I am older than you are. But I’m not dead yet. It took nearly 3 years of burn- ing to face this. To “say” it. Who cares, right? So, when you sing your song about old men, no matter the look on your face, I’ll think ‘glorious!’ I’ll think that it must be true— my every dream! Well, not all of them. As for my additional dreams, tonight the moon weeps for each of them. They will each take time. And a little bit of death, shall we say? Yes, death. But what’s a little death for but to enthrall, invigorate, in- vite introspec- tion. The pun’s on me, and why not? I’m not a- fraid of myself. Nor what I’ll find. Some may say that’s a bit naïve. But not me. I have plenty left of my sleeves, clumsy as I may be at finding I’ve lost nearly half of what I was carrying up in there some days. Goodnight, you gloriously sad weeping ball of cheese. I’ll see you tomorrow night. And that's something you can count on for certain.
“Suicide bomb, that!” Says the guy playing the elevator music on his cellphone (for everyone in the ele- vator to enjoy). “This can’t be helped,” he says into the phone for whatever reason. (Everyone else thought surely he was going to terminate that hogwash with “can’t be happening, but it seems these thoughts were similarly spare of any real foreboding.) Not being a movie, this sort of string of incidents does not lead to tragedy. These things just do not occur in real life. Nevertheless, the pregnant woman began to moan. The elevator inhabitants were on their way up. The moans were barely a blip in anyone’s mind. And they were silent enough that it did not seem disturbing that no on was paying attention. Visibly, any- way. But each person in the shaft did believe they caught an audible “birth” and “fuck” . . . . Ah, mumbling. This is most definitely not what the occupants of elevator number five were thinking, but how could they not know, given the cast they encountered in the miniature fleet- ing home in which, come to think of it, we all spend an awful lot of time as its occupants are zipped away to another home (whether zipping down or up, as it turns out); to one that’s a bit less miniature and a bit less fleeting. Ah, home.
Back to our story. With, I’ll admit, an intended level of suspense, since I do know what hap- pens next, even fifty-one years hence (as I type this). How could I possibly forget? Who could? I exited the elev- ator and sort of staggered to my desk at my less fleeting home, after noticing that everyone else in the el- evator had the most unusual sunburn. “These people are so not careful,” I remember think- ing as I stumbled toward the coffee machine. Pay no heed to that. It’s simply my job to think. Because I’m the agent, after all. So, at that lost in thought moment of swagger and impending coffee, whether it was a bomb or not, I instinctively re- moved my phone from its holster (these things have been trending for weeks now; trust me, just look it up!) and I sent one quick text: “you still mean the world to me, nick!” I hit send and quite fortunately made it well toward the outskirts of floor forty-two before the massive explosion on floor fifty-one.
Interpersonal Relations (part two) ....throbs to the earlobes. —John Ashbery It’s “pretty cool” to get exposed to fine arts at an early age like Kid Rock’s doppelganger, we each decide, here in The Quiet Room of the homeless shelter in which I’ve "resided" for the better por- tion of two years. Yeah, it's pretty cool. And then Mr. Lucid For the First Time I’ve known him, which has been here as my bunk neighbor for over six months, adds “and so are interpersonal relations.” Nobody had a clue what to say for a long while after that. We implied it be, perhaps, by our just being silent. But, inside, I’m giddy. Because this is the very foundation of my value system; a foundation that his been excavated and blown up to smithereens over the past couple of years but yet clearly remains a big part of it. Scrooge just claimed in a very poignant moment that interpersonal relations are, well, pretty cool. Any- way, I’ve really no idea where other nearby minds have wandered , but I can hardly contain myself. Which, as anyone who has spent more than, say, fifteen minutes with me knows, is quite, well, it's an unusual situation in which to find myself in. Biting my tongue, that is. So it’s impossible to speak, and this happens to me next to never. A couple of minutes pass (or perhaps thirty?). Then, Scrooge, aka Mr. Lucid for the First Time Since I’ve Made His Acquaintance, adds, as if he had only just seconds ago made the previous observation, “Yeah, and you most definitely talk too much.” He’s looking at me (duh!). So the moment is gone. The subject turns momentarily to other subjects. Such as earthquakes. Apparently one hit Napa Valley the previous Sunday. A 3.8. I learn a lot from the guys in The Quiet Room. And relearn just about as much. Things with which I’ve been out of practice, like re- gaining control of a sustained type of optimism. This, and, as another example, the art, the sheer necessity, of being social (I'm speaking for my- self here, of course). I tend to usu- ally add here that I’ve been diag- nosed with an am on regular med- ication for anxiety. Particularly social anxiety. But yet, I tend to add I'm a clear-cut extravert in the Myers' Briggs sense. So, I get my energy AND my anxiety from people. It’s a necessity and a curse (to which I usually add that I’m a Gemini). But, this can’t be that abnormal. Is it? I don’t know. It’s just me and every day is learning to deal with it. I stop my mean- dering thoughts long enough to listen to the directions the con- versations have gone in the room. How San Francisco sucks. How it’s A fantastic place to be (whichever, it’s home to me, and I do love it, or wouldn’t be sitting in a home- less shelter discussing such an absurd subject). Next up: our favorite spots to sleep when we are literally "on the streets." Mine happens to be Ina Coolbrith Park (named after a poet!), a relatively untravelled diagonal block on Russian Hill built on one of those avenues that give way to a dead-end for vehicles for a block or two due to how steep they are (or how wealthy the neighborhood, I suppose). My mostly six months on the streets coincided with the longest contracted job I’ve had since nearly a decade ago, when (during the earlier time) I made enough money to take three and a half years off of paid work and live the life of what I considered at the time a bohemian artist. I loved it (the park) because it was relatively un-trafficked, I had my own cul-de-sac built of boulders to sleep within (a fortress, as you will), and, night or day it had one of the most beautiful vistas these eyes have encountered. I got to wake up every morning, pre-dawn, to the view of the gorgeous new Bay Bridge, Treasure Island, and my “home," of sorts, the Financial District with its familiar buildings down below. As I spent my last night here at the barracks (as I called them), a place appropriate enough called Sanctuary, which stands inconspicuously at the corner of Eight and Howard Streets in lovely San Francisco, feeling the need to re- cord yet another small record of my existence, this more straightforward (truthful?) than normal hello to the world, or the minute part of it that might take a listen, I'm content. Tomorrow, I shall move on to better things. Finally better things. May it be an (averaged-out, of course) uphill swing for many years to come. If I had small glasses of champagne and bubbly juice to distribute here, on my last night in The Quiet Room, I’d send us all a simple cheer. On to the next. And may it never be as consist- ently grueling as the recent past…
It’s 2am, Tuesday morning. We’re six guys around a table in ‘The Quiet Room,’ which is never really quiet, but tonight it’s quieter than usual. New faces, old faces. The crazies, the dependables (such pigeonholing in the crypt of pigeonholing is always relative; more relative than you’d know for a long while, were you even stuck there as I was, assuredly). One guy I’ve never once seen lucid (he sleeps on the top bunk next to mine; I call him Scrooge, but a better description of his night- time ventures might more app- ropriately garner him the nick- name Gargoyle. Yes, these are some of the things that have occupied my mind during my stay here of nearly two years but for the 6 months break when I was working (and, lucky me, living on the streets simultaneously) – anyway, this is my first time experiencing him quite lucid, and we’ve been bunk neighbors for half a year. He’s the life of the party tonight! And party it is. It’s my last night here. I scan the “barracks” (as I call it here) in an attempt to envision this small tucked away enclave of a room a profligate (in the best possible way) cul-de-sac of lasciviousness. Our “Sanctuary” was home (apparently) to a bath- house. In the Golden Age of those mostly remnants of nostalgia here in San Francisco. The men sitting here tonight defy sex. That’s pro- bably an unfair assessment based on my own perspective. But they do defy sexuality, for certain. Except one, who’s a dead-on doppelganger for Kid Rock. And yet, he “got exposed” to “fine arts” at an early age, which, as he keeps saying (and I certainly keep agreeing), was “Pretty cool” . . . .
Short List Poem w/Actual Names of WiFi Networks O_BIRD_BOYS The ALDER PeeWee ticklemypickle Lmarcum authentic Manman molasses M flower Dave Standard Cognition ThePug memebox
Peripheral Vision I was going to puke once I realized we were not even halfway through the month. So. I’m truly sorry about the spectacle. But the fireplace is original. Sometimes memory is funny that way, serving no purpose but to remind us what idiots we are. Hence signifying the value of reclusivity and of running away from hardcore emotions or refusing to do laundry on do-or-die date. Obviously, there is an overarching fear that we might break our already fragile selves; become our own communal guiding light? Nice lighting in any environment is gener- Ally helpful. And 'nice' is not exactly det- ermined by the eye of the beholder here (if you follow my supposition) (distantly). A keen awareness of one’s environment can be helpful, if not crucial. I have heard about the wide disparity in how the periphery of each individual human’s vision can be. Deceptively tall embank- ments on both sides of an intersection toward which you are driving (one ex- ample) before which thick vegetation obscures an intersection warning and, a few meters forward (i.e., directly in front of the intersection), another shrub- covered stop sign. These are not life- shortening or life-altering entities in and of themselves. Two or three nar- ratives of any shape or size suggesting logic via the narration of each. We play along. People are somehow fine with this routine. But, as for me, I believe to do so is the way of a cretin. For one thing, people get terribly con- fused regarding their own part in their own event; and especially confused, say, when one of their friends are also at said event, there is massive confusion,\ in general, over who did what? Who hosted? Who was the most fun? The funniest? Etc.