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.