Hooked

Last night I dreamt I had caught a fish. I was in a paddle-boat with my sister on an enclosed lake. Playfully dangling a baited lure into the water with my hand and some line, I expected to catch nothing. 

Unexpectedly, I felt a tug and it began to drop. Excited by the surprise, I called out that I'd hooked something. I held the line taught, slowly wrapping it around my knuckles to close the distance between myself and whatever I had hooked. I pulled on it carefully, like a spider, to avoid losing the creature; to prevent any excess force from tearing the hook clean through the flesh of its cheek.

Finally the fish emerged from the water, wrestling with the air, thrashing and twirling like a wind-chime caught in a hurricane. Suspended above the lake, beautifully colored - dipped in silver, painted with deep blues and violets - its yellow eyes revealed an almost human desperation. Its iridescent scales, shining in the sun, reflected small luminous squares of light, like a living disco-ball. It hung there swinging pendulously, entrancing me like a hypnotist's pocket-watch.

Momentarily free from its spell, and still holding the line, I submerged the fish back into the water out of fear I would kill it by suffocation. My sister asked what I was doing, why I had left the hook in it; "do you want the fish or not?" I said I didn't want to hurt it, and decided I needed to throw it back. 

I stole the fish from the water once more, with the intention of removing the hook from its mouth. The fish was making it hard for me, jerking and squirming in my hands as I tried to remove my hook, when suddenly our boat hit a rock, sending the fish into the air just over my shoulder. The fish slid down the back of my shirt, onto the middle of my back where I couldn't reach it, and the hook burrowed into my skin. The fish fought, twisting the point in deeper. Pinned together, our agonies intertwined, the harder we pulled the closer we became.

After a brief struggle, and much pain, I pulled the fish from my flesh and hurriedly tried dislodging the hook from its mouth. It bit at my fingers and batted away my bleeding hands with its tail. "Come on," I cried out "let me do this!" The fish became a bit less relentless, and I had the hook almost free when I realized the fish had ceased moving. "No, no no." Panicked, I held the fish in my hand under the water hoping it would breathe, but it didn't move. "Maybe if I hold it just a little longer" I said to myself, lying to lessen my horror. I waited, growing more impatient, more ashamed, every passing second more fearful. Despairing, I lifted it from the water to see its scales had grown pale. Wet and wilted it lay lifeless in my hands. Its eye, dead and accusing, stared into mine. 

Then I was in a darkened room, drinking, as I stared up at the fish now stuck to a wall. A blind man, young but with white hair, his eyes not unlike those of a fish, placed his hand on mine and said, "it was a beautiful fish."

Some Haikus for You's

On top of a roof

An old metal antenna

Swordfish skeleton

Innumerable

Memories transmitted, received 

Reverberations

The golden lady

Dyes her hair a raven black

Horizon, murdered

Like winds, words whispered

Quiet and kind, the shadows

Blow away our bones

Once Bitten

It's difficult to grow. It requires exertion and struggle; seeing things within yourself you don't want to see; things you thought you could hide, or hide from. Often it seems that our selves are the things with which we are least familiar, but with whom we spend the most time.

I have gotten to know myself by means of two-way mirrors and interrogation under duress. I play good-cop bad-cop with myself to try and force confessions, to get answers to questions I don't have answers for. We cherish the lies we tell ourselves and forget we obtained them from someone tortured, willing to tell us anything to make the pain stop. 

We forget to forgive ourselves for our failings. Instead we hold bitter resentments and grow distrustful of our ability to make decisions. We are hard and cold with our hearts, never wanting to listen but always wanting to talk. The incessant chatter of worry and indecision sounding always, threateningly, like a snake's rattle. 

If only we were our own anti-venom once bitten. To collapse into our own arms and be held, whispering, 

"Shhhhhh, it's okay. I'm here."

Change You Can Feel

Yesterday before the clock struck 12, wrapped in blankets, hiding from the sun, a thought came to me. I should run for some kind of political office. Well, the campaign slogan was what came to me, the running for office part was incidental to the campaign-poster. The poster, depicting an affluent white male, well groomed and wearing a showy suit, a burlesque rictus cemented onto his face, hurling a fistful of change at an elderly woman broken by poverty, her hands outstretched in supplication as the pennies pelt her. Across the top, the words:

"Change you can feel"

With imagery like that, who wouldn't vote for me? I'd have Weiner as my running-mate, or Weiner "the dirty," as Google search's auto-complete likes to call him. I'd have to find some use for Jesse "the body" Ventura, in the hopes of making headlines like "Weiner and The Body, the Full Package," or "Jesse Ventura and Weiner Pinned Against Stiff Competition." We could even televise a tag-team wrestling match; Dirty Weiner Body vs anyone. The ultimate marriage of politics and sports entertainment. It would be a sell-out intercontinental pay-per-view event. I'd use the cash generated by the match as funding.

Wouldn't it be grand. The three of us, barnstorming and electioneering all across the nation, proselytizing our unique brand of truth from state to state. I can already see Weiner kissing babies, and Ventura shaking hands with a knuckle wrenching fervor. There'd be so much muckraking and mudslinging it would look as though we were filming a Mexican monster movie featuring Godzilla, Mothra and King Kong titled Montezuma's Revenge. 

Aside from daydreams of political domination, the weekend was relatively free of megalomania. I ate at an Italian restaurant in San Francisco that was so opulent it was shameful. Every need and concern was carefully catered to, nearly to the point of condescension. I was embarrassed to be so pampered. It was the kind of dining experience where I was shocked to discover I had to wipe my own ass in the bathroom. I began screaming out in confusion while seated atop my porcelain throne, screeching and snarling, demanding a servant slip on a pair of velvet gloves and cleanse my anus with some high-ply toilet paper. I screamed, "I have to eat with these hands after all! This is heinous injustice; insufferable!" Kidding aside, the quality of the food, was impeccable. Easily the best risotto I've ever had. Who knew rice could taste that good.

Saturday was spent sipping wine, driving winding roads, and reclining in the sunshine. We feasted on fried calamari and ricotta gnocchi in a tomato confit, before descending on dessert like wolves, howling with delight, our eyes closed and our heads upturned toward darkened skies. On the drive back we watched turquoise clouds gather on top of hills and stretch out like smoke over the horizon. I asked her how she would feel if I were an elected official. She asked what my platform would be, and whether I could summarize it in one sentence.

"Sure," I said, "I can pitch it. You have any change?"

Time Keeps on Slippin'

No time to write yesterday.

To grasp it was like trying to remove a small pice of eggshell from bowl of yolks.

Before I knew it, the sun was retreating, abandoning the blue clouds that hung low over the horizon, electric and flickering, like a neon sign.

Edward Sharpe & The Magnetic Zeros

I'm listening to the new Edward Sharpe album, and it is amazing.

A polyphonic safari through times and places passed. Tunnels of psychedelia and waterfalls of soul bleed from the 1's and 0's arranging themselves inside my magnetic hard-drive, floating toward my ears to create this sound. The album is as lyrically strong as it is listenable, and dancey too. Musically, it is epic and driven. It sets its sights on a mountainous peak, accessible only by way of thick forest, great grassy fields, dark valleys and rivers; sandy beaches at sunset.

Edward Sharpe and his Magnetic Zeros have revealed themselves as the dead-raising gypsies they really are - having recruited a symphony of musicians, melodies and rhythms from dead times - resurrecting sounds buried inside old boxes. The album weaves together vibrant soundscapes of soul and jazz, folk, R&B, big band, gospel, psychedelia, honky-tonk and blues. It is one of the most chimerical albums I've ever heard, a chameleon darting across a rainbow in the sky.

The second track, Let's Get High hits hard, with the hanging dangles and jingling jangles, clapping percussion and tapping tambourines you expect from The Magnetic Zeros. The song moves between motifs evoking Ray Charles or Sam Cooke, sauntering into a Beatles-esque chant that marches toward the song's undying and spiraling psychedelic finale. If I Were Free, easily one of my favorites from the album, hides a bassy melody, punctuated by moments of dreamy synth, existing somewhere between an 80's dance-track and Pink Floyd or The Moody Blues - and many places in between - while delivering a beautifully crafted story, vivid as a vision.

They Were Wrong is a track haunted by the hum of Johnny Cash. It booms and bristles with shades of his voice, the air almost warm with his breath. The smooth Motown baseline of In the Summer slides up and down an old wooden neck, sounding like it could've once belonged to The Temptations. This Life, an epic soul-searching existential crises, starting with a hum on top of some sleep-walking melody from the 1950's, opens with the words "I've been trying to pretend that death is my friend." It is somber and beautiful and vulnerable, and it becomes nearly religious in sound when the gospel singers burst forth, pounding on your ears like fists on locked doors, their voices vibrating in a sharp gold. They leave him as he sings "I've walked into black, said I weren't coming back," just to return with the words "saw my angel in blue." Tender trembling vocals give rise to chills that raise countless little mountains across your skin; giant hot-air-ballons rubbed across carpets pull at the hairs on your arms as they pass.

Their brand of variegated Gypsyfolk charms the ears and wraps itself around anything cold, like a colorful silk scarf on a chilly grey day. There is something mystical about it, magical in its multifacetience. Adventurously capricious, the album is an impressive assortment of sounds, different, but each fitting and belonging on the album. There is a strong sense of belonging on the album actually, and no sound or style is denied; participation and assimilation are encouraged, almost ordained.

It's an album imploring you to dance with it. To haunt dead dance floors - where you belong.

Deep Purplization Disorder

The days have been very long. I lose hours like a hemophiliac losing blood. My mind is numb and tired, cramping like the clenched fist of the old man at sea, holding fast to a line. The line holds a fish, that holds the man. All of us, prisoners. 

Fatigue pulls at my eyelids, applies ice to my fingers while I try to type. My mind, a sleeping ocean, without waves; without motion. I try to stir it, to break the surface tension, but it remains placid and impenetrable, a great glass mirror.

I stare into it, trying to glimpse sight of myself in what lurks beneath, but I see only my vacant reflection. Narcissus' death wasn't of vanity. It was suicide. A self sacrifice to the water; thirst for knowledge and understanding, for freedom from uncertainty and fear...pain; absolution. 

So much of our lives are spent moving away from pain and sadness, if only we were all masochists; we'd always be happy. That we run so quickly toward happiness and everything soft is almost a kind of mental-illness. All of us know life is suffering, Buddha fucking told us so! Yet we keep grasping, keep clutching, the blood in our muscles aggregating in stagnant puddles, bloated and hard, until we're fooled into thinking the sensation of pins and needles is actually feeling.

With each passing day this week I feel more and more my personhood loses circulation, like an arm I've slept on and can no longer raise. It almost feels like I've been administered small, imperceptible amounts of some substance that simulates depersonalization disorder. Maybe they add it to the water at work. It keeps the employees unconcerned with their personal affairs as their sense of self dwindles and vanishes, like a word erased on chalkboard. 

What if instead it were deep purplization disorder? I'd want my theme music to be Smoke on the Water. I'd play it loud for every occasion, especially the inappropriate ones: walking out of the bathroom with the sheet of toilet-paper you had used to line the toilet seat tucked into your underwear, hanging out behind you where your pants meet your shirt, trailing you like a streaming ribbon of shame. Or when you go to take a sip of water and somehow swallow it incorrectly, precipitating an embarrassing fit of violent coughing and choking. Or falling up the stairs with your lunch in your hands, sending a steaming bowl of clam chowder spiraling into the air in slow motion, the contents of the bowl sloshing out and raining down upon the crotch of your new black slacks, creating the appearance of a sloppy accidental ejaculation, just as the cute girl at the office turns the corner to see you with your face contorted as you cry out like a mentally handicapped child with a speech impediment, cooing spastically like a baby and tumbling downward as you fail to ascend the stairs, all while the DUHH DUH DUHHH of the guitars echo off of the ears of mortified onlookers. 

Oh how I'd trade it for depersonalization disorder at that moment.

I Had a Dream

The killer was just starting to make a name for himself. He had broken into the home of a friend and murdered him. 7 days later, another friend. The police weren't taking it seriously because they didn't have enough evidence to support the theory that the killings were related. 

As we stood outside under the funeral parlor awning, saying sad goodbyes, a homeless man carrying some papers approached us. He handed us the bundle, each of them containing only two words: you're next. Gripped by grief and outraged by the message and messenger, both, Phil grabbed the man by his collars, his voice threatening and trampling the air as he shouted "who the fuck gave these to you? Who put you up to this?!" The old homeless man, trembling with fear and regret, stammered and began pleading and whimpering while he told us a man had given him $10 and some cigarettes to hand us the notes.  I told Phil to let him go, that he didn't know anything. The man stumbled off down a side-street, clutching his cigarettes and looking back timidly over his shoulder; the rain forced us into cabs.

Later that evening, I received an urgent call from Sarah, a friend who had been with us earlier when we were presented with the letters. She was upset and crying, repeating that she was scared and I should come quick. I arrived at her house to the sight of spinning sirens and parked police cars. She was outside with friends, speaking to the cops. As I approached, Phil intercepted me and said "come with me," leading me inside. Sarah's window was smashed, glass hung in the frame like crystal guillotines waiting to fall, small shards of glass scattered across the floor like burst marbles. He held up a piece of paper, the sight of which, made my stomach turn. It was a photo taken of all of us from earlier in the day, when we were handed the message outside the funeral home. 

This second message, had been delivered by a brick, through a window. 

We all sat together after the officers left, trying to console one another in fits and starts. All of us badly shaken by the events of the past couple of weeks, even more by the events of the day. Why was this happening? Who was doing this? Questions hissed and buzzed, relentless against our heads, swarming and stinging like bees. The conversation wasn't making me feel any better. We didn't have enough information to learn anything more, so I decided I would leave to try to clear my head. 

Walking alone at night, every passerby became a portent; scared and distrustful of each stranger, I began to feel the full weight of the day's events. I found an abandoned bicycle and peddled home as quickly as I could, racing through the streets as though I were being followed; not realizing that arriving home wouldn't assuage my fears. 

When I got home I immediately checked the locks and windows. With the company of a large kitchen knife I checked the closets and shower, the large cabinets under the kitchen counter. I placed ceramic plates on the edges of windowsills at angles so that they would fall if the windows were opened, and tilted chairs against locked doors. I kept the knife as I climbed into a bed like a coffin.

Fear and anger fucked loudly on the floor above me, thudding and pounding with the rhythm of my heartbeat. Every sound, no matter how slight, was suspicion. I wondered if this is what the remainder of my nights would be like - lying in fear, waiting, unable to think of anything but unseen dangers, tormented by shadows. In that darkened eternity I died and was reborn 1,000 times as I imagined what negligence, what forgotten precaution, had resulted in my demise. Like the full moon, vulnerable in the night sky - pale and sunburned - I knew no peace.

With the darkness of night fading, I felt my eyes relax, succumbing to something like sleep. Suddenly my alarm fired - jolting me awake.

-----

I had a dream.

-----

Time for work.

Stealing From the Soup Kitchen

Earlier at work, I inadvertently became embroiled in a heated debate. I was making casual conversation with a co-worker who was telling me about a friend of his. His friend, an independent filmmaker, was irate over Spike Lee's Kickstarter campaign to get funding for his next film. My co-worker, expressing his thoughts on the subject, he said he considered his friend foolish and said "anybody should be able to start a Kickstarter." I agreed with his statement, but added, "while that may be true, it doesn't preclude your friend's indignance." This is where it all began.

My friend looked at me as though I had kidnapped and hog-tied Henry Winkler and stuffed him inside an oversized birthday cake with instructions to sing Happy Birthday Mr President to Obama. I explained that "while I agree anyone should be able to start a Kickstarter, it seems a bit uncouth of someone like Spike Lee to utilize the service, given Spike Lee is an established and well-known filmmaker. He has celebrity, industry connections and affiliations, know-how, and influence, so an argument can be made that he doesn't need to gain funding through Kickstarter like an unknown independent filmmaker who has none of those assets would." I had blasphemed something fierce, and was to receive the full brunt of his fury. He told me I was way off base, and that I hadn't a clue concerning the inner workings of the movie-industry. He touted the virtues of appealing to an alternative source of funding - which an internet-based service such as this could provide - which boiled down to greater freedom and creativity for the artist.

I lauded his efforts, and once again agreed with him and communicated I felt this was a good thing. It seemed as though we were both addressing different aspects of the issue. To get us back on track, I saw I would need to clarify my argument: "I agree that a service like this works because anyone can participate, and I am not advocating celebrities be banned. I agree that this medium affords greater control and flexibility for the artist, and thereby produces a more honest product, unadulterated by corporate interests or censorship. What I take issue with is the power of celebrity to attract funding, at the expense of someone without that same advantage. Think of a parking lot with rows of tall lights on a summer night; the lights with the biggest brightest bulb attract more moths; Spike Lee is a very large very bright light. As an independent filmmaker, why should my dream be eclipsed by having to compete in a space against someone like Spike Lee? Isn't Kickstarter for other independent filmmakers like me, with limited resources and a good idea, just starting out, trying to gain funding and get my dream off the floor so I can eventually make a name for myself?"

Though I omitted money completely in my argument, my co-worker took my stance to be somehow related to wealth and said "so because Spike Lee has money, he should be able to finance his own projects? I don't think that makes sense. He should be able to use a service that anyone else can use despite his net-worth. Ultimately, if people don't like the idea for his film, they don't have to pay him to get it done. That's the brilliance of this system: if yours is better, they'll pay you. It isn't an either or type of scenario here. The point of the service is to get good ideas off the ground, and the people decide what those are."

Seeing my friend was again trying to make the issue about something it wasn't, I decided to use an analogy. I asked how he would feel if he owned a pizza shop in New York, making his living off of selling slices, living a pretty happy life, until one day, Robert De Niro opens a pizza shop down the block. People begin flocking to the new pizza shop because Robert De Niro's name is associated with the establishment, and it has novelty and celebrity. You find that suddenly your shop is empty and your business is in decline because you're competing with someone who has power and influence. He told me it wasn't the same at all, and I was again, way off. At this point, another co-worker, overhearing the conversation, walked into the room asking if he could participate, given it was an interesting topic. He argued that a celebrity presence has the potential to open up more opportunity for independent filmmakers, not less, because it serves to put more eyes on that website. People who go there to fund Spike Lee, stumble across your page, after having been to Spike's, and now your traffic is increasing exponentially. To use the moth analogy, that bigger light is attracting more moths to the area, so all the extra moths who can't fit against that light begin bleeding off to other nearby lights, increasing the number of moths in the area.

I found this to be a provocative argument, and couldn't deny that there was some validity to it. I still asserted that it was possible other artists/filmmakers were being damaged because they were never noticed or were destroyed by unfair competition. I went back to my pizza shop example, but my two colleagues shot it down and said it wasn't the same because Kickstarters come and go so quickly - they're always in motion - and comparing it to a stationary building limited in space wasn't fair. Still feeling that they were wrong, but willing to adjust, I asked about food-trucks, given they are mobile, can craft a niche product and cultivate a specific cuisine with a specific following. I described a situation in which a new food-truck has to compete in the same space as an established food-truck with a strong following, as opposed to another food-truck in nascent stages of its development. They said this too was not the same, so I gave up. I decided all I wanted was to get them to admit that the presence of big-name celebrities - with resources and assets that aren't necessarily monetary - could trample on the dreams of those without the same luxuries, and that perhaps a space like Kickstarter isn't one where they should have to be competing with those people.

They would not grant me this.

They said that it wasn't possible. They said I was making an argument that they analogized thusly: "you're saying that a guy who's rich and has a car shouldn't be riding the bus." I failed then, as I fail now, to see how that is what I was arguing. That premise sounds absurd. It appeared they were going back to trying to straw-man me, by trying to re-factor in wealth. Finally, I hit them with my last analogy, and said "no, it's more like a soup kitchen. If you're not starving, and you don't need the soup, but you decide to go to the soup kitchen anyway to eat the soup, that's a dick move. Now there's less soup for the people who actually need it, and someone is going to go hungry tonight." They told me this too was different.

I lost interest in the conversation once I realized that they were completely unwilling to entertain the idea that I may be partially right. I then asked if they wanted to go play a game of basketball with me and Kobe Bryant. For some reason, they declined.

Mustardy Hot-Dog Bun Encapsulates Jumbo Dick

Caught up in the whirlwind of the weekend, I neglected to comment on something that was brought to my attention this past Friday. 

After doing my laundry, which went without incident - I wasn't accosted by anyone with mental illness or aggressive tendencies - I set out to seize the city and capture it with my camera-lens. Trekking through the Presidio, through forests that gave way to a cemetery and eventually the Golden Gate Bridge, I spent much of the day completely alone - save for one interaction via text message. 

The message was from a friend whom shall remain unnamed, and it contained a link to a pornographic website. I'm not sure if this person's intention was to share some quality smut or to dazzle me with a rare gem, but whatever his intention, I was definitely dazzled. Not by the porn, though. I couldn't watch it because I was out taking photos of hard wood. I was dazzled by the title of the movie.
 
It was the kind of title with one foot firmly planted on either side of a boundary; brilliance and banality. It was either the work of a master poet, practiced at the delicate art of pornographic philology, or an asinine assemblage of slang and euphemism that approached a kind of Mad-Libs absurdity:

Bald Pink Sausage Wallet Slides Over Bulbous Cock.

In all my years purveying porn I had never come across a title so descriptive and debonair, yet so  crude and crass. That prose is as purple as a bulging vein decorating a bulbous cock. I feel like it should be read aloud by Steve Irwin (god rest his soul) during a nature documentary depicting the beauty of human copulation. Or perhaps its place is in a Shakespearean comedy of errors concerning a bald miser and a rotund male rooster.

It made me realize how lazy other titles are; Tight Teens; School-girls Who Love to Fuck; Barely Legal Babysitters; Big-Booty-Bitches; Luscious Lesbos Who Love to Lick. At least they employ good use of alliteration. But still, these titles all pale in comparison to our wordsmith who dreamt up "sausage wallet." In his honor, I have taken it upon myself to try my hand at a few strokes:

Dunkin Dozenuts Sprays Hot Viscous Glaze All Over Mucilaginous Maiden

Bellicose Swashbuckling Penis Plunders Pirate's Booty

Waterlogged Octogenarian Sucks a Slimy Skin-Slug Through Her Pie-Hole

Mustardy Hotdog Bun Encapsulates Jumbo Dick

25hrs in the House of Atreus

Over the weekend I spent 25hrs with someone I thought I would never see again. I don't know from which book of black magic we stole the spell that was cast - a spell that returned a dream reality had foresaked - but it was a strong sorcery; one that sent us sleepwalking hand in hand through those kidnapped hours. Our memories weren't remembered, but relived. We reveled in our time together, as time stood paralyzed, unable to stop us. With great buckets we plundered Heraclitus' river, and showered in waters we had fetched from upstream. Every embrace was enchanted, every breath was bliss. While we slept we dreamt of one another, and upon waking, our trepid hands peering out into the darkness, each reaching out for the other, we were reunited; greeted with whispers of love and happiness.

It felt so surreal. Something, that for the last 60 days I had sought, and thought about unrelentingly. I hadn't imagined it possible to attain, and had committed to commiserating; throwing the dream away like an empty pack of cigarettes, my hopes crushed up butts, my happiness turned to smoke.

In the first few minutes of our reunion, an uneasiness and distrust swirled all around us. We sat unable to suspend disbelief. As happy as I was, I couldn't help but cling to the suspicion I was about to wake up - that this was just some subterfuge perpetrated by my subconscious. Like Tantalus in Tartarus, expecting her to recede from me as I reached out to touch her, I stood still in the water, afraid to drink.

Soon the doubt, like fog, fled, and we were full fledged lovers again. We had offered a duplicitous offering and stolen ambrosia from Zeus' table, granting us 24 and 1/24 hours of freedom from retribution. We drank champagne and napped, and ate ice-cream, and laughed, and loved, and with the wind we walked familiar streets - and when we held hands we were ghosts - we haunted our favorite restaurant and drank all their wine.

After leaving the restaurant, the sidewalks seemed sparsely inhabited. The breeze seemed to blow slow and sideways. The sun, setting, colored the clouds a soft pink that looked like watercolor. The sky was paper wet and stained with tears - it began to pull apart and lose shape. We arrived at her door, her eyes glistened, green and grieved, but grateful. We parted, I left her reluctantly, as I had two months before, at that same door.

As I walked I turned back and saw only shadows. Above, the moon, like a pale marble, had rolled out from behind a cloud, and it seemed to sigh. The stars in the sky reminded me of the shimmer I had seen in her wet eyes before we said goodbye.

Now apprehended by the gods, we are punished for our deceit.

Separated like stone statues, still and staring, struggling in silence, unable to touch.

Tussle

We are all defenseless 

Swords

Touted and thrust toward

the mad maw

Of an implacable beast

Double-Feature

I'm off today. It is a marvelous gift from my corporate benefactors, as a kind of restitution for having worked on July 4th. But Orf, why are you writing now?  Didn't you just finish a post? It's your day off! Well dear readers, I suspect the day will whisk me away, as days often do, leaving me with no time to write a post later tonight. So; my first double-feature.

I think I've only ever seen one double feature. It was when Rodriguez and Tarantino had released Grindhouse. Having never seen a double-feature before, it is one of my most memorable movie experiences. Rodriguez had the floor in the first half, with Planet Terror, a raunchy and cooly-absurd zombie-flick ripe with gore, featuring a hilariously dark-humoured cameo from Tarantino that pretty neatly sums up the feel of the film. Next Tarantio took the wheel with Death Proof, a dialogue driven drama that put the pedal to floor for the finale, with a non-stop no-holds-barred car-chase showdown between Kurt Russell and our femme-fatales. In between the two films, as an intermission, there were an assortment of fake movie trailers - one of which (Machete) was made into a feature film - which were parodies of horror just as over-the-top as the features. My two favorites were one voiced by Will Arnett, and one titled Thanksgiving. Grindhouse was the kind of film intended to be viewed in a theater, with a packed crowd, half-drunk and rowdy, eager to have their eyes defiled and their sensibilities offended. Viewing at home isn't quite the same.  I've tried it.

A quick glance out the window reveals it's still cloudy. Which is often the case in San Francisco this time of year, especially in the mornings when the fog hasn't yet burned off. I'm hopeful the sun will christen the day for me shortly, so I can go get myself into trouble. Before that though, I need to do laundry, or else go commando. What kind of trouble can one get into at the laundromat you ask? I'll relay a true story, which is actually a nice description of the kinds of things that happen to me with a surprising regularity. I had decided to go to the laundromat down the block one afternoon. I had plans later that evening, and figured it would be empty, given the weather was blue and gold. When I arrived, an old woman, with grey and frizzy hair, brittle as her bones, was unloading body-bags full of laundry and dispensing them into seemingly every available washing-machine. She was performing the task with the assiduity of someone trying to break a world-record; and maybe she had. Seeing the last available washer was about to fall victim to her rapacious unloading, I dashed toward the machine. She too, contrary to her old and deteriorating body, ran maddeningly toward the machine.

Somehow I beat her, and she gave me a look of complete incredulity before saying "you know, I was about to use that." I replied that I had a feeling she was, seeing as she was using literally every other washing-machine in the laundromat, which is what had inspired me to get to the machine first. With her mouth contorted and twisting - resembling a puckering anus, performing an interpretive dance of disdain - chewing on her hatred she puffed out a sound I think was meant to convey her appraisal of my audacity. It smelled as though she had shit not her pants, but her mouth. She walked away muttering and looking back over her shoulder as though I had done the unthinkable. Ignoring her, I loaded the machine and then sat down to read a book.

Not long after reading I had received a phone call, and not wanting to intrude on the old woman's solitude, I walked outside and took the call. I spoke briefly with a friend in New York, who caught me up on the happenings of the people and places I no longer see. While on the phone, I noticed a homeless woman, only a few years older than me, halfway up the block, who appeared to be just waking up. After ending the call, I noticed she had moved closer to me and was now on the corner to my right, seeming to stare. I went back inside, to check on my laundry and move it into the dryer, receiving dirty looks from the old lady as she cleaned her laundry. I'd never felt so dirty in a place designed to make things so clean. I put my clothes into the dryer and went back outside to enjoy the weather. Leaning against a street-pole, reading an article on my phone, I relaxed in the sunlight and relished in the breeze.

My repose was interrupted by stomping feet sounding on the pavement. When I looked up, I saw the homeless woman approaching me, her eyes like lighthouses, seething fury beaming outward in pulses as she blinked. "DO YOU HAVE A FUCKING PROBLEM," she yelled, from a face completely covered in what looked like prison tattoos. Shocked and confused, I simply looked at her puzzled. "I SEE YOU LOOKING AT ME, YOU'VE BEEN STARING AT ME LIKE YOU'VE GOT SOMETHING TO SAY, SO I'LL ASK AGAIN, IS THERE A FUCKING PROBLEM?!" Angered by her accusations, but not wanting to incense her further, I replied calmly "Are you serious? I've been standing here looking at my phone for the last few minutes, I haven't even so much as glanced in your direction." People began to stop and watch the commotion. She stepped closer and said "LISTEN MOTHERFUCKER, I KNOW WHAT I SAW, YOU CAN SAY WHAT YOU WANT, IT DOESN'T MATTER! YOU WANT TO TAKE THIS OUTSIDE?!" Angrier, but still maintaining a healthy sangfroid, I informed her "We are outside. And asking me if I have a problem, but telling me it doesn't matter what I say when I tell you I don't have a problem, suggests I'm not the one with the problem."

She then told me she would call the cops, and I'd have to explain it to them. Imaging the humor of the arrival of the police, combined with her resultant incarceration, brought me a frenzied delight, and I almost called her bluff. Allowing her to physically menace around me, and verbally abuse me in public was beginning to make me feel emasculated, and I considered calling the police for her as retaliation. It was only because of the guilt I felt at toying with someone who had clear psychological trauma, that prevented me from egging her on. Instead, I told her that I meant her no harm, that I was enjoying some time outside while doing my laundry and that there was no problem. She backed away a few feet and said "GOOD! THAT'S FUCKING RIGHT THERE'S NO PROBLEM. YOU DON'T WANT TO FUCK WITH ME!" I just looked at her blankly, doing my best to remain calm and not deliver a swift uppercut into her ink-ravaged face. It looked as though a child with Downs syndrome had doodled all over her face with dirty sharpies. She then abruptly about faced, muttering, returned to her corner and sat down, continuing to stare at me.

I stood and wondered if she might be the daughter of the woman inside the laundromat.

Belated

Last night, while writing this, I had carelessly placed my foot into one of the Sandman's bear-traps and was taken by sleep:

It isn't often that I begin writing a post this late. My wits, what little of them remain after a day's work, have been further diminished by fried cauliflower, cheeseburgers and red wine. The Profuser and I grabbed a quick bite at a new restaurant on Haight Street, before our rendezvous with James. The food was mediocre, but the ambience and service made up for what it lacked. The name of the restaurant was Sparrow, and I was shocked to discover that the bird wasn't listed anywhere on the menu. Not even taxidermied and displayed on the bar for some dramatic flair. What has become of this city? I can't even walk into a restaurant and order the dish the an eatery is named after. Imagine walking into a joint called Burger and being unable to get a hamburger. It's fucking madness I tell you.

I wrote about dreams last night, and I'm moments away from drifting off as I type this, so it only seems appropriate to recount my dream from last night.

I dreamt I had driven someplace I didn't belong. It was a favor for an old friend, residing in the area, who was unable to walk. When I returned to my car, I was met by a gang of youths in their early twenties, dangerously idle, with something to prove. 

They shouted racial epithets and open threats as they menaced around me pacing like roosters with puffed out chests. Approaching the car, I realized the rear tires had been cut flat. I was an invader, having inadvertently committed a violation of domain. I was to be dispensed with, perhaps sharing the same fate as my tires.

One of them I recognized as the cousin of my disabled friend, and when I spoke, I spoke directly at him. "Why? Can't you see how they've won? Engineered fear and an illusioned enemy cause us to divide over meaningless manufactured difference. You didn't need to do this." Some chuckled, another said I was crazy, others remained wooden and impassive as deer. The one I addressed came closer and told me to get in my car and leave. With his back to the others, I saw kindness in his eyes, a subtle remorse. 

As I drove away, my two rear tires flapping and flopping against the asphalt like dying fish, he was somehow sitting beside me in the passenger seat. Like the ashen tip of a lit cigarette, we were slowly consumed by the cool night air and the passing of time. The streetlights pulsed, droning like slow strobes as they past. They became the tired second-hand of our ticking clock. We crept on through the night in a car that moved like a limping dog, trying to find the way home.

Nightmare on Phlegm Street

I know not what I dreamt of last night. The dream, like sweat during the night, evaporated upon waking. I always wonder whether the disappearance of dreams is deliberate or accidental. Perhaps the symbols and secrets they convey are too heavy for the mind to hold onto for too long. Our memories collapse under the strain of juggling our oneiric anvils. 

Some dreams, though, all night thrown like darts against the mind, pierce and persist upon waking. Calling out like splinters. The dreams remembered don't seem to ever have any qualities that make them unique. They may be mad, obscure and arcane, joyful as sonnets, or spoken to you in dead dialects. I suspect the dreams forgotten, too, have no special reason for being unremembered. 

All week I have had unusually vivd dreams. I've been dreaming in IMAX 3D, with Dolby Digital surround sound. Dreams, the memory of which, time hasn't yet been able to drown. In time I'll remember one instead as a memory, forgetting it was only a dream. Is there even a difference? What about the difference between dreams and nightmares? Technically they're both fantasies, except one is unwanted.  Why does the mind fantasize about something that brings it displeasure? 

When I was a child, somewhere between the age of 5 and 10, I became familiar with the mind's ability to create unwanted dreams. I loved scary movies; Halloween, Phantasm, Creep Show and whatever else I could get my hands on. There was something thrilling about being scared. It made me feel more alive. The fear we feel in childhood, though, is different than the fear we experience as adults. As children we fear the things we don't know - the monsters in the closets and under our beds, a sound in the shadows - we are gripped by the raw and inexhaustible power of imagination, painting portraits of fear with a deftness rivaling Rembrandt. As we age though, the things that we fear are things we've come to know - death, injury, poverty, loneliness, sickness, pain. 

Fear, that perennially paranoid parasite - a tenant we can't seem to evict - beside us always when we're beside ourselves. It's in the water we drink and the air we breathe. In our maladies and our manias. Our hopes and dreams. 

On a purely philosophical level, Nightmare on Elm Street is perhaps the greatest horror movie of all time. It's a horror movie with a real and always present danger - one that isn't a zombie wearing a hockey-mask, or a creature in a lagoon, or a depraved serial-killer with a really big knife: the monster is you. Inescapable, existing not in some dark alley late at night, or some old and deserted house, but within your mind. You are the author of your own destruction, directing your demise with a Tarantino-esque self-indulgence. 

I was the ultimate captive audience. In front of the blue glow of the TV, my eyes flitting in the darkness, heart racing, rivers of adrenaline coursing through my child-sized body, all jittering with fear and exhilaration, fluttering around the screen like a moth on meth. My memory of it, like a dream, is almost musical. It plays in my mind alternating between an inconsistent and staccato tempo, switching abruptly to long suspended notes skulking and hanging from the threads of a mangled metal violin, cold, coarse and out of tune. It is a song in which all the parts bleed together, without distinction, though they are full of sentiment. 

Later that night, I couldn't sleep. With the blankets pulled up below my eyes, clutching them like a shield, I scanned the room for strange shadows. The slightest creak in the room's wooden floorboards transformed my heart into a military drum and forced my eyes shut. Laying there, still as stone, believing that maybe if my eyes and body were covered in that same darkness, that I wouldn't be seen by whatever was there with me. Eventually I would drive myself to sleep, exhausted. 

Once asleep, I would wait for the violent maiming and murder that awaited me in my dreams. Waking, panicked and breathless, I found I had no interest in sleeping. But neither did I want to stay awake. The fear wouldn't leave me; awake in the dark or asleep. Suddenly, from underneath my bed, giant scissors began stabbing up through the mattress, desperate to cut me. I rolled and dodged the blades about the bed, for what seemed like eternities, playing the deadliest game of rock paper scissors and always drawing - until finally, the scissors won. I woke up, realizing I wasn't actually awake the first time; a dream within a dream. A new, deeper panic held me, as I realized there was no way to tell if I was awake. Dizzy with dread, despairing and doomed, my sympathetic nervous system kicked in and purged; great bouts of vomit.

This continued for weeks, maybe months. And despite my parents decrees, I still sought out Nightmare on Elm Street and its sequels. How, as a child I was able to watch more of them - and without my parents consent - I do not know. But I did, and the nightmares continued. Actually, I remember now: it was the babysitters; Chrissy and Claire! 

I would sometimes become so frightened I would flee my room, trying to bridge the distance between mine and my parents' room as quickly as possible, my feet like lightning across the floor, triumphantly leaping into their bed with them. Eventually I had to sleep with a bucket beside my bed - to catch the vomit. Sick of being serial-murdered by my psyche - night after night, after night - I resolved to put an end to it. It happened inside a church, and it involved a super-soaker full of holy water. I had crucified old Freddy and unleashed a liquid fury upon him that set him ablaze, howling back into the darkness from whence he came. After that, the nightmares were over. If I had to change it, I would have instead drank a gallon of holy water and unleashed a wrathful deluge of vomit upon him. But I was young and naive.

It's strange to consider, looking back now, knowing that no amount of blankets or clasped eyelids could save me from the sense of danger. And it's as true now as it was then. We shut our eyes to our fears and staunchly deny them, busying ourselves with work and distractions, vacations and special occasions.  When we grow too weary, we hide behind bottles like blankets. Maybe those adult fears aren't so different after all.

Always running but never escaping. Forever forgetting that the call is coming from inside the house. 

Wanting Wings

Neither yesterday nor tomorrow
Will return the words,
Lost and ransomed,
That had vanished before ever reaching my lips.
Thoughts, banished and fled,
Sail toward some far and furtive shore.

In the darkness,
Far off, a gull squawking.
Shadows strangling the sound.
Shrieking screeches fall like feathers to the ground.

The hollow howls of the bull,
It's name,
Just one of the phrases it has forgotten how to say.

Words, adrift,
Lost and entombed,
Inside Daedalean coils, lay.

Like Icarus, wanting wings.

A List

Some things I like (in no particular order):


- a nice bottle of red wine

- finding the handicapped stall empty

- when I exit, finding someone whom I dislike waiting to use said handicapped stall

- good dark chocolate

- the soothing yellow glow of dusk spilled over a field of flowers

- the eyes of a beautiful woman

- the architecture of churches

- the company of a close friend

- crawling into bed after a long day

- the realization I'm dreaming

- a moving poem

- a breeze

- a sad song

- a long shower

- a smile

- the sea

- all the potential of a promising first date

- farting while walking up the stairs

- a clever phrase

- the moon, never turning its back

- trees showering in the wind

I, Taphophile

It's strange that at 27, my thoughts, like some kind of nightmarish merry-go-round, keep circling back to growing old. Fixed in a state of purgatory, I am both and neither. Not quite as young as I once was, but also, not quite old. For most of my life, my friends have always been older than me, and would often be surprised to learn my age. Old soul, they'd say. Even as a small child, my best friend was my grandfather; with his bum-knees and socks that crawled up the length of his shins. Some of my earliest memories are of being in the cemetery with him while he washed his car and paid respects to deceased relatives. In a totally non-macabre way.

I remember running through the rows of tombstones, looking at flowers placed on top of graves. Drawn to them because they seemed so out of place; bright and soft against the hard dark stone. Sometimes the flowers would be placed at the sides of the gravestones, seeming to hug them, like a small child clinging affectionately to a parent's legs. But the stones always looked so...grave. Shaped like the hollow of an arched-doorway, a frown turned to stone. Immovable and impenetrable. As a child the symbolism was lost on me, but now.

While he washed the car I would gather up small balls of dirt and throw them against any available hard surface, giggling as I watched them turn to dust. Again, the symbolism was lost on me. Excitedly, I would run and jump, hoping to catch hold of a low-hanging limb of a weeping willow.  Other times I would watch the squirrels scurry about, moving as though pursued by ghosts.

I grew to enjoy the peace and solitude of the cemetery. It was my playground. I wonder if the dead beneath my feet felt threatened, or perhaps taunted, while I marauded immune to their disease. Older now, I see that the conversations I had with stoic stones taught me to listen; their roses gave me an appreciation for beauty, for the gentility of the willow; for the power of the breeze to make the dead dance. Surrounded always, by Hermetic inscriptions carved into tablets - the writing on the wall - letters and numbers that I couldn't yet read foretold my fate. It was unknowable, like a cat's reflection cast in glass.

I suppose it can be argued that these events didn't shape me; that I couldn't help but be anything but me. There must have existed in me a sensitivity which allowed me to apprehend things as I did. Had I been exposed to a completely different set of circumstances, I would have approached them with the same alacrity, extracting meaning from any experience, and nothing would be different. Perhaps.

The answer, I think, lies buried somewhere in the middle; taciturn as a cryptogram on a tomb.

Gasp

Today I went to go look at a bike for Burning Man.  I had found an ad for the bike on Craigslist, and arranged a meeting.  As I walked toward Inner Richmond to some stranger's home, I imagined the various ways I could meet my demise.  Would I be invited in, and then greeted by the reveal of a concealed weapon?  Robbed and butchered.  Perhaps there would be a gang of African American dwarves waiting for me in an adjacent room, eager to exact revenge for yesterday's post.  Or maybe I'd be held at knife-point and forced to fornicate with a pack of polygamous pygmies.  It was hard to tell what was in store, but whatever it was, I told myself I'd go down fighting.

When I was near the house, I called "Dave" and told him I was about 5 minutes away. I suggested he bring the bike out in front of the house so I could look it over and take it for a brief test-ride. Surprisingly, he agreed. As I approached, I saw the bike in all its psychedelic glory. The bike was perfectly weathered, rusted and rugged, a beautiful golden-bronze. It was adorned with precious multi-colored gems all down the frame like stegosaurus spikes. A basket was attached to the front of the handlebars, with thin tie-dye streamers hanging like whiskers from the basket's base.  Thin strips of reflective sheet metal had been perforated and threaded through the spokes in a zig-zag pattern, to create a hypnotic spiraling effect when the wheels were spinning.

With Dave's consent, I mounted the mighty mare, and began peddling down the block.  Clumsy and wobbling, I rode down the street, my ass comfortably perched on a seat that appeared to have been retrofitted with some type of fabulously plush white fur.  I think it may have been the breast of a female polar-bear. They're endangered.  It made me feel dangerous.  Just then, as I was speeding along, lost in my delusions of grandeur, a small dog, some piece of shit poodle, idiotically turned the corner directly into my path.  I quickly pulled back on the reigns of my speeding steed, but saw I was moving too quickly to stop in time.  I turned the handlebars and tried to steer around the precarious poodle, but it must've been having a stroke because it reacted by moving sideways, towards instead of away from my tires.

I screamed, it gasped.  I didn't know dogs could gasp.

A wee spurt of piss sprayed out onto the sidewalk as the dog continued to suffer some sort of slow-motion aneurism, its jaw slowly opening and closing like a swing-door.  In a last ditch effort to avoid collision with the creature, I turned sharply in the other direction and crashed into a parked car as my iron-horse and I tumbled down, grossly bending the bike's basket.  The impact set off the car-alarm, and as I lay looking at the dog, dazed and furious, as the dog appeared to be dancing dub-step to the car's sirens.  Either that or it was having a seizure.  I still couldn't tell.  Dave came running toward me screaming "holy shit dude, are you alright!?"  The, wooooooop, woooooooop, beep beep beep beep of the car presided over our conversation.  I explained that the damn dog had come out of nowhere, and at first it didn't move, and then moved into the direction of the tires, so I had to turn sharply to prevent hitting it.  He looked at me confusedly and said "what dog?"

I extended my arm and pointed in the direction of the dog, only to find that the dog was no longer there.  Baffled, I began to stammer, the car sirens thundering in my head like waves of droning madness. "Listen," I said, "there was a dog.  It was there two seconds ago.  It looked like it was having a seizure or a stroke or something.  The fucking thing gasped.  Did you know dogs could gasp?"  Just then, the car alarm came to an abrupt halt. Then the sound of a gasp.  "What is going on here," asked a voice from the other side of the car.  I got up from the ground to see who to address, and saw a blonde haired woman in her mid 40's, slightly overweight, holding a poodle.  She had the air and assumed authority of an elementary school principal.  Without waiting for a response she walked around to our side of the car, not to see if I was okay, but to inspect the damage to the car.  Luckily, there was none; the damage had been dealt mostly to basket of the bicycle, and my pride.

I told her that I had nearly hit her dog as it turned the corner and made a bee-line for my tires.  She looked at me disgusted, and then looked at the bike, furry and rusted, and then to Dave - dressed like a hippy - and back at me.  Her face bore a look of such utter contempt, I could almost read her mind.  It must have been swirling with thoughts of drug use, and rampant irresponsibility.  She reminded me of Judge Judy. She said "if you weren't driving a bicycle on the sidewalk, this wouldn't have happened."  I asked "what wouldn't have happened?  Your car is fine, and your dog is fine."  Exasperated, she spat out "my dog is not fine!  Just look at her!  She's frightened something awful."  I spat back in kind "if your dog wasn't wandering around the sidewalk without a leash, that wouldn't have happened."

Dave, trying to mediate, said "yea, I mean, both of you are at fault here.  No one is really to blame but," then she interrupted him and said "I am not at fault.  You are!"  I laughed and asked, "do you realize how absurd you sound?  You sound as stupid as your dog looks!"  The dog replied by gasping, again.  Dave looked at me as if to say "it gasped," but before he could the woman said "that's it, I'm calling the police."  Dave, clearly alarmed at the mention of the police, quickly put his hands up and pleaded "no, no, no, that's not necessary, it's fine; I'm not even worried about the damage to the bike."  She began rummaging through her purse for her phone, and said "I'm calling the police because my dog was attacked; she's traumatized for life!"  Dave told me to forget about buying the bike - it was no longer for sale - that he "wasn't sticking around for the cops to get here," and he picked up the bike and peddled hurriedly away.

I considered my options: stay and have a potentially humorous interaction with the police, or walk away and enjoy the rest of my one day off.  Seeing as the sun was shining and the skies were blue, I chose the latter, told her to shut the fuck up - and her little dog too - and then I walked away.  Seeing as I hadn't eaten since the breakfast I made after yoga, I walked around in search of food.

A quick Yelp query reminded me there was a restaurant I had been meaning to check out nearby.  It was 4:35 when I had gotten to Burma Superstar, and they didn't open until 5:00.  The Yelp reviews said to get there early, but it seemed I was too early.  Assessing my level of hunger, I decided I would be okay to wait 25 minutes.  Within minutes of sitting down on the bench outside the restaurant, the line ballooned from 0 to more than a dozen people.  Happy with my choice, given I was first in line, I struck up conversation with the two people beside me.  They told me it was their first time eating here as well, and that they had been meaning to come here for 2 years, but the line was always so long that they never waited.  Apparently it was our lucky day.  We were led in and seated next to each other.

As I sipped a Burmese ginger beer, awaiting my coconut rice and chili lamb, I looked over and said "did you know dogs could gasp?"

No Stopping Anytime

I had something to say, I swear.

While I was on the shuttle, I had intended to write something I could post when I got home, but sleep overtook me and I woke up in a city enveloped by fog.  I remember the first August I had spent in San Francisco. I was in a cab on my way to meet some friends.  The cab driver was loquacious, as cab drivers often are, and as we drove through thick fog, in a thick Russian accent he told me, "in San Francisco there is no August, there is only Faugust."  Such an asinine rhyme, but it has proven itself true.

Back to the topic at hand.  There was something I was going to say.  Like a car I parked it, thinking I would just return to it later, but it seems to have been towed away.  Foolishly, I must have ignored the no stopping sign.  Perfect.  This will give me the chance to use yet another street-sign photo for today's post.  Fucking raking in points here on originality and creativity.

There's a topic.

It's difficult to write daily.  Difficult to set aside time, difficult to focus, difficult to have something to say.  Writing has a way of scraping the trash and debris from the gutters of your mind; like street cleaning.  Fuck.  There I go with the street-sign references again.  When I say writing daily, I mean writing leisurely (though there are times, like now, when there is nothing leisurely about it) without plan or purpose; for enjoyment.

All day at work I write.  I write facts.  Just the facts.  Without flair, without color.  Like an undead dragon, I breathe lifeless words onto a page - technically onto a computer screen, but that's not relevant really.  There is something especially damaging about eschewing creativity.  Particularly when doing so for 60hrs a week.  I suffer a kind of stunting, where the lithe and lissome elements of my imagination are reduced to rigid and inelastic dwarves.  Is a brown dwarf a thing or am I making that up?

Nope, they're real.  From a cursory read, they're stars that can no longer make ends meet. The interstellar version of someone crippled by debt.  That's what my mind has become.  A universe full of brown dwarves, especially concentrated in the Dingle cluster, located just outside of a black hole.  Speaking of, I think a brown dwarf fell out of my ass when I took a shit earlier, before I left work.  I had eaten a burrito for lunch, full of black beans.  So theoretically it may have been a black dwarf.  I can't recall its exact pigment.

Perhaps it was a pygmy.

What a Drag it is Getting Old

I just got off the phone with my mother. Lately it seems every conversation with my parents requires the delivery of bad news; the death of a family friend, an accident, a financial struggle, stress surrounding uncertain futures. There is a quality of increasing hopelessness in the stories they tell, a coming resignation. 

My grandmother, a diabetic in her mid 80's, just received news that she will need constant care and supervision due to her medical condition. Now in Florida, she was previously in a nursing home in New York, after she had been hospitalized from a fall. She will have to go back north, like a recaptured prisoner, to return to the home she had once escaped from.

For the elderly, there is a cruel kind of symbolism in sustaining an injury from falling. I imagine when you get to be that age you realize all of life is a kind of fall, and your inevitable impact with the hard cement has already happened, you just haven't completely lost consciousness yet. Our lives are the sound of rain falling.  The passing of time, the body's motion through space as it tumbles; losing youth, agility, acuity, happiness, health, independence. 

Growing old is the loss of freedom. Bereft of the freedom from death, mostly. But also the freedom from fear. With old age we walk as though on a tight-rope, every step slow and practiced, myopic. Gravity assails each footfall, while we walk on earth constantly quaking. 

We are all the boulder pushed by the loving hands of Sisyphus, who weeps not for his fate, but ours. 

Grow Big or Grow Home

My beard has been on death-row for the last few months; it just keeps getting pardoned. They say it shot a man in Reno.  Just to watch him die. 

At first I did it as a kind of joke, a testament to slovenliness. A tribute to the unkempt; a dedication to sustained inaction. But I've developed a strange sort of affection for it; it's grown on me. It's almost as if the beard has grown me. 

A beard makes you more keenly aware of how people look at you. Having a mass of gnarled pubic hair, the color of rust, hanging from your chin is the ultimate litmus test. If you doubt it, don't shave for a few months. I've had this beard long enough that I'd nearly forgotten the looks of condescension and derision, aspersions cast by passing eyes. There's a strong association between beards and uncleanliness in our culture. As if facial hair exists only as a symptom of homelessness. 

I will admit, there is something mildly repugnant about hair. Perhaps because it reminds us of our apely origins. But that kind of disdain is simply simian.

Some people want to change you. They want you to fit into their preconceived notions of propriety. To reinforce their version of truth. If you don't, if you are different, you are deemed a demon. A threat. It's amazing how petty people can be. To treat someone with hostility simply because of the way they've chosen to wear their hair, is a subtle form of bigotry. Not based on race, but instead on body adornment. Not based on what one has done, but on what one has failed to do. 

The best way to handle these sorts of people is to ask them if they're staring because it reminds them of their own pubic hair. Aghast, they'll stammer and express shock and disgust, but continue to prod them. Ask why they're embarrassed, why they view their genitalia as something shameful to be hidden. Exhort them to free Willy or liberate Lady Labia. Then ask them how it is that they're able to walk around without feeling dirty, while carrying piss-scented tumbleweed tucked away in their undies. 

You'll also hear remarks from alleged friends and associates. Their greater familiarity will grant them a sense of entitlement to voice their opinions, a responsibility to tell you like it is. They will say things like "when are you going to shave," "don't you think it's time to get rid of that beard," "how much longer are you going to let that thing grow?" Take note of the people who make these remarks. They are always the ones incapable of beardly bliss, whether from fear of trying or simple genetic inability. As they speak, in their eyes you will glimpse fear, jealousy, and hate.

To the unbearded, some too narcissistic and overly concerned with self image, others too strongly socialized for any deviation, the rest too reliant on social congruence and peer validation, all too fearful to muster a mane, to them I say "be fearless, not beardless."

From those who have beards, though, you begin to notice stoic nods of approval, drunken high-fives, acceptance into an age old brotherhood. Always an expression of recognition, community, appreciation. We fight the good fight, in silence, so you don't have to. And our numbers are always growing, even in death. 

For freedom of expression, for freedom from persecution. For freedom from scarves. For America. 

Heartburn and Syndication

As I write this, heartburn creeps up into my breast, toward that little thumbprint where my neck meets my chest, in between the collarbones. I feel like I drank a bottle of Vicks Vapor Rub. My esophagus must look like a rusted metal tube, slowly eroded by caustic acid. I think I may have been a dragon in a past life. Or maybe a muffler.

Earlier, while I was at work, an old friend - and an even older girlfriend - from New York had messaged me. Her communication was unexpected and brought with it a strong nostalgia; memories of our time spent together as unpracticed lovers. She was good to me. She was the girl that would show me a relentless love. Our conversation was not without the opening of some old wounds. She had been the girl who loved me most, but the one I treated most carelessly. Neither of us are without fault; we both badly hurt the other. I have forgiven her, but fear she hasn't yet forgiven me. 

She said something to me today that struck me. I had asked her about a character in a book she had recently read, one she felt reminded her of me. I was curious what she considered the resemblance to be. She said, with candor, that she thought he and I shared the same outlook on life. It saddened me to realize that no matter what her notions were, they were outdated and obsolete, replete with little cotton lies. It has been almost a decade since she knew me like she did then. She's pieced me together from a series of reruns she has watched over and over in syndication.

The images we hold of the ones we've loved and lost have the quality of old photographs. They depict eidolons that exist only as phantoms, fixed forever in the past. 

Haunted

It's fascinating how an idea can affix itself to your awareness, like gum stuck to the bottom of a shoe. Earlier I had read a post by Q that later, would inspire a failing of sorts. All day, dark and heavy, clinging close to my head, thoughts of her hung like an executioner's hood; my mind buttressed by metal beams and scaffolds, covered in curtains like a building condemned.

I'm ashamed to admit it. Guilty like a gym on Monday. My resolve dissolved and wore away, small grains of sand blown on a breeze. I've committed a kind of suicide. I died in a dream. I texted her. When I woke, I stood naked at the front of the classroom, my vulnerability on display. 

On the way back from Sonoma on Saturday, James and I spoke about the relation between love and loss. I remember saying that the hearts of men are like seashells scattered across a shore, lying lifeless and empty, waiting for a woman to come and climb inside. Love is to be possessed. It is when the creature departs, though, that the shell's emptiness is realized. The lost sense of intimacy and fullness, replaced now by an ossified and stale residue, skeletal in its vacuity.  

The rolling waves supply an ocean of inhabitants, always more to replace the one before.  With each new tenant the shell becomes a bit smaller as memories of the past accumulate, occupying space. In time, it becomes a miniaturized haunted house, slowly bleaching beneath the sun; a beach house for its ghosts.

Nothing occupies a space more completely than the memory of a woman.