Hard Leather

Life can't always be a fleeting dream.  There's got to be some living in it as well.  Working.  Hard living.

To see how much you're really worth.  I see that now.  I'm living it.  There's a lot of getting up off the ground, picking yourself up again and such, but it's not a getting your legs swept out from underneath you that gets you there.  It usually doesn't hurt as much as that; more scrapes, less bruises, you know.  What it's really like is like running down a hill on roller-skates.  Yeah, maybe it's not the best idea, but it's a rush sometimes when you're actually scared shitless, and you roll and skid when you hit the ground.  When you get up, you're breathing heavy from the adrenaline, and then you look up the hill and laugh.  And sometimes you hit a brick fucking wall and something breaks.

I wear boots of hard leather now,
but they'll soften in time.

I wouldn't say I've learned much of any importance in my time here except for the fact that moments come and moments pass, but they do not last forever.  And it's wholly up to me what I do with them.

I like to think I'm not wasteful.

Consult Jim Carrey

Just remember,
pains of the heart can almost
always be solved with
a good hard bike ride.

If'n you get to where
you thought
you were going and
your chest is still tight,
it only means
you didn't go hard enough.

Or far enough.
I bought something shiny today.

I only pray that when the time comes,
she chooses to love and
not to fear.

I'm afraid though
because the fear might be
much easier.

Twilight Breeze

I've been constantly losing focus lately
My train of consciousness keeps leaving without me
I feel like I'm missing so much

I locked my bike in my room the other day
Just before work
It's one of those knobs without a key
'Twas a murder spree
Dismantling that lock
Busting down that door
Just to be ten minutes late

Mind-numbing
What-the-fucks
This is change

It's the time of life now that
doesn't slow down
It's the time of year now of early sun-downs

I'm going to miss working on the beach
And the twilight breeze
And the flat horizon
And the sea

I'm growing, they say.

Quote of the Day: Self-Developments

The aim of life is self-development.  To realize one's nature perfectly - that is what each of us is here for.

[People are afraid of themselves, nowadays.  They have forgotten the highest of all duties, the duty one owes to one's self.  Of course, they are charitable.  They feed the hungry and clothe the beggar.  But their own souls starve, and are naked.  Courage has gone out of our race.  Perhaps we never really had it.]


I believe that if one man were to live out his life fully and completely, were to give form to every feeling, expression to every thought, reality to every dream - I believe that the world would gain such a fresh impulse of joy that we would forget all the maladies...

~ Oscar Wilde

New World Order

I forgot what street I always bike down to get to In-N-Out, so I open the map on my iPhone.  It does this thing every once in a while when it doesn't show the zoomed-in of where I am, like the surrounding blocks.  Instead I'm looking at a zoomed-out flat map of the world.  It's the first time it's actually given me pause though...

My fingers zoom in, and there it is.  It's Garfield Avenue.  As for tonight, I'm paying much more attention to the important things, not names.

I'd never really noticed it before, but all down Garfield there are only streetlights on the right side of the street ,save for one at the very end, almost at Lincoln.  This solitary light on the dark side of the street's blinked at me the last two times I've passed it--once last week, once also the week before.  It would be dark, and I would be lost in my usual world, not paying attention, and as I'd ride by, it'd flash twice, quickly, in quick succession.  Tonight there was no flash, no blinking at me.  The entire west-side of the street was dark, and stayed dark.  I'm paying much more attention tonight.

I wonder if Garfield is trying to tell me something, something about the dark side and the light.

[I'm supposed to write a novel on neo-colonialism and a new world order]

It ends in death and "I open my eyes."

Girlfriend's Guide

I just spilled, I don't know... maybe a fifth of Ozeki sake.  The whole thing's 180mL, and it comes with a stiff rubber cap, for to-go, I'm assuming.  Oh, Japan.  It's the local ramen house.  I fucking love ramen.

I fucking love sake too, which makes this not so surprising; this isn't my first sake of the night.  I met Claire, per request, at Hama Sushi and immediately ordered a large hot sake.

She was with her friend, and they were already wasted, so I ended up drinking most of it.  Then I drove her home and fucked her while watching the show she produces.  She's a studio exec.  She's a hot mess is what she is right now, but it's fucking sexy.  And I'm madly in love with her.  Nobody's ever loved me like she does.  I care for her more than anything, mainly because she makes me write, and the smell of her puts my heart at ease.

***

I wanted to feel the violence in the air tonight.

I rode my bike from Claire's down to the ramen house on Main Street
and immediately ordered the Ozeki.
It's fucking windy tonight.
My eyes blink and squint into it while I ride.
Into the debris.
By the streetlights on 4th Street,
I saw the wind.

It was thrashing through the trees.

Tomorrow Never Dies

Some days are more queer than others in terms of what the eyes see and the minds makes sense of.

Yesterday was Sunday.  I work at the hotel on Sundays, the one with the office right there on the boardwalk, so I see all these people walking by, by the dozens, maybe hundreds of them.  Maybe thousands.  I always make sure to bring my camera on Sundays.  It brings the day by faster I tell myself.  In reality, it stems from an irrational fear of forgetting beautiful things.  I used to shoot people through the office window, but that quickly got played out, same angle and all, short window.  The shot's there just for a second, and it was rarely sharp.  Now I take my camera outside onto the boardwalk and shoot down the length of the thing, both ways, with my zoom lens.

There's this girl I see a lot, not personally, but on my phone and my laptop.  No, I don't follow her (seriously thought about it, but I'm not in the habit of torturing myself; that's a lie), but I do follow photographers, and this girl gets her picture taken for a living.  In a word, she's breathtaking.  In that Malibu girl skinny blonde sex idol sort of way.  Her name's Bryana, I think.

Sometimes I just go out a couple feet from the front steps, right in the thick of the ebb and flow of people going up and down the boardwalk, and there she was.  She walked right by me.  I heard her say something to her friend, her voice, and I didn't even take a picture of her.  I missed the moment.  She made me catch my breath though behind my sunglasses.  She had on a beige zip-down hoodie, like a beige cardigan (I do follow her), like skin tone.  I smiled.  A few months back I'd seen that girl from the Blurred Lines video and Arielle's rooftop party from inside at my chair through the office window.  I missed that moment too.

Later last night me and Claire, fresh air darling Claire, were driving to Nobu.  I was driving, and I saw Bryana on Wilshire by herself, same beige hoodie, beige cardigan, like skin tone.  I smiled.  I'd never seen her before in my life, and yesterday I saw her twice.

Queer.

The streetlight on the street with no lights flicked twice again as I passed it on the way to In-N-Out again, and went out and stayed out.  I watched it, twisting to look back on my bike, all the way to Lincoln.

And the girls sat exactly where I told them to, right beside me, and I never said a word, not once to them, like they followed my eyes.

At Nobu,
the lighting was dim.
We had a table outside
looking out to the sea.
When I looked inside,
there was Kanye
and Kim.

The Labour Of Life

"And to love life through labour is to be intimate with life's inner most secret."

Well, if labor as you say, Mr. Kahlil, is the flute of life, these days gone by have been an orchestra opus to that infinite force, to living and to life.

Living with labor everyday is a force unto itself, infinite or not, but no less a push of growth, like the rooted plant that gets watered everyday, gets sun everyday, and in it's time will bloom.  I am the cactus in the desert, the succulent from Sacha, perhaps my most memorable present.  Strange, but of all things I can remember, it is that sun succulent and it's tiny porcelain pot that's crystallized in my mind right now, on our old porch in the marina, on it's own single stool in the sun.  The green of the tall thick reeds in the background, the sound of the fountain in the koi pond.

When a plant gets more than it needs, it gives back with it's beauty.  My baby, she sprouted and bloomed one day and as time passed, reached to the sun in salutation for all to see.  She swelled with grateful pride.  What a role model.  And to think that those were hard days...

Not because I worked too much,
but because I didn't work enough.

Do not forget the focus, fool.
Do not forget the Spanish couple set
right beside you.
What reminded you.
You lived in a city once for a short while
and it always sounded so.
And to you they were less words with meaning,
more music.
More sound of life
with melody and meter
and unfiltered emotion that didn't distract,
but made the foot tap in the mind,
like life as a catchy tune.
I was writing in those days.

I see her just outside the terminal, and she's smiling.  There's a chill in the air.  Hola, Argentina.

Que Youth

As I was riding to In-N-Out, down a dark side street, Van Buren, the only streetlight in sight flicked twice and went out. right beside me.  Like click, click, Keyser Soze.  Like fuckin' Dumbledore with his lighter.  Come to think of it, I can't even recall if the light was on in the first place.  Non of the other ones were.  The whole street was black midnight, I could almost see the stars.


NOPE---------------->


Hola! Que Youth;

I'm at the Brig right now nigga.  Wednesday night.  Some girl dragged me here.  Well, we dragged to Zinque but they only have beer and wine, and to be honest, it's way too fuckin' French in there, by which I mean pretentious.

She says I should say:

"I am the active youth.  I am that friend preaching about the absurd reality that we all must cum to know.  Which is what youth is all about."

What can I say, she's young.

I wanna write this with some fucking Scotch.  Single malt, baby.  The cheapest thing they got is something called Glenrothes Reserve.  $11.  No French music in here.  No, good old bluesy hip-hop.  Good rhythm, good words.  I'm a writer.

All these other fucks are probably spouting' off about that one piece they wrote for VICE that one time or that two times.  Not me, motherfucker.  No, I write books about what it's like too be doe.  I self-published the first one.  I'll probably self-publish the second one if no one picks it up because hell, it's such a chunk of time to sell something like that.  Something just about Paris and women and writing.  No plots, no subtexts, no story arcs, just insufferable growth and a strive to pull meaning from the mundane everyday.  Spliffs help.  I hope you're beginning to get my drift.

Me, I work at that surf shop in Santa Monica among other things.  Travis' stuff going all the way back to his SURFING days is an inspiration certainly.  We showed one of Kai's movies in our parking lot, Dear Suburbia, and it was a fucking gas.  Craig gets all asian in the eyes when he's high, like blitzkrieg stoned and drunk, I know.  I remember things in the haze.

Summer in Winter

It was a real summer night.  July in Santa Monica.  I don't know who decided on Copa D'Oro, but that's where we were.  I'd never actually been inside the place before - just walked by it, driven by it, biked by it.  Come to think of it, I haven't been back to the place since.  Strange.

It's the kind of place that when you look into, doesn't look like all that much fun.  So what.  A place doesn't have to be fun for everything to happen at it.   It's dark, and it's not big, but it's also not cozy.  No one's really moving with much life in them.  The cool lounge music is just loud enough to mute all one's thoughts.

We gave it a go though.  The girls insisted.  Even away from the bar, conversations had to be a bit louder to be audible over the white noise of ambient thought.  Not everything got through, but when Lili said I should come out to Paris to write for a little, something sparked like a flint rock, and I snapped to and said, "Why yes, of course."

I don't think she entirely believed me, but we cheers'd and she said, "Ok. Good."  Even at the thought of it now, the idea sounds crazy.  But that night at Copa D'Oro, leaning on the wall bar in the warm dim light, two months in Paris seemed to me to be the most reasonable course of action.  The plan crystallized instantly.  The clarity was like a sharp adrenaline shot; it would be a two month round trip ticket, just like the one to London, and I would finish the book there.  Two months was plenty of time.  There was no weighing whether to go or not, just a lust to be back in Paris already, a wonder how, and a determination to make it so.  It wouldn't be easy.

Consciously, did I know what I was doing?  No.  It was a gut-run, sprinting blindly towards open doors.

Unconsciously, it was simple.
I was writing a novel.

And so from then on I did not drive the eight miles to and from the shop everyday, I biked it.  I did not go out and buy lunch everyday.  I made it at home with breakfast, and packed it in an old backpack with my black leather Piccadilly notebook and a mechanical pencil.  After finishing my lunch, I'd spend the rest of my hour break sitting at the beach with my feet in the sand, writing.  I listened to music, and I wrote in the sun and the sea breeze a short five minute walk from the shop.  I set an alarm on my phone to stop from continually checking the time.  That's determination.  That's fear of wasting our most precious finite resource; time (or is it money).

Layer Coke

They're playing that song from Layer Cake, the slow ballad with heavy strings and long notes when you realize that everyone's dead.
Strange.
I don't think I've heard that song anywhere else.
Which reminds me.
There was a day not long ago when someone's words were echoing in my head.
Well, maybe not words per se, but someone's idea of success was booming between my ears, and not in the good way.
It gave me an anxious unfulfilled air because my path and this idea, this image of success were two different things.
Not one in the same, no.
The success that they were larding, or at least that I saw in my mind was a career.  A salary, a 9:00 to 5:00, a parking pass and casual Fridays and free weekends; a ladder and a five-year-plan, disposable income, five day getaways; you know, a career.  It's a nice sounding idea, the comfort, the luxury down the road.
Me, I'm barely paying the bills every month.
Yet when I look back, as always, regret is hard to come by.  The way things have laid out are shockingly (at least to me) fortunate.  So I think I'll stick to the path.

Never look for something that you don't really want.

When times are trying, always remember what you asked for.

If I've learned anything in life, it's that one should never second guess himself; and power and influence are not one in the same.

In retrospect, the hard road is it's own reward.  Remember that.

Schwinn Winter Sport

Art gallery owners are almost always intellectuals.  Now that's not to say that they're especially smart, or financially acute necessarily, but they knew things.

These owners knew that although they didn't have liquor licenses, so long as they didn't actually sell any of the beer or the wine, they could serve it all night long.  Money's a funny thing in the art world.

You walk down the boardwalk, you'll see some art going for $20, $60 maybe; this hastily painted used skateboard deck for $30, this mask hand-carved with a hammer and chisel by a perpetually stoned Jamaican brother, carved from palm fronds that he fines on the beach in the morning, $50.  He sits there under his easy up all day, hammering away, and singing.  He's got a stiff accent in his style and in the way he talks to you in a passionate ganja stone.

Farther down the boardwalk there's a real painter.  A quiet hunched over fellow with dark skin with a shine on it and creases at the ends of his soft smile and his squinty eyes.  The painter works under a wide umbrella.  I've only ever seen him paint big canvases, painting with sliver brushes and a pipe leaned against his easel (or was in on the canvas itself) as a guide.  His pieces were at the same time detailed and meticulous, Caribbean realism with a lovely taste for scale in large environments.  Also, he always played old jazz records while he painted, and although he hunched, his chin was always held high; even when he looked down at his paints.

His canvases, big 5x5's, he would price at $2000.  Seeing him, I think, was the first time I really craved disposable income.  That being said, the only reason I ever went to an art show on Abbot Kinney was for the free beer.


ENDLESS WINTER = INVIERNO SIN FIN


It's Claire's birthday today. Biking home, it occurred to me; I need to start writing again.  What a shame it is really that the first thought in my head is one of dear old Abbot Kinney.  Gone are the art galleries and the free booze - the free beer and the wine because art galleries don't have liquor licenses, so they can't sell alcohol.

Ray, she's married.

Western

What Do I Say

It's funny--wait, you know what?  I'm tired of saying, "It's funny."  It's starting to sound like "nice" to me.  Instead, how about we consider this: Holy fuck!  Who knew fate liked to see the tree twist in the wind so much.  I guess the resistance leads to stronger living.  And it always comes down to the smallest moments, the most obscure, seemingly inconsequential decisions that can bring about monumental life plot points.

I answered the phone.  I could've just as easily let it ring--all the guests were checked in, I was on my way out the door with Max, I mad missed maybe twenty calls that night--but I answered it anyways.  I dropped my bag, sat down and said, "Venice Breeze Suites, this is Brian."

Trumpet Man

There's a man outside my window playing trumpet in the night.  Sad, slow notes.  He's sitting on the base of a streetlight on the boardwalk.  His shoes are tattered, his pants baggy.  The sleeves of his zipper hoodie are cut off; he's got musician arms.

People stop to say hello.  Friends.  A black man with a baby in a stroller.  A guy in a hat with a small dog.  They all talk like they know each other, and the trumpet man stops playing for a moment.  A high-five for the baby. She's wide-eyed in the fluorescent light.  It must be the music.  And the darkness pressing in from all sides.

I wonder what this baby thinks of him, looking up from her stroller; this trumpet man.

CHRISTIANITY / ?

The hypocrisy.  I find it somewhat puzzling and quizzical that the those with the most hate in their heart are usually religious.  They float on a cloud of egotistical righteousness through their lives.

Quickly now, before I forget.  We're sending them straight to heaven.

It's funny to think that because of science, the number of souls in heaven severely plummeted.  Children who would have normally died now survive.  Women no longer die giving birth.  It feels terrible to say, but did God not have a plan for them.  A fast-pass to his pearly gates that we've now denied.  In our fear of death.  Our inability to let go.  That's what's changed most, I suppose.  We've all prolonged our captivity in this body, letting our souls mold and sour much past their expiration date.

The devil came to us as power and wealth, and through that we became slaves to his ultimate tool: money.  They are the shackles of modern society.  No one is happy.  There is no peace.

None of the hardliners live like their Saviors.

Writing At Work

(on scratch paper)


You know, it shouldn't be this hard.  Even this, now, right now, my mind feels like its running circles in my head.  there's a sensation when you're looking at a lighthouse from a distance; it appears that its simply flashing, pulsing, like a metronome, constantly and directly at you.  Those are my thoughts now.  It's how they're coming to me, like little blips on a lurching storm-tossed horizon i need to get closer.

(next sheet)

It just happened again.  The flash and the darkness.  I need to be closer.  I need to be at the base of it, or better yet right there inside the head of the thing on the catwalk around the bulb, running around it at the same speed, looking right at it with my eyes jammed open and my whole body, hair-tip to toe-nail feeling the heat of the one million, twenty million, two hundred million candles, whatever it is, however strong it may be, it's blinding.

(out of paper)

It needs to be.  Blinding.  Or binding...

"The difference between the almost-right or and the right word is the difference between the lightning bug and the lightning."

~ Mark Twain

XOXONORI

"Eagles are sacred--if you see one, it means you're on the right path."

It's funny.  When I read that, I remembered.  I remembered those days living at home, jumping on the 405 right behind my parent's house at Howard Hughes Parkway, on the way to wherever in the daytime, blue skies and cotton clouds, and there at the peak as the onramp went up and over and yawned left into northbound traffic, there at the peak, above everything sat a brown eagle with streaks of black.  It was a large bird, scanning the vacant lot they're building apartments on now.  He wasn't always there, but I saw him often, and for some reason he always brought joy to me.

This was back when I was writing my first book, and I thought it was my destiny.  I thought I was writing a gospel, or at least that's what I told myself.  I was writing something people could believe in and follow, not just something to read.

And it felt so write right.

Universe

The universe is a wonderful thing.
From my bed,
looking back,
I can't believe all the people
I saw tonight,
all the cigarettes I smoked tonight.
And from what?

If I remember clearly
and I had to choose one thing,
it was the smell.
Riding home.
Hands off the bars,
and the curious smell
of burnt wood,
like an old camp bonfire.

Something I remember from long ago.

(like this shirt, it's damn near six years old)

Finn McCool's

There's an old-timey sounding bluegrass band playing tonight.
When I look over at the band though,
they don't look so old-timey.
They look young,
just a little bit older than me;
one guy with a beard,
one guy with a stand-up bass,
one guy with long hair playing his guitar facing up,
metal twang tube,
and I'm still sitting across a table from the girl I've always wished for.

It's Wednesday,
it's happy hour
and I'm (not) drinking a Black Wednesday

It's a Je Suis Charlie,
a French margarita by the taste of it.

Selfish Me

"I could have died in your arms, now I'm back at your feet."

(It's a song by The Love Language)

I met a Swedish teacher today.  He was here in LA going over his lectures for the next class.  He's a professor in Literature, so we get to talking, the usual.  Not the same old story, but not unlike it on my end.  "I'm a writer," I tell him, and it goes on like it always does.  Like that scene from I Heart Huckabees when Dustin Hoffman plays the recordings to Jude Law.

Tuna salad, no mayo.  

Like that, you know.  Something I've said before, almost to the point of practice.  But I like it.  It's something I like to talk about, because when I talk about it, I suddenly feel like writing, so I write.

While we were talking I came to a soft realization.  I asked him, "So what do you guys look at in these novels - you and your students.  What do you talk about."  And it suddenly occurred to me that most of these novels are these incredible stories.  Over-the-top, awe-inspiring courage or horror, or the worst of things or the craziest of things happening to these characters, made up or not.  There's death.  There's deceit or destruction, or some callousness and pain and torture of the soul or mind or something, some overcoming of great odds.  And through these stories, made up or not, the author tries as he or she might to shine a light on a great universal truth.

Or not.  Sometimes it's just a fuckin' story to make you say, "Oh my god!"

Or to give perspective.  To make someone take a step back for a second and see the whole world instead of just what's in front of them.

So realization: I don't have any good stories.  They're plain Jane.  Banal.  Eh.  Chicken and rice.  So I guess I just gotta flavor the shit out of them.

Honestly, plenty of good writers do.  Writing about the everyday.  The day-to-day, the routine, and what it means.  Hell, I think I just write about it (and I can say this now because I'm single again) to keep from killing myself out of disappointment.

That's the universal failure: giving up.

Never gather moss.  Never roll slow, or at least never stop.  Whatever it is that you're doing.

I guess my roll is writing (role?).  I'll take pictures to just for the fun of it.

Thanks, Eriksson.

(His name is Sven lol. I only know one Sven and he's a mannequin)

Man's Rationale

"It's okay, I dated a black guy once.  Well half."

"You half dated a black guy? Did you half fuck him too?"

"I didn't fuck him at all actually."

"Then what's dating constitute? So you got dinner with a black guy once..."

"I was on tour with him for a month and didn't want to fuck him until he could prove that he could stay faithful on tour."

"Gag. I never understood that."

"What."

"Why being faithful to someone means you don't fuck anybody else.  Since when?"

"Since forever, idiot. This is why you never have girlfriends."

"Yeah but faithful? Why faithful? Being faithful is to believe in something.  I can still believe in someone and fuck other girls.  I don't believe in them any less.  To be true?  I won't tell lies.  Just don't ask me questions that could hurt you.  Be pain averse.  Believe in me that I believe in you.  It's a two way street, and I don't think sex should necessarily be a part of it.  Relationships centered around sex never work out.  It's the cap to the cookie jar, it's the vinyl record plastic wrap, something to take off first to get to all the sweet inside, all the music and the words and the art and the images and the everything that defines love.  Sex is the latex condom standing in the way.  And I've never liked rubbers."

Winter's End

Madelyn was making bow-ties at the time.  But they weren't for boys.  Girls only.  Bow-ties for women.  Power women.  Tycoon Neckwear she called it.  She made all the bow-ties herself, and she sold them online and in little boutiques all around Los Angeles, including the one she worked at occasionally on Sawtelle by all the Japanese noodle places.  I'd always flirted with her, she was interesting to text and to talk to, and we got dinner a handful of times, there at the very end, just before Paris.

I was good at dating then, I knew how to charm a girl, especially the quirky sexy ones.  She had thick red Angelina Jolie lips, Madelyn, and athletic legs from I don't know what.  That's just the way she came, I guess, and she came with a healthy ass too.  Slim arms, she was fit. A sharp jaw, straight hair.  Brown eyes, thin neck.  Sophisticated sex, she was.  A wild dancer.  A quick thinker.  A women who knew what she wanted, and knew what power was too.  The physicality of it, sure, but she knew it was a strength of mind as well.  And she was strong.  She was intimidating. but back in those days, I always liked a good challenge.  I reveled in them actually.  And she was keen on me.  At least I think she was, for whatever reason.

[stop]

Was I so attractive really?  What is it about me that hath women fall to their knees about me?  What is the look that I always see in their eyes, always so discernible.  It's not sex, it's intrigue.  I know, I know.  Physical attraction plays a role, I'm sure.  But for now, and for all you reading, let's pretend its what we all call charm.

I seemed charming to her, I suppose.  In a cavalier sailorly sort of way, because immediately off the bat, she knew I was up to no good.  That I had a mind for the more carnal aspects of nature.  And she reveled in it.  She liked me alone in romantic places.  At dinner.  At houses she was watching for a friend.  All by herself.  Vulnerable.  She was trusting.  And with me she believed there was nothing to fear of.  Except healthy sex and a familiar, elusive back pain and a strain through the inner thighs that she longed to get back again.  I don't know.

I'm only guessing.  I took her to dinner at Mao's, of course.  As always.  I bought a bottle of wine beforehand.  From Trader Joe's.  A four dollar Malbec.  Nick was our server at Mao's, as always.  He said hi, and we talked quickly and quaintly like every other date I've been on there.  The toe of Maddie's boot ran up my leg while Nick and I talked swell and wave height and the short rides in the South Bay.

I ordered the Curry Rice Stick with BBQ pork.  She loved it, and afterwards we went to a local arts show at the north end of Abbot Kinney in an old one-story, wood-siding, beach house sort of place.  It wasn't a shallow building, it went deep, and although the pieces weren't necessarily jaw-dropping or particularly thought provoking, they were plentiful and filled all the various nooks and crannies nicely.  In one such cranny, there was a man drawing caricatures and in another a man serving drinks - glasses of wine or beer - free of charge.  We went to the bar first and left with quite the kitchy drawing of the two of us with oblong noses and broad lips, and in the car back to her place, I had my hand on her leg, and she would raise her knee up, her foot balanced on the balls of her feet, coaxing my hand upward.  Or downward depending on your vantage point.

LOOK WHAT THIS FEELING HAS DONE TO ME

We drove back to her parent's house.  In her room, she pulled her dress up over her head.  Black lace. Why is it always black lace?  Girl's got taste.  And one hell of an ass.

I told her I couldn't get hard with a condom on.  "I wish I could, but it's the unfortunate truth," I said.

"Well, have you been tested?"

"Yes, just two months ago." I lied.  "I'm clean trust me."

"Are you sure?"

"Yes. Positive." I wish I wasn't such a good liar.

"Well, fuck me then already."

I did.  Healthily.  I didn't cum though.  In the morning I had to leave early for work, and I kissed her good-bye, and told her I'd see her after Paris maybe.

It was a week until my flight.  Paris beckoned.

I'd never been more ready to leave.  I'd never been so lost.  It was some great adventure to be found though.  The process.  When I look back, now, from Buenos Aires, it's beautiful.  But in the moment I was such a mess.

The test results came back two days later.  I got a call from my doctor telling me I had chlamydia, so of course I freaked so he calmed me down, and told me it happens to everyone and that I'd just have to pick up a prescription.  It'd be fine.

I wasn't worried about my body though, as I assume he thought.  I was worried about the responsibility.  I picked up the prescription in the Marina, a day before my flight.  Maddie was the only girl I called.  She deserved better.

I felt a duty that I couldn't ignore, and to my luck it went straight to voicemail.  It was the hardest message I'd ever had to leave.  To anyone.  If you've been there, and you were man enough, you know.

An hour later, Mom was taking me to the airport.

Hotels, Man

And so it is, not starting now, it is.  I'm a hotel man.  At a desk and a computer with a most minimal of work tasked to me.

And so it is.  I must make my own work now.  I must create, I must write, I must do what feels right again, not what feels easy.  Not droning on the Internet for hours, no--God, no--give me the strength.  I must write.  Even this, now, the pencil to paper feels infinitely more, infinitely swell, infinitely better than the hours before in the abyss online.  This is what I needed, this is what I always need to do here at this desk.  I need to write. 

I need to feel this ache in my hand again.

Birthday Girl

When The Levee Breaks

I work doubles now.  Friday and Saturday.  It seems funny to me though that it's not the work that's killing me.  It's the school.  Or more precisely, not the school, or the work (well, maybe in part the work), but the proximity of the end.  Of school that is.

What really irks me though is this picture.  Look at it.  Ugh.  The joy in that child's face.  The secrets, the love, the curiosity.  The struggle.  The diaper butt.  It's all from a time that no longer exists now.  There is an incredible animation in the living of these kids.  Their eyes see past their hands and hell, who knows what they're thinking about.

No phones, no Internet, no video games.  Welded pipes bring them infinite joy.  Maybe they're not as articulate, not as knowledgeable as the children today.  But you know what?  I'd bet the farm that they were sure as shit a lot more pure.  In every emotion.  And to such an amplitude that it echos through the decades to us now, and I think to myself, "Fuck, that must've been cool.  To be so free of the mind."  When they take pictures of kids in New York in the future, it's going to be slack faces looking at digital screens.  And forty years from then, someone will see the pictures and say, "Man, look at all the fun they're having.  I wish life was still like that."

Modest Mouse

I heard it and I remembered what it was like.
The last time I heard that song was a while ago, when I was a different me.

But then,
Now where am I?
I'm sitting in In-N-Out.
Corner bar stool, 12:45 in the morning on a Thursday.
Today took me from a lovely breakfast on Main Street,
sweat-shop labor for eight hours,
Scopa with some movie guy,
then a spliff on the beachfront and homework,
and stories and talk,
and now In-N-Out.

It's some life, man.

Textures

Shade Balls

I'm in the shade under patio fans.  What's a wonder to me is how everything can change in a year.  It's in the summer breeze, these things.  This wondering.  I smell women on the wind again.  I get anxious, my heart races, like I've woken up again to the same old and I've just been dreaming this whole time.  All of it.  For a fortnight, a long spell, maybe more.

Looking back, I surprise myself.  I'm a better man than I thought I was.  I'm capable of more than this, this present state.  I've been biting at the bit for some time now.  The frustration swells and floods over weekly.  It's palpable, this yolk.  There's a physicality to it.

I want to write so bad that I can't contain myself sometimes.  I yell, "Fuck!" and punch something just walking down the street because I know now what focus it takes, this writing, and right now I don't have it.  I can't spare it with everything else right now.

It's maddening to know that something so intangible as focus can be so finite.  Even now, fuck.  I wish for September and the patience to see me through this month.  I pray for the day when I wake up and school is no longer the looming thunderhead in my mind.

Like a bull in the paddocks,
what comes next will be prolific.

My hand hurts.
It's not used to writing this much.
It's not as tight as it used to be.
That's all going to change soon.
Remember it's a muscle
(this writing)
The strength of it,
it's power comes from exercise.

What It Do

HOMEWORK

My computer froze and crashed and I just lost everything.

There's a lesson here, I know it.

Or a sign, I suppose.

*****

I'm on molly with Claire, laying in bed naked.  Her dress is wrapped around her waist and the perfect curve of that perfect ass is just raised slightly to the air.  I think she's asleep now.  Ass in the air.  Perfect.

And we're breaking up.

But you know what?  Something tells me that it's all going to work out.
In the end.

Handsome Family

It's been a while since I've written while looking at the beach.  Well, I'm looking at the beach now, like right now.  I'm on the bridge over Topanga Creek, on the westside of PCH, facing south, and to the left, there's the ocean.  Seagulls flapping heavy in the sun air.
It's fucking lovely.
And I just surfed.
And smoked half a filtered spliff.
Nina Simone's jivin' off the iPhone.
What a summer day.

There's a lot to be said about the last two years of my life, and I haven't said it yet, much less written it down, not most of it.  But see, that's what the rest of it's for.  Today I was thinking about all the fucking things I have to do.  And I thought, why am I doing all these things.

[a man-bun just walked by, with his mum]

The point is, son, is that life's all about people wanting you to do things.  You know like for them or for other people.  The trick is to make sure you're doing the things you like.  And you're doing it for you.

Fuck all the rest.
Get money.
Fuck hoes.

I just saw my reflection in a woman at the Chevron on 4th and Pico.  We both needed air in our tires.  She had brown skin just the tint that would, like me, be ethnically ambiguous.  She had sunglasses on.  She was wearing workout clothes, and was athletic, and slightly masculine, and still very attractive.

And she was driving the same fucking car as me; white Ford Explorer Sport, same year, except her's had a black back hatch panel.  That was strange.  I wonder if she's writing about it right now...

Start Spring.
Winter can wait, but always work on it.
Start Spring.

(and remember what Broah said)

This Is

Like a dream, I remember her.

And as such, I don't know where she came from.  But she is before me now as I sink into the familiar couch, Sacha's spliff in my hand and the disco ball from the amp painting in all it's neon colors: red, blue, and green, and pink.

She's dancing in roller-skates on the Moroccan blue wood floor, in tiny green sequin shorts and a loose-cut halter top, and her name, of all names, is Rachel, which is why I remember.

I remember meeting her once, just once, here, a couple years back.  A bright summer sun was coming in with the breeze.  I maybe spoke to her for a minute, no more.  About what I don't remember, but her name, she told me her name, and I remember thinking, "Rachel, what a coincidence."

I remember she made an impression.  One that I'd all but forgotten about.  Until tonight.

It's like a dream, this is.

My hand changes colors when I put it to the light.

Vintage

A Schvitz

Christ, I think I'm losing it.
I really think I'm losing it.

I can't think with the thoughts, all the thoughts and things.  I can't even find the words to write anymore, and what I can only describe as a cold dread has been lingering in the back of my mind for I don't know how many days on end.

It's a frustrating feeling I have, constantly.  Like a new thought is taking off like a fucking bottle rocket in my head every seven seconds.

Whizz, pop!  Whizz, pop!  Whizz, pop!
Whizz, pop!  Whizz, pop!  Whizz, pop!

And then it's gone.

And I'll see it's shadow throughout the day, but it's only there for a second above water, like a whale breathing, and then whoop, gone.  Something new.  Something I need to do.  Always something I need to do, something new.

I'm sitting, staring at a Lazy Susan that won't stop spinning and I fucking don't know what to do.

BsAs: Mouthy

La Boca in the winter on a weekday is a perfect place to see.  In the daylight and empty streets.  Not empty, I should say.  It' no ghost town.  It's just the day-to-day.  The throngs of people aren't choking the cobblestone, the marketplaces are deserted save for a few salty painters, ground into the routine of  life.  An artisan life.

I should write everyday.  I should routine like them, and when I see the focus in their furrowed brows, the deep lines in their weathered faces, I dream of looking myself that way in the distant future at their age if I'm not laying in the ground dead somewhere.

My trusty Nikon's in my right hand, the strap wrapped half a dozen times around my wrist, just to be sure.  The spliff we smoked at the apartment before leaving is wearing off slowly.

It's an hour on the bus from Villa Urquiza to La Boca.  But it was a good day.  It wasn't raining, and the sun beat down in sharp contrast, along with his writing ability.

Dreamy on a crisp air, so the colors look rich.

Oh, bother.  I can't write like that any more.  I'm full.  And uneven.

The way it's -




























Looking out at the port, I couldn't even see the horizon.  Not even close, just the other side of the derrick really.  And some high rises behind that, and then I think the water.  Right after the wetlands.  "l could live here," I said.  "I have this affinity with the ocean, see, it feels like home to me."

"Are you a rapper?"

"No... No, I'm not. Why do you ask?"

She looks at me like a sarcastic brooding Argentine, looks at me.  "You're rhyming."

"Who me?" stumbling on the uneven cobble.

She nods.

"Hmm.  I see..."

I think she's had it, she nods, and looks at me.  "That's not the ocean.  That's La Plata."

"I know," I say. "Not here, but you know, past those high rises.  And maybe the wetlands.  I could surf there right?  Like if I'd actually brought my board and my wetsuit with me?"

She sighs.  "I mean, maybe. But it's not the ocean.  It's La Plata.  That's why this is 'La Boca'.  It's the mouth of the river."  Pointing at her lips, spread open. "The mouth."   Tracing them over once. "Uruguay is on the other side"

"Gotcha.  Well, why are these all made of metal siding?"

"This was - " Shaking her head,  "No, this still is kind of a ghetto.  This were old sailors residences.  The port mouth," looking at me.  Lips spread open.

People were actually closing up shop for the day.  At 3:00 in the afternoon, 15:00, closing up.  We just got in at a ratchet little corner pastry chef while he was bringing the one plastic kid chair in from
outside by the door.  She talks to him, thank god, and I zone out to their dialogue. Look around.

What's funny is that I'd been on the same street a few nights ago.  With Andrea.  It was raining.  No, it was fucking pouring, and we were running.  All the way from San Telmo, down Paseo Colón in the rain, taking cover under awnings, on one of those wide street building porches.  We'd met friends.  A singer and her brother at a corner gas station and then ran down a street and to cover in La Boca Juniors restaurant on... Suarez I believe?  I got the milanese.

"He's going to give us some things to go.  What do you want?"

"Dos empanadas.  Por favor."

"Yes, what kind."

"Un pollo, un carne.  Por favor.  Gracias."

She looks at him and cracks a smile like-

"Hey."

"We'll eat outside," she says to me."  We eat on what isn't quite a loading dock, and isn't quite a porch or a bridge or anything really more than a superfluous incline to plateau for 3 meters, then decline.  We sat on the plateau with our feet dangling a foot off the ground, eating our empanadas.  The walkway's broken concrete.  The street's got holes in it through to the dirt.  A stray dog runs by, slowly to survey us and the smell of our food, but he gets along.

It's was a good empanada.  Or was it milanese?

BsAs: Cemetery

I'm at a cemetery writing, sitting just outside on a little stoop with other cool kids listening to a guy play a sideways guitar with a little metal pipe.  It feels oddly American.  But then again, so does most everything else in this country.  The style of it, although I'm not used to cold cities.  Maybe this is what Austin's like.  More Spanish, of course, but cool.  Buenos Aires is a cool city.

That's what it is in the winter.  In July.  It's chilly, and all the stone looks cold.  Recoleta is a big walled thing.  And inside is not a grassy field of tombstones, no, it's a maze of mausoleums.  Ancient tombs, each it's own grand structure.  I wish I was buried in here.  Despite the loud artisan markets outside the walls, there is a palpable quiet that whispers down the long skinny footpaths.  I want to come back here at night when there's no sun and maybe a full moon.  I'm sure it's amazing, although I'm not certain if it's open at that lovely hour; midnight, when the spirits are the strongest.  I wonder what they would whisper to me then.  I wonder what they would say.

But before all that, I should really brush up on my Spanish.

Seriously though.

Raymond

There is a strange feeling here.  It's like short-sightedness.  I only say that because I'm very sensitive and particular when it comes to my vision.  I need to have a view of something to do work, open space, and right now it's like looking straight at a wall and when I look out the window it's a wall, literally.  I'm looking at a wall.

There's no wonder, there's no story out there, just stucco across a skinny driveway.

And when I say everything is connected, this is what I mean.

I've found comfort in a beautiful cage with nothing to see.  

And as such, all the feelings that had meaning to me were lost in the bliss.  In a placenta of ignorance and numbing domestication.  It's why the cows come home and the horses run free.  

I didn't realize the reins weren't in my hands 'til just now, right this very moment.  Some had been walking me at a trot.  And I love her.

PS this is not an allusion to Carver, it's a street name.

Convention

Everything feels like--

We were on the phone, her and I, and as I walked into the kitchen she paused because there's bad reception in the kitchen, and she said, "I'm losing you."

The Job

My mind's' running in seventeen different directions.  Full speed.  Sprinting, but I'm not moving.  And my hair is going with it.  How did I get here?

When i listen to Cotton and Velvet, it feels like Paris again.  That was three years ago.  Or was it four, I'm not sure.  Lili's married now.  She's married.  And Claire's home.

Why isn't this perfection enough?  I can still remember writing on Tonya's balcony on Market St.  That was a week before Paris, or a month maybe.  I was so high.

It's almost difficult to put the feeling of that initial anticipation into words, that fervor, that unknown, that biting at the bit, that dreaming, but I'll try.

It's like flying.  With your eyes closed, like sky-diving in your sleep.  But upwards.  It's immaculation.  Maybe it's the Cotton Jones.  My Jones may be my tuning fork, I think.  My metronome.

I don't know what's happening.


What if all I wanted was to have a family in a hotel--no, (this is indecision) have a family and live in a hotel.

More Importances Of Being Ernest

Thank God I'm still writing.

[and then I ran out of weed]

But I remember Oscar Wilde.
I remember his smartness
and the way he made me think in Argentina.
I had a real hunger there,
like a food hunger, as well.
Perhaps it's not the season,
but the months that give my fingers jitters.
Those on the other side of me and my months,
like zodiac signs.

It's the months of summer in the northern hemisphere,
come fresh from the Spring Offensive.

Mais Je Digrissé

Dear Paris,


When a young man goes to you, what is it he's looking for?  What does he want most in this world?  This one wants to write a book, he says.  What do you think.

Well, I think he's running away.  He's afraid, and he's finding comfort in women, and some to the point of love.  After all, I'm Paris.  Who's not coming for the love.

He was invited.  By Lady Lili.  She's an old friend from high school.  Princess Lili.  Souler star Lili.  He says he didn't fall in love with her, he fell in love with someone else in Paris.

Did he now.  So does he know then?

Know what?

The scent of a woman.

He knows their scents, yes.
Each one of them is different, he says.
The scents, not the women, he says.


[I love that they always sing about girls]

Don't. Stop.

She was the daughter of a cop.
That arc to her when she bends over,
And she looks in the mirror.
Self-realization.

Where?
In an analyzing,
then content way.
A look.
An image of oneself.

Mirrors, man.
We're talking about mirrors.

[Exit, Mayer Hawthorne]

This Is The Future

This is what happens tomorrow.
The music stops.

Wow, that was stupid.
The music's back on guys.
We're okay.
But man that was trippy.
I don't think I've ever written an entry in the future before.
But hell, who knows, maybe I have.
And the blink-of-an-eye.
She's beautiful.
Long shirt and a dalmatian under a clearing sky.
She looks like Claire.
In a choker and black boots.
And dark roots.
Maybe it's about love.

That's comforting.

Europe By iPhone

Holy hell.  I forgot about that, until just now.  The (and I'm guessing here, wildly at that) Platitudes of Europe by iPhone.  I'd damned near made that one.  And now my words are jumping.  The layouts.  Maybe the pictures as paintings.  Posterized.  I'll need to figure out how to open that file.  I have it now, the .book file.  All I need is the key.  She makes me remember things.

Guest No. 94

Like the old Mark Twain tale, and the mysterious stranger Satan.  Except no, I need to be quick.

One of the few constants that still remain in my life, through all the years, is In-N-Out.
My double-double and my strawberry vanilla shake.
It's an oldie, but a goodie.
And now it's time for school again.
Vancouver was a dream.
Was it?

It's playing tricks on me.

Beach Blonde

Met Gala Scene

She's at the Met Gala.  At the Met Gala, before you even get into the place, it's ritual custom to get one thousand photographs taken of you.  She's good.  She walks the red carpet at a constant pose.  Some famous designer draped upon her.  It'll be in the tabloids for a week, for sure.  She's smart, which is scary.  Her eyes never stay on the same lens for more than a second.

But these are pros on the other side.  The best.  The best cameras, the best flashes.  A second's all they need.  After all, they're in it for the money.

So is she.  

Once in, the necks crane.  It's her.  She's used to it.  She looks for people she knows.  Say what you will about her vanity, that girl can scan a room in under three minutes.  A room of three hundred faces lit low from the high rafters.  Three minutes tops.  She's knows a lot of the faces, doesn't care for most.  Ah, a friend.  That bitch, she's by the bar.  So typical.

She feels his eyes on her bare back (that famous designer despised dresses with backs) like the midnight sun in the dark, like a heat lamp or coming out of shade in the summer day, and her flower opens to him and she turns to look at him, and what she sees she's most certain of.  She's never seen him before.  Not ever.  Not even once, not in the papers, nowhere.  

Set at the other end of the bar with a pencil in hand.  He twirls it in his fingers and then writes in a palm-sized black notebook on the bar.  And then he twirls again and writes a little more, not glancing at the pencil and the words coming out, but at her.  She's coming towards him now.  Then back down at the words.  Then back at her.

She's curious.  Which, to be true, is a feeling usually lost on her.  But she's curious.  It's in her eyes, this curiosity, and in her eyes are reflected his own.  When they're looking at her.  He's still writing.  What the hell is he writing?  

When he stops writing as she nears, he doesn't break her gaze.  The pencil's still in his hand though. His left.  With his other, he cleanly swipes a tumbler off the bar and empties the contents, golden, save the ice cubes, and then she's on him.

"Hello, darling."

"Let me guess," she says.

"Guess..."

Her eyes flick to the empty tumbler, then back to his face.  At this range he's much more real.  He didn't shave today, perhaps yesterday though.  It's an almost fresh face.  There's no product in his hair either, which is a shame, she thinks, because it would look so good with a little style to it.  It's wild.  Not in a long way, not disheveled, but in the way of someone who's constantly running his fingers through it.  

"Ah, the drink. I like this. By all means.  Read me like a book, love."

"It was a fine whiskey, wasn't it."

"Brave try.  It usually is actually.  But no, tonight it's tequila, equally fine.  It's a night for uppers."

"And tequila is an upper," she concedes.

"Tequila and champagne, Miss... I didn't catch your name by the way."

"It's Kendall."

"Well Miss Kendall, I must say.  You're quite the stunner."

"What are you writing?"

"What do you mean?"

"I saw you writing and then you stopped.  What were you writing?"

There's a piece of paper on the bar, note-sized, that he quickly folds in half with one hand and sees into the inner pocket of his jacket.  "Oh, it's nothing."

"Nobody writes nothing. I want to know."

"Have a drink with me first, then maybe I'll tell you."

"No, tell me now."  It's strange.  This rejection.

He smiles, and glances over her shoulder.  "I think your friends coming.  Tell her she's pretty for me, will you?"

She turns, and he kisses her on the cheek, like an old French friend.  And then he's gone.

"Kendall! Oh my God, who was that?"

It's like a dream she remembers from long ago.  "I don't know.  He said you were pretty though."

"Oh my God, really?  

What do you think?  

Too glam?  

Kendall?  

Oh my God, Kendall.  

Snap out of it."

She takes a deep breath and closes her eyes quickly and shakes it off before realizing her hand's clenched on something, right hand.  It's a piece of paper, palm-sized, folded over once and ripped on one side.  In penciled and clean writing it says:

Well, you're just about the prettiest thing
I've seen since spring.
Call me tomorrow
310.227.6314

"310. That's an LA number."  She's whispering to herself, her tight lips curling ever so slightly on one side.

"What that? Kendall baby, I missed it.  And what's that?" She's noticed the note.

She folds it up again and reaches through the side of her dress, first up (fuck! that's right, no bra), then down (thank god I wore panties) and slips the folded note into her tight silk-thin panties, right over her clit.  She bites her lip.  "Nothing," she says, grabbing her friend by the arm.  She's drunk, the friend.  "Who else is here?"  Meanwhile in her mind she repeats the number over and over and over again, seven times because she read somewhere it takes seven repetitions to really remember something.

3102276314. 3102276314. 3102276314. 3102276314. 3102276314. 3102276314. 3102276314.

Writing Of Summer From A Winter

I was getting ready for Argentina this time last year, early June.  The gloom was in the air in Santa Monica, and it was winter in the South.  America de Sud.  I told myself that it was somehow fitting because I was going down there to write a book about Winter.  A strange winter, a difficult one, that took all of a year to plow through.  From Santa Cruz in the early fall, right up to the next October autumn.  With a long cold winter in between.  Yes, it's about a low, but hey, I had fun too.

This book is about Winter, true, but truer still I pray this story rings with the coming Spring.  That Spring, the one in the book didn't come until the summer.  'til the lease was up in Santa Cruz and I moved back down to LA.  In the summer, and sometime in July like pressure looking for release, I found it.  Or I should really say it was given to me in the female form of my good friend Lili.  And probably not in the way that you immediately pull away from that.  We were at a bar with some friends--bare with me.

So we're at this bar and we're drinking and talking just over the music in a dim-lit bougie hole-in-the-wall place by the pier in Santa Monica.  We didn't see each other often, like we used to in high school, so we always had a lot of catching up to do, and she's the kind a gal that's definitely fun to catch up with.

She always had her mystery men.  She'd secretly faun over and flirt with them.  But that life was a separate one, of more meaning and importance to her, than the one I used to be privy to.  Back before Paris.  But anyways, that's why I think she was so interesting in a way.  She always had some greater secret, some cunning that she's devised behind her eyes.  And well, you know me, dear reader.  I've always been one for a secret or three.

Miss Lili sometimes (rarely) had some for me.  Sometimes it's just so simple of a thing to say that can start some whole master ball rolling.  If it were marbles, this would be the slammer I'm talking about. It takes two things to send you that high: one, high pressure built up like rocket fuel, and two, a catalytic ignition.  Or hell, if the pressure's high enough, all it takes is a release valve; an escape route.

That's short sighted, but oh well.  Lili was studying abroad in the fall.  Studying "International Relations."  Uh-huh.  That night at the bar she said, "Come to Paris and write for a bit."


[stop]


What were those weeks like? Remember!

I can feel the seed sprouting in the sun here on the terrace at Boulevard.  Oh, this Sutton Place.  There were girls.  There was drugs and festivals, and two jobs up North, and living at home down South (see Running Away), me and my bicycle and my surfboard.  And of course my trust Ford Explorer Sport, the White Mamba.  And at the end, it all coming to a head, and release.  It's like Igby Goes Down.  Gag.  Somebody punch me.

The Globe And Mail

I never worked in construction, so I can't really say I know too much of the matter.  However, I am familiar with the feelings he's so enamored with.  That ant mentality, and the power of small things.  He had somewhat of a jarring experience to snap it into prominence, a fall, a hanging between certainties at a construction site.

Mine was on a tropical island.
After a night of motorcycles and beer.
And redemption as an antiquated belief system.

See, I believe in the truths, the uncharacterized and real defined tenets of naturalized crime and punishment.  I believe in comeuppance.  I believe in that which we deserve in our lives based on what we've done and how we've treated others.  I believe in respect, and in the certain specifics in my mind that come with earning it.  I believe in the value of design and the beauty of words.  I believe in a reasonable return-on-investment.  I believe in photography.

Modern Guilt

When I take a deep breath and step back to blink twice for fresh eyes, I can't help but think to myself, "What a strange and wonderful place this is that all my life's stumbling's taken me to."  To be a necessity in some wonderful woman's eyes, it's what any man would dream of, isn't it?  Or maybe that's the catch, the rump right there.  I never needed anyone in my life.  I had people, but I ran away. I was good at running, and I was always honest, which made me tricky, I suppose.  Did I need them though?  No.  There was never a need, I don't think (or maybe I'm just being daft) I never needed anyone.  But for forever and as long as I can remember, I'd always wanted and wished to be needed.

The old adage holds true: be careful what you wish for, as they say.  Except I think it'd be a hard stretch to call me careful.  Lazy, yes.  Scattered, most definitely.  But not careful.  No, being careful's about holding back, which personally I think is a waste of time.  The only thing I've been "careful" about is probably publishing books, and look how that's turned out.  No, if I'm going to be something when it comes to wishing, I'd rather be grateful.

Grateful.  Cognizant.  Deserving.

I need to deserve this, and that's how she makes me better.  Thank you, Claire.

Dustin Hoffman

Incredible actor.  The Graduate, have you seen it?  A must see, absolutely.  The crux of it is this tug-of-war between innocence and adulthood.  Well no, it's much simpler than that as well.  It's cat and mouse, predator and prey too.  It's the difference between what's right and proper and a societal norm, and what fervor of reality can really be.  It's not everyday, but it's out there, and it's perfectly possible; through any lens, with any set of characters.

And so what's easiest to see through other than the lens of one's own life?  So the setup is this: Two girls living in LA, roommates (because living by yourself is boring).  One recently received a Masters in Business online, she's the Graduate.  The degree was paid for by the company, she works in TV.  Roommate, best friend, soundboard, comic relief, etc. (see Caitlyn Ritter in Apt. 23) is a hair/make-up artist.  They met on set.  The Graduate is a producer, older, working with the studio.

At a work event, gala, awards ceremony, whatever, Graduate's boss makes an introduction, an older man, accomplished, show-runner/creator.  He's handsome, polite/cordial, maybe a little distracted.  He wears fine clothes and an expensive watch that he checks quite often.  He tells the Graduate he'd very much like to see her again.  They date.  He has a son, Archie.

Archie's younger, adopted at an older age by show-runner/creator.  He'd wanted a son, had never married (wasn't the best with women, always busy, like producer from Californication maybe?) Found him at a foster home, had flipped through his notebook, adopted him, took him home, and turned his story into an award-winning show.

Took notebook, by force basically, force of will, "I'll buy you another notebook, I'll buy you ten notebooks, this one's mine."

They don't like each other, not anymore.  Not after that.  But he's his son now, and father's always hoping to scoop up another hit.  Has the maids read the notebooks.

"I just write poetry in it now, a short story every now and again to keep his lips moist.  I'm not an idiot, I know how to keep my stay because honestly, this stay ain't bad.  I mostly stay out of sight.  Half the time, I think he just keeps me close, keeps me happy because he doesn't want it getting out."


Meetings:

(1)
Nice dinner at Big House with Creator; fancy, chef-prepared, waited on, candle lit, outdoor in the Hills, sees the son come in with a girl through the glass windows.  "Who's that?"
Pause, "That would be my son."
"You have a son?"
"I have a son."  He's a man with secrets apparently.

(2)
Party at the Big House.  Lots of people, best friend comes along, she likes to party.  Graduate sees her with Archie.  There's eye contact.  Graduate is at her man's side the whole time pretty much, has a few moments with best friend.  It's a launch party, new TV show.

(3)
Next morning, coming home, Archie's there in his underwear.  Friend is in the shower.  He put's his pants on, but not a shirt.  "You know what? I actually haven't the faintest clue where that might be... But come on, it's summer, and I run hot."
They small talk until friend comes out in a towel, and his shirt in his face.
"You're home! And you've met Archie, I see.  Archie, this is [Graduate].  [Graduate], Archie."
"[Graduate], hello."  And to Friend: "Ah, and that's where my shirt's been. Well, ladies," finishes coffee, "I must be off.  I've got work in thirty minutes."
Friend: Workin' on a weekend?
Graduate: You work?
Archie: No rest for the weary, love. (mouths) call me.  (to Graduate) It was a pleasure.
Girlfriend storytime: "I was actually talking to ACTOR for five minutes before his girlfriend walked over."
"You're such a little slut! Do you know who that was?"
"I don't know, the bartender?"

Archie's too charming, not a gentleman mind you, but a charming little shit.  And he curses like a sailor.

And eventually he's going to fuck his dad's girlfriend.  He's made up his mind about that.  He's a genius, but only pertaining to things he truly cares about.  He's cunning and manipulative.  He's Mrs. Robinson.

Big Minds: Archie, Graduate
Small Minds: Creator, Friend

Scene:
Creator's flying out of town for work, up north to Vancouver.  Graduate spends the night kisses him goodbye in the morning out the door.  She makes coffee.  Girl comes down, "Archie said there's water in the kitchen." She's a mess kinda.
"You're Uber has arrived."
"Oh, they usually have water in the car don't they. Ok, bye." She leaves.
As soon as the door shuts Archie sneaks down with a towel around his waist, smooth getaway, and unknowingly flashes the Graduate, and she sees him off guard, seeing her only after it was too late (long hallways, sweeping stairwell, whatever), then an awkward standard, "I just saw your penis" talk, before she says she really should be going.  "I really should be going," she says.
"Wait! Have you had anything today? You know, to eat?"
"I was just going to-"
"Because Maria's just made all this lovely food for two and Angela's up and called an uber for breakfast." Looking at the food... "I can't eat all that."
There's bacon.  We should know that the Graduate loves bacon.  And it's the fucking best-looking bacon she's ever fucking seen.

[cut to commercial]

There's a scene before at brunch with roommate that she goes off about bacon.  I should say on and on really.  She really fucking loves bacon, they both do.  It's  bonding point for both of them, the last piece of bacon, like Lady and the Tramp.