Hello It's Me

A comforter changes everything. I am no longer crashing at Superman's winter home. Magically, the heat was also on last night. The crystal castle has melted. I must have slept for eight hours, or seven. I dreamed of the tropics. I feel like a prince, a real Kryptonian, Zod, Vlad, Something / Anything. Though, in truth, when I awoke... Miss Lane was already long gone.

Too bad, that.

I seem halted in my weight drop. I have leveled off at 211. Twenty-five pounds lighter than I was at my flabbiest, but somehow stopped in my descent, edging towards my goal of invisibility. I am going to write a self-help-diet book for people who wish to get to 211 pounds, just like me.

I'm stuck on a title though. It's either going to be,"What am I doing with this in my mouth?" 

Or, "Oops..."

I am currently trying to come to terms with my fiber intake. It's an ongoing issue. The more of it I eat the more monstrous the results. There must be some logical end to its hideousness.

Okay, Starbucks will be open soon. That means good things for me. 

Each day now I go to Starbucks and buy a coffee. Each day I am amazed at the enormous sense of entitlement, and waste. There is a counter there so that people can prepare their coffee the way that they choose, once they have it in their clutches. This table can easily accommodate two people. Each morning, like broken clockwork, somebody will be standing at the dead center of the table, occupying it nearly completely, rather than just standing to one side so that another person can use the table also.

Each day, my response is the same, "Could I possibly use one half of this counter made for two?" as I navigate in towards it anyway, usually to the right side where the delicious cream is kept cold. For several days now I have noticed why these people act this way, I think. They don't want others seeing what they are doing. Here in beautiful Sonoma… they will pick up anywhere between 3-7 of the wood stirrers and they're using them to stir the sugar in a single coffee. I swear to Paul Bunyan. It's fucking insane. 

I'm not a tree hugger, per se, but I'm still deeply repulsed by this kind of abject consumption. How can one coffee stirrer be insufficient. You're just dissolving sugar into a hot liquid with motion. It doesn't require miniature deforestation. 

If you look in the trash you'll see that there are always a few clumps of stirrers tossed away together. If you use one and offer to hand it to somebody who needs one they'll look at you like you just asked them if it was okay to give them a nice back rub with a personal choice from your private dildo collection.

I'm always tempted to say what I think, "It wasn't in my ass, I swear to fucking god. Smell it?"

The people are bad enough, but they've also put the local flyer-board right in front of this table. So, they will stand there and gaze up in wonder at it after preparing their coffee and then just after that also, oblivious to all others except perhaps those recalled in fading memory. I mean, you can't really blame them, they haven't had their morning coffee yet. It makes me want to sharpen one of those wooden stirrers. Prison rules, etc.

What can be done? 

There is no cure for the others.

.

This time

(the view this morning)

I fell asleep with the window open. I awoke in a state of frigid suspension, unable to get out of the bed to piss, too cold to stay, my body shaking with the mistake. The sheets felt as though they had evaporated into the night. All that remained was a thin hint of what they had been. They weren't trapping any heat but rather only inviting the demonic cold to pass through. It felt as if I was sleeping inside a ghost. The darkness never helps. I struggled to find my phone in my underwear.

My phone was not in my underwear. I was. I looked for the phone while wearing my underwear.

I have since closed the window, but I sit here now fully clothed with a scarf and pullover fleece hat on, still chilly. I am eating popcorn out of a bag. Breakfast, etc.

It is something that I must not forget, the window. It will not defeat me again.

"We're goin' out where the sand's turnin' to gold, so put on your stockin's baby, 'cause the night's gettin' cold…." 

One of my favorite Springsteen lines. He has a few of them, particularly on Nebraska.

"At least for a little while, sir, me and her we had us some fun."

Oh yes, the fun never stops:

"In the wee wee hours, your mind gets hazy, radio relay towers, c'mon and lead me to my baby… The radio's jammed up with talk show stations, it's just talk, talk, talk, talk, 'til you lose your patience… Mister state trooper, please don't stop me…. 'Aint somebody out there, listen to my last prayer, hi-ho-silver-o, deliver me from nowhere."

"Your eyes get itchy in the wee wee hours, sun's just a red ball risin' over them refinery towers. The radio's jammed up with gospel stations, lost souls callin' long distance salvation."

Yes, that album. One of my favorites, a lo-fi reinventing of the past.

What else.

Scarlett Johansson has come in favor of porn. See? She says that it can be "productive." This means that it can generate commodities. Porn is fertile.

Perhaps there is a secondary meaning that she may have intended. Effective, etc.

I have begun reading Steinbeck's East of Eden. I've felt that he was a very good writer but that he would grind his agenda against the reader, too much. He was insistent on always making some moral point, of standing up for some principal. Bad is bad and good is good. Too often it stood in the way of the truth. We'll see how I feel about his masterpiece. Perhaps a Laureate Aesop of the 20th century is what this time requires.

This time.

That is what I'll call it. Until the next time. 

.

 

Only I didn't say "fudge"...

So, yesterday I had been asked to babysit the child of some friends. 

- No problem, I thought. I can do that.

It was Dad's birthday, Mom wanted to bring him out to a movie. 

- Sweet, I thought.

I arrived at the appropriate time, got out of my car with the steak I had bought for dinner, as I have done hundreds of thousands of times before, and the alarm went off on my car. 

- Fuck, I said. 

I couldn't turn it off. I started frantically pressing buttons on the key, putting the key in the ignition, turning it, starting the car, panicking. It suddenly turned off on its own, for reasons unknown. 

I went in the house, said my hellos, got Dad's keys so that I could take the boy over to see my boy for a little play-date, put him in the car, got in, put the key in the ignition, ALARM. The horn started honking, lights were going off, the boy was laughing at me. Daddy, he popped his head out the front door and asked if everything was okay. I must have done something right, eventually. The alarm stopped. 

- How can this be?, I thought. Beginners luck.

Things went swimmingly on the play-date. We ate dinner and then all had a flashlight adventure in the dark, exploring the neighborhood, the back yard, the trees and the stars. We carried with us a book that, when illuminated with the flashlights, with the lights then turned away, would glow in the dark. Star formations that we were meant to find in the sky would glow at us. The stars appeared, as if by magic, above us, and also there in our hands.

Then, later, it was time to take the boy home and put him to bed. I unlocked the front door, turned off the alarm, and began the routine of getting him in a fresh diaper and his pajamas. We worked together on this and it went surprisingly well. I put his bottle in the microwave for 40 seconds, put the cap on, shook it up, brought it to him in his crib. The boy was pleased and quiet. I closed his bedroom door behind me and went to the living room where I prepared to watch some television, my new hobby.

As I prepped a pillow on the couch to sustain the substantial weight of my head an ALARM went off - a very LOUD one, PIERCING. I ran to the place where the alarm remote is kept and pressed OFF repeatedly. Nothing. I tried to call Mom and Dad in the the theater. Their phones must not have gotten a very good signal. It is a problem with that theater. I texted. I raced around the house praying in tongues, offering alms to the alarm gods.  

At some point I must have pressed the "panic" button on the remote, thinking (and somewhat rightfully so) that this was most certainly a moment in which to panic. There was a child sleeping in the house and I needed immediate help from the alarm company.

This was not the right thing to do. I recognize that now from the comfort of the following morning and a good night's sleep.

Finally, Mom and then Dad called me and we rapidly discussed the alarm code and how it should be input into the wall unit, to disable the alarm. 

- No luck. I tried it hundreds of times. I wanted to be certain. 

They decided to discontinue their movie and walk home. The theater being only a few minutes away on foot. A few minutes of panic and screeching alarm with a child trying to sleep in the other room, having gone to bed without his Mommy and Daddy. Now this. The possibilities were potentially disastrous. I knew this.

There was a knock at the door.

The cops. 

- Of course, I thought. 

They'll understand. Who better to help in a crisis situation. Who more capable and well trained to bring understanding and compassion to a strained circumstance. Who?

- Who indeed.

Cop, he was very understanding; chuckling with helpfulness, even.

I didn't find out until afterwards but Mom had already called the alarm company and told them that this was not an emergency and that I was a trusted friend. Was. 

This had been communicated to the cop before cop knocked on the door. Cop didn't bother telling me any of this.

I envisioned some free transportation to the Sonoma County Main Adult Detention Facility, with perhaps some light pepper spraying and a few punches to the kidneys.

But instead, I invited cop in and he tried to turn the alarm off also. No luck. Who better trained to intervene in a crisis situation. 

Mom and Dad came home during this and we all chatted amicably together as the alarm raged on.

Mom called the increasingly useless alarm company again, becoming verbally agitated. They assured her that they had done what they were supposed to do on their end.

Dad walked around the living room asking where the alarm was coming from. We searched its source. It was very high pitched so we naturally looked up to the corners of the room where it seemed to be coming from. But no, that wasn't quite it. Finally, we arrived at the couch, where, when we looked down, we discovered and realized there was a doggy-alarm pad designed to keep dogs off. A throw pillow was touching its edge.

Disabling it was alarmingly simple. 

The dogs were sitting on their bed on the floor, both looking up at me, untroubled, quite happy to be home.

.

QCD!

(scholastic binky, age 22 months)

- I have tv now. 

I'll find you, Jesus. I know you're in there.

It's far worse than I remember it being. Still, I fell asleep with it on. Big mistake. I awoke around 3am with the Dave Chapelle show on. Rap music. Something about "delicious booty." 

Is that what young fellows really listen to?

'88-'92 were the golden years for rap and hip-hop, don't let anybody tell you otherwise. Go back and listen, you'll see. For overall innovation, diversity of style, influence and quality… the golden age can't be beat-boxed.

Also, I was 20-24 years old. A perfect time for things to be great.

I'm a "hater."

What am I doing? It's 4:20am, I'm going back to bed until the gym opens.

------------------

Useless. I just lie there. Well, I don't just lie there. If I did, then I would probably fall back asleep. I toss and turn. The gym opens sometime in the future.

My mind is a blank. It can only take being filled for so long and then it needs to empty, to purge. Perhaps my mind has an eating disorder. It consumes and then releases. My mind has lopsided blue-balls. That is the latin term for them. 

Caeruleus Pilas Inaequali is the informal, street slang.

I have an unspecified consumption disorder.

UCD. It will be named after me. QCD! ©, by the time it's all over. 

Though some will prefer the earlier description: pro-hectic bi-utilization disease. 

And its sister affliction: inadvertent linguistic supply syndrome. 

Anybody that reads and then speaks will be able to soon claim it as a malady. It will be covered by your credit card insurance.

I'll never get any money from it, though. The lawyers would claim that would only exacerbate my condition, inflame my disorder. It would anger the commerce gods.

They're probably right. They're the experts.

They will be claiming for centuries that the disease has never been quite understood. Its definition will remain nebulous and inclusive. 

"At the time of its discovery we never appreciated the full scope of this disorder. Little did we know."

"If eating healthy, getting regular sleep, and exercise were an actual cure then we wouldn't have to extend their credit limit, now would we?"

Oh Jesus, what the fuck am I talking about? 

I spend as if I'm on television.

.

other complexities

(Señor Padre y Hijo Giggles)

Up early as ever today. 4am and my body alerts me with the need to piss. There is not a single thing that is preferable about being older when compared to being younger, do not trust anyone that would tell you otherwise.

Just look at the picture above. The only people who want to be 45 are the people who are 46 and climbing.

Went to the park with Rhys yesterday. If being older is preferable then why do we wish that another's childhood could last forever. If not forever, at least to slow parts of it down; get a chance to enjoy some of it twice, or more. Endless giggles and wonder, happy to be silly, wonderful to be young. 

What a great little boy is he, and me when near him. 

I go in to a two hour interview at work today. There is an advancement that I want. The next position requires even greater technical skills, ones that I will need to learn. I seek increased complexity in what I do. Many do not, I know that. I am the other guy. I have an aptitude for it, though I am admittedly lazy at times. It is not just the aptitude. I am also filled with uncertainties. Knowing things make me feel better, up to a point.

I don't study code on my off-work hours, much. I started to, but then focused on other concerns, other complexities. Life.

Speaking of, I just tried to use my phone to deposit a regular check that I receive. It mistook some of the numbers on the check for the account number and then mistook the account number for the routing number. It would let me change the account number, oddly, but I couldn't modify the routing number.

Security precautions will let you adjust whose account the money comes out of, but you just don't get to choose from which bank the money departs, apparently.

Ah well, it looks like I will be stopping by the bank's ATM after the coffee shop. I will see if all of my technical skills have prepared me to deposit a check where it belongs, into the belly of the beast. 

.

"If I could walk away from me"

Yes, I have had much time for reflection, with more coming soon. It is good and necessary. I resist it as I can, then herald it when it arrives, as if it was somehow my doing. It is just as they say, a time for growth. 

Life gets crowded. Cést La Vie.

I've bought a few new books to help me through, East of Eden and Women in Love. 

I also borrowed The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism from my friend whose last name is also Max Weber. I insist on pronouncing it with the only Germanic tongue I can muster, an aping of a comic dialect. We will have to wait and see if I make it to that one. I have a lot of fiction to wade through. That is where the greatest truths can oftenest be found. What remains is what we tell ourselves, what we're willing to learn, to what we hold on.

Lou Reed died on the 27th of October, you may have heard. So did my mother, 20 years ago. It is somehow oddly fitting and perhaps indicative of a larger life cycle, of mine. Not Reed's dying, but my mother and now. It is the end of something significant and yet lasting, with no way around it. There is only the going through it, like a novel that ends in a perfectly timed heartbreak; dissolution, as if no other words could possibly now replace the ones in front of you.

Lou Reed, and Mom. Connected now by visible numbers. Dylan Thomas and Sylvia Plath are birthed there as well. 

I thought that I had discovered The Velvet Underground, around 1985 (to give you an idea). I remember buying their first album and playing it for all of my friends. I was obsessed. They thought I had lost my mind. What costume shall the poor girl wear….. A hand-me-down dress from who knows where…. Their ears were firmly planted in the Houses of the Holy territory. I mean, so were mine, but I also had a strong will to be weird. 

Then, I bought their third album, which I mistakenly thought was their second. Some Kinda Love, Pale Blue Eyes, Jesus…. 

They allowed me to believe that I was an artist also, just by listening to them.

It took me years to find out that they had a career long before I had discovered them and brought them to the spotlight of Altamonte Springs. I saw it in The Village Voice, or Rolling Stone. You can imagine my disappointment, mixed with a prideful affirmation. 

Well, maybe you can't. 

My tastes were on the right path, I told myself.

So, this October 27th slipped by, filled with other concerns. My mind has been elsewhere, yet also focused deeply inward. Odd, that. It is a scarce feeling, one worth harnessing in the hopes to enact modest change. Life offers occasional opportunities for serious reflection, moments when the fictions seem to fall away and there is just the raw substance of life left floating in front of you. Like now.

The Velvet's first album explored sadomasochism and heroin, by their third album they were invoking Jesus and writing contemplative songs for lost love, pale blue eyes. 

The eyes written about were actually hazel. Poetic license, that.

"Candy says, I hate the quiet places

That cause the smallest taste of what will be

Candy says, I hate the big decisions

That cause endless revisions in my mind"

.

… it was written in their life

Another weekend completed. Trying to make some sense of it all. There is only that: what hurts and what doesn't, what we move towards and from what we move away. Everybody has their own ideas about it. 

It will remain darker longer now. The clocks have been adjusted such that it will be darker later, some say lighter earlier. Though little shifts the tilting; it is the seasonal bargain. There are changes in suicide and heart attack rates due to Daylight Saving Time, increases and decreases, depending on the season. Some people are just unlucky, others' otherwise.

Cato got the news of a close friend's death this weekend. An overdose, an accident. We spoke about the inherent difficulties of such a thing. There are the fond memories, the seeming senselessness of it, the lingering questions, the loss. People prefer death without questions. Old age provides one thing that we tend to ignore: the end to certain needless queries. 

Did they want to live any longer? It is considered rude to ask. It perplexes some that others might not want more life. They find that to be very sad; unable to see beyond the word, incapable of any exploration into negation. I can understand why.

Ah, but I have already made a clumsy attempt at examining that idea before. This morning is not the morning for it. 

One is more likely to have a heart attack on Monday morning than any other time of the week, such is the efficacy of the western structure. The heart apparently knows how to respond to such a thing. It remains tellingly unconvinced at the concept of productivity, choosing its time carefully, with precision resistance. The sudden constriction. It is perhaps the heart's "cry for help."

Or, maybe that is just something that I've heard. Mondays are a myth, like the requisite craziness that attends a full moon. Though I do not think so. It supports what I want to believe so it must be true. Like laughter being "the best medicine." I know that to be authentic, because I can feel it working, and feeling is another way of knowing.

Maybe there is yet still a last laugh hidden. 

Though too few, I believe, laugh their way out of a Monday morning.

.

The New Moon

(painting: Genevieve McClendon)

Yesterday, Cato and I walked the entire perimeter of the city of San Francisco, nearly. Our actual walk was only a few miles but left a feeling in my legs that it must have been much, much more. It's the hills. Though in truth there weren't that many between the panhandle and the Mission, it's mostly a sloping downhill. We had lunch at a great vegan place (I almost capitalized the word "vegan." It amazes me that they have not yet universally called for that, demanded it… capital letters confer distinction, so why not them, such a distinct breed?).

But the food was delicious and it helped start the day out well after a nearly two hour workout.

We discovered a little secret SF location on the far side of The Mission called Taylor's Tonics, an odd little shop that specializes in rare sodas for sale. They had bottled sodas and candies from all over the world; also making, marketing, and distributing their own.

Quirky, fun.

Cato and I sat outside and listened to the music. Strange and rare cover versions of all kinds. Ella Fitzgerald, Louis Armstrong, Frank Sinatra, even an acoustic cover of an AC/DC song that was clever and listenable, if you can believe that. We both agreed on it, so we must be right. I bought chewy candies that were the approximate tastes of root-beer and watermelon.

We sat in the sun watching the girls walk by, waiting for nothing. I struggled to consume those elastic wonders of candy science, my face distorting as I began the best part of the digestive process on them.

Then, once I had claimed victory over their foreign evility, we went to see a few pieces of art hanging in a studio space that is sometimes used to rehearse local theatrical productions. One of the artist's pieces is seen in the picture above. I liked her work. Genevieve is her name, the patron saint of Paris. Is it patroness when referring to a saint? I don't think so. Saints have no recognized gender. They're like albinos. I'm not sure, or more correctly: I don't know…. I made the same mistake the other day when referring to Isis, but then corrected it, I think. I hope.

It's a pretty name, Genevieve.


Well, early this morning was the new moon. The event has held imaginary significance for me and today does not disappoint. It has been an odd 30 days since the last one. Coincidental, not serendipitous. More ironic, perhaps, than anything else.

To counter the claims of many others - that the full moon invites much craziness - I started taking note of events on its occasion. It happily turned out that notable occurrences did start to fall on the new moon, and some craziness also. One after the other, events arrived, as they always do, until those events had finally exhausted themselves.

Today is a significant day for me, anyway. 30 days since the last new moon.

One down.


It's easy, all you need is love...

.

Tell her anyway

Last night, more bad news - unnecessary suffering. I should have known. I guess I did know, I just hadn't been adequately warned, or advised.

Nobody is to be trusted. Well, people can sometimes be trusted - their opinions can't.

There are a group of people in the world who are commonly ridiculed, deservedly so. They increase adversity at will, even profit from it; stretching out both confusion and compromise at a price, all the while assuring you that things are as they should be, or will be soon. They're always on your side, or someone else's. They're always there. They are oddly known as counselors. Esquires, etc.

I am trying to just hold on and see the light at the end of any of this. 

Anybody, please, remind her of those three key words, no matter the cost. 

Tell her anyway, I love her.

.

The Flaming Lips

"One of the 50 bands to see before you die…" Check.

I was surprised at the material they chose to perform last night. It was not what I would have expected. It might have been more appealing to me, I think, if I had been high on drugs. That's how you know music is good... when it requires drugs to really get into it, to get inside of it...

I only partially kid. 

I mean, I'm sincere about the statement, and its intended irony.

I used to suffer that sentiment a lot: people telling me that I might like certain music more if I was high. 

You have to be on a certain mental plane to really dig it, man.

But, I liked the stuff that The Lips played last night. It was material that I would not have guessed that they might have chosen, and for that I applaud them. I guess it depends on what you want to consider "crowd pleasers," and then of course there is the crowd to consider.

I think they went out on a limb, with it being Halloween and in San Fran, Wayne Coyne started to give a speech about how much SF has meant to them - but then he binned it, thankfully. It was borderline weepy, or was headed that direction anyway. We were supposed to all fondly reminisce upon their early days... 

To be honest, I did. I wished that they would have played stuff from "The Day They Shot a Hole in the Jesus Egg" or more material from "Clouds Taste Metallic," and the older stuff. 

But that is precisely for that same reason: I am old.

It wasn't noisy enough for me. It was too lush, for too long. Thursday night is a tough night for double-dropping ecstasy at a rock show, though clearly not by many other people's standards, etc. 

I have a "review" at work today, one that might determine a few different things for me. I have an interview this week for a promotion to a more complex job. Another interview sometime later this month, for yet a different position. A very important meeting on Nov. 5th, and then another on Nov. 18th…. I haven't even had a coffee yet.

Do you see...?

"You realize that life goes fast, it's hard to make the good things last..."

The Thursday Morning Orchid Thief

(a partial resolution) 

I have two close friends who share today as a birthday. I have always been slightly jealous of them for this. Halloween has seemed to me to be the best of holidays, though by many standards it does not qualify as such. We get no day off from work, the banks and many businesses remain open, but you do get to choose to be something other than yourself, briefly. Or, you get to be a hidden part of yourself, to inhabit a moving fantasy. Certain people seem to relish this function, and of course their chosen role in it. It gives them a temporary courage of sorts, though they tend to do the same things that they would do otherwise, which requires no real courage at all.

Some might say: If Miley Cyrus, then why not me?

Indeed.

For children, it is a yearly attack against the very idea of growing up, a full-frontal disguised assault against maturity. Candy illicits gathered from neighbors in darkness, then respectfully thanked as a running after-thought, goblins having been parentally reminded.

It's Catholic, I think. So, there is some resistance to its open acceptance. Mardi Gras is also a Catholic festival, like Carnival. 

Selah.

If you have ever been curious about the spirit of New Orleans but do not wish to suffer the region during Mardi Gras then Halloween is the time to visit, says the ever-wise I. 

Many cities come to life on this day but the French Quarter is really something curious and strange; an empire of delicious faults, the genius loci of the big easy. There are notions felt there not felt elsewhere, mysteries of passing. Difficult to describe, impossible to forget; nameless matters moving around, and through. It is a place to which one must bring their fantasies, to give them form. There seems to be a thinning of the membrane that separates worlds, a shedding of the heavy integument. One can nearly touch the other side of something barely sensed, never seen. There is a great desire to give over to something unknown, to grasp gently an unsolved puzzle, the amorphous whispers of the enigma. 

-------------------

'Perhaps,' I thought, while her words still hung in the air between us like a wisp of tobacco smoke - a thought to fade and vanish like smoke without a trace - 'perhaps all our loves are merely hints and symbols; vagabond-language scrawled on gate-posts and paving-stones along the weary road that others have tramped before us; perhaps you and I are types and this sadness which sometimes falls between us springs from disappointment in our own search, each straining through and beyond the other, snatching a glimpse now and then of the shadow that turns the corner always a pace or two ahead of us.'

-Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited 

.

Isis… she would even listen to the prayers of the wealthy

My life has become increasingly absurd. I go to sleep and also wake up long before most people on the east coast. It's as if I'm perpetually preparing to defeat imaginary jet lag, or maybe just suffering from its imagining. I am prepared to thoroughly dupe a trans-coastal journey east. I've been waiting for this fantasy flight for about a year now. I'm slowly moving towards UTC in body and spirit, the old Greenwich Meridian, the prime zone. 

I would have left for NYC this morning, but alas…. It was not written in the stars, not mine anyway. My stars are too often the falling ones, a constellation in sudden descent.

Though in ruins, I have been sleeping much better, 6-8 hours a night consistently. I awake early in darkness, flirting with the goddess Asteria. The watchful eye of Isis falling upon me from above, then past me in my dreams; friend to sinners and slaves, patroness of nature and magic. 

My kind of girl. 

It's really too bad she's Egyptian, though. They're having so many troubles, and such strife, over there. They have started taking people into custody. 

After that, what next?

.

Fear

Fear

Fear of seeing a police car pull into the drive.
Fear of falling asleep at night.
Fear of not falling asleep.
Fear of the past rising up.
Fear of the present taking flight.
Fear of the telephone that rings in the dead of night.
Fear of electrical storms.
Fear of the cleaning woman who has a spot on her cheek!
Fear of dogs I've been told won't bite.
Fear of anxiety!
Fear of having to identify the body of a dead friend.
Fear of running out of money.
Fear of having too much, though people will not believe this.
Fear of psychological profiles.
Fear of being late and fear of arriving before anyone else.
Fear of my children's handwriting on envelopes.
Fear they'll die before I do, and I'll feel guilty.
Fear of having to live with my mother in her old age, and mine.
Fear of confusion.
Fear this day will end on an unhappy note.
Fear of waking up to find you gone.
Fear of not loving and fear of not loving enough.
Fear that what I love will prove lethal to those I love.
Fear of death.
Fear of living too long.
Fear of death.

I've said that

-Raymond Carver

.

The Junior Deputy

(Fireman, J.)

It has been some time, probably since my mother's death, since I have felt such a strange alloy of emotions. In some ways I am relieved, as when the pain of another's dying ceases and that is somehow better than what led to it. There is also a happiness, associated with - though not dependent upon - that same feeling of relief. In yet still other ways I am not happy at all and might not be for some time, having to face significant loss and genuine uncertainty.

Soon, I will hopefully be able to write about things rather than merely around them, though essences are often preferable to specifics.

(Fighting Fire with Water)

Yesterday, we took my friends' boy to the local firehouse where the firemen offered a pancake breakfast. The kids and parents come from all over the county and get to look at the trucks on display, then ride on the antique ones with sirens and copper bells flashing. It was fun in the way that one can become truly happy for the happiness of another; watching the boy leap about endlessly in the jumpy castle. It is a contagious joy. He would have slept there if he could have, undiminished by repetition, fascinated by the unceasing buoyancy of living.

(Floating)

.

"This train's not gonna wreck itself..."

Drifting is fine for a while. After that, one should either be traveling, centered, or lost altogether. Drifting works best when there is an occasional place to return, a center of sorts.

That's my wisdom for the day. 

Sunday's a good day for such sagacity. It has time to stretch its legs and find itself. Wisdom loves to barbecue on the lord's day, the Sol Deis, the Solis Invicti.

Sunday is the loneliest day, the one in which to fall in love.

Love, it's what we're told. One problem with love is its unregulated nature. Everybody has their own idea as to how it should be done. 

No, like this....

There's always a "No!" hiding out somewhere, particularly in true love. Thousands of them, waiting to be launched, from any angle. 

It starts with a seemingly endless series of yes's, the sound of hissing snakes. Well, then it ends.

... not with a bang,

but an ixnay

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As promised...

I'm posting from my phone now. You will receive the approximate wisdom of a text message. I could post from my computer but that would mean that I would have to get up off this comfortable air mattress. 

Seems unlikely. 

Last night, Cato took me to an Arabic fusion restaurant for my birthday. On the way, we discovered the SF Critical Mass (above). Dinner was delicious. Lamb and Calamari and Scallops and Ravioli. All separate plates but brought out two at a time. Then, some pyramidal chocolate and dulce de leche desert. 

As promised, I was in bed by 10pm. 

Chateau Cusick, it's like sleeping on air.....

540 Months

Five years past, I turned forty. I was still living in NYC and had no plans to move. Why would I ? A good friend threw me a nice dinner at her home and the next night another good friend hosted a party at a little club. Almost all of my friends were there. I remember it well.

"I never thought I'd need so many people...."

My, how life has changed. Now, I have a happy and healthy boy, many of my friends are still on the East Coast and probably still celebrating my birthday, tonight I will go to sleep around 9-10pm, and tomorrow morning I will finally get out of bed at 4am and then wait for the gym to open, one day wiser.

I don't have anything to say today. I am getting older, there is no mistaking that. 

I retain a willingness to laugh. There is that. 

The severest of truths require some sense of humor. 

Okay, I guess I have that to say today.

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Desperate Measures

(Prime)

Desperate times.

It is getting cold. I need new shirts, a warm hat, a hoody. I have found a way to sleep outside, for free. I'm looking into the legality of it. There are public/private property issues to consider. There is hardly hotel wi-fi in the great beyond. 

This site may cease to be, unless I post from my phone. The pictures are never sized correctly. I always have to adjust. Always.

I have been looking at sleeper vans, rivers, government cheese, etc.

For today, I am a commuter again. I rode the bus from Fulton to Market. There was a man riding along with us that was horribly deformed. I was reminded of mammality. I did not want to be near him. I wanted him to leave the pack, a pack that I also desperately wanted to leave. But still.... he should go first. I watched him walk away after he got off the bus, into the early morning darkness. I could see his facial deformities even with his back towards us. They were that pronounced. 

I don't want to ride the bus any more. 

I wanted to pray for him but then thought better of it. I was afraid that I would ask god to keep him away from me.

We are all twisted. The idea is to find someone who will tell you that you are not, then hold on to them and tell them the same. Smile often. Kiss often. Etc. 

I have been reading a lot. James Joyce, Dubliners. Though I just read it somewhat recently, I will re-read Winesburg, Ohio again soon. I can feel it. I need to remind myself of a thing felt though sometimes forgotten. 

We are all twisted, and those shapes get locked up together like a wood and steel puzzle found in quaint roadside diners; meant to test the iq of children, to occupy the youngsters for a time. It seems impossible that the pieces could ever become separated, though the mind knows that it must be so, the mind feels it to be true. Why else would these games be placed upon the tables. The parents will give it a try for a while, then pass it over to the children. Within minutes, shortly after the parents have given up on it... Voilà! 

The parts are suddenly in pieces.

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"The sky, too, is folding under you..."

almost, then nothing
backwards, lost, forgotten, I
miss the mysteries

mysteries of mind
there is one lasting question:
to love the enigma?

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Buoyancy

Already out of time today. It moves too fast.

Up at 4am, after tossing from 2am onwards. Drifting is fine when sleeping or floating but thrashing is another thing. Where has the morning gone? No exercise, no writing, nothing at all. Just the recurring tedium of a new life moving around me.

Dullness is not softness in dreams. It is a stomach-ache that is hiding behind my eyes.

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