Another letter to M.

Dear old friend M,

It's been two Christmases since I wrote you, not counting the note I didn't leave when I slipped out and down the old creaky steps to the street. Two holiday seasons now without word and only this water between us and a bank of smog across this vast coastal empire. You were at school, art school, the worst kind, probably continuing our previous night's conversation about Christo and how he's an environmental artist, please. That was a lousy conversation and it proved to be our last.

I was excited about you. All the books you sent me that winter made trips to the post more frequent. They kept me up at night, those god-awful long Alaskan winters with no reason for anything. You kept me good for a while and then brought me home, and I guess I owe you a thank you.

I work for a herpetology consulting group now. We drive around and look at things and then write them down in yellow notebooks. I really like it and think it's going to last longer than most things do. I still think of you from time to time, but not often. I know my friendship was tinged with an urge to get in your pants and I'm sorry about that. All in all, I just wanted to be your friend. You were so witty and full of what old people call spunk. It drew me to you and sometimes I wonder now if I read you right. Or if all along it was just my energy driving the two of us. That can be tricky. It's unfortunate remembering you in such a light.

Today I thought of you and all the books I'd tell you to read. And you're the type that would actually read them. Do you know how unique and hard to find that is these days? I wonder what you're reading now, probably something lighter than the shit I've been dabbling in. You were always the pithy urbanite author reader, the McSweeney's novel type. And me, god I don't know. Maybe I always read what I thought would get my heart closer. What I thought would help me understand that which I want to become.

Still M, I am a sheep among lambs. Someone spiked the grass, it doesn't chew right. The shepherd's not here and sometimes I wonder if there even is one. I'm leaning toward no. So I continue to do what I do.

In another field,
J

Ante meridiem

Cool morning fog. Dark sky and soft gray clouds slowly crawling from the Pacific. They made it this time over the Santa Cruz Mountains, often dissipating on the eastern descent. Hiking up there on those days, looking skyward and seeing the thick wisps disappear into the atmosphere. It's eerie and unnatural, like a wave that never breaks.

This is my favorite time. I made the coffee just right today. I couldn't sleep and disabled the alarm clock hours before the set. I don't think in overwhelming thoughts at this hour. Everything is manageable. I sit back in my chair and picture myself in the day's activities. I walk myself through each one, little pictures along the way that show me where I am. And then I try to time it and make sure there's no overlap, no feeling of being rushed. I can't be rushed. It kills me in restaurants especially, or sometimes in the right space at the grocery where shoppers demand that you edge forward with every available inch toward the register, everyone's personal bubble already popped from years of city, unaware and okay. Me in the middle, screaming inside. I plan the day on my terms. I'd rather wait an hour than be late and rushing across the city powerless to the whim of traffic. I say, bring a book.

I dreamed that streets were shiny with fresh water running down to pool in the flats and further on it filled the thirsty arroyos of the impossible Southwest. I imagined the plumes of dust and ash rising with the pattering of droplets on the burnt paths of the California fires. Half-awake I knew it was the fan that likely sounded of rain, but I let myself drift back to a better thought and watched the water clean this city and fill our empty reservoirs and water our vegetable garden.

Still life with car and traffic.

Driving home today over the San Mateo Bridge, with the wind catching our light car and shoving me into the other lane, I was hit by a wave of contentment for the work I'm doing and for the home I'm heading to. There's always something with me; never a moment that I'm not agonizing over a thought. A thought which pushes me toward some drastic solution that I fantasize about, often revolving around a plan of escape. It's been the school, the job, the town, the person, you name it. I took a moment to enjoy this feeling and then lost it.

Everything gets muddled doesn't it? Who thinks straight any more? I watch the politicos on the tele and wonder how they manage to deliver on such concise terms, although often saying absolutely nothing. How do we stay on track? Where did focus go? I'm thinking this when a little flimsy Ford Focus flies by me (always on the right in California). Oh, the transparencies in the domain of motor vehicles! Give me your Excursion, Explorer, Land Cruiser/Rover, Escape! As if to say, Let's get the fuck out of here! Or for the impotent ashtanga-spiritual deskjockeys the Insight, Focus, Breeze, Elantra (sounds like elan, elation!). And on a side note I'd like to mention that new Dodge models have the most powerhungry homoerotic names possible: Magnum, Nitro, Caliber, Avenger. Like petnames for military toys.

I'm thinking this and checking out the new billboards. I have them all memorized now along the great Bay Area loop from the Bay Bridge to the San Mateo. I, along with other drivers, enjoy the respite of new media and relish the experience of new eye candy. Carrie Underwood smiling with her beautiful symmetrical face and breasts at the Bay Bridge merge, I was sorry to see her go, but it never made me want Vitamin Water. Let me tell you, we all are very much over the Apple billboards with silhouetted dancers kicking and shaking. Currently a 30X20 smiling face of Kevin Costner looms over 101-80 interchange, goddamn is that unsettling, especially since it explains nothing about his coming movie. He's happy? Is that it? I bet, he's filthy rich and a self-proclaimed director/actor extraodinaire. Dances with Wolves was good, I'll give him that.

I turn on NPR and try to drown out the stop and go. Cathleen was telling me the other day that an international news mediasaur haunts the airwaves on behalf of the United States, informing the world on our national affairs. There were two things that interested me the most about this. First, apparently it's illegal to broadcast this media source within the nation, a perfect framework for unchecked misinformation. The other is that the broadcast conveys everything using 1500 words, a strategically whittled down vocabulary for communication purposes. I'd really like to hear one of those programs. For now I roll down the window and turn up Talk of the Nation.

There's a giant dispassionate looking dude leaning back in utterly useless pearl clothing with a giraffe chilling behind him on the plains. Abercrombie & Fitch. Grisly technique those fuckers have. I'd take the elite trophy whores of Bebe over them any day. It's okay though cos this billboard lets me know I'm close to home.

Looking back i've always liked what i was doing, at least for a little while. Mostly for the experience, more often for the preposterous unexpectedness of it, for example: slinging dishes in Portland, delivering soda and other junk food in Sitka, accepting donations in the frigid Jackson winter, picking up litter on the interstate. Less often it was the love going on: watching birds in Idaho and Alaska, getting my eye and loupe to the ground in good old Washington State. I'd like to welcome myself back to a good job. This week's highlights:


coast garter snake


santa cruz garter snake


juvey rubber boa


psychotic killer alligator lizard