Words: Disheveled Daily Prose:

Stray dogs on my street remind me that I do indeed live in a farming community. A fat pregnant black dog, full of milk and wandering about, narrowly missed by cars wags her tail as she runs about; she isn't even as bad as the little white chihuahua that barks as if it could take my head off. I joke to my friends to run it over, but then laugh, "But don't really. It's too fun to hate that yapper mutt. I would just find another bothersome animal to despise." A few alleys over are chickens and roosters, and of course there are other strays that run freely up and down the street like they've just snuck under barbed wire fence to see the world for a little while. The old southern streets of Bakersfield were like that; only the dogs seemed much meaner then. They would chase and snap, snarling after me. I felt like I must have looked like a sweetly dripping enchilada pedaling a bike. One funny moment yesterday: Although I do know people who hate getting bad service, I was at my favorite Mexican food dive and had ordered the cocido, a Mexican beef soup with veggies. The waiter bringing it over nearly dumped it onto my crotch. A few splashes hit me and stung, but I merely yelled, "Yes, adventure! I love it! I survive again!" The waiter was apologetic, and I was just glad I didn't end up hard boiled, if you know what I mean...

I often wonder what the nice people in my doctor's office think every time I come in reading Harry Potter or some other children's book. The one I brought in today was very thick, and I was thickly involved as well. When I come in reading Lords: Part One , will they think me an egomaniac?

Talked to the Citrus Girl Muse yesterday. She said, "I love California. I forget how much I love it here." She had just put in a full Napa Valley day, exploring wine caves, and barrels, and the decadence and simplicity of the wine country life. I imagined simple moments of peering into vineyards and rolling landscapes; tipping a glass of wine to the thought of those she loves. I'm going to talk to her this morning, probably as she's stomping barefoot, grapes splattering, her laughing and singing just as she always has, lost in the adventure of her moment...

In a week of motivating factors, I find myself in a melancholy mood. We writers all go there. It's the dips we artists take now and then--tasting the bitterness of writing, fumbling in the dark, trying to pull a line out of the air, wondering why creativity is so closely tied to passion and truth to oneself. I must be caught up in some idea on optimism and love--that's gotta be it; forget decay, don't need to be reminded of what I lose. This is the ten-o-clock moment: fastening a few words, fasting no food or water for the morning trip to the blood-letter, wondering why some people lose themselves in themself, gazing inward, fashioning eyes deeper into the meaning of 'you' or me. Such disjointed thoughts are of the novelist--he strings them together, fluffs them up in novel form; but in full wonder? Yes--should be. One just wonders and throws words onto a page; the stream will be realized by a few, the people who know they are loved, and love back, or not. There is a children's story in me, something about the feeling of being lost; it's a simple premise to be lost. It's not very glorious, but is a strangely silent story of finding love, losing it, feeling abandoned, feeling ashamed, and then slowly growing back to what it once was.

Had an enjoyable evening of hockey last night. Knees are still sore. Elbows are still sore. Shoulders are still sore. I think that about covers it. I'm feeling like sharing a children's story excerpt today. Here's a fanciful slice from a tale inspired by bike rides along the Ohio River in the Cuyahoga Woods titled, The Corn Cannons:



In the canopy of a once quiet forest there lived a community of bagworms. Although the bagworms didn’t know, nor had they cared to know because high up in their treetop homes they had much different cares;, not far from the forest edge lay acres upon acres of mostly corn-filled farmland. It was only the summer months, and so the corn grew early, from rich black soil where it towered tall, with golden ears brightly lighting every stalk.

Each kernel was a seed of delight, most delicious, and mouth-watering, a scrumptious blend of corn grown to perfection, connected to nutrients of a soil that made for an extremely high quality corn. Although carrots poked leafy noggins through rows of sparkling soil, and huge pumpkins and other strangely shaped squash appeared like silly ornaments, more than any other vegetable, this corn was wanted by a great many people, bugs and forest creatures. Yes, such squash, celery, onions and turnips decorated the farmland with their bloated shapes and some with long tangled vines, but it was the corn that was so richly wanted.

Alongside the farm, the forest soil was so plentiful with nutrients and goodness that the very woodland trees themselves grew tall and strong. In a merry sort of way the trees seemed to have danced and grown so that they appeared to have burst from the forest floor into giant leafy canopies where such bagworms could happily live far from the busy happenings of the farmland and forest floor.

Along with many other bagworms lived Mr. and Mrs. Bagworm, two of the most notable bagworms of the entire bagworm community. They lived in a silk-woven bag high up in the treetop canopy of cottonwood trees where cotton stars often floated so feather-like in the summer evenings. This is where they lived and liked to take walks.

You see, up among the leafy treetops near their home hung a silky road that wound around their town in such a way that bagworms could only refer to as “the road that goes this way and that.” It was a perfect path for taking long walks on a summer's day, a summer’s eve, or even a wintry morning, though this was most certainly summer at its warmest.

This was their road, and their village. And this was their life, so far from the forest soil and built so high upon the spidery strands of webs. Such silk had been spun by fatty bagworm spinners who could weave strands between cottonwood branches and delicately tie them around thick tree trunks. These were the bagworms who could eat no less than three leafy jingo pies before getting to a hard day’s work of silk spinning and road building.

In the middle of the forest and completely lost in sight and sound from the farm—so the bagworms all thought—Mr. And Mr. Bagworm often walked between leafy rows. On long walks they passed beneath Blue Heron nests. The huge birds often stood like great statues and cast shadows that such bagworms would delight in on a hot day when shadows seemed hard to find. On each walk, the bagworms carefully made their way around squirrel holes, woodpecker crevices, and not to mention, the many baghouses of their most fashionable village.

These were the finest of silk buildings, made from the most expensive strands that bagworms could spin. Many of their houses were made of it—oh such bag-buildings they made! So tall and small, in every shape and size a bag could be, which of course made all the other creatures of the forest wonder just what a bagworm’s baghouse really could be.

Bags of all shapes and sizes filled the forest canopy: red bags, small bags, rich black patent-leather looking baghouses as rich as any baghouse you could ever see! There were zebra-striped bags and most of all, glistening silk bags, and delicately woven carry-alls perched high in the treetops, with bagworm neighbors leaning from them and throwing greetings into the windy evenings. Some of the bags were missing their straps, while other elegant straps had been tugged tightly around trunks full of glittery designs with rhinestones like mirrors for the bagworms to see into and comb their strands of course bag-buggy hair. Silk was of course used to tie most of the baghouses to their bagworm village. Every bag was held tight, and every doorstep opened to a silken path where even the bagworm children would feel safe and snug as they walked and played.



Baghouses were not without little square windows, or large round portholes, and fireplaces, or rooms with full kitchens and with all the Mrs. Bagworms, not just ‘the’ Mrs. Bagworm, but all of the wives of all the Mr. Bagworms, each in their bag homes, and all making leaf pies, and leafy salads, and great leaf-layered sandwiches with nothing between the leaves other than a thin layer of mustard. They cooked leafy pita-jingos for little bagworms, and banana-leaf tropical bungos for the most daring of appetites, and cakes tilted with twirlers and sparklers, leaning leaf-cakes as high as five bagworm hats, with five bagworms stacked below, each a mighty sight, one might add.

In the mornings, fireplaces puffed smoke that smelled of cinnamon leaf-candies and ka-dimple-lily cookies. This was the cooking part of the day, the big part of the morning where bellies rumbled, and ladies and hungry bagmen would bake and bake until their stomachs ached. It was the kitchens that made the bagworms most happy. Because everyone knew that bagworms grew, and grew, and grew when they ate...



In the tiny bag houses were little boy and girl rooms—with bagworm bunk beds twenty bunks high so that all the bagworm children could have a safe summery place to sleep in at night. There were little stories of lost bagworms to keep them in bed. There was the tale of the hungry bagworm so they wouldn’t eat from the refrigerator, nor sneak food to their beds; and the three-headed bagworm story; that was so scary, because it once had four noggins before eating its own head! That made three! There was no peanut butter and jelly in that tale full of dread. But no monster tale really scared them, because bagworms knew that no such thing existed, except for those pesky firefly faces, gnats, and snails that hid under their beds!

This summer had been different for the bagworms. It had all started with early summer noise. “Boom, Boom,” the bagworm families could all hear through the treetops during a June rainstorm. “Boom, Boom,” the noises came like clockwork on Sundays, and then on Sundays and Mondays; and then included Tuesdays and Wednesdays as if a giant bagworm were beating a drum to wake up all the little bagworm children in the mornings. “Boom, Boom!” it would sound so as they would not be late for school, though there had been no classes during the summer.



After the fifth morning of booms, there was a conversation between the many children of Mrs. Bagworm in particular:

“Boom Boom!” the day began.

“But it’s not school?” peeped a little bagworm voice. “It’s the summer! I just want to sleep. And every morning these booms, these drums, these thunderous poundings! What are they?"

His young brother answered: “Maybe the trees are falling in the forest!”

They’re younger brother followed: “No—it could never happen!"

The youngest piped up: “Maybe the sun bumps through the treetops on its way to day every morning."

“That’s the silliest!” the oldest smiled. He was barely listening at all.

Some bagworm in between in age interjected to try and scare the youngest: “I think it’s a giant, and it’s trying to shake all us bagworms out of our trees!”

After a bit of thinking the smartest protested: “It could never be. Daddy says only bagworms, bears, blue herons and gypsy moths live in our forest.”

“Not true!” said an amazingly tiny little bagworm. “I saw a walking stick and he greeted me one morning by twirling his cane and tipping his hat.”

“Well he doesn’t live here. He was a walking stick and he was just passing through,” said his twin sister who stood just as small.

Another twin brother answered back: “Well there are animals and things, and great places that we don’t know about!”

“Like spiders and nasties and birds that eat worms??!” said the oldest. Now he was trying to scare them all.

“No!!” said the twin sister, hiding her eyes as many of the bagworm children began to laugh.



Soon came the first day of July. It was a bright day, typical of such days, and so Mr. and Mrs. Bagworm took their morning walk just like any other. Dressed in a dress so fine and red, she held her umbrella to block the morning sun while Mr. Bagworm walked in his favorite suit: skinny and long, it had 150 pearl buttons that he snapped together each day. It was the suit of all suits, especially made for such lively morning walks, and he felt very clean and dandy in it as he and his wife walked the dewy morning strands.

“I like the mornings,” he said as he walked.

“And I like to twirl my umbrella and block out the sun,” smiled Mrs. Bagworm.

“I like these walks, they make me strong,” he added.

“Well I like to sing little morning love songs,” Mrs. Bagworm said, hummed, then twirled her umbrella into Mr. Bagworm’s wormy face. He was so sure of himself and so proud. He had eaten five leaf pies the day before and had grown enough to add two new pearl buttons and lots of nice length to his ever-growing suit. He then pranced and stuck his wormy chest out and grumbled as men bagworms do when they’re walking about.



And then the morning booms happened again.
“Boom, Boom!” went the morning blast, louder than ever. It exploded through the trees. “Boom, Boom!” it turned the little baggies in their beds. “Boom, Boom!” it threw Mr. Bagworm to the silk strands where forty-five buttons unsnapped with a zing!

Mrs. Bagworm was shaken most of all. In fact, she fell from the tree amid further booms and glided with many summersaults, and luckily, with the most luck you could ever witness, she held to her umbrella, and sailed all the way to the ground like a dazzling butterfly-bagworm that there never was!

A tribute to the Condors for clipping the wings of those baby bird Falcons last night 2-0, here's a scene from Cubicles based on a 2003 hockey moment:



The biggest hit I ever saw in a hockey game was one laid on late in the third period by a Bakersfield Condor just behind the Bakersfield goal. A Fresno Falcon—yes, those dreaded Fresno anythings, dreaded farm folk: grape growers, cabbage and potato planters; and poets, students, wandering Tower Centre hipsters, footballers and hockey players, all Bakersfield-haters with their Central Valley smog that drifts into the Southern areas; they are so despised as we here are Fresno-haters—not too different in rivalry from let’s say, Boston and New York. There I was with Mike and some hockey players from the local slink rink; one of the coaches manning the goal box; we talked about our favorite hated Falcons and had a sighting of Katie Starburns in the aisles, a beer in each hand, and sitting down, not paying attention to the game at all.

“I can see her talking from here,” says Mike.

“It’s Katie,” I add. “She could talk through a nuclear war.”

“You don’t say?”

At that moment a Falcon circles behind the left side of the Condor’s net. At just the same instant a Condor speeds around the net’s right side, legs digging into the ice, shoulder dipped, and in a sudden burst of strength crashes the Falcon player high onto the boards, snapping his stick in two. The glass shakes while the player jumps up from being crumpled, only to scream and curse in embarrassment. It is the most aggressive hit I ever witness. Mike drops his beer. And then we look at one another, high fives slapping and cheering like crazy, both probably thinking the Fresno player was really lucky to not have to be scraped up off the ice.

This morning I ask a friend half a world away why she's been strangely silent. No talk of rescuing Indonesian orphans or chasing down child sex traffickers from Tsunami child stalkers... nothing. The response is just as silent, just a few cryptic words of haste and a busy life. But then, that might be my mindset too if I had similar work to do, similar horrors to sort through. Last night, I was in an especially cranky mood pacing Centennial Garden--I don't know why writers are so moody and desperate; like Frodo Baggins the world weighs on our shoulders some times. There is no explanation in a blog, only the surreal verbage in pages and pages of literature can a writer even begin to sort out such moodiness. It's a little like the fog outside right now--even to me--no true understanding other than a little colloquiallism--perhaps it's just a matter of the heart. I know only a few people who understand hearts. They're very few, but they understand the frailty of a heart, and they understand a bit why fog permeates writers. Even the dead understand a bit about us... a song indirectly makes its way to my computer this morning--melancholy about people having no time, and lost love. The song had been sent by a man to his girl; he had so eloquently walked lonely isles and then disappeared, his lungs having gave out...

I was happy to hear from Michael Miller yesterday. It's reassuring to know that other artists want to read my work. His words are pleasant. He is a writer who you can tell each word weighs heavy in his thoughts... emails like music lyrics layed out on the page--I can see his creativity in the simplicity of writing a note to me...

I went up to the San Jose Theatre of Performing Arts recently to catch Wilco's latest tour. I must say I was impressed by Jeff Tweedy once again as he blasted through an emotion-driven set from A Ghost is Born. At the same time it was strange floating back into the city of my youth, passing through Hellyer Park to relive past days: Mexican family barbecues and baseball games, fishing with a bamboo pole with a string attached to a hook and fat earthworm. My Pop used to take us with the rest of the Kindergarten class to wreak havoc on the trout and bluegill. At least we hoped we would wreak havoc. Not that I remember catching any fish. But those are lost days. It's good to get in touch again here with the Bakersfield music scene. I'm impressed comparing the music in Bakersfield today with the mid 1990s when bands had just passed the reign of Spike 1000, Sex Art, and The Lonely. In the mid 1990s there was still a Mento Buru as well as bands like Dim--are Ramone and Missy still floating around the coast somewhere?--and Jumping Trains, Angry Asphalt Machine, Organic Device, Crawdaddy and others. I remember old Chaos Coffee, right before it became Bottoms Up, which was before it became Rileys. Crawdaddy often blew their mad horns in Chaos Coffee and I would wander in, get some Earl Grey tea--I didn't drink in those days, and sometimes did a little ska dancing myself. Get those elbows swingin'--that's all you need. I saw Scott Bell, now city lawyer in the Haberfelde, on his back and scooting across the floor in drunk rhythm to the song Devastation when he used to jam there... He told me recently, "I just let my kids play with all that old guitar stuff." Of course it was 1995 or 1996 that Korn came and played at the Casa Royale and hung a Bako cop in effigy. There's a scene in the Citrus Girl all about that. I'll have to post it one of these days. The drummer's sister Darla and husband at the time, Bruce, slunk around in the dark during the show. Old Bruce would hang out at Jastro Park and play hockey with us guys in Bakersfield's early roller hockey days. Darla was just happy to see her brother perform. And old Rob Ruiz from the early Dim days hung out with a beer in hand, his backpack with drumsticks poking out, and wandered around talking to anyone he could. Now that was a Chicano band, that old Dim--but that's another story. Today's music, so punk influenced because of several reasons--punk bands get play in Bakersfield--it's been a thriving scene; it's the roots of much of Bakersfield rock, Bakersfield being so close to LA and the punk scene that's been there since the 1970s. I noticed a similar scene in the Huntridge District: the old Huntridge theatre off Charleston Blvd. in downtown Las Vegas, which is a punk haven as well. Don't forget the Double Down I mentioned in an earlier blog. Punk is alive and well because of its history...

I'd like to offer my thanks to JR at Illpressed. Because I literally stumbled onto his site, this old timer has gotten in touch with the Bakersfield alt music scene once again. The talent has gotten richer, the old timers more experienced and just as on fire as ever; and the music, now with the Internet as a launching pad, has transformed the alternative music scene here into a more mature entity than it ever has been, with websites and communities all abuzz about music. Maybe I'm just grasping onto something, because after writing a book about Bakersfield corruption and its seedy underbelly of murder and deception, and knowing the fallout that is soon to come from local government and its slimy officials, I just may find that it's the artists of the city who will give me peace of mind...

Tomorrow I will begin posting music reviews as part of my blog. Two shows I will be attending tonight will be the Dalloways, a Fresno-based brit pop band. Upon first listen they remind me a bit of early Lloyd Cole, although they are a self-proclaimed blend of Belle and Sebastian and The Smiths... Will also be attending Bakersfield high energy band, The Filthies. I noticed they will be in Las Vegas at the Double Down bar. Once frequented by yours truly, the Double Down is a rockabilly/rock hangout a good distance from the Strip with freaky paint on the walls and a slot machine bar...

I opened the living room window this morning and realized the Christmas lights had finally been taken down; that blue skies in winter are hard to come by in this fog-trapped valley; that old pictures grow yellow because our memories do; that kids stay young for a short while—you lose sleep and wish you hadn’t, but then when everyone gets older you find another reason to lose sleep. Maybe the only sleep we can ever cherish is while we’re young, when we forget that forever is but a short time. We hide under the covers and only pop out at a perfect moment, thinking we'd stay there forever. Forever being something like, “I’m going to love you forever.” Better just say, until the end. So I get up, wake up, think, I’m going back to bed and sleep until noon. But then something calls to me. A play, a story, or reading the news, fiddling with breakfast thoughts until suddenly the sun is out and I can’t just ignore it up in the sky, that big eye making even the fog glow grey instead of black. Who needs sleep? That’s the only thing that will ever be forever. And I’m not ready for that yet. I’m ready for more poems, more music, more novels, more hockey games to go and scream at, and so

Just so you know. I am being forced to write today's fancy blog from a person half a planet away.

I am most excited about one of the novels I have just written. I enjoy the content much more than the darkness and alienation that pervades Lords: Part One. Well, the manuscript in mention is not completely written. It needs an ending, hopefully in this case, one of those Hollywood kind of endings befitting a comedy: a little sugary sweetness perhaps? Those of you who know me have been wondering where this manuscript is, and why I keep it so well hidden. Cubicles is hidden because of its comedy, its subject matter, and well, just because most of you have plenty to read witout me dumping another manuscipt in your lap. Ha! A firmer reason is that even though Cubicles is more fiction that both Citrus Girl and Thick White Crust it is too believable for too many people. Although TWC certainly is filled with a minor dose of magic realism and because of that is actually less believable, even though it is true-to-life Chicano fiction. I am afraid that too many people will look at this novel and scream, "This is not reality! This did not happen!" They're right. It didn't happen. It's a fiction book drawn from experiences that include: real life, film, books, creative wondering and more. Cubicles is 'Office Space' with a good dash of philosophy sprinkled into the very heart of its prose. I keep wondering what kind of excerpt I would put online. But I can't fathom a scene I could throw onto the Web that could please all my readers. I will keep contemplating. I will consistently wonder, just like the main character wonders why such Frankensteins fill the vacuum of the corporate worlds common men and women populate:



Two heads taller than the rest of us, which really isn’t intimidating from someone so much like a lost boy monster, Milt’s head actually is large and rectangular like a 50s B-movie Franken stiff. He’s got big grey eyes and large lips; his cheeks puff out along with hairy chest hair that springs up through his v-necks like copper coils. His hands don’t look like flesh at all but dry and wood-like, as if unfinished, carved, and stuck onto his body. God only knows what he does with them up in the Greenhorn Mountains, where he commutes from everyday and lives with his wife and two small children. He’s probably just digging a tunnel to nowhere, I figure, with those bare wooden hands clawing the earth—those will make good shovels—very time efficient. Frederick Taylor would be proud...

Poem from 1998. The Muse of The Citrus Girl, Thick White Crust, and many poems. I hear she is coming back to California for a brief visit. Not to see me, but on some corporate trip to Napa Valley wine country:



Tommygirl from the woods.
Sun-kissed desert goddess blooming,
Walking on Route 66, in heaven.

Poem from 1998 that reminds me of this time of year were I to be driving East from California's Great Central Valley. The desert and the valley being two muses I played off each other. Normally my muse was a someone, a person, with the desert as the backdrop. Here you can clearly see muse as nature:



Miles and miles of grapes, and oil wells in them,
pumping their fists.
The green of early February in hidden agri-valleys,
on the tree-lined hills keeping citrus safe from the wind,
while across the freeway, cows roam, eat, and piss on the wild prairie.
East 58, into the mountains—rocks and green—green rolls of hills,
squares of land in the valley: shining brown and green patches of light.
Us quiet in the car with Metro while I write and stare into the green,
the green we soon leave behind, the green that a cloud wraps on a hill,
just past the first oak of the foothill mounds,
just before my favorite valley: where 58 meets 223,
just before our climb into the Tehachapis,
And after Cache Creek, for a brief smoky moment,
you get a glimpse of volcanoes—steam from machinery miles away,
even further behind the smoked peaks—it makes them seem alive,
burning and ready to burst.

I'm writing about homelessness because of an inquiry earlier today. Sometimes we learn about ourselves by studying the disassociation others have gone through. There are other themes of homelessness. In the epic poem in Country Songs to Live By, and in The Citrus Girl, surely, the characters living an adventurous cross-country travel season just had to have homeless moments of living in the hoopty on the streets of the agricultural town of Bakersfield, CA. Those "rebellious MTV-sucked youth." But they chose that life. It wasn't pressed upon them. They were seeking and finding each other along the way. They were homeless, together, but according to this poem it was a journey each took for separate reasons, and it was spiritual. Here is a segment:



...And I repeat: “it’s what uplifts the epic of self,” to the sun over my spirit body.
Sonora 1996 there is a Tocomcari rise spitting above my desert, uplifting me.
And Wonderstrand understood, when I climbed his mountain with Jordan.
I washed Jordan’s hair laughing in self-glee as we stood in cleansing desert showers.
It was for the self. Those 4 days in the desert under the burning bush sun—uplifted me.
Living in the car in Central California scented citrus air, Gautama understood,
sitting in his apartment,
where we could see smoking, burning eyes, in moving tapestries.
And so I uplift my self.
Like Poet in blood hemorrhage, lifted, pain, spirit, death,
sorrows soon forever gone in moments caught between starlight as he passed.
And maybe I should say in self-uplifted moments,
words that could make mountains twist toward the heavens,
“Christlike, you are the burning bush—in godsent-fire...

Now, according to the narrator of this passage, he started a new life. Homelessness derived from that. Instant change. He associated with it, because it was all in the news. Here's an excerpt from Thick White Crust:



DIA de LOS RASCACIELOS Just after the attacks occurred I was with my ex-girlfriend sitting in a bar in Las Vegas watching four channels at once unfold the horror of destruction. The buildings had already fallen apart. I didn’t even hear about their collapse, or the attack, until a few hours after the buildings had come down. By the time I knew, thousands of ordinary people had already existed through extraordinary circumstances. Thousands had already been torn away from life, from the planet, at a certain universal crossroads, in a planetary ellipse through the heavens, through our solar system in our galaxy, and that in the universe, and so on, and so on. There it had happened fixed in time and space. People will memorialize the event on Earth. But in the distant heavens, there is a place as well. This was the day of the towers, the day of the dead, the day aliens would no longer be wanted—the farm workers may be no more. No, it cannot come to that. But Vincente Fox will not be the only Mexican crying in his sleep. The borders would close this day, the world would change, paranoia would come into existence for every man, woman and child who heeded the impact, the meaning of the explosions ripping across their television screens, or who stood in New York City, who could not believe their eyes that towers could crumble, and jets could be hurtled like rockets, and people, and ideas such as ‘no borders’ could burst like boils on our American landscape.


I sat there with the woman I would say goodbye to. I knew about goodbyes. Families had said goodbyes all morning; final goodbyes; the goodbyes of death. It was the day of the towers—there would be many, many goodbyes of death. Imagine a city. Nuclear warheads are on their way in five minutes. The phone lines jam with goodbyes. What do you do? Who do you say goodbye to? If only the people of Hiroshima knew; they could have screamed their goodbyes. But this is the day of the towers, the skyscrapers. And there I sat, already knowing I was going to say goodbye to this woman. I wondered if I would ever see her again. We both sat silent. Occasionally, one of us would point to a television screen: there was an angle of death that we had not yet seen. A tower fell apart. This time it appeared on an even grander scale; it was closer, right upon us. I could almost crane my neck and look upwards. Another replay: we could not see the horrors of individual death except for the jumpers. And then that was enough. Telemundo showed me enough. CNN showed me enough. NBC showed me enough. I had to go. It was my turn to say goodbye.

I spent the next few hours in a Laundromat washing clothes while the woman, my ex-girlfriend, slept in her bed with a horrible cold. Her lips were full and red, and so were her cheeks. Her green eyes fell into slumber as I went off to wash her clothes before I left. When I came back I ironed two shirts for her and then poured her some gingerale. She was top waitress at a fine dining establishment. I had scrubbed the stains from her shirts and aprons. I cried every moment the iron shot steam into her clothes. I cried for her and America. I cried for goodbyes, because goodbye means people come and go, and that life eventually ends, and that there are little deaths and great deaths, and they abound and create holy terror at the moments leading up to farewell: the moment of goodbye itself.


There were stains I could not get out of her shirts. And that made me feel horrible. I had scrubbed until the ends of my fingers were red. I looked out of her window down Eighth Street. I saw taxis pass, and a roaring ambulance. I could smell the palm tree standing out front and the dates that hung from it like beads. I knew the woman I loved slumbered, and I could smell her too, in the room, in the air, in each moment as I stared at the casinos of downtown Las Vegas and the hard asphalt below. It seemed like such a short jump though I was not one to be a jumper, not when I had time to think about it.


Like the people in the towers, I didn’t want to say goodbye. I was full of anxiety and terror in a house I could not live in because love is a strong feeling, and I had wronged her too many times, and for a time, was not even happy with her. I had refused to work things out. It was too late. And so only a goodbye could have any healing, or any hint of salvation. Only a goodbye would do. My lips quivered. It was dia de los rascacielos. My country ripped apart. People fell. No one knew what would be constructed from such bloodied earth, but there would be a re-building at least in New York. That, America was sure of even as the buildings fell.

...homelessness. I do address such personal issues in both The Citrus Girl and Thick White Crust. I will post a couple of passages either later tonight or in the morning; that way I can share a little prosody about life and its turning points. In the literary world, writers, like other artists must endure hardships now and then, sacrificing what others want them to be so they can stay true to course. John Gardner invites us to learn that dissheveled writers take a little longer to blossom than your typical corporate folk. I think that's me for sure.

I was asked today about my middle initial. Of course my response was: mystery, mystery and more mystery! What was I supposed to do, give a straight answer? If I can't remember what V.S. Naipaul's middle initial means then surely no one in their right mind is going to remember my middle name even if I did kiss and tell. It will be lost with the intitials in J.R.R. Tolkien, or the 'W' in W. Somerset Maugham. In other words, I won't tell. It's my Lemony Snicket surprise Cracker Jacks hidden trinket that the people who don't know must guess a little bit to find out...

Lords: Part One went through some final edits over the weekend. I'm happy with the comments. I believe there will be some quick development to the ending. Nothing major, just some more teasers for the second part, and a lengthier final scene. There was some discussion as to the demise of a certain character, a Simon Sundale as well. The discussion took place, in part, in a parking garage in downtown Bakersfield, right across from the old brick Newspaper building; fitting don't you think? Beware of toiling with Native American ghosts old Simon...

Apparently
I am pressured to write more personal notes here. Dissheveled
at best, this is what the good people want. Did some email bantering
today with an old friend from Vancouver who lives in Las Vegas.
These fans, I tell you, they will even support that crazed hockey
player, Tibbets. He wrote:
Tibbetts was great! A little on the
edge maybe, but it was sad to see him go....



We went to the Victoria game (last home game) and saw the
MIGHTY

Wranglers win 3-2 in OT.


I think they were worn out by the time they hit Beggersfield.
3 games

in 3 nights?


I bantered back with some excuses about why the Condors ever
lost to the Vegas Weenies. It ended with us only agreeing that
hockey players should not wear horrid Elvis or Tuxedo style
jerseys on jersey auction nights... they look like, well, it's
just embarrassing.

I began working on a musical again about a week ago. Dusted off the old Chicano theatre piece after running into an old friend at Barnes and Noble. I never go to those places, detesting book stores for the most part. I put in about five hours in one night only to have a systems crash that didn't recover what I had written. I lost two songs, pages of re-writes, and in the morning was fairly cranky toward even the humming sound of the computer fans. If I smoked, that would have been a two pack night with twiddling, itchy nicotine fingers. There's a certain desire to write lost when such happens. I get moody, I give up, only to rebound and refocus a few days later. It's amazing the little things that pick you up: the smile of a faraway friend, the hope in a moving email, or a funny moment that is truly understood as universal...