Kona Honzo AL

I did buy a new bike. It offered most of what I was looking for and was cheaper than the ones I had been looking at. It felt right when I test rode it. I preferred it to a similar Santa Cruz that I tried. 

Now, it's at my house and I am waiting to take it up some mountains, soon.

29" tires will take some getting used to, as will losing 17 of the gears that my Marin has, though the differences in upper and lower ratio are similar if not the same, and will likely turn into an advantage once I've adjusted to using the fewer gear options, which may require more strength when moving up. 

The disc brakes are huge and a vast improvement over everything I've owned before. I'll stop before I turn this into a bike review of a bike that I have not rode yet.

I'm happy. 

I wish that I could spend this much money every Saturday.

.

... teeth of the hydra

(a "toy camera" filter inside the Fuji)

The weekend is up, and open, and ours. There will be lots of time spent around the pool, sparkling water and fresh fruit, taking afternoon naps, cooking something I've never tried before. There is a pound of sushi grade ahi in the refrigerator. I have committed to doing almost nothing for at least a day. How difficult can searing tuna be.

We slept in the tent last night, the boy and I. 

Tomorrow, there will be a photo-shoot. No idea where yet, but my plan is to get the boy and his friend dressed up in their various outfits somewhere scenic, then just take pics of them being kids. I might experiment with off camera flash, though it might be far too bright to try. I still have much to learn and the sun is always taunting me, making my art difficult, if not impossible. I bought some lighting gear but never really got around to using it, to gaining a sense of how it is best used. 

I think I became a problematic shopper recently. I had a little amazon indulgence.

Ah well, it's mostly over now. Though I will need a new bike. That much has become clear. Since deciding that I would like one, my old bike has suddenly become difficult to pedal up mountains. It feels sluggish, even when coasting down hills. I am convinced that something is wrong with it. It does not match my interest in the sport that it pretends to be concerned with. 

One of us must go. 

It's an old bike, rescued from a Florida beach home where it had been rusting for some time. It had a touch of the salt water cancer. The components were still okay for the most part, but all the cables had to be replaced. It was a nice bike in its day, but it will need to be put down now, melted for parts that will be used in our war with Mexico.  

The new bikes that I have been looking at are really something - better components, better brakes, better everything. One would not think that it would be possible to make even nicer bikes than what were available in the recent years, but I'm told that bicycle technology is making perennial leaps and bounds, growing faster than the personal technology device market. 

Well no, nobody actually claimed that. I just made that up, but it is the sense one gets when shopping for a bike, that last year's model has been marked down for an obvious reason: this year's model is better. It has been improved. Anybody with last year's model must not take biking seriously.

The cheapest bikes that would make me happy are about $1500 and up, though I have seen a Trek that was just over a thousand that was acceptable. I like Shimano components, but SRAM is an American company, so there is much to think about now that I am in California. I've always used Shimano components, and I've always ridden Marin or Kona bikes, always a hard tail. I've never understood rear suspension, at least for the type riding that I do. It feels like I'm humping a marshmallow up the side of a hill. There is a less direct relationship between force applied and distance, or altitude, gained. 

There are hundreds of choices, and I have yet to set an upper limit to how much I will spend. Everybody tells me that carbon frames are a must now, and they are not cheap. I know that anything over $3000 is silly and not really needed, but there are few choices below that price point that have the right combination of what I want. 

I have not yet announced any ambitions to go pro. Now, post-divorce, there are all these new cyclical freedoms to explore. I can buy any type bike that I want. 

Take that, ex-wife. 

I should delete that. It makes no sense. She's happy that I have embraced something that might kill me differently. No, I joke. She likes it when I am healthy. It's a funny thing that some women have for a man that has blessed their cervix and ovaries with life producing man-seed. The miracle of conception, without all of the natural filthiness of birth. Women are a mess. Have you ever seen what happens? I probably don't have time to go into all of that right now, but I'll simply offer that the result sometimes justifies the crime-scene means of it all. 

The boy just woke up from having slept the night in the tent that we had set up in the living room, his legs had fallen out the side, but his body was still on the air mattress, a feat that would have rendered me paralyzed until noon. 

He woke up, sat on the couch and told me that I'm the best dad in the world. I asked him how he could possibly know such a thing, and then told him not to worry, there's still plenty of time.

.

"The World's Most Comfortable Underwear"

(Buzz)

I've entered "real dad" territory: I mostly want to be left alone, but if somebody is in danger then I want to know about it and make sure they're safe, then I wish to be left alone again. I have an odd new impulse: to help only when needed. I don't mean with my boy, but other people. I'm a real dad now. It takes a villager, etc.

I had a waking dream this morning, an acquaintance had committed suicide and I was somehow talking to him after the fact. He was explaining his reasons and they all seemed valid to me. His suicide didn't even scare me into waking up. I just became bored with listening and eventually drifted into the early morning without him. 

I awoke worried though, checked online to make sure nothing had happened. Even though I knew it was a dream; concern has a superstitious component to its nature. To worry is to feel something unknown. It's a form of magical ignorance. It only takes being right about somebody one time in youth to believe that worry is mystically related to one's capacity to love. So, that's what I do now: worry instead of care. 

Superstupidity. 

I haven't heard from him in a while. He was a smart kid, not troubled in quite the way that I was, but troubled nonetheless, afflicted with echoes. He didn't fit in, so he tried very hard, which didn't help anything. He wasn't his own worst enemy, so he had at least one friend going for him. 

I liked him. He was willing to discuss anything and was very bright, desperately so. 

Well, it turned out that it was just a dream. Any more details and I might give away who it is. He's as okay as he's likely ever going to be, but the news of his suicide would not surprise me much. I did dream it. Some kids develop a special super-power: the ability to recognize things in others, particularly the hidden sadness that many carry. This kid had that. 

I reclined in bed yesterday after my late afternoon ride, and then the gym. I was watching something, the first few minutes of a talk show maybe, and then I fell asleep. It couldn't have been much after 6pm or so. I awoke at 1am and ate a single spoonful of ice cream then went back to sleep, awaking for the day at 4am. A tremendous night's sleep, considering I skipped my usual dose of sleep magic. Somewhere near 10 hours, broken up into two acts. This renders me invincible for the weekend, my morning erection is as a divining rod, and I a morning dowser, able to find toilets in the dark. I can tell where the well will best be dug, apparently it is towards the ceiling. 

Nope, must stop the vulgarity soon. It is a national health crisis, again.  

The weekend will be spent with the boy. We have plans to sleep in the tent in the living room, the one suggestion from my brother so far in life that I might be willing to try. You must remember, he specialized in tricking me. I blame him for my cynical demeanor, of course. That, and CS's encouragement for me to read Bukowski at too young of an age, 16. 

Jesus, 30 years ago. By those numbers, we must have both been young once. CS says that I make far too much of age. Some truths only speak from the well of exaggeration. 

That's the new truth. Trump calls it "truthful hyperbole" in The Art of the Deal, and you fucking loser pansies had better get used to the implications. 

I'm not writing about politics, don't worry. I am referring to our new father's many domestic and international  business successes. We need someone that knows how to speak Kim Jong Un's truthful language of national exaggeration. It would surprise no one if Trump initiated some premature nuclear simulations against Mexico. He has his own nuclear codes. America has found its ambassador. It feels so right. 

The time is Trump, the Trump is now.

There's no way that flaccid ball bag Hillary will be able to screech her way past this behemoth of success, this titan of industry, this Self-Madenstein Man. Our blue collar billionaire. He's like a Rush album listened to at 45rpm. It's orchestrated. 

Hillary seems to advance the vague idea that her failure will be a failure for all women everywhere. In this, she is a sexist. Yes, you read that correctly. Hillary is both a sexist and a racist. She simply placates rather than insults, but the results are not entirely dissimilar. The Don would never tell a black audience that he brought hot sauce with him everywhere he went. I mean, that's the stuff they put on burritos. 

Is it workin'?

I mean, everybody's entitled to change their stance on things, or to be a shallow and corrupt politician, but comrade Clinton really abuses the privilege. The Don doesn't even know that it is a privilege. With him, it is birthright and tactic. He's our great negotiator. 

Never underestimate American fear. It feels like we're all still living in the same house, but the kids know that a divorce is coming soon and we can't decide if we're more afraid of living with an unpredictable dad or a mother that sacrificed home life for a security clearance. Both of them have a career, though in what it is becoming difficult to say. Neither of them wants custody of the kids, and both confuse the desire for power with the ability to exercise strength. 

This is where we are, America. Divorced not only from our leaders, but soon choosing which siblings we will live with, and which ones must go. I realize that I am a one-vote coward, but I'll have to choose to live with mom in this scenario, since she'll be getting the alimony anyway. She really does seem to act as if the presidency should be handed to her simply as a reward for "inequality." 

It's not sexism if people don't like you. It's sexism when people don't like your gender and then express that to you. She is not a stereotype of any woman that I have ever met, nor can it be prejudice based on lack of experience. We've been forced to suffer her for more than twenty years. My distaste for her, as unpleasant as it may be for some people, is based on her. It's perjudice, the feeling that somebody has lied under oath and I don't want to vote for them.

It's really too bad that liberals don't have programs to cure conservatism, the way that christians can cure the gays. It is all so confusing until you accept the simple fact that it's been demons all along that are causing this national strife. Satan is really tearing this nation a new asshole. Evangelicals overwhelmingly support Trump. No other single fact in my lifetime brings both subjects into clearer view: Evangelical Christians are neither.

Okay, I had promised only yesterday or the day before: no more political talk. Does this post even qualify as political?  

America's Got Talons, the Season in Hell.

.

Attn: Mr. Santa

I have either an income problem or a spending problem, or both. I really should be managing my money a bit better, but I like nice things. I covet them, to be near their preciousness. 

I own two different camera setups, both expensive sets to own considering that I am an amateur, and both would be considered very nice kits to own by most people. 

Somehow, I want more. 

The same is true with a bike. I had set a limit for the purchase of a new bike at around $1k, but thought that I could go up to around $1.5k if I saw something that was really worth it, like last year's model on a markdown sale. One evening of casually looking and my budget has crept up to the $2.5k range with spikes all the way up to $3.5k.

I'm the worst kind of capitalist - I prefer things of beauty.

Well, I think that these things are beautiful, anyway. The simplicity of a well-designed and well-made bike holds much appeal for me. I remember a time when a plastic shovel, some beach sand, and the periodic waves of ocean water were all that I wanted.  It was not so long ago. 

I'm just trying to do anything that I can to avoid political thought. Not that most of the thoughts I have are strictly political, they are more cultural and how politics affect our culture. I'm just going to try to hide for the next six months. I have grown tired of it all and only wish it all to be over.

If Jesus wanted me to be happy then he would find a way of knocking on my door with that Bianchi bike. He's Italian now, so it makes good marketing sense for this region. I will help bring proud attention to his brand, cause, and message. 

If he does bring it to to me then I will name it Bianchi Jagger. 

.

Marin Indian Trail

Anything to get away from politics, police shootings, and racially charged online conversations. I know, white privilege, that I get to walk away somehow not shot and with the right to vote still intact. Social media is becoming a little bit too similar to watching an old man watching the news: a lot of screaming at the screen, insisting that the world is choosing all things poorly. Or, that at least one side is causing all of the problems, and that the president is useless but the next one shows much promise, as long as their opponent is defeated. It's like listening to a drunk, the repetition of the story offers nothing new, but the volume just keeps creeping up.

So, I've been looking at more bikes. I can't decide if I want a road bike - something I haven't had in many years - or another mountain bike. The one pictured above is about a thousand dollars cheaper than the Bianchi that I mentioned the other day. 

It's a Marin Indian Trail, a racing bike that is a step up from my antiquated Marin Nail Trail, the new version of which is six hundred dollars less than the Indian Trail, if I were to just replace my existing bike with this year's model. A simple replacement that'll cost me about two thousand dollar signs: $s. My current bike is so old that I can't even find an image of it online.  A near approximation is below. It's time to replace. It's slowly becoming a junker. The more that I abuse it up the side of a mountain every day it has begun to give and squeak and creak like an old dried skeleton.

I've realized that cycling is a solitary hobby, for me. I have few friends whose advice I can rely on here. My anarchist friend from war-torn Europe encourages me to get the Bianchi, with the Campagnolo components. It's an argument that lures me, though I lure easily towards the things I already want.

A beast of wont, what I want now is a new copy of the thing that I already own. 

(slightly newer model than mine)

.

One, Two, Three... Jump

I hope to spend some time with the boy this weekend, trying to inch our way closer to the sky.

.

The short-lived joy of cheap polemics

(wind-tunnel survivor)

Trump is going to win. I see that now. His campaign is playing the neo-liberals. They are so eager to denounce and correct that they don't realize how much their unease at Trump is playing into that campaign's strategy. Few things make conservatives as happy as liberal anger and piteous self-righteous indignation. It's catnip for the true constitutionalists. 

America should prepare to have a new crossing guard in town.

Not only did they know that it would be noticed that they plagiarized Michelle Obama's speech, it achieved the intended response. It is a way of saying, If liberals want to steal from us, let's see how they feel about it. They won, and they will continue to win on this point. They know that the wrong people love them on the "right," so they're making sure to get the right people on the "left" working hard for them every day, as freelance publicists.

The Newest Liberals will be to blame for whatever happens, of course. They're too stupid and self-satisfied to get out of their own way. They seem to think that they're helping people with their anger and vitriol. That they can't agree on Hillary will be their undoing. It's how elections are won and lost. 

This one will be the latter.

That is my official prediction, for today. Predictions change as needed, though they always go up in price exponentially as the deadline approaches. 

I must push myself away from the conversation. It brings me little happiness and is a diminishing return on the self-satisfaction of feeling right. 

I blame myself for having bought into this a bit. I don't like any of the candidates, so I've been playing around, seeing what sort of animosity I can scrape up from the process. 

It was wrong, I see that now.

Okay, I will comfort myself with my own self-satisfaction at having been right. If Hillary wins I'll rejoice and act as if I wanted her victory all along. Nobody will remember that I was once a sexist that disliked her solely because of her strident feminine qualities and characteristics. I shudder to think what the result might be if I said that I wouldn't vote for Melanoma Trump, either. 

It's lucky to live in California now, sort of. I get to see if my vote will matter before I've even cast it. 

.

Something Wicked That Way Went

Home from camping. I'd like to claim that the weekend was restful. For some reason I came home exhausted, even though I slept reasonably well while out under the redwoods and stars. Reasonably well for me is anything near 6 hours a night. There must be something happening underneath the eyelids that so plagues my rest.

I stopped by to see the boy when I came home and took him out into the backyard to watch him run around. It is the simplest of joys that sustain us. It seems unfair that the simplest of troubles can be our undoing. He had a new haircut, one that he requested as: Mom, I want rock and roll hair.

It's true, that's what he now has.

I have a friend visiting from Tokyo later today. He will bring his girlfriend out to wine country and they will go to some wineries. A one-day trip. It is, of course, not enough to see all that there is in beautiful Sonoma. That can take as much as a week.


I would write and report more, telling about the beauty of nature and sleeping under the stars, but my week is already galloping away from me. Friends came into SF unexpectedly last night, almost as I was driving back through the city to get home. I went to sleep, thinking that maybe I would drive into the city to see them at a rooftop party. I closed my eyes and awoke in the darkness of the next day, needing to pee. I sat down on the toilet and nearly fell back asleep. It is what the new men do, to show their sensitivity and vulnerability, because that is what we have been told will make the world a more livable place. We'll see, I guess.

I would have driven into the city, were it not for the affection I've developed for my new sheets. I need to clean my apartment before my guests arrive. It seems only that and a manicure now stands between me and true happiness.

Don't worry, that's just the hair gel talking.

.

Little Basin, near Santa Cruz

Both of my hiking buddies have sustained prohibitive injuries. 

We are deep in California's meth-territory. I have offered to either buy or sell, both attempts unsuccessful. If my luck doesn't change soon I might have to return to civilization where a vague mistrust of strangers need not always be an impediment to commerce. 

"Mamma's Boy"

Disaster. Well perhaps not that, but failure at least. At least that. 

The camping expedition in the backyard ended the same as it always has: the boy wanted to sleep in his bed. After I spent the time setting the tent up and preparing it for the night, the boy seemed quite pleased with everything as it unfolded and came to life. Then, as we were ready to start drifting off he started complaining about the amount of light that was coming into the tent from the setting sun, there was the orange glow of the tent fabric and I had to admit it was a visual experience that you don't get to have most days, and then he told me how much more he loves his mother than me.

I've heard it all before, many times.

I snapped, packed everything in the car, told him that he could have mom if that's what he most wanted. We went home and fell asleep in my bed. He had been upset, so I did not want to traumatize him by making him sleep away from me. Then, he kicked me and poked me all night so that I could not sleep, reminding me what turmoil I caused by his great admitted love for his mother. 

I am racing a four year old to maturity, and losing.

So, now I depart for the weekend, to go camping with friends near Santa Cruz. Hiking, to clear the mind of the non-essentials.

If you don't hear back from me, you'll know: it was bears.

.

... should have never cut his hair

I have squandered today as I have so many others, by working. I'll teach my son to live differently, and think oftenly, I promise. There is nothing left of me. The Apple Inc. took it all. 

I go to pick up the growing boy soon, we will camp in the backyard. Then, tomorrow I leave for a weekend camping/hiking trip near Santa Cruz, the Mexican city of Santa Claus.

I will bring my camera and hopefully have some pictures and some stories to tell.

If I don't, then you'll know: it was bears.

.

The innocent and the damned

I've written myself into a corner, again. I can't put in writing the things that are most on my mind. Whatever value there had been to outward honesty seems to have outlived its usefulness, or perhaps I had only been abusing the privilege. Some internal mechanism has safeguarded what little bit remains.

No. It's only an assumption that there is such a thing as honesty. Like other qualities it is untouchable, kept nebulous, barely a reliable sense, barely shared. Honesty is a flexible approximation, based as much on the faith of what is being said as the one saying it. People like to hear what they like to hear, from the people they like to hear it from. Everyone has a fantasy relationship with themselves that they insist upon to others. 

When caught muttering to myself someone will invariably say, Who you talking to? 

Oh, I'm just working on the script for my little daytime soap opera.

I've learned something again - I wish that I hadn't. There is barely a modest relationship between the idea of outward honesty and the appearance of inward honesty. Some people have one, some both, others bounce between, some are incapable of a semblance of either. A few seem only competent at one, which renders the other nearly meaningless, or worse: dangerous. It seems related to a person's sense of worth, though I am perhaps using too small of a sample group, a mixture of the calculating and expedient. 

It has taken me a handful of decades to recognize that some people value their capacity for honesty, others feign it to gain an imaginary sense of control over an imagined situation - as dishonest an act as there ever was - proving ideas to themselves through a policy of duplicity. You can test it easily enough, though results are ignored by the willing. Faith in one thing is the denial of another.

The trick of it all seems to be that so few people are able to recognize that they are first lying to themselves. Everything that follows is a result of that fabrication drifting above the garden of self. There is little difference between the inner voice of persuasion and that of admission, that ghost of utterances that floats behind the echo of the eyes. 

Withholding intentions becomes a pastime for the corrupt of heart. 

There seem to be two types of people in the world: the decent and the indecent. It's unfortunate that there isn't an easier way to tell them apart, or to detect when they are being one or the other. The eyes make a poor window for looking in when they dart, and avert. 

Change is happening. No idea what it means, but I have grown tired again of things as they were, and are. A person just gets so tired of things, even of the recent. 

It is subtle, informed by that sometimes unexpected inner voice, unmistakable when it speaks, even when it is later ignored. The mind starts saying different things. Sentences become more clear - less hedging, less waffling. The word "never" starts to insert itself in the monologue. A phantom word that, once heard, can not easily be forgotten. Never haunts the thoughts closest to it.

Love is antique, a charmed curiosity for one who collects. 

.

Matters to whom?

The boy likes to try on glasses and costumes, some of which are mine (below, the glasses). I would bring him to Burning Man, but I'm not going this year and I'm not quite sure if he's ready to be away from Mom for that long. He is a sure fit with the Burning Man crowd, though. Born an expert on the subtle ways of imagining. He embraces many of the same values: Radical nudist ice cream eater, etc.

We received news yesterday that over the weekend one of his schoolmates was hit by a car and killed. A three year old boy. The family was crossing the street. The boy fell out of a stroller in front of a car. The details are murky, ultimately irrelevant. It has affected me more than I might have guessed. It is difficult not to share in the grief. 

Fear fuels the imagination. I know that it does. I can awake from most of my nightmares, and yet imagine ones from which there is no waking. It's easy when attempted in the quiet of morning.

Don't worry, I haven't found Jesus or anything like that, though I've heard that he has been knocking for me. 

Death is a difficult adult concept even at its unpleasant best. For an abstainer from faith, there is the struggle with meaninglessness, a concept that is not always easy to convey in a comforting way. I am cautious when advancing the idea that life is transitory and mostly self-contained. It is unsettling to grasp and then believe, that there is no meaning to be had outside of your own existence, and that the love and experiences we generate are limited in scope by our own senses, by our own ability to live, by our capacity to feel. 

It does not scale easily out into the universe. It barely survives a lifetime. 

If there is some secret way to discuss death with a child then I have yet to happen upon it. He's a bright kid. It sometimes worries me, and worry is a celebration when compared to grief. 

.

Able to coast

I'm not ready for whatever it is that's going to happen now. This leaves even less time for what will happen next. It is the sense of knowing that ushers age. The fruit of the tree of the eden indeed. It is the loss first of naiveté and then of denial. After those two balloons have popped, the pirouettes of years come dancing in.

I went for a different ride today. Arriving at the top of the hill that used to be the turnaround point of my old route, the hill following now angled downwards, the one that daily broke and remade my heart when it was always against me. 

I was able to coast back, as if on wine. 

For five years, this has been the battle. The veins across my body tensed with Thomas' rage.  

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

To cheat the system - a backdoor left open - the unexpected, about to be.

Pray, on some little bank left lying out in reach.

Oh, to be a robber with one more moon.

.

Bianchi L’Eroica

I've been looking at new bikes, such is my sickness for the healing salve of capitalism. There are two Bianchi bikes that have caught my eye at the local bike shop, Wine Country Cycle. The western world is losing its grip on civility, so why shouldn't I own an Italian bicycle. Nobody ever knows when drinking Italian coffee will become another myth of history.  

Enjoy every cup.

Now, the bike pictured above has a similar "classic" design aesthetic to my Fuji cameras, the likenesses of which are shown below and then further below. It is a mainly retro appeal. So, I'm edging closer and closer to becoming a true tech-hipster, from somewhere near Williamsburg and now currently based in the Bay Area. A person worthy of ridicule. How else am I to adequately project that I am part of the "creative class" and that my tastes are foreign enough as to be almost exotic, yet only insomuch as the things that I want are expensive. Anybody can buy their way in. 

To possess the bike that I want I already have everything that I need, except the money.

I won't buy the bike above. It is too expensive. I would spend that same imaginary money on a new mountain bike before the one that I really want. But I might buy a much cheaper version of that bike, and be partially happy about it. I have established what is known as a pattern in this regard. There is a version that costs about 1/5th as does the one shown above. It's a different color, and heavier, with standard components, and the brake cables wrapped beneath the handlebar tape, along with a few other things that I would change. But, it's in my price range.

It's time to buy the boy a new bike, though. We went to the public playground yesterday, rode around the skate park on our bikes. We were the only ones there, not realizing until we were leaving that there was a sign on the gate that said No Bikes. I am really teaching the boy how to live now. BIY: Break It Yourself... 

As for riding, he is improving by the moment, quite literally. He's still using his Thomas-The-Train bike as a balance bike, but the pedals will go back on soon and he'll be up and in business. Free as a child. 

Now, I know that teaching a child to ride a bike is a significant and memorable event in their life. Or rather, it is quite memorable to the parent, symbolic of the eventual departure from the nest, significant for what the suggestion of that means. But to hear the squeals of joy coming from the boy as we were riding up and down the contoured hills together, and the pleas for us to circle around to "do it again, do it again!!!" were as infectious as a sound has ever been, available as an instant. Participation being the only price of admission. 

The other stuff fades away. I am left wanting that life of charms and joys. 

The simplified way that it was when retro was not yet retro. 

.

The Giant Philistine

Yesterday's post was not about weight, either. The subject that I am writing about rarely ever changes: a sense of ignored guilt.

I was at a music festival, chatting excitedly about things that I had yet to consider.  Somehow, in my defense of Woody Allen I made a claim that I have been thinking about intermittently ever since, because I don't fully believe it. The person to whom I was talking was denouncing the talents and worth of Woody Allen. I assumed the defensive position, believing him to be of considerable value as an artist, knowing that what hung in the balance of this argument was either the victory or the defeat of the very idea that a man should be able to marry the adopted child of his ex-girlfriend if he and she so choose as adults.

High stakes.


The accusation made was that Woody was too self-involved. I responded that all art was self-involved. Without prompting I made the retrospectively extreme claim that even Michelangelo's David was a deeply self-involved work, revealing as much about the artist's inner world and impulses as it says about the collective world we share.

Or, something like that, if that thought can escape through grinding teeth undamaged.


Afterwards, as time passed, I thought, No, no... art has become increasingly self-involved as society has become far more self-conscious, more self-reflexive. David is not a representation of what Michelangelo looks like, where Woody Allen's film are a representation of not only what he looks like, but also how he thinks about what he thinks about, and what occupies at least a portion of his inner world. David is drawn from a biblical myth.

That answer satisfied me for the time being: that comparisons across such great passages in time were difficult, particularly in assessing the artist's intentions, and when considering different mediums. While both artists have been well studied, they were each products of their time. Naturally, it follows that their art reflects or reflected the varied sensibilities of those times.

I remained quiet on the subject, thinking that perhaps I should stop sniffing around at music festivals.


Something was bothering me though, of course. Some inner division on the subject kept eating away at my willingness to accept the merely chronological escape. All things can be compared by intelligent minds. The ability to make distinctions between things is a hallmark of thought - discernment is the very evidence of thought. Perhaps more important than the ability to recognize differences is to discover the invisible threads that connect things and make them comparable, which is a way of measuring distinctions.

So, I started asking myself about the process of art, of creation. Within each artist there exists some inner division against which they routinely press in an effort to produce art. Self-doubt, self-expression, self-honesty, self-loathing, self-discipline... don't all of those forms of introspection equal self-involvement. Or, is self-involvement only when the artist reveals those inner workings as part of the art itself.

All options are available at the onset. The final result is the work, which is a record of the decisions made, to the nearly complete exclusion of those choices abandoned, which correspond to the inner landscape of the artist, as honed by their abilities, then translated through varying degrees of physicality into the external world.

Both artists had help creating their works. I thought that was a good point of entry. A series of unanswered question was the result. What constitutes self-involvement in a work made by many? Well, vision might be one. How much of the artist's fingerprint can remain before it becomes an outward work of self-involvement. It's not as if David was made in secret, or was detached from the artist's name during or upon creation.


But no. That's where I gave up. David represents an ideal, Woody Allen's films do not. If anything, his work involves the questioning of, or at the very least the occasional necessary bending of, ideals. His films are a testament to the difficulties of compromise.

I should know better, to not go to battle with the high Renaissance. I had lost. I knew it. I should learn to know when to stop talking, but I probably won't. I should, at the very least, know when not to take on Goliath. Ideals exist externally as well as internally, and David expresses that more fully than do the films of Woody Allen.

But something kept eating at me. I wasn't entirely sure if that was true or not. It was that strange thing which occurred inside the artist, that residue of self that occurs regardless whether the result represents an ideal or not. The work itself can not be self-involved, because it is detached from its creator by the time it is complete. That we are able to better recognize and assess presumed levels of self-involvement makes the comparison difficult, misleading.

Maybe...


It is that conditioning of self, the preparedness to listen to and respond to the inner impulses. That inwardly spiraling process of self which produces art. Do tempered obsessions mean similar things?


David's eyes look to Rome. Woody Allen made a film about Rome..... Nope, nothing. There is no way to adequately gauge self-involvement, and writing (at least as the basis for filmmaking as storytelling) and sculpture are awkward bedmates.


Talking about art requires practice, practice involves the self. Whatever abilities that I used possess to convince myself of things seems now gone.


When is a work finished?

When the artist gives up.

.

Why I'm Fat

CS told me that I "make too much of age." Yesterday's post was an indulgence, of course, and I wrote as much in the piece saying so. Though age was there mostly as a pretext, so that I could then insert the subtext of having lost weight. Yes, it was about weight more than age. I simply didn't know how to adequately start writing about myself, so I used a subject as a type of obfuscation, a subterfuge. Or, is it a centrifuge? It could have happened to anybody. I make far too much of masturbation also, but nobody's willing to challenge me on that. I'm like the Karate Kid. 

You want to know what seems like total bullshit, to me. I get harassed by LinkedIn through email perpetually, encouraging me to "Congratulate somebody for something!" Every now and then I will congratulate the person, finding some warmth in my normally cold and callous heart. But then, I moved to a new title at my current place of employment. So, I updated my LinkledIn profile. 

Nothing. 

I'd like to claim that I'm not a little bit pissed off about it, but it doesn't make any sense. Why do I get barraged with these emails, and why doesn't anybody care that I have a new job title.... Oh well... Perhaps I will not find the love that I am looking for on LinkedIn. 

My StupidCupid account is always lighting up:

There is no option on the site to choose "I am a Bent / Man >> Continue." I tried. 

America is so angry about gender issues, partially because OkCuckold just makes it way too easy to choose. 

Want more privacy? Sign up for an incognito account.

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

What follows below is an opt-in portion of this post. It is not required reading.

There are those that will always feel unquestioningly justified in what they do, no matter what consequences might result, no matter whose lives are destroyed. All to advance some ideological position, or to make some ideological statement, or perhaps just as a semblance of upholding the law. I have never been known to care for cops very much, and I have my reasons, but if the anger for what seems like the killing of innocent black guys results in the killing of innocent cops then one must question more than just color to arrive at an understanding. 

If you believe that cops can not be counted as being among the innocent, this post is not for you. As I said, I have my problems with them also, but not like that.

I am reluctant to claim that what happened in Dallas last night could have been predicted, but it probably could have been and probably should have been, and perhaps it was. I could have told you that there are some who will eventually convert the cause to a more orchestrated and militant response, some who will become emboldened by what happened last night. It's easy to blame Obama, of course, or the #BlackLivesMatter group, or just African-Americans in general, as we already have been told that they've brought all of their problems upon themselves. Ask one half of the nation and they will be happy to tell you. But when five cops get killed at a rally to raise awareness of race relations between the police and black communities, you can guess who will lose. 

Discussing race in this country has never worked. No matter what ever gets said, there is always another color to the story. In a nation that willingly and routinely ignores the issue of child slavery to eat conscience-free chocolate then you can pretty much assume that they will mainly look the other way when cops kill black guys. It must be unpleasant for them to have to scroll past all of that nastiness in their news feeds, chocolate smearing the glass, only taking time out to post a complaint about having to use their thumb or forefinger to finally move on.

Nobody likes to be accused of something they did not do, or for a crime they can not see. 

.

A Pirate Sucks At Fifty

Some friends are approaching, at, or past the 50 year mark. My brother becomes jubilee-worthy next month. A childhood buddy turns 49 this month. My anarchist comrade has been celebrating this moment for the last ~35 years. I believe that he turns to a sack of copper doubloons on the midnight following his celebration. 

It's a hideous age to be, though there are worse ones, yet none that have the same definitive end to any self-held ideas of one's youth. 60 would be worse, of course, by almost twenty years, but one must endure 50 before they can arrive there. It is the way of time, being one way and always working against the one working hardest against it. One no easier abandon youth at 60 than they can at 70. It is already long gone. 

Time used to be on Mick Jagger's side.  Have a look. Then, do a search for recent images. He calls them laugh lines, but... nothing's that funny, mate.

Years await me, or that is the hope. The most patient hunter: numbers. The great bullfighter in the sky. Growing old used to be funny. I thought that the humor of it might persist, like jokes about the greatness of bacon, or beer.

I have to exercise five times a week just to look one year younger than I otherwise would. 

I almost used the word "vigorously" in that sentence. It felt wrong. I'm not sure what it is that I'm trying to express or evoke today, or on any other day, but some words will always be wrong for almost everything. Vigorously is one of them. You can tell just by looking at it in the quotation marks.   It seems like such a flimsy evocation for what it represents. Then again, capitalized in italics, it looks too vowel-heavy. 

It's not vigory enough. 

So, fuck, fuck, fuck. I meant to write another sentence after the one cited above, but now there's no way to get back up the page to it, where I might be able to gain a foothold to try and make some sense.

I did this to myself. 

I set out to lose weight a few months back and now I have achieved a numeric goal that could be a sensible stopping place: 30 pounds. Though I'm tempted far more by the pursuit of some fucked version of self than self-satisfaction at achieving a numerical type of moderation. I've never been able to set strictly numeric goals, and have never been very happy when trying to achieve them only on that basis. 

That being said, I still lost 30 pounds. 

The exercise regimen mentioned above does help me feel better, which feels like being younger, insomuch as being relatively free from pain was one of the qualities of youth. The problem with feeling younger is that my behavior corresponds to my feelings. What people seem to want is for me to look young but to act my age, which begs the question: What would they plan on wasting their newfound feelings of youth on? Because youth is anything if not wasteful of itself, those that try to preserve it suffer this most pointedly.  

I am given to indulgences, some of which have backfired on me, repeatedly. It is a lucky thing that I never developed a love for video games. I'd be masturbating over the top of my fat roll right now, watching myself in a mirror set up next to my gaming monitor, always in danger of spilling my cherry Slurpee. 

Or, that is the closest approximation that I can think of for public writing: expected auto-erotic Slurpee malfunction, caught daily in well placed floor mirror. 

Flavor: cherry red.

.

A rise

Last night, a barbecue with friends. Two types of steak, a quartered chicken, fresh veggies, buttery pasta shells, and black beans. A meal for men and boys. We ate it all in a tree fort, wearing pirate patches, swearing our honorable allegiances, etc.

Still, fighting anhedonia and listlessness with bike riding. Soon, I will be able to start jogging again, where feelings of boredom will be replaced by inward screams of demonic self-discipline and the open invitation to pain. No exercise hurts as much as does jogging when taken on too unexpectedly, or too seriously at the onset. My bones are made of aging lumber, they creak as does a house settling. We were all cutting costs at time of construction.  

For the runner's high, I am chasing dragons. 

Fairy tales are more than true: not because they tell us that dragons exist, but because they tell us that dragons can be beaten. - G.K.Chesterton

I have found a new ride up into the hills in Sonoma - Lovall Valley. The road winds upwards for several heartbursting miles. Hills give way to hills, curves to curves. The path is lined on both sides with overhanging trees, metal gates, signs of wealth - oaks and imports of all kinds. 

Once there, a small valley opens onto an elevated floor where all things are available to the sky, as if the land was arranged as an invitation . The hills meet the blue as part of the same place. The shape of the land simplifies, giving the effect of an embrace. All directions seem to confer a protection of some kind, as if riding along an open glove. 

It's a loop road, houses that can barely be called just houses lining both sides, and on the valley floor, ascending along both sides of the valley hills unseen, each separated from all others by vast spaces, some disappearing entirely into the privacy of wealth. 

Reflecting there, simplifying life through exertion. Galvanizing the spirit with the shock of patterned exhaustion, repeating the unanswerable questions, moving towards the manageable ones, what matters, how long, then coasting among the hills and the sun, also.

.

Enervate vs. Energize

Ooops. I've never done very well at being my own copy editor. Yesterday, I took the time out to look up and determine that the word "enervate" meant the opposite of how I was using it, as I suspected, but then I forgot to change it. It's sloppy writing, riddled with poor or unused research. It is a travesty of paucities. A child could be enervated by the activity I had described, though it's not what I had intended. It betrays the paragraph. Don't worry or weep, I have changed it. 

Cato used to find typos and much needed corrections in my posts, but he has abandoned that to further pursue his heterosexuality. I had to rely on CS to text me an early morning correction. Oddly, he used to be my science teacher, so it's a bit embarrassing. I felt as if I had turned in a first draft as a finished paper. I would launch into a few stories from some thirty years ago now, but I would not wish to betray his undercover-ness. His anonymity means a lot to him. It's one of the many things that allows him to drink so much. He is protein in this regard. 

Or, protean. 

It occurred to me that if alcohol were a pill then nobody would take it. The effects of alcohol are not all that great. The process, or ritual, is what people seem to attach to most. The feeling itself is only good for about 30-60 minutes, particularly if you stop drinking after a few. The rest slowly becomes a form of liquid misery. You get to witness first-hand the enervating of the mind and body, etc. 

Well, I'm not going to dungaree the good name of alcohol today. I meant: denigrate. Fuck. I don't want to besmirch this post up. 

I couldn't think of a word that sounded like besmirch. That might have been funny if I had. Is there a word that sounds like besmirch? It's a loner in the lexicon. I need a Mike Tyson app. for Blogger. If I start to use a word in a sentence whose meaning might be questionable then it just replaces that word with something ludicrous, unexpected, or counter-intuitive. A sort of Auto-Mad-Libs for fans of rapist Mike Tyson. 

I guess one need not be a fan of his to use the app. Fanhood alone, or lack of, should not preclude anyone from purchasing. I mean, it should not be prevalent. Or, a peach impediment. You might just find it funny to laugh at the hopeful articulation of a convicted rapist. There are many. I suppose we could have offshoot apps for other rapists, like Brock Turner, or the alleged sexualizer, Bill Cosby. 

Fuck, how did rape and rapism pry its way back between the legs of my blog. It is parnassus, this perniciousness. Well, let's not linger on the subject for long. That is how the devil does his bidding, through contemplation while sitting naked on the toilet. 

It is interesting that rape is not covered in the bible's stone bill of rights. The answer to this moral dilemma is actually quite chiseled. Rape is a crime against the head of the household, in biblical terms. So, every woman raped before the 20th century should acknowledge that it was a crime against a man above her - her familial patron if you will - which takes some wind out of the sails of the angry feminists who cry rape-history, rape history...!!! Or at least it should, if they knew how to adequately pay attention when men were making religions. Also, no woman raped before the 20th century is now still alive. So, statute of limitations and all of that.

It must really be something for thoughts of rape to go through a Christian's mind. The sudden gravity of being tempted by the ol' Devil hisself, and all of that. I mean, some of them must fight off the bedeviled temptation to rape through prayer. I mean that they do their moral fighting by praying, not that they rape through prayer. That sentence was misleading. They must go inside of themselves and do battle against rape with the devil, invoking the help and strength of their lord and savior. 

I think it might be useful to have a national registry of such people, the ones who believe that an effective antidote to rape is prayer. I mean, it makes perfect sense. Let's just have a list of those that struggle with, and somehow resolve, that temptation with that practice alone. If they happen to own guns they should be exempt from this list, of course. 

Well, that is the introduction that I wrote for today's post. The rest has been sent off for fact checking. 

My Old Teslament crew, "The Leviticus Lions," are looking into semantics, and some syntax. 

Will advise. 

.