The Forgotten Works

Back from The Road

2006-08-14T21:56:00.001-04:00

As much of a technophobe as I claim to be, I just haven't been able to deal with a non-DSL internet. I've been restricted to the dial-up-prison for the last two months and after waiting 45 minutes to download a Miles Davis song, I just simply decided that no internet was better than dial-up internet. I'm a spoiled li'l bitch and I'll be the first to admit it.

The Low Down:

1) Me-WE-The Family have/has moved 3071 miles due East. After years of stuggling in our "beach resort town", we have finally just up and got the hell out to save our hide before the proverbial shit comes down. Good bye Santa Cruz. Hello Brattleboro Vermont. What's this? Children playing outside without their helicopter parents buzzing just overhead? Honest to goodness hardworking folk just working for the betterment of community and not just themselves? Affordability? Culture? True interest and respect for individuality and art? What is this place you speak of? It's called Vermont but don't move here, the Winter will kick your slack ass...

2) I am once again humbled by the State of Man. There's really nothing better than a cross-country roadtrip to solidify your ideas of the nature of day-to-day human existence. I can't help thinking about how if individual A grew up in site A vs. site B, how much different would that individual be? I've seen the Gates of Hell and I call them the state of Missouri. It amazes me to no end that I could drive for 200 miles and see billboards advertizing nothing other than anti-abortion photos and slogans or $99 full mouth dentures- cash only! Who are these people? Is there a kid in Humansville that gleans that there is something higher, someplace that values an aesthetic similar to his/hers? Someplace that knows what the word "aesthetic" means?

A sad observation would be how places throughout the country are losing their individual identities as we become as nation of high density housing complexes and stripmalls and Walmarts. It amazed me to see how this town in Nevada looks just like this town in Ohio which looks just like this town in Nebraska. We are becoming a nation where one can go from coast to coast and never feel alienated or lost. There's always a sense of familiarity and safety and it comes at the cost of adventure and the challenges that fortify the Self.

3) Tomorrow's the 15th anniversary of my 21st birthday. What a schmuck I was then... I hope I feel that way about the me that inhabits the Now, 15 years from now.

4)

With all the chaos in the universe, why are a small group of "experts" deciding, this week, whether or not to keep Pluto classified as a "Planet"? Leave poor li'l Pluto alone you nerdy bastards!

...I'm easing back into things. Thank you for indulging me with my small list of things I've been ruminating on for the last few days. There's been so much more but no one wants to hear about how awesome Sugar Smacks are...

...In the morning, I'll read this and see how much that bottle of Spanish wine kicked my ass...

There's a Robber Bee in the Hive

2006-06-06T00:34:00.000-04:00

Today, a car sped past me with the customized license plate "JCLUVSU" and I pondered it's meaning for a moment while I deftly maneuvered my way through the bad drivers who read papers and applied makeup and talked to girlfriends on cellphones in an effort to maximize their time during the morning rushhour traffic. When it hit me that it stood for "Jesus Christ Loves You", I felt a slight twinge of nausea that I couldn't blame on my belly being full of coffee when what it needed was some oatmeal or pancakes or steak.

What got to me wasn't the shlockly evangelical statement this man was advertising. No, what got me is that I'm officially embarassed to be a part of the freaky, short attention span, scared herd that is labeled "Human".

It galls me to no end that we lord ourselves over our environment without seeing ourselves as the lemming-like slaves to remain "true to the group" at all cost and at the expense of freedom and therefore, happiness. Yes, there are different factions and groups among the larger herd but it is still a species that shows an unfailing love of the mob. Man's love, and desperate need of religion is the first and most obvious proof of this. Love of country and zealous patriotism are great uniters and great dividers but even the divisions create unions. Rock concert fans gather in one place and commune in their common goal of showing the lead singer their breasts. There is intense power in song. Children are so easily taken in by the church (aside from the fact that they strive so hard to please their parents) because of the power of unified singing or recital of words. Even when "detached" from our main comforting group, within the herd, we show our colors and signal ourselves as "queer" or "liberal" or "catholic" or "punkrock" with easily identified markers: bumperstickers, hairstyles, clothing (most of which is smothered with statement making labels or, outright slogans), tattoos, jewelry, etc.

There's no solution to this problem. It's nature. It's folly to think that the masses can go against nature. Largescale revolt against nature can only lead to extinction and we are commited, as a species, to drive this planet 'til the wheels fall off. The masses are here for the long haul. They rose up, claimed the power and then quickly gave it away to those that they would trust to shepherd us. Occasionally, an individual will attempt to skew off the permited course and they are quickly reeled in and their fire is snuffed. We pass the time with the numbing unifiers of television and pills and prison sentences and arguments over the same issues that have been argued for a all of our existence. What a miserble huge herd we are. What's one to do?

Ashes to Ashes

2006-06-05T23:41:00.000-04:00

Last night I sat down and burned the paper that documented my existence for the last eight years. For some reason, I had thought it a good idea to stockpile these "important" papers just in case a need for them were to arise. Well, the need for them never came and it was interesting to go through box after box of these forgotten records and to toss them, without a hint of remorse or nostalgia, onto the fire. The paystubs from 6 years ago made me wonder how I was able to feed my family. I found documentation of thousands upon thousands of dollars I spent on insurance against loss or injury that never manifested. The signed and stamped and notarized deed to the house I bought was on the bottom of the pile. It was still in the original envelope it was handed to me in and I threw it onto the flames, unopened and unread.

I am left in awe over the amount of paper we use to detail our purchases and our medical coverage and our car stereo warranties. I'm almost left with a feeling of shame, not so much about the environmental waste and decimation side of the issue, but rather, it leaves me feeling like our paper usage is yet another way we, as a species, try to immortalize our existence. If we are racking up bills and accruing debt, someone, somewhere knows that we exist as they reconcile our accounts, and push the buttons that get the gears in motion that will cut the tree and make the ink and pulp the wood and print the bill and send the bill and the man comes to our little not-so-anonymous-house and when the bill is dropped through the slot and opened we say, "damn, another bill!" but really we are thinking, "thank god someone knows I'm alive!!!"

When I threw the last piece of paper onto the pile, I watched it burn until the embers started to fade and I felt like a sad, egoist who's been allowed to watch his own funeral and is ashamed of his epitaph.

So, now having typed this, should I feel the urge to go purchase something I don't need that's priced above my means but I can take it home today with the swipe of a credit card and eventually pay it off in 3 years at a 18% higher price with interest? The ashes say NO...

Don't look at what's behind the curtain...

2006-05-28T01:59:00.000-04:00

I should have known better. I think I got distracted by something shiny or pretty and allowed myself to stray off the path my steady feet have become accustomed to shuffling along.

Perhaps, it was brought on by my impending move away from familiar things, people and history. Maybe my thoughts are being directed by my father-in-law's contant dance with the grave. Or, it could just be the whiskey that's been keeping me company while my children and wife sleep in the next room.

Tonight, I got caught in the trap of intoxicated name searches on Google for people I hadn't seen, heard from or thought about in years. I typed in the names and my whole past rushed up and swept over me. One name reminded me of another. I found myself creating a sad daisy chain of people I have known over the last 20 years. Faces of friends, companions, family and lovers appeared on my glowing monitor like suprised ghosts and I found myself becoming more and more depressed as I read accounts of their lives. Smalltown newspaper articles touted their"career successes". I found lonely MySpace pages where they collected thousand of "friends" they know nothing about. I examined photographs of these old familiars in unfamiliar settings (weddings, dinner parties, conventions) and their faces seemed to resemble the people I used to know but there was no denying that these people are now strangers with histories I'll never know anything about and time has wrinkled and wounded and scarred them and I realized that I, too, have become a wrinkled, wounded, scarred ghost.

I'd like to think I know my own temperament better than most. It seems obvious that I should know better than to force the locks to doors I lost the keys to long, long ago. Closed doors are closed for a reason. I just wish I could forget the location of the doors or learn to stop caring about what's on the other side.

Point of View

2006-05-22T22:53:00.000-04:00

There's a scene in the film "Barton Fink" that, immediately after I saw it for the first time, I knew that I was changed by the impact of a few lines delivered by John Goodman's character to John Turturro's character. Turturro has been living for a few weeks in a room in a seedy Los Angeles hotel while he writes a screenplay. He befriends Goodman's character, who is often on the road as a salesman but he has been a resident in the hotel for years. In a moment of whiskeydrunk forgetfulness, Turturro bemoans his current quarters and his bad luck at ending up in such a dump. Goodman is immediately sobered and cuts Turturro down as a "tourist with a suitcase" who's putting down his "Home".

Anyway, I've always thought of this exchange and how we're all, more or less, tourists with suitcases and it has been humbling to me, at times, and reminded me to remain empathetic to the situations that others must endure.

Everytime I drive through a town like Barstow or Red Bluff or Bakersfield or Los Angeles, for that matter, I am reminded that I can just keep on going. There's nothing to tie me to these communities I find to be representations of Hell. I also don't celebrate too much as I leave, knowing that these towns are filled with the honest, working poor who are just trying to eke out an existence for themselves and their loved ones.

My wife and I often talk about how much misery is created by people and their Points of View in regard to their lot in life. People often live and die, never enjoying the simple happinesses that abound all around them, while they scrape and fight and seek money and the things that money buys because they feel (and have been taught) that therein lies true happiness. While Mr. Smith is trying to keep up with the Jones', his son grows up and becomes a stranger and his wife constantly plots her escape route.

People become so lost in careers and their roles as "success stories" that they don't appreciate the now. Friends are taken for granted. So much effort is spent complaining about one's job that it is forgotten that one can just find another job or that their job really isn't that bad. Whenever my jobs feel tedious, I remind myself of all the truly shitty jobs that are out there. My favorites are the ones that you forget even exist because they're so off the radar. Bukowski worked in a dogfood factory. A friend of mine, on the east coast, is a caretaker for a mentally disabled man who he refers to as "the dickbiter". There's a reason for that name! Dickbiter is fond of fashioning small balls made out of his own feces and leaving them here and there. My Old Man works, and has worked for years, in the sewers that 99% of people never have to acknowlede the existence of, but they enjoy their benefits. My job ain't that bad...

These negative outlooks are poison and, in a way, they are the product of our commercially driven culture. But, we are also at fault as we buy into the popular wave of upward mobility without any thought to where the escalator is taking us or any appreciation of the view. A man who's looking up at the clouds is easily tripped up by terra firma.

It seems like we could all stand to unpack our suitcases and stop playing tourists and have to not just absorb what's around us, but actually deal with it and see it eye to eye and take in it's smells and give a shoulder to its heartbroken and allow ourselves to actually feel heartbroken, from time to time. We could stand to become suprised by beauty and kindness found in unexpected places and from unexpected sources.

The ride's going to come to an end for everyone here. Some will become dust surrounded and remembered by loved ones. Some will become dust happily knowing they've touched others and had an effect on the world. Some will become dust and be buried beneath giant monoliths that they've erected for themselves which will eventaully be visited by noone. But, dust we all become and I'd like to become dust knowing that I pushed just one person in a good direction and that I remind them to remember where their feet are from time to time.

"...all your San Franciscos must burn and fall again" - J. Kerouac

The Unseen Scene

2006-05-02T23:56:00.000-04:00

There's something so healthy about fading from public attention. The public is a fickle and fleeting observer and companion. Note: When I say "companion", I make no mistake about labeling it a friend. When you are caught up in its tide, it carries you without regard to the dangerous rapids and falls that lay just down the stream.

For many years, I (as most members of Youthculture do) wore my identity for all to see. You see it everywhere about you. T-shirts emblazoned with band names or slogans about politics or activities you enjoy. It's a way for us to feel unity with strangers. People who follow the Los Angeles Dodgers can find kinship in the strangest places with total strangers who also follow the Los Angeles Dodgers. Twenty years ago, found myself sitting at the Metro station, donning a Smiths shirt, and I came across another walkman listening boy wearing a Smiths shirt, and we struck up a conversation and eventually became best friends. Our t-shirts acted as "windows into our souls" and let the world see who we were or, at least, who we wanted to be identified as or with. That was back in the days when you had to scrape to put together an outfit that showed you to be a part of an "alternative culture". I spent hours sewing handmade patches onto jackets and studied how other people pegged their pants. Drives up to San Francisco to buy shoes were rare and something that one looked forward to for months. The places where we bought shoes were hard to find and they employed scary people who stared your 17-year-old ass down as you forked over the $60 bucks you made 2000 burritos for. But, in the end, you had a new pair of creepers or monkey boots and it was worth it when you went dancing at some back alley alt-club in exotic Cupertino.

But, I digress...

The years have passed and I changed my way of thinking. As a writer, it's essential to get close to people and situations in order to glean ideas for new stories. I found that my exterior costume was detrimental to gaining access to strangers. It's good to go to a circus in a poor, predominantly Catholic and Latino inhabited town and not have mothers pulling their children away from you while signs of the cross are made at you and hostility sits all around you as you watch the elephant do a handstand. It's nice to just sit there and enjoy the show. Some Barstow trucker making small talk while the pumps fill your gastanks in the hot, fucking middle of nowhere is so much better than cold, hateful silence. There's only so much writing about the "cold, hateful, silence" that one can do...

So, now I think it's important to, not neccesarily blend in, but rather to go unnoticed in day to day ongoings. Fads and trends become expectations. Whenever something becomes the expected norm, there's always an outsider who is shunned, mocked or excluded. The Hot Topic t-shirt (and let's not even begin to discuss the amount of money made by shrewd suits off of millions of kids who are "sticking it to the Man" by purchasing the rebellious apparel provided by the Man) that reads, "You laugh at me because I'm different. I laugh at you because you're all the same." readily demonstrates the battle that thousands of identically clad kids identifying with alt-culture attempt to fight with thousands of identically clad kids who participate in the norm. The sad thing is, it's all commercially driven crap...

Like it or not, we all participate in this stupid, stupid cycle. I, myself, try to play the part of the invisible man but I'm still caught up in thinking about what costume I should don for my role. Also, I catch myself wishing I could find more invisible man kind of people. Whenever I move somewhere new, I always shun the first people I meet. I've got it set in my head that the first friends you make in a new place are the desperate or crazed people that noone else can tolerate so they continually glom onto newcomers until their parasitic nature is figured out. I want to find the people with nothing to prove. There's no need to stand out. There's no need to have any notice taken of your day to day activities. I want to find the ghosts. How long would our little band of invisibles hold out until we felt the need to wage some kind of social war? What sad monkeys we are...

I've got a funny feeling they've got plastic in the Afterlife

2006-04-12T23:51:00.000-04:00

My family and I are in the process of pulling up our stakes and moving across the country to a place where, more or less, everything is new. Everyone will be a stranger. The town and the surrounding towns will be unfamiliar. Mysteries will exist around every corner and down each alley.

While I am beyond excited about the prospect of not having ties to or roots in my new home, the process of packing, getting ready and starting to say goodbyes has triggered the inevitible wave of nostalgia that I knew would arrive, sooner or later.

Yesterday, I took my family to Vasona Park in Los Gatos. When I was a kid, Vasona Park held an almost magicial status. There was everything for a kid to love. There were dangerously tall play structures built of wood and metal. There was a large murky lake with a dam on the backside where you could watch a huge torrent of water roaring through the overflow gates. There was a maze made of bamboo that one could spend hours in. I often, purposefully, found one of the many dead ends the maze contained, deep within the center, and I'd sit and read for entire days in August 1980.

Going back today, as an adult man with almost 36 years under the bridge, I'm saddened by how things have changed. I could still see traces of the things I loved, as a child, but they are ghost-like forms of what they were 25 years ago.

Los Gatos Creek feeds into the lake. There was, and still is, an island that sat in the middle of the creek that determined kids could wade out to. My friend, Mike Alberta, and I spent almost everyday, one hot summer week, "camping out" on this island. We brought Ritz crackers, Capri Sun juice boxes, pocket knives, and binoculars and hid in the dense foliage, watching the unsuspecting park revelers as they walked by, flew kites and sat on benches sharing "private moments". It's now (and probably was then) a bird sanctuary and it's strictly forbidden to wade into the water, much less across it to the island.

Later, my family and I walked past a boat launch where I remember renting a canoe with my Dad and sister and we shoved off into the lake for a floating picnic. I alternated between rowing and cutting pieces off a log of salami (you don't really see salami sold that way very much anymore - it's almost always presliced and packaged) . My Dad stood up to take a picture and before we knew what was happening, the canoe flipped over, dumping us and our belongings into the dark lake. It was a cold day so we were all wearing fluffy, down filled coats that quickly absorbed the water and became heavy. The canoe had already sunk to the bottom and I remember struggling to swim and hearing my Dad yelling to "take off your coats!" so that their weight wouldn't drag us down, along with the canoe. We got our coats off and swam to shore, mostly being pulled along by my Dad as he stuggled to stay afloat while keeping 2 kids above the surface. When we finally made it to the shore, I remember feeling blissfully happy, laying there on the dock listening to the creaking sounds of the dock and the slapping of the water beneath it. My father had lost a valuable camera and I remember being sad that we had lost an entire day's worth of photos from all the fun we had had before it sank beneath us.

A couple of months later, the three of us were walking and came across a huge mud puddle. It started as a half-innocent splash of muddy water aimed at my Dad but it grew into a 3-way all out mudfight of almost epic proportions. We threw caution to the wind, and for a few hours, cast off our roles as "parent/child" and "brother/sister" and the mud transformed us into giggling friends as we rubbed it in each other's hair, wallowed and rolled around and just had a truly blissful afternoon of spontaneous, "irresponsible" fun. Strangers walked by and watched the spectacle. Some took pictures. Some looked on with expressions of what was almost shocked awe. Most could not help but laugh along with us. To add to the mix, there were tons of these spiky seed pods laying around everywhere (we called them "monkey balls" back then. Now, I know them to be the seed pods of Liquid Ambar trees but I've taught my daughter to call them "monkey balls"). These were plenty of fun to stick into each others shirts and pants to create bearable discomfort. When the cold from the wetness and the mud finally got to be too much, we walked home. The look on my stepmother's face immediately broke the spell of the happy afternoon. "There's no way you're coming into this house like that!" and my Dad immediately became "Dad" again and said, "Yeah, you're probably right" and made my sister and I strip down in the driveway where he hosed us off with cold water from the spigot. My sister and I were miserable and crying and blue from cold before we were clean enough to be admitted into our "home".

Now, walking with my family, I can't shake the feeling that the park feels haunted. There's nothing but ghosts of what I remember about it. What used to be a place of fun and mystery has become an overly safe and sterile.

There used to be a real fighter plane that served as a playgound climbing structure. It was totally intriguing to kids because of its rust and sharp edges and shiny, silver metal frame that would absorb the Summer sun's heat to the point where only the extremely brave and determined would venture out onto it. Once you made it past the scorching hot wings and fuselage, you could sit in the cool cemented cockpit and you felt like you had been through a sort of rite of passage to reach that spot that only the brave knew the comforts of. The plane is still there but now it has been covered with smoothe, cool fiberglass which makes it look like a fake airplane and it sits by itself in the middle of the playground, ignored by children who see it for what it is - just another boring piece of plastic.

It made me happy that my daughter ignored signs, warning of the potential dangers of the creek and lake and paid more attention to their post-storm turbulence, than to the pre-fab plastic playground that looks like all the other playgrounds across suburbia.

Parks and playground, it seems, now follow the same model as planned communities and strip malls where all individuality and uniqueness are eliminated. It used to be that countries, states and towns had individual charactaristics, traits and qualities. Now, it looks like we are content to allow our communities, parks and children to be formed into acceptable molds of safety, expectedness, and normalcy. Generic playgrounds, such as the ones that McDonald's offers at their inner-city restaurants, just get kids used to these bland norms early.

If I try really hard, I can see the ghosts of my past as we sling mud and monkey balls in the spectral field that now is home to a huge parkinglot where people pay alot of money to "play" in a space where, for me, fun wears a deathmask and the sound of the nearby freeway is a dirge.

It's definitely time to leave. It's time to peek around a corner and not know what's going to be there. It's time to give a new starting place to history. Here I go...

(This highschool-photography-class-style photo is for you, Tex)

The Seeds of Hope and Destruction

2006-04-04T00:20:00.000-04:00

I've been thinking about the cruelty that men bestow upon their fellow men and what always brings me to the brink of tears is not the acts themselves, but rather the fact that these acts were committed by men and women who were once children. Theoretically, we're all born the same. We are born as breathing, hungry infants who seek nothing other than warmth, nourishment and comfort. Unfortunately, the reality of existence gives no heed to idealistic notions that everyone's lives will be untouched by neglect, hunger, poverty, disease and abuse.

When I see a photograph of a criminal, one of the first things that I think about is that person being a child at some point in the past. Who would have dreamed that what was once a laughing, dancing, peek-a-boo playing child could possibly become a rapist, a suicide bomber, a heroin addict?

How does one become so lost from their roots and initial path? How many men on Death Row cry for "Mommy"? At what point does someone cross the Point of No Return and shut the door on their past innocence and therefore feel no remorse about destroying the lives of others? I just don't get it...

It's even sadder to think about children who don't, at least, get a few years to feel happy, sheltered, loved. They are thrown right into the belly of the beast by being born into areas torn by war, gang violence, hunger, or disease. Even sadder are those children born into homes where the protection that should come from a parent isn't there and where the parent, in fact, is dangerous to the child as they assault the child physically, emotionally or psychologically. There is no where for a young child to hide when Home and Parent don't provide safehavens.

I've been thinking about my children and their future. What does life have in store for them? I watch them and their classmates thinking about all the possibilities that await them. Who will become the coffeeshop intellectual? Who will become the gangsta thug? Who will become the petty theif? Who will thrive and who will give up themselves?

All I can do is be present and hope to be a guide, of sorts. The seeds are growing and I can do my best to gently shape the growth but ultimately, nature and outside elements will take their course and show me that it's folly to think I have any control over anything or anyone.

I take my daughter to the park and burn the sound of her high-pitched laughter into my memory. Doing so, I try to recall the sound of my own high-pitched laughter back in 1976 and try to drown out the 6 o'clock news with its sound.

The Gulag is Everywhere - Just it's walls are gone

2006-03-27T23:42:00.000-05:00

I've been slowly trudging through Solzhenitsyn's "Gulag Archipelago" and am, so far, struck by two concepts worth sharing.

The book is a voluminous account of his imprisonment in the Soviet Gulag prison camp system - a system which not just killed and imprisoned hundreds of thousands of people (many were true innocents who never really had any clue as to why they we so victimized by their fellow man) but also employed a sadistic ritual of torture (most designed to leave no mark). My first choice of adjectives, when describing the punishment metted out to the Gulag's inhabitants was to be "inhuman" but then I struck it realizing that only humans can be so cruel. Only humans derive pleasure from the pain and suffering of other creatures.

Anyhow, the two concepts that have hit me so far have been:

1) When a new prisoner is admitted to a cell (usually designed to accomodate 2 but almost always filled with 5 to 6 prisoners, if they're lucky) one of the first questions asked is, "Are you coming from Freedom?" I'm reminded to not take the simple things for granted. Tomorrow, I will stare directly into the sun, because I can. I will drink more water than I need to sate my thirst. I will sit and listen to the schoolchildren, as they play during lunchtime. I will skip stones across the dirty San Lorenzo river. I will hug my wife and children 5 seconds longer than what feels like is the necessary duration. I will hit the snooze button on the alarm clock and not worry so much about being late to work. I will keep my shoes off for as long as possible. I will enjoy the process of breathing clean, free air.

2) Prisoners, when brought to the Gulag, are kept in extreme isolation for a duration of time that is a minimum of 5 days and a maximum that knows no end. They begin to feel like alien entities floating through unknown territory like sad ghosts. When they are put into an overcrowded cell, filled to the brim with complete strangers, it is almost like a reunion, of sorts. It is painful and pleasurable (if pleasure may be experienced in such environs) in that it is almost a rebirthing process where one is reunited with Men and sheds the spectral skin worn during the Isolation period. No longer is it "I" and "Them" when thinking of where and how one stands in the world. The sweet concept of "WE" comes into play and there is little that can quell the power of "we". "We are not happy". "We demand a solution." and "We will not tolerate this". Even if the speakers of such statements have no true power to control their fate, there is, for at least a moment, a sentiment of strength and spirit and hope when "we" exists.

Tomorrow, I'm going to find and work with and enjoy the people with whom I and They make "we".

Collections

2006-03-22T00:00:00.000-05:00

I've started the packing process for my family's move to Vermont in June. I've started months early because: A) I know I have tons of knick knacks, bric-a-brac trinkets and baubles. B) I don't want to move anything across the country needlessly. If it doesn't serve me or make me happy, it's not coming. C) It's nice to look at one's posessions and take stock of oneself.

What we collect really gives clues into who we are. It's a very intimate process-collecting. It takes initiative -whether it be well spent energy or not. It tunes one into the surrounding environment as they scan for new additions to the pile.

There's also something bittersweet about collections. They show an attachment to this mortal coil that I find both endearing and heartwrenching. Collecting objects makes us remember that we aren't that far removed from the animal world where crows and ferrets hoarde away everything shiny they can find.

The objects people collect know no bounds or limits. Some collect books, records, photographs, autographs,art, seashells, antiques or stickers from everywhere they've ever been. I often see RV's with a map of the United States where only 1/3 or 1/2 of the states have been filled in by stickers. I like to think that someday, they'll fill that map and feel a happy sense of completeness.

These collections are often the first things that people try to save from the house fire's flames or the rising floodwaters. They represent a timeline that links people to their memories, past and lives.

The first thing I remember collecting were rubber bands, when I was five or six years old. I collected them by the thousands and made a big rubberband ball out of them that kept growing until it was left behind during one of my family's many moves. Then I collected the silver wrappers that chewing gum comes in. I had a huge stack until it was thrown away by my stepmother who didn't realize it was my collection of treasure and not a collection of trash just stuffed under my bed. I followed the traditonal collection route by collecting stamps and coins for a few years. I combed flea markets and yard sales for a few years until I had amassed a fairly sizable and reasonably valuable collection. My father was concerned about the value of my collection and insisted that I store it in his safety deposit box at the bank. Every other week, I looked forward to going to the bank to go into the special safety deposit box viewing room where I would look at my collection and make new additions that I had procured. Around the time I was 12 or 13, my father and I started drifting away from each other. I moved in with my mother and whenever I asked my father if I could could get my collection from his bank, he said that this week wasn't good for him. This went on for a year or so and then I stopped asking. I knew then and there that my collection was now his.

People covet each others collections. They look at the stockpiles of amassed treasure and either they don't have the patience to build their own collection or they don't have the money to buy one of their own.

I must have made an unconscious decision when I lost my "valuable" collection to stop collecting things of value.

Tonight, while packing, I see that I have an enormous collection of things that noone else would ever notice, much less want. I am moving about 30# of rocks across the country. Also coming are: about 3000 streetsweeper bristles that I've found in gutters over the last two decades, lots of broken pieces of pottery and glass, jars filled with buttons and old keys and red soil from Arizona and my children's teeth and 100's of other things I've found or had given to me that possess intense sentiment and memory. I've always liked that a theif could enter my home and rob me blind of my "valuable" possessions and wouldn't even think to take the things I most value. Someone who would steal a piece from my collection would have found value in it only after hearing the long and involved story that each piece bears. Such a theif would have to be so close to me that I would have shared with them the secret of the value and such a theif might as well do physical injury to me as it would be less painful than robbing me of my past.

I think it's beautiful that some cling, like desperate animals, to these little comforting objects. I pack mine lovingly and think about the past and keep an eye peeled for shiny things that will appear on my future path.

2006-03-13T21:29:00.000-05:00

Why Film Is Dead

dedicated to Tex F. Evans

It's finally happened. I have witnessed the death of an artistic medium and can now turn my back on it and look forward to something new. I won't watch anything new that the Film Industry puts out, or talk about anything they put out or pay a cent to support their "efforts" or give a second of my time to the dead artform of Film.

The process started a few years ago when I noticed a disturbing trend where American filmmakers were remaking films from foreign countries. Now, this had happened, on rare occasion, in the past (ie: Japan's "The Seven Samurai" becomes Italy's "Fistful of Dollars" which then is made a third time with the American "Last Man Standing".) But, at some point, it seems that American producers decided that there was money to be made by remaking films for Americans who lacked the patience or sophistication to watch a film with subtitles and confusing foreign languages. One of my favorite films of all-time, Wim Wenders' "Der Himmel Uber Berlin" (American release title: "Wings of Desire" , was remade and called "City of Angels"- a big name, big budget film that happily flopped. I also celebrated when "Vanilla Sky", the Tom Cruise blockbuster and a remake of the beautiful Spanish film "Abre los Ojos", bombed.

Now, it seems that foreign soil isn't providing enough fodder for the Industry. In the last year we have seen remakes of American films that include classics like "King Kong", "The 39 Steps" and (yes, I claim it a classic) "The Pink Panther". Other films of lesser caliber are not excempt from this creative piracy. "Superman" is re-made before poor Christopher Reeve has been in the ground for 5 years.

Why do I have a problem with these remakes? I take issue for a multitude of reasons. A) I think it's sad that we've become so lazy that we accept these rehashed stories without hungering for new ideas, new vision, new stories. It makes me sad for the same reasons that I can't understand why someone would watch rerun television over and over again, killing time and just watching because it's "the best thing on". B) It makes me sad that the intent of most films is to make money and the Art is slowly fading away, as is the intellegence and the actual messages that film used to convey. C) Most viewers of remade films will never take the time to watch the original and if they do, sadly, many will be disappointed because of the lack of production, and special effects and star power.

The final blow was going to see "Ultraviolet". This was not a remake. I had somehow thought it might be, at least, visually exciting. I watched this movie in a kind of a state of shock. How had a movie this bad made it past so many stages that a film needs to go through to make it to the theater? The answer is plain and simple: we just don't care about film anymore. And on a deeper level, I think this goes to show how apathetic we are to what's being spoonfed to us whether it comes in the form of Art or Politics or War or Culture. We are content to "kill time" accepting what's being offered to us.

Through our acceptance, things that shouldn't be permissable are allowed to survive and thrive. I am done playing and am taking my toys home with me.

...and I wish I could get my $8.75 back from Cinema 9 for that damn movie. The $6.25 I paid for the popcorn was worth it...

2006-03-05T16:15:00.000-05:00

I'd rather see piles of salt built than bury the past.

At age 35, I'm reading Vonnegut's "Slaughter House Five" for the first time. Most people read this as required reading sometime around highschool. I, somehow, didn't. I'm glad that my teachers turned, instead to Steinbeck or one of the "classics" because I'm sure the book wouldn't have hit me, at age 16, the way it has gotten my gears going at age 35.

I'm only 30 pages into the book and this commentary isn't about Vonnegut or his work. It's about how we, as a culture, are in such a hurry to move on, without mourning or reflecting or thinking about the past in a true and meaningful way.

The first few pages of the book mention the firebombing of Dresden during World War 2. I started talking to my wife about how everyone knows about Hiroshima and Nagasaki but very few have any knowledge of the massive deathtoll that occured in the German city of Dresden. The fact that American children are taught a very limited account of history is a topic for another discussion...

My wife then mentioned that when her cousin's husband was playing soccer in Germany, a few years ago, they were blown away by the fact that there are still (60 years later) carcasses of bombed out buildings scattered here and there across the country. These buildings serve as sobering reminders of the past and give the past a face that the present can relate to. Verbal and written accounts can be misleading. Even photographs can be taken from angles that don't allow the individual to truly assess the situation. When one views something with their own eyes, they gain better, more accurate, understanding of exactly what it is they're looking at.

America doesn't like its people to look at things with their own eyes and come to their own conclusions.

I think it says something horrible about the way we deal with tragedy that America has begun the groundbreaking ceremony for the Freedom Tower - a monstrous, modern monolith being built on "ground zero", the site where the World Trade Center twin towers stood until 9/11. I feel like we're burying history along with those that died in the buildings and the airplanes that brought them down. I wish we would take the high road and send a message to the future by keeping Ground Zero intact. It seems obvious that the masses couldn't help be moved by a giant empty void smack in the middle of the U.S.A's largest city's business district. If it were kept a hole, devoid of life and full of dust and twisted metal, that would serve as a proper reminder of the events of 9/11.

Instead, we in this country that buries its history and past, erect a monument that's taller than the fallen towers. We build this giant glass and steel middle finger that's pointed at our enemies and say, "we will not be afraid." But, what we're really doing is spending a huge amount of money to make a statement that's all form and bears no substance. Anyone with enough money can build a tower. The Freedom Tower represents the vanity of America. It will serve the purpose of our government when they crow about the strength of America and it will become a symbol that most think of when they remember 9/11 because their memory of the original inhabitants of the site will fade and become replaced. We are a nation of memorial plaques and memorial freeway overpasses and memorial sewage pump stations. Our memorials don't make anyone remember anything.

I, like Vonnegut, love Lot's wife for that all-too-human reaction when she looked back at the ruins of her home. The lesson the Bible teaches us is to never look back, and America follows suit, as a good Christian nation should, and it too wants to move forward, as it veils, hides and moves away from its past.

2006-03-01T21:58:00.000-05:00

Distracted by shiny objects, we'll forget anything and everything.

Yes, some may say that we need to "move on" and "get on with Life" but I find this year's Mardi Gras celebration a macabre display of gross selfishness and insensitivy to those who exist in "the bigger picture".

First, as the above photo illustrates, I am mortified to see (almost pointedly) an absence of anyone other than white people celebrating this festival of lively raucousness. In what seems to be a huge (and painfully obvious) PR move, the media is showing lots of footage of children (all white) and less of the usual drunken tourists who decend upon New Orleans every February.

It seems brutally irresponsible to party on a site where less than six months ago, bodies lay exposed or under shabby blankets, where they were left to bloat and decay.

The city still hasn't (and never will) recovered and it now has to deal with the mess created by this party. We always are in such a rush to "return to normalcy". It's good to reflect on, dwell and deal with tragedy, loss or disaster. It makes one remember and appreciate what's important. Yes, one could say that Mardi Gras is showing people that it's important to have a good time and celebrate Life but I feel that most people will take the easier road of denial and drunken forgetfulness and will regret more what they did for some college stranger's camera than they do for showing complete apathy to the "outside world" that happens outside of their safe little fragile bubbles.

How nice it must be to have the luxury to take time off work , hang out in a safe environment (because you know the town has more police presence than ever...too bad it wasn't there when the actual residents the New Orleans Police are entrusted to serve needed protection) and then you drink and drink and drink while wasted 19 year-old girls show their tits to you in exchange for plastic baubles...

Whenever I drive through a town that a perceive to be a "hellhole", I always take joy in the fact that I can leave. But, I almost always give thought to the residents that must reside there and call it home and it instantly humbles me.

Whereas the message sent by the revellers in New Orleans this years is, " Never mind them poor folk who should known better in the first place than to live in a city surrounded on three sides by water and built below sea level. Just party and feel really alive. If New Orleans doesn't leave you feeling sick and hungover, you've done something wrong... "

Requiem For A Town

2006-02-25T23:57:00.004-05:00

My heart is officially broken. I woke up this morning to news that Prudencio Rodriguez had died. For those of you who haven't spent much time in the town of Santa Cruz, his passing will mean nothing to you. For those of you that know Santa Cruz and it's inhabitants, you probably know Prudencio better as "the old violin guy". He died today at the age of 90 after falling down some stairs.

Prudencio has been a constant in my Santa Cruz existence. He stood about five feet tall, wore a cowboy hat and played the worst sounding music that I've ever heard produced by a violin. Yet, he played for years, scratching out quick paced little ditties that noone had ever heard of or could remember to whistle out at a later date. When I was in high school, it was considered extremely bad luck throughout my entire jaded punkrock friend crowd to walk by him without dropping something in his open violin case. When I moved to San Francisco (as almost all punkrock 18 year-olds from Santa Cruz do) and then dejectedly moved back, he was still here. A few years later, I moved to Minneapolis and when I returned, I was happy to see him still playing on Pacific Avenue showing no signs of improvement in ability or any advances in age. My last move was in 1995, when I moved to Seattle. Upon returning once again to my beachfront childhood town, the little violin guy still stood the test of time. Each time I moved away and returned, I was happy and suprised to see him still alive and present. He had come to represent what I felt was Good and Stable in Santa Cruz. I made him into a kind of holy man in my own personal faith system that involves obsessions over minutae and worship of heros, places and curios that go unnoticed by most eyes.

I am sad that I never took a picture of him. I meant to many times over the years and just never got around to it. My friend Janina told me that his "horrible music" was actually a very precise form of Mexican folk music that was historied and technical. This may explain how after 80 plus years of playing, he never "improved". That part always got to me.

I was overcome with a sorrow for this familiar stranger (I never really knew his full name until reading his obituary) because, for me, he represents the Old Santa Cruz - a town with mystery and true weirdness (not bumper stickers proclaiming it) and ghosts made of flesh and bubblemachines and HOPE. He reminds me of how I used to feel good about my hometown whereas in the New Santa Cruz, I feel like a stranded tourist. I don't recognize anything or anyone. My history here has blown away or been buried deep within the foundations of new, ugly buildings that house stores with goods intended to be sold to people totally unlike me or anyone I've ever been friends with.

Prudencio's passing is an omen and I'm heeding it. I'll miss that little guy and his shitty, lovely music...

2006-02-24T22:21:00.000-05:00

In Praise of Amateurism

There's a guy who plays his cello on the sidewalk who I pass everyday during my travels. He is, quite possibly, one of the better cellists I've ever heard. He'll segue from a Bach suite into a heavy cover of some song by an obscure Scandinavian death metal band.

I've taken to watching him. He seems to perform joylessly. In fact, he seems not to be performing at all since he always seems to remain oblivious of his audience. The only times I've ever heard him speak he's speaking ill of the speaker of unsolicited praise who happened to be walking by and, apparantly made the fatal faux pas of breaking the cellists post "performance" trance. He is not happy. He is, I believe, a bit touched in the head.

This brings me to the point I've come to after meditating on the Cellest and his situation. I never want to master anything. I've noticed that those who achieve mastery (whether it be of the cello or collecting butterflies on pins or chess or whathaveyou) always seem to have made huge and, I believe, self-destructive sacrifices to acheive such status. Problems with hygeine often arise. Loneliness rears its head early and then becomes accepted as the norm. Sharing existence with outsiders becomes foreign and, eventually, fear becomes replaced by abstract alienation. The world becomes something like a festering tooth that, at first, hurts and then, one learns to live with the pain and then the pain changes to something else, numbness.

I choose do a half-ass job at thousands of things and still be immersed in Life. I find it exciting to become immersed in my "fad of the month" and sort of learn how to do things like YoYo or play Bocci ball or make tasty cookies. Once Mastery is achieved, look out! First, you take up an activity on a whim or with the idea that you will gain fame or money. You, maybe, gain these. You make money. You impress your friends. Then friends fall away as your talent alienates them. You'll then surround yourself with other afficinados and masters of whatever thing you're drowning in. Then, the competition will bore you, distract you, keep you from your goal. It's the goal that will be your undoing and it's the goal that will see that you die from hypothermia in a field that neighbors a college campus that houses 15,000 students (one of whom, at least, who would have loaned you a coat or given you two bucks for a cup of warm coffee).

So, I say this to you Dreamers and Aspirers: Knock it off! Stay simple and off the radar and you'll live longer and happier. Slack your simple ass through the days and people will smile when you enter the room. Many Beers will be bought for you. Attractive strangers will pointedly stare at you as you walk across the bar. If not, at least, you can live happy knowing that you're, hopefully, wearing clean underwear and even if others don't realize it, they don't think otherwise. There's very little sadder than a talented iconoclast who smells of offal... Don't be that guy!

2006-02-19T22:38:00.003-05:00

Portrait of a Dead Man

I'm at the point where it's painfully clear that I've almost burned through my reserves in my current hometown. A few years back, I would've come to this realization and been gone in a matter of months, weeks or even hours. But, now I'm playing the part of the "responsible adult" who also bills as "parent of two children" so planning is in order. Thinking things out in a timely, patient and rational fashion. This all goes against my instinctual grain but I'm in a different stage now and am adjusting to the circumstances.

So, tonight my helpful mother-in-law sends me a link to real estate in Vancouver, Washington. First, let me say that of all the places I find alluring in the Pacific Northwest, Vancouver, WA. doesn't even make the top 100. But, I appreciated the energy and effort she spent so I open the link and the photos appear and after hearing my exclamation of "Holy Shit!" followed by near hysterical laughter, my wife comes into the room and joins mybemused slideshow of house after house that all seem suited for suicide. I pointed out the her, "now as we go through these shots of bedrooms, basements, and weed infested back yards, just imagine my corpse hanging dead center in the shot. Not hard to imagine, huh?"

No, I think I'll take it slow. We're in no real hurry and there's no sense of desperation hovering over us. Vancouver, Washington: I'll say a prayer for your residents before going to bed tonight.

2006-02-19T20:12:00.000-05:00

The Culture of NOW

There's a sadness that's been building up inside of me for a few years now and cell phones are the root of it.

Today, I watched a guy, riding down the street on one of those motorized skateboards, pull a ringing cellphone our of his special "cell phone pocket" (lots of new pants and shorts now include this a a standard feature) and he answered the call and then almost lost control and fell into oncoming traffic. If Darwin was right, then the cell phones will be as strong a contributing factor to the extinction of certain members of the species as the ability to swim, forage for food or run quickly.

Kids always get the brunt of the abuse that's heaped on a society than needs things quicker than now. I work with individuals who have never known a world without remote controls, microwavable food, computers that can access anything you need to know or cell phones. But, adults fall prey to the temptation of extreme convenience too. It just easy to scapegoat the kids.

What really makes me sad though is not the convenience factor. What gets me is that, now, people never have to spend time alone with themselves and their thoughts.

I remember walking two miles to school when I was a kid (and NO this is not one of those "when I was a kid, I had to walk through a blizzard without shoes on" stories). I'd idle away the time playing little games with myself. Counting steps. Making up stories about the people that lived in all the houses I passed. A stick was my sword for vanquishing the evil weedy monsters and other plantlife that happened to be unfortunate to lay within my path. I floated sticks down gutters on rainy days.

Today, I see young kids walking to school, talking on cell phones. They just can't wait that extra 20 minutes to talk to their friends. They walk, hand to ear, eyes to the ground, barely aware of what's going on around them. If they looked up, just for a second, they'd see me sadly watching them, thinking of all the youth, freetime, experience and LIFE they're missing. If I could, I'd send them a text message with a plea from the Universe to just stop trying to fill all that "boring" time and to just enjoy the simpleness of their lives before Time catches up and, inevitably, fucks it all up...

Deckle Fetishism

2006-02-19T19:26:00.000-05:00

Heidi found this paragraph in a reference book specific to buyers and collectors of books:

"UNCUT is probably the most overworked word in the cataloguer's vacabulary, and it has come to exert a mesmeric - and not entirely healthy- effect on the novice collector. He will not, of course, share the delusion which provides such steady (but blank) ammunition to outsiders hostile to bibliophily, viz. that uncut is the same thing as unopened, with the corollary that collectors prefer theif books not only unread but unreadable. For UNOPENED means that the leaves have not been severed by the paper-knife from their neighbors. But unless the functional significance of uncut edges is properly understood, a rational preference for them IN THEIR PLACE can all too easily degenerate into DECKLE-FETISHISM."

Deckle-fetishism... hmm...

A friend states, "I can see you going home with your beer and your 10 watt lightbulb to rub the edges of the book pages."