Indisputably

(the accused)

Back in the valley. Spring is here. I will want a new bike soon.

I have been reading all morning. I get the wrong news feeds - or rather, I should stop trying to use Facebook as one. There comes a point where you realize that watching videos about Vine videos that went viral the day before is somehow less than fulfilling.

It all seems so interesting, at first.

One thing that I do find of interest is how any point of view can be supported with an article and/or a study. Anybody that has a blog, like this one, is qualified to conduct scientific research. 

Even me!

To wit, never before has there been less of a consensus on what constitutes a healthy diet. If you are a vegan then you will find plenty of evidence to support your decisions. If you choose to be a heartless murderer of sacred cows then you can also find articles that tell you how wise and noble your decisions and actions are. In fact, some of those articles might even touch upon the many evils of vegetables, things to be wary of.

Global warming, the same. 

Just pick an issue, decide how you feel about it, and voila'... supporting evidence appears around you. It is nice and non-threatening, amenable to sales, etc.

One thing that you will not find anywhere: a vegan that denies global warming, or one that believes Monsanto is making great strides with genetically modified foods, even though there is broad scientific consensus to support this.

So, it's fun. Sometimes I do miss the good old days though, when a general agreement could be had, about anything. 

I found myself arguing about rape online the other day. Not arguing, that would be wrong, we were experiencing discussion opposition. Both sides were united in the idea that rape is bad, but where we dissented was on who the silent victims were. My conversational partner was shocked to hear that there was a higher percentage of unreported rape among men than women. 

In prison, within gay relationships, or not within a relationship... rape is common and very rarely ever reported. It requires hospitalization before any statistics start to emerge. This unfortunate fact is also true with women, but not quite as true, because they are encouraged to report, while men experience powerful social stigmas against any admission of sexual victimhood. 

Just try to assign a more gender neutral meaning to the word rape and you will see. It is a word that does not easily transfer its meaning between the sexes. Rape is a one-way word.

I had made this fact up, concerning the incident rates of unreported male on male rape, but that's not the point. It was easy to support and defend, even without any evidence, because it seemed plausible. Rape actually is quite common among men. In fact, you'll find that it almost always involves at least one. 

Male-less rape is rare, but the experts are still looking. 

Another little known fact: rape is almost three times as common in Canada as it is in America. Rape is on the decline in the US and has been for the last 40 years. Though we are still warned to watch out for 29 year old teachers in Florida, preying on 17 year old boys. 

Shameful, yet she seems almost proud of her statutory crimes. 

Rape is non-existent in Saudi Arabia, if we are to believe the stats. The number of reported cases can be counted by hand, or perhaps hands. There is no specific law which makes rape illegal there. That is how irrelevant it is. 

Rape, under sharia law, requires four male witnesses for it to even be considered. Quite often, once there are more than four male witnesses it becomes a gang rape, as the witnesses of such a heinous thing must maintain their honor. 

Then, the woman will be often punished for that indiscretion as well, the shame of having been raped can not be ignored. It displeases a just and loving God.

So, if you have a friend who is simply disgusted with the handling of sexual violence in the US, discuss their options to emigrate to Saudi Arabia, where it does not represent nearly as much of a problem.

Well, we don't have to discuss rape all morning. Most sexual activity is happy and healthy and fun, though it being so precludes it from much outside interest.

These are just luxurious times for faux argument. 

The odd thing is, some of what I've said above is true and supported by strong evidence, yet no one wishes to believe it.

Ah, precious faith and scant fact. 

... to give back the soul I had

Do not expect much. Don't accept any less. Do not accept less than you deserve.

There are so many conflicted messages in which we are encouraged to adhere. 

It is best, perhaps, to ignore others' expectations of you.

I am trying to write this at work.

I try not to let things stress me out,  but they do. 

There is so much that hangs in the balance. Each moment is now also in the future. It is possible that this always is, always has been. 

I've included this excerpt several times before, but never more than today:

My heart of silk

Is filled with lights 

with lost bells,

with lilies and bees

I will go very far

farther than those hills,

farther than the seas,

close to the stars,

to beg Christ the Lord

to give back the soul I had

of old, when I was child,

ripened with legends,

with a feathered cap

and a wooden sword.

- Lorca

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Mushrooms, Bleach, etc.

Isn't that photo adorable?  Kids... they're not for everybody. 

I like them. 

It's for the best, too, because I am both surrounded and outnumbered. 

Lethargy.

I wish to go back to sleep but will instead just have another coffee. 

My arms felt as if they were made of silly putty at the gym, the weights so much denser than usual. It's as if they're made out of lead.

I awoke in a new place. My new place. A larger room than before. Rhys and Rachel will be coming to stay with me this week. It will be like camping for them. A novelty that will be over by Friday. An adventure in limiting scope, the focus on working together. We will learn to play and live in a smaller space.

Rachel's house was flooded while I was gone. There was no Noah, no Ark, to save them. 

Then, they found mold when the experts came out to inspect. Mold is a thing that can not be allowed. A close cousin to the single-cell yeast - the fungus we mostly adore - mold represents a potential danger. 

We are all against it. Few sing its praises. Outside of antibiotics, like penicillin, mold is something most people don't want in the house. Some do not trust penicillin either, but convincing them is not our purpose today. That is for the many well-informed scientists of social media.

Now, if you lived in the woods, or enjoyed camping, then you might feel very differently about mold. An ecosystem would not be the same without it.  It is what made R.E.M. seem the way they were on their early albums. There was something murky about them.

But as for home...

Things must be ripped up and torn apart before they can be rebuilt.

It is the only way. Things must be removed, replaced. 

A fresh start, a clean break.

Life goes on, though not long for the mold.

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Son of Sasquatch

Putzing around on a Saturday. It is always difficult to keep mystery in focus.

Dinosaurs be movin' ... don't hate.

The headlines have it: Boy Sasquatch Bolts!


I like that these images are out of focus. It lends a sort of mythic quality.

In the image below, the creature tentatively known as Enormous Foot took off running towards the river and trees when he seemed to notice we were tracking him, but then mysteriously looped back once we feigned no interest in following.

I have hundreds of these pictures. None of them have been doctored. This is the real deal. Last seen wandering his upstairs bedroom, he ate a cheese sandwich and had a nap.

Though, always on the move, the nap was much shorter than we had hoped, which left the wild youngster in a foul mood, the evening was given over to bursts of primeval rage and much disconcerted howling.

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Classes of Interest

(Train Town w/ Great Grandpa)

I think that LinkedIn has finally figured out where I work. It's starting to make suggestions that I "connect" with people at my current job. Their site must run on quite an algorithm - or, is it a logarithm. Probably the latter. I can barely remember what the term means, though I think it's a fixed value that denotes the range between one thing and another. Is that right? Is that an exponent?

Seems simpler.

I think everybody that gets a college degree should be allowed to go back every 10 years and take refresher courses, particularly if you were too dumb to pay off your student loans. There should be "Principal Interest" in which you do not have to pay tuition, but if you pass the classes with a B or better then the cost of the class is actually deducted from the remaining principal of your loans, or your interest.

An A comes off your principal and a B comes off the interest - a C gets your name posted online as having earned a golden star. 

Done.

It would show that the system is actually pro-education, at least. Let's see the colleges be as dedicated to their students as we are federally guaranteed to be to them. The classes could even be taught by alumni that had proven themselves in a given field. This could also be used to pay back the loans. It is a win, win, win situation. 

It will result in a stronger workforce, comrades...

I'm not sure what has happened to me, but I am having an increasingly difficult time typing. I might have the Michael J. Fox syndrome. 

I should feel lucky to be miserable - I could be horrible, at least as far as Woody Allen sees it.

Well, Rhys is awake now. There is an end to this morning speculation and the daily adventure again begins.

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Spring Break, Daytona... Catch It!

(Daytona Bandshell)

I don't have the time to write for this site any more. The terrorists have won.

I wonder if that's one of the NSA's search terms: "the terrorists have won"...

Seems sensible.

If I were in charge of that vastly complex operation then that would be a phrase that I would want to know about.

I would have personal requests filtering through the database.

There are many:

- I'm so hot for you right now

- Bombs in the plaza!
- Led Zep Rules

- Why should I pay taxes?

- I want you to watch me*

- Sean Cusick is a twat

- I want to suck your*

- Praise be to*

- Dynamite

* - wildcard search

Combine all of this with an image - albeit distinctly American - that contains hints of Medieval Moorish architecture, that ol' muslim look, via the Spaniards, and voila!...

I'll probably be getting arrested before I even hit the "Publish" button.

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K.C. and the Moonshine Band

Shit, I forgot to finish this... My morning got away from me.

I never liked Nirvana when they were a band. But then K.C. offed himself and right away I thought that they must be righteous, and deep. Or, at least I thought that K.C. was. The bass player, whose name has been permanently removed from the public record, got fat. Dave Grohl took up a career in maturation.

I heard a rock "journalist" refer to Cobain as "the John Lennon of our time", or something like that.

I thought to myself, "No, no he's not."

But what did I know... I never owned a Nirvana album and thought that grunge had already been done, and much better, by Neil Young.

And I was right, except for the fact that I had never bothered listening to any of the grunge bands.

I found most of them to be dreadful, and yet somehow lacking in dread. More tedious than serious. Or, that their seriousness was their tedium. 

I was into house music, etc. 

But, Nirvana, they seemed to stand out. I decided to give them a listen, just to be sure. I was wrong, as many of you already know. I began to take back everything I had never quite said about them. 

The album I first chose to listen to was "Unplugged." I had read a few reviews and many people that were "in the know" about grunge had a particular distaste for this album. So, I assumed it would be perfect for my purposes.

I loved it, fully and from the first listen, and still do. It is a great rock album, in many ways.

A new note has been released from the police vaults, one that sheds the light on Courtney that many have been trying to shed for K.C. since his death. The Lennon comparison came to be increasingly accurate as time passed, except for the fact that Cobain seemed to despise Love to some degree. I do not believe that Lennon ever quite hated Ono, though I could be wrong.

Pictures from the scene have also been released, for the more morbidly minded. 

If one had to list the most hated women in rock and roll then Ono and Love would quite likely be towards the top. I'm certain that these lists exist somewhere on the inter-webs, but I don't need them and have no interest.

Courtney. 

I lived near the Wendy's at Union Square where C. Love let a bum suck her titty and encouraged people to watch and take pictures. Later that night, or the next, she threw a bottle or a mic stand at a girl at one of her shows and hit her in the face. I've always found that sort of "punk posturing" to be insufficient. On this point I have never been wrong.

All of this, of course, made the news. Shortly afterwards I believe Courtney had her child, Frances, taken away from her and was placed under mandatory, court-ordered, treatment.  If you've never seen the Pamela Anderson Roast on Comedy Central then you have not witnessed the depth of Love.

Posturing rarely ages well.

Well, I don't have anything to wrap this post up with, unlike Cobain's punctuated ending.

Though, like him, I have run out of time.

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Giants vs. Padres

Here was our view of home plate. We had great seats, but.... fans, you know.

I had said that I was going to write some more relationship advice, a sort of Dear Abbott, but the day has launched without me.

Failure in love is the surest way to make you an expert on the matter, just as divorcees know how to hold a family together better than anybody.

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James Taylor has destroyed my morning, again

Today, SF

Tonight, maybe the Giants game

Padres vs. Giants

That is gendai-haiku

Waking up early is a lonely business. 

I have tried to go back to sleep, I will surely need it. But sleep does not re-appear within me, it has escaped the relationship, saying that it needs to focus on itself for a while, just wants to be friends, etc.

Sleep whispers, It's not you, it's me, I swear.

Do you see how it has destroyed me?


One of my buddies recently requested that I stop writing about my sleep patterns, among a few other things, so I will respect his wishes. I so desperately hate to disappoint....

There are only so many subjects available in the morning.

Ah, coffee and the gym, my life is enviable.

I will be calling that buddy soon, once I am in the car. My east coast friends get early morning phone calls. Anybody west of St. Louis is useless to me.

When is Chuck Berry going to die? He's being a bit excessive now, with all this longevity, isn't he?

Is it too early for rock and roll, or too late?

I try to imagine after-parties in the heyday of rock and roll. Did they sit around and listen to Deep Purple albums until all the chicks had left?

Probably. There were always a few guys who had brought their James Taylor records. They'd sit around moping in the den because nobody would let them put ol' Sweet Baby James on, just knowing that the party would love it, the ladies... it being the true, true sugar.

I don't know why we have to hear that fucking Bad Company album again... It's oafish! 

Ugh, and if we have to listen to Jethro Tull one more time, I swear, I'll puke all over these cork walls. They only had like three good songs, ever, maybe four.

Why won't they ever let us rock the sweet Taylor? I don't get it. "Mud Slide Slim" is a ceremony in celebration....


Jesus, speaking of No Particular Place to Go.....


I hate James Taylor. He represents everything wrong and stupid and odious about music. His music is demonic. That's right, it is used to summon the dark one, the big Dev. Just look at the picture above and tell me that there is not a direct link between that man and Aleister Crowley (below). To feel otherwise is silly. It is obvious and I refuse not to believe it. If you can not see Satan in the liquid blue eyes of the man above then you do not have Jesus in your heart.

And yes, sometimes you will hear me humming Carolina in My Mind. That is only to remind myself of the danger therein - not in Carolina, of course, but in the music of James Taylor. All of it, none of it is safe.

I know that's a Carole King song, nobody needs to remind me.

Why did heroin take so many others, but not precious JT? Why, oh Lord, do bad drugs let some people survive?

Ah well, I've been through all of this before. There is no point in it. We can not redeem the sins of the past, particularly the nineteen-seventies.


"Nothing is true; everything is permitted."

(Father of James and famed Pyramidiot)

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The Great and Curious Tester of Frogs

(crowd-sourced image)

A weekend of normalcy.

Saturday, a trip to the Charles Shulz Museum.

Things, I do not believe, achieve any greater normalcy than are contained within stock Midwestern sensibilities. Rachel pointed out the architecture of the building was very Midwestern, and she was quite right: flat and open, with a sense of the expansive.

The place is not a museum designed for children. Very few things are there to be touched. It is rather for the adult who wishes to revisit a familiar social artifact to which they may be attached. 

There are quotations of Shulz's pasted along the walls that are eerily similar to Warhol, though I do not believe the intention was the same at all. They seem to function almost as an alternate counter-point, because they contain no irony. Warhol was also a product of the semi-midwest. I believe it was Pittsburgh, the most midwestern of all the northeastern cities. 

Some consider Schulz's work deceptively simple, others just simple. He is like Norman Rockwell without any apparent painterly talents. His abbreviated comic forms are quite flexible, and contain much in little, though he is no Matisse either. With him, sometimes less is only less, a scribble only a scribble, and abbreviation is used for purpose rather than suggestion. It is not for aesthetic pleasure that people are drawn to his work, I do not believe. 

That is my criticism of the master.

Then, Sunday, Costco for supplies. In the event of an apocalypse, or otherwise, we will still need those. 

Late in the day Sunday we took the boy and the pup to the park. We spent some time on the swings, letting the boy be a boy-monkey, encouraging it, even.

Then, we went to the dog-park side of the park. As we walked around pretending that we were all cars that comprised a train that was circling on the thin concrete that exists without apparent reason along the inside of the park, making the requisite "choo-choo" sounds, Rachel noticed a little frog. 

A very little frog.

She drew Rhys' attention to it and the boy crouched down in fascination. We watched the little frog jump from grass blade to grass blade, small enough to traverse them without affecting them much at all. We both encouraged the boy's fascination with the little colorful creature. It made its way to a spot on the ground, a small opening of flat earth, dirt.

The boy stuck his index finger out and as we both said no he pressed the frog down into the dirt using his last digit. The boy's finger was scarcely large enough to cover the mass of the frog's body, though for an instant the little green guy was eclipsed. But then it re-appeared in a different form. In that moment the frog's flesh looked as if it was made of rubber, but it was not made of rubber and I do not think a complete recovery was made when the pressure was released.

Later, Rachel claimed that she believed the frog to be okay, as it hopped once again after we both quickly screamed for the boy to stop and picked him up and walked away, explaining the preciousness and fragility of life to one who had just tested its limitations. We gave him the perfunctory speeches on the indiscriminate killing of animals for the sole purpose of curiosity or malice, and the evils contained therein.  

I allowed that the frog might very well have moved after the incident, which was more likely the result of its blood rushing back in from its extremities to its trunk, triggering a reaction from its nervous system, a system I pointed out, that had just received its first and perhaps last truly traumatic shock, likely resulting in an extended state of torpor, or worse.

I do not know much about amphibian morphology, but I am reasonably certain that its digits are not designed to swell to the size of its legs.

That is my assessment of the incident.

I said a prayer for the little fellow, brother carnivore, though to whom I prayed remains a mystery.

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A vacuum in the lexicon

Sunday mornings used to appear before me in a very different form.

Ah, well, let's not become wistful. There will be time for such saccharine sentiment later, when no one is looking.


...no-one?

The word "nobody" does not satisfy the same sense in the mind that "no one" does, and there is no single word which means the same thing, except "none," which is not specific to humans in usage, except by context. We are told that nobody and no one mean the same thing but they do not feel the same, particularly if it is the spirit or mind of a person to which our concerns are affixed, not the somatic sense of them. 

The English language has a hole in it, and there seem to be none to fix it.

I need a word that indicates an absence of all others, and possibly even of self, perhaps even when in a crowd. It should be able to be used to indicate both a physical absence as well as the general sensation of absence. Something that indicates loneliness that is external to the person experiencing it. The outward manifestation of isolation, rather than its internal mechanism. 

Maybe vacancy, though that refers to a space that happens to be empty of humans, not necessarily intended to be that way.

Remote, maybe, but meaning the distance from one another without regard to actual proximity.

A permanent vacancy, an emptiness that can not be filled by the presence of another human, not just the longing for the other human, but the dearth of humanness itself, the impossibility of satisfying this need, in a single word.

Never mind. I don't normally write out my searches. It is a practice in loneliness, little else.

Fuck it, let's go ahead and be nostalgic this morning, we're already this far in....

I miss Sunday morning after-parties, and Sunday night after-after-parties, and all day Monday after-after-after-parties, though not necessarily in that order. 

In truth, I am too old for all of it, the club night which leads to the after party most of all. I have tried going out a few times recently and it has resulted in failure.  All my fault, of course, but there it is. I would do much better at an after-party where I need not stand the entire time.

A friend played in SF on Friday night and I did not make it out, did not even really consider it. At around 9:30pm, after putting Rhys to sleep and reading for a few minutes, I checked my phone and it was already Saturday morning, and I well rested.

It is simple. There are certain drugs that I should not be allowed to do any more. They know their names. I need not list them here.

My only indulgence should be the occasional kummerspeck, which is precisely what I plan on today, a little grief-bacon this morning then ribeye steak tonight. What is it that makes tears on fudge so delicious?

No, I kid. I always tilt my head back so that the tears roll down the sides of my face and not directly onto the brownie where they would add salt and ruin the sweetness of pain.

With ice cream it doesn't matter as much. I don't know why that is.

Speaking of learning new words...

Rhys learned a "bad word", and how to use it effectively.

I won't print it here, because I'm a quasi-devout Christian recovering from language deficiency and a horrible love addiction.

But...

He not only knew that it was a bad word, he knew how best to shock me with it.

Let me rewind.

Rhys is only two years old. I don't believe I'm being a prude in believing that he shouldn't quite yet know any words like this one: shit.

Or, shitty.

But not only did he know the word, he already possessed several different applications of it.

To wit, I often lie in the bed in his room talking to him as he calms down to go to sleep in his crib. Last night, he said the word a few times without me recognizing what he was saying. But then he followed it up with, "I said a bad word, daddy."

Rachel opened the door to make sure I had heard and understood what he had just said (we still use baby monitors, etc.).

At this point Rhys got very excited about using the word. Over and over again, "Shitty, shitty, shitty, shitty, shitty…. Daddy, I said a bad word. I said a bad word. Daddy! Daddy! Hahahahahaha…."

"What the fuck!", I thought.

How does a two year old learn a word like this. A child should have to be four or five before employing this sort of shock and awe tactic. Three, at least. There should be an age limit.

He's a bright kid.... but he doesn't have any tattoos yet.

When asking Rachel, she admitted that the daycare woman had called, concerned, and asked if we knew anything about it, two weeks ago. Then Rachel heard him say it a few days ago. Between the two of them they have heard him use it to describe his own poop as well as an exclamation of exasperation. 

Rachel decided to ask him where he learned the word. Now, this is the part of the story that really gets me.

This little two year old boy constructed an elaborate tale about how Elle, a girl that he attends daycare with, and Sebastian, another boy, were in the bathroom while Rhys was evacuating and Elle pointed at it and told him that is what his poop is called.

There has never been a time in which he would have been pooping in the bathroom with Elle and Sebastian without Carol, the daycare woman, present. Ever.

Ever.

It is not a situation that could have possibly occurred, only that had not quite occurred yet to our little fabricator. He constructed this story just to toss Elle into the cesspool. When Rachel confronted him with the invention of the story he became very embarrassed.

The little swindler...

So, not only did he grasp the power of using a "bad word" towards his parents, he had also contrived a narrative to use this same power against one of his daycare playmates, one with whom he has had little troubles with recently.

Amazing.

Is it wrong to feel a vague sense of pride in such a thing, on the Lord's day?



Sunday mornings used to appear before me in a very different form.

Oh, Sunday mornings used to appear before me in a very different form.

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The Buddha Principle

I've been assisting my friends with their relationships. It is not going as well as one might guess. 

Yesterday a friend passed along an internet quotation from "Buddha"… 

It turns out, of course, that it was not a quotation from Buddha. 

Soon, nobody will have ever said or written anything. There will be too much evidence for it.

But I liked it, it was timely:

In the end, only three things matter: how much you loved, how gently you lived, and how gracefully you let go of things not meant for you.

Be wary of trite life summations by Gandhi and Buddha, and all others. Remember that there are no writings of Socrates, so it's always safe to quote him online and elsewhere.

Nothing is simple, except perhaps these quotations. Nothing is just something else.

Be wary of all things, even fear.

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Nothing moved, nothing gained

The fog rolled and crawled across the western mountain line. The setting sunlight barely drifting through. Had there been alarms sounding it might have seemed like an industrial accident, a mishap at a chemical factory somewhere else, anywhere on the news. I walked upwards, first following a path, then started across nearly open fields. They were fenced, though not well, used to graze cattle or sheep in better times, now overgrown with waste, nature.

I expected gunshots to ring out, wondering aloud if I would ever hear them.

It would depend on whether they hit the head or the body first, and how much damage they did to the head, whether they rendered the mind useless in an instant, or if some senses lingered and dawdled before moving on.

I stopped and sat on a rock looking out eastward as it darkened, the sky making its purple transition. The fog disappeared as you were in it, as if it were avoiding you. I could see as far as I needed, though less and less. I felt as if I was within the belly of an enormous ghost, one on the verge of sleep. It was as if all things were on the border of becoming still. I pulled a notepad from my pocket and stared at it blankly, at its blankness. I turned back a few pages and looked down at the words. I turned and turned. I closed the book and watched dimly the disappearing mountain line on the far side of the valley. Nothing moved there, only barely the wind between us.

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The rise of violent writing in the US

(Home)

I have spent the morning writing an email. It was quite a novelty. It felt so private, even secretive. Then I remembered that nothing is really secret, and only thoughts are meant to be private...

So, I decided to teach everybody how to read my emails if they wish. 

It's easy!

No, I don't actually know how to intercept and read people's email, though from what I understand it is not very difficult, if you have the resources, which is apparently what our tax dollars are.

One wonders if the government already knew about the Heartbleed bug. I see so many people posting about government invasion of privacy but no one has yet seemed to grasp the immensity of this mistake. If it was in fact a mistake. They may have made off with all of the keys to the kingdom in one run.

I shouldn't say that no one has yet to seem to grasp the immensity. I do have some nerd friends. 

What I find particularly interesting is that there is not a commensurate push to strengthen due process in these lopsided times. One would think that the courts would recognize the jeopardy to the judicial process and begin allowing for extra time to determine precisely how the prosecution came to discover certain bits of evidence in key cases. 

What you're going to see instead is increased convictions with defense attorneys stumbling to figure out how this last minute evidence was discovered and introduced. 

The future will contain more guilt. 

Slate created an interesting piece about the rise in prison populations. It's worth actually clicking on the link which takes you to the gif that the article is about. 

Here, I'll try to link just the gif. That seems to have worked.

For anybody that has read "Freakonomics" you might find the last sentence in the article linked above of interest. The economists there argued that the drop in violent crime was directly linked to the Roe v. Wade decision, which resulted in a reduction of unwanted pregnancies. 

Admittedly, based on their data, there did seem to be a shelf that was reached and then America was suddenly dropped off from the catastrophe of urban violence that was swelling in the US up until that point. The article linked above points out that murder rates have dropped "considerably" over the same time period that there has been an increase in prison populations.

Don't let me muddle my arguments here, or any more than I already have. 

I am all for reduced prison populations, which does not make me pro-murder. I only point out that there might be more than one corollary or causality involved in the drop in violent crimes, like an increase in use of police force and the militarization of those same local forces.

Well... well, we're out of time.

I looked at the cost of houses yesterday in the Sonoma area. You would be stunned at what half a million dollars will get you, or even a quarter of a million, or less.

It's a 30 year investment, if you're lucky. But once I'm a spritely 75 then I'll be the proud owner of an oak shipping slat, two dirt holes, a dog that won't lick my face, and a straw man that keeps all the birds away.

Who will need the cops then? 

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That's all

(Sailing into Sandbars)

There is always something to worry about. I awoke this morning in vague fear that since taking a vacation I had somehow forgotten how to perform the details of my job. Silly. The mind invents the most bizarre anxieties.

Mine does.

It's because my life is collapsing, the life that I chose. Even my dreams are trying to escape.

Now, I will have to make some new choices. That's all. 

That's all, I keep telling myself.

It is not for lack of love, but lack of something else: a mutual willingness, the ability to change, etc. Rachel and I have discussions about how lots of children that are co-parented turn out just fine. 

Perhaps this is true, but what of the parents? How do they appear, or resolve? How do they arrive and depart?

Just fine.

It is nice to be going back to the gym. It gives me a calming sense of control over my life. Things seem to fall into place.

I just returned from the wretched sweatbox and it is a miracle that I survived, truly. The icons of Jesus and Mary are hung on the wall in front of the cardio machines. They must have saved me. All that was required was some breathless begging on my part.

I find myself repeating the simplest of lessons.

In life, there is mostly a lot of letting go. Sort of. We must hold on to some things, or try to. But what, and who, and when are the recurring mysteries. The things to which we hold seem so useless later, sometimes. The things we let go, so hopelessly irretrievable; lost forever, yet almost within distance to touch. Though touching becomes out of the question.

I chatted with Rachel for the first time in weeks, maybe longer. It was more than a chat. It was a talk. We chat all of the time, that's not what it was. It is necessary for two parents of a child to talk from time to time.

We are far more than just two parents of a child, of course, but that is about the most we can bring ourselves to talk about, the boy. 

It was a good talk, and enough. It is nice to be reminded that we both have a similar mission in life, with similar goals. Allies, etc.

Love is not enough. It's a pretty good start, and it's an absolute prize as an ender, if you can manage it, but there are so many things along the way that are also needed. The assumption is that love is the pretext that will give you sufficient reason to develop these other traits. That is the assumption. 

No matter how often this is tested it remains mainly unproven, or rather, very easily disproven.

There is an increasing sense of constriction in my life, an impending sense that things are closing in, or down, on me.

It's probably just the coffee, now that I have stopped.

.

Upon returning

Just now, as I was lying in bed on my last day off from work before returning, finishing a book that I brought with me everywhere on my trip but did not read, a simple thing occurred to me. There is so little that we can do, almost nothing. We make our choices, we can wish, we can surround ourselves, we can push back at the love that is offered to us, or we can be bowled over by it. Then it is all over, whether in pain, surprise, or some deluded sense that something else will emerge from the newly found darkness. It all passes so quickly, there is not much point in worrying about it not doing so.

I look around and I see so many others.

Though I know that I am loved I have often felt lonely. Many others must also feel this way. In this, I know that I am not so unique.

I look around and I see so many others, also.

While I was gone, I missed writing. I missed beginning my mornings with some silly contemplation, given away freely. I missed the feeling that somehow, in some small way, I might also be something else, something other than lonely.

It all passes so quickly, there is not much point in worrying about it not doing so.

.

The Hundred Years War

(The Burghers of Calais, Auguste Rodin)

Home again, home again...

Rhys was excited to see me, and I him.

We all went for a walk when we awoke, to let Barkley the pup do his business. The bright morning said summer but the wind still speaks of winter, not even in whispers but in full, long, deep breaths. 

The normalcy here is as I expected, without any deviation whatsoever. I will, at least, be able to return to the gym regularly, to try and recover something that gets lost along the way. Vitality, but also something else. It is not only about gaining, another thing falls away; a thing not needed, a thing not desired.  

The boy was quite excited to try on the Buzz Lightyear pajamas that I brought home for him from the land of such things. They were too large, though he didn't seem to mind much. He ran around the house exclaiming, To Infinity and Beyond!... which sounds about right. He wore them today to day-care.

Something strange has happened while I was gone. I have lost the taste for coffee. I guess I wasn't drinking it regularly enough and now it tastes to me as it used to, which isn't very good. I should take advantage of this window of opportunity and quit. I probably won't. I'll force through and be a coffee drinker again anyway, in spite of the odd chance this window offers.

I had thought that perhaps it was just the different brands that I drank while away. But no, I just returned from Starbucks, and their brand (my usual) also tastes "off" to me. 

This would be a good time for me to return to drinking teas, at least. Earl Grey.

I just got an email from Tumblr saying that my site, this one, has just turned 3 today, and wanting me to wish myself congratulations. That sounds about right. My life is regulated by faulty algorithms with bad data. A 45 year old man finding attention and affection for and from himself through leveraging various social media platforms towards one another. Two Facebooks gazing into each other's profiles, with no poking involved, just an awful lot of liking. 

Having barely touched my coffee I have another rare opportunity: going back to sleep. Nobody would know. I have the day off from work, my last of its kind for a while.

I crawled into a familiar bed and turned on my laptop, to find the image above. It has no special meaning, except perhaps only to me, as a reminder of where I just was, and maybe that the figures were spared from certain doom, though you would never know that just by looking. It is the moment when they believed they were approaching their collective eternal fate.


As for the sleep…. Shhhh, don't tell.

I will be as still as the statue.

.

The decisions we make

(The Boathouse, Central Park)

The trip is over. 

Today involves some packing and then the long flight home, a return to normalcy. There is a connection through Phoenix, one of the most hellish cities anywhere, on any map. Why don't I just pay the extra money and get the non-stop flights?

In the airline industry they use a term for a flight in which the plane will stop in another city to change some passengers then continue on to the destination city. If you stop and think about this term for a bit it should enrage you: direct. They call those "direct flights" and that is how they are sold. It is an industry-wide term and has been that way for as long as I've been flying.

To make matters worse, with most airlines you will only get the frequent flyer miles as if you were flying a direct line between the two cities on the itinerary. Perhaps this is where they derive the term. Who knows.

Well, perhaps that is a topic for another time. I try not to get myself too worked up about flying before I have even arrived at the airport. 

It will be nice to return to the valley of Sonoma. The humidity in Florida is impossible and it is still early in the year, the soupy denseness has just arrived. I was told that last week was the last of the cool nights and clear days.

I do not know exactly what I face on returning to Sonoma. Something has changed. There has been a shift, I can feel it. We are both afraid. Afraid of what will happen next. It need not be so devastating, particularly if neither of us is doing anything to avoid it, which would indicate that we both invite it. What else should we expect in such circumstances. 

If only it were more simple to make love work. If the pleasure that can be derived from caring for another person could be achieved in an easily sustainable and consecutive fashion. It all sounds so simple, but everybody struggles with it. All relationships require work and willingness. All the love in the world can not save a connection that lacks an open enthusiasm for it to succeed. There must be a faith of sorts, a belief that it can and should be preserved. 

Without that, nothing.

Who knows, perhaps everyone will be happy to see me, ecstatic even. Rachel as well. Maybe she will run to me to hug me and hold me longer than expected. Perhaps she will tear up with happiness upon seeing my face, as if I have returned safely from sea. That would be nice, to feel deeply loved and missed. The imaginary components of love are always the easiest to achieve. 

Though fear is also imaginary, and that seems to work in the opposite way.

I probably don't know what the fuck I'm talking about. 

This should be easy enough to verify, just listen to me for a little while, etc.

Excerpt from "the crunch" by Charles Bukwoski:

there is a loneliness in this world so great
that you can see it in the slow movement of
the hands of a clock

people so tired
mutilated
either by love or no love.

people just are not good to each other
one on one.

the rich are not good to the rich
the poor are not good to the poor.

we are afraid.

our educational system tells us
that we can all be
big-ass winners

it hasn't told us
about the gutters
or the suicides.

or the terror of one person
aching in one place
alone

untouched
unspoken to

watering a plant.

.

He is Risen!

(Taken from within an NYC cab)

The last day of my vacation, the last day spent away. Easter.

Monday will be spent traveling and Tuesday will be spent acclimatizing; going back to the gym, washing clothes, domestic doings. It is odd, for me, to be in places that are so familiar and yet feel so far from home.

I had been drinking moderately before this trip, knowing that I would likely drink more during it, which became true. Seeing old friends, it is what one does. That, and eating. Now, I will return to not drinking at all and my diet will shift away from the richer foods. I am looking forward to it. The vacation has been great, visiting with old friends, but constant traveling is exhausting and drinking is fun mostly in small doses, I have found. 

It is my new wisdom; small doses, taken less daily. I want now only to return to my life of healthy habits.

I also want to go to Easter Mass this morning but ol' CS is against it, godless heathen that he is. I almost had him sold on the idea but then I told him that we should pray on it. 

I wish to admire the lovely girls. It is the best that religion has to offer. That, and all the free redemption that anyone can stomach.

We went to a restaurant last night, as we were leaving there was another restaurant across the street which caught our attention, one which featured live music. There were three women dancing in front of this poor guitar player, all clapping out of time and wildly waving their arms. At least I think that's what they were trying to do, dance. It could have been a stroke-in. It was one of the most demented scenes I have witnessed in a while. I try not to be too much of a racist, but wow… white people…. How can something so funny be so dangerous.

When I get home I will have thousands of photos to go through. I am looking forward that that also. I took many pictures of all my friends' kids. They will want them, I hope. I just went through them to find the image for today, a goldfish bowl in a taxi. 

Only in New York...

It all seems so long ago now. Two weeks away. That's five times longer than Jesus spent in Hades tussling with Satan, preaching, giving the dead one last chance to repent before condemning them to eternal separation from God. Three days. That was half as long as it took his Father to make all the heavens and the earth. On the third day his dad was occupied with creating the oceans and rivers, and a few other things. 

Such is the immortal complexity of the human soul, the details are fuzzy and the time-frame is compressed beyond belief.

.

Tampa

They say the camera adds 10 pounds. 

She must have tried to take this picture 7 or 8 times. 

Having not learned any salient lessons from this image, we're on our way to McDonald's.