Dance like no one's filming

My buddy reminded me that my newly acquired racist friend and UFC aficionado was also homophobic. He loudly used a familiar invective on the phone when he won a bet on the fight. I should have included that in yesterday's post, also. 

Ah well, not every racist can be perfect.

Since writing the post there has been an unofficial consensus that the term "black guy" is still basically okay. Tone and context appear to be what matters most. 

That is important to know. No longer do I have to be the old guy, at least in that regard. The consensus was formed by an all white focus group. I'll reach out to a few of my black friends (Can I say "black friend"?). I have a specific friend in mind. He is involved in all manner of social awareness, and I expect that he will have a strong opinion on the matter, even if he has never held one on it before.

He's good like that. If you need a sudden opinion, he's your guy. 

Now, also, when watching porn, I won't think that there is a black guy in it. I'll simply think, the recently arrived fellow that is using up most of the frame. 

Moving on. 

CS is over on his site taking on the many murky complexities of Facebook pornography. He's just the guy to do it. He proposes "Revenge Art" for those embittered ex-lovers that wish to lash out against former affections.

People make themselves vulnerable in a loving relationship. Then, it ends, and all that is left is the poorly-lit handheld video of the mag flashlight going in and out of your little circular ham-flower. It seems wasteful to not use it on Facebook, right? It is part of why I have so many friends. The occasional public meltdowns are priceless.

That is the down side of writing here every day. It is a nearly perpetual meltdown of one sort or another. So, that when I am actually struggling it goes almost unnoticed. I practice a religious erraticism, so a real crisis is masked by my perpetual instability. It's the price to pay.

Working yesterday has somewhat robbed me of my Monday. It's not the worst thing in the world to lose, but it does already feel as if the week will be unnecessarily long. I want to go to the gym, but the boy is still sleeping. Even when he awakes I'm not sure that I'll want to go drop him off at his mother's house. Ah well, I'll figure something out. Working out on my lunch break usually makes me feel good. It seems as if I am utilizing the hours of my day better, even though there is no real difference between that and working out before my day starts. It is funny, what the mind tells itself.

Funny is one way of describing it.

.

The day I discovered racism

(Pic by Rachel)

I just spent an hour writing an email. In doing so I feel as if I've exhausted whatever impulses I had towards writing. We'll see.

Nobody writes emails any more. I've looked through my inbox, going backwards in time, and it seems that people stopped writing emails around 2007. I mean, you'll still get emails but they have the basic content and literary value of a text message. Everything is a "chat," discussion is dead. It has been more than a decade since the post box contained anything that resembled correspondence.


I'm getting old. Last night a guy sitting next to me said, Whoah, whoah, dude! You don't have to say that...

We were watching a UFC fight and I referred to one of the fighters as "the black guy." He explained that that phrase is "not okay."

Since when?

The guy that I went to the bar with told me that the phrase "black guy" isn't really used any more.

Again I asked, Since when?


I mean, I get it, that someone might take offense with the phrase, but nobody is rushing to cease the use of "white guy" in conversation.

So, I've become an old white guy that wonders why the word "negro" angers people. No, I kid, of course. But it's impossible not to see it in a somewhat personal / historical perspective. Words and phrases that were once okay no longer are. I get it.

I hear people say "black guy" all the time, though. Am I expected to wince now and express disapproval?


Later, the guy at the bar and I had a pretty good time "chatting" and he turned out to be a racist also. I forget what he said, but he dropped some old school descriptive racial terms here and there. We had a good time laughing about it.

He was half-black. That's not how he described it, but he explained that he had one black parent. I said, Yeah, I can tell. If someone saw us talking you would be the black guy and I'd be the white guy. Right?

He said, Would you describe me as a black guy? 

Yes, because you're a black guy.

I'm not all black. I'm just as white as I am black. 

No, you're not. You're a black guy.

Could you tell that my mother was white?

No, but I can tell that you have a black parent.

We laughed at the stupidity of such things. It all started, I think, because I called one fighter a "cracker." This set the tone for the rest of the conversation. I explained that I am from Florida, and these are my people. The term is a technical one, and not meant as a pejorative.

So that you'll better understand, here are the two fighters:

Can you tell which one is the black guy?

Well, he won the fight.

My newfound racist buddy said, You don't even know what you're talking about. He's not black, he's Dutch.

There are no black guys in The Netherlands? There have been every time that I've ever been there. 


So, now I have to stop saying "black guy," so as not to offend the tender hearted amongst us. It's not as if I'm a huge fan of the phrase anyway. My new phrase will be "the fellow with the discernibly African lineage."

I'm not sure that's an improvement.

I just did an internet search on the subject and there is no reasonable answer. The one thing that everybody online could agree upon was that it was the Irish guy that caused all of the problems.

.

Wonder Wanker

(Photo by Rhys)

Again last night, I pulled the couch sideways, put on a movie, reclined with my phone and computer off, and prepared to forget. After adjusting the blanket that I had pulled off of the bed a bit I noticed something wet. I, of course, smelled it. 

Rhys. Little Rhys. 

I remembered that in the morning, shortly after waking up, he had told me that his shorts were wet. I didn't quite complete the connection, I just helped him change his clothes. So, this morning I get to wash all my sheets and hopefully get the smell out.

I had to do laundry anyway. Perhaps I have not adopted all of the necessary "mom genes" just yet. My claims from yesterday might have been a bit premature.

In addition to love being quite a necessary thing, it is also a very lucky thing.

Yesterday, I went to the local meat market and stocked up for the weekend; steaks, and chicken, and marinate, and wine. I have to find something that makes me happy. I had hoped to go on an adventure this weekend, but I will be working on Sunday. Always there is need for more money, even when there is enough. 

More than ever, I will need it, money. Whatever structure I was trying to hold on to that resembled a family is coming to an end. It was inevitable, I guess, though just because something is inevitable doesn't mean that it is invited. For anything to work it requires willingness on everybody's part.

I was chatting with one of mine and Rachel's mutual friends last night. She was asking about the super-heroes that Rhys is into. Batman, of course, and Spider-Man. She asked which super-hero I would be. 

Wonder Wanker: red, white, and blue panties, etc.

I discuss wearing women's underwear an inordinate amount here. I dedicate much space and energy to the pursuit of it. 

I did an image search for "Wonder Wanker" and found this wandering runaway instead, had to use it:

That's right. That is an RV in the background. Nothing says jail-bait like a teen in shorts, positioned in front of a mobile crime scene.

I just ordered The Book of Dolores. Curiosity, a taste for pathos.  I tried to order his book, Imperial, but a used paperback copy is a hundred bucks. 

I was reading Camus last night, just random pages from The Rebel. By 46 he had won the Nobel Prize and was dead. Absurd.

"It is necessary to fall in love... if only to provide an alibi for the random despair you are going to feel anyway." - Camus

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"... what 'ought to be the truth"

I must have somehow finally developed the "parent gene," the sleeping one. Rhys has been coughing most of the night. It kept me from sleeping, earlier last night. I could hear him hacking away in his bedroom, his little sporadic convulsions. I worried. Then, he eventually calmed down enough to go to sleep, as did I. At some point in the night, as he often does, he came to sleep in my bed. I pulled him up and in, covered him with comforter and went back to sleep. I awoke a few hours later to discover that he was still regularly coughing, but that's not what woke me up. I sit here listening to it now in wonder. 

I am a very light sleeper. Almost anything will wake me up. It seems impossible that he was lying next to me, coughing all night and I slept through it. 

It's what happens to men, I guess. They eventually become more like women. I don't actually "guess." I am certain of it. Men's estrogen levels increase as they age, just as women's testosterone levels do. It is part of the reason why women find men more attractive as they get older, but rarely is the opposite true. Women take on some of the qualities that they claim to dislike about men, and call it "strength." Men take on some of the qualities that women have claimed were superior to others. 

Nature is savage, calculated.

My point being that I am beginning to notice many little indicators of how I am becoming a more complete parent. I sleep like a mother watching her pup. I hadn't set out with that as a goal, but it has happened, little by little. By next year I'll be able to fetch a ball, maybe catch a frisbee in mid-air, poop in the backyard, etc.

I would be lying if I didn't include the obvious fact that Rhys has become much easier to parent. His first two years were very different than this one, though there were months in which I cared for him then, also. I have been told that it will all just get easier, for a little while. 

Read the comments section from yesterday's post for somebody else's take on the struggle. I imagine that some readers here must be bored witless to continue hearing of my experiences as a father. 

At least one pair of eyes within me is always exaggeratedly rolling. If you pretend to be something for long enough then you eventually might become it. It works for many things, love and happiness excluded. There are few convincing imitations of happiness, too many of love. Some delusions seem so much less cruel than others.

I don't want realism. I want magic! Yes, yes, magic.

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Kickin' up Dust

(Learning the basics of baseball)

The boy still sleeps in the other room, so who knows how much time I will have to write. Not long, would be my guess. He will wake up and want to watch Batman, or something like it.

Last night, a friend came over for dinner with her boy, Jordan. They both played out in the courtyard again with el barrio niñas y niños. 

My friend, Lisa, and I were laughing at some of the absurd, oddly truthful things that kids sometimes say. It is poetical, at times, the unexpected combination of ideas, ones that they are just beginning to come to terms with.

Jordan approached Lisa the other day and very seriously said, "Well, the truth is not fun."

"It's monsters."

Rhys had to get a time-out at one point in the evening, for not being a good listener.

As his time-out was finishing I held his head in my hands, looked right at him, and told him that I loved him. He raised his hands and placed them on each side of my head and gently rocked my head back and forth, leaning forward he looked into my eyes while nodding, "I need you."

It was animated in such a way that is difficult to convey here. It would have been almost teasing if it hadn't been said so innocently and with such unforeseen sincerity.

Off he went, back to terrorizing the other kids.

Rhys has also assured me before that he would protect me from monsters. He has told me that he would say, "Rawrrr!, and make them all go away..."

Thanks kid, that is what I've been trying to do, also. Scream until the monsters go away.

Well, perhaps it is much more entertaining for the parent than for the reader. I've been having a pretty good time with it all, though. There are little payoffs to being a parent, nearly impossible to convey to others, their odd and unexpected magic. There is much more to it than just silly, surprise claims and questions.

The more I parent, the more it falls into place.


Today, Rachel and I go to see a lawyer, to again begin the process to finalize what remains between us. We will sit in his office and nod and agree, explaining that this is what we want, that this is what is best for everybody involved.

I'm sure that we will be filled with the absurd, oddly truthful things that parents sometimes say.

.

Lust for Chaos

Don't take anything I say too seriously, or seriously at all, I don't. After a conversation with CS yesterday morning, I showed a lack of discretion in last night's post. I was only trying to get under one reader's skin. I don't even know if it worked. Just a little squirt of healthy sexism, to keep life interesting.

If your goal is to drink less coffee in the mornings, then do not buy larger coffee cups. That is my wisdom. It is Daoist. 

I need some time away. For whatever reason work is not offering me its usual sanctuary from the remainder of my superficially mild life. I should go to the gym. That helps. I took well over a month off from being there. After my father died I became sick with a lingering stomach virus. I think it was a virus. I can't tell. It is still affecting me, though not enough to keep me from going to the gym. This virus seems to love me and only me. I am past the age where I worry that each new malady will be the one that pulls me under. Eventually, I will be correct in my assumption. 

I'll feel so smart, and prepared to begin my new career as a doctor, a diagnostic soothsayer. A swimmer in the seas of assumption. 

The other day I was sitting in the city, watching people walk past. It struck me, how many of them there were. Too many, it seemed. It occurred to me... how odd that death doesn't interject itself more often into our day-to-day lives. Everywhere, there are people dying, though we rarely see it. Sure, death sometimes gives its warning signs, so that dignified people will crawl off to be alone. It is institutionalized, the privacy of dying. Only poor and deranged people insist upon their public deaths. Still, it seems odd that we don't see it more often, with numbers considered.

There are lots of poor people.

I looked around and thought that every person that I could see would one day die. I felt like I had smoked pot, with deep revelations of this kind just rising to the surface.

I took notice of how many older people there were waddling past. Fewer of them than the younger ones, to be sure, and moving much slower. Perhaps that is it, all of it, they move so slowly they just disappear from stillness. Death becomes invisible, an unending lack of motion.

Life is like a velociraptor, it can only see you if you're moving. At the point of your own death humans appear as a blur. The image of their motion increasing, comparatively, so that all that is available is a smear of color moving by you. Life is the portion of it that you can no longer catch up with.

Passing before your eyes, no longer yours.

I once read that the "fact" offered in Jurassic Park simply isn't true. The one concerning a T. Rex's inability to see you if you weren't moving. Who would have ever guessed that we can't replace science with blockbuster films.

Okay, death. It is a morbid thought. No small wonder why my readership here has suffered so greatly in the last few months.

The next time somebody wants to argue for Steven Spielberg's greatness as a director, then sit down with them and watch that film.

It is abysmal.

Okay, I am losing my mind. I can feel the intermittent slipping of consciousness. It is baffling.


A friend recently told me that he does not share my lust for chaos. The phrase resonated with me, the simple truth of it. I only wanted to go eat lunch at the downtown SF mall food court, the week before Christmas.

The phrase lingered though, its economy of purpose rang true within me. The implication of sin, the oft-presumed aversion to disorder. All of it. We forgive Iggy Pop any number of sins because he has claimed them as a mere Lust for Life.

... a lust for chaos, that is another matter, altogether. Life is more orderly, more mannered, than most would admit. 

I have learned my lesson: Do not sit up at night, drinking a bottle of wine, listening to Van Morrison, writing a post because you felt the previous one from the same day was insufficient.

There is tomorrow!, Rocky. There is so tomorrow...

I feel as if I have said all of this before, and I have. I somehow still manage to avoid the subject of my own life, what matters most to me; pursuit of hopes. Missing the target most of all, perhaps, when I address it directly.

The Daylight Savings Time has me completely fucked. My social interactions are becoming less and less social, more fucked up.


Earlier this morning I envisioned a health care option in which I could just go check myself into a hospital for a few days. I could lie there and watch tv, just to make sure that I was okay. A nurse at the end of a buzzer, morphine too, if the temperament of the malady demanded it. I'm not sure why a nurse in a hospital is so preferable to an apartment or hotel alone, but it requires no thought to know that it is. Truly. Someone to bathe over me.


Such a thing seems perfectly plausible, and perhaps enjoyable. I get an erection considering nurses, and that nursing. Yet, an objection abides, or alerts, drifts along its course. Art is just a complaint, of sorts.

Illness is. It takes. It pulls downstream.
It seems more than it seems.

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Funny How Love Is

(Michael Manson)

I opted against a film tonight. I rushed home distractedly from the city, had two beers then quickly bored with local pub talk; went to the wine shop, the grocery store, the meat market.

Home.

I put most of the food away, ate a can of Dinty Moore stew.

Surviving that, I put on some Van Morrison.

Jesus, he was a trifling man.

In truth, I loved it. I have always found a way of getting my arms around the romantics, and have also handcuffed some realists along the way.

I sat back in my desk chair, sipping my wine, counting my many new dollars, wondering how somebody so fortunate could end up being a liberal like me, and not the online kind.

Speaking of.... online-liberals are all menopausal women, maybe even worse. They are just terrible. They are uninvited hot flashes, trying to save the earth. It's not so much that what they say is wrong, it is that they are just so unforgivingly intense concerning the expectation of accordance. It's like people that raise money at Elton John concerts, and insist that you recognize their efforts. 

These medusas did not reach me through the Van Morrison tonight, though. Do not worry, much. It is only something that has been on my mind; women of a certain kind. It need not worry you, also.

Men are capable of grander general gloom than women, they always have been. It is why their songs are more beautiful, men's. Women will always own specifics, but men have them beat on the averages of sadness.  

Don't kill the back massager.

All that being hieroglyphed above, I sat and gently studied the unmeasured sorrow of my good buddy, Van Morrison.

I calmed myself and thought poetical thoughts, then felt them, then leaned forward into the speakers, head in my hands. I nearly prayed aloud, muttering the rhythmic embrace of a thing that is akin to pain, beauty.

Some are dedicated to the description of the maladies. Van is triflingly among them.

The wine gripped and griped my mind, tore the sail from its mast, just as the stew stormed my stomach. Within a few tilts of the glass I had found my way far away from Van and stumbled into the sharp end of the sextant.


Below are the bubble-pop rooms of my youth.

INXS, etc.

This time will be the last time that we will fight like this.....

I'm standing here, on the ground.....

Resolution of happiness
Things have been dark for too long

Don't change a thing for me

I felt as if I were near a pool. 

Execution of bitterness
Message received loud and clear

Well, the wine calmed me, here and then there.

That, then, gave way to this:

I go to places we used to go

I still see people we used to know

Friends, they ask me, where is she now?

I have to tell them we're over now

When I questioned love, I thought I'd surely die

I couldn't see a future without you by my side

We're not together, but I'm still alive

I'd rather not see you for a really long time

Funny how love is...

Funny how love is...

Funny how love is...

I don't want your magazines, I don't want your clothes

Take them from my house, let me be alone

Ever try to catch me in, or call me on the phone

Don't send me letters, I don't want to know

When I questioned love, I thought I'd surely die

I couldn't see a future without you by my side

We're not together, but I'm still alive

I'd rather not see you for a really long time

Funny how love is...

Funny how love is...

Funny how love is...

Love is so funny, the joke is on me 

Funny how love is...

Gummo Marx

Last night, another evening spent on the couch, watching a film. "Stardust Memories" by Woody Allen, a personal favorite. I ate popcorn and fiddled with my phone, texting like a teenaged girl. My underwear had little pink strawberries dancing happily along.

There is a scene in the film in which Woody Allen defends himself against accusations of being inappropriately attracted to a teenage girl, a relative of some sort, a young cousin of his girlfriend, if I remember correctly. 

Allen denies that the film is autobiographical, at all.

I might watch a Bergman film tonight, who knows. Watching Woody Allen films often makes me want to watch the films he is referencing, or stealing from. 

I am in the mood to go home and hide my head under the covers, to conceal myself. Life is complicated, sometimes best avoided. A quiet room, an engaging film, a few glasses of red wine, a planned escape. 

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"Monkies" is misspelled

(Australians are Evil)

I want odd and greatly nasty things: monkeys that deliver me opium; dogs that dance with turtles; primates that ride greyhounds for sport or pleasure; monkey breeds to either post or play, and become popular. 

Monkey-faced animals that embrace the beauty of the Trifecta.

Most of all I need to harness others.  

50 shades of Greyhound. 

I'm not willing to put any energy, or time, into much of it. Most of all I do not wish to put in energy and time together at once. That is what drains the human spirit, traffic.

To be expected, to commit. 

I want opium to appear before me like an unpaid lottery from the east; delivered on the loud-squealing backs of crazed monkeys, as far as the eye can see. 

A sea of monkeys, a papacy of papaya.

I also have a plan to reasonably exploit lumberjacks in the local area, though they are a very tough people. 

No-nonsense sorts. Happy to gamble, bitter to lose

Their good eyes light up when I mention monkeys riding dogs, though. They have little time for frivolities, lots of patience for misery.

Monkeys on the backs of dogs, for gambling dashes, are three serious matters; not as raising one child to just be kind, negotiating ways through a forest that harbors surprises.

Lyin', Tired, and bear it.

Lumbering towards that. 

I race, and run.

Barefoot growls, dancin' in the moonlight.

. 

Genesis E-330 Weber, in Green

By now, some of you might be asking yourselves, "What the fuck is so exciting about a gas barbecue grill, and why does he keep going on about it?" You would be right in asking that question. It is the correct response to my mania. That being written, it arrived yesterday and it is even far more exciting than I had expected. 

Last night, porterhouse steaks. 

We had another fiesta with the neighborhood kids. They all came over again and watched the rest of "Frozen." I do not see the fascination with that film. There are plenty of animated kids' films out there that are worth watching. That's not one of them. I distributed cookies, one each, which they ate outside. 

They love me, and soon they will raise my son.

I have decided to start hunting. I am going to a gun shop today to buy a rifle. Not sure what the laws are in California concerning a license, but I'm sure there will be an expert on all of that at the gun shop. There is no such thing as a gun shop that is closed on Sundays.

I need a sacred carcass to put on this grille. It's that big. I'm not sure if there are open range hunting options in California like there are in Africa, and now Canada, but I'll find out. I want to shoot a giraffe in the neck, just to watch it twitch. Like Johnny Cash, but with animals.

I am committed to only eating the meat from albino beasts. They must be hunted in the wild, and it is preferable that they die in fear.

No, no, no. This is all wrong. My online behavior has cost me some online friends. Let me start over.

I am a great lover of all things made of meat, and would harm none of them if I had to do so myself. I will be using this grille to make soups, exclusively. I just like the flavor of an open flame. 

I do wonder what impact it would have on the market if a picture of the slain animal was included as part of the packaging, like the warning on cigarettes. Maybe even two pictures. One of a cow grazing happily in a field, then the other a second or two after its demise in some dimly lit factory. The lifeless eyes fixed on some distant cosmic point of departure.

It is important to eat the weak, to gain their secrets. It is how the strong remain vital.

Ok, enough with my bad-acid meat-marketing plans.

Ignore all of this. My morning coffee hasn't gripped my head yet. 

I am a closet vegetarian. If I had more moral courage I would make the leap. I just don't care for the texture of vegetables. 

I do want a rifle or two, though. But that's only so that I can vote Tea Party in the next election without being hassled at the polls.

.

Stardust in my heart

(Cato, Friday night)

A weekend with the boy. I will try to keep him away from the hallucinogenic rabbits pictured above. They are demonic in nature and would burn at the stake in slightly different times. 

There are some who would re-invite those times. Many. I am involved with a conversation in which my adversary is espousing the benefits of across-the-board drug testing for welfare recipients. I have proposed that those with drug problems should get extra money, to assist with treatment. Welfare programs really seem to anger some people. They see the world like the picture above, problems reproducing like bunnies, asexual and somehow always in monochrome.

Last night we had a party at the apartment. Rhys and his buddy, Jordan, ran around outside in the courtyard with all the kids in the neighborhood, all mud-luscious and puddle wonderful. Then, they all came in (with their parents' permission) to watch "Frozen." The girls sang along with all the words, to all the songs. There were about 10 or 12 of them singing in blissful chorus. It was charming. 

Rhys and Jordan, the only two boys almost, didn't seem so interested, but the girls were having a great time. I chatted with the ones that spoke English, did my best with the exclusive speakers of Spanish. There were many that were willing to assist in translation. One of the girls offered to fold all of my clothes for me, sat down on the floor and began. I told her that was very sweet but that she didn't have to do that. She didn't mind. I'm waiting for her to turn 15, so that I can marry her. 

Quinceañera awaits.

They all wanted to know why I had so many books. I explained that I was a teacher, of sorts. They wanted to know where. I told them that it was not quite for a school, sort of. They all agreed that they liked to read a lot also. We were all great lovers of literature.

They asked for me to play my guitar. I strummed an E-G-A combination and then put it away. No songs would die today. I found a box of girl scout cookies and gave them all one each, verifying parental approval with each distribution. They all nodded in solemnity, without asking their parents, of course.

They asked if they could come over today. I explained maybe, that Rhys' grandfather (his bisabuelo) was visiting, and we would have to see. He is from a different time, and might not understand allowing Mexicans in the house. But he's a great old guy whom I like much. He helps me navigate the world by avoiding the Mexicans and the Indians and their reservations, and pretty much all others, too. He is of that time, but still quite lovable nonetheless, and I like him much.

Don't tell his mom he's out without shoes on in the picture below. She is no fan of such things.

 

The other day, Rhys and I were driving in the car. I had bought Rhys some fairy wings at the dollar store. He was holding them in his carseat. He loves dress-up, particularly pirates, anything from Peter Pan. 

He was explaining things to me as they are:

I have stardust in my heart, Daddy, so everybody flies.

.

Beyond the Clouds

I had forgotten how nice life can be.

Last night, I turned off all of my phones and computers (all except the one I was using as a movie screen), and watched an entire feature length film. I turned the couch sideways so that I could recline and watch and eat popcorn.

Beyond the Clouds by Michelangelo Antonioni (then finished by Wim Wenders). It wasn't very good. I watched it off of a Handbrake rip, but the cinematic quality is not what killed this film. It just wasn't one of his best. I napped through some of it. I should have drank wine, but I didn't.

Perhaps what I did enjoy most about it, though, was that it had been so long since I felt contemplative, at all. Few things in my life invite contemplation, and I don't demand it enough for and of myself, not even here on this site. When it happens, it feels nice. There is the requirement of external stimuli for me to magically realize that I don't have to do anything. I don't have to interact with the screen in front of me. I've nearly forgotten how to be a passive recipient of a visual experience. 

The film itself was a boring disappointment. I had seen it before and remembered it being much better than it was. There are a handful of other Antonioni works that I love more; L'Avventura and The Passenger. 

The soundtrack was only part of what killed it. Bono and Van Morrison doing instrumental standards. Abysmal. I tried to ignore the music, hoping that it would somehow help, but it was impossible.

Antonioni had a stroke while making the film, which showed. It felt as if one would have to have endured a stroke to enjoy it fully, on the level that he made it. It was fragmented, split down the middle, twice. It seemed lost, though that did suit its subject well enough on the surface. The disillusionment of love. A theme that I was ready to embrace.

But no. No.

Four loosely intertwined vignettes, told from the perspective of a wandering director. The opening sequence showed some promise, though the dialogue seemed to almost be an SNL parody, particularly as it was overdubbed by John Malkovich (pronounced Mal-Kovv-itch, with the stressed syllable in the middle, at least for this film). He dawdled through the film, playing the part of a director, ruminating on the act of making films, which is what the film felt like also: somebody trying to determine how to make a film.

Not even the lovely, fully nude women could save it. Had it been made by a lesser-known, younger director then it would have been dismissed outright as being both pompous and puerile. It exploited the subject that it pretended to explore. It was a film about being a film.

As Peter Griffin said well enough, "It insists upon itself."


Well, I'm out of time now... That's my first-draft film review for Monday's show-and-tell. I'm going to bring in a handful of actual pubic hair from the 1970s, just like the fully grown growlers on display in this week's feature film....


Love all.


I'll probably watch the film again in another few years and have a complete reversal, claiming wildly that Bono is just the genius that he has always believed himself to be.

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Land Sushi

The government reverses its stance on cholesterol. What next? If we can't trust them with nutritional science then who knows, maybe they've made mistakes in other areas also. I have yet to see Citizenfour, the movie about Edward Snowden. I'd rather read articles.

I just don't know who we can trust any more. The government is spying on us, and then telling us that cholesterol is no longer a danger.... It seems like a trick. My whole life it is all that I've ever heard: cholesterol is the heart killer.

My barbecue grill has arrived. Well, it has arrived at the Home Depot in Napa. I was not able to confirm that it had been assembled yet. There is delivery to consider, too. Then, the purchase of a propane tank, or two, and a cable and lock to prevent it from being permanently borrowed by an anonymous borrower. I don't want to have to cable the thing up, but it's too expensive to risk a heartbreaking tragedy.

After all those precautions, I get to eat as much cholesterol as I choose. Well no, not really, high fat foods still represent a problem, of course.

To celebrate, I donated some money to a school fundraising effort and my reward for having done so was a tri-tip dinner for four. Rhys ate a few very small pieces and I have committed to the task of taking care of the rest.

This is what the thing looked like after I had eaten as much as was possible in a single sitting:

The good news now is that eggs will no longer make me feel guilty. I can eat more of them without feeling guilty. Eggs are a nearly perfect food. They are like land sushi.

The boy is asleep in the other room, and I have to question what I am doing awake in here posting pictures of the remains of my dinner. 

The good news is that the moral high ground upon which vegans have placed themselves has been brought into question by the proper authorities. It turns out that plants want to live, as well. So, sentience should prevent some from eating at all now, hopefully.

No, I kid. I have a few ongoing feuds out there in the world right now, veganism is just one of them. Defense spending is one of the others, though luckily not conducted with the same persons.

I only fall in love with vegetarians. It seems to be an unwritten policy in my heart.

As for the defense spending argument... I really should stay off of Facebook. I get engaged in protracted  military arguments with humorless people, and I clearly want to win, but then don't put in enough energy to do so. Not that ideological disagreements can be won anyway, but that's not the point. I just try to argue in the background while I'm doing other things, and that is not the best approach when you're facing the enemy's front line.

I want to crack open a bottle of wine right now, but that will mean that I definitely won't go back to sleep. At least not until I'm done with it. As I said, the boy is sleeping in the other room. I went through a rather sizable series of expenses and much time was consumed with providing the boy with his own bedroom, but he wants to sleep with me most of the time. I don't mind, but I don't sleep quite as well when being kicked in the face. He's a very active sleeper. I've always felt that the word somnambulist sounded like an advanced gymnast of sleep. Each time I wake up he's in a different position, in a completely different part of the bed. I'm convinced that he did a back-flip to get there. 

The good thing about the wine that I might open is that it is relatively low in alcohol. The wines that were gifted to me, many of them are of that nature, and I have found that I greatly prefer them to the excessively high alcohol content wines of California. When I have tried to go back and enjoy California wines they seem to assault with heavy forward flavors, to mask the levels of alcohol. 

Give me a few minutes and I'll have the rest of that steak out, and be cooking up some vegetables. Kale, etc.

No, I went and looked at the stack of bottles, nothing quite appealed to me. The hope of going back to sleep still hangs over me. 

Well, my investment genius turned out to be missing some crucial information. I didn't quite understand what stock options are. I have the "option" to buy them, but the only value that exists within them that is mine is the profit above what I have the option to buy them at. I hadn't quite grasped that. It means that I might not be getting my Nikon D4S any time soon. It affects the spending money I'll have for my upcoming trips also. 

I lost my sheikdom rather quickly. The market is particularly volatile for somebody who has no idea what they're doing.

I don't know why I feel like I need to say this, but the five pillars of Islam do not interest me much. Maybe the pilgrimage, I do like to travel. Though Arabia is a place of great intolerance to alcohol, and I would feel silly circumambulating the great Rubik's Cube that fell from Allah's hand.

In Mecca, on the eastern corner of the Kaaba, there is a black stone placed there by Muhammad that muslims peacefully jostle to touch as they circle and re-circle the ancient building seven times chanting. It has been made smooth by the many millions who have touched it. They would rather do this than drink wine, which settles things once and for all, for me.

The stone is believed to go back to the time of Adam and Eve, though I have been trying to tell anybody that will listen that it might be even older than that. The House of God  flooded in the 17th century and some of the walls collapsed. It needed to be rebuilt, this holiest of holies. 

Okay, Fajr quickly approaches. I must prepare to prostrate myself towards Mecca, and to stone the devil in my heart while he sleeps.

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Conduct unbecoming of.....

My estrogen levels are off the charts. I fell asleep last night with the final factory scene from "An Officer and a Gentleman" looping with the volume set to hysterical weeping levels. 

Up Where We Belong, indeed. Tears of joy dripped from me, for her. I had knocked the box of tissues off of the bed and woke up all the cats. I curled up in my quilt and sobbed myself back to sleep where I dreamed of calorie-free ice cream.

I received a fair amount of criticism for my post yesterday from a small handful of friends that would prefer if I were simply tougher. Try to remember dear readers that I happen upon a subject, sometimes a subject that is quite personal, and I try explore it. In no way does it represent the totality of my thoughts or feelings. It is simply a brief meditation (hopefully) on the subject chosen.

And yes, I am saddened that my marriage has failed. I do worry about the effect that it will have on the boy, but I am reminded by every unpaid online advice specialist that children are quite resilient and that I should now raise my child this way, or that. All good advice. I am certain of it. None of which can protect the boy from whatever possible damage might be the result of all of this, the signs of which he is already showing. 

This reflection alone is not enough for Rachel and I to consider staying together. So be it. Some people do, and some people don't, for the same reasons and concerns. 

There are some who will read that last sentence and tell me what an awful idea it always is, and how it never works. There are others that will encourage you to work things out, just as they did, etc.

These same friends seem to miss the subtext here, that I am moving on with my life. I'm still allowed moments of reflective sadness, and even regret. Being honest is not a weakness, even when the honesty concerns an uncertainty of the heart. Emotional dogma and denial is not necessarily strength, though it can easily pass for it, with many.

Everybody wants you to be as certain as they are, and for your love to unfold itself in the way that theirs did. Because they are now okay, so there can only be one result from a similar circumstance.

It baffles the mind, a bit.

I try to agree past the point where it makes them comfortable, but that doesn't work either. I will draw every possible parallel between my circumstances and theirs. Because love is always identical to other love, and the condition that has been discussed in the last few minutes of conversation is the fulcrum point upon which all relationships bend or break.

Get it?

Perhaps counter-intuitively, it seems to be my old punk rock friends that have the best advice and generally see things as they are most clearly. Well, that is my perception of it, for whatever that's worth.

Who might have guessed that an old creeping legion of regurgitators would have learned anything by renouncing excess and doing it themselves.... what an unlikely ethos.

All the times when we were close, I'll remember these things the most...

Nursery Rhymes, when all else fails

(Saul Leiter)

Up late last night, again, looking through old pictures. Different times, happier times; or more youthful, anyway. Something in the eyes hasn't changed, though. It is odd, that. How you can see, and what you can see with experience, and what must be called knowledge. Time ravages, it happens all the time, then it happens all of a sudden. Though, the seed of self seems always present, the pattern that unfolds the patterns.

My first effort at Coq Au Vin... I'd give it a solid B. There were things I simply didn't do well enough. I rushed some of the preparation, didn't chop the garlic and bacon into fine enough pieces. It didn't result in nearly as much food as I thought it would. I have maybe two servings left after Rachel and Rhys came by for dinner last night. I suppose I should have made some couscous with it. Something.

We had bread, which for some reason Rhys was placed in charge of. He promptly bit out a few sides of the loaf, then tore it in two, then dropped the rest on the floor. Such is life. He seemed to enjoy having possession over something that I wanted.

The remainder of the food sits chilled in the refrigerator now. I will have no problem finishing it, soon, with a newly obtained baguette. 

Rachel and I will not be reconciling, in any way, or not any more than we have now, if what we have now can be at all considered a form of reconciliation. I knew this, but it still comes to the senses as a shock, a tearing of the fabric of memory from what was to what will be next. What we will now become lacks any tether of hope between us. We are tidying up the legality of it all. It is a purely legal matter at this point, one that will soon be swept up and made permanent. The word itself carries such weight, represents such an unbridgeable schism: divorce. It is a weighty word, somehow the purview of parents of the past.

What ultimate effect this will have, no one knows, though I struggle finding much good in it. It is what we both have wanted, or what we were willing to allow happen. When I mention the visible seed of self being present, I can see the failings far back through and past even the happiness together. We are all guests in another's life, arriving without reservations and checking out well after noon, always with a handful of charges waiting at the front desk. 

Last night a friend told me that I have it made: a son that I love, the freedom to do as I wish, a good job in the SF tech sector... charm, wit, warmth.... These are truths and partial truths rendered together so that some seem to bolster the others, to hold them up where they might have stumbled, or sat down to rest. I do love my son much, but love of this kind, fatherhood, and freedom to do as I wish.... well, they might as well be a super-hero and his nemesis. It is fun to watch the good guys always win. 

I have the freedom to eat as many chicken wings as I wish to, or to buy the cereal that I like. Freedom of this kind is mostly just milk instead of soy milk.

I am not unhappy. My words here must make that seem un-so at times, but it is true. I would have preferred a different unfolding of events, with perhaps a different result, but that would have relied on differences in others, also.

People don't change, they adjust.

If wishes were horses, beggars would ride

If turnips were bayonets, I'd wear one by my side.

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¿Hablas Español Solamente?

(Niños Vaqueros Locales)

Another weekend gone, just like that. 

I finally bought the ingredients to make Coq au Vin last night, but fell asleep having only just placed the bacon and chicken in the refrigerator. I do not mean that I fell asleep near the refrigerator, but it was not far off. The bag of other materials, all recently bought, sits on the dining room table now, waiting for me.

I will prepare enough of the delicious mush to feed eight soldiers, then eat it mainly by myself over the course of three or four days. Hopefully, this time I will keep my refrigerator on long enough for me to reduce the average cost of each plate to somewhere below $80.

Everything costs so much money. None of it does individually, but collectively it's an account killer. Just simple stuff that I do not have, and must buy each time I wish to make something; all-purpose bleach, garlic powder, thyme, brown sugar, apple-cider vinegar, white vinegar, extra pure virgin olive oil, chicken broth, and on and on and on.

Soon, I'll be prepared to make any of these dishes again, which I will almost be required to, based on initial investment alone, though that time still seems a long way off. I eagerly await the day when I glance at a recipe and think to myself, I have all that stuff at home, maybe I'll give it a try.

Wow. Speaking of... I just noticed two books had arrived, left in the location where Rachel would normally leave something that had arrived for me in the mail. Both were gifts from a friend. One is a cooking book, specifically, recipes for the grille.

So, I now own my first ever book of recipes. Since I know how to read, I feel an obligation to become an even better cook. Soon, I will be hosting dinner parties and holidays. Grandkids will speak of grandma's lovely cherry cobbler and famous Sunday roasts.

Yes, I am becoming a grandma; the grey skin, the soft and sagging flesh, the forgetfulness, the kindness that sometimes accompanies aging, the patient listlessness, the loss of choice in bodily function, the growing suspicion of all others in the neighborhood. The idea of sex is becoming repulsive to all others and a distant shameful secret even to me. My underwear hang on the clothes line like a sighting of Moby Dick, hideous and fearsome, flapping in the winds.

Well, not yet.... I don't really dry my clothes on a clothesline. In the machine dryer it looks more like a school of great white whales, all together caught in the vortex of a whirlpool, dodging harpoons. No less terrible and carnivalesque for the thousands of kids that live in my apartment complex. I am certain of it.

I do not exaggerate concerning the local population of enfant terribles. I estimate their numbers to be in the thousands. Because they are always moving it is impossible to get an accurate counting. I have invited all the members of my bird watching society over in the hopes of getting a better estimate.

My apartment complex is comprised almost exclusively of Mexican immigrants. I am the only tenant that attempts to speak English, or Spanish. What I mean is that they are effortless in their Spanish and show few signs of wanting to bridge the gap with me. All, except the kids, of course. They know more English than their parents and find me to be a novelty of some sort. A wobbly piñata. 

The first time they came to my door it was to sell me kitchen supplies, some fund-raiser meant to raise money for some trip. They dug into me for $50, but I told myself it was all stuff I actually needed, though we tell ourselves all sorts of things when we only wish to be nice. The young girl that was there, seemingly to help her brother move his wares, asked a series of questions about my young son and my "ex-girlfriend" who lives down the road.

Her brother openly scolded her for asking me personal questions when he was on a mission to fund his overnight trip to the Monterey Bay Aquarium, but I told him that it was fine and not to worry about it, that's just how girls are.

They must think that I am an eccentric, wealthy gringo. Living alone in an apartment in which all others are populated by no less than 4-6 official and unofficial tenants, documented and undocumented.  I have considered moving in my baby grand piano. I suspect that monstrous indication of imaginary cultural wealth will seal my fate and cause insult to the cultural sensibilities of the neighborhood, even more than the lack of rich caramel color in my skin. I must seem like an albino tycoon here, wandering the ship of a cruise liner.

I should brush up on my Spanish. Perhaps do more than just brush up. I must learn some Spanish, not just some half-remembered phrases, mispronounced mainly in jest.

The kids think nothing of cupping their hands up to my front windows to peer in and see what my life is like. They sit outside my front door and play games and eat pizza, leaving the tell-tale trail of garbage that kids think so little of. I will hear their mothers and fathers scolding them in the barely foreign tongue, the next time I open my door it will mostly be all cleaned up.

Vaya con Dios, Pizza Unidos....

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Saudade

I wasn't going to write a post today, but a friend just sent an email about a picture of she and her father when she was a very young girl and it made me both sad and warm at once. It concerned the mystery of memory, and how her father longed to return to a time when, I'm sure, life was simpler and filled with fond memories. He dreamed of wandering out in the dark night where he lives near the Mediterranean and finding his daughters as they were then, when they were both young. The hope of an abandoned time and place to which he now could seemingly return by the will of his wish.

I would not call what her father wrote delusional, at all, but I have been coming to terms with my own delusions. The way that I had thought that things were. I have been forcing myself to look back and re-examine the series of choices that placed me where I am now. 

It is all an exercise in uselessness, of course, but it's still the only exercise I get.

I find it difficult to believe that Rhys will have no memory of all the things we currently share, our many inside jokes and the playful ways that we interact. In a few years he will develop sustainable memories. Of the past, he will only have planted memories of the pictures I take of him, the stories I tell to him about this time, or perhaps those that I have preserved here. The thought of him reading this blog is equally troubling and comforting; troubling if I'm alive, comforting at thoughts of otherwise, that there is evidence of my love for him.

I'm told that even though he will have no memories of his own through this time he will still develop a sense of love for me, and a deep sense of comfort for having a father that loves him. Each day I see the past recede and disappear as it moves away from us. The child that Rhys once was such a short time ago, is no more. He is now a happy three year old boy, figuring out things as he goes.

I was taking a bath with him and he was taking note of my boobies and then his boobies, and that mine were larger, though I tried to point out that they were also more solid. He asked me if I thought Mommy had big boobies. I carefully explained that she has "Mommy boobies."

He is fascinated with the idea that I was once a boy like him, and that when he gets older he'll have hair on his face. He told me that he wants hair on his legs one day, too.

I didn't want to forget that.

The woman, Carol, who runs the daycare that he has been a part of since very early childhood came by Rachel's house recently. There was something she wanted to drop off. Rhys became very excited and wanted to show her everything, giving her a tour of the house and especially of his room. The first thing that he showed to her there was a little ceramic piggy bank that she had given him as a present a few years ago. I'm sure that he only knows of this because Rachel has repeated it to him, but he wanted to impress upon her that it was his and he had been using it, saving coins.

The description that Rachel gave of his enthusiasm to share the many things of his room with Carol was very touching. 

We don't change very much, but enough. Ever eager to show others the components of our lives, to have them make sense, to be of interest.

Those emotions of his will, of course, give way to their replacement. On and on, until one day he is a young man, making his own decisions. I will naturally recede in importance to him. It seems impossible, yet also unstoppable. Already, I wish to return to previous days, afternoons, to when I would swaddle him to put him down for his nap. I would stand there above his crib with my hand on his wrapped abdomen, watching him watch me until his eyes would begin to dip closed, to calm him by the light pressure of my hand on him until he was asleep. The sound of his miniature breathing being the only thing in the world.

All of it now falling into a recent past that is remote, untouchable.

I didn't want to forget that, too.

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Slip Slidin' Away

I hear the boy coughing upstairs. I sit downstairs at Rachel's house, waiting for him, them to wake up.

The pressures of separation are starting to show. The other night he was crying at my house, wanting to "go home." It was because Rachel was there. I am certain of it. He is fine when it is just he and I. It must be very confusing for him. We try to explain a parental thing that neither of us quite understands.

He asks from time to time why we don't all live together. These are moments that are rich in opportunity, but the many things that I could say that might be entertaining to me would very likely only confuse him further. He looks to me for truth, certainty, consistency... if you can imagine that. Fatherhood requires a gentility of mind and presence that I somehow never quite had for myself. It is better to develop it late in life than not at all, I suppose.

The triangle that would be our family is missing a part, seemingly never to return, comprised of three points and two edges; three vertices, two lines. One pencil mark has nearly been erased. It is an imaginary mystery, wrapped in the incomplete logic of failed love. It flunks the geometric litmus test, somehow too acid and without a base.

The toughest part is yet to come.

So many twigs for such a small nest.

Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away

I know a man
He came from my home town
He wore his passion for his woman
Like a thorny crown
He said, Delores
I live in fear
My love for you's so overpowering
I'm afraid that I will disappear

Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away

I know a woman
Became a wife
These are the very words she uses
To describe her life
She said a good day
Ain't got no rain
She said a bad day's when I lie in bed
And think of things that might have been

Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away

And I know a fa-ther
Who had a son
He longed to tell him all the reasons
For the things he'd done
He came a long way
Just to explain
He kissed his boy as he lay sleeping
Then he turned around and headed home again

Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away

God only knows
God makes his plan
The information's unavailable
To the mortal man
We work our jobs
Collect our pay
Believe we're gliding down the highway
When in fact we're slip slidin' away

Slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away
Slip slidin' away
You know the nearer your destination
The more you're slip slidin' away

Mmm...

- Paul Simon

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