Trixie

What can be said. My buddy's family dog died today. She had become sick, organ failure. It happened suddenly, too suddenly. Not without warning, but also without options.

Much has been said about the love of dogs, and by those who are far better than I at saying it. It is an exceptional love that is achieved in the most ordinary of ways, anybody that has ever felt it knows. Some of those who deny it also know, for reasons their own. Then, there are those that have never felt it. Or worse, resist it.

Trixie was neither particularly noble nor always easy to interact with at the onset of each and every encounter, though she had tremendous and peculiar charm once you accepted that, and then convinced her to move past it with some affectionate head petting and soft talking to, if you were lucky. All was not well at home until she conceded that it was. Explosive in the severity of her greeting, unending in her verifications that all was as it should be. 

Trixie was always the first to know.

Her way of announcing need for love was also unmistakeable, endearing. Her uncontrollable exclamations at any entrance to the house will be missed, an echo of the life that we share.

The barking, her barking.

.

(No Tittle)

I am tired, I am weary, I could sleep for a thousand years....

I question also, much. One must attempt to balance the expectations with the answers given, the promises; compelled to try, obliged by contact, proximity.

It's never easy. Promises scarcely equal expectations. They should, might. They are always pointed at different stars.

My last lines:

No one saves others, or else, or was. 

To the spritely tune of: 

Or was, or was... all the wonderful because we does.  

We're off to slay the blizzards. 

.

Deep in the Bohemian Basin

(Praha)

The weekend feels as if it's already over. Mondays hang over Sundays like wet moss.

My life is about to undergo some fresh changes. I invite them. There is a last-minute offer to play Prague for New Year's Eve and I want to take it, though the circumstances of life seem as if they might act in preventative ways, again. Aging seems to be only part of the problem, the conditions surrounding age add unexpected restrictions to its dynamic. 

The spirit is willing, the body is strong. So, tell me, what went wrong? 

Anybody can get by with two of these qualities: poverty, dreams, children. Trying to possess all three simultaneously is excessive and ill-advised. I suppose that poverty might have to go. I've held on for as long as I can. It was my one last remaining virtue.

Having a kid is great, if that's mostly all you ever wish to do. The boy is not old enough yet to come with me to Prague. He and I are entertained by different things. I suspect that my Czech friends would not find the same amusement in him as I do.

Who knows, they are a complex, wanton people who might respond positively to his preternatural wailings.

I invite chaos up to a point. The problem being, that point is often well past other's limitations for confusion and disorder, particularly when I am positioned as either the conduit or source. 

Having a child regulates some of this, in one way, though not always by your own design or timeframe. Things keep changing, demands keep transitioning unexpectedly, and it feels like chaos to me, though I recognize that in some ways it is happening by a certain pre-determined order. I am experiencing the quanta of parenthood.

Who knows, maybe the boy would love Prague in the winter, just like me; the dancing house, the castles and many spires, and even a dose of Kafka, too!

.

The tell-tell heart

I awake to the sound of knocking; a dram within a dream, screaming.

It is a heartbeat, I am certain, never ceasing. Of this, I am sure, beyond; its regular thud and muffled insistence, the uniform patter of existence.

There is one here in the room with me, almost silent, never still, tempering the breathing to my dreaming, an eventual end of beatings.

Unbelieving, comes the alarmed echo of being, thieving from the thing. 

Faith is just a thing's seeming. 

Panic, sudden suffocation. In fright lost first to nerves, and then dread, terror and hysteria. 

Panic leaps from operation to undertaking, without a doctor's whisper. Never more than a lanced pustule, broken blister, an incision. 

Haunting, taunting, the uniform pumping of its tough fibrous purpose. 

In this sudden stop, panic is certain.

The lamp has drawn its curtain. 

Why I still love having choked the clock....

I often complain about not having time to write, today it's true.

I am tasked with completing a "self assessment" at one of my many jobs.

I love this sort of exercise. 

It produces a minimum of two sets of results, often having nothing at all to do with one another.

The first-draft version has qualifications like this:

• Have eternally vanquished Godzilla from the Bay Area 
• Have never ratted on anybody; don't even know the HR "red line" number
• Always exercise very strict "code of silence," when tired, sleeping, or praying

The second-edited-draft version resembles this:

1. Increased overall sales by an inestimable amount
2. Expressed corollary, negligible effect on stock prices
3. Deeply committed to company's 401K policies
4. Avoid office politics by calling in sick

Then, I'll submit a third-and-final version that I won't bother outlining here. It bores the mind to consider oneself in a purely functional capacity, and then to state that capacity using so few words.

Laconically, as it were.  

If they asked me to write an essay about myself they just might get a dirty simulacrum of truth.

In the end, I will sneak in subtleties. Always.

When asked to summate myself as part of the obligatory self-appraisal, I'll write things like, "Consider yourself lucky to see me working for you."

Too subtle?

I've never had a boss regard me with anything less than affection*, even the ones that almost fired me, of which there were several. 

Full disclosure: It must have been the tears and roses...

* - "anything less than affection" - This statement is not strictly true. One of my managers did cut off my oxygen supply for me, briefly, at a nightclub.

In fairness, this did happen off the clock, and I survived.  

.

Temporaria Iustitiam (It's Latin, brothers and sisters!)

(Two good citizens)

(This is a work of incomplete satirical fiction and is not intended in any way to be legal advice; whether substantive, useful, or purely imaginary. I am not a barrister, etc. If you feel that you are being unfairly targeted... then please contact your local police office and let them know who you believe might be your persecutor or persecutors.)

I don't like cops very much, either, and don't ever want them hugging me.

They are necessary in the same way that death is: they provide order, too often at the point of severe pain. In this, they are the presumed resolution of "sickness," and will remind you when given the chance, the literate ones. If it were not for death then there would only be perpetual disease.

Do you even have any idea of what sickos I deal with every night? 

Why yes I do, Officer, is it T. Bickle?

A few rules, for power:

- Never, ever grant power to the humorless.

- Never assume the basic goodness of humanity, particularly in those who have sought out and gained petty or substantial powers over others.

- Do not ever let the punitive force of society exceed the creative force.

In the handful of experiences that I have had with cops... I have found often, only after that fact, that they used their knowledge of how to abuse the law to direct the outcome of our interaction in such a way that they were able to flex the maximum amount of power against me, with no accountability whatsoever. Even when I was "trying to help."

Cops don't like me, generally, and I usually echo and reflect those same sentiments back to them. They don't respect me, and I make sure that they know that I feel similarly. I very rarely begin an interaction with a cop with anything less than respect. The undoing seems to be in the questions that I am willing to ask them.

Anybody that is very well liked by cops is quite plausibly a complete perversion of independent thought. If your heroes are cops then you just might have the imagination of a killer. Cops do not kill more people than the general population, but the comparative numbers should surprise anybody.

I should qualify... when discussing sports and weather, in line at Starbucks, cops adore me, wish me to be one of them, etc. It's only when they have arrived to create order that things go terribly wrong with them.

Another aside:

If "line of duty" is a valid defense, without need of further question, then why is black on black crime even questioned or referenced. If Giuliani can claim we need so many cops because there is so much black-on-black crime then why can't we extend that thought process out to its logical conclusion and reward blacks for killing other blacks? It would be much cheaper than cop pensions, and achieve seemingly similar goals. If the magnitude of the lie is to be believed at all then we have some horrible inner city comptrollers.


Back to the post:

The only thing that I have truly learned in these experiences with cops is one very simple fact: ALWAYS exercise your right to remain silent. If a cop is asking you questions then he is looking for ways to implicate you ,or to use your own statements against you, or somebody you might care about. Try to record your interactions with cops, always. The laws on this vary from state to state.


A few basic tips:

- All cops are liars.

- If there were more "good cops" then there would be far fewer bad cops.

- Do not ever open your door for a cop (This includes your car door, and even the majority of the window of your car door. Just crack it so that you can talk. Don't be a prick on this one, but do not give them the chance to unlock your door for you. They will. Tell them that you are scared and do not wish to open your window any further. This is a solid, legally defensible position that will get your ass kicked almost every time. It's worth it.).

- Keep your door locked and speak with them through a respectable space, one in which they can not enter unimpeded. You can tell them to walk over to a front window of your home and speak to them through the glass. If they break this glass without a warrant then it is a very different thing from them claiming (as this highly awarded team of two) that you opened the door for them, no matter what the facts.

- All cops are liars. They are all also writers, of a sort. Their writings are taken with disproportionate seriousness.

- Do not ever offer a cop information concerning yourself. If you are being questioned about a crime then seek legal counsel, even if you believe yourself to be entirely innocent, but most certainly if you know yourself to be endangered. Your right to remain silent will prevent them from arresting you 90% of the time, or this statistic is what I will test the very next time I have a chance.

- Don't be black, brown, or anything other than white, ever. I can not emphasize this enough. If you do not have "white rights" then you should hide inside, always. You are always a threat to a cop's safety, never forget that.

- The number of judges that question a cop's claim of uncertainty for their own safety against a dark-skinned person is virtually non-existent. Do not be black.

- Do not ever publicly question a cop's authority, just silently show them yours: NEVER OPEN YOUR DOOR. EXERCISE YOUR RIGHT TO REMAIN SILENT. You can legally stand at your front window and taunt cops with silence. You have no legal obligation to even acknowledge them. They will shoot you to prove that you were not a ghost.

- This act will be acceptable by any court of law. Ghost are very scary and real, they just proved that. 

- Every now and then you will meet a nice cop, one who even seems "good." On a bad day, or even on a very good day, this same cop will cover-up for a cop that has hurt or bludgeoned you, or immorally used the law against you, or even egregiously broken the law themselves while you were trying to help.

- Frank Serpico may have been a good cop.


A political aside:

- Notice the position of most Libertarians on the increasingly fragile concepts of Liberty and Freedom from Tyranny.

- Too often, they will side with the cops. These are dangerous people.

- Never forget that. Never forget the way they make you feel about the concepts of Equality and Justice.

- Never.

A few tips for driving:

- Turn your cell phone off before getting in your car. This has a two-fold benefit.

- Buy a dash-cam that streams to the cloud.

- Exercise your right to remain silent, always.

- Never admit to wrongdoing, wrongfully thinking that you and the cop just became friends.

- All cops are liars.

- Don't drive drunk.

A few tips for home:

- Install a webcam that streams to the cloud.

- If a cop pushes his way through your front door without presenting a warrant or announcing that he has one then shoot him dead once he has entered your home. Make sure that they fall inside your home.

- As quickly as possible shoot the next one, and then the next one, and then all of the ones on your front lawn.

- Once a felony has been committed then they all become accomplices to that felony. An illegal entrance to your home is safeguarded against retribution and you will be rewarded for heroism once the justice system and media comes to understand your unique plight and story.

- Judges simply love this, because they love the law.

- Shoot them dead until they are no more, the illegals on your lawn.

- This may take several minutes. There will be more arriving promptly.

- Verify that they had no warrant by calling your lawyer.

- Do not fret over the cost of this call.

- Use a land line, if possible.

- Relax, and enjoy the earned satisfaction of temporaria iustitiam.

- Enjoy it, your time may be coming to a sudden close, unless you happen to be white.

- Never be black.

.

The boys, and girl

(Rizzo, the wonder beast)

Home again, home again...  

Vacations pass far too quickly. I recognize now that I have a knot of complicated feelings concerning the holidays. It is likely because I have conflicted feelings concerning family in general, I guess. It is all a waste of time of course, those type feelings, and I should resolve or move past them. I recognize that I am spending too much time in my 40's resolving emotions that should have been dealt with in my 20's. Coincidentally, it was my father that first pointed this out to me.

Thanksgiving came and went and it was not nearly as difficult as I had believed it would be. Emotional apprehension is useless, worse than useless. But... there it is.

I wait to hear the stirrings of the little boy with his mother in the next room. Then, we will pack up all of our stuff and say our goodbyes. It is often my favorite time of the day with the boy, the early mornings. He awakes and is very sweet and present. I have still not quite grown entirely used to the idea of being a father. I see that it is happening all of the time but it is a sensation that is hard to quantify or qualify, but it is there. 

An old teacher of mine once said that, "Feeling is a way of knowing" and I believe that to be true, quite. It is not always testable, of course, nor is it often accompanied by any certainty, but it still floats at the center of what we know. It is the reacting to feelings as if they represent a totality on their own that should best be avoided. It is all a mess.

This morning I will say goodbye to Zora, a very sweet girl that has aggressive cancer. She possibly does not have much longer to live. In fact, it is nearly certain. It is difficult to accept, when the unthinkable meets the unstoppable.

Because I live so far away this will very likely be the last time that I ever see her. Well, it is best not to think about such things too much. I am sensitive and given over too easily to emotions, for good or ill.

I worry also about my aging father.

(Zora)

I didn't get a good enough picture of Nelson, the third of three dogs here. Usually, he is my favorite subject. There is a nobility and calmness about him that I esteem.

He is an independent thinker, mainly immune to training efforts. It is part of his charm. There is a determined and assured wildness about him, a quality that too often gets punished in humans. Not vicious, at all, just ever yearning to be unleashed and nearly uncatchable once free. Yet I do not get the feeling that he is running "away," he is merely running to be running, exploring in full trot for no other reason than it is there before him, happy to give chase to this new and sudden world.

(Timbo and Nelson)

.

... that distant afternoon

Nothing much to report today. Yesterday was a wash. We all did as close to nothing as possible. Took the dogs and the boy to the park. I have become the greatest action photographer in the house and am prepared to spend enormous amounts of money to insure that my closest competition is kept at a very distant second.

My friend discouraged me from purchasing the Nikon D4S. It is not a sensible purchase, in any way, but yet I still wish to own it. I have never been paid to take a single picture in my life. So, owning this camera would be among the least practical things that I could consider doing right now.

I can't tell if that sentence talks me out of it or makes me want it more.

Well, we did almost nothing yesterday, we did go play pool. I worked very hard to maintain my unbroken defeated streak in that sport. Perhaps I missed my calling. They play a cheater's game here in Colorado called "ball in hand" which is a way of changing the rules as you go, as needed, as long as it works to your advantage.

There was beer and shots of tequila, red wine with steak and cod dinner. Then the inevitable descent into the near incoherence of late evening. I vaguely remember a discussion concerning the potential resolution of America's war woes with mandatory conscription. I offered solid imaginary fact as the basis from which I was maintaining my position against it, using Israel as my proving point and example of failure. 

I was, of course, quite wrong about nearly everything I said. I discovered that fact this morning with some wiki-research, but I'm not going to let my buddy know about this. I'll lure him into the conversation again, better prepared the next time.

It is the last day of our mini vacation. We will go to Boulder today and commit to the ice skating that we had intended to yesterday.

A friend posted a quotation in response to yesterday's post. I will leave that with you today:

"Many years later, as he faced the firing squad, General Aureliano Buendia was to remember that distant afternoon when his father took him to discover ice."

- Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

.

Captain's Log, Stardate December 1st

(Developing his persona, the gaze of disaffection) 

We arrived at Longmont, CO. Barbecued chicken last night in the big green egg, drank beer and wine and watched football games. I want one of those grilles but it will have to wait. I am willing to bet that they can be bought used rather inexpensively. I surmise that many people buy them and become frustrated with using them. I gravitate towards things that have been relatively unchanged by time. This grille is from the middle ages. Likewise, my acoustic guitar is among my favorite possessions. Few things in life are as simple and pleasing.

I tried to play recently and my abilities have atrophied. I struggled holding chords and making changes, my fingers had weakened, lost the callouses that make playing something other than painful. I have been playing the piano much more lately. It is so easy to just sit down and strike some chords. No case to open, nothing to put away.

It is but one measure of my deep-rooted faith in the value of idleness.

Today, we might do some outdoor ice skating, a thing that I love and haven't done since leaving NYC. 

I am not the most graceful of skaters but I don't need to be. There is something contained in the sense of floating along the ice that transports me like a good drug, a waking dream. It seems magical, to glide along the slipperiest of worlds, the long arc of turns, the near effortlessness of being.

It gets boring after about an hour.

.

Persuasion

This is the slightest case of jet lag I've ever experienced. I have to close my eyes and concentrate to even feel it. 

No, that can't be possible. It is the restless boy sleeping next to me all night. Children are so active in their sleep that it's no wonder they need so much of it. He flops and twists and sits up and falls back to the pillow, or just to the bed, he'll turn sideways unexpectedly, sleep with his face down and back elevated, he talks and mumbles and squeals in his sleep. He likes to sleep close to me, so I get to detect each of these movements and sounds. I am a very light sleeper, so no energy is lost. I can pick him up and re-arrange him in a more sensible position and it doesn't even wake him up, nor does it last. He'll be waking me up again in a few twists and turns later.

Rachel went skiing yesterday while I attended to the napping boy. His cough seems to have subsided and neither Rachel nor myself feel any sickness coming on. It's a minor miracle considering how much the boy has been perpetually coughing and breathing on me. Children need more love when they are sick, not less.

Breckenridge is true "white girl heaven" and Rachel is brimming with happiness here. She would stay the entire week, I am certain of it. I like it, but not quite the way that she does. It speaks and whispers to her, it tickles her silly.

She will try to persuade us all to go skiing today. She has been describing the pastime to the boy in such a way that I have very little hope of doing anything else. She announced that there was snowfall at Copper Mountain, not far from here. She stated it as if the simple fact was all that there was needed to be known. It will require me getting out of bed. 

Now that I have grown used to the hotel room I would lie here for days.

I'll enjoy it once the familiar movements come back to me, cutting the sweeping S shapes, gliding downhill. The day will be over sooner than I would hope, and then the next and then the one after that, on and on just like that.

.

Breckenridge Blues, Vol. 2

(Nikon D700, 135mm f2.0 DC)

Stuck in a hotel room with a sick boy, nothing to do but write another post. Emails into the void.

I don't do well with boredom. I'll take almost anything over flatness and lethargy. If I didn't have the boy to care for I would wander. It's not as easy to be a free-spirit when you're not, though. All of the men that I know that have had children struggle with it. Several have privately told me that they envy my predicament, to be separated with only one child, a son. They tell me that in a year I'll recognize the freedom for what it is, rather than the horror of uncertainty that it is now.

It seems odd to me, for other people to look into my life right now and see something enviable there. It's not that I don't occasionally enjoy things as they are, it's just not what I dreamed of. It's like arising from a dream that causes you confusion upon waking, rather than terror, or the sense of sleep pleasure's passing. My life is a daze of doubt.

Focusing on work helps, oddly, though one can not work all of the time. The restless, messy life awaits when the clock strikes close of day.

It seems nearly impossible that it was sexual attraction that landed me here.

Now that I am old and wise and full of wisdom... young kids will come from miles around to listen to me, and to heed the many warnings of my words.

Let's all hope not.

There were other things also, of course, beyond sexual attraction. Though some of those things now seem just as inaccessible as the other. Hard to believe, hard to forget.

It is a good and lucky thing that nature fills a parent with love for their child. I shudder to think what life would be like now without that. Love is a choice only up to a point, after that the trees and the stars and the sound of a young boy coughing take over. I find myself feeling useful to a creature who knows nothing else.

Some question the supposed additional meaning of parenthood. So much is hidden and yet revealed in the mysteries of usefulness; deceptive in its mundane practicality, peculiar in its power.  

.

Letting the Days Go By

Breckenridge, deep in the wallet of the Rockies. 

We arrived late last night, after some time spent in the hot springs at Glenwood. I didn't go in the pool, didn't feel like it. The hot springs pool was impressive, no doubt about it. There were two of them, one hot and one very hot, arranged next to each another so that they stretched quite a distance, as if they were one long pool. 

Everywhere, there were people lounging about, presumably improving their health in the mineral rich waters. If I could have switched my eyes to black and white sepia-vision then I would have believed myself transported somewhere to the century before last, only the occasional bikini would have given away my proximity to the current age. 

Going on vacation with your wife, from whom you are separated, and your young child is an odd experience. It has brought me no shortage of unsettled feelings. Questions without answers, or worse. The what ifs and whys re-occur. You've already answered the revisions for yourself, and considered the many alternatives, but then there is this fluctuating sense, the tingle of lost love.

Invariably, something will happen, something will be said, and you'll snap out of it. All the reasons that things don't and won't work will galvanize around one facial expression, the tone of one clipped sentence, the sense that there isn't even a need to look at one another for confirmation any longer.

And you may ask yourself, Well, how did I get here?

The sun is rising over the snowy mountains in pinks and the blues of the sky. I would take a picture of it and post it here but I am too lazy.

Okay, I tried. Through the hotel blinds, it did not convey the essence of the morning. It rarely does, maybe never.

The boy has a cough, which might prevent us from continuing on to Longmont, CO as we had planned, not wanting to bring sickness to our friends. It's just a cough, we will have to wait it out and see. 

We may be stuck here, surrounded by natural beauty, attending to our boy together. Who knows, maybe we will fall in love again, though I tend to doubt it. Love requires a willingness towards one another that we no longer possess. A quality that we once shared as the earth's natural aquifers, where two hot springs meet. 

We also might be stuck here in the hotel merely enduring one another, for the sake of the little boy.  

We have plenty of practice at that, too.

.

Daddy, Uncle Diogenes Wants to Slice the Turkey

We spent the holiday with a large, warm, well-adjusted family. I focused on being pleasant, and when the opportunity presented itself, even charming. Not too charming. That's the key, try to avoid being "too" anything. That strategy has caused me problems in the past. Insisting on one part of myself, using it as a social mechanism, a wedge to prove differences. I would call it a "defense" but too often it comes across as an offense, a heresy. The Martin Luther of Thanksgiving.

All families possess both microcosmic and macrocosmic components. It is best to understand that before announcing "interesting" large-scale social ideas at dinner. If somebody says "We need to get rid of the politicians!" I'll respond with, "Sure, as a start. Then we should behead all of the older cops."

Nice people are nice, though. 

Niceness provides a comparative perspective from which to better assess certain human attributes. I almost wrote "comparative basis" but that would be disingenuous. I don't wish to mount an attack on the underlying meaning and value of "family" and the potentially strict, poisonous qualities of others' "expectations of pleasantness" this morning. 

Families can be very warm and supportive, up to a point. You must wish to be somewhat like them and act in accord with their values to fully enjoy the benefits of their love. Decorum is doctrine. Few families encourage lifelong directionlessness, particularly the artful or intoxicated kind. I don't necessarily mean alcohol, or not just that. I mean the intentional compromise of one's faculties through the regular excess of the mind, though also in the occasional augmented capacity. 

I partially kid, in an effort to distill then dilute, my meaning. 

In the few paragraphs above I tried to find a way to say that we all had a nice Thanksgiving. Do you now see the dilemma? Some who read here might not, others will. It is a common affliction, to know that you will only ever fit in to the degree that you can contain, and even betray, yourself. It is the value-exchange that many are willing to make. It happens everywhere and for all time. The benefits of part-time family membership are mitigated. Many covet the gold card amenities. 

The idea of having one's own family was sold to me as the ideal antidote to this feeling. I should have recognized earlier that maybe all I ever wanted was a part-time membership. It was the purchasing of the full condo in the hills instead of the time-share on the beach that seems to have finally forced this realization. The homeowner dues nearly broke me. The association bylaws contained so little negotiable fine print. It all became a crash course in contract redesign, renegotiation, and the subtle art of reneging. 

Though everyone at the front desk seems quite happy to keep me on as a silver-card holder. 

I just have to remember to always bring my own towels.

.

All cops are created equal

(CNN's "Hubby and the Squeezer")

Like broken clockwork, I awoke at 2:20 am. Even in a  different time zone I'm fucked, spend my hours passing through darkness alone. Except this time I am not quite alone. Rachel and Rhys are here in the room with me at my father's house. Rachel moved to the floor at some point, said the bed was too soft, that it would hurt her back.

The boy is sleeping in a "pack-and-play" next to the bed. We spent 12 hours traveling yesterday and he did pretty good, didn't start fidgeting until the 11th hour homestretch.

That is my travel update for you.

Ferguson. We all got a chance to see "equality under gunfire" in action. 

The police would like to remind us that the kid that got shot could have just as easily been a white kid. It was just sheer dumb luck that he happened to be black.

The cop probably never even noticed. When he pulled the trigger twelve times he might as well have been shooting Frank Sinatra for all he noticed or cared. He was finally doing his duty. His life was in danger, a hundred and fifty feet from where he had been attacked.

I wouldn't be surprised if they promote him to the position of police sniper. The kid's really got a natural feel for it.

Online you hear the common retort, They go out there and put their lives on the line every day.

My new response will be, Those odds aren't quite good enough for me. Just so that we can even the bet up a bit is there any way they could put their lives on the line every night, and weekends also?

I've given up on having opinions on it. I support all of the troops, especially the local ones. It's true that cops have to deal with a lot, but one thing is becoming increasingly clear, that they'll never have to sully themselves with accountability.

I should stop, today is the great yearly reminder of gratitude. I try to be grateful, but it's not always easy. It's because I have an imagination.

Things could be worse, is usually how I access feelings that approximate gratitude. Sort of.

Things could be better, is often how I excite my sense of youthful passions.

I try to keep things interesting by not wallowing too much in either thankfulness or righteous indignation. To keep a healthy psychic balance I remind myself how lottery winners all suffer the same fate.

Last night at dinner my father was relaying how he has been smoking for 75 years now. So, for those who take their medical cues from anecdotal sources, Smoke Up! The old cancer won't get you, unless of course it's just your time to go. Then it won't matter if you were smoking or not anyway.

I love listening to people reason, particularly when they employ the time-tested "Everything Happens for a Reason" methodology. Whenever I hear people say it I always want to respond with: What, like masturbation?

Well yes, it sure does happen for a reason. I can list a few of them. I always know why I masturbate. When it's all over I say, Well, that happened because of her.

All things sure do happen for a reason, stupidity most of all. It self-contains what is known as a "cause and effect" relationship. It's a form of intellectual karma. If you do nothing, the universe will reward you with non-knowledge. You will have achieved the much desired state of eastern nonsense.

If Karma is a universal and meta-physical record of actions then shouldn't Buddhists deny it altogether?


If asked what I have to be thankful for today I'll look around the table while holding hands with loving strangers and say, From Christ's Sermon on the Mount: Blessed are the uneducated hearts because they will receive invitations to Charles Manson's wedding.

Now there's an idea... I should start an online competition of original submissions for Charles Manson's wedding vows. Let's Crowd-Source this event.

America had better hope that I never come in to immense wealth and unexpected power. My life would be an acid blood-bath orgy of obscene misuse of potential and resources. Imagine Rupert Murdoch, The Koch Brothers, George Zimmerman, Charles Manson, and Bill O'Reilly all on my board of directors. I'd create a special "Naughty-For-Prophet" charitable tax haven, a sort of Political Action-figure Committee, a Super-Duper-Power-PAC.

I'd call it "The City of Turds, Ferguson, LLC"

Or, "Everything Happens for A Rifle, DBA"

Maybe that's too... I don't know, overt...?

Simple is best:

A-men, Inc.

.

We are all on our last cruise

Judging by the online community's reaction I'm surprised that Michael Brown didn't get killed much sooner. There are many who feel that he got precisely what he deserved and it was only the heroics of our boys in blue, with their herculean restraint, that kept him alive as long as he was.

We're reminded that the "grand jury" saw all the evidence and has made their decision. There simply wasn't enough evidence to indicate that a crime might have been committed. 

If I was a black guy in the US, with access to the internet, I think that I would be fucking terrified. There seems to be no shortage of people online that would love nothing more to one day be in that cop's shoes and pulling the trigger in just the same way. 

Death to the thugs! 

Not coincidentally, they are the same group that claims that racism is now a thing of the past. You know, we have a black President.

I'm not sure what it is about justice that angers the darkies so much.

For once, the far-right white men all seem angry at the "24 hour news cycle" that has "caused" all of this. It is strange... to have them so close to questioning Fox News for the first time in their lives, but still somehow missing the point.

Well, enough on all of that. The riots should keep everybody happy for another few days. Few things confirm the need to shoot blacks as much as looting. 

If corporations are people then they have 2nd Amendment rights, too. It's only a matter of time that Fox News will be reporting on Fox News shooting looters, as they're reporting on them. That should boost their ratings and forever erase the murky question of "journalistic ethics." 

Finally, the media is taking its responsibility to this nation seriously.

I woke up at the pre-zero hour again. We will be leaving for Colorado soon and I need to prepare. I have only packed my bags insomuch as I charged the batteries for my cameras yesterday. There are two packs of unopened Calvin Klein t-shirts stuffed in with a bunch of dirty blue jeans, a few socks, and a pair of underwear.

Rockies, here we come. 

Last night I was explaining to the boy that we'll be going on an airplane tomorrow. It's old news to him now. He was mainly uninterested, though he did ask me if I paid for him to be upgraded to first class.

We'll be leaving the little pup behind. Grandma shows up here in Sonoma later today to care for him. They're old buddies.

I can feel it already, a very long ways off, this will be one of the strangest Thanksgivings ever.

My father is rather old, his health is beginning the inevitable descent of aging, at that age. Each time I see him I can not help but wonder if it will be the last. It is a grim thought, and one that I can not easily drive from my mind.

There is no escaping it, the unavoidability of mortality.

.

Poppy Tears

(Afghani Dreams)

I don't want to leave the bed in winter. When I do, I only wish to return. If I had a fireplace then I would sit next to it nightly in a big chair, wearing slippers and a robe, smoking opium, if I can get it.

I know now why my friend told me not to look at the tv or internet last night. Ferguson. There are a variety of ways to feel about what is happening there, then there are two types of people that insist that you feel just as they do, without variation. It depends on where you see injustice. Some people are all for law and order, and some are a little too much for it.

One thing that I did find humorous about all of it was an online post I saw: If you were killed by a cop, which store would you want looted in your memory.

It all seems senseless, particularly the part about the grand jury never indicting a cop. I wonder if there has ever been a grand jury that didn't indict a cop killer. That should help serve as a comparative basis when considering what justice is, or should be.

I might write about it more. I just don't feel up to it now. 

Today is my last day of work for a little while. Tomorrow we leave to visit my father's family for Thanksgiving. Cusicks meet Cusicks, familia y familia. We will drive west from Denver through the Rockies tomorrow when we arrive. It is a beautiful drive. I look forward to it each and every time that I've done it. It offers a true sense of passage.

That's all there is to report from the personal essay desk this morning. If anything changes then you will be the first to know.

Keep your eyes on this blank space:

.

Where the sky meets the air in my chest

Towards the last few years of my life as a touring artist I developed an intense fear of flying. The day or two leading up to a departure were often filled with dread. I became cross with those near me, reminding them of my love, of myself as a mortal. I would sleep as the plane pulled back from the gate and taxied. Though this was not sleep as you might know it, but the troubled sleep of reason. I would awake with a start, jumping up suddenly from a pool of monsters. 

A doctor described it to me as one possible response to anxiety, the fear of death, a perversion of the fight-or-flight instinct and a form of narcolepsy, brought on by decades of drug use and a willing disruption of the sleep-wake cycles.

That same doctor prescribed to me many anti-depressants and anti-convolusants, to disastrous effect. I was rendered unbearably erratic by the very cocktails that were designed to bring me solace. Escaping them was a more profound struggle than the affliction itself. 

My life had become like progressive rock; insistent, technical, convinced of its own worth. 

Smug. I forgot smug. My life had become unpleasant, endured mostly by enthusiasts. 

A pilot who once sat next to me described my condition otherwise. He claimed that it's a natural reaction to the feeling of suddenly having fulfilled all of your responsibilities. He likened it to coming home at the end of a very long day and dropping all of your bags and sinking into the couch. He mentioned the myths of pressurization and commented freely on the medicinal effects of red wine, insisting to use the phrase "spirits" in discussion.

When I awoke again we discussed the variant speed of sound at different altitudes, as well as strategies to understand its meaning. The speed of sound gives us some understanding of the very meaning of time.

There are a number of accepted standards. I started to look them up just now but a close friend asked that I not look at the internet or tv before writing. I suspect it is because of the curse of unneeded factuality.

He is likely right.

Few things make me feel as free as the momentary wish for abyss.

When I would awake during takeoff I would keep my eyes closed and grip the seat, feel the intense weight of falling upwards as if there were no end to the gravity of flight, no end to being pulled elsewhere, as if the sun and moon and earth were conquered all, and at once. 

.

With No Direction Home, Like an Incomplete Unknown

(Egon Schiele)

I used to read much more than I do now. I miss it, time for self. There was a sense of calm that it afforded, a sense to which I can not seem to return. I rarely watch movies any more, also. I had told myself that there were lessons there to be learned, embedded somewhere in the tales of remorseless excess. 

Now, I am not so sure. These stories seem to have no better prepared me for life than anything else might have. Addiction might have conferred greater lessons than fiction. I tried to extract partial lessons from both, in the hope of combining them. Somewhere along the way I was supposed to decide on a way of living and then live by that self-defined etiquette. I adopted a few different approaches to life and must have decided at some point that they all seemed nearly interchangeable. I'm not so sure now. Nothing seems compatible any longer. Though also, nothing seems substantial enough on its own to feel complete. My memories are tattered scripts, unfinished scraps of dream long forgotten.

There are occasional periods that I pass through that take me by surprise. Emotional turbulence bubbles to the surface and I am causing some new personal havoc of sorts. It is exhausting, to live a life of unstudied emotion, to give in to unconsidered impulse. Sartre called it "magical," though it is left to the reader to decide whether it is of a black sort or not.

One partial solution is easy, of course: stop adding kerosene to a fire that I wish to subside. 

But the devil's voice glows and invites, doubles as embers in the darkness. 

The temptress kisses in the crucible.

.

Tijuana Cock Fight

Friday, with a team of three other untrained experimental research scientists, I assisted in the design and construction of an appropriately-named killer attack robot. I tried to upload a video of its final victory but Google is being weird. It nearly swept the competition in a brutal to-the-death match series involving thousands of other applicants.

I had been quiet about this up until now because I hadn't realized that it would make international news, which it still hasn't, but I'd like to get out in front of this scandal before it happens. It's no surprise to many that read here that I very well might be announcing my candidacy for office sometime this weekend.

Here is the short list of my qualifications:

- Can do pushup

- Wear underwear, often designer

- Eat red meat for every meal

- Haven't had red wine in hours

What has my opponent done? Silence.

These times call for more than just silence, they also demand reverence towards sanctity. In the face of yet another Benghazi report  that clears the White House of any and all wrongdoing this nation needs someone willing to ask the difficult questions like, What the fuck is a Libertarian anyway?

- Why don't they seem to want Libertarianism for others?

- Why do the best works of 20th century literature lack protagonists that qualify as heroes?

- What do they keep spraying out of commercial jet airliners?

- Why do vaccines that contain mercury cause Epolio?

- Why doesn't The Constitution include a Right to Privacy?

- Do albinos have past lives?

- Why is there no agreed upon measurement of time?

- Is there a possibility of intelligent life elsewhere on this planet?

My opponent has voted against all of the measures designed to prevent unregistered harlequins from enrolling in our grade schools. I have supported measures that increase the chances of pregnancy. 

My opponent has angrily voted against proposals that would have provided education for all politicians.

Is that really who you want sleeping on the big red button in the middle of the night when Russia finally comes knocking on Sarah Palin's front door?

Vote No on Missionary Proposition #9. 

.

The Tauntaun Toddler

Note the Star Wars pajammies.... in pumpkin collars and cuffs.

I want a matching pair. I'll find them, too. I mean, I am your father, and all of that, etc.


The time is arriving on padded Ewok paws when the boy and I will sit down together and watch Star Wars for the first time. It might still be a few years off but I can feel it approaching. Call it the Force, if you must, but I do feel it. Chalk it up to the many midi-chloridians.

I don't have the energy to make a bunch of nerd jokes here. Do Jedis ever really apologize? We'll keep our eyes wide for Order 65.


Don't worry, though... I'll also take the warrior to his first Peter Framptoon concert. What could possibly be more important to a young boy than the bookend summers of '76, and '77, when Corvettes and Trans-Ams ruled the roads and even serious artists were taking stabs at a quick disco hit....

The night is dark but the sidewalk's bright, and lined with the light of the living...

Yes, young Jedi; bright, it is.


Some Boston, barely an infection from Aerosmith (not too much). Then, as a matter of pure course, the eternal fight against the evil of the many Empires.

.