Rampant Radicalism

There is a little sushi place here in town that I love, Rocket Sushi. I know the name makes it sound as if it might be all cream-cheesy tempura rolls, but it is not at all. The sushi chef there is great and provides me with slices of fresh raw fish to sustain myself through the long summer nights. That, and he makes miso soup with truffle oil, little tasty mushrooms, and crab. 

Delicious, and all of that is before the cold sake and beer.

I went last night. I couldn't take this feeling that I have had of living a life of moderate restriction for almost four days, so I splurged. 

Speaking of splurges, I may be going to Burning Man in two weeks. I started looking at tickets and a parking pass yesterday. There are still a few things to consider, and I am on the fence about going at all, but the winds are shifting. The sails on my bike are gradually lifting me towards the dry lakebed in the sky. There are many haters, some that would have me reduce my carbon footprint by not going at all... They would deprive me of the pleasure of drinking warm red wine in the sun while sitting inside of a Boeing 747, high on ecstasy. 

Why can't I just be one of the burners that doesn't really give a shit about the future of the earth or corporate non-profits like Black Rock City, LLC? You know, a simple burner that involves themselves in the more spiritual pursuits of intoxication. 

We'll see.

Before arriving at the sushi place last night I tried again to make it all the way up the mountain to the west. Sonoma Mountain. I failed, but my heart nearly burst trying. It must be good for me, that exhaustion that occurs deep in the vital organs. That screaming for mercy that is indicative of a serious circulatory issue of some kind, or organ failure. If you have never tried using a mountain bike to ride up a mountain then you are doing it wrong. Any fool can ride down a mountain. 

I sweat out some of the bad spirits trying to hit the summit. These embodiments of evil leave the surface of my skin in generous cupfuls of man-sweat. My whole physique is an accretion of wrinkled, loose skin, like a long-sleeve scrotum stretched over what used to be my head and chest. It pleases the Roman deities that I also sweat as if I am buried suffocating inside a pair of summer blue jeans. 

I am nearly at my target weight, my goal, my preciousness.... 200 pounds or below. I've been within two or three pounds of it for a week now. It has been almost a decade since I've been below that seemingly unbreakable fat-floor. I expect to be at 170 lbs upon returning from Burning Man.

We'll see.

I've been told that trying to lose weight at Burning Man is dangerous, but that's stupid. Those environmental factors play perfectly in to the needs of a crash diet - intense and unforgiving heat, sandstorms, lack of bearings, mitigated communication, dehydration, wandering from the group, hotbox port-a-potties. All of that stuff will help you become thin and beautiful. If I do go, I plan on giving a series of impromptu lectures on playa survival. It will focus on the spiritual requirements of abstinence and the many variations of sin that can be found in relentless self-pleasuring.

It will be mostly a recap of last year's lectures titled, "Radical Self-Servings (all you can eat)." 

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Please, not an octopus...

This morning, a friend posted a notice of her anniversary. Five years. I went to the wedding the day before leaving NYC. A nearly last minute opportunity. It was very sweet, a great way to leave on a high note, celebrating both events with friends. Though admittedly the wedding did overshadow my leaving a bit at the time. 

Time is airborne. That was half a decade ago. How many half decades are aloft, how many remain. 

Later that same night we all sat at one of our favorite meeting place bars. There was a going away party. The newlyweds shut the place down. Not even I, the great and mighty, could stay any longer. It was time to go. I had subleased my apartment a few days before that, which lasted exactly a year. The landlord sent documentation that made it difficult to argue. When you buy a house in California you can not easily claim residency in an NYC apartment, also. 

So, I let it go. 

Turns out that apartment should have been kept, at almost any cost. Such is life. You jump and hope for the best. Then, you jump again and again and again, until you are crazy from the jumping. At a certain age, I'm not sure which, you just tire of jumping and you want stability in your life. You have tired of hearing people announce the hidden value of change. You have benefited all that you wish to from uninvited change. You just want those people away from you, happily changing themselves elsewhere. Sometimes you just need a couple years of stasis, to keep from going jump crazy.

Though a decrease in mobility hasn't taught me how to better shop for groceries, and my cooking has only become marginally better. Perhaps I am only romanticizing ideas again. I need an alligator attack to bring me to my senses. I miss the randomness of Florida. You could always expect it to be crazy there - crazy hot, crazy humid, crazy swamps, crazy rivers, crazy drivers, crazy people. It is a state of energized fools. Beware the emptying of the bayou. The sun draws something out from deep within the genetic makeup of mankind there. It oozes out through the pores, a syrup of insanity. You can hardly see it when you're there, can't miss it upon returning. 

  

Oh time, remember?

A friend's mother passed away a couple months ago and in trying to be there for her I realized that I can hardly manage even a slight change in schedule. If something is not an outright emergency then there's very little time for it. I no longer get to decide when I can be free. Or, the cost of making that decision too often is too great. So, you learn to love the treadmill, the semblance of motion. 

I was likening myself to a happy Sisyphus a few weeks back, riding my bike up the side of a mountain. I had disabled the front suspension so that bike was as rigid as it possibly could be. Something about the slight loss of forward and upward motion through downward force applied was bothering me. I recall telling myself that if I was going to push anything up the side of a mountain I wanted it to be a rock, not an octopus, not a marshmallow, but a rock. A meaningless distinction in an eternity of uncertainty; riding melting marshmallows into the sky. 

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Skate 'Nough

(Ollie over Da' Lub Macheen)

Yesterday I lied a bit again, for the purpose of trying to make the story circular - less oblong or irregular. It was not the guy who committed suicide who pulled me away from the train, it was a survivor. A minor indiscretion, for the sole purpose of dissimulation. 

I often omit facts rather than bother misrepresenting them. The tale relayed yesterday could not bear the weight of another character. There was already the black-hole-like gravity of the self-involved author. Then of course there was the suicide. I had run out of space for other humans in there, within the standards of brevity we all enjoy. 

As I get older, I think less. But also I think less of the suicides that I have known, or been near. I think less of everything. Perhaps I am just thinking more slowly than I once did. The cycle of my thoughts is perhaps in order, it's simply recurring less frequently. My bpms have slowed, even wobbled.

When certain things do cross my mind they spend less time there than they once did, so it is not so spiritual as to be related to oscilloscopes or yoga. 

Who cares. Things change. 

Time passes; love fades. 

Love passes; time fades. 

Love is a reflection of the quality of time's passing. 

Time is a reflection of, etc., etc.

I keep trying to do things. More things. There's no spare tire for it, though I have taken up amateur skate photography. There is a burgeoning skate scene among the kids in mi barrio. 

Recurring time to have some to oneself, to parent, to work, to occasionally read a book, and to enjoy the burden of a single or dual modest set of ambitions... One must choose. One must shave when you are a man's face. 

I'm lying again, wrapped in a story. It is good for women to shave also. I choose to write a daily blog, one that has increasingly become about me exercising daily on my bike, or the bike that I want; time spent there; observations made, scratching against the surface of the earth, verifying that I am alive. 

I should find somebody to exercise with... I hope that I wouldn't end up resenting them for eating up all of my "me time." It's what happens with love, you know: reminds you that it doesn't have to be there. If two people find new ways to remind one another of that then they should be fine. 

Or.

Before you know it, or just as you know it.... this person that you once wanted to share every minute with took your words quite seriously, even literally when it made sense to do so, and now wants every heartbeat, to the very last. It's the way: to promise love, then to last forever, vow to capture one another's last heartbeat, if only to give it back to the past, if only, to, give, it. 

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Miniature Moments

The season is already changing. The earth is returning again to its tilt from the sun, leaning into darkness. Summer should be in full swing, yet there is a chill in the morning air, a grayness in the skies. There is quiet on days when there should be the sound of children playing. The breeze has begun to move the trees outside the window.

I took the day off from work, for reasons I correctly predicted last week. I was feeling stress and knew that I needed some time to myself. I used to hold months of solitude, if solitude was what I wanted. Now, the weeks are broken up into on-again / off-again schedules of work or parenting or social time, driving into the city or back home again. Rarely a day goes by that I can call my own, or can insist upon it.

Having time to myself is strange and unfamiliar now, as if it is a secret. To speak of it is almost to erase it before it happens. I sit here now, enjoying the silence and peace, worried that if I do not do something with it soon that it will disappear from around me. I will feel guilty for having squandered a thing that can not be saved from squandering. 

There is some cultural guilt surrounding freedom of time. American parents are fucked. There is a competition here to out-parent one another, at any cost. The imaginary escalation of good parenting in this country has destroyed the lives of those it is ostensibly there to improve. Not the kids, but the other ones, the ones who should know better. Everybody is trying to become worthy of a magazine mention. 

Don't get me wrong, some parents are just no good at it, others make it far more difficult than it needs to be. There is an hysteria that surrounds parental concern that prevents anyone from relaxing. It is how you know that this country can easily slide into something resembling fascism, the totalitarianism of freedom. Everybody gets to opinionate everybody else into a corner. It starts with rigid ideas about what is "good parenting" and might end with the faltering of one or both of our two political parties, which is of course already happening. Whatever purports to replace the current system should be guarded with deep skepticism, especially that system which claims to represent the best of the best of the freedoms. America is ready for it. I mean... they're about to experience it. I do not mean to suggest that they are prepared for it. 

My guess is that it will be Libertarianism, or something like it. It is far right wing conservatism under the banner of liberty. If not them, then it'll be the liberals under similar auspices, through the use of the boa-like constriction of liberalism. 

Ugh, today is my day off. I should leave politics for a work day, one that is already tainted with concerns and needs. Today should be a day for stories.

CS wrote of Peru this morning. 

I was reminded of one trip that I took there with a few friends, one of whom committed suicide a few years later. On that visit we were all performing at a big party. Afterwards, we planned a trip to go to Machu Picchu together. We took the helicopter from Cusco, rather than the train. It saved us three hours of sitting. It was an old military helicopter, still painted green. The jungles below were rich, vast, and unforgiving, also very green, nearly a perfect match. Any rescue operation that might have been attempted would have suffered apparent challenges, as would have any survival attempt made from the ground, from a swallowed dot of invisible wreckage. 

I came down with an atypical case of stomach sickness as we were in transit. I ate or drank something with the misguided courage one gets from traveling without consequences for too long. I spent much time in a small room vomiting, and also the other evacuation. I was drained of all excess energy and fluids. What little remained was for survival. The microbes had won. I signaled defeat with every breath, each drop of sweat. 

As we arrived and were walking towards our accommodations, there were train tracks where the passengers whom had come through the jungle would also arrive. We were walking alongside the tracks and could hear the train arriving behind us, its whistles blowing and the metal on metal chaos of locomotion. 

I turned and noted it, but was already too far gone into whatever sickness was going to take me to help myself, or to understand what I should have been doing differently. At what would have been my last moment a friend's urgent scream of a warning in the form of my name made it through the sickness. I stepped away from the tracks just in time to prevent the train from crushing my head from the side as it was arriving at the station. The look in my companions' eyes said much about the proximity of the near disaster, though no evidence was more convincing than the train itself. I remember in my fever turning to face the passing of it, inches away, watching the orchestrated steel move in unison in front of me where I had been walking, larger than any movie, larger even than a train. 

I nearly fell into it from the startle and shock. The friend who later took himself pulled me slowly away from what was happening. There is that moment at the onset of sickness where death invites itself and you are not yet aware enough to fight it off, to devote care enough to stopping it. Such is the confusion of its arrival in the fevering body, the delirium that attempts to replace life.  

I had miscalculated how far away from the tracks I was, how far the train extended beyond where the wheels touched track. My friends behind me had a clearer view of my miscalculation. There would have been very little chance of survival or rapid transit to a hospital, but rather only an unlucky death in the jungle, a crushed skull, or an equally unlucky survival. 

I lived to tell the tale. There are other details, but the sun is making its way to the ground outside, the hills are calling me, inviting me upwards as a river that runs backwards into the skies. 

I have started doing something devilishly irresponsible. When I see an inviting vineyard that appears unwatched then I will ride up and down a few rows of grape vines at full tilt. Exhilarating, knowing that a reasonably good rifle shot can probably hit my head from any balcony in the distance. That I will have never even heard the gun, the sound having made its way to what was me just miniature moments after did the bullet.

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"I just think I'll go away"

I never left the house today, never put my shoes on. Left my phone off for most of the day. It was glorious, sort of. I've binged watched shows in bed in my underwear, but then I lost them somewhere. They're probably under the bunched up covers, enjoying the momentary peace of solitude, praying for rain, or that I will think they're dead. I have several more pair, but what's the point. There will be no dinner guests tonight. Who needs underwear. I have eaten everything in the house that did not require preparation. Stood naked in the kitchen, the sultan of the fridge. I have dirtied all of the dishes that I could without malice.

I have been enjoying drifting in and out of a semi-medical coma. I've had worse days, those that can not be slept through. When it comes to sleep I want fewer options, none that involve waking.

Between old reruns of Adult Swim series I've been listening to some bluegrass. What tremendously great stuff.

There is type of person that claims to love all types of music, except country. Most of them are too stupid to know what bluegrass even is. It would all be the same to them. You know, the hordes of people who used to be fans of progressive house and would unashamedly talk about the different styles within that genre, but now downplay their youthful enthusiasms and indiscretions with mostly silence on the issue.


I think I pissed a few people off yesterday with my musings on the meaning and misunderstandings of equality. To try to define it, or understand what is meant by its enforced use, is not to argue for its opposite. People simply choose to believe in the concept selectively, and do not wish for anyone to question what is meant by it, or to question the existence of the honored quality within themselves. Equality is a term used to abort both thought and conversation on the very subject it purports to resolve by its acceptance. It is almost a non-sensical term.

If you don't know how to respect people then a bumper sticker ideology isn't likely going to fix it. I'm going to start telling people that Gandhi invented the word. You'll see that fact on Facebook soon, where it can really prove its effectiveness and flexibility as a concept. You know, being the spare change you wish to jingle in the world. 

Jesus, some people really make me wish to die, or kill.


Today was my brother's 50th birthday. I texted, but it may have been too late to reach him. He was part of the reason I developed such a deep love for music, though you might not know that now. He does not seem to have much interest in it any more. Or, if he does then he doesn't talk about it much. I'm getting there. Some of my passion for it has dwindled, probably hiding somewhere with my underwear.

But not today... not with all of the great bluegrass that's still available out there. I would starve the children of a third world country to be able to sing like this guy. Or, first world, whatever.

You know, delusions of banjo.

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Never discuss equality with me

(Nothing says equality quite like a man's fist)

The feminists I know are not mentioning equality when discussing the Olympics. Or, if they are then they are generally missing the point and don't quite seem to understand what equality is. They may be complaining about conditions or this or that, but they never mention that women are winning *world records.

I can win the *world record for my apartment any day that I wish. No true feminists that I know would question my world record. How could they? It's the world record of my apartment. They are winning the *world record for their gender, or sex.

Stick with this.... I'll try to turn it around. I'm off to a bit of a bad start. 

I saw one Tweet in which a woman was decrying the comparison of Katie Ledecky with Michael Phelps. Why shouldn't that comparison be made? They are both great swimmers. If there was such a thing as equality then they would be able to compete together. Or, at the very least Katie would be able to beat Michael while swimming in the same race, once her handicap had been calculated into her time. 

It is a technical term in sports, a handicap. Why does no one argue for handicapped times? Instead, they accept two separate races and two separate world champions. There is only the difference between these two victories when one considers the actual meaning of equality. One disallows it, the other emphasizes it. 

There is a percentile difference between men and women in swimming speeds and ability. That's right, men and women are different. Women, I believe, are faster than men in longer distances if I remember correctly, or perhaps the differences become more equal at increased lengths, as women enjoy a greater constitutional vitality. It is part of why they live longer, among other advantages. 

Wanting equality only when and how it benefits you is not equality, it is the usurpation of advantage - which is fine by me, and perhaps should have already happened in most every possible way, except wealth - but let's be more honest about it. We bracket the uncomfortable in an attempt to avoid it or make it somehow less bothersome. It's impolite to even mention it, so I must. I must. The only people who do not wish the world to be more flat are those living on the hills. Little matter that they may have struggled to arrive there, or if they were born there. Insisting upon equality forces the conversation to address the idea, something that most people do not want. Just try, you'll see. 

There is only one way to feel about the idea and that is being "for it," even though it can hardly be defined or agreed upon. The evil is to be against equality, which I am not, at all. I am for understanding what is meant by the idea, most of all. 

The same people who look aghast upon the idea of "separate but equal" cheer it on crazily every four years. Or, every time they bother noticing. The Olympics are both internationally celebrated and yet deeply sexist. The competition is arranged and divided almost entirely upon the lines of sex. Anyone that can not see that, or refuses to acknowledge it, doesn't understand what equality is. It is a very simple mathematical concept and represented well with a single icon: =. 

It is a symbolic expression, even when used in this capacity. Equality exists mostly as an abstraction.  

To wit, if men = women (or women = men if you prefer) then let's let that be that as an understanding of equality. If men ≠ women, or women ≈ men, or if any other concept of equality can replace the actual agreed upon one then let's admit that equality is not quite what it pretends to be and use different terms, because the actual meaning of the concept has been lost then, or obscured, for reasons that might also be worth noticing if we care about the idea at all. 

Say this out loud anywhere, I dare you: Michael Phelps would have won twice as many gold medals if he was allowed in all of the races. His gender prevents him from competing in about half of the competitions.

Or say this out loud anywhere: Katie Ledecky did not set a world record and never has. 

You'll see. She actually does not hold any world records. Those are all held by men. Or rather, man. 

Read most any newspaper. They will all mention her world records in an unqualified way. I'll say it again, Katie Ledecky does not hold a world record in swimming. Compare her times to the best times ever achieved and the discrepancy becomes very clear. I hope that I'm right on this. I clearly didn't bother checking this piece for errors, nor running it by my copy editor before going to press. 

Let's have Caitlyn weigh in on these troubling facts. She seems to possess the requisite courage and experience to address the world's many athletic gender concerns. My question is very simple: why are some people prevented from competing based on gender? Once asked, then other questions will need to follow. Why do we give out world records for sub-par times, based on gender? The answer is simple to derive, though very difficult to accept.

That doesn't mean that the questions should not be asked. Most people already have their accepted answers and will guard them with whatever hostility their gender can muster. This is why the continued asking of questions is as important as the conclusions that have already been agreed upon: to reduce the hostility with which ideas are met, as hostility does not defeat an idea, only a better idea can do that. 

The same indignation which has fueled the well justified fight for equality ignores the concept which it ostensibly advances when it is convenient or necessary to do so. That is why I love to argue with those who profess a deep and abiding belief in equality. Most people do not, at all, actually believe in the value and worth of equality. No true lover of ideas would wince from the subject. 

People are taught to be ashamed to admit their preferences, so they embrace equality as a concept, yet still they tend to only fall in love with those that they prefer. A true believer in equality might consider taking up a battle against romantic love, as all that does is herald one person of equal value over others with the same equal value. Silly, right? Then, why do we accept the same argument elsewhere. If we are allowed to express preference then what does that do to equality. Or, where does the boundary occur between them. It is there, in every person, so why don't we have better language for it.

Or, Why don't I? would perhaps be the more apropos question. Perhaps there are those who have dedicated their lives to separating the act of preference from the idea equality, and I am just a rube that has been out of school for far too long. 

I've said it all before, and have received the expected disdain for having done so. I'm very much for watching people compete and have no problems with categories. I don't even mind, at all, that the competition is generally divided between male and female where it makes sense to do so, which is where women generally can not beat men. Perhaps that is the wrong phrase: where women can not effectively compete with men. That is a much better description for what is happening. I find the raised male fist in the image above a very silly symbol for what it purports to advance. 

None of this is an attack on women. Quite the opposite. I very much want a world where females grow up and strive to become great. The very best. I want them to have goals and heroes that they can relate to. I know that I did, and I would wish it for anyone else. I also want them to grow up into a world where honesty flourishes and unpleasant observations are brought out into the light, not hidden from conversation. If we accept, codify, and celebrate differences between the genders then let's not also deny those differences where it is merely advantageous to do so.  

There are a number of examples of how we mainly ignore the concept of equality when it is convenient. We'll see if America soon has young women register for selective service. That is yet another area that people, even the best that I know, waffle and hem and haw when confronted with how they feel and then what they believe to be "right." The idea of both sexes registering for conscription is receiving wide support among both democrats and republicans. Women can now enjoy the federal benefits, so why should they be exempt from the same responsibility that men have for those same advantages. You see, it is easy to understand, yet there is something that troubles even the most mathematically inclined of hearts. It is perhaps a beneficial form of sexism, or at least, a form that nobody minds very much. 

It is only those among the odd-Christian-right that seem to be against it. If you want to know where you stand on the issue then just remember this: Ted Cruz opposes it.

It seems clear enough: Equality is not quite the noble idea that we pretend it to be. Not when defined by terms that can be used to easily define such a complex concept. Men and women may not be equal in all talents, though they are equal in worth and value and should be afforded the same opportunities and rights, as well as pride in status and accomplishment, both shared and otherwise. To deny this means something else altogether. 

If you think that I am now somehow disagreeing with what I have said above then perhaps I have not explained myself clearly enough, or you may be understanding only what you wish to understand, and hearing in what I have said something other than what is there. Sports presents a problem in the idea of equality. That does not mean that we should do away with sports any more than we should do away with competition that excludes one gender, which it does not appear that we are prepared to do. It only means that we should acknowledge what is happening as it affects how we understand ourselves and others. 

Which brings me to my conclusion: Mens' bodies and Womens' bodies are different. 

I will leave the other considerations of difference to each of you, to draw your own conclusions based on your own observations. Start with comparative longevity and then work your way around to the data concerning how many males die in spontaneous abortion. You will find that men and women neither start nor end on purely equal footing. The race between the genders seems to supersede the very lives we live, and the ones we don't. 

Let me see if I can find a passage from one of my favorite social critics, Jacques Barzun. 

I'll be right back...

Here it is, transcribed from the book From Dawn to Decadence, by me, just now. You can see how much I steal from him by comparing what I wrote above with what he wrote below. I was merely trying to equalize us. A true believer in equality would insist upon plagiarism as a rule of law. 

     In arithmetic equality is a simple idea; once grasped never unsure. In society it is complex and elusive. Thinkers who argue from the state of nature find it easy to say that all are born free and equal; but that is only because in that imagined state there are no standards to measure people by and at birth no talents to compare. The equality of souls in the sight of god also depends on a judgement to which we have no access. From these abstractions, the mind moves next to equality in rights, implying "equality before the law," that is, the same procedures for like cases. These can be made visible up to a point. Beyond it come human decisions - as by a jury and a sentencing judge, where equality again is untestable.
     At the third level - equality in social life, business, and politics - the principle is both in force and missing. There are so many facets to the human will and the civilized world that as many good minds have argued for as against the truth, the worth, and the meaning of equality. It was for equality of opportunity that the French revolutionists decreed public instruction. But does schooling provide it? The answer at once shifts to the question of individual ability: "human beings are not equal: see the test scores." To which the rejoinder is that schoolwork is only one measure and a vague one. There follows a list of great figures who were dunces in class. Besides, consider the illiterate guide in the Canadian woods: is he not in his domain the superior of Churchill and Einstein? Finally, if merit is measured by ability and it gives unequal results, is it iniquitous? The sans-culottes discovered this and their radical wing demanded "equality of enjoyments" (jouissances). Today the complaint is that the meritocracy forms an elite: it is aristocracy under another name; social justice demands equality of conditions. Logically, this should mean equal wages for all, but these have rarely been argued for.
     So difficult is it to define equality and nail down its conditions that in dictatorships where it is proclaimed and enforced in dozens of ways, the needs of government and daily life re-introduce distinctions; as Philip Guedalla observed early in the Soviet regime, "some are more equal than others." The paradox reminds us that in international law has no option but to assume, in the teeth of the evidence, that all sovereign nations are equal.
     There is but one conclusion: humans beings are unmeasurable. It follows that equality is a social assumption independent of fact. It is made for the sake of civil peace, of approximating justice, and of bolstering self-respect. It prevents servility, lessens arrogant oppression, and reduces envy - just a little. Equality begins at home, where members of the family enjoy the same privileges and guests receive equal hospitality without taking a test or showing credentials. Business, government, and the professions assume equality for identical reasons: all junior clerks, all second lieutenants, earn so much. In other situations, as in sports and the rearing of children, equivalence based on age, weight, handicap, or other standard, is computed so as to equalize chances. That is as far as the principle can stretch.

   

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Norovirus

(Émonda S 6)

Mom came over with the boy to drop off some Pedialyte. Her official nurse prognosis was norovirus, which does make some sense considering that I got it and the boy didn't and we had the same dinner. If it had been food that was off then it would make sense that we would both have became sick.

Mystery solved. 

It doesn't change anything about the misery of my condition. It does reduce some of the mystery. Now, I get to continue eating the previously thawed food out of the freezer and we'll find out. I know it's stupid. There is a steep price to pay for both curiosity and knowledge.

Something's wrong with me. There's no question about it. I'm not a person that often loses things, but in the last few months I've lost two pair of glasses and a usb stick and a few other things, I forget. it doesn't make any sense. I'm living a reasonably healthy life. I thought that was all that was missing. If I could accomplish some basic health then everything else would fall into place.

Nope.

The healthier I become the more my life seems to be falling apart in little pieces. The loss of the second pair of glasses was troubling. I had them less than a week: $500.

Ah well, the bike was the best purchase I've made in a while and has already paid for itself in what it has done for me. I have found some inner happiness when gasping and crying my way up the sides of mountains here. My body is always sore now. That's how you know you're fit: constant pain.

I went looking for road bikes, sort of, yesterday. I went to the local shop to get a new tube and started chatting with the friendly midwestern salesperson there. He drew my attention to a new road bike and extolled the virtues of such a sleek instrument of carbon-fiber fitness.

I don't need a new bike, everyone knows that. I just bought a great new bike. But why should that matter. Bikes are like cameras, you need several of them to truly be happy. They all do slightly different things. I am spending a tremendous amount of energy riding the mountain bike up mountain roads. That's where a road bike becomes useful, on roads.

Jesus, I need some sleep. I've purged up everything that I've tried to eat, have tossed and turned in bed all day, my lower back is sore from being in bed. I am fluctuating between being cold and being clammy. 

Earlier, I think I saw a glimpse of the light. 

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... money never changed a thing

After work yesterday, I rode my bike up the valley to Kenwood. It was a good ride and the day was lovely. I took a few off-road paths, one through the woods, one of which was a little bit rough. As I was heading towards the gym I noticed the front tire had a leak. It felt soft. I kept riding as long as I could and skipped the gym, wanting to fix the tire. I walked the last mile home.

Everything was falling back in shape. 

Then, I picked up the boy, came home, and made dinner. Now, do you remember me relaying that my freezer had partially thawed. This would not be the best place to thaw and cook spaghetti meat sauce for dinner, sauce that had partially thawed and then refrozen. In fact, this turned out to be a very bad idea, though I justified it at the time through a number of sentence fragments. 

I had reheated it thoroughly and thought that would be good enough. It wasn't. 

I read to the boy from one of his books and fell asleep in his bed with him, happy. When I awoke about an hour later I didn't feel very good. Everything went from bad to worse. I went to my bed and tossed and turned. Then the gates burst - the sweats, the chills, all else. I spent the entire evening ridding my body of the poisons that had developed within me. The idea of the boy going through the same helped keep me from falling back to sleep. I fretted about his health and kept peeking in on him to make sure that he was sleeping. Just walking around the apartment to drink water was difficult.

His mom came over early this morning and she says that he is fine now. Who knows, maybe he is stronger than me. I had two glasses of wine, perhaps that was it. But what could go so bad in a bottle of wine between one night and the next. It doesn't make any sense.

Vomiting makes you understand your body in new ways. My entire thorax was sore, but not from the contractions, I do not think, but sore from riding and the gym. I had become so used to doing a workout regimen nearly every day that I think I might have forgotten to ever let my body heal. I was just accumulating the need to recover.

My body has turned against me many times, but not usually for the purpose of health. Or rather, it tries to send me messages about my health, but it does not usually punish me for possessing any. 

Who knows.

I am working from bed right now, too tired to make myself any better with coffee or juice. The thought of both of them turns me into knots a bit. 

Now, I am forced to slow down and rest through the weekend. 

Here I lie; I can do no other.

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Nurse

I'm fucked - stressed out, need some time to myself. I took an extra day off from work this upcoming weekend, though work is not the cause of my stress, I do not believe. It can be a stressful job at times, but I am bringing anxiety to all that I do, even writing here. It feels awful, to resort to vulgarity as a substitute for anything. I am trying to make the world ugly for reasons I've yet to determine. It is causing me issues and I need to return to some sense of center.

So, this weekend I will lounge and loaf and invite my soul. Something like that.

I sit here now, eager to get outside and to ride my bike. Lately, riding my bike has felt like writing posts used to. I am putting something into it, getting something out.

Would anyone like to hear me go on complaining about how poor the effort that you're currently looking at really is? I used to hear people say that you have to be able to laugh at yourself, I hadn't realized they didn't mean cruelly so.

No, I kid. Most people seem to suggest that I'm far too easy on myself, if you can believe that. I have learned not to allow the inner voice to be too disappointed, or too harsh, for too long. It hasn't helped me much, but I do think that it is a key to laughter, whether you win or lose the inner argument it tends to finds its way out in an eruption.

I wish that I could somehow make this site my live Tinder feed. That should keep the dates just rolling right in. 

I'm ready to be unfaithful to an idea. 

Some of my previous fidelity could be attributed to the fact that other women nearby were cautious of me, the rest probably can be chalked up to drinking and drugs - inability to either love or cheat. It's almost too bad that drinking doesn't make women go dry the way that it can render men soft. Half of the world's ills could be solved by us each swallowing a daily bottle of evolutionary adjustment.

Moistness might be an advantage. Softness, perhaps even more so.

Yours,

Billy Bibbit

Well, that is a dark way to end the post. I mean, I'm laughing a bit at it, but fuck.... We all know what happens to old Billy in the very next scene.

I made a joke the other day and it had to do with the old dual similes of men being like dogs and women being as cats. Then, as you might, I pictured a dog fucking a cat. It was a scenario I have not envisioned in many years. I laughed for days, here and there. Still am.  I mean, if you just close your eyes and picture it... it is some fucking funny stuff.

I challenge you not to giggle a bit.

Doesn't matter whose side you're on: a dog fucking a cat.

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Atlas, holding up the skies

I'm not domestic. I can't seem to do it right, or often, or well enough. Somehow, I left my freezer door open again last night. Well, that's not accurate. A frozen bag of food fell out onto the floor and pushed the door open, where the door then remained open all night. Wide open. All of the food inside had thawed, of course. Again, hundreds of dollars thrown out the window. Worse than thrown out the window, still inside the freezer, where now I will need to throw it all out. On top of losing, now I also have a few chores to complete. 

I just can't seem to get it right. I'm considering putting a deadbolt on the fucking thing, or just super gluing the door shut. Maybe a well-placed bungie cord is needed here. I was doing so much better when I was just buying meals at places where meals are made. You know, restaurants. I never had these problems when I went to restaurants. They seem to understand how freezers work.

It's all stressful, then there all of the rest of life and living to contend with.

I found a new ride, a real heart burster. Sometimes it feels as if my legs start way up in my chest, pulling the precious resources away from my brain. The ride ended halfway up a road to the west, near the top of Sonoma Mountain. I am trying to find a back road or path over to Petaluma, the next valley over where there is the wide river that leads to the bay. 

I first rode up the mountains on the east into Napa county, then down and across the valley floor, through the weekly farmer's market at the square, then most of the way up into the mountains on the west, and off into the sun. 

I call them mountains, they are really just friendly hills. Friendly, until you try peddling up them. I made it most of the way to the sun, but couldn't go any further. Few things excite me more than defeat does right now. It's like hitting a triple in the 9th inning, then the other team getting the third out while you're standing there, 90 feet from scoring. 

You can not wait to play that same team again.

I have included the route below, sort of. They are the loop roads that are farthest left and farthest right in the image, for those of who like to look at maps and to think of me.

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Where does the wine go

(No Bird Is An Island)

Something glass is cracking. Then, the sound of crystal slivers crashing in unison on the warehouse floor. It's probably just a wave of love. 

I start to think that I have tired of being alone - that is, until I talk to my friends about their relationships. Being alone has never seemed so delightful as when I am on these calls. I laugh at them as if I am young and somehow wise again. I used to try to play the devil's advocate and point out to my friends where they were in the wrong. Not any more. 

My friends are always right, and their partners are always the problem. It's inexplicable that it works this way, but that's science, it lets us see new and unexpected truths. There is only a problem when you are friends with both sides of the monster of love. Then, you just avoid that couple, always find a reason to leave after your second glass of wine.

I'm going to gender-identify as a vegan from here on out. That should prevent me from having any relationship problems. That last sentence can probably be shortened by one word.

I enjoy romanticizing romance, but the realities of any relationship wear me out, love thrashes me most when I should be sleeping. Relationships fuck people up. They become a distortion of their normal selves, as if bubbles grow out of their foreheads announcing some previously obscured character defect - trust, jealousy, pride, security. All of it is a perpetual mess. If love is what completes people then I'll remain unfinished in my partial form. I can enjoy all of my shortcomings in relative peace. Watching it all in others from a close distance is fun enough. Then, I get to go home and have my apartment to myself. 

All the wine is left in the bottle.

Never date somebody without their own place to live and sleep. They are sure to drink your wine. That is a calculable error that many learn young.  

If you can just sustain that single thought through every decision that you make in life then you should be fine. Anything less than that and you enter the distorted perception field of love, the hall of broken funhouse mirrors. It will happen anyway, but at least when the other person has somewhere else to go then hopefully they can just go there when the wine of love has reached its boiling point. 

Once they are living with you then their place to be alone is also your place to be alone. Some love is just too much aloneness packed into a single space. 

When the other person has their own place everybody gets to go to sleep if they choose to, you can always share the remainder of the wine tomorrow, or on the evening that follows the tomorrow of tomorrow, or on the eve of never.

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Rememberables, etc.

Too much bad, cheap introspection. Stress used to be so much more fun, and memorable. 

The rememberables, etceterables.

I need a vacation - some time to myself. I've restructured some parts of my life, have realized now how many of my faculties are given over to the commitments. The blah, blah, blahs. 

I want life to feel possible and plausible again. 

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Baby Fever

The weekend slipped by almost without notice, each year they move faster and become more elusive. I spent some of the time cleaning the apartment with the boy, some of the time riding my bike up into the sky along the mountain lines, some of the time cooking, there was a day at the beach, then it was all over. The weekend is insufficient time to recover. Humans need much time to do nothing at all. 

I do. I need more time to do nothing. Nothing in my schedule - empty spaces, blank blocks of unimpeded time.

On the way to the beach the boy became a little bit car sick. I felt a little bit off also. I assumed it was my raging climacteric and the onset of his menarche. The cherry doesn't fall far from the tree, etc. It generally starts around our respective ages, approximately 4 and 48. Fuck, am I really twelve times older than the boy? Jesus, the mind makes for a terrible calculator. It's like having Melville's White Whale in the accounting department. I'll be gone before the boy even makes it to half of my age. It would take about 40 years. 

I should not think this way, it leads to darkness, desperation, despair.

To where did the remainder drift.

I worry that any decrease in menstrual flow will make regulating my lunar-based behavior more difficult. I need to sync my period with somebody soon, or maybe a silver bullet, a cross/stake through the heart... otherwise I run the risk of becoming a spinster. 

I am having some sort of mid-life crisis, some sort of zero-hour Rubicon moment. I have joked about it over the last few years, pointing out my unnatural obsession with expensive and some might say redundant interest in cameras, as well as a few other aspects of my character which could indicate an estrogen crossroads of some sort. But it has moved internally now, to ravage my uterus and rob me of my precious progesterone. I have found myself increasingly in estrus, though that is probably just the call of my eutherian bomb ticking. I am what is known as baby-crazy. It is a biological and sexist slur, and I know that we're not supposed to use such phrases....but I identify thusly. 

To mock my condition is evil, stupid, and wrong-headed. The right to ostracize me has been brought to its proper end. Get used to it: I'm here, and I want a baby!

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Do you wanna' get away?

A last minute decision to go to the beach. It's time to get away. We will pack the car up with the requisite beach accoutrements and head towards the sand and surf and the ocean beyond, to the last mermaid, seaweed and shark, merry whale, end of flesh and hour and horror, and finally they stop, and you go on, toward your ocean, the cigar biting your lips, the way love used to.

Well, I had not pre-thought that Bukowski would somehow make his way into my post this morning. It will not be a Bukowski day, I do not think. I will bring a book to the beach and hopefully read a bit. I will bring a camera and hopefully capture an image or two, to document my life, to verify that it is happening, that it has happened.

Some people work very hard. But still they never get it right.

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Is it scalable?

When I started writing here six and a half years ago I had no way of knowing what my life would hold, no idea that I would have a son, no idea that I would be divorced, nor that I would be living in Sonoma having bought and then lost a house, had never heard of the company that I now work for... None of it.

I can imagine my life unfolding in NYC, unchanged much from what it was before. That life no longer holds as much charm for me as it did only a year ago. It's odd how those things happen. Some internal switch flips and one no longer feels the same about some time or place of the past. The heart stops longing. On my return visits now the city seems vomitous, unwashed, covered in something unpleasant. The entire place seems like a subway platform left out in the seasons, made mostly of patterned industrial bathroom tiles.

What I once felt as the vitality of the place now just seems like noise. A hum can mean almost anything if you will it, and as long as what you will it to be is a hum of some kind or another. Things change when you adore a place, or a person in a place. Love renders chaos meaningful, without promise of it being any less chaotic. Love always works with the next person in a way that it could never work with the last. Is there any human faculty more cruel than this effective biological fib. Individuals are the most common denominator of their own relationships, yet the success of love always seems dependent on the arrival of the next.

NYC's greatness is in part its largeness, found in its crowds or in the vastness of their absence. The place is humbling. It instills a type of pride in any who have felt and embraced it for any time. It is larger than personality, though it relies on its aggregate wealth of same. It can herald or subsume, and it hardly seems to care which. Celebrities understand that it is important to make their biggest mistakes in other cities. There is something shameful and naive about a young star making their first mistakes in NYC. It seems unearned, presumptuous, eager to be embarrassed, and also possibly their last. 

I have become a more quiet country boy. I like to ride up into the hills and disappear into the rays of the sun. This month marks five years of living here. I have started to take more advantage of the beginner mountains that surround me. Next weekend I may ride over the Mayacamas to Napa. It is called Trinity Road and I encourage you to look it up on a map. It connects the two valleys with a tremendous set of nearly shoulderless switchbacks called a road. 

Well, since this site is about me and my self-fueled obsessions I did the work for you. The map is linked below. It does not show the altitude differential, but anyone familiar with glancing at maps and mountains and roads that cut through them can make their assumptions.

I want to go through my books soon and donate the ones I no longer want and make a stack of those that I have not yet read. I want to throw out every technical manual that I own. 

Middle life suggests that you've run out of time to become. I may reach out soon to the other members of "The Finer Things Book and Sushi Club" and see if any of my old reading buddies wants to fire up a demonic contemporary novel again. 

I half kid, but we did have a little faux reading group in NYC. I think that we only read a book or two together. I remember Revolutionary Road.  It concerned itself with the failings of love. That is, until it all ends in death. There was a botched self-applied abortion. That was the device used to end the tale. 

A botched self-applied absorption. 

I've spent too much time trying to understand how love works, why it fails. I am no better for it at middle life than I was at the onset of puberty, though I can chuckle it at it more easily now, from what seems a safe distance. It arrives and disappears in a mystery whose singular effect seems to be the removing of mysteries, a drunkenness that gives the effect of temperance. 

Temporal clarity, this wobbling uneven conspiracy of life. 

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Cuddling with Darth Vader

The boy is about as sweet as a person can be. Yesterday, I picked him up from his summer gymnastics camp. His mom was busy with work and meetings through the late afternoon. We went and had a little sushi lunch, then went for a bike ride to get some ice cream at the top of the hill, then to the pool to verify and defeat the crippling heat of summer. 

Mom came by to pick him up. On his way out with her he went to his room and grabbed a few items of importance. He left them on my bed - a book of abridged Star Wars tales and a cotton Darth Vader character that he loves and sometimes sleeps with. He told me that I could cuddle with it if I wanted to. He seems to be grasping just how much I miss him when he's not here. 

The littlest of things, so fragile as to nearly disappear. Watching him grow up and become the person that he will be is a mixed marvel. I am already wistful for a past that has yet to become. I know that I'll one day miss the little boy that he is now. 

He adores most all things made of ice cream or cheese. I will usually let him have the last few bites of anything that we are sharing so that he need not panic or rush. Lately he has been getting near the end and offering it back to me so that I can have whatever remains. This must be difficult for him, as he is a tremendous lover of almost all flavors of ice cream. Who would have guessed that being witness to this miniature offering of kindness could be so overwhelming. 

I've said it before, and it bears repeating: having kids isn't for everybody. I'm not even sure that it was entirely for me, at the time. You end up becoming a different person, if you try at it at all. 

I bag on aging quite a bit, but there is one positive value emerging from it: I am gaining ground on becoming the person that I perhaps should have been all along, a better sharer of ice cream.

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Wine From Tears

Less than a week ago I got a new pair of glasses, about $250 out of pocket, after insurance covered a nearly equal amount. Yesterday in Oakland they disappeared. I told you that the place is SF's unfenced penal colony. There will be no second chances at having insurance cover half the cost again, for at least two years. One second I had them, the next second they were gone. The manager shrugged and said, You really can't set anything down in Oakland. 

He was right.

I'm becoming tired of my life lately. Everything I look at in my apartment is some thing that I started. There are stacks and stacks of things half done, books partially read, projects missing a component, dishes used to eat and then abandoned, unwashed clothes overflowing from the dirty clothes repository. The road to hell is littered with tepid ambitions.

I'll get over it. It's probably just a phase. For the time being I have grown tired of life, of its routines. I don't care about many of the things that used to seem to matter so much. I don't want anything anymore. Except maybe to be left alone, which probably means that I'll be falling in love again any moment now. There is probably a strange woman hiding under my bed as I write these last words, first wanting to be loved, then wanting to fix me.

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The Great Indoors

I go into the other city today, SF's penal colony. Some people claim to like Oakland, though many fugitives must have adored Gary, Indiana at one point, also. There is a work function there along the bay. I'll go and drink beer with my work mates, find out if any of them really love cocaine or not.

No, I should not joke. This site is not anonymous, though it is farcical enough to sometimes seem so. I do not have the luxury of being veiled by obscurity. 

I received a very bad text last night. There was a question about bed bugs and why did I have them. I did not think that I did, but will need to find out. I will begin the year long search for signs of them on my mattress, then I will overact if I find any, like an American mother discussing their child's needs. I have had the scare a few times before in NYC. The very thought of it makes me itch and scratch as if my body is an infested mattress and I a squatter in the insect kingdom.

That last paragraph made me want to make a crack joke. I see now why cocaine is such a problem, once you start joking about it then it's increasingly difficult to stop.

We started to break down the tent last night and pack it away. We had visitors coming over for dinner. If I had a larger house I'd try to find a way of leaving it set up in perpetuity. It's fun. I remember when I was a young boy I had a rather large walk-in closet in my bedroom and I found that my mattress fit perfectly inside of it on the ground. So, I removed everything from the closet and set up a living space inside. 

Cue: "closeted" jokes. 

I put up posters from National Geographic of the known universe and of our solar system, maps of the earth's topography. I moved a shelf of my favorite books and my stereo in. It could get quite hot, so I hung a fan from the hanging rod, positioned downwards. I would close the door and listen to music for hours that became seasons, forming all sorts of solemn ideas about myself, that I was perhaps destined to live a monastic life of meditation and commitment to self-education. I read the widest variety of books that I could imagine at the time, all the way from Hemingway to Carl Sagan, thinking myself quite protean.

Perhaps that is why I was eager to defend the artist's right to self-involvement the other day, treating the quality nearly as a requirement. I am still wrapped up in myself, and my own thoughts. Though those thoughts of self no longer involve only me. The idea of self becomes one's role, also, what one spends their time doing. You find yourself nestled within another, and likewise your voice of self is no longer alone. 

Those distant halcyon days are remembered among my untroubled best. 

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You might think...

Days are complete with routine - mornings with the boy, working, eating, exercising, the boy in the evenings again, writing a post when I can, sleeping when I can, repeating when I can. There is so little time left to just fuck about and do nothing, which leaves even less time to do something adventurous, or useful. It really is no wonder that people drink and do drugs. The surprise is that they don't do more of them, and more often. Abstinence is an equivocal blessing. It takes the happiness from the first few glasses of wine and spreads that evenly throughout a twenty-four hour period, leaving the sensation nearly undetectable until you opt for its complete opposite. Joy no longer arrives in a warm wave, but rather as particles of light, everywhere and nearly useless because of it. Temperance is like daytime, you tend to notice that it's there. 

The other advantage to abstaining is that it reduces pain. My best days are stippled with routine diversions. Life is more interesting when you drink, though not always in a way that invites interest, sometimes it demands. 

I've been thinking about it more, lately. I tried a limiting regimen - one night of drinking a month. On the first night that I implemented this I drank as much as I wanted, as per my agreement with myself, only realizing freshly again that I don't care for drunkenness very much. It is simply the result of drinking, slaking the thirst. I greatly prefer moderate drinking, though that is only an infrequent result when giving in to the daily compulsions. Moderation is caused more often by time restraints than by my own volition. For someone that does not care for drunkenness you might think that moderate drinking would be a natural result, that one's behavior should follow one's senses and one's feelings about life and living. You might think that.

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Milestone

Sunday, the boy started riding his bike. We put the pedals on, guided him a bit, then he was off and cruising. He never took a fall. A little shaky here and there, of course, but he has the basic rhythm of it bested. Within a matter of minutes he was doing circles in the parking lot. 

Too excited to even take a good picture of him, as if Christmas arrived in July, I fumbled with the joy of it all. The light was bad for photography, anyway. It was end-of-days hot and bright here through the weekend, like pages out of Revelations. 

I went bike riding yesterday, also. Two separate rides totaling about 60 miles. It will not be my ride that is remembered from yesterday, I would guess. Mine was meant to be more therapeutic in nature, though his was far more successful in that same regard. 

Classic image of a dad, I - proud as light, smiling like the sun.

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