A Land of My Own

I have posted before about my feelings regarding this country. Having seen so little of it, I've always felt apart--it is, after all, my children's home, and only a shelter for me. Grateful as I am to have been so received, I cannot get past the foreign-ness of my accent.

But dear Trishy has helped me take a few steps out of my shell. I've now seen so much more than I'd ever have imagined possible--even as recently as two years ago. The world is wider but not for that less cozy, warm, and familiar. Everywhere I go, the plants are green, the water's mostly blue, the air too. It is so warm, reassuring that it be so. And though most travelers might laugh at this obvious observation, it never was a given to me. Humanoid beings occupy most spaces, and at least while I'm traveling the United States, they speak English (after a fashion). I think I've also posted on Americans' use of the language and will refrain from doing so again--for now.

The best part is not in the differences, which I expected, but in the similarities. It is all one country, from the dry desert near home to the wettest forest outside Seattle, to the wide, wide river that flows (not always quite so gently) through this new city I am now visiting. I regret not having been able to spend more time at Mamacita's (link on the right), but when ever would I get a chance to drive on over to the arch? And boy! What an arch!

The thing is bigger than the t.v. shows I've seen about might lead the careless watcher to expect. It is breath-taking! At 7:30a.m., the three little Mexican people who happened to arrive at the parking lot at the same time I did, and I, walked up the little walk from the structure to the arch, and nearly gasped when we reached it. Somebody said the Statue of Liberty would fit under it--and I don't doubt it. It is so shiny and pretty, so new in its uniqueness, and yet so far from foreign. Seattle, Portland, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Indianapolis, St. Louis--a short list, perhaps, to many, but to me a sufficiently widespread sample to say with little hesitation: this land is my land. At long last, these are my people. Black, Mexican, any of ten different kinds of white (like my new little Irish-kind-of-folk in Indiana), immigrant and native-born, boys and girls and everything in between. English-, French-, Spanish-speakers, and those who tried to teach me sign language in Santa Monica, or the two-year old who signed "thank you" at the airport when I left for here--they are my people, too.

Trite though it might sound, and though you've heard it often, the blood's all the same color. But, more importantly, the top light, the red one: it means stop. The red flashing hand on the other side of the street means don't cross. The round green symbol, with the girl in the middle and the white letters means: come get a cup of overpriced coffee. We are all the same because we've chosen to be so. More than land, more than language, more than anything at all, anywhere and at any time, this is my land, these are my people, simply and only because I claim it so. No paper can make that more real. Nothing else anybody else can do will welcome me home like the thought that I belong. It's silly, I know, but anywhere I go, from now on, I'm always going home.

Thanks!

And just to avoid leaving this on a "deep" note, I just wanted to show one more pic, to see if it looks to you like it did to me. Tell me how this looks:

Sagitario

A mitad del camino de mi vida, I came to realize that there really is no point. There is absolutely no evolutionary necessity for my continued existence after my genes have successfully escaped my body and ensured the continuation of the species. It is at this point that I sought to console myself through the usual hedonistic ways "we" often follow. Still, at some point, "we" grow tired of these ways. Though I was a late bloomer, now that I'm done blooming I find I skipped that middle part and went right to old.

And now that the universe has turned yet one more time as a cruel reminder of my neglected youth, the hunter returns. The "otro yo" that allows perversion under the guise of insanity. The weirdest thing is that I'm never the only one.

There'd be no predators if there were no prey.

You Lost Me At Good Bye.

Yo no nací para amar.

I should have just given up when my parents forbade me to date la criada next door. I was only ten, and she was twelve, and we were really just friends—I guess—but isn’t that the way it always starts? I mean, I’d go out to ride my bike but instead, I’d sit for two hours chatting with her about nothing in particular. She wasn’t well educated, nor very smart, but she was sweet and she was sincere, and she was funny. And it certainly didn’t hurt that she was severely over-developed for such young age. But the instinct for the continuation of the species is far stronger than any parental threat—though sometimes misguided. Gender, you see, never made any difference in my attraction to people. I can say with a certain degree of confidence that it wasn’t merely “liking” like in friendship, though at the time I didn’t know any better, because at this age, I’ve learned the subtle differences between merely liking and liking. And boy, I liked them. Still, I reached high school age and hadn’t managed to get the liking past just that to turn it into the decadent debauchery my classmates proudly claimed at the confessional on Saturdays—and my penance was always shamefully much shorter than theirs.

En el mismo lugar, y con la misma gente.

And then one day friendship led to love and love led to marriage and I had two kids! Callooh! Callay! All we needed then was the white picket fence—and I swear that despite all my other perversions, I still dream one day to have such a silly symbol of stability of normalcy. It was a dream so close to gotten, that I was twice hurt when the marriage fell apart. I cannot say I ever stopped loving her, but I don’t like her quite so much these days. Trust is the only thing you have, sometimes, and unlike the tails on lizards, it doesn’t grow back. One day, in the heat of a fight, she asked me to leave. “If I go, I won’t come back,” I said; “I think you should leave,” she said; and I left. I remember my daughter watching me take the last of my clothes from the dryer, asking me where I was going and when I was coming back. But though I visit often, I haven’t gone back. They’re still there, in the same house, with the same neighbors—and they still say hello when I stop by. She’s asked me three times to try again… but there is not try, like Yoda says… “Do, or do not!”

If you want to be happy for the rest of your life.

She’s now twelve years older than she was the day she waved at me as I drove away, December the twentieth, a clear, sunny, bright, and dismal day. I’d rather have a blustery day, cloudy, rainy and drizzly, and an old movie, black and white perhaps, and a cup of hot chocolate with the little marshmallows floating on top, and a dash of cinnamon. There should be someone there, with me, to share the coolness of the air and the warmth of the chocolate, and if a fireplace be handy, the little crackly noises of the wood as it burns. But there need be no one. If you make solitude your friend, you need not trouble yourself with loneliness. It isn’t an easy thing to do, but then neither is keeping just ten pounds off, or keeping the top of your desk’s hutch dust-free. It takes work, patience, perseverance, dogged determination to complete oneself. In any case, the greatest stories of love were about love that never happened, or was brief and sour.

I can do well all on my own.

Melancholy

A strange interaction of the humors coursing through my veins today has brought me to a most melancholy mood, despite being so incredibly busy at work. I find myself saddened by uncontrollable flashbacks brought about by sweet smells, old songs, or short phrases said in passing. It is odd, I think, that I should be saddened by these, as many of the memories are of better, happier, freer times; but one has little power over the emotions emanating from memory, and I have none.

There is, for example, the sweet smell of coffee made with just a little too much cinnamon. That one is my Grandma’s—who wasn’t my grandmother but deserves the title more than any other woman. The one thing I remember most is the time in ’75 when it rained for a whole week and I couldn’t go out and play. She brought out a large pile of newspapers, and between eating cookies she had baked, and chatting, and playing, and doing nothing, we made paper boats of all sizes. When it stopped raining, we took them out and let them go in the river the street had become, watching the armada float away, across the channel to invade England. Ahhh! Happy times.

Then, there was Supertramp, singing some silly song from the early ‘80’s. I didn’t discover them until the ‘90’s, when my wife and I would play them in the sentra, non-stop, on the way to Laguna Beach, where we would spend the entire weekend and many weekdays through the summer after we got together, before the baby came. To this day, Supertramp smells salty, sunny, and warm—bright and lazy—peaceful.

Then, this guy from Vermont called and asked for help. Now, under normal circumstances, this would not have elicited a second thought. Customers often depend on our higher level of expertise to solve problems in their production process, even when they’re not directly related to our product, and we comply with every request very happily, as this ensures they’ll come back. Some people say good will doesn’t build a faithful clientele; I disagree. This particular problem was easy, in and of itself, but the urgency with which it needed to be resolved reminded me of the times when my classmates would rush to me, asking for assistance. It wasn’t that I was any smarter than any of them—half the time, it was just that I can type faster than most people—but that I would not let any problem overwhelm me: we would sit and calmly dissect the issue, work on a solution and present the best answer we could. For a moment, I was back in school, blank piece of paper in front of me, pencil in my hand, and a question floating in the air around my head, looking like a puzzle piece for the matching answer that might be on the verge of flying away (pardon the mixed metaphors). I think this is because I am a Sagittarius: the hunter always on the search of prey. Presented with a problem, I am happy again, finding a solution.

And now, I’ve won the raffle for the Dodgers tickets here at work, and four of us are going tomorrow—not really to see the Dodgers (they suck), but to hang out and drink a couple of beers in the cool relaxation of a wasted day. And I remembered the days when we went to watch the horse races, when I was little. It was so much fun because nothing else would happen that day. We’d get up in the morning and get ready, and we’d go and hang out, watching the races. And for a moment, I was a child again, laughing at my uncle’s Fiat Bambino.

And then the day is over and I shut down my computer and go home—another day’s over and another one’s coming, and I, I alone can see them coming and going and look at all the ones that came and went and know—again, forever—that sighs count more than breaths, though fewer.

How many times did you sigh today?

Septiembre, El Once

Los que recuerdan lo hacen muchas veces con lágrimas y con dolor, pensando que la inocencia que habíamos recuperado en los cincuenta años desde el ataque aquel que nos trajo a la segunda guerra mundial había por fin muerto—que esta sería la dolorosa introducción a la adolescencia global que se acompaña con inseguridad frente a nuestra incapacidad de defendernos contra locos, estúpidos, y crueles. Es inevitable recordar ahora como nos sentíamos el día anterior: casi todos los periódicos hablaban solamente de la economía y como su falta de fuerza nos afectaría individualmente; amanecimos quejándonos de la renta atrasada, del carro nuevo que no podríamos comprar hasta diciembre, del juego de video que la niña quería, pero en medio día murieron tres mil inocentes y aunque por un solo momento, todo desapareció y fuimos una nación, un solo grupo bajo ataque. Al día siguiente, todo fue diferente y nunca mas volverá a ser igual.

Gente muere a diario. No hay nada que podamos hacer para evitarlo. Enfermedades, accidentes, la fuerza misma de la naturaleza trae a su fin mas vidas de las que yo jamás podré contar, muchos mas merecedores de larga vida que yo, mucho mas buenos, mas útiles, amables, deseables. Cada paso de exploración requiere paga en sangre. La expansión de nuestra conciencia pide a veces almas y siempre carne como intercambio. Así siempre ha sido; así siempre será. No lloro por los muertos, pues mi fe me lleva a pensar que están en un mejor lugar que este. Lloro por los vivos que ahora se han privado de la riqueza de cada una de esas vidas.

Soy de aquí y por eso lloro mas por los míos que he perdido. Pero soy humano y por eso lloro también por todos los demás que se pierden diario—y ahora para colmo en paga de aquellos que ya lloré. Tantos de ellos mueren en mi defensa, que me siento un poco culpable. Tantos mueres sin haberme conocido que me siento culpable por ese sacrificio—no es necesario. ¿Cómo pedirle a Dios que lo prevenga? Mi fe me dice que El creó el mundo pero nos lo dio a nosotros a mantener. El no interviene. Y sin embargo, en su defensa y en defensa de la patria hemos matado y mataremos a tantos.

Supongo, al final, tendré que usar toda mi fuerza Cristiana y aceptar el golpe—aunque mi Cristiana debilidad me impida dar la otra mejilla. No pediré ojo a cambio de ojo. No es sobre simplificación el decir que mi perdón engendrara perdón de otros. Al contrario, creo, como creo en el Creador mismo, que la paz es lo único que cuesta más que la guerra— ¡y esa es tan cara!

Sexo, Pudor Y Lágrimas

A veces no pienso
Me vuelvo tan frió y no estoy
A veces me ausento
De mis sentimientos
Y luego sonrío,
Recuerdo y me aferro a vivir
Y a veces quisiera
Matar por tu amor
Tan solo por un momento

Y es que todavía no encuentro
Lo que en mi sería normal
Para darte mucho más
Y entregarme por completo
Sexo, pudor o lágrimas, me da igual

Me quieres ver grande
A pesar de lo débil que soy
Y si toco hasta el fondo
Me sacas de nuevo
Por eso me quedo,
Me aferro y te quiero a morir
Por eso aquí adentro
Tú estas todo el tiempo
Viviendo del sufrimiento

Y es que todavía no encuentro
Lo que en mi sería normal
Para darte mucho más
Y entregarme por completo
Sexo, pudor o lágrimas, me da igual

Sexo, pudor y lágrimas, me da igual

by Aleks Syntek

Let Me Be Frank...

Para cambiar, seré honesto. Me inspiró la honestidad de los lectores de Mirko (see link to the right), y por eso he aquí la dura y sucia verdad:

1. primera vez…..?
. 19 con mi mujer… después, 26 con un chamaco.
. Preguntenme la historia: me gusta contarla.
2. alguna mujer?
. La primera, y hasta ahora, la única.
3. días de la ultima vez…?
. Este fin de semana.
4. que preferís? activo o pasivo?
. Activo
5. mucha previa…. o poca?
. Todo en moderacion.
6. posición favorita?
. De lado, o el sentado sobre mi, frente a frente.
7. oral o anal?
. anal
8. cuantos te bancas en una noche?
. Duración depende, cantidad límite hasta ahora es 5.
9. clásico o innovador?
. Clásico.
10. beso negro?
. Claro—dependiendo de detalles que dejare a la imaginación.
11. q entre sola…. o ayudas?…
. De las dos.
12. dulce y romántico, o hard y ordinario?
. Romántico, aunque duro, dulce, u ordinario.
13. juguetitos sexuales?…
. Nunca lo he hecho… pero mas de una vez vaciamos el refrigerador.
. I’m a big fan of condensed milk.
14. luz prendida o apagada?
. Apagada, pero no en la oscuridad—tal vez velas?
15. lugar mas “raro” “osado” “intranquilo”
. Afuera, en las montañas, viendo la ciudad, sobre una roca
16. trío?
. LOL… lo mas, fuimos 8. :-)
. Los detalles no son publicados, pero no me da pena contar en plática.
17. de día o de noche?
. Cuando caiga.
18. con medias o sin medias?
. Como Dios me trajo al mundo.
19. hasta ahora…. “el amor de tu vida”?
. No le digan, pero se llama Ricardo.
20. preferís chupar? o que te la chupen?
. Que me la chupen.
21. fácil… o accesible?
. lol... accesible. (?)
22. rubios o morochos?
. Todos los gatos en la oscuridad…
. Suelo decir que no discrimino por color: hay mejores motivos.
23. lubricante o babita?
. “Babita”? LOL!!! Ok… babita.
24. dps de….. dormir juntitos abrazados… o….”bed and no breakfast”)
. Me encanta dormir bien enpiernado: antes, entremedio, y después.
25. mejor lugar para ser besado?
. Jardines Botánicos de Huntington Library en Pasadena.
26. alguna vez activo?
. Solo activo.
27. intentas una vez y si no entra, insistís? o desistís?
. Insisto.
28. gritas?….
. No, pero no me quejo si tu lo haces.
29. acabas y?.. me importa un pedo si terminaste o… te hago terminar ¿?
. El chiste es terminar los dos.
30. te va lo prohibido?…
. Hasta cierto punto.
31. acabas y? salís corriendo al baño, te quedas y disfrutas del momento?
. No solo el momento… buen rato… tal vez hasta se repita antes de ir al baño.
32. te jode estar todo chanchito en la cama o salís a limpiarte.?
. Habrá que limpiarse antes de dormir, pero para mientras, no hay apuro.
33. coger o hacer el amor…?
. Hacer el amor, por fuerte, energético, atrevido, o apasionado.
34. te gusta besar?
. Si me gusta, me encanta—y por horas.
. Si no, ni un poquito.
. Depende de con quien.
35. te gusta disfrazarte?
. No. (see 18 above)
36. alguna fantasía?
. Tal vez un poco aburrido, pero no; sugiéranme alguna y las considerare.
37. q miras primero en un hombre?
. La sonrisa. Maldita magia capaz de calmar tormentas y quemar montañas.
38. avanzas o dejas que te avancen?
. Tiene que ser mutuo. Muestro interés y respondo cuando interés es demostrado.
39. me darias de nuevo? A Mirko? Cuando quiera… :-)
40. te gustaria q te de?….

Y tú, ¿Quién eres?

So, copying other people around here, I went somewhere and had my brains scrambled.

When they that do the scrambling were done, what fell out of my head looked like the pile above.

Anyone care to translate what this means in realistic terms and plain old english?

MMMMMMMkay...

Fort Bragg

So my friend was coming to see a play (Same Time, Next Year). Perhaps you remember the movie with Alan Alda and Ellen Burstyn. To be honest, it makes me uncomfortable. I don't know why the idea of unfaithfulness makes me so uncomfortable. It bothers me. The whole movie, i'm fidgetting and scratching; the whole play, I was doing the same.

So, my friend's going to the play. She invited me. I'm sure you understand that watching the play being performed for the first time where the movie was filmed was too good an idea to pass up. Plus, I was getting a little sick and tired of the dulldrum of everyday life. So, Friday at 9:00pm, I got in my car and started driving. It was a hot night in the valley (San Fernando Valley), but going over the hill, the air cooled significantly. There was a breeze. There were a million other people coming with me, but they all had the sense of moving faster than a turtle, so it was ok--I don't mind the traffic, I mind driving slowly.

The air got warmer just as we reached the bottom of the hill. However, that's when the smell of cow crap started, and it didn't end till I was about to turn to cut across from the I-5 to the I-101 so I could head up to San Francisco. Now, under normal circumstances, I'd have gone up on the I-5 to the I-580, cut across Oakland and right into San Francisco--but there was this sign saying the bridge would be closed. Once I finally made it around (not quite twice the distance, but a bit out of the way anyways) I found another sign that said the bridge would be closed on Labor Day weekend. Nice. Thanks!

Now, that was far enough, as far as I was concerned, but I was going further, and I wanted to see the sun rise over the lovely beaches I had seen on Mamacita's blog (see link to the right). So I drove on--all night, even--till I got to where I was going. The picture above I took only this morning. I had no energy left for blogging yesterday, after the insane drive a three-hour nap and rushing over to the play.

The air is insanely clean here. I feel like sticking my nose in my exhaust pipe so I don't get addicted. And despite the beauty, friendliness of the people here, and all that jazz, I'll be heading back to civilization soon enough. Sitting at Starbucks now, an island of familiarity in this otherwise pristine ocean of white faces, I am reminded how much I love glass, concrete, pavement and steel, the noise of traffic and two in the morning, the whirring of machinery constantly at attention, awaiting our every wish. I am a environmentalist in the sense that I'd be well-served to see nature in only the briefest of visits, leave it unmarked and undisturbed, and round up most humans into their own reservations, to be let out only short periods and only after extensive training in the matter. I realize, however, that there are rights you might think you have to live in this nature--not realizing perhaps that your presence there is detrimental to the very nature you seek to join.

Be that as it may, I am here now, and nobody seems to be leaving, so I will leave. I've been here enough. It's not that I didn't like it--it's just that I'm done with it. I wonder what heaven looks like. I wonder if I'll get this bored of it this quickly.

Turns out I still haven't found what I'm looking for...

Una Noche Como Anoche…

Siempre he dicho que el teléfono es para comunicación solamente, y no para conversación. Los que quieren plática deberían usar el teléfono para decirme donde verlos; un cafecito, un te, un jugo, y horas de plática pueden seguir. Lo que me molesta mas es la haraganería implícita en decir “quiero saber de ti y que tu sepas de mi, pero no mereces el tiempo o esfuerzo para verte en persona.” La única excepción aceptable es cuando la distancia o algún impedimento físico previenen el viaje, o recibir visita. Tal vez no es así, en realidad, pero eso es lo que pienso yo.

Con el tiempo, he entrenado a todos que así es. Mis amigos—pocos que son—y mis familiares saben bien que al llamarme deben simplemente decir el punto, hay un intercambio de información pertinente, una que otra pregunta respecto a mi salud y la de ellos, saludos a los parientes, besos, abrazos, apapachos cuando sea apropiado, y bye. ¡Simple! Sencillo.

Who could ask for anything more?

Pero no siempre es así. Lo bueno de las reglas son las excepciones, los pequeños eventos en los breves momentos que nos dejan saber que el mundo sigue mas allá del horizonte que hemos construido. Anoche fue una de esas noches.

A las 7:42 PM, Ricardo me mando un mensaje al teléfono, diciendo que me hablaría cuando saliera del cine, a donde había ido con su nuevo novio. Yo pensé que llamaría antes de las 10:00 PM. Aburrido en casa, salí a esa hora rumbo al bar con ganas de tomarme un par de Heinekens y jugar un poco de billar. Quince minutos después, me habló. Resulta que el novio fue a visitar a su familia, dándole a Ricardo tiempo para llamarme. Bueno, a pesar de un pequeño enojo por haberme hecho esperar, decidí platicar con el un rato. Lo que esperaba era que me dijera que quería ir a Starbucks (o Peet’s, si hay uno por ahí: Hmmmm!). Ricardo vive a una hora de distancia, pero nunca he tenido ningún problema con manejar esa distancia por una buena plática, y si hay algo que él tenga de bueno es su plática.

Llegué al bar a las 11:00 PM, no por la distancia, sino por haber dado tantas vueltas mientras platicábamos y mientras encontraba donde estacionarme—el lugar es popular, y estacionamiento en cualquier lugar de Los Angeles a esa hora de la noche es prácticamente imposible. Me estacioné, me salí del carro y empecé a fumar mientras platicábamos. No me invitó. Hablamos de él, de su familia, de mi familia, de sus amigos, de mis amigos, del trabajo, de la escuela, de los cambios que hemos visto individualmente desde que quebramos hace varios años. Hablamos de la operación que necesito y por que la he pospuesto tantas veces. Hablamos de todo, y terminando todo volvimos a empezar.

A las 12:00 de la medianoche, después de varios cigarros, decidí no entrar al bar, pues no tiene caso considerando cuanto me estaba gustando la plática. Salí otra vez en mi carro, rumbo a casa, pero tomé la ruta escénica, y llegué a la 1:00 AM, todavía platicando con él.

Diré, con toda sinceridad, que aún así no me gusta hablar por teléfono si hay posibilidad de una buena plática con un café. Pero siendo lo que fue, fue buena noche—y últimamente no he tenido muchas.

Another Saturday Night...

Play Careless Whispers.

When is the last time you told someone “I love you” for the first time?

Sitting in the dark is something I do often for the sake of entertainment.

I like the smell of good incense burning two rooms away. It is not so subtle as to be missed, nor so strong as to be intrusive.

I went to dinner with Carlos two nights ago. I had just worked a 12-hour day, after two 10-hr days, and I was tired! But I went. He felt like going to get pizza at this place near where he grew up—it was a long drive, and we talked of useless things, and I enjoyed our conversation greatly. Just after the fall, I thought it great we could still talk, still enjoy an hour’s worth of conversation on the way to cheap, second-rate pizza in the south bay. We ate; we talked; we drove back. I went home still thinking that when it occurred to me I never loved him—and so I started wondering when it was the last time I loved—and, more to the point, when I loved enough to say “I love you.” Because there is a threshold, a point before which we cannot get ourselves to say the words and after which we cannot hold them back.

The neighbor’s headlamps flash across my living room as he turns into his driveway and suddenly I realize the incense has ran out and my tea has gone cold. Though there are four of us living in this apartment, and I love the noise and the feel of simple human habitation, and really love the rare moments of solitude when they come.

They’ll be here soon, so now it’s time to sleep.

Soon, it’ll all change, and I will back to solitude. We must all go our own way at some time. Much like a break up, any separation entails the breaking of old ties. Daily “good morning”s turn to monthly “how have you been?”s and surprising run-ins at the bank or the store. It is never the same… but then, things never are.

When is the last time you told someone “I love you” for the last time?

Good night.

Leftovers

God made man last.




Not because he was saving the best for last.




She was just making do with what was left.

Volver

Can you believe it's been so long? I feel as though it was just yesterday I was here last, but looking around, I see much has changed. Some friends are gone, while new ones take their place, not that old friends can be replaced—but life is busy and as full as it can be it gives me little extra time for more. More... More is the ethereal, curious, most elusive thing I'm always seeking. More is the fuel that seems to drive me further and further on this road.

But more does not always lead down a straight path. Onward, yes—but is that the same as forward? I am too tired to ponder this right now. From time to time, all I can do is put a foot in front of the other in this eternal act of falling, balancing, trying, dancing that we call walking.

From time to time I come to that proverbial fork in the road and I just take it—not always to follow the road less traveled by—not always quite deciding—and always wondering if this is the right path or maybe, may be that one was.

And all the forks have led me round and round back to this place, through caverns measureless to man, to this sunless sea. And on this soulless beach where we now find each other once again. I am a bit embarrassed you should find me lacking my usual ebullience, waiting pointlessly for an answer, even from the echo, to my lonely cry—but a wind blew out of a cloud and it seems there shall be no one here to look upon my works. None, perhaps, but you, and you will not despair, but rather walk with me.

And in the end, come full circle to the womb that made me, I shall cherish most the warm embrace of those arms that, outstretched and yearning, through my travels, awaited my return.

Toaster Heaven

So let us say that after a long, distinguished life of toasting faithfully and well for many years, my toaster has finally shuffled off the electric coil that gave it purpose and is now bound on that last of all the quests to the undiscovered country. I refused to cry, for we cry not for the dead but for the living, self-pity spent for all lost chances—but they shan’t ever come back to us. Not knowing the nature of the ritual it might have chosen for itself, I forsake a Christian burial and chose instead to think of what comes next.

Where do toasters go when they die?

Let us consider this was a good toaster—a faithful toaster. Having lived such a life, would the toaster go to a heaven where it would simply toast for eternity? Is the continuation of its purpose a just reward for having served that purpose well? Or does it go to a place where it can suck to its sweet heart's content—if that is what it wishes? Does the final chance to apply a new purpose to an old life make it a reward? Or, can it possibly be? Can it be the final prize for so much effort is nothing but oblivion? How is that fair? Who says life is fair? And if life isn’t, what kind of fool expects death will be?

Or maybe I am wrong in searching for a parallel between this plane and that one. Perhaps the nature of existence in toaster heaven is so vastly different from the one I know that I cannot even imagine what it might be. I should not worry so.

Reward or no reward, it’s still coming for all of them, all the toasters, and no amount of worry on my part makes it faster—or slower. It is just what it is. Asking if toasters go to heaven is perhaps like asking if androids dream of electric sheep—a mere article of faith, never, ever “mere”.

Godspeed, my dear toaster!

Recurring Dream: Canto El Segundo

Location: US & Mexico, both at run-down latino neighborhoods.
City: unknown
Participants: various (unnamed) and me

The houses are old and need paint and general repairs—the kind of care people who care can give. But the families here care about other things, it seems. They are warm and friendly, welcoming and sweet, and though they will at whim add a room to a house, they have the hardest time maintaining the houses; they’d rather spend that energy on the fruit gardens they have planted on what once were large front yards. They speak loudly, their voices mixing into a melody of Mexican songs, and jokes, and conversations all at once, easily followed in the many ways they go. They keep chickens and dogs, both loud and neither caged nor chained—and song birds to keep them company, and they play their radios way too loud. They work on their cars in front of their houses, taking half the street. Most back yards have hardly any divisions at all—and never anything that might be called a fence. It is messy; it is loud; totally different from anything I have ever really known, it is home.

I am a child of five or seven, running wild like the many other creatures God has wrought, making friends and playing games, and only coming home when the sun sets.

Time goes by.

Now I am older and I help one of the neighbors who fixes broken cars in his garage. He works late into the night, and because my parents know him, it’s ok that I stay late with him and help him. I am learning. He cooks, too—after a fashion. He makes tacos and burritos and whatever else he feels like making and I really like his cooking. He shares with his customers, too, when they come to get their cars. After some time, word has spread that his cooking is better than his car-fixing and people just come by to buy his food. Eventually, he stops working on cars altogether and now just cooks, selling tacos out of his garage.

About a hundred steps towards the sunset, there is a bar. It’s a small, neighborhood bar. The kind where everyone knows everybody’s name—the first place wives send their kids to find their missing husbands. People there have heard about the tacos. Soon, there’s a constant line of traffic between the bar and the garage. Some eat and then go drink; some drink and then go eat. Most go back and forth, walking one off and then rewarding their hard work with the other. I still help the neighbor, but now I help him make his tacos. Everybody says hello.

More time goes by.

Now I am eleven and I can make tacos myself. And I can fix a car, just not as well. Often, I take shifts for the neighbor, for he too takes his nights out at the bar. He has no wife, no children, no dog and no garden. He had his cars and now has his tacos. And he had me. And I had him. But never did I do more than help him. We do not chat.

One evening, late in the day but not so late the sun had yet set, I got ready and walked over to his house, to help—just like always. But this time was different. As I got closer to his house, I noticed smoke. I ran to the house as fast as I could, but there was nothing I could do. The flames were twice as high as the roof. Not knowing what to do, I ran over to the bar and asked them to help. They called the fire fighters. A group of men ran with me to the house. We all started trying to put the fire out. By now, the neighbors were out, too, and they had their water hoses and buckets and everybody helped. But it was too late. Soon, the house burnt to the ground. The man whom I had helped for many years was not there. I never knew where he went. As we all finally gave up—when there was nothing more to burn and it seemed safe the fire would put itself out anyway, the firefighters and the police showed up.

Just as they arrive, the dream ends and I am awake again—oddly at peace but a little sad.

My neighbor, my teacher, my friend is gone. Not dead—not for sure. He’s simply gone.

I never knew his name.

I’ve had this dream once per month every month for the last year. Unlike my other recurring dream, this one varies in details. It happens sometimes in English, sometimes in Spanish. It happens in the US or sometimes in Mexico—though I am not Mexican.

What does it all mean?

Recurring Dream: Canto El Primero

Location: beneath the old water tower at the Nickelodeon “old-west town”
City: Colton, CA
Participants: my brother and me

I am eleven years old, hiding behind the posts that hold up the water tower in this fake western town built around the old pizza joint that went under the name of Nickelodeon, and though I only started going when I was fourteen, in the dream I am eleven, and my brother is twelve, and he is the cowboy chasing me, the Indian who’s invaded his town, playing with me in such a typical way that was so atypical of our childhood together. This goes on for a while, and while we’re playing I notice we’re getting older—slowly, perhaps, for the dream, but considerably fast as we reach our teens and beyond as we continue playing.

There is no one else in town. The place was boarded up long before the dreams started and in my dream it was already locked behind the temporary fencing one rents to surround construction zones. But people have forgotten about this construction zone and it is, for once, exactly what it always purported to be: an abandoned, or at least declining western town. The pizza was never very good.

But the pizza’s not why we’re here. We are playing. Cowboys and Indians. Oddly enough, neither of us has a gun. We stay a while under the tower and then we start straying, just a little farther every time around the base—and that’s when we hear it. At first, it is a faint and distant sound, like a quick buzz going by our heads, followed by a hard slap onto the dusty ground a little farther down. I identify it first. I don’t know how old I am now, but I am considerably older than the eleven I was when this got started.

I tell my brother to run, that there’s someone shooting at us with a silencer. I have no idea why. It sounds almost ridiculous telling the story now, but someone’s playing target practice with us and we have to run. We begin to run away from the water tower, towards the arcade right next to the pizza place, but we don’t make it.

I don't know what happened to my brother, but as I’m running, I feel the aging process accelerating, though I don’t really notice it then; I remember it later. Suddenly, as I run away, I feel a sharp slap on the back of my head, and the warm sensation of blood running down my back. The force knocks me forward and I fall and bounce and fall again. My body now lies sideways, my face looking back towards the tower, and as I see the dust gently settle back down to the ground, I think “I am too young to die; I am only thirty-five.”

And as the dust settles, I die.

This is the only dream in which I have ever died. I had it semi-regularly, every few months, for years (about five in total) prior to my thirty-fifth birthday. On my birthday, I went alone at dusk, and then again with my best friend around eleven at night, to walk the lot. The buildings had been demolished; there was no sign of anything I remembered, except a couple of partial concrete slabs on which the building perhaps rested once. But I walked around; and I called out in my head for whatever it was that had summoned me there.

But nothing came.

Other than my best friend, I was alone with the moon and the stars and the wind. Not even a black cat crossed my path. The spell, now broken, I never had the dream again.

Three months after my birthday, my brother, only thirty-six at the time, died of a heart attack while playing basketball with the kids in the neighborhood. He was dead before he reached the hospital. When I reached the hospital, I had them call the local Catholic Church to ask that they send a priest to pray with us over his body. The priest sent word along these lines: “What’s the point? He’s dead already, and we only perform the last rites on the dying.”

He never came.

What does it all mean?

No longer a hero...

There are few things one can hold in one’s hand that are more significant—at once more precious and more dangerous—than blood. There is nothing more tangible that means more to life—no! life itself!—or with more connotation of such significance. It is pure, holy or blue; it is utterly unclean, in traditions more ancient even than the language we might use to tell it and in the most modern sense of “bio-hazard.” From the time when one brother’s blood called out from the earth to its maker for justice to this morning’s blood sample I gave at the doctor’s, this life-force-fluid is all that keeps us from being a mere pile of ashes. To simpler minds it might have been the breath of God.

Looking at the little vial of my blood as the nurse took it away, I wondered what might become of it. Oh, I’m sure someone will try to grow things in it, look at it through a microscope, maybe even apply a little heat to it to see if it jumps out of the petrie dish. They’ll find it clean, I’m sure, but they won’t return it. It is gone forever, sacrificed for the sake of peace of mind, for the knowledge that the rest of me will be fine, well, good even. I wonder if they’ll put a purple stamp on my butt declaring me “CLEAN.” It is a sacrifice, like many made before—to the greater powers, seeking absolution yet again.

The greatest of all gifts we could give to God—the one thing we couldn’t take back—life. As is common with humans, the Aztecs took it to the extreme and we revile them for it. Medicine men who did not understand its power sought to find a balance in the body by drawing it, spilling it, hoping to take with it what ailed their patients.

I hate needles—deeply, madly, truly—ever since my father would drive me, a sickly child, to a doctor’s office every week to get a multi-vitamin complex shot that left my butt numb and my leg weak the rest of the day. Many years later, when I got married, my wife and I decided to give blood as our little contribution to the bettering of the world. It started when a kid at our high school got in a car accident and they asked us to give blood. We gave. We never stopped. In as brief an interval as was permitted by the blood-bank, we gave again, and again, and kept doing it past our divorce, still going together though we were not together, because some things ought to be done regardless, and that was a good thing. But then, I had to stop.

Men who have had sex with men since 1977 are not permitted to give blood—no exceptions.

My blood was clean. I could prove it. They were going to test it anyway. Still, it was unclean, unwanted. It was my mark of shame—and I, unwilling to lie for their benefit, simply stopped. A gift so rudely questioned is undeserved. Statistically speaking, they might have been right—but I am not a statistic. Responsible and clean, I still felt I had the mark of Cain on my forehead and resented it—hated it—and would not compound it by lying.

The greatest of all gifts we could receive from God—a chalice-full of holiest sharing—a promise of eternal life, given to us from His own hand one day soon to be celebrated all over the world:

this is my blood, the blood of the new and everlasting covenant, that will be shed for the forgiveness of sins. Do this in memory of me.

And though I still prayed, the church told me that I was more unclean than all the other sinners who prayed with me, and I stopped going. It is their right, their private club, their rule to make and I shall respect it. I disagree—my God, my Father, for reasons I’ve explained elsewhere ever-forgiving, can see past this “flaw” if such it be and see my heart is clean and my love no less pure than any other man’s—my blood just as red. There are many like me, seeking this God. One day, we will find him, at work, at school, on the bus on the way to a bar, eating a sandwich at Subway’s—there He will be, arms wide open, wounds healed, promising to love me like He asked my fellow men to love me but they failed.

And while I could not lie to keep giving the gift I thought I was giving, others have lied, continue to lie, and continue to give the same gift. Many—perhaps braver—men like me are at this very moment engaged in combat of one kind or another, fighting for a right denied us. It is odd how society in general accepts the product of our labor but denies the laborer behind such fruits. It reminds me of many such fights in the past and saddens me that this is one battle that needs to be fought over and over again on many fronts.

And now our fathers, our brothers, our children go forth into the desert out of which Abraham once came, to spill their blood as the price we pay for liberty. No nobler gift was ever given me, and though they don’t know my name, I shall forever be grateful to each and every single one of them. God bless them. God bless them all: black and white, Latinos and Asians, male and female, citizens and not, straight and gay, left-handed and not; God bless the short and the fat, the tall and the skinny. Their blood is just a precious to me, their gift the greatest I could ever want: the hope that one day my children’s lives will be peaceful. God bless their families.

Politics aside, I can see into their eyes and see their sincerity and their pride, to be the hands—most proud and direct part of all that we as a body do.

But just like one brother’s blood called out of that same sand to its creator clamoring for justice, so shall theirs—justice for their kind, justice for the man, justice for their country and the poor people all around them who suffer the hatred of the intolerant and powerful. Such justice is beyond any man’s power to grant.

May God grant us all the wisdom to recognize it when He sends it our way.

Laundromats are boring...

Laundromats are boring. There’s nothing to do but laundry, and who wants to do that? They need to diversify their forms of available entertainment. Bookstores that put in coffeehouses are cool. Nobody knew Dave or Buster, but Dave & Buster? Everybody knows them! What I really need is a bookstore/coffeehouse/arcade/Laundromat with free wi-fi for customers. Now THAT would suit my pressing needs. I can read, wash, drink, AND blog simultaneously, concurrently—at the same time, even!

I blame the Chinese. If they hadn’t made all the goodies so readily available, so affordable, so user-friendly, and so upgradeable through the wonders of intrinsic obsolescence, how could I have become so accustomed to doing all these things, all the time, often for free? I know that many would suppose that it started with the Japanese in the 60’s, but it in fact stated with the Chinese about 60 centuries ago. They got the trend started—though. Now, I can safely blame the Americans. If there is something we are good at learning in this country is mass-marketing, mass-producing, mass-controlling, mass-consuming. Supersize me! Immediate gratification takes too long.

So, yeah… I’m done with my fourteen loads of laundry. I really wish it was an exaggeration, but it is the sad, sad truth. Gathering up my clothes, I decided to clean a bit and threw out two 45 gallon trash bags of clothes much too embarrassing to wear—be it because they’re worn, stained (don’t ask and I won’t tell), or the ever-present “what the hell was I thinking?” category. My daughter counted my shirts. I wear maybe 20 of the 75 in my closet on a regular basis. And I still buy more from time to time. No, I’m not bragging. I’m narrating to you the broadest characteristics of my symptoms so may appropriately diagnose me. Contact me and I’ll tell you where to send the medication. How cathartic retail therapy can be!

Chavez needs to send more natural gas my way. Dryers are just too expensive. 50 cents a load my derriere! They should be lucky to have me patronize this dump. And where the hell is my quad-venti white chocolate mocha with two honey packs and just a touch of whipped cream? ::a-la-Homer:: “whipped!”

There is this bar down in the city where they have 300 kinds of tequila. I went looking for it yesterday—in the quite-right thought that Wednesdays are most deserving of such treats, but no! I failed and ended up drinking lowly Mexican-Irish coffees. Here’s how you make one: start with a shot of whiskey, add a shot of Khalua, add a shot of tequila, add a shot of Bailey’s Irish Cream; if there’s any room on the cup, add coffee. Top with just a dollop of whipped cream. ::a-la-Homer:: “whipped!”

Ah!!! Self-indulgence! The ultimate drug…

AND I will smell downey-fresh!!! Hmmmmmmm…

Middle...

She walks in beauty, like the night
Of cloudless climes and starry skies;
And all that’s best of dark and bright
Meet in her aspect and her eyes…

We met one day, in anger, and she cried. Her life in endless turmoil, she taught me mine was still worth the living, and I took to that like a man should, my Middle child, half-grown, ever in need of a hug and a kiss, and a hand up the rough slope. She took my hand and thought that it was me helping her when in fact she saved my life more than once. And now she needs me again, but this time I cannot pull her up. She has her feet firmly on the ground and though it might shake, it will not move and she can walk on her own and find her way through dark, moonless night, out of a forest she loved in the day, but that can seem so scary in the dark.

She needs a light, and stars just don’t light the way.

You see, she’s fond of complicating her life; we all do—but she’s a master at it. She’s like the obstinate child who, no longer happy just to put the puzzle together, insists on doing so with all the pieces facing down. She’s the cinnamon in my coffee—hold the sugar.

One day, she will meet A Man, and he will hold her hand, but not her heart, and she will find wide roads for them to walk, cool breezes and tall trees, love like the love of friends, but not. She will find with him what she cannot find with other men far closer, a safe distance that will keep her from falling, falling into a pit, falling into love. It’s not that love is, in and of itself, a bad thing, but some people are not ours to love, and that is a terrible thing to find out. She will not have him. She’ll crave him, crave his breath, the sound of his breath, the beating of his heart on her cheek. She and he will want nothing but that, but love refuses to be “nothing but that” and it grows—oh! vaster than empires, but more slow.

And there will I be, to keep her tears from hitting the ground, because one ought never to hold them back, but the ground is undeserving. I will hold them in my hand till they, like sighs and prayers float away into the distant clouds, bright and white, distant , incorporeal and free—foreign.

One cold and distant night we’ll embrace each other warmly under the Portland sky and cry together for what might not yet have happened, but must. And it must, oh child! It must. At the end of the day, the sun sets—Yehoshua doesn’t live here anymore.

And she whose name we won’t say now will not say thanks—and I won’t say thanks—and the world will go on just like it always does, from west to east, so fast we cannot feel it.

And in the dark, I’ll call her name. I might not be able to go into that forest and take her out, but I can cry into the dark her name, only her name, over and over.

Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay.

You’ll need no light to find your way. Wherever you come out, I’ll be there.

The God We Trust

The god we trust was once a vengeful creature, even spiteful, angry and strong. He was a man like men could never be. Most artful creator, merciless destroyer, gentle and tender, fierce and adamant—not really so different from us that we might not worship him.

And then he changed.

Where once he willingly held a grudge for forty years, he came to give (willingly and lovingly) for thirty-three what I could not give for a second for the sake of others: his child. He was the kind of mother I can never dream to be. He was the father my father taught me in brief glimpses is out there—up there, beyond—the kind of father I would love to be.

One day, I hope to leave a little note in the last wall that’s left of the last place I know he lived, this god of mine, and I will ask a single question. Or maybe I will say a single word. I don’t know. I suspect such a senseless act can hardly be anticipated—full of meaning but what substance? A moment in time, dedicated not to him but to me—a selfish act of a desperate man hoping a greater purpose will absolve all the wrong choices I have so painstakingly taken through my life. Absolve me. For history can absolve no man.

One day, I hope to walk into a garden where that child he gave me—gave us—found just how weak human resolve can be. And perhaps, full of resolve, I’ll dare to pray for my own children. He’ll still do what he wishes—I suspect that’s one thing he has left from the old days.

One day, the god we trust changed.

One cold spring night, in a far-flung corner of the world nearly forgotten by men of sense, the god who told us he was a jealous god only to change it later—only to send word for us to love one another like he’d sent one to love us—that god I could never have loved became just like me—he had a son.

And that has made all the difference.

The end is near...

I have generally been too selfish to write about the really important things in life... and this is no different. From my perspective, I get to see a slightly larger picture of the political situation in which the United States has placed itself for purely self-preserving reasons. True, many Americans are in the same boat—having come from abroad, or keeping an open mind to the interests of other people. Many do so for equally self-serving reasons: economic, political, social, familial, &c, &c.

From where I sit, politics in the Unites States seems like the proverbial football game played between the 49-yard lines. Republicans, Democrats, you all look alike to me. On a more personal level: donkeys or elephants? Couldn't you at least pick American animals? That said, there is at least one thing I find commendable: your ability to find the slightest differentiating characteristic and magnify it beyond measure or proportion to give yourselves a sense of common identity—a dichotomy of sorts—to which you cling with the same fervent mindlessness as do football fanatics, bodies covered completely in paint, beer in hand, screaming senselessly, craving victory more than sense and forgetting all about fairness. This is commendable because it makes you accessible; this is exactly what happens the world over in soccer or that thing the British play that looks like baseball :-) We are all crazy. We are all fanatics. This is good. It gives the rest of the world a bit of hope you will one day realize the sun does set on your empire—like every other empire before.

And still, I cannot help but think the world would be a better place without George’s finger on the button. I give him this: when he speaks, I sincerely believe he honestly believes he’s being truthful, honest, and as complete as is advisable for the president of the United States. This is why I have no reservations when I say that I am in opposition to his point of view; his view is clear, and in my view, sufficiently wrong to merit redirecting the country’s efforts in a direction less destructive, less self-destructive, less mutually destructive. He is not evil, as some would say. He is not stupid, as many have told me. He is most assuredly not ineffectual.

He is just a man who should know better.

Cage Song

"...Esta cobardia de mi amor por ella

hace que la vea igual que una estrella,

tan lejos, tan lejos en la inmensidad

que no espero nunca poderla alcanzar..."

I am drunk, so I will go ahead and skip the bullshit and tell it, for once, just like it is.


I had Robin. Really, I did. And I might still have her if I had the balls to do away with my dignity, but my dignity won and I don’t have Robin anymore.

I had Ricardo, and the same thing happened, though in a different way.

Then I had Roy.

He is the song I never sang. His voice is like the beacon that leads you safely to the harbor in a storm. But his heart was never mine, and I cannot have a body whose heart I cannot hold. I cannot have a mind whose soul escapes me, and his soul will only ever be his. I am proud of him, for being so independent, so willing to be alone in a world that never will let him be.

I know why the caged bird sings.

It is the same song that Van Gogh sang once, to a whore in a strange town, in a language foreign both to him and to his heart. He was insane, which I think is mostly a good thing. Shakespeare wrote once of a man whose story this isn't, and said that it he was mad and that "pity 'tis 'tis true." I disagree...

An ear is not worth enough, and an earlobe is just a gesture. He can have mine whenever he wants—a pound of flesh, even, more if he wants, or less…

He can have my heart.

He could have my soul, but he rejected it. And now I wait for him who might deserve it.

But time goes by so slowly…

But time can't do too much...

and god—bless my heart—won’t do it despite my most desperate pleas...

More than anything, more than ANYTHING, all I want is for this hunger for nothing but that the hunger go away—to go away.

Peace! Wherefore art thou?

All I want is peace... a little peace—nothing but silence in the night... a starry, starry night—no longer full of sound and fury—

A view to a kill…

At first, it was just because I was bored, waiting in line for a pool table, with little to do, so I lit up a cigarette and smoke it slowly, haltingly, hesitantly, enjoying the momentary rush, the momentary dizziness, the momentary distraction it provided me, faster than the drink and shorter-lived. I had not smoked since I was thirteen, when I stole a cigarette out of my father’s pack of Winstons, only to cough uncontrollably when I tried to smoke it—wondering why anyone on earth would do such a crazy thing. But by the time I got to the bar, my lungs (much like everything else about me) were harder, harsher, jaded, more used to abuse. And alcohol has a way to dull the edge of reason and by God I was bored. So I smoked.

Soon, it became a sometime thing, then an often thing, then more so. I blame Patty. She smoked; she was the only one who smoked and I felt sorry that she stood by the tree outside our office, smoking by herself months now, ever only one, at lunch, Monday through Friday—and when we went out to drink. Much unlike St. Sir Thomas Moore, I sold my soul for friendship and went out to smoke with her—and thus the sun shone through my smoke for the first time in over a year—ever, really.

A year later she got married to Eli and stopped smoking. Damn her! Thereafter, I stood out by the tree by myself, smoking one and sometimes two during lunch, Monday through Friday, but not on weekends, except when we went out. But things do change and the lungs, faithful servants, quickly get used to the abuse and signal subtly that they can take on more, so I gave them more. At first, it was one or two on the way home, and then more, and then more, and then more.

Today, I finished a pack I bought Monday night on my way home from work. They’ve held steady at about $4.50 a pack for quite some time now, so my wallet doesn’t much complain—though my son (ever so much smarter than his dad) did the math and it seems like a veritable ton of money I’m burning ten times a day. I do make it a point to buy two cartons when I go to Mexico, since I’m already there, and to save money. Oddly, those last longer than the ones I buy here—perhaps they’re harsher, or seemingly more precious for coming from so far away. Either way, those two cartons last what three might last had I bought them here. I should buy them there more often. They’re cheaper, too.

Last year, I went to Seattle on vacation, seeking a dark, depressive, outright suicidal place where I could feel at home, full of blustery days and brooding moods, but no! The sun shone the entire time—I swear it was sunny at 10 p.m. It never dipped below 70 degrees and those damned Seattle people just thanked me for bringing the California weather with me. And did I forget to mention it rained the day before and the day after I was there? God does work in mysterious, often-infuriating ways.

While in Seattle, I drove up to Vancouver, just to say I’d been there. It’s a very pretty city, and though I have often said I might want to live in Seattle, I seriously now think I might prefer to live in Vancouver instead. It seemed a bit sleepy, after growing up here in Los Angeles—and I’m sure more so in comparison to the other many cities that boast of Chinese take-out at 2 a.m.

Not five minutes from parking, while walking through the beautiful city of Vancouver, two people came up to me and asked if I was looking for a cannabis café. WTF? Do I look like a druggie? Leave me alone, people, alone to pretend you have it perfect there, alone to admire the cleanliness of your streets and the crispness of your air and think that perhaps, just perhaps there is a place where Rockwell might still want to live.

A homeless woman, out on the corner handing out flyers to some local event, asked me for a cigarette. I gave it to her, of course—one of the Mexican ones in my pocket at the time. I lit hers and lit one for me as well. We talked a while. That’s how I know she’s homeless. She told me cigarettes there are about $6 American for a pack. Go figure! I paid $1.50 American for the pack we were enjoying. I looked at the pack wondering how it could be the same thing, packed in the same way, printed on the same paper with very similar ink could vary so much in price only a couple thousand miles away. Handing her the rest of the pack, I thanked her for the conversation, and walked over to Starbucks where I paid about the same for a cup of White Chocolate Mocha as I do in Los Angeles and did in Seattle.

Back to the present—in this Starbucks, and to cigarettes. I need one now. It’s been a full hour since I had one and not my lungs but my mind asks—nay!—craves one. It’s all in my head.

Yesterday, one of my coworkers told me his dad was diagnosed with stage-four lung cancer. Inoperable. Incurable. Inexplicable, as he has never smoked in his entire life. He’s chosen not to fight it—he’s 82 and claims to have lived a full life already. Personally, I think my life would take ages to be complete. So many lives I could imagine—and did just right now. Schrödinger would be proud. But he’s given up, I guess, and nothing kills faster than that.

Well, God does. But let’s not blaspheme.

He’s far too creative for that.

It's just a jump to the left...

It’s morning again, like a bucket of cold water unceremoniously thrown on me by impatient hikers eager to get going, but not because it’s cold but because it’s sudden, and harsh—a scream in the dark. Dad is home again, and mom is getting ready to go to work. Both tired, both sick of the life this new life has brought and I, half-thief who took with mine the meaning off theirs, simmer in the guilt under a quilt made by a third-grader and taken to Goodwill to save her soul. This is the worst time of the day, when both are home and when both have just enough energy to fight and memories long like the anchor’s chain, and just as heavy. They are weary travelers, I tell myself, in a quest they did not choose and whose virtue left them long ago. Your children’s lives are only precious when they’re threatened.

San Jose is a cold place—even in the heat of the summer. Ten times more people were murdered within ten miles of our apartment than I kissed the year we lived there. Refuge though it might have been from the unwelcoming, newly-Republican world of the “me generation”, that apartment was more a cave where I could hide in darkness even from its other occupants, all related to me by sheer force of happenstance and not a one whom, at the time, I might have chosen for my own. I sought escape. In the end, the sissy in me wanted a hug, but the man who would one day emerge from the ashes could not accept the weakness of such needs and twisted my emotions to my loins. Lacking any normal output for such energies, I hid behind—what did I hide behind? I cannot remember. By forgetting every day, the new one seemed less hopeless.

Days upon days of the same: accusations, recriminations, arguments, fights, long escapes that lead only to further accusations. The bus was full of strangers, but they were quiet, and they smiled, and when I pretended I didn’t know where I was going, they pretended they hadn’t told me just a few days before which one was my stop. And there was that strange place on the way: a museum? a temple? a sanctuary for the remnants of the old Egyptian empire now hiding in San Jose, perhaps. Who knew to what gods such creatures prayed? Who knew what strange hungers afflicted them that could be satisfied in such a quiet neighborhood? And then, at last, The School. That was the end of the line.

My parents always thought me smart, articulate, educated beyond what might be genetically anticipated. What they failed to see was that it was perfectly understandable when seen in the light of life at home. Screams cannot be heard 20,000 leagues under the sea. Who can notice one extra bottle breaking against a wall in the War of the Worlds? No pain I felt could match the sense of loss one must feel witnessing the end of the world from the relative safety of The Time Machine. Lost in books, I was the Invisible Man. Until I was my own.

When I was seventeen I walked into the jungle, and when I was twenty-one I walked out. And by God I was rich. Even if I was only fourteen.

But that is another story.

I remember when this whole thing began...

... no talk of G-d then, we called you a man...

I miss my faith.

There was a time when I would blindly have acepted faith on its own terms. It wasn't merely a childish thing: it was perhaps the size of a mere grain of mustard, but I truly believe a mountain might have moved upon my simple request. Not now. Not anymore.

Sometimes I blame this country. I think it was the sudden change of life that brought in doubt and then, through shame, all that follows.

Sometimes I blame my father. His sins shine oh so brightly upon my forehead--my face is his face. I remember every sin I never did repent, so many... so very, very many.

It's not like I don't believe. It's not like I'm some sort of agnostic. I believe, with every fiber in my mortal heart.

And still, I miss my faith. I left it somewhere in my messy room. Perhaps I left it in the church where a priest said he couldn't come pray over my dead brother's body, because what's the point--he was already dead. Perhaps I left it in the bed where I lay, right before surgery, when the priest told me I would go to hell for marrying a Baptist in a non-Catholic church. Perhaps I left it in the ground where we buried my father--30 feet away from a statue of St. Judas, not six months after I lit a candle asking for his help. Perhaps I left it in the house my father abandoned just to save my life 24 years ago, after dedicating his life to the cause that drove him out.

Perhaps G-d just took it away.

I don't know. I never know... not anymore.

I miss my faith.

Raining in L.A.

Whoddathunk? It's raining in L.A. Well, it's not really raining; it's drizzling seriously, though, more than normal. But what is normal in Los Angeles?

As we prepare for the quasi-fantastic remaking of the universe that the Oscars are, we'll see plenty of "important" people pretending they care about the planet by showing up in hybrid cars, or pretending they care about their fellow citizens by complaining about politics, politicians and what they do for a living, or just looking absolutely fabulous in stuff I'll never be able to afford--yes, I'm jealous.

So I'm driving through, all the way to San Pedro, to spend the night in a boat, on the water, in the rain. It'll be a nightmare, full of angry people, careless people, distracted people, on poor roads, in fast cars. But these are dangers I can look for and expect, dangers I can guard against and for whose arrival--when they come--I can at least partially accept responsibility as (if nothing more) a willing participant who entered the arena knowing well the possibility of total catastrophe. Can I say the same of the planet when it fails becuase I smoked, kept a light on too long, drove a few miles too far? Can I say the same of the consequences of those politicians' actions? Where does my responsibility end there?

And what about all those bad movies I pay good money to go see? Am I responsible for them, too?

It is moments like this that make me want to stay home, have crackers and cheese, and drink some riesling.

Almafuerte

¡Avanti!
Si te postran diez veces, te levantas
otras diez, otras cien, otras quinientas:
no han de ser tus caídas tan violentas
ni tampoco, por ley, han de ser tantas.
Con el hambre genial con que las plantas
asimilan el humus avarientas,
deglutiendo el rencor de las afrentas
se formaron los santos y las santas.
Obsesión casi asnal, para ser fuerte,
nada más necesita la criatura,
y en cualquier infeliz se me figura
que se mellan los garfios de la suerte...
¡Todos los incurables tienen cura
cinco segundos antes de su muerte!

¡Piu Avanti!
No te des por vencido, ni aun vencido,
no te sientas esclavo, ni aun esclavo;
trémulo de pavor, piénsate bravo,
y arremete feroz, ya mal herido.
Ten el tesón del clavo enmohecido
que ya viejo y ruin, vuelve a ser clavo;
no la cobarde estupidez del pavo
que amaina su plumaje al primer ruido.
Procede como Dios que nunca llora;
o como Lucifer, que nunca reza;
o como el robledal, cuya grandeza
necesita del agua y no la implora...
Que muerda y vocifere vengadora,
ya rodando en el polvo, tu cabeza!

¡Molto piu Avanti!
Los que vierten sus lágrimas amantes
sobre las penas que no son sus penas;
los que olvidan el son de sus cadenas
para limar las de los otros antes;
Los que van por el mundo delirantes
repartiendo su amor a manos llenas,
caen, bajo el peso de sus obras buenas,
sucios, enfermos, trágicos,... ¡sobrantes!
¡Ah! ¡Nunca quieras remediar entuertos!
¡nunca sigas impulsos compasivos!
¡ten los garfios del Odio siempre activos
los ojos del juez siempre despiertos!
¡Y al echarte en la caja de los muertos,
menosprecia los llantos de los vivos!

¡Molto piu Avanti ancora!
El mundo miserable es un estrado
donde todo es estólido y fingido,
donde cada anfitrión guarda escondido
su verdadero ser, tras el tocado:
No digas tu verdad ni al mas amado,
no demuestres temor ni al mas temido,
no creas que jamás te hayan querido
por mas besos de amor que te hayan dado.
Mira como la nieve se deslíe
sin que apostrofe al sol su labio yerto,
cómo ansia las nubes el desierto
sin que a ninguno su ansiedad confíe...
¡Trema como el infierno, pero rie!
¡Vive la vida plena, pero muerto!

¡Moltíssimo piu Avanti ancora!
Si en vez de las estúpidas panteras
y los férreos estúpidos leones,
encerrasen dos flacos mocetones
en esa frágil cárcel de las fieras,
No habrían de yacer noches enteras
en el blando pajar de sus colchones,
sin esperanzas ya, sin reacciones
lo mismo que dos plácidos horteras;
Cual Napoleones pensativos, graves,
no como el tigre sanguinario y maula,
escrutarían palmo a palmo su aula,
buscando las rendijas, no las llaves...
¡Seas el que tú seas, ya lo sabes:
a escrutar las rendijas de tu jaula!

Breakfast, again.

Out the window, I see them coming. They’re a family of American Indians. The father walks up front, wearing a grave but stoic look that belies years of consternation and perhaps even frustration, lines well-worn into the flesh tanned too much by long desert days. A little on the heavy side, his body is like a thing he needs to handle, deliberately and carefully, each step well-measured, a slight wobble as he walks. His clothes fit on him like those sheets people put on furniture they don’t plan to use for a long time, forgotten in a room they hardly enter. He is worn and dusty.

Holding open the door, he lets the little wife come in. Though old herself, she’s what racist people like me might think would become of Pocahontas—a thing of beauty indeed. She too is old and tired, but her face has finer lines, a gentler droop to the extra skin that nature gives us as we age, and eyes that—silently—speak of endless mornings. It’s a mother’s work to keep the family together and it shows. She’s herding in the children behind her with nothing but a look and a slight frown. Her beaded outfit makes the slightest rustling sound as she walks past me, turning her head only a little to make sure the kids are coming close behind her.

The kids are coming close behind her. There are two of them. They, too, bring up my long-held racist preconceptions of what an American Indian kid should look like. I compare them in my mind to kids of similar age where I come from. Neither is a child, either—they’re very much into their late teens, precisely when people start to think they’re not kids anymore, despite their mother’s stern looks as they burst into giggles when a pretty girl walks by. I remember the “Indian” kids where I grew up, usually poor and neglected, dressed in torn clothes, selling stuff at car windows when they stopped moving. Oddly enough, in my memory they look now just like all the other kids, just like my kids, and I wonder how a culture made all of brown people figure out the intricacies of racism.

The two kids walking into Carrows have full heads of long hair, straight and black, really shiny, and I find myself a little jealous. The younger one wears it untied, draped over his back like a cape. He’s thin and has about him an air of rebellion—well within bounds I would say, as mom keeps a good eye on him. A worn Metallica t-shirt, blue jeans held close to his thin body by a belt with a big shiny buckle and the obligatory boots that look a little out of place. His face is way too gentle for the look; his skin is just too smooth and his smile far to ready to come out. He blushes.

His older brother is heavier, though hardly fat. He wears the typical t-shirt over jeans that hang a little too low, and then the worn canvas shoes every kid in this country owns these days—I should have bought into that company in the 80’s, darn it! Or was that too late already? He ties his hair tightly with a black thing like my daughter wears—a fancy rubber band. His face is less perfect than his brother’s, and I wonder if perhaps I have misjudged their ages and this one’s just going through puberty while the other isn’t. Or perhaps this is a family like mine, and this kid plays my part while the younger one plays the part of my older brother, whose smooth skin always got compliments from the older women in the family while mine went conspicuously unmentioned. Maybe because I am projecting, I ascribe to this one all my failings and to the other one my dead brother’s virtues. It is at the moment I find I like the younger one better—but before I get a chance to delve into my own self-hatred—that breakfast shows up and I have to stop typing this.

Barstow.

They say that god built the world in seven days—and looking around, I think it shows. But seriously (I love it when people say that, like they just said something funny), have you ever been to Barstow? I’m sitting here now, at Carrows, having breakfast, waiting for my “friend” to get ready (only gay men take longer than women to get ready, and that be a long, long time), so I thought I’d write another little entry into my would-be-blog. I love it when people say “friend” like we don’t all know just what that means.

Barstow is a town stuck in the 50’s, and I don’t mean that as a compliment. I mean that it looks like the last new construction was supervised by Truman. Even new buildings look aged. The air is dry, the horizon impossibly far away, the roofs are scratched as though by the sandy claws of desert life’s long neglect. Only the cars show any change from my grandma’s time. Great-grandma, really, who drove by here in the 30’s on her trip from nowhere to a nowhere farther still. I wonder how she saw it then. Was it already tired of living, going through the day under the heat of the sun—every day with no greater purpose than to reach tomorrow?

Was it already beaten?

I’m sure there are plenty of numbers to show how wrong I am, numbers that show increase in industry, new construction, the lively exchange of on-going commerce. I’m sure there are numbers to show why this is a vibrant little town all on its own. But I speak not of numbers, but the dragging feet of people walking slowly and aimlessly on the street, the fact that all the energy one sees is only transitory. It seems the median age is in the upper 40’s, not a problem in and of itself, but where are the young ones?

When did these people lose their hope?

Even in other dilapidated towns I’ve felt a sense of struggle in the face of adversity. Here, there’s a resignation with their fate, like the drowning man who, tired to the end of his breaths, gives up and sees the light grow dimmer as he sinks. One cannot help but wonder what they’re doing to change this. What’s next? How can they just sit here and let the desert swallow them?

I, too, am only going through. On the way to Victorville. Now there’s a town that will grow to engulf this town. Only 35 miles or so away, it is on the move. There’s construction everywhere, new people, fresh paint, newly-paved roads. And a million miles of desert for them to grow into. Perhaps that was Barstow way back when. And when I leave, it will still be here, waiting to one day become a tiny little piece of the new, great metropolis in the desert. Perhaps the future is not in growing, but merely surviving, and what shape such survival takes is immaterial when compared to the oblivion of disappearance. Perhaps just living is enough.

But not to me.

Always Coming Home...

“Dad, I’m the only person you know who likes the way you drive,” he says, almost smiling, almost serious, looking hesitantly up to make sure I’m taking the comment as a compliment and not criticism. It is three o’clock in the afternoon, and the sun makes this January 13th feel like a Fourth of July, and the smell of gasoline adds a bit to the barbeque feeling. It is, in any case, a holiday for us, a get-away weekend in Tijuana, just the two of us. I smile and tell him it takes a while to drive well fast and that he should start slow and learn how before he tries to do it quickly. Of speed, like most things excessive, I tell both of my kids they can decide just how much is too much on their own, once they’re old enough and mature enough to make such decisions—for the time being, it’s just a matter of getting older. Once they’re older, the list includes other benchmarks of maturity, including a decent education, a modicum of demonstrated intelligence, and some stability—like getting and holding a job.

It’s true. I have become my father.

I am both cool and mildly permissive, which they like; I am a clean slate on which they can experiment new styles; I am a sounding board for their deepest, darkest secrets, as I am very much committed to their well-being, but detached enough by simply not living with them that I can contribute a somewhat-objective point of view. And G-d knows I can bite my tongue when I don’t like what they decide. Childhood is, after all, the time to get the scrapes and cuts and black eyes and (may He in His mercy please forbid) broken bones. But I am also sometimes irascible and often simply incomprehensible and many times just crazy. I come from a world very much different from theirs and things can get lost in translation.

So speed is my translator right now—and shopping. My son and I go fast—no, really, fast!—and my daughter and I spend quality time picking out shoes—and I mean LOTS of it. I guess she does have a little advantage in a gay father. At the very least, I can put a good outfit together. It’s harder for him, but then he was always the mature one (and I’m comparing him to me, not to her). It is a good thing I’m equally at ease working on the car, or working on the computer with him hunting down all the goodies we’re going to put in the car.

In the end, I guess, you live your life the best way that you can and pray to G-d your children will forgive you—no matter what you do, they’ll find fault in it, mostly because you failed to prove you were superman, or Jesus Christ himself. I can’t walk on water—I tried! When I was eight, after reading the Bible, I tried out the pool and sank like a stone—albeit a thin, well-shaped stone. Still, I've measured their lives out in sighs and tears, and gasps and fears. Their hopes have been my dreams and their fears my nightmares. Their dreams have been my goals and I have worked my fingers to the bone to get them. They're mine, darn it! Mine and only mine! Until they're only theirs—and then I'll be content to rest down in the ground.



Oh, and another thing, one that helps me more than most anything else with my children… I am the only person they know with a shorter attention span. I am guaranteed to be fun—in short spurts when I concentrate really hard… but I get bored really easily… and this is long and I am done… and there’s coffee to be had… there’s gotta be a starbucks within fifty miles… remind me to write the rest of this when I come back.