NO FARTHER WEST

John Sayles

2006-07-07T16:28:00.000-07:00

just watched a movie called 'lone star' last night. very good film, by director john sayles. sayles is a gringo but is fluent in spanish and uses his interest in latin america to great effect in exploring the texas frontera in lone star, the cultural exchange, political tension, and the human dimension of all this.
lone star was playing, in fact, at a cineclub in oaxaca city one night when aurora and i were living there. we showed up late and missed it, ended up wandering around oaxaca with a sore foot drinking mezcal and coca-cola, as i recall. now, thanks to the wonder of netflix, i can see all the john sayles movies i want.

Long Live Propaganda

2006-06-21T20:42:00.000-07:00

I just watched this dvd I ordered off of netflix and it shocked me. "Triumph of the Will," a Nazi propaganda film made by Leni Riefenstahl in 1935. What shocked me, however, was not what I thought. The film was made by a woman, whose career, one might guess, was ruined (although if 'the reich' had won, that would have been different), and is a documentary about Hitler and his triumphant tour leading up to the World Olympics. It is truly well-made, and beautifully photographed, and stands as an important part not only of world history, but of film history.
Beauty is such a whore. The iconic language of film and tv, used so adeptly by the FOX network among many others, wraps deeply resonating symbols: a flag blowing in the wind, a child held in it's mother's arms, a soldier standing with sad, stern eyes, and gives them an agenda, tears them from their original context: life, in all its complexity.
The first thing that struck me was this: the ordinaryness of it. If the film substituted American or British flags for everywhere there was a swastika, it wouldn't be so alien at all. This film is exactly the opposite of subversive since the intent was to make the viewer actually believe in the symbols shown, but since us 21st century inhabitants have had those symbols so thoroughly discredited and know the ghastly crimes they concealed, the effect today is thoroughly subversive, in that it shoots straight to your gut and makes you realize the cold truth of what you've been viewing. By seeing it in its most extreme form, 'Triumph of the Will' lets us see propoganda clearly and recognize where we know it from. The visual language of Nationalism is familiar to us all (Einstein called it 'the measles of mankind' but since measles no longer gives us much of a problem, in the spirit of giving the past relevance we should probably alter Einstein's quote to 'Nationalism is the AIDS of mankind').
The second jolter was this:
Hitler was Left!

As a self-proclaimed 'leftist' for years, this made me squirm. Of course, I did know that 'Nazi' meant 'National Socialist' but I ignored it. I knew that fascism, in its original, Italian sense, meant the corporate state. But Germany was not Italy. And yes, State power is what allowed the Nazis to commit their well-known crimes; the same State power that allows us to give welfare moms welfare. Now, here is where I remind myself that Socialism and Nationalism are two different things: combining them is what's lethal. But the haunting fact remains:
Hitler gave more lip-service to the working class than Bush does.
Thats right. Watching 'Triumph of the Will' I found myself hating Hitler, not as an abstraction of absolute evil, but as another deceptive politician. The same way, in fact, that I hate George W. Bush. Hitler, in this film, gives a moving speech in front of thousands of war-traumatized (by World War I) German youth, whose faces are shown in stark relief, filled with emotion, by Riefenstahl's camera. What moved these German faces, who wouldn't look out of place at your nearest bar or disco? Hitler urged them to put aside their classism. He said that a new age was dawning, one where no German aristocracy would exist, and only German Workers and common people would have power. He urged the crowd not to be ashamed of their working-class roots. He exhorted them that 'physical labor... would no longer be a source of shame' for Germans, and that 'all Germans' would soon have to attend 'your school,' that is, the school of physical labor and manual toil, the world of shame and sweat that no doubt the members of the SS and the German Workers Party were eager to quit their Nation-building activities to rejoin.
Our modern-day leaders don't need to spout such rhetoric, even in falsehood. Leni Riefenstahl, to the looks of online accounts of her life, was a misguided fool taken in by Hitlerian propaganda. On her own website, we see pictures of her fondling black African children (see- I like black babies! aren't they cute? I didn't mean anything!) and if one is willing to give her the benefit of the doubt, she is probably as innocent in her own way as the FOX executives are of every casualty in the Iraq war. I don't feel sorry for her, but I do feel empathy for the crowds of soldiers, many of them no doubt farmer's sons, fueled by poverty and loss into a blind belief in a society that soon would be the world's shame. They believed, oh yes they did, that they were RIGHT. Hitler's appeals to the Left were a big part of it, and much of his word choice and pleas to 'the workers' and for a 'classless society' wouldn't be out of place today in San Francisco. Those boys went to die, went to kill, as 'our boys' do today. And while we take history for granted, viewing the often-referenced past in the full light of what was once the present is very revealing. Bush has recently taken to monkeying right-wing pundit Michael Savage in his use of the extremely dubious expression 'Islamo-fascism', an expression sure to cause any historian to twitch their indignation muscles into injury. Hitler and Nazism and Fascism have become such a national obsession that it seems no other analogy can fully express the evil that whereabouts lurks stalking the globe within and without our Homeland. (Seig Hiccup! Another Pilsner please. Pass the 'Man Show' and some lube for bikini handcuffs on my hypothalamus, Frat Boys want 'schadenfreude' too?)
The Nazis are gone but global propoganda is alive and well.
California Uber Alles!

The Man Behind the Photos

2006-06-01T17:10:00.000-07:00

Check this out. It's Gavin McInnes. You haven't seen his photo, but if you've seen Vice Magazine you've read his words. He's the one who pens the sometimes witty, sometimes cruel, kind, or salacious commentary below the photos in the magazine's "Do's and Dont's" section.
In this interview he reveals his "New Conservatism," a label which he claims Vice Magazine invented, and dodges the question as to whether or not he is a social libertarian. He also rails against Canadian socialism and American liberalism, and confides that he only does heroin 4 times a year or so.

http://www.montrealmirror.com/ARCHIVES/2002/120502/news3.html

The Bruja

2006-02-03T13:17:00.000-08:00

Every day when he was on the way home from the cane field, he’d see her. She was out there on the tree-shaded porch, her house of swaying grey sun-brittle wood separated from the path by a long stretch of yellow weeds. Tall stalks of volunteer corn hid the way just before her house, and he’d grow anxious before he made that turn, because he knew she was there, waiting, always sitting in the same place, sometimes knitting, sometimes just sitting wearing a rainbow-colored shawl.
When he walked past she would turn her head and follow him as he walked, her small black eyes never leaving him, her head swiveling like a carnival toy on a string as he walked down the path towards the village. She was a bruja, a witch, people said, and he was terribly afraid of her. Tall, dark things hid in her house, things infinitely taller than the flat tin roof, held down by cinder blocks.
Then one day he walked by on his way home and she wasn’t there. She was absent from the porch. On the way to the cane fields she was always somewhere other than the porch. But in the long shadows of the afternoon, there she was, it had always been that way.
The next morning he thought about it on the way to the cane fields and he was cutting cane with Manuel, who lived in the same village as he, and mentioned this strange thing.
“Yes, I noticed it too,” Manuel said.
“It’s very strange.”
“Yes, Pablo. Someone must go to the house and look in on her, and make sure she is well.”
He shrugged.
“Yes Manuel,” he admitted. “Someone must go and look in on her tomorrow, if she is not there again today.”
“No, Pablo. Someone must go and look in on her today. What if she is sick or hurt, or has fallen ill and cannot leave her bed? It is the Christian thing to do.”
“Yes Manuel, but if what they say about her is true, then she is not deserving of the treatment one would give a good neighbor.”
“True, Pablo, but one must not listen to idle gossip. It poisons your heart and ruins good fellowship.”
“I admit, I do not want to go, and I fear the woman and her works are evil.”
“I also do not want to go. We will flip a coin, Pablo, and let chance decide which one of us gets this opportunity to be a good Samaritan.”
As Manuel pulled a peso out of his pocket, Pablo held out his hands to stop him.
“Manuel, to gamble is unchristian. Who in the gospels gambled? Truly, it was the Roman soldiers who cast lots for the robe of our savior! For a deed to be good, it must be volunteered.”
“My brother in Christ!” Manuel beamed and warmly shook Pablo’s hand. “You are a giant of a man. What you say is true, and I admire you for taking on this burden! When you get back to the village tonight, come to my home and we will pray for the woman, whatever her condition!”
Pablo smiled weakly. His plan had backfired. Manuel was cunning.
“Swear to me you will go!” Manuel demanded.
“I swear I will go,” Pablo groaned.
“On what do you swear?”
“I swear that if to this woman’s house I do not go, may the devil haunt me and give me 6 years of mal suerte.”
“What else?”
“I swear that if to this woman’s house I do not go, may I drown in a river so my body is never found.”
“Very good. And once more?”
“I swear that if to this woman’s house I do not go, may I go blind before the year is done.”
“How about another for good measure?”
“Manuel! I should not swear at all, for does it not say in the gospel, ‘do not swear, but let your yes mean yes, and also your no mean no’?”
“Por dios! Let it never be said that you neglect your studies of God’s word, Pablo. Only remember your yes means yes.”
Manuel left before Pablo that day. He said he had to go look in on his young son, just a few months old, and disappeared down the sun-drenched path, swinging his machete loosely from side to side, rattling the dried maize stalks.
Pablo left soon after, and as large purple rainclouds gathered overhead in the late afternoon, the weather seemed to reflect the dark forbodings in his mind. He walked down the path away from the cane fields, images of veiny-armed demons and serpentine worms curving through his mind. Past the door of the hut was a world of terrors, walls covered with maggots, freezing winds swirling around, and the woman, her ancient face with a thousand canyons sun cracked crevasses where the crone world of death-womb came and dwelled, the nightmare earth, endless pesadilla.
Pablo prayed that when he rounded the corner and came out of the maize and looked on her house, she’d be sitting there, staring at him like she had hundreds of times before. He looked up past the dried stalks of maize and saw the dark moon of the sun nearly obscured behind the clouds. Fat drops of rain hit his hat brim.
He came around the turn. Sure enough, the old woman wasn’t there. The porch was vacant, only wind blowing some pagan trinkets hanging on string under the tin verandah, handmade prayers to nearly forgotten gods whose potency still was cause for horror.
Pablo crossed himself and prayed to his savior. He rushed towards the village, out of sight of the house. He prayed that he’d be forgiven for breaking his word today. Tomorrow, if the woman wasn’t there, he would look in on her.

Grandpa & Hemingway

2005-12-06T12:52:00.000-08:00

reading hemingway's short stories now. great, great stuff. a clean, well-lighted place and the gambler, the nun, and the radio. it seems that rather than become an essayist or man of letters expounding his views, hemingway worked his theories into his fiction, but in a way that isn't obnoxious or obvious, but benefits from the dialectic you can include in a narrative, where different points of view collide.

sunday aurora and i went up to citrus heights to my grandparents, where we talked for a few hours and sipped tea. i taped my grandpa talking for 90 minutes and after the tape ran out he was still going strong, in fact, in mid-story. i'd like to get many tapes of him talking and recalling the past, his life of now 86 years. he is a man who fought fascism in world war II, who travelled the world by sea, who worked with great, deadly machines- in the boiler rooms of navy ships. he drank, he brawled, he saw the continents, he chased women, he was the child of immigrants and grew up in the depression; in short, he couldn't be more different than my own father, and this raconteur has been at the root of my own desire to tell stories, and to live a life worth telling stories about. i want to get as many stories as i can from him on tape so that his stories will outlive his body. eventually i'll use his larger-than-life stories in my stories, written down, and that's something i can do for him, because one thing he never was was a writer.

Pre-Travel Anxiety

2005-12-01T10:40:00.000-08:00

So the countdown has begun. 17 days from now I'll be on a plane to Mexico. I'm experiencing some disconnection, anxiety, weird intense dreams. I'm about to finish up my last days at this job at the better business bureau, and then I'll be jobless except for my freelancing with the News & Review. I plan on doing freelancing for other publications if I can. But today I was looking back at the stuff I've written for them, and seeing only flaws. Writing for money is different than writing for yourself. A turn of phrase becomes plastic, you force your voice into something that can be built, altered, dismantled, rearranged. The money gives it a mask, a distance. I look at this stuff and some of it is cool, and some of it seems to trite or pretentious or forced. Whatever. Its experience, its getting out there and fucking doing it. But it goes to show my state of mind right now. Obsessively looking through the craigslist.org job listings and fretting over how little there interests me and how little everything pays that I think I could get. Nevermind, I tell myself, you'll find some job, any job, when you get back, no use worrying about it now. I'd be less worried if I were by myself. Now that I'm with Aurora, I don't want to be a burden on her financially. If I was alone I could stay with friends for a little while when I got back and... what, bum around? What are you thinking? No, it isn't that. It's that you've come along this far and now you want to tear everything you've done down. Or its that you're seeing a new chapter opening and you want to close this last one, tuck it in and put it to bed, and you're worried sick that you're gonna go backwards again. Its a zigzagging path to the future, not a linear one. Then you were reading that stuff you wrote, picking at its seams with a hook. It's just a structure that was built, sewn together with verbal thread, its not identity- how can the eye look at itself? Just like this morning, can't shave without the bathroom mirror because it fell down. That made you think about how shaving is an act you do in the mirror. In the morning in the mirror you compose yourself for others. For the others you face in the day, you are arranged, clean-shaven, clean, perfect as straight lines as you can manage. Nature is not clean, not straight, not like you- not a thing made of qualities, but a quality made of things. You're all turned around, having coffee in the morning with that coffee smell thinking of the cathedrallike hum of airports and trainstations, travel about to engulf your entire life, every moment, your routine broken, exhilarating. It's this waiting that gets you. This limbo, this interim. Finishing, tying up of loose ends. It's maddening, kind of.
17 days from now I'll be on a plane to Mexico. Thinking in circles today.

Videogame Nostalgia

2005-10-27T14:31:00.000-07:00

Recently I dusted off an old Game Boy, the original version sold in the early 90's. It still works fine. I came across while boxing stuff for a move, and the only game I have for it is the cartridge currently in the slot: Tetris.
I put in some batteries and started playing, and the gameplay, the old black & tan LED screen, the simple controls, and especially the music brought a flood of memories back. I remembered long trips in the back of my parents car amusing myself with these games, immersed in the constructs of code that had sprung from the minds of imaginative Japanese programmers. I remembered trips to my Grandparents in LA, the long drive down from northern california, when my only respite from the endless blur of farm crops was the Game Boy. I actually felt a deep sadness come over me when I listened to the melodic little tune that plays after you win the game.
Then I remembered a more recent sight: some kids in their 20's, around my age, with t-shirts that said "ROOTS" under a graphic of an old-school Game Boy, or a graphic of a controller for the original NES. The sight struck me as stupid, after all, who in their right mind would look to the world of antiquated consumer electronics in their search for identity?
My generation would, that's who. No, we're not in our right minds, but its not as bad as it seems. That t-shirt is identifying the same nostalgia I feel for a simpler time, yes, one not long ago to those over 40, but a very long time ago for me. Before Y2K and 9-11, before Grand Theft Auto and Tomb Raider, before videogames became more like movies than they are like toys.
Now, videogames are the rising commercial art form: Steven Spielberg is getting into the business. An October 14th, 2005 Associated Press article cites the "increasingly intertwined interests of Hollywood and the video game industry" as behind the recently announced teaming up of Spielberg and Electronic Arts, the owner of "Madden NFL," "the Sims," and many other major titles.
Every time technology moves forward, one looks back on yesterday's stuff with disdain. But last week's stuff looks a little less unattractive, kind of quaint, and last years stuff becomes a collectors item. The old games were primitive, true, and one could make the same argument I heard from my parents, that less refined entertainments lead to more imaginative work on the part of the child. Its the same argument: "When we were your age, we only had TV, none of these videogames" and that they heard from theirs, "When we were your age we only had radio" and on, and back and further back, to Abe Lincoln whittling a stick in his log cabin for amusement.
Its well and good to be aware of the fact that different media affect us in different ways, and to try and study the varying effects that new media have on us. But to focus on the medium while ignoring the message is a grave mistake, because it is to cleave in half something that is an interdependant whole. For example, "Max Payne," a ground-breaking videogame of recent years. The medium itself is dependant on the hardware available to run it, the physics engines neccesary to make the game design possible, and a whole host of other factors. But the game as an art form, if we can call it that, is a message in itself. It simulates the 3d experience of a violent action movie, but the story itself more closely resembles film noir, portraying a world of corruption, crime, drug addiction, and attempts to reach towards a bleak poetry of loss. The story exposition is told in graphic novel form with text bubbles on-screen, with a "radio-theater" soundtrack narrating the onscreen comic strip with voices, sound affects, and music.
Like a Petroushka nesting doll, one medium is contained inside another, not making any one of them obsolete, but grouping them together. Cinema did the same thing when it incorporated photography, music, and drama all into the same medium.
The early days of the 8-bit Nintendo Entertainment System and its successor, the 16-bit Super NES and the Sega Genesis, were a period of working within strict limitations. Limitations can be stifling, but just as often, they can be a boon to creativity, and the bizarre fantasy worlds concocted to explore the possibilities of platform gaming have lasting value as popular, commercial art. Particularly for those of us who played them growing up.
The peculiar Japanese sensibility expressed in the Mario and Sonic the Hedgehog games, with its Italian plumbers and pipes and mushrooms and turnips and such, futuristic graphics and jarringly surreal, absurd landscapes, is one that I think could never have come from elsewhere. Western youth have been fascinated with popular Japanese culture for many years now, from Hello Kitty and Pokemon, to Nintendo and anime, and while I don't claim to know the reason why this is, I think it may have something to do with ancient Shinto animism. Thats just a wild guess. Perhaps technology and consumerism are easier to integrate with your cultural imagination when you haven't had a couple thousand years of Christo-Gnostic dualism to contend with. Perhaps being bombed into submission after a period of imperialist aggression acted as a horrible tonic, making a look forward into the future the only view acceptable.
Of course, it is not Japan itself but a specific man who is responsible for the dreamlike aesthetic I found so fascinating in Nintendo games. Appropriately enough, there is a Shrine devoted to the man on the internet. Shigeru Miyamoto, according to biographical information found on the internet shrine, was born on 1952 in rural Japan, near Kyoto. Interestingly, his family lacked a television set as he was growing up, and he found his entertainment by exploring the natural world around him: rice fields, rivers, ravines, deep caverns which he would explore, alone, by lantern.
Miyamoto didn't care for the rigors of college much, where he studied Industrial Design, and often skipped class. When he finally graduated, he got a job for a toy company called Nintendo. He designed an arcade game called Donkey Kong. After the unprecedented success of this game, many others followed, including virtually every game in the Mario, Zelda, and Metroid series'.
Miyamoto is humble and eccentric, who according to Wikipedia's page on him, rides a bike to work and insists on receiving an average salary. His list of quotes on the Miyamoto shrine reveal him as a kind of videogame mystic.
"What if, on a crowded street, you look up and see something appear that should not, given what we know, be there. You either shake your head and dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than we think. Perhaps it really is a doorway to another place. If you choose to go inside you may find many unexpected things."
Another quote has the same feeling of there being something 'other' that is latent in this invented world.
"The person next to you is a warrior and the space that appears empty is a secret door to another world? You either dismiss it, or you accept that there is much more to the world than you think "
My affection for videogames didn't keep me from reading books or being creative. It became one facet of my childhood interests, which ranged all over the place. Is nostalgia, or sentimentality, an unproductive emotion? Perhaps, if you wallow in it. At least you can do better than t-shirt sloganeering, as the guys in the Advantage has done. The Advantage, on 5RC records, come from Northern California's foothills, near where I grew up. They play cover songs, exclusively form 8-bit NES games, on rock instruments. Seeing them live is an exhilarating experience for someone of my generation, the music resonates on multiple levels, and you realize the fastidious genius of these songs, both cute and complex, both ridiculous and dark.
In the end, it really is the human at the other side of the tunnel, the creative intelligence behind the message- whatever medium we engage with. I'll leave you with one more Miyamoto quote.
"Video Games are bad for you? That's what they said about Rock 'N' Roll."

American Fear

2005-10-19T12:58:00.000-07:00

In the Martin Scorcese film Gangs of New York, there is a scene where the 19th century criminal villain and gang leader Bill the Butcher sits down next to his young protege and reveals the philosophy that allows him to rule over the chaos of the Five Points slum. He is draped in the American flag as he delivers his speech.
"Do you know how I've lasted this long?" he asks, then answers his own question.
"Fear. Through the spectacle of fearsome acts. A man speaks ill of me, I cut out his tongue. He steals from me, I cut off his hands. A man rises against me, and I cut off his head, stick it on a pike, and hoist it up for all to see."
He pauses.
"Fear. That's what preserves the order of things."
If hope for the future is the guiding light of the American vision, the light shining from the torch held in the hand of the Statue of Liberty, if hope- of finding a place to belong, a piece of the pie, a refuge from oppression and poverty- is what the American dream is about, than surely its shadow-side is fear.
Fear of the hope being broken. Fear that the mold of the past hasn't in fact been broken at all, and that the ancient traditions of slavery and warfare and aristocratic family rule and freedom-smothering religious doctrine haven't been broken. That America is not an exception to history. This fear is perhaps a fear that fear is still what drives us, and not hope at all.
America loves its gangsters, its immigrant visions realized on the screen by the likes of Scorcese and Coppola. There's a flash of recognition there, that what the gangster feels is what our nation feels in its heart. Behold the gangster, feel with him if you can and understand well these feelings: that him and his family are more important than society's rules... that nobody will look out for your interests but you... that loneliness and isolation that comes from being at the top and self-absorbed and still unsatisfied... and something more savage, that what won't be given fairly must be taken by force.
In California and in Pennsylvania, in Idaho and in Cleveland, in Virginia and in Texas, there are young American boys of all races, all desperate to prove themselves to the world. We learn cruelty and the pecking order on the schoolyard, and racism, sexism, and classism too. Sometimes it turns bloody.
Would it be fair to say our culture is obsessed with masculine grandiosity? From the big trucks and bigger burgers of everyday suburban life, to the big bankrolls and bigger guns of urban rap fantasies, to the big hats and bigger cowboy boots of the "rugged frontiersman" cowboy? We elevate the black man who proves his worth with an AK-47 to icon status because he titillates our sense of fear. That's the immigrant song we want to keep hearing, because that's how we feel. Martin Luther King is fine to name streets after, but the militant Malcolm X has more immediate archetypal power in 2005.
"God hates fags" the fire-and-brimstone hate ministry of Pastor Fred Phelps and his Westboro Baptist Church, may be closer to America's heart than many of us want to admit. There's got to be more to it than mere religious pomposity. Why do we hate pansies so much? Do we fear them because they fail to participate in the cherished American game of "tough guy"? Is the physical openness of the homosexual that is so terrifying?
Checking the FAQ on Westboro Baptist Church's website, "godhatesfags.com" is revealing. It rightly claims traces its roots back John Calvin's puritanism, its preaching of hatred towards "fags" as well as "adulterers," "idolators," Jews, Muslims, "heretics," and "apostates," as part of a Christian tradition that once was dominant in the United States. It's also a gospel of fear: this is not God the merciful, God the forgiving, God as love. This country was founded by men who believed in God the terrible, God the violent avenger, God who metes out deadly punishment to those who break his laws. God who demands fear and trembling, abject obeisance, not the God of the Enlightened philosophers who wrote the Constitution, but the God of those who burned witches at Salem, a God who wants his followers to submit reason and intellect and inquiry to mindless worship and doglike obedience.
How is it that the dream of the 60's and 70's with its flower children and progressive rock ballads and yearning for peace and enlightenment fade away so completely... for me its a memory before I was born (in 1979) told to me by pop culture, but when I look around I see something that makes me nostalgic all the same.
As Hunter S. Thompson said after looking out at his imaginary high-water mark where the crest of hope and change broke and then receded, the problem with Tim Leary's consciousness expansion was that it failed to warn the young adventurous Americans of the "grim, meathook realities" that would be amplified by the drug experience. The past bit us in the ass.
Either way, the counterculture was coopted by the men with the money. And while that happened early on, the longer it went on, the more this coopted counterculture reflected the ideals of the men with the money, and the more it catered to those aspects of us that best suit their needs. Enter the slick salesman, the carpetbagger, the carnival barker.
I see visions of the N'Sync boys literally dancing in a shower of dollar bills, muscled thugs preaching the gospel of fast cars and fast money, cookie cutter whiteboy rockers filled with the petty, private angst of mommy & daddy's divorce proceedings.
Why would we walk around with shirts and hats and truck emblazoned with the words
NO FEAR
unless we were absolutely filled with it, and absolutely desperate to confront it?
Unless we were tortured by the fear that we've abandoned any semblance of authenticity. Afraid of the prospect that the hope for the future we learned was the founding impulse of our nation has become a lie used to sell us things we don't need, and worse, that will harm us.
We're still Puritans, too. We have the Gnostic fever that spurs us to divide the world into flesh and spirit, work and pleasure, the sacred and the profane, the church and the nightclub- to divide things into dualistic halves where never the twain shall meet.
Thats why when we party, we do it with such reckless abandon. When we go after sex, its with a fervor thats built to fuck away the shame. We pursue vice twice as hard to convince ourselves we're liberated from the Puritan mentality that hounds us, and forbids the things that we crave.
Most of the time, we fail to realize our dreams of liberation. We run back to the established terrain of the familiar, the Job, the Church. No drug laws will be reformed, no land for the landless, no unjust foreign Wars will be stopped, public transportation built, jobs saved, ect, ect, pick your cause, ad infinitum. The dream of social change is crushed and we run back and cower in fear and trembling beneath the black whip of power, because we recognize the terror of what our society has wrought- something so ossified and inflexible that to revolt against it is to stand in the path of a frieght train, to be crushed by an institution so steel, so heavy, so mass, that it would be as if one were swept aside like an insect without a thought of remorse and barely even a recognition.

West Coast Party

2005-10-12T16:10:00.000-07:00

party in the living room
languid limbs, stoned into sedation
watching futurama on the big-screen tv

narcotized with its
clever light less warm than laser beams
pastel patterns play across the flat surface

keg squatting in the backyard
people smoking cigarettes
between pauses, half-sentences

pit bull in the kitchen
with a body like a drum
runs across linoleum and skids

bland man holding beer
talks about his business
a shop in the woodland mall

he says "its like hot topic
mixed with pier 1 imports
a little something for grandma...

and body jewelry for the kids"
and a pale lass with red pigtails wears a shirt
that says "brazil," (where she's never been)

bongos in the backyard
a white guy with dreds slaps them
and nobody pays much attention

tiny pinpoints of black
in ice-blue eyes, in the hatchet face
of a tweeker, clothes draped over skeleton

ghosty goat beard,
black beanie, he pushes through kitchen
and goes back to the yard

ziplock bag stuffed with cannabis
on the couch, a few ounces or so
green in waiting purpose to suspend time

black boy in bob marley shirt
looks shyly around kitchen, quiet
people in stoned still, masked dreams

Me Gusta Las Mapas

2005-10-05T10:51:00.000-07:00

I like maps. I like them not just as guides or utilitarian objects to be used as resources. I enjoy their incompleteness, and what they don't tell us is just as important as what they do. I like old maps, innaccurate maps, amateur maps. I like invented maps- maps of places that don't exist.

The Deal

2005-09-30T15:04:00.000-07:00

Down the darkened street of the decaying suburb, streetsigns dusky, elephantine buildings bleeding slow light, Rainbow Grocery, Bingo, Paratransit, and the State Assistance complex, a hive of chalky buildings. Giant city blocks it takes forever to drive across, nothing here is built for humans, only automobiles, with empty-looking suburban homes hiding on anonymous corners. You know you've entered a 3rd world country now. You don't have to leave your American city to go there, you just get off the freeway, and find yourself huddled behind the wheel of your car, terrified to get out and step onto the haunted pavement where postindustrial waste blows in a toxic wind, afraid of getting lost here, where skeletal blacks dressed in ragged clothes look at you with hunted eyes, driven by demons of narcotics or hunger or want for dignity or meaning, where demented Vietnam vet amputees with pissed-in clothes roll their wheelchairs down stinking sidewalks, white rejects abandoned by the 4th of July.
There are well-dressed men and women who walk down these streets with Bibles held in their hands. There here for a reason- to tell you about the Deal. God's deal. The pitch: sales is an art with defined parameters. First you must establish need. You can't sell someone something they don't need, unless you first convince them they do. Here in the wastelands, its easy. Hunger for bread or for justice translates easily to hunger for God's Deal. Let me first tell you- this isn't the only life. Really? The weeds in the sidewalk don't talk. They wave from side to side whichever way the wind blows. The smell of grease and of gravel? My home, my playground. What other life is there? The Kingdom of God. Gods world is green, eternal, painless, pure. The Paradise of Eden. God's Deal? Its not the deal of Man. Man offers you possessions, God offers you eternal life. He reaches into his bookbag and pulls out a religious text, hands it to the man. The man frowns, looks it over, pushes it back. The other man says take it, its free. The man takes it back, opens it, looks at the pictures of happy people in the world of God. Let me tell you more about God's Deal. Would you like to live forever? Not here I wouldn't. Not like this. Well theres another way. There's a way to walk with Christ. Like the man doesn't know that. He's resisting, he waves his arm, look at all these Churches. That's the only other thing out here other than Rainbow Grocery, Bingo, Paratransit, and the State Assistance complex, fortress of right angles and shame. Giant city blocks it takes forever to drive across, this is what's left of the West. There's Churches every-fuckin-where. FOLSOM WORSHIP CENTER, one sign says on a colossal rectangle of unadorned white, a cross standing erect up above it. COME WORSHIP HERE the signs say. WORSHIP GOD WITH US the signs say. The man with the Deal takes a step back. But did you make it yours? he asks. Did you make it yours? Did you really try to let God enter you and did you really feel him in your life? Did you really shake hands with God, accept his Deal, kneel down, and Worship him? Did you give up your Self?
No, the other man says. No he didn't. He moves back then into the smell of grease and of gravel. He goes whichever way the wind blows as natural and free as you can manage in this cellar of the world. Don't try to sell me a pie in the sky. I can't see it. I can't see this God. The man selling God's Deal says "can you see the wind"? and he says "no but I can see what it moves, and I can't see God movin' shit" and the two men part ways.
Get off these streets fucker, get off these streets before you become the fear you hate, or is it... become the hate you fear? Get back to your Deal, your Church, your Job, your Car, your steel shield against the World. Get back in your car, and stay there. He watches the strange man from some other part of the city going from door to door with his combed hair, sparkling shoes, oiled leather bookcase.
Who put you in charge of the Deal anyway?

Time it goes away away down the river of grammar

2005-09-30T11:06:00.000-07:00

Somehow I can't really believe in time. Go down to the railroad tracks go down to the grave, the grave where molding headstones white granite and ethereal aqua-tinted mold creeping over them, go down to the Mexican restaurant where life circles ever on in bronze voices on the radio and golden beer going down throats. Limes, radishes, men with thick hands like tree roots clutching the soil, half-buried like headstones.
They say the universe began one time, there was a big bang, they say, and that the universe had its beginning there. I'm not convinced. I say the world had no beginning- its always been, always will be, and there is no time, there is only one moment, which God is outside of- that is the definition of God- something outside of time- not a great man, or even spirit, or collective mind. This universe is a great, vast, toothpaste tube, and as it is squeezed out into timelessness, it loses its body. "God" is perhaps a sentient quantum computer, a program written in a code invented by itself. GTACAACATCCG- "who" wrote the code that could become an evolving self-writing altering program? There is a Kabbalistic idea that "god" is a verb, not a noun- and that letters and language are creation, quite literally. We know from the discovery of genetic code that there is at least something in this idea.
You cannot destroy limes and radishes by destroying one Mexican restaurant, or even all Mexican restaurants, and even eradicating all lime and radish plants from the face of the earth. If the genetic code of that plant were stored somewhere in a computer database, a future scientist could recreate it. Or if it were say, preserved in amber, a la Jurassic Park.
In the movie Tron, which I once watched 23 times in a row when I was a kid and had the stomach flu, there are 2 worlds: one of the "users" and one of the "programs" and the programs get their life and form and personality from the users who "wrote" them.
We are all in a sense writing ourselves, as we script the plots and intrigues of our lives, and our bodies are busily writing our cells from DNA as we sleep. Might it be that the old religious vision of God as a kind of "Master Control" computer could give way to another paradigm, one more dynamic, liberating, and "open-source"?

Sweaty Faced and Starry Eyed

2005-09-30T10:29:00.000-07:00

Ghandi stands stunned in the sweltering Kalahari desert, next to the railroad tracks, where sunburnt, peeling Irish slaves are hammering great iron spikes into the rock, every now and then opening their mouths to make horrible sounds- their tongues have been ripped out for speaking the Irish language. Sweat pours down his Ghandi's face. He is bleeding from a bullet hole in his torso, a terrible bloom of scarlet on his white linen.
Carl Sagan stands next to him in a turtleneck sweater, apparently impervious to the heat. He seems to be standing in an invisible bubble of air-conditioning. Behind him, standing still as a statue, is a British army officer, rifle with bayonet pointing straight into the white sky.
"I wouldn't deny that the grandeur of the cosmos does inspire some kind of... religious feeling," Sagan says. "In my experiences with marijuana, I had some sensations that I would describe as religious, for lack of any other word. But I really know nothing about theology. I guess what I want to ask you is... when you say, 'I am Christian, and Hindu, and Moslem, what do you mean?"
Ghandi wheezes something unintelligible. He staggers a bit, and his spectacles fall off his sweat-slick face, and land on the hard-packed earth, the heavy lenses cracking.
"I haven't seen any evidence at all that such a thing as a non-corporeal intelligence can exist. But that doesn't mean that it isn't possible," Sagan concludes.

Biofactory

2005-09-28T15:41:00.000-07:00

The business model applied to my time: bread outweighs dreams.
Natural capital: the universe provides us with natural systems of abundance, flows of clean water, solar energy, time to tell stories or devise games or labyrinths, space to hunt in or pollute.
Why do I want to be a writer, anyway? So I can see my word-worlds printed on paper pulped from trees torn from the real world, sold at stores and then devoured and then discarded or set on the shelves to collect dust or to wind up, binding-broken, stained, fluttering pages uselessly like a grounded butterfly in a landfill somewhere?
Us artists and writers and musicians- how is what we do so sacred and pure, when the economic model of the system we are contributing to endangers our own survival? Whats so great about filling the world with more zines and CDs? More... stuff.
What's our defense?
Printing on recycled paper? Promoting alternatives to unsustainable growth in our work?
What kind of Work has real value?
I don't want to sell widgits or gas cards to business travellers. I'd rather be an enviro-bandit, hijacking lawyers and senators on the way back from their exclusive tennis courts, holding them at gunpoint while taking their money and jewels, and then giving it to... who would I give it to? The Sierra Club? Is that the answer? More powerful NGO's?...
Plant-machines, hunchbacked Ents over an assembly line with their tree-branch hands, busily cramming the lids on psychedelic pies to send out undercover to powerful establishment baby-boomers, to rouse their green tendrils of curiosity again and send then curling into action, those ones who never actually got down in the 60s or 70s and always felt square and vaguely guilty and hateful for missing out on the fun.
The biofactory of my Body, meanwhile, is metabolizing the coffee and kettle corn I just injested. Later, it will become the raw material of both farts and thoughts.

Forbes 400

2005-09-23T16:51:00.000-07:00

This is our free and independant media, and the values they celebrate.

http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/invest/forbes/P129955.asp?GT1=6968

I'm currently reading "Bordering On Chaos" by Andres Oppenheimer, about Mexico's political system, rife with corruption, incestuous and nepotistic. How Mexico's billionaires were running the country behind the mask of the PRI with little care for the masses suffering deprivation in Chiapas, until the Zapatista uprising forced them to take notice. How Televisa, the dominant TV network twisted and slanted the news and used selective coverage to influence the public.

It doesn't seem strange of foreign at all. I think I'll feel right at home in Mexico.

Death And Disaster Are Good For You

2005-09-21T15:52:00.000-07:00

As the clock ticks inexorably forward, (inaudible digital stones falling), caravans of buses and cars move through the checkerboard of Houston's city streets, evacuating from the coming hurricane Rita, another giant fist pointed at the gulf coast, and I think of Texas- that big cowboy boot in Mexico's ass- that place where, they say, everything is oversized: the state, the steaks, the hats, and the waistlines.
I travel back in time, floating through that miasma to before the era of the Disaster President: W.
Yet, there in the Clinton years, not everything was ok, the Battle of Seattle... WTO... ect. it still seemed things were not completely out of control-bad. Just quietly corrupt, the brutality somewhere beneath the surface, but not recklessly-bad, incredibly strange-bad.
Our years with W. have delivered more than their fair share of startling images: haunting visions of America ripping apart at the seams. 9-11, Iraq, and now Katrina, and now, on the eve of another hurricane disaster, one wonders what horror comes next. George W. Bush has presided over a period of unrestrained horror. He is the Disaster President.
Our commander-in-chief will look out at us from the television again, quite soon. He will look at us with what he imagines is a look of steely resolve, but comes across as merely unfeeling and simian. Death And Disaster Are Good For You, his eyes and his tone will say, Itll Build Character- Pull Yourself Up By Your Bootstraps, Now, Y'know It Ain't Gov'ment's Job To Take Care a Y'all -as he mouths canned platitudes most of us are far beyond weary of hearing.
It isnt just his economic policies, his tax breaks for the rich, his War in Iraq based on lies and deceit, his ineptitude, his arrogance, his fumbling with the English language, his mealy-mouthed phony Christianity, or his creepy friends.
That would be enough, but theres more: He's just bad luck. He's a jinx. He's bad mojo. Really shitty mojo. A lighning rod for a shitstorm. Really.
We don't need your prayers, George.
A co-worker told me today that a recent poll showed around 40% of Americans believe the hurricanes are God's way of trying to tell us something. I think that's god damn appalling. If that's so, what is he trying to tell us? "YOU ARE INSIGNIFICANT PUNY CREATURES, I WIPE YOU AWAY WITH MY WRATH, BWAAAAA!"? Because if thats His way of showing infinite love, I would suggest... His communication skills are sorely lacking (which would mean He has at least one thing in common with our President).
It isn't God's wrath that's bringing these hurricanes any more than it was God's wrath that brought the bubonic plague. And running around in sackcloth and ashes, flaggelating ourselves isn't going to make a neosporin smear of difference.
Deus Absconditus. The Founding Fathers heard of him- the God who absconded- absent- not here- not acting in our world.
Deus Absconditus.
(He snapped his fingers a nanosecond before the big "bang" and thats the last we ever heard of him)
Deus Absconditus.
Because if there was a God who intervened in human affairs, we wouldn't have this moron in the White House.
Get off your Christian high-horse, George, we don't need your prayers- only you do. We know your public displays of holiness have one purpose only: to appease your constituency, not a higher power.
Praying is a luxury for those who have bread. An act of desperate hope for those who don't. We don't need your prayers, Mr. Bush, we need action.

Pageantry

2005-09-16T16:32:00.000-07:00

Watched some TV last night- Univision, the spanish-language station. Today is Mexican Independance Day, and last night the national pageantry was in full force. Thousands packed into the Zocalo in DF, and then Fox went up to make a short speech from that balcony- there's something so sci-fi about that. Maybe it was my dreamlike state at the moment, but there was something so glitzy and surreal and ridiculous about it. Its easy to look at another country's nationalism as something sort of quaint or funny- perhaps thats a part of my unconscious arrogance as an American.
But there was also something inspiring about it. Blind patriotism and national pride is not something I'm fond of in the States. But in Mexico, or another "3rd world" country, there is a completely different context. It brings something to mind.
My anarchist writer friend Shon was talking with Aurora's pal Rejin, who is Middle-Eastern. They were discussing things, and later I said something to Rejin, who was very impressed with Shon, about his staunch anti-nationalism as a professed anarchist... this was after we were discussing Iraq. Rejin said that in her view, nationalism can sometimes be a good thing- that the people in Iraq who are setting off carbombs and killing innocent people aren't patriotic Iraqis- for the most part they've come in from outside of the country- and that the nationalistic Iraqis who care about their country are the ones trying to stop the violence.
While I doubt I'll ever have a comfortable relationship with nationalism... I can understand regional pride, the deep emotional tie people have with the soil and trees they grow up with. The pageantry of another nation's rituals seem so naked to the eye of an outsider. Then again- as with any ritual, there's something the eye misses- exactly the invisible thing that gives it weight- history- a story- a myth.

Steam & Sensibility

2005-09-07T09:19:00.000-07:00

This is from an email I sent to aurora and her response. Its really right-on so at the risk of violating her privacy, I'm posting it.

From: "justin aleph"
To: Aurora
Date: Thu, 01 Sep 2005 12:19:49 -0500

aurora,

been listening to the radio all morning. I'm so pissed at Bush and the fucking Republicans. this whole disaster in N.O. was totally preventable if levee rebuilding projects hadn't had their funding cut.

the media will roll over and act like it was a disaster no one could help, Bush will get a free ride once again, and the gulf will be poisoned for the next 10 years. I'm disgusted. They're taking officers off search and rescue missions to go police looters. property is more important than people.

I've been talking with Dan this morning. he says if he was 20 years younger he would move to Canada. they're going to teach creationism right next to evolution in the schools. countrys going bankrupt. gas is 5 bucks a gallon in atlanta right now. when are people going to wake the fuck up and realize the country is getting driven into the gutter by this gang of reckless plutocrats?

care to emigrate? lets get outta here.

-j

Re:

Justin,

All of the death and destruction is overwhelming. This morning, within a period of 5 minutes of NPR radio, I heard about dead bodies floating down city streets in Louisiana and 900 people dieing in a massive stampede at a mosque in iraq.

All of this makes me want to drive less and do more. I don't think that immigration is the answer though. I say, do good work here. Use the beauty that is flying all around us at any given moment, and make something. Sure, it's good to go away for a while... a few months or a couple years... but there is so much to be done here. I don't think this country has ever NEEDED art, activism, and idealism MORE than it does right now. If all the creative people leave, what will be left? A wasteland of corporate high-rises, box stores and gas stations that charge $15/ gallon.

Let's make beautiful things this weekend... and get allot done. Let's go on bike rides and plan out the first pod cast. Our recorder will be here on tuesday and I want to get started as soon as it arrives.

Thanks for sharing your thoughts. I share your sense of despair and dissolution... I do think this means that honest, true work is more more valuable now than ever.

Love, Aurora

If You Can't Make It Anywhere, Go To New York

2005-08-31T10:01:00.000-07:00

The old adage is, "If you can make it in New York, you can make it anywhere."
But nowadays, it might be more accurate to revise that to "If you can't make it anywhere, go to New York."
Aurora and I were talking about this last night after a really shitty show at the Fool's Foundation. A band called Magick Marker played, and they were awful. They took a half-hour to tune, and then they played completely dischordant, atonal jam-crap, flailing away at their instruments in method-acting trances (sooooo spiritual) one girl even plucked at her guitar with a chicken foot. Yeah, a chicken foot. Wait til after the show for the heroin.
Everyone stood around, silent and still, watching. We're supposed to be impressed? Aurora blurted out "Only in New York" and embarrassed me, a fact she enjoyed very much later on when needling me for caring about what people think of me. Anyway, at the time, I was thinking more 'this band blows' rather than 'we're supposed to be impressed because they're from New York' but that was, upon reflection, pretty accurate.
Its like the emperors new clothes. Now, I've seen incredibly pretentious acts from everywhere from Sacramento to Iowa- Noisefest, for one, is almost a parade of that. And when I was in the Bay Area, that place definitely has its crop of pretentious music acts who create noise music because they can't really play.
But there is a certain level of preciousness, a certain almost religious tolerance for unjustified absurdity that must exist in New York, because the stuff that comes out of there... a lot of it just isn't any good. This is a place that produced Andy Warhol and Jackson Pollock. Regardless of what you think of them, imagine the subtlety of taste required of the New York aesthete. How to sort the poop from the prime? What are the criteria? Is it to do something truly novel, or do something at the right time, with the right look? Or is it a matter of connections, who you know, that determines what rises to the top, not just popular opinion?
Aurora especially feels this way, since a few of her friends who have moved there, far from struggling and clawing their way, have found it easy to find work in their esoteric fields of video art or music or what have you. One band, a couple friends of hers from Davis High, have a CD on a record label, they are signed and have a contract and are going to get to tour Europe playing their music. In my professional opinion as a music writer (barf bag time) they aren't very good, they're ok, but I could name one individual I've known for some time (name of Neil a.k.a. OX) who has far more talent. But, alas, not the networking skills.
So... If you can't make it anywhere, go to New York? Ayn Rand once said "Every time I hear the word 'culture' I reach for my wallet." Ultra-capitalist Rand's jokingly fascist attitude is the same kind of cynical impulse that guides a lot of the business end of the culture business. Hidden underneath that idea that culture is something to be bought, is the idea of buying something for one dollar and selling it for two. Getting on the ground floor of a trend or a band or an artist or whatever is like buying a stock when its down, both in terms of actual money and especially that nebulous other capital, the invisible kind we can here call 'coolness' but you could call by many other words. In that kind of environment, no wonder the line would be blurred between the avant-garde and the merely flatulent. With so many people taking themselves so seriously, you might as well too, right? Business is all about networking: all about connections. Whether you find yourself at home at CBGB's or a local golf club, your nearby Church or the Bohemian Grove, the best business connections you make in your life will probably be in a non-business setting. Get out of the studio and schmooze, arteests. The ones that are too busy with their art to schmooze, well, it doesn't really matter how good they are.
You won't ever hear of them.

Story Published on Internet

2005-08-29T11:13:00.000-07:00

Got a short story- very short- so short its not even really much of a story, published on this online journal called "Right Hand Pointing." Theres some pretty good writing on the site, it advertises itself as "an online literary journal of very brief pieces for smart people with short attention spans."
Anyway heres the link:

Right Hand Pointing Issue #8

When I'm Rich

2005-08-11T13:46:00.000-07:00

Credits roll over purple screen in cursive lettering:
When I'm Rich

Stock footage of bees swarming around a hive.

Sound of an air conditioning unit or refrigerator- a rich, industrial drone.

INT. DAY
RESTAURANT KITCHEN

SELIG, a young black man, is nearly obscured by steam. He is washing dishes. He chops vegetables and meat, hauls garbage out, and performs other menial tasks.

EXT. DAY
OUTSIDE RESTAURANT

Selig is talking with FRED, a slim white guy with glasses, a backwards hat, and jeans who is standing next to him smoking a cigarette. Both are wearing stained aprons.

SELIG: Fuck working a dumbass job, man. I'm sick of this shit.
FRED: Me too. I'm gonna tell them I'm quitting.
SELIG: You got another job?
FRED: No.
SELIG: How you gonna pay the bills, then?
FRED: Mooch off my parents. (shrugs) Collect unemployment.
SELIG: Collect unemployment? How you gonna do that if you quit?
FRED: Well, I would just call in sick until they fired me. Then I'd get unemployment cuz they fired me for being sick.
SELIG: Does that work?
FRED: I think so. I got a friend who did it.
SELIG: Shit, maybe that's what I should do. You ever tried it?
FRED: Yeah. I called in sick until a job fired me.
SELIG: Did you get it?
FRED: I bet I could've. I didn't bother to go down to the unemployment office. You gotta fill out a buncha papers, I think. I was staying with my parents, so it didn't really matter.
SELIG: Oh.

Pause while Frank puffs on cigarette.

SELIG: Anyway that might work I guess. I'm about finished with this job, dude. This job is gettin on my last nerve.
FRED: You know the only way to make some real money? Sellin' dope.
SELIG: Oh yeah. Right. You and your Columbian connections, right?
FRED: (laughing) I wanna wind up covered in gold and diamonds, just crusted over with jewels and shit.
SELIG: They'd find your body stuffed in a dumpster, fool. Why don't you quit talking and do it?

EXT. NIGHT
CHINATOWN

CAMERA follows a SKATEBOARDER wearing a Slayer shirt. The sound of the wheels rolling and clacking is very loud.
The skateboarder passes Selig on his bike, putting a tape in his tape walkman. CAMERA then follows Selig as he rides his bike down the sidewalk.

Selig turns off the crowded street onto a more residential city street.

He is riding down the sidewalk when he comes to a small crowd of hoodlums.

HOOD 1: Hey! Hey wait!

Selig slows down and looks at them.

HOOD 2: I want your bike! I want your bike!

HOOD 1: What you gonna do?

HOOD 2: Don't looka me that way. Don'tchoo looka me that way.

Selig spits contemptouously and keeps riding.

The hoodlums run to their bikes, sitting on the street, and get on them. They begin riding after Selig.
CAMERA is in front of Selig. He looks behind and sees them coming after him.

Chase sequence ending in parking lot.

EXT. NIGHT
PARKING LOT

Hoodlums stand up above Selig, who is on the ground on his back, holding his hands up in the air. They scream at him and threaten him.

HOOD 2: You gonna spit at us now? Go on, big man!
HOOD 1: We're gonna fuck you up!
SELIG: Wait, wait, wait a minute, would you just wait a minute. (Selig is truly scared, panicking)
HOOD 1: What? You want us to wait? You want us to wait for what?
SELIG: Just wait a minute! Wait, wait.

Hoodlums begin spitting on him, and rain him in spit as he closes his eyes and holds his hands above his face. He gets a few light kicks in the side. They continue to spit on him.

Hood 2 takes Selig's bike and rides around the parking lot in a liesurely circle.

The hoodlums grow bored and walk away. Selig lays there. He starts to sit up and Hood 1 starts walking back towards him fast.

HOOD 1: What? You gonna do something?

Selig stays half-sitting up on his elbows.
The two stare at each other and then Hood 1 spits at him and turns around.

HOOD 2: Come on. He ain't worth it.

EXT. DAY
OUTSIDE RESTAURANT

Fred lights a Newport cigarette. He looks up and sees Selig coming.

FRED: On foot today?
SELIG: Don't ask.

He sits next to Fred on a bench.

FRED: OK, I won't ask.
SELIG: Some jerk motherfuckers gaffled my bike. I was on my way home yesterday and these dudes started yellin at me, then they chased me into a parking lot and they got to me, man. Stole it, just like that. Just took it. Intimidated me, scared the shit out of me, and took my bike.
FRED: Why?
SELIG: They wanted it, and they didn't have it. Why else?
FRED: I'm sorry that happened to you. Did they beat you up?
SELIG: Do I look beaten up?
FRED: You look ok to me.
SELIG: They kicked the shit out of my pride, I'll tell you that.
FRED: I've got your back, if you wanna take revenge on those dudes.

Selig smiles.

SELIG: C'mon. I could give a shit about revenge. I just want my bike back.
FRED: Well maybe I can help.
SELIG: Thank you, but no. There's nothing you can do. But thank you.
FRED: You sure?

INT. DAY
KITCHEN

Selig and Fred walk into the walk-in freezer.
They stand next to a fan and take turns hitting Fred's pipe.

SELIG: Whoo! This is good stuff.
FRED: It'll relax you. Makes the day go by. The way I see it, they don't pay me enough to be sober on the job.
SELIG: Thanks for smokin me out, bro.
FRED: Not a problem.

A Perfect Day

2005-07-18T16:51:00.000-07:00

I know why the job is the last thing alcoholics lose. I remember seeing Elijah at Mama's Royal Cafe, unshaven, pale, haggard eyes and skin, damp stringy hair hanging down to his chin and wild self-hate haunting his motions, the shitty tattoos staining his arms as he hustled around the restaurant head down in self shame and loathing and consumed by it, dirty dishrag wet and held loosely in his hand, stained apron draped around his waist under his equally stained shirt. he worked feverishly, like he drank. He worked feverishly, clinging to the job as a man clings to a life preserver. He hustled around the kitchen, hypnotized by cooking sherry and the blind rythyms of the job. He came early and stayed late. He gladly worked off the clock in abject gratefulness to the job. Anita, the kitchen manager, loved him. She'd tell him to go home. He would hunch his shoulders and march out, to go and drink in the shower, take a deep drink in the shower. "My favorite place to drink is in the shower. I love to pound 40's in the shower." The job would be the last thing he would lose.
The Monday mornings I have come to work and been the most grateful for the job have been when I was the most unhappy. A desperate weekend, drunk with dashed hopes lost in dumb streets, alone tired and edgeless shapes going through the mind in waves of drift shame and stupid, losing shape, you cling. Cling to the job- get there- be there- you're useful- you perform a function- you have your life.
Have a weekend like my last weekend, though, and you show up, as I did this morning, this Monday, with not gratefulness but with resentment. When you are happy -as I am, why would you want this? I had the perfect day yesterday- the perfect San Francisco day. We pretended to be tourists. We parked by the Embarcadero on Harrison, had picnic sushi by a pier where a giant white hulled luxury behemoth was anchored, awaiting passengers. Aurora and I walked up Market to Powell, happy and talking, saying "see this building- I used to work here when I was temping, living in Oakland" ..."Justin don't you think we are sometimes? Silly, sappy, ridiculous? And not just around each other- it's a good thing, don't act like that!" ..."hey, look over there" pointing out people, watching them, getting batteries for the camera... taking a few sneaky pictures, trying to get strangers in the shot, people who don't know they are getting caught in an image and have that unconscious grace of the unwatched...
we took a cable car and stood on the edge as it went up the hills with me saying "isn't this great? I can't believe I was here every day and never did this, I'm so glad we're not too cool to do the tourist stuff, I want to do every damn touristy thing in this City." and the cable car bell ringing, and the crystalline light in the summer day and we are not in hot hot stifling baking slow Sacramento, the slow yellow air of the valley, the baking gold glass of the Sacramento valley. We can smell the sea, cut it in the air with our noses, nearly taste the salt.
We get off the trolley and head down into the swirling fleshy, camera snapping and bland masses of tourists at the Fisherman's Wharf. We talk on and narrowly skirt an upset, steering around an argument before it blooms and expands and becomes an entity of its own. Instead we get lost in the Musee Mechanique dropping coins in elemental craftsmachines rickety and wood and primitive and ornamental and handpainted and ancient pre-depression kicks for lovers like us, and little kids now old as my grandfather. After this we walk down the tourist trap and wind up spur-of-the-moment like on a little old fishing boat that just as we come along the man says he's got just 2 more seats and I say right here and we get on just at the last minute before some curlyhaired kid sneers "how many more?" trying to make it on the boat but no way no how.
Once on the boat as we motor away a boorish and clumsy middleaged guy from Idaho welcomes us and offers us a beer. Once moving along he and his wife come out with more insane banter, cartoon ugly American tourists embarassing me and Aurora in front of the cool Australian couple also on the boat. "Tell us sea stories, what ya call 'em, tall tales. C'mon! We don't care if they're true, just tell 'em" Idaho bellows. "Tell us lies, lies" he demands. The Captain shouts with a gap-toothed and uncomfortable smile "It's against my principles! I don't do that! I'll give ya some narration but I'm not gonna give ya any fibs." Idaho again asks for sea stories, untrue fables, fantasy. "Reality hasn't worked out so well, so we'll take that" he concludes, and drinks some beer. The Captains in his cabin now, we're out front by the nose of the boat with blankets as we move out into the choppy bay. The water looks like liquid iron swirling around.
We pass under the Golden Gate shrouded in fog wrapped in a blanket against the chill, holding each other. Aurora says move this way so I can lean against you and I smile is that my function? And she says you have many functions this is one of them, and I move and she leans against me and I'm happy she's leaning against me, her head resting on my shoulder. The sun slices through the fog in swirling patches of sharpness and no edges, moving on, blue-gray slashed through with electric white blinding bright, coloring shifting on to deep rich grays, and the choppy waves yield to the cutting prow of the boat and offer up sweet-salty echoes landing on our faces. Then the Australian woman tells us she is originally from Mexico, and the Idahoans go back in the cabin to torture the Captain. We learn about Mexico City neighborhoods the Zona Rosa and Cuyoacan, where Frida Kahlo had her studio.
After the ride is over we get back on steady legs and go hiking through North Beach and have a hot toddy at Vesuvios, next to City Lights Books and Jack Kerouac Street the alley where there are a couple murals but nothing anywhere about Jack and I hatch a plan to sneak back here with a graffiti pen and transcribe a favorite passage from the Dharma Bums on the wall- obscenely blank- obscenely cream-blank-painted. Into Vesuvios, where the pictures of Kerouac are on the wall, and we sit at a little booth with many pictures and posters of James Joyce, which is perfect because Aurora loves Joyce. So we talk about him, and other things, and kiss publicly and then wander out through Chinatown and I get a hoodie cuz I'm cold, I didn't bring anything warm, and we go and eat fat noodles and drink tea, pass a tea bar in Chinatown painted all bleeding vibrant stripes of unreal color yellow red and green, and the steaming tea casts yellow ribbons into the air that catch your nose and hook you, and rows and rows of glass jars with inescapably foreign contents (herbs, crushed blossoms, dried fruits and flowers, leaves) with unknown potencies, and we catch a cab and then go driving back to Sacramento, to have a night full of other things equally amazing as the rest of the day but not for exposition.
After a day such as that, you do not relish work in the morning.
No.

Roving Tendril of the Mind

2005-07-14T10:31:00.000-07:00

Tenacious green vines twist up fences, work their way through cracks in walls, climb up lattices, squeeze through gaps in wooden corners with rusty nails and peeling paint. Likewise tenacious is anxiety, that euphemism we use for fear, that clinical word that allows us to continue the convenient illusion (particularly convenient for the Pharmaceutical Industry) that all our ailments, physical and mental, can be fixed with a simple formula or drug, if only we can find this nerve center responsible for anxiety or depression or phobia...
Words such as fear, or hope, or desire, or pining, or longing --old and premodern and might as well be ancient ruins, older, at any rate, than the current diagnosis of our plight, seem to imply these things will be with us as long as we are us, pointing a still pointing hand to some insoluble issue, every one.
So. When one problem is removed, the mind sets in and begins to gnaw on something else, and much as the stomach's acids bubble and suck at itself causing pangs of hunger when not provided with food, so the mind seems to love to torture itself with pangs over empty and petty issues, whatever small thing it has to digest, and if some stark human drama is not present, the lack will be made up in the magnification of small things to raise them to the level of tragedy.
I'm still awaiting the results of a blood test for dread diseases. Meanwhile, I'm afraid of never amounting to anything but a second-rate part-time journalist, or horror of horrors, a music critic, a hanger-on about the arts, never managing to publish anything of my own real invention but only documenting the creative activities of others.
The truth is, I'm hungry right now. I get moody when I'm hungry. And add to that I've been reading Faulkner, which should explain everything.

Drugs

2005-06-29T16:56:00.000-07:00

Listening to Gillian Welch, Hell Among the Yearlings. "My Morphine" and other songs.

I'd like to

1) Have coffee with Aaron Cometbus. And I mean by the pot, not by the cup.

2) Shoot dope with Gillian Welch. But that junk shits lame.

3) Get drunk with Benicio Del Toro. He seems like he could drink well.

4) Smoke reefer with Kool Kieth.

5) Eat some shrooms with Dolly Parton. She'd be a hoot on psychedelics, like as not, ya reckin?

6) Huff airplane glue with Phillip Seymour Hoffman.

To Be A Real Christian

2005-06-27T09:51:00.000-07:00

This is a new story I finished over the weekend and am taking to a new writer's group I'm joining to workshop. The group was started recently by my new and exciting girlfriend, Aurora, and will meet weekly. Contact me if you're interested in joining.

The sunflowers all turned their heads towards the sun. They never looked back, like Lot’s wife did. Lot’s wife looked back on the burning Sodom and Gomorrah as God’s fire of wrath rained down on it in rainbow stripes of comets and lava and sulphur and liquid, white heat. Lot’s wife looked back, and she turned into a pillar of salt. But the sunflowers never looked back, never looked away from the sun, never looked away from the light, never looked away from the source of life. Mindlessly, steadfastly, they kept their eyeless faces fixed on the sun. Steadily, humbly, they all looked the same way- towards God, never away.
Chris wished he could be like that. But he was a sinner. He was tortured by sin. He’d been raised Christian, but things changed when his parents divorced. He was a 13 when that happened. He hadn’t been back inside a church since then. His father had been a pastor once, before he married his mother. After they had kids, they’d been too busy to be active in the church. His mom was a sinner, and his parents had split because of it. Chris didn’t care much for his mother, she was a degenerate drug user.
Chris quit staring out on the horizon of the rows and rows of sunflowers all looking out at the sun, where past that the airport lay, and planes like giant toys it seemed you could reach out and grip and smash took off and landed and taxied up and down the airfield next to the big gray air-control tower.
Chris came to the end of the field of sunflowers and tread up the side of the hill from the dirt road that followed the irrigation canal to the county road that led on to the Interstate Freeway a couple miles down. He walked by the side of the paved, two-lane county road. Occasionally pickup trucks would zoom by, carrying men with ham-like forearms hanging out the windows, white skin burnt red by the sun, baseball caps turning around in the cab to look behind them at the lone walker on the yellow-weed strewn rocky dirt by the highway.
Past the fields of sunflowers up the road, huge majestic oaks, ancient like cathedrals, raised their heavy green and black arms in giant flying walls like living flags from the soil. They shielded dark houses, with windows hiding in privacy, the big farm homes stretching up 2 and 3 floors from leveled earth, gardens at their roots, attic windows under the pyramids at their crowns, with teenage death metal music coming out softly in ribbons, gradually reaching Chris’ ears.
Past the houses, another half mile down past cropfields was the trailer park where Chris lived. He came kicking pebbles down the steep hill, taking a shortcut from the highway to the rear end of the trailer park. KOA, it was called, KOA Kampgrounds. Chris didn’t know what the purpose of all the K’s were in the name, or what KOA stood for. He’d only heard rumors that the Klu Klux Klan owned the Campground chain, and that had something to do with it. This guy who told him this also showed him a mysterious thing about the Marlboro cigarettes pack. His name was GG.
“You cover up this side, and this side” GG said, and held his thumbs framing the Marlboro seal.
“Look at the red and white backwards, like backwards from how you’re lookin’ at ‘em.”
“Ok” Chris said. He didn’t see anything.
“Y’see its two Klansmen. You can see the silhouettes of the hoods. Its two Klansmen holding up a banner that says ‘Veni Vidi Vici’.”
“What does that mean?”
“It’s Latin” GG said. “It means ‘We Came, We Saw, We Conquered.”
“Wow” Chris said. He was looking closer now and he’d done the trick of looking like GG said, at the negative space and seeing in reverse. He could see the white Klansmen holding up the racist banner clear as day. He wondered at how he’d ever missed it before, or why he’d never wondered what the Marlboro logo meant. Chris wondered what other hidden racist messages he missed in ordinary objects. Chris felt very sensitive about race. Even though he was only a quarter Hispanic himself, and looked white, he identified with minorities and was very sensitive about racial issues.
Down the hard-packed red clay of the campground, a black iron fence surrounded the maintenance buildings at the center of the lot. Chris walked towards it. Instead of a courtyard in the middle, the blank, windowless buildings of the Plumbing and Drainage centers took up the middle of the campground, surrounded by a red circle of road and beyond that, the RV encampments.
On his way to he and his dad’s trailer, Chris saw John standing shirtless next to his RV, his tattoos showing and a can of Budweiser in his hand.
“Hey Chris” John said.
Chris walked over to meet him. They slapped hands in greeting and hunkered down for a smoke.
“Don’t let your dad see me givin’ you a cigarette” John said.
“Don’t worry, he’s not around for a couple days. He’s out working on a contract in Oregon.”
“Aw, okay” John said.
“When you gonna be 18?”
“Next year.”
“Hm. That’s 10 years ago for me. When I was 18.”
Chris wanted a beer. He’d only been drunk a couple of times, but he knew that he liked drinking beer. He didn’t want to ask John, but he knew he could have one if he asked. John was a weird guy. He didn’t go to church, he drank and smoked and people said he liked to do speed and used to be in jail. But all he wanted to talk about was God and being a Christian. People said he used to be a Jehovah’s Witness but he was kicked out of the church for sinning. John really respected Chris’ dad and would tell him to be a good son and obey his father, but at the same time he would give Chris cigarettes and let him hang out late at his trailer when he knew Chris’s dad had a strict curfew set for him. Chris overcame his reluctance.
“Can I have a beer, John?”
“You want a beer?” John said and raised his head and squinted.
“Yeah sure” he said and threw out his arms a little in a macho gesture. “You’re man enough I guess. Y’ain’t gonna rat on me to your pop are ya?”
“No way!”
“Alright then. Here.”
John opened a can of Bud and gave it to Chris with an elaborate gesture of generosity. They sat and drank in silence as the sunset approached.
“So what you been up to today?” John said.
“Nothin. I just went on a walk by the sunflower fields. It’s really beautiful out there.”
“Its really beautiful out there” John sneered. “What would your dad think a you? You sound like a queer.”
“What?” Chris was confused. John wobbled slightly in his hunkered-down position and leaned back against the trailer. His breathed reeked, a flowery-sweet, yeasty smell that was unpleasant and slightly rotten.
“You spend too much time alone, kid” John said. “You don’t have no friends, do ya?”
Chris hung his head and blushed hard. He didn’t have any friends, this was true. He didn’t go to high school. His dad traveled all the time for work, and he had been on home studies for a long time. Sometimes he helped his dad work, a lot of times he was too far from any school to even get there. His dad taking him to school by car once a week was as much as they could arrange.
“I hate this trailer park” Chris said and spat.
“There ain’t nothing wrong with this trailer park” John said.
“I just wanna leave here and go to the city. I can’t wait until I get outta here” Chris said.
“Whoa there, buddy, where you think you’re gonna go?” John said.
“Anywhere is better than being in the middle of nowhere.”
“Oh yeah?”
“yeah.”
“Where you gonna go?”
“Maybe San Francisco.”
“You’re gonna go live with all those fags?”
Chris shrugged.
“Are you a Christian, Chris?” John said and lit another cigarette. His usually pale blue eyes looked brownish-green right now. His muscular body was relaxed, his big body sagged, and he looked far older than 28. His eyebrows creased into angry trenches and he focused on Chris.
“Are you a Christian?” he leveled the question at Chris like the barrel of a shotgun.
“Yeah, of course” Chris said and shrugged.
“What does it mean to be a Christian?” John said. He had a sip of his beer.
“It means that you believe in Jesus and the Bible” Chris said.
“Is that right?” John said.
“Yeah” Chris said doubtfully.
“What else does it mean?” John asked.
Chris paused.
“Well, it means that you believe in the prophecies, you believe that Christ will return, and you believe in the miracles that Jesus Christ performed, and the miracles God did for the Israelites.”
“Yeah, and what else?”
Chris didn’t know what else to say. He said nothing.
“He said be no part of this world!” John exploded, spilling beer as he threw his arm out in a sweeping gesture.
“Jesus said ‘you shall live in this world, but you shall not be part of it’, did you know that?”
“Yeah” Chris said.
“You think you’re going to be no part of this world if you go to San Francisco?”
Chris thought for a minute. He didn’t know what to say.
“I just think I’ll be able to do different things. I wanna see different things.”
“Like what?”
“I dunno. Maybe I would like to go to a coffee shop.”
“Yeah? A coffee shop?” John said disgustedly.
“I donno” Chris said and hung his head.
“What do you think Jesus meant when he said he wanted us to be no part of this world?” John said.
Chris thought for a while. He didn’t know what Jesus meant. He had no idea.
“I think Jesus meant that we shouldn’t sin” Chris said.
“No” John said. “No, not at all. Jesus meant, when he said that, that we should take no part in this world, not in any way, he meant just what he said. Don’t you believe that? Don’t you believe in God? Don’t you believe in Jesus? Don’t you believe in what Jesus said?”
“Yeah, I do” Chris said.
John made a mean face and stood up. He stared at the setting sun and held his arms on his sides and didn’t say anything, a macho silence shrouding his stillness. Chris looked at him admiringly. He felt insecure and hungry for instruction in the ways of life. He was lonely and alone.
“To be no part of this world is to have no part in it. No part in the government, no part in the system of it. You understand?” John said.
“Yeah, I do” Chris said, but he really didn’t.
“That’s why you can’t vote. That’s why you can’t work for the government. You can’t take part in the system” John said.
“You gotta cut all this shit out. Smoking, drinking, associating with worldly people. You shouldn’t even be talking with me.”
“Why not” Chris said and turned and looked at John. He had a sick smile on his face.
“Because I’m disfellowshipped” John said. “I’m not part of the Christian community anymore. When God brings the End, I’m gonna die, just like you, just like all the worldly people, only I won’t get another chance at resurrection, I’m gonna go straight to Sheol, I’ll be dead forever, just black silence forever, nothingness.”
John opened another beer and leaned against his trailer as he drank it.
“If we really study the Bible we learn that man has had his chance to have dominion over his fellow man, and that rule has come to nothin’. That’s why real Christians don’t participate in politics or any kind of earthly civilization.“
Chris thought for a while, thinking.
“But my dad said we should vote Republican, cuz we need to vote against the people that want to keep abortions legal and want to put the loggers outta jobs.”
John laughed cynically.
“You think George W. Bush is gonna do that? You think he’s going to keep the loggers working or make abortions illegal?”
Chris shrugged.
“George Bush isn’t a real Christian. Anyone who gets that much power is corrupt. Bush doesn’t give a shit about working people, all he cares about is his rich friends and his corporate allies. The whole fucking power structure is corrupt. It’s going down. It says in the Bible that on the day of Judgement, Jesus will look to the men of power, the Governments of the world, and all those who claim to be men of God but who are really just servants to wealth and greed, Jesus will turn to them to judge them and they’ll look to him and they’ll say, didn’t we do these things in your name? And Jesus will say to them “I never knew you.” And they’ll be brought down to make way for the New System of things. God’s system of things.”
”Who’s gonna control the planet if all the Governments are gone?” Chris said, bewildered.
“God will,” John said solemnly.
There was some time, then, before either of them spoke. They looked out at the sun beginning to set and the clouds like gray rags that had been soaked in gasoline, and were just beginning to alight.
“But isn’t everyone going to Heaven?” Chris said.
“Only 144,000 are going to heaven. They’re called the anointed. No one knows how many have already gone up. Some are alive today. No one can tell if they’re one of them by being told they are. Some people feel the call, they say that God speaks to them, or an angel does, and tells them they are. At the Memorial for Jesus Christ’s death…”
“What’s that?”
“That’s the only ceremony Jehovah’s Witnesses have other than baptism. It’s the night of the Jewish Passover, and it takes place at sundown. It’s when the last supper happened, and Jesus broke the bread and gave out the wine and said ‘here, eat, this is my body’ and ‘here, drink, this is my blood.’ It’s a very serious ceremony.”
“Oh.”
“Anyway, the anointed are the only ones who drink of the wine and eat of the bread.”
“But what happens to everyone else?” Chris said.
“They live on, in fleshly bodies, on the Earth forever. No one will get old or die. We will all be immortal. As it says in the Bible, ‘there will be no mourning anymore, neither will there be weeping, for the former things have passed away.’ There the lion will lie with the lamb.”
Chris watched John as he spoke. John looked off into the distance, his tone had changed, he was speaking more softly. Chris had heard his Dad talk plenty of religion, but this was strange and different. John came from some kind of mystical sect, he was on a real serious, unearthly journey. Chris was captivated. He was curious to know more. Immortality was a pretty seductive prospect, it had to be admitted.
“How do you get to live forever?”
John raised his eyebrows as if to say “you want to know?”
“Like I said, you have to be no part of this world. You have to live in it but not be part of it. You have to forsake any drugs or drinking too much, and never smoke cigarettes. No porn, no jerkin’ off, no sex before marriage. Definitely no faggotry. And no cussing. And on strict conditions, no blood.”
“What does that mean?”
“No eating blood, like blood sausage or meat that has blood still in it. Blood is sacred, so once it leaves, there is a scripture that says ‘it must be poured out upon the earth’ and you cant take it back in. So no blood transfusions, even in life or death cases.”
“Whoa” Chris said. John was looking him straight in the eyes now.
“To be a Jehovah’s Witness, is to be willing to die for your beliefs. Are you willing to do that, Chris?”
Chris wanted to say yes. But he couldn’t. He just didn’t believe in anything that strongly.
“You’ve got to be willing to make sacrifices. Like Isaac was willing to do with his son Jacob. Isaac took his only begotten son onto the altar to sacrifice him, since God told him to. So he had his son on the altar, tied down, with the knife in his hand, held up in the air ready to murder his son with a knife, hack him to death and kill him and then burn his fucking corpse as a burnt offering to God. That’s what Isaac was willing to do for his faith. But you know what happened, don’t you?”
“God stopped him” Chris said, remembering the Bible stories he’d learned in church and the Christian children’s books he’d learned to read with.
“God stopped him because he is merciful. You must be prepared to do anything for your faith. Did you know that Jehovah’s Witnesses were sent to their deaths in World War II in Nazi Concentration Camps?”
“No way.”
“Yes way. They were sent to the ovens along with the Jews. The Jews wore uniforms with little gold stars of David on them. The Jehovah’s Witnesses wore uniforms with purple triangles on them. The Watchtower Bible and Tract Society has a video about it called ‘Purple Triangles’. Unlike the Jews, the Witnesses could get out of the concentration camp just by saying they weren’t Jehovah’s Witnesses anymore and they would be good Nazis. So what they did is really superior to what happened to the Jews, when you look at it.”
“Why did they get sent to the gas chambers?” Chris asked.
“Because they wouldn’t fight in any wars. To be a Jehovah’s Witness, you can’t fight in any wars or perform in military service. Can’t join the Army or Navy or anything. And that in any country. Because the Witnesses are all over the world, here, in England, Africa, Mexico, even Communist countries where they’re not allowed and they have to practice in secret, like in China. Sometimes they’re caught and tortured. You can’t owe allegiance to any Nation, because nations are the things of this world that Jesus is coming to destroy, along will all false religion and all unbelievers.”
“Everything will just be gone?”
“Everything will be smashed.”
“By Jesus?”
“Jesus and the angels and Jehovah God himself will come and do this. Everyone who is not a Jehovah’s Witness or isn’t accepted by God will be annihilated.”
“What if they never were preached to? What if they lived their whole lives in China?”
“They might have a chance. But someone like me, who’s seen the Truth and then rejected it? I’ve not no way of surviving. The only hope I would have is if I die before the End comes. Then I’ll be resurrected along with everyone else, and get a second chance at being saved. If I die now, I’ll just wake up in the New System. But if the End comes tomorrow, I’ll be dead forever.”
“When will the end come?”
“Like a thief in the night, no man has knowledge of the day or the hour, that’s all the Bible tells us. The way the world is going, environment being destroyed, pollution, war, I don’t think it can be long now. No, it won’t be long.”
Chris was finished with his beer. He wanted to get back to the trailer and bathe in the tiny closet they called a shower. He’d been on a long walk and he was sweaty. The sun was going down.
“Well, thanks for the beer, John. Nice talkin’ to you.”
“Wait one minute” John said. “Let me get something for you. You’ll probably get more good from it than I can at this point.”
John went up the stairs and into his trailer, leaving the door open. He was in there for a minute or so, and Chris could hear him going through drawers. He reappeared with a big book, bound in red leather, in his hand.
“We call this the Revelation book,” John said as he handed it over.
Chris looked at the cover. An engraved scene of a great crowd of people in a valley led up to a throne with light-rays coming from it. The man sitting on the throne had a crown, but he had no face- just a blank space where the features would be. Another man, up close in perspective, was looking out at the reader, gesturing back with an open hand towards the divine King on his stately throne in the sky.
Chris flipped through it. There were many Heironymous Bosch-like illustrations, with striking, surreal images. The horsemen of the apocalypse, War, Famine, Death, images of armed conflict, men that appeared to be half-locust, angels with strange costumes and long horns flying over clouds.
Chris closed it and tucked it under his arm. He shook John’s hand.
“Well, I’m gonna go take a shower.”
“Alright my friend.”
“See ya around, John” Chris said and turned and walked back towards his trailer. He looked behind him once, and saw John looking at the trees, the houses, the fields, the sunset, sipping his beer.

The next day, Chris’s father, Craig, got back. He went straight to his bed and slept for hours. When he got up, he cooked some eggs and bacon and coffee.
“Kinda late for breakfast, isn’t it?” Chris said, looking up from his fantasy novel. He was reclining at the table with a small stack of books in front of him. Craig leaned over him and opened the drapes.
“Kinda early to be indoors, isn’t it?” Craig said, groggily stirring sugar into his coffee. “What time is it, anyway?”
“Two p.m.” Chris said.
Craig grunted.
“Shouldn’t you be outside having fun or something? I wish I didn’t have to work and could spend all day outdoors.”
“It’s boring out there. There’s nothing to do” Chris said.
“Well I’m sure there’s something you could do other than spend all day reading.” Craig said and took a deep breath. He was a stocky man with a beard.
“What’s this?” he said as he saw the Revelation book. He picked it up and looked at Chris sternly.
“Where did you get this?”
“John gave it to me.”
“That figures. Don’t tell me you’ve been reading this stuff, have ya?”
“No. I was going to though.”
“Well you can forget about it. Those guys are a bunch of fanatics. And they’re not Christians, either. They’re a wacked-out sect. They’re out of their minds and personally, I think their teachings are inspired by the Devil. So you can give this back to him or throw it away. I honestly don’t care.”
“But Dad!”
“Don’t start in with the buts. I don’t bother you about your little fantasy novels, do I? I think it’s a little weird, all the magic and sorcery and stuff, but you’re old enough to know the difference between reality and fantasy now. But this stuff” Craig said and shook the book in his hand.
“This stuff is dangerous. Now when you’re old enough, you can read whatever you want, but I don’t want this hanging around in my house. Ok?”
“Alright Dad” Chris said sarcastically.
Craig turned back to his bacon and Chris clammed up. He disappeared back
into his book. A human warrior named Thon was lost in a swamp. Swamp-beasts and witches were everywhere. Thon had only his sword and his magic amulet of two silver snakes, swallowing each other’s tails.

A few nights later Chris was startled by a loud sound, jolted out of his sleep. He sat up in the warm darkness.
“Did you hear that?” he shouted in the stillness, down towards the other end of the trailer, where his Dad’s room was.
There was a pause before his father responded.
“Sounded like a gunshot to me” he said.
The lights went on. Chris saw his dad, dressed for sleep in his sweatpants and t-shirt, putting on his flip-flops.
“Where you going?”
“I’m going to go check it out, that’s where I’m going.”
“Are you sure you should do that? Maybe we should just call the police.”
“If everyone called the police everytime something happened instead of doing something themselves, don’t you think a lot of people wouldn’t be helped? Maybe someone’s hurt, Chris. I’ve gotta go see.”
Then, almost as an afterthought, he added “besides, Chris. It’s the Christian thing to do.”
Chris sat up and kicked the sheets off.
“Well I’m going too.”
“No you’re not. Not until I see what’s going on first. Stay right here until I get back, that’s an order.”
Craig grabbed a heavy black flashlight, the one he took when he went out working. It was shaped like a club and could easily be used as a weapon. The screen door slammed behind him.
Chris lay back down and stared at the ceiling just a few feet above him. He fell back asleep in a few moments, just as he was dimly remembering to stay awake until he found out what was going on in the trailer park tonight.
He was dreaming something about sunflowers. There were men with the bodies of locusts. And an altar- an altar made of wood, cuttings from trees, dry branches, sticks. There was nothing on the altar.
Then he woke back up. He didn’t know how much time had passed, but he felt like it was a long time. He sat up. Out the window next to his bunk, he could see flashing red and blue and white lights, spinning and flashing, flashing and spinning.
He squirmed out of his bunk and into a pair of jeans and put a shirt on. He turned the light on and found his shoes and put them on, quickly tying the laces. He didn’t lock the door behind him or turn out the light. He rushed out and down the steps and out on the hard dirt and gravel.
He walked past his neighbor’s trailer and out into the main square. Out on the other side, past the maintenance buildings and the iron fence, he could see 2 parked police cars with the lights on. Next to them was an ambulance with one lone spinning red light on its roof. Chris wondered why he didn’t hear any sirens.
The air was dewy and cold and felt good on his face. He looked up and he could see that a very faint blue light was announcing that dawn would soon be on its way. Chris made his way around the corner and approached the scene. He could see, now, that the policemen were gathered, with a few other people, around John’s trailer. Chris could see his father standing near the open door of John’s place, talking with a policeman, holding the flashlight in one hand. He looked over at Chris as he approached, and said something to the moustache wearing cop. He walked, head down, towards Chris.
He held out his hands, flat out like against an invisible wall, don’t come any further.
“What happened” Chris said. He already knew it was something terrible. He could feel powerful emotions swelling up inside him. Everything seemed hyperreal, the crystal clarity of the spinning, flashing lights was terrible.
“Chris. Chris go back to the trailer. We’ll talk about this tomorrow.”
“No! Tell me what happened now!” Chris yelled at his father.
“He’s dead, Chris. You wanna know what happened? He shot himself. John shot himself.”
Tears sprang into Chris’s eyes. He couldn’t believe this was happening.
“How?” he said.
“With a shotgun, okay? John…” Craig took a deep breath.
“John committed suicide” he said and exhaled slowly.
Chris turned away and ran. He ran up to the road, slipping and sliding and stumbling on the rocky slope leading up to the highway, and started running down it. He had a vague desperate notion in his head about running to get away somewhere, in the frenzy of the moment, he couldn’t imagine going back to the trailer.
But as he ran down the pavement, the giant shadows of trees and houses ahead of him in the morning twilight, he realized there was nowhere to run but a bunch of fields full of sunflowers, their faces all pointing in one direction, their leaves tortured with some kind of rot, their yellow haloes shuddering when a wind came.
Chris stopped running and stood still. He could hear his Dad coming behind him, breathing hard, the flap-slap-flap-slap of his plastic sandals. They stood together, not speaking.
“Lets go back, ok?” Craig said.
Chris didn’t say anything. The sun would be up soon, warming the pavement that now was cold.

Taco Bell

2005-06-21T14:31:00.000-07:00

In the drive-through
Roberto turned to me and said
“Chalupa? What the fuck is a chalupa?
Is that Mexican? What the fuck is that?”
And we laughed
And then I ordered a Chalupa
It was gross

I grew up on this food
2 bean burritos and 2 tacos
Was my usual lunch meal
Mom and Dad loved Taco Bell
“It sure beats McDonalds” they said
And we ate Taco Bell
Damn near every day

For a while they had the Chilito
I liked that item
I remember back when they first introduced
The double-decker taco
Sometimes I would get a Mexican Pizza
Now who the fuck thought that one up?
Whose genius idea was that?

I never went for the 7-layer burrito
I didn’t get my items “supreme”
No thank you to runny imitations
Of guacamole and sour cream
Just give me the basics, ok?
Tortillas, corn shells, meat, beans
Lettuce, sauce, and cheese

I grew very comfortable
With this industrial cuisine
Its quick and cheap and
While certainly not gourmet
Its not hard to eat

Smaller franchises took the
Taco Bell format
And did it one better
Del Taco is slightly better
At least they don’t use
Dehydrated beans

I have fond memories of eating at
Taco Bravo
A little place run by ex-cons in San Jose
Or Taco Tree in Auburn
Imagine that- tacos growing on a tree
You could get a cappucino there
With your tostada
The smaller places do it better
If they want, they can even
Throw in an espresso machine

When I was 17
I lived on Taco Bell
Driving all around in my beater car
With no radio,
Boombox blaring on the back seat
The floor was littered with crumpled
Taco Bell wrappers

The Creeping Horror of Mediocrity

2005-06-15T14:39:00.000-07:00

Yesterday I sat in the conference room at work with a dozen co workers from my office. An old man played with his birthday present- magnet toys- with childlike fascination. He's Croatian by ethnicity, born and raised in Chicago... some time 30 years ago or so he came to Sacramento. His name is John. This was his birthday party. I sipped coffee and ate a little cake, avoiding the white mounds of frosting. I listened to the conversations around me.
"Which one is this for you, John?" Del asks. She's a sweet-dispositioned black lady in her early 30's with 2 kids. She gave me an electric motor-scooter her kids weren't using after I came into work dejected one day after having had another bike stolen.
John looked up at Del and smiles coyly.
"One of many" he says.
John is very old. He's got arthritis in his hands. His skin is almost as gray as his hair, his eyes are hid behind thick glasses. His entire form is twisted, stiff, and hunched like an old tree. His spine is like a question mark.
Today we are celebrating his birthday.
Del is talking with Scott and Helen about sports. They are talking about Jerry Rice. Scott is an old white guy, old enough to retire, but not as old as John. Scott is a Republican and enjoys reading histories of war and conquest. He knows all about the Civil War, the battles and generals. He knows about old Russian history and the Tsars. He'll talk about it to anyone who will listen.
"Well the thing about Jerry Rice is he worked harder than anyone to get to where he was" Scott says and nods his head. Del nods her head up and down.
"He did, he worked hard. He was out there first in the mornin' and the last to leave off the fiel' when they were practicing" she says.
Del turns to me and says something about the team that's going to win the championship, and some dynamite player I've never heard of. I don't bother telling her I don't follow football, I just smile and listen politely.
The subject turns from sports back to aging.
"Is it true life begins when you're 40? Or is it 30?" I joke.
"Well when you get into your 30's you know that no one's playin' around" Scott says and sinks his chin into his neck while staring earnestly, a curious mixture of grave seriousness and absurdity.
"Ain't that the truth?" Helen says. Its been at least 30 years since Helen kissed her 30's goodbye but apparently she remembers.
"When I turned 30 I cried and cried" Del says and shakes her head wistfully.
"What? Why?" I say.
"I was so sad. My 30th birthday that mornin' I woke up and just cried. I mean I got happy later when my family came by and we went out to dinner and we had a little party and stuff. Cuz you feel like your life's over! You're not young anymore! It's not like anything can happen anymore."
"You guys are making me really glad to be 25" I say and sip my coffee.
I'm the youngest person in the room. I look across the table at Angel and Mark, two young parents only a few years older than me, but already far closer in mentality to the middle-aged people at the table than to myself. They are talking about their kids' daycare and preschool.
"That's when I took my son out of that daycare. I showed up right at the right time thank God, they were serving the food and there, right on the tray, were strawberries. I took him out of that daycare right then. That was it."
Mark is deathly allergic to strawberries, and so is his son.
"Amazing Grace is wonderful" Angel says. "I take Christian there and I love it. It's clean, the staff there is excellent. I'm gonna be sad when he has to leave next year."
"How long do they take..."
"Right up to kindergarten."
"And how much is it?"
"600 dollars a month. Which is pretty good, for what you're getting."
I lose focus for a while, thinking about death and time and the life I want to lead. I don't want to wind up like these people. I don't look down on them or judge them, I just want to have a different kind of life.
Now Angel and Mark are talking about Las Vegas.
"I try to go down there once a year" Mark says.
"Me and my husband go down there at least once a year if not twice."
"Where do you usually stay?"
"Right on the strip. Last time we stayed at the Stratosphere?"
"How was that?"
"It was good. I absolutely love Las Vegas."
Travel. That's the key. Not to Las Vegas, although I'm not opposed to going someday- I've never been. But Vegas seems like the opposite of where I want to go.
Travel. To the real places Vegas replicates in a plastic parody- New York City and its jagged slate skyline, Egypt and the Pyramids, the canals of Venice, Italy. A life filled with this kind of travel, surely, is a way to escape the creeping horror of mediocrity.

"I feel the urge to travel, it's all I wanna do
Y'know I just can't settle down, because I like to roam"

Smoke Along The Tracks, Dwight Yoakam

My Corporate Sponsorship (part II)

2005-06-06T15:42:00.000-07:00

Xiang and I communicated via passenger pigeon, writing compact messages on tiny strips of paper in miniscule text and then sending off the birds, to wait two or three weeks before a reply came. Arturo came and delivered supplies once a month and could take a package and deliver it for me.
For the first year I was completely alone. I explored the length and breadth of the Fort, which was enormous. I cleared away all the vines and creepers and skulls and bones, of which there were a lot. I swept it clean, washed all the walls and whitewashed the entirety of it. There were 22 buildings in all with 307 rooms. I found and rehabilitated 48 cannons and soon had them back in functional condition.
A little after a year passed before my tutor showed up, delirious and drunk. His name was William Codpiece, and he was from England. To this day I have no idea where Xiang found him or what arrangements were made. William had insisted that several burros were employed to haul enough rye whiskey and rum to fortify him during his stay. There were 9 barrels in all, 3 to a burro. William, with a curt “You’re the tadpole are you?” stumbled aimlessly around the courtyard until I directed Arturo to the quarters I had made ready. There William stumbled in and passed out and slept for days.
He awoke in a foul mood. The poor bastard had been a brilliant scholar in his time, but his brain had been cooked in a disastrous home experiment with an Orgone accumulator and a Tesla coil. William had been trying to pick up where the fringe scientists left off but had only succeeded in electrocuting himself. The contents of his brilliant mind scrambled, he turned to the drink to steady his nerves. At times it worked, other times, it made him even more deluded.
My private tutoring lessons were deeply flawed. I learned that America was discovered by Amerigo Vespuccini, who also wrote operas. The pilgrims came over in three steam-powered vessels: the Meany, the Penny, and the Saint Mary. There had been great wars in this century, fought by secret societies made of sorcerers, thieves, businessmen, salesmen, professional athletes, and actors. Actors were the most dangerous of these clandestine groups, as they could pretend to be something they weren’t. There was a man named Ronald Reagan who was controlling the world then. He was an Actor, and he was supreme commander of all the other Actors, most of who lived in Hollywood, which was secretly controlling the planet.
Sometimes after a tutoring lesson, I would go walking the perimeter of the Fortress as I usually did, and I would find William crying. He would be hunched over on an ancient stone carved with Indian mathematical symbols, listening to a tiny transistor radio, weeping over the static-soaked South American ballads and love songs, greedily sipping gin and wild guava juice. He would rock back and forth, listening to the tinny trumpets and echoing voices and string sections of the pop songs, drinking and talking to himself, his face crinkling into a tragic mask and then smoothing out like paper in moments of total resignation.
The wispy blond hair on his nearly-bald head would blow in the tropical breeze, and his pale, milky blue eyes would shut. His thin, British lips closed over the crooked-fence teeth. Then he would cry again, face balling up, and start babbling about “things too quiet to dread” and “things too precious to protect” and other riddles and nonsense.
My writing desk was next to a window with a beautiful view of the jungle. Xiang was right- the seclusion did the trick. With no distractions I wrote prolifically. When I first arrived there were already crates of paper, a dozen typewriters, and boxes of black-inked typewriter ribbon waiting for me that had been helicoptered in ahead of time. All these supplies were behind my desk against the wall in stacks, next to the methodically labeled manuscripts both finished and in progress.
I got right to work as soon as I got there. I wrote an extensive fantasy saga about 4,000 pages during my first year. It was about a vast empire of clay people and their battle with the plant people on a large planet twice the size of Jupiter. The clay people had their own language, which I invented. It was a very simple language. There was only one tense, for past, future, and present. Most things didn’t have their own nouns or adjectives but were referred to by the equivalent terms of “that” and “stuff” and “like” and “y’know.” I was lazy and didn’t want to write a long glossary.
When William arrived, I stopped writing for 3 years to devote myself entirely to studies. Since I didn’t have any textbooks, I took extensive notes on whatever fact or fiction spilled out of William’s mouth. Then I studied and memorized it. This intense effort at study was also an education in disillusionment. For example, once I started studiously took lessons in Latin vocabulary and grammar. After a few weeks I realized that the vocabulary I was learning is what is commonly called “Pig-Latin,” and the grammar was identical to English, if somewhat strange, as the rules kept changing every lesson.
I gradually learned to doubt everything William taught me, but I still earnestly applied myself to learning it, since I had nothing else to do. Other than writing fiction of course. My writing desk was always there, rain or shine, fog or flood. The insects and snakes and birds were all too willing to take over my Fortress and make it theirs. It was an ongoing struggle to discourage them. I managed this using stolen supplies of my tutor’s liquor, which was of such a cheap and acidic quality a sprinkle would be enough to rid them from a room for a while.
After my hiatus from writing, I returned to the craft at the age of 16.
I wrote a sci-fi epic called Morgan’s Revenge. It was about a kingdom of telepathic farmers and their kind and enlightened feudal masters. They lived in a more or less egalitarian, idyllic society, spending most of their time meditating and practicing the high arts of contemplation until they were invaded by the techno-goblins, a fascist group of underground-dwelling mutants who used computers to communicate.
After a while of this period of learning, it dawned on me one morning that it was totally within my power to request additional stuff. I had always liked comic books, so I sent a letter to Xiang requested several crates sent in. My tutor recommended I also learn the “classics” whatever that meant. So I requested a crate of classics too.
A couple months later, the helicopter came slowly down into the courtyard in a storm of wind and leaves and wildflowers. We unloaded the supplies and retired to our rooms. I had also requested booze for my tutor and could hear him noisily clanging the glass bottles around getting them arranged in neat rows in his chambers, ready for drinking.
I went on a reading binge then, tearing through the comic books, which ranged back to the early days of comics and went on through up into the 90’s. Weird Tales, Mad Magazine, Iron Man, Popeye, Green Lantern, Thor, X-Men, all the comics lore was greedily sucked up. Then I moved on to the classics. Old books, all of them from the 19th century and before. I read the greats with some interest, but realized early on that I preferred the slam-bang action of comic books to the deep ponderings and long descriptions of the old writers of Europe and antiquity. Dickens was totally a yawnfest. Dostoyevski was pretty cool but he sure could have used an editor! Shakespeare I liked, but the words I didn’t know drove me crazy.
Most of these grand old men of literature were total windbags.
Still, it filled my head with troubling ideas about history, society, politics, reason, and faith, that I knew I would have to work out with stories of my own. I continued my studies with Codpiece, but started writing fiction again. In 1998, at the age of 18, I finished the first book I knew actually might be relevant, since I had finally read (barely) enough good literature to know the difference. It was called Mario Freud and Mickey Marx take on Bugs Bunny and Wild Bill Hickock in the Hall of Records with Death Tazers, or M.F.A.M.M.T.O.B.B.A.W.B.H.I.T.H.O.R.W.D.T., for short.
This time, instead of immediately launching into a sequel and trying to turn it into a saga, I went back and wrote another draft. Then another. I was in the process of writing a third when one morning we had an unexpected visitor at the fortress.
I awoke to hear the insectlike droning of a small plane, but sputtering and backfiring. I got out of bed and opened the shutters to see a small white Cessna with blue stripes cruising low, a trail of black smoke coming out of its tail end. It managed to pull up, then went almost out of sight before plunging straight down beneath the jungle canopy.
Phillip, my soon-to-be benefactor, stumbled into the fortress about 48 hours later, barely alive, cursing profusely in Yiddish, sweating buckets, and hoisting a giant brass-and-ivory container embossed with Hebrew letters containing a Torah scroll inside.
“Thank God!” He screamed upon seeing me approaching him with a ladel full of water, and he promptly collapsed, face first, on the whitewashed stone of my courtyard.
A few hours later, he woke up to the sight of me, splashing water on his face.
“Oy Veh” he said. And Phillip passed back out.
I waited another several days and slapped him on the face. I got no response. So I waited another few days and slapped the stranger again. When I did, the well-rested Hebrew came awake with a start He was a short, curly-haired man with hazel eyes and a shark-skin suit which was shredded and singed by the crash. He spoke in a Brooklyn drawl you could cut a Biali with.
“Thank you for saving my life” he said gravely.
“I was on-route to a bat-mitzvah for my little niece, Emma. She lives with my sister in Lima, Peru. When the plane malfunctioned, I was sure I was doomed. I made my peace with God and shut my eyes.
“Incredibly, I survived the crash unharmed but for a few scratches, as you can see. I saw the fortress here, not sure if I was dreaming it or not. Thank heavens its real and not a mirage.”
He paused and looked at me curiously.
“Who are you?” he said.
I introduced myself and told him how I came to be in South America, and took him to the Dining Hall, a large chamber with an arched roof and windows overlooking a steaming jungle canyon filled with jaguars and neon-colored birds. We ate brown rice and coconut and sipped delicious coffee brewed with beans from one of the trees in the courtyard.
“I’ll send for a helicopter to come pick you up” I said.
“Thank you” he smiled. “How long will it take?”
“Unfortunately, it won’t be for a couple weeks.”
He shrugged.
“I’m lucky to be alive. If I miss a few appointments, so be it”
Over the next two weeks, we spent a lot of time hanging out and talking about subjects esoteric and not so esoteric. The Kabbalah was explained to me in some detail since Phillip was an amateur historian of sorts and I was eager to learn about nearly any topic.
“Just don’t you pay any attention to those jerks at the Kabbalah center” he said, wiping his forehead of sweat in the sauna-like jungle heat.
“Why not?” I asked as I picked beans from the coffee tree.
“Rabbi Berg and his cohorts are turning a great metaphysical tradition into a superstition to make money off. Selling the little red strings and the Kabbalah water, they’re getting rich off it.”
“So Phillip. I haven’t asked you yet. What do you do for a living?” I asked.
Phillip turned out to be an excellent connection. He was a high-powered L.A. lawyer who defended well-heeled clients in criminal defense cases. He was working on another specialty, since he was tired of dealing with crime. Copyright law interested him, since he enjoyed music and movies and was curious about copyright issues.
“You should really come to LA” Phillip said one afternoon. He looked up from a stack of my manuscripts he was reading through. We were drinking mango smoothies. “Yeah it’s beautiful down here and everything, and you have lots of time to write, but you need to be around other creative people. And if you ever want to make a living, you’ve gotta be around the industry. Have you ever thought of writing for movies? Television?”
“Never really thought of it.”
“You’ve got talent here!” Phillip said and slapped the stack of manuscripts with an open palm. “And from what you’ve told me about your life story, you’ve got plenty of material to draw from. Please. Promise me you’ll come visit me in Los Angeles. I will make you a guest in my home.”
“Ok,” I said. “I promise.”
And we shook hands on it.

To Be Continued...

Lords of Chaos

2005-06-03T15:43:00.000-07:00

Moynihan's book is fascinating, no doubt. From a sociological standpoint and from that of history of religion, this book is interesting, aside from the obvious interest in it as either a music or true crime book.
Part of the pull of this book is its author's creepy fascination with the subject. It's obvious Moynihan is really enamoured with the varying Satanic, neo-fascist, Odin-worshipping, anti-Christian, radical right wing nationalist, or racialist Metalheads in the book, most of whom are behind bars for arson (church-burning), murder, and other crimes.
Even more so reading it knowing that, at least if Jim Goad can be trusted in an interview where he says as much, Moynihan himself holds white racialist views. Moynihan holds himself at arms length from the most extreme or distasteful views expressed by the Black Metalers in the book, but one gets the feeling he's only doing so to keep up appearances.
As someone with strong anti-fascist, anti-racist feelings myself I can't relate to most of the views expressed in the book. But I still can enjoy it. If your belief system is so weak it trembles at exposure to something contrary to it, I think that means your convictions are pretty feeble. It's actually refreshing to learn about a subculture so alien to me, yet in a way so close to home. This book is just as educational as it is incindiary.
I have to say its a little disappointing to learn that Cradle of Filth, the only Black Metal band I really love, are cozy with this racist-fascist Burzum guy, Varg. But what the fuck did I expect, right? Don't they claim to be evil incarnate?...

My Corporate Sponsorship

2005-06-02T13:56:00.000-07:00

Part I

As I sit here, smoking an American Spirit cigarette, drinking an Ocean Spray cranberry juice mixed with Stoli vodka, I want to first of all thank the American Spirit and Stolichnaya companies for the lifelong supplies of booze and cigarettes I now enjoy.
I’m pleased to put fingers to keyboard and tell you a little about my Corporate Sponsorship and how it came about.
The serenity that rewards a desperate soul when seeing its madness spilled on a page and transformed, by some kind of alchemy of paper and ink and thought, has always been my comfort. I wrote stories to keep me company since I was a child, growing up in the tiny chicken coops and backrooms I lived in with my family in the backwoods and slums of California. I completed my first novel, “Darkness Falls on Donner Pass” at age 2. My father was killed in a tragic accident with a threshing machine when I was three. I still don’t know what a threshing machine is, but that’s what happened. My mother was blinded in an industrial equipment malfunction at a pickling factory in Oakland. Her and my seven aunts and my five sisters and brother were forced to live in the worst conditions, cleaning discarded toilets and gathering food out of dumpsters to survive. I met an old man in an alley one day when I was 6, sprawled out in a pile of newspaper and empty bottles of Old Crow whiskey. His name was Rodney.
Rodney was 168 years old. He had come over from Ireland and fought in the Mexican War for the Americans, but deserted with some of his fellow Irish and joined the Mexican side. They formed a battalion called the San Patricio and after the war, were given the highest honors for bravery from the Mexican government. Rodney would get me drunk and tell me stories of how he had gone shooting rats with Pancho Villa and whoring in Mexico City with Ambrose Bierce. Rodney was the only man to know the fate of Mr. Bierce- he was there when the old writer passed away, pants around his ankles and a smile on his face in a beautiful bordello that used to be a nunnery.
I ditched the miserable dens my family inhabited and took up with the ancient hobo. Rodney taught me how to hop freights and pull welfare and insurance scams. In return, I helped the old man manage his affairs and get on and off of trains. We had a great time, living outdoors in the wind and sun and sleet, camping on cliffsides, living on beans and hot dogs, going up and down from Alberta to Florida to Argentina, back up to California, to Washington, to Quebec, and back again down to Chile, and, well you get the picture. After a couple years of this free-ranging life, I decided to write to my mother and let her know of my well-being and whereabouts. I received a response at my stolen PO Box in Tijuana from one of my sisters. It told me that my mother had a cancerous tumor that they did not have the money to pay the doctors to remove. I hopped the first train I could and landed in San Francisco 3 days later.
I ran up to the abandoned building my family was squatting with all the money I had in the world, 93 cents, burning a hole in my pocket. I wanted to be able to contribute what I could, little that it was. I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself if I didn’t.
I was shocked to find my mother sitting up in bed in the sunlight streaming through the broken windows, smiling and laughing with a huge bandage on her neck as the rest of my family merrily drank champagne and danced to a brand new stereo system blaring the Ramones “the KKK took my baby away.” I laughed until tears streamed down my face and drank deeply from the bottle of Couvosier passed to me and hugged my family and kissed my mother. We danced until late in the night as my mother rocked in bed and snapped her careworn fingers.
We burned all the candles and when we were all exhausted, collapsed and I heard the story. A mysterious benefactor named Boris Bolshevik had contacted the hospital and claimed my mother was his high school sweetheart back in Ohio. He wired money to pay all her medical bills and then some. The surplus money had been handed over in cash from the hospital officials, after some threatening from my brother Preston, who had become a fearsome, scarred thug weighing some 300 pounds of muscle and sinew since I left.
The strange thing was our mother had no recollection of any high school sweetheart named Boris. Even stranger, she had never gone to high school at all, 3rd grade being the highest level of formal education she had ever received. We all pondered this mystery for a while but could come up with no ideas.
After a happy weeklong celebration I headed back to TJ, where Rodney and I had been staying the last month. When I arrived, I found Milo, the owner of the Rutting Bull, a favorite cantina of ours near the border.
“Rodney, he no bueno,” Milo said and shook his head sadly. His eyes were apologies fixed darkly in his face. I shivered in my spine and stepped closer to him.
“Where is he?” I asked.
Milo took me down some streets I had never seen before, to the Chinatown district of Tijuana, where crowded opium dens of discarded railroad workers laying spawled on crowded bunks tilted in on the smoky angles of corners and vendors selling Mayan amulets and I Ching hexagrams carved into jade. Chorizo chow-mien was cooked at little stands and kung-fu matadors strutted around in gilt and turquoise and red velvet costumes but with long pigtails and Chinese shoes. We came to a tiny booth with red painted signs in Chinese outside. “Curandero,” Milo whispered to me and pointed to the black curtains. I poked my way in immediately.
It took a moment for my eyes to adjust to the dim red lamplight. The old healer was leaning over Rodney, gently poking needles into his chest. I lunged at him, buck knife in my fist, jabbing at his face. I didn’t even see him move, but a moment later I found myself out of the booth and across the alley, covered in tiny bamboo cages full of scorpions that I had knocked over. I shook them off and got to my feet. You see, I had never heard of acupuncture. The old healer came out and smiled at me, and speaking in perfect, British-accented English, explained that Rodney was sick and he was a doctor.
Rodney was gravely ill. After so many long years and the incredibly preservative effects of certain liquors Rodney drank, age had finally caught up with him. The acupuncturist and herbal healer had known Rodney for a long time but there was little he could do at this point. In his dying moments, Rodney handed me the key to a safety deposit box in San Diego.
“Take this and go,” he wheezed. “It’s all yours.”
And I went.
A few hours later, I was sitting in the Wells Fargo bank in San Diego, and thanks to Wells Fargo for the interest-free checking and savings account I have today, also the free financial consulting they give me, sorry to interrupt but I’m obliged to as they are one of my corporate sponsors. Anyway, there I was, looking through the contents of the safety deposit box. Rodney had had a string of identities constructed on paper with different social security numbers, from different nations with birth certificates and passports, all with bank accounts, properties and shell companies of their own. Anything of value had been signed over to me.
One of the identities Rodney had constructed had a name that rang a bell: Boris Bolshevik.
Rodney’s death left me materially enriched, but spiritually bereft. At the tender age of 12 I had lost the only father I had ever known, and was left as the sole heir of 174 years of collecting wealth and property and material possessions. Well, it didn’t amount to all that much compared with your average multimillionaire. Rodney was a free spirit and didn’t care for money. However, he was a collector, and had a passion for unusual and unique things and artifacts. He had stuff around the world, stashed in different places in forgotten and beautiful corners of the planet. I would need help in sorting it out, and was worse than helpless without assistance- I was a target, and a risk to everything Rodney had collected. Rodney, wise as he was, knew this, and included in the safety deposit box a short but warm letter advising me to contact a Xiang Ximou of Sacramento.
I hopped a train up to Sacramento, a sweaty little city filled with vagrants, hicks, and immigrants. There some nice rivers to sit and drink beer by. Xiang lived deep in the Chinatown of Sacramento, and in the 150 degree weather I had to watch my feet as the pavement usually was half-melted. Xiang had a quiet office next to an abandoned railyard filled with yellow weeds. The only sound was the soft ringing of bells, which hung all over the screened porch where Xiang would sit in a rocking chair and dispense financial advise to his clientele.
I stepped in the screen door and let it slam behind me. Xiang woke with a start from his nap. I explained who I was and showed him the letter from Rodney. He brushed a few tears from his eyes and stroked his bald head.
“You’ve had very good fortune,” he said.
“Not usually,” I said. “But I was lucky to meet Rodney.”
We stayed up all that sweltering night under the bare electric bulb that lit Xiang’s porch-office. He used an old rotary phone to make phone calls to places in the world where it was already the next day, and went painstakingly through the contents of the safety-deposit box, making tiny chicken-scratch notations in a red leather bound book.
I stayed with Xiang for several weeks, living off rice and vegetables. Xiang was a strict Buddhist, and worked for practically nothing. He was working off the bad karma he had racked up as a young Triad, when he had fleeced members of his own community through extortion and loan-sharking. He wrote a detailed account of all my new properties and possessions. Over the phone and using certified letters sent Federal Express, who by the way I’m not obliged to even mention since they aren’t one of my corporate sponsors but they really did an excellent job, he made sure everything was signed over from Rodney’s various identities to me.
Then one morning he announced he was finished.
“What now?” I asked.
“That’s up to you. What do you want to do?”
No one had ever asked me this before. It occurred to me that writing was something I had always enjoyed. I had a few novels polished off and some volumes of poetry and short stories. I had never read anything other than the occasional dime store novel or newspaper and had no formal education at all, but writing was something that came natural to me. I liked it.
“I want to write,” I said.
Xiang and I talked for a while. It was decided, on his advice, that I go down to South America to an old Spanish Fortress I owned somewhere in the Columbian jungle. Writing was a solitary activity, Xiang said, like meditation, and required solitude. He would get me a tutor and send him down to see that I was educated. This sounded fine to me. I’d had plenty of the fast life already.
After stopping in San Francisco and surprising my family in a limousine, I introduced them to Xiang and we went and bought a house for them in the Mission district where they were comfortable. I bought another house in Berkeley for my relations. There were a lot of them and some of my brothers and sisters were having children of their own. Both the houses were big and could fit a lot of people. They were all incredibly grateful to me and stunned to hear that old Rodney, the drunk I’d run off with, was responsible for their astonishing reversal of fortune.
Still, things would never be the same. Now I was looked on as not just another member of the family, but a powerful, disruptive force, almost a godlike figure, who had delivered them from a life that they had grown used to, no matter how miserable it was. Underneath all their tearful thanks and hugs and shouts of joy, there was suspicion and disbelief. I was glad when I could leave and got on a plane with my brand new passport and ID.
I landed in the steaming jungle and met with Arturo, my guide. He was a stone-faced Indian who spoke very little Spanish. In nearly total silence, he guided me for six days through the jungle, cutting with his machete through thick swaths of crawling green vines that would wrap around your hands and feet as you slept it grew so fast. We could only sleep for 15 minutes a night, all that was safe. Gigantic beetles the size of small dogs would run up behind you to attack your asshole.
Nightmarish creatures that had evolved millions of years in the sunless depths underneath the impenetrable green canopy poked their grimy heads at us out of puddles of stagnant water and snake urine, with huge watery discs for eyes, fearsome blue scales, fur-covered teeth, and webbed fingers with talons groping towards us out of the slithering shadows. I was at the very last of my stamina when we climbed up out of the thickest layer of the jungle at last. I found myself on a plateau, where amidst the dense foliage there was a slowly decaying fort.
This would be my home for the next 10 years.

To Be Continued...

Rebel Jew

2005-06-01T10:41:00.000-07:00

I've got that song by the Silver Jews stuck in my head.
"Jesus was a rebel jew, was a re-bel jeeew, and he died for you..."
I like that band but at the same time their irony annoys me. I have mixed feelings.
Just got back from a swell 4-day weekend spent with Aurora in Mendocino where her uncle has some land. We camped out in orchards and burned candles under the stars and drank wine. Hung out with her uncle and cooked and ate great food- tabouli, hummous, crab, salmon, bbq'd vegetables tofu and tri-tip, tons of salad, crackers and cheese and olives, wine, beer, different breads with garlic or cheese or butter. We feasted, walked around and visited the different people who live on the land. It was cooperatively bought over 30 years ago by some counterculture types who have continued to live there ever since.
We went swimming. There was a little gypsy-wagon sauna next to the small cold fast river running through the land, swimming next to the redwood trees towering above you, getting sunburned and reading Moby Dick.
The first night we spent in SF, stayed with Kevin Price and we went out to a party and then a club and knocked a few back while Aurora slept. We got up early because Aurora had a christening to go to in Berkeley. I walked around Telegraph listening to Doc Watson in the early morning and ate at the Cafe Durant, my favorite place to get breakfast in Berkeley, where you can eat out on the 2nd-level balcony in the fresh air and sip coffee and read the paper with a great view of Durant St. and Telegraph.

Summer Reading

2005-05-26T15:19:00.000-07:00

I've decided to do something I haven't done before:
actually make myself a summer reading list. Anyone who reads this has to post their own as a comment, okay?

They will surely be read out of order but here goes:

1. Norweigian Wood by Hakuri Murikami. I started this but then got sidetracked.
2. Lords of Chaos: the Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground by Michael Moynihan and Diorik Soderlind. Fascinating, sordid history of the Scandinavian Black Metal phenomenon.
3. Collected Screenplays: Jokes, Gummo, and Julien Donkey-Boy by Harmony Korine. See below.
4. No Trespassing: Squatting, Rent Strikes, and Land Struggles Worldwide by Anders Corr. Hopefully it will be more practical than parlour room.
5. Suffle How It Gush by my friend Shon- its a galley copy of his soon-to-be-published personal history of Bosnia and Croatia.
6. Zines. Got to catch up on all the zines I've got but haven't read yet.
7. A book by Yukio Mishima. Don't know what yet.
8. A contemporary play. I'm open to suggestions.
9. Fires by Raymond Carver. This was supposed to be number 1 but I forgot.
10. Trick Baby and Long White Con by Iceberg Slim. Its been a while, Iceberg, I'm ready to dig you again.
11. The Big Lebowski screenplay by Joel & Ethan Coen. I started this once but never finished it.
12. Nine Stories by JD Salinger. Time to re-read it.
13. Something by Flannery O'Connor or Faulkner or both. A dose of Southern writing.
14. Moby Dick by Herman Melville. This is if I get ambitious. Me and Billy shook hands on it that if he read The Brothers Karamazov, I'd read Moby Dick.

Harmony Korine- My Hero

2005-05-25T14:07:00.000-07:00

Sure, I knew of Harmony Korine for a while. I'd seen Kids and Gummo and enjoyed them both. Particularly Gummo. Then a few days ago I saw Julien Donkey-Boy.
Like the other two films, there are things about it that bother me. They aren't works of "perfection." But the freshness of his vision and the haunting images and the disjointed, non-linear storytelling where things just chaotically happen and the plot is something you have to gradually assemble and invent yourself... I love these movies.
They're challenging and dark but they have a real innocence about them too and I think you have to look for that or you'll miss the point. Korine doesn't flinch from the disturbing, and he dares you to see some unexpected beauty there.
In Gummo and Julien Donkey-Boy, another unmistakable thing that I love is how they are focused away from the urban world. They take us into the backwoods, the rural, the "underdeveloped" and show us something there. Korine grew up in Nashville and I can't help but think if he'd grown up in Los Angeles he wouldn't have the unique perspective he has. One of his favorite writers, Flannery O'Connor, is from the South. If he'd been raised in Hollywood, there would be no Gummo.
I just read this interview. I was pleased to find that he doesn't sound too cool or jaded or ironic, he comes off much more like a David Lynch- a genuine eccentric artist.
Did I mention this guy is the same age as me? 25. In a way that makes me feel like a slacker and I need to get off my ass. But mostly I'm proud that someone from my generation is doing something of real value. Makes me want to keep hammering away at scripts too.

Redneck Manifesto

2005-05-24T09:37:00.000-07:00

I'm reading the Redneck Manifesto right now, by Jim Goad, editor of the notorious zine ANSWER Me! and author of Shit Magnet. He's a witty, intelligent, violent, brutal yet sensitive writer... and underground cult hero/villain. I'm not going to go into his personal life here or my opinion of it, anyone who wants to know about him can find it out by reading Shit Magnet. To examine his worldview, read the Redneck Manifesto.
Goad paints a portrait of the white underclass that is left out of our national debate. He makes some excellent points- poor whites are stereotyped as racist, when it is rich whites and their economic exploitation that is responsible for the vast majority of oppression, racial or otherwise. The working class redneck bar is better integrated than the rich white folks' country club. It's now verboten to blame poor hispanic or black people for their economic situation, but the stereotyping of poor whites as imbeciles responsible for their own pathetic poverty continues.

Goad alleges that liberal, upper class urban whites project their guilt for participating in this economic exploitation on the poor rural white. Scapegoating. The liberal academic notions of "white skin privelege" are not only meaningless but actually offensive to destitute crackers in rural areas where no jobs exist, the schools are in ruins, and communities are ravaged by crank abuse. White skin priveledge may exist elsewhere, but for most poor whites its an abstract notion that has nothing to do with their reality- which is based on class.
That's Goad's point. America's "dirty little secret" is not racism- everyone knows about that! America's "dirty little secret" is classism- something the media is much more adept at keeping a secret. Americans are encouraged to mistrust the poor "white trash" and their anger, which must be a product of some innate perversity or primitivity.
Goad makes a convincing case through "people's history" borrowing from such honorable muckrakers as Howard Zinn to demonstrate that working class people of all races have been shit on in this country, and the experience of white Appalachians, who live in 3rd world conditions, is much more similar to the experience of ghetto blacks than it is to that of the tiny boss class.
A more provocative book you'll probably never come across. You may not agree with everything, but you'll keep reading.

I Believe In Love

2005-05-19T11:46:00.000-07:00

Character:
self-confident woman, I hope, that all best wait me in the future. Optimist, I believe in a miracle and eternal love. But nevertheless, I sure, that the family must be without mad love. The main thing - respect, understanding and care of each other, I hate treachery and deceit, lie and hypocrisy. I love my daughter and parents very much, therefore I help them. I am "an owl" - go to bed late, get up late. A thunder-storm, rain, sun, hurricane and warm snow - do you meet such? It is I... But sometimes I am simple a calm by the sea.

I believe in love

Looking For Type:
I am very open and sincerely honest (some people afraid of it). I demand the same from my partner. Main things for me - to have the cosy house, reliable partner, steady material base, affable people around me and happy daughter! Someone will think, I ask so much! I do not consider so, you see I am worthy most good! And I hope, the worth man will respond me. Only when two people meet, they understand, that exactly such person they waited all life, all others coming across on ways are the casual passers
Looking For Age:
40 - 50

People have no idea what goes on in my head.

I have all these crazy thoughts. Sometimes I feel like I will hyperventilate. I just breathe so hard. Sometimes I feel like my heart is the motor of an overwound watch and my chest, my rib cage is the shell casing for this watch. I can hear it ticking too fast. There's too much pressure built up. I am a smart, educated person. This isn't supposed to happen to me. Didn't Thoreau say something about men leading "lives of quiet desperation" ? That's me. Anyway my blood pounding in my ears. Its deafening sometimes. I can't call it an anxiety attack. But it's some kind of an attack I have. I live alone. There would be no one to help me if, say, in a freak accident I slipped in the shower, broke the glass door with my elbow, gashed my jugular vein and starting spouting blood everywhere. Might sound crazy but you know freak accidents do happen. Basically I want someone to live with. I'm not a pervert, I don't need any kind of weird sex stuff. Actually, I hardly have a sex drive. Not to say I'm not good when I get going. But I live basically celibate, you know? Lets just say its not a huge driving factor for me. I'm not one of those guys who uses porn. Porn exploits and objectifies women. I'm against that. I do eat meat, but I used to be a vegetarian. Sometimes I go to the park and feed the ducks, alone, and I wish so bad I had someone with me I feel an attack coming on. Like something is just about to fold or crumple inside of me. Its like an implosion. I can't explain it. One time I was at a party and I kept talking to a girl. She was weird. She had this blue Mardi-Gras mask on for a while, with sequins and feathers on it. I was talking to her for a long time.

I thought she was just quiet.

So I kept talking to her. I kind of followed her around the house, my friend's house where the party was at. She had this blue lipstick on. I kept talking to her, and then I was about to go outside to get some fresh air. I had been talking to her for a while, pretty much on and off the whole night. So she was in the hall next to my friend. And I came up and said "Hey, do you want to go outside with me? I'm going out to get a breath of fresh air." And she looked at me with the same little smile she had all night and said "You make me want to throw up." She said it real quiet. I wasn't sure what she said and so I said "Excuse me?" and then she said it again. "You make me want to throw up." And then my friend was poking her nose in, trying to find out what was wrong. Let me tell you, I wanted to throw a hammer in the mirror right then. I felt guilty. Like a rapist. Maybe I had unconsciously objectified her, put her into the porno of my brain, mentally raped her without realizing it.
I went outside by myself and felt stupid. I wondered what went wrong. What was wrong with me? I looked inside the window. Some of the guys were drunk. I don't drink. I saw those drunken guys, leering, shouting, and I wondered why they didn't make her want to throw up. Why me? Because I had been talking to her, I guess. Then I saw her walk out by herself. I noticed she had blue highlights in her hair. I didn't know anything about her except she worked at a natural foods store. She looked all stiff, like a scarecrow. I guess I look like that too. I'm pretty stiff. If there's one thing I hate, its dancing. I'll do anything- just don't make me dance! I think if hell exists, its, for me, a room where I have to dance and people just sit there watching me forever. I still think about that girl sometimes. I make people hate me. Somehow, they hate me. I'm a nice person. I just don't want to be alone anymore. I really can't stand being alone anymore.

Its About The Lyrics Again

2005-05-17T11:34:00.000-07:00

We were smoking cigarettes, me and the hip guy, Plankton, who knew what was going on.
"Yeah, well I like the lyrics too" I said about the band we were talking about.
Plankton shook his head with a little smile on his face.
"Like suddenly everyone's all about the lyrics again. Y'know? Like when did we forget about the lyrics? When did the lyrics stop being important? Suddenly its all about the lyrics, y'know?"
"Yeah" I said, even though I had only a vague idea what he was talking about.
Michael Gira gets all perved out.

I went and saw the Angels of Light a few weeks ago. They played a cover of Bob Dylan's "I Pity The Poor Immigrant" at the end that kicked ass. I think I know what Plankton, hip guy who keeps up on trends and reads lots of hip brooklyn blogs and can say -------- is the new --------- with the perfect amount of self-mockery, was talking about. It appears that lyrics have been rediscovered by the avant-garde. Maybe this coincides with the retro-wave moving from the 70's back into the '60s and beyond, and bluegrass and folk getting rediscovered. Devendra Banhardt comes to mind.
I've just been introduced to some music that my friend Eason hooked me up with. (long live the iPod). The Silver Jews, Amps for Christ, Danielson Famile, even Belle & Sebastian, these bands have a kind of literary feel, and in the case of Amps for Christ, they're exploring pre-rock music in a post-rock context.
A word about Amps for Christ. Did I mention I love this band? Amps for Christ, it turns out after I did some digging around on the net, is a project by Barnes, who did electronics for my favorite politically conscious east bay sludge-punk noise band, the one and only Man Is The Bastard (legendary). Pioneers of the style known as "West-Coast Powerviolence" and notorious for their gut-shaking dual bass-guitar, drums, electronic noise, and melodramatic bellowing male voice sonic assault, MITB is no more but Amps for Christ is here to save us from the corporate-capitalist Moloch with love, grace, and distortion pedals.
Awesome noise-folk with sitar and hammered dulcimer, electric bass, electronics, acoustic guitar, male and female vocals, fuckin rad enough to baptize your soul in feedback of the holy ghost. Nomadic Hebrew, desert dwelling hippie punks practicing primitive forms of electronic monotheism. Christ lives in the amps forever.

www.ampsforchrist.com

Meet Carl Sagan: Hemp Visionary

2005-05-13T15:09:00.000-07:00

Someone recently told me that Carl Sagan was a stoner. I had to see if this was true for myself. Not only is it true, but Carl put his affection for the imagination-stimulating plant into words quite well. As a fan of mind-altered literature all the way back to Fitz Hugh Ludlow's The Hasheesh Eater (a really cool book written well over 100 years ago), I found Mr. Sagan's observations as "Mr. X" impressively clear-stated.
Have a read.
One thing he notes in this essay is something I've noticed myself- the sensory amplifications under cannabis sometimes result in experiences or insights that you can take back with you when youre not high. For one example, when I went and saw Scorcese's Gangs of New York in the theater, I was ripped, gone, high as a kite. It was the first time I'd smoked in months (I don't smoke often) and I was completely stoned. We smoked right before going in to see the film. I felt like I was in the movie. Given the incredible sets --an entire section of 19th century New York was rebuilt on a gigantic set in Rome-- costumes, and everything else, my hightened sensitivity made me feel the historical period so profoundly that I can honestly say my interest in history was at least tripled for a good while after that experience. I went out and read the book , Gangs of New York, which is an oral history of the urban 19th century underworld written in the 1930's by Herbert Asbury, and went out and sought after his other books as well- he wrote a whole series. I also read parts of The Barbary Coast, another by Asbury, about the underworld of San Francisco in the 1800's. Anyway, that said, I agree with Sagan's sentiment that cannabis is best used occasionally, and with great pleasure. If you do it too often, it becomes routine and loses its charm. I speak from experience there.

Word Alert: Stochastic

2005-05-12T16:30:00.000-07:00

Came across this interesting word today on a science blog. The world of science blogs is something else man. These people are so smart they make me feel dung. Thats right, not dumb, dung. Really though, they are intriguing. Evolutionary science, biology, genetics, all kindsa stuff. Scientists' blogs are a fascinating peek into the kind of mind that really digs that stuff. Like my friend Josh, physics major, who does math for fun. I suppose that's as incomprehensible to me as it is for some people that I do "English" for fun.
Anyway, here's the Word Alert: "Stochastic." The word is used in contrast with "Deterministic." I'm trying to get more precise about my word usage due to an embarrassing editing incident recently where I was edited for a gruesome word misusage. Can you say that? Misusage? Is that a word? I think so. I find that any word becomes ridiculous if you look at it long enough or say it over and over. Like the word "Obey." Or even better, the word "Drawer," pronounced "droor" you know like when you're opening your desk drawer? That's a funny word. Say "droor" 20 times in a row without cracking up and I will give you 20 bucks.

Sto·chas·tic
Pronunciation: st&-'kas-tik, stO-
Function: adjective
1 : involving a random variable
2 : involving chance or probability
—sto·chas·ti·cal·ly /-ti-k(&-)lE/ adverb

[Greek stokhastikos, from stokhasts, diviner, from stokhazesthai, to guess at, from stokhos, aim, goal. See stegh- in Indo-European Roots.]
sto·chasti·cal·ly adv.

Raymond Carver

2005-05-10T13:21:00.000-07:00

So I heard about Raymond Carver from this guy at a writer's group I went to once. He was mentioned in the same breath as JT LeRoy, a writer I like, so I thought maybe I'll check him out. And then forgot about it for some months.
Then I was in Beer's Books looking for some slim book of fiction or short stories that I could fit between school reading to meet my fiction needs without taking up too much time. I came across What We Talk About When We Talk About Love. It was like 3 bucks. The cover art was bland, just a picture of a bed next to a window. I almost didn't bother with it.
Then I took it home and read the first story. As soon as I was done, I had this sort of wierd, couldn't-breathe, excited feeling. I went back and re-read it.
Carver's reputation as a master of the short story is well-deserved. Each of his stories is perfectly crafted, spare, lean prose that somehow manages to convey depth and feeling and carry more weight than most writers can with half as many words.
Carver was born in Oregon and lived there and in rural Northern California for most of his life. He lived in Chico for a while and went to school there. He married and had a couple kids young, developed serious alcoholism, was hospitalized several times, spent the last 10 years of his life sober, and died young at around 50.
After reading the book, I looked back at the cover art and suddenly it made sense. There's just a neatly made bed, a window, and the sun coming through it. Thats like one of his stories. Theres a simplicity, beauty, and emotion without resorting to sentimentality, that redeems these stories from the tragic power & violence that underlies them.
So that's when I wrote the story posted a couple days ago. It's my version of a Raymond Carver story. When I last read Vonnegut, I started writing a story that was crazy, surrealist satire. You're always influenced by what you read anyway, so my theory is you might as well consciously imitate a stylistic feeling, in your own voice though, to try and experiment with a different style or tone while seeing what else you can do. You can learn so much from different writers.
I don't think anyone has captured language as its spoken, or the extreme heaviness of the ordinary, in the way that Raymond Carver did.

Everyone I Know Here Is Gone

2005-05-06T12:30:00.000-07:00

Everyone I Know Here Is Gone

Paul stood on the cracked sidewalk with yellow weeds by his feet, his face shaded by the bill of his baseball cap. Slowly he walked down the quiet street of the small town to the Post Office. It was hot outside, dry and hot with bright clean light bathing everything in brilliance. Inside the Post Office it was cool and dark. He went here every day to check his mail, and every day it was the same. He put his key in the lock of his P.O. box and as he twisted it, he got a little thrill. Just a queasy little nauseous thrill fluttering up from the pit of his stomach, quickly coming up in waves past his heart and lungs until it reached his throat, where it ended with a sharp breath. There might be something in there for him.As usual today there wasn't. There were a few things, a Penny Power ad sheet and some throwaway coupons to Safeway and Raley's he would never use. He turned and tossed them into the garbage on his way out the door. Back outside, he looked both ways and saw no traffic. He crossed the street and went into the quiet brick building with big picture windows where inside they sold coffee.Inside the coffee shop Paul ordered coffee from the cute redhead at the counter and then had a look around. There was a young couple he knew from around town sitting at a table. They were just out of high school. That had been a decade ago for Paul but it felt like a lifetime. He felt like an old man. He sat down at a table next to the couple.
"Hey Christina" he said.
"Hey Paul. Did you watch American Idol last night?"
"Nope. I can't say that I watch that show."
"It sucks" Matt said. Matt was Christina's boyfriend.
"I don't watch that much TV. I like to watch movies" Paul said.
"Aren't there any shows you like?" Christina said.
"Well." Paul thought."I like the Simpsons. And I like the Family Guy."
"Family Guy" Matt said and smiled. "Fuck yeah Family Guy's funny."
Paul nodded his head.
"What are you guys doin'?" Paul said.
"Nothing. There's nothing to do."
"I've gotta work later at the pizza parlor" Christina pouted.
"I'll prolly just hang out there and play video games. Waste quarters and watch her work" Matt smiled crookedly.
"Which pizza parlor?" Paul asked.
"Round Table" both Matt and Christina said simultaneously.
There was a lull in the conversation. Matt fiddled with his Oakley sunglasses and Paul sipped his coffee. It tasted good, it was hot and black, Columbian roast.
"Whatchyou doin today?" Matt asked.
"Just went by the Post Office. I don't have any plans," Paul said.
"Get any mail?"
"Just junk. Ads and stuff."
"Expecting anything?"
"Naw. Well kinda. I write to some people, a few people just, that I write to. That don't live around here y'know?"
"Yeah. Y'ever try email?"
"Naw. I don't have a computer. I don't know how to use it."
"I like it. You should try it. Man, I don't even use regular mail anymore. Snail mail."
Paul sipped his coffee and looked out the window down the street. There was the gas station, and across from that, a shop where they sold pottery and handicrafts. Down from that was a bank. Down from the bank was another gas station. The street was lined with trees. He had a few people he wrote to. His ex-girlfriend who lived in another town now. She had gone to college around the time he had gone to jail. She was still his best friend, pretty much, if you wanted to call it that. He also kept in touch with a few friends in prison. They couldn't use email, that was for sure. They couldn't get within miles of a computer.
Paul was lonely and he knew it. He hated going to the Post Office because every day, he couldn't help it but he always got his hopes up on the walk there, and if there wasn't something in there but garbage, that little thrill he got, that queasy hope, was all for nothing.
"Fuckin Clyde. I can’t believe he called you this morning. You better watch out for him," Matt said.
Christina laughed.
"He was being sweet. You’re the one whose gotta watch out for Clyde," she said.
"Fuck that dude," Matt said.
"You’re the one who wants me to get a restraining order."
"Fuck you it was your idea."
"Yeah… well."
"I don’t know why you always defend him."
"I do not always defend him."
"Yes you do."
"I only defend him when you get all crazy."
"I only get crazy when you get all weird about it. Like you can’t make up your mind."
The couple was retreating into their world made of two. They started talking in hushed voices but still pretty loud. Paul politely ignored them and looked out the window, concentrating hard on the bank and the gas stations. As he looked away, he listened carefully.
"I made up my mind but I think you don’t think I made up my mind like that time you came into Kmart cuz you seen him in the parking lot and you had to freak out on me in front of my co-workers" Christina said.
"Don’t you bring up some old shit. That’s old shit."
"That is not old shit that was three months ago."
"Well what do you expect when I see him hanging out with his fucking asshole friends, fuckin’ mean-muggin’ me like they wanna start some shit?"
"You’re just afraid. That’s why you want me to get the restraining order."
"You are so full of shit. That restraining order was your idea, remember, when he was givin’ you all of the creepy phone calls? Remember that? You forgot that, huh? Threatening you? Threatening me? Well I didn’t forget it cuz I was there and I remember it. I remember it."
"You just want revenge cuz you got your ass kicked by a bunch of Nazi Lowriders."
"You traitorous bitch. You’re such a bitch I would fuckin’ lay you on the floor right now if we were not in a public place."
"Fuck you, if you wanna do it, then do it you fuckin’ fag."
"You fuckin’ bitch. I would knock your fucking teeth out. You’d be on the ground, counting your fuckin’ teeth."
Christina laughed "Yeah, I’d like to see you do it too. You can’t lay a hand on me. Cuz then the Nazi Lowriders would be on your ass, and they’d…"
"What? You think I’m scared of some retard peckerwoods who can’t read?"
"Yeah I think you’re scared. Cuz they already kicked your ass."
"You know, I wish you hadn’t aborted that baby cuz then you would have to deal with that motherfucker every day. Havin’ a kid with him, then let’s see how happy you’re gonna be. How happy is that?"
"Pretty happy."
"Oh yeah, pretty happy with a dude in and outta prison. He’s gonna take care of you. Oh yeah his friends are really gonna take care of you. Christina, I’ve been up for five days, can I crash at your place? Can I take your VCR apart and smoke crank with you in front of your baby kid? You fucking crank bitch. Oh yeah, my motherfuckers are big shit because they’re NLR. White power, speed freak tweeker, in and outta prison, white trash motherfuckers into some Mexican nigger shit."
"You’re the one who almost had a kid with a Mexican bitch, you faggot!"
"You can’t say shit so shut the fuck up cuz Celia was not even..."
"You don’t care about me and you never did."Christina was looking puffy-eyed now. Her porcelain doll-like face was creased with rage. Her hoarse loud-whisper was sounding ragged.
Paul stood up to go.
"You guys need a smoke?" he said.
Christina and Matt stared at him, wordless, dazed for a minute.
"Yeah can I get a smoke bro," Matt said quietly.
Paul carefully laid two Camel Lights down on the coffee table next to their cans of Mountain Dew and snuck out the door.

After he left the coffee shop, Paul went on a walk. He went down the street past the gas stations down to the end where the thrift store was. Behind the thrift store was a big parking lot, and behind that, the railroad track. He followed the railroad tracks for a while, kicking around some rocks. The railroad went down some hills, the path cut into the hills like by a huge knife. The hill was covered with dry old grass and weeds but huge slabs of gray granite flecked with black and streaks of white stuck out of the hill in giant inedible steaks.
Paul went walking down the tracks, down towards a trail he was looking for. He passed a landmark called "The Lookout" which was a large flat rock he used to drink at when he was in high school with his friends. He didn’t feel nostalgic when he walked by it. It raised no memories because he passed it too often in the present for it to have any meaning in the past.
Paul came to the trail that came dropping down off the cleared land next to the railroad. It was a clear trail that went swooping down the valley of oaks and thick green brush and then almost got lost in a mountain of blackberries, then angled sharply to the left.
He followed it. He kicked up some dust, picked a couple berries on the way, and felt the tension in his ankles as he jumped down the steep hill triggering tiny cascades of red clay and sliding brown soil. He squatted down by the canal under a tree and watched the water swirl and eddy and run down the neatly cut channel, on down the curve and out of sight. A long time ago he'd done something violent and there had been police, handcuffs, jail, court, and it ended in prison. He'd been in the newspaper and everything. It was hell he'd gone through. A series of hells, actually, rings of hell he'd eventually followed up and back out of the dark hole he'd fallen into. When he got out he came back here, that's where his probation was, and he had nowhere else to go anyway. He stayed quiet and out of trouble.He stood up and squinted. Everyone he knew here was gone. They went away to get educated or find work or do something to make something of themselves. He'd just stayed right here. Where else would he go? The world was a toilet. What was he going to do in some big city? They're full of drugs and gangs and yuppies. He wouldn't know what to do with himself in a city. Probably go out drinking one night and get into trouble again. End up breaking a bottle over some guys head and then the guy's friends would shoot him. Or getting arrested and getting in trouble again that way. He might get into some trouble with drugs, too.He sat down to ponder this next to a manzanita bush in the dry yellow grass and watched some bees flying around some sourgrass. He leaned over and picked a long green strand with the yellow flag on the end dangling down like a bell. He bent the stalk in half and put it in his mouth, biting down and tasting the sour vitamin c taste and chewing the fresh lemony grass.Yeah, he'd probably get into trouble with drugs. He didn't have any self-control and he'd probably get hooked on crack or heroin or something. He'd end up in some abandoned apartment building somewhere, dead with a needle in his arm.Cities. Tall buildings, people and noise everywhere, rich people, high rents. Weirdoes, druggies, freaks. Crazy streets, angling in on each other. He'd get lost trying to find his way around. Probably just freak out. He didn't think he could deal with it. All those people crammed into such a small place, it wasn't natural. People in cities think they know it all, but they don't know shit, he thought to himself.He stood up and unbuttoned his shirt and took it off. He hung it on a tree branch. Then he took off his t-shirt. He took off his shoes and then socks and stuffed his socks in his shoes. He took off his pants and boxer shorts and hung them on the tree too. Last, he took off his baseball hat and hung it on its own branch.He walked down the trail a few yards. Feeling the sun on his head, his back, his butt, the back of his legs. He could see a bee's nest on a log, hidden away between a part in the tall yellow grass. He aimed his dick at it and started urinating. The stream sparkled in the golden light as it arced through the summer air and splashed against the log. He moved to the left and rained his fluids on the bee's nest and the insects swarmed out of it, buzzing around, confused for a moment, then flying straight at him.He laughed hysterically thinking Whoo! They're really mad now! and swatted and waved at them, then turned and ran, the swarm of bees around him in the corner of his eye he could see them, and he jumped and sailed through the air for a sweet and endless second before plunging into the icy water of the canal.

buns of steel

2005-05-06T12:25:00.000-07:00

SHE had a look of holy terror in her eyes as she stared out into the night. Her perfect lips and hair shimmered in the LA breeze. 'If I'm not famous by the time I'm 30, I'm going to have to kill myself.'I thought of saying something and then rejected it. She caught her breath and spoke quietly, almost whispering.'What's the point of living if no one sees you?'