get a piece of the rock

if like me you always thought that a “rockhound” was just a crackhead on the prowl then you’re only PARTIALLY right. as it turns out a “rockhound” is also someone collects actual ROCKS, like the kind you don’t put in a pipe and smoke. as our friends at wikipedia tell us(what’s a wiki anyways?) “Amateur geology (known as rockhounding in the United States) is the recreational study and hobby of collecting rocks and mineral specimens from their natural environment”. i relay this info to establish the rockhound’s credentials as a legit hobbyist because apparently at this point i am one. wookie’s mom decided that we all needed a new “family hobby”, something we could all do together that wouldn’t bore the shit out of at least one of us, and rockhounding is what she settled on. they’d been a couple of times already but now that i’m in the mix the hounding party had grown and yesterday was our 1st excursion as a 5-person unit.

that’d be me, wookie, lenner, wookie’s mom, and wookie’s bro E. now the 1st thing you need to know about this particular hobby is that apparently the directions to known rockhounding “sites” are super vague. i mean like “follow such-and-such road(now i’m even being vague) until the bend and park on the side of the road near the bridge that isn’t on private property and find access to river somewhere and voila”. like vague enough that if wookie’s mom and E hadn’t passed us on the highway before the turn off so we could follow them(we needed 2 cars) there’s no way we would’ve found them or the spot or any rocks at all. as it turns out rocks were in short supply anyways but i’m getting ahead of myself. the point is that the sites are pretty random because you can’t do it on private property and most land in this fucking country is private(don’t get me started) so not only are the spots in weird places and lacking the proper signage but they are also quite small and our theory is that on top of everything else the rockhounds who write the guidebooks and whatnot don’t want to make it too easy for JUST ANYONE to stumble across these sites to pilfer the limited offerings at will so they write the stuff in such a way as to keep it vague enough to ensure that only those willing to put in the legwork are gonna be competing for the rocks on hand.

anyways it didn’t take us too long to find it but it took us about 45 minutes and several passes to convince ourselves that this WAS indeed the spot. wookie had done some research and was concerned about high water(do rivers have tides?) because the guidebook mentioned “waders”(as in “wader, there’s a fly in my soup”) but wookie’s mom assured us it was gonna be low tide and anyways i didn’t have waders OR a disposable pair of shoes so i showed up unprepared and had to take off my boots and roll up my jeans and wade around in my barefeet and the rocky bottom chewed up my soles pretty bad. but not my soul. that was chewed up pretty bad by the fact that i didn’t find any agates or carnelians or any of the other fancy rocks, i just found rocks. some were cool, mind you, but even after splitting open to double-check they all proved to be rocks and rocks only. wookie found 3 pieces of carnelian and wookie’s mom found 2 or 3 agates but i found a ginormous crawfish that i at first mistook for a small lobster. what a lobster would be doing in a podunk stretch of the nehalem river is anyone’s guess but apart from being an inexperienced rockhound i have also never gone crawfish hunting. regardless the little fucker was huge and had these nasty looking pincers and he was my only find all day.

after an hour or 2 wading around we had a picnic on the bridge, which was about 30 yards long and stretched from the road to a gate that said “NO TRESPASSING”. “back to nature” this was not, not exactly anyways. while we were finishing up some old guy pulls up in a truck and sits down and starts rapping with us, his name is richard and he lives right across the road and has horses and a little rock quarry on his land and do we want to see? i have minor visions of being lured into an ambush but he seems harmless enough and everyone else seems game so off we go. there’s 3 dogs on the property and they’re semi-feral but pretty nice and cute and the horses seem ok but only semi-tame and a couple of them seem like mules. or burros. richard points to a few apple trees and says we can pick some so wookie busts out her step ladder and starts picking but after she discovers they all have wormholes she desists.

richard says he needs to go into town but first he hops on a 4-wheeler and leads us to the quarry, which ends up being the rocky side of a big hill at the end of an old trailer-park dumping ground. it’s real mad max type stuff with old bombed out camper shells rotting away and i’m having visions of spawn ranch and the hills have eyes and also becoming acutely aware that our only exit is back the way we came, back through the gauntlet of garbage and rusty machinery and old trailers from which i’m at least half-expecting zombies or the manson family to begin emerging (or perhaps just a few “deliverance”-type rural-oregon rednecks with rifles and a bottle of mezcal). there’s trash and for some reason lots of moldy garlic bread everywhere and i try to take pics of the madness but the best i could do was this:

wookie actually climbs up past the green haz-waste pond and the oil pit to dig around on the side of the hill but the rest of us are feeling somewhat disturbed so i decide to play fetch with one of the feral dogs named sara and she’s too afraid to come close enough to give you the stick but super insistent that when she lays it down several feet from you it’s very important that you pick it up and THROW. she looks like this:

anyways we made it out unscathed except for wookie who may have contracted poison oak. and escaping with your life is rule #1 for every budding rockhound, so i guess we did ok. and the next time a crackhead says “i’m going to go find me some ROCK” don’t go jumping to any conclusions.

living in detox

i have seen the madness in my area.

i woke up on the couch(too hot in the bedroom this morning and wookie was snoring a little bit) and couldn’t see the clock(too dark) but i knew the cat wanted to eat and it was probably about time to wake up so i rose to start my day. had a bad taste in my mouth so i had a bite of alden’s mint chip ice cream and then a few pieces of canteloupe, then i fed guzzy some shredded chicken and salmon shit that looked and smelled gross(but it always does), put the coffee on and adjourned to the back “office” to wait for the joe and start the day. i guess i became somehow preoccupied with something that couldn’t have lasted more than 3-4 minutes because when i sat down to turn on the computer and maybe write a little bit i smelled something funny and looked down to see that guzzy had already managed to puke not once, not twice, but thrice. which is not the way for anyone(including guzzy) to start their day. cleaning duties(of course) fell on yours truly and i hurried to grab rag and cleanser because this particular animal has been known to eat her own barf and sure enough when i returned at the ready she had already taken a couple nibbles so i shooed her away and got to work. then that beautiful sound of feline retching filled the room and guzzer let go again-twice! so fuck me, my day was off on the wrong foot.

which was possibly already in the cards because i’m trying to get off these pills i take to sleep, i mean they’re just diphenhydramine(25 mg) which any insomniac can get right over the counter but i have been taking several nightly for a long time so i figured sleep/waking might be a little rocky. i still can’t exactly tell(the barfing episode threw me) but the fact that i have to worry about withdrawing from ANYTHING(no matter how benign)(and anyways IS it that benign? any solid information is welcome at infinitytrigger.wordpress.com) is somewhat absurd and points to some pretty dumb behavior on my part. i mean i have suffered through some(non life-threatening) drug withdrawals and some(very life-threatening) alcohol withdrawals in the past so one might think that more of same would be tops on my list of things to avoid but here i am again, wondering how long i’ll have to deal with SOME form of discomfort(even if it’s just mental) in the coming days. so as a reminder to myself(and perhaps a warning to somebody else) i give you

A WEEK IN DETOX, part 1

or maybe it was 6 days. i was stuck in holland(now “the netherlands”) at the tail-end of a european tour to see a girl(long story) but instead of romance i found myself having nightly seizures when the alcohol began leaving my body(i’d been drinking copious amounts of hard alcohol for over a month) before the store opened at 7 and i was able to purchase alcohol and begin the whole cycle all over again. i somehow managed to set it up so i would go straight into detox when i got home and had to keep drinking until i got there so i wouldn’t have any grand mals. when i arrived at coda in tigard i was in bad shape and well on my way to cirrhosis(that’s what they told me anyways) so i was plied with librium and showed to my room. i was supposed to be sharing it with a vietnamese heroin addict but i snored so fucking loud that he had to vacate to another part of the building and voila! i had my own room. i slept for a day and don’t remember much except they had to wake me up every 6 hours to give me librium and at one point i looked in the mirror and said to my reflection “who are you?” over and over. when i finally was able to get up and around i went to the fridge in the common room and poured myself some gatorade. my hands shook so bad i was barely able to get any in my cup but the only one watching was the vietnamese heroin addict and he didn’t seem to mind. i then proceeded to drop the plate that had a bowl of soup and a sandwich that they had been saving for me on the floor. i must have looked dejected because someone else cleaned it up for me, but it was discouraging nonetheless.

the next couple of days i made the staff’s life shittier than it needed to be. i had somehow retained(even on the stretcher they put me on when i arrived) a fair amount of cockiness and felt entitled to fuck with the people charged with trying to keep me alive until i was out of the woods for some reason. this included demanding my money(actually my mom’s money) back after 3 days so i could leave and resume my activities, telling them they needed to somehow expedite the results of my AIDS test(i was convinced i had contracted it somewhere along the way), refusing to participate in “mandatory” AA meetings, messing around with a 19 year-old junkie from the suburbs who had cornrows and a nice smile, wandering into “off limits” areas outside the facility, and basically acting like an asshole.

on about the 4th day i shaped up a little but to be honest i at no point had absolutely ANY intention of not drinking when i left coda, let alone for the rest of my life. i looked at the whole episode as a brief pause in an ongoing way of life that i had settled into over the years and frankly could not see beyond. i did have to stop drinking for 9 weeks when i checked out to avoid further complications to my already-fucked liver but after that it was right back to where i was before the seizures started, and for several years after i thought i had the whole episode beat, but that was only until

A WEEK IN DETOX, pt. 2(coming soon)

write and wrong

i have no idea how long it’s been since i wrote something here, i mean i could check but instead let’s just say it’s been a long time. any excuse i came up with off the cuff would be chintzy because it would have to fabricated from very thin air indeed. i’ve thought about my blog from time to time over the past several months-plus-weeks with a minimal amount of guilt but no real sense of urgency. i just figured that maybe it was over, and maybe it is. but in the mean time me and leni are out driving around the other day and she says out of the blue “you’ve GOT to start writing your blog again. you’re watching too much TV”, which is not exactly true because what i am actually watching are live feeds of MLB games on the computer, and yet point taken. in my defense let me just say that this year was my first opportunity to actually follow a team(sf giants) over an entire season and i was curious as to what it felt like to catch 162 baseball games over the course of 6 months(there are 21 yet to be played). i still don’t know exactly because i didn’t start watching until right before the all-star break but i think i got the gist of it and my conclusion is that a) baseball is my favorite sport, b) watching a baseball game is relaxing and a pretty good way to spend 3 hours, and c) it’s nice to track a team’s progress over the long haul, but only if 1) your team doesn’t totally suck and you like at least most of the players and 2) if ultimately they are at least in the mix in regards to the playoffs. the giants WERE in the mix up until about a week ago but after getting swept by the division-leading dodgers(fuck LA!) they were 5 1/2 games back in the division race and 5 1/2 games behind the cubs in the wild card  chase which basically means that statistically san francisco has about as much chance getting into the post-season as i do getting employee of the month, and since i don’t exactly have a job in the tradtitional sense the giants’ season is basically kaput.

which means i’m going to have a lot of extra time on my hands and if i’m smart i’ll use some of it to get my ass writing again because basically leni is right, i do waste a lot of time watching shit and if one has a  choice(which i do) then one  might as well try to spend one’s time doing something productive, and regardless of how a post(say this one) ends up turning out there is no doubt in my mind that writing things down is a productive act. on top of that the momentum of doing something that has some substance to it spills over into other parts of your life in a beneficial way whereas sitting in front of a screen creates no motion at all and sort of drains any energy that you might have been able to use for other things. there’s also a guilt/shame/regret element to knowing that you’ve just squandered an entire day doing jack-shit and that stuff can really weigh on you whether you’re conscious of it or not. and while i’ve just spent 558 words to basically say what i could have said in one sentence(“i’ve been watching too much baseball and i’m going to try to write again because leni said so”) any guilt i feel about it pales in comparison to the shame induced by the realization that your life is steadily slipping by and away and you don’t seem to be doing a fucking thing about it.

wookie had a bad couple of days, her doc prescribed her some medication that was supposed to help but instead made her groggy and irritable and annoyed with every single thing i tried to do, most of which were attempts to make her feel better. it was completely out of character for her which is a weird thing to observe but it only lasted about a day and a half and now she’s back to being her semi-perfect self all over again. however it just goes to show that you gotta be vigilant and watch your ass when it comes to doctors and medication and that goes double for drugs that affect the workings of your one and only noggin. i’m having some trouble with noggin-issues myself but not with medication, my problem is with a counsellor who assessed my mental state the other day and came up with a bullshit diagnosis which i have to try to keep off my record somehow and then dump her and get back to my counsellor-less and now-baseball-less existence. and now it’s time to test my theory about how starting off the day writing will give me some creative momentum to use elsewhere, i’ll let you know how it goes.

RIP ornette coleman

he made the world a better place

solitaire

i woke up with the husker du song “don’t want to know if you’re lonely” in my head even though i’m not a big husker du fan and also that particular song is one of my least favorite song in their “canon” but what are you gonna do? by the time i had fed the beast and started the coffee(had to use a paper towel for a filter even thought i had pointed out to myself yesterday IN NO UNCERTAIN TERMS that i had better get to fred meyer PRONTO and pick up a new box of coffee filters) i had forgotten the husker du song but then a funny thing happened. when i sat down i decided i’d write about being alone in the apartment for the last week and a half due to the fact that wooks and lenner have been in france(the south first and then gay paree) and was thinking of a song to start the post, something about loneliness, you know? the 1st thing that popped into my head was the lou reed song but then i remembered about the husker song and i wondered if i knew something in the back of my head upon waking which would’ve prompted me to have that song that i don’t like in my head. because i wasn’t planning on getting up at 4:30 and if i did i wasn’t planning on writing so how the fuck could i have pre-picked a song i dislike for a task that i wasn’t going to perform about a topic i hadn’t chosen? this is where cause and effect(affect? this one’s always tricky) become murky, kind of like the chicken and egg thing except involving aspects of presentiment and the interconnectedness of all things, large and small and literary and venal. i had to look up the definition of “venal” just now to see if it fits and it doesn’t really but i’ve decided to let it stand because i kind of like the word, it means “showing or motivated by susceptibility to bribery.” but don’t worry, dear reader, nobody’s paying me a goddam cent to share my thoughts, not even a penny. which i guess is a cent. not yet, anyways(the venality, that is).

so the thing that’s funny is that i lived alone for 10 years before moving in here with the 2 girls(there of course was guzzy, but you know what i mean) and never minded it and in fact was(or so i thought) a person who really needed his “space” and almost didn’t move in here because of it but the fact of the matter is that for all of my previous bluster and worry apparently now that i’ve experienced living with others( in a “family” environment, not sure why that’s in “quotes”) i’d rather not return to my previous ways. i mean after i drove them to the airport i came home and got to work on some pieces and felt pretty good about having all this time to get some work done but that only lasted about 3 days, after which i was pretty sick of myself and since i can’t really be working on art 24-7 i have been having to face that being alone is not all that i cracked it up to be for that solitary decade of which i spoke. and when i realize this i begin to wonder what the fuck i was doing not dating or anything all that time, just putting up with my own petty grievances and delusional “needs” while there were girls to meet and people besides myself to spend time with. but as we all know looking back and monday morning quarterbacking is at the very least problematic even if you happen to be tom brady with a sack full of deflated footballs and a machiavellian scheme so i’m gonna go ahead and leave that aside.

anyhow i didn’t use the husker du song, i used the lou reed song and i don’t even like it that much but it IS about being alone. i guess i could’ve stretched it and used this one

because it’s a much better song but it’s about william burroughs and i could never figure out what hell burroughs was doing when he started cutting sentences up like so much sausage and rearranging them and then calling it a book. actually a few books, a few books that i just couldn’t get through. in fact the only bill burroughs book i managed to get all the way through was “junky” which was a great book but just had regular sentences. like the type me and you might write if we were engaged in regular correspondence and neither of our names was bryon gysin.

anyways i still got a few more days to be all by myself(and although i briefly thought about it there’s just no WAY i was gonna use THAT song) and i’ve got 5 new pieces waiting for me to work on them and i guess i should hunker down(husker down?) and quit futzin’ and putzin’ around. the world goes on whether you’re alone or elsewise and there’s no use thinking too much about it although i just spent 871 words figuring that out. i guess i could’ve save us both the trouble but who knows what’s gonna happen when you foray into the wonderful world of words?

another year where i didn’t die

if you’re like me then birthdays aren’t just days where you might wanna think about your life, they’re also days where you’re inclined to wonder “how the fuck am i not dead?”. and it’s not just ME that’s somewhat amazed that i’ve somehow made it this far but just about everyone that knows me. as far as i am aware the fact of my resiliency doesn’t bum anyone out, but who knows? i can see how it might bum some people out, me bucking the odds and whatnot. because by most accounts i shouldn’t be turning 46 today, i should be 6 feet under.

a heavy focus on poisoning oneself for the vast majority of one’s life creates a disconnect for sure. not just from reality, or at least parts OF reality, but also from an understanding of the life/death cycle itself. over the years i’ve had many people predict my untimely demise, which wouldn’t have been untimely at all. in fact it would have been about as TIMELY as you can get. shortly before my first stint in rehab, when i was reduced to lying on the floor while intermittently drinking hungrily(thirstily?) from the ever-present bottle in order to keep the dt’s from my throat my friend ross came into my room to say “hey” but upon seeing my state of affairs simply said “you’re gonna die”. just like that. then left.

the drug dealers i saw semi-regularly could never figure out where all the dope WENT. i’ve generally been together enough and seemingly sober a majority of the time so that they couldn’t jibe my semi-sane appearance with the quantities of substances i was purchasing/consuming. and when i saw most of the other customers i could see where the confusion arose, because generally a druggie’s drugginess is at least apparent if not worn prominently on his sleeve. as far as i could tell none of them worked or carried on relationships with the non-druggie community but instead lived within a pretty tight circle. i LIKED all of them, for the most part, but just couldn’t picture them outside of their drug-induced confines. the people that i knew and spent time with that WEREN’T druggies were really NOT druggies. and they had no idea that i was basically on one substance or another 90% of the time.

which wasn’t true with alcohol. everyone that knew me saw me with a beer in my hand pretty much 100% of the time. it didn’t seem to faze too many people but the people it really pissed off were the few doctors i went and saw at the end of my 20 year bender, who literally could not BELIEVE that not only was i unapologetically devoted to my drinking career but had also skated on any apparent physical price that i should have, by all accounts, been in the throes of paying.  one of them was a naturopath who had me get some blood work done and told my i probably had cirrhosis and seemed genuinely pissed off that not only was my liver clean but my pancreas and everything else was too. i mean there was the one time during my first visit to a detox facility(there were several) that the blood draw showed elevated liver numbers(whatever those are) but the docs there then made the mistake of telling me that liver cells regenerate themselves quickly and that if i stopped drinking for 9 weeks my liver would repair itself. when i left, with the outtake interviewer telling me that i needed to go into residential treatment because “you’ll never make it”, i celebrated with a twelve-pack and then turned around and then abruptly abstained for 9 weeks. how i did it i don’t remember but at the end of  the 2 months and change i figured i was good to go. thus began the next 7-year phase of my alcoholism which culminated with me FINALLY taking a nose-dive both physical and mental. it happened suddenly(or SEEMINGLY suddenly, the previous 20 years not being taken into account) and knocked me so far down the ladder that it sent me back into detox twice, one visit closely following the other, and when that sort of treatment came up short it was off to 3 months in rehab which, apart from one short relapse, eventually did the trick.

in fact i just celebrated 6 years sober on cinco de mayo and there are no signs of me returning to my self-destructive former self. i really think the relapse did it, there was no avoiding at least one more attempt to recapture the alcoholic flame and when that drove me right back into the ground it finally sank in that i really was done. there simply wasn’t any other alternative except to simply die. and i guess i wasn’t quite ready.

so i’m still here and now i have wookie and leni and have also re-discovered my artistic groove and things couldn’t be that much better. turning 46 doesn’t freak me out and heading downhill toward 50 at this point does not fill me any sort of dread. i’d like to thank whoever helped to save my life(you know who you are) and hope that i can make up any debt that i owe them by not totally fucking everything up. happy birthday to me.

happy birthday, bob dylan

“It’s Alright, Ma (I’m Only Bleeding)”

Darkness at the break of noon
Shadows even the silver spoon
The handmade blade, the child’s balloon
Eclipses both the sun and moon
To understand you know too soon
There is no sense in trying.Pointed threats, they bluff with scorn
Suicide remarks are torn
From the fools gold mouthpiece
The hollow horn plays wasted words
Proved to warn
That he not busy being born
Is busy dying.

Temptation’s page flies out the door
You follow, find yourself at war
Watch waterfalls of pity roar
You feel to moan but unlike before
You discover
That you’d just be
One more person crying.

So don’t fear if you hear
A foreign sound to you ear
It’s alright, Ma, I’m only sighing.

As some warn victory, some downfall
Private reasons great or small
Can be seen in the eyes of those that call
To make all that should be killed to crawl
While others say don’t hate nothing at all
Except hatred.

Disillusioned words like bullets bark
As human gods aim for their marks
Made everything from toy guns that sparks
To flesh-colored Christs that glow in the dark
It’s easy to see without looking too far
That not much
Is really sacred.

While preachers preach of evil fates
Teachers teach that knowledge waits
Can lead to hundred-dollar plates
Goodness hides behind its gates
But even the President of the United States
Sometimes must have
To stand naked.

An’ though the rules of the road have been lodged
It’s only people’s games that you got to dodge
And it’s alright, Ma, I can make it.

Advertising signs that con you
Into thinking you’re the one
That can do what’s never been done
That can win what’s never been won
Meantime life outside goes on
All around you.

You loose yourself, you reappear
You suddenly find you got nothing to fear
Alone you stand without nobody near
When a trembling distant voice, unclear
Startles your sleeping ears to hear
That somebody thinks
They really found you.

A question in your nerves is lit
Yet you know there is no answer fit to satisfy
Insure you not to quit
To keep it in your mind and not forget
That it is not he or she or them or it
That you belong to.

Although the masters make the rules
For the wise men and the fools
I got nothing, Ma, to live up to.

For them that must obey authority
That they do not respect in any degree
Who despite their jobs, their destinies
Speak jealously of them that are free
Cultivate their flowers to be
Nothing more than something
They invest in.

While some on principles baptized
To strict party platforms ties
Social clubs in drag disguise
Outsiders they can freely criticize
Tell nothing except who to idolize
And then say God Bless him.

While one who sings with his tongue on fire
Gargles in the rat race choir
Bent out of shape from society’s pliers
Cares not to come up any higher
But rather get you down in the hole
That he’s in.

But I mean no harm nor put fault
On anyone that lives in a vault
But it’s alright, Ma, if I can’t please him.

Old lady judges, watch people in pairs
Limited in sex, they dare
To push fake morals, insult and stare
While money doesn’t talk, it swears
Obscenity, who really cares
Propaganda, all is phony.

While them that defend what they cannot see
With a killer’s pride, security
It blows the minds most bitterly
For them that think death’s honesty
Won’t fall upon them naturally
Life sometimes
Must get lonely.

My eyes collide head-on with stuffed graveyards
False gods, I scuff
At pettiness which plays so rough
Walk upside-down inside handcuffs
Kick my legs to crash it off
Say okay, I have had enough
What else can you show me ?

And if my thought-dreams could been seen
They’d probably put my head in a guillotine
But it’s alright, Ma, it’s life, and life only.

5 days that shook my world

may 22-may 26, 5 days that shook my world. 1st, on the 22nd(in 1914) sun ra arrived on this planet from saturn via birmingham, alabama. he went on to create one of the more expansive(artistically and quantitatively) libraries in the annals of music, a body of work that weasled its way into my soul and stayed there. the world has looked like a very different place ever since. on may 24(1941) bob dylan came howling out of the ether and landed in hibbing, minnesota via duluth. eventually he made his way to new york city and made AT LEAST 5 records(freewheelin’, bringing it all back home, highway 61 revisited, blonde on blonde, desire, and blood on the tracks) that kind of blew open(wide) any doors that might have otherwise been closed in the “field” of rock and roll music. on may 26(1969) it was my turn, and i entered through a portal in the pomona valley hospital in southern california’s infamous “inland empire” and spent most of my youth waiting to get away from the horridness of life in “the O.C.”, orange county california. i haven’t really done a whole lot to catapult myself into the realms of my 2 gemini masters but i CAN say that without me there would nobody to tell this story, so OK.

although to call this a story might be jumping the gun, at least if you take “story” to mean some sort of purposeful creation of a comprehensible narrative. i mean you just never know what’s going to happen when you start writing, and if you end up typing up a shopping list or directions to a few rainy-day garage sales then “story” is definitely the wrong word to use. then again you might just offhandedly  dash off a piece of fiction(or non for that matter) that somehow crystallizes all of the nebulous and/or confused data that’s hovering right in front of everyone and in doing so goes some way toward helping to elucidate the dilemmas faced by modern humans(and non for that matter) and maybe even proposes some non-worthless solutions to the problems presented by our crumbling, desperate planet. i would like to stress the word “might”.

this morning i’m sitting in an apartment that has been vacated of 2 of its 4 constituent parts, at least for the next 2 weeks. this is because wookers and len-len were presented w/the outlandish opportunity to enjoy an almost entirely paid for trip to france, a week in the south and a week in paris. the plane tickets were bought for them(and wookie’s mom and brother too) by an aunt of apparently some not-insubstantial means, and the lodging in the south of france is also covered. meaning they get a 2 week trip to france for the cost a few baguettes and 5 nights board. this is kind of what i would call a “once-in-a-lifetime” type opportunity and as a result i’m sitting here with guzzy while the 2 other tenants are most likely still hovering somewhere over europe(they flew from portland to amsterdam and got a connecting flight from there and although it’s been 18 hours already that is a long fucking trek). after spending most of my adult life(and i’ll be 46 here in a couple of days) as a live-alone bachelor/hermit i today find myself in a (usually)full house and this is my 1st substantial stretch of solitude in 6 months. it’s been less than a day but so far it doesn’t feel too unfamiliar, i think my muscle memory is kicking in and loneliness is thus far in check. the weird thing is that after 6 solid months of thinking in terms of “us” instead of “me” there IS some befuddlement regarding what the fuck to DO with all of this time. usually the day is broken up according to len’s school and wookie’s work and my shopping and cleaning and all that stuff while trying to get art together for either a show or my own basic sanity and there just isn’t a whole lot of time to wallow in my “infamous” indecisiveness, generally speaking. there are simply fewer options, and often only ONE option. and when there’s only one option, it’s not exactly an “option” per se, is it? i didn’t think so. anyways here’s a new piece of art:

those seams aren’t as obvious in the real world but you get the picture.

TODAY’S SCHEDULE: 5-7 AM, art and coffee; 7-9, trying to write a “story”; 9-10, don’t know. probably art. 10-?, there’s 2 yard sales to go to and also i have to go to the stereo store on 102nd ave because i broke the fucking needle on my turntable like a jackass and now i have to shell out $20-30 on a replacement. from noon on my schedule really starts to fall apart with the only sure thing being that i will most certainly be watching game 3 of the warriors-rockets series(go warriors!) via some shitty livestream online because we don’t have cable. that game starts at 6 and by the end i’ll probably be ready to read or something. being alone ain’t all it’s cracked up to be, and it’s not cracked up to be much.

happy international workers’ day

happy international workers’ day