Intersections

*

this is a painting that no longer exists.

*

I got up and went to work and came back home sick after only two hours. I have some kind of cough. 

It brings me to my knees.

*

My wife is obsessive compulsive, like me. But different. She does art. Art. Art. Art. Art. Art. Art. Art. Is it art yet? Let's do it some more and see if it is. 

She takes something and makes it art. And then she puts some art on it again. And then once more. Or twice maybe. 

Over and over and over.

*

She is knitting socks of late. Intricate and mysterious and warm and colorful and vibrant and, yes, odd.

*

I am instant gratification man when it comes to art. Or almost anything. Give it to me now. 

There. It's art. 

*

Next!  

*

I watched Tom Hanks in Castaway again last week. There is this moment, right before the plane he is on smashes into the middle of the vast Pacific ocean, where Mr. Hanks is in the airplane lavatory, trying to splash some water on his face in the tiny stainless steel sink. He pats the water off his face and then holds up his thumb, which sports a band-aid.

Slowly, grimacing, he peels it off and stares at the injured thumb.

In the blink of an eye he will be smashed up into the overhead, then flung around in the belly of the plane, then smashed into the sea, nearly drowned, nearly eaten by the screaming turbine of the wing-mounted engine, and then cast adrift in a tiny, leaking life raft in mountainous seas in the middle of a storm in the middle of the night in the middle of nothing.

After that, he doesn't think about his thumb any more.

*

It's all about perspective.

*

If my life lacks sufficient stark terror, I tend to obsess over my little injured thumb.

"Ooooh. It hurts."

*

Anxity.

*

There is a method for disassembly. There is one for assembly. There are myriad others in between. 

I am a stranger to them.

*

The most beautiful thing in the world is the world itself.

*

What more does one need?

*

There is the thrill of glimpsing the vast timescales of the geological processes. The vast numbers of years and ages and creatures. Not to mention the galaxies. The worlds and numberless stars and numberless experiments made in no one's name at all.

*

We are all grist for the mill.

*

make no mistake about that.

*

yet we are given the beauty of a sunset. of the sea. of our own flesh. of kisses and numberless kisses of our beloved.

riches rain upon us like disasters.

*

we are all of us undone.

*

Palimpsest

*

Dusted the bedroom. Wiped down all wood surfaces with Method Good For Wood. Touched up all scratches with Old English Scratch Cover for Dark Woods. Vacuumed with new Bosch canister vacuum. Mopped with microfiber mop head and Minwax Hardwood floor cleaner.

Vacuumed and mopped the Darjeeling Limited Hallway.

Painted one wall of the living room in Ralph Lauren Oatmeal. Dusted, wiped down all wood surfaces, touched up with scratch cover. Vacuumed the sofa and sofa cushions and cleaned leather sofa, ottoman, and chair with saddle soap. Vacuumed and damp mopped. Re-did the mantle display.

Vacuumed the office and dusted it. Wiped down the steel table top with Good for Wood. Damp mopped with Minwax Hardwood floor cleaner.

Bleached the countertops in the kitchen. Took the O'Keefe and Merrit stove apart and cleaned the outside from top to bottom. Scrubbed the stainless steel sink with Barkeep's Friend and vacuumed under and behind the stove and wiped the floor down by hand and then damp mopped. Took the caps off all the spices and washed the grime off and put them back.

Clorox bleach plus on the bathroom sink and toilet and shower and vacuumed and wiped down by hand and damp mopped.

Washed the dog and dried her.

Ate quesadillas prepared by my wonderful wife.

Watched part of The Magnificent Seven.

Dusted the bookshelves in the living room again and wiped down the steel table top.

Looked under the sofa for dust bunnies but there were none.

Had a short glass of frozen vodka and lime/ginger juice.

*

Last night I made a new painting and today I put it up in the bedroom.

It is a palimpsest. It is black and oatmeal colored. It is mysterious and torn and half-scrubbed away.

*

Our fireplace mantel has now a small collection of pinch-pots from our first week in ceramics class.

It is sweet.

*

I am deeply, deeply disturbed.

*

But everything is in its place.

*

Soon, very soon now, I will have everything under control.

*

What are you lookin' at?

*

Night At Camozzi's

*

You can't go to Camozzi's no more.

*

This year I am learning how to manage our finances. I have been more than semi-retarded about money all of my life, but I am at long last taking the helm and steering us away from the shore and out toward deeper waters. I'm really having fun. It helps that we actually have enough money to pay all of our bills and still have a little left over.

This new thing is long, long overdue.

I imagine like how addicts when they finally get clean, when they take back their lives, then there is almost always some bad shit coming for them to knock them back down, make them give up? I won't be too surprised if there isn't something looming on our horizon. 

We are hard creatures to change. Even if we want to, we're not much good at it.

*

On the other hand, I've already seen strange things going on that I do kind of attribute to the effects of attention. 

There seems to be new money everywhere I look.

*

It is the Year of the Rat. 

So, auspicious for new endeavors.

*

Good luck to you on yours.

*

I Know Which Way The River Flows; When I Was Young I Was Told

Yesterday we made another bonzai run to the city. We took the girlchild and her boyfriend and dropped them off with a friend who is interning at an art gallery and we went to the Mission District and were bad.

Limon-  Peruvian fusion. Lime walls and brown floors and orange tiles and dark-skinned polite men in black carrying fresh, crusty bread and pitchers of water and the food.

Crispy calamari and octopus with chipotle aioli.

A simple, rustic filet of some white fish on a bed of spinach and perfectly roasted potatoes in a rich sauce that you had to sop up with the crusty bread.

Pork tenderloin in a cabernet sauce with mashed potatoes topped with braised carrots and pickled red onions. I almost died. It was perfectly plated in a deep bowl-shaped dish that held everything together and maybe I did die.

We were there for lunch, maybe four other people in the whole joint. The hostess was on the phone the entire time taking dinner reservations. Non-stop.

Then we cruised the mission. Junk stores and thrift stores and second-hand furniture and lots of collections of mid-century sleek Jetson's furniture and lots of places that collected the freakiest shit we've ever seen. Giant heads, leather covered torsos, vintage porn, stuffed dog/wolf/vampirebeasts, gigantic floodlights, medical cabinets, rocket-ship themed executive desks, creepy paintings, all jambled and smashed together in dark crawlspaces and basement rooms...and the people. We walked out of one joint and the wife says she thinks there was some LSD in our calamari. That kind of place. Those kinds of people. Faces that shimmered and glowed and seemed oddly misshapen or too holy or too fucked up to be real.

Folks lettin' their freak flags fly.

When we couldn't take another step or see another stuffed skunk mauling a naked boy mannequin, we headed for The Slanted Door.

Ah, me.

Cocktails and raw oysters and fresh springrolls and more oysters and my lord amighty.

I am a slut.

*

Picked up the hella stoned youngsters in the Haight and drove home through the night. 

In 'N Out double-doubles on the way back.

*

One of those days you put in your little rucksack to pull out on some bittercold night when you are alone and soulsick and can taste naught but ashes.

Some small thing to warm the soul.

*

Here's to you, friend. Tell you what, why don't you guys all run out sometime this week and see if you can't top this day. Then come back, tell me everything.

*

Namaste.

The Vida of My Escondida

*

My sweet, my everything.

*

Unease as an operating system

*

*

Look, generally I'll say that I love the human condition. In its specifics, it can be my undoing. All that loving going on. That self-sacrifice. That beautiful longing, that refusal to be cheapened, the willingness to lay down one's one and only life for another. There are books filled with that kind of love, that kind of strength and beauty and willfulness that sends the very devil packing in shame.

We are a beautiful creature.

*

But we testify against our mothers. We steal from our children's piggybanks in the dark of night. We lie to make ourselves seem better than we are. We prevaricate. We betray.

*

I guess we need all of it. 

*

I have never been hospitalized or made to take a medicine to make my brain work better, but there's more than a handful of folks would say I'm pretty crazy. Esp. the better they know me. But I am enamored of the wheezy contraption in all of it's particulars. I love to stand over a dead body. Its part of me love's a murder scene, a terrible car wreck, a weeping woman. A pool of blood and drag marks and a hammer under the floorboards.

I kept a little photo-cube paperweight on my desk of a murder victim got hammered to death until some other victim came in and was talking to me and just about fainted. 

I had to put it away after that.

*

But a big part of me is a pretty sick fuck.

There's no getting around that.

*

I remember my first autopsy. In the academy. There were kids puking left and right, passing out. The M.E. had to push me back a couple of times. I grabbed the brain and was twisting it around, trying to line up the basal skull fracture with the lacerated artery that caused his death.

I got a taste for death.

*

Don't get me wrong, I don't like it. I don't relish it. I just want to figger it out. 

The mechanisms are various and I would know them all.

*

I wrestle with my demons just like you do.

*

Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence

*

If you have nothing nice to say...

*

Look, don't even read this. I'm warning you. It's just a whiny little bitch session. A man with the true heart of a nervous little poodle, looking out the window fearfully, pacing and whining. Wanting to go outside but worried that it might be too hot. Or too cold. Or windy. Or becalmed. 

*

The birds might be too loud.

*

I bought a new vacuum cleaner today. To replace the one I bought three months ago. Which replaced the one I'd bought two weeks before. Which replaced the expensive one we'd bought two years ago that we hated with a white-hot passion.

*

But now I am in love.

The Bosch Canister BSG71.

I vacuumed the house twice.

*

I am cooking black bean chili because my wife is miserable with cramps and she wants it and I am moody and crazy and out of sorts but I do know that I can whip me up some chili if that makes her happy for even five minutes.

It's like, if your little ship is sinking, you bail it out. You go get a bucket and you heave seawater out of the bilge. 

If she goes down, we're all lost.

*

The sun is out and it is warm as a day in June and the sky is achingly blue and the smell of grass and air and the sea is swirling around everything outdoors like Mary Poppins sprinkling joy dust on the kids who've been cooped up all winter and are running around, rubbing their eyes and feeling the strange life in their lungs and on and on.

I get no joy from it. 

It tries to work in around the edges, and it makes some headway. 

*

But I got a bad weather in me.

*

I'm pretty sure that drinking helps....

*

Kiln Rejects

*

No habla clay.

Tengo todos thumbs.

*

It is good for me to do things I am not good at. So far, ceramics is in that camp.

I am having a blast, though.

Today I made a drunken log cabin maple syrup pitcher.

*

Use your imagination.

*

It is so much fun to spend all day in class next to my wife. I keep trying to hit on her, but I'm too shy.  

*

My planned four-day weekend is shot to shit because of this trial I'm working on. The DA prosecuting it looks and acts just like Lady Elaine Fairchild. And the judge, come to think of it, acts a lot like Mr. Rodgers. 

All I want is for Speedy Delivery Man to come up with a verdict so I can put paid to this.

*

Hope you are well and not wrapped around the axle like some people I know.

*

fin.

To Whom It May Concern:

We live in the folds of a huge canvas;
like the sea when it moves quietly and furiously,
alternately hiding and revealing

where we have
come from,
where we are
going:

our entreaties caught in our throats.





*

The Quest For the True Self

*

Quien, yo?

*

My kid had her tonsils out today. She's all hopped up on pain meds, laid out on the sofa watching Monk and eating mashed potatoes and rootbeer popsicles.

She feels like hammered shit.

*

Yesterday I was stopped at a traffic light and a bee landed on the windshield. For some reason, I was struck with this thought that all of mankind and all we had wrought on this planet was of negligible importance to this bee, and by extension, to all of mother nature. 

Now, of course, this is utter bullshit. We are destroying this planet. 

But I guess it tied in with that show on Discovery, life after people, and how a thousand years after we were all wiped off the face of the earth the birds and bees and fishes and whatnot would pretty much recover and go on as if we'd never been there and torn the place up. 

Maybe it was  the windshield did it. Kind of like I was invisible or something, and just watching this bee go about his business. Big shot detective, car, stereo, guns, briefcase, agenda, ideas, plans, compulsions, etc.

But to that bee I was just a place to rest for a second.

Like a rock or a tree branch.

*

We overestimate our importance. 

*

Smoke pours from the windows and the gears grind and grind and the calliope's out of tune.

Still, I am grateful for this life and all the good and bad of it. This blog is ostensibly about the attempt to reconcile the beauty with the horror, but I guess if you look deeply enough into it, the reconciliation has already occurred. Or is redundant. 

Look at them long enough and they become expressions of the same thing.

It's all beauty and horror.

*

namaste.

*

*

Dead Man Walking

*

I knew this guy once. Nobody to me, just a guy on a case at first. But I got to know him. He got in a jam and he did what he thought he needed to do to get out of it. 

It didn't turn out so good.

*

I see people around me, people I know, people I care about. They get themselves in jams, too. 

We bring it upon ourselves.

That's what the buddhists will tell you. 

That motherfucker karma.

*

We're none of us immune. 

*

God, it's like a swarm of bees in my head right now. Gritting my teeth like to bust 'em. There's something to say here but I can't get at it. Slips away. Slips left and then comes in with an uppercut or a body shot and pivots left and you jab at empty air and it tucks in again and drives one into your kidneys.

Slips away again...

*

Night Gathering

*

*

I don't expect you to understand. 

It's not your fault.

You got no frame of reference.

*

That's my first reaction. 

*

But looking at it, I see that it's wrong. Of course you have a frame of reference. Of course you understand. It just means something else to me than it does to you. Because of my frame of reference. 

I have been changed by things.

The change has been wrought.

*

I shall endeavor to cease my squawking about it. But my god.

*

One thing I know is that whatever else is going on here, I am writing and working for myself. I am the beneficiary of my works. Sometimes I am writing for myself in the darkness of some cold and future night, that there might be some warmth, a scrap of blanket and a piece of bread.

Here you go, friend. 

*

fin.

Lone Palm

*

Life expands to accommodate what you would fit in it.

Jam in some good shit, man.

*

Today we had our first all day ceramics class at the community college. We wedged clay. We made pinch pots. We made a coil-built vessel. We watched Thai potters make incredible pots on some old hand-shot video. We got dirty. We ate lunch on the grass in the quad like twenty-year-olds. We helped clean up after. 

We put our initials on the bottoms.

We had some good time.

*

I love my wife, you'll have to excuse me. 

She gives me fits.

*

I cain't hardly stand it.

*

I don't know how you are supposed to quit drinking when Albertson's has Ketel One on sale for fourteen bucks off. 

Jesus wants us to smooth away the rough edges, it seems to me.

*

After six hours of pottery, we went to the local market in Morro Bay and bought brocoli rabe and we're cooking it up with the leftover grown-up Mac n' Cheese from Yolie's party yesterday and we are having frozen vodka first and I don't give a shit if I should or not it's good and that's that.

Plus Peach Cobbler Ben&Jerry's ice cream for after.

*

"Who's the boom king?"

*

Namaste.

*