The Graduate

clippings and wolves

Mon, 20 May 2013 16:58:00 -0400

Mowing the yard at my parents house is sort of therapeutic. When I was younger I couldn’t stand it. It’s always hot when you mow, it always takes longer than it should. Now I like those things, the free time and the heat. I let this non-english speaking woman cut my hair today. “You want skin?”

“What?”

“Sides, you want skin?”

“Uh, I mean, yes?”

“Yes? ok.”

“Could you leave it a little longer on top?”

“Top?”

“Longer on top please.” She smiles at me and nods. She has no idea what I’m talking about.

I am a wolf running through a series of paper walls

Down a long hallway, with a glass roof

I can see the tops of pine trees above me

Through a thin sheet of water left on the glass by the rain

I gallop through the walls, over and over

Breaking through each one.

I just keep running forward,

I forget.

Further and further away, I run

The tearing apart, the breaking in

I hear it and I’m tired, the walls bear down.

I pause and I want to look back.

I pause and I howl.

Eating Bugs and In Vitro Meat

Mon, 20 May 2013 00:02:00 -0400

I found my summer place, its basic and cheap, which means more money for a new cyclocross bike, or a track bike if the BVV can get its act together.

“I just don’t know if it’s any good.”

“What’s that? I mean you’re helping people.”

“I know, I’m bringing the infant mortality rate down from forty percent to twenty percent here, I’m setting up a water treatment plant that’ll increase the life span, from a public health perspective I mean, of the entire coastal region of the country there. I just don’t know what the fucking point is.”

“I mean, you’re saving peoples lives, you’re actually helping people.”

“I know that, I’m letting there be more people. That’s the damn problem; there’s too many god damn people.” He’s looking ahead, over the steering wheel at the road. We haven’t talked much lately, we haven’t talked much since he’s been back.

“Well, we’ll figure that out too.”

“Yea? Like China? Look at how much flack they get for that, its not a socially acceptable thing to do.”

“I know, I wish India would come up with something like that, or the U.S.”

“How would that ever fly here?”

“I guess it wouldn’t.”

Hero

Fri, 17 May 2013 19:55:00 -0400

There is a shanty house in a park near a D.C. Metro stop in Arlington Virginia. A man named Marcos built the shack and has been living there for nine years. The shack is waxed canvass, and the beams in its corners are large branches of trees that look water logged and are completely stripped of bark. They are slowly turning grey. Across the tops of the beams are two by fours, screwed into the tops of the bare branches. Over the top of the shanty is a couple two by fours, and a few pieces of yellow cane. The roof is covered with a blue tarp, bungee tied at the corners to hooks screwed into the beams. The walls are cardboard and canvass, there is a door made out of scrap sheet metal screwed into a frame of two by fours.

The floor is made out of cinder blocks covered with old blue carpet scraps. Marcos has two camping chairs, two five gallon drums for water, a bicycle, a little end table, a sleeping bag, a camping stove, a mattress pad and a love seat inside the shanty. He has a bicycle that’s locked up at a bike rack in the park. Marcos showers at the recreation center two blocks away.

The house is located next to a thicket of trees at the edge of Hayes park. The trees were left as a sound barrier for the park from the highway on the opposite side. Marcos is slow, not slow like the workers stuck in the North Carolina turkey farm, left to rot their gums eroding showing the bare roots of their teeth, festering with rashes and paid two dollars a day for thirteen years to live in a room with no windows and no kitchen and no beds. Marcos is just simple, and for years he keeps it a secret that he built the shanty. He doesn’t tell the social worker when he sees her. He doesn’t tell his numerous employers. He doesn’t have any friends to tell. The only people who know are the children too afraid to venture near the shack when they lose a ball in the woods. Making up stories about Marcos and his secret house. Making up stories the way kids do, legend apparition.

Marcos wears a tan jacket and baggy blue jeans, he has two shirts, and two pairs of pants, two pairs of socks and two pairs of shoes and two pairs of underwear. He washes all his clothes once a week at a laundry mat with change that he always keeps in his pocket. He always keeps any money he has in his pocket. He has other shirts, he has shirts that say “Ace, the hardware place” and “Lowes” and “Olden bicycles” and “Cintas.” All places where he was a janitor.

Right now Marcos is cooking hot dogs in a pot with the last of his first drum of water. He’s seasoning the hot dogs with ketchup packets he took from the grocery store near the deli sandwich counter. He’s sitting in a grey folding chair with “Built Ford Tough” stitched into its back. He’s tired, and he’s running low on money, he wants to earn more so he can keep his savings account open, so he decides to go see Janet at the shelter tomorrow.

Janet will wonder how Marcos gets by and where he stays when he walks into her office in the morning. She will be glad not to know and she will know better than to ask, because she can see that Marcos is in good health, and that he can ask for help when he needs it. Janet will see that Marcos is apparently free of drug addiction and, informed by nine years of interaction, that Marcos is a hard worker who gets confused. “What can I do for you Mark?”

“Well, Ms. Janet, I need to, uh, I been savin up and now, well I don’t have any more saved up so, I was hopin we could work again-I was hoping you could let me work again.”

“Marcos of course, but this time I want you to stick with it ok? No disappearing this time.”

“Ms. Janet I wont I swear, I will do my best and you know that, I swear I will do my best.”

“I know Mark, I’ll ask around and see who needs you, come back on Friday morning. Is everything else alright?”

“Yes Ms. Janet, its all fine.” Marcos thanks her and leaves. Janet will call her brother in law who manages the Lowes around the corner from the shelter, he will hire Mark again and will give him three five hour shifts a week paying 8 dollars an hour. On Friday Marcos comes back to the shelter and Janet helps him fill out a direct deposit form. He has a voided check from his bank that he keeps in a ziplock bag inside his black wallet. After two weeks, Marcos gets a check for $254.16 dollars. He uses $18 dollars to buy a new tarp for his roof.

Evalyn Reed is a member of the Arlington County PTA. She wears makeup to the meetings. She’s tall and slender and she has dedicated her life to humanitarian causes since marrying her husband Jacob in her early twenties. Evalyn and Jacob have been married for fifteen years and they have a son named Johnny who is six. They live in a brick home constructed in the 1920’s. The home is remodeled inside and out, complete with working central AC, a roof top garden, two stair cases from the main floor to the bedrooms, stainless steel appliances and a chandelier in the entryway that Evalyn imported from Tuscany after visiting with her husband. The chandelier reminded Evalyn of how lovely Italy was and that she had conceived her only child while on the trip.

Today it came to light that Jacob had been seeing someone behind Evalyn’s back. “I don’t want to talk about this now Evalyn it’s nothing, it’s not important.” Evalyn had grown tired of playing with Johnny in the yard.

“We’re going for a walk,” she declared, strapping Johnny’s shoes onto his feet and leading him briskly by the hand to nowhere in particular. Evalyn was wearing lulu lemon tights and a lulu lemon top. She had on pale blue adidas running shoes with lime green laces. She had her blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail.

Evalyn, and Johnny, walked and walked and walked. “Come on Johnny, let’s keep going.” Evalyn would pick Johnny up when he slowed down. They stopped at a riteaid for a bottle of Fiji water, and continued walking on, eventually arriving at Hayes Park.

Marcos is walking home after work when he sees Evalyn, she is very pretty and he looks at her for a second, long enough to make eye contact. He doesn’t mean to stare and he quickly looks ahead at his shack in front of him now. Evalyn watches Marcos pull open the door to the shack, almost hidden in the trees, he crouches to fit under the two by four and goes in. Evalyn is disgusted, she picks up Johnny and marches straight back to the house with purpose. “That they would allow a man to set up a shack in that park, I mean for god’s sake children play there Christie! And when Johnny grows up he will wander over to that park by himself and god knows what else.”

“We should do something about this.”

“You’re so right. I mean he’s probably on drugs.”

Evalyn talks to Jacob about it when he gets home. Jacob agrees to tell his friend on the county board about the bum in Hayes park. “I’m just shocked he had enough time to set the whole thing up.”

“I know Jacob, I thought this was a nice neighborhood, he’s probably in there using drugs.”

“I’m just as upset about this as you are.”

“I know.” Evalyn looks Jacob in the eye and puts her hand on his hand. “Sweetie when you get worked up like this, I get worked up.”

“Is that right.” Jacob smiles at her and she winks at him. She starts walking upstairs and he takes off his shoes and follows her to the bedroom.

Marcos is sitting on his chair, watching bread fry with the oil left over from bacon in the bottom of his pan. He can smell the plate of bacon next to the stove, he wants to wait until the bread is finished so he can eat it all at once. It’s Saturday, and Marcos has twelve hundred dollars saved up. He wants to quit working for the rest of the summer but he promised Janet he would stay. He went and talked to Janet yesterday when he wanted to quit. He was tired of being teased. “Mark, when they tease you, what do they say?”

“They say things I don’t- they talk about thing’s I don’t know they say things, they act funny. Then when I say something back they smile at me but I can tell they’re being mean.”

“Mark, you’re a hero, you know that?”

“Ms. Janet no I’m not I’m a janitor.”

“No Mark, you’re a hero and every day you go to work you fight crime, everyday you ignore those people who tease you you’re a hero, you should be proud of yourself.”

“But why? They just tease me.”

“You should be proud of yourself because you ignore them Marcos. Don’t you just smile right back at them and go back to work when they tease you?”

“Yes.”

“Every time you do that you’re a hero, do you see what I mean?”

“I-yes I think I see that. Thank you Ms. Janet.” Marcos remembers leaving Janet’s office. He pretends he has on a cape. He marches to the grocery store and spends nine dollars on bacon like the kind his mom would get every two weeks for special Saturday breakfast before she died.

Marcos is waiting for his bread to fry in the bacon grease when someone knocks on his door. He answers the door and the Arlington county sheriff’s department places him under arrest for trespassing. He’s taken to jail and they take down his shack and put crime scene tape around where it was. A crowd gathers while men in hard hats and yellow hazmat suits take the tarp off the roof, and the canvass off the walls.

“How long was this guy here?”

“Who cares man he’s just some junkie.”

They cut the two by fours and load them into the back of a truck. They cut the branches and load them into the back of another truck. They pick up each of the cinder blocks and load them into wheel barrows into the back of a third truck. The chairs and the couch and the little table get loaded into the back of a fourth truck.The trucks have yellow flashing lights and they drive away. A week later Marcos goes back to the park and finds that the only thing left of his shack is the dirt where the cinder blocks sat.

Newly Content

Wed, 15 May 2013 14:14:29 -0400

I’m sitting in a coffee shop in Berkeley California having just spent the day walking around in West Oakland, I took a bus here to see the Berkeley campus, it’s nice.

Yesterday My friend let me borrow his fixed gear bicycle to ride around downtown San Francisco. I rode up the steepest hills I could find, I had to get a pedaling start for some of them because the bike’s gear is too large to spin up the steeper parts of SF. I rode over the top of a hill and started hurdling down towards the bay, I had to skid stop a few times and was nearly hit by a car.

I’m riding to the bay now, where I plan to park the bike and go for a run. I run up a path by some soccer fields and around a point by a Marina. I run next to the bay and I can see the golden gate bridge immediately before me. I run up some stairs through a field of flowers and through a low brick tunnel that I almost have to crawl under then I run across the golden gate bridge. I stop there and stretch because I was chasing a much faster runner the whole way across the bridge and I could feel it in my calves. I run under the bridge to the other side and I start to run up the hill to the overlook but remember that I still have to run all the way back to the bike so I stop and look out over the water. I take some pictures. It’s so pretty here.

I’ve been looking forward to this trip since before I planned it. It’s everything I could have hoped for. I feel somehow free of conflict here, detached but significantly happy. I found a shiny penny heads up on the ground and I have it in my pocket right now. Right now I feel contented, which is nice to feel but terrible to write about.

There’s an old man brooming the corner of a street next to his shop on the edge of Chinatown. He brooms the street while another man wearing a straw hat sits on the corner with a little tin can playing a Banhu. He plays a somber tune that he plays everyday. He plays the tune against the flow of the people on the street without regard for the excited movement of the hundreds of new faces he sees every day. He sits at the foot of the arc that starts chinatown. He sits at the corner of Grant and Bush. I walk past this man and I feel like I’m somewhere very old.

Sore Loser

Tue, 14 May 2013 16:01:21 -0400

I wonder how people get stupider, intergenerationally. I theorize that it’s a result of cousins fucking each other. A long history of cousins meeting and deforming further their own genetics. They meet in closed spaces quietly understanding too much of one another and selfishly taking advantage. Holding the better mixing of the genes in like a black cap on a full water bottle.

I’m sitting in a cafe in the Mission with Wifi. so naturally it’s not the coolest of the cafe’s, since the cool cafe with the bike messengers and the Barista wearing the stained canvass smock with 270 dollar hand made loafers on refuses to taint its coffee with, internet access. So I’m in the cafe next door to the cool cafe, reading a book that I was somehow recommended by a person who, it turns out, has neither read nor recommended the book to anyone including myself. This mystery is equaled by the appearance of the beautiful woman on the plane.

I met a beautiful woman on the plane I took to San Francisco and I got her number. Last night I told her I was going to this bar called El Rio and she met up with me there. She walked in and I saw her wearing a pretty pink dress that showed off her slender body and her blonde hair. She walked into El Rio and we both felt a little out of place among the crowd. Monday night at a bar that sells PBR for one dollar a can can bring together an interesting group.

We decided to play shuffle board and a bully-woman came up to us and intimidated us and tried to hustle us out of a beer that she bet on the game. We beat her and her complacent friend twice, but as we approached the win for the second game the bully woman walked away to a lemon tree under some white lights on the back patio. She folded her arms and later when me and the mysterious woman were having a private conversation at the end of a long hall way we over heard the bully woman saying we had only beat her once. I wanted to be competitive and chime in but I also didn’t want to take my hand off the small of the mystery woman’s back.

We walked to the front of El Rio at one, I missed my train to Oakland and we sat and waited for a taxi. The street was empty except for all of the little things that stay with a city street clear through the night, little scraps of posters glued to the walls and pieces of gum staining the sidewalk like black stars. Dim outlines of the tops of buildings and wonderful little clouds of steam emanating from here and there, alive at the ends of pipes like veins tying the pieces together. Little hints that it makes sense to be here with her even though you probably shouldn’t have ever met.

Anticipate West Oakland

Mon, 13 May 2013 18:31:12 -0400

I decided to go check out a restaurant called “The Pretty Lady” on 18th street deeper into West Oakland. A friend told me I would love the food, and that I should definitely go if I were staying in Oakland. I remember something Gene said to me when we were riding bikes through Oakland the first day I was here, “Oakland is spread out man.” I’m walking on 18th street now towards the restaurant and I’m clearly in a city, but there isn’t anyone here. I don’t realize it until I see people. I see three younger men, one of them has on a red bandanna and a colorful baggy sweater with shorts. Another has on a big black jacket and boots and the third friend has on a hat and a black hoodie. they’re standing on the corner opposite of me and they look at me, probably because I looked at them first. I keep walking past a reform high school and piles of trash. I walk past a skate park and there’s no one in it.

I get to the front of the Pretty Lady, its on the corner and behind I can see warehouses. The sky is all grey this morning. The restaurant has a kitchen you can see into off to the left as you walk in, it’s a diner and the whole place is a rectangular counter that goes around the middle where they keep coffee and juice and things. One woman can work the whole counter, I think that’s the point. The kitchen has this pale turquoise tile all over it and the woman can just grab food from the kitchen without exiting the rectangle. I walk in and a middle aged Asian woman beckons me to sit down in one of the old fixed wooden chairs. It looks like a stool except it has a raised wooden back. I sit on the chair and order coffee from the woman, I grab one of the leather bound menus and order a breakfast burrito. I realize the place is cash only and ask where I can find the ATM that’s closest “Four blocks up,” she points down the street.

I walk the four blocks past another random group of people and a car with huge chrome rims. I walk past an empty lot that’s covered with trash. All of it is domestic trash, there’s these stuffed animals covered in dirt and ripped up just sitting on the ground next to the sidewalk. I walk into the corner shop with the ATM and I look over my shoulder to make sure no one followed me in. There’s a thick cloud of flies circling over some part of the floor near the ATM and I hear them buzzing behind me as I hurry and pull out some money “hello,” an old man behind the counter with a large greasy nose says this to me.

“Hi how are you?” I say back reflexively.

“Hello,” he says again. I stand there for a moment awkwardly and wait for the money to come out which I snatch and fold into my pocket as I exit the fly eaten shop. I walk past the group of people and the pile of trash down to the pretty lady. My food is waiting for me and a group of five men walk in together and sit on the opposite side of the rectangular counter from me, They talk about driving trucks and fishing and going through Reno and how to bring a bicycle with you so you can ride it when you’re not driving. They talk about welding and eat bacon and drink black coffee. They have on hats and they’re older and I can’t tell how well they know each other or if they just know how it is driving a truck.

My Breakfast Burrito is amazing, it has hash-browns and eggs and bacon and green pepper and cheese and onions. The tortilla is fresh, and every bite is spectacular. I try to eat slow so I can listen to the men talking but I can’t help but scarf it down. I drink three more cups of coffee after and wait for something else to happen.

A Bowl of Brains

Wed, 08 May 2013 19:58:10 -0400

When I was ten my neighbor had me help put on a haunted house for his two girls and their girl scout troop. I had to hide in the woods and pull various levers and cords while wearing all black. I feel like maybe my performance was less than excellent, one of the girls saw me standing in the woods. My neighbor was less than pleased.

At the end, when I was allowed to come out of the woods, they had set up a series of bowls inside of brown paper grocery bags on the lower patio. They had tiki torch citronella candles all around the patio. It was humid and hot for October, you could still hear crickets in the forest behind the house. The girls were all giggling and I was running around in circles pretending to be an airplane and then the adults directed our attention to the bags. We quiet down and a little girl asks “Whats in the bag?”

“A bowl! A bowl of brains! Touch it!”

I reach into the bag and the bowl and I feel lumpy cold wet pieces of something, almost like strands. I thought for just a second that I was actually playing with brains.

The bag stunt reminds me of that other trick you do when you’re a kid, where you cross your ring and middle fingers, then take a pen and wedge it between the fingers. If you don’t look at your hand, and you try to push on the pen, it feels like you’re touching two pens.

I wonder why our minds will let us touch a thing and assume that it’s brains instead of spaghetti. I feel like that type of self-deception should have evolved out of us a long time ago. Yet, we all do it to ourselves all the time.

I finished my first year of law school by the way. I’m reveling in the glory that it was, and I’m excited to be back East for a while.

The Last Breakfast

Sun, 05 May 2013 13:39:09 -0400

I walked into the Walnut Cafe, sullen, aware of my circumstances but threaded to reality by poor stitching. “How many?”

“Just one.”

“You can sit at the bar.”

I sat down and when the waitress came over I asked her for coffee and the crayons, realizing that it would probably be the last time I would get to draw in crayola, and probably the last time I would have coffee. “Cream?”

“Please.”

The Batista working the machine noticed the crayons, she smiled and brought over a paper hat with fishes on it, totally unaware of my supposed life threatening condition.

Two weeks ago I crashed my bike racing in Longmont. The road rash became infected and I was prescribed antibiotics. They didn’t clear things up very well, so then I was prescribed stronger antibiotics. This morning I woke up to find that the infection seemed to have spread to my other leg, covering most of my muscular, hairless thigh. My doctor said that if this were the case I should go to the Emergency Room.

So I sipped my coffee slowly, I recounted the best of times. The pending threat of certain death, coupled with my hunger, made the breakfast especially savory. I worried about the amount of carbs I was eating, but I don’t think God is counting carbs in Heaven.

“Do you want anything else?”

“A fighting chance?”

“Excuse me?”

“Just the check please.”

The waitress was nice, while the weather this morning was appropriately grey, the characters in today’s story were appropriately typical. The staff of the Walnut cafe was cheery, and they were working well, bearing the brunt of the early Sunday rush with grace. Busily moving around, exchanging bits and pieces of their plans and stories since they had last worked together. Trips planned, family in town, hangovers that were especially bad. My waitress brought me my check for twelve dollars, I left her a four dollar tip, thankful for my last meal, and drove to the hospital.

I arrived at the hospital, after checking in for twenty minutes, seeing two nurses, and changing into a hospital gown, the doctor told me I should go home and put some moisturizer on my legs. “since you’ve been letting your hair grow back, it looks like it’s irritating your skin because your skin is so dry. The infection looks like it’s healing up nicely. If you have a fever, or you start to feel really sick, like can’t walk to the bathroom sick, then come back.”

I guess I will have to take that Criminal Law final tomorrow after all.

Stop Lights

Sat, 04 May 2013 12:24:00 -0400

I’m sitting on the patio at a coffee shop in Boulder, I saw a man carrying heavy boxes to the back of a van drop one on accident, I got up and helped him put the box in the back, he smiled and thanked me, when he left, he waved and smiled again.

There is this series of traffic lights that, when you drive through town, you always have to stop at one or two of them. Sometimes you hit three or four, but you can count on hitting one or two. I was driving home tonight and as I reached the bottom of the hill I saw that they were all green. I’ve seen this before, a taunt to speed through the slowest part of town, I’ve even taken the bait only to have the prize, the stopless passage, stolen from me by a yellow light. It’s happened so many times that I learned to keep from getting my hopes up. I got through the first of the lights, Arapahoe, no problem. Next is Canyon, the light at the 4 lane highway that runs parallel to “downtown” Boulder, I’ve made these two before in a row, not often, tonight I made it through Canyon right as it turned yellow. The next light is at Walnut, normally Walnut is easy to get through and tonight was no exception.

I’m still stopless at this point, between Walnut and the Pearl street walking mall. I don’t speed up, I’m actually going under thirty miles an hour, and I’m still completely positive I’m going to hit a red light before long. The Pearl Street light and the Spruce, the light after, change at basically the same time. I get through Pearl Street and as I approach Spruce I look ahead to Pine. Pine Street changes with no warning; haphazardly it changes its color like a fair-weather sports fan. Often, I will catch the light at Spruce, watch the light for Pine turn green, then catch the light at Pine anyway, it’s already red again. The lights are less than 200 feet from one another. I approach Pine. As I get closer I’m dumbfounded, not only is the light green, the little walking man who lets drivers know how much more time they have to catch the light hasn’t even turned into the flashing hand guy. I drive through Pine with no problem, no indication that there was any other way it could have happened. I drove through Pine and the rest of the lights as if it were the way it was supposed to be. I don’t really believe that I did this, still, I am sure it won’t happen again.

I went on a run today, for fun. I ran for two hours and I ran from my house to goss grove over to the mountains on Arapahoe, then I doubled back to 9^th street and ran up that to the cemetery, I ran around the cemetery then I picked 9^th back up to Chitaqua, I stretched for a minute at Chitaqua then I ran up the trail to the tree line. It started getting cold, so I turned around and ran down baseline to the law school, got a glass of water, then ran back over to Pearl Street, then to 19^th, then home. I figure I ran about 14 miles. The weather was perfect for it, I left my house at 630 and the sun was still up high enough, it was the golden light of the day. I watched it move through the pines and make shapes on the sides of things and the ground. I watched the light all golden and I didn’t have to think I just kept running and every time something hurt I smiled about it. I smiled the way kids do when they break toys on purpose. I smiled the way men do when they find themselves on one of their limits, passing it, running through it up a steep hill passing people, sprinting across an intersection, sprinting the last few hundred meters to the tree line in Chitaqua. Sprinting across the intersection next to your house in the last minute of your long run.

MAY DAY

Wed, 01 May 2013 15:54:22 -0400

May day, while not the first day of spring officially, represents a halfway point between the first day of spring and the summer solstice. Essentially, May Day is the first day of summer in many pagan traditions. The god Flora is said to have walked through the town, dispersing flowers and ribbons and death for all in a terrible mood. Flora was a leather bound, sword carrying goddess with terrifyingly muscular legs covered in a thin layer of blond hair. She wore her hair like a helmet with straight thick bangs exactly three quarters of an inch above her eye brows. As the goddess of flowers, she was perpetually mad with the plebeians for their constant abuse of her wares, seeing her flowers cut, smelled, dried, and mashed into various concoctions was most distressing for her. Yet every May, she would muster up the courage to face the people. If her temper was short with any one who was less than pleased by her presence, perhaps because of a past encounter she had had with one of their loved ones, they too would face the terrible bite of her flower scented blade.

Flora was rather lonely, as all of the other demi-gods didn’t understand her, unique, fascination with fauna. Further, her voice was sort of low, too low to be sexy like a lounge singers, and she was able to beat most of the other gods in a foot race. She spent most of her time reading with her cat in bed. On Thursdays she was known to open a bottle of red wine, adding to the general depth of her lonely sorrow, if she finished the bottle, she would often cry and stroke her cat as long as the cat would allow. Of course, like all cats, Flora’s cat could only tolerate physical contact for so long before it had to go hide somewhere and scratch at something.

Later in life, Flora lost a lot of weight, started wearing turtle neck sweaters, and used the money she had earned during her career to help back a local art gallery. She featured herself one month under a pseudonym. She displayed a series of flower sculptures made from mixed medium, some clay fired and glossed, others left raw. The clay used differed from flower to flower, she added different amounts and different colors of sand to each batch of clay. While the drunken masses seemed to enjoy the exhibit at first blush, the next morning all of the important critics either did not mention the flower exhibit, or gave it a resounding “meh.” Flora would never sculpt again.

Flora was said to enjoy starring off into the ocean, baking, and gardening. She died with her cat, by her own hand, leaving behind a thin corpse with elegant makeup and a palm full of the reddest roses anyone had ever seen.

Raining

Wed, 01 May 2013 00:58:52 -0400

Sometimes when it rains in Virginia there’s this smell. It’s like the wet air connects you’re nose to everything granite and everything old and everything that reminds you of dust and pine needles. Sometimes it smells musty and like fresh cut grass. In Colorado, it never rains, but it did today. It started raining when I walked out of a restaurant on pearl street and the smell was overwhelming, I felt like I could smell all of the rock and dust and static there was, like that smell was dying to escape the dust it was trapped in but it couldn’t, because it never rains. I walked down the sidewalk and I felt like I was living in my favorite smell. It made me smile. I’m excited to go home this summer.

Then I got to my car and a fucking raccoon decided to crawl underneath it and wait for me to open the door, presumably to grab me by the ankle, wrestle me to the ground and suck my soul out through a gaping tear in my stomach. Luckily, I noticed him slip under my car, so I threw some little rocks under the car and made it honk with my panic button. I’m pretty sure he ran away, although, to be honest, I only saw him crawl under, I didn’t see him crawl out. I guess we’ll see tomorrow.

Ch Ch

Tue, 30 Apr 2013 00:13:20 -0400

There comes this moment at the beginning of adulthood where you realize that everything is shifting. Underneath you, around you, you. When I was growing up I got the sense that important parts are monolithic, my house would always be the same, my family would always love me, love doesn’t move.

I’m standing on the corner of two busy streets watching traffic drive by, pacing a few steps back and fourth next to the street, under a tall orange light. The light is red, and when I turn back towards it it’s green. The cars start to go again, and new cars pass. I watch the light turn yellow and red, sure enough a whole new set of cars line up at the light and wait for their turn to go. I pace the other way and watch new cars approach the light. I face the other way and realize that everything is moving, and as they travel I am confused still, and surprised still, at the newness of each new moving thing.

Physically cars, the sun, the grass, myself; my home, my bike, on and on and on. Mentally I bend in new directions to make new space for new ideas. I take the things I see into account and I let fade the experiences that hurt the things which cannot move. I let fade the feelings and the notions that I cannot accept, because if I did the unmovable would move. If that happens I will be more lost than I already am.

But now I’m on a bus, I’m headed home on a bus at night and two people roughly my age are sitting in front of and behind me. I see them now, I know that they will move too. I know this but it doesn’t make me feel lost, it doesn’t make me feel vague. I expect everything to move, I anticipate that everything will, instead of being afraid that I’ll end up depending on nothing, I can depend on everything and everyone and every feeling and every day and every year and every beat to move in any way it can when it can however it will. I can depend on everything to do exactly something, to change. Suddenly I don’t feel lost, I feel like I know one truth. I feel like all of the life I’ve lived these last two years of young adulthood have allowed me to know one important fact beyond a doubt. It’s going to change, whatever it is.

As petty as that sounds, it’s more than I knew yesterday.

Night Ride

Sun, 28 Apr 2013 00:43:00 -0400

This afternoon I was driving up 28th street and a ladybug landed on my arm, it had two spots, one on each wing. I count the spots and think of a wish. I wonder for a minute what I want if I can have one thing forever and I decide I want to be happy. I decide this and I hope that it means a few things for me. I hope it means I get to help people. I hope it means I get to be in love. I hope it means a lot of things and it probably does mean at least a few of them. The lady bug stayed with me almost the whole way home, she finally flew away at a stop light into the perfect sunny day.

I go to a barbecue. We have Crayfish imported from Louisiana. They sink into the pot when they’re cooked. I watch them pull out the big heavy bucket and let it drain before dumping the feast of red bugs on a table covered with newspaper. We stand in a circle and laugh and take in the sun. We stand in a circle and smile because of the good food and the good company and the warm weather.

I ride all around Boulder in the dark, I start at 8 and get home at 10. I ride over to NCAR up the climb and I smile and I ride over to the CU campus and take some fast turns in the dark. I ride past the student commons and they are having a formal for the newest graduates of the ROTC program. All the women have their hair up and the men are dressed in uniform. Neat crew cuts holding hands with bright elegant dresses passing by me. I see a big flower pot full of orange and red tulips. I pick one and slide it stem first into the pocket on the back of my jersey. The top of the flower is sticking out of the pocket. I ride around the campus more and watch all the buildings move past me in the dark. I ride off the campus over to the pearl street walking mall and I ride around that on a few of the streets, just spinning around chasing cars like a dog. Just looking for someone to give my tulip to.

I hold it in my left hand as I ride and I watch the faces of the people I pass. I’m so eager to give it to someone that I almost give it to a woman smoking on the corner of the street. I think better of it though. I slide the tulip in my pocket again, carefully. I slide the tulip into my pocket and when I get home I put it in a glass of water. It will wither and die before I find someone to give it to, but in the summer I find tulips everywhere. And even if I don’t I’m happy like a ladybug spinning through the warm air of a clear and sunny Boulder afternoon.

Zombie Fred

Thu, 25 Apr 2013 12:03:37 -0400

I was sitting in the dining area at the table with a few of my friends from school. Fred was there, eating his medium pizza and drinking a coca-cola. Staring straight ahead at the glass door on the back of the house, he didn’t realize we were there until we sat down when he was suddenly and violently pulled out of blankness, “We’ll I’ll just move” he says.

“No Fred stay right there, you’re not in the way at all, we’re just going to talk about con law there’s room for all of us.”

The students and I begin to discuss the exam. I offer that an interesting question could be written about whether or not Zombies should enjoy the fundamental right to vote. Faces light up, it’s a good idea. “You know, there’s such a thing as a philosophical zombie, or at least, there’s a discussion about whether or not one could exist,” Fred smiles, tickled by the thought of the concept, once filed somewhere far away in his slowly deteriorating mind. “The question is, could there be a human who exhibits all of the traits of a person, all of the feelings and thoughts, but is actually blank inside? Actually just a program or a zombie, rehearsing learned behavior with nothing behind his eyes? Most people believe it’s impossible, but of course, how could you know?”

I don’t know, Fred, you tell me.

Return of the:

Wed, 24 Apr 2013 13:20:00 -0400

I woke at 2:30 a.m. to the loud sounds of clanging things emanating from the garage. In my half sleep half awake, half drunk state I immediately envisioned a robber wearing the hamburgerler mask, hunting for electronics, and meth. I could see him in his pin stripped uniform, clanging things around with his careless cape. I got out of bed quietly, I heard the garage open, then close, then open again. I slipped on my pants and tried to observe what was happening downstairs in the reflection on the glass of a strange Asian painting hanging on the wall. Fred has returned.

Fred is an interesting character, while he isn’t the landlord of my little bungalow, he is the owner. Apparently he forgot our lease doesn’t run out for another three weeks and decided to commandeer the guest room in the basement much to my and my roommates chagrin. I’m sure he’s just jet lagged from the time he spent exploring Asia(n whore houses), But for some reason he returned nocturnal. Frankly, I don’t see him making any real effort to counter the effects of jet lag. Nor do I see any reason why he should, he is a most natural creature of the night.

A pounding, the door creaks and resonates with the timber of a large flat drum. a startled resident awakens to the tribal sound of a club on the stretched and tanned skin of a dead animal. He quickly realizes the sound is merely that of a large hand on a heavy wooden door. pound pound pound pound pound pound pound-pound-pound-pound faster. Ever faster the dark creature beats the door, resonating into the night. A tempo most unsettling marks the personal effects in his room, like a rapid succession of dark waves all of his things are instantly smaller and farther away. The pounding makes him an island in the middle of a large dark master bedroom. “It’s two a.m. who could it be?” Pound pound pound pound pound. The sound still growing, still persisting he slowly rises from his bed. He slowly dons clothes, accidentally in beat with the terrible drum. He quickly swallows his heart, accidentally in beat with the terrible drum.

Suddenly it stops, he hears foot steps outside. He runs down the stairs to the front door, and when he gets to it he pauses. He sees his hand extend for the knob, he sees it turn, he looks out of the slowly forming crack and feels a cold gush of air overcome him. He sees the white head of hair, closely cropped to his smirking and irregular face, at once angry and sad and blank, he sees that Fred has returned.

Craigslist Poem and Scotland

Mon, 22 Apr 2013 18:09:07 -0400

I woke up remembering time I spent in Scotland as an exchange student. Callum, one of the Scotsmen, suggested we go to a driving range. We went with Callum and borrowed his golf clubs. He was an athletic sport loving Scotsman who, upon arriving at the driving range, used his putter to hit a golf ball just over 200 yards. He had nice graphite shafted clubs. I was hitting his three wood when I accidentally smashed the head of it into the ground, and the ball, sending both the ball, and the head of driver snapped free from the graphite shaft, careening a hundred yards out into the driving range. I was left holding a long carbon shaft, I remember dead silence and shame.

Of course, Callum wanted the head of his three wood back. I had to convince the driving range regulars to stop hitting while I jogged shamefully down range, retrieving the club head to a chorus of uproarious Scottish laughter.

So I’m looking for rooms in the Washington D.C. area for the summer. I have a cool internship in town and it will be fun to see all my friends from home. While searching for rooms I came across an accidental poem:

One bed room with mattress
660 cash
Room already has mattress
One closet
Bathroom is next to room.
Wi fi
No cable
Money must be paid first in full
Cash only
Please have a copy of your id
Thanks
Email if interested

Touching.

Up the Mountain

Sun, 21 Apr 2013 20:19:03 -0400

Dearest of lords the amount of work I have before me expands rapidly into the sunset like the flats of Eastern Colorado. Equally bored with it, I turn to you, blog, for the type of comfort only an ambient textual mirror can provide.

I don’t talk like that, I talk like this:

Yesterday I woke up at 8:30 a.m. and went for a coffee, at 9 a.m. I sat down and worked on school until a little after noon. I went and rode my bike for three and a half hours after that. I rode to Ward Colorado. I noticed that after you get past the first mountains in the canyon the temperature can drop pretty dramatically. I noticed this because before the mountains I was riding comfortably in my bibs and a light jacket. After the first mountains it was snowing and I was getting progressively colder. Riding down was extremely cold, luckily when I rounded the first peak it warmed up again and the snow stopped.

After that I went to the library and worked until it closed.

Then I went to a punk show at this place called “mouth house.” It’s a show house, which means there’s some punkers who live there and book shows at the house. It was in an industrial part of Denver a mile or so West of downtown. They had four stages and there were people doing graffiti on the outside of the warehouse across the alley. They had a moon bounce. They had a mosh pit, I got hit in the head by someones elbow. Punk shows are fun if you approach them with the correct attitude, you need to be aware that what you’re doing is silly, and that the people around you are very silly, as long as you don’t take the time you spend listening to punk rock seriously you’re not in any danger of wearing a studded jacket or doing strange drugs and covering yourself with paint. I had fun dancing and drinking red bull until I finally started crashing at one in the morning. I drove us home and slept until Seven a.m.

When I got up I started working again. This afternoon I went on a bike ride around Boulder and managed to work in a 20 minute climb to NCAR. Now I’m back in the Library. I plan to work until it closes, I think that’s 1 a.m. I guess we’ll find out.

Reefer Madness

Sat, 20 Apr 2013 22:34:42 -0400

I drove my gas using carbon emitting automobile to the coffee shop near my house. I parked in the lot and left the engine running because I was on the phone, and my phone works better when the car is burning gas.

I noticed a larger bald man wearing three hundred dollar sunglasses. They were Oaklies, the type that some cyclists in the Tour de France get paid money to wear so large bald men from boulder will pay 300 dollars for them. He had on shorts, to display his rather stunning calves. For an older gentleman, his calves were quite nice.

This is a theme in Boulder. It seems that women here wear pants and sweaters, trying to look more like hikers. While men here wear running shorts and tight tee’s, trying to show off their sweet bods. I noticed another shorts wearing aging gentleman walk behind the bald one wearing the 300 dollar racing sunglasses. His calves were really nice too.

The aging bald shorts wearing calves gentleman wearing the sunglasses was confused, although I wasn’t sure why. He was trying to get into a Hair Cuttery. The door was locked because it was still early in the morning and they weren’t open. I wasn’t sure if he was confused by that, or if he was confused by the sight of his bald head, reflecting at him from the window to the shop “But, my hair cut.”

I suppose some habits die hard, since surely the lenses in his 300 dollar cycling sunglasses were sufficiently blocking the glare produced by the window that he would be helpless to distinguish his reflection on the glass’s surface. He about faced, sort of faced his palms to the sky in a cross motion, then raised up onto his calves momentarily, stunning.

They had to close my campus today because of the weed smoking holiday. I suppose our administration is worried about “Marijuana, the burning weed with its roots in hell.” I guess I can’t blame them, after I finished my bike ride I decided to indulge in some Taco Bell, the line literally wrapped around the outside of the building.

The Poor Decision Process

Thu, 18 Apr 2013 22:22:19 -0400

When ever I decide to make a poor decision, there’s a process.

First I have to listen to old gangster rap and get really angry. Not at anyone in general, just angry, in general. After I get hyped up on aggression I transition into punk rock and work out. If I start to think about, anything, I turn the music up a little louder or do what ever I’m doing a little faster. It’s sort of like reverse meditation, where I purposely obfuscate my third eye with teen age punk singers voices and my heart rate. During this time I either decide to make the poor decision on a sub-conscious level or not, after though, the decision is pretty much made.

I can’t act on it yet, until I settle down. I have to turn on jammy sounding acoustic-y music or classical music and cook a good dinner. Last night it was a chili. I make a lot of black bean chili but, in an effort to justify the poor decision I was deciding to make, I decided to experiment with the seasoning. I added a dash of cinnamon to a chili otherwise seasoned with garlic, cayenne pepper, chili powder, cilantro, and onions. The cinnamon worked really well, providing a larger justification for the pending stupid decision I’m deciding to make.

I slept on the decision and I woke up refreshed, in a foggy haze of decision stupidity. When this happens, I have to plunge back into the punk rock phase of poor decision making 101. It’s sort of like shouting “We’ll do it live!”

There is an unfortunate downside to this poor decision making process I have. A key element guiding its structure is that I can’t personally have an inkling of what that poor decision I’m planning to make is, else I would talk myself out of it. So it’s like I’m making chit chat in an elevator with strangers, except instead of casually speculating about the weather they’re all speculating about the odds of me doing one stupid thing over another. “I heard he was thinking about trying stand up comedy.”

“I heard he was going on a solo hike-camp trip over the tree line.”

“I guess we’ll have to wait and see.”

What ever, I guess I could start trying to talk myself out of it, I could go ahead and- fuck it, turn the music up.

The Bunny Solution

Tue, 16 Apr 2013 21:26:23 -0400

I took this picture while I was out riding my mountain bike up Flag Staff mountain. I had some leg openers to do and I felt like staying warm so I decided to do them on a climb. When I rode down there was a mountain rescue unit on the scene, I didn’t stop to ask. There were a lot emergency vehicles there and more were arriving as I passed.

I think I’m just going to sit at my house and listen to all this new amazing music 2013 is having. It seems that pop culture finally popped out of meandering vague electronica and into a sort of jamming southern rock 1960’s/70’s re-visitation. At the same time, hip hop has gone back to Wu Tang roots. All of this happens while “The Knife” puts out maybe their best or at least second best album ever. Now I just need Mos Def to put out a real hip hop album, something that echos “Black on Both Sides” and it will be the best music year ever.

I had so much stuff I said I was going to do. I feel like I wake up ambitious and I find things through out the day to spend the feeling on. For instance, I’m leaving a bunch of things here in Boulder for the summer. I found a place to store my stuff and a place to store my car. I remembered that someone at the car dealership told me the coating used on the wires in my car was “soy based” and that rabbits love to get up into the wires and chew on them to death. Especially if you park near a field.

The place I’ll be parking my car for the summer is next to a field. I can’t wait for a cute little bunny to shock himself to death on some important electronic equipment in my car, costing the rabbit his life and me some money. When I remembered the bunny problem, though, I also remembered the bunny solution, “Coyote pee.”

“Coyote pee?”

“You have to coat them with Coyote pee, the wires, not the bunnies.”