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.

as i wrote on the youtube description (if you want to see the vid in high quality, and you may since it’s about the aesthetics/art of something), check it here & click “View in High Quality”) hacking the iPhone is fun …it reminds me of the days i had my 8600 Mac (FOUR GIG HD!!!) and would totally mess with the resources, mostly strings and pict resources, and totally tweaked out the computer. (i still have nifty screenshots) then they changed the entire architecture with OS X and it got scary to go into the System folders and everyone was just trippin over the OS in general (released from pre-OS X limitations! wow! protected memory! multithreaded operations! 3D!!!!). but now we’re back in and i foresee some kickass themes in my future. i know i’ll do a UMX one and a couple hardcore xicano ones. then probably something organic. rough. like wood, or stucco type feel. analog. reel to reel theme so it looks like an old tape  player? it depends. anyway, lots of potential! dont know how much cash it would make, but somehow that’s never what motivates me to begin scribbling! agh!

this was sort of a practice run. most of the icons are not mine, so i can’t call it a XOLAGRAFIK theme or anything. (i created the dock, five icons, and the background image). next one, for sure.

the sadness is not because we can’t be together anymore. i could change that if i wanted. the choice was mine.

no…what fills the house with screaming silence most nights and threatens to drown me with sorrow is that i’m afraid i made the right choice. and if so, then there is no way but forward.

2am Violets, originally uploaded by nezua.

what has the internet done to my writing. once i wrote in spiral notebooks. the letters spoke of the day and the mood with the density of the ink or the height of the letters or the uppercase slant or the drawings i’d sketch.

sit, quiet, writing. open the window, sip the tea. write.

a time to note the time, to speak the truth, to ask questions…and then close the cover and leave the marks there, pressed in dust, smells of paper and ink and inbetweens and
waiting notwaiting
       (to be)
                 o p e n
                            ed
        again.

it was a private thing. it was an unselfconscious and beautiful thing. thoughts had room to become naked. or to explode entirely, to snow down like dust or black bullets of coal being loosed from a heaving orange sky—words
did
not
exist to be pawed over
pecked over
parsed and pried apart and pornographically paraded exclaimed upon loved and hated by so many all so quickly and so didnt lean and upright gleam and yearn and whine and boast and keen

they simply were

there. withyou

in a sense
we’ve gained the worst of two worlds
in our joining of diaries and public periodicals

[if blogging has replaced a private journal]

we’ve lost the freedom of private writing
and gained an illusion of truthful documentation

and what will i have in ten years of these words?

these posts are not truth. they are not even true. they are conversation. they are angles of me i’m presenting to you they are honest quite often and yet fully dressed before they are born blue

which is fine sometimes. i don’t hate it or wish it dead or gone.

but i miss that cat who came out for spiral notebooks. that person who let out his gut. who did not even need to breathe deep to relieve because there was no one to impress, convince seduce deceive

i’ll have to go and rouse him
i need to know what he knows

i lied in the dark tonight under my fan
i seemed to grow wider awake
the night was as if a giant flower above me
hanging over me breathing into me
and i wanted never to sleep again

only to be in this infinite three am space
hot lemon tea on my tongue
a world falling further away
the sun turning under me
and a clock moving backward
soon to chime a number
that will tomorrow
no longer exist

heartmuscle, originally uploaded by nezua.

trying to settle. trying to settle and fill the belly. still distant from repetitive necessities, bored with eating showering and the like. do it, but not with great interest, sort of necessary evils. not sure i appreciate that view. everything can be relished and make for a joyful and deep experience. eating, cooking, showering, bathroom actions, sleeping. and they do sometimes. yet, i do not appreciate their insistence and timing. i’d do half of the amount of rounds if i could. but alas, that doesnt seem to work out.

looking fwd to hooking up some more work as soon as i can. i’m not idle, am working a couple jobs at once, always. have to. but think i will cut it down to two at once. more than that and the jobs seem to lag too long. but need to make more, get a big deposit or something, need to replace two crowns. sharp teeth breaks are hurting my tongue. why doesnt insurance cover crowns? i don’t understand that. isn’t it a normal part of dentistry? i hardly think that this state of affairs is something that should be thought of as needing anything fancy or cosmetic. this is not about cosmetics, these are teeth in the back that don’t even show. this is a sort of torture. i wake up at night because i’m biting my tongue and two teeth are sharp as razors. my mouth is a medieval rack. i don’t even shape some words the same anymore because i have to look out for the angles. good thing i dont spend a lot of time in deeply enmeshed kisses or anything. i’d eat ya alive.

am i still covered by herm’s insurance? i think she dropped a day of her schedule because i needed more time for work. that might have made her part time, and thus no insurance. no, we wouldn’t have agreed on that. she needs her insurance. and in my case it would hardly matter. most of this is going to come out of pocket.

and yet
i’m taking time away from work days to research law in the law library and file papers and go to court because i was served with charges that must be disputed and disproved. can’t afford a lawyer, that would cost more than the amount i’m losing due to taking all this time away from work. work work work. court. blog. press release threat of lawyers delayed paychecks rotten excuses cluttered room breakbrokebrake—

i need a different kind of break. like on the beach away from everything except wind water and sun and a smile full of teeth that feel smooth as polished coral.

the heart will seek, originally uploaded by nezua.

up at seven 0 five which is weird only because i’ve been up for over seven hours now. woke up at midnight and have been up since. dont bother asking why, there’s no nice way to complain about it and it wont do any good so let’s just get on with this thing.

finished the book illustration job. was quite a job, wrapping together three things that are normally separate jobs: cover, logo, and interior illos. bid it very low, as it was written by a friend on a low budget, and subject matter i enjoyed. but its over and that’s good because i have to get on to some other projects that have waited a while.

would really like to finish a video ive been sitting on, but all these things that dont pay, they wait. sometimes even things that do pay wait! but my projects that i love most wait longest. guess thats just how it works.

bernie mac is dead. morgan freeman is still alive. looks like he and john edwards both got busted for getting some on the side. one of these events surprised me a bit.

i’ve got to write a list. i’ve got things to do. unfortunately, for all of these things, sleep is required.

what i really need to do is shake up the room. i need to clean this room. no, i need that power that kid had on the twilight zone, i need to freeze everything for a week, chill out and watch old star trek episodes and when i’m not doing that, take walks in the sun. leave the computer for a solid few days. make my list, and then begin to chip away at it. wake everyone up when i’m almost done. i just need a little headstart here. hey! i’m not in bed and dreaming anyway.

well maybe i’ll feed UMX over the weekend. but i think all work will stop until monday, dammit. bernie mac died and he was but 10.5 years older than me. hell if i’m gonna stress myself out here.

man i’m tired.

joy, originally uploaded by nezua.

Lunita cracks me up. She takes a blue marker and scribbles on her VHS tapes. her favorite movies, she brings me a tape of Fantasia with scribbles and I don’t get mad of course, but laugh and say “Oh, very pretty!” but she had other ideas.

“Oh nooo” she says. That’s what she says when she sees something out of place or wrong. Like when the people who did the front stair repairs used concrete with pebbles in it. She stopped and pointed at the patch with the odd texture. “Oh nooo.”

She wants me to clean the tape now, wants me to show her how to clean the scribbles off. She assumes they will come off. She’s right, when I scrub, it comes off. She brings me another tape. I tell her “It’s okay,” meaning we don’t really need to take the scribbles off. But she insists. Points at it urgently. “Oh noooo!”

Won’t play it until it’s cleaned. So I clean it. Try to sit back down and finish up what I’m writing. She comes to me with another tape. “Oh noooo.” I say “It’s okay, Luna. It can stay like this, really.” But she gets upset, “Oh nooooo!” and now she’s not just evoking sorrow and alarm, she sounds aggressive. And I just begin laughing. “What are you getting angry for?” I ask her. “You are the one that scribbled on it! You didn’t even get in trouble!” I’m still laughing the whole time. Not angry, just cracking up in earnest. “If you don’t like them scribbled on, stop scribbling on them!”

I hadn’t brought up that she is the one that did it yet. She gets it, and leaves the tape on my desk, goes back to the living room. She suddenly looks happy to escape the conversation.

So funny. Reminds me of us grownups. We scribble on things and then get mad because they are scribbled on. Blame it on others. Want them to fix it. Kids are just straightforward…we learn later how to confuse ourselves about these things.

Yeah.

All Luna’s life (and before she was born) I will sort of orchestrate certain sounds or songs. Like the THX sting and the FOX Pictures riff, and the opening song to the first Star Trek show. I like the physical channeling of the energy. Luna is used to this, and she now does it faithfully if you play Star Trek.

When I first played Fantasia for her, she was delighted to see the conductors! Doing what papi does! To music! It was so funny to see her jump right into conducting along with the movie. How many two year olds can you sit down in front of Fantasia and they not just watch through the non-cartoon part, but conduct along with it? Too much.

photo posted from my iPhone