Saturday, December 4, 2010
Thursday, November 11, 2010
"Nancy is babysitting tonight."
Thirteen bounding gazelles headed west for more food and cover, it was that sun from her childhood, it was late in the day, mid-November.
They had been called together by the one with poor vision and a funny way of speaking, what the tall one called, "an accent."
Where the wolf actually was now, was anyone's guess. Terry knew it couldn't be in zone 20 because the mountain lions hunted there, he had noticed tracks a few days earlier around the banks of the reservoir. Terry had his weapons, he had met the animal before and he, unlike Ben or his father's best friend, Mr. DeWeese, was no longer afraid.
Pamela parked the car and Dee Dee got out, walked into the florist and asked to see her wrist corsage. She could hardly wait for the dance. She had hoped that the rocket launch might be postponed. She was nervous as the boy behind the counter asked for her name again.
"Buehman." She replied.
Dee Dee Buehman."
The boy disappeared into a room and then returned.
"No, sorry." He said blankly.
"But..." said Dee Dee.
"Maybe Mrs. Erickson didn't do it yet....Kenny is still in the hospital." The boy picked at the scab on his elbow. It began to bleed.
"The dance is tomorrow.... though." said Dee Dee as she fought back tears.
"I know. I ain't goin neither." said the boy.
Dee Dee was stuck. She turned and looked out the window of the small shop. She began to cry. Across the street, a boy with a skateboard rode off the sidewalk, jumping the cement curb, into the street and into an oncoming Dodge Stratus.
They had been called together by the one with poor vision and a funny way of speaking, what the tall one called, "an accent."
Where the wolf actually was now, was anyone's guess. Terry knew it couldn't be in zone 20 because the mountain lions hunted there, he had noticed tracks a few days earlier around the banks of the reservoir. Terry had his weapons, he had met the animal before and he, unlike Ben or his father's best friend, Mr. DeWeese, was no longer afraid.
Pamela parked the car and Dee Dee got out, walked into the florist and asked to see her wrist corsage. She could hardly wait for the dance. She had hoped that the rocket launch might be postponed. She was nervous as the boy behind the counter asked for her name again.
"Buehman." She replied.
Dee Dee Buehman."
The boy disappeared into a room and then returned.
"No, sorry." He said blankly.
"But..." said Dee Dee.
"Maybe Mrs. Erickson didn't do it yet....Kenny is still in the hospital." The boy picked at the scab on his elbow. It began to bleed.
"The dance is tomorrow.... though." said Dee Dee as she fought back tears.
"I know. I ain't goin neither." said the boy.
Dee Dee was stuck. She turned and looked out the window of the small shop. She began to cry. Across the street, a boy with a skateboard rode off the sidewalk, jumping the cement curb, into the street and into an oncoming Dodge Stratus.
Saturday, October 23, 2010
Thursday, July 22, 2010
I feel hollow.
I am not in my own bed.
A sheet sticks to me when I wake up, my own blood sticks me to the sheet.
There had been a fight.
Still cannot recall the exact details. I am certain it was not my fault. I am certain she was not human. I am certain of the scar this cut will leave, not unlike the last few. Why do they target me? What have I done? When will they realize I won't back down? Where do they come from?
The sky.
I remember now.
They come from the sky.
I am not in my own bed.
A sheet sticks to me when I wake up, my own blood sticks me to the sheet.
There had been a fight.
Still cannot recall the exact details. I am certain it was not my fault. I am certain she was not human. I am certain of the scar this cut will leave, not unlike the last few. Why do they target me? What have I done? When will they realize I won't back down? Where do they come from?
The sky.
I remember now.
They come from the sky.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Sunday, May 30, 2010
Saturday, May 29, 2010
amassing the mass and then massing
Last night I met up at Wilshire and Western.
It was wild. The group of about 600 massed up on the north east corner, above the subway entrance and we finally rolled out north on Western completely shutting down traffic and running every red light. We headed west on 6th street and that was wonderful, a massive group riding through Hancock Park, yelling and making noise, joking, jockeying...
We then went south on Robertson headed below Pico and then turned around and stopped traffic at Olympic. The larger group ahead did this circle of death there, where they ride around in a circle and then pick up their bikes over their heads and hold the bikes up in the air and continue to walk in the circle. After that we headed east again on Olympic then up Fairfax, east on 3rd and into Pan Pacific Park.
I rode with Irv, he said that he usually rides to the 2nd stop with the group and then heads home but he called it after the park. He went home and I rode with everyone out and up LaBrea about as far as Santa Monica.
People came out of stores and restaurants and yelled from their cars, "Why are you doing this?"
The videos on Youtube don't quite do it justice. You have to do it to feel the fun and excitement. I've never laughed so much while riding my bike.
Oh, and I can't walk at all right now.
Wednesday, May 26, 2010
rover dover river rocks
picked up placed on
put down and packed apart
water springs again
falling on the flat
cold, blue and lifeless
leaves cleared, netting set
wire mesh above
a basin clean, full, black
noisy water springs high
but for how long?
eels and leaves shushed
branch sand
orange petal
ashen thorn
sad pebble
drum thumb
poked brush
moss beard
lotions of sea-ivy
trails out window shed
lapping splashes
rocks laugh
Tuesday, May 18, 2010
Little Splits
His intentions were honest now, finally.
"How long do you really wish to suffer?" Asked Robert. "That's kind of heavy now right?" He took a drag and looked up Vine, his car was calling, go home, laundry, mail that thing, call that guy, 20 other things that he wouldn't do.
"Yeah, that's good. I like that. That's good."
He thought about his day and the rest of the time ahead. At least it was sunny. The girl who was crying walked past both of them, head down, still crying.
"What's goin on with your finances?" Robert popped up.
"Oh shit, I don't know. Same thing, still chasing my tail- things are okay though- don't know why. I mean, I can't say really other than giving it up y'know? That's what I keep doin' and seems, well, still...still alive....somehow....didn't think so 4 years ago."
The trees canopied the one lane road, the hill was endless, it climbed and fell. The turns were unpredictable, there was no flow to them but this was a neighborhood so nothing made sense. People started building shit anywhere in the 70's. House after house, on-top of house, on-top of house. The stop sign gave them a few ways to go.
She stopped the car. Turned off the engine. It was a coupe, quick, stealth, she looked so fucking good behind the wheel. She flashed looks fast. He caught every one. He couldn't control himself any longer. She started it and then it all became a game of blink. Blink first. He didn't blink, he blanked and then snorted, "fuck...
"I wanna kiss you right now."
"No, you can't." She was serious. "Cause then we'll start fucking and who knows what that'll lead to."
That shut him up.
"Damn, I'm glad somebody's thinking."
A coyote jumped from the hill into the roadside. The coyote stopped and stared. The couple stared at the coyote. They all stopped for a moment and stared at each other. Then from the front left of the car, two more coyotes appeared and stood with the first, they turned and stared at the couple in the car. He turned to her and said, "I want to kiss you right now."
She looked at him and held his gaze and she too was burning in this moment. It was fierce, it was raw, it was animal, it was fucking sex coming at both of them. She opened her lips and said, "Someday, when we fly across the bridge on your bike...going 100 miles per... I will sit behind you and I will pull a chicken bone out of my boot and I will stab you in the neck."
He said he would welcome that gladly.
The coyotes were joined by about 22 other coyotes now. Some began to fight and bite
at each other but a group of them stood patiently....watching...waiting.
As he put his head down that night he wasn't aware of the fucked he had shrouded himself in. He was so far down the rabbit hole, he had covered his entire head in fucked....
All he could do was think about the distraction of her and how it might offer some sort of solution or some real fucking chaos.
But that was 4 years ago.
"How long do you really wish to suffer?" Asked Robert. "That's kind of heavy now right?" He took a drag and looked up Vine, his car was calling, go home, laundry, mail that thing, call that guy, 20 other things that he wouldn't do.
"Yeah, that's good. I like that. That's good."
He thought about his day and the rest of the time ahead. At least it was sunny. The girl who was crying walked past both of them, head down, still crying.
"What's goin on with your finances?" Robert popped up.
"Oh shit, I don't know. Same thing, still chasing my tail- things are okay though- don't know why. I mean, I can't say really other than giving it up y'know? That's what I keep doin' and seems, well, still...still alive....somehow....didn't think so 4 years ago."
The trees canopied the one lane road, the hill was endless, it climbed and fell. The turns were unpredictable, there was no flow to them but this was a neighborhood so nothing made sense. People started building shit anywhere in the 70's. House after house, on-top of house, on-top of house. The stop sign gave them a few ways to go.
She stopped the car. Turned off the engine. It was a coupe, quick, stealth, she looked so fucking good behind the wheel. She flashed looks fast. He caught every one. He couldn't control himself any longer. She started it and then it all became a game of blink. Blink first. He didn't blink, he blanked and then snorted, "fuck...
"I wanna kiss you right now."
"No, you can't." She was serious. "Cause then we'll start fucking and who knows what that'll lead to."
That shut him up.
"Damn, I'm glad somebody's thinking."
A coyote jumped from the hill into the roadside. The coyote stopped and stared. The couple stared at the coyote. They all stopped for a moment and stared at each other. Then from the front left of the car, two more coyotes appeared and stood with the first, they turned and stared at the couple in the car. He turned to her and said, "I want to kiss you right now."
She looked at him and held his gaze and she too was burning in this moment. It was fierce, it was raw, it was animal, it was fucking sex coming at both of them. She opened her lips and said, "Someday, when we fly across the bridge on your bike...going 100 miles per... I will sit behind you and I will pull a chicken bone out of my boot and I will stab you in the neck."
He said he would welcome that gladly.
The coyotes were joined by about 22 other coyotes now. Some began to fight and bite
at each other but a group of them stood patiently....watching...waiting.
As he put his head down that night he wasn't aware of the fucked he had shrouded himself in. He was so far down the rabbit hole, he had covered his entire head in fucked....
All he could do was think about the distraction of her and how it might offer some sort of solution or some real fucking chaos.
But that was 4 years ago.
We couldn't have fit any more in if we tried
It was a Ford Econoline van, brown, '77, the year that punk broke...but this was '86, punk was dead, jokes were in, barely.
My father asked, "Can you get it in writing?!"
We welded the sliding door shut in upstate New York, Niagara or Buffalo, maybe Corning. The engine blew outside Greenfield, Indiana. The differential failed in Benton Harbor. Radio stolen in Joliet Illinois. Windshield smashed repeatedly about the head, neck and shoulders.
A brown van need only be brown and a van to draw suspicion...we were pulled over at least once every 6 days.
We logged mile after mile, hour after hour, endlessly for years at a time. We were not on the road, we were in the road. There was no end in site. Homer talked to us in our sleep. We lived in shadow, as ghosts of ghosts. No one wrote to us, no one could call us. We were living, breathing cartoon characters, swerving the soggy states like ding dongs.
New shoes and pool halls made me happy out there.
My father asked, "Can you get it in writing?!"
We welded the sliding door shut in upstate New York, Niagara or Buffalo, maybe Corning. The engine blew outside Greenfield, Indiana. The differential failed in Benton Harbor. Radio stolen in Joliet Illinois. Windshield smashed repeatedly about the head, neck and shoulders.
A brown van need only be brown and a van to draw suspicion...we were pulled over at least once every 6 days.
We logged mile after mile, hour after hour, endlessly for years at a time. We were not on the road, we were in the road. There was no end in site. Homer talked to us in our sleep. We lived in shadow, as ghosts of ghosts. No one wrote to us, no one could call us. We were living, breathing cartoon characters, swerving the soggy states like ding dongs.
New shoes and pool halls made me happy out there.
Wednesday, May 12, 2010
Yesterday, a sand hill crane made it's way to my back door in Los Angeles. My first thought was, this crane is lost. This crane is on a journey and needs to rest, gather some strength, search for food. This crane is strong and lean. It keeps me in it's view, head in profile, making sure I am paying attention.
After spending the afternoon with it in my small backyard, the crane made it clear that it was not lost. The crane was here to remind me of the past. The wind itself was not enough to remind me of Kearney or Lincoln or Fremont or Grand Island or Hastings or Valentine or Brule...of the spring...of the way the sun would shine on the pin oak trees in May.
After spending the afternoon with it in my small backyard, the crane made it clear that it was not lost. The crane was here to remind me of the past. The wind itself was not enough to remind me of Kearney or Lincoln or Fremont or Grand Island or Hastings or Valentine or Brule...of the spring...of the way the sun would shine on the pin oak trees in May.
Wednesday, April 28, 2010
It was loud in the cafe, ceaseless from all corners, louder voices, chairs grinding across on the wood floor, the door opened to street noise which clubbed the room, the glasses being put away behind the bar were like crashing cymbals, the lady with the cackle stuck in her throat, the table of 4 drag queens, the coked up host arguing with the manager about missing monies, the table of female softballers, the pecking chatter between the two bar backs from El Salvador. Constant. I wasn't there. I checked out. I wanted to be home in my one bedroom watching the rest of Video Drome. I wanted to get on the phone and crawl into her baby talk. I wanted more to drink. I needed to get away from my cousins who were from out of town, dressed like they were from out of town.
This tall brunette with perfect eyeliner poked me. I turned and could smell her, she was all done up and well out of place.
"My friend and I have a disagreement and we'd like you to decide who is right."
I immediately fall in love with her. I'll have the answer, whatever it is. I'm quick on my feet and hold a bachelor of arts in something from somewhere. I will be her answer man and save her from the droll troll she is chained next to.
I take a peek at him. Dreary dolt.
She says it has to do with animal groups, "Is it a battery of barracudas or a colony?" She thinks it's battery. Her follow up question, the key question, the question of my fate is, "Do you think there is any moral impediment to women becoming rabbis?"
She had me at barracudas.
She lost me at impediment.
I had no clear answer. My cousins come alive and begin to chime in excitedly. This is their first New York conversation, besides the one with our waitress from Ohio. The cousins give complete opposite opinions. I decide not to say anything. The chatter subsides and we all go our separate ways.
About 8 months later I'm on lunch break...sitting on a bench in Bryant park. I am reading White Noise, which is to say, I am re-reading White Noise, some of his riffs give my mind the hiccups.
"Do you hate women?" She asks with game-playing familiarity.
I look up.
"Goodbye Columbus." I think to myself.
"From the Orlin, downtown... a few weeks ago." She says. "DeLillo huh?"
We deny ourselves nothing. We carry on for weeks... months. Two years go by in a blink. On and off, we answer each other, meet, share in this life...all while living other lives. We can't help ourselves. We have lost control. We decide we're French and we're allowed. We indulge and forgive each other but never ourselves.
One day, she calls crying. We meet. She tells me that she has been diagnosed with leukemia. She's been told to get her affairs in order. I ask her what she wants to do. She asks me what I'm referring to. I say, "about us." She says she doesn't know. I suppose I don't know either. What do I want? What did I ever want?
Tuesday, April 27, 2010
He was clever but seemed to be malfunctioning
"Whaddya got- more puppets?!"
He was in my face. There were 7 people from Germany in the audience and he was armed for battle, somehow consumed with what I might do. Why so abrasive? Why was he threatened by lil' ol' me? This was like fifth grade all over again. Oh, right...we're in showbiz. Everyone is socially retarded...forever. There's no growing up, no getting out of it.
We became pals.
He lived on 2nd and A, just below. If he wasn't a junkie he lived like one. A studio apartment, shit everywhere, mattress on the floor, books, coffee mugs, Klipsch speakers that he cranked up. I was in high school again. He thought fast and talked faster. Engaging, challenging, self pitying, angry, always in pain or searching for it.
"Here, read this!"
I took a book he handed me.
"Let's go eat something!"
Monday, April 26, 2010
my life has taken on a palindromic quality.
“I seek misery.”
She did not actually know this though.
She was trying hard to remove thoughts and feelings of fevered pitch. Trying to reverse that trend. She was unaware. She was ignorant that she, was her own worst enemy. -Had no idea how to spot it. She just filled her pain with more pain or clothing or trinkets or witty, hurtful emails or characters she would put on over the phone or food she wouldn’t allow herself to eat or rigorous exercise or breathy acoustic music with the faint whisps of a harp or xylophone or travel or reading or some sort of distraction.
Her hair was straight, the skin on her face was clean, but there was a bomb inside her brain.
She did not actually know this though.
She was trying hard to remove thoughts and feelings of fevered pitch. Trying to reverse that trend. She was unaware. She was ignorant that she, was her own worst enemy. -Had no idea how to spot it. She just filled her pain with more pain or clothing or trinkets or witty, hurtful emails or characters she would put on over the phone or food she wouldn’t allow herself to eat or rigorous exercise or breathy acoustic music with the faint whisps of a harp or xylophone or travel or reading or some sort of distraction.
Her hair was straight, the skin on her face was clean, but there was a bomb inside her brain.
Thursday, April 22, 2010
There is a certainty about you
Podcasts are... damn, right?
I've been listening to some great new ones; TBlows; recordings of transformers blowing, a German podcast called Glikstivost, of a raccoon scratching in an attic, a podcast called Water Skis- just skis on water of lakes from around the world, a NASA engineer podcast of sound recorded by a deep space satellite near Procyon. Brilliant!
But my latest fave is a podcast featuring recordings of young women vomiting. I've been listening for about 13 months now. They are excellent recordings, quite vivid, little dialogue, some begging to God, heavy sobbing, choking, gagging, and vomiting, lots and lots of vomiting.
Jockstrap is another good podcast. No dialogue, just the sound of jockstraps being tried on and the belt line snapped against bare skin and then slowly taken off...thousands of different men trying them on and off. All done using great mics and it's as if you're right there in the jockstrap.
More podcast updates soon.
Tuesday, April 20, 2010
fenced
So thinking about building a fence today. Started pricing out materials online. Found some fancy standoff post bases made of jade and gold leaf. Talked to a fence builder and was warned to think it through before venturing into deep fence water.
A fence is a tricky treat. Not unlike a gate. A boundary of any kind can be limiting and it can be freeing if you sit down for 8 minutes and really think about it.
There's some rain spit comin' down. Gotta git to the front yard and tend to it, a'for it comes down in bynomes.
Wayne just sneezed at the luster.
The luster is burning off the electric kiln, coming out of the garage. LG is throwin in there, can't be good for brain, lungs, eyes, teeth, corpuscles. Her phone rings. Maybe that will drive her out and into lunch.
Shelled about 40 peanuts in about 2 minutes flat. Man, I love me some peanuts.
Today's Dharma Blog...
A fence is like a wall. And a wall has no windows. Maybe you want a slider or a slide...into the pool of your life?
If a fence is a boundary, try ripping it down. Maybe rip your hair out a little to see how that fence is holding you back or out or up or down. Try a curtain first, or some netting and then maybe a white picket deal. Maybe just breath.
Sito Monkrak
Here's some fence idea I got cookin':
A fence is a tricky treat. Not unlike a gate. A boundary of any kind can be limiting and it can be freeing if you sit down for 8 minutes and really think about it.
There's some rain spit comin' down. Gotta git to the front yard and tend to it, a'for it comes down in bynomes.
Wayne just sneezed at the luster.
The luster is burning off the electric kiln, coming out of the garage. LG is throwin in there, can't be good for brain, lungs, eyes, teeth, corpuscles. Her phone rings. Maybe that will drive her out and into lunch.
Shelled about 40 peanuts in about 2 minutes flat. Man, I love me some peanuts.
Today's Dharma Blog...
A fence is like a wall. And a wall has no windows. Maybe you want a slider or a slide...into the pool of your life?
If a fence is a boundary, try ripping it down. Maybe rip your hair out a little to see how that fence is holding you back or out or up or down. Try a curtain first, or some netting and then maybe a white picket deal. Maybe just breath.
Sito Monkrak
Here's some fence idea I got cookin':
Monday, April 19, 2010
post-new-futurist retreat, Friday Heintx 29neenth! Mark your iLog!
Brilliant!!
Love it.
That's what I'm talkin' about.
That's what she said.
Don't even think about it.
Correct for 200 continue.
Frisbee Golf? I say Frisbee this!
Do Not do that.
Who are those girls over there?
I forgot to put on socks.
Looks like Labor Day has come early this year.
Will try to do my walk thru tonight at Tiger Lilly. I will be wearing a wig, so just be relentless and take me down to size. Really go for it. I'll have my back to the audience so no one will know it's me, save for the wig.
The water and the drill and the book on the art of firing sit in on the table, along with a vase filled with dying roses, a cell phone at the ready, and two bowls. One filled with peanuts. One filled with empty peanut shells. The Woody's bag stated they were roasted and salted.
Flirtation and reciprocal vulnerability mixed with selfishness, fear, pity, lust, and rare body parts will only provide pain. Use only as directed.
Deception is the covert manipulation of perception to alter thoughts, feelings or beliefs. What are you hiding?
Time to build an A Frame and watch the fire come in...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yBdTtcX1sio
Sunday, April 18, 2010
Thursday, April 15, 2010
I am competely over it...now
It is
moment
to
moment
for me
right
now.
The warm blanket of anxiety, which used to comfort me, has been burned in the fire. Many of the logs that I used to fool myself with, thrash myself with, feed, warm, bathe, and surround myself with…have been tossed. Though they are still there, in the garden, I find it harder to use them today.
My thoughts function in an unseemly manner. Please do not let me operate heavy machinery. Please ask the children to go upstairs. Keep pitchforks at arms length. Follow the animals into shelter. Avoid all eye contact. Chew food. Stretch legs. Breath now. Lunge first. Thrust deep. Ask later.
It is a practice to keep from thinking. It is my thinking that starts the judging…the judging then helps build the case… which leads to my destruction of you… and ultimately my destruction of everything… the destruction of me.
So, I am over EVERYTHING in this moment. I have let it all go.
I have detached.
And, it ain’t so bad.
All I really need to focus on right now….is my breath.
I have found… if I can accept… along with forgive….ALL in my skewed perception will turn out better than what my brain wants to have me imagine. If I attach fear, desire or hope to people or possessions, to principals and perceptions, I am totally fucked. And if I am fucked, well then, sound the alarms, all hands on deck…because it appears that you too will be fucked….yes, I am bringing you into this vortex of fury and pain. You are sheep. I am carnage. Please pass the pickles.
Today I have faith in so much more than what my thinking brain can provide. And yeah, you might be thinking, "Isn't that you attaching something to something else?! Aren't you contradicting yourself?! Aren't you a lover of pies and kiwi?!"
Or maybe you're already thinking about something else...some other...something... unrelated to thinking ...or pies ...or truckstops ...or freezer doors...or?
Life is fueled by contradictions.
This is my contradiction. This is what I have found works, right now. In this moment. For me. What do you have? Do you have that? Do you have that in times of question? -In times of frightening reality? It takes real moments to test this out. Try it. Surrender. You don’t know anything. Seriously.
moment
to
moment
for me
right
now.
The warm blanket of anxiety, which used to comfort me, has been burned in the fire. Many of the logs that I used to fool myself with, thrash myself with, feed, warm, bathe, and surround myself with…have been tossed. Though they are still there, in the garden, I find it harder to use them today.
My thoughts function in an unseemly manner. Please do not let me operate heavy machinery. Please ask the children to go upstairs. Keep pitchforks at arms length. Follow the animals into shelter. Avoid all eye contact. Chew food. Stretch legs. Breath now. Lunge first. Thrust deep. Ask later.
It is a practice to keep from thinking. It is my thinking that starts the judging…the judging then helps build the case… which leads to my destruction of you… and ultimately my destruction of everything… the destruction of me.
So, I am over EVERYTHING in this moment. I have let it all go.
I have detached.
And, it ain’t so bad.
All I really need to focus on right now….is my breath.
I have found… if I can accept… along with forgive….ALL in my skewed perception will turn out better than what my brain wants to have me imagine. If I attach fear, desire or hope to people or possessions, to principals and perceptions, I am totally fucked. And if I am fucked, well then, sound the alarms, all hands on deck…because it appears that you too will be fucked….yes, I am bringing you into this vortex of fury and pain. You are sheep. I am carnage. Please pass the pickles.
Today I have faith in so much more than what my thinking brain can provide. And yeah, you might be thinking, "Isn't that you attaching something to something else?! Aren't you contradicting yourself?! Aren't you a lover of pies and kiwi?!"
Or maybe you're already thinking about something else...some other...something... unrelated to thinking ...or pies ...or truckstops ...or freezer doors...or?
Life is fueled by contradictions.
This is my contradiction. This is what I have found works, right now. In this moment. For me. What do you have? Do you have that? Do you have that in times of question? -In times of frightening reality? It takes real moments to test this out. Try it. Surrender. You don’t know anything. Seriously.
Wednesday, April 14, 2010
Tantrum
Yogurtland, just below 3rd on the east side of LaBrea Blvd, Thursday, April 7th, 9:45pm-
Totally fucking packed.
-A line of assorted people out the door. The night is hot. We make our way in, I grab a cup, pretend to squirt hand sanitizer from the 3 gallon dispenser into my cup…my daughters do not laugh, they do not smile, they are exactly one month from turning 13, everything I do is unappealing.
We crawl toward the first flavor, plain tart, my favorite. Down the line is coconut, vanilla wafer, dutch chocolate, arctic vanilla, red velvet cake batter, pistachio, taro, butterfinger...it’s all fucking great. There are so many flavors, people can’t help themselves, some are pushing, some walking around getting in the way. Some try to make it to the bathroom. I spy the slummers, who have tiny paper sample cups…like little junkies they hang off the smores machine, taking hits and eyeballing everyone else as if to say, “no, you suck.”
We inch forward.
We get closer to the fruit and dry toppings bar, we’re still 5 feet away, when I notice 3 fat Armenian girls, no they’re Spanish…maybe Russian gypsies. They are inching in ahead of me from my left, kind of elbowing, I give them the benefit of the doubt for a moment, thinking they’re lost or looking. Then the first one takes one step more… and I let loose, “THERE’S A LINE!!”
I say it clear, direct.
I use a tone of impending doom and violence, and a volume that makes the glass in the stores window brace.
It is with authority.
It is with a hammer.
The first one blanches, but she does not heed, does not care, she will be heard, “If all here will pay, so be it…let’s see him try… and bring his fucking sad heat.”
She begins to talk back. Her words make no sense, it’s noise, she’s underwater, she is a cartoon.
I begin,
“WE, ARE IN THE LINE!!
YOU ARE NOT!
THE LINE BEGINS FOR YOU, BACK THERE!!"
Silence.
All those in the store feel sick.
The power of this silence makes me more righteous, more violent, more angry, more, more, MORE, MORE, MORE!!!
This is my time. I am right. This is my tantrum. I will be heard. This is my frightening moment. I will be the tormentor. All will witness.
All will pay.
ALL WILL LIVE WITH THIS IN THEIR DREAMS.
ALL WILL LIVE IN DARKNESS.
She begins yelling now, faster…her friends chime in like gerbils, I see lips, tongues, teeth and eyes, flashing, flipping, pursing… they are young, insolent, they are fucks. Her brother is on me, but I am faster. I grab him by the back of the hair, a large fistful and yank. -He drops his cup of pomegranate raspberry tart. I thrust his eyes into a machine of New York Cheesecake. He begins to fall down, I balance the weight of him on my knee and hold his limp, right hand up to the lever and gear of the dispenser. I fish his fat finger into the gear and begin to watch as the torque snaps it bringing him and his sister to attention. The cold yellow dairy goo begins to shit in his hair.
Totally fucking packed.
-A line of assorted people out the door. The night is hot. We make our way in, I grab a cup, pretend to squirt hand sanitizer from the 3 gallon dispenser into my cup…my daughters do not laugh, they do not smile, they are exactly one month from turning 13, everything I do is unappealing.
We crawl toward the first flavor, plain tart, my favorite. Down the line is coconut, vanilla wafer, dutch chocolate, arctic vanilla, red velvet cake batter, pistachio, taro, butterfinger...it’s all fucking great. There are so many flavors, people can’t help themselves, some are pushing, some walking around getting in the way. Some try to make it to the bathroom. I spy the slummers, who have tiny paper sample cups…like little junkies they hang off the smores machine, taking hits and eyeballing everyone else as if to say, “no, you suck.”
We inch forward.
We get closer to the fruit and dry toppings bar, we’re still 5 feet away, when I notice 3 fat Armenian girls, no they’re Spanish…maybe Russian gypsies. They are inching in ahead of me from my left, kind of elbowing, I give them the benefit of the doubt for a moment, thinking they’re lost or looking. Then the first one takes one step more… and I let loose, “THERE’S A LINE!!”
I say it clear, direct.
I use a tone of impending doom and violence, and a volume that makes the glass in the stores window brace.
It is with authority.
It is with a hammer.
The first one blanches, but she does not heed, does not care, she will be heard, “If all here will pay, so be it…let’s see him try… and bring his fucking sad heat.”
She begins to talk back. Her words make no sense, it’s noise, she’s underwater, she is a cartoon.
I begin,
“WE, ARE IN THE LINE!!
YOU ARE NOT!
THE LINE BEGINS FOR YOU, BACK THERE!!"
Silence.
All those in the store feel sick.
The power of this silence makes me more righteous, more violent, more angry, more, more, MORE, MORE, MORE!!!
This is my time. I am right. This is my tantrum. I will be heard. This is my frightening moment. I will be the tormentor. All will witness.
All will pay.
ALL WILL LIVE WITH THIS IN THEIR DREAMS.
ALL WILL LIVE IN DARKNESS.
She begins yelling now, faster…her friends chime in like gerbils, I see lips, tongues, teeth and eyes, flashing, flipping, pursing… they are young, insolent, they are fucks. Her brother is on me, but I am faster. I grab him by the back of the hair, a large fistful and yank. -He drops his cup of pomegranate raspberry tart. I thrust his eyes into a machine of New York Cheesecake. He begins to fall down, I balance the weight of him on my knee and hold his limp, right hand up to the lever and gear of the dispenser. I fish his fat finger into the gear and begin to watch as the torque snaps it bringing him and his sister to attention. The cold yellow dairy goo begins to shit in his hair.
Tuesday, April 13, 2010
Releasing on the exhale
One afternoon after 4pm, we sat in his room. He told me two stories...One about the night before.
An oil drum.
A fire in the oil drum.
A gang of men.
Drinking together.
And her mouth…getting in the way.
She pissed all of these guys off. He had to physically remove her. But she kept coming back for more. Eventually he told me that he hit her.
With the back of his hand he said.
And his ring caught her square.
And chipped her tooth.
He was visibly shaken as he sat telling me. I did not want to hear this. But he told
me more…
The next tale was a story of accidental death. Accidental or on purpose, when someone gets hurt by your hand, you should probably stick around. Somehow he had worked these things out in his mind Somehow he found the courage to tell someone, to beg for someone to listen.
I could see him shaking more now.
He was visibly upset and unaware of what to do.
He asked me what I thought.
I was too stoned, too young, too stupid to give anyone advice.
But I may have said, “This is now in the past.”
An oil drum.
A fire in the oil drum.
A gang of men.
Drinking together.
And her mouth…getting in the way.
She pissed all of these guys off. He had to physically remove her. But she kept coming back for more. Eventually he told me that he hit her.
With the back of his hand he said.
And his ring caught her square.
And chipped her tooth.
He was visibly shaken as he sat telling me. I did not want to hear this. But he told
me more…
The next tale was a story of accidental death. Accidental or on purpose, when someone gets hurt by your hand, you should probably stick around. Somehow he had worked these things out in his mind Somehow he found the courage to tell someone, to beg for someone to listen.
I could see him shaking more now.
He was visibly upset and unaware of what to do.
He asked me what I thought.
I was too stoned, too young, too stupid to give anyone advice.
But I may have said, “This is now in the past.”
That is so me!
In my morning meditation this morning that I have yet to do, I was right there...right at that place. I was able to quiet my mind once and for all. I had another awakening.
The meditation topped other epic meditations because it hit me like a golden arrow, it pierced my conscious mind so hard I tipped over backwards and lay on my back for nearly 3 days…in pure peace, awake, with the universe fully realized in my smile.
I finally got up and dialed my girlfriend in France. She was on her way to work, at the Perrache stop in Lyon. She was not ready for what I wanted to tell her. She was late and had just bitten the inside of her cheek. I asked her if she was still going to the south for holiday, she said yes. I tried not to worry but could feel it rising in me. I reminded her that I didn’t have a new suit, but was planning on buying one upon arrival. She hung up on me.
I got up, opened a drawer and looked over the array of weapons and grabbed the Bilier, a small axe. “This should do it,” I said to myself catching a glimpse of my forehead and the fresh scar in the mirror.
As a relentless seeker of beauty and death, I made my gratitude list and jumped into my Humvee, sped down rural route 28 counting the gobs of money in the sack. “Fuck! I do not have a good feeling about this exercise!!” I screamed as I put in my iPod. I selected a new podcast of John Kenneth Galbraith reading Philip Roth’s, When She Was Good. Galbraith read a ton of shit, it’s how he really made his money. My favorite is JKG reading The Rosie Greer Story. It is wrong in every aspect and yet electrifying slow, perfect.
She called my cell.
I listened.
She was unhappy about everything.
Focusing on the road, I remembered that I was a liar, living the perfect life; 2 young children, a wife, a motorcycle that will go 160 miles an hour, I no longer have a tattoo that spreads across my stomach saying V Thirteen, a 1964 Eldorado convertible, and a will that is my own…it now belongs to the universe.
The meditation topped other epic meditations because it hit me like a golden arrow, it pierced my conscious mind so hard I tipped over backwards and lay on my back for nearly 3 days…in pure peace, awake, with the universe fully realized in my smile.
I finally got up and dialed my girlfriend in France. She was on her way to work, at the Perrache stop in Lyon. She was not ready for what I wanted to tell her. She was late and had just bitten the inside of her cheek. I asked her if she was still going to the south for holiday, she said yes. I tried not to worry but could feel it rising in me. I reminded her that I didn’t have a new suit, but was planning on buying one upon arrival. She hung up on me.
I got up, opened a drawer and looked over the array of weapons and grabbed the Bilier, a small axe. “This should do it,” I said to myself catching a glimpse of my forehead and the fresh scar in the mirror.
As a relentless seeker of beauty and death, I made my gratitude list and jumped into my Humvee, sped down rural route 28 counting the gobs of money in the sack. “Fuck! I do not have a good feeling about this exercise!!” I screamed as I put in my iPod. I selected a new podcast of John Kenneth Galbraith reading Philip Roth’s, When She Was Good. Galbraith read a ton of shit, it’s how he really made his money. My favorite is JKG reading The Rosie Greer Story. It is wrong in every aspect and yet electrifying slow, perfect.
She called my cell.
I listened.
She was unhappy about everything.
Focusing on the road, I remembered that I was a liar, living the perfect life; 2 young children, a wife, a motorcycle that will go 160 miles an hour, I no longer have a tattoo that spreads across my stomach saying V Thirteen, a 1964 Eldorado convertible, and a will that is my own…it now belongs to the universe.
Monday, April 12, 2010
food
A piping hot plate of Pad Siew from Triple Tum Tender calls to me today; the steam rising off the wide noodles, the thick gravy, the beef, ginger, the broccoli, the sweet smell, my mouth awaits the taste reminding me of summer rains in Bangkok, the hints of chili, garlic, oyster sauce, a bay leave, a coconut, chopped nuts, a touch of cilantro, all of it chewable, melting, authentic.
There was something about the search for food that gave us little comfort…Us being myself and a few of my white, entitled, supremely middle class, 19 year old droogs. We had no idea how to fend or cook for ourselves. We had lunch passes to the cafeteria, no cookware, no resources to get off campus and explore. Well, we did have our feet…we could’ve walked someplace, but the places walkable were shit. Places like, Doug’s, where they served potato bread smeared with wood. Or, McKorkle’s, where they just served gravy… you had to bring in your meat, potatoes or rice, they did not supply it. The Kettle was where they melted things, The Blue Crab served beer nuts and beer, The Shack had their famous French imported tables and dripless candles from Hungary before dripless candles had been invented, fine silk table cloths, cutlery from Portugal, a smartly mustachioed man of 67 years old who never spoke but was the best Maitre’D in town. He waited silently, patiently for customers each afternoon beginning at 5pm sharp. No one bothered to tell him that the bar stopped serving food in 1974.
Salvation arrived when we found Runza Hut…a staple of our childhood. Someone had a car or stole a car and by accident we found Runza Hut blocks from the capitol. A Runza starts with daily homemade dough, stuffed full with ground beef, onions, cabbage and secret spices, baked and then served hot. Add a side of onion rings and a Coke... Man, that’s good eatin’.
Ma grandma Tilly used to spend the night. She would come out to our suburban home from her brick house in South Omaha, the old place on 36th street, across the street from Richmond Gordman’s, down the street from the packing house that still worked off the stockyards. She was Lithuanian, still…even though she had moved to the states in the late 20’s.
My grandmother made blintzes for us in the mornings she would spend the night. She would wake up at 4 in the morning and start the batter. These were the best, and were never recreated quite the same by her daughter. They were eaten with butter and jelly on the inside, sometimes powdered sugar sprinkled over. They were as thin as paper and melted in one’s mouth. At one sitting in my childhood, I ate over 23.
Last week I felt fat. So I took a tennis lesson. Saturday I rode my motorcycle out of town and ate continuously; Mexican food in Lake Arrowhead, a half rack of pork ribs at Pappy & Harriet’s, more Mexican food in Banning, a bunch of grilled chicken, salad, mac n cheese last night for dinner. Today I will fast a little bit. Probably bake some cookies. I spoke out loud this morning about how I need to start eating right, doing some sit ups…it’s fun to finally imagine beginning a physical, healthy practice too.
There was something about the search for food that gave us little comfort…Us being myself and a few of my white, entitled, supremely middle class, 19 year old droogs. We had no idea how to fend or cook for ourselves. We had lunch passes to the cafeteria, no cookware, no resources to get off campus and explore. Well, we did have our feet…we could’ve walked someplace, but the places walkable were shit. Places like, Doug’s, where they served potato bread smeared with wood. Or, McKorkle’s, where they just served gravy… you had to bring in your meat, potatoes or rice, they did not supply it. The Kettle was where they melted things, The Blue Crab served beer nuts and beer, The Shack had their famous French imported tables and dripless candles from Hungary before dripless candles had been invented, fine silk table cloths, cutlery from Portugal, a smartly mustachioed man of 67 years old who never spoke but was the best Maitre’D in town. He waited silently, patiently for customers each afternoon beginning at 5pm sharp. No one bothered to tell him that the bar stopped serving food in 1974.
Salvation arrived when we found Runza Hut…a staple of our childhood. Someone had a car or stole a car and by accident we found Runza Hut blocks from the capitol. A Runza starts with daily homemade dough, stuffed full with ground beef, onions, cabbage and secret spices, baked and then served hot. Add a side of onion rings and a Coke... Man, that’s good eatin’.
Ma grandma Tilly used to spend the night. She would come out to our suburban home from her brick house in South Omaha, the old place on 36th street, across the street from Richmond Gordman’s, down the street from the packing house that still worked off the stockyards. She was Lithuanian, still…even though she had moved to the states in the late 20’s.
My grandmother made blintzes for us in the mornings she would spend the night. She would wake up at 4 in the morning and start the batter. These were the best, and were never recreated quite the same by her daughter. They were eaten with butter and jelly on the inside, sometimes powdered sugar sprinkled over. They were as thin as paper and melted in one’s mouth. At one sitting in my childhood, I ate over 23.
Last week I felt fat. So I took a tennis lesson. Saturday I rode my motorcycle out of town and ate continuously; Mexican food in Lake Arrowhead, a half rack of pork ribs at Pappy & Harriet’s, more Mexican food in Banning, a bunch of grilled chicken, salad, mac n cheese last night for dinner. Today I will fast a little bit. Probably bake some cookies. I spoke out loud this morning about how I need to start eating right, doing some sit ups…it’s fun to finally imagine beginning a physical, healthy practice too.
I would never...
Twelve things I would never in a million years do-
1- I would never do this list.
2- I would never have sex with your dog.
3- I would never shake hands with your father.
4- I would never wear a fur skirt to the opera.
5- I would never vacation in Minot, North Dakota
6- I would never boil a pigs head in chocolate.
7- I would never touch the tit of an 80 year old woman.
8- I would never eat your heart.
9- I would never kick a fire hydrant.
10-I would never swim to Catalina Island for the fuck of it.
11-I would never perform oral surgery on myself.
12-I would never hit a young girl in a wheelchair with a hammer.
I often try to give people the benefit of the doubt.
I try to allow the idea of another perspective. It is important that there may be conditions, unseen circumstances, or extra information that I was not privy to. Once when I was driving to the flower market downtown, it was about 4 am and a black transvestite was lying, bleeding about the face, in the middle of the street screaming, “Help me, I need help!! HELP ME GODDAMMIT!!!"
-I immediately thought that maybe she had deserved this. Or, she was perhaps yelling to someone in a car parked along the street and maybe they were napping or were deaf. Maybe she was shooting a student film. Maybe she was part of a TV prank show. Maybe she was not hurt but was doing some downtown performance art piece that was experimental and a protest, commenting on the societal ills that have befallen the befallen. Maybe she did get beat up by her John or her pimp and had been sexually assaulted beyond comprehension, left for dead. How was I to know?
One time I saw a 5 year old little boy in a mall all alone, crying. Maybe he didn’t get the toy he wanted?
1- I would never do this list.
2- I would never have sex with your dog.
3- I would never shake hands with your father.
4- I would never wear a fur skirt to the opera.
5- I would never vacation in Minot, North Dakota
6- I would never boil a pigs head in chocolate.
7- I would never touch the tit of an 80 year old woman.
8- I would never eat your heart.
9- I would never kick a fire hydrant.
10-I would never swim to Catalina Island for the fuck of it.
11-I would never perform oral surgery on myself.
12-I would never hit a young girl in a wheelchair with a hammer.
I often try to give people the benefit of the doubt.
I try to allow the idea of another perspective. It is important that there may be conditions, unseen circumstances, or extra information that I was not privy to. Once when I was driving to the flower market downtown, it was about 4 am and a black transvestite was lying, bleeding about the face, in the middle of the street screaming, “Help me, I need help!! HELP ME GODDAMMIT!!!"
-I immediately thought that maybe she had deserved this. Or, she was perhaps yelling to someone in a car parked along the street and maybe they were napping or were deaf. Maybe she was shooting a student film. Maybe she was part of a TV prank show. Maybe she was not hurt but was doing some downtown performance art piece that was experimental and a protest, commenting on the societal ills that have befallen the befallen. Maybe she did get beat up by her John or her pimp and had been sexually assaulted beyond comprehension, left for dead. How was I to know?
One time I saw a 5 year old little boy in a mall all alone, crying. Maybe he didn’t get the toy he wanted?
Friday, April 9, 2010
What we eat off of...
I ate of her, ate off her, ate her whole.
In the highchair -king of the iron high chair, “Feed me,” was my only language. I ate off the porch on my rocking horse, blanket, plastic bear in hand, sister now in chair.
I ate in hotel rooms.
I ate from the dirt in the backyard.
I ate off the wagon.
I ate out of your hand.
I ate off stunning serving ware in France, Greece, Spain, Israel, Bahrain, Italy but not Turkey.
I ate out of your mouth…Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and Dulce De Leche by Haggen Dazs.
I recall stacks of bright colored plastic bowls & plates with spaghetti, meatballs, tuna casseroles, goulash, stuffed peppers, liver and onions, Lucky Charms, Lipton cup-a-soup, potatoes, meats, pickles, beets, Pop Tart’s and other candy colored treats. Lots of bright colored plastic cups with Koolaid, lemonaid, milk, ice cream floats, water and pop.
“Have anything you want!”
“I’m having shrimp.”
“--The hell you are?! What are you goddamn nuts?!”
“But you said, whatever I--“
“Order anything else!”
I ate pizza off paper plates 3 times a day as a kid in Seaside Heights, I ate crullers in the morning from Wyckoff’s, and crabs at night from the bay. We caught those crabbing crabs in the early morning, caught in cages with fish heads and turkey necks, put in bushel baskets. In the dark bay sat our little dingy…with those crabs running nuts at our tiny toes.
-Ate steak and lobster for a couple nights in the Persian Gulf with Captains and ranked officers. And a few weeks before that, I shared a thanksgiving meal off a metal tray on a shiny ship off Naples with 1000 others.
-I took notice in the fine blue detail of a particular piece of late 1800’s Stone China; it was a dinner plate that a few of us smoked hash on.
-We eat off the Mikasa we got from our nuptials…It’s our daily dishware. And the 1960’s dinner set given to us. Thank God for Replacements LTD.
Burning with sunlight to this day from an eight course banquet; fresh succulent mango in a puddle of Indian oil with ginger… served off the back of her knees.
In the highchair -king of the iron high chair, “Feed me,” was my only language. I ate off the porch on my rocking horse, blanket, plastic bear in hand, sister now in chair.
I ate in hotel rooms.
I ate from the dirt in the backyard.
I ate off the wagon.
I ate out of your hand.
I ate off stunning serving ware in France, Greece, Spain, Israel, Bahrain, Italy but not Turkey.
I ate out of your mouth…Ben and Jerry’s Chocolate Chip Cookie Dough and Dulce De Leche by Haggen Dazs.
I recall stacks of bright colored plastic bowls & plates with spaghetti, meatballs, tuna casseroles, goulash, stuffed peppers, liver and onions, Lucky Charms, Lipton cup-a-soup, potatoes, meats, pickles, beets, Pop Tart’s and other candy colored treats. Lots of bright colored plastic cups with Koolaid, lemonaid, milk, ice cream floats, water and pop.
“Have anything you want!”
“I’m having shrimp.”
“--The hell you are?! What are you goddamn nuts?!”
“But you said, whatever I--“
“Order anything else!”
I ate pizza off paper plates 3 times a day as a kid in Seaside Heights, I ate crullers in the morning from Wyckoff’s, and crabs at night from the bay. We caught those crabbing crabs in the early morning, caught in cages with fish heads and turkey necks, put in bushel baskets. In the dark bay sat our little dingy…with those crabs running nuts at our tiny toes.
-Ate steak and lobster for a couple nights in the Persian Gulf with Captains and ranked officers. And a few weeks before that, I shared a thanksgiving meal off a metal tray on a shiny ship off Naples with 1000 others.
-I took notice in the fine blue detail of a particular piece of late 1800’s Stone China; it was a dinner plate that a few of us smoked hash on.
-We eat off the Mikasa we got from our nuptials…It’s our daily dishware. And the 1960’s dinner set given to us. Thank God for Replacements LTD.
Burning with sunlight to this day from an eight course banquet; fresh succulent mango in a puddle of Indian oil with ginger… served off the back of her knees.
The Liberty Bell
I performed a performance one night not so long ago and it was not a first time performance of this performance, but one in a series of a thousand performances…maybe hundreds. It was an abandoned rail car packed with hobos, heads on fire, everyone screaming and trying to remember their lines, the rail car goes off the tracks, down a steep embankment, careening between red-coral canyon walls, two of the iron wheels fall off, three sides of the boxcar open, the car flips, yet the hobos keep singing and screaming, now ad-libbing the dialogue…holes in the floor appear, hobo’s falling into the hole, off the sides, some being scraped along the walls; blood everywhere….this goes on for appears to be about 18 days. Finally the boxcar comes to rest in a crevasse below the ocean.
I talk to several people after and they say,
“Great job, that was funny.”
I explain to each person that “this happened and that happened, and I really wasn’t pleased about how we did this then, and the before moment came after, and the cue for the other thing didn’t go right, the 3rd act reveal broke in the 1st act and we couldn’t find glue so we used paperclips, the tech stuff killed us, the hobo fire was too bright or didn’t have enough orange in it, the two wheels came off and they were the wrong two wheels and we knew that you knew, we could see that you could see, we could feel what you were feeling, AND, the parking lot where you parked was fucked up, I stubbed my toe a couple weeks ago, fucking gas is expensive, man is hot out or what? -My haircut is wrong, this gum is too chewy, my lawyer is suing me, fucking hummingbirds are in my backyard again, the ocean is broken, the greeter at Walmart is an asshole, my coffee was tea, black is black, white is white. Did you like the thing? That really didn’t work. No it didn’t. You don’t know anything. Fuck you, it was horrible and you’ve deluded yourself to think that what you saw was good cause you paid a lot of money... -If you paid nothing you would’ve seen all the flaws that we experienced in the moment. Fuck you, you’re not my friend!”
Finally a woman stopped me and said, “You just say thank you.”
“What?....What do you mean?”
“You need to just shut up and say, thank you….after your little show.”
“I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“It’s diminishing…what you’re doing--”
“--Doing what?--”
“--No, it’s rude. …Someone is trying to be gracious and you are refusing them. You are diminishing them. You need only be kind and say, thank you.”
“Oh.”
I talk to several people after and they say,
“Great job, that was funny.”
I explain to each person that “this happened and that happened, and I really wasn’t pleased about how we did this then, and the before moment came after, and the cue for the other thing didn’t go right, the 3rd act reveal broke in the 1st act and we couldn’t find glue so we used paperclips, the tech stuff killed us, the hobo fire was too bright or didn’t have enough orange in it, the two wheels came off and they were the wrong two wheels and we knew that you knew, we could see that you could see, we could feel what you were feeling, AND, the parking lot where you parked was fucked up, I stubbed my toe a couple weeks ago, fucking gas is expensive, man is hot out or what? -My haircut is wrong, this gum is too chewy, my lawyer is suing me, fucking hummingbirds are in my backyard again, the ocean is broken, the greeter at Walmart is an asshole, my coffee was tea, black is black, white is white. Did you like the thing? That really didn’t work. No it didn’t. You don’t know anything. Fuck you, it was horrible and you’ve deluded yourself to think that what you saw was good cause you paid a lot of money... -If you paid nothing you would’ve seen all the flaws that we experienced in the moment. Fuck you, you’re not my friend!”
Finally a woman stopped me and said, “You just say thank you.”
“What?....What do you mean?”
“You need to just shut up and say, thank you….after your little show.”
“I don’t know what you’re saying.”
“It’s diminishing…what you’re doing--”
“--Doing what?--”
“--No, it’s rude. …Someone is trying to be gracious and you are refusing them. You are diminishing them. You need only be kind and say, thank you.”
“Oh.”
Thursday, April 8, 2010
Get the picture?
“Everyone is gay and Asian,” Laura said.
“Huh?” I thought to myself for 7 years.
I was now sitting across from Early Smith, a burnout from Morton.
He didn’t give a fuck. It was just plain. Why didn’t teachers see it? Why didn’t cops see it?
Evil poured out of him.
He was…
Burned out.
…smoldering at 15.
I was on the Lexington Local one Halloween night, a few of us got on the train after watching part of the parade in the village. We got on at Bleecker, and at Astor a wilding pack of ski masked, hoody wearing 12-15 year old's burst into the car. I could see they had no regard for anything. I mean nothing was stopping them. They were all street. Had absolutely no sense.
They didn’t fucking give a shit about anything, didn’t know enough to care.
They broke into the conductor’s car and started beat boxing and rapping on the PA system. A few of them ripped out the plastic separators that held advertisements over the seats. They placed one of the separators in the door, so when it opened it would bend and then shatter, sending plastic shrapnel through the car.
This was something out of a Lessing novel.
His pal whose name I can’t remember, Carl! No, Steve, Brad, Jeff, Doug, Mike, Todd, ….all of these names conjure knuckle dragging cavemanism, all are single syllable grunt names, never full names, were they born Steven, Bradley, Jeffery, Douglas Michael? They are guttural people of mud; eyelids still sealed shut, misshapen teeth, noses to one side, fists of sodden potato's, beefed and clenched, thumbs like hydrants.
These two pillars of delinquency chose on this lunch day to sit opposite me with their smirks, their ideas…greeting me with fists. Destroying my mother’s sack lunch, crushing my Hostess Ho Ho, peanut butter & jelly sandwich, crackers and apple slices.
Tuesday, April 6, 2010
Listen and Follow
Filmore, late 80’s.
Was hanging around the band that was playing up in the other room for New Years, or maybe it was Halloween. Doesn’t matter. Maybe I’d be asked to climb aboard for a song or two. Why not? It was happening more and more. I would wait…hang around, carry gear, be a mate. This was my gang, somehow I pushed and got inside. These were fun dangerous people, these were quiet days and long nights, this was youth, this was everything I wanted; staying stoned, watching trees, seeing music every night, chattering on about nothing, strolling on the Haight, tripping at the Kabuki 8, sleeping on couches, listening to Anita at Ibeam, Sushi Sundays at Nightbreak, reading Edie on a rooftop off Baker & Turk, pesto pizza, meeting women with Mercedes, standing at the Other, curbing outside Dal Jeets, cold to the bone...endless, directionless, perfect.
The hall in the afternoon was bitter, dank, run down, dimly lit even with work lights on. The place was busy with circumspect workers standing around, moving kegs and cases of beer around on hand carts, bottles of booze, decorations, lighting, all of it was in a slow motion.
We had been relegated to the upstairs lounge, it was a VIP club within the club, it was perfect. The band was best in this kind of tight setting, rocking best with those right up front.
The rip, buzz and horror twang of Ivy’s guitar will never leave my pea brain…it is… undeniable… historical…sickening to the soul, to generations of me, and yet seductive... It is death scratching…It is mayhem…It is a razor; magnificent…It is pure volume to cave one’s chest to….Reverb to pull me out deep…It is evil…It is animal….It is the echo in my head.
Buck heard it first.
He set his guitar down.
“I think they’re checking.”
We followed like rats, sliding in the dark. We stood up in the balcony looking down on our heroes, not knowing what to expect.
“Is that them?” I wondered.
They were dressed in funeral attire, a Sunday best kinda thing. Sharp, dark suits for the men, a dark trench coat for Ivy, and she wore a headscarf that went over her slight bouffant. Dark sunglasses all around…
Classy folks.
Was hanging around the band that was playing up in the other room for New Years, or maybe it was Halloween. Doesn’t matter. Maybe I’d be asked to climb aboard for a song or two. Why not? It was happening more and more. I would wait…hang around, carry gear, be a mate. This was my gang, somehow I pushed and got inside. These were fun dangerous people, these were quiet days and long nights, this was youth, this was everything I wanted; staying stoned, watching trees, seeing music every night, chattering on about nothing, strolling on the Haight, tripping at the Kabuki 8, sleeping on couches, listening to Anita at Ibeam, Sushi Sundays at Nightbreak, reading Edie on a rooftop off Baker & Turk, pesto pizza, meeting women with Mercedes, standing at the Other, curbing outside Dal Jeets, cold to the bone...endless, directionless, perfect.
The hall in the afternoon was bitter, dank, run down, dimly lit even with work lights on. The place was busy with circumspect workers standing around, moving kegs and cases of beer around on hand carts, bottles of booze, decorations, lighting, all of it was in a slow motion.
We had been relegated to the upstairs lounge, it was a VIP club within the club, it was perfect. The band was best in this kind of tight setting, rocking best with those right up front.
The rip, buzz and horror twang of Ivy’s guitar will never leave my pea brain…it is… undeniable… historical…sickening to the soul, to generations of me, and yet seductive... It is death scratching…It is mayhem…It is a razor; magnificent…It is pure volume to cave one’s chest to….Reverb to pull me out deep…It is evil…It is animal….It is the echo in my head.
Buck heard it first.
He set his guitar down.
“I think they’re checking.”
We followed like rats, sliding in the dark. We stood up in the balcony looking down on our heroes, not knowing what to expect.
“Is that them?” I wondered.
They were dressed in funeral attire, a Sunday best kinda thing. Sharp, dark suits for the men, a dark trench coat for Ivy, and she wore a headscarf that went over her slight bouffant. Dark sunglasses all around…
Classy folks.
Listen and Swallow
I wrote a single joke that has been released as one of the top 10 downloadable ringtones in the history of downloaded ringtones. And it’s not even a joke really, nor a punch line, but more of a catch phrase, or a line. And it is now part of the American modern lexicon of slang and noise.
But this joke cut through the din.
This single ringtone has made me over twelve million dollars a year for the last 5 years. Yeah, I know. This one mindless thing that I recorded in less than one hour has given me an incredible quality of life, for which I am really not that grateful.
I made up the joke years ago in a shitty club outside Atlanta. I was opening for a comic magician who was a typical comic magician with a coke problem. He’d come out and try to be a stand up, try out his horrible new jokes til he couldn’t stand it and then forced to do his tricks. He ended his set each night by swallowing a table leg, the crowd would give him a standing ovation every single night. He would pick up his special magic table with the machine made cylindrical table legs and shove one of them down his throat. Standing ovation.
My joke must have originated from the disgust and contempt of that moment, night after night. Or maybe it came after the 3rd show Saturday, when I watched the drunken waitress, whom I’d been working on, escaped to the mens room with the conning conjurer. Either way, it was written out of anger and resentment.
But this joke cut through the din.
This single ringtone has made me over twelve million dollars a year for the last 5 years. Yeah, I know. This one mindless thing that I recorded in less than one hour has given me an incredible quality of life, for which I am really not that grateful.
I made up the joke years ago in a shitty club outside Atlanta. I was opening for a comic magician who was a typical comic magician with a coke problem. He’d come out and try to be a stand up, try out his horrible new jokes til he couldn’t stand it and then forced to do his tricks. He ended his set each night by swallowing a table leg, the crowd would give him a standing ovation every single night. He would pick up his special magic table with the machine made cylindrical table legs and shove one of them down his throat. Standing ovation.
My joke must have originated from the disgust and contempt of that moment, night after night. Or maybe it came after the 3rd show Saturday, when I watched the drunken waitress, whom I’d been working on, escaped to the mens room with the conning conjurer. Either way, it was written out of anger and resentment.
Monday, April 5, 2010
Intimacy
I am at my most intimate self when I am in silence.
And as I write this, my first thought applies to memories of lying beside my lover. But as I consider it longer, it could apply to myself. When I am in silence, in my deepest meditation perhaps then, when I witness the monkey jumping at the speed of light from one thought to the next. That awareness is when I am at my most intimate. Maybe?
It’s funny how quickly I associate intimacy with sex or love, or the ideas of closeness with another. Where am I the most intimate?
Is it with you that I can lose myself?
Is it with you that I can reveal my most true self,
Is it with you where I find my most frightened self?
Is it with you in silence, through your eyes, telling me, “All is okay?”
“We are okay?”
“We will be okay?”
“You are okay?”
What will it take to tell myself that?
Who asked you anyway?
The levels of closeness in all my relationships continue to ebb, flow, build, burn, grow and reveal with new parameters of intensity with every interaction, some of which have yet to register in my conscious mind at all. All of which are based on the openness of my limited conscious mind.
My imagination is great with creating intimacy. I can blow a little air on an old box of coal and stir those embers, is that intimacy? Is it intimacy if you blow on the coals?
My brain was buff-- Her brain was faster than mine, which was too fast. Her mind made her mouth move and sound came out faster than my ear holes could take. My brain was buffering. She spoke so fucking fast and so fucking smart and built so many fucking mouse traps with trap doors and black holes and time warps, it was only when she stopped-
And I stopped-
And we stared.
In silence.
Into each other.
On the blanket...in the park...that we could feel everything in each other.
And as I write this, my first thought applies to memories of lying beside my lover. But as I consider it longer, it could apply to myself. When I am in silence, in my deepest meditation perhaps then, when I witness the monkey jumping at the speed of light from one thought to the next. That awareness is when I am at my most intimate. Maybe?
It’s funny how quickly I associate intimacy with sex or love, or the ideas of closeness with another. Where am I the most intimate?
Is it with you that I can lose myself?
Is it with you that I can reveal my most true self,
Is it with you where I find my most frightened self?
Is it with you in silence, through your eyes, telling me, “All is okay?”
“We are okay?”
“We will be okay?”
“You are okay?”
What will it take to tell myself that?
Who asked you anyway?
The levels of closeness in all my relationships continue to ebb, flow, build, burn, grow and reveal with new parameters of intensity with every interaction, some of which have yet to register in my conscious mind at all. All of which are based on the openness of my limited conscious mind.
My imagination is great with creating intimacy. I can blow a little air on an old box of coal and stir those embers, is that intimacy? Is it intimacy if you blow on the coals?
My brain was buff-- Her brain was faster than mine, which was too fast. Her mind made her mouth move and sound came out faster than my ear holes could take. My brain was buffering. She spoke so fucking fast and so fucking smart and built so many fucking mouse traps with trap doors and black holes and time warps, it was only when she stopped-
And I stopped-
And we stared.
In silence.
Into each other.
On the blanket...in the park...that we could feel everything in each other.
Lies
Everything I write is a lie.
I am sitting down in a chair that I never sit in. I am typing on my brand new iPad. It is perfect and it completes me. I waited online with pirates in the valley for over 2 days to purchase it. One fellow with a beard and not from this country was set to buy more than one. We argued about that for a short time, about only being allowed to buy one and it escalated quickly. He seemed to know the rules. He offered to settle it by, “cutting my fucking balls off if I didn’t shut my fat fucking face.”
Pretty sure that’s what he said.
I wanted to be the first in my neighborhood. I wanted it more than that ice cream sandwich the ding ding man sold in the summertime on my street just outside of Bonneventure.
So now I have one. It is fast and shiny and powerful. I can now begin my novel and or screenplay.
The rain has started again.
A dog barks at the approaching mailman. The mailman maced a dog down the street last Friday, but the dog kept charging. Got a good piece of the mailman. The dog will be destroyed tomorrow if no one comes and adopts him. I think the dog’s name is Chet. He was a mixed breed mongrel. His owner came to my house and asked if I had heard anything, if I’d be willing to testify in a court of law. He had a beard. And his wife who stood five feet behind him as he did all the talking also had a beard. They were curious to me. He spoke fast with an Albanian accent. His hair was almost gone on the top of his head, but he had a strong beard.
Once when I worked at a bottling plant there was this married couple Pat and Pat. Pat ran the label machine. It was an archaic machine that slapped wet labels on glass bottles of soda. It was the last step in the process before they were boxed and then laid on pallets. More than once a week the label machine would fire up too strong and the metal slappers would miss the labels completely and then they would slam onto the bottles, smashing one after another, spraying glass and soda everywhere. Pat wasn’t deaf but he spoke as though he never learned to speak properly. He had a high-pitched squeak. He was able to form letters but his voice was so high and raspy, it was uniquely odd, especially when the machine would go berserk and he would yell and scream, never really knowing how to shut the thing down. Hundreds of bottles would explode before he could stop the line.
Pat’s wife Pat was perhaps the ugliest woman I’d ever met in that town. She too sounded funny when she spoke. Maybe she took on Pat’s voice the way couples take on the queer patterns of their partners. She was shorter than Pat and wore glasses that fell off her face. She was short, with short blond hair, average body, bloused in work shirt and pants one couldn’t gauge much. She was smelly up close however. She worked on the line somewhere else. She and Pat barked at each other on and off work, in the warehouse, in the break-room when we played spades. They were a freakish couple, but had senses of humor. One afternoon Pat put a live boa constrictor someone found in the warehouse inside Pat’s locker in the break-room.
I am sitting down in a chair that I never sit in. I am typing on my brand new iPad. It is perfect and it completes me. I waited online with pirates in the valley for over 2 days to purchase it. One fellow with a beard and not from this country was set to buy more than one. We argued about that for a short time, about only being allowed to buy one and it escalated quickly. He seemed to know the rules. He offered to settle it by, “cutting my fucking balls off if I didn’t shut my fat fucking face.”
Pretty sure that’s what he said.
I wanted to be the first in my neighborhood. I wanted it more than that ice cream sandwich the ding ding man sold in the summertime on my street just outside of Bonneventure.
So now I have one. It is fast and shiny and powerful. I can now begin my novel and or screenplay.
The rain has started again.
A dog barks at the approaching mailman. The mailman maced a dog down the street last Friday, but the dog kept charging. Got a good piece of the mailman. The dog will be destroyed tomorrow if no one comes and adopts him. I think the dog’s name is Chet. He was a mixed breed mongrel. His owner came to my house and asked if I had heard anything, if I’d be willing to testify in a court of law. He had a beard. And his wife who stood five feet behind him as he did all the talking also had a beard. They were curious to me. He spoke fast with an Albanian accent. His hair was almost gone on the top of his head, but he had a strong beard.
Once when I worked at a bottling plant there was this married couple Pat and Pat. Pat ran the label machine. It was an archaic machine that slapped wet labels on glass bottles of soda. It was the last step in the process before they were boxed and then laid on pallets. More than once a week the label machine would fire up too strong and the metal slappers would miss the labels completely and then they would slam onto the bottles, smashing one after another, spraying glass and soda everywhere. Pat wasn’t deaf but he spoke as though he never learned to speak properly. He had a high-pitched squeak. He was able to form letters but his voice was so high and raspy, it was uniquely odd, especially when the machine would go berserk and he would yell and scream, never really knowing how to shut the thing down. Hundreds of bottles would explode before he could stop the line.
Pat’s wife Pat was perhaps the ugliest woman I’d ever met in that town. She too sounded funny when she spoke. Maybe she took on Pat’s voice the way couples take on the queer patterns of their partners. She was shorter than Pat and wore glasses that fell off her face. She was short, with short blond hair, average body, bloused in work shirt and pants one couldn’t gauge much. She was smelly up close however. She worked on the line somewhere else. She and Pat barked at each other on and off work, in the warehouse, in the break-room when we played spades. They were a freakish couple, but had senses of humor. One afternoon Pat put a live boa constrictor someone found in the warehouse inside Pat’s locker in the break-room.
Sunday, April 4, 2010
What connects me in my relationships?
At dinner last night, Church and State, I was reminded of so many nights out, hundreds of our dining dates; Hama, Il Vagabondo, Roku, Joe Stone, 88 Noodle on Columbus, Cicada after the twins were born, sitting motionless, staring in space, lost…One if by Land, Two if By Sea for our engagement dinner, later joined by Greg and Angela. As Uri worked effortlessly pouring French Martini’s, I touched the back of her hand and smiled and kissed her cheek, then lips. “I like being out with you. I’m lucky to be with you… thank you.”
I am drawn to her.
I still want her.
I still crave everything about her. I am longing to feel her, even when she sits beside me. I seek to smell her, to hear her, to watch her.
I remember the first time I touched her. It was a hug. We had never formally met, but spent formative years around each other. We were now in the same city, directly across the street. It was her front door. She was wearing an angora sweater, although it was probably a knit or a poly-wool blend, my right hand reached behind her and I felt a softness that sent a lightening bolt to my childhood. These were layers of quiet pillows, her sweater and then her skin, all of it was beyond soothing, all of it invited, “You are here, you are safe, you are home, come into me.”
We exchanged pleasantries, stories, I could smell her from across the room, we were adults in the world now. Her roommate Janelle joined, we went downtown to Union Square to the newly opened Coffee Shop. We left Janelle out. The months that followed were about cappuccino, walks in the park and food; Pappardellas, Around The Clock, Mamoun’s, Mary Ann’s, 6th Street, Teddy’s, Odeon, Tomoe Sushi, DoJo, BBQ, Kiev, Veselka, Nirvana, Mesa Grille…it goes on.
I am drawn to her.
I still want her.
I still crave everything about her. I am longing to feel her, even when she sits beside me. I seek to smell her, to hear her, to watch her.
I remember the first time I touched her. It was a hug. We had never formally met, but spent formative years around each other. We were now in the same city, directly across the street. It was her front door. She was wearing an angora sweater, although it was probably a knit or a poly-wool blend, my right hand reached behind her and I felt a softness that sent a lightening bolt to my childhood. These were layers of quiet pillows, her sweater and then her skin, all of it was beyond soothing, all of it invited, “You are here, you are safe, you are home, come into me.”
We exchanged pleasantries, stories, I could smell her from across the room, we were adults in the world now. Her roommate Janelle joined, we went downtown to Union Square to the newly opened Coffee Shop. We left Janelle out. The months that followed were about cappuccino, walks in the park and food; Pappardellas, Around The Clock, Mamoun’s, Mary Ann’s, 6th Street, Teddy’s, Odeon, Tomoe Sushi, DoJo, BBQ, Kiev, Veselka, Nirvana, Mesa Grille…it goes on.
Saturday, April 3, 2010
Time and Space
I can make myself believe anything.
After a funeral in the basement of a church or hall, paper plate in hand, I pass the coleslaw and potato salad, fully aware of the semi-attractive woman I have yet to meet, and she asks, “are those cold cuts?”
Somehow I hear, “I want to meet you in the bathroom, have sex, run out the side door, steal a Lexus, drive to Pennsylvania, get married, live in the woods, chop wood, churn butter, start fire, clean floor, hang curtains, read Proust, welcome moon, hear Dylan, Bob and Thom, live free, smell truth, eat sun, breath stars, stay lost.”
Where in cold cuts do YOU not hear that?
It is quite clear.
I can make myself believe we were destined to cross paths, ordained to intertwine, predetermined to turn into werewolves, meant to roam villages, feed on fresh kill, fated to eat each other, surrendering to the inescapable, doomed eternity. What fun!
There was no surprise after our hands touched what happened. After our intentions were said aloud, once our fears were acknowledged…we simply didn’t care, we plainly had no help, no restraint, we were without all control; we were in for a horrible adventure. Yet, somehow we held onto the hope that a fairy tale might take root; we’d be carried on wings of love to a hushed safe place.
“Fuck everything and fuck everybody, “ she said.
Ahhh, truer words of love and hope were never spoken more eloquently.
It was as if we had known each other our entire lives. It was as if our desire had nothing to do with it. It was as if time coerced space to help collide these circling spirits. Independent entities now made one.
Romantic, real, endlessly exponential; THIS must be love.
Feh…Smells like teen sex to me.
After a funeral in the basement of a church or hall, paper plate in hand, I pass the coleslaw and potato salad, fully aware of the semi-attractive woman I have yet to meet, and she asks, “are those cold cuts?”
Somehow I hear, “I want to meet you in the bathroom, have sex, run out the side door, steal a Lexus, drive to Pennsylvania, get married, live in the woods, chop wood, churn butter, start fire, clean floor, hang curtains, read Proust, welcome moon, hear Dylan, Bob and Thom, live free, smell truth, eat sun, breath stars, stay lost.”
Where in cold cuts do YOU not hear that?
It is quite clear.
I can make myself believe we were destined to cross paths, ordained to intertwine, predetermined to turn into werewolves, meant to roam villages, feed on fresh kill, fated to eat each other, surrendering to the inescapable, doomed eternity. What fun!
There was no surprise after our hands touched what happened. After our intentions were said aloud, once our fears were acknowledged…we simply didn’t care, we plainly had no help, no restraint, we were without all control; we were in for a horrible adventure. Yet, somehow we held onto the hope that a fairy tale might take root; we’d be carried on wings of love to a hushed safe place.
“Fuck everything and fuck everybody, “ she said.
Ahhh, truer words of love and hope were never spoken more eloquently.
It was as if we had known each other our entire lives. It was as if our desire had nothing to do with it. It was as if time coerced space to help collide these circling spirits. Independent entities now made one.
Romantic, real, endlessly exponential; THIS must be love.
Feh…Smells like teen sex to me.
Thursday, April 1, 2010
What did I notice? What did I not notice?
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Wednesday, March 31, 2010
Revisit
I want to quit writing even more today. I am getting behind more and more and it is becoming troublesome. -Almost unable to wake up early enough to complete all of the tasks each day. Currently I wake up at 2am. I begin with meditation, then prayers, and then I go to another place in my apartment and light candles and do more prayers. I make an omlette and pray and then eat the omlette, then I sit in silence for two hours, and no less than two hours. This sitting in silence is a non-meditative meditation. I learned this method which qualifies as a "new method" from an outlaw monk in Alaska, his name is Konk. He has changed my life in more ways than I can describe here. In essence it is about, not meditating, because even meditation is an active practice. Konk even admits that because his method has purpose it is therefore void. But he insists that his is a true practice. The others are filled with faults.
After sitting in silence I take a walk one block in my neighborhood completely naked. It’s always dark and no one is really up, so it’s never been a problem. Also I believe my neighbors are okay with it, as I’ve been in this process since I’ve lived in the building for over 11 years. There is a sacrifice that I make on my walk that I am not allowed to disclose here otherwise it discounts my process and therefore my soul. But I can say that it has affected my openness to change three fold.
I usually shower, make a melba toast and turnip sandwich and then hit the gym. Sometimes on the weekends I will forgo the gym and hit Black Top trail. It ascends 4000 feet and kicks my ass. For these hikes, I usually bring Ketchup, my 22 year old iguana. Work is work. I sell big property, and I am very good. It is however, an all day affair and generally takes me into the night with dinners and drinks, entertaining clients. Last week I entered 2nd place in sales for the quarter. Looks like someone is going to Miami, FL for the region honors in August. Barry Logan, our CFO loves the work I’m doing because he knows my numbers are legit.
Usually I get home after 10pm and I do yoga for a solid 20 minutes. These writings follow that on most occasions. At 11pm I watch the news, I love Hank Tremble and Diane Kirtz, they are an excellent, well informed, news anchor team and have been doing journalism a great service for over 23 years. Chip Hurley with sports is awesome as is Ned Hale with weather. They are the top news team in the Summer State, without them I fear my foundation would weaken.
I work endlessly on my doctorate in post traumatic nightmares also, squeezing in research when I can, often times on my iPhone between showings during my workday. Before I lay my head down, I like to play Mandolin, which I am teaching myself with the help of Mel Bays, the instruction booklet for beginners. I do an hour of prayer and a night meditation and then remember that I did all I could do for the day, it was what it was. For now I will soldier on, as I can feel the good it is doing for me. As Winston Churchill said, "It is better to have an ambitious plan than none at all."
After sitting in silence I take a walk one block in my neighborhood completely naked. It’s always dark and no one is really up, so it’s never been a problem. Also I believe my neighbors are okay with it, as I’ve been in this process since I’ve lived in the building for over 11 years. There is a sacrifice that I make on my walk that I am not allowed to disclose here otherwise it discounts my process and therefore my soul. But I can say that it has affected my openness to change three fold.
I usually shower, make a melba toast and turnip sandwich and then hit the gym. Sometimes on the weekends I will forgo the gym and hit Black Top trail. It ascends 4000 feet and kicks my ass. For these hikes, I usually bring Ketchup, my 22 year old iguana. Work is work. I sell big property, and I am very good. It is however, an all day affair and generally takes me into the night with dinners and drinks, entertaining clients. Last week I entered 2nd place in sales for the quarter. Looks like someone is going to Miami, FL for the region honors in August. Barry Logan, our CFO loves the work I’m doing because he knows my numbers are legit.
Usually I get home after 10pm and I do yoga for a solid 20 minutes. These writings follow that on most occasions. At 11pm I watch the news, I love Hank Tremble and Diane Kirtz, they are an excellent, well informed, news anchor team and have been doing journalism a great service for over 23 years. Chip Hurley with sports is awesome as is Ned Hale with weather. They are the top news team in the Summer State, without them I fear my foundation would weaken.
I work endlessly on my doctorate in post traumatic nightmares also, squeezing in research when I can, often times on my iPhone between showings during my workday. Before I lay my head down, I like to play Mandolin, which I am teaching myself with the help of Mel Bays, the instruction booklet for beginners. I do an hour of prayer and a night meditation and then remember that I did all I could do for the day, it was what it was. For now I will soldier on, as I can feel the good it is doing for me. As Winston Churchill said, "It is better to have an ambitious plan than none at all."
For Me? You Shouldn't Have!
I’m not sure how any of the objects in my room made it in. There may be a covert army of interior designers hanging out down the street parked in Range Rovers, Mercedes 500 SL’s, or vegi oil powered Volvos , drinking gin and tonics, smoking Gauloises, chattering on about what they know, or what they think they know about Billy Haines, waiting for me to exit, so they can rush in and do an installation. This must be the case because my wife who stands 5’4” is too small and clearly not strong enough to bring a dresser and nightstand combo into the house, let alone our bedroom.
These two olive green mid century modern pieces, are well-crafted sections of furniture that add function, class, love to our simple bedroom. The main and larger part faces north and is approximately seven feet long and two and one half feet deep. It has three large drawer’s stacked on the ends, the north end houses my wife’s clothing, the right houses my own. The center area has two pull out doors that reveal a large place for shelves, which are missing, inside are photos albums, papers, shoeboxes of photos. There are gold knobs complete and functioning where they should be and everything slides and opens easily. There is a glass top that rests above. On top of the main dresser sits a 32’ television, a large framed work by David Schoffman, which is 6 panels of oil or acrylic abstracts on paper pinned & stacked 2 across and 3 down. There are little bowls of coins and odds and ends, two cases that hold more junk, loose photos of my youth, watches, coins, receipts, framed photos of family, a lamp made by Marnie Jamieson. The smaller dresser, which sits across the doorway facing east has an empty square basket, some playing cards, a studio monitor and more loose papers that need to be either thrown away or filed in proper places. Inside each of these drawers are things that could be tossed or put into a scrap album, or scrap trunk, objects range from papers, photos, scripts, sculptures, headsets, and cryptic pieces written in hand, sometimes typed on worn pages of paper.
This is furniture. I am content with how it looks and how it works. I look forward to using it today. I don’t know about tomorrow. I am trusting my furniture will be here. It is furniture. Am I writing about my furniture? Yes.
These two olive green mid century modern pieces, are well-crafted sections of furniture that add function, class, love to our simple bedroom. The main and larger part faces north and is approximately seven feet long and two and one half feet deep. It has three large drawer’s stacked on the ends, the north end houses my wife’s clothing, the right houses my own. The center area has two pull out doors that reveal a large place for shelves, which are missing, inside are photos albums, papers, shoeboxes of photos. There are gold knobs complete and functioning where they should be and everything slides and opens easily. There is a glass top that rests above. On top of the main dresser sits a 32’ television, a large framed work by David Schoffman, which is 6 panels of oil or acrylic abstracts on paper pinned & stacked 2 across and 3 down. There are little bowls of coins and odds and ends, two cases that hold more junk, loose photos of my youth, watches, coins, receipts, framed photos of family, a lamp made by Marnie Jamieson. The smaller dresser, which sits across the doorway facing east has an empty square basket, some playing cards, a studio monitor and more loose papers that need to be either thrown away or filed in proper places. Inside each of these drawers are things that could be tossed or put into a scrap album, or scrap trunk, objects range from papers, photos, scripts, sculptures, headsets, and cryptic pieces written in hand, sometimes typed on worn pages of paper.
This is furniture. I am content with how it looks and how it works. I look forward to using it today. I don’t know about tomorrow. I am trusting my furniture will be here. It is furniture. Am I writing about my furniture? Yes.
Monday, March 29, 2010
Turning Points...
The doctor smeared more gel on the wand.
“Let’s look one more time.” She said.
This was fun for her. She enjoyed this part. This was done with a lightness, a bit of play… a natural joy about all of it, as if to remind us that “people have babies every second of every day.”
This was our first child and our very first ultra-sound. The small exam room was the size of an airplane lavatory; very low ceiling, no chairs –a sink in the corner that might have been an ashtray at one time. She turned on the electronic monitor, put the greasy electric transducer on my wife’s belly and then pointed to the monitor and began talking, “There see?…There? There’s the head… and the feet. See the hands?”
I couldn’t see shit.
The doctor continued to move the magic stick around, studying the monitor. She seemed cool, hip…modern. She was mid to late 40’s, white, 5’5”, kinky gray, shoulder length hair, parted down the middle…old wire framed spectacles. I took her in and wondered if she was into Wilco.
“I’ll burn her a cd!” I thought.
The doctor continued to move the thing around and describe parts, and my wife agreed with whatever she thought she saw. My anxiety was starting to creep in. My forearms began to ache because I was gripping the arms of the chair so hard. My anxiety was turning to anger but then quickly gave way to apathy. This was no longer interesting to me. There was no clear image. The monitor was too small and the picture was intermittent and grainy and the whole experience was unlike any movie of the week or episode of ER I remembered from TV. We reminded the doctor again that we did not want to know what kind of baby was growing in there. We didn’t want to know the sex. We wanted to be surprised upon arrival. I thought about wanting to get out of there…”Let’s go, wrap it up!” I screamed in my head. We had stuff to do. We had planned to eat lunch, maybe buy a crib, pick out paint swatches, calk some shower cracks…endless items on our endless little lists.
But the doctor, who we both kind of took our eye off of for a few seconds, was no longer paying attention to us.
She had stopped.
We didn’t really notice her stop, but she did.
She paused…
And she turned on her stool slowly for a moment that was long enough to change the tone of the room. She seemed to be in what Stanislavsky called, “a small circle of attention.”
She then looked slowly to us both, calmly… with a slight tell of fear. She paused and put one hand up, her fingers to the side of her mouth touching her lips and looked at us both and said,
“You guys….”
“There are two babies in there.”
Blood erupted in my ears, my skull ripped in half, my chest seized, unable to catch air, my limbs fell, and my spirit flew around the room and sat in the upper corner of the ceiling looking down upon all of us. -Then snapped back into my chair. I was instantly freezing and on fire. Sweat poured onto my shirt, my mind was racing, waiting for the punchline, waiting for the punchline, trying to catch up, catch up to what the fuck she just said.
It was as if Chuck Jones himself had hit me in the face with a garden shovel. I was beyond stunned…much like the quiet that follows a severe car accident.
Clearly not thinking clearly, I thought she was fucking with us, but that wasn’t true based on the silence….based on her expression… based on the etch-a-sketch image of the two goblins in the monitor…based on the truth… in the room.
So, as our doctor sat there, mouth slightly open, jelly dripping off the magic stomach rod onto the floor, my wife and I tried to read her expression. We desperately scanned her face…this doctor who we had given all of our hope and trust to so readily, so easily, so, “la la la la la, we’re-having-a-baby-in-America-like-people-do-in-America…..on-Lifetime-or-LMN or on OWN or AMC or Hallmark-or-on MTV where you only need to be 12 years old…”
We locked on the doctor’s mug trying to read her. The doctor seemed to be quite surprised, which resulted in the question that could only come from a woman who was EXPECTING FOR FIVE FUCKING MONTHS TO HAVE JUST ONE SINGLE BABY--
“What are you saying? Are they attached?” My wife begged.
Our minds flashed to the tale we had dismissed by kooky stranger who chatted us up in the check out line at Trader Joe’s, “My cousin had a neighbor who gave birth to a head. That’s right…a single head.” Or, the time we were on a flight from Newark, completely unsolicited, the flight attendant offered this gem to chew on, “I read in Newsweek sometimes the feet grow together and never separate.”
Stoked by paranoia we wondered “Why would the doctor tell us this?! -Why would she tell us like that? –And what else is she not telling us?! How worse can it be?!” Will we be touring sideshows in 7 months?! Do they even still have sideshows?!”
“What are you saying?” My wife asked.
I was not keeping it together. But then, out of nowhere, I was hit smack in the head with a perfect moment of clarity. I saw that I was about to freak out but stopped myself! I observed from my most inner minds eye that I was suddenly making this all about me.
But I stopped. And said to myself, “Be a man! Do not freak out. Be there for her!”
I grabbed my wife’s hand, rubbed her shoulder, & gave her a reassuring smile.
This was the first time in my life when I actually believed that there was a greater power at work, a bigger plan going on, which I had no understanding or comprehension of. This truly was not about me at all. The only thing I could do was smile and feel the wonder and love and say yes.
It was as if I had been told the perfect joke and I was laughing in a brand new way, from my heart.
Another joke would follow, a month or so later; I came wandering to bed at 3am after a night out listening to some bands at the Lava Lounge. -I got all crazy n shit…I may have even smoked a cigarette. Yeah, partay.
So, 3am, Staggering down the hallway to our bedroom, I pass my wife who is now awake and walking the other way to the bathroom, but she’s walking funny; holding a pink bath towel between her legs. She says something like, “Hi.”
“Hi.” I say, totally making a bee-line for the bed.
“Uummm….I think my water broke.” She says.
I think my response was,
“Okay. I’m gonna try to get some sleep.”
“Okay.” She says.
This is just how utterly clueless and unprepared we were. We had a month to go in our pregnancy, so the actual “birth” part of it did not yet exist in our lazy, lavender, American deamtime myopia. After about a half hour of staring at the ceiling, one of us decided to open the Dr. Spock book. We found the page on “breaking of water,” and it said in bold letters, “Collect 200 dollars and go directly to the hospital, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!”
I just wanted to go to sleep.
Little did I know that I would spend the next 14 years, “just wanting to go to sleep.”
Our twin daughters were born one month early in May, 14 years ago. The world seemed to have completely stopped during that first year. We were in our pink, dream cocoon of love and bliss and no sleep; we were all healthy, we had a house, I had a gig…we had people around us and we had these alien creatures that looked like two old men that would stare at us and sleep and eat and cry.
Today they are full grown humans; faster, stronger, smarter…five steps ahead of me.
They are 14. They are women. They are sullen, and want things. They are warriors, now part of the largest buying demographic on the planet. Our true parenting days are just ahead of us. My hope is that we’ve improved on the model that our parents handed us.
People often ask us, “Twins! How did you do it?!” My wife answers, “We didn’t have anything to compare it to. So, we just did it.”
She’s right.
Whether you’ve had one kid, two kids, or nine kids…you dive in and just do it.
As they continue to battle us every day now, I breathe. I breathe and begin the journey of letting them go. Monday, they leave for Washington DC and New York City with their 8th grade class.
Seems like they’ve just arrived and now I’m letting them go.
But I guess I really don't have to let go, I can simply lighten my grip, and try not to hold on.
“Let’s look one more time.” She said.
This was fun for her. She enjoyed this part. This was done with a lightness, a bit of play… a natural joy about all of it, as if to remind us that “people have babies every second of every day.”
This was our first child and our very first ultra-sound. The small exam room was the size of an airplane lavatory; very low ceiling, no chairs –a sink in the corner that might have been an ashtray at one time. She turned on the electronic monitor, put the greasy electric transducer on my wife’s belly and then pointed to the monitor and began talking, “There see?…There? There’s the head… and the feet. See the hands?”
I couldn’t see shit.
The doctor continued to move the magic stick around, studying the monitor. She seemed cool, hip…modern. She was mid to late 40’s, white, 5’5”, kinky gray, shoulder length hair, parted down the middle…old wire framed spectacles. I took her in and wondered if she was into Wilco.
“I’ll burn her a cd!” I thought.
The doctor continued to move the thing around and describe parts, and my wife agreed with whatever she thought she saw. My anxiety was starting to creep in. My forearms began to ache because I was gripping the arms of the chair so hard. My anxiety was turning to anger but then quickly gave way to apathy. This was no longer interesting to me. There was no clear image. The monitor was too small and the picture was intermittent and grainy and the whole experience was unlike any movie of the week or episode of ER I remembered from TV. We reminded the doctor again that we did not want to know what kind of baby was growing in there. We didn’t want to know the sex. We wanted to be surprised upon arrival. I thought about wanting to get out of there…”Let’s go, wrap it up!” I screamed in my head. We had stuff to do. We had planned to eat lunch, maybe buy a crib, pick out paint swatches, calk some shower cracks…endless items on our endless little lists.
But the doctor, who we both kind of took our eye off of for a few seconds, was no longer paying attention to us.
She had stopped.
We didn’t really notice her stop, but she did.
She paused…
And she turned on her stool slowly for a moment that was long enough to change the tone of the room. She seemed to be in what Stanislavsky called, “a small circle of attention.”
She then looked slowly to us both, calmly… with a slight tell of fear. She paused and put one hand up, her fingers to the side of her mouth touching her lips and looked at us both and said,
“You guys….”
“There are two babies in there.”
Blood erupted in my ears, my skull ripped in half, my chest seized, unable to catch air, my limbs fell, and my spirit flew around the room and sat in the upper corner of the ceiling looking down upon all of us. -Then snapped back into my chair. I was instantly freezing and on fire. Sweat poured onto my shirt, my mind was racing, waiting for the punchline, waiting for the punchline, trying to catch up, catch up to what the fuck she just said.
It was as if Chuck Jones himself had hit me in the face with a garden shovel. I was beyond stunned…much like the quiet that follows a severe car accident.
Clearly not thinking clearly, I thought she was fucking with us, but that wasn’t true based on the silence….based on her expression… based on the etch-a-sketch image of the two goblins in the monitor…based on the truth… in the room.
So, as our doctor sat there, mouth slightly open, jelly dripping off the magic stomach rod onto the floor, my wife and I tried to read her expression. We desperately scanned her face…this doctor who we had given all of our hope and trust to so readily, so easily, so, “la la la la la, we’re-having-a-baby-in-America-like-people-do-in-America…..on-Lifetime-or-LMN or on OWN or AMC or Hallmark-or-on MTV where you only need to be 12 years old…”
We locked on the doctor’s mug trying to read her. The doctor seemed to be quite surprised, which resulted in the question that could only come from a woman who was EXPECTING FOR FIVE FUCKING MONTHS TO HAVE JUST ONE SINGLE BABY--
“What are you saying? Are they attached?” My wife begged.
Our minds flashed to the tale we had dismissed by kooky stranger who chatted us up in the check out line at Trader Joe’s, “My cousin had a neighbor who gave birth to a head. That’s right…a single head.” Or, the time we were on a flight from Newark, completely unsolicited, the flight attendant offered this gem to chew on, “I read in Newsweek sometimes the feet grow together and never separate.”
Stoked by paranoia we wondered “Why would the doctor tell us this?! -Why would she tell us like that? –And what else is she not telling us?! How worse can it be?!” Will we be touring sideshows in 7 months?! Do they even still have sideshows?!”
“What are you saying?” My wife asked.
I was not keeping it together. But then, out of nowhere, I was hit smack in the head with a perfect moment of clarity. I saw that I was about to freak out but stopped myself! I observed from my most inner minds eye that I was suddenly making this all about me.
But I stopped. And said to myself, “Be a man! Do not freak out. Be there for her!”
I grabbed my wife’s hand, rubbed her shoulder, & gave her a reassuring smile.
This was the first time in my life when I actually believed that there was a greater power at work, a bigger plan going on, which I had no understanding or comprehension of. This truly was not about me at all. The only thing I could do was smile and feel the wonder and love and say yes.
It was as if I had been told the perfect joke and I was laughing in a brand new way, from my heart.
Another joke would follow, a month or so later; I came wandering to bed at 3am after a night out listening to some bands at the Lava Lounge. -I got all crazy n shit…I may have even smoked a cigarette. Yeah, partay.
So, 3am, Staggering down the hallway to our bedroom, I pass my wife who is now awake and walking the other way to the bathroom, but she’s walking funny; holding a pink bath towel between her legs. She says something like, “Hi.”
“Hi.” I say, totally making a bee-line for the bed.
“Uummm….I think my water broke.” She says.
I think my response was,
“Okay. I’m gonna try to get some sleep.”
“Okay.” She says.
This is just how utterly clueless and unprepared we were. We had a month to go in our pregnancy, so the actual “birth” part of it did not yet exist in our lazy, lavender, American deamtime myopia. After about a half hour of staring at the ceiling, one of us decided to open the Dr. Spock book. We found the page on “breaking of water,” and it said in bold letters, “Collect 200 dollars and go directly to the hospital, YOU FUCKING IDIOT!”
I just wanted to go to sleep.
Little did I know that I would spend the next 14 years, “just wanting to go to sleep.”
Our twin daughters were born one month early in May, 14 years ago. The world seemed to have completely stopped during that first year. We were in our pink, dream cocoon of love and bliss and no sleep; we were all healthy, we had a house, I had a gig…we had people around us and we had these alien creatures that looked like two old men that would stare at us and sleep and eat and cry.
Today they are full grown humans; faster, stronger, smarter…five steps ahead of me.
They are 14. They are women. They are sullen, and want things. They are warriors, now part of the largest buying demographic on the planet. Our true parenting days are just ahead of us. My hope is that we’ve improved on the model that our parents handed us.
People often ask us, “Twins! How did you do it?!” My wife answers, “We didn’t have anything to compare it to. So, we just did it.”
She’s right.
Whether you’ve had one kid, two kids, or nine kids…you dive in and just do it.
As they continue to battle us every day now, I breathe. I breathe and begin the journey of letting them go. Monday, they leave for Washington DC and New York City with their 8th grade class.
Seems like they’ve just arrived and now I’m letting them go.
But I guess I really don't have to let go, I can simply lighten my grip, and try not to hold on.
Body Parts Know...
Mine eyes have seen the glory and they’ve had enough. It was not gradual, the decrease in eyesight. My minds eye had been informing my physical eye for some time now, there was plenty I was missing, maybe now I’ll take time, put on glasses and truly see.
It started with a book I bought at the airport in Denver, The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell, about a National Guard who was in for a college education only to be called up ‘n out to Iraq. On the same trip I inhaled Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. Within moments of being in Houston, I told my father “I can’t see for shit.”
And he gave me a pair of his readers.
“Damn, glasses really work!” I shouted like a true American. I was again launched into consumer mode, my new accessory fashion radar lighting up. –“Can’t wait to go shopping!”
I hung onto those 150’s for a little over 6 months until I began my obsessive search for the “first pair.” My eyes would not wait, they continued to remind me that there was no getting around any of it. I struggled reading at auditions, letters from the IRS, Facebook messages from old girlfriends about “sons or daughters I had in other states,”…..er, wait, with eye wear that reads- “sans of drawers in other straits.” Phew…she was always crazy.
I made my way to all the low end glasses joints; Pearl Vision Center, Lenscrafters, Special Eye Plus Mall, Vision Wear-Town, Malsoms, G.F. London, Beachums, Malbar Vision Center, Eye Lab, Eye Town, The Eye Shack, Eyes-Eyes-Eyes of Glendale, House of Eyes. Then I started hitting the upscale shops; Oliver Peoples, Gogosha Optique, Optical Shop of Aspen….nothing.
I wound up at LA Eyeworks. Spent over 3 thousand dollars for my first pair, totally worth it….I look fucking great.
And now… I can see the forest for the trees…now…I can see the space between us…. now… I can see through your blouse…now… I can see the breath… now…I can see your eyes…now…I can see…now…I can see these words…now, I can see this.
It started with a book I bought at the airport in Denver, The Last True Story I’ll Ever Tell, about a National Guard who was in for a college education only to be called up ‘n out to Iraq. On the same trip I inhaled Anthony Bourdain’s Kitchen Confidential. Within moments of being in Houston, I told my father “I can’t see for shit.”
And he gave me a pair of his readers.
“Damn, glasses really work!” I shouted like a true American. I was again launched into consumer mode, my new accessory fashion radar lighting up. –“Can’t wait to go shopping!”
I hung onto those 150’s for a little over 6 months until I began my obsessive search for the “first pair.” My eyes would not wait, they continued to remind me that there was no getting around any of it. I struggled reading at auditions, letters from the IRS, Facebook messages from old girlfriends about “sons or daughters I had in other states,”…..er, wait, with eye wear that reads- “sans of drawers in other straits.” Phew…she was always crazy.
I made my way to all the low end glasses joints; Pearl Vision Center, Lenscrafters, Special Eye Plus Mall, Vision Wear-Town, Malsoms, G.F. London, Beachums, Malbar Vision Center, Eye Lab, Eye Town, The Eye Shack, Eyes-Eyes-Eyes of Glendale, House of Eyes. Then I started hitting the upscale shops; Oliver Peoples, Gogosha Optique, Optical Shop of Aspen….nothing.
I wound up at LA Eyeworks. Spent over 3 thousand dollars for my first pair, totally worth it….I look fucking great.
And now… I can see the forest for the trees…now…I can see the space between us…. now… I can see through your blouse…now… I can see the breath… now…I can see your eyes…now…I can see…now…I can see these words…now, I can see this.
Saturday, March 27, 2010
I am healed...
It’s hard to remember where my suffering went, most of it seems to have been cleared away today. I’ve obsessed for years, but that was because I had no perspective. I lacked a true self, I was unaware of who I really was, who I could be, what I truly needed, what was in my way or what I didn’t need, how I could help others, how faith could offer me a higher quality of life. For the last year and 6 days I’ve been in a practice.
In the beginning it was to not feel the immediate pain, now it is about staying in this present moment right now. What a concept to actually try and honor.
-To understand old patterns of thinking, to be wary and mindful of desire, hope, and most of all fear of my future, this can only be practiced. Fear in any sense, real or unreal, fear is just a word. Most of us can leap ahead into our future and poison it, whether it’s the next moment, next hour, later this night, the next day, week, month, year or years to come. For only now, I have been given the gift to practice and watch how I react to everything. For only now I can continue to practice.
Why practice? Practice allows all of the imperfections to exist and therefore allows all that is and is not, to be quite perfect. Wow, do I live in California or what?
In the beginning it was to not feel the immediate pain, now it is about staying in this present moment right now. What a concept to actually try and honor.
-To understand old patterns of thinking, to be wary and mindful of desire, hope, and most of all fear of my future, this can only be practiced. Fear in any sense, real or unreal, fear is just a word. Most of us can leap ahead into our future and poison it, whether it’s the next moment, next hour, later this night, the next day, week, month, year or years to come. For only now, I have been given the gift to practice and watch how I react to everything. For only now I can continue to practice.
Why practice? Practice allows all of the imperfections to exist and therefore allows all that is and is not, to be quite perfect. Wow, do I live in California or what?
Fun or Fear...
May 13th 1979, I graduated from the Houston Texas Juvenile Detention Center For Outstanding Youth. I enjoyed my time spent and thanked all those who helped make my stay pleasurable. I thanked many as I went; Tomas F. from El Paso was first. He and I shared some laughs one night after he and his cousin stabbed me in the lower abdomen with Bic pens. I later repaid the good prank by showing him the benefits of severe head trauma delivered with a metal chair leg. Gene M. from Arkansas got my attention when I had my back to him in the work yard. After spending 4 ½ months in ICU with severe injuries to both of my feet, I turned a negative into a positive and gave him a hug that he would never forget; breaking both arms in more than one place and dislocating his shoulders, tearing his labrum so thoroughly that he could never raise his hands above his waist. The guard whom I grew to be most fond of sexually assaulted two of my girlfriends after drugging them with Rohypnol. I found fingernail clippers simple and effective when pulling the inside of a cheek apart.
My studies from the Center gave me a new outlook and an improved sense of citizenship. But that waned after a week and I was outa my mind again. I flew across the city in a stolen green Ford something, being chased by two of Houston’s worst. They had guns too, and radios, and a helicopter. This was livin’! This was rock and roll; heroin, German Shepherds, older men with large automatic weapons and harder drugs, women, an empty house in Sugarland filled with blow, a tattoo on a rabbit, swamp-jump blues, Tuaca, a ’71 Nova, and envelopes of Franklins -more than I knew what to do with…this was my life…If only…if only I could add more to this adventure. Maybe I could get laid or stabbed by the end of the day? Why not, so much seemed possible at that moment. I really had no way of knowing….I was 17 and in America.
Driving to Beaumont, San Marcos weekly standing on streets in Austin, knifed in Galveston, driving, more pain, lunging head first into a big bucket of fear, I did some of my best thinking, and committed to some of my best actions; I made it worse.
My studies from the Center gave me a new outlook and an improved sense of citizenship. But that waned after a week and I was outa my mind again. I flew across the city in a stolen green Ford something, being chased by two of Houston’s worst. They had guns too, and radios, and a helicopter. This was livin’! This was rock and roll; heroin, German Shepherds, older men with large automatic weapons and harder drugs, women, an empty house in Sugarland filled with blow, a tattoo on a rabbit, swamp-jump blues, Tuaca, a ’71 Nova, and envelopes of Franklins -more than I knew what to do with…this was my life…If only…if only I could add more to this adventure. Maybe I could get laid or stabbed by the end of the day? Why not, so much seemed possible at that moment. I really had no way of knowing….I was 17 and in America.
Driving to Beaumont, San Marcos weekly standing on streets in Austin, knifed in Galveston, driving, more pain, lunging head first into a big bucket of fear, I did some of my best thinking, and committed to some of my best actions; I made it worse.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Buying A Pair Of Shoes
My father has over 20 pairs of cowboy boots. He’d love nothing more than to shove one of his Tony Lama alligator, ostrich, hippo, lizard, or rhino boots up your ass. He has 5 or 6 Stetson hats that are blocked to perfection. All of this makes sense since he was born and raised in Teaneck, New Jersey.
My father loves clothing. He is what he terms a, “clothes horse,” although he wouldn’t call himself that. He appreciates footwear the most. Years ago he found a pair of cow hide clogs, during his clog phase. Not sure if he ever wore them but after the divorce my mother threw them out in the trash, I happened to grab em and still have them today.
New Jersey is the 6th borough of New York City. It houses over 2 million flat footers. The masses that work in the city, that trudge the pavement. My father was destined to mass with the masses in the city and become a flat footing commuter, working in an office doing office things. But somehow he wound up in the middle of the country at Offutt air force base, met my mother and began to raise a family. He got into his cowboy look when he was riding the rails selling credit life insurance to banks across the prairie. One night after dinner and drinks, around 2am, this cadre of businessmen and bankers suggested it was time for my father to own a proper cowboy hat. One of the men at the table owned the large western wear store in the town and at 2am, the men played dress up. They had selected a fine Angus granite 4x fur felt Stetson for him. My father looked great in it, he looked strong, like an American. This hat led to more hats and boots, and more boots and long rider trench coats and that was about it…no bolo ties as far as I can recollect.
In 1980 I was graduating high school and my father thought it was time I owned a suit. We picked out a nice blue pin stripe, a couple dress shirts, ties. And then it came to the shoes. He insisted I have a nice pair of Florsheim Wing Tips. He bought be a pair of the classic black Carleton’s. I wore them always. They became my favorite shoe and I had them resoled countless times.
In 1986 I moved to New York City and within the first few weeks of being there I took my coveted Florsheim’s into a shoe repair place on 1st Avenue just below 51st street. I asked them to be resoled, cleaned and shined. “Day after tomorrow,” the man said. That night the woman I moved in with got drunk and mad and kicked me out. I found a pal to crash with in Tribeca on Reade Street and after a few months I moved to the upper west side where a 2 bedroom sublet became available.
I met my wife on the upper west side. She and I lived across the street from each other at 90th and Columbus and later moved in together cross-town at 90th between 3rd and Lexington. We had a glorious time together in the city as young people do in their late 20’s; we dined, danced and dreamed of owning a nice Murray Hill Townhouse…but then moved to Los Angeles.
This past fall I was back in the city on the east side to give a speech at the United Nations. As we motored up the FDR, I smiled about the city and thought about how it never really changes. After the speech a few of us gathered for lunch near the Roosevelt Tram and then after lunch I took a stroll down 1st Avenue. The neighborhood seemed familiar and then, out of nowhere I felt a shock run through my feet, up my spine and into my ears, I somehow remembered my wingtips. I looked to my right and there was the same storefront that had existed 25 years earlier. I entered, an electronic signal echoed in the shop and a small man came to the counter to greet me.
“Picking up -dropping off?” The man asked abruptly.
“Uh…hello… this may seem strange, and I’m just going to take a shot here, I was in a long, long time ago and had dropped off a pair of shoes to get resoled, again this was about 25--“
The man cut me off.
--“Black wingtips?”
“YES!”
--“Size 12? Leather resoles?”
“YES!”
--“Day after tomorrow.”
My father loves clothing. He is what he terms a, “clothes horse,” although he wouldn’t call himself that. He appreciates footwear the most. Years ago he found a pair of cow hide clogs, during his clog phase. Not sure if he ever wore them but after the divorce my mother threw them out in the trash, I happened to grab em and still have them today.
New Jersey is the 6th borough of New York City. It houses over 2 million flat footers. The masses that work in the city, that trudge the pavement. My father was destined to mass with the masses in the city and become a flat footing commuter, working in an office doing office things. But somehow he wound up in the middle of the country at Offutt air force base, met my mother and began to raise a family. He got into his cowboy look when he was riding the rails selling credit life insurance to banks across the prairie. One night after dinner and drinks, around 2am, this cadre of businessmen and bankers suggested it was time for my father to own a proper cowboy hat. One of the men at the table owned the large western wear store in the town and at 2am, the men played dress up. They had selected a fine Angus granite 4x fur felt Stetson for him. My father looked great in it, he looked strong, like an American. This hat led to more hats and boots, and more boots and long rider trench coats and that was about it…no bolo ties as far as I can recollect.
In 1980 I was graduating high school and my father thought it was time I owned a suit. We picked out a nice blue pin stripe, a couple dress shirts, ties. And then it came to the shoes. He insisted I have a nice pair of Florsheim Wing Tips. He bought be a pair of the classic black Carleton’s. I wore them always. They became my favorite shoe and I had them resoled countless times.
In 1986 I moved to New York City and within the first few weeks of being there I took my coveted Florsheim’s into a shoe repair place on 1st Avenue just below 51st street. I asked them to be resoled, cleaned and shined. “Day after tomorrow,” the man said. That night the woman I moved in with got drunk and mad and kicked me out. I found a pal to crash with in Tribeca on Reade Street and after a few months I moved to the upper west side where a 2 bedroom sublet became available.
I met my wife on the upper west side. She and I lived across the street from each other at 90th and Columbus and later moved in together cross-town at 90th between 3rd and Lexington. We had a glorious time together in the city as young people do in their late 20’s; we dined, danced and dreamed of owning a nice Murray Hill Townhouse…but then moved to Los Angeles.
This past fall I was back in the city on the east side to give a speech at the United Nations. As we motored up the FDR, I smiled about the city and thought about how it never really changes. After the speech a few of us gathered for lunch near the Roosevelt Tram and then after lunch I took a stroll down 1st Avenue. The neighborhood seemed familiar and then, out of nowhere I felt a shock run through my feet, up my spine and into my ears, I somehow remembered my wingtips. I looked to my right and there was the same storefront that had existed 25 years earlier. I entered, an electronic signal echoed in the shop and a small man came to the counter to greet me.
“Picking up -dropping off?” The man asked abruptly.
“Uh…hello… this may seem strange, and I’m just going to take a shot here, I was in a long, long time ago and had dropped off a pair of shoes to get resoled, again this was about 25--“
The man cut me off.
--“Black wingtips?”
“YES!”
--“Size 12? Leather resoles?”
“YES!”
--“Day after tomorrow.”
Wednesday, March 24, 2010
That part of my life is over.
We had slept in the van again, but only for a couple hours, then it was time to drive again. Not sure who was driving, maybe Emery, maybe myself, we pulled onto the onramp to get back on Highway 94 and it felt as though the chain fell off my bike. Stepped on the gas, and there was noise from the strong engine, but nothing else. We turned off to the side of the onramp, put it in park, then in drive – same thing, no forward movement. “Transmission,” Someone mumbled.
We had been coming in from Chicago, I’d dropped off the clown or the fat guy in the city, said, “Thanks, we’ll call you, love to do it again, see you around…” I had made previous arrangements to fly the juggler in and pick him up in Grand Rapids the next day then drive to the show in Mount Pleasant. Everything was timed out perfectly. Now, everything was perfectly fucked.
This was my first tour on my own, in my first van, with my first crew. We were expected to meet the agent who sold our show that afternoon, rub elbows, impress him, go to lunch, listen to his stories of when he bought and sold the Brooklyn Bridge, broke down on the Verrazano or the Dan Ryan Expressway or the Turnpike, Thruway, Holland Tunnel, Brooklyn Bridge. We had to show up shiny, bright eyed, eager, firm handshake! Now we were in peril.
“Y’need a new rear end.” The truck driver said. “That’s what she said.” I mumbled. “Whazat?” He asked. “Where can I get on of those today?” I asked desperately. It was Saturday, starting to rain, which was another count against us. “Dunno.” He mumbled back. Emery and I got on the phones and tried to solve the problem, we had to try.
Within 20 minutes we had it miles away in someone’s barn slash auto repair place. Now to get a rental car, we’d have to come back for the van, since he said it’d be a few days. We’d be in Wisconsin or Ohio, but we’d figure that out later, had to make it to the gig, the show….
”Can you make the show?” The agent always begged to know when we ran into travel problems.
The agency guys ended up picking up my new juggler and transported him to the venue. My credit cards had all been declined when we tried to rent the car, but I had access to cash and happened to find a cash only car rental place in Benton Harbor. There were about 10 other insurmountable obstacles that got in my way, problems that I was sure would end my “big,” and “oh so special” world as I knew it at the time. But we were on the road. We made it to the show, in the rain. The agent sat in the front row, with his wife, the rest of the agency, arms folded. We knew it was going to be bleak. I tried to brief the juggler how the show would run, he seemed to get it, I asked Emery to hold his hand. With 5 til curtain I heard a rumbling, “thunder?” No the house was packed with about 600 people.
In the end, everything worked out. I had no way of knowing that or trusting that idea as I meandered through my struggle. I made efforts to do what I could to move forward and that was all I could do. The rest was going to be what it was. But if I wanted to, I could’ve let my struggle and suffering overpower and destroy me.
This is a small story, I share it because it has meaning; when it gets hard I want to cry, when it gets bad I want to run, when it gets difficult I want to blame, when it gets ugly I want out. And sometimes when I dive in, it gets worse, it gets harder, there is no relief, sometimes more pain. But what life continues to show me is that the results continue to reveal themselves. And in the end, I will be okay.
My real changes and victories from my immediate past year are still presenting themselves to me. I came into my year with a great self-imposed suffering brought on by my own fear, self-will, loss of self, and a complete lack of faith. What I’ve found over this year, little by little -is that if I do what is in front of me, the best I can, stay honest, if I give of myself, and stay grateful, everything becomes a gift.
We had been coming in from Chicago, I’d dropped off the clown or the fat guy in the city, said, “Thanks, we’ll call you, love to do it again, see you around…” I had made previous arrangements to fly the juggler in and pick him up in Grand Rapids the next day then drive to the show in Mount Pleasant. Everything was timed out perfectly. Now, everything was perfectly fucked.
This was my first tour on my own, in my first van, with my first crew. We were expected to meet the agent who sold our show that afternoon, rub elbows, impress him, go to lunch, listen to his stories of when he bought and sold the Brooklyn Bridge, broke down on the Verrazano or the Dan Ryan Expressway or the Turnpike, Thruway, Holland Tunnel, Brooklyn Bridge. We had to show up shiny, bright eyed, eager, firm handshake! Now we were in peril.
“Y’need a new rear end.” The truck driver said. “That’s what she said.” I mumbled. “Whazat?” He asked. “Where can I get on of those today?” I asked desperately. It was Saturday, starting to rain, which was another count against us. “Dunno.” He mumbled back. Emery and I got on the phones and tried to solve the problem, we had to try.
Within 20 minutes we had it miles away in someone’s barn slash auto repair place. Now to get a rental car, we’d have to come back for the van, since he said it’d be a few days. We’d be in Wisconsin or Ohio, but we’d figure that out later, had to make it to the gig, the show….
”Can you make the show?” The agent always begged to know when we ran into travel problems.
The agency guys ended up picking up my new juggler and transported him to the venue. My credit cards had all been declined when we tried to rent the car, but I had access to cash and happened to find a cash only car rental place in Benton Harbor. There were about 10 other insurmountable obstacles that got in my way, problems that I was sure would end my “big,” and “oh so special” world as I knew it at the time. But we were on the road. We made it to the show, in the rain. The agent sat in the front row, with his wife, the rest of the agency, arms folded. We knew it was going to be bleak. I tried to brief the juggler how the show would run, he seemed to get it, I asked Emery to hold his hand. With 5 til curtain I heard a rumbling, “thunder?” No the house was packed with about 600 people.
In the end, everything worked out. I had no way of knowing that or trusting that idea as I meandered through my struggle. I made efforts to do what I could to move forward and that was all I could do. The rest was going to be what it was. But if I wanted to, I could’ve let my struggle and suffering overpower and destroy me.
This is a small story, I share it because it has meaning; when it gets hard I want to cry, when it gets bad I want to run, when it gets difficult I want to blame, when it gets ugly I want out. And sometimes when I dive in, it gets worse, it gets harder, there is no relief, sometimes more pain. But what life continues to show me is that the results continue to reveal themselves. And in the end, I will be okay.
My real changes and victories from my immediate past year are still presenting themselves to me. I came into my year with a great self-imposed suffering brought on by my own fear, self-will, loss of self, and a complete lack of faith. What I’ve found over this year, little by little -is that if I do what is in front of me, the best I can, stay honest, if I give of myself, and stay grateful, everything becomes a gift.
Tuesday, March 23, 2010
That which is no longer...
It again was fall, with rain. The dark, dead, doom of winter on the Great Plains was nearing. The true nature of nature was now showing its face. Willa Cather must have been Viking stock or of Mongolian breed. The pioneers who settled here had strength of machines. How would people of today survive 150 years ago? How would it have been possible without all our modern conveniences, our creature comforts? Where would my father be without his Homedics BB3 Foot Massaging Bubbler Foot Bath? -How could my mother live without her lighter? -How could my wife survive without her iPhone? -My mother in law without her remote control? –My sister’s doubles matches? -My brother’s airport access to TED lectures? -My sister’s Volvo that continues to break down? How could I go on for a single moment without a Grande Soy Latte Macchiato? I shudder island to think.
I was driving around this place last fall; the town on the Missouri that I was born in, raised in, remained in until my early twenties. I was emotional, driving my Dodge Stratus from Hertz. Hertz had the best deal on Kayak that day. This was the first time back that I was alone, the first time I had to explore, to let my eyes see the city with no distractions. My heart surprised me and was able to let in my childhood, my adolescence, my memories of a place I never really saw, rarely understood or cared about. It was an exciting slow ride in my Stratus…Foghat blaring on Z-92 FM. My parents had picked an amazing town; rolling hills, changing seasons, a large enough population with different races, with high and low economic neighborhoods, parks, libraries… funny how I never saw any of it growing up.
This place seemed to have taken off; the city and it’s new buildings. The trees had shot up, many still had leaves, were still full and I could see how strong they grew, would’ve seen more except the rain obscured and glossed my vision. Even the rain brought back memories of rain from my childhood…it’s smell reminded me of the slow incoming canopy of darkness and the cold days ahead that would sequester all life for months.
Driving west, crossing 72nd street on Cass, I drove behind the old Crossroads which was for sale. My father worked at Musicland there and told me once he met The Rolling Stones when they passed through. I continued west and came to the HyVee, which was never there. This whole section of town was never there, north of Cass. This was where Peony Park once stood! Where was Peony Park?! What had they done with Peony Park?! Someone will have to pay for this!!
Peony Park was our hometown Disneyland, our Six Flags, our Knottsberry Farm, our Arnold’s Park, our San Diego Zoo. Except it had man made swimming pool that took up about 10 acres smack in the middle, with sandy beaches around the entire watering hole, -slides, fountains, diving boards, diving platforms, swings, trampolines, volleyball, rafts and music. A monorail circled the pool throughout the day, -rollercoaster’s and rides and games surrounded the monorail. The park was a dreamland for me, and all children.
One summer day I was given some money to go by myself and buy an ice cream cone. The stand was packed with people and I was too little, I was lost and surrounded by adults. Then I felt a pinch, no worse, my arm was stinging, I didn’t know what to do other than cry. A woman had burned my arm with her cigarette. Generally when injured I was prone to screaming and begging to be rushed to the nearest hospital, but after she saw that she had burned me, she bent down in her white bikini and my tears and pain flew away. This stranger was the most beautiful woman in I had ever seen. Dark, long brunette hair, full lips and brown eyes, and a Coppertone figure straight out of Movie Star Magazine. She bought me two ice cream cones and I walked away in love for the rest of the summer.
For years I continued to look for her at the park…every time I was back at the pool, floating on my raft, laying on my towel, standing on line for ice cream, I kept an eye peeled. I was even looking for her now in the produce section as I stood over the Texas grapefruits inside the ordinary HyVee.
I was driving around this place last fall; the town on the Missouri that I was born in, raised in, remained in until my early twenties. I was emotional, driving my Dodge Stratus from Hertz. Hertz had the best deal on Kayak that day. This was the first time back that I was alone, the first time I had to explore, to let my eyes see the city with no distractions. My heart surprised me and was able to let in my childhood, my adolescence, my memories of a place I never really saw, rarely understood or cared about. It was an exciting slow ride in my Stratus…Foghat blaring on Z-92 FM. My parents had picked an amazing town; rolling hills, changing seasons, a large enough population with different races, with high and low economic neighborhoods, parks, libraries… funny how I never saw any of it growing up.
This place seemed to have taken off; the city and it’s new buildings. The trees had shot up, many still had leaves, were still full and I could see how strong they grew, would’ve seen more except the rain obscured and glossed my vision. Even the rain brought back memories of rain from my childhood…it’s smell reminded me of the slow incoming canopy of darkness and the cold days ahead that would sequester all life for months.
Driving west, crossing 72nd street on Cass, I drove behind the old Crossroads which was for sale. My father worked at Musicland there and told me once he met The Rolling Stones when they passed through. I continued west and came to the HyVee, which was never there. This whole section of town was never there, north of Cass. This was where Peony Park once stood! Where was Peony Park?! What had they done with Peony Park?! Someone will have to pay for this!!
Peony Park was our hometown Disneyland, our Six Flags, our Knottsberry Farm, our Arnold’s Park, our San Diego Zoo. Except it had man made swimming pool that took up about 10 acres smack in the middle, with sandy beaches around the entire watering hole, -slides, fountains, diving boards, diving platforms, swings, trampolines, volleyball, rafts and music. A monorail circled the pool throughout the day, -rollercoaster’s and rides and games surrounded the monorail. The park was a dreamland for me, and all children.
One summer day I was given some money to go by myself and buy an ice cream cone. The stand was packed with people and I was too little, I was lost and surrounded by adults. Then I felt a pinch, no worse, my arm was stinging, I didn’t know what to do other than cry. A woman had burned my arm with her cigarette. Generally when injured I was prone to screaming and begging to be rushed to the nearest hospital, but after she saw that she had burned me, she bent down in her white bikini and my tears and pain flew away. This stranger was the most beautiful woman in I had ever seen. Dark, long brunette hair, full lips and brown eyes, and a Coppertone figure straight out of Movie Star Magazine. She bought me two ice cream cones and I walked away in love for the rest of the summer.
For years I continued to look for her at the park…every time I was back at the pool, floating on my raft, laying on my towel, standing on line for ice cream, I kept an eye peeled. I was even looking for her now in the produce section as I stood over the Texas grapefruits inside the ordinary HyVee.
Monday, March 22, 2010
My Whole life was just about to change – I just did not know it yet.
I was adrift in the chaos of my twenties, following along…barely. It was the dreary, doldrums. It was the gray, dead-end of fall, I had registered for more classes at university. I was doing what they told me, fulfilling requirements to "get out." The process was high school, into college, into the world. No one knew why, but it was what throngs of other white, middle class, and undereducated parents were doing with their children. It was a conveyor belt. I was a disgruntled cog or widget, wobbling down the line, escaping every once in awhile to find relief. I’d find it by accident in burned out garages, watching teens from high schools who were angrier than myself, moshing to hardcore bands...beer, sneers, knuckles...other bars and parties, people, women... distractions. None of it was enough.
Unsure if I was on academic probation or double probation at the time, either way, my attitude -even after being threatened with expulsion, didn’t seem to waiver, I was going to show these pointy-headed instructors who was smarter by not showing up or by not doing the work. What did any of it have to do with the state of the world right now? And what good was any of this insipid information going to give me? How was I to benefit the world as a human if I could compare and contrast Robert Blake’s The Tyger and anything by Wordsworth? "What did “intimate,” mean? Think he means imitate." Alas, I was young, spoiled and entitled, eyelids still sealed shut, ears clogged with bread boxes the size of bread boxes and angry about all of it.
Miraculously, I made it to one of my 5 or 6 classes that semester, the one being, Eastern Civilization. It was a random class out of a handful that I could have picked. The teacher was as Wally Cox as he could be...small, bespectacled, wound tight, tweed blazer, button down brain, bow tie...the whole bit. And he could go on and on and on about the dynasties and the empires in a time before time existed. For the first several classes I simply fell asleep. He droned on in a dreaded nonstop, monotone, lecture voice, the kind of tone and endless spoken sentence structure that I could not fight. It was like a section of classical music, once it began, it never repeated to hook you back around, it basically never stopped. The man was a sitar. But one day, for reasons that are unknown to me even now, I began to listen.
For once in my life I was able to focus and listen to this man I normally ripped apart in my mind. I took notes furiously til I had to shake my hand from cramping. I learned to take notes with both hands, sometimes scribbling simultaneously in two notebooks. I ended up filling 2-3 notebooks per class. He often spoke faster than I could keep up, sometimes I would raise my hand and ask him to repeat ends of sentences. My mind raced to understand everything he described. In other classes I would take notes and mark key things one would figure obvious on a test. This was different, this wasn’t about the test, this was for me, and all of it was fascinating. I was able to set my ego aside, which I later found out was trying to destroy me, and I could just listen to all of this information about a time and place and a people and culture that I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d learn anything about.
The access this single class granted me was fifteen thousand fold; it allowed me to open and listen, it took me out of myself, it gave me the opportunity to see that I could learn about mundane topics and anything at all really, it piqued my curiosity to listen for and learn more, it reminded me that I didn’t know anything at all really, it gave me the mind it would take to throw myself into events perceived as difficult, or tasks that I would normally be so very afraid to tackle, it showed me that if I try to detach fear that I can learn, listen, walk and speak with a little more lightness through this life.
Unsure if I was on academic probation or double probation at the time, either way, my attitude -even after being threatened with expulsion, didn’t seem to waiver, I was going to show these pointy-headed instructors who was smarter by not showing up or by not doing the work. What did any of it have to do with the state of the world right now? And what good was any of this insipid information going to give me? How was I to benefit the world as a human if I could compare and contrast Robert Blake’s The Tyger and anything by Wordsworth? "What did “intimate,” mean? Think he means imitate." Alas, I was young, spoiled and entitled, eyelids still sealed shut, ears clogged with bread boxes the size of bread boxes and angry about all of it.
Miraculously, I made it to one of my 5 or 6 classes that semester, the one being, Eastern Civilization. It was a random class out of a handful that I could have picked. The teacher was as Wally Cox as he could be...small, bespectacled, wound tight, tweed blazer, button down brain, bow tie...the whole bit. And he could go on and on and on about the dynasties and the empires in a time before time existed. For the first several classes I simply fell asleep. He droned on in a dreaded nonstop, monotone, lecture voice, the kind of tone and endless spoken sentence structure that I could not fight. It was like a section of classical music, once it began, it never repeated to hook you back around, it basically never stopped. The man was a sitar. But one day, for reasons that are unknown to me even now, I began to listen.
For once in my life I was able to focus and listen to this man I normally ripped apart in my mind. I took notes furiously til I had to shake my hand from cramping. I learned to take notes with both hands, sometimes scribbling simultaneously in two notebooks. I ended up filling 2-3 notebooks per class. He often spoke faster than I could keep up, sometimes I would raise my hand and ask him to repeat ends of sentences. My mind raced to understand everything he described. In other classes I would take notes and mark key things one would figure obvious on a test. This was different, this wasn’t about the test, this was for me, and all of it was fascinating. I was able to set my ego aside, which I later found out was trying to destroy me, and I could just listen to all of this information about a time and place and a people and culture that I never in my wildest dreams thought I’d learn anything about.
The access this single class granted me was fifteen thousand fold; it allowed me to open and listen, it took me out of myself, it gave me the opportunity to see that I could learn about mundane topics and anything at all really, it piqued my curiosity to listen for and learn more, it reminded me that I didn’t know anything at all really, it gave me the mind it would take to throw myself into events perceived as difficult, or tasks that I would normally be so very afraid to tackle, it showed me that if I try to detach fear that I can learn, listen, walk and speak with a little more lightness through this life.
Sunday, March 21, 2010
"IF ONLY..."
If only I were a fish, I would have been eaten by now and would have fed so many others. My purpose would have been fulfilled. If only I were a cloud, I could have an aerial view of the earth below me and nice peek at the space above, I could watch the other clouds around me, and feel the wind whispering behind. If only I were this, that and the other thing, I could revel in my regret, celebrate my what if’s, pontificate my past. But this is no luxury; this all serves me very little.
Some have posed the idea that if we even open our minds to the possibility of a different thought or decision, that thought or decision begins to play out…that parallel life begins and travels it’s own path. We may at any given time have over 3 million parallel lives happening at once. If that is so, why do most of mine lead to lurid sex acts? Or an ol’ fashioned gunfight outside a saloon? Why do most of my parallel lives find me in the end all be all battle of the robots? And why do I always win? Yes, I will always win! When will the robots learn? When will my subconscious learn, that my will is too strong for me not to fail?
If I were a hammer I’d hammer in the morning, I’d hammer in the wheat fields all over some ham. I’d hammer in snow-time, I’d hammer in the bathhouse, I’d hammer in the toes and the glow sticks, my hamsters and my possums, all over this ham.
What happened yesterday was this, and this I cannot change, so I can’t live in the remorse or disappointment of it. If it were a victorious day, I wouldn’t be able to live in the celebration of it, but maybe I would try. That is something I like to do actually. I like to hang onto my hallowed occasions; those are some of the things I like to fill my mind with in my day. But then they fly away, those feelings of accomplishment, of pride, of ego being fulfilled and then new feelings come in, some of desire, some of fear, some of contentment in just this moment right now.
Some have posed the idea that if we even open our minds to the possibility of a different thought or decision, that thought or decision begins to play out…that parallel life begins and travels it’s own path. We may at any given time have over 3 million parallel lives happening at once. If that is so, why do most of mine lead to lurid sex acts? Or an ol’ fashioned gunfight outside a saloon? Why do most of my parallel lives find me in the end all be all battle of the robots? And why do I always win? Yes, I will always win! When will the robots learn? When will my subconscious learn, that my will is too strong for me not to fail?
If I were a hammer I’d hammer in the morning, I’d hammer in the wheat fields all over some ham. I’d hammer in snow-time, I’d hammer in the bathhouse, I’d hammer in the toes and the glow sticks, my hamsters and my possums, all over this ham.
What happened yesterday was this, and this I cannot change, so I can’t live in the remorse or disappointment of it. If it were a victorious day, I wouldn’t be able to live in the celebration of it, but maybe I would try. That is something I like to do actually. I like to hang onto my hallowed occasions; those are some of the things I like to fill my mind with in my day. But then they fly away, those feelings of accomplishment, of pride, of ego being fulfilled and then new feelings come in, some of desire, some of fear, some of contentment in just this moment right now.
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