fatty fatty

2010-08-08T21:37:00.000-07:00

2010-08-08T09:50:00.000-07:00

by Nephtali DeLeon.

2009-11-24T14:13:00.001-08:00

the decision shouldn't be

left to unicorns,

but that's simply how it is

2009-10-27T21:19:00.000-07:00

Am not sure why it took 25 years for me to notice.

I'm sorry, Proclaimers.

2009-08-02T10:27:00.000-07:00

North to the future.

2009-07-07T21:30:00.000-07:00

A few days ago, my mom asked if I've been writing.

I said no.

Then, "I guess I could write about being pregnant, but..."

And trailed off midsentence, which I do a lot of these days.

I've always felt secretly smug about my ability to summon extradimensional communicative powers when needed. But am finding that, with the cruel humor of a misunderstood, disrespected goddess, pregnancy amps my awareness of & confidence in this, while also sapping me of it.

That's why you don't hear the choir you really should, from my mouth.

2009-06-30T13:45:00.000-07:00

Eh -- mehh -- GEHH!!!!!!

2009-02-13T21:07:00.000-08:00

What would Lauren Hutton do?

2009-02-08T15:00:00.000-08:00

It is best to make up words in Scrabble (and, naturally, their definitions). I think so.

This morning:

zev: the number 10 in Hebrew

Selzfa: Zeus' wife's nickname

veawe: a polite address to a Spanish-speaking grandmother, when asking her to do something

Jtmuri: an ancient Central Asian tribe (the "j" is pronounced like a "y")

wewu: the name of a skin disease in Mayan (accent on the second syllable)

firny: the quality of a spot in a fossil where it is soft or goes to powder

2008-11-17T21:41:00.000-08:00

That's hot

I was just watching the Rocky Horror Picture Show on DVD, and found out Meat Loaf and Elvis Presley were introduced to each other at a midnight theater showing of the movie.

2008-08-28T08:56:00.001-07:00

(Reprinted without permission from fellow Costa Mesan but soon to be New Mexican Jaymie Pinkston's Myspace blog.)

Monday, August 25, 2008

Lance Star

the other night under the Castaway bridge in the bardo of the wrong which is the right side of the tracks, we made a little magic with Lance Star. He rode through to take a pee and we wrangled him in for a beer and some talk. Well we got a lot more than we bargained for. What a beautiful beautiful blessed soul we met last night. We often hang out with homeless people, well they are some of the more interesting types of people here with the important things to say, simple as that. When the shit hits the fan you want to be friends with the travelers, the strays, the outcasts--the ones who know the land and where to go and hide out. Those are my people--the people sensitive to patterns.

Lance Star has been homeless for 15 years forging his own path to the divine. He would rather stand up to save a tree being cut down then to work a job where his freedom of speech is held back. Many things he spoke of confirmed a lot for me. I saw many parallels in his visions as I have had in mine and have heard from others like us, such as the one about seeing the thousands of blue souls being rising from the Earth. I am again awestruck at the nature of creation, the simple feeling that hums through us all. We all agreed that what we are currently seeing is just the tip of the iceberg for this sick planet. A lot of shit is going to go down. All of the humans choosing to fill themselves with negativity and put their gifts and power into their almighty suffering Lord God will be getting another chance soon to make it better. A right fell swoop if you ask me. Who can say what for the rest of us, all I know is that I'm glad to be getting out of this cesspool and I couldn't be happier.

We will just keep bumping into each other again and again, lets make it fun and feel good this time around! Whatever happened to just rocking the fuck out? People here don't do that. But I am telling you that the institution of Rock n' Roll and milk and cookies will never die!

I am so sore today as that night we scaled a giant hill having heard a boy on mushrooms playing guitar. In the morning we walked home dusty and smiling at the leering morning passersby.

by Jaymie Pinkston

How to Make A Rainbow

2008-07-28T13:00:00.000-07:00

Make some light shine through some water, like in a glass. Or watch it going from the sun into rain.

The light has to be coming from behind you (so, it's light, then you, then water). I am not sure why yet.

I guess, Carlos, because water "breaks" light "down" into the "colors" it is "made up of"...this is how you make a rainbow.

(I don't really understand the parts in quotation marks.)

2008-07-18T23:47:00.000-07:00

Were you along, on the camping trip to the Kern River last weekend? Everyone spoke Spanish but us. There was loud cold reggaeton from a parked truck by the low spigot by the trash, at 9 am where we did dishes furtively, to help out. Tecate from around then on. There was a fire south, near Lake Isabella, that'd started two weeks before, and was still only half "contained". Someone passed us the Native American 12 Steps

I ADMIT I HAVE GIVEN UP MY POWER AND THAT MY LIFE IS OUT OF BALANCE WITH ALL THAT IS NATURAL

At night, after the astronomy slideshow, our main friend, a 6 year old named Angel, saw planets through the telescope in the flat, smoky dun, although he was alone in this. The men went out looking for wood and came back stoned.

Do you remember?

Well, if not, here are a couple sentences you missed.

I'm Pat, and I'm everything.

When I was in rehab there in Bakersfield.

Maggie, did you remember how to make a rainbow

2008-07-18T23:41:00.000-07:00

IQ level has no correlation with the quality of one's poetry.

I was relieved to see proof of this, and thought you might be too.

2008-06-15T20:34:00.000-07:00

There Is Wind, There Are Matches

A thousand times I have sat in restaurant windows,
through mopping after mopping, letting the ammonia clear
my brain and the music from the kitchens
ruin my heart. I have sat there hiding
my feelings from my neighbors, blowing smoke
carefully into the ceiling, or after I gave
that up, smiling over my empty plate
like a tired wolf. Today I am sitting again
at the long marble table at Horn and Hardart's,
drinking my coffee and eating my burnt scrapple.
This is the last place left and everyone here
knows it; if the lights were turned down, if the
heat were turned off, if the banging of dishes stopped,
we would all go on, at least for a while, but then
we would drift off one by one toward Locust or Pine.
- I feel this place is like a birch forest
about to go; there is wind, there are matches, there is snow,
and it has been dark and dry for hundreds of years.
I look at the chandelier waving in the glass
and the sticky sugar and the wet spoon.
I take my handkerchief out for the sake of the seven
years we spent in Philadelphia and the
steps we sat on and the tiny patches of lawn.
I believe now more than I ever did before
in my first poems and more and more I feel
that nothing was wasted, that the freezing nights
were not a waste, that the long dull walks and
the boredom, and the secret pity, were
not a waste. I leave the paper sitting,
front page up, beside the cold coffee,
on top of the sugar, on top of the wet spoon,
on top of the grease. I was born for one thing,
and I can leave this place without bitterness
and start my walk down Broad Street past the churches
and the tiny parking lots and the thrift stores.
There was enough justice, and there was enough wisdom,
although it would take the rest of my life - the next
two hundred years - to understand and explain it;
and there was enough time and there was enough affection
even if I did tear my tongue
begging the world for one more empty room
and one more window with clean glass
to let the light in on my last frenzy.
- I do the crow walking clumsily over his meat,
I do the child sitting for his dessert,
I do the poet asleep at his table,
waiting for the sun to light up his forehead.
I suddenly remember every ruined life,
every betrayal, every desolation,
as I walk past Tasker toward the city of Baltimore,
banging my pencil on the iron fences,
whistling Bach and Muczynski through the closed blinds.

by Gerald Stern

2008-06-14T11:49:00.000-07:00

I haven't written in here in so long, and am sorry. I've been going through kind of a sea change for the past year, and just haven't wanted to put it into words.

I stumbled onto this link when Googling "mexican feminist child rearing," though, and it got me putting everything into words, all of a sudden.

So, I read it and posted the ranty comments you'll see if you go there and go to the bottom. She replied with what she replied.

(And yeah, they're ranty, maybe because it all came out at once, for the first time, and I was pissed off. A little self-righteous, too. Oh well.)

Anyway, that's the sea I'm in.

2008-03-24T23:27:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was a fairly good day for sentences. I was told,

"green is your flavor"

and

"the chances of being a pop star is one in a million."

I think the best one from today was from Alex (4), who told me I'm fat. I said, o.k.

2008-03-13T18:24:00.000-07:00

My brother's both unmaterialistic and crackles of this world. Not an easy guy to buy a birthday present for. Circumstances beyond our control put us at odds with each other from the start, too. They evolved, but some years were lost in our friendship, during which I might've gotten to know him better.

Anyway, he always fascinates me, but is a little hard to decipher at times.

Now. I'm not a big sciencehead and can't say I check his website, Science Blog, daily. I did this morning, though, and realized two of my favorite things about him: his will to be optimistic for creaturekind (including humans); and his translation of that into physical reality.

Science Blog's a daily online magazine: science articles from journals, institutes and occasional newspapers, under subject headings like "Aerospace," "Geoscience," "Nanotech & Materials," and "Physics & Numbers." My brother chooses the articles, writes their headlines and posts texts beneath headlines. He also oversees advertising and reader-blogs. (It's a real-thing kind of a thing: by 5:44 p.m. PST today, 888 people had read one of today's front-page articles, 612 another.)

I was struck, today, by his generally positive editorial decisions, and how those seemingly small choices affected my mood. For example, headlines usually include an encouraging word (today's front page includes "readies," "boosts," "better" and "saves"). Headlines for "negative" stories, which could easily be tweaked for drama's sake (he's a clever guy), are moderately crafted (for example, today's "Energy Drinks Take Toll on Teeth" and "Tropics Are Next Emerging Disease Hotspot").

The positive headlines aren't misleading, either; articles generally imply faith in a...future. In no way is this part of the Armageddon machinery.

He's been quietly running this for years. For some reason only today did I notice his choices, though, and how they affected my outlook. I guess, also, what a volatile place the news in general has in my psyche.

On some level I believe everything I read, and from what I've heard, most people are built like that. How to deliver news seems to me like a pretty serious question, and "generally optimistically" seems to me the best answer. The possibility -- well, reality -- of a psychically safe place to get information about the state of us-and-our-environs (from a scientific angle, in this case) feeds my own faith in our future.

Thank you, brother! The more I know you, the better I like you!

P.S. A particularly fabulous story from today's front page.

2008-03-13T14:28:00.000-07:00

In other news, go buy this today. You can probably get it at your nearest health food store (but you might want to call and ask them first so you don't waste a trip).

It is called Ciao Bella Blackberry Cabernet Sorbetto.

I don't care if it makes you feel like a yuppy. You probably are one, anyway.

This is your assignment for today, with a half-page response paper by Monday.

2008-03-13T14:08:00.000-07:00

Dear MoveOn,

I want to thank you for two things: changing American politics in the direction I want it to be changed; and renewing my faith that there was still room for it to change.

I've been on your side 100%, until today.

Today's email, the ad for an ad contest for Obama (MoveOn's way of endorsing him?), really bothers me.

It seems so un-MoveOn to endorse one candidate over another -- when there are only two -- without explaining why.

Or did you send an explanatory email earlier, and I didn't receive it? (If so, could you please resend it?)

If not, though...MoveOn's all about ethicality and clarity and upfrontness, right? All the facts so people can make informed decisions, right?

So, what's the deal?

I assume there are others like me: folks who don't know which Democratic candidate to choose, but are slightly suspicious of the media's neutrality/coldness toward Clinton, in the face of its extreme hype of Obama.

For us, MoveOn's endorsement-without-explanation seems disturbingly in step with that very message: go with Obama because we want you to. Not, go with Obama for reasons x,y, and z.

Please explain the logic behind MoveOn's decision to endorse one candidate over the other without explaining why.

Thank you.

Maggie Sullivan
Costa Mesa, CA

Okay, I just had to say that. I'll get off my soapbox now.

2008-03-10T13:06:00.000-07:00

My car was stolen a few weeks ago, and then found, the morning after I reported it to the police. I'd been telling myself this is Newport Beach, it's an '84 Camry, no one'll care enough to find it; getting it back, and so fast, was surprising. Kind of a relief, too, that it hadn't been misplaced; I was still very spacy from surgery a couple weeks before, and only about 80% sure where I'd parked it last.

But it was stolen, and was found, intact in its blanched crustiness on modest Bimini near Baker in Costa Mesa (the 2006 engine was somehow still there).

Either way would've been okay -- I miss the bus -- but the delivery-back of the car was touching for me. Not the car itself, so much, but parts like Officer Navarro, who picked me up from Enrique's and drove me to where it was, rather than my having to pay to get it out of the impound lot (he didn't think that was fair to victims).

He said now that the rain had stopped things would be warming up. He referred to me as "the victim" several times, which I enjoyed. He and I were about the same age, I could tell by how he talked about K-Earth (which was playing in his car). People younger and older than me may be okay being cops, but not people roughly the same age, we're not cut out for it. He said he used to listen to jazz and I decided before he could explain that he'd stopped because it kept him out of cop mood.

He was extremely thorough and polite in his dispatches to "Beth" on the other end (that was when most of the "victim" stuff came up), and then later with everyone else. When I saw him toward the end of the whole thing, patiently waiting in his car for word back from headquarters that I was clear to take my car home, he looked sort of small, and sort of old. And I suddenly felt like part of this place. For the first time, I think.

It was a random, liberal-looking grayhaired householder, Sue, on Bimini who thought to call the police about the car in front of her place. She and a stocky female detective were chatting beside it when Officer Navarro and I got there. I felt so grateful to Sue. She and the detective talked about the beautiful "forest" in front of Sue's place, and how Sue sometimes even naps out in her yard, the trees protect her so well. The detective warned her about people hiding in her bushes and Sue said she has a guard dog. This turned into a conversation about geese, the detective suggested she get geese because they take no nonsense from anyone. I suddenly felt like with a couple of costume changes, we could be in an illustration in a children's nursery rhyme book, like in Low German, from like the 1800s or something.

Sue eventually ducked out and I talked more with the detective lady. The glove compartment was open and receipts in little balls on the floor below it. Though she never said it, I began to understand that she'd carefully examined every single thing in my car. Like the affirmations sheet in the back seat about fertility and children; cheapshit movie magaines; Spanish flashcards; and the dust. She'd tried unsuccessfully to get fingerprints off the "contents of the bag" (a small brown paper bag holding a few cassettes). Toward the end she complimented the broom in my back window, calling it a "bezom," which I believe may have been Wiccan sign language.

Eventually word came that I was free to take the car. We all waved to each other as I drove out. As I left I wondered if -- while getting the crapster back was definitely a good and convenient thing for me -- it might have even been like 1% better for them. An entirely positive thing, I mean. As I thought about that possibility, I felt a lot of love for them.

The rest of the day was a rainbow. I spent way too much time and money at RiteAid (they sell these gorgeous Indian skirts and blouses now, which of course took forever to consider). It seemed like only women were working there that day, all easy and funny. Finally tore myself away and home...continued the post-fumigation (oh, we'd also just been fumigated) put-back...and then, got my first period since the surgery.

I was so proud. Not of myself, exactly, but of bodies. They try.

2008-01-09T20:25:00.000-08:00

San Diego graduated from high school.

Finally.

I was thinking after eight years maybe they really were just sick of him and said oh just let him go.

My boyfriend said Grandma Spider helped him get his grades up, though. She was hired as the guidance counselor last year through a pilot project after 5 years in jail for having had a relationship with a student.

He's planning to work for awhile and just hang out

2007-11-01T13:46:00.000-07:00

My tree
with
greenery
unfoldes.
Un-sheep.
Un-shepherds in their dotage,
driven to sudden refusal by the appearance of
election-year Valentines slid into my cell.
(But careful, the beverage you're about to enjoy
is on fire.
Like our hats are.
Which we remove & hold before
our chests when we bow our
smoking heads in greeting.)

(The group poem from our last open mic.)

2007-10-25T13:35:00.000-07:00

flying embers

Coming back to work late Monday afternoon after a dentist appointment, I suddenly had to see how it would feel in Ladera Ranch. (I'd met the place a few months before and been compelled by the contrast between the harshness of its environment, and the paradisical hype.) I took Antonio Parkway, but once I was there was led north by the smoke.

Antonio ends at sort of a deadend, at Avenida de las Flores. At least 100 people who felt the same as me had gathered there to park, get out and look at the afternoon flames.

Everyone had their cellphones aimed at the fire. They were taking pictures of it. It occurred to me this might be something Everyone Has Done For Thousands Of Years. I wanted to, too, but had no camera or cellphone around.

For some reason the porn star vibe of today's cool people seemed especially pronounced there, and touchingly inadequate.

2007-10-19T13:08:00.000-07:00

...the deeply mixed and fallible indeterminacy of motivation that has and always will characterize the fundamental state of human affairs...

That's a line in a poem by James Kelly, who read it at Our Little Open Mic today.

I thought it was kinda cool.

2007-10-08T14:10:00.000-07:00

I learned something from this explanation of Beat couched in an explanation of "neo-Beat".

I've never been able to explain the whole Beat thing, myself. Maybe even to believe it was an actual something, with borders enough for an explanation.

I appreciate this guy's effort. But if there really is such a thing as beat, I think "neo" is premature. I'd wager a lot of folks are just, still, fucking beat.

2007-10-05T17:38:00.000-07:00

Okayyyyy...

I'M HERE, NOW!

2007-09-03T15:57:00.000-07:00

We were lying on the couch outside today.

It's a trailer couch, also a pullout bed. I've slept on it a lot this summer, and bought a mosquito net for it a couple of weeks ago.

[Have you ever slept under one? I recommend them even if you have no mosquitos. If it's been too long since you were in a fairy tale, sleeping under a mosquito net will deliver you back.]

I had the couch pulled out last winter. Things were so sad here then. A worldwide desk, the Kenny Howes Memorial Desk in fact, went in its place. (When he heard it called that, he said you call something that when someone's dead. But then he went and died in my life, of his own will. So, maybe it's right.)

Anyway, I looked over my sun-bedraggled plants from the couch today, and felt bad.

Cause it's the garden of someone who isn't really here.

I want to change that.

2007-06-18T12:32:00.000-07:00

The hospital I work at emails me an inspirational message every morning.

I liked today's. They said it was from an old folk song.

Be kind to your parents, though they might not deserve it.
Remember that "parents" is a difficult stage of life.
They’re apt to be nervous, and over excited,
Confused by the daily storm and strife.
Remember, though it seems hard I know,
That parents were children long ago.

2007-06-15T19:55:00.001-07:00

Excuse me, but I just have to ask.

What the hell is everybody doing in just one place?

Among other things, it doesn't make evolutionary sense (well, assuming "evolution" actually describes something).

Wouldn't we be much more successful survivors and/or reproducers if we could be in more than one place at once?

Get back to me on that why don't you.

2007-05-20T00:26:00.000-07:00

Hidden Water

A girl was in a wheelchair on her porch
And wasps were swarming in the cornice

She had just washed her hair
When she took it down she combed it

She could see
Just like I could

The one star under the rafter
Quivering like a knife in the creek

She was thin
And she made me think

Of music singing to itself
Like someone putting a dulcimer in a case

And walking off with a stranger
To lie down and drink in the dark

by Frank Stanford

2007-05-18T19:28:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I know people's motivations right away. Usually with strangers.

But in relationships, I can become sort of like Mister Magoo. I just don't have the clearest vision, sometimes, with people I love.

Great ability to see things I want to, though.

Like M.M., I'm probably only here by constant, unnoticed coincidence/miracles. Today one was humblingly clear.

I have a kind of seeing eye dog (?), that I don't deserve, in my friends. I got some solid counsel last night that really nosed my diapered tush away from the deep end.

And I'm noticing some stuff.

I want to be an artist. And in my world that takes self-confidence. Not in front of a crowd or whatever. But I mean, when I write, I need to believe I have some basic integrity, or I'm not all there to have fun with words. Some of my energy, somewhere, is hung up back wherever integrity slipped.

For me, part of integrity is treating living...entities well, and doing what you can to keep harm from coming to them.

By "well" I don't necessarily mean all niceynice. Some medicine tastes bad. The kind my friend gave me last night did. But there's a difference between bad-tasting medicine and, like, unnecessary surgery just to get someone's fucking money.

The thing is, I have to admit and live, now, that "living entities" includes myself. Integrity also means keeping harm from being done to me.

That's very easy to say and may be very hard to live but I'm going to try.

2007-05-09T08:40:00.000-07:00

Catch The Light

Until I turn pink and transparent,
I will eat this lovely magenta vegetable.
How could I resist such a flamboyant,
pickled and extroverted root
that turns scarlet everything it touches?
But me, I am just a plain old turnip
someone pulled from the ground.
I try to shake off this clumpy fortress of dirt
that clings, leftover from some bygone era
and I’ve only just lately noticed that
I still haven’t washed myself off,
that I am afraid to go near water,
afraid to let anyone see my purple striped skin.
That is why I have been devouring so many beets.
I think maybe one morning without realizing it,
I will walk by the sliding glass door
as the sun shines through me
and like pink stained glass you will see everything
inside me that I haven’t been able to say.

Clover, Red Ants, Wooden Tables

Danilo watches winged insects sit on his skin
and he rubs dirt from gopher mounds into his pores.
He can make himself turn green from the grass,
he says, “Come on, let’s try it!”

I warn him about the cactus on the slope because
at five years of age, it is as if he has never rolled
down a hill or had a rock stuck in his shoe.
He jumps from bench to bench as birds
twitter above in the oak trees.

I thought he’d never walk again after his doctor
told me I was in denial, but the doctor was wrong, dead wrong.
All I wanted was to get back to this place again
and here we are. We spin Frisbees up to the sun,
toss sticks and bones into the air like voices
that call down from the mountain.

There are clover and red ants here, wooden
tables with names and years carved in them.
Danilo’s little legs no longer tremble, they sing
more and more in tune with the music.

He throws a rock at a metal trash can,
it clangs and bangs. The call of a dove beats out
and fades away on a wind that brushes us,
a wind that rustles through yellow flowers and tall weeds.

He falls lightly like a leaf sprawled under the sky.
“No, no!” he says dramatically, “I can’t do it,”
but he is stronger now, he gets up again, no help.
His little legs re-sprouted from some tulip bulb
planted long ago. It is Spring and my boy is back.

These are by the glorious Gabrielle Mittelbach. Please come hear her read more at Our Little Open Mike Friday, May 25 at 9 a.m. at the Starbucks at 24100 El Toro Road in Laguna Woods. Wuhu

2007-05-02T14:10:00.000-07:00

Oh my gosh.

Somehow, last week, I was introduced to a charming, perceptive, extroverted, articulate person who wants to be part of this nutty morning Leisure World open mike thing. (She'd do the talking and I'd do the setup and publicity, it'd be perfect.)

The cafe's expressed willingness.

We're going to a short story writing class at LW tomorrow afternoon to see if anyone there would be into showing up to it to read.

Oh my gosh.

We might actually have an open mike, at the Starbucks outside Leisure World, Friday mornings at 9!

Oh my gosh.

We're thinking about starting the last Friday of May.

Oh my gosh.

And can I just say, thank God for extroverts

2007-04-25T23:50:00.001-07:00

I can't see you, but I know you're here. I feel it. You've been hanging around since I got here. I wish I could see your face. Just look into your eyes and tell you how good it is to be here. Just to touch something. See, that's cold. I feel good. Or here, to smoke. Have coffee. And if you do it together, it's fantastic. Or, to draw. You know, you take a pencil and you make a dark line, and then you make a light line, and together it's a good line. Or when your hands are cold, you rub them together. See, that's good. That feels good. There are so many good things. But you're not here. I'm here. I wish you were here. I wish you could talk to me. Because I'm a friend. Companero.

words from wings of desire pic by sarah conner

2007-04-23T21:28:00.001-07:00

Dearest Faker

Right now I'm looking at your card,
come flecked with several different inks.
Mail always ends up slightly marred;
the postal system's full of kinks.

And, today, I lightly snapped
the mediocre notion
that everything's important,
once it's blown across the ocean.

2007-04-12T13:04:00.000-07:00

I am a very weird person.

Very weak and very strong at the same time.

Very-ness might be the best part about me.

Not strength or weakness, though, who cares about them

2007-04-06T19:26:00.000-07:00

Hey...on the off chance that you ever saved or copied anything from one of my blogs, and it happened to be

1) about driving from California across Wyoming and into South Dakota in 1993, or

2) about Dr. Tom Shaver/Orange County Saferides

...could you possibly send it to me at magi81@hotmail.com?

Thank you!

2007-04-05T12:30:00.000-07:00

My car's running!

It's so superduper!

I've stayed the last few weekends in L.A., at my brother's in Highland Park, and then ex-sister-in-law's in Los Feliz (though we've decided to just be sisters and get it over with).

I love L.A. more and more. Its improvisational driving remains! And one of the parts that used to bug me is now one of my favorite parts.

It is the people who come there following a dream.

To be bugged by them wasn't even a real thing of my own, but a crappy inheritance from my father (a transplant himself).

It's taken awhile to figure this out, but.

Those people are right!

2007-04-04T21:30:00.000-07:00

Eh mehh gehhhhh!!!!!

I just asked the manager of the Leisure World Starbucks if she'd be open to having a morning open mike there, and SHE SAID YES!!!!!!????!!!!

Okokokokokokok

2007-03-27T11:30:00.000-07:00

The first thing I overheard in line at the extremely busy Leisure World Starbucks this morning was how some guy's brother-in-law worked as a poll watcher for years and learned firsthand how many dead people come out to vote. The next guy said the Kennedy-Nixon race was won by dead people.

The tone these things were said in is hard to explain. Humorous compassion for the dead? Trying hard not to be one of them? And to make it look easy?

Nah...not quite.

If nothing else, the morning regulars at the Leisure World Starbucks show the fuck up. I sense they'd call any other way of being candyass, college kid, something like that.

If anyone's wondering where the next Orange County open mike should be, this is it. (And it should be a morning one.)

This is actually a really good idea. Please, someone, take it.

2007-03-23T14:41:00.000-07:00

Last year around this time I started kind of feeling...roses.

A children's theater in La Habra was doing "The Little Prince," and I was thinking about trying out for the part of the rose. I bought a rose bush, and asked people to call me Rose. I didn't end up trying out for the play (it was too far away without a car), but the name stuck.

The rosebush didn't do very well. I'd been good with plants before, but not last year. Plus I couldn't get the watering right, it was always too much or too little. Holes spread through the leaves and the flowers got moldy.

By last month it really seemed dead. The orange hips looked like accusing birdheads. Everything else'd fallen off.

A couple weeks ago, though, for the fun of it, I dug a hole in the ground between the shed and the fence, and a neighbor helped me transplant the rosebush into it. (A tough old bird. I offered him gloves but he said that'd take the fun out of it.) We protected it from the lawnmowers a yard or so around with a nifty kneehigh fencey thing.

Now it's budding, all over. Much lusher and more confident-looking than I remember from last year.

It reminds me of a children's song my dad wrote a few years ago about the springtime. There's a line that goes, winter's not that strong

2007-03-23T14:34:00.001-07:00

All my life I’ve been interested in other people’s stories. I’ve wanted to know them, understand them, feel them. When I grew up and got into politics, I always felt the main point of my work was to give people the chance to have better stories.

I just heard Bill Clinton say that in his biography on cd.

It's so weird...I had that sense, while Clinton was president. And that that might be one of the few things a president honorably and uniquely (as opposed to the financial powers controlling the role) could do for his or her country. To hear him confirm it, wow.

2007-03-21T12:24:00.000-07:00

Damn it, Lois, I said it in 1997, and I'll say it again. Al Gore is a sacred text from the 36th century!

2007-03-16T08:24:00.000-07:00

Today's crush is on Louie Armstrong music!

Brittleness, weakness, selfishness and plans, quietly take their leave and go.

I hope to have such strong arms someday. I think you have to do a lot of exercises!

2007-03-08T13:32:00.000-08:00

Sometimes the answer is Louis Armstrong.

Like, now!

2007-02-24T19:07:00.000-08:00

messy room

in my trailer, over here,
falling asleep,
but also
in your bed
(you know?)

a fast-talking dj turned down very low,
a box of macaroni, a shadow,
my only door opened by itself
when you walked past,
maybe that’s why

in the corner a blanket,
a lamp with no bulb,
record player the same age as you,
a check for six dollars,
comb with your snarls,
for me it wasn’t fake for me it was real

bootprint on the pillow,
a tape all tangled up,
rubber soul out of its jacket on the carpet

radio, rain, a duffelbag
from the war with your dad’s name
and stain, aw, just out of practice, your bed,
the light blue wall near your door

2007-02-21T23:55:00.000-08:00

I’m in love with a paper towel. I’d know her fall to the floor anywhere. The origami of her crush in my hand. The time it takes her to get damp and useless. Her patience, alone by the trash. Not one to cause mischief there, or, worse, to feign pathos. No, she just...is. More vulnerable than the most halting, circuitous, unrequited loveletter. Serrated at sexy, evil angles. And she'll do her job if she has to. Built in. Now I have to figure out how to stay in touch with her. We lead such different lives. And she might not even be interested in me. What do I know? I’m so naïve. I certainly don’t know what other people do alone in the bathroom. Not like her.

2007-02-20T21:29:00.000-08:00

Still reading "The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas" (the lady of hash brownie legend), by Gertrude Stein. The funny thing is, every time I open it up, my face goes into this solid, against-my-will smile, as if I'm on Starship 2000 at the fair, or indeed eating a hash brownie. There is something so Gumptious about it. Also Delighted, Simple, Informative, Chatty and Grand.

Tonight, one of my old supervisors at the bookstore sold me a perfect-condition 1934 first edition of "Portraits and Prayers" by Ms. Stein for $125, when it normally goes for $600, and is letting me pay it in three installments. He found it at a library sale for a dollar or something.

I thought that was quite good.

2007-02-17T21:44:00.000-08:00

When I lived in Topanga Canyon I would sometimes stop at the Vons on PCH between Malibu and Topanga going home from work. It was usually dark by then and often foggy. The elderly black evening security guard there always nodded when he saw me. I enjoyed seeing him as sort of a mythic figure in the fog and thinking he must have a lot of stories.

One night we spoke. He started being mythic right away. He'd been a merchant marine in the 1960s, and collected military ocean lore, strange sightings, inexplicable seafaring events. He said the water lore of any people always starts in its military. That the first mermaid sightings were recorded by Roman military ships off the coast of Wales. I believed him

2007-02-17T06:44:00.000-08:00

Going to California

It’s a windy night with fireflies
and I’m taking apart a guitar
and my sisters are upstairs fighting
about a brush. Sixteen lemons
have fallen since you were here.
I should send you one
so you can eat it in front of somebody
and impress him. (That is meant to be a joke.)

One thing you should know
is that you have extremely beautiful hair.
Those guys had been partying
too heavily for their own well-being
and were about to fall asleep.
They were more dreaming than seeing.
Add to this the fact that they
are not artistically creative.
I feel sorry for them, more than anything else.

Well you haven’t written yet.
That’s cool. I know how it is
when you don’t feel like writing a letter.
You probably have more significant things
to think about, like school.
Could you send me your phone number again?
Unfortunately, Jennifer thought it was a receipt
and threw it away.

Well I’m back and look
you’ve driven me to drink.
I’m mailing this right after it’s finished
so please make some allowances.
I had a dream about you last night.
Listen I wish you would come back sometime.
They put up a whole new building
for Maeder and those assholes.
You wouldn’t even have to see them.

2007-02-08T19:50:00.001-08:00

Jimi Hendrix Subaru Commercial Insight

I don't know how you're going to feel about this, but I just found out that it has been the 1950s since around 1908. And that it's going to continue to be the 1950s (get this) until there are no more women. And no more men.

2007-01-30T12:31:00.000-08:00

Love I believe in you, even if you still aren't here,
and it seems unlikely you'll think to look for me
in Costa Mesa under the freeway
behind Baja Fresh.

But I can't go to St. Petersburg for you now,
or Cape Christie or New York City or Deadwood.
I think my fate is here, with the plants
that're supposed to make it seem like paradise.

I talked with a marble stand
of pink and purple pansies
at the southern valet gate to Fashion Island today.

One said that after the shock of the first season,
they and the millions of others like them
grow embarrassed.

That these feelings keep humans from relaxing
on corporate park lawns.

Another said they know how much water
they steal, and just where that puts them.
That they're embarrassed to face the natural world,
when it is,
and that, partly because of them,
there's so little left here to face.

In their embarrassment they've become terribly self-absorbed.

They know that, too.

And truly, they're afraid.
They know their princess colors are no match for the hawks,
vultures, spiders, owls, coyotes,
snakes and red ants.

It was different where they came from.

And, as I turned to leave,
behind a family running to the movies,

one said they're like a lot of the early white settlers
in these ways,

for whom it will take awhile
to become people again,

if they ever do.

2007-01-29T17:06:00.000-08:00

One gray, sticky summer afternoon in 1992, the security guard was driving home from the gym and saw a two-toned green-and-turquoise sedan in the middle of the street. Its hood and all four doors were open.

This was when he was still a police officer. It was his day off, but he always carried his gun and radio. He stopped, got out and looked the car over. It looked abandoned. He called in and started running a report from the license plates.

Toward the end of the call he put his foot on the front fender, just to kind of rest it there. He took it off and WHOOOOSH

a wide huffing fire uncoiled ten feet tall.

He turned, shielding his face with his right arm, and fell on his butt. He felt so hot he thought he was on fire, and ran to a sprinkler whipping some front yard. He doused himself, took off his tank top and wrapped his right arm in it. A kid came up to him.

It turned out he hadn't actually been on fire, but the boy said

you're fucked up man

because his face, arm and the side of his torso were burned almost as bad from having been near the fire as they would've been, in it.

He drove himself to the hospital and was admitted right away. The ER nurses and his department had a good relationship because his guys also did security for their floor. His right arm was shaking but the nurses said that was normal. They gave him a shot for pain in the butt and reminded him of having seen his naked bottom for the next few weeks.

Whoever planted the explosive in the radiator did it wrong, they made the blast go upward instead of out or in. The angle of the hood rolled the flame somewhat toward him, but still that was what saved his life they said.

The way he told it, it seemed like he'd come through pretty well. I couldn't see any scars on his face or arm, and it sounded like the wind had died down.

When I knew him a little better he told me about losing his wife and children in a house fire five years later. The ways he talked about the two fires (I mean, the fire part of the fires) were very different. He barely described the one that took his family at all.

2007-01-08T16:20:00.000-08:00

You will find that charity
Is a heavy burden to carry
Heavier than a bowl of soup
And the full basket.

But you will keep your gentleness
And your smile.

It is not enough to give soup
And bread
This the rich can do.

You are the servant of the poor,
Always smiling
And always good humoured.
They are your masters,
(Terribly sensitive) and exacting
masters
You will soon see.

The uglier and dirtier they will be,
The more unjust and insulting,
The more love you must give them.

It is only for your love alone
That the poor will forgive you
The bread you give to them.

by St. Vincent de Paul

2007-01-01T15:25:00.000-08:00

Capricorn

She asked a flower
how to live forever.

And the flower told her.

Then she slowly asked,

"...so, why don't...
some flowers...
live...forever, if they can?"

The flower said,
"You sense that question trespasses.
You feel like a seductress
with something at stake.

It's called propriety, my dear.
Yes, it comes this way, too.

And, as to your question, well,
that's why."

2006-11-06T21:58:00.000-08:00

I feel very lonely and crazy. I'm usually alone in life, but haven't felt lonely...well, much. I pray obsessively, aggressively, on the morning buses to work and the afternoon ones home. Probably shouldn't call it prayer, though, it's so grasping.

I've done more unintentional hurting of beautiful people, through events I didn't ask for and my lack of wisdom in response to them, in the past two months than maybe in my whole life. And now have lost them. I probably mean less to them than they do to me. There's some comfort in that.

Maybe it's time to finally read "Winesburg, Ohio" all the way through. Not chicken out as the light starts to dim. Maybe, if I can do that, I'll be cured.

2006-10-26T14:07:00.000-07:00

No tobacco; no alcohol. He lives alone in Leisure World. He is widowed.

I just saw this today at work and it blew me away for some reason.

2006-10-24T00:52:00.000-07:00

Please, God, teach me how to love and how to write. I'm ready.

2006-10-16T20:43:00.000-07:00

I Lost My Invisible Puppy

I lost my invisible puppy
when we were out walking today,
she disappeared into the bushes
and totally faded away.

My puppy is not too apparent,
my puppy is paler than pale,
she tends not to draw much attention,
she wags an invisible tail.

She wears an invisible collar,
her leash is invisible too,
I fear that she's vanished forever,
she's totally hidden from view.

I'll miss her obscure little antics,
her odd indiscernible tricks,
she chased inconspicuous crickets,
she fetched undetectable sticks.

My poor imperceptible puppy
is probably still in the park,
perhaps if I pay close attention,
I'll hear her inaudible bark.

by Jack Prelutsky