Taco vs. Nothing

South Texas cuisine is fattening me up. I've noticed it recently, and I have to put a stop to it. Tacos are so good, though. It won't be easy. It was very easy to maintain an active lifestyle and lean diet in Japan. It will require some effort here.

I don't have a plan, and this does not bode well.

Today I'm doing some cursory research for a speech about nothing. It should be compelling and persuasive, personal and authoritative, and accomplish absolutely naught. Perhaps I should look into the theater of politics, but instead I am delving into philosophy, and my favorite--quantum physics. Lots to take out of context there.

Living in the suburbs again, I am constantly feeling trapped. There is time to wander and think, but nothing to see or contemplate. I end up back where I begin, which is usually a kind of deep yearning, for which any number of daily displeasures will do: very often, I find myself puzzling over whether or not there is anything I can do or say to reestablish contact with an old friend of mine, long since disappeared. If I press the issue, it will likely do no good. If I let things sit, there would be no impetus to reconnect. I usually come down on the side of thinking there is nothing here to be done. That I will simply have to wait and see. A wait that may take a lifetime and come to nothing. But as often as I decide on futility, I cannot ignore that I will always have hope. There was a reason our connection was so strong, and there was enough positive there to be salvaged somehow, in whatever way forward, however undefined. And I can only think that no matter what may or may not occur, I can resolve to think of myself as being a friend, of hoping for this life's richness in my friend's days, all of them, and that perhaps we will find a space somewhere to share a sincerity again with one another.

Anyway, I miss my friend.

This, when my brain is allowed to spin at the rate of the earth, without stopping to take in some new thing.

I have nothing to write about, best get to it.

Here we go... da... da duh da-daaaaaa....

Pittsburgh's goin' to the SU-u-Per-bowl!



Now go Packers.

a note on "from"

the recent posts beginning with "from" are not from stories, but journals I kept while in Japan, the titles in italics are the labels I had placed on the journals' inside covers.

from it might not kill

There is a distance in these moments, so that the flood of time may take me further from a perfect memory. And so it becomes necessary to make new ones.

And there is the ocean.

And there is the way bodies with mass distort space and time, curving in such a way that all things impose a gravitational effect on every other object within range of the distortion. I should like to ride one of the waves of these distortions, as I once did in the ocean as a boy in Huntington.

And all the lights had gone out in the Westin, only Venus was now visible in the sky above the dark building. I took my blue pen out and hurriedly scribbled, "Venus replaces Westin" on the yellow pulp, momentarily forgetting that Miki, with her small frame, her glasses, and inexplicable joy, had reminded me of a girl from my days in university--and that my reaction to this recollection had shaken me.

Thereafter, I was resolved. I had allowed myself to be buried by those things I do not disclose. But I can recall that a perfect feeling can exist inside the most stressful or unwanted moments. The goal is to pursue that perfection in each experience, and not to become unnerved when the things of life interfere. Interference, of course, is never external, it is always originating from within.

from touch

sometimes we are found in the pronunciation of unexpected names.

such sounds have consequences. they will trap us between two distant worlds, separated by time more than any other distinction.

there is the way i search the night skies for photographs.

the way you lean into morning microphones and ask for coffee.

a tension between the biorhythms of love and those driven by the place of the sun on the horizon.

from August 2009

A photograph. A self portrait taken beneath a tree in the park near Tokyo station, near the imperial palace. Red rings under the eyes. He is hungry. He thinks of her in passing, that she would have loved this spot, that they might have named it in the manner of pony-shit park in Angers. This is the glassy look you see in his right eye. He wears a black shirt to soak up the light that surrounds him, so that the absence of him is what you will see, though all else is green and vibrant, reminding us that it is summertime. Among those things we cannot see is a couple, lying in the grass, wrapped up in each other, lazy, he is reminded of a pair of dogs who used come around in July and August, while he had been digging a ditch around the front of his father's house to capture the ground-water before it might enter the basement. A small mut and a large retriever. They had been a lazy pair, under a tree in the adjacent yard, the little one occasionally turning its head to the neck of the larger and biting playfully. The other yawning. The young couple is passed occasionally by those strolling through the grass, who give them disapproving looks. What's wrong with this? Thinks the man in the photograph, Is it a jealousy, do you imagine it is a sexual embrace. Certainly they are lovers, but I can't imagine a more innocent display of intimacy. When I lay with my lover in the grass in Pennsylvania springs, it had been the same. And perhaps we received such disapprovals, but, like these two, we could not care. There was not a thing in this world but my lover's eyes, her breath, the warmth of the sun radiating in the moist ground. A world that cannot exist for long, yet which is an eternity when we are within it. The man in the photograph is looking up toward the branches. Because we cannot see them, we imagine it is hope he has caught in his gaze. It is, in fact, a bundle of green needles, and a line of unidentified insects, having located something of interest on the tree.

in that we are to be returned to ash

I would (not) say that you are a stone, (nor) that I wished to break myself upon you. But in my misgivings I attempted to name you. You have not the qualities of any name I applied.

Your mild whispers through a locked window have missed their mark. And I never held you in such low regard as to leave you covered in the ink left un-captured by my paper.

I wished instead to be as unlike a ghost as I once considered myself an apparition of her loss. The image of her reduced with the sexuality possible to the retina, to a raised breast (I begged her to reconsider). I could never have seen her, should she have danced, as you do, on the edge of a pin.

But it was she that I lost again in you. My self never entering into it. I have lost the capacity to break in any other place but one.

If I had not named you,

3 Projects and some junk

Attempting to remain focused on writing/film. I spent a prolonged period yesterday with cameras and lights and mics, shooting and getting interviews. It was invigorating. It's been a paralyzed couple of years, creatively/filmic-ly speaking. Searching for that one good idea. But I think that's the paralyzing aspect, somehow thinking there's a single idea to be had. Better, I think, just to live in a sea of them. So I'm giving myself some homework--

1. Three movie ideas this week.

2. Three stories sent to publications.

3. Work on the doc.


Note: I went to bed the other night watching Inception. It adds another layer to watch while asleep. I'm only partially kidding. There was lots of dialogue bleed-through--unconscious engagement of lucid dreaming is rather odd.

I'm running out of teams to root for

There was a corner shop in the cultural district of Pittsburgh I used to have to walk past everyday to get to the Coffee Tree, and during the playoffs they had, playing on a loop, the "Steelers are going to the Superbowl," a little 30 second ditty. You could hear it from the apartment until maybe 11:30 at night. Over and over again. I always liked the Steelers, up till then. I shall try to like them again. I will not, WILL NOT, take the Jets. Maybe it's just their time.

When I am quiet, you recede; when I speak, your lingering is more a ghost

On that Saturday evening it seemed the walls of every house had vanished, leaving only the candles placed in the windows at Christmas-time, glowing in that green country like fireflies in the summer.


And how our words will keep--as if we had them in jars.

Cedar Days

I had a few allergies that acted up in Furukawa from time to time and so I thought I understood what I was in for with the mountain cedar in San Antonio. I was wrong. It's been awful.

Finally finished applications. I am going to shower, then shave (first time in several days), then head to the post office to express everything out to where it belongs. Then begins the waiting.

I owe time to some other projects and people, best get those tended to quickly.

And it's time once again to focus on some meditative and contemplative things. I have been out of sorts since arriving home, perhaps even prior to that. Much more writing and reading are in order. Debts to pay. I should eat. I've been thinking about the past a lot these days and, while reflection and rumination are sometimes advisable, the present requires me.

Life is good. I shall probably even smile about it.

Colts vs. Jets

... (sigh).

great game. why did indy take that timeout? probably still woulda lost.

go pats

Slumps and Spurs

I have been back in San Antonio for nearly two months. In addition to some difficulties in my personal life, which have more or less settled now into the broader background of discontent, I have yet to get a handle on how this place works. Reverse Culture Shock, I think it's called. Food, transportation, language, just the aesthetics, everything. It is familiar, I grew up here, but I find myself looking at the familiar things and feeling neither comforted nor put off. I am blank. When some event or other ought to spur me to action, I see little point. Perhaps a depression, a feeling that I am trapped. Most frustrating so far is my lack of desire to break out of this.

And a ghost haunts me here.

It's my hope that, simply by putting it down on electronic paper and sending it out into the universe, I will begin a change in my attitude.

I watched the Spurs play in Indiana last night. After two tough losses in a row, they seemed to drag their asses, get to their spots just a little late, wouldn't take open shots, tried to lose all through the game, and in the final eight minutes or so were able to kind of pull it together just enough to squeak out with the "w." It's hard to feel great about a win like that, I'd imagine, but they've stopped the bleeding at least. Perhaps a recovery under such circumstances can help a team or a person regain their bearings.

This is what I'm hoping.

An Uncertainty in Delight

I told the troublesome poet that I'd never felt so foolish as when I was truly happy, nor so wise as when I was blanketed in sorrow.

She crossed her legs at the table and I pulled at the end of my cigarette. I am not happy, but I am at peace, I said. The sausage and beer came

(I tried to start smoking cigarettes again recently, but it was too much work. Made me feel ill and I couldn't get to sleep.

And the clippers I bought are like sheep sheers. Heavy. You can't hear them cutting. And so I am, for the moment, clean. Cleared away of some stupid vanities).

I then spent several months whirling around in circles making airplane noises and giggling whenever I had careened off center and crashed into a wall, or offered the wrong smile at dinner, or colored with the children, naming everything after my dizziness.

But it was not a foolishness. Only an uncertainty I hadn't the inclination to examine.

In this manner, I began to draw maps of undiscovered lands. I gave them the qualities of the other places I had visited, the street names were those I had grown up learning. Some wiseguy tried to tell me I was doodling fantasies and I slammed the book shut, rolled up the loose papers and hid them under my bed. Later applying for an apprenticeship under the captain of such a vessel as is as likely as any to stumble upon such places as those I have designed.

I am unwavering in my resolve to prove that my maps--upon my having made them--did in fact cause those places to be real. And there is one in particular I should like to find.

I crossed my arms on the table and lay my head down to rest it. I am listening. It's just that I am also traveling. It can make a body weary.

Post Script

a note on form and quality (it seeks out recollection)

It is the way one melts into the other. A sofa. A car seat. Walks by rivers. Tents near oceans.

That day I believed I owned a particular drawer.

And we will consider the way the gods continually transform into one another. Aten, by analogy, becomes Yaweh. Bes becomes Horus. And so too in this mortal frame do many things mingle.

The touch of one lover is the same as another.

I think it better, then, to utter their specific qualities, but will not.

To the form of mirror. The form of love. The form of chair. For each, should there be a perfect version somewhere in the aether, I already know the names.