I clicked save and it all disappeared. Everything I wrote was erased so now I’m typing fast. Trying to get it back. The door was left open and the breeze is blowing in scraps of newspapers. Did you hear the  news?

You’ve got so many locks on your door I don’t know whether to bow, break in or extend my hand. I stay out in the yard, shielding my eyes from the sun. The Wars are in distant, sun-parched lands. Everything is fine over here.

I squeeze a Capri Sun into my mouth and remember the winning goal I scored so long ago, the ball floating through the air, me fast enough to run underneath it, watching it drop down from the sky, getting into the right spot and being sure-handed enough to catch it.  What’s it called to dream not about a distant future but a different past?

An Italian group claims Jersey Shore is offensive to Italians. I would argue it’s offensive to humanity, and as an American-American I’m deeply offended; as a budding fashionista, I’m truly horrified by the nincompoop parade of hair gel and Ed Hardy.

I get home from hip hop karaoke and mix some tuna with mayonnaise and spread it between two pieces of bread. Sometimes the most we can hope for from a night is to come home to a good sandwich. Cold Cut Love. A sliced pickle. Mustard goes a long way…

I call this Literature because I name things. I named me: Artofstarving. She laughed, said I was a fool, I said I am a misunderstood poet… I proved us both right.

There’s a man waiting for the bus,
his chin shaking, hands beating on his knees.

I think I know that man, licking his lips.
Cars zoom by like in a commercial.
Fast. Powerfully. Sensual.

I don’t know about you, but all this ennui is exhausting.
I just want to sit on the edge of my tank and rest my flippers.

I was in love once. And another time I was into aquarium fish…

I like to sleep but that doesn’t mean I want to sleep away the rest of my days. I drool on the pillow and swim in pools of dreams. I especially like the one where the moon is bright and the swimmers are naked and we run through the pine forest empty as the breeze.

I look into your eyes and see the potential for soaring… there’s a dot in your pupils that tells me this. Like you’re ready to lift off any second.

I clean off my desk and wipe the dust particles off my computer screen. I put everything in order yet my cursor still pulses in the same spot… waiting. It’s been stuck here for awhile… I won’t call it Writer’s Block because I don’t know any other thing but this struggling, this reaching. This overabundance of urge and complete lack of verve. If I said anything profound it was a mistake, and I take it all back.

The sun today is spotty, it doesn’t know if it wants to come out. Christmas is coming and they’re selling trees on the empty corner lot. Whole miniature forests come alive for one month. It’s not quite the pine smell of my dreams but a close simulacra of my distorted nocturnal projections. Real enough though that when I take a festive pull my nostrils tingle with nostalgia, and my nose hairs flagellate with aromatic delight.

I’m trying to decide where to go this Christmas. I have the urge to fly somewhere new and rent a car, wander the roads like a Modern Day Un-Wise Man. Spend Christmas in Kentucky, alone in a small town with freshly fallen snow until (serendipitously!) I’m temporarily adopted by a loving if slightly racist family that enjoys caroling, baking pies, and guns.

Or maybe I’ll mosey on down to Mexico, hole up in Baja with a quart of Tequilla and a surly attitude that causes the locals to exclaim, “gringo loco!”

Or maybe stay and have an L.A Christmas.  The most exciting kind of travel you can do is in your own city. I hear they make excellent goat soup in East L.A and there are world class observatories in our own mountains. I’ve spent thirty years in this city and have yet to get a true glimpse of what is out there. We find our spots and keep to them, tread the well-worn ground, creating little invisible human deer paths through the city, from the same restaurants to the same bars, the same barber, the same liquor store and Market.

I have a little nest I curl up into, a wad of twigs I rest my wings on…

I walked through the Grove today and the plentiful and bright holiday lights gave me a certain woozy, consumer vertigo. The Christmas tree was 50 feet high and lit up the faux-town square with a cheery red glow. The lane was agog with shoppers. Crowds of people swung bags of retail and prattled excitedly about whoknowswhat…. It made me dizzy and kinda like ‘am I going to pass out?’ feeling.

Battling delirium, I reached the Farmer’s Market thankful to buy my produce without much serious neurological damage. The stimuli was overwhelming. I am just not equipped for such an onslaught of light and humanity and religion and Capitalism at once. All I can make out of such walks through the Grove is that either I am out of mind, or everybody else, but definitely one of us is, because I can’t understand how someone could take delight in this Disney-fied delusion with its trolley that only travels 200 yards and squirts of synchronized water in tune to the too-loud classical music blasting from hidden speakers. The scene makes me cringe for humanity, the way we can be rounded up and bought. And here I am. One of the herd.

I bought a clove of garlic, a sweet onion, some mushrooms and kaiser rolls. I’m making buffalo burgers and watching TV tonight. The vendors all smiled kindly and the temperature is dropping as a storm moves in. I buy my various items from the Farmer’s Market and feel rekindle with the power of purchase. This is the way it should be done, not with brightly lit linoleum and window displays, but under a tent, with the food in crates and cashiers who appreciate your business.

I head home to make my burgers, avoiding the Grove altogether by taking a series of back alleys. The moon is softly deflated, missing a little weight around the middle. The city buzzes with cars and stars. Buffalo meat is leaner than cow.

JOSHUA TREE NATIONAL PARK:

Tuesday night I got stomach poisoning. I woke up in the middle night feeling sick. The sheets were shockingly cold and I was violently shivering, my bones knocking together doing a viral jitterbug. I thought my jaw was going to fall out of my mouth. It was awful, frightening.

The next night at bowling league I was in a zone. All my rolls were hitting the sweet spot of the pocket, crushing the pins perfectly every time. I bowled a 197. My best game ever.

We still lost the match.

Saturday night. People are up and walking around the apartment  building. I hear doors opening and closing and people talking loudly on phones. We work all week in eager anticipation for two days where we can forget it all. Suffer it all for a brief respite where we can laugh and dance and not be “responsible”.

I cooked salmon for dinner and ruined some spaghetti squash. I’m staying in and looking forward to reading my book. I’m being “responsible” tonight.

My life is not exciting.

I’m okay with that.

I’m giving away a bunch of clothes to the homeless this weekend. I’m getting my Thanksgiving do-goodery done early. It’s a good opportunity to make room in the closet and slim my wardrobe down,  making it leaner, more organized. I found some things that I haven’t worn in three years, yet I hesitated whether I should keep them or not.

Screw it. I’m getting rid of most of it. It feels good. Better on some homeless dude’s back than the bottom of my closet.

It’s amazing that my conscious can be cleared just by throwing away some clothes. Who gets the better end of this deal? The homeless? Or my ego?

I wish I knew how to make my own potpourri from the trees and bushes growing in my neighborhood. I’d start with fresh lemon peel, then add something cinnamony.

Speaking of smells, I love the smell of Hawaiian leis. It’s hard to be in a grouchy mood with one of those things dangling around your neck.

This world would be so much sweeter if everyone planted some pleasing aromatic plants in their yard.

Besides the obvious suspects, my least favorite smell is burnt popcorn.

We go all the way around the globe to find pleasing smells, spices, foods. We’re animals that feed on pleasure. They say money doesn’t buy happiness but if we didn’t try Civilization would fall apart. Certainly the Forum shops at Caesar’s Palace.

Can you think of the perfect sound? A campfire crackling? A wave breaking on a desolate beach? Your child calling out Mommy, Daddy? Have you ever cried at a concert because the music was so moving?

We swim on the water and surf on the sea.
If I told you you could have it all would you at all believe me?

Life is a slow ride, we hold on in whichever fashion best suits us.

1:57am: Santa Monica Mountains. We spotted three bicyclists making their way down the road. We were on the ridge looking down on them. Their lights shone coming down the hill, snaking over the Sepulveda Pass, their glow an eerie illusion. What were they doing out at this witching hour? We promptly declared them as crazy as us and went back to watching the heavens and telling jokes.

We’re were up there to watch the meteor shower, higher than the Getty Center. L.A. spread out to our right, the Valley to our left.

2:12 am: I kept missing the meteors because I was in a trance, dumbstruck, by the millions of lights washing across the basin of L.A like an electric sea. I couldn’t take my eyes off of the spectacular sight. The other guys kept exclaiming when a streak flashed through the sky and I’d jerk my head upwards but always too late.

The city was my show. I wondered if there were more lights or people out there, and what everyone was doing in the dark.

We are all connected by rococo radio waves and leering ballerinas.

2:24am: My friend Felix heard something rustling in the bushes and began chucking stones into the thicket, trying to scare whatever animal disturbed the leaves. I vocally expressed that I wished the creature would pop out and maul him, and even though that would mean I would have to leap into the scrap to help him, this feeling was sincere.

I mean, I hoped he’d survive and all…

Does that make me a bad guy?

I mean, I also hope for great things to happen to my friend, too, and everyone I love. I hope for peace and happiness and riches and love for all, but sometimes I’m a little selfish, and right then I was hoping for a cougar attack, or maybe just a crazy-bold chipmunk to jump on his face.

2:52am: Conversation and chit chat flowed freely. We imagined what the Chumash did in these hills. Did they have prized hunting trails through here? Did they tell stories of how the Spotted Woodpecker survived the flood by nourishing on the acorns the Sun God tossed him? Could they imagine what this land would look like three hundred years later?

We also rapped about the L.A. river and how nobody in this city thinks it’s a natural body of water. Only Tinseltown can take a real river and have everyone believing it’s fake.

We talked to kill the silence. It’s what humans do.

3:13am: We were up there for two hours and had seen a half dozen shooting stars. The ocean layer was starting to blur out the horizons. The lights of the city were bright as ever. After awhile we became bored with the stars and pondered what we were doing up on the mountain. We downed the last of our Pabst without fanfare, efficiently.

We poured the backwash out on the ground and crushed the cans, depositing them in a backpack to bring back with us. We may be half-crazy, bohemian trespassers but we’re not litterbugs.

3:22am: The air was cold. The wind chilled our bones. We traveled the dirt road back to my car and then quickly cruised down the steep hill, reminiscing on a mutual friend who used to drive up and down this hill for fun, his own private roller coaster.

So many friends come and go we struggle to remember their names. Was it Jason? Brad? Bruce?

3:33am: We reached the bottom and waited for what we thought at first was a motorcycle, having only one, lonesome headlight; but as it slowly approached we decided it must be a scooter for the speed it was crawling;  eventually the light turned into a figure and we realized it was the first bicyclist trudging uphill, his buddies not more than fifty yards behind him.

All three had big, gleaming smiles on their faces like what they were doing was fun. I let them pass, respecting their quixotic mission.

We are all alone on our bicycles, mine’s just flashier than yours.

Fairfax is having their homecoming tonight. The fireworks sent the neighborhood dogs into a tizzy. I love that word: tizzy. I attended their rival, Hamilton High. They beat us every time. We had a killer music program but an inept Athletic department that was only good for helping other teams in the city improve their record. From my kitchen I can hear the crowd cheering. They sound young, optimistic, and void of problems. That’s probably how I sounded when I was 17.

I’m almost twice that age now. Old enough to be their father. It’s a scary thought. Me being a father.

I bought lamb for the first time and have no idea how to season it. I stare at my spices and try to think of the flavors I’ve experienced when eating lamb. I’m out of my league here.  At the same time I’m waiting for my laundry to finish washing so I could switch it to the dryer, pondering when my Fridays lost their teeth. Finally a half hour has passed and I venture across the street to my friend’s building where I do my clandestine washing like some kind of laundry Anne Frank, sneaking around so the tenants of his building don’t catch me.

It’s strangely blustery. The wind is whipping. Water is flowing down the side of the road into the gutter. Its pastoral melody is strange to hear with the blare of the loudspeaker at the football game in the background and wail of fire engine sirens in the distant. But it’s the closest sound we have to a bubbling creek in this urban landscape. With the  strong wind it’s quite intoxicating for a romantic like me, although I wonder if somewhere a water mane broke. They’ve been snapping all across the city, but especially around here. Something down deep in the Earth is moving.

When I lived in Boston I got a big laugh out of pretending to not know what a riverbank looked like. I do that a lot. Pretend to be stupid.

What are your favorite topics of conversation? Is there anything that really causes you excitement? Passion? We all have something.

I’m still trying to figure out what mine is. Although I know I really like to talk about myself.

I’m drinking locally cultivated Pinot Noir and feeling quite pleased with myself. My wine rack is full for the first time in… ever, I think. That’s what happens when you work down the street from your favorite wine store.

It’s time to cook the lamb. I hope I do that poor animal justice.

They caught John Scott. Who is John Scott? It was on the every newscast. They had a field day with it. He was a 74 year-old “tagger” the police caught and joyfully assigned the label the oldest tagger ever caught. He would leave stickers around town that said “Who Is John Scott?” and if you google that his website pops up where he says who he is. Not much of a mystery.

The lamb didn’t turn out half bad, in case you’re wondering.

Last year for Thanksgiving I took part in Gobble Gobble Give and it was the most rewarding event of my year. I wish I could take part this year but Joshua Tree calls… If anyone in the L.A. area is looking to do some volunteering this year, I highly recommend checking this out.

I sometimes feel my phone is vibrating and dig into my pocket to retrieve it only to discover that I don’t even have my phone on me. Phantom Cell Phone Disorder I’m calling it. Remember when 143 meant I Love You?

Now it’s all about 142. I Love Me. Like the new cell phone ads for YOU. And YOU were Time Person of the Year. It’s all bollocks. They separate us in order to make us vulnerable, have you believing you’re special, unique and can only express this by owning various products that define who YOU are. Guess what? Fuck You. And fuck Me. We’re all in this together and we’re so much more alike than the few sore spots that advertisers strike in order to hawk their goods. No matter what Pepsi tried they couldn’t sell us Crystal Pepsi.

That makes me proud.

We live in an absurd collage.  I’m the man in the diving bell and astronaut suit. Right below the fuming volcano and Lou Reed. If God did create us because he was bored than we have something in common. If the Inuit have 57 words for snow, I have 58 for God. In the middle of the collage is a giant, smoking factory.  You enter in one door and emerge through the other side as meat.We’re nothing but macramed .

The game must be over because the night is silent except for Friday night revelers jubilantly discussing life and its myriad magical possibilities. Actually, I have no idea what they’re discussing because all you hear is chatter and laughter and your mind colors in the blanks.

When I was young I always had trouble drawing inside the lines.

Now I don’t care. I throw my paint around everywhere.

The only thing keeping us from transforming is fear.

The only wind on our backs is a midnight zephyr, pushing us west, into the Pacific Ocean.

The church bells are ringing but I’m sleeping in. Tomorrow is Monday, the day all our dreams are destroyed. I’m marked by a striped shirt and a tie. Today we can pretend that our jobs don’t exist and everything is fine as long as we stay buried in these blankets.

The flowers by the bed were picked by me on my way home from the bar, my 2am rambling leaving behind decapitated flower stems. I sang your name when I rang your bell. You weren’t amused but you let me in anyway.

Have you ever reached towards someone only to realize they weren’t there?

I’m frying chicken and listening to pop songs on my computer. Someone is knocking on my neighbor’s door. When you stop and contemplate your movements — washing your hands in the sink, picking up the phone, frying a piece of chicken — you wonder how being human could be anything special at all. But it’s in this act of remembering the moment, of being one with whatever it is you’re doing, the simpler the better, that you can realize your humanity.

I’m frying chicken.
You’re on the floor doing Pilates.
Jimmy is driving his truck on Mulholland again.
Sarah has her paints in her lap and the door wide open.

The only thing keeping us from laughing is our crying…

The only escalator to heaven is broken. Has been since Galileo.

People are moving around the neighborhood, trading apartments. These buildings don’t change, just their occupants. I am the Emperor of this Ant Empire. Tonight I strolled down Fairfax and observed the comings and goings of my subjects, minding my own business, a stranger to even myself. Everybody is busily headed everywhere… I’m content to stand in my kitchen and cook chicken, music keeping me company.

A song I recognize from a past life churns up in the shuffle lottery. I listen to it while plating my chicken and scooping my rice. It reminds me of a time before I got old. I consider singing along but remember that these walls tell lies and instead pour a glass of Australian Syrah, reflecting on the grape’s journey from the vine to my glass with a freakish zeal.

Do you ever take the long way? Have you ever lost yourself in the act of going that you forgot where it was you were going?

Power lines connect us all…

I sit down to eat. A ghetto bird flies by, its spotlight floating back and forth over the Spanish tile roofs of the ‘hood. My phone buzzes, oscillates across the table and then drops to the floor. Right now everything couldn’t feel more right.

I turn on the TV, avoiding the news. I don’t care anymore. I’m not afraid to admit it. I look for something mindless and find it within seconds. On MTV they’re showing some poor schlub sitting around his girlfriend’s living room with her parents, watching his girlfriend out on a date with some popped-collar dude with a spray-on tan. I miss the music. I turn to an expose on the founding fathers, asking the question, ‘were working for the Freemasons?’… on the History Chanel. On Animal Planet, they’re exploring the dietary habits of Sasquatch, and after the commercial break they’re going to discuss the Abominable Snowman’s. Is anything real anymore?

The only thing keeping us from setting our souls free is the inability to locate them in the first place.

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.

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.

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.

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.