Weekend At Last

Work, class, appointments and deadlines, soaring gas prices and the plummeting value of the dollar. All of the stress that lie has to offer. The week is over now. People everywhere are winding down so they can gear up for another week of the same. In the last of the failing light I took my bike and headed for the aqueduct bridge on Gotte Hill. It was an evening of Spring's perfection. It's evenings like this which cry out in inspiration to poets and mere mortals alike.
It was late in the twilight hour. The stars were out and the sky was colored from a dark aqua in the west through lavender to midnight blue in the east. I followed the path along the water on my bike. It's course wound around the foothills halfway between the stars and the valley floor. The horizon was a straight line running infinitely off ahead of me, and giving way to the city below. I rode through still pockets of air, some warm and some cool. Each one carrying with it its own unique smells. There was the musky smell of moss and moisture which rises off of bodies of water and carries with it the scent of life and renewal. A second later my face was filled with the breath of the evening, a breeze fell off and away from the curving valleys to the south, and I was surrounded by the aroma of a million flowers, jasmine and primrose, each variation bringing to the surface vivid memories of unseen blossoms, hikes and hills long forgotten. Accompanying the smells were the sounds of crickets and frogs, the world transitioning between light and dark. Mixed with the natural were the sounds of distant neighborhoods. A family laughing, a car door closing, a dog barking. Slowly the streetlights came on in the world below and the weekend was underway.

Tales from the Bedridden

So today has been an interesting day. Not that everyday isn't interesting, but I just feel like writing about today. I've had the flu now for the past three days. I've been doing a lot of sleeping and watching movies and youtube. There isn't much else to do when you have a fever of 103 and you can barely stand. Yesterday was grad-fair, and I had to go to that to get my cap and gown for graduation. Going out when you're very sick comes highly unrecommended. My only alternative was to make the 100mile drive to Bakersfield and buy one from the school bookstore there at a later date. With the price of gas as high as it is I opted to attend the grad-fair. I learned that driving with a high fever is probably not all that different than driving drunk. I also learned that when you stand in line for an hour on the verge of passing out only to find that they don't have any gowns for people over 6', you'll find out that you could have just ordered the dern thing online anyway. But I'm digressing, I'd only intended to talk about today. So today I had a term paper due for my Ethnic Literature class. The assignment was about as vague as the purpose statement for the class. I think when delving into controversial realms too deeply, you become immersed in a quagmire of PC lingo that makes it nearly impossible to communicate intelligibly. If a language is a set of sounds that have mutually agreed meaning, making the terms you use to define something as far from being a representation of what you're actually defining as possible, has the potential to cause quite a bit of confusion. And here I was worried that my paper would be unintelligible because I'm running a fever.

I also ruined a pair of shoes today, which is rather amazing considering I've barely stepped outside. My amazing urban pipelines, the preppiest shoes I own, which I got for $10.99 at Kolhs are pretty much kaput. I blame the outrageous price of rent in Southern California, or possibly the fact that I'm feverish (you can blame everything on that one). So due to the high price of rent in California I'm forced to live in a little run down pink hotel room. Yes, it's very gay. It's also only slightly larger than your standard walk-in closet. What little space I do have is taken up by books, my bed, my bike, and my clothes (living in a closet does have its perks). I have no room for furniture. This makes it difficult to eat meals. I resort to eating most of my meals while sitting on my bed. Needless to say I've become very ingenuitive. I discovered a long time ago that shoes make great cup holders. You can put a 20oz soda in a shoe, and it will sit there through a veritable earthquake. This discovery is something I've been very proud of for the past couple of years. Well, today when I got back from dropping off my paper, with a package subway lunch, I kicked off my flipflops, dropped my lunch on the bed, plugged in "Whitesquall" on DVD (great movie by the way) and set up my cup holder shoe and enjoyed my lunch and my movie. Two hours later, in the midst of the storm which the movie is named for, I noticed half an inch of liquid sloshing back and forth in the bottom of my shoe. There was a hole in the cup, dad gum it! I tried to wash the shoe out, but I don't have much hope that it can be salvaged. I can only imagine what it's going to be like walking around in sticky shoes. On the bright side, I learned that canvas shoes don't leak.

The Clerkenwell Kid

Like snapshots of another world. A friend of mine recently linked me to this blog. The author’s short stories, while some are a bit melancholy, are really amazing reads. I meandered around the site trying to find out a bit more about him, and apparently he’s a musician, and if you look hard enough there is a link to his myspace where you can listen to some of his music. While it’s a bit too morose for my taste, it’s still quite beautiful and some of it hints at vintage 40s jazz. The stories are like the music. They’re rather surreal glimpses at a uchronian world that has a very 1940s feel. Short and sweet and beginning in medias res without any background or resolution, like the passing window into a life which one sometimes catches in a photograph of a stranger. The stories are just that. Short snippets. They give one the impression of looking at pictures of some life in a world that never was.

In a galaxy far, far away

Long ago...
Originally uploaded by empyrean_squire

You've got to love living in a place like this. We've got everything here. On the front page of the paper today was a story about a 62 year old man who was shot and killed while he was out for a walk. The sad thing is, that's hardly even news in the Antelope Valley these days. What's interesting about this particular murder was the fact that the man was shot through the chest with an arrow. Who shoots people with arrows in suburban neighborhoods in the middle of the night? Maybe it was some of the wiccan kids who hang out in front of Barns and Noble at night. Maybe they were acting out a live action D&D quest and the sexagenarian didn't make his saving roll. Or maybe one of the gang bangers on that side of town decided he needed some culture in his life and joined an SCA group. Oh the possibilities.

That's nothing though, about six months ago the mother of some thugs must have attended a PTA meeting or something and decided to take the advice about being more involved in her kids lives to heart. One night she loaded up the family sedan and drove her kids and some of their friends over to the house of a rival gang member so they could pop a cap in his ass. They shot up the house pretty good, and fortunately no one was injured. Apparently Mama neglected to teach her kids to shoot. For shame!

As if all of that weren't enough, now we've got some Lord of the Sith running around stealing IPODs.

Bumming Cigarettes

"Ah, so you've become a beggar" She said.
"Not necessarily," he replied, holding it loosely between his lips. "You see, the chief difference is in who is benefiting through the transaction- the receiver or his client."
"You mean the parasite or its host." She casually retorted, disinterested.
He lit the thing and drew deeply, causing the smoldering end to glow fiercely and retreat like some slow burning fuse, consuming itself. "Some parasites are beneficial to their hosts you know, in which cases the relationships are more symbiotic."
She rolled her eyes and waited for him to continue.
"If I were begging money, for instance, like that deplorable character over there, ultimately I'd be negotiating with a person to hand over their most precious commodity- Time. You've of course heard the phrase 'time is money.' Time is the only thing in the universe that has any significant value. Think about it, we are each alloted so much of it, and that's it. When you boil it down it's the only thing we have which we can't get more of. It's the 'reductio ad absurdum of all human experiences.' Then, to make matters worse, we sell it- by the hour no less. They call it 'a career' and in reality, all you are is a harlot. Prostituting your time away to the highest bidder. 'Here,' they say, 'is a week of your life in the tangible form of a green piece of paper.' And then these leaches come up and ask you if you can spare a dollar. Damn. Hardly live with myself I could, if I were making my living by stealing minutes and hours of a fellow's life."
"So explain to me how bumming cigarettes is any different. They cost money too. Just how do you propose the giver is any better off?"
"Oh that's easy" He said, taking another drag off the slender white cylinder held in his fingers. He exhaled the thick smoke like an old locomotive gathering momentum. "Cigarettes kill people. Lung cancer and all that. Every cigarette you smoke is equivalent to losing a couple hours of your life. I'm doing them a favor taking the things off their hands. Instead of asking people to give me time in paper form, I'm giving them time. I'm offering to extend their lives, and they don't even realize it."
"Brilliant," she said sarcastically, "Relativism at its best."
"Precisely," he said.
"Of course, wouldn't it be more beneficial for everyone involved if you threw those borrowed cigarettes away, instead of smoking them?"
"No" he said, tilting his head back and blowing smoke straight up in the air. It dissipated and became one with the dense fog surrounding them. "That would defeat the whole purpose."

D-day

Due date: March 12th. 15 days and counting.

With 14 response papers, 1 term paper, an annotated bibliography, a portfolio, and 50 sentences left to diagram, I am busy doing what any sensible person in my situation would be doing...namely, making lists of things I would rather be doing. I've never been one to make New Years resolutions, but I lately I've unconsciously been making "end of quarter" resolutions, and the list of things I've resolved to do after this quarter ends has gotten so big I think it might help to write it down.

Things I would be doing if I weren't in the process of committing suicide by academics, and things I am resolved to do after I am finished committing suicide by academics:
1. Read a novel. For fun.
2. Subscribe to a photo-assignment group on Flickr and maybe sync the escapade with my blog.
3. Write a short story. Or, better yet, write and actually finish a short story.
4. Visit the Grand Canyon (it's been years since I've been there and it's more than time to visit it again)
5. Drive to Moro bay. With my bike.
6. Visit Cal Poly San Louis Obispo. Probably while doing the above.
7. Camp on the beach. See the two above.
8. Make a frisbee golf course at Lane Park and not get arrested for it.
9. Become more artistic.
10. Visit the Huntington.
11. Go skiing again
12. Clean my apartment. (...yeah)
13. Swing dance...alot.
14. Win the lotto.......................
15. Finish filling out my grad-school apps.
16. Finish filling out my passport app.

There are more that will come to me as soon as my head hits the pillow...or as soon as I resolve to write those response papers.

Nocturnal Oblique

10pm, I'm at Denny's again. Breakfast for dinner. There has to be a better place to study. I can't wait to move someplace that has a little more respect for itself - I hate it when I sound young and naive. I know there is more to life than pie at 1am and pretty waitresses, but is it too much to ask for some place that can accommodate me some of the time? I've got to quit reading stream-of-consciousness novels.

Two eggs, bacon, hashbrowns and toast - $7.99. I could get the same at Alice's for $3.50, and it would taste better too, but they aren't open this late, and if they were I doubt they'd be serving breakfast.

Sometimes you get tired of being alone in the same apartment, listening to the same music and staring at the same walls, and you just have to get out. You pick a secluded booth in the back- or the region of the restaurant farthest from where you came in. You haven't been there five minutes before a young couple lurches in, clinging to each other like Siamese twins. They too seek out the alleged "back" of the restaurant, and as luck would have it, they take the booth in front of you. At first glance you might think they're just out for a casual date, but the girl plops down on the guy's lap and they begin to put on a display that could make any trollop blush. In fact, you're not entirely convinced that they aren't in the midst of some nefarious act of harlotry, and that money won't be changing hands afterwards. Apparently a booth at Denny's is cheaper than a hotel room. On the wall to the right is a black and white photo of a navy sailor kissing a girl. For some reason the photo seems romantic, while what is taking place in front of you is nauseating. As you attempt to focus on the books in front of you, two very portly fellows also find their way to the back. They take the booth behind you. They sit down heavily with a disturbance that is undoubtedly recorded by seismometers across the county. For some reason just sitting down isn't good enough for the guy on the opposite side of your bench and he seems to sit down several times and even then he can't sit still. The other one decides that now is the most opportune time to phone his deaf mother and very noisily discuss his various gastro-intestinal conditions. Between the constant, wave-like motion of the bench beneath you, -instigated by the avoirdupois beta noire behind you- and the frivolous fornication unfolding in front of you, you're not able to get much done.You watch the rain out the window. Your stomach churns to the tune of "Your Body is a Wonderland" by John Meyer and you look to the sailor and his girl for sympathy, but you don't really get any. Maybe you were better off at home, but after all, you're diagramming sentences, so what difference does it really make?