The Chevy Chase

I spent Sunday chasing Jack London's ghost. When I woke, early in the morning, I found the day sun-filled and bristling with curiosity. It leapt through my window and danced around my room, then, hesitating briefly, it escaped out the window, after several suggestive backward glances. I chased it outside with a lusty exuberance, ready to capture and conquer, to dominate the dreams of the day, but it fled quickly around a corner. It fastened itself to the back of a motorcycle and sped off. Without any obvious alternatives, I dragged an old, affluent man from his yellow Lamborghini, beat him mercilessly into submission, and followed it.

We raced over the Golden Gate Bridge like birds in flight, darting and dipping between cars, soaring over the speed limit. I called Q and told him I was in pursuit of a golden haired, blue eyed matron, pregnant with love and possibility. He told me to pick him up, that he's been trained for this sort of thing. I boomed over the pavement toward his little abode, sweating and frantic, fearful I might lose her scent.

Soon Q's house was in sight and I saw him waiting. He was wearing a bright orange jockstrap and a black gas-mask. He was covered in baby-oil and clutching a tennis racquet in one hand and a large fisherman's net in the other. Black combat boots laced up the length of his legs and stopped just below his knees. I slowed to a roll and he hopped in. Looking like a sweaty, sunburned circus elephant, through the gas-mask he trumpeted a furious war cry. His dedication was barbaric and fierce.

Why the oil, I asked him. I could understand the jockstrap and combat boots, the giant fishnet and tennis racquet, but the oil seemed counter-productive. His head jerked in my direction, the hose of his gas-mask swinging limply, all shriveled and flaccid, and sounding a like an airplane pilot over a PA system, said: you need a handicap, dumbass. It's for the love of the chase...they were out of baby powder.

There it goes, he yelled, pointing toward a cloud. I saw it hiding itself behind a white, fluffy lake-fart, and peeled out after it, the tires squealing and kicking up rocks. It ducked behind mountains and hid inside dense copses of trees, lied itself down in tall grass and shallow streams. By this point the car was pretty banged up. We were leaking gas, oil, and probably transmission fluid, because the car was lurching and becoming completely uncooperative. They don't make stolen Lamborghini's like they used to, I told him. The windshield had been cracked after we hit a pregnant woman; we hit her so hard the baby shot out of her pussy-crack like a wet sprocket. The child went sliding off down the street like a bar of soap.

We had to abandon the car once we got to Jack London, because of an electrical fire, and we pursued the creature on foot. We ransacked Jack London's cottage. Q, swatting at priceless antiques with his tennis racquet, tripped over an old typewriter and crushed a 13-year-old girl with his mostly naked, slippery body, saying: that's the way nature intended it, let's go. So we promptly vacated the cottage and headed toward the charred remains of The Wolf House. We posed for pictures and took photos of Asian tourists.

Then the unthinkable happened: we lost the day. Grey skies rolled in, militant and monochrome, threatening rain. We scrambled up the trail and out of the park, finding refuge in a nearby cafe just as it started to rain. The sign on the door said NO PANTS NO SHOES NO SERVICE, but because Q had those combat boots on, they let us sit at the bar. I hadn't realized I'd worked up such an appetite until the waitress arrived and told me about the special. Her eyes were olive green and glowing. She had Slavic features that were simultaneously soft and sharp. She begged to be broken, and to break. I imagined leaving Q and riding off with her in the sizzling Lambo, speeding madly into the dark wet clouds.

When I stood up to approach her, I heard a strange yet familiar sound, like a shrieking siren approaching. Then, it pierced my ears: the crescendoing doppler shift, the howling of an infant, the shattering wine-glasses on the counter. Suddenly, it came sliding through the doors, clobbering my legs like a bowling ball. As I fell I grabbed onto Q's greasy arm to stabilize myself, but my hand just slipped off. I cracked my head off a stool and lost consciousness.

When I woke up, Q, the baby, and the waitress were all gone. There was a post-it note stuck to my head.

It said: you're it.

A Jaunt and a Joint

The beach turned out to be a great hit. We arrived to brightly lit shores and the sunshine sound of The Beach Boys. There were wooden tiki bars set up with an endless supply of alcohol. There was dancing and hula hooping, frisbee and limbo. Over the course of four hours I must've had at least 10 beers. When I felt that frothy yellow tide washing over my liver in waves, its icy and mischievous undertow pulling at my heels, I knew some rascality was underway.

There were bottles of juniper water, straw skirts and coconut brassieres, playful and inciting roguery. There was want of scandal, something shadowy and furtive to balance the sun, something to make mischief, something daring.

We took a walk across the beach and came back with the sun in our eyes. We floated across the sand, blown in on the breeze from the gently rolling waves.

Someone flushed a diaper down the toilet.

Then we disappeared, northward bound and sleepy, catching naps like cats.

Life's a Beach

I need to get out of the habit of writing unfinished, stray-hair tales. It's nearly impossible to write a well-formed story in half an hour; it takes time. Yesterday I'd run out. I've grown tired of writing about the events of my day. They're tedious as they unfold, and even moreso when I relive them; to relay them is criminal.

Today I go to the beach, under duress. The team has been wrangled into a work function in Monterey. A day of fun in the sun, beneath the dirty cotton skies of March. I think I'll wear a hoody and a hat, maybe gloves too. They say you can get a sunburn when it's overcast, so I'm considering smearing some sunblock on my face like warpaint. It'll be be my de la resistance to this coerced excursion.  We were told that should we not attend the party, we are expected to work, from home or in the office. How's that for morale?

A lot of people are unhappy about it, myself included. It was communicated as a day to relax and recoup from our endless long-houred days, something restorative to mend that aching depletion, the persistent low-grade fever of exhaustion and over-exertion that is slow-cooking us all. Instead, I will spend 5 hours traveling on a bus to have a beer on a cold, cloudy beach.

It's drizzling. I just realized I didn't bring an umbrella.

Sometime

It had been nine days since he'd lost his best friend, and he was coping the only way he knew how. He would get up, work all day, go home - to drop his suitcase off and change his clothes - and then go out to the bar. A bottle of Gin, that's what he'd order. Every night. The first time the bartender asked him what he wanted, and he told him, the bartender thought he was joking. But the bartender watched as he ordered drink, after drink, after drink, until the bottle was depleted. What was strange was that he didn't appear that drunk. Sure, his face flushed and he spoke more - and louder - than usual, but he was never belligerent or mean or reckless. He was a liability only to himself. There was a woman who came around, from time to time, with red hair and earrings. Her eyes were blue and her skin was the color of porcelain. No one knew exactly what her story was, where she'd come from or what she was looking for, they just called her Red.

It was a bit unusual, her being there, because she was always there on Wednesdays, not Tuesdays. She was always alone, and she seemed disinterested in the company of men and women both. Red drank slowly, deliberately. She had the expression, always, of someone listening for far away music, for something soft and subtle, a lilting mystery concealed in the sound of clinking glasses. The bereaved man was sitting beside her at the bar, halfway through his bottle of Gin.

"I don't feel bad about it," he said. "I thought I'd feel worse, but I don't."

This is just the way it is. Everyone runs out of time, sometime.

Radiation

She got stoned in the park, like stoned - high. At least she did when I knew her. She was the kind of girl that you wanted to be around, not because she was the hottest thing around - which she was - but because she made you feel good. She had a way of complimenting people that was sincere and discerning. She knew things about people, just by looking at them, that would take most people months to figure out. Once, when Robby Gruntler had walked into the park, never having seen her before, she told him that he had a really beautiful heart, a thing that was rare in a person. You wouldn't have known it by the looks of him, with his misshapen phrenology head and shark's smile, but a few months later he ran into Janet McEary's burning house to save her 10-year-old Great Dane. Robby came out all covered in soot and stained with smoke, his hair ashen and his face black, coughing madly and laboring under the weight of old hound as he brought it to safety. Some folks wondered whether Marlene's way of seeing through to a person was of the self-fulfilling kind. Seeing something in a person, whether it's true or not, has the power to make them see it, too; to make them change.

On this particular day it was hot, had to be some time in late July, and Marlene and Jenny and Sarah were all sitting on the benches behind the old baseball field on the right side of the park. The field was old and poorly maintained, unused, save for the kids all drunk and playing baseball with meaty tree branches and a dozen apples. A whole day could be spent in the park getting stoned and drinking beer, telling stories and chasing one another around like dogs off the chain.

Now, it was a known fact that Marlene rolled the best joints, period. No one else was even close. Even the rough neighborhood boys, proud and prideful as they were, admired her skills. They defended her fiercely if anyone ever questioned the integrity of a Marlene Slow Burner. She rolled one that burned for 15 minutes once, and it would've burned longer if Joey's dad hadn't seen them from his car. The story goes that Marlene knew they were going to get caught that day - because she saw Joey's dad parking his car while she was licking the joint - but because she could sense it was going to be the finest joint she'd ever rolled, there was no way she wasn't going to smoke it. That's the kind of girl Marlene was. She had determination, unwavering resolve, an envious optimism paired with an adventurous whimsy. Her presence was contagious and beatific; she always smiled, even when she was sad.

But she wasn't sad that day when Joey's dad took them all home and told her parents what they'd been up to. She wasn't sad when she was grounded and had to sneak out at night in order to make an appearance at Paul Brewman's houseparty when his parents where on vacation in Costa Rica. She wasn't sad when she got caught fooling around with Marty Martin in the back of his mom's Coupe De Ville, either. Come to think of it, the only time I ever saw Marlene sad, was the time she met me.

It was December, just before Christmas, while we was all out on winter break. In those days, winter break meant you had two weeks off; two weeks to play in the snow, two weeks to shovel it, to get the money to stay out late and drink with your friends. Marlene had arrived to the party late that night, like she usually did. It was the first time I'd been invited to their side of the park. Typically, I would stay on the side where the normal kids hung out, because I wasn't quite as cool as the kids on Marlene's side. But it just so happened that Richie Curutti found me to be hilarious. He said I wasn't like anyone he knew, that I said things people normally wouldn't say, and in ways they wouldn't think of saying them. The story he always liked to tell was of the time I had taken issue with something Mr. Lacosta had said in English class. Mr. Lacosta had set some really severe restrictions on a creative writing assignment he was handing out to the class. After he'd handed all of them out, he asked if anyone had any questions. I looked around and saw no one else did, and I raised my hand. I think there's been a mistake, I told him, I thought this was a creative writing class. All the kinds chuckled and Mr. Lacosta asked me if I was being smart. I looked at the sheet and saw he wanted us to avoid using S's and M's for our assignment, so I said "well, given we've taken out the S's and the M's, could I add an F," and I flatulated, long and wet like. Richie Curutti laughed so hard he pissed himself.

So here I was, standing on Marlene's side of the park, the cold moon in the air above us all frostbitten and blue, little puffs of clouds floating up from our open mouths, talking about ghosts and haunted houses. Marlene said she didn't believe in ghosts. When I told her I did, she asked me why. I'd never been asked why I believed in ghosts until that point, so I had to think of an answer on the spot. I said:

"Well, because I guess there isn't good enough reason for me to believe they don't exist. It seems reasonable, to me, to think people give off a kind of energy, like a star giving off light and heat - radiation. And if people do give off energy, then that energy radiates outward in all directions all the time, getting absorbed by everything around it, right? Ever see how the sun fades a photograph in a window? What if a person's energy could affect a place in a similar way, staining it so it becomes a kind of trapped echo?"

Marlene looked at me and her face went blank. She didn't say anything. Her friend Jenny came by and took her hand, pulled her away to talk to another one of their friends. I figured she didn't like what I said and I hung around talking to Richie for a little while. Then I walked over to the swing set in the middle of the park. No one was there and the quiet was nice, so I sat on the swing, swinging, staring up at the moon. From behind me I heard footsteps, and when I turned around I saw Marlene. She sat on the swing beside me, barely moving, not saying a word. I didn't know what to say, so I didn't say anything, either.

"You really believe what you said before," she asked.

I told her I did.

A pensive look spread across her face, and a slight furrow appeared on her brow like it was trying to scratch an itch at the top of her nose. It went away and came back again in quick twitches.

"I don't know if I believe that," she said.

"Well," I told her, "I'm not lying."

"No," she said, "I mean, I believe that you believe it, but I don't know if I believe it."

After a brief silence she added, "or maybe I don't want to believe it."

Another silence.

Then she asked, "do you think even little kids, like really little kids?" I started to reply, but she opened her mouth in that way someone who is about to say something opens their mouth, so I stopped. She did too. Her eyes started to well up with tears, and with her lip slightly trembling, she struggled to get a word out.

I won't forget how her eyes looked, like beautiful blue marbles made of ice and melting. She forced her lips into a smile and looked up at me and said:

"No, you're right - you're right. Even little, really little kids; I can feel it."

She paused one more rime.

"I can still feel it inside me. Even though it isn't, anymore."

Something is Wrong

There is something surreal that lurks in the hour just after the sun rises, and also, before it sets. During this time anything seems possible: the sun hasn't yet decided to shine, or to close its eyes, and in these pensive seconds of celestial indecision, time hangs on as fast as it recedes. In these moments time stand at a crossroads, where potential meets imagination, exempted from examination. Distinct and indistinct, the hour's evanescence is hastened by its radiance.

The birth and death of the day; who would have known it would be so hard to tell the difference?

Soon, time passes, transient and vagrant, frightened away by the whirring police-siren oscillation of the sun and moon, shrouded in darkness or evaporated and dissolved by bright lights. All of my assumed fantasies bleed out into cotton-candy clouds, then quickly turn inert and grey as the daily drudgery sets in. The buzzing of industry.

Work and worry.

And loss - of time, of love, of self.

This quotidian tedium breeds a desperate restlessness, a panicked boredom.

I can sense a deterioration, deleterious and dreadful.

All I hear are the deflated sounds of sighing, leaky crestfallen hymns, hissing from flat-tire throats.

It's Just a Restless Feeling By My Side

The lyrics floated from the speakers:

If you see the light turn gold, come out tonight and we'll get stoned
I don't want to get old, I don't want to get old

He looked at her as she lie there naked and beautiful, like a cherry on a mountain of white whipped cream sheets. The sunlight, coming in from the small stained-glass window, was all colored in gold and soft pastels. It kissed her hips and spilled itself out over her glistening thighs. It refracted and bent toward her face, looking longingly into her eyes, illuminating them like jewels in a display case.

A light sweat and a listless smile, the unconcealed evidence of their love.

They'd often wake like this on weekends, their affection rising with the sun. He lie beside her after opening the window to let in the air, which before, had held its ear to the painted glass, whispering excitedly against its surface. The sound of parrots punctuated the silence in between changing songs.

I was sitting on a rock just waiting for a key to sleep inside the house of old serenity 
So I climbed up to your alter, begged please, don't let me falter

His hand danced idly across her skin; down the small of her back, up the notches in her spine, across her slender shoulders, and then rested around her neck, just below her jaw, his thumb gently touching her face. Her riptide eyes drew him into her, pulling him madly toward her whirlpool heart. He could feel it beating faintly beneath his fingers. Her pulse spoke to him, revealing morse code mysteries, secrets as old as time. Their minds were clear and blue, brilliant as the sky. She smiled and wrapped him in her warm cotton touch.

"Are you hungry," he asked in a whisper, his lips just below her ear, pressing softly against her neck.

"Mmm, I could," she said.

"Could what," he asked, softer.

"...eat," she breathed.

The music possessed them, it moved around the room humming, twinkling and wet, painting wind-chime memories with their beating hearts.

Should've known better to stay asleep

Bowling Shoes

What does anyone have that's really their own? The shoes on our feet and the clothes on our back? They are things that we use to hide the one thing we really do have: our nakedness. How funny that we are born without clothes, but buried in them, wearing our want, literally, on our sleeves.

More and more it seems like the only things we truly own are the things we think we do.  Even our planet, the place we call home, isn't our own. We inhabit it for a brief time, living inside the most elaborate all-inclusive resort this side of the Milky Way. Yet we forget we are just guests here, walking on two legs toward the end of our lease. Most dinosaurs did it on four.

Are the hours ours? If so, most days we are lucky if we get eight of them for ourselves. No, I don't think the hours are ours either. They are on loan, like old, worn out bowling shoes.

We read in the dark, beside the dim light of our flickering bedside candle, burning for as long as the wax will allow. All the while, time, escaping upward as blackened smoke, swirls and dissolves, a trapeze whimsy swallowed by the air.

We all are; swallowed by the air.

Ballooned

D. Sauvageau

Have you ever lost all reason to dreaming?

Sometimes I dance with delusion and a meek magician's fancy, escaping into soft secret folds, warm and lilting, full with understanding.

Floating ever upwards, like lost birthday balloon cares.

I’ve never considered how much a stray balloon resembles a flagellating sperm, hunting through space in search of an egg. An errant balloon won't make it out into space of course, it will simply rise tens of thousands of feet, until the building pressure inside the balloon pushes outward causing it to burst. Like our human hopes, all crayon colored and red, the ascent becomes an inverted kind of falling - reaching a final resting place on a patch of wet cloud.

Then, those deflated gun-shot dreams fall back to earth, torn mangled and hollow, spiderwebbed and plastic, waiting to ensnare unsuspecting wings.

We are too often watching happiness float away.

It is easy to forget that all it was was lighter air.

200

Tonight is my 200th post. It's cause for celebration! That's what tomorrow is for, I suppose.

If only I had more time to write, I'd regale you with stories full of folly and foibles. For now though, I will celebrate in my sleep; counting Z's and fucking sheep.

Speaking of fucking sheep, someone asked me recently if I'd rather fuck a corpse or fuck an animal, and I think the answer is clear: animal, every time. Who'd want to make love to a hard, cold leathery corpse...ever? I imagine the sexual organs of a dead body to be rather uninviting, desiccated and smelling like rot.

I'd really need some kind of incentive to engage in necrophilia. Maybe I'd fuck a zombie, that's exciting. My cock is like a tombstone: solid metamorphic rock.

Head stone.

It's ingenious...igneous.

Those zombie chicks always talkin' bout brains

Rushing

No time to write
No time to read
No time to stop -

Speed, speed, speed

No time for things wicked
No time for things nice
No time for things virtuous
No time for vice

Trying to stay current
Always picking up pace
Whisking and wispy
Whipped up into space

Only racing to the end
Where I heard it would be; Rushing madly to the call
Spilling out into nothing
Where everything falls

A Care

My last post was too long. I reread it and removed the section about Q's phone calls with the front desk. It's difficult to document something and tell a compelling story at the same time; there's a lot of extraneous shit to cut out. The sentimentalist in me wants to take note of every detail - for posterity. It's like taking photos - we capture things to be able to go back to them, to revisit a time and place lost. But no one wants to sit through a slideshow of dull pictures, or read mundane clumps of sentences that don't further the story.

What I mean to say is, I apologize. I hadn't written in days and I unleashed a lengthy piece on you, without a care.

The Great Horned Squirrel

This past weekend Q and I went to Yosemite. We'd planned a nice getaway up in the glacial valley, full of scenic sights and stunning vistas. We were to hike our hearts out, climbing up the sides of mountains like spiders, rising with the sun, falling with the moon. Two dudes, embracing the photorealism of their bromance, like Teddy Roosevelt and John Muir.

We'd fled San Francisco Friday just before rush hour but still managed to hit slow rolling traffic for the first half of our voyage. Q became frustrated by our speed and began demanding people get off the road to allow him to pass, gesticulating furiously and pounding on the steering wheel. I urged him to remain calm, less he suffer the embarrassment of a stroke before even arriving at the trailhead. The moon began to rise, white, over the pale metal windmills that stood like sentinels over sprawling green pastures. Cows grazed lazily in the last bit of daylight. I stared out the window marveling at the green hills that looked soft like velvet, the occasional red barn, and the dilapidated tractors and sheds which surrounded.

As we drove on, the pangs of hunger started to kick and we began foraging. The roadside was littered with countless McDonalds and AppleBee’s, the artery clogging opium of the people. We decided that it would be best to find a local, privately owned restaurant - preferably of the biker bar variety - one that offered burgers and tall beers, hostile bartenders and poor service. Both Google and Apple failed at navigating us to the desired establishment, so we had to rely on cunning and guile, street smarts and crafty resourcefulness. Soon we arrived at The Grizzly Rock, located in the same place as a Best Western: a sure sign of quality if ever there was one. Q parked the car beside a shiny blue hillbilly truck sleeping under a palm tree. Foolishly, he started to change his pants in the parking lot while I photographed the truck. The temperature had dropped a bit since we’d begun our journey and he thought it would be easy to make a quick adjustment and restore some warmth. Unfortunately, this maneuver had marked us as homosexuals, queer city folk passing through their town, spreading our gayness like a plague.

We entered the saloon and found ourselves greeted by a gang of rednecks wearing trucker hats and flannel shirts, with beards full of scorn and ire. We were intruders. I looked at the taxidermied horned-rabbit mounted on the wall and envisioned Q and I’s severed buttocks glued to the walls, repurposed as bottle-cap openers or jammed with pickles. I resisted the urge to run and instead sat down at the bar beside Q. I ordered a tall, well hopped beer, much more potent than needed, as a necessary show of manliness. I excused myself to the bathroom where I discovered a giant photograph of President George W. Bush perched above the mirror where I washed my hands. When I returned to the bar I was alarmed to find that Q had ordered a Shirley Temple. The burly hillbillies glared, and the women did too. As I sat down I heard him say “I don’t know, I’ll have to think about it hon’, I’m on a diet.” This was bad, really bad. In a hushed voice I asked him what the fuck he was doing. Was he trying to get us lynched? He told me to calm down, that I seemed stressed, “we’re on vacation.” I composed myself and looked at the menu; burgers (a dozen different kinds); steaks; prime rib; pulled pork sandwiches; triple-stacked angus bacon burgers with a prerequisite heart-health warning. Ultimately, Q settled on a burger. To compensate for his earlier indiscretions I ordered a pulled pork and hamburger sandwich. I realized the intense irony of placing that much meat into my mouth to dispel any notions of our homosexuality.

We ate without incident and got ourselves back on the road. It was dark now and we hurtled through it, our headlights beaming, barreling across asphalt like a shooting star. A fabulous, faggish shooting star. The road was black and lonely, totally desolate except for us and the gunmetal locomotive racing beside the passenger window. We rode on in our small yellow Volkswagon bug, like a terrified mouse scurrying away from a slithering snake. It was an hour before midnight when we’d reached the hotel. Located just outside Yosemite, it was serene and austere, a river rushed outside the window of our room. I was exhausted and collapsed into bed, ready to steal as much sleep as I could in preparation for the morning hike. 

Once the sun began to rise, we made our way into the valley. There was the sound of stillness, then of birds and moving trees, camera shutters, the opening and closing of car doors and trunks. The rock face of El Capitan squinted down at us while the rising sun blared into its eyes. Driving onward I saw Half Dome break through the trees, jutting out from the earth like the broken leg of an enormous statue. We drove past Curry Village and parked the car and then began our ascent. We had intended to hike Half Dome, but because it was closed we decided we would hike Nevada Falls instead.

The hike was stunning. Yosemite is a place of great beauty and wonder; rushing rivers hissing over rocks like liquid serpents; ancient trees as tall as buildings, and as wide; mammoth rocks carved by ice; waterfalls; magic forests. Everything was going splendidly, the trails were empty, the morning air was cool and we had food in our packs. Q stopped off in the woods, crouched down behind a boulder to wipe the sweat from his ass-crack with a wet-wipe. I stood and riffled through my bag to find my other lens when, suddenly, I heard a strange sound. It was a bizarre kind of hissing, staccato and urgent, high-pitched. It seemed to be coming from right behind me. Looking back over my shoulder, I saw nothing. Perhaps it was nothing; just the whisper of my imagination. Then it came again, this time more shrill. Again I looked around and saw nothing. I quit looking through my bag to focus on the sound. I stood with my head slightly cocked, tilting my ear toward the woods. Silence.

Turning back around toward the rock, I was startled by the appearance of a small squirrel. It seemed to emerge from nowhere. It's black eyes met mine and didn't waver. It pounded its twitching tail threateningly as it glared. I couldn't understand how, but the squirrel was giving me a dirty look. Not dirty like mean, dirty like...dirty. It opened its mouth lecherously and looked down toward my cock. It looked back up at me and I watched as its tail grew stiffer. With one hand it pointed at my dick and then to its open mouth. The message was clear: it wanted nuts, mine.

The sound of Q returning from out behind the rock gave the squirrel enough time to scurry away unseen. I must've looked horrified because Q asked me what was wrong. I considered telling him what happened, what I'd seen, but because we'd smoked a bit of pot, I didn't want to seem paranoid, or worse, delusional. I told him it was nothing, that we should continue on our hike. I marched on, looking back over my shoulder every so often until I was able to tell myself things were fine. We talked of rock types, igneous and sedimentary; love and loss; of growing old; science and religion. Before I knew it we were atop Nevada Falls. The view was something to behold, reverent. We stopped and took it in, ate peanut-butter-jelly-banana sandwiches and watched the water fall out onto the rocks below.

Q told me we should take a different path back down, even though it was slightly longer, because it was a bit more scenic. I agreed and we began walking along the edge of the mountain toward the other path. The open sky and rocky ground gave way to a dirt trail bounded on each side by large trees. To our right, only air, moist with mist from the falls. We traveled along the sweating forehead of a fearful mountain looking out over a lethal fall. I walked in front of Q, snapping photos and marveling at the rustic splendor of the place. Q's phone rang and he stopped to answer it. I went on further to explore the trail, when I saw something rustling in a bush just ahead of me. A bear. Of all the rotten luck. My heart went base-jumping off the side of the mountain and panic gripped me. I started to take my backpack off, to relinquish my food to the bear as an offer of supplication. But then, the sound stopped. Q came up from behind and apologized for taking the call. He asked if something was wrong.

"No, just thought I heard something in the bushes," I told him.

"Haha, you thought there was a bear in that little bush," he asked. "Is that why you were taking your pack off??"

"No," I said, feeling my face flush, "I was going to grab a different lens."

To stay true to my lie, I switched lenses and we moved forward across wet rocks past the bush. As I lifted my leg to step to the next stone, there was the sound of a blood-curdling wail unlike anything I've ever heard. It sounded like the war cry of a dwarfed crackhead who'd inhaled a dozen whippet balloons full of helium. From the corner of my eye I saw a small furry creature gliding through the air holding something pointy. I turned my head toward the left to see the thing more clearly. It was the squirrel. And it wasn't holding something pointy - it was a throbbing boner, a horrible case of penisitis. I heard Q scream "holy fuck" and I tried to dodge the animal, and the small vienna sausage dangling from its midsection. My equilibrium was compromised by the visage of this vermin Valkyrie and I misstepped, losing my footing, falling down onto wet rock. I watched the creature sail over my head, squealing, passing over me and moving right - over the cliff beside me. Had I fallen a few inches to the right, I would have gone off the cliff with it.

"Holy fuck! Holy fuck! Are you alright?! Did you see the cock on that squirrel? Holy shit! It was coming right at you," Q shouted.

He helped me up and I told him I'd seen the squirrel earlier, that it sexually harassed me in the woods where he wiped his ass.

"Well he's gone now, over the hills and far away," I told him, "let's grab something to eat, and maybe a beer to help forget about what just happened."

We hiked back down, the swelling in my knee causing me to hobble and limp. We stopped inside the Awanhee and ate hummus and had a drink. I took several Aleve and rested my leg. Q drove us up above the valley where we smoked some more pot and watched the moonrise. It was a view that is difficult to describe. The full moon glowed yellow-orange, floating upward over the mountains and, behind us, the setting sun painted the sky in pink and red.

The next day we hiked Mirror Lake and Yosemite Falls, my knee and hip still sore, but functional. We took the 120 back toward San Francisco, a drive almost as beautiful as Yosemite itself. We stopped off at a saloon in a California hick town for the last drink of our adventure. I spoke with an old man who'd spent 24 years in the Navy. He told me that since his wife passed, that he has no one left except his brother, whom he plays pool with 3 times a week. Q thought the man piteous and was thankful when he left. I found him human, vulnerable, tender, withered and frail, like a burning building ready to collapse.

We got back into the car and left. I'd been driving for an hour or so when I heard something moving in the backseat, where our bags were. I asked Q if he could see what had fallen or what was loose, god forbid it was one of our cameras. The next thing I heard was the sound of unbridled terror and shock howling from Q's larynx, followed by a frightening and familiar high-pitched grrrrrrrrr. It was the squirrel. This time it did have something sharp; it was the knife I had in my bag to cut the sandwiches with. It scurried around the backseat and leapt onto the neck of Q's chair, holding the knife to his throat.

"Fuck! Be cool," I yelled.

Q continued to scream and with its free hand the squirrel extracted a notepad from my bag. It handed me a page onto which a message had been scrawled:

Roll up the fucking windows, smoke that last joint, and play Purple Rain, LOUD!

5 F's

Truth has always been important to me, and also honesty - truth's expression. I'd be lying if I said I've never told a lie, but I'd like to think I've told fewer than most. Honesty requires a coldness of heart at times, and the ability to tell someone something brutal. It also requires you to say things you know to  be disadvantageous to you. There is the necessity for courage and a readiness of consequence.

This morning I read a list of the top 5 things people say on their deathbed. The list was trite and it espoused a kind of Kerouac-style living. It felt strange to think of something as both trite and true, but the more I thought of it, the more I wondered: perhaps the more trite something is, the more true it is. What bothered me was that I couldn't really disagree with anything on the list. What bothered me more was that they were things I'm not doing:

- I wish I hadn't worked so hard

- I wish I spent more time with people that matter

- I wish I let myself be happier

- I wish I had expressed myself more

- I wish I had a life true to my dreams instead of what people expected of me

If there were boxes beside each of those, denoting a pass or fail, I'd be rolling in F's. What's the solution though? Burning Man is only a week long; what about the other 358 days of the year? I feel trapped, like a cartoon rabbit who's realized he isn't in a warm vegetable bath, but boiling alive in a cauldron for a gang of hungry cannibals.

Maybe what bothers me is the actual premise, the whole deathbed notion; the grim futility of things. That black-winged wave in the sky, a great unkindness of ravens rolling in like a black tide. I feel like Tippi Hedren sitting on a bench in front of a playground, doom and foreboding multiplying with each backward glance.

The doom is the knowledge that we cannot stave off death, we can only wait.

Then, before we know it, we're found ripped up and torn apart by time, cast aside like shredded tires on a highway's shoulder.

Ei incumbit probatio qui dicit, non qui negat

The presumption of innocence is the chintinous integument of liberty.

Without it, anyone who finds themselves accused must wrestle free of the allegation, and in doing so - in order to defend themselves against it - must invariably act in such a way that affirms the claim.

Consider for a moment how this process becomes inimical to liberty. One can no longer act freely in accord with their own leisurely jurisprudence. The assumption of safety from maltreatment would attract the ire of those who do not possess the same sense of security. Resentful, they would then seek to inflict their condition upon the more free-spirited members of society, so that their misery is shared; an atrabilious kind of homogeny.

The prevailing question becomes, "if I'm not at liberty, why should anyone else be?"

The folly of such a parochial and myopic view is easily revealed through extension - as myopic views often are. It produces a culture of fear, for both the accusers and the accused.

A confluence of fear, and a cold, stifling circumspection come to pervade the populace under such conditions. Inaction ensues, inspired by the threat of ready persecution, inciting distrust and a generalized retreating inward. The freedom of speech deteriorates and becomes weaponized, held against the throats of those who would seek to restore a sense of understanding, of love and trust.

Ideas begin to be surveilled. Words become fuzzy shadows on a black & white convenience-store camera; mounting evidence. Murmurs transform into whispers and then silence. The voices of courage become mute with cowardice. Those innocent and in need of defense find themselves defenseless - impugned with impunity.

What have you to say for yourself? 

What am I being accused of?

Well, I'm not at liberty to say. 

Bereaved

Disease debility and death.

That's what there is to look forward to from here on out.

I'd prepared something else to write about today, but I just got off the phone with an old friend from New York and now my mind is electric and teeming, full of frightening eventualities - a drawer full of knives.

He told me his mother recently had a fairly invasive surgery; that everything is okay but she has a pacemaker now. There is something truly truly horrifying about the thought of your parents dying, and of watching them. Not only does it serve as a poignant reminder of your own mortality, but it reinforces a looming sense of loneliness and despair - one that seems to creep closer with each day passing. To realize that one day, all you will have left of them is a fading memory, full of holes and inadvertent falsifications, existing as static snapshots of statues, gathering dust, interred in your mind.

We're all to be orphaned. By time and health and luck and wit, and life.

We're told to make the best of it, to enjoy life, to pursue happiness. We laud this as an inalienable right.

For these small pleasures we are willing to suffer great pains. But how our rapturous delights can beget so much distress; regret and penance, pain and remorse, a soreness that won't heal. We grab at roses inside bushes of thorns, forgetting that we must pull our hands back through where they've been thrust.

We fight to feel. It is all we have.

Why is it that exhilaration, the feeling of being alive, is so often followed by the dread of death. It tags along like a cute girl's fat friend. Sitting at the table, round and bloated, devouring space, expanding, hoarding mass. The fear spills itself out over itself, and anything near it, folding over folds. It affixes itself to our shoulders and we feel it in the crumbling arches of our tired feet.

Why must the idea of death be so terminal? It is a thing without magic, a kind of scientific disappearing act, cold hard and factual - final. Then is it death we fear, or the pain of death. Perhaps it is the same; less physical than it is psychological.

We don't care about the end of our bodies, we care about the end of our minds.

Breathe, Breathe in the Air

Thin strands of grass cover the hillside like green brushstrokes. The short leaves of small trees glimmer in the morning light, wobbling and waxen. The sun's argent eye squints through a smoky haze spread across the sky, sending buckshot photons scattering. Just overhead, gulps of swallows dart like thrown knives, carving the air with their shiruken wings. On the horizon, the water looks invisible, but like a great liquid mirror it doubles the silver sky, creating conjoined twins. Mud colored mountains jut out of the water like dirty icebergs, or the fins of some colossal deep-sea creature that's come up for air.

I'm inside a bus, running along like a metal millipede. On either side, lanes of cars march past like shiny ants. My day is just starting, setting itself up to be undone; like the rising sun and the falling moon; like lace and lingerie, and lust; like trust and trysts and trips and fits; and fists; wrapped gifts and long lists; dominoes like headstones, each one waiting to fall.

Breathe in deeply, and exhale. The sound of a rolling wave, an eternity passing.



Breathe, breathe in the air
Don't be afraid to care
Leave but don't leave me
Look around, choose your own ground
For long you live and high you fly
And smiles you'll give and tears you'll cry
And all your touch and all you see
Is all your life will ever be

- Pink Floyd

I'm Wide Awake It's Morning

The clouds are a comin'. Or, at least that's what my phone says.

Yep, I've checked my sources: partly cloudy, all day. I'll need to jump in the shower now and cut myself loose on the streets, armed with just a camera and a lens.



The sun came up with no conclusions
Flowers sleeping in their beds
The city cemetery's humming
I'm wide awake, it's morning

I have my drugs, I have my women
They keep away my loneliness
My parents, they have their religion
But sleep in separate houses

I read the body count out of the paper
And now it's written all over my face
No one ever plans to sleep out in the gutter
Sometimes that's just the most comfortable place

So I'm drinking, breathing, writing, singing
Every day I'm on the clock
My mind races with all my longings
But can't keep up with what I got

And so I hope I don't sound too ungrateful
What history gave modern man
A telephone to talk to strangers
Machine guns and a camera lens

So when you're asked to fight a war that's over nothing
It's best to join the side that's gonna win
And no one's sure how all of this got started
But we're gonna make them goddamn certain how it's gonna end
(Oh yeah we will, oh yeah, we will!)

Well I could have been a famous singer
If I had someone else's voice
But failure's always sounded better
Let's fuck it up boys, make some noise!

The sun came up with no conclusions
Flowers sleeping in their beds
The city cemetery's humming
I'm wide awake, it's morning

- Connor Oberst

Mirari

"It's a tiger," he said to her, pointing toward a dried patch of dense brush.

He'd always had a fascination with those large frightening cats. When they were younger - much younger - they would routinely go on dates to the zoo. He'd spend all day in front of the tiger's cage, taking photos and writing notes in his small spiral notepad. He said they were powerful symbols bound in bodies striped with dark mystery, grace and danger. She remembered how resistant he was to leaving the spot where the tigers were. Their cage was less like a cage and more like an open plain, walled off by thick glass as tall as a house. He'd told her they made them that tall so the tigers couldn't break free - they'd been known to leap with ease over walls a dozen feet high.

"I was just over by the monkeys," she'd said, touching his arm, "on the way back from the bathrooms. You wouldn't believe how loud they were. They screamed and hollered and jumped and danced and all the children just went mad. Until one of them began flinging shit out over the fence at a group of teenagers on a field trip and..."

"Isn't that funny," he said, without letting her finish, his eyes never leaving the tigers' cage.

Now, fifty years later, she looked out toward where he pointed and tried to see the animal that she knew wasn't really there. All she saw was a dead shrub blowing in the wind.

"It's a big one," he said, "it reminds me of one I saw once while on safari in Africa."

He'd never been to Africa. There aren't even tigers in Africa, but he didn't know that. He'd never left upstate New York, where they'd met.

"Jesus, can you believe the size of that thing," he said. "The stripes could probably paint a barn black. Hand me the binoculars, quick! I want to get a better look at him."

"John, there's..." she paused.

"Come one Bridgette, you're wasting time. He's going to get away like the last time."

"Like the last time? Like in the Himalayas, you mean?" she asked.

They'd never been to the Himalayas.

"The Himalayas, then in Cambodia, again in Malaysia. There was Sumatra, too. And let's not forget Nepal, when you scared him off because you couldn't keep quiet," he replied, a bit scornfully.

In a detached pithy tone of subdued frustration, she replied, "Oh yes, how could I forget; the time I accidentally scared a tiger away."

At her own pace, she reached into the bag and pulled out the binoculars. She'd bought them for him years ago. John kept them meticulously clean, well oiled and shined, the glass clear as crystal. She handed them to him and said, "here," too tired to entertain the charade.

With unsteady hands made deft by excitement, he brought the binoculars to his old eyes, magnifying his illusion. Peering out into the distance, then looking down and scribbling earnestly into his worn out notepad, he documented his sighting. He always wrote things down, for as long as she'd known him, which is what was so puzzling about his condition. How could someone so obsessed with notation and documentation be so mistaken?

Bridgette wondered how long it had been now. She wasn't sure; two years, four? Maybe five.

At first it was little things, like leaving the fire on under the tea-kettle until all the water boiled out, until the bottom of the pot began to cook. The stink of burnt metal hung on the walls for days, its persistence a mocking reminder of his forgetfulness. They were lucky the house hadn't burned down. He began losing things; his wallet, keys, toothbrush, the tiger-stripped cufflinks she'd gotten him for his 50th birthday. One day he'd answered a call from their granddaughter, Kathleen, and he told her he wasn't interested in buying any girl-scout cookies:

"I mean, I like cookies as much as the next guy," he said, "it's just that, I don't know you. What assurance do I have that you won't just cash my check and keep the cookies for yourself? You sound like a really nice girl and all, but these days you just can't tell."

Bridgette had to yank the phone out of his hand and explain to her that grandpa was just playing a joke. Out of guilt she bought enough cookies from her to satisfy the Cookie Monster's most indulgent binge.

Then there was the night he'd walked to the grocery store to pick up his prescription from the pharmacy and bring in some bread for dinner. It had just started to rain when Bridgette had finished cooking, and after she'd finished setting the table she realized he hadn't come home yet. She called him but he didn't answer. Alarmed, she called the pharmacy and asked if her husband had been in to pick up his medication.

"No Mrs. Carlyle, John hasn't been in," the pharmacist said.

She got in the car and drove around looking for him, circling a dozen times, if not more, listening to the fluttering engine's lonely hum, the drumroll desperation of the rain. The soft heartbeat of windshield wipers echoed inside the car, hauntingly, her panic beside her in the passenger seat refusing to wear a seatbelt. She'd decided to go back home and wait, and told herself that if he didn't come home within the hour she'd call the police. He came in dripping wet, after the food was cold, after she'd driven around in the rain looking for him.

"My God John, where have you been," she asked rising up from the chair.

"You wouldn't believe it Bridgette; you just wouldn't believe it if I told you," he said, shaking his head. "I went out without my wallet, and I must've got turned around because you know, I couldn't for the life of me find my way back home. I was about to give up when I came up on the house of a guy named Fred; nice guy. He told me he remembered me; he looked familiar but I don't know where from. Anyway, he pointed me in the right direction and here I am."

These kinds of episodes had taken their toll on her. She was afraid to let him out of her sight. She started to develop eccentricities of her own. She found herself reciting things in her head; phone numbers she'd seen on infomercials, the numbers of injury law attorneys advertised in between commercials during The Price is Right, business names and addresses of buildings she would pass in the street. Their daughter, Cheryl, had gotten her and John a book of sudoku puzzles last time she'd visited. Bridgette would fill in the little squares every morning with her tea, and sometimes at night in bed. She finished the entire book and moved on to the puzzles in the morning newspaper. One Sunday the paper hadn't come and Bridgette called up the post office demanding to speak to the mailman who neglected to deliver her paper. When John told her he'd used it to line the cat's litterbox she stormed out and bought her own paper from one of the dispensers in town.

Then she stopped buying catfood.

She didn't want to resent him, but she did. As his condition worsened he began to spend more and more time with their cat, Mirari; he was a Bengal. The doctor said it was good for him to spend time with the cat. She resented the cat, too. She started leaving the doors and windows open just enough for the cat to fit through, hoping it would sneak out. After dinner one night, the night after John's 61st birthday, Mirari got out and didn't come back.

John was devastated. He started forgetting more, faster. He'd forget to eat - which made him tired and weak - and he started sleeping a lot. Drawing pictures of lions and tigers distracted him briefly, until he would realize Mirari was gone and then lose interest. To pull him out of his depression, Bridgette bought him a pair of binoculars and started taking him on drives. They'd go to parks and he'd stare out through the binoculars spotting imaginary cats and phantom panthers. It hurt her to see him so irrevocably lost.

He looked up at her after he finished writing in his notebook.

"John, it looks like rain," Bridgette said.

"The rain brings them out, you know. Most people think cats are afraid of water, that they don't like to get wet, but it's simply not true. They just like it to be on their terms," he said.

"I don't have an umbrella, John."

"You can head to the car, it's okay. I don't mind, honest" he said. "These cats are camouflaged by the clouds; they can hide behind drops of falling rain."

Inside and Out

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To Stone

Dreadful curls of cobras hang grimly from her head; great hissing death adder accordions. Knotted anacondas spill down her back, writhing at her waist like scourges. Her small viper bangs, deadly and dangling; scaly caterpillars devouring green leafed glances. Rings of rattles swing at her ears, her black mamba eyes drip inky venom tears. She creeps through shadows; the sound of a breeze meanly sighing. Waterfalls of sick and wicked scales glisten beneath the silver light of a frightened moon. Retreating, it hides its face, pulling itself under a cold black blanket in the sky. Petrified.

You had me at Herpasaurus

Contagious

She walked passed him and met his eye. She wore a thin white open-backed shirt. He could see her shoulder blades, lined like bird wings, two dimples pressed into the small of her back. She was graceful and well-muscled, supple. Even in the darkness of the nightclub her skin gave off a sinful kind of radiance. Her moonlike orbit around the room pulled at his blood and created tides of excitement. He imagined what her lips would feel like against his, her coy eyes and mischievous smile as she took off her clothes; the impossible softness of her hair, the smooth skin covering her firm legs.

Fantasy is a powerful force, its potency hinged on the possibility - or impossibility - of its attainment. The more out of reach the object is, the more compelling it becomes; to a point. He knew he wouldn't approach her, what for? To yell some trite, ill-conceived line loudly into her ear over the music? Even if she responded positively, what then? Talk over the music the entire time, or just long enough to get a phone number? They were there to watch a show, not to talk to strangers. He considered that in a universe where the success of their tryst was assured, the fantasy would become his current reality: because fantasy must be dictated by what isn't going to happen, by what you don't have.

Well that's not always true, right? He didn't have herpes, but he wasn't fantasizing about that. Maybe if she had them, though. That's the line!

Hey baby, you so fly that I'd catch herpes from you and I wouldn't even care; tell me you have them and I'm yours.

Painful sores and lesions, like organic engagement rings. It really doesn't get any more romantic than that. After that he might tell her about how herpes actually came from the dinosaurs; it's what killed them you know. Just like some guy fucked a monkey and created AIDS, some caveman fucked a lesothosaurus and bam! Herpes. To really make this work, while talking about dinosaurs, he'd have to find a way to work in a joke about a thesaurus. Perfect. What's the worst that could happen?

"What do you think I'm an idiot? A caveman couldn't have fucked a dinosaur."

"Thank god," he thought, she knows that humans and dinosaurs didn't..."

"Dinosaurs were gigantic, it would just squash a caveman you fucking asshole."

In a universe somewhere, Stephen Hawking is fantasizing about being her.