a prarie home companion

Tue, 03 Feb 2009 17:56:07 GMT

Some nights when I was bored, towards the end of last summer, I’d go through the “casual encounters” section of Craig’s List just to see what I could find. After enough time with it, I saw a few good ones—detailed articulations of a particular illicit fantasy, and pleas for some reader to act on it for them. It was a pool for the desperate— or at least the desirous— readers and posters alike.

One male requested a man who could have oral sex with his girlfriend while a German Sheppard licked between her legs. One girl wanted to carry out a rape fantasy. She wanted a strange man to come through the door, without saying anything, without making introductions, have sex with her while she resisted, and then leave without saying anything. Come to think of it, there were several like that.

That summer I worked as a dockhand at the lake downtown. Every morning for a few hours I would feel energized by the presence of my coworkers and the cool breeze skimming across the water. It was a welcome break from the solitude of the night before, but by the late afternoon, the sun had gotten too hot, the wind subsided. Sitting on the docks waiting for patrons started to get dull and to pass the time I’d take my turn putzing around the water in a high-power motor boat and calling it part of my job description.

“I think I’ll go on a lake check,” one of us would announce to a small crowd of half-alert staff. It meant nothing to the person saying it except to say they were killing time. The breeze was dead and it was only fitting to make it again: get on that fifteen-foot Boston Whaler and kick it into full power, blaze along past the imported Venetian gondolas to wake a young and struggling family in the leaky pedal boat we had rented them with a smile not ten minutes prior and past them, a slightly less enthused pair of yuppies, still sporting the expensive sunglasses and quick-dry visors they wore like professionals when they first came in but looking considerably less enviable as they floundered in their attempt to sail the dead zone around the corner between all the tall buildings. Ours was a city job, in the best sense of the phrase. Our patrons were as diverse as our staff: a cross-section of the people whose modest ambitions and stunted dreams had made this a city at all.

“Yes sir, no problem. Sure thing. Yep, you bet. Transom’s busted? We’ll look into it. The pedals don’t work? Yeah, they do that sometimes. Have a nice day. See you next time.”

On the main dock, there was a rack of red canoes taller than I was, and one day in the hour before the end of my shift, just a little tired and assuming no one was watching me, I put my cheek to the highest one and closed my eyes, running a hand across the smooth surface, warm with the sun.

the news.

Wed, 23 Jan 2008 04:57:02 GMT

I seem to have trouble keeping things in perspective.

My flight got "rescheduled" to two days prior to when I thought it would be. Suddenly what I presumed would be an extra two days of preparation went up into thin air. I freaked out for a second and did what I normally do when I freak out - I call someone I'm close to and whine a lot. I express that sincere sense of upset that I feel in that instance, meditating on my situation.

I am upset.

But I'm going to forgive this one, too. My dad gave me the wrong date, and now I'm going on the right one. So after an hour and a half adjustment period ... I'm alright. Life goes on, grandly, as it always should. What I left behind will still be there. People will remember me, and think of me (just my hunch), and good for them if I'm right.

You know, it's amazing how many flaws even the seemingly most perfect relationship can have in it. People are just so different than one another. I keep forgetting that, and it keeps biting me in the ass, as I sit there and wonder how it is that two people don't fit together like parts in a German motor. I'm not sure what time does to that, if it makes two people more alike, or more used to the difference. What can I say? I'm impatient. I want things to just ... fit. To just be right , and easy when its looks like they are.

Someone (a conservative) said that the primary difference between liberals and conservatives was that liberals believed in the perfectability of man. Of course, when you assume that one can be perfected, you're really going by your own standard of perfection. No one claims to be perfect themselves, though, so you're holding everyone else to a standard that even you can't match. I need to let that one go. I get that. Our differences make us stronger. A different perspective is helpful on nights that I don't feel myself.

So where does that leave me? Clearly, life is just beginning to get interesting for me. I have a lot to be happy about. I have friends and parents who care about me, do not cling to me, but still care about me. That's more than many can ask for. I should embrace that.

I embrace that.

Priorities for our generation

Mon, 14 Jan 2008 08:19:44 GMT

It's not to become a less "apathetic" generation. Anyone our age knows that everyone else is proportionally either as ignorant as any other slice of the American population or just as vested in its well being. Really, it just goes like this:

1) Fight global warming.

2) Look the the non-natural, anti-reality virtual world in its measly digital "eye", past any of its "practical applications," and very affirmatively say no.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/2008/jan/14/facebook

planning.

Wed, 02 Jan 2008 09:02:31 GMT

I'm considering writing a blog during my stay in Durban. I was against bringing my laptop, but I realize now I'll have to have it with me anyway, if only because I'll be taking classes. I should really get an adapter. But with that essential piece of hardware I suppose it'd be easy to keep an online journal of my doings, with a link on the Mac Weekly website and a regular ad, and maybe excerpts in print.

"Today I ventured out into one of the larger townships in the area, with a friend of course. They say if you're foreign they'll kill you if you step foot in the place, but with the right guide it's made possible to get around that warning. That doesn't mean one shouldn't be careful, of course, and I was, though within fifteen minutes of walking I soon realized I had no idea where I was. Completely at the will of my guides, I was left to keep my senses heightened, maintaining an eye on the ones around me and trying to build a map in my head of exactly where we were, all while still pretending to be tough, untouchable, and perfectly willing to do whatever they asked of me."

"Mozambique is an interesting place. The climate is just like Durban's - maybe a little hotter on most days but the sea breeze is usually within reach just as it is back in SA. But coming across the border one is more prone to notice the palm fronds, the expanses of sugar cane fields, and the beaches. There is something more tropical about the place, and for it, an added element of danger. Maybe it's that everyone speaks Portuguese. There's something more exotic about the place, more undiscovered, more malarial, but only then in the best sense possible.'"

Who the hell works the paper while abroad? Not many. Perhaps I'll be the first. It'll come in handy when, and if, I need to explain to people that I'm quitting my last semester. I have friends outside this shitty basement office, I'll say. I want to be with them. And I've done my part, damn it. It'll be true then as ever.

ranting.

Thu, 20 Dec 2007 23:44:55 GMT

Here's a guy for you:

Suketu Mehta. Lived in Bombay until he was ten, lived in New York for the rest of his life except for a short stint in college. Writes (well), and lands a job with the NY Times and eventually the New Yorker. Moves back to Bombay, writes a book about it.

Truthfully, the book was good, but not that good. Even so, the critics put him up there with Naipaul and Charles Dickens for his mastery of both India and English. He met with people whom most of us would never meet. But come on now, I've got the balls to do that, and I can write, as good as this guy. Promise.

So is he the epitome of success? Does he just have it made? To be thirty-something, married, with a bestselling book and everyone is telling you you are the best portraiteer of a modern city since Dickens? I hope he doesn't relish in his success. He certainly comes off modest though, so I would guess not.

Being a writer sometimes is just not that hard, at least any harder than what I do: live well, and write about it. Say something ... new about it, not just in terms of subject matter, though however more new that is, the less original you have to be in your style.

But who said I wanted to be a writer, anyway?

What Do You Have To Say? - Warning:

Tue, 11 Dec 2007 02:20:10 GMT

If you came with a warning label, what would it say?

View 503 Answers

Warning: too much soul. Aim away from face.

Reputations

Mon, 10 Dec 2007 03:03:15 GMT

Dear Alex,

I've been impressed by your journalistic diligence and balance, and so would be happy to serve as a reference on your behalf for this scholarship. Let me know the who when and where of a reference.

all best, -- David Chioni Moore, reputed scholar of African literature

...

Some bullshit.

http://media.www.themacweekly.com/media/storage/paper1230/news/2007/12/07/Opinion/Blaming.All.Of.Africas.Ills.On.African.Leaders.Ignores.History-3135807.shtml

http://media.www.themacweekly.com/media/storage/paper1230/news/2007/10/05/Opinion/An.Iranian.Weighs.In-3011677.shtml.

Wed, 17 Oct 2007 03:07:11 GMT

The plan now is Durban in the Spring. I'll get to Cape Town for a week or two sometime during the semester, go to Mozambique when I get the chance (I've always wanted to go to Mozambique), and after a while I'll get to Dubai somehow. People always used to hop rides on cargo ships and oil tankers and shit. The business has gotten too regulated to allow for that in recent decades, at least between most of the developing world. Maybe that wouldn't be the case on a transit to Dubai, as there is just so much illegal shipping in and out of there, not to mention a lot of organized crime and whatever else. Pay the right person anything, and he'll just let you come for the ride. And from there I can go to India.

what my roomates said.

Fri, 14 Sep 2007 02:04:12 GMT

So, the year in review (so far).

Lessons learned:
-Getting a fridge is one of the better things you can do for your apartment or apartment-style housing.
-Going to a staff meeting drunk is not always a good idea. Good thing I didn't get caught, just spoken to about mouthing off a little too much.
-The near-constant company of friends is usually enough to stave off the pressing, lonely sense of desire that can so often compel one to go out and find some ass, and the insidious way one treats themselves afterwards when the search comes back in vain, as it usually does.
-Friends who are willing to get you up in the morning are far nicer than an alarm clock.

Achievements unlocked:
+We've cooked curry for ourselves, with all scratch ingredients, a small cutting board, two pots and some cutco knives. Saturday, we'll do it again, hopefully with leftovers.
+I'm studying abroad next semester; I don't care what anyone says. The first application's almost done. I haven't had an essay in months that so wrote itself.
+There're a couple of stories, involving girls I met ten minutes to an hour and a half prior that I won't divulge on this forum. Good enough. Hell, that's an understatement.
+Ryan's coming in November; Chicago at the end of October.
+The show's back in another week.

And my roomates and I have been talking a lot. The four of us agreed this evening over shisha that the reason we didn't hang out with girls more was that we were just too damn awkward around them. It's funny how easy that is to admit to each other now. As much as we boast about our sexual conquests the romantic sides of our lives always get swept under the rug. No amount of alcohol has ever seemed to bring out those rawest of feelings we have for the ones we really think about to each other, and that's alright. Some things are best understood without being considered out loud.

Madhav told me that when he saw him two days after he graduated, Achel, king of the Indians at this school was reduced to silence. He was in such disbelief, even a little timid.
Oh, and tomorrow is Eurobeat. We talked about that, too.

"Partying just with people you don't even know, just getting drunk, being sleazy with a few girls and passing out, that's not a party man; that's shit. A party is like we do, when you stay up drunk as fuck until five, six. And the music is so loud you can feel it, like really feel it. And if there's girls there or not, you don't even care, and the next day you spend all day talking about the night before, because it was just ... so crazy."

Chagi boy ... I can't wait for Friday. I have a feeling at the end of this the whole two five semesters will be in perspective.

Mon, 03 Sep 2007 19:39:09 GMT

Alex Park is within the inner walls, intent on staying there, and without reason to leave.

Well that's not entirely true. Right now I'll confess what I will not so much to anyone who'll listen (the ones who inevitably have something to say in return), but to the occasional girl, and to the one room mate I have so far, and the eight to ten people who stream through every night so far.

No, we don't talk much about details, but the messages conveyed anyway are as honest as anything, and they yield there own optimistic messages.

Things look up, even if not exactly as I had intended. And that's how it'll go, at least as far as I can see, which, granted, is rarely as far as I would like.

encounters in the Techiverse

Sat, 25 Aug 2007 09:07:10 GMT

I gotta say, I just had one of the most hilarious conversations all summer not even five minutes ago with a seventy-year-old black guy I met on the street at the Transbay Terminal in San Francisco. We were just standing around there, waiting for the bus when he asked me to change a five. I couldn't, but I asked him if my line was passing through there anytime soon. It wasn't, so he just offered me a ride once we got to West Oakland BART, where his car was.

So anyway, first thing that happens when we get on the bus, is this Jamaican lady sitting across from him accuses him of having stalked her the whole way down.

"You're out of your mind," he says. "If you looked in the mirror you'd realize you're not even worth stalking." That wasn't even the funny part.

We got to his car, and he went off about how Jamaicans pit on black people here (true), how they steal social services and they're steeped in superstition. "They're all up in that voodoo shit," he says. But to balance out the conversation, he asks me what I do, and it goes from there. It comes out eventually that he used to teach art history at Tech, of all places, some thirty years ago, back when we had art history there. I told him about my art experiences there.

"Yeah, they had paper, sometimes. You had to bring your own pencil. That was how it was ... Mr. Chan."
"Oh, yeah," he says. "Stout Chinese guy, right?"
"Yeah. You know him?"
"Oh, I know Chan." In the same sort of tone he went off about Jamaican immigrants on, he goes into how lazy Chan is, how he hasn't achieved anything in his entire teaching career, and never intends to, except maybe to where that apron of his a little more and "bullshit a lot."
"He's stuck in the system," I said.
"Chan is stuck ... in Life. I was so surprised to find he had a daughter ... I mean that this person would be progressive enough to even, to even Screw" (his exact words). "I mean, to get a nut at all. Someone must have done that for him. I mean, someone must have."

the ride home

Thu, 23 Aug 2007 06:30:40 GMT

My favorite Yemeni gave me a ride home from the corner store tonight.

"You ever get shot on your neighborhood?" he asked.
"No, but I've been jumped a few times."
"No shit? On your street? You ever think about shooting those bastards?"
"Yeah, sure, sometimes."
"You want a gun or something?" Never doubt what this guy says.
"What if I did?"
"We'll hook you up, no worries."

...

"Alex, you're going to be rich someday; you just gotta be a rich greedy bastard once in a while."

Moshien, you know me too well. Consider me a loyal, underage customer for all my alcoholic needs. I'll believe you, just this once.

Wed, 22 Aug 2007 03:12:30 GMT

If ever, bored as hell (and a little anxious perhaps), you browse through Craig's List, under "casual encounters," you might be surprised here and again by the absolutely ridiculous nature of some of these requests.

"sexy horny BBW--sweet and friendly and so ready to bend over for you. Please be over 25, under 50, and loving some jiggle. I like tall, broad-shouldered men."'

"Now that I have your attention, are you a sexy geek? Would you like an erotic message from a bohemian babe with bodacious ta tas?"

And that was just today.

Needless to say, some of these must have a story attached to them, whether they be fakes or completely serious. I saw one once, requesting that someone spend a week of deep conversation and sex with her in an apartment in Martha's Vineyard. Another, requesting a male, asked that someone sit there and be sucked off by the poster's girlfriend while their German Sheppard licked her between the legs. So, I've been bored lately, and online classifieds have become a source of temporary amusement. My job is losing its satisfaction.

I had my head bowed down on the canoe rack today at the start of my shift, tired as hell. It was hot and well before the afternoon breeze would take the burn off. "You ok?" a coworker asked.

"Yeah," I said," just tired. We sat down at the table together under the only shade on the whole dock and talked a little. In his eyes you could see a whole world of disappointment, of trying to get out of the ghetto and failing every time, so break he couldn't even afford community college.

"Let's just say, the deadline for JC snuk up on me this year," he said. "That, and there's a funding problem."
I asked if he was seeing anybody right now.
"No, the last one ... It's hard to even say, really."
"What happened?"
"She was in it with one of my friends sisters, and her sister - a twelve year old."
"What, she was going at it with a twelve year old?"
"More than that," he said. "They were pros."
I look perplexed.
"They were having her turn tricks ..." he looked the other way. "It's people like that that make the world as shitty as it is sometimes.
"Where was this?"
"Mid-nineties."
"Foothill?"
"More like Macarthur," he said.
"I didn't think they had girls working up there."
"Oh that's just where they lived, I didn't say it's where they worked," he said. "They had her shit up on Craig's List."

Maxinamity

Tue, 21 Aug 2007 04:36:05 GMT

Reading Fiasco now, the long, often wordy account of the Iraq War, from the bitterness that followed the Gulf War until a few months ago. I'm in that long part that started a little over a quarter of the way through the book and I expect to go until the end, where basically every good idea gets thrown out the window, or is enacted too late and with too little support backing it. The generals start to yell at each other, arguing about strategy (they don't have one) and all the while, the bodies continue to pile up, reminding all of "the cost of incompetence in our profession," as one puts it.

In 2004, the Marines are invited back into the chaos for the first time since the invasion to fight off the insurgency and create enough order to get something, anything done. They are social people, perhaps more aware of the human side of conflict, and used to finding human solutions to it, as opposed to the army, who it is thought, are used to finding technological solutions. Major General James Mattis, who was deployed in Afghanistan not long before, is invited to take the lead. With his characteristic wired rimmed glasses and a personal library of over four thousand volumes, Mattis was known at home for his bookishness, a rare quality in the Marine Corps, especially for a general. But in Afghanistan, he had made a name for himself reaching out to the locals and gaining their trust by being completely, utterly honest with all of them:

"'I come in peace,' he recalled telling them. 'I didn't bring artillery. But I'm pleading with you, with tears in my eyes: if you fuck with me, I'll kill all of you.'"

I underlined that, with the pen I got from Columbia ...

Fiasco

And perhaps that word would just describe it best, with such ... clarity.

good morning, good morning

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 07:51:41 GMT

I keep thinking about what I'd like to tell her, if she were walking by my side as I come back from the street, or if she were sitting next to me on the bus, for instance. It's amazing, really, that after all this time I still have more things to say, without repeating, even as I think about it, every day, for weeks now. I don't feel so alone without her, I guess that much has changed, but at the same time, I realize just how much grander life could be with her in the picture, if, I could just say what I want to say, see her happy again, know that she's grown from all this in the way that I had.

I told a friend once, saying good bye to a girl (through him) that "she'll never know what she meant to me."
"sometimes ... that's ok," he said. Looking back, what I should have said, perhaps, was that in a few weeks, even I will forget what it was like to have really cared about that person, so much that it hurt. I had to forget, to move on, to get past it. That was two years ago, and that same girl contacted me only a few weeks back, but I avoided sustaining any real dialog, if only because I didn't want to go down that way again, feel like I did, that futility amidst all the heart.

I don't feel like that now, this time. There's a future, even if it will take ... long to realize. I have to know that, even if she doesn't ... and yet I worry about exactly that. I don't know what the external observers think, from their perspective, this couldn't possibly be is rosy as I make it out to be. Maybe you don't think what I do.

music.

Thu, 16 Aug 2007 00:06:40 GMT

Pet Sounds is such a nihilistic mess of an album, humming along to upbeat tunes about hopelessness and despair. They never say it outright, but Brian Wilson was constantly on the verge of killing himself then, and for two decades after its release. For an alternative, listen to Sergeant Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band, why don’t you, which contemplates the cosmic, impossible realities of the universe, known and unknown, drifting along to tunes of that touch on the poor but not pitiful, the drifting but not lost. Songs like “With a Little Help From My Friends,” the album’s second track, and “Getting Better” make you love the life you have, in strikingly simplistic lines, one after another, which sung in so many other ways could sound utterly flat-faced and desperate to the point of addiction.

I get high with a little help from my friends,
I get by with a little help from my friends

“Fixing a Hole” makes you wonder. Beginning the B side, “Within You, Without You,” George Harrison’s sitar-laden solo contribution tells you what to wonder about, without closing your mind to limited possibilities. Finally, at the end of it all, the triumphant (or disparaging, depending on who you ask) last track, a mash up of two songs, one John Lennon’s, the other, Paul McCartney’s, simply called “A Day in the Life.” Upon which, one realizes, Geoffrey Stokes’ statement that "listening to the Sgt. Pepper album one thinks not simply of the history of popular music but the history of this century," finally makes sense. You have to listen to believe it.

As I fucking wait.

Tue, 31 Jul 2007 01:48:59 GMT

Someone asked me once, what crashing is like. You know, falling, all the way down, your life just completely fucked up, everything you thought true about yourself and the world just coming apart at the seams, right as you thought you've just almost got it all figured out. That period before the much celebrated "starting over" period.

I suppose this was something I had some real experience in, so it was only right of him to ask me. I asked him,

"Have you ever been held in the air by six people, with ten more surrounding them, lying down, with your eyes closed?" No, they said. "Well it's kind of like that. You expect to hit the ground, but for some reason you know you won't. Like that time I was so angry at my dad I took a glass in my hand and hit the table with it. It left a gash across my ride little finger and inch across and a quarter inch deep, to the bone: cut nerves, cut muscle. Missed the tendon, but not by much. It bled so much I had to be wheeled around in a gerny in the emergency room, I was so lightheaded. But anyway, I remember just staring at my finger and seeing my dad above me, and this guy who I hated so much the instant before I was just then very dependent on. There was a real connection there, it was bizarre, in a way.

"If I had to describe it as anything, though, it was almost a sense of calming in the midst of all the chaos. I was aware of the people there in a way I hadn't been before, like being suspended by friends as gravity says you should be falling flat on your back. Crashing is like that. You throw yourself up to the sky and ask yourself to be judged, for all the right and wrong to sort itself out and for the wrong to be forgiven, not by anyone in particular, just by anything at all, if possible.. You don't ask for that, you certainly don't expect it. You just want to feel your fragility and your worthlessness, and you do, frankly. And what you've done right and wrong all just blends together and all you can sense is if you're living or if you're not, and at that instant, well, you feel very much alive, and that just goes on. Whatever song you're playing at the instant just seems to make sense, and whatever conversation you have with whatever friend just seems to inspire them even as it seems to mundane to you. It's angelic in a way. And there's no judgment in that, it just hurts; it hurts a lot. Throwing yourself to the mercy of the world is rarely a good idea, after all, since the world is so cruel."

He didn't know exactly what I was talking about, but with a little thinking he might understand.

heading south.

Wed, 25 Jul 2007 06:31:41 GMT

The other night I wrote something like three emails and a facebook message, and a livejournal entry that never made the wire, all around three in the morning, just sitting here and listening to Miles Davis fusion. I think I was frantic, a little desperate. Not sure what inspired that. In response to one especially long email to the Dean of Students, I got this warming little piece of advice:

“In other words – as my uncle used to say. If you have to eat shit, don’t nibble.”

And,

“You have some great friends, and some really crappy ones (no offense).”

I’m still not sure where he gets all his information. It certainly wasn't me, but some reliable source, nonetheless. But hey, everyone needs someone who knows them better than themselves (or is at least more frank) every once in a while.

…

I wanted to write a book a while back about a twenty-something who came back from an extended stay in various war zones in Africa, returning to the disillusion that had pushed him away from home in the first place because … well because he was desperate, and it was stable enough to keep him. There was going to be a girl, too, who was fed up, pissed off and looking for a way out. They’d meet on the deck at some family reunion getting to know each other, and maybe it would lead to some awkward and temporary romance. I never cared enough to write that story.

But again, the other day, I was thinking about that again and I thought about, what if they guy stayed there? And what if he didn’t go to the all too clichéd environment of a war zone in Central Africa, and instead just cut it somewhere else, became successful and then was found again, years older and apparently healthier, by his family and old friends, on an interview, on the internet, like a message from Hates, a glimmer of familiarity from a parallel universe. How that must change things after so much time. Like,

“What happened to so-and-so?”

“He left, for Africa. We don’t know if we’ll ever see him again.” And then, after years, he’s there again: the white man, among the black, the living among the dead. On the other side of his 16-hour descent into the unknown via transcontinental Lufthasa jet from Frankfurt International, happy as ever, but oh so far away.

If you do it right, going to Africa is such a stroke of suicide, in that way.

dockhands.

Mon, 23 Jul 2007 05:51:15 GMT

Some soccer mom came by the boat house with two preteens yesterday evening. She had a worried look on her face, but the three of us barely noticed, just sitting there, talking shit about the boss and laughing. You could tell we were friends if only because we were all so equally dark, from so many countless hours in the sun, and wearing the same gray and blue staff shirts, like a gang of dock hands, rather than some useless band of ramshackle employees.

"Do you work here?" the lady asked. The reply was universal, and positive. "I've got a bit of a problem," she said, going on to explain that birthday plans for her daughter had just now fallen through, leaving the following day gapingly open with nothing yet to fill it. "Do you rent paddle boats?" she asked.
"Yeah, they're right over there," Nathan said pointing to the coral of more than ten.
"Oh, thank god," she said. Last time she was here, her daughter hadn't been able to reach the peddles, so two of our staff walked mother and child, and her friend out to the dock to test drive Onah, 'the white one,' to see if it would be up for the enormous challenge of the following day. The boss wasn't there, so I went out in our absurdly overpowered patrol unit and, after politely asking if they'd enjoy a wave or two, proceeded to do circles around the little boat. The girls laughed, bouncing happily on the water. When I got back some offers to write letters of recommendation were offered, which we three accepted modestly. Even before then the lady had pulled out her wallet, offering tips to Nick and Nathan on the dock as they watched the sunset over Lake Merritt. They turned her down.

"I just love my job," Nick said an hour after Nathan had clocked out. He rode his Piaggio scooter onto the dock and dropped a sandwich on the picnic table where we often caroused for hours on the weekends, waiting for anyone to dare pluck us from our paid state of content. There was little more to be said, really.

When the sun finally did set I was at a bar-be -ue in Rockridge sitting with same four I'd managed the last year of high school with, drinking beers and enjoying the silence of the remains of the day. The next day, my sixth on the job in this week long stretch, the lady came back with her daughter and the same friend and six others. They took out some paddle boats - two per, with 'the white one' reserved especially for the birthday girl. Eleven years old, today. They'd come back from seeing hairspray to meet up with the father, some parents and the little brother. Dad was the first to come. He took the extra time to dick around with his new toy, though when the party showed up finally, even he was tempted (albeit through a little persuasion), to put down the iPhone and dawn a yellow life jacket to take it to the water and enjoy the waves to come. Nick and I did circles around the lot of them, fast at first, then slower, so as to build the wake and really push them from side to side. After a little bit, I ducked into the back room of Bay D (the dungeon, it's called) to take out a wide-brimmed, canvas staff hat with "City of Oakland" and a series of nautical flags freshly embroidered into it, and stuff it into my life jacket. Nathan and I cruised out to the birthday girl and passed it on to her.

"A special gift from Oakland Parks and Rec," we said, and drove off. Lady didn't offer tips when all was said and done, but there was plenty of cake to go around, which they called us out by name for, and the thank yous as well, which seemed to come from all sides. "They'll remember that for the rest of their lives," the lady said as she walked back off the gate, her daughter's friend still wearing the canvas hat so that the birthday girl could keep her lively pigtails intact. The father shouted out a thank you as well, trying to get the attention of the other three dock staff on duty at the time, but they were too busy dismantling the other rentals of the day to notice. When I finally clocked out I was more than two hours over time. It remains to be seen if I'll get paid for that.

Today I am a dockhand Maybe I'll just wait.

counting the details.

Wed, 18 Jul 2007 06:36:20 GMT

It's gotten to that point, finally, when I've started to run out of room for all my books. There's 33 on the shelf in front of me, almost as many on another downstairs, plus 11 more on a shelf behind me and 12 on the floor. "He hasn't read all of them," one might choose to remind you. True enough, but then again, a lot of them are reference books, some of them I've read large swaths of, which, if you add to the other sections I've read in other books add to something that resembles a large book in itself, if only in size. Sometimes you don't even need to combine sections in this way. That I've only read a third of the Rise and Fall of the Third Reich still means I've read some 451 pages of German history, on encyclopedia paper (in encyclopedia print), footnotes and all (there're at least two per page in that one). And there's also another ... 30? (well he can tell you) of my collection at Nathan's house.

In no small way, this is a time I really dreamed of. I didn't think I'd get here when I did. I thought it'd take me years to, you know, be so mature, as to have books pouring off of their shelves. I'm such an adult now. I have two memoirs of India, three novels by J.M. Coetzee (I read a fourth but gave it away), an autographed copy of medium sized volume by an Italian economist on the financial organization of international terror networks, and a book of Bob Dylan interviews. The Bhagavad Gita sits next to Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis, next to a book about Chaos Theory. Down the way is a short history of Islam, and something by Chomsky.

Some of these I read years ago. A part of me feels old just looking at it.

tonights meanderings.

Thu, 12 Jul 2007 04:59:05 GMT

In the future, sometime nearing the end of the current era, one of the wiser among us will look back to now and make the connection between homemade bombs in Iraq, and homemade computers. People will talk about how the backyard, back-alley, back-of-the-ass inventions of people were really the things that changed the world, as opposed to those that were built by the giant firms and governments of the world, unlike in the era before. People were even making spaceships on their own, for Chrissake.

People will look back to now and wonder if we wondered then if the very structures of our civilization until then were being undermined, in favor of some kind of chaos where individuals were free to connect with one another, reaching out to each other and into infinity with no other care then to do just that. Husbands left their wives for internet porn. Children left their playgrounds for Myspace. Perhaps even the state wondered if it was so necessary anymore.

Someone will write a novel about it.

My father left for Texas today carrying his darkest suit. I don’t expect he’ll comeback with good news.

Two nights ago, Ryan and I were driving through Fruitvale, talking about the girls we’d go for just then.

“I’d love a gangster-ass Mexican chick,” I’d say.

“Like a really gangster-ass Mexican chick?”

Like so much, she’s actually Salvadoran, with a tattoo on her upper back commemorating a cousin who was shot on 95^th and Foothill, who was so much of a cousin that he was actually a brother. A girl who wears eye shadow out of respect for the Cholas, and because she thinks she’s not pretty without it, a girl assumes just because I talk to her means I’m hitting on her, who’d only date a Mexican if he could keep a secret, even though she’d be prone to spill his.

And yesterday I was on Shattuck, and I passed a half dozen cute Berkeley girls and I wondered if I could try my hand here. I’d love a cute Berkeley girl who didn’t give a fuck enough even to smile when I introduced myself, who smoked, on occasion, when she was trying to impress the older ones around her, who she tended to gravitate towards on summer days outside the bars she had friends sneak her into.

Oh, and fuck Chipotle.

Speeding.

Sun, 10 Jun 2007 07:33:10 GMT

I'm always so fucking tense after a flight.

Getting there it's easy to ride the adrenaline into the wee hours of whatever place you're at, regardless of the timezone. Walking around in the nighttime, or just unpacking is as exciting as anything. Coming back, though, the adrenaline that kept me up and stiff in a chair for the past six hours without sleep, conversation or stimulation at all is still there but I have no idea what to do with it.

Oh, and call me, cuz I want to see you, too.

Two weeks in.

Thu, 17 May 2007 04:25:56 GMT

It feels like it's been so long. And yet I haven't even started my job yet, Nathan is still in the Orient. Cal is in the midst of their finals and Davis their midterms, if you can believe that. It's such a different place here, such a whole nother world. Last year I came back and just wanted to be away from everything that was school. Fuck it, I was done. For these for months, I said, this would be all I had. And sure, the people could drift in and say hello, and I'd take them in. But this was my home.

Now things are different. Eddie and I talked about how good the summer looked, how many people we'd meet, and all the things we were yet to do. There were so many adventures to be had. This was where we were building our future together, with all the friends. The things that mattered, they would stay with us at our discretion, and the rest, we could give the finger to. This was our home, not our parents' that we were connected to by coincidence alone. We had chosen it for ourselves now - our present, our future, our work.

And then part of that it seems is to stich the school life into this one.

Last winter I was having some potential trouble with a friend at school, and I thought about what I would tell him as we went to the airport and I didn't see him for a month. One thing that crossed my mind was just to say, "You know, frankly, I'm going to be in paradise for the next month, and I could just as easily forget about you until I get back. Please don't give me reason to."

I didn't say that. Home isn't just another escape anymore.

A Memoir of Northern Minnesota

Mon, 07 May 2007 17:20:45 GMT

Driving through the upper reaches of this state is a little like penetrating the stratosphere, or going into space. After a while you notice the cars stop coming towards you from the other direction. About the time you get off the interstate and start heading west to get to Kevin’s place it seems appropriate, after all, how much more north can you really go?

Kevin had invited me off hand to come stay with him. The invitation was extended to Madhav who sounded thrilled, but couldn’t get his finals and packing together in time. So it was just the two of us, and his mother to pick us up.

“I think I’ll drive the rest of the way,” she said at a pit stop, unsatisfied with the way he was driving. Half an hour later, she clipped a deer. “Welcome to Northern Minnesota,” she told me. It wouldn’t be the first time.

And so it was off to Kevin’s place. Driving through space for another hour and finally a string of lights appeared in the darkness. So this was it, Chip’s hometown, where all those childhoods were spent. There were churches on every corner. No wonder the place made him so uncomfortable.

…
Kevin’s friends were reconvening now. Only a few schools had let out but some people stayed up there year long for their own reasons.

We ended up at an abandoned ski resort that had been converted into cheap apartments where the landlord didn’t ask questions and only accepted cash. Kevin only seemed to belong to this crowd vicariously. Of the six there, two were going to basic training in August, with the hope of going to Iraq after that. Two went to community college in the area, but were around because they had just returned from study abroad in Denmark, and another fought forest fires. But here, Macalester was just another Minnesota private school, and Kevin just another hometown kid, with his friend from California.

We stood around the car and sprayed our heels with bug repellent while one of them toyed around with an axe he had in the trunk.

“You know some kid in Winona put an axe through his foot.”

“Really? How the fuck did he manage that?”

“Just working on some logs for a fire or something, and his blade missed – went right through his foot.” We would bring it anyway.

Together we walked into the darkness and up one of the old ski runs with our flashlights on. It was a long walk up the hill, littered with beer cans and bottles. The top of the place had some remnants of a fire pit, with more bottles strewn all over it, so we started a fire with some grass and sticks and one of their Zippos that sang the national anthem when you opened it.

One of them kneeled in front of the fire to tend it and ended up cutting himself on the glass. They ended up having him take off a sock, cutting it in half with a pocket knife, and using it and a plastic bag to make field dressing. An hour later someone suggested we go down the mountain, as it was starting to sprinkle. By the time that got worse we actually left.

“Sometimes it rains,” Kevin said. “You deal with it.” We walked down the mountain, with the hobbling friend with a glass cut in his knee following.

“At least it’s a taste of Iraq,” I had told him at the fire. The night ended waiting in the emergency room, reading Wired. Welcome to Northern Minnesota.

Saturday.

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 16:01:06 GMT

I could get brunch now, but I could also just wait another hour, sleep until then and take it on my shift so I get paid for it. Good god, lot's of work coming up. And fuck that class.