My baby towers over the main man Dennis...

This day to myself

I started running again and now it calls to me everyday. I'm a much happier person in this state, though there've been times when i ran out of sadness, ran for exhaustion and a subsequent weariness nearly incapable of thought. But even then it was the antidote and i knew it; i used the negativity as fuel.

The sun has been unobstructed for days. I'm over it. My shoulders and neck are pink and hold my fingerprints where i touch for a few seconds, the pink slowly filling the white. I've drank so much water today i'm afraid i'll overhydrate or some such thing. Cathleen was telling me she'd been to the hospital one time for drinking too much of Eve's ale. Seems i'm always recovering from some water-stealing episode afoot~ running the trail along the lake, the tennis courts, or more recently pacing about the house with a bottle of chardonnay to myself. This a.m. i questioned whether last night's drunk was worth this morning's bright welcome. Good god! The sun was so bright! And did i drink and dial? I did...

I climbed out to a quiet house, Cathleen gone for the weekend to play with 50 thousand Burning Man carousers testing the melanin content of their skin. I can see the leather-hided new-agers of Los Angeles drawing mandala in the sand, or Berkeley beats discussing their latest trip over maté. Just the thought makes me wanna go hug my pillow.

I walked around with two cups of water, one for me and one for the plants. Spent some quality time with the herbs building up a chopstick and twisty-tie support system for the basil, which has dumbly outgrown its stem capabilities and flopped over like a dejected sunflower.

It was a tough day for decisions but i managed a call to a potential employer and surprised myself by declining the job, despite desperately needing the income. Hanging up i had a great sense of relief and had to pat myself on the back, and i did quite literally. It's a thing i started doing a few years ago, usually when ending a long hike or run, a personal yet stupid self-congratulation.

I decided to go spend a few dollars to celebrate the fact that no paychecks would be coming for a while longer still. Walking into the bookstore i realized it would be one of those shy days where making eye contact with people plays on the nerves. A pretty common affair for a hangover day. I fidgeted at the counter as the lady ran about the shop finding my book. I grabbed the new Josh Ritter and fumbled for payment acting like an underage kid at a liquor store. Remember when Michael J. Fox got that keg of beer in Teen Wolf? His canine eyes burning red, he leaned over the counter to say,"Give me, a keg of beer!" He was my hero after that...

Valerie summons Astaire and Kelly to her kitchen

It was a curious Saturday night with improvised cocktail concoctions in hand, playing a board game while pizzas baked in the oven. And that's when Val made her move donning tapshoes on the kitchen linoleum... The beautiful art of tap, slight inebriation and an air of nonchalance.
*Link on title

Ano Nuevo State Reserve

Scientists posit that primordial landlubbers crawled from the sea 700 million years ago... After three months at sea, wallowing alone in search of food and the passage of time, an elephant seal finds shore.
*Link on title

Half moon glowing yellow over the Oakland city skyline
I can see it from my bathroom window
Wondering who else is looking at it now

Tonight we're sitting on the couch watching the tele...
and passing a pint of ice cream between us
For a moment there as I gazed out the window
I almost got it...

Megalomania strikes at Circuit City!

What seemed another above-average day in our normal, yet above-average happy lives... became something quite different. There was a sloppy sky overhead terribly uncertain of itself. Am i sunny? Am i cloudy? It was clueless. Our bedcovers looked quite the same, disheveled and lost over the edges. We could've powered our home were my night's nocturnal revolutions harnessed. I like a good toss from time to time.

Everything began quite the same... crossword and coffee in bed, finally beat that fucking Washington Post which had been testing our crossword abilities as of late. I made a slow uncomplicated meal of bacon and potatoes and eggs and melon, plenty helpings of coffee. Finally struggled out of the house after noon. Then began the mad escapade of boxstore hopping, staring up at riddled walls of tele screens looming in lens like umptagonal bug eyes. And the white noise surround sound began its number, and our eyes shifting like tweekers, and the pockmarked faces of salesboys in overwashed hand-me-down staff shirts. Emeryville almost ate us!

The day ended in epic fashion with a three-hour Circuit City stint where i bore witness to the amazing shopping strength of Cathleen. Pen and pad in hand chronicling the pros and cons and picking the minds of multimedia zombies. I couldn't believe her stamina and articulate grace when asking about analog v. digital and tuner types and contrast ratios, meanwhile weighing consumer reports on her handy laptop popups. Fucking amazing!

And as the sun set on the city of Emeryville, which should NOT have its own zipcode, we rode away with a 37'' inch flatscreen and somehow shining guiltless of the grand venture.

as if to say... I really love those Seattle Mariners... wanna
make something of it?

Painting and the Art of Happiness

We took on a sum of white walls yesterday... the glowing morning light playing through the windows, music through the french doors and our brushes sticksticking with pastel paint. Blue tape borders and us between in our least favorite rags laying down paint on tiptoe and knee.

For past years i've been tied in thought, torn by the process of decision making, under the small weight of having little to go on. I've been happy yet uninspired, unmotivated, driven by nothing more than my personal want of feeling as such, making my own world and feigning any solid understanding of what exactly i'm doing in it. In part, due to some missteps but moreover simple advents of craziness that i wouldn't pin to any notion of fate or even coincidence. Some downright strange occurrences that i'd like to accept just as are.

It would be hard to claim any discontent, though there has been struggle. Somehow i've stayed up all along and still lingers a sense askance Would i have stayed on my feet much longer? Cos i found something and now with previous direction recoursed it's hard to compare anything, hard to remember what i was doing and to where i was going.

When i first met Cathleen and we were making a telephone plan to get together, i suggested some dumb logistical struggle that might impede our union... and she told me in a matter of words, that we are in control of most everything, and that's the bottom line. That thought really drew me, and i guess in retrospect how could it not? And yet there are times, many of them happy, when i stop and look around wondering, how can i possibly take credit for what my life holds? So many of these things have been beyond my ability and rather occurred of their own. And why would i assume my own control in things and, why would it matter if i weren't?

All i want is love and watermelon.... maybe some old new country on the radio. Montgomery Gentry....

I'm tired of spinning my wheels
I need to find a place where my heart can go to heal
I need to get there pretty quick
Hey mister what you got out on that lot you can sell me in a pinch

Maybe one of them souped up muscle cars
The kind that makes you think you're stronger than you are
Color don't matter no I don't need leather seats
All that really concerns me is

Speed
How fast will it go
Can it get me
Over her quickly
Zero to sixty
Can it outrun her memory
Yeah, what I really need
Is an open road
And a whole lot of speed

i love songs about heartbreak...

Pool party at your mom's house...

I'm lying back on a leather couch, the shades drawn tight to a 100 degree day beyond the glass. We just flipflopped across town sporting slight sunburns and sunglassed to a near limitless blue above. Fucking Turlock fucking California. A sight for sore eyes, a green gem amidst nothing but flatness and agri-lines of corn and vine. There was nothing to be done but step a few streets over from the backyard pool to the empty weekend grocery... in need of banana split supplies and a sixpack.

Its been a busy few days here reconvening with my partner's past, her loving hometown openarms wide and not yearning for detail. Docile and sleepy and hotter than most. Lounging in quiet AC wonderlands, cafe stoops beneath umbrellas and kicking about on airmattresses in delicious blue pools. But beating all aimlessness was last night's drive-in witness of Harry Potter: Order of the Pheonix. If it wasn't enough that Harry is the man and gets some kind action with a young sweet thing at Hogwarts... better yet was our perch from the back of a minivan, seats forward, hatch open and us couched out in blankets and pillows, barefeet in warm night air staring up at the drive-in screen. A balanced diet of queer tasting popcorn, chocolate, beer and dazzling privy to Harry Potter's mad skills in sorcery. And us dialing in the magic via FM radio.

There is a certain lethargy that goes along with this life beneath a baking sun, the Valley of California. No wonder now to the inviting concept of siesta... and better still these long stretching siestas that last the whole of the day. I didn't expect the lush greenery of sycamores and locusts spanning the neighborhood streets, all the lawns freshly mowed but no one around to sit upon them or lounge beneath umbrellas or giant sombreros. Nearly nothing higher than a story stretching out for fifty-thousand souls and their abodes. I think a normal reaction for myself would be that of distrust, perhaps worthy of a yawn or two... some underground disdain or lassitude for the whole grid. But somehow no... i've got love for Turlock.








The shark sequence...

Willy's Barbershop

This morning my baby took a left on Mission, heading for the station... train bound for East Bay. And i took a right toward my favorite barbershop, a small old-fashioned feel with straight edges and men waiting with magazines and tophats. Took a seat while a fellow got finished up on the chair, thumbing through the funnies and crossword. Then he called me up for a seat and wrapped a scarlet curtain around my neck. I started pointing at different pictures strung about the place saying "kinda like that... except shorter on the sides" and he's going "Uh-huh sure thing."

I sat back and watched myself through three mirrors and thought of the pleasant morning with a few birds singing on the apple tree in the yard. Lying stretched out with the bright morning light pouring beneath the raised blind and this new, yet familiar body beside me. A slow uncalculated morning with crossword and american breakfast of potatoes and eggs and toast and peach on the side. And i'm sitting back in this chair, my sleepy eyes perhaps looking upward to the "visual memory" we speak of in elementary school (i guess we must look up, maybe even open our mouths a bit, to contact memory).

Willy the barber finishes me up with shaving cream across my neck and sides with a blade and then this amazingly quick massage, my neck going pop pop pop and leaving me completely relaxed and meanwhile he's done the final style on my hair. All i could say was "woh" and "thanks kindly... it looks great!" Stepped back out into the morning light and took a slow beeline trip through the neighborhood. The sounds and smells of the Mission have grown on me... Something about feeling present and nostalgic in the same moment. And thinking a little of a fond farewell as we ready to move across the bay. To make a home together in the near bright lights of Oakland.

...Hula and the home rule on the 4th of July...

a sleepy morning with the pretty cactus blooming on my doorstep...

...taking a slow dance at the Class of 1997 Reunion with Lewis County looking on...

this is the ease of american life...

I'm on a coffee shop hop in and between the intermittent Seattle showers. My friend M. pedaled off grudgingly toward work after snoozing her alarm twice this a.m. fore finally slumbering upward and out. I tossed any number of things upon my back and set off into Mallard. Beelined for M.'s poor car, which we left last night on a no-name street near the video store. Took half an hour to find it again... sadly abandoned against the crumbling curb looking downhill toward the Ballard locks.

We'd spent an afternoon/evening scrambling some ivy trails at Careek Park on the Sound and had mused a movie night to follow. But returning to the little red sportscar, we found a likely soul given up. M. had miraculously been driving a dipstickless car for a few months, somehow shying a prior engine collapse. And now... the poor thing coughed and whirred, pistons likely locked and dry. Some darling leather-coated, pop-top Saab driver found us home in his shiny five-speed, flirting preciously with M. in the frontseat. I lay back in the body fitting backseat reminding me of a soft version of a police cruiser.

I found M.'s car in a similar state, sadly rooted to the street with mawkish purrs on ignition, clawing for a little life. And it being a Mercury, i thought of the ominous retrograde situation up in the heavens and wondered if any bearing were made on this little four-wheeled motor.

Pressing on i ducked inside a small cafe rocking Neil Diamond and later some delicious electronica full of beeps and flurries reminiscent of Aphex and Atari. And there i am perched still blinking my way through vocational postings and the more enticing chum network. Coffee kindly altering my senses and shining a little light despite the current gray beyond the glass.

... the acolytes happily pay eight dollars a beer...

A brief prayer.

I'm cracked out by exhaustion and severely need a beverage in my hand and a Mariner win this evening. First of all I'd like to thank the tickets that have been procured for this clear evening... seats well situated for such a momentous drinking occasion. The lights of Seattle, its gridwork silhouette skyline will stretch up... and below us our poor five-game skidding Mariners, G-D bless them, will take the field against the even poorer Pittsburgh Pirates. I'd also like to thank accompanying Andrew for his more recent conversion to the fanclub and subsequent recovery as a stalwart Bucs swain. Andrew it was wholly necessary... you are finally a true resident and worthy Olympian.

I'd also like to thank the morning for being over. Its been five days on the rooftop laboring slave-like and i ache such as an ailing gerry might... grumbling, groaning and the like. Roofing is a bear and a bitch quite frankly. My gratitude to Lali Puna (*link through blog title) for rousing some energy and groove this morning, combatting prodigious doubts and motivation. I was not happy about life and needed something in my veins other than blood. It was either music to uplift or some Lewis County product derived from lithium, which i lacked.

Also a thanks to Cat for similar encouragement on the scale of élan... some sweet thing to come. And to Erin Kramer who will likely try my levels of consumption, no surprise there. To M. Holtrop for gracious invitations and a pacific voice for the radio. And of course a big one for the Almighty, who despite my stead disbelief still manages great things.

Contrails. You left one too...

Above the patchwork of hued farmland and stricken cuts along the hillsides, veins scratched from logs dollied upwards. Metal jaws clamping and cinches loosed, the waiting trucks along the yellow-clay roadways. And my lorax northwest analogies... looking downward.

So far below and San Francisco a mile per second further behind. I'm leaving home and going home all the same, the same time. And poor Frank who i left nights back at that social/networking/drinking scene downtown amongst the lofts and industrial hangouts. I think of him and our philosophical discussion, bordering metaphysics and that whole pitfall of sugarcoatedness (which we miraculously sidestepped); his selfless confidence ringing. I always heard the confident tone; it sounds louder on my ears, i always could listen harder. You seem like somebody concerned with the idea of home, he said. I'd known him for only a few minutes. I was on a second glass of overpriced sauvignon blanc, my thirty-sixth hour of wakefulness, thirtieth hour of over-stimulation, fifteenth hour of pollyannaist ga-ga for the world and its inhabitants. The comfort of strangers... a few to mention.

Nearing Seattle, the lowering hum of engines aside me and the left wing stretching out toward the Pacific. I can see the mighty Columbia reaching the coast, its flat slow waters tamed with a shot of soma and hydroelectricity. Let's not save the world, I'm thinking. I'm done with anything even feigning that resolution. Maybe saving yourself... unlikely by abstraction alone, but feasible i guess... and at least acceptable.

Let's not worry that timing is everything. I still wanna hope that it was the right time, you know i do. And despite any leaning theory of governance and guidance, i don't wanna resign myself but rather push it in the direction of my hoped outcome. I'm not worried anymore if I'm lost or found. I'd like to be found, but it's out of my hands. And oh those Olympic Mountains... still white and starked with dark rocks and shadow. Enough to make me forget wholly any point i may have had. The only thing resounding is a sweet contentment...

I'll get funny again...

I like the damp streets in the morning and my feet trying to find a new way through the city grid. A plus: that tired eyes can still see so well; the cup of bittersweet coffee in my hand; a goodbye kiss for the day. Makes me think that to question how we spend our time beyond the sense of feeling alright, is just a waste of time. I've done that far too much.

I like this new record playing in my ears, playing every moment i have the time to unwind and rewind. To have music inside your ears (or head) that no one else can hear is a guiltless pleasure. It's rhythm and motion and perhaps that is everything. There's this song by The National...

We expected something, something better than before. We expected something more
Do you really think you can just put it in a safe behind a painting, lock it up and leave
Walk away now and you're gonna start a war
Whatever went away I'll get it over now. I'll get money, I'll get funny again
Whatever went away I'll get it over now. I'll get money, I'll get funny again
Walk away now and you're gonna start a war

I'm still working on one it means exactly. The feeling is there, and it seems to fit the feeling i have for this ragged job search, the monies run up chutes and down ladders, whether it's worth it. My balancing act always seems to involve songs and stories listened.

A dear friend's father is coming up on retirement and he ponders this coming time, its bountiful aptitude following a life of due diligence to vocation. He thinks of model airplanes and books to be read. I wonder about that aim and its nearing freedoms, and wonder if it ever really leaves us to begin with. I have those plans too and can only hope that a free spirit is lasting in a world of labor and dollars. I'd like to capture my freedom all along the way and never lose sight despite the early mornings that pull me from a warm bed, and inside a glowing caffeine office. Most of all i want to be good and no matter the blocks, i think that can be done.

*there's a link to that song up on the title...

You really got a hold on me

I decided to stay a while longer in the Bay... my current plans unraveling. The man was saying sign here, here and here... and oh so barely did i escape. Some love for Smokey Robinson and the Miracles.

I'd like to send this shoutout to improbability, because without it... life wouldn't impress me nearly as much. I want to take you back in time to the year 2005 and the microcosmo of my life at that pivotal moment. On Fridays we drove into town, either to McCall via the Lick Creek Summit Road which was a veritable nightmare and graveyard for vehicle undercarriages; or, to Cascade via a neverending serpentine road begging the driver or passenger at some point to not become an astronaut.

On this much anticipated Friday venture provisions would be bought in the denominations of half-racks and cases, often in can form. On return, refrigerators would be stocked, lawnchairs assembled and the evening commenced with a cylinder of Red Seal and maybe a rock-throwing contest down toward the South Fork(*link above on the title).