CA

“Dean's California--wild, sweaty, important, the land of lonely and exiled and eccentric lovers come to forgather like birds, and the land where everybody somehow looked like broken-down, handsome, decadent movie actors.” 


“It seemed like a matter of minutes when we began rolling in the foothills before Oakland and suddenly reached a height and saw stretched out ahead of us the fabulous white city of San Francisco on her eleven mystic hills with the blue Pacific and its advancing wall of potato-patch fog beyond, and smoke and goldenness in the late afternoon of time.” 


“This morning I saw a coyote walking through the sagebrush right at the very edge of the ocean ― next stop China. The coyote was acting like he was in New Mexico or Wyoming, except that there were whales passing below. That’s what this country does for you. Come down to Big Sur and let your soul have some room to get outside its marrow.” 


“The setting sun burned the sky pink and orange in the same bright hues as surfers' bathing suits. It was beautiful deception, Bosch thought, as he drove north on the Hollywood Freeway to home. Sunsets did that here. Made you forget it was the smog that made their colors so brilliant, that behind every pretty picture there could be an ugly story.” 




To plagiarize myself: 


We spent that winter trying to find beauty. In the morning, we'd place green tinted glasses of water on the table and wait for the light to come in the window and illuminate it like Orthodox art, or make rainbows on the surface. We had decided that winter that we were going to live off art, off words, rather than the prosaic and unrelenting requests of our the shallow vessels we call bodies. We were determined to follow in the footsteps of art, the painter Renoir said, "The pain passes--but the beauty remains." 

On weekends we'd travel to the coast, admire steep hillsides draped in yellow sunflowers that plunged to the turquoise water below. We'd marvel at the rakish hair of the sage, the old costal live oaks, roots growing from shale, trunks silvered, bent but not broken by the wind. In the evenings we'd drive up dark roads, slithering up the mountains until we reached remote places. There, we'd climb on granite rocks and sit with our legs crossed, listening to the Santa Ana winds melting the white alders and Manzanitas, mimickign the sound of the ocean that we'd left behind. 

We'd walk through cemeteries veiled in early morning fog, run our fingers across the rough names of the dead. We'd marvel at the light on stained glass in old churches, the white bellies of gulls against pale blue sky. At dusk we'd sit with the graves behind us, on a small sea cliff, the voices of the dead but memories of lives misspent. Below us, the ocean, beating its same old tune, always on message, at our backs, the dusky arms of fig tree, slivered by light. We drank beauty in as easily as if it were water. 

We left behind, for those few somber months, all the things that we'd failed to be: good lovers, good friends, hard workers, the children our parents had dreamt that we'd be. Our dreams were no longer rimmed like an old cup with regret. We remembered fondly those who had loved us. We imagined the fingers of our mothers, our lovers, pulling softly through our hair; a child' rake across the sand. We forgot the places we'd left behind, and didn't bother imagining the places we'd be. We were here, or there, in a cobble stone courtyard with artists drawing pictures of children in bright colored chalk, in the balconies at ballets, on cold walls at midnight, admiring the shape and pull of the moon. 

Towards the end of that season, we saw humpback whales near sunrise, their bodies, like gargantuan brass dressers we had left behind in the houses of our youth, slipping through the water like rain through the sky. It was that morning, my body chilled by the sea, with those leviathans playing some indecipherable game at our feet, that I remember acutely from that lovely and bizarre winter. It's the last clear memory I have of you, standing next to me on sandstone cliffs, bare foot and windblown, looking out across that steely water as if we were explorers bound for some new valley. It is not the precise image of that morning that I remember so well that my heart briefly leaps, even now, years later. No. It is the reflection of that morning through your eyes. Just look at them! Look! They are on fire. Only beauty remains.

Thoughts catalog

1) Maybe I meant to say catalogue. I think I grew up spelling it as catalogue.

2) The strangeness of standing in the shower, remembering vividly being twenty, feeling it more real than the twelve years that separate me from it.

3) The beauty of a small child saying, "dance, dance" and parading around the house with her dolls moving widly.

4) Trying to show her how one of the doll's was capable of an excellent rendition of Michael Jackson's moonwalk.

5) The sudden consciousness of my beard. This is why it never gets long.

6) The embarrassment of a front yard covered in debris.

7) Not enough to roust me into action.

8) The simple beauty of a day after eleven hours of sleep.

9) Resisting the urge to ask another father his child's name at the playground, because the real reason is my desire to have Sadie repeat the child's name, so I can show him how advanced my little hellion is.

10) Sweet girl.

Morning Borges

Argumentum Ornithologicum

I close my eyes and see a flock of birds. The vision lasts a second, or perhaps less; I am not sure how many birds I saw. Was the number of birds definite or indefinite? The problem involves the existence of God. If God exists, the number is definite, because God knows how many birds I saw. If God does not exist, the number is indefinite, because no one could have counted. In this case I saw fewer than ten birds (let us say) and more than one, but did not see nine, eight, seven, six, five, four, three, or two birds. I saw a number between ten and one, which was not nine, eight, seven, six, five, etc. That integer--not nine, not eight, not seven, not six, not five etc.--is inconceivable. Ergo, God exists.

A dialog about a dialog

A: Absorbed in our discussion of immortality, we had let night fall without lighting the lamp, and we couldn't see each other's faces. With an offhandedness or gentleness more convincing than passion would have been, Macedonio Fernandez' voice said once more that the soul is immortal. He assured me that death of the body is altogether insignificant, and that dying has to be the most unimportant thing that can happen to a man. I was playing with Macedonio's pocketnife, opening and closing it. A nearby accordion was infinitely dispatching La Comparasita, that dismaying trifle that so many people like because it's been misrepresented to them as being old...I suggested to Macedonio that we kill ourselves, so that we might have our discussion without all that racket.

Z: (mockingly) But I suspect that at the last moment you reconsidered.
A(now deep in mysticism) Quite frankly, I don't remember whether we committed suicide that night or not.


Incongruous music time:

Walking in Bar Harbor

There is something implicit in taking a walk by one's self. A sort of stated goal of achieving the sort of anonymity and succession of thoughts that are unavailable in a room filled with people. The white boats sit idly in the aquamarine water of the harbor. The path is gravel, lined by rose bushes, blooming pink, giving off the sound of bees. On my left two youths walk on the rocks below the path, picking their way carefully, while trying to appear nonchalant. "You wouldn't die if you jumped from there," one of them yells to the other. I don't know if they are talking about the water or not, but if so, it's about two inches deep. I reflect on  a different time, when I was also full of the folly and swagger of youth, so eager to prove, to prove.

Passing them I see again, a pair of people below the path, sitting at the edge of the ocean, the waves lapping at their feet. The couple, for that's what they must be, are no more than twenty, and they're sharing a cigarette, and listening to the water. They also are placed correctly, close to the water, yet distant, looking away from it, blowing smoke into the breeze. This is the place for those who have put away youthful folly without having put away youth. 

The gravel path is heavy with people. I smile at no one. I walk quickly. I do not know why I'd smile at anyone. We do not know each other. The islands in the distance hold trees, that scale their small precipices like monks on the way to prayer. Sea birds skim over the darkening water. The houses to my right are more like mansions, thick wooden gates, private tennis courts, ravens dotting a verdant lawn, searching among the rich excess for a scrap of their own. 

I pass a third couple, moments later, sitting on the rocks to the side of the path. They are older, wiser. Their rock is not hard to access, a small step over the stone wall takes them to their destination. They sit, not in the silence of contemplation as that of the youths, but in camaraderie, in something shared. I do not smile at anyone. 

At last I pass an old man in uniform, sitting beneath a tree, watching the islands, the ocean, and the birds on his break from work. I smile immediately. The rest of us are strangers here, soaking up a sun and an ocean that are not ours. I can tell by his posture against the shade tree that he belongs. And then I am forced to reflect on the doctrine of eternity, which teaches that all of humanity is united in its being strangers in a strange land. And that, given the truth of the doctrine, I should instead be smiling or frowning at everyone, for none of us belong to the sea, the sky, or the land, we belong to the heavens, and we are all so very far away. 

Collected Non-fiction of Borges

I would recommend this hypothesis: imprecision it tolerable or plausible in literature because we almost always tend toward it in reality. The conceptual simplification of complex states is often an instantaneous operation. The very fact of perceiving, of paying attention, is selective; all attention, all focusing of our consciousness, involves a deliberate omission of what is not interesting. We see and hear through memories, fears, expectations,. In bodily terms, unconsciousness is a necessary condition of physical acts. our body knows how to articulate this difficult paragraph, how to contend with stairways, knots, overpasses, cities, fast-running rivers, dogs, how to cross the street without being run down by traffic, how to procreate, how to breathe, how to sleep, and perhaps how to kill: our body, not our intellect. For us, living is a series of adaptations, which is to say, an education in oblivion.

To live is to lose time; we can recover or keep nothing except under the form of eternity.

A German scholar, around 1731, spent many pages debating the issue of whether Adam was the best politician of his time, the best historian, and the best geographer and topographer. This charming hypothesis takes into account not only the perfection of the paradisiacal state and the total absence of competitors but also the simplicity of certain topics in those early days of the world. The history of the universe was the history of the universe's only inhabitant. The past was seven days old: how easy it was to be an archeologist!

The sunset's just my light bulb burning out

It's a Carolina kind of night: the warm wind blowing steady, the sun's light half-hidden by grey puffs of clouds and planes moving slowly through the silvery sky, a lone black bird flying to somewhere new.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/06/18/120618fa_fact_mayer

This tremendous article is about a real American hero, who uses his Christian talk show to bash people who he doesn't like. Would it be too much to ask for someone to give me a talk show? I'm willing to say something bad about anyone. I'm willing to offend if you'll pay me.

Aside: To my theological friends, what does it mean that this particular guy believes in the same God and Christ that I do, but he has, what I believe to be retrograde views about people, particularly the GLBTA community. I mean, like from a, how  many angels fit on a head of a pin kind of way. Does this guy make the cut with Saint Peter? Does he get into the game ahead of someone like Socrates? Can we chalk him up as a modern day Pharisee? Of course I'm making an assumption, certainly a number of conservative folks might agree with his stance on homosexuality. In that case, I suppose I'm toast, which brings to mind a favorite anecdote from my Christian college days, when my friend Steve did something, and I, being very clever, quickly said, "Let me know how hot hell is when you get there," which lead to the natural response of "No problem. I'll just tap you on the shoulder and tell you." It's sticky, and reading an article about a guy who seems to espouse a whole lot of misinformation and general disgust with other human beings makes me feel icky. Yeah, icky.

Like most Thursday nights, it's time to curl up with Walt Whitman

"America, if eligible at all to downfall and ruin, is eligible within herself, not without; for I see clearly that the combined foreign world could not beat her down. But these savage, wolfish parties alarm me. Owning no law but their own will, more and more combative, less and less tolerant of the idea of ensemble and of equal brotherhood, the perfect equality of the States, the overarching American Ideas, it behooves you to convey yourself implicitly to no party, not submit blindly to their dictators, but steadily hold yourself judge and master over all of them." Walt Whitman (super dreamy)

I just sent out a Tweet. It's my seventh in the last seven months. I'm realizing it's a hell of a lot easier than composing a blog though. A college student had to teach me what hash tags and trending meant this past spring, but I think I get it now. I just put pound signs everywhere right? I'm in.

"Delia Elena and San Marco"

Borges

"We said goodbye on one of the corners of the Plaza del Once.
From the sidewalk on the other side of the street I turned and looked back; you had turned and  you waved good-bye.
A river of vehicles and people ran between us; it was five o'clock on no particular afternoon. How was I to know that the river was the sad Acheron, which no one may cross twice?
Then we lost sight of each other, and a year later you were dead.
And now I search out that memory and gaze at it and think that it was false, that under the trivial farewell there lay an infinite separation.
Last night I did not go out after dinner. To try to understand these things, I reread the last lesson that Plato put in his teacher's mouth. I read that the soul can flee when the flesh dies.
And now I am not sure whether the truth lies in the ominous later interpretation or the innocent farwell.
Because if the soul doesn't die, we are right to lay no stress on our good-byes.
To say good-bye is to deny separation; it is to say Today we play at going our own ways, but we'll see each other tomorrow. Men invented farewells because they somehow knew themselves to be immortal, even while seeing themselves as contingent and ephemeral.
  One day we will pick up this uncertain conversation again, Delia--on the bank of what river? --and we will ask ourselves whether we were once, in a city that vanished into the plains, Borges and Delia."