juni 2006 Archives

Thirteen years ago today, I arrived in San Francisco. I walked into my new house at 11:45pm on Wednesday, June 30, 1993.

Thirteen years later, San Francisco is different, but that only makes it more the place I fell in love with when I first saw it with my own eyes. I am different, improved. Older, and wise enough to know that wisdom comes only with experience, not intellect.

Thirteen years ago, I was 29 when I arrived and Allen was 35. We had a dog, Randee. I worked for a little Mac software company two blocks away from where I work now, the center of the Mac universe.

Thirteen years ago I knew I would survive a partner. And a dog, for that matter. I knew I would survive no matter what. For the rest, I had no idea what was in store for me, and I liked it that way. I could list the bad things that have happened, and it would be a very very long list.

But the good things? Those are ineffable.

For me, ineffability always beats the torpor of a file of complaints.

Thirteen years later, that has not changed.

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I loves me the Rijkswidget. It shows me a different painting from the Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam every day. Today's image:

Evidence of the world's first PowerBook! Hendrikus van de Sande Bakhuyzen painted this self-portrait in 1850. Click on the painting for more info.

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My new dream car:

Set to be available in the States through DaimlerChrysler in 2008.

UPDATE (I'm full of them today!): they have a pink edition of the car in Britain!

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The media is utterly letting him off the hook. The Today show led the story with “a dream come true for late-night comedians”, thus relegating the story to nothing but a simple embarrassment for Limbaugh.

The man violated the terms of his already wrist-slappy deal, and now he's carrying around a prescription that isn't his. Oh, they'll argue that the script was written for him by his doctor, and that all that's really required is a) the doctor's intent to give a prescription medication to a patient and b) the doctor's ability (read: license) to write scripts, but honestly, under the law—the laws that Rush Limbaugh has used in quite literal interpretations to inveigh against others to great effect—the only person who is permitted to take the medication in a bottle is the name of the person on the bottle.

Oh, I know there are good will arguments for bending the rules for this and that, thus and such (e.g., hey, I ran out of ibuprofen, can I take one of those 800mg tablets your doc prescribed for you?), but Rush Limbaugh burned through any good will that anyone might have made available to him, hasn't he? In fact, the Republicans have subsisted on nothing but siphoning off the good will and have used it to power the machinery of their current ascendancy. And Rush Limbaugh has been nothing but a perfectly good assmonkey for them all along.

The doctor who wrote the script should be censured or otherwise punished in some way, even if only symbolic. Should he be barred from practicing medicine or writing scripts? No, of course not. But something must be done.

And Viagra? What particular brand of self-loathing must it take for a woman to actually let Rush Limbaugh put his dick in her? It's upsetting to even consider that there are women like that around.

I know that that Catholics don't go in for any kinds of artificial birth control. But so far, the word “control” has been synonymous with prevention. IVT is also not considered natural and that's all about procreation. Has the Catholic Church weighed in on Viagra and Cialis?

Have all those other anti-abortion folks ever expanded their ROI to include all of natural procreation?

Rush Limbaugh deserves more punishment than whatever idiocy Jay Leno can poorly deliver. Imagine that Rush Limbaugh were not famous, not white. What would happen to him now? (that's a trick question, chil'ren, because that Rush Limbaugh would never have gotten such a sweet deal on doctor-shopping in the first place).

UPDATE: Hottie Homer just pointed out to me that Rush was on his way to the Dominican Republic when they nabbed him, where flourishes a vibrant sex industry. Not only that, Rush isn't married. So by the arguments of the anti-gay Right, he shouldn't be having sex at all. With anyone. And if he was going to prostitutes, I take it back about the women being self-loathing: they're being compensated for their difficult labors.

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Yesterday morning nothing went right. Even the freebie trainrides for “Spare the Air Days” here in California worked to my disadvantage. Still, onward and upward, right? This wouldn't be the first time that el mundo malo was fucking with the god of biscuits, and by now I can recognize when I'm in it, and what to do about it: nothing. Don't force it, don't tempt it. Don't attempt to beat it into submission or to run away from it. Live it, focus, be wary and don't forget to breathe as you trudge up the acclivitous path back into el mundo bueno. It's simple, but not easy.

I barely missed the Baby Bullet train and so I hopped on the next one. That next one was a local train only so far down the peninsula, so I had to stop at Redwood City and wait for the next train. This is where the world started to seriously go pear-shaped.

I had tunnel vision—something I'd never had before, yet I knew what it was when it hit. Then the sunlight shot daggers through my eyeballs and into my head, like one of those Popeil's In-the-Egg Scramblers. (Can I similize or what?) (Oh, and I can also fabricate words as I go—English isn't perfect and I'm merely adding to its perfection).

The left side of my head hurt in particular, behind the left eyeball and towards my left ear. I couldn't escape from any of it. Is this how a vampire feels? Oh, probably.

I pulled my cap down over my face and got almost instant relief when there was far less light. I got into work a bit later than usual, and left early because even with the monitors turned down to their lowest light level and with my office light off, the blinds mostly drawn and my door closed entirely, there was still too much light. Unbelievable. And I thought the rib pain was inescapable.

Anyway, I was standing there waiting for the next train in Redwood City. I walked up to the tracks and looked North for a train that was already five minutes late. No train, but there was that stab of forlornness, of longing I suppose, of fear and distance, the vacuum of suddenly too much scope.

This is not something germane to el mundo malo. From when I was a young child and the old railroad tracks—which by then were nothing more than a flat, partially cleared path through woodlands—would impart the same sense of too much distance. Follow the empty rails to the vanishing point. The Vanishing Point. That's a term used in perspectives studies in drawing: the point at the horizon at which everything vanishes. It's a disturbing term, and that same disturbance hit me when I looked up towards the City and found nothing but empty tracks.

Maybe it was something that I could have dismissed more easily had 90% of my world not been occupied with a giant “Ow!” Perhaps it could have been forgotten had I not seen an article in the Register UK about Harriet, the Tortoise, long believed to have been invited to join Charles Darwin's voyage some 176 years ago.

Imagine a being that age. Imagine what has transpired in the world since.

The article gave me the same pangs of tide and time that the empty rails did—an accelerated and assisted path directly to a distant, vanishing point that I wasn't ready for.

Now, after spending all of yesterday evening in the dark and falling asleep very early and then awaking in fits and starts all night long until 7:30 this morning, the headache is gone for the most part. My photophobia has faded down to “Bright light!” and a bit of wincing. Sounds are no longer painful and the spiky pain on the left side of my head is disappeared.

But Harriet, the Tortoise is dead and the train rails are not empty so long as I am in this traincar. And still, hints of dread rise up in me when I consider the distances.

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To my brother, Sam (today) and to my father, Jack (yesterday)! I wish I could be together for every birthday and holiday.

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Silence is the Perfectest herald of Joy. But I'm not perfect.

Never came trouble to my house in the likeness of
your grace: for trouble being gone, comfort should
remain; but when you depart from me, sorrow abides
and happiness takes his leave.

Today I celebrated my first week back to work! And I'm here to tell you, that certainly makes a change, and for the better. Though there was considerably more pain because of being more active (and less, to a certain extent) and being “on” all day long, the attendant happiness of being back among the mates on my team and simply being back at the Mothership/Neverland (but without the plastic surgery and pedophilia, as a Hero of mine said)/the Center of the  Universe wins out easily.

It's been a tiring week, though.

And in a different way, tomorrow will be tiring as well: Soonae and Jong leave for Korea in the morning. Though I will have my solitude back, I will be in solitude. Though I will have a door to lock behind me, I may end up locked behind it. Though I will be alone, I will be lonely.

O, my lord,
When [we] went onward on this ended action,
I look'd upon him with a soldier's eye,
That liked, but had a rougher task in hand
Than to drive liking to the name of love:
But now I am return'd and that war-thoughts
Have left their places vacant, in their rooms
Come thronging soft and delicate desires...

The cat is called Walter. He is stuffed with more personality than any three other cats. Understand, I am a dog person: I am not a cat person unless there is a cat about. Walter has taken to both Soonae and Jong, abandoning me in the process. I digress.

If I pick up Walter and place him down near a toy of his, he is disoriented, but that is transient and he may discover the toy, forgetting whatever cat-thoughts had priorly caused both of his neurons to vibrate. Would that we all could abide changes so easily!

But I try and try not.

Then sigh not so, but let them go,
And be you blithe and bonny,
Converting all your sounds of woe
Into hey nonny, nonny.

In all of this it has been the heart I have found companionable and not the head. But now that the head situates itself in the world and occupies itself with work and fun (often the same thing), what's left to be impatient about? Why, everything else, of course! I am not neurotic—that is to say, greedy for the next tragic drama—but rather, I believe that grace requires grist: the only beneficent consequence of change is transformation.

...Graces will appear, and there's an end.

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Soonae and Jong picked me up at the Caltrain station. We picked up Mikey and went to Brothers 2 Restaurant on Geary.

What's better than dinner with those you love?

Fuck if I know.

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The glass surface of a placid lake is a wonder to behold. Perfection lay thereupon.

Perfection is boring, static, immutable. Dead.

Destructive interference isn't the only kind. Moiré patterns also contain additive, constructive interference. So does life. Change brings more opportunity for change. Life is about having evolved the ability to evolve and adapt.

Adaptation changes both the individual and the environment.

I am a creature of strong habit. It's not structure I need so much as dependable places on which to light whenever needed. That's structure to some, but the selfsame notice the erraticism of the orbit instead of the strange attractor at its core.

Chaos governs itself and we are, each and all, generators of chaos.

Do the non-linear math.

All syllogisms fail to capture any complete truth
This is a syllogism
Therefore, this is not a truth-statement.

Taken on the merits of its structure alone, that would've baked your noodle. Taken as a seed crystal for a mode of thought, it locates your thoughts dependably. It's there because it's not exactly there. Horseshoes, grenades and this: close enough is good enough.

He asks, in discomfiting eloquence, if we think we're in control. I'm not so sure there's any control to be had: the soul has no third-person singular, a thing that we never remember until we reach out to another and curse the loneliness of an arm's length.

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I'm on Caltrain 314, a Baby Bullet train that expresses—rather not like milk from a breast—from San Francisco to San Jose with stops at Millbrae, Hillsdale, Palo Alto, Mountain View and finally San Jose. I'll be de-training (how retro-pubescent!) at Mountain View. A train borne on rails not unlke the ones which put my life on hold.

This is the first time on the train since before the Winter Break, 2005. Just now, iCal tells me that date was December 22, 2005. Strangely, just yesterday Noelbear had told me that his birthday is December 22. Spooky.

I am riding the train “backwards”: that is to say I am facing San Francisco and so the morning ride is always facing backwards. Some cannot ride this way; others will only ride this way because it's a safer position to be in in the event of a train wreck. I always sit facing San Francisco. In the evenings, that's forward (for those of you not doing math at this hour of the morning).

Now, I've known many train wrecks in my life, and have lived through them all, so this kind of safety preparedness perhaps is lost on me. And I don't get motion-sick riding backwards. For me, the priority is to avoid the kind of bends one gets when one too quickly descends from San Francisco to Mere Earth or, in kind, surfaces too quickly from the depths of that mundanity known as not-San-Francisco.

I kid, and yet I don't.

My mind is everywhere this morning, with “first day” jitters and with being up so early and with having slept so little and with what the day will bring. Soonae dropped me off at the train station and will pick me up at the end of the day. “Don't say 'thank you',” she said. “Family doesn't have to thank each other.”

The notion of Change always causes me apprehension until I'm caught up in the flux of it. Then it's a surfboard ride that can be fun. Or scary. Or both. Or neither. But always exciting and always Temporary. Never Always and never Never.

So...“Let's see what's out there” and “What's next, Mrs. Landingham?” and “Open new window, open a new door. Travel a new highway that's never been tried before” and “You drink revival when you're thirsty for survival” and “These endless days are finally ending in a blaze”.

My life is suddenly gravid with the Future, did you know?

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I feel like I should have laid out my clothes for the next morning, or packed a lunch, or make sure my shoes were shined. Or any of those things that I used to do as a way of burning off the excess chi at the start of something new.

Only this isn't something new so much as something renewed.

Life got derailed when my Vespa (with me on it) got derailed on December 30, 2005. I have effectively, psychically lost 5.5 months of my life. The continuum broke. Expectations dashed. Assummptions turned and made an ass out of u and umption.

The biggest single step forward happens tomorrow. The locomotive (heavy on the loco) gets set back on the rails and off it goes: I return to work at the Beloved Mothership.

I

cannot

fucking

wait!!!

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Soonae told me today that there's a popular Korean aphorism that roughly translates to “If you see a pile of shit in the street, it's best to look away, not out of fear, but simply because it's shit.”

I started to think it was just a variation on “Is life too short to deal with shit, or is life too short to care about the shit?” But it's more than that. It's a personal point of view that's just as much about the shitter as it is about the ambulator.

Over the last year and a half, one of the hallmarks of the people who invited themselves into my life without asking me was that I was good material to be the bad guy. Which eventually ended up with me being treated like the black pool of slimetar that killed Tasha Yar.

I was blamed by the same person on separate occasions for being too forgiving and for being too rigid with respect to the same event; I was identified as the cause of a suicide attempt (not my own); I was at fault for being stalked, at fault for not noticing in others the effects of a drug I never used; I wasn't a psychiatrist nor omniscient nor did I, apparently, properly syllogize and requite a romantic love for a mouse from Montana (he's just like Sam, you know!)

My Litany of Shoulds: I should have known, too, that sexual infidelity was going to happen (making it a posteriori my fault); I should have known I wouldn't be respected; I should have known that other people's rules and boundaries were the only ones that mattered; I should have been far more laissez-faire about my own relationship by being far less laissez-faire about it. When speaking my mind, I should have assumed that everyone else is of the opinion is that I am motivated by what others may think of me and that I think the same thing. When thinking my thoughts, I should ignore the irony of the above.

I should have realized that I must participate in the current fashion of “lies are the new truth!” and dress the part of a spineless, soulless, slug with a personality bypass just to fit in with these people who were never invited into my life by me.

They're gone—by disassociation from Sam—from my life now, and it's a new era. (Sam is still in my life in a different and more positive way, thankfully). No more “breathe [sic] baiting” nor “pseudo [sic] intellectual crap” will “spew” from me towards any of them. And by “them”, I mean you folks who have recognized yourself in my ranting rota. When you people see me out and about, I will treat you as brusquely as you have treated me and I will be as dismissive of you as you have been of me. If I were to respect you as little as you respected me, well, let's just say you couldn't handle that—and more to the point, I would lose those parts of me that I cherish the most. Whatever my reaction (or lack thereof) might be to you in person, rest assured it will be the minimal effort.

So especially to the Spinner, the Stalker, Mrs Shrek 2 and the Thalidomide Britbaby, I am done trying to make a silk purse out of a sow's ear and I'm done casting pearls before swine (and other aphorisms as well!).

This swine wears the pearls. And he can appreciate a finely made silk handbag, for that matter.

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I want to paint my face. I want to learn the art of face painting so that my face can be more expressive. To bring more of the internal world to the surface for others to see. Perhaps small gold-leaf buttons painted across one cheek, over the bridge of the nose and completing a symmetry might stamp me with that quixotic reaction to the final sizzle of the sun submerging itself in the Pacific. Or triangles of green will punch awl-encompassing holes through me and into the jungle, making me as translucent or as interlucent as I sometimes feel.

I want a white sky that surrenders its blue to the small sea beneath it. I want a heavy sky that hangs low, shaping itself to the hills of home.

I want my feet massaged until the vermiform surfaces of my brain unknot and I want sex that reassures me that some things are worth breaking ribs for.

I want to stop wanting, this moment, because this moment makes the wanting unseemly and wanton.

Except that, so long as I want to trust my feelings and cannot, neither can I trust the not-wanting. Twee gezichten of the same gelder, my friends.

I am no Van Gogh, but my palette knife is.

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Life continues to settle into itself. My favorite Pastry Chef has been in town on business and he and I hung out last night and ended up at Boy Bar to hear Sam spinning. He played Bizarre Love Triangle for me, which was sweet. The Pastry Chef and I have always had great rapport, but I don't get to see him (and Head Chef) nearly enough: but for half an ocean, I would see them every day.

Elvis Costello once sang that “Home Is Anywhere You Hang Your Head”. It's not a pleasant song, in the sense that it walks the ugly perimeter of love, the barbed wire fencing about the entrance, the snaggle-toothed proscenium arch fronting the gaping maw of insecurity, the mirror that requites no image.

Life moves, not forward, but outward and inward, retelling all the old stories and reinterpreting them in a current context, finding its own balance, finding its way. My life, my way, moves (back) towards those men and women with whom I feel like me because they let me be and because they have respect for other things and other ones beyond a blind obeisance to their own needs, to more than just collecting the emoluments of their own self-involvement.

My friends and loved ones.

The Palace of the Soul burns candles in its windows again and welcomes what may come. A small gesture, but, importantly, a first gesture. The infinitude of divisions exists in a finite space or time and the Soul cares not for any of Zeno's Paradoxes. The heart moves of itself, requiring no observer.

The prolix yap and nip at the heels of it all, echoing in the chasm their protests that a single leap is the only way to move to the distal edge, and Zeno's divisions get you nowhere but strewn upon the rocks below.

The day ended as it began
As he was seconds older than the man he was this morning
And the world has wiped its mouth since then
Or maybe it was yawning

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Le poèt de chien y uw god van koekjes (I'm from everywhere) were hangin' and swangin' at the beach and elsewhere yesterday, toolin' around town pickin' up chicks with an on-loan Mr. Microphone.

When we realized, “hey, hang on a minute! we're gay!” we opted for Bed Bath & Beyond and Trader Joe's instead. I'm ok with the Bed and the Bath, but the Beyond, lord jesus christ on a cracker help me. We were at the top of the escalators on our way down and I beatifically spread my arms over the Land Of Small Kitchen Electrics And All Clad Cookware and proclaimed it Good. El poeta del perro made me walk through the section anyway (even though I told him of my obsession), coaching me away from the need to search for all-electric asparagus cookers and professional-level burr grinders.

What a bitch, right? But New York seems to have given him a touch of imperioussssssnessssss (sssriussssly). He's been barking (in trochaic pentameter) little orders here and there, and out of pure shock I find myself heeding them before I realize what's happening.

Like at Trader Joe's. I was at the end of an aisle, he was part of the way down the same aisle and he barked, “Come here” (even that came out as a trochee and not an iamb). He pointed at the little handwritten sign below the deluxe cashews:

A minute later, I was looking at the all-natural soy-based laundry detergent (gotta love Northern California) to see if it was ok to use in front-loading washing machines (it was) and I noticed the badge on the label:

Who knew Trader Joe was so virile?

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“Three years and all I have to show for it is...a man I can't stop kissing.” -- Practical Magic

•••

DAD: Do you love him?
SAMANTHA: I loved who I was when I was with him -- First Daughter

•••

Here in my car
I feel safest of all
I can lock all my doors
It's the only way to live
In cars

Here in my car
I can only receive
I can listen to you
It keeps me stable for days
In cars

Here in my car
Where the image breaks down
Will you visit me please?
If I open my door
In cars

Here in my car
I know I've started to think
About leaving tonight
Although nothing seems right
In cars -- Gary Numan

It's not easy trying to thunk lines from romantic comedies and the lyrics to a Gary Numan song into something inclusive and self-consistent. I don't know why I try in the first place; maybe I've just never succeeded in stopping it when it goes on. A brain can bend reality, but it rarely obeys external demands.

When I was back in Pennsylvania, I was sitting out in the back yard of my brother's house. He and I and his fiancée Jessica sat under a few trees talking about the past (the area in which he lives is what we used to call 'where the rich people live'), the present (his son, Nick, who is newly returned—yay!—to the family, was cutting their huge lawn and smoking while doing it), and the future (their impending nuptials and honeymoon). We talked about the “used to be”s of the area—this house was white, that house's yard used to be overgrown with fir trees and woody shrubbery, Matt Hoidra—someone I went to high school with—lives just the next street over; that kind of stuff. I'm sure it was quite boring for Jessica, since she didn't grow up around there.

We were also talking about some of the local uproars and pre-legal allegations towards friends of the family, activities that are well on their ways to ruining lives and families even though the truth will never reach the light of day. No one is interested in exoneration, nor in forgiveness these days.

I made what I thought was a rather direct analysis of something, a straightforward assessment that showed a popular conclusion to be specious. My brother said, “Most people think linearly. Your brain goes off in so many dimensions all at once that people have probably never even thought of.” It was a huge compliment and he knew it. Right now, though, I can't remember the topic. It was lovely to hear that kind of compliment from my brother, very warming. And it stayed it me, obviously.

And therein lies the ironic rub. It was a template for taking in the experience and luxury of two weeks with my family, and all that came before in NYC, and all that followed since I've been back in San Francisco: that damnable, inexorable syncretic process that, once started, can only end of its own voluted volition. Writers know what I'm talking about.

Sorting out the a priori from the a posteriori should be a straightforward task; two columns on a spreadsheet and you're done, right? Well, no. The n-space doesn't really like the crisp, glabrous didactics of YES and NO.

That's a lot of plates to keep spinning at once, but you know that a breakthrough into Something New simply won't happen unless they're all spinning and stay spinning until you've turned off the gravity with new insights.

I sat in the most perfectest car in the world yesterday. I'm a huge fan of cars and I manage to keep up on nearly all of the mainstream brands and models, at least in an academic sense. I rarely go out to look at cars in showrooms, but we did on Saturday. From glabrous metal with crisp creases, angled glass and futuristic high-intensity discharge headlights emerge créatures mécaniques. People like me don't buy cars for any reason more highly prized than gestalt. Laundry lists and consumer reports are good for tie-breakers, but not for primary choice.

It's a similar pattern to meeting people. That gut feeling that really isn't about instinct so much as the internal marshaling of minutiae that present themselves viscerally. It's fine work but doesn't require a fine touch.

But back to that perfectest of cars: The Audi A4 Convertible. Sitting in the driver's seat flooded me with memories of my first car: a 1973 Chevrolet Caprice Classic Convertible. It was 8 years old when my parents bought it for me as an early graduation present. It was triple white. The angle of the windshield, the top of the windshield relative to my head. The available open air behind the head. Light coming from overhead that hits the dash. I couldn't tell you if the angle, the location, the headrest, the lighting were all the same or different to my 1973 Chevy, but I can tell you that I was there in my old car when I sat in that Audi. Too many memories arrived at once for anyone—including multidimensional thinking me—to keep as separate entities. More thresholding and marshalling that produce another visceral reaction: this car is for me.

Consumer Reports, EPA estimates, reliability reports, dime-a-dozen-ness, even highway safety are terribly bourgeois, stiltingly rational, and frankly, utterly moot.

Same is true when you start to make a balance sheet of qualities of a person you want to have a relationship with. How do people honestly do that?

There was a cute boy walking down Van Ness with his girlfriend as we were parking the car. The one I was shopping with pointed out that the man had a pierced lip and was wearing a hoop through it. He pointed out that that might ruin some of the best reasons to have a boyfriend in the first place. Like for kissing. My magical me agreed aloud before I had a chance to think about it. Kissing is would be at the top of any laundry list I would make about a desirable thing in a relationship. I could kiss for hours, not necessarily as foreplay for but its own sake. Haven't you learned the most marvelous things in the right kiss with the right one? Who wouldn't want to do an end-run around the clunkiness of words to discover real truths in the pleasures in and dance of a kiss?

Of course being in the situation to have a kiss that removes you from the world and into one another requires the context of two people who can be present in a moment, two people who understand themselves enough to bring authenticity to the intimacy.

It's like the difference between making love and just fucking.

Gay men are really really good at fucking. And grow really really tired of fucking because the repetition can make one bored and eventually jaded. Sexual gymnastics/prowess/acrobatics/quantity/danger is the only answer to avoiding sexual boredom for most. Talk to a gay man about anonymous sex or a three-way and the eagerness to proceed or even to boast is immediate. Talk to a gay man about making love with another man, and you get eye-rolling and accusations of lesbianism.

Sexual freedom is defined by such rota that you must pick your spot on that list like you'd sign off on what you're bringing to a potluck or which item of a bridal registry you've purchased. And while you're at it, assign a label: bear, cub, otter, twink, musclebear, muscle queen, top, bottom, slave, master, pup, owner, hole, cock. Left hanky mauve and right hanky taupe.

All these notions that used to be just that: notions. Try them on and them take them off and go back to being who you are, and be with whom you're with. But that's rare these days. The top needs bottoms. Bottoms need tops. Pups have owners and masters own slaves. Living the dream, baby.

So afraid of losing out on the chance to have sex with so many others, when it never occurs to most that they might be losing out on the chance to discover a deep-end intimacy with one.

The kind of intimacy that a simple kiss can impart, when the kissers are capable of bringing themselves to the party.

Cars are important to me; the right company even moreso.

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I'm back home in San Francisco, safe and sound.

Well, except for the re-borked shoulder after a long flight in a narrow coach seat sitting next to a 6'5“ man. It's twingey and everything. Here's hoping it's temporary.

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Someone once said to me that San Francisco was a city of bottoms. To which I replied, “No, I want to be on top.” No, seriously, I replied, “Yeah, San Francisco: a City of Bottoms, where even the buses kneel!”

Right now I'm in Chicago's O'Hare (O, Her!) Airport and on the way in I was reminded of the Big Sky here, the lack of hills or any topography that isn't human artifice. In other words, “Chicago, where even the aaaaaccents are flaaaaaat.” Have I mentioned how much I hate the Great Lakes aaaaaaccent? It's like nails on a chalkboard.

Of course, it doesn't help that I was on a nearly-two-hour flight on a 50-seater, my massively broad shoulders forced forward in a narrow seat, causing me to have to lean forward, causing compression around my ribs, causing more pain than I've felt in a week. Even two vickies aren't putting a dent in it.

Then again, it could just be Chicago.

It is, after all, like the America pavilion at Epcot.

I remember Mom not liking Houston. Or Chicago, for that matter. And she felt really guilty about impugning a whole city. She got over it.

I know New Yorkers love New York, and San Franciscans can't imagine living anywhere else but San Francisco, but what cities have you been in that you never really need to visit again? And why?

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I need to spend more time outside. What informs me of this does not speak so much as tell. I need to be able to wake in the sun. The cozy dark of the bedroom makes the waking a chore, an exit instead of an entrance.

It was never my choice, except in complicity, to sleep in the inner room, the only room in the house, in fact, with no windows. It is not the room to spend a third of one’s heartbeats in.

A window is reason enough for itself.

Complicity is a conspiracy of pramatics and the rational mind; a point of view I put far too much store in, for who can explain the ebullience that comes from the out of doors? Scientists (the followers of scientism, mind you) give you pO₂ quantities and other such ablative absolutes or they'll present sublime yet uncertain oblations to evolutionary theory, but all tacks fail to capture the nonesuch experience.

It was never my idea to sleep in that room.

Pragmatics always seem to win in the end; the solution is in reimagining what an end is. Playing the pragmatistic game is merely a philosopher’s self-loathing and it seems that mostly only a greater practical need can vanquish an in-place practicality.

That game always ends badly.

If you dismiss any particular end and instead opt for obeisance to deictics, pragmatism becomes only a means to an end—and remember, the end which can no longer be defined.

Choose instead an indexical quality: say, happiness.

Happiness, to borrow the pragmatism of the scientists, must surely be predicated on the qi; energies must align and such alignments are relative to the form of the person.

Perhaps sleep is not a thing the awake should abide. Perhaps awakening is a dream to the sleeper. Rollaway, hideaway, stowaway. No reminders of sleep while awake, and the sleeping should inhabit all in the time it’s given.

The feng shui of a Murphy Bed in the torpor of turgid prose.

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After the stupid uproar that Nashville staged in response to the Dixie Chicks' stated opinion that they're embarrassed that they're from the same state as George W. Bush, the Chicks respond with a totally kick-ass song, Not Ready To Make Nice...a stark and direct song aimed at the losers who hate our freedoms (meaning the Red State yahoos who love freedom of speech as long as you never exercise it).

I bought the album, Taking the Long Way from iTunes Music Store, and discovered elsewhere that the album is #1 on the charts! Go Chicks!

And go ye to purchase the album. It's terrific.

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