Sailor's Delight

The air was warm. It was one of those warm nights that you get in early Spring sometimes, the kind that fills the air with mischief. The kind that slows down time.

In the distance the sun was setting, streaking the sky with reds and light purples, soft pinks, like a woman putting on makeup. I was standing at the front of the line waiting for the bus, green grass and trees all around me. The part of the sky that wasn't red was of a pastel blue, the color of children's sidewalk chalk. A phrase came to me, knocked loose from my memory: red sky at night, sailor's delight. When I'd first heard it, as a child, it was preceded by: red sky at morning, sailor take warning. I'm not familiar with the veracity of the phrase, just that I'd heard it before. I think it was a family friend who'd said it, a friend of my father's, named Billy Ahern.

He was the kind of guy that always had a story to tell, always a joke, a riddle, a prank or an interesting tidbit of information to share. With him, there was no scarcity of wit. He was someone I enjoyed speaking to. He talked about things that were important and meaningful - not about how I was doing in school, but about how I was doing. As I grew up, he and my father had a falling out and he didn't come around much anymore. Occasionally I would run into him on the bus on my way to work, but our conversation was always abbreviated under those circumstances.

One Thanksgiving he had shown up to the house unexpectedly, wanting only to wish us a happy Thanksgiving. When I heard the knock at the door I was standing in the kitchen helping my father cook. In his socks, which were pulled up to the middle of his shins, wearing nothing but a pilgrim's hat and his tighty-whities, drinking a bottle of white wine, he told me to get the door. It was Billy. He shook my hand and said "Happy Thanksgiving," and then closed the door behind him. He waved to my mother in the next room, wishing her a happy Thanksgiving as well. He seemed ebullient and genuinely happy to see us. Billy didn't plan on staying long. I could tell because he didn't take his jacket off.

He looked at my father and laughed endearingly at his ensemble and then started to step toward him. All I heard was the sound of my father's socks sliding across the kitchen floor as he squealed, WEEEEEEEEEEEE, and sailed into view as though on roller-skates. When he got close enough, and still sliding, he used his momentum to slap Billy across the face, knocking his glasses from his head and sending them flying into the cat litterbox on the floor. Billy staggered back against the door, arms thrown outward, searching for balance, as my father cried: Happy Thanksgiving mothaFUCKAAAAAAAHHHHH! 

From the next room I saw my mother, mortified, her hand raised to her mouth in shock, looking at me as though I should do something. I turned to Billy, who wore a pained expression of betrayal and suppressed anger. "What the fuck is wrong with you Mike," he asked, standing himself upright. "I gave you something to be thankful for," my father replied. Billy looked incredulous, and for a minute, I thought he might retaliate, until I saw the stoic look of resignation in his eyes. He bent down and picked his sunglasses up out of the catbox and glared at my father. "This is how you treat a friend come to wish you happy Thanksgiving, huh," he asked, as he turned around and walked out the door.

After he shut the door, my father opened it and yelled: BIIIEEEEETCHHH!

Even Glass

The glass was hot and glowing, goopy. It hung from the end of the long metal pole like honey, dripping slowly as it cooled, taking shape and becoming translucent, then transparent. The heat from the open furnace was fierce; someone told me it could give you a sunburn if you stood too close for too long. Inside it looked like a volcano full of bright molten glass. Men in underwear spun and blew the glass, flattening it with wooden blocks, perforating it with blowtorches, tempering it. The crowd gasped as the glass popped and burst, jittering in their seats excitedly, anxiously awaiting the next trick.

We were inside an old factory, the room, sparsely decorated, smelled of cinders and something chemical. A band presided over the affair, accordions and dreamy Latin guitar scales hung lazily in the air. There seemed to be a gruff fragility to the art, a kind of joust with time. The men in underwear, their javelins raised, gobs of glass glowing at the tips, rolled and pressed them forcibly against hard surfaces, manipulating them before they cooled; before they lost their malleability; before they became hard, and still.

Sometimes, the glass would become too stressed from the pressure, from the rolling and pulling, and it would shatter to pieces while it lay idle on the table.

Even glass, I thought.

The Great Terminus

The other day a thought occurred to me: what if we are always experiencing all moments, throughout the entirety of time, at once. It's not a new idea, but the other day, it felt truer than it ever had before.

Have you ever walked down a particular street and felt it was of another time? Perhaps the houses were painted in soft pastels, slightly faded and faintly out of place, distinctly indistinct; the presence of aged architecture or a vintage streetlight, a baroque column, an odd sign. Or maybe you've seen a person that looked of a different time; an old frigid looking woman with a Victorian primness; a savage looking hairy man with the forehead of a Neanderthal; a child wearing monochrome corduroys, suspenders and a coal-colored hat, straight out of Depression-era America.

Maybe you've passed a playground and felt time bristling at your skin, spinning back around like a merry-go-round, reminding you of a memory you once had but had forgotten; of a certain time of day; a perfume your grandmother wore when you were a child; the temperature of the air when you had your first kiss.

Or the way time is able to saturate itself in song; Chuck Berry, The Beach Boys, Led Zeppelin, Otis Redding, The Temptations, Lead Belly, Hank Williams. How a song can grab at you and summon the memory of a person, place or thing.

The idea of time as circular isn't a new one either , in fact, it's one that's been repeated many times over, in many different places, at many different times. If we agree that we can do away with the linear notion of time (a leap, perhaps) and bend it in on itself, events would flow like electricity through a coil. Maybe then, the reason we have memories of times past is because they're still happening, now. Not only times past, but also, times that haven't yet passed.

What if your desires, those things you peer into the future and seek out, are just memories drifting toward you from the future? They are your cravings and yearnings, sometimes concrete, and sometimes fuzzy, but perhaps always just remembrances of things to come. There is a German word sehnsucht, which I think describes this sentiment:

"It is sometimes felt as a longing for a far-off country, but not a particular earthly land which we can identify. Furthermore there is something in the experience which suggests this far-off country is very familiar and indicative of what we might otherwise call "home". In this sense it is a type of nostalgia, in the original sense of that word. At other times it may seem as a longing for a someone or even a something. But the majority of people who experience it are not conscious of what or who the longed for object may be, and the longing is of such profundity and intensity that the subject may immediately be only aware of the emotion itself and not cognizant that there is a something longed for."

When I think of time as circular, I don't even think we traverse the circle linearly. Each moment is its own discrete but related circle, and kind of vibrates and pulses upward into another circle, and another circle, like a ripple, or a magnetic field.

There are the naysayers, though. Those that would tell you time is linear, that it starts with the big bang and ends with the eventual heat death of the universe. Let's consider the character of such a person for a moment, and ad hominem attack the shit out of them. Because, really, these people are a miserable loveless lot and should be dispensed with. If life is the sum of a person's subjective interpretations and ruminations of the things they perceive, and the ideas they have about the things they perceive, then all anyone ever has is their beliefs - they are what guide us, what shapes us. They become the voice in your head, the way you view yourself, others, the world. Why, then, would you want to believe in the obliteration of everything you love and hold dear; the great terminus.

Why would you insist upon this truth and thrust it like a sword at those who would disagree, those with their own beliefs on time and life, on death. They are the ones who assert themselves like one telling ghost stories, like someone trying to scare children. Personally, I think it comes from a place of fear somewhere deep inside them. A fear they will doggedly project onto any dissenting opinion, accusing others of being too afraid to accept the truth - their truth, the one they've subscribed to. They are the ones who believe in a zero sum game, where there are no winners, just losers. Really? This is what you want the voice in your head to say? These are the dreams you want it to whisper to you in the dark when you lay your head against the pillow? I've noticed they are usually the ones who, at night, cannot sleep.

Remember, even the number zero is a circle.

Sunny - D

From yesterday:

Well, I'm fucking stunned. I just listened to The Beach Boys live album from Knebworth England. By listened, I mean I listened to a 1-minute preview of each of the 22 tracks; it's downloading in its entirety now. Apparently the show was legendary - one of the rare times Brian Wilson took the stage with them, a day after his 38th birthday. The album is a testament to their ability as musicians, truly. When I first stumbled across it I thought: a live album by The Beach Boys, that's going to suck; how would they achieve that same meticulous sound they produce in the studio? I couldn't have been more wrong. The album is phenomenal, a vulgar display of talent.

The most prominent attribute of the album is the feeling of enjoyment, from the thunderous applause and enthusiastic cheer of the audience to the effusive banter from Wilson and The Beach Boys, one gets the pleasant feeling of warm sunshine just from listening. The setlist is unbelievable and even includes two Chuck Berry covers.

With The Beach Boys there is always the feeling of traveling back through time, and the urge to grease my hair, buy a leather jacket, a comb, a yellow Thunderbird, and then drive to a red and white checkered ice cream shoppe, drink a milkshake and dance like a whiteboy. Well, depending on the album. Other albums inspire daytime drug use and dreamy demented delight. Sunny-D.

Perhaps the greatest achievement of this album was to make me forget completely about the rain. It's pouring here in sunny California, buckets and sheets, cats and dogs - cock and balls.

The rain ain't got shit on The Beach Boys.

Stair Master

From earlier:

My head aches today. I wonder from where it crawled, out from under which rock the pain creeped. Despite my aching cranium, I make my way out into the fog, to go to the gym. Today will be the fourth consecutive day. It is an enormous struggle just to get back to where I was a month ago. Much of life's energy, it seems, is spent trying to get back; to, or at, someone, someplace, something. Looking toward the future is polarizing, often inspiring only two feelings: fear and fantasy; sometimes both. The past, however, is not similarly restricted - we wear it like a ball and chain. It can be regrettable, tender, fond, wistful, tragic, but always haunting. We stare back at it like a setting sun, with a post-prescient omniscience, knowing exactly what we should've done, then (had we known what we know now). It is a sickness, a kind of temporal voyeurism.

Speaking of sickness, I feel the vague onset of nausea. The thought of spraying vomit out over the gymnasium from atop the stair-master amuses me. Marching like gestapo toward the heavens, ever ascending, demonstrating my elevation over those piteous bastards beneath me, only to unleash a deluge of puke upon them, with impunity, from my mouth spigot. Vomiting on someone is so much better than spitting on them. It comes from somewhere deeper than saliva - from the soul. Most people can't stomach it though, that much raw essence.

Working out when you have a headache is like taking a shower when you have a sunburn. It's something you know you need to do, something that will probably help, but the pain and inconvenience of it all calls the whole thing into question.

Dissolved

Amidst the cries of the inconsolable, those hopelessly forlorn people inside the Zahir, all facing an imminent demise, there was the distinct repetition of the word: no. Everyone had retreated to the far corner of the room, facing away from the explosives, averting their eyes from the monstrosity like a bad dream. No one had seen Amuela march toward the grenades and pick them both up, repeating the word no with greater anger as she approached the window. She pitched them out into the streets like baseballs, and a moment later they exploded, killing half a dozen more guerrilla fighters outside.

Outside, the men were momentarily immobilized, frozen with consternation and befuddlement at the sudden reversal. How? Unbelievable! First the rocket, and now this. "We have lost too many soldiers," one of the men shouted over the chaos and gunfire. "What do you propose," Mustafa asked him, taking cover behind a building across from the Zahir. "I fear if we do not retreat, we will incur even greater losses," the man replied, "there are only the two of us left." Hesitating, his pride wounded, the sharp sense of failure cutting him savagely, Mustafa solemnly agreed with the soldier's assessment. He forfeited the fight and fled the street bitterly, the want of vengeance, of victory, stinging his mouth. "They may have staved us off today, Haqar, but their days of plenty are numbered," Mustafa said, with a cold air of assurance, his black eyes lightless and hard, like pieces of coal.

Inside the Zahir, men struggled to restrain Amuela as she thrashed and fought to make her way past the door. She wanted to see the faces of the cowards that had ambushed and murdered innocent people, murdered Abir. Her face was wet with tears and flushed with anger. "Get off of me! Let me go! You cannot keep me here! I want to see them," she cried. Finally, the men pried her from the door and sat her in a chair. Someone came out with a glass of water. The people inside the restaurant, thankful to her to be alive, watched curiously as she drank. She was not from there, it seemed. She looked to be of Spanish descent, perhaps from Madrid. Amuela - with her wild, light-colored eyes, her strappy sandals and frenzied hair, her white dress, blood-stained and torn, clinging provocatively to her lean physique - looked merciless, like a goddess of war.

One of the men, the man who, earlier, had stood at the window beside the now dead bearded man, pulled up a chair and placed it in front of Amuela. Calmly, he sat down and said, "we are very thankful to you, for your bravery." She stared back at him, expressionless. She wasn't listening to what he was saying. To her, the realization was beginning to sink in: she was lost. Her fantasies of financial freedom, love, a life of travel and whimsy - all of it - had been detonated with Abir. How could things ever be the same? How could she ever love anyone again after watching him get blown to pieces by a suicide bomber. Some hardships are not simply endured, they are deformitive, debilitating, like surviving a fire; ruined melted skin, waxen and thin, forever disfigured.

Her last memory of him was of them together in bed, two nights before. They lay in the dark, beneath a silk canopy, and through the narrow open doors the light from the full moon glowed on the balcony, overlooking the sleeping city. Beside the bed was a lantern. Its flame flickered gently, dancing inside a ball of glass to the same billowy rhythm as the curtains that hung from the tall windows, to a tempo set by the breeze. The night was hot, even hotter as they explored each other's bodies. Sweat dripped from their pores like small oases, and they drank one another completely.

The cool air felt good, restorative, somehow auspicious.

Dinner

The ground was hot. It's not something she ever would've thought of, if she wasn't down on it, pressing her hands into it.

"We'll meet at six," he'd told her, "at the Zahir."

If she would've known that at 6pm, in the street near the Zahir, there would be an ugly explosion, a nightmare of glass and screams and smoke, she would've just stayed inside. She scrambled to find cover during the commotion, during the heated exchange in the street between two men dressed in rags. They were talking excitedly, with a demented fervor, just before the blast. The man had strapped explosives to his body, sending shards of shrapnel and corrosives out over where he had stood moments before. There were people lying in the street, the air stunk of flesh and sulphur. The confused cries of women searching for lost children volleyed with distant police sirens.

Terrified, she wondered where Abir was, if he'd been claimed by the attack. Crouched behind the car, the baleful thought made her feel ill and injured. Memories of the weeks before whirred by her, as flashes from a zeotrope dream. She remembered holding his hand as they'd crossed the street on their first date, the first time they had been to the Zahir. They were cautious then, not yet made mad by love and its longing. She thought of the time at the bazaar when he bought her an exotic pair of sandals with ornate straps, made of fine leather, meticulously stitched. She had protested much but Abir wouldn't take no for an answer. He had told her that she deserved something fine, that she was a woman of inordinate beauty; "to deny this is to disrespect God," he told her, "you should be adorned." She was unsure how much he paid the merchant that day; Abir was always a skilled bargainer and never expressed the slightest shame or shock for any expenditure. And he was right: the sandals had looked exquisite. They fit her as though they were custom tailored, as if she were a model to be painted or sculpted in marble. The straps drew attention to her flawless, well muscled calves, her immaculate feet, the smooth tan skin of her legs.

Now, in disbelief, peering out from behind the car, she searched for a sign of Abir. His tall thin frame, his way of holding himself, with grace and poise, upright and centered firmly in his feet. He seemed to her always, unshakable. As the smoke cleared she ran out from the cover of the car toward the restaurant. There were people who'd been blown to pieces, completely unrecognizable as human; raw chopped-meat corpses. She prayed one of these was not Abir. He wasn't meant to be a cheeseburger.

"Amuela! Amuela," a voice cried out.

She turned and saw Abir hurling himself at her through the restaurant door. He looked decisive and stern, deft; he moved toward her deliberately, absolutely. He embraced her with a fierce tenderness, briefly, and then placed his arm around her and quickly ushered her to the door of the Zahir. "You must come in at once, the streets are not safe," he told her. When they reached the door it opened slightly and Abir pressed her inside ahead of him. A second explosion, immediately behind her, and then a splattering of burger meat. Abir was dead; turned into a sloppy joe - hamburger helper.

The people inside screamed and gasped and shouted and threw tables and chairs against the slammed door, barricading themselves inside. Gunfire rang out in the street and everywhere there was the shrill sound of pandemonium. Amuela's white dress, stained with pieces of Abir, looked like it had been spritzed with ketchup - a casualtied condiment. She was stunned and mute with horror, numbed by the speed of her return from salvation to abjection. A bearded man, directing the survivors, shouting and wearing sweat-stained clothes, ordered someone to pull her down under a table. Two sets of arms grabbed her and quickly dragged her to safety. Another man, at the window, began shouting in a language she didn't fully understand and motioned to the bearded man. The man joined him beside the window and together they peered out cautiously. Then, more yelling, hurried movements from the back of the restaurant, and the emergence of a long cylindrical weapon; a rocket launcher. It was handed to the bearded man. He crouched down and balanced the cannon expertly on his shoulder, placing the opening in front of the broken window.

The sound of rushing, and a rapid displacement of air; the giant bottle-rocket squealed out the window like a smoky hissing comet. With the force of a wrecking ball, it crashed into a parked car, sending it spiraling into the air, engulfed in a sea of flames. The car landed on two guerrilla fighters, and set fire to several more. The ones that were pinned under the flaming vehicle cried out desperately, barking in burning agony, sizzling, popping like firewood.

The bearded man moved away from the window and yelled something to the rear of the room. Amuela's ears were ringing. Her whole body vibrated with a feeling of unreality. It felt like the world was trembling, caught in the grips of a violent seizure, shaking itself to pieces and swallowing its tongue. More men rushed past with machine guns and ducked in front of the windows inside the restaurant. The man with the beard turned to face the cowering inhabitants of the Zahir. He had only just begun to speak when a barrage of bullets whizzed through the room and caught him in the back of the head, launching strands of spaghetti from his skull out onto the wall. The frightened screams of the crowd came to an abrupt stop when two grenades burst through the windows, rolling across the floor with the aplomb of two rotund sheriffs, spurs ticking like time bombs.

Bodies clambered and clamored to get away from the spheres, but there was nowhere to run to.

Dinner was served.

Returning

There have been, the past few days, secret transmissions; subtle suggestions from the cosmos hinting at a vast interconnectedness underpinning everything. It is something that can be felt on sunny days, when walking alone on a deserted street enclosed by cheering trees thrashing like green pompoms, birds chirping excitedly with their squeaking-wheel voices, a wave of familiarity and then a feeling of returning appear in the air like mist. It is something that can be felt when staring out to sea, its infinite horizon rejecting your sense of separateness, your discreteness, making you feel as though you are a drop of insignificance inside something endless and eternal; also something integral, an inexplicably small completing piece to an incomprehensible jigsaw-puzzle. It can be felt at the prospect of falling in love, or at the end of an adventure. It's in the awe of the stars in the night sky. It's in the wings of a bird glowing in the morning light. It's in the loneliness of the desert; the company of close friends. Of someone asleep. It is in the palms of our empty hands.

The Man in the Room Downstairs

It was in that apartment that I fully realized the oddities of the human mind. Those weeks marred by his incessant howling, the constant anxious rummaging, that amphetamine pacing. While I tried to sleep all I could hear were his deranged cries - the sound of torment made mad by unmitigated fear. When I moved in, the apartment was marketed as a sunny 1-bedroom, equipped with a unique stained-glass window in the bedroom, a large kitchen, and a balcony which led to a roof that provided a stunning view of the city. These things were all true. Once I had moved in, I found there was another, omitted item, that hadn't been discussed at my signing the lease: the man in the room downstairs.

I hadn't seen him, but I did see the entrance to his dwelling - which I had to walk past to get to my apartment on the next floor. The door was tarnished with a thick layer of vile filth, stained yellow and brown with the buildup of tar from intemperate cigarette consumption. It looked like something that should attract insects; small spiders and cockroaches. Strangely enough, I did find that a great deal of spiders made their way up through the floorboards and into my apartment. It was only after some time that I put the pieces together and realized they were emigrating from his room; they'd come up to die from the floor below. Sometimes, when I would come home late at night from work, tired and heavy with exhaustion, there would be that putrid odor lingering in the stairwell, waiting to unleash itself upon me. It reeked of decay and desecration.

It was one week after I had settled into this apartment that the sounds started. At first they reminded me of a kind of humming, or of someone with a weak voice faintly singing to himself, or to a child. Soon, though, it would reveal itself as the nightmarish cradle rocking it really was.

It must have been 2:30 in the morning when it woke me. I was in a sound sleep, a sleep that was nearly bulletproof, fortified by a whirlwind workweek and a vigorous daily exercise regimen. The haunting howls from the man in the room downstairs had literally induced a nightmare, ruthlessly rousing me, dropping me onto my head in a dark room inhabited by his iniquitous crooning. I felt like I was the resident of a psychiatric ward in an asylum. These were not the screams of an ordinary man; they were troubled and beastly, forlorn and demonic, bubbling and betrayed like a boiling crustacean. First I tried to ignore them, hoping maybe they were just night terrors that would pass after a few minutes. Hours later, after trying to sleep with headphones on and failing, after turning on my stereo in yet another failed attempt to drown out the noise, after pounding threateningly on the wooden floors, I realized I would have to visit that grotesque door downstairs.

Shirtless, I ventured down into the darkened stairway. It was now 4:30. I had to leave for work in an hour and a half. A seething fury goaded me as I stomped down the stairs, still disbelieving this had carried on this long. When I slammed my fist against his door, flakes of brown crust fell from the corners, dust knocked loose and hung in the air. Then, all sound stopped and I heard something metal skid across the floor inside. Uneven footsteps stumbled and then galloped toward the door. A shadow spilled out from underneath and sniffed at my feet. Suddenly, standing there without my shirt, I felt cold. The sound of his breathing scratched lightly against the door and I felt him peering out through the peephole. Puzzled, I stood and questioned my next move. Should I shout, bang against the door again, threaten to call the police, wait? My thoughts were interrupted by the abrupt continuation of his screams, somehow made louder by the dirty wooden door. A chloroform consternation choked me and I retreated upstairs, ready to call the police.

As I stared at the 3 digits, all white and glowing on my phone, the thought crossed my mind that the man was unwell. I mean, clearly. Would it be right to call the cops on someone with a mental handicap? Bring in the SWAT team for the disabled while you're at it. Or was I just making excuses to conceal my fear of calling the police and having to deal with them and him before going to work? What might I return to later that night? What if he was injured during a scuffle with the authorities?

Then the wailing got louder.

There was something about it that was almost contagious. The longer I was awake listening to it, the more psychotic I felt. Here I was wrestling whether or not to call the police! The whole thing felt so bizarre. Until I heard laughing. Hideous, carnal laughter that made my skin crawl; the kind that would make spiders crawl, too.

Yes. The man in the room downstairs was not well.

Coconuts

Coconuts floated on the water, split open and adrift. Chunks of white meat sank and resurfaced with the rolling of the waves. In the distance, the faraway islands sat on the ocean's head like ghostly green yarmulkes. I felt happy. There was sunshine on my face and her skin smelled like the wind. We'd been away for four weeks at that point, and the world seemed to smile on us. Our yurt was about a hundred feet up the beach, and we spent most of our days devising plans for where to go next; learning native tongues; hunting for bargains down at the market and getting drunk on cheap wine. It was perfect.

I remember thinking everything so surreal, there on that little beach in Portugal, every day an adventure, every day living, breathing, being. Months before, in San Francisco, it would've seemed unthinkable. I was working a job that rapaciously consumed all of my time; leaving the house at 6am and returning at 10pm; working weekends; skipping lunch. Now here I was, living like a bum on a beach, in a shack with only a few pairs of pants and shirts to my name, a computer and a camera. A sunburn.

We had nothing - no money, no possessions, no fancy apartments, no expensive dinners, no six-figure salaries - but it felt as if we'd stolen something: something grand.

We did.

We had the one thing we didn't before - time.

Bug Bites

I've been bitten. Itching red bumps decorate my collarbone like small rubies; little misplaced nipples.

I've got it bad, the travel bug.

The cure, I'm afraid, is to quit my job, give up all but precious few of my possessions and leave the country. All day long I read articles on traveling and visas, Steripens, WOOFING and quick-dry clothing. I'm now familiar with the concept of onward travel tickets. Credible sources suggest it's possible to live abroad for about $15,000 a year, perhaps less (where exchange rates are more favorable).

Dreams of travel writing and photojournalism whir around me dizzyingly. First, I need to get a couple frequent flyer cards and begin rapidly accruing miles. I'll also need to make myself a bit more presentable; maybe get a few articles published so that I appear more marketable, to secure a sponsor, or at least gain readership.

I can see it now; trekking through Nepal, photographing the Himalayas, hanging with Buddhist monks. Seducing Buddhist nuns! I'll challenge the whole notion of non-grasping:

"Grasp it! Grasp it! Now pump! Pump! PUMP!"

What? I was talking about inflating a flat bicycle tire. Perverts.

Flabongo's Alienus

It's good to be back, mostly. It was great to spend some quality sibling time down in Southern California, but now the show must go on; he left for New York, and I've returned to the grind. We drove to the airport Monday night in a stolen Dodge Charger - our valiant ivory steed - galloping down the 101 at ludicrous speeds. I tried inviting him to stay in San Francisco a bit longer, perhaps indefinitely, but he didn't fall for any of my ploys. I tired trickery and guile, clever and cunning, honest truth and pleas - none sufficed.

We fled Coachella Sunday like screeching albino bats smothered in sunscreen, flapping madly beneath coffee stained clouds. There was a dust storm Saturday night, and 60mph winds. During the storm the sand must've made its way into the clouds, giving them that strange muddy color. While we slept, I dreamt a troupe of dwarves hopped up on steroids were breakdancing riotously against our tent. When I woke, I realized it wasn't a dream. The wind tugged fiercely at the tent, jostling it wildly, menacingly, seeking to uproot it. We watched an EZ-Up sail across the sky - a four-legged tribute to Mary Poppins' umbrella.

While we were at the festival we met some interesting people. One of them, a member of a gang of attractive girls camped beside us, kidnapped my brother on Saturday, just before dawn. She held him hostage in their campsite, right under my nose, dressing him up as a unicorn and force-feeding him pints of beer through a perforated garden flamingo called a flabongo. I found him, a helpless captive in the midst of their torture, and fought off the lust-crazed horde of women, escaping narrowly into the show. Camouflaged by a sea of concertgoers, we were safe from any further brutality. Afterwards, I made my brother a POW MIA patch, which he wore on the brim of his hat.

We saw performances by The Afghan Whigs, Washed Out, Pixies, Fatboy Slim, Queens of the Stone Age, and Outkast, to name a few. The real story though, at least by the media's standards, was Leonardo DiCaprio's drunken dancing. It's true. He too gets drunk and has fun at music festivals. Believe it brothers.

The biggest shocker though, wasn't the music or the antics of an acclaimed celebrity, it was an experience I had at a food truck inside the beer garden near the main stage. The sun had just set and we had 2 hours to kill before the next band, so naturally, I suggested we grab something to eat. There was a truck with tasty smells emanating from it called Me So Hungry. The line looked short enough, and the menu offered a variety of sliders and sweet potato fries. I settled on the prime rib slider and waited patiently to reach the window. My brother, craving something simpler, made a bee line for the pizza line. I stood waiting for what felt like tens of minutes; I couldn't tell, my phone was dead. Maybe it hadn't been as long as I thought, I thought, but I knew the line had barely moved. He finally returned and was astonished to see I was in nearly the same place as when he'd left. He ate his slice, then went to stand in the long ATM line to withdraw more cash. Then he went into the beer line to grab a drink, and drank it. At this point there was only one more person ahead of me at the counter.

It had been 30 minutes.

I placed my order and handed the guy at the window $19 for the burger and fries. He asked my name and told me he'd call me when it was ready. 5 minutes passed. Then 10. Then 15. Blinded by rage and hunger, I nearly stormed the truck and robbed them of all their cash and burgers and fries; I could taste shards of salty vengeance crunching sweetly between my teeth. Then, as I was about to go into a berserk fugitive frenzy, they called my name. After 45 minutes the two little burgers were mine. And they sucked, majorly. They tasted like they'd been cooked by a blindfolded ape with a deteriorated and defunct olfactory system. Given the time it took them to produce the burger, I expected far more in the way of quality. It seemed, to me, that while I waited surely they must have purchased a large acreage which they then turned into a farm; a bunch of young cattle, which they'd raised to maturity, feeding them and letting them graze uninhibited in wide-open green pastures, making them strong and healthy and bounteous; expert butchers, world renown chefs and a slaughterhouse, all housed inside that small truck. Instead I got a mediocre burger that might as well have been prepared inside a highschool cafeteria.

It was a travesty. A food truck catastrophe. I don't even want to tell you about what it did to the portapottie when it came out. It was like the scene in Alien, except, my anus.

Alienus.

What if the movie Alien is just an allegory for slimy, stinking, belly-busting diarrhea? Ridley Scott; Scott's toilet paper. Coincidence?

You decide.

In a Vacuum

I slept poorly last night. Heartburn. But not the burning kind. It was the kind where there is pressure and a sense of pushing outward; a slow-motion chest explosion. I can still feel it with each breath. I knew I shouldn't have eaten that chicken vindaloo last night, but I couldn't resist its delicious lure. It's the price I must pay for indulging my tongue at my stomach's expense. It's easy to forget that the mouth is only the doorway to a destination. Often, we treat our tastebuds as though they are the destination.

Maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm actually having a time-lapse stroke; I have been eating a lot of ice cream lately. The body, and its craving, is a mysterious thing. At times, it seems to be utterly disinterested in the pursuit of pleasures, preferring regimented eating with a lot of structure and an emphasis on health. Other times, though, it voraciously sucks up fats and toxins with the force of an industrial strength vacuum.

The same is true for want of company. At least, for me. If our diets are informed by our bodies' needs - craving peanut butter when low on fats, or bread when starved of carbs - then what mechanism controls our emotional urges? What, or where, is the indicator for these types of imbalances? In our heads and on our sleeves, I suppose.

In that rupturing feeling in your chest, swelling with every breath.

Nine Inch Cents

Tomorrow my brother arrives. It's been some time since he's visited. I think the last time he was here I was still in my old apartment - must've been about two years ago. His stay was shorter last time, but we still managed to make a few memories. One night, I had drunkenly scaled a building that was under construction, climbing a tall ladder to the top of a roof, thinking myself King Kong. Devilish angels buzzed around my head like fighter planes, the machine gun rattle of their bad ideas zipped loudly past my ears while I pounded my chest. After I conquered the building I realized the only place left to go was back down. Once we got back to my place I passed out in my loft bed, floating in my little slice of heaven between the mattress and the ceiling. I got out of the bed repeatedly during the night to vomit, and eventually took my brother's place on the floor with the air mattress. He told me that he knew those Jalapeño cheesesteaks I ate looked funny. I thanked him for letting me know.

This time I'll need to outdo myself, to make a better memory. I don't have much time to conjure up something new and irresponsible; by this time tomorrow he'll be here. I think I'll pick him up at the airport in a stolen car full of abducted children, wearing no pants and drinking a 40oz of Molsen Ice, listening to gangsta rap; that NIN vs 50 Cent mashup of In Da Club and Closer. My rap name will be Trent Jackson, aka The Red Baron.

Speaking of music:

I think I'll take him to a music festival in southern California, where he can discover his Bohemian roots. We'll ride to Indio and camp out in the desert, searching for a muse, listening to outcasts and watching arcade fires. Perhaps he'll find a nice hippie girl smelling of patchouli and rose water, with flowers in her hair.

Mamma's Boy

I woke up later than usual today, because I was out later; eating ice-cream and smoking knees and shoulders, drinking beer. Me and my boy Crayon had ventured out into bat country. I woke to find Häagen-Dazs wrappers strewn about my apartment like empty cicada shells. There was chocolate too - dark chocolate, filled with tetra-hydra. I was alone, on a deserted island full of deserted desserts. I dragged my Robinson Crusoe ass out of bed and stumbled over my Rip Van Winkle beard, almost falling over. In my kitchen there were spiderwebs hanging from cobwebs, and the spiders had starved. How long had I been asleep?

Then I checked my email. There was a message from my mother. She'd taken the time to write me a story about the day I was born, on account of my upcoming birthday. It must have been a magic day for her; 12 hours of labor; pain, worry, and relief; happiness and fulfillment. The idea of my body opening up and dropping a little screaming person out of it is something I cannot fathom. The closest experience I've had is taking a wide shit: a booty baby.

I began thinking about what it must be like to have a child move away across the country; to have someone that literally grew inside you, living on the other edge of the continent. It must induce a persistent low level anxiety. A feeling of helplessness, an inability to protect. A mother's love is a powerful thing. As a boy, it is your first introduction to the animal that is femininity. She instills in you the warming touch of closeness, kindness and love. Empathy.

If you're lucky, she's the first, and only, woman who will ever truly love you.

Magnolia

Farting after ice-cream is the worst kind of farting. The farts are full and hot, and they scorch your asshole. Oh, my dragon's larynx colon.

So there were a whole bunch of things I needed to tell you. Except, I've forgotten them all. I'm erasing memories. It's necessary, to make room for new ones; out with the old, in with the new. There's a big glass jar of booze growling at me, and something inside me is growling back. It's from a local brewery; it's crisp and fresh and, golden. The frosty mug and the thick top almost make me feel I'm drinking a root-beer float: I swear there's whipped cream in this thing.

There was something I needed to relay...something I was going to say.

Something I never told you.

Brown Hole Sun

I've observed some strange behavior with a lens I recently purchased from B&H. The lens wasn't cheap, coming in at around $1200 - the cost of my previous camera - and the accompanying adapter was $300 on top of that. So you can understand my surprise when I noticed some strong de-centering on photographs taken at wider apertures.

Check out the above shot of the silos.

See how the top of the photo is soft and ethereal, while the bottom is in focus? It's strange, because they should be the same distance from where I stood.

I've emailed them, asking to send me a replacement adapter, so I can determine whether it's an issue with the lens or not. I suspect the camera body to be fine, because it plays nice with different lens/adapter combinations I own. I'm concerned, though, given I made the purchase with them at the end of February, and it's now April. We'll see; I've heard good things about their customer service.

I haven't been to the gym in weeks, because of work, and my body is slowly morphing into a piece of shit - literally. I feel like Gregor Samsa's long lost brother, Fecal. I want to hide under a bed in the room of my parents house, stinking of rot and pestilence, a decayed apple lodged into my back, coming out only to feast on refuse and chewed dregs. Or maybe peanuts and corn, because they're more often seen imbedded in the belly of a smelly turd. I had planned on going to the gym today (as well as yesterday) but my alarm didn't fire this morning.

All is lost; all muscle mass, I mean.

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I wrote the above post on my way in to the office. I'm back home now. At work I managed to eat a package of Oreos; several mouthfuls of chocolate-covered almonds; fistfuls of cashews, and a chocolate-pecan-caramel candy bar.

I have evolved into a sea of gelatinous wet stool, staring up from dammed porcelain into the eye of a brown-hole sun. Unsure of my boundaries, all runny and heterozygous, existing somewhere between liquid and solid - hot chocolate soup.


In my eyes, indisposed
In disguises no one knows
Hides the face, lies the snake
The sun in my disgrace

- Chris Cornell