First Entry Found, pt. 1

(includes "Just For Fun, pt.1" and the famed expose on modern living "In Times Like These All One Needs Is a Good, Firm Shake. I'll Take Vanilla.")

3/1/07
In between thoughts of deviant sex with pastries i've been thinking about Gopher Sounds a lot today. It was this great independent record store in Flagstaff which, i'm guessing, is now officially closed- another casualty of that blasted in-ter-net.
A few weeks ago I learned from my friend Lee that the store would be shut down, victim to diminishing sales which, as the industry tells us, is a result of Kevin Shields refusing to make up with Belinda, grab his pedals and slip back into the studio to cut a new My Bloody Valentine record. Smug bastard.
Lee "does" the weather in Flagstaff at the tv station where i was employed as an opinionless man-shaped bucket earlier this millennium. While not being shoveled shit through the top of my head by the management of KNAZ , Lee entertained me with tales of high pressure and of drugs, of impending storms of kind bud coming in from the North. And he was always enthusiastic and he was always right.
So when Lee called and told me about Gopher Sounds closing down it didn't really affect me too much at the time. I mean, I've given up hope about a lot of Flagstaff- the bark beetles which had been ravaging the trees now found their dastardly way into the town's heart. And like the pine forest all the town really just needed a nice rain. For like, three and a half years straight.

I used to tease Lee about the way he told the weather but that was because I was bored and didn't know what I was talking about and frankly also because he is short and wore a suit, a combo that always makes me a little giddy. Lee was so good at the job that during his 3 minutes in that suit and in front of the chroma key pointing at some animated storm system that would inevitably not find it's way into bark beetle territory, we, the entire bucket-headed ragamuffin-production staff, we'd sit contently in that fart-drenched production room and go over tapes and tell jokes and do imitations of each other in our headsets, knowing that Lee still had one minute and twenty eight seconds to go and that it was all going to be easier from now until the end of the half hour on our live television news program. "One minute." We're going to make it, even with beetles eating through the rest of our ancient cameras and equipment, with the antenna barely transmitting and the sports segmant still up in the air, we are going to make it. "That's 15 seconds."
And I guess that they say that you always do, you make it. "That's 10. . ." You just make it though boys, ya make it. The towers fell but we made it. She had that stomach virus on the cruise but we made it. He slept with another woman but we're going to make it. But fuck that you know- Pompeii? The Anasazi? The '03 Cubs? Gopher Sounds? "That's 5. . ."
One time we were cruising through the weather segmant- someone hit a button and the next thing you know Lee's standing in front of a furniture commercial. You don't make it and it's okay, really it is and we're going to have to get used to it because, well- don't you see that storm coming? "1. . ."

I think that main reason I was fired from Gopher Sounds back in the spring of Ok Computer was that i was too obsessed with not making it. Us, me, you, them- everyone not making it.

Plus, there was the issue of my scent. Living in the desert on 80 acres of land with 6 or so other people all surviving on the patented "coffee and hope diet", smoking Drum in a house with a corrugated roof that was supposed to collect rain water in a place that never rained wasn't good for body upkeep. I was unwashed because the act of washing in a house so devoid of water would be the worst kind of selfish. "You showered!" the dark evil daggers would shoot from my passive aggressive housemates, "doncha know we needed that water for our coffee!"
So because we never could collect enough water from the clouds and down the roof and into the tank and through the filters and down the pipes, we all knew that whatever water we did have would never find it's way out that shower head. And if anyone even hinted at the need for a nice quick shower and shave of the legs well then, up against the wall and out came the daggers.

No, the act of showering was relegated to the houses of our friends in town; town- that damnable place where water ran freely and electricity stayed on for an entire cycle of toasting bread.
Our beloved friends, the saints, swinging open their shower doors as we slinked in on a wave of stench once or twice every week; even allowing us to fill plastic gallons and jugs with water that we could use to drink coffee back home on the ranch. But why? Why did they let us do this, why did we get away with leaving that horrid black ring around each tub? Because we demanded it with our dusty swagger and harried eyes, that desert gaze cut with hawk and black sands was too much for them- the saints could not say no, and if they did, we might kill 'em or curse 'em or even worse, make them like us. We knew this, we knew that in the end we were all going down together. So what's a few gallons of your water anyways.

But carrying a job, working at a record store like Gopher Sounds was a different story. I, in my 9 to 5'er lack of charisma was enslaved into worrying about how i smelled for a fucking job. Here, where girls break up with boys and where flowers which once rose from impossible desert soil now too are dead. Here where none of us will make it i hafta worry about smelling nice to sell Fugazi cd's?

I first saw the eyes of the jobless beast the day that my boss Steve had me go to the hotel and pay a dollar to shower. We both knew that this couldn't go on as it had, that the aromatherapeutic oils couldn't mask the truth of me whenever the sun would hit hard against the window behind the register- that now no amount of shrink wrapping would make amends. My knowledge of the Factory label would not be needed soon enough.

Another reason to fire me was that i was often late to work. This too could be easily linked to the no one here get's out alive theory of not making it but i just won't bother. Instead let's link that trip to work to the one i took today, just for fun, (because fun is most fun when revising not so fun things with a fun new spark) ((please someone stop me if another sentence like that one belches out ever again))-
Today i left for work at the last possible minute that i could to avoid being late for work. Unfortunately, as i locked the door, i realized that i had forgotten to pick out a cd to listen to during the 8 minute drive. So by entering back into my apartment i was officially leaving past the last possible minute that i could to avoid being late for work. Glad i did it though as the music will be new.
Now anyone who has had the pleasure of joining me in my garage can just relax during this next bit, come now dear friend, just sit back in your chair and go through a short self guided meditation with me. We're walking down the stairs to the garage. We take the side stairs as somehow I feel that they are lucky when leaving but not when returning. It's cool here on this staircase, the turns are close and comforting. For a moment we smell the recycling, paper and the reside of tin cans. Our shoulders brush together as we descend. At the bottom of we approach a heavy gray door. A box is embedded in the wall to the left of the door, a small light bulb there glows green. The color of entering. We breathe together and, almost touching the door now you see me push a button. The light is red. The Sacred Garage Space has been activated. We may enter. . .
The noise in here is deafening, a terrible beep that pounds through ear and into chest, eating away the lining of your stomach, a Lou Reed moment of self hate. BEEP BEEP BEEP We scramble towards the car, fumbling keys and jagged toe step. You ask me about the noise and i try to explain that it is the sound of the alarm deactivated, that it is off now and that, were the alarm actually going off, that, well- that's a sound even worse than this. BEEP BEEP BEEP I've been here a year and i still don't understand this.
One quick and easy 12 point turn later and we're out of the garage. The alarm is activated, or silenced once again and i have a choice. I can A. Cut through traffic and risk being smashed by many cars or B. Don't do that. I've gotta admit that B. has been my choice lately.
Now the rest of my drive to work is pretty stale- a lot of stop and starts and turns- you know, driving-type stuff. Weeeeeeeeeeeeeee!!!
After about 8 minutes i parallel park between two cars that do not have the space for flossing between them and get out, grab a coat and walk to work. That's it. That's the journey.

Ok, great. That was Just for Fun, pt. 1. Now I'd like to contrast that trip with the one that i would take to work at Gopher Sounds ten years ago but i can hardly remember what it was. Or rather which mode i would take to get to that job. I think there were three-

1. The Erin and Blue Escort
Erin and Blue were the youngest folks to live at the ranch. As a couple they were as on and off as our electricity- the state of their love was as randomly dependent on the placement of the sun as the amount of wind that blew through the propeller each day. I remember that Blue was the one who would siphon petrol from the tank of Erin's car whenever we would run out of natural energy and had to use the gas powered electric generator. I guess part of my job was to convince him to do it as i most certainly was not. We'd go out together into the dark with a hose, a gas can and a bottle of drinking water. He'd kneel down into the black sand while I would do my best to make him laugh knowing that it might make the taste less poisoned.
Eventually we'd pull the rope chain over and over, blistering hands, coyote scream- fuck! The desert is a cruel place! Nothing is easy here- bread cannot be toasted for risk of shorting the power! Bugs crawl in mouth! Rattler's in house! The pull cord for the gas powered generator is an unyielding asp, it's bite is the sliver of rope in palm pulling over and over for nothing but sputter!

End Pt. 1~

Over the next few weeks we plan to bring you entries which were found encased in individual fortune cookies collected by customers and staff at an unnamed Mandarin buffet ($10.99 lunch/$17.99 dinner) in southern Ontario over a 4 month period.

Well over 6,000 single-lined fortunes were assembled by Edith Felene, a former airline hostess and longtime member of the Hamilton Book Club, who lists item #117 The Honey Garlic Beef as her personal favorite dish.
We would like to thank Ms. Felene for her months of toilsome work in bringing to us these entries. One cannot imagine sifting through all of those tiny scraps of paper and assembling them from random piles into the (sometimes) cohesive works that we have now. Without her efforts, these statements- however frustrating and ultimately unimportant they might be- would have been discarded in heaps of chow mien, napkins and grease.
Our hopes and prayers are with Edith as she continues to recover in Hamilton General Hospital. Please send flowers and chocolates but refrain from any get well cards with text smaller than 16pt., no run-on sentences or cookies and please- no poetic phrasing .


Soon after the first week of February (not coincidently during the same period that this blog went silent ) mysterious "non-fortunes" were the disappointing end to what had been "a very fine meal until this point thank you, but now you've scared the kids and what the hell kind of fortune is 'Each pack of Red Vines have approximately 20 pieces in them !'. (Quote taken from surveillance footage captured 3.18.07, 1:23 pm lunch rush- Cormier Family table, seat 3, westside Butterfield Ave. view.)

After numerous customer complaints the owners chose to contact the Taiwanese-based Happy-Sun Fortune Cookie Company who replied by fax with the following- "You may love the small ones but win the big ones. / Lucky Numbers 3, 18, 21, 26, 33". This message, though later used to play Lottery Canada, was ultimately of no help.

The Fortune Cookie Mystery which, like any good mystery, is always proceed by an utterance of 'why'. For example- 'why', after enjoying a nice plate of Mu Shu Chicken, 'why' was Mr. Hendricks given a fortune cookie which, when cracked open, revealed the completely useless phrase "behind a brick wall and cross through traffic". Why? Were these specific directions that Mr. Hendricks was being asked to follow? Like, that brick wall over there? (Suffice to say that Bill Hendricks did follow, only to find himself standing in front of a vacuum cleaner repair store on the other side of the traffic.)((Which actually turned out pretty well as Bill remembered Mrs. Hendricks request to purchase a new filter.))(((Which he did.)))((((But 'why'?))))
Mysteries like these need an answer and though the Chinese prophets has been known to be obtuse, sentences like "impending storms of kind bud" just didn't translate well as fortunes in southern Ontario. Something wasn't right and The Happy-Sun Fortune Cookie Company, for all of it's optimism and numerological compliments, just weren't helping.

So Ms. Felene, because of her literary ties, was asked by the restaurant owners to attempt to understand these strange fortunes. And Edith soon discovered that the disjointed phrases and non-committal assumptions that had been frustrating the prophetic hopes of diners for weeks we're not "nonsense" but rather part of "a larger scheme", a "complete thought". Which she believed to be "hardly coherent" and "never a winsome phrase as ' you will enjoy good health and financial independence' " Edith never less believed these thoughts "had something to say" but "what, oh what" and "why, oh why do I keep seeing those little red spots" for are "the little red spot people the cause of the burning burning inside of my head!". (Quotes are from Edith Felene's personal diary.)

Edith began by laying out the scraps of paper collected from frustrated diners across the carpet in her central Hamilton condo. One can picture her then, alone; glasses perched on tip of nose, that cup of peppermint cooling off in the Niagara Falls mug atop a coaster, the late winter light barely penetrating the window and Edith trying to make sense of all of those tiny greasy sheets. You cannot be envious. But Edith, in need of a project and always good at the Sunday puzzles, was fit for the task and approached it with a passion seldom seen around the Chateau Royale Condominiums (save for when Hank Jenkins cashed in his bi-weekly check from the tool company and ordered in a whore).
But for all of the shuffling, head scratching, note taking, note tearing and all-out research, it- like many brave discoveries- it was a happy accident that provided Edith the breakthrough she needed to solve the mystery.


The bottom of a cat's paw is a special thing. Some Native Tribes of Real America consider paws to be spots that are focus points of energy. Much like a vortex a cat's paw captures energy and holds it in- like a well during the rainy season it is refilled while never fully drying up. It is believed that cat's paws are firmly rooted to the center of the earth while the rest of the cat (it's mind, heart and soul) travels interdimensionally. Hence the energy held in a single paw encapsulates the power of this world and any other the cat chooses to travel within. Much like a pillow. (Which is also considered to be an energy hotspot in some cultures.)

But 'why' do these things happen? What makes one piece of paper stick to one paw and another to one more? How do these things fall together? Why do phrases coincide and, in turn, exist with one another as if they had never been apart before? Is it at this Native Intersection that all things meet? Is it here at this place that our natural instincts entwine- that one half of one phrase meets the other, that lovers become lovers, peanut butter and jelly? The spot where twins are born and an entire nation finds it's common purpose, dug into the ground, found under the stars, one paw touching the next? Who the fuck knows. . . What is true is that one small fortune was moist enough, had just the right amount of grease on it to stick to Beatrice's paw and another the same and that both of these phrases, when they were dislodged from the paws, both of them coincided, met at the core, one small punctuation bleeding into the next, one wound of word onto another- that these things embraced and become one complete thought, obscure yes and quite possibly built from the things that madness is made of- but enough of a Natural Conjunction of Things that Edith Felene recognized it as One Complete Thought and, because of those sacred paws, was able to ascertain that these elusive fortunes meant something when put together after all. Eureka! and God Bless! "Now all I have are thousands of little scraps of paper that need to be assembled (somehow!) so that (finally!) I may make sense of all of this!". Good luck Ms. Felene, good fucking luck~

And so, in continuance of this mystery, we must now reshape the big 'why'- clean it up, scrub it down with a new approach to questioning. We must squeeze it out and pat it down until it is reshaped as a fresh and squeaky little 'how'; as in- how did this happen? How did the contents of this blog somehow transplant into the ink that decorated little scraps of white paper that were then inserted inside of sleepy looking fetal shaped cookies being baked and individually wrapped inside of a factory in Taiwan only to be shipped from that place, across land and sea and end up in one single restaurant in Southern Ontario which just happens to be 114km from the place where the author was born- how did this happen?

I mean, he really can't even stand a buffet! -

How and why- well, whatever. We won't and we simply cannot, but yes, you may try. We're done with it though. And Ms. Feline, on that hospital bed- well we can only hope that her pillow is a vortex. That would be nice for her, as she deserves to skate across time and space in a volley of truth and answers and damn fine looking multi-colored nebula for all of her hard work. She will meet cats there, cats that have lived in those distant places since time began; puzzle-making cats who will challenge her skills with the finest puzzles collected over each fantastic millennium , across each fantastic dimension and Edith will sit there, on the tip of some celestial object, her glasses pushed up on her nose, and she will sit there and solve each one of those cat's tricky puzzles until one day, pressured by growing hospital bills, Edith Feline will miraculously rise from that stale hospital bed with the vortex pillow and head back to work. Only then will she remember that this is Canada and the medical bills were taken care of.

Ukiah, My Dear (part)

Slouched upon the tired plastic of Denny's most special piece of cushioning in California I asked the woman I love most to marry me. Or rather I said that I would marry her. She answered as she often did, as only she is able to, she answered underneath words and language, below the grounds that our fathers and their's before laid with books and debates and lies and talking, always talking.

She spoke from the ether, from the well, from magick itself- from that innermost place that lies underneath everything, even under poetry and dream. She spoke from silence, from the breathing of animals, the passing of comets, from the scurry of insects laid deep under the ground.
I couldn't always hear her silence and this would become a signal post of my anxiety, a piece of what would eventually draw us apart. But when I could hear her wordlessness, purely heartborn and without ears, that I could hear it- this made me feel special beyond measure.


Part of me still sits at Denny's- the coffee gets colder and Ravven's head is against my shoulder, the waitress doesn't mind that she's asleep. I am so very tired and yet wait to hear her answer. . .

corvid

to you, wherever you are~

if we could hug for 10 minutes i believe that we would feel all that has ever been felt since the beginning of feeling itself. it would be like our own little play- "The History of Everything"- and when it was over you would leave and the curtain between us would close once again.

mixtape mine: day one

Track 1. 9:05-10:40 It was one of those nights sleep that burrow into me, like hundreds of little groundhogs wearing backpacks filled with stardust and sand that set up camp deep in the subconscious, light tiny bonfires of sweetgrass and sage and refuse to leave.
I woke up tired, head swirling in Spiritualized's Take Good Care Of It on vinyl with the pitch control turned down nice and slow all the way to the left. Dream inhabits most of my mind, taking up camp, refusing to leave. Good. Oftentimes, I like you better.

Track 2. 10:41-11:00 A double shot of black densey goodness from ye olde espresso device changed the song, albeit briefly. The groundhogs ran off into the hills, trailed by a stampeding concoction of lion, buffalo, giraffe and cheetah all quick as beans and carrying great bunches of banana's atop their backs while, right behind, chased 64 third-graders each with a bowl of cereal filled with milk and crunchies but without that sliced banana their mothers had promised for breakfast that morning; everyone humming right along to Animal Collective's Purple Bottle as we ran.

Track 3. 12:15-1:45 I'm one of those almost embarrassingly weepy Simon and Garfunkel songs, let's say Old Friends. In this case i'm Garfunkel and i'm having to sing it a cappella because Paul is still in bed back at the hotel. He's there with a sexy raven-haired stunner whose about twice his height and goes by an exotic nickname instead of her birth name, a right that she has earned. They met last night at some trendy new Brazilian club that i just couldn't get off the couch to visit.

the little red friends love lozenges

So, I've been sick most of the week, something in the throat that has been causing me to watch inhuman amounts of television. It's bad yes, but please don't pity me. Instead you can send flowers and other get well tokens through cable channel 503. It'll be sure to get to me that way.

The illness came quite suddenly and I was able to follow it's wretched progress the whole through my body. In fact the entire process of going from being well to sick took about 3 and a half minutes- one moment i was sitting back, enjoying a toothpick and thinking about the future
while the next moment i was unable to breathe, my neck swelled up as though god had served a burning tennis ball from way up in that great-court-in-the-sky(tm), a hellova shot that landed right back in my throat. The bully.

I couldn't breathe or swallow or think very highly of the future. In fact all i thought of as my body temperature rose was "i have been infected by an apocalyptic virus and this is the end, this is how we will all go". It never crossed my mind that i had caught a cold- something as simple as that just doesn't fly for me in today's world. No, this was the wrath of a thousand lifetimes spent doing the wrong thing, ten-thousand lifetimes as an asshole punishable now, here at the end of the world, by a tennis ball set on fire and lodged in the throat. Now understand- I am the guy who, upon arriving home and discovering a strange smell in my apartment's bathroom one day, immediately blamed a flatulent ghost and not the plumbing. That's just the way i think.

Being sick and without medical insurance here in the last days before the aliens come to annihilate can be a problem. I'm afraid to go to the doctor for a simple cold when there are probably much more serious matters going inside of me that need investigating. So i become resigned to to few aids in regaining wellness:
1. Ricola
2. Soup
3. Prayer
4. VH1
Now one of these has betrayed me and it's not the one you're thinking.

Ricola! Why have you forsaken me!

Last night, during the closing credits to Tupac: Resurrection (part of VH1's late night rock movie showcase) i went to grab a coupla Ricola cause i like to have them in my mouth while i sleep. (I love how it creates this textured landscape in the pocket of my cheek, how they send me dreams of Swiss mountaintops overgrown with wild herbs and i like the fact that it's considered dangerous to sleep with something like that in my mouth.)
I turned on the hallway light, unwrapped the lozenge and was about to pop it into my mouth when something caught my attention- why is it speckled?

Ants. About 5 little red ants were lodged into the cough drop. I unopened another and yes, more ants. As i unwrapped the rest in the bag and found bunches of ants "sleeping" in almost every cough drop my mind raced (well, i was pretty sick and full of television so not exactly 'raced' but 'strolled') back to the many, many lozenges that i'd put into my mouth and graciously sucked on throughout the week (and while i slept), all of which were almost certainly covered with dead ants.
How did this happen? The bag contained no remnants of ants- they were all under the wrapping and stuck head first into each cough drop. Were they packaged this way? Did the ants begin their journey in a Swiss processing plant or did they go even farther back in this lozenges lifeline- did these very ants inhabit that green pasture of herbs at the base of the Alps?
Maybe these ants were from my last house in Oakland, a part of the terrible infestation that La and i battled each Spring; members of the Great Ant Marching band who entered our home from four different locations, trumpets blaring, drums calling others to this place- "they have Ricola here! and gummies! and they are too sensitive (or stupid) to really put an effort in to kill us!". But did they really march in through the house, break into the bathroom cupboards and plunge themselves into that winter's supply of herbal cough drops only to have me discover their tragic deaths a year later? If so then how did they squeeze into the tight individually wrapping? Ohmygod. I must have ate hundreds of them, sucking out their old dead blood at night in an attempt to get better. . .

Well i hope that the ants died well, with clear lungs, sinus free. I hope that the lemon and sugar made their little red bodies tingle as they sucked in more and more of the healing nectar. I hope, if they were from Oakland, that as they passed away they were swept by visions of a better place- a place of green, of butterfly fields and herbs, of mountains capped by snow and by cloud, where they and their Swiss ant kin could live peacefully in well-packed mounds of dirt stocked with the finest chocolate and spices- never a tickle in the throat again, never a need to cough or cry.

flaming lips

these pictures are from the flaming lips new year's eve eve show here in san francisco. i like them because i cannot see the difference between the crowd and the balloons- to me they look exactly the same and that would probably make the band happy.

brushes with death : a list of ways that i could almost be killed here at this spot that i am sitting in now

(note: in no way a death wish but rather a wish for near-death which can be "rejuvenating" and "life-affirming" and all those words they use on afternoon television except of course "weight-loss" and "he left me for another woman".) end note.

1. ceiling collapse.
The ceiling above me is notoriously thin with a few scars- most notable is the fist-sized hole around the fire sprinkler. A co-worker has dropped items through this hole and onto my head so it is possible that someone who carries a hunting knife on their belt could be upstairs, right above my office and let's say he's put on a few pounds because, oh, his wife left him and to compensate he's bought a donut maker and is attempting to master the most awkward yet good tasting donut possible (let's say espresso and cream cheese). And in his attempt to fill the hole that lost love has left him with, he's put on weight.

So the once trusty belt which holds that very important hunting knife which he carries now into a music club just in case that rabid raccoon that leapt at him from behind those dumpsters one wretched night a few years back, just in case that very same raccoon is hiding behind the soundboard.

Ok, now let's say that the belt has been pushed from one hole to the next ever since that damn donut maker came into this lonely man's life; this poor belt, jealous like so many of the man's once proud possessions, jealous of this 3 foot square device that cuts, fries, and turns donuts while dispensing them onto a cooling rack automatically (oh, remember me, your electric razor? your bill counter, your tie rack, me your once-loved blender of juice? remember me!). This belt has been pushed from one hole to many so that there are none left only the snap of brittle leather that sends the whole thing to the floor upstairs above, hunting knife and all, to the floor right above the thin ceiling in my office.

So with the belt in a dead heap on the carpet the knife hops and skips, bounds out of the protective sheath and right into that fist-sized hole above my head, where it picks up speed, falling the four feet or so through the hole and through the space above my desk until it lands twap! right into the letter "G" on the keyboard in front of me- inches from my head and just a touch away from the "T" and "H" keys that my pointer fingers rest on to type the word "the". near death baby! feeling ohsogood now!

2. gangster gunfire.

I am sitting behind a window which i'm guessing is not bulletproof. It's funny, i never even considered 'bulletproof' to be an issue until enough moon-eyed people approached me here asking if it was. It's nice when random strangers are concerned for my safety, even when (in doing so) they bring up dangers that i had never considered. Bullets? Here, around me?

But they may have a point. I have only been close to a few guns over my well-protected-but-still-somewhat-erratic-just-not-tending-to-be-violent-life. And three of those guns have been here, near this window.

One of the earlier gun experiences worth noting from the days before i arrived behind this window was in Switzerland. Johnny and i had just arrived in Zurich after a disastrous 2-day train ride during which, among other things, we ended up in the wrong country. When we finally arrived in Zurich we were exhausted and I for one could not wait to fall back into the bottom bunk in a sock-smelling room at a youth hostel field with 10 Polish guys that liked to sing as loud as they could in low registers at 5:30 in the morning.
So it's early and i'm pretty tired and everything is golden morning sun, with the smell of nuts roasting from inside cauldrons on the streets. People are bustling about, heading off to work at the banks and chocolate factories and other Swiss places- all of us boarding a quaint lil trolley, painted up festive for the holidays with a big bell that anyone, not just the conductor mind you, a bell that anyone can ring! (Where in Amerikkka can you do something like that? i dare you to try to hit the horn next time you ride BART)
The trolley is packed with a nice assortment of businessmen and women, bankers, ski instructors, yeti's, chocolatiers and a guy with a hat and a submachine gun standing next to a little old lady who snacks on a bag of chestnuts. I seem to be the only one alarmed by the guy with the submachine gun. I thought this was a peaceful nation.

Another gun was on the ranch i used to live on in the high desert of northern arizona. It was here that i really cultivated a belief that i could fend off any advisory with the powers of:
1) the mind
2) waves energy
3) complex poetry

Like any good developing belief this one had been tested many times before; starting in my later years of high school when i would antagonize, antagonize and then avoid a fight by slinging confusing phrases at any would-be attacker.

It was on this same ranch that my defensive skills were really put to the test. On a night we were throwing a party with lights and repetitive dance musick i stood alone on a dusty road about a quarter mile away from the rave collecting money and or tickets. It was kinda silly- i mean it was like 2am and i'm standing in the near dark on this dirt road with only a card table and the stars to keep me company. But it was my shift so i had to do it. Anyways this evil van rolls up with like evil bumper stickers on it and a dark, dank bed in the back where evil people would lay and do evil things to eachother while listening to crap like the red hot chili peppers. :::Shudders:::
The van of 5 people does not want to pay the $5 each to get into the party. They don't care much for our openhearted trade policy nor do they agree upon the always generous "pay what you can" offer. In short, this transaction is going nowhere. This van has no choice but to turn back around and drive the 8 miles of dirt road and 30 miles of pavement outta here and back into civilization. And i guarantee that place will not be any more tolerant with the way these people do business. When their evil van runs out of gas the attendant will not offer to them a trade of music, drawings, poetry or organic drugs for gasoline. He just won't.
They don't like hearing this and the males of the bunch step out of the evil van to tell me so. We trade words and i probably laugh a bit as i tend to do when faced with people that make threats at me. This laugh is not meant to antagonize but of course it does. Really I just think it's funny when, after thousands of years of existence- with babies and war and all these different types of breads, i find it funny that we still get angry over stupid shit. And sometimes I just hafta laugh. I don't remember certain if this is one of those times but chances are it was.
So this one guy steps behind me while i'm talking to his friend, telling him "comeon, this is how we make a living, we're a buncha ragamuffin pirate artists living out here in the dirt, give us a few bucks" and suddenly i feel a sharpness in my back, right next to my spine; it's cold and pointed and doesn't feel like anything else especially when he leans in close to my ear and whispers "I have a knife to your back. Let us in."
Yes, that's right. He said a "knife". Not a gun, i know- as I'm sure now that I have misled you, this story is about a knife. The story i thought that i would tell did take place in the desert and it did involve a gun and an lcd-crazed acid-maniac who, after we asked him with all of our 5 shaved heads to please leave the fucking desert right now thankyouverymuch, pulled out a gun and shot it straight in the air. Apparently the shaved heads didn't scare him (as they tended to do). And when the bullet came down it landed just a few feet away from our dear friend josh (who i believe had a full head of hair at the time but never less was always too kind to be scary). So yeah, that one was a gun and this one a knife. At my back.

Important to understand is the relationship i had with my demons at that time. What could be best described as an open relationship, my demons and me hung out a lot and had no problem sharing this with the rest of the world. This was a battle i fought in public, the dispelling and embracing of the wretched blackness. Now the demons and i have a quieter, more private relationship. Where once they slept in the master bedroom on the floor near my shoes, the demons are now like old friends who come by late at night, asking that i throw down the keys so that they may come on up and spend the night close. I put them on the couch and try to forget that they're there. Sometimes the demons stay for a few days and sometimes they just break in at 4am to surprise me, only to leave with first light. It's just that i don't give them as much attention as i used to and for that they cry out. I'm sorry, you just hurt too much and i can't put up a good fight anymore; oh shit, i know- just go ahead poison me anyway. I have so few defenses now but maybe i can take it once more. Blast me with that black stuff.

Back then i embraced the battle because i felt that the demons were an inescapable part of me that i felt could, with love and practice (and complex poetry) be tamed. I used to go out into the desert late at night and stand on a hill with my arms spread inviting the darkness to pick a fight with me. I wanted to overcome them but mostly the demons just killed my heart. That's probably why I am at the place that i am now. I didn't win that fight. We have the occasional cup of tea together now, my demons and me. Whenever we get together i just want to pull my arms in close and it is then that i really regret quitting smoking. We are no longer on that hill and I guess that I'm far too exhausted to climb back up there.

*This would be the perfect place to put a poem i wrote back then called "demons and angels".

I spend a great deal of time near windows. At work, my nose is about 2 feet away from one all day long. Because of light changes i can see people through it half of the day and the other half of the day people can see me. Seldom do we all see each other at the same time. I guess it's a bit like role-playing in that way; i like to watch and oh, now you're watching me. Please don't look now. I'm eating. Please turn away.

I've seen some intersting things through this window. Once, a great white wolf dog was being chased through traffic by about a half-a-dozen people, 2 of which are the rhythm section of a fairly popular indie rock band.

Just yesterday a police car pulled up on the wrong side of the street, sirens lit up and festive. The driver jumped out, and gun drawn straight out from two stiff arms, yelled at someone to get down on the street; which this certain someone did, face first into the cigarettes and gum that decorate our sidewalks. Just atop some of this gum and slightly to the right of the gun a girl was trying to get her bike unlocked, her bag of groceries from the health food store so close that the cop might've been pointing his gun at her jar of tahini. The cop yelled, many other sirens came racing up dressed in black and white chrome and steel, other guns were drawn and the girl continued to unlock her bike just inches away from it all, seemingly unfazed, her mind quite possibly distracted by visions of POM juice animals being massacred for no reason other than to color the juice blood red. But that's another, far more tragic story than this.

This is about windows and not even the one with all the policemen and gangsters in it either. This is about the window is in my apartment that my bed pushes against, the one that my sleeping head lays about two feet from each night. (So, for those keeping score, that's more than half my day within two feet of a window.) ((for those keeping metric score, that's 60.96 centimeters.)) (((that's more than half a day on the days i work for those who scour sentences for inaccuracies.))) ((((but if you do that then why are you here anyways?))))

This window can be pretty noisy. Not the window itself but whatever's behind it, which i suppose is usually cars and people and arguing people and people on drugs and people on drugs who argue in cars and (once) a 19" crt monitor which seemingly fell from the sky and landed hard in the middle of the street creating a mess of cars with people arguing in them for most the night.
It can get noisy and it took a little while for me to get used to it. I'd tell myself that the street is an ocean, that the cars are waves and the sound i hear is the tranquil pound of the sea hitting up against the shore. The sirens are whales, the garbage trucks make the crunch of coral against coral while the manic, once high school theater star turned drug addict screaming at his lover and feigning suicide in the center of traffic is a dolphin. A sweet, bubbly, smarter-than-thou dolphin coming off three-weeks of shooting speed and sacrificing any reasonable thought collected since childhood to the fires of self-hate. Cute lil dolphin!

Last night was different though and I didn't need to make an ocean. Sometime soon after i hit the bed something unnatural settled in, a strange force overcame our fair city. It was perfectly quiet. All at once, and for a few short minutes, no one was in their car driving by, no one was on the street, no monitors fell, and no trash needed to be picked up. It. was. perfectly. quiet. As if some city-wide decree was passed that said "Do not do anything between 2:01 am and 2:04 am" and everyone complied because if you did your name would be submitted for a chance to win a fabulous new i-phone and by golly, i'll surely be quiet and not do anything for those few minutes because i'd sure like one of those i-phones dont'cha know.

It was quiet, perfectly so like a baby wrapped in her first blanket, quiet enough that i think the moon shone brighter and took on a fullness seldom seen over these skies. I was taken by the silence, not yet asleep but entranced, what a jewel the sound of nothing is in the city!- in those moments of quiet i'm sure that many took steps closer to perfection. Me, I tumbled out the window, all of me falling out into the world and back into time and into another window that i slept under.

Let me try to simplify this because it all makes very little sense to me now anyway. I didn't actually fall out the window, no, that would hurt and be pretty embarrassing (and noisy)- what happened is that my mind slipped out the window and traveled backwards about ten years prior. entering through the window of a place where my 10 years ago self was on the brink of sleep, in nearly the identical state that i was in last night in bed. At this place these two "me" consciousnesses met and exchanged information, my "now" consciousness telling my 10 years ago self about the state of me in 2007 and my 1997 self registering that and creating a sort of deja-vu that i can now remember experiencing that night 10 years ago. The deja-vu information that i felt in '97 was:
a) i live in san francisco.
b) iam different in that many of the things that were so important to me then are not now.
c) this is a problem.
My initial reaction to this in '97 was sadness and disbelief- i had a very distinct ideas then that are at odds with the deja-vu information about my future self that i was receiving. Basically, my future self worried me.