Bottle baby

It's too hot to live.
That's what I remember thinking as I stumbled under the magnifying glass that is the Southern California Sky. The thermometer was pushing up over 100 arid degrees, and the real estate value of shade was enjoying it's mid day boon. On days like this sometimes I hide in the back of the fiction section in the Central library. It's quiet, it's air conditioned and by and large I am left alone. Sometimes I get the call from one of the friendships and we sail on down to The Standard or The Boneventure or any other of the numerous downtown hotel pools. That's always refreshing, bathing all beautiful with our beverages and our sun blinds over our eyes, high above the rush and hustle, high above the toil, perching feloniously with the rest of the leisure class lavishing in the sun.
If only.
If only everyone could lose time off their lifeline in such luxury.
Most days, honestly, I don't roll so ritzy, most days I'm on my own to find salvation from time and temperature and I end up down at Manhattan beach, body surfing and laughing to myself; I stuff my pack with water, apples, and reading materials and I while away the time till the sun disappears and I can move around again without fear of melting or losing what remains of my perspective on consensus reality.

This one day though things were different, I couldn't find a way out, couldn't find my escape and so I improvised a solution to the heat and loneliness. The sun was going down but it was still sweltering and I couldn't find a place to hide. I wandered over to the neighborhood liquor store and bought myself a quart bottle of Pacifico, my favorite cervesa, and I climbed up the walkways high above echo park looking down on the city. I sat in an out of the way spot, the sun had vanished a while back and it didn't seem like anyone was around. I cracked my brew and began to drink it down. I let the cold fresh taste cut the sweat from my face and I shivered a bit there, in spite of the heat. Sometimes my head gets on top of me, I start to dwell, I could tell this was going to be one of those nights. It must have been a weekend or close to it, because I could hear them having fun down below, could see the girls in their fluorescent colors and angle cut hair, brazen, brash, and drunk with youth and possibility. I could see the boys with the tight jeans and striped shirts smoking their cigarettes with loose gaiety and I could feel the hollow point in my stomach and tried futilely to fill it with beer. It isn't easy to be in a city so full and so alive and feel like you exist outside of it, like you're only a phantom.

The Ghost. That's what my mother used to call me, I came and went silently. I was sneaking, I was avoiding scrutiny. I didn't want to be noticed, i didn't want to be seen. That's how i exist to them, a boy who lives his life in the shadows. For awhile that's not what the rest of the world got, I only hid myself from the family, so they wouldn't have to watch me burn. Now here, in this new place, I have completely disappeared, and so I'm left to myself on top of a hill, alone with my velocity, a cold bottle of poor man's medicine, the swirling cloud of anxieties, apprehensions, and the weight of failure so acutely manifest in my 28th year.

With each swallow I tried to sink, letting the thoughts rise, the regrets, the pain. They would come up whether I wanted them to or not, so I went down. The parade of ex-girlfriends, swallow, sink beneath them, the Matches, the losses, the disappointment, swallow and sink beneath them. You trade with the bottle in your hand. You let your emptiness seep out as you drink the freeze in, so that by the time you're done, your heart is numb and your belly is full; in your hand you hold a bottle brimming with hurt which you can handily smash onto the asphalt, letting the contents run down the sidewalks and into the drains where it mixes with like sentiments from the rest of the city. I got what I wanted that night, I couldn't feel the heat, I couldn't feel my heart, and for awhile I sat there silent, listening to the laughter and the screams, watching my wicked city glitter off into the horizon. Somewhere in the night I was able to find sleep, shallow and uneasy but that's a lot better than I do most nights. Most nights I don't sleep at all.

Slumber party

We live in the greatest calm and grey, a nowhere thought, forcefed sucrose confettis sprinkled down from our mediated starbound elite. There is no politick for us, no struggle or division, we are woefully of one mind, constantly debating between the hemispheres of our own self interest. Feigning attempts at social progress, we become Nihilists, star stripped elephants and asses. We are the great slumber suffering the world a slow and eventual crib death, smothering the minds of the young, dowsing the fires of creativity, relegating the process of social invention and critique to the pompous privileged few who have only yet to inherit the american dream. Oh that wicked eventuality, that resignation and surrender...to close our eyes and sleep, to fall under the illusion that our lives of luxury are righteous, are deserved, and are not bought with blood.

the Hundred Peaks

I didn't care anymore, so I just wandered down the twisty incline to the sound of water hitting rocks. I gave a wave to the Mexican guys who were smoking through pinched fingers with their thick legged girlfriends. I was done avoiding people out here, I needed to be clean.

Three days before my car was overheating on the road up, I had pulled over in a turnout and was obsessing over my next move. I couldn't go back down to the city, I needed to put oil in her...why hadn't I put some in before I left? I have coolant and water I'll just put some more in. When I popped the cap of the radiator, scalding hot antifreeze sprayed out, I had my faced turned away so it only got my body and hair, but I was now covered in hot sticky green ichor.

The first mountain I ever climbed I did so by accident. I had set up camp and had a lot of daylight to kill. I packed my bag with tools, a knife, water and strapped my trail boots on. I headed out looking for a signed trail that seemed to have promise but wandered around and took an alternate route to nowhere. I didn't feel like going back as I didn't really have any destination in mind. I was boiling inside, I needed to break out, I needed space, and so looking up at the hill in front of me I started to run. Up shaley sliding rock and sand, up through Pines and Furs, up and up until my legs cramped and my lungs burned. This was a way I knew to make it stop, to make it quiet, to stop the argument that is constantly occurring in my head between the many mothers and fathers of my personality. Seven thousand two hundred and twenty eight feet later I stood watching the sun sink into the west with nothing but the high screaming of the Santa Anna Devil wind and the vast bodies of the sleeping great surrounding me. On top of my small mountain I was a little closer to heaven, alone, and quiet. The sweat dried cold on my skin and I let it get dark before I found my way back down.

I looked down over the ledge, into the shimmering blue and green. It looked deep enough. " Go for it Bro!" Yelled the taller guy. " Is it deep enough?" I asked him
but I don't think he heard me. They stood on the river bank below and intermittently glanced up at me and gathered their things to leave. I took off my shirt and hat, laid my things by the side and stared down at the pool created by the deep point beneath the waterfall. "I'm going to break my legs" I said to myself as I walked over the edge.

I carefully refilled the radiator with fluid and water and drove back down the mountain, back into La Canada and onto the 2 towards Echo Park, right back where I came from. I stopped at the car wash and washed the fluid from inside the engine and off the hood of my car, then I bought some oil and put it in. I didn't think about it, I didn't say anything, i just did it and headed back up to Angeles. I was doing what i said I was going to do.

I pointed at the tallest mountain in my eye line, and said " You. You're next." I had quickly scaled another small mountain and I had gotten an early start so I had all day to bushwhack, trail blaze and take down the biggest kid on the block. I walked around it's base and followed the beaten path. I got to a wash in the path and looked up, it was steep as fuck but do-able. I wasn't about to follow someone else's path up this thing, I was going to take it down on my own. It's funny the way a mountain tricks you, you can only see so far in front of you, and so you always think you are coming to the summit when in fact it's just another plateau. I started running up this one like i had the night before,but soon I was checking my water supply and calculating the risk of continuing, the risk of dehydrating myself out here, a good 20 mile hike from my camp. I decided to keep going and half delusional from the altitude, exhaustion, lack of water and hunger, I arrived at the peak, the highest point south in the hundred peaks section of the Angeles National Forest, and I saw all the way into the desert beyond the mountains, to Palm Springs and Nevada.I knelt down and cried into my hands as The Devil Wind sang its song unabated.

I hit the water hard, and my legs folded up as i hit the bottom. The Water was alive, fresh born from a snow melt and running young down the creeks and streams leading to this pool where I emerged and screamed to the sky. Cold like new, cold like young and unspoiled, cold like renewal. The kids on the bank cheered, I swept the hair from my face a smiled at them, shining like silver in the dying day.

Come down from there. Come back into the black acrid grid and try not to gag. What can you take from a place where your mountains are manifest and surmountable, to a place where ghost people dream silent and desperate? What are you doing there? What are you doing? Climb the hard way, just as long as you climb, kid. Get to the top half dead if you have to, just get to the top, see the glory from upon high and know it's cold quiet truth. There are many roads to the top of the mountain they say, sometimes you have to make your own.

Massive Authority

At some point I just stopped doing what i was told, and that's probably where it all went wrong. Or right. Depending on who you ask. I stopped trusting what i heard or saw, started seeing people trying to gain benefit from my obedience.That subtle exploitation is what turned me into a bad son, a bad student, a bad employee, a bad citizen, and a bad boyfriend. I can't wipe the smile off my face and i can't stop staring at the train wreck, I point my finger and fire off my big mouth regardless of it's obnoxious intonation or awkward phrasing. I'm a troublemaker wandering listless in a carefully constructed, but fragile, maze of concrete glass and good intentions.Here you go kids, here's a prime example of what you get when you don't follow the rules, you get a spot outside in the rain, the freedom to come and go as you please and no promise of help if ever you should need it. Do i bely the social contract or am i exercising my rights to their fullest extent? Am I living a life more examined or am I refusing to conform? Is this a dream I'm living or a misguided delusion? Time, the great arbiter, will be the judge i suppose, will show if my path was downward spiraling trajectory full of misery, disappointment, and self induced loneliness, or if from the the outside I find myself inside and making a needed contribution if even in the smallest of ways. Good luck kids, going your own way is long and unpaved road, get ready for the wear and tear.

Over and Over

When I write long winded diatribes on how our lazy nation needs to hang tough in tight quarters, for our honor, for our sanity, for the salvation of our souls, I do not do so lightly. In fact I haven't been able to completely reconcile myself with my own opinion presented in the earlier entry entitled "Riot Face, Strong Heart". It starts off a recollection of my youthful activism and left leaning "soft" radicalism, while the tail end advocates a course of foreign policy akin to that of our current neo-con administration or that of presidential hopeful Sen. John McCain. As you might imagine I am not comfortable putting myself in bed with these kinds of people...








So in order to assuage my own riled nerves and constantly revolving thought process I will continue to examine this problem in a typical spiraling calamitous Jack fashion. Feel free to skip to the next entry.

I wonder where the guns come from. "Their" guns, "Their" bombs. Of course you'll tell me they come from Iran; yes, granted they have passed through the Iranian borders, they may even have been purchased by Iran coiffures, but who made these weapons? Russia, perhaps? Give me the name of the company, I want the NAME of the conglomerate responsible, and with that a list of stock holders, trustees, and board of directors. Who OWNS the munitions factory? When I buy RPG's from some plant in Vladivostok who ends up pocketing that cash? What other companies do they own or hold stock in? Show me the tangled web of intrigue that exists in the modern age and now seems invisible and ignored, where the men who built the guns sell them to the people his own country is fighting against. Tell me straight to my face that this condition doesn't exist in American business, tell me that American purses don't get fat from the squabbling revolutions of Africa or the suicide car bombs in Gaza, tell me that the yolk has been loosened, tell me that I wasn't born, unfortunately, outside of a class of elites, so foreign and alien to my lifestyle that they might as well be from Mars. Tell me that my endless toils and aspirations, no matter how noble and diligent, aren't for naught; tell me I have a shot at happiness, peace and changing this corrupted institutional greed and slavery into a world more like the fairy tale one promised to me by my Saturday morning socialization programming and my positive attitude "can do" icons decorating my sugar crusted, over processed, breakfast cereals.
C'mon just tell me
tell me
LIE TO ME.

Where I make a plea to the conscience and humanity inside of the American public, to not let the good and innocent people of Mesopotamia suffer for our lack of heart and perseverance. Our leaders call for the same action to prolong their unrivaled profits or to further destabilize the area for future plunder and exploitation. Where I feel a duty, as a strong human being and true man of the west, to defend those who cannot defend themselves, Our leaders are not hampered by such heartfelt idealism, they see only dollar signs, feel only the yoke of their masters upon their throat.

My friend Mark Lennon once gave to me this profound truth after a weary discussion of our political woes in the dark year of 2001, he said this " There are no conspiracies, just follow the flow of capital and you will find the truth" he may have borrowed it, he may have conceived on his own, it makes no difference, it began a firing in my imagination that became the cascade of simple undeniable truth to the sorrowful state of mankind presently and ever in the past. Greed is the sole motivator of all humanities evil. Greed for money, for land, for power, for status, all other things fall beneath it as the father of our suffering. So when I make emotional pleas for self sacrifice to benefit the people whom we have needlessly victimized under the banner of "liberation", I do so out of the foolish dream of turning the next corner in the evolution of civilization. To grow as a society out of the infantile squabbling and greed laden, land and resource grabbing, into a more mature and enlightened state, one that isn't afraid to admit it is wrong, one that can exert force but may also yield, an advanced technique in all games of strategy, in interpersonal relations, but not in the affairs of nations?

I want to make my case to the grey faced career politicians who are are content to be carried along by the currents of financiers, bankers, and the industrial military complex, and not by intelligence, conscience and a DESIRE to see things made BETTER. We are cursed to have our finest and noblest lead lives of poverty and charity while the gilded crowns and thrones of the Earth are occupied by unenviable slime and detritus from the fecal afterbirth of Mammon. Their chains of persuasion and control emanate from every media source lulling my friends and fellow true hearts into a static filled sleep, an apathy that casts them adrift, lobotomized from their creative faculty, hope for the future, essential divinity and power.

These are the conditions that induced me to wander, that have instilled me with an almost insurmountable ennui. This is the world that I live in and love and yet cannot bear to look at, this is the cruel bitch mother that I will never forgive. I would shed my humanity and run the hills like the desert dog that I am, if only I could choose a transmutation of form over this eventual withering of spirit and gradual defeat of my most shinning hopes and dreams for the world. I have had my eyes blinded by the glory of the lie that I live under, that I tell myself, that we all whisper before we go to sleep to keep from going mad and throwing ourselves onto the roadways, into the nuclear reactors, onto the rails and electrical lines.
"Sleep" we whisper "Everything is going to be alright."

Everything is not going to be alright and we know it. All our lives we have been fed the "America the beautiful" line of bullshit, about the triumph of capitalism and democracy over the forces of tyranny and exploitation. All I see is rule of money over the battered peoples of the world, no government is above its influence, no individual unable to be bought, borders have become arbitrary distinctions of land masses, for the arms and meddling fingers of the wealthy reach from the industrialized food industry of the American mid-west, to the blood diamonds of Africa, into the forges and factories of China. The masters of the world sit high upon their limitless treasures, and they have become like the devil himself and have convinced the world they don't exist. The beauty is they are not a conspiracy ,they do not have an agenda outside of creating and keeping more of the worlds wealth for themselves, wielding more influence in the arenas of governance to further this aim and living above the rule and laws of man, behaving how they see fit.

I can't see anyway out of this situation but what was done before, to realize them, the god kings of man and go to their homes one and all to drag them into the streets, opening their well fed bodies up from balls to brain and turning their insides out, for the feast of rats and wild dogs; To tear down their palaces and redistribute the riches they have hoarded, but how to keep things from returning to their current state? Isn't it in human nature to want one more morsel of bread then the man next to you? And so I despair, because in the end I can have no answer, my desire for revolution and retribution is fed by my own jealousy and desire for the power and status denied to me by fate. This is why I wander, this is why I cast off the burdens of the world and sit amongst the flowers, this is why giving up has never been so close, the final tap out to the world at hand, where I turn my back on the ways of society and wander into the wilder realms of experience alone and speak only to myself. What is there to do that is worth doing? How can the truly world weary ever overcome his vision of the futility and purposelessness of a human life? I have long needed a reason to go on living, and nigh has one ever been ready, but I persist as per our fundamental function, and I wait to one day cross the path of meaning in this world, so that i might have something new to cry about. Instead of oppression, corruption and cruelty, I can whine about having too much work to do. What a blessed day that will be.

Galactic Pizza

I wanna know when I'm gonna get my pow-wow with the crystal shard machine elves that live in the walls of my closet. Not that I actually have a closet but regardless, there is whole multi dimensional megaplex back there full of swirling fractal reality and a couple of next level Keebler motherfuckers cooking up coincidence cakes and sugary syncronicities. Last night they were kicking up such an unholy racket that my Stevie Wonder record kept skipping and my phone was blowing up with calls from a low pressure system that wanted to come piss on the Basin. I wanna know when those shiny pricks are gonna sit down and tell me why I can't get a good slice of the live stuff and why I can eat tacos on every corner of this god forsaken grid, yet there isn't a decent sandwich shop for twenty miles. I'm not asking for some kind of Outer-Ring Stellar Subs, or Big Time Galactic Pizza, I just want a thick slice piled high with the goodies and maybe one corner deli or bodega that can throw some Boar's Head on my sangie for fucks sake. These little mojo gremlins are tinkering with my life line and you're telling me they can't maneuver me into the realm of nominal culinary competency, what am I some kind of jerk? So I think I may have no other choice than to batch up a brew of Ms. Aye and go frog swim in the kaleidescope madness in between breathes, that way i can kick these shimmery union ass clowns in their shiny Elvin asses and set the world to rights. Don't fuck with a Rhodie when he wants a square piece or deprive him of his cold cut compensation, things be gettin' heated in the multi-verse. Don't even try to pull the old "beyond my comprehension of three dimensional space and time" routine, cuz I can whoop some ass and you, my mischievous crystalline friends, are fucking with my num nums. Best rectify boys. Best. They don't call me Dynamo because I DON'T drag Old Testament ghosts through the quantum fracture in my "Return of the Jedi" wallpaper and slap them upside their glistening grey-scale approximations of anatomy. No. They Call me Dynamo cuz I'm the only motherfucker on the block who will kick down the doors of perception just to go knuckle down on some astral tricksters and boot their sorry jewel encrusted hypers-faces back to the larvae belching, insectoid mother of creation and all her panorama bubbles of shared consciousness. Takes a tribe to raise a child right? Takes an Action Jack to get some decent food around here...or so it would seem. So get on the ball you wonky star brats, I am straight starving over here and the Twinie bomb is calling my name.
Tally Ho.

Rip It Wide Open

Watch the kid go with those other funny color wearing folks. Their jeans are tight and ripping at the knees, wrist bangles jangling to the mixed up rhythms of a dance genre stew being stomped out of cabinet speakers spray painted with absurdist day-glo slogans. The DJ spins vinyl only and is covered head to toe in a color clash nightmare of a knit body suit that sports the approximation of a beard and covers him head to toe. They bounce and flail , they imitate the customary dances and de-evolve into to visceral gesticulations of their own. Nothing stops the beat, nothing stops the mayhem. They fuel it with booze, drugs and candy, they induce trance states with strobe lights and heart stopping bass, they push everything to the limit aiming to break. The sound starts with disco that gets married to hip hop, that has an affair with electro, that gives birth to house; somewhere in the mixing board the eternal feedback purity of harsh noise combines with drum and bass, succeeding in leveling anyone who tries to stand against it. The kids move together, the kids move apart, they have physical conversations and screaming fits, they ride their youth and chemistry clear into the new day and pay little consequence for the dare. Blessed is the youth that dance with all their hearts and blessed are the old that still try.. Rip it wide open colorful ones, amalgamations of everything you ever heard or saw, give me something to sing about in your celebration for celebrations sake. Rescue us from the grey and inform the night that we’re going to push it until the break of day.

Total Asiaphile

You can call it that, my hopeless infatuation with my little Japanese girl, but i think it goes way beyond her country of origin. This Lady has proven time and again that she loves me true. Love isn't a word that holds much stock for me, but no other assemblage of meanings matches the state that I so fortunately enjoy with this divine messenger from the east. She's my protector, she is my sage, I have traveled the long empty roads of a nation without a soul and she has guarded me from evil, amen. When the summer heat bears down, boiling my brain, she is a cool breeze, when the moon follows us home after a long dance, she is my view of the heavens. When I am alone and far from home she is my one comfort, when all others have turned me away she is my home. I dare say she is the one person that has never failed me; granted our relationship needs constant maintenance but it's worth every minute and every penny in order to rest easy on the absolute assurance that she will never let me down. I feel lost when I'm without her, and the thought of being apart causes hollow pangs of loneliness to grow from the base of my manhood and climb screaming into my stomach and heart, rendering me helpless against the eternal march of time, decay and our shared mortality. She is my revelation, she is my cure, she is my one unfaltering ally that poets and songsmiths have promised. She is a friend in the truest sense of the word, she is my light in the dark, and I can say, in all honesty, without her I would truly have and be nothing. This is to you, my darling, may we be together forever. Love, gratitude, respect and worship. I thank you for every moment you give to me.


I love you Civic EX, and when I die I hope that I die inside you.

Gee Oh Dee

My mother was the only other person in the room, the only other sound was the persistent beat of Gramma’s heart monitor. Mom motioned for me to sit next to her beside the bed and said to Gramma “ Mom, Jack is here to see you.” Gramma’s eyes were glued shut with sleep secretions, her face hung sallow off her bones. I watched her lips tremble for a second and heard the faintest of wheezes. That’s when I turned my heard away to press back the stinging in my eyes and sinuses. This is it, she is going to die today. Mom held her hand, which was blackened with constant bruising , heavy medications had left her flesh the consistency of overcooked chicken and the slightest touch liquefied her muscles and turned her skin a dark viscous color. She had been like this for almost a year, in this “home” filled with the mediciney smell of industrial cleanser, all alone with her memories and the other elderly who had given up
and were waiting to die. This was a bad place, a place that I hated and never wanted to be. This was a forlorn state of being, and as I sat there watching her, watching this fading image of a person I only knew in living color, I wondered what would make a person persist in this state, when death was within reach, why they didn’t float down the tunnel and into the light, why they didn’t leave the pain and suffering of this world behind and ascend to the next glorious level of existence at the promised right hand of our father. Was it a passion and reverence for life? Was it to settle unfinished business and bid farewell to loved ones? Was it waiting for the gates of eternity to open and to rise out of the mortal coil, carving a blazing trail of ethereal beauty through all seven dimensions of God’s divine creation?

No.
Of course not.

They persist in their tortured corporeal forms because their alternative is the abyss, the inky black void of non existence, and they are afraid. Yes, afraid because life is warm and life is good and death is colder than outer space. They say death is the unknown but I disagree, death is so terrifying because we ALL know what the void is, it’s where we came from, and somewhere deep in the recess of our beings we know the horror and agony of Nothing.

“the dead know only one thing, it is better to be alive”-Pvt. Joker Full Metal Jacket

I heard someone once speak about how the here and now is heaven, the best its going to get, and to start enjoying it because it’s the only respite we get from the big dark empty. The terror must be unspeakably powerful to make person choose constant agony, the worst experience in life, the persistent state of incredible pain and torment, over the cold comfort of nothingness. I don’t believe in god or heaven but not because it’s all stories about clouds and saints and puppy farms where we can chase squirrels forever. No, I don’t believe because people have to be convinced that a deity exists, they have to be threatened with punishment to obey the odd social morays and taboos of their particular sect or religion. I don’t believe because If my mother hadn’t built an invisible boogeyman in my mind to keep me from kicking my sister and playing with my peepee than never in a million years could I have dreamed up such a ridiculous circumstance. I just would have known, this is what is and it is good, and I shall cherish it throughout all my grass stained dirty faced days. Most of all I don't believe because I watched a woman wither and die, and never once did I see a glimmer of hope in her eyes that something better lay beyond. I only saw pain, fear and pain.

Don’t misunderstand me, this doesn’t make me amoral, far from it, I am big on life and living. I’m all about getting along with each other and attempting squeeze the maximum fun factor out of every minute of my lifetime. If I had things my way, we would all be running around in an H.R. Puff n’ Stuff ,tripped out, super fantasy porno, constantly eating awesome food, drinking the good wine, and getting our sex organs pampered with over stimulation. I guess in lieu of that reality I’ll just have to make due with what I got. I’m just not about to live my life in accordance with arcane rules and standards in order to gain entrance into some misty fairy land at the other end of the space time continuum. Especially when it generally requires depriving myself of some of life’s finest pleasures and arbitrarily hating someone else, who otherwise could be an potential super friend and good time pal, based on their race, creed, color, belief system, or a thousand year old blood feud. All set.

Now for any of you who are true believers out there, for those of you who think that my heathen ass is going to perish in eternal heck fire for my blasphemous stance on the afterlife; I sincerely hope that I am mistaken. I hope there is something beyond the inconceivable lack of substance that awaits us in the end. I hope I die and wake up in the supermarket, with all the pizza and peanut butter cup ice cream I can eat. I hope I end up in the Elysian fields (Elysian Park will do; on a Sunday afternoon in springtime when the Mexican families are having barbecues and their kids are taking swings at piñata stuffed with sugary goodness.). Hell, I hope I wake up in the DMV in Pawtucket Rhode Island, a fate worse than death some might say, but hey, something , ANYTHING is better than nothing. The problem is, it remains very much unknowable so I try not to worry about it and attempt to deal more with the here and now. As far as Mr.Death is concerned, the check is in the mail, it’s not like we won’t find out eventually, so in a hopeful conclusion to this otherwise dour and troubling piece, I say we all should cross that bridge when we get there, because maybe the reason nobody comes back from the dead to tell us all about it is because its so sweet, so RAD that they don’t want to ruin the surprise.

…and they better not eat all the god damned pizza, lest afterlife asses need kicking.

Riot Face, Strong Heart

I had tried to wake up Artie, but he just farted and went back to sleep. I waited in the cold alone, blowing into my hands because the heater in my car was broken. The bus was supposed to have arrived at 6:30am and it was almost 8:00 before it showed up. One by one we piled on, until the greyhound was filled to capacity. I didn’t know anyone else on board but we shared one thing besides a mutual destination, we didn’t want our country to go to war and we were meeting half of a million other like minded citizens in New York city to let the world know.


It started off as a riotous cacophony of voices and chants. People brought instruments and there was music drifting out of the long serpentine river of bodies that drifted through the city. We sang and we danced and it was good, it felt like we were doing something, like all of us together might make a difference. It was two years after September 11 and the nation was still shaken, the impetus to get revenge was palpable, but we in the streets had the will to resist the temptation. We weren’t going to give in to our baser instincts, we would rise above and persevere.

The police closed in around three o’clock in the afternoon, they bisected the parade at the intersections using horses and shields. People resisted but most dispersed, for the stubborn they had tear gas and hoses, for the fearless they had clubs. I saw a girl get kicked flat in her chest that day, I saw a boy being dragged face down along the asphalt. I didn’t know what to do, it seemed so wrong that they could just push us around like this, wasn’t this our right, as citizens, to peacefully assemble? I was really scared, there were riot cops, faceless, with shields and batons pushing us back, the gas was drifting down our way from a spot up the street. Someone had given me and orange handkerchief earlier, he said "in case you need it". I thought he meant if I needed to sneeze. I tied the rag over my nose and mouth, and clasped my hands behind my back, I dropped my weight and centered my stance and with all my secret kung fu knowledge resolved not to be moved from where I stood.

I don’t know why I did it really, I don’t know what I thought it would do, I just didn’t want to let these anonymous enforcers dissolve me, silence me, make me obey. I wasn’t doing anything wrong, it was my country that was committing the crime, the war on terror was a travesty and I didn’t want my to be any part of it. They had the horses buck their steel bridles on top on my head, they kicked me from their mounts, and finally one of them came from behind and hit me behind the right knee with a billy club. I quickly found myself being zip tied and thrown into the back of a paddy wagon.

All around me kids were being beaten up and dragged away, it was chaos and the police were efficiently and enthusiastically breaking this protest apart. I felt both terrified and galvanized in my position, there was a clear line as to where I stood, for the first time in my life I suppose. These cops looked at me with disdain, but mine was greater, they pulled the rag off my face and tried to be "bad cops" but I just stared. I had nothing to say, scared to death at what was going to happen to me, but my eyes held the accusation, the challenge that made them look away. They might have just been doing their job, but they were wrong and they knew it.

Inside the wagon I met a few other nice guys, we all shook hands in a silly back to back sort of way with our zip cuffed hands. One of them, Brian from Virginia, had a cell phone that we each took turns calling our friends on. I remember leaving a highly excited message for my friend Jay whom I was supposed to find somewhere in the masses of collected faces that day. The others assured my nerves that what lay in store for us was just a process, a lot of waiting and not much else. I guess they had done this kind of thing before.

They drove us down to central processing, by this time my cuffs were cutting my wrists, drawing tiny droplets of blood to the surface, my arms were numbing up and I wore a sort of grimace. They pulled us out and filed us through and it was there I noticed the most pronounced difference in the police attitude. While the front line cops were frothing at the mouth and spitting their most hateful epitaphs at us, the rear quarter cops looked ashamed of what was happening. I guess that’s the way it goes when you watch almost a thousand people, mostly kids being dragged in, beaten, bloody, and abused by the very people who have sworn to "protect and serve" them. They would offer off handed apologies like " I think you guys have the right to do what you’re doing, we’re just doing our job, it’s not our fault." or even " I’m just waiting to get into the fire department, I don’t want to be a cop." They took more pictures, I for one would love to see mine someday. All brash and defiant in my self righteous 22nd year, sporting my FUCK THE WAR hoodie and the kindling angst that will typify my Millennial generation.

We were held in what I understand is a " drunk tank", huge cells that accommodate hundreds and most typically used for St. Patrick’s day and Puerto Rican day parades, where serious drinkers and gregarious mischief makers can cool off after a long day on the job. It would have been bad if I was alone, but that cell was a pretty good place to be if you had to be stuck somewhere indefinitely. I got thrown in with about two hundred other fist lifters like myself, I was immediately congratulated and welcomed into the flock, I was amongst the others like me, the ones who stood against the tide, I was home. When they brought Jared in I could only smile and say "what’s up man?" he was shocked to see me, and he gave me a big hug, and pretty much became the best jail buddy you could ask for. I had grown up with Jared in the town of Lincoln, we played football together at Lincoln high, and we went out causing trouble together on many occasions, once he even called my Mother when after a run in with Police I ended up stranded on the other side of town way past curfew and he, being older and class president, tried to smooth things over (unsuccessfully) . He was a the same age as my older brother and had gone on to become a outspoken local activist and poet. Funny. It was funny to see us both sitting there, I was still totally overwhelmed by what was happening and terrified of the consequences of what I had done. Was I a traitor? Were they going to deport me? Am I going to trial? Am I going to prison? I didn’t voice any of this, but Jared could tell I was nervous, he helped calm me down, and I was grateful to have friend there, I knew he would look out for me. That’s when one of the other detainees got on top of a bench and started to speak " Hi, my name is Michael and I am an attorney at law, and I want to tell you what your rights are, and what they can and can’t do to you".
Dumb fucking luck.

We spent eight hours in that cell. Michael, the lawyer, gave us the lowdown ; basically they were going to interrogate us, idly threaten us and let us go. There was nothing they could really do, after all there were at least five hundred of us in this building alone, and they couldn’t possibly supply adequate and humane facilities to us, we were in the shade. We passed the time by talking to each other, retelling our story of how we got nabbed, and listening to impromptu freestyle sessions between those so inclined, while drumming out beats on the bars and benches in the jail cell. It got a kind of feel good hippie vibe in there, it was all "we shall overcome" and " peace , love and civil disobedience". While we were together we were the good guys and we were united against the dumpy boys in blue on the outside of the cell, we told them jokes and sang their praises when they came in and they couldn’t help but laugh despite their impenetrable veneers. They had separated the men and women into different cells, but when they started the interrogations and releases, they had to parade the women by our cell to the interrogation rooms. We cheered, beat the bars, chanted love songs, and feminist slogans. They blew kisses, shook their hands together like champions and screamed populist rally cries, and we couldn’t help smiling knowing that release was eminent and once we hit the street again we will have our voices back we will have won.

The fat detective asked me a lot of questions, but I didn’t answer any of them, I just replied " no comment". He told me If I didn’t cooperate I was going to go downtown to the city jail, with some bad black men who would love to get their hands on me.
I laughed because Michael had told us the cops would say something like " they will bring you downtown or to Rikers Island and you’ll get sodomized by row after row of big scary black men" as one of their idle threats. The fat detective didn’t appreciate my disrespect so he got close and did the whole "super close spit talking routine" in my face, I just averted my eyes and repeated my mantra " No…Comment". He dragged me back to the cell and told me to have fun rotting in there. Before the cell door even closed my name was called again, I was cut loose.

After you’ve been in a small room with three hundred other guys for eight hours straight, no food, water or bathroom facilities, coming out into downtown Manhattan is some kind of surreal revelation. I was greeted by a large group of supporters, other members of the protest or affiliated groups, that had camped out in front of the central processing building, with hot coffee, doughnuts and hugs.
RULE. Yes, it kept being reaffirmed, I did a good thing this day, took it to the fullest extent, went on the record to say that this war and the new slate of foreign and domestic policies were a mistake, were against our own best interests, were bad for America. I stood with many others who felt the same way and could probably articulate their thoughts and feelings much more eloquently than I can, but I was there to say no, no more blood, we have suffered enough already.

Back at the University of Rhode Island, not many people shared my view, frequently during class discussions of this critical topic I was called a "traitor" and " Un American" .I’m sure many of the other people who I shared that cell in March had to absorb these same kinds of insults. Five years and 4003 dead Americans soldiers later, public opinion has finally caught up to us, finally sobered from their hate laden bloodlust after young members of their own communities came home in boxes or missing limbs. 29, 541 American servicemen and women have been wounded since this whole affair began, and finally people have had enough. They want to call it quits, want to call it a mistake, want to pin it on Bush like they didn’t go along with it the whole time with their American flag stickers on their SUV’s; but it’s too late to go back., it’s too late to withdraw. What amazes me most is that the entire Baby-boomer generation, which prides itself on it’s youthful political activism and its valiant championing of civil rights and the end to violence in Vietnam, could have wholesale sold their OWN CHILDREN down the river to the same kind of imperialist war of occupation that they struggled so hard to end? How did they not see the writing on the wall? Was it not obvious how all this would play out? I was only a child, 23 and greener than a golf course and I knew that this would end bad, it would be nothing but blood and tears. Now they want a big change, now everyone wants out, get out of Iraq, end the war, bring the soldiers home. Well I wish they could come home too, I wish they never left; but if there is any hope for us, if there is any hope for a free Iraq and a stable middle east and a safe America, we cannot back out now.

There comes a time when we all have to grow up. We have to accept responsibly for ourselves and our actions. The United States is a young culture, a strong culture, and a very immature culture. We came to the opportunistic rescue of our European allies sixty years ago and watched as the old imperial power structures crumbled and the new American free market became the dominate force on the planet. We used our power recklessly, over turning popularly elected governments in favor of puppet states our companies could exploit (cough, Vietnam, cough) We created Manuel Noriega, Saddam Hussein, and Osama Bin laden, all "assets" funded, supplied and trained by fat Yankee treasures. Our grandfathers never had to realize their own consequences, as they had passed into senility and dust by the time one of our "assets" drove two jet airliners full of American citizens into the twin towers of the World Trade Center . Let that be the lesson, let us learn. We went to Iraq for the wrong reasons, we waged a war that was by all rule and principle , a criminal act. That war is over. Now there exists a fractured society, that was once held together by fear and fist and now has been haphazardly glued with good intentions. Iraq is a state that was carved
out of the Ottoman Empire at the end of the Great War, it’s borders were arbitrarily drawn by British bureaucrats. It has bound tightly disparate tribes of peoples (Sunni, Shiite, Kurds) who have a history of "not getting along" and no experience with self rule. These people have been under a autocratic regime since prehistory, they are used to one strong voice telling them what to do. If we leave now, there will no one strong enough to resist the well funded , well trained, and zealotous forces of Radical Fundamentalism from taking control of the state.

I don’t want to be mired in an almost endless struggle to stand a fledgling Iraqi state on it’s feet, or wait the thirty some odd years for reconciliations to take place amongst the various tribes and ethnic minorities. I don’t want to dump trillions of tax dollars into the desert just to say we did what we said we were going to do, bake up a free and democratic Iraqi cake.
No.
I want to do those things because WE OWE IT TO THEM.


We owe it to the kids whose fathers got blown up because they worked next door to a viable target, we owe it to the mothers whose children were "collateral damage", we owe it to the Fathers who were kidnapped and stolen to Guantanamo or murdered by a rival tribe in the chaotic aftermath of the invasion that we headed, brash, brazen, hooting and hollering. We owe it to the simple people of that country, who went to sleep one day with a very stable government , albeit headed by a sociopath but a reliable sociopath ( maybe not so much different than ourselves?) and they woke up the next day to a living hell that has persisted for the past five years. We promised these people everything, we told them they would get schools like ours, free choice like ours, clean water , power, and food, PEACE we promised them PEACE. IF the forces of Fundamentalist Religious Extremism take hold of their lives then they will never know peace, they will never know the freedom that we know. Believe me I have my qualms with this broad nation of ours, but I know that it is the best thing going, I want those people to have what I have because, goddamn it ,THEY’VE EARNED IT. They have bled and suffered enough, over a million total deaths, and if we disappear on them now there is no telling how bad it will get. Guess what, when the kids are grown and look back and the misery that is their lives you know what they will see? Some semblance of stability before WE came, then terror, chaos , blood and loss, and how we left them to fend for themselves because we only care about ourselves and our money. They will hate us. Then you have on your hands, the most cunning and inventive weapon of all, a hate filled human mind. I’m sure through the forces of social construction and indoctrination their hate can be finely crafted and honed until ten years from now WE, the Millennials and our children, not our parents, will be faced with a entire generation of weapons, deadset on reciprocating the chaos that we have visited upon them.

That is why I say we stay. That’s why I say we have to eat this one. America needs to shut up, grow up, and MAN the fuck up and deal with the mess we have created. The entire world watched us do this, and they will watch to see what we do next, if we really are force of freedom and democracy, if we really are a nation full of good, compassionate souls who are trying to raise the world out of the strife and despair that it has known for ten thousand years, then we need to show that we are mature enough and strong enough to admit we were wrong and to use our power to correct our mistake. It is still possible to save them, it is still possible to give them the bright and glorious future promised, they will stand up and claim it for themselves if we can be the light that shows them the way. This would be the greatest work of our young nation, this would make us great, not our wars or our television shows, but our heart and our commitment to doing right no matter the cost. I think we can be that great, the question is, do you?

I stand up for what I believe in, and I’m an American whether we are right or wrong, I will do my best to help steer this nation in a responsible direction. I support my troops, and very much believe in their mission, I am against the war, now and forever, but I am also against giving up on the people we have promised to help, I am against giving in, I am against letting them suffer. This isn’t going to be easy, this will cost us dearly, but on the other end we will have learned, grown smarter, done good for the world, and we will not be fooled again.

The Origin of my Blog's name

February 18th, 2004...

The wind was biting my cheeks, crisp in the winter evening. I couldn’t feel a thing, my whole body was swimming in the warmth provided by camaraderie, merriment and about forty dollars worth of whiskey. Each hand was absent from their typical duties, gripping the handle bars of my rugged ten speed road bike; instead they grasp the black plastic garbage bags packed full of baker’s work, the warm sweet breads I had so skillfully pilfered fresh from the day old dumpster. I was flying downhill well ahead of my following companions, drunk on the freedom total recklessness provides. If I noticed the glare of the on coming headlights I didn’t care, I had lost breaking ability days before; I had never seriously considered repairing it and so in fact, I had no intention of stopping.

I woke up at some point while I was still lying on the street, frosted in sugary crystals of safety glass. Two friends were holding me down, telling me not to move. There was something very wrong, I was in pain so severe I couldn’t quite comprehend it and now looking back I have no real memory of it at all. My shoulder was way out of it usual place, my skull was dented, my brain bruised and my body feeling about as good as it possibly could after the head on meeting with the frame of the late model Japanese coupe. Apparently the driver hadn’t noticed me at all, he was on his cell phone with his girlfriend, which was good because I was drunk as sin and in the throes of the ultimate "I don’t give a fuck" period in my life. We met in the intersection, I kissed his windshield and he never even bothered to call me back.

The street was littered with my pilfered bread, which seemed to confound the police. They couldn’t figure out where the cinnamon rolls, raisin bread, and baguettes could have materialized from. It was three in the morning on a Thursday night, there was a mangled bicycle and kid lying in the street, a Subaru with it’s windshield smashed in, and a about three hundred dollars worth of bread lying around, It just didn’t seem to fit together. Eventually the vanguard of the homeless and junkie populations that inhabited my neighborhood came out to investigate the excitement and lo and behold they were treated to street snacks as they took in all the commotion. It was likened to a George Romero film, by my friends who were there; the emergency lights painting the world alternating shades of red and blue, the lurching void of dope sick vagrancy, the authority figures with their hands in their pockets. I remember a police officer asking how I was doing as I lay writhing in agony on the cold pavement, I screamed at him as loud as I could, jacked up on booze, adrenalin, and more endorphins than I ever remember tasting " THIS FUCKING SUCKS!!!" ,The cop turned away and off handedly announced " He’ll be alright" like there was someone else listening.

I woke up again in this hospital, this time fully myself. I lie on a stainless steel operating table with a great deal of commotion going on, I began to sit up ,felt the searing pain all over my left side and decided to just hang out. The doctors all looked down at me, I looked up at them, sighed loudly and said "This is just perfect" They snickered and went about their preparations confident that I had a full grasp on the situation. Fact was, I didn’t remember what happened, I didn’t remember who I was, my brain had swollen from the trauma casting a thin fog over the world . The nurses asked me a lot of questions I couldn’t answer, I knew the information they were looking for, but the fog was hiding them from me, like I could make out their outline but not the distinct features. I wished I could have pointed and said " yup your answers are right there but it’s no use trying to see them it’s like pea soup in here!." I just stared at the ceiling trying to stay awake and wondering what I had done this time, because I knew for sure this wasn’t the first occasion I had seen the inside of an emergency room.

After the morphine I became a whole lot more optimistic about the situation. I smiled as the doctors popped ol' lefty back into place.


















"Lefty, left-o, Lou, Louie my boy, my ace, my number one hand, how you doin’ baby? You feeling better? Alrighhhhttt, me and roger here were real worried about you."

While I sat in the unit waiting to be discharged, I puked all over myself. I honestly had tried to call the nurses but they were busy, and my voice was weak. I didn’t really care anyway, I was doped up and didn’t feel like bothering them, I had done quite enough already. My friends came in laughing, they said the nurses were making fun of me because I just sat there and made a mess of myself; I just shrugged, Morphine offers little resistance and makes no apologies. I was glad to have my friends around, even if I couldn’t remember their names, there is just a feeling, a warm color pattern in your chest that resonates when you see them, they are known and you are happy, it feels safe and good to be near them.

Later after everyone left my Mother and Father showed up to pay the bill and drag me home. They always knew it would be like this with me and they really didn’t seem to mind. After all,at least I was still alive. The real kick in the teeth was when I woke up later that day. I had come back to my parents house and been put to sleep in my old room, in my old bed. Now this wasn’t the last place I slept before being thrown out of the nest at age 19, no this was my OLD bed, My OLD room from when I was a child. It was all arranged the same way, the major furniture where my Mother wanted it, before I was big enough to move things around on my own. When my eyes opened I was still suffering from amnesia a bit. By and large the fog had lifted as I sat in the Emergency room waiting to leave but things still weren’t crisp, I was pretty slow on the draw. So was the case, when I peeked through my foggy eyes at the room I recognized from boyhood. It was only a second, maybe half a second, that I didn’t remember but it was enough; enough time to break my fucking heart. I woke up and looked at the same wall, with the same window, the same house and trees that I had for the first ten years of my life. The TV was in my room and there were scrambled eggs, English muffins and orange juice on the nightstand...

"Price is Right is on, Bob barker, "Come on down!", Bid one dollar it’s the best bet!, it’s all here I remember! I’m home from school I ’m sick and mom is taking care of me, and I just had the most horrible dream! I was grown up and I wasn’t anything like I thought I was going to be, I was cruel, I was reckless, I had no job, no future, I had no hope, no love, and more so I was sad, sooo incredibly sad and I knew that it had to be a dream because I was happy with all manner of beauty and goodness inside of me, the world had a special place for people like me. It doesn’t matter, I can do it all different oh thank god I can do it all…"






















Then I move slightly and feel my body feel my length, feel the throbbing ache all over and it flipped on me, like I had sealed my self in a tiny glass bubble out of self defense. With a shatter and a crash it all came rushing back.

I cried. I hurt bad and I cried. I cried for all the things I did to bring me to this point, my body was broken, my heart was broken and I was right back where it all started; do not pass go, do not collect 100 dollars. I cried for a life I regretted, for the manifold of missed opportunities. I cried because I was being brought back to a world where the future was uncertain, where anything was possible. Brought back to a world where you could be riding high one minute and half dead on the pavement the next. I wasn’t any good at living life in this world and I knew it, so I did the only thing I possibly could. I resolved to get better. It was here bruised, beaten, unable to walk or think clearly that I closed the door on a dark and confused room in my life, and I began building the new room, the great work in progress that most of you are familiar with. Fighting Jack, the Dynamo, Boxcutter, Manpower,The Captain, and a myriad of others, in retrospect it didn’t take all that much, just getting the pride and despair knocked out of me by two tons of steel and finally going home, getting in bed and letting my mother and father take care of me until I could stand on my own again.

And that was it, my friends came around and cheered me up as best they could, I went to physical therapy and got a settlement from the insurance company (they never did find out how inebriated I was) and I moved back to the city to try again. Six months after the accident I won my first professional Mixed Martial arts match in a little over a minute, I was performing in bands like JEFF and Pirate Snakes with my mammoth broseph Amil and I met my first real love in the doe eyed artist Beth Brandon. It’s kind of a sick joke really, but it made feel like I owned my small time calamity, when I chose the name for my fancy new online journal. It made a lot of sense, about me, about my reckless nature and caution to the wind attitude, about my relentless pursuit of the extremes of experience that is perhaps both my greatest asset and failing. I’d like to think I learned a few things since then but the name is probably is still true. From girlfriends, to living situations, taking jobs to taking off across the country and lets not forget, while riding a bike with no hands, no brakes and two garbage bags full of day old bread. It’s my E-dentity, my general philosophy and my tragic flaw. So if you want to find me I’m here at
http:// Jackgoesfacefirst.blogspot.com.

The Indy Go! girls (cover your heart)

Everything I know about women, I learned from Indiana Jones.

The Indiana Jones films posit that there are three primary female archetypes:
The Marion, The Willie, and The Elsa. All woman are a combination of these three distinct personas, and the great quest for modern man is to find a women with a personality make up complementary to our own, in essence our "perfect" woman.

Let’s examine some of the essential traits comprising each archetypal model:

The Marion-

When we first meet The Marion she is beguiling the ignorant Mongolian herdsman with her astonishing ability to punish a handle of whiskey despite being of small frame. Soon, she proves herself handy in an all or nothing scrap with the big ugly forces of imperial fascism. This is a woman who can hang with the boys. Despite these masculine overtones, when the time comes to make pretty, she is able to pull of breezy bazaar style or Paris high fashion formal ware with barely a fuss and a fling of her hair. You might be saying case closed, search over and you may be right…if you can handle a woman with a mind of her own. Now I personally love a spirited independent lady that will call me out when my dizzy dream-eyed, emo scale, starts inching into the red, but there are a lot of men who still harbor an innate castration anxiety and the idea of having to submit to the will and authority of a women, no matter the circumstances, is out of the question.
Well to these guys I have but one thing to say:
"you’re a bunch of pussies"
The Marion is more than ready to ride shotgun on your crazy high adventures, but you better be ready to back her up on adventures of her own or she will cut you loose like bi-plane from a dirigible.


The Willie-
She knows a good diamond when she sees one, she can charm the pants off a Chinese gangster, and is featured in the dictionary under the entry for HIGH MAINTENANCE. Man, what a handful. You practically have to drag this women anywhere unless, of course, you are offering to have courtesans CARRY HER and all her BAGGAGE. She’s a princess and when the chips are down, not worth the weight. Such a weak representation of a heroine, when compared to The Marion, aided this follow up effort to be overlooked and forgettable; for me the only redeeming part of the whole caper is the introduction of Shortround as the ideal wingman. Distrustful and intolerant of the Willy’s need for attention and totally clutch when some effete metro sexual prince is voodoo jabbing you in the back, he beats out the other two best friend archetypes The Sallah and The Brodie (just barely). The Willie, of course, can come around to more of a grounded and self sufficient attitude but it takes an enormous amount of effort. A little bit of a Willie goes a long way (read: headache city), her overwhelming need for reassurance and the sense of security that material comforts provide, make her a poor choice for an adventure buddy, unless of course you hate getting dirty too, in which case you’re a whiny bitch and the two of you will be very happy together. Unfortunately a lot of men would opt for this sort of "trophy" relationship, which just proves that these men are dimwitted, even more unfortunate is that too many women are conditioned to believe this the extent of feminine identity, all Willie’s seem to need is to realize their inner Marion.

The Elsa-

Oooooooohhohohohho Elsa. This is a tough one boys. Smoking hot, Blonde, Slut, NAZI. I have half a chub just thinking about her. How can something so wrong feel so right? She’ll give you good chase, then blow you in a Venetian library catacomb, romp with you halfway across Europe, and then sell you out to some evil fascist rich boys who can buy her more coke and chardonnay. Why then, is it so hard to let her fall to her own selfish doom in the temple of the holy grail? Because even God knows a good fuck is a terrible thing to waste. This is the woman that posses raw sexuality and wields it like a weapon. I’ll hand my grail diary over to this uber-bitch every time, as long as she tells me that I’m very bad and that I’ve let my country down as she fucks me sideways. Just remember that it’s all fun and games until you start getting soft, to quote Hall & Oates "if you’re in it for love, you ain’t gonna get too far" so listen to your wingman Shortround and cover your heart. You don’t want someone this malevolent tinkering around with the pink squishy softness living beneath your iron clad exterior, no sir knight, you will have chosen poorly.

So in the end you have to choose for yourself, after all you’re going to have to live with each other, just be honest with yourself and what you’re into. There’s nothing wrong with having a Willy that has a Marion streak in her, in fact that would be pretty cool, I think all well kept girls want to get down and dirty and closed fist knock some teeth back every once and awhile. If you’re into getting stepped on and slapped around go and find an Elsa, go get your fascist dominatrix, but if you intend on living with this person you better hope there more than just the abuse, hopefully a little Marion or Willy to mellow the brew.

I personally can’t deal with a Willie, I just don’t want to put in the time and effort. I’m left with Marion and Elsa and while Marion is very pretty, Elsa is a grade A slice of Aryan wet dream, she’s got the lips, hips and finger tips, to make you a penitent man; but would you rather wake up in the morning with a knife in your back or next to a smiling natural beauty that is ready eat pancakes and get swept up in some serious world saving adventures? At the end of the day a Marion will not only lie on her back for you but watch yours while you’re drinking from the grail. Besides, how can you kiss Elsa and not think of how your old man had already blazed that trail? Gross.

Like the mythical quest for the grail, a young man’s search for his ideal counterpart is a long and possibly endless pursuit, a fools errand. However, I think you can find someone who fits your needs and whose needs you fulfill and together you can figure out how the adventure unfolds. You make sure she doesn’t step into the light and trigger the poison darts, she’ll make sure you don’t get your heart ripped out of your chest and thrown into molten pit of magma to please the black goddess Kali. That isn’t a quality that is easy to find in people, so if you find a special lady who is willing to jump out of an airplane on an inflatable raft, you better not hold it against her when she hits you with the mirror. No, just thank your lucky stars then sneak off the boat and onto the submarine so you can save her from the scary Jewish ghosts (close your eyes, dear) and rejoice that the opposing forces of darkness and tyranny will be puddles of their former selves. Take the highs with lows, be kind, considerate and caring and by all means Jones, let the lady buy you a drink.

Look Sidewalker

The streets are lined with birch trees, the sidewalks are slabs of granite. The large smooth stones are splotched black with old chewing gum scars and deep wounds of grime, but by and large they remain intact. The Trees vary in age and size and occupy little blanks in the puzzle piece walkway that follows the road almost endlessly as it wanders around the city. There are a few places where the trees have grown to a ripe old age, their trunks are thick and fat with maturity and health, their roots expressing their will by dislodging the large granite pieces wherever they see fit. It becomes like a landscape in and of itself, some of the slabs point skyward at incredible angles, displaced solely by the roots of the birch tree. It's a beautiful thing to wander this modernist terrain, created by natures refusal to bend toward mankind's aesthetic principals; a blatant rejection of cages and convenience. It's like a memo in the "Inbox" of the city reading:

"Dear Civilization, you can have your way for now, but once your not looking I'm going to do whatever the fuck I want. Remember who lets you live here, bitches."

Or something like that...if nature was an asshole. Which i don't really think it is. Uncompromising, yes; unemotional, always, but a jerk? I dunno, jerks don't grow awesome things for you like marijuana and apples. Not that I'm back on the wacky weed or anything...I'm just saying.

So it's while I'm gliding down Alvarado ave, being as much myself as possible with my paper back copy of "The Hobbit" in my back pocket and all infatuated with the trees and my own cleverness, that I come upon a person that I have never seen before. He was legless, rolling through the intersection on a motorized wheelchair. It appeared, as he went by, that his head and chest where balancing upon a large jello filled pilates ball stuffed underneath his over sized orange T-shirt. His abdominals were lax from disuse and his face drawn and gaunt, his bulbous gut was no doubt a product of his involuntarily sedentary lifestyle. It made me quickly remember myself and my relative strength and ability, and made me recall the low times when I would moodily remark (to myself) that my body was a prison keeping me from a truer form of expression. Seeing this man reminded me that I am a complete ass (correct), and that if anyone had a right to gripe about physical condition it was this man and even then I bet he didn't. I reminded myself of the "posi-jack" philosophy on physicality;
" My body is my favorite toy" (in more way than just THAT way, you sickos )
and promised to run and swim and climb more trees.

Around that time I passed by a Mexican restaurant called " Colima 20" and remarked (to myself, maybe Mr.D) on the trend of L.A. restaurant chains to include their number in the signage. I suppose to give each particular location a certain identity. Like
" Hey where did you guys get those Burritos?"
"Oh we got them at Colima!"
"Not Colima 12, right?"
"No Colima 20, why?"
"Colima 12 sucks eggs, but the others are really good"
or something like that. I dunno, I still think it's a little weird. Maybe the owner just gets off on advertising how many "Colimas" there are. Like if he has twenty burrito places it must mean he is incredibly virile, with a ham sized peen.
I guess it could be like a scavenger hunt too, like if you did the top twenty "Colima" countdown you would get a special prize. Like a clown to live in your sewer.

This is generally what it's like inside my head as I walk down the street, I'm sure it's like this for you too. Maybe not the same, but similar. I used to think we were really different from each other, that I was unusual, but i don't think thats true anymore.No sir, I think we're more alike than we are different. In fact I don't think we're that different at all. Come 'ere and give me hug.

Dreamtime

The Aboriginals of Australia speak of Dreamtime, an everywhen from which all things were created. When they speak of their lives, they speak of their "dreaming" their current lives as a subjective experience. This is in direct oppositions to western philosophical thought, which describes our linear waking consciousness as an experience of "objective" reality. Basically, we here in the west are brought to believe we exist in a reality and a universe that exists independent of our experience of it and if we did not exist it would continue without us. In opposition to that, we have the aboriginal concept of reality, which basically asserts that the universe and reality is a product of our consciousness. This radical and often heretical interpretation of reality finds a scientific foothold in the recent discoveries by quantum physicists relating to the nature of phenomena under observation ( that it alters the outcome of experiments), and the seemingly random behavior of subatomic particles and irrational composition and functioning of the universe at its most minute and detectable levels. This brings up many new associations, such as the influence that Taoism and other Asian mystical systems have had on the expression of these new ground breaking ideas in quantum physics, the seeming overlap of systems of thought that have existed for over three thousand years and the most recent efforts by the comparatively youthful western scientific inquiry is astounding, if not unnerving.
As we learn more about the "nuts and bolts" of our universe, experience , and reality, we come to see that isn't as objective as we once held it to be, and that we "the observers" have a much more important or at least influential role to play, at least from the vantage point of our own experience. I for one find it comforting, that we do not exist in the cold logical laboratory universe that the science of my father's generation had told me I did. To find that there is still a great deal unknown, and even more that is unknowable, gives me hope and in many ways a reason to keep exploring and keep searching this life for clues, answers, and experiences that may broaden my perceptions, deepen my knowledge ,and lead to a greater understanding of my own dreaming. It always rang true for me, the idea of Dreamtime, it always seemed right. Dreams are a wondrous and joyful thing, devoid of the anxiety and terror of nightmares, the word dream only conjures that fluid and boundless place, beyond rationality and logic, less substantial but more honest. If ever there was a place that such a thing as "this" could be imagined and born, the realm of dream, the Dreamtime would be such a place.

Supermarket Sweep

( one for Ms. Chloe Mandel)


Whenever I imagine what heaven would be like, I automatically cycle through all the Judeo-Christian artistic representations, you know, billowing cumulus clouds, pearly gates, choirs of white robed angels singing in glorious cacophony to the greatness of "He who is called I AM". That shit is all pretty stupid, and god awfully boring (sic!) so eventually I come back to what my personal idea of heaven is.

...and it looks a whole hell of a lot like the Stop n Shop at three in the morning.

I've done it a bunch of times, just rolled on up in the middle of the night, the place is still 100% lit up because its in the suburbs and nothing makes any sense out there. I grab a cart and start sliding down the isles, the one other person in the store is the night manager and he's in the back room drinking coffee and watching anime porn. I bust a big smile and ride the back of that shiny shopping cart down the fluorescent rainbow isles, crammed with sugary goodness and savory dreams. The bright whites reflect of the freshly waxed floor giving everything an ethereal glow and the lemony fresh scent of pine-sol reminds me of my Mom's kitchen floor. Fleetwood Mac is bringing that soft rock lullaby somewhere very high above me and drifting out of an old half blown out speaker. I think it's something about the abundance that I find comforting, and I suppose it says a lot about me that my idea of heaven is a warehouse full of food, but hey, I never claimed to be anything other than a basic unit. I just drag that back foot as I roll from the soft drinks to frozen foods, I think I'll get a pizza to go with this ginger ale, then maybe some ice cream...the kind with peanut butter cups in it.
I mean really...
What else is there?

Down comes sunshine and rain

Standing straight with my hands out I can catch it all. You should see me, thick black hood hiding the tired smile as i come down the dirt path in Elysian Park, where I walk weightless in a city filled with a million other names.I take slow steps like a beat dropped into a syrupy kick drum, and I breathe deep the poisons and passions pressed out of every inch of concrete stepped on, in this, the most desperate city on earth. I have few destinations, no appointments, only blessed purpose and divine motivation as I meet and make friends with people who move fast and make their way through the funny money maze that you find here. Overhead at night a cannon fire spotlight strafes the ground from the ever present ghetto birds, or points to the sky from the innocuous event thresholds, the lighted fingers mingle and clasp the sky until the rain comes and pushes everything indoors again. Waking up, the city is washed, but never clean, and hills are lush and green in this, their time on the far side of the summer scorch and the ravenous wild fires of fall. I can’t say that I love it here, or that I belong here, only that I have made my own version of the place that I am, like a richly imagined childhood pillow fort, I am possessed of a city of my own making and slip silently for now into a fortunate place for the strange naivety of the wandering pretender.
When I sleep, I dream of waves being born, far out in ocean by a storm that no one ever sees, every night they draw closer to shore gaining gravity and speed as they swell across the sea floor wanting, waiting, working for the exquisite moment they crash upon the beach, crushing castles in the sand, stealing shovels and pails, and propelling the revelers in it’s embrace, careening them into momentary bliss. When I wake up, there is rain coming down the window, and sunlight pressing the drops, shooting off at strange velocities and making a microverse of momentary rainbows as each color dies on my eye. I walk in my sore man’s street shuffle out to the park slope and up into the dirt path wonderland high above downtown. I look up into the misty morning as the sunshine and rain mix together in an unlikely way, falling down onto this unlikely face, that tucked beneath it’s thick black hood smiles and stretches out his hands.

Street Scholars

I can't be certain, but i am pretty sure homeless people are the most well read people in America. Think about it, the last time you went to the library downtown, who was haunting the reading room? Who was crashed outside in the garden with their plastic bags full of treasure? Who was holed up in the bathroom sweating, grunting, and working it out, just to leave their long luscious defecations unflushed in the commode? Yeah the fucking homeless peoples.

Now all of us city dwellers have been dealing with these mystical faerie folk since our first day on the block, but here in L.A. I feel that being homeless is elevated to a realm that surpasses even that of the NYC underground dwellers. Being homeless in L.A. is like being a fucking hobbitt in the Lord of the rings, this is their town, their world. Every inch of public space is manned by a derelict individual, all civic works are ultimately to their benefit. Because of the city's "hands off" policy they are free to inhabit every sidewalk, bush, crevice, underpass, "outhouse and doghouse" that they might find. The rest of us just walk around like we don't notice, it's the ultimate exercise in denial. There are thousands of zombies walking the streets, eating our brains, making stinkies in the lavatories, and we just act like nothings happening. Oh, it's happening it's a magical fucking faerie land out here and I'm on the bus. No seriously, I'm on the bus and it's full of crazies! I gotta pull the chain, I don't care where it stops JUST LET ME OFF THIS GODDAMN BUS!!!

So anyway, these secret geniuses are hiding out in the library all day everyday, reading all there is to know about everything, how smart are they really and what are they planning? Is it wise for us to allow these people to amass such minds of near infinite knowledge when all their time is spent idly? With their vastly superior intellect and their free weekdays they could easily rise up and subvert our entire civilization! Next thing you know we'll all be sleeping in the park and talking to ourselves as we look at the dog poo on the ground.

...okay hold on a sec

I'm in the library right now and I've got my eye on a real mastermind, it looks like he's letting his eyes rest while he recomputes all the information he's just garnered. I'm going to get a closer look, see what he's reading, see if i can gain an inkling on his devious plans for world sublimation.

okay...deep breathe...

one
two
three
GO!


...okay I'm back
That was intense
I felt like I was navigating a ornately crafted web of mental security just approaching him, but here's what I found out:

He was reading Dr. Seuss's "Horton Hears a Who?" and it looked as if he ejaculated a bit on the page then barely managed to stuff his greasy unit back into his filthy camo trousers before passing out in flatulent ecstasy. For the moment we may be safe from a homeless style revolution. Thank Jeebus.

Home boy

I landed in the dead of night, cold and grumpy, no one would sit next to me on the plane. Two consecutive jam packed flights, all the way from Los Angeles, California to Providence, Rhode Island, for a grand total of six hours and eleven minutes and the only empty seat in the house was right next to me. What am I, some kind of jerk? Well... maybe i shouldn't have worn the Zack Morris sunglasses the WHOLE time, and I guess I could have shaved, and combed my hair but whatever! Like it doesn't hurt my feelings when every single person on the plane looks at you and cringes before deciding to take seats next to screaming babies, morbidly obese recreational eaters, and the deathly ill. I mean COME ON, I'm a pretty cool guy, I mean you HAVE to be pretty cool to rock a pair of goofy sunglasses like you mean it, right? Furthermore, they totally missed out on my well rehearsed tirades about the benefits of rearing large crops of retarded children or how Arnold Schwarzenegger should be anointed emperor of America. Then again... maybe it's for the best.

Since I've been back, visiting my home town, I've been busy as a bee, running here and there all hippity bippidy trying to see all the friends I've left behind. I made the New England trifecta of Boston, Providence, and New York, I went to half a dozen New Year's and X-mas parties, and received all manner of daps, bro-hugs, kisses and sensualities from friends, acquaintances, teammates, long time superdudes, and assorted love interests. It's made me feel full, after a time of being very much on my own and a bit lonely, It's made me feel like I matter. Now I'm like the next guy who wrestles with his self loathing and self doubt on a regular basis, and I'm not one for giving into despair or getting all emo and crying to everybody I see, but when it seems like your walking invisible in an unfeeling world nothing quiets those sinister inner whisperings like the voice of friend. A lot of the time i regard myself as a bad person who is constantly striving for some kind redemption ( sue me, my mother raised me catholic) but the people in my my life are of such quality that I can't quite reconcile the guilt with reality. If all these magnificent people deem me worthy of their friendship, how bad can i really be? I must be okay at least, because i know I'm not fooling anyone, I suck dick at playing poker.

So as i get ready to go back to the front lines of my private war with the social structure, I take my strength from the people who hold me up, and my confidence is bolstered, because with a foundation this solid, i can't ever be broken down. So happy New Year friends, I'm going to miss you when I'm gone, but if everything goes according to plan, pretty soon we'll all be living our dreams in a castle built in the clouds.

Work Up part III: The Night Shift

Projects vs. Trailer parks

Which would you choose if you had to? Would you go for the cement social experiment, or the mobile destitution of the lower class? I bet you're having trouble deciding, it's quite a conundrum, a damed if you do, damned if you don't situation. On one hand you roll in, delivering delicious, hot, tasty, pizza treats, and you get yelled at "Gotcha rock, white boy?" and stared at, cased really, by large gangs of young men, sitting idly on the corners of their block... and you most certainly don't get tipped. On the other hand you go down into the warped pavement and cracked asphalt despair of trailer trash, but usually they would hit you with some cashback. Then again, if you got the right call you might end up in the smoked filled dampness of section eight housing, getting an obscene monetary gesture from a seventeen year old dope dealer excited by the sauces, veggies, and meats presented from your silver lined heat bag. Maybe you almost get your face ripped of by the pitbull/ rottweiler mashup from hell, as you stumble across the broken toy strewn cement slab that a double wide nightmare sleeps on. Where are you more likely to get flashed on? When you drift across the stark yet invisible color line, out of your place and obvious? Or when you sink to the bottom, to the level of perpetual mistake, where the bins are always full of bottles and the children's cries go unanswered? Do you really want to offer conjecture on such an obviously loaded question, to throw your hat in one ring or the other, defining yourself in the glaring light of your prejudices?
Well, let me offer my experience, anecdotal as it may be. I never got robbed, not in my thirty consecutive days and nights of duty, although I was constantly invited inside out of the cold, the wet, or just the night. I saw the private space of many different people and many times I was surprised by its honesty and the care people took with what they had. I got stiffed and I got paid, the biggest tip I ever got was from a beautiful, black, single mother who asked me to pick her up a bottle and some mixer at the liquor store so she could stay with her daughter until her mother arrived and she could go off to her Halloween party dressed as an angel. I never once wanted to go to those places, those wild, secretly malicious blocks where the fight for survival scrapes a little to close to the uncivilized realms within us, to the poverty stricken struggle to get by, to make it work, to get on top. But I did, and although I got nervous, I was never afraid, because I knew those people in a small way, because who was I and where was I at, the bespectacled white boy coming into the wrong neighborhood to bring them small comfort, what was I doing, if not whatever it took to get by, and what did I have worth taking? We were all working hard then, in our own way, whether we knew it or not. We were all poor in this country, eyes consistently bigger than our stomaches. The ramshackle lean-to of failure is a matter of relative disposition, could you ever squeeze a million dollar baby into a ten dollar pair of shoes?. Of course not, but if you were barefoot in the cold, you wouldn't care how much they had cost. What could anyone choose? Prison or Poverty? We all choose neither, but in the end it is places like these that we lay our head, in the end the poverty is in our hearts and the prison we call home.

Six hundred miles of nowhere

Arkansas.

Work up part II: The Revenge

So there we are, back on my favorite haunted country ranch of historical relevance and inherent creepiness when my boss Chris, Jeebus bless his heart, decides to regale me with more tales of woe akin to the previous woeful tales of woe in Work up part I.

You see I'm back at the corral, it's lunch time and I've brought a few extra carrots for my friends, Caballo grande, Dos Caballos pequenos, y Sr. Burro. I'm hanging out, giggling like a little girl and enjoying my horsey time with the horsies. Now remember folks, I'm pretty much standing on THE Trail of Tears out here, it's nuts AND there's the ghost of a little dead girl wandering around in her night gown...for real, just ask Chris, he'll tell you all about it. Perhaps sensing my relative ease and contentment, enter the bossman...

"You really like these horses huh John?" he asks

" Fuuuuck Yeah!" I exclaim " These mini-horses are the JAM! and have you seen Sr. Burro over there? He's so bummed out all the time! He's reminds me of my friend Jeremy."

If you're wondering if I actually say things like this to my employer, the answer is yes. I have been working with him for over a month, the secrets out, I'm a weirdo.

He responds "Yeah it's pretty cool how she (the lady of the house) adopts all these animals. They're all abused and neglected."

" How does one neglect a horse? I mean ...Why would mumble mumble mumble"

I just sort of trail of in my astonishment that someone could mistreat such a immense and noble creature, then again I have seen people do some terrible things to each other and themselves, why not to what they most certainly consider a lower life form? Also in the "abuse" catagory I am reminded of the Horse F*%ers, the sexual deviants who take pleasure in either handling some horsepower or getting handled by some horsepower. I even once heard of a guy dying because he got reamed by a horse and it destroyed is internal organs. Raw horse power. Yeah, guy needed to get there, he wasn't satisfied with the common pleasures of getting F-ed in the A, he needed more...a lot more, no six inch man piece would do, no novelty foot long double dong satiated his needs, he wanted a full ARM'S LENGTH of HORSE SWORD backed by the densely packed musculature of a TWO TON BEAST. Seriously, this happened, my friend Joey saw the video, although he never explained WHY he saw the video. But straight up, there was entry, a groan, and death. The mega-dick just plunged straight into his rectum, up into his colon, tearing past the lower intestines and piercing the man's lungs. Or so I imagine. (and i do Imagine...over and over...) which oddly enough is an appropriate segue into the rest of my story!

Chris starts talking about the neighbor across the pasture

" Yeah the lady next door raises Stallions, and she was supposed to have a full horse fence you know? Like with an electrified wire and stuff, but all she had was one of these split beams right here (points to the corral fence). Well she (owner of our property) had just rescued a little filly ,you know ? And in the spring this horse went into heat, and I guess the Stallion across the way could smell it and it drove him nuts"

"uh-oh" I said.

Not just uh-oh for the filly, but uh-oh for me, because Chris is about to disqualify another bucolic horsey day from the running of best day ever with another colossal bum-out story.[sic]

He continues

" The Stallion broke it's fence and came charging over here, it just smashed into the yard and then chased the filly around the corral for like an hour until it cornered her down by the road. A couple of bikers were riding by and saw it happen, they were trying to throw rocks at him to stop him but it didn't even phase him, man."

"You've got to be kidding me"

" No man, he just raped that poor horse and killed her."

"What the f%*"

"...and the worst part was, after she was laying on the ground bleeding to death, the Stallion just stood there kicking her."

" What the F%*???"

"Yeah, man, horse rape. She (the lady of the house) was devastated when she found out, it really broke her heart."

"I can imagine." I reply.

" Yeah so she got in this big court battle with the neighbors over negligence and this and that, and they ended up getting that Stallion destroyed."

I stand there dumbfounded at the conclusion of the story. It really only makes sense. Such a real ending...so fitting for our time and place, so human. Then I look at Chris and in all honesty say

" I really wish you wouldn't tell me these things."

These are some of the days I have at work. They're not always like this, or maybe I just stopped listening.