Although I don't believe in God.

 

How can I be expected to properly express myself when my vocabulary is so small a thing and the world so large and full of nuanced experiences? Here always comes the start—the outpour that does not know if there is too much or too little, if we are too similar or all alike, if there is more or less to be done, if I am doing anything right or everything wrong. I am tired, tiresome, my skin feels heavy and old, despite my sometimes role as that sort of semi-wandering embodiment of innocence. God bless the drugs, and God bless your father growing marijuana in his vast French fields. God bless the white-eyed German boy walking down the highway in his underwear with his thumb out. What have we done? Picked up a bit of trash, at least. God bless that docile compliance to the flow of life that rises up with the first rays of sun when our jaws are still working and our pale shadows are still jumping all across the sand. The margin for error is as slippery a place as my heels are full of sea urchin spores, but there is something to be said for these transition spaces and the strange, wonderful people that inhabit them, thumbing through memories in their little wooden homes. Home is where your questions come unraveled. Home is where you test out your new skin and hope.

The American Work Ethic

Here’s what wrong with the American work ethic:

            Everything.

Here’s what wrong with the American work ethic:

            Building yourself up is not something you do with money or unhappiness. I want to build a self out of beautiful words and unforeseeable experiences. Strange and strong—I want to be like no other person you’ve met before. I want to be my own reverberating echo, a process of something like “freedom” and “truthfulness” and not in the sense of any cheap verbal honesty, but in the sense of fully inhabiting my own chameleon skin. Admit that you are not a person, neither the person you dream of, the person you long to be, the person whose mouth you speak through, you are a process just like:

            everything else.

Here’s what wrong with the American work ethic:

It’s based on a Dream;

            the Dream is not beautiful—

if you have the power to exist within an indefinite space with malleable rules and new visual/sensory possibilities that are impossible to even remember in a cognitive/conscious way according to the terms of waking memory—shouldn’t your Dream be at least beautiful?

Here’s what wrong with the American work ethic:

America is not ours.

Here’s what wrong with the American work ethic:

Happiness should not be a novelty.

Too soon June.

May was mayhemic. Yup, not a word, but we all saw that coming, no? Kim's visit was fucking epic, we ran around with couchsurfers, boogied it up at the Booga club, drank wine at the huerto and played with puppies, caught a ride with Alberto (on the back of his motorcyle!) to a crazy rave party in a magical pine forest where we become polar bear and kitty cat and danced our souls off, trekked to the Quilombo and got our mothafuggin Drum&Bass on, we had tasty tapas and long talks and all time flew by far too fast. She was my last solid excuse to not study, as finals are fast approaching (first on is the 14th, aghhhh) but then the feria had to come to town, and seeing as it's a cultural experience and whatnot, I had to go. And I had to rage my face off in the punky/hippy tent until like 7am.

Oh yeah, you think the fair is for riding rides and eating candy? Well, we did that, too, of course, but this is Spain, so everything comes with a side of loud music and alcoholism. Their fair includes discoteca tents, and that shit doesn't close down until 5 or 6 or so. Naturally, I set my bag down like a dumb ass and all my shit got stolen. Goodbye bag, wallet and money and credit card, keys, fourth or fifth stupid goddamn cell phone, cracked screen Frankenstein ass iPhone, house keys, favorite leopard leggins, red bandana, and sweatshirt! Spain is teaching me so many lessons about the non-importance of physical objects, eh? Shit could be much worse, don't y'all fret.

In other news, I've semi-certainly decided to try and find Gypsy a good home here in Spain because of all sorts of flight fuckery that is too tedious to get into. Basically they want to charge me 400+ euros to have him transported and he wouldn't get to travel with me so who knows what those frightening money hungry fucks will do with him for those grueling 16+ hours of travel? Much less trauma to hand him off to someone who is (almost) as capable as loving him as me. Bummer, but, that's how it goes. Anyway, I'm supposed to be studying right now, which is obviously why I am writing this long overdue post instead. Exams end July 4th ('merica, fuck yeah...) and then I will hopefully trot over to Germany and take a gander, maybe dip a toe in Denmark, who knows, planning is not really my strong point. I'm giving myself to destiny. Or whatever. But that's about it, folks. No flight home QUITE yet, still wanna make sure my kittles is taken care of before taking off, but I aim to be back in August.

You have no idea (unless you do) how fucking weird it is to watch this trip come to a close. So many mixed feelings. I'm super fucking jazzed to get back to my boy, my puppy, the fambam, the redwoods, the food. But it's also a little like being torn in half. So much love for the place I've created for myself here, it's definitely a home. But, gotta keep on flowing.

Azul

Este es mi primer intento de escribir algo creativo en Español; ironicamente, es dirigida a alguien que no habla Español... Espero que no sea completamente ininteligible.

 

¿Donde esta mi taza azul, mi pájaro azul, mi alma azul?

¿Donde están mis dedos, azules, en la blancura del invierno?

¿Donde están esos ojos fríos, tan azul como el mar tumultuoso y indeciso, los ojos que me miran directamente en el azul de mi alma incierta?

Dos meses largos y ardiendo, dos meses de naranja y rojo, dos meses oliendo de la acera caliente, de sudor y agua tibio, dos meses lánguidos y húmedos…

Y vuelvo a ti.

Y vuelvo a la verde tranquilidad de los árboles.

Y vuelvo a la frescura del aire pacifico, de las nubes San Franciscanos.

Y vuelvo al azul de tus ojos, al azul.

Stop the squirming.

 

Stop that squirming,

with your blackhole anxiety,

transition dreams and pockmarked skin,

there are certain people and then

there are others.

Displacement is not replacement,

personality is a fluctuating element, susceptible

to time and rejection.

Don’t forget to dig up love,

don’t forget that you can’t dance but you do,

don’t forget,

bald bird,

that you are just another indoor cat

before the open door.

Your secret hands are no secret,

self pity is no hot commodity and hot days

make you like this:

sticky, stuck, irritable.

And your lungs, too, may be cloudy

and thick,

but breathe through the gunk.

And your eyes may be cloudy

with distance,

but don’t blink the time away.

And your skin may be cloudy

and lonesome,

but it’s still translucent;

so the only choice is to be the muscles and the blood

the only choice is to be the bones and the sinew

the substance and the soul.

Another dream underwater.

 

I’ve signed off on rights to a mermaid adventure film, mother tells me, somehow certain that I am the mermaid. Later I will ask about the slippery tail and an art director looks at me with scorn. It’s about more than a mermaid. It’s a metaphor. Oh.

Still, strangely, all this time in water and tape has captured something secret, and on the flight home my silver suitcase is shuffled and scanned. For discrepancies.  I picture them with their fingers all over the watery footage. They must have found it, that dark thing, and scraped it with a scalpel from the sticky lace of my memory. All around it are hints that something is missing, and yet…what?

The escalator also goes down.

The escalator also goes down, mother sees this and we dash down pushing past sleek-haired women in blazers, past serious faces and rolling suitcases. Commotion.

Ladies and gentlemen. We are all floated out to sea, in the most brilliant piece of silver; luggage is scattered and rearranged. Beside us a group of Asian businessmen gather crates of soy sauce looking somehow simultaneously calm and peeved. On another floor, footsteps echo on slick floors and a huge man stuffed into a gray suit becomes enraged, stuffy and enraged. Where is why is, etc, these are the things that vex and bite at him, gray and bureaucratic, he strikes me, grabs my arm. I look at a big glowing clock and take note that at 5:03pm, I was struck. He snarls and denies it. Look. We are out to sea.

Kelsey wanders in, and he put his hands on her, his big mouth making ugly remarks. There is one other woman in the room. I look at the big glowing clock, making notes. His protests are like malevolent elephantine wails.

On the deck, or whatever, red and blue backpacks… We see them coming.

Kkkk. underwater oxygen sounds, kkkk.

Hold still

mermaid

what if

your cell phone goes off

underwater.

The breathless faces, all greenish blue, looking.

The voice comes through, narration overlapping the cloudy waves sounding crisp, clean and serious; And in the darkest waters, I climbed up, and squinted, eyes fogged up in murky waters, and I hurled those secrets into the green streak that could be a river channel. Later we will scrape the ocean floor with metallic contraptions, and pull the truth up to the light.