Planty's Days of Plenty

Life's tenacity is really inspiring. When I went away to Yosemite last week I had forgotten to get a plant sitter for the pet plant that was given to me. So, for a week, little Planty sat dehydrated and alone on my windowsill; relentlessly burnt by the ravaging rays of the midday sun. I came back and found him half brown and wilting. He looked like Tom Hanks in Castaway, or Christian Bale in The Machinist. I felt awful, naturally, and I've been trying my damnedest to nurse him back to health. I'd committed the plant-owner equivalent of leaving your kids in the car with the windows rolled up at the height of summer while you run into Wallgreens for a pack of Marlboros, a Red Bull, and one of those cheap little handheld Chinese electric fan spritzers. You know the kind. For a second I thought I might be busted by child services.

Why isn't there a plant cruelty prevention association? Plants are alive, right? It's because no one gives a fuck about them. Or maybe the acronym is too controversial - ASPCP. I can literally buy a plant, starve it, verbally and psychologically abuse it, blow cigarette smoke in its face, tirelessly beat and sexually molest it, and absolutely no one would stop me. First they came for the plants, and I did not speak out because I wasn't a plant. Then they came for the mushrooms, and I did not speak out because I wasn't a mushroom. When they came for the tomatoes I did not speak out because I wash't a tomato. When they came for me there was no salad left to eat. I blame the militant vegans and vegetarians who promote rampant plant consumption. It's important they they perpetuate the idea that plants have no rights or feelings, or else humans might start rushing to their aid. They farm the poor, defenseless creatures like cattle and chew them up with a voracity fit for a carnivore. They keep our green friends segregated and out of the animal kingdom so that they can continue to commit an invisible genocide. If a tree falls in the forest, does anyone give a shit? It is tragic. But I digress.

The person who had given me the plant, instinctively, knew something was wrong. A text appeared asking me how the plant was doing. She wanted to see a picture. Fuck. There was no way I could send a picture of it in this condition. Crazed thoughts came to me; of photoshopping it; coloring it with a green, non-toxic Crayola marker; making it black & white and artsy to conceal the abuse I'd perpetrated. None of these would do, obviously, so I did the only thing I could: nothing. I've been dodging her left and right. In the interim I've been singing to Planty, playing him songs on my guitar, dancing with him and giving him compliments. Plants have feelings too; Robert told me so. That's right, his name is Robert Planty. And I love him.

Planty is lush and vibrant and green again. All we need is just a little love and affection. And water. It's just mostly water actually - I haven't done a thing but water the little fucker.


The Rain Song

This is the springtime of my loving - the second season I am to know
You are the sunlight in my growing - so little warmth I've felt before.
It isn't hard to feel me glowing - I watched the fire that grew so low.

It is the summer of my smiles - flee from me Keepers of the Gloom.
Speak to me only with your eyes. It is to you I give this tune.
Ain't so hard to recognize - These things are clear to all from
time to time.

Talk Talk - I've felt the coldness of my winter
I never thought it would ever go. I cursed the gloom that set upon us...
But I know that I love you so

These are the seasons of emotion and like the winds they rise and fall
This is the wonder of devotion - I see the torch we all must hold.
This is the mystery of the quotient - Upon us all a little rain must fall.

Filling a Whole

It isn't the absence of a past partner that inspires sadness, it's the lack of a new one. At least that's what I've noticed. It's shocking how quickly the memory of a previous flame can be extinguished by a promising new fling. We thrive on closeness, connection, things shiny and new, on feeling understood. When something gives us any of those things we cling to it and wrap it in our affections. Music does this, drink, beauty too. Where am I going with this? Ah, on my way home tonight I saw a girl who looked like a love from long ago. My heart stuttered when I saw her. Dammed up memories broke free and flooded my veins. The temperature of the air was just right. It lent an icy crispness to the wistfulness numbing the present. Nostalgia has a way of whacking you out of time and hurling you heart-first into old echoes. You always come out buzzing, drunk and disoriented as a ringing bell.

Speaking of drunk, not drinking has started a kind of stirring in me. I find myself longing for something I wasn't longing for before. Cock, mostly. Kidding, though I did have chicken for dinner. Alcohol has a way of filling a hole; with a quicksand that serves as a marvelous substitute for substance. Where does that hole come from though? And that innate desire for something more, something better? It's there in every great idea, every act of love or kindness, every revolution, every little curiosity or question, each wish and every shooting star. It is potential. What a sophisticated concept. To see something's potential one most appraise the thing's future worth based on its present condition. This requires the observer to establish a hierarchy of values with which to measure the thing's usefulness while also assigning a temporal dimensionality to both the thing and the observer's relation to it. A strong, fruit-bearing sapling becomes more coveted to the agrarian than the wilted runt covered with tree fungus. With potential there's intuition involved, and a gamble. One must rely a little on prediction and hold onto the hope that their assessment was correct.

Often potential, and more often its lack, becomes a source of deep dissatisfaction for us; when love didn't work out the way we'd thought, or the trip doesn't go as planned. Expectations are bound up in a thing's potential and we forget that an expectation is not the same as a promise. We conflate the two and develop a dangerous sense of entitlement that often leaves us deeply incensed. What we see in a thing is seldom more than just a projection of our hopes and desires onto it. When that potential is lost, ruin and depletion take its place. We impinge on the world our predispositions, our peculiar proclivities and predilections for preference, scoffing at the means which do not suit our ends; balking at and condemning all opposition, anything contrarian. And in doing so, ironically, we deplete our potential for flexibility, creativity, adaptability.

The whole thing is hopeless madness, every last bit of it. But what else is there?

The Pickle of Christ

God damn, it's been a while! I was up in the mountains last week trying to force seconds to stay still. It's good to be back. The few readers of this site were legitimately concerned. They asked me to post something, perhaps about Valentine's Day, but I'll do no such thing. Valentine's Day is a day for contented lovers to celebrate their love and adoration for one another. It's a day for those who are jilted and alone to scorn and ridicule those who have what it is they lack. Oh, and chocolate too. Lots and lots of chocolate. And sex. I like all of these things.

I've been having bad luck with doctors lately. My primary care physician, whom I've been seeing since moving to San Francisco, acted so untoward toward me that I've sought someone new. His unique brand of cold condescension was borderline admirable. There should be a word used to describe the process of divorcing yourself from your doctor. Maybe he's jilted right now, searching for his heart with an icy stethoscope. Today isn't a story about him though; I'll save that for another time. Today is about the spinal specialist he'd referred me to. Why I chose to see a specialist he recommended is beyond me.

I arrived at the doctor's office this morning on time. As they requested, I had filled out all of the pages which were provided in the gargantuan envelope full of patient paperwork. I handed it over, relinquished my insurance card, and had a seat. Within minutes I was escorted by a kindly gentlemen named Michael to a room where I was given a blanket, a hospital gown and a cucumber. I was told to put the gown on. The blanket was there if I got cold. The cucumber, I'm still confused about. Michael informed me the doctor would see me shortly, and he promptly scrammed. After a brief wait, Kristen, the PA, arrived. Seeing as my last name is Italian, she took it upon herself to add the word paisano to the end of every sentence, leaving off the o of course. It shocked me how quickly this transitioned from endearing and cute to creepy. "Okay paisan," she said, "let's have you take a walk over to get an x-ray. You'll walk out of here, make a left, and hand these papers in to the women's center; they'll take care of you, paisan." The women's center? It was a question I didn't have to ask - my face said it for me. "Oh, don't worry about that, paisan, the name is misleading." It's sexist, is what it is. Unless they're doing mammograms and pap smears, neither of which particularly interest me - unless I'm doing the papping - the center sounds pretty squarely intended for females. But I didn't say any of this to her, I just passively complied and walked myself down to the women's center in my billowy blue gown and socks.

The room was packed full of women. Rotten, post-middle-aged women who all stank of menopause. Some were mustached, some were crust-assed, but all of them were disgruntled, ugly, and indignant. One woman made so artful a scene at the counter I was almost brought to tears. She exclaimed that she simply couldn't wait in line like everyone else for her x-ray; that she had things to do; that the doctor told her this would be quick; that they clearly didn't talk to her doctor, because if they did they'd just get her in next; that she wanted to speak to someone; that she wanted that someone to call her doctor. Eventually she took a seat, but not until after she squeezed every last colorful drop of privileged entitlement from her fatuously thistled brush. After an eternity I had my x-ray. As I was escorted out, back to the spine center, I passed the mammography room. Go figure.

Once again I met my old friend Michael and he helped me back to the examination room. Biting with a loud snap into a cucumber, he said, "the doctor will see you shortly," and then Michael was gone. Once more I waited. I heard the low boom of a man's voice vibrate the hollow wood of the door. Then, like an Asian Kramer from Seinfeld, Dr. H walked in and threw himself onto the chair beside me. His body collapsed, slouched, and finally slid like a sheet of paper down the chair as he extended his hand. There was something funny about him; in a comical way, sure, but also in a wry way. He looked like he should be on TV; The Simpsons. "Stand up and look at the ceiling," he said. So I did. "Look at the floor." I did. "Bend left." I did. "Bend right." I did. "Twist." I did. Each time I fought the urge to yell: you didn't say Simon says. He asked me why I was here today. The implication was that because I could perform these very mundane human motor functions that I was free from debility. I told him that though I can move in the ways I was instructed, it is not without pain and loss of range of motion that I'm able to do so. Mainly, I was there to get an accurate appraisal on my outlook at recovery - it's been 7 months. Instead of reviewing the x-ray with me and giving me some advice on what my next steps should be, he began waging a sophisticated war of sophistries. He started speaking in riddles and parables, drowning me in an avalanche of non-sequiturs;

- What did you study in school?
- Do you know who Newton is? Do you know what happened under the apple tree?
- Did you know that the best lawyer in the country was illiterate?
- Do you know about the uncertainty principle? Quarks?
- What do you know about string theory?
- You know how Paypal came to existence?
- Do you know how lucky you are you weren't paralyzed when you fell? I wonder what God's plan is for you.

I kid you not. These are phrases verbatim from his lips. Things got stranger after he crossed the God threshold:

- How many commandments did Moses give you?

None, I told him. I was trying to subtlety let him know I was a non-believer. I was also subtlety trying to nudge him back toward medical reasoning and professionalism, instead of the specious religious waters he was walking on top of, but he parted my attempts like the Red Sea. "I think there's a purpose for you; God didn't take away your ability to walk. The lesson is: don't climb trees anymore and you'll be fine." Holy shit. I was in over my head here. The PA was putting on a wimple and spritzing the room with holy water. Fuck. I'd wandered straight into a Catholic hospital. Too late to correct my error, I had to endure banal platitudes and pointless parables about how my weakness is truly a strength. Finally, after all this time, an answer for that dreaded interview question! He told me a story about a mighty warrior who suffered a thorn in his side - which he then likened to a thorn in my spine, I kid you not - and asked me to find ways to adjust my lifestyle in such a way that this weakness can be seen for the strength that it truly is. They were so far gone down the pulpit hole that I just nodded and smiled and prayed to Satan for salvation. There could be no reasoning with them, I was sure of it. The three of us in harmony sang the Memorial Acclamation and then we fed each other the eucharist.

No.

Actually, I slapped the blithering quack in the face, ripped off my paisan's wimple, and stomped on it. I retrieved the cucumber that I'd stashed away earlier and cracked it in two. I stuffed one half into his mouth and the other into hers, and then I asked them to figure out with their nose where I'd hidden the pickle. I gave them a hint - not in Gomorrah.

Get Off My Yawn

I woke up at 4:00AM today.

Why?

Not enough Z.

Temperamental Temperatures :: Icarus' Fever

I won't bore you with the details, but I've been shissing all day. I wonder if that word already exists. I refuse to check Urban Dictionary. Were I to find the word already in our cultural lexicon, I would feel upset and old. Speaking of feeling old, I re-watched Terminator 2 today. I remember seeing it as a child; a blackboard full of faded memories written in ghost colored chalk. There was an eponymous video game, too. I remember playing it, maybe even using Game Genie to cheat. Genies are cheaters by nature. They cheat you into thinking you're cheating reality, but you're only cheating yourself. Unless you're Aladdin, and then you get the girl and the kingdom.

Earlier I watched most of a podcast about civilization and climate change, glaciation and melting. It was three hours long. My attention waxed and waned, but what I took away from the talk was a reminder - we are totally at the mercy of nature. As technologically advanced as we believe ourselves to be, we are only ever a few degrees away from drowning or freezing. It's kind of beautiful actually, the delicate balance. In recent times we've been blessed by the most stable temperatures the earth has ever seen. The fluctuations we've experienced have been minor, and they lack the temperamental, stone-cold fire-and-brimstone severity seen in other periods.

The discussion made me think of how subtle temperature changes, even on a micro level, can drastically affect organisms. A fever for instance, an increase in temperature of only a few degrees, can kill a person. A batch of beer brewed and left at room temperature in the summer thrives, while in the winter it dies. Improperly prepared foods, cooked at too low a temperature or for too short a time, can harbor life threatening bacteria such as E. coli or salmonella. Warmth, a thing so essential to life, when present in abundance, claims the very gift it bestows.

Fortune's wings are febrile, waxen and thin.

We should all be thankful to the earth for not cooking us, or turning us into cavemen trapped inside thawing hunks of ice. We live in a privileged position, one which allows us time for thought, leisure, safety and security, happiness, love. Our current era is a sort of prolonged Thanksgiving, a period of bounty, yet we waste it feeling dissatisfied, unfulfilled, miserable and ungrateful. Maybe this inner uneasiness is heralded by some persistent survivor's guilt, or the tacit acknowledgement of nature's fickle favoritism. She'll wear us like a new hat until we're no longer fashionable, and once the winter comes, she'll stuff us in a closet next to a mammoth scarf and a panda pelt. Extinction is so passé.

Sushi Evacuation

I'm up early, before the rain. It started yesterday and it's supposed to continue through Monday. Funny that during this brief window of absence I'll need to shower. Some things are just inescapable.

Last night I had dinner with friends, sushi. A few minutes before our food arrived the Profuser began acting strange. He's always strange, really, but there was something especially troubling about his demeanor. His hair was flipped up too, which added a caricature-esque novelty to his head, gigantizing it. There was something very Beavis about his butthead. I got the impression something interesting was happening behind me, but because it was behind me I couldn't easily turn around and survey the scene. After an unnerving wait, our food finally came; glorious little rolls wrapped full of fish and rice and avocado. Seconds later the Profuser's expression became more animated. I heard something spill near the bar behind me. Drunks, I thought. When I met the Profuser's eye he looked concerned, transfixed even, and he motioned that I move nearer to him. That's when I heard it. Violent, regurgitory retching. We were witness to a textbook bistro demonic possession. Either that, or she didn't like the sushi. I turned to see what was happening and saw her unloading gallons of raw fish and rice, seaweed, all bathed in stomach acid. She had a fire hose for an esophagus. It was splattering, reaching across the floor to grab at my socks and shoes. Suddenly a waitress and a sushi chef dressed like a priest burst through a back door and made a beeline for the poor possessed woman. The Profuser's lady and I had front row seats to the exorcism. I scooted over to make room, stuffed a piece of sushi in my mouth as though it were popcorn and watched the spectacle.

The woman was evacuated, but not before she stunk up the restaurant with her belly perfume. The waitress approached our table and apologized. "She was very drunk," she told us.

"What are you guys drinking; next one is on me."

The Tomato That Came From Heaven

Luckily I've managed to completely avoid the Super Bowl. I only narrowly escaped it in Whole Foods. I'd decided to buy something to cook for dinner and I converged on a mass of people scrambling for their last minute beer and salsa, potato chips, artisanal guacamole. They clogged up the lines like massive wads of toilet paper thrown recklessly into a public toilet. Initially I thought I'd make a soup, of the vegetable variety, but on a whim I changed course in favor of my tried and true brown rice jambalaya. Instilled with a newfound sense of adventure, I grabbed carrots and spinach - two ingredients I've never used in a jambalaya before. It seemed a sound decision at the time; the carrots would add sweetness, the spinach, nutrient density and greenness. Caught up in the momentum of my culinary inventiveness, I picked up a shiny tomato that seemed about to burst. It reminded me of a swollen water balloon full of tomatoy goodness. After waiting in line with the horde of oblong pigskin worshippers, all fueling their frenzied tribalism with bad alcohol and saturated fats, I made it through checkout and out of the store without incident.

In the parking lot there was a homeless man with a sign pleading for anything. I considered offering him my tomato, maybe just hurling it at him, but when I looked in the bag and saw it glimmering, almost twinkling, like a red, benevolent sun, I give him all the cash in my pocket instead: two dollars. At some point I saw a pair of cute little dogs and, after having startled one by reaching out and petting it, the other urinated freakishly as at stared at me in befuddled fear. I snapped a picture and continued on my way home. Once I arrived at my door I paused briefly to bid farewell to the perfect weather and I entered my abode. On my stereo I summoned Van Morrison, requesting from him a performance of the album Astral Weeks in its entirety, and then I started preparing my dinner.

As I was cutting up the vegetables, ritualistically dismembering them while I hummed and danced around the kitchen, I wondered if the plant on my windowsill was getting nervous. It seemed to sweat slightly, gathering a subtle dew. I couldn't tell for sure but it seemed to be leaning imperceptibly away from me, toward the window. The carrots, hogtied and bound by a purple rubber handcuff, screamed helplessly while I chopped the mushrooms. The pepper cried while I diced the onion; so did I. Everything went as I'd planned. Tasty aromas swarmed through my apartment, waltzing merrily with the music, tickling my nose with the sweet, spicy smell of success. I was nearly done. Only the tomato remained unscathed. It would go in last, so that it would slow-cook and stew in its juices, simmering gently inside the big pot of jambalaya. When I took the knife to it, it slid through effortlessly and made that satisfying wet sound; gave me goosebumps. I could no longer resist the urge to taste it. I was shocked to discover that it not only met my desire, but it far exceeded it. The tomato tasted like heaven. It was here, all stunned and giddy with my discovery, that I noticed the other half of the tomato had painted inside of it the silhouette of an angel.

Holy shit! What had I done? This was the equivalent of a Jesus Christ potato chip, or a Virgin Mary avocado. I brazenly bit into it without realizing the blessed nature of this venerable vegetable. I felt like Eve, deceived, a herald of my own misfortune and calamitous ruin. All I could see was eternal damnation and doom, hellfire and holocaust. The innocence of this seraphic and faultless fruit had been impugned by my ignorant, sinning hands! This was terrible. I felt ghastly and devilish. So I did the only thing left to do: I cut up the rest and threw it into the jambalaya. If I'm destined for hell, I'm going to enjoy every fucking second getting there.

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Must stomach hurts now. Clearly, cannibalizing an angel must invoke wrathful indigestion.

Labia-esque

Keith Harring

It's Super Bowl Sunday. For as far back as I can remember I've never been into sports. Most of the time they do nothing for me. Q once said something like: "sports; never have so many people cared so much about something that meant so little." I'd have to agree. Imagine if instead of playing American football on Super Bowl Sunday, stoners competitively smoked enormous "super" bowls of weed in a nationally televised event? I'm imagining it to be somewhat like American Idol in the way it's shot and narrated, maybe even hosted by Ryan Seacrest, where contestants would have to smoke maddening amounts of marijuana and then participate in an absurd version of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire hosted by a geriatric Regis Philbin. Have you ever noticed how much Richard Simmons and Regis Philbman look alike? Richard just has more hair, and pizzaz. Looks like pizzas.

Drew invited me over to view the game, but I'm not sure I'll make it. We all went to the De Young yesterday and checked out the Keith Harring exhibit. As we walked in I joked about a piece which depicted a spaceship sporting a labia-esque aperture on the bottom from which a tractor beam had targeted the skull of a male earthling. I said, "this piece explores the relationship between masculinity and femininity; specifically the godlike, almost supernatural power of the labia to consume and enslave the male psyche." At first my compatriots laughed at my observation, even openly scoffed, but that was before we entered the next room. The next room was dedicated almost exclusively to sex, dicks, teats, tits, beastiality, birthings and vaginas. Suddenly I was validated, vindicated. I enjoyed the exhibit, mostly because of the proliferation of penises, but personally I found Harring's work a bit too repetitive. He uses the same labyrinthine motifs over, and over, and over, and over again. Perhaps this is part of his message, an indictment on the artistic and moral uninventiveness of our times, of the wasteful, iterative and overly consumptive nature of capitalism. When viewing his work one gets the feeling of being lost, overstimulated and alone, cast out into a sea of ravaged and discarded bodies all bent and punched full of holes, unified through exploitation, held at knifepoint by the immutable and voracious power structures hungry for our spiritual, moral and financial ruin.

So at the end of the exhibit, as we exited through the gift shop, we typified these artistic themes and ideas the best way we knew how: we bought little Keith Harring refrigerator magnets.

It's what he would have wanted.