What does the "Publish" button do?

(Helen Keller)

Disclaimer: I was going to change some of this, but am at work and my day has started. Dear reader, you are on your own.

I finally got my D700. I had one a couple weeks ago but returned it so that I could buy a different one, at a drastically reduced price, and with extras. I have entered the full-frame digital world. Now my lenses will all finally make sense. All of that collecting will start to pay off. 

We'll see.

I am interested in only doing nudes. Macro photography of the male outer urethral orifice paired with images of women putting on lipstick.

Help Wanted. Inquire within. No experience necessary. Amateurs preferred. Undergarments optional.

No, my interests go well beyond nudity. I also want to photograph autopsies.

Fuck, that is dark. That even makes me feel a little creeped, a thing not easily accomplished. I used to listen to industrial and goth in hot Florida garages, so, you know... lizards, and stuff. 

And not just autopsies, beheadings too. I'm dark.

So, there.

Yikes, I need to go back to writing in the third person. God would never think like this. I'll be an eye on the wall. Is it eye, or fly? I think it's fly. Oh well, I'll be the god-fly-eye on the wall, like Bono in the 90's. That would get boring after a while, unless you could move from room to room. What if the conversation departed? You can't have an entire novel unfold in a single room, unless you're Virginia Woolf.

Now that is a writer's name, Virginia Woolf. Fuck. Why couldn't I have been born with a name like that? And genius. And a nice juicy pussy where my anus now is, or somewhere down there. It's all so confusing.

Well, I started looking at flights to NYC yesterday. I will need to bring six or seven flight cases for all of my camera gear. Just Woolf and I, together again. 

She knows how not to shave; just an enormous expanse of pubic hair that stretches from outer thigh to outer thigh. Untrimmed and unshaven, some individual hairs reaching 4+ inches in length. It starts just below the navel and stretches to the knees. A real growler. 

I watched Valley of the Dolls with a friend the other night. If there has ever been finer acting before then I don't know where, or when. I believe Philip Seymour Hoffman played all of the parts. It was that good. It was a rare pubic expose and a booby bonanza. 

No, the film is actually about how difficult it is for women to finally take over. It begs the question, Is it really all worth it?

I want to do a sequel called Valley of the Balls in which the truth is finally revealed about how difficult it is for men to grow up within a matriarchy, where they are treated only as toys, dressed up by their mothers in outfits they don't want to wear, having their butts wiped daily, scolded, forced to eat vegetables, dragged off to church, all of it. It's time....

These poor kids all end up doing drugs. The pressure is too much for them. I know.

Do you support equal rights for men? Then please sign this petition to have Virginia Woolf's books burned right off of the shelves. They're polluting our high school libraries with their filthy pubic hairs. 

Matriarchal birthing must be stopped in our time. Female pregnancy is a thing of the past! The penis deserves its chance to speak. Free Pubic Hair for everybody. Burn your bro's...

Step out of the 50's, asshole!!!

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I need you more

After four months of not drinking, to the day, I decided to try it again, last night. It was exactly how I remembered it being. Nothing terrible happened and I did not wake up feeling awful, though neither do I feel great. 

I don't get it, to be honest. I don't understand why alcohol is so problematic.

I mean, I understand that it can be, I just don't understand why.

I have been listening carefully to what others say about alcohol, its seductive and cunning nature, and concede that I may not know everything that there is to know about it, even after decades of informal research.

It did not seem to hold any special magic for me. What it did hold was the chance to hang out and talk with my friends in a way that I normally don't, or haven't. 

I felt freer, and a little dizzy.

I can see how that could be dangerous. That feeling, if it became what you lived for, to the exclusion of other pleasures, could be disastrous. But I did not feel that much more free, just a little bit more willing to express things. Careless even, perhaps.

Less capable but more willing.

But most of all I suppose I felt like less of an outsider. I didn't have to sit and explain my feelings about drinking, or abstaining, to anybody that would listen. I was just one of the people there, having fun, talking. Abstaining entirely sets you apart. That is something to carefully consider. Nobody wants to feel left out, nobody wants to be left out. Last night I was a believer, a belonger. 

I didn't have any special reason to drink. A close friend was in town, and yesterday I finally paid off my last bit of remaining debt, my student loans, but it wasn't either of those things. I just wanted to know what it felt like again. This thing that I've dedicated so much of my time and life to. I wanted to understand it better, more.

It wasn't terrible but neither was it grand.

When I stood to walk from the bed to the bathroom just now my body felt heavier, less stable, less certain. So, there is that to consider. I have greatly enjoyed the feelings I've had of lightness, buoyancy, balance, and stability. Those feelings have brought me pleasure.

It was just beer and wine. Not in excess, but also not in strict moderation. I made no promises either way. Both drinks tasted just as I remembered them. Alcohol has a bite to it, even in small doses. 

I don't hate myself, for having drank or for anything else. 

I don't have what I would consider a hangover, but I don't feel wonderful. I feel curious. I want to know what this will mean for me, if anything. I want to know if alcohol represents a problem for me, or if it is an excuse for me to only deal with my problems in a certain way, through the distilled filter of it.

I don't get it, the problematic nature of it. I really don't. It makes me wonder if other intoxicants would become like alcohol, for a certain section of the population, if they were legal and designed to be consumed the way that alcohol is. Special places, like bars, set aside for their consumption; process oriented intoxicants.

It was good for me, I think. I hope. I have been questioning a lot of things lately, drinking being one of them. Myself, also. I want to re-determine where I stand with things, for the purpose of finding new joys in life. I want my pleasures in life to increase. I don't want to feel as if I owe anybody anything but I don't want to prove that I don't by hurting them.

I have spent four years on this site trying to be honest. I'll try that with drinking also, as much as I can bear it, and to the point that it does not bore me.

I am already very close this morning.


Dangerously close.

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Mercy!

(Count me in...)

Ok, Mercy...! 

Or, whatever it is people scream when they can't take it any longer. I give up. 

Uncle, etc.

I was never really writing in the third person anyway, not truly. I can assume the voice of god in the first person also. See below.

Well, I feel like there's so much we should be catching up on now that we're just chatting again.

Philip Seymour Hoffman: juicy and yet sad.

People seem to be fascinated with the salacious details of his death. Seventy bags of heroin! Wow, that is excessive. I can understand thirty, or even fifty - if you're really an addict - but seventy... brother, you've got problems.

It is also hilarious to me how many men on Facebook "came out" of the closet to announce what a waste Hoffman's death was. Often with the precursor: "Now, I don't normally do this kind of thing, but...blah, blah, blah... one of the greats... struggled with his demons.... my favorite film… just like me, too... think of the children.... such a waste... blah, blah, blah.... "

Hilarious. 

Well, I am rushing in to work again, and don't have time for a more complete examination of our world. I am currently in a duel to the death with somebody online who doesn't understand why people speak other languages, particularly in America, where language is an impediment to understanding. He referred to them holding on to their native tongue as "nostalgic" , "counter-productive" and an indication of their "purely emotional ties" to their own culture. He's quite the libertarian patriot, you see. 

I suppose he forgot about this:

El Congreso no hará ninguna ley respecto al establecimiento de religión, o prohibiendo el ejercicio libre de la misma o que coarte la libertad de expresión o de la prensa, o el derecho del pueblo para reunirse pacíficamente y para pedir al gobierno la reparación de agravios .

He insists that he's already done his part in the struggle, now it's time for others to step up.

.

Doubled back, to verify

His life opened in front of him, abruptly, almost without warning. He could sense that it was happening though he misjudged the width of the chasm, its depth. He could not see into his new future. There was no clear vision there waiting to unfold, to occur by the will of its viewers; no shared idea of what was to come next; no nodding, smiling confirmation with another. The power to tell himself that he could do as he pleased had not gripped him. It all seemed unreal, and of great untouched consequence. He had learned to make decisions by consensus mostly, had come to rely on it.

The fantasy had proven itself, then doubled back to verify. It taunted his daydreaming.

He was not entirely free to choose - money can either prevent or create fear.

He was no longer encumbered with happiness. The severity of choice had fallen away. No. It had not fallen away, but it had become detached. All things seemed to be drifting now. He cared, but not with the old care. He was fascinated with what might happen. 

He thought of her often, and fondly. He remembers the undressing, the kissing, the longing for more even as it was happening, the magical disbelief of it, the desire to extend the feeling out somehow, in every direction, and then back into themselves, a reverie that disappears in daylight.

He was fascinated with it, with what might happen.

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Black Rebel Motorcycle Club

(The Wild One)

Having rarely ever tried he seldom had to contend before with feelings of disappointment. The genuine article was new to him, even exciting in a lonely way, because it was his. He had previously been able to pick and choose his times to use the feeling, to export it as an excuse for worse behavior. It was such a low level and common exploitation of emotion that many assumed it to be quite natural, had even done it themselves without much thought or effort.

It was part of the requisite stance of the artist, he would tell anybody that struggled to pre-recognize it, or to understand it, or listen, or care. That is, when he would grace them with a response at all, rather than just his usual sneering condescension at their philistine brutality. Or, something.

He would make himself a nuisance to avoid being ignored. It was a posture of expressiveness, though one of diminishing rewards. 

Dissatisfaction and discontentment were his attempts to make the world a better place. Cynical, not pessimistic. The former had the more preferable pedigree. The distinctions between the two served to confuse those people that didn't matter. This, he had told himself often and for a growing handful of decades... for a diminishing audience.

When asked what he was rebelling against he could rarely give a clear answer. He offered abbreviated abstractions instead, or mockery. The question frequently resulted in being direct rebellion against whomever asked.

He rebelled against the clarity of others, and why not.

Defensiveness is disappointment without all the effort. Or, it can be. It can be other things also, and all of them so admirable, and justifiable, of course.

Defensiveness. Can you use it in a sentence, please?

D-E-F-E-N-S-I-V-E-N-E-S-S, right?

It was the lesson that he was learning, late in life, that self-deprecation is an attempt at comic defense. But it worked, often, and he was at least creative about it, at last.

Be crafty with your own self-criticisms and others will feel stupid trying to best you; stupid, and mean.

That is what he told himself.

But, his own life was catching up with him. His previous self had come back to haunt. The characters in rear projection were suddenly getting lines in the film, overtaking him.

The roar of it was deafening.

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

- Hey Johnny, What are you rebelling against? 

- What've you got?

- The Wild One

He never did it again

There were glimpses of stories, retold as memories, nothing more. He barely remembered being a child. He could place houses his family had lived in, streets that he used to walk home from school on, the vast southern sky of the 1970's. School. The background radiation of a mild life.  

He would return to neighborhoods where he once lived and everything appeared foreign, strange, faded, unbelievable as a place, as if nobody had survived. Impossible but familiar, old houses leaning on defeat, barely lit, life-size polaroids of themselves. The houses appeared as pictures of the past. The failed dashboards of old cars splintered by the sun crowding the driveways. They were hopelessly beyond insuring, though few outside the banks ever said so; cracked, worn well past pleasure, useless. Nobody ever suggests demolishing. The land is worth even less without the house, somehow. You would need to destroy them all, and everybody refuses to agree. The eye knows more than the bricks, much more than the owners. 

He could not recall the feeling of having ever been a child, only the occasional prodigal detail, a memory of a memory, told in reverse.

There were people from his boyhood, everywhere it seemed. They all had stories, ones they relayed with comedic conviction and recurring pleasure, undiminished by monotony. For him, it was all of waning interest, though he often smiled anyway. He could no longer pretend to care. Something had gotten the better of his narcissism. He knew even less about the mystery that had prevailed. Time, he guessed. Even the stories were beginning to seem as if they were from a previous life. 

How many can there be, between here and there? How many can fit? - He asked himself. 

The stories were hopeless, crowded by repeated tellings, as if each had to be stored separately, hidden methodically from view. The past was a chaos collecting. The music of a few merry-go-rounds, all at a fading distance, all menacing in their reluctance to disappear, to evaporate into silent darkness. It was like listening to someone recount the events of their own recent dreams: torture. The teller, marveling at the mind's abilities when left unguarded, informed by sleep androids, bemused by the very presence of self. 

For him, there was a dullness to it all that he could not shake, but to do so was what seemed needed. Though he knew that one can hardly shake the dreams of others. 

He wondered if he was once an arsonist, or perhaps a pyromaniac.

When he was thirteen he aimed a pellet gun at a distant bird. 

.

This feeling was not temporary

Her purse strap caught the corner of the railing. There was a post with a raised guard meant to repel birds from that spot, to keep them from perching and becoming a nuisance. She was rushing to the station. There were still several minutes before her train departed, she had wanted to check one of the shops. She knew precisely what it was that she wanted. The only question was time.

People gathered together loosely around monitors that were also clustered together and suspended from the terminal ceiling. They were pointing and staring, some of them nodding, verifying and reverifying to themselves or others. She checked her departure gate and time. All was as it should be. Everything was in the place that one would expect it to be.

When she entered the shop she turned from memory to her right, then carefully scanned the last aisle leading towards the back of the store. She walked quickly. The shelves were only waist high. At first this seemed stylish and clean, but was more likely part of an anti-theft system. She walked as far from the side of the aisle as she comfortably could, glancing downwards, looking where she expected it to be.

She did not need it, she told herself. If they were out of stock then she would be fine. She only wanted it, and had wanted it for some time.  She was not nervous. This feeling was not temporary. It did not come and go. She was just busy. Always.

She was very busy.

.

… separated by canals, linked by bridges

A sleepless man needed to get away. He rolled around until his back hurt. He got out of bed. 

A vacation, a trip. He had not had a holiday in well over a year. There was no reason for it. Well, there was a reason for it, there had been. He preferred not to think of that. He thought of Venice but New York was far more likely. He was waiting for news to arrive in the post. From that, the necessary plans would be made, flights purchased, time off requested.

He would request his future time from one who does yet not possess it, and never would, as if... He preferred not to think of that.

One thing had happened, then another, and then the decisions. It was often that way. Decisions were forced upon him. He found himself negotiating others' wishes, wants and needs. The mid-life mistake of hoping to be useful, suddenly, and without much practice at it. He had ceased to be a traveler, a wanderer. It was around this time that he changed his name, started writing in the third person, went underground.

He went to the kitchen and drank a cold coffee and peeled a banana that he did not feel like eating. There sat the dynamite.

He came back to where he had been sitting and asked if the novelty of writing in the third person had already worn off. It was not only that he was writing in the third person, he told himself, but that he was still writing about himself. He needed to invent. He was exhausted, spending ten or more hours each day at work, then the commute there and back, the city buses. 

Each evening he told himself that he would do something, anything. Instead, each evening he would lie on the floor of his friend's apartment and read. It was all that would sustain him but it was not enough. It was something, but barely. He would read almost anything.

It was dangerous to write of others. He knew that. One often writes poorly about that which is closest to them, the thing they love. Not always, but often. He had tried. The merest suggestion becomes an enormity, because it is a suggestion. He had to get away from it. His life had become too large, too crowded with details. 

He told himself that what he was doing - this daily reading and writing - was therapeutic. He thought of all the healthy writers he knew. None. None that were worth reading. He had tried to read people that were "positive", the spiritualizers. The Eckhart Tolles and Deepak Chopras of the world. It was useless. Only a paragraph here or there was even tolerable, and only when excerpted carefully from the endless morass of a full book. Anything more was insufferable. They all put forth for sale a farrago of good intentions. Trite life lessons, nothing more. It felt dishonest, a scam.

The same seemed not to be true for other readers. They could devour publication after publication of that stuff. Their bookshelves were filled with positivity, sagging with the burdens of affirmation. They never seemed to achieve their satiation point. There is no end to the seminar of life, they seemed to say. The goal of buoyancy is its continuance. Victory consists in not being defeated. Happiness is not being sad. Etc.

What others could endlessly re-read, and even memorize, he struggled to make it through. It felt very dishonest, a vapid scam that seemed far too true for some, desperately so. The fact that it was both incomplete and dishonest seemed to be the very thing that appealed to many. He preferred not to think, about such things.

There was no metaphor that these writers would not exploit, or reduce to simile when possible, if given the time - and time is what they planned on having, and keeping. They all lived to be about a hundred years old, or more. They would instruct their readers on the proper use of their own time: mimicking the spiritual lessons of the writer, giving them keys to understanding that would shield them through the misfortunes of time poorly spent, experiences suffered, the negativity of others endured. It was all there, even a defense against sleeplessness.

He had always wanted to go to Venice. 

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To shoplift one must first be alive

He had been writing in the traditional way, solitarily, for exactly four years. Nearly exact. He was approximately truthful.

It had been four years and one day.

He sat at his desk in the early morning hours and whittled the words away, sipping cold coffee. He would toss away the source wood, placing only the remaining pieces into the machine, the little chips that had accumulated around him, cluttering his life. The remainder.


No, that was not what he was doing, at all.

He was squeezing sentences out of his own aether.

No, that was not it, either.

He was tired and relied far too heavily on familiar devices. If he was almost honest with himself then he resigned himself to being what he was: a bored thief.

Some mornings he would spill his cold coffee and curse aloud, though quietly, now only to himself.  There was diminishing pleasure in cursing to himself, so he kept the volume of it down. There were some things that he had not been able to pinch. Too many, really. But he kept his eyes open, trained to note the corners, the cameras, the door.

The world was not going to be shaped at all that day, nor diminished.


Though a little sliver might still be lifted, here or there. Some small, momentary joy may have been snatched from the sphere, trapped there in an aging mason, the memory of fireflies, peered in at with wonder and interim delight. Held up against this world, an imaginary globe rolling towards spring, the crystal ball that tells a story of the slowing past, the recurring yet to be.

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Songs

Like a river that don't know where it's flowin' 

I took a wrong turn and I just kept goin'

-Springsteen, Hungry Heart

Some songs are like rivers. 

I asked the question yesterday and could think only of nothing, no answer came. 

Then, I heard a familiar old country song and it felt as if I was drifting, being pulled lazily downstream. Trees might have been hanging over, wandering past. It would have been so easy to drown in it all. So I did. I breathed in deeply and sunk to the bottom. I wanted to stay there but it would not let me. It only ever allows a return visit.

Hank Williams said that there are only two types of music, one to live to and one to die to. That's at least as true as anything else that's ever been said of it. 

I have too many things inside of me, too many demons, I think. 

Too much vacancy, also. 

Empty spaces where the angels once were squatters.

.

Is there anything like a river?

I miss the summer, the wild blackberries that grow along the bank. I miss the river, noting the silence of its absence; the nearly imperceptible sound of its passing; sleeping with the windows open.

It is only silence, I tell myself, nothing more.


A lost soul might believe that a winding road is like a river.

The wind might resemble it, unseen, perhaps in some places along the valley, moving just above the river.

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Masculism for beginners (or, how to grow hair in your ears)

Somebody told me that I "don't look 45" the other day.

Well, flattering, I thought. They very well could have meant that I look 50. They never clarified.

It was a woman, so I expressed my appreciation for this presumed compliment by getting an erection.

No, no. I did not. But now I wish that I would have, sort of, minus the time in jail, of course.

Would that have been wrong? Is it even illegal to have an erection, inside your pants? I'm fuzzy on the laws governing that behavior. Arresting a man with an erection... well, you might have a fight on your hands there, legally.

If an erection is part of the last stages of expressing and completing attraction then should they not also be used as part of the breakup process? Common sense would dictate that they would, as an important indicator of sorts.

I don't understand how all of these things work, and don't pretend to. There have been rules posted on the walls at some of the restaurant kitchens that I've walked through, but they don't cover all of the pertinent areas. There are situations that we are left to navigate on our own, without much guidance.

The only message that I can glean from any of this is that maleness itself is wrong and shameful. Half of you might agree with this sentiment. But it does not require much imagination to extend it to femaleness also. There are a few known behaviors of the pudenda-mess that would be similarly frowned upon if openly discussed. We have not always been so advanced on such matters.

I have been told by many, many people that "moist" is their least favorite word in the English language.

Men need their own talk show, where the penis can attain its rightful place in the contemporary conversation, naturally. We can affirm it to one another, discuss its feelings, its needs, what makes it feel afraid, what it looks for in a relationship, why it loves the game peek-a-boo so much... the many burdens of potency and dominance, its place in the workplace, the glass window, etc. A place where we can allow its many mysteries to penetrate the veneer of...

Or: A triumph for male sexuality, a refuge from shame! A phalanx of phallus.

Well, we are left to always wonder, but then punished for ever drawing our own conclusions.


So, anyway, I had a quick selfie, to verify my age. It's amazing what you can do to a human face in iPhoto. (I know, I know... Lightroom is the app to use. I was in a hurry and it was only for this site.... Also, I only have Aperture, which is iPhoto with lots of extra features. The processing algorithms are pixel-identical on some of them.)

The settings of Definition and Saturation either flatter or insult the sensibilities. The above and below examples show the basics of those differences.

I should probably learn more about digital photo-editing before discussing it. I will be back to this subject.

Do not think that I am being too self-involved here, this is the lord's day. I find this exercise in vanity quite restful. Earlier I downloaded all of my Facebook data - this can be done now, if you'd like it to be searchable, correctable, etc. So, do not think a self-made pic is as absorbed as I can possibly be.

It is barely the surface.

The reason that I am so giving of myself is because I honestly believe there is something of worth to give. It is narcissistic in a benevolent way. I like to pair my weaknesses. They are trained to use The Buddy System, etc.

Speaking of weakness:

The other day I was at the gym, in the city. It is associated with a college campus so sensibly there were a lot of kids there. When I say kids I mean that they were young adults. They seem like kids, to me, miniature versions of larger mistakes.

Soon-to-be catastrophes.

None of their bodies sounded like old houses in the wind when exercising. Mine popped like a nice campfire, there was a nearly perpetual crackling, with occasional hissing, dangerous to be near, haunted by the smell of something's demise, soon to be carbon.

But they are all enormously self-admiring, these kids. They flock towards the mirrors, adorned with brightly colored dumbbells that match their skin-tight outfits as if by design, then they will pose and strut and swan, presumably for themselves as they show open agitation towards anybody noticing this behavior or inadvertently blocking it to actually workout. None of the young girls would make mirror-eye-contact with me, though I strained and strained for it.

I will wear my glasses next time.

Their vanity and un-assuredness combine to create and feed a monstrous arrogance, but of the type that can't quite walk on its own yet. It is like witnessing the first steps of celebrity. None of them are working out very hard, none of them are sweating. They are all jus' chillin', you know... maxin' and relaxin'... but they look good. They are all trapped in these enviable bodies. You know, their skin is tight and flexible, as if they are all made of moisturizing lotion; they are thin without effort, they rebound from injuries with time still left over. All of that.

Somewhat conversely, I looked as if I had been soaked in hydrogen peroxide for about a decade. Perhaps I have just been in the evolutionary tub too long, my traits are uncovered, dangerously exposed in some spots. The skin has drawn up to give my hands a better grip when hunting in the river, but the effect has extended to my entire body, a savage balance. I am suspended between being water-logged and dehydrated.

What I hope to catch with my growing crow's claws, well, I'll never know.

When they say that a digital photo image is RAW, they are not lying. It really does capture my true radiometric essence.

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Many crave it

(The classic kid's "bowl cut")

Well, yesterday's post received a lot of love. We have some real rape fans around here.

No, I should not kid. Many have been raped. I know.

A friend pointed out to me that the post was one of the least ironic that I've recently written. Parts of it, anyway.

Irony, me? I didn't even know what the word meant until a hipster carefully explained it to me. They are so good at that, knowing things.


Cato had wanted me to stay in the city last night, to take him out to dinner. To "celebrate," he said. Precisely what it is he hoped to celebrate is still unclear.

Yesterday morning he explained his workout intentions, and choice to abstain from steroids: "But I don't want to bulk up at the gym. When I get older I'll look like you."


He helps me adjust my self-image in this way. I jogged to the gym after he left, thinking about this.

Shit! I thought. Shit, shit. Why wasn't I born with a hipster's body? I want to wear skinny-jeans....

Though, I do need to lose some weight. I tried to get into my cardio warmup but I couldn't concentrate. The exercise machines were arranged facing these large, wall-length mirrors. There I was.

Don't cry! Not at the gym.

I maintained composure, but only just barely.

I'm starting to believe the recurring claims of his many ex-girlfriends. Borderline cruelty was the claim, if I remember correctly.

No, I kid again.

Cato suffers my jokes, I must do the same.


Let me see if I have any seriousness to write about this morning.


Nope, I gave it a few minutes and nothing appeared before me.

I'll go get some coffee and try again in a few minutes....


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


Pain is serious. Let me write about that.

Pain can also the temporary relief from it. It is what makes addicts of people. Pain is almost better, more manageable, when it is mild but permanent. The mind begrudgingly adjusts, endures for the sake of enduring. Though it always knows that it is doing so, on some unforgiving level. There is only so much it can take, or be asked to.

The relief from pain, particularly at the effective functioning of an analgesic, appears in the central nervous system as a lucid moment, and lights with it the imminent return of the other. The mind scrambles to manage, to avoid.

It is not possible to outrun darkness, shadows will make shadows of us all.

Drug addicts are acutely aware of the return of pain. It is almost all they talk about. That, and the sensation of rising above it, or evading it below. It is the misery of daily living which seems to plague them most completely. I know.

Love can serve as a temporary relief from pain. Many crave it for this, and other reasons.


Yesterday, as I was driving back to the valley from the city, there appeared in the sky to my left the most wonderful sunset I had ever seen. Truly. Mark the date. Of 45 years, this was the one. The pictures below can not convey how real and unreal and marvelous it truly was, how it almost imperceptibly changed shapes and colors as it passed, as an enormous emotion. Music for the eyes.

It was the type thing that makes one wish to believe in a god, the earth's swelling. It was both majestic and temporary, untouchable by human hands. The cosmos' wonderful way of insisting upon the fleeting. A fantastic reminder that all beauty is loss, all change is permanent.


I was a danger to the cars and people around me as I fumbled to free my camera. Since I could not leave with it I wanted to look, to stare at it as much as possible, for as long as I could. I was ashamed to blink, knowing that it would all end too soon, and right in front of me.

To steal the eyes of god.

To give you an idea, the two pictures above were only taken about three minutes apart from one another, through a tinted window, at 65+ mph. Though in honesty, I had stopped down from f2 to f8 between them. I was just fumbling to capture some small part of it before my likely death, at my own remaining driving hand. The one side of the sky was changing almost as quickly as a wave that was breaking along the beach, already receding, disappearing into itself.


I texted Rachel to tell her about it, to show Rhys if she could.

She said that he had just pointed at it and said, "Pretty!"

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Why rape is funny

I don't know anything about Justin Bieber, except that people hate him. They use him as a sort of anti-definition of themselves, a punchline of externalized derision. Whatever he represents, some people desperately need you to understand that they most certainly do not. I doubt that I would be a fan of his music, much, if I ever bothered to listen to it. 

But he does seem to have captured the essence of the American dream, or at least part of it. He is self-made, somewhat; recognized and raised to the attention of others through his own online creations, which appear to be a highly collaborative endeavor; a sensation that arose naturally from his own ambitions; achieved all of this through the democracy of the open market; and has attained astonishing material wealth as his reward. 

Etc., etc.

Yet he must be immensely threatening to grown men. This is often the case when pubescent girls swoon over a young "star" like him. It must be a very, very serious threat to their sense of masculinity to have boys rewarded for being cute. It seems to greatly anger men who also wish to be deemed cute by 12 yr old girls. For what purpose we are left to wonder, though few ever seem to. It's the dishonesty of intent which repulses me most. If these men could admit that they are threatened by Bieber - and attracted to and frustrated by young girls - then I would like them much more. But they can't.

Rarely before have I seen such an outpouring of sexual hatred as I did yesterday, wishing delicious rape upon him during his short visit to jail. 

If only….

One self-identified "Christian" joked about how much he "loves karma," suggesting that this 19 year old boy deserves to be prison raped, where his bodyguards can't protect him. I'm not sure if karma would come into play there, but maybe, somehow.... At least, I don't know what Bieber has done that would invite such a thing. Annoying, perhaps yes. Prison rape as a punishment for this, difficult to fathom. 

This good fellow saw no harm at all in feminizing Bieber, which makes his Christian rape fantasies "safe," I guess, the way god intended. Homosexual rape must be an abomination in the eyes of the Lord. That's why Mel Gibson was partially immune to it when he went off the rails one warm Californian night. 

Only faggots would make rape jokes about Mad Max. Faggots, or liberals.

This same Christian went on to defend Taylor Swift, claiming that she has "values."  I asked what kind of values, and did he mean ones like "karma rape"? It did not seem to occur to him that wishing rape upon a young boy might also incite the forces of karma to act accordingly, and in a reactionary fashion, towards him, if such a thing were even possible.

He must have prayed with his pastor about it. 

Now, I'll admit that one of the funniest things I've ever seen online was Bieber getting hit in the head with a water bottle. But I found this funny for precisely the same reason that prison rape is not, because it was harmless. I watched it hundreds of times, much to the dismay of my overnight co-workers at the time. Each time that the bottle hits, whether in slow motion or not, I am as jolly as Santa, but cackling like the Devil on charcoal.

Perhaps if more men got to witness actual violent male-on-male rape then they might be less inclined to joke about it, or wish it freely upon others. I don't know. I joke about it too, sometimes. But something always catches me, like a hook, when I do. I start to envision the reality of it, where it becomes markedly less funny. It's as if I can hear the echoed begging in the distance, calling from the darkness. 

I mean, if we're going to joke about rape then let's go all the way with it. Implication and innuendo are for fucking pansies. We're no Justin Bieber fans on this blog, mother-fucker!

Rape, rape, we say! 

Let's take the time to envision the teeth getting knocked out, the pleas, the useless attempts to get away, the unexpected whiteness of the buttocks, the enforced group fellatio, the sinister laughing at weakness and submission, the repeated tearing of the anus, of course, the blood which serves as a saving lubricant. 

All of it. Let's be men about this, not sissies that might enjoy a little gang rape here and there.

Perhaps it is the healing power of blood which calms the true Christian mind.

If these things are funny - and they are fucking hilarious, brothers and sisters - then let's laugh a little about young women being raped also, right?

Little girls. Little boys. The helpless everywhere. 

Rape the retarded, while we still can. 

What could be more funny and delightful? The idea of stripping privilege from one who does not deserve it must ignite the impulses of the righteous. The Peter Pans of Rape. 

The Villains of Violation.

I mean, fuck… I'm no fan of Bieber either, but I haven't found a way of subjecting him to the guillotine just for being a kid, yet.

Wouldn't it be fun to rape his detached head? Fuck, I mean… this is what's wrong with the media… When are we going to have beheaded skull rapings in America.  The real news.

Kabul-style.

I mean, the little half-female fucker has never even had to have a job! If he could just prove to us that he actually spent his own hard-earned money to buy the lottery ticket that put him where he is then I'd be happy to call off the rapings. 

But he can't, can he?  

So, he gets what he deserves. What he did is unfair, an insult to good Christian sensibilities and values. He became rich and famous and young through no effort of his own. His mother is only 37 years old, for fuck's sake. If Bieber gets a girl pregnant next then an average working man like me could be old enough to be somebody's great-grandfather. 

It must be stopped!

Rape is the only answer. 

That, or poverty. 

Or both.

But, real prison-rape first.

Am I Right?

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Buoyancy

There is a seemingly unfindable hole in the air mattress at Chateau Cato. Each night I fill the mattress with wondrous machine-driven air, each mid-night I awake several inches lower in elevation from where I started, being consumed by the remainder. It feels as if I am sleeping in a massive android scrotum, trapped in a giant rolled-up band-aid. I am not touching floor yet, but I awake in fear, in enforced immobility.

It takes me about 30 seconds to work my way out, usually knocking something over in the process. I will often let an accidental fart or two out. I have reached that age, there is no stopping it any longer. My knees were barely the first thing to go. Pissing the bed is even less of a temptation than it had been before. I envision the unpleasant and warm accumulation of it. I suppose it might have its benefits, in terms of cleaning afterwards, but my mind still rejects it.

Everything seems to be working against me.

I want to dip the entire thing into a tub of soapy water, to find the mystery, but I lack a tub large enough. My solutions are too often impracticable, just look at my life. I imagine a spray bottle of a highly concentrated soapy concoction. All of this takes time, too much time.

Yet I find that same time to write about it. Writing is easier, less messy, doesn't always involve trips to the hardware store, seems less like work most days.

Cato insists that I purchase a new air mattress. Suddenly this object was meaningful to him, it held significance far beyond what the eye can see. It was a family heirloom, of sorts. There is the emotional loss to consider. He became teary-eyed when discussing it. I tried to hug him but he fought his way away. 

No, I kid. He is beaten from work like the rest of us and I feel bad for him. He comes home and I am there, with some newly broken thing of his, prepared to talk about relationships. 

My excess fat is the easiest explanation for the failings of this industrial wonder but neither of us can find a way of adequately pinning the blame there. Such a small hole created from such excess in body blubber... it defies logic, yet it is what we wish to believe. Apparently, I have the sharpest love-handles known. They commit crimes in my sleep. Though among their laundry list of misdemeanors and indiscretions mugging isn't one of them. I never wake up any richer for theses crimes, some strange wallet or purse cradled in my belly's clutch, overflowing with cash, and jewels.

It does always seem to say, "Don't look at me. Don't look at me!"

… must be guilty of something beyond just an occasional cheese danish. 

Well… I must take a shower and then get on the bus to go to work. Not the tech-buses that are all the rage and indignation, but the regular local MUNI. 

I am a city boy again, sleeping like a one-eyed gypsy, nestled in sagging android scrotum, smelling of farts and old band-aids. 

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A hazing

(More from the Sonoma expedition)

Yesterday I stretched the truth, for the purpose of fiction. 

Rachel did not question the word "heartened" and she was once happy also. I remember it well.

The post may have hurt her feelings. That wasn't my intention. 

Many things, when examined closely, when held under scrutiny, become a seeming untruth. It is the nature of doubt. Some do not know its joys, nor its potential purpose. 

Writing, when done well, uses the invention of fiction to approach truth. 

Doubt has the sole appearance of negativity to the mediocre mind. Conviction in the unproven is preferable to many, a devoted certainty to the nebulous. When presented with the unexplainable, well, then it just must be the hand of the haze…

God picks up where science leaves off, we're told. 

Doubt creates possibility against dogma. It acts in the eternal defense of suggestion.

I'm going to start referring to "god" as "the haze."  When I hear people use the term then I will substitute the phrase "the haze" for their god. That should bring me some little joy for a time.

The haze will be my higher power, whatever I conceive him to be….

It is easy to mock, too. 

Doubt does not necessarily need to contain the kernel of humor, though. But I certainly prefer it that way.

"I was spending some devotional time in the haze the other day, just waiting for the befuddled's blessings, to feel the hand of the blur moving in my life. After a long time searching, the room suddenly filled with vision vapors and I heard a howling in the distance. It was the mist moving. The baying haze sent me a message: to live my life in service to the cloud. When I heard the haze speaking... you had better believe I listened. I got on my knees and invited the haze deep into my heartbeat."

In the picture above, I forgot to use the virtual horizon. It shows.

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Do people still hold hands?

Well, I got bored. 

I miss drinking terribly, some days. 

Other days I just miss it, sensibly.

My all-day Sonoma photo-shoot fizzled out after I realized that it was time to stop and get a sandwich. It lasted just under an hour. The above pic is the resulting masterpiece of effort and inspiration. It took about three seconds to produce, perhaps five with post-production. 

Enjoy.

I've never cared all that much for landscape or nature photography. I mean, I'm glad it's out there, not really harming anybody, I've just never wanted to be caught up in it. But, not knowing what else to do, I found myself driving around aimlessly on a delightful day, pointing at things like a lost tourist, talking to myself.

Useless, aimless, etc.

Well, it is better to have looked at things than to have not looked at them, most of the time.

That's at least one difference between being in love and being alone. The same day might have glowed for me, at some other distant time, in the presence of my warm beloved. If you don't have a hand to hold then you might as well have a camera in it, otherwise it invites the devil's whispers.

Do people still hold hands? Am I dating myself? It sounds a little bit 20th century, maybe even 19th. 

It's a bit "darling," isn't it?

Last night my wife questioned the use of the word "disheartened." 

She asked if there was ever a time when people were heartened. 

One of them was.

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"When I'm driving in my car"

The valley has turned cold, to remind us that it can.

I will go out today and search for scenes to photograph. In the past I might have brought Barkley, the pup, with me. 

Today, I will park the car by the side of the road and walk to a place where I believe I will get the best shot - or rather, the easiest one that still looks nice. I will hardly depart the road. 

I will curse the cold, even as the day is warming.

Knowing all this makes me not want to go.

I must work on my definitions of satisfaction, to remind that I still can.

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To speak of

The sun is beautiful, even though it is deadly hot.

That line made me giggle as I sat down to write today. I keep repeating it to myself. I'm hysterical, or getting nearer to it each moment.

To speak of hysteria:

We took Rhys to Chuck E. Cheese yesterday, which was really more of a Carlos E. Queso. I fit right in as the obligatory Padre Gringo. 

Daddy Gringo. Yet another new name for my memoirs. 

Rhys loved it, of course. We "played" games, which consisted of me putting tokens in and Rhys watching myself or Rachel try to entertain him with the device. 

I, of course, dominated the game room. Nobody else even came close. I rekindled my sense of competition. The boy would get bored and move on to another game that he didn't quite understand. We would follow, forcing tokens into the machines, to appease them. 

All of them were covered in pizza grease and snot. 

He loved the basketball game most of all. He has a plastic hoop of his own in the backyard. "Basketball" is one of his favorite words. 

Three syllables, for those of you who weren't counting.

To speak of pride.

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A sunrise that never lasts

Yesterday morning. I snapped this pic as I was leaving my new writer's residence in The Castro. 

By definition it is just on the rim of The Castro, lingering on the lip; its milky dew, as it were. Who am I to emit aspersions? 

Gift horse, mouth, etc.

I'm not sure why I can't seem to convert the RAW image into an acceptable jpeg. The image as it exists within the camera, and even within iPhoto, looks much nicer, more inviting than this. Darker. The colors here appear lurid and from the eighties, not as they were yesterday morning at all. 

This is a San Francisco morning as it departs for its South Beach vacation, dressed in fresh electric pastels, powdered pigments, giddy with promise. This is what Don Johnson faces after a three day west coast bender, a Sonny Crockett, as they're soon to be known.

I will need a desk, of course, at my new residence. There will be expense involved, though not much. I will submit a list of my expected needs. I should have that prepared by the close of office on Tuesday.

I had meant to write about yesterday's sunrise and then its subsequent setting but now I have been sidetracked and have lost the feeling for it. 

I was crossing the Golden Gate Bridge for the latter showing. 

I went home feeling good.

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