flukes in the cosmos

tonight the moon looks like a vanilla bowl of ice cream. there is no typo in any statement. she used to eat fat little worms when she was a child. i told her that time was a lake and she reminded me that rivers  bring them water. lips, a tiny dog named elvis and calm and bone marrow. i wound down a hollywood hills stream resurrecting myself in my jewish deli city. alan watts returned to late-night radio, some indie station programmer brought his voice again; the illusion of separateness, buddha is an awakened one, sansara is a rat race to which we slave. outside, my friend and i were smoking and talking about meeting women and the distance between the nucleus and electrons, relative to a football stadium, ourselves. without the charge, we are soup, alone in december we can survive anything. still stars in the sky during the day and night is a prize if we can remember our moment. feeling thin, adult, meaning, bringing bunches of meaning, filling the plate with meaning. a christmas party, american spirits, basil whiskey, and little themes repeating themselves in new spirit.

"metaphors are dangerous. metaphors are not to be trifled with. a single metaphor can give birth to love." - milan kundera

she's passionate about tomato soup, prop. 37, and old people. i told her about the lady i rented a room from in franklin canyon years back. it only took abby three marriages to have the same last name as her street. she laughed. abby had an oxygen tank, swollen legs, flaky skin and a dark sense of humor, loved the syncopation of my guitar, watching tennis, and kept a tiny prison bed in the miniscule nook she sublet a teenager who spent his nights wandering the neighborhood, drinking whiskey, wincing from the hollow burn, improperly smoking cigarettes and smelling cooking from houses belonging to families and stoves. they weren't good days or bad, they were mine, simple. but we don't include those details because they arrive later and are inconsequential in comparison to the spark of interaction.

elvis reclined on her lap, head hanging back like a kid upside down or a playful bat.

fortified with six b vitamins including 50% dv folic acid 1 gram of sugar per serving

i see an eyelash floating in my cereal milk, it used to belong to me, seconds before. we keep losing these things we've grown, produced by our very being. they just happen to fall off.

"life becomes more and more about what we've lost." i told a curly-haired girl at a bar some lost months ago. she kept calling and calling.

you wanna borrow some passion?

i lived alone, walked in the middle of the night from my santa monica canyon street to an ocean avenue filled with hundreds of thousands of people and a few underwhelming art installations. years after, it was me and my girl and some bicycles from venice and after that i was alone again, wondering about a glow.

i meant to say nostalgia, prior to passion, but wait, something happens:

nostalgia untethers to curiosity.

there have been all these flighty people defeating me time and time again through heart-wrenching feeling or icy indifference with bands and locales and experiences and, but, i set my stubborn roots in this magical desert, buzzards flying overhead, my seeds spread by santa ana winds and subtle seasons which natives like us know how to detect, and so we prosper, the way desert creatures know how, burrowing, meditating, climbing to some altitude in early chilled mornings before the stampedes wake and, there, we nurture spirit and thrive in our own way.

i wasn't bred for the path of least resistance, as docile as my pursuits appear on surface, surface, you can have surface. i'm somewhere dark, ensnared in monster tentacle, knife on belt, tearing away invigorated by some struggle or another.

i know that i've created all of these predicaments. it's what we do when nature fails to blow hurricanes our way. but there is purpose, it's a worldly laboratory and we are all mad scientists conducting experiments for our own opportunity at something more, physical, it happens in the physical, then manifests, if true, in the spiritual, near-infinite minuscule experiments creating something like, god, or ultimate creation.

this artistic soldiering, has greatness, even if it's a single hand on a massive push, on an object too large to comprehend outside of vision.

the reader is both repelled and attracted to the indulgence. something else exists is all i'm saying and i can locate a torn shred of a map to it's location on this strangely arranged keyboard.

so grab your passion now, coddle, cuddle, let it float away like the butterfly and give chase, ignore, paint, sculpt, dream about all those turbulent images and non-sensical patterns you've been beginning to suspect for some time now.

recognition

everything will be in black and white, remember. the future is a child on playground about to skin his knees, tear through jeans, go play again. i don't know if our paths ever crossed before.

i was sitting somewhere on the promenade drained and stimulated by all the adrenaline i've been pumping through my blood from beaten stages, holes in walls, awkward pauses, beats, edification for that moment of tension and burst, sun reflecting me in the menu window of a restaurant. i see all the years beginning to accumulate on my face and staying there and i'm worn out and invigorated at the same time, days unidentifiable, even my dreams are foreign, scary, and this world is beyond understanding alone.

britt and i were talking about continuing our parent's metaphysical journeys. trav and i, reincarnating opportunities for behaving in truth like cloud atlas and our own purpose. bec, we looked into each other's eyes and spoke of darker depths, until that guy behind us, stood up and went home, hugged his kids, we hoped, imagined, laughed. shane, we said it's all in our minds, our tickets to freedom, most importantly creation, like this or that book he read on cell phone at jury duty or some george lucas quote i'd heard, creators. tallulah, i told about the time i was kicked in the solar plexus by a horse and she gave me hers about the jealous head-butting goat at the farm, then we sat in the car, she finished her cold pizza slice breakfast and we made up fictional get-rich-strange worlds, straight-faced mostly, we get it, jealous goat factory fires, insurance money, human blubber, block out the sun ransom, not necessarily in that order.

i'm the luckiest man in the universe.

russian books

you might know me. i'm the one creating own tales in mind and riding imaginary horses hoofing streets in this lonely amazing city. i was writing this scene reminiscent of us and i could taste your mouth. and someday mankind will be divided by those who can survive outside and those who must stay indoors. and one day we will have but a single username to classify ourselves. until then, circumventing dystopia, we could discover something precious dredged from our rocky soil.

you start with getting by, then good days and bad days, more weeks, more time and you almost forget about her feeling, like honey.

until you do.

it's strange but they never bring rescue in those achingly desolate moments and days upon days of crushing agony. they only arrive knocking in forceful waves once you've unmistakably immersed yourself back into violent forests with beasts of blood and wild man as your guide. and then you don't have time to be slowed down by excess and charm, face painted, heart savage again. there's play-acting in every ceremony but at the core is a straightforward truth, a heart of the matter; that it's invigorating to be in discovery at full stride, haunting ghosts instead, travelling in synchronicity with animal spirit and hunt and moment.

but for you sappy folks thinking, feeling, romantic connection is your guide, machete clearing your way through weeds, discovery of path, i offer you this: 

on public radio there was a piece, i caught the tail end, about a runner, he was in terrible pain, damaged health for awhile but getting better and better, finally convinced by his woman to give up on the pain medication, sure enough, he turned out fine and thankful and running again and he stubbornly conceded everything to her and she said:

i didn't have any other choice because i love you.

keep venturing

these words are dangerous. sunset blvd. crawls along merrily and unshaken through gloss and that leftover 90's spirit, urine soaked wood and a feeling from the years before at red rocks. venice is teeming with cats on rooftops and alleyways, possums trot like stupid possums do in front of headlights on dark nights. magic, when they give us that tin cup of milkshake extra instead of throwing it away. these days are the same til they're not, it takes a struggle to cover the previous coat of some left behind pseudo-masterpiece or brilliant arrangement too far ahead of it's time. but you can become stronger than a wave, tidal surge, you are a unique source of energy. and dfw was killed, i believe, by too many words. bill hicks and those folks by truth, it's like these amazing people walk our earth and become absolutely realized only a small moment of time before they are to leave, giving us but a clue to the clueless universal organism. but let's not make martyrs of the departed, instead, let's take those hints and lessons and impart something brilliant while we're here. these words are luminous.

down at the new amsterdam

staring at this yellow haired girl, there is no epiphany. life will continue to teach us the same lessons until they're learned. the ones who get it, move on.

art, expression, i chose the wrong template. i will work on this despite climate, because i have no choice. and i saw some article about the links between creation and mental instability and i laughed like a madman to myself, stating the obvious again and again.

to be a man on wire first requires an ascension, then the line, next feet, followed by gravitas, followed by the ability to laugh at the use of the word gravitas, followed by braving the singularity of being, every ounce of it, moving forward with all the elements, finding balance, if only for one wild walk from tower to tower.

then you can go back to the philandering miniature french asshole or whatever you wanna be in this world, indifferent, until you show them something wonderfully out of the ordinary.

la weekly

"...the most substantial change he made was in the protagonist's rationale for suicide: in the movie, it's not because the character hates humanity but because he feels he has failed to connect with it."

"but i believe inherent in any artist's work is an optimistic truth. that the very creation of art is in itself an act of optimism."

-tom tykwer and lana wachowski

i like the way she sang free falling. i keep ending up in franklin village or some eastside nook, nail lodged in tire, tired and alive. i step on stage and unleash the beginning of an expression, tears spilling to humor rolling to an amalgam of uncorralled energy finding direction. everyone on this planet is making their own movie. i'm always assigning blame for the insanity, my this, your that, her, her, her. and i'm a mess, scrambled eggs, salsa on a plate. now i'm a lightning rod of expression, an outpouring of libidinous current channeled onto fixed canvas with shape-shifting gaze. the pay phone, west hollywood dancing it's gay dance around us, i shuffled, cheered, yelled my strange angry character into the receiver, i was so exhausted it hurt, and they roared like beautiful tickled lions, their smiles and laughter pouring down the sidewalk, and i caught some of this fragile music that people make when feeling that mutual understanding of invisible universe, everything got better that moment. and we all drove to a birthday cake.

finding aqua water and wheat paste on chavez

schoolchildren in a big group on the sidewalk of vermont and something. i'm gathering and bunching, abstracting beauty from everywhere. you live in the world. and you warm the ocean when you enter in pieced together underwear bathing suit bottom and nothing but dark skin. i know you don't wanna laugh but it strikes me in the gut, you thinking i'm overflowing with passion, you. i once accused beached elephant seals of salivating for your presence, gravitating to your earth. and i don't even know if i was joking then. fine, so we're a couple of people full of life energy blasting away and showering the results like stubborn parallel volcanos. but it's not tragic if you can laugh about it and it's not tragic because we're being honest and clashing and living the best we know how and i don't regret the feelings we've shared, however together or away or wrong or right, they've never been mundane and are always combustible and sweat inducing and maddening, evidenced by my pacing on strip of grass near montana and somewhere, talking on the phone and hearing that voice of yours like a spark, rush of wildfire, kiss of windy aftermath. so yes, i find my way on singular journey in the dark, you find reason to be frustrated at my ineptitude, list reasons i'm stupid, then make your life magic like you always do. but trust that we are gargantuan from before, now, whatever tomorrow brings and the form may never return we won't be young and we are still gargantuan like that feeling we've said so many times. now, i'm in a mediterranean cafe eating a "spinachi wrap", it's not named after me, baklava and coffee black, two cups, i won't be able to sleep tonight, but you fire into me like a cannon.

no one will read this

and i wanted to get home and write. i left a message, sometimes you hear a song on the radio and it's so good that you don't finish it, because you have to call someone you care about.

and what do we do?

bond over movies, music, family, life stories, meet out there in the middle and build something in the space, feel it's shape, reflection.

i'll write you a river, carry you to the sea. i can list off a bucket full of bullshit, far more than that trite attempt at novelty you gave me our second night, and i know that i loved you in a way that was previously impossible. i loved you like never before.

i slept in my car. and why do we do what we do?

the ocean was black and blue, bruised morning. i drank coffee and lifted my lights up. my friend and i were talking about the good dying young, she was brave and honest and we spoke about loving some more despite it all, feeling everything.

and i can see the beauty in all things.

yellow victorian

i remember sliding pocket doors trapping wood-burning heat in the room. we incinerated masterpieces because there was never any purpose sustaining them. and that which we contribute is a mere blessed flutter of the figurative butterfly wings flapping man's evolution. now years later, i'm in some kind of nightclub victorian with shabbier woodwork and a feeling of collective non-entity. i wanna shake the shoulders of people taking this at face value. want us to melt in a pot together, witches brew, come out enchanting with life in one burst, that's all. it will make a difference, push followed by push, we're getting somewhere.