Bald Mountain

(Note the hideous accretion of blubber along the waistline)

Yesterday, two friends, James and Cato, came out from the city and we hiked a bottle of red wine up to the summit of Bald Mountain where we promptly drank the silly thing. The day was beautiful and the views were fantastic. The conversation was pleasant even though Cato insisted on bringing to battle qualities that can not be divided, such are his powers of imagination. I tried to be reasonable but was forced to focus my energies elsewhere: each upward step. 

The hike was difficult for me, as many things have lately become. But I made it, with having only to stop and rest a few times, whining most of the way like somebody's fat older sister. Honestly, I feel like an aging pack mule. I carry an extra 30 pounds with me everywhere I go. Each step a thunderous reminder. It is my fat biting back at me.

I exercise regularly but rarely exceed the 45 minute mark for cardio. The hike was approx. four hours from parking lot to summit and back. My chest was thumping and my lungs were a savannah grass fire, an uncontrolled burn. 

I let James borrow my Martin guitar when they left. It does me no good being here. It taunts me and my gimp left hand. The continuing damage of the nerves on that side are enough that the hand has started to curl up and turn red. It looks like the feet and stockings of the Wicked Witch of the East, and I the victim of a small house falling.

Nobody, I don't think, questions the severity and seriousness of a stroke, but this nerve damage has given me a little glimpse of insight into what that might be like. Steps must be taken to avoid such a thing. But when I go to get a physical the doctor keeps telling me that I need more pork and wine, and fish on Friday's. He's a good catholic, so what can one do?

To respond to a conversation from yesterday:

Cato asserts that there is a god, present in all things, though perhaps not omnipotent, nor omniscient. Omnipresent, is the term. 

This is the laziest version of faith of which I know.

So, let me attempt the response that I could not quite muster yesterday. 

It is a form of deism, the default position that order in the universe implies a certain mindfulness of a creator. It does not. The hypothesis is not needed, to paraphrase LaPlace's famous response to Napoleon. It is the optional position of those who are reluctant to make the step of reason: that there is no proof of God. It confuses the presence of order with the implication of god. It is a way of saying that physical rules are actually a mystery, and that within that mystery there still exists a possibility of a god, and then confusing the existence of a possibility for a favorable probability. That is known as "the leap of faith."

This leap is unnecessary. Gravity, or any other force, no more suggests that there is a god than anything else, which is not at all. The speed of light in a vacuum being a constant likewise does not confirm deities. A sunrise is beautiful but the face of god is there only for those who wish it to be. Because beauty exists it does not imply a god, nor do physical laws and the interaction of matter. This is the DMT argument: I smoked a drug and saw something strange and unifying there in my hallucination. Other people have also seen this. That must have been proof of god, right? What other explanation could there be?

The structure of the living experience has similarities. The explanation is that simple.

Well... I just took the dog for a walk. As we were returning home two crows were startled off of the power line and they made their famous croaking sounds as they took flight. This surely was the voice of god, right? What other possible explanation is there? All roads lead to god if that's where you want them to lead. Nothing will persuade someone who wishes to maintain a belief in something. Reason is useless against faith because they believe it to be so. There is a phrase for this phenomenon: willful ignorance. This un-winnable contest does not mean that imagination is the victor of the interaction, it only shows that reason is powerless against it, because mankind largely has a stronger need to believe their visions.

A contrary use of the imagination would be to simply imagine a universe without a god. It is very easily done. See how simple that is? 

It's a tie! 

All that it takes to defeat imagination is to counter-imagine.

Now, just try to do the same with rationale. It can be done, but not nearly as easily. When you remove the burden of proof gods will pop up everywhere, often demanding money or sacrifice. If there is no god then how did they make the Wizard of Oz? There is no imaginative limit to the hypotheses possible. This brings some people immense joy, even a sense of freedom, the ability to choose among so many possibilities without being burdened by evidence, or a lack thereof. 

To paraphrase an old friend: Freedom is the feeling one gets when they are not aware of what truly controls them.

Rationale, imagination, and ignorance are all somewhat optional. Choose wisely.

(Attempting to use my son to hide the fat)

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Coast to Coasting

The remnants of cosmic dust have finally left my bloodstream. A good night's sleep last night and I am back in form, what form there may be anyway. It is not the staying up all night and partying that wears you out, it is the lack of sleep, mostly. But lying in your bed and not sleeping is a very different thing from lying on a friend's wooden floor all night tussling with space spooks, eyes closed, music blasting. I have known both, well.

But it is nice to be back home again. A free day today and perhaps a mountain hike with a friend tomorrow. Some reading on the couch, a nap, etc. Rachel and Rhys are in Chicago, visiting, celebrating her grandfather's 88th birthday. It was on the 4th. A nice festive day for a birthday. 

I did not have to suffer many patriotic fools on the holiday. Nightclubbers are not generally known for their nationalism, neither their patriotism. There is, I believe, a tendency to align with some nebulous concept of universal love and mutual respect rather than the principles upon which countries are formed.

All you need is love, as the saying once went. Though it turns out that such love, as an all sufficient social bond, has proven to be lacking in results when compared against its claimed abilities. As a recipe for happiness most find that love alone is merely the component that is most pleasant to include, not always the most useful. But, such qualities should be judged by their implicit aim as much as their result. Intention has the potential to be as vital as outcome.

Faith is another needed component, an almost invisible quality. But faith without love often results in fundamentalism, it is terror at nearly any level. So, there is that to consider. Somehow, one must not give in to the impulse to rely exclusively on any quality that is heralded as the complete answer to anything. Nothing is that simple. Often the call to "faith" is used only to prevent meditation and abort conversation. It is used as a standard by which others' dedication may be measured and scrutinized. Be wary of it. 

That is my wisdom. Be wary of those who would answer the complexity of life with a single all important response in the form of a quality - a call, plea, or demand to rely exclusively on simplicity as an answer to all things, to give it over to god.... It is almost political, its empty though purposeful rhetoric. It is the curse of abstraction, used as an attempt to avoid the painful burden of analysis; similar impulses that operate on different levels. 

Somewhere, floating between the two, there is an occasional glimpse of truth, a momentary flash in the darkness, rarely as still and knowable as the faithful claim. It is only you that is speaking there in that space, tackling memories.

Nothing is written, except perhaps briefly in the stars, or across the sands. 

Ask the ashes.

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The Second Hand Satellites

(SHS in full effect)

I did exactly as I promised I would yesterday. Staying up all night does not necessarily make for good writing. Or any, for that matter.

We've decided to get the band back together. We sat up all night listening to our own tracks, quite pleased with ourselves. 

It was like The Second Coming of Hand Satellites...

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Oops....

I forgot to write a post today. 

So far nobody's pissed me off with their patriotism or abject nationalism. There is that, at least. 

I have no problem acknowledging the virtues of constitutional government while denouncing its weaknesses. 

Perhaps a balance of powers has an inherent time limit built into it. Similar to how people used to claim that "communism looks good on paper"... 

Okay, stupid. 

Since my posts get a lot more pageviews when I post a picture of a girl... there you go. 

Happy Independence Day, perverts. 

I'm about to board a boat and head out into SF Bay, to ingest drugs and listen to music, watch colorful explosions, etc. I figured I might as well do so while I still have the chance, because if you don't, then the NSA has won...

They covet our freedoms. 

If you say something, make it last. 

... on a mountain high

(An Orwellian image)

If it could have been called sleep at all last night I awoke from it with the theme to "An Officer and a Gentleman" running though my head. "Up Where We Belong".... Nonsense. Would that be with Joe Cocker and what's her name? A questionable premise indeed.

I had to listen to "Islands in the Stream" by Kenny Rogers and Dolly Parton just to get the other tune out of my head. From there it was a fairly easy leap to The Carpenters. Bad omen, that. 

Where the eagles cry...?

I want to write about Edward Snowden but my mind is thick and I'm not sure what I want to say. 

I'm afraid to drink a cup of coffee. I might try to go back to sleep for an hour, don't want it interfering with, or adding to, the restless possibilities. 

It is really something, though. The President of Bolivia's plane was stopped in Vienna, to be searched. He was denied use of airspace by France, Portugal, Italy and Spain. The idea of a whistleblower must strike fear into the heart of democracies everywhere. 

I still have mixed feelings about the entire episode. There are those who have hailed Snowden as a hero, and certainly he is beginning to look like more of one as time passes, though strangely so. The entire thing still strikes me as being a little bit too staged. Though admittedly, less and less so and it gets weirder, and ever more ominous. Who would script it this way? When countries are stopping the planes of sovereign presidents, to be searched for stowaways... well, that is an entirely new level of intrigue.

Selavy questioned who the person was that falsely testified to Congress. His name is James Clapper. He recently "apologized" for giving erroneous testimony. All is well within the government again.

Think about that. 

Apparently, what Snowden has done is worthy of the death penalty, if not worse. What Clapper did, merely in need of an apology, a trivial formality. In the grand scheme of things it was not even a faux pas. I mean, the programs were classified..... One can't be expected to be honest about such a thing, least of all to Congress.... 

Senator Wyden's office has refused to respond to what Congress' reaction will be to intentionally falsified testimony. Clapper was given the questions in advance of his testimony. 

I've used the term here many times before, but it's one well worth repeating, totalitarian democracy.

Ah, so sorry, we never expected you to answer our questions honestly, this program was classified.... We only fund the programs with taxpayer dollars....

One arm of the government takes the money from us through taxation, then gives it to another arm to secretly spy on us, when asked about it by those who financed it with others' money they lie, the American people are expected to accept that this is just the way things go when you're busy foiling dozens of terrorist plots (no details given), and the only villain seems to be the guy who finally spoke up about it, at great personal risk to himself. No amount of national energy would be wasted in seeing him brought home to justice, of course. 

Anyone familiar with Orwell's use of the term Doublespeak will smirk that Snowden is being charged under the Espionage Act. The very word espionage means "the act of spying or using spies, typically by governments."

It still seems to me that the entire thing is a little too convenient, designed to result in complicity if not subservience, much rather than what the Facebook liberals are hoping for as a result, armed revolution. These all seem to be steps somewhat designed to alert people (journalists in particular) that the old freedoms that helped keep a democracy in check are no more. 

Where the eagles cry, on a mountain high.... 

"Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind." - George Orwell

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Tinctures, solutions, etc.

What the fuck. I go months without being able to sleep. I start to make plans, to distribute the free time in the morning amongst the things I choose. Then, without warning, I sleep like a drugged corpse. 10 hours last night. I know that it's dangerous: too much sleep or not enough. I have been warned by professionals. But how is one to live, certainly not with alarms to rule them?

I won't use one. It's not that I won't set one occasionally, when needed, to catch a flight, etc. But they won't be a daily fixture in my life. It is a very small thing, but I refuse to be shocked into waking. I know that it only gives me the illusion of self-possession, but that must also count for something, right?

Now I have no time to write. I will start work in a few minutes. At least I'm not alarmed about it, there is that.

I work in an industry in which I am sometimes able to see technological advancements (or setbacks) that are invisible to most others. I read the sporadic trade article, etc. Since the Snowden / NSA leak the industry is starting to see a growing concern that data not be stored on servers in America. This is silly, of course, as where the data is stored is not nearly as critical as certain companies being willing to just freely hand data over to the government. Server corporations operate on an opposite premise. It is the only way that they stay in business, by safely storing data. But, it is an emerging concern. 

That being said, I can understand why some people are reluctant to have their data stored in America any longer. This might sound like a small thing. I assure you that it is not. Where the servers are located and who is willing to store their data on them is critical to everything that matters. The average consumer has no say in any of this, but they could. All possible future vitality is dependent upon the strength of the data industry, which is directly related to server location. The money follows the information. It could even be argued that the information is the new money. In many important ways it actually is. This is not my argument, but is is one way to view the present and future economy. 

Ask anybody, if you happen to run into them somewhere.

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Armstrong

 (18 months)

It seems simple enough: time passes. For some reason when I woke up this morning I was shocked that it's actually 2013. That puts 1983 at thirty years ago. Startling, to me, this morning; the unrecoverable distances of time.

Yesterday, we drove up into the Russian River Valley, to Armstrong Forest. Redwoods, as you can see. There was one tree there that we walked past that was 300 feet in height. They estimate it to be 1300 years old. How unlucky, I told myself.

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100+

It has been hot here, very hot, above 100 degrees. That's like gay-nightclub hot. Yesterday, the digital thermometer in Rachel's car read 108, though that can't possibly be accurate. It was nearly unbearable. I felt like a three-legged dog, trapped in the family sedan with the windows rolled up, abandoned on the fringes of the Wal-Mart parking lot. My mind was howling to escape. 

We couldn't take it any more, my howling. We went to a friend's house and swam in the pool. There really is nothing else quite like submersion to fight off heat and the unending misery of summer fleas, not even air conditioning, not even cold beer in air conditioning. Nothing. 

Ice cubes are useless compared to a pool.

Rhys loved it. He has sensibly determined that if he just walks into the water then we will scramble to get him. He either seems to have no fear or he has enormous trust in us. He requires constant monitoring, though he is thankfully predisposed to walking into the pool towards the place where one of us happens to be. That kid is rarely more than two steps distant from calamity. 

The day before yesterday it was equally hot, if not greater. I can't remember much beyond that, it has bleached my brain. We went to a local charity event. It was impossible to listen to people ask for financial help in that wretchedness. I couldn't sit still. I had to walk over the the entrance where I could get closer to an air conditioning vent. Fat people do not hold up well in these temperatures. I'm certain that there were some there that were angry with me, that I was blocking the flow of cool air, somehow fouling it with my advanced and sweaty presence. I was desperately looking around for a sturdy chair to stand on, to get my head closer to the source. 

At one point I'm pretty sure I saw Rhys humping Rachel's leg. I didn't even care. She looked good. I couldn't think about the implications of such a thing in that stifling heat and humidity, though. I was relieved that somebody had the energy to do it. It was a sign that we might survive. The last few days have been pages ripped straight out of Revelations. I would not have been a bit surprised to hear frogs falling from the sky last night, cooking on the roof. These are the plague-times.

One partially good thing, at least: the heat has doubled the size of my cock and balls. They just hang there, stretched, trying to get as far away from my body as possible. I've been looking into nudist camps in the area, wanting to take advantage of it while it lasts. The cock - much like the clitoris, lips, and inner ear - cannot sweat. It does not have the required glands for such a thing. The balls are quite famous for it, but the cock is treated mercilessly in this weather, in an evolutionary way. Nobody ever references their sweaty cock but the balls are hardly ever accompanied by a different adjective. The temperature will only make it uselessly hang there - which may help the cooling process some, giving it more surface area - but that is minor compensation for the other misery.

It's pitiful to witness, there is a forlornness that saddens.  

I've been going to the gym regularly, trying to recapture some youth. But as I slowly get back into a simulation of shape I just end up looking more stretched. My arms and shoulders and neck and face do not look the same any more. The skin refuses to react the way that it once did. I'm a melted version of myself. My whole body's starting to look like penis skin. It seems as if it has been grafted on well enough - though not quite as snugly as I might have preferred, with only the occasional seam being noticeable - but the surface must have been taken from a distant relative. It's not my skin, it's not possible. The years have embezzled my life away. My body looks like a duffle bag that was once used in a getaway run.

When did I become this aged thing. I appear in the mirror as a police sketch of my former myself, a fugitive from my own past. It will not surprise me at all if one day soon I awake to find the entire world still rendered in color but my reflection will just be a rudely stated black and white composite. I've gotten in the reluctant habit of stopping by the post-office, to keep an eye on the wall, in the event that a familiar ghostly sketch reappears there.

"Oh, the only decent thing I did when I worked as a postal clerk 

Was to haul your picture down off the wall near the cage where I used to work."

-Dylan

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Define - pornology

(ex-cheesecake)

My buddy, Selavy, is a talented old syphilitic. For many long years he has harangued me about sending him naked pictures of the various women (girls) I've known, or loved, presumably so that he can abuse himself privately at his own leisure, to his own foul ends. I have sent him some pictures that highlight the more fascinating components of female physiology but never told him whose anatomy was revealed in the image, whose genitals and anus were attached to which person, which smiling face, etc. Instead, I misled him, giving him snatches of insight while intentionally swapping and confusing the names, deceiving him in perpetuity. He still has no idea whose parts he's actually been gazing at. The color of pubic hair is often a perplexing mystery, particularly when it is lighter in color.

That was more fun for me than honesty. I have no special obligation to, or relationship with, the truth.

He can not help himself, the syphilis has gripped him. He's not exactly a dirty old man, neither is he a pervert. Perversion would imply a deviation from the norm and if anything his tastes are rather prudish, comparatively speaking. His impulses seem quite normal to me, almost healthy. He is merely more comfortable expressing them privately than most. Also, he is yet to be truly old, though he might disagree with this objective, non-clinical assessment. As for his tastes, he often makes some very salient points concerning sociobiology and the sexual tendencies of groups. It is difficult logic to argue with.

His cadging for glimpses into the lives of others goes on unabated. 

Alternately, he has forced upon me thousands and thousands of naked images to review. Is it a "nude" or is it a "naked image"...? I forget, though one is preferable and more precise than the other. I don't feel like thinking about it this morning. But there is scarcely a women I've ever met through him whose anatomy I have not seen in alarming detail, often with various props. He is never one to deny the model a little mise en scène when it suits the mood. He rarely lapses into what might be considered pornography, by most. This is not to say that his fascination does not extend to that point, only that his artistic temperament often prevents him from giving in to such base impulses. 

His fetish mainly seems to be the fetishes of others. 

"What good are friends like this who would fool you about such explicit things." -Selavy

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As things become possible

(unknown)

Selavy makes a good point this morning. What is more alluring than sharing an unexpected secret? What could be better than willingness? All things are possible with it, none without. Is there anything nicer than an unforeseen invitation, one lined with suggestion, innuendo. A summons in the form of a simple, little, picture - unexpectedly sent. I have long sought the sweet and tawdry. Love, or anything resembling it, should have its secrets, the sharing of cheap, precious little unknowns; there should exist a component of private naughtiness, to keep the imaginative component involved.

All things are possible within it.

It is as easy as going into the bathroom and taking a quick picture, though it can be done even easier than that. It could be as simple as lifting a leg. Describing it may make it sound cheap, but you know it when it happens, and it is not cheap at all but rather precious, among other things, exciting.

They are sweet stories to tell yourself.


With many photographs there is the feeling that one is peering in on, or perhaps past, a secret - a shared confidential may also be peering back out, or even through. It may be the moment that the secret is secret no more. It is never easy to say with complete certainty. It is a mystery concerning mysteries.

Maybe I have already said too much.

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Blondes give more fun

(photograph taken at SF Moma, artist unknown)

I assumed that most people thought of Nelson Mandela as a hero. Not so, say some online Brits. Apparently, he was a terrorist and was in prison for good reason: treason. I tried to point out that he was resisting what most people considered a tyrannical and outright racist government. 

Little matter, that. They likely oppose those filthy Palestinians as well. 

Ah well, what can be done. I should have listened to my ol' buddy Selavy. You can't convince anybody of anything they don't already want to believe. It is all a foolish waste of time.

I have nothing to say today, but would like a chance to prove it.

Let's see.....

In the distance the houses are burning. The smoke rises without following us. 

I'm not sure if I like intoxicants or intoxication. I know the difference, I simply don't possess a control group from which to test.

The child's hand around the stem of a wineglass, the expected tilt, the carpet beneath, the tears.

She had done her white hair up such that she looked like an animated toilet bowl cleaner. Hairspray bolstered the illusion. One quick dip in the water and she would have proven useless. 

It was the most effortlessly graceless performance I had ever witnessed. 

Seeking a sordidness I could not find.

Blondes give more fun.

She was a delightful recipient. 

You silly monsters.

Contemplating suicide helps me go to sleep.

Nope, nothing's working for me. On another day I might have stretched any one of those sentences out past its logical end. Not today. 

Let's pick back up here tomorrow and see where the world has taken us.

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Bring Forth The Krackenhead!

The rains have not stopped. Yesterday morning, after publishing my post, Rachel and I discovered a leak in the ceiling. We had known something was wrong but we weren't quite certain what it was, now we know. A piece of the drywall tape had come loose. I had convinced her it was just poor workmanship, that we would get it fixed. 

Nope, or at least not in the way that I had thought. The poor workmanship was higher up, on the patio outside of Rhys' room. A friend came over who does roofing and we discussed strategies for repair. We will have to wait until everything dries and then use a hose to try to find the leak. For now our house is a water park of sorts, we dance among the magical waterfalls.

I poked two holes in the ceiling to let any standing water drain out. There was none. By doing so I have caused what water was there to make its way further along into the sheet of drywall. It was a calculated risk, it had to be done. Too much water standing in the ceiling could have been much worse. 

Home ownership is not always the unending joy that it seems. The value of our townhouse has increased somewhat dramatically in a single year as the market has rebounded. Somewhere, someone will be getting even more wealthy off of our eventual bad luck. We have considered remortgaging already. How can that be? 

Another friend has warned us not to do so unless we can get a full point off of our current interest rate.

What the fuck am I writing about?

Jesus Christ, it's only a matter of time before this site becomes dedicated to Christian Financial Advice. I'll open an office somewhere in Texas. I'll call it Mormons For Money.

Doesn't the word Mormon sound like it belongs next to Gorgon in The Clash of the Titans?

That reminds me.....

Last night I got in an argument with a few people that seemed surprised, adamant even, that there exists abuse potential in pharmaceutical pain killers. They seemed mainly content to blame the companies that make the drugs and the doctors that must do their nefarious bidding. It ended poorly, or rather my contribution to the conversation did. I mocked my counterpart, after being told that I was "non-sensical," or rather that my assertions / analogies were, that my observations were not apt, which means that they were not appropriate. This assessment, a clear attempt to limit the use of the mind, was somehow not considered an insult, though my use of the pejorative "dunce" was. If you don't toe the line that big-pharma is simply all evil and that all creators of GMO's are likewise purely villainous, then you will feel the collective wrath of the left. Just try it sometime, for kicks.

As I get older I find myself less and less able to align myself with that which might be called "the left," though I am still far from agreeing with much of "the right." I somehow oppose both of them, though not always equally or adequately, apparently. There are simply fewer and fewer places remaining to go. Even agreeing with people online is difficult. There is a "righteousness and indignation quota" that must be met, if yours is found to be insufficient then you are in line with the evildoers, fooled by the media, a dim-witted shill for the corporate elite. 

What passes for "science as proof" online is likewise shocking. I don't think that many bother reading the studies that are buried in the articles they post. They are presented as unread and yet incontrovertible fact. For the study to support their assumptions is alone good enough. To question the study, or the science behind it, is when you will really suffer the ridicule. Being literate is not enough, one must have already published a contrary study, though this same qualification is oddly not needed as a means of agreeing with said study. 

As for the abuse potential to be found in pain killers, I was more than willing to prove my point. As part of a loosely related independent study I promptly ate a Vicodin and a Klonopin (not strictly a pain killer, but rather a hypnotic anticonvulsant classified as a benzodiazepine, which has muscle relaxant properties, a thing which anybody my age or older will assure you has a pain relieving effect), and then a Xanax to help relax me as the others took hold. You don't want to go into anything like that with stress plaguing you. It's very important to drift comfortably into that strange world, a soft and somewhat rounded place where one can easily bend and reshape their surroundings to the will of their mind, if only to justify the quest. 

What, precisely, it is that I am looking for there, I never know. In the search for a thing unnamed I discover other lost phantasms entirely detached from purpose, just floating there like eye angels along the vitreous humour, starting as the shape of unicellular amoebas, in time becoming banshee mermaids, wonderful in their amorphous animated proportions.

In the morning when I slumber through they are all lost to me, like the memory of billboards passed in the rain during an ancient Florida vacation, the advertisements of floating myths, underwater nymphs, dancing and twirling among the reefs, Weeki Wachee and Blue Springs pulled from the past and saved, like lost souls now swimming alongside the Mighty Mormon.

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The longest days of the year

(Ruscha)

Fell asleep and then woke again to the sound of rain. The notes of it restful as a detached emotion, one that can be felt freely without the weight of experience; nostalgia for an unnamed thing, universal in scope. A mysterious summer anomaly for the region, unique to others' memories, so claimed. I close my eyes and I am in the jungle, an open windowed room along the coast, waiting for the rains to lift, the boat prepared and also halted. When I close my eyes in it I am anywhere at once. 

Soft grey from scope to scope, the daily ambit robbed. The longest days of the year have lost much of their light. I lie in bed and do not mind at all. I could be perfectly happy there all day, waiting to escape.

I've drank straight from the milk jug twice in the last two days, tilting the gallon upwards, a thing I have not done in years. I am reminded of my mother's pleas not to, getting caught yet again, the admonishments. I remember young grade-school projects in which we were all asked to bring in a plastic gallon milk jug, one that had been thoroughly washed out. The stench filling the room when those that had not were finally opened, as if a rotten sarcophagus had been unearthed in Egypt, or worse. The children's faces withdrawn in crumpled cries of unison. I wonder what projects students must do now, consider the differences of a cardboard soy container. What assumptions can be made. Those days must be long lost, the ones in which all children drank generous portions of daily milk, plastic jugs being a norm in almost every home. Those days must be gone.

If not, then soon, though not before the rains have lifted.

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Ok, Charlie Hustle

Four day weekends are the way it should be. Your traditional two-day weekend should be buffered by a day off on each side, always. The three day work week is where it's at. Imagine how productive we would all be in those mid-week days. Nobody even cares about Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. It would be a win-win for everybody. We could call it the Super-Size Weekend. You can get them at 7-11, like lottery tickets.

Monday would make a great new Sunday. 

Holy crap, speaking of lose-lose.... I struck out in softball yesterday. I didn't even know that such a thing was possible. I leaned into two pitches, dangerously swatting at air, then was caught watching the last, flat-footed in the shoulders. Shameful, truly disgraceful. I wish I would have pulled my back out on the first wild strike, hospitalized myself instead of what I actually did do. I should have shit my pants at the plate, just forced a couple big turds out into my drawers, fell to the ground and claimed I was having a stroke, anything.

The bases were loaded and it was the third out of the inning. The team needed me to get at least a base hit, a thing that I'm pretty good at, usually. I had gotten on twice in the game, once even from some Pete Rose type hustle to first, but this was just deplorable. Rachel hasn't had sex with me since, hasn't even kissed me. She offered some batting advice after the game. She got drunk last night and talked about old boyfriends, texting secretively, giggling. Rhys spent the remainder of the day crying. This morning he woke up and rolled over when he looked at me, burying his head into his "wuzzy" and moaning, not wanting to be picked up. 

Contemptible. I think the team captain is going to trade me. 

C'est la vie, as they used to say.

"It's a round ball and a round bat, and you got to hit it square." - Pete Rose

The Lord's Moon

(unknown)

The Lord's Moon. 

Slept like a werewolf, hair growing out of the eyes and rabid claws for fingers, the bloodthirst of a crazed demonic fiend. I dreamed of waking needles keeping.

St. Vulgaris. The compensatory murmurs; courage to follow gypsies into the forest, to steal from them, to be lured by their dark song, tempted. The prime force driven, apologies drifting up through the stars, mumbling prayers deep into St. Anus. On a running night like last lit, devouring wanderers wide. Angels crept past the fire, baring the teeth of ghosts.

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Stinson, redux

(dreaming of the tides)

Yesterday: I took Rhys to the beach. We went with a childhood friend of mine and her sister's family. I'm not sure if I've ever told the story here about her. She and I have been buddies since just before adolescence. I must have told that story, right? Somebody remind me. I'm getting old and can not distinguish between memories and shared fictions.

Quickly: Lisa, my friend from childhood, along with her husband Matt and soon-to-be adopted child, live here in Sonoma. We were very close friends from the ages of around 11 to about 16, then her family moved to Nashville. We stayed in touch intermittently but then lost touch, as I had done with so many of my friends, for about 15 years. She found me online, writing a column for a music website out of Amsterdam. She saw that I was coming to visit San Francisco soon and she invited me out to Sonoma to visit and meet her husband. I accepted and started making a visit to Sonoma a regular part of my trip to SF. It played a very significant role in Rachel and I having our wedding ceremony here, as well as eventually moving here. I must have relayed that already. It sounds familiar. 

The Beach: We went. As I've said before, taking a child to the beach is not like other visits there. It is nearly perpetual work. I don't know how women do it, but they seem to sometimes love it. If the child is not in your arms - and even when they are - you must be on the lookout much of the time for them eating sand, crapping their pants, drowning, or eating a jellyfish - all sorts of terrors. I didn't take a single picture while there. A wet diaper filled with poop is a very different monster. But it is a quite special feeling to see the boy fascinated with the waves, the water, the open sky, the ocean itself, the Pacific. I'm not sure how much he can grasp the enormity of it, what version of the truth a child's mind brings. I imagine it to be a snow globe version of the place for him, though perhaps I am only imposing my sense of the rounded edges; likely. I know that he cannot yet imagine Asia across, that's all. Infinity for him might mean as little as losing sight of me for a moment when he turns to look. Who are we to ever say; assumptions all. Last time we had much fun together running into the surf and then retreating from it. Yesterday, he was fascinated with the waves. He would stand on the shore where the waves were making their last thin, spreading break. He would fall forward into the water as it would draw away, and then again be knocked backwards by the sensation of it advancing past him. It was hysterical, though I had to put a limit on how much hysteria I thought he could manage, the parental assumption becomes fact. There were a few moments when the tears came, but he recovered quickly as the next wave approached. I would just stand him up again and the ocean would take over. It must have tricked his mind into thinking he was falling forward or backward and he would just go with it. Or, considering that he was dropping towards the flow of the water perhaps some desire to compensate and correct was his undoing, the liquid earth moving unexpectedly under his feet. His newly learned ability to stand coming up against an eternal foe. It was fantastic. When I would pick him up to right him he would be covered in mud, and giggling, excited towards the sea. I mean covered, beach mud packed under his shirt, down his ass crack, partially trapped by a sagging wet diaper, saltwater mud in his hair and on his face. Yuck. Kids are quite a sensation, exhaustingly messy. Nothing is miniature about the chaos they make of themselves. They live for it. Once I got to the open showers I conceded that there were some things that should not be managed publicly. Feces, etc. We returned home prematurely. I took him to the car, changed his diaper and placed him in his car seat, a lone deep breath as the final click confirmed it. He was asleep before we left the parking lot. I felt as if I had been flattened by sunlight. The drive up through the hills and away was peaceful. The boy and I had bonded, which made it all sensible and warm and worth it. To wit, there was a moment in the day as we were waiting for our food from a little local shop in which he and I started playing with a straw. He was trying to jab it into my mouth and nostrils and eyeballs as I held him, so I started biting at it, a thing that he seemed to find hilarious. All that I needed to do from there was add a "rumph!" sound to each bite and he became devastated by my unending comic genius. The boy could not control himself, he was consumed by giggles. The rest of the day and into last night as he was going asleep he kept instigating more of it from me, rumphing me from a distance, peeking around corners to launch a surprise rumph!, expecting the same in return. From across the house we would trade air bites at imaginary straws, chuckling and chortling as we went. 

Simple joys, buddies, etc. 

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I never asked

My piss has turned to uric poison. It is supposed to leave the body sterile though mineral rich, which explains why it becomes "less than sterile" so quickly. That, along with its warmth and moisture.

Whatever sickness it is that has gripped my body is finally making its way through, and out. The cleansing organs have been working all night, as I was nearly sleeping. I've been helping them along by not drinking at all for the last few days, but now they've shown their hand. It was all a dark yellow that smelled stinky foul, and it burned terribly, of course.

No, I only jest.

Any loss of vitality is just a practice run, and it does not burn when I pee, any more.


I've encouraged Cato not to be too vulgar on his new site, and now look at me... I'm despicable.

A female friend, long ago, once told me that I have a "Bundy-esque charm." That would be Ted, for those of you perhaps too young to recognize the reference. He was an American Monster, or some named-for-television thing like that. There were several documentaries made. He was a quite storied serial killer in his time.

He escaped from prison a couple times and then acted as his own defense attorney, keeping himself from both extradition and execution for over 10 years, several appeals, etc. This all happened at the very end of his run as a serial killer. There weren't enough female victims in prison, sort of. Some experts surmise that he came to Florida only because they have a death penalty, that he needed to increase the risk to increase the pleasure. He had perhaps become bored with just the standard rape, killing, mutilation and necrophilia.

At FSU, five victims in one night, four within 15 minutes of one another, within 30 feet of each other.


He asked a woman who had previously testified on his behalf to marry him in court, she accepted. By a strange Florida law (are there any other kind), because he had done so in a courtroom and in front of a judge, they were considered immediately married. There was nothing the judge could do to stop it. It was the law.

Mrs. Bundy and he had a child together, nobody is quite sure how. Oddly, he never killed her.

The anticipation on her part must have really been something. Believing somebody to be innocent is partial, no matter the level of faith.

It took three death sentences to finally execute him. It happened the day after Salvador Dali died naturally, or rather, in a very non-surrealistic way.

I think my friend only meant that I could be devious and convincing. I never asked.

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Strike up the Wurlitzer

Sick again. Who knows with what. Up all night, mercury spinning in my veins; my body as the rising and falling of a thermostat, at the whim of unseen wind. Impossible to get comfortable, impossible to sleep, sweating and chills, tossing and turning, everything more liquid than solid. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. 

The room reeks of dank somatic complaint.

I'm heading into what might have been a nice 4-day weekend. The woman who takes care of Rhys in the daytime needed Friday and Monday off so I took them off also, to take care of the boy. Now I question it. Parenting is a particular burden when ill. 

Nausea, Coffee, Repeat. 

My stomach is empty, as dizzy as the carnival, lonely as a carousel, dragged through the night behind certain circular horses.

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Vaginosis

It feels like that sometimes, doesn't it? Just icy death and that all over fishy feeling.

So, now I'm sick too. I won't bore you with all the details, but I knew it was coming. I was up most of last night with the feeling of metallic blood moving through me, but that wasn't all that was moving through, there were many midnight mysteries.

The body wishes to purge, and for once I'm on its side.

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Things change....

(The "real" Yankee Stadium)

I wrote a rather extensive piece earlier that will never be published. 

I was sharing my vast wisdom concerning having children and the various gender-specific sacrifices that are made, and rewards given. I dropped Rhys off at the nanny's place, when I got back I looked at it and recognized it for the vile wretchedness that it was.

One of the key points was, "Why can't we have it all?" 

It included a rather lengthy encouragement to carefully consider the question.

I will be emailing it out privately, to men that I trust.

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