I dunno what it is.

Maybe it's just being sick, still, with something I can't shake (or with a series of things which I can't fight off 'cause the other thing lowered my resistance). Maybe it's that everyone's sick; i talked to friends yesterday from Philly and San Jose, both of whom came down with horrid ailments that sounds exactly alike the same day. People around work of coughing, people around school are doing the same.

Or maybe it's the fucking weather. God. I'm not used to this. But it looks like the sun is creeping out now, so maybe, maybe, we're tail-ending this deluge.

Maybe it's about work; I'm so fucking far behind now that I feel like I'm ahead, the other rats about to lap me on the track. I'm behind in a way that feels like I'll never catch up, yet not sick enough that I can use the excuse anymore.

Maybe it's the mounting stack of things to do, taxes, bills, the entropy of a household this time of year when all the things put off can no longer be put off.

Or maybe it's simply the pain and yearning that comes with spring's approach, my body knowing the season even though my mind says otherwise. I feel the sap flowing in the trees and the flowers trying to bloom and my body feels a pull somewhere, somehow.

Whatever it is, I can't fucking write. I keep trying. I was up last night with a bout of insomnia and trying to blog; nothing. Fucking nothing.

I need to talk about stuff, and I just find I can't, like my fingers stiffen and my mind whirls and the power of speech is gone. And it leaves me with the usual mute frustration, the raw, disconnected feeling, the vague anger with no good outlet. Teeth grinding, head hurting. Pressure.

You know. The usual.

Let's hear it for stupid, pointless holidays.

You know, it's funny; one of the things that's weird about america is our lack of a native culture. The native in native culture includes rain dances and chants; but that really hasn't seeped into american popular culture due to the, you know, genocide and culture-cide of a century and a half ago.

The bottom line is, we're not from around here. We're gumbo. We're stone soup. We're fusion cuisine, a weird mis-mash of elements that don't always work together as a cohesive whole. We're a fuckin' mashup.

What that means is that our traditions, our holidays, our cultural fests and ceremonies, one and all, are borrowed, brought in with a baggage by immigrants from a thousand other places. Our native culture is a shaken cocktail of cultures from other places, most of which is celebrate in a shallow, surface sort of way for no real reason but to celebrate.

Now, I'm not putting down celebration for celebration's sake. Not in the least. However, it's a funny thing we do here in america.

Think of our major holidays; easter, christmas, independence day, thanksgiving. Our minor ones; st patrick's day, halloween, valentine's day. O these, two - thanksgiving and independence day - have relevant cultural meaning. One's a harvest festival, both celebrate our nation's birth.

The others though; all of them borrowings from religions, yet sanitized, stripped of meaning. Who are st patrick and st valentine? Who actually knows, if not raised catholic? Our christmas is a cultural fest of reindeer and santa and candy-canes, our easter is a festival of sunny debauchery for some, candy and colored eggs for others. Oh, sure, we know its connected in some way to some guy who died and came back, but that's not what the holiday's about.

Even Halloween is a mish-mash for us, ancient celtic/druid/pagen traditions, arcane and dark, weirdly mixed with catholic saint's festival days. This one is closer to a native holiday that most others, at least the modern way of celebrating it seems to be. But still, it's a blender-whirl of traditions from other places and other times.

But the ones that most stand out to be as stupid are those which still bear the names of saints. I've talked about valentine's day before, and though I never finished writing it, has another piece on it this year; about the absurd sanitization of a holiday that's all about the beauty of physical, carnal love. About how we've turned it into a sugar-and-flowers day where hallmark makes bank and kids exchange meaningless bits of paper. A day that's intended to celebrate love in it's most physical, carnal sense has the blood and sweat and come drained out of it, replaced with a glucose drip.

And then there's st patricks day. A day that's all about a saint that means little to the modern american experience. Some guy named Paddy. So we celebrate it by pretending to be irish, putting fucking green food coloring in our beer, drinking irish whisky and irish coffee, and eating corn beef n' cabbage, and who the fuck cares? Sure, it celebrates one immigrant group, but why that one? Why not the italians, the french, the scots, the africans, the chinese? Why not the pacific islanders? Why not the people who owned this land before we swept in and slaughtered them?

I am irish. Way back, when the ancestors started coming over here from the horrific conditions an ocean away, my ancestors came from scotland, ireland, england, wales, holland, germany, france, and for all I know every other weird little country in europe. All you need to do is look at me to know I'm a celt. Go look at Mary Queen of Scots and you'll see has my nose. Go look at those doughy boys fighting wars in europe and you can see my heritage.

That's my culture, part of it; yet I look at the nonsense of america drinking green beer and singing danny boy and wonder why we all care. Why will we all go out tonight and drink and drive and celebrate when we're not celebrating anything?

It's because we don't have anything real to celebrate. It's because our culture lacks real, resonant holidays. It's because our country, with that cursed work ethic we're founded on, has to damned few holidays at all.

Look at other cultures and start counting the holidays. Asia, Europe, latin America; you can't seem to look at a calendar page without finding a holiday. Holidays where businesses close, where kids are set free from school. Holidays where people parade and dance.

Here in the USA, we get a bizarre, small handful of holidays where people actually stop working, and apart from that, holidays that are meaningless in terms of our never-ending work calendar. No break for carnival; no break for columbus day or MLK day. No break to celebrate the new wine or the fresh october beer, no break to celebrate our founding fathers. No break to celebrate the native cultures we obliterated in founding this country.

So we make our own. Some saint? Let's drink. Some other saint? Let's buy candy. Someone got nailed to a cross? Let's dye eggs. Birth of a prophet? Let's cut a tree down and put it in our living rooms and exchange wrapped gifts. End of summer? Let's put on costumes and beg for candy house-to-house.

Now, understand I'm not in any way lamenting the existence of stupid, pointless, made-up holidays. What I'm getting at is this - we do it because we have to, because we as a culture lack a common framework of background, religion, genetic origin. We have no cultural common ground, so we make one up; and choose the most pointless holidays as our focus points.

St valentine means nothing to modern america. Likely there was no st valentine, or at least not one we can point to as the st valentine. St. Patrick means little more, unless you're a generation or so from Ireland. He's just another guy with an 'st' in front of his name, or another name on the list of saints to pray to for help in case of snake bite.

I'm trying to think of memorable st paddy's days in my past. It's a blur; green beer and irish whiskey, huge steaming pots of corn beef (and how many of us have yacked corn beef post st paddy's day over the years?). as a child, getting pinched because I wouldn't wear green ("But I have green eyes I don't have to," I'd say, and of course now, I have green tattoos). Drunk, is mostly what I remember; drunk in a forced we're supposed to get drunk way, not because I actually felt any will to celebrate. Drunk, and listening to Horslips and the Pogues, the Crusaders, the Clancy Brothers, the Chieftains. Drunk on beer and Jamison and waking up not knowing where I was.

It's a funny collage of blurry memory, And with few key exceptions, the memories come with a shrug. Eh, whatever.

I'd like to say I'll be going out tonight to listen to fiddles and pipes and dancing a jig in my best kilt; more likely I'll be sitting home watching Deadwood. No dancing, no piping, no waking up bruised and confused.

Maybe it's just that I'm getting to be an old fucker, but celebrating nothing just seems empty.

Ever wake up, for no good reason, just sort of pissed at the world?

Actually, for some people the question is, do you ever not.

But anyway, that's not usually how I wake up. Usually I'm ok. Maybe not great, but ok. I don't mind being awake; sun in the window, or the sound of rain, and the promise of one of the best things in my day, that first cup of strong, dark coffee.

Today though, some dream, or some turn of moon or some other turmoil in the back of my mind soaked across the line that divides subconscious mind from mood, and I woke wanting to hit something.

I don't even feel bad this morning, physically, which is a good thing; the first moring in a week I havn't woken with a a sinus headache.

Yet - this low, murky feeling of rage. This vague desire to do harm with no real specific target and no ability to communicate what it is. No ability to communicate at all; I've been trying to answer emails all morning and just keep sitting and staring, hands hovering over the keyboard. Nothing. No words come.

I'm not even mad at anyone, or anything. It's a static charge of annoyance that needs to arc someplace.

Normally I'd feel better - food, coffee, exercise, these simple things please me. Even doing crunches until my muscles burned didn't sear away the feeling. I would go back to bed but after three cups of my black liquid crack, there's no sleeping, not for a good twelve hours at least, if that.

I feel like Al Swearingen in the Deadwood episode Here Was a Man; "I need to fuck something! Trixie, get up here. And bring the bottle."

Yeah. That'd work.

I ran across this over in Buck's blog; or rather, I ran across a reference to it. Buck helped me with translations, which I then cross-checked on a number of web sites.

I do not know the origin of this, nor do I know of it's accuracy, nor am I certain the translations are correct. Details, these are; It spoke to me.

Samurai no Kokoroe - Precepts of the Samurai.

• Jiko o shiru koto
       (Know yourself)
• Jibun no kimeta koto wa saigo made kikko suru koto
       (Always follow through on commitments)
• Ikanaru hito demo sonke suru koto
       (Respect everyone)
• Kankyo ni sayu sarenai tsuyoi shinnen o motsu koto
       (Hold strong convictions that cannot be altered by your circumstances)
• Mizu kara teki o tsukuranai koto
       (Don't make an enemy of yourself)
• Koto ni oite kokaisezu
       (Live without regrets)
• Hito to no deai o taisetsu ni suru koto
       (Be certain to make a good first impression)
• Miren o motanai koto
       (Don't cling to the past)
• Yakusoku o yaburanai koto
       (Never break a promise)
• Hito ni tayoranai koto
       (Don't depend on other people)
• Hito o onshitsu shinai koto
       (Don't speak ill of others)
• Ikanaku koto ni oite mo osorenai koto
       (Don't be afraid of anything)
• Hito no iken o soncho suru koto
       (Respect the opinions of others)
• Hito ni taishite omoiyari o motsu koto
       (Have compassion and understanding for everyone)
• karuhazumi ni koto o okosanai koto
       (Don't be impetuous (rash, passionately impulsive)).
• Chiisa na koto demo taisetsu ni suru koto
       (Even little things must be attended to)
• Kansha no kimochi o wasurenai koto
       (Never forget to be appreciative)
• Issho kenmei monogoto o suru koto
       (Make a desperate effort)
• Jinsei no mokuhyo o sadameru koto
       (Have a plan for your life)
• Shoshin o wasurubekarazaru koto
       (Never lose your "Beginner's Spirit")

I'm not a zen guy so much. Not into the eastern philosophy, the meditation. Yet, I see myself as some sort of warrior, even if I've not always got an enemy to face down, or if the enemy is within. The sword may be imaginary, may be made of words, but it is the fighter with whom I most identify.

And so, when I read this code, this set of rules, it seems to apply.

I do not agree with every line of it, nor do I measure up on all points. And yet as a whole, if feels right.

Certain lines of it speak to me to the extent that I began thinking of a tattoo; wondering what these look like in Kanji.

Ikanaku koto ni oite mo osorenai is one such - how can one not wish to embody it? But more, there's another that says tattoo to me for a special reason.

Koto ni oite kokaisezu - Live without regrets. This is something for which I strive, and mostly, mostly, I've managed it. But it also takes me back to a memory, one of the last conversations I had with my father, or at least one of the last meaningful ones we had.

"What if you regret your tattoos?" he asked me, when I first started to get them. And it made me think. I considered this for several moments before I answered him.

"I have no choice - thus, I will not."

It was a moment when I made a lifetime choice about regret; a choice that applied to tattoos specifically at that moment, but as time went on, a choice I've tried to apply to all my life.

I strive for this; yet there are regrets in my life I feel daily. And thus I strive to overcome regret.

Koto ni oite kokaisezu. I want to wear it.

Darling remember from when you come to me
that I’m the pretender,
I’m not what I’m supposed to be
but who could know, lf I’m a traitor?
time's the revelator, revelator.

          --Gillian Welch, Revelator

I wish I had an mp3 of that song so I could put it up for you to hear, it's beautiful. I only have a m4p version I got from the itunes store and they're not sharable. I'd bitch about that but (looks at paycheck) it's not in my best interest to do so.

Better, I wish I could put up an mp3 of my friend Ken's version of it. Welch's is pretty, but Ken's, with backup by Heather Courtney and (hell, I guess her name is Lyndie Way, but I'm not sure about that). Ken's is intense and passionate. A case where the song writer and the cover artist combine to make something wonderful that the songwriter alone doesn't deliver.

Today marks two years of blogging for yours truly. And as with last year, I feel I should be saying something about it. I failed last year. But I have very very strong feelings about anniversaries, commemorations of dates and events. I remember these things, have marked them on myself with tattoos. I'm the one who says "You know, one year ago today, we met". I already mentioned that this year marks 30 years since my first piercing. So these things matter to me.

In so many ways Welch's lyrics, above, say more about my feelings here than anything I can come up with. I’m the pretender, I’m not what I’m supposed to be.

My long-time readers (um. both of them) know I started this to talk about writing, because I couldn't think of anything else to blog about at the time. I had hoped, after writing Wanton earlier that year, to use this blog to help me hone my writing skill and harness my creativity.

Best Laid Plans and all that. In fact this blog has been something completely other than that. An ego monument, a place to express myself, an anchor around my neck, a listening ear in both good ways and bad. It's gotten me some good friends, though in fact many of them came via orkut, or other sites like the erotica forum where I posted my novella. It's in many ways helped me be more open about my feelings. It's taught me some new technical skills, but it's also given me a huge distraction and time suck.

I don't know, in the end, if this is good for me, or bad. I flip-flop on that weekly, and as I've said, three or four times I've given it up and torn my blog down and said fuck blogging, it's all over. I've written almost nothing since Wanton, only put up two stories (a silly piece about santa and a sex-dream story inspired by a long-ago celebrity crush). I spend more time in a state of writer's block than I spend writing.

It's been an intense two years. I've learned more about love and hurt the last two years than I think I ever knew in my life up 'til that point. In many ways these last two years have encompassed some of my highest highs and lowest lows, and the shock waves from all that will not dissipate for a long while yet. In many ways I found myself these last two years, or let myself be myself, stopped being what other people expected of me.

Maybe the pretender is the shell on the ground behind me. Or maybe I'm fooling myself again and what I'm doing is simply killing time and not doing anything.

In either case, this marks two years in my life where everything changed and yet everything is the same, and I'm the worse for the wear, with new scars inside and out, only some of them self-inflicted.

I feel like I should be proud or angry. Yet all I can manage is sad.

Time's the revelator.

Swiped from Herr Wolfe, who is certainly a gentleman and a scholar. No idea the true origin of this, but it isn't as trite as most of these.

This is what happens to me when I'm in that emotional, unable to express myself state. When the poet in me wakes up tries to claw it's way out. That poet has no means of egress; on my best day I am a writer of decent prose, but poetry eludes me completely.

Yet what I feel, some days, can only be rendered correctly in poetry; and thus I wind up seeking the words of others to express what's inside.

I haven't heard this song in years - and just reading the lyrics I remember why it almost brings me to tears every time I hear it.

Standing firm on this stony ground
The wind blows hard
Pulls these clothes around
I harbour all the same worries as most
The temptations to leave or to give up the ghost
I wrestle with an outlook on life
That shifts between darkness and shadowy light
I struggle with words for fear that they'll hear
But Orpheus sleeps on his back still dead to the world
Sunlight falls, my wings open wide
There's a beauty here I cannot deny
And bottles that tumble and crash on the stairs
Are just so many people I knew never cared
Down below on the wreck of the ship
Are a stronghold of pleasures I couldn't regret
But the baggage is swallowed up by the tide
As Orpheus keeps to his promise and stays by my side
Tell me, I've still a lot to learn
Understand, these fires never stop
Believe me, when this joke is tired of laughing
I will hear the promise of my Orpheus sing
Sleepers sleep as we row the boat
Just you the weather and I gave up hope
But all of the hurdles that fell in our laps
Were fuel for the fire and straw for our backs
Still the voices have stories to tell
Of the power struggles in heaven and hell
But we feel secure against such mighty dreams
As Orpheus sings of the promise tomorrow may bring
Tell me, I've still a lot to learn
Understand, these fires never stop
Please believe, when this joke is tired of laughing
I will hear the promise of my Orpheus sing

     --David Sylvian, Orpheus

There are little things we do that get us through the day.

A bite a chocolate in the afternoon. A cup of tea, or a stiff shot of espresso.

A conversation with a friend, a favorite blog; a little bad teevee or a gossip magazine.

Sometimes it's something good for us - a run, or a workout at the gym, a basketball game with friends. Sometimes it's not so good; too much to drink, drugs. We smoke too much pot or snort something or swallow something for pain when the pain isn't physical; we go for the bottle and crawl inside because it feels safe in there.

Sometimes it's simple pleasures; cooking or putting the kids to bed, doing something just for oneself, doing something that's easy to finish and mark off as complete.

That's what blogging is for a lot of us, I think. Something to help get through the day. Someone to talk to, someone to listen. In many ways a tribe, a group, a gang to belong to. Someone to listen to you with that bizarre intimacy faceless communication provides.

Some days though, you need a little extra. More than what gets you through. More than your drug of choice or your social ritual, your little tasks, your daily entertainments. Some days you just need something good to happen out of the blue.

The littlest things sometimes - a compliment where you don't expect it, a little affection, a lucky break. A streak of productivity.

I wish there was a magic elixir; something in precious finite supply; a drop to produce those good moments when you need them, those lucky turns, those tiny gifts of good fortune. I'm not greedy though; that's why even in my fantasy, it's a tiny supply, not to be wasted.

Good things come out of the blue too rarely in life. for this reason I try to be honest with people; honest and free with my praise and my compliments. I want to be the person who makes someone's day, the compliment out of the blue. I've been known to say "you smell good" to a stranger, to tell people who look fantastic that they look fantastic, for no reason other than that they made me smile. I try to leave the unexpectedly large tip, to thank the people who do thankless work. When something good comes, unexpected and unasked, unhoped and unsolicited, it makes one's world better in tiny ways.

Unexpected pleasures are, nearly always, the sweetest.

I recall last year trying to write an entry about giving thanks. I thought I'd posted it, and I find I had the same issue then as I have now - I can't seem to quite find what I want to say.

Like the silly cultural tradition of the new year's resolution, we in america, at least (does anyone outside the US practice something like this? I don't know) take one day of the year to 'give thanks'.

This, like christmas, is ostensibly a religious celebration. The act of giving thanks is in fact, thanking your chosen deity for whatever you have.

It's the funny dichotomy of american culture; we were founded in many ways by religious pariahs, zealots who fled home country rarther than assimilate into a less-devoute population. So much of the very core of american culture is, still, puritan and deeply god-fearing. The notion of the first thanksgiving is one of a feast held to honor god for providing.

Yet, we are also the nation that has Separation of Church and State written into the most basic foundation of our culture, the constitution.

Thus we have Thanksgiving and Christmas days as national holidays, yet we're not able to call it christmas in school anymore, we have to refer to 'winter holidays'.

I'm not a christian. In any way. I've talked about it before - my atheist upbringing, my lack of any faith or spirituality. I celebrate these holidays as cultural tradition, not as spiritual or religious festival. Yet they're important to me in a deep and fundamental way. I love the holiday traditions. I love christmas music, lights, tinsel. I love the fall colors, the traditions of ballgames and parades. These are my culture as an american. Dress up and decoration, songs and games, friends and family. Tribe.

But I also know what lies under it all. Deeper than western cultural traditions, deeper than christian gods.

I wanna be Titus Pullo.

(Warning, there are minor spoilers toward the end of this, after the cut)

If you're watching Rome you know what I'm talkin' about. If you're not watching Rome, well, we're down to the last episode, so wait for the DVD to come out; which should hit when next season rolls around. Or wait for HBO to start a re-show.

Rome is a fantastic show; it takes a few episodes to get going and knowing your roman history helps a little since they don't always explain the relationships and historical significance of everything. But once the show gets going, it's fucking brilliant, well written, well acted, incredibly well cast.

But I've said all that before.

The thing I want to talk about, though, is Titus Pullo.

I'm having one of those weirdly incommunicado weeks. I can't find anything to write, I don't seem to be talking to anyone.

I just can't seem to communicate. I can blame this on Resident Evil 4, or on the fact that I just started working out and it's eating up my time, making me tired, and leaving me sore. Or the fact that I'm deep into the latest Bujold Chalion fantasy (Which fucking rocks - when did she get this good?)

That's all bull though. The bottom line is, I'm just feeling fucking fried, mentally and emotionally. I'm in one of those places where I drop out so bad I start getting mail from people who want to know if I'm mad at them, or worse, I start to think they're mad at me.

I need to sleep late and then have noplace to go for a week. I need to take mid-day naps in a hammock under a palm tree and then wake up to lunchtime rum drinks. Instead, I'm looking out the window and seeing night already, and I'm remembering how much I hate this time of year, when the clocks change and suddenly it's dark before my work day is anywhere close to over.

God, it's been a long time since I've felt tropical air. It feels like a whole fucking lifetime has passed in the fifteen months since last I swam in warm ocean. Two lifetimes maybe. And I'm still dreaming about sailboats.

The nipples are healing well. But I'm remembering how fucking long it takes to heal these things. They are just aching to have someone lick and suck on them. Maybe if I pick up a dental dam...

Piercings are made to be sucked on.

I want to be writing. I have a novel, or a short story, or something, forming in my head. A deranged sort of psycho-drama (well, duh, what else). I have models for three characters, and a vague plot line. But I know I can't get anywhere. My life has no space in it right now for the kind of drop-everything week I need for a writing project, the kind of week that birthed my novella. Best I can do is write an outline and hope it sticks well enough to write later.

I know, I owe pictures. Halloween pix of the kids, plus I'll-show-you-mine-you-show-me-yours nipple pictures. Soon. Promise. And maybe one of the dozen entries I have unfinished will finally see completion and I'll have a meaningful update here.

Just, you know, never assume I don't love you to death, just because you don't hear from me.

Razors pain you; Rivers are damp; 
Acids stain you; And drugs cause cramp.
Guns aren't lawful; Nooses give; Gas smells awful; You might as well live.

I bet 'ol Dorthy was a riot at parties.

I'm not really a fatalist. I don't really think very many things were meant to happen.

Ok, there are a few people - very, very few - who walked into my life and I felt, this had to be, this person needed to be here, and the universe would have brought us together somehow. People who changed me, changed my life.

But as a rule, I don't think there are things fated, or meant to be.

And then I look at pictures of the ninth ward vanishing under water again and I think, maybe some primitive thing, something that was here before europeans walked this continent, has chosen to take it's land back. And maybe we need to just give it back.

Sigh.

I'm afraid to look at any more news. I'm afraid to look at the pictures tomorrow morning when Rita hits ground.

I spent my sunday not being at the computer. I think this was a good choice; I'm arm-wrestling a lotta frustration and staring at a screen on which I'm unable to do anything useful makes it unquestionably worse.

I managed to sleep unusually late, thanks to lovely chemicals; what was was that old DuPont quote? Without Chemistry, Life Itself Would Be Impossible.. I woke just in time to make fine, strong coffee (Peets of course - there's simply no better coffee the world over), and then tune in a football game.

Ok. So my team sucked. They basically conducted a clinic in how to suck. Big deal though, it beats that empty, mocking screen. Final score? I think it was about seven hundred to minus 5 or something. If we were not in negative numbers, we should have been. There goes my fantasy team stats for another week - can I have a mulligan on this week and start over?

It was one of those afternoons where it feels, for a day, like summer isn't over. Hot, bright, clear, with the feeling that there's not just a day, but an entire season before me. A life before me. Starting fresh.

I walked out and looked up and breathed in a summer smell, and wanted it not to end, ever. I wanted to walk and keep walking. I felt like if I could just follow the sun it would lead me to a place where summer never ended. But it's not so simple as that and I can't always simply make the choice and have it go as I dream.

So instead, I gathered up my children and spent several hours simply walking, exploring our neighborhood, with stops for lunch in a new italian deli, and for beverages in the odd little market that still scratches a living in town, somehow.

We walked until out feet hurt; Olivia's outgrown another pair of boots. Like me at her age, shoes seems to shrink before our eyes.

We returned home, finally, to change shoes, drink and then we needed to feed Ruby's obsession with goofy-golf.

We spent the rest of a sunny, dusty afternoon knocking small, brightly-colored balls about on ratty outdoor carpet; I entertained my children with snippets of old monty python routines. My hovercraft is FULL of EELS!

I'll finish my day with a short workout, something I'm trying to get myself back to. I'd forgotten how much I need that, how much better I feel when my muscles have the vague ache of weightlifting. So I'll do a short set of curls, some pushups, as many crunches as I can stand. Just the basics, though I need to be back at the gym, I need to get myself back to heavy leg-press sets and squats and bench. I've never felt better, in my adult life, than when I have a routine of heavy lifting.

And then, I think, a glass a scotch, and if my eyes will stay open, tonight's RockStar INXS. This is the last week and I'll miss it. Though I may not stay away that long.

Simple sundays.

Still though, I thought, as the sun was setting, I want to follow that sun. I want to be where summer never ends.

Someday.

I'm having a terrible time with any sort of communication these days. I can't seem to get a blog entry finished (I have at least a half dozen started). I'm not able to maintain an IM session for more than a few flirty comments. I'm not responding to email. I'm not able to maintain a conversation in SMS text.

I'm feeling sad and angry and withdrawn, and finding no good outlet for all this.

Part of it's simple logistics. I just picked up a stack of new responsibilities at work - basically, I wound up the defacto owner of every major internal web site for all of my company's hardware engineering organization. I didn't exactly mean to do that, but once it started to pick up momentum in my direction, I wasn't gonna stop it. But I'm having to un-do a lot of very bad work that contractors did, in a hurry. The goal is to eventually get this all into a content management system, but god knows how long THAT will take. So I'm suddenly a web monkey and having to figure out the basics of fucking css.

This is on top of my existing job; so now in effect I have two.

So that's part of it. I just got an order of magnitude busier. I woke up thinking, not about my morning coffee or about what I'd like to be doing to some nasty little slut or about what I was gonna do with my weekend. I woke up thinking about fucking css and all the work I have to do.

But it's more than that. I feel defeated in some way. I feel things in my life slipping away from me, people slipping away. And I feel like my own ability to communicate is going with all this.

I need to write. I need to create and communicate. Words are my tools, my way of knowing my universe, and when my command of language slips, I feel as if I'm disconnected.

I keep flashing on the last shot in the last episode of firefly; Jubal Early spinning in space, isolated and utterly alone in the universe, insulated by the thin skin of his space suit. And he says - "Well, here I am." Like nothing matters so much.

For the first time in I can't remember how many years, I got up this morning and didn't check my email first thing. I get about 100 automated reports and notices every night, system statuses, database backup reports, disk space checkers. Same stuff every day. I always log in and check email first thing, in case something has gone badly haywire. And because, almost always, I have some conversation going with someone. And today I didn't even open email until I'd made coffee, had some breakfast, settled four kid fights, looked at the usual morning news web sites.

I knew there was nothing but bad news in email. Bad news and empty silence. Well, here I am.

I need to fucking do something.

I'm absolutely jittering today, waiting for word from Seth on the drive recovery. Yeah, I know it's too soon, we really could not hear before tomorrow at earliest and friday at latest. But something in my head decided it was today and I can't stop checking email and looking at my IM client (adiumX) to see if Seth's logged on. At which point I'll have to resist the urge to pester him.

Thanks to glorious chemicals, I managed a decent night's sleep last night. God I needed it. Also thanks to my friend Mike, a stray brought home by yummy-ex-nanny Andrea (who brought over her photo ipod last night so she could show me pictures of her ass - I love this girl). Mike's havin' a bad patch in his relationship, and needed some love; for Mike, this means cooking for someone. He made a fantastic salad of spinach, maytag bleu, chopped almonds, fresh sweet corn, balsamic and a light oil (we were out of EVO, but we all agreed that was ok, the lighter oil let the ingredients shine in this salad). He followed with great grilled rib-eyes and chard sauteed in bacon fat with a little cider vinegar, and mashed potatoes. An excellent dinner, and all I had to do was clean up around Mike while he played my usual role of chef.

This is why, back in days of yore when I had dotcom money, I built a giant kitchen. So people would come to me and cook; an evening in the kitchen is one of my absolute favorite things.

It made for a relaxed evening, rounded out by watching the DVD of Sin City, which I just got. My god, I love this movie. It's sheer brilliance, and a second viewing just makes it better. I was noticing minor touches I hadn't seen the first go-round, and the noir crime-novel-b-movie dialog, which sounds stilted at first, becomes poetry. Everything about this movie is beautiful, casting, visuals, pacing, music, lighting, language. If you have not seen it, go buy the DVD. Don't even bother to rent it, go buy it now.

An evening like that helped, but I'm still vibrating today. I just want word back - did we get any data or not? I wanna move back to the m'sphere and finish cleaning up, but I don't wanna rebuild everything until we know if we have to.

More coffee. That'll help. Mmmmm, Peets!

I swear I haven't slept more than three hours any night the last week.

I'm getting on to that fog state where I'm sleepy and wired; I fall asleep when I'm watching TV but can't sleep when I get in bed.

I need to do someone some violence, but it needs to be, you know, the good hurt kind of violence.

Soon, if this keeps going, I'll get to the hallucination phase. That's where it gets entertaining.

I dunno what the fuck it is. Ok, well, that's not true, completely. Some of it's the cocktail of stress my life has become the last few months; new speed bumps in my road, old speed bumps come back. The usual, only more. And there's the low-grade mental and physical health shit that comes with that; not getting enough exercise, drinking too much, thinking about sex and escape all day and not having the time or energy or whatever for enough of either.

The wonder of it all is that I have not been sick, really sick, in almost a year. With kids in school, I'm used to having at least two major colds and a sinus infection every winter.

But it all adds up to no sleep. I managed to get myself on a school schedule last week, driving my kids to early day camps, and my clock's set for early wake-up already; yet my sleep-time clock (damn, I keep typing that as 'cock' - see where my brain is at?) is still set for well past midnight no matter how I try to get it earlier.

I need to channel is all into something. I need to get back to the gym and start pumping iron, I need to get my bicycle tuned up so I can ride it (21 gears don't help much when the front derailleur won't shift). And I need to get my head off of things I want but can't have. I need to get back to living in the here-and-now.

Or I need to go back to using narcotics.

Who needs a good spanking? I need to take out a little something on you. Now, not fair offering if you're far away and can't travel.

[made with ecto]

I can't stop thinking about sun and sea today.

It's been a while since I've sat at work and daydreamed about a sandy beach, diving exotic oceans, sailing sunny seas. Today I can't stop picturing it.

I want to sleep in a hammock under a palm tree. I want to walk on a beach and feel my skin go tan. I want that salty feeling my skin has when I've been in and out of the ocean all day.

I need to be on a boat. It's been too long. I feel good when I'm on a boat, at one with the universe. I'm made to be at sea, not land-locked in a valley.

I need to get the fuck outta here.

[made with ecto]

I have all sorts of shit I want to blog about. A movie I watched saturday (awful!), doing kid-stuff with my kids (simple pleasures), cooking, a book I just finished (very good). Another movie I watched last night (funny, and deeply odd).

But I just -- can't. I'm feeling too low, too frustrated, too spent. I just can't find the words.

I was trying to comment on a friend's blog last night, and I couldn't even find the words for that, just stared at the gray background with my fingers on the keys and had -- nothing.

I'm again struggling with the urge to take it all down, or archive it all and start over.

So the short review of Howl's Moving Castle.

As Miyazaki goes, don't expect Spirited Away or Princess Mononoke. It's not even close to the magic of those films.

But as films go -- well, it's still Miyazaki. And he's fucking brilliant.

As always, it's beautiful. Sweeping vistas, skies that glow with life, inventive creatures, motion that's not like any other animator. It's inventive and clever.

Unlike the other films, though, there are plot and pacing issues. The plot makes little sense, and the title character never really makes any sense, vain, shallow and cowardly one moment, brave and honorable the next. We never really see any reason for anyone to love him, yet love is supposed to be the motivation for much of the plot. It's a muddle, but a light-weight one. There are also moments that drag, where characters are talking to each other without it seeming very relevant.

There's plenty to like though; the main character, a girl names Sofi who's under a curse that turns her into an old woman, seems to change ages continually throughout the film in a deeply surreal way; this wasn't an accident, I think Miyazaki is saying something with it, but I couldn't quite crack the code. The voice acting is low key, with good turns by Lauren Bacall, Blythe Danner and Jean Simmons, though Christian Bale is entirely too manly as Howl.

Unexpectedly, Billy Crystal's vocal performance as Calcifer, a fire demon, was wonderful. Usually when they put someone funny in a part like this, it screws up the character, as with Phil Hartman doing the cat in Kiki. Here, for some reason, Crystal's performance makes it work.

It's well worth seeing; I'm hoping the weaknesses were due to it being a story from outside source, not due to any slippage of Miyazaki's talent.

My father's day was pretty much uneventful. No one fought, no one cried. The kids and I went to the Winchester Mystery House, a place that seems to have endless entertainment value for Olivia, and then I took off and had a little time to myself while the family made me dinner. Not exactly the plan I had in my mind's eye for the afternoon, but you take what you can get, and peace is not a bad description for a day. Later, I'll pour a scotch and watch Six Feet Under, and then I'm thinking good thoughts about sleep, something that's been in short supply lately.

[ of course after I wrote that, I realized that they've moved six feet under to a different night, so I had to content myself with old Monty Python episodes, but you know there's still sleep to look forward to... ]

Gimme your body
Gimme your mind
Open your heart
Pull down the blind

Art for arts sake
Money for Gods sake
Art for Arts sake
Money for Gods sake

I had one of those weekends where I think about killing off my blog, because I am in a place where rage and pain and frustration mount, and I can't seem to use the one therapy available to me -- writing.

This is where a private journal is better; yet I seem unable to write without an audience. As much as I belive in art for art's sake I can't seem to practice it, I need to send my words off to someone to have them worth saying.

Blogging is a double-edged sword. We send our words into the vast semi-permenant public record that is the internet, but eventually, we all must deal with the fact that from the click of the 'publish' button, our thoughts and deeds are public, and can, possibly, be tracked back. Even anonymous bloggers know this; look at Waiter Rant, who had to take his 'tip jar' down because it might compromise his anonymity.

Those of us who blog under a known name, real or trackable back to us, invariably confront the fact that people we know may read us. Family, friends, work, parents.

My mother reads this space. Eventually, my daughter will find it, as soon as she gets bored googling up obscure playmobile toys and decides to google daddy.

The audience constrains us. Things I might say, behind a curtain of anonymity with no names or dates, now, ever and always, I must think about. Who might this hurt? Is this someone's secret? Am I free to speak? And this becomes a spiral, tighter and tighter, til sometimes I cannot move my fingers, trapped in some fugue state, paralyzed by thought and unable to create.

Days like this, I think, shut it down, it's past it's expiration date.

Fortunately, when I think this, I don't reach for the delete key. At best I think 'take it down' and move the published files aside. The database that contains all this work, and that of other bloggers, is safe, and backed up. So if I again succumb to the desire to make it go away, the few ounces of treasure in all this won't cease to be.

But I stare at ecto's compose window, more and more as time goes by, with empty, impotent frustration, my words filtered down to nothing. I post links and pictures and funny quips, meaningless film reviews, because I feel I must say something.

Mute frustration rules my life in many ways. Words I cannot speak. My words become the match that ignites a tinderbox of trouble. Yet words are the life-blood of me, my interface to the world, my only effective tool to understand the universe. I think in language. I often think in dialog.

I am trapped in my own head, unable to break free, the tools that helped now, I fear, hurt. There is so much I want to say, and so little I can.

Some of these are true.

A girl behind glass. She thinks she's alone.

She fixes her makeup, adjusts a hair fallen out of place. A moment of personal innocence in the red glare of an amsterdam street.

She looks up to catch me watching. Eyes meet. She reddens, not from the red light of her street and profession, but simple blush, caught with the mask askew.

I smile at her, and she returns the favor, and we are two people in a street, not hooker and john.

I feel my heart beat as I walk away. Her face locked forever in my mind.

She tells a story in her thick scottish accent. Something about a dish I think we'd call hash back home. But it doesn't mattter what she's saying.

She cooks, waits tables on this small private train. As she tells me her story, she brushes hair from her forehead, wipes sweat from her brow. Her blouse is sleeveless, and her arm pits are lightly fuzzed with soft, soft golden hair.

I remember her voice as she said It's nice. The glow of her pale scottish skin. The soft, tawny gold of her hair.

I wish I could remember her name.

She wants to make a left turn in front of me, and I slow, beckon her to go. She looks at me, across the impossible gulf, two wind shields and a few yards, and smiles. She smiles not like one driver thanking another, but like sunshine, like an invitation. I wave to her as she turns, and she leans my way, and blows me a kiss.

I watch her honda in my rear-view mirror. I want to make a U-turn, but I do not.

She dances next to me at a concert. We're at the stage, the music ear-splittingly, blisteringly loud. We're not together, yet dancing, leaping, cheering, we're in each other's space.

She's smoking, and at one point my windmilling arm meets her lighted smoke.

The pain is nothing - in the drunken, sweat-slick frenzy, I barely feel it. But she sees, and kisses my arm, and shares her beer with me, and we dance the next few songs.

The show ends, and we hug, and we kiss, and then she is gone, her date confused and asking her some question my abused ears cannot hear.

I taste her sweat on my lips as I walk away.

A bar in a gray and average hotel in a gray and average city. She runs the bar, and stocks the most amazing collection of caribbean rums I've ever seen.

I order, and she fills my glass, and we talk about rum, and she tells me her dream of a sailboat; she'll write a book some day. Just the two of us there, no one else.

Her hair is short; she's tall. My senses tell me she's a lesbian, but when we talk she looks into my eyes, and my heart and groin say, maybe not, or maybe not tonight.

I drink too much rum, just to be near her, and promise to come back and see her again; but my flight plans are changed.

I hope today she's on that sailboat, writing that book. And some day, in some sunny port, I'll run into her and we'll share her latest discovery, and I'll ask her if my heart once again told me lies.

Her dress is green. Velvet. She speaks in a soft southern accent; I'm not good enough to know where she's from.

A bar far beyond my price range, in a city where thinking about a drink costs you twice what actually getting it would cost back home.

I order the most expensive brandy they have. I've no idea why. But it seems a night for such things. I sip my drink, and as I watch her bare shoulders and the fit of her dress on her hips, I'd pay twice.

I want to hear her say my name.

We talk about her tattoo design, as she waits for the artist to finish piece. Some strange primitive pattern. It doesn't make sense to me on paper, but she slips her shirt down off her shoulder to show me where it will go, and I want to taste that shoulder.

Later, when the artist places the design, it makes sense; a shoulder so perfect, a design that fits. It looks like it belongs there, and more than ever as the needle bites into flesh and the droplets of blood ooze through the ink, I want to taste that shoulder.

It's too fucking nice today in sunny Silicon Valley to be at work. My third-floor office (Yes, office, I'm no cubical-dweller) window mocks me with this fact.

I rode to work this morning on my big green Triumph, and had the best morning I've had in a couple of weeks. Coffee in my veins, sunshine and the smell of spring, almost summer.

Oh, to keep going. I took the long way to work just because it's so nice, so beautiful. I wanted to keep going, just ride, just go and go. Ride west, to the sea, and then turn south.

Or find some tramp steamer, ride aboard, work my way across the ocean, and ride off someplace with palm trees and warm beaches.

The horizon calls me. The road calls me.

Go.

Who's with me?

How many people at thirty, fourty, fifty, can say to themselves, this is the life I planned on having?

I bet I could find a few. People who knew. I'm going to be a scientist. I want to play violin in an orchestra. Some people feel a calling in life, and answer it, and have the luck, and the gift.

Most of us just sort of wind up where we are, washed onto some beach like semi-sentient flotsom. We know we made some choices there at some point, we chose that fork, not the other. Yet so much is random eddies, currents we can't control or choose not to control.

(Title shamelessly stolen from Woody Allen.)

There is no outpouring of love, ever in life, like that when we die.

My friend Chris -- Papa Christo -- my best male friend even in life. His sister died this week, by her own hand, after a long and terrible depression.

I never knew his sister Holly. I'm not sure why. I met her a time or two, but for some reason, our paths never really crossed like they did with the rest of his family. Now, it's too late, and tonight now do I learn what a sad thing that is.

I went to her funeral tonight -- well, I don't know if funeral is the right word. She was a deeply religious woman, a catholic, and it was some complex and arcane (to me) catholic thing including a bazillion hail marys, which of course make me want to climb the walls and swing from the rafters naked like a chimpanzee.

But it was the readings after that brought tears to my eyes.

I've never seen Chris cry before. I've never said "I love you" to him, not heard him say it to me. Yet tonight, before things even started, he was weeping on my shoulder and we were whispering I love you as passionately as lovers.

Tears came to my eyes so easily over his loss. More easily than ever they came over my own loss of a sibling.

So many people stood up to talk about Holly; so much love. God, this woman will be missed. And the pain over the manner of her death spoke deep into my soul, the feeling that she's been lost long before she died. I know that feeling I said to myself.

Why can't we tell those we love how we feel when they're here? Why can't they hear it, feel it, when love is shared?

I don't want to wait for my loved ones to die, to tell them how I love them. I doubt I ever said it to my father, I know I never said it to my brother. I don't even recall when last I told my mother I love her.

Love is so easily shared for the lost. It's so easy to speak well of those who are gone, to discuss the joy and light and happiness they bring. Yet when they live, the annoyances great and small plague us, loom large, larger than they should.

Does loss change that focus? Or are we simply more comfortable pouring out love to those who are beyond hearing?

I love you. Let us not be afraid to say it. I love you -- friends, family, parents, children. Tell your loved ones how you feel while you have a chance. Sometimes they're taken away before it's time, sometimes we just forget to say it, forget we feel it. Say it when you can.

Mate Care-For, protect me.

There's a book by Tim Powers, On Stranger Tides. It features, among other things, Black Beard, Stede Bonnet, Calico Jack and his wenches Anne Bonny and Mary Reed, Voodoo, and the Fountain of Youth. It's typical Powers, which is to say, not typical at all. It's an insane, inspired, possibly brilliant piece by one of the most inventive SF/Fantasy writers working today. It threads a fictional story into real historical events, fictional people in a fictional story side-by-side with real people from the pages of history books. Powers is an obsessive researcher so when he tells a story this way, it's spot on with the details.

This is also clearly a book that inspired a lot of the Pirates of the Carribean movie. I mean, the lead character is Jack Shandy, his lady is named Elizabeth, there's a ship crewed by zombies, there are curses. Too many similarities to be completely accidental. Published in '87, it predates Curse of the Black Pearl by a good fifteen years.

The beauty of Powers' work is that he peels back the cover and shows us the magic - sinister, dangerous, dark magic - hiding behind ordinary reality. He shows us a world where everything has a meaning, and everything that looks sinister actually is. Of course Blackbeard was a sorcerer, we think. How could he not be? Of course pirates practiced Vodun. How could we not already have known this?

The pirates in Powers book call on someone, a protective saint, a person, a protector. Mate Care-For, they call him. They summon him for luck, for protection. They carry charms to suppon his attention and thus summon his protective presence.

Only, he's not just that. He's someone else. He's someone more.

Maître Carrefour. Master of the cross-roads.

"We all want meaningful lives. We look for meaning in everything we do.

But suppose there IS no meaning. Supposed life is fundamentally absurd.

Suppose there's no reason or truth, or rightness in anything.

What if nothing means anything? What if nothing really matters?

Or suppose everything matters. Which would be worse?"

--Bill Watterson, 'Calvin and Hobbes'

There's a small irony that one of the great philosphers of my era is a guy who draws a comic strip about a little kid and his imaginary tiger. Such it is, however.

[composed and posted with ecto]

We need someone to blame it all on.

Someone to hate. Someone to blame. Someone to point at with the finger of righteous indignation, and say j'accuse. It's all you, you fuck, it's all your goddamned fault.

A friend just said to me, I just wish I could fast-forward life six months.

So I started thinking about it. How would that be? How would we use it? What would we miss?

It's easy to look back and see blocks of time in one's life that simply had to be endured; times when things were out of whack, when days are painful and gray, or red with anger, or simply a haze of boredom. I can see eras where I could take six months away and never miss them.

But how do you know where life's most important experiences lie? How do we know where it is that we learned something? We don't always learn from the good moments, the exciting moments, sometimes it's the agony of time's passage that teaches us about who we are.

Would you fast forward, when you have to wait?

Waiting is, of all life's challenges, my greatest. I hate lines (Well, ok, I liked *that* kind, I mean lines, as in queues). I hate waiting rooms. I hate being early and having to wait for someone I'm meeting. I hate it when I have to be patient. I want it now. I'm Veruca fucking Salt, dammit.

But there are times when nothing I do, nothing I can do, can hasten the flow of time. There are things which must happen at their own speed. Seasons, changes, evolution. Healing. Growth. Things need space and time, and conditions.

Patience, jackass, patience.

What would we lose? When my children were babies, there were low moments where I wished, why can't I just speed this up or run it forward? But now I look back, short blinks of time, seasoned with tender memories. I would pass the weeks of frustration being a support organism for a mindless screaming want, yet, I might miss the golden seconds of a baby's first smile, first laugh. Seconds of joy in weeks of pain and frustration, yet they balance easily.

What else might we skip by if we could hit that button and jump forward six months? Would we find that life's travails lie behind and only a clear golden horizon lies ahead? Or would we find things unchanged, time lost, important moments never experienced, and life's ballast of problems still strapped firmly to us?

We don't have a button to push, so the point remains moot, or at least rhetorical.

There's one way; the hard way. We can't skip a page, we can't run a scene ahead. The best we can manage is to fill our days to the point where they roar past, or numb ourselves to the passage of time.

There are days though, where simply being able to look ahead would be enough. Am I on course? Will all the work, the wait, the patience pay off? It makes one understand faith, something I have not and do not truly want. But how comforting it must be to be able to say, I know it will work out in the end, for my faith tells me so.

But for me, it's simply waiting, and oh, how I hate to wait.

Sometimes one has to just trust to fate and fling oneself into the void.

For some of us, that's easier. Fall back and trust hands will catch. Close eyes and trust others to lead in the dark.

For some of us it's harder, we think too much. Second guess. We look beyond and under and around, we ask, is it right? Is it good? Are people to be trusted?

Who are you, and what do you want from me?

I'm not a great planner. I tend, in general, to be impulsive. I tend to do things on whim. There's no gratification, I always say, like instant gratification.

But I'm also not one who trusts easily, who does things on faith. Let's double check that, I say. Are you sure? I second guess and think too much. I question and consider and re-think.

Sometimes one has to just do it. Just go. Just make a leap, and hope for good luck.

Sometimes one has to trust for no reason, do things for love or passion or just because.

It's not easy. It's not easy to open. Bare the throat. Drop the shield. All defenses gone, cut the safety line.

Is that freedom? True freedom? I don't know.

Just once though, I would love to be there. To live in a place and a time and a situation where all the walls drop down and souls are laid bare.

Take my hand. Close your eyes. Jump with me.

Ever have one of those days where all you can think is red-hot haze?

Those are the days the animal in you needs to hunt.

Those are the days where we go out and drink and fight and fuck. Kill or die, rape and pillage. I can see my ancestors, celtic warriors, franks, danes, visgoths, all those party animals who sacked rome again and again. I can see, sometimes, how simple a life it would have been. My axe, my spear, maybe a war club, nothing but white-hot berserker rage to fuel me, that and maybe some crude fire-water, some foul-tasting, sour mead or ale. Sweep in, screaming and roaring, over-whelm my foes with my fury and need to kill and crush, rend and tear.

Then bloody and battered, a captured wine bottle in my hand, I find the treasure, the prize won. The women await, for a different kind of violence.

Simple. Kill or die. The winner takes the prize. The most powerful, most beastly, gets the choice of the spoils.

I wish I could find a tape, or a torrent, or a script, or something, for the criminally overlooked show Cupid's Valentine's Day episode.

The show itself was brilliant, and hardly anyone watched it.

But this episode managed to verbalize something; the difference between the storybook, candy-hearts and hallmark cards valentine's day and a true celebration of physical, carnal love. This show captured that thought with humor and intensity.

Because the hallmark cards are a load of crap. Another holiday based on purchased sentiment and trite, meaningless exchanges of printed paper.

Love is physical. Love is carnal. Love is sweaty, and red-faced. Love hurts. Love is about bodies and sensuality and pleasure and caring. It's about passion and desire. It's about fucking, and making love, and kissing, and biting.

A day that celebrates love without sexuality is meaningless and empty.

Forget St Valentine, some pointless martyr of dubious authenticity. This day, any day that claims to celebrate love, should celebrate Cupid, Eros, Aphrodite, Venus, a hundred others. It should celebrate the real love, the physical love, the outward manifestation of the gut-wrenching intensity within.

Love isn't lacy and pretty. Love isn't tidy and easy and neat. Love isn't contained on a candy heart or a paper envelope.

Love bleeds. Love aches. Love is a knife, not a feather, a bruise, not a red crayon.

Love is what moves us and drives us, sustains us. What brings us together, drives us apart. People kill for love, die for love.

Celebrate this carnal, physical, real love. This day, or any other, choose your own. But chaste kisses and paper do not celebrate the love I'm talking about.

Now, with all that said, let me further note that for two weeks I've thought this Valentine's was a tuesday. I of course then planned to do my shopping for pointless cards and candy hearts on monday, being that spontaneous, last-minute kind of guy. So of course, I'm late as usual.

Ah well. Better late than never. Even for vapid, pointless gestures.

Remember way back when we were kids and the idea of best friend was so important?

When you're ten. Twelve. Fourteen. When you're a kid or a teenager. When you're at that Stand By Me age.

When does that stop being such a big deal?

I awake to a new year this morning.

I feel, as I always do, some vague sense that things should be different. That the world outside my window should look fresh. Reborn.

But it never does. Last night's, yesterday's issues are still there to be handled, no clearer, no easier, no more manageable. Yesterday's joys, also, are still as they were.

But I want a fresh start. A slate wiped clean. Tally the score and see how we did, start again and hope to do better.

This could also have been titled 'these are a few of my favorite things'.

Things for which I give purely lascivious thanks:

Women who shave.

Women who love me.

Women who are not afraid to talk about it.

I'm thankful for every woman out there who takes off her clothes and lets someone take pictures, that I and others like me might enjoy such beauty.

I'm thankful for masturbation. It's sex with someone I love.

I'm thankful for the taste of pussy, the feel of breasts in my hand, the curve of a beautiful ass against me.

I am thankful for the beauty of a woman's orgasm.

I'm thankful for love, for romance, for unexpected connections with people far and wide.

I'm thankful for friendship and for people who listen when I need to talk.

I'm thankful for the words "I love you".

I'm thankful that people read this shit.

This holiday is a trite, silly thing, but under it lies rites of the equinox, harvest festivals, libations to the gods. Today it's about pilgrims in absurd hats (puritans -- not people who should be celebrated, but instead reviled); it's about turkey and cranberries, and stuffing.

So I do not, as a rule, give thanks this day. I see no gods, revere no higher power. What I have, I worked for, made, or was lucky to find. But sometimes, some ways, the universe provides; against great odds, things line up and go your way. That is what I am thankful for; the small bounties, the little things that make my life oh-so-much better.

It's been an interesting year. Outside, in the great big world, there are bad things happening. Government, war, hate, stupidity. A moral crusade, in which I am most certainly the enemy, though my enemies don't yet know it. But here -- in the small places, the little space that is my life, it's been a year of great bounty. Truly, I am thankful.

I'll fill all your wishes
with my taco flavored kisses!

South Park viewers will know where that comes from.

You ever encounter a food item that you just think, this is fucking wrong?

Kraft "Mexican Style Taco Cheese."

Yeah, it's cheese. That tastes like tacos.

Ewww?

The sort of day when I don't to be here.

Not any specific here. Here work, here home, here the simple boring mundanities of real life.

I'm picturing a sailboat. A tropical sea, sky. Wind and sun and freedom. Rum. Fruit and fish.

No clothes. No people.

Two of us. Three of us. Whatever. Tan and sweaty, smelling of the sea and the sun, coconut and lime. Smelling of each other.

Water and sun and the breeze. Sound of tropical foliage. Flowers. Birds.

There. I want to be there. Anywhere.

I want to sail a boat with nowhere to go. Watch a beautiful girl sleep in the sun. Make love in the sea. Sleep and live with a rocking that leaves me feeling wrong when I step on dry land.

Nut brown; clothes feeling wrong, when they're needed. Nothing that needs a plug or a cord, nothing with a screen, nothing with a keyboard.

Where am I? Why would I care.

When will I come back?

There would be no back; only here, now. Smell, taste, touch.

I shall sit and draw a map that leads to nowhere. X marks any spot. Close your eyes, drive a dagger in, that is where we shall sail.

I can smell the rum already.