Frozen Hair

Two dead leaves commenced a tiny dance in the shadows of their branches, a life after death, waltzing with frozen hair and beetles all skittering along the concrete with the swirling winter wind, sounding the defiance of their demises with brittle clicks and clacks against the ground like little morse codes from beyond the grave. ".. / . -..- .. ... - . -.. .-.-.- / -.. --- -. .----. - / ..-. --- .-. --. . - / -- . .-.-.-"

Mean Maybe

I'm going to record some songs I've been working on the past year or so with my brother over the holiday break in Sacramento. So far, I've just been sending him bedroom recordings of me on acoustic guitar and singing - usually quite out of tune. But I'm excited to get something recorded again after a very long hiatus. Sometimes when I'm working on one of my own tunes (rudimentary though they may be), I stumble upon some other tune I really like.

I really like this song "Mean Maybe" by this fantastic band Yellowbirds. So I recorded a dumb little bedroom recording of it. I think you can hear my cat howling in the background of just about everything I've ever tried to record. Goddamn thing.

I Should Have Shouted

There have been times I should have shouted, but could not. Did not. Did nothing instead. Did nothing but feel suddenly hot as my blood boiled and my heart rate tripled. But that's not really doing anything. Maybe on some metaphysical level, the biological reactions I've experienced on my insides could fit the mold of some sort of reaction. But blood pumping through my dumb, dead veins all day isn't exactly voluntary. Doesn't make me brave. Or maybe it does. But no one will ever see it, or know, or deign to stretch to guess that sitting around doing nothing is actually doing SOMEthing.

I can feel when it happens; when I want to scream and when I want to scare someone. Or when I feel like some cerebral injustice is about to unfold and some fucking common sense ought to be distilled from all the half-truths and conspiracies and shortcuts to thinking that are all-but bound to stem from a panicked mass of souls, each of them afraid of dying. Of growing old. Of being alone forever. I can see it in the eyes of some of my closest confidantes when the veil of their skepticism is lifted, and everything's a grimace, and how could anyone in the world have a sense of fairness and just thought amidst this big pop culture tornado blowin' through the Bowerys, and the Bays, and the Burnsides.

Follied be they for whom extant virtues have been absorbed through mediums they can never understand. Fortunate (and rare) be they for whom sense doesn't need to be common to be just. And fair. And a life lived in the moons of neverending cosmos invisible to eyes a million years from now be wished upon to those for whom the rigors of honesty with themselves, with others, and with unencumbered pride and humility for the understanding of it all is relegated to some fantasy realm. That the fantasy is often much more appealing than the small efforts and rewards bequeathed by leading a virtuous life is the wellspring of every evil in the world.

It is to these last referenced that my silent protests, my seething inner diatribes, my distrust in humanity as a whole, is most steadily focused upon.

So, there have been times I should have shouted, but did not. For some reason figured I could not. That to rock the boat meant to chase the tornado. Meant to acknowledge that I play a role, if only as opponent, in a web of systematic insanity. With paper trails. With photo IDs and retina scanners, and workplace safety standards and lunch hours and no time for naps or outrage or questioning of anything of any real cultural significance. McKenna's maxim "Culture is not your friend" is perhaps the best synopsis, or the most succinct. Had he pointed out, in turn, that the parameters instilled into those whose entire intellectual apparatus has been hinged upon impossibly unreal expectations, has been imbued by unfair standards of role, has been smeared before even their birth by thousands of years of hate, fear of death, disgust of peace, I believe that McKenna's relatively small contributions (although terribly influential to many facets of rational thought, and to a more dramatic extent, influential to the scores of brain cells mystified by extraterrestrial research, or drugs, or humanity and fear) may have hit home harder outside of the underground world of ethnobotany and the hippie-youth drug scene who desperately want to believe that we're descendant of apes who mistakenly ate psylocybic mushrooms growing on ancient cow manure.

Then again, maybe not. Maybe nobody would have thought any different anyway. Despite the evidence. Despite the inimitable truths burning holes right into their eyes and ears. And that is what is worth screaming for. That the proof in the pudding must pale its hue to that most lethal drug: Distraction. For with the barricade of ignorance, willful or otherwise (but especially willful, which, frankly, all ignorance is), distraction's etymological kissing cousin, destruction - at least of the brain, or of any other wholly humanistic trait that separates us from wild dogs - is all but a foregone conclusion.

Live in the wild and live your truths, and be who you are. If your wild is the cultural wastelands of the valleys and the strip malls and the ridiculous facades of faux-historic corporate conglomerates, stay there. If your truths are morsels culled from television programs run by corporate-sponsored networks, or billboards, or flash-in-the-pan, hypnotic, repetitive, bland and unoriginal pop music, save them for yourself (see also: save yourself from them). And if you question, for even a second, ever, that who you are is a force detrimental to the advancement of society, or a hurdle in the thoroughfare toward peace, or a chigger in the doe hair of mother nature's vast, uncompromising-yet-delicate hide, CHANGE.

Failed Pitches

...Wherein I post treatments or pitches that were rejected by various publications for indeterminate reasons. This installment was sent to the folks at Amtrak, as I and every other writer in America with more than a passing penchant for laziness lunged to try and land a residency to write aboard a long, free train trip. I sent them a writing sample previously posted on this blog ("Cadaver"), forgetting to read the fine-print that they were not interested in any crazy-asshole rantings on sociological accounts of depressive maniacs or otherwise burnt-out fuckers bent on imminent demise. Whoops.

Anyway, here was my stupid, idiot pitch on what I would have written about, as sent to the suits at Amtrak, and which was given a big ol' "FUCK YOU, GUY":

I'd like whatever I write to be a meditation on the effects of human tendencies toward isolation/agoraphobia/complacency as it relates to a world bent on bridging the gaps pertaining to hermetic psychoses (social media, smartphones, GPS, FourSquare, etc) - the paralyzing fears wrought by lack of connection and the collective bristling of people who’d just as soon be left alone.

-An intrinsic analysis challenging the false connections people make over uniform obedience to social trends and entertainment; or the nearly blind filing-in and marching along with the ubiquitous ebbs and flows of some TV series/news story/fruitless pandemic warning.

This idea could be given further bloom within the construct/context of the writer/narrator isolating himself within a sleeper car aboard a passenger train burping across the country - the United States rolling by; interesting ramblers carousing in the observation car; the junkies and lovesick romantics and runaways and spooky old drunks; the sometimes mortifying proposition of a dimly lit dinner in a dining car at a table full of strangers. The dichotomy of attempting to expand on one’s comfortable spectrum, while being forced to abandon certain aspects of reclusive tendencies to accomplish it. Almost being commanded to.

It’s not that the story has to take place on a train. Rather, the self-imposed isolation could serve as impetus to the creative synapse necessary to spark my fledgling story of this meek figure who’s facing his fears of returning to the location of what he thinks is the source of his self-imposed isolation.

...Clearly, they made the correct decision to decline. So it goes...

Freeform/Freefall

Today you’ll write about that time you found an alpaca dead inside the city canal while you were walking to school. How disturbed you were by such a regal jaw agape at sewage currents in the muck and by lips flapping in the algae riptide of a thousand pollywogs. How you stared and stared at its lifeless husk wet with bloody rivulets cascading from untold numbers of cruel wounds. And wondering how the beast had managed to be here, then remembering the farm where the soft creatures roamed like aliens in a liquid metropolis just above the waterway. It’s fall, you remember thinking, must have been a silent dive.

You’ll write about the boldness of bloodhounds sniffing for scraps at the dirt walkway of the canal above the rodeo grounds, abandoned by their masters and hungry for anything. How their dead red eyes would zero in on ankles as the bicycles whizzed by their porches, mocking them for their exhaustion, and how those eyes said, “you watch yourself when we’re both on level ground again, fella…”

You’ll remember how you secretly wore shorts under your pants so after you left home to walk to school, along the old canal path, you could strip the pants off and give your legs some life. How you’d watch reruns of The Simpsons at your best friend Danny’s house, where his dog Blackie would stench up the place with its ancient breath. How we watched the unfolding of the Los Angeles riots on TV in real time following the Rodney King trials, and how we realized, for the first time maybe, that the world was a dark place full of danger everywhere.

You’ll write about how you threw your prescription glasses in a garbage dumpster en route to class because a girl told you you were cute without them, and a bully called you four-eyes for the millionth time. How that bully rots in jail now for murdering someone he found sleeping with his mother. How you wanted to interview him from prison for a book like some kind of revenge-craving Capote, and how you thought better of it because in a way your secret revenges are being played out without your input all the time, and without you doing anything but moving forward.

Today you’ll write, because you can. And because you have things to say. And because it’s the only way you’ll ever remember anything.

More Old Words

This is the climax to a short story I wrote in 2008, called Blackout, and which I revisit often to feel a bit more at ease with whatever chaos is swirling around. It makes me miss California in a weird way, and certain old friends more.

...When I felt myself let go—to tune out to the vision of the Dream Journal and its drug-inducing solutions—I dreamed another long, tunneling dream. The first one in a long time that didn’t involve spiders or bees. The first one I remember actually recalling almost all the way through. The one that brought me back from the shadow’s song. It was of the anxiousness of an impending storm.

In it, I went to greet the rain and winds in the middle of the park across the street. I stood alone, with cascades of soothing rain showering me, with the park people staring at me in admiration. Lining up to gape. Beaming in the low-light of the blackout. I stood in the center of the concrete that underneath once birthed the trees of John Bidwell, in a cross-pattern of limbs with one clear direction toward the southwest of town down Broadway, and back again to the rows of bars, and the other path headed straight from the heart of the town unto my Tower. I became engorged with pride of the memory of these trees, and turned toward the Tower and saluted the amber-capped apex of its phallus.

              I danced in the water like a Cherokee, inviting the surge to cleanse me, and to become one with the core of the enveloping brood of hobos. They encircled me now, applauding, as if I’d figured out what to be free and clean and true had really meant. I looked into their eyes and looked further into what I thought might be their hearts, and further to their souls.

              And all these people of the old oaks looked at me to find a higher solace within the words of their own world, and rejoiced in a singular bliss, morose and monolithic, with bitter relation to the common thread of soul and singular truth. They did not need the power; their routines persevered where others’ went awry; and the city’s citizens simple lives were now made simpler by the wrath of Mother Nature and the awe of cawing beat of Earth. It was simple, real, now…but they didn’t understand.

              The group parted ways slowly from the back of one-half of the circle and turned to let her by. Heloise walked slowly through the swarm, her eyes glowing, her perfect teeth gleaming in a familiar smile. She walked to me and the rain stopped.

              “We will find each other again,” she whispered. “Being happy is a bore. But being sad is deadly.”

Hey, Lindsay

I wrote this in the wee hours of the morning in August of 2010, the same long night/morning that I stayed out for what seemed like forever exploring every unlocked door in the Portland Hilton, two old friends in tow - one of whom I'd a fairly serious former crush for. I was stone-drunk and silly, and flitting about like some sort of lovesick wino, swimming in her beauty and the afterglow of a kiss stolen in the fluttering light of a dark hallway at 6 am. I sent this to her, but I don't know if she cares much for writing. Or writers. Who knows. I'm posting it because reading it every once in a while reminds me of how excited I can allow myself to be when I just drop my guard a little bit. 

            I stayed up all night. All fucking night. For two days straight. Wrestling with old, dull demons inside my heart, them clawing the membranes, the veins, the ventricles of the stuff inside my chest. I drank way too much, didn’t eat, didn’t think with anything but my heart, the same organ being torn by the little claws of spontaneity. Not with my brain, or whatever else I’m supposed to think with. My guts, maybe? My guts had shit for brains. None of that mattered. I lunged with the bile-heavy verve of whatever was left in the tank. I made decisions in nano-seconds, took forbidden fire exits to 18^th floor fire escapes (17^th floor?), peering unto the twinkling twilight of the west hills of Portland, Oregon, (O, funky red Montgomery Park sign! O, neon blue Volvo beacon!) with my life residing on the opposite side, my cat nestling in the shady dawn of the firs of Tabor, my bed resting flea-ridden in a sweltering southeast cubby hole, like the brimming twitches of my reason in the fervency of a Hilton haunted labyrinth. 

            I navigated the crags, the avenues, restrooms, fancy convention speaking rooms with the PA left on for everything to resonate, the unlocked pool, the unlocked useless exercise room, the elevators with the fancy buttons, evading the African security guard, so far away from the archaic, creaky staircases of my home. But barely far enough, actually. Not too far to remember why I was here. Why I longed for this moment for the last eight years. Why I knew that no matter what consequences I’d meet by virtue of this hastiness, I was prepared. I was prepared. She was here for me. I was here for her.

            And Lindsay looks at me like she did in 2002, like she did when I was but a stranger, still a stranger, in fact, in most ways, but hardly at all in these labyrinthine corridors - excavated behind the safety of the secret kitchens, where meals for broken kings have been think-tanked and prepared, to fuel bad decisions, awful fuel for awful men. She undresses in the mystery caverns of this homage to consumerism, happy for a swim, to be seen by me in her negligee, to splash in the know-nothing revelry of a west coast vacation, where we’ve finally seen each other again! Rejoice! It was not supposed to happen! We were a footnote in the aged annals of romance; a blueprint for the ways in which young lovers begin their bon voyages toward the promise of what was once promised all young lovers, but which has since been trampled.

But not anymore, you see.

We are making it right, in some way true, by usurping its banality; by proving, in some way unknown, to even us, that to ignore a rift in the alleyways of the blips in time and in a kind of love, or lust, or severe attraction, is the ultimate tragedy. That to forget the fact that time can sometimes stand still is the source of everything awful in the world. That to insist on the impulse of the heart is a triumph in the face of this electric world.

            And we grin in the shadows at each other with electric smiles, needing each other to know what we already know. What we knew eight years prior. That the forgotten folds of the heart yield not the detriments, strictly, of unknown, sulking demons, like those old, dull specters residing in stasis inside my chest. That the want of the core of us is the life of the earth, and that regardless of anything ever thought of in the history of the world, any barriers erected, any philosophies accepted and passed on, the religions of the weak, the fickle jealousies espoused from the maws of the cores of the wicked requires but a simple sidestep to ensure that which makes everything really work. That like, or love, or tender respect, or forever-admire, is something to strive toward, forever, and with serious gravity. And we will strive toward it, our hearts in our hands, in our smiles, in our eyes, until all are one for even one moment again. There is nothing more important.