saw a doctor finally about the stomach thing and he put me on some retrinaline or whatever, designed to cut down on the amount of stomach acid that is produced, and hope that stops the burning font that’s been spilling for six years now but i wonder. i often feel as if i am ready to burn, am burning, need air, room, to burn hotter, brighter, fiercer, cut loose from the restraints all the world and my own body place on me…i sort of thought the condition was tied to my emotional/mental self but despite my poetic imaginations of psychic immolation, i’m excited to think these pills may help. i’m so sick of dealing with these symptoms, been dealing with this since 2003 in brooklyn when i was commuting 20 hours a week, three trains each day to westchester and got so stressed my stomach began eating my own body alive. i wondered tho if it was the espresso. i was never sure. either way, its been a long time i’ve been living with it…acid threads in the saliva…constant wash of stomach acid ended up weakening a tooth of mine until one day i bit down on some damn nutty bread and it broke right in half, weakened another crown til it broke and also made a filling fall out…it was a scary time i was like what is going ON??  felt like i was jeff goldbloom in The Fly til i figured it out. after all, i used to hit on a mylanta bottle like mekhi phifer in Clockers hit the yoo hoo. if you are kicking up that much stomach acid, its floating around your mouth nearly all the time which is sort of exciting to think about. does it give me superpowered bites? i know it does. one of my teeth is sharp like a dagger. laced with acid, even. and i have pretty strong jaws. i think i like to freak myself out with thoughts like this. i mean that in a good way of course.

when i came to the booth this morning i saw dude
didn’t like the way he was walking so i kept him in my view
he was headed to the booth
i cut wide, so that i could come up behind him without him knowing it
just in case he had any bad intentions in mind
i figured i could fall on him like batman
well, not like batman, more like felix cuz i’m one lithe cat so light on my feet you’ll never hear me coming
a fluid five foot six, suited in a black and gilded silver mix and i step on shadows softly like i’m melding music with my midnight mind, a single harmony woven nine notes at a time
so i walked up and stopped about ten feet behind him
just letting him do his thing at the booth
looked kosher
finally he turned around
feeling my energy coiling up and down
and saw me standing there
i smiled but i don’t know if that did anything to smooth the moment over
he felt he had to mutter and grumble at me
but the mutter don’t matter, i wasn’t there to please him

i was there for my Shot in the Dark and just to keep an eye on the coffeegirl
even if she never knows it
you can count on me to be felix the espresso chugging guardian angel of la noche

life is always fitting together. even when you are not contemplating it, it is reaching around to your roots and reabsorbing the whole. connecting itself and unearthing itself and burying you if you are moving too fast or too slow as compared to yourself and all the paths you use to walk forward and find yourself in the entire hot blizzard, you, you are a unique snowflake swallowed by a steaming mound of compost and at war even at peace, and as we grow and reach up, parts of us fall down and decay and separating the two is a line as easy to find as the one that splits night and day. organisms and viruses and bacteria constantly clamoring to drown you, to eat you alive, to burn you down. and then there’s you, warring right back. burning right back, cellular membrane transporting right back, leukocytes swarming to the attack, a double helix unzipping replication and lipid sorting triple stack. we are at peace even while we war. peace is winning. and peace is losing, too. and there are always rebels within the empire’s galleys, rowing the great ship forward while they make little flourishes with the oars with all the heart and hope in the world that together they can bring her that much closer to a new shore. even sailors on leave were born to fight. and we’re fine with killing, just gotta be the right ones. nobody’s gonna argue for peace except cyanide, and the breakdown of the chain, system shutting down cell by cell and very quickly, all is still. until. the bigger body turns toward you to get its fill. tongue of mold and bacteria and virus, lick your lifelong wound, absorb you back into the womb. there is no world free of murder and war and if for no other reason that given the entire equation, most human beings desire a properly confirmed, blessed, and ritualized kill—not peace. just like the germs in our belly and our guts. they war night and day, sprawled on the muddy slippery banks of our biology under the heat of a heartbeat, flowing gently down the acid stream, living only for their miniscule dream and dedicated to killing the right ones.

at this point i can’t seem to tell if my left upper thigh is numb from bruising or ice. it was a beautiful ride, a beautiful dawn, and it all ended on the concrete. i had warning. two slight slips of the chain and i thought that’s odd. i wonder if this is that problem i took the bike in for coming back or if it is and i’m not sure i got much further than that when the chain locked up and i flew over the handlebars to pivot into the concrete with the bike magically both under and on top of me.

i’m always impressed by the way violence stupifies the mind. it’s one of those experiences that can always feel new, no matter how many times it happens. although there is getting used to going through the process, of course. but that first splash of pain and realignment of the horizontal plane, wow. it can shake your understanding away in a second flat. those moments after the wreck that you see yourself doing things in slow motion kind of style unattached to the forward movement of your mind mechanism. just everything happening on its own. you, in some faraway seat watching it all go down. your view becomes a movie screen, your eyes become a windshield. when i had my head on collision in the Subaru in 1995, it was my moaning that really surprised me. it sounded like someone else moaning. it took me a few moments to realize it was me. and letting myself down off of the ceiling by unsnapping my seatbelt was an automatic thing, too. but this was nothing like that of course. this bike spill. except in the sense of how you feel very confused for a moment and in there is a small brushstroke of sadness…as if someone left you out of discussions for a moment. what the hell happened, what just happened to my world? why is my body sending all these signals. whats wrong with my body? where is it? is everything safe? am i still in the same arrangement i’m used to being in? and it seemed i was because i could move okay and as i stood up off the ground, i looked first at my lens, my camera lens. i’m glad i had my cheapo wide angle adapter on. it took the brunt. but of course the interlocking mount is the thing to worry about next. ugh. legs felt like someone hit them with hammers. same thing. metal bars of the bike and i had been moving pretty fast. i felt stupid and slow and wondered if anyone was looking out their window as i moved around in the dim light checking out my bike. damn wheel was mashed against the brake. wouldnt turn. what was wrong? unlocked wheel and then it slid into place. bike seemed okay.

i got back on, rode home. that saying about getting back on the horse after you fall came to mind. i laughed to myself. no notable bravery here. just no other way to get back home.

beginning to wonder about the spirit of my bike. what was its life like before its previous owner sold it to the shop? this is incident two marked with intensity and such violent energy. …and, at the same time my bike brings me a greater number of moments filled with beauty and deep satisfaction. hey, it’s not my bike, i guess! asi es la vida.

mostly.

i knew that taking the lighter back to the store owner would result in nothing. the man was nasty, mean, suspicious. perhaps there was cultural gaps happnin, he was from india, i think. but…nah. i’ve known plenty of nice indian store owners. i think he may have just been a sour person. he always is negative feeling and distrustful. i can see how being a storeowner like a seven eleven owner could push you in this direction. and i didnt’ want to go. i was saying to myself just throw it out. just throw it away who cares. but i felt all cheated when i got home with my candles and nag champa and lighter and was ready to tweak moods and it was EMPTY so i said let me just take it back and i knew he would shake his head with that stubborn look in his eyes. i had to do it anyway. i even asked myself why. but my self only answered do it.

“you did no buy that  here” he said, before i even had a chance to explain myself, but i handed it to him and turned away. that’s okay, i didn’t expect you to give me a new one. but i did buy it here from you only ten minutes ago. that’s how i got it and that’s the truth and i walked out and unlocked my bike and got on my bike and fastened my helmet in the sun and drove away.

the ride was long. i got lost in my thoughts. no. that’s not true. i was not lost. it was soothing. the sun, the wind, the music in my ears. i was moving at my own pace. sometimes my legs burned, but i am getting stronger lately and it is at least something i can push through now. sometimes i leaned down and geared down (or is it up?) and built up momentum. but mostly i sat up on that sporty, flared seat and felt the springs buoy me, and the wind move past me, watched the sky come at me. i felt happy. strong. free. i love my bike and i love my knobby tires.

i was almost home. i pulled in front of the gas station the one with the wide open sidewalk situation, i am always careful there. people pull in and out rather recklessly or widely or often or something, you have to look out. and i was pulling past one car and i see this high, black, shiny blazer type vehicle fly toward me through the parking lot area and suddenly come to a stop all smooth only feet from me and looming over me, like the guy is doing it on purpose and i look up at his crewcut and his black glasses and mobile fone and new blazer and think to myself what a jerk and just because i look at him sidelong as i’m moving past him, he starts moving around and talking smack inside his big truck. i put up my middlefinger behind my back and ride away.

i’m at the next corner and suddenly his vehicle veers around the corner, all weighted down on one wheel with momentum. He arcs in front of me and off the road onto the curb, at an angle. He is pulled over.

He looks at me to make sure I see it’s him. Or maybe to see what I’m doing.

Well, hell. I get it. I know the way this works.

I hop off my bike and put the kickstand down and walk toward the black truck. I even still have my backpack on. It’s black, too. Like my bike and my helmet. In fact, dude and I are both all in black.

Him, leaning back far enough to see that I’m headed his way. Peering back through the tinted window on his truck.

I’m fifteen feet from his blazer and getting closer—not thinking as I said, it’s my instinct to fly into the face of the storm—and suddenly he peels out and backs up back onto the road. Electric gears lower his tinted window and he looks through his sunglasses at me. He is in an agitated state, his well-clipped head bobbing around in the dim interior. I see now that he is running on a temper that clearly blew up at the gas station and has been burning since.

“I’m a cop!” he yells at me, as if holding up a cross. “So what are ya gonna do? B—”

—”I don’t care if you’re a cop!” I yell back.

—”beat me up?”

We end at the same time almost. He is shouting across the space in the seat between us. He is a couple feet higher than my eye level. I am still on my feet, halfway between my bike and where his truck was before he peeled back out onto the road.

He goes on. ”I gave you the right of way! I stopped!  Wh—”

At this point his words became mush to my ears. I try to cut through, when this happens. I don’t need to be doing this. I’m on my way home.

I interrupt him. ”So what do you want?”

He pauses and then bursts forward with his same adolescent haste.

“I want you to say…it’s cool, we’re cool!” he screams.

Maybe I could have given him what he wanted. Maybe anything would happen now, could happen with reflection. But there is no time on these floors for deep pondering and nuance. Nobody even knows what’s about to happen from moment to moment. There is Now and a short pause between Now and Too late.  Or…maybe it doesn’t matter and it’s who I am and I’d do it again a thousand times and ten. It felt right.

“Too bad!” I shout back. “Don’t do that shit to bikers!”

He explodes inside his truck. He grabs the stickshift and squeals his tires. His blazer jerks around and then forward as he shouts “Fuck you you fucking priiiiiiiiiiick!!!”

I am oddly reminded of the Wicked Witch of the West, melting.

I get back onto my bike and push the button and then wait until the light changes and then I drive on. My heart is pounding pretty good.

He drives up the same road. Ahead of me. I slow my pace a lot before it is time to turn off, knowing its best he doesnt see where I turn. He probably did. But didn’t see where I turned again.

Probably would have been smarter to make friends with local cops. But catering to punks and bullies is simply not in me.

so at one point i also learned how hard you can spill coming down a hill, banking a tight turn, but in the rain and with a heavy backpack on. wow. never did that one before. i felt it happening, felt the backpack’s inertia yank me sideways as i tried to turn and realized too late (but with perfect slow motion lucidity, just like my head on collision in 95) that my weight was all high up and i was like a van about to tumble. couldn’t do anything about it but laugh, i was laughing actually as i wiped out because it was SO complete. i really did go ass up, dragging paint off my forks and all. i wear a badass little helmet so i was okay in that way. and i didn’t break or cut anything, so it went pretty well. but i sure did feel idiotic right there at a big intersection. so glad i wasn’t on the road, as this major street actually has no bike lane (Willamette), as “bike friendly” as the city is (2nd in the nation? 3rd? no less than that)

also a while ago some stupid kid sold his videogame system on ebay to me but neglected to mention that he had written HIS NAME IN BIG BLOCK PERMANENT LETTERS ON EVERYTHING FROM THE CORDS TO THE CONTROLLERS TO THE DISCS TO THE GAME so i thought i’d bring it local and it turns out that even tho its a nice little setup i cant sell it here because i rubbed off the damn serial number when i was cleaning this kids name off stuff. AGH. WHY are you printing serials in ink that can get rubbed off so easy???? so i guess i’ll craigslist or ebay it. whatever. yes, am now selling things on ebay and such because money is tight and its too rainy for a damn yard sale!

spring is coming, but she’s taking her time.

i care about the positive change our government is putting into effect lately, but it only seems miraculous in relation to the grossly mediocre to downright dark days we’ve been forced to think of as normal. of course if a government takes so much of our money and can use it on killing, they can use it on healing us, too. if a govt can lay down rules for the People, as well as hang the threat of death or imprisonment over us as part of a contract of living here, you’re damn right it should also be acting in positive ways, as well. so i’ll wait on all the hoopla, as i know they will take a while to come into effect anyway. we’re not done looking after all issues. on immigration, obama seems to be trying to pull some centrist obscuring bullshit, and the ICE raids are still going down on his watch while a bunch of good junk is talked up so bfd. anyway, enough of politics here. that’s not what this place is for.

feeling turned off by social media lately as every damn virtual merchant and organization and station and big shot is humping the Twitter bird and otherwise its too much TV talk and dire politics and electric blue headlines. And that’s not even how I hang out. seeing this sort of makes me feel lonely, but not in a scary way. only a way where i remember this is just an electric communication and memory tool, not a warm, beating heart. bright and colorful light, but not an eye looking back into mine. full of sounds and songs but not a voice that can sound out into space and into my ears. distinct surfaces and mechanisms awaiting the input of various signals, but no hand to touch, not even an arm to brush, or playfully shove. this interface provides at best, a copy of a friend’s face or voice. and too laden with my own perception and intention and narcissistic projection. it’s good to remember not to lean on it too much for the wrong things, or at least not for too long.

i dont mean to criticize others’ good time…so i just back off lately, rather than get into that. it’s not them. it’s not the medium. it’s me. i’m not only the type that backs away from big buzzy crowds, but also a sort that needs the saltwater. i want to mash myself up against the big blue orbs of the world, not against her grill. i dont want to discuss digital dilemmatoid. i want to carve ruts into the earth with my hands until they bleed. and then i want to feel you clean and bandage them for me. and then i want to use them to cook everyone dinner and play a song that we can’t help but sing along to. i don’t want to play charades in masks that stink of new plastic. but again, these qualifications are my own. and if that’s how i feel, it’s better to find other places to give energy.

the winter has been painful. and good. i love living alone. i don’t want to give it up anytime soon. i love traveling terrain in my mind and heart that is new. i’ve met myself in a way that i’ve never before. and have seen things in myself or my actions that…well, i won’t say i haven’t seen them before. and yet there is nothing like that time you finally shift inside to make room for that awareness. i feel, here at almost 40, that i’ve had another bout of awareness. come at me with fury and resolve, as always. (“resolve” contains the words “solve” and “love” which is satisfying)

and yet, i have not fully emerged from what feels like this cocoon of change. i will not emerge as a butterfly in an open sky. the moth has swept through too much flame to hope for untouched wings of a  delicate hue. these jeweled panes are smoked black on the corners, sharp obsidian chips removed as payment for passage. eyes wild and growing wilder, though my sense of smell is sharper than ever before.

i need more time yet. time to feel out my own way, to orient myself, to let this shape steam in the morning sun, to unfurl the wings. to find the horizon, to feel out the frame and learn the balance so i can lean tight into the curves again. to mix my metaphors with the morning rain, full force and without shame.

i wrote in my handwritten journal in 2003 or so another’s heart should not be your own proving ground

and there’s just not enough room or time to write everything i mean, so i leave this note
so incomplete

here in winter

you can feel the sleep
you can smell the sleep
you can taste the cold
slowly soaking through the bindings that attach you to the fold

and the evening inhaling warmth from the land
and from the trees that once bore fruit
 and from anything that dares remain in her blue, blue, dusty room

on the horizon where green boughs once drooped with the weight of an eggplant dusk
now stand stark stick figure bark-encrusted markers of the past and future
and even with numbed face and fingers
you can feel a stirring only waiting
sense the sleeping bulb wrapped in a soil fist of inbetween
curled up tight in the dark and dreaming in the deep
one day to breathe again
soon to rise up from sleep 

–

it is very important for an artist to keep an unflinching eye on her or his weaknesses
and failings
even when not spoken aloud and
not to dwell
not to reserve a place in hell
(after all, we are all imperfect and ugly in the wrong or right light)
but if a person in general is always in danger of rationalizing or overlooking their own faults
then an artist is especially endowed to create an alternate world in which to live
and so he or she must be careful to mind the boundary line

important for an artist to keep an unflinching eye on weaknesses
to learn the lessons that would make a soul grow
to see the truths that must populate the work if it is to be “art” 
that is—
if you are to be saying anything important or worthwhile
it should not be in the service only of propping up the stories we tell ourselves to survive and stay “sane”

if it is to be more than just escape (though there is a valid argument for escape being all the justification “art” might need) your work must be in the service of revealing, speaking one of a few things (or perhaps some/all of them):

injustice being aided or carried out

horrors being perpetrated, overlooked

beauty to be absorbed

pitfalls to beware

ethereal ideas deserving flesh/important abstraction given form

ideas/essence/people that ought be kept alive/remembered

truth

and how can you tell the truth if you cannot look at it? how can you understand human frailty and then, evil, and finally the forgiveness and the redemption that pulses at the inner sanctum of every cell if you are imagining you are made of entirely benign molecules and motion? how can you see the eternal if you cannot squarely look at the now?

watch your fangs and mind your elbows
nursing all night on summerplump vine tomatoes
and careful not to spill too much gasoline in the stream
lighting fires for your sparkling (day)dream 

there is a garden you must tend
always and in every season
even if it is in secret
or for a time hidden by snow

ajua
noodle soup
chamomile tea
lemon honey suckers
and lots of tv
cold chocolate chips and pepperjack cheese and
i’m ten times as strong as i used to be!
it’s my wolverine gene!
it’s the iron queen sheen!
it’s the width of the swath of the heft of the lean!

oh man i dont have a pine tree yet! hmm. but i’m not sick anymore. wow. that cold really laid me out for a few days there. a week. the first time luna brought it i fought it off, was pretty happy about that. then next week, she brought it back around and that time it leveled me. i missed her this last go round because i was sick. so i look forward to seeing her next week. 

lucha-baby was born of course…i’m glad she’s finally here in the world. she’s very new, her face is still settling. but she does look different than luna. glad she’s healthy. and born. 

meanwhile just glad to be well again so i can work hard this week. have to finish up one job and make some progress on another. and i did plan on cleaning the house this week. but instead i opted to be very low impact and rest. i’m glad i did. that cold really took its time with me. i dont want to see it bounce back. 

and i have plans soon to get a bicycle. and get around a bit more. i’m pretty tired of this one stretch of the street.

more to be revealed.

He loved the feel of a smooth stone, or to take a flower to pieces, to see what there was inside. He loved the pepper tree breaking into light, and the white hens rustling by moonlight in the black branches, and the sleepy sound of the hen shit dropping. He could do nothing about it, though. Not yet. He could carry all of it in his head. Not talk about it.

—Patrick White, The Vivisector

it’s an odd thing. at first i ran from the silences. i would feel them stretching out, pooling too fast along the corners of the floor, slanting toward me as i jogged down the short hallway that connects my room to the kitchen. would find them waiting for me in the bathroom, curled up and clustered in massive numbers behind the shower curtain. they dropped from my own ceiling in the middle of the night and woke me from my dreams. in the day, i would turn on the TV to banish them, any movie, any show and if not, i’d play music. always i would bounce like a moth back and forth from one lamp of electric energy to another, always feeling the burning fringe of a void was close behind….

something happened. or began to happen…or ceased to happen. i’m not sure about this part. the imagining this part is dull. so is pronouncing myself HERE and no longer THERE. i’m thinking i really have no idea and this may be nothing more than a brief pause anyway. but somehow i have come to welcome them. i’m trying to remember if it was bit by bit…but i’m just blank on that part. all i know is one day i realized i was sitting, and not feeling lost…but just sitting. and exploring my experience. and not tensed under a massive weight of hissing silence and ready to bolt…but like some sort of oaken and well-oiled drum made to resonate with the smallest and most lavender of vibrations—

i wake early to find these silences in the livingroom and i sit down, there. joining them in the darkness where light has only dusted the edge of this or that where you can immerse yourself in a lake of silence. not…waiting for sun, not wishing anything away. just setting yourself down and being there. not intruding upon the night or feeling intruded upon by it, simply being another living part of her. as real and intent and aware and still as a lake that mirrors the stars back to the sky.

i find these silences resting against me in bed. i enjoy them now and don’t find myself springing to my feet and to the computer so often, while i’m still squinting. i don’t force each moment to clip against another moment, creating some frantic ladder from one activity to another. sometimes i sit and let them drift in the sky of time…coming apart or healing up together as they will. some early early mornings i open my eyes, lie there and look up at the predawning sky, violet or orange it always looks sweet and a bit unreal at first maybe i’m even looking through the rainbow film of a dream, sometimes i turn my head into the warmth of my own hair and fall back asleep.

i think today is thanksgiving. i saw a printout for specials in the bakery. apple crumb pie and so on. delicious. very expensive. i wonder what i’ll eat later. it won’t be apple crumb pie! maybe it will be steak and potatoes at the bar. hmmm. or maybe i’ll just fry up some quesadillas. we’ll see.