January 2012
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Our function in the universe is unclear, while our...
Why that “happiness thing” is so difficult for all of us human beings, caught somewhere between true beasts & pure angels. A theory.
Literally holed up in a beautiful dive in North Beach yesterday evening drinking Irish Coffees & lost in a book when a former poet laureate interrupts me… ‘buy a newspaper,’ he says. (?!)
The New Year came to me on a high roof in San Francisco w/fireworks over the Embarcadero & wine euphoria & one of my favorite people suddenly singing ‘it’s the end of the world as we know it’ beside me while the explosions intensified in tempo & color. A real moment.
Earlier there was a feast among friends & blind Cab Sauvignon tastings & maybe just a touch of apprehension...
December 2011
3 posts
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Washingtonia Robusta
If California could only dye the fronds of its common palm tree yellow, the entire state would resemble an immense field of dandelions.
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You are walking on the moon, reader. I am under the waves of the sea. This point seems overdone, but your life is only obvious because of what it is & who you are in relation to each other. If we had been born somehow among the rings of Saturn, we wouldn’t understand the swirling violence & noise at the surface of the earth on a quiet sunny day in December.
November 2011
1 post
October 2011
2 posts
I feel, at 30, like I thought I would at 20 years… that is, almost ready to be serious.
Here is unserious:
Could the mild, unspeakable guilt we feel as hosts when entertaining out-of-town visitors during a spell of bad weather be in any way related to the horrible, misplaced guilt a child of divorcing parents feels?
Here is serious:
What if we told each other the truth from the start?...
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September 2011
3 posts
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We’re redefining a ‘good night’ based on the last: an impromptu, beautiful concert of Bulgarian folk songs played on violin in our apartment at midnight. Thank you, Isabel.
THEMED MEMORIES (consumables)
Coffee & croissants in the palm tree gardens of the Fairmont on weekends.
Argentine empanadas consumed along the oil-slick Embarcadero.
Barbecue afternoons on the rooftops of Telegraph Hill, drinking sunlight.
Secret rooms & expensive cocktails in the speakeasy ghetto.
Games of tag w/the surf at sunset, slowed by Greek food & honeyed custard.
August 2011
3 posts
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A question to ask yourself: Is it that this place has no soul or is it me?
July 2011
4 posts
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I found a file named nonsense.doc.
When I opened it & scrolled through the text, I forgot how to breathe… the document was words to song after song after song I had written in the fall, winter & spring of my first year living alone in Portland, while I should have been studying or keeping up w/family half-way across the continent. Among the lyrics, there were dozens of songs that I...
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Photographs from Big Sur
Early morning, I let the house dog out into the yard to distract her from the fact that I did not know where to find her food. She looked hungry. The plan worked well - though I later learned she had conned me, as our host had already fed her & gone back to sleep. I went into the yard, too, because I am easily distracted. The large old oaks were strong-armed & stunning, the orange tree...
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June 2011
5 posts
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“Damnit we’ll do this telephonically.”
– OVERHEARD in SF.
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Day 1
My eyelids push closed, chin pointed up for a moment. I reopen my eyes to a holy white ceiling &, dropping my head, to a holy room in a holy city next to a holy sea. This process will be replayed a hundred times before the sun sets, or more truthfully before California turns away from its light. I will retrace these steps - eyes closed, up, opened, down - each time my hurried mind refuses to...
May 2011
7 posts
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A NOTE TO SELVES: The most tragic, most important,...
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April 2011
6 posts
Why To Get Out Of Bed In The Morning
Money is the root of much unhappiness. Happiness, too, unfortunately.
The masters say simplify, but:
Love is the root of much unhappiness & happiness. Family is the root of much unhappiness & happiness. Even the pursuit of happiness is a source of much unhappiness. … so the elements themselves are clouded.
The masters say nothingness is truth, but:
Nothingness is not happiness,...
Wherever you are now, I am sure, is a great...
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WatchVIDEO STUDIES | SAN FRANCISCO I carried my p&s camera around, thinking in video instead of snapshots… an experiment. Everything is sort of rough as I have no professional equipment. The song is an old demo of “I Don’t Know” by my pal Leo London.
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March 2011
7 posts
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PUNS THAT ANSWER THEMSELVES
What is a funny-looking creature you might SEA LION on the beach?
Why is what like a writing desk? Are you stark RAVEN mad?
Which animal cannot BEAR to stay awake through the winter?
What sort of beast breathes fire while DRAGON a serpentine tail behind?
Which bird still might sing all NIGHTINGALE force winds?
[ ps. let the above also serve as instructions & create your own. Share. ]
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WatchSelections from my Love Letters to Saint Francis:
The Impossible Ladder The elegant plan, the simple inarticulate hope the incessant dusting, the uncovering that hovers here the unremarkable rungs of the impossible ladder
that you think of these things at all.
The cups that are clean, then filled, then cleaned the nowhere fear, the terror of arrival the sad spaces in front & above, the...
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WatchNoah Kalina stopped by to help w/the housework.
Time Change
After days of feeling pathetically helpless & stupidly overwhelmed by the staggering tragedies in Japan, I tore myself away from the news (itself a sort of intangible tsunami) when I realized I’d been listening to endless, hopeless broadcasts & staring distrustingly at the bright blue bay water out the window for an unknown amount of time. The thing that shook me “awake”...
“I’m kinda training for a marathon. Well, not kinda… I am training...”
– OVERHEARD in SF. Dude on a cell outside Bob’s, smoking.
February 2011
7 posts
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I Think I Just Annoyed Tom Waits
Could it be possible?
First things first. The great San Francisco snowstorm of 2011 never happened… bastard bought a ticket, told everybody in town & then never stepped off the train. Hell, it hardly even rained. I was having a delicious sandwich in the park during “the worst” of it, & I couldn’t remember a nicer lunch. The sun was strong & the air, somewhere...
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FEVER MATH No. 8
These two phrases have an identical letter progression:
A spa’s tickings troll E.D. together
A spastic king strolled to get her
ps. like crosswords w/out clues.