curtain would like to know what he has done

I am innocent
My heart is pure
I'm just not like you
I just took principled stands
In wrong places, wrong times

sometimes there's no poison like a dream

It makes me sad to know I'll be crazy 
The rest of my life
(It makes me crazy to know I'll be sad
My whole life)
I watch through the peep hole
They put the 20's under the cash tray
They put the 50's and 100's if they take them
too
They put them all under the cash tray
Like a child is put to bed at night
Oh hey
Ride the plesiosaur
Catch the reading bug
Behold the flight of the wiffle hen
You are not alone
(No I am fucking alone)
I wish I knew what was at stake.

Spooky Tooth

Saif and Rani
We don't care about the climate warning 
And the promotion of a living hell that your grandchildren will live through
Me kind and friendly
The scariness of red teeth
Bared to you an enamel star
Feline retreats
For murine feints
I think you picked the wrong place to stay
Everything you love will be taken away
Life under the petal throne
The universe is the size of a cat.

Space Miner

Space miner
Mission so clear
What could be finer to a space pioneer?
"Service time is lonely
Live it up before you pass away."

First Come First Served

I want to be there when the savage comes
When my savage brother daniel
Who is older than me
And cannot heal my pain
With his devastating mind
Wilfrid S. Bronson has died
And I can't help but elide
Tales of the painful years
Chip Wheelie since 2002
Good grades and Admit One
For now guidance is internal

New year's Morning

I called up my dad on New Year's Day morning to wish him a happy new year and, as usual, to make sure he and mom are in good health and good spirits. I dread the day I get the call from one or the other telling me that one or the other is in the hospital and has had a stroke or a heart attack or fell and broke a hip. Having lost two siblings in the past 3 years, I dread the continuing dissolution of my family. The past two years have been a quiet, reassuring interlude.

Anyway, my conversation with dad somehow went from vague niceties and talk about the weather to reviewing all the threats to humankind facing us in the next 100 years. Dad thinks the years around 2050 will be the watershed when things really begin to go downhill. I was reminded what a pessimist dad is at heart (he always called himself a "realist," however). That is where I got that streak, too, and I wish I didn't absorb it as if by osmosis, but there it is. And like dad, I have contained that nuclear core of despair with a protective shell of pacifism and strained positivity and trying to get people to get along. It's weird. I am very much both my mom and dad distilled into something different than either. But I love them both so much.

On It

Thirty days in the hole
Next contestant!
What the hell do you expect me to do?
There's only so much
Slack I can give you--
I spit on your Siberian Khatru.
So stop sitting on
The fence
Roll out your best response or
Your last defense--
Or get the next 
Contestant.
Please
I've got anger
And an endless supply of
Victims
And a gun
No one's gonna take 
Responsibility
Until it's done--
It's such a perfect, practical
Day.

Chicago Storm

I follow the drift fence
From anon to thence
Hoping the trail is
Not a fader
And I may spy
The back end trailhead

i need a CSA

"Omniscient real estate broker"
Always gets good laughs for Sam Harris
Still 44% think a mushroom cloud
On the TV screen would
Have a silver lining.

dean of boys

Yes, padwan

When she leans over to kiss me

I get the Brillo

I'm left to guess what the hell

Is the dealio

Forego the proclamations

They will just sound banal

I guess you're the alcalde

Of our little Love Canal

it's the return of the screaming carwash girl

A hush will be falling all over the world

tonight.

steamio

I am meat
In muscle shoals
Neither fish nor fowl
Well founded confusion
I'm making bank with Hank the Crank
But I don't really understand
This wank
Though I wanna go
I wanna go, yes I
Wanna go
I wanna go.

taking "creep" to a whole new level

Of DMV lines and second class citizens
Power on like a full MacGruder
Compere collar hair
Shitstorm-predicting media man
Get on that pig and ride.

I'm nice because

For no one else

Finding contentment should have been

So easy for me

Because, because

No one else was like me

black tar and china white

Black tar and china white
Not exactly my childhood Lite Brite
Couldn't punch out the new paper forms
Couldn't conform to 21st century norms
Black tar and china white.

bad bang theory

BAD!
No use for pity it's all so silly
BAD!
Every hit, hits hard
BAD!
Badness floating on love
BAD!
Big explosions in my life I'm reeling and sweating
bad.

buy the lie

The good does not outweigh the bad
We are abuzz with anxiety, facing life
When did life stop caring about life?

failure and loss

Wall hanger
Four banger
Looking for projects
to keep sanity
Florid or sleek
My soul to keep
Striving
For pride
Failure defied
Waiting for success
Bobbing for stress
Trying to sleep
Publicly weep
Failure and loss
Same as the old boss.

wish I were a roofer

I'd have a plan for my day
Hauling gear up ladders
With the lads who labor
Day in day out
Wish I were a roofer
Staring down from up on high
Trying to ignore the voice
Telling me to jump into the sky.

the human life of a chump

Facts don't matter when they don't like you
Anyway tires are squealing even on your
Happiest day
There's just a skeleton of common sense
And a whiff of human pride
Animating the life of a human chump.

birth of a notion

Eclectic fares
Spiral stairs
Tunneling and undermining
Used to be falling
But now I'm climbing.

the confrontational dishrag

As we were curled in our sleeping bags
We dreamed of mountain ranges
At the edge of a salmon stream
A mossy reality limp as a dishrag
Keeps us in our slumber
We wake later in a city flat.

invisible money

It's there somewhere.

democracy

Why don't you just not kill yourself?
Sometimes the strongest thing you can do is
Just survive.
My life as a Monsterquest;
powder residue all over my fingers--
How could you not love yourself?

"Killing myself after my parents die"
Is probably not a good future plan
Setting things up to be a hermit
Will put you in a steel-eyed span
Really,
How could you not love yourself?

the life waste management company

Got to pick up every stitch

Afraid of every all-in and every hitch

No career of creativity and

No getting rich

Oh no

Must be one hell of an itch.

consumer protection

Game on!
for human clinical trials
Tame viruses and technocrats
Twiddling dials.
Game on!
For factories of fiction and for
Dire predictions of
Forfeited planets.

The game plan of
Truth and justice fanatics.

Game over!
For the unseen hand
Game over, man
Game over.

tomorrow looks cloudy

the cost of doing business

Dead civilizations are just the cost of doing business.
There was a time in this country
There once was a store in the mall
There once was a plan in the works
That made sense of it all
Today I looked around
And saw the result of
The great forgetting
Dead civilizations are
The cost of doing business.

a gaze like an attack ad

I'm all stevie nickerly and wide-eyed
I am shaken, not stirred
Cocktails on the roof.

Oh I just want to get fucking buzzed
Oh I just want to get stoned
And listen to bill hicks.

Hey now
I've got a foggy notion
Called an immersive world view.

order is fun

A mountain
A resource
That resource is beavers!
We belong here
The foes who vote
Resisting the life of
a political polyp
One man,
One fling of the civic
Throwing star.

get my marauding pets amnesty now

I took two readings
And decided I was cooked.
I followed every rule
And they threw at me the book.
I am the bas relief
I am the frieze
I am the farmer in the dell
I am the fucking cheese.

widen the net

Bad star strikes without any warning
Mom killed my will to live for minimal suborning
I want to rip up everything
Or even kill myself cuz
I am tired I am really tired
Mom.

when criminal elements have less of an incentive to vote

The public perception is mine alone
Ignorant of facts
In hand to the flacks
Many uses laughingstock
You will believe gridlock is like vapor lock
Was it the blues, child?
Was it the gotteramerdung-ade?

two americas

Two Americas:
Thus as ever
Wish I was a Western European
So much bullshit
We will never be free of the vultures.
So do it for the trees
I hate all the would-be
Caesars
I am not a speculator
I am just a spectator.

spiderland

Out past spiderland
Next to the section eight housing
When you stop second guessing
And climb out of that well
Not buying what
Fuckwits and failures and dickheads and braindeads
say
It's not going to be pretty
for anyone
I think we've been conned
For thirty years
There's been a shooting
There's been a killing
There's been a thinking
So sad:
That our lives are so short.

prescription

Leuplolide pushed aside

Set to blaze in all its glory

Dead set against maturity

Unfolding a peculiar story

Growing outward

from the heart

The real prescription is

simply love.

D

forget it you're NOT accredited

I accept a gentle guidance;

Accepting an assertion of authority.

arrest

Arrest the heart/has no color
Nothing more nothing less
We just wanted an A
Bragging about homeopathic ingredients
Like they've never heard of the internet
Breathing fire/seizure of property
Paralyzed by fear.

henry wallace

Oh my I love dem bones
I wanna be ossified right after I'm cloned
Oh my so one day I learned
That my bones were jointed then
One day I learned my bones were
Gone or going
Lost in clastic plastic splinters.

Henry Wallace called a
Fascist a fascist
FDR said he welcome the
Hate of the economic royalists
I wish I could rescue
Loved ones from the grip of
Political madness.

what will happen at the state level

Come independence day
Don't forget the year of macro-insanity
If only I were raised by me
Raw material
The wind in my heart is a hurricane
Experience
Bicycles, gardens, and rock and roll
Here's the bottom
I never believed in bandaging the world
I never believed in triaging the planet
Ready for recreation
I wanna go to Alice Springs
I wanna spend a week in Adelaide
I wanna be free like the Monkees
I wanna be happy and not afraid of life.

I hate my anger

Yesterday was one of those days at work where nothing seemed to go right, at least for for first several hours. First off, I got floated to the third floor, where good things don't happen (at least to me), my ID badge decided not to work (which I need to get into security areas) and it took an hour to get it fixed, and I said a dumb thing to a doctor. I felt put upon and the feeling just grew from there. My tone of voice became monotone, and my replies to questions terse. I know that feeling well-- I spent several years in that state of mind in the mid-00's in response to the dismal state of my job and relationships. I learned from that that it doesn't make you feel better, gets you nowhere with coworkers and especially the public, and ends up just making you hate yourself and life. In fact, I quickly fell back into that old familiar bleakness, wishing I would die, hating myself, wanting to curl into a ball, cry. I successfully fought it off, and the rest of the day was okay. But it was frightening, it is always frightening, how quickly and easily it is for me to fall back into that pit of negativity. It is never far from the surface, and it is the source of nearly all of my bad decisions, failures, and lack of achievement. And by extension, the ultimate source of my never ending well of anxiety.

I have to get mentally healthy, I have to fight back against these old demons, if I want to have a gentle old age and not one of internal turmoil anding in suicide. I love life and too many people for that.

the falling man

To me the iconic image/thought/meme of 9/11 is the photo of the "falling man." A photographer caught a series of images of a man falling from one of the upper floors of the north tower of the World Trade Center. He has never been definitively identified but he is widely believed to be Jonathan Briley, a worker at an upper floor restaurant in the North Tower. There is even a documentary based on the image of the falling man. It is estimated that about 200 people were blown out or fell out or jumped from the WTC that day.

It is iconic to me in that none of these people, when they went to work or had business in or were sightseeing at the WTC that day, had any idea that they would be shortly plummeting to their deaths. Though with such a long fall they surely has time to contemplate the unlikelihood, in addition to the sheer terror, of their predicament. I could imagine myself simply crying "WHAT THE FUCK?!" about a dozen times in my brain were I in that situation.

But the falling man could not have guessed the truly maddening chain of events that led to his unlikely predicament, one chain link receding back in time to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. That led to the CIA arming and allowing to come to prominence of Osama Bin Laden. That led to his hatred of the imperialist west. That led to his embrace of radical Islam. That led to his forming Al Quaeda. And so forth up until that fateful day. Intersecting with Gulf War, and Saddam Hussein being in power, and ending up with the neocons in the Bush administration in 2001 ignoring the warnings about Al Quaeda'a imminent attack because they were focused on ginning up a reason to invade Iraq. and on and on, one unlikely circumstance leading to another, all finally culminating in the instant of existential absurdity of one man, a few minutes before focused on serving food to customers at a restaurant, suddenly finding himself in midair. Absurd. Insane. Like much of this century so far.

hiking with nice folk

I went on a weekend camping trip with my friend Cesar and his son (8 years old if I recall). We left Saturday morning and drove to the Gila Cliff Dwellings National Monument and set off up the middle fork of the Gila River. The weather was great, the stream was cool, and the company was fun and amiable. Boy do I love spending time with  sane people! We set up camp maybe three miles up the river (Cesar's son was getting tired and a bit cranky by then) and we figured that the wonderful sandy riverbank we happened upon was as good a campsite as we were likely to find. Across from our campsite was a towering rock wall, giving us a feeling of security and lending soft echos to our voices. After dinner we built a fire and made s'mores. I slept great for a change. The only fly in the ointment was my failing to bring my Tevas-- I did most of the several river crossings in my bare feet, because I didn't want to get my shoes and socks wet. My feet are still sore from all the small river rocks I had to step on to get across.

The part that made my day-- Cesar's son said that his favorite part of the trip was when I was acting silly and clowning around!

All-in-all a great, albeit short, backpacking trip.

hurdles of the macro depression

So the Republican National Convention is finally over, and for me there is a kind of relief akin to having the killer revealed in a murder mystery. The id of that portion of the electorate that wants chaos and oppression has bubbled to the surface and revealed itself as stronger, harder, sharper than ever before. I watch them and I feel deep pessimism for the future. And I feel a personal hopelessness as a result. I want to head for the hills and hide away from humanity; my old reliable bugaboos. Hopefully the Democratic convention next week will infuse me with a little hope and let me back away from the edge, and sleep a little better.

climbing with a friend

I went climbing yesterday for the first time in about a year. I went with a friend who i used to climb with from the adventure group. She also hadn't gone rock climbing in about a year, but it was her suggestion that we do it, remarking that she didn't want to lose all her rope skills. I agreed and overcame my general anxiety about doing anything and my specific anxiety involving rock climbing, reclaiming my climbing gear from another person in the adventure group who I had lent it too. It felt nice going through the slings and carabiners, I just love the feel and sound of climbing gear. It's the same way I feel about bikes and bike parts.

At any rate, we met up and drove to the tiny crag we decided to climb at, about ten miles north of town. My friend brought her two young boys, who though don't climb, enjoy exploring and kicking around in the desert. I set up a top rope, rappelled to the ground, and we each went up a fairly easy route. It felt good touching rock again, tying the rope to my climbing harness, making goofy and encouraging comments as I belayed a friend who I trusted with my life and she with mine. All the deep subliminal things that make me love rock climbing and always will, even when I'm too full of fear and anxiety to do it. I so wish I had discovered climbing back when I was a young adult.

after we stopped climbing and packed all our gear away, my friend, her kids, and I hiked north of the crag to a water-filled hueco we had spotted from the top of the cliff. There were hundreds of tiny black tadpoles in the puddle, and many more in a nearby hueco that was nearly empty of water, Luckily we found an abandoned bucket nearby and transfused several bucketfuls of life-sustaining water from the large hueco to the nearly dried out one. The kids where so happy that we had, in their minds, saved the little colony of tadpoles that were in a race for time and were at the whims of the reliability of this summer's monsoons. As if to reward our actions a thunderstorm developed and it started to rain, softly at first, and then in a torrent just as we arrived back at our cars. My friend remarked that she was afraid that her kids wouldn't remember such small moments and tiny adventures when they grew up, and I assured her that they would.

It was a good afternoon, and we agreed we would return again next week to climb again.

make it all go away

I am troubled about everything. I am troubled about the small-- how I may be potentially screwing up my own life, damaging my health by what I eat and exercise I do or neglect to do, how I may be hurting other's feelings inadvertently, even the fate of the trash I generate. And I am troubled by the large-- global warming, the increasing polarization of the politics in this country, peak oil, economic stagnation, the increasing chasm between the rich and poor. I am whipsawed between the micro and the macro, things that depress me that loom large and those that loom, human scale, in my own back yard. I am basically a hippie who envisions a world of harmony, a place where there is near endless consideration for individuals getting enough food, shelter, education, respect, joy; and even greater consideration for the environment's health, where the "brotherhood of man" is a very real and every-day ideal that everyone strives for-- moreover, a "brotherhood of the biosphere." That we are so far away from this makes me fret daily, as does my inability to develop a rich and satisfying social life/career/home. I feel powerless and afraid. I endure a background dread that interferes with everything. hemmed in by the micro and the macro depression.

 Turn on the blogs. 
Let the macro eclipse the micro depression for a while. 
Learn how hopeful consideration has a zero payoff 
When it smack-dabs thoughtless cocksuredness.

I think about lyrics a lot

It occurred to me today that Neil Young's song "Cortez the Killer" has an abrupt ending. It's as if Neil wanted to write a long song of epic scope but just ran out of steam.

Also, is there any lyric sadder than the end of Bob Mould's "Compositions for the Young and Old," to wit:

"I hear the weatherman
He says "it looks like rain for a while
I guess I'll have to stay inside
Make peanut butter sandwiches and cry."

Fuck, makes me wanna cry every time I hear it. Bob Mould deserves to have his name live on for a thousand years for writing the album Workbook.

uh-oh

Well guys, We made it to the middle of fekkin' nowhere, Middlegate Station, Nevada, which isn't actually a town, it was a rest stop on the old pony express route 100 years ago, and now it's a rest stop on the Lincoln Highway between Fallon and Austin. It's basically a clapboard saloon/restaurant/motel
deal, and there's one house across the road from it, where I bought sweet corn from the folks who lived there when I was driving through 10 years ago. We're staying the night in the motel; amazingly they have wifi! Fred rode 100 miles yesterday, me considerably less, so we deserve soft beds to sleep on.

Middlegate is also the "gateway" to Berlin-Icthyosaur State Park, 51 miles down a gravel road. I love the name of the park! The Berlin part refers to a mining ghost town, and the Icthyosaur part refers to a handsome specimen of a fossil icthyosaur that was discovered there back in the day. It's still embedded in the rock face it was found in, but is now protected from the elements inside a building. Pretty neat if you can stand the drive.

Last night around 2 am, Fred and I were awakened by a horrible racket outside the motel, followed by bright lights. We peeked out the window and there was a helicopter landing in the parking lot. There was also an ambulance, lights a-flashing. We figured someone was being airlifted out, god knows what happened to them. It gave me flashbacks to my own accident last year. Haven't been able to get back to sleep since.

Which brings me to my own tribulation, and why I haven't written so far. I've been pretty bummed out since last Wednesday, when we rode into Placerville. Besides Fred's bike self-destructing (we eventually got him a new one), My achille's tendon began to hurt me. It may have to do with the new bike shoes I had to buy in Davis, or maybe some sequelae to my injury, but it kept getting worse, and my ankle swelled up disturbingly. It also began to "squeak," which I guess was from the inflamed tendon rubbing against the surrounding tissue. I consulted a doctor and he said I had tendonitis, and needed to R.I.C.E my achille's tendon or it might rupture. So I've been a total drag on this trip ever since Placerville (Fred's bike was a total drag on it before Placerville). The tendon's a little better, but not much. We discussed ending the trip, or at least the riding, so I can heal my heel, heh heh. The alternate plan would be to get a car go visit friends &
relations in New Mexico for a few weeks, riding our bikes as the mood suited us. On June 23 I have to be in Iowa City, Iowa, for a week long Rural Health Scholars Program (some of you know I sorta want to work in rural health care when I graduate), which is this annual symposium thingie for med students, dental students, and NP students. I have no idea why they're letting me in, but what the heck-- It's Iowa, baby!!! Immediately after that ends, Fred needs to attend a Bat Mitzvah in one of the suburbs of Denver. And I forgot, I'm supposed to visit my folks in Ohio, also. So it would still be a full-ish itinerary. Maybe fun, too. Anything to get me outta this funk. Oh yeah, not rupturing my tendon would probably be a good thing, too.

So there it is. My body is a broken down mess. I'll probably never get a chance to do something like this again. I've been wanting to do this since I was 18 years old. Better stop now, I'm getting depressed again.

First post of the actual bike ride

Day Two (May 25):

Today was our first full day. We covered 70 miles
total from Benecia, the lovely oil refinery town, to Davis,
perhaps the North American and/or New World Capital of
Bicycles. I mean, they have a bike as their official town logo
(a penny-farthing, one of those old-timey bikes from a
hundred years ago with the giant front wheel and the tiny
rear wheel. You needed a step ladder to mount one of those
suckers. I hear they were quite unstable but went hella fast.
No chain involved, so the big differential in size between the
pedal crank and the front wheel provided the pedaling
advantage. Then someone invented the bicycle chain and
the pneumatic tire, and the penny-farthing was toast.
But I digress).

Lots of roads we have been on have been spectacular, but
The Putah Creek Road was paradise. Putah Creek. Hee hee.

Sorry.

Giant hills bordering the valley, covered with Blue, Valley, and
Coast Live oaks. How do we know this? Because Fred is a
freaking botanical encyclopedia.
The Buckeyes are in full flower and
the inflorescences of these trees are typically some
what longer than the coastal version (sez Fred).
The Putah Creek and Pleasant Valley Roads were
Flat, no traffic to speak of, and there were peletons of
cyclists going all directions. We were surrounded by
Enormous groves of English walnut, Cherry trees,
and Nectarine trees with fresh ripe
golden fruit. Fred even stopped to pilfer some (only ones
that were on the ground, of course!) Delish.
(Dana)

We had hardly been on the Putah Creek Road a couple of
miles when I was approached, as I was riding by a guy on
nice road bike who talked with me for several minutes.
He asked me where we were headed and who was with me.
He had guessed that Dana and I were together on the
trip as we were both the only cyclists on the road
with touring paniers on. He was very friendly and he
would race ahead ten miles or so and then circle back
to cycle and talk to other cyclists on the road,
biking all the time, getting his century in for the
day I'm supposing. He helped us out with information
on Davis.
(Fred)

Davis was fantastic!! Bikes everywhere and people so
friendly and helpful. I talked to guy in Rite
Aide about bike stores, and he gave us a tour around
town that lasted an hour!. Pretty good for a Monday.

So I was using these things called SPDs (affectionately
called "spuds"), made by Shimano,
which are a clipless pedal system with the cleats on the
bottom of the shoe recessed so that you can walk around
normally with them on instead of doing the "duck walk"
like you do with serious racer shoes. My shoes in this
case were actually SPD sandals, and were over 10 years
and had seen a couple thousand miles of use. Well, somewhere
between Vacaville and Davis, my right sandal disintegrated,
by which I mean fell apart into 2 pieces, all with little warning.
This was nearly intolerable, and luckily I was in the bike
nirvana, so I quickly acquired replacements. This was my
salvation but perhaps also my undoing. More on that later.
This was our second mechanical glitch that day (Fred had a flat
tire earlier, no biggie).

Anyhoo, two strangers
showing up in Davis at 4:30 pm on loaded touring bikes
get the right treatment in Davis, apparently. Our Rite-Aid
friend was calling his friends at various housing Co-ops
in an attempt to get us free housing that night. In the end
we decided to go with the motel, but it was a great friendly
effort on his part.

It turns he and his family live in Village Homes
which are some of the very first ecological/ solar/
earth-roofed homes ever built in America, built with
giant commons that everyone shares and lots and lots
of community gardens and athletic fields.
All sustainable-- no pesticides/herbicides.
A completely community-focused earth-freak subdivision.
As you can imagine, not many of the houses there are in
forclosure.

So, we did some bike shopping, which included spare tires
and and a space-age sweat-wicking cycling shirt for Fred.
It was blue. Then we rode to Nugget Market for the organic
fresh food, and a giant sammich for me. Foolishly we bought a
watermelon which I had to precariously bungee to the back
of my bike. We ate like porkers in the motel room and fell
asleep within an hour.

Freakin' cable TV but no A&E, so I couldn't watch the remake
of "The Andromeda Strain." This depressed me, and oddly,
I thought about Scottosaurus and how he probably loved
"The Andromeda Strain" (had we talked about it once? Mebbe).

Sac is only 15 miles away.. Tomorrow we hope to make
it to Placerville.

Birds & animals: western kingbird (Dana still hasn't
seen this one),
Acorn woodpecker (three perfect white spots, one on
each wing and white on the tail), Red tailed hawk,
turkey vultures, metalmark and sulphur butterflies.

Fred should be giving nature tours.