Thoughts

There are two basic kinds of thoughts. The first is the kind produced by thinking. This type of thought commonly stems from an earnest question, is structured, nuanced, has an attainable answer and, while it may not always be patently obvious, or even remotely clear at the time, there is a kind of trajectory involved. These thoughts are conversational, exploratory, they seek to clarify; what am I doing here; should I take this new job; why is the sky blue? Then, there are the other thoughts. These thoughts are more like an occurrence in the mind. Seeming to come out of nowhere, they flare up - either acutely or chronically - and serve little purpose but to draw attention to themselves. For instance, wondering if a package you'd ordered has arrived, or if you left the stove on before leaving your home, whether you smell funny. Thoughts like these are specific, noncomplex and circular in nature. Thinking harder about them typically does not help one arrive any closer to an answer. They tend to cause anxiety or distress.

As we age we seem to spend most of our time in that second category of questions - the ones that add to worry; can I afford my mortgage; what happens if I lose my job; does my partner really love me; will my medicine be covered by my insurance; will my foot ever heal; besides eating drinking and fucking, what have I done with my life; is this what I want? The questions are heavy, and they long for the calm assurance of an answer. But they are not questions that can ever easily be answered. Often, it is only time that will tell. And so the answers to these questions are ransomed by an unknown quantity of passing seconds, days, weeks, months, years. But will we ever have enough time? What if we never learn the answers? Ah, an even more frightening question.

A curious, determined mind should be able - if given enough time - to convert uncertainty into certainty. The pursuit of knowledge should eventually present the seeker with the truth he or she seeks. That is, if they are assiduous. Not all of us are, however. Some of us get deterred by difficulty. We wallow in this sense of petulant, frustrated helplessness, and like a child angry and ashamed that it can't yet wipe its own ass, we try to rid ourselves of the feeling. After a while we say fuck it and begin to hold in our shit to spare ourselves the disappointment, the embarrassment, so that we don't have to admit defeat. Soon we fill up with toxic pollutants and rotten poisons that leak back into our bloodstreams. We feel miserable, heavy with unhappiness, stuffed full of pent up feelings of anger or fear. Without an outlet, without a real sense of ever achieving release, we go on this way until it kills us. Through stubborn attrition, our spirits wilt and stultify, becoming less than useless - burdensome.

It doesn't need to be that way, though. There is a way out. We can learn to relax, and to accept our failings. And by embracing our shortcomings we allow ourselves a certain vulnerability that we cannot achieve with another. This in turn fosters a kind of comfort in one's own skin that encourages greater relaxation, greater trust, and greater love. When we're able to start this conversation with ourselves, the reward is redemptive; nourishing thoughts shine like warm light, obliterating the dark and drying out the damp, fungal smell of doubt and self-contempt. Then, instead of restless thoughts, we're greeted by thoughts of compassion, forgiveness, encouragement; congratulatory thoughts that seek to celebrate instead of censure, affirm instead of deny.

Once we can do that, we'll have time for those more important thoughts; if you're waiting for the waiter, aren't you the waiter; why is it called a building when it's already built; if you get out of the shower clean, then how does your towel get dirty?

Ode

"There was a time when meadow, grove, and stream,

The earth, and every common sight,

To me did seem

Apparelled in celestial light,

The glory and the freshness of a dream.

It is not now as it hath been of yore;—

Turn wheresoe'er I may,

By night or day,

The things which I have seen I now can see no more..."

-- Wordsworth

Taken

There was a video this morning, of a man murdering another man on live television. The footage, likely from a local news station, was from thirty years ago, in 1985. In the tape we see a man accused of child abduction and the molestation of an 11-year-old boy, walking in handcuffs, being escorted by police to face trial. Just as the camera becomes perpendicular to the passing suspect, a man, standing inconspicuously in the background, appearing to use a public telephone, turns, raises his arm and fires. The bullet hits the accused in the head at near point-blank range, killing him instantly, and he falls to the floor. Police rush at the assailant as we see him hanging up the phone and putting down his weapon. Someone on scene cries out, "why Gary, why?!" Gary was the father of the boy who had been kidnapped and sexually abused by the now slain man.

This scenario raises a couple of moral dilemmas. First, on the topic of justice and vigilantism. It doesn't take much imagination to put oneself in the place of a father whose child was taken from him. Just imagine someone hurting the one you love. For weeks he feared his son was dead, or being held somewhere against his will, tortured, forced to perform or engage in lewd and traumatic sex acts, only to have his son returned and his wildest fears confirmed. Who could slight a man for seeking retribution in this case? There is a dark, seductive triumphalism to tales of vengeance. We relish in delight at the thought of avenging the helpless, of punishing - with extreme prejudice - those who would prey on the powerless. Wicked, wrathful fantasies become indulgent perversions for which we have a limitless capacity. What could be more cathartic than taking matters into your own hands and making the world safe again for your child? An act of murder in this case becomes an act of heroism.

But, no. That is an incomplete truth. An appeal to an emotional one, even. The man had only been accused - he hadn't yet been tried. What if, and this is a big if, certainly, the man was innocent? Wrongly accused? What if, when Gary went to shoot the other man, he missed and inadvertently killed an innocent bystander? Or, what if in succeeding, Gary was charged with murder in the first degree and found himself in jail and away from his family at a time when they needed him most? Surely this was a calculated attack. He had premeditated the whole thing. He wasn't killing under extreme emotional disturbance, or with a depraved indifference to life, rather, he had given it much thought and planned to murder this man on sight, in cold blood. What kind of example does that set for his son?

This gives rise to the second moral dilemma posed - when, if ever, is murder permissible? Is killing another person acceptable when it's retaliatory? When it's preventative? Or should murder always be discouraged because life is intrinsically sacred? The troubling thing about murder, to me, is that it is inherently inhuman*. It conveys the belief that the murdered party is incapable of atonement or rehabilitation, that the individual is beyond redemption. What belief is more core to the human heart than redemption? It is the marrow of hope, and the archetypal theme of the epic story - the return of the king. To kill is to deny someone the chance to make amends, to change. Murder is a denial of mercy*. A person committed to the idea of murder is not in sound mental standing. Love is not at the center of operations. Instead, fear, anger and pain have the helm. Just as justice is blind, so is its obverse, injustice. The man lashing out in anger and pointing the gun at another really means to point the barrel at his own head, only he can't see where he aims.

It could be said that the anger and pain Gary unleashed on his son's attacker was the same pain he had been inflicting on himself. In many ways he likely blamed himself for not being able to protect his son, for being helpless to save him from the unspeakable ugliness and horror of human monstrosity. This pain then transmuted into an anger perpetuated and fomented by fear; that it might happen again, that one day he might find himself unable to defend his son against some other unimaginable and unpreventable tragedy. So, he needed a metaphor. In order to kill that part of himself, he would kill the physical representation of it - his son's captor. An act so bold would surely signify the death of fear, and it would show, to the one he loves, an unwavering resolve and tenacious dedication to championing the defenseless. His former self would be a martyr to this new and improved self. And, in doing so, he would have expiated himself for his past failings, cleverly using murder as a vehicle for redemption.

The question that comes to mind is - would I have done the same? I'd like to think the answer is no, I wouldn't have. But I don't have a son. Someone I love has never been kidnapped and raped. Would I be able to trust the criminal justice system to lock this individual away forever and reform him, to keep him from harming someone else in the same way? Would I be able to control my emotional reaction to the news, or would I buy a gun and wait patiently at a phone booth for revenge?

How many Liam Neeson movies will I have seen by then?


*Mercy killings add another layer of complexity to murder. The difference, however, between a mercy killing and murder, is that in the case of a mercy killing, the 'victim' is a willing participant. A murder, in all other cases, involves an unwilling participant - someone who wishes to live but has been given death.

Sap Happy

Bronchitis. That's what it must be. Nothing else would adequately explain the violent and persistent fits of coughing. The lush, green, verdant quality of the mucus. Walking pneumonia perhaps. But, then, there would be the expectation of a fever, weakness, a worrisome shortness of breath. Instead there is only phlegm. Lots of it. Colorful gobs of green. For some reason, which still remains a mystery, the night continues to carry on in a way that is always enigmatically gloopy. Sleep, acting in direct opposition to expectation, demonstrates a cruel capacity to produce in the nasal cavity a surfeit of sinus sap. And it does so with extreme prejudice. Slowly dripping, faucetlike, snaking post-nasally down the length of the throat, thick globs of the stuff ooze into unsuspecting grooves of the lungs. There the snot begins to make a green, swampy, home away from home.

Vacationing in the lungs, in small, almost imperceptible increments, the slow bacterial accretion grows, creeping ever outwards and colonizing the boggy breathing apparatus, until, all of a sudden, while in the midst of a pleasant, restful dream, there is the abrupt return to wakefulness inside of a darkened room, clutching at the chest and coughing as slime is ejected out of the lungs and back up into the throat, only to arrive as garnish on top of a sleepy tongue. An odd kind of reverse peristalsis. The whooping and coughing that follows more closely resembles barking than breathing. To hear it one would get the impression of a walrus in danger, crying out in mortal terror. Things go on in this way all night; sleeping and choking, coughing and sleeping, choking and coughing. What an uncanny ability the body has, to produce such quantities of sludge.

Water doesn't seem to help much, other than keeping the body hydrated. Perhaps what's needed is sustained dehydration. A desiccation of the nasal passage. This could be a solution. There is no phlegm in the desert. Vitamin D, it is said, and echinacea, ginger, herbal teas, spoonfuls of honey, soup and warm baths, all are supposed to help. But none of them do, not much. Time is the only cure. And it is also the curse. One cannot fully appreciate a good night's rest until it is lost to sleeping in interrupted winks and starts, tosses and turns.

Actually, I think I feel the fever coming on now. Sweet delirium. The nasal icecaps are melting.

Jesus Cristo and La Madre Maria Cadena

The Jesus and Mary Chain played last night at the Fox Theater in Oakland. The old dinosaur granddaddies of shoegaze graced the stage with The Warlocks for a tour of their most recent album, Damage and Joy. Despite having a gnarly chest cold, I decided I'd go anyway. I'd purchased the tickets for the show months ago and I had good seats, so fuck it. As a notoriously shitty live band, not only was I taking the risk they would suck, but I was doing so sober. The one caveat being I was hopped up on enough guaifenesin pills, Advil sinus relief and Flonase nasal spray to kill a bear. This wild, previously outlawed drug cocktail - combined with my body's exhaustion - provided the foundations for a phenomenal show. As it stands right now, I still do not know objectively whether the show was good or bad. For all I know Jim Reid could have been singing both off key and out of sync with the band and I would have had no idea. The whole of the audience behind me could have left in crushing disappointment and I would have still been rocking to their jams. This is the great benefit and detriment of shoegaze; sometimes the wall of sound is so thick that it's hard to tell which way you're facing.

Not every song was a hit, but the ones that stuck really shined. There was one point where I'd lost myself so completely in the music that I'd become disembodied. I was floating somewhere between my seat and the ceiling, like a solitary gull hovering out over a great and gusting sea. They'd taken the song and stretched it out into some druggy, slow-motion, sludgy psychedelic interlude that turned my brain into goo. I was the Jellyfish King. Jim Reid had begun speaking in tongues, sixteen of them simultaneously. It was shamanic. The room had taken on the shape and size of a sonic bubble and, when it finally burst at the song's conclusion, even Jim had to comment on how groovy it was. I'd forgotten about the sort of lush texture and depth of sound that can be achieved within the genre. It's been so long since I've seen someone do it well. Who better than the band that helped to define it?

They played a good mix of new and old stuff and the light show gave the impression of being inside an aquarium. Come to think of it, there was a deeply aqueous feel to the set, as though all of us were slowly drowning in the sound, only coming up briefly for air in between songs. 

I'm going down to the place tonight

To see if I can get a taste tonight

A taste of something warm and sweet

That shivers your bones and rises to your heat

I'm going down to the place tonight

The damp and hungry place tonight

Should all the stars shine in the sky

They couldn't outshine your sparkling eyes

But it's so hard to be the one

To touch and tease and to do it all for fun

But it's too much for a young heart to take

Cause hearts are the easiest things you could break

And I talk to the filth and I walk to the door

I'm knee deep in myself

But I want to get more of that stuff

Of that stuff

Some candy talking

Talk

And I want

And I want

Some candy talking

Some candy talk

I love the way she's walking

I love the way she's talking

It's just the way she's walking

It's just the way she's talking

And I need

All that stuff

Give me some

Of that stuff

I want your candy. I want your candy

And I need

Give me some

Of your stuff

Give me some

I want your candy. I want your candy.

I want your candy. I want your candy.

I want stuff

Sleeping Beauties

Today was a day spent idly. Idle roaming, idle thoughts, lying in the grass. The sun shone overhead, brightly, kindly, as if granting permission for the hours to unfold in whatever way that best seemed fit. Tasked with the choice between chocolatey psychonautic adventures in Golden Gate Park, or a movie, I decided to take a trip to the chocolate factory. For the longest time there have been these chocolate-covered mushrooms - of unknown strength - hiding quietly in my freezer. Patiently, they've been sitting in stasis, awaiting a warm mouth, a kiss, to make them alive again. Sleeping beauties. So, kiss them I did. It was only a peck, though. Sensibly, the chocolate was divided in half and quickly consumed. Then I burned some sage, making sure to let the swirling smoke touch the palms of my feet before trapping the last of it under my floral snap-back cap, and then I paid tribute to the altar of Ganesha for good luck and providence. Ritualistically I sang two songs of love and mourning, and then I was out the door. Already the world seemed to me a different place. The muscles in my feet, pressing into the soles of my shoes - and in turn, the shoes pressing against hard cement - throbbed and tickled with new intensity. Enhanced sensitivity. Wind danced over my chest, ruffling the tail of my shirt, jumping off through the leaves of trees behind me, leaving the limbs pleasantly thrashing and swaying in space. The air around me had become much more aqueous. My gills were flapping. A silly grin spread across my face and everything else seemed to smile, too. Even gravity, a thing that can always be relied upon to remind you of a constant constraint, seemed to have lightened, lifted. Birds were chirping, a soft music played in the distance, and I followed the scent of the future aimlessly into the park.

In the park there were many things that happened. A particularly odd interaction was a moment I had with a squirrel, a sort of standoff in which I was able to convince him, telepathically, that I was friend - not foe. Uneasily he eyed me, especially at first, while I watched his entire body pulse with trepidation. The thing to know about squirrels, is that they do not know how to move slowly. They can only twitch and dart and make sudden, frantic movements. This, and a gratuitous love of nuts, is all they know. After a long while of still-standing and nonverbal soothe saying, I was able to express the concept of peace to my furry woodland friend. Instantly I noticed a softening of the eye, a slowing of his heart-rate, an unbending of the ears. It was strange, what happened next, and it requires a careful imagination. He slowly moved down the trunk of the tree, inching toward my foot, and arriving, prostrated himself, like a dog at its master's feet. I kid you not, this actually happened. The fact that I was on mushrooms did not help me conceal my surprise. At first I wondered if he was just unafraid of people, if he thought I had some food to give him, but then I saw how he had almost completely flattened himself out. He wasn't looking for food, he was relaxing. I'd somehow tamed a squirrel. We had established a truce, a special bond. Could I take it home? Would it follow me? If it did, would I need to get it a small leash? A muzzle? Behind me a child's laughter broke the spell of our armistice and the squirrel retreated back up its tree. It seemed to look at me longingly, as I walked away, and I felt at first sad, then happy, because I knew I would always remember his trust and tenderness.

Flowers were what caught my eye next, lots of them. They seemed incredibly textured and outlandishly colored, incomprehensibly distinct, to the point of appearing alien. Never before had I seen flowers like these. Intricate patterns rippled out in waves across the petals, like goosebumps, then spilled slowly down their spiny stems. When the breeze would hit them they would gently jostle and dance, strutting in small, staccato, funkadelic grooves. Following the breeze I found myself passing through paths I'd never taken before, all of which led me, by a circuitous, no, fortuitous chance, back to the same place. For a while I lied down in the grass and listened to the sounds of peacetime; children playing, the cracking of cans of beer, leisured conversation, laughter. Staring up at the sky, watching clouds lose their shape and stretch themselves slowly apart, I thought about the scary thinness between calm and crisis, and how all it takes is an instant for the veil of civility to unravel. How the sounds would change, then; sirens, gunshots, screams, explosions, crying, whimpering, and then, eventually, nothing but the occasional sound of skidding rubble. The heat was getting to me. It was time to get up and find some shade.

When I got up, a pair of musicians had launched into a performance under an acoustically lovely arch. The sound was perfect. Amplified and rounded in a way that only physical space can render it, both brightening and also deepening it, the sound washed out in all its sonic splendor over the grass to those within earshot. They were musicians I had seen before, years ago, with my brother. At the time we'd given them money and bought their CD's. They were good then, but were even better now. They played a music that is difficult to characterize, somewhere between gypsy opera and gregorian chanting. It transcended language, spoken in a tongue that was foreign, yet familiar. The man played a violin and wore bells on his feet. While he played he danced to create a percussive, jangling rhythm. From his lips erupted a series of low growls, followed by a few soul-shaking falsetto notes, and then some hopping fiddlework as he cut at the air with his song. The woman also wore bells, and a painted white face, and she sang a pitch-perfect angelic hymn that was the harmony of the man's. A crowd gathered as they played. They danced, volleying notes of raw and unmistakable beauty and pain, longing, love. It had been some time since I'd seen such an expression of human feeling. Their music made the air feel fuller, heavier. The whirlpool sound had a kind of gravity to it, always pulling my breath nearer. It was electrifying. The conclusion of the performance brought all the lawn-sitters to their feet and a thunderous applause smacked at the silence. I delivered a crisp $10 bill to the open violin case and kept walking.

I lazed around, got lost for a while in a rose garden, walked a small circle around Stow Lake and then sat staring at trees. Everything was brilliant and beautiful and existed only in the exact way that it could. The power of psychedelics is in their ability to miniaturize the self, to dissolve the ego and give rise to an awesome, overwhelming feeling of insignificance in the face of nature's immensity. They give the gift of certainty - everything that is, is, because if it weren't, it wouldn't be. Everything is complete, whole, perfect, brimming with being. All there is is the moment. Seconds stretch out like thinning clouds; wispy white strands replete with presence.

There is a unique beauty about a second. Seconds pass indiscriminately, invisibly, incessantly. Aggregates of them make up the totality of our lives. Adolescence seems now only a series of seconds. And although they're all equal in duration, some stand out more than others; a first kiss, a broken bone, a last kiss. The seconds are what rule us. We can only see them in minutes, hours, days, and years, often forgetting that the only thing separating life and death is a second.