¡Ay, caramba!

The good guys won! We'll finally get this country back in shape.

I can not wait, personally. We've had to suffer these potheads for far too long now. 

We finally beat the dems like the silly mutts they are. I'm looking forward to enjoying the economic prosperity that will surely arise from all of this. Fuck, I tried to cancel my health insurance this morning but HR said that I can't do it. I reminded them that there's a few new sheriffs in town, they had better buck up, I'll be back.

I'm just glad that I'm white and middle-aged, not a terrorist, etc. Jesus, the little people have got some kickings coming to them, and it's about time. Those fuckers have enjoyed a free ride for far too long, leaching off this great nation of ours. 

Pay up, Sanchez! 

You wouldn't believe how easy the migrant workers have it around here. You see them slinking around everywhere with all that filthy cash stuffed away, cash that should have been going to pay the taxes of the many suffering vintners in the region. 

That famed Mexican haughtiness is in for a few kicks to the balls, wipe those smirks right off of their faces. 

That'll teach 'em. 

Well, I haven't even looked at California's election results. Maybe I should have before writing all that now sits above this paragraph. Maybe the Mexicans finally won. Who knows, they might have already seceded and I might be a Mexican right now as I type this. 

Who needs facts. I can adapt.

Es fácil, todo lo que necesitas es amor.

Jesus Marimbaburritos, did you see that? My blog is succumbing to harvest-time gibberish.

Well, I should stop, preferably before somebody starts to take me seriously. I often wonder the possibilities of such a thing, being taken seriously. 

I am no big believer in democracy, but neither is anybody else. Just listen to what they all say today. You'll hear the word "cheated" thrown around a lot. 

Ask the people what they want and then just give it to them. Easy.

I see very little difference between the Reds and the Blues. 

The Blues lean further left on social issues and were about 3 and a half million times more likely to engage in voter fraud, but that's about it. 

I can understand why it's so important to many, and can understand the horror among some that recent advances in social liberties might be rolled back, or impeded from advancing any further. It's not as if many Presidents have been appointing liberal judges, ones that will challenge the authority of the executive arm of government, much less act in the interest of individual freedom. It's not easy, but the several POTUS' have found a way to create cascading layers of complicity in the judicial branch.

So few challenges to executive privilege ever make it to the final court, to test the "constitutionality" of their actions. They are smacked down and reduced in purpose along the way, to such degree that any seeming victory in checks-and-balances is mostly a meaningless victory, if not a pyrrhic one to the democratic and judicial process on its way up, or as a result.

Meanwhile, we live in a time in which the final court will claim that a corporation is a person and should enjoy the same rights and liberties afforded individuals in the Bill of Rights.

American terrorists aren't people, though. Let's not muddy the message. They are treasonous traitors. 

It's going to be nice to put prayer back in schools, and not that muslim wailing bullshit. Some nice sober recitations, in lockstep chorus. 

That should help separate the good ones from the bad.

Oh, majestas.

.

Birdman

(Photo: John Dill)

The picture above appears tinted the way the world becomes if you drink too much NyQuil. Or, that's the effect it has on me, anyway. It is a picture of my friend playing the Robot Heart sunrise set at Burning Man this last year. One sunrise that I missed. I left only minutes before my friends arrived, confusing the time that my friend was starting, arriving too early and then leaving likewise.

He was in town yesterday, so we decided to have a movie adventure.

Why is it so difficult to see good films?

We attempted to go to a showing of Birdman. It was only playing in one theater in the entire SF Bay area. The theater was immune to all the iPhone maps we used to try and find it on foot. We ended up stopping cars in a mall parking lot and repeatedly asking directions, little updates along the way. The theater was hidden behind a rundown row of apartments that bordered the mall parking lot. It was being eaten by the nearly impoverished.

What am I talking about? In SF, those apartments probably housed millionaires.

It makes no sense that a film starring Michael Keaton, Edward Norton, Emma Stone, and Zach Galifianakis should be relegated to one old crumbling ruin of a theater hidden on the dark sloping backside of a mall parking lot. Though perhaps those are my age and cultural preferences acting slighted rather than the facts of their diminishing star qualities. Also, this added to the dramatic theme of the film. Maybe it was intentional. Or, I waited too long to see it and it was only playing in one theater.

I don't know.

Nope, I just looked. It's playing in three theaters and one that was much closer to where we were. Fandango is useless and dangerous.


The film was great. It was intended to unfold as a single take though it also self-consciously revealed that this could not possibly be so, with actors appearing instantaneously in new positions and wardrobe as the camera panned. Some of the cuts were detectable if you paid careful attention, while most others were seamless.

Still, it makes little sense to me. It had a limited released on Oct. 17th, that's it. I would guess that with the star power that it has and the director being the maker of 21 Grams... ah well, what do I know of such things. The closest of the theaters to me, in Sonoma, only occasionally plays a film that I care for, Moonrise Kingdom and St. Vincent (with Bill Murray) being the two that come to mind, separated by two years.

You get the idea. I'll let this point of fact go. Give me time.


Birdman appealed in odd ways. The director, Iñarritu (forgive the missing accent over the a), does an excellent job at both anticipating and toying with expectations. The dialogue is quick and powerful, the pacing is purposeful and dynamic, and the theme of escape-through-flight is eternal. Though there are elements to deride within each of the characters, the director does not instruct us much as to which we should prefer, which is a refreshing lack of directorial condescension.

Usually, for me, there is something so nervous about Michael Keaton's performances that it can make me almost uncomfortable, but in this he does a good job at making me nearly uncomfortable in different ways. His character is a sagging collapse that somehow retains some of the charm and mystery of his former self, as well as some of the power, though also a hefty dose of petulance.

The director never lets on whether his supernatural powers are real or entirely imaginary. His dressing room gets trashed and other characters acknowledge it, but none witness the trashing. Often used through desperation, his powers over the physical world augment the unfolding of the character in both touching and satyrical ways. During a helicopter battle a griffin screeches down from a rooftop during his tremendous hangover on the opening day of the play, etc.

Haven't we all felt that way.

There were montages at the beginning and end that I would have liked to have seen incorporated more into the story line. My friend and I readily agreed on this point. They were visually powerful and suggestive but somehow the director seems to have missed the connection, or not made it as fully as he could have. Instead, he suggests the flight of suicide as the visual denouement though never really tells us one way or the other. The implication is clear but never achieves anything more than just that, implication. One might suppose that would be enough, though it somehow felt lacking, even given the intentional blurring of the lines between the real and the imaginary.

Perhaps it is only meant to impute the inner desire to fly, to escape, to die. In that, perhaps Iñarritu succeeded. Though we both wanted closure, not hints.

Still, we gave enthusiastic thumbs up to the film. It is truly unfortunate that it does not have more of a wide release in theaters because many of the effects are exclusively cinematic.

4 our of 4 stars, and two thumbs.

My buddy and I are old battling critics, separated by opinion and at occasional eternal war with one another, though on this we were united. The front lines have been blurred and now we share old war stories as if we had always been fighting for the same side. It is a by-product of age, I suppose. We have grown up a bit together and recognize that there are better enemies out there than each other.

Like time.




Well, let me wrap this up with one of my coincidental interests. I've been reading again lately, so beware.... references and quotes are now upon you.

Mephistopheles.   No joy could sate him, no delight but cloyed,

     For changing shapes he lusted to the last;

     The final moment, worthless, stale, and void,

     The luckless creature, he would hold it fast.

     Here he who fought me off so well-

     Time triumphs - stranded lies, a whitened shell.

     The clock is muted-

Chorus.                          Mute! Like midnight it is stilled.

     The hand is falling.

Mephistopheles.            Fell - it is fulfilled.

Chorus.    It is all over.

Mephistopheles.            Over! Stupid name.

     Why over?

     All over and pure nothing - just the same!

     What has this constant doing ever brought

     But what is done to rake away the naught?

     So it is over! How to read this clause?

     All over is as good as never was,

     And yet it whirls about as if it were.

     The Eternal-Empty is what I prefer.

- Goethe, Faust

.

La Collectionneuse

My secret life has a new dimension.

Last night, after seeing Rhys, I went to sleep around 7:30. Last evening really, not yet night. I awoke around 2:30 and my secrecy began. As a film projector unexpectedly begins in the silent darkness, there is an orchestra of dancing lights upon waking. A dream of having just been in an unlit room; untold stories unfolding in the eyes.

An accomplice recently asked why I don't just stay up later, the way that I used to, and then sleep in. She surmised that I can still have all the secrecy I might ever want in the late evenings. Her assumption being that I wished to somehow economize and align my time with others. 

It's not true, though. In the evenings there still exist options, distractions, the noise of others moving, the temptation to move in unison with the turning world, to rise. Through the middle of the night's passing there is a calming nothingness. Things appear in the darkness as aquatic apparitions in the depths, the emptiness of secrets being their disguise.  A world without shadows, only darkness and unharnessed thoughts floating. My midnight life is as a submarine sliding past, surrounded in silence.

Close your eyes with all lights off, then press on your eyelids with your closed hands, not too hard, not so that you see red but just before. There are unexpected shapes floating across. Hear your breathing, carefully. 

It is like that, this strange phantasma. Hours upon hours, all dispersing in morning light.

Several emails back and forth with an old friend yesterday, I decided that I would start spending some of my alone time in films. We exchanged compact opinions on a handful of directors. I asked him about a book I had encouraged him to read, A Sport and a Pastime, by Salter. He gave me his enthusiastic approval and then compared it to a film, La Collectionneuse, by Rohmer. 

Now, Janus films also await me in the cold, cold night. Criterion. Last night was the first in an unplanned festival. 

I awake and take off all of my clothes underneath the covers. I don't quite know why. One must re-remember how to be nude when it has been too long. One must feel why to be nude. It is odd, the sensation that you have put something on by being naked, to assume senses lost by clothing.

It is a practice in resisting age, an invisible cloak that attends disrobing, like the warmth of a second glass of nice red wine.

The film's main theme is a pouty young woman who owns several bikinis. Two men compete over her but there are also more, some who have and enjoyed her. Passers by.

Each of the three main characters - a struggling lust triangle - espouses their version of sexual politics, complicity. 

Each incomplete, each insistent, each doomed. 

The intended theme concerns itself with how much vanity and guile exists in even the simplest and most casual romantic arrangements, seeking to prove something we only find to eventually blame in the actions and assertions of others. One must conceal their impulses and detestations, carefully arranging how we advertise our interests.

The film ends in the unquieted restlessness of finally being alone, of returning to the imaginary desired state of peace. 

Fin.

It is freeing, this noiseless feeling. To possess nonexistent silence; where the whole world is hushed, and I miss no one.

.

Behold, a thief in the alembic

I didn't take many Halloween pictures. I was out of my zone. I brought the wrong camera. I'm losing my edge.

Also, I didn't want to be annoying at every possible turn.  

The one above is of a buddy of mine. He and Rhys had a grand time roaming the streets with the many witches and goblins and princesses, collecting their sugar loot, the sucrose pillage, their wild cellophane plunder.

I lectured them on gender stereotypes, of course, because that is my ideological nature. I was dressed as an adult pink bunny, though I do not believe any pictures exist. I frightened parents, truly. When my gender lectures gained no audience I warned them of demonic possession and offered to introduce them to Christ, to shepherd them in to the fold.

Ah well, there is still time before the arrival of the floods. We live in biblical times; locusts, plagues, bats, the flood of rising waters, etc. Fast times for the righteous. 

It is odd that embedded in the Christian myth there is the warning that a loving Christ will return as a dark surprise, a thief, to toss the non-compliant into eternal misery and torment. Surprise! 

Does that sound right to anybody? Why is there even a battle going on between a true almighty and one of his perverse angelic traitors? 

None of it makes any sense at all. Wouldn't the god described in the biblos, the creator, just win that battle and be done with it. Seems odd, that. The myth seems quite human in both its telling and purpose. Nothing about it seems particularly inspired, or even mysterious. If it was written by God then one might have guessed that he would have edited out all of Numbers as being inconsequential. He might have had the Ten Commandments be the same from the first and second recital of them, also. It sounds as if it was written by cuckolded farmers, ones who are accustomed to having their crops raided by insects, suffering the occasional oxen theft. 

Ah well, happy Sunday!

I read several pages from Goethe's Faust last night, so I'm feeling quite homunculi this morning. 

You could say I had a fairly radical Saturday night, wrestling with 'ol Mephistopheles.

What I possess as from afar I see
Those I have lost become realities to me

.

"Come on now try and understand"

Even a doctor friend reached out to congratulate me on my luck yesterday. Such is the underlying power of chemistry. The central science bonds us all.

I half-joke when I discuss pharmaceutical drugs. I am as harmless as a box of kittens, a busload full of nuns, etc. I only ingest the medicine that my doctor demands of me, and always under the strict supervision of the printed advisory on the bottle. I have installed a special camera in my room to carefully monitor intake. Each morning I review the previous night, frame by frame, to ensure that there are no discrepancies. 

If any of you knew the daily and nightly horrors that I endure just to make this site possible then you would not question the wisdom of my doctor and pharmacist, who appear to finally be working in concert to address my condition. I suffer from mild acuteness.

It can strike at any time. One must always be prepared. From this rises the paradox of poetic nerves, or so I would like to believe anyway.

It is the closest thing I have to occasional faith.

Ah well, it is all just a joke. It is part of my irreverence series. I am trying to touch on any and all subjects that deserve it, in which people might have wished that I didn't.

I want that to be the way that people remember me, in precious wishes.

I was going to link "Careless Whispers" to the phrase "precious wishes" but I couldn't do it.

I'll leave you this instead:

.

"Will you ever win?"

My pharmacy just made the most brilliant mistake. I can't go into details, because I think it's illegal, but they substituted a controlled substance in my prescription. 

Though, who am I to question their wisdom in such matters. They are educated. The two chemicals are very similar, but different in one important way, to me.

Instead of getting the very popular benzodiazepine that I desperately need to control unexpected outbursts I got a substitution that I very much relish and enjoy.

I keep feeling as if the pharmacy will call and tell me that I have to come back in. You hear of these stories where the bank accidentally fills an account with cash and somebody withdraws it all and goes on a spending splurge.  They make a mad dash towards the horizon hoping that modern banking won't catch up with them.

I remember one case in particular, a kid. He claimed that he thought his grandma made the deposit for him. He had stereos and all sorts of nonsense. I never followed up on it but the bank was trying to make him pay the money back. He was understandably reluctant. 

Why should he be punished over their mistake, was his reasoning. The money was all gone. Vanished into adolescence. 

That would not make sense with this stuff, though. That would be plain silly. 

I always take them only as needed, and need them as often as I take them. 

Well, I won't bore you further with my windfall luck. 

It was Klonopin.

Tonight, of course, all of the local satanists will emerge from hiding, if they can pull themselves away from their Ouija boards long enough. I can. I am fascinated with demonic communiques, of course, every now and then an atheist wants to hear them swimming in the winds.

Yesterday I made a joke about "Satan's Something" and in the comments section somebody found it odd that an atheist would "invoke" Satan.  Atheists are forbidden from poetics as well, you see. Once you've been banished from the eternal loving kingdom then you have no further access to the fun facts of spiritual warfare, devout opposition to the principalities of darkness. I've been demoted to mere mortal.

I wish the young Stevie Nicks was here. We'd really party, her and I. That girl... She as her usual cool, witchy self, and I as a transvestite in a madhouse, makeup skewed, jumping on the bed, eyes crazed and darting about, desperately the same as always.

(... darkness, like a fine skylark)

.

Hi Dad, it's me, Sean

Uh-oh, I forgot to write a post today. 

It's too late to report anything artfully, or well. I've had my brains blown out by double-barrel work.

I was chatting amicably with my dad last night, walking around the back yard while watching little Rhys be a silly, crazy boy.... Suddenly, I found myself explaining, for reasons I still don't quite grasp, that I am an atheist and have been for about a decade. 

In the past this was simply something I reasoned that he did not need to know. At his age, why give him extra things to worry about.

But, oh no, no... now I have burdened him with this new, awful knowledge of me. In addition to the general stuff he always prays for concerning me he'll now have something really specific to chat with God about:

Then of course, Father, there's my youngest son, Sean. He has always been distant, Lord, and rebellious. Perhaps it was my fault....

Ah, forget it. I'll just explain it all when I get there.

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

The fallen leaves outside make a rustling sound along the stone driveway. 

In the darkness there are the winds through the trees, the leaves on the ground all moving, scraping in unison. A murmur of death.

The season has ghostly powers.

Autumn is Satan's Sunday.

.

... so few wish to return

Quick workout on my lunch break.

Going to the gym in the middle of the day seems an odd luxury, as if it's an hour of weekend. 

Who are those strange people there?

Because of this milk-and-honey sense on a workday I put a little extra into it, and seem to get a little extra out. That is the way of things, we're told.

It's silly, how the mind talks to the body, and what it chooses to say.

All of life is a vacation from the abyss.

.

That way be monsters

I've tried everything to avoid writing an entry this morning, nothing has worked. I must have fallen asleep at sundown, or just before. I awoke at 0am but couldn't sustain it. I have been having nightmares, the worst that my mind can conjure. I'll leave no record of it here. They are unrepeatable. It is a bad and black magic to invite them further into this world.

Facebook is a very curious app. I can see who is awake, calculate location, determine shared timezone, assume that they are up to trouble. I don't really spy on people, but it's impossible not to notice who is active at 2, 3, and then 4am and then stalk them. I want to reach out and joke but who knows what state of psychedelic intoxication they might be in, naked and confused, on the verge of tears.



I have been told that I need to stop writing about my failed relationship here, that I have lost a very valuable reader. This particular patron of the site says that they don't mind it so much when I'm being funny but they can't stand the attempts at seriousness. Sustained thoughtfulness is too much for them, and where they draw the line, you see. They do not care for the exploration of a certain condition outside of their own.

This news wouldn't have been so bad if I didn't agree.


Get it over with!... is their easy advice.

Other people's lives can be so burdensome and problematic.

Rhys has started telling me that he doesn't love me. He has discovered his newly found power to choose, and ways to use it. It is what we have encouraged him to do, though I did not quite predict this as a potential outcome.


Here is part of a brief conversation we had this morning:


I love you, Rhys.

I don't love you, Daddy.


Yes you do.

I know.

.

October

(the photographer)

I was browsing the social sphere this morning, looking for ideas, when I came across a post about a friend's mother who had passed away, some years ago. It occurred to me that today is the day my mother passed away, twenty or twenty-one years ago. Is it terrible that I can't remember which it was. Some would say, of course it is.

It must have been twenty-one, now that I force myself to remember all that surrounded it.

I was going to write about that here but there is very little to say without fishing for pity, and we know about that stuff, pity.


It seemed, at the time, that my mother was older, that her time to die had simply arrived. Looking at it now I realize that she was not that old and she might have wanted to live several more years. I am certain of it. She said so herself. She seemed old to me, though. I know better now.

I looked up the average age of death for a woman in America and thought that she was only robbed out of 10-12 years, if you look at the average. But that is not how it is to be looked at, at all.

My father is a secretively good Catholic and stayed with her until the end. He was dating another woman within months of my mother's passing, marrying her shortly thereafter. All of this seemed mathematically improbable at the time. If there was a wedding then I wasn't invited, or didn't go. I should ask. That is something that I probably should know, I guess.

They must have eloped, though that seems odd and somehow unlike him.

What do I really know of the private lives of others. I struggle making sense of my own.

In any event, wedding or not, he had moved on with his life and seemed prepared to do so. He must have been prepared somewhat for this new relationship, and they are still happily together. As happy as an old couple can be. It is so difficult to tell. Nobody wishes to be disgruntled concerning only themselves. It works best in pairs.

So, it was meant to be. Written in the stars that are much older than he, and she, and I.


This all seemed to bother my brother a bit. I had felt that my mother and my father were not always very content together. I wasn't quite sure what further dedication and reverence he should have to that unhappiness. I was doing so many drugs and had discovered a new family that I didn't care as much as I should have. It did seem vaguely troubling that my brother was interested in enlisting my opinions in these matters.

Now I see that he is quite reverent as well, more like my father than I am. It is a difficult lesson to learn, as he was the one who first taught me irreverence. Older brother, he.

Later, my father told me that he was not unhappy in his marriage to my mother, that I was quite wrong. He corrected me on the point of this fact but it did not greatly change how I felt about their marriage at first. To me, it seems that happiness and unhappiness were recognizable from the exterior, or should be anyway. I could be wrong about that also, happiness is no tattoo.

.

Brackish Backwaters of my Youth

I left the house in darkness. The stars are assuming their winter clarity, twinkling less in the still dryness of the colder air. Having spent several decades in Florida, too many really, I greatly prefer the cold clarity to the muggy humid twinkling of the wet Atlantic and Gulf winds. Though there are things I do miss about the state. 

I like that Rhys will grow up fascinated with alligators at a great distance. I got the other education. No lake or creek was too small to wonder if one lurked therein, especially during mating season when the males can wander and become more aggressive, just when they come out of their form of hibernation. I can't remember if it is a real hibernation or not. I don't think so. I believe it's just a slowing of the metabolic process, as cold-blooded creatures can.

I've encountered a few, fearsome creatures. 

Equally, few lakes or creeks were uninviting enough for a young, curious boy. Florida is a fascinating fresh water swamp, comprised of springs that feed the St. Johns River, mapped by floating Budweiser cans. Science suggests that I'm going to miss it more and more. They're moving the state capital to Atlanta.

There really is no apostrophe in St. Johns. This is the pedigree and ancestry of the place. Saint Johns, unknown to the history of the English language. It was named by the Spaniards, the Catholics I guess. So, there is that. 

Little matter, apostrophes very rarely clarify meaning. They are a tool of grammatical snobbery. It is only funny in that it is wrong, and humor is both useful and necessary. 

I have lived in three of the four most notorious states in the union now: Florida, New York, and California. In that order.

I've decided that I'm moving to Texas. I want to complete my tour of infamous disasters. I've never lived anywhere less than a decade though, so I have a few years to go.

Austin. 

Or, after Sonoma, Austin might seem too metropolitan. Perhaps Marfa would be more my speed by then. 53 is the new 35. Austin would be my first capital city, where I could pursue my various political aspirations. 

In Marfa, I would spiral into the art world. The photograph above is among my first sellable works. It's a collaborative piece with my son. It's called "The Big Dipper at Orion's Belt (Watch out for Scorpios... Oooh, don't go behind that door, girl...." We haven't decided if we're going to stick with the subtitle or not yet. Too much context can so burden a work.

Serious offers can be addressed to my agent. It's not quite done yet. We were going to add some crayon coloring to reference what you see below. Not an imitation, merely an influence on the final inspiration. My work is never complete, only unpurchased.

I am wary of any place where people go to become weird, or where they use the idea of weirdness as a promotional device for tourism, like Austin. It starts to feel a little Tim Burton-y when a place uses weirdness as the thematic branch of the Chamber of Commerce. 

"For the sake of weirdness" is strictly suburban.

Speaking of, I said I wanted a secret life a few months back. Well, I got one. It won't stay secret for very long. That is the danger of producing a confessional site where I am expected to produce new material daily. The cost is that nothing remains hidden, excepting how I happen to feel.

The upside is that when pictures of me doing something hideously wicked and shameful make their way online I can just shrug. I've already admitted dishonor in the meaningless ways. What harm can possibly come to me.... what more can a reader want? 

I've given you alligators to peer at safely.

If you have enough friends on Facebook, the way I do, then every day is a birthday party. If you happen to like parties, then you win! I'll spend the whole day on people's pages chatting with all of their other friends, the ones that I don't know. 

I'll eat cake all day long.

Well, I was going to list all of the things that I adore about middle-aged women this morning, to counter-balance yesterday's satire, but I've run out of time. How long do women stay middle-aged? Certainly I'll be able to catalog my many loves someday soon, before time itself escapes me.

Let's start with just this one: their sense of humor ranks very high in the qualities I most esteem. 

After that, everything else is just gravy.

.

The seemingly inevitable

(This picture is known as a "ruse")

The sound of rain in darkness. All that is missing is the scent of bacon.

When I checked my phone I got the news that two friends delivered their second baby girl early this morning, so I'll have somebody to celebrate with.

Jesus Zeus Cracker Attacker, I wrote the sentence above with sincerity. I did! When I looked at it again it was impossible not to see self-pity embedded in there. What is it about getting older... it's nearly impossible to discuss it without sensing, reflecting, or projecting something distressing about it.

Don't feel as it you need to answer that question. It's rhetorical. I know why aging is a piteous process, because the mind stays younger than the body. That's why women age more gracefully. Their minds and bodies are more closely matched in age. 

People will hate me for this, but it makes perfect sense. 

Just listen to me, now, ladies:

Females mature faster than males, right? We all know this and are reminded of it by the women who have read men's discovery of this phenomenon. Well... figure it out. What effect will this have on females?

This question is not rhetorical. 

They will take on most responsibilities earlier, fatiguing their minds and bodies with the details of procreation and attracting a suitable mate to help provide for the situation known as a family, which they are empty and useless without. This can be evidenced by their desire and denial of it. 

It places females in what is known as the persuasive position. Their task, even as they might readily see it, admit to it, or even be proud of it, will be to convince or manipulate the unformed male to mature faster for the purpose of better fulfilling the impulses of the former. This exploitative co-process is known as love.

Some men will actually "buy in" to this ordinary and hereditary deception, convincing themselves that this is "what they really want" and even what "they must have" to be happy. For a few, this seems true enough. Studies still need to be conducted to determine the source of this seemingly inborn fallacy. These poor souls appear perfectly content living out the fantasy desire of another creature.

However, some men will discover early on that they don't have to do any of this, that there's no inherent value in maturing and that their penis fits inside differently shaped places. So, they opt to instead resist this entire process, retaining a more youthful demeanor, which is what we are reminded youth really is: attitude.

These fortunate males might recognize that mating involves an increased risk. Nature doses these dear souls with a generous dash of liquid imagination, which regrettably sometimes takes the form of fear in later years. 

Fear is nothing more than this: picturing yourself just as you are, only older. 

This is where the real difference between the sexes exists and thrives. A woman might want other things in her life but she will build a life around her that, in the event of an emergency, she could easily grow old into. This is what destroys her youthfulness. It is known as "grandmothering." A man accumulates a squalidness and occasional stench that feminine decorum demands must be transmuted or entirely discarded by the sexually active female in said man's life.

Comic books left near a window in the rain will grow mold. Mold smells. That is the beautiful trajectory and circle of life.

A healthy cohabitation produces a feeling of happiness in the male which, when combined with highly effective persuasive posturing (linked above), leads to the seemingly inevitable. The male "balls" are quite sensitive to the touch. Males really have very little chance in any of this, and even less "say" if you pay close attention to the experts, but some of them do revert after a time and re-assemble the dangers and disgusts of youth around themselves again. Male "balls" also produce a noxious odor to warn off potential mates during times when they are en testrus. 

From the sociological view, the young male population is far more accepting of one of their own back into the fold than are their female counterparts. Females, after a certain age, have only one direction in which to travel. This is why you will hear them discuss how important their life choices are much more than males will. It is a compensatory reaction to knowledge of them having less options than their male counterparts. Likewise, this is why they must limit the choices of all males whenever possible. 

You can hear women discuss this "Peter Pan" problem openly, if you are privy to their private conversations or ones they happen to have while sipping white wine in any public restaurant. 

Picture a tableful of middle-aged women all discussing single men. I know, I know, but picture it anyways. An innocent man will be described in this way, "Yeah, but he'll never grow up." All the women will nod knowingly, as if it's some incurable malady. They will refer to the situation in precisely this way, "Aw, that's too bad...." as if they are reacting to a problematic toddler, which is how they best know to cure a man like this, through rigorous discipline and routine. 

It is called "tough love" and feels much like caressing beef jerky.

Hopefully, the condition of youth is incurable, in some. 

Be reminded: your reward for growing up is not even the table of middle-aged women, it's just one of them. 

Your punishment for growing up is having one pick you.  

Anybody with internet access should realize that access to information will upend this biological process more than anything else. Kids no longer need to fear not being able to meet somebody. Without that basic pubescent fear all of human society is in danger.

Don't worry folks, it's perfectly okay for me to talk about women this way. I've looked into it and found that it's a very reputable branch of science known as "gender attribute parity." It is quite the rage in all the online magazines.

Wait, how did I get here.... Let's try to start this morning's post again. I swear to Beelzebub I wanted something different this morning. I wanted bacon and a woman. 

Why can't men have it all....

Oddly, two antonyms for pity, both quite valid: cheer and hatred.

So, don't pity me, just choose.

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But it does grow on trees

(pic intentionally unrelated to post)

Love, one of the few things that will make you scared and tired at the same time. You don't want it to disappear but then it does drag on a bit.

It requires a fair amount of convincing oneself that you're no longer in it and can often creep back in when you're sleeping, or just before.

You can reason your way out of it but that doesn't feel very good, requires too much effort, the sustained ignoring of another. You want a stronger emotion to come along and save you from it. Good luck with that. Waiting doesn't always help.

This saving does happen, sometimes, but then you can lose your deposit. Always difficult not to question the hefty upfront fees in the new deal. None of the currencies transfer. It's like converting salt to Euros. If you get caught trying: guaranteed insolvency. 

Bankruptcy. Some states won't even allow it. You are marked as a writer of bad checks. There is a word for such a person: a criminal.

Maybe comparing love to money is a bad idea. Maybe not.

It does have imaginary value, symbolic in that it can represent something other than itself, can be spent variously, foolishly, or even saved. People like those who have more of it, judiciously avoiding the impoverished. Often willing to shed a little light of generosity if it doesn't require touching.  

You can go to a nice, clean place to get some but you only lose what you have when you do. Much like religion, they provide it for you by taking it from you. People too often confuse their possessing of it with the making of it. Its value against other currencies rises and drops with the market.

Okay, love is money, or just like it. Everybody deserves it though few can figure out how some accumulate so much.

There are differences, you can try and try to give love to somebody freely. Some days there just are no takers. No amount of describing its worth to another provides it with that worth. One has polarity, the other is always attractive. Love is a spinning magnet; attract and repel, ad infinitum. Money is the North Pole, special metals point to it like magic for fools but nobody can seem to get there. 

I have the whole world figured out... and just so happen to be enjoying some insider compass bearing during a period of heavy bull trading.

Ta-da!

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On Golden Pond

The boy stayed at my house tonight. He is growing more accustomed to spending the night here, slowly. There is still so much unformed parental habit that I need to self-mold from the used ball of multicolored play-doh that is my life. I watch Rachel do it, she makes it seem nearly effortless. Mothering, it is simply something she is doing while she's also doing other things for the boy. For me, everything is an effort, nothing is practiced, too little rehearsal time put in. I haven't memorized my lines. I have forgotten to give my life completely over to it.

The boy said he didn't want to sleep in his bed. He wanted to sleep with me. As we were drifting off, after reading a little light Curious George, he started to show signs of distress, wanting to know where Mommy was and why couldn't he go home to sleep.

I explained that this was his home, too. 

He kept emphasizing that he wanted to go to his home.

After about ten difficult minutes of that it began to look like he was winding down. His started the familiar nightly pattern of pre-sleep tossing and turning. He assumed his favorite spot at the very center of the bed, with all of the possible covers lumped underneath him, arms and legs jutting out unexpectedly into my rib cage, throat, or head.

He sat up and asked where Barkley was.

All that I could muster was, "I'm sorry."

It was a fair question. Where was his puppy.

The only meaningful answer that I could give him was that I was sorry, and I was, as useless as that is, I was being honest. You're going to have to start getting used to sleeping away from your puppy, buddy. Yet another unexpected joy to spring from all of this, another senseless set of feelings in which to try to come to terms, both with and for somebody else. Born into a life of separation anxiety. Now I am somehow depriving a child of their puppy, too. 

What next?

The whole thing is irretrievably fucked, we both know it. We’re trying our best to create a space where the kid can grow up in relative normalcy, which is a laugh, considering the two authorities that combined with that publicly stated intention.

What next?

I look around and I can’t believe how monumental and commonplace was our failure. It’s the simplest thing in the world, having kids, people do it all of the time, but no, no… Every morn and every night, Some are born to sweet delight.

So, here I sit, penning this pathos in near Blakean darkness, to the whispered rhythm of miniature breathing, not knowing what else to do. When the soul slept in beams of light. 

Thinking perhaps of getting a puppy.

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The World as a Series

When the actual subject can not be approached.... I suppose there is always still the minutiae of life to explore, which some might say is the actual subject.

I might say it, even, sometimes.

I hadn't seen the boy for over a week. We "Facetime" often, but it does not quite satisfy the feeling of being a father. This seems about equal to the feeling of being a son for him, it seems. I am easily ignored when just an unshaved face on an iPad, not so much when tickling his stomach or holding him upside down by his feet, swinging him like a giggling pendulum.

So, we played last night for a bit and watched our first World Series game together. We won. 

I understand that everybody wants to see KC win, partially just because SF just won two years ago and KC hasn't seen the series since 1985... Fuck that. The best thing about Kansas City is that it's not even in Kansas, and when they won in '85 it was against St. Louis. 

Anyway.

This morning I came by to say hi again. He and his mother were still sleeping. When they did wake up, much later than normal, it took my help to get him dressed in the pajamas that he would wear to school. Today is "jammies day" at his pre-school, etc.

So, some intense negotiation went on to convince him to wear underwear, and then to change from one pair of pajamas to another. Then, on went his "Thomas the Train" Wellingtons, and off to school we went in my yellow Volkswagen Beetle. 

I sing to him in the car, often, sometimes non-stop. I make up songs up as I go. He will sing lines back to me, replacing "Daddy" with wherever he hears "Rhys." Simple songs, really, nothing worth getting money for a studio advance.

But, we were having fun on our way.

He asked a couple times if I could not go in to work today and spend the day with him. I had to let him know that I must, for reasons that I can hardly even explain to myself. Money, I guess. 

When we got to the parking lot he sang the chorus of one of our best hits. It is about him loving me and ends in a very excited, "Daddy, Daddy!"

I carried him in to the school and we chatted. I could sense that his mood was changing when I went to set him down so that he could wash his hands before joining the other kids. He wanted me to carry him for that, too. So I did. Once his hands were washed I could feel him pulling at the back of my shirt, his arms around my neck and his legs around my waste tightening their hold. I tried to talk to him but he had a middle-distance stare. This was not his normal pleading, this was the real deal. 

I explained that after school we would go to the car wash, and that I loved him very much. One of the teachers heard me tell him about the car wash and she tried to peel him off of me, telling him what she likes about the car wash. His last hand grasped on to the back of my shirt and would not let go, all the while there was that knowing stare through the pre-school walls. The daily trauma of childhood, separation. 

I loosened his fingers from my shirt, his little hand let go as she sat him down at the table with the other kids. He didn't even look at me. He just stared through the wall as she tried to win his attention. That was the last that I've seen of him, though we have big plans to watch the game tonight.

We're both all for the Giants. 

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The cause of much silence

प्यार में विफल रहता है

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Taking applications for a new favorite sushi spot

(collection of mountain and fog)

Tojo's was good, but somehow not as good as I dreamed it would be. It's best not to build things up in your mind too much. That's what I have to say about expensive sushi: just enjoy it. 

Don't get me wrong, it was very good but somehow didn't live up to my imagination, or memory. Expectations too often just leave you feeling bad. Ah well... what is money but a paper mechanism for second chances?

The British Columbian weekend is upon me. The image you see above is from the balcony where I have been working in North Vancouver. It has been like that for two full days now, without a single change in the clouds. It does get darker at night.

The stationary clouds are taunting me, the murk's mocking. 

Somewhere out there in the great Pacific there is an unsuspecting scallop that is waiting to become hotate sashimi just for me. I will find you my precious little mollusk, and we will unite in the stillest fog, and a rain that never falls.

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