An Aide-Mémoire

Looking  through old pictures. The boy sure does grow up fast. He and his buddy (pictured below), also. They are both rocketing into the lives they will be living. I have thousands of pictures of the boy and his mother, so few of he and I. That is a result of me always being the one behind the camera, of course. I am not the kind to set up a tripod very often, running to jump in front of it and pose, like an smiling idiot. The tripod that I have can not adequately hold the weight of my new camera. Such is life. There are always wants.

The boy will likely never have a lasting memory of us being a family together. Perhaps one day, with any luck, I won't either. That is what she and I have decided. Best to end it all now, completely, before it negatively impacts anybody else. We were both the perfect people to have a baby together until we did, or so we thought. It is difficult to believe now that all the things that were said were anything other than willful lies. Divorce is a mother fucker. 

I mean, it would be simply splendid if it weren't for the boy.

The Alabama Shakes were better than I had thought they would be. Great, in fact. Powerful music, played flawlessly and with much enthusiasm. More range live than is reflected or contained on their album. It was a sold out show. People lying in the grass all the way to the top of William Randolph Hearst's Greek amphitheater. A beautiful night, in all. I needed it, to get away. 

I greatly look forward to NYC this week. Then, I look forward to getting away again, and then again.

It is what is needed, reminders of a life outside of this life. A prompt to schedule forgetfulness.

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Post Sibling Day

(Skippy, Pat, Ginger, Me)

I lie here in bed, almost dreading going into the city. Well, not the city, but Oakland which barely qualifies as a city, more of a municipal police zone.

I attempted an experiment, to see how it would feel. I drained a substantial amount of blood from my body into a bathtub filled with hot water. Once I had lost enough blood that I started to feel disoriented I stopped the bleeding with a homemade tourniquet. A thing that was once the cure is now a sickness. Times change, I suppose. Still, we must get the bad blood out somehow.

It started as an accident, then I followed through out of curiosity. I was cutting onions for dinner, and doing so far too quickly; grilled chicken, asparagus, with sautéed onions and mushrooms. A couple glasses of Cote du Rhone. A handful of Xanax and then a hot bath. I somehow managed to finish preparing dinner, and even eating some of it. Blood rushed from my body over everything that I came near. I told myself that things would be forgotten first, then found. It felt ritualistic.

The tub seemed to fill with blood very quickly. That's because blood is thicker than water, and hot water will cause dispersion and impede coagulation. It was a novelty how this mistake, a slip of the hand, led to this. This sudden urge to find out how something might feel. What to expect toward the end of expectations. I wanted to know what the last thing would look and feel like. I could feel my heartbeat through my entire body.

If you've never sat in a tub filled with your own blood you'll find that you might want a shower afterwards. The smell at first seems wetly metallic, but then it almost seems sickly sweet as if it was fruity or ripened. It was everywhere and never got the chance to dry. The water kept if from hardening, and decaying further. From within the filled tub it gushed freely, creating red blossoms of underwater inflorescence. I watched these flowers form and disappear. When I pulled the wound from the water it tasted just as one would expect, sweet and burnished, almost stannic, like foreign wine from an old copper cup.

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Hyperopia

I have myopia; not its tremulous opposite. 

This fact usually pleases me, as much as it might.

Though, every now and then...

Somebody stands in my bathroom as we prepare to depart:

What are you doing? Those aren't eye drops, that's nasal spray. 

Now, you understand, you see.

The nose is the most direct path to the brain, we're told. Vacillators being just what they are. Eye drops are mostly lubricants, relieving pain over time. The curious strain of lids blinking. The friction of watching things like love arrive and depart. 

At some point, every person must decide how much nonsense it becomes worth to swallow.

If the eyes are the window to the soul... then eye drops are barely religious, more ritual than relief.

 

They make us seem. 

So,

Let the lamp affix its nasal beam.

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Let us follow him with lettuce, and cabbage

Time approaches, recedes. 

This weekend, a friend comes to town. I will drive in to Berkeley / SF to meet him. We might go see a rock-soul revival band. The Alabama Shakes at the Greek Theater. I haven't bought a ticket yet. They are expensive, at least to my waning financials. $100. Who cares though, really. Didn't I just cite the title of a study here recently which claimed that people who spend money on experiences are generally happier than people that spend money on things.

Didn't I?

Then, hopefully a day with the boy before I depart for NYC. I will attend a Greek baby baptisma. I will try not to discuss the pagan significance of sacraments and induction. 

Try.

Speaking of, I think they should induct Pete Rose into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. If anybody within the realm of that circus had any sense then they would, just to prove that they still have some shred of rock credibility left in them.

Because what can be more rock-n-roll than having an issue with compulsive behavior(s), and honoring it.

What?, I ask.

Honorary Inductee: Charlie Hustle. 

Or, maybe they should induct him as Charlie's Hustles. The words induct and indict are funly similar.

His alias sounds as if he was a drug dealer to the stars. Charlie's Hustles: When it absolutely, positively has to stay up overnight... When I lived in the East Village there was also a guy there known as Charlie Hustle, though for different reasons, I suspect.

Lots of Greek so far in this post. I will miss Greek Easter this Sunday in NYC, and the delicious leg of lamb that pleases God with it. My visiting buddy, Pete, and I have agreed to have a Sunday roast anyway. He is English, so it is what we should do, though we might not do lamb, etc.

Our lamb has conquered, let us follow him. 

It makes no mention of eating him, though we know that to be a component of transubstantiation, a bit of Catholic wizardry. 

Our lamb has conquered... That's Moravian! If I ever was going to convert to Christianity then I would adopt one of the odd Eastern European sects. Bohemia, unite!

I have an expatriate friend relocating from Prague to SF soon. I greatly look forward to it. Since moving here, for the nearly exclusive purpose of satisfying the dreams of another, I have felt more physically, emotionally and geographically isolated than ever before in my life. 

Now, I am happiest when caring for my son, but get bored and lonely when he is not with me. This is not the life that I would have chosen, at all. Well, perhaps half of it is. It is a consequence of trying to make another person happy. Big mistake, that. 

Having social time is a luxury for some and a requirement for others. I am among the latter group. I am given over to dark moods when left alone for any period of time. So, I find temporary happiness and solace in chatting with others. 

The impact of loneliness on another is difficult to assess. This is particularly true when the assessors are not isolated, nor necessarily lonely. They know about it most of all. You can guarantee that the authorities on anguish don't allow themselves to endure very much of it. That is what makes them such experts, and in a small town the experts are always everywhere. 

There is a greater concentration of expertise the more distance you put between people. It is known as the inverse prowess of the vacuum ratio. People come from miles around just to be near it, to drink in its warmth.

There's no love quite like country love.

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A night flight to Bagan

Always, I wait too long, then it is too late. My mind races to the day, and I can not catch it.

Writing is done best in the mornings, though I have been awake all night, waiting for it, waiting for the day to force me from bed, to coax me along with collective action. I want more, when I have tired of lying in bed.

My sensibilities are in slivers, shards. This lack of sleep is taking its toll, again. Every morning I ask if I should drink that half pot of coffee. It makes me nervous, queazy, as if inner glass lacerations are opening and re-opening. My father's death changed me. Something within has become detached, lost. I clutch at things, yet can not grasp.

I want more of something, suddenly. 

What will ruin me will ruin me. 

It's foolish to believe, to think that anyone ever escapes it.

Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law. 

And why wouldn't it be.

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"Put on your stockings baby, cause the night's gettin' cold"

San Fran in the early morning hours. I awoke to the rain in darkness. I came in to the city last night for a dinner party. We stayed up late chatting, very late for me. We tried to find a place where a friend was making her djing debut, but we had no luck. We found a closed door and an empty sidewalk. I have no idea what might have happened, either we arrived far too late or I had somehow misunderstood the nature of the location. It would not be the first time, for either.

After we ate our spaghetti and meatball dinner we listened to Bruce Springsteen's lo-fi masterpiece. They swore that they would hate it, now I have to send it to them. We played it almost from beginning to end.

On the drive into the office all of the SF crazies were out in the sadness of the early morning rain, swatting at windmills, tussling with space spooks. All that it takes is the one extra component of the rain and then the desperation becomes much more tangible. So little can be done.

Speaking of sadness... the neighborhood kids love me, because I talk to them. They are attention starved. They often ask if they can come in to my apartment and play with Rhys. There are a couple of them whose families, I do not believe, allow them inside until it is time to go inside to go to sleep. They go straight from the communal courtyard to their rooms with who knows how little conversation or interaction with their parents.

Once, when getting ready to wind down with the boy I explained that we were going to go inside and take our baths, and then I wanted to read the boy some stories. I could see the swooning in their eyes.

You read to him?





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I bought a vinyl copy of the album for a friend not so long ago and mailed it to him at the address that I had. I don't believe that it ever arrived. Somehow fitting that it would get lost. It suits the narrative.

Congregation gathers down by the riverside 

Preacher stands with his bible, groom stands waitin' for his bride 

Congregation gone and the sun sets behind a weepin' willow tree 

Groom stands alone and watches the river rush on so effortlessly 

Wonderin' where can his baby be... still at the end of every hard earned day people find some reason to believe

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"Oh, you've got grey eyes"

Can not wait to go home and read a few pamphlets. They have all piled up on me, again. Tracts, solicitations of hope; slivers, where wood is needed most; faith, shadows, hints, suggestions; gloom amidst the muddy roots of pleasure; gnarled wellsprings, ifit springs at all. It generates susceptibility; gods, ideas, exercise, yoga, et al. There is a dourness to life that the very best among us sweat of, time being no cause for warrior.

Few things are as undramatic as a library. This library never extinguished that fire. Nothing really mattress, anyone kamikaze. 

I would drink a bottle of wine, but don't wish to sit in bed; would have already left were it not for this book that I want to read, just arrived; to check my email, to nod once more without moving a pillow, to blink and close the world.

Few ever really works on their drug problems, they play on them, if at all. 

The only unpayable debt is the sense of guiltiness; it is the one unforgivable skin, to believe that you can not be fore given skinned. 

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The Don Father

Apparently, I couldn't stop myself... I awoke around 1:45 am and didn't immediately go back to sleep. A little Mad Men might help, I thought. I watched five more episodes of the dreaded season seven. Don Draper has become the Richard Nixon of advertising, and they're going to kick him around for a little while more. Nobody seems to want him there any longer, except maybe Roger Sterling, the closet sentimentalist and self-preservationist. 

Draper was a self-defined man, all the way up until he cracked a little; letting the definitions of others seep in, then those definitions soaked him. I mean, he had made some mistakes. He had violated the advertising code, to never allow a meeting with a client to veer into unpleasant territory. At a conference with Hershey's he spoke candidly and honestly about himself. That was all it took. There is one thing that will not be tolerated in advertising and marketing: honesty.

They let him come back to the firm, but with strict conditions. Just as he looks as if he's going to crack from one of those conditions he seems to pull it all back together. We'll see where it goes, what type of final characterization they'll provide for him. 

For several episodes now he seems as if he needs a shower. His hair appears greasy and uncombed. To my memory, they have never shown him exercise, nor engage in any activity that might suggest an improvement in health. His complexion tells the tale. 

He has won back some trust and warmth from his daughter, Sally, after the girl caught him fucking the neighbor. He does so, oddly, by suggesting that they dine and dash, after he explains that he hasn't been in the office and he was ashamed to tell her. 

Honesty and trust are very slippery themes here, and everybody seems to have a different capacity and tolerance for and against them.

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Sean's Easter Fireside Chat

A weekend with the boy. Easter egg hunts and fish dinners. I hadn't planned on Easter fish, but I am hosting tonight with an all vegetarian crew. I think they're all vegetarians. Pescetarians, I should say. Nothing that walks, or can acknowledge that they're being eaten, which is why I love bacon.

How do most vegetarians feel about oysters? They're like the mushrooms of the sea, somewhere between animal and something else. If I remember, they don't have central nervous systems. So, no pain. As far as the "reduction of suffering argument" goes then few should have moral qualms with oysters. But, we're going to have salmon or tuna tonight. I haven't decided yet. Trying to feed oysters to vegetarians seems almost cruel. I'm not sure why I feel that way though, I guess it's the "I just don't like the texture of meat" cliche extended past beef and bacon.

I have a patio table and chairs now, so we can bask in the vibrant ambiance of the barrio.

I have been going over my finances and it looks as if I might need to return to reading books for entertainment. A few of my speculative investments have floundered or failed. Other than a handful of years between being a performance and recording artist and a technician I have usually been able to make money. Not a lot of money, but I have done just better than surviving, with just better being all that I really needed. It has always left me wanting a few things, though always feeling that I had what I required to be happy. 

(Self-describing as a "performance and recording artist" is such a twat thing to do, but it made me giggle a bit. So, why not... I've started using brackets again, also, haters.)

I read the title to an online article last week (I never bother reading the actual article, it will ruin my opinion of it) which stated that people who spend money on experiences are generally happier than people who spend money on things. I believe this is true, though I'm also willing to bet this is a cause of a personality type and not the result of just choosing to spend money to travel, though I doubt the article made that claim. It seemed like an ad, a "suggested post."

It's not as if you could get some old pile of complaints to empty their carefully guarded retirement account, to pack up the wife and travel somewhere, and expect an auto-epiphany to be the result. They'd bitch, bemoan, and regret concerning the "loss," especially when they returned back home to their favorite chair.

I have rededicated myself to the idea of travel, with or without the article. I think by later this year I would even be able to travel with the boy. He and I are becoming quite the team. A year ago everybody told me that it would happen, but caring for him was still a struggle. Yesterday, I noticed some diapers that were still in the bathroom drawers, from boxes I had moved from my last place. The site of them seemed silly and from so long ago. But now, he sleeps mostly in his bedroom, has never wet his own bed, and only mine once. That's a pretty good track record for a kid that has been through all that he has, and he's only 3.25 years old, a fact that surprises everyone who's told of it. The kid's a bruiser, no question about it. He'll be taller than me by Autumn.

Speaking of the death of things, I started season seven of Mad Men. Oh Jesus, the cracks are really starting to chasm, the creeks have become canyons. They're all having to address their own destructive behaviors. I'll have to stop watching. It breaks my heart, but I can't stare into this part, the well-lit abyss. 

It's like most films that feign to explore drug use, they're fun to watch right up until about the halfway point, once the morality play begins. You know when it's happening, you feel the arc cresting and beginning its drop. That's the best time to just start it over at the beginning. Most drug films are just horror films with a chemical killer, nearly invisible yet always lurking. These films offer the same private titillating glances in to murder.

You can hear the voices in the theater, Oh no, girl, don't go behind that door...

I used to silently make fun of people who used the word behavior in the plural. I have grown up, some, since then. The word already suggests a set of actions, a plural manner of being.

It need not be pluralizeds.

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Bad Man

(I should not have used this image for this post.)

No, I was only kidding yesterday. I have well over thirty unique articles of underwear, each from a different country, all seemingly designed for a slightly different gender. Do not worry. If I run out I can always buy more. They're making new nations every day, just for me! 

For many years I didn't wear underwear. It seemed to make life easier. It was Rachel's suggestion that I start, if memory serves. I seem to remember her buying me some. That was the form in which the suggestion arrived, as a gift. Do you see where that got me?

Mad Men is still driving me crazy through the darkest hours. Last night, Don Draper is being told by the neighbor's wife that their mildly sadomasochistic affair is coming to an end.

He: It's easy to give up something when you're satisfied.

Her: It's easy to give up something when you're ashamed. 

I'll need to take some time off from my gluttonous consumption, maybe a few months, but my plan now is to watch each season again. CS has rightfully called it a masterpiece. 

Bobby Kennedy was killed last night again, also. 

The past is beginning to make me feel old. Not necessarily "my past" but specifically the past of Mad Men. They make periodic references and I know all of them. I recognize that other people might not. Dorothea Lange was from last night.

The reference to Lange reminded me of a book that I have by Margaret Bourke-White. It occurred to me that few of my friends would know who these women were. For whatever reason that, coupled with the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, made me feel old. Even though these people lived and accomplished what they did long before I became aware of them. It is my time's relation to their time that did it.

Does that make any sense?

Never mind. I am no fan of purely sensible things. It was just a late-night observation.

In the mornings, I never measure out coffee when making it. I just eyeball it. Maybe that's my problem and explains the deep erraticism in my nature. 

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Mood-Based Egg Templates

I am a man obsessed. 

Anyone that doesn't watch each season of Mad Men, at least twice in succession, and then document their experiences in writing or in some other quasi-expressive endeavor, is not living to my standards.

(Do you italicize a tv series?)

This show is the only thing that has ever made me want to read John Cheever. Even when Rhys is here, I am up late into the night, gorging myself on episodes like a man with a genuine problem.

From the episode last night, in which the news of Martin Luther King Jr.'s assassination was made known. Roger Sterling walks into Don Draper's office and says only this:

The man knew how to talk. I don't know why I thought that would save him. I thought it would solve the whole thing.

Well, if any regular readers here will recall, I had ordered some kitchen wares from the local hoodlums, ostensibly to finance some school trip down the coast to Monterey. The boxed booty finally came (see pic above); a pot holder (not shown), a silly hippo cutting board, and templates to cook eggs based entirely on mood. I wondered if the stuff would ever arrive. I thought the little gypsies had taken me. I couldn't even tell which one had peddled these expensive domestic fictions. The all look alike. They're ethnic, or something. The kids, I mean.

To speak of domestic fictions...

I have begun washing my own clothes again, also. 

(I know, I am a pig of several sorts.)

But, it's true, and a very strange thing has struck me during the process. I will go a month or more without washing clothes. I own that many t-shirtsm and jeans, and well.... I was warned not to wash the jeans. 

So.

As I am trying to rack the t-shirts straight out of the dryer while they are still warm I become quite impressed with my survival abilities. I have the timing on this thing down now. It really is all about the rhythm. That is, unless you've given up and just don't care any more. Then, your clothes just become a soft lumpen mess from which you draw and prepare each day's new outfit. 

I will rush no less than twenty newly racked shirts into the closet and then almost as many gym shirts. The latter I will simply stack one on top of the other and then use them again in inverse order. The socks can wait until they find their lost partners among the ruins of Washington Hill. 

Nothing says love like socks does.

It's when I get to my underwear count that the math on this monthly strategy starts to crumble. It makes no sense, at all. It just can not be possible. There appears to be an administrative error, or two, at least. I count the other articles, I carefully count the crusties again. I do the math... the very specific division between undies and days passed. I immediately suspect a thief. Though, who would steal my underwear...? That activity works best the other way around, I've found.

I think back carefully to the last time I washed clothes, and what my life was like then. I try to remember a time that I washed only underwear between that time and this time. I search my memory for such an odd washing session. The numbers just don't add up, or divide, or anything. There are no memories to backup up an illicit undies washing session.

Disgust is the only available response. I inspect all of them with a newfound scrutiny, searching for any errant indicators, wayward blemishes. I am hoping to find one pair that I can throw out, blaming everything on that weird two-week period in my life, only a few days previous. 

Nope, they all seem reasonably clean, and I wear (mostly) men's white cotton boxer-briefs. This type of underwear is closely related to the eternal grade school tattle-tale. If you had ever acted inappropriately and perhaps deserving of a demerit, for even a single indiscreet second, then this underwear would announce that fact loudly and proudly to the whatever world would listen. Muffled on one side, present danger on the other.

Nothing there, I swear, which also makes very little sense. The only explanation is that I have soiled a pair of underwear so completely and over such an unexpectedly long period of time, then forgotten having done so, and there is somebody that sneaks into my apartment (hopefully a young woman) and steals them from me for who knows what foul personal pleasures. It is conceivable that, when finished with her own perversions, she is washing them and returning them back into the stack, to be used again by me. Maybe she sneaks off into the night with the next pair, for a month of private joys and longing. It is impossible to say with any certainty.

This month, I will be on better guard against such a thing. 

You have my word.

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"Oh, you've got green eyes...."

Breaking up is hard to do, but it does not come without its occasional joys and surprises. Every now and again, you feel free. The wind coming through the windows, the music playing softly, the book you happen to be reading, the unexpected acceptance that you have the day to yourself, truly to yourself. One man's horror is just another's understanding. Time lurks and menaces in the darkness, though it can be quite soft and sweet in the afternoons. 

It's not all over yet, of course. The heart does not work at the mind's pace, nor is it always able to make the same leaps, particularly as it tries to jump forward. It comes around, it must. Absence stings for a while, then like most things it becomes too boring to endure. All that it takes is some tickling from fresh fingers and the past delightfully becomes the past.

Time moves one direction, the heart another.

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One episode bleeds into another

I don't understand what the fuck is going on on Mad Men any more. I fall asleep too often while watching, or I just listen instead of watching, imagining the action, blocking, editing, shot composition. The script tells only a part of the story, the reading tells much more than just another half. The voices get confusing, blurred, there are many new characters, etc. 

I pick up where I've left off and somehow Don Draper is fucking his previous wife, Betty, in some cabin motel. Then, Don's smoking hash in LA. Sally Draper has become a young woman.

They're lucky that I'm not the head writer for that show, very lucky. All of the principal characters would be killed off and a whole new cast would emerge, all of Sally's friends. Perhaps this is why they're ending it next season. Post-cherry there isn't a single reasonable place left to go. The last episode would just be a re-make of Moonrise Kingdom.

Maybe not all of the principal characters would need to die. I'd save a few, just to punish them, like Pete Campbell. They have all made a lot of poor decisions in life, all of them. It is comforting, to me. There are allegiances, some trust others, but few are worthy of trust. It doesn't matter where I pick up on an episode, somebody is often on the verge of ruining it all, for themselves or everybody else. I don't see how they do it, the writers. Ever since the office merger things have become confusing. 

Everyone on the show is, in their own way, unloveable. 

Holy Jesus... while writing this... Sally just walked in on her father, Don Draper, fucking the neighbor, Mrs. Rosen. 

What more can possibly be said about such a thing.

Maybe I should start watching Louis, instead. It might be easier to keep up with. 

Fewer surprises, when not all surprises are bad.

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A River Runs Past It

My brother offered to buy me an airplane ticket to Florida. I want to take him up on the offer. The timing is bad, or poor, for me. Though, I have nephews there, recent acquisitions to the fledgling empire of family.

He is worried about me, I think. Mr. Brother. He is Abel to my Cain.

No, that makes too little sense. God is not displeased with my offering of fresh garden cucumbers to my brother's cooked, dead goats. In the end, all of us are keepers to brother and sister alike. 

Lambs led to laughter.

That would be a silly criteria for a loving God to invoke; to prefer lamb to land with such lasting significance. Who could openly believe such a thing. Certainly a just and modern God would never read, nor so gravely consider, the Old Testament as being serious. Vegetarians must begin to cringe shortly after the first chapter of Genesis. 

Post garden, post Eden, post under. It's no green wonder.

If we, my brother and I, were the two from A River Runs Through It then I would be Brad Pitt, the younger and dead one. Though that comparison is perhaps too Methodist for the purpose of this post.

We are both problematic fellows, he and I. Though, I have often had a special knack for getting noticed for my problems. In other years I might have been considered a shaman or a poet or a criminal, but instead I am trapped in waning and wanting times where my audience is increasingly comprised of official members of the local legal community. I have made myself a known nuisance, and yet somehow also acknowledged as a very good and decent man, worthy of much improvement.

The untangled struggle is that I am still in love with her. 

It was very difficult to detect, to feel, through all of the many disappointments, but now I recognize it for what it is. It is not only hope that departs; want is the heart's envoy.

It will not do me any good, will not help me in any way... this useless love. 

Yet, it is. The remains are all that are left to be swept.

People give much lip-service to the power and purpose of love. They speak of it as if it is thirteen months of a horoscope. Those same mumblers will discourage you from admitting to love when the timing is wrong for them, when it just doesn't fit any more in their ears.

Yet, I do still love the girl, and believe she needs it, and somehow I accept its overness. 

There is an essence to the death of love that is unmistakeable. Its stench is perhaps the most temporary and lasting thing there is; pressed blossoms that have stained a favorite book, too yellowed around the edges, too unbound to survive another single opening.

People say, express, and believe the most strange and contradictory things about love. It is as a flag that flies on any mast of many ships, it accepts each mission, each lost purpose or completed voyage in full, traded amongst nations, it proudly lies unflagged, and stands amidst its failures. It is most useful when hopeless. Love is the symbol of two-ism, under siege. It can always be heralded as a singular victory, yet functions well in defeat. It marches, conquers, vanquishes. Love has few permanent alliances, yet trades freely in most welcome ports. It is as gold, shiny and golden, though stolen just as much, and frequently just as often.

It is meaninglessness in a word, immense as a feeling, potent when spoken. No person is free from its abuses, none innocent of its eventual uses. Love is an action that is best unacted.

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The Mind-Forg'd Manacles

Nothing makes any sense. 

All of a sudden, I am filled with an enormously emptying sense of futility. Almost everything that I dedicated my life towards, gone; useless and pointless. All that seems left now is me and the boy, and part time at that. I don't know why this depresses me so much. There is much to be satisfied about, but somehow I can not seem to access any of it. 

Time, time, time says everybody, as if that is any less cruel and absurd.

I fear that I may put too much pressure on Rhys, that my fathering of him will become too important to me. That must sound silly to some, the idea that parenting can be too important. I am concerned that with him being the only thing left that matters out of all of this that it will unnaturally strain what was just becoming much more natural for me.

There is no way to go but forward, I'm told. What I would normally do when filled with an emotion that I could not conquer would be to just push up against it, and to just keep pushing. Slowly, it would move on. I mean depression, a state that I am much more accustomed to managing. With futility, there is nothing there to push against, just more of it in all directions. Futility is resistant to resistance. It is not a good feeling, and nothing very good can come of it.

I made the mistake of discussing it with my brother last night. He and I do not share many views. His answer is in giving things over to God, a response to life's struggles that does not work for me. I am sure that he is praying for me. Even though I am not a believer I still like it when people tell me that they will pray for me. It seems mystical, that a person would dedicate their quiet attention to invoking the assistance of the universe on another's behalf. I do it all of the time, though don't consider it praying.

I worry too much. Then, to justify all of my worrying I'll give myself something real to worry about. I don't want to feel as if I am just wasting my time, so every now and then some of my inner concerns must grow tentacles and take flight.

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Far from the Madder Men

Mad Men just gets better and better, though I have heard that the sixth season is not as good as the fifth, which is what I am on now. That's okay, I will adjust. I am sure that it is still better than most things on television. Can it be considered as being "on television"?

I just saw the episode in which Lane hangs himself in the office after being caught embezzling. His suicide note was in the form of a resignation letter from the firm. It was the option that he was given, resignation, rather than face the legal consequences. He opted otherwise.

Cato is on his way here. He began a pre-sunrise photo day, crossed the bridge to Sausalito in the dark, early morning, high iso, etc. Now, he heads towards Sonoma looking to shoot. I suppose I should put a battery on the charger. Perhaps we will hike.

I spoke very briefly with Rhys this morning. He will attend the services for his great-grandfather. His first, the grandfather's last. That is the way of things. 

I remember being traumatized at the first funeral that I attended. It was not due to my understanding of what was happening, but rather my brother's reaction to his understanding. He was crying, inconsolable. It was a close friend of the family, of my father's. Joe Crow was his name. My brother's reaction affected me most of all, him being my big brother, me seeing the power that it held over him.

It left an impression of death. A strong one. Finality is restful, in a way. Once the shock passes, the newness subsides, then mostly only acceptance remains. It leaves few choices in how to react as time passes. There are only the choices in how to feel. It's the same as when people are alive, only with the imaginary arrogance of self involvement for another removed. You are no longer provided the luxury of the idea that you can do anything about it, or them, at all. It's like a marriage ending. Life and love are ever meddlesome, death restful. 

Everything becomes "if only..." for a time. Then, even that recedes, powerless against the present, past, and all else.

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Less Than Zero

(mugshot)

Nothing much to report. The last stages of separating, getting the final remnants of my stuff from Rachel's house is going swimmingly. Last night a meddlesome neighbor gave me grief for being there, even though I have a key and was invited to do so by Rachel. None of that seemed to matter, He called the police. The police never care very much for what I have to say, so they arrested me. I made the mistake of standing outside to talk to them. Or, rather I should say that that is where they found me, rolling up an extension cord in the backyard. It was 2am, but the neighbor knows exactly who I am. He just wanted to get the police involved in the conversation.

So, they called Rachel to verify with her that I had permission to be there, which she did. Imagine how stupid they must have felt when they found that out. They let me go after about four hours, though they did actually charge me with something, for my own good. The charges will be dropped, as they never bothered collecting any evidence and their reason for being there in the first place rather crumbled when Rachel reminded them that I have a key to the place and was invited to be there.

I would have preferred if they would have at least de-loused me. It's always nice to know that you have one less thing to worry about upon your release, etc. I have a court date that luckily falls in the middle of my trip to NYC. I'm sure they will be reasonable about changing it to accommodate my travel whims. The court system is managed by fair-minded people.

I am tiring of this whole divorce already. I had thought that it would be so much more fun. Turns out that it's just like everything else about our relationship, a struggle that hardly seems worth it.

I do find it interesting how your perspective of a person almost completely changes once you relinquish that last little dose of hope that your heart has held on to.

Hope is some dangerous, silly stuff, but without it...

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Go Happy!

One night I sleep eight hours, the next only four, broken up in 45 minute segments. I feel as if I was beaten up by a mattress and two pillows. My sleep has too many commas in it. 

I have become a late-night binge watcher of mostly older shows and series. Mad Men is my new favorite again. Last night there was an episode, coincidentally titled "Far Away Places." The writing in the show is enviable. There are episodes that I like as much as "Scenes from a Marriage" or anything else.

The show from last night charted the trajectory of two relationships both ending in tandem. Well, one of them ends, anyway. The other gets just to the precipice, the empty edge of darkness, but pulls back just enough into the shade, away from the light of self-scrutiny.

In the first, after a fun night of lsd-inspired revelations, Roger Sterling and his wife are lying on the floor together speaking their newly discovered truths. It was all part of the self-reflexive portion of "the trip," shot from high above.

The wife says, "You don't like me."

"I did."

The next morning he leaves her. She is confused, but he explains that he has seen his new truth and he must follow it. He seems quite happy about it all. Things suddenly became perfectly clear to him. He explains his revelation to his ex-wife, encourages her to try acid. 

The episode ends with Don Draper in intense anguish and concern. He had abandoned his wife, Megan, at a motel, a Howard Johnson. There was an unpleasant argument about her only being an accessory to his life. He takes off without her, leaving her there in the parking lot. 

In the car there are vignettes, memories of better times. Don whistling "I Want To Hold Your Hand."

He returns to look for her. She is nowhere to be found. Somebody saw her get in a car. He finds only her sunglasses in the parking lot. Phone calls are made to houses, offices, parents, all veiled so as not to reveal the real concern for her, for her safety, or for the loss of his sense of control. A cop wakes him up in the restaurant of the motel. He explains the situation. The cop promises to help. Friendlier times.

He finally drives home, to find her there with the house locked. She lets him in. They are both angry for different reasons. There is a chase and they end up on the floor, faces to the ceiling, just as Roger and his wife were.

"You just left me there. How could you do that to me?"

"I don't know. It was a fight, it's over."

'"Every time we fight it just diminishes this a little bit."

The final scene, Draper stands in the conference room, a giant glass cage, alone. The other characters walk back and forth in front of him on alternating paths, showing little or no awareness of him. He sits still and watches as if viewing a life-sized screen of lives passing by on two different paths. 

Roger Sterling breaks the moment, sticking his head through the door to the conference room, glowing with post-trip joy.

"I have an announcement to make. It's going to be a beautiful day."

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"In my own country, I am in a far-off land"

I had forgotten how much I like the show Mad Men. Other people's lives are imperfect also, marked by the mistakes of self and others. Reminders of such things help. I watched it last night, almost two full episodes. As I did, I drifted off to a full night of sleep. 

My dreams turned odd and terrible just before I awoke. Something about missing a train in a land of foreign languages, dark skies, and bent metal. Decay. The station was so overcrowded that the trains were loading and unloading well past the platform, to make room for other trains that were trying to do the same. Everywhere there were people crawling and climbing and scrambling to get onboard. There is no chaos like foreign chaos. 

I was unable to verify that the train was heading towards my destination, though I tried desperately to find a departure board, anything. I held its name on a piece of scrap paper. The place was one that I did not know, did not recognize. I was certain that I was mispronouncing it. The many passengers looked at me or looked away with the dull disinterest one has of a foreigner in need. The doors started to close. I couldn't tell if I should jump back and out of the way of the departing train or if I should risk it and end up in an even stranger, less hospitable place.

I awoke and thought, what next, what next...

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Love is almost all you need

I already look forward to returning home from the city, to go to the gym. I exercise for the same reason that I now want the divorce, to feel better.

Another kick to the stomach, coming towards the end of a long series of kicks to the stomach. Things are more over now than I had guessed. I am told that it is for the best. That's what I tell the conflicted boy, also. He was crying out in his sleep the other night for "Mommy..." What can you do at such a moment? Love is and always has been an incomplete answer, even when it is the only possibility of a response. 

One of us eventually had to move on with our lives. In my own way, our "family" had become important to me. As the idea of reconciliation became increasingly remote I struggled to form and maintain a sense of cohesiveness in our lives. Now, it is all lost. The boy's mother won't be participating in my life any more, nor will I be involving myself in hers. The change was inevitable, I guess. I had exhausted my usefulness for the ongoing ambitions of her own life. Glad I could temporarily help, I guess.

I got a son out of of it, anyway.

Ah well, CS reminds me to keep my sense of humor about it. He is, of course, right. It feels as if there is nothing left to laugh with, though, no air to form the sounds. A profound abdominal emptiness might be the source of existential humor, but not necessarily of laughter.

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The Kiwi Kid

Adventures we did have. 

There are things I am still learning, like what juices to not buy. We were at the gas station, getting the full carwash and interior of the car cleaned. I figured it would be very fatherly of me to buy the boy a juice. Strawberry-Kiwi. What boy doesn't like strawberry-kiwi?

Off we went on our adventures. On the road we video-Skyped with the boy's uncle and cousins, chatted amicably with a few others, etc. We were off, speeding towards the future. Just before the Golden Gate bridge I noticed the plastic juice container rolling around empty on the floorboard in front of Rhys. We had been talking almost non-stop the entire ride. I felt around everywhere trying to find the wet spot that would have been the result of this unfortunate spill. The cap was back on, but not evenly. I had placed it in the center console, a place that I had not realized the boy could now reach when he so wished. I never even saw him take a sip. Such is the power of sugar and water. He must not have drank it in sips.

As we got closer to our destination, Cato's apartment, it became clear what the outcome would be. He begged for me to help. We were less than one block from Cato's when it came up on the poor boy, all over his car-seat, his jeans and Adidas jacket; a gallon's worth.

My car is a 2004 VW Bug, I think. The electronic key works when it wants to, never when I want it to, ever. There were wet-wipes in the back, what would be the trunk. If you can't get the back to open with the electronic key then it either requires two people or something like a cassette tape to lodge underneath the lip and then a second door command for the evil thing to function. None of this was a possibility. The boy stood bawling as I helplessly tried to conduct this foul ceremony.

We were awkwardly parked near a curb on Fulton, traffic sped by as the boy bawled and bawled. I climbed through the back of the car, over the car seat, stretching into the back to recover the wet-wipes, setting my knees in a puddle of strawberry stomach acids. Upon my return the boy had still yet to compose himself. He didn't like the throw-up any more than I did, perhaps even less. I comforted him as best as I could while I worked away at the volume of the stuff across his front. Cato helped as best as he could, going back upstairs to get paper towels, to allow me to try to dry the most affected areas, the trail of greatest offense.

I hugged him and told him that I always feel better after I throw-up, that all the bad stuff is gone now, etc.

By the time we made it upstairs Cato had found some remnant from Burning Man, a rubbery wizard's ball, as he described it. It is meant to excite the minds of ravers. When bounced on the ground it lights up in festive colors, somehow through its inner bubble bath. The boy bounced it along and giggled as it went, chasing it across the floor. Its pulsating iridescence and wizard spells magically erasing the memory of vomit, its power over the day vanished, though the scent still lingered a bit.

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The reluctant

(single father of one)

Adventure. The boy and I will go and explore today, perhaps into the city.

The neighborhood kids are becoming tedious. It seemed quite fun at first, the boy having all these local kids to play with. Now they are a perpetual nuisance. None of them have parents, none visible anyway. I am greatly outnumbered. Last night, I wanted to make some dinner for the boy and he wanted pizza. All the kids were playing in or near the doorway, ever creeping deeper and deeper into the apartment. When they heard the word "pizza" some deeply planted flip was switched, or perhaps a trigger pulled. They swarmed the kitchen in unison. The scene possessed the chaos of a Mumbai soup kitchen. I was certain to contract malaria, or worse. I would have beaten them away with a spatula, but I am reasonably certain that such a thing is illegal if not frowned upon, even in California.

So, I ended up making two pizzas and distributing the wealth as evenly as I could among the hordes, encouraging them to go and sin no more. In this I am Christlike, sans anchovies. They all loved me, even though the older ones could detect my frustration and were wary. They were taking turns playing with a toy rocket of Rhys'. One boy looked at it in covetous envy and asked if we were rich. I explained that we were not, though he seemed incredulous concerning this plain statement of fact. This feeling will be compounded when I move in the grand piano next week. 

It is the last object that Rachel and I shared, sort of. The only one that both she and I seemed to want that could not be adequately split, nor a duplicate purchased. I do enjoy it being at her house, but that was not enough to prevent me from also wanting to play it at my leisure. Less and less will I have the impulse to sing songs there, nor blunder my way through newly learned chords and phrases. Increasingly, our mistakes are becoming past tense. Soon enough, they will all just disappear from the record, like old speeding tickets that once raised the cost of our insurance. We'll both be getting our new licenses, fresh pictures, different addresses. Same old tattoos. 

I rounded the corner on my way home yesterday morning and Rachel and Rhys were heading toward school. We both stopped and I hopped out of the car to say Hi! to Rhys. Later, Rachel asked if I was just getting home. It was nice to tell her that it's really none of her business, the same way that she would to me. Though that slight feeling of sassy freedom was very-short lived. Never compete when moving on. It is the guaranteed path to wretchedness and rather inhibits the desired outcome. I will arrive at torment soon enough without the express pass. Rachel has announced her future intentions and they include making me miserable, though only as a by-product, not necessarily as a goal.

I first wrote goal as gaol, for the many etymologists that linger and dawdle, or find themselves trapped, here.

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The revolution was over, the problems remained

(My father, his brother)

Death, everywhere and for all time.

Life, everywhere; only so far, only so much.

Now gone, the boy's great-grandfather, Rachel's grandfather, she adored him much. This morning just south of Mesa, Arizona. The affable fellow who was just here visiting. Departed a handful of months before his 90th birthday, which would have been on July 4th. 

He spoke to me - Rachel's grandfather did - of being away from home for so long; an extended month of unexpected travel. He seemed fatigued by it all in his description to me, though he expressed no desire to go home to Waukegan where there was too much fresh snow. Two feet!, was the claim. Now, he will return home and the snow will represent no problems.

Rachel will take the boy to the funeral, his first. It was not discussed at all when my father passed away. That is the way that mothers are; somehow always right, most of all in silence, omission. 

One day I will explain it to the youngster, or find a way of avoiding having to do so. I do not yet know what my relationship to death is. 

The lawyer's office wrote late last night and asked where my paperwork was. I asked if the divorce was still happening? I presume that it is based on their lack of response, and that nobody outside the office has informed me otherwise. I am becoming increasingly settled with the idea, though I neither invited it nor initiated it. I had hoped to maintain the semblance of a single family, in this post-separate world. The pattern that was in place long before Rachel and I met had more to say about it than I did, it seems. 

I was not invited to the memorial services. I am often reminded by the soon-ex how much I am loved by her family. I suppose that one does not get an invitation to a funeral. You are informed, and then you act, or choose not to based on your ideas of discretionary spending and how it relates to pleasure, duty, purpose, guilt, otherwise.

I have been given notice. The rest is up to me. 

In fairness, the boy's mother did ask me if it was okay that she take him to the funeral services, to which I responded, of course, of course.

Do I sound bitter, or even worse? I am both, and even yet much worse than that, some nights.

Few things remind of love as does death.

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... a second hand emotion

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Please secure your own mask before assisting others

On the night when I need normalcy in sleep the most, before driving into the city, my mind races and I became anxious, turning and flipping underneath the covers. Sweating, then having my legs become chilled when they are out from underneath the covers. Five hours of sleep will have to do for a very long day.

Still, I awoke before my alarm clock.

A friend has invited me to stay in the city for dinner tonight. I am tempted but uncertain. Staying involves additional fatigue. Just the thought of not sleeping in my own bed makes me shudder a bit.

Things have progressed between Rachel and I, or should I say digressed? With either description, we are moving as fast as we can towards completing our separation. There is a sudden enthusiasm driving all of our actions. I preminisced no return to the salad days. We will move on with our lives in some form or another. Separated, yet bound.

I am now available on the open sex-trade market. My most recent profile pic can be found above and below. I merely need to photoshop some flowers in the left hand.

Tired of waiting, tired of uncertainty, tired of floating in the vacuum of love.... Try a canvas love mask. 

It's the best way to preserve whatever's left.

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