Nervous Hospital

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All That Heaven Will Allow

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Memorial Day

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For those who have laid their lives on the altar of freedom. For those who answered the call and are now missing their legs or their eyes or their hands or their ability to think right or sleep through the night. For those who still serve and for those who are yet to come.


Thank you for your courage and your sacrifice.


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Namaste.



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Easy Bake Gas Chamber Mishap

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portrait of every living soul.





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Instead of suicide I am cooking. Caramelized French Toast with bacon and fried eggs for breakfast.  Paella last night, with cod and squid and argentine red shrimp and andouille sausages and vialone nano rice. Saffron. Garlic. Rosemary. Crusty bread dipped in olive oil infused with red peppers, garlic, and more rosemary.

Garlic Aliolli to spoon on top.

A bottle of Ripasso to go with.


Got up this morning and grilled a couple of the left-over andouille sausages and fried some eggs and made some toast and ate that with a pot of strong coffee. Then I started on the baby back ribs and tri-tip and the baked beans. Ribs marinated in Kahlua then rubbed with spices and braised in the oven, low and slow, to be finished on the grill later. Tri-tip dry-rubbed with salt and pepper and garlic, resting on the counter for a few hours before it goes on the grill as well. The beans bubbling away, filling the whole house with the smell of garlic and molasses and ketchup and barbeque sauce and bacon. I'm going to drink beer and barbeque and eat leftover paella and I won't stop until it's dark and i'm stupefied with liquor and food that was made with love and tenderness and passion and as a direct fuck you to the forces of death and loss and stupidity, forces which lie, not outside of me, but within.


It is a battle to the death.


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I will feed the woman well, if I can do nothing else.




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Namaste.



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Intermission

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Feel free to peruse the archives. I'm sure there's stuff you haven't read, or should read again.


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Thank you all for your friendship and support.


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There is nothing to protect, and nothing to be protected from.




Namaste.




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The Falcon Cannot Hear The Falconer

I pray you will forgive me my silence.

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This week the Wild Woman of Borneo was recaptured after some months on the lam. She's behind bars and likely to remain there, cooling her heels, a good long time. I'm not going to go into details, out of deference to some kind of privacy, but she has generally been wreaking havoc on friend and foe alike, leaving a swath of destruction and terror not unlike a particularly malevolent tornado.


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We are yet huddled in the wreckage, aghast at the sunlight pouring into the basement through what we had imagined to be the solid foundation of our lives.



And yet, and yet.


Maybe the tornado is the wrong metaphor. Maybe she's a dirty bomb, or something grander.


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It seems everything must be burned.



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I know these are but small troubles, and everywhere you look things are worse, and worse still.


I got no right to go on about it.



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Yet I am sore put out.




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I do not think that all things happen for a reason. I do not believe this is all meant to be.


I believe that some people bring evil into the world because it is what they want to see.


I do not think this is in any way a good thing.




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I have, in point of fact, set my very life against it.



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Is that my lesson here?



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fuck if I know.



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Namaste.



And may you be spared.



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(ps- don't feel like you have to say anything. I know you love me. I do.)




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The Assassin's Escape

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So last weekend The Woman on The Verge dragged me down to San Diego to look at a little-bitty old trailer she had her eye on. Built in 1979 and pretty much untouched since then, except for an unfortunate Miami-vice inspired reupholstery job done in the mid-eighties. The roof leaked and the overhead inside was water damaged and rotted. Everything that could open or shut was held in place with bungee cords. The exterior paint was sun-faded and the seams were split and bulging.

But it was also short enough to fit in our driveway, and light enough for our little truck to tow safely, had a toilet and shower that worked, a beautiful little stove and oven I fell in love with, and overall it had a certain undeniable charm.

The woman was in love.

So she gave the nice lady the money she'd been saving up for the last six months, and I got a three-minute walk-through of the systems from the nice lady's troll-like husband, King of The Bungee Cords, I'd already taken to calling him, the gist of his commentary ran along these lines..."This here used to be hooked up, but it come undid and I never noticed nothing different, so, hell, I don't know what it did. Same with this here switch under there, I flipped it back and forth, but I don't know what it does." 


We hooked up our new 13 foot 1979 Nomad travel trailer to the new tow hitch and drove the three hundred miles straight back home.

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This weekend we took her on our shakedown cruise. There happens to be a beautiful and wild little RV campground not six miles from our little blue house on Main street, and that's where we went.

The Trailer, The Woman on The Verge, and The Bulldog 

We had a hell of a good time.

Dishwasher's Command Central: Three burner stove and kitchen sink.

We managed to eat pretty damn good.

Lentil tacos with pickled onions, red cabbage, and roasted poblanos.

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Good Lord Almighty.




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I have to be honest and let you know that I was not the best partner The Woman could have hoped for. I was nervous as a dog shitting peach pits driving that trailer home, and I was worried about all the imaginary things that could go wrong.

Thank God she handled me like a snake-charmer. At this point I'm almost half convinced the whole thing was my damn idea.

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At any rate, I'll spare you the details, but I will say this:





My soul has been becalmed.



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I will take to this like a duck to water. All day to cook over smoldering coals. All day and night to play with the dog and look over at the woman, catch her eye, catch her by the arm as she passes me, kiss her, kiss her and kiss her some more.

Sit by the fire and stare into it.

Roast vegetables in the ashes and coals.

Read until I fall asleep.

Take the dog for long, wild romps in the tick-thick grass.

Let go of the entire architecture of my imagined terrors and petty fears.


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Breathe.






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We had a damn good time. Set up camp on Friday at about 2 pm, and broke camp Sunday at 9 am. I love the Woman on The Verge and I owe her my soul, but what she did by getting us this camper and bringing this whole new thing into our lives- I am down on my knees in thanksgiving.


I fed her, though. I gave her caramelized French toast and bacon and fried eggs for breakfast. I gave her grilled shrimp and grilled corn on the cob and roasted poblanos for dinner. Lentil tacos.


We even roasted a butternut squash that we didn't bust into until we came home today, served with goat cheese and mint vinaigrette and salad greens, that almost killed me.


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The whole time we were camping, I felt this huge, twisted knot that was in my soul gently unwinding.


She'll tell you, man, I can't sit still for five damn seconds. Out there, under the setting sun, or under the blazing stars, under a cloud of mosquitoes, I could mimic stonehenge.


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Stalwart in my immobility.


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Abject in my passion for the woman I love and the taste of good food and the warmth of the wine and the woodsmoke on my skin and the deep, deep, rekindling of the pastoral nomadism that is my biological  homecoming.


All that Mongolian steppe manliness and abandon.


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The Assassin Has Made Good His Escape.




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Namaste.




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