Little Dog Mind - Twain

Notes: Early Morning Branch Break

If It’s dark out I’ll walk barefoot across the bee field, chancing an early morning stinger from a bee waiting to return to the box.  Blue Jays are screaming everywhere in the eucalyptus trees waiting for bees to spill out of boxes.  A couple of deer run alongside the deer fence, see me and jolt back the other way.  It doesn’t feel like the city - but I can here bart collecting early morning worker bees headed towards boxes across the bay.  The apricot tree looks heavy next to the leafless pink lady.  

Fates - Johanna Warren

Notes: **LateNightFloat**

My bedroom is a sailboat.  I wake sailing across the streets of South Berkeley just over the roof tops; suspended like a cloud.  Old hippies replant succulents in red glossy ceramic potholders, paint chips on faded wind breakers.  Men stand outside barber shops on Sacramento street, talking across four lanes of traffic, coming inside and out.  People pile into Acuras; they pile their belongings into Hondas and Toyotas.  

First Love / Late Spring - Mitski

Notes: ^^UncertaintyNeedsRebranding^^

A Dole Banana, A dry wall screw and pair of levis jeans. Three items, common enough to work their way through politics, religion, social viewpoints. Three essentials that rarely elicited positive or negative feedback.

Three investigations Chase undertook for his Senior Seminar.

His goal was to fully document the creation. The chain of processes that make a Banana a feasible and affordable supermarket sundry. Motivated in part by dreams of unearthing scandal, a dungeon full of child slaves, hands glued to sewing machines with plastic feeing tubes. Somewhat motivated by the belief that a more complete knowledge would radically alter societies consumptive habits.

The book of Pain Principle 2: Pain can be measured.

Cross tabulated tables were wallpaper. Chi squares, regression analysis. The tools that promised definitive answers were cherished and used as decoration. By measuring the kilometers between banana field and supermarket, multiplying by an estimated true cost of oil, factoring in the jobs created along the way with dodgy dumby variables, Chase began to piece together a small story line.

Long grids of Banana plants strecthed across an earthy canvass. Old Mercedes trucks maneuvered in and out and in, looking for ripe groves. Banana plants birth small foot ball shape flowers that crawl up the watery spine of the plant. A carefree machete slap is plenty to fall a 15 foot banana plant. When a banana flower is spotted, emerging like a tough wart from below the skin, short men with plastic bags climb a short plastic ladder and pull plastic over the flowering fruit. Dole Bananas must arrive with a consistent ripening period and by bagging the fruits, maggots, birds, climatic shifts will not effect the eventual desirability. Dole sells millions of Bananas to Europe. Studies show that German consumers prefer long, straight, Bananas rather than little curvies. Dole is in the business of making Germans happy and today’s supermarket banana is pornographic airbrush of the true fruit’s psychical form and taste.

For one month, Chase bought Bananas by the crate. He must have spent $300 dollars on bananas. A plywood pantry in the basement of 318 Dale St., served as his library carrousel. Five bananas for breakfast, three bananas

between peanut butter for lunch, fried bananas, banana bread. BANANA. He slept on the peels, drawing sharpee faces on the cylindrical yellow tube socks for company. The bananas quickly became Chase’s primary company.

“Was it hard to cross the border?” Chase asked a freckled banana man.

“It must have been difficult. Months locked away in the dark, underneath pounds and pounds of your own. Stickered, sprayed and waxed like night tramps that consider asking for money. Your all done up. Ready for the shelves. Ready for the automated mistings and the grubby fingers inspecting your skin for imperfections.”

Chase’s friends would help him paint the bananas: blue furled uni brows, pierced ears and jagged teeth. If they discovered that one of Chase’s main forms of procrastination was to interview the curved personalities decaying in his room, they would probably paint more bananas. Partial insanity was encouraged, revered and

almost always considered a liberating force. Friends with a cursory understanding of Chase’s project pocketed their cell phones, avoided his door step, hoping in some childish way that Chase was figuring it out and should not be disturbed. As the Spring semester blew through Santa Cruz, carrying sea salt and moisture, twisting redwood leaves from torso thick branches, Chase tore through the internet, tore through library books and primary documents, tore through bic pens and index cards. Chase and his sleepless banana family, all sharing the same shelve.

Unlike most impassioned college seniors, Chase understood that few eyes if any would ever read his thesis work. Bound, stapled, formatted his thesis would sit on a shelf, next to a report on Costa Rican Tree Frog dispersion, below a research piece on the ionosphere 250 miles above earth’s surface, stagnant and untouched for years. Perhaps a future student would pull the 120 page thought ball down from head height, sift through introductory paragraphs, topic sentences and discussion sections, searching for some quick quotable figure to bolster a bibliography. The futility of the project was only a minor annoyance for Chase, he

pressed dirty fingered key strokes late into the night, pushed and pulled by an eager force to build strong foundations. Concrete that could seal his convictions, his friends Marxist habits, his Professor’s call to action.
Maybe at the end, with diploma in hand, shaking foreign hands and hugging proud family members, he would be able to walk with out a hunch, without a sullen critical eye focused on the world’s rampant shortcomings, maybe he will carry some knowledge or understanding that could explain why his culture’s proudest objects, interactions, and values made him sick in the head. 

Ghosts - Lonesome Leash

Notes: ((FeelingSmallFeelingTired))

Past the hydraulic shrimp boat wings folded upright above the water, beyond the bits of land, nostalgic islands, above the stagnant rot of crab pot and old rope, high above the bayou’s winding channels and far beyond it’s planked porches covered in steel cooking pots, the sky reddens and bleeds from orange and blue. Fire and water mixing in the cosmos. Charging down the bayou in streaks that stain.

If placed correctly, perhaps the shallow curve of the moon could hold all the stars that follow it’s nightly appearance. Heaped and tangled together in a net of light, pushing and shoving like a billion runts against the curve of breast. Bigger stars roll in on mechanical limbs, clicking and spurting gas, bolted and bending, jointed with brass rivets that glow fire red with pressurized heat. They open dark holes by pressing their steel thumbs hard into the brightness, and as the night trips over the horizon the giants take their place standing on the moons soft edge.

The water is so clear and dark that it reflects lost light thrown down by loose stars and the wooden keel of the dingy cuts through ghostly cosmos. If you look closely you can see whole constellations gyrating in place, flashing their misunderstood patterns on the surface of the bayou.

It is here that they tell stories of concrete boxes. Grand treasures guarded by the Devil that surface in the swamps for a moment before disappearing down into the mud like shrimp burying the length of their whiskers. The people here tell stories of endless holes that plunge into the swamp where one could fall and never climb out. Chests of riches unlocked by sinister deals with the dark. Old age can’t even pull these stories away. They seem only to ripen as haunted memories are built upon and refashioned to fit a stories structure. Grown men and woman push their superstitions down through the generations keeping the bayou alive with a quiet magic.

If I let the canvass folding chair hold me, trusting its foreign weave with the weight of my body, wishing that the rust did not crawl up the sheered metal legs, praying for threadbare cotton beneath. If I lend the plywood dock my vote of confidence, laud it’s flex and bow, celebrate it’s hasty construction and it’s keen command of balance. If let my trust flow from the chair and dock, further down the Bayou, carried by saline breeze, across Gravel Goat Road, between the legs of laying hens before resting on a cypress porch. Perhaps if it could lift the window shade a few inches and inspect the flood lines circling walls, blotch and mold climbing six feet above the wooden floor molding. Maybe my belief in the rigor and tradition of the people that live here in Dulac, Louisiana would molt and harden.

Atop the hexagonal weave of a crab pot, a great blue heron spreads its wings over water. “Dems good eating” Kirk says pointing at the bird. I wonder how its tubular frame would fit over a fire, whether Kirk would eat the wings or long legs. The bird, now protected by numerous laws, treaties and arbitrations, fans its wings in safety. Moisture in the air provides a weightless bounce to both flora and fauna. Blurring the edges of action.

We used to eat them all the time.

They taste good.

Ya they is good eatin.

The birds proportions seemed far too acute to hold any real meat, but Kirk insisted that a heron would feed a few people.

We used to live off the land when we grew up. Those Red winged blackbirds is good eatin too. Catch em in a box. Fry up the breast meat.

We sat on Kirk’s front porch.

“The truck could hold another three or four, pressed against the wheel wells, crouching to get out of the wind. It was better this way with a head full of air feeling the mosquitos and gnats bounce from your cheeks. During the summer we would pile in the truck, all of us at once and hit the yellow line, forty miles an hour to cool down at night. Looking out across the road, a sea of sugar cane on either side floating away from us.”

“This one time when we was kids, we were all fucked up, drunk and high. My buddy says to me, man this is where that treasure is.”
‘what treasure.’ I asked. Thing about that treasure is you gotta show up with three people and stand around this place in the ground. The youngest has to fight the devil. And the others have to stand their and watch. If the youngest stands his ground and beats the devil, you get the treasure.”

What could be meant by his shallow voice. He could talk for hours a group sitting around his legs, watching his hands move back and forth across the negative space in the room. Whether or not he knew it, he was remembered. His stories had the unique property of presenting themselves over and over again in life’s daily movements.

Adult Song - Dave Deporis

Notes: #BeggingOrBeginning#

Strong convictions carried little currency.  A neatly labeled shelf already existed for his passionate angst: the questioners.  It was big enough for Chase and all of his friends and inside they found more incredibly inspiring humans.  Two named Molly and Sam, had carved a small tunnel through the wall of the cabinent, they built a smooth slide that deposited the curious into a cabinet labeled “depressed recluse.” The walls of the cabinet were painted and plastered with ornate mid-century musings.  In the back a small library of records was kept for musical enjoyment.  Poking his head out of the cracked cabin droor, Chase saw a sea of cabinets, each neatly labeled. 

“Good afternoon sir” Said a blind man walking across the sea of cabinents.

“Hows it going”  I asked.

            “Everything is good right now.  Thanksgiving is coming right up around the corner, I’m thankful for that.”

            “There is a lot to be thankful for,” Chase muttered, turning his head around to watch his friends walk deeper into his cabinent.

            “Young man are you crossing any of these cabinets, may I cross with you.”

            Chase stepped out and the man wrapped his hand around Chase’s arm like a marsupial tail.  They walked together. 

            “Are you looking for any shelf in particular?” Chase inquired.

            “I have a bed about thirty shelves down in the blind black man cabinent, but I thought it would be nice to do some walking before dark.”

            They passed dusty old cabinets that hadn’t been opened in years.  Labels like griots guild, protagonists circle, time for time club, polio survivors.  As they crossed over each cabinet shelf the top heavy old man would tap his cane against the metal casing, listening for resonance, listening for a response. 

“You can tell a lot about a box by tapping on it.  Some people respond quickly almost urgently with a few taps or banging.  In others the sound just carries on down, hitting stagnant pools of flesh that have burrowed in deep and probly don’t appreciate the foreign noise.”

They both understood that there was no end to the sea of cabinets, too many new identities were constructed daily.  Builders could barely keep up trying to house humanities profiles. 

“Watch out for that one” Chase chuckled pointing with his finger, “Violent sports fans”

The sun bouncing light off various metallic handles and lock knobs was nearly two fingers from the Shelves horizon line. 

“Best to head back now.”  The man said. 

Chase agreed.  Cold and dark and metal didn’t mix well.  The comfort of his friends, his friends songs, paintings and wine filled discussions were a comforting food, difficult to find elsewhere.  Certainly there were other strongholds, other people questioning socities structure, yearning for novel interactions and open expression.  There had to be others, nestled, crammed like cozy eggs into a padded box, somewhere not too far away from here in the sea of cabinets.

            Tapping through aluminum face plates and titanium mesh, even a small ceramic tile façade, the blind man led Chase back to the questioners box.  With the sun set and wind humming through handles, Chase offered the man a bed to sleep in for the night. 

“What’s the name of your shelve anyways.”

“We’re the questioners” Chase said. 

Leaning his cane against his fit nylon track pants he paused before answering. 

“Yes, I can sleep in there”

纸飞机 Paper Plane - MADPETE

Notes: &FuzzyBrain&

Welcome to the center of the internet – please be seated and take off your shoes.  The data is very sensitive to weight and vibrations.  Hold this rod.  It will keep your body gyroscopically still preventing data corruption.  Attach the rod to the grooved track above your head, the rod will be your guide throughout your journey to the center of the internet.  Thank you for taking them time out of your web browsing to experience to visit the center of the internetJ

Notes: **BrainCloudMySeasons**

Golden Orb Persimmon season, webs built on drain pipes and ripe fruit, between window panes and door stops, in cars – big fat golden orbs amongst the glowing persimmon leaves shaking off in the wind.  

So dark you can’t see the hills, eucalyptus branches breaking and storm drains full of asphalt.  Sometimes the power goes out – sometimes the bay surges.  Clear stars and we breath in all the dirt that falls from the sky.  Waves from Hawaii and early nights at home around the couch.  Soup in buses.  Soup.

Plums explode.  Crabapples Explode.  Cherries explode.  Green hills.  Seeds.  Magnolias.  Maybe a tang-top.  Garden starts.  A few windy days.

Fog every morning in the dark – blankets of comfort – hundreds of tiny clouds pushed together over the bay flowing together in gentle cooperation.  Moisture and spitting and by noon it burns through.  Wind follows, , through the teeth of the foot hill – delivering moisture, flumes of ocean air, afternoon clouds and wind – the great summer’s relief – wind.

Junk Bones - Dark Dark Dark

Notes: ^PostitiveFeelingsAimingForLongNarratives^

Storycorps you know it?  Booths around the country where people can interview or be interviewed and its recorded - one copy goes to the library of congress and one goes to the people interviewed.  So many stories.

Ok _____

Sessions/music corps - traveling bus recording video studioish thing that you can be interviewed in and be recorded.  Ammish folk tunes, Indian pan Flutes, Old jazz players.  

Or _____

just get really good at sessions and travel around the states making session videos

Or ____

Why is my head always in the clouds?  Why all these ideas, schemes, escape plans, missions, futures.  whats wrong with now

Or  ______

Writing a song is scarying me - I am being defeated by my standards and pre-task pessimism

Or -____

I wrote a song called You Got me in the Haunt 

Or _____

Maybe ssris are a good thing - less creative barriers??

Or _____

maybe a lot of things need to change in my life?

Or______

Hot room Hot redwood Hot Day Hot Sun Hot Work

Or _______

What if I could do the things in my head?

Or ______

How am I going to transform this bus in a month, pay rent, organize a bunch of shows, get the thing paid for somehow, write 10 songs, have an art show with my mom, intern at a creole restaurant, put new tires on the bus, date 2 people, go on ok cupid dates, work 28 hours a week in the sun, apply for residencies, write nytimes a letter, read 4 books, go shopping for 10 people, go surfing and windsurfing and sailing, get out of the hosue, take pictures, make a music video, feed a cat, pay my rent, park and repark a bus, re do a webstie, launch a website, edit a video from san quentin, go to new orleans, film and edit in new orleans, hang out with ex lovers in new orleans, find new lovers in new orleans, resurect freestyle night, film a parkour video in the dog patch, learn beatles songs on the guitar, watch a vhs dammit, help my dad move bees, get two trucks stuck and unstuck in a week, not make my mom a mothers day present, go to Sonora Twice, talk to 10 different insurance companies, play smartphone games, download tinder and delete, live with 10 roomates….

Or _____

I love the idea of the piano being in the bus

Or _____

Should I trust my gut that is vicerally telling me all the time to:

-buy a bus

-get rid of my iphone

-move 

-quit job

-go to vermont

-live in the bus and make art to sell 

-record sessions of muscians

-play lots of guitar

-live someplace beautiful like really beautiful

-live in a small town

-Make a record label

-Give a lot of beautiful things away

-Have a sunday pancake speakeasy

-Cook creole food

-Slow down

-Read one book at a time

-feel small in a landscape

-surf

-get a desktop computer - possibly without internet

-find a space that feels better than bathhouse - aesthetically. energetically

-Get inspired

-Get out

-Fall in love again

-Get lonely

Or _________

That life sounds kind of amazing - why do I choose this one?

-Fear of not making money and loosing independence

-Fear that I won’t meet people I connect with

-Anxiety that I won’t do well with unstructured time

-Hard to meet people

-Miss my friends

-Bale out on something that works pretty well

-Back to ground zero

-Can’t decide where to go

-Its cold in the winter most places

-I owe people money

Or ________

I really have so much faith in my vision

Ego man

It’s always a good idea to do them

They are windy and inspiring and blow into me without any grasping

They come easily and a free and personal and equipped and beautiful and inclusive 

They are to be trusted - they are my gifts here, this lifetime

Or _____

Ideas are shit

Or _____

The minute I start they fall and break and unrippen and spill and become not quite right

Or _____

They will carry me far along

Or ____ 

I’m more like a tree that grows slowly towards the water

Or _____ 

Maybe anxiety is the blockage.  Fear is driving me along quiet borringly.

Or ____

Maybe try zoloft or something 

Or _____

Flip flopper.

Or ______

Time for some gratitude

Or _____

JUST DO IT

Or _______

Or just write the damn song!!!!

 Notes: !Odd Long Day!

Fundraising for a good fuck party – going door to door, skirt to skirt, hem to hem, collecting consent with thin Bob Parker microphone, battery pack blinking and a grooved on/off push switch.  ON – do you consent to being in a fuck party?  YES – I consent.  Buttons fly open and breasts fall out.  Dicks lay lie puss snakes on the hardwood floor.  OFF – each corner of the room is a cardinal direction.  ON – Do you consent to being a skin actor in the sex party this evening?  YES – consent recorded.  Megabyte download and stored right on the desktop EVERYONE’S CONSENT in sky blue rectangle folders 100 pixels below the hard drive. 

“You got a threesome in you”

ON – consent microphones humming in-between nipple clamps and stirrups.  He answers YES. 

Downloaded/named/filed/fucked.

Another by the window – push pops and the angry fist – all bundled up in cellophane and space blankets.  Yelling about something from folds of plastics.  ON – microphone slipped under the top of the bundle – I want to stick my fist in you and I want us to pretend like its not happening - can I?  YES: Microphone Record OFF.

Downloaded/named/filed/fisted

A trash can full of wine leans against a stained glass window and the room is temperature controlled by a booth somewhere upstairs. 

ON – consent microphone humming

“I think I want to go to sleep”

Recording…

“I’m too tired to have sex in front of you”

Recording…….

Pushing the electronic foam oval further into the space of the conversation, recording nuance, recording pause and lip movements, recording body positioning. 

“Roll Over”

Recording……..

OFF.

Downloaded/named/filed/sleep

Lion - Laura Goldhamer

Notes: *(PastaOnAridge)*

Coordinates : Grizzly Peak Make Out Spot, Listening : to David Bowie Alone With Soup Cooking on The Stove Watching : Tourists take selfies with San Francisco illuminated in a golden circle behind.  Golden light raining down on a city of movement and future.   

There was a girl who had a button to turn all the lights off.  She lived a ceramic bowl about twenty yards from the South Berkeley Border and as a child she would turn streetlights off from her bedroom window.  She liked to watch the lights fade out in patterns down her street, pressing the button at different directions and velocities she could could darken an entire neighborhood. 

She was scared of making it completely dark.  It seemed permanent - so she would keep swaths of Oakland alit, triangles of light.  She would turn off the Lake Merritt strung pearls, and then the Oakland port, never at the same time.

She sometimes thought about the people in her darkness: warm black refrigerators, medical machines deflating, bedside table lamps, the cold.  

She started to climb to the ridgeline above the East Bay, covered in Eukalyptus oils.  She would lean towards the lights, dangling her button over the cliff towards the city.

Everyday she would walk to the top of the ridge and decide whether to turn it all off.  Everyday she came back down – into the light – past the bright white Claremont hotel, along the curbs.  Walking home with the button between her fingers. 

She couldn’t decide if she hated it all.  The liquor stores and bagel shops, the sulphur orange lights, the parking lots with new cars, the warmly lit homes, the container ships collecting in the bay, the steady pulse of cars across the Bay Bridge.

She couldn’t tell if it was healthy.  She imagined a dark black ink bay– and the stars!  All the hard work of a century slamming to a halt in darkness. 

Wouldn’t it feel so good to experience magic in her lifetime – like an earthquake or firestorm, but completely unexplainable.  Outside of science.  Outside of concrete.  Outside of employment.  She thought about whether people really liked this.  Whether if we all stood from a ridge above the San Francisco Bay Area we agree in unison, marvel with the car lots, and scrapers, and billboards, the movement and twinkle of people traveling home across the water.  Would everyone take a picture in front of the lights or just the tourists?  

She thought about what people would do in the dark.  Would they keep trying to turn their phones on for hours.  Would they gather in the streets with candles.  Would they be scared?  

She wondered if she had a responsibility to anyone?  Anything? She thought about how her generation was going to be the one to change it all – stop the environmental degradation and inequity in the world.  She considered solving climate change – how did it measure up, what part of her family would be greatful?  What part of the world would cheer? 

She realized she was saddened by it all – by this great responsibility and privilege she held in her hand.  She couldn’t figure out how to be in the world without doing what she wanted.  How could she know anything else? 

She wondered how much worse it would have to get – how much taller the lights would have to rise – into the clouds – beneath the bay – glowing,  How many more people would be in the city then?  In the world?  She wondered about people who had finally found a place to live – who could finally afford heating.  Would she turn their lights off.

            Every day she would lean towards a neighborhood.  She tried to pick the ones with the big lights - the most industry.  She would lean and aim and never shoot.  Maybe I’ll press the button right before I die and not have to know the rest of the story.  But she was old enough to know that death was difficult to predict.  She thought about killing herself.  She thought about pressing the button and killing herself.  Like a flash.  Like an explosive ending.  Like a fly exploding the bulb of a hot lamp. 

Eventually she stopped leaning towards the lights on her ridge.  She would visit the ridge when she was nervous or frustrated with the world – sometimes she didn’t even bring the button, left at home in a box. 

She can’t remember saying she wanted children, but she had them.  And they were entertained and fattened on the lights.  First squares of light and rectangles of light – held to the face – then glasses and helmets – then chips and codex.  

She heard herself worried for the world, complaining about our creations, complaining about the loss of things.  She was sure her children could fix it – they cared – they could write a new narrative, start a new story.  She felt herself passing a weight – passing it to the innocence of her children, wrapping it in hope and encouragement and passing it them during dinner.  Before school.  Before bed. 

In the decades before her death she felt age and death mixing in her skin.  She felt more pain.  She watched the world lighten – light harvested and reflected and for anyone.  Limitless, weightless, gold arcs of light in every direction, in any eye.  A great quiet – A great hum – A great Calm.  Reached collectively – beaming – perfect.  

She started to move her bones.  Pulled on her shoes.  She walked towards the ridge in the blinding light.  Seeing nothing.  Using her hands to feel the stones, and dirt and rubble.  She was 80 years old.  She brought the button.  Beams of light knocked her down to her feet as she climbed the hill, ripping off her folded skin.  Winds of light stood up all the hair on her body.  

She leaned from the top of the ridge towards the light that blinded her. Pillars, columns, spheres of light filling the sky.  

She thought she believed in change.  She believed in new beginnings, she believed in the earth, she believed in humans.  Leaning farther out from the edge of the cliff, button in hand, poised.

She thought about her children - surrounded by the light - living in it - off it. 

The button was heavy and round.  She wondered if it would still work.  

And now she felt the the full power of her opportunity.  A giant eraser.  A many armed shiva leaning towards progress and hope and story.  She felt the creativity in darkness, in halting, in option.  She felt the freedom in pacing and fear.  She let the button’s weight pull her down from the ridge. Falling towards the flats - towards the old Bay marshes - into the the creeks and redwoods.  She extended her arm towards San Francisco and pressed the button and the stars exploded into the sky, she pressed the button for Oakland and columns of light darkened, she pressed the button as she fell and when she hit the ground she pointed it towards the heavens and pressed it again - everything dark. Even the stars. 

Why Did You Have to Go and Do That - Dina Maccabee

Notes: ##Thanks4giving##

Its party music and my muse tonight is a giant blood orange with a short skirt, sitting in the back row, behind me, watching my shoulder blades carry the tension of performance. 

Its party music and last night I fell in love with a wild man on a school bus, fell deeply in love with his brain and my brain and all the things that felt possible.

Its party music and sometimes I just see body parts, the architecture of an ass, the probability of a thong, the parabolas and breasts and triangles and tubes.

Its party music and the folk musicians sing out the beauty of birds and mountains as the waves touch the edge of the bus in rhythm to their dirty fingers and long beards.

Its party music and ducklings stack in ascending eye height order, ready for a cultural feeding– pushing ear and nose and hungry beaks towards the source of tonight’s entertainment food.

It’s party music and James Wallace and the Naked Light grace the bus with sideways glances, cow eyes and the ambiance of understanding.

Its party music and Bikram Pochknoff performs Ringo Star’s Black Bird to cage full of critique, confusion and second generation Berkeley minded migrants.

It’s party music and I spit into the audience when I sing.  

It’s party music and Daddy and Morris deserve another chorus about finding a late night finger fucking.

It’s party music and my dumb phone defines me.

It’s party music and sometimes your friends are in love with you and sometimes they are furious with you and now they sing about you.

It’s party music and all the people I invited didn’t come.  

It’s party music in my tube house. 

It’s party music and freshly harvested sand fleas squeak in boiling wine outside on Berkeley built landfill rocks.

It’s party music and electricity runs off a hot battery in a SUV 40 feet away, keeping one incandescent against the performers cheek.

It’s party music and Looper curls up on the drift wood throne alone clutching her knees and deciding with the world.

It’s Party music and pyramids of straw and hay are stationary towers under eucalyptus sway. 

It’s party music and men with motorcycles and leather vests film acoustic sets on tablets holding them straight in front of their chests like excited mug shot placards. 

It’s party music and she hands out 10 joints of homegrown blue dream candy whistles, popping across the dark audience like chemical fireflies.

It’s party music and a purple little horsey came out. 

It’s party music and the security guards ignore the beachfront bus party for as long as they can.

It’s party music and we practice Horney boys songs under yellow sulfur lights with the confidence of comedians and the insecurities of artists.

It’s party music and my parents arrive in a Prius at 8:30pm, drift under the windows standing on tip toes to see the strange news from another star. 

It’s party music and we plow through college high heels, burrito hands and traffic signals for donuts and the quesadilla. 

It’s party music and we press skin and tits close together and bite nipples with canines 5 feet from the dog parks perimeter, two skin hounds pushing and pulling skin around each other, blankets of nerve endings – and its fucking cold; carving out hand holds on hips and bouncing everything up and down to some agreed upon rhythm, probably an accumulation of our collective musical upbringings – puff daddy and gal costa, meeting in tempo underneath steel envelopes on the streets of Berkeley. 

It’s party music and the bed is full of sand and the sheets follow our limbs around. 

A Leap in the Night - Silian Rail

notes: ^i'mAbigBerryPie^

Naw that’s just the smell of fresh paint in your childhood bedroom - covering layers of teethmarks, stickers and etched initials.  A big blanket of white, still a bit sticky and reflective.  Throw tarps and paint cans lining the edge of the desk you used to climb under as a child and over as a teen to slip out the window.  The room is a place to evaluate: distance traveled, degrees earned, worlds changed, people loved; sometime I sit in my childhood bed wrapped in the impressions of a lifetime, folded between the stories I can tell now.  Other days I return to this room with a stomach disgust, stagnant blood, landed too close to the nest and spent his life climbing back up the filial tree with broken wings.  This room can be a canon shooting me towards the possibilities of life, or it can be a cage where I stew in safety, waiting for the perfect patterns to blink the beacons of my future.  It’s strong magic.  It’s bone white now.  Reflective and sticky to the touch.  

The Shining Path - Sun City Girls

Notes: !!!#SweatPantsRainPants#!!!

This morning is all rain.  Grey skies and all rain.   Gas powered weed wackers and leaf blowers creating and moving bits of greenery around the streets.  Somewhere over there a lawn is manicured, somewhere over there a hedge of juniper is shaped.  Is it wrong to value entropy instead.  Unshaven beards dipping into soup bowls.  Chin Noodle clouds and pesto mustaches.  Overgrown doorsteps, weeds everywhere. 

       And that’s when all the drones settle in, reserving couch spots in front of football games with freckled eyeliner and eager postures.  Little rectangles of comfort dropped in perfectly built squares.  Who did we inhabit this from.  This is a creation.  This was a creativity.  Who’s vision left me with expensive boxes?  Stop teaching me how to navigate these realities as if they are stable/sane/logical.  How do I start over?  How do I feel solace in rejection?  How do I feel comfort in loneliness?  Who could have prepared me for how the world would make me feel alone.  Walking through piles of concrete, neon signs, bent trees, watching new buildings built with the speed of the gods.   What can I celebrate in a liquor store?  The variety?  The machine hours of glass shaping and coloring, textured prints for measurments.  The credit card machines direct connection with my bank.  The refrigeration systems cooling efficiency.  The calories – packaged in stained cardboard and internationally sourced aluminum foil.  What generation can I blame this on?  What man?  What a waste of time and energy.  Family sized boxes of cancerous chemicals flavored for addictive consumptive patterns.  I never want anything inside of any box?  I find my food on the ground from a tree.  I find my objects in the street.  I’ll eat a whole tree.  I’ll sleep inside a dog.  I’ll eat your whole car.  I’ll shit on your lawn.  I’ll tear down your box.  I live in a rectangle with a round top next to a triangle dog park.  Who put us in boxes? Teach your children how to be lonely.  Its lonely as fuck here. 

Here's to John Wesley Hardin - Moon Dog

 Notes: (((((WhatDoYouDoEveryDay)))))

Are screens moving closer to me?  The space between my laptop and the edge of the desk narrows over the course of the day, eventually the bright machine is humming in my lap like a puppy dog and I tuck it in to my covers at night like a shivering lover.  Is it unreasonable to believe that I’m not in control?  That some magnetic pulse of silicon is actively and consciously vying for my attention, my view shed, my bedside table even my love.  A million Iphones leaning towards us as we lean towards them, what eye contact!  What beautiful connectedness and focus!  On subway, on plane, on streets my beauty I am all yours or you are all mine.  I got a dumb phone and I still pull it from my pocket staring at the 100-pixel polar iceberg background.  These are habits and the are quiet strong – actuated 100s of times a week in the dark, amongst loved ones, in bedrooms, in the mornings.  What an amazing collective habit we have built for ourselves, what buy in! I am a host to this technology that harvests my oddities and patterns.  I willingly provide battery power, endure loading wheels, sift through adds; it knows who I want to talk to – where I want to eat – what I need to do and I worship it.  

Checkin In - Purple Grape

!!sunnydrugs!!

Diamonds or “diamonding” was one of their favorite and earliest experiences in pleasure, architecture and interior design.  Over the summer, when sidewalks were covered in hopscotch frames and rainbow prints, loose ends of chalk could be found, usually in the cracks of the sidewalk panels, slightly diagonal and wedged. 

            Longer finger-nails, were developed over weeks of acrylic hardening and non-biting-goal oriented behavior.  A longer fingernail with a flattened chisel shape allowed more wiggle room to slide and flick between sidewalk panels when extracting chalk, it’s also they found, easier to clean, paint and file.  “Chalking the Dust” powdering it by squeezing it against the walls of the concrete slabs during extraction or by trying to dislodge it from a difficult corner, was despicable and disappointing.   Colors were arranged in piles and labeled in a small rectangular zip lock bag, then placed into larger zip lock bags that held all primary and secondary colors.   Marking symbols before and after the assumed (but more often guessed) “brand color” made searching through color bags a little faster, and helped to distinguish between all the very similarly named colors Ex: 

Bottle Brush Blue, Bonnet Blue, Blue Blueberry, Bay Ocean Blue, Bang! Blue.

                                                            Vs

#—#Bottle Brush Blue#—#

%==Bonnet Blue==%

^^(Blue Blueberry(^^

**$Bay Ocean Blue$**

!!*&Bang! Blue&*!!

Sometimes color-coding would lead to long disputes; everyone had differing senses for hue and saturation and feel.  They liked the blues and the purples and really liked finding more expensive brands that didn’t powder immediately, held together with some wax or moisture. 

            Over a summer they could typically collect a small garbage bag full of chalk – but it meant missing out on a lot of other opportunities.  Encouraged by the slow growth of chalk diamonds, now almost reaching the bathroom of the living room, perfect and equilateral, all pointing the same direction towards the ceiling, purple sections and a fade in the corner of the room.  Multi-colered dust piles would form on the floor of the living room, the majordrawback, because it quickly became their chore to clean the living room, after it was discovered by the parents that “Mango the cat” would roll and breach through the rainbow tailings, leaving rainbow paw prints all around the house, that at first were incredible and mesmerizing, but soon the magic wore off and became slightly irritating—both because of the mess and also because the parents found it defeating and unimaginative to be irritated by such a wonderfully organic and beautiful thing that was occurring on a day to day basis in their house.  Having spent most of their parenting life oscillating from a constant state of shock, awe and disbelief to a deep sense of pride and wonderment – they found as their children aged they didn’t really actually do any parenting anymore which made them slightly self conscious because it had always felt like the most important thing that had happened so far.  Any attempts to guide, teach and encourage seemed distracting and condescending at this point in the children’s rapidly unfolding careers.  Being “auto-pilot” parents, although a bit lonely and disconnected at times, allowed them to focus on their own lives. 

            On march 17^th 2014, after the first small section of diamonds were placed, (mostly shades bright greens harvested the few days after the St. Patricks day parades), at that point in time the diamonds were quite reachable and easy to press without any equipment.  Standing facing the wall, leaning all of her weight on her entire arm, pressing with a straight elbow and little finger strains to balance her palm over the chalk and napkin, Wendel was the first of the Children to “Push Color Through.” 

—“Pushing Color Through” is a sensation the children claimed was pinnacle experience one could feel.—

            The parents at first delighted by the joy and ecstasy this new game brought to the house were mostly impressed with their children’s ability to live inside their imaginary worlds, which they were convinced was one of the main joys of parenting.  After a period long weeks, nightly visits to the diamond wall and even a small fight over scarce chalk resources, they decided that the game had gone too far and posted a flier in the “Living Room Comments Section” permanently outlawing “Pushing Color Through.”

            Day by day the stacks of letters, petitions, votes, signatures, lab reports, grant applications, business propositions, threats from the government typed on thick card stock complete with a baseball card holograms, worm and beetle sacrifices – then mounds of crickets in piles surrounding a bigger beetle on a stick, even an attempt at a rudimentary letter bomb full of pink chalk was delivered to their bedroom door, they finally ended up signing and dating a neatly typed surrender document and sliding it back under their bedroom door. 

            $$#(Pink Perwinkle)#$$ a common Walgreens color in the Summer of 2014 – was the best color they had found so far for “Pushing Color Through.” It had the warmest tone of the purple family and was fairly “Push-Easy”,easy to maneuver and drive once one was already pushing.  Everyone had their bag of favorites usually in a top drawer or in a fanny pack organized by code and assumed name. 

          Certain diamonds in the living room were named after particularly memorable pushes, “Grass Cloud”, “Deep Hole”, “Everything is Going to be Alright for Everyone”, “Always Under Things,” “Other Side of my Head” “Meetings with a Moose” “Best Sandwich” “In-Love” “!!!Yes!!!” “The Peak”.  Others were “DUDdiamonds” labeled with x’s and would be tried from time to time but didn’t see much action.  The children had found that some of the hardest to reach diamonds near the ceiling of the living room were some of the most “Push Easy” and some elaborate steel scaffolding systems were soon erected. 

          When someone’s “Pushing Color” their knuckles and fingers turn white from the arm pressure, and they usually tilt their head back to stare at the ceiling.  Pushes can last seconds long and Wendel’s younger sister claimed to have pushed for half a minute but none of the other children had been their to record any data, but she voraciously labeled the diamond “The Best”and attempted for the next few months to recreate her experience with a handful of rare pigmenets and dust combinations.   

            Wendel’s oldest sister was a “Dust Mixer,” accepting almost all “BagSheets,” the standardized order form the children developed for color mixing.  She was known for mixing an initial golden yellow barrage of warm feelings, on the noise, and cheeks and eyebrows that quickly escalated to a yellow tingling and humming pattern around the temples.  She was good about keeping things light, quick with a lot of upfront shapes and actions and a good background of tingle and hum.  She used dental tools and digital scales, always wearing gloves when she mixed.

            The family didn’t leave very often – after other children started pushing, a loose band of “Dusters” started growing their fingernails to comb over the streets.  Certain colors were hot for a week or two and would fade after a “Mixer” had come up with some new combination.  Blues were always popular.  A series of high school students attempted to form a small union as their sophomore year project, but were unfortunately not old enough to vote and legally sign.  Lines would form rapping around the block, all the neighbors, excited that that their daily routines had been shattered by something so unique and magical, helped dig a path that snaked across their front lawns and was generally referred to as the “ColorRoad.”

Wendel like her older sister had the mind for “Mixing.”  Plenty of people couldn’t distinguish between an on-brand vs. off-brand #**#Apple Green#**#, and would rather trust their “push” “color” from someone who had been mixing for a few years.  She mixed for herself and didn’t like to talk a lot about the extra mix that she would share with pushers.  

Killa Cam - Camron

!He’s Making Me Noodles!

My dad walked into the kitchen, “that smells dangerous,” referring to the flourless chocolate cake Mikayla oven placed.   Grinding up loose leaves and shake from a season of trim work, I was investing my talents in the creation of a blunt cake.  30 tightly rolled jazz cigarettes, little body changers, sentinels with the eye on top, twisted and looking towards the sky.  Rolling operation with shake and grinders everywhere.  I felt like I was talking to someone while stealing from them.  Talking to my Dad about jobs, plans, ambitions while licking and staring and creasing and rolling the last of 30 joints.  All in a mason jar with no top and immediately spilled across the Acura floor.  Left one for him while he turned the Comcast on to watch an animation movie about a lost dragon.  

Dogman - Eliot Eidelman

^^ILiveInADogPark^^

Today was a tragedy.  Time was butchered in-between tasks with medicinal headaches and picayune feelings of rage.  The way she talks to the dog makes me pause in the middle of my cheese cut, shift the tortilla, begin again as if my actions have some role in the larger orchestration of caring in the room.  Cheese cut – iron fry – little protein disks topped with arugula and drunk with mate flakes in the teeth.  STOP – NO – COME.  There is nothing worse then a dog sometimes – earths most pitiful phenotypical extension of the wild, delivered from plastic kennels in fluorescent lit animal depots to the homes of lonely Americans.  

^^^Serene love – Filial love – Sacred love.^^^  

NO-SIT.  Enslaved as objects of love, fed and fattened, runned an shitted – leashed and unleashed they return for orders like beautiful organic drones.  Dogs are for control.  The remind us daily of our dominant control of everything around us: weeds in the garden, eucalyptus trees, the time it takes to get somewhere, the quality of our food.  Dogs train us to be controlling – to discipline – to take the hard line.  They train us that everything shits and eats and sleeps.  Their freedom offends us.  Why are you barking?  You don’t come when you are called?  Don’t poop in that part of the yard?  To the point of shock collars, fences and beatings.  What broken spirited animal would agree to this contract – what self respecting beast would muzzle its teeth and refrain from biting everything in sight. 

But maybe we are worth it?  Maybe it feels so incredibly warm, purposeful, complete to be controlled by the gods - to be walked to patches of dirt by busy bipeds, to make a god bend over and pick up a warm shit in a plastic bag they’ve designed just for our shits.  The leather collars with our human names, we have a phone number, a micro chip, a doctor, a meal plan. These are good gods.  Maybe our love is that strong.  Our hearts beat that loud.  Maybe dogs are incredibly honored to be working along side us.  Co-Directing the future of earth.  Honored to be involved in the architecture, surrounded by our inventions.

Or maybe its just as simple as our holy hands!  Pointed and thin, scratch paws, impossible, dexterous, nails and all, on the belly on the back, moving – two of them like golden rakes across patient, shaking dog skin.  

Britney's Back - The Love Language

!PopcornDunces!

Hot tub chunks, floating dead ants and the cypress trees are finally making our neighbors disappear in shadow.  I baked up a green smoothie - almonds, blueberries, chia seeds, flax powder, water – back on the liquid diet - seems easier than trying to cook anything and disguises my lack of kitchen inspiration.  I just emailed her and told her that I like to date several people at once - which is the reality, but not really the truth - I’ve never been very good at telling people I can’t love them.  Big artsy plans for the new year and last night I rolled 30 joints into origami patterns with Seth Rogen as my guide  Trying to make big stories again - going on oddly timed sailing adventures.  I wonder when the internet will make me happy?  When some beautiful designer will realize the dreadful potency of all this human slop and create a giant electronic womb for me to visit and be at peace in.  

Michael Franti - Pray For Grace

    This morning I woke up next to the smell of human being – restless and sweaty – covered in piles of cloth and sheets – blowing lungs of breath through pork teeth.  Her leg is a heavy thing that locks my knees in place.  Hairs go everywhere, wrapping around my neck, through pillow cases, along the hem, between my arm and my chest.  When she shifts and rolls her brown hair pulls through my body reminding me that regardless of how occasional our romance might be, right now, this morning I am hers – wedged underneath a heavy leg and tangled in her long brown hair.  

Extraordinary Machine : Fiona Apple

notes: !tryinghardnottobefound!

A procession of dunces, banging around between left and right ear, searching for some water source, energetic rush, ATP chain, all holding each others hands in the dark folds of grey matter, walking lightly as to not wake the beast or leave any imprint or memory.  Feelings and emotions on pause or tiredness or depression or lack of motivation.  What would have got him up at 530 am to start the day?  A mouth on his dick, a war coming over the hills, a collosal tidal wave.  What gets one up in the morning?  This is in many ways the question he is playing with everyday, an involuntary project, revisited and tested.  Some lunge for their work grabbing coffee in motion towards the door, towards the bus, towards the bus station, towards the walk to the office, towards the first meeting, towards the list of emails to be responded to.  Being pulled from bed rather than pushing yourself.  Pulled by the forces of responsibility of fear of performance of should and punishments and consequences.  Pulled to the stable to milk the swollen goats.  He thinks about what forces push and pull him into bed, into sleep, about how it is somehow permissible to sleep, to spend 8 hours motionless, in a dark bag, huffing and snoring, productionless and fruitless.  His eyes move to the top right of the screen catching the time moving again. 919!  The productive half off the morning already squandered in the transition between sleep and wake, some internal structure or practice could pull him through this energy migration.  Movement.  He remembers Sean who jumps out of bed onto his cold muscles, darting for speaker system, pushing a few buttons and the dark morning is a dance party.  Stretching and body movement, overriding the tired mind with a push start, moving tires and gears and mechanics before any complex electrical components are even necessary.  PUSH. PUSH out of bed towards some daily trajectory or goal.  Set your aim and fire yourself through the morning hours. This is a moment to gain momentum.  To set a tone.  A new life birthed each morning.