13.07.02 "California" is a dirty word. part ii

A few strange things happened.
The night that Ava abandoned me, I made my way back to SF city, wandered around and slept on doorsteps to avoid the rain and other strangers in the SF night. Two nice young men arrived home late to find me on their doorsteps. I apologized and explained that I knew it was obnoxious and bothersome for me to have been there. They were polite and one asked, "Where will you go?" and I said that I didn't know but smiled and waved goodbye. He told me to be careful. I wonder if I had explained my circumstance he would have let me stay there, but at this point I was very suspicious of hospitality.
Another night I stayed at a place called Soma Inn or hostel or something, having received a Western Union from some one that was short of the amount needed to fly back to NYC. I spent this instead on (H) & Cava - Friexenet.

The next night I met some strange man named John who told me early on that he was a speed addict. I told John that I would cover his half of a double hostel room, the number of which turned out to be room #222. and explained that it was just me being nice and that I didn't want any sex or anything; in fact I love pussy.
We chill out and later he throws a bit of a fit because I won't buy him drugs. We part ways in the Castro. I am uncertain why he believed he should return.
I wake up very early, and I am happy to not find John there. I go to the taxi company to retrieve my bag which has been held hostage since the falling through of prenegotiated fare arrangements. When I come back to the hostel and open the door to room #222, I find John masturbating to straight porn Or he is nodded-out post masturbation. I ask him to put himself away and he slowly and passively in rebellion does so, but not without pleading some case of inconvenience. I dealt with it all in stride.
On another night, perhaps that one, I decide to go out to Ocean Beach, on a whim and because I have little else to do. It's lovely. The beach lets me sleep for a while. Then I get cold. Some how, I suppose I was keeping my eyes open for a place to stay for a while, I found and empty apartment near the ocean. There were sliding glass doors. I entered and cautiously explored my potential new digs. I was ecstatic about having the quiet sanctuary of an empty apartment. It reminded me of the old days with Erik.
The place was strange, and there was a sort of system of plastic curtained separations in the apartment, along with industrial cleaning vacuums equipped with venting tubing which exhausted to the outside after being filtered. Then I notice the hallway entrance door is a sort of plastic quarantine lock, and read a posted large sign only visible from the outside of the door.
It read biological gear is required due to a fungal contamination. !!! I began to pray, and consider my options. I could go to a hospital, I could go jump in the ocean, burn all of my things, I could call the E.P.A, I could do nothing. I think to myself that I've already very likely exposed myself to anything present and wonder how peculiar it is that the neighboring adjacents were occupied. Hopefully I took a photo. I also had daydreams about contracting some awful Andromeda strain type of lung infection, and think of myself dying such an absurd death so far away from anyone who cared. I also considered that the sign and the plastics were designed to scare off squatters, but decide that to be unlikely. I go to sleep, in prayer, thinking of Daniel in a den of lions the size of microbial spores.
The guy John writes me some email, but I have left his stuff, as I said I would, on the sidewalk after waiting for an hour. I felt like I ordered french toast that morning, the one before the E.P.A. squat.
I called Jason and asked him to write down an address in case something happened to me.So far, I seem to be OK, excluding the fact that I am an alcoholic drug addict. Soon after, I am on a plane back to Islip, very early in the morning, without money but relieved for the flight. Hungover.
Having spent the night fending off an old gay Irishman, who was bald and in an all-too-scary way.
I stayed in a hostel called "The World" or something very near to the Soma Inn. I drank a couple of days away, organizing finally a ticket purchased to go home, wherever that is, probably NYC.
Since I landed in Islip, which is far from The City, on Labor day or Memorial day or whichever one is in the spring, without any cash, I had to convince this woman and her family of sons to give me a lift to the train. There I met an older couple in their 60s. The man asked me which was it was to NYC on the LIRR, so I gave him directions relative to the Sun. The sun sets in the west, and we wanted to go west.
It turns out that he was a fighter pilot on the early jet fighters. I guessed I believed him, but it seemed that he would be so directionally challenged. His wife bought me a ticket for the train and he made it clear that it was his wife's generosity and not his. I appreciated that statement. It touched me for some reason.
At around 9 I arrived in Brooklyn, stayed with Andrea and Matt, and then proceeded to try to make arrangements to get to France. Benjamin left on a flight that very day and needed money. I was able to get it to him and took him as far as the shuttle from Port Authority to EWR.

Some few days passed and I worked out a ticket with Andrew, who cashed a check for me. I flew to Paris CDG on June 3rd / 4th then took a train to Bayonne where I met up with Ben & Co.
I was mortally drunk by the time I arrived in Bayonne, some 24 hours after leaving NYC. I believed I was stuck, and I was. David Tullio could have helped me, and would have, but we were having difficulties communicating. Anyway, I'm not sure how good my credit is with him.

And so, this is the beginning of my stay in France.

Hippocrates (460−357 B.C.) prescribed drinking the juice of the white poppy mixed with the seed of nettle.

Tom Waits on cigarettes: The beauty of quitting is, now that I've quit, I can have one, 'cause I've quit.

When the Light of the Endless was drawn in the form of a straight line in the Void... it was not drawn and extended immediately downwards, indeed it extended slowly — that is to say, at first the Line of Light began to extend and at the very start of its extension in the secret of the Line it was drawn and shaped into a wheel, perfectly circular all around. (original in Hebrew)

- Foucault's Pendulum, Umberto Eco, Keter, Chapter 1

Joseph stopped. He stopped drinking & he stopped smoking cigarettes. There was a bacchanal of ugliness, during which he was very aware that it had to stop, and he had committed himself to stopping smoking on the date of the 18th. Publicly, he had professed his commitment, to more than a handful of people. And on the 18th, he woke up smoking and fell asleep without cigarettes. He still had a patch stuck to him.

The Universe gave him a break. It detained him. He was in a room with graffiti on a table that read, "The Truth is Rarely Pure and Never Simple." This is an Oscar Wilde quote, much unexpected for the particular room he was in. There was also a piece of graffiti on the wall that read, "eat geLatin at burger Kings" that amused him. He had a bed, a sink and toilet, and a table mounted into the wall. He had two sheets and two wool blankets, shoes that were not his and a suit that was not his. There was a window high up in the wall that he could see a snow out of.

There was a t.v. outside of the room that he could hear. He could not smoke, he did not have any cigarettes. And so he remained for some weeks. Then, he was in an automobile on a very very long trip to a place that was not so far away, and the drivers asked if he wanted a cigarette. He did not, but the span of time was so unbroken and unpunctuated that he declined to decline. It was a filterless camel. As he smoked it, he looked out at a stream. He wished that he wasn't smoking, and decided that it was a very bad idea. Until the next time that he was offered a cigarette, which was well-timed after a meal.

And so, he arrived at his destination, where he couldn't smoke again, but this time left in 12 hours or so. When he emerged to the rainy day, he really wanted a cigarette to close that chapter. And so the grammatical smoking resumed. Joseph was fond of commas and semicolons, they left things open. Cigarettes seemed similar.

But, he had quit. He did stop. And now he smoked again. And drank too much coffee.

Uptown Bronx Bound #2 Train Making *ALL* Catacoomb Stops

I don't have the luck to always get a motherfucking express train. Most of the times, it's a local. But I am a train-switching motherfucker, so when I roll in and catch the doors open on that motherfucking #2, I'm across the platform like so many pieces of blackened chewing gum.

Let me be your server. I won't spit in your shit, in fact I am very very adherent to the golden principle of food service. Enjoy your shit. Your shit should be good, and if I told you it's good, it is. Drink up, invite divinity at your table and leave me a motherfucking tip.

Also, I'm wearing some badass socks.

No more,

Vicissitude: Blessing, Curse, or Both?

Dear reader,
A Burroughs-esque, "Well, well..."

if we get our full threescore and ten, we won't pass this way again. so kiss me with your mouth open. turn the tires toward the street and stay sweet. - the Mountain Goats' "Dilaudid"

He's talking about getting a full life. In Psalms 90:10 it describes a full life as 70 years (threescore + 10) and maybe eighty but if you manage to get that extra time it's a toil in vanity as ultimately life is bound by its transience and fleetingness. This idea is a fundamental element of my understanding and one which I've carried close to me throughout my life.

Now & Never are eternal. I've asked for the latter, but have only been given the former. Resentment would be vanity, and counter-divine.

Just remember, the sun is not forever. If NASA is our only hope (& the other space projects around the world) then, well, I mean...-really-... ?

So if I am here or there or anywhere in between...

"Well, well..."

Expense Report (or l'Additione)

Joseph was sorting his papers and notebooks on Lucia's bed. He had returned from Miami with all of his files and notebooks and was refiling and organizing in a therapeutic attempt to alleviate his malaise from drinking the night before. He was trying to 'get his house in order'. At 29 & 1/2 he felt he had finally had enough of the sinister bacchanalia that had been his only known life. Dr. Jielu had written a prescription for clonazepam which he had mis-managed, shared, and run out of 3 weeks early. The pharmacist gave him only 5 tablets after calling the doctor, which contributed to Joseph's anxiety. He had been a wreck the night before, and along with fear and guilt he had a calm, a hope, even a faith that he never had to contend with that sort of thing again if he just chose to do the next right thing. As he went through his papers and notebooks, he stumbled upon a beautiful song he had written that felt magical and medicinal to his dark and heavy heart. It was as unfamiliar to him as if he had never seen it or read it before -- Jamais Vu. It read as follows:

Expense Report (or L'additione)

7 poppies' heads
3 men dead
Ghosts in their bellies
Men in their bones

10 dollars
15 euros
10 pounds
The life of a man

The love behind a red curtain
What's in the bag is certain
She spilled tears but I didn't believe
I spilled blood all over my sleeve

He also had notes on the reverse of the sheet that suggested he name his band "The Hats on the Bed" and above that starred item another that indicated he should use the chorus of a casino slot machine room, that magical tumbling rain of sound on the heart. It makes sense as a musical symbol, because that rain forest of electronic sirens, ethereal and sweet, rings the false hope and empty dreams of the machinery of Las Vegas as it eats the hearts of men who crash on its desert shores. G-d, it's beautiful, but only from the other side.

Joseph was blessed. He wanted to know about so many things, and in spite of his ration of tragedy, he still had an appetite for beauty & redemption. In fact, as a waiter he thought to himself that it's time for the entree. Lucia was a phenomenal muse, an ancient and loving soul with intelligent, warm eyes that could communicate more than Joseph would ever be able to say. As they walked to the pharmacy to get his prescription, for which she would pay, they passed vibrant and healthy pansies defying the Philadelphian December. She noted, "those are some resilient-ass pansies." Joseph smiled and told her that that was a beautiful and ironic statement. She smiled, gave a quick eye to his and said, "Good point." He replied, "Tough-ass pansies, Rough-ass pansies." He asked her which was better. They agreed that "Rough-ass pansies" was more perfect.

Tell me how to get the hell out of Sesame Street

Joseph often had one of three recurring dreams as a child. One was a small him bring thrown out a car window over a bridge crossing an autumn valley, where he would fall with his heart flipped in his chest until he woke up landing on the soft padding of his mattress. Another was the visitation of two characters from Sesame Street that brought compound words together. They were aliens, and would take turns, "Tele," ... "Phone," until they completed the single compound word. Those two fuckers would be bouncing against the door window in the living room where he slept at the Waddells' house like a moth on a light bulb, singing, "Jos," .. "Eph." That frightened the fuck out of him. He did not want any late night messages from aliens, puppets or not. Their mouths circulated in a perverse oscillating ovulation, and they chorused, "yip yip yip, uuuuhhuuuh uuuuuhhuuh." The third dream was that he was able to breathe underwater, like Jacques Cousteau but without any mortal breathing apparatus. He loved Jacques Cousteau and the whole underwater world. He would want the ability to breathe underwater at that point in his life if he could be given any superpower. He would pray for it.

Mania?

What bloody mess it all can be. Other times, it's like a long and beautiful nascent garden on a perfect first spring day. A waxing moon, a cool night with thin air. Sometimes the universe rings its magical bells, sounds harmonize in resonance with your heart. Your eyes are full of stars. You are mad with inspiration, but the Universe is having it that way. Your synapses fire like bullet tracers in some ancient war to establish order. Yes, you. You are custodian of your Universe, though it's not yours and you didn't hire yourself. You were appointed in an ancient and magical ceremony that has been long without reference or reverence. You're all hopped up, your eyes are clean & sharp. You can tell that something is crystallizing in the ether, like it may shatter if you breathe too hard. Like it could flex if you poked it. Like you maybe could lose a finger.

So you run a labyrinth of ideas, everything shining golden and brilliant like the sun. And in this labyrinth you are not lost, it's like you're coming home from the longest, most epic journey to a home that you've long forgotten the splendour of, running from corridor to corridor bathing in the coimfort and ease you sense in the brilliant warmth of the light and soothing cool of the air. Like you are a motherfucking fish that has been thrown back into an Ocean of brilliant and eternal depth.

"Don't steal, [but instead] drug deal." - Ted Black

Readers, friends, if you turn these pages
Put your prejudice aside,
For, really, there's nothing here that's outrageous,
Nothing sick, or bad — or contagious.
Not that I sit here glowing with pride
For my book: all you'll find is laughter:
That's all the glory my heart is after,
Seeing how sorrow eats you, defeats you.
I'd rather write about laughing than crying,
For laughter makes men human, and courageous.

- Rabelais, intro to Gargantua & Pantagruel

Joseph would walk to school in the morning. He can't remember how long it took him, but he did know that he didn't have extra time to mess about. On the walk, he would cross a nicer neigborhood and a stream on the far side of which were grapes growing on a wall. The climate never had the grapes come to ripeness that he knew of, and definitely never had them so during the winter school year. Still, they were supremely sour like a natural candy. He would usually stop to eat them on his way to school, using the cringe that the overwhelming sour provoked to propel him running up the hill. A la "Sour Power". Oh indeed.

At the top of the hill was a traffic utility box, inside of which he was certain that there were little men pressing buttons to change the lights. They did not like if you knocked impatiently on the box, so he avoided that. But he could hear them doing their work, and was always pleased when they accommodated his need to cross the street to get to school.

Once at school, for 4 of 5 days, he would sit at a desk in the back of the room and do whatever the very nice teacher who was always very nice to him asked. Spell things? Sure. Practice cursive? Sure. Read? No problem. Then one day she sent him across the hall to the grade above for reading. He felt smaller than he normally did. Still he read. That's what they asked him to do. And so he did. Then he returned to his class.

One out of 5 days, he would go to his classroom and then go back to the lobby. A big, fuckoff yellow schoolbus would pull up in front of the school and he would climb into it. Then it drove him somewhere else, where he would have other classes. Just him & the driver on the big, fuckoff bus. It was always very surreal, but as a child, everything is magical & surreal. The other students told him he was retarded. He didn't talk. There was something wrong with his shoes, they said. He didn't understand, but believed them, since they seemed to have a consensus about it.

A photo of him at this time shows him with tall white socks with colored bands around the elastic. He's wearing a shirt & tighty whities, and he has a young olive complexion with huge dark circles around his eyes. The circles around his eyes are almost blue. He looks sleepy in the photo, but you can tell it's morning. It's taken in a bedroom he lived in. His desk is very organized, with a small elevated book shelf that looks like a reappropriated dish rack.

What he did with his time he can't remember. He would buy baseball cards, not because he really cared or knew who the people on the cards were, but because they were numbered and he understood that it was good to have a complete set. And opening them to find new players that he didn't have and gum was a bonus. As much a part of that was the adventure to the store. They didn't cost more than 50 cents.

Another interest he had was experiments. You know, like attaching a paperclip or a wire to both ends of a battery and seeing how warm it all would get. Warm enough to melt crayons, not warm enough to explode as he had hoped. That was fortunate. He hadn't considered that a battery explosion would likely harm him. So he was very close to the anticipated action. He took things apart. Watches, electronics, small machines like a record player might be made of, they all held secrets. He hid things, like money. Sometimes he forgot that they existed, the hidden things, and they were totally new to him when he found them. He may very well have been retarded, and people did not make sense to him. Other children were the most confusing, but adults knew and behaved strange things & ways.

His favorite thing was falling asleep.