Caught in the Slipstream

I bought a watch, haven't had one for awhile. I was in SEAR, using their rest room to tell you the truth befire I headed over to the Games Boutique. They were haveing some sort of WATCH BLOW OUT and I didn't think anything of it until I saw an old friend in the case. The best watch I have ever had was a CASIO sailing watch. It had and analog fave with a digital display wherein you cun use a countdown timer, a stop watch, have a digital watch display (how primitive), show the date and your sperm count. Ok I made that up but you get the point. I had worn that watch for years, used it while racing Solings on SF bay and timed Formula car at Sear Point with it. One day it died, battery. I took it to a jeweler who turned up her nose at the thought of soiling her hands with it, disposable watch she said, and that I should consider purchasing a well made American watch like a TIMEX. She just happened to have a case full of them. They all looked like refugees from that era of style that is so boring that you could experience a narcoleptic event, like a glance from a Somnambulist Gorgon you would be asleep.

I eloquently told her to go screw herself and changed the battery myself, a couple of times, watch worked great until it just wore out. By then the model was out of production and the modern replacements had LEDs ULTRABASS. By then though I had also fallen victim to a modern habit, using my CEL phone like a modern pocket watch. Everybody does that now these days, have you noticed? We all seem to think that it is easier to yank out our Cigular communicator and flip it open like we are requesting Scotty to beam us up. We do this even when our hands are full. That is SO MUCH easier than straping on a watch just before we pick up our car keys and head off to STARBUCKS.

BTW, DUNKIN DOUGH NUTS makes better coffee than STARBUCKS.

Now that is not to say that we don't have much more IMPORTANT things to do with our wrists these days, barbed wire tattoos, handcuff bracelets that sort of thing. For some reason though we seem to think that this is STREAMLINING out lives, one less thing we have to deal with, meaning the watch. NOW we have a phone AND a pocket watch, then we get rid of our notebooks by getting a PALM PILOT phone or a blackberry. Now we have a watch AND a phone AND an address book AND a notepad. Al this leading up to the iPhone, soon to be a ubiquitous part of many people's lives and to replace the Camera as the definitive High school graduation present.

We are STREAMLINING our lives, drafting opportunity on the information superhighway on the high banking of our future. OK...the racing metaphors are the pits, so sue me.

We are doing it to our language as well. "What's going on" becomes "'sup", "You are showing disrespect to me" become "YOU be DISSING me". The latter expression always makes me feel like you are at the dinner table and being served, as in "I am dissing out the mashed potatoes as fast as I can!". What we are doing to the language is a subject for a whole BLOG but as we excise elegance and form from our speech in favor of sounding like rappers and making texting easier 4 U I wonder are we STREAMLINING or just getting lazy?

The same thing applies to our relations with each other as well. In Germany one outspoken (twice Divorced) member of the Government want to make marriage EXPIRE after 7 years. It is like you have to RE-ENLIST or RENEW THE OPTION on your life rather than work at actually try to sustain it. It gives the UP-AND-COMIN-MOVERS-AND-SHAKERS in the world an easy out when they tire of trying to remain civil to someone they ostensibly promised their heart to just a short span of months before.

In the name of efficiency and STREAMLINING we have become more self absorbed, self centered and cynical. In the world we live in today, dark, oppressive and mannerist as it is, those qualities seem inevitable, but that doesn't mean we have to accept them. I won't mourn the passing of love, compassion, devotion and loyalty because I do not believe that their demise in inevitable. In fact I believe that their conservation is something WORTH fighting for.

So how do I start doing this? Well I use more syllables when I talk. I choose to write with a pen (and write clearly and legibly) rather than a mouse hooked up to a word processor. When I watch a movie I refrain form using the fast forward button (well, maybe not with PORN). When I go the store I will not burn extra gas by orbiting for half an hour looking for a parking space so I don't have to walk those extra 15 yards. Finally I will continue to strap on my new watch friend with the broad ANALOG face before I my boots hit the pavement outside my door.

Wanna know what my Sperm count is?

...one more perfect summer afternoon.

These days, deep within the nebulae of friends where I orbit, there is a question that comes up at least once a day. It is a simple question with no single answer. Each person's response in different, from one another and often from day to day. It is five words that define chaos theory, the butterfly's wing that causes hurricane Katrina.

What are you looking for?

Throughout my life I have asked myself that question, now I ask my friends and they have picked up on the puzzle. I hear them out of the corner of my ear asking others the same thing.

What are you looking for?

When I was young I was looking to be old enough to drive a car.
Then I was looking to be attractive enough to catch the eye of THAT GIRL in drama club.
As I finished school and moved into the world I was looking for the patht that would bring me fame, fortune and happiness.

I must add here that when each of us has to face this question it is a safe bet to assume that at least part of the response is a frame for happiness. No one seeks to be unhappy, unhappiness seeks us.

As I have grown older though my own response to this question has become more and more abstract. For the longest time I have, when asked, said that I was merely looking for one more perfect summer day.

I can remember the day I am thinking of too. It was summer in Rialto, the little town in So Cal where I lived until I was 9. I got up early that day, it was summer after all and the day was not to be wasted, and climbed into my "baggies" (swimming Trunks) that I had left in a damp heap next to my bed the previous evening. Pulled on a t-shirt and when out to eat a bowl of Sugar Pops before climbing back into my "summer home", the dough boy swimming pool in the back yard. Morning was spent making said pool into a whirlpool and riding the current like a sea turtle in the gulf stream.

While I was in the pool one of my Mom's friends came over to visit, the one that gave me those odd feelings in my stomach when she smiled at me, and she made a point of coming out to say hello. I was nine and it seemed perfectly normal to me, consider that when I grew up I was going to marry her anyway.

I got tired of the pool just about the time my friend Steve Brown showed up and asked if I wanted to go to "recreation down at our school, W.A. Meyers. During the summer kids could pay a dime and go into the auditorium at the school and play ping pong, or shuffle board or board games o could jsut hang out and look at each other. The latter was a favorite of all the guys as we were tryng to come to grips with these odd feelings (like the one I mentioned earlier) that looking at the girls gave us. Some of the guys who had older brothers, like me, introduced new words to our vocabulary and they brought in concepts we didn't understand but were intriguing nonetheless.
For their part the girls looked back at us in an alluring way that told us that they knew something we didn't. It was the first blush of my experience with the feminine mystique and it carried with it heady promises.

S the day got warmer there was ice cream to be eaten, chocolate malt off of flat wooden spoons that came wrapped like medical appliances in crisp white paper. You had to eat it fast because even though it cam out of the cooler hard a glacial slope the desert sun soon put an end to that. If it drip on your skin, inevitably brown like a coconut this late in the summer, so much the better. The rivulets of Carnation chocolate cooled you down, tasted just as good (or better) liked off your fingers and gave the grass a place to stick when you went to roll in it.

Late afternoon and we were bored so we drug out a skull and cross bones kite that survived in my closet since March (the apex of the kiting year). The hat Sanat Ana rolled in off the desert and lifted Jolly old Rodger high in air so hot I wondered why the paper skull didn't burst into flames and plummet to earth like a Nazi fighter. In a few minutes the kite was high and stable enough to tie off to a sprinkler head. Then we laid on our back in the freshly shaved brown grass, hands behind our heads, watching the tail made of old sweat sock dance to and fro.

Dinnertime came, breaded veal cutlets, french cut green beans and mashed potatoes. Then an hour or two of TV, laying on the floor with my Dad. He would always lay paralell to the creen and I would rest my chin on the curve of his rib while we watched. Dad would smoke and I would drink root beer. Eventually I would doze and later find myself in my PJs in my bed with the vinyl cowboy riding the bucking bronco headboard.

That was my perfect day for so long I cannot remember. It is still a good answer to the question even though these days my mind has edited things once again, cutting back more detail in an emotional shorthand. Now my perfect happiness is simpler still, like moment caught in a strobe light. It is not so descriptive anymore, more visceral and simplistic.

What am I looking for now?

Velvet and stars
Fingertips and nails gently touching my shoulder in passing
Smooth contours that my hand can recall as if they were cast in flesh to follow them.
Hair conditioner all night long
Tea and talk
A smile that speaks volumes
Whispers in the darkness that give way to gentle breathing.

The answers seems so simple but attaining them is no easier then chasing that one summer afternoon.

You must be THIS TALL to live this life

I don't know if it is a badge of honor or not but I am JUST old enough to remember ticket books at Disneyland. Although we lived in Southern California during the early years of my life we didn't make it over to Anaheim to "The Magic Kingdom" hardly at all. The first (and only) time I went with my family I was too short to do any of the really FUN rides, thus my much coveted "E" tickets were passed off to my brother and sister and I was relegated to an interminable number of passes through PETER PAN along with the joyful motion sickness that came from the whirling Tea cups. That ride, along with bricks of Pink Popcorn gave rise to the delightful euphemism "Technicolor Yawn".

Now for those of you who don't know what the HELL I am talking about I shall elaborate. It used to be that when you went to Dizzyland you paid for park admittance then bought tickets books for the attractions inside. The tickets had letters on them, A through E. "A" ticket rides were simple and cheesy, kids stuff. The higher the tickets got the more exciting the thrills to be had. All of these culminated with the famed "E Ticket", the holy grail of all tickets. Two for a book and worth ten times their weight in chocolate gold coins. Many was the kid who would find himself at the end of the day clutching a handful of ragged booklets full of "A" tickets and longing for the joys of the morning when their were "E Tickets" to be had and life was good.

So life affirming was this pasteboard wonder that it has given rise to exciting or amazing aspects of our lives as being described as being an "E Ticket Ride". If this is the case then we can only surmise that less amazing events in our lives are relegated to the lower level tickets. The first day of school might be a "D" ticket, along with your first dance, first job etc. Christmases might run the gamut up and down the book, as well as relationships with members of the opposite sex (based on a lot of mitigating factors). Your first kiss, losing your virginity, the birth of your children would all have to be "E Ticket Rides".

The sad thing though is that so many of us get to a stage in our lives where we look at our ticket books, dogeared and worn by being clutched in sweaty hands while we travel through our lives, and realize that we have used up all the lower tickets and only HAVE the "E Tickets" left. The trouble is that by the time we realize it we are all too set in our ways and stolid that we gaze at these remarkable "fun coupons" through rheumy eyes and wish we had used them when we could have really enjoyed them. Those people long for the lost "A" and "B" coupons, they want to ride the ponies again and will never work up the nerve to brave the Matterhorn.

I have been told that I have done a lot in my life. I have raced cars, sailed on racing sloops of San Francisco bay and taken flying lessons in aerobatic airplanes. I have lunched with famous people and called some my friends. I have worked on amazing projects with amazing people and scaled the spires of my field. I have an incredible son who it has been my pleasure to have an active hand in raising, of everything I have done he is the most satisfying. Some people would say that I have had more than my share of "E Ticket Rides".

Trouble is I want more...and just now all I have are "A" tickets.

Add to this that there are people I know, people who mean more to me than they can ever comprehend, who are at this very moment standing and staring at their "E Tickets" and refusing to use them. To them the pony rides, the ones that circle round and round and never get anywhere, seems safe and secure. The Matterhorn is tall, scary and beyond comprehension. They refuse to see that a life lived without the Matterhorn is a life un-lived but rather survived.

What can I do? I guess all I can do is get some more pink popcorn and go ride the teacups with someone I don't like.

Let He who is without a Partner Cast the first Aspersion

Moving through my life, moving through my day, moving through the vagaries and pain that comes with my situation I keep hearing something from a substantial number of my friends. These are not CASUAL friends, rather they are friends who have known me for a long time and have watched me flail about like a drunken Zombie looking for some sort of happiness and fulfillment. They have watched me tilt at feminine windmills in the past, comforted me when my lance was shattered and the knight of the mirrors showed me how truly pathetic I was (or felt I was anyway). At moment like these my friends will place a caring hand on my shoulder or pour me another cup of coffee and say:

"You need to find a friend in yourself, you need to be happy alone before you can be happy with someone else!"

The funny thing about all of these friends is that they all share a single trait in common. ALL of them are on my "don't call after 6 PM" list. The reason for that is pretty damn simple:

They all HAVE SOMEONE.

I will go even further and say they all HAVE someone and HAVE HAD someone for sometime. They are all in secure relationships with partners who share similar aspirations and goals. To go further, since most of them have been my friends since BEFORE they had these relationships I can safety venture that in few, if any, of them did I EVER see th kind of strength and resolve that they all want me to pull out of a hat like some birthday party magician. Some floundered from relationship to relationship like their emotional gyros were outta whack. Some traded an old relationship for a new one, some have been together so long that they cannot remember what it was like to be alone (or if they do it is a memory as old as Senior Ball or grad trips to Disneyland).

She and I argued about this very point long and hard, her being of the "you gotta suck it up and be strong" school of thought and me of the "...it's a sorry bastard indeed who never allows himself to care enough to lose a bit of himself in a "We" or "Us" relationship. No resolutions were had, many words were exchanged.

Now you have to understand that I postulate that there is a difference between "need" and being "needy". If you are NEEDY that means you cannot survive without the aid of someone else, either tangibly or physically. If you NEED someone though, that means that you know who you are and what you want, that when you find the right person you are wise enough to know that if you let go of just a little of yourself that the benefits you reap will be worth it. It is like a chemical reaction that yields more energy that it requires, the combination of two hearts, two spirits, two people becomes an "us" that is greater than the sum of its parts.

In the same way that I believe that people from Canada never actually hear themselves say "EH?" I believe that people who have an established bond like that are pretty much unaware of it. They take it for granted and don't recognize, or allow themselves to recognize, that other people want what they already have so badly that they will go to amazingly extreme lengths to get it. They are oblivious to the fact that something so simple in their own lives could be so valuable to someone who doesn't have it.Add to this that everyone loves to make decisions for other people. They are like that because if they spend their time assessing other peoples shortcoming they won't actually have to deal with their own.

I'm sorry but given those stricture I have to say that as much as I love those friends their perceptions are as valid as a Priest's views on sex.

One foot in front of the other. Tick Tock, tick Tock. I am learning who I, in fact, am by living my life alone. I am learning not to define myself by the judgment of others, or upon other people's presence (or absence) from my life. At the same time though I have been alone long enough, even when I wasn't "alone", to know when something comes along that makes me better and brings me that much closer to the person I want to be.

That thing might be my work, or a hobby. It might be a place or ritual. Then again it might be part and parcel of having a certain person in my life, the nitro to my glycerin. The presence of THAT person in my life, in whatever capacity, make me just a little stronger, just a little taller, just a little happier. Their presence makes the days brighter and the burdens lighter. Their presence makes me just that much closer to the man I want to be.

What kind of fool would not NEED that in their life?

Tick Tock Tick Tock

...it has been over a week since last I spoke to her. The sky has remained where it should be. the sun is implacable in its travels. My lungs remain functional, one breath at a time. My heart isn't broken so much as it is bruised, deeply, the kind of bruise a baseball bat renders to bone. The kind of bruise that paints a purple madras pattern on you skin and fades, inexplicably, to yellow. The kind of bruise that is hot to the touch for weeks and even when it fades a phantom pain remain for a longtime, nerves that heal but never are truly convinced that they are.

I don't have any clocks in my apartment, the FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, but I might as well have. The seconds march by and my mind creates its own background beat. I would say it was timed the pulse in my veins but my heart, wounded as I have mentioned, would be hard pressed to keep so reliable a rhythm. Still the ticking seems linked to the pulse and flow of the blood rushing through my eardrums, like emotional tinitinitus.

That is not to say I cannot be distracted from the beat, but even when I am with other people or my mind is otherwise occupied it is there. Like an elusive spice you cannot name in a dish you eat everyday. Then again , maybe it is the absence of that spice. I can't really say.

My old friend the road knows about this though and what solace I do find I find with her. Bending the horizon on my motorcycle, visor half open to sample the scents I pass through. The emotional metronome is stifled in the smell of eucalyptus warming in the last gasp of Indian summer, the murky tang of low tide and the comforting scent of hot tires and a hotter engine. Shifting, bending, braking. Lather, rinse, repeat. Warm compounds and physics allowing me to assume angles that my mind thinks impossible.

The ride has to come to an end though and when the engine is quit once again the ticking of cooling metal blends into that familiar rhythms. Before I am out of my gear the ghost is there again and my heart is struggling to get comfortable once again like a beaten hound in too small a bed.

Against the beat are the usual questions. What is she doing? Does she ever think of me? How could this happen? No answers come, or ever will, it is just the way of things.

The passing of a love is like the passing of a relative. There is suddenly a great hole in your life in the shape of the other person. You rage against the injustice of it all and shake your fist at god. There is no answer, there is only the beating of your heart and the passing of the days. First the yellow of the bruise will fade, then the purple. Eventually you will seem as you were before, maybe even better as you learn to armor yourself. In the end though only you will know that there are flaws in that armor and tender spots beneath them.

Tick Tock Tick Tock