Automation

One million asses, repeatedly sitting and standing, lying and rising, squishing foam of the train seats until a tattered thin, velvet crunched square of blue and orange plaid fabric is all that remains, serving no more of a purpose than to decorate the 1970's schoolroom beige plastic bucket seats.  And it smells like some combination of sweat, piss, and perfume mixed with remnants of vomit and grease from sticky weekend nights where the drunks and the kids rode up and down till dawn.
The train is a vessel.  Chicago trains are relics.  They have too much traffic to shut down for renovation and the city's too poor (and/or cheap) to afford it anyway.  Sloshing around in a sea of reverberations, head phone speakers, highly dramatic telephone conversations, pip-pop-popping Spanish postulations, and sometimes heated Polska mother-daughter confrontations, till the rails screech and rattle to a stop and voice recorded directions tell us passengers what to do and where we're going, interrupted by a disgruntled conductor who reaffirms the automation and also reaffirms everyone's desire to just get off and go... anywhere.
The political environment is hot and the economical environment has chilled down a bit, for me, at least.  Rush Limbaugh preaches and fills the minds of young successful professionals with minutia of irrelevant falsities, when a kid driving a Maserati's main concern should be little Andy Drummer.
He's an eighteen-year-old kid moving out of his parents' house for the first time, unassisted, rebelliously even, and as he drives that U-Haul truck, he realizes within the first mile on I-90 that he's not comfortable behind the thick rubber Mayflower styled captain's wheel.  In a desperate attempt to exit, cutting over two lanes of traffic like the blade of a knife sliding off a potato and into an oppressive index finger, little Andy Drummer drives the nose of a black Maserati into a divider off of the California exit.
Pulverized glass, twisted steel and a thin trail of engine smoke rest on the divider from the shattered Italian sports car.  The U-Haul went skidding on its side down the exit, screeching like the rails beneath my feet, a violent war between metal and concrete and neither side was backing down when finally a firm street light forced a treaty and stopped the machine.
I watched the scene unfold from my moving picture window, looking back until it disappeared and then forgot about it.  See, in a city this big there's too much tragedy and death to pay attention to.  So, you keep your eyes forward and worry about the people and space immediately affecting you. Like Jimmy Carlisle who walked down Ashland Avenue for ten blocks, heard two gun shots, one thudded, screaming death and still managed to buy flowers for his newly pregnant girlfriend.
The story came on the news, he didn't recall a thing.  It's why cell phones and iPods and portable privacy devices are so popular and viral.  They provide enough stimulation and distraction to remove one from an unfavorable situation, say the commute on the train and then you start checking it at home and after you get out of the shower and before you go to bed and before you know it you're waking up in the middle of the goddamned night , waiting for a response from some fleeting, nebulous relationship (do we have those anymore?) wondering why they haven't responded.  
Meanwhile, the clock in the living room ticks steady, on and on and on.

#firstclassproblems

A cartoon yellow sun hung over a frothy pool of splashing kids and she wriggled in the AC, biting her lip a little harder each time the diving board sprang like a doorstop.  See, there was a community pool in her backyard.  And that was fine when she built her house in the development ten years prior.  The community then was seventy.  The community now is seven hundred: thirty three percent little boys and thirty two percent little girls who all love swimming and are forced to do it competitively by nostalgic parents.  

            The real issue isn't the playful little kiddies and their squirmy little bodies.  Rather, it's the fact that she works at home and types medical transcription, i.e. transposing voice recorded southern speaking physician's notes into readable text. The kiddies scream and yell and it infiltrates her every thought, breaking her concentration and stressing the skin below her bottom lip.  She turns the volume up and keeps plucking away at the keys. This is summer.

            Winter's no better.  Apparently, sometime in the last couple years the community decided it would be a good idea to train their elementary swimmers year round.  Thus, they began hoisting large skeletal ribs around the pool with cranes and spreading a large white tarp over to create a dome in the fall.  The structure works as an acoustic amplifier, turning shrieks into ambient howling, again infiltrating the poor woman's brain and stressing her bottom lip. 

            One time, it was so upsetting that she walked over to the pool in her slippers, bundled with a fleece coat.  The stocky coach pumped up his chest as she explained the predicament.  He told her that he was sorry, but there was no possible way to keep the kids down.  She bit her lip and walked back to the house.  Upon phoning the then community board president, Jerry Graft, who softly told her that he completely sympathized, the noise slowly subsided.  After a few months, the team started hosting swim meets every week, which bellowed cacophonous renditions of pop songs and distorted screaming.  The woman phoned Jerry again, who shakily informed her that there was nothing he could do about it. 

            See, Jerry's wife had recently cheated on him three week's prior with the swim coach.  He left work early to surprise his wife with flowers and upon creeping up the stairs to muffled vibrations, he caught her spread eagle on his satin sheets moaning like a dog.  One thing Jerry has never been very good at is confrontation.  So, after his extended peek, he merely turned around and went back to work never saying one word to his wife.  He threw the flowers away in a dumpster two houses down.  He imagined those sweating calves of the swim coach, at least eight inches wide, and those full-veined arms and hands, clinched like a baboon.  He feared for his life should he make a scene or even mention the event to Sally, which happens to be his wife's name.  Surely, things would work out if he let the isolated event slide, he thought.  And things did, he thought. 

            So when the woman phoned him and said that the swim meets were entirely too loud and obtrusive to her household, Jerry decided that no action could be taken.  The woman, obviously unnerved, marched over the frosty grass to the swim meet in her slippers and pulled the swim coach aside.  "Have you the nerve" and "how disrespectful can you be" were a couple things she said.  The coach turned the stereo down a notch and told the kids mockingly that they should keep it down.  And, naturally, they got louder.  Steam poured from the poor woman's ears and she almost bit right through her lip as she ascended her carpeted steps.  Ted, her husband, told her that it wasn't that bad and that she should stop focusing on it.  She told Ted that he needed to grow a pair of balls.  And Ted didn't.

            The weeks passed and winter lifted a little. With it lifted the canvas of the "white albatross," which the woman had cleverly described it once in an email to a girlfriend.  As summer approached, a few things were changing.  One was that Jerry discovered that the banging of his wife by the swim coach was, in fact, not an isolated event.  In fact, it was happening every Tuesday and Thursday after the coach finished taking his morning shit, which he did religiously at 9:30 a.m.  It lasted until 9:48 a.m. where he would then shower and head over to Sally's.  Jerry figured this out when he questioned Sally about a dozen tiny splotches of the swim coach's semen on his maroon satin sheets.  Almost dripping with saliva at the question, Sally exploded on Jerry in a tirade of unabashed confession, describing the positions she had screwed the swim coach in and how much more satisfying in bed he was than Jerry.  As a finale to the rant, she held up a bottle of KY Jelly which she kept next to the bed and tossed it out the window, claiming that if she added that to the moisture she produced for the coach, he may slip all the way through her.

            Jerry calmly phoned his lawyer and requested a divorce explaining to Sally during the telephone conversation that he didn't want any trouble and that he would take his things and leave.  And he did, thereby resigning as community board president, the most prestigious title he would ever have in his entire life. 

            News of Jerry's resignation flowed throughout the community, but no one cared that Jerry was leaving. Everyone was simply mentally picturing and gossiping about the amazingly hot sex that Sally had had with the swim coach.  Even some of the kiddies' mother's began looking at the coach out of the corner of their eyes on the pool deck.  The coach wore a smug grin and stood tall, like a prized stud horse in Kentucky.  Because he was. 

            With the flimsy political environment in the community, middle school kids stayed at the park past dark.  And parents stayed at the pool past closing time.  It was obvious that the reigns of power needed to be handed over.  They needed to be handed over to a "real leader" the woman said to Ted. And Ted said, "I liked Jerry." 

Fallen Winter... Illustrations

Below are the illustrations that I've completed for my upcoming zine, Fallen Winter.  The illustrations will coincide with the works, all of which can be found on this blog.  So, I guess, in theory you could print out the entire zine from this blog and construct your own, but that wouldn't be fun.  And, in actuality, my close friend/editor/colleague, Chaz Oreshkov will be formatting the zine, and I'm sure he'll be doing it in a way that you will never be able to achieve on your own.  I'll keep you updated on a release date.

Also note that I kind of fucked around with the photos on Picasa to hide the highlights from my flash Kodak camera and sharpen the lines.  On one of the ducks, I obviously started playing with the different edit options.  Who knows how it will be finalized as...

ONE MORE NOTE: Back2Print is releasing a travel piece collection on June 16th (currently unnamed) and my "Blood in the Heart" Part I has been chosen for publication in it.  I will be working with Elizabeth S. Tieri on the editing and tightening of it.  **Exciting shit for Huron the next couple weeks with this and FW**  Stay tuned for more updates as we near the release date.  Alright, here goes:

Blood in the Heart pt. II of III (I didn't map this out well)

***LOOKING FOR A NEW TITLE***  I love "Blood in the Heart," but it doesn't really capture the message that I intended.  Maybe I'll use it for something else.  Suggestions being taken...

Hoyne and I rented a car at an Enterprise and he fronted the money.  We set out on that bright morning, giddy with excitement and a little fear because we hadn't mapped out our route or planned places to sleep or really prepared at all other than Hoyne bringing his tent from Chicago with a couple marijuana nugs tucked deep in its compact fabric.

            After a while, snaking through the greater Los Angeles concrete network, we finally hit the coast and saw that beautiful street sign, which read: "Pacific Coast Highway."  Pepperdine sat at the top of the overlook and I wondered how wonderful it would have been to be rich enough to go there.

            Hoyne wore shades and a cut off t-shirt, which showed his tattoos and the sharp angle of the Pacific sun reddened our arms.  We stared over the immense ocean and let our minds wander, sometimes not uttering a word for an hour.

            The 1 intertwined with the 101 at times, pulling the car off of the coast and through valleys of vineyards, which stretched for miles over rolling hills and Mexican workers with straw hats dotted in between the rows and they tossed grapes into the backs of pickup trucks.

            When we reached San Obispo, the 101 continued to stay straight and the 1 broke off northwest and trickled to a two-way road tucked and hidden in the enormous cliffs lining the ocean.  I remember thinking that I was in another world; a celestial world, when I saw those brilliant, intricate color schemes painted down the sides of those bluffs and how their ancient crags stuck out as the first defense against the pummeling ocean, protecting, yet coexisting in a beautiful symbiotic way.  Hoyne said that this is how he knew god existed.  And I thought to myself that this is how I knew he didn’t.

            It took us a few hours, but we winded around those rocky protrusions north until redwoods popped their bushy heads high toward the sun.  The first step out of the car was stiff, compressed bone and then I took that first big inhale of air and could smell nothing but fresh fern and the purest, sweet smell of vegetation just saturated in the air molecules.

            We went to a diner and drank a couple beers and our server let us know that all the campgrounds were full and the two motels within the Big Sur area were close to full occupancy and the price was close to six hundred a night. So, we drove a little further north toward Monterrey and searched for places to pitch the tent.  A lighthouse stood tall far in the distance, perched on a large boulder in the swelling foam and the land surrounding the shore was tall with grass and hundreds of cows grazed near the water way down the valley.  I expected to see Monsanto's cabin and that wandering goat with black lumps of shit in the white sand, but all that I saw were packs of cows and an endless greying sky. 

            We turned the car around and drove back past the diner, finally finding a wide part of the shoulder to park.  Hoyne really wanted to use his tent so he fumbled around with the stakes and the canvas, but could never drive them deep enough to hold, as the Earth was hard and dried, chipping like brick into crusty rectangular pieces.

            That was about two hours ago and now I sit, reclined as far back as the car seat will allow writing by moonlight, which illuminates thick fog rolling in from the never-ending water.  Hoyne breathes softly, chest rising and falling, and he has a Modelo can gripped firmly in his right hand.  The air's gotten cold and my phone hasn't had service for the last six hours.  Hoyne says there isn't a cell phone tower for one hundred miles.  It's kind of nice to be shrouded in fog, but also kind of scary when we hear random pickup trucks speeding around the bend in the road.  I wonder how in the world they don't just fly off the cliff into the steaming water below, but maybe they're used to it and know every dip and turn for the sixty-mile stretch.

            I close my eyes and my brain wanders, far back home to where my mother is curled in bed probably crying at the thought of me alone.  But, I don’t feel sad and I don’t feel scared.  I feel happy.  I hear the animals crying and I can feel that vast ocean churning beneath us and I think of Kerouac and of Nick Adams and wonder how different I am than both of them.  With one crutch on the civilization that raised me and the other dangling off of the side of this bottomless cliff, I feel safe and relaxed, away from the bullshit and alone at last.  Hoyne's lips flutter on the exhale.

Hoyne woke up hungry and we both wanted to get lost in the trees so we bought steaming coffee and some nutty muffins and headed toward the summit of Mt. Manuel.  The air was cool in the valley and hot on the side of the winding trail and we ascended at a brisk pace, facing the clock which limited our exploration.  The issue was that we had to have the car at San Francisco airport by 6:00 p.m. and we knew it would take a couple hours to drive there.  So, we climbed up high and fatigued our legs, gazing down the steep brush inclines with jagged rocks and a waterfall waiting, 3,000 feet below and it was tempting to jump at that white foamy water and we desperately wanted to take a cool swim, but time allowed nothing more than the climb, and it was as wonderful as I could have imagined. 

            The colors were so vivid and popped like blooming spring and it all seemed so foreign compared to the Chicago concrete and the Kentucky limestone that I was accustomed to.  It was a sad moment when we exited that mysterious and haunting cliffscape, but again excitement returned when I thought of San Francisco, the final stop of our adventure. 

            Golden rolling hills and hazy sky flooded through the window of my personal moving picture, when the highway signs became larger and more frequent alerting us of our proximity to the bay.  My arms burned in the sun and I hid them in the shade of the dashboard, massaging my roasting skin.

            We checked in the car and walked into the airport, which was as clean as a hotel, semi-empty aside from some Asian ladies waxing the floors.  We left our luggage at the airport in a locker for twenty-four dollars a night and asked the long dirty finger-nailed concierge where we could find a cheap motel in the city and he pulled out a map highlighting areas around Merchant Street, directly off the B.A.R.T. stop and told us where the hipsters were and where the douche bags were.  Meanwhile, all I could focus on was the thick brown line of muck stuck deep underneath his uncomfortably long fingernails. 

            My shoes and socks were soaked through with sweat and that powdery dirt of the Sur, which turned to mud and crystallized on my leg hairs and when we stepped into our lodging, I stripped down, eyes closed under the warm spray of the shower which washed the dirt down the drain, crusting around the edges of the linoleum.  When I had finished and dried, the remaining filth caked in long brown stripes on the fresh white towel.  After we were clean, we began cracking open the remaining Modelo cans and worked up an appetite.  Hoyne sat tranquil at the table by the balcony and stared into the dark building across the street, sucking at the small pipe in his fingers

Spring, an homage

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the
Starnbergersee
With a show of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm' aus Litauen, echt
deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the
archduke's,
My cousin's, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened.  He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.


The Wasteland (lines 1 through 18)  T.S. Eliot

Moon in the morning hangs semi-transparent in the blue sky.  The trains flush in and flush out, getting all where they need to go and never a minute too late.  I watch as smoke billows from an exhaust vent on top of a rusting warehouse and it steams a moisture patch on the brick chimney next to it, long since dormant.
It's a normal spring day, pretty and cool, and I think of T.S. Eliot and his twisted vision of the so-called prosperous season; how the sun  melted and uncovered piles of mangled bodies decomposing like cow dung in the damp, muddy heaths all across Europe; how even without a world war, spring somehow brings me a sense of sadness, just inklings, of how another season has passed and we looked forward to the next, forgetting of the last.
However, it's hard to be sad in the sun and it's hard to be sad in the breeze, but when the rain comes and cries its eyes on the grey-lit Earth one of these April mornings, I'll revisit my thought and find a really sad one to share.

Blood in the Heart part I of II

Broke and traveling to Los Angeles for work.  Missed my flight and now it's storming.  Could've been sunny by now.  The terminal lights reflect white tile floors and matte grey walls all sterile and clean except for a few rogue Starbucks cups and wadded wrappers. There's a kid, maybe twenty-two, with cowboy hat and electrical tape, which fastens little Styrofoam cubes to his forehead and forearms.  He rocks rhythmically to the incantation of his own voice.  He reads with eyes closed from pen-written Sanskrit, which looks to be a pocket Qur'an, four inches thick. Frayed hemp strings dangle from his pockets and I watch out of the corner of my eye. 

            Water speckles and streams down the windows and the sky is so grey that runway and buildings blend right in, blobbing in the distance.  A baby in a green tank and white shorts stares in amazement at the waves of precipitation blowing in, hands and cheek stuck to the glass.  Others, much older, watch out the window with legs crossed on the carpet, phone in hand; coffee in hand.  All transfixed and hypnotized by the ultimate magnet; the derailleur of sprockets lodged deep within their skulls, water is shifting the focus from what is now to what could become and what has been into what we want.  Storm doesn't worsen, but stays steady and true and shuttle buses break through, trailing spray past the window.  My friend rocks, to and fro, back and forth to the hum of his voice and they stare quizzically, searching for answers, but finding contempt and wrinkles for their foreheads. 

            The hub of America; the heart that pumps to more glamorous capillaries, Chicago has a pace attracting even those from the East and even those from the West, all stopping for a connecting flight, whether for work or for play, but to travel; to go; to leave; to depart. 

            Weird, rectangular and geometrically shaped objects pull wagons in the air yard.  And the water pools and ripples and reflects the dead, grey sky.  Big plane of blue and white with monochromatic shading scales in between has its cargo door flung open wide and water streams off the edges.  My mom is worried.  She's working tonight at six.  A big yellow gas line connects to the underside of the plane like an umbilical cord, fueling the machine for its big flight in this big world and only if they'd just put a little more.

            I'm starting to rock with my friend, but it's not to his voice, it's to the thought that I'll never come back; that I'll never speak to anyone again, but not because of a fear for death, rather, the fluttering excitement for the mystery of future.  The rain's letting up.

            And the sky's a little brighter.  LA's a different pace.  You can feel it just waiting to board, or, hoping to board. Most of the minds are in their own worlds living their own lives without any regard or care for the other minds sitting in the adjacent galaxies around them.  It's kind of refreshing.  And all I can care about right now is leaving Chicago. 

            A fat, younger-looking guy shovels three layers of pancakes into his mouth feverishly and without a pause even for air.  He has a guitar with him, but he doesn't look artistic.  He holds his biscuit tight between thumb and forefinger and chomps down on it with crumbs cascading off his lips.  It disappears after three.  Pathetic. I start rocking harder with my friend and he makes me comfortable because he's not afraid.  He's holding the electrical tape tight and it squeezes his hand, making it balloon around the black stripes in bubbles of white.

            Big grey plane crosses the air yard, must be going far.  Rain is streaming lightly now, but it's still somewhat speckled.  The men in the yard are wearing neon green-yellow jumpsuits and they scramble to throw luggage on rolling wheels of conveyor systems.  The baby in the green tank screams as the water lessens, but maybe that's not why.  In the distance, it looks like it has stopped raining, but up close you can tell it is still sprinkling.  Little brown girl with dark hair and black eyes stares and fingers at the speckles of water dotting the glass.  Her brother in the green tank stops screaming and does the same.  His eyes widen in fascination when he realizes that he can't touch what he sees and he smoothes over and over, every so often searching for moisture. Their mother comes over and picks up the boy.  She's a pretty mom with eyes that look deep into the distance and she rocks the tank and his curly head falls. 

            Dorsal fins of large planes stick over the dock extensions, which look like accordions.  Black man shovels pancakes in his mouth like his friend and coughs every two or three minutes.  Every grunt breaks my mood and I want to bury my fingers in my head.   Thankfully, after four minutes, the black man's fat white friend comes wobbling back to the gate with the large guitar case sprouting behind his head and he explains that their flight is ten gates down.  So, they gather their things and breathe hard down the hall and I exhale and let my shoulders fall.

            And I look at my friend who has tucked away his electrical tape and neatly closed and banded his important text and his eyes meet mine beneath the black brim of his hat and we exchange a half-smile and a quick look away and that was all that was needed to make the connection; to understand and to comfort.  As I stare at my feet, I feel relaxed and composed with the energy to do anything, like all restrictions have been dissolved.

            Just need to get on this plane.

            Rain still patters but the streamers are slower and speckles are hanging on for dear life.  The grey sky opens to show some blue and a tiny plane rises slowly to meet it.

Here, I sit in a cove of a Long Beach harbor, the sunset pink and orange, all palmy silhouettes and fishermen in casual clothes wipe down the cabins of their boats, carrying poles to the deck.  It must be night fishing.  An open condom wrapper sits next to me, half-buried in the sand… must be night fishing. 

            There are a lot of birds swooping around the sky with one grey pelican gliding softly over the water and another one curving high.  The water is smooth, but still ripples a bit.  Half of the boats have American flags hanging and the moon sits directly above a lighthouse.  A woman takes photos of it.  In the distance, a helicopter hangs motionless in the sky with a flaming red beacon for a tail, pulsating like the lights on a heart monitor.  And I resonate, feeling my chest rise and fall with the red gleam. 

            The harbor is pretty much empty and I'm in complete awe of its beauty.  No longer does it matter that my wallet is flat, but I guess you can attribute that to the fact that my company is paying for every meal that I devour in the dim lights of the hotel bar every night.  The other side of the harbor has many more masts and with all of the hanging white lines, it looks like a dead forest.  Not really, though, just a bunch of white poles and ropes hanging from them.  I think I like romanticizing sometimes. 

            The pelican flies low again and the helicopter hasn't moved in a good fifteen minutes.  I'm leaving for Big Sur in the morning so this will be my last night in the LAX area; an area that, much to my chagrin, I have actually enjoyed.  My dark-rimmed eyeglassed friends built this city up to be hell on Earth and despite the fact that the jeans are loose and the shirts and are even baggier, it has been anything but.  The hipness competition is nonexistent.  Thus, I don't have to listen to anyone preach about the cleanliness of the food industry or the atrocities on the other side of the world or the best hole in the wall bar in the coolest uncovered neighborhood in the city and it makes me breath easy to not see another soul in the entire three-mile square of the harbor.  Exhale.

            The sun is leaving and in its ever-growing absence, neon lights replace it; blue ones circling the edge of the water and red-orange-yellow ones lighting up restaurants and Ferris wheels.  There's a decent breeze and it hisses through the palm trees.  I love how still the harbor is and how quiet it feels.  Very relaxing.  Not like Chicago.  Less bustle.  More freedom of movement.  And as I look around, the helicopter hasn't moved and the boats sit still and the people have gone home and the birds and pelicans glide around effortlessly reflecting dimly off the smooth water.  The skyline is a series of hotel buildings and fishermen fumble, firing up their engines and the sky darkens as they retreat into it.  And I walk back home to the hotel, smiling at no one at all.  

Fallen Winter: Cover

Here's the cover to my zine of short stories.  Obviously, still on drawing paper, but I've decided and this will be it.