Are all ghosts clairvoyant?

(Musée Mécanique, SF)

Last night Rachel and I went out to dinner, a date, if we are still allowed to acknowledge such things it that in this post-binary world. There was a newly renovated restaurant space that had opened up - Layla - that we wanted to try. It was lovely, better than Olive Garden... As we were leaving I pointed out to Rachel the bowl of apples in the entrance hallway, a reference to the late rock promoter, Bill Graham. When we got in the car I played her the song, Layla, because my singing of it did not evoke a memory for her. The only version I had on my phone was the acoustic one, which was shameful but unsurprising. Or, so I thought. After playing that one for her, and picking up Rhys from the sitter, I tried to play the regular album version, the classic, from YouTube. Somehow that was even worse. 

Freedom Rock, etc.

Ah well, it was not even my past but the past before that, so what do I have to be ashamed of? My generation produced We Built This City on Rock and Roll. If you ever need any additional reason to hate Bernie Taupin then look not further than that late career hit for Starship. Yes, Starship was what they changed their name too, when the concept of a Jefferson Airplane perhaps seemed too attached to a past that they were clearly breaking free of. 

Can I end a sentence with the word of, twice?

My official position is that Eric Clapton has always been a useless douche bag. This was a required stance for anybody that listened to alternative or new wave in the 80s. He was from the oafish and loathsome past. Exceptional guitar playing could not possibly save him. It was his stance towards being a rock star that was unacceptable. Then, he wrote that song about his son dying. Tears, Heaven, Etc. Quite possibly the worst song ever written. Unforgivable. 

Well, my report of our date seems unnecessary now. We had fun; it was sweet. We talked of the future and what possible trips we could take with the boy. There have been a few possibilities that we have discussed now - Yellowstone and Jackson Hole, Tokyo, NYC and Washington D.C. Maybe there were other places mentioned. Those three are high on our list, each for different reasons. 

We talked about Jackson Hole and Yellowstone as a mixed snowboarding and camping trip, one in which we could maybe bring one of Rhys' friends with us. He would love that. He wants very badly to get a camper and do a road trip with mom and I. He mentions it often. Tokyo is a no-brainer. We all love the culture and food for slightly different reasons, I suspect. The foreignness has much appeal. Then, a late entry was two trips that we have been talking about that we realized we could just roll into one. When I mentioned last night that we could stay at the Mercer or Soho Grand in NYC I could see that I was saying the right things to mom, who was two flutes of champagne deep at this point. I spoke of all the fun things we could do - visiting friends and sightseeing, a Yankees game, the Statue of Liberty, The Met and MOMA, our favorite restaurants. Then we could take a train to D.C. and have two days there. The Smithsonian, the National Gallery, the Mall, the White House, the nation being greatly made again.

What wholesome family fun - just crimes, misdemeanors, and vacations. 

  

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Helps me, Jesuys

I started to post something vile again. Cato and I had a joke yesterday that made me chuckle. But then I couldn't find the right picture to match the joke, so everything went the way of the Dodo.

I find myself having the strangest of conversations with my friends lately. The mechanics of being an age. This age. The talk is more private and more pragmatic than what I am used to. There is talk of the treatment of common ailments. Nobody wishes to be interested in these talks. 

I took a few minutes away from a mildly stressful day to write here. I avoided the vile but became trapped by the mundane. 

You saw it happening and you did nothing.

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Akira Ichiban Q6

I'm not sure if I've ever seen two dogs have consensual sex. Having lived in Florida for the irresponsible length of time that I did it seems nearly impossible to have not seen such a thing, though I have no specific memory of it. All I see now when I close my mind and think of the Sunspot State are dogs fucking in the dirt. Mostly in the backyard. Everybody has a backyard there, and every backyard a dog. It never seemed to me as if it was the female dog's choice. 

I see this all the time at the dog park now. Dogs just rape each other. They try to get some playtime in before and after, but every now and then you witness some sort of sudden assault. The owners are mortified, of course. I try to stop the dogs when I can, as if my dog is partially to blame. She was wearing a brightly colored collar.

If you've never tried to stop one dog from fucking another dog you'll know this is not exactly a one person operation. It requires practice and training, and life affords so few opportunities, and few partners to do that dance. I try to match everybody else's enthusiasm for separating them, but sometimes I suspect that people can sense my heart's not really in it. I suppose I could just grab the male by the collar and toss him away somewhere, but that somehow seems worse than the sex crime itself. 

Since I have a female it is usually some male that is being indiscreet about their amorous feelings towards my lucky lady. So, it is up to a variety of Sonoma hippy-chicks of all ages to stop the assault, mostly. I'd be lying to say that this doesn't make me giggle a little bit inside. Not because of the act itself or their reaction, but you can see how much they project human morality onto their animals and expect it to come to life there, fully formed and evidenced in modesty of behavior, discretion. I always take some time out afterwards to tell the offending dog about my best friend, Jesus Christ. This will have about as much influence on their desire to rape as will the frantic stream of invectives and direction emanating from their owners - No! and Stop! and Insert Dog's Name! here.

The one that really gets me is Bad Dog! 

I suspect that in a dog's mind screamed phrases like No! and Stop! only mean Hurry, hurry... to them. It only seems to increase the urgency of the act. 

The women always apologize afterwards. I am tempted to ask them if they let their dog masturbate enough? Other times I am enticed by my inner demons to say that I can't tell if my dog's in heat or not. I sniffed all around her butt the other day but I couldn't be sure. 

She has been spayed, I'll explain, but I don't know if they cut off the flow of all of her woman parts.  

She seems flirty.

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Fighting death and kissing nipples

I promise not to write about dub or reggae today, though it is almost all that I wish to write about. It is sad and beautiful and yet somehow triumphant and strong and filled with faith so foreign. 

I am standing up at an adjustable desk that holds my new computer. It is difficult for me to stand for any period of time. Something has changed in my lower back. It no longer has the will to negotiate. I need a desk and a chair, but I keep telling myself that standing is better for me, less sedentary, but the truth is that my body needs the sediment. Whatever sediment used to protect my aching vertebrae has long since abandoned me. One of the results of living is pain. So be it. Let it be. Let be be finale of seem. Keep on keepin' on, and don't ever stop truckin'... whether you're a brother or whether you're a mother... we are probably family, though there's less fish in the sea than there used to be. 

Great minds, quite noticeably, do not think alike. Though that is no reason to presume that you are great when everybody else insists that you're a twat. 

I speak God's truth, you see. 

I just read that this is the wettest year ever. Or, I think that's what I read. It was a headline only, probably about the east coast, but I'm certain the author lives in Sonoma, on my street. 

It is dispiriting, this endless rain. Shifts in weather patterns vex me and they should vex you too. It is an omen, I say, a portent of what will come. 

If you're not wet then you're not paying attention.

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From the well of exaggeration

It's been raining for a year.

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"A day without music is a day lost forever"

Have I really not written since Tuesday? It doesn't feel like it. I worked all week and I worked all day today. It happens sometimes. It's never fun, but at least it has been rainy all day, which lessens the sting. I may take some time off this week. 

I don't have anything to say, really, I just finished with a long, intractable problem that neither myself nor any of the people working on it could solve, so I wanted to look out elsewhere into the world, where solutions were not required. 

It is just a day gone but it would have been my day and now it is not and never will be. 

I did have a few newly acquired albums playing in the background today, so there is that. If you want to hear what reggae would sound like without the obligatory guitar strums on the upbeat then listen to the link below. It is my favorite album of today. 

The pup has been at a kennel all day. We'll go to get her soon and she will make me feel better. She loves me and I her. We let each other know by rubbing our faces together where I can smell all of her soft puppy fur. She will lick and nibble at my ear lobes. It is sweet and makes me giggle. 

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Surrender

In my battle with the world I should have backed the winner. Today beat me senseless, lifeless. All day I ran like a three legged lizard, scrambling to escape a bored scorpion that just wants to talk.

 

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Basic Age

I've had an unusually difficult day at work. Don't want to write about it, but it's how I spent my day, without any cycling to force the arrow through to the other side, to be broken off and pulled through.


Listening now to one of the most beautiful pieces of quiet music. Hoping. Haven't listened to it in years. Could not find the right recording online quickly. So I've posted one that I have never heard. Fuck it. The recording is almost as important as the music, so I hope the one below works well.


I read an essay about Susan Sontag's essay writing tonight. That is how I should spend every afternoon or evening: reading quietly, music in the room. There is some recent scandalous news of her out now in the panopticon. Just saw it.


It has been between the sixth and seventh year of my son's life that I hardly have time for myself. It becomes the thing that I do. It's not terrible. It is everywhere, all for now and for soon.


Standing up and typing at the keyboard of my new computer, some years underneath me. Can't imagine having to stand to do anything any more, having now already exceeded this basic age.

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Moms

Having been loved by my mom is one of the few feelings that has stayed with me from childhood, that and my crushing uncertainty about being loved. 

I asked myself this morning when I woke up, What makes a mother's love special? Of course there may be some inescapable biological aspects to those feelings, but I've known enough orphans and adoptees who feel the same to know that biology alone does not explain all of it. Having felt loved, from an early age, is something that stays with you. Or, it can. People need to feel nurtured, at times, and safe. I never got the feeling that one day I might have to fight my mom for a pork chop. I remember building forts in the living room with my brother and her. 

Feeling loved seems to be a mixture of the love that another person shows for you and what you repeat to yourself about it. Once your mother is gone you have fewer things to repeat to yourself. It is best to stick to the stories concerning the glory of love, avoid the other stuff. 

To watch the boy express his love for mom is really something - sweet and pure and true. It is enough to make me happy. 

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Dr. Satan's Echo Chamber

Oh yeah, I forgot to post, or started to but never finished, ran out of things to say, or have said them before. Like CS, I also have no stories to tell. What do I do that would produce a story? I spend my days repeating daily things, not discovering.

The boy's behavior improved. Did I write about that here, or has it just been tumbling around inside me for a month? Could be both. He was being naughty, disrespectful, and mom and dad had to drop the sledgehammer on him. To give you an idea of how tough we are: we took away all screen-time.... Not sure if you know it or not, but that is about the worst thing you can do to a kid now. No more terror, no more tyranny, no more discipline too. Just reasonable conversations, one after another after the other following the one before that.

I have nothing to say today - no stories from beyond the womb. 

Lee Perry is Jesus. I mean, Jesus. I won't bore you with writing about music, but when he was brilliant he was like nothing else that had ever happened. I am listening to the Black Ark mixes of this album. They are among the deepest, coolest, most bad-ass and beautiful pieces of music I've ever heard. I couldn't find the same mixes that I'm listening to online, and that link is to the already known and famous album. It's criminal that the dubby mixes aren't available on YouTube.

You guys should come to my house and hear it.

Tell you what.... I'll make you a real sweetheart deal. If you think that dub isn't right for you then I'll let you walk out that door right now without signing on for this once-in-a-lifetime generous timeshare offer, but if you're wrong then you might have to live the rest of your life regretting the decision that prevented you from ever getting involved in South Florida's Gardens of Inspiration single and double use units.

I'll concede that it is a bit strange that at 50 all I want to do is ingest THC and listen to old dub albums, mostly from '75-'81, the golden years. But what the fuck, I've reached that stage in life early where you realize time is truly limited and you may as well do the things that let you avoid doing things you just don't want to do.

What happens to people?

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Unwritten jokes

Well, I was going to make a joke about Rachel, Ann Coulter, and Celine Dion getting it on but my sole reader stole my thunder in yesterday's comment section. I was going to try to add Phil Collins to the second portion of the joke, because of me. Something about us all checking for Ann Coulter's Adam's apple. I bet she has a nice big, protruding laryngeal prominence. 

I don't have a pic of me that suggests Phil Collins handy, but you get the idea. The joke works, even in its current crude and unformed state. 

Rhys is in his room right now. Punishment. I had to go to school to pick him up. He has been misbehaving. Shockingly, this brings me no private internal joy, as I might have long ago guessed that it would. I'm not very good at punishing him. That may be part of the problem. I'm not sure. I'm so used to being around people who regard every one of my emotions as being over the top that I have a difficult time gauging much of anything. There is always a low level hysteria waiting to respond to anything that begins to suggest randomness. 

I used to be afraid of misbehaving. I don't mean physically afraid, just afraid of what my parents would say to me, of being ashamed, disappointing. Rhys doesn't like me being displeased with him, but perhaps not adequately. He doesn't seem afraid of anything, specifically of the consequences we decide for him. He has too much confidence that he can avoid most the brunt of any punishment we throw at him. This is in part because he's an only child. He knows that any justice we dispense towards him is almost equally punitive for us. 

Yes, this life is and always has been an unwritten joke. 

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From the Hand of Favor

Going through old pics is a mixture of fun and then something else. Time passes, that's a fact that photography insists upon. It is nice to get those little glimpses into what was, though. It was the trip that I was on from today's picture that caused me to really get into photography - France, circa 2008. What little cinematography I learned in school was long ago lost to excess. I don't remember what a t-stop is, etc.

I like the Terry Richards look of the picture above. Now, I know that he is not to be commended, because his sexual impulses are destroying people, but he did make his mark with a certain style of photography, one that I happen to like for candid shooting. I've done some nudes in this style, but they did not come out well, unless Terry Richards also shot crime scenes. I suppose some would argue that every picture he took is a form of evidence of same.

I don't really know that much about him, or the accusations against him, but I do remember the visual style and it is one that is fun to imitate.

Eventually women will get tired of accusation destroying the sexuality and sensuality of their shopping experiences. They will silently overwhelm those who have claimed them as their own. Advertisers are rightfully afraid, now. Well, the ones that aren't trying to capitalize on the times by standing with it. But you can't successfully suggest sex without implying a power disparity, because that is what creates the dynamic, though that is the world that is now demanded of us. What was is male privilege at its most loathsome, say some.

Can you believe women have to suffer the insults of fashion photography? It perpetuates objectification. Look at it.

The first major publication to reintroduce aspects of the lurid in their campaigns will be touted as bold and provocative. Or rather, the first one will be roundly denounced, then another one will pull it off. It will fly. That is how time passes; greater minds need lesser ones.


The online personality that I most resemble lately is Ann Coulter. I don't use her nouns. I try to occupy myself with different subjects than her, but we have the same basic outlook and use a lot of the same verbs: people are full of shit and should be mocked, claims of victimhood far outpace victimization, everybody's a fucking pussy, and individual personal freedom is more important than we have been telling ourselves.

But who wants to sound like an old crank, especially one that is indistinguishable from the harpy of the GOP? Who among you wishes that, for little old me?


That Rachel resembles her does not escape me. This has a preventative influence on some of my various sarcasms. I am trying to learn how not to be honest about every single thought that happens upon me.  That is where people begin to confuse the distinction between types and the thing itself. I know I have before.


So, anyway, Terry Richardson. I looked him up for the last month's worth of news and it seems the accusations have subsided, though so have the jobs. The once chic temptations, garish hints of unashamed sexuality and even that of - gasp - the brash suggestion of porn, have fallen from the hand of favor. Apparently there were some who felt that the expectation should not be that the rock-star fashion photographer should pursue the craziest pussy he possibly could, and would not then be rewarded for his satyrical behavior through satiation.

I have listened to their complaints, in a general sense, and have found them to be sensible when heard in great and suffering detail. It is the in the abstract where it all comes together and makes perfect sense.

Still, something about everything always  feels so wrong.

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Access

Upon recovering my iPhoto libraries and scanning through old pics I have found a handful that are among the most precious and beautiful things that I have. Making babies is something special. It is a form of public intimacy - the evidence of a known secret that is as yet unrevealed. 

The images are a series of her as she was becoming more and more pregnant. The one above was in NYC, the one below about three days before the boy was born, in Sonoma. They are incredible things, for me, both sensual and complex. I took them quickly and without much concern for technique, which haunts me now, though even some of the ones that are blurry have a special charm, a paired innocence with the subject. The blur seems to remove any lingering erotic intentions or purely documentary purpose. The ones that are in perfect focus seem somehow too explicit, too well lit, too literal. I would show more here but most of them are nudes and Raquel might not sign off on them as being too unflattering. Though of course she could not possibly be any more wrong. You can't tell a pregnant woman that, or much afterwards either. I have learned that you should make a woman feel beautiful, but carrying a baby can impede most any efforts.

I would do it all over again, twice or thrice. The images roam around as magic inside of me. They are mysterious and powerful, incantations that come back to tempt. 

That's my morning truth: I like getting her pregnant.

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Enjoy:

(Yes, older pics... still)

My plan is to go for a nice long bike ride this morning, a couple hours.  We'll see. I'm here now, lying on the bed listening to ever more obscure dub from the 70s. It's the only music I listen to any more. Most of it flies under the annoyance radar of casual listeners, so I can play it around the house all day without irritating the other tenants. It has aural complexity and invites attention without demanding it. So, perfect for a dad in his 50s.

If you're just not sure if dub is right for you then consult your doctor and try the link in this post. It's not an album that I would say best represents the genre, but it's the album I would play for people who think that all dub, and reggae, sound the same. Pass the Dutchie, etc. You'll find plenty of familiar elements in the album, but you'll find other things also without needing to be a very careful listener. It leans towards jazz without leaning too far away from calypso, etc.


I'm happy to be listening to any form of music enthusiastically again. I went through a few years in which I thought that I had lost most of interest in music. I think I had just grown tired of a few of the genres that had dominated my view for so long. Dance music now bores me, for the most part. There are a few people that play stuff I really enjoy, but most of it has receded back into a place where it all just sounds the same - dull, repetitive, uninventive, electronics. Luckily, few aspiring djs ever send me their mixes, hoping to get my opinion on them, any more. The only people that I do go out of my way to listen to consistently play the type stuff that I might like.

Don't get me wrong, there is plenty of good electronic music out there, but it requires a curator and unfortunately those come packaged in the form of the dj, many of whom are wholly insufferable.

Okay, before I lure myself off into a a tangent or screed, I'll wrap it up and leave you to your own thoughts and pleasant confusion for the next 30 minutes.

Enjoy:

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Unsent Postcards

I was able to recover an old photo library upon setting up my new computer and organizing myself a bit. I am interested in computing again. 

I found a bunch of old pics and have been posting them on Instagram. It is silly and shameless of me but I don't mind.

Here, I'll post one here that I didn't post there. It was one of my favorites; one of Rhys' first portraits.

Being pregnant was fun; creating life is good. Much better than good. I should have been doing it since puberty. 

rachel, rachel, rachel. 

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... his books

If a poet has a dream, it is not of becoming famous, but of being believed. - Jean Cocteau

The boy has been causing all types of mayhem, experimenting with disrespect. It is difficult to watch, the clumsy birth of what may become a touch of healthy sarcasm and irreverence. The willingness towards naughtiness is a more compelling posture. I get that; I believe that. Of what use are manners if they show no sign of ever having been challenged? It is a thing that seems impossible to teach, for me, never having found the consistent balance to strike.  

Mom's eyes sometimes let me know how detailed are my conversations with the boy about what I believe to be nuance in behavior and understanding. During the most boring times of the news cycle I read that kids are much smarter than the credit we tend to give or deny them. Over the course of a lifetime everything gets to be true for a moment. 

I picked him up from school today. His punishment: sitting on the couch reading while I pretend to work. His young voice sounding out the halting words of each sentence. Had I known this would be the result of him causing trouble I might have been more encouraging. It is sweet in that way that you can not hold, only maybe keep as part of some amalgam of the memories of the time. I have written it down here. 

And Now. 

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Safety, Thirst

I only have a few minutes to write, am forced to rush today if I would like to get a bike ride in. 

I went to visit an old friend the other night, almost a week ago now. He was back from India where he was traveling for 6 months, and Ireland, where he is originally from. We sat and chatted and ate dinner and drank good beers. We compared lives. He has no children, no partner, has never cohabited with a girlfriend. We are both getting older and I suppose we must sometimes have curiosity about the other's life. 

I spent my portion of the night vocalizing the noble protectiveness of being a father. 

It's great, to know what and how to love, and what must be done, and then maybe I said something else that was semi-noble.

When I gave him a ride to the place where he was staying, after three beers, I explained that the dog had eaten both the seatbelts - passenger and driver.

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Lights of my Life

I am beginning to understand why some of the older people I know are not ever excited to see and talk to the other older people that they know - the talk turns to death, or suffering, or ailments, or strokes and heart attacks, and of course suicide. Every now and then an overdose. The infidelities have lost their power to tantalize, I guess. It seems to be the only reason some of my friends reach out to me any more, to make sure that I am aware that others my age are dying off, or suffering some horrible malady. It's really no wonder that there are others that only want to frame the image of their family's lives through social media as being healthy and happy and often traveling. 

I went for a bike ride today. I was up into the hills where there is no cell signal. I couldn't escape an uneasy feeling I had, wondering what would happen if I had a heart attack. A friend's older brother just had a massive one while cycling, was 10 miles into his journey, felt bad and turned around. He collapsed somewhere in the middle of what might as well have been the 18th century. He went to someone's front door in the middle of all of that nothing and begged for help, was airlifted out eventually. It took the ambulance an hour to arrive. They summoned the helicopter. 

All of that rattling through my head as I huffed up my own hill to nowhere. Well, to Jack London's Wolf House, to be more precise. 

When I die I don't care how my death will be described, as long as the most appropriate word for it isn't preventable. Though unavoidable and unstoppable don't have much appeal, either. The word that I most detest is slow. That means painful. I'm certain that my insurance company is working towards making it inexpensive and are entirely unconcerned with it being pleasant. I've outgrown any desire for it to be sudden or tragic. There is barely any of the raw material left for the latter category. I've never learned a very good way to talk about death and dying. 

I arrive and depart talking of myself.

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"Enjoy Every Zenith"

No new pics. Just a folder of old ones.

Spring returned, just in time. We had a week of nearly 90+ degree weather after what seemed like one Spring day and years of Winter. Today we will take the dog to a regional park where there is a lake that we will swim. 

I bought a new computer - $3000. I hate myself for doing it but I have been spiritually hobbled by my last one suddenly failing on me. I can't say that its demise was entirely unexpected. It lasted 8 years, which is nearly miraculous for an Apple computer. I have included the details of the new one below, for my nerds. I could have upgraded to the faster processor and the improved graphics card also, but that would have been almost another thousand dollars. I won't be doing much video editing. Once it gets here and I have it up and running I will buy Lightroom and Ableton Live. The latter of the two will either make me feel cool or silly. 

My hope is to start scanning the thousands of 35mm film shots I have taken, or to hire an intern to do so. It has become absurd that I have let this effort back up on me like this. I see how people become risibly eccentric as they age. They hold on to their interests in a tangential fashion. One side slips away into the abyss, losing contact with the behavior that continues, which makes no sense without any follow through. One day I'll be a cyclist that buys bikes but never rides, also. 

What can I do? I like to shoot film, and I would like to have the shots I've taken. Mostly I like going through life framing what I see. Hearing the sound of the shutter click and manually winding the film. Maybe one day I will see those frames again. This morning I wondered if the new pup, Akira, would outlive me.

I have tried to convince CS to go on a photography road trip, but he is not quite up to it yet. Maybe I'll go to Berlin and do a road trip with Cato. He has dug his Sony camera out of the shipping box where it has been since he moved to Germany. He took a trip to Barcelona, which seems to have been the inspiration for finding it and charging the batteries and lifting it to his eye to press the shutter. Who knows, maybe he's one of those annoying millennials that uses the electronic viewfinder to compose his shots. 

There is so much great photography out in the world. It is overwhelming, yet people are still mostly insufferable. Age softens some of those feelings, while holding the body in an arc of pain. 

Nerds:

27-inch iMac with Retina 5K display

With the following configuration: 3.7GHz 6-core 9th-generation Intel Core i5 processor, Turbo Boost up to 4.6GHz 64 GB 2666MHz DDR4 memory 3TB Fusion Drive storage Radeon Pro 580X with 8GB of GDDR5 memory Logic Pro X .

Public Hair

(Album Cover)

I thought of a name for the band. We need a drummer machine still, but things are really starting to come together now. Our first album will be comprised entirely of pensive jazz masterpieces. 

I have been playing a handful of folk songs lately. This weekend we are meant to go camping with a group of about 40 campers and hikers, parents and kids. The Cub Scouts. Because I am useless in most daily practical matters - and everybody else was offering to roast pigs or dig trenches and latrines - I offered to play some songs that people can sing along with around the fire. Cumbaya. The others jumped on this idea - loved it, have written me emails to confirm. 

I am using it more as a promotional opportunity for Public Hair's first local tour, so it's important that I shine.

Any time that we have ever had what might be considered a "musical" moment at any of these scouting events it has left me feeling less than patriotic. So, we'll maybe do Blowin' in the Wind, This Land is Your Land and On Top of Spaghetti. If those voracious folk fans demand an encore then I'll have Oh my Darling, Clementine up my sleeve. It is such a perverse and wicked song to sing to kids, but what the fuck... I've roamed and rambled and followed my footsteps. 

I meditated yesterday, only for a few minutes. It gave me some insight into what an absolute wreck my inner world is. 

I kept trying to talk myself into taking a short break from meditating to rub one out. As they say can happen at these times, my impediments became clear and presented themselves to me unobstructed. 

I spent my time in the upright darkness, chasing away the phosphene dance of my eyelids, repeating in hushes, my mantra-ray: .... Shhhhhhut the fuck up, Shhhhhhean.....

When I'm almost done I always whisper, Vietnamaste. 

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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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