020308 Anyone who wants to do anything real ... should have to have kids first. 020408 Jesus, why did I ever tell you about that? I ask in half-mock exasperation when she says she wants me to stuff her mailbox full of flowers, too. What, you want me to stuff my own mailbox with flowers? I mean it’s not like-- Christ, I was seventeen when I did that! Be seventeen! she exhorts, pushing on my chest with one paw like a Labrador standing up, and I know she is right. It’s time to be seventeen again, when I knew I was someone, when I knew I had such a lot of love to give. Only now I’m seventeen and thirty-seven all at once, and I have a really important job to do. I’m going to be the one who is there, and ready, at the right time when the genius comes through the door, the loner comes through, the loser, the clown, the just plain weird--I don’t have to invent the Apple I, but I would damn sure be honored to be like the ones the Woz looks back at when he says, yeah, that teacher really supported me when I needed it. It’s such a blessing, because I don’t have to be the genius, I just have to be-- We watched Fahrenheit 911 tonight, and the epiphane for me was not wholly political, well, partly it was, but here’s the big thing: I’ve been looking in the wrong place all these years, trying to curse my half-alive stuckness and pin the blame on my “situation,” like, oh, I don’t live alone any more, I have no time to just sit and think, and what I was really blaming my failure to thrive on was Ann, I was blaming my wife for simply being here, and I was blaming all my responsibilities, all these things poor little old cute victim artist bullshit me had to deal with now, and that’s why I can’t write a goddamn story, and it’s all y’all’s fault--even though I love you, don’t get me wrong, I still love you because what good is being a--god yes, though I hate almost to the vomiting point to admit it--tortured artist, unless your great noble sacrifice includes loving your family. But do you know where the problem really lies? Too much barbecue? No, that’s not it either. It’s Good fucking Printing. John’s a spineless, soulless opportunist who thinks water’s not a problem because we have Lake Michigan, who thinks Fox News is a real TV channel, who thinks global warming is just like religion because everyone has their own opinion. That man is the reason people like Bush get away with it, and I’m tired of fooling myself into believing that I go to work at an all-right place every god damned day. I should have quit after I broke Alvin’s granddad’s ink knife. Alvin, now that fucker was a printer. There’s nothing wrong with being a printer. There’s just something wrong with being an automatonic capitalist, whether you have billions like Halliburton, or fucking peanuts like John. It’s the same thing, just the number of zeros is the only difference. I should have quit any number of times, but you know what? I’m going to get a new life instead, and it’s about god damned time, because I am worth more than that. I am too beautiful and tall to waste away like a piece of veal in a fucking warehouse, watching TV with that fucker. Good morning, America. My daughters are beautiful and they astonish me every day. My wife is an ocean full of jellyfish and sharks and octopusses and wisdom. Everything is going to be all right. 020408 I mean, don’t get me wrong, he’s a nice guy, we’ve had some good times and all, but. Yeah. 020408 Asus EEE, OLPC, Macbook Air... I think I’m starting to get it. It’s a shifting of emphasis away from cramming as much of a desktop as possible into a “laptop,” toward creating a device with its own paradigm--it really is like iPod + computer, and everything that marriage implies. And I think I’ll be really digging it in about 5 or 6 years. 020508 patricia polacco visited muskego and talked to our kids in their schools and talk to us and sell books and sign them. Megan got the Meteor book about the real meteor that landed in P’s backyard (well it happened to her mom anyway)--megan touched a piece of the actual meteor and made a wish on it-- “I wished I could care for everyone forever.” Millie got a book about a girl and a pig kissing! (is how meg described it). Anyway, totally awesome, new understanding given about where books come from (real people). Did you know kids and old people are connected because the former are close to the light having just come out, and the latter are close on their way back in? And they have all those years in between to talk about. 021108 There’s at least two levels of being preachy, and neither one of em’s any damn good. 1) It’s obvious you’re trying to be preachy & teach those kids a lesson. This is basically a lecture. 2) You at least try to make it “interesting” or a “story.” This is like a lecture disguised as a comic book. 3) You may have convinced yourself you’re not trying to be preachy. Your story is a real story; however, its roots have grown out of such preachy soil as to produce leaves of the most stilted, pallid nature. 4) You’re really speaking and playing from fascination. If someone learns something from it, yay. Such learning is not an acquisition, but a weaving in, a stirring in, the gradual evolution of a life. Here’s my example: Fungus the Bogeyman. We loved it because it was intriguing, magical, and funny. It was irreverent. Fungus was who was interesting; not any abstract or abstruse philosophies pushed by pedestrian, authorial dictum. Now, decades is it? later, it occurs to me that Fungus and his family and people are a much better ---- for multicultural sensitivity than any formalized attempt to enlighten. Notable about Salvia Divinorum so far: Dissociative. Not like pot really at all. On/off almost; not a recreational, spend-the-day-stoned type of thing. That first time, sitting with Ann: one hit of 5x=physical (hard-on, odd vocal/aural effect, felt like a current pushing at my legs from behind). Two rapid-succession, larger hits=psychedelic (buzzy wallpapery animated visual curtain of yellow and brown diamonds, dissociation from physical logic (dropped lit pipe in my lap; was aware of doing so but in a somewhat depersonalized way), peripheral awareness almost nil, extra-saturation of yellow tones, then several minutes of truly not being sure if I was in the “correct” time-space (kept trying to get clues from Ann that would tell me for sure if I was really sitting on our own couch, or on some alternate-universe stranger’s couch; and if the latter, how was I going to explain my presence-- “I’m not crazy,” I assured her repeatedly.) I never doubted that I was myself, however. Then a few minutes of denouement, with a somewhat shroom-like “greasy” but pleasant feeling, not-unpleasant drained feeling, lightheaded back-on-the-ground feeling. Soon, sleep. 021608 Yes, there is a voice telling me I should just give up because I'm too old. Does that mean I should just give up? You tell me. 021808 I miss the seventies and even the eighties in ways that I cannot even explain, except perhaps by invoking the memory of a certain dirty white Toyota Celica, parked in a parking lot of some outdated shopping center in St. Louis, the radio on, back when the radio had something to say that no other entity could say. I think it may even have been Ken Nordine, saying something to me that no other soul could possibly say, and I think I grabbed my own crotch, thinking, hey, I can see how crotch-grabbing really is a comfort. But I was young. St. Louis was a city, with real airplanes, real restaurants, and I didn’t even know yet who Joni Mitchell was or had been. But I tell you what, here in the naughts, after everything, and I know you know what I mean, I sure do wish I had a river. I could skate away on.... I have, however, however, Alison, Scott in old apartment above the Rexall Drugs, owned by Anne’s mom’s fiance’s absentee brother, perfected the vodka martini. You don’t know me anymore, but whatever flight you’re on now, it can’t possibly have as perfect a vodka martini as I have made tonight, in the shadow of mounds and mounds of Wisconsin perfect snow. It’s cold outside and getting colder. Shake me another! It’s funny how TextWrangler’s new icon--essentially the same except more jaunty--makes me want to use the app more. And want to have it in my Dock. Graphic Design is powerful stuff! Remember. Remember going thru the middle of the night, through the middle of the wildlife refuge with Claire, through the middle of the fair. Remember Willie’s thumb-worn guitar, on close-up on the big tv, right there at the SEMO district fair. Remember him saying, “Do you want to hear something new?” Remember the strings, the thrum of the strings, the smile in his voice. Remember Claire, for she gave up her disingenousness for the sake of your relatively young bod & brain. You owe her, motherfucker. I also miss the orchard, Diebold’s and the other one, the one where we got stick candy in so many flavors, really any flavor you could possibly want, all swirled up in a spiral up the stick, and you sucked it til it got sharp, so pointy it could pierce your cheek if you weren’t careful. I miss the apples and the apple and cement smell of the place, and the long ride home, and the basement, and the roller skates and the iron smell of the support beams of the basement, riding around and around and around and around on roller skates in the basement. Music. Records playing, scratchy, music, real music, before they had all this.... And now I’m married, actually married, to a beautiful stranger, and the songs get stranger every year.... But some of them are quite strange and beautiful, like a Mongol warrior in his reeking hide, walking around on our blemished streets.... Also miss Glenn. Hate to say it, but yeah. Miss walkin’ in Memphis. Playing pool. Losing. The changing of songs. The bridge. The visible line. God how I hate to be drunk without you, fucker. But here I am. I miss the kind of Anne that’s spelled with an “e.” She’s the kind that’s made of magic and thin sun. More goddess than human, she never could have existed according to current theological and scientific views, but-- O I was there, I was there on that flat rock! Wasn’t I? The sun beat her skin into something I could lick and consume; it consumed me; I was never to be the same, having been burned by that sun. And all the while the Mississippi, in complicity, railroaded by, below, gun-black, smoke-hued and slow, all a glowing, all going down, down, down the stream to where we all came from. She laughs; my pretenses all are childish and shattered. Is it really time for me to look backwards thus? I can scarce believe it. I am but young--whence this old forsaken sigh, this wretched ache? I am young, I swear it! And yet-- HOLY SHIT> okay, yah, second or third or whatever. Time. Time Salvia. You know I did it the other night with basically no results save the buzzing diamonds, but now, shit. I mean, how’s this: You look up at the ceiling one minute and discover you’ve just started looking up at the ceiling after being everything and everyone you thought you missed and wanted to be from youth. I mean, one second I was three fourths drunk, the next second I was lifting the pipe against my better judgment, and the next second I was on my back on the bed, and the fucking computer was on the floor, the keyboard was disconnected and on the floor, the drink was spilled on the rug, and I don’t even fucking know what happened or where I went, except I have the feeling that you should definitely be careful what you wish for, and do have a fucking sitter when you smoke this shit. Holy shit. DUDE. Well. I just hope the computer’s okay. I’ve never tossed it onto the floor like that. Buzz, buzz. I looked in the mirror and my own face seemed to frog-flatulate like Marco’s used to when he and I would say grandiose things neither one of us believed. Late into the night, having drunk a few beers, after the white boys played capoeira with themselves and each other, occasionally even with each other. That was the source of that boy’s arrogance: he couldn’t handle the psychosexual nearness of it all; had to distance himself through his own physical superiority; lucky for him the game was rigged, I never kissed him, or we’d a been lost. He’d of been lost. I never kissed his grizzled mug. Thankg god, he say, thank god I never did so much drugs as to fall under that particular spell. Thank, yeah, okay, god or whatever. Poor bastard, you say, but who but yourself are you talkin to, you old fuckin queen you. Hope you didn’t break up your computer too much. Fuck. Jesus Christ. It’s a wonder this shit isn’t illegal. Why the fuck did I get up and rip away from the computer like that? I have no idea. God I want to smoke now, I mean normal tobacco like normal people smoke. God. Holy shit. Am I me? Do I care? Does it matter? 021908 It doesn't matter how respectable, predictable, or honorable they may or may not be. That's not the issue. It's not paranoia to object to the fact that the superdelegates COULD overturn the will of the people if they WANTED to. The fact remains that THEIR votes matter more than MY vote; and that state of affairs is un-American and unacceptable. 022308 Scott Eggimann said this to me tonight, via the old-fashioned technical wonders of telephony: “Even your emails have a certain brilliance.” And I tell you what, just about nothing could have made me happier. Thank you, you son of a--I can’t even call you that. You’re my oldest friend.