Between the ceiling of our apartment and the floor of the place above is, is an empty space about a foot high. There can be found up there electrical wires, there can be found cotton candy pink chunks of insulation, and there can be found a six inch tall little man named Gary.
Gary's a bassist. He has an inch long replica of a Fender fretless that he plays, mostly at night. He is currently working on his epic bass opus that, depending on his mood, can last up to three hours. It doesn't sound bad, but occasionally you can hear where he has lifted entire parts of other songs, mostly from the Zeppelin catalogue. And his dallying in techno may be ill advised, but shoot, I'll see where he’s heading with it.
He's been there for years, Gary has; he has furnished his rut as they say. He's furnished it with miniature chairs and miniature tables, a tiny couch that he made himself in his workshop above our shower. He gets his materials from the trash on the rare occasions that he leaves that small space up there.
And Gary rarely leaves, the outside world is way big for him and he is continuously being treed by rampaging cats. Gary can climb a tree like a tiny little lumber jack, all nimble and full of purpose. Gary gets pretty lonely up in that little crawl space. One time, his sister (Fiona, normal sized, lives in Vancouver) brought her newborn over to keep Gary company. While it was with best intentions that she left the infant with him, the baby was not happy being in the dusty, dark, insulation filled space and continually wailed. And honestly, what the hell was Gary supposed to do about that? He's six inches tall for fuck's sake.
As he's lonely and doesn't have many friends, Gary is constantly snatching snapshots from occupants of the apartment building and creating a photo-collage on his one foot walls. I know somewhere up there that there's a picture of the nine year old me shaking hands with a man in a Dale (of Chip 'N Dale fame) suit. Actually it could be Chip, I could never tell the difference.
Most of the time, I'm okay with his decorating schemes, but at my most paranoid I get concerned that he's using his Gary powers on the pictures to turn us residents into a zombie army that he can command. Sometimes I think I hear him whispering plans through his floor, my ceiling. I can rarely catch what he's actually saying, but I've got ideas.
The other day I made Gary a mix tape and placed it in the little hole in our ceiling that's in the closet. Because I thought it was funny, I included "Gary's Got A Boner" by The Replacements on the second side. I hope he likes it.
Friday, April 27, 2007
Thursday, April 26, 2007
Push In, Then Pull One Side Out
I had this moment walking home last night where I momentarily closed my eyes to reset things and when I opened them again...
There weren't any cars passing on the street for a brief moment. There was no one else on the sidewalk. The stores seemed closed and the gravel lot I was passing was devoid of cars. The gray suddenly popped with a vibrancy that begged to be noticed, and I had that strange sort of powerful feeling when you realize that you're alone; alone and calm and comfortable.
There didn't seem to be a need to force myself to breathe, it just happened. And as crazy as that seems, it took a whole load off of my mind. Had I known that the mood was going to shift so violently I may have taken a moment to sit in that gravel lot and watch the thick tangle of clouds blow coldly by for a little while.
And now this free floating anger that wants to take root and shove my tongue around, make a mockery of my typing fingers. I've learned that trying to wrestle with it is a lot like one of those Chinese Finger Traps, the more I throw punches against it, the harder it's going to hold on.
Thank you iPod for bringing up Tom Waits' "Table Top Joe" just now. That settles things down, puts things into perspective.
I'm trying to not to wish, that like the president, I had a front of men to take my falls for me.
I'm trying to forget the fact that various television programs showed footage of a toddler being creamed by a Colorado State football player over and over and over and over and over again. I'm trying to forget that this means that either the media, or the television watching masses, enjoys watching four year olds put into mortal danger - and apparently likes to watch it again and again.
I'm trying to imagine myself somewhere else besides this soul crushing job. Perhaps I’m listening to that light crunch of my feet shuffling through an empty gravel lot. But when I look up, expecting to see a chain link fence and a train yard, I see water. The gravel in the lot has become the small stone beach of Hood Canal. I know the house my grandparents used to own is behind me. I can hear and smell the bonfire back behind me and to the left. But I don't want to look back just yet.
I want to watch the water lay lazily with the muted evening sun lounging about all around it, I want to see the small waves birthed at the passing of a ski boat lightly slap the waterlogged piling sticking out of the beach like a finger. I can hear raucous laughter back by the fire, but I still don't want to look back just yet.
I want to see the lights slowly waking up across the water, I want to see the fires over there grow brighter with the coming night. I can see two kids out in a rowboat a couple hundred yards from shore, the bulk of their conversation eaten by the briny water on its way to the beach here so that only hard consonants and laughs survive the trip. I can hear Bif and Riley coming down to the beach from a house they've never been to, Bif talking to him all fake seriously and he's chuckling with that dry coughing sound he gets when he's tickled.
I want to look back now...
There weren't any cars passing on the street for a brief moment. There was no one else on the sidewalk. The stores seemed closed and the gravel lot I was passing was devoid of cars. The gray suddenly popped with a vibrancy that begged to be noticed, and I had that strange sort of powerful feeling when you realize that you're alone; alone and calm and comfortable.
There didn't seem to be a need to force myself to breathe, it just happened. And as crazy as that seems, it took a whole load off of my mind. Had I known that the mood was going to shift so violently I may have taken a moment to sit in that gravel lot and watch the thick tangle of clouds blow coldly by for a little while.
And now this free floating anger that wants to take root and shove my tongue around, make a mockery of my typing fingers. I've learned that trying to wrestle with it is a lot like one of those Chinese Finger Traps, the more I throw punches against it, the harder it's going to hold on.
Thank you iPod for bringing up Tom Waits' "Table Top Joe" just now. That settles things down, puts things into perspective.
I'm trying to not to wish, that like the president, I had a front of men to take my falls for me.
I'm trying to forget the fact that various television programs showed footage of a toddler being creamed by a Colorado State football player over and over and over and over and over again. I'm trying to forget that this means that either the media, or the television watching masses, enjoys watching four year olds put into mortal danger - and apparently likes to watch it again and again.
I'm trying to imagine myself somewhere else besides this soul crushing job. Perhaps I’m listening to that light crunch of my feet shuffling through an empty gravel lot. But when I look up, expecting to see a chain link fence and a train yard, I see water. The gravel in the lot has become the small stone beach of Hood Canal. I know the house my grandparents used to own is behind me. I can hear and smell the bonfire back behind me and to the left. But I don't want to look back just yet.
I want to watch the water lay lazily with the muted evening sun lounging about all around it, I want to see the small waves birthed at the passing of a ski boat lightly slap the waterlogged piling sticking out of the beach like a finger. I can hear raucous laughter back by the fire, but I still don't want to look back just yet.
I want to see the lights slowly waking up across the water, I want to see the fires over there grow brighter with the coming night. I can see two kids out in a rowboat a couple hundred yards from shore, the bulk of their conversation eaten by the briny water on its way to the beach here so that only hard consonants and laughs survive the trip. I can hear Bif and Riley coming down to the beach from a house they've never been to, Bif talking to him all fake seriously and he's chuckling with that dry coughing sound he gets when he's tickled.
I want to look back now...
Wednesday, April 25, 2007
Goodbye Ranting Post, Goodbye Bowling
Oh sweet Jeebus. I was writing a diatribe about the hippies and how most youthful rebellion seems fashionable and not really a philosophy, and was boring the piss out of myself.
The summation:
1) Hippies were peddling a lifestyle of not working, drug ingestion and all the sex you could eat. Fuck yes, sign me up, but don't try to convince me that ALL hippies were trying to change the world - if it wasn't fun, they wouldn't have done it.
2) Those "fighting the good fight" today seem to have this exasperating flock mentality of not really thinking for themselves but just taking up the argument that's in fashion. It feels good to get self righteously angry about something and it must feel even better to have hundreds of people who dress like you feel the same way.
Let's leave it that shall we, move onto something that doesn't in itself sound so self righteously angry. Let's talk about Glo-Zone!
Last night was the final evening of throwing rocks for the bowling league, and it was celebrated with free pizza and black light bowling. The "better ingredients, better pizza" was adequate in that it was free and kept me fulfilled food-wise while I bowled in an environment similar to a CSI agent looking for semen on a bedspread.
It's not easy to bowl well inside a cut rate rave, particularly when the flashy light machines occasionally get in your eyes, but bowling well is not necessarily the point with glo-zone. Add to the festivities your fellow leaguesters singing karaoke (including, Jeebus help us, "Living On A Prayer"), well you're lucky to break a hundred.
For what was supposed to be a laid back and fun bit of finishing up the league, many people were going at their bowling with furrowed brows and tight lipped countenance that spoke of a particularly puritanical upbringing or a mad desire to evacuate the bowels. It was up to our group of miscreants to liven things up. And liven things up we did.
Pitchers of Belgian ale, vastly inappropriate dance moves, partial nudity, touches that most people in kind society would consider molestation... We made it ours and screw those who can't stand the shocking view of our good times. Surprisingly, I walked out of the alley by 10pm and sober, which was a considerable difference compared to the rest of the season.
I also walked out with a trophy for best handicap game of 289, and it was actually my trophy. Goodbye Bowling Night, I'll miss you.
Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: “Station To Station” by David Bowie. That disco section is giving me a chub.
The summation:
1) Hippies were peddling a lifestyle of not working, drug ingestion and all the sex you could eat. Fuck yes, sign me up, but don't try to convince me that ALL hippies were trying to change the world - if it wasn't fun, they wouldn't have done it.
2) Those "fighting the good fight" today seem to have this exasperating flock mentality of not really thinking for themselves but just taking up the argument that's in fashion. It feels good to get self righteously angry about something and it must feel even better to have hundreds of people who dress like you feel the same way.
Let's leave it that shall we, move onto something that doesn't in itself sound so self righteously angry. Let's talk about Glo-Zone!
Last night was the final evening of throwing rocks for the bowling league, and it was celebrated with free pizza and black light bowling. The "better ingredients, better pizza" was adequate in that it was free and kept me fulfilled food-wise while I bowled in an environment similar to a CSI agent looking for semen on a bedspread.
It's not easy to bowl well inside a cut rate rave, particularly when the flashy light machines occasionally get in your eyes, but bowling well is not necessarily the point with glo-zone. Add to the festivities your fellow leaguesters singing karaoke (including, Jeebus help us, "Living On A Prayer"), well you're lucky to break a hundred.
For what was supposed to be a laid back and fun bit of finishing up the league, many people were going at their bowling with furrowed brows and tight lipped countenance that spoke of a particularly puritanical upbringing or a mad desire to evacuate the bowels. It was up to our group of miscreants to liven things up. And liven things up we did.
Pitchers of Belgian ale, vastly inappropriate dance moves, partial nudity, touches that most people in kind society would consider molestation... We made it ours and screw those who can't stand the shocking view of our good times. Surprisingly, I walked out of the alley by 10pm and sober, which was a considerable difference compared to the rest of the season.
I also walked out with a trophy for best handicap game of 289, and it was actually my trophy. Goodbye Bowling Night, I'll miss you.
Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: “Station To Station” by David Bowie. That disco section is giving me a chub.
Tuesday, April 24, 2007
Bill Burroughs Comes To Customer Relations
Meetings, they're a fertile breeding ground of business language, a consistently growing and nonsensical lexicon of words and phrases that should never see the light of day. They're like those types of fish that live in one body of water but then get pulled into the bilge pumps of cruise ships only to find their way to waters where swinging baby boomers take a tram from the boat out to a souvenir stand and say they've traveled. These types of fish then end up taking over their new watery home due to not having natural predators.
These business words are a lot like that. They escape the fluorescent lit confines of meeting rooms only to enter into our everyday lingo and propagate. There are "shifting paradigms" out there, there are people thinking "outside of the box", there are people who need to make their families "action items" before they enter into their conscious. In a correctly working ecosystem, someone should be hunting these words down and eating them, using their vowels and consonants for folk art.
The meeting I sat through today did not birth any new mutants to the language, but someone said something very business-ese that made me shiver a little bit: they're going to imbed some messaging into the new training tools.
This brought to mind subliminal messages. This brought to mind updating the operating system. This brought to mind programming your wage slaves through seemingly innocuous words drilled in during training.
This also brought to mind the mistakes that could happen if the wrong messaging was imbedded. Suddenly you have an entire platoon of cube soldiers taking to the streets in a festive, pant less, dance party every time the word "pre-emptive" is used. They end up blocking single passenger car traffic for hours and stopping deliveries of overnighted parcels. And while yes, there would be plenty of people out there livid with the situation, screaming into their internet accessible cell phones, I have to say a lot may in fact be thrilled with such a joyous party situation.
Confidential to Panda Girl: While I was brushing my teeth this morning, I thought to myself, “Why aren’t we in a long distance band together?”
These business words are a lot like that. They escape the fluorescent lit confines of meeting rooms only to enter into our everyday lingo and propagate. There are "shifting paradigms" out there, there are people thinking "outside of the box", there are people who need to make their families "action items" before they enter into their conscious. In a correctly working ecosystem, someone should be hunting these words down and eating them, using their vowels and consonants for folk art.
The meeting I sat through today did not birth any new mutants to the language, but someone said something very business-ese that made me shiver a little bit: they're going to imbed some messaging into the new training tools.
This brought to mind subliminal messages. This brought to mind updating the operating system. This brought to mind programming your wage slaves through seemingly innocuous words drilled in during training.
This also brought to mind the mistakes that could happen if the wrong messaging was imbedded. Suddenly you have an entire platoon of cube soldiers taking to the streets in a festive, pant less, dance party every time the word "pre-emptive" is used. They end up blocking single passenger car traffic for hours and stopping deliveries of overnighted parcels. And while yes, there would be plenty of people out there livid with the situation, screaming into their internet accessible cell phones, I have to say a lot may in fact be thrilled with such a joyous party situation.
Confidential to Panda Girl: While I was brushing my teeth this morning, I thought to myself, “Why aren’t we in a long distance band together?”
Monday, April 23, 2007
Goodbye Theater Show, Hello Air Show
We closed the show Saturday to many laughs, a few tears and a metric ton of recyclable glass that had once contained alcoholic beverages. This show was particularly fun to do and the audiences, save one damn night, were generally kind and boisterous, and so it is in fact a little sad to see this show come to an end.
We the cast managed to leave without any real permanent damage, not much anyway. Sarah took a painful looking faceplant in the green room when she attempted to jump over my legs; she said she was okay, but I still see her ungraceful, slow motion fall in my dreams. Oh, and I got a splinter during strike when I was helping in dismantling the set.
All things considered, I managed to keep myself in control during the post show party; if by "all things" you mean my desire to push a good time to its inevitable breaking point. I had some beers, a splash of whiskey, danced badly (which was appropriate for the music selections) and sang even worse. But still, I did not get home until almost 4.
Enter into a sunny morning, a shrieking child. Riley was not having a good morning apparently. Perhaps he felt bad for a headachy and physically exhausted dad, but I doubt it; the kid's cute and everything, but kinda self absorbed... While Bif was taking a yoga class, I attempted all the tried and tested tricks to keep a screaming baby from doing just that, but to no avail.
The television played only the news, because I could not find the remote. And what I learned a number of times from the news was that a Blue Angel crashed during an air show in North Carolina. I have to believe that air shows in North Carolina go over like “Dark Star” at a Dead show.
Which is well by the way, I realize not all of you out there are going to get a Deadhead reference.
I have mentioned before, loudly, my confusion as to what the purpose of the Blue Angels is besides a promotional tool for those mixed up enough to believe that you get to do something cool like that when you join the military. I'm assuming that they dazzle the enemy into submission with their aviation tricks, and barring that they'll just crash into a neighborhood. Sorry, too soon. When I let down my sardonic shield for a couple minutes I began to feel bad for the young, dead pilot and his family and friends.
And then the newscasters asked, "what does this mean for Seafair?" a number of times. Seafair is the Seattle version of the "Dark Star" air show; plane tricks and drunken boaters clogging the waterways for a weekend in August. There was no moment of empathy for this guy who plummeted through a neighborhood and into the ground in a few tons of fast moving steel, it just became, "what does this mean for OUR air show."
Perspective folks: some kid is dead from performing million dollar tricks for gaping-mouthed crowds of sunburned yokels, drunk on cheap beer. Maybe give it a day before we ponder the future of Seafair like some spoiled 2 year old screaming over another kid who got a rootbeer popsicle.
I’m still a little worn out from the weekend…
We the cast managed to leave without any real permanent damage, not much anyway. Sarah took a painful looking faceplant in the green room when she attempted to jump over my legs; she said she was okay, but I still see her ungraceful, slow motion fall in my dreams. Oh, and I got a splinter during strike when I was helping in dismantling the set.
All things considered, I managed to keep myself in control during the post show party; if by "all things" you mean my desire to push a good time to its inevitable breaking point. I had some beers, a splash of whiskey, danced badly (which was appropriate for the music selections) and sang even worse. But still, I did not get home until almost 4.
Enter into a sunny morning, a shrieking child. Riley was not having a good morning apparently. Perhaps he felt bad for a headachy and physically exhausted dad, but I doubt it; the kid's cute and everything, but kinda self absorbed... While Bif was taking a yoga class, I attempted all the tried and tested tricks to keep a screaming baby from doing just that, but to no avail.
The television played only the news, because I could not find the remote. And what I learned a number of times from the news was that a Blue Angel crashed during an air show in North Carolina. I have to believe that air shows in North Carolina go over like “Dark Star” at a Dead show.
Which is well by the way, I realize not all of you out there are going to get a Deadhead reference.
I have mentioned before, loudly, my confusion as to what the purpose of the Blue Angels is besides a promotional tool for those mixed up enough to believe that you get to do something cool like that when you join the military. I'm assuming that they dazzle the enemy into submission with their aviation tricks, and barring that they'll just crash into a neighborhood. Sorry, too soon. When I let down my sardonic shield for a couple minutes I began to feel bad for the young, dead pilot and his family and friends.
And then the newscasters asked, "what does this mean for Seafair?" a number of times. Seafair is the Seattle version of the "Dark Star" air show; plane tricks and drunken boaters clogging the waterways for a weekend in August. There was no moment of empathy for this guy who plummeted through a neighborhood and into the ground in a few tons of fast moving steel, it just became, "what does this mean for OUR air show."
Perspective folks: some kid is dead from performing million dollar tricks for gaping-mouthed crowds of sunburned yokels, drunk on cheap beer. Maybe give it a day before we ponder the future of Seafair like some spoiled 2 year old screaming over another kid who got a rootbeer popsicle.
I’m still a little worn out from the weekend…
Friday, April 20, 2007
They Call Him...
Can we talk about Flipper for a second? I'm gonna come straight out and say that I don't believe that he really was faster than lightening. Pretty quick? Sure, especially in his watery domain, but not faster than lightning certainly.
We started talking about Flipper at work here for some reason that I'm not really at liberty to explain. I know I watched it - kids with a park ranger dad and a dolphin (it's got hit all over hit) - but I honestly could not remember what the damn show was about save for that 9 word synopsis. Jennifer swears up and down that Flipper help solved crimes, which I find ludicrous. These so called crimes would all have to be water crimes would they not? I mean Flipper's not foiling bank robbers with his tail dancing and jumping for mackerel. No, no, Flipper's apparently busy stopping manatee poachers and pirates, nosing the occasional shark in the gills.
Jennifer said Flipper once stopped a boat by jumping all around it. I call bullshit. If you're a hardened water criminal, there's no way a frolicking dolphin is going to stop you.
I think the show creator's missed a golden opportunity here, follow me. Flipper is actually a military research dolphin that has escaped captivity only to be found by this well-meaning park ranger and his motherless sons. Flipper is hyper intelligent, as it says in the song, "no one you see, is smarter than he." Of course the song also says that he's faster than lightning. But wait! What if he actually was faster than lightning due to military experiments.
Flipper eventually figures out how to walk on land, and then how to use rudimentary tools. Then he learns how to design and build his own tools using the forge, lathe and oxy-acetylene welding torch in the ranger's garage. He's still out there solving the occasional crimes, but he makes it look like the kids actually foiled the bank robbers, or drug dealers, or eco terrorists. Occasionally, Flipper gets confused – what between his super intelligence and the military brain washing – and lures a pretty, naked chick out to the water only to drown her.
But Flipper’s crime fighting ways are beginning to garner attention from shadowy military figures still on the lookout for their missing dolphin project ZX-2119 and the chase is on.
Flipper is working on his eventual escape from his former tormentors, and from the ragingly stupid family he's ended up with. There will of course need to be a hostage situation where Flipper is forced to use the younger kid as a shield against his gun waiving old trainer who will scream, "he's been trained to find wonders under, under the sea! If we let him go he'll take over the world! It needs to end right here!"
I'm not going to ruin the ending for you.
Except to tell you that the older brother is forced to stab Flipper, with the very stabbing tool Flipper himself made and presented to the boy for a birthday present, in order to save his younger brother. The shadowy military figures slowly disappear with vague whispers of other projects involving sea otters. The two boys and their ranger dad lay Flipper to rest out in the sea and as the bloody body sinks to the bottom, we see the Son of Flipper cavorting with the corpse before leaping to the surface with a hellish dolphin squeal.
Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: The theme from Flipper. It’s my own fault really.
We started talking about Flipper at work here for some reason that I'm not really at liberty to explain. I know I watched it - kids with a park ranger dad and a dolphin (it's got hit all over hit) - but I honestly could not remember what the damn show was about save for that 9 word synopsis. Jennifer swears up and down that Flipper help solved crimes, which I find ludicrous. These so called crimes would all have to be water crimes would they not? I mean Flipper's not foiling bank robbers with his tail dancing and jumping for mackerel. No, no, Flipper's apparently busy stopping manatee poachers and pirates, nosing the occasional shark in the gills.
Jennifer said Flipper once stopped a boat by jumping all around it. I call bullshit. If you're a hardened water criminal, there's no way a frolicking dolphin is going to stop you.
I think the show creator's missed a golden opportunity here, follow me. Flipper is actually a military research dolphin that has escaped captivity only to be found by this well-meaning park ranger and his motherless sons. Flipper is hyper intelligent, as it says in the song, "no one you see, is smarter than he." Of course the song also says that he's faster than lightning. But wait! What if he actually was faster than lightning due to military experiments.
Flipper eventually figures out how to walk on land, and then how to use rudimentary tools. Then he learns how to design and build his own tools using the forge, lathe and oxy-acetylene welding torch in the ranger's garage. He's still out there solving the occasional crimes, but he makes it look like the kids actually foiled the bank robbers, or drug dealers, or eco terrorists. Occasionally, Flipper gets confused – what between his super intelligence and the military brain washing – and lures a pretty, naked chick out to the water only to drown her.
But Flipper’s crime fighting ways are beginning to garner attention from shadowy military figures still on the lookout for their missing dolphin project ZX-2119 and the chase is on.
Flipper is working on his eventual escape from his former tormentors, and from the ragingly stupid family he's ended up with. There will of course need to be a hostage situation where Flipper is forced to use the younger kid as a shield against his gun waiving old trainer who will scream, "he's been trained to find wonders under, under the sea! If we let him go he'll take over the world! It needs to end right here!"
I'm not going to ruin the ending for you.
Except to tell you that the older brother is forced to stab Flipper, with the very stabbing tool Flipper himself made and presented to the boy for a birthday present, in order to save his younger brother. The shadowy military figures slowly disappear with vague whispers of other projects involving sea otters. The two boys and their ranger dad lay Flipper to rest out in the sea and as the bloody body sinks to the bottom, we see the Son of Flipper cavorting with the corpse before leaping to the surface with a hellish dolphin squeal.
Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: The theme from Flipper. It’s my own fault really.
Thursday, April 19, 2007
Porches
For some reason, all I can think about today is sitting on a porch, quiet and easy. A number of porches great and small trundle through my head.
I think of a screened in porch in Dos Rios. It's cold and raining and I'm walking back and forth playing guitar to the thundering sound of the river below. I also think of that same porch some warm, warm night and eating nachos and talking and laughing that heavy, dizzying laughter with the sort of relaxation that comes with fierce love and a well played buzz.
I think of stooping it up in New Orleans, a plastic cup of whisky and shredded lettuce in my hand and things about to tip to the hilariously wrong. And me wanting to inhabit my drunken self back then and tell Mercedes that she'd never guess it, but we would both be parents to infants in a few short years.
I think of hot days sitting on the wooden beams of the porch in Chico, typically with a beer and a smoke. I want to go back to that day I saw Biffy, just barely of adult age, walking off to the laundry room with that smile that makes the world seem okay. I want to tell her that soon I'm going to make her my one and only, that soon everything I knew about love will be tossed out the window for her to re-teach.
I think of sitting on a porch in San Francisco with Corado after a frustrating attempt at playing music together, and after things had sort of fallen apart with our friendship. There was that heavy silence of discomfort and fear of swaying a delicate balance. For some random reason, I wanna go back and tell him that there may come a time when he feels the need to walk backwards up a hill to watch the evening sky over the water fade from electric blue to black, and for fuck's sake he should do it.
And I try to foresee a porch on a house that may one day be mine. I see myself drinking a cup of coffee on a cold morning. I see myself sitting down on one of those glorious spring evenings that just make you feel sexy and softly playing some acoustic guitar. I see friends there for a visit, sitting around in folding chairs and Riley sitting on the steps and laughing at some internal joke he wasn't going to share, music coming from inside (I'm thinking maybe Sonny Boy Williamson) as well as the smell of dinner that's almost done.
It feels good y'all.
I think of a screened in porch in Dos Rios. It's cold and raining and I'm walking back and forth playing guitar to the thundering sound of the river below. I also think of that same porch some warm, warm night and eating nachos and talking and laughing that heavy, dizzying laughter with the sort of relaxation that comes with fierce love and a well played buzz.
I think of stooping it up in New Orleans, a plastic cup of whisky and shredded lettuce in my hand and things about to tip to the hilariously wrong. And me wanting to inhabit my drunken self back then and tell Mercedes that she'd never guess it, but we would both be parents to infants in a few short years.
I think of hot days sitting on the wooden beams of the porch in Chico, typically with a beer and a smoke. I want to go back to that day I saw Biffy, just barely of adult age, walking off to the laundry room with that smile that makes the world seem okay. I want to tell her that soon I'm going to make her my one and only, that soon everything I knew about love will be tossed out the window for her to re-teach.
I think of sitting on a porch in San Francisco with Corado after a frustrating attempt at playing music together, and after things had sort of fallen apart with our friendship. There was that heavy silence of discomfort and fear of swaying a delicate balance. For some random reason, I wanna go back and tell him that there may come a time when he feels the need to walk backwards up a hill to watch the evening sky over the water fade from electric blue to black, and for fuck's sake he should do it.
And I try to foresee a porch on a house that may one day be mine. I see myself drinking a cup of coffee on a cold morning. I see myself sitting down on one of those glorious spring evenings that just make you feel sexy and softly playing some acoustic guitar. I see friends there for a visit, sitting around in folding chairs and Riley sitting on the steps and laughing at some internal joke he wasn't going to share, music coming from inside (I'm thinking maybe Sonny Boy Williamson) as well as the smell of dinner that's almost done.
It feels good y'all.
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
500
Hey there everyone I'm feeling pretty darn good today despite my three in the morning concerns that the Irish Car Bomb I really didn't need was going to make for a fairly hellish morning but I'm feeling good I'm feeling happy and I'm feeling optimistic and I've got two kinda large auditions coming up that I'm actually excited about which is a nice change I spent a couple of minutes talking to my dad this morning who is looking down the barrel of his last day of a job he's spent the last thirty-three years giving his all to and he told me that I was the one who took the brunt of his diving into his job and that he would like to have those years back and do things differently and while a younger version of me would have loved to hear my father squirming and looking for absolution this made me a little sad to know that I could tell him all day long that I know he did the best he could and no longer honestly held any ill will towards him but he still has a chunk of regret in his soul that I never want to experience we shared goodbyes as I was walking past a cathedral in the neighborhood that felt like one of those bits of mise en scene we would talk about in a film class and how wrought with meaning it all was and then I thought about how much I hated it when a fellow student said the words mise en scene and then I looked at the head of some poppies that had yet to bloom and immediately thought about a church running the heroin circus in Seattle and it's fairly amazing how quickly the posts and days pile up like a massive sentence that just keeps running and I'm shooting at the walls of heatache bang bang I'm going to harden my heart I'm going to swallow my tears turn around bright eyes every now and then I fall apart the guy in the ill fitting suit and long greasy hair walking ahead of me I wanted to reach out my hands and give him a pat on the shoulders and tell him to go have a great day and the person who I couldn't tell if they were a handsome woman in a suit or a pretty boy with longish hair so that I had to sneak a second look and would have gone for a third if I wasn't afraid of being caught staring and I wanted to tell them that boy or girl they were beautiful and just all the people I want to tell that it's going to be alright below is a picture I got asking for an image of five hundred I think it's pretty I wonder if the world were really this colorful if we wouldn't get bored of it song stuck in my head right now time by bowie
Tuesday, April 17, 2007
Saved
I got to this interesting nexus of streets, passing all of these fresh faced young ones, so beautiful and affected, waiting in line for a show at The Showbox. To the south was downtown, to the north was Belltown. To the west a setting sun glanced off of the Puget Sound just behind the famous Pike Place Market, to the east sits a methadone clinic.
Now, I will say from the get go, I've never been inside a methadone clinic so I'm only assuming to know what a person in need of said clinic would look like. And while I'm assuming away like a mass assumer, let me say that most of the people I see shambling around those blocks at odd hours, the people without a spark in their eyes and hollow cheeks, the people who have been aged far harder than someone should be, the people that appear to be little more that the walking dead, well I assume that they're the type of person in need of a methadone clinic.
I stood on one corner, waiting for the light to change and release me, when I saw across the street a man with a bible and a bullhorn, a typically dangerous combination. He was kneeling with the shaking shambles of a man who looked as though he called this area home. They knelt on the sidewalk, across the street from a Johnny Rockets diner and any number of shops selling tacky doodads with "Seattle" printed on them, praying intently.
The older man cried and I was captivated. These were not tears of sudden release, not tears of anguish, they reminded me of the smell of a theater. These were well rehearsed tears, tears this man had learned to shed again and again, tears that shone on whiskered cheeks but stood with nothing behind them. He would shake off his performance and begin to stand when the street preacher would gently lower him back to the sidewalk again.
I was unsure who this play was for. The preacher, I'm sure, felt that he was helping a man in need, saving him from his sins. But what about the saved? Was it some sort of conditioned response for him, actions he had learned in missions and shelters before, something that becomes as automatic to the rest of us as drinking water when we're thirsty. Was he trying to make the street preacher feel like he was serving some good?
The preacher finally let the man up and away and I wanted to take him one block to the west, show him the water shining and the snow on the Olympics just beyond that. But I only listened to the hollow bullhorn sound of the words, "another one saved" cut through the PJ Harvey playing in my ears.
Now, I will say from the get go, I've never been inside a methadone clinic so I'm only assuming to know what a person in need of said clinic would look like. And while I'm assuming away like a mass assumer, let me say that most of the people I see shambling around those blocks at odd hours, the people without a spark in their eyes and hollow cheeks, the people who have been aged far harder than someone should be, the people that appear to be little more that the walking dead, well I assume that they're the type of person in need of a methadone clinic.
I stood on one corner, waiting for the light to change and release me, when I saw across the street a man with a bible and a bullhorn, a typically dangerous combination. He was kneeling with the shaking shambles of a man who looked as though he called this area home. They knelt on the sidewalk, across the street from a Johnny Rockets diner and any number of shops selling tacky doodads with "Seattle" printed on them, praying intently.
The older man cried and I was captivated. These were not tears of sudden release, not tears of anguish, they reminded me of the smell of a theater. These were well rehearsed tears, tears this man had learned to shed again and again, tears that shone on whiskered cheeks but stood with nothing behind them. He would shake off his performance and begin to stand when the street preacher would gently lower him back to the sidewalk again.
I was unsure who this play was for. The preacher, I'm sure, felt that he was helping a man in need, saving him from his sins. But what about the saved? Was it some sort of conditioned response for him, actions he had learned in missions and shelters before, something that becomes as automatic to the rest of us as drinking water when we're thirsty. Was he trying to make the street preacher feel like he was serving some good?
The preacher finally let the man up and away and I wanted to take him one block to the west, show him the water shining and the snow on the Olympics just beyond that. But I only listened to the hollow bullhorn sound of the words, "another one saved" cut through the PJ Harvey playing in my ears.
Monday, April 16, 2007
It's A Dad One
I didn't want to turn this blog into a big "I'm a dad" fest. But as being a father is now one of the biggest factors of my life, it is understandably going to sneak in from time to time. Today's is going to focus on fatherhood, fatherhood and Frosted Mini-Wheats.
Here is the little man about to be fed to a pack of wild tulips:
We were backstage just before going out to do one of the roughest evenings of theater I have ever experienced; rough, rough audience - seriously had knives and socks filled with nickels... rough. Anyway, one of my fellow actors asked if I had gone to see Grindhouse and my reply was that no, my movie going days are pretty much on hold for the time being. She asked why, I let her know that I had a 4 1/2 month old at home, and she gave me that same look I tend to get when people hear I have a child. It's a raw look of sheer disbelief, a look that succinctly asks, "You? You're responsible for a child?"
I also find that after the shock has worn off, and when people stop to think about it a little, they come back with a, "I bet you're a good dad."
Well, I'm hoping so, I'm trying. I thought about it yesterday and realized that in the movie of my life, I never want to have that hackneyed moment of telling my grown child, "I know I wasn't a good father." If there's nothing else I can do for Riley, besides trying to show him that life is a grand and funny adventure, it's to have him know that he is loved and loved fiercely.
The list of things breaking my heart at the moment:
Him going from full on scream to focused attention when I come into his room and play a little acoustic guitar.
The soft little murmurs and clicks that are his hard fought proto words. (The new development of the high pitched shriek can be phased out though).
That smile that would have me running full bore into unrelenting danger just to see him do it again.
Oh yeah, and Frosted Mini-Wheats... I like 'em. It was honestly a bit of a ruse, I didn't have anything about Frosted Mini-Wheats.
Here is the little man about to be fed to a pack of wild tulips:
We were backstage just before going out to do one of the roughest evenings of theater I have ever experienced; rough, rough audience - seriously had knives and socks filled with nickels... rough. Anyway, one of my fellow actors asked if I had gone to see Grindhouse and my reply was that no, my movie going days are pretty much on hold for the time being. She asked why, I let her know that I had a 4 1/2 month old at home, and she gave me that same look I tend to get when people hear I have a child. It's a raw look of sheer disbelief, a look that succinctly asks, "You? You're responsible for a child?"
I also find that after the shock has worn off, and when people stop to think about it a little, they come back with a, "I bet you're a good dad."
Well, I'm hoping so, I'm trying. I thought about it yesterday and realized that in the movie of my life, I never want to have that hackneyed moment of telling my grown child, "I know I wasn't a good father." If there's nothing else I can do for Riley, besides trying to show him that life is a grand and funny adventure, it's to have him know that he is loved and loved fiercely.
The list of things breaking my heart at the moment:
Him going from full on scream to focused attention when I come into his room and play a little acoustic guitar.
The soft little murmurs and clicks that are his hard fought proto words. (The new development of the high pitched shriek can be phased out though).
That smile that would have me running full bore into unrelenting danger just to see him do it again.
Oh yeah, and Frosted Mini-Wheats... I like 'em. It was honestly a bit of a ruse, I didn't have anything about Frosted Mini-Wheats.
Friday, April 13, 2007
Alabanas Saves The World
Alabanas kept with him a child like sense of humor well into his now late twenties. In fact his real name was Nathan, but like a funny yet obstinate child, he insisted everyone call him Alabanas. Some people thought it was his silly way when he simply would not answer to Nathan, they thought he was just being funny, but he had honestly forgotten that Nathan was the name that he was born with.
A huge fan of practical jokes, Alabanas would go to incredible lengths to trick or surprise his friends, sometimes even complete strangers. In fact just now, he had spent about seven hours in the two hundred yard stretch of woods behind his apartment complex digging a hole. Alabanas went out there with a shovel just as dawn was dawning and persistently dug a shallow hole into a slight hill, just big enough for him to crawl into.
The original plan was to create this make shift cave, cover the opening with moss and turf and huckleberry bushes, hide inside (for hours if necessary) only to jump out and scare Eliza when she would inevitably come out to the woods looking for him. Oh man, it was a great plan, he would laugh until he couldn't breathe anymore.
It may be a good time to mention that Alabanas had a fairly serious problem with his short term memory, he would up and forget things just like that. Some people thought that he was genetically predisposed to this, his mom had gone a bit off and had to be locked up for awhile. Some people thought that this damage to his memory was from the massive amount of psychotropic drugs he had ingested in his teens. Maybe it was a mix of the two, but the issue is that Alabanas had dug his hole, had crawled inside to wait, and had immediately forgotten the point of this whole endeavor. Alabanas also had a pretty lively imagination which tended to jump out and fill in the spaces of memory decay.
Napping a bit after the hard work of digging a hole, Alabanas awoke wondering why the fuck he was hidden away in a wet hole in the dirt. And then he remembered; the Falggerjuhns, a vicious breed of humanoid like creatures from a planet 4 galaxies away, had taken over Earth. He was the only human left alive for all he knew and it was up to him to rescue the world.
Oh yeah, Nathan cum Alabanas also had delusions of grandeur. He jumped up from the breakfast table one morning and ran shouting through the streets that he was the true son of God. Thankfully, he forgot all this about ten minutes later.
But now he crouched below a thin shelf of soil, eyeing out through the thin camouflage of shrubbery that he had made, looking for those foul beasts with five arms and a head made up mostly of a pulsing eyeball. He would not let the Falggerjuhns take him and make him a slave in their sex mines; Falggerjuhn sex involved a lot of raw, ripped open flesh. He would not go down without a fight, he would do his best to drive the alien scum from his planet.
He moved slowly, trying not to make a sound that would alert a Falggerjuhn scout, and reached into his pocket to search for any kind of weapon he may be carrying. He felt the pocket knife that he kept stashed in his pants and slowly, quietly, pulled it out of his pocket and opened the blade. He suddenly smiled a vicious smile, he could hear one of them coming up the path towards him...
A huge fan of practical jokes, Alabanas would go to incredible lengths to trick or surprise his friends, sometimes even complete strangers. In fact just now, he had spent about seven hours in the two hundred yard stretch of woods behind his apartment complex digging a hole. Alabanas went out there with a shovel just as dawn was dawning and persistently dug a shallow hole into a slight hill, just big enough for him to crawl into.
The original plan was to create this make shift cave, cover the opening with moss and turf and huckleberry bushes, hide inside (for hours if necessary) only to jump out and scare Eliza when she would inevitably come out to the woods looking for him. Oh man, it was a great plan, he would laugh until he couldn't breathe anymore.
It may be a good time to mention that Alabanas had a fairly serious problem with his short term memory, he would up and forget things just like that. Some people thought that he was genetically predisposed to this, his mom had gone a bit off and had to be locked up for awhile. Some people thought that this damage to his memory was from the massive amount of psychotropic drugs he had ingested in his teens. Maybe it was a mix of the two, but the issue is that Alabanas had dug his hole, had crawled inside to wait, and had immediately forgotten the point of this whole endeavor. Alabanas also had a pretty lively imagination which tended to jump out and fill in the spaces of memory decay.
Napping a bit after the hard work of digging a hole, Alabanas awoke wondering why the fuck he was hidden away in a wet hole in the dirt. And then he remembered; the Falggerjuhns, a vicious breed of humanoid like creatures from a planet 4 galaxies away, had taken over Earth. He was the only human left alive for all he knew and it was up to him to rescue the world.
Oh yeah, Nathan cum Alabanas also had delusions of grandeur. He jumped up from the breakfast table one morning and ran shouting through the streets that he was the true son of God. Thankfully, he forgot all this about ten minutes later.
But now he crouched below a thin shelf of soil, eyeing out through the thin camouflage of shrubbery that he had made, looking for those foul beasts with five arms and a head made up mostly of a pulsing eyeball. He would not let the Falggerjuhns take him and make him a slave in their sex mines; Falggerjuhn sex involved a lot of raw, ripped open flesh. He would not go down without a fight, he would do his best to drive the alien scum from his planet.
He moved slowly, trying not to make a sound that would alert a Falggerjuhn scout, and reached into his pocket to search for any kind of weapon he may be carrying. He felt the pocket knife that he kept stashed in his pants and slowly, quietly, pulled it out of his pocket and opened the blade. He suddenly smiled a vicious smile, he could hear one of them coming up the path towards him...
Thursday, April 12, 2007
Bye Kurt
So Bif cuddled up next to me this morning after putting Riley back down to sleep and whispered to me that Kurt Vonnegut had passed on. I let the news sit for a second, and then thought, "well, he's been wanting to go for awhile."
I can't say that Mr. Vonnegut's passing will effect me in any huge way, but his work certainly did.
When I was 18, out on my own, not realizing that I didn't need to struggle to find my identity (but struggle I did), I got my first real taste of Kurt Vonnegut. I had certainly heard of him, vague whispers of books condemned to banned lists and this masterpiece called Slaughterhouse Five which was even mentioned in Footloose, but even though I went to high school in a fairly forward thinking part of the world, no one seemed brave enough to teach it just yet.
Dave came down from the university while I was working in a gas station and going to Saddleback Community College. He sat by the pool reading Cat's Cradle by our man Kurt. I asked if it was any good and he gave me a brief rundown on the plot. I filed it away under "Things A College Person Reads" for future perusal when I needed to be reminded of what I was supposed to be doing.
Not long after, I was searching out reading material at the bookstore and remembered about Mr. Vonnegut. They didn't have Cat's Cradle, so I picked up a copy of Breakfast of Champions.
Breakfast of Champions blew my mind. Literally, it was as if Kurt Vonnegut crawled into my head and gave my brain a blow job. It hadn't dawned on me until that moment that you could fuck with literary structure in any damn way you felt like, suddenly there were no rules. I look back at that first reading of Breakfast of Champions as the first timid steps through a gate and onto a wildly overgrown path I would do cartwheels down
I began to delete the "Things A College Person Reads" and "Things A College Person Listens To" files.
Every time I went to visit other works by Mr. Vonnegut, it always felt like I was being invited along by a friend. A friend with a wicked sense of humor, a friend who was a little sad at being able to see all the wrong there was, a friend who understood the frailty of people but also got the triumph, a friend with that sparkle in his eye that just gave you kick to the heart.
Thank you Kurt, for doing what you did.
I can't say that Mr. Vonnegut's passing will effect me in any huge way, but his work certainly did.
When I was 18, out on my own, not realizing that I didn't need to struggle to find my identity (but struggle I did), I got my first real taste of Kurt Vonnegut. I had certainly heard of him, vague whispers of books condemned to banned lists and this masterpiece called Slaughterhouse Five which was even mentioned in Footloose, but even though I went to high school in a fairly forward thinking part of the world, no one seemed brave enough to teach it just yet.
Dave came down from the university while I was working in a gas station and going to Saddleback Community College. He sat by the pool reading Cat's Cradle by our man Kurt. I asked if it was any good and he gave me a brief rundown on the plot. I filed it away under "Things A College Person Reads" for future perusal when I needed to be reminded of what I was supposed to be doing.
Not long after, I was searching out reading material at the bookstore and remembered about Mr. Vonnegut. They didn't have Cat's Cradle, so I picked up a copy of Breakfast of Champions.
Breakfast of Champions blew my mind. Literally, it was as if Kurt Vonnegut crawled into my head and gave my brain a blow job. It hadn't dawned on me until that moment that you could fuck with literary structure in any damn way you felt like, suddenly there were no rules. I look back at that first reading of Breakfast of Champions as the first timid steps through a gate and onto a wildly overgrown path I would do cartwheels down
I began to delete the "Things A College Person Reads" and "Things A College Person Listens To" files.
Every time I went to visit other works by Mr. Vonnegut, it always felt like I was being invited along by a friend. A friend with a wicked sense of humor, a friend who was a little sad at being able to see all the wrong there was, a friend who understood the frailty of people but also got the triumph, a friend with that sparkle in his eye that just gave you kick to the heart.
Thank you Kurt, for doing what you did.
Wednesday, April 11, 2007
Just Plenty
I had one of those moments this morning on the way to work, one of those kick in eye moments, one of those moments where you know you're healing.
I once went to a healer, and it was honestly a little more new agey and woo woo than I would normally care to deal with, but I was in a fairly desperate situation. The healing involved my lying down and the healer putting herself into a near trance state. She went through a list of things that she was getting from me and I knew that if there stood a chance for this to work, I needed to let go of preconceptions and leap into this unreserved.
It's difficult to dredge up exact memories of what I was told or what I felt; it's reminiscent of putting yourself wholly into some creative endeavor, where there are only hazy, shadowy memories of what you just did. I was told that in a past life I was myself a powerful healer and had the ability to heal myself. I was told that I was holding onto a mother figure within me, that we had been together for ages and ages, and now it was time to let her go. I remember weeping uncontrollably, the healer asking if I was okay and my shaking voice reassuring her that I was just fine.
The point is, when I feel those moments like this morning, I equate it to something kicking over inside and the healer within me coming forward.
It was the perfect combination of just the right point of "Blame It On The Tetons" by Modest Mouse, and the cold air on my face, and the early pale spring morning sun shyly brushing the bricks around me, and the green shoots of the trees... I was hit by a strong, but far too short feeling of hope. Not the light in the darkness hope, but the remembrance of everyday magic.
Then "I'm A Steady Rollin' Man" by Robert Johnson came on, and I thought to myself, "Yeah, I AM a steady rollin' man."
I reminded myself to hold onto the images of the world shaking itself back to life, hold onto the blinding smile your son flashes you when he sees you first thing in the morning, hold onto your wife telling you that she loves you, hold onto the feelings of love from friends, hold onto the kind words and the even small rewards granted after immense struggle. This is how you heal, by not taking your own life for granted.
Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: "Living On A Prayer" by Bon Jovi. Seriously, it's not funny. My god, it's bad and getting desperate.
I once went to a healer, and it was honestly a little more new agey and woo woo than I would normally care to deal with, but I was in a fairly desperate situation. The healing involved my lying down and the healer putting herself into a near trance state. She went through a list of things that she was getting from me and I knew that if there stood a chance for this to work, I needed to let go of preconceptions and leap into this unreserved.
It's difficult to dredge up exact memories of what I was told or what I felt; it's reminiscent of putting yourself wholly into some creative endeavor, where there are only hazy, shadowy memories of what you just did. I was told that in a past life I was myself a powerful healer and had the ability to heal myself. I was told that I was holding onto a mother figure within me, that we had been together for ages and ages, and now it was time to let her go. I remember weeping uncontrollably, the healer asking if I was okay and my shaking voice reassuring her that I was just fine.
The point is, when I feel those moments like this morning, I equate it to something kicking over inside and the healer within me coming forward.
It was the perfect combination of just the right point of "Blame It On The Tetons" by Modest Mouse, and the cold air on my face, and the early pale spring morning sun shyly brushing the bricks around me, and the green shoots of the trees... I was hit by a strong, but far too short feeling of hope. Not the light in the darkness hope, but the remembrance of everyday magic.
Then "I'm A Steady Rollin' Man" by Robert Johnson came on, and I thought to myself, "Yeah, I AM a steady rollin' man."
I reminded myself to hold onto the images of the world shaking itself back to life, hold onto the blinding smile your son flashes you when he sees you first thing in the morning, hold onto your wife telling you that she loves you, hold onto the feelings of love from friends, hold onto the kind words and the even small rewards granted after immense struggle. This is how you heal, by not taking your own life for granted.
Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: "Living On A Prayer" by Bon Jovi. Seriously, it's not funny. My god, it's bad and getting desperate.
Tuesday, April 10, 2007
Tethered To The Logic
There were childhood obsessions with things like lava rocks (which I grew out of) and sharks (which I did not), and I remember a passing fancy for quicksand as well.
The 7 year old Billy version of quicksand was an almost sentient thing, a pit that patiently awaited some poor traveler, complete with pith helmet, to enter and sink. I imagined the shrieks of the trapped, traveling unnoticed through the jungle swampland. I did a small amount of research on quicksand, and what the 7 year old Billy retained from this, was that quicksand is often made when an underground spring over saturates some sand and turns said turf into a funnel of wet death.
Oh, and I remember quite clearly a pencil drawing of someone caught in quicksand laying on their back with arms in a “Y”. Apparently this is how one survived the death sucking of a pit of quicksand, do an impromptu back float until a boy scout came along with a 2x4 to assist in pulling you out.
Okay, apparently I believed that quicksand pulled you down into the crushing depths of thick wetness, slowly crushing the very life out of you. I imagined being pulled finally into the very underground spring, thick and wet sand flowing from nostrils no longer in use, being pulled along to a dark place that my child's mind feared to ponder.
It was like being pulled to the other side of a black hole... what was there?
I'm now strong enough to know that the quicksand spring created the quicksand in order to pull passerby into it's devious springy-ness, carrying the body to a factory 3 miles below the earth where sightless midgets with 3 arms and antennae harvested the bodies for precious chemicals; chemicals that would be used for warfare with the surface.
I think what still sort of attracts me to the idea of quicksand is the symbolism: A mire that traps within the jungle of the subconscious.
I was more than a little disappointed to find out that there are no known deaths due to quicksand. In fact, one would have to be suicidal and borderline mentally retarded to be killed in quicksand. Apparently quicksand is typically only a couple feet deep, and while struggling can pull one further down, quicksand apparently does not behave like some soil snake sucking you beneath it's gritty mouth. Apparently if you were to just calm your happy ass down, your body would float to the surface.
So, the key to surviving quicksand, and most anything else in life, is to just relax.
The 7 year old Billy version of quicksand was an almost sentient thing, a pit that patiently awaited some poor traveler, complete with pith helmet, to enter and sink. I imagined the shrieks of the trapped, traveling unnoticed through the jungle swampland. I did a small amount of research on quicksand, and what the 7 year old Billy retained from this, was that quicksand is often made when an underground spring over saturates some sand and turns said turf into a funnel of wet death.
Oh, and I remember quite clearly a pencil drawing of someone caught in quicksand laying on their back with arms in a “Y”. Apparently this is how one survived the death sucking of a pit of quicksand, do an impromptu back float until a boy scout came along with a 2x4 to assist in pulling you out.
Okay, apparently I believed that quicksand pulled you down into the crushing depths of thick wetness, slowly crushing the very life out of you. I imagined being pulled finally into the very underground spring, thick and wet sand flowing from nostrils no longer in use, being pulled along to a dark place that my child's mind feared to ponder.
It was like being pulled to the other side of a black hole... what was there?
I'm now strong enough to know that the quicksand spring created the quicksand in order to pull passerby into it's devious springy-ness, carrying the body to a factory 3 miles below the earth where sightless midgets with 3 arms and antennae harvested the bodies for precious chemicals; chemicals that would be used for warfare with the surface.
I think what still sort of attracts me to the idea of quicksand is the symbolism: A mire that traps within the jungle of the subconscious.
I was more than a little disappointed to find out that there are no known deaths due to quicksand. In fact, one would have to be suicidal and borderline mentally retarded to be killed in quicksand. Apparently quicksand is typically only a couple feet deep, and while struggling can pull one further down, quicksand apparently does not behave like some soil snake sucking you beneath it's gritty mouth. Apparently if you were to just calm your happy ass down, your body would float to the surface.
So, the key to surviving quicksand, and most anything else in life, is to just relax.
Monday, April 09, 2007
I Ain't Got The Power Anymore
There is no due date, no deadline for this thing, yet I feel this near Catholic guilt when I don't post at least close to daily, or in a timely manner. The Catholic guilt could be from this day being so close to the one where Jeebus came to bring the Easter Bunny back from the dead. And even though I've been hellaciously busy today, I still feel bad for not posting in a timely manner. Sometimes I feel like a sick little monkey.
Sometimes I feel like a house frau from Long Island, with one of those loud and annoying voices, sitting in a bathtub with mussed hair, bleeding out of the eyes.
It's interesting that sometimes you don't realize how bad you feel until you look back on the situation. This is how I feel about this weekend. I was still obviously not feeling at the top of my game, but didn't realize how not good I was feeling until now.
The entire weekend seems hazy, which would be fine if I had spent a majority of it swimming in whisky, but I was very prudent with my drinking. I feel like I've spent the last few days quietly in quicksand, perhaps feeling the squeezing pressure but unaware that this is where I was.
It was terrible timing this being buried, as Brandi and Brady and Jill came up for a visit. I barely remember seeing them, which I feel terrible about as there are always great comic moments and probing conversations to be had.
Friends came to the show on Friday, which was nice, and they said nice things, but I cannot judiciously tell you if the show went well or not. Same with Saturday's show; the actors seemed really jazzed about it but, and I think this is when I began to realize that I still wasn't feeling well and not just tired, I really had no way of judging how it went.
I spent most of yesterday with the sort of headache I imagine wished on killers and ambulance chasing lawyers in the 18th level of hell, sometimes nauseous from it, sometimes feverish. Bif at one point asked if it wasn't nice to be feeling better from the cold of last week and I automatically said yes.
But I would rather have a full blown cold than walk around in this codeine haze where I cannot judge highs or lows, where I cannot breathe deep with a smile the rush of wind coming up from the Sound, where I cannot remember clearly spending time with some amazing folks. That's not living.
Sometimes I feel like a house frau from Long Island, with one of those loud and annoying voices, sitting in a bathtub with mussed hair, bleeding out of the eyes.
It's interesting that sometimes you don't realize how bad you feel until you look back on the situation. This is how I feel about this weekend. I was still obviously not feeling at the top of my game, but didn't realize how not good I was feeling until now.
The entire weekend seems hazy, which would be fine if I had spent a majority of it swimming in whisky, but I was very prudent with my drinking. I feel like I've spent the last few days quietly in quicksand, perhaps feeling the squeezing pressure but unaware that this is where I was.
It was terrible timing this being buried, as Brandi and Brady and Jill came up for a visit. I barely remember seeing them, which I feel terrible about as there are always great comic moments and probing conversations to be had.
Friends came to the show on Friday, which was nice, and they said nice things, but I cannot judiciously tell you if the show went well or not. Same with Saturday's show; the actors seemed really jazzed about it but, and I think this is when I began to realize that I still wasn't feeling well and not just tired, I really had no way of judging how it went.
I spent most of yesterday with the sort of headache I imagine wished on killers and ambulance chasing lawyers in the 18th level of hell, sometimes nauseous from it, sometimes feverish. Bif at one point asked if it wasn't nice to be feeling better from the cold of last week and I automatically said yes.
But I would rather have a full blown cold than walk around in this codeine haze where I cannot judge highs or lows, where I cannot breathe deep with a smile the rush of wind coming up from the Sound, where I cannot remember clearly spending time with some amazing folks. That's not living.
Friday, April 06, 2007
Some Hard, Cold Facts
I took a couple of days off to fight a cold. I was doing pretty good I tell you, finally adopting a daily dosage of vitamins (having a kid will make you do the craziest shit - taking vitamins, quit smoking, pretending to eat someone's tummy when you're not playing some perverse, zombie sex game) seemed to have fought off for awhile this plague that circled the office a number of times.
But eventually the bill comes due, and sometimes you earn that bill by drinking a fair amount of whisky and beer while bowling on a Tuesday night. Anyway, although I was perfectly capable of doing so, I didn't write anything the last two days and I apologize.
Some things that occurred to me the last two days:
1) Morning "news"/variety shows still keep up with the pretense that they're offering something of use when in fact they're thinly disguised shills for corporations and a method for celebrities to keep themselves bathing in the waters of exposure. They depress me to no end.
2) I have somehow become more socially acceptable by carrying an infant to the grocery store than I do going there by myself. No one ever stopped to talk to me when I picked up some tater tots on a solo mission. How do these gaping ladies know that I'm not hoisting this kid around to sell for drugs?
3) I could probably get a lot of drugs for a healthy, 4 month old baby.
4) If you were to coat yourself in Vaseline (or a generic brand of petroleum jelly for that matter) and then walked a long distance, anytime a passerby spat on you it would run right off of you. But then you'd trap your sweat under a layer of petroleum, and what kind of trade off is that?
5) I've missed you sugar snap peas. Where have you been? Why haven't you reminded me when I have passed you in the produce section that I have missed you? I don't mean to blame you, it's just I feel lame for forgetting.
Honestly, I probably could have used another day to recuperate, my head feels like someone has taken one of those TNT plunger type bicycle pumps and affixed the ball needle adapter and plunged it into my brain. That mad fucker then begins furiously pumping to the strains of "Living On A Prayer". All the while, a fever broke leaving me sweating like... I don't know, something whose soul purpose is to sweat. Anyway, the longer I stay away from this delightful occupation where I get paid to have people yell at me all day, the tougher it becomes to ever go back.
But this weekend is gonna be good weather wise, I've got some fine folks from California coming for a visit and I go back on stage for some more knockin' 'em dead. Look out world, I'm limping towards you.
Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: "The World's A Mess, It's In My Kiss" by X.
But eventually the bill comes due, and sometimes you earn that bill by drinking a fair amount of whisky and beer while bowling on a Tuesday night. Anyway, although I was perfectly capable of doing so, I didn't write anything the last two days and I apologize.
Some things that occurred to me the last two days:
1) Morning "news"/variety shows still keep up with the pretense that they're offering something of use when in fact they're thinly disguised shills for corporations and a method for celebrities to keep themselves bathing in the waters of exposure. They depress me to no end.
2) I have somehow become more socially acceptable by carrying an infant to the grocery store than I do going there by myself. No one ever stopped to talk to me when I picked up some tater tots on a solo mission. How do these gaping ladies know that I'm not hoisting this kid around to sell for drugs?
3) I could probably get a lot of drugs for a healthy, 4 month old baby.
4) If you were to coat yourself in Vaseline (or a generic brand of petroleum jelly for that matter) and then walked a long distance, anytime a passerby spat on you it would run right off of you. But then you'd trap your sweat under a layer of petroleum, and what kind of trade off is that?
5) I've missed you sugar snap peas. Where have you been? Why haven't you reminded me when I have passed you in the produce section that I have missed you? I don't mean to blame you, it's just I feel lame for forgetting.
Honestly, I probably could have used another day to recuperate, my head feels like someone has taken one of those TNT plunger type bicycle pumps and affixed the ball needle adapter and plunged it into my brain. That mad fucker then begins furiously pumping to the strains of "Living On A Prayer". All the while, a fever broke leaving me sweating like... I don't know, something whose soul purpose is to sweat. Anyway, the longer I stay away from this delightful occupation where I get paid to have people yell at me all day, the tougher it becomes to ever go back.
But this weekend is gonna be good weather wise, I've got some fine folks from California coming for a visit and I go back on stage for some more knockin' 'em dead. Look out world, I'm limping towards you.
Song Stuck In My Head Right Now: "The World's A Mess, It's In My Kiss" by X.
Tuesday, April 03, 2007
Before The Beep
I listen to a lot of answering machine messages on a daily basis, and while I'm not exactly a tech whore, I'm always a little bit amazed by when I still hear the older taped answering machines going.
I'm even further amazed by folks leaving their outgoing messages who seem confused by the process or better yet treat it like it was new technology. The other day I was instructed by a voice that sounded as though it were bathed in gin every morning that, "after I'm done talking, there's going to be a beep and then you leave your message after that with your name and your number."
Unless Drinky McGlugGlug there gets a large number of calls from the mentally retarded or people who have figured out how to call in from 1952, the instructions on how to leave a voicemail are not necessary. Most of us have been doing this for over twenty years, back when people actually bought tapes that had someone singing "nobody's home" to the tune of Beethoven's 5th.
Things haven't progressed much past the lame novelty answering machine tapes I'm afraid. Yesterday I was treated to some 19 year old stoner telling me that he and TJ and B Money weren't home, and then he used what I'm assuming is a pawn shop Fender Strat to play a bit of Ozzy's "Crazy Train" to close out that party. I did smile a sad smile thinking about myself at 19, probably doing something similar and just as stoned, but c'mon man... "Crazy Train"?
And now all sorts of people let me listen to music while their magic jukebox phone is finding the person I'm trying to reach. Never have I heard a good song while this is happening. Never. I mean if someone had "Fat Bottom Girls" by Queen as the song to listen to while the person being called was roused from their call-less world, I would celebrate them with a hearty "hell yes!" Even "Hello" by Lionel Richie or Blondie's "Call Me", these would be better choices than anything else I have heard.
My U2 loving roommate in college once left a quite lengthy section of "Numb" by said band on our answering machine. I've made mention of my feelings for U2, and I didn't mind this song, but no one is calling you to listen to a minute 45 of a song; get in, get a cheap laugh if available, get out.
I have not heard a lot of people pushing the voicemail out message envelope, I feel like we're in the 80's hair metal stage of this particular art form. I occasionally hear some playfulness, a snippet from a movie, some adventurous folks playing with the form, but I'm looking for a little more surrealism, a little more absurdity. I think I'm going to leave an outgoing message that is mostly a high pitched scream followed by a muttered list of, "Bertha, nutmeg, plastic jet fuel, keystone", with keystone in a high, sing-songy falsetto, and then a whip crack instead of a beep. If nothing else it may dissuade telemarketers and tele-pollsters from ever calling again.
I just realized how Andy Rooney-esque this posting is. I apologize…
I'm even further amazed by folks leaving their outgoing messages who seem confused by the process or better yet treat it like it was new technology. The other day I was instructed by a voice that sounded as though it were bathed in gin every morning that, "after I'm done talking, there's going to be a beep and then you leave your message after that with your name and your number."
Unless Drinky McGlugGlug there gets a large number of calls from the mentally retarded or people who have figured out how to call in from 1952, the instructions on how to leave a voicemail are not necessary. Most of us have been doing this for over twenty years, back when people actually bought tapes that had someone singing "nobody's home" to the tune of Beethoven's 5th.
Things haven't progressed much past the lame novelty answering machine tapes I'm afraid. Yesterday I was treated to some 19 year old stoner telling me that he and TJ and B Money weren't home, and then he used what I'm assuming is a pawn shop Fender Strat to play a bit of Ozzy's "Crazy Train" to close out that party. I did smile a sad smile thinking about myself at 19, probably doing something similar and just as stoned, but c'mon man... "Crazy Train"?
And now all sorts of people let me listen to music while their magic jukebox phone is finding the person I'm trying to reach. Never have I heard a good song while this is happening. Never. I mean if someone had "Fat Bottom Girls" by Queen as the song to listen to while the person being called was roused from their call-less world, I would celebrate them with a hearty "hell yes!" Even "Hello" by Lionel Richie or Blondie's "Call Me", these would be better choices than anything else I have heard.
My U2 loving roommate in college once left a quite lengthy section of "Numb" by said band on our answering machine. I've made mention of my feelings for U2, and I didn't mind this song, but no one is calling you to listen to a minute 45 of a song; get in, get a cheap laugh if available, get out.
I have not heard a lot of people pushing the voicemail out message envelope, I feel like we're in the 80's hair metal stage of this particular art form. I occasionally hear some playfulness, a snippet from a movie, some adventurous folks playing with the form, but I'm looking for a little more surrealism, a little more absurdity. I think I'm going to leave an outgoing message that is mostly a high pitched scream followed by a muttered list of, "Bertha, nutmeg, plastic jet fuel, keystone", with keystone in a high, sing-songy falsetto, and then a whip crack instead of a beep. If nothing else it may dissuade telemarketers and tele-pollsters from ever calling again.
I just realized how Andy Rooney-esque this posting is. I apologize…
Monday, April 02, 2007
April Showers
I listened to the hail lightly scratch against the bedroom window last night like a furtive, yet strangely persistent animal. It was that persistence that made me look out the open blinds and stare at the amazing amount of water falling in the cone of streetlights, but not anywhere else that my eyes could see. The flag at the post office blew in crazed, epileptic dance moves.
And sat and watched for awhile and thought about the Black Keys blues cover album that Nikki 2 K's lent me. I thought about staying awake for some hours, music in one ear, rain and hail in the other. I equated my life at the moment to lying in a fairly warm bed, dry and with the luxury of thinking about a blues cover album a friend had lent me, while just outside the world raged.
I tried to remember what it felt like in those moments when your life was in a bad place of desperation, when your mistakes manage throw a shadow on the better parts of life. I didn't want to remember the actual days, the actions, I wanted to remember the hollow vortex somewhere between your heart and stomach that drained your soul and left you gasping.
I realized that all the rumpled bedclothes and paid credit card bills, a job that's livable and pays more than the rent, a couple bucks tossed to the homeless guy outside the theater cannot be banked against never experiencing a moment of kick in the face desperation somewhere down the line. There's not a karma savings account that allows you to allay feeling the madness of bad things by paying it off with good deeds done. And then I realized I really didn't want to remember that either.
Sometimes the world's going to knock you around sugar pie. Sometimes that rain and hail is going to unmercifully slap around the tulips just opening up all over the city. And when you can count yourself as lucky enough to be inside when it comes, feel lucky.
It's that eternal yin and yang of living, it can't all be gravy and at times it's gonna hurt. But do the good times outweigh the bad? Fuck yes they do! You get blues covers albums and friends willing to share music that excites them, and you get laughter and beer and lovemaking and resounding shouts of 'yes!' to the heavens. You get those meals that make you curse every meal you've had before for not living up to that one, you get wine, you get Harold and Maude and T. Rex. You get handholding and people who will stand behind you and car rides where the music seems made for the landscape and you get tulips that still stand under the pouring rain and hail.
And sat and watched for awhile and thought about the Black Keys blues cover album that Nikki 2 K's lent me. I thought about staying awake for some hours, music in one ear, rain and hail in the other. I equated my life at the moment to lying in a fairly warm bed, dry and with the luxury of thinking about a blues cover album a friend had lent me, while just outside the world raged.
I tried to remember what it felt like in those moments when your life was in a bad place of desperation, when your mistakes manage throw a shadow on the better parts of life. I didn't want to remember the actual days, the actions, I wanted to remember the hollow vortex somewhere between your heart and stomach that drained your soul and left you gasping.
I realized that all the rumpled bedclothes and paid credit card bills, a job that's livable and pays more than the rent, a couple bucks tossed to the homeless guy outside the theater cannot be banked against never experiencing a moment of kick in the face desperation somewhere down the line. There's not a karma savings account that allows you to allay feeling the madness of bad things by paying it off with good deeds done. And then I realized I really didn't want to remember that either.
Sometimes the world's going to knock you around sugar pie. Sometimes that rain and hail is going to unmercifully slap around the tulips just opening up all over the city. And when you can count yourself as lucky enough to be inside when it comes, feel lucky.
It's that eternal yin and yang of living, it can't all be gravy and at times it's gonna hurt. But do the good times outweigh the bad? Fuck yes they do! You get blues covers albums and friends willing to share music that excites them, and you get laughter and beer and lovemaking and resounding shouts of 'yes!' to the heavens. You get those meals that make you curse every meal you've had before for not living up to that one, you get wine, you get Harold and Maude and T. Rex. You get handholding and people who will stand behind you and car rides where the music seems made for the landscape and you get tulips that still stand under the pouring rain and hail.
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