pomegranate

Baby crying. Hey. Baby crying. I know. I know. But it's safe for you now in Venice. I hear you crying babies everywhere. Strollers everywhere. Baby. Crying. Venice is now an upper-middle class family town Baby. I don't know exactly what that may mean for your upbringing. But Baby I'm guessing they might forget to tell you that grown ups have nightmares too.  

I see you there, suckling at your mother's breast. Crying. I'm just trying to write here at this socially conscious cafe/shoe store Baby. Me. I woke up scared last night. I didn't cry. But I was scared. I shook on the inside like you might cry on the outside. You should know that sometimes grown ups wake up scared too. It is a fact. Might as well embrace it Baby.

And I kept my phone in the living room too. I didn't want my phone to be what kept my fear at bay this time. Cuz what if someday I don't have my phone there for me Baby. I just had to get back under the covers and accept my fear.

I guess I get guilty. Or I get scared cuz there are all these places in the world where it doesn't matter how much is done in the interior world. That a bunch of crazy killers are on the loose with ridiculous agendas, religious and otherwise, it scares me.

Like Baby I heard about these killer clowns up in Bakersfield or something. I didn't look too far into it though cuz not looking too far into things is sometimes the only way to stay sane.

It's just like, I hear people talking about things on the periphery and there's only so much terror a grown up is capable of entertaining at times Baby.

I mean, really. They won't even tell you certain things unless you are in a war zone or being raised by wolves. Gosh there's probably a lot to learn from having wolves as parents. I don't want to frighten you further but it happens Baby, babies get lost once in awhile and get raised by wolves. And it's not so bad.

Oh my dad by the way, my dad always makes a point of saying, that there was a feral quality to his children as they were growing up. What cuz, we lived up in the hills with our mother and all, without electricity for awhile or something. But Baby. Baby you've got a golden glow. I've been told it's safe here in Venice these days.  

getting over the flu

When I'm looking out of a window at the rain, I feel like a powerful man. Powerfully silent. Powerfully knowing. And I can see the beauty in all things. It's a regal pose. Especially as water drips through faulty sills and loose body hair curls along my unswept bedroom floors. Cough. Blow nose. Cough. Sneeze. Patter of the rain. Powerful. Sick. Crumbled tissues. A powerful man. This morning I was thinking this morning of all things.

How my mom's ex-lesbian lover took her minivan from her in Topanga Canyon.
How my mom's fedora wearing ex-lesbian lover is a narcissist.
How my mom's first ex-lesbian lover was a former teacher of hers who came to live with us for a period of time while my parents were still married.

The rain stick she brought into our house. Magical, I thought the rain stick was. The noise it made, the way the noise shimmered with some unknown element. I couldn't believe something like a rain stick could exist. Cuz I was at an age where people were starting to tell me magic didn't. I wondered what other magic was out there. And just now I was thinking about how my parents met in a mental hospital. And one day I will write about all of it but I'm still in it.

Ray Liotta will smile by the end of the commercial if given the correct brand of Tequila from the diminutive bartender.

I got a job at a deli. I am almost thirty years of age. They are perfectly good people running a fine operation but there is no good result to that job interview. Don't get the job, I'm broke and waiting for film projects to happen. Do get the job, and I do get the job. I am almost thirty years of age and a hundred bucks still feels like a substantial amount of money.

Kevin Spacey wants you to grow your portfolio using E*TRADE.

An erotic experience was with a young woman I once worked with at a cafe. She said the doctors diagnosed her as bipolar but that she didn't believe them. I didn't know. She was crazy smart and fast and electric. And I ended up in her bed. And she was a feminist but coming to terms with liking sex on the rougher side. She felt now that the two were not mutually exclusive. I was just happy being around a young woman, sex, I had no preference in style.

So when she wanted our bodies taken beyond the edge of our heavy-run intimacy and into the impersonal shouts and moans that pornography is made of, I did the filthiest thing I could think of,

I grabbed her face close to mine and kissed her at a lazy pace. Ground into her deep and indulged and caring of a distant impulse. And then we looked into each other's eyes with a kindness that acknowledged that we were two scared near strangers making love together against the harsh hating parts of our outer and inner worlds.

And days later she said she couldn't help still thinking about it, she texted, wanted it again. And like Los Angeles, I cited my initial disclaimer. Oh yeah, I had given her an initial disclaimer earlier in the night, about how like Los Angeles, I wasn't in any place to be held accountable to anything serious. Which made me a bigger jerk for kissing her slowly.

I've heard Brad Pitt gets on his knees every night and prays we all smell of Chanel No. 5.

the sudafed vignettes

Do you love him?

No

Then, why not leave?

I guess cuz he feeds me as much blow as I want off his car key when we're out together

And is that all you want?

Right now, yes.

I fell in love at first sight with this blonde blue-eyed with a round odd face and probing eyes and it was at first sight. Very important that it was at first sight. Her face! I never remember a face but the memory of her face is waking me up in the middle of the night! 

That's a myth - love at first sight

No! I used to think that but as I'm getting older, I'm starting to believe love at first sight is the truest form. I'm starting to believe that the very first moment is the most powerful and that everything else dims after that, subtly/slowly in the best of cases or rapidly/violently in the harder world of things but it's that first moment that pushes into your perception of the world and changes its shape and course forever

That's the saddest thing I've ever heard. I don't know why. I don't know why

Yeah, well

I don't believe in love at first sight. That's just the sunrise, beautiful indeed. But I believe love follows an arc like the sun. With plenty of beautiful moments, including high noon ---

Yeah but you're always talking about the damn sun!

That's cuz like love, it has always been here for me, even if it seems to go away for a very dark night or two

Can I help you?

Yes, I'd like half a pound of--- um--

Ma'am?

I'm sorry, excuse me. I'm just-- I'm sorry.

Where on Earth have you been?

I've been around.

Around? I went to Around. I went all Around. I didn't see you there!

Remember? That's cuz remember? You don't remember do you? How we once agreed - that if we hadn't met that one particular way we did - that we never would have

Yeah but I thought we were just saying that cuz I was tangled in your arms and we were naked and close as close as two people could be - so we could say risky things like that to each other

No, it was true. We were never gonna find each other again, our souls had never met before they had that one night remember the feeling of it we both shared in my bed that one morning long ago?

I remember but...Well then how do you explain this huh? Here we are! Here we are! We found each other again!

That's cuz you called me

i wrote this in my phone either before the hospital in it or after

It all wants to make you serious, don't. It's been indescribably hard but life building and strengthening. Muscles are supposed to tear before they repair. And the last year I've just been tearing.

He built her a castle. She gave him her youth. They left each other bankrupt. And they both were right and wrong and they made us.

Then she moved us to a rundown mouse-infested beach house that was powerfully rocked back and forth by the crashing waves. And one night it rained and the skylight above our bunk bed blew off and I figured because I was on the lower bunk that I'd just stay there and survive and I did. Wet and everything.

Then I grew up and started remembering things in pieces, that threaded into me as I changed. And an important thing to remember about a thread is that for the story to continue it must disappear and rise back up with a faith that it first went to another side.

the blat of Jack's horn

OH no I'm starting to feel my heart well-over

Let it

But so much

Let it spill onto your toes and into the Earth

Sometimes I don't know if I can stand it. The way I struggle and toss and turn with this faulty proposition

Struggle then

I've been walking home a lot
I've been freaking out a lot
I've been waking up with tears in my eyes that aren't even irrational but instead true
My tears have been true

You've been moving in the correct direction try to feel every fucking inch of it til it makes you a sun

superrito

I know why I felt bad leaving the stage. I had provided all these between the joke windows but refused to explain what they were saying. And they didn't necessarily care. An indirect viewing of how hurt I was, without just saying it.

Laughter wasn't the point for me but I functioned under that guise and toed the edge.

They were there to get away from theirs. You were allowed to do the same. Just be there for the joy.

I dunno sometimes I just feel like the ugliest girl at prom. Remember that tag next time, it makes the joke, ties it up into a bow.

before google eats us alive

We could be that slow drunk couple drinking at the Cock N' Bull on a Sunday night. I'll be buying your beers and it's the sweetest thing. The way I tend to your drink when it gets low. And you have your legs and torso swung in my direction with hands on my knees in the sweetest body language. And when that old folksy song comes on, we sing along, better than expected.

Or we can be one of those new age Bohemian couples with our finances in order. I'll spend my weekends tinkering with the soil of the vegetables in our urban garden, talking with the solar panel technician about doing the water heating system, and motoring to and from Little League games in an electric Tesla. Our two children have long hair and Sanskrit names that could be shortened to sound harmlessly Anglicized if they want. But they'll probably embrace em especially as they get older. It's really up to them. And you'll have that room where you paint and meditate up in that separate guest house perch with the huge open window that catches the afternoon ocean breeze and you'll say it's your favorite time and place, the afternoon time. And even when I emerge from my own zen den grumpy and manic you're somehow always ready to embrace me because you know creativity has so many forms and sources and that it is endless.

Or if those two don't work for you we could be that couple I've seen on Lincoln Blvd. late at night or on the Venice boardwalk early in the morning. Living on the streets and sidewalks. You yelling out your demons at me, I, threatening to leave but never going further than the shore, us, always coming together tenderly. The two beings between our bags in the evening, breathing in the Earth together, intermingling with the saltwater air and fooling the naked eye upon us because we are involved.

This could be the part where I say we've never met. But we have. In tiny fragments as you drove by, caught my attention on a promenade, or middle of the darkness while I slept and dream-formed your presence and how it felt as we cradled one another as a boat on a sea.

book review

I'm not sure about prior generations but our own life-long love stories will be with ourselves. I will look back and treasure what I saw with myself. And who I loved with myself. It is a modern alteration for sure.

We evolved genetic change in sweeping numbers beneficial to the climes and they manifested into collective behaviors and constructions that took on lives of their own.

I felt God wrap tentacles around my heart, first like an out of control weed, then as a hug of vines.

I bought the pen I wrote this first draft with at Dog Eared Books in San Francisco to ensure the $10 credit card minimum was met.

Saltwater in my hair and a smile in my heart I fell asleep last night re-experiencing diving under the waves and whitewater and looking at the light under green ocean on my legs and the time I've spent in the world below the surface and how extraordinary it is that we've figured out how.

A girl asked me to walk with her to the sunset. I told her the ocean is not our home but we are brave for figuring out how to belong in it for awhile. Humanity clinging to shorelines because it expresses a breaking wave and its return to the whole, dispersed but into a significant One. And it feeds us in fish. It feeds us in spirit.

Back for another coffee already?
Yep
Today's the day.
Today's the day I fly away.

I put cream in my coffee so that I can drink it right away. Last night I rode the bus. I walked for miles in the dark. Spoke to my mom on the phone. She wrote a children's book about the Universe. The scientist in the NY Times book review this morning said we are nothing like ants. I want to go see the Matisse works at MoMA. I want to go to New York City. I want to bring this entire experience with me through life and eternity.

thus it was written

Having little to do with the institution of marriage, how we are at a wedding is how we feel about romantic love. Sober and withdrawn I walked through the ceremony more or less unimpeded. I have this praying thing. Where I pray. And it's not to any personified entity in particular except maybe myself. And it's amazing how much love I have for everyone including the most random people. And if they flash into my head I announce them in prayer and it makes my heart feel corrected. After my car accident I was telling Britt that it was broken. And maybe it was, is. But it keeps correcting itself in a state of prayer and plenitude.

on my knees

The only people who know how to be nice are the mean ones. I know because I am an absolute defensive asshole piece of shit and the things that go through my mind would make the average middle of the roader vomit endless bile onto their shitty made in China by young children shoes fuck them fuck the labor laws fuck what people do I swear to God sometimes I want to kick everyone in my path down onto their backs spray them with gasoline and light them on fire laughing as they struggle and----hang on let me get that door for you ma'am. Well yes you have a good one too ma'am. I most certainly will make a nice little place for you in my prayers tonight ma'am, right there alongside the shadow of my own soul.