Broken World

Satellite Wishes (I Wish I May, I Wish I Might)

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03 Runaway Train

From a God’s eye view it all must seem so silly.  Lines drawn separating one person or place from another, borders, boundaries, the yours and mine of desire and regret—the willing, the wasted, the reluctant and those forgetting that we all end up old, ugly and woeful, but hey, ugly ain’t so bad once you accept that at best we’re all sideshow attractions in a traveling freak-show in this two-bit carnival life.  Oddballs, freaks and outcasts have always been my companions of choice—-so if you’re still my pal, buddy or sweetheart, then yeah, I’m talking bout you buster.  We all have our own personal measure of beauty, but baby you give me that sweetest ache deep in my chest, just like that feeling I get when I awake to a clear snow-covered mountain morning.  You make growing old not such a bad prospect when I know I have you as my mirrored companion—-you pump collagen into this weary heart of mine.  I’ll always follow you down.

Everybody’s scuttling about to secure their share of food and shelter, maybe even love scraps or its ghostly shadow locked within ones own pleading soul.  Down here, it’s a macro playhouse of clogged freeways, early morning skyscrapers blooming above the yellowish haze, the broken, the woebegone, those lucky few with the taste of a new kiss still on their damp lips, old creepy guys in shiny new cars, commuters waiting on meaningless buses taking them to meaningless jobs, lonely guys on desolate Nevada desert roads seeking something just over that next ridge, plain Jane looking girls clutching romance novels with their ragged dog-eared dreams, a dog pissing on someones perfectly manicured rose garden, mountain thunderstorms, salty sea scented beaches, coconut smelling  sun tanned bitches, grimy unshaven bums on skid row, blue birds on telephone wires joyfully singing above a gated community, breached levee’s drowning someones hard-earned promise land, someones first breath, another’s last—-uh-hum?  Mister, most are gonna lie to ya, but not me—no sir!

All the wise ones, like the giggling Dali Lama, chubby Buddha, rabble rousing Jesus wear that same smug lil grin.   They’re like a pack of good ole boys sharing some private inside joke.  They know the jokes on us as we do our twisted dance with Maya.  I feel my time slipping away, what will you do with your time here.  I do know this, that regardless of my foolish carrying on’s, I’m a lucky guy, to be chosen, to be alive, to be wandering this blue spinning sphere—-a temporary oasis for those trapped by space and time, a far-flung and forgotten Eden set against a backdrop of flickering lights and mumbled prayers.    I try not to forget this within each dissolving moment.  I stare up at the night sky and I can’t tell the satellites from twinkling stars, but they’re all oh so pretty—and I wonder what becomes of my satellite wishes?

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Cages, Walls and Prisons

18 Track 18  Soundtrack to blog.

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A good friend of mine recently went to prison.  I hate to say it, but this news came as no huge surprise.  You see, he had always lived his life behind one wall or another—–a wall of alcohol and drugs (until he got help and quit) a wall of pretension and success (until he lost his business and money) a wall of arrogance and deceit (until his fraud was exposed) a wall of emotional insulation (until he was filleted and spiritually gutted).  In jail there are no walls between you and yourself, the only walls there are the ones keeping the rest of the world out. The prisoner and his keeper are forced to coexist—-hope—like pardons, float just out of reach.

Sometimes when I consider this life, I see each of its participants living out their existence where “they need to be”—-please don’t misinterpret this as meaning “where they may want themselves to be”.  Perhaps its arrogant of me to say such a thing, who am I to know what another may or may not want or need?  I am arrogant.  Arrogance comes with the territory of being a writer.  A writer is the last unwitting peddler of authenticity for all crumbling cultures.  To be a good writer, you need to have something to offer, something new and interesting to say, a revelation to shine a light upon.   As for me and my writings, I intend to confound the smart asses, frustrate the conventionalist and piss off the righteous. Cause, if I mix the colors just right, I might create a picture that becomes a window for another to peer through.  I always wonder the same thing about others, “Tell me what you see—what you feel?”

I loved a girl once.  And maybe she loved me back, these things are illusive and subjective—or more than likely, I’m just plain hard to love.  Love melts in your mouth not your hands, and it’s very difficult to see whats going on inside another’s mouth, let alone within their heart.  M&Ms lie, they all look different, but they all taste the same.  She took me to her home, a place where she kept her clothes, slept, stocked her cupboards and fridge, where she dreamt her dreams, hid her tears, bathed, put on her make up and stored her smiles.  I tried once to live with her, but my stuff cluttered up her neat organizational scheme of things.  I left before the walls she was constructing became to high for me to scale.

There’s a place in the High Sierra’s known as Desolation Wilderness, what a mystic and daunting land. A place of stark granite walls, gnarled pines and hidden alpine lakes, a place where one can either lose themselves or become re-aquatinted with what was meant to be.  It is here that I sort out my devils from my angels and decide who is the lion and whom is the lion tamer.   The lion cage is where I go to discover what comprises the alchemy of my soul.  And I will tell you this, it takes a lot of courage to put my head inside that lions mouth.

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Casting Spells

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Lets share a cigarette baby, there is something sexy about having you partake in my bad habits, why?  I don’t know, does it matter?  Lets drink a couple bottles of wine and we can say things that we make up along the way, just little thoughts about this or that, it doesn’t really matter.  We can stumble down some dark small town streets or take our clothes off and stand in the sun on some vacant summer beach, like the one that runs across from the railroad tracks out highway one north between SF and Santa Cruz.  But maybe you got better things to do these day, I sure as hell don’t.  Do you got any new tunes on your iPod that you can turn me on to?   We always like the same artists, the odd ones no one else has ever heard of.  Pass me that cigarette again baby—-where’s that cork screw? I don’t want to feel like shit tomorrow, but fuck it, tomorrow is another fabled world away, put your coat on and I’ll tie these unruly shoes of mine and we’ll go outside and walk around, stumble about and I’ll tackle you and bring you down to the earth next to me.   And we’ll laugh at this life with its promised death and we’ll pretend today is our last day, maybe it is, who knows, who cares, cause sweetness, right now it don’t matter.  Why do people die, they get taken away from us, I don’t like that, I hate that.  But you’re alive today with me.  Lets go get high and then eat cinnamon graham crackers with sweet Nutella chocolate spread all over them.  And then, I’ll make you-up stories as we lay in one another’s arms staring up at the ceiling and we’ll see all these undreamed-of-things tumbling from my mind, hanging right there within the emptiness above us, as if they were real, as if they belonged only to you and me—–cause imagination and fantasy is the spell that once cast, holds love together.  Come on darlin, come on along with me and we’ll just keep goin on like this.  That wouldn’t be so bad now, would it?

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Life Between Two Shakes (and how we spend our days—)

They call it retirement, but the word sounds so—so—how should I put it—-um—ah—-old? The word retired carries with it a tone of being “tired” as in, re-“tired”. By definition the word seems to mean “tired and then tired again” (now that’s freaking tired). It conjures up visions of someone sitting alone on an old tattered Chesterfield with an afghan covering their varicose veined legs as they blankly stare at a rerun of Wheel of Fortune. An ageless Vanna White smiles out at the audience of drooling geezers as she flips over another vowel. The phrase at the bottom of the TV screen reads, “Frogs in biology 101?” The excited contestant hits his button and shouts out, “I’ll solve the puzzle! What is, stiff and waiting to croak.” Now that’s a tad bit harsh, but being new to this élite group known as retiree’s has taken some getting use to.

Recently at a dinner party a balding gentleman with a first trimester pot belly inquired, “So, what do you do?” Awkward silence. I grimace, lick my upper lip and then say it. “Oh, I’m retired”. More awkward silence. He smiles and then looks me up and down as if to see if I am missing any of my appendages. I can see the thoughts ticking away in his worker-bee mind, “This guy is either very lazy or very rich.” Then he try’s to feel me out with some of his own self disclosures. “Oh hell, I’d like to retire too, but I cant’ afford to pull the trigger yet.” This is a guy with a 2012 Navigator and 2011 BMW in his garage, lives in a 3,000 sq. ft. home with just him and his wife, has a pool, hot tub and belongs to the Racket Club. I smile, “I didn’t pull the trigger, I just decided to take the bullets out of the gun, in other words, I choose to down size a bit.” He stares at me with eyes of pity that’s usually reserved for panhandlers and bums. He gives me a fatherly pat on the shoulder and says, “Ah, you’ll be fine. I’ll buy ya a round of golf at the country club someday.” I give him the hang loose hand sign, “Yeah, how bout we play this Monday, there’s hardly any one on the course during the week and the green fee’s are half price.” He answers me without skipping a beat, “Oh no, I couldn’t do that. We’re in the middle of mid year projections and our new revenue production targets have been increased by 15 % for this fiscal year.”  The office-speak creates a queasy feeling in the pit of my stomach.  “I’m putting in fifty, sixty hours a week right now to try to keep the workload manageable.” The lines on his forehead clench into a tight little fist. “Jesus, the road work on the inter-state has increased my commute to an hour and a half each way. Not to mention the price of gas.  Damn, that V8 of mine is guzzling down the gas like its water.” He nervously rattles the ice in his tumbler of Scotch and then throws it back in one quick gesture of defiance.

More awkward silence—-. I extend my hand to give him a parting farewell. We struggle for a second trying to figure out if we should give each other the “bro shake” or the formal “businessman grip”. We end up with a kind of uncomfortable middle of the road handshake that is indicative of our disjointed conversation. “Well, stop by the house and maybe we can take the kids for a hike or go to the beach or something.” He nods and gives me a noncommittal, “Yeah, sure, sounds good.” I give it one more try, “No I really mean it. We can get up at the crack of dawn and hike up Mt. Tallac.” He only provides me his partial attention as he hastily appeases the annoying ringtone from his iPhone. Ironically the little device is playing the song, “Help” by the Beatles.

As I turn to walk away he grabs me by the arm and motions for me to wait. He quickly taps out a text message and once again addresses me. “Maybe we can hike Mt. Tellac. I’ll email you and then put it on my outlook calendar and its a done deal. By the way, what is the elevation at the summit?”  It is my turn to look him up and down as I respond with a  bit of  trepidation in my voice, “It’s above 10,000 feet.” He sucks in his gut as he pulls up his Dockers, “We can do this bro!” I smile, “I think you’re right man. Sometimes ya got to get above all the crap to enjoy the view.”

As I drove home from the party in my 2002 Outback (4 cylinder), I am reminded of a quote by Annie Dillard, “How we spend our days is, of course, how we spend our lives.”

Disclaimer: This blog is by no means insinuating that working into ones golden years is a bad thing. In fact, many people love to continue working well into their later years, as their profession is their passion—and this is a beautiful thing. This piece is intended to examine how two individuals with different perspectives seek to find common ground and a mutual understanding of the other’s lifestyle. With that said, I accept the fact that subjective observations are biased, but that comes with the territory of being a writer.