This Is Your Pilot Speaking

So this and that and the other thing.  What matters is intros and school and King St. and it all ends with a blowjob in a tent. Charles Bradley, end credits


---SCENE---


Open on the bus up to campus:

NARRATION: Unlike sex, school's always come easy to me.  This is gonna be a breeze.  And this bus, look at this.  Like a goddamn tin a soaked tuna or sardines or something on wheels.  What the fuck, get me out a here! Ugh! (frustration) How many more stops is it?  Who knows, we're not even on campus yet.  Student life, I guess.  We're all trudging off to our respective knowledge.  So light in the air is all this tension.  It's only the first day.  This will only get worse.  More morose, more strained, more callous.  It'll be feverish at one point I'm sure.  Sick with regret and procrastination.  But now... Here, squeezed on all sides, it's still light.  There's laughter here and there, but most everyone is listening to music.  It's the sign of our times.  Oh, and my stop's next, along with everyone else, go figure, top of the hill.  Good time to pass gas.

The Train From Barnstaple

'Twas a train we took through the night four nights before, but in the other direction.  It's a slow train, something I remember lamenting when I was still an old adolescent in Europe, slopping through Italy in the summer with the gents, but this is an entirely different story now, isn't it.  It's England in the winter with the love of my life.  It's green frost covered pastures twinkling in the early light.  It's fields of white swans with long necks, elegant and demure.  It's old bridges and silent streams, slow rivers of magic, like this train.  It's the unseen grip of laughter I hold over Oliver with a single finger.

Like running horses in the still air.
Like Claire.

Eyes like the grass and eyes like the greystone.  It's moss on the dead tree bark, and in the distance.  In a moment all the sheep on a distant hill set down on folded knees, not grazing, not moving.  Still water sits and the smoke rises.  The old brick and the stone holds, and the thatched roofs too, here and there.  Romance and quick dreams between streams just like Claire.

"She is England to me. She is tea in the morning and at three. She is sure, she's unsteady. She is free. She's Excalibur. I must have her," says the pheasant to me past the trees on no breeze, set by himself in red armor.  He is free.

A Classic English Christmas

It's Boxing Day today, a day I hadn't even heard of 'til just about a week ago, and if I had heard it before, it'd have been something of a bout like the title fights of old in my mind.  Joe Lewis and Ali.  The one with George Foreman, more more recently Pacquiao, the thrilla' from Manilla.  Something viscous and bloody, boxing.  Mais non, says the French ring on my finger from English love.  My fresh air, my Claire.  Boxing day is a day by the tree, all the lights sparkling, young Oliver giggling away.  He makes me want to read Dickens again, like I did when I was his age, young Twist.  What a trip it's been, this romp through the countryside.

(designer Keith Norman)

Perhaps it's the air, the cool, the cold.  The wet and the wides tides that come through the inlet here, under the bridge between us and Bideford, but there's been wiped out to sea, like a quick rip's taken all the whole out, all the feeling, bad or good.  It's familiar and I feel like writing again.

It's distance.

In the eyes.

Some fink from long ago.  Like Sammy Davis Jr. on an empty stage under two spotlights, come across the pond for the BBC in the 60's.  Black and White.  Gunslinging.  Laughing.  Impersonating.  Sans serif title, justified.

She's saying I remind her of him.
Sammy Davis Jr.
The Performer.

Ad-libbing Just Once In A Moment and All The Way as Tony Bennett and Frank, and Dean of course. He's really quite amazing.  So is Victor sitting in his chair there and wagging his foot away.  Bless his heart, for the snowballs, for the meat pies and the laughs, for everything.  Bless Derrick too, for his goatee and his mega-kabob and his "fair play" and everything.  It's a lot of change for two weeks, two nights in a castle.

A Peak At A Pilot

Open on the open road, northbound US 101, through the Salinas Valley, brown hills, golden brown.  A white two-door Ford Explorer, not clean, dirt over the chrome on the wheels, the side-view mirror taped on.  One driver, car piled high.  He's moving

NARRATION: (see RUNNING AWAY)

Driver lights spliff, puts hand to the radio knob as he drags and turns the music up.  Driver blows the smoke out the sunroof, flicks the roach out as well.


---SCENE---


Open on "Welcome To Santa Cruz" at twilight.  Turns up Western, beat up college houses on one side of the street, forest on the other.  Turns music down, looking for address.

DRIVER: All right, where the fuck are you you... four-forty... four-forty (breath of discovery) four-forty.

Explorer pulls in on the side lawn next to a pick-up truck also on the sidewalk.  Two cars, side-by-side in the double driveway <-- and="" behind="" cars="" door="" driveway="" front="" goes="" i="" in="" inside.="" it="" madness="" nbsp="" no="" on="" pick-up="" pulls="" river="" s="" shitty="" sidewalk.="" the="" there="" to="" two="" unlocked="">

REDHEAD: Hey there partner! How goes it? I'm Dylan.

DRIVER: Dylan.  Brian, it's a pleasure.  I--

DYLAN: Now that's Dylan with a "y" because see there's another Dylan's living here this year.  You know him?

BRIAN: Maybe... I don't think so though--

DYLAN: Okay, well he spells his name like a bitch with an "i-l-l" you'll meet him.  Brian you said?

BRIAN: Yeah, with an "i" not a "y" (half laugh)

DYLAN: Right, the new guy.  So this is your room right here, front and center.

It's a small room, shoved under the staircase, not quite a cupboard, like a small den with an angle in the ceiling.

BRIAN: Nice...

Door close.


---SCENE---


Open on a hand pushing a door open to a large lecture hall.

The Skies Over Clifton

Something's in the way of the heavens over here, over England.  Clouds at all levels.  And a low sun, even at midday so that there's always a wonderful light shining through.  It's never an empty sky in the winter, and I think that's what makes all the difference, what set it apart from the other seasons.  Things happen in the winter.  It's alight and sometimes frightful to look at.  It's not calm, and it isn't boring, and because of all that I think it's difficult to tackle.  I guess the same could be said about life really.  It's not a far off comparison, life and that dreadful season.  A real life anyways.  Not some fucking fairy tale played out on the TV realities.  What a fucking thing to tackle, life, in the breadth of a single season.  The darkest.  The wettest.  The weirdest.  The most restless one to live through, or at the very least I could say it's the one my mind's most attuned to.

The sky's mostly gray through the days, but when the setting of the sun does come, it's that most beautiful of things each twilight that only comes once the same way each lifetime.  You never see the same one twice.  Not in the winter anyways.

That's what's running through my head on the highway back from John's.  He'd given my arm a nervous pinch at our good-bye and I smiled, squeezed his shoulder light, and in his beady little eyes I said, "good-bye."

And Derrick raced us off into the painted countryside, back down to Derby (pronounced dar-by), that hell-man, on the side of the road I'm not used to.

Merry Old Englands

There's a certain charm to this place, there is.  It's a biting cold outside on the edge of Sherwood Forest.  But here in an ancient pub from Robin Hood time, Ye Old Trip To Jerusalem, there's a warmth brewing from behind the bar and rising up the skinny creaking wood steps to the only room with free tables.  Everyone's conversation sounds so proper.  So matter-of-fact.  It's Jolly.  Something of a kingdom feel, where everyone knows their place ad revels in it.  It's chipper 'round the holidays.  It's "you's" and "lovelies" forever.

Nottingham Castle is set atop a thick block of cavernous sandstone that shoots up a hundred feet.  A solid base for such a faint castle.  Nothing grandiose.  It's a small cosy castle, Nottingham.  Green grounds, numerous iron and wood doors in the cliff-face, assumed tunnels and mischievous dealings. The accent's a bit more pronounced than in London.  And the laughter's more flowing.  Like I said, jolly.  'Tis a wonderful place for a drink and a write, this old pub at the foot of Nottingham Castle, carved into the cliff.  It's a stone's throw from Lord Byron's old house.

Don't mind the window.  Or the cursed galleon (that sparks a story I wrote in childhood).

So You Think You Design

[it's desperation]

ENDLESS WINTER

What a title

What kind of a man does it breed?

There's nothing broken in me.

Only the sense of thick roots,

battered bark,

a deep ancient core of patience for the sun.

Winter Is

An English accent on the train.  A silent goose, British temperament, dry humor, wet feet and the rain.   Winter is not a structured verse.  It's a pile-up.  Things stacked one on top of the other.  Over and over again.  Little things over time.  Things thrown in the morning, sugar-coated.  Things learned, things yearned for.  Idyllic dreams of bi-planes, ocean-cliff houses, skating and scalability, and climbing up to reach an end.  It's funny how much of a dream one can retain when writing it down.  It always starts poetic.

Though when one comes to think, really think on it, it's random.  It's madness.  It's a firework show of subconscious synapses.  It's a winter storm.  Coming down from the mountains and the redwood, coming across the sea.  Blankets of rain, storm surges, laid waste tidal falls, piling up on a naked soul.  There's never any money in the winter.  I'm just beginning to realize that.  It's a season of dependency.  When one discovers what one really needs, and what one can do without.  It's heavy on the shoulder, winter.  It either breaks a man, or it makes a man stronger.  But it comes every year.  Sometimes twice, depending on the hemisphere and the timing of travel.  This was a two winter year.

A Swiss Lecture In The Winter

Matty and I got high before making the trek up to the lecture halls above the co-op.  We biked up to the base of campus and caught the shuttle to the top of Science Hill.  We strolled in through the back side entrance, not the front, two minutes late and thoroughly stoned.

The old Swiss economist had already started his lecture, but only just so.  He was still introducing himself, and I saw his eyes flick to us high up in the back row as we stumbled across to the center.  We wanted good seats.  Hell, I didn't give a damn what he thought about it anyways.  I wasn't even in school anymore.  I just came up to campus two or three times a week to sneak into the dining hall for free food.  And to write.

And apparently I came up to watch Swiss economists talk for an hour as well.  Matty dragged me, I remember.  This was his idea.  The economist told us a story of the end of a global American empire. He sounded hopeful though.  It was fucking fascinating.

Winter Breeds A Cold Blood

A stiff lip that's dried on the outside.
It's a thing one looks to the end of
and not the beginning.
Those months are trials of a man.

They'll break a man.
They'll take a man
if he's not careful.

It's a precarious season, this winter.
Most men with any salt
or a good idea of the long con
the what's to come
baton down with a woman
see things through, at least to the spring.

Not me.
I had other ideas
not to call them better or worse.
Just different
they were.

Calling Card

There's a lot to be said in the name of stoic confidence.  

To be said to its power, to its sway.  

Perhaps I'll jot some of it down soon and tell you, 

but for now I'll say this: all the stoicism and confidence in the world ain't worth a calling card without charm.  

Charm is what gets a poor prince laid.  

The confidence is what keeps them coming back for more.  

After all, money only buys a certain woman.

Turbo-Prop

I'm writing to the droning croon of a tiny single-aisle, four-seat-across, metal tube turbo-prop from Portland, Maine to Newark.  Snow's scattered and speckled on the soft ranges and tributaries and lakes below.  It reminds me of flying back from Paris.  Of Kerouac again and Jack London.  It's the cold north.

On the runway, taxiing, I remember.  What's life without a question in the air.  What am I doing here?  Is it right?

I don't know.  Which isn't to say it's wrong, it's just uncertainty.  The mind doesn't always know what the gut feels unless you ask it.  I try to ask often.  After all, it's not a calculating hard-pressed process of thought that always guides best.  Not for me.  No, it's instinct, a killer autonomy within that leads when I relinquish the reins and let it carry me towards a purpose.

That's when I speak without words to that all-presence.  I think it's the being that some call God.  It's usually those that never hear him though that give him such reverence.  They're usually shouters, self-righteous, and almost always strict church-goers, enveloped in what they believe to be right because it's what's been fed to them by voices that travel through the air.  Off the pulpit.  They can't fathom the sanity of those that hear the silent ones.  Or perhaps they just aren't listening.

Ah, yes.

A smile creeps across at the lost rambling.  I've found it again.  A warm comfort, and I remember.  The runway.  The taxiing turbo-prop, and the question.  I don't ask of myself because alas, like I said, I don't really know.  I just ask, I throw the question out to be reflected back by the universe.  Today he's Matthew McConaughey.  I ask, "Is this good? Is it right? How'm I doing here."

He smiles and says, "Alright, all-right, all right."

It feels good, like some purpose, that one I've been searching for.  It's a crisp fresh air with Claire.  Thanks Maine, I can't wait to be back againe.



[this is right, this is well.  I can do this]

Phone Free

There's an unrest that's settled within me as of late to the tune of a loss for words.  Unsettling indeed, the pages aren't filling themselves as they used to.  It's a thing that's startlingly poignant in my life.

Well, I should say mind not life, as the life of mine has seen the whirl of speed that becomes of a man in over-drive.  I can't even complete the word, see.  It's turbulent times, these days, but there is a peculiar relish in it.  A giddy strength of sanity, a grip of the reins that I'd all but forgotten and feel now again in the deep depth of the core of me.

My chi, amidst this calamity.

The Race

Quote of the Day: Free Style

"Literary style is the power to move freely in the length and breadth of linguistic thinking without slipping into banality."

                                                                                              ~ Walter Benjamin

Flume Radio

Valleyheart

And here,
at the end of all things
of the valley
and the heart,
the brown is the leaves
and the ground,
and green is the trees
and the leaves
are yellow too,
and so is the end.

Diamond END over red.

And a telephone pole.
And an empty concrete river.

The ghetto birds thump.
The 101 roars with the trees
and so too do the leaves.

Leave.

I've been here too long,
I must leave.

When Winter

When winter turns to spring turns to summer fall.

The summer falls like a feather, slowly through the later months.  With sweet emotion, the taste of which comes on the Indian winds, the off-shores.  The south swells fade west, but nothing really from the north just yet.  The water's still warm.  Spring-suit weather.  Two millimeters of neoprene and short sleeves.  Just to keep the warm breeze of a windchill off in the early morning or just before sunset.

What a lovely time to be in LA.  The summer crowds are pretty much gone after Labor Day, the kids are back in school.  The tourist are always around though, but less so after the turn, and it's more international now.  Americans only travel in the summer.  The morning fog flies off for the winter early.  And September and October are beautiful months, working at the shop, dinners at Mike's house, bars and house parties on the weekends.  Jessica, Megan, Emily the boxer, that trio of Italian girls, that German girl, and at the very end there Madelyn.

I met Jess when she came into the shop looking for a wetsuit.  By the look of her, she was a size 4, and I've always had a thing for size 4's.  It's a great size.  It's the right size for me, I'm not a big guy.   She looked good in the suit, she was a skinny girl.  Cute, delicate face.  Soft-spoken.  Frail's not the right word, but it wouldn't be far off.  I imagined I could probably break her if I fucked her hard enough, and when I ran after her to give her my number scribbled in pen on a piece of receipt paper, she very innocently handed me one of her business cards in return.  It said she was a writer, very innocently.  We had dinner the next week, Sushi House, I think, she lived just a block down from the place.  Then she took me home and we got high and watched Yellow Submarine on her little laptop because she didn't own a TV.  We watched it on a tiny couch in her living room that pulled out into a mattress sort of thing without the metal framed one would usually associated with a pull-out.  the cushions were all connected, more like a plush tongue rolling out to ready for an acid hit.  There was no acid to be had that night, we just took hits of some good weed from the the tiny pipe she had, and when the movie was over, she rolled onto me, and things got very, very physical, but no one's underwear came off.  "I'm not going to fuck you on the first date," she told me.

I said, "That's fine. I understand."  Two weeks later we were fucking for hours at a time.  We never once used rubbers.  When she was on top she rode quick with quick hips and short tight circles like she was trying too hard to get hers.  Trying too fast.  Moving too quick.  She liked it when I fucked her hard, and she could see me in the closet mirror.  She liked it when I fucked her in the kitchen when she was thirsty and trying to pour a glass of water.  She liked it when I fucked her while she held onto the door-frame to keep from falling over.  She would always go weak in the knees if I thrust into her particularly strong-like.  I did it all the time.  It felt good.

When I think of her, the word that comes to mind is mousey.  A brown-eyed girl.  She was smart, and she worked for a small advertising agency, and the slight signs of stress and work and life showed in the corners of her eyes and the red veins that would spider across them.  I will say this: she was adorable and her skin was olive smooth. And I was addicted to fucking her for some time.

At the same time, I was seeing Meghan as well.  I'd met her at the shop as well but she was different. I only sport-fucked Meghan, but she loved it.  We were each other's sex toys.  And she lived two blocks from the shop, which was highly ideal.  She wasn't skinny like Jess.  Her hips wouldn't dig into me while I was digging into her, so I fucked her even harder.  And all she would say was, "Fuck me harder, fuck me harder, fuck me harder."  So I would try to oblige, and it felt good and we both sweat through the nights and the early mornings that I spent there.

She wasn't shy like Jess.  She didn't look it either.  Blond hair, sharp blue eyes, loose red lips.  I'd caught her eye-fucking me, and she asked me to reach a dress that was too high for her.  The way she said it made me want to fuck her right then and there, middle of the store on a Sunday.  But instead I taped my number written on a piece of receipt paper to the clothes she had me pull down and put in a dressing room.  She texted me while trying stuff on.  She texted dirty things and told me to meet her after work, which I did, at the Irwin hotel.  There's a bar on the roof, and I ran into her on the elevator up, white lace dress, and we just started making out.  She tasted like vodka drinks, and when it got dark she took me to Gjelina's for dinner.  "Let's get a bottle of nice wine," she said.

I said, "I don't think I can afford a bottle of nice wine.  Not here."

"Stop it. Just stop it. Let momma take care of you."  She was a nurse.  She covered the whole tab, which came out to around $150.  I returned the favor with what I could back at her place, all leg squeezes and shudders and eyes rolling into the back of her head.  I even threw a back massage in for good measure.  She deserved it.  And she was dirty, and she liked it rough and athletic.

When it rains, it pours in Santa Monica.

The Good German

BsAs: Dangerous Winter (Invierno Peligroso)

"And what about me?"

"You... You my friend, es peligroso!  Haha!" Fre turns to the Columbian girls and talks in Spanish to them, gesturing towards me, making a flatline with his hand.

I look at Guada.  "Peligroso?"

"Dangerous," she smiles. 

Fre screams back in, "You're dangerous, my man. I was telling them. You're so cool.  Nothing effects you.  Very in control.  It's intimidating, man.  You're swagger.  No matter what happens."  Flatline.

"Oh, stop it.  I'm not dangerous."  But the Columbians are looking at me now.  So is Guauda, and so are the two Angolans.  "I just don't get very emotional that's all.  Control of one's emotions is a sign of maturity," I say very matter-of-factly.  Maybe it's because I listen to so much fucking sad music all the time.  Or the jazz.  What I like to call good music.

Fre nods, "No doubt."  Already he's more muted.  Just slightly.  He's a smart man, Fre, maybe the most articulate one I've ever met, being fluent in six languages.  English, Spanish, Portugeuse, French, Italian, and of course Bantu, a tongue native to Angola.  He likes to read books and cook good food and enjoys good music and quite obviously loves fucking futbol to death.  A fanatic, he calls himself, but he's an intelligent fanatic.  He likes poetry and sometimes he talks to Guada about Jorges Luis Borges, the Argentine writer.  According to him, poetry always remembers that it was an oral art before it was a written art. Poetry remembers that it was first song.  It was music.

*****

Winter's a good time for music.  It's a hard season, and something like music can carry you through if it needs to.  In Santa Cruz, we still had the festival bug from Europe, from the show in Nice and the Berlin forests.  We wanted it still.  We wanted the music.  In the middle of October there was a festival on Treasure Island in the middle of San Francisco Bay.  It was very appropriately named Treasure Island, this festival.  Matty had gone the year before and convinced us to go.  It didn't take much.  Just the promise of grand music and haywire molly.  The whole house was on board, and Max and Chase were driving up from Orange County for it, and Taylor and Dylan and Matt Swartz and Nikse were all going to because they lived in the city now.  Tay and Dylan lived together in a nice quiet building out in the Richmond.  Close to Ocean Beach so we stayed with them.

The usual mischief.  Miss Molly as always.  For Max Mike and I, the last outdoor concert we'd been to was in the summer in Southern France, and before that Berlin in the summer too, and LA and in the spring Indio.  They were hot affairs, the lot of them, so we dressed according to that.  But the seasons were turning, had turned already even to fall.  To fall in San Francisco.  It's not freezing, by any means.  It's still California.  But let's just say it wasn't fucking tank top weather in 2010.  But that had been my wise decision.  Max's too.  Mike went with a t-shirt, just didn't bring a jacket, and he was chilly.  It wasn't bad though.  What we lacked in layers we more than made up for in drug use and dance sweat.

Through the day wasn't bad, but into the night we'd snake our ways to the center in the front.  For the warmth.  And we danced close on girls with the same ideas.  Through Miike Snow, through Kruder, through Deadmau5 and LCD.  And in the in between times, walking between stages, put a chill in the bone.

And then it started raining.  Right through the middle of LCD Soundsystem, it started drizzling.  Lighter than that, maybe misting.  Whatever it was would melt, burn off before it touched the ground, or even our skin sometimes, if the drops were light enough.

Charles Bukoski: The Crunch

Winter is Dark and Stormy

Winter is dark and stormy and wrought with drinking.  It's a boozy season.  But then again, so could be said about every season really.  Summer's for drinking, fall's for drinking, spring's for drinking.  But winter's for drinking in a different way than the others.  In California, winter means rain, so we drink indoors, and we say it's to keep warm.  It's spiced wine and cider with brandy.  The wine's red.  The liquor's dark.  It's stormy outside and in the mind.  Moods fly particularly so in the winter.  It's a dangerous time.  Short-sighted.  Immediate.  Gluttonous.  Prowling.  Lying in wait.  Traps baited.  Fingers cold to the bone is what winter feels like.  It smells like wet rain.  Damp ground.  Red wine.  Ports.  And pastries from the bakery.  It's love lost and right in front of you.  Of me.  Hearts are crushed slowly underfoot, just after the holidays.  Dreams of new beginnings are dashed by grim reality.  A freeze of the soul.  Difficulty breathing before the rains come.

Barometric pressure.  Feverish forgetting, whispering, "Stop, stop, stop, stop."

Like the old cliché, what doesn't kill you, if it doesn't drive you off the road, it just makes you stronger.  Strengthens the grip, sharpens the mind.  Winter hollows out the core of me.

Each year.

Although to be true, there hasn't been much in there for some time anyways.  I am a hollow core.  An empty vessel. 

*****

When I was driving back with Lennon it was winter.  No, maybe Spring.  What color were the hills.  (Is that the white or the red?) Oh, jeez.  I can never remember that.  White?

No, they were green, bright green.  And the rolling hills of the Salinas valley are always the greenest in spring.  So it must've been spring.

No, it was winter.  That's right.  They were brown.  Wet brown and dead.  Not raining, just wet.  Lennon and I were both sufficiently high by the time we hit Salinas, and the sun was still out, not so high, but fighting the clouds to the west over the hills.  We were talkin'.

"We are all parts of a whole," he said.  "And we are each one whole.  Does that make sense?"

"Sure. Like a pie."

"Yes, like a pie."

"Mmm. Pie."

"But we are not always whole pies, Brian.  Like you.  You say you are happy and self-fullfilled all on your own."

"Yes.  Perfectly content."

"But you are not everyone."

"I know.  I can see it in others.  That need to be with someone.  In a relationship.  With a boyfriend or a girlfriend."

"Some people need that.  Some people are not whole pies like you.  They need someone else's slices to fill them."

"Not me.  I need the right one."  But at the time I felt like the right one wasn't ever going to find me.  Consigned to a single life.  But I did know what he was talking about.  "I don't need that intimacy, but I can't be alone.  Not completely alone.  I'd fuckin' die."

[stop]

Charles Bradley

The Deserved

Boy Vs. Man

What's the difference between a boy and a man?

Being a boy is about pleasure.

Being a man is about sacrifice.

A boy runs away from responsibility.  He thinks that everything should be perfect and his way and in place.  Detached.  Oblivious.  Care-free.  He's wonderful, a drifter.

A man. Now a man's different.  He's different.  The way a pup and a dog are different.  The way a buffalo and his calf are different.  The cougar not the cub.  The embers after, not the fire.  Being a man is not glamorous.  Being a man is rugged.  It's responsible.  It cares and endures.  It looks down the road and around the corner, not at it's own feet, step-by-step, reveling in it.  There's future in a man's eyes.

A boy's eyes show only change.  Pollen in the breeze.




The biggest difference in us from before, in our parents' age, is that the men were younger back then, and now the boys are older.  It's an abundance of comfort.  Where boys had to become men, they don't have to anymore, and everything's changed.  But so it's always been.

It's not about football and fast cars and  fucking.  It's about foresight.  It's about fortitude, of mind and body.

A man doesn't run for the hills, a man weathers the storm on the plot he's called his own, and builds and grows.

Failsafe

My mind, in it's never-ending quest for survival has, a little unknowingly until now, devised a safeguard for my body against suicide.  One day it told my hand to pick up a pencil and start writing, and now I simply can't kill myself, no matter how much I sometimes, frequently, desperately, lustfully dream of it, I can't do it.  Not until all the writing's done.

That being said, I say thank God for cigarettes.  And fast cars and motorcycles, and drugs, and lightning, and a powerful ocean.  I'm not going to pull any trigger, but I wasn't meant to be here long.

None of us were really.

I know that.

Guns Germs $teal

Guys see necessity.

Girls want security.



$peaking generally, of course.

I Want to Go To London in December

The feeling is a funny thing.  Love.  It feels weird to say it.  Love.  It's always associated with such a seriousness.  I always thought I knew what it was, that I could pin it down to the handful of words.  A one-liner.  It not that simple.  If you think it is, you're stupid.  There's a whole cast of thoughts behind the idea of love.  There are different kinds, different meanings, and different sets of feelings that come with each.

Whatever, I think I love her.  Claire.  And as time goes by, I do so more and more.  And what's more I think she loves me back.  She needs me, I think.  And that's something I've never felt before.  Not in love.  And I think I like it.  Like some purpose with companionship laid out in front of me.  Like a slow predictable story arc, no amazing twists or anything.  Except I have no idea what's going to happen.  That familiar dread isn't there.  Just reality.  And good living.

Love is good living.

Truths for Spring

Viceroy.  Early in the morning.
Don't take me for a fool now.

So this is life.  The what everyone else does.  This is what constant companionship feels like.  To wake up every morning next to the same woman who loves you.  Sound about the same as Argentina really, but lo, when I ask myself why, it's difficult to say.  It's not easy to explain.  I believe it's a matter of want.  I didn't want that, not like I want this.  This incredible feeling of right.  The warmth inside that's not, strange as it sounds, from the late summer late morning sunlight of a cloudless Santa Monica sky.

The wind from the east and the Indian spirit blows a soft breeze across the sun-deck over Amelia's, and my shirt's off and the thin film of sweat pores through as I write, a light and subtle glow.  But the warmth comes from inside like recollection, form remembering the feeling of her in the kitchen before breakfast, bent over the counter, the reflection in the kettle, and then the thought in my mind: what a life, I love this girl.

Even when she ties me up, even when she chokes me, and especially when she blows me.  I want her.  Maybe that's love, a prolonged mutual want, a symbiotic need for one another that's more or lass apparent to each party.  Similar wits, impressive prowess, healthy sexual appetites, and strong fucking, and maybe more and more making love, which I realize now that I so seldom do.  I'm so used to fucking for sport and not for love.  It takes some getting used to, but I like it.

And hey, it's not perfect, but who wants perfect really?  How manáge (I love that word).

Imperfections keep things interesting, especially when there's a recognized crazy on both sides, and yes, it's wild and she's jealous, and I'm absent minded and erratic and eclectic emotionally.  But we balance each other out, I think.  It's not always easy, but I think Mike had it right.  I'd rather have a desperate love than an easy one.  Looking for a perfect love gets you no where.  Finding a compatible, crazy desperate up-and-down, all-over-the-place broad spectrum, wild all-or-nothing love is everything.

I think.

Quote of the Day: Feel the Pain

People are afraid of themselves, of their own reality; their feelings most of all. People talk about how great love is, but that’s bullshit. Love hurts. Feelings are disturbing. People are taught that pain is evil and dangerous. How can they deal with love if they’re afraid to feel? Pain is meant to wake us up. People try to hide their pain. But they’re wrong. Pain is something to carry, like a radio. You feel your strength in the experience of pain. It’s all in how you carry it. That’s what matters. Pain is a feeling. Your feelings are a part of you. Your own reality. If you feel ashamed of them, and hide them, you’re letting society destroy your reality. You should stand up for your right to feel your pain.

                                                 ~Jim Morrison

Success / Nothingness

Supposing Truth Is A Woman

- what then? [her name is probably Emily]

If I suppose so, the reason is clear, the reason why, for this treason in my mind towards every other poor city on this green Earth.  The Truth is what keeps me coming back to the warm, light ocean breeze burnt skin LA, galloping back from southern hemisphere winters and Latin gems of an old city feel that I love.

It's not the buildings that bring me back.  Not even the weather or the waves.  It's the faces and smiles and spliffs, the Truth - truths, all of them, city wide; the friends and the comfort of hame that makes it impossible for me to live anywhere else.  I don't know where I'd be if it were not for those Pytka girls.

The old cozy beach house, right on the sand in Venice.  I wouldn't be writing here now without it I don't think.  It's Monday, nearly 9:00am.  I'd probably be in an office right now if it wasn't for those two.  Sweet Sacha, and dear Arielle, they saved me.  They shined a light for me away from the grind, saved me from certainty and the security of a real life with real things like a real job and real money.  From a future that was clear, they changed me so that the simple relief of ocean breeze on a rail of a third floor terrace in the sun brings me peace.  Eyes close for a second so all that fills my head is the banter sound of beautiful women and curious men on a summer Sunday, and the music, the taste of watermelon and salsa, and tequila limeade and bummed cigarettes on my throat and my tongue, and the intangible feeling of joy from being back home.

From the Frills of Winter

I had a nice spliff head-buzz when I saw her running by in the Spring.  I remembered her face and especially her form from the good romp at Tampico, in the winter months.  Mikey's Santa Cruz DJ debut.

He was good, Mikey.  By which I mean to say he was good at music, not just DJ-ing.  His hit single from high school, "Shake ya dicks," still to this day brings tears to my eyes.  To be blunt, it was a gut-busting time.

The crowd at Tampico was entirely girls with the exception of Matty Mike and I.  And Matty kind of looks like a girl already, so really it was just Mikey and me.  And all girls.  Katie's friends.  All girls, both Mikeys, a Matty and me.  Her name was Brittany.

One of two Brittanys.  Because there were two Brittanys there that drunken night.  One latin and blonde hair, she was thin in a tight blue dress, with a sexy way about her.  She had nice lips and a skinny little booty.   One bright eyes and tight lips, with hips, she was every one of my dreams.

She had good running form.  That says a lot about a lady.  She spoke soft, and for dramatic effect, always waited just a half-second longer than normal to respond.  And sometimes she didn't respond at all, just smiled with a cringe and desire at my chest before I grabbed her.

I remember seeing her from our ground floor porch, looking out across the long grass at Grandview.  She was just rounding the soft corner where the road bends around to the right towards the 1 and West Cliff.  I was high and decided to jump on my bike after her.  It was the way she ran, the figure she cut in the winter sunlight.  I caught up and slowed down beside her, and gave her the old double-take.  "You're Katie's friend.  From Tampico."

"You're Mikey's roommate."  Just a glance at me.  She kept running, and panting, and her skin glistened in the brisk air.  "Where you biking to?"

"Checking the surf.  Where are you running to?"

"To Kelly's."

"That's funny.  I work there."

There's a sparkle in her eye, and she smiled.  "Oh you do, do you," she said, slowing her pace, taking stock of me.  "So you can get me bread then."

"I would love to get you bread," I said.  "Right when they close I can grab some.  What's your number."

She gave me her number like that.  Girls love a boy in a bakery, I guess.


[to be continued]

BsAs: Nabokov

"I was weeping again, drunk on an impossible past."

And just like that everything's all right and clear again.  It's the airplane radio, jazz.  Armstrong, La Vie en Rose, on cue.  There's a flash, as there always is, to way back, simple puppy love at chez Sacha all those years ago, watching Marion Cotillard before I'd ever her name before; before like, before this, before travel and writing, before photography and college and all the ups and downs, before Laura even.  Jesus, before Laura.  What was I before then?  Before Mammoth?  What was I?  Who was I?

I was every girl's best friend.

What is that?  What curse?  That word comes to me more and more these days, I feel it, this something that follows me, like a veiled shadow, not strong, not a weight necessarily, secretly following in the sunlight through winter trees splattered on the ground; no outline, awash and moving and swaying in the wind with the dead branches.

Si, the curse is light, I think.  It's what it bring me that weighs heavy.  A lonesome heart, and like the football side of it, I'm given witness to great sights, awesome masses, magnificent expectation, proximity to what could be something truly joyous - a grand celebration that never comes.  It's always taken away at the last minute, the last minutes, but leads on to the very end, like all the women in my life.

I can never quite hold on long enough.
Neither could Holland in 2010.
Nor Argentina now, on this sabbatical.

I have a kinship with never quite being good enough.  I know how it feels, Messi.  It's how my entire life seems to be playing out; nil-nil 'til the very end, and then some lucky soul comes pulls the rug out, and I'm left standing there dazed, middle of the pitch without having a clue as to what happened. Always thinking I could've done more, I should've.  I could've done things differently, a thousand different ways, but I didn't.  And now here I am, runner-up.  On the world stage.

It plays again.
(short loop)

That's how music is right?  Hour long album, tops.  Playlist, album, mix-tape, whatever.  I'm watching Almost Famous on the last leg back to LA, back to reality, and the sunny end to this stoic winter dream in the South.  This movie makes me feel whole again, and young like everything used to be and nothing's changed.

They got free Johnnie Walker up here.  Yeah, it's grand and the joy swells inside me.  I want to see Savanna, my Penny Lane.

Cheesy right?  I hope Jordan's at the airport, I hope Claire takes me back.

"So Russell, what do you love about music."

"Well, to begin with... everything."

BsAs: In Winter

It always feels like something's missing.  I missed a lot this winter, in this Winter Sur.  I missed the summer, skipped it's summer mood.  I missed my best friend's birthday, the 4th of July, always spend it did I in the throws of drink and good company and familiarity at the sense that things would always be like that.  What's that called... that revel in the wonderful routine, the commonplace, the expected and afforded to plan.  It's a submission to comfortable surroundings; a stunt to growth.

Who says how much we are to grow?  Well, I guess we each do, each of us.  There's not much amusement in growth (we all remember how much schooling sucked), so I understand the thinking; grow enough, grow into something, into a place and enjoy it.  Growing's no walk in the park, but it provides wonder and the awe of learning.

Or whatever, you know?

Maybe you can grow too much, get too big you know, like the Roman Empire or Alexander the Great and his Greece.  It was really much more than Greece really, but it all came crashing down afterwards.  Is that what happens?  A big explosion, an expansion out into greatness and then cracks in the shield under the weight and then turmoil, disillusionment and chaos.

Or is growth like a redwood tree, steady and strong, and stronger and taller still, slowly each year for eons.  But nobody knows your name.

That's right, I missed Outside Lands too, speaking of Northern evergreens.  Outside Lands and San O, and practically all the summer pier concerts.

All for an exploration of self-imposed depression.  In a fucking beautiful city in its winter rest.  It's death.

I feel like the hardboiled egg, not the coffee bean right now.  At least I'm not the carrot.  Let's see if we can turn that hot water into coffee, shall we?

What I learned is this: there is no escape in running away.  Escape is in the music.  Escape is the music.  No, reverse that.

Never go deaf, my darling.

BsAs: Dreams of Californication

I'm spending my last day decidedly on the train.  The bumpy ride to Retiro, the heavy swaying.  Ironically, there's a trio wrapped in casual French to my right, across the aisle.  Just like Paris.  I'm sitting just by the coupling, and when I look down I can see the tracks through the gap between the cars, trotting by on squeals and the iron nail on chalkboard sound of metal against metal that's become somewhat of a soothing sound in the vacuum left by real music to my ears.  It's the sound of worlds colliding in my mind.

Paris, Bali, California.  This city, Buenos Aires.  The lot, all blending together like all the colors of things down the drain.  What's lasting is a light cool azul to the eyes before it's washed away by the cleansing water of imminent air travel.  Recycled air and changing time-zones.  I'd told Ricardo that the noise, the city sounds, screeched drawn out duldrum, bells and horns and sirens and the sounds of cars and buses and thousands of people talking and thinking to themselves.  all reflected off the high city walled near Palermo.  The sound at 5:00 rushed hours in central neighborhoods, think sidewalks and coffee.  I told him that these are the things, the sounds with eyes on the buildings above, these are the what, the mysterious key to put my restless mind at ease.

Maybe I was just trying to be poetic.  To impress.  But I think it's true.  That static white noise does something to drop thought, the way I always wish for when the thinks' too much.  It's desperate insanity (or let's say for the sake of my mental well being, for some semblance of sanity, that's right, that it's malignant genius) that seeks static backgrounds and loss of thought for nothing if but a few seconds, maybe a minute.

When I look back down at the streets, I already know what I'm going to miss the most.  The women.  The female landscape of this city.  Italian and Spanish descendants make beautiful foot-traffic, especially when everybody walks.  It makes me want to move to a walking city.  Something spread out like Paris.  Maybe New York.  Not San Francisco though, the city's too small and the public transit too on point to really put the miles in like they do here.  For me Buenos Aires is a city of great legs.

And good food too.  Last meals now.  Last supper perhaps, but early, 'round lunchtime.  I was thinking about some asado, but I panicked and just ordered the Plato del Dia.  Two thick milanesas, thick breaded patties and rice that seemed to be marinating in butter.  The rice was rich yellow, the pollo, juicy.  It was fucking delicious.  In a bare-bones simplistic sort of way.  Just my style.  Something heavy to hold me over 'til California.

In Memoriam

For him, life wasn't so much
important as living was.
Because when you've lived,
really lived, like he did, what's
life without the living.  Wasted
time maybe.  It takes a brave
man to make that choice.  Yeah
sure, any idiot coward can kill
himself.  But for a thinking man,
like him, there's a whole lot
riding on both sides.  It ain't so
black and white.  He preferred
the road unknown.  I feel ya,
Robin.

Charles Bukowski: Safe

BsAs: For Guada

She wanted me to write something about Buenos Aires.

That's all she asked of me, and a part of me wishes she'd been a bit more specific because I don't know exactly what to write.  The best I can do is tell you what Buenos Aires is to me.  For that, I need to say why I'm here.  I came here to write.  I always go places to write - I went to write in Paris and I went to write in Bali - but never about where I am, more of where I've been.  I went to Paris to write about traveling around Europe.  I went to Bali to write about living in Paris, and I came here to write about winter.  Not here, but in California.  That was the plan.

Let me say this: I don't think I leave my home to travel anymore.  I did that once, after university, I backpacked around Europe, the same old that everyone does.  Trains and backpacks and a handful of days in each city.  I don't do that anymore.  Everyone travels.  There's nothing really truly unique about it, not that I'm trying to find something unique, it's just not what I want.  I don't want to sight-see, I've done that, and I've seen that, and I wanted to see something new.  I want to know what it's like to live in a city that's not my own.  I want somewhere new to become routine.  I stayed in Paris for two months, and Bali too, and I've been here in Buenos Aires for fifty days.  Sure, I know a pair of months is hardly enough to call a place home, but it's all I can afford for myself, I don't have a lot of money, and what I've learned from flying to these different places is that it takes about a month for a city to become routine.  To feel comfortable.  I guess I do it all for the backdrop now.

So what is Buenos Aires.  To me, a man from Los Angeles with no spanish tongue?  I can certainly say with authority in my mind that it's marvelous.  It's Paris with a twist and more grit.  It's a sprawl, sprawling enough so that one needs to get a solid hold on the bus system to really know it, so it's kind of like LA too, but with a different passion and landscape and much more color and flowering and decoration (I really do enjoy the look of the buses here), and a sense of the past that I always love to see in a city.  The old buildings and the bronze in the parks.  San Telmo and Retiro and Recoleta, and even parts of Palermo.  Clogged sidewalks and subways like New York.  Brickwork and stone like London.  In short, Buenos Aires is every city in the world, and at the same time its own little crystalline gemstone.  The skyscape of tall skinny buildings, flats stacked on flats next to nothing, and  then nothing, and then another stack.  A good view of the city makes the eyes dance more than any city I know, and it's immediately recognizable and wonderful and makes me never want to sit still, but always be on the move, on my feet, exploring.  I'm a walker, and this city's made for it, and I love it.

Through the weekend markets, past the midnight milongas, all of it, and the colors and graffiti and, my god, the beautiful women that breathe life into the city concrete and the thick humid air.  There's something about Argentine girls that, more than anything else, make me wish desperately that I spoke even passable spanish so that I could talk to them.  I wish I knew tango so that I could dance with them at night and hold them close.  They've got more fire than Parisians, more spark, like a wild flame, burst of fireworks compared to a cold french cigarette.  Women made for bright love and smoldering passion in a certain disparity not unlike my own.  We're akin, me and this city, and there's a feeling in me that I must return one day.  Under any pretext or context or circumstance, and with a solid grasp of the Spanish language.  If not for the women, at least for the meat cooked over hot coals.  Take a metaphor out of that for me please.  Something beautiful and sexual.  Like this city.

Oscar Wilde: The Importance of Being Ernest

"I keep a diary in order to enter the wonderful secrets of my life.  If I didn't write them down, I should probably forget all about them."

"Llevo un diario para registrar los maravillosos secretos de ma vida.  Si no los anotara, problemente lo olvidaria todo acerca de ellos."





After all, that's my greatest fear.  The thought that I might have forgotten something.  That's why I write it all down, everything I think should remember anyways.  Like the pentagram.  Guide's star on her forehead for protection.  When she feels like she needs it, when she feels a spirit or an energy and she doesn't feel safe.

She reminds me of Lennon.

Oscar Wilde: A Woman Of No Importance

"My dear young lady, there is a great deal of truth, I dare say, in what you said, and you looked very pretty while you said it, which is much more important."

"Mi querida señorita, había mucha verdad, creo, en lo que decíais, y estabais muy bonita mientras lo decíais, lo cual es mucho más importante."





No, I was mistaken before.  This is Buenos Aires.  This place, San Telmo.  Not Villa Urquiza, not Retiro...  Not Palermo, not Barrio Chino, not Porto Madero, not even La Boca, but this place.  San Telmo.  The old heart through which all the city's blood flows through.  It's pumping here in San Telmo.  Always.  And at all hours and late into the night.

It's by chance that I come upon these small enlightenments and maybe some could say, "Well, of course it is, everyone knows that.  I didn't need you to tell me.  I read it on the Internet.  I know.  That's no great enlightenment."

And they wouldn't be wrong.  Not entirely.  But I said nothing about some grand enlightenment.  Some monstrous clairvoyant clarity.  I said it was a something small.  A subtle thing.  A thing twenty-watt bulb turned on, recessed lighting.  An open eye blinking to see everything in focus.  It's no atom bomb.

But if you haven't lived here, if you've just passed through for a day or two or a week in this city, I don't think you do know really.  Maybe you know the Sunday markets and the outdoor tango and the street food and the meat and the ice cream and the antiques, and you say, "This place is bustling! It's so alive!"

That's like praising good taxidermy.  It's just the skin of the morcilla, as I think I'm now going to start saying.  Morcilla is that smooth dark sleek blood sausage.  It's tight and refined and served nice.  The inside's not so clean cut.  It doesn't slice like chorizo.  When you cut through, no matter how smooth, morcilla explodes.  Into everything.  Coagulated blood like guts, and spices, and anything else thrown in.  The flavor's strong.  It's absolutely delicious.

It was a Thursday that I arrived at Andrea's.  A gracious host, she had a pullout bed under her's.  She asked me if I wanted to go out for the night.

I was tired, but I obliged.  After all, I'd been here a month and hadn't really gone out yet, not at night, so why not.  "Sure, why not," I said.

"Have you seen any tango yet?"

"Yeah, sure.  They were dancing in the streets on Sunday."

She gave me a look like, "really, bitch?" and said, "I have a surprise for you.  Tonight's going to be a fantastic night.  And you can bring your camera if you like."

So I did.  After the rest of Solange's joint, of course.  Andrea split it with me, and then she took me to a milonga around 23:00.

You know you can't hear a heart in the day light.  No, outside in the sunshine everything's much too loud to hear something as soft as a heartbeat.  Too many cars really.  Nights are lighter on traffic.  Weeknights even more, and the later the better.  That's when you hear the heart pounding.  And to be honest you usually don't hear it so much even then.  Not as much as you feel it.

A milonga is a tango bar, and if there's ever a time to feel a heartbeat, it's in a place like that.  The beat's in the footwork and the passion in the face and the embrace.  It's in the heat of the mild winter and the humidity that grips the floors and the tables and crevasses and the seats and the very skin of the place, the old walls, the wet mirrors and the seltzer water.  It's draped on all the cobblestones outside so that the lights reflect a glow off the street and my hands feel damp.

All the girls move like scorpions.
I knew a scorpion once.

Blonde hair, fair skin, and blue eyes.
It wasn't the way she moved so much that made her a scorpion though.  It was the way she pricked you with the sting in her words, or more the way she used them.  With the stinger in, she had an unnerving gift of being able to get whatever she wanted.  It was her eyes, I think.  The way they balanced over the top end of her button nose and her smile.