Achievers, Socializers, Explorers, Killers - Repeat

I'm not on my other computer where I could plug in the external drive that has the other images, the newer ones, but not all of them, just the ones I couldn't fit on my work computer and was forced to find another way, after I converted a bunch of RAW image files to jpgs, but forgot to re-import them to the library, so that now I have thousands of orphaned thumbnails. 

My life is summed up neatly in that last sentence, every aspect of it, because it is also a wandering paragraph. My pains have become the metaphors they always wanted to be. 

I've been reading A.J. Liebling here and there lately. Anybody would wish to write like him, at times, but there are so few rewards left in the world for those who would try. Are there any essayists that have a fraction of the wit and breadth of interest? I read people like Matt Taibbi or David Sedaris or people in that same talent strata and I wonder what must have happened. As if the end-indicating apocalypse fulfilled its every sinister prophecy. It happened silently, without coverage or comment, without whiff of soot or cinder to let us each agree that it is all over, for all of us and for always now, we want a better sign of the end. The mind of my mankind has collapsed in on itself. The weight of its aspirations proving to be no match for the famous real estate salesman that we decided to timeshare our future with. 

Perhaps it happened as part of the discovery of the utterly unstoppable fallibility of self-consciousness, around the same time that we were given a seemingly universal chance to advance our own version of self, sans much of the consciousness. Few things indicate our inability to have heroes as does our inability to believe in them. Partisanship always proves the failing. I'd like to say it's just age, the ossifying of the ideals, but there is also a dumber version: none of us ever mattered much. 

What I mean is... I've begun arguing for the heroics of people that I am unsure of and yet convinced of the crimes of anyone that would advance the enemy argument, in any form. This is how I am sure that I have lost whatever feeble grasp I might have ever had on enlightenment, mine or anybody else's.

I promised not to talk about politics any more here; there are so few enlightened voices left in the conversation. I've reached an age where I do not wish much to peek back at my own voice, not tomorrow morning, not after, and have never wanted to listen, just check. I'm surrounded by people here in California who believe the most fascinating conversation topic is their own well being, and how to struggle there, so for practice and jest I try to talk and think like them. We all do this, somewhat, just not in California. 

The three struggles in storytelling have always been: man against man, man against self, man against God, but now there is man against other man's self. That other man might have a struggle with other man or other self with other god, but most of all it is the struggle with other man's self. to bring victory with thine own self. The new conflict is lack on inclusivity in storytelling. 

I'm so ready for that narrative. But can we agree that man's struggle with man's self has always been the issue. Why else would there even be a need for feminism, where all is historically well?

.

between force and this

(turn up the brightness on your device)

I do not suspect this picture will translate very well here, it barely looks lookable on my expensive new 27" iMac with plasma something and expanded graphics cards, luminosity features, something, something, something, bright lights.....

Mom, the boy, and I took it tonight in the back yard. We were hoping to see the meteor shower, but have moved to the wrong side of America.

I just had a text exchange with an old friend about that image, sort of. I sent it and within a few words we were making and sharing observations about those who enjoy a taste for the abyss, or a little abandon - the compulsive, etc. The need for a unified field theory between the compulsive and the attractive.

I wanted to buy myself a keyboard, nothing fancy, just something to feel alive about. I said so, after other wants.

Then, we texted goodnight. 

No other generation has complained so much about being handed the keys to a second hand century, and so soon after barely even driving it off the lot. 

.

Delights (joie de vivre)

.

"Mother, give me the sun"

Ibsen, if you didn't feel like looking it up. I think it's Ibsen, could be Checkhov. I read them both during impressionable times. I'm reading Beckett right now, and am reminded of the overwhelming everything of nothing. A man my age should not read Beckett until, and unless, there is hope. 

Okay, I looked it up - the quote is from Ghosts by Ibsen, and I've never read it. 

So, posing stand the posers. 

I want more life, father.

.

More Dangerous Photos

This one is dangerous because it shows what mom does for a living - raises money for the science. 

Little Lebowski Urban Achievers, yes, and proud we are of all of them. 

I joke, but I am very proud of her and so is the boy. While I explored a boundless and systematized disorganization of all the senses for a couple years after our divorce, she achieved a master's degree. At dinner, we meet in the middle and only talk about things that I can speak authoritatively about, which is the subset that has become my own photos and writing. We're advocates for traditional family values, you see, and we believe that dad's dogma should be silently resisted at dinnertime.

I hope that it is clear by now how much I kid much through the occasionally truthful well of exaggeration.

Anyway, as is said in these situations, we're all happy today and just letting the day wade by slowly, playing Legos on the floor, listening to Burning Spear, petting the dogs as we walk by them, drinking scotch because the wine ran out.  

Photography is one of those weird places where motive need not be established, since to the viewer it seems abundantly clear. Why would you need to state the disgusting thing that should be obvious to all?

I took this picture a few years ago among about a thousand that I took that same day, mostly of kids playing. When I discovered it I thought, Oh, how funny. 

But not everybody finds such images so funny. Some people see danger there, too.

.

Dangerous Photos

CS texted me last night, stating that we should be taking and posting more dangerous photos. I agree with him, but I am an enormous pejorative pussy. In my world there are only two types of dangerous images: bad ones and worse ones. Translated: other women and other, younger women. 

Best to stick with portraits that grandma will like and approve of, because only god knows how much we crave her unrequested approval. 

I do love photos that contain some hard to describe sense of menace. Images snatched from the continuum of life that reveal or suggest some lurking danger, even if the subject doing the lurking is the one taking the picture, or the one viewing it. Danger need not be real to feel real. 

Russell Chatham died. Rachel's mom has a large print of his in her house that I love. It is absurd and takes up an entire wall. I could look at it for hours, and have. If you look up his California paintings - from his artlessly titled book Russell Chatham: One Hundred Paintings - you'll see many that were made close to where we now live. One in particular - Sonoma Mountain - is a place where I regularly ride my bike. I recognize the spot that is the subject of the painting, it's almost impossible not to. I will ride there this morning with a friend, coincidentally. The trail starts near Jack London's house and runs up the ridge about 2200 feet to one of the meadows near the top. It is the bald mountain top that is the subject of his painting. But there are many others from Napa and Tomales Bay and Marin. It is a great place to live for natural beauty. I'm hoping that will prove to be enough.



In an effort to convince myself that I should buy the new Fuji X-Pro3 camera I decided to start shooting my X-Pro2 without the use of the back view screen. I will try using only the optical viewfinder for a bit, meaning I have to bring the camera up to my eye to effectively frame an image, like shooting with film, or more like it. So far it is driving me mad. I've realized how much my shooting with that camera is not the style of shooting that it was meant for, but it is a way of shooting that I've learned to love and don't really use with any other camera. I often shoot from low angles, but do so just by using a wide angle lens - 24mm - and leave my arm hanging at or just a bit away from my side, or swinging as I take several. But the back screen can still be used to achieve approximate composition. I shoot a lot and hope for the best. Every now and then lightning gets trapped in its act.

Now, here is the fucked up part. Even though I spent one night shooting in a way that I recognized was a bit limiting for me, as I was lying in bed thinking of mostly sleep, I convinced myself that I could just buy the new camera and keep the old one also. This, so that I could choose which one I wanted to shoot with based on mood. Keep in mind that I am not a professional and have never once made any money off of my photography. The closest I ever came was when a reader here asked for a print of one of my photos and paid for the print and shipping cost. So, one time I broke even on one part of dealing with one image. Every purchase is money that becomes lost in a hobby that has no logical limit in terms of things you can buy, if you only want that thing. The only requirement of desire is always pre-satisfied. It justifies itself because it exists in advance of any need for justification.


But... I just got an enormous stock payout from my company, so what the fuck. The insurance people also paid every single cent for me getting hit by the car. They never even asked me to pay a deductible. The hospital must have felt that the $50,000 they charged my insurance company for letting me walk out after three hours, telling me to take aspirin if you feel sore, was sufficient payment. I took out $200,000 insurance for accidental death or dismemberment yesterday. It only cost me a dollar every two weeks. It's like a lottery ticket that always has the same numbers. I want my possible final last thought to be, Well, that'll be something nice to help ease the pain for Rachel and Rhys. After taxes that should be almost $100,000.


The world is so fucked. I want in on the corruption. Do I have to start at the bottom, again, as if it's an entirely new career? I have some fledgling corruption experience on my shadow resume. Shouldn't my lifelong efforts at avoiding actual work count for something?

Russia, if you're listening, maybe you can find some dirt on my opponents, too?

.

"I can't go on like this"

I forgot to write a post last night. Or, I was too tired and fell asleep with the boy while watching an animated movie. Or, both. I slept terribly, so it is difficult to remember. The timeline of the evening most closely resembles a headache. 

I went to the doctor, finally, and got a cortisone shot. The sciatic pain in my leg had become unbearable, chronic, and acute. It had been going on for months. I don't even remember when it began. Had I known that a simple trip to my general physician would have caused some cessation then I would not have waited. I won't wait again. Though, I've read that it is no cure and that too many cortisone shots can cause other problems, but fuck it. Pain is not something I am willing to tolerate. 

Every time I say or think something like that last sentence I hear Beckett's haunting: That's what you think.

My doctor is a pleasant old guy and I hope he never retires. We have good chats. He is from the old guard of family medicine. He offered me pain killers for the sciatica as he was refilling my Xanax prescription. I told him that he can keep them, that the ones he would give me aren't much good for anything. No, he recognized the reality of my pain, he assured me. I told him that the sciatica pain comes and goes and that pain killers make me feel dopey and sluggish the whole time, so he let it go. And it's true. I've never cared very much for most pain killers. Though some drugs that I have loved madly for decades have some palliative qualities. I want to keep my resistance to such things low. Who knows what the winters may bring. 

.

The sun sets at 4 o'clock

I went through some old pics this morning, unexpectedly. I found a few that I like. I'll post this one for now as it is the first one I came across. Hopefully there will be more in the next few days. I have been beaten down by the merciless bureaucracy of everything. The hospital and the paramedic service and some lab all want money from me. Not a lot, but I don't want to pay it and nobody has even admitted that I was misdiagnosed. I wasn't in trauma. I was barely hurt. 

But, ah well. This is not the place to complain of such trivial things. There are other trivial things to trifle about. 

I got a new driver's license today. Well, I'll get it in a couple weeks, but I went to the DMV today. The requirements of the state summoned me from afar. I forgot to shave for the picture. 

Afterwards, the woman ringing up my sushi at the market asked me if I was eligible for the "Tuesday Discount"... this means that I look to be 55 years old. As I walked to the car it occurred to me that I am drinking age older than 30 now. What a terrible thought. 

Okay, I'll wrap it up before the sedative kicks in any more than it has. Tonight, I wanted to take no chances that my body might ignite its own late-night fracas. I have quelled the insurrection. 

I often dream of trains when I'm alone

I ride them down into another zone...

.

Pygmalion

I am listening to an old album, a favorite, by Slowdive - Pygmalion. Shoegaze at its best. I don't think there is a finer example of music I like to listen to in a certain state: coming down from E. I spent about a decade listening to this album, along with a few others. I'd listen to other albums, of course, but if anybody asked me what my favorites were, then this was always on the list. I used to make lists. I love lists, especially those of pure subjective preference. They are as irrational as most poetry, especially if a short paragraph of justification is included. What happiness it is to find one concerning things that you may also love.

I have read no less than 25 lists recently - in the last year - about dub music. A couple of which I studied as if I had found a gold vein. One of which was so reliable I bought every album on it, 30 of them. This being one of my favorites.

I used to have an iPod, when they first came out. I would fly all over the world with it, listening to this album and so many others. Then, I got a job working an overnight shift, where again I could listen to music. When I fly now I can only enjoy music for a few hours, then it usually becomes tedious. Though I have a phone that will hold sixty-four times more music than my original did. I tire now of not having the enthusiasm that I once did. Sometimes when I drink it returns. The verve does. 

.

The Tank Top

A friend challenged me on yesterday's open advocacy for corporal punishment. I almost had to slap the fucker, except that we were conversing through text. The slap will have to wait. Of course it makes sense to hit kids when they act up. I know that we're supposed to reward them for their creativity, especially in bad behavior and poor manners, but what the fuck. Social mores on child-raising are about controlling parental behavior and virtue signaling from the speaker much more than they are about producing super-children. It's why my most common response to people lately has been, Please, get the fuck away from me.

But I was mostly kidding about hitting kids. You should only hit a child if they hit you first. That rule goes for everybody. You can hear the nervousness in mom's voice when I tell the boy that he always has the right to defend himself. You can hear her wanting the power of approval in these moments, trying to add qualifiers and create scenarios where this basic axiom wouldn't be true. I state simply, Nope, anytime somebody attacks you then you have the right to defend yourself and don't ever let anybody try to tell you otherwise. 

If she pushes back against that I tell her that she's making herself unelectable. 

I'm just fucking around, of course. You should always strike first. Everybody that has ever won a fight knows this. We're moving back towards a society where people punch first and assess the merits or questions of the attack later, as well as the criminality. I miss the adrenaline rush of fights. I miss almost everything about youth, the apparent ease in which one can make mistakes most of all. Everything was easier when I was younger, especially getting old. 

Rage, rage against the dying of the fight.

.

Ok Boomer

I couldn't find a new picture, so I started at the bottom of an old folder and gave up looking at this one. It suits my Saturday morning mood. Autumn. Or Fall, for those who lack my pretenses. I prefer the original Etruscan.

Moving on. 

Today will be dedicated to Dad Stuff. Cub Scouts errands and good deeds, followed by a parental talk. My son made fun of a special needs girl yesterday at school. The girl did not hear the slur, thankfully, but other kids did. It was presumably for their benefit that he made his joke. I had to try to explain to him why singling someone out for a thing that they have no control over is very wrong and the cruel act of a weak and scared human being, but I couldn't quite find my footing in the brief conversation we had about it yesterday. I mean, I hit all of the important points but somehow I don't think that I drove those points home as well as I would have liked to. So, he has a dreadful and uninvited conversation coming his way today. I'll only stop when he's crying. That's how I'll know that I'm an effective communicator and a good dad.

Also, I'll point out to this little bigot that racist jokes are all the rage now. He's living outside of his times. If he really wants to be cool then learn irony and focus on the woke. 

It is a deeply unpleasant thing that he has done. 

The other day, he and I were at the dog park. Well, we were leaving the dog park and he wanted to play at the playground near the parking lot. So, we did. At some point I noticed that he had dooky on his shoe. Jokingly, I said, Oooooh, it's dooky.... He became very sullen and clearly uncomfortable. I stopped right away and pointed out that he and I make dooky jokes all the time, and that because he had some on his shoe doesn't mean anything, and that we'd clean it off when we got home. But he made the association between what was on his shoe and himself as a person and it hurt him, such a joke coming from me. I could see it clearly in his reaction. I'm going to find a way of using that episode to help him understand how it feels to be singled out for something that's not your fault.

I hope he doesn't equate being born with a visibly noticeable learning impairment with having shit on his shoe. My impending speech perhaps needs a little more work. Consider this the rough draft. 

I'll think of something. 

I have tried pointing out to him that in all beauty there is some strangeness of proportion, also, but I'm not sure how much he can yet understand such a concept. He likes toys that are sleek and cool and secretive and slick. Maybe I can use Batman to help him understand the inner pain and disfigurement that many people live with, and that some embrace fully to understand who they are. If that doesn't work then maybe I'll beat the little shit into tears. Put some fear in him, at least. People say it's wrong, but in the moment it seems like the right thing to do. If not, then nobody would ever do it. Right? Truth is transitory, especially with that of sudden violence. It's true meaning and beauty seems to disappear as soon as the cops arrive. 

I'm not really going to beat the boy. I've never touched him punitively in anger. But I can still feel the rightness of the impulse. I'm not one of those liberals that can only see the failings and injustice of others. My search for the iniquitous starts right in my own heart, and rarely needs to leave. If I had more moral courage then I would admit that more often. Knowing that I would have been impeached about two years before Trump, if I had ever become president, helps. I only have any sense of nobility when it comes to ideals and abstractions, and only in conversation, rarely in deed. When it comes to drugs, money, power, and pussy I resemble Caligula much more than Captain Crunch.

Maybe I can hire somebody to talk to the boy.

. 

Now, what in the methamphetamine is going on here?

Yes, I know, the image troubles me also. But I like it. The leash doesn't hurt her, but she won't fight against it. The swirl was accidental, and not taken with a special lens for the effect. Optics and light are strange, or can be. There is so much to learn and know when it comes to the science of optics, and I have little time or interest in learning much of it, but I do wish I had paid more attention in the cinematography classes that I took in college. They might have been useful.

I didn't. I reveled in apathy and indifference.

I worked long and hard today, though, for reasons that I can not confirm. It just happened and it didn't feel terrible, but now the day is gone and I regret not making more of it. Not even a sacred bike ride.

There is a new camera that I want, but I'm not like old money bags over in the financial paradise of Detroit. The camera has what I would consider to be a problematic feature set. They have out-cooled themselves on this one. I'm afraid that I would buy it but prefer the back EVF of my current model, the one before this one. They've upped the price of being hip again. 

What would I know about being hip? You're about to find out how flimsy my efforts are.

Watch this:

I taught myself to play an old Grateful Dead song today - Deal. I would post a video of them playing it here, but Jesus I can't do it. I must be a bigot. Jerry Garcia is a fuckin' stinkin' fat hippy. He's impossible to look at in the 80s. Just a sloppy drug addict in a dirty unbuttoned flannel shirt. I do love his melodic playing, though. When I try to play along with him it makes me wish that I was a dirty hippy in an rotten stained t-shirt, also.

Here, have a studio version of Sugaree instead:

.

An idealistic kid runs into the supernatural light

No politics, though I am tempted. It incites my passions like a bloodlust because I'm not enlightened. I gave up on that years ago, for the reason just listed. 

One thing, though: Trump is Jesus for the followers of Jesus that don't believe in the teachings of Jesus. Even when they lose they think and proudly claim they're winning.

When I was a young boy I went to an evangelical church and surrendered my heart over to the bleeding hands of Jesus. I told you that I wasn't enlightened, what did you expect? But the impression that those people gave me never really left me. They would deny basic facts of all kinds and constantly tell us that our own eyes and minds are out to trick us, and not to trust them. For a time, I confused this with enlightenment because at that time I could not tell the difference between meaning and the feeling of meaning.

This concludes my Bill and Ted's Talk.

I like these images. They are dark and frantic and not portraits of my son's beautiful blue eyes. So, you know, it's a different type of photography for me. The one at the top is the one I like the most. It seems as if he is being lifted into the light, mid-stride. An alien abduction of sorts, for believers and non-believers alike.

It is written in the light and darkness.

.

The War On Witchery

Boo.

My life seems incompatible with itself. I can't seem to let anything settle down inside of me lately. The anxiety feels like electricity in the air. My mind crackles with it. I jump at anything. I jump at nothing. 

You can only live in impending doom for so long, eventually you'll want the doom to bring it on. 

That's where I am now. 

Beckett might disagree: That's what you think. 

Currently listening to Berlioz's Symphonie Fantastique, hoping for the best there is in madness and despair. 

What gloom remains in fear. 

.

Out of scent, out of mind

I have no new pics of my own. I saw this online and liked it. It was probably made on an iPhone by someone who wished that car wasn't in the shot. I have done very little with photography lately. I go through spells but the spells hardly drive me mad any more. They barely drive me to the gas station. Every now and then I lose interest in life. All things dim to grey. It comes back, with less ferocity. None, really. It feels like I've woken up from months of sleep, the bed is made underneath me and I am fully clothed. As if there is no explanation for my presence in the present and none of the past explains how I arrived in the current moment. It's probably a component of my existing disorder, but I'd probably listen to someone who told me it was a new one. It feels as if everything is entering its late stage. I thought that all of this would be more interesting. 

We can't smell the fires any more. The skies have been clear, the winds pushing the smoke a different direction. Mildly traumatic things just become a part of our lives, a feature. We rationalize it, or try to, but it changes how we feel about almost everything, a little bit. It imbues the quotidian with mild, distant terror. There's a threat to think about out there and there's no getting away from it even when there is nothing to worry about. It is then that the shift in our lives is most troubling. Like tinnitus when it is quiet.

.

Trigger Treat

The boy and mom went trick-or-treating. I opted to stay home with both neurotic dogs. They can not be left alone on a night like this. I may go out with the boy later - house to house. Halloween is my favorite holiday, but not because of the kids. I like the idea of them celebrating some dark mystery, without most of them even having any context as to why, or really how, yet they nail it. It is absurd, worth cherishing a bit. It doesn't go far enough for me, of course. I must have been Satanic in a previous city. 

I had so much that I felt I wanted to say, earlier. It is what work does to a person: shuts them up and down. 

It might be my own fault. I have been sitting here playing the guitar for about an hour, now I am listening to Prince Jammy's Kamikaze Dub. Dub seems a music designed to shut people up, since so much of what is going on in it requires attention to detail and subtle changes over time. You don't have to listen for that, but it barely makes sense to otherwise. Some would agree with me on both of those points, for different reasons. 

What can anyone do? Nobody seems able to see or hear what another does, even in shared love. Shared hatred seems to be more focused - all things about Donald Trump are worthy of hatred, is the accepted message. The obsessive and metaphorical are what turns love and drives hatred. 

That is your koan for the day. 

Memoize it, store it at the proxy.

Wild turkeys just ran across the back yard, a group of about six. We are seeing them more and more. Within a year someone will tell me it's because of climate change. That is the oft repeated foreboding here. I've been asking everyone if they're still worried about the San Andreas fault and sliding into the ocean, or do they think the hot winds will come and get us tropics first? 

Nobody gets to feel secure any more. Maybe they never did and we're just all just starting to really share our feelings. 

Thank you for attending my Ted Talk on Climate Change.

I just needed to get some noise out of my head for no other reason than that it had been asking me to be free. 

When we were in the hotel in SF, I still had to walk the pup, Barkley, and so I did so in the heart of the Tenderloin. We were at a nice hotel, I promise. SF is a strange place, it embraces contradictions that most cities have no access to. It's not always perfect.   

As I walked the little Shih Tzu, who was fascinated with the ground level aromas, I imagined me handing out little green poop bags to all the street junkies, giving them a little woke speech about the importance of reusability and sustainability. But I was afraid that I would buy some drugs from each of them and never get to the reusability portion of my speech.

 

.

I should do other things

I should be preparing for a meeting that I have in 20 minutes, needed a cigarette break. Don't smoke, just wanted one. Smokers are funny. They all have some curmudgeonly leanings. Or, perhaps in a woman I would frame it as charmed insouciance. You get the idea - aggressive or demure disregard. It squirms so well in youth. 

I have eaten terribly for two days now. Truly. Fast food, etc. My body is rioting as I write this. 

I am expected to present information in a meeting soon, I think, and I have prepared nothing. I can usually talk off the top of my head and make things up as I go, but today I am feeling despondent. The other day at work I became nervous while speaking and got a little bit choked up. That didn't stop me from speaking, as it should, but rather I tried to fight through it, and lost. 

I just realized my meeting is in another hour. I should spend that hour preparing. Like Batman, I feel as if I am about to retire also. Has he used the word retire yet? I'm not even sure. It sounds foreign. 

I really should brush up on terminology. Understanding the terms is critical to this thing.

Ok, fuck it. I have to go.

Batman knows that I am kidding. We are different people. That comes as an occasional shock to both of us. Neither of us has much of a secret identity left, after years of writing here and there. 

Speak for yourself, Batman might say, ironically or not.

.

Boom! Pow!

Batman is flatly full of shit, but I regularly forgive him that. Many times he has derided me for posting photos that he would not, or in a way that he would not, or when I have had the temerity to openly express anything that resembles happiness. And yes, gratitude. It is not foreign to him, though his struggles with it are apparent. Pay no attention to his silly protestations, they are not of actual substance. 

Though he is very perceptive and for that I like to keep him around, even though he greatly prefers and deserves solitude. 

Will he ever emerge undisguised from behind the walls of Wayne Manor....? 

Gotham may never know. 

He should know by now that I donate a generous percentage of all that I say and do to pure jest. I am a humble Joker at heart, only this way because I fell into a vat of chemical waste where I stewed for decades, leaving me horribly disfigured, which then led to my criminally sadistic insanity. 

Batman will tell you all about it.

Okay, I was going to write a regular daily update, but now the needs of the day have crept into the morning, where superheroes and their arch-nemeses refuse to depart. 

.

Kiran and Tessa

Batman will hate that I have posted this picture. He will have a personally held ideal that doing so violates, something about sentiment, or maybe the shame of something exhibited so vulgarly. I have heard about these unshared principles between he and I many times in the past. Cést la View.

The wedding was beautiful. Very. I did not bring my camera and only took iPhone pictures but that was okay with me. I didn't look like a twat carrying the cursed device around - a firearm that captures potential harms as it creates them. There isn't very much that I can do at a wedding that is any different than what anybody else can do. Access. We all have pretty much the same in that celebratory space.

I dj'd the reception. That was interesting and fun and went well, I think. Something so familiar returned to after an absence seems strange. I questioned how I could do such a thing for so long, and derive so much sense of self  or even self-value from the doing of it. But that's what I did. I noticed last night what a tough and yet easy way it is to forge your story about yourself. Life is hard, expression of any kind renders you vulnerable.

The bride and the groom were very happy and thankful that I did this for them. I was grateful for the opportunity and the honor of helping. It gave me reason to care about music again and to think about the tastes of someone other than myself. That will wear off quickly now, probably. But I felt it, and I'll ponder what that means. It gave me some interesting perspective on how I have changed. It is good to help your friends. That they think enough of me to have me do this special thing for them was flattering. It is nice to participate positively in someone else's memories.

And I love them - made happy by the proxy of theirs. 

.

Hopes

Well, I guess I was wrong about the need for power outages. Or rather, PG&E wasn't right enough. They're off and destroying everything again, by fire. They say it's climate change. The citizens of the area are all quite skeptical of that explanation. We just came out of a drought not too many years ago, during which there were wind storms. Not sure the science is there on that explanation.

I had a crazy, hectic day before I departed the country for the city. I have a hotel in SF for tonight and tomorrow night. I am going out nightclubbing tonight. There is a Halloween party that will serve as my makeshift birthday party. I hope that I can still stay up until midnight. We'll see. Then, there is a wedding tomorrow and then of course a reception after that. I am dj'ing the reception. I hope that I can stay up until then. 

Okay, maybe a short nap in this fresh, new luxury hotel room. That'll help my hopes. 

Addendum: Oh yeah, I forgot to provide some physical context. I'm at a hotel that's across the street from the Hibernia Bank, where my beloved revolutionary sweetheart, Tania, had her famous Glamour Shots taken in glorious 15 second intervals.

Nope. I just looked it up, different branch over near Nob Hill. I've looked up Patty Hearst's Wikipedia page so many times the hyperlinked text is permanently purple.

I've mentioned my infatuation with her here many times before. I want to one day fly away with her previous self, all the way to Stockholm. If wishes were horses then she and I would be robbing banks.

.

... a dream of growing up to ride

We don't know if we'll have power or not. It is a maddening solution to the problem of global warming. I am, of course, very opinionated on this matter, though without much fact informing those opinions. Any fact, really. I only know the fact of my opinion's existing. Takes too much of the fun out of it to be informed, so time consuming.

I took a few pics of the boy today. We were in a 7-11, buying powdered donuts, those little ones in the pack of 6. They were crap, but seemed to make the boy happy. I'm not shooting enough with my 35mm cameras. I'm losing my ability to shoot quickly. I fiddled with my aperture and missed focus. The boy had moved by the time I was ready to take the picture. We went to the dog park after the donuts, but my shooting didn't improve. It didn't help that I was using an 85mm lens and trying to capture fast moving targets with a wide aperture in a hostile environment. 

Nothing helps, nothing changes, nothing matters.

I had better change this attitude before the wedding. I still have a few days and a birthday between now and then. What could possibly go wrong?



She tried to raise me right but I refused.

.

Gone With The Grid

(From Manzanita Campground)

I survived Sedona (above), but California is killing me now. Well, not California, but P,G&E... I came home from Arizona and prepared to work on two playlists I am making for an upcoming wedding - on Saturday. Today, I found out that they're shutting the power off in this region again, probably tomorrow and through Thursday. This complicates everything about my life in unpleasant ways. I'm still struggling with this new realization that I live in a third world county.  

My brother sent me some very thoughtful presents, books, for my birthday. One on the art of Burning Man, one a visual history of bicycles, and one on Toltec spirituality. Lots to look at and think about. He is a better brother than I am. But what the fuck, it had to be one of us, why not him?

I should go to bed. There is nothing more that I can do tonight to prepare to lose power. I try to enjoy it when the power gets turned off, reminding myself to just enjoy the simple pleasures - reading, playing the guitar, riding my bike, even film photography - all the things I love - but there is much to do to prepare for the wedding. A haircut, and other things I have not yet thought of, but definitely a haircut.

 

.

Sonoma to Sedona

That's right - 12.5 hours. It's a world land speed record. The proper authorities have been notified. 

It has been a long time since I've done an all day car drive by myself. Gives one time to clear the head a bit. Mine was absolutely empty when I arrived. I walked from the hotel to find a restaurant, but it was all super-vegan pizza places, or worse. I settled desperately on an Indian place, thinking lamb vindaloo would help me. Nope, neither that nor the large Taj Majal beer (they didn't have Kingfisher) helped at all. The tough cubes of lamb were deposited dry into a watered down mixture of ketchup and curry paste. Because Vindaloo is meant to be a very spicy dish I said, "medium" when asked how I would like it. That also was a mistake. They made it "medium spicy, for a white guy."

Horrible.

Sedona is beautiful. Do a Google Image search and you'll see. What you see on the screen above is all around me. That picture was taken in the daytime. It's just how the sky looks here, truly incredible. And yes, the image that you see above is exactly what I am seeing with my own eyes right now. Ansel Adams never came here to take pictures. Nobody knows why. But some have recently suggested that it was because he was a fucking dumb-ass. 

I needed an adventure. 

The drive here was desolate and long. There is much vast nothingness out in the Mojave. There is another nothing that stretches out past the end of the nothing that can be seen. You can feel the emptiness beyond the horizon in all directions. It does something strange to be alone and surrounded by so much empty space. You get used to it pretty quickly, but as with most thing I try to milk the sensation past its usefulness. I kept Space Oddity on repeat in the car for about 9 hours before I could hear it no more. I wore two pair of adult diapers, like that astronaut from Houston that wanted to kidnap her romantic competition in Orlando and had no time for potty breaks. Imagine stopping to get gas and stewing in your own urine, or worse, knowing that you saved a couple minutes. I was just like that, in a high speed trance to win back the object of my love. Then, I stopped at McDonald's and had the #2 with a Coke. 

It broke the twelve hour spell of tenderness. 

Few things say "eternal romantic love" as well as rock formations do, especially ones that are created by millennia of surface erosion. In all directions here the colorful sediment that you are seeing used to be at the bottom of the ocean, about 330 million years ago. 

I only know this because I asked Aquaman. 

.

Easy

Power returned. We were in the dark for two days and only at night. Beyond that it was only the blessed unexpected reprieve from the internet, and work. 

I've stopped taking as many pictures of the boy as I used to. He is showing signs that always being a photographic subject is not something that interests him. I've explained that I believe there is something fundamentally good, and wonderful, and beautiful, and true about most people, and that photography can sometimes reveal these things along with possibly capturing many other delicate aspects of being alive. He nods at me, says that he likes it more when we can see the pictures we took right away. 

He's not wrong. I spend more time with film. The results are likely delayed beyond his capacity to connect them in time. He recognizes the space from the picture above but doesn't remember us watching the many French New Wave cinema classic that led to us buying him a black turtleneck for this dramatic photo shoot, etc. 

I love the boy and love having good pictures of him. I'm like a Jewish mother when it comes to him.

I have agreed to do the music for two friends' wedding. It has been a much larger task than I assumed it might be at the onset, though a genuine labor of love and pleasantly engaging. I have been having fun putting the lists together. I wish that I was doing it with an audience. They are not done yet, but I have slimmed down my track selections to about 200% of what they need to be, which will make compiling an acceptable list of half that amount easy. Or, that is what I tell myself. Easy. I will begin the task or ordering the songs tomorrow morning. I leave for Sedona tomorrow night.

If wishes were horses then horseshoes are made of curved metal angel wings. 

Update: Shit. I used that picture (above) already.

Here, have this one.

.

Preemptive Blackouts

I had to drive in to the city today to work. California's infrastructure is collapsing but I still have a job. The above image was taken from PG&E's website. It shows where the problems are. Interacting with the power company is similar to most all other interactions - the person on the other end is either incompetent or corrupt. Or lying.

.

Power

Well, the power has not gone off yet and there are no winds. It is a strange thing, to be told that something is going to happen because something is going to happen, but then to see no evidence of the thing that is meant to happen but the result was promised and is on its way. Trump times are strange times. We live in the wealthiest third world nation ever. I barely hear people discussing infrastructural collapse, but it seems that the smart and good people might want to start thinking about it. Maybe it's just because I live in California, but it is already happening. They're shutting down the power grid here because the infrastructure can not survive the wind.

You know what I meant, though, not this sort of collapse but like McCarthy's parable, The Road. 

Well, I would invite an unexpected day off from work. I would pack a backpack and a camera and go for the type ride that I never do otherwise, or only very rarely - an adventure, anything but not another routine. Most everything I like to do can be done without power - cycling, playing the guitar, film photography-  and a break from a computer screen would be welcomed. 

When darkness, when?

And let Con Edison take the blame....

Our power will be shut off soon, possibly for days. They know now that the power company has been the cause of these recent deadly fires. Rather than improve the infrastructure they've decided to just shut down our region when the winds blow. Tonight, the winds blow.

.

The "enormous condescension of posterity"

Once the physical pain has subsided then the lack of life adventure becomes the most self-apparent complaint I can muster. Reading about CS's trip to Paris has made me realize why I've stopped writing here the way that I used to - my life is nearly adventure-less. How many posts can I spend outlining the details of my banal love for cycling? Or, my love for banal cycling? How many candid portraits of the boy can be made? At least his maturation creates some sense of change, some vague narrative - time's passing.

I would post a Beckett quote here, as it applies, but it is too dark. I sent it to CS just now, to haunt him. He hates me. I'm sure of it. I disrupt the poetry of his sadness with bleakness. 

Those who love me the most discourage me from entertaining the imaginary darkness of writer's past. Lermontov, Baudelaire, the Marquis de Sade; Fuck, even Chuck Palahniuk; Dostoyevsky, Cormac McCarthy. All of them: troublemakers and triflers. I have become afraid to mention writers that lived and worked before the 70s or 80s. Knowing anything that occurred during a morally retrograde time is a sure sign of not being wokeful. Or, not woke enough. All of human history is there only to be denounced. Now that everybody is able to abort all conversation concerning the past with a pithy observation about how wrong things were then, we are left to assume that extinguishing your memory of the past is the responsible thing to do. 

Certainly.

Well, that's another thing that I have had to let go: getting worked up at how absurd the times are. Our times. The more of a loss their grip on sensibility becomes the more we will be expected to denounce the sensible.

It never stops.

Regard all contentedness with the greatest of suspicions.

It never stops, futility.

“Have you not done tormenting me with your accursed time! It's abominable! When! When! One day, is that not enough for you, one day he went dumb, one day I went blind, one day we'll go deaf, one day we were born, one day we shall die, the same day, the same second, is that not enough for you? They give birth astride of a grave, the light gleams an instant, then it's night once more.” - Beckett

.

Back in the Saddle

Sally Mann's book - Hold Still - is interesting, fascinating at times. She is a good writer and makes an interesting story of the making of her images. It makes me envious of her free time. I hear CS often bemoan the squandering of time and he is right, it is bemoanment worthy. 

It's not a word, don't look it up.

I reached out to an old friend today, it was her birthday - 36. We laughed that I will be 51 this month and that I was her age when we met. She was the bartender at what become my NY living room. It was where I entertained guests. Few that I knew had the resources to enjoy a place that could have guests. If you are a social person then bars are your easiest, if not only, option there. They were where I met everybody. Now, I can not imagine sitting in one of them for an afternoon, though I can remember doing so many times. Not any specific time, just the amalgam that becomes a single fading memory. Tricia is her name, perhaps I've mentioned her here before. She bought a yacht and was living on it for a while, trying to find herself. I suspect the burdens of parenting may have curbed that lifestyle, though I did not ask. I just wished her a happy birthday and acknowledged how hard life can be when that was how she responded. It can be. 

I am working on a wedding playlist for two friends. They will be married the day after my birthday this month. They have asked me to provide the music, which I have gladly agreed to do. It is more challenging than I would have first guessed.


This will give you a partial idea:

And this, a Lucinda Williams cover:

I have learned about a handful of new artists making this playlist, which is always fun.

Like Mayra Andrade's Afeto:

So far I like her ^^^ entire album, Manga.

Lots of musical ground to cover, quickly. It's a pleasant challenge. I am often tempted to use old familiar tracks - at least those familiar to me - but I am trying to make a playlist that I'll want to listen to, also.

Perhaps I will post it here. We'll see.


Almost my entire sense of personal freedom in life is wrapped up in cycling. I have discovered that when I push myself back in the seat of my new bike it becomes much more comfortable. It took me almost two weeks to discover the sweet spot where the seat-post really does absorb a significant bit of road shock. 

I am trying to find ways to continue riding in comfort. It was the main reason for me buying the new bike, the tradeoff between lowered resistance and comfort. The first roughly equates to speed, the second to possible distance. Yesterday I climbed 200 feet across 23 miles in an hour and 40 minutes.

See?

I have nothing to write about, really. Certainly that much can be seen. 

.