The Perverse

Then there was none.

2010-10-07T19:37:00.000-07:00

This will likely be my last post. I turn forty, I begin a different blog elsewhere. I haven't persevered with the perverse, and even my recent unfinished writings have a different personality stamp. They haven't matured, necessarily. They just don't feel right here.

A lot has happened. We're expecting a baby in November. That would be jumping to the exciting news...simply saying there is a 'we' is cause for joy. I've been head over heels for this gal for two years, and I confess I'm a little stunned that it hasn't topped out yet. I feel stronger and stronger about this relationship when I stop a moment and check myself.

Aside from happiness, there have been other distractions. I'm more likely to be at the gym than writing. Of course there's the nesting for the coming baby - I'm always moving crap from here to there, then back or elsewhere - creating space for little Ezri (we already have a name for her) has made day to day life a Jenga torture. Christina is barely moved in...she's still in the process of going through boxes and reckoning what makes the grade in the new life.

And there is Starry. Camille isn't as accommodating as I am, and the two cats are not getting along at all! Starry is a boy and he's very territorial. Camille is Camille: princess and reluctant center of attention. So much has been going on all at once, I worry about her. Moving in was a step up for Starry, but she just hangs in the computer room all day to avoid confronting him. Also, I notice both cats eat more and more; I think when there's competition or cause for scarcity, they eat each meal like its their last.

That sums it up: I had to stop writing to attend to my duties as Mayor of Catshittown. Perhaps one day I'll retire and write my memoirs, though thinking about what I'll have to write about invokes the smell of ammonia.

Windows into Widows

2009-10-22T22:16:00.000-07:00

Since I haven't written in awhile, I took a look at all the things I never finished. These pieces have occupied my mind in many ways...woolgathering on the bus, mind-wandering on the elliptical at the gym...they just never worked out, regardless of my hopes at their maiden voyage. The crux of it is, I'm in love. It's so much easier to write when you are lonely! Like fashioning you own Golemn out of clay and the hours you don't have to spend with a hottie much, much, more animated.

Mercurial U

You enter the tent…and it is so massive inside, and it is intoxicating and exhilarating all in one, this tiny universe that promises to entertain and fulfill. The air is permeated with a blood orange hue, a reflection of crimson drapery and stagelight from the intenser end of the rainbow. You feel a new aliveness, a childish glee as you catch your elongated form in a distorting carnival mirror. Everyone is so colorful and spectacular here…and the volleyed reflection tells you that you, you too, might belong. You force yourself forward, deeper into this strange atmosphere: those previous thoughts of contentedness, the assurances you gave yourself over how happy you already are, are drowned out in a jamboree of horns. A dozen trumpets and tubas and saxophones arc and pitch against one another sounding like they would each rather forge their own melody: but they have come together especially for you, in a tentative cease-fire.

Attachment Theory

On rereading the notes, I may have been writing something through the eyes of a child, a child who does not feel like they are a high priority for their mother. Of course, I’m interpreting my notes through the lens of the title. I’ve already described more than what was there; it could really be any number of cries for help.

Snake Oil

Is there such a thing as religious deprivation? What happens when it is gone? Theology: the promise of a never ending skirmish. Not for the casual; god for the compulsive. Is this about the constructs that we put in place to displace it? The nagator, the deconstructor, the busybodied armchair psychological engineer: the peanut gallery. What do we hate about it? Really.

Sadly, there is not one coherent thought in my notes – but I know that snake oil referred to the recent posturing in atheism, not religion in particular. Ok, I’m an atheist; I enjoyed the 2 popular books that helped reassert it, too. What I don’t get is the preoccupation with it, or why people exert so much energy towards conversion or conviction (apparently, I don’t see why people get so vested in it, since I never finished it). I mean, what is the value to the individual? I didn’t finish “Atheism in the time of Irreverence”, either. I’ve been in forums and seen people passionately argue non-negotiable points. Really, you either prefer the fantastic lie or the plausible lie, and proof carries no water here.

Cassanova

That might be what did it: Hank made a habit of contemplating all the possibilities. He was deliberate – people had to be patient to hear what he would say – because he was imagining all the different directions his words could take. He wanted to be prepared for every possible contingency. Then this one. He couldn’t read her, or she lived outside the world he though he had all figured out. He’d been with many women – so many different personalities and situations – and thought he had it all down, knew how to handle a skirt in any circumstance. At the outset, he tried to play her like any other: he would read her moods and know when to shift into another gear. But this one.

I’m not sure how I feel about my grandfather. On one hand, I’ve romanticized him as this pre-punk figure. I saw a photo of him a couple years ago, and that was my first thought: before the skin heads, before the straight edges, here we had this stove pipe punk. It was a strange photograph of his entire family: someone probably blew two weeks salary to get a picture with a ‘camry’, getting the entire family to pose before the above-ground oil tank. None of which is germaine to cassanova.

I think I referred to this story, at one point, as being about the ‘most selfish person I’ve ever known’ (make that a second). I don’t think he ever worked a day that I existed on this planet, but I’ve heard just enough stories to romanticize his life. This story was about his career (one of very many) as a race car driver in the 50’s. Aaaaand, his abandonment of his wife and children around that same time. I pulled this paragraph from my blogspot notes; I have about 15K words in disparate locations on my pc. I’ve attacked it from so many different angles, and I was challenged by the time displacement and intimidated by failing on something with a tangible tangent to my own identity. I still want to finish it, but I think I’ve decided to wait until my grandfather has passed. What I have written so far, considering the context, felt very weird in the writing of it.

A Soldier’s Things

3. A long metal bar. It was part of a lock to the warehouse we broke into. It was a sweet deal – it was between leases, unoccupied, and the upstairs was like a gigantic indoor skate park. Some friends and I visited it a couple more times, until one day we snuck inside to find the toilet at street level was overflowing, flooding the place. It was creepy, dawning on us slowly that we weren’t the only people invading this place. Endless reams of Asian porn were strewn all over the place, floating in the thin pool.

I have a box of momentos. One day I decided to perform an inventory. Other items of note: Sandman, from Star Wars. Rosary Beads. A Slot Car. Numerous concert tickets. My Huskies Watch, my bolero tie (hey, I should bust that out!). I think the absence of things in my momento box says more about me than what’s actually in it….

The Third Son

Isaac could not be deterred. Fervent imaginings had lit a fire in his heart, and his mind was boiling with many hopes and possibilities that could arise from this venture. He shared them with his father, and he made known his frustration at the sole gray path marked for him should he stay. And Lott understood, and Lott let himself be proud of his son.

I might finish it. It’s a facile rewrite of the bible. You want the firstborn to follow in your footsteps, and the second born will be a great backup if they don’t go off to war and die. But there is no clear destiny for the third son…which is why we have priests and musicians.

Roe v. Wade

…is blank! But I remember my intentions. I wanted to review the judicial argument, which, by the way, is inadequate and flimsy. I understand the right to privacy, contingent on other SC rulings…but since I’m not going to ever get around to this, I highly recommend you read it for yourself. Then read a couple others, just to garner some idea what a logical conclusion should look like. My fear, and preoccupation with this, lies in knowing that the ruling was tailored not to constitutional grounds, so as much as it was designed to appease popular opinion at that time. And by saying ‘at that time’, I’m implying that popular opinion changes.

What we really need is an amendment, a caveat indicating that life is not precious or sacred.

Flip Your Wig

But what does this have to do with wigs? Well, I’ve been making allowances for them lately. The do what wigs do – distort, embellish or misrepresent – and though my communications with them has been minimal, they’ve manifested over the past couple months as really bad ideas I either indulged or humored a little too much. Here’s the net-net: they’ve made me either deny/confirm, or explain away, my behavior. This is an embarrassing, undeserved, inconvenience to me.

I try to avoid being personal. This invective is more or less complete, though unpublished. Kind of sad, since we tend to be funny in our mean-spirited moments. Rolling this rag about 2 wigs who don’t know each other but share lying compulsively in common was therapeutic…though I think if I met a Crackwig or Mindwig tomorrow, I’d probably make a snap judgment about her.

Structure

Each day becomes more and more submerged in detail. My time estimates are in blocks five minutes each. This isn’t good enough; my focus can be derailed in five minutes.

I’m not sure what happened here. The notes are copious and nonsensical. I may have been suffering from insulin shock. This is one of my symptoms of the shock by the way; an obsessive micromanaging of moments. Don’t laugh, it will happen to you right before you die, I just get the opportunity to live the moment on unplanned occasions. There’s more:

When codifying behaviour, do we go too far? How do we know when to stop? What values are in place? Is this serving self, or something higher than self? An immediate self, or a self conscious that it reaches into the past and future? Isn’t the very defining of structure something I do in an inspired moment, something I do because I want to do – an impulse? What am I positing, knowing that it is in the face of what I may be inspired to do tomorrow? Why is one compulsion more virtuous than another?

Perhaps I wanted to look at the transience of our compelled transcendence. There are a lot of words here. There are also a lot of references to killing squirrels; I kid you not. It is broken up with the statement: “Provide an itinerary. Here.” No reference to what the itinerary should serve.

Fan Boy

Anyways. Secret Wars sounded a death-knell, and as DC minimized it’s number of universes and Marvel decided to expand theirs, I found I wasn’t enough the passionate archivist to keep up with numerous cross-overs. Even books I liked were being marred with disjointed one-offs, forced storylines that made no sense inside a comics’ gestalt.

Meeting Howard Chaykin was a great moment for me. Even Christina & Otto, standing right next to me, couldn’t gauge the synapses in my brain doing a spastic bumper-caring off one another. Even as I walked away from my fanboy moment, my nerves were calming down as enthusiastic, tiny metal Pachinko balls, might do. I was short-tongued and nervous the whole while.

There’s no good excuse why I didn’t finish this one. Fanboy would never be approved by my internal Vatican…y’know, the ones who decided the story where Jesus turned into a goat shouldn’t be included in the Bible? Or was it fucked a goat? It’s all academic now, anyways.

Starting

2009-07-12T17:00:00.000-07:00

The cigarettes were good for him for they measured the time.

He did not look like someone positioned to start. Slouched in an armchair, a terry cloth robe his better off brother bought him at Penny's, draping his flanks. Not that he needed a nice robe. What was the point of owning a nice robe, unless you are independently wealthy and making your way about in it, all the day? But if you're going to buy a robe for someone as a gift, and you own a chain of machine rental companies, and you know, you're probably taking down six figures a quarter? A twenty dollar robe seems a little chintzy. Like, why bother at all, brother. Though everyone should own a robe, even if they don't wear it. It's just nice to have, though he wonders if the house were burning down he would think to grab it on the way out.

He leans forward and picks up the newspaper. Remembers when it used to be "this" wide: swears the print is a little bigger, too. He picks at the corner, separating sections and shucking away the periodicals for the glossier grocery advertisements. His thoughts are ahead of him now; he's guessing what red meat will cost him, how dearly, before he finds the image. He always does this. He imagines the worst. He does it so he won't be disappointed; no matter how bad prices get, they'll never be as bad as what he expected them to be. Makes him feel a little in control, a little bit the master of his own destiny. The steaks find him first. The splotchy redness of the t-bone slabs jump off the page, the photo is bereft of anything appetizing, but he is swept away by the numbers: 6.99 a lb! That isn't half bad. And he deserves a little treat.

The cigarette has burned down, and he remembers only taking one little drag, when he first lit it. Just to get it going. He looks at all the paper he still needs to pore through, and decides to light another.

She's a BOOK

2009-07-11T18:31:00.000-07:00

It was a good place for people watching. Only, once he had given his eyes the reign, he forgot himself entirely. It would be a good place to be if it could be a place that unfurled into perpetuity: but that never happened. No, his mind would take back control, and an evil comeuppance would take place. As if to say. As if it were to say, flexing extremities in a show of dominance. But that is two things. It would flex and say, "Look who is back in control now!" (curving toes, tightening sphincter, arching spine and heaving chest - way back now; arching parallel to the earth's surface and robbing the eyes of their power completely). Or, instead of looking at who is in control now...it wouldn't really be necessary, declaiming it so, having directed the eyes to look into the sun: "So, while the cat's away, the mice will play!" - or some other folkish aphorism pregnant with judgment and disapproval. But that is the mind. It is always framing its pulsations in a manner that assumes everything else has a mind; deep down it knows this is not the case and it only acts in this way to please itself.

It was a good place to watch people, but it became grist for comparisons, self-evaluation, and the imagined interpretation of a relationship of the self - only known imperfectly - against an overwhelming whole that returned his gaze in circus mirrors and imported artifacts.

$$$

2009-03-16T17:46:00.000-07:00

It was the only time I raised my voice at her.

After all, we both had plenty of expendable income. Our bills of necessity amounted to less than a fifth of our combined paychecks! I shook the credit card bill at her and intentionally jacked up my indoor voice. I usually have a stoic approach; I like to absorb a problem cerebrally and try to never appear flustered. But this was no time for stoicism or understanding. I was dealing with an appetite out of control, and I calculated my temper and words to animal training volume and tone. I had to get across what could not be tolerated.

"How? Eight Thousand Dollars! On what? Food? Clothes? Do you have any self-control at all? Don't you see you have nothing to show for this? What are you expecting, some kind of windfall of cash to take it away?" I broke down the simple math: if the bills get bigger and bigger, you probably aren’t living within your means. If you don’t do something about it RIGHT NOW, it is only going to get worse…

In retrospect, we had an ill-conceived dynamic. Eighty - Forty doesn't add up. I had always tried to make allowances so she could enjoy herself to her heart's content, while extending myself paying down the principle on the house and covering all the surprise expenses that homeowners quickly learn to expect. The more she indulged herself, the more reticent and conservative I became. Naturally, my anger that day was aggravated that any sacrifice I made up to this point went to naught.

To her credit, she paid off her debts within the next 3 years.

But I was resentful. I was resentful when she couldn't help out with bills because, after all, she was paying more than the 'minimum payment' on those credit cards (the eight thousand was only one of many). I was resentful because I had already done so much: solely provide the down-payment on a house while tossing her name down as co-owner; buying us a car that she used almost exclusively; I was resentful because it dawned on me that in addition to being the responsible one, I also had to be the one to compensate for her selfishness…because this is what I believed a partnership entailed. I responded by putting every spare penny in the bank, foregoing any venture that might be financially taxing. I put extra hours into my salaried job, hoping this might better my situation somewhere in the future. Certainly, the universe would stand up and recognize my efforts, and something good would happen! What I was saving was a basal protection, a financial barrier against what surprise she might have for me next. A hefty raise became the carrot at the end of the stick: if only I had my own windfall, I could buy a ring. Or sail around the world. Do a big something fun for the both of us.

For her, the distance between whimsy and satisfaction was a brief hop. She had a sense of self-entitlement that I never understood: at a moment's notice, she would see what she wanted and feel she deserved it simply for being her. She's not the only woman I've seen display such caprice, and found it an unattractive trait - but I wrote it off as an occasional necessity, an infrequent letting off of steam. In other women, it was an ugly petulance, but since she was my love it was simply an event and not her character. Simply another obstacle to scratching our way back to zero; I could easily spend another month putting off the things that I want.

And so I worked until I burned out.

I worked days and nights. I had maintained a level of self-sacrifice for years that never resulted in the recognition I hoped would arrive. I felt the squeeze between a partner who consumes for one and a half, and a shrinking job market that stunted my pay and increased my workload. Day in and out, my thoughts were filled with despair.

But I looked at the money I had put aside: This accumulation - partly because I no longer had the time to spend or enjoy it, partly stored as a precaution and reaction against her excessive spending – had reached an appreciative size. Wasn't it supposed to provide a comfort? It could be the down payment on a bigger house, or the beginning of a child's college education…but what mattered at the moment was that it was also saved with an ambiguous eye towards freedom and possibility. What mattered at that moment was that I could afford to perhaps, finally, do something for myself.

I quit my job.

I did it with self-righteous bravado. I felt the world was telling me I had to suffer because I had no options, when really, I had another option. And I exercised it: to not stand for the situation! And I'll confess it did not bother me as much as it should, that my partner would have to be the ‘reliable’ one for awhile. I was so proud of my nest egg, so confident I could land on my feet, that I continued to maintain that 80-40 balance without a foreseeable second income in sight. And I managed this, while throwing money into home projects and going to school, for 3 years. I was going to show a debt-loving world that there was still some reward in paying it forward; show the world those old sensible fables were still valid.

I’m still proud of what I did, even if it turned out somewhat badly.

I eventually went back to work, but with a healthier optimism. It was a bit scarier than I thought it would be - finding a job with equitable pay after being away from the industry for three years. But I scored! (Side note on the IT industry: I could’ve better spent my time away going to cosmetology school and becoming a hair stylist. Sure, I’d be on my feet all day, but the pay would be the same and I’d have nights and weekends open to enjoy). However, I don’t think I completely understood the effect on my partner. I might love morality plays played out in fables, but her world was something entirely different.

She had to explain to her peers why she was working and I wasn’t. How does one explain all I have stated up to now without implicating oneself? If she chose to vilify me, I cannot blame her. It would take a conscientious mind to explain things truthfully…and being as fiscally irresponsible as she was, it’s questionable whether she had that conscientious faculty in the first place. So if she expressed frustration to others over my inverse freedom, especially with the perception of chosen unemployment as such an available taboo, I completely understand.

Also, it was stressful for her: it was stressful from day one of my unemployment, even when I still handled the financial burden. We were one lay-off away from complete exposure, and I’m certain she felt the weight of being the person on the hook for it. It became even uglier in the last three months of my unemployment, when I had to rely on her in reality: the eighty-forty was abandoned for a sixty-forty where she was handling so much more than what she was used to. For those three months, she was carrying the same burden I carried for eleven and a half years (excepting the additional I saved or paid in principal; she wasn’t about to go that far).

We landed on our four feet: we had both provided our drama, now it was time to live happily ever after.

This is all written so long after the fact. I write these things to make them clearer in my head. For the most part, I’m over it…but from time to time, some aspect of our relationship recurs in my head making negative waves. I write about it to get it out, to see what I was missing; to look for that off chance that it will reveal to me some bit of information that I missed. Maybe acknowledging it helps me move on. The act of writing engages the left side of my brain, the dogmatic and objective side. I’m just as prone to shake something out that I did wrong, something about me that I’d like to change. I don’t think anything I’m writing today has cultural value, unless it provides an insight into money and relationships. I’m beginning to see, as I write, that it may have had some value to me.

She developed a tumor. It was benign. I was terrified at the thought of losing her; doctors can reassure you at the probability of successful surgery but the word surgery will trip you up; the word alone will kidnap your thoughts into a multitude of ominous scenarios. But she was okay. I appreciated the people who came to see her in the hospital. I doted over her during her months of bed rest. I thought it must be hard for her, unable to move without assistance…it bothered me more that the days were so short and the light was so little and it made our bedroom into a cave. Hardly a place to recuperate.

When she was able, she started going to the gym. She was very persistent about it. Over \months, a desire to lose the bed rest fat was replaced with a need to become as toned and weightless as can be. A week wouldn’t go by that she didn’t bring home another pair of new designer jeans. But she was healthier; I couldn’t ask for more. Even when all those endorphins kept her from coming home after work: hitting happy hour, going to shows, coming home who knows when.

I knew what her new lifestyle was costing her, and we slowly returned to our old dynamic. I stored for an inevitable winter. She continued to spend. After all, look at what she had been through. When I accidentally opened a bill and saw a balance of nearly five thousand dollars, I just kept silent.

There was no need to be passive-aggressive. I was in fact, already beaten. She was not going to put me in the position of having to raise my voice again.

She left me when I told her I wouldn’t change. I have to stand by that response; though it has taken me this long to figure out exactly what about me I won’t change (what exactly about me needed changing was never made clear in the first place. It had to wait to come out in numerous post-breakup conversations).

She wanted someone who invests in self discovery: really, I should go to therapy. It would be good for me. She wants someone who wants to travel the world. Learn to relax, take a vacation. She wants someone who will go out after work with her every night. She wants someone who will do this, that, and the other every weekend. She wants someone more fun. She wants to try rock-climbing and she expects someone to do it with her. She wants more sex. She doesn’t want someone who shies away from an expensive restaurant. And on and so on.

I remember my initial reaction at the time: she basically listed everything I AM NOT. After twelve years together, this was understandable. After twelve years, faithfulness and unequivocal support don’t carry much currency.

I remember my secondary reaction, when I was alone and away from her: I hated that her new job at work was centered on defining and building requirements, where people like me are supposed to provide technological solutions. It was like her brain got stuck in a rut, and this seemed entirely unfair for me.

We moved forward with the separation.

This is where it gets ugly. How do you decide who gets what? Unspoken and tacit agreements about money and material things suddenly require definition in a spiteful context. Being the abandonee, I didn’t ease the process. I argued from the standpoint of what made sense: I put all this work in the house, I plan to stay here; take the car, she uses it more; I don’t care if she found and brought the cat home, I’m the one who takes care of her; I’m not the one leaving. I’m not the one leaving. Isn’t there a price to pay for being the type of person who just walks away and abandons? I don’t care if you made out with some chick in a bar and it made you feel new, that it opened your eyes to all these possibilities. Do you think you’re the first thirty-something, sexually confused woman who thinks she can build a fresh lesbian life on the back of what her man earned for her? Well, you’re not, and go fuck yourself.

It all came down to the house. I tallied up what I put into it. I busted out percentages. I broke down what we both put into the house, and what we both could get out of it if we sold. I came up with a fair number.

She came back with a complicated road map of 401-k’s, blue book values on cars and a fifty-fifty divvy of what would happen if we sold the house. I found it hilarious, this circuitous route that cut her assets in half, that separated things I felt I had no right to. But she had this legal take for a good reason; the legal take would give her almost twice the fair one, and the legal one would always win. As absurd as its complexity was, she was going to choose the option that gives her the most money. Money in hand was what mattered to her most.

We played a dangerous game with theoreticals. In theory, we were saving this much money by not incorporating lawyers. In theory, this was the value of the house if we sold it the day she left - days after I had torn up the carpet to put in the hardwood floors she wanted. I held my tongue over all the other potentials. How we wouldn’t be arguing over the value of the house if it hadn’t been for the only one of us paying the mortgage since she left. How she was expecting a lawsuit payout from a traffic accident, and she didn’t figure this into her ‘legal’ definition of what she deserves. I just wanted it over.

We met one last time. We thought we had a number we agreed on, but we were apparently thirteen thousand apart. It was the difference between selling and not selling the house: if the house were sold, she wouldn’t have that thirteen thousand because it would be used to pay a hypothetical real estate agent. But I wasn’t selling the house, so she believed she was entitled to that money. Since I did not want to sell the house, I should pay it to her.

I was flabbergasted. This was downright offensive. I was jumping through hoops to get her bought out before the lease on her apartment was up – instead of waiting the two years allowable to me to arrange the sell of the house and then settle with her. And wasn’t she basically threatening me? Wasn’t she telling me that in order to make that check to her a little less hurtful, I had to sell the house?

I was done. I told her I would give five thousand. Through tears, she accepted.

If there IS any cultural value to impart, it is to get a lawyer. I was no longer dealing with my partner; I was dealing with an animal. I could only see my partner, though. Considering that she carried the secret with her – that we were no longer in love – for a much longer time than I had, she had me at an emotional disadvantage. In addition to all her new life requirements, she also felt entitled to be a homeowner herself, and she was going to chisel as much out of me as she could to ensure it. A lawyer would have brought all those theoreticals into play, the aforementioned ‘potentials’ would have been on the table. A lawyer would have told me not to act in haste, to not think about ending it as quickly and painlessly as possible.

Because it didn’t end there. I may have gotten her out of my life, but I’m reminded each month that I’m only paying the interest on what I paid out to her. I can’t afford much more. The housing market went in the crapper, and I just made an inflated buyout based on an inflated house value. Doubly screwed.

I keep asking myself, why now? Why so long after the fact?

One reason is positive. I think I’m healed. I think that after dicking around for a year and a half, I’m finally thinking about my own new life. When I think about what I want to do with this new life, I’m angry at how trapped I am. How little I have to offer, because I let myself get taken advantage of. And I know what regret feels like; it is an ugly tarnish on what should be something hopeful and bright.

I think part of it comes from shutting her out entirely. I don’t know how she fares now. I know I never wanted to know how great she is doing. When the fables don’t come true, when evil prevails, when you are thoroughly played…you’re not up for watching a victory jig at your own k.o., you’re just not up for it. But distance from the event has made me wonder. Is she a raging lesbian now, or did she find a nice man-gina? Did I earn her enough money so she got that house of her own? Can I find anything positive in the time we did have together?

That is where it all comes home; that’s the reason I write these things.

How it would end between us? It was always evident. As clichéd as it sounds, it was about the money. We could get along gangbusters, but it could never last. Not a pay-it-forward guy like me, and a pray-the-bank-makes-an-error-and-wipes-out-my-balance girl like her. My only regret is that it took her so long to realize her requirements. Scratch that: her requirements were cognitive bursts, a running list of wants by line item. What I wish is that she took the time, a long time ago, to metacognitavely realize what all those wants require. She shouldn’t have wasted her time on a man who likes the simple things in life, who practices living within one’s means. I wish she could have just walked on by, looking for the big money-maker, instead of taking advantage of a nice, well-intentioned guy like me. There’s nothing wrong with that! I watch the E! Channel…I think it’s even celebrated as a virtue.

the trees

2009-01-04T23:01:00.000-08:00

I liquidated my anxieties, thumbed my rosary beads, burnt a votive, and nothing happened. Selective attention and self-fulfilling prophecy: aren’t they a little like Tweedledee & Tweedledum, with their exasperating agreement to never disagree? Well, this is the time of year that Carroll’s comedic duo haunts my home. Each winter, I twist and wring out all this negativity bandying about in my brain; a pablum puddle of stress and insecurity and unfettered fretfulness I offer as a little sacrifice…a little reassurance, that the trees will not fall on my house. Because nothing bad will happen if I put pay to it; because nothing good ever happened if I didn’t lance an ounce of flesh.

It isn’t like, one year I decided to become fearful of the trees in my yard. It started with the last prolonged snow storm. The branches of the trees were weighted with snow; a spike in the temperature the next day was followed by freezing temperatures that night that turned the pine’s beautiful white coat into a cumbersome armor. A little after midnight, the branches began falling. The first one took out the corner of the garage, and as I was out to investigate, neighbors from up the street were standing in the alley way: the crack on breaking, the landing on the garage, was enough to rouse them. I assured them everything was okay, no one was hurt. What else could I do at that moment? I drew a mental geometry in my head, figured if a tree fell it would fall short of their home, and wrote them off as saintly for their concern.

But that was only the beginning; the next twelve hours brought eight additional branches giving up the ghost. Sometime in the wee hours, M abandoned the master bedroom for the living room sofa – putting a little distance outside of the trees’ canopy. I slept alone, each new thud interrupting my R.E.M. with a fire crack and jump starting my heart rate with a defillibrating pop. I don’t have many regrets, but I definitely regret sticking it out in this manner, I carry some second-guesses over thumbing my nose at Mother Nature by standing pat and pretending there was nothing to fear. Ask any Scientologist: the subconscious is no place to make a stand, and mine took a beating that night…by trying to sleep through trauma, I put out the welcome matt for engrams galore. When I awoke the next day, there was a mish-mash of large branches that in one place came to my waist; by the time I had cut and de-branched, I had a mass that could fill an entire room.

None of the aforementioned is news to people I know. If you know me slightly; if you have seen my home, I have mentioned the trees. You know I live in fear of them. It is a tentative, peaceful cease-fire…I don’t want them to disappear, but each windstorm announces a new political unrest. If you haven’t seen them: they are two majestic pines that loom over my tiny, 1000 sq. foot shack. There are two more trees in my neighbor’s yard, one of which is a ponderosa pine whose needles seem to fall only in my yard. I’ve cursed at all four of them since my first year here, when I spent the fall raking pine needles out of my dead lawn; a lawn killed by their acidic injections. I could never resolve what to do with them. On the one hand, they were a bonus when I bought the house. Look in any direction, and you will not see trees so tall. There are four of them, so they have an interlocking root system. I simply didn’t see the downsides when I bought the home; I didn’t grasp the amount of maintenance. And I didn’t know we would come to this contention where I would be on the losing side.

Up until the snowstorm, I had never conceived of an entire tree falling. It’s something that just doesn’t happen, right? But I read about it in the papers. Roads are closed because a tree fell. Electricity is lost because a branch took out the wires. I would try and determine what kind of tree it was, how old it was, what kind of conditions made such a thing possible. Part of the reason I tell everyone about the trees, is simply to get some reassurance. I want people to tell me that these pines look healthy, that we get enough water that their roots are strong and they would never give entirely.

The last several years have been difficult. Simply knowing that a windstorm is coming fills me with dread. The trees have become a strange Achilles Heel, a chink in my normally stoic posture. I have given so much power to them, and when the winds kick up they affirm it with a mean-spirited validation. I lay supine and jet awake at night, imagining escape plans should the greatest crack resound…while they assert themselves in a fanning fury, reminding me there was a time when people believed it was the trees that made the wind. It is a primal instinct and short stone’s throw from animism, but they make a convincing case: my heart rate accelerates – sometimes pull me from my sleep – as their flailing tantrum is thrown above me.

I know it is illogical, but I cannot have them cut down.

Despite the inconvenience of maintaining them. Despite knowing I’ll never have a beautiful lawn. Despite knowing that a well-placed lightning strike could destroy my house; even knowing I’ve wasted so much anxiety and stress should the worst never happen.

Part of it is the novelty – I look about me and see that I’m a rare custodian for what many people would see as a developmental inconvenience. It hearkens back to the first time I walked through this empty house and looked up between the trees’ interlocking branches and felt a full heart and reverent awe. I’m wary what would be the outcome from amputating the x-factor in a personal pride. Also, as ashamed as I am that I’ve developed this insecurity about the trees, it too has become a part of me…it is as though, in lieu of having a god to be illogical over, the trees have stepped in as my personal absurd recourse (and discourse).

There is one other reason.

I believe we roll over peaks and valleys, that nothing is ever all-up or all-down. And the trees might challenge me the year round, but this intense aggravation is bookended in the harshest winter. I know it is coming, I can brace myself for it, and there is a familiarity to my anxiety: I know how to deal with it, I’ve exhausted my imagination playing the terrifying scenarios over and over again in my mind, and I guess…if the worst happened, I’d like to think my body would react accordingly.

Then spring comes. It only happens several days through the season, but as I come home from work, a full block from my home, I hear a sound competing with the car traffic. I’m always impressed with the ruckus the returning birds can kick up, surprised that I can hear it from so far. I begin to walk a little slowly, taking in the moment: hundreds of birds converge in the trees; finches and sparrows and some I’ve never been able to classify. By the time I’ve reached my front steps, it is like a sheet of white noise…only it is a cacophony of individual chirping, an orchestral rehearsal. And I tell myself, this is my home. It is a wonderful end to a work day; I usually grab a chair and set myself below them, below the spring blue sky. It is chaotic and joyful at the same time, and I want them to go on and never end but I know this is only their rest stop and they are bound to move on. But it isn’t lost on me: it’s no longer just about me and the trees. And I feel pretty lucky, knowing I’m custodian for these tiny beings as well, believing that each year they identify my home and my trees as their rest stop.

deep six ought eight

2009-01-01T22:31:00.000-08:00

when i send my mind searching for arching themes to sum up last year, one song plays over and over as the images flip by. it isn't a song by my favorite artist, nor is it even a sentimental favorite, but it fits perfectly with the backdrop of failed, half hearted pursuits and the revolving-door of transient relationships sprinkled over the period. Morrissey invoking the title, 'lost', and each context he presents giving us an opportunity to drop the term as excuse or resignation, is hauntingly a propos for my mental 8 mm. i try not to fight my brain on these things; if my gut, heart, chi or whatever, annoints the moz as its song troubadour laureate, i'll unashamedly acquiesce. indeed, i was lost in 08.

when i look at the peaks and valleys, i have a tough time seeing them simply as such. a high point was buying M out of the house and being quit of her...though i'm still kicking myself for not really looking out for my best interests and likely overpaying to expediate the process. out of the biggest positive, i'm still second-guessing the outcome and dealing with the negative results. the lowest point, the justice show...i made a complete ass of myself in my public drunkedness, and spent weeks hating myself over it. but it was the first of a couple rock-bottom moments that prompted me to start drinking less and start focusing on taking better care of my body. so: out of the sour came something sweet.

that these intenser moments came in the early half of the year doesn't surprise me. the year vibrated like a struck tuning fork. i had more questions, was more ill at ease - more lost - at the beginning. i was more erratic and misdirected in trying to be something different than who i was, either overshooting or falling short of my mark. i just needed to be centered, and the tines didn't come to rest until the closing months of the year. acknowledging you are lost is a good start: from there, you're either going to posit where you want to be and make your way there, or you are going to plant a flag where you are and start seeing things in relation to where you made your stand. I think I'm going to do a little of both in ought nine, resolving to stop wandering.

and maybe a year from now, i'll be looking back and hearing 'sing your life' jauntily ringing each image in. or if i'm lucky, 'last of the famous international playboys.'

Urban Famine

2008-12-16T22:49:00.001-08:00

I will try and make the best of today, but most of the people here see me as a threatening pariah and unknown quantity. Most of them do not approach me; I have to sidle up to their little groups, show my affable side, and undo whatever mots de merde have been bandied about in grumbled spite at my general affluence. Can I be blamed for my anticipation, or for a situational providence? Testimony has come my way confirming I can certainly be held in suspicion for it. Meh. It is the suspicion the weak have for those with the power and pull, the uncomfortable alliance the dependent have with those on whom they depend, mostly so when the relationship is undefined and left open to fanciful interpretation. This much, this much I can appreciate - and I can understand their group wariness, even when it springs up amongst them in camaraderie of mutual insecurity. What I wish the people could understand – is that I never asked for this relationship. I only pursued advantages for my own reassurance and longevity, and this foisted me into a position of responsibility…and I am among them today simply to enjoy a little cake. To celebrate Horace’s ninth birthday; my good friend Mikal’s eldest son. This is supposed to be a beautiful occasion, a cause for celebration, and I was drawn to the street by the people en masse. That such an agglomeration is not associated with a rumble, riot, looting or…strategic displacement of undesirable people...is no fault of mine.
“You might remember my husband – he was on the committee that organized the barrier in Arbor Heights.” She detaches herself from a group of women, holding blankets and quilts in her hand. That she looks my age – an age where anything attractive we once had diminishes in favor of asset or status – is not lost on me. “He always spoke highly of you. That you were a solid comrade; that you looked to what would benefit the most for the greatest number of people…despite the decisions that needed to be made.”
“And what was his name…?”
“David Douglas. You might not remember him by name. I know there was a sense of urgency at the time, that names were unimportant and quickly forgotten.” She looks about, measuring the distance of people for reassurance that no one but the two of us can hear: “He set out with two others to go east. This was in May, and he hasn’t returned. Phaedra and I…we are so terrified. It’s been seven weeks since his promised return.” I tell her that I can ask after him. I can get an inquiry to the bootleggers who commerce in information as well as contraband - but it does little to mollify her anxiety. “My daughter and I have gone over this a thousand times. He is not coming back. Either he is dead, or he has found a better life and left us behind to feign for ourselves. He left us with this…he left knowing the risk, and he wrote the date on a rock and told us many times that should that date pass, we need to begin a future without him.” As she spoke, she pushed her bundle to me, in a suppliant application.
I ask her, “Isn’t this for the boy? For Horace?” She looks away from me.
“No, it is for you. Just so that we can have some kind of consideration. We live in the same division – three blocks over, though we’ve never met – and we don’t have the fortune of having a garden. We have to get by on trade. This, this we can spare and hopefully, we can establish a rapport of sorts…I’m not sure what we will gain by it. Possibly your goodwill. Or protection.”
I’m taken aback. Nobody could have anticipated my coming out and joining this cold afternoon, and I cannot recall the last time I participated in any gathering dedicated to levity. I look past the woman to her daughter – a wispy twenty-something who could be beautiful if life were not so hard, if we could all be well-fed and didn’t need to consider how we spend each calorie of expendable energy. And I think of how long it has been since I’ve been with a woman. I’ve never felt comfortable with my position in the community; I’ve mostly wanted to be alone, and I would partner with others only as the need arose or whenever I saw fit. But I’ve remarked the faces about me today, seen how no one will meet my eyes, and I can feel it: they respect me as a necessary evil, a key to their own survival.

When I was younger, I read that one in every two hundred men could claim ancestry to Genghis Khan. He was a merciless warrior and apparently, a profligate rapist. The statistic seemed so fantastic that it would always return to me – the grist of disbelief. For every two hundred men I would meet, one of them must have had this gene, could have had this capacity for ruthlessness that I wanted no part of. It foreshadowed my distrust for fellow men, and I forged relationships as cautiously as a scout making hhis way through a field of landmines.
“Please. Give what you have to Horace – I suspect this is what you intended. I appreciate your gesture. You can come to my home anytime; we can discuss in private what it is you need to improve your circumstance. I am not here today to barter services or material necessity.” I shift my head and eyes about to let her know the conversation is finished: “Now I must try and find Mikal…”
I break away from her. I know I have given her the impression of a man obdurate, but I am secretly flattered – she is offering a validation I never thought I needed. This idea that the people might see me as their own warrior, even if it is a mantle I do not necessarily accept. I see Mikal at the center of a group of people, and they disperse at my approach.
“Well done, Mikal. Or should I commend your wife? I can’t envision you going door to door and inviting all these people.”
His smile is sheepish. “You know how I feel about this. She does it out of spite. The boy is lame; he cannot lift a thing. Look at him. The only thing working is that mouth of his.” I pat Mikal on the shoulder. “It is different for a woman. You might put the food on the table, you might be her support, but the boy is the apple of her eye. Their existence is more entwined than your marriage, even though you are the father.” Now it is my turn to lower voice, and I lean into his ear: “Is that what today is about? Did you have the talk with her?”
Mikal’s pause is drawn out, and he barely moves his lips to mutter. “It did not go over well. What am I to do? I feel terrible about the accident, but I don’t know if we could handle another year like the last one. We are still young. Times can improve – I believe they will! But this is too much. Oh, the days I went without eating.” He inhales deeply and releases a dramatic sigh. “Entire days.”
I feel so bad for him. I cannot imagine the joys or the grief that become a father. I look at Horace: the boy with the crooked arm. His right arm, broken several years ago when he and some other boys were playing in the quarry. When we arrived at the scene, it was folded like an accordion holding its air, swinging about when we removed him from the rubble. We tried to set it back in place. The boy’s screams were harrowing. We didn’t do a very good job, and the arm didn’t heal straight and apparently there was some nerve damage. He could eventually move his fingers, but he could feel nothing with them. When he reached the age that bring the young into toil, the men were frequently interrupted with Horace’s dropping and breaking things. He will forever favor the hand that is not naturally adept, his full potential will be a scepter haunting him.
I sit down next to Mikal and we watch his son together. I try to make him feel better. It is a tribute to the occasion. “Well he is full of happiness today. And you are right - things might make a positive turn. There’s no use worrying about it now, we have a planting soon, food won’t be a concern, and who knows? There might be something the boy can do to make your family’s life easier.” Mikal gives me one last smile before looking to the ground in contemplation. But I know we are thinking the same thing; it is the way anyone of us who has survived these past decades will think - or we would not have survived at all. We are thinking about what we will do if the situation worsens.
I’m already contemplating and bracing myself for what might fall upon my own hands, when I think of Genghis again: the statistic that sits in my mind as a nuisance. I had never factored that I could be the cursed numerator in a novel, insidious statistic.

I kneel down on the floor next to her spent frame. I set a large bowl next to her filled and overflowing with ears of corn and potato and carrots, and my heart is warmed as her eyes widen to take it all in. “Take this home for you and your mother. And this:” I present her with a 30-06 and six shells. “You surprised me when you said you had no weapons.” Businesslike, I make exaggerated movements to draw her attention: “You load it like this.” I put the cartridge in place and cock the rifle. “…and aim. Now, don’t go out and kill anyone with it, or we’ll hunt you down. I will hunt you down. And I’ll make sure there are more of us than there are shells I’m giving you now.”
Her eyes do not move from the rifle as I hand it to her. “How many people have you killed with it?”
I tell her she doesn’t need to know. “People can get by without killing anyone at all; aren’t you are proof of that? First rule: consider this a tool to warn intruders off. Rarely do they act alone anymore…if a group attacks, a warning shot might be all you need to distinguish your home as one that shouldn’t be invaded. Killing should be a last resort. Always a last resort.”
She is adjusting to the weight and feeling its density: “But there’s so much we could do with it.”
“No. You are too young to remember. There was a time when killing for food was unacceptable. A taboo. I know this will be a difficult transition, but there are those of us who want to bring this time back. For the community. Even for the people who threaten us…it needs to be something that we never consider or accept. Ever again.” I offer her my hand and lift her to her feet.
I lead Phaedra to the door. Though I tell her to call on me should they need anything, I want that they will be sufficient and I will not hear from them again. I feel it as a resignation and guilt over my actions. There is an allure in the supplicant, an allure that awoke a sleeping libido – it was further fueled knowing she was a child, 30 years my junior. It was enflamed when I could tell she was getting no pleasure from any of our coupling, and I was soon overwhelmed, mouth-breathing all my future sadistic plans for her to the back of her ear. I am able to better see the transaction for what it was, now. Now, that I am fully engorged.
Not that I wouldn’t do it again. With a different woman. But I don’t have an unlimited supply of rifles.
I have forty-seven of them – an assortment of automatics, specials and game-hunting fare - minus this one bartered away. It is an odd assortment, many taken from a looting grab-ass spree when two dozen of us ventured Northing in the earliest weeks of the famine. When we knew we could call it such, when circumstances were begging a name to attach to the pestilence. We raided like locusts: piloting stolen shopping carts, shattering shop front windows as we berated bystanders waving our baseball bats and voicing hostage-scenario threats. It was a successful route. Many of us absconded with carts loaded with tin-canned imperishable. Two of us came away with a small arsenal. “Haven’t they heard the old parable about teaching a man to fish?” The other asked me. I could only smile as we watched the others congratulating each other for their plunder. They measured their success in their immediate need, for them and their families. “Perhaps we forgot our aphorisms and parables when our stomachs became empty.”
I become nostalgic when my thoughts are redirected to those first several months. It was a time of rampant adrenaline and collective ambiguity. In a short amount of time I went from being nobody to approaching someone untouchable. It was a time where many of my shortcomings were reinterpreted as strengths. A time where the bar of success became an irrelevance, and old subjective values lost their density. When I awoke each morning, the anticipated drudgery of a former life was displaced by a new reality – a notion that I could possess more prominence and leverage before my head hit the pillow at the end of the day. I can think of no better way to explain it: the world’s end marked my new beginning.

Nobody can point to one single event as the downfall. Certainly, there are as many root causes as there were once attention-seeking pundits, but I hold it to be true: the disparate, cataclysmic events were unrelated. Every claimed root cause will find a series of perpetrators. Some caused by humans, some caused by policy, some caused by nature.
I was born at a time when the ‘energy crisis’ – or the existence of such – was coming to the forefront of world debate. Our own country seemed to be the last to reach a consensus that it was deserving attention; that it needed to be addressed in policy. Ours was a country with a long history of division. The country as a whole was divided, and you could take any large parcel of land within it and find more division therein. Still it was a rich country. We were all well fed, so our tensions were comprised of pettier things. We had so much, yet were so unappreciative of it. All of our citizens had so few worries, so many conveniences, that we valued our opinions – ideological, traditional, and culture-edifying – as something more valuable and true than natural law. We saw politics as a casual dissipation: not something that needs constant attention and internal pressure, but an intermittent event where having a voice becomes an electuary compulsion. And within this framework, we had dissension that an environmental or ecological problem existed. Within this framework, there were even still, deep seated resentments that would interfere in fixing it.
We were a strong, but slowly-progressing country. A country rooted and obsessed with its own unique history. A narcissistic, central and self-referential country as well. Debates would culminate in arguments invoking our constitution and within our temporal frame of reference, attempts to interpret the intentions of our forefathers. We became a country of two opposing mindsets: to take risk or stay pat. To create a utopia for all, or allow each individual to pursue their own best interest unfettered. To provide guarantees, at a national level – or to make each person responsible for their own life. A country frozen in its bipolar identity; a government that encouraged only the two loudest and majoring voices. With a political structure that allowed the perpetuity of only two parties, our way of life was subject to a game of constant tug-of-war.
There were many signs at the end of the century, so many warning signs. Signs that humanity was negatively affecting the global climate. Signs that we were losing our competitive advantage on the global market. We looked to our fathers and mothers and envied them their bounty of opportunity and opulence; believed we should have the same even if it meant borrowing against our children’s future - so that we could possess it in our own turn and validate our own efforts. There were some brave enough to cry out against a consumption that came naturally to a status-minded public, but their warnings were discredited. Their facts and evidence were dismissed as selective attention and self-fulfilling prophecy. A natural apocalypse was reduced to a matter of faith by the same interest groups who professed that the faith they offered would culminate in a supernatural apocalypse…
The wealth of our nation, even as it devolved into farce, still drew respect. And resentment.

People often inquired about Blake Island. It was a former tourist attraction, just shy of a square mile, resting in Puget Sound. When we were a metropolis, people would board from Elliot Bay for Tillicum Village: spend an afternoon being served lunch and beer while being entertained with tribal dancing. To our knowledge, the island never had more than a few, to no, residents. Now it was hard to tell. It looked no different from our shore, to those of us who could remember from our youths. A bountiful mound of majestic pine trees. The potential for wood resources and farmable land. An advantageous outpost. Several families wanted to inhabit the island, seeing it as a place of safety and privilege. Getting there by kayak would be possible, as the island lay but four or five miles from our shore. For many months, we spoke with wonder and what ifs and we brainstormed how we could get a couple dozen of us out to the island and back. We spoke big with our words, and we collectively dreamt a lodge that would house us and protect us before moving on to the peninsula where true game might be found.
The expedition had to wait, however. In my own neighborhood, all the men’s days were focused on breaking rock. Food was the greatest priority, and we were still trying to undo the progress that had become a hindrance in the new world. The neighborhood would awake these winter mornings to the peal of a sledgehammer breaking up street concrete - Clark had an internal clock and skittish hypertension that sounded our daily work bell – and screen doors slammed as we joined him, still aching from the previous day’s labor.
We broke up the sidewalks and the street. We created a rock quarry at the southern downhill side of the street, tacitly agreeing on a wall where none of us felt we had relationships with people we would miss. The women and children would join us, herding up any object that could be put to use breaking rock and putting their backs to the wheelbarrow or carrying away of rock and sediment. As the sun set, we cajoled Clark to give it a rest: the end of his workday would herald our own. It took a good solid month, this setting free to the soil.
When we took on this work, I would say that a third of us were still present. Many left with the hope that prosperity could be found elsewhere. Some left quietly, with resignation, looking about them and knowing that they did not have the heart to compete against their own neighbors for food. A few – individual members of families – simply disappeared. There was a woman, Samantha, who would sing aloud to fill her own ears with the sounds she missed from her iPod. She would take long walks, sharing her melody with anyone who wanted to invite a little joy into their heart. Whenever I recognized her tune, it would bring back all the memories I had attached to it and I would find myself humming it for hours. Then she was gone. She was one of many, and nobody, not even her family, suggested that we go looking for her.
It was agreed that it made the most sense for our downsized community…plant our food outside our front doors where we each had equal opportunity to guard over it, and guard against each other. Anything grown on each individual’s property, in our own yards, we would retain as our own. It was an agreeable mix of the communal and the rights of individuals to put forth an extra effort to gain a surplus.
After the spring planting, our focus returned to the expedition. We took inventory and found we could muster a half dozen kayaks or small boats to accommodate twenty-two people. It would take that many to carry them the mile to shoreline, but we agreed that only eighteen of us should go to Blake Island: we did not want to risk not having enough room should a boat capsize. Reuben and I brought guns; Clark and Mikal, in separate boats, would drop fishing poles. After all the work in getting the boats to shore, we didn’t want to waste such an opportunity. We were each anxious with our own private expectation at what we might find! Almost a year had passed since we banded together into some unknown venture - and despite our many talks leading to this day – we knew we could not have visualized every possible contingency.
None of us had made this journey in the prior life. With the weather and the water at calm, we guessed at how long it would take…I thought ninety minutes. At midpoint, both shores looked like impossible swims and the rolling currents felt like Mother Nature’s muscles posturing in flex and extension. The salty air brought out an affected ribaldry and we shouted quips across our vessels, making light of our threatening surroundings. It was as though we were channeling the spirits of ancient sailors or triggering a latent gene. We quieted our merriment as we neared the east shore of the island, the first to arrive taxiing until we could group a hundred feet from shore.
Our boats met in an uneven starfish shape: “There’s a landing dock on the north side – we could reach it in another fifteen minutes,” Conrad said in a low voice, barely strong enough to carry over the hum of water. I disagreed. “If there are people on the island, we don’t want to use the front door. I say we land here.” The others nodded in agreement, but inside I felt sick that we had never discussed such an important detail. When this played out in my mind, we were landing at the southern tip of the island, but the northwestern currents steered us to the eastern side. My mental scenarios were being upended by the reality of the moment, and doubt and second-guessing were invited into my decision-making process.
We hit the shore, a tight little ledge that blossomed immediate into a coniferous wall. The boats were secured to the trees, flopping from side to side in the wading water, with plenty rope to spare. We broke into six groups: as many groups as we had guns. We felt like we were back on plan. We would advance about a hundred yards branched apart from one another, canvassing the tiny island.
I led the eastern shore-hugging party, bracing my automatic ahead of me. The first leg of our journey was a cumbersome incline, manipulating our feet through ferns brushing our waists. The absence of trails was interpreted as a positive sign, and every few minutes I reminded myself to never let the east water completely disappear from my sight or I might lose my bearing. This has to be a safe place. If there were a threat, we would have felt it by now. If there are people here, they have to be more frightened of us. I did not know we were making slower progress than our neighbors. As we heard Randall yell, we broke into a run.
“A Chinaman! A Chinaman!”
No thought was given to what might attack our legs below the ferns; I am amazed none of us tripped and fell. Our threesome reached the scene of the standoff. Not twenty yards ahead of us, there were four of them, their hunched statures making like disembodied busts above the sea of ferns. They did not appear to have any weapons. One of them shouted: “What do you want?”
“We’re just checking out the island! We are not here to harm anyone.”
It was my voice again, taking control of the situation. Though normally reserved among people, it takes only a few moments of ambiguous suspension to draw me out. I navigated myself towards them, aiming the automatic to the sky. I was almost upon them and I could see their visible shaking - they were, indeed, more afraid of us than we were of them.
They were a family. Korean. They reached the island as we did, departing from Alki Point - not several miles from where we debarked, but four weeks prior. As both of our groups converged in this small clearing, I continued to probe them with questions: “Is there game on the island – how do they eat? How many are you? Why did you leave the mainland? Have there been other visitors like us?” But these were the questions that they would not answer. They would look at each other and demur.
Rueben leveled his gun at them. “You don’t have to talk. But you’re going to lead us to your camp. Now.” They lowered their heads and turned to walk, and Rueben lowered his arm as they acquiesced.
They did not lead us far before we broke into a clearing. Though the trees enclosed the island in an illusion of unaffected permanence, the unkempt grass reminded me of what happens when society breaks down, just how much our old world needed constant care and maintenance. An asphalt trail was lined with benches half-swallowed in the overgrowth. If there was any game on the island, it wasn’t of the grazing sort.
I directed Reuben to stay outside with the family while several of us trekked to the performance hall. It loomed disjointed against the landscape, a majestic log cabin. Inside, we milled about like insects: surveying the kitchen, looking for sleeping quarters, walking about the stage and pretend-commanding over the large room. It was an eerie novelty in this unlit setting…but I wasn’t getting any of my questions answered. The looks on the others queried the same thing: where is the food? How did they make it a month on this island?
“It’s out back!!”
We followed Clark’s voice. Ruling out edible game and the limited containment of the island, I think I already knew. Emerging onto the back deck, I took in the fire pit and several refrigerator units hugging the backside of the lodge. Clark was walking towards us from the edge of the woods, waving a bone in his hand. It looked like a femur.
“There’s a rat’s nest of them back there,” pointing to the trees. Clark breathed heavily, carried by a frenzied enthusiasm. “They’re human. I found a couple heads. We need to get out of here…it might be a trap.”
I looked at the fire pit for some kind of evidence but none was divulged. I looked again at the refrigerators. “We aren’t going to open them!” Phil froze in midstep, and then slowly backed away from the metal tombstones. “I don’t care how curious you are. Leave them be.”
We rejoined at the clearing. I asked that the island inhabitants take us back to our boats, for we had seen all we needed to see. The looks on their faces were defensive and shameful, and I tried to sidestep the taboo issue. “We are not here to fight or conquer…I’m sure you understand our curiosity to see whether the island was inhabited or not, and we have our answer. Let us part without issue.” I warned Rueben, in quiet convoy, what we found: my fears that we don’t know how many others might be on the island, and that we need these men with us as hostages. They managed to take the island once, so they must have had some hidden means – despite how harmless these few appeared. But we were returned to our boats without event or ceremony. We didn’t feel completely at ease until we were rowing a good hundred yards from the shore.
The others began talking and I withdrew in quiet. A part of me wanted to see what was inside the refrigerators, but this ruthless, practical part of me, knew that the weather was too warm to open them. That whatever was inside could spoil. Those doors would be kept open as we gaped and gawked at dismembered body parts; the boys wouldn’t be satisfied until each cut had been held up and displayed in morbid curiosity. And it would all go bad, down to the last cut and chop. It would be useless and pointless.
I could not judge what these people had done. It is possible they only displaced a band of people who dispatched another band of people the same way, who in turn did the same. The island might be a microcosm of our world today, repeatedly eating away at itself, inheriting the shelter of the old world but having to reevaluate what is truly necessary to survive. And when they saw us, they probably thought their time was up – they would have offered what was in those refrigerators to buy another day, only to have us leave. Withdrawal seemed the most mutually benefitting option, and I had to avoid such an awkward parlet. I’m not ready to see people I know arguing whether we should barter in such a thing as human flesh. Suppression and avoidance sometimes has its place in human interaction.
Perhaps we can return in a year, better knowing what to expect. Perhaps there will only be one person left when we return: a reluctant king, an embittered victor.

Our city, like any other metropolis, had an identity all its own. It was the only city I ever knew, and I wanted to grant it at least that much! As a child I would visualize the city as a sprawling, supine body in human form. A ghost overlaying the landscape. I would try and see the body in my mind, but it escaped me in a transparency because it was its moving parts that were the thing that mattered. Tiny cars making their way along vein-like streets carrying the blood in and out of the heart, the heart of a thumping shopping center. People were like blood cells. Some existed to move, some existed to heal, and some existed to transcend the needs of this fanciful, hypnagogic vision. The heart beat in the shopping malls, the mouth consumed in the most elite neighborhoods, and somewhere in the south – we’ll call it Tacoma – the remainder that could not nourish was unceremoniously deposited. All that I took in, I took in as indicative of the actions of something greater. I could never take the intensive or individual and see it for what it was. Many people generalize from an extensive point of view, and make their judgments against the individual in light of it. I believe I worked in the reverse; I took in the smallest parts and wondered their place...how they forged their place, into some greater whole. What greater purpose did these tiny motes, or their actions, serve in the movement of this mighty beast?
I may have been right in my vision. The metropolis was an audacious entity, a noble monument…but against nature. It would have its rise and fall; its birth and heyday and sad decline. It would contend against other like entities, and they would eye each other’s interests suspiciously as they sought what the one could get from the other; just how far it could trust the other and what metrics sounded an alarm when the other was a worthless dead weight or becoming a potential threat. All these great cities. Accelerating their passage of blood and reinforcing their own metabolism: posturing and affecting a hopeful individualism as they all equally petitioned a central government for favor. The Federal government acted like a head cheerleader plying each social clique, granting favor to any confidential ear who could keep it private, promising everything to everyone who would vote her homecoming queen. My young mind would despair in disgust. It saw the world in this superficial schema, became bound by it, and hoped little for it.

I don’t have the answer. I have my moments where I feel I grasp it, but it eludes me. Like many others, I want to have a single cause I can point my finger at. Some act that I can point at, and with all the others say: ‘we’ll never make that mistake again!’ But it isn’t that simple. It is more gasoline fueling the argument, as we take exception to what the other believes is the problem. I’ve had many fireside chats with the others. We hold many of the same disagreements we had before. If I could separate them into different corners, they would fall between carrying a sense of responsibility to something greater than the self - opposed to a petulant, selfish expression of individual will. My phrasing may give away where my sympathies lie.
Our country was already over-extended when we elected a politician who would promise much more in the way of what rights were guaranteed to each citizen. It all sounded very good; his like-minded Congress echoed his sentiment and healthcare was added to ‘life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His opponents gratingly called it the Nouveaux Deal. With hindsight, I can understand their criticism. Once we embrace, or have implemented, a well-meaning social program – it is never easily eradicated. Not even when it has outlasted its usefulness.
And as it is with any other social program, it created division: some people truly needed it; some people felt like they couldn’t take advantage of something they were funding unless they were sick or dying. I created mutual suspicion that the services were abused, and I see this as a natural reaction. I applaud those who paid their tithe and kept their mouths shut; they compete with the saintly. This did not stop universal health care from creating a new generation of people who saw death and sickness around every corner; who self-diagnosed them into emergency wards and critical care. It is a metaphysical rebellion; some people wanted to tax the system that laid an unfair tax upon them.
For the wealthy, the true leaders of the country, the new path was made apparent. They serve a higher, intangible power: share holders, some unknown and some highly vested and vocal. Enabled by advancements in communications, four of the five largest corporations were able to re-establish their executive branches outside of our country’s borders. Any debate or red tape challenging the plumbing our own country’s natural resources was deftly silenced as the perpetrator shifted locale beyond jurisdiction. Elder statesmen and retired CEO’s could be seen on television beckoning the second tier to join them in this exodus, to relocate to the new safe havens scattered over the established countries of the old world. Even third world countries put aside their envy of America’s long-standing wealth and stature to unfurl their red carpets, attracting away prominent business owners and giving them the keys to their diminutive kingdoms.
Tax penalties were applied. New laws and restrictions were passed to coerce away this trend. It was to no avail. Where possible, the jobs followed the executive to their new homes. I don’t think anyone has the answer to whether any of this was unavoidable…the government responded as expected to an event that could have happened regardless of the party in power. Some will say a very fine line was crossed with the burden of too many social programs. Others spit a raspberry at the deserters - who needs them, we can get by, by wanting less for ourselves.
The jobless rate climbed into double digits. Prices for anything you could name skyrocketed. People adjusted their needs, but the economy was in freefall. The pundits called it contraction, and graphs and variables reinterpreted our land’s aggregate product and blooming population in new paradigms in an attempt to interpret why we had time to watch this all at home on our television. I remember looking forward to Sunday morning, because I would splurge for an Americano at my coffee shop. It was the last one surviving – probably because it was not part of a global chain - and it too eventually disappeared as the world I couldn’t control continued to adjust its bottom line.
People continued to doubt global warming. Even after the third flooding of New Orleans. Even after everything west of the San Andreas Fault slid into the ocean. Skin cancer cases rose like the cholesterol levels of people who prefer bathing in the light of their television sets, but it seemed as though no one was going to change their behavior. There were many campaigns to enlighten people, but people still drove their cars to work each day, watered their lawns, and pushed every watt in their electrical box until a breaker told them enough was enough.
The terrorists became less choosy about their victims. Or maybe, they only became smarter about targeting them where they hurt. Domestic dams were targeted; oil wells abroad were set afire and burned for months. Several I recall, burned for years. So I am told. I only heard that their fires expired by way of testimony, from travelers who say it is so. Electricity had become sporadic amongst the rolling blackouts; we had slowly regressed from being an age of immediate and cheap information, to one rating information’s value low on a scale of what’s crucial and edible at the same time...

We were contentious with China. Fifteen years into our freefall, they had accumulated almost half of our country’s debt.
Debt to pay for their product. Debt to bail out our companies, only to see them leave. Debt to keep our health care, our social security, our welfare: debt to maintain a notion that America should transcend natural, financial laws, to implement a utopia. Debt accrued as we were told that consumption was a duty. The debt that aggregates when you aren’t as competitive as you would like to believe.
It is an age-old, self-criticism: we Americans are obsessed with the other; the other beyond and the other within our borders. Even the other that lives on our own street. What, you don’t believe in unfettered Capitalism? You are the Other. Any religion other than Christian? The Other. You’re the only Democrat or Republican on your street? You are the Other.
Our collective ego bought into it this notion: You are not an American? You are the Other. It never occurred that we could be this “Other”. That there could be a bigger player in the game, a more robust power - that we could be the nuisance, or something to be swept aside. For there to be an other, requires identification with a false, subjective sense of entitlement – whether it is ethnocentric, ideologically centrist, and even geocentric.
China dumped our debt on the global market because they could; they were that strong.
China dumped our debt because it was increasingly likely we couldn’t pay it off.
China may have declared war on us as they did so, but communications have been sporadic ever since.

Gas eventually became cost-prohibitive. People had always complained about the price, invoking it as some belle-weather mark of the economy’s health, but it still took many years before people stopped paying the price and investigated other alternatives or made the sacrifice of not driving at all. It was this - people adjusting their behaviors and demand – that prompted the providers of gasoline to seek other means. I remember the words of the people: they would go with another alternative when it was equally convenient and powerful. It is ironic to think when it became financially inconvenient enough, they were able to adjust and it was simply too late to make a difference. The public was too set in its ways; gasoline was like a variable in an equation that gave the city’s infrastructure a motion. It’s ectoplasms of existence.
When the combination of terrorist attacks on oil rigs, increased population, and reluctance to change met head on, the government stepped in to make private consumption of gas all but possible. It was reserved for the delivery trucks, mass transit, planes, and our armed forces. People gnashed their teeth at it. So many cars became useless; a ton of metal and plastic that could only be used at best, as a second shelter. A third or a fifth, in some cases. A few had electric cars, but the price of electricity followed that of any other resource…it became a luxury of the very few, and most would sooner spend what money they had to light or heat their homes at night than charge a car battery.
We didn’t know it at the time, but the S. S. Epiphany would be the last cargo ship to leave our port. Speculation about when another ship would arrive - when the trains would return from distributing their imports inland – bubbled on everyone’s lips. Nobody would say aloud that we were cut off, because salvation could come any minute. When shipments stopped coming in, when grocery stores didn’t receive their deliveries, store owners kept mum and unceremoniously raised their prices while they quietly horded away anything not perishable.
And there was so much buzz. Wild theories about an imaginary border that was determined at the Federal level, amputating away the remote northwest. That possibly, the federal government didn’t exist at all anymore. That China had decreed an embargo against the states. That the richest people in the world had boarded a rocket aimed at Mars. Nobody knew for certain. Between the rolling blackouts, we tried to get as much as we could from the media, but there was no news. The internet ceased to exist. If one could get a television signal, they would come across a couple dozen channels showing reruns, or worse, a lunatic broadcasting pirate television from their basement – espousing conspiracy theories about what was going down. Either way, we finally achieved an age bereft of commercials, an age where information and opinion were synonymous.

There were community groups, dating from my youth, that promoted green living and responsible consumption. These were good people; so socially minded. They were unfortunately a tiny pioneering portion of the population, their sound and logical initiatives no match for the barrage of salty, appetite-whetting grist and image that lures the population at large to seek a quenching in more material, or superficial, manna. As noble as their ideal of how the world should work, they were often very naïve about the animal in our human natures. They projected their own willingness toward good intentions upon the population...on the one hand not giving themselves enough credit; on the other giving the world at large too much Not everyone is ready to forego their interests to defer to the good of all people. When mutually existed conditions worsened, the conflict between communal acceptance and self-preservation was further divided by perceived, assumed risk: every endured sacrifice was viewed askance. The joy one sees on their neighbor’s face can only result – in their mind – from the neighbor benefiting at their expense. I don’t know of any organized communal network that survived the famine. Perhaps if all bought in…if we had all enjoyed a sense of community when we could afford to…the transition may have been different.
Instead, we had – forgive the sense of irony - la bella confusione. Several weeks of rising anxiety and misinformation, experienced privately in each home and apartment. At what point, we asked ourselves, do we stop waiting and give up hope? When do begin breaking shop windows? When I visualize this passing, I see every family looking at each other with distrust while equally summing up who could be trusted to be complicit in breaking the law to survive. And I bless those who had the foresight to flee; they are nameless heroes, true transcendentalists who took the greatest risk, made the greatest sacrifice of all they earned, to spare their families of the urban famine.
I cannot bring witness to it, being a suburbanite. Though the transition for us was an immense weight and readjustment, we had just enough resources to provide ourselves food. We had gullies and parks and arable property: we had enough to take us over that bridge of doubt and the temporal suspension between not knowing if we would be delivered, and resolve that we must take our fates in our own hands. The lay of the land - rotating hills and flatlands stepping down to the water – provided a natural demarcation between neighborhood communities. It was conducive to communal living. We had shared experiences as we withdrew from the world, by simply withdrawing from the metropolis but ten miles distant. We had all, at some point, stopped paying our mortgages in quiet, only to find there was no one to come collect. We all had the same problem of trash removal; we all lost our electricity at the same time and needed to band together for protection; we found the importance in sharing the same heat and fire. We may have hungered, but I believe a tiny part of us knew deep inside that the bleak future posed a challenge igniting an inspiration long atrophied.
But I can only imagine the city. Its tangent bureaus and compressed glass, steel, and human flesh. The city, where you will have to make your way past a thousand souls before you find a vending machine or grocery store. Where a hundred people or more may live on a quarter block. Where the supremely rich, the barely scraping away, and the homeless make contact with one another on an hourly basis. Where human activity is soldered between the service industry and a dream that your art will pay for itself someday…
I can only imagine what it was like. Did they all pour forth from their condo towers and apartments and riot in the streets? What happened when they ransacked the grocery store or corner deli to only come away with a bag of Sun Chips and a packet of head cheese? Were the off-avenue homes burned to the ground? Did they band in large groups? What happened when a thousand, perfectly functioning alcoholics, realized the problem they didn’t know they had was abruptly solved for them? I play it over in my mind, but it is more romantic in there: I see them rushing Broadmoor and throwing a party in the largest mansion. I see them inhabiting the shores of Elliott Bay and Madison Park and taking the boats to a better world – even though I know there is no fuel. I try to see the streets fill with dancing, below a DJ’s monolithic speakers - all economic differences put to the side to celebrate the Armageddon. But I know no one would use electricity for that, or put a surge at risk.
I remember a city full of life; a place where entertainment was only a short walk away. Where there were so many choices of events, resulting in stacked scheduling conflicts, which I would need five of me to take in on any given Friday evening. A complete immersion in consumption; each five of me would sell my soul to make room for a second stomach to digest it all. It was supply-side entertainment too: there were so many attractions in this circus, there were even markets for the esoteric or lovers of amusements provided to the tiniest of crowds. There was a fine line between performer and spectator – I could never tell who the flatterer, who did the humoring, was or whether the point was simply to drink and have a memorable night. Even as you obliterated the memory.
I knew a Thomas, who said he had been there. He said that many fled. That it was not a good place to be – there was general hysteria and unwillingness to give up a free, libertine lifestyle. There were hysterical mad dashes for any bar that still had a little booze to serve - that it was bartered for random utilitarian items, sexual favors bereft of any artistry, and empty promise notes for future preferment. If I am to believe him, our first outbreaks of cannibalism were in Belletown and up on the Hill. It was saddening to hear, but when he reported on it, I could only shrug. It made sense.

Mikal went for fresh water and never came back.
He isn’t the first to make south for the reservoir and not return. Mikal joked about the several who did before, heckling those who would abandon us like this. Where was my mind when he volunteered? Nobody volunteers for anything they don’t have to. The reservoir is several peaceful communities away; nobody is attacked on their way to the reservoir or the Ocean-side. I thumped the palm of my fist to my forehead. Mikal was surreptitious in letting me know his intentions.
I made a promise to Mikal and Gelsomina: I would watch over her and the boy should anything happen to him. At the time, I was picturing myself a savior to a family tragedy – not a smoldering anger at his betrayal. To me, to her, to the boy – to his responsibilities. You think you see clearly what you would do in a situation that you have promised yourself to, but the reality hands you a distorted rendition that dampens your enthusiasm. I don’t want to do it. Not if this is about him screwing me over in securing a promise that alleviates his conscience. But he is gone now; I cannot slay a ghost; I am the least victimized in his wake.
Gelsomina and I sat at the table and had an honest discussion over our new situation. I told her about my doubts about Mikal, and in her wired state, she agreed. She was full of emotion, and it was better for her to hate him alive than to lament him in death. Perhaps she was only choosing the option that gave her the most hope. Living without knowing an answer draws away our energy. Hating an enemy, even a loved enemy, has some therapeutic release.
We agreed to maintain our separate homes. I will be a father figure to the lame boy, Horace. I would convince the others that the two of them will continue to get the same share as though they had Mikal about to perform the needed work.
It is a carry over from the old world: despite all the promises we make in stride, we want to believe we will never be called to deliver. We want our lives to be lived with little upheaval; we want our tomorrow to look the way we chose to live today. I want to find some path where I can juggle these inner needs and social obligations, and this arrangement – though imperfect – approximates my want.

“Why don’t you just take them into your home? They should consider themselves so lucky. And Gelsomina has aged well. You should consider yourself so lucky…”
Clark is hitting on the wrong nerve today. We are pulling up stalks of corn. Whole, entire stalks. We are attempting to get a second harvest before fall, something we’ve never attempted. And this is not the first time I’ve been questioned about this. “We received your agreement on this. I’ve no interest in Gelsomina, and I have no interest in sharing my home. I don’t want the boy breaking my things.”
A few minutes of silence, and I can read in Clark’s face his wanting to say more, before he breaks into his plaint. “But it isn’t just Mikal. Glenn passed from old age, and there’s only ten men left who can handle the hard labor. You both have beautiful homes that anyone would envy, and if Gelsie moved out, we could attract a new couple in. It could be a good fortune, if you would only consider it.”
I answer with a smoldering look and turn my back to him. But I know he is right, and I know he is only voicing the ideas of the others. So I spend the next several months working like I am two men. I awake before everyone and at the end of the day I reaffirm myself as I see each of them quit from exhaustion. I do it to strengthen and justify my own sense of protracted entitlement. I do it to put myself beyond rapprochement, and it has its intended effect: I quiet any suggestion about how I should manage my affairs.
But it taxes me, maintaining this tangential second home. Clark is right about Gelsomina; she is a comely woman whose passion is rebirthing. She did not mourn Mikal for long; I suspect there may have been internal trouble and Mikal’s disappearance was affirmed as abandonment and not a tragic loss of life. When we were at first anytime alone, she would play the woman inspired with starting a second life - succumbing to passionate lovemaking. A lovemaking reinforcing her liberation and youth, a fire borne in spite at her own betrayer. I wondered if Mikal had been a misogynist – or not misogynist enough – because Gelsomina wanted to be defiled, disrespected and she enticed me with the depths of masochism she would creatively suggest and endure. My long work days were ghosted with an adrenaline barely pulsing enough to please her. But I would always want my own bed away from her...it was the last frontier of privacy in my life. My own bed and my unconscious, fervent imaginings.
And these disparate, unrelated parts of my life would converge upon me.
In these mental wanderings, I discipline the men into an adept fighting unit. We take neighboring communities by force. We kill the strong-willed and resistant and make an example of them, welcoming in those motivated and sensible enough to know that joining us is in their best interest. We grow stronger as a collective.
I delegate the large responsibilities, like food management and water patrolling, to those I trust the most. I have to. I cannot be responsible for all the needs of a thousand people: I determine who I can trust, and those I am on the fence about, I play against one another. But I become the leader and the last word, and I make final decisions with a forbearance that will inspire the trust of the people. Because I have to be sensible about many things that matter to them before I tell them that we are continuing to move our border south.
We succeed by expanding – taking and destroying. I galvanize the emotions and take command of a constantly growing army of men, and we survive by increasing our influence and largesse. It becomes a machine that I have no control over. There is no stop button. No way to stop or idle. It exists because it expands. Yet I am satisfied that this is simply the way it must be; if it were not I it would be another to put such a human machinery in motion. I only had the foresight to see this is so; it is better to eat than to be eaten. When you are attacked, you do not want to be the one on the hinterland of the kingdom; you want to be at its core. Let thousands perish before they reach you.
It is a fantasy I accentuate in my waking hours. Perhaps it is the exhaustion brought by the labor. I elaborate and try to fill in the cracks in my vision to make it complete. It usually ends with another community taken down, women paraded before me as I gesture to my second who is worthy of being my concubine. I and the men are threateningly formidable and half naked, brandishing our weapons. Ritualistic fires are burning to mark the ceremonious occasion. We joke whether we really need the crops they labored over, whether we should just burn it all to the ground, in a show of menacing force. We take in their fear. Their fear and complete helplessness is the most rewarding moment to putting life at risk in war; it is the complete realization of our victory. And I am never moving about in this fancied culmination of effort. I’m in recline, brought to the front by a rickshaw from which I demurely forego to alight. Because this entire scene is old business for me, and there is always another community awaiting us beyond. The parting image of the modern barbarian, the leader who lets others bloody their hands for his practical, sensible agenda.
It is an obsessive compulsion, this fantasy. Does it come from this re-emergence of my libido as I find women petitioning me because of my status? I think that is part of it. And this sense of entitlement and advantage I have against the other men in our community, it comes from that too. Fear as well. A fear that we need another Kahn to survive. A fear that I am the only man who can see beyond our tentative borders that we must act or eventually react. A fear, and a realization, that another heartless, selfish individual is needed to insure the life of others. I try to find ways in which the barbarians of the dark ages could have been simply…misunderstood.
As I work in our field, I frequently catch myself standing up, stretching my back, and looking towards the South. Somewhere in that rolling landscape, there is one such as I, one as desperately prisoner to his work as I, one who sees being a prisoner to his own interests a more appealing option – an escape from his immediate oppression. Such as I.

“Uncle T-----! Uncle T-----!”
My legs are so exhausted from my trek that waiting for the boy is a welcome stopgap. But it is strange seeing Horace this far from home: did he come out to greet me? Nonsense. Gelsie would have been expecting me from the East, and she would not have agreed to let the boy venture this far alone.
The fall was upon us, and I had an entire day to myself. I have no memory of the last such day, nor can I recall what I did with it. There was likely nothing memorable about it; I probably read from sunup to sundown and cleaned my guns not knowing how precious a day it would be.
I didn’t want to spend the day at my home. Gelsomina wanted to hike to the north beach and spend an afternoon together, but I had reached a point where no time with Gelsie could feel like an escape for me. I told her I needed this time alone to recharge; that I would likely head east to watch the skateboarding youths on the great concrete bridge and do little more. I tried to mitigate her and Horace’s disappoint, telling them they would not enjoy themselves with me today.
Only, I did not go there. I’ve seen it before - the great bridge to the metropolis. It was strange in those early days, to be upon it - gone bald with the death of the automobile. In the general anarchy of the time we treated it as a perilous slope for our skateboards. A single ride was enough, for we didn’t want to lug our boards the half mile to the top again. I hear there are sentries there now, claiming it equally for west and east communities. I hope they let the children play upon it, but I don’t know if they do.
I broke through her hemming and hawing and Gelsie was persuaded. I grabbed my rifle and backpack and headed north alone.
We are not the only neighborhood to uproot their street, and I found the alleyways a more direct route as I made my path. When I walk through these neighborhoods converted to condominiums, it feels like disadvantageously making one’s way along the bottom of a canyon. I crept slowly and cautiously, eyeing the windows and the roofs for any threatening contingency.
I abandoned this route for the main arterial, and as I did so, people were waking and descending from their homes. I was stopped and asked many questions, for I was an unfamiliar face and therefore an object of suspicion. We would do the same in my own neighborhood, and most times there is no cause for concern…I’m just a person taking a long walk! Shouldering a rifle as I do is only an indication that I mean to return from my journey.

I spent my morning having the same conversation over and over. I told of our double-harvest. For those communities that have not done so, I told of our labor in creating a farm in our street and I recommend it to them. Removed from my home, I am garrulous and lacking any pretentious, authoritative reserve. We shared rumors and information that we glean from bartering bandits flagging the troubled communities that teeter on anarchy. I repeated my words again and again, and surprised myself that I had the patience to do so.
The walk that once long ago took an hour, took three. When I reached the beach and felt the sand under foot, I collapsed in a pile. I could go no further, and acquiesced to the natural border trumping my pioneering ramble.
Those who made their living on the shoreline were too occupied to pay attention to me. I planted the butt of my rifle in the sand, and the landscape swallowed it like it was shipwrecked driftwood or orphaned pile. I surveyed the landscape and saw no one within a hundred yards of my self; I submitted to the white noise of the reaching waves and let my body relax supine. I even closed my eyes for a moment, lulled by the wall of noise. It was a background static I missed from my younger years, the loud hum of a world in motion.
“What are you doing here? Don’t tell mom! She doesn’t know we came here…”
Horace’s words draw me back to the present. I am only away for a quarter day, and my thoughts are swimming in an inattentive reverie. When his words shake me to, I react with a survey of the landscape. A jarring reaction to invisible human threats, chased by the notion that there are no witnesses about.
“Who is this we? There is no one but us about.”
The boy’s eyes fall away from mine. “OK, I come here alone sometimes.” He raises a tablet for me to look at, a picture book of drawings he has collected of penned landscapes and faintly recognizable faces. He hands it to me like it is an excuse and a confession all the same. His is a face of shame, and I feel compelled to encourage him: “These look very good. You do well with that bum hand of yours. Is this where you come to draw?” I try to look enthused; this may be all the boy thinks he is good at.
“I come here sometimes. Sometimes I draw when mom goes to your house. Here is best. I haven’t gotten caught yet.
Nobody noticed you were gone, I think. You know this and this is how you deal with it. While the other boys your age are at work with the men, you hide and you draw because you surprise yourself with your talent. You shock yourself that you have this ability, and it separates and distinguishes you and it makes you feel full at once. Here you are making beautiful art with your mangled fist in private, in a world that has no use for it. I can only imagine. Perhaps when you look through your book you feel as though it excuses you as the others labor. Perhaps. Do you know how valuable time is, when all the effort is needed to put to the dirt to make yourself fed? Oh, to have the time to scribble so. This could be amateurish and it would amount to the same.
“…but it is good. Very good.”
Horace’s eyes light up. The fears dissipate like a fog, and his face shines like a sun. He has feared this moment. I want to believe he is acknowledging the burden he has been to me these past months, but I know this is not the case. My approval validates his sneaking away and not contributing to the community; his only realization is that his anxieties were as private as his shame.

“Horace. Have you ever shot a gun?”
“You know mom won’t let me…”
“This will be our secret. Just like your pictures.”
I let him carry the uncocked gun as we head in the opposite direction. My heart’s pace races, though my mind ambles with a steady hum. “We’ll go to the gully. Don’t rush ahead of me…we must be cautious. Horace. Hold up.”
He runs run ahead, but stops where the street ends and turns into an overgrown, a black descending trail. I talk to the boy in soft tones. “We always have to be careful. There may be people down there. Even at this time of the day, when it is still light. Do you think you are ready?” Horace gives a tight-lipped nod.
As we huddle beneath the low branches and make our way down the trail, I think about my return. I’ll head south from here. I’ll overshoot the reservoir by a half mile, turn east, and return from where I said I would. It is a long, roundabout trip, but it will confirm what I said I would do this morning. And the long hike will fill me with ideas, ideas and stories about where I was that can fill an entire day – a day that accounts for where I was as I lay upon a sandy beach and gave myself over to a relaxing nothingness.
“Shh!” I raise the back of my hand to halt the boy. I draw his attention to my feet, and how I carefully avoid the branches that will snap underfoot and make a warning noise. I point to the nettles and mime a cautionary prohibitive gesture and affect a heavy brow. I stick my tongue out to make sure he gets that they are to be avoided.
The gully is more inviting, and it correlates as no surprise – more dangerous - than the parks that were left behind by civilization. Here, you feel like you are lost in an oasis of wild nature… opposed to the tailored trails of levy-sponsored governmental maintenance. One is fought against, one is well groomed. In one, you might find the occasional wild animal. In the latter, human Diasporas hide at night because it is familiar and safer. I do not know how these places came to be, how these places managed to confound civilization. Sometimes it is just the lay of the land, land that we ran out of time conquering.
I ask the boy for the gun. Horace is charged with a sense of wonder at the moment, knee deep in a carpet of ivy and gazing at the canopy of branches blocking the afternoon light from the sky. Artists can be such dreamers, subjects to their environment or muse. He is oblivious as I eject the shell from the rifle.
I hand the gun back to him, and we tread at a slight incline until we reach a clearing. It is bare, a floor of dry dead branches and hardened dirt. “I would come here as a child. We found a cave once, but its recess was barely an adventure. We travelled a few feet and were attacked by bees. You just don’t find anything like caves in the city.”
“What’s a cave?”
“Well, it is a hole to the underground.” No, that’s not it. How can I describe a cave? “Not the underground. Into the earth. Like a tunnel, but it just goes deeper. I don’t know how they’re made. Some are manmade, they would use dynamite to tunnel into the earth…man made caves were in search of something, like coal. But caves were also made by nature, and they gave early people shelter from the weather, a place to create warmth with their fire.” The boy comes of a generation that inherited abandoned homes; he is not going to understand. Horace has already lost interest, pointing his gun and aiming at the homes atop the bluffs. It is sad and comical. His askew forearm causes him to support the butt of the rifle in feminine pose.
“Here.” I take him through the steps. To load. To cock. To aim. To pull the trigger.
I set him with his legs pinioned shoulder-length apart. “You only need to pull the trigger,” I tell him. “Everything else is set. Just wait until I give the go ahead.”
I back away several steps. “Until I give the say.” Horace holds his pose. The moments are protracted and I know that all his thoughts are diluted to a single verbal impulse; it was like this when I made my first firing. Only then, the bullet and the kick were real. And I was alone. There was no one there commanding me to fire, and I only awaited a voice in my head telling me to do so.
The seconds continue to race, and I watch him as he shakes, retightens his grip against his own perspiration and I watch the subsequent moments as he wonders if he ever got back his complete bearing from all that shifting. It is a tortuous temporality, where the beginning is borne of an event with unforeseeable outcome and the end never comes and the space between is all pricked nerve. It is enough time to look about on the ground, and find the perfect size rock, a battering ram larger than my fist but not so large it could not be wielded as such.
Because I could not see a bullet wasted.

Stevens & Page

2008-12-14T22:07:00.000-08:00

With the passing of Bettie Page, I became nostalgic for the Rocketeer. Yeah, the Disney film from the 90's with Jennifer Connelly and Bill Campbell that maybe, two of you saw. I always thought it was an underrated superhero film that did the comic book justice, a film that would have succeeded if it only came out ten years later...even though it was a post-WWI pop epic that required the slightest leap of faith to follow. But Bettie, Bettie....

I wouldn't know who Bettie Page was, if not for Dave Stevens.

Dave Stevens created The Rocketeer in the eighties, and I recall it started out as one of those appendages you would find in comic books: Perhaps the magazine publisher wanted to test the waters, or the selling comic's lead act writer / artist was getting all prima donna and wanted to do fewer pages - but the Rocketeer began as a bonus seven pages at the end of unrelated material. I swooned at the art.

He contemporized classic comic book art. He also put together a story that was believable, a rarity in the graphic medium. And he knew how to draw women. I was pulled in, and rose to the challenge of putting together half stories unfairly buried in thes comic indicies. But: Bettie Page.

Stevens was a huge Bettie Page fan, and he based his leading lady (perhaps due to the temporal context) on Page. That character you see in the movie, played by Jennifer Connelly (when she had a fighting chance to do so), was meant for Bettie Page. Dave Stevens went on to more direct comic efforts, creating Bettie Page Comics:

I'm a sucker for referential art in any form. The Rocketeer harked back to an age that I knew little about, and it seemed designed to amuse the 40's youngster as much as it could an eighties teen. There aren't many writer / artists who see a viable market in that...many today are competing with video games and bringing to the reader the impossible, the unimaginable, or a new novelty. Stevens' was a more modest art, the integrity of a realist. He took on the wire walking challenge of creating a past fiction, the story of what could have been. It is a different leap of faith, and I think, more challenging than forging a new universal tangent. The art must be believable, since reality has already excused the story.

Stevens was open about his basing the supporting character on Page. It was an homage. Being the elusive idol she was in her later years, the reader could relate to the unfulfilled pining.

Dave Stevens passed away from Leukemia in March 2008. He was only 52, part of a rare breed of artists who tied the past history of comic books to their craft.

UnDead

2008-10-31T10:14:00.000-07:00

The 2008 Zombie Walk was a blast. Thanks to Wendy & Krystel for make up assistance! This was a bit out of my comfort zone - I'm a known party pooper when it comes to Halloween costumes. It was a challenge coordinating being away from the home office for hours at a stretch during a big implementation weekend - I only got paged twice, once as the march began and once at the end. It took me out of character! Over the first call, I couldn't help straightening up and speaking formally into the phone - one of the two dozen photographers ran up to snap a pic of me in my 'genuine' moment. I haven't seen the pic turn up online anywheres, but there are still quite a few on Flickr.

As for character? Next year I need to figure out a different shambling gait. I would ram my left leg forward like I was putting a pickaxe to a glacier, then swing my right in an arc. Consequently, my left leg was sore and swollen for days. My growling drone was unconvincing, my attacks on civilians half-hearted. So many things I need to work on, but I'm excited for the next zombie event...

I went home between the walk and the afterhours activities - just making sure everyone in the office was getting what they needed. Zombie Karaoke was fun, just - well, I didn't know anyone. Gabbles & me were the only Z's there for awhile, and the only people singing. But eventually the dead came out; met some cool freaks and had a good time.

Pop Politics

2008-10-25T20:09:00.001-07:00

Is it really the..sixth time? The sixth time I will be voting in the 'most important election of my life?'

If I sound underwhelmed, let me repeat: six. That's five times I've been on this emotional rollercoaster; five times that I let myself get emotionally vested in a contest that ultimately affects me very little. Two of them, feeling post-election optimistic...three of those times, spending an early November Wednesday morn with a sense of dread I knew had a long wait before dissipation or correction. Yep: I'm slowly turning into one of those independents - not jaded, not yet - who see little difference between the blue and the red. I haven't learned to cherish the good times, but I've noticed that when I don't get my way, the world fails to fall apart.

That might sound like an understatement, considering the past eight years...and what might be viewed as the worst, most role-abusive, American presidency in our history. Perhaps I've only projected the potential worst on each Republican presidency: that my privacy will be noticably impinged upon; Roe v. Wade will get overturned; my cuss-word laden music will be made illegal; etc. None of this ever happens. Even the last eight years were more of a competency & motivational, rather than an ideological shortcoming: a case of a 3rd world leader's approach to running a first world country. You know, not wanting to interrupt your vacation while your constituents perish; suspending constitutionally guaranteed liberties as a matter of convenience to meet war time aims; summarizing an Axis of Evil that will only guarantee that your enemies stay your enemies.

Not like any of this is President Bush's fault. Way back in 2000, didn't he look into a camera and say that he trusted voters to make the right decision? He may have lacked a pre-emptive nerve when it comes to the environment, but he was golden on war, and on putting the onus on the decider...which in this case was the American public.

Which also makes a case against Democracy in general. If it were a perfect world, we would have a cap on the number of times we could vote. I mean this in seriousness. If you knew you could only vote in 3 presidential elections in your whole life, would you chose differently when and how you voted? Wouldn't this eliminate the 'cold war' of voting against the opposing party every four years? I would think if we are going to have term limits, we oughtta have voting limits too.

Even if 2008 doesn't bring us the 'most important' election of our lives, it vies for the most novel and entertaining.

Up until the last several months, I really liked John McCain. I think the McCain of 2000 could have made a swell - certainly better than the one we had - president. He seemed to have an honest, sincere connection with people, and at that time he distanced himself from the religious right - he was a maverick, y'know - that provided a small reassurance that he wasn't out to marginalize substantial portions of the American public. He tended to shoot his mouth off as much as Bush, but it had more to do with being direct than being self-servedly cavalier.

There were plenty of red flags, but the first one that realy mattered was the 'Bomb Bomb Iran' clip. When I saw that clip, fully understanding that the rest of the world gets to watch it too, I felt that in the eyes of the world - our leadership could end up looking like the leadership in N. Korea or Iran. Tattooed in 'nutjobbery', with the only difference being that this would be elected - a reflection of the people he governs (okay, Ahmadinejad was elected too - by popular vote. But McCain by anything but a popular vote would doubly exacerbate a grievance).

As a presidential contender, you get to make one executive decision; a freebie. His was Sarah Palin. Either he was playing fast and loose with the maverick tag, or he threw his Hail Mary in the third quarter...oddly, he made a decision that ignored a middle, undecided electorate in favor of persuing jaded Hillary supporters. He brought his decision making process (if mavericks have those) into question, along with suspicions about his thoroughness in vetting a candidate who could potentially end up running the country. It recalled Bush's aggrandizing in the face of adversity, a completely unrealistic ignorance of potential outcomes.

But what has been most decisive for me, recreating a nostalgia for previous campaigns and affirming previously unprovable assertions about the right, is the conduct of his campaign. Making himself a default by attacking his opponent's past and character. Letting his followers fight his fight for him. The waves of negativity that he needs to get back to shore. Even if McCain were to win, still a distinct possibility - it would be under the dubious context of pandering to the lowest common denominator and by dividing the country through fear, the only emotive he can enlist against his competition's message of hope. Suppose he were to win: he's guaranteed partisanship with a potentially Democrat congress. He has contributed to the rift between left and right by extending the crossing and deepening the chasm.

So I'm voting Obama. With reservations.

If there is one positive thing to say about the past eight years, it's the potential it opens for a saviour-like character. Demagogue has gone from being a smear - like liberal - to describing the medicine needed for a disenchanted populace. All Obama needs to do is to point out the faults of the previous presidency and state that he can do better. This, when any Joe Shmoe feels like they could do better.

I say reservations because - long before the Republican VP hopeful made it a more sinister prompt - I questioned his experience and depth. The press was talking presidency from the day he entered the Senate, and it all seemed so premature...and his attendance on showing up to vote was, well, disappointing. Initially, it felt like watching the bar being lowered all over again: we can dismiss the last president's enunciation challenges; let's dismiss the next one's voting record - or lack thereof. Afterall, he talks so pretty.

My other reservation: Obama's rock star status, his messiah-like call to followers and ability to seem as though walking on water. In light of some of his voting decisions (FISA - big disappointment. Bank Bailout - bigger disappointment), I'm surprised at the lack of criticism he garners as the adored candidate. I've often looked at the right, questioning how so many impoverished can vote against their interests (the quick answer is religion)...and the Obama-phenomenon has me asking the same question about basic social liberalism. It seems that the bigger he gets, the more safe and conservative he is.

Perhaps it is my age. Perhaps because I've seen it all before. I'm voting for Obama to legitimize popular opinion, or what I see it to be.

When I look for positive reasons, I find them coming from unexpected places. I want to vote for him because the rest of the free world wants to see him as our leader. I see conservative rats jumping ship, like Buckley's progeny or Vanity Fair's own tedious souse - endorsing Obama - and I see an opportunity for unity for which my own little history can provide no measure. In a nutshell, Obama projects being a competent, enlightened leader...something we haven't seen in awhile. If his speech in response to his connection to Rev. Wright serves an indication, Obama could be the rare individual that truly wants to lead: to enlighten and advance the people he represents.

As I get older, left and right just feel like spatial directions: moving away from each other, in opposite directions, for eternity. Also, as I get older, I don't feel like there exists an ideology that is going to solve all the problems I want to see solved. The only time I feel jaded, is when I realize that a candidate that lives up to an ideology simply doesn't exist. But I do believe there are barriers that we have lived with that have long outlasted their initial points of contention, and Obama presents the opportunity for a youthful expansion of vision, a look from a different angle, at the image this country presents to the rest of the world.

Conjuring

2008-08-22T00:00:00.000-07:00

The blank sheet of paper soaked all the light in the room.

In an irresistable contrast. Amongst the hipster chatter I could pick up dropped names, catch vibrant gestures and I navigated through bodies that would accommodate and contort to avoid a spilled drink. He must have been waiting for awhile; a single person in a large booth alludes to squatter's rights - especially when the tavern is packed so tight. As I slid into the booth across from him, he did not look up from his tablet. Which made me look at it too. The calming effect of this little window of pulp, in an otherwise jarring and clamoring environment, was infectious.

He was away in concentration. His eyes swimming in the eleven by fourteen inch pool in front of him. Straight backed and upright, forearms at rest, perpendicularly framing the object of his focus. Immediate atoms charged with unstable anticipation and suspended intent.

- Are you waiting for the idea?
- No. I already have like seven. Seven grand ideas.
- Not grand enough to make you go, though? How long have you been here?
- Awhile. Before happy hour. When people were ordering more coffee than beer. Awhile.
- *Sigh*. At what point do you give up?
- Do I ever? I think you are giving time too much credit in this process. There is one thing I don't understand, and that is why it starts when it does. I never tell myself to pick up the charcoal and draw. I just find myself doing it. Sometimes I sit there for five minutes, sometimes for an hour.

I'm feeling an affinity with him. When we made plans to meet, there were no indications that I would find him compromised or engaged. There was also no plan. The idea, as usual, was to meet at happy hour after work and play catch up. Sometimes we run out of language and invite others; this is in fact, usually the end result. I look at my hardback copy of Zola's Nana in my hand. How often do I carry around a book that never gets read? Its blood red binding seems charged with a long anticipated purpose, and eagerness to answer the call. I slap the book on the table.

- I think there's enough light. Go on with your deliberations (with a smile).
- I don't want to be rude...
- You're not.

The challenge is picking up where you left off. I read a page, the thirtieth, and wonder if I should start the book from scratch. There are too many characters. Too much time passed from the initial embarking on reading the book. But I continue, slowly. My metacognition isn't dropping me from being conscious of how I'm reading, to letting me lose my awareness of self in the pages. And I continually look up as young ladies pass our table. I fidget and repeatedly restart. I flip pages ahead to see where this chapter ends and whether getting there is conceivable. I peruse the pages and calculate the ratio of extended dialogue to black page paragraphs. I smell the book. Whoever owned it before me was a smoker. I imagine who owned it before me - an old person? The image of an octogenarian reading the book on a swinging front porch bench, after a long day of garden-tending. It's a lot to pull from these yellowed pages, this musty scent. But the imagery comes more easily than the story in the pages. It is the front porch of a large plantation and the sun is setting and there are mosquitoes all about. No wait, the book cannot be that old. I look at the publishing date. 1955. So it is old, but not old enough for my daydream. I check out another woman passing our table, and as my eyes travel from her hips to his face, I feel like errors in perception are mounting against me. But it doesn't matter; he's started.

He begins with two sweeping swipes producing open and closing parentheses. He leans back and looks at it for a moment. He pushes his head far back on his spine, squinting his eyes. Waiting to see something there. Finalizing his idea? I look over the top of my book at it but say nothing. Then he leans in, curling up the end of the tablet with his left hand and attacking with charcoal on his right.

It is all reckless movement - I watch his hands more than I watch the trails left by the charcoal. Dramatic slashes are followed by intense zig-zagging. Many of his wrist jerks are angular, and there are very few moments where he draws slowly. Or smoothly. Judging by his hands, there can be no curves unless he is working some experienced magic. He stops to pick up his eraser gum, changes his mind, and drags his thumb across his tongue instead. He rubs his thumb into the picture, creating his chiaroscuro where he wants it. After several minutes of more furious drawing, he sets the picture flat - sticks both thumbs into his mouth - and sets them to work smearing charcoal in every which direction. This is the only moment where he takes on a surgical air, where his eyes reflect an intent. As he grinds his spittle into the pulp.

He leans back. He spins the tablet around. Like it no longer holds any interest for him.

- Done.
- It's a horse. Nice. I didn't know you did horses.
- I can do animals. Dogs, Cats, Horses. Wait, four - I can do unicorns too.
- I'm not sure if that counts.

I lift the bristol tablet so only I can see it, away from his vision - not that it matters. He seems disinterested, like this was his release. He can go to sleep now.

I was expecting something more shocking in terms of subject matter, but it is just a horse. But it is beautiful and sad. It looks like nothing that could have come from the disorganized furiousness of its birthing. Theres a contordedness to it - the viewer is in front of the horse, inches from the ground. The subject appears in genuflect, as though the horse is trying to touch its forehead to the ground. Its face is in near profile, with one eye looking accusingly at the viewer.

I want to take it home with me. How many drawings have I seen where a horse is a majestic animal in active bucking or broncing, or displayed from the neck up in a presidential profile? There's a uniqueness to this broken-ness. Even a tamed beast has some spirit, but there's something human about this horse with its defeated spine. The picture captures something that could never exist in the real world, something for which we lack any context.

- I like it. I like it a lot.
- Thanks. The long wait is really about trying to figure out what I want to say.
- And what is that?
- Hmmmm. Well, it's for you, so I guess that's up to you to figure out. If I was good about communicating directly, I wouldn't be drawing pictures - right?
- Does this mean I get to keep it?
- Yeah, you can have it. You can put it up at your place and look at it while you're pretending to read some fancy book.
- Funnyman.

Knowing it is mine to keep. I hold it up in front of me with a straightened, proud, back. My broken horse. As I hold it away from me, another picture emerges - in a Dali-esque twist, the total becomes another horse's face. My eyes adjust, and it is the only horse I can see: the new horse is smiling cheesily, incorporating a pond and faux reflection at the bottom of the page. An arresting twist. I have to concentrate to get the original image back...

- Nice touch. I didn't notice the second horse at first.
- They're the same horse. Like you can't be broken and happy at the same time?
- Okay, so they're the same horse. Are you trying to get at something profound?
- Not really. Its for you. So I'm going to make it about you. There are times I don't think you give yourself enough credit. I hope when you look at this picture, you remember there's more than one way of looking at things. That's about it. This is your reminder to go easy on yourself, and I hope when you look at it, you look at it right.

He says it with authority. He says it in a way that makes me recall all the negative things I may have said about myself in the past, but as I call them back they arrive with a weakened significance. I want to say something meaningful, but anything that comes to mind seems too familiar.

- You're welcome.

His smile widens and shows his charcoal-blackened teeth.

7 Days

2008-07-28T12:17:00.000-07:00

1. Tore out ten more feet of fence, and one post. This post was heavier; had to wheel it to my dump staging area.
2. Removed the sod to create a 5' x 8' garden.
3. Enjoyed There Will Be Blood & Trailer Park Boys. The latter I watched twice.
4. Visited Jen and we picked up a surprised Mark while waiting for the bus. Hit Talrico's. Nobody told me everyone is moving Westside!
6. Saw C at the bus stop next morning because I was getting to work with a hungover turtle's momentum. Chatted her up.
7. Pre-ordered my iPhone; the story changes whether I get to keep my old number or not. On a happier note, my company provides a nice discount on the monthly AT&T bill.
8. I begin writing Mercurial U; doubt I'll publish it.
9. See C at bus stop again, this time I'm really kicking myself for not asking her number or something like that...I sometimes forget how shy I am. I keep leaving it to chance, that I'll see her again...
10. Visited Marika. Briefly.
11. Rethinking beard. According to Just for Men, and my co-worker Ray, 'Gray gets no play.'
12. Saw S, who I haven't seen for years. After hearing about the split, he shares his own anecdote implying that he saw something wasn't right...something that annoys me a bit, since it only reinforces this idea that I was the only person in the world who didn't get that something was wrong. And I'm hearing this from someone drunk, at the video store, at 8 pm.
13. My sister dropped off the karaoke CDs, and Dance Dance Revolution for the Wii. I really need to give that thing a chance.
14. Rented and watched Everything You Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask). I've avoided Woody's 70's stuff until now. It was better than I was expecting.
15. My parents visit. They give me a lot of ideas for the yard.

16. Rented and watched The Notorious Betti Page. Gretchn Mol. A beautifully shot film.
17. I go to market. I replace last week's flowers with new ones. I buy rasberries that will go bad over the next 4 hours.
18. I dig a 25-30' trench on the north side of my house. It is right against the foundation, so I'm always digging on my right side. I submerge a draining pipe that has rested above ground - rather tackily - since the day I moved in (1999). I'm surprised it only took a day, starting after noon, to complete the project.
19. Neighbor interrupts to talk about the trees in the backyard. He wants to add on to his house, and might have his removed. This would weaken the roots for my 2 trees (and derail some of my landscaping plans out back). Or, he might just move. But if I have to remove mine? 5-7,000 dollars. I've been attracting a lot of 7K 'surprises' lately.
20. Wendy visits, and it is great to hear how well she is doing.
21. I sleep terribly. I awake at 01:30 and check in with a deployment; I wake at 05:30 to finish it off. Usually when I'm this sore, I sleep the just sleep, but I think my BG got low in the middle of the night.
22. My soreness continues.

File Under Things To Do Before I Die

2008-07-25T17:54:00.001-07:00

I want. Not to belabor the Prince kick I've enjoyed lately, but I had to toss in this fashion addendum. I arrived at work obsessed with hunting down the...well, any really...polka dot suit. If you start out with Google, like I did - good luck. Nobody is making and marketing men's polka dot suits online. Sure, you can have one custom made, I'm sure of it. I'm not budgeted for custom-made suits right now. I'm not the greatest search engine driver either, and my efforts went unrewarded.

But I know a polka-dot suit exists; I have the same Uptown fanzine from which this screen-scrape was taken (note the opposite page imprints ruining an otherwise stark black and white photo). I was a bit frustrated that I couldn't find this LoveSexy-era pic in digital...I think its one of the coolest photos of Mr. Nelson, and though he's always flirted with polka, I've never seen it so overwhelmingly so.

I would of course lose the reflecting mirror heart corsage (there's a better view of it in the pic below; this one just shows up as a light-catching glare). I would also lose the heels and go for something more contemporary - probably some Stacy Adams. I might try LeRoy's next week and see if they have something on hand. I dunno, the last time I stepped into LeRoy's, I got a lot of "you're no pimp!" stares, and zero customer service.

Even if I get this suit, there's a problem with occasion. Once I found my suit - once I proved something like it exists - I had to share it with co-workers. "And where exactly do you plan on wearing it?" "I dunno, somebody's wedding?" I replied. "Hah. You can't upstage the bride!" Whatever. I'll find an occasion; perhaps I'll just ask to be buried in it.

(The Til Eulenspiegal part of me thinks, well, if I don't like the bride? I might just wear it anyway. The Sam Louis Obispo part of me just want to wear it all the time - with a matching bowler & cane, steppin' out.)

Colour U Peach and Black

2008-07-17T00:01:00.000-07:00

I had Ed pegged for a rocker: he was effusive for Van Halen and Metallica, and when we did talk about music, he would cite bands that were either mega-this, death-that, or about to slay-one-another. So when we did hang out, when the 'older, bad-influencing' Ed invited me to his house, I was surprised at the music he was burning to share. It was 1983, and he had just discovered Prince.

It was the audacious raunch. It was more direct and shocking than the euphemisms and metaphors cited by an army of hairspray bands: Ed wasn't going to let me leave until I heard Prince pronounce, Marsha, I'm not saying this to be nasty...but I sincerely want to fuck the taste out of your mouth (I never could figure out why he was insistent on "Let's Pretend We're Married" over the aurally more graphic "Lady Cab Driver"). This was my first exposure to Prince - I wasn't particularly wowed by the music. My interest at the time was limited to the Beatles, Elton John, John Denver & Kenny Rogers...artists who weren't preoccupied with rhythm or groove or funk. I didn't get any of it, but I thought watching the impaled eyeball spinning on the turntable was pretty cool.

This is not to say that an impression wasn’t made. Ed liked Prince, and the Ed I know shouldn't like music like this. What gives here?

The following spring, as my 8th grade class graduated, When Doves Cry was inescapably, repetitively, making its rounds on the airwaves. I was a little wiser at the end of the school year. I began to better understand what musical genres were, and I began to understand the appeal: Prince was someone who was transcending them. This was made ever so more concrete when Let's Go Crazy hit the radio rotation: this was no ordinary artist. After a lot of pining and pleading, Purple Rain showed up in my Easter Basket: thank you Jesus Bunny.

So my love affair with Prince began. It was, like my real life love affairs, a tentative one. I loved Purple Rain, but at age 14 my bank account wasn’t so expansive that I could indulge the idea of owning 2 albums by the same artist: I would have to hear three singles before feeling it was essential to purchase Around the World in a Day. I was the only person I knew who owned this album, and had the challenge of trying to get friends on board with me: a frustrating, fruitless endeavor. When Kiss hit the airwaves, I didn't know what to think. Prince was putting to the forefront the falsetto I knew he employed, but felt that he succeeded in spite of. I bought Parade with much reservation, consoling myself that the cover was at least more tastefully imaginative and artistic than the previous album's mural. Over the course of these 3 albums, Prince led me from being a pop singles-loving adolescent to an (elitist?) eclectic fan of AOR. Amongst my friends, I was becoming increasingly solitary as a fan of his music, something that made the bond more sincere.

Also over the course of these three albums, my appetite for music in general was growing. Having an artist - especially during the 80's - who put out a new album every 11 months -proved to reinforce my new addiction. Prince was unique in his prolificacy; he was also playing a dangerous game of overstaying his welcome. How were any of these songs going to become classics if people don't have the time to absorb them, create personal experiences with them? For me, it was fun: each new single, each new album, would surprise me with what he's capable of. He created an illusion of unlimited creativity. He wasn't following the normal pattern of putting out a (either repetitive or alienating) follow-up to an amazing album, then disappearing. This created an unsettling feeling: how long can someone possibly keep this up? Even if someone can keep this up forever, doesn't the audience eventually change?

Aside from the public, radio-friendly leanings, Prince also fulfilled a need for something deeper, more esoteric. I would greedily collect the remixes and maxi-singles and legendary b-sides that would accompany them. Hello, 17 days, Another Lonely Christmas, Erotic City, Love or Money, Always in My Hair, Girl, How Come U Don't Call Me Anymore, God...It seemed I had to revamp my mixed-tapes with each single's release. Fan and critical consensus, in retrospect, conclude that a few of these should have been singles. This secret knowledge only served to draw me further into Prince's universe.

I was apprehensive when I first heard the single Sign O the Times on the radio. It was stripped down and bare. He fired off The Revolution in 1986 (on my birthday!), and the album I was anticipating - even though I hadn't completely absorbed the underrated Parade - had all the signs of being a disaster. I tended to multiply this stripped-down song times twenty, thinking that this would be what the anticipated double-album would sound like: bandless, with nothing but Prince and studio magic and automation. A mysterious advertisement for the album in Pulse! Magazine - a black page with only a peach colored heart, peace-sign and cross - only reaffirmed my discomfort. Warner wasn't leading with the music like on the previous 2 albums; they were relying on mysterious, obfuscating advertising. This had the potential of being a double-album of demo quality, high on symbolism & self-indulgence; low on production.

I brought home the maxi-single - not the edited 45 rpm - for Sign O the Times; La La La, Hee Hee Hee - the flipside - dispelled a lot of the reservation. Though the Linn Drum leads as usual, the 10:32 "Highly Explosive" extended play has one of Prince's funkiest bass guitar solos committed to vinyl (in writing this, I had to hook up 10 sq. ft. of stereo speakers, and of course - a stereo system. It was worth the trouble). It is a song as playful and whimsical as the A-side is pensive and mournful. Even before the release of the album he'd established that he has so many grooves on the shelf he needs to cast a few of them to B-sidedom and other artists. Prince also played a little gender-bending trick: on the maxi-single cover he appears to be dressed in a peach skirt and tube top, tasseled gloves and garter with an inset heart. He appears thoroughly waxed, Brazilian-like, as he holds a large black heart over his head. The reverse side shows him in full face exposure, lip-sticked with matching peach cloud guitar in hand. Only it isn’t him in drag, it is Cat – his backup dancer- dressed and hair-styled to look like him. It’s a convincing sell.

I bought the Sign O the Times LP in late July 1987, a week & a half after its release. I missed out on some beautiful weather so I could sit cross-legged on the floor in front of my stereo, headphones on and reading through the inner sleeves on my lap. It had my full attention, and when I got to the end, I had to start it all over again. I was in awe. It was so different from the previous few albums – it felt bereft of an overseeing concept or a self-evident stylistic approach. It felt like a barrage of hits waiting to be culled out and discovered. It would be easier to list the songs that didn’t grab me on that first listen: Slow Love (it sounded like a typically burlesque Prince ballad), Hot Thing (a funkier retread of Girls & Boys from the previous album), U Got the Look (the Sheila Easton duet had something forced about it, and there’s a good explanation for this), and The Cross (two chords, and the only overtly religious song on the album).

By the time Sign was released, critics had already formed a dossier on Prince as a songwriter. Sure, he could play over 30 instruments. Sure, he could write irresistible hit songs. But - and critics are always there to remind you where your ‘shortcomings’ are - Prince has this conflicting & recurring pre-occupation with god and sex. Sometimes the contradiction appears in the same song; sometimes it appears in the same line in a song. But it never seems to get resolved; it isn’t a conflict that Prince gets beyond. One of the first notable things about Sign: they are kept comfortably separate. The Cross is a purely religious /social observation; the same can be said for the song Sign of the Times. They may be kept separate, but not equal: there is a treatment given to these songs absent from the rest of the album, and they are in a very small minority…two of an offered sixteen.

This doesn’t mean that the rest of the album is dedicated to sex. There’s preposterous strutting, heartfelt preaching, ridiculous psychedelic imagery, nightclub posturing, internal monologues, and rallying cries to celebrate life. There‘s definitely sex; there’s plenty of it. But Prince adds a new dimension to it. It seems more cognizant of its own obsession: Prince has approached it with a new maturity that at times is romantic, at times pathologically or compulsively unsettling.

Side one can serve as the cliff notes take on the album, topically, if not musically. It opens with the title track and first single – a relaxed groove with a pulse like a clock winding down a body’s expiration; a song that reads a list of woes that threaten the world, posing the question why humanity continues to move forward in spite of them:”When the rocket ship explodes / and everybody still wants to fly / Some say a man ain’t happy truly / ‘til the man truly dies.” It directly addresses the Space Shuttle Challenger tragedy, inquiring whether some of the pursuits of humanity fail to look for the value in pursuing them…particularly in light of all the social challenges we have on earth. He ends the lyrics quizzically: “Let’s fall in love / get married and have a baby / we’ll call him Nate…if it’s a boy.” He doesn’t settle for the political song that leaves the listener blaming someone else; he ends with accusing the listener with the same headlong rush towards the end of their life. It has a subdued groove, an uplifting yet – at the same time, lamenting – transition into the chorus. It ends with sporadic bursts of percussion and synth.

It segues into Play in The Sunshine, a deceptive remedy. It is a strange transition; living up to the playfulness alluded to in the title: “Someway, Somehow, I’m going to have fun.” But the lyrics allude to such odd imagery, that one questions whether the voice in this tune is looking for solace in an opposite extreme (“I want to be free,” “we’re going to love our enemies ‘til the gorilla falls of the wall”, and “the big white rabbit begins to talk.”). Prince has a history of knocking on hippies, and it’s tempting to resign the lyrics to having fun with them again. Even if that’s the case, Play in the Sunshine is as musically diverse and dynamic as the album opener is stuck in a rut. It starts out in a frenetic rush and unrealistic declaration, breaks down for two separate guitar solos, before the background vocals that have grown increasingly complex through the song, devolve into a gospel choir hung over and deplete of energy.

Then the funk & Camille’s sped-up voice break in: Housequake’s “Shut Up Already, Damn!” cuts in before Play’s celebration completely winds to a close. Uncharacteristically for Prince, Housequake employs horns combined with familiar ‘eerie’ background synth lines. Though inspired by James Brown, Prince brings an irreverent humor to it. It is one of the highlights of the entire album; lyrical content takes a backseat to comedic timing; the first three songs resolve in the funk being the final solution the previous two songs’ internal contradictions.

The Ballad of Dorothy Parker is the earliest song recorded with the intent of being on either the Crystal Ball, Dream Factory (when Prince had a 3 album set in mind), or Sign of the Times (we’ll just call it “his next project”). Musically, it changes direction sporadically – an illusion created by vocal layers that shift and change directions frequently. It reads like an early attempt at a song focused on relationships, but it doesn’t take itself as seriously as later songs on the album: this is the fun of being seduced. Despite the line “I needed someone with a quicker wit than mine / and Dorothy’s was fast”, Prince was unfamiliar with Parker the writer. To him, it was a name pulled out of the effluvium of pop culture reference. There are many instrumental shifts and voices put on display, but it is a subdued contrast to Play in the Sunshine. The callout to Joni Mitchell’s “Help Me”, and the way he employs it, is impressive. Dorothy Parker ends with a wah-wah guitar groove that has little to do with the proper song, but implies doors being open to something more, depths to explore.

When I first listened to side two, I thought it was the weakest on the double-LP. If any of the four sides have to be the weak link, I would stand by this notion – though I also believe making side two the weakest separates it from The Beatles or Songs in the Key of Life. But I’ve come to appreciate it over time. It reveals where the god/sex contradiction went: shifted to sex/love. It is book ended by It, an unreserved expression of sexual desire, and Forever In My Life, a reflective song in which the narrator confesses to himself that there is a time to settle down. They share a similar tempo. It progresses with a hypnotic synth melody that indicates a crescendo that will never be reached. Prince cites banal lyrics over the build, all Id in his delivery: “I wanna do you you baby all the time, alright / I’m gonna think about it all the time / fuckin’ on your mind, baby / feels so good it must be a crime”. Forever In My Life, by contrast, is lyrically pretty. Prince relegates the Linn to the background, layering his background vocals to anticipate his bluesy lead delivery. It is an honest song, sounding almost extemporaneous; there is a strange trade-off between It and Forever in musica versus lyrical complexity. Even on early listening, I questioned how Prince could be more compulsive about sex, or more sincerely honest about relationships.

One strong point to be made for side two of Sign: it doesn’t lose momentum. The only thing making this side ‘weak’, is comparing it to the other three. Couched between It & Forever, are Starfish & Coffee / Slow Love / Hot Thing. Starfish is the most popular of the three, a song that would fit comfortably on The Beatles: precocious, precious, and full of sugary imagery. Slow Love feels like a ballad Prince has done before, though it sounds perfectly executed. Hot Thing pounds and drives with fiery horn lines and a danceable backbeat. All three are great songs, differing wildly from one another. It is almost as though his adept ability to handle such diverse approaches to songwriting was too hard to resist, creating the most erratic collection on the LP. It also doesn’t help that every song on sides 3 & 4 have – whether in pop culture or in cult fandom – a resounding significance.

U Got the Look finds Prince using the Camille-voice in duet with Sheila Easton (the Camille project was another ancillary, and eventually absorbed project, into Sign & The Black Album). It is a song that can’t determine whether it is dance or rock, and the electric rock churnings in the background sound as though they may have given Trent Reznor an idea or two. Did I say this didn’t impress me at first? I stand corrected. U Got the Look was the last song written for Sign of the Times, when Prince wanted to intentionally attempt something commercial to tack on his album. In terms of requirements and deliverables, he hit the mark. It might not forward any of the psychological contradictions on the album, but it displays how Prince can nail it in spite of himself: a sped-up voice, dissonant synth-lines, and a near cabaret treating of pop-rock. He does it with catchy, memorable, simple lyrics and an unforgettable – if not absurd – bridge that finds him singing each word in the line “Well here we are” in four sequentially different keys.

If I was Your Girlfriend is a masterpiece in Linn-drum and synth sequencing. It also stands as one of the creepier love songs ever written. Prince brings the same obsessive approach from It, refocusing from sex to the relationship itself. He strives for a possessive intimacy that leaves no room but for the person who adores. I was always surprised that it received any radio attention, since it’s descent into a sexual madness – all that was cut from the radio edit – makes the song what it is. “Would you run to me if somebody hurt you / even if that someday was me? Sometimes I trip on how happy we can be” is a haunting lyrical pairing; everything that follows - right unto the symbolic, post-coital ending of the song – sounds like the sick mental schematic from which such a statement arises. “We’ll try to imagine what silence looks like…” repeated over and over, begs a votive candle be lit to ward all the preceding demons away.

A poppier approach to the same subject matter follows. Strange Relationship looks at things from the outside: “Baby I just can’t stand to see you happy / More than that, I hate to see you sad.” “The more you love me sugar, the more it makes me mad.” It propels itself with a driving, heavy drum beat and catchy synth melody…though the topic matter is overshadowed with a threat of violence. Prince, as narrator, has switched from unabashed honesty to an observation of the relationship – it’s like you see an ego emerging. He is seeing the thing – and his reaction to it – for what it is. Just like most of the songs on Sign, it quickly follows it’s predecessor, announcing itself on the scene with an urgency.

The Freudian triptych resolves in I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man. Topically, it is distant from Strange or Girlfriend, but the narrator has developed a certain morality about relationships (if this were a three-song side, excluding U Got the Look, it would seem even more intentional…but since that isn’t the case, this is my own reading). “Honey, you might be satisfied with a one-night stand / but I could never take the place of your man.”…subjects the narrator to not getting his way, in spite of his honest assessment. And the music is pure pop, perfect for radio, relatable for its simple message: it could be the most unequivocal hit on the album, with an extended version that satisfies the faithful. ICNTTPOYM is a song that had been around awhile (since 1982). It takes an unusual direction for Prince, breaking down a tight pop song for a subdued groove and playing some funky delayed rhythm before re-emerging with the melody. This is the same Prince who was genius enough to leave the bass out of When Doves Cry; you might think he is marring a good thing. But when the melody returns, it is effective.

Side three ends with indirect resolution, begging the question: where can one go from here? Well, god, for starters. And Dancing. And arguably, the most romantic love song Prince has recorded – among many – yet.

Side four is where you either poot out and resign yourself to filler (The Beatles) or pack in the hits (Key of Life). Prince is somewhere in the middle. It’s Gonna Be a Beautiful Night, the longest song on the album, is closer to As or Another Star than it is to Number 9, that‘s for certain. The middle piece of the LP finale is a pastiche of his marketed Minneapolis sound, live energy, newly discovered horn lines and contemporary - though accessible - rapping. I’ve yet to see a review of the album that doesn’t qualify the song as ‘heavily overdubbed,’ and considering that Sign wasn’t meant to be a live album, this is rightfully so. It is the last relic of Prince performing with the Revolution, and the effect reminds that the parting – artistically, anyways – ended on a high note. Like the title indicates, it is positive, and for nine minutes the listener has a lot thrown at them: Oz-land chants, multiple voicings, jazzy rubato, funky rhythm guitars, playful tomfoolery. Even if it is overdubbed from the Zenith, Paris, performance, it is a postcard that makes one with they were there.

However, it is The Cross that quietly launches side four with an eastern sounding, quiet guitar-lick. It is a song sung twice – once with Prince’s vocals leading over musical embellishment, a second time in a different key, with more strain, drowned out in distortion. It is the most direct addressing to Prince’s spirituality; a wiping of the slate clean following the preceding three album sides. Depending on where you are coming from, you might either appreciate the stop-gap, or wonder if…if he were to pursue the straining honesty of side three, where it might have taken him artistically.

The last song is Adore.

Though Sign O the Times has been viewed as a classic in many circles, it didn’t chart amazingly well: it achieved a high of 45 on Billboard charts. In light of what the album offered, the series of singles fall short of being representative: Sign O the Times was followed by If I was Your Girlfriend. Though the follow up had a killer b-side in Shockadelica, it threatened the momentum of the album. It was followed by a pair of double a-side maxi singles – U Got the Look / Housequake and Hot Thing / I Could Never Take the Place of Your Man. Considering the material discarded from the 3-album set, the direction of double-A sides is surprising. Imagine throwing Dream Factory, Sexual Suicide, A Place in Heaven, or Possessed into the mix. U Got the Look & ICNTTPOYM were videos taken from the Sign O the Times Concert film, garnering some video rotation on MTV….though decreasingly so. Sign, the single, reached #3 on Billboard’s Hot 100; Girlfriend made next to no impact, and U Got the Look went to #2. At the time, this meant very little to me. As my focus shifted towards the underground, I was pleased that I could hear Prince’s music on KJET or KCMU. As I made my own genre shift, I was validated that I wasn’t the only person who appreciated his talent or music.

Sign also served to end a high artistic run for Prince. He would follow up the album with Lovesexy in 1988, but self-indulgently limit CD listeners to a single track representing the entire album (no track-skipping). Ironically, it was the first album that I bought on the day of its release – I remember bringing home its (obsolete) long-box along with Morrissey’s Viva Hate. Lovesexy was announced with another great single – Alphabet St. – a funky, playful number, that was lost in the controversy over the pulled-at-the-last-minute Black Album and the indignant response to Lovesexy’s religious overtone. It is a departure from Sign, where the synth and full-band sound at times overwhelm anyone who would’ve accused Sign of being too thin or sparse.

And again, the release of his next album left little room for appreciating the previous one: LoveSexy may have hurt Sign, just a little bit.

Late July of 2008. I’m still listening to Sign O The Times, and even though it sounds like the 80’s, it conveys a lyrical wisdom that reaches beyond being confined to an era. The music can be pinned, but a few of the overtones and topics are universal. Perhaps I can handle it better than others because I’m a Paisley-head. I’m caught up in the mystique of what the album could have been if Prince had his way and released Crystal Ball or Dream Factory. I’ve invested the time and money in getting each and every album like lightening might strike again; like Prince might pull off something like Sign again. I’ve made allowances and explained away shortcomings. I brought home the finally released Black Album with it’s official release, optimistic that it would provide the missing link between Sign and Lovesexy.

Late July of 2008, and really: me and Sign have only reached 21 years together. Time to have a drink to this album. It’s hard to absorb the idea that more time has passed since its release, than between it and the release of The Beatles. It might be old age, but it seems musical revolution isn’t progressing at the speed it once did.

The horn lines slink in as the audience of Its Gonna Be A Beautiful Night recede into the background. Adore announces itself like many Prince ballads from before: “Until the end of time / Ill be there 4 u / U own my heart and mind /I truly adore u / If God one day struck me blind / Your beauty I’d still see / Love is 2 weak 2 define / Just what u mean 2 me”

Adore has distinguished itself as THE definitive Prince ballad: stylistically, it has some formulaic elements, but there’s a humor and idiosyncrasy to it – making it all the more genuine. “U could burn up my clothes / Smash up my ride, well maybe not the ride / But I got 2 have your face / All up in the place.” The idiosyncrasy lies in the structure of the song. It doesn’t build up to a fantastic ending. It reaches a crescendo at mid-mark, becoming reflective about this adoration: “you own my heart, you own my mind…” In a strange turn, he revisits the sentiment of Girlfriend, but musically, it doesn’t sound possessive or obsessive. When he says that he wants to be “More than your mother / more than your brother / I wanna be / Like no other”, the music allows it to be romantic sentiment instead of guilty or sickening confession.

“Tell u what u mean 2 me / Every time u wander / Ill be your eyes so u can see / I wanna show u things.” There are 2 references to eyesight in the song; one indicating that the adored transcends the vision of the one adoring; the second to an insinuated guidance to things to be seen – a giving over to seeing things in spite of distraction or ability. However, it is ambiguous as to whether there’s possessiveness about it. Given the context of the song, it feels romantic and heartfelt – it may not have been intentional. But it is difficult to be sure. Considering how Prince wields relationship matters on Sign, it seems he would make a statement, however veiled it might be, about the positive nature of a relationship: how in a healthy partnership, sometimes you lead; sometimes you follow. It is a perfect ending to a double-LP, but like the preceding 3 sides, it ends nicely and raises some questions at the same time.

I’ve listened to this album for 21 years, and even after a perfect ending, I’m wondering what surprise will break in to interrupt it. I want to hear what side 5 has to offer, what depths or heavens it takes me to. Prince reached his zenith with Sign O the Times – the preceding albums, many of them also considered classics in their own right - feel like a building toward this moment. All subsequent albums get compared to it. Personally, I never get tired of it. Each and ever song has grown on me over time. Sometimes it is hearing an outtake, a live rendition of it, or just the reconsideration you give an element from repeated listens. And I’ll probably only like it more and more, until the end of time.

WS Street Fair / Carl Owens Golf Tournament

2008-07-14T14:06:00.000-07:00

Friday, I made it by the Street Fair late to do my yearly uzshe: got Henna'd and bought sunglasses. This year, I chose the symbol 'The Way' since it smacked of a distant relevence to a consistent and divine golf swing. The gal doing the work had great cleavage (since she's applying it to my inside forearm, there aren't too many other places to look). Stopped by Jen's hut and said HI. I couldn't stick around and talk to her long; she was busy running the joint while her lump of a coworker proceeded to do nothing but text away with one leg up.

Pete & I had a blast at the Golf Tournament. I picked him up way too early for the trip. No regrets, it made for a relaxing, unhurried day. It was nice to see his family again, though Holden - now age three - kept asking "Where's Michelle? - Where's Michelle?" I thought it was funny, D'arcy looked discomfit, and I'm impressed that at his age he even remembers.

So we were early enough to hit a bucket of balls before shotgun. My first drive was perfect. My first pitch was perfect. I left the range at Carnation feeling really good about my swing.

I shot a 118. That's about 15 over my average. This, in a year where I really want to break 100. I contribute this to: a) My drives were hot or cold. When they were cold, they were 'goodbye, I'll never see that ball again' cold. So I did a lot of hitting 3 off the tee. b) The rough. The coordinator for the tourney complained about it as well: it was poorly maintained and ate up a lot of balls. Really, I shanked a couple I should have been able to find easily. More penalty strokes. c) After 5 holes, I summed up where I was at, and decided that I wasn't going to break 100 anyways, so I may as well start drinking. Which I did with gusto.

I love chatting up the beer-cart girls.

As horrible as my score turned out to be, it was also a day of some of my most amazing shots. For me, anyways. On a short par 4, I almost drove the green. My ball ended up dead center, ten yards shy. I don't think I've had a better drive. Also, due to the sly mechanics of the Calloway system of scoring, I managed to beat Pete (really, only the net matters to us, so I don't feel like I beat Pete). I walked out of there with a new golfing bag, Pete with a beverage cooler. It was a long drive back, and I resigned myself to not going to the Street Fair for the Saturday night Dance Party. I don't think I could handle getting drunk twice in a day.

Sunday, I made 2 trips to the fair: I needed to hit the Farmer's Market in the morning (stock up on flowers), and I wanted to see Carrie Akre in the afternoon. I came back with so much more from the morning trip: an earful from Jen, still holding the fort down, and...comics! I spent about 45 minutes under the hot sun looking for Fantastic Four's I didn't already own. I bought seven, when I got home I realized I already had 5 of them. I also stopped by the Rat City Roller Girls to see if they new some of the people I remembered from the rink, and they did! But they weren't going to show up until later. I bought a RCRG shirt and made my way home.

After playing guitar at home for a couple hours, I headed back. I was behind on time, so I quietly waved to Cali & Jen as I made my way to the North Stage. Carrie was amazing. I haven't followed her solo career fanatically, but I love the most recent album - and her band. She was behind schedule starting, so I snuck in for a quick beer and texted Juan to come join (no response). I finished up, Carrie started up and it was one of those intimate experiences because you are watching it all alone. I really enjoyed it, along with the crazy scarf hippie who danced away several feet from me. He persuaded a couple people to join him, and handed out his business cards to them (I really secretly wanted one, but I didn't want to be lulled into public dancing. I mean, what is it that he's selling?).

That was the weekend, in sum. Now back to work.

Shrill Posturing

2008-07-08T00:01:00.000-07:00

"So...this is going to sound like an odd question", leveling my eyes at her. "How would you go about baking a cake? I don't want you to tell me how to do it, I want you to tell me how you...you personally, would go about doing it."

I'm humoring, complicit with the look on her face, though I can see she is not going to take the question seriously. She's not in a position to question the questions: "I would go to the store. I would get a box of cake mix. I would read the side of it and figure out what ingredients I need..." And her mind wanders a little; she pauses for a moment. The moment I've been waiting to break in.

"No, I don't think you understand the question. A cake. How would you go about baking a cake."

She gives me the look I was waiting for. A blank face, all attention and seriousness. All searching for how she could have misinterpreted such a stupid question in the first place. Absorbing her mis-step. "Okay, I think I understand. First, I would find a cookbook." I raise my palm up to signify that she should stop right there - "Really, this is what you would do?"

The cake question was never my idea. Someone asked me it when I was the interviewee, a long time ago. I never did find out the right answer, nor did I get the job. It was a mean turn I wanted to give back to the universe - some day, at some opportunity. When Rebecca arrived reeking of marijuana and sporting a relaxed confidence, I felt it was now or never. "I understand it seems like a simple process - baking a cake. Let's try this one more time." I'm a bit astounded. If I were her, I would be angry by now - but Rebecca just looks terrified. I've harshed her mellow. She collects herself, swallows deeply, and gives it another try.

"If I were to bake a cake. First off, I don't know if I would ever bake a cake. If, If I were, if I had to...I'd talk to someone who knows how to bake a cake from scratch...is this what you're looking for? Bake a cake from scratch?" I shrug, like it doesn't matter to me. Either way you want to play it, Rebecca. I add an expectent nod to continue. "Okay, from scratch then. So I'd do some research. Look online? Get a recipe? Then I would go to the store to buy all the things I need to bake it. Funny, I don't even have a pan for baking cakes. Not a round one. I guess I would know by now what cake I want." And her enthusiasm bottoms out, as she sees that if there were a right or wrong, she ended on the wrong end of it. "I guess I should have said that first."

I pretend to jot a short note on my legal pad. "That'll do it for the cake question. People either get it or they don't."

"Don't stress too much over it - I can assure you it has little or no bearing on the outcome of the interview." Having had my fun, I feel the need to retreat a step: "It's just...there are so many directions you could go here. It has little to do with this position. But you could find yourself leading a project, or, something like that." I add, "It beats being asked where you see yourself in five years. Now that...makes no sense at all."

After escorting Rebecca out, politely shaking her hand and letting her know when I'll be making a decision (a date that usually slides, since hiring people isn't as simple as baking a cake) - my phone rings. "Hello?"

It is the director: "There's been a mixup with recruiting. Your 2 o'clock? Don't hire him."

"Can I ask why?"

"Sure - he came highly recommended. Internal Referral. But someone in recruiting misplaced his READ...as it turns out, he failed it." This shouldn't be a big deal. The READ is a test as inconclusive as asking cake-baking questions. It asks straight away if you've stolen from your place of work. If you've done drugs. Whether you've physically assaulted someone. Except it goes on like that for 150 questions. The end result - you've either answered all the questions honestly, and shown you're imperfect in a few areas. Or, you've answered it dishonestly and are too saintly for your own good. It has a few trippable metrics in the background, but relying on the READ as a reliable tool has been a running joke to hiring managers since it came in-house.

"So? We've both taken the READ test and failed! Has there been a change in policy?" My boss laughs. "Well. If I can get a copy of his, I'll show it to you. This guy failed pretty much everything about it."

I hang up the phone. I need a moment to absorb how stupid this is. This test no one takes too seriously, this weak sieve that doesn't serve to weed out, concretely, the psychologically unstable or the morally crippled - except under the most extreme conditions. And what happens the single time it sets off an alarm? It gets misplaced and I have to fake an interview. What if I happen to like the candidate? I look over his resume. Saying he is over-qualified for the position I'm filling would be a gross understatement. I've never seen a more perfect resume: a logical progression of increased responsibility at two different businesses. His most recent occupation, I know for a fact, just outsourced their tech department wholly - I doubt he was fired. The number of computer languages. Multiple platform. Not just multiple platform hardware ops experience, but coding experience for them as well. When did this guy find the time to do all the bad things the READ exposes? Did he just get yes and no confused while taking the test?

I give up trying to make any sense of it. I've received my directive. I have only a single dim bulb of inspiration - play it grim. From the get-go, from the initial handshake, make sure he knows his chances are slim...for reasons beyond either of our control. The phone rings: it is Sandy; my appointment is here. "I'll be there shortly." I'll have to imagine some creative reasons as I make my way.

He's African-American. As soon as I see him, I am counting how many African-Americans we have in all of our technical departments. I can't get past the number two, and quickly calculate the percentages: even if I could hire this man, we'd still be woefully below any ideal quota. His smile is warm as we shake hands; I note that this experienced expert is about to be interviewed by a man almost half his age. And Jesus. As I flash my access card to gain entry to the interior offices, I can't help noticing he's following me with a terrible limp. Like he has a club foot...the second notion I muster to replace like he's had a gunshot wound.

"I know, I'm overqualified. You're probably wondering why I would apply for this job - it's almost entry level. I've been at this for over a month - and it's been rough. This morning, I had a second interview for a lead position at another company - made it to the final three - but didn't get the job. It would have been perfect for my skill set." I'm wondering if other companies have READ tests. But all I can tell him is that the market is tough, and techies all around are being asked to do more with less...am I really repeating the kind of trite sayings that annoy me when I hear them? Yes I am. "Well," he tells me, "I don't want to give you the idea that this is the job of my dreams. In five years, I'd imagine I would be in a position more aligned with my experience." A small part of me wonders how I'll use this against him.

We arrive at conference room 7E, and I ask him to make himself comfortable. I wait for him to choose a seat, and find one opposite where we can see each other face to face.

I make my normal introduction, iterating the values of the company. I recite the mission statement for the immediate department he is applying to (he was wrong - it wasn't near entry level. It was entry level). I ask him exactly a dozen questions, taking notes. Questions passed on to me from the previous manager; questions that I could never quite peg for what insight was to be taken from them. Usually, it comes down to either a good or bad feel for a person. In light of the other candidates, this guy is my first notch in the good side. I add a thirteenth question - where does he see himself in five years - because I believe it is a question he wants to answer. I take him on the tour of the multiple IT departments, the server lab, the computer room that he would be working in if he were hired. I show him my desk. I have used up the necessary hour to show how I treat every applicant very seriously, and we return to the conference room.

"Now, I know this is not your dream job. And we always want people who are working to better themselves, competing for a better position. I want to be honest with you about where this job comes in at..." I write a number on a yellow sticky. I'm never good at lying, so I pick the lowest number in the pay scale, despite his over-qualifications. He looks blankly at it for several seconds.

"You're joking, right?"

"I'm not." I need something between the lie and the truth: "Personally, I think you are over-qualified, and I would bring you in at top scale just to get you on. But for budgeting reasons...I can't bring anyone in at but the lowest pay. I'm probably telling you more than I should, but that's what is going on in the background. If I want an add to head count, which this position is, an add - I have to do it on the cheap."

It is ridiculously low, the number. I believe it will be enough to deter him - it's almost a ten dollar an hour difference - but he only sighs. I don't know what he's been through these past months. I don't know how seemingly hopeless it has been for him. And he doesn't know that the only way I can come away from this, feeling good about it - is if he is part of the decision process. But he only sighs, takes it in, and says: "Okay." This is not working.

"That, and we are going through a restructuring. We might lose this position." It is a complete lie. I have a fear he is going to leave this place, and stop looking because he lowered his standards so low that he couldn't possibly not get this job. In a way, he is correct in this assumption: in a perfect world without READ tests, he would be a shoe-in.

He looks at me blankly: "You could have told me that from the start." I think for a moment that he will become angry. It comes over his face, but he is professional enough to quell it. "This does amount to an afternoon of my time."

I switch gears into my normal wrap up. We'll let you know when we come to a decision, etc. That I'll pass his resume on to other departments, etc. He is no longer making eye contact with me; I don't have his full attention. I can read it on his face: he is too busy wondering what he will do next, because he is a fighter. That he is mentally dismissing me, in my presence, is a balm to the empathy I'm feeling for him right now. I deserve to feel this small. I'm playing the part of the complete tool: not knowing for certain why I'm 'following orders,' only knowing that I'm doing the exact opposite of what, if things were up to me entirely, I would be doing right now: offering him this job outright. As we walk to the door and I see him out, he tells me thank you absent-mindedly. I want to believe he has completely written me off, by now.

"Dean. I just interviewed a candidate you might be interested in. Daniels referred him."

We have about 12 open positions, all told. Most of them are only internally posted, so the public never sees them. As I'm handing the resume to Dean, I'm working on another lie. I could have handed the resume to Dean before I got the call...I can figure it all out later. I could be defiant and simply tell Roberts that I think this guy is a good hire? I don't know. Unlike my interviewee, I don't really have a plan. Part of me wants to make this somehow work for everybody. Another part of me just wants to redeem myself, even if it means making it someone else's problem.

Dean reads the resume, his eyes growing wider with each line.

At Random (A Journaling)

2008-07-07T18:39:00.000-07:00

Strange; a week ago, I was pissed - at everything. The little things that were tripping me up, the things that were beyond my control, the things that were in my control, but were hanging about with a nasty importuning...because I had no desire to deal with them.

I had to rearrange some priorities. It's pretty silly, when I think about it, how easy it is to put yourself in a better frame of mind. To bolster yourself with a sense of efficacy. It all started with making some appointments. Doctors appointments, Eye Doctor appointments, get the car in to have the oil changed, etc. Of course with work, meeting appointments is always a challenge. But they were met. Sometimes I forget I have a knack for automating my job (but again, even that is an importuning & challenge I have to meet head on).

I regretfully had my final doctor's appointment with my primary. I was a little agitated since I had run out of insulin and my doc was no longer covered on my plan, so I had to shell out for it. I definitely have cholesterol issues. That makes sense. I had my first appointment with my new eye doc (basically searching for the nearest to my home covered by my plan), and I'm happy to announce I've managed upon a caring, condescending, preachy, no-nonsense, in-your-face guy. It makes me wonder if what I really needed was a deserved (as opposed to irrational & drunken) pistol-whipping this entire time...

Then the weekend came. I had plans, but I blew all of them off.

I sat down and wrote a list of things I want to do to the house. The things that could take anywhere from 2 hours to 50 hours. To hell with the fourth of July, to hell with the Long Winters show...diving into that list (only checked off 2 items by weekend's end) was more rewarding to me than relying on doing what I would usually do.

I do get inspiration and motivation from being alone. I think I have to face that fact. But I've been operating on this assumption for too long, that I cannot be alone...like I'll go crazy without some nurturing company, and I'm beginning to recognize how erred that assumption was. I think it led me to mitigate my standards for friendship. I think it led me to really lower the bar and persue some superficial people. I think it didn't allow me to be myself; it led me to be, at times, someone I'm not. I should have listened to the obvious signs: if you aren't feeling good about it, you should just get away. It seems simple enough.

A Day In Preview

2008-07-02T09:56:00.001-07:00

A Prayer for Hank

2008-07-01T18:54:00.001-07:00

Or Henry. I have about 7K worth of words scattered amongst 3 voices. It is going nowhere fast, people. Casanova was to be my big deal; my tribute to the most selfish - yet charming - person I ever met. It was supposed to be my first attempt at method acting (because I'm neither of those); my first real short story. Don't know how to stitch all of this together. Don't know if it will ever get done.

I wanted to see if I could set about it like a task. Tell myself I'm going to write for a couple hours, and actually DO IT. I recognize the achievement is rather small, in the scope of things. But this has dragged on for so long...the initial takes that I did write, the notes I wrote in my little notebook - they've had time to simmer and get very cold. When I read them, they already look fumbling and amateurish (though I know deep down the whole effort isn't going to bowl anyone over) and only distantly relevent to things I've written over the past couple weeks.

I dunno. Perhaps I'll attack it and write the whole thing from scratch. If I'm going to do this at all, it's unavoidable! But really, I'm hoping tomorrow-me...because today-me is getting 'meh' about the endeavor...gets a passion about Hank.

Perhaps Hank isn't as likable as he is charming. There's a certain point you get with people, when you really start to see them.

Brevity

2008-06-30T20:26:00.000-07:00

He was out walking. The destination or point of embarkment is not relevant. He raised his hand, and realized there was nothing in it. But he was expecting something to be there. And it was empty. His first suspect was his addled mind, his half-absent thoughts set to roaming - along with his physical self - under an unrelenting afternoon sun. Where the kiss of a breeze was precious. Where he walked slowly across spatterings of shade on the sidewalk, only a little slower. But the hand. There was nothing in it.

"I can tell you what was there."

This from a man sidling up alongside him. Only it is a strange voice: as though he were a talking animal, only here it is coming from the mouth of a human being. Is he wearing mascara? He is afraid to guess. He has no time for this; he has real, real physiological problems to contend with: he feels the exhaustion from the heat. He doesn't like the sweat stains he is leaving along the inside of his collar; not now, not ever. He doesn't like where he is right now - every face he passes appears like a walking wraith of fetal-alcohol syndrome: a walking, breathing, argument for abortion.

"That was the question you were asking yourself, right? I can read your face. The look on your face is...obvious. It's obvious to me; it is obvious to all of us."

He wants the man to leave. He walks faster. He does not know what he is missing from this empty palm: he only knows that when he looked at his hand, it wasn't there. And everyone seems to be in on it; everyone knows what he is missing but him. He keeps his lips tightly pursed. He is too proud to ask. Too proud to ask any of these people what has gone missing, especially people he does not know and who have no right to know. Even if they do know. None of this makes sense.

The man grabs him by the shoulders. He is so caught in his own verbal reticence, he acquiesces with several blinks. The key might be given for free. He is not walking; he is standing now. "I don't need to know you..." The man's face rolls left and right, head over his shoulders - back and forth like a blind man in concentration: "to tell you the thing you are missing right now". The man posits a savant's reverie:

"You were the one who let it go."

The man walked away. He watched the man go his way, and counted the seconds as the man got smaller and smaller. One thousand. Two thousand. Three thousand. He watched the man stop at the corner, and suspensefully awaited what would happen next. The man did not round the corner, disappearing out of sight and granting him his freedom. The man did not walk straight ahead, back-turned and torturing him with a confirmed abandonment. Neither did he cross the street, where he might walk along - keeping one eye upon him - as the two of them second-guessed at what the other was thinking.

The man saw another. Another, coming from another direction.

The man sidled up along her, and as she walked in this direction, he could tell the man was saying things to her. Things to frighten her and shove her from her bearings.

In this direction: Oh shit.

EveryOne Have A Great Pride!

2008-06-27T09:36:00.000-07:00

Me, I'm off to golf; I'm only hoping my pride will make it to the back nine. But I did come across this site today (warning: it's a hate-site), which answers the question...can you be mentally retarded and gay? (The answer: not for long)

What led me there was the breakdown of 'gay' versus 'safe bands' and the occasional parenthetical justification for the former. Asterisks lead nowhere. Elton is listed twice. What I really love: 2 artists that I've name-dropped on my blog made the short-list for safe (Cindi Lauper & Dresden Dolls). Go figure. It's good for a laugh - if you have a sense of humor about these things.

Love Everybody.

bus stories

2008-06-24T19:23:00.000-07:00

After Vikram Seth laid the 1474 page 'Suitable Boy' out to the public, before he was about to publish his 'Perfect Music', he made a boistrous promise:

I didn't particularly intend to write a shorter novel. However, I did realize that if I were to write another novel equally long, it would take up another decade of my life. I wasn't very keen to do that. I also reckon that publishers aren't intrinsically fond of long novels; they're difficult to convince people to read...or to review for that matter. So I hoped that the inspiration for my next novel could be curbed within reasonable length, 300 to 400 pages. I guess I'm lucky that it has. I did threaten to cut off a digit for every extra 10,000 words above 100,000. All of my fingers are intact

I'm making the same promise: if I ever write anything that takes place on a bus again....

I Didn't Join the Army, Either

2008-06-24T19:07:00.000-07:00

"Captain Lou Albana. Never heard him? You two are identical. Except he's got a rubber band in his beard."

"Rubber band...?" He strokes his beard and lets out "that's some crazy shit."

Two weeks into college. Two weeks in, and all my senses are filled to the brim. It is two weeks of not wanting to fall behind, reading ahead in my text books, exploring where the best places are to get a clear head and study. But fascinating and ruined people keep singling me out to share their opinions of the world. To share the twists and turns by which they arrived at where they got. To share their dance moves. Normally, I wouldn't mind a wild-eyed, greasy long-haired and devil-bearded man dancing on a table in McDonald's at 6:30 a.m. Just not the table I'm already studying at.

"You ever heard of Cindi Lauper? He was in her music video." Since he joined me in the back of the bus, the caboose, the pit: Cap'n Lou has warned me we will be going to war with Iraq "You just watch!". He has informed me, between sips from an oil can in a brown paper bag, that he is a Viet Nam veteran: "The shit I've seen; I know what I'm talking about here." He has let loose an explosive fart: "You got to listen to your body, kid." He is not the first wrecked vet I've met who predicts the U.S. is always on the verge of going to war. Like a preacher sermons on the end days. Like the big event that will make the futile investments in your life worth it. But I don't tell him how inconceviable it is, a war in this day and age. This civilized age. Not going to happen. Kuwait sounds like a country that didn't plan ahead, and they probably got what they deserved.

"Heard of her. But that's not real music." The bus makes a stop on Eastlake, and Cap'n points to a tavern across the street. "You want real music? That place rocked back in the day. Saw Jimi Hendrix there." Cap'n jerks as the bus resumes, and we are joined by a third in the back. "Hendrix. There. For Real." I say it with a humoring urgency, an encouragement to tell me more. To tell me more and get him talking - even though I know it will all be lies - while I sum up our newcomer.

He looks white collar. Executive white collar. Perhaps in his mid-thirties. Wearing cufflinks, and the republican suit with the blood red tie. A pinned tie. I see many three-pieces on the bus, but they usually have a sense of style. A sense of flair. This newcomer is exhibiting an old-money, wall street conservative look - reserved for people who drive their own cars or who own people to drive them about in them. I feel like he deserves a name, just like Cap'n Lou, who is already drawing this polished man in.

"Hey Square, d'ja know Hendrix played there?" The tavern he nods towards is retreating, and Square makes no effort to look or stretch or put himself out in anyway to look at it. "I've heard of him. Not my kind of music." He does, though, seem to put himself out to make no eye contact whatsoever with the Cap'n...who is too boozy to care: "Well, what do you listen to? Everybody's got a thing."

I smile. I can't stop it: this promises to be entertaining. All three generations of us. The 70's loser vet, the 80's financial success, and the student with all the promise for the future. "I prefer classical. The Opera." But he says it directly to me, as though it is my turn to answer. And I try so hard to please: "I like some of it, but I like to listen to a little of everything. Mostly punk. But I like chamber music too. No opera, though."

"It's hotter'n Georgia asphalt!" Cap'n Lou stretches his arms over the adjoining seats as though staking territory or defining a comfort zone. I have to admit, he does look comfortable. "But its a dry heat. Not like jungle humidity. That shit makes you sick breathing it. But the worst is napalm."

Square quietly clears his throat. Seemingly importuned by the other, he stares intently at me. "So. Are you learning to become a biochemical engineer?" motioning to a book on my lap where only the word Calculus is predominantly displayed.

"Biochemical Engineer? Funny you'd get that from this..." holding the book up. "But an electrical engineer, maybe. I just started. I'm not passionate about this. Hoping by the end of the first year I'll know for sure what I want to do. And then there's the war coming, too."

"You just watch!"

"Really. I haven't been following current events; my passions rest elsewhere." And the Square says it like a thespian, with a sigh and withdrawing shoulders. "You should look into biochemical engineering. There's a future in it." I tell him I'll keep it in mind. Cap'n Lou breaks into guffaws.

"Look at you, in your suit. Talking big words. Ain't you burning up?"

Something I hadn't noticed. I feel sorry for this Square; he is obviously out of place here. And he has a heckler, already. I'm curious what put this man so far from his element, but not that curious. And my stop is coming up in a few more blocks. I give Square a sympathizing smile and a roll of my eyes: crazy drunk. I pull out my wallet to retrieve change, and my girlfriend's photograph is exposed.

He leans forward, inquisitive: "Is that your beloved?"

Cap'n is less interested in my photograph - but echoes in mock condescension: "beloved...!" And I show the photo to the Square: "I don't know if I would say beloved. But this is my gal. Selena."

He reaches towards his attache. "The Goddess of the Moon. She is very beautiful. You are a fortunate one." Cap'n Lou now wants to see; he flicks his fingers with a give it here motion. I lean towards him but do not hand over my wallet. He nods in appreciation. Square has removed a slight stack of white business cards and is motioning to hand one to me, and as he leans forward all three of us make an odd huddle.

"This is my beloved."

The card I hold in my hand is a business card, a grainy photo on the left and a paragraph of names - a jumble of pseudonyms - on the right: Miss 666. Wife of Baphomet. Diana. Arbitrer of the Moon. Na'amathe. The Cunt Goddess. And more. The woman looks mostly normal - perhaps forty, with a busy Ogilvie home perm and a secretary's employee of the month photo-sitting smile. The only occult thing about her is the mascara application, upward egyptian curliques where crow's feet begin their advance. Without the resume, I wouldn't have pegged her for Satan's Mistress, but apparently she is - and pretty proud about it. Square is looking excitedly at me, eager for my response. Too excitedly, though: the hand holding the remaining cards, bending the ends between thumb and forefinger, loose their hold.

Dozens of cards burst blooming into the air like a firework, coming to rest over the floor of the back of the bus. Square is befuddled, a self-disappointed look of shame curtains his face. He catches himself, and is down on his knees picking up the cards. In his suit. It is a sight.

Cap'n Lou grabs one as Square is reaching for it. As he takes it in, he stands up: "You're kidding right?" And he throws it down at the humbled Square. He walks and wobbles as far as the rear entry. "A Satan Worshipper. You're kidding, right?" And as he turns to us to say it, he is white as a sheet. Like he will be infected by either one of us. He dismounts at the next stop, only a matter of seconds, and I'm happy that his moments of discomfort are brief.

I'm having my own conflict absorbing the moment. "So, have you been together for long?" It is all I can manage as this suited man scrambles over the floor. There might be an issue about his idol being facedown on a surface so readily tread.

The bus isn't moving. The Cap'n is outside, pointing to the back of the bus, and the bus driver is trying to interpret this commotion: the excited drunk outside and a man at the distant opposite of his vehicle, doubled-over as though he took one to the stomach. I mutter under my breath: "You don't have to answer". And I go join the Cap'n. When I join him, we have nothing to say to each other.

Solstice & Solace

2008-06-23T15:25:00.000-07:00

A common problem with being inconsolable: as your hermetically sealed thoughts whirl about in your head, faster and faster and engraving negative revelations with accelerating revolution, the illusion is created that the pressure is coming from outside. You have to forgive yourself for falling into this trap. It is merely a perception, possibly an internal desire to keep phenomena at an equilibrium, a balance, between the increasingly shameful rote thoughts clanging their chains about in there - and the inspirational monuments and heroic deeds by which you have put it upon yourself to measure up.

And that is the key; the pressure is coming from inside.

There is no lynchpin but the one of your own choosing. No physical draining to relieve a pressure imagined. Sometimes, you cannot independently - logically - arrive at a solution; you need something smarter than you.

Sometimes a solstice can turn things around. And.

Centrifugal is an imaginary force...

Internal Revolutions

2008-06-21T12:30:00.000-07:00

He took the tongs and sifted through grapes and sweet melon and pineapple and cantelope. And the bagels. So many bagels, each weighing in at 120 carbs - even before piling on the cream cheese. His eyes rolled over the table. Yes, somewhere a poor village could put this all to use: funny how the world works. He found a table away from the rest - he knew the second part of the day wasn't going to get the focus he put forward for the first half, not after eating lunch. So he settled to watch the attendees: the administrators, the programmers, the architects, the developers. And he couldn't help noting, as he remarked on the conference badges hanging about their neck and bouncing forward with each step, how noticeably overfed they all were.

A couple working for a hospital in Duluth joined him. They exchanged names, and immediately the two were remarking on the second class from the morning: "I know Bob has done some auto-discovery work for determining what we have in-house..." "Right. But that's only on the Windows side. We have some unix and Linux components that the administrators have been too busy to turn over to us." "Cowboys. If we could get more buy-in from the top, the pressure would be there. It would be pretty easy for them; I know they're already monitoring all those servers...the information is already there." He turns to him: "Just a kick in the pants, right?"

He mumbles and stutters. There must be something wrong with these people to have joined him; there must be some crisis in confidence, some inherent desperation that would prompt them to ask for the take from the guy who couldn't appear more disinterested. He scans the room for all the seats they could have taken.

"I think everyone in our I.T. is on board. It's been a challenge - as recent as six months ago we were 'auto-discovering' from an Excel spreadsheet..." He waits for laughter, but they look to each other as though he can't be possibly be serious. "No, I'm serious! Here's what you do: find someone in a general platform support role, someone who loves to write code but is stuck in writing the guidelines and standards that govern it. Take them out to lunch, get them on board with what you are doing...management is only there to pay lip service to it. For leadership, they want this to be low investment, high return. Don't count on them, regardless of what they said in class. Really: make it grass roots, make it fun, and lead people on with the attention they'll get if they succeed. That's how I did it." They look at one another. It's not a very technical approach; it's not the language they are used to speaking in. "We don't have a platform support, and I don't think there's a person in our department like that! Everyone is overworked!"

"Overworked fixing stuff or overworked implementing projects? Before you answer..." He leans into them conspiratorially: "your answer determines whether you should be here at all. I mean, keep in mind; we're all here to learn how to track - on failure, by change, and so forth - all the technological assets in our shop. If you fall into the former group, you seem to be doing fine. So fine that you can expend your resources to send them to a dog and pony show like this. If you fall into the latter group, well then: kudos."

He feels bad for the Duluth couple. They lean back as though regretting the table they chose, and he wants to make it up to them. "Google 'auto-discovery tools'. You'll probably find something for free. Someone has coded this already. Someone has always coded the good stuff already. Google it, and toss in the platform you're worried about. Print it out and hand it to your SME. Just doing a little thing like that will show you're vested, and you probably won't have to take them out to lunch." Saying the word makes him look over at the buffet and all the leftovers that will be trashed by the time they gather into forum groups. A dull bell is rung overhead. "Show's about to start. Here's my card - " He whips out a couple and crosses out the title 'Change Manager' and writes 'Windows Specialist' on one of them; he hands them each one: "I seem to be changing jobs every six months. I gave up on business cards. I should just have a set written up with a generic 'IT Professional'...at least the phone number never changes."

Two hundred of them herd at the sound of the bell. He reaches into his back pocket for the badge and flashes it as he passes through the doorway into the conference room. And realizes, he didn't ask for the business cards from the Duluth twosome: either they never want to hear from him again, or they left them at home. It happens.

There is one more lecture before the day ends with forum groups. The last lecture will address the value derived from an implemented problem and change management process that will add value to your corporation due to the minimized need for production support resources. He looks at all the people crammed into the room and makes a judgment: the more people a session is designed for, the less applicable it will be to any one in the room. He thinks: I'm not usually this jaded about these conferences. It's a nice break away from the office. Is it the subject matter? Is it because of all the preaching about how bad things will never happen when there's more up-front investment and attention? Is it because of the way they gloss over the investment required to reach this utopian, perfect state? He thinks about the personalities he works with, the varying degrees of touched inspiration and checked-out laziness. The programmers who get excited to give you a solution to a problem you never had in the first place. The administrators who are content to meet the requirements of their duties but have a fit when something causes them to change the way they look at their jobs - like a new federally imposed auditing procedure or having to deal with a new vendor required by a credit card company they already have a good relationship with. The leadership that wants to see this utopia, but won't sign off to purchase the products that will bring it.

Isn't this where the contention comes from? A defined process that should work everywhere, anytime: but it isn't proven to work anywhere in the real world, so for now: you buy the conference books like they are the Rosetta Stone for how you should be doing things. You meet other people in the industry and you learn to talk the way they do in this imagined utopia. You make baby steps towards reaching this Promised Land. And who knows: this shit may not make a difference by the time you get there. It could take ten years, and what could happen in that time? How many snake oil salesman will show up to give you an ineffective technological solution? How many shifts will occur in the economy? How many times will you ignore your own requirements because you were so thoroughly charmed by a solution to another's problem? Because you were enamored and intoxicated by a new complexity promising to take the hurt away?

He doesn't pay thorough attention. He takes notes through the first fifteen minutes before being carried away by his internal, skeptical questions. The call to break into groups brings him to attention and identified by the purple block on his badge, he walks to room 10E.

"Hello." He can barely keep his eyes open.

"Cindy and Rupert are from Croening; John and I work at Finnish. Where do you work?"

He tells them. He tells them it's funny that all of them are seated at the same table, considering that none of them are working for companies that provide technology as an external service; none of them are individual contractors. "Just noting it. Not that there's anything wrong with it: I just thought they'd be smattered about through these groups..."

"Okay..."

"So. What are you're points of pain?" He finds this is the best question to get the ball rolling, and Cindy rolls with it.

"I think we're pretty good: we have a good problem and trouble management in place. It's the change and the configuration that are the most difficult..." He breaks in: "Do you find that your configuration, getting a hold on your inventory...don't you feel like that is the first thing you should get defined? It seems these things are encouraged in the wrong order." Cindy: "Right. I think that's a known. The definition...the requirements for each of these processes...they're going to be best defined in the order of priority, right? I mean, we know when there's a problem. We know when something is broken. It's easy to cut a ticket for that. It's just the looking forward, so we can see what changed in the environment. For what reason the break occurred."

He swells up with the same kind of idealism that the group running the conference suffers from. "Yeah. I think everyone is at the same place. But, if you start from a top down model: define your assets, define the processes or changes that affect it, and then at the very bottom, have a way of tracking when it breaks: that seems the way to go. The dogma & the industry have been moving from the bottoms up. There's a lot of talk of removing the pain of fixing these problems, making everyone's life more beneficial for not having to put out fires. Which is a pretty tall order...it almost sounds like the goal is to eliminate problems before they happen..."

"I'm sorry, did you say dogma?"

"You get the point. They're promoting a preset logical structure. It would work wonderfully if I were starting an I.T. shop tomorrow: I could follow it to the letter. But all of us have processes already in place. I take back what I said about not having I.T. or contractors here. We're in the same boat to figure this out - shops that are long in the tooth, set in their ways, trying to figure out how to resolve the new methodology to several hundred people and management set in their ways and values. Where implementation has outraced the management of it. You know - your exceptions to standard outnumber the benefits from having defined the standard..."

This strikes a note with John. He is looking at me askance, writing me off as someone who has nothing to offer to the discussion: "Okay, so we want to create a CMDB...how do we go about doing it?"

There's an irresistible silence. I feel like John was negating my thunder, and his question is answered with a lull, so I ask it. "Do any of you see the return on investment? It's been bugging me." John rolls his eyes - he's already profiled me as a troublemaker. Cindy looks a little relieved. Rupert is on the fence: "But that's not why we're here. We're supposed to find solutions. Even to the problems that are prolific. Suppose you found the one answer to all your business' problems and could solve it overnight - you'd feel pretty good about that right?" His tone is getting personal and it confirms that I'm the rogue and outcast at the table. But I'm feeling a complete breakdown coming, and answer him: "Even if this were the answer..." I swing my arm about the room, taking in and addressing everything, "I'm not sure how I would feel about it. I would still have a development and a production support division, right? I'm not going to fire off all my P.S. folks; do you think that sounds like a good idea? I happen to like when things break. Even if it takes people away from their project or value work...it makes them familiar with the systems they're working with. The other day, I had this situation, and because Anil had to fix a problem with a job he had never worked with, he came up to me and told me how he noticed a few things he hadn't noticed before. Anil kicks ass. He found a better solution than the batch we had in place. He re-wrote a design part, and we've reduced the transaction time by seventy percent. So. There's something human about that: I had this kid with something to prove, and he took advantage of the current environment to up the service levels we had in place."

"Ummm...none of this has to do with a CMDB. That's the requirement. Even if it is just to get our assets in one place."

"Google it. Really." I have moments where I wonder why these, and not other people, are sent to these conferences. "Do you people not realize when you've been sent on a wild goose chase? I can see it now, you probably have shit like this budgeted so you don't lose it for next year. But here you are, taking it all seriously."

"There's no need for language!"

Cindy's right, there's no need. "I guess I've been doing this too long. This is the second version of the second methodology that I've had to...learn? Humor? I'm not sure anymore. I see what it promises - I see how heavenly it all is. I also see a complexity that...put to the grindstone of the reality we deal with every day, amounts to a strange...theological methodology." Rupert's eyes light up at the word theological. Probably some Jesus freak. "Come again?”

I'm already regretting my words. "Okay, theology may not have been the right word. What I mean to say is, you have contention and conflict in place. You have problems. So, you are sent off to a conference to learn how to minimize and eventually eliminate these problems and contentions. Only, what they tell you...is that that entire system you have in place...is the thing at fault. The contention has only been moved. It used to be, the grief came from having to respond to that 2 a.m. call to fix something you don't know the first thing about fixing. If you are good at what you do, you hit it hard and figure it out. But by saying that these are all processes that will eliminate this by specific definition...it just seems like you've added layers and layers to the fix."

Rupert seems to want to take me on: "So, you throw resources at fixing things. I can see the cognition required in that. But aren't you foregoing a metacognition?"

"I think that's where I went astray and said theological. It runs parallel to the way so many people look at the world. Yes, it's a noble effort. But for every little problem you fix, you don't have to worry about that problem anymore. Buying into a process that assumes it can keep problems from happening...doesn't that seem a little weird to you? Think about it. It broke because you didn't do it right in the first place. Instead, we're going to have you design something a thousand times more complex, but based on the true and eternal and double-checked authenticity of our requirements, you won't have to fix a broken thing. Even though your coding was shown fallible in the first place."

This gets a laugh from the table, and Rupert speaks up for the group: "Well, I see where you're going with that, but that's the direction the industry is headed. Smarter design. Better requirements. More tracking of the workflow. This seems to be a personal problem for you."

And even after making these people laugh, he feels like he's had this moment. He's getting further and further from them. They only want their CMDB, and that's understandable. They want the technical resolution to a problem; this was probably the only action item they were given for attending the conference. Do they know how many steps it takes to figuring out what they want in their CMDB? No - they probably are focused only on the number of platforms they have, and the degree of granularity they need to report on failure. "You are making this unnecessarily complex," he tells them. "But I wish you the best. I hope, after working your fifty hour weeks, you are still passionate enough to deliver what has been asked of you. In your spare time, y'know."

Rupert had been sitting next to him, and his body language tells it all. It made a shift, so that he would have to look over his shoulder to him: "I don't know the situation where you're at. Just let us move forward - I think we've heard enough from you. Some of us see how there can be a gain or value in this."

He thinks about his atheism. How much bearing it can have on this. But he shakes it off; it is just a matter of his interests being distant from the interests of the conference. He stands up from the table. "I think you're right, there's nothing I can say to help you out in this. It's true; I might be a little exhausted and jaded at it all. I'm sorry for wasting your time - sometimes I look away from the immediate problem, at the big picture and the architecture of it all...and I'm overcome with a sense of futility. Again: I could see the value if I were throwing together an I.T. shop tomorrow. As for resolving all of these processes in an organization for where the current processes are working effectively...let's throw a number at it...let's say they are 95% effective...I guess I don't see the return. I'm caught in a situation where I'm asked to improve something nearly perfect...and you can't understand how frustrating that is." He steps back, and returns his chair to the table. There are several moderators dividing their attention across several tables, and the one nearest walks over to them.

"Is everything all right here? How is it coming along?" Along with the badge he has a whistle around his neck.

He feels like all the eyes are on him to answer. He made a commitment when he stood up. He tries to be funny: "Please don't blow your whistle. I was just leaving. And you know what? I'm going to leave, I'll order your library of books later this week, but I'm going to leave and I'm going to charge where I work as though I were here the entire time. Yeah, that's what I'm going to do. From a cursory look, what you are selling is logic couched in technological terms that any individual in the eightieth percentile...and I'm guessing we're all there or higher? Could have determined on their own." He looks to his table, but no one is making eye contact with him.

"Okay, we do get the occasional response like this. And you're welcome to leave. It's not like we're going to tell on you. If you can come up with a solution to your problems on your own...well, share it with us!" The man tells him he's not going to tell, but he was twisting the whistle in his fingers from the moment he arrived at the table. "You know where to find us! There's a process for improving the process..."

He's not sure why he hasn't bolted. "I feel like I let my little group down. I'm sorry, you guys. I hope you implement this, I hope that even though you are the ground force in your corporation, you somehow get your leadership converted and backing you. I hope you can chisel out a bit of market share with this. Since none of you are in direct competition with me..." And he finally breaks into a smile. "It's funny, there's a personal investment too. Our lives, our careers...I guess I just want to say, think about picking your battles." And he turned to leave. Finally.

The complex was located deep in a suburb. As he left the building, he looked to his car. Really, this is a nice place. It is so quiet, except for the children laughing. Which isn't a bad sound. You can learn to live with that sound.

He walked the far stretch of the parking lot to his car, parked on the outskirts. Before he realized he would be trapped inside for lunch, he had parked his car as far from the building as he possibly could, thinking it would be nice place to eat. The nose of his car abutted a chain-link fence, and beyond was a small public park: benches, pond and monkey bars. Several children were playing on the other side, as two mothers sat on the bench talking to one another.

He flung away his backpack, setting it on the hood of his car. He sunk his fingers into the chain link and climbed all ten feet of the fence. He was haphazard about his dismount, and once over he just let himself fall into a roll. The ladies’ heads turned.

"Hey. Hi. I got out of my seminar early." He told them as he stood and straightened himself. He brushed some dirt from his legs. "It didn't go well. I think I wasn't into what they were saying." His mind was lit up and racing: he knew there was no way that these women didn't see him as a threat at worst, or the most eccentric man they've met, at least. He still had his badge. He had just climbed a fence in a $500 pair of Salvatore shoes. He was tucked in, professional-looking, and had just fallen ten feet out of the air. One of the ladies looked to his right, and his eyes followed: there was a break in the fence designed to allow sane people access.

"No, really, don't worry about it. I'm Jan. This is Meg. We bring the kids here every day during the week."

"Oh, nice to meet you. My name is Dean. Dean Marlowe. The boy on the monkey bars. What's his name?" Meg speaks up - "That's Jed. He didn't do anything, did he?" And he tells her no. "Nothing at all. You'll be watching, you don't mind if I talk to him do you?" Meg looks to Jan, then back to him: "Umm, sure. Do you mind if I ask why?"

And he's already stumbling forward. "There's just something I learned today. I learned something, and I want to share it with someone. A kid. I think a kid is the only person who could understand." And he could sense their concern, but he dragged one foot after the other forward. Meg and Jan fell away from his consciousness.

"Hi Jed."

"Hi." Jed was focused on not breaking a bone. He was a quarter of the way mounting a rainbow shaped arch of monkey bars. "Did my mom send you over?"

"Oh, no!" He replied. "I'm just a friend. So you come here for fun every day?"

Jed saw that this was going to be some talking. Talking he hadn't planned for. He rest the front of his body over the bars and turned his head to this new man. "Almost every day. Some days I have Soccer. And I go back to school soon. My dad is teaching me multipication, he got me a book."

"Pluh. Mulipluh - cation. How old are you?"

He takes one hand away to count: one two three four five. "I'm six!" But he didn't take away the other hand. He laughed a little inside at how the boy was almost completely vertical, but was smart enough to not give up his grip entirely. "So you're six and you are multiplying things...that's pretty good!"

And the boy went on: "I'm smarter than the other kids. My mom and dad tell me so. And I have violin. I have violin and soccer and school." "That's quite a schedule!" But already he feels his heart breaking; whatever he wanted to say to the boy is falling away from the front of his mind. But he asks it. He thinks it is the question to get the ball rolling: "So what do you do for fun?"

"Fun? I don't know. My dad likes soccer. My mom likes the violin."

"But what do you like to do?" He's given up on giving advice. The boy is putting up a challenge he is not ready for. What did he want to do? He wanted to shake this little boy, probably draw the attention of the cop he sees from the corner of his eye: shake this boy, and tell him not to ever grow up. Don't believe in what adults tell you, and when you get older, don't trust the things you put in the place, to replace - all the things the adults tell you. He realized he didn't go into this with a plan. He switched gears. He just listened.

"I like to play on the bars. I like coming here. I'm almost to the top."

"Well then, let me leave you alone. You look like you're doing a great job." And the boy beamed at him, and it was a consolation that warmed his heart. "What's the highest you've gone?" And the boy tells him - "I've gone one, two, three, four."

"Do you know what they are? Four what?" And the boy just tells him "Four of them". He tells the boy, "It's four rungs. Each one is a rung. One rung. You've made it up four, and you've made it four rungs. Do you want to try for five?" And the boy looks away and matches four to five, because multiplication is something he only does in a controlled environment: with his father looking over his shoulder. "Yeah!"

He says it with an enthusiasm. An enthusiasm that makes him feel like today was worth it.

You're Hired!

2008-06-19T18:41:00.001-07:00

Jenga

2008-06-19T17:41:00.000-07:00

He knew this was going to hurt eventually. That it would collapse on itself, someway.

It was a warmth he needed - to be among people. He didn't really get these people or understand them. Theirs was an inpenetrable world. They were all inpenetrable worlds! For too long, he'd interred a self-assurance that he needed nothing but his own wit and will. For too long, he ignored the life line and soft place - the woman he thought would always be there - and never made the connection that his confidence, security, bravery and risk-taking relied so much outside his wit and will: it relied so much on his knowing, deep down, that he would be loved at the end of the day. That she would be the warm body he lay next to at night and reassure him that if nothing else, he was not alone. When she changed; when she was able to relocate so readily, she took his foundation with her. So he just wanted to be among people. Being alone brought him to look at his mistake. Occasionally, he would try and see it for what it is: long in the tooth, friendless and alone, a shell of a man moving forward with the momentum of a bad habit and the occasional relief of a deep sleep. But he didn't want to accept it.

So he tried to be with people. Even if he didn't understand them.

He tried too hard. They knew he tried too hard, and they hated him for it.

Photo Anatomy

2008-06-18T21:54:00.001-07:00

Had an appointment with the ex tonight to get the title transfered for the car. I almost didn't make the meetup on time: I fell asleep sunning on my front lawn! The windows for soaking up some vitamin D are unpredictable and fleeting - I don't have to tell you that - but coming out of a sun-nap and having to be somewhere in like ten minutes is jarring. It was a wash: the licensing agency was unable to assist.

She gushed with loads of compliments about how healthy I'm looking: it was nice to hear! I've been conscious over the past few weeks over how bloated I got over several months of drinking and hanging out in bars...perhaps my week of vegetarianism is paying dividends. I haven't made any diet declarations yet, and I'm definitely not eating healthy per se; for now I'm just going to ride the no-meat eating and see where it takes me.

The pic is from Hawaii, a year ago. One of my favorites for the eye contact.

Bumbershoot 1997

2008-06-18T18:40:00.000-07:00

Three years of living on Dexter can be boiled down to one memorable day. I miss living on the easternmost hinterland of Queen Anne; I miss walking to work everyday and I miss watching the sea planes alight every half hour. Oh, and the free Lake Union fireworks displays. I miss the days when an accident in the tunnel would find me outwalking a mile and a half of stalled cars. I miss the brood of Siamese cats that lived in the overgrowth of trees below our apartment window. I miss our apartment manager, who was always stumbling drunk out of the Dexter- Hayes Pub the same time I would get home from my nine to five. But by the time I am dottering in old age, I think a lot of this is going to fade, and the Dexter Years are going to find representation in one Bumbershoot saturday.

You couldn't have asked for better weather. Michelle and I recited an affirmation to each other: "We aren't going to let ourselves be bothered by the crowds. We aren't going to get pissed off when people are talking over the music; we're going to communicate this to each other and move to a better spot. There are things worse than having the backpack of the person in front of you shoved into your chest." And a few others; we traded them back and forth as we walked to Mercer and made the turn under 99. This was new to both of us; neither of us had been onsite from doors open to doors close.

It had been about ten years since I last saw Robyn Hitchcock. Last time I did, he was headlining Bumbershoot at the old Coliseum. It was a bit strange when he encouraged, from the stage, the crowd imagining a large blade sweeping across the Coliseum and beheading everyone on the floor. Then right into "Balloon Man". This time we would be seeing him in the Opera House; Tuatura was opening. I talked him up a great deal to Michelle.

Michelle at the time was going to massage school - she was into any music that could relax and not compromise her alternative leanings. So Tuatura was a perfect fit. Since everyone was politely sitting at the noon hour, there were no contentious backpacks. Being in the aesthetically lit Opera House while the sun is at its zenith...that's a bit weird, though.

Tuatura was a revolving door of musicians and feast of ambient sounds. Their first album remains a fave to this day. When Robyn came on, he was joined on stage by members of Tuatura (Scott Mccoi! Peter Buck!) before I really understood the incestuous relationships and inner band workings of all these local musicians. I beamed when Michelle approved of Robyn.

We migrated to the main staage to catch David Byrne. Neither of us had big expectations; it was an opportunity to sit in the stands and relax for a couple hours. We were treated to a great set. I think it was special since Mr. Bryne has been performing solo long enough to where he just decided - fuck it - I'm going to do Talking Heads songs. It's a festival, after all. There's a mix of frustration and respect when you follow a lead singer beyond their own band and a desire to re-create your own virginity manifests in leaving the history that everyone knows you for, in the dust. On this occasion, David Bryne came out on stage wearing the oversized suit - this time in hot pink - and all intentions were clear. It was a huge, unexpected, pleasant surprise.

After that it was into the familiar. We caught Kristen Hersh at the westernmost stage. Well, most of it. It was effing hot, I'd forgotten my sunscreen, and we were exposed. Mind you, this precedes the genius of Sunnyborder Blue. Kristen was very finicky about getting her guitar in the right tuning while the crowd baked. We saw some friends of ours, said hi, but only made it through half the set. It's a little weird to fall short of a fanaticism in retrospect: I've learned every song I possibly can, of Kristen's or the Throwing Muses, on the guitar.

It's even weirder to look at all the acts we missed. Michelle and I thought we were making a tremendous effort as we went off-site to get dinner, but these are some of the acts we would miss this weekend: Beck, Goodness, Sonic Youth, Tenacious D (1997? For Real??), David Cross (though I would stand behind him at a New Pornographer's show a couple years later), Foo Fighters (meh.), Margaret Cho (yes!), Sleater-Kinney (A band I would become very passionate about around the same time they call it quits: I saw them only once), Tom Robbins (O. M. G.). But getting off-site was part of our plan. We wanted to regroup, we wanted a quiet space away from the food vendors where I could whip out my syringe and take my shot inconspicuously. A little reinforcement, for the final round.

Which we had plans and backup plans for: Beck. Failing that, Cake. We saw neither.

We hooked up with some friends from the massage schood who were gushng over El Vez. They were insistent we join. We talked it over and were easy with it: Beck was going to be chaos (in retrospect, I think there were casualties) and we admitted to each other that Cake was always going to be a sad alternative anyways.

Michelle and I saw one of the best shows we had ever seen. El Vez - and the El-Vettes-brought the magic. The revue was an uptempo rollercoaster from start to finish, with great music and overacted drama and a general lifting: sometimes music takes you out of everything you're familiar with and drops you in an unfamiliar place. This was one of those moments. We walked away converts, with no regrets over the shows we didn't attend...

...and that was the last show of the night. We raved to each other as we walked the mile back to our home. We had a slight advantage, getting out before Beck was finishing his set on the main stage. And you might be wondering: okay, a nice day of shows. Four, if you are keeping count. You've been to probably over two hundred shows - and this day is more memorable than any other? Even though you go to Bumbershoot every year and could write a short piece for any one of them? How about the time you saw John Wesley Harding for the first time...or the Minus 5? How about the Wilco / Shins set? Or R.E.M.? Certainly seeing Isaac Hayes or Elvis Costello in the Arena had to amount to something? Or the time you were there late for Kristen Hersh, and went into insulin shock? Or the first time you went to Bumbershoot without Michelle - and even though you went on a life-threatening ride with a beautiful new woman, you had to go home and cry because nothing seemed right to you anymore. Any of it could just as well suit.

Well, we walked home, ranting and ragging over El Vez. We made the trek up Dexter, we thudded the soft steps up to our second floor apartment, and dropped like bags of potatoes onto the futon chair. And we turned on the television.

As we flipped through channels - different shots of a wreckage near a tunnel - we were like archaeologists unearthing a new grief. Princess Di was dead. A skepticism kicks in - sometimes healthy, sometimes conspiratorial - but this is what the television was telling us. Princess Di was dead because her driver was outracing the paparazzi. A stupid reason. But undeniable in it's efficacy. You have a moment where you sum up what this person means to you - nothing , really - but the moment where you sum up what it means to the world quickly follows. And you are submerged in empathy. A saddening empathy that makes you want to kick down your neighbor's door and ask them if they've heard the news.

Michelle and I were pretty much dead to the world when the news hit; all a sudden we are on our feet and pacing as though this mattered to us. As though it could impact us. We kept the television on for a short time...it didn't take long to ascertain that the news was repeating itself...and decided to roll into bed half-shellshocked. We had woken up that day with an ambitious plan of action; we went to sleep bereft of any sense of accomplishing it.

You Will Get Your. Reward.

2008-06-18T17:24:00.000-07:00

Things We Lost in the Fire. The title alone conjures an image of the things you failed to consider as you made your life-saving escape. To forsake the needed for the sentimental and precious - the frivolous and superficial are secured in lieu of the essential. Despite the reminiscent & implied regretful tone of the title, the sound of Low manifests itself as the opposite: immediate, universal & shed of unnecessary flourish. However: this album is a milestone in Low's career, a transition into familiar melody and accessible song...and it is possible that even at mid-career, they chose a title hinting at the purity of sound they were leaving in their wake.

Low's 4 previous efforts set a Mendoza Line for slowcore, making this album a pleasanlty jarring surprise. Not like there was anything wrong with their previous work: they had defined a niche, they created a texture...they owned being sober at 2 a.m. in the morning. Things We Lost in the Fire is like a patient coming out of a coma; coming into life. Where their previous efforts created texture, this album created movement.

Also, Fire is not as jarring a transition as say, the later Great Destroyer - another title that shows it's cards. With Fire, Low conceded very little in their approach - still being very dour and deliberate - but incorporated lush arrangements, warm and familiar chord changes, and the occasional latent rock hook. Instead of relying heavily on vocal textures, a studied approach to the emotionally evocative lyric is utilized; instead of a single sound pattern, a pastiche of style is brought to the fore. This is Low maturing in a single bound, breaking into new territory.

The album embarks with "Sunflower": if you are a first-time listener, you are gauging whether this is the most depressing thing you've ever heard. If you've already plunged into Long Division - you're accusing another band - not Low - of copping Alan & Mimi's impeccable harmony and name and laying it over a melodic track. But that's transition. It sets the tone for the album...sparse guitar work and plodding - sometimes delicately brushing - drum strokes. "Whitetail" sprawls into Low's past and future, with hanging vocals and foreboding musical accompanyment.

But Low delves into a sluggish pop sound with "Dinosaur Act" - a song that invokes the Pixies' Loud/Quiet/Loud formula - and an indication that the band is shedding itself of a resistence to music more accessible to the unsuspecting world. This is even moreso evident on "July", a song that announces itself with a hypnotic and apocalypctic beat - moving through different measures and contexts and leaving the listener with the reminscent lines -

They'll Never Wake Us In Time
They'll Never Wake Us In Time

To be followed by Mimi & Alan's la-la's and month-calling (August, September, October) to the outro strings. "July", along with "Embrace", create a centerpiece to the album: the latter bears forward with a drum pulse as Mimi's vocals lilt and and hang until the song builds to a head. The lyrics imply a tragedy the listener can only guess at.

The second half of the album finds Low flirting with catchy harmonies / arpeggios as they delve into "Whore":

What is the whore you're living for
Is it so wrong to think there's more
There's always one worth waiting for
What is the whore you're living for?

It is a beautiful, melodic, pretty song - with a serious message - and an evil realization: "You want to speak like angels / but you can't." It comfortably moves into "Kind of Girl" - showcasing their easy harmony over folk guitar - before aspiring to the affected pop of "Like A Forest". Relying on a lyrical hook and foregoing musical complexity, this song is a pleasant reminisence: "Goes off in my hands" resounds and resounds.

"Closer" is familar territory, with Mimi and Alan's harmony in-sync and transcendent over the music. "In Metal" ends the album with a preview of Low's future: by relation it is a driving stride and rumble that addresses the precious & fleeting transience of raising a child.

Things We Lost in the Fire is not so much a challenging album as it is an album that might easily go by unappreciated in a year bringing forth a lot of great efforts. It isn't designed to shock or awe, but it finds a quiet strengh in melody and informed lyrics. It separates itself in its uniqueness; a uniqueness that is sublime. Really: if you already own it, give it another listen. If you have no clue about Low: check it out.

I Draw a Bath

2008-06-17T17:27:00.001-07:00

This month - I can't pin it to the day - marks the ninth year I've lived in my home. That would be nine years without taking a bath.

There are two explanations for this: for one, I'm a dude, and dudes shower (unless you are The Dude - and how did taking a bath work out for him? That's right, a ferret gnawing at his 'nads). And the other: in nine years I haven't razed the bathroom to the ground and made it breathtakingly bath taking-worthy.

The “head” is pretty sad. It is the gateway between the master bedroom and the rest of the house, because there was no way to add on to the majestic, original, six hundred square feet while thinking in horizontal confines. This means there are 2 doors: that's a big limit for such a small space. If you happen to be sitting on the toilet, you have a sink in your face. If you are aiming for the toilet, and you have broad he-man sized shoulders like me - you are contorting into an asymmetrical caricature of you in full; if you are hitting anything other than the right side of the bowl you are accomplishing an Olympic feat.

And then there's the tub.

It is an old fashioned, claw-foot tub. Or so I suppose. I haven't removed the sheets of fiberglass in which it is ensconced to really check it out. This is one thing I've learned as a homeowner: tearing things down is an easy commitment to a project that takes months to complete...months that your real full-time job doesn't have the dreamy idealism to humor.

So it is a real tub, kept in place with glitter-speckled white laminate sheeting and black, eroding caulking. Definitely something that you don't want to relax in; not in a prone position. Also: I haven't cleaned it since the ex left. The boys might understand: dude.

But I was having an overwhelmingly taxing day at work today. The kind where you lose your focus, and the only relief is to be anywhere but being at work. I took a couple ibuprofen, and that didn't work. I took a nap in the "short term parking" room, and I still wasn't sated. To add to my troubles, I knew I'd be working from 2100 - 0100 tonight from home. Home was not looking like the relief I was looking for.

And I'm not sure how it came to me, but I got stuck on this thought: I'm going to go home. I'm going to draw a bath. I'm going to finally take a bath in my home.

It hounded me to the end of the work day. I took off at 14:30, was home by 15:45, and set to work on making my tub something I didn't fear. Armed with Mr. Clean's Magic Eraser (MADE IN GERMANY; Ingredients: "contains no phosphate" (wtf?)), and another, less questionably toxic bathroom cleaner, I scrubbed the tub down to its drain. It was a process, one that reminded me why I don't do bathrooms.

That took an hour, enough time for other complications to arise: Where did the bath salts go? I swore I had a drain plug, where the fuck is it? It's the afternoon, why am I getting no water pressure? But I tracked down the former, found the second after much searching, and had enough time to endure the latter (though the bath faucet - rarely used - never transcended groundswell brown to a crystal brilliantine).

I've never treated myself to a lavender-salt bath. And I like to think of myself as pretty metro. After taking another 45 minutes to fill the bathtub, this is what I had on my hands:

Not pretty. But I don't intend to have my eyes open for long. While waiting for the tub to fill, I set up a tiny boom box CD player and selectively selected Lindsey Buckingham's most recent album to zone out to; I also laughingly turned a smartass remark my father once made about my more leisurely obsessions into a half-assed haiku:

There he goes my son
He who loves soap and candles
So proud he's my son

And I slip in. The salts feel like I'm bathing in champagne and I double the dosage (it burns a little, but I probably shouldn't have dumped it on my stomach)...and the hours I took to get here are magically erased (TM). I have one bad moment when I realize that whoever designed this tub, designed it with the water escape too low. I cover it with one foot, a small sacrifice.

Look at that. I let them go and rest, and my arms are floating. I'm floating in my own home. Nine years, and I'm only floating in my home now.

Death of a Salesman

2008-06-10T23:19:00.000-07:00

Lyrics to a song by Low, that touch me in a big way:

Death of a Salesman

So I took my guitar
And I threw down some chords
And some words I could sing
Without shame

And I soon had a song
I played it around
For some friends
But they all said the same

They said music's for fools
You should go back to school
The future is prisons
And math

So I did what they said
Now my children are fed
'Cause they pay me to do
What I'm asked

I forgot all my songs
The words now are wrong
And I burned my guitar
In a rage

But the fire came to rest
In your white velvet breast
So somehow
I just know
That it's safe

A nice little acoustic number I think a lot of people who have given up on music can relate to. I had it in a collection of songs I was going to burn for someone, along with Trouble by Kristen Hersh, It's Different for Girls by Joe Jackson, Out of Reaches by Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks (the centre piece), Full Moon in My Soul by Robyn Hitchcock, Humble Bee by John Wesley Harding. And a half dozen others. But really, burning a CD of songs is kind of cliche; I deleted the collection.

I Get Punched in the Head

2008-06-09T17:00:00.000-07:00

An inventory - reverse resume - of moments where I was not employed:

10/07/1970 - 10/08/1983: 13 years and a day: Because I'm a child and I shouldn't be thinking about work.
09/13/1993 - 09/15/1993: I was working at a temp agency, but had so much faith I would get hired on permanent at the now defunct Aldus. In my last week of hoping, I hear Aldus has been bought up by Adobe. I do not have a backup plan. Too lazy too look for a real job, I end up in a tanning salon.
02/21/2002 - 10/02/2005: I quit my professional job with indignation (though I hang around for about a month from my given notice). I spend a year finishing and starting house projects, I begin drinking (late bloomer), apply for about a thousand jobs in this time (who quits a job in the middle of a technology bust?), go to school to get a k-8 Education Degree, realize I love kids but most of my colleagues are christers - and I have difficulty resolving a teacher's salary with maintaining a house mortgage in heavenly West Seattle; I end up back where I was when I left. Gratefully.

In that time, I've worked at a roller-rink, been a restaurant dishwasher (for five hours), sold photo-sitting packages over the phone (for a week, tallying up a single sale), unimaginatively transitioned to telephone surveys (they rarely checked for the existence of respondents on the surveys, and they paid on commission - so I made over twenty bucks an hour), had steady work out on my own doing field maintenance for a local drug company, worked at a temp agency (everything from moving furniture to processing mail orders), the aforementioned tanning salon (the glory days of high-pressure, bait-and-catch sales of tanning packages: a racket that I couldn't ingest enough cocaine to perfect). And the rest is Information Technology, a vague term I hate validating. I tell people I work with computers; they tell me their internet keeps crashing, and I tell them I don't really do that kind of working with computers.

The coolest job? Roller-rink. Like there could be any doubt.

Child labor laws were pushed to their extreme so I could start work the day after I turned thirteen. In retrospect - I was paid under the table for several years - the laws may have been compromised a lot. The person who hired me based on my dancing skills (The March, The Fox-Trot, The Waltz, The Tango) is no longer living with us, and I'm guessing there is a statute of limitations that stops at the grave. I spent the first year as a floor guard - blowing a whistle to let you know you're going too fast, putting you on the bench if I have to blow my whistle twice. Little thirteen-old me, local rules enforcer and an early taste of my own pretend importance.

Southgate Roller Rink was a family owned business, and I felt a part of the extended family as much as the rink nurtured me as a second home. Dorothy was a gracious and kind employer. Her daughter was my dance instructor. Her son-in-law was second to my father as an authority figure, though in an employer role, he played at being impossible to impress. The older floorgaurd was like a hero to me: imagine Tom Cruise's charisma before it expired into crazy, and you'd have Steve. Working in the snack bar, there was Marge - who had been my Sunday School teacher, and Terry - my first gay pal. Terry would eventually leave and was replaced by my dance partner, Lisa. It was a tight little community.

And I was a bit of a red-headed stepchild. I was goofy, irresponsible, easily distracted: from day one, my focus was on the attention I received for being a floor guard and not necessarily the fulfillment of the responsibilities thereof. I would spend my time flirting with several girls - oblivious to a kid bleeding a bloody nose all over the skating surface. I didn't see playing the music as a responsibility, unless there was a responsibility to bring more Siouxsie or the Cure or the Dead Kennedys to the rink environment. I was an attention whore, and Les - the father figure & senior-senior floorgaurd, let it be known that he saw me as such. When I shaved my long hair down to my skull, my mother asked him what he thought of it. "We try not to give ben the attention he seems to crave" was all he said. A policy of containment.

It's a little weird in retrospect: I had this at such a young age, something that a lot of people want all their life: to be center stage, to hold people's attention, to be adored in spite of myself. To be an exception, to be able to get away with things you shouldn't, to be special. After only working at the rink for a couple years, I could feel it's lack of permanence as people I knew stopped coming to the rink...you know, growing up and into their own interests...finding myself feeling a little too old for my environment but not wanting to let go of it. It remained my full time job through high school. I was there long enough to mature into engaging the responsible aspects of what I was doing, and become increasingly conscious of the self-humoring & self-parody required to be an attention whore with staying power.

I may have stayed a little too long. Late on a Friday night in my final summer, when I was seventeen and knew I wouldn't be coming back in the fall, an excited child rolled and fumbled up to me - pointing to the emergency exit.

"I just saw someone go out the back door with a bunch of skates!"

Now who would want to steal a bunch of roller skates? I investigated the long hallway beyond the emergency exit that lets out onto 16th avenue behind the rink. I opened the door and looked northwards towards the bars, southwards towards the adult book stores. The hindside of the Roller Rink was a much more adult world, and it wasn't uncommon for young people to get dumped off at the rink so a parent could have themselves their own good time. But I don't see anyone with an armload of skates, and I ask the kid if that's really what he saw, and he insists on it.

I skate to the front door and I tell Dorothy; I'm equally insistent on checking it out. Of course I tell her that it's some kid that took the skates - there's no way she would let me go if she thought otherwise. White Center has gotten palpably more violent in the last several years - even the roller rink has a couple of police cars that show up as the sessions end on Friday and Saturday nights. But I love adventure when I sense it, and with her permission I motor down the ramp to street level.

I decide I'll just roll around the block and make a looksee. Chances are, they're long gone. But it is night and night is intoxicating to a seventeen year old adolescent...this is an excuse to roll into bars and ask 'have you seen anyone making off with a pair of our rentals?' I get to traverse a new territory to lay down my authority as a 120 lb. bounty hunter.

I cut through the parking lot of Bea's Pancake House, the last family-friendly post before hitting White Center's seedier boulevard of porn shops, bike shops and bars. There are a couple of made-up girls unlocking a dodge dart - typhoon and feathered hair, tight acid-wash jeans and suede stilettoed boots - and I ask them if they've seen anyone running around with a pair of rental skates - you know, black or white booted, orange wheels? And I'm sheepish about it; I can already feel the dismissiveness & condescension I've come to expect from girls a couple years older than me entitled by their own fake licenses.

"No, nobody with skates." And I thank them, and as I skate away I'm craning my head back at one of them, as she bends over to retrieve something from the back seat of the car. I'm not ready as I slowly turn to look where I'm going.

A man. A solid, balding man. He's juking to the left, to the right, like some spastic ape. I register this much when he's five feet and closing; I'm not ready for his roundhouse fist to the right side of my head.

And I'm looking up from off the ground. I think I remember seeing the sky, and one of my legs making a prohibitive sign across it as all my wheels turned against me. And the pain in the side of my head, and the pain in my back and another pain in the back of my head where it hit the concrete. The side of my head is the least of it. I am sore everywhere, and I'm feeling it as I get on my feet.

He's attacking the girls. No, he's pushing them aside. He shoves one of them away from the car, and she makes a dozen tiny skirting little steps in her heels to keep from falling down. She yells 'Asshole' after him as he is slamming the car door shut. The driver side window is down and I can see him now: probably in his forties, the broken face of a hard drinker, more fat than athletic. What you would expect to find in a White Center bar; and he yells out the window: "Bitch, trying to steal my car, bitch!" And he is still yelling out the window as he slams on the gas, tires screaming, and he winds out of the lot and into the street and away.

The girls take off running as fast as their jeans let them; I am on my feet now and I follow their rapid little clicking heels. They turn into the first bar right as I catch up to them, and I ask them what the hell was that? I have my palm to my head like it's the only thing holding it together. In my mind they are guilty. They are a couple of hot chicks that got a guy drunk and got his car keys, and their running off without checking on the guy that took the punch plays into my indictment. "That was my car! That was my car! That fucker stole our car!" and they forget about me quickly; one asks the other "God, what am I going to do?"

They are on the inside of the tavern's door; I'm on the outside; this seems to be a good time to give up. I tell them I'm at the roller rink if they hear anything. I tell them I was punched. Just in case they didn't notice. And she turns to her friend: "my mom is going to kill me". And my last words to them- "I'm pretty sure I'll be okay." evoke an angry eyeroll. I shut the door to them.

And I skate very slowly back to the rink. I'm not sure I like this new environment. I'm used to being the authority figure looking down, not looking up. I've stepped well far out of my jurisdiction tonight. In my contained world, I have all the information I need and in a small way, what I say, goes. Out here, telling who is right and who is wrong is a lot more complicated. And much less final. And what I think doesn't really amount to much in other people's drama. And so on. I am skating alone back to the rink, and there is no one to hear my complaint.

I am uninjured, and I get as much attention out of this as I can. I tell my story so Les will wish he got punched in the head himself. And I bask in it. At the end of the night, midnight, an inventory reveals that no skates were taken.

myself, annotated. sort of.

2008-06-08T14:04:00.000-07:00

I spent a writer's block moving some of these posts to myspace. My mom was all over it and called me with all these questions about what is / isn't true...after telling me I'm an amazing writer of course (thanks mom; like most things I'll disagree). But she does bring up an interesting point. I tend to throw everything in here, with varying degrees of reference to reality. I have a fascination with where creativity comes seemingly from nowhere and where it has an impetus in reality: passive aggressive message to my friends, cry for help or attention, etc. And I'm a pretty honest guy, to a fault, so I'm just going to lay it out:

The Beast: First paragraph about my ex, sitting about with no intent to blog in my head. It took a weird turn. An awkward night at a bar pissed me off enough to write, and I finished it barely able to sit up. I tried to maintain a faithfulness to it being about the ex while being pissed at another. 100% true.

Image One: 100% True.

The Dynamic: 12% True. My first attempt at not creating a cry for help.

Recognition: 100% True. Because writing the previous entry was not smooth...

She Moved Through the Fair: 60% True. The Ex was sitting by my side the whole time. And I didn't lose my wallet.

Project Management: Is an ill-conceived piece of crap.

The Giving Tree: 97% True. My grandfather and I are men, so there was not nearly as much talking. Plus we were both chewing tobacco, something I chose to leave out.

Easter Notes: That shit is 100% true.

September Fourth: 100% true. And I'm about 25% over it.

The Opposite of Murder: The first thing I wrote that I have a good feeling about. It ends positively. I'll call it 30% true, since I've been attacked by crows on several occasions and feel like we don't have a healthy relationship...and saving the bird really did happen.

Litter Box: 99% true. I doubt my neighbor was checking me out. This one, and a subsequent post, were vital to me. The diabetes, and my inability to be responsible about it 24x7, 365 days a year, has led to some very frightening moments.

Social Skills: 4% true. But don't I wish it were more 'n that? I get all artsy-like, transitioning from a cumbersome, inept, sentence structuring - to end in a frenetic speed. It was the first time I surprised myself with what I wrote, and it was like sinking a putt on the 18th green after a shitty day of golf; the thing that brings you back for more.

Merging: another from the diabetes monologues, and 100% true.

Progressing: 100% untrue. Mostly, I was loving the style of writing I was engaging with the ending paragraph of Social Skills. Extempore.

The Wastelands: About a person, and I guess it's 100% true. I feel like I'm edging towards something more like prose, and the percentages get a little sketchy when I do...also, the stupidest title I employ.

HI: 100% true.
Leave the Kitten Alone!: 100% true, and really: don't fuck with the cat, ever.

Deconstructo: I felt like I did such a fun job blurring the line between fiction and reality with Social Skills, I decided on a sequel. After all, I've already committed a fuck fantasy to word about a girl I will eventually meet; I thought it would be fun to write how she figures it all out when we do for real. Then I decided to get cute and make it the same number of words as the first, and that was just silly. There will probably be a third, against all better judgment...mostly because Bree and I walked by her one day. There's something about having 2 worlds that don't jive making this tangential brush. I'll call it 15% true - everything about my sleep deprivation at the time, anyways...

Fragments: 0% true, and based on the title: negligible.

Mother's Day: 100% true, more or less.
Untitled I: 0 % true. I want to do more of this nonsense fable stuff.
Dreams Conjured: 100% true. But they are dreams, after all.

On Meditation: Commentary, something I don't usually do. First off, I'm not well-travelled or well-educated; I don't have the authority for it. I just finished Hitchen's God is Not Great, and it gave me an appreciation for how even television pundits are miles ahead of my outlook on things. I think I only wrote this because I was too lazy to finish my own Atheism in an Age of Irreverence which would have been (un)read and (un)appreciated by only one person I know.

SIFF Notes: 100% True. But note how wordy I'm getting.

Her Interior: Again, 100% true with the 'prose' caveat. Although - I love this little piece, and I've re-read it myself a couple-dozen times.

Yetrigar & The Getty's Cove Redress are both 100% true. Really, just travel logs from the Sasquatch trip.

I've Been Thinking About It...: 50% true. I was having a bad week at work with the ex, who was spending all day in a conference room 30 feet from me. At one point she surprised me at my desk, which I was not ready for...and we spent a half hour talking. I wrote this when the thought crossed my mind: what if she suggested getting back together? And the rest is true, though an immature impulsiveness is honest and evident. I felt a little weird about this one, especially when someone wanted to make sure it wasn't true - qualifying it with a 'you don't smoke, right?'

manna for manny: 6% true. I walked by this person downtown and wanted to see if I could write about him. I walked a block to 4th & Pine, headphones on and struggling to get my notebook out in mid-stride. I finally whipped it out, and 2 condoms flew out of my bag and into the air as I did so. There is nothing more humbling than picking up your rubbers (from off one of the dirtier corners in town) amongst a half dozen homeless, adolescent tweakers.

Casanova: When I finish this monster, it will be 25% true. I mean, it takes place in the 50's, a place I wasn't exactly at. It might be my first real short story.

I Get Punched in the Head: 100% True, but one would think I've been punched in the head more than once. Perhaps the fact that it only happened once makes it worth writing about.

There it is. I'm hoping it's a positive promise of things to come. As I wrote this, I kept thinking of any number of music band's greatest hits collections, and how things tend to go downhill after they indulge a retrospective. I guess I have obsurity going for me. I'm trying to think of these as my singles: nobody cared, but I passionately petitioned.

manna for manny

2008-06-02T12:10:00.000-07:00

- Did you see Manny's new threads?
- Lucky bum. I saw them first. Didn't think they were for us.
- You just ask. You just pick em up, ask the nice lady if they're for the taking. Coulda been yours.
- Well I didn't and they ain't. It wasn't meant to be.
- Shit. Manny's probably not going to talk to us anymore. Are you Manny?

Though he was being asked in jest, an answer was requiring serious thought. "It's just clothes. You birds got to lay off. And pay better attention next time." He gets out of it without a technical lie, though he cannot avoid feeling beatific saying the words. Its the threads, acting on him and giving him a renewed authority. His words seem denser than those around him.

Feeling like a leader is something he's missed for years. Like when he headed up that maintenance crew in Georgetown. It was subsidiary to an extensive temporary hiring service - they handled all the paperwork and financial ends at central; he was supervisor over a dozen men and three large trucks. It was the perfect gig. He wasn't responsible for drumming up the contracts. They would be floated to him each week at the Bellevue office (the boys were under the impression he had several afternoon meetings there each week). So there was a lot of autonomy and nobody looking over his shoulder. He knew when to let the atmosphere in the shop get a little loose - let the guys have their fun - and he recognized when he had to motivate them: "Lookit how slow Stan's priming that molding - looks like he doesn't mind keeping the rest of you here late. Guys don't forget to thank Stan..." A great gig, being the big man holding sway. It seemed a little too good to be true, and eventually was. The end came quickly when the temp firm consolidated their services and eliminated most of the subcontracting they were providing, and there was nothing Manny could do as the last jobs expired over the course of a month. He regretfully left behind the only office he had in his life - a single window-enclosed office in a vast workshop, stinking of marijuana and male body odor.

And then there were a couple of bad years. He's heard enough from other people how he's responsible for it. He lives every day being accountable for it.

- Okay, everyone's in. Light's Out!
- Uuuugh.
- Nite Nite, Ladies...

The Christ Church of the Nazarene opened it's basement to thirty of them last week. It's shelter, but it's in the berbs. Because it's in the berbs, there's a lot of rules...but also, there's a lot of discipline. He finds that this helps. He's not waking up to his demons each morning. He's not stepping out and dealing with the ghosts he's trying to escape: bums who never found a place to stay the previous night, still stinking of booze. He appreciates this new gig.

He leaves his job each evening - a certified seller of Spare Change News - to board the bus to Ballard. There's always twelve of them, and he can feel it immediately: they aren't welcome, they stick out like a sore thumb. He's gotten beyond being angry at this. Even though there's nothing wrong with them - none of them are drunk and none of them have had a drink all day, all of them have jobs to go to - but the people who are going to their homes see them as some invading threat, some intrusion, some undefinable devalue on their personal lives and assets. He saw the flyer that went to all the houses around the neighborhood. Basically, the church announced that they were putting a group of homeless up for the night, they were expected to be in by ten, they had subsidized bus trips in and out of Ballard: they were only there to sleep. And here's who to contact if you have a problem with it.

After staying a week, Gus called the number to lodge a complaint about himself: "Yeah, yellow raincoat and long beard. Red Beard. He made some not right comments to my daughter. Stank of booze." They had a good laugh when Gus was making the call, and were ready to erupt with it when Gus got called out. But nobody ever said anything to them or Gus, and the punchline for the practical joke just hung silent in the air. Even when posturing with a threat, the smallest indulgence would not be humored. It made them feel small and insignificant.

Manny put the same threads on each day, the same threads that made the others envious - and filled him with a sense of pride. It was a complete suit of wool. A dress shirt wasn't too hard to find. And a dark wool overcoat. For the completely destitute, it was envied for its warmth. For the recovered and newly competitive, it was envied because he simply outdressed the bunch. Since he lucked out acquiring it at the last drive, the suit had changed him. Sort of upped expectations. He began shaving every day. They had Brill Creme at the Nazarene, and he would slick his black hair back with it. As they set out upon their day, he would sheepishly tell the others: "I've had to sleep with you guys all night. I'm not sitting in the back of the bus with you guys." He would sit up front, where the elderly sat, and he would practice is conversating skills.

He stood all day on the corner of Fifth and Pine, occasionally shouting "Spare Change" - sometimes with an exclamation, sometimes with the hint of a question. He never got sick of being told that he didn't look homeless. Or that if he were homeless, he's the sharpest dressed homeless person they've ever seen. Or, that being homeless can't be all that bad. Eventually, he stopped being homeless. "I'm independently wealthy...I'm just filling in for my brother today. Now he's homeless." "I'm a stockbroker. This is community service." He knew they were in on the joke. He knew that at the end of the day, he was still homeless. But he wanted to be plucky, enthusiastic. Make a good impression, because you never know when someone might want to give you a chance at something better. Something about the clothes was making him think he might want a white collar job. He'd be good at it.

Being in a high-traffic, fashionable area like this had it's challenges. He had to always be on. He could never let up. He had to conduct himself as though all the men had eyes in the back of their heads. And if the women had eyes in the backs of their heads, he didn't want to think about it. It was distracting, and it made him want more in life.

The weeks turned into months. He was scoring big with this job. It had been seven months since he had a drink. He was learning to type at a class offered by the church, and he was typing 90 words a minute. Though he knew he could do better; though he knew he was meant for more. He had been to several interviews at various companies. They paid a better wage, but they didn't pay a wage that was going to make him stop being homeless. Not that it mattered, he didn't get the job each time. Anyways, he was already used to being homeless and saw it as some strange advantage. It wasn't something he had to avoid. But there was something bothering him. Something made him feel like a window was slowly closing on him.

It was the suit.

It was starting to smell funny. He didn't know how to describe the smell. He didn't own a wool suit or a wool overcoat when shit was going right for him, and nothing prepared him for what months of rain would do to it. Over the course of days, he could feel his stress climbing at the thought of it. When someone told him no to his 'Spare Change', he wondered if it was because of him. Because he guessed he had started to smell, too. Even when people were nice to him, he couldn't stop imagining what they were thinking and hoped they would move on before they caught a whiff. But he couldn't not wear the suit. He couldn't get past the visual: how it seperated him from everything he feared about his situation. He couldn't get past thinking how it was some key to unlocking his way out of it.

Then today. The weather made a drastic upturn, shooting to eighty degrees.

Manny stood on his corner. He could feel the perspiration and the sweat, and he watched the girls in their short skirts and the businessmen who opted for short sleeves. The weather had turned, and everything was coming to life in these people's worlds. Cars would drive up fifth avenue blaring their music. Mochas were traded in for slushies. And Manny was burning up. Burning up hot. Perspiration ran down his back; he could sense how he was staining up his dress shirt. And Manny couldn't breath. He couldn't take off his overcoat, and he felt like he was going to expire.

And no one stopped to talk to him. Or to buy a paper from him. Manny felt like this was the game, it was lost, and he was only toyed with before being defeated.

The Getty's Cove Redress

2008-05-29T17:40:00.000-07:00

My stress level was at a boil. Days before Sasquatch, I still hadn't secured a camp site. I combed a 30-mile radius around the gorge: several places reminded me that it is, after all, Memorial Day weekend and they had been booked for 8 months. Not one to give up, I would call them weekly hoping I could catch a cancellation. Someone had to be dying, somewhere.

The penultimate week found me frantic, and there's no squeeze toy like a credit card. I was upping the ante on not having a place to camp by making erratic visits to sporting goods & retail outlets, charging more and more camping equipment that it was looking more and more likely I would not get to use. But it was to make me feel like I was effectively doing something while waiting for the universe to get me out of a stalled momentum.

On the last day before leaving, I had 2 leads. Riverside Camp Ground & Inn - who keep 5-10 spots unreserved (if you check in before noon, you'll pay for the previous day as well), and Getty's Cove - a whopping 150 first-come, first-serve unreserved sites that begin filling up at 8 a.m. Odds on the latter, even though I couldn't conceive getting there that early...however: I was already feeling queasy about the Cove.

Their website offered no phone number to call. Front Page HTML dating back to the 90's - when everybody's uncle decided to create their own web page. A site counter on their main page that was stuck at one. The only hint at the personality of the campground? A rambling run-on fragment: "HIKE,BIKE,SWIM,FISH,BOAT,SUN,SOCIALIZE,PIC-NIC,BBQ,RELAX,& Many Many Other Thing to Do." I asked my sister - an avid camper - what the place is like. "It gets a little loud, but it's a fun place". Sometimes I forget how different me and my Graham Cracker sister are. But I figure, everyone is going to be there for the same thing, right? 225 camp-sites, mostly people tired from 12 hours of music. It'll be fine.

When I pick up Jen on day one of the festival, all my stresses dissipate. None of this is bouncing around in my head anymore; it's happening and we are on our way. There is no more preparation one can do. I tell her our alternatives, and when we reach exit 136, the decision is concrete and we make a right turn.

The car ahead of us is turned away at the entrance. The young pimply staffer seems to sum us up and makes a quick decision that yes, there are sites still available. They are full, but we can find a spot somewhere. Warning sign number 2. But we are wayfaring travellers with limited options, and agree to the terms anyway. "No Refunds".

On finding somnambulistic security, our relief is brief. A crawl down a long gravel roud surveys dry ground and rampant youth. Young, impossibly young, nubile, chiselled and cut partygoers. Competing sound systems erupting from several quarters. An inflated, dense population. Camping tents are packed side to side and a few setups have spilled heavenward onto the bluffs and rises. And Jen is so polite, saying this reminds her of a rave she'd been to. This mitigates my discomfort, a bit.

We find a parking space and set up our tent. In retrospect, we were probably doing this on someone's site...but it appeared everyone was doing it. There were tents anywhere ten square feet of flat land invited one. We had a few hours, and walked about the grounds. We joked about being ten years older (at least!) than anyone else we saw...and we admitted to each other there ain't anything wrong with ogling when there was so much fit young flesh to feel up with your eyes. We were united in our mutual novelty (however, looking at the competition, I see images of bringing my bathing suit for a morning swim float away into the distance).

By the time we returned to our tent, a Ford F-150 had snuggled it's way onto the tight site. We applied makeup and popped in contacts as 8-Bit's Suck Ma Dick blared from its speakers and filled our temporary quarters. The classics. The grounds were ensconsed in towering rocky hills, and I pointed out some drunken climbers posturing at a jutting precipice. "I think there's going to be some casualties this weekend." Jen didn't seem to mind should this happen..."Could you imagine how Bree would have handled this?" "Oh, she would've hated this," I say.

We zip up the tent, and I have a brief thought about whether I'm leaving anything of value behind. And we get back on the gravel road. Jen points out a girl changing into her bikini top. I'm definitely piqued, but I'm also wondering why everyone else isn't heading out to the show...despite boats packed with drunken teenagers and rap music or hard rock hits of the seventies cranked from several quarters, I hold on to this belief that we are all here for the same thing: to exhaust ourselves at Sasquatch. I am so fucking wrong.

Through day one of Sasquatch, my denial takes root and my optimism grows. Jen's comments about a rave conjure an image in my mind: hundreds of people happily dancing or ambling about high on ecstasy, while I'm lulled asleep to the beration of techno music. I can deal with this; there's a comfort to it. I can really deal with this. When I get away from the gang at Sasquatch for a few minutes, I'm texting Marika:

Me: If I play my cards right, I might be committing statutory rape tonight.
Marika: I say, if there's grass on the field, play ball.

But this is the way of my denial. As the hopelessness of a situation climbs to a forbidding peak, my optimism increases to illogical levels.

Day one of Sasquatch wraps up with an incredible performance by R.E.M. We are soon on the road, and I'm fighting sleep as the headlights light a landscape lulling in its anonymity. I only want to sleep. Jen is quiet. I almost drive by the entrance to the Cove - I have to put the car into reverse to return to the entry - and then I'm awake. It is the adrenaline and fear, and what the car's beams reveal by light over the next several minutes...

We have to creep slowly down the gravel road: there are drunks in droves, walking backwards and joking with each other about how they'll get rundown. The general store and public showers are an octupus of inebriated, equilibrim challenged and vibrating, lines of people. And we make our way by, at two - at four - miles an hour. Once past the initial throng, some ashole takes to flashing a strobe ray light into my rear view mirror to destroy my vision and slow me down even more. It is personal and I can't do much about it: I just want to get past the people, the bonfires, the music...and get to the tent.

I slowly swerve around beer bottles; I rescind the driver-side car window to better enable a severely challenged sailing. Something breaks and shatters against the side of the car and I immediately close the window. There is wetness and I know nothing more. It had to be that fucker with the light, or his friend, or something. I have a clear path where the road widens and I do not find a parking space - I park off-center from the road where I'm not blocking anyone in. Because I'm polite like that. Jen and I disembark into a war zone.

There is no ecstasy: just drunk people. There is no rave: music is invading space from every quarter. There are hoots and hollers and Yeeeeaaaah's that rise above the music. And the ladies are suspiciously absent; the atmosphere is masculine and asanine. I see no point in pretense at being cool and wrap a light around my forehead designed for reading (for real: I had a notion that I would read a little of Hitchen's God Is Not Great as my pretend rave played lullabye); Jen and I get what we need from the trunk and make the long 100-yard walk to our tent.

The entry is unzipped and open, but this is no surprise. It doesn't look like anything was stolen; certainly someone would have taken my glasses and destroyed them if this were not a simple case of a drunk accidentally crawling into the wrong shelter. Just to be sure, I scan our sleeping bags for jizzum or the evidence of condom wrappers. We cannot be more urgent about slipping into our coccoons, something that defies explanation. The car, parked in some random (not-here) place, had to be a safer, more appealing option. But we were physically and mentally exhausted. We didn't have the energy to help ourselves. It was a little after midnight.

Since I forgot one, I grabbed a bunch of clothes for a makeshift pillow. We didn't wish each other goodnight; sleep was a goal that was outdistancing us amongst obstacles of shouted hollahs and shitty music. The next four hours were torture - because I did approach sleep! I would feel the soft touch of going under, and something would retrieve it. The onset of a snore, a racing chest, or a disturbance beyond the thin wall. I kept checking over at Jen; she seemed either to manage sleep or manage to keep her eyes tightly shut. I was imagining my car upturned in flames. I would hear spitting gravel in the distance, and resigned myself to a guessed-at fate: some monster truck was going to four-by through our tents. I was uncertain if I locked the car. Thinking this did not help at all.

Conversations cast shadows against our little tent's scrim: "Dude. This is not your tent." "Uhhh..." "What did I tell you? Go find your spot. You're in the wrong place". "Yeah, but..." "This is not your spot (raised voice). What do you want me to do?" The drunker of the two moved on and a fight was avoided. Or another: "Did you just piss on that tent?" "Uhhhh...why, did you see me?" "Fuckin-aye, man, that's sick." "But I had to go." "Yeah, but fuckin - piss in the ditch, man".

Of course, I thought it was our tent. Only by chance, it wasn't - small mercies. Speaking of small mercies, there were 2 rain showers that drifted into the cove during the small hours. The first was pleasant: the campground died down to an occasional shouted "Fuckin Rain"; the second drew a drunken chant of "no more rain" from a dozen people. Evilly audible. Still, the rain seemed to dampen the drunken energy for a few minutes at each stretch.

I was unused to seeing the morning sunlight before 5 a.m. I arose from my astrally-travelled state, not quite sleep - and emerged from the tent. I was concerned about leaving Jen there alone, even for a few minutes, and as I embarked on my walk I kept looking back at the tent. There were still forty-some people about, the hardcore and immunized, and I didn't want them invading our tent. I made my way to the car, where I verified all doors were locked and was surprised at how ineptly I parked it. It was very close to the middle of the path and begging abuse. I noted it was an exploded egg, not a beer bottle, that hit the car. I chanced on a HoneyBucket, which was unsurprisingly not-flowing over. As I quit it, I looked at the dried-up inland rivulet and counted the discarded beer bottles and half-rack cartons, and posted a theory about where all the human feces were really going.

I tried for sleep again and succeeded. I succeeded in spite of some ass aping an Indian chant to the morning sun. There was still music playing. There were still zombies about, and there was still ribaldry. But the checksee put me at some ease, and I slept for 2 hours.

By seven, Jen and I were both awake. We unceremonially set to taking down the tent even before vocalizing a decision that we wouldn't be staying here another night. I think we were both utterly defeated. We had travelled from having no reservation to having all the reservations in the world. The only path we could see was out of here - and any alternative sounded inviting at this point.

When we arrived at the Riverside Inn, they had - after checking - one campsite available. I was a limp rag hanging over their counter; the ending scene of Poltergeist playing through my mind. Even good news was absorbed numbly.
We set up site at this new ground. It was away from the water, and I wasn't going to be able to use my swimsuit again. We were a three minute walk from all the amenities we needed. But all the challenges in the world were removed from us, and we could concentrate on the complications a normal camper must face: how to go about brushing one's teeth? Do I want to make a trip to the bathroom now, or should I wait a few minutes? We could finally relax - our neighbors were gay to the right and yoga enthusiast to the left. We got a kick out of how cosmically cruel were the past ten hours.

Still, the Cove left it's mark. Following the next night's deep sleep (Jen dealt with my industrial snoring, trying to make me feel less conscious about it -"all boys snore!"), I had an urge to do 50 pushups - my fading competitiveness given an urgent boost by the hardbodies of Getty. But mostly, it was dreamy. Whatever noise sent us to sleep was nothing, nothing, compared to the chaos that sent us running like a pair of wayfaring travellers turned refugee. The penultimate RELAX of the Cove's script was finally found in a place where capital letters kick up their legs and retire.

That morning, a helicopter sped over the Columbia river towing a large rectangular box below it as I read through Haruki Murakami's After Dark. I turn to Jen: "Probably one of those cliff people from the Cove". She tells me that the same helicopter flew over the river the morning before, but I dismiss it. "I'm sure they're dying all the time, falling off that cliff. I wouldn't be surprised if they lost someone every day. Look, it's the perfect shape of a coffin." And I inwardly dreamt they were carting away the fucker that egged my car.

Yetrigar!

2008-05-28T12:01:00.000-07:00

As soon as we were on-site, we were off to Yeti stage to see Throw Me The Statue. I couldn't plan for a better introduction: there's something invigorating about new bands with a lone album under their belt. Throw Me delivered a great set of strong energetic pop music, and they pack so many melodic hooks I think the world will be hearing more from them in the future. After the set we went to check out the grounds and hook up with Glenn & Ezra before returning to Yeti to catch the last half of Joshua Morrison - someone I wanted to check out per recommendation. The music was good, I loved the cello - but some of the more sombre music is hard to absorb in the festival environment. It's definitely worth checking out some more.

Then came our first conflict: Vince Mira and the Ray Kay Trio versus The National. I think both acts topped Jen's or my 'must-see' lists, and it sounded a little too convenient when we heard some rumblings that The National had cancelled. Glenn and I figured we'd give Vince Mira a couple songs before hitting the big stage and confirming The National news, but we never made it.

I'm calling out Vince Mira as as the big highlight and hit surprise for the three day festival. No building up to a crescendo here; it's just the way it unfolded: broad daylight, three hours in, music I'm pretty familiar with and wouldn't usually listen to on my own. This kid (sixteen years old!) has a voice a thousand times bigger than his diminutive stature. He can deliver a dead-on Johnny Cash and the Trio do a remarkable job executing the familiar songs with rockabilly energy...but Mira's voice has a richness & more distinctive bass than Cash ever had. Glenn & I kept putting off taking off - I felt like I was in the presence of something truly special, and at the end of each song I was eagerly anticipating the next one and getting to hear that voice again. There's also that feeling of shared awe that, if you're lucky, you occasionally get to experience in the anonymity of the festival atmosphere: you're not the only one getting converted today. Please, go see him. You'll thank yourself for catching this guy in your own backyard: he plays the Can-Can every Tuesday.

The New Pornographers took us to the big stage for the first time. I've seen them before, I love their music and I love that Neko Case is more prominent than when I last saw them touring behind their album Electric...that said, it was a strange though energetic comedown from the previous act. They did manage to close with a memorable, ass-kicking cover of ELO's Don't Bring Me Down. M.I.A. played the big stage next; I wasn't feeling the tech-revved hip-hop (though, when do I ever) - especially from where we were sitting. Most of us took off for Okkervil River, getting news along the way that The National did indeed show up, and would play a later set at the small stage. News about how the M.I.A. set would get chaotic with a hundred people dancing onstage wouldn't reach us until next day (unless I'm one of those hundred people - and I doubt I would've been - I still don't feel like I missed out).

The end of the day was tightening up. I didn't pay much attention to Okkervil, prefering to become an annoyance about getting to The National a.s.a.p. How many suicide letters have I written with Alligator on repeat? The answer is five (only 2 extant). I'm very sentimental about this band.

Though excited about seeing them on the small stage, it wasn't much more novel than seeing them at the Showbox. It was a bit of a letdown. I wanted them to be overwhelmingly loud, to blow me away, but their output was muffled in the wind. The others headed to see the Breeders before the end of their set, but I still wasn't about to move. The next hour would find me on my own...I caught the last 15 minutes of the Modest Mouse set (catching "Spitting Venom" might be highlight number three for day one), and took a chance on an accidental hookup with the folken at the Breeders.

Exchanged texts brought us together for R.E.M. By the way? The best spot is dead center just beyond the inner circle of the main stage. A nice mix of freedom and perfect sound. Of the 6 times I've seen R.E.M. live, I'll put this at number two (because you never forget your first time). Michael Stipe was in usual form, but Jen and I agreed he looks better, more fashion savvy...and healthier...than ever. The set lived up to the new album's material - high tempo and high energy - even the onset of rain couldn't mar the set. Harbor Coat live? Sweet! The frenzy of the set was broken up by two songs: Drive (who would complain?) and a very memorable Let Me In that had all the band members circling Peter Buck at piano. Another magic turned by live shows: songs that make me go 'meh' will forever have a new significance. I'm also happy to report that this is the first time I've seen R.E.M. live and didn't hear the alterna-tonk of It's the End of the World...and didn't miss it one bit.

I've seen "Awesome", it seems, a dozen times. Strange to see them outdoorsy like. "SN's afro" was usurped by the able Reggie Watts, who happened to be a few yards behind us. If you haven't seen this band yet, by all means: do it. You will be charmed by Dave's interpretive dancing and Evan's dead-on John Linell (of They Might Be Giants). Unlike previous shows, I didn't get to press palms with the band - sad, since I feel like we're skunk brothers by now.

Saturday was going to be an exhausting day. Jen & I didn't get much sleep the previous night (more on that when I wrap this up) and I was going to find any opportunity I could to nap in the grass. We caught Truckasauras next on the small stage, a band made for late night dancing playing a mid-afternoon set. They aknowledged it. The music was pretty good, despite the uphill setting...a band I'll check out locally when the next opportunity arises. We caught a bit of What Made Milwaukee Famous on the medium-sized stage before settling in at the main stage for Cold War Kids. This was high-ground sunning time.

I liked Cold War Kids. It sounded like serious music. I'm a serious guy. I can visualize walking into the record store and buying their album. NOT the best tanning music, but hey.

Tegan & Sara: 2 songs and I was set. I can only take so much much sun. Jen and I had gone street-level for the set, and I was increasingly distracted by how much UV was hitting the left side of my face. If only I could rotate the entire gorge 90 degrees counter-clockwise. I found a grassy depression between the big and the medium stages where I could catch up on my text messages and just lay and not do anything for a little while. We were eventaully rejoined with Glen for The Presidents of the United States of America - for a couple of songs, anyhow. From there it was off to Mates of State. I enjoyed their set at the middle stage, though the smell of human feces began to hang all about. Jen got to hear her favorite song, though we didn't stay for the entire set. Or did we. It's possible we did. Saturday was definitely the most muddle-headed of the three days.

Glenn led us to Michael Franti & Spearhead - ok, he led us to a beer garden close to it. I like to think Glenn and I bonded at this moment. I got a kick when he talked about looking forward to seeing Michael Franti & Spearhead, and Jen told him who we were listening to. Sigh. Reggae-inspired music and the fans who don't know they're listening to them.

For the second night in a row, I went AWOL. I was amped to see Malkmus; Jen and the others wanted to see DCFC. I've already seen the Cab at a previous Sasquatch, so I headed for the mid-stage and caught the end of The Kooks' set. It was a fun set. They have that Kinks meets punk, British invasion sound - makes you want to go home and spin the Mt. Rushmore soundtrack. This was also a rare occasion when I showed up very early for the band I wanted to see and was able to get very close by the time Stephen Malkmus & The Jicks came on.

I've been on a Pavement/Malkmus kick for about a year now. I've seen them once before - the muscle twitch that initiated the kick - and it was great to see them after being thoroughly informed. I was packed amongst a tight, weed-smoking crowd...and it was impossible avoiding the contact high. It was a great, loose set. It was my only Sasquatch moment where it came to me and watching someone play guitar, and the set ended with wishing I was home so I could strap on my own.

The Cure: we met up again. I commented on how I've never seen the Gorge packed to capacity. Jen tells me - "It's the Cure - you didn't get the memo?" Regardless. We made it through half the set and beat a retreat.

What happened to The Choir Practice? Sure, it's day three and exhaustion is setting in...but we thought we were only twenty minutes late for their set. Seems we missed the whole thing. If that wasn't awkward, we hung at the small stage to catch Whalebones as well. They are touring to support an E.P. Is that why they only played 3 songs? (though we both appreciated when they asked if anyone present was staying at Ghetty's Cove. They're going to get points for that).

O.K. The Hives. We set up shop at the Main Stage, and this band was fucking incredible. Infectious energy, and a lead singer that knows how to play the crowd. Master of ceremonies indeed. Makes me want to rescind anything I've said since 2003 about bands that dare to keep the "The" in their title.

Everyone has seen Built To Spill, right? Well, I hadn't. I can't let go how I quit my job in 2002, and how constant listening to Perfect From Now On weighed heavily in my decision. I saw them for about ten minutes at Bumbershoot that year, and it was horrible! Michelle and I had snuck into Key Arena and the sound bouncing about the place was forbidding. Even when they lit into Freebird.

Cool of Jen to endure some alterna-guitar rock with me. It was an okay show. I wanted more volume, more vocal. This finished the triumverate of my must-sees, and I walked away with some mixed feelings. I was happy they didn't do a bunch of covers, which they are prone to do. I was especially happy they served up Traces from their last album and Distopian Dream Girl from their archives. It might be a simple case of only getting to see them when the window of worship has passed.

After BTS, I took another nap. Jen stayed at the Main Stage for Rodrigo Y Gabriela, followed by the Flight of the Conchords. I was able to catch half of the former, all of the latter. Both were impressive sets. Now, I don't want to give the impression that I was narcoleptic through the last few days. I think I can only stand in a spot for so much time! While I was away (the same grassy knoll), I was meditating. So much different. On this particular occasion, I was meditating on a young couple who scurried behind a cargo container that held thousands of bottled water goods. They disappeared for a moment, between the container and the fenced off winery...then reappeared to grab a recycling bin and drag it out of site behind the container. Well, someone is getting laid, or a blowjob, or whatever. I was then interrupted by a drunk who could not handle the angular degree of the slope on which I rest.

Jen & I met up after the Conchords to see Jamie Lidell. Finally, I dance. Everyone danced. He did his motown, Stevie Wonder thing, he did his beatbox thing, he did his DJ thing. Considering how behind on time things were running at this point, no one expected an encore. He did one anyways. Another high recommendation, go get his album or go get him live.

Finally: The Flaming Lips. My feet hurt.

No, really: The Flaming Lips. The "U.F.O. Show". The headliners of all headliners. And wasn't this the first show Jen and I caught back in September? It was. It was remarkably the same show, but with more nudity and more flying saucers. There is no such thing as being underwhelmed by the Lips. I'll leave it at that.

And my greatful thanks to Jen for driving as far as Ellensburg. Even though I really never nap.

Her Interior

2008-05-28T10:59:00.000-07:00

I only required a brightness, clean lines and a modest assembly of places to sit and relax. Over the course of weeks, I would set materials about - things that either defied categorization, meaning I had no place readily defined for them - or things that demanded attention, but not immediate attention. Days would come and go, and these abandoned objects, by rod and cone, would become real, demanding entities in my brain. My mind would become as cluttered as my comfort space, my thinking less linear as thoughts navigated through an obstacle course. Inspiration would get derailed by an unsustainable attention. Eventually, I would grow frustrated and stand in a doorway. Survey what truly needs to be saved. More often than not, the promise once held by an object lost all value in my need to achieve clarity. They were widows. Hanging threads. Having committed to the cleansing, they would either find their way to the trash or get a second chance somewhere where they could exist out of sight. My momentum would take me into every corner of the house, even the places that did not affect my thinking so. Clean and purge. I would attend to every detail as though my home were a car and I wanted it waxed and buffed by sundown for a beach cruise...only the person I wanted to impress was myself. And it would work - I might question why I didn't do all of this sooner, but it would work and I would have a pleasant, focused evening. It would be only me and my inspiration - which could be any number of things - but importantly, my mind would be free of the distracting notion that it needed to be somewhere other. Settled.

Then, her interior. I could make no sense of it. It was all ambiguity and expiration and dischord. There were signs of affect. Of neglect. Of suspended activity. I would sit on her floor among bread crumbs and tracked cat litter, strewn sheets of paper and children's toys. Purveying the cerebral vomit of so many interests, so many appetites, too many personalities. Tired plants would beg for spare change. Mounds of dishes resigned to rust; a kitchen counter resembling a salt-battered shipyard. Everywhere were whispers of immediate gratification and ignored consequence; a pleasuring that limps instinctively forward in defiance of cognitive maintenance. It was a squalor of petulance and indulgence. The apartment was an overpacked suitcase fit to burst, its air a heavy thick drowning. I could never be at ease here, and I wondered how she could either. I fought a meddlesome urge to grab anything, start cleaning: but where could it go? Where would I begin? How long it would last.

Her interior was no soft place to land. It was a menagerie of attention deficet and derailed inspiration. A rat's nest of tiny abandoned hopes and wishes and caprice. A junkyard or a collapsed attic. It was no place to quietly exhale; no place to let a mind float adrift.

Her interior was no place to be; we would quit it for the streets. Perhaps this was her comfort, to spend as much time away from herself as possible...existing as a derivative from the self we cannot escape. To become one's own shadow. Having walked among the detritus, I can appreciate this. To recall it all, my breaths become low and my hopes become wrung tight. Her interior was her nervous breakdown. Her coffin.

Siff Notes (I didn't go to SIFF)

2008-05-27T17:39:00.000-07:00

“You’re still here!!”

Well, I got shit to do. Do you know how I pay mind to all these people with nothing better to do than glom onto a mob protest? I’m protesting right back at them, treating today as "business as usual". Also, having an entire department to myself is hard to resist: I can crank up The Best Band You Never Heard in Your Life and not wince when Frank sings – “he puffs, he puffs up – his sanctified erection!!!” - one of several songs about the late Jimmy Swaggart. It makes me feel secretly irreverent in this professional cul-de-sac, and I’m most productive when I’m blasting music against the real world, anyways.

But I turn down the volume. The person exclaiming this to me is one of the top managers, probably still here as a show of solidarity for all the employees asked to come in today. There’s no context for what to expect the day following a riot in your own backyard. Most everyone came in; spent their day getting nothing done as they filed in and out of conference room 8A. They would loiter a few minutes watching CNN, gauge how long they had to stick around, eventually give up on the workday. An email went out at noon, describing the social climate in the streets, listing the official marches scheduled to take place today - along with a warning that planned marches could become UNofficial at a moments notice. Oh, and be out of the office by 2 PM. You’ve been warned.

It was now approaching four. “Yeah, I’m just finishing up. Just being stubborn, I guess. I hate letting a mob influence what I’m going to be doing today. Even if nobody ever knows I’m making my own little stand.” Mr. Manager isn’t all that impressed. “We have a real situation here, and we have to make accommodations…I know, we never asked for any of this. But whatever you’re doing, it can’t be as important as your safety.” I tell him okay, I’m logging off – and I tell him my bus is right outside the door on first avenue and getting out of town shouldn’t be a problem. He checks to make sure I know what hotel the company will put me up at - just in case.

I wrap my sling case over my shoulder and a need to get out of the city, the same impulse that overtakes me every day, sweeps me forward. I know I’ve been illogical. I’m torn between thinking we’ve learned and prepared between day one – where nobody was prepared – and thinking that, like an insidious disease or a cancer, anyone wanting to make trouble is going to learn from day one and adjust their approach.

A secret part of me wants to be part of this mob. That’s how I spent my lunch: I walked over to 5th and University and shouldered my way through a thundering roar of voices directed at a pair of hippies operating a ten foot puppet of the grim reaper; they stood atop some poor civilian’s car to do this. I took in all the people – the homeless, the itinerant, and the intense: I was compelled to classify each person I observed as either a true protestor, or someone who scuttled into this fray - someone wanting to be part of some feigned anarchy. I noted the number of high school aged children I saw, and I had to admit: if not for age and maturity, I would be sitting alongside them. All but for their dispossessed look: I had grown up with political notions defined by the Dead Kennedy’s and Minor Threat, and I’d like to believe – had this been a different time – I wouldn’t be some eye- shadowed emo squatter acting aloof where the action is happening. These were confusing moments for me, seeing adolescent dreams played out by others as my adult mind tallied up the damages to public property. The only rebellion I could muster was a cerebral one – a smooth reasoning and flattening of my straining adrenaline.

The official afternoon march was permitted to head south on Second Avenue, then eastwards on reaching Spring Street. My building faces both first and second - I catch my bus on first, so I only anticipate heavier re-routed bus traffic. I have this all played out in my mind, my only fear being the moment when Metro suspends bus traffic – as they did on the previous day – before my opportunity to get out of downtown. This happened painfully at 7 p.m. the prior evening, so I think I’m safe. The previous night was horrible. Michelle ended up trapped at the clothing boutique she works at, while her boss and some hired hands drilled plywood boards over the shopfront windows - all the downtown businesses were in crisis mode and doing the same (though in her case they really did lose a couple of windows). Getting her out of downtown was a challenge: I had to track, from home via television, where the violence was errupting while we anxiously communicated scenarios where we simply don't get her home that evening. By midnight, a path of vandalism was developing that led up Pike and Pine towards Capitol Hill: we coordinated a quick pickup that found us slowly creeping down second avenue to the viaduct, surveying the police presence at each intersection.

It begs the question, why did I go into work today? Beyond the already stated indignation at protest, I don't have any answers. There were no human casualties the day before, just a lot of damaged property. To my knowledge, only one person had been inappropriately pepper sprayed. There just didn't seem like enough of a lingering threat to anybody's life, and even if there were: there was a slight allure to being near it. Being at work was more interesting than watching and waiting for something to happen on the television; this way I was a heartbeat away from the physical drumbeat.

As I cross the street and arrive at my bus stop, I can hear the march in the distance. The 54 bus is already there - less than 100 yards away - but the noise echoing from Second Avenue is making me nervous. In the few seconds that it takes the light to turn from red to green, the noise changes from the loose unison of pedantic chant to the cacophony of human outcry. Green. The bus bursts forward like it has urgent information the seven of us waiting to board are uninformed about; it opens it's doors before coming to a complete stop and I hear the pok-pok-pok of tear gun fire in the distance. Everything is going wrong.

The next several moments are hurried. Individual shouts are becoming immanent and distinct against their mob equivalent backdrop, and I am the last to board the bus as I see through the windows dozens of people charging the intersection at First and Union. It is not unlike the arrival of locusts: they interweave between cars, run over the hoods of vehicles, they move quick and bee-like and it is impossible to know their intended destination. I grab the nearest seat, and they've arrived at the bus and they are pounding the sides, slapping their palms against the window. I take the time to flip them off. I immediately regret it; there's a good chance this bus is going nowhere.

From where I was sitting, I could not see through the bus driver's eyes. I could not tell if we were hemmed in; I could only say that from my window the cars next to it were frozen in place. The bus lunges. When I try and imagine what the driver had to deal with in this situation, I'm at a loss. I can't escape thinking that he instinctively accelerated - without consideration for the people outside. They were already everywhere. The bus moved forward, and the fist pounding trailed away from me, back, fading to the back of the bus. I could not hear it over the sound of all the chaos around me, but it would soon become apparent that a similar police blockade had been set up on First and University.

Though the bus was outstripping the marchers in the Southbound lanes, dozens of people had already made it down the opposite side of the street. The police reacted, and the bus headed into a big cloud of tear gas.

The cloud was visible and everywhere. You could not see it inside the bus, but it was thick enough that the world outside it's windows turned to smoke. The effects anticipated the visual: everything in your head feels so congested that you're fooled into believing you can't breath, your throat grows thick and your eyes fill with water. Imagine being stuck in the moment before a sneeze, only not as precious. It is intense to the point of pain, and I was not the only person down on their knees on the bus floor (the other was a senior citizen. but hey).

It would appear bus driver was hero and culprit: somehow he managed to navigate through the blockade to the next block, but also? His was the only window open in the entire bus. The other riders were hysterical, crying: once he made it past University, the driver brought the bus to a halt. There was no other moving traffic about. We appeared to be the last ones to get out.

All faces were twisted in nausea, mine included. The bus driver resignedly opened all the doors while I made my way down the aisles to make sure everyone was okay. No one was having a severe reaction. There was an elderly woman who wanted to get off the bus and I told her she should wait, the driver is trying to air out the bus and there won't be another behind this one. I tell her this through a thousand winces and blinks before getting back to the bus driver, who tells me he'll be okay. This is when I see his wide open window, realizing he got the worst of it. There's an opportunity to play hero: "Why don't you let me drive the bus down to Columbia?" He's huddled over in pain and doesn't find this funny. "No. Just let me sit here a few minutes".

I tell him I understand and I walk up and down the aisle trying to explain to people that we're just stopping for a few minutes. I'm not sure why this seems to have affected me less than others; I'm still physically inhibited by the gas but so many people about me range from extreme discomfort to outright pain. I stop to put a hand on the shoulder of a woman in tears, responding to an external show of misery. She's actually okay - I'm responding to a physical emanation. After a few minutes, I feel the bus moving forward and I return to my seat.

We make it to Columbia. Though there is no conceivable answer for how it was arranged, there is a medic car that the bus arrests behind: the bus driver disembarks, walks to the nearest wall, and collapses. Two EMT's rush to him to give him attention as another fresh bus driver gets on the bus. He lets out a whooo-eeee: "ugh, smells like you people have been through something". I tell him how we drove through the tear gas and how everyone wants to get home. He is full of good humor, he tells us he'll get as there soon as he can.

As we pull onto the viaduct, I walk up and down the bus opening each and every window.

Besides Read About His Band Breakup in the Papers?

2008-05-23T16:55:00.000-07:00

The Week In Review

2008-05-23T01:45:00.000-07:00

Missing Chez Gemicki, Who Wouldn't Have Minded

2008-05-19T16:38:00.000-07:00

Do you know Ben you are the only one who hasn't pecked my head about more treatment,that is the sign of a true friend.I may scratch another 12 months if I am lucky,but do I want to do that with an ulcerated mouth and chucking up all the time,no I don't.Time I have left is for having fun fun fun.The girls and I have hit Greece,Spain,Portugal,America,Canada,Mexico and France,made a huge dent in my critical illness payout,infact there is only about £10,000 left so you can see it was as you would say a blast.I am so glad I got rid of Lee and that was because of you,never realised just how bad he was til I talked to you.We have been here before,me off to France in the morning.This time I am not driving,mini munches and me are flying first class,then we have a driver.I just wish I had got rid of Lee years ago.You didn't miss me mate,you have been with me through the worst of it and I truly have no fear.Things took a sudden turn for the worse but I have lost so many friends who didn't get the chance to enjoy themselves.How much did I enjoy the SK concert,they kept me company through my treatment.I have said goodbye to everyone who matters,you matter alot to me.I saw your lovely city,I saw lots of America ,how fat are people over there,they are huge,I have never eaten so much in all my life,everything is so cheap,I loved it,I would never have gone there but for talking to you.Don't worry about my girls,when I go to my Mum they will both be very well off and they are going to live with my eldest sister,insurance advisor has made sure they will be well looked after and provided for.They both accept my decision,I am not being selfish,but quality rather than quantity.If there was any chance of a cure then I would try for them,but there isn't,I knew that when I had chemo last time and I bought myself some time.I could do it once ,but now I know what it entails,I couldn't do it again.Sorry no paragraphs or punctuation,I wasn't expecting a reply and I am tired and lazy.I hope you and M have the best life possible and Camile,you deserve it.I had better trundle off to bed and I wont email you again,sorry if I have upset you,but I had to say goodbye.You are a special friend to me and please believe me when I say I am not scared,I am just practical.It's not how long you live,but how you live.I have had so much fun,I have such nice friends,If I could live til a hundred and one,or lose one friend,or one special day,I wouldn't trade it,no chance.I thank you for your friendship and this time tomorrow I will be in France,with some very good friends.Take care and pleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeease don't work so hard,you are a special special fella ,don't waste one single day.Remember the Gemicki philosophy of all work and no play makes Ben a dull boy.So Tiger goodnight and godbless and thanks for being there,it made a huge difference,you made a huge difference Lots of Love Chez x x x x

On Meditation

2008-05-18T21:04:00.000-07:00

It’s lost a lot of its esoteric appeal.

Perhaps because we expected too much of it: something transcendental from within or some stimulus from without, making our not doing something for an hour – or fifteen minutes, depends upon your threshold for inactivity – worth the time invested. Maybe you’re lying on your back, maybe you’ve contorted your legs into a fine pretzel and tried to will your ass to rise a foot off the ground. Or you just close your eyes and imagine, let yourself drift freely. But the bottom line – you want some return, even if it is a calmness you carry with you for the rest of the day.

There was a time in my life when I belittled the idea of meditation, writing it off as a waste of time and whimsical pursuit. Guess I had little patience for whimsy. That was a turn-off, as well as its proponents – at least those I’ve known. Either they were people who are easily pigeon-holed as escapist or people wanting a little more mysticism in the world. In other words, their insisting on meditation and raving about its benefits fit very nicely in a ready-made profile – with meditation a necessary, correlative behavior. Meanwhile, my skeptical nature passes judgment on just how messed up these people’s lives really are, and I have a difficult time seeing how meditation is helping with the things that really matter. Even one of my heroes, David Lynch, has been stumping about the artistic/inspirational benefits of transcendental meditation. Sadly, his book about it coincided with laying a turd of a movie, Inland Empire. The world continues to reinforce my negative notion.

But I’ve turned a corner on it.

I’ve always had a broad, negative interpretation of the word consume. I was never satisfied with a definition targeting the material objects that we ingest or buy. I’ve bought into a notion that we are by default, always consuming: we consume scientific and theological knowledge; we consume lifestyles that are idiosyncratically individualistic or follow a nice cultural script; we consume our own thoughts as we rethink them and we consume others as we listen to them. Our appetite – whether seemingly sated or unquestionably hungry – exists in our mind, and it is never turned completely off. From day one, people, we are eating ourselves and the world around us, alive. We’re all living on the clock, and time is our tender…our attention our account. Even as I type, I am paying and I am consuming.

And the entire world is doing it, there’s always demand for it, and we’re getting more efficient and faster about the business of stuffing things into our eyes and ears. It is no surprise we are in an ‘information age’; what is surprising, is that we can suspend our defense against people wanting our attention – or just a societal pressure prompting you that your attentions need to be focused on something – long enough to comfortably go to sleep at night.

I’m not about to put a value on what is consumed. Be an atheist or theologian, see if I care: you’re both eating something up. Macrobiotic or McDonald’s; John Coltrane or Madonna; Mann or Grisham. Pursuits? Don’t mind if you are studying to be a yoga teacher or blazing a trail as a tweaked out graffiti artist. Whether your cause is noble – like finding a cure for cancer – or tangential: street corner musician. You, me, we’re all consuming. This has been a bit of a leap of faith for me, since the idea of inputting and outputting strike a beautiful balance. And it might be for you too. I’m basically saying, when you think you are inputting, or taking in, you are still consuming.

And it’s become a bit of an obsession for me. I mean, how do I turn it off? How do I embrace an impulse that negates itself, that implies that nothing has to come next?

After aborted attempts at multi-tasking it (you can ‘meditate’ while weeding the garden or doing other mindless, repetitive work), I began putting aside time and space to meditate. I’m not putting any expectations on it – I don’t care if it makes me happy or more virile or gives me the power to fly or throw balls of flame at my opponents. I’m not expecting it to remove emotional pain or give me a metaphysical high.

I just need to turn of the consuming. Just for an hour or so.

So, I’m going to be one of those people to recommend it…surprise! I think anyone can relate to how engorged our minds are, and I think most can relate to moments in our life when time stops, we feel a little out of our selves, and we enjoy the suspension in that moment. Everything feels in synch and nothing is placing a demand upon us. Well, you can force it. The key is focusing – or not focusing – on what meditation could do for you. Just go into it without asking any question whatsoever.

Dreams Conjured

2008-05-15T15:19:00.000-07:00

The earliest worth noting, or the earliest I am capable of recalling for the lasting indelible impression. There was no plot. It was a sunny day at my grandparents – the one’s who lived down the street from me. I was on their creaky back deck, and there was a party going on – a brass band was there, the Seattle Mariners were there, and the Hawaiin Punch Cartoon was there. There may have been others. I was very ambivalent about sports in my youth, so it is odd the Mariners were there. I was at least intrigued that a cartoon character could be in my dream, though I felt he was a little unruly and overexcited. As for the brass band…I’m not certain they were playing. I feel like there were just a lot of people milling about with horns, trombones, and tubas. I may have been eight or nine years old. I woke up wanting to be back in my sleep, relaxing with and making new friends. New friends I had absolutely nothing in common with.

Another came a couple years after living on my own. It was a characterless studio apartment in SeaTac; I was working nights and though I didn’t know it at the time, I was deathly sick. When I say working nights – imagine the worst possible schedule. Sometimes from 9pm to 9am; sometimes from midnight to noon – I would work 4 days on, 4 days off. I had a tough time determining whether I should spend my off days getting back on track or trying to keep myself up all through the night. Anyways, the dream. There was a mad, loud, slow thumping at my door. This is in the tiny studio apartment. And I push my brow to the eyehole and ask who is out there but I cannot see a thing because whoever is on the other side is covering it up, or leaning against it and hurting. I ask who is it, what do they want. And I hear these animal like noises from the other side, like someone in pain or the straining sounds of a dog being trained to speak like a human being. I open the door, and once the door is cracked the thing pushes its way inside. It is like a man, but so tall he cannot stand fully upright in my studio. He wears nothing but a loincloth diaper and his unwieldy hands are larger than my head and he is lunging and grasping at me. In a strange way, he reminded me of Baby Huey. Man Child. The monstrosity looked to be more of baby fat than muscle. I try to get away, I try to communicate – but I cannot look into it’s eyes for his Neanderthal brow. He lumbers and grasps and continues to make these strained noises from his throat, chasing me around my tiny studio. I jump over the half-wall enclosing my bed to get away, but this only stops him momentarily. I try to fake one direction, then another, but he isn’t fooled and he is a lot quicker than I think and he finally gets me – gets his large hand on my shoulder and pulls me to him and then he gets the other forearm around me, pulling me in and then I wake up. Or I think I do. I believe I wake up in my bed where everything is black and there is the thumping at my door again. Only this time I don’t get up to go to the door; I lie there and try and shout who is it only now it is I who sound like an animal that cannot form words. Then I wake up for real, in a sweat, with a dry throat in mid-misshapen vowel formation. I think this is the only dream within a dream I’ve ever had: where you think you awake but don’t. My heart was racing. I had to get up and look out the peephole to be sure everything was okay outside.

Then, several years ago. It started so pleasant. It was the silvery blue of twilight, and M & I were staying in a seaside town. It looked European, with cobblestone steps everywhere and nautically themed shops that looked like they were constructed from old pilings and dressed in abandoned fishing nets. It was a charming place, and though we knew we had to get to dinner soon we were distracted by so many little novelty shops – we spent a lot of time in a well-lit haberdashery where there were so many shoppers that we were all shoulder to shoulder. We are packed like sardines, and we talk and joke with these people who just like us want to buy a hat or a scarf and move on. M & I finally make it back out to the walk-way, and we spy a little place that has windows into a basement restaurant where there are numerous white clothed tables with little lit candles – when we hear the screaming from far off. People begin running about, or just walking fast, in different directions. I lose track of M, and join a young bohemian couple and walk quickly with them, but they are just as curious about this as I am. Then we see the lights. Out over the water, there are long red beams that reach from the earth’s surface and up into the sky, too many to possibly count, and they slice through the water and the landscape as they move about in no discernible direction, cutting quickly and slowing darting about. They are everywhere, they are bright, and I turn to one of my new companions and they say this is probably the end. And I agree with them, but none of us feel urgent about it. We walk slowly down to a pier and find some large rocks that will serve as seats, and we’re a little sad, looking at each other’s pink-hued faces…but we’re also in awe of all the destruction going on about us. Somewhere far away the landscape is afire, and more people join us and just sit and watch but I do not see M again. It grows very quiet; the beams make no noise and a lone siren in the distance is drowned out by the waves hitting the rocks. There’s something magnificent about this ending, and I wake up.

Just a side not one dreams. I love the settings. It is often the most memorable thing about my dream. One time the entire dream took place in a wet world of grids. NOT like TRON. The entire world was on a grid barely wide enough to walk upon, but from nowhere water was flowing across and pouring down into the interstitial void. In another dream, all was tunnels. Large tunnels, like Subway sized – or like the NY dance club – but the walls were made of roots. Intertwined tree roots. Or the city I dwelled in for one night, where there were only parking garages. I was trapped out on the streets, and every entrance way – whether it was ground floor or 3 stories – was a parking garage door. Oddly, there were no flying cars in that dream.

Sigh. I miss dreaming.

Untitled I

2008-05-11T00:36:00.000-07:00

there by the grace of god go i. by a blood orange sunset underneath a chiaroscuro of silver and grey and black cloud. by and by. my bald feet read the ground steadily, a path littered with dead leaves and twisted exposed roots and hard cooled dirt. there is no breeze seeing the day away and the naked limbs of contorted branches are still. not a twitch. and i come upon them, huddled by a pit of embers. god’s children. waiting and patient.

and you are here, why? - the man opposite me asks. and i tell him i am only moving forward to a place like this where i can rest a little while before going on and finding some sanctuary and some people who i can trust. i sum him up: he is a clown. grease paint and flower hatted. a wilted dangling daisy. if you want to trust, you will trust – it is that easy. – he says, as his eyes drift back to the pit and the dull light exposes his chrome painted tear. i ask him if i am welcome here and he only shrugs. it is as good a place as any, if it is company you desire – he says.

who leads you? - i inquire. is it you? and he tells me no, i simply saw him first and made the assumption; the first to speak is often only that. we don’t even ask ourselves that question, who will lead us. perhaps this is our strength, that no one asks that question. or when they do, it is only when they join the group and they quickly learn that it is an irrelevance. but here - take my seat. perhaps the next to arrive will come from the same direction as you, and you will know how it feels to answer the question. i have to relieve myself, it’s only natural you know, it is inevitable and i do not know for certain when i will return. i may not return, if i come across a better place than this. if that happens, i will likely stay there. and he stands up and dusts off the face of his trousers and turns to go.

there is little heat from the dying fire and i look at the remaining faces. a woman with raven black hair and a tattooed ankle bracelet. a small boy who is dead behind his eyes for none of this has anything to offer to him. a man perhaps old enough to be my father, not quite though, who cannot take his eyes from the woman. an elderly woman in wraps and scarves who will not stop shaking.

and i talk to the tattooed woman first because there is something hopeful about her. she is still young enough to have hope. trust is such a thing to ask for, she tells me. you cannot rely on anyone but yourself. you have to watch out for yourself, first. and i’m at a loss and i cannot argue with her on this. i say that it is at least a noble thing to look for, and she responds by pointing to the boy and pointing to the elderly woman and she asks me, when we three tell you different things and you believe you trust all three of us, what do you do then? and i tell her i don’t know. but, i say - you wanting me to not be fooled and illustrating this to me so that i will not be hurt. surely that is a step towards wanting to be trusted? and she laughs. or, it could mean i’m the least trustworthy here.

and the man who is older than me asks her why she didn’t include him in her lesson. fuck, you are needy – she tells him. isn’t it enough that i’m fucking you? and you’ll be the next to leave, just watch. this new one, i can tell, he’s flashing on me. i can feel it, a woman knows. you…the real reason, well, you might actually be trustworthy. i think that’s why i didn’t include you.

he leans back, satisfied with this. and he turns to the elderly woman, as though he has changed his affinity and having been validated by one, seeks a new validation in the other.

the old woman does not notice him and only shakes. she only shakes and keeps one eye on the boy. it is a maternal eye, though she is well beyond the point of having to worry about such things. – he has no mother, she says. the boy lights up, no longer only a stuffed toy. do too, he says. i have a mom. and she loves me. the elderly woman says that she knew his mother, and he may as well have not had one at all. she growls it, to no one in particular.

do you meddle in other people’s lives? i have to ask her this. her words are cruel, and the sympathy i had for her is vanished. i tell her these are cruel words to tell the boy. but it is true, she insists. it is better that he know now than wander through this world thinking different. you are so concerned with trust, imagine the trust this boy places in his mother who is indifferent to him. someday he will find on his own someone he can trust, and he’ll never find it if he does not understand who he cannot trust, first. she continues. i am the only one here who has seen it all; i’ve been with men who loved and fell out of love with me, i’ve been trusted and betrayed; i’ve trusted and been betrayed in turn. i’ve seen how cruel and how wonderfully people can treat one another. i’ve seen how good natured an idiot can be and i’ve seen the pettiness in the intelligent. i’ve seen how the days never stop unfolding through you, regardless whether they are bound to bring hope or bound to bring despair. i have seen it all, i have felt it all, and i believe i’ve come to know and i believe what i say.

and for why, i ask her. why is it that you believe so? how is it that you can trust your own belief? is it simply for having survived, that your trust has been reinforced? did the distance between your thoughts and your words get shorter as you aged?

i did all i did just to get through to heaven, she tells me. and I could have been this boy, this girl, this man, or you. and I would feel it so. it has nothing to do with my age, but the spirit i lived it in.

then, i realized where i was.

Zappa Plays Zappa

2008-05-08T00:33:00.000-07:00

I love the guitar; I hate the guitar face. Like you’re not pinching any ordinary loaf – you’re pinching a marble loaf. Or you’re trying to sharpen a pencil with your asshole. Bleh. My apologies in advance for Steve Vai.

I’ve anxiously awaited this DVD since I saw the show at the Paramount in 2006. The first run of the Zappa Plays Zappa tour was something magical and momentous. I don’t think there was a soul in the building who didn’t walk out singing the praises of Dweezil for restoring so faithfully the music of Frank Zappa. Sadly, there hasn’t been a void…it just hasn’t been done with such integrity or relevance.

There’s been The Persuasions’ A Cappella release…the Ensemble Modern has faithfully taken on some of Zappa’s orchestral-leaning compositions. And don’t get me started on the Project/Object that frequently makes its way through town. Reproductions to this point have either embraced a very isolated part of Frank’s oeuvre or cashed in on his more absurd leanings. Dweezil Zappa set out – picking a brilliant representation from a catalogue that condenses sixty-five albums – to bring the music of Zappa to a new generation. And he does acquit himself successfully: he brings to the table the most convincing reason why you should be out buying Zappa’s work by the armload.

From a musician / composer standpoint, Dweezil may have a strength that his father didn’t. He acknowledges immediately that he is not the ringmaster his father was; he does not pander to the ‘toilet-humored’ music his father indulged. The DVD is bereft of lyrical tunes. But of all the work put forth by father or son, this DVD may be the most convincing evidence of Zappa as genius composer. Sometimes it takes another person quoting the original to appreciate the thing being invoked – and that is the underlying theme of these 2 spliced performances. Carefully selected musicians executing some of Zappa’s most challenging compositions. The result is a success: a balance between inspiration and intimidation.

When I discovered Zappa, I found something outside of pop music as I understood it. Differentiating between Rock, Dance, R & B, Country…lost its relevance. I interred this idea that there was Pop, Jazz, and Zappa. Pretty simple: he managed to create his own genre and universe. Zappa also taught me there’s a big difference between songwriters and composers. Like between poets and novelists.