Birthday Field of Dreams

After I graduated from college, I moved in temporarily with my parents in Petaluma, California. For awhile I worked nights as a security guard, of all things. I thought I’d make a go at trying to establish myself in Sonoma County, where I grew up.

So one day that was a day off for me, I woke up at 2.30 AM and I had nothing much to do, because Petaluma closes shop at about 10 PM and all my friends were asleep. It also happened to be my birthday. So I decided to watch “Field of Dreams” for an extra special happy birthday to me.

For some reason this night I kept on wanting to cry in certain parts of the movie, but I also kept remembering that this was, after all, just a movie – these people I was on the verge of crying over were actors who delivered lines convincingly.

Still, when the movie was over, I rewound it and watched it a second time – playing the good parts over and over again. When the sky had the faintest suggestion of light in the east, I decided to take the dog for a walk.

We walked a few blocks down to the main drag. As the dog crapped in a newly ploughed field that was the empty lot next to an ice-cream shop, I saw legions of commuters zipping down the boulevard, going to god-knows-what jobs where they probably got pencils grinded up their asses day-in and day-out.

I watched them and I was bored to death, completely alone with nowhere to go, and I am sure they wondered why I stood there on the corner, by the ice-cream shop with a Dalmatian watching them all zip along.

~

Later that morning after the dog had gone back to bed, my father gets up, drinks a V8 and reads the newspaper in the bathroom. He’s gone by 7.30. Then my mother gets up.

It’s funny that I think about this on today of all days, but it’s been about 12 or 13 years since my old man and I really got along, or had any kind of feeling, or relationship.

High School just about killed him and me. I don’t ask him the questions I want to ask because there is no way to ask the questions that could get at the root of the matter.

I think about this as I read the weather forecast.


July 11, 1990

A Sketch Meant to Be Nothing, but Now is Something

For some reason I have been thinking persistently on this particular sketch over the past few days. I was thinking about how it looked when I was waking up this morning. I don't ascribe any meaning to it when I reflect on this sketch, because this sketch is not supposed to signify or diagram a real thing or anything that appears in external phenomenon. It just is a collection of lines, really. I drew it that way, as an exercise in connecting lines that seem to refer to something, but in fact, do not. Over time, this drawing has taken on some subtle significance for me. So here it is.

Bad Restaurant Names

1. Oops We Did It Again
2. The Montezuma Express
3. ShitzBurger
4. Messin' With The Grub
5. La Cucaracha
6. Cramps
7. Dinner With Drunken Chef
8. Cooters
9. Slappy Happy's
10. Fate's Food Festival

...she's tired...

This from one of my journals/ sketchbooks.

I mean, she's tired, really tired, and she comes to the cafe with all these books and she is so tired, with her cup of coffee & I hear someone saying in the background, "WHAT THE FUCK IS GOING ON -- COME ON MOTHERFUCKER -- SHOW YOURSELF!" and the music selection is ending, all this winds down down down and she is sleeping with her hair on her books.

San Francisco, November of 1994.

BLAND

We got a few of these packets with meals while we were staying at the hospital after the c-section. I know institutional mentality can be this way, but should you really advertise it on the products themselves? But then I tried BLAND and I like it. And I can't seem to get BLAND now that we are home. I want BLAND. Now I find I cannot have BLAND.

2 Poem (to P I)

Poem

Dad you are the mountain
I shall never surpass
Yet you are in my way

& God said yes
It is true


Poem


I became richer than bill gates
& bought heaven
And found out \\God was somewhere else

When it Rains, it Pours

Last night at about 3 AM the bed turns to nails underneath me. This is quite painful. I jump out of bed and fall on the floor. My wife asks me what I am doing, I tell her that the bed has turned to nails, and I g*ddamn f*cking can't believe it. She says that I am dreaming. Oh fine, I reply sarcastically, I'm only just BLEEDING all over the floor with 5,000 holes in my skin. But who cares about me? Just get back in the bed of nails so everyone else can get a good nights sleep. I'm sitting there, thinking I might get back in bed, when a flock of floating dog heads start coming out of the corner of the room, where a shadow is. When it rains, it pours.

TEST

1. God created the Universe in seven (7) days. T/F

2. Eve remembers being created while Adam does not. T/F

3. Adam and Eve had tall kids. T/F

4. Satan...

a) Knew beforehand that God was ready to put the Universe together in seven (7) days
b) Likes to eat sandwiches (ham on rye) for breakfast
c) Remembers what it was like when he was an Angel
d) Had his own rebellious plans mapped out, but also felt free to improvise

5. When the _____ came out of the ______ they were really in the _______.

a) Apple...tree...deep shit
b) Devil...garden...deep shit
c) couple..Volvo...distant future
d) mistake...actions...impromptu

6. When I think of God, I feel happy. T/F

7. God feels happy when he thinks about me. T/F

8. God loves a sit down dinner. T/F

9. When somebody is missing something, this usually means that...

a) They have sinned
b) They have "Paid their 'Dime' and 'Took Their Chances'"
c) They have Sinned, but God has forgiven them
d) They are dying

10. Satan licks the key-locks with his tongue at my house. T/F

11. If you are Evil...

a) You know it
b) You know it but you deny it
c) You realize it from time-to-time
d) You hate getting up to do your laundry

12. God is...

a) Big
b) Round
c) Angry
d) Winsome
e) Other (please specify) _______________________

13. Adam and Eve had tall kids. T/F

14. The last thing God created out of nothingness was a ______________________.

15. God likes to believe in....

a) Sin
b) You
c) Me
d) Satan

16. Adam wanted to be a Auto-Mechanic. T/F

17. Eve was a Lesbian. T/F

18. One time Satan disguised himself as a woman and had sex with Eve. T/F

19. This test is going to send me to Hell. T/F

20. Heaven and Hell are indistinct once you are dead. T/F

ANSWERS:

Today is the Day

Today is the day. I am dying, I could go at any moment, but I still have time to be angry. I'd like some juice; the last taste of juice in my life most likely, so where is the goddamn nurse? I've been feebly pushing this crocked button baton thing before Death comes in the room and rips my soul from my body -- and no goddamn fucking nurse. And I hate the view.

In Love with Everything

We go outside to have a lovely cigarette. The night is trembling ever so softly, like a snare drum. I can see the light from the streetlamp, and how it seems to make the leaves in the trees curl, intense, dusty and faded green. You say something to me, and I reply automatically, still wondering at the night and the light of the streetlamp on the leaves, as we sit on the fire-escape 3 floors up. We smoke and smoke the lovely lovely cigarette, in love with everything.

The Guy in the Red Suit

Every time something special is happening in my life, some event that I know I will be remembering for a long time afterwards as a rare and precious moment, this guy in a red suit shows up out of nowhere with his _____ ______ hanging out, babbling loudly, breaking things, throwing up on me. Now I live alone, bereft of companionship -- disowned even by my own family, all because of that weird guy in a red suit. With his ____ ______ hanging out.

break up poem, remembrance of things past

i.

i was fine
but she wasn't

because
she was a jerk

ii.

she was fine
but i wasn't

because
i was a jerk

iii.

do you remember those nights
when we were fascinated
with each other

there seemed to be no end
in the moment we inhabited

seeming solid

we were as delicate as two origami
poised by a window

with no idea how fragile
how transitory things are
through time

The Secret of all Secrets

I heard a disjointed conversation, sitting at the pub, from around the corner, but I didn't dare look. "Shhh. Here is the password, or even, the secret or all secrets....like two guys walking down a road with a mirror. EVERYTHING IS A STORY."

Just a Matter of Time

We were eager to go off to war. Mostly eager for Protecting Home and Country with God on Our Side and Kick Some Ass, why not? That is how it usually starts. Then you have your first mortar round, which was not that bad -- BTW. Boom! War is hell! Ha ha ha. What if I did get killed that day? Nah, then see your friends get shot -- a finger shot off say, or shot in the face, or shot in the groin & head -- or you see a few people get disemboweled on a rum tumm tummy day by high explosives. Laying dead on the roadside, sunny blood black in the dust with a dead goat and a few dead birds. ("They eat their own...", you said almost inaudibly about 300 or 400 times, keeping the mental tires on the concrete of your brain.) Later, you get that sentence out of your head by listening to the "Little Drummer Boy" -- as a joke going back to elementary school. One morning you wake up and turn around the points of the compass, messmates laughing. You know it so sure, you know it's nature now so purely, you will not speak it. It isn't a Great Adventure, this isn't really a War, but a Place where eventually you'll be Dead, too. And the Kicker of all Kickers -- Dead or Alive, you're coming outta this one Dead. And when you know that, what do you do? You write long emails, and you know for sure -- it is just a matter of time.

Sorry

It starts with Sorry
And then they write an Opera

Where they Sorry Sorry Sorry
For at least an hour

Only this time when you hear it
You cry every time

And you forget how angry
You were when you heard the news

For June
2006

When I was the Moon

I dream I am the Moon. I am at once all these things: weightless, radiant, cool, serene. Looking fondly down at Earth, I also find I have a very busy schedule -- lowering and raising the Oceans around the World, ducking for the Cow to jump over me, influencing Lunatics and Lovers, spicing up the lives of Crustaceans, Children, Owls and Wolves...but please, do not "Shoot at the Moon". Howl all you like, but no more "Shooting the Moon"!

The Yellow Toy Pistol

8 years ago, a fat little girl rides down the block on a pink bicycle. In one hand she holds a yellow toy pistol. Daddy is nearby, all slacks and sunglasses - hands in pockets, his gray hair swept back. The sun slants, she rides, the toy pistol wavering. But she never drops the toy pistol, and I find that fascinating.

Hazelnut VS French Vanilla

Day 1: I want Hazelnut flavored creamer for my coffee. I settle for French Vanilla.

Day 2: I want Hazelnut flavored creamer for my coffee. I settle for French Vanilla

Day 3: Ibid.

Day 4: Ibid.

Day 5: Ibid.

Day 6: Getting coffee, I become irrationally angry. I say to myself, privately, in white hot emotional heat, "Why do I settle for French Vanilla? Why?"

Day 7: I try Hazelnut creamer in my coffee. It is then I discover all along I have not been drinking French Vanilla. I HAVE BEEN DRINKING HAZELNUT.

Going to Sleep

I was trying to go to sleep a few nights ago, and so I started thinking about all the horrible things that have happened to me. I wasn't reviewing the usual garden-variety horrible things that can happen at any time, the horrible things we forget about. I was picking particularly nasty memories, reviewing some uniquely awful situations that I had to go through to get here at this place in time. Naturally, after doing this for awhile, I was quite anxious and felt like I couldn't sleep. I felt like something was wrong -- like I had forgotten a crucial detail that I shouldn't have forgotten. Gradually, I became convinced this forgotten detail would unravel the significance of my entire life. It was terrible. Then, switching gears, I realized a man was in the other room with a knife, and he was going to kill me. And then I fell asleep.

Points on How to be a True Gentleman

Category: Me

1. Always be gentle, polite, and speak kindly and nicely at all times
2. Never throw things
3. Moderate nasty habits
4. Think, "I am attractive."
5. Remember to inculcate a feeling of modesty, and diligence
6. Never kick animals, or small children, especially at parks and in nature preserves
7. Use spittoons if you chew, or a handkerchief if you use snuff
8. Avoid any kind of low drink such as Vermouth, Gin that is sold in plastic containers, and soforth
9. Attend a Church occasionally
10. Do well, and fear not