Rotate My Way – Let’s Dance

Come my way, let’s dance. This life is too fleeting to stay seated. Let’s let go of all the other stuff gravity holds down besides the trees.

This world of ours rotates too fast. I get dizzy in the crosswind.

It’s another windy day. I try to hold on but my hats fly off my head all the time. I go chasing them down in the breeze and from behind I look like a man whose always losing his head. That’s how it goes. Are you going my way? Let’s transgress our love.

Skating on this pond, the ice is thin, I think I’ll skate until I sink.

Even when I look like I’m having a good time I’m really not.

Our fingers trace the lips of our lovers, leaving our prints on their kisses. Wine makes it all go away, down into the ground where our lives combine with our ancestors’ to form the bedrock of all our mistakes. History repeats itself they say — the repeaters, that is, say.

I say, let’s start something new, let’s transform ourselves.

I write cinema. Behind the garbage bins, in the dark, I scrawl my name on the cinema walls while the audience chuckle and guffaw inside then galumph to their cars with popcorn bouncing through their intestines destined for the digestive deep, joining more corn than one stomach can imagine.

I’m writing your name on the wall like I was four years-old again, reading Clifford The Big Red Dog, watching Johnny Cash sing with Oscar the Grouch. Forming each letter slow and precise, I write all our names in cursive.

You are the summation of your thoughts. More than your wallet. Your lovers. Your career. You are the circumference, the radius, the circle you draw when your synapses shoot colors through your brain and pictures develop magically, uncontrollably; shapes result symmetrically, language flows fluidly, patterns propagate themselves like small insect colonies, consciousness is self-replicating. You are the energy you set loose when you open your mouth and express yourself, when you get up and shout.

I love when we’re talking about our lives, the places we’re from, the stupid things we’ve seen, stitching up our experiences and everything else into a lazy autobiography we know by heart. It’s simple but so moving every time: these lingering conversations that take years to complete.

The way words lure me into bean-spillage and from-the-heart-speaking you’d think I was born to play the lampshade party-goer, the class clown; but I am God’s wingman and we’re tight like a buttplug in a nun’s ass,  everything you say I can deflect with my all-knowing audacity. My earthly worries dissolve with a little reminder that every day there is a sky above and earth below is a blessing and there’s nothing greater than pondering Right Now. And dancing.

This moment, Right Now.

Dancing…

You are as beautiful or as ugly as the words slipping through your lips. We are like waves and tides. Going up and down. I’m a surfer of your bullshit.

This trolley is bumping and shimmering and falls down these San Francisco hills with more velocity than my flesh can handle. Tingling with the Halloween cold air, the wind ripping through the carriage, my flesh is a million nerve endings on alert, a book in Braille.

I escaped from the pages of a novel you wrote while under the influence of the moon and sixteen illegal substances, showing up at your door with a semi colon dragging from my shoe.

I am Apollo — say my name three times and I’ll do a dance for you.

Apollo.
Apollo.
Apollo.

That’s why I love you. You do what I say.

Confetti falling from the rafters, cluttering the dance floor, we navigate through the party like bodies with sails and a steady breeze. We drift through an ocean of eyes like a pair of lonely ghosts. It’s the night before Halloween and helter skelter is in the air.

Are you going my way? Come with me, we can get all holy and transubstantiate ourselves to music.

Vampires

Tears we don’t find revolting — a lone achievement in the realm of bodily fluids. Blood. Piss. Cum. Shit. Spit. Unless its your own you don’t want anything to do with it. Tears are in rather vile company. Coincidentally – or not – tears are the only bodily fluid humans produce that other animals don’t. Chew on that.

Last night I went to a party in Sherman Oaks. It was a “vampire” party up in the hills and everybody wore fake fangs and fake blood and there was a tubful of Coors Lite I laid waste to in a pinstripe black shirt and red tie. The pool light had a red lens so it looked full of blood, sorta. There was supposed to be fire-breathers but as we were walking up the hill a fire engine was descending the other way so I assume that part of the party was fundamentally altered. For atmosphere there were torches burning around the yard and a stripper pole in the living room. It was a vampire friend’s birthday so of course there was cake. And pictures galore.

Our lives are constantly being documented by our friends. The camera flash is now a ubiquitous constant at bars and parties. We spend half the evening lifting false smiles onto our faces that by the time we go home we’re worn out by all the digital posturing, confused by the clamor of nothingness, wondering what was actually produced, there is a corrosive stunted wonderment invading our culture. Our conversations center around outfits and poses. The toasts and jokes are miserably unoriginal. The deejays don’t even carry records anymore. Oh, the woe of an aging hipster.

My new apartment doesn’t have a window to look out of so I haven’t been writing much about staring out the window. I haven’t yet found the literary usefulness of staring at walls so I’ve decided to focus on my cooking and how buffalo meat tastes so much better to me than cow and it’s probably because it tastes more like meat should, gamey, hearty.

We all live in square rooms with square windows, the walls between us grow thicker as the years compost in the yard.

We light candles and drink wine to unwind and lament the blood stains on the shag rug.

Across town there was also a “white trash” party we were prepared to dash off to should the vampires go on a bloody sucking spree. I had a bag of clothes in the trunk of my car to make the transition from goth to hillbilly, but alas the night didn’t feature a wardrobe change. We loitered in the yard till three in the morning pointing out Orion’s Belt and imagining the various possibilities in the night sky until the mist rolled in and the torches assumed an eldritch glow. We were all princes and princesses of darkness, for a night… some more than others.

Tonight I’m pondering what to do with the piece of pork defrosting in my fridge and if I should get Mexican crema for the mashed potatoes and which wine to open to compliment it all.

I decide against the crema because I’m frankly too lazy and as I peel the potatoes for a minute I let my mind lose itself in the task of preparing my meal — one of the best things life has to offer, both eating and forgetting oneself for a moment.

Immeasurably Different

The craters of the moon collapse in a crestfallen crescendo.
Brittle light shining upon the dried-up, skeletal beechwood trees
cast an uncanny  reflection of the heavens,
illuminating my lonely face a paler shade of pale,
a ghostly, chalky alabaster tombstone white.
It makes its mark by betraying everything it touches.

The shadow of the moon… it’s no better.

And still you whoop and holler, like you won the lotto.

The Dodgers were knocked out of the playoffs.
A sewer line broke in the street the other day.
Water flowed everywhere, like a river.

The currents brought me to her river bank.
She said her name wasn’t important
and for an evening I believed her.
We dined on lobster and other animals
of the sea… the night treating us less
cruelly than it should have.

The wine sits in a glass with a W on the outside.
The grape was crushed in 2005,
when time was measured differently.
And I was measured differently.
She said I drank too much and she was right.

A solitary sea crab stuck to the hull of the ship
makes its way across the bay and lets go with a slip,
lands near the pier where the surfers hang around
and buries itself in the soft sand, into the ocean ground.

Inside its shell it will live out the rest of its days.
You and I held hands while we listened to the waves.

It was 2005 and the year before was 1993.
The only difference between now and then
is I buy soy candles now. I only mention it since
humans have a need to measure these things.

They want meaning for the tick,
and religion for the tock.
Or else time doesn’t mean a thing.
Needy things we are…
Needing meaning.
Needing religion.

But where I live it’s all goddamn dandelion gossamer.

The Serious Moon

As wonky as the weather in Los Angeles has been lately, so have my moods. My coconut juices have been sloshy and rather incoherent, in a bad way — I can’t make up my mind about anything. What to order for lunch? What to write about on artofstarving? Whether to buy an inexpensive couch, or a really nice one. All things that don’t really matter, but I’ve struggled needlessly anyway. I’ve been a worrywart and a sourpuss, and even I haven’t enjoy hanging out myself lately.

Some other things that bug me…

Handicap people make up less than 2% of the population but account for more than 33% of toilet stalls. That is prejudiced and unfair to those of us needing to go to the bathroom who don’t have the luxury of rolling around in a seat on wheels.

It’s going to be my number two priority to see more stalls for the un-handicap.

Number one priority is seeing to it that more tall urinals are available. Those little urinals makes it too easy to pee on your shoe.

I’m kidding, of course… I never pissed on my shoe before — that would be uncool.

We take our health for granted. At least I do. Every morning I try to feel the joy of being alive, of awakening as a fully conscious, sentient soul and appreciate what a special blessing that is; but sometimes that alarm clock just isn’t your friend, and you would gladly offer any ransom to retrieve a couple of hours of precious dreamtime.

After I shower I wipe the water off my body before getting out. Less water absorbed by your towel means you have to wash it less often, saving water. I’ve trained myself not to feel cold a sorta jedi-zen mind over matter, where before I’d immediately jump into a towel like I just climbed out of some iceberg-infested waters, now I barely need one. I just drip dry like some future apocalypse shower.

This post-shower process also gives you a chance every morning to get acquainted with your body, to explore your flesh. As you wipe off the water, think, ‘this is my arm. This is my elbow. These are my lungs. This is my chest. This is my birth mark. ‘

When I come upon a pimple, I say, ‘this is a pimple. It is evil and a pest. We are sworn enemies.’

When you think about it, and I do an oddly large amount, so much of our lives are spent eating in restaurants, cooking in kitchens, and personal maintenance in the bathroom. Every now and then we come out for drinks at the bar.  One time we stayed up till four in the morning talking on the couch… I remember famously Johnnycakes was discussed. The moon had a serious glow that night. Sometimes the moon does that… get all serious.

A serious moon casts a strange light in which every thing looks like a facade, like there’s no depth or insides to any of the buildings, the trees resemble cardboard.

I’m trying to live with less these days but the more stuff  I get rid of the more I get to fill the space — and I live in a small apartment, too small for all my things. My books have become a burden. They’re already in my head so what good are they doing stacked in the closet? The bookcase and all those titles are nothing but vanity lined up, my desire to inform the world of my sophisticated tastes.

I bought a shirt I don’t really like because it was a great deal, only $20, down from $145; but I don’t have a pair of pants that goes with it so I’ll have to buy some jeans. Be careful of anything that is too good of a deal. Be careful of how the mind rationalizes things that are ultimately counter to what is good for it. The mind is a turbid, steaming mudpool of confusion, and we’re swimming blindly in it everyday. I need shoes now too.

If Jesus came back to Earth would he ever be believed? It’s a catch-22 where anyone who claims to be Jesus is immediately dismissed as insane, as a charlatan. What if Jesus came back and just gave up this time? Spent his days drinking beers and hustling folks at pool? That’s rhetorical of course.

I could blame these thoughts on the moon, and its serious glow, but I’d rather own up to my quirks. I’m constantly craving the cringe, lost in stunted wonderment. I’m perpetually baffled by all the new things there are to learn, people to meet, places to go. I could blame these moods on the planets’ alignment or some karmic equation coming to fruition, but I don’t really feel like placing blame, because I don’t bad for them, there’s no blame to be had, these thoughts are what keeps the flashlight lit, exploring the swamp, these sundry Sunday nights.

Swimming Both Directions

I am a person that discerns Target from Wal-Mart, someone who absolutely adores trips to Target, but would never be caught dead in a Wal-Mart. I know it makes no sense at all, yet I won’t change. I know it doesn’t matter what clothes I buy, yet I spend days contemplating the next outfit I plan on purchasing.

I loathe the state of our culture, while cherishing its more low-brow, inglorious feats.

I am a walking contradiction, a fish swimming in two directions.

The lights in the night sky sparkled celestial-brilliantly and I remarked, “oh, what a pretty star,” when my astronomer, buzz-killer friend corrected me. “That’s a satellite, dumbass.”

I get home from bowling league and I thought to myself, ‘what’s the difference between a gutter ball and a strike but the slightest of wrist-flicks!’ Star or satellite, what difference is it to me?

As a species, we’re 99.9% the same. But it’s the 0.01% of us that gives us our personality, and our identity, and those key elements drive capitalism, makes this whole show work. Where would we be without such special feelings about ourselves? I am and that’s an important thing to be. This is my time here on earth. I’m going to do it!

The soy candle burned low. The evening drew to a rather unremarkable end. I sat there in my kitchen amid the stainless steel and wondered what my humanity has to sacrifice to be human.

I was hungry, but too tired to eat. I decided to read to fall asleep, hoping that somewhere in my dreams I’ll exist on Icarus’s cloud. I opened the book and was stolen from my life.

Twenty Questions

Twenty Questions:

1. What is the strangest, most invasive question a complete stranger has ever come up to you and asked?
2. Why does the moon look so beautiful when I’m out jogging alone?
3. A Pabst Blue Ribbon takes away the harsher thoughts, but then I’m left with just the tender ones, is anyone willing to trade?
4. Do you have a bashful bladder?
5. When you listen to songs that you used to listen to with your love, do you ever feel like singing along, and then when you do it slowly morphs into a shout until you’re angrily belting it out the open window?
6. This pizza I’m eating is high in calories, but it makes me feel good; do you ever masturbate while watching the news?
7. Do you ever think about calling someone and then all of a sudden they buzz you? And you think it’s ironic, or a coincidence, until you realize it’s neither, because it happens all the time.
8. I’m masturbating while watching the news. Do you like pizza?
9. I’m right here. Go ahead and touch me, but only if you’re sure you’re going to leave a dent. Are you confident you’ll be able to affect me? I’m only going to let you do this if you’re serious.
10. I’ve got so many things I want to know about you, we can play twenty questions all night long. If I told you I was a confectioner of conversation, would you believe me?
11. Does modern art make you upset?
12. When you see attractive mannequins in store fronts, do you ever imagine having sex with them? As a kid, did Smurfette make you horny? (Okay, that’s actually two questions, I’m cheating)
13. Oceanic travel used to be highly dangerous… what people used to do to come to America!  Does growing old scare you.
14. What’s your favorite piece of sushi? You’re not allowed to say yellowtail.
15. The day after drinking my throat is always so parched. It’s because we’ve been talking again until dawn. Why are your words so dry?
16. If time isn’t a curved bow, why do you play it like a fiddle?
17. Whistling in the restroom is an aggressive, anti-social act; what’s your favorite tune? If I can guess it, you owe me a peach.
18. The world is round and ripe and if it were a piece of fruit you’d take a bite; so how can you really expect anyone would let you carry it around in your hand?
19. I like tea. Do you like tea?
20. We’ve got all night. If I went outside and began to yell at the rockets we shot to the moon, would you come stand besides me and shout and shake your fists also? Or call the cops? I need to know before I hold your hand.

Alkaline Heart

It’s Saturday night and a holy thirst is inside me,
I want the week to die, executed by foggy memories.

You worshipped me like Jesus Christ at a toga party…

I’m throwing my hands in the air like Buddha.

You ask me what I’ve done with my life?
I’ve walked this world for 33 years.
What more do you want?

We all have a robot in our heart,
With gears to oil and screws to turn.
He knows how to get the party started.

This heart is gullible and alkaline and on fire…
Don’t pour water on it.

Shucked Oysters

The menus taped to my door.
The vinyl spinning on the record player.
The shucked oyster shells stacked on the plate.

Conversation fell around us like confetti on New Year’s.
It was too loud to hear her name but it sounded like Constance
and I couldn’t help but think that that sounded like Constants
and that falling in love was just too much work,
so I refilled my drink from the bar by the pool
instead…

It was hot and the sun was  big and bright
so I wore plaid shorts and headed west
where it was too foggy and cold
to comfortably wear shorts.
(Especially if they’re plaid.)

This city is too crowded to be so lonely,
my friend complained, and I looked at him,
and knew exactly what he meant, but lied instead,
and told him what a great place this was to live.

I don’t think John Keats was
someone I’d want to meet.

You always knew the way to my death star.
You always knew how to blow me up.
We watched the VCR and laughed at the punchlines.
Not realizing everything around us was crumbling.

You are a little lightning bug in a jar.
The night turns in flashes.
Catching last call at the bar.
Stuffing ones into our caches.
Hopping on the last train to Zanzibar.

Found sand in my shoe but I haven’t been to the beach.
Gravel pieces dropped into the hourglass. Boulders of time.
I’m a clogged drain, begging for your sweet and sour refrain.
The whispering in my ear. The spread of ink on the page.
Lost track of the rail – we’re eating up our emotional right-of-ways.
Everything surrenders when the street sweepers come and
brush away our dreams. The streetlights bleed blood red, bleating.
La Brea contaminates its arteries, like a junkie, or a fist in a crowd.

The satellites keep a steady watch on my lurching, half-muscled gait,
a-stumblin’ home, perched forward in time. Head full of the saints arguing,
conspiring, crapulous.

I’m here, but I’m not me. John Keats
was not someone I think I’d like to meet.

Walking Corn

I’ve been thinking about what I eat and trying to improve upon my normal diet of burgers, pizza, and the occasional chicken sandwich — that’s if I’m feeling healthy. I’ve been trying to eat more sushi and green tea, because that’s the staple of Japan and those motherfuckers live a long time, and sushi is tasty. Plus fish is brain food supposedly. Omega-3 and all that.

Ancient Aztecs used to refer to themselves as ‘walking corn’ because they believed, as the saying still resonates today, you are what you eat. And they survived off of corn. It was sacrilege to let corn sit around on the ground. We in America eat a ton of corn, whether we realize it or not, we drink a lot of corn, we wrap meat fed on corn in breading made from corn starch. We are way more corn than the ancient Aztecs. We just don’t appreciate it, nor even care.

What does this mean? Corn isn’t bad for us, is it? Well, scientist believe that the reason modern red meat is as unhealthy as it is is due to the cow’s corn diet. Cows were evolutionarily designed to eat grass, not corn. When we consume so much of it, in everything we eat, our dietary balance is out of whack too. Bad for the cows, bad for us. Moderation is the key to everything in life.

The thing is, corn is hidden in foods we normally don’t think it’s in.

It’s in your soda. But not Mexican Coke. That’s why it’s so tasty, that and the cool bottle. Not only does Mexican Coke taste better because of the use of cane sugar, it’s better for you. High Fructose Corn Syrup is turning our kids into giant fatties. It has as much to do with the obesity epidemic as super-sizing your fries and vegging out in front of the playstation.

All this corn working its way through the American diet is not by accident. The government, along with Cargil and other gargantuan agribusinesses, have initiated policies that promote the overgrowing of corn and the lowering of its price, for their profit. They run the entire operation, from the buying of corn to the use of it in almost every food product imaginable, and they keep it under wraps and secretive. What do you have to hide, Cargil?

A McDonald’s Chicken McNugget is only 53% chicken. A large part of that tasty, little crunchy snack is corn. Not that much of it is chicken. Corn is even broken down and used in the wrapping of food products. We’re practically swimming in the stuff.

There’s an excellent book called The Omnivore’s Dilemma written by Michael Pollan that explains all this corn-spiracy way better than I can.

From Wikipedia:

Pollan begins with a deep exploration of the food-production system from which the vast majority of American meals are derived. This industrial food chain is largely based on corn, whether it is eaten directly, fed to livestock, or processed into chemicals such as glucose and ethanol. Pollan discusses how the corn plant came to dominate the American diet through a combination of biological, cultural, and political factors. The role of petroleum in the cultivation and transportation of the American food supply is also discussed.

What can we do about it, though? Besides becoming vegetarians? The easiest thing, it seems to me, is to stay away from processed foods. Stay out of the middle rows of a supermarket! Away from frozen foods, sodas, Twinkies, crap like that.

Another thing we can do is eat grass-raised beef. Sure, it’ll cost more, but it’s healthier, has more important omega-3, and you’re not adding to the density of feedlots. If you’ve driven up the 5 and passed by Harris Ranch, you know these mega-feedlots are a shitty situation. You smell the flood of manure from miles away. It must suck to be a cow in one of those places! Not that being a human in the middle of L.A is much better…

I’m becoming more of sushi freak, that’s for sure. And veggies. There’s nothing like a good piece of broccoli. With some melted feta there’s nothing betta!

Before you right me off as being corny and alarmist, stop and think about what you put through your body on a daily basis, and how it makes you feel after wards. The proverbial after-lunch food coma doesn’t have to be…

Most animals are concerned about two things, sleep and eating; okay, three things if you include procreating. That seems to be about the only thing we’re still concerned with these days, getting our hump on. I’m going to try to eat right, I’m going back to the basics, I owe it to my body.

Now someone pass me an orange.

Begonia And Logorrhea

Packer aimed his pervi-scopes – as he delicately referred to making eyes at a woman – at a curly blond youngster stepping out of a black Jetta. She was wearing a flowery, loose dress that reminded him of pictures of his mom when she was a hippie. A blue tank top clung snugly to her breasts, perfect bulbs of feminine fruit, and oversized sunglasses nearly obscured her face.

“If you’re trying to find something, I’m here,” he announced in a voice he likened as suave, but more surely came out a little lecherous.

“What’s that?” She asked. “Are you talking to me?”

“I hoped to be. I’m Packer,” he told her.

A cool breeze whipped up the air. Ash blew off the cigarette he was smoking and the tobacco hissed between his fingers. He could feel every foot of space separating his body from hers, the moisture in the air making the distance heavy and listless; he wanted to close the gap so he stood up and approached her with his arm fully extended. “I think you should know that you have a lovely look. It’s nice to meet you.”

“Thanks,” she answered, a small hint of a smile spreading above her dimpled chin, but then it subtly changed to a sneer.  She took his hand but quickly dropped it. Behind her ear was a yellow flower. He tried to figure out if it was real or not.

“What’s your name?” Packer asked.

“Caroline Lane.”

“Hello, Ms. Lane,” he said with a stupid, lilting rhythm he instantly regretted.

“Lane is my middle name,” she shot back with prepared ease.

“I’m sorry, Caroline Lane. What’s your last name if I may be so bold to ask?”

“You may not,” she replied with a strange mixture of humor and malice.

“Well. Caroline Lane is a beautiful name.”

“So I’ve been told.” Her tone now definitely lacked friendliness.

Packer didn’t miss a beat. “Well… I’m telling you again.”

“Thanks. Great. Super. It was nice to meet you, Packer,” she said and bent her knees and held out her dress in a sarcastic curtsy. “I’d stay around but there’s a million places I’d rather be.”

She turned on her sandaled heel and walked off towards Melrose Blvd.  He yelled something flattering after her and she put up her hand in response without turning around. He continued to watch her, dreaming about begonia and nights full of logorrhea and her curly blond hair until she turned the corner and disappeared.

How quickly and pointlessly we fall in love, he thought to himself, flicking his cigarette into the gutter and watching it sizzle out in a grimy stream of oily water. It looked like a river of tar, yet made of rainbow and somehow beautiful despite the context, despite the rejection, despite the apathy.

“Oh, well. Another one will come along,” he said aloud to no one and laughing at the thought, the city busily ignoring him and he not really giving a fuck, the night coming on like an ether rag upon your lover’s lips, it’s the sort of comment that would make Packer laugh like a madman to himself; and so he did, accepting the heartless hardship with a puckered grin before heading back up his steps and into his small, one-bedroom apartment in the Fairfax district.