Storm Gods

Easter was nice. It was a Spring day, somewhere in the 70s and clear, the sky a robin's egg blue. Yesterday it was 90 degrees. The sky seemed more bright than soft. If I am robbed of my Spring by a lingering Winter then I will stop paying my daily tithings to Zeus. No more indulgences for lazy ol' lighting bolt. 

I realize now how important the two party political system is to America, and how vital. I've never wanted one side to just win every election in perpetuity. That doesn't seem as if it would result in anything preferable. As corrupt as so many of them are it is best to have some harsh critics of each side in positions of power on the other side. I almost feel better with how much they hate each other. When they worked together it made me nervous. You call it obstructionism, I call it the delicate balance between incompetence and criminality. A government should mistrust its members. What the fuck are they doing otherwise?

I started asking myself why I even care about politics. The answer became clear to me while on my 90 degree bike ride yesterday: it's because my life lacks most all other experiences. I rarely get to experience art or music. I do not seek enlightenment. So, I sit at home and browse newsfeeds.

What I have discovered by spending my days looking at newsfeeds:

- The Trump "Pee Tape" is very real and the only thing preventing us from seeing it is because it is actively being used as blackmail. Kompromat. 

That's the only thing that really matters. A bunch of hookers pissed on a bed that Barack and Michelle Obama slept on, because at that time neither of them had birth certificates, so that is the custom in Moscow when such a thing is discovered. If they find you with a fake birth certificate then bear prostitutes are brought in. 

It's true, this is really the world we live in. Never before has there been such a robust set of conspiracies to help get us through the otherwise boring work day.

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Testify!

America has never really seemed to know what to do with itself. This last week has been extraordinary in that regard. I have viewed most of this through the carnival prism of Twitter, where what is already misshapen becomes further distorted and always with some spin, if not a very heavy dose of it.  

It has not been a week. It has only been two days.

Part of what has fascinated me about Twitter is watching the little self-confirming cliques that have formed there. There are a handful of liberal media figures who relentlessly congratulate and LOVE one another's take on everything. They vary in snark as well as wit and intellect but what they don't ever vary in is the unquestioned state of the collective narrative that they all seek to build and maintain. Some of it is absurd beyond comprehension, but yet somehow still fascinating. 

From the other side....

We are seeing what happens when a populace really digs in and gets behind a career criminal. Of course the claim of criminality is unjustified, because as so many have pointed out... there was no conspiracy. There was no attempt to stop or slow down hostile political and social interference, but it did not rise to the level of conspiracy. That last sentence was about Obama, of course. The Mueller report is damning for him, also. The excerpts that I read document his knowledge of hostile foreign election interference as well as his administration's lack of response to that threat. 

One side seems to completely ignore that fact because they are so hyper-focused on Trump's always borderline illegal behavior. Is negligence at that level also a form of obstruction? If not of justice then at the very least of a healthy democracy. Obstruction of Democracy. 

But my intention is not to bag on Obama here. But it is worth noting: he did nothing to stop, prevent or even slow Russian interference in our national election and seems to have put the sanction in place at least in part as a trap for Trump and his team to try to cover his inaction. It was a trap that they repeatedly tried to walk into but were not organized enough to pull of an actual crime or collection of them. But Obama blew it and nobody should give him or his administration a free pass here. 

Do I think they should be investigated? No. We already know what we know. 

Do I want to see a slew of Trump cronies in prison? Sure. 

Why the difference? Intent. 

Everyone that I get a glimpse of in the Trump administration is nakedly motivated first by criminal self-interest. Yes, I know, the Clintons and Obama make lots of money off of speeches and book deals. That is fundamentally different than lying to the American people about a business deal that you were trying to secure in Moscow while campaigning to become president, then using that power to leverage personal gain, all the while lying about your Russian connections to the very people whose votes you were seeking to secure. 

Was it illegal? Nope.

Should it be permitted in a president?

How are we even asking that last question? 

After a decade of hearing people talk about "the media giving _____ a free pass" now we have a voting populace that seems a little too eager to give their guy that same sort of deference, but with a legal and political vengeance. 

I remember when Clinton perjured himself and was caught. People - some of them - wanted to see him go to jail for it. My mom - a democrat - was one of them. Others asked if lying about a blow job was really the thing we were going to try and take a president out of office for. Now we're asking if working with Russia, even if not quite to the level of prosecutable criminality, is sufficient.

The dems have fucked themselves. I don't have enough faith in them to believe that they might do the right thing here, which would be to investigate a few of the unanswered questions that remain from the collusion portion of the Mueller report. And as hard as this might be for them: to ignore the obstruction portion.

Yes, I know it's not a popular opinion, but there is just way too much evidence that several of the key players lied to Congress and to Mueller. It's absolutely baffling to me that reasonable people are accepting some of the conclusions and some of the tremendous gaps we have in our understanding of what actually did happen. Right now we are in a place where the other lingering investigations might get shut down by an openly partisan-motivated AG, then of course the presidential pardons would come, and then the narrative that this really was all just one big witch hunt might remain the dominant narrative. 

Anyone that has not looked at some of the most troubling facts might accept that version of events. 

Mueller seems to have focused his report purely on the possibility of there having been a tacit agreement between the Russian government and the Trump campaign, when no one (at least as far as I know) ever made that claim. The collusion was always with a series of state-related players who are widely known to also be deeply involved in international organized crime and to no one's surprise: real estate. Perhaps a few of those other 12 or 14 investigations that we know so little about will prove fruitful enough to get something to stick there. 

My favorite takeaway from all of this was Mueller's analysis that Trump would have been more easily indictable for obstruction of justice if any of his underlings would have bothered listening to him or acting upon his many criminal wishes. I'm not sure why that brings me so much pleasure, other than the obvious prosecutorial acknowledgment that the man is an inept buffoon and most everyone around him knows it and responds to it by ignoring his orders. 

That aspect of his character seems to be in plain sight for anyone with even baseline curiosity about him but it's nice for the assessment to become an official part of the record.

The rest of this post has been redacted.

Harm To Ongoing Matter

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... and pungent

Social media is determined to rot my mind. I keep trying to pull away from it, have tried to remind myself of some prelapsarian joy, even, a glimpse of imagined happiness. 

Twitter, I thought. What could possibly go wrong there? It's just a curated personal newsfeed, I told myself. How can bits of news and partisan spin coming at my face and eyeballs at the speed of light possibly hurt me?

We tried drugging the dog but it didn't work. Doesn't surprise me that she didn't take to downers. She seems more of a speed freak to me. She's young, so I don't really know how to talk to her about it. I bought special treats so that I could hide pills in them, so that we could crate her without all of the emotional drama. But no. There will be some emotions and canine drama around crating and separation for her. That has become clear. I don't blame her at all. I'd react the same way if some 50 year old man was giving me drugs and locking me in a crate while he put on lycra underwear under his athletic shorts, then left the house for an hour, returning huffing, sweaty, and aromatic. I'd be out of my mind with terror at such a thing. 

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All Is Taken

Today would have been mine and Rachel's ten year wedding anniversary had we remained married. Our relationship stretches another ten years before that; the decade before the decade before. 

We went to France for our honeymoon - Dijon, Beaune, Lyon, Saint Paul de Vence, Paris of course, a day spent at Notre Dame which now looks as if it is burning to the ground. Or rather, burning to the stone. Tragic and yet somehow sadly fitting for this day from a purely personal perspective. Tragic for everyone except the staunchest of atheists. 

I am neither sad nor nihilistic about the marriage but it failed and I would have preferred that it had not. Somewhere along the way our votes for the sustaining of the relationship lost their string of unanimous victories. There was an unexpected upset at the polls, booths, curtains, and levers. The romance forgot its democracy. The thread of consensus becomes misplaced. That's all it takes. 

We worked things out, in a sense. 

There are hundreds of pictures that I could pull out from our time together there, but it would take work. My computer has finally failed and I am trying to buy a new one. We'll see. It is a lot of money that I do not wish to spend. But what is a man like me - a collector of personal digital artifacts - to do?

The images of Notre Dame make me terribly sad, of course. So much loss there, wrapped up in a very symbolic place. A thousand years or more to build. One wonders how such a thing could happen, but these types of things happen often enough for all of us to know in advance: there is always some human negligence involved. Some poor French citizen working on the cathedral of his childhood imagination makes a mistake. Or, there is the negligence of human understanding, which so often results in hatred and terror. That's all it takes. 

It's only Monday. I am tired and want peace, respite from all the badness, all of the bad newness.

"One day you take a look at yourself and wonder how it happened. And you realize it just did. Sloth, perhaps, and a certain admixture of fear and desire. But mostly sloth and the slow, imperceptible movement toward safety. You are not who you thought to become though you are not unrecognizable to yourself. But you are a distorted version of your youth, the smile slightly twisted, the lines around your eyes speaking of compromise." - CS

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Photographic Vérité

Fancy Pet Portraits. That's the name that I would try to get a business license with, if I wasn't confident that someone had already applied for it. I have been practicing my "spiritual speak" lately, to prepare to interact with my clientele. I make sure to always talk about "capturing your cat's true animal essence." I explain to people that my role sits somewhere between artistry and the dark arts of being a psychic medium. They seem to love this. 

I have put into motion a plan to buy myself a new computer, an Apple iMac. They are tremendously overpriced but what is one to do? Familiarity and ease of use apparently win out. I reached out to an old friend that works at Apple for a discount, which helps greatly. It will be nice to have a computer that I can run Lighroom and Ableton Live on. I'll be dangerous again. 

I have never processed most of my images out of the camera. Or, if so then I have just used the "magic wand" specializer that is stock in Apple's Photo app. I realize how tremendously lame this is, to invest so much time, energy, and money into photography, but to ignore the apps that can allow for so much more. 

What can I do? I love snapshots. 

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The Carbitrary System of Measurement

While my son awaits his time as a rock guitar god he also sometimes pisses in streams along state park paths. It's among our favorite pastimes. That, and giving our new pup lots of Xanax. Yes, we have resorted to drugging the dog. It is the only thing that seems to make her happy. We know that she is a true Q6. The real deal. 

Other day: Mom asked if we should trick her and put the drugs in her butt when she's asleep.

That: not precisely what was said, verbatim, but you get the idea. 

Mom: knows how things work. 

Moms: do. 

I was either drinking heavily when I borrowed the camera that took the picture above or I have no conception of distance. Zone focusing may never quite "be my thing." I suppose that both claims could be true. I do so love to bifurcate. 

Perhaps I was using the metric system. 

It is only a concept. 

Did you know that America doesn't have a name for the system of measurement we use. 

Customary is what it is often called. 

That is perhaps the best word for it. 

Arbitrary is another word for it. 

Self-defeating when the time comes, the carbiner of death.

Customs - that is the agency that gets to search you if you're ever lucky enough to leave and then come back. 

An agent from that department celebrating a birthday now would be a Custom's Aries. 

There were so many Frisbees bikinis sun and and and ass the world turned when the day only ended by the sure pure volition of youth; accord this boorishness of sun. 

Things change. 

My life needs a child, a Julia Assange. 

... a real whistleblower.

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The Strat

I had an old Stratocaster lying around in its case for years, two decades. When I pulled the white pick guard off the other day to replace it with the newly purchased black one the date on the inside read May 22, 2001. So, almost two decades. It was bought new for a studio project I was doing with a few other people - electronic dance music - I kept it since I could play better than any of the other DJs. 

The boy has been interested in it lately. He wants to plug it in and make some noise - bang on the drums and call to the gods, the primeval susurrus or full-throated roar of rock-and-roll. I do not wish to overstate the importance of me swapping out the pick guard and changing the strings on this guitar but it's much bigger than The Clash's first album. 

Well, we'll see. I do like the look of it more than the white. Mom said this looks more "rock and roll," and the other looked more "country."

Here, you tell me:

I don't care that much either way, but I was bored and it gave the boy and I something to do for an afternoon. He seems to like the black better, so there is that. The guitar will be his in a handful of years here, so what the fuck... I haven't plugged a guitar in to an amp to play it in many years now. When I bought the official new black Fender pick guard I also bought strings and a bag of 60 picks. I'm so fucking ready to go on tour now. I'm ready to play Camden, Reno, or maybe Stockton. Work my way up towards San Bernardino or Shreveport. Maybe all of them. All original material, all made up entirely on the spot. I wouldn't have it any other way. Rock opera, it's a real tragedy. Buy a van, a new bong, and maybe a clean t-shirt. We'll see where it goes. 

Are we allowed to post music from our moral and spiritual inferiors?

If so, this still exists:

Being a fucked up rock star that tries to fuck young and possibly impressionable girls doesn't remove your recordings from the universe, but they're working on that.

It's out there in some new perfect tomorrow.

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Wings of Wildfire

New film pics; why not? I liked this one and a similar one with mom doing a ballet lunge of some sort. She didn't like it but I did. She looked as if she was really flying. That is the occasional way of things between old lovers, they see with reliably different eyes, sometimes at a distance, other times up so close. 

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All is forgiven

The clouds have let up and left me. An app on my phone tells me that the sun will stay around for a week, maybe more. I can't see beyond the next seven days with it. Happiness from above for the foreseeable calendar row. I have pardoned winter of all its federal crimes. 

I borrowed a camera from a friend, an Olympus XA2 I think. I left a half-shot roll of film in it when I gave it back, which he finally had processed and scanned. The images were all crap but there were a couple of the boy and I, a photographic rarity. If you'll notice I have a camera in my hands in the images, a manual Nikon, if you must know how intolerable my interests can be on those I go hiking and have lunches with. The pics were taken by mom. 

We ran into some people we knew on this hike and I shot a few frames of them with the Nikon. I remember it well because they both looked uneasy posing for the picture. A few months later we heard the rumor of divorce in the winds, a mention that has been swept under the ol' proverbial family rug since. 

The pics are now part of an ever growing stack in my closet. 

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Noob: I

Pics from the dog park - the family Q6. I have become known as the local pet portrait guy - a man that brings nice cameras to the dog park and shoots the playing pups without asking permission. I'm okay with that. I'm still shooting mostly nudes, only of the wrong species. The idea that you have to ask anybody to shoot pictures in public only ever seems to apply now to those with a real interest in photography, anybody can hold their phone up and that is somehow, magically, beyond question. But dare to raise a telephoto lens to the world....

I just wrote a paragraph about the inherent oppression of the family structure, but my conclusions were arrived at much too quickly. The summation was both false and ugly, a venting, false dichotomies trapped in circular arguments. I am happy with my family but there is some sacrifice to make it work for the others involved in the way that it works for me. I guess I just needed to get some of those thoughts out of my system to see them for what they are, or were. 

That process of expressive open discovery is maligned now as evidence of the very thing that the process reveals to be untrue, and just as easily dismissible. The spirit of inquiry is no longer a valid enough reason to publicly think or convey. The questions have been answered. Now is the time to advance conclusions. Or, are you new to Twitter? 

I have tried to wean myself from social media. I jumped platforms, from Facebook to Twitter. At first it seemed to me that Twitter is just a newsfeed with personal commentary interspersed. There are some very bright people using that platform, seemingly able to produce perpetual mixtures of pithy wit and factual revelation. Though what at first appears succinct so often turns out to be incomplete or dishonest or flat wrong. There is no solution to the humans. 

We have no plans for the day. I hope it disappears slowly in that same way. I want hours of nothing unfolding slowly out of this Sunday. It is all that I ask of the turning earth. 

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Solidity

I'm not emotionally stable enough to go to movies like Dumbo. I found that out today. I've always known it, I guess, but I was reminded again today. It has become my most identifiable characteristic - the unsteadiness of mind. Being troubled, depressed, or anxious has overshadowed everything else that was once me. 

Nothing happened at the film. I just cry a lot, concerning almost anything. I've never been able to stop it. The people who go see films with me must be strong. I don't see how they keep it together so well and so easily about me. The perfect customer for the film industry: a quiet madman that will buy the tickets and eat the bags of popcorn. 

The film wasn't great. Tim Burton productions rarely are. Disney, etc. 

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Old pictures of the boy, again

Winter hasn't moved. It arrived and sat on the sky months ago. I've stopped looking at the weather. It can not be wished nor willed away. I want to scream or escape. It is all that I've ever wanted. It is mostly all I've ever done.

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Few and fading thoughts

I struggled saving a bunch of old pictures from a dying computer. Did I already write about that yesterday? Probably. I can't remember anything any more. My life is becoming strictly attuned to just one thing: being a dad.

There was once a time when my memory shined like a chrome bumper. Or, that's how I remember it now, looking back.

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In-Network Coverage

That's not a response to any question that I asked.

I had to repeat that three or four times today on a phone call today with a doctor's phone answering person. No less than three times. Each person that I spoke with told me to verify this doctor or office was in-network, including my insurance company. They told me not to trust the list of doctors on their own website. It is best to verify with the doctor's office, to be sure, always. Culpability, etc. Doc's office said the same about the insurance company. By the end, it was fun because the thing is so broken that it has become something else. Have some fun with it. So what. It's only time. I was asking for lottery numbers from one insurance agent because I felt so lucky, and we were discussing numbers, and she started to give some to me but then must have thought differently about it a bit before providing any more mystical numerical truths.

Her name was Vivian. The image above is entirely unrelated, but now I'm out of writing time.

Here:

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Cluster

I want to import a shitload of alligators to California. I know they'd do very well here. For a while. I have faith. The doubt has fled. I dream of massive semi-tractors filled with the prehistoric beasts, slithering and snapping at one another and the dumb cruelty of their situation. Four days across the country without being fed. You'd be sure to have a hearty population remaining. The heartiest. I'd spread them around in the local lakes at night, always trying to pair them up together as male and female. Nothing hateful, just thinking about population more than individual gator needs. I'd scatter them about like they were Starbucks stores. Where the popular lakes between would become gator territory just by being caught in the middle of a plan. Clustering. 

This is why I never make any money. These are my business dreams. I do pretty well in the stock market. 

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Home again, home again

I don't have any new pictures. I didn't take very many while on vacation, though I packed as if I was on assignment from National Geographic, except with mostly prime lenses. I've almost already run out of pics from our few days in Tahoe. I shoot often with a 17-35mm f2.8, but those shots all tend to be of a certain type - expository. They establish a location, mostly, and if I am lucky capture some action in forced perspective. 

Has anyone ever spent more time and money taking family snapshots than I? I'm sure there has been. Nobody that I know. If I had more time and space then I would start taking portraits of others, but everything takes so much time. 

The boy is in Cub Scouts and I have offered to take pictures of the various events we go to and post them online for the other parents, but I tried to check into Scout guidelines for such a thing - assuming that there are regulations to posting pictures of kids online, etc. - but none of the scout leaders responded to my question when I asked. Maybe they thought I was a pedo. 

Who knows. People do get nervous when there are cameras near kids, which is both understandable and neurotic. Would a pedophile advertise his lusts so openly? Maybe. I don't know that much about them. There was a show about catching predators but who watches that sort of thing? I just tried to watch a video and couldn't get through the first encounter. People watch that sort of thing for pleasure? I posted it there so that you can decide for yourselves. I made it all the way up to the moment when they referred to the young girl as a "decoy." A term that appears to be quite technically true.

Well, I am not here to tackle Barbara Streisand's problems today.

I am eagerly awaiting the moment where I can be entirely written off as old and confused, so that I can openly say anything that I want to say. Sort of like what I do here, but in people's faces. I want Thanksgiving to come early this year. I've started asking Rhys' friends if there are any "gay" or "black" kids in their school. When they look confused I just mumble to myself, None, oh that's good. It's stupid and evil, but what the fuck. How else is he to know when racial or sexual jokes are funny or not? The boy needs me.

I hear people talk about how "hatred is taught" and "kids don't know what racism is," but that's all a bunch of bullshit. By the time they are my son's age they are quite aware of any differences between them and they do whatever they can to advertise and exploit those differences as shameful weaknesses. I see them do this all of the time.

Maybe they weren't little tyrants for the first five years or so, but nobody that has witnessed children up close would make a claim about them being free of the sins of bigotry by the time they are all corralled together in elementary school. It's virtually all they know at that age and it must be constantly fought if you ever hope to defeat or discourage it. There are so many commonplace lies people will repeat about the purity, sanctity, and innocence of children, even as you are mounting your full psychological resistance to extinguishing the very issues that some claim do not even exist. It's what parents do, all day long.

It's not an entirely ignoble lie to advance, I guess. Though children contain all the kernels of awfulness there are and ever have been. If not then parenting would be a relative breeze.

But it is not a breeze. It's not even breezy. 

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Derek

(A recent pic)

Another friend passed away. I'm not sure but based on the posts mentioning depression - his - I have assumed the worst. Is it the worst thing to assume - suicide? I don't know, but it does provoke some very bad feelings. He was a nice guy. He gave me my job as a manager of a local record store in Orlando many years ago, a position I took with all of the seriousness that you can imagine. I was known for sleeping on the futon during the days. Like so many of us he had his own problems. He and I were always happy to see each other. There is that to remember. I could tell more stories here about him, but they are mainly illicit memories. We were younger and none of them, I do not think, would shed favorable light on his recent demise. 

Unlike some of the other deaths recently, I had not seen this one coming at all. What is to be said when you reach an age that you can nearly predict the unfortunate deaths. If not the specifics, there is a sense that tells before you know. Do other 50 year old people feel this way? 

Last week or the one before there was a death which appeared at first to be a suicide. All of the music that had been posted by them to social media before the person's death certainly seemed to suggest that there was some messaging going on beforehand. Then the news broke that it was not a drug-overdose and it was not a suicide, it was accidental. Ignoring that it could have very well been accidental while still being both of those other things, also. It was definitely an over-dose, just not the recreational kind. What sadness is spared by the clarifying claim?

If I was to die soon then my entire life might seem like one long suicide note. So, live every day like it's your last, write a suicide note today.

We mis-booked our condo here in Tahoe and we're supposed to check out in the next couple hours, and that's not even the worst thing that I have to deal with this morning. 

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"90 miles an hour, girl, is the speed I drive"

We slept in late, now there is a rush to get out on the slopes. I have drank coffee, but it did not solve the issue of my lethargy. Now, I poured another cup but left it on the other side of the counter. I would rather type this sentence than get up and retrieve it. 

Well, I brought a camera out yesterday, and shot a few pics of the boy and mom. Shooting in snow requires some minor adjustments, which are easy enough to make, though getting a very well exposed image of snow is challenging. The computer's assessment can not be always trusted. 

I should be less of a twat and buy a good multi-purpose zoom lens, as that is what is needed in this environment. Carrying around even two primes, one on the camera and one in a lens pouch, becomes tedious and prohibitive. Add to that the other camera - 35mm black and white film - and you can imagine what a drag I was yesterday getting these two shots when I could have just been sliding my 200+ pounds down a snowy hill with my giggling son, as mom looks on, still worried that we're both going just a little too fast.

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Day 3 in the Snow

Don't worry about that bit of psychedelia running along the side of my face. I had eaten a handful of candy edibles before we departed for snow stuff and it seems to have affected my phone's camera function. It's as if one of my acid flashbacks had a stroke. 

The boy and mom and I had a great day just getting up to speed on our new winter sport - snowboarding. Mom stayed on skis, but the boy and I have learned some basic maneuvering skills in two days. There are some motions that are counter-intuitive and it takes some getting used to to slice a curve while drifting backwards, but once the sound of your nervous system screaming subsides a bit it begins to all feel quite graceful and even... natural, when it is anything but. 

My friends are, of course, all proud of my parenting and courage and bravery for learning a new and dangerous sport at this age, but what the fuck... when I told them I like to wear women's underwear they told me to shut up! There were no renegade accusations of bravery and courage then. 

CS is right. The Dems are going to find a way of getting tangled up in conversations about Caitlyn Jenner and Ted Nugent next year. You can feel it all coming a million miles away. The Repubs are going to try to mostly keep their heads low and ignore their choice of president. Then they'll start minor arguments over which federal agencies should take on responsibility for funding sex reassignment surgery for non-active military. The Demmies can always be counted on to stick to their platform leading up to an election. 

They chose a poor enemy: other Americans. At least the GOP was smart enough to create a threat built on the idea of foreign enemies, LOTS of them, EVERYWHERE. My favorite part of purely partisan politics is that you'll never run out of idiots, no matter which side you vehemently oppose. 

Ok, day three in the snow. 

Don't worry about that bit of psychedelia running along the side of my face.

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Hearthy

(Day One, Truckee)

There's nothing much to take pictures of here anyway. Just snow, lots of it in all directions, peppered with smiling white people here and there.  It is supposed to snow tonight. We will ski and snowboard again today. Then we will watch the snow fall tonight through the bay windows of our rental property, with the fire going. We will see what the result is tomorrow - either more skiing or none at all. The boy seems to have really attached to snowboarding, as I suspected he would. He had all-day instruction yesterday from a very patient expert in the emerging sport of snowboarding. They are everywhere here, the specialists. It is why some smart people hate things like this: the field of experts is already overpopulated with the worst kind of the intellectually incurious - the healthy and young. 

Yesterday, after swimming a bit in the heated outdoor pool we (I, mainly) decided that we could take a shortcut through the snow to get back to our clearly visible temporary home. It wasn't very far to go, but the snow was much deeper than it first looked, and was also a very uphill climb. I had to take my shows off for fear of losing them in the snow, which was a good example to teach my son when it comes to doing stupid stuff in the snow. The snow was weakened underneath, so every step that mom took in front of me she sunk up to her waist. I tried to step in her footsteps but dad is much heavier than mom. I was sinking to my chest, in wet swimming shorts and no shoes. You get the idea. The boy seemed to love it. Mom, not nearly as much.

We survived. The boy instinctively latched onto the joy of being in the snow without shoes, to make sure there was not any confusion about exactly how right mom was. We are different sorts of frontier people. 

I make it seem worse than it was. It was silly, borderline foolish. No one suffered more than myself, and that seemed fine with all of the witnesses.

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Don't tell, don't ask

We arrived in Tahoe - well, Truckee, which is north of the lake.  We went shopping for the week for food, we went by the ski shop and got kitted out with snowboard gear, we ate lobster rolls and had wine for lunch, we settled into our rental condo and couldn't figure out how the television worked. Vacation stuff. 

The pic above was sent in a group text among some old friends. I barely remember being asked to put the sweater on a few years back, to have my picture taken, but I did. Now, I have this  little memento to celebrate Spring Break with. Yesterday was Rachel's birthday. I am prohibited from discussing the details, but her age in relation to mine would have pleased the honorable Elijah Muhammad a decade ago.   

Don't tell.

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Will there?

I don't know what I'm doing sitting here at this computer. I should be packing. I have put it off to the last moment, and the last moment has now passed. I will rush and forget things that will seem more important than they could be once I realize they have been forgotten. I will bring too much camera gear and strain to use all of it, making decisions that make no sense, setting out for hours with a speciality lens, shooting film when I should be shooting digital. 

Okay, I will ingest a significant amount of THC for the drive to Tahoe. It will help keep me happy and enthusiastic about the music that I am choosing to play, some heavy 70s dub, the deep cuts. It's what I've been into lately, and the last Cat Power and Warpaint albums.  Like any good feminist, I look down my nose at art made by men as stories that the world has already heard and that we have no further need in that regard, probably never did. Except, I did slip recently and read a novel by a man that wasn't transitioning. It was exciting to be such a toxic misogynist, feeding on the pastime of the enemy, like masturbating in the dark with chocolate smeared on my hands. It's not for everybody, starting with the skinny. 

Will there ever be an end to our many differences? 

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A distance apart

We leave for Spring break tomorrow. Tahoe. Truckee. Northstar. It's a vacation place, for families. We are guaranteed to have the famliest of fun. I poke some sarcasm at it, but it is the type place that lives up to its modest promises of semi-expensive distraction, to the exclusion of fascination. I'm certain Tahoe features heavily on Stuff White People Like. I know this without needing to check, but if you don't know that site then browse it. It was from a more innocent racial time. 

My dilemma is the same as always - which cameras should I bring, all Nikon makes sense, but I love the Fuji so much and it is easier to travel with, but what of the instant, and but I love to shoot film, which requires Nikon lenses, so then why not bring the Nikon body... maybe I'll bring every camera and lens that I own, but I wanted to bring my guitar also, and was looking at new ones the other day, though mom, the trip sentinel, said there's no room in the car, and that maybe I could bring the ukulele, and I haven't tried to put the bike rack on the back of Rachel's new car yet, and part of me wants to stay home and have a week to myself, though I know I would regret doing that, because it would unnecessarily hurt the feelings of others whom I love; I need to buy some ski clothes though I'll be snowboarding this trip with the boy because teaching him to ski would be anachronistic, everything is expensive, the thought happened to me that if I brought my mountain bike I could just ride and ride and ride until I felt tired or hungry or both and alone enough that I wished to return and had reached a distance apart in which I couldn't possibly know where I was going any more.

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... an otherwise blameless life

I just found myself standing on the scale while eating a piece of chocolate. 

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I promise

Slight misreporting yesterday. The family reports that it was not a suicide, was not an overdose. 

Consolations never seem to equal the thing for which they are meant to bring comfort.

I am not in an unhappy mood, even though the rains are washing at me tremendously. I have a meeting, then a bike ride in the sun. I promise.

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Sundays with jazz in other rooms

I finally went for a bike ride. It has been about a month since I have been able to ride regularly, which is a big part of what keeps me happy. Without it I am suicidal just like everybody else. 

Well, I can say that, sure. An old friend from the prehistoric world of nightclubbing committed suicide last night. I wasn't that close with him but that specific news always tends to send shock ripples through the survivors, what's left of them, the remainders. Some thoughts become more difficult once you have children - like this one. You want everyone to be happy and safe. It's silly. You know it can't happen, but you tempt things so much less now. You understand life differently. The old things seem so foreign, far away, and yet dangerous. I used to romanticize decay as long as it wasn't sullied with any desperation. One lets their guard down every now and then, things begin to slip, the old standards become the augmented new. 

The first thing I always want to know whenever I hear the news of a suicide is: did they have children? As if that's the only thing that matters after something like that.

I could be wrong. You tell me. 

I am like an opioid crisis when waiting for clouds to clear. If you've ever wanted to die in your sleep then you might understand what I mean. I mean, when people say, How would you like to go?

You tell me. Have you ever, in your sleep, wanted that.

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And do you have any?

Okay, I've come to accept it. The new pup is a very sweet burden. So be it. She, at least, affords me the opportunity to go to the dog park much more often now, where I can take pics of dogs. They are animated and fun. This will occupy me a few times before I grow tired of it. 

Yesterday, after taking a few pictures of dogs at the park a few people asked me to see the ones of their dogs, and I offered to send them the pics if they would write their email addresses in my phone. There was one mom that seemed quite skeptical of me. She was the best looking woman there and before she wrote her email address in my phone she felt compelled to ask me if I had any dogs at the park. I guess she wanted to verify that I belonged there and wasn't some creep taking pictures of young dogs for who knows what perverse pleasures. I should have sent her a nice, juicy dick pic.

It is not the woman in the picture above. I pissed her off trying to get into the parking lot. I was tailgating her a little bit, mostly because I had been drinking and felt a sense of urgency to get to the park where I would be safe from police officers, I told myself. Public parks are always a great place to hide from the cops, especially when there are moms at the gate checking IDs. Who would think to hide there?

People are crazed endlessly with excess of accusation.   

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Being

Jesus, that dog is driving me a little bit crazy. I can't escape it's sweet, loving yowls of anxiety. I am, quite literally, hiding inside a restaurant right now and having a beer with lunch, where she can't see me. It'll only be fifteen minutes of sweet escape, but some much needed time. Maybe one day I'll be able to have two beers with lunch, then three, then who knows. 

I love the pup much, but Daddy needs a day off, soon.

There is more to write about, but fuck it. 

The boy loves her so much, and she loves him. To watch them together is a splendid thing for a man my age to do. What else is there? 

One of my lifelong friends is retiring soon. Maybe he'll move here and watch my dog and kid for me.

I would let him drink all day and complain all night. I'd encourage it. 

What else is there?

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Want: More

I sit here with my first glass of red wine of the day. I went to the dentist earlier - a crown was needed. Not nearly as bad as a root canal but the sound and smell of a drill being used on one's teeth is not anything that easily extinguishes itself. The wash is only to spit, the unpleasantness of the mind remains. So, there is the wine and the memory of the smell. It will likely drip down the left side of my face and onto my white shirt, because I'm still a little but Sylvester Stallone'd from the local anesthesia. My lip droops Lidocaine. 

I often chat with my dentist about the various drugs that used to be used as compared to the ones that are now. Amazingly, they have generally less abuse potential and are more effective. He will tell me illicit stories of when his office used to get broken into by ravers desperate for tanks of nitrous oxide. 

No, I told him that story, but he had stories of his own, as well. 

Nitrous oxide makes me feel like going better places than just the dentist, though I never arrive. The feeling wears off. Even when I was a kid I used to relish the atmospheric walks home, down the familiar streets that felt so suddenly unfamiliar, thinking of an album that I should listen to.

I want everything, life, and some more of it. 

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Skate Tough or Go Home

Never a Dull Moment, the curse sent to us in album form from English rocker Rod Stewart. It was the last of his listenable full-length efforts. But I meant the new pup - she's a real dynamo. There is still much adjusting to do. 

CS is right about it being a lot to undertake of course, though I feel as if he is enjoying the luxury of complaining about what taking on a pup means without having to do any of the work. 

We're dropping her off at discipline school and going to Tahoe for a week. It is the boy's Spring break. I suspect that we will miss her in equal proportion to how much we enjoy the relief from caring for her. She is trying very hard, you can see it in everything she does.

Yesterday, we went to the local skate park. I tied her to a tree outside. I'm from Florida, that sort of thing is still permitted. She whined and yowled for a little bit but then settled down and accepted her fate. After a while it occurred to me that she could run around with the kids in the park, no one else was there. So, I brought her in and closed the gate.

Rhys was standing at the bottom of a bowl. She had run around to the top side. When she saw him she just darted for him, I tried to yell no, but she had already launched from the upper rim into a full breasted dive into the bowl. She disappeared from my site and I expected to hear a snapping sound and her immediate howls of pain. But somehow she landed it. She tried to run up the sides to get out but kept sliding back towards the bottom. I showed her which side she could run up to get out of the bowl and then that's all the kids wanted to do with her after that, just to run and laugh and run. What a wonderful thing is youth. 

Everybody loves a puppy.

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