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…
Thursday, March 29, 2007
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
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.
Tuesday, March 27, 2007
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.
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.
Sunday, March 25, 2007
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.
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.
Saturday, March 24, 2007
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—
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
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.
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.
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
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.
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.
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