As soon as you are born, you start cheating death

(or how I stopped a world war only to start a civil war...)

Everything sat perfectly in the box. Pink and red tissue paper lined the bottom. A small box, with a hand painted yellow bird, sat in one corner. A second corner held two boxes of white wine, equal to three glasses, purchased at the liquor store of earliest convenience. A box of conversation hearts laid upside down in a third corner. The one way tickets sat in the forth.

Things don't often come together in such nice packages. The pieces hadn't fit so well lately. There had been corners, or edges, or a cluster of four or five right in the middle that just couldn't be found. But this one, this one had everything. The thought, the moment, the place, the joy and of course the heart. It was the type of scene that a printer company would use to illustrate the superior printing ability of their product versus another. It was rare.

Another pair of tissue paper found its way on top of the contents. The proper creases and wrinkles were added to imply age, forethought and importance. A small tear was added; the corner of the box of the conversation hearts poked through, a glimpse into the future.

Packing tape had been purchased on the way home that afternoon just for this occasion. It had to be sealed. It had to be safe. It had to be secure.

It had to suffocate.

The tape was too tight. It was too secure. It was too safe. There was too much thought. There was too much effort. Too much fucking heart. The water was rising. This was sinking. There were holes everywhere. Small. Fucking huge. Some in between. Some day there would be a sort of monument here, a stump, just past the fence, by the park, next to the stone that commemorated the tree, that gave shade in the past, before this was ever here; before the tree fell into the ocean.

It gave in. It gave up. It did it's version of walking away. No fight. No yell. No tears. No pain. No hope. No chance.

But it got a plaque.

And what did we get?

Street corners and the steps between

There is still a burning in my calves. Its not from dehydration, which it is sometimes, but from the series of steps I have been cramming into the previous 10 days. I've been in four different airports. I missed one flight and had another make an emergency landing. I walked all over Chicago, LAX, and parts of Santa Barbara. I had my heart trampled on somewhere along the 14 and restored in a good friends kitchen. He used booze and kind words to patch it back together. I made late night phone calls to answering machines that got intercepted. I smoked what seems like a hundred cigarettes. I shared meals and toasts with friends old and new. I danced with a woman older than my mother and girl who drank like she used to. I made plans and promises and broke both I am sure. It was exhausting.

And I am not tired one bit.

More life, I think that is what I need. So I'm going to do it.

When you could be here, you are slipping away...

Football season is almost over. That has to do with this, and it has to do with nothing. I have a heart full of things to say, a mouth full of things to discuss, a soul full of things to be ashamed of, but today is not those day. Today is the day for this...

I passed a funeral procession today. Well, almost.

The Peppers I spend my time these days is a lot like the Pepper's I used to spend my time. The one where I complained about facial hair and bosses and I made mixes to loose my job to. They are remarkably similar, at least in lay out.

Today, just before I got out, the small part of the restaurant was filled with people. They all knew each other, or at least knew of each other. And they all wore black.

There are specifics to this that I do not know. There are rumors about these people that I have heard, but this is neither the time or place to talk about why they were sitting together in an awkward combination at the Pepper's that employs me. I just know that, for the few hours on this Saturday, before the end of football season, they were united by something given to them by a man. He might have been a boy, he might have been a giant. We are all of these things at various times. But whatever this man was: boy, god, fuck-up, lover, cousin or friend; these people all thought it best to remember him on this Saturday. And I too, will remember him, in my own way.

I have been fortunate in not knowing the sting of death, personally, in these years I am stringing together. I feel like I have mentioned this before, in this place, but I am not sure. But this is what I have, for him, the gentlemen who probably left us too soon. The fucked up thing is that we don't know if it was too soon or too late...

30th street east was very close to the house I grew up in. On that street sat two landmarks that I have been thinking about all day, before the bad news, before the funeral, before I got out of bed. They were both places of death. Maybe someone died there, I am not sure, but they were dead. I knew this at seven, when I first walked through the desert to them, to figure out their geography, to make up a history that would suit them, now that they were almost gone. One was a large concrete silo/fireplace and some woodwork. It had to be a house, no, a home. There was a father, he worked to hard, and a mother, who loved to much, and one day it collapsed under its own weight. The same thing happened to my parents, but our house stood up, I saw it the other day. It freaked me out. The other place had a concrete pool that I used to try to skateboard in. There were problems everywhere. One, I was a horrible skateboarder. Two, there was dirt everywhere, and no lip. Some kid told me once that was where they kept their water, they didn't have a well. That seemed insane to me. Evaporation in the desert would have made any effort worthless. I guess it doesn't matter now. Why?

All of those places got torn down. The two I mentioned, the rest I didn't; they are all gone. They got replaced by track homes in the real estate boom. We all know that went bust, now those homes sit empty, and the places of desert life before it was a life are gone. No kid is going to wander out and find the remenants of a home from 90 years previous. Not like I did, but what is the actual difference. The places I held dear didn't mean to me what they meant to the people who lived in my favorite places to visit, and neither my home to them.

There was some point after high school, but before I became the person that I am most days of the week, that my father was in a funeral. It was a guy he worked with. The name escapes me, if I even knew it before he passed, but he is dead. My dad picked me up for something, I couldn't even tell you if I had to, I don't remember what it was. But in the car, a car I would later drive into the ground and get 600 dollars from the state from, was still a sticker in the window that said "procession". It was very strange to me that people had decided that mass producing a sticker for a funeral procession would be a great way to make money, but they did, and they did. This story doesn't seem to make much sense right now, but let me try to tie this all together...

Death doesn't show his face in my life that often. That makes me happy. But everything seems to fall to commerce. I was amazed at the number of people who showed up for this man's funeral. I am sure there were more than who showed up to Peppers, but they all seemed to care. And I think they all cried.

And that is all I want.

A lot of tear stained faces.

Because they will take EVERYTHING else away from us.

Everything.

My First Shot

It was my junior year in high school. I was 16. It was Easter break. Not spring break. Spring break was brought into the lexicon by people who want to remove all aspects of Jesus Christ from American culture, the same people who write x-mas on their Christmas decoration boxes after the holiday is done. (See? I can totally pull off all that crazy christian school stuff I was subjected to all those years!)

My friend Nick and I were across the street from his house, at his neighbor Cade's place. We had bought weed (for the first time!) a couple of days before and we were picking it up from Cade. He was nice enough to break it all down for us, so we didn't smoke any stems or anything. He probably took some for himself, but that's what happens when you let someone else handle your drugs. We were probably going to go BBQ or something else that day, but at the moment we had nothing going on.

Cade was 18, a senior at another high school, and lived alone. Yup. He had his own little 2 bedroom house. He was artsy, dark, and a little nuts. He blew away my 16 year old mind. And he got laid ALL THE TIME. By very attractive girls, and women.

So Nick and I are standing around in his bedroom, probably listening to Dr. Octagon, hearing some story about SOMA's, fucking, and hamburger meat. (Maybe.) We decide to leave, so Cade opens his sock drawer to get our weed, and there is a bottle of liquor there too. I say "What's that?"

Goldschlager.

Cade tells us about it. I had never heard of it before. My family like their Jack Daniels. And Smirnoff. And Beefeater. And Bud Light. But not this stuff! Cade asks if we'd like some. I decline, but then, he sells it.

"That stuff floating around in there, that's real gold."

Done. I say sure.

Warm. Straight from the bottle. Goldschalger.

My shot virginity was gone.

I coughed, rub my chest and shook my head. (I still do that.) There were gold flakes on my lips.

It was wonderful.

We said our goodbye's and thank you's and I drove home, buzzed, from my first shot of liquor.

5 Things I Dig About Jesus

I was all prepared to do a 5 things I dig about Jessie Spano from Saved by the Bell, but it was stupid.

5 Things I Dig about Jesus

1. His reporting on DRUDGE REPORT. In addition to being a carpenter, Jesus minored in inflammatory right-wing journalism at university. Amazing what someone can accomplish when they put their mind to it. I wonder what else he did those years no one wrote about him.
2. He was in that band, with Mary Chain.
3. His dry-erase marker art in junior high school. He could make stuff look 3-D, with the special glasses he carried around in his pocket, of course.
4. Catholic Girls. They exist because of him, and I exist because of them.
5. He deleted his myspace account. To much baby-momma-drama dragging him down. He's an example to us all.

I tag Bert at The Sounds I Make. He is lazy, now he has something to blog about.

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