Heart Potato

I've been talking with Q a lot lately about love. It's a topic we've always seemed to orbit around, for as long as we've known each other. And why not; love is a subject more worthy of discussion than most. Lately he keeps trying to incorporate Prince into these conversations though, and I wonder if he's trying to tell me something. He did send me a poem by gay old Walt Whitman. And we did say I love you when we last parted. Hmm.

Hmmmm.

Love doesn't know gayness, but it is gay. Love doesn't care who loves, but it is caring. Love is and isn't a lot of things. People often confuse love and happiness, conflating them. Incidentally, love happens to be the cause of much unhappiness; for those who don't have it or have lost it; for those whom it is unrequited. It's hard to hold onto, love; a veritable hot potato. We toss our hearts into the hands of others, passing them from person to person, to place, until they've been dropped and pawed at so long the skin has fallen off and the inside is cold and half mashed. Maybe I should explore a Mr. Potato Head analogy instead? How we all wind up missing an eye or a leg, maybe even a nose, lying at the bottom of an old toy chest, abandoned and alone, left with only a silly hat and a crooked mustache.

But that's not the complete picture, that's just what happens at the end. The road that leads us there is tumultuous and tortured, marked by a small handful of profoundly meaningful connections which, after having dried up and dissolved, leave us with deep creases along the lonesome valley walls of our souls; steep ravines and sharp canyons bare the cracked and blistered memory of love's rushing waters. While the thing is there, there's nothing quite like it. Anyone who has ever felt it can speak to the near-ineffable beauty of being possessed by it; of the communion it brings; the way it makes the world sparkle. When it is there, it is almost all that matters; passion, possibility and purpose all wrapped up into one.

At the beginning, it is a playful stream that gently pulls us along; merrily we go. The stream becomes a river and soon we are caught up in the hurried pull of white rapids; our hearts throb and bang with excitement as we thrash through its whimsical waters. Then, there is a great clearing and a fall; butterflies in our bellies. We crash and sink and then swim, immersed completely in that which carried us. We drift out onto a placid lake and enjoy its soft weightlessness for a while. Here a deep calm takes us, stilling the waters of our souls. We exist here for a time, absolved, sanctified. Rapturous comfort holds us, swaddles us in its grace. Soon we are too much with it. It fills our lungs and we can no longer breathe. Once more we find ourselves lost under the water, staring up at a softly shimmering blanket of liquid light; shadows sinking, sinking, until the scent of our decay perfumes the dim green dark of a swamp's starless sky.

I blame that on Walt Whitman.

"Come lovely and soothing death,
Undulate round the world, serenely arriving, arriving,
In the day, in the night, to all, to each,
Sooner or later delicate death.

Prais’d be the fathomless universe,
For life and joy, and for objects and knowledge curious,
And for love, sweet love—but praise! praise! praise!
For the sure-enwinding arms of cool-enfolding death.

Dark mother always gliding near with soft feet,
Have none chanted for thee a chant of fullest welcome?
Then I chant it for thee, I glorify thee above all,
I bring thee a song that when thou must indeed come, come unfalteringly.

Approach strong deliveress,
When it is so, when thou hast taken them I joyously sing the dead,
Lost in the loving floating ocean of thee,
Laved in the flood of thy bliss O death.

…


The night in silence under many a star,
The ocean shore and the husky whispering wave whose voice I know,
And the soul turning to thee O vast and well-veil’d death,
And the body gratefully nestling close to thee."

The Times They Are a Changin'

I'm up early. The birds woke me before the garbage truck - which came later, at 5:00. They must've been up again on an all night cocaine bender; night owls. A lady I'm currently courting has identified me as a writer of sorts. Somehow, through my fumbling articulations over text message, she's seen through my shortcomings. I write, I told her, often; and often poorly. But sometimes, amidst my wasteland of garbage and fetid mediocrity, a pearl doth shine. There's still plenty of time to let her down. Just wait til she sees my 1-inch killer.

A new form of social media emerged yesterday. It's group-based live streaming, provided by an app called Periscope. Its potential to impact the way we ingest social media is staggering. In an instant, every person in the world becomes a reporter, documentary film-maker, or armchair talk-show host capable of making a meaningful contribution. Some questioned the usefulness of such an application, drawing attention to the general narcissistic banality and frivolous voyeurism the app will invariably perpetuate. This isn't a well formed critique of the service though. It's a critique generated by the lazy and unimaginative. Let me explain. Just hours after the app went live there was an explosion in the East Village of New York. I was unaware, in the middle of a conversation with colleagues in San Francisco, when my phone went off: Explosion in New York. I swiped the notification and was brought to the app. I saw live footage of smoke and people running, police pulling onto the scene trying to secure the perimeter, general confusion and chaos. The broadcaster explained, after the 300+ people viewing the feed began asking what was happening, that moments ago a loud explosion shook the ground and the building was up in smoke. I was right there on the scene before reporters were; before the firetrucks. I texted my family still living in New York and they were unaware of the story. I continued to watch as the story unfolded organically from the scene, a kind of grass roots journalism. Bits and pieces of facts were tied together, culled from jumping from stream to stream, and I had a pretty good idea of what had happened before my family did.

There isn't any explaining necessary. This will change the way we ingest news forever.

It even serves, in an ancillary way, to reduce bias. A live broadcast presents objective facts happening in real time. There is no coloring, just raw video footage. Think of the ramifications for civil protections and individual safety. Police abuse can be broadcast live and unequivocally to the public; criminal acts and suspicious activities can be broadcast to wide audiences at a previously unthinkable speed. We've seen a manifold increase in the degree of immediacy and reach each person has, to the point of bordering on omnipresence. This gives every person with a phone a rape whistle which can be heard around the world. Stream an assailant's face to hundreds of people with the press of a button; capture an assault on public transit; a home invasion; watch a revolution happening right now in a different country, on a different continent, from the streets.

It's important to note that the reverse can also be said. The introduction of this application has, overnight, turned every person with a cellphone into a surveillance camera. We're all one step closer to living in Jeremy Betham's panopticon. The level of hyper-scrutiny this application has introduced should be concerning. It calls into question what we mean by privacy. With great power comes great responsibility. If we fail to properly utilize this tool, the consequences can be disastrous.

Whore's Booger

I've had some deep thoughts tonight:

- Isn't it strange how sometimes you can't get a wet booger off your finger?

- Just how long does it take for a booger to dry?

- How come some are crusty?

- Do boogers stink? If they do, why can't we smell them?

The top of my head is peeling. Like an idiot I walked around the desert with the sun blaring down right onto my bald spot. It sizzled. The hat I bought was purchased too late to save my red-lobster scalp. Now, perched atop the crop circle on my head, I have a young rattlesnake shedding skin, selling buckets of shrimp for $3.99. Each time I scratch my head, which itches wildly, thin white flakes float down before me like snow. Even Freddy Krueger wore a fucking hat for Christ's sake. Oh well. I'll use it to impress girls at dinner parties. "Want salt with that," I'll ask, right before tilting my head forward and shaking out a few homemade pieces of salt. Hell, it could even pass for parmesan if I wanted to get fancy!

I met with Q and his little one earlier, for a brief city soiree. We went to Golden Gate Park and climbed a tower where we looked out over the whole park, pointing out places we'd passed on our way. We had hotdogs and ice cream, soft drinks. The boy is beatific, effusively happy. Not even the contempt hurled at us by the pedestrians whose crosswalk we blocked could phase his joyous disposition. Pedestrian contempt. I like that phrase. Its meaning is immediately obvious and self reflexive - the combination of words functions as a compound noun and also an adjective which names the thing. Pedestrian contempt, it's so pedestrian. It's directed at us if we fart loudly in public or chew with our mouths open, or if we talk loudly in a decidedly quiet space. It's when we cause someone a minor inconvenience which they lack the patience, maturity, or desire to deal with in a dignified fashion. It is often expressed in a passive aggressive sigh or a roll of the eyes, a glare, an incredulous, exasperated throwing up of the arms or shaking of the head.

When I shake my head it's like a snow globe with a hole in it; all of the snow comes falling out. How long can I beat this horse for?

I wonder what a horse booger looks like.

Salvaged Postcards

On weekends I rise with the sun, sometimes before it. It's pleasant to get a head start on the sleeping masses all withdrawing from acute alcohol poisoning. Last night I was one click away from booking a last-minute flight to Alaska, but I didn't think I'd make it to the airport in time to board the flight. Then I decided I would go to Utah instead, for a mere 500$, but found out there were absolutely no rental cars available for this weekend. After being thwarted twice, I felt it was time to yield to the universe's will. Maybe the plane would've crashed if I'd gone.

I realized I never posted these fragments from my brief stint in Death Valley:

What at first I thought was a mirage, turned out to be a bonafide desert oasis. I'm in the shade, drinking a root beer, waiting for a juicy cheeseburger.

Being out of direct sunlight is cause enough to rejoice, but cold, bubbly beverages and prepared food are down right lavish out here. Until this point I've been subsisting off of power bars and beetle piss. It is rough in these parts. I feel like I'm at Burning Man, but without the lights, drugs, music, parties or people. I climbed sand dunes the size of mountains this morning to watch the sun rise over the mountains. Photographs cannot adequately convey the vastness of things here, even when using a 14mm lens. What's surprised me most though is how teeming with life Death Valley is. Field mice and rabbits scurried away from my headlights in the predawn; fire ants and grasshoppers leapt away from my deadly boot-heels as I photographed fields of wildflowers in bloom; flies buzzed around my ears and swarmed my face as I climbed through canyons; enormous black hawks soared through the sky like inky kites; a lizard slithered and stuck its tongue out at me before darting into deep desert brush.

There is too much to see. Another trip is in order soon, before the summer brings its heat.

Ok, my food has arrived.

(Later)

It was incredible. Giant insects thwarted my sunset! I'd picked out the perfect spot, seemingly untouched by humanity. I found a rusty old beer can from the early 1900's amidst a pile of ancient rocks. I was giddy as fuck and setup my tripod like a champ. The only thing left to do was wait. Suddenly, I heard a buzzing. I shooed whatever it was away. Seconds later it was back, this time at my other ear. A second time I shooed it away, this time more violently. Thus began the war. My foe was unstoppable and his allies kept multiplying. Soon I was like a bear swatting away a swarm of angry bees. They were gargantuan, prehistoric-sized insects and they wanted me gone. They targeted my eyes and ears exclusively, disorienting me and rendering me incapable of taking a single successful photograph. I had no choice but to retreat. I was defeated. Whatever hope of a sunset I had was stolen from me by these vile creatures. Fuck flies.

----------

I spent my last sunrise at Zebrinksi Point and then Artist's Drive, the most psychedelic natural landscape I've ever seen. After that, Badwater Basin, and then I was off. The drive out of the park is just as beautiful as the drive in, maybe moreso. Sprawling meadows and fields of horizon spill out in all directions, climb up the sides of mountains, blanketing everything in green. Thin clouds veil the most distant rocks in a smoky, ethereal blue haze. The whole thing is difficult to photograph because of the sheer vastness of the horizon; there's no easy way to frame it or choose a subject - the whole thing IS the subject. Cameras can't entirely capture the dimensionality of the place.

Though I didn't want to leave, it is somewhat of a relief to be away from the heat of the valley. I didn't know it before I'd been there, but it holds the record for the hottest recorded temperature on earth. I can't speak to veracity of the claim, but they've got backing from The World Meteorological Organization.

Just now I stopped off at a biker bar on the side of the road to get a feel for the real Nevada. From the outside the place looked divey; a wood facade and a retired children's elephant-ride adorned the entranceway. I parked and went in. The place was covered with dollar bills and old dusty trinkets that looked like they were salvaged from a Burning Man yard sale. I attempted to order food, but they told me I had to go outside and order from the grill next door. So I did.

At the counter I was greeted by that special kind of unpreparedness that only Nevada can provide - they were all out of burgers. Apparently there were a lot of people passing through this weekend, because the weather was so nice, and all the burgers have been eaten up. It didn't even surprise me; I half expected it. I decided I would order a beer and drink it outside in the sun, in front of the motorcycles and the coin-operated elephant. I walked into the bar and asked what they had on tap. Nothing.

Oh, I said.

Busy this weekend?

Dearth Valley

I know Friday the 13th was yesterday, but I think they're a day behind over here in Nevada. They seem to be a day behind evolutionarily, too. There is a dearth of intellect here. I'm too exhausted to belabor this point, but let me regale you with a brief story of how my night ended.

After driving out of a star-covered Death Valley, I headed an hour away toward the hotel I hadn't yet checked into. Let me digress momentarily to mention the splendor that is Death Valley. Being there feels like roaming around in a giant, real-life Roadrunner cartoon. The place is straight out of the imagination of Chuck Jones. As I was driving out of the park, speeding along in the dark inside my rental car from ACME, any moment I expected some mishap to befall me; a treacherously placed black hole; an inescapable oil slick; a terribly timed trip-wire that would ignite the wick of a rocket which would blast me and my vehicle to smithereens. The tragedy, as it turns out, was waiting for me at the hotel. A premonition came to me, as I neared the 20-mile mark, of some vague problem that would interfere with my ability to do the last two things that remained - shower and sleep.

I pulled up to the hotel and immediately sensed something was wrong. The outside looked like it had been decorated by a special-Ed art class from a local elementary school. There were aliens with improper proportions, weird UFO's glued onto the walls at odd angles, and far too many green lights (which I think were supposed to be tractor beams). I shrugged it off, parked the car and entered the check-in office. The check-in office, I came to find out - after the poorly installed dangling door bell made a hideous, nails-on-a-chalkboard type sound - was connected to the home of the proprietor of the establishment. An older woman emerged from her couch, slowly (both in movement and aptitude), existing somewhere between male and female, white trash and meth-head (what's the difference?). I think she had been drinking. I hope she had been drinking. She appeared to be on some very strong prescription pain-killers. She had two black eyes, so it's not outside the realm of possibility. She spoke like a time-lapse photograph. I gave her my name. When I spelled it, she recited back a set of letters I had never given her. I corrected her and she replied with an entirely new name. Thinking she might be hard of hearing, I annunciated more clearly and showed her the confirmation email on my phone containing my name. She took the phone, read my name, but then uttered a third, still unfamiliar name to me. She was the most complete marriage of dumb and ambivalent I've ever seen. 

Much like Stone Cold Steve Austin, the Texas rattlesnake, she gave me her bottom line: there was no vacancies. "Actually," she said, correcting herself, "there is one room we have. The sink and the tub is backed up." That would kind of interfere with my plans for the night, I told her. After a series of questions, mostly about how this could have happened, she started glazing over. I stepped outside and called a nearby hotel. It turned out they had a room available. 

I'm too tired to go on. My interaction with her ended when I thanked her for her help as she was speaking in slow-motion on the phone to my booking representative, spelling her own last name over and over.

Something went wrong when I saved this post and I lost the last two paragraphs I'd written about what happened at the second hotel. Oh well, fuck it.

Goodnight.

Southeast on Southwest

Pink cotton candy. Or maybe an enormous block of sunrise-colored dry ice. That's what it looks like outside the plane window. Watching the sunrise from above the clouds is a sight to behold. The word marvelous comes to mind, but there's something gay about it. Marvelous. 

There are moments so pregnant with beauty that it seems difficult to dismiss divinity entirely. A woman beside me is reading a book on the Protestant Reformation with her hands clasped in prayer, so there's that. I was talking to my sister the other day and we agreed there isn't a Christian god looking down on us. If there was, surely I would seem him right now, right? All around me there are cherubless clouds. Gold has replaced the pink from earlier and we're slowly descending into an ethereal kind of custard colored fog. Below us mountains lift their peaks up through the haze to greet the morning light. Some of them still have snow on the top. Pastries. Giant, geological puffed pastries dappled with powdered sugar. Even though the airline generously provided me with a pack of free, honey-roasted peanuts, they've only served to increase my appetite.

Ok, the flight attendant is beckoning. It's time to stow away all electronics and return our tray tables to the upright position. We're landing in bat country. 

I just realized I left my belt at the security checkpoint. 

Abuelito, the Cleaning Lady

No time to write tonight. I've just unpacked my Wacom tablet and I'm getting the software installed. I have to use a CD to do it! For those of you who don't know, CD stands for compact disc. I haven't used one to install software since probably the early 2000's. Thank baby Jesus I purchased an external superdrive back when I was buying music from Amoeba every other weekend. But really, who the fuck puts software on discs anymore? Not even AOL does this! Not only that, but the install speed is ludicrously slow. It's terrible; I'm having flashbacks to the 90's. I'm beginning to hear the electronic static and popping of my old dial-up modem.

I shouldn't be writing, I should be packing. Really though, I'm always packing; they call me Sony Walkman, because I always got dat CD (compact dick!). You knew that was coming. My download is at 69%. I don't know when the last time was that I partook of a good, old fashioned, messy 69. Probably sometime back in the 90's, while listening to Bush, with a nice hairless bush in my face. Speaking of Bush, the 90's, and 69's, I remember the first time I tricked a girl into 69'ing with me. It happened inside of a closet. R. Kelly was there.

It was my first girlfriend and we were young. Her parents were smart enough not to let us occupy a room alone together unless we left the door open. We'd go back to her house after school everyday to do homework, which was code for: explore and exploit each other's bodies. Because her parents typically worked late, we were placed in the care of her elderly grandmother. She was a shrewd old Venezuelan however, and kept careful watch. I think she was a royal palace guard in her youth. Her old age ruined her mind though, and she'd find the most unimaginative reasons to enter our room; to replenish towels or dust; to clean the windows or ask how a can opener worked. It was offensive, even as a child. Was she a cleaning lady or her abuela?

Whoops. Out of time.

I'll have to continue this one tomorrow.

Dreaming of Dysphoria

Ever have a dream where you wake up crying? It's probably only happened to me two or three times in my life, but each time the feeling is the same; intense, nightmarishly augmented despair. Even after you wake up, during those first few minutes of renewed consciousness, you lie in the darkness steeped in a melancholy so complete that you wonder whether the dream had actually happened. The sadness clings to you even though reason tells you the cause wasn't real. Wasn't it though? Even when feeling something in a dream, you still feel it. You've only imagined the circumstance that created the feeling, not the feeling. The emotion you felt in response to the stimulus was genuine.

In my dream I had traveled back home to New York, to visit my family. It was a surprise and I hadn't told anyone I was coming. After a series of misadventures on public transit, baleful snowstorms and a decimated subway tunnel, I finally made it to the front door. When I'd arrived no one was home, save for my 19-year-old, deaf, albino cat. He came to greet me and I pet him happily. I inventoried my old home, to measure how it had changed in my absence. There was the distinct feeling of being an intruder, a stranger trespassing where I no longer belonged. I felt like a ghost come back to haunt a place that once had meaning to me, but which I was forever estranged from by time. Soon I heard the familiar voice of my sister traveling through the hallway and up the stairs. She was talking to the dogs and opening the door. I ran and shut myself in my old room, to hide myself from the dogs, one of which I had never met. He was rumored to be aggressive, mean. My efforts were in vain though, and smelling my ghostly scent, the dogs immediately approached the door to my room, indicating the presence of a burgling buffoon.

I was uncovered and there was much merriment and excitation. The dogs played at my feet and smiled and wagged their tails ferociously. I bent down and began petting my old dog, who rolled in my affections like a tickled child. It was then that I realized the dog I was petting was the new dog. My dog, the one I knew, looked at me bitterly, and with anger. He bit me softly on the hand to communicate his disapproval of me. An awful feeling swelled in my heart and I reached out to touch him, to try and explain that I had made a mistake, that I had been away too long. This was his message, also. I had been away so long that his heart had hardened. He had to abandon hope of my return and find solace and companionship in a beast of a dog. The beast had gained all the beauty of my former friend while my dog had rusted, inheriting all of his ugliness. Wicked sorrow began wrenching from deep in my chest. No, no, this is not what I had intended, I tried to tell him. I foolishly expected him to wait patiently for my return without considering the loneliness I had inflicted on his soul. Resentment growled from his lips and his teeth shone as he stared lovelessly into my face. Anguish gripped me as I felt the depth of the sorrow which had ravaged and warped his heart.

Tears fell from my eyes and a feeling of helplessness and regret coursed through me like an electric drum. I'd become an energizer bunny of remorse. A hysterical kind of sadness took hold of me and I wept without restraint. Just before I woke I saw tears in his eyes, too, which doubled my dysphoria.

The lesson, I think, is that one should not expect love to remain in absence. It does not make the heart grow fonder. Hearts are not to be held over the head of another; they cannot safely be kept. If love has taught us nothing, it is that it waits for no one.

Hickory Dickory Dock

Time's gotten away from me once more. There is never enough, no matter how much one has; the more you have, the more you need. As a young child, a year is an eon. As an adult, once you have nearly three decades under your belt, a year is just the changing of seasons. You try to make more time for yourself but the more time you invest the more time you wind up needing. Paradoxical clocks. Tick tock tick tock tick tock tick tock. Tits cock tits cock tits cock tits cock.

My brother's been texting me Kierkegaard quotes all day...I don't remember where I was going with that. Often, when I open my computer with the intention to write, it seems like the sheer possession of an intention undermines the whole endeavor. Some strange mutiny takes place as the tiny worker responsible for turning the creative cogs in my brain gets rumor of an impending shift. The little bastard throws a wrench in the wheel and promptly goes on strike. He runs out of my imagination factory, hops in his ramshackle, red, 1986 convertible, and speeds over to the Dickory Dock's factory where he starts churning away on the wheels of time. I hate that sonofabitch.

Oh yea! I meant to write something about the lovesickness I cause in the hearts of beautiful, young, exotic women. I don't know what it's called in English, but the grandmother of an afflicted maiden described it to me as vertigo de la corazón. There are few, if any, women in this world capable of resisting my magnetic charm. This fact has brought great ruin to the hearts of many a dame. My flame burns too bright, I've been told. It is pure canned lightning. I possess all the allure of a flickering flame perched atop the wick of a gently burning lavender and hibiscus candle of Chinese antiquity. As my flitting feet make soft all the hardness of the wax they touch, so too does my lovely masculine aroma disarm and make docile the minds of fine females. In a past life I was a pheromone; the first, most primal pheromone which gave rise to all others. My psychic told me so. Out of great consideration, caution, and concern, I conceal my true self from all damsels, shielding them from my true identity for their own protection.

Ok, I'm tiring of that.

And I'm tiring of this day, of this computer screen, of consciousness. I want to slip into a world of infinite play and possibility; of raw, unfettered creativity and homoerotic intrigue. I'm like a gay narcoleptic seamen named Martin Luther King Jr., in search of a cute little dreamboat to tug me off to sleep.

I leave you with a quote from our friend Kierkegaard:

“If I were to wish for anything, I should not wish for wealth and power, but for the passionate sense of the potential, for the eye which, ever young and ardent, sees the possible. Pleasure disappoints, possibility never. And what wine is so sparkling, what so fragrant, what so intoxicating, as possibility!”

Penthouse

Time is running away from me tonight. I keep grasping at it but my hands are covered in butter - because I was masterbasting. There were so many things I wanted to write about today but I've lost the scent of most of them. Ah, here's one from this morning while I was riding the bus to work. Because I'd forgotten my headphones at work on Friday, I had to suffer the injustice of pedestrian conversation; which is always spoken at a volume that is far too loud, especially in the morning. Today I was lucky enough to board a nearly empty bus, save for a black woman with a stroller, a few white and hispanic people in the back, and another black woman who was alone toward the front of the bus. I sat down a few seats behind the woman with the carriage. She had been talking to the other woman, who sat a bit too far away from her to shroud the conversation in even the slightest shred of privacy. They were talking about fatherhood and race. She was trying to dispel the notion of absentee African American fathers by pointing out there are Caucasian men who orphan their children too. I wasn't sure what her point was exactly, but I'm sure she thought she had one.

Soon the bus filled up and I heard a hushed commotion bloom into a distinct civil discord. From what I surmised there was a disabled woman asking for a seat. People had to spread out and make room so that the people who were sitting could stand up and surrender their seats. The woman who wanted the seat decided that as people were clearing out space she would make her demands more forcefully known by quoting the law which mandated they relinquish their seats - as though this would somehow make the process faster and more convenient for everyone. Then, caught up in the fervor of discontent, the other woman with the stroller began to call out to the boarding woman. She said something like "yea, and just look how long it takes them to get out of the way and give up that seat; look at them roll their eyes, too." Her implication was that some sort of discrimination had taken place. Hearing this, the disabled woman responded with a type of birdsong war cry and they began parroting strange parables and righteous indignations into the air in the most aggressive passive-aggressive way possible. Her inviolable honor had been besmirched, and she wasn't going to stand for it - that's why she asked to sit down.

In truth, I wasn't close enough to see any eyes rolling, but I was still pretty close to the scene. I didn't notice anything racist or ill-intentioned happen. The bus was crowded, and it did take a few seconds for the space to clear, but I viewed this as more of an indictment on the public transit system in San Francisco than an act of collective bigotry perpetrated by a couple of young, middle-aged white women living in a wildly progressive city. The two African American women didn't stop there though. They continued perfuming the air with awkward victimhood, tacitly scolding all the "entitled" white people on the bus. I thought a race riot was about to break out. I could've sworn I saw the shadow of Reverend Al Sharpton running madly toward the bus to try and capitalize on the moment. There were some choice phrases uttered by these two women which I told myself I'd remember now, but I can't. Something about how they were "doing y'all a favor by allowing us to partake of understanding." Mainly, they were trying to impart on us how they're unjustly targeted because of the color of their skin. Oh, the irony.

A thought came to me in that moment, of just how insidious racism really is. It isn't just a weapon to be hurled at a target, it is more of a kind of toxic radiation which spills out in all directions. Racism is the hate speech equivalent to nuclear warfare. It mutates and warps the mentality of both the perpetrator and the victim, helping to further estrange the two people from kindness, trust, empathy and understanding. The victims of racism, after suffering countless bouts of discrimination, begin to become prejudiced in a generalized way against the people who have expressed bigoted sentiments. In this case, the women on the bus perceived an act of racism when there was none, because they've been taught by experience to expect it from people who looked like the women sitting in those seats.

There is great power in keeping people focused on difference, distracted, fighting amongst themselves. A house divided cannot stand.

On a more light-hearted note, I asked a French woman to clean my apartment yesterday after she remarked that it was quite clean, but messy. I told her that if she felt that way she should take it upon her self to improve the situation - I have a lovely way of empowering women. It is a gift. After all, it was women's day! And she was French! Who better than her to be a maid? I was shocked, shocked, when she gave me the middle finger. I'll excuse her unladylike behavior though, because she was clearly drunk from the Mexican cocktail we'd had at our rooftop bungalow in the sunny Mission.

I'll leave you with our ascent to the roof deck, told in play form:

Enter myself and my French comrade, joining two hispanic women in an elevator. As we enter, a man wheeling a baker's rack full of fresh baked bread exits. Buttons are pushed and the doors close.

Me: Mmmm. Bread smelled delicious.

Woman 2: Haha. Why yes, it did.

Conversation softens and slows. The doors open at the 4th floor.

Woman 1: Ok, Nadia, nice seeing you, talk to you soon.

Woman 1 walks out. Doors close. My French cohort eyes the buttons on the panel. A circle next to the letters P.H. are illuminated.

French: P.H. What do you think it stands for?

Me: It's where we are going.

French: I know this, but what does P.H. mean?

I look around the elevator at the other woman who looks at me for a response.

Me: ...penis hole.

Both Woman 2 and Frenchie look at me, aghast.

Me: Penthouse. It stands for penthouse.

Forces of Nature

Hear me out.

Every thing is made of matter and energy. This statement is uncontentious. The same little atomic legos which make plants and stars and ants and the rings of Saturn, make everything else we see in the universe.

Let's consider the universe as the closed set of all matter and energy which exists across time and space. Nothing within the universe can be made of anything existing outside the universe; it is a self-contained set. A rock and a starfish are both made of the same basic building blocks; matter, energy, atoms. They are different combinations of matter existing in and arising from the universe; the same way an artery inside of a body is made of small cells, which make organs, tissue, and muscle, which in turn make a body.

Some things we find are living and some are not. What if living creatures are just autonomous manifestations of the universe itself, and consciousness is just a function of the universe's awareness of itself? Then, humans are the universe's expression of itself. We are sovereign symbols, existing as both representations of the thing and the thing itself.

Gravity is understood to be the universal force which attracts all things. The great unifier, it is the organizing principle responsible for the universe as we know it. Without it, there could be nothing.

Then, what if love were just gravity expressing itself through human hearts?

Without that, there would be nothing.