Regarding Last Night

This piece here was written when I was really feeling the sorts of things I was talking about last night. I wrote it six or ten months ago, but it really hits the nail on the head in terms of complacency, and easy solutions. I think I'm doing better than this now.


*******
Corageous Dalliance


I can regard this as a dalliance. I can pretend this is a pit stop. It’s a deific sign rising out of the mists on the highway that leads to singing castles and just reputation. I’ve been driving all night without hope of rest and have been uncautious. I drift down the well-worn off ramp and settle into the parking lot for a meal and a warm bed.

And I don’t leave.

I dream a dram of whiskey and drive in my sleep, somnambulating closer and closer to the destination, waking up damned. Stacks of paper rise like colonnades on my desk. Staple removers mouth foul curses and latch their clever jaws on the warm flesh of my gut. I measure time in the inches of my waistline, not the loss of rubber on my tires. I run straighter and faster than those around me, but the sedentary sirens sing me slowly into their soft supports as surely as any around me.

We get married on a verdant hillside in the shadow of a well-pruned ash. It’s as comforting as any storybook wedding for my bride and I. Scolding my indulgences vow after vow, I am but eager hands and a greedy wallet, pulling back the veil to lay lips upon that steady paycheck.

Courageous men would not twine their fingers around hers. They would fuck her and leave her, never tempted by the accumulation of goods and the status symbols bought with this lifestyle. Truer hearts would leave flowers on her bed table and start their cars. Thinking of this as a momentary thing—a footnote in my book—would be easy if I were such a man.

I can’t paint my bitter, tear-stained laughter with mere words. You have to hear me when I’m alone, almost coughing from the exertion. I know that each time I say I’ll move on, I’m saying what I want to hear.

That old car rusts in the driveway. The slick shine of the steering wheel fades in the sun. The rims blacken from grime. All things are soluble in the flow of the years. All things atrophy.

Mouths, Money and the Senate.

*Quoting Brahm*

"Is anything really worth fighting for? Or perhaps is it that all of our nobility and our virtues are just stories we tell ourselves to feel good when times are easy. Is expediency really the only rule?"

Fighting? Violence? Or is it just striving that you mean. Not giving up, in or out? The only one I think worth fighting is myself. Parts of me at any rate. To shove that brat of an attention span into a corner; hold him there with force and ignore his constant distractions and alternatives. To berate that stolid, aging complacency with profanity and insults--anyting to catch it off guard and start working again. I have to break objects and private morals just to get the attention of my increasingly egotistical sense of entitlement. I have to cut myself down, shove my nose in my own shit and work harder than I think is healthy, just to keep myself moving. Isn't that fighting? Just to put one foot in front of the other some days. To soar, rather than merely drift on others.

But I know what you're saying. It's that complacency that you have to fight against before you can even begin to fight someone or something else. It's so easy to sink into a rhythm of one day after another, and to see all the trees, but never worry about the forest. Never to even realize that you can change the forest. It's two battles at once, and a thousand excuses come to mind before you can get to the second. When your morals, obligations and virtues ever even come into play, the shock can be enough to paralyze.

There are things we'd all do. Fight for our lives, and probably those of people we care for, but would we defend an innocent stranger? Speak up when something is wrong? Until you know how to win the battle against your internal enemy, the external battle is a wet dream.

**

Today I wrote to both of California's senators, voicing my opinion on our President's desire to gain the line-item veto. That was a big step for me. I want to justify myself when I rant and rage about government. I want to feel like I've done more than earn my degree, I want to put it to use. To be political. To be able to more than talk about checks and balances, and jurisprudence, but to put my hard earned knowleged to bear, and to be a functioning useful part of the world.

Thanks for giving me a little bit of reason to revolt, Brahm. You're hitting a nail on the head for me, and waking me up to the idea that others are thinking about this too. Growing up is about more than just getting a job. Really growing up is being what you thought being an adult was before it snuck up on you. For me, that's changing things. That's becoming this person who's able to go from thought to action.

Maybe now I can publish something. That'd be putting my money where my mouth is, huh?

I quit

A thick, milky ocean laps against me; these dreams like cliffs, eroding away. I dream about prison and about searching in a deep hole. I wake up with my eyes closed and feel around me. Please tell me I'm safe. Please tell me I'm not doing something stupid. Am I alone? Am I clothed? What's going on? How did I get here? What time is it? What day? It's whack-a-mole, and the questions pop up and down faster than I can swing the hammer. It gets heavier every time. A tickle in my throat. Did I vomit? How hung over will I be? Am I supposed to look cool, mixing things together like a chemist without an education? No one holds me back, and no one chastises, but I feel like an idiot. Baseless. Adrift. Twitching and wired. Trying to decide if knowing is better than wondering. The drink gets me here, and I worry about where here is.

I quit.

Captain's Log.

To whit: Becoming an adult might be about learning to love things that were took for granted as a youth. My microwave and vacuum cleaner make me disgustingly excited. I'm become more domestic, and it's no one's fault but my own. I dream about end tables. (I also dreamed I was gettig high with my mom and dad, though, so let's not get carried away. This isn't Leave it to Beaver, and I'm not Ward.)

Stefanie came to visit over the weekend, and we partied, walked too much and observed the world of animals.

It was a derelict time. Polar bears look so dumb, all by themselves in crafted environments. There is something so much more compelling about a naked cat that wants to eat your soul.

This is nature's way of telling us not to fuck with the relative traits of animals. Dangerous predators raised in captivity lose their nature at a disgusting rate, while the small, manageable ones keep their attitudes, and probably even increase them, foul tempers fed by constant reinforcement. This is why the cat hates you, and the polar bear doesn't know you are food. It's creeping me out just thinking about it.

Warren

"Regina, we don't say things like that in the house of God."

It was funny the way the reverend could capitalize a word like that. Just by saying it, you could see the letters butting up against you eyeballs, even if you kept them shut tight. Warren held on to Regina's shoulder and nudged a lock of black hair away from his eyes. The back patio at the Church of Our Savior on Elm and Sutter had never been so crammed full of little girls, all parading their pink and purple dresses. If Easter was about revival and rebirth and all that, Warren could only wish that the pink his daughter was wearing could croak and die, or maybe hibernate a couple months out of the year. He sipped his beer when people were looking. Took long, comforting gulps when they turned away.

"Rev, she's just a little girl. Go easy."

"Warren, we've known each other a long time, and I love your family, but where would your daughter learn those words? And about her mother? You should be ashamed."

Ashamed wasn't really in Warren's repetoir. Goaded into compliance, maybe, at best. Shrugging indifference, ususally.

"Well you don't have to take away her candy, rev. It's Easter, for cryin' out loud."

"I'll be the judge of who receives and who does not in this church."

Warren cold cocked the reverend with the butt of a forty ounce Miller High Life and wrenched the wicker basket out of his limp grip with his left hand. Green plastic grass fluttered out of it in a parody lawnmower clippings. The plastic eggs all stuffed with jelly beans and those little crispy chocolates jostled around like suntanning elephant seals, but didn't move far. He handed the basket to Regina, smiling loose and honest for the first time all day. The little girl practically vibrated between joy and shame. He stood erect again, and looked the reverend straight in the eyes, looking for just the right line. A smoking gun.

“Bite me, reverend.”

If the rest of the assembly was going to give Warren and his girl those kinds of looks, at least he could have the decency to deserve them. He took Regina's hand carefully, and squeezed all the reassurance he could muster out of the gesture. She felt safer, too. They left together, and they laughed, and feasted on marshmallow, gelatin, nougat and chocolate. When they were drunk with power and glucose, they both said nasty things about her mom. And that was about the happiest they'd ever be.

King Oscar

In another life I was King Oscar. My robes were silver scale, my crown a spire of coral more fanciful than the noblest narwhal. Moon bright pearls dangled and bedecked the ceilings of my underwave castle. Mighty vents coughed and sulfurred up energy. Sardine subjects went this way and thosewards—a convoy driving right, a caravan left—shining and soft on the eyes like chain link curtains. They cast rainbows on the kelp beds. And all the while I was chortle-satiated. Belly laughs. I sucked down shrimp and poured prawns down my grizzled gullet. I drank mulled wine and spoke nonverbal in grunts and glees. The pressure of the deep, heat the earth spun up molten, the heavy crown; they could not dim the rose in my cheeks.
My bastion broke. And only today I saw the hole.

Stop Calling Me a Terrorist.

God Bless America. And Max. Also bless Max.

Comic Books

After thirteen months at my current job, I've finally been convinced that the people I work with are geeks. Big ol' geeks. Damn. (Not that I'm not. No, no. Just that I think the “these are some cool folks” meter just topped out. Wow.) We had an email conversation between five folks over the course of the entire day, debating the merits of comic books and their filmic translations. People are so good at hiding their inner geek, but you can always smell it. You're just never sure enough to force a confession.

Sick

I'm making a quick sidestep here. Like, why am I sick all the time? I always like to blame acquaintances and California germs, but that sort of thing shouldn't slow me down this long. I conqured Oregon diseases, standing on top of the mossy pile, bejacketed in lichen and mist, but sunny, pleasant Oakland bests me? I should be putting the screws to the industry and riding a chariot built of guns and drugs from the hills to the bay.
I think it's more insidious than that. Corporate tidings bring a graceful excuse to treat your employees like thieves. Each hour of medical leave a tiny razor strike at the wallet of the shareholders. These disease-ridden, filthy employees are a swarm of cutpurse piranhas.
They swat around their knees and make up policy walls to keep us from climbing too high. They count our movements, in sickness and wealth, by the second. The second. They cleave the day at its joints, then break the filet knife out and slowly grind it into mince. And this isn't enough to make me sick?
Well, not quite. These walls that so irk and stifle me (they keep me down, really, they do) seem only to convince those around me that the solution is to enter the building brandishing an arsenal of microbes that would turn a the whole of Monsanto on its ear. They cast aspersions about their paychecks and cast lesions about their deskpace. Like primitive witchdoctors, owing their health to miracles and poultices rather than rest and solitude. I can rattle against this cage all I like, but I'm barred in by ignorance and violent apathy. And by mucus. A cage of mucus that makes my sinuses heavy and my sleep fitful.
Swear vengeance with me one and all! A bill of health! An ammendment for the oppressed to strike a blow against the diseasedist!