Not a Rough Alley

Seen on the streets of Los Angeles.

Submitted by the one and only Renita Jenkins.

This Is Our Time!!!

It’s been awhile since I wrote about politics. I was overloaded early on by the Primary and had to take a break and wait it out. Do other things. Now that it’s Obama against McCain, I can return to what I love.

Talking shit about politics!

I love this match-up. It couldn’t be more black/white.

Wait, whoops… I mean night/day.

This is a bigger choice than just Democrat/Republican. Liberal/Conservative.

This is between reaching out to the future, or clinging to the past. A past, I remind you, stained with blood and racism!

John McCain’s supposed appeal is his “patriotism” because he was a “war hero”. A hero because he was shot down and held captive. Brutal. No doubt. But this doesn’t make one more qualified to run the country forty years later. And if the Republicans want to argue it does, I’ll ask them straight-up why they didn’t think that eight years ago, when they voted for draft-dodging Georgie!

And it’s more than fair to ask what Vietnam taught John McCain. He is still on the wrong side of that conflict, one of those that truly believe what went wrong is we should have dropped more bombs on the Vietnamese and kept our mouths shut at home. That’s the America John McCain would love to see.

It’s a shame, actually. I sort of feel bad for McCain. If it had to have been an Republican president, I wished it had been him the last eight years over our current one. If Republicans hadn’t fallen under the influence of the religious far right, and if South Carolinian Republicans weren’t full of shit and bigotry, McCain might be leaving office right now rather than trying to attain it.

It’s just not going to happen!

Here’s a few obvious reasons why:

• Barack Obama thinks before he speaks, then is articulate on the spot. John McCain babbles, talks in tired Republican cliches.
• Barack Obama has Jay-Z and Sheryl Crowe on his Ipod. John McCain thinks Sherly Crowe is something Dick Cheney tries to hunt.
• John McCain divorced his wife and married a much younger, blond heiress who steals cookie recipes. Barack Obama married a strong, independent woman, with a career and drive of her own.
• John McCain wants us to tear up our shorelines for a few more trips to the mall in our Yukons. Oh, and tear up the Yukon Territory too! Barack Obama wants to create a total green movement that will revolutionize our economy and free us from the oil addiction that is causing all this mess.

People tell me all the time, “Yeah, but Obama can’t do all that by himself.”

Um, no shit! He’s going to get all of us to do it! It’s up to him to steer this ship, not man every fucking oar. 

“But he’s just pretty speeches.”

Yeah, but pretty speeches is what makes someone get up and do something.

“What has Barack Obama done in the Senate?”

What do you think makes a great leader?  Powers of persuasion! Not authoring bullshit bills in the Senate. What is John McCain’s legislative glory? [chirp chirp] I’m waiting.

Give George Bush the best speechwriter and he’ll still sound clueless and unconvincing. I’ll still scratch my head and wonder why the hell this guy is sitting in the oval office, speaking to me on every channel. We didn’t put Abraham Lincoln on Mt. Rushmore because he wore a flag pin to the office every day.

And Barack has already proven himself to be a natural born leader. His youth is not a knock on his character, rather it makes it all the more impressive. He has achieved so much, so quickly, for a reason! He inspires. He works tirelessly. He loves what he does; helping people, organizing, bringing communities together. He doesn’t want to sit in the senate for thirty years and wait his turn like a good soldier.

He wants to bring his gifts to the capital to inspire, and bring us together. Yes, with a lot of pretty speeches. And his tremendous gift for reason, for thinking through the issues and questions of the moment. They say you can see how a candidate will be president by how they run their campaign. And Barack has kicked everybody’s ass at that. Ask Hillary!

That’s the choice. We can go with the brilliant rookie. A person of this era, who proudly boasts “I have pieces of America all in me”. A man who represents where we’re at as a country. A man who still had student loans up to a few years ago. 

Or we can go with the dude who thinks the only way to show love for your country is to kill people from other countries. Who owns seven homes and makes his assistants send his email for him because he doesn’t know how to, and has never used ‘the Google’. This guy is going to lead our tech-based community? You have got… to be kidding!

I’ve been seriously invested in every election since 2000. But not like this, this one has my whole soul in it. Gore and Kerry got my vote. Obama has my heart.

It is time for my generation, those under fifty, to take the power away from the old farts that have been screwing us over for the last thirty years. I’ll say it! They’re the ones who got us in this hot mess! They’re the ones that gave all the power to the oil and car companies. Who let the lenders use American homes like slot machines. Who want to refight Vietnam every ten years.

It’s not his age that makes John McCain too old to lead our country. It’s his mentality.

I’m not going to follow the dinosaur over the cliff like a lemming.

This is our time!!!

 

Barack’s our man!

Notes From The Ant Empire: Ice On Mars

So NASA has concluded that the white substance they’ve found on Mars must have been ice.

Because it evaporated.

Okay… I’ll buy that.

What this also means is that there may be a frozen Martian in those ice chunks.

Let’s send Pauly Shore up there to dig it up. Then we can film Encino Man Two, Life on Mars. 

We now officially found the presence of water – one planet over, in our own solar system — the ultimate harbinger of life. I think it’s safe to conclude that this means there are thousands and thousands of planets out there with the potential for water.

And you know what that means?

Yep, the possible existence of Annete Funicello movies on other planets.

                                                            

I could go with a little Beach Blanket Bingo myself today.

There’s something I find terribly tiring and cliche about complaining about the weather, it’s so predictable in its country bumpkin way; but damn, it’s hot as a witch’s yeast infection!

It was 109 in Sherman Oaks yesterday! Almost as scorching today. 

My buddy was arguing that it was only 105 yesterday. Even though it said otherwise on yahoo – as if he could somehow detect the difference of four degrees and was more of an expert than the meteorologists on the news with their Doppler gadgets and combed-over expertise!

It’s funny when stupid people think they’re smart.

                                                            

There’s a guy who makes art with nothing else than a stick. Draws lines in the sand. At beaches and dry lake beds. Mind-blowing forms and shapes, giant in size.

His name is Jim Denevan.

He does it all by his eyeball. It lasts as long as the Earth lets it.

The resulting sand drawing is made entirely freehand w/ no measuring aids whatsoever. From the ground, these drawn environments are experienced as places. Places to explore and be, and to see relation and distance. For a time these tangible specific places exist in the indeterminate environment of ocean shore. From high above the marks are seen as isolated phenomena, much like clouds, rivers or buildings. Soon after Jim’s motions and marks are completed water moves over and through, leaving nothing.

It’s pretty amazing. I recommend you check out more.

Life is fluid and we better get with it…

                                                          

I pound on the keyboard and squeeze the mouse like a trout to get my ideas to take shape on the screen, to illuminate the pixels like a hyper-modern love affair. Like a Welsh Pop-punk band.  I want to wear shorts from Target while I denounce Capitalism like a one man dunce cap – broadcasted souls screaming through the air, choked up with myspace pages and cell phone calls – while I sit on my IKEA couch and hold a beer from Belgium, praising Individualism.

I want to breath in white noise and exhale slogans and jingles all mashed together like a trash compactor for old advertising campaigns. Where’s the beef? Man, have it your way! 

It’s all mixed together like a chemical cocktail of commercialism. My shirt is from the Gap.

Beer drinking bears. 

Tigers hawking cereal.

I want to be a modern disposable poem, made of plastic. I want to contradict myself.

A million dollar Banksy in the flesh. Art of Funny Starving.

                                                           

I went to the Silver Lake Lounge the other night and had a crappy time.

Somehow it was appropriate – as if it’s not really cool to enjoy yourself anymore. They overcharged at the door and at the bar and the AC was pitiful and the bartenders surly.

It wasn’t the bands’ fault everyone was miserable. They were good. Somber. Long bangs. Bashful guitarists. Female keyboardists.

All of sudden every band has a cute chick on keys.

Still…

It was hot, like I said before, blistering hot.

The musicians kept making jokes about the heat. Jokes that weren’t helping.

It wasn’t a night for fun.

                                                           

Lately, I’ve been obsessed with lately.

Always trying to take a Polaroid of the present. And there is no such thing. There’s always a delay, a ghost. Cultural Feedback. You feel it most when you least suspect.  That feeling. I’ve been here before. Or, someone like me has been here before. Some other me, before me.

You get the feeling of one fluid, human emotion, transcending time, reading Richard Brautigan.

The whiskey had made us mud-puddly at the edges of our bodies and the edges of our minds.

“This is delightful,” Vida said.

Books that are over thirty years old, about the same things you’re feeling right now, remind you that there has always been one big pang and one big heartache in the world. And you realize that 5 dollar gas and George Bush doesn’t make us any more oppressed or put-upon or complicit and broken than Richard Nixon or Truman.

You realize the man on the moon does not grace his romantic charms on you and your lover alone, but upon a thousand, million, lovers, sitting in the night blossom jasmine scented porches of forever.

And you realize the ocean has always called the lost.

And it brings you a certain joy – knowing you’re not alone in your aloneness.

                                                           

My mind is a very crowded place.

Packer Dulce once wrote:

A cult is started when a scientist dies… 

The crowd pushes forward, up to my eyes, for a better view.

                                                             

Art of Starving: Emotional Graffiti

– The heart weighs three pounds, or is that the brain?

                                                            

thesunsingssongsofsizzling
thesunsingssongsofsizzling
thesunsingssongsofsizzling

El Capitan State Park

I went camping up at El Capitan State Park the last few days. Spent a relaxed 48 hours “out of touch”.

El Capitan is a nice place to camp. The campsites sit on bluffs overlooking the Pacific, or tucked along the creek in a shaded glen, you pick. There’s some nature trails and a nice hike to Refugio Beach for you “walkers”.

This is all less than 2 hours from L.A.

I spent time down on the ocean’s edge…

Pebbles populate the shore like spectators at a surfing tournament. The clouds lumber up to the beach, gray and wise, an old man hovering over a chess match, trying to tell me something I am too deaf to hear, or else can’t understand because I don’t speak the same cloud-language.

A person had come before and delicately placed rocks on top of each other, the small stack watches the waves crash one after another. 

I sit there and watch too.

And wonder if the ocean watches us.

The land drifts off behind me… 100 miles to the south Los Angeles stews beneath the clouds. Or maybe there are no clouds over Los Angeles, as perfect as she is, just El Capitan? Without Google Weather, how would I know? And there’s no WiFi at El Capitan to get Google Weather. My wife has her computer along and she tried. That’s just a fact these days, computers at campgrounds.

A squirrel pops up and begins staring at me. I pull out my camera. (The usual cue that sends squirrels, literally, turning tail and running) The squirrel does nothing but sit there and watch me.

So, I snap its image, stealing its soul.

Stupid squirrel.

Stupid squirrelsoul…

“stupid squirrelsoul-stealer”

Time wears down like it does on the beach without a clock to keep track of it, languid and meaninglessly. The ocean continues to heave its contents on the shore, muddy and foamy and looking like nothing I’d refresh myself in.

A patch of weeds grows intertwined with the rocks and the driftwood.

The Channel Islands are hidden by the clouds but I know they’re out there. And because I know they’re out there, I can feel them out there. Like some magnetic charge of knowledge.

I think of getting up and going back to my camp but there’s something about the ocean I can’t leave.  It tumbles ten yards ahead of me, dependably, religiously, as it has for eaons and epochs and measurements of time I can’t even fathom, and this all makes me feel very young.

I’m sitting in the lotus position. On a patch of grass. Meditating. A family flies a kite behind me. I’m picturing a perfect diamond in my heart. Glowing. A glowing diamond. How ridiculously cheesy is that? I’m thinking only of my breathing. In. Out. The simple function of my lungs expanding/contracting. And the diamond, glowing in my heart.

I am searching for silence.

The part of being where non-being hides, the space between breaths.

I’m getting close to pure nothingness when the squirrel scampers back into my consciousness and I begin wondering what it is doing here, before I realize that that must mean something, then I try to figure out what it means. I make a note to write about this, later, when I get back home. The squirrel interrupting my meditation. Then it hits me. I am a squirrel. The way I navigate through life: running around, gathering little acorns of experience and tucking them away for later use…

Eventually I get up, mosey on back to camp.

Walking through a meadow I come upon a lifeguard shack in disrepair – flaking paint, caution tape strung around it – reminding me, oddly, of teenage love.

And the T.V show Gidget.

So, in the end, El Capitan is not a bad piece of nature to lose yourself in, to be alone with your thoughts and meditate by the waves. Clouds or not, it’s a nice place to catch up on your squirrelness.   

Give it a try, but call ahead for reservations. At least, if you’re thinking of heading up for the weekend.

Talking To Birds About The Economy, And Other Entertaining Tales Of Madness

The price of a barrel of oil shot up 10 dollars. The Dow dropped 400 points. Unemployment spiked a half percent. Communities continue to be hollowed out by the mortgage crises.

It all hit the fan today.

There’s no shade of lipstick for this pig of an economy.

What a fine Friday!

Watching the news today felt like some Clockwork Orange-type torture. It was painful. Crippling. It made me want to throw up, but I just couldn’t turn away, my eyes clamped-open on my own volition.

Has the dreaded day we’ve all been fearing finally come?

Over the last twenty years the economy has been acting like that Log Jammer ride at Magic Mountain. We climbed a big hill in the 90’s, then rode around splashing water everywhere until we hit the first drop in the early 00’s. We regained stability and rode around going nowhere for awhile until all of a sudden another steep ramp appeared and we began free-falling. This drop twice as steep and twice as long.

I have the feeling we’re halfway down the slide now, and when we hit the bottom the ride is going to be over.

Throw your hands in the air, and wave them like you just don’t care.

At least the current gas and economic crises might signal the end of this…

“I been drinkin and smokin
holdin shit cause a brother can’t focus
I gotta get to home ‘fore the po po’s scope this
big ol Excursion
swerving all up in the curve man “
–Krazyie Bone from Ridin’

It’s getting harder and harder to pretend to be rich, less rewarding too. Bragging about SUVs is so 2002.

Yep, time to start singing the blues again, the ol’ ‘ain’t got no gas, ain’t got no honey’ blues.  

Going down the road feeling bad.

Time to break out guitars and harmonicas. Woody Guthrie style.

Except, we all need new slogans.

Perhaps: This Ipod is Fascist?

So if everything is as bleak as it seems – and I haven’t even mentioned the dollar, which is fast becoming cheaper to use as toilet paper than to spend – than today is a date we can look back on and say ‘it all went downhill from there.’

The Mayans were off by about four years, but at least they were closer than Prince, the creep.. .

June 6, 2008. Where were you when the good times ended?

I was enjoying a cup of coffee in my loft, wondering how I can get my cans to the recycler without having to take the car. Brand new Nissan Versa, and it annoys me to drive it.

Fuck it, at least I’m getting out of town. I’m going camping this weekend. I’m going to park my car by a log and let it sit in the shade for a couple of days, and I’m going to lace up my hiking shoes and tread a dusty path somewhere, up into the hills above Santa Barbara, that posh hamlet sparkling by the sea.

Michael Jackson used to live in those hills. In a place he appropriately called Neverland, until the fantasy world he created for himself ran into conflict with the fantasy world the rest of us have created for ourselves; that of laws and morals and things that will not be tolerated, like sleepovers with kids. I’m not condoning what he did, whatever it was, just pointing out that everything we have as a society, every institution, every law, every fundamental benchmark of civilization, down to the very value of money, is only such because we all will and believe it so.

In God We Trust, more than we’d like to think it means.

But I’d rather not think about it, or Michael Jackson either. I’d rather give my attention to the trees and the birds and follow what they have to say. The sparrows have no idea that oil just hit $139 a barrel. Nor should they care. The crows, however, I’m sure suspect something.

If you ask a cormorant or a duck their opinions on Peak Oil they wouldn’t say a thing, because birds can’t talk, silly. But they’d pull a picture of the Exxon Valdez from their feathers and show it to you, just so you’d know.

I’m going crazy talking to birds, a little coocoo you might say. (Maybe that’s where it comes from?) It’s a sign of questionable mental health, but much worse, they’re rather bad conversationalist and not much help. I’m starting to get the feeling that they don’t like me so much, us.

The birds.

“What should we do? How can we save ourselves?”

“Coooo. Coo. Kitttle. Kittle. Kittle.”

That’s all they ever say. Kittle. Kittle. Kittle.

And this tells me, it’s up to us to fix this mess. And it can be done. It’s starting to happen. The old optimist in me comes out. Maybe this financial crises is the shot in the arm we need to start changing our lifestyle? Sure, it’ll be rough, but it’s also necessary.

And it’s already happening. Gas usage dropped 4.5% in March.  That’s 11 billion gallons.  Not much, no, but it’s a start. And it may be anecdotal but I’ve been hearing positive stuff from my friends. They’re not driving as much either. Back in the mid 90’s, when I grew up, all we ever did for entertainment was cruise around L.A aimlessly. Like the song says: “Victory Blvd. We love it! Santa Monica Blvd. We love it!” Some of my best memories were in the driver’s seat, cracking jokes and listening to sports talk, rapping along to Biggie’s Ready To Die.

But no longer.

I’m going to buy a bike and start biking to work. It’s only 2 miles away, it would be hypocritical to do anything less. A lease on a new car and less than six months later I’m buying a bike. Pretty soon, if this keeps up, I’m going to have to see a man about a horse, literally.

I let the milk drip into my glass until it’s absolutely empty. I don’t waste gas by driving like a maniac. I eat my leftovers. I buy from a thrift store, not just because I’m hipster scum, but because it’s cheap and doesn’t add to the cargo load coming over from China.

We’re basically going to have to buck up and live like our grandparents did – tough, thrifty, resourceful — the folks that made it through the Depression and the War. The Greatest Generation Ever. Except we’re the most drug-addled, shallow and coddled, neurotic generation ever.

It’s going to be interesting.

Notes From the Ant Empire: I Am Their Giant Lord

I was walking to the store today to buy a pair of scissors. Don’t ask why I needed the scissors, you don’t want to know, but I was walking because I’m on a quest to see how many days I can go without driving in L.A, while I’m between jobs. My little one-man revolution.

I just started today.

On my little mini-walkabout, I passed this peculiar sign.

I felt like removing the dangling placard at the bottom and wearing it around my neck, walking to the store with that proudly bouncing on my chest.

Then I thought against it. Maybe it’s a little too on-the-nose, as they say here in Hollywood.

That would seem a little needy.

                                                             

Am I the only one that thinks John McCain’s daughter is kinda hot? I try not to because she’s the spawn of the enemy, but, you know, um… she just is.

I can’t help it.  

And, in a way, it’s kind of a turn-on, the fact that she is McCain’s daughter. The forbidden fruit tastes sweetest, I guess.

Here she is drinking a Bud.

The Primary is coming to an anti-climatic end. Today. Thank God.

I’m just glad it’s over. I’m looking forward to seeing Obama take on McCain, the debate that will unfold, and more of Meghan McCain. I heard Republican women are freaky. 

                                                           

In other news, I finished a short story tonight.

It’s called The 8-Ball. It’s about a pool player named Bumbles Barry.

I look at the collection of files, those familiar Word icons we all know and love, that represent my life’s work to this point, seperated into appropriately named folders, and I know that I’m creating something here, that I’m building – but sometimes it feels more like I’m digging.

Or tunneling.

This is an ant in my ant farm. Rhoda.

My little Ant Empire.

I am their Giant Lord.

In the instructions it reminds you, in case you’re naming them, that they’re all females. There should be a warning attached that if you’re naming all your ants you need to get out more often.

I’ve only named one of them, thank you.

What’s my point?

Oh yeah, writing is kind of like digging a tunnel into your mind. Excavating out the raw material, snooping around like Geraldo in Capone’s vault, seeing what’s down there. Life is just one big mass of dirt and it’s up to artists to carve little tunnels for us to travel through it.

 

And who’s to say that removing matter isn’t creating empty space, building nothing out of something?

                                                             

I’m going camping this weekend.

Campfire. Tents. Hiking poles. North Face.  The whole deal. I’m trying to find a spot far from light pollution. It’s getting harder and harder to accomplish that. I’m thinking Eastern Sierras.  

The stars are slowly disappearing from the sky.

I can’t help but be saddened by this and wonder how many splendid mythologies we’re losing along with them. Think of the wonderment you felt looking at the sky and seeing it filled with a million worlds you knew were so many light years away that they could have already exploded long before you were ever born, and feeling the Earth rotate for the first time by watching it happen overhead in the Milky Way. All that wonderment you felt as a kid, and still do, what will happen to it when the stars are gone and the sky is nothing but a black sheet over the Earth? Or worse, a smoggy blanket of refracted urban light. The smear of billboards and streetlamps upon the heavens.

What will happen to the luck from a falling star when no one can see it?

                                                              

I wrote a collection of poems called Stunted Wonderment back in 01′.

Here’s an excerpt from one of them.

It’s like the donut is nothing without the hole.
The donut is the hole.
To think, I live for this.
My large intestine can wrap around the world
But I just want to put my arms around you.
While the sun sets in lethal doses
I dream of wild horses… taking me… away.
Every twitch, every neurotransmitter switch
Every kick, every crackjunky fix
is a crackling campfire for the Gods.
They all ran off with the wild horses so baby…
Don’t mean to be graphic
But you’re the hole for my donut.
You’re the whole donut.
You’re the glint of something good
in my bad boy eye.

There’s more. Most of it’s this bad.

I put pictures of mountains and lakes and dilapidated barns next to the poems. I ran off exactly one copy at Kinkos and proudly proclaimed myself the author of a collection of poems called Stunted Wonderment, obviously still do.

Come to think of it, it’s not all that different than what I do here…

I hope I’ve gotten a little better with the prose, though.

To think, I actually once wrote…

Life is a sweaty set of balls the Gods play pocket pool with.