that I had been going though my photos and deleting them only to be putting them right back where they came from; more lost hours of life. I have had moderately increased success with my secondary library but there are still hundreds and hundreds of useless pictures, mostly large, fine-quality jpegs.

I suppose the thing to do would be to export them as lower quality images, keeping only the better ones in their current state. It's not as if I spend any time printing any of them out. It is nice to double click on them and see them fill the computer screen without loss of quality. There's that, I suppose.

We were once told that hard drive size would just increase and increase. Now, everybody wants to store your data for you somewhere in a dream. If they can just convince everybody to pay for "cloud" storage for the rest of their lives then all will be settled. It's better than tobacco, they say. The people who have amassed enormous libraries of music, films and still images will end up paying far more than they would have for local storage and everybody else will pay a monthly fee to access what they already own. The world is such a perpetual rip-off at times that I question how anybody keeps their sanity. Most of them actually seem quite pleased with the way things are going. They always cite "convenience"...

How convenient it will be to one day pay others to keep your wealth for you.

Well, I suppose hard drives cost money too, and they're not made very well, many of them. Right now I need about a 20TB RAID system, set up in type I duplexed redundancy with independent disc controllers. 

Oh no, I promised myself I would never do that here. 

A regular reader was telling me what an API is the other day. It was cute. I had told her that I didn't want to bore her with the details of my job and she questioned me further on the specifics. After listing a variety of things that I deal with on fairly a regular basis she came back to me a little later and announced that she knows what an Application Programming Interface is. Adorable. We once worked on a college degree together. I think we got our bachelor's in lit. at NYU, if memory serves.

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Busted flat in a baton war

The Fuji arrived. I love it. I envision myself being a war-journalist/street-fashion photographer, mid-60's, Vietnam era, The Beatles, Twiggy, Dylan, Me, etc. What is life if not play and pretend? Just ask any child. They know, and they will gladly show you. Life ceases to have its most meaningful essence when the capacity for wonder and imagination are denied.

It will take some time to get used to. The battery life is very short on it, too short. Yesterday it only lasted for a few hours of shooting. Taking it out for a full day will require preparation. Learning to navigate a camera's system/feature setup is half the battle. Half. The other half is getting comfortable with making quick changes. Only time can (hopefully) produce the comfort needed to shoot fast and well.

We'll see.

We went with Rhys to the first monthly Farmer's Market of the summer. It is always an eye-opener. There was a band there that was playing "classics..." The singer introduced each song as if it was written by a dear friend of hers with whom she had just recently spoken, or perhaps contacted in a seance.

She started with Janis Joplin's "Me and Bobby McGee"... When she got to the line in the song, "But I would trade all of my tomorrows for one single yesterday" it occurred to me that that almost shocking willingness to trade away the future must get easier and easier to make. The line  doesn't work if you sing, I would trade all of my yesterdays for one single 'nother day. Anybody would eventually make that trade.

Ah, the paradox of time, getting slapped by windshield wipers.

Oh well, I was going to try and explain our evening at the Market but my day is already getting away from me again. Perhaps another time, one spent less paradoxically.

Speaking of, I understand why people believe in God. I once believed myself. It ignites the imagination and gives form to the numinous feelings of wonder that many of us share. It confers a special purpose on the capacity for imagination, where otherwise it might only lurk dangerously idle, slithering purposelessly away under the bedsheets, waiting to strike, and then to make away with one's innocence and all of lost paradise in a single go.

We now know, through blessed science, that idle hands are the monkey wrenches of the supernatural.

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Lounging in the loft

I forgot to mention yesterday that the California poppies already came and went, at least in terms of their bloom. They seem to only be in full orange for about two weeks, but they are everywhere, half unexpected reminders. 

I remembered later in the day that I had used the image but forgot to mention the fact of them, their bloom.

There are unexpected struggles on every side, for me. It's a mystery. I can't claim that I'm not somehow involved in most of it, if not all. Removing me bears that point easily out. But that's what I'm hoping to avoid: removing me.

It is too much to explain here, and hopefully it will pass without need for explanation. It's no wonder that so many Americans are Christians. The idea of just putting it all in God's hands must at times be an alluring prospect with occasionally disastrous results.

The Fuji camera is meant to arrive today. I have phone conferences most of the day. I have yet to figure out what to do if UPS comes during a call. It is not a call that I can easily excuse myself from. I will figure something out, I mean, something beyond prayer.

I just checked. The camera was in Petaluma at 4am, the next town over, prepared for delivery today. It's had quite a lot of travel in the last two days: Columbia, Louisville, Oakland, San Francisco, and then soon here, into the unfinished hands of a golem. 

Last night, I called an old friend. He said a few funny things that I planned on stealing this morning, though now I can't remember any of them. The coffee can not seem to break the memories free. They're out there somewhere in the aether, perhaps getting passed freely among the angels, along with the occasional handful of faded poppies.

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Seis de Mayo

(California Poppies)

I cannot tell the date, either in English or Spanish. Yesterday I incorrectly stated the Cinco as the Seis.  I blame the city of SF. Going into the city on Saturday has screwed me up. I haven't been the same since.

I have to start working early today. There is a training video that I need to watch. It is 2 hours long. I will need coffee. 

Rachel and Rhys return tonight. They have been gone 10 days. The house feels different.

The Fuji camera is supposed to arrive tomorrow. So, there is that. New images to look at. You will see.

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Dolores Park, SF

(Alex and Cato, celebrating Mexico's lost battle of Veracruz)

A big adventure for Barkley yesterday. We drove into SF. There was a Cinco de Mayo festival of some sort at Dolores Park. Then, we all walked to a "bookstore" where Cato regularly borrows books, then had a beer, then had dinner, then the long drive home. Barkley's still in bed, refusing to acknowledge the new day. When he awakes I hope to give him a bath. He is like a street-swiffer, collecting every bit of dust and grime and filth and funk that it is possible to. Obsessed with the many new smells of urine, he was like a canine on a bender yesterday.

I had almost washed him before I went into the city, thinking that he was too dirty to bring out in public. It's a good thing I waited. He would have needed another bath today. I had brought him for a few reasons. The first, that I didn't want to leave him at home and alone. He has been particularly needy since Rachel and Rhys have been gone. Well, maybe I shouldn't say "needy" but he certainly likes me much more now. We are true buddies. Secondly, I thought, Well, if I bring Barkley I won't be tempted to stay in the city all night... That partially worked. I was home very late, for me, sometime between 9 and 10. 

After I left they all went to some rock show. It was apparently one of the greatest things to ever have happened. Cato texted me to verify sometime well after I had gone to sleep, explaining that I had really fucked up and that the show was "AWESOME."

It was nice to eat at a good restaurant. I tried to order every appetizer from the $5 menu but the group stopped me. They were not entirely on board with my shenanigans. The day was long. They also wanted to order entrées. Which, when they came, turned out to be quite worth it. Cato claims that the food in SF is even better than NYC. I almost slapped him when he said it but then realized he would probably beat my ass. Don't let his hippy beard fool you, he has enormous reservoirs of pent up rage.

I told him that his beard was c'est chic and fit nicely with his homeless couture and blue-blockers. He's really rocking the SF Kaczynski look. 

He did not bring his camera. He also has the Fuji X100S. I had hoped to shoot with it a little bit, check out some of its hidden features. Mine has already been shipped. It is meant to arrive here on Tuesday.

Instead, I brought the Nikon with a prime lens, a 50mm f1.4. Still a very nice camera, particularly in daylight, though I only took a few pictures. In a couple years I will want a full frame digital.  Perhaps I should not mention it here though, coming so soon after the purchase of the Fuji. 

Seis de Mayo 

Sonoma, CA

(Urine Mop)

(Stranger and Tree)

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