so don't refuse to believe it

I guess I lied
It's past midnight on Monday/Tuesday and I can't work. I don't know why I have absolutely nothing in the motivation tank for work these days. I feel like the guy, Trent, in my Navy boot camp Company 132 who gave up when he felt he couldn't make his bed in time. It was a drill and each of had to make our beds to regulation specs from scratch within five minutes. Well Trent tried but then realised he had the sheets facing the wrong way up and he just gave up. He figured he didn't have enough time to go back and get it right so he just stopped. That big, pumpkin head just wilted and said he couldn't do it. Well we knew he'd get in trouble and since he was a decent enough guy we all helped him get his bed finished in time. I can remember that quite vividly. He sat on his bunk and rested his big red head in his hands and said, "I can't do it." Ever since then when someone gives up without any real reason I think of ol' Trent. I wonder what him and his huge noggin are up to. His mom must of died during child birth because this guys head would have hurt even if he came out through a c-section! So I can't give up but I am going home to finish things up. On a completely opposite note, my sister Greta told me that Miles' show in Sacramento was amazing. She feels that his work has reached a new level and that he is destined for greatness. She is probably right because, like she said, I think he has "it". His art is unique and vibrant and says something. It's subtle but it's there. It's sort of sad because now that he is building up a large following in Northern CA, he is also getting more criticism. I told him that they go hand in hand and that he should be happy to be so well-known that people care one way or the other. He is "the Man" in Sacramento so obviously people will be taking verbal shots at him. Manson was a frustrated artist and look what he turned to as an alterior outlet. I'm just glad he is kicking butt and working so hard. Now I have to do the same. "We drink the same old wine from a brand new jar; we get hungover but we always survive it."

watch the blue, blue sky darken like an inhalation
It's after midnight and Mark Eitzel is pleading to me from the tape Chris made me. Damn it's good. Lyrically tight. Musically graceful. Playing on my heart strings like Pinocchio at a bonfire, everything's crackling. I got home and saw my cell phone blinking. I can't leave that thing alone long enough to say I am independent of it. It's like a mailbox that is always open, empty, waiting. And Lord knows I love to check my mailbox. I didn't actually listen to the message because it's too late to respond to it but it's nice to come home to it. I was over at Carlos and Jessica's place watching the seminal episode of the Sopranos and the season finale of Sex in the City. It seems to me as though the first season of Sex in the City was far superior to what they are making now. I won't be watching any more of those episodes - unless there is a party associated with it. The season finale for Six Feet Under is next week and that seems interesting. The girlfriend in that is whacked with a mental brother. The gay character in the show is coming unglued and doing crazy stuff too. Interesting show but I could see myself tiring of that show soon too. The Sopranos however has been consistently good because it has been evolving. I don't mind watching TV on Sundays because it is always a day without plans. I used to set 8pm aside for the Simpsons but I wanted to give the HBO line-up a chance. The Simpsons are easy to like; real easy. I don't like horribly incompetent people in real life but damn I sure love Homer. He's like Captain Caveman meets Fred Flintstone. Is that so wrong?!? At the HBO viewing tonight there was a friend of a friend there who teaches music at the University of Hawaii. And the cool thing is she knew a little bit about poetry and poets. I tire of saying my favorite poet is Pinsky or Gunn or Bukowski or Cummings and seeing the blank stare response. Then I change the subject so they don't feel awkward about not knowing anything about contemporary poets. But when she started talking about music I had to give a few blank stare responses. Hey, I majored in English, not Music theory. And on that note I must admit that I don't think I will write in this blog for the rest of this week. I need to concentrate on writing things of a poetical nature for the big contest. I need to be a lot more open than I can be here. But I do like trying to make my prose sing a bit, and in some of the best entries here I think I have done that. Sometimes I click on The Past and cringe when I read what I have written. It can be flat, forced, tangled, misguided and sometimes just plain boring. But that would describe ninety percent of my life. The other ten percent I am asleep having a good dream :) But I need to do a lot of overdue work and write, so my hiatus. I need to return calls, return letters, write about stuff and read a bit too. Mostly I feel the pressure to work late hours in preparation for Elisa's visit when I will once again take the renal endurance test. I also have to run more, drink cranberry juice and generally cleanse my body. In that regard, it is always better to overprepare. Or else by the end of the week I will sound like the ending to Radiohead's Karma Police. My next writing endeavor will be to research personal ads and try to make some poems out of them. In a way I see personal ads as being very similar to poems. They are small, self-conscious windows into the perception the writer wants you to have of them. Most of them are so pleading, not necessarily in their words but just in their mere existence. And if you read enough of them you begin to understand what they really mean. It's all about real and make believe. You can believe what you want or what the writer wants you to believe but its no different than the correlation between words and constellations. You see them but that's all you know. Whatever you decide they mean beyond their actual formation and arrangements is up to you. They can be bright and pretty or lonely and faint, but why are they there. You can never answer that, they just are. Even the maker is bound to forget the whys of any existence. But sometimes just looking at them carries all the meaning you could ever want. While nothing changes.

8-12-01, midafternoon
It's Sunday, finally a day of rest. Charlie came in last night and saved me from a night of drinking with my boss, co-worker, former boss and her friend - people I really didn't want to hang out with. So instead of going to the Hard Rock for drinks and a lame meal, I got to go to Auntie Pasto's and have a decent meal with good people. After that we went to Gordon-Biersch (a place I admittedly frequent far too often) and had a couple of beers before calling it a night. Being on West Coast time Charlie couldn't survive a whole night of drinking. But Steve, his girlfriend and Mando weren't that hard driving either last night and after gently quaffing two beers it was time to retire to the cave. I thankfully slept in til 830, which felt like I had slept in til noon. Just yesterday morning I went on a hike with Mark and then shuttled him off to the airport before Charlie came into town. I was going to take a nap in between visitors but the Vikings were on TV and the game was really good. I can't wait for football to come around again. I need it. But, like baseball, the games will be on live at funky times. For example, Monday Night Football is shown live at 2pm. The timing is bad but what is worse is watching sports on tape-delay. That's why watching the Giants in person will be great! I look forward to Elisa's visit which starts this Saturday but I also am thankful for a week off too. I need to ramp up my work efforts even though I am less than thrilled about work in general. My job is pretty easy, just time consuming. I need to suck it up and get some stuff done. If I don't have anyone to entertain this week it will be much easier to get my work done. I was thinking about going to Maui tomorrow for a work-related event but feel like I should stay around here and get things done before the client meeting on Tuesday. Boring. But that's all I got right now. I hope to see sexy beast (the movie) tonight, should be good.

white paint, plastic saints, 638pm 8-10-01
I am already thinking about two things that are coming in the future: my visit to SF and what I will do when my lease expires at my current place in Hawaii. I sort of want to stay there because of its proximity to the beach and other stuff but I am not sure I want to have a roommate anymore. Maybe Mark spoiled me but I am real displeased with my roommate these days and I don't think it is all his fault. I just see him too much. You know how you can like someone because they seem cool and you don't really know them that well but when you do hangout it seems to be fun. Well that's how my roommate was. Now I know him and a bunch of little things about him irritate the hell out me. It is sooooo petty to whine about these things, especially here, but it's nicely cathartic. If I didn't work with him, it would be so much easier to get along with him. So I have that little dilemma to ponder by the end of November. I would really like to move into my friend's 2bdrm/1ba condo near Diamond Head - that would be stellar! I could be back in my old stomping grounds. Close to my barber, my favorite running places and lots of cool restaurants. We'll see. My trip to SF is looking REALLY good from here. I can't wait. I just want to sit at a cafe all day and watch the world pass. The fog, the smells, the lights, the traffic, the homeless, I will take it all. I gotta see a show at Bottom of the Hill or its equivalent. Just to see what kind of talent is out there. Speaking of which, it's time for dinner and a trip to Lucy's. A little Mexican food, a little avoidance of my roommate and visiting boss and shall be redeemed.

he moves his words like a prizefighter
Wow, what a week. Go, go, go every minute something. I am not saying that is bad, just taxing. Let's see, I sent an e-mail to someone I haven't talked to in about 14 years. I went out Tuesday night with Mark like I had a liver that was 14 years younger. And I have been trying to get the same work done for about 14 days now. It's crazy. In fact, I don't have time right now to make a real entry because I have to go meet up with co-workers and a former boss to drink. Yesterday I met up with a former boss to go running around diamond head. I really needed that. I am in no shape to be running a marathon in December so I have to start training in earnest. I know three people who are going to be running that marathon and I don't feel like finishing behind anyone of them. Jim, my former boss, has the best chance of beating me because he weighs about 130 pounds and is pretty darn fit. But he is a bit older and has confidence problems. I thought he was going to beat me the last time we ran a mrarthon together but he mentally hits the wall. Sometimes I sort of feel like I should stop running when I am in the middle of a marathon but then I think about my friends (especially Carlos) and I think of all the shit they would give me if I didn't finish it in a respectable time. Too much pride, I can't go down like that. I like to run, I can run, so I run. I just have to do it more often. Instead I am going to run out and grab a beer - not too much exercise involved in that. Since I have more time to write than I thought I did I will tell you a bit about e-mailing my old friend Tanya. The best part about it was just being able to say thanks for the memories. There are only a few people I would REALLY like to see again to kind of settle things and one of them was Tanya. We had an excellent relationship for a while and then things fizzled in an unspectacular way. So I always sort of wished I could run into her one more time and just say thanks a ton for the good times. So I was up late and trying to do everything but my work and I found her name on the high school website. I read the little blurb she wrote about herself and kids and new hubby and knew I should send her a note. I'm glad I did and I am glad she is in a good spot in her life. I probably won't ever see her again but I got to say thanks and that's all I really wanted to do. Now I am off to save the world from the invasion of beers that are sweeping the lands. Wish me luck! I am sure I can only kill six or eight of them so you will have to go out and do your part too! Just wait til the 20th when we can join forces and do some real damage!

Tortured winds that blew me over 8-5-01
"Nothing is everything, everything is nothing" - I just got through listening to Lifehouse Elements, hence the lyrics. Lifehouse was the project Pete Towshend had started after Tommy and was going to be some big deal but it ran ridiculously over budget and it never saw the light of day. Instead of making the movie and accompanying double album soundtrack the Who released Who’s Next. A great album in its own right, maybe even more so without the baggage of narrative interpretation that a film would have hung on it. Every track on the album is pretty damn sweet but I would have to say that my overwhelming favorite is Won’t Get Fooled Again. It’s a great response to the Vietnam war and the general struggles, both internal and external, of such undertakings. The best part is the ending, “meet the new boss, same as the old boss.” After all the craziness of war we still get stuck with the same leaders that got us into it all. Maybe new faces and names but all the same, even after vowing not to get fooled again. It sort of reminds me of Frost’s poem, the Road Less Traveled, in which he talks about taking a different road in life which is not much different than others, but because he chose it, it has made all the difference. I would call that an ironic ending. Sort of like Planet of the Apes’. Anyway, my favorite version of that song was done in the movie, the Secret Policeman’s Ball. I am not a huge Monty Python fan but this is a bunch of different artists collaborating for Amnesty International. The song is an acoustic version that comes across like storytelling more than a song. It’s perfect. I’m sure there is an acoustic version of “That’s Entertainment” that Paul Weller has done which could rival the acute perfection of Pete doing Won’t Get Fooled Again, but I haven’t heard it. On that same note, I had a pretty long conversation with a friend’s kid last night at the party. He is really into guns. If he weren’t such a smart and even-keeled kid I would be worried. But he knew how much each rifle cost and the material components of the trigger mechanism and the coatings of the barrels – I mean he knew a ton. I could sort of bluff my way through the conversation because of having to hang out with Marines one weekend a month for six years but he lost me sometimes. I think to be 12 years old and have a fascination with guns isn’t such a bad thing. Especially since he wasn’t talking about the glory of war or anything like that, just the weapons themselves. I have never been much of a gun admirer but I got to do some cool stuff playing with those Marines. But only in the context of being a kid and playing with stuff that went BOOM was it cool. I wouldn’t last long in war. I would flip out and play dead, I am sure of it. Or I would try and work in a hospital far from the front lines. Really I would never want to know how poorly I would fair in war. If I were a betting man though I would say Bush puts troops in harms way about a year before his reelection. It’s sad but true. I am sure Clinton was more inclined to use troops early in his presidency to show he wasn’t the cowardly draft-dodger that his record would indicate. Maybe I shouldn’t say “cowardly” but “smart” – either way, he had it pretty nice while others were falling in ‘Nam. Time to shift gears. Brad didn’t go to that party last night because he cut his foot at the beach and ended up getting 10 stitches. In hindsight I should have gone with him to the hospital but instead I was kicking it on the beach playing catch with the football. Pretty nice. For some reason acid kept creeping into conversations at that party. One guy was talking about how this friend of his tried acid and said that all the birds were glaring at him and saying, “fuck you!” That’s pretty funny, I guess he was a bit paranoid. Another guy at the party was touting the glory of acid and how he wanted to score some so he could feel like he was in college again. All I can say to that is good luck buddy, you are going come down and still be _____ to that ____ who treats you like ____. Sorry about that but that guy isn’t a very good drunk. In fact he epitomizes the kind of guy I would never chose to go drinking with. He is the kind of guy who talks real, real big when he is drunk and ends up getting in a fight where his friends have to save him and they end up getting the real beating because he falls easy and early. I don’t know why I keep falling into a vitriolic rant, I had a nice long ass nap today and I feel so much better. Just to lay on my bed again and have nothing to do, nowhere to go, it was nice - dreamy even. On Friday I saw United had some good fares all over so I tried booking myself a flight to somewhere fancy but ended up just buying my ticket to San Francisco in late September. I wanted to go to Boston, DC or Miami but the logistics of those trips didn’t quite work out. So I will go see the City I left behind. Before I go I will cut it up into bite-size pieces that I can do morning, afternoon and evenings. But once I get there I will still try and swallow it whole. You know, it’s that whole thing about “when the world is a monster” that rem sings about. Speaking of which I was listening to “Reckoning” this morning on my way back from dropping off Catherine at the airport and it couldn’t have been truer. Anyway, I didn’t get the baseball tickets for the Astros-Giants game because I couldn’t get four or more tickets together. So I will either get bleacher seats on the day of the game or scalp some if there are only a couple of us that actually have the cajones to take the afternoon off and yell at the ump. No profanity, just good clean ridiculing. I arrive sometime on the 19th. On the 21st I would like to do the Anchor brewery tour so if you are up for that let me know. I will call in later this week and make a reservation. I could narrate the tour myself but there is something about being in SF that draws me to that place. That, and Specs really make San Francisco San Francisco to me. You can have all the fine dining and the fine art, it’s the ocean meeting the shore, fostering the fog that really make SF. That real thick fog with the fog horn sounding in the distance. Mmm. So you flank yourself in a big peacoat and you go to an old sailor’s bar and you partake of a time-honored local brew. Later you meander down the street and play pool in a bar that is so tight with Italians you start to speak it. After winning a couple and losing a close one you decide to grab a slice of late night pizza. You sit down with a server whose body is a petroglyph with 3-d piercings. The new Van Morrison album plays and you realize you are where you have always been in your heart. “Two lovers kissing amongst the scream of midnight. Two lovers missing the tranquility of solitude: getting in cabs, traveling on buses – reading the graffitti about slashed-seat affairs.” And though I love those lines from Weller’s That’s Entertainment, they are not what I will end with. Instead I think something more hopeful would be more like me. So here are a couple of lines from Pinsky’s poem “Biography” in his book Jersey Rain. It’s still a great book so pick it up and read the future. “Wobble and blur of my soul, born only once,/ That cleaves to circles. The moon, the eye, the year,/ Circle of causes or chaos or turns of chance./ The line of a tune as it cycles back to the root,/ Arc of the changes. The line from there to here.” It's almost midnight again, time to read, wonder and write. And, in a land of quotes, "make a place I can live in."