Today Is Your Birthday, So Happy Birthday To Ya!

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This is my kid with her little cousin. It is her birthday today, so wish her a good one.


She deserves it!



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Sixteen years ago she came into this world. She knew what she wanted. What a blessing it has been to watch her all this time. I wouldn't trade a second of it for anything, anything, anything.


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I love this kid bad.




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Resentful and Suspicious

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Tomorrow Emily turns sixteen.



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She is the sun around which my pale planet spins right now. I am some absent-minded gardener, puttering, trying to weed without pulling out the sunflowers or the bachelor's buttons or the forget-me-nots. But I am a poor servant to the garden,
and like as not will yank out a rose instead of a thistle.


As if my puttering matters.


There is a grander plan in play.




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I am grateful to be permitted my small audience.


Beyond words.




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I believe in love's power to redeem.



I will not quit it.





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The Hard Way

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self.




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No Way to Apprehend It

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When I am less anxious things seem so fine. It's not that things seem bad when I get like this, because no matter how bad I feel I know that things go on the way they do and they are good, but when I feel this way I got no way to apprehend what's good.

I got no way to apprehend it.


*


If I was to say. If I was to take you by the hand.
As if you'd understand then. As if I would.
The incantations. The overpass and the the bridges.
It is dark and growing darker.

It is dark and growing more so.


*

I am a poor substitute for what is needed.
I wander about, holding out a bowl, scribbling some prayer,
but I am not what's
needed in the end.

The good intentions I got, they won't get you a dime's worth
of the god's elixers.



*

I could lift a stone. I could do it again
and again. Maybe not such a heavy stone as this one,
but perhaps a smaller one.

Perhaps this one here.


Perhaps not.


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it is a constant surprise to me that I am so easily knocked for a loop.
And that is a poor excuse. I know that I am nothing like crazy.


Right.


I have tied my own hands to the oars and I will see that I work
the oars until we reach what shores are ours to discover.



It's just that I'll complain.




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To Grandmother's House We Go

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We went to the Cliffs today and listened to this band, Threes and Nines, with our daughter and her friend. It was very fine. We had crab sandwiches and a twelve dollar glass of wine and watched these kids play. A drummer and a stand-up bass and a kid singing and playing guitar.

Keep your eyes on this little band, they're something else.


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There was a bunch of folks dancing in front of the stage:

Acid trip girl: red hair, freckles, skinny, skull tat on one shoulder blade, peacock on the other, hot pants, kangol hat, big leather purse. Looked fifty, was probably late twenties. Her boyfriend was a scar-faced Mexican dude with tattoo'ed legs and a Raider's ballcap and black and white sneakers. He danced by putting one foot out, then the other. Like the hokey-pokey.

There was Mick Jagger girl, about sixteen, arms and legs seven or eight feet long, stick-thin, big Mick Jagger mouth. She funked around like a rubberband tree.

There were all manner of young girls in faux-seventies dresses and big sunglasses. Some were flinging hoola-hoops around.


Then there was this sixty year old skinny dude in a black cowboy hat and a 'Merican flag shirt, tight black pants.


He rocked the house.


*


Some fun was had.


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Gotta go, its time for Flight of the Conchords.....

Waiting For Mister Len

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Today for playwrighting.
Today is for moving the Ginko tree.
Today is for olive oil tasting in the park.
Today is for watching the fights.
Today is for making of art.
Today is for reading Men In The Off Hours.
Today is for waffles for breakfast.
Today is for laying about in the lair.
Today is for strong coffee.
Today is for ice water.
Today is for sweat and strong hands.
Today is for getting done what needs doing.



Let's go!




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A bit strange

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All these thoughts. I can't put them down.




I get tongue-tied.


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It is so lame, but I really am sorry I am not holding up my end of the conversation. I owe you. I count you as my friend,
but I won't bring myself to talk to you.


I got so much to say.


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I hope you know that my silence is a companionable one, and that if we were face to face I think you'd be better able to tell. It's not an icy silence. Nor sullen. Nor bitter.


Ruminative. Contemplative. Maybe a little bit shy, but not in a bad way.


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Ah, I bet you know it.



*



Sometimes it is a sheet of glass between me and the known world.



I know it will go away again and there will again be the smell of the sea and the feel of the breeze and the sounds of the great and wheezing contraption whanging around and the whole of it causing me to smile and to not cease smiling.



*




I am a little bit strange, too.




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At Sea

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self portrait.




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Reaction Gap

In a gunfight, if you aren't the agressor you are at a disadvantage that is defined by physics and neurology. Even if you are attuned to danger, ready for it, and not be-bopping around with your head up your ass, you have a serious problem when an aggressor decides to attack you. He's made up his mind, and initiated the action- pulled his gun, or knife, whatever, and is closing on you or engaging you and you have to:

A. Observe
B. Orient
C. Decide
D. Act

while you're under attack already. No matter how fast you are, you can't catch up to what's happening in time to control it. All you have left most times is one or two really shitty options. It helps if you have trained enough to be able to run on auto pilot, and it helps if you go around armed and twitchy.

But, still.

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Yesterday I was supposed to do MP-5 training at the range, but the guys from the task force and the FBI were on an operation, so there was nobody to train. Luckily my little brother was there, so the two of us spent the day shooting. We had a good time, working on fundamentals. Shot a lot of steel plates and worked on smooth and fast presentations, lateral movement, failure drills, controlled pairs. My bro is an excellent firearms instructor, its a real passion of his. We are always trying out new shit, refining old stuff, working and working the techniques that we think will help us function in real-world engagements. We both do a lot of force-on-force training with Airsoft, which is using replica guns that function just like our duty weapons, but they shoot hard little bb's that sting like a motherfucker when they hit you. So we can test our tactics and see what works when someone is shooting back at you, trying to fuck up your ooda loop.

It is some fun, let me tell you.


You find out fast what works and what just looks pretty on the range.

*


Man, my daughter hates me right now. She's pretty sure I'm the cause of all of her unhappiness.


Why can't I just leave her alone?



It was a time when all she wanted was her daddy.


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Thinking about that makes me sad.




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It's easier to think about drawing from a concealed rig and putting two in the chest and one in the head at five yards in 1.5 seconds.




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Hey, check out the link to Pixel Rust if you want. Daniel Kopton's got some good stuff over there. He did some little plastic army man shit that is right up my alley.


Also, I fixed Lineberger's link and also Richard's over to Aye, Wobot.



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Torso

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It is the hard times that make us what we are. Especially if they kill us, because then we are dead.



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It is nothing like hard times here.



It is all sunshine and roses.



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My wife, she goes in the garden and everything just blooms around her. Little flowers that were wilting perk up and turn their faces to her like she is the sun lighting on them. Their scents wafting up on the breeze just for her.


I go in the garden like Kali or Shiva, you know, a thousand arms sprouting all manner of axes and blades and shovels and saws. It gets loud and it gets ugly and it smells bad and then whatever was there isn't there anymore and like as not something new is. Or scorched earth.


We do our dances, each to each.


*


I guess I'm just like everybody else. I think I'm one way, I'm some other, opposite to that. I don't need to find out all the answers, though one would be nice.


My wife tells me I am crazy.



What kind of human would you be right now if you weren't, is what I want to know.



I mean, who the fuck could be sane?


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I ask you.


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Parlor Girls

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I got a pretty good idea I been drinking more than is good. Craving is probably a bad sign in that arena.


Skoal!


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Lately we've been watching that Anthony Bourdain character. Who my wife is falling for in the worst way. He's got some stuff figured out, seems like. The physical pleasure of food and good company, the way that travel takes you outside yourself and yet also completely isolates you in your environment, so that in a way you are the only thing in it that you've got a tangible connection to. He's a good writer, and he's got an honesty about him that's refreshing. And he smokes. And drinks too much.
I don't know, but I think overindulgence is dead necessary at times.


Like right now.



*

Think I'll have another drink.


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Listen, everything's fine. Whatever it is, you'll be alright.



I promise.



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The Cutting Room

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The little ship is righted, for now. The seas have calmed and sunlight warms the decks.


Gulls mackle in the breeze behind us, raucous and beligerent.



Everything feels fresh.




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I don't mean to complain so much. I know I'm blessed to struggle as I do.






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Namaste, y'all.


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Hombres Malvados

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I got nothing right now but knowing I got to hold tight
and hope she don't throw me.



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I have lost the way words used to move in me and everything is
wind-scoured and dust ruined and bone dry. Dessicated.
That's a word. Bereft is another. Something has taken my measure
and finds me wanting. I wander through the rooms of my life
and everywhere it is one door closing on the next.


And me befuddled.


I'll be dog.


*


I have always believed like a child in the power of love.
I won't quit it, though shaken in the maw of a great, angry beast.

I will believe.


But when the beast has tired of sport and I lie busted in the dirt
I get my doubts.



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I got my doubts after all.


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