Sunny Day...

I guess sunny days really are easier to get up to. Except when you don't want to - which is a lot of days. But that said, I found a piece of last nights pizza crust on the counter and that was a delicious little treat.

Rivulets...

New Year's Eve has been ponderous for me every year now for the past few. I think last year I spent it inside, listening to the din of my neighbor's blasting crackers in the street. I don't think I even went out. Year before, made it down to Hawthorne only to be too stoned to enjoy the craziness of it all. I walked home in the cold rain around 11:45 pm, only hearing the celebratory car horns just as I reached Stark St. Then there was the first year that I'd decided not to go too big, as it were, and spend the evening walking around the city with my love. Nobody else wanted to hear that and the pressure to do something grew until I ran away and spent the evening wandering the streets of the lower Haight for hours, profoundly sad and alone.

Rivulets

the snow caved to the wet deluge pouring from my coat
around me hoards of revelers milled
in dark masses against the silver night snow
like marauding invaders they bellowed
delirious in the New Year
their happiness unbridled
unaware

some ask me to flip the switch off
everybody has problems they say
don't be a drag they mean

motionless in the snow
the rain slapped against my parka
and burned the crystals below me and to my side
the tip of hair next to my ear felt like ice
while the rivulets pooled and froze
somewhere out of sight

Slept for 13 hours last night...

Besides some rather obtuse dreams, I was only awoken once by the pounding syncopated rhythms of fucking above my head. The neighbors are the height of schedulers, consistently engaging in coitus between 11:15 pm and 12:15 am. While it may not be every night, it's certainly enough to classify as a routine. Good for them. Not so much for me who has found the natural curiosity of others in the throngs to have worn thin. So while their penetration takes place upstairs, another takes place below: my fingertips in my ear holes. Though yes, I am a little jealous.

Cash in the pocket...

Bout my tips

little toes of tiddly winks
at counter throes and deft advertisements
cue'd all time lows
and misguided hijinks
once again force me to spend
these little bills
on my little me

There was an eclipse... I slept

Flying into San Jose - Mineta International Airport two nights ago was a cathartic experience. A full moon posted high in the sky as I watched the clouds grow and weave over the city below me, the gridwork of little alien creatures stuck thinking of only what's right in front of them.
I enjoyed the bank of vapors below me rolling forward with the plane, watching how fast they were really moving.
The stewardess served free beer - a vanilla porter from Mactanarnahans.

I left the juice out...

It's cranberry and I'm drinking it though I know it was at room temp for quite a while. Still, I can't tell if it's gone bad or not. Like I said, it's cranberry juice.

Withdrawwwwooollllly Manmyth...

I've come into a social ice age of sorts where I can't smile around others without immediately frowning from insecurity. Not healthy I don't think but perhaps natural. Ice age...

______________________


she says it's higher than average
I say mine's average
I really mean its low

we talk sometimes too fast
my face flushes
but she hasn't left
they never leave
until they're gone
and nothing happens

laying on my floor
could be painting the Sistine Chapel right now
we'd have more in common then
or something to talk about

Billy Corgan could play every part
I think about Glynis
while I walk
the rain feels exceptional
and cold with its big slow drops
I put my hood on but it's just cotton

__________________

Moog synthesizer Peter and the Wolf...

'It's so silly. It's whimsical.'

The Pope of Chopsticks karaoke fame expresses his opinion.

I sit idly by and drink an iced americano. In winter. Though the rain storm is temperate, which is nice.

Aimless sleep while it rains outside...

My cave, my wonderful apartment of mildew and warmth, kept me cozy for hours upon hours this morning and it was only with great reluctance did I venture from the warmth of bed. Of course there was also someone tapping on what I thought was my window but actually was the window of my neighbor.
I watched Liverpool lose to Newcastle and was about to turn the television off when I came across the CGI cartoon Garfield, which I watched for a minute or two and discovered was an episode about Egyptology.
Still I turned it off and dove into the web for some trivial information, racking my brain to recall what of interest had been requiring query. Ah ha! Why does swiping a credit card wrapped in a plastic bag effectively allow it to work whereas before it did not? I searched and discovered an answer: namely that many card reading devices are too sensitive and little incongruities in the surface throw off the sequence reading of magnetic pegs imprinted in the strip. When the plastic bag covers the card surface, it essentially desensitizes the reader by blocking its direct contact with the surface.
Anyway, not the best explanation but the story isn't quite complete there. In the response thread posted by interested members, someone made available a PDF with the specific technical information about the magnetic strip on credit cards. The creator of the PDF? Anadigm Inc., a company from Cupertino, CA, situated on Stevens Creek BLVD. Where on Stevens Creek BLVD? Right next to highway 85, in a building that shares a parking lot with my old work and mainstay bar Paul and Eddie's. Oh, but Anadigm isn't located there any longer. Instead a family chiropractor's office is there. Their name? Garfield.
Odd.

Things fall apart... such as my memory of where certain quotes come from...

I first encountered these lines as the title to the great break-out album by The Roots. "You Got Me", originally written about Jill Scott but sung by Erykah Badu, even contains the lines, about a relationship, 'things fall apart'. We used to sing this song in my freshman dorm room...
But I new it was from somewhere: the Nigerian author Chinua Achebe's English-language novel from the fifties of the same title. But it goes back further - William Butler Yeats, in a poem entitled The Second Coming.
So they're Yeats' lines. Only the thread then lead me back to another great whom I cannot escape, Percy Bysshe Shelley. From his Prometheus Unbound:
The good want power, but to weep barren tears.
The powerful goodness want: worse need for them.
The wise want love, and those who love want wisdom;
And all best things are thus confused to ill.
We, human creatures, always want what we don't have. Knowing this, I continue wanting.

War

My brother-in-law, Davenport Danube, has a business trip planned to Singapore. Never mind that I'd thoroughly relish an experience in such a pulsing metropolis, the question has arisen, is it safe for him to travel to Asia in light of the recent skirmishes between the Koreas and the mobilization of allies in the region?
No, Davenport shouldn't travel to Singapore. Never mind that it's over 2880 miles (4640 km) from South Korea. It's still in Asia.
No, never mind Davenport. You have a wife and child. I could - nay - I MUST go in your stead.
Singapore, sweet. Did you know that Singapore is the capital of Singapore, it's own political entity? Nor did I.
Anyway, war. Never the answer right? But always the eventuality. Cynical I know, but our nature as humans is one of power and greed. I believe in small, tribal communities that coexist with others in a shared prairie of our minds. Only there's still fighting and there's still death. A utopia of perpetual peace, now that's a inhuman.