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.