Month: May 2013

“Yeah, man! Random acts of kindness,” said Appleseed.

Hank looked at Appleseed in dismay. “No, not at all,” he said.

It was 9:35 PM on a Tuesday. It was perhaps the third time I’ve watched the episode in a year’s time. Some episodes as many as fifteen or twenty times. I’ve considered watching other television shows, but it’s not the same. This is why some people go to Disneyland everyday or fall in love with the Eiffel Tower. There’s nothing else in the world quite like it. I know that if I tried those things, I might feel the same way.

Jaime, my neighbor, left a card beneath my door before I got home on Saturday. It asked that I look after their home, which I did. I checked the plants. I checked the front door. They returned on Sunday. We talked about their time in Salinas while making carne asada and drinking Coronas. Jaime’s wife, Migdal, used an excellent marinade, and he knew when to flip the carne asada to leave the right amount of char on the meat. The meat crackled as he dropped it in the pot.

“I have family there,” I said. “Somewhere in Salinas”

“Where?” he asked.

I looked at the grill and then shrugged as I drank my beer. “It’s been a long time.”

“Ah? It’s not far.”

“I’m not, how do you say, sociable.”

He nodded and poked at the meat with the two-pronged fork.

“Each to his own mind,” he said. The only conclusion about any human being.

Migdal and their daughter brought chairs. Their porch was too cluttered with potted plants, so they set them up on my side of the building. They mostly talked about Salinas and I talked about work. No one knows a thing about working in video games. I became jolly enough to simply recount old stories.

This time next year, if I’m still here, I’ll go pick up a table with the hole in the middle for a big umbrella. Some nice chairs to put around it. Better if it’s an old, used wooden set. Something I can fix up. Something for the space beside an old motorcycle and weeds.

Never asked a woman to punch me, but it’s something I’d like to try. A unapologetic wallop to someplace durable. That’s not something that gets forgotten.

“Yeah, man! Random acts of kindness,” said Appleseed.

Hank looked at Appleseed in dismay. “No, not at all,” he said.

It was 9:35 PM on a Tuesday. It was perhaps the third time I’ve watched the episode in a year’s time. Some episodes as many as fifteen or twenty times. I’ve considered watching other television shows, but it’s not the same. This is why some people go to Disneyland everyday or fall in love with the Eiffel Tower. There’s nothing else in the world quite like it. I know that if I tried those things, I might feel the same way.

Jaime, my neighbor, left a card beneath my door before I got home on Saturday. It asked that I look after their home, which I did. I checked the plants. I checked the front door. They returned on Sunday. We talked about their time in Salinas while making carne asada and drinking Coronas. Jaime’s wife, Migdal, used an excellent marinade, and he knew when to flip the carne asada to leave the right amount of char on the meat. The meat crackled as he dropped it in the pot.

“I have family there,” I said. “Somewhere in Salinas”

“Where?” he asked.

I looked at the grill and then shrugged as I drank my beer. “It’s been a long time.”

“Ah? It’s not far.”

“I’m not, how do you say, sociable.”

He nodded and poked at the meat with the two-pronged fork.

“Each to his own mind,” he said. The only conclusion about any human being.

Migdal and their daughter brought chairs. Their porch was too cluttered with potted plants, so they set them up on my side of the building. They mostly talked about Salinas and I talked about work. No one knows a thing about working in video games. I became jolly enough to simply recount old stories.

This time next year, if I’m still here, I’ll go pick up a table with the hole in the middle for a big umbrella. Some nice chairs to put around it. Better if it’s an old, used wooden set. Something I can fix up. Something for the space beside an old motorcycle and weeds.

Never asked a woman to punch me, but it’s something I’d like to try. A unapologetic wallop to someplace durable. That’s not something that gets forgotten.

Made a choice what’s blended my real world and the one in my head. I want to make money, you see. Need some. I don’t write anything new but there’s years of material. Goes way back to before any of this. Over a decade of stuff to package up and put out there. Was thinking maybe even emails I can twist up into a story of some kind. Names changed to yadda yadda the innocent. A sort of lowly revenge.

Choice was to tell my bosses that I’m looking to do that. Go for easy money. Big thing in entertainment industries is the contractual obligations. Some places take issue with employees making money on the side. Standard part of the business, like with inventors. Video games in my case, so I wasn’t worried. More of a FYI to get the OK in writing and file it away. CYA, always.

So I said it in an email and thought I’d get my clearance right away. Move forward with the exploration phase. First response from the business guy was quick: “Can you elaborate? What do you intend to write? For instance, is it related to video games in any way?” Well, yea. Some. I explained the freelance stuff I used to do. Video game guides. Not the most lucrative, but got me free copies of games and some beer money. Also mentioned the fiction and short story collections, for the sake of being thorough. And that was the last of it. No peep since. One of the folks—The Boss—is on those emails. This guy’s done well for himself. Knows good writing. Makes me sort of anxious that they’ll ask for further details. Examples. And, admittedly, sort of excited in a way some kid is excited to be an extra on a film. That hope of discovery. The “holy shit, kid, you’re amazing!” fantasy. Just a bit of it, anyway. Grounded at all times.

There’s also a fear. Exposure. There’s a compartmentalization to everything, and it can be delicate, like a membrane. Bitterness on one side and jovial exterior on the other. When one is bitter about life it seeps through in the telling. There’s that thought that any writing sample will be a) not gold, and b) revelatory of the writer’s uneasy psyche. Some are fine with it. Their nature allows for that sort of abandon. Me, I don’t know. Someday hasn’t come.

The camera zooms out of the character’s eye’s pupil at this point. Turns out he is not discovered and placed in a writing position to reach his fullest creative potential. He does not go on to be the next The Boss. The camera pans back and reveals him sitting in his car at a vista point facing the Pacific ocean. The song on the radio is a banjo melody. He watches the water shift. His request has been approved. There is nothing stopping him now. No contract, not another soul in the world.

Made a choice what’s blended my real world and the one in my head. I want to make money, you see. Need some. I don’t write anything new but there’s years of material. Goes way back to before any of this. Over a decade of stuff to package up and put out there. Was thinking maybe even emails I can twist up into a story of some kind. Names changed to yadda yadda the innocent. A sort of lowly revenge.

Choice was to tell my bosses that I’m looking to do that. Go for easy money. Big thing in entertainment industries is the contractual obligations. Some places take issue with employees making money on the side. Standard part of the business, like with inventors. Video games in my case, so I wasn’t worried. More of a FYI to get the OK in writing and file it away. CYA, always.

So I said it in an email and thought I’d get my clearance right away. Move forward with the exploration phase. First response from the business guy was quick: “Can you elaborate? What do you intend to write? For instance, is it related to video games in any way?” Well, yea. Some. I explained the freelance stuff I used to do. Video game guides. Not the most lucrative, but got me free copies of games and some beer money. Also mentioned the fiction and short story collections, for the sake of being thorough. And that was the last of it. No peep since. One of the folks—The Boss—is on those emails. This guy’s done well for himself. Knows good writing. Makes me sort of anxious that they’ll ask for further details. Examples. And, admittedly, sort of excited in a way some kid is excited to be an extra on a film. That hope of discovery. The “holy shit, kid, you’re amazing!” fantasy. Just a bit of it, anyway. Grounded at all times.

There’s also a fear. Exposure. There’s a compartmentalization to everything, and it can be delicate, like a membrane. Bitterness on one side and jovial exterior on the other. When one is bitter about life it seeps through in the telling. There’s that thought that any writing sample will be a) not gold, and b) revelatory of the writer’s uneasy psyche. Some are fine with it. Their nature allows for that sort of abandon. Me, I don’t know. Someday hasn’t come.

The camera zooms out of the character’s eye’s pupil at this point. Turns out he is not discovered and placed in a writing position to reach his fullest creative potential. He does not go on to be the next The Boss. The camera pans back and reveals him sitting in his car at a vista point facing the Pacific ocean. The song on the radio is a banjo melody. He watches the water shift. His request has been approved. There is nothing stopping him now. No contract, not another soul in the world.

I emerge from the train each morning and remember that the first thing to do, always, is to swipe my card on arrival, or else they’ll charge me a fee and I’ll have to email people to get it fixed. It takes time to do those things, so I remember to swipe the card at the reader. Then I walk out onto the street. Usually not in too close a proximity to anyone, but sometimes, especially on game days, it can be crowded. I think about some people who do all sorts of walking and getting near others in the course of their days and then think about having a nine-to-five gig someplace far away from a city. How boring it must get, but how serene. I’d invariably select a desert location. The summer and its bleeding into autumn would make me wish I was elsewhere.

If I catch the early train I’ll see the girl with big sunglasses standing to the left of the bus stop. Her face will be down toward the phone in her hands, which she rests against herself as she reads or types. She’ll have a bit of a double chin and a cute, distinct nose that pokes out and makes me appreciate her in profile, the only way I see her.

Poetry, as I understand it, is an assortment of words in an appealing order, chosen and arranged to say a thing in a different way than one might usually say it. “We Real Cool” comes to mind when I’ve got poetry on the brain, because my old writing professor—only writing professor I suppose—loved to read it and assign a “We Real Cool”-style poem. I don’t recall any of the poems of that sort that I wrote, or any of them at this time, but I’ll sometimes think that I’d like to write one about the profile girl to the left of the bus in the shadow of the brick building next to the pharmacist’s.

The truth is the nose reminds me of someone. The bulbous end, little bump along the crest, a length that I like but that some people think is not conventionally attractive, at least not for the magazines or the ads which are mostly of a certain kind of white woman. I think it’s a good nose.

You see some noses in life, like those of beautiful girls in profile, and you think, yours is a really fine nose. Thinking too much about these things is part of the problem, maybe, but that applies to everything.Thinking too much about these things is part of the problem, maybe, but that applies to everything.

Lately, about two months, there’s been an ad for a bed store or a store that sells soft, fluffy things, just on a tall brick wall next to a corner bar and coffee house. The ad is about a story and a half high. It has some words in a script that I’ve never bothered to read. The image is of a woman in bed, lying on her side, with a pristine white comforter or quilt pulled up over her shoulder. Her hair is long, a brunette base with streaks of gold like lots of people do. You can’t see her face at all on account of it. It sprawls across her face, shoulder, and beyond across her back and onto the bed. It reminds me of the section of a beautiful hand-crafted wooden clock between three o’ clock and six o’ clock, where the varnished lines extend out from the center of the clock to the far reaches. It’s long, thick, pretty hair. Sort of thing that a man can really love to hold.

Both the profile girl and the ad appear at about the same few moments during my walk. One of them, the ad, I keep forgetting to take a photo of. The other, the person, I’m too afraid to do anything about.

I emerge from the train each morning and remember that the first thing to do, always, is to swipe my card on arrival, or else they’ll charge me a fee and I’ll have to email people to get it fixed. It takes time to do those things, so I remember to swipe the card at the reader. Then I walk out onto the street. Usually not in too close a proximity to anyone, but sometimes, especially on game days, it can be crowded. I think about some people who do all sorts of walking and getting near others in the course of their days and then think about having a nine-to-five gig someplace far away from a city. How boring it must get, but how serene. I’d invariably select a desert location. The summer and its bleeding into autumn would make me wish I was elsewhere.

If I catch the early train I’ll see the girl with big sunglasses standing to the left of the bus stop. Her face will be down toward the phone in her hands, which she rests against herself as she reads or types. She’ll have a bit of a double chin and a cute, distinct nose that pokes out and makes me appreciate her in profile, the only way I see her.

Poetry, as I understand it, is an assortment of words in an appealing order, chosen and arranged to say a thing in a different way than one might usually say it. “We Real Cool” comes to mind when I’ve got poetry on the brain, because my old writing professor—only writing professor I suppose—loved to read it and assign a “We Real Cool”-style poem. I don’t recall any of the poems of that sort that I wrote, or any of them at this time, but I’ll sometimes think that I’d like to write one about the profile girl to the left of the bus in the shadow of the brick building next to the pharmacist’s.

The truth is the nose reminds me of someone. The bulbous end, little bump along the crest, a length that I like but that some people think is not conventionally attractive, at least not for the magazines or the ads which are mostly of a certain kind of white woman. I think it’s a good nose.

You see some noses in life, like those of beautiful girls in profile, and you think, yours is a really fine nose. Thinking too much about these things is part of the problem, maybe, but that applies to everything.Thinking too much about these things is part of the problem, maybe, but that applies to everything.

Lately, about two months, there’s been an ad for a bed store or a store that sells soft, fluffy things, just on a tall brick wall next to a corner bar and coffee house. The ad is about a story and a half high. It has some words in a script that I’ve never bothered to read. The image is of a woman in bed, lying on her side, with a pristine white comforter or quilt pulled up over her shoulder. Her hair is long, a brunette base with streaks of gold like lots of people do. You can’t see her face at all on account of it. It sprawls across her face, shoulder, and beyond across her back and onto the bed. It reminds me of the section of a beautiful hand-crafted wooden clock between three o’ clock and six o’ clock, where the varnished lines extend out from the center of the clock to the far reaches. It’s long, thick, pretty hair. Sort of thing that a man can really love to hold.

Both the profile girl and the ad appear at about the same few moments during my walk. One of them, the ad, I keep forgetting to take a photo of. The other, the person, I’m too afraid to do anything about.

The words I never want to hear are, ‘I give up.’ Not from anyone. Not from inside my head. They linger around like satellites. They are permitted because they sure as shit don’t obey.

Instructions are a tiresome type of blog post. They’re all tiresome, eventually.

A friend (filed under ‘blown opportunities’) wrote that she purchased a particular type of bikini. My first thought was an image of her lying on a oversized Star Wars towel, naked. I still remember her doubt and tearful way of handling the simplest problems. While engaged, she slept with a number of men. There was some sort of unhappiness that I will never understand, though it feels I ought to know it well. I comforted her once so we could get on with it. Her fiance was also a friend who possessed an annoying intuition. He pointed out my ways to me a number of times and I evaded answering him. I didn’t want to explain the sloppy sex I’d been having with prostitutes in my Jeep (since sold). The debt to which it led is embarrassing enough.

Reading books like The Talented Mr. Ripley and A Very Private Gentleman, I don’t sympathize. Nor do I care about notions of justice. Rather, I curse the bumbling officials who fail to shine the light of truth on them. You’re a liar, you’re a fucking liar. I simply want to see them exposed for their shitty ways. Secrets are not allowed anywhere but within my mind.

Comes time, I will decline to associate a Yahoo! (or some such) account with a Tumblr. account. It’s been all sides. Accounts everywhere, even after years of pruning and shaping a decentralized online identity. All of these consolidations and efficiencies. Tumblr.’s appeal back then as now is a relative anonymity. A reality that all which is written, said, or otherwise posted is confined to a drawer and inconsequential. A small corner of a database to which emotion can be relegated and forgotten during the day, when it is all feelery bullshit. A distraction.

Of course, even that loses its appeal.

I was asked if I am truly an ISTJ. I mostly am. I was somewhat offended by the implication that such a dude can’t write a certain way. The preconception nonsense turned around on me. Awareness of hypocrisy is a wet blanket on the soul.

It takes a drink, a gorilla grin, and some knee slapping just to get into a proper state of mind to write for these things. None of it good enough to turn around into fiction.

I’m just flustered. The effect of self-loathing. I consider travel more and more by the passing day and think, I just need a fuckin’ breather, Jesus. Atlanta. Flagstaff. Reno. Lake Tahoe. Redding. Needles. Eugene. Salt Lake City. Billings. It goes on and on.

The words I never want to hear are, ‘I give up.’ Not from anyone. Not from inside my head. They linger around like satellites. They are permitted because they sure as shit don’t obey.

Instructions are a tiresome type of blog post. They’re all tiresome, eventually.

A friend (filed under ‘blown opportunities’) wrote that she purchased a particular type of bikini. My first thought was an image of her lying on a oversized Star Wars towel, naked. I still remember her doubt and tearful way of handling the simplest problems. While engaged, she slept with a number of men. There was some sort of unhappiness that I will never understand, though it feels I ought to know it well. I comforted her once so we could get on with it. Her fiance was also a friend who possessed an annoying intuition. He pointed out my ways to me a number of times and I evaded answering him. I didn’t want to explain the sloppy sex I’d been having with prostitutes in my Jeep (since sold). The debt to which it led is embarrassing enough.

Reading books like The Talented Mr. Ripley and A Very Private Gentleman, I don’t sympathize. Nor do I care about notions of justice. Rather, I curse the bumbling officials who fail to shine the light of truth on them. You’re a liar, you’re a fucking liar. I simply want to see them exposed for their shitty ways. Secrets are not allowed anywhere but within my mind.

Comes time, I will decline to associate a Yahoo! (or some such) account with a Tumblr. account. It’s been all sides. Accounts everywhere, even after years of pruning and shaping a decentralized online identity. All of these consolidations and efficiencies. Tumblr.’s appeal back then as now is a relative anonymity. A reality that all which is written, said, or otherwise posted is confined to a drawer and inconsequential. A small corner of a database to which emotion can be relegated and forgotten during the day, when it is all feelery bullshit. A distraction.

Of course, even that loses its appeal.

I was asked if I am truly an ISTJ. I mostly am. I was somewhat offended by the implication that such a dude can’t write a certain way. The preconception nonsense turned around on me. Awareness of hypocrisy is a wet blanket on the soul.

It takes a drink, a gorilla grin, and some knee slapping just to get into a proper state of mind to write for these things. None of it good enough to turn around into fiction.

I’m just flustered. The effect of self-loathing. I consider travel more and more by the passing day and think, I just need a fuckin’ breather, Jesus. Atlanta. Flagstaff. Reno. Lake Tahoe. Redding. Needles. Eugene. Salt Lake City. Billings. It goes on and on.

Disappointment is the fact that Alaska Air doesn’t fly to Tasmania. Minor disappointment, anyway. Over in a few moments. Next is the possibility of Titusville, but Florida isn’t compelling enough. It’s the place at the end of a cross-country walk, ride, or drive, not the destination. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of space work these days. Have to wonder what’s left to see. Unfamiliar beaches facing East, stretches of humidity. I’d feel drawn to a woman or two, but not enough to make the effort.

Feels like it ought to be far enough away. Hard to tell unless it’s across an ocean, which is the next far enough.

Christmas is locked in. I’ve marked it as the family time of year. Right around that day. No more than a week, and if a week, including plans to drive out a ways in a borrowed pick-up truck. Out into the desert in those cold months. That’s a path what’s been trod before, but that was then. I hear now lots of places out away from cities are more barren than ever. Just quiet sorts of visits. Lots of fences where there used to be open land.

The jailbait I saw for a while recommended a knife for my travels. She worried too much and spoke little before I knew they were signs that it will not work. I told her she shouldn’t believe the movies, though the only movie that came to mind was Easy Rider. She wasn’t the type to watch that, and I wasn’t the type in the film. I associate her ways and preferences with flowers and flower-related activities. Our most memorable pillow talk was a story we concocted about the future. She was a single mother with a couple of kids out on a front porch in Georgia or some place. I was the road-weary visitor whose relation to the family went unspoken. There and gone again. It was a fantasy then and it’s an amusing thought now.

Now I know that I don’t go to visit any person except my parents and brothers, and only because they covered twenty-some years of my life. There is a debt there that cannot be repaid.

There’ll be a decision. Closer to the date of travel and more costly than it might have been. The rigmarole of considering places is just wistful fantasy, like flipping through an issue of National Geographic.

Disappointment is the fact that Alaska Air doesn’t fly to Tasmania. Minor disappointment, anyway. Over in a few moments. Next is the possibility of Titusville, but Florida isn’t compelling enough. It’s the place at the end of a cross-country walk, ride, or drive, not the destination. There doesn’t seem to be much in the way of space work these days. Have to wonder what’s left to see. Unfamiliar beaches facing East, stretches of humidity. I’d feel drawn to a woman or two, but not enough to make the effort.

Feels like it ought to be far enough away. Hard to tell unless it’s across an ocean, which is the next far enough.

Christmas is locked in. I’ve marked it as the family time of year. Right around that day. No more than a week, and if a week, including plans to drive out a ways in a borrowed pick-up truck. Out into the desert in those cold months. That’s a path what’s been trod before, but that was then. I hear now lots of places out away from cities are more barren than ever. Just quiet sorts of visits. Lots of fences where there used to be open land.

The jailbait I saw for a while recommended a knife for my travels. She worried too much and spoke little before I knew they were signs that it will not work. I told her she shouldn’t believe the movies, though the only movie that came to mind was Easy Rider. She wasn’t the type to watch that, and I wasn’t the type in the film. I associate her ways and preferences with flowers and flower-related activities. Our most memorable pillow talk was a story we concocted about the future. She was a single mother with a couple of kids out on a front porch in Georgia or some place. I was the road-weary visitor whose relation to the family went unspoken. There and gone again. It was a fantasy then and it’s an amusing thought now.

Now I know that I don’t go to visit any person except my parents and brothers, and only because they covered twenty-some years of my life. There is a debt there that cannot be repaid.

There’ll be a decision. Closer to the date of travel and more costly than it might have been. The rigmarole of considering places is just wistful fantasy, like flipping through an issue of National Geographic.