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.