NEEDLING

Hello & Goodbye ... this blog is as of today officialy defunct! I've had no time to write here, and I've lost the motivation to do so. My last few entries weren't really worth putting down, and there's no need going on for the time being.

I've just bought a house! My first! And I need to do a lot of work there, inside and outside ... I can't wait to start playing in the garden, planting my fruit trees, making an herb garden, et cetera.

I've got a screenplay that needs to be written, a book to publish ...

I've got a full time job, and I'm in the process of trying to start my own business.

All of that good stuff brings this blog way down the totem pole.

It's been a lot of fun. And I'll most certainly do this again.

A few years ago, I held an open journal called "Looking for the black & blue goose" while I traveled to Maine and Texas--I lived in Paris at the time--and I enjoyed that very much, where I had actual goals, that I was meeting all kinds of great people, that I had no job really, and all I had to do was enjoy life, drink, and write on my journal ... and I think that's what I'd like to do again. Maybe if I'm lucky, I'll be able to take a one or three months sabatical sometime sooner than later--though not anytime before six months--and I think I'll keep another open journal then.

Or maybe I'll find something totally different to do.

In any case, for the time being, it's time for me to put this electronic typing to rest and think of other things ... I've pretty much done that all ready in the last few weeks, months, but I wanted to make it official.

I don't yet know when I'll take the whole thing off the net ...

Cheers!

My car’s on its last leg
the exhaust pipe barely two inches from the road ...

Was driving home
from my folks
after lunch today
when I get a call from my sister.

She says, “is there anything
dragging on the road when you drive?”

Her girlfriend is two cars behind me
and she was wondering?

I say thanks, I’ll stop
on the shoulder
and check it over.

When I pull over
K. drives by me and ways hello.
I wave back.

I get out of my car.
It’s all good and not good.
It’s as it’s been now for a few weeks.
Which is not good,
because it could all go to hell
any time.
Which is good
because it hasn’t really gotten any worst
in at least two or three weeks.

My exhaust pipe has been dropping
little by little
the last few weeks
or months, I don’t know
and I’ve been ignoring it
for financial reasons
among other reasons
like laziness
lack of time
drunkenness
lack of time
denial of the world as it stands around me ...

Working double shifts
every other day.
Got to be at the store in the morning
to open up shop
first thing mañana!

Wednesday I close on my first house!

I’m so broke it’s not even funny.

I owe money left and right,
but what the fuck!
that’s the way
and I’m happy about it all.

(Before buying a house
I bought a brand new laptop
and went to Paris
on holiday for one week ...

can't complain.)

Earlier this evening I couldn’t find my nail clippers. I was so frustrated, so pissed ... Normally, I keep them either on the shelf underneath my coffee table, or in the top drawer of my desk, or inside the Cuban cigar box next a deck of cards sitting inside the cinder block holding my bookshelves up ... They were nowhere to be found, the little fuckers! And my toe nails really needed cutting! Two weeks ago, I banged the shit out of my left foot little toe against my futon. It hurt like hell. I’d been drunk, and now my toe-nail is black, dead, and half-way coming off. I wanted desperately to cut off all the slack … and … I couldn’t!

The essential is never seen
it seems
or maybe I’m just a prick.

No amount of liquor
can get me sloshed enough to forget
it seems
until it’s too late and I didn’t want to
after all.

Hennessy VSOP. That’s what I’m talking about. There’s been smoke coming out of my car. Like I’m stopping at a red light and it’s over eighty degrees out there, my windows are down because my a.c. sucks, I see smoke coming out from under the hood of my car, and at first I don’t know if it’s my problem or the other guy’s exhaust spewing all over me … it’s been a few weeks now, and since I’ve started driving my car, that I’ve started asking myself some serious questions. It smells like burnt rubber! But I figured it was all part of the ride. My dad gave me this car a few months ago. Lucky me! I was driving a Mazda back then, which went to shit, and every other day it was breaking down, and I was spending hundreds of dollars I didn’t have. It got real bad, and it started to look as if I was going to quit my job—30 minute commute both ways—when my dad offered to “lend” me his car, a 1990 Peugeot station wagon. That was a few months ago. Thanks to my dad, I didn’t have to quit my job. And from the get go, there’s been a “burnt” smell to the car, which I’ve always figured to be part of the experience.

I take a screenwriter’s class at ACC and I take I35 to Braker lane every Wednesday, then I more often than not get stuck at the red light at North Lamar. For several weeks now, I’ve been seeing smoke coming from underneath my hood, but I haven’t been sure. Last week, it was obvious. It was like a fucking BBQ. It reminded me of that time I was stuck in traffic in Hoboken waiting to enter the tunnel to Manhatan in my little Chevette! People next to me kept looking at me with lots of fear in their eyes. There was some major smoke coming out of my hood, and there was no shoulder for me to go onto, nowhere for me to go! If I exploded, so did they! At the Lamar intersection, it wasn’t so drastic. The smoke wasn’t so bad. I kept going, went to class, came back home, went to sleep, woke up, et cetera … and popped up the hood finally to see what the fuck was going on.



Two blocks of wood were stuck up next to my battery, holding it there, half carbonized from heat and such. I couldn’t believe it! Why would anybody put wood in the engine? At any time, they could have flamed up and taken me to hell! I called my dad to ask him who had changed to battery last? He hadn’t ever gotten it changed, so this dated to before he’d bought the car.

Brutus is sick, or at least not in top top shape. Woke me up around 4h30 this morning throwing up. Took him outside, and he ran to the back behind the tree where I knew he was doing something that I’m glad he didn’t do inside the house. Bless him. Locked the front yard and went back inside to clean up the mess he had made, not nearly as bad as it could have been. Haven’t fed him this morning. Figured … let it go through his system whatever it was. Went for a walk a bit ago, and he was sick again, then it was plenty of dry butt heaves. Poor boy. It’s nothing too bad since he’s not depressed, he’s wagging his tale, running, being a normal dog. So I’m sure it’ll pass.

This morning, I tried to go back to bed, but couldn’t sleep, so I sat up and read till I finished the book I was reading, “Le Roman de Molière” by Mikhaïl Boulgakov, translated from the Russian to the French by Michel Pétris. Liked it, makes me want to read all of Molière’s plays.

Now, after a bath, a walk with the dog, and still some time in front of me before I need to be at work, I’ve re-opened a book I read and enjoyed many years ago: “Jacques le Fataliste,” by Diderot.

Here’s a quick and badly translated interpretation by yours truly of the first page or so:

How did they meet? By chance, like anybody. What were their names? Why does it matter? Where did they come from? From not too far away. Where were they going? Do we ever really know where we’re going? What were they talking about? The Boss said nothing; and Jacques said that his captain had told him that everything which happens to us down here, whether good or bad, had been written up in the skies.

The Boss – There’s some big philosophy that one.
Jacques – My captain would also add that every bullet leaving its gun had its ticket.
The Boss – And he was right …

After a small pause, Jacques burst out and yelled, “May the devil take the barman and his bar!”

The Boss – Why tell your neighbor to hell? That’s not very Christian of you.
Jacques – Well, it’s that, while I was getting drunk off his bad wine, I forget to take our horses to the drinking through. My father notices. He gets mad. I shake my head. He takes a stick and rubs my shoulders rather harshly. A battalion was passing there on their way to Fontenoy, so vexed, I joined up. We arrive at destination and the battle starts up!
The Boss – And you receive a bullet with your address on it.
Jacques – You figured it out, right in the knee. And God only knows what unfortunate adventures I’ve gotten into because of that shot. They hold together no better or worse than the links of a cheap chain bracelet. Without that shot I believe I would never have fallen in love, for example, or get a limp.
The Boss – So you’ve been in love?
Jacques – Yes, sure I have!
The Boss – And all because you were shot?
Jacques – Because I was shot!
The Boss – You’ve never told me a word about it.
Jacques – That’s right.
The Boss – And why’s that?
Jacques – Well, it’s because it couldn’t have been told neither too late nor too soon.
The Boss – And has the time come to learn of these love affairs?
Jacques – Who knows?
The Boss – Just in case, give it a shot …


Well ... I think I'll stick to reading it, rather than trying to translate it! My my, now I know why I've never wanted to be a translator. It's hard work! And I suck at it! And did I say it was difficult? Cheers.

At the Hilton last night ...

okay ... okay ... I know it's annoying, but I've never owned an Apple before, and I've never played with photographs before ... so here I go, here's my impromptu way of correcting bad pictures ...

enjoying some tunes on Ken’s show this morning while doing my wondrous bastardization of all ready bad images taken last night …

Got to meet the guy who runs the Del Maguey, single village mezcal company! I've been a big fan of said mezcal for some time now, so that was exciting to me.

What to do? Listening to the repetitive instrument. Solo Piano, by Philip Glass.

Ric said many things. Among other words, he said:

"Leave it alone after this
It is fine”



III       Unheard song
from Vacuum Dance

            1

We rolled along
ascended the coastline
to this place on the map
top right of my mind.

We found black pebbles
on the beach
our bodies bending
at our waist
at our knees
picking pebbles like small petunias.

The waves are dogs crazed
friendly but don't touch
don't carelessly jump
and don't caress the wind
a mad woman blowing nubiferous songs in your face.

Over the waves the rocks are silent
comfortably cold
overlooking the water at a hundred feet.

Steeped strephonades I sing.

The clouds, the way
they move through the sky
like big floppy bellies
going in separate directions
listening
to the sea beating the bottom of the cliff.

I was the earth moving
a great big ship going nowhere.

            2

Pale blues barely
blue
just almost gray with sand.

Rivulets crawling
laughing tickles of water
through the beach towards the sea
like an arousal
a cry
endlessly coming back
through the sand
into the bay
where the waves are cold
I know
I was wadding my feet.

I was looking at a dead
black-backed sea gull
its carcass halfway gone already
eaten by fish and other gulls.

I ventured further into the waves
rolling up my pants
the carcass floated out of my reach
I had a long stick
to help me prod.

                         Let it go, what'you gonna do with a dead bird?
                         I don't know. I want to see.
                         Let it go, what'you gonna do with a dead bird?
                         I don't know. I want to see.
                         Let it go, what'you gonna do with a dead bird?
                         I don't know. I went to sea ...

            3

An unpaved road
into the woods
into the hinterlands
the backwoods
with an old wooden shack
at the end
burnt down to the muddy ground
and a rotten mattress
eaten by mites and the cold
with springs sticking out
rusted.

She stopped the car.
She had to piss.

Steam came up
from the frozen leaves.
I watched.
She had a hot ass
or she was full of hot piss
or both.

Back in her car
in the backseat
I had her knees
cupped in my hands
pushing them apart.

...

She had to piss again.
Me too.

Nothing like pissing
after sex in the backseat of her car
on a freezing afternoon
and her just one tree over
also pissing.

Tickling a subtle melody
of happy thoughts and frozen squirrels
we laughed as we pissed
we laughed
we pissed as we laughed.

There was laughter all around us.

She was the earth moving
a great big nubiferous ship
going somewhere
or possibly nowhere in the lactic skies.

I have to write the critic of a film for my screenwriting class. Tomorrow morning, I’m getting up early again, and driving to Taylor to go take pictures of the house I’m attempting to buy. My insurance man needs these pictures so that I can get a good deal on home insurance. Every single hour of time off I’ve had in the last couple of weeks, I’ve spent it there, it seems. It’s like I’m trying so hard not to be too excited because what if the loan doesn’t go through? What if my car breaks down? What if anything happens and that at the last second, I won’t be able to close on the house? So I cannot get excited about it, I just cannot, I have to keep thinking that it can still all fall down the pipes so that if it does, I’ll be upset but I’ll be able to get over it faster. I have to read ten to twenty pages of four student screenplays by next week, and comment upon them. My fellow students from the class I’m taking. Somehow I’ve got to find the time for that as well. (pause) Listening to Philip Glass. Solo Piano. Watched a movie tonight, a movie I started watching with no expectations. I pretty much knew it was going to be a good movie, technically speaking, and acting-wise, but other than that, really … nothing, I figured it would be yet another big Hollywood over-the-top drama. I was blown away by the lead performance. And I won’t let on to which movie it was, because I need to sit on it a bit, lay my head down on my pillow, and let the night take its toll. For the moment, I’ll content myself with Philip Glass. Maybe I’ll go buy the book and re-read it … just for laughs, then watch the movie again … then write the darn two-pager … or maybe I’ll go pick a totally different movie.

A youngish couple walked into the store. He’s obviously over the legal age, probably in his early thirties. She’s probably over the legal age, but somewhere in her twenties, so I ask them the inevitable question once they get up to the counter with their bottle. She’s in a bad mood, I can tell. He’s trying to make the best of it.

“And you’re both twenty one years or older?”
“Yes,” he says.

She’s all ready got her I.D. out showing it to me. I’m quiet, waiting to hear her answer. Nothing. We’re both looking at her. There’s some tension, though it has nothing to do with me.

“You need to answer me,” I tell her at exactly the same time as he tells her “You need to answer him.”
“Oh,” she says, surprised, “I thought that just showing my I.D. was enough.”
“You got to tell me … are you twenty one years old or older?”
“Yes,” she says.
“Cops and T.A.B.C. can’t lie to me,” I say as an explanation.
“I’m a cop,” he says, and flashes his badge at me.
It takes me by surprise. "Oh," I say.
"I wouldn't lie to you," he says.
"Well, you can't."
"But I wouldn't."
"Just in case, I guess."

It’s happened a few times, but still, it’s always a tad bit bizarre for me. A cop is a man or a woman—usually a man in uniform yelling things at me and not being particularly nice to me—who wants something from me at some unfortunate moment in my life. It’s always weird for me to see a cop in front of me, specially one who happens to be my customer, who is dressed as anybody and who is having the same troubles any of us are having. A person who is not asking cop questions from me, is not demanding cop requests from me, who is not being a COP with me … but who still is a police officer! It’s like when I was a kid once in San Francisco going to the French school and catching my teacher one day making out with some guy. I was with my best friend. Neither one of us could believe our eyes. We were ten. She was our teacher, not some regular woman in regular clothes, doing regular things as anybody else we saw in the streets. After that incident, I remember, it was always really hard respecting her as being my teacher. The total opposite with cops, these days at my age. Seeing them like this, vulnerable and human, forces me to respect them because it’s always hard for me to see police officers as being anything but officers, to relate to them as everyday fellows with everyday problems. The guy flashed his badge at me, all smiles. I didn’t know what to say, except that the T.A.B.C. people have been real hard these last few weeks, busting people, and pulling all kinds of folks to jail … I said the first thing that came to mind.

“So why are these T.A.B.C. people doing what they’re doing? What’s that all about?”
“They’re assholes, that’s what.” He didn’t hesitate a second to give me the low down, “they need to leave people alone, let them be …”
“Shit!” I said, “let me shake your hand, I’m so glad I’m hearing this coming from a cop.” And I shook his hand.
“It’ll all go to court, you’ll see, and they’re gonna loose, there’s no way around it. It’s invading people’s privacy …”
“Absolutely!” I was still in shock. Cops are regular human beings after all! Shit!
"Just watch your ass, that's all ... be real careful ..."
"I always am."

At Claire and Frère's place … they kindly opened this bottle of wine on my last evening in Paris. How’s that for a send off?

"Do you have a treat, or what?"

Another wine bottle. Another evening. Listening to Gainsbourg, among others. What to do with myself? Not much to talk about, really. Trying to work on a screenplay, but nothing is coming out. Multitude of things happening simultaneously in my brains and within the context of reality as it presents itself around me … I sometimes wonder if I’m not an android onto which testing is being done … and that the world around me is merely a simulation of sorts … which would make all this, as in this scribbling, this drinking, this farting, this buying a house, this never-ending wonderment, this acceptance of the world as it appears, this living in other words, totally devoid of meaning as I can understand it … it’s like I’m indefinitely a teenager barely coming out of puberty … adolescence ad-infinitum … questioning my being here on Earth? Why not Pluto? Or Venus? Or possibly even some moon revolving around some planet somewhere within our galaxy? If not simply our solar system … a mere satellite I could inhabit? Instead I use my French-press coffee maker—which I no-longer use for making coffee since I no longer drink coffee except when I’m in Paris … though if I ever make it back to Italy, I think I’ll make an exception—as a decanter. My French-press coffee maker makes a great decanter! I discovered this second usage of this glass object the other day when pulling a bottle of wine from my wine cellar and, as I tried to open it, the cork found itself inside the bottle rather than out of it … it became imminent that I find a container into which to pour the wine right away … I knew the cork was bad, et cetera … I’m no wine connoisseur, and I possibly over-reacted … but I knew instinctively that this bottle needed to breath, and if it could breath without the cork drowning inside, then I might possibly have a damn good bottle. The French-press presented itself in all its innocence. I thoroughly washed it out, rinsed it, dried it, and poured the wine into it. It was a beautiful bottle. I was pleasantly surprised.

Sitting outside on this sunny morning, eating strawberries, drinking some English breakfast tea, and reading short stories by Pierre Siniac.

Couldn’t be any better.

On Tuesday, I visited a small cottage in Taylor, Texas, that I decided I wanted to buy. On Thursday after further thoughts, and one last visit of the little house, I sat down with my mother—who happens to be my real-estate agent—and we filled out an offer on the house. I signed all the papers, gave them back to my mom, and went to work. Yesterday morning, I got up at the wee hours to go to San Antonio for a wine seminar. We tasted some amazing Italian reds. Wines I simply would never have the opportunity to drink otherwise as I’m not rich enough.

A Tenute Silvio Nardi Brunello di Montalcino 2000, 100% Sangiovese. WOW, that’s basically all I can say. I don’t have the skills nor the knowledge to describe what I was tasting, so all I can say is: WOW! and double WOW! Or the Sette Ponti Saia from Sicilia, 100% Nero d’Avola. This second one could actually be in my price range for a special occasion. Think dark tobacco and spicy coffee. The red zin lover, which I am, will go gaga over this one. Again: WOW! (How’s that for an educated wine critic? By the way, Mr. Wine Connoisseur—or whatever he decides to call himself—is currently writing a “wine” entry, that he will publish on this here blog, with my permission of course, and he will do so, or so he says, on a random but more or less regular basis … don’t hold your breath, who knows how long it will take ... though, I’m holding him to it!)

Upon coming back home in the afternoon, cracking my first beer of the evening, I received a call from my mom telling me the seller has accepted my offer, and that we were ON! Next step: hire an inspector to inspect the house—I have ten days to get this done—so that I can be sure there are no termites or irrevocable water damage, or anything of the sort, before I close.

I’m very excited. I cannot stop imagining all the improvements I can do to my little house … building a privacy fence around the backyard, opening up the kitchen to the living area to widen the space up, move the water heater to the storage room from the kitchen where it currently resides, bring in a claw-foot bathtub, build a back deck, put in French doors in the back bedroom, planting several fig trees, peach trees, a little water fountain with some red fish in there and some water lilies … non-stop, so much I could do, given the time and the money. We’ll see. First, the inspector has to go take a little safety trip through the cracks and crevices of my little cottage.

Been going non-stop since I got back from France. It’s like going back gave me some fresh energy to burn … and that’s what I’ve been doing. Haven’t even had a day off from work since I arrived, other than Sunday, I’m back on the house-hunting trail … and doing good. Yesterday, on the second day of going around all the streets of Taylor, I think I might have found my little dream cottage. Albeit, it’s small, in a small city, and far away from Austin … but it could be mine for not so much money, it’s on a huge lot where I could eventually build another small cottage for rental, and it’s ready to move in. This last bit may not seem like such a big deal, but in the price-range I’m looking at, you mostly find fixer-uppers, and more often than not, these are in some really rough shape. So cross your fingers, knock on wood, and the whole rest of whatever one is supposed to do … here I go!

Last night: Oysters on the half shell! That’s what I did, and some muscles cooked in a white wine sauce. A bit heavy, perhaps, but boy was it good. All of it, enjoyed scrumptiously at what is rapidly becoming my favorite venue in Austin: Quality Seafood Market & Restaurant & Oyster Bar! I love that place. They even have free wifi, though every time I’ve gone in there I’ve been way too busy slurping down several dozens of oysters washed down with pints of locally brewed beer to even bother with the internet.

All right … all this is well and good, but my screenplay has suffered tremdous set backs recently … first there was Carolina and Mattias visiting from Berlin, then there was my trip to Paris, and now back here in Austin, there’s been nonstop work and nonstop house search … and of course, the usual going out, drinking, eating, making a fool of myself in public, passing out on friends’ couch, spilling my beer on myself, eating some more, lots of fish, lots of salad, lots of lots of good things one can simply not pass up, some damn good wine here and there, a few good pints of beer … and still managing to get up early in the morning to drive myself to the store and work, work, work, and work some more! What a fucking life!

(I better go take a bath, now …)

St. Patrick’s day, that Irish holiday invented by Americans, was spent at the Dog & Duck pub. The band kicked ass. The Flametrick Subs, accompanied by Satan’s Cheerleaders. They all kicked ass, and I’m gonna go to their next show in Austin if I can make it.

Listening to Trouble. Today’s show. Tonight’s a slow night. Closed the store. Nothing more. Infatuation … I thought it was … but it lasted so long, now I find myself wanting … or so the song goes. Slow ... so slow ... give me some funk. Give me a whisky and shut up. Go over there, maybe even in the next room, and see if I’m there. Look a real long time. Don’t come back any time soon, not until you find ma gueule. I’m in the corner of the circular room seeing the effect.

Opening Wallace Stevens at random, I fall onto the The Man with the Blue Guitar.

XII

Tom-tom, c’est moi. The blue guitar
And I are one. The orchestra

Fills the high hall with shuffling men
High as the hall. The whirling noise

Of a multitude dwindles, all said,
To his breath that lies awake at night.

I know that timid breathing. Where
Do I begin and end? And where,

As I strum the thing, do I pick up
That which momentously declares

Itself not to be I and yet
Must be. It could be nothing else.

(from the Man with the Blue Guitar, by Wallace Stenvens.)

Back home. Got back last night after close to 20 hours of being awake, of waiting for buses, riding them, running across streets, waiting in lines, opening bags, closing them, reopening them, reclosing them, waiting at the airport bar having a pint—my favorite part of the whole traveling b.s.—waiting in lines a few more time, showing your passport yet a few more time, answering questions, staring at some pretty passenger seating across from you, going to the restroom for the umpteenth time, and finally boarding the tube of metal which will if you’re lucky take you back home.

Fell asleep while listening to some music on my computer on the plane, when I wrote the last entry. Woke up with no batteries left. It’s the here and now, don’t know what to do with myself. Gotta be back at work all ready this afternoon, not even a day to chill out, take a long bath, something … you know, to recuperate, or something like that. Nope. One big faBang! Slap my face! Do a back flip on my nose!

It’s 6h30 AM and I’m wide awake. Normal. This is my preferred morning time. Been up over one hour. Took Brutus out for a walk. He doesn’t leave me one second. He’s like, you bastard, you were going to leave me forever! He was at a good place. Brian and Tracie dog-sited him all week. He got to play with his girlfriend Kali the whole time. I guess he’s glad I’m back. We went for a long walk this morning, before the sun came up, the best time, really. Now he’s asleep on his bed right behind me.

Paris! The last night there, having a couple of drinks with some friends … first we went to go see our friend Antoine who’s working in an underground bar for teenagers. He hates it there, but we had to say hi to him. An old basement, probably several hundreds years old, made of low arched brick ceilings and brick walls. The place packed with kids no older than 18, possibly 19. Everybody smoking. A gas oven. Not a single bottle of descent booze on the bar. Antoine gave us a good price on our drinks. When the place got too packed, we moved on to an Irish pub down the street. A few more drinks, some chips, and a few more laughs, I went up to the bar to pay, gave the girl forty Euros. She gave me change back on thirty Euros. I insisted, and she gave me another ten. Paris! Unfortunately, that’s often the norm. There’s a point where you don’t know anymore when a person made a legitimate mistake, or if they tried to jip you. Was at the boulangerie yesterday morning before going up to Rick and Kyungmee’s. I wanted to buy some croissants, some pain au raison, and a baguette. I told the boulangère what I wanted, went to the counter and waited. She bagged it, put the order in front of me, entered some numbers in her register and told me the price … I looked at her a second, she didn’t flinch. The price was a little high, I thought, but then I didn’t want to deal with it … 6h30 in the morning, my last morning in Paris, I didn’t want to get into a fight with anybody … so I paid, stepped out of the store, walked over to Rick & Kyungmee’s place, called them to ask them if I could come up, and ran up their five flights of stairs. Kyungmee opened the two paper bags.

“My god, François, why did you get so much!”

The boulangère had slipped in an extra four pain au chocolat! Oh well … turned out we chowed down, and when I left, there was only one croissant and one pain au chocolat left … though we hadn’t even touched the baguette.

The other day, I think the cavist gave me the wrong change back on three bottles of wine, but it had all been confused. I was talking to him in French, to Rick in English, and he wasn’t able to run my credit card through for some reason, and I’d also started telling him I worked in a cave in Texas … blablabla … when I stepped out of the store, I counted my change, and it didn’t seem right, but the whole scene had been too confusing to go back in and demand a recount.

That’s okay. At the duty-free shop in the airport, I bought a 15 euro bottle of cheap whisky. I gave the girl a twenty, and she gave me back fifteen. I looked at it a split second, then pocketed it without giving it another thought, something I would never do around here.

Listening to Anne-Marie’s cd while flying 40 thousand feet over the ocean floor. Drinking some cheap scotch and ginger ale. I’m drunk and I don’t care that the plane is rocking. No matter to me. Gone to the restroom at least four times all ready since we’ve been up in the air. And once right before we took off. The plan was to go to sleep eventually, after the first movie, which I’ve all ready seen, which has all ready come and gone—a tough cop and innocent joe routine / bad guy number with Samuel Jackson … it was what it was and I enjoyed it a lot more than Walk The Line bull shit I sat through on the way to Paris.

(Not an once of sleep to be seen anywhere near my head.)

Whitewash outside. Sun splashing down on the cloud covered milky-way of smoke. Nothing to be seen. Not even the demarcation of cloud, no grey lining around the edges, not a damn thing but bright lights as if we were flying right into heaven, for Good’s sake. It’s a …

lost my train of thought. My neighbor just tapped my shoulder, took me out of my dream-land to ask me if the reading light she’s just put on bothered me. “It’s perfectly fine,” I said, trying real hard to keep my thought, the phrase I was about to write, to keep it clear and neat. No go. No deal. No honey for you. Just a white washed cotton blur of sun-blazed reverberation in your face. It’s a … forget it … kill the mockingbird and shit in the lavatory … give me a scotch, the cheap shit will do, yeah, I’m not kidding, I’m telling the truth, no … really … the cheap shit in the plastic bottle. I just want a buzz, nothing else, to help me forget the violins … so that I can pass the time.

One of the flight attendant was on the flight I took on the way to Paris last week. I was taking a piss just a few minutes ago, the second to the last time I asked for a ginger ale, and I asked it from her. I was going to tell her, “You were my last flight attendant, do you remember? You stood in the front of the aircraft as you did today, and you greeted me both in French and in English. Do you remember, I was on your flight a week ago. Have you worked all this time? Have you had any time off? Have you seen your family?” But thought better of it. I took a piss, grabbed my ginger ale, and came back to my seat …

Here I am, much higher than a kite.

Last night I wanted to see a movie at the cinema. I didn’t want to see an American movie, I wanted to see something French. There were two choices in the two cinemas just down the street from Pierre and Ana’s place. Both movies looked pretty bad, but we decided nonetheless on going, choosing to our detriment Un printemps à Paris. Possibly one of the worst movies I’ve seen in a long time. To be avoided at all cost. Ana had predicted that it would be a bad choice, and opted to stay home. Pierre and I walked into the sub-degree evening weather, hoping against all hope, that we might actually find a descent picture, a convincing story, some characters that go beyond clichés and stereotypes. No such luck. I zoned out a couple of times during the movie, but somehow for some reason unknown to me, forced myself to stay awake.

(And this, on the morning of my last day in Paris for who knows how long, is my four-hundredth entry on this blog.)

We were walking down the street. We’d been in this café on the corner of the rues Bichat and La Grange aux Belles, across the street from the Hospital St. Louis. It was getting cold outside. We were walking to one of my favorite bars a small distance away, where the boss knows me, even after all this time. That place is up rue Belleville, past all the Chinese restaurants, not far from the park, on a small street away from the mayhem. We’d left the last place because the band playing was bad, and anyway, we weren’t there to listen to bad music or even to good music, but to talk to each other, to have drinks and so forth. We were five, but mostly I’m going to talk about Melissa.

We were talking a mixture of French and English. Melissa has an Australian accent in both French and English. She laughed a lot when she talked. When she first walked into the first bar to meet up with us, she realized she would have to talk French a lot, and she got a heat flash. So she took most of her clothes off, then finally she cooled down a little bit, so she put her sweater back on. It’s close to freezing outside, and it’s been drizzling on and off the last few days.

“I’m obsessed with my dad,” she said several times in the evening.
“Yeah?”
“That’s why I think I want to go back to Australia.”
“When you going back?”
“I don’t know. Maybe I won’t go back at all, I don’t know. It depends if they let me take my cat. If they don’t let my cat go with me, I’m not going anywhere.”
“Do you miss Australia?”
“It’s my family mostly, that’s pulling me. Mainly my dad. I’ve been away four years, now. With the bird-flue, and all, you probably can’t travel with animals, anyway. Did you hear of those cats dying?”
“Yeah, they were stuck on an island. All they had to eat were some wild swans and some ducks, or what have you. They didn’t cook them. That’s the first thing you should always do these days is to cook your poultry all the way before you eat it. Not really an option for the kitties, I guess. So they caught the damn disease and they died.”
“So they’re not barring cats from crossing the borders or anything like that?”
“Not that I know of.”
“Because I love my kitty cat, and if he can’t leave Paris, then I’m never leaving Paris. Never!”
“You got to get him a passport.”
“Are you kidding, he’s all ready got one, he’s got more papers than I do.”

“Does your father know you’re obsessed with him?”
“I think he does. No, I know he does. It’s the way he’s been acting, you know. I went back to Australia for my brother’s wedding, and it’s the way he acted. I know he knows.”
“Aren’t you a little old for this kind of thing?”
“I know.”
“This is the kind of thing you go through when you’re like thirteen or something. You know, the daughter falling in love with the father.”
“It’s my boyfriend that’s the problem, he’s not fatherly enough. I need some sort of father figure in my life. He never makes any decisions. I’m always the one deciding what we’re going to do, where we’re going to go eat, if we should go out, what movie we’ll go see, you know. That sort of thing.”
“How did you meet him?”
“On friendster.com.”
“Really! I’ve never met anybody through electronic means. I’ve got a webpage and all that, with myspace.com, but I’ve yet to meet anybody through there.”
“You’ve got something against meeting somebody like that?”
“No, no I don’t, I just don’t see myself meeting anybody in that manner.”
“You’re against it or something?”
“Not at all, I mean, I wouldn’t mind, it’s just that it hasn’t happened, that’s all.”
“You don’t want to.”
“I’m telling you, I don’t care. Matter fact, I think it would be kind of cool, but I just haven’t gone out of my way or done anything in that direction.”
“So you’re okay with it?”
“Of course.”

I’m doing Melissa a disfavor here, because she’s a funny girl, and I’m not translating her speech properly.

“How tall are you?” I asked.
“Five five.”
“…”
“Is that okay?”
“Sure, why wouldn’t it be?”

She’s a real cutie. She’s a non-stop flirt. Her eyes are constantly laughing. Her whole presence gives sparkle to a room, which is perfect, because she basically only drinks champagne wherever she can, except in small bars where she prefers a kir or two or three ... Sometimes, she likes to get on the train, and go directly to Champagne where she spends the weekend drinking champagne. As you’ll see, champagne is the way to her heart, not coffee, and definitely don’t mention coffee machines to her.

She was talking about this guy Nikos who’s been trying to go out with her. This guy is old enough to be her father.

“I don’t know how he thought that I was interested in him. I never gave him an once of hope, or so I thought. Because you know, I’m a flirt. I’m a real big flirt, but I know when I’m being a flirt, and I can turn it on and off just like that. I can do that. I’m good that way.”

We were in my favorite bar by then. It’d been a while. It was funny. We’d left this other place because the music was so loud we couldn’t speak. When we entered the Pataquès, it was the exact opposite. They were holding some kind of conference, and every time we tried to speak, some old guy kept telling us SHUSSSSSS. We were laughing about it. It’s one of the reasons I like this place, there’s always some sort of weird thing happening. This is a real small place. Twenty thirty people and it’s packed. There was ten people sitting in a semi circle on the other end of the bar, listening to some guy—a lawyer type—with a pony tale, and a tripod with paper and a large marker. You know the type, a rich yuppy who’s seen the light and is now trying to share his knowledge with the rest of the world. It’s usually something to do with the Far East, his good karma, and so forth. He didn’t disappoint. Of all things, the conference was on Feng Choui. The guy kept talking about how you couldn’t put the head of your bed underneath a window, or your oven facing a certain way, or whatever, we weren’t listening. We kept making cackle noises, trying not to crack up too badly, with the neighbor guy giving us nasty looks every other seconds. You see, in Paris, everybody lives on top of each other. There’s no room here. People, especially in the neighborhood of the bar in question, are for the most part poor, or not very rich, working class, immigrants, and more often than not, live in tiny places. And the whole idea of Fen Choui is a ridiculous one when you’re a family of three living in a 40 square meters apartment on the fifth floor, or a single person living in 15 square meters on the seventh floor with a tiny window you have to stand on a chair and pull yourself up to see out of. I used to live in such a place on rue Malebranche not far from the park de Luxembourg. It was cramped to say the least, but it was a step up from where I’d just moved from. That place was 9 meters square, had no hot water, no shower, and no W.C. The studio on rue Malebranch had hot water at least, but still I had to piss in the urinal in the hallway, and I took showers at the hotel where I worked as a night receptionist.

SHUSSSSSS!!!! Said the old guy.

The boss, a real friendly guy, kept telling us that it was almost over.

“It’s just about over, maybe another five minutes, or so.”

He said this a few times. It was definitely longer than five minutes. Anne-Marie, Claire, Myself, Melissa, and François—I didn’t put myself last because that’s the order in which we were seated—were stuck in the corner at the front of the bar on three chairs. That’s two chairs less than people, in case you can’t count. Melissa was seating with one cheek on François’ chair, and the other on the chair were I was trying to keep my fat ass as small as possible—no small feat—because Claire was also seating on my left on the same chair. The only reason she wasn’t falling off the edge was because she was in the corner against a furnace, one that wasn’t turned on because it was there only for decoration.

The yuppy with the pony tale loved to hear himself talk. People from the group would get up from the semi circle, would step up front to the guy’s large paper on the tripod, and draw a schematic of how their apartment were laid out. Then the rich yuppy would explain how their whole apartment was completely wrong, and so forth, and then the person in question would like a school kid who just wrote the wrong answer on the blackboard and was corrected in front of everybody in a humiliating way—these people were grown adults mostly in their forties and fifties even older—would go back to their seat with their tale between their legs. I think the rich yuppy was getting off on it. Not only was he showing everybody how enlightened he was, but also, he was making them feel stupid on top of it all. I can picture him going home and masturbating on his balcony from his large ten room Feng Choui friendly apartment overlooking the canal St. Martin. He’s probably into minimalist style, and his walls are painted white with nothing on them except maybe for a Samurai sword hanging over his chimney.

(I keep getting off my main subject—in this case the troubles of the beautiful Melissa—but I need to say this right now: I’m in this café at this instant while writing this entry, and I just ordered some food. Un tartar de saumon with a green salad and a ¼ de vin blanc. It’s so good! Oh yeah, I almost forgot. I’m seating inside the café where I met Melissa for the first time. They’ve always been friendly here. It’s just a few minutes from place de la Bastille, but without everything else that comes with the Bastille crowd. The barman is a bit loud, telling anybody that wants to hear about this drunk asshole he had to throw out of the bar last night. At first he was getting on my nerves, but now he’s started to grow on me. People are like that sometimes. And by the way, I asked Melissa if I could write about her and publish it here on my blog, before doing so. She said, “Sure, make me famous!”)

“He kept telling me he wanted to meet me to discuss writing, and such, so I’d meet him for a coffee,” Melissa was talking about this fellow much older than her whom we both know, “but it always ended up with him asking me to come over to his place. I can be dumb, but I’m not that dumb!”
“He’s always had a thing for you, I could tell.”
“What are you talking about? I’ve never given him any signs that I was interested in him.”
“That doesn’t matter.”
“Anyway, I was being nice and all, and one day, he basically invited himself to my place.”
“He invited himself over? Just like that?”
“Yeah, he called me and said, ‘can I come over for lunch or diner?’ and I didn’t know what to say.”
“Why didn’t you just say no?”
“I don’t know. I … I felt guilty or something, you know, like I owed him something? That’s stupid, I know … or maybe, I don’t know. I-I just didn’t want to be mean to him because I kind of feel sorry for him a little bit.”
“That’s not good.”
“And so I told him, okay, come on over for lunch. I thought he would understand that, you know lunch isn’t diner, it’s lunch, and I told him, ‘sure, come on over for lunch, this way I can take a break from work, we can eat a quick lunch, and then you can go,’ I said all that. Isn’t that clear enough? Quick lunch, A break from Work, and then YOU CAN GO! I don’t know how clearer I could have been.”
“…”
“So he came over and we had a little salad or something, and then I asked him if he wanted some coffee. He said sure, he would. So I was trying to make some coffee. I’m no good at such things. I never get it right. Either I put too much coffee or not enough, or I forget to plug the machine in the wall, or I pour too much water in there. So there I was at the machine, being frustrated with it, trembling a little, from the frustration, NOT from being nervous … that’s the way I am, it didn’t have anything to do with him, and everything to do with the coffee machine! And then you won’t believe what he did!”
“What?”
“He came behind me, and I thought he was coming to help me out a little. So I said, ‘you know how to do this?’ and he said ‘let me show you,’ and then instead of helping me out with the coffee he grabbed me and tried to kiss me. I wasn’t even prepared for anything of the sort. I kept pushing him away saying ‘no, no, I don’t want to,’ but he thought I was being coy. You know, that I was saying ‘No’ but that I really meant ‘Yes.’ That wasn’t the case at all. And he kept trying to kiss me, and I kept pushing him away. Finally, and it seemed like forever, he stopped, went back to the couch, and sat down. He was looking the other way, and I concentrated real hard on the coffee machine. And then, you know what happened?”
“What?”
“Nothing, that’s what happened. We sat down and had coffee. Can you believe it? We just sat there, and for a moment we didn’t say anything. We were being civilized again. I told him that I didn’t understand, that I hadn’t thought that I had given him any sign whatsoever that I might be interested in him in that manner. He didn’t answer me. I told him I had boys over for a drink and food at my place all the time, but that didn’t mean anything. He just kept drinking his coffee. Then he started talking about his short story again as if nothing had happened. I couldn’t believe it. You know, I’ve had guys try to kiss me before when I didn’t want them to, and that’s fine, but you know what?”
“What?”
“They always apologize afterwards, and they say that they’re sorry, and that they thought that I wanted to, that they hadn’t realized that I didn’t want to, and that they feel real bad about it, and all that. That’s fine, you know. A guy has a right to want to kiss me, but if he tries and that I don’t want to, then he should at least say something. Not Nikos. Didn’t even say anything. Nothing. Nada. Then he started talking about something totally unrelated. Can you believe it? As if nothing had happened, that’s what really upset me.”
“What happened next?”
“I said I had to get back to work, and he left, and he didn’t call me back for a long time. I think he felt totally humiliated. Three months later, he left a message on my machine asking me if I wanted to meet up for a coffee so we could talk about short stories or something … still, as if nothing had happened!”
“And?”
“I didn’t call him back.”
“You got to admit that it took some balls, you know.”
“I know, but he could have apologized afterwards. Or at least have the decency to look a tad bit ashamed or embarrassed!”
“Yeah … probably would have been a good idea.”

She was drinking a kir and I was drinking a beer, and she was laughing while she told me the story. Then we went back to her dad.

“What am I going to do? I’m really obsessed with my dad.”
“What are you going to do?”
“I don’t know. But I do know I need a father figure, somebody to be strict with me and tell me what to do every once in a while. You know what?”
“What?”
“I was so horrible to my boyfriend when we went to Australia for my brother’s wedding.’
“He went with you?”
“Yeah, that was our first trip together, and I was horrible to him, because I don’t know. I just treated him horrible. I kept ordering him about, and he kept doing what I was ordering him to do. I was totally inconsiderate, but you know, I wanted him to tell me what to do a little bit, to stand up to me and to my father. But he wouldn’t, he just put up with me, kept being this really nice guy, and me, I kept badgering him, and now I feel really bad about it, because …”
“Do you love him?”
“…”
“…”
“Yes … sure … Yes, I do … he’s a great guy, and I’m so happy to be with him.”
“Has he mentioned anything about the trip?”
“No, he’s so good about it. He’s such a great guy! He’s been lovely about everything, as if I’d been a perfect little girl to him all this time. I’m so lucky, you know. It’s because of my dad, though, you know that. That’s why I was being so mean to my boyfriend, because I was jealous for my dad, because my dad wasn’t jealous over him, so I had to do the jealousy thing instead of my dad.”
“That’s a bit confusing.”
“I know. I’m confused myself. My ex-boyfriend was such a jerk. We went to London once, and all he did was order me around, wouldn’t let me do a single thing. Everything I wanted to do he just ignored me and made me do what he wanted to do!”
“Well, Melissa, you realize you’re contradicting yourself a tad bit.”
“Well, I want a father figure some of the time but I don’t want to be with a total jerk off, there’s got to be a median somewhere.”
“Who made the first move?”
“What?”
“With your current boy?”
“He did.”
“Who asked who out?”
“He did.”
“Who kissed who first?”
“He did.”
“Well, you see, he does take the initiative some of the time.”
“But he’s so nice to me all of the time. Can’t he be strict with me every once in a while? I mean, I’m not into S&M or anything, but you know, there’s a limit to everything.”
“How did he make his first move?”
“Well, we were friends for a long time, you know, and I never thought about him in that way, and I never figured that he thought about me in that way either.”
“I guess you were wrong.”
“I don’t know, I don’t think he thought about me in that way right at first. We were friends first.”
“I think he thought about you in that way the whole time, he just didn’t know how to go about it.”
“Anyway, he came to my apartment with a bottle of champagne.”
“That’s it.”
“Well … I’m not going to give you all the details.”
“Can I come over for a bottle of champagne?”

She just laughed at my suggestion.

“All right, how about I come over for coffee?”

She just laughed some more.

“let’s have another drink, then.”
“Okay.”

(Actually, she told that story early on in the evening, and it became a running joke throughout the evening, I kept asking her if I could come over and help her out with the coffee.)

Non-stop for two days. Not a second to write whatever, anything down. Yesterday, we fell out of bed after ten or so, had some coffee, and visited Claire’s favorite bookstore, la librairie Tschann on boulevard Montparnasse, where I bought several books.

For lack of anything interesting to say, here’s a list:

“Le Roman de Monsieur Molière,” by Mikhaïl Boulgakow;
“Je Suis Né,” by George Perec;
“Les Armoires Chinoises,” & “Mon Voyage en Amérique,” by Blaise Cendrars—one of my favorite authors—and finally;
The first tome of the complete works of Panaït Istrati, Claire’s favorite author, a Romanian who wrote in French—not such an uncommon thing: Eugene Ionesco and Tristan Tzara for example, are two other such Romanian authors who wrote in French, and whom I’ve really enjoyed at one of several points in my little life.

That should give me a few things to do upon my return to Austin.

Later on in the day, after a couple of beers at Les Deux Folies in Belleville, we went by one of my favorite bookstores next to the hospital St. Louis in the 10th arrondissement, la librairie l’Introuvable. I’ve actually rarely been inside this particular bookstore, because his hours of operations are difficult to understand, and he’s rarely ever open, or at least almost never whenever I walked by there, which was often since I lived just a few blocks away. However, when he is open, he has one of the best selection of Polar novels I’ve ever seen. And not only that, he seems to know every single volume on his book shelves, and is always ready to answer any question, make as many suggestions as you want, or discuss such and such authors with you.

François, Claire, and myself were on our way to Anne-Marie’s place of employment on rue Paradis on the other side of Gare de l’Est. She teaches linguistics at the university. François works on another campus at the Arab Department library. There’s strike going on right now, which I’m not going go into because it doesn’t really concern me, and it’s political anyway, and I’m not actually sure I understand what it’s about, but François is taking part in it, and so are lots and lots of students and teachers and other university workers. Matter fact, school at the university level has been drastically interrupted in the last few days throughout the Parisian region. So François asked Anne-Marie if he could come over and make a little speech to her students, so that he could explain to them why they should take part in the strike. Blablabla, we were on our way from Belleville walking towards la rue de la Grange aux Belles, and I wanted to walk by l’Introuvable bookstore, knowing full well that it would be closed anyway. Miracle … fate thus had me walking into the store to purchase some more books.

I said to the owner of the bookstore, after showing a book by Chester Himes to François, “Excuse me, could you make a couple of suggestions. I’m looking for some Polar written by French authors. For example, I like Jean-Patrick Manchette, but I’ve read everything by him … I also like Jean-Bernard Pouy ...”
He went into thinking mode, started looking at his bookshelves all the while asking me if I’d read such and such author, and so on. He picked out three authors I haven’t read: Daniel Picouly, Pierre Siniac, and Dominique Manotti.

At one point, he did pick out a French translation of an American book.

“I heard you talking about Chester Himes, here’s another Black-American author, Walter Mosley …”
“Yeah, I know him … but actually I live in Austin, Texas, so I’m not really looking for American books. Preferably, I like books which take place in Paris, this way when I’m in Austin, I can feel as if I’m walking through the streets of Paris.”
“Of course, you don’t want translations of American books.”
“No.”

If you’re ever in that neighborhood, and that you like that genre of books … I like the French words better: Polar, or Noir, because they don’t limit the genre to one specific kind of story … Detective Novels, the English version I guess of what the genre is, doesn’t give proper credit to the potential of where such stories can go. Like Film Noir, there needs not be a detective story, which personally if not one of the classics gets on my nerves, but there needs to be a large grey cloud of evil and nastiness over the whole story. Shadows covering dark alleys … Hard Boil pulp fiction is a better term of what I’m a fan of, though not quite exactly it. The French Polar writers were inspired almost entirely by American post-war pop culture, and the American films of the 40’s and 50’s, but then they took the genre and ran off with it, made it their own, made it very French. Manchette was one of the best.

Another night in Paris. Eleven o’clock in the morning, getting up, drinking coffee. Paris, the city of lights … I don’t know about that, what I do know is that we started eating and drinking around six last night, and that after avoir refait le monde several times over, people went home somewhere around three in the morning. I gladly slept on Frère and Claire’s couch. What I do know is that I’ve had coffee, cigarettes, loads of food and wine. I feel like the monk who’s broken all his vows. But I knew that all ready. I’d decided long before the other day. When I bought my ticket, actually, was when I decided that having a coffee would be the first thing I did when I got to Paris. It happened as soon as I stepped out of Gare St. Lazare and met up with Pierre and his son Vadim. I called him from the airport to warn him of my arrival.

“Have you had anything to eat? Are you hungry?”
“I’m fine.”
“You had some food on the plane?”
“Yeah …. totally disgusting. What I need is a really good coffee, actually.”

Or, rather:

“T’as bouffé?”
“Ouais, dans l’avion … Carrément dégelasse, mais bon. Ce dont j’ai besoin, c’est un bon p’tit café, à vrais dire.”

And thus started the debauchery. We stopped at a proper Parisian bistro, and had ourselves a couple of espressos.

The plane left Houston almost two hours late. I arrived in Paris much later than planned. It’s been over one and half years since I’ve been living in Austin now, and when I stepped off the airplane, everything was familiar ... the people standing guard, the police with machine guns, the smell of the place, even the coldness and unfriendliness of the place … I followed the exit ramp into the airport and through the passport checking point looking through the glass at the people waiting to board the plane I’d just exited, the people looking at me through the glass wall … for the first time in 1.5 years, I was home. Off course, that’s not true, my home is now in Austin where I have my family, great friends, a job, a car, a dog, prospects of moving up in the world, buying my own home, where I’m going back to school—something which had been impossible for me to do here—where I’m finally starting to find a routine, and where I can even think of eventually opening my own business. Seven years I lived here. I couldn’t find a descent job, I was on the doll for most of it, never once did I ever have some proper prospects for the future, reasons among others why I moved back to Texas … and yet … and YET, this place where life was so freaking difficult, this place feels like home like no other place I’ve ever been or lived and flew through! Is this euphoria, felt upon stepping back on French soil, only felt because I know I’ll be back on that plane in less than a week, that I’ll be back at my job and my little rental house and driving my car, walking my dog, doing my thing, in just a few days? Probably to some extent, though not entirely. Every time I’ve left Paris, and that I’ve come back to Paris, this has been how I have felt.

I met Pierre at St. Lazarre. We walked quietly to his and Ana’s place in the neighborhood of Batignole. Cold grey and wet, the streets of Paris with its dog shit, urine smelling walls, and speeding car freaks, but also with its small bread and cheese shops, pedestrians of all race and color, five to six story buildings, small cramped streets, metal bridges, endless train-tracks, small parks, and food stands right in the open, greasy meat being cut into bread and sold out of dirty plastic windows … the smells, the noise … I stepped into a student demonstration as I got off the RER in Chatelet, and again as I was stepping out of the underground at St. Lazarre, hundreds and hundreds of school-aged kids screaming their heads off, running en-mass down the subway’s alley-ways, adults standing around amused by the whole scene, joining in the yelling and screaming in between puffs of cigarettes, others walking totally uninterested in the goings on … Paris. Non-stop activity.

Pierre and I stepped back down to go to the market place to pick out diner. We chose some rouget, some leeks, some charlotte potatoes, and some shallots. At the cheese shop, we bought some conté, some tomme de brebis, some fresh goat cheese—so fresh it looks like chunky yogurt—and some epoisses, which the cheese man covered with a little marc to liven back up. We then made it to the wine shop for a couple of bottles, and stopped of at the café for a couple of demis before coming back up. Svetlana brought the bread and the deserts. Fouzia also came over. We all sat around in the kitchen and prepared the food while we talked, then we sat at the table and ate non-stop till 11h30, finishing off the ensemble with a little tequila I’d brought over.

It’s like I’d never left, it was like one of hundreds of such diners we’d had in the past. When you go shopping together, then you come home and sit around the table with a little red wine before you even start preparing the food, and when you do, everybody pitches in, or at least sits around the kitchen as you do the work. In the past, I would almost always do most of the cooking, but I’ve lost my hand a little, and last night I contented myself with chopping the shallots and drinking the wine. Then when the food is ready, you sit around the table and tell stories, and drink, and laugh all night long. The television is not on, maybe there's some music, but not necessarily.

This afternoon, I take the big leap across the big pound … this is far from being the first time, yet every time I do it, it puts me ill at ease. It’s not unusual for me to not sleep at all for several nights or so before I fly off, and absolutely nothing while flying … thus, this time I decided to take a different approach, as I only have six days in Paris and I simply can’t spend my whole time being jet-lagged and off kilter. I’ve come home relatively early the last couple of nights, had just a couple drinks and went to bed trying to think good happy thoughts. I did have restless dreams all night long and woke up way before my alarms sounded at 6am, but when it did, I went to the pool and did lots and lots of laps. I’m now nice and sore, and by the time I board the second plane tonight, the one going straight from Houston to Paris, I hope that after a couple of bourbons, I’ll be so tired that I’ll fall into a stupor and sleep like a baby all the way to Charles de Gaulle.

So off I go, flying into the sun …

(The mere thought of climbing into a large hallow tube of metal with wings weighing several tones, and going up 30 thousand feet into the air at ungodly speeds, puts me in a weary mood to say the least. What ever happened to ocean liners? That seems like a much more descent form of transportation. I’d rather float on water than whiz through air any day.)

Happy Texas Independence Day. Today is the anniversary of the Texas Declaration of Independence (March 2, 1836).

Here's some music for you: Willie Nelson Media Player.

There was a real cutie pie walked into the store today. She wasn’t dressed up or nothing fancy. Just wearing sweat pants and a t-shirt. No makeup, hair all astray. Not too tall, probably no more than 5’6’’ if that, petite, dirty blond. I liked her right away. She was friendly, relaxed, and knew what she wanted. Humble confidence is an attractive trait. I’m starting to get tired of these needy housewives with fake everything, two inches of makeup, who smell like the latest overpriced perfume, who wear the trendiest faux-relax overpriced get-up, and who demand, demand, and demand some more. This girl was looking like a normal human being, and she was real pretty on top of it all. I couldn’t help myself checking her out while she wasn’t looking. Nothing fake. Nothing underneath the t-shit except what god—or whatever—blessed her with. She came up to the counter with a half gallon of Evan Williams bourbon whiskey. There’s something attractive about a tiny little woman with a big ol’ jug of cheap whiskey … (that’s the white-trash in me coming out.)

“Is that gonna do it for you?”
“Sure is.”
“Are you twenty one years old or over?”
“Yes.”
“Do you have an I.D.?”
“I do.”

She struggled trying to pull her driver’s license out of her wallet. I almost told her not to worry about it, but I wanted to keep her at the counter as long as possible so I kept my mouth shut, trying not to gawk too much, though being that she was fumbling with her wallet, she was looking down, and not paying attention to me.

I contemplated what I should say … and there was nothing. My mind was blank. Damn me!

Right as she took the license out, I said, “Don’t worry about it.”

The license was out, and she handed it to me.

24 years old. I looked, though afraid to take too long. I wouldn’t want her to think I was memorizing any information. I wasn’t. I handed it back to her as soon as I had identified that the picture was definitely her, that the date proved her age, and that the license looked to my knowledge to be valid … all this taking less than a second. I have lots of practice.

“It’s a beautiful day, you gonna enjoy it?” I said feeling sheepish.

When there’s nothing else to say, the weather’s always a good place to start. 85 degrees today … perfect hanging out day. And she seemed like she was open for small meaningless talk.

“Yeah … I’m hanging out by the swimming pool.”
“Lucky you.”
“It’s been a long time, I just put in my two weeks.”
“You quitting your job?”
“Yeah … it’s awesome. I’m going back to school.”
“What’re you studying?”
“Graphic design.”
“Really!”
“Yeah.”
“That’s cool. I never finished school, and look where I’m at, a clerk in a liquor store.”
“I’ll probably be going back to retail myself.”
“It’s not so bad, really. Selling wine and liquor is fun, actually. What kind of job are you quitting?”
“High pressure sales job in an office building. Too much. I just didn’t have a life, you know. I want to do my own thing.”
“I know what you mean. Actually, I’m going back to school myself.”
“Really!”
“Yeah.”
“What are you studying?”
“Screenwriting … you know, film and all.”
“That’s great.”
“Yeah … I’m only taking one class at a time, though, that’s all I can do with a full time job and all.”
“I’m going to start with just two classes, I’m not sure how I’m going to manage it, yet.”
“Where’ll you be going?”
“Actually, I’ll be taking classes online.”
“Ain’t there a bunch of fraudulent places out there?”
“Well, I’m going to a real university, and I’ll earn a real degree.”
“…”
“It’ll just be done online.”
“That’s cool.”

And that was it. An abrupt ending. I didn’t know where to go from there. We’d finished the money transaction, and there was nothing else to say. I’m stupid that way … never know what the hell else to say, and also the fact that she’s buying something from me, and that that isn’t really the place … so I just shut up and smiled. I thought to myself: Maybe she’ll become a regular, but then I counter-thought: Do I really want her to become a regular on half gallons of Evan at 24? Not really … maybe I can turn her on to some good wine …

“Good luck with everything,” I said.
“You too,” she said, and she walked out.
I watched her walking to her car, a large grey Pathfinder looking vehicle.

(pathetic, I know … I can’t help it … maybe when I’ll be in Paris next week, the entries—if I have time for them—will be more interesting)

I’ve never had much luck with cleaners, laundry people in general. At one point while still living in Paris, working this job I thought was going to get me places—supposedly a production company, turned out they were con artists—I ate well for almost a whole year, took the taxi a lot, went out to restaurants, flew to Poland three or four times, drank a lot of booze that I hadn’t paid for, and bought nice shirts for the first time ever. I also started to take my laundry to a laundry-mat where somebody else did the laundry for me. What a concept! I dropped off some shirts, came back the next day, and they were clean, folded, inside plastic bags, and looking like new. This experience was a pleasant one to me. I partook almost weekly until my last visit, the one that made me mistrust cleaners for a long time to come. I walked down the little alley from my work early in the morning before opening the office, one of those tiny streets between buildings so small nothing can go through them except bikes, pedestrians, mopeds, and one very small car at a time. I dropped off my shirts and picked them back up that evening. The lady was as usual very friendly, joking even, calling me by name, making chitchat, not acting as if I should be particularly worried about anything. Each shirt had its own bag. Each folded neatly ready to be put on the shelf. I took them home happy as a squirrel, got up the next day, and grabbed the shirt from the top of the pile. It took me a few days to get down to the bottom. When I got there, to my dismay as I took the shirt out of the plastic bag and unfolded it, I discovered that the right sleeve was burnt, that the holes had been hidden by the way it had been folded, that the shirt was lost and good for the trash. It had been a week, I had thrown away the receipt, there was no proof except my word, and I didn’t want to fight this one. I let it go, but never went into another cleaner again. Well, it’s not so clear, really. A few weeks later I quit that job because they hadn’t paid me in over a month. A couple of month later, I went on the dole for the following few years. Never really needed to visit a dry-cleaning business again until just recently. This morning, I stepped into the dry-cleaners just three doors down from my store. I was in a good mood, all bubbly, having spent a good weekend with my friends visiting from Berlin and so forth. I hadn’t unlocked the door to the liquor store so I was encumbered with my backpack, my wad of shirts needing cleaning, my sweatshirt, and the leash to my dog, Brutus. I set all the stuff down and tied Brutus to the post before walking in.

“Good morning, how ya’ll doing?” I bubbled out all happy, “I’ve got some shirts needing cleaning.”
“What’s your name?”
“Needles.”
“First name.”
“Francois … I’ve never been in here before, this is my first time.” I was still all happy.
“That’s all right. Is that your dog?”
“Yes, it is!”

The lady behind the counter was an older lady, overweight, and short. She didn’t smile. She didn’t take me down at first, because I was so elated. I was being overly friendly, overjoyed, though I didn’t mention why … it took me over a week of pondering to make the decision. I was all smiles, proud of myself. For the last couple of months now, I’ve been buying some nice shirts, having fun wearing them … next week, I’m going back to Paris for my six day paid vacation, and I want to look good, so I decided to visit a dry-cleaners. Out of convenience, I picked the closest one, the one three doors down from my place of employment. Nothing could go wrong.

“You take him to work with you?” Her tone was dry and not friendly, but I ignored it.
“Sure do … everyday … he’s such a good boy.”
“Where do you keep him? In the back room?”
“No, he stays up front with me behind the counter.”
“You keep him up front!”
“Sure, he doesn’t say a thing. He just hangs out. Everybody loves him that comes into the store.”
“That’s against the law,” she said nastily. I start taking note of her tone of voice. My shirts are in her bag now, and she’s printed out the receipt.
“What?”
“I’m going to have to call the Board of Health and tell them about it.”
“What!!!” This is like a brick falling on my face.
“It’s absolutely illegal to take a dog to work.”
“What are you talking about? There’s nothing illegal about it. I’m not doing anything wrong. My manager’s okay with it, so is my boss … I’m not trying to hide anything from anybody.”
“You can’t take a dog into a grocery store, can you? No you can’t. The other day, some man took his dog to the coffee shop, and he sat them on the chair with him. The attendants at the coffee shop asked him to leave, and he refused, so they called the pound to come take his dogs away.”
“What are you talking about? You’re going to call the cops on me? You gonna call the board of health on me?” I was starting to raise my voice. I was getting upset.
“No … no, I mean …” she was backing off a little bit, “I would call them just to ask them, to be sure,.”
“You going to call the BOARD OF HEALTH ON ME, I’m not doing anything wrong! I don’t sell food, I don’t prepare anything ...”
“I don’t want to argue with you, sir.”
“So what are you saying?”
“You can’t take your dog to work. If I knew of a place that let dogs in, I would never do business with them.”
“You wouldn’t.”
“No.”
“Give me my shirts back.” I said, my voice shaking.
“There’s no need to get upset.”
“You’re going to call the cops on me, and … forget it, just give me my shirts back. Come one, I want my shirts back, please.”
“Hold on, I got to get them out of the bag.”
“Give me my shirts back, please.”
“Okay, okay.”

I took my shirts and walked out of there. After work, I dropped the shirts at another dry-cleaner down the street. It was a younger woman behind the counter. She was very nice. I started taking my credit card out to pay.

“Don’t worry, you can pay whenever you pick them up tomorrow.”
“Thanks.”
“You have a great day, sir.”
“You too.”

I know where I’ll be going from now on.

Been treading around in the mud. Barely catching sight of my toes. Like trying to grasp the slippery handle to the belly of the submarine while drowning … not remembering counter clock-wise from clockwise turning action. Swell and Swallow. Blow and go well down the shellfish shithole you find yourself in.

I can’t breath, baby! All I can do is swallow some water …

Something solid, that’s what I need. No more nothing from these weak connections, these bi-polar conditions … no more, baby … I need a brand new battery running on nuclear powered juices.

All right, all I need is a spaceship full of friendly aliens abducting me for a few moments out of my boring time. PLEASE! You can do whatever unpleasant thing you might need to do in so far as the safety of the universe is concerned. Understandably, if we’re talking about some freewheeling potato mashing pleasure ride, up and down the Russian mountains zipping laughably by totally stoned … GRATITIOUS, is what I’m trying to say … then basically NO … FUCK you, honey bum … you just ain’t using my ass for no spaceship pleasure ride. Gotta bark down some kind of ruling somewhere. You understand?

Vodka and tonic kind of evening.

Thanks to all of you out there whose name I can’t mention. For helping me buy a brand new computer, for helping me connect back to the internet, for helping me stay home listening to some music and write down this shit! Bless you! It’s a brand new day, today, connected to the internet, typing on a brand new machine. …

THANKS!

Feeling good. Got out of bed just a few minutes past 5am this morning. Brutus wouldn’t get up. Kept looking up at me wondering what the hell was wrong with me getting up at this ungodly hour. I turned my room upside down looking for my bathing trunks. I haven’t gone swimming in ages. The last time was last summer in the Llano river at the ranch of Brian’s dad. The time before that was in that very same location. And the time before that, I believe was in the south of France in the ocean. Found my bathing trunk hidden underneath a pile of mismatched socks. Brutus started doing stretches. Since the lights were on, and it didn’t look like I was going back to bed, he started waking up. Took him out for a walk along the railroad track, came back home, locked him inside, and drove on down to the YMCA. Boy oh boy it was cold outside. The swimming pool is outside, and it was below forty degrees this morning. The water’s heated to a very comfortable 84 degrees. But you got to get from the locker room to the swimming pool, and there’s no way around that one. It’s cold. Period. But at least once you’re in the water, there’s nothing else to do but do laps. If too much of your body is sticking out of the water, then it’s too cold, so you just keep swimming, which is exactly what I did for about forty five minutes. 8h30. I’m all sore now. This being the first time in years—literally—that I’ve done any kind of exercise. I’m at the coffee shop next door to my car-oil-lub-place. It’s not even 9am, and I’ve manage to work on my screenplay, get some exercise, walk my dog, and get my car taken care of! What the hell’s wrong with me?

by Joseph Campbell


I’ve started re-reading this wonderful book. Here’s a whole passage that blew me away. It’s right at the beginning of the book (page 8 in the Princeton University Press paper-back edition).

“The unconscious sends all sorts of vapors, odd beings, terrors, and deluding images up into the mind—whether in dreams, broad daylight, or insanity; for the human kingdom, beneath the floor of the comparatively neat little dwelling that we call our consciousness, goes down into unsuspected Aladdin caves. There not only jewels but also dangerous jinn abide: the inconvenient or resisted psychological powers that we have not thought or dared to integrate into our lives. And they may remain unsuspected, or, on the other hand, some chance word, the smell of a landscape, the taste of a cup of tea, or the glances of an eye may touch a magic spring, and then dangerous messengers begin to appear in the brain. These are dangerous because they threaten the fabric of the security into which we have built ourselves and our family. But they are fiendishly fascinating too, for they carry keys that open the whole realm of the desired and feared adventure of the built and in which we live, and of ourselves within it; but then a wonderful reconstruction, of the bolder, cleaner, more spacious, and fully human life—that is the lure, the premise and terror, of these disturbing night visitants from the mythological realm that we carry within.”

(I’m at work—copying this passage as I’m checking people out—so excuse me if I make any mistakes … I’ll fix it all up sooner than later.)

Went to Vegas
sat at the roulette table
put my faith on red
every time
that was my game plan.

Tripled my money
started out with a twenty
Humphrey I thought I was
for a real short minute
in a movie I though I was
for an even shorter moment
some sort of secret spy
playing it cool
playing the chump
you know
lying low waiting for the villain
to show up all a brazing
showing off his stuff
with his wad of cash.

Basically
I was trying to stay inconspicuous
not making a nuisance of myself
being a magnet I thought I was
for an even shorter fraction
of an instant.

All the sudden my twenty
and my five crumpled ones
became like a big fat roll
of century folds
like a gangster boss I was
or thought so anyway
for such a short time
I cannot estimate or calculate
the seconds concerned
in human terms …
I became like a big fat rolling pig
in an Armani suit
instead of my red E.T. sweatshirt
I’ve been wearing just about everyday
for the last seven years.

Playing the red
at the roulette table
that was my game plan
hitting the big times
five to ten bucks per spin
the little white ball spinning
spinning and spinning some more
“No more bets”
said the croupier
passing her hand over the velvet table
to make her point clear to all participants
and she took all my chips
as the little white ball
chose a black slot
instead of a red one
for its few second of rest from spinning so much.

Yesterday was my blog’s two year anniversary! And I forgot! Shows where my head’s been hiding these days. Still no internet connection on the home front. Working on the little problem. Lots of hits, even when I’m not writing on my blog … yet … no comments! Come on, folks, send me little words of encouragements every once in a while, or let me know how much some entry really sucks, or anything … just say: Hi Needles, what’s up? What you drinking these days? What you reading these days? Any fun adventures in the near future? Why ain’t you writing on your freaking blog, you lazy fool … You know … little things like that, just so I know the void out there isn’t as big as I think it is.

(Visit me on myspace.com/fkneedles)

I moved from side B to side A of the duplex where I live this weekend. My friends and neighbors moved away back to England the Thursday before. They took their two dogs and two cats with them. Brutus has been depressed for the last couple of days. He’ll get over it. He’ll have to, really, because I’m not getting a second dog. The weekend was one long non-stop chore. I went at it slowly, without ever getting in too much of a hurry ... trying to procrastinate but knowing that the move had to be done by such and such time. I got all the small and tedious stuff done on Friday, then on Saturday, my parents and my sisters came by to help out with the remaining small to medium stuff. My dad brought a red wheelbarrow and took care of moving all my plants from the backyard to the front yard. I’d already moved the big three: A miniature peach tree, a Brown-turkey fig tree, and a young Loquat tree, all of which are potted in large black plastic pots. I bought a dolly on Friday morning to help out with the move after breaking the dolly my dad had loaned me the previous weekend. Brian & Tracie also showed up and were a great help in taking a load of junk to the dump, and another load to Goodwill. We finished that day of work early at the fish market which also sports a restaurant and oyster bar—brand new addition we found out about this weekend ... I have a felling I’ll be spending loads of time there: half a dozen oysters for $3.95, a pint of local brew for $2.50 and a free wireless connection! What else could one ask for? Shit, I’m going there today, it’s my day off.

(It’s funny how hard it is to write, when one hasn’t really written in a few weeks. It’s hard to find something to say, to get the thought process going. I find that my thought process works in direct correlation with the act of writing. Basically, it’s hard for me to think a thought through other than with my fingers typing on the keyboard, or scribbling in my journal. And I haven’t partook in any such activity in what seems like eons. Writing & Thinking go hand in hand. It is through the act of writing that I can make sense of an idea ... though it would seem at this point that I have absolutely no clear train of thought, nor much to talk about ... it is by this forcing of words, meaningless as they are at this point, that I eventually find something to say, something meaningful enough to give me reason to go on ... but when I stop this seemingly absurd act of putting words down on screen or paper, my thought process slowly shuts down and a bleak blankness starts coming through like a blunt patch of nothingness in my forehead.)

Sunday I cleaned my ex-house, my ex-car-port, my ex-laundry-room. The landlady said I could switch out the refrigerators because my old one is much better. So I’m not quite done yet. But that’s okay.

(I'm so happy. I'm here at the oyster bar now. Just put down my second dozen, and my second pint ... I better pay my bill and go back home, otherwise I'm gonna spend my whole week's paycheck here, and eat oysters till I fall down on the floor ... Ain't life beautiful?)

Thanks to all of you who have read my blog during the almost two years of its existence. It's been a hard-working last few weeks for me, thus the little posting on this site. In the next couple of weeks, I'm moving to a new house, actually I'm moving from side B to side A of my duplex. Not a big move, but you still have to carry everything from one place to the other. After the move, I will once again have the internet at home, so regular posting should resume.

Best of wishes to everybody!!!

Quiet time can often do people a lot good. I should attempt to experience this quietude sometimes soon. Am trying a little this morning, before starting my week, one of the two busiest weeks of the year in the liquor and wine biz. It’s late morning. Last night I woke up at two in the morning, agitated from burlesque dreams I can no longer remember. Too lazy to scribble anything at the appropriate time, I just lied there trying real hard to fall into a deep restful slumber from which I’d wake up fully energized and ready for the new day. Not so. Not happening. Instead, I went to the living room couch, followed by my dog, and I had a scotch while he slept on after getting onto the couch next to me unbothered by whatever was bothering me. I sat there and stared at the wall for a bit, but it wasn’t doing me any good. The biggest problem last night was an inability to breath. It’s probably some sort of allergic reaction again to something or other.

There...that’s not much, but that’s all I have to say. Except for maybe on the 14th of this month, I had a dream which I gave a title to, the title is the following: The Taming of the Dragon at the Top of the Tower. I remember the dream to be pretty terrible. There was an old man with a long white beard at the top of the tower. The dragon was inside a cage of sorts, a cage that looked incredibly like one of those German silos you find littering the beaches of France. The old man had a big stick, and he was hitting it with all his force onto the top of the dragon’s cage, which made loud and deafening pangs and pongs. This really angered the dragon, who wanted to sleep, and the dragon in turn spit fire through small holes at the top of his cage, the small holes which in a silo on the beach would have served to stick guns through and shoot at the incoming enemy. I was running up the stairs of the tower, trying real hard to make it to the top, but the staircase never ceased to exist. The stairs kept on and on. The old man at the top of the tower, the one who was angering the dragon by making large resonating pangs like crashing planes on Chinese gongs, kept yelling out my name in anger. Everybody was angry it seemed, when all we all wanted to do was sleep. That’s what I dreamt in the early hours of the 14th of December this year, and I know this because I wrote a line in my journal which reminds me of this particular dream every time I look at it. Recently, though, I’ve been lazy, and I’ve not written little notes to myself to remind me of the tings I like to be reminded of, which can be a multitude of things. My memory is horrible, and I need to make little notes about just about everything. Sometimes when I get lucky, I'll write a little note which brings the whole experience back. Most of the time, I'm not so lucky.

Silence for the past few days. I wanted to apologize about the silence. December is when things go a bit crazy in the liquor and wine biz. That’s also when you get invited to parties. Last night, I was at a book-release party. I was expecting loads of people, and walked into an intimate group of 7 (8 including myself) where I felt uncomfortable. Tonight, I’m going to my company’s Christmas party – well, it’s not MY company, it’s where I work as a humble clerk selling wine and whiskeys. Tomorrow evening, I’m having drinks with the friend of a very good friend of mine. I’ve never met this person, but was told by my friend in San Francisco that me and this other person had to meet, so that’s what we’re doing Monday after I get out of class. That’s all part of it. Also it’s the last couple of weeks of class. I have a take-home quiz and an essay to turn in real fast. That’s what I’m supposed to be doing this Sunday morning. My regular coffee shop was full up with people at every single table and a line in front of the bar, so I changed, and here I am writing these lame excuses rather than working on my home-work. I have absolutely no reason, except procrastination, to not be working. I have two yellow pads, one with my notes from the semester and the other blank and ready for usage, two .05 black ink pens, though I prefer the .03’s, I can’t seem to find them anywhere around here, I have my school book and another film history book for further reference, and finally I have the questionnaire needing answering, and my laptop for internet research!

Then there’s the book of poems! Manuscript should have been ready for the press in September!

The silence will end soon. I’m moving to my next door neighbor’s house in mid-January, at which point I’m getting the internet re-installed within my living quarters. Currently reading The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul by Douglas Adams, trying to stay sane. It’s very funny, though last night sitting on the futon my sister gave me which resides in my office next to a very strong light and is used strickly as a reading & sitting apparatus, I was desperately trying to concentrate on the last few chapters of the book when a large black fly with red eyes kept flying circles around my head. I ignored him at first figuring he’d get tired of orbiting like a pestering moon around my personal globe, but eventually, I couldn’t take it anymore. I was tired, so it took a while. I’d gotten up early that day to go have a talk with my landlady, waking up on my couch with a hot iron instead of a face, and my glasses underneath my ass broken in two right in the middle so close to the seam there was no piece of duct tape which could help me. I waited for the sun to be full up, slapped my prescription sunglasses on, and drove on down to my landlady to discuss my moving into the other part of the duplex, rent, rat problems, and a myriad of other things. She’s a very nice lady, so it’s always a pleasant chat. Next, I had to resolve the glasses problem before going to work because there was no way I was driving home after work in the dark with sunglasses on. I all ready don’t see well, but added on to my car’s soft headlights, my inability to judge depth in times of stress, tiredness, and otherwise unpleasant situations, and the fact that I wanted to go to this party I had been invited to on the other side of the world, forced me to deal with the situation instead of going back home and taking a snooze on the couch or even possibly in my bed. Between getting a doctor’s appointment, ordering new glasses, and getting my old glasses soldered back together, that took from 9am till 3pm! My prescription are so strong nobody carries the necessary lens in their store, and thus I went to three different places before finally accepting the fact that I’d have to have them sent off to some laboratory and not to be returned to me before fifteen or so days. The third and last place I stopped, was a nice lady who gave me a descent price, relatively speaking, and even called the glass repair shop to tell them she’d broken my glasses herself while handling them and couldn’t they help me out, so that they wouldn’t charge me an exorbitant fee for soldering my defunct glasses. I was two hours late to work. We had a very busy day at work. The president and vice-president of the company came by to visit and make sure our store was up to par because next week the big world-wide big cheese of the largest spirits distributing / producing company in the universe is visiting our humble establishment...I hear he’s French, maybe he could give me a corporate job back in Paris or London where I can just hang out in a big office with a secretary and do nothing all day?...I’ll ask him, see what he thinks, shoot the shit with him in French, see if I impress him...or maybe not, I’ll probably shake his hands and be put back into place by his entourage. I’m guessing he’ll have an entourage? Don’t all C.E.O.’s of global encompassing companies have entourages? You know, body-guards, pretty blonds in high heals, tiresome little man in little suits, coffee carrying assistants, accountants constantly typing in numbers in small calculators, pencils sticking out of the ears, screaming numbers nobody in their right mind could ever understand...whatever, the store has to be swept, mopped, dusted, and all the other thing-a-jimmies. Christmas music, Christmas decorations, clean windows, and happy faces on every single one of our mugs. Then after work, I drove on half an hour in the opposite direction of my house to head on down to what I though was going to be a large congregation of people to visit with. By the time I got home, it was close to 1am, my dog Brutus was very upset with me for having left him on his own all this time, and all I wanted was a drink, and some profound peace. Which brings me back to the large buzzing fly doing circles around my head. There’s nothing I could do about it. I tried leaving the room running, to see if that might shock him into going somewhere else, I tried leaving the room very slowly to see if he might follow my outside, I tried making me a very strong gin and tonic with lots of lime to see if that had any effect, I tried taking a piss, I tried ignoring him. Nothing worked, so I went to bed.

And here I am, half an hour or more at the coffee shop, and I haven’t even taken my film history books out of my bag.

Times are getting busy. This Thanksgiving was insane at the store. Pretty much non-stop from the minute we opened the doors till the time we closed. We all worked a double shift that day. We had a couple of slow hours in the early afternoon, but that didn’t last long. Thanksgiving day was a mixture of trying to recover from the previous day of work, and forget about having to go back in on Friday. I woke up on my friends’ couch sometimes in the early AM of Friday with a massive hang-over. Which bring me here, this beautiful Sunday morning, at my local coffee shop having a green tea and a banana. I’ve got a paper due for Monday’s evening class, for which I’ve merely noted down a few ideas...I’m working on the manuscript for my book of poems which is all ready long overdue...am meeting with the current editor this Wednesday hopefully, that is, if she doesn’t flake out on me...basically, what I’m trying to say is that, with the holiday season taking off on a very busy Turkey day I’m guessing that it’s gonna be an uphill battle all the way till New Year’s (this Goble-Goble day was busier than both last year’s Christmas and New Year’s!) I’ve got to crack down on the school work, because I need a 3.5 GPA to get into U.T.’s R.T.F. program, and I need to concentrate on my book, it’s been almost there for way too long now, and it needs to be there before the end of the year. All that added on to the usual up and down mood swings, I’m guessing I won’t be on this blog very often.

I did have a beautiful flight this morning, though. Was in a little apartment complex somewhere south of here on the seashore. I was living a quiet friendly life in an otherwise trashed out complex, but trashed out in a laisser-faire way, a grungy we’re at the beach situation, nothing too grossed out, and at one point, I stepped outside and lifted off into the air, over the tree line and flew a great distance inland. It was fun. Now, I don’t know what flying dreams imply in all the psycho-therapeutic way. I’m sure there’s some underlying meanings, some frustrations and neurotic behavioral problems I need to deal with, and I’m sure they’re all right on and so on and so forth. I don’t care. I had a beautiful pleasant flight. I wasn’t flying away from something, I wasn’t taken by the wind without being able to control my whereabouts, I wasn’t experiencing any kind of fear or reproach or anything negative, I was just pleasantly floating way above the trees. I even started doing back-flips, or taking on different positions, to see which was more comfortable. I waved at cattle grazing down in the fields below. Little farm houses. The terrain looked more French than Texan, so I’m not sure where I was, maybe a mixture of both. I woke up needing to go to the bathroom. I’m not sure what that means either, and I don’t want to know.

The entries during the season of festivities are going to be scattered. Wherever you are, go and have yourself a good flight. It’s fun.

My brain is dead. My thoughts have rivaled death and lost. There is nothing left. I’m not even sick. I trod on, one step at a time. My sleep is deep and silent. I fall from wakefulness into unconsciousness nightly without knowledge. It’s beautiful in the sense that I’ve always wanted, or thought I’d always wanted, this darkness. Now that it’s here, I’m no longer sure. I wake up early in the morning ready for the world...at least physically. My body is wide awake, in charge, full of energy, ready to take on the world. However....my mind feels blank, dead, without hallucinations, without a past, without a future, just barely presently blank and awake, brand new, freshly out of the grind and ready to take on the shits, nothing doing. Without a past, imagined or real, my mind awakes like a babe newborn into the world and barely able to cope. The peacefulness is wonderful. The rest is bleak, like a post world war landscape of death. Memories are the bricks which build our consciousness into a palatable daily life. Without memories we are but babes unaware of the rest, monkeys with a slightly higher intelligence, bipeds horny walking around trying to copulate, feed ourselves, and get some rest. With our memories, with our parents’ memories, we are sad creatures still, but at least we are three dimensional.

My friends in Portland, Maine, are opening a cocktail lounge in mid-December. Unfortunately, I cannot make it for the grand opening. J.A. asked me to think of a cocktail they’d name after me. I think he was kidding, but here it goes nonetheless. (I finally tested this cocktail on several people last night after trying out several versions on myself the last couple of weeks, and for the most part, it was successful.)

My version of the Chocolate Martini, use top-shelf ingredients only:

the COCORICO

One shot of citrus flavored vodka
One shot of straight vodka
Half a shot of chocolate liqueur
A generous splash of kirshwasser

Put all ingredients in the martini shaker with lots of ice – made from distilled water of course, no tap-water rocks in my house! – shake rigorously for 30 seconds, and filter into a martini glass.

(Cocorico is the sound the rooster makes in French, and Coco is how the Americans pronounce Cacao. The rooster is a very French symbol. I’m both French and American and since this is a chocolate inspired drink, I think the name is perfect.)

My eyes were open. I was walking up a staircase. Very tired. Disgruntled. Wanting only one thing in the world: to take a shower and renew myself. Up the stairs, I knew, there was a public shower I could use. But for the life of me, I couldn’t make it up the stairs. There was a person sitting on the stairs leaning against the wall, having a smoke. This person was a woman mid way up the stairs. Sitting and smoking. I couldn’t see much else, it was all so fuzzy. I was in some sort of a fog. There was no fog around me. There was no fog in the house I was in. There was no fog on the staircase going up. There was lots of fog in my head. My head was heavy. Very heavy. I was literally falling awake. A horrible sensation, whether falling asleep or falling awake. It’s unworldly, it should be done automatically without having to think about it. It’s as if some inexplicable forces are trying to pull you out of your body or out of your consciousness. It’s unpleasant. She said, “you’re doing just fine, you’re almost there.” She went back to her cigarette, not moving, just looking at me. And I crumbled on the last stair. I had made it all the way to the top when the fog became too heavy, and I could barely understand what the girl was saying. I held on to the wall and sat down, sliding my hand melodramatically down the grey wallpaper. I awoke.

(Snapshots. Snapshot after snapshot. Watched the movie by Chris Marker in class last night. La Jetée. Going in and out of consciousness, or time travel, whatever you want to call it. When I was a teenager, I used to read about ‘out-of-body’ experiences, trying to explain the sensations I felt almost nightly going to bed. It’s all about the moment it takes to fall asleep or to fall awake, what level of consciousness you might find yourself in at any one point in time or in space. Sometimes, things get messed up, and the boundaries between time and space get messed up, or they simply change to a time / space relation you’re not used to. Call it hallucination, out-of-body experience, time travel, abduction by aliens, hardcore dreams...it doesn’t matter what you call it. It’s a trick of the mind, electrical surges slightly off beat.)

- That, too, is part of who I am. Not every facet of my personality has to be pleasing. Yes, I CAN be a shallow, selfish, dick head. What of it?
- I don’t know. You tell me.
- I’m not telling you anything else. This whole conversation is boring me.
- So you do admit, in the instance that we’re talking about, that you’re using clichés, being selfish, and not even remotely thinking about how others might feel about your actions or about your words?
- Sure, certainly.
- That’s not very nice, is it?
- So what? Who says I’ve got to be nice all the time? Albeit, most of the time, I’m this nice guy who goes out of his way to be Mr. Nice Guy, but every once in a while, I just want to let loose, and sometimes, this means becoming a selfish asshole.
- That’s not a pleasant thought.
- There’s nothing pleasant or unpleasant about it. It’s a fact. Most of the time, I’m a nice guy, most of the time, I try to be fair, and all that other stuff...
- You say that, but who says that except for you?
- So?
- Then who says it’s true?
- Does anybody other than myself need to say something to me to legitimize what I feel about myself?
- Sometimes it’s helpful.
- Bull shit. I’m a pathetic individual. And I can only speak for myself - personally, I think we're all pathetic individuals to some extent. I write about myself as truthfully as I can. That means describing myself as a selfish shallow asshole merely interested in plastic beauty and getting pathetically drunk being this selfish prick...that is, if that’s who I’m being at the time. I could very well be the completely opposite person another time, and whoever I’m being, as long as it’s me, then that’s whom I should describe myself as being...
- And you want others to read about yourself portrayed in this manner?
- What I want doesn’t matter. What’s funny is that people actually read about my pathetic little life.
- You think it’s funny?
- Funny and even more pathetic than myself, which reassures me that I’m not as pathetic as I sometimes think that I am, which reassures me that I’m not the only lonely asshole out there, which reassures me that after all is said and done, I’m merely human. Like my good friend says: monkeys with car keys, that’s what we are, not much else.
- ...
- I’m pissed at life, I’m pissed at myself...that’s what it is...
- From...from the other day?
- What? No. No, lets not be silly...I couldn’t give a monkey’s fart about the other day...I’m...I’m pissed at my inability to move, however hard I try, however much energy I dispense, however much I struggle to strip myself away from myself, I can’t move. I’m stuck, like an iron statue rooted in a cement socle. A boring statue, to boot.

The following planet was inhabited by a drinker....
“What are you doing there?” he asked the drinker, whom he found sitting in silence in front of a large collection of empty bottles and of a large collection of unopened bottles.
“I drink,” answered the drinker dismally.
“Why do you drink?” Asked the little prince.
“To forget,” answered the drinker.
“To forget what?” insisted the little prince, feeling sorry for the man.
“To forget that I’m ashamed,” confessed the drinker lowering his eyes.
“Ashamed of what?” said the little prince who wanted to help.
“Ashamed of drinking!” concluded the drinker, closing himself into his melancholic silence for good.
And the little prince left, perplexed. (badly translated by myself. The Little Prince by Saint-Exupéry.)

- You’re selfish.
- Sure, all melancholic people who make it a point to point out to the rest of the world how melancholic they are, are selfish. Real selfless people are those who can suffer the pathetic melancholies of everyday life without going on and on about it. Specially those of us who don’t have it so bad, but think they do, and go on screaming it non stop to anybody who will listen.
- Are you trying to be...uhm...serious...to say something...uhm...deep?
- (Laughs) “Deep” ??? Give me a break.

(Am I, or am I not being sarcastic, that’s the question....)

It’s Monday. It’s morning. The weekend has rolled over and petered out and a new week has started. A rat has once again died somewhere underneath my kitchen. As I walked into my house early this morning, the smell hit me with its nauseating stench, and I nearly vomited right there and then. Not to mention my head pounding away from non-stoppable good fun since closing the store Saturday evening. It’s all a bit of a blur right this moment.

It started at my neighbors’ belated Halloween bash Saturday night. Lots of fun. It’s not quite clear to me around what time I stumbled back to my humble abode, but Kari said they’d left around three and I was still dancing away...dancing away like fools. My outfit was that of a French Cowboy. Basically my usual attire with Glenn’s cowboy looking straw hat he uses at work. It’s a very smelly dirty thing which looked perfect on my head. I could have tried a little harder, but I don’t particularly care for dressing up, though I enjoy dress-up parties. Glenn and Kari went as a priest and nun couple.

At some point Sunday night I was in a hot-tub somewhere in South East Austin, frolicking with three other people. That is, until the guardian of the apartment complex came by and nicely asked us to please step out of the whirlpool as it is not to be used past 10pm. We kept going from the hot-tub to the much colder water of the swimming pool. I’m not sure what time it was, but it was certainly much later than ten in the evening. He was very nice about it. I’d even lost my glasses during one of my dives into the swimming pool going after one or both of the two ladies in our little group. The guardian found them. They were at the bottom of the swimming pool. It took us a good twenty minutes of searching before he finally found them. He took out his flashlight and was very patient with us. All four of us very drunk, all in our mid-thirties, groping around in the dark in our swimming apparels, looking for my glasses. There’s something to be said about hot-tubs and semi naked people drunk out of their heads very late into the evening. It’s kind of fun.

Saturday still at the store, I sold a bottle of scotch from my personal stash. I keep a stash of bottles I want to buy for myself in the back room. The customer is a young fellow in his mid twenties. He first started coming to the store a few months ago, and said he wanted to learn about Scottish whisky, that he knew absolutely nothing. He couldn’t buy anything that first evening he talked to me, but said he would be back. I’d told him to come over whenever he wanted, and that I’d try my best to walk him through the various regions and styles Scotland has to offer. He’s bought more that half a dozen since, and Saturday he wanted something special, something he’d never had. After a little perusing of our Scotch section, I decided on the bottle. I took him to the back room and showed him the bottle. A 22 year old whisky distilled in 1978 by the Macallan – Glenlivet distillery. Raised in sherry oak, and bottled by Cadenhead at cask strength in 2000. Pure nectar!

“You’re killing me, man,” he said to me. I was showing him the bottle, giving him the low-down on what I was showing him.
“That’s the stuff here, my friend,” I said. “Look at it!” I was holding the bottle in question next to another bottle, also from the Cadenhead bottling company, so that he could see the difference. The 22 year old whisky was much darker than the other one. “Look at this stuff, man. Look how thick it is, this is the kind of whisky you have to chew, it’s so thick. This ain’t for you and your buddies to pour down your gullets without thinking, this is the stuff that you respect, that you pour in the glass and you take it in with your eyes, with your nose, you take it all in, man, before taking the glass to your lips...”
“That’s not going anywhere near my buddies. Nobody’s touching this except me, and you, since you were keeping it for yourself, I’ll invite you over and we can have a drink.” He held the bottle in his hands, then set it down, and placed his head inside his hands. “Dude! you’re killing me, here.”
“I’m not forcing you. I’m not twisting your arm.”
“Yes you are,” he said as we were walking back to the front of the store. “You’re the whisky expert putting a bottle in my hands telling me this is the shit, what am I suppose to do?”
“I don’t have a gun to your head.”
“You just about do.”

We made it back to the counter, and my colleague was looking at the bottle as we took our respective positions. Me behind the counter, entering the skew code of the bottle into the computer, and him in front of the counter awaiting his new purchase.

“Dude, that’s the shit! That’s some incredible stuff!” My colleague said, “how much more of this stuff we got?”
“That’s it, man, there’s no more around here, probably not another bottle anywhere in Texas.”
After the customer left, he said “What are you doing? You should have kept that for yourself.”
“Yeah, I know, but I like the guy. I had it stashed away to buy later.”
“Why’d you sale it to him?”
“He’s bought so many bottles of scotch in the last couple of months. He’s been trying every region, every style, and he wanted something different. Anyway, it’s fun to sale a great bottle to somebody who appreciates the fact that you’re selling him something special. That’s part of the fun.”

And so I started my weekend on a good note. All the evil shadows and demons were closed out. Good karma. I was sitting on top of the world, going home with two six packs, getting ready for a festive weekend completely unplanned for, other than my neighbor’s party.

At the party, there was a young woman visiting from Bombay. Her brother lives in Phoenix, and they were in town visiting my neighbors. I was absolutely entranced by her beauty. We were about five of us sitting around in a circle of chairs talking about this and that. This young woman’s dream is to become a star in Bollywood. She’s certainly beautiful enough. She’s in dancing school, acting school, taking singing classes and all the other stuff, and she’s planning on finishing her university studies in the States. So there we were in a circle, discussing such things as you do. One of the fellows, who was dressed as Zorro, is a stand-up comedian, and is currently writing a screenplay about being an Indian living in Austin trying to make a living as a stand-up comedian. He wants to direct it himself. I told him: good luck.

So I say, “tell you what, we’ll write a screenplay together, I’ll call up my buddy in Bombay who’s a cinematographer working on some big stuff, and we’ll let this young lady star in our movie. We write, I direct, she stars! My buddy shoots the movie, and you, the Grime Reaper over there, you can be the producer.”
“But I don’t know anything about being a producer!”
“That’s all right, you’ll learn as we go. We can’t make a movie here in the US, because it would be an independent, we’d never get the financing necessary to make a proper feature, and it would be too ‘quote unquote’ ethnic for American audiences, and we’d never in our wildest dreams get a distribution deal because distribution companies are bastards that way. No, we need to shoot an Indian movie in India with a ‘quote unquote’ international appeal. It’s cheap as hell to make a movie over there. I know the guy who can get us anything we want, the best crews, the best studios. We’ll make a beautiful picture, we’ll make millions, we’ll make her a star, and we’ll have a blast doing it. We could go to Cannes, the French will love it, and that always looks good on your resume, when the French love you in the film business. I can see the headlines all ready: French-American man directs his first picture in India. They love that kind of shit in France. They’d have some patronizing bull shit about French Indian relations going through the centuries, what the two countries have in common, what they’ve shared and so on. They love that kind of shit over there, as long as the movie critic slash journalist feels superior to it all. All we need is a story. It has to be very simple, yet be some crazy love story with lots of dancing and the whole village going off into choreographed dancing and singing at the most inappropriate times.”

I was off on a wet dream, talking, thinking, not sure whether I was thinking out loud, or talking to myself, dreaming, or actually communicating. The alcohol, the dancing, the loud music, were all starting to take effect on my brains and my ability to make any sense whatsoever. The young woman had me completely mesmerized. She was appropriately dressed as Cleopatra. She had the most perfect set of teeth I’ve ever seen. I’m a tooth fetishist, have I ever mentioned that? Her lips were about as sensual as any I’ve ever seen on or off the screen. This young woman is a star in the making, all she needs is to meet her Fellini. And she needs to find him quickly. That’s what this girl needs. A guy who worships beauty. There’s not even any need for a story in the Hollywood sense of storytelling. What we need here is some Italian post-modernism, some Freudian fantasy with a twist. A man living a mid-life crisis falls in love with a girl he cannot ever have. Her destiny has all ready been completely planned out by her family, and he’s not any part of it, but he must have her at any cost, even at the cost of both their lives. That’s the whole story. Lots of tracking shots, endless discussions that go nowhere, flashbacks, flash-forwards, coming in and out of fantasies, nightmares, and various levels of realities. The guy is in his late thirties, early forties, an Indian who has lived most of his life in the States. He’s a wall street type, or an engineer, or a professor, and he’s very successful at what he does, except he’s not happy. He’s a highly educated man, very Americanized, and is traveling to India for the first time in years for family business. His father, who also lived in America, has asked in his will to be buried back in India, and that’s what he’s doing. He can barely talk Hindi or Tamil, and he really doesn’t want anything to do with the whole situation. Then, he meets this girl half his age, who blows him away, and he can’t do a single thing about it. He can’t have her, he’s got a wife and family back in the States waiting for him to get back home to, and he’s crazy in love with a girl his daughter’s age in a country which might as well be a foreign country to him. That’s a movie. That’s a damn good movie. Anybody out there want to write it? Somebody who knows and understands both Indian and American cultures, who can write a good story without the stereotypes? I’ve got both the girl and the cinematographer. All I need is the male star and a good screenplay. I can direct.

There was also the Romanian Mathematician with whom I danced for a while. She had this accent as if she would chew you up like a banana at any time. Rough, yet soft. She was wearing a bright red hair piece, and wasn’t really dressed as anything in particular, she said, just last minute grabs here and there. Algebraic geometry is her field of studies. Great escapism, is how she described her work. She couldn’t be bothered with reality. Everyday reality bored her. She kind of looked like a crazy artist type, except she’s a scientist. We danced, then at one point, I was off to get another drink, and she had disappeared. I’m not sure what happened to her.

And then there was my neighbor’s lab techs. Two more beautiful girls. One was quiet, didn’t drink a thing, was dressed with a sheet wrapped around her, and hung out talking with Cleopatra most of the night. The other, a crazy girl dancing and drinking, was dressed as a post-modern Cinderella. By the end of the evening, she took her costume off, and changed into a cut-off t-shirt and some blue jeans. I’m not sure how I stumbled home, but what I do remember is staring at this girl’s navel. She had the most incredible navel in the world, and there was no reason to look at anything else. I was plastered drunk sitting in a folding chair, staring at her navel. She was dancing, and her navel stretched, tightened, moved about her stomach like a contortionist. It was amazing. Needless to say, there were way too many beautiful young women at this party, and my overall senses were overwhelmed by all these beautiful female forms moving about in my surrealistic universe. This was a Fellini movie, all these people dressed up in all kinds of crazy costumes. All these beautiful women dancing and being crazy. My imagination taking the better hold of my person, and me incapable of concentrating.

And now it’s Monday, and a new week is upon us. Tomorrow, I must go back to work. Tonight, I must go to school, though I’m currently thinking about skipping. I’ve spent way too much money this weekend. Somehow I went through forty bucks...oh yeah, it was the door fee to get into the Celtic festival Sunday afternoon where we got drunk on dark beer and various bottles of liquor we snuck in. That’s me and my friends who called me out of the blues, and forced me into their car Sunday midday to go to god knows where and drink yet way too much. I’m not sure what I’m going to do as far as food is concerned till my next pay check, which is still a long ten days away. There’s always the credit card.

You can visit Chapati Mystery and buy some t-shirts, or learn more about what you can do, also on Chapati. UNICEF says it's having trouble raising the necessary money. (Thanks to Moorishgirl for the link.)

"Despite dire warnings of a looming calamity, the United Nations has had difficulty raising money for the quake victims. As of Friday, it had received just 20 percent of the $550 million it needs for the next six months. Officials have warned that the shortfall could force U.N. helicopters to stop flying as early as this week."

Waking up feeling like a retarded pancake. The neighbor’s dog is barking away at some ghost. There was, thank god, a glass of wine left in the bottle from last night. The days are too long, I don’t remember the half of them, certainly not dialogue, conversations, and what have you. They jumble together and whiff away into the fogginess of my brain. It’s a disenchantment of sorts, a forgetting of life lived, a putting away into space of nothing. Black hole is better than remembering. I know nothing. I see nothing. I hear nothing. Or however that diddle goes. I am merely a body flowing through time, space and matter. The rest is all illusions gone away for the sake of my survival and for the sake of my sanity.

Bought a wine cooler yesterday with money I don’t have. I placed three bottles of wine in there. A 1999 Chambolle-Musigny by Alain Hudelot-Noellat, a 1997 Echezeaux Grand Cru by Louis Jadot, and a 1999 Gevrey-Chambertin by Louis Latour. The cooler can hold 52 bottles all together, so I've got a ways to go.

Why did I buy this appliance? The domino effect, probably. I’m a sucker for it. First, there was a bottle of 1988 Mouton-Rothschild. The bottle was at my friends' place. We were, incredibly enough, talking about wine. The subject among many other turns and derailments, landed on me saying that I’d like to own a wine cooler. I don't know why I said this. I just did. In the moment of that instant, I completely forgot how broke I am, how much money I all ready owe the bank, and imagined through the soft fuzzy butterfly effect of the Mouton, myself strolling the French country side buying futures at various chateau's. The idea popped into my head and attached itself like a leech. Such ideas, those of ownership of appliances, are very much a part of our consumerist society. In no way is this new cumbersome part of my estate necessary for my survival as a human being. Yet, for several weeks, it grew and grew until I finally bowed down to it and thought I couldn't go on with life unless I went to the store and made this purchase which will further me into financial destitution.

I don’t regret the purchase, I’m rather happy about it, however, now that the deed is done, I can clearly see that I was tricked by my own silliness. I could have saved myself a lot of money by not buying this wine cooler, and instead paid off part of my credit card bill, gone out for a beer, and drank somebody else's wine.

After the first initial conversation, I started talking about it at work . My manager said it was a great idea. My colleague said I shouldn't spend that kind of money. My manager said I should go to Home Depot, tthat they have some wine coolers on clearance sale. That bit of information was stored in the far reaches of my brain, and then promptly forgotten. My colleague surfed a few web-sites and showed me some wine stores, told me I should surf e-bay and so on. My manager said I should never buy a second hand wine cooler. I changed the conversation and we talked about the sexiness of our female customers, specially those forty something women who haven't had any face lifts or breast jobs and still look awesome.

A couple of weeks later, my colleague told me: Hey man, I was just at Home Depot, they have a 52 bottle wine cooler on clearance sale. That little bit of information was stored in the back of my brains, yet closer to home control, linking myself back into the forgotten department. Two days later, my Mouton friends at whose place this whole ordeal had started comes in and says to me: Hey Francois, I was just at Home depot where I purchased a wine cooler, you should check it out, they’re some pretty good sales going on right now.

That was the grabber. The rule of three’s. The next day I drove to Home Depot and bought a wine cooler. Now it’s sitting right behind my desk with my three lonely bottles on its racks. And me thinking, what else can I put in there? We've got 12 cases of this really good 2000 Cru Bourgeois arriving in a couple of weeks. Both my colleague and my manager are keeping a case each. Why shouldn't I do the same? Buy on credit. The American way of life!

It’s morning. Wine has been drunk. Wine has been stored. Wine all around. My ideas are foggy. My life is disappearing behind veils of red wine. I stare out the window and see the leaves on the ground which need to be raked. It’s time I got up and did something. I dream of opening a whiskey distillery. I collect single malt scotches, all ready breaking my finances to hell, and there I go again, and force myself into the wine collecting business when just a few days ago, I promised myself I’d start collecting American whiskies only. What the hell is the world coming to? I step off an airplane and kiss the ground. Barley and grapes everywhere. Fields of corn and rye stretching as far as the eyes can see. Hill sides of vineyards barely surviving on chalky grounds. Four seasons of gods and goddesses. I am the messenger of blur. Fuzzy snow on your tv screen. Embrace the harvest, embrace the moon cycle. I want to dig in the dirt with my hands, my nails breaking through the earth. I want to smell the shit which feeds the vine and the grains.

(an essay without an end nor much of a middle, and a rather crappy beginning, is, i guess, probably not an essay at all...)

3h49
There’s a flying rat in my kitchen. I just got out of bed, put on a sweater for the first time in months, am feeling good like you do when you’re finally sleeping inside a blanket rather than inside a thin layer of sweat, and I’m at my kitchen sink thinking life’s not bad at all these days, singing to myself while washing a tea cup with soap and hot water. Totally unexpectedly, as one can imagine, a rat leaps out of my top cup-board and lands behind the refrigerator making a big thump noise. A good seven feet down. My mood flips instantly. First, I panic. With a tight hold on the cup and the sponge, leaving the water running, I jump about five feet backwards, thinking to myself: What The F...!!! I realize this is not the most insightful thought one might have under such a circumstance. Hey, I’m no green beret! I don’t deal well under unexpected situations. My impulse is to get the heck out, not attack back. My defensive and offensive maneuvers are a bit rusty. Are there any instructional cassette lectures one can purchase? You know, something to listen to while you’re stuck in traffic going to work. Anything along the lines of How to deal with unexpected flying rodents in your kitchen? Second, I realize what has just happened, analyze, calculate the images, the facts, the probabilities, my own sanity, whether I’m awake or not – during the actual moment when the rodent flew way too close to my face, I didn’t take the time to calculate that it was a rat, it was simply something grey, something abnormal, something to be urgently weary of and I instinctually jumped backwards – it took a few seconds more before realizing what had missed me. This is when, upon fully visualizing and understanding the flashes in my brain, that I grimace with disgust and feel all nasty inside. It’s like I’d just seen my own skeleton flash at me in sickly green neon colors while crossing a very busy Parisian intersection around Barbes on market day. Third, I shiver out of the kitchen and into my living room, feeling slimy. I consider blocking off the kitchen and never using it again. Fourth, I slip my sandals on, and decide that building a wall between my kitchen and the rest of the house is not a viable option. How do I afford the bricks, the mortar, the time, and the energy? Fifth, I bravely make it back into my kitchen, fists up, ready to defend myself against any more flying rodents. It’s like a b-rated horror film taking place live right here in my kitchen. I hope Sigourney Weaver plays the female lead, because I think she’s hot, and she’s good in those kinds of pictures. Specially when she shaves her head.

I make myself a much deserved cup of tea.

***

Did I mention that I’m scared of rats? It’s not like some insurmountable phobia where I freeze up and I can’t deal with life anymore, it’s just that I’d rather not be around them at all if I can help it. Sure, sure, little white mice are cute to look at with their pink noses and such... but rats? No way, man. And mice, as far as I’m concerned, are just fine for pet snakes’ snacks – that’s a tongue twister – though I do think differently about mice now that I’ve read the complete series to the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy a couple weeks back.

10h21
This post is going nowhere. What is my theme? What am I talking about? Am I getting anywhere? There’s definitely a beginning, but is there a middle and an end, or at least one or the other? Nothing. Just fluff. I’m at a dead end hitting an inexistent brick wall full of rats gnawing holes through the centuries one generation at a time.

***

Brutus, my hundred pound chocolate Labrador, is useless as far as the rat situation is concerned. He simply can’t be bothered about it. He is after all supposed to be a retriever, not a hunter. I understand, but still...

The rat situation started a few weeks ago, and so far, I’m loosing. It became widely evident when one evening I was lying on my couch watching television. Brutus is lying on the floor right next to me, waiting for food to accidentally fall to the floor, when out of the corner of my left eye I notice something moving. I turn my head from Seinfeld to the left where on good days the kitchen usually sits, and see right in the middle of the brightly lit linoleum floor, a grey rat chewing on something. I can’t believe the audacity. I respect the rodent for a fraction of a second. Our eyes meet. He doesn’t move, he barely stops chewing for a moment. Then I look at Brutus, who’s completely given up on getting any more food from me that evening. His head is relaxed on his front legs while he’s looking straight at the rat with a totally bored, please don’t bother me right now look in his eyes. I nudge him a little, to no avail. I have to get up and pound the floor a couple of times before the rat actually decides to get the hell out of dodge. There was no more denying the problem. I bought some rat poison, placed it where the rat should get to them and where Brutus couldn’t however hard he tried. I found the little hole in the wall next to the refrigerator where I saw the rat make his get-away. A few days later I started smelling decaying flesh, and figured I’d had him. But then the smell stopped way too fast. And then came this morning. The smell going away was good. The smell going away so quickly brings me to assume there’s something else under my house eating the decaying bodies of dead rodents. That usually means more rodents. Rodents are like humans, they use the death and misery of their comrades to build and strengthen themselves. It’s a very affective, efficient, and smart policy, if you can stomach it.

***

How does a rodent get into the highest cup-board of my kitchen? That’s where I keep the coffee machine, the grinder, and all the other coffee accessories which I haven’t used since August 4th. That’s also where I keep absolutely no food of any kind. It makes no sense. I have to get rid of this problem. I can hear them at night in the attic running around on top of my head, or underneath the house scrounging around, there’s got to be a whole infestation. And what scares me the most, is that I could have been standing two feet to my right, lets say, reaching for something in one of those cup-boards, and that rat would have been flying right into my head.

I can picture myself fighting with a rat straddling my face, clawing at my eyes and getting tangled up in my hair. I’d be screaming murder through the house, and finally ripping the rat off my scalp and slamming it down on my driveway’s hard pavement cement. This is neither here nor there, but once when I was thirteen years old and a freshman in high school, a squirrel got cornered in the school in between two flights of stairs on the midway landing where a window had been left open. Several kids surrounded the creature and blocked it in a corner. They were throwing all kinds of things at it: spit balls, pens, books, bags, trying to kick at it and such... keeping as safe a distance from it without letting it get out of the circle. The squirrel was scared out of its wits. I broke through the circle with bravado, to show off to the other kids really though rationalizing to myself that I was trying to save the poor thing from their cruelties, that I was some kind of hero. I walked right into the group towards the squirrel and grabbed it. Right as I was going to put it back out onto the window ledge it had fallen from, the little shit bit me. It hurt like hell. Before I realized what I was doing, I slammed the thing on the tile floor of the hallway. The other kids backed away in awe, and I felt like a dip-shit.

Basically, what I’m trying to say, is that I’ve had my dealings with rodents. And I would like to be through with them if at all possible. They haunt my dreams.

13h10
Imagine being in bed, thinking you’re awake but not able to move a single limb and other than this slight dysfunction of motor skills, all is more or less normal. That is, you’re seeing the room around you and it seems fine. Then, everything shifts a bit. Not by much. Not wacky enough to reassure you this is only a dream. Just funky enough to warn you that something’s drastically wrong. The door’s a little bit taller, the angles are smaller or wider than usual, the light is of a slightly different tune, the floor creaks in a different tone, the perspectives are not quite right, like those of a beginner in art class, and your bed is facing the wrong way... et cetera. It’s a mixture between hallucinating and dreaming, if the two aren’t the same to begin with. All the sudden, a whole school of rats comes racing into the room from nowhere in particular, from the door, and carpets right over your body at high speed. It’s like a heard of tiny wild buffalos. Thousands and thousands of tiny feet running on your back and disappearing on the other side into the wall or through the window you’re not sure. The whole experience lasting no more than one minute. Can you imagine how that feels? It doesn’t feel good. And flying rats in my kitchen only reiterates my fear of them. Every rat I see is like a bad omen warning me the plague is on its way. Maybe the plague will start right here in my house. Should never have read Camus! They’re breeding themselves into an army down underneath my humble habitation, taking control of the walls, the attic, and slowly coming into my kitchen, until finally, they will flow out like a sea of gangrene overtaking my body before going into the rest of the city and spreading to every corner and every house they can get their teeth into. I better put a stop to this right away. I’m the hero on a mission to save the planet! Kill all the rats in and around my house! (This is really starting to sound like a B-rated flick. Anybody want to write the screenplay? Nobody in the neighborhood believes me, other than the lead lady of course who lost her whole family to the rats as they were visiting, and we have to go about it alone, until it becomes too late, the rats have all ready eaten half the population of the city, we’ve fallen in love, when finally we discover the hiding place of their leader: Twinkle Twinkle, the Grand Master Rat!) Anyway, I don’t want them getting all cozy and stuff in there with me footing the heating bill this winter!

22h49
Can I go to sleep in a house full of rats?

A Re-birth! That’s a bit melodramatic. Not sure if that’s not exaggerating things just a tad bit. Everything in motion, everything moving in and out of brain death, doesn’t spell out a new birth, and definitely not a re-birth... how ridiculous is that? Haven’t been able to breath all week. Allergies. I have not gone to see a doctor to confirm this self imposed hypothesis on my current health. I don’t feel sick, it’s just I can’t breath. I blow my nose and thin see-through mucus comes out. To no avail, since I still can’t breath. Great for wine tasting... Yeah! I’ve done a few recently. The blockage happens mostly in the morning upon waking up, it seems to clear up as the day takes its course, so it’s not so bad. This morning around 5h30, I walked outside and sneezed for about fifteen minutes. That seemed to only steer things up in there. Now, just about one hour later – what have I accomplished during this hour? Not much. I’ve managed to make some tea, to slip into a pair of dirty blue jeans, and put on a shirt I found in the creases of my couch – Just about one hour later, as I was saying, I’m at my desk sipping some Yorkshire tea and trying real hard to forget all about my nose, my inability to smell anything properly, and all that slime I’m having nightmares about: Where does it all come from? Is it my brain I’m blowing out through my nostrils, and if it is, shouldn’t it have a little more color to it? Somewhere, I’ve either heard or read that what you see in your blow rag, if it’s clear and you can see through it, then you’re experiencing allergic reactions to... not sure what to... Mold? Pollen? Whatever’s floating unseen through the air we breath... But when and if it starts turning white, creamy, and eventually greenish, then that’s when you should worry, and start drawing out your last will and testament.

This woman came into the store the other day. She had tubes coming out of her nose, linking her face to a hand-bag she carried about her shoulder from which emanated little beeps and burps. She was a tiny woman, barely five feet and a couple of inches tall. I was at the register cashing in a sale from this other woman who comes in every other day to buy a fifth of overpriced rum in a plastic container. Every other day she stands in front of the rum section and has to make a decision: Clear or Gold? And sure enough, it’s always one or the other. Anyway, I was giving her her change back when the other woman was walking into the store. The one who’d just bought the rum walked out, she’s a very tall and very skinny woman around forty something, and just as she’s stepping outside, the two women recognized each other.

“Bernadette!” screams the very tall very skinny woman, “How are you? I barely recognized you! it’s so Good to see you! Wow, we were all sooo worried... how are you?”
“I’m doing wonderful! It’s so good to see you too.”
“What happened?”
“Ohhh, wow, you know... it... I got real sick, and... I was in the hospital... you see, both my lungs collapsed. First the left one went, then the other one just afterwards...”
“Oh my gosh, are you all right now?”
“Oh yeah, I’m fine. I don’t move as fast as the rest of you, but I’m doing great now. It’s amazing, you know, it started out as a cold. Just a stupid little cold, you know, sniffling and stuff, then it moved down to my throat and it started getting real bad, a strip throat and all... and before you know it, my lungs collapsed.”
“Oh wow, I’m soooo sorry, but it’s sooo good to see you again.”
“It’s good to be back.”
“All right, well... you take care.”
“You too.”

(The conversation lasted a bit longer than that. I don’t mean to make it sound trite. They talked about seeing each other again, absolutely needing to go out and do some catching up, see some other people in common, have a couple of drinks, and a lot more of how good it was to see each other again.)

The tiny woman bought a cold bottle of inexpensive chardonnay, paid, left, and that was that.

***

Re-birth! Ah! Re-birth, my ass... I’m starting to sound like a born-again bible-thumper, talking about being born again, about seeing the light at the end of the tunnel, coming out from the depth of SIN... buddy, oh boy! Birthing myself through a long never-ending air-conditioning ventilation system made up of organic material all slushy and flesh like, crawling in there head first, being thrusted out by unknown unseen and probably misunderstood forces of nature, pulling myself out or trying, clinging on to anything... nothing I grab onto stays in my grasp, like trying to climb a mountain made up of green gobs of slime... except I’m not climbing, I’m neither going up or down, I have lost all sense of gravity, I am not doing anything intentionally, I am being evacuated, pushed out, shoved away from wherever I was before... covered in slime and gooey stuff... I have lost control... re-birth... My Ass! More like an execration! Moving then not moving, thrusted forward then sucked back in, thrusted forward, then sucked back into the darkness, seeing the dot of light getting bigger and then small again, but every time it gets bigger, it’s just a little bigger than it was the last thrust, and every time it gets small again, it’s just a little less small than it was the time before... an unimaginable spot of brilliance amongst all this darkness and fish entrails never quite in the same spot, moving about – THRUSH – another blow from the depths thrusting me a good ten yards forward sliding right through the sludge of water and blood, this needing to get this ordeal over with, this needing a breath of fresh air – here I go again, whining about breathing... breathing, that’s the central theme of this post: Looking for a breath of Fresh Air! THRUSH... and off I go whooshing about like a turtle caught in a mudslide... the spot of light getting larger, itself breathing as if alive, not just an exit, but an orifice, a large cave opening alive and breathing... just one more little push and... and... AND THEN!!!

PLOUF! FLUSH...

(Born again, my ass. Re-birth, my ass. I’m merely trying not to go brain dead just yet.)

Well, here I am at the coffee shop, and this is my time to write here on my blog, though I find that I have very little to say. I should have written something prior to coming here, but I didn’t. What I’ve been doing all week with all this new found time on my hands is read books! Write on my long-hand journal! Work in my garden! Work on my screenplay! It’s been amazing.

So... sorry... I have nothing to say.

I need to get used to this new found freedom. I will try to publish on my blog once a week. I will post either on Sunday or on Monday. This will start as soon as I get off my ass and write something worthy of being posted. Hopefully, and unlike today, I will have something ready before coming to the coffee shop.

So, please forgive me for not posting, and please believe me when I say that I will post again soon. To the few of you who do – or did – read this blog, please try and see this as a kind of re-birth.

Cheers.

Well... I did the unthinkable, the unfathomable, I cancelled my home internet account! That’s right, I will no longer be plugged-in as of the end of the first week of next month. Why? For various reasons, one of which being financial, but also because I spend way too much time at this computer doing pretty much a whole lot of nothing instead of what I should be doing: working seriously on my various projects. It’s not like I’ll be completely out of touch, since I have constant internet connection at work, and I can always walk a few blocks to my neighborhood coffee shop with my laptop and use their free Wi-Fi connection. So I’ll still be around. I’ll still post on this blog, though my posts will be even more infrequent than they have been recently. What might happen, what I hope will happen, is this not being able to post immediately will force me to write and rewrite, think and rethink, edit my posts, and then post them. I have a tendency to write and to post and to barely look at what I’m doing. When I reread what I’ve published on my blog, I sometimes cringe with some of what I find there on my electronic screen. And anyway, I think I want to start reading the printed press once again. I miss the turning of newspapers pages over breakfast.

Last week and last weekend were crazy mixture panic, chaos, and partying. A large percentage of our customers at the liquor store had unexpected company. One woman was telling me they were five adults, six children, and ten dogs, at her house. Some people had one friend, others had several families, and everybody was drinking heavily. On Wednesday and Thursday, the supermarkets around town were emptied. The water went first. I don’t like tap water, and I usually stock up on gallon jugs of spring or distilled water. On Tuesday, I was running low, by the time I decided to get myself some water, there was none to get. Not a single bottle of water was available in the city. What people hadn’t scrounged and over-bought on, FEMA and the Red Cross had taken. Various employees in various supermarkets told me they didn’t even bother to load the shelves whenever they got a delivery. They took the pallets off the trucks and plopped them down by the front door, in thirty minutes, everything would be gone. Then by Thursday and Friday, the stores started to run out of bread, of dairy products, no more milk anywhere – I don’t drink milk, so that’s fine, and I don’t eat most breads you find around here either, so there... – then went the canned meats, the canned vegetables, and finally the potatoes and the onions. By Friday afternoon, the supermarket next to my work was empty. We at the liquor store didn’t quite run out, but we had a very strenuous week. Non stop. Busy all the time. We at least doubled our sales compared to the week before, and I haven’t quite recovered yet.

My friend’s mother lives just north east of Beaumont, Texas. Thursday, I called my friend to see if her mother had gotten out of there. What? My friend says, she hadn’t read the newspapers, watched television, nor looked on the internet. She knew there was a hurricane right off the coast, but wasn’t it landing in Corpus or Mexico or something? No, I said, it’s going straight for Beaumont or Galveston or around there somewhere. Well, my mom doesn’t want to leave. I think you’d better call her and tell her to get in her car. She left at 4 in the afternoon on Friday! It took her 6 hours to get to Austin, which is very fast, considering I’d been hearing all week from my clients and their unexpected house guests about the gridlock on the highways, that people took more than twenty hours to get from Houston to Austin, so 6 hours to get from Beaumont to Austin is exceptional. Now my friend, her mother, and their two dogs are staying in her tiny efficiency apartment for a few days.

Considering the panic which took place, even here in Austin, where the worse we could have expected was severe winds and rain, possibly the loss of electrical power for a few hours, and at best exactly what we got, beautiful sunshine with slight cooling winds, then I’d hate to see our city on the eve or during an actual catastrophe. People were fighting at gas stations, people were driving recklessly – they do on normal times, but it felt there were double the amount of crazies on the road – people were scrounging for food and water... not poor people, or hungry people, but people driving 50 thousand dollar vehicles were filling there trucks up with dozens and dozens of gallons of water, taking everything they could get their hands on. I overheard one such man on Wednesday afternoon who had literally filled the whole back of his truck with water, “you just cain’t be too ready, it’s just me and wife, but we got to get ready for the worst...” or something of the sort. One customer came into the store, a little upset, a little red in the face, but calming down, and told me about his adventure. He’d just been at the gas station, were he’d had to wait half an hour to get gas, and finally, he was at the pump, opening his gas tank and started going for the gas pump when the man parked on the other side of the pump was going for it. “What are you doing?” asked my client, “I’m getting gas,” answered the other man. “Fine,” said my client, “but stick to your side.” The other man had the pump on his side filling up his gas tank, and was reaching to the other side to fill up a truck load of jerrycans! Why would this man need this much gas?

That’s one thing I did. I saw that one coming, and I filled up my car on Tuesday evening last week. But that’s it, I didn’t stock up for the next three weeks!

People are nuts.

It’s the great big exodus. It’s fucking biblical. A million or so people are evacuating and driving through town. Glenn was getting off of work in Giddings – 100 miles from Houston approximately – and there was no taking 290 East – the principal highway to get back into Austin. The cops have turned all the red lights off all the way down from Houston, and the cars are driving out bumper to bumper. I don’t know where they’re going. There’s a major international music festival in town this weekend and every rentable room in town has been rented for weeks. The Governor told everybody to go to Dallas, San Antonio and For Worth. All day today I had customers coming into the store telling me relatives where coming over for the weekend. The H.E.B. next to my work ran out of water in the early afternoon. After class tonight, I stopped by my local H.E.B. and the parking lot was fuller than I ever seen it. I decided that I’ll go in early tomorrow morning. The storm should hit and totally destroy the coast-line, and it might still be a hurricane when it gets to us, they say. In any case, we should expect extreme winds and extreme down pour. We should expect massive amounts of trees breaking and flying. We should expect electricity to go out for a long time. We should hope real loud that no tornado will form out of this storm. Glenn, Kari, and I haven’t prepared at all yet. Tomorrow, we’re buying lots of water, some food, and loads of booze.

One of my beer delivery guys is in the National Guard. He told me today he’d been called in, and tomorrow he’s on the way to Houston for several days. In two months, he’s on the way to Iraq.

“I got a guy to cover for me for the next couple of days, this way it’ll all be cool.”
“But... they can’t fire you right? How does that work anyway?”
“Naw, dude, that’s part of the deal, whatever they call me to do, I can’t loose my job over it. Matter fact, it looks like I’ll be making less money in the next few days by going to Houston, so they’ll cover the difference.”
“Shit, man... and they can call you to go to Iraq too, right?”
“Yeah, matter fact, we’re supposed to go in two months.”
“I’m sorry, dude, I wouldn’t wish that on anybody.”
“You know, man, when I joined I figured something like that might happened, and at first, when it all started to go down, I was like, shit, dude, it’s an experience...”
“Yeah, but, dude, that’s not no experience you want...”
“Yeah... I don’t, man... ever since I saw that movie 9-11 or whatever, I’m like, fuck this shit, what the hell... I want to defend my country and all, but not this shit...”
“I’m sorry, dude,”
“You know, if they call me, I’ll go, because I signed up, but man I don’t want to... I’m not scared or nothing, I just don’t want to go over there and fight for their lies and... shit...”
“Dude, good luck tomorrow...”
“All right, man, I’ll see you later.”

It’s a weird feeling. People are freaking out. Nobody knows what’s going to hit them. It’s a massive exodus coming from the coast. This man walked into my store, and I’d just been checking out a man who was saying that everybody was all freaking out, going all out of proportion, that we’re in Austin, and nothing’s gonna hit us except some hard rain and some strong winds, why buy all that water? What’s those people thinking? And he walked out.

The next guy in line was a small guy in shorts and a wife-beater. He had lots of tattoos, a dark working man’s tan, and a rough edge like he’d worked ever since he could walk on his own.

“I don’t know nothing about no water shortage or nothing, but I live down there on a boat, or should I say, I lived on a boat, and that boat’s my living.”
“I’m sorry, man.”

He wasn’t melodramatic, he wasn’t mad, he wasn’t upset, he was just like: I live on boat which in two days will no longer be, I’m buying some booze to help me ride this shit out, other than that, I’m fine, dude.

I’m stranded in this country
not knowing the first thing
being in my thirties all ready
I am...

It’s a different thing all together
being this age when I was here before
I was young, illegal, and uncaring
dropping acid in the dried out
canal
looking at the brick bridge
over 30th street
seeing dancing illusions of death
and birth.

I’ve never legally worked
for a living before.

I’m not used to it.

It’s been a long day
trying to filter out the mundane


Remembering the Slovak church lunches
in Paris I had to walk past the railroad track
take a left, a couple of rights
and there it was abandoned it seemed
in that stark neighborhood
not far from Porte de Montreuil
a church
locked behind the chain fence
we would walk in after the service
was just over
me and my Slovak friend
starved the both of us
not a penny in either one
of our pockets
we attended the after-service lunch with glee.

He took care of the priest
in Slovak
and I was the interested French friend
who loved central European cultures
but spoke not a word.

We rarely paid more than a couple of euros.

We were always the center of attention.

My Slovak friend always paid
because I was even more broke
then he was
and my dad wasn’t an ex-soviet undercover cop
turned private inspector
and he seemed to have infinite funds
available to him
upon proper demands.

Broke as we were.

We are all guilty. With the evidence available, none of us could stand trial. We’re all good for the guillotine. Bourgeoisie in spite of ourselves. And if we’re not guilty personally, our parents and or our grandparents certainly are, which makes us guilty by association. We’re all good for the gallows! To the lions we go! The whole bunch, lets get the games started! Don’t know what I’m talking about. Raised strict Catholic by non-believing parents who have through the years become more and more the church goers, I am not your regular atheist. Matter fact, I am not an atheist at all, though I have been accused of such many times. I believe in life, in responsibility, in consequences, in the spirit of life, in the mystery of life, in the world in which we live in, from which we are an inseparably part... I believe that I am God, as well as every other person which I meet or not, any other person which lives or has lived, we are all part of the same machine, the same struggle, the same love, the same hate... we’re all dirt, crude oil to be, full of energy and spirit, part of a whole mother earth which is us and we are her or him... or whatever. The White Goddess, by Robert Graves, deserves a looking into.

I like Gypsy music, and that’s what I’m listening to right now. Romanian epic poems sung through my little cheap computer speakers. I don’t understand them, but I know I am them, that they sing about me and my family, about my grandparents, my great-grandparents, about myself somehow. I know.

I have come from the depths of drunkenness, I have spilt everything which could have been spilt anywhere in my house, I have slumbered on and off from restless sleep to somnambulistic meanderings... I am the barely awake of Sunday morning. My kitchen is a mess, the laundry room seems to be at a standstill, the washing machine broken it seems, the dog all about the place going insane, I spill a brand new bag of dog food into his water bucket and onto the floor, the cleaning process is halfway successful, I skater mud and debris all over the house, water spillage, I try to recover as much of the dog food as possible running it through the colander... all the water soaked nuggets of expensive protein intense big puppy food finds its way into my refrigerator. There’s a weeks worth of soaked food in my bean casserole, the only dish big enough to hold all the wet dog food and fit in my cold box. I need to cook beans today for the rest of the week. This is a pain in the ass, and it’s only just the beginning, the rising from bed, the trying to have a more or less normal Sunday. Maybe what I need is a bath. Last night, my next door neighbors invited me to a doggy party. Zep, their dog, turned 4, and thus they invited lots of people with lots of dogs. All graduate students, scientists, chemical engineers, and computer programming experts. I felt about as smart as the dogs. At one point, the conversation turned to wine and spirits... finally, something I could talk about... and then, no matter how smart all those folks certainly are, once you get enough alcohol in any person of any level of intelligence, the conversation seems to always fall into more or less the same themes: past alcohol induced feats, exaggerated, and sex, or the lack of, the raunchy jokes, et cetera. Basically, a fun evening all around. Talked with one fellow about his Hungarian and Lithuanian origins, he talks neither languages of his parents. His mother when a little girl, jumped on a train right after church one Sunday many years ago, with her parents, on a day the Soviets guards had forgot to put a sentinel on the train heading to Austria. The train sped towards the border not stopping for anybody else. A whole bunch of folks in Sunday clothes with their Sunday suppers slowly simmering on their kitchen stoves, all bunched up on the coal wagon speeding towards Austria with the Soviets shooting bullets at the train trying to get it to stop. And that’s how, I was explained, his mother started her journey to America. I wonder what happened to all those meals simmering in all those kitchens? Did the village go up in smoke? Did the Soviets eat the meals? Did the priest jump in the coal wagon as well?

(Notice the subtle underlying theme of going on the wagon.)

His grandfather worked for Ford Inc. as a machinist in the factories in Cleveland, Ohio, for 25 years.

“He was an incredible man,” is all I was told.

Being a Hungarian soldier during the Second World War, he fought for the axis powers. He was made prisoner by the Americans, and interned in an American run concentration camp located somewhere in France. For months, they gave him nothing to eat. The prisoners survived by eating grass and leaves found on the campground. And still, in the mid-fifties, when they escaped the Soviets, America is where they were headed. During the war, his grandfather was an interpreter of Hungarian for the Germans. Because he was an intelligent man and spoke both languages with great aptitude, he ended up in some dangerous circles. Such people as Heinrich Himmler used his services when the Germans walked into Hungary.

I can’t even begin to imagine finding myself in such a situation. Once, when I was eighteen, I landed a job as an interpreter for this Californian millionaire who had the idea of starting a black truffle ranch in West Texas. He brought the biggest mind on the subject to Texas, paid them handsomely, and hopped to get as much information from them as possible. These truffle specialists, scientists and such were all French. This is where I come in. One of these scientist in question was a horrible man, and being the interpreter I was stuck in the middle, having to translate what he was saying without changing the meaning of his words. There were times when I was ashamed of what this man was saying. The man who had hired me, the millionaire’s brother in law, for whom I had worked earlier that summer helping him build stain glass windows told me after that horrible man was put back on the plane, that I had done a great job, and that they all knew these words were not mine own, that I had done my job as an interpreter, and that was what I had been hired to do. Pancho was an artist who lived in the hill country, he was poor, an ex-hippy from the sixties, a wonderful man who happened to be related to a very rich Californian. This French scientist lived in what had been Vichy France during WWII. He was one of those French who had been more than happy to see the Nazi’s coming in. There were many more than most would admit today. He collected Nazi memorabilia such as uniforms, medals, photos and such, but also guns, specially automatic guns, which are highly illegal in France as far as I know. He explained that one of his favorite games was to invite unknowing friends to his place, set them up in his living room with a drink, and then disappear for while. He’d come back in the living room dressed up as a high ranking SS officer with a loaded automatic gun and scare the living shit out of his guest. This is part of the stuff I had to translate, which wasn’t so bad. He kept telling these types of anecdotes which I translated to his hosts, my boss and Pancho. This man was a sick man, and I hated him, even more so because this man was French, and in my silly eighteen year old mind, I was afraid my hosts might think all French people were like this man.

When our work was done, and that it was time to take this asshole back to the airport, we had a few days left and we asked him if there was anything in Texas he wanted to see. There was. He had always wanted to see the Confederate Air Force – now the Commemorative Air Force – an organization which collects old WWI and WWII airplanes, fixes them up, and flies them on a regular basis. At the time, they were located in South Texas, and we traveled all the way to the valley, to my parents’ distress since I was at the time an illegal alien, and if stuck in an Immigration Check Point, I could have been taken into custody. I went anyway. I looked and sounded American, and I had a driver’s license. We were driving on those long highways. We would see whole family of poor people walking on the sides of the roads. At one point, our scientific asshole friend said to me... this was at the time of the first Iraq war, the one Bush Sr. started... “we should gather up all these people, put them on a plane and make them walk hand in hand, every single one of them, parents, children, the whole bunch, in front of the American Marines in the desert to clean out the mine fields. It would save us a lot of money, and at least these people would serve a purpose instead of just being parasites.” When he said this to me in French, and the millionaire and Pancho were looking at me for a translation, and the French asshole was egging me on to translate what he’d just said, and we were traveling down the highway passing all these poor people walking down the side of the road, I looked at Pancho, whom I liked and respected, and translated what the scientist had just told me. I was angry and almost in tears at having to say such a thing.

It’s Wednesday evening and I’ve had a long day. Couldn’t sleep last night so I was out of bed around 4am reading Love’s Lovely Counterfeit by James M. Cain – who also wrote The Postman Always Rings Twice - which I rightly finished... loved it, but then again, I’m a sucker for those kinds of books, and Cain, though it’s been many years since I’ve read anything by him, is often pretty darn good. By 6h30 there was nothing left to do, I’d drank some hot tea called De-Tox, which didn’t do anything for me, so I’d drank the two last beer in the fridge while reading the last few chapters in the book, that didn’t do anything for me, so I walked to the local supermarket and bought a melon and a grapefruit, walked back home, sat on my couch, still tired as hell but not sleepy one bit, that wasn’t gonna do it, so I took a long hot shower, and still nothing. There was nothing left for me to do but to go back to bed. I did. Nothing doing. No sleep. Rolling over, having weirdo nightmares, half awake, half drowning in my own silliness, I was trying desperately to get some sleep. 7h15, the alarm went off, or rather, the alarm on my cell phone went off, I changed it to 8h30, and went back to sweating it out all by myself rolling around wanting needing to catch any kind of descent snooze. Nope, wasn’t gonna happen. 8h30 I rolled out of bed, put some clothes on not looking whether they came from the clean pile or the dirty pile, and my eyes barely able to function, I drove my thirty and some minutes to work, my melon by my side. I arrived at work early, didn’t clock in, but sat at the back desk, cutting my melon in half and starting eating it. I hadn’t taken two bites that somebody was all ready beating on the back door. I looked at the clock, it wasn’t even 9h20 yet, ten minutes before I’m suppose to clock in. My shirt open, my clothes totally disheveled, I grunt to the back door, open it to a surprised delivery guy.

“You here all ready!? I wasn’t expecting to see you here this early, man.”

It’s one of my favorite delivery guys, so I can’t be pissed at him, but I do give him a little hell anyway.

“Hey man, I ain’t even clocked in yet, what’s the idea?”
“Sorry, man, don’t know why they put me on your stop this early.”
“Shit... I was eating breakfast and all, trying to relax a second before having to start my day.”

Took that order. He left. So I sat back down, finished my melon rapidly, and went to go sit on the shiter for a few minutes, my first bowel movement of the day, the most important one, when, I’m barely through doing my business that here it goes again, somebody knocking on the back door.

And that’s how my whole day’s been going. During class tonight, watching Nosferatu by F.W. Murnau, I could barely keep my eyes open, my head falling backwards, catching myself before falling off into lala land. I was afraid I was going to make some stupid comment, because I couldn’t always tell the difference between what was happening on screen and what was happening in my head.

It’s 22h56 now, I’ve been home a while, I made myself some simple diner, had myself a couple glasses of white wine, watched The Killers a short film by Andrei Tarkovsky, his first – I watched Robert Siodmak's (1946) version a few nights ago – all based on Hemmingway’s short story, and I figured I should visit my blog before going to bed.

(Today is an average day for me these days, just to show you why I haven’t been writing much here as of late.)

My man is stuck at the end of act one, he’s met the girl he’d like to spend the rest of his days with, but she doesn’t really care one iota about him (not until she realizes she can use him to free her boyfriend, but that’s not till way into act two)... right now, we have a situation of cross border unhappiness – Texas / Mexican border – with my hero wanting to go home – another country all together, France to be exact – and his boss not wanting him to go home – the boss holds the key for the hero to go home – and the daughter of the bad guy dropped in just for bad luck with whom the hero falls in love with – unrequited of course – though he’s just about to get his window of opportunity to get the hell out of dodge... if he gets involved with her and takes on her complicated life on top of his own - which he's bound to do - then there’s a big chance he’ll miss out on his ticket back home. What to do? But right now, I’m barely at the end of act one when boy meets girl.

Decisions... decisions...

Silence. I’ve been silent now for a week. I’m sorry. It’s been difficult to find anything to say these last few days. Everyday reading the news, seeing the devastation down south, all those people displaced, all those people who’ve died, and little me over here totally powerless to help. So I sit at my desk on Sunday, yet another Sunday, another week ended, a new one about to start over again... day after day, I go to work, I work these long days which comparatively to some aren’t long at all... and I don’t do much of anything else except go to school two nights a week. My personal time has been reduced drastically. It’s been one month now since Marvin and myself have been just the two of us at the store, in a store which really needs three full time employees, and we’re both getting tired of the situation. When I get home in the evening, instead of reading, I turn the television on and go blank. My brains are turning to mush. In the morning, I turn the computer on and surf the various news sites and blogs instead of writing. None of it is any good, and I believe I’m about to get rid of my internet access here at home, so that my computer becomes once again a work station rather than a brainwash brain-dead station.

¾ part black-currant liquor otherwise known as Crème de Cassis, 1 part citron vodka, fill with ice and ginger-ale, shake, and pour into glass, ice and all. Should fill a pint glass. Drink like cool-aid. It’s called the Kir Dévasté.

People smarter than myself speak: TonyPierce, Whiskey Bar always has some intelligent words to ad to the lot, his essay The Potemkin President hits a few nails right on the head, Anne Rice is pissed, thanks to Looka for the link, though I’d read her piece in the NYT earlier, the Holywriter tells us what he thinks, and Bob Herbert is very direct and right on in his op-ed which he starts with:

"Neither the death of the chief justice nor the frantic efforts of panicked White House political advisers can conceal the magnitude of the president's failure of leadership last week. The catastrophe in New Orleans billowed up like the howling winds of hell and was carried live and in color on television screens across the U.S. and around the world.

The Big Easy had turned into the Big Hurt, and the colossal failure of George W. Bush to intervene powerfully and immediately to rescue tens of thousands of American citizens who were suffering horribly and dying in agony was there for all the world to see."

It’s Sunday and I ain’t gotta be at work
it’s the Lord’s day they say
them that say it’s the Lord’s day
but I don’t believe it for a second.

Sunday’s my day, people
Sunday’s my day, folks
Sunday’s the day I get to not go to work
because the big boss man says
because the big boss man says.

He won’t give me any other day off
says it’s the Lord’s day
and I can’t work on that particular day
on the Lord’s day
and only on that day.

I guess that’s fine by me
he can say whatever he wants to say
because I know Sunday’s my day
it’s my day to stay home
it’s my day to not go to work
even if I know this ain’t no more the Lord’s day
than mine own
I’ll have a beer anyhow
and get ready for the next week full of days
which aren’t the Lord’s days
because the big boss man says
because the big boss man says.

Gawker has a few things to say. Chapati Mystery is right on. The B.B.C. coverage is excelent, thanks to Bicyclemark for the B.B.C. reminder. Shrub comes in way behind schedule, as usual. Maureen Dowd tells us what she thinks.

When the president says this:

"This week we've all been humbled by the awesome powers of Mother Nature. And when you stand on the porch steps where a home once stood, or look at row upon row of buildings that are completely under water, it's hard to imagine a bright future. But when you talk to the proud folks in the area, you see a spirit that cannot be broken."

He should probably also look into this. It ain't just Mother Nature that's the problem, Shrub. Thanks to Chapati Mystery for the National Geographic link. We should all be humbled by the awesome greed of certain people.

inadequate laments
from safety
a home standing still
inside which
a man sitting alone
from others
crying not because he thinks
but because he feels
inadequate to lament
adequately.

unable to act
and help those
even poorer than him
he sits there
and watches them die
miles away.

is it cowardly?
or the truth of the situation?
unable to move
imprisoned inside walls
so thin
like careless sticks yarned around
the room
wooden matches
stuck with glue
built as if a wall
a grid
of strewn toothpicks.

33

emptied.hills.listen.
,not,alive,trees,dream(
ev:ery:wheres:ex:tend:ing:hush

)
andDark
IshbusY
ing-roundly-dis

tinct;chuck
lings,laced
ar:e,by(

fleet&panelike&frailties
!throughwhich!brittlest!whitewhom!
f
 loat?)
          r
            hythms

(copied from the collection e.e. cummings complete poems 1913 – 1962 page 416)

I sit in front of my screen this morning surfing the bad news which seems to be the only thing going theses days as I drink the remaining two third of a beer I apparently didn’t finish last night, and I tell myself there’s really nothing I can write about. There’s plenty of much more talented people out there writing about the tragic state we find ourselves in, and me here in front of my screen rehashing what’s all ready been said is of no use to me or anybody. Next week is my birthday, I will celebrate by eating way too much pizza and drink way too much cheap beer. I will do this with a few friends after I get off of work and I will go on through the wee hours of the night like a bumbling idiot.

People who have something to say: The Interdictor, BAGnewsNotes, Whiskey Bar, Michael Moore.

Some of my customers have once again proven their great sense of humanity. As I’ve said before, I work in a predominantly republican neighborhood. Most of the people who come into my store drive large gas-guzzling SUV’s, and have consistently fought any sort of public transportation to come into this part of town. You know, so that people like myself don’t have to spend their entire salary on their vehicles, and to keep the riff-raffs away. These people, when they’re not working, are buying booze from me and going to the lake to float around all afternoon. I wouldn’t mind doing the same thing every once in a while, but there are few to no public accesses, public parks or public picnic grounds are inexistent. Unless you own a boat, or you own property right on the lake, or you have friends that do, then you’re stuck far away from the water. Blablabla, I digress.

One of my regulars, a white man in his early fifties, came in as he does just about every day to buy his pint of Jack Daniels, a couple diet cokes, and a pack of cigarettes.

“Have you seen what’s going in New Orleans?” He starts, as if anybody anywhere close to the south or anywhere in the United States doesn’t know what’s been happening in the gulf region in and around Louisiana, Mississippi, and Alabama. “And those looters, isn’t that just terrible.” Then with a grin on his face, bending over, lowering his voice, speaking “white to white” – I hate it when people, just because of what I look like decide to include me in their usually unpleasant little worlds – said “I’m not prejudice, but I didn’t see a single white face in the bunch.”

“Well, sir, New Orleans is a predominantly black city, and people there are so poor, it shouldn’t even be allowed to be that poor in America. You’ve never seen such poverty.”

I wasn’t trying to excuse any looting. First of all I’m not there and I can’t even begin to understand what it’s like, but this man with his racist allusions, was really starting to get on my nerves. On top of it all, he was including me, as if it was understood that I thought and felt just like he did. Don’t assume I’m a bigot just because you are.

As he walked out the door, not really understanding that poverty could even exist in America, this man furthered himself in his idiocy showing his true colors, by saying: “I guess they’re stealing a microwave, or whatever, so that when the whites come back, who no longer own a microwave or whatever, they can sell them the microwave and make a little money, since they’re so poor.” And he walked out the door. I really don’t know if he was being serious – I think he was – or whether he was so hateful and insensitive, that he thought he was being funny and or ironic.

Anybody who starts a sentence with “I’m not prejudice, but...” or “It’s not that I have anything against woman drivers, but...” “I’m not racist or anything, but...” “I’m not homophobic or nothing, but....” or whatever, there are thousands of such examples, is basically admitting exactly what he or she is claiming to not be. Yes, you are prejudice, would you ever have had that conversation with a non-white? With a black person? No, probably not.

The next customer who walked in was a black man in his forties. I really wished he had come in just a few minutes before.

(I don’t want to keep repeating what I read in “leftist” blogs all the time: that racism is mostly an older white man’s problem. You know, The Old Big and Fat White Man is now the stereotype for everything that’s wrong in the world... and like all stereotypes, it’s completely wrong. Racism and bigotry comes in all shapes, colors, and sexes.)

Later on, another customer walked in. This time a white woman, probably in her early forties. She started telling me how her ex-husband was from New Orleans, and that her ex-husband’s family was now crashing in Austin at various relatives. She then told me how, when she was married, they’d visit New Orleans several times a year, “and really, you know, that place was sooo dirty, it really needed a big clean-up.”

She was standing at the door about to walk out, waiting for some kind of approval from me. I was simply in shock at what I’d just heard. She saw this and tried to justify herself before walking out. “But the streets were so dirty, full of drugs, and violent crimes...”

I wasn’t budging. I guess I’m a coward, I should have told her how terrible a person she was for thinking such a thought.

Finally, I said, “I’ve lived in New Orleans, and let me tell you, New Orleans is a great city, and I love that city.”

She left.

(For news stories related to New Orleans, go on NOLA.com.)

(All links and text in the following post from LOOKA blog.)

Call the American Red Cross: (866) 438-4636. Donate what you can, and use this number to look for any friends or relatives who stayed behind with whom you can't get in touch.

NOLA.com posts that "there is a database being developed for people who are missing and may need to be rescued from New Orleans. Call 225-925-6626 to give officials their names. They may also have information about people already rescued. We attempted to check this number and were unable to get through (busy signal)."

Call FEMA to begin the assistance process: 1-800-621-FEMA or http://www.fema.gov.

(Call FEMA while you can, before Bush finishes his appalling process of dismantling it.)

My heart goes out to the city of New Orleans and all her people. In 1997, I lived in New Orleans for seven months. It’s one of my favorite cities. I made lots of friends there, many of whom I lost contact with when I was kicked out of the country by the INS later that year and moved to France.

Last night, a friend of mine who now lives in Austin, but happens to be one of those people I met while living in New Orleans, called me because she wanted to go out. Across from me at the table where we were sitting was a girl of 25 who had come to Austin last week on vacation with her parents. She lives in New Orleans. Her whole house was completely destroyed in the last couple of days, she said. They’re living in a motel right now. Her pregnant sister is there as well. Since they’re here all ready, and they like it here, they decided just to stay here, and to make a new life for themselves in Austin.

Marcia Ball was on stage with several other musicians. People were coming on and off the stage. They had five keyboards lined up, and a drum set in the back. They kept exchanging keyboards when new people came on stage to join in. Marcia Ball was always up there. At one point, this one woman came up and grabbed a microphone and started singing. She sang a mixture of blues. She was very good. In between songs, she explained that she and her husband had been vacationing in Austin when all this happened, but that they actually live in New Orleans. Even though they can’t go back home right now, they’re going to fly in as close to New Orleans as possible in the next day. When she was explaining all this, she wasn’t overly dramatic or melodramatic at all. She said everything matter-of-factly. The girl sitting across from me was laughing and having a good time, said she had to get out of that motel room, her parents were driving her mad, which is why she was out on her own. Nobody was crying. The woman on stage was all smiles.

These are people who just lost everything.

The Emperor looses ground. His flight to the moon seems put off for the time being. He’ll just say he did it, and forget about it. The propaganda crews will take care of the details. Design a proper moon-walking suit, just as long as it looks good on camera. That’s the trick. Make it flashy, over the top, add some big time military music, a large orchestra mind you with all the brasses the turbines the large tam-tams and a whole slew of woodwinds and chords... fireworks in the night skies, the rocket never even left ground, but nobody’s gotta know. The Emperor steps out of the cockpit, his special-unit helmet all ready in his arms, all suited up clean as a brand new nickel, his clothes never even been worn, stepping out of the rocket as if he’d just come back from the moon, his hair in a perfect hairspray get-up. The paparazzi are all up in arms, cameras stuck to their retinas, shooting it all up like the latest soap-opera queen. The Emperor Steps Back Down to Earth Safely, says the headlines – “Irony is not necessarily intended,” the editor tells his subordinate before they send the paper to the press... “but maybe it is.”

Stuck on the screenplay. Yep. Attempting to write an outline first. I’m stuck at the end of Act I. What happens next? Damnit! I need to get the hell out of dodge and go sleep in a motel somewhere. Preferably in the middle of nowhere with a couple bottles of bourbon. That should fix my problem. [Yeah... Right!] It’s the Middle that does it to one every time. You can always figure out the beginning and the end, but the middle... the middle is the stubborn step-child. The middle is the meat, what makes it all worth it – bad example since I’ve given up meat all together, but for the sake of imagery – the beginning and the end are the bread, they better be damn good, but they’re only there to wrap up the rest, to bring finality and an overall roundness to the middle. And bread is always easy to find, whereas meat, that’s a different story. I’ve been broke, down and out, eating in soup kitchens, stealing from the super market, attending free buffets during happy hours... and boy was it none of it easy, not able to afford anything. Yet, even then, I could almost always find some bread. It’s what you put inside the bread that’s hard as hell to find when you don’t have a dime.

You know I say
what I say
very little really
is all I say
just about as close to nothing
as I can gather
is all I have to say.

The dogs are quiet
the parking lot is empty
I got me a simple high
simmering lightly
on a small fire
and that’s all I can ask for
right now
and if you don’t understand
keep on
fighting your own fight
just leave me out of it
and let me sit mine out
for right now.

Did I forget to grow up? Is that my problem? This seemingly unfathomable problem steering up hell in my brains and emotions and stomping down ferociously on any attempts to think and act like a grown up? Is it nothing more than a refusal to become a sentient responsible being, a stable settled and calm member of the citizenry? Is it not now much more than just a refusal? Has it not turned itself into a head-banging against the wall stratagem of debility? Upon arriving at no solution to this non-existent problem steering up mental disruptiveness, mental blocks, and total incapacitations, and being able to come up with nothing more than a massive head-ach, I have decided that I am merely being selfishly in denial at my inability to get on with life. Am I only eighteen forever in my brains? While my body continues to falter into ageing like a stumbling idiot? Is this what’s continually and exponentially making me more and more impotent word-wise? This constant fight between my emotional abilities, my mental acceptance of who I am, and my physical self slowly declining... are they the bricks of the wall building itself up blocking out my creativity? And how do I get around this corner?

Here comes the door to my old neighborhood, mixed people of all kinds talking a thousand different languages simultaneously reverberating in my head right now... sitting at my favorite cafe having a beer watching and listening to life walking by. My favorite activity. Where, do I ask, can I partake in such an activity around here? There is no such place like a place where the populations of the world walks by in the time you can watch five minutes go around the clock. All seven continents, every mixture of ethnic soup you can imagine, all skin color schemes, every dress code, religious restriction you can think of, all this humanity passing by your eyes in a few instant... where... where can I find such a place here in Texas that I can sit on the sidewalk, order a beer for a couple of bucks, listen to the server talk in at least two languages depending on which customers he’s talking to, have him remember you and your friends... where... where other than in Paris in those neighborhoods, as few as they are, not yet pushed out of the city limits by the ever dominant yuppies and their fears? Those most wonderful places where music is in the mixture of languages being spoken. From sub-Saharan African multitude of linguistic music to the inexorable sources of China, from the old world of Jewish Poland to the old ports of Algeria, and the mountains of Kabylie, I used to sit there drinking beers all day long dreaming about nothing much. The beauty which comes out of the sweat, rage, and mere human existence of having to be forced to live together, to breath together, to do business together. The fellows from whom I bought my beer before going home were Indian, the store where I went to buy my beans, sweet potatoes, garlic – among other things – were Chinese who served a mostly Black African clientele, most of my bars and cafes were run by Kabylies – such as the hotel where I worked where I was one of the only two “white French” employees, the rest where either Algerian Arab or Algerian Kabyl. I loved this diversity of people. Recently the new arrivals to the neighborhood were from ex-Yugoslavia, like my concierges who were Serbs, many more people on the streets where from Croatia. Loads of Russians hung out in the cheap cafes as well. As long as the beer stayed cheap, I didn’t care. I loved it all... but here, I don’t see any of this kind of thing, this being together through united poverty. I don‘t see it anywhere here. I miss these sidewalks multi-laced with all these languages. I miss this being able to hang out and drink beer from morning till night hanging out on a terrace without being judged. Doing nothing but looking at the world stroll down the sidewalk. This doing nothing more than drinking beer or wine and just simply being. I miss this about Paris. (Though I realize my memory is romanticizing... and that’s a dirty trick, there’s many reasons why I had to come back to Austin, but let’s not ruin these happy thoughts...)

The red wine is almost gone. I’m stuck in this position that I don’t quite know how to explain. I do not want this blog to turn into a place where I complain all the time, where I describe ceaselessly my pathetic existence. No and no again. That’s not what I want. That’s why I haven’t written lately... because I’ve been in a self-pity mood, and I don’t want any of it. I’ve tried and failed with this form all ready with a book of poems I wrote many years ago called The Pathetic Man. It is very badly written. I’d unfortunately given a couple of copies away and it might be in somebody’s procession somewhere. (This notion is at once exciting and scary.) For example, a few years ago I stayed at my friend John in Portland for the winter. I read some of my new poems to him and his then fiancé – they are now married. (I eventually read several poems at a now unfortunately defunct rock-n-roll club called The Skinny several times that winter.) John told me he still had some copies of poems I’d given him more than ten years before! When we were roommates in Camden, Maine. He showed them to me. I looked at them. Read them as if I was discovering a door into my now mostly forgotten past – I have a horrible memory. It was at once wonderful to rediscover myself and terrifying that somebody, anybody, even a good friend such as John, would have kept these angst-riddled scribbles for so many years. It gave my ego a little boost.

Feeling nostalgic, I was just going through some old floppy disks I’ve been keeping around since the late eighties. I haven’t tried to read them in years. Two out of three don’t work. In those that do, every other file is dead. Inside the third one I popped in my floppy drive, I found a file called El Patheticus (several hundred pages long... a pre-cursor to The Pathetic Man) and I found this following “poem”, if you can call it that...

Here it is. Enjoy. Nothing has been changed. Line break, language, words, or anything else. It was written either in 91, 92, or even possibly 93. I was working as a janitor. It's fun, for me anyway, to find and read such writing, as bad as it is.

some bars i'll probably not go back to

really hot today and i've being sweating it out
i went to the office and picked up a scrubber and some wax
then
 i went to go talk to the maintenance guy
 at the blood bank
then
 i delivered some music and instrument 
 for my land lord downtown
but on the way there i ran out of gas
  on north lamar right by the 24th street intersection
so and i ran up 25th 
  then i crossed over to 24th
  and almost walked all the way to the drag
  to find a gas station
i filled my two gallon life saver
  and got a ride from this long haired guy
  in a humongous 80's beat up red buick
who told me he's run out of gas on Lamar before
  and it's the shits
  i agreed: nowhere to park off
    you gotta leave it on the road
then to make it worse
  i couldn't get to my gas tank
  because it's on the traffic side
  and all these cars kept speeding by
    probably cursing me out
i waited patiently
  thanking god 
  that some cop or wrecker hadn't towed my van away
and then this guy with a baby in the passenger seat
  in a real nice metallic blue continental
  you know
  the expensive kind
stopped and blocked traffic 
  so that i could fill up my tank
he waved at me
  and i waved back thankfully

after that i went back to the station
  and filled up the tank
and went on to deliver this music downtown
  i was just on time
but landed myself 
  right at the beginning of the heavy afternoon traffic
so i decided to stop at this bar on 4th street
  and have a cold beer to relax a bit
  and read my Philip Levine book 
  i'd just bought

i went to the back courtyard
and all the tables were full
  so i asked these people
  if i could seat down
  since they had four free seat there
the girl
  a preppie college makeup perfumed and ready for a sale
looked at me
  amazed that i'd even had the guts to ask her
and said NO
  in a oh-god-please-don't-seat-beside-me way
they're reserved, she said
  so i looked at her
  and not wanting a scene
  i sat by the plants
nobody ever came to fill there seats
  somehow
  after looking at the whole crowd for the first time
  i understood
that these were all wantta be drinkers
  and moma poppa's money in pockets socializers
  but i ignored the fact
  and opened "what work is"
  enjoying it even more so because of the irony
  of where it was being read.

i moved
  got up 
  and went inside 
  to find a free seat 
  on a leather couch
and i ordered another guiness
  and read on
until these two ladies sat by me
  and one
  a blond business sharp yuppy thing
  asked me if i might have a joint
i said that i didn't
  and kept drinking and reading
then 
  i asked her if she thought 
that maybe her friend
  who had gotten up and left for a minute
would mind if i grabbed one of her cigarettes
  to which she grabbed the pack 
  and gave me one
  then lit it for me
i went back to reading 
  after saying thank you

after a while 
  she started trying to get a hold of people
  sitting in front of us
she was still in search of a joint
she kept yelling "Hey!" and "You!"
  and was getting no response
  so i yelled "YO" 
  because i was getting annoyed
  and couldn't concentrate
  and i got the guy's attention
the guy nodded his head 
  and she got up
  thinking he had a joint
he grabbed a hammer 
  out of his back pack
  thinking that's what she was asking for
and i had to ask
  why in the hell would he have a hammer 
  in his back pack
and he said 
  with an australian accent
  that he had just found it earlier today
  
after another short while
  two dweebs in ties and starched slacks 
  came buy 
  to meet these two ladies
  and they all got up
and i thanked god and ordered another guiness
  thinking they were gonna sit somewhere else
  but they just shook hands
  and the ladies sat back down
  while the two dweebs stayed standing
  talking their gibberish
then the blond in search of a joint
  turned back to me
  and asked me 
  if i wanted another cigarette
being one to never refuse gifts from strangers 
  i accepted
  and as she was lighting my cigarette
  she said:
    "if you can find me a joint
     i'll let you have the whole pack."
i wanted to spit 
  on her nice velvety blue suit
  and tell her 
  that i wasn't no fuking bell boy
  but i didn't
i went back to my book and my beer
  and when i finished my beer
  i left without saying a word
and i noticed that one of the two dweebs 
  took my place
  and the blond 
  put her arms around him
  never once looking at me
  keeping her line of talk 
  uninterrupted.

i drove home
  and now i'm getting ready for work.

Last night after work, my battery in my car went out. Work was finally over, I was going home, knowing there was a movie – 1941, by Spielberg – waiting in my mailbox from Netflix, and it’d been such a hellish last few days, that I was looking forward to having a drink, and just chilling in front of the television. To put everything in context, let me explain a few things. Last week, my breaks went out, and I had to replace them. This weekend, my water pump went out, and I decided to get it replaced as well, though looking back, I should have just left the heap of metal at the mechanics. All in all, this has cost me a lot of money. That plus the cost of my dog’s trip to the clinic a couple of month back has cost me every penny I’ve made this summer plus every penny I will make in the following two months. I was in front of the mechanic, he had just announced the price: 500 bucks, and I was looking at him asking him, “isn’t there anyway we can make this a little less, I mean, I’m completely broke, to pay you I’ll have to max my credit card.” He just shook his head looking as sorry as he could look, telling me there was nothing else he could do, but that hopefully, when they’ll get in there for good, they won’t have to replace as many hoses and such, and that they’ll be able to lower the price. Five hours later he called me back to tell me the car was ready, and that the final price for parts and labor was: $499.14. In front of that mechanics, who seemed to be a good man, and who had a face I could trust, I decided to go along with it. To be fair to him, there’s no way in hell he could have predicted an altenator fall-out. he did however warn me that there was no way for them to know whether I had blown a gasket or not, since I’d overheated my car several times, and there wasn’t enough pressure in the water-cooling system for them to know this until AFTER they’d replaced everything, and that if there was something wrong with the rest of my engine – things not fixable – then I’d still owe them for the parts and labor regarding the water-pump. ALL THIS SAID... and this is why it is not good to be a die-hard optimist, I still went along with it, and said: OKAY, thinking... this will be it, it’ll last me till Christmas, it’s got to, then I can either buy another car, or get a job bike-riding distance from my place. When I got in my car last night after nine hours at my favorite liquor store, that I turned the ignition and that NOTHING happened... I’d been pissed, ranting for three days now, black circles forming under my eyes, not able to hold a conversation without going on a rant about how much life sucks... that I finally for the first time in what seemed like weeks, put my head down on my steering wheel and started to laugh.

It’s time for a [1 month?] sabbatical. I need a break from this blog. School is starting up in less than two weeks – Yeah!! – and we’re gearing up for the busy season at work all ready. It’s starting to feel like a chore to write here, and that’s the last thing it needs to be. I think my recent posts have reflected my lack of enthusiasm lately, so I believe it’s time I went back to my paper journal for a while. Good ol’ pen and paper! What a concept.

I’ll be back. Thanks for those of you who have been reading me. See you soon.

F.K. Needles signing off.

Things are going just fine. Listening to some fine music on American Routes. This morning, getting up early, procrastinating, not wanting to get on the computer and catch up on yesterday’s backlog. Doing this screenplay training thingy. And I realized yesterday that my Theme and my Logline were both NOT happening, and I had to rethink them. And upon doing so, I was able to write my first Treatment draft. I realized that my lead character had no real goal. There was nothing which moved him forward, and even though that is often the case in real life, in movies with a three act story line, which needs both strong character and worthy action, this is important. Screenwriting 101. I’m forcing my way through it. On my own, trying to get out of this rut. Blablabla.

I’m feeling good this afternoon. Made some home-made pico-de-galo from fresh vegies and herbs. Made lots of it to last me the whole week, so that I don’t have to eat ONLY raw lettuce for lunch. This morning, I got up all depressed and feeling sorry for myself, and what I usually do in these circumstances when I don’t have to go to work, is that I go to my local bar / cafe / coffee shop / diner for a cup of coffee and some American breakfast or just a cup of coffee or something... and this morning, I realized that I no longer drink coffee, eat meat or dairy products, nor do I indulge in refined or processed foods! What The Fuck! Where the hell does one go for an herbal tea and a cup of freshly cut fruit, a place where one can hang out, shill, and write in one’s daynotes? Nowhere, that’s where you go. Such a place does not exist. So I got in my car, went to Target, bought a kettle – I’ve been meaning to do this for weeks – then drove on to the local organic convenient store co-op. I was shopping, looking at all the vegetables, the canned beans, and so forth, and noting that the prices are really high. I still picked a half honey melon, some celery stalks – which I’m just realizing I forgot to add in my pico-de-galo – some totally natural almond butter made from raw almonds and nothing else – I love the stuff – and a couple of caffeine-free teas. I walked up to the counter feeling a little out of place. All the other customers are granola types. Scraggly beards, unshaved arm-pits, long hair, halucegenic t-shits, and so forth. So I don’t look so out of place with my sandals, worn shorts, wife-beater, and opened paisley button-up shirt. Still, for some reason I didn’t feel completely at ease. I got up to the register, starting to feel as if I didn’t belong at all, I even grabbed a worthless magazine off the rack – which I never do – for some reason. She asked me if I was a member. I said no.

“What does that mean, to be a member?”
“You get a discount.”
“Oh yeah? What do I do?”
“It’s fifteen dollars a year, or a seventy dollar lifetime membership.”
“Okay.”
“You can just pay me, or any other cashier, or save your receipts till the extra you’re paying as a non-member adds up to the annual fee.”
“Okay.”
“Are you new in the neighborhood?”
“No... I’ve been here a while... I’ve just turned vegan.”
“Same thing.”

More than ten years ago, I used to live two blocks away from that store. And it’s been that long since I’ve walked in there. I lived in a big house with lots of roommates. There was one named Brandon who we all made fun of. He had long hair, was very thin, didn’t eat any meat, was short, and always had some beans cooking on the stove. We were real asses to this poor guy. I think back about him now, more than ten years later, closer to fifteen years, when I’m myself going vegan, and how it’s difficult in this world of fast-food, refined foods, an onslaught of nonstop advertising, and the F.D.A. with their lobbied food pyramids, to eat properly... I think back and wonder if he’s still a vegan, if he still thinks back to those days when we all lived in what I’ve come to call: The Hell Hole. I lived there eleven months. I turned twenty there. I discovered all kinds of drugs there. I became an alcoholic there. This place was a major turning point for me. I wrote a screenplay about it many years ago. It’s very badly written, and hopefully, nobody will ever read it.

It was a weird feeling with that cashier. I was almost shaking. She was smiling at me with her face without any make-up whatsoever. It was the first time I verbalized what I am doing. “I just turned vegan.” It was a real big relief. Like I’d just admitted that I am an alcoholic... except better.

Early Sunday morning working on a screenplay – a project I started as an exercise on the tenth of this month, and will take to its completion on the thirty-first of this month – and listening to Tamar’s Are we there yet? (May 7, 2005) She plays some really fun stuff. I’ve never listened to her show before until the other day when I wanted to listen to Give the Drummer Some with Doug Schulkind, and she was the guest d.j.

A snake being gobbled by another snake
naturally curls itself in a tight ball

rendering Wabdabdal’s swallowing
and masticating process near impossible :

       a snake roll
       is a lot tougher to chew on
       than lets say
       a cinnamon roll or a tootsie roll.

First of all
when sandwiched between Wabdabdal’s jaws
he knows he’s done for, he knows it
yet a mordant survival instinct
a poignant need to not be eaten whole
or in parts 
kicks in to the last squeaky breath 
                             – he knows it – 
                      one last rattling sigh.

He twists himself up in vainglory
of a sailor’s eight with extra loops

pertinently knowledgeable of his powerlessness
he does his best to make Wabdabdal’s task
a real pain in the neck.

Considering a snake is all neck
and no ass
this becomes a substantial pain.

However, this is not enough.

A snake eating snake 
is unflinchingly patient
calculatedly cold and tenacious.
The odds of him spitting out his prey
are basically little to none
even if the pleasures of the flesh small
or even absent 
and the protein intake, compared to the energy dispensed
minimal… 
it’s highly doubtful, highly improbable
that a snake eating snake
will let his doomed captive go.

(A poem my friend Brian is designing a poster for. It is from my book Beer songs for the lonely that my friend Claire in Paris is publishing soon. I'm very excited about both these projects. Brian doesn't have a website, but he's working on one, and as soon as it's up I'll have a link to it. He does great work. This is all I could find on the net as an example of his work. Though the image is very small, that particular painting is at least five feet by four feet. It's a big one, and it is explosive.)

I’ve been absent. Unfortunately, I haven’t been in such a great amount of descent moods these last couple of weeks. Upon re-reading my last few posts, I half-wished I hadn’t written some of them. I even took some sections of the last post away, which I believe makes it much better, though it’s hard to make it entirely readable. That is my current excuse, as well as we are currently doing Inventory... if you’ve never worked retail, then you have no clue what this entails, if you have, then you know. Tomorrow’s the big day. Been working long hours. Quitting the coffee I must say has helped my sanity tremendously. Keeping the bearings straight, baby! Not going completely bonkers yet, sonny! Ain’t dead yet, you slick cowboy you! You ain’t seen the last of me, honey-pie... and so on and so forth... actually been sleeping nights through, not quite like a baby yet, but we’re working on it, specially on the part about getting some rest. That’s the bit I’m excited about.

Not that this has anything to do with anything, but I had some shark for dinner. Cooked in its own juices, baked in the oven at three hundred and fifty degrees. That and some simple greens, no sauces, no nothing other than all that I just said. Accompanied by a bottle of white wine from Alsace.

I’ve switched the last couple of hours watching this film I really like (Funny Bones, first suggested to me by Claire in Paris... I watched it on my laptop computer a little more than a year ago, as I was moving out of my studio in Belleville, rented it from netflix recently). Drinking a little Whitehorse blend... uhm... on the rocks with a splash of Perrier. That’s my drink, honey-sweets, potato-pie, my little red cabbage... you are like beat sugar distilled to a perfect spirit, dull as an aluminum door handle, harsh as a blow to your brains, neutral enough for all the flavors to be added effortlessly... you are a lie, if mixed accordingly, you will neither be felt nor tasted by the weak or the used-up, yet you will attack and go for the kill every time, seen or not... which is why I'm sticking to a little scotch and water...

Currently listening to Ken Freedman’s show from August the third of this very year.

Grunt grunt grunt. The old man walked into the store. He could barely walk. Five feet tall. Dressed in beige golfer’s shorts and a white polo shirt. He had some sort of bandage around his right ankle. Probably around his early eighties. He grumbled as a way of communication.

I saw him coming, getting out of his oversized Cadillac, and bee-lining towards the liquor store. Grumpy old men, there seems to be an endless ration of them. I held the door open to him.

“How you doing today,” I said.
“Gin,” he grumbled, “where’s the gin...”
“Right this way, sir.”
“Where’s the gin?” He repeated a few times, never having ever said hello or anything.

I lead the way.

“Right this way, sir.”

He followed me on his heavy foot, stumbling along as best he could. At this point, I was still being nice to him, figuring he was just another grumpy old man, one among thousands, and that I owed him some sort of respect or something. I took him to the gin section.

“I usually like this Bombay stuff,” he says.
“You like it dry or do you like the newer stuff.”
“Dry,” he said dryly with a rough throat.
He was looking at the Bombay Sapphire.
“Then you might want to go with the Bombay 86, it’s more of your classic dry gin.”
“I’ll take that one, then.”

“Where’s your cognac?”
“Right this way, sir. Here, let me take this bottle from you, I’ll go ahead and place it on the counter for your convenience.”
“Where the hell’s the cognac? The French cognac...”
“Right over here, sir...”
“Not that I want to buy anything French, those bastards... but they make the best damn cognac around, those damn French.”
“Right over here, sir,” I’m now talking on the tonal basis of cold steel. I figure it’s no use getting into it with the old geezer.

He’s grumbling to himself. He’s standing in front of all the cognacs and other brandies. I can barely understand a word he says.

“Don’t you have none of that Corboisshon’s?”
“What?”
“Corboisshon’s... are you deaph?”
“I... I’m not sure, sir... don’t think so... what is it exactly?”
“It’s some of that damn French Cognac... those damn French... I can’t stand buying their stuff, but heck, they make the best stuff you ever darn tasted in your life. Corboisshon’s!!!!”
“Well...”
“V.S.O.P.!”
“Uhm... do you mean Courvoisier?”

I point out the bottles to him.

“No...”
He grumbles, clears his throat a few times, and continues, “V.S.O.P. Corboisshon’s!! Damnit, everybody has it.”
“I’m sorry, sir, I’m at a loss.”

And he looks at the Courvoisier for good this time.

“There it is!” He exclaims. “Corboisshon!”
“Yes, sir, that’s the Courvoisier I just it pointed out to you.”

He ignores my last remark completely.

“You got this stuff in your store and you don’t even know it! What kind of store is this anyway?”
“I don’t know, sir. Will that be all?”
“Rumph.... those damn French, I hate their guts!”

And he grumbles all the way back to the counter, where I charge him for his two bottles. At the beginning, I thought about giving him hell, then I though about it, this old piece of angry shit will be dead soon. Fuck him. I rang him up and looked at him thinking, ‘You’re angry and hateful and an asshole, but soon, you’ll be dead, and I’ll still be alive, and I’ll live many more years, while your body will be the playground of worms and maggots.’

That made me feel better. I smiled at him. No a single moment throughout our encounter did this man actually look at me or listen to me. He never heard my accent – light as it is – nor calculate that I might not be an American, that I might not agree with his narrow-minded republican ideals, that I might actually even be French (the evil of all evil), the very representation of those awful people he despises so much, those awful people who make such a wonderful drink... Damn Them!

Seagulls holding catfish just out of the water, their wings flapping, the fish fighting, until the fish dies. A large city water fountain. I’m ridding into town on my big motorcycle. My super dog is running besides me. We both have sunshades on. The cool of cool, except when I get into town, I don’t recognize the roads. Did New Orleans change that much since I was last here? I veer to the left, turn on to what I think is a road, though I’m not sure because everything is under construction. I find myself ridding on a public plaza. A huge man-made water area in the middle built like I’ve never seen one before. There’s no edges, no barriers, nothing which delimitates the water area from the dry area. It flows in and out in small waves. It’s like they built the concrete flat, and then let it slop down to form a cone-like hole in the middle of plaza, which they then filled with water. Except it’s not a cone throughout as I found out, because I rode my motorcycle right through the water, still looking as cool as can be, my dog swimming besides me. It slopes down to a little deeper than waist level then it levels out and stays flat. Large catfish all over the place. It was difficult not to hit them as we rode our machine by. Seagulls diving down, and lifting them out of the water, keeping them out of the water long enough for them to die, then putting them back on the water so they could chew without having to fight. Chewing seagulls? We drove back out of the water. There was a cop standing there looking at us, but he did nothing. So we parked next to a park bench made of concrete slabs, one of many surrounding the water hole, and sat ourselves down to dry in the sun.

This is the second morning that I do not make myself a cup of coffee. Not a single drop of coffee all day yesterday. The day before that, I had two cups to start the day, and none throughout the rest of the day. I did have a chai tea, which is loaded with caffeine. But none of that yesterday. I went to the coffee shop and had some herbal tea. I’ve had a head-ache since yesterday afternoon. Let me explain my usual coffee intake. I wake up early, make a pot of coffee. I have one of those small percolators which produces two large mugs of American drop coffee. I drink the entire pot while surfing the internet, reading various newspapers, checking out some of my favorite blogs, and so forth. I take my dog out for a walk and make it back home. By this time, I look at the clock, if I still have plenty of time before having to get to work, I put a second pot of coffee on, which drips while I'm in the shower. By the time I’m out of the shower, I have two more large mugs of coffee while I surf on the internet some more. Sometimes I have some food, most of the time I don’t, though these last few days I’ve been eating fruits and various berries for breakfast. I dress, get in my car, and on the way to work, I stop at one of my daily coffee shops where I buy a small coffee – no room for cream and no sugar, please – which I either drink on location or take in my car depending on what time it is. I arrive at the store, do whatever I do there, and usually take one or two coffee breaks throughout my shift. After I clock out, I come home and switch to either beer or wine or whisky. Almost two days without coffee. It’s a tough one.

My friends from Paris, the two you saw in the picture hiding behind large bowls of noodles – Bowls for Brains! Noodles for Brains! Noodles for Bowls! Brains for Noodles! – have sent me an awesome care-package containing cd’s, books, cool engravings... music such as what I’m currently listening to by Philip Glass – just turned it on, turned it on, put it through the grinder, the wringer... having a slight moment of apprehension, as in: What’s Gonna Happen Next? (His music does that to you, amazingly enough, repetitive as it is, always seemingly going back to where it’s all ready been when in fact it’s slowly going forward, around, towards, in tight circles inside a spring which seemingly keeps going around back around itself but really doesn’t, moving slowly away from the source at a rate of umpteenth circles almost circling around the same space, one upon the other tightly held together ready to spring out any time... Are you ready?)

I haven’t written any poetry in a long time, but repetition has always been very important to me, whether the repetition of words, or of imagery, I think they somehow give you the time you need to get right down to business. I like Philip Glass for that. I wish I could do in poetry what he does in music. I cannot. But then again, I should practice more often. Now I’m ashamed to share anything with you. Nothing compares to this music. I’m sure Ezra Pound would have had something to say about the mater. Something like: Don’t quite your day job! For a long time, I worked on this long poem called Blueberry Hill and never finished it. Maybe some day. It takes place in an imaginary Maine, somewhere between Rockland and Bar Harbor. It’s the story of a man and of a woman who are in love. He is building her a house on top of a hill called Blueberry Hill. This takes place long ago before cars and computers. She is pregnant with their child. One cold snowy night before he gets back from pulling the lobster traps, she gets murdered by a horrible man. When he gets back to the campsite and sees both her body and the body of his unborn child dead in the snow, he boards up the house, and walks down to the harbor where he steps into the freezing water and drowns. But before he does that, he buries his wife and his unborn, builds a circle of stone around their grave, and blesses the ground, saying that all lovers that come to this place, will find what he has lost. The story is told by a young woman to a young man who are lying inside the circle of stone. The old house never inhabited is still standing on top of the hill, all boarded up. Big oil tankers are moving slowly far out on the harbor. But the two young people are oblivious to the world.

Maybe I’ll get back to it. Maybe I won’t.

The first time I started writing this poem, I was working in a poster shop in Paris right in front of the Centre Pompidou. The days were very long, and sometimes I would go more than one hour without seeing a customer. We catered mostly to tourists. We sold posters of famous paintings, postcards of the same paintings, and all kinds of useless little types of junk-shop stuff made in china, like golden Arc de Triumph, Eiffel Tower’s of all sizes, lighters in the shape of naked women, touristy maps of Paris on kitchy frames, mugs with all the monuments on them, et cetera. I became very broke towards the end of that summer, as I’m apt to do, and I had to sub-lease out my studio to stay alive, so I actually lived inside that store for a couple of weeks before flying to the USA for a six month leave of absence living out the Maine winter, then the Texas winter, and back to Maine, before heading back to Paris. Those poor people who owned the poster shop, they gave me 300 euros in cash so that I would buy some candies in the US unavailable in France, and ship them back to them, so they could sell them in their other store. I religiously stayed away from that money. But after a couple of weeks of having no car, not being able to go look for the candy in question, living in Portland on my friends’ couch, not having any money... after a few weeks, I started borrowing a dollar here, a dollar there... and before I knew it, the three hundred Euros were gone.

Maybe I’ll get it back. Maybe I won’t.

I told myself that living in Maine would be the perfect place to write a narrative slash fable-like poem taking place in Mystery Maine... but I was wrong, I didn’t even touch a word of it in the six months I was mostly in Maine. Mostly I drank beer at the Skinny – rock-n-roll club now defunct but opening back up soon I hear. I wrote an online journal for a select few, one I promised myself I would turn into a book before I died. I drank some more, hung out in coffee shops, several bars, met lots of great people, had some great times, but never got around to re-writing my poem. Back in Paris, I was way too totally broke to do anything but go around scrounging for food. By the time I found a job, it was too late and I – as now – worked such long hours that I was never able to concentrate or deliver any type of energy to my poem. So there it sits. So there it is.

Maybe someday I’ll get back to it. Maybe.

First thing first. Life gets in the way of creativity for those of us who aren’t disciplined enough. For creativity to be foremost, nothing else must matter. Nothing.

My friends sent me this wonderful package loaded up with books, music, and stuff. It’s absolutely great.

MERCI!

Turned the DVD player off after watching Super Size Me. This is my first viewing, and probably the last. I knew everything he talked about all ready, though I didn’t know it to the extreme he talks about it.

A few months ago, I had two teeth extracted. That day, I was in pain, hadn’t slept in several days, and came into work looking like shit. My manager, who’s now working at corporate office, basically forced me to go see a dentist. There’s one just a few store-fronts from our liquor store. A few hours later, I was sitting in a surgical chair with an old fellow sticking pliers in my mouth. I hated it. I hated the drugs they gave me beforehand.

There was this gas I had to breath in – I had decided not to be put to sleep (being fully aware of the linguistic connotations) and had decided to only have my mouth be put to sleep. After the shot into my gum, and it wasn’t taking - they’d stick needles in there every few minutes to see if I could still feel something – they decided to put a gas mask on me. It was no fun at all. I lost all ability to move my limbs. I could only move my eyeballs, see what was happening, be completely aware of my suroundings. I started trying to talk, or rather to yell at them that I hated what was happening to me, but all that came out were primordial grunts and garbles. I’d never before felt so powerless.

And hovering over me was the doctor, a tallish graying man in his early sixties, and a young nurse in her early thirties or late twenties who all ready hated my guts because it was past six in the afternoon and her shift had been extended. She’d been rude to me from the start. To her, I wasn’t a patient in pain – small, I know, not exactly life threatening... give me a break – to her I was an hour more on the clock. She made it quite clear to me when she picked up her cell phone right outside my room and called her significant other to inform him/her that because of a late patient she wouldn’t be able to make it in time. All of it with over-amplified sighs, sorry’s this isn’t my fault... blablabla... when I lost total access to my limbs and vocal cords, and that I was on this metal table late in the afternoon staring up at the ceiling and at these two people hovering over me, one of whom hated my guts, all the sudden I got more scared and more paranoid than I’d ever gotten before.

I tried to talk, and it came out as prehistorical grunts of fear.

“Whoops... guess we put a little too much gas, sorry about that,” is all the doctor thought to say. He pushed some button and the pressure released.

I felt like the biggest coward. I felt like a little boy except my mother wasn’t outside that door making sure these people weren’t going to do horrible things to me.

Then everything went numb inside my mouth. My limbs came back to life. The pliers entered my mouth. I couldn’t feel a thing, but I could hear my teeth resisting. I could see and feel the annoyance of the nurse as my teeth fought the pliers. I could hear things crunch in there.

In the process of going to a doctor for the first time in a few years – not counting the bull shit green card over-paid American doctor I had to see in Paris to get my papers – they told me my cholesterol as well as my blood pressure were high, that I needed to be careful. For two days after the dental surgery, I couldn’t eat any solids, so I contemplated my diet quite seriously. I decided I would not go to another fast food or hamburger joint ever again. I’ve failed a few time. I decided to buy fresh food at H.E.B. for my lunch instead of going to the local hamburger joint. I’ve done that ever since. I’ve lost weight, though not as much as I’d like to. I don’t like nor drink sodas, so that’s not a problem. Coffee is a big thing for me. So is alcohol.

I bought some books.

Eat to Live and Cholesterol Protection for Life, by Dr. Joel Fuhrman, M.D. (I was turned on to these books by reading Large Fellow, you can find more information here.) I’ve gotten the name of a doctor, a proper M.D., from my sister. A doctor who works with ‘alternative’ remedies – mostly meaning NO pills and such, and sticking to dietary solutions. So I thought about possibly doing an experiment, kind of like Super Size Me but the other way around. That’s why I rented that movie, so that I could see to what extent he took the experiment. The extent to which he took it is scary.

It would rather be an unfair start since I’ve all ready totally given up fast foods and hamburger joints, as well as Tex-Mex restaurants, and so forth. But I am overweight, an alcoholic, and I do live a rather unhealthy life-style. I don’t even know how much I weigh... (scared to know, really).

Maybe it’s time to go see that doctor, get all the numbers, the charts, the cholesterol levels, the this and that’s... et cetera. And jump on the wagon!! First, though, I need to read the books, study the whole affair, and see if I have the balls to go through with it.

(There is one thing I must keep in mind. I won a trip to Las Vegas with my work, and this trip won’t happen till the end of October. How could I go to Vegas and not drink, not eat whatever, not do all the things that are totally bad for me? What else is Vegas good for? So, for right now, I’m cutting out the meats, which I’ve more or less done for the last several weeks, I’m slowly cutting the coffee, and eating as much raw vegies and fruits as possible, along with beans, salads, and unsalted nuts. But I’m not going all out until AFTER Vegas, which gives me plenty of time to study up on it all.)

Uhm... I’m getting all these hits (for me, that is... lets keep everything in perspective: 9 hits in a day is a shit-load for me) and I’m not writing anything new. I realize this whole business of blog writing is an ephemeral one, and if one has the customers – readers – then one should at least have the decency to write new material, newer material, more material... et cetera, ad infinitum. The problem here is simple: I have not been much inspired these last few weeks. I’m getting off a ‘pissed at the world’ binge, which transmuted itself into a small depression, and is now finally trailing off into never-never land.

But out there towards the outreach of my personal universe, is still too close for comfort... I feel the nasty vibes. Shadows and monsters which have crowed my imaginary space, and in thus doing created chaos which had to be fought internally, are barely gone, their intrusion still felt. All this is hard on my direct hands-on easily translatable imagination, and all this is also quite a stretch on my emotional capacities. During these times, most of my emotions are strained and entirely taken over in fighting the anger and the depression – shadows and demons – and my creative life gets pushed backwards into my unconsciousness for the time being... which makes for – at various degrees – great dreams, horrible nightmares, and mostly sleepless and or restless nights.

Non of these imaginary landscapes are readily available to my creative impulses as I am usually too tired to write. I spend the whole day at the liquor store faking being happy, putting a smile on my face and listening to all these people’s troubles and such, so as to make the highest commission possible – which has a tendency to make me feel like a whore, not helping any... all smiles and jokes, fun and games on just a few hours of bad sleep several days in a row... By the time I get home, I’m exasperated, on the verge of imploding, and in no way able to write about it all.

Or maybe I’m just full of shit. That’s probably the most viable explanation for my laziness and inability to write.

More sooner than later. Cheers.

The action in this photograph is not taking place in Austin, Texas.

NOODLE EATING & SLURPING LIVE FROM PARIS, FRANCE where I'm unfortunately not since I'm currently living in the capital of the Lone Star State slaving away in a liquor store.

(My friends say hello... HELLO back... hope I can make it across the big pound sooner than later.)

Having a bit of a non-inspired last few days. Read the story *BD* 11 1 86 by Joyce Carol Oates in the Fiction issue 2005 of The Atlantic monthly magazine, and it’s been giving me nightmares. At first, it starts out banal enough, drab realism, taking place in a high school – as far as I’m concerned, teenagers are ugly vindictive little shits with pimples, and I talk from personal experience from both ends of the stick – but then the story slowly changes, becomes strange, the suspense builds, while you’re thinking, OK, this is obvious... (can’t say anymore)...

I can’t remember my dreams from last night, or rather from earlier this morning, it’s been too long since I’ve gotten out of bed. I was living through some weird shit when I woke up early this morning, then I closed my eyes back up out of laziness, not wanting to get out of bed, and went back to uninspired sleepless sleep, during which I forgot the earlier dreams. All I remember is that I was living through the last episode of a television series, and they were showing all the big moments of the series. The series had been about a regular city bus that takes its route everyday from one end of the city to the other, and all the people it picks up. Every episode, then, takes place in the bus, starting whenever the driver puts on his driver’s hat, turns the ignition on, and starts off before the day has even started. Everyday, he picks up the regulars, as well as all kinds of other people, and the episode is about that, what happens in the bus, what people talk about, the meeting of strangers, accidental meetings, the regulars who become friends or weird acquaintances by seeing each other everyday. We also go into the lives of each bus rider, their personal stories, et cetera. Of course, this being my dream, some of the special moments were for example close-ups on one guy swallowing something horrible, swelling his throat several times over - we could see it go down his throat while he sat at the diner table - which then made him throw up and die a terrible death, all of this in close-up, but not only this... there was also an eighty year old Chaplin character who would everyday at his bus-stop let everybody get in before he did – the driver was in on this – and would let the bus slowly start up again before running after the bus, grabbing a hold of the back, climbing on, and making his way to the back door – I don’t even know if public busses in Austin have back doors? Like they do in Paris? – and letting himself in. He had been a secret agent for Scotland Yard in his younger days. All along, the other passengers saying stuff like, “and you know, he’s past eighty years of age,” “Wow, that’s amazing, how he does such thing...” All along the old man giving us a Chaplinesque show, except one day he slips, lets go of the handle-bars and dies... his ghost jumps out looking exactly like Chaplin with the hat and the cane, running along side the bus saying goodbye to the other passengers, before being picked up by a flying ghost car and flying / disappearing away. Various images are coming back to me. The plot isn’t, though... there was a plot as well, which I can’t remember. I was somehow involved, watching it on a big screen, sitting on a couch which was really modern art and not meant to be sat upon, but I did anyway because I didn’t see the logic of having a couch in front a large screen television, one you are currently watching with some other people, and not being able to sit on said couch. It felt ridiculous to me. All the other people were sitting on the floor being mad at me for being so disrespectful.

(Last night, I was drinking Dubonnet red. Then I switched to cheap Lone Star beers in long neck bottles. I also ate a raw steak of salmon fish, to see what it would be like. I loved it. I eat sushi all the time, and I was wondering if it wouldn’t be more financially interesting to simply buy a large piece of salmon, rather than buying a bunch of tiny pieces wrapped in rice and seaweed paper. But like the sushi chef was telling me the other day, certainly I could try, but the fish he used and the fish sold for cooking weren’t put through the same reglementary controls.)

Jeune parents branché, artistes, pseudo artistes, et branleurs. That’s the kind of bar, the closest one to my house, where I’ve been having a couple of American pints this late afternoon. I specify the ‘American’ part of the pint because it is much smaller than an English pint. Every time I order a pint in an American bar, I feel as if I’m getting totally cheated, which I am.

Anyway... just trying to step out of the house. This morning, early, I went to the H.E.B. (local supermarket chain) and bought a styrofoam cooler, some sandwich food, and ice, then came back home to pick up my dog. We went to the lake, had a swim, some sandwiches, a snooze, another swim, and a small walk through the woods. Perfect. I should do this more often, and for different reasons. This morning, I woke up pissed off at my neighbors and decided to hit town so as not to have to see them today. Which kind of screwed things up because I would explode at no pre-announced time holding a monologue out loud to my non-present neighbors with an argument explaining my point of contention. I did, for several moments, achieve peace while forgetting my anger, and actually enjoyed the lake, my dog, the sandwich food, the laying on a towel on the grass sleeping... but the bursts of angry speeches spoken towards the trees and to the air came out every once in a while uncontrollably. I could barely keep myself from assaulting innocent lake-bystanders, from whom I stayed as far away as possible for everybody’s safety.

To keep me calm and descent, I was reading stories from The Neon Wilderness by Nelson Algren... a wonderful writer.

The fifth beer is when you realize you’re closing in real fast on the final chapter. Cracking that one, you promise yourself to sip it slowly and enjoy it. Which is fine because you’ve got a slight buzz going, and you might as well enjoy it, and take your time. The fifth beer is not only the beer of truth, but also the beer of denial. Even though the end is eminent, and you know it, you don’t yet have to face that fact. The fifth beer tastes almost as good as the first one. The end is near, but it’s not quite here yet. The sixth beer – when you’ve only purchased one six pack – is a funeral. The fifth beer is like an Indian summer, a second chance, a second wind which takes the cyclist up that last bit of that last hill. The fifth beer is a rediscovery, an appreciation of life as you know it, a temporary pill of good health, a slight burst of light. When the fifth beer is gone, you know it’s close to bed time, to falling asleep, to waking up, to going back to work. The fifth beer is heaven. Slightly buzzed, slightly stupider, slightly rosier around the cheeks feeling warm and excited, you drink the fifth beer with a je ne sait quoi happiness which lasts but a moment before denial takes place. The fifth beer is the answer to the universe, it is the answer to mortality. Once it’s gone, you’re that much closer to the end of the six pack. And once that’s gone, it’s gone and over with for ever. The fifth beer is eternal youth while being eternally closer to death. The fifth beer is the proof that life must be enjoyed.

Okay... having a little bout of depression the other day. Sometimes, it’s hard to look beyond our small pathetic little problems. I’m actually busy right now applying to go back to school. It’s exciting. If all goes well, I should be taking one or two university classes this coming semester. Since I’ve been back to Texas, I’ve barely been out of my house, I’ve not met any new people other than work-related, and I’m starting to go stir crazy. Work, Work, Work... and no play, makes for a dull day... or however the saying goes. I’m also back on the house / land looking-to-buy mode. I’m leaning more towards ten or so acres of unrestricted land, so that I can plop a small mobile home on it, and then do whatever the hell I want to do (I’ve got some ideas.) Just to say, all is good in lala-land. Trying to stay focused et de ne pas perdre la boule.

A friend writes me a letter telling me she’s gotten married. I sit here not able to sleep, thinking about my pathetic little life working barely making ends meet not able to do anything else when all I want to do is get in my car and drive. Drive a long ways and stop somewhere where I’ve not ever stopped before. Who says I cannot? It’s been one year since I’ve been back in Texas from Paris, and what have I done... not much. I’ve paid rent, paid my taxes, paid the insurance companies, paid the electric bills and the gas bills, I’ve bought gasoline for my car, paid to change the oil, paid the interest on the car to the car dealer, I’ve been the dutiful son and have done all that was expected of me as a good citizen. I’ve worked hard, I’ve bought the books to learn to do my work even better, I’ve perceived no raise, no help, nothing. I’ve in one year done nothing but work and feed the machine, and yet today, I’m more than one thousand dollars in debt – which I wasn’t one year ago when I arrived – I have no savings, the chance of me owning property is little to none, and I see no light at the end of the tunnel. What’s better: not finding employment in France, being broke, but owing nothing, having some sort of security, aid if I need to go to the hospital... or being able to find work but making always just a little bit less than what’s needed to be ahead, having absolutely no job security, no medical aid, no security, but having the freedom to say I’ve had enough and I want to do something else, go somewhere else? I don’t know. Right now, I don’t know.

SALOME (se levant)
Vous me donnerez tout ce que je demanderai, tétrarque?

HERODIAS
Ne dansez pas, ma fille.

HERODE
Tout, fût-ce la moitié de mon royaume.

SALOME
Vous le jurez, tétrarque ?

HERODE
Je le jure, Salomé.

HERODIAS
Ma fille, ne dansez pas.

SALOME
Sur quoi jurez-vous, tétrarque ?

HERODE
Sur ma vie, sur ma couronne, sur mes dieux. Tout ce que vous voudrez je vous le donnerai, fût-ce la moitié de mon royaume, si vous dansez pour moi. Oh ! Salomé, Salomé, dansez pour moi.

SALOME
Vous avez juré, tétrarque

HERODE
J’ai juré, Salomé.

SALOME
Tout ce que je vous demanderai, fût-ce la moitié de votre royaume ?

HERODIAS
Ne dansez pas, ma fille.

(from Salomé by Oscar Wilde)

A young woman comes into the store. She comes in every once in a while. She usually comes by alone. This time she’s accompanied by some beefy boyfriend.

“That whisky you suggested the other day, that was for him,” and she points to the beefy young man.

The other day, she came in and wanted a nice present for somebody who likes Scotch whiskies but doesn’t know much about them. She knows nothing about whisky at all, and cannot drink them. Even though I prefer the Islay’s, I suggested a highly rated Speyside from the Cragganmore distillery which is relatively affordable and a great drink.

“They loved it so much, the bottle was gone in less than three days.”
“Really,” I say, “when me and my buddies get to it, a bottle rarely survives one evening.”
“But wasn’t it the bottle you gave your dad for Christmas?”
“It sure was, and he loved it, and so do I. What about you?”
“Oh, I couldn’t drink it. That stuff is too strong for me.”
“Add a little mineral water, and it’ll go down beautifully.”
“I tried... couldn’t do that either.”
“What you need is a little white wine.”

She was looking at me with big eyes, while the boyfriend just looked beefy. This was yesterday and we were doing a wine tasting.

“How about a little chardonnay from the Willamette valley?”
“Okay...”

So I pour the girl and the boy each a glass of wine.

“You’ll love it. It never touches oak. It’s fermented and raised in steel. No wood anywhere, which is rare for a domestic chard. Which is one of the reasons I like the stuff.”

They drink.

“What do you think?”
“I-I don’t know nothing about wine,” says the boy.
“I like it,” says the girl.

They don’t buy a bottle. That’s okay, I’ll get her to buy one next time she comes by.

(No... there’s no punch line, though I agree with you, there should be. This is merely a few minutes in the working life of Francois, so you can see how boring my days can be, though they can last, as Saturday did, from 9h25 till 20h35 not counting to and fro driving time.)

She got mad at me a couple months ago when she came in with her underage sister, and I asked the young girl to wait outside.

“But so-and-so and such-and-such store always lets me in the store with my sister.”
“I’m sorry, please don’t take this personally, if you’re not her legal guardian, she can’t be in the store with you, it’s not personal, it’s not my decision, it’s not me who made up that law. But if I don’t make sure this law is abided to by my customers, and there’s a T.A.B.C. agent out there who decides to do something about it, then I'm the one who gets to go to jail, loose my job, pay an outrageous fine, and never get to work in the alcohol serving industry again... at least not in Texas.”

She walked out in a huff without buying anything, cursing me under her breath.

"Write a letter to your senator," I suggested as she walked out the door.

It took her several weeks to start coming into the store again, but she did, they always do, and she’s been all smiles since, never mentioning or making any reference to the incident at all. She listens to my advice, buys what I tell her to, within reason, and says please and thank you. Also, she's cute. If only they could all be like her.

Was thinking about this for some reason, after getting out of my bath. Was taking a long salt bath while listening to A Prairie Home Companion. Eventually I fell asleep, and woke up to some Cuban music. The water was lukewarm, Brutus was asleep next to the bath tub on the floor, the bottle of Argyle – the wine we did a tasting of yesterday – was half gone, and I needed a big glass of ice water. So I decided to take a cold to warm shower to wash the salt off, shampoo my hair, and get this Sunday afternoon going once and for all. Two hours in a bath tub is long enough for anybody by any standards.

Long day at work yesterday, and another one coming along today. Barely enough time this morning to chill out with a cup of coffee. Hard getting out of bed. Confused dreams. Was invited at this place by this woman, and I kept messing up. Like I got my foot caught in some string or something trying to make it to the bathroom while they – there were a few people present in the dream conversing in the living room area of wherever I was – and while trying to cut it, I completely entangled myself in it, only to realize that it was some fancy silk drape I was destroying. But the more I tried to unravel myself, the worse I destroyed everything around me and strung myself even more. It was like I was caught in a spider-web. The hostess was a woman probably about my age or just a few years older, who lived alone with her pre-teen daughter. I forgot most of the dream, but I was embarrassed throughout, so much so that I started waking up, and wanting to get the hell out of the dream, because I didn’t want to get caught totally destroying this person’s bedroom-bathroom. It was like a bad Three Stooges skit all bundled up together.

The good thing about today, is that I have to leave the store at eight tonight, I cannot stay till closing, because I am volunteering at the French Legation Museum where they are celebrating Bastille Day. From 21h00 on till closing, I will be in charge of selling raffle tickets. There will be food, drinks, and music. Should be fun, and anyway I need to go out, to do something other than stay at home and go to work.

(Today’s date.)

Messidor is the month (three months per season)
Sauge is the day (thirty days per month, each day of the year having its own name)
Sextidi means it’s the six day of the week (based on a ten day week)
26 is the twenty-six day of the month
We are in the 213th year.

More information on Le Calendrier Républicain here.
The names of the days and months: here (in French).

Brutus likes to:

• roll around on the couch when I’ve forgotten to put his blanket on it and thus getting his brown hair stuck in the orange velvet;


• spill his water on the floor when he’s drank what he wanted then look at me with sad eyes five minutes later when I haven’t filled his water bowl back up;


• lay in the bathroom and sleep several hours at a time – I have tile in the bathroom and the AC in the living room shoots its cold spurts of air in that direction;


• come wake me up at four in the morning though I’ve left the front door open and he can come in and out as he pleases – with this virus he’s getting over, he’s prone to have accidents he can’t necessarily hold in very long, so I leave the door unlocked at night (he knows how to open the door, which closes more or less on its own);


• wag his tail and look at me like what? after he’s chewed a poetry book... and he only likes great literature, never would he be caught dead chewing anything less than Rimbaud or Rilke or the likes;


• run straight at me when I call him and do circles in between and around my legs, wagging his tail like it’s the best thing ever;


• be given treats... probably one of his favorite activities, he loves it when he gets a treat;


• hang out next to me when I sit at my desk hours at a time (I usually do nothing much that's constructive, and he gets a good snooze in);


• roll around on his back and get his tummy scratched for as long as possible – I swear, he almost purrs, and for a 90 pound dog, that’s a little weird;


• (last but not least) hump anything that moves on four legs.

Basically, he's a great dog, and I'm happy he's home.

I not only wrote but lived a short story last night during my dream, about which I apparently refused to talk about during a wild party on the fifth floor of a building in a city which might have been Paris, but probably not. My dog was with me, which is a good sign, being that he’s still at the clinic – doing much better since yesterday, cleaning himself, wagging his tail, sitting up when you visit him – and there were other dogs, and lots of cats too. It’s all quite complicated and blurry. At one point this old woman got into a car, a brand new mustang, and drove off. She was a bit weary of other cars so she stuck to riding on the sidewalks. Her car was an electric kind and was plugged in with a very long extension cord back in the building she’d left. So she finally ran out of cord and had to stop. It happens that she stopped right at the top of a sidewalk staircase, like you see in Paris. She got out of the car, carrying her kitty cat, and stepped down the few steps, about ten of them, to the lower sidewalk, were she sat down and started pulling on the extension cord so as to be able to start all over again. That’s when some young girl of about ten or thirteen years walked up to her and harassed the old woman, telling her how once that kitty cat she’s holding bit her and she was going to tell on her. This is all quite confusing. I’m not sure what the old lady in the electric mustang had to do with anything. It was towards the end and I was tired of dreaming all ready.

The short story was more interesting. I was a man on the run. I was an Indian on the run from a movie shooting crew. You see, I played an evil man on a popular television series, and finally I had had enough, and went on the run. I no longer wanted to be portrayed as such. It all started on an afternoon stroll with my family in a Paris neighborhood when something was said that I disagreed with profoundly – as if I was thirteen or eighteen again, in total rebellion against anything my family said – and I ran off. I started running through the streets which quickly became more of a West Texas flatland of desert and bushes. At first, it was my family members who would come after me, trying to talk some sense into me, telling me I had to get back to the film set. I refused, I ran, I climbed rocks, jumped over ravines, nothing was going to force me back to that film set where I played an evil man with no scruples. Then the film crew started getting involved. They weren’t nearly as nice as my family. They fought me, threatened me, but I was always one step ahead, they couldn’t catch me, until I climbed this rocky small hill on the side of a busy country road, and followed it through till I found myself real high up with nothing in front of me. It was either jump or get caught, but I thought about it too long, and there was the producer right on my back. He was very angry, and pulled out some papers filled with numbers and charts. He was yelling at me, tugging at my shoulder, telling me to get the fuck back to work. Look at all I had cost him all ready, I would have to pay him all this money back, that there was no running away. I told him, show me my original contract then, show me where it says I owe you diddly shit, where it says I can’t quit whenever the hell I want to. And that’s when I decided to jump. Underneath, a good jump, was a lot of sand, and I decided it would break my fall, so I jumped, and the producer climbed back down the other way. He had people surrounding me from the other sides of the road. I landed without hurting myself except now I was in this large hole with a difficult climb all around me. Almost as large as an Olympic size swimming pool, but nowhere to go, I was trapped, I thought. A car screeched and stopped right on the edge of my sand trap. The nose of the car hanging off the edge. One of these old square numbers. An Oldsmobile or something from the mid-eighties. Red burgundy paint in bad shape needing of some work. A woman at the wheel looking down into the hole at me. Shit, I says to myself, there they are, they’ve got me now, I can’t get away, I’m trapped. She gets out of the car, she’s wearing a two piece bathing suit, and she jumps into the hole with me. I go to her to see what the hell’s she doing. She’s laying in the sand, turning around so that’s she’s mostly on her back, and she’s looking at me with big round eyes, scared.

“Please don’t hurt me too bad, I know you’re evil and you’re on the run, but I just want to be famous.”

I realize she’s not one of them, that she’s only some crazy broad, god only knows what’s she’s thinking, so I go to her, sit next to her placing my right hand on her stomach, she’s thinking I’m about to hurt her real bad, when I say...

“I’m really just a nice guy. The rest is fiction.”

That’s when it gets weird. Big pink cubes start falling from the sky, barely missing us, bouncing up and down. I’m now watching three space aliens playing a board game. They’re playing with large dice-like pink cubes, and little stick figures. I recognize myself, the man on the run, and the damsel in self-distress, as two of the little stick figures they’re playing with. Other stick figures surrounding us such as the producer and his team. Then, one of the space aliens tells the other two, “You loose!” And slams one of the large pink dices on me and the damsel to squash us. A little splatter of red squirts out from under the pink cube. The three space aliens have a big laugh as they get up to go do something else.

The week has zoomed by. Work has been non-stop. It seems like we cannot keep up with the amount of booze we sell – people ‘need’ and purchase – and our storage room is a mess. Boxes stacked five to eight high, hundreds and hundreds of bottles of booze just waiting to be shelved. Again, and I cannot divulge numbers – against company policy – but we sold LOADS of booze. These people sometimes come several times a week, buying gallons at a time of whisky, vodka, and tequila. It amazes me. One young woman who is a personal trainer at a gym a couple of miles away, comes in sometimes three to fours times a day, buying pints and half pints of the cheapest vodka. She’s probably barely 26 years old. She’s a good looking girl with an athlete’s derriere and an inspiring chest, always wearing trainer’s tights. She speaks in a high squeaky voice, always slightly sweaty with her dark hair sticking to her forehead, and has through the last few months told me all about how her and her boyfriend do nothing but argue, where she’s from, her lineage, et cetera. We’ve recently found out she also hits the other liquor store, the next one down the road, sometimes has much as she hits us. What do we do? Keep selling her the stuff? That’s what I say. She’s an adult, and it’s her business, or do we have a talk with her? Tell her to buy a big bottle so she only comes in once a day? Smells of hypocrisy to me. She’s not the worse. Wait till Christmas season rolls back around, and the Christmas tree people stake their corner of the highway as they do every year, with their r.v.’s and their vans full of pine trees, and start their six week venture. One of the fellows, he’ll come three times a day to buy his pint of cheap whisky, and usually goes for a fifth or a liter on Saturday afternoon – after he’s all ready had his morning pint – to make sure and make it through Sunday whence, as is the law in this god-fearing state, we cannot open our doors and cater to the needs of our thirsty neighbors. We are your local neighborhood liquor store, looking out for your best interest... you: the church-going-republican-voting-god-worshiping public. But they, they are not the worst, the two I mentioned all ready, they are in need, and they come and I giveth – for the right amount of course – and I listen, and I ask questions so as to put little facts and figures of their lives to memory, so as to remember what they drink, what they have drunk, and what they’d like to drink. I file thousands upon thousands of useless bits of information about these people. Hundreds and hundreds of them. How much money they carry in their wallets, do they pay cash or credit or check, what kind of car do they drive, what do they do for a living, can they afford me to sell them the “really good stuff” or should I contain myself and be happy selling them the cheap bottom of the shelf gut rotting liver killing mucus of the filthiest distilleries of corn in the world? Do they have their one and only drink or do they like to change every once in a while? Do they go for the wine at all? Or hate the grape? Do they have a sweet tooth, and how is the girlfriend / boyfriend / husband /wife /daughter / son / dog doing these days? Facts and figures. Numbers and dates. Who’s on a diet and who’s a gourmet cook? Who comes from California, or has just gone on a vacation to Guatemala? But those two, the tree salesman and the gym girl, they’re only two unfair examples. Alcohol has no economic, religious, color, linguistic, ethnic, or any other lines of division. They all come in my store, and they all need just as much as the other. I’ve had people come in and preaching the good word of our lord Jesus Christ holding on to a half gallon of gut rotting vodka – oh yeah, and by the way, this here bottle of booze is for my brother in law who, bless his soul, is a sinner, but one must love and forgive all – and continue to give me the low down on my soul as I quietly cash in the sell, nod my head, and tell him “thank you sir, and have a good day...” and please don’t start sucking from that bottle till you’ve gotten home, will you, because I’d hate to have a Jesus-loving half wit preaching the good word his windows down, going a hundred miles an hour in his half tone SUV guzzling that stuff down like babe attached to his mother’s teat. I know how much people drink. I have brain surgeons, real estate brokers, lawyers, elementary school teachers, construction workers, bakers, computer programmers, politicians, dishwashers, waiters, bartenders, chefs, world travelers, artists... and the list goes on. But I’m starting to sound as if I hold a grudge. I don’t. As if I’m judging them. I don’t. Many of my customers have become acquaintances, and maybe some of them will become my friends if I stay there long enough. I appreciate many of them, and some of them I even enjoy selling them the stuff. Not as in I’m selling you this drug you need, but here, lets talk about this and that whisky, how they differ and what gives each of them different character. It’s fun, I must admit, when I’ve sold somebody a bottle and they come back a week later and tell me, Thank you Francois, that was some awesome stuff, show me some more, I trust you now. That’s the fun part of my job. Discovering new wines and spirits, appreciating them, and then giving that appreciation to my customers. That’s the fun part. It’s just... I don’t know, maybe I’m cranky this morning, and I don’t feel like putting in a ten hour day today, because it’s Saturday and because I’d like to stay home and because I’d like to have my weekend for once... I don’t know... maybe it’s all these bits of pieces of all these people’s lives that I’ve put to memory and stored away in my mental cabinets... it takes so much room, and there’s not that much space in there as it is, because I’ve also consumed my good share. Saturday morning. I must remember this, it’s only just another Saturday morning.

My dog Brutus is at the clinic spending some very unpleasant times. Hopefully he’ll pull through. He has contracted the virus Parvo, which completely dehydrates the dog. The vet says there’s an 89% chance of success. I’ve got to get back to the clinic this morning, then upon getting back home, I have to disinfect the house. There is no danger of the virus infecting humans, but once a dog has had this disease, he can contract it again, and apparently, this is one strong virus which can live for days at room temperature. None of this is any fun, and poor little Brutus is going through a bad time.

Been a bit under the weather lately. Both Brutus and me and are simply not up to par. Temperature reached 108 – 110 yesterday. That doesn’t help. Fourth of July weekend with long busy hours at the liquor store, being away from home much longer than usual, and two evenings in a row of grill-out and guzzling of beer probably doesn’t help. And having to be back at work on Monday early on where it was my duty to do the liquor order for the next week. After an all day affair at the house on Sunday, getting in my car and going to work at 8h15 Monday morning was not easy. All afternoon Sunday: loads of people, lots of dogs, three kids. Lots of screaming kids, drunken conversations, way too much food – especially the meat, which I rarely eat now days, usually no more than once a week other than special occasions – and more booze than you can shake a stick at (I’m probably not using that expression correctly.) Took Brutus to the vet this afternoon. Brutus has no energy, less than yesterday, woke me up in the middle of the night throwing up, won’t eat since Monday, and looks depressed. First thing the vet asked me:

“Is he in love?”
“Uh?”
“Is he in love that you know of? It’s sometimes hard to tell with dogs.”
“I don’t know.”
“When they’re young like that, and they smell a female a block or two away, or they hear some other dog barking, they get all excited and they don’t know what to do about it. And then they get all depressed.”
“Never thought about that. Guess that makes sense.”
“He’s a young one, doesn’t know what hit him. I used to be like that too, in my earlier days.”

The following questions were the normal types of questions, or rather the kinds you’d expect from a vet. What’s he been doing, eating, shiting, et cetera. This vet has been recommended by Glenn, Kari, Brian, and Tracie. And I like this guy a lot. There was none of that hospital type of feel. Just a bench in the reception area. And he just bent down and stuck a thermometer up Brutus’ ass to check his temperature, then his stool. All along asking me all kinds of question. He was wearing sweat pants and a t-shirt, and he charged less than half what other people do. Right down to earth. I felt a little bad because I didn’t have any cash on me. He only accepts checks or cash, so the receptionist girl said, no problem, gave me an envelope and told me to put the check in the mail the minute I have a moment. It just so happens that Kari is taking her two dogs and two cats in tomorrow, so I’ll give her the check.

Is Brutus in love? That is the big question. Maybe that’s my problem too. Why am I not in love?

Been writing letters to people, some of whom are friends, some of whom might become friends, to submit stories / articles / interviews to the online magazine Claire and myself will be publishing soon. We have been working on getting a small press going for the last few months. This small press goes by the name of Les Editions Hors Serie, and it is registered in France as a not-for-profit organization, Loi 1901.

As I wrote in one of my letters:

“The working theme of our first issue is: Life, beyond the mainstream and around the corner... or, life lived outside the mainstream. Wondering if you’d have anything you’d like to submit to our magazine. Multilingualism and multiculturalism are an important element of what we’re trying to do. Living outside of one’s element, country, language, et cetera, has been rather significant for Claire, myself, and many of our friends, and it’s in that spirit that we’re trying to create this small press.

"We’re looking for but are not limiting ourselves to: Interviews with artists /filmmakers / writers, written or photographed portraits of the just-mentioned or others, photo essays, personal essays – preferably revolving around one incident and talked about in a simple straightforward style, but not necessarily – short-stories, one-act plays, short screenplays, and poetry... or... ? something else? a photo-op? a great recipes which somehow relates to our theme? an interview with oneself, kinda like Celine did once with himself because he couldn’t stand journalists?”

And this is what I have been doing, as well as teaching myself HTLM and working at my favorite liquor store, and the reason why I’ve been very bad at writing new posts on this blog... (which very few people read anyway... leave me some f...ing comments every once in while telling me how much you appreciate me! (or not... or just to say hi Frenchy!) damn it, I’m sensitive that way.)

Perusing the second-hand bookstore the other day before going to work, I found a little book which might turn out to be a small treasure, though it’s been written in intermittently here and there. Why do people write in books? Make marks? Underline sentences? It’s highly annoying, and if perchance you are reading this post, and that you happen to be one of these people: Please stop! Think of the people who will inherit such and such books, they may not want their attention drawn to one sentence on the page, which to you might have had a specific and significant meaning, but for them only takes their attention from the rest of the page for reasons they don’t necessarily understand. I bought the book anyway, because it had only a few marks through its pages, and because it’s a book by an author I’ve enjoyed, an author who has not published all that much, and a title I had never heard about: Willie Master’ Lonesome Wife, by William H. Gass. I’ve only started reading the small book.

Here is a paragraph from this book:

“Suppose, for instance, a stranger were to–oh, say you’re laughing uproariously, and that’s the occasion for it–spit in your mouth, god forbid. Still, daily, they do worse. So here you are, you’ve cracked your face across–ha ha ha-ing–and someone–some enemy, some social scientist, some polisher of singular skills–fires it in suddenly. Well you’ve always had your own wash working for you, sloshing about–an inland sea foaming up against its rocks (how grand that’s put, how grand), and you don’t mind it. You don’t go hithering and thithering, do you? moaning, do you? god, my god, my head is leaking, lord, my head is leaking through my mouth, my god, and down my throat and past my shoulders, all those tubes, good lord, and towards my shoes? In that case, then, you must be friendly to it. You’re old chums. But hawk blind on a table and you’ll never tell your spatter from a thousand. Queens. Boyfriends. Bums. If you have an experimental twist, try this: expectorate into a glass–sufficiently–twelve times should do it. Do not tarry. Drink the spittle. Analyze your reluctance. And wonder why they call saliva the sweet wine of love.”

by William H. Gass from his book Willie Masters’ Lonesome Wife.

said a little old lady in her eighties buying a half gallon of cheap vodka from me today when I asked her how things were with her.

It’s deadingly – I’m sorry, sir, that is not a word – HOT... rather: It is so hot, it is deadening – maybe... not sure if this is the proper word usage, or if my brain is farting – abrutissant is what I'm trying to say. My A.C., a small window unit in the living room, cannot keep the house cool, it barely sputters gasp like efforts. Upon coming back from an eleven hour day at the liquor store, driving for half an hour in an A.C.-less car, I placed a sheet on the couch – forget the bedroom, it’s an oven – and attempted to take a nap. The couch is upholstered with orange velvet, and laying on it without a sheet is like placing oneself on a cooking stove. Nothing doing. What I need to be doing right now is write a couple of letters. However, my brain feels like refried beans. I’m afraid of what might come out. Here I am at my desk. What the hell, I’ll give it a shot, with the knowledge that I do have the option to NOT send what I write. And this is where things gets tricky. Do I have the ability to decipher passable communication from loopy blabber?

Been working on learning HTML and CSS all day, trying to “design” the website for the small press I’m starting with Claire. It’s going slowly. Mostly, I end up surfing on the net, like tonight, trying to look up the Vouvray, Domaine Le Peu de la Moriette, I opened for diner. Doing so, I found a couple of blogs I added to my reads: Vinography: a wine blog, and Botrytis@vinexpo. However I did get some work done, and if Claire approves of the direction I’m taking, the site should be up soon.

The bottle by the way was some damn fine drinking wine. It’s good I tried it, because I need to start pushing some of our French wines. They’re not moving unless they’re “hand sold.” And I still get loads of “I refuse to buy French” responses from small-minded mostly republican voting upper class shits – a rather large section of my clientele – to whom I have a very hard time keeping my cool and not telling them to go fuck themselves.

Blablabla...

(Also, blogger.com is doing some weird shit these days, and it's really time I learn how to get out of this blogger.com dependence... as in find some other blogging tool...)

I love reading and I love re-reading the stories of Isaac Bashevis Singer. Opening a collection of short-stories at random and starting to read whatever story there is on the page, turning the pages back to the beginning of whatever story I opened the book to. It’s always good, better than good, and it never gets old. Just re-read Logarithms from the collection The Death of Methuselah and other stories. A young man listens to his aunt tell the story of Yossele, a mathematical genius, who betrayed womankind by marrying the daughter of the gentile apothecary.

“If one lives long enough, one hears many things for the first time,” Aunt Yentl said. “Men look strong, but they are actually very weak.”

1

I lived in a big house not far from my parents. How I accepted to live there is not known to me, but there I was, and more or less happy. Unbeknownst to me, in my front yard was a large opening which I noticed one day while coming out my front door. I walked over to check it out and lord oh mine it was a large hole somewhat like a garage door or rather more like the window of a military silo, like the ones you see on the Normandy beaches but much bigger, big enough for a car to come through if it wasn’t the roof. All around was my garden. There underneath was a large room. Next to the garage-like window was a staircase going downwards into this large room. A door at the top, also opened. The whole thing looking as casual as could be. In the heat of summer, late afternoon a cool breeze is unusually blowing through, and they’re simply trying to catch a bit of it. This being bizarre enough, what was really shocking is that down there was my old high school band-room, the very same room I’d spent more than one hour per day, sometimes several hours a day, practicing in the high school symphonic orchestra or the high school marching band. Squatting on the ground trying to get a better look inside, I felt as if I was doing something wrong, looking into a place I had no business looking into, getting a sneak look at my past, or at what my past once held, because there underneath me was not my past, it was the band room I once spent much time in, but I wasn’t in there so to say looking back up at myself, I wasn’t anywhere to be seen; underneath my feet was a world I no longer belonged to, to which I no longer had the key, a world I was no longer invited to have any say in, and this is why I felt awkward looking down. There were a few kids in there listening to the band director, which sounded as if it might still Mr. Franklin. I could only see the double door entrance right under me to my left, and part of the instrument storing area as well as a few chairs from the back rows of the orchestra sitting arrangements. I couldn’t make out any of the kids, though I could hear some activity. This must have been the end of the lesson for the day. Most of the kids had obviously all ready gone home. Mr. Franklin was giving some pointers to a few remaining kids. I squatted down as much as possible, held on to some metal bar, and peered down a little more when I noticed a young girl facing the band director, meaning facing away from me. As if on cue, she turned around and looked up at me, giving me that teenage look of “what the fuck” and I jumped up, caught red-handed, I walked back to my front door all shook up. The one main thought on my mind being: My god, they’re going to make a hell of a racket when the practicing starts up again, how the hell am I going to live with that?!

2

On the way back to my front door, I crossed a man who had obviously been watching me the whole time. I turned red, felt ashamed, and did not know quite what to say. He wore some blue working clothes, like a janitor.

“Are you the custodian?” I asked.
“No, I am not,” he responded calmly.
“Are you the groundskeeper, then?”
“No, I am not,” he answered again in a very calm voice which unnerved me even more.
“Then who are you? And what are you doing in my garden?”
“I watch over the door.”
“Oh...” I had nothing to say to that, “I’ve never noticed it until today.”
“I know,” he said and looked at me for a few very uncomfortable seconds. Then he lit a cigarette and walked away. At that point I decided he looked very much like Humphrey Bogart. I watched him till he disappeared into the darkness, because the day had ended and it was now nighttime.

I turned around and headed back to my house. I opened the door, turned the lights on, and entered. All was very silent, grizzly almost like a lonely winter evening somewhere in Maine. A chill ran down my spine as I shut the door behind me.

The roommate search
hasn’t gone so good.

Met some good folks

haven’t called them back

because in fact I’d rather be alone
here in this house
by myself
with nobody here other than me
and my dog.

Reading Blaise
and he talks how he can’t be bothered to clean the house
and this is the main reason why
he lives most of the time on the road
and the rest of the time
he hires a maid.

Now... that’s an idea.

Think I might be much happier
me who hates a dirty house
and yet who hates cleaning the house
and thus
always lives in a dirty house
unhappy and depressed.

What I need is a maid.
Why not hire a maid?
On a bi-monthly basis?

There’s gotta be a maid service
for me.

I’m a bachelor,
certainly I can afford
such a trifle luxury?

“Oh dear,
what’s happening here,
I think it’s perfectly clear...

[interlude, repetition]

Give
me
one
small
strain
of...”


Listen the Ken’s 15 June 2005 show . It starts out rocking.

And so I just put on his last Wednesday’s show, and it turns out it’s exactly what I needed. Then the second show is this bad ass interpretation of Mr. Sandman. Or whatever the name of that song is. IT ROCKS.

Got a call yesterday to show up tonight for what I thought was some sort of job interview. I'm currently looking for part-time work I could do from home, to supplement my current income. The person who called me and set up the meeting time, did not even show up. Following is an email I've just wrote and sent to her. Maybe one should not write such emails when one feels that he's been had or been abused in any sort of way, but I felt as if it was necessary to tell this person what I thought.

Dear T.,

I arrived at the meeting to which you invited me to 15 till seven and left 20 after. I never received the information about Global Travel Trends you had promised me, and decided to go since I had said that I would. Unfortunately, after staying a few minute, what I had been afraid might be the case turned out to be true: I had been tricked into showing up at an MLM-type meeting, one which would undoubtedly prove to me how much money and how much fun I could have if I parted with a small amount of cash – an amount which for me is far from being small. I am upset about this. It’s partly my fault, as I did not ask you any specific question pertaining to the nature of the “business” meeting you were inviting me to, but I also blame you, though you did not lie to me in any way,you did not mention to me any of the pertinent bits of information I would have needed to make an educated decision on whether or not to show up. And I feel that by the ad you posted, as well as by your phone call, that you insinuated this would be a job-interview type of situation and not a sales pitch for some MLM company to "help improve my life" and get into my wallet (though I admit to being ungodly gullible and childishly trustworthy... maybe even a little simple... so perhaps I'm at fault here?) I did show up. I actually arrived at the hotel at 6h15. I drove directly from work since I did not have the time to drive home, and arrived early, went to the bar, had an over-priced coffee which tasted like burnt socks, and read USA Today, which I hate. There is nothing wrong with a person parting with 215 dollars expecting El Dorado – whether it be at the movies or in Vegas or wherever, dreams have always been for sell – but to abstain from telling such a person about what it is he is going to take part in, and not to send said person the promised “business” details, is wrong, and in this case, is equal to Lying. Please, refrain from finding “clients” or “associates” in this manner. Please, put some sort of link or some sort of explication on you craigslist.com ad to explain the nature of your ad so that you will get only REAL responses, and not waist the time of people like me who are actually LOOKING for a second income. (Hey, I’m not saying Global Travel Trends is necessarily a bad deal, maybe spending 215 dollars might buy me some much needed information so as to travel cheaply... but I’m not in such a position, and the places I will be traveling to in the next few months, I have no need for hotel fares, taxi, and such... this kind of traveling is not the kind I can afford, even with 90 percent off. When I’ve traveled in the past I’ve either slept in my car, at friends, friends of friends, people I just met, in a tent, eat sandwiches, or eat at side-road fruit stands, and I don’t care much for comfort. Basically I have no money. Could you prove to me that those 215 dollars would be well spent? I doubt it, but if you’d like to try, go ahead, write me why.) And last but not least, when you plan a meeting with somebody, have the decency to show up, or at least tell the person you’re inviting that this is a seminar at which you will not be present, but that I should go and listen anyway. Blablabla... Okay... I’m sorry, this is getting out of hand. I’m probably being too harsh, here. But you see, my family lost all their money in the mid 1983 oil crisis. We were living in West Texas at the time. The town we lived in went from 15000 population to 9000 population is less than a year, in almost six months. That’s a lot of folks for a small town. My parents owned a motel, and we went from full occupancy at fifty bucks a room, to quarter occupancy – on good evenings – at less than twenty bucks a room. I’m not asking for sympathy here, I’m about to tell you why I am upset at being lied to, or at least, at not being told why I was being invited to a “business” seminar. My parents, trying to make ends meet, did everything they could. My dad tried selling insurance, frozen food, my mom went back to school so she could become a teacher... and, all this time, people such as yourself, would come see them with “magical” money making deals, for such and such amount, and very little work on our part, you could make thousands, millions, whatever. Amway and all their copycats. My parents never made a dime, but those other people sure made plenty of money off my parents, who were simply trying to make ends meet, and easily influenced by the likes of such companies. And some people do make money with these types of companies, but they do it by preying on all kinds of people who cannot afford to be preyed on. So... sorry for this long email, but I had to get it off my chest, tell me why your MLM is different than all the others.

Sincerely yours,

Francois

1 ounce of home-made liquor – you know
the one I mean from your garden
and those you had to buy
peanuts in a bag, peanuts for the masses
peanuts roasted backstage
peanuts farmed by those rednecks innocent of you
like windows, you are the view unknown
of the mountains or the plains never seen before
likewise... roasted... never even a nuance of wide eyed
reconnaissance.

1 ounce of vodka
a splash of orange liquor
and a splash of lime juice.

Over ice
covered and filled up
with some club-soda
and stirred
with a chop stick from Hon Kong.

Sipping ice home-made liquor with some club-soda over ice and a splash of lime. The day went by like a mass of grayish slumber overwhelmed with dark clouds ready to blow up any second. I watched two films. Neither much better than the other. Passable. The first worse than the second, only because of the subject. The cinematography was absent from both. Meaning the art was mostly gone. The second was based on a large larger than life famous figure, and it was able to get away with some pathos. Unforgivable emotional margins. I sip the liquid of my own invention. Pure 100 proof alcohol into which various herbs and fruits macerated for one month, then diluted with sugar water, and aged for several weeks.

Had an appointment with PH#3 yesterday late morning. Nobody came. So I called and was told she was running late. I had to head up to my sister’s so we changed appointment to this morning.

Having a hard time getting out of bed, this being my day off, I force myself out anyway so as to make myself presentable for interview and visit of the room. This time, PH#3 calls, and tells me that after all she thinks my house is a little bit too far south for what she’s looking for, regarding her job and all that. I say okay, whatever.

On to PH#4. A fellow visiting this afternoon. Seemed like the descent sort over the telephone, called me back yesterday to make sure we still had an appointment this afternoon.

Beer bath?!?! Is that gonna be the next fad? I think it would go big around here in Texas. Check it out: Guests take a dip in beer pool.

(Link found via A Good Beer Blog via this post.)

Grim stories for educational purposes. Dim lights shown on this world of shit and frozen underpants. Undergarments in the gutters. Smelling like the backthroats of lifelong drunks who haven’t had nothing to eat in ages, nothing but cheap regurgitated liquids. A dance mal propre of one hundred drunks puking on stage in harmony and in step on Broadway! What’s happened? A musical undignified relative to... vile stories written in verse so’s we might learn, so’s we might teach our children some chagrin, some ugly little truth... none of us much better than one hundred drunks puking on beat, syncopated delirium onstage from a children’s book illustrated with love... I see it says the writer to the director, it’ll be a grand success, we’ll make millions. And the orchestra plays on...



(This is my 300th post. I started on 31 January 2004. I've had few visitors, but that's all right. This is after all not such a good blog. Sometimes I hit on some good ideas, most of the time I don't. As the rest of my life, it lacks focus. That's fine, too. It fits me just fine. We'll see what happens next. Also, I should probably take a class in grammar, maybe that's one of the things I'll do when / if I go back to school like I'd like to this coming September or January. When I was learning sentence structure in seventh grade, I didn't speak English. Not that I should use that as an excuse, so I won't. I remember being in this classroom not understanding what the hell was happening, except that I understood the teacher was breaking down sentences on the chalkboard. By the time I got to eleventh grade, the teacher gave us a spelling test once a week on Mondays to start the weeks with. I failed every single spelling test that year except for two. I've improved a little bit since. That's something. Yes, something positive, and I should probably focus on that.)

Listening to Jacques Brel from a CD AMK made for me before leaving Paris. I’m having a little drink thinking about this whole housemate searching business. I’m not backing down, but this means compromise in the near future. That’s fine, I can deal with it, I guess. But it’s been so long since I’ve lived with anybody for any lengths of time. I’ve crashed on friends and strangers’ couches and beds for a night’s visit to several weeks at a time. It’s always been much appreciated, sometimes it’s been awkward, sometimes there was drama, it’s always been rewarding in the sense that I’ve met all kinds of folks that way, and I've gotten to see different places. I've had many people stay at my place in Paris. Sometimes friends, sometimes strangers who just needed a place to crash. It’s been good. Many nights having flaky conversations lost in the drinks. People staying at my place while I’m away, while I’m staying at somebody else’s place. But LIVING with somebody on a rent-lease basis, sharing bills, sharing living space with an agreement, a financial and roof-over-your-head commitment to another, I haven’t done that in more than ten years. It’s scary. A bit like stepping into a time blitz. This probably means I won’t be able to sing along with Brel or Gainsbourg or whoever, somebody like Vian... walk in my shorts, my balls hanging out, glass in hand singing as loud and as off key as I can, the music blasting, the wine bottles rattling, the peanuts roasting. L’insouciance égoïste. Nothing sweeter. Compromises. Uhm... I guess I can deal with it.

She calls at 8h30. It’s my fault, the directions I gave her yesterday weren’t very good. She’s a bit turned around, she says, and she’d rather call me before getting even more turned around. Twenty minutes later, I call her to see where she’s at.

“I’m on 45th and Bull Creek...”
“I’m not sure where that is,” I say, “but just keep going East until...” I give her more directions.

Ten minutes later she arrives.

She’s very clean, paused woman. She’s forty years old she told me in one of her emails. I like her right away. She seems like an easy person to get along with. The dogs like her right away as well. Brutus and Little Bear are all over here, tails wagging, snoofling about. Good sign. Always trust the dogs, they’ve got good instincts, better than us.

I show her the house, explain to her that I wasn’t expecting anybody to move in before the first of July, and that I’ve got a few things to do, like put a new door on where her room would be. Brian took the door off years ago, before Tracie moved in, and earlier I was asking Tracie whatever happened to that door, and she said it disintegrated, and no longer was. So I’d have to buy new one, or build one.

PH#2 really likes the place, likes the neighborhood.

“Why did you move from Virginia?” She arrived in Austin about three weeks ago.
“Well, I’d been stuck in this no-end job for the last few years, and I’d heard that Austin was a cool friendly place. Music and an art scene, I figured I’d give it a shot.”
“Yeah, I just moved back here myself, I’ve been in Paris, France, for the last seven years, and I kindda wanted to come back here and eventually go back to school.”<