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They were infinite. They were evry color a soup of grey white and blue could offer, a foam that if i held up a stick maybe a couple lengths longer than i was tall i could scratch my name into or maybe the the made up initials of the kids i owe my parents. I did it all the time, made up first and middle names for them. I like michael because of jordan and jackson, and if i wanted to be cheesy i could give him the same initials as my old man. My parents had middle-named me after a baseball pitcher i think. K, the middle brother was kevin kostner and osmond from the family band. J got his middle name from shaq, except none of us knew if there was an apostrophe -niel or niell on the birth certificate and he was born before the age o google so i think he just spelled with the two l's to be safe.
I remember once when J was an infant kevin and i were convinced our parents loved him more. We had heard them after our bedtime in the living room his gurgling and both my parents laughing. He always got to stay up late and at seven i was grown up. I wanted to play a night with my dad. One night i climbed down my bunk to kevin's shaking him awake to help me spy. We could hear them downstairs in the kitchen now and hadto be careful to get a peek from the top of the stairs. The floorboards that lined the hallway between our room and the top flight were groany and to get past them you had to support your weight on the linen closet door or cupboards on the opposite side.
Kevin was my best friend back then and brother-in-arms. He was the only one i could trust to scale trees with me or do things we weren't exactly supposed to. A renegade team of two sidekicks. There was once that we would climb onto the opening garage door to the gated apartment complex and for the three seconds it was completely horizontal clamber across to slide down the in-side of the gate, like indie jones. I had the gate control to get in after school and we were taking turns clicking and climbing. The story ends with his being lodged between the roof and gate because of a neighbor coming or going and my freaking out until dad came and saved him. We both thought he was going to die and a body check later revealed a little scraping but no bruises and K had returned unharmed. I love him and i was destroyed by guilt because i couldn't help him. He was fine. We're all indestructable at that age. This image was taken after i dropped him off at school. He's a psych pre-med at UCLA and i want to be like him when i grow up.

put this on lj a couple days back.

I'd rather take the time to burn every last bridge I've ever crossed beneath the sun
Than live my life knowin' you may one day follow me over one.

it was implied at the get-go. if not by mutual agreement. if not then than by the signs we waved as they waded through their scene. she remembers defending the events with her friends, "no you don't need drugs every time you go," and "of course there's sober people at these parties." that was the thing, convincing people to come. i remember bringing a girlfriend and her girlfriend to a new years bacchanal in los angeles and the friend was terrified of people slipping things in her water. like there were these cats out there with pez dispenser rophynol waiting to catch a teenager slipping and throw her in the back of a van. so no, drugs are not essential to the dance scene but the only way to enlightenment was through pestilence and the dancer had crawled through three or four controlled substances before she sat down near the dance floor than night.

we talked about these weekend escapes. how we had climbed into overstuffed hondas and drove two three hours either into LA, San Diego, or the surrounding desert to get away from what? like we tried to live some dual life where school or work and the weekday were something to grind through in waiting for the weekend. this is what terrified me. we had friends that were a bit older. paycheck to paycheck renters; plans upon plans coupled with zero motivation. mid twenties i was looking forward to finishing grad school and being a grown up. what had happened with these people to get stuck in a late post adolescence? it was this scene, man. it was just like any other. in my punk days there were old fucks in faded black denim and sleeveless band shirts held together but just barely with dental floss. old crust punks either working the venues or hanging out with the proprietors. burn outs. that must have been it. it was undying love for the scene that stagnated them. keeping involved with whatever music drove them.

she made a joke about our drugs sounding like license plates. D-O-4-DMT-7; it wasn't funny but it was clever and i liked it. "that was alright," and "no i took four times the reccommended dose and couldn't sleep," or "that's alright but i wouldn't do it again, man." she was pretty, smart too. hair that alway fell just-so and eyes that searched your face as you talked looking for tells or smirks maybe a casual sideglance that mean you had just made something up. everyone's perfect when you're tripping so hard the night bleeds rainbows.

i let her know my greatest suspicion. i was afraid of being a psychopath. i watched a tv show and had all the earmarks mentioned. i could hardly keep friends, people were interesting but simple. what i mean by that is that nobody else was playing this game of show-hide-tell. was everybody so bland that their actions were never the sum of their intentions? she posed driving as en example. EXACTLY. you're on a moderately crowded highway and you see opening after opening. flash blinker, check shoulder, merge. playing frogger from point a to point b shooting the accord between semi trucks for a second to get past the 1990s soccer mom luxury van. everyone else was an obstacle or opportunity you needed to wait for the right time to exploit she said, reactive automatons convinced you were an ass for skipping lanes so often or worse, not even noticing. what was more i said.:i never cried. it was hard for me to emote. people were emotional beings and when it was socially acceptable i never broke down. not that i never felt choked up, just not at the right times. there were moments, maybe a look from cereal buying dad to cereal wanting daughter at the grocery store, or the scene in a chorus line when the pr girl finishes the number about her acting teacher. we laughed it off citing social ineptitude.

the most important thing we talked those following days was hate. how if love could be an all encompassing obsession that what could hate possibly be? she said something like an active dislike. that same involvement in their wellbeing becomes a damnation and you spend you time cursing every second. no. hate is an absence of emotion just as dark is the absence of light. it's not an active dislike that you let boil inside you, there's already names for than like angst and resentment. hate was something special and hard to achieve for the uninitiated. it was the second a name no longer mattered to you. the mention of her doesn't envoke a defensive i-don't-care remark or a second thought at all. complete disinterest. this hate was exciting we said like a discipline you perfect.

we hardly spoke anymore but i had kept all the postcards we traded from our neighboring towns like i needed trophies. like some couplings work out we had fully explored each other and found less than we had hoped. there is a special place old lovers keep your secrets and fears, the things that can turn you from frozen pond to a lake of fire in an instant. only strangers pull punches and hitting someone like that is still a victory.

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Dear driver,
This is the ocean of steel you nagivate every day before class. When your school day is over you climb back into your oven adjusting the climate inside to taste and turning on your never-loud-enough stereo before heading out of the parking lot onto the backed up arteries that connect your classroom to your bedroom never pausing to appreciate the north east breeze at the top of a hill or sun setting to the west. I implore you to spend some time outside every day while, as a friend said, mighty spring whips it's flower wreathed cock out. Ride a bike, wave to a stranger, dance at a stop light; you're only young for like ten seconds. Enjoy it.

goodnight doggie.

“	It was one of those hot dry Santa Anas that come down through the mountain passes and curl your hair and make your nerves jump and your skin itch. On nights like that every booze party ends in a fight. Meek little wives feel the edge of the carving knife and study their husbands' necks. Anything can happen.	”
—Raymond Chandler, "Red Wind"

suburban breezeways are moaning tonight as dry desert air heads southwest across socal. the wind farms between here and palm desert with their propellers facing the coming sun. tomorrow i have a date with the pasadena/los angeles courthouse. a ticket i got last month is due tomorrow and like a proper twenty something i left it to the last minute. the hollow gastank in my car was also left out of mind until just now. i knew the car needed food but today was sunday, today in a fleece sport jacket playing chrono trigger, the afternoon peppered with snacks and naps. like i said, the tank was empty and there was no way i was going to do it tomorrow morning. i left the house still wearing my jacket, having traded my gym shorts for some denim cursing myself for not having grabbed my gloves and hat. the wind was a tease of what would be in the coming days. the santa anas were called the devil's breath because of the heat they brought in from the desert. it's the angst of the dying upper class in palm valley and an invitation for trashed twenty somethings to invade indio's coachella groaning through my suburban sprawl. i needed gas and i needed gas tonight. whatever fumes had fueled my honda back from school would have to take me to the corner store for gas. across the street, movement. the air likes to play tricks, turning hedges into raking fingers with lonely voices. there it is again, a bear of a dog. white. labrador. i whistled and waited for the glance from a friendly puppy. marking trees and scratching his feet on the grass; probably belongs to a neighbor on a night walk. plus, it's spring and my mom spent the day with the garage open, if he had been out and about all day he would have come up to say hello. into the car and off to the mobil.
the first week of school is always the worst. parking feels like getting teeth pulled and if you have not been fortunate enough to add classes early you will be doing a dance that involves multiple classrooms, professors, and rejections. i was going home from an afternoon/evening class around and traffic back to the freeway was a clusterfuck. these were kids who hadn't gotten classes were more than likely sitting in their cars disappointed and hopeless looking forward to sixteen weeks of entry level jobs in lieu of studying. there was one cawice lately, am i a reactionary person? do i simply respond to input? ther in particular up ahead being a nice guy. a white late model accord letting cars pass in front of him near a lane merging. my lane on the other hand was inching as his was stopped dead and the third merged in front of him. three, four, five cars. what a nice kid. as cars eight and nine i was able to look into his car. asleep! this kid was asleep! i started honking and motioning for someone else to notice. it was only about seven but i was sure this guy had spent the last twelve hours running room to room getting no after no for having a too late registration da- wait. what if he's narcoleptic?! my flailing and honking got the attention of a girl in a sedan. CALL 9-1-1 i gestured. phoneless i had no way to alert anybody and was worried mr sleeps would kill someone if he got on the highway. my lane continued forward and i left him behind. sedan girl puts her hands in the air with face both worried and smirking saying either "no phone," or "i don't know." should i stop? how could i wake him up? what if i park in front of him and when he wakes up his first reaction to a tattooed man standing in the street at his window is to slam on the gas? i can't afford that. minutes of deliberation i am down the street turning onto the highway. oh man, i hope everything is okay with him. the tank is full and it's freezing out. time to go home.
pulling in the dog is still playing cat-at-scratching post on the lawn across the street. unwilling to let an opportunity to be kind/helpful/not lazy i walk across the street and call to the labrador bear. hey puppy, what's your name? what are you doing out? hunched over but gripping him by the collar i walk him around the house and pull the gate shut behind us. no tags, great. i hope you weren't dumped in the area by a "family." it's a terrible night to leave a dog is a strange neighborhood, and how dare you take advantage of someone like that, jerks. well, i'm not looking forward to a night of howling and scratching so i take some lunchmeat and benadryl and prepare some hors d'voers.

their porcelain hands.

walking to the refrigerator through the dark house is an affair. my slippers clip-clop down the hall past the empty living room and all i feel is eyes and arms. something like being watched but only as a footnote. the way you see a runner out of the corner of your eye while you lounge in a park or how you notice someone sit down near you while you read your book on the bus. the arms are the worst part. they are dainty hands with fragile wrists and slender fingers. it happens only at night after i've been at the computer for a few hours past everybody's bedtime. the screen at it's lowest brightness setting burning pink like i've been staring at a square sun. i meet the sentience with controlled breath and over-calculated footsteps. if i let them know that i know it's all over.
this isn't the only place i've felt them either. i remember throwing out the trash when we lived at the apartment in anaheim. i would try to throw the bags from the street over the gate into the *ideally* open dumpster. first you would estimate clearing distance, second you would pick up the bag by the knot and swing it back and forth like a pendulum gaining momentum enough to make a perfect arc over the steel doors that guarded the rolling dumpster. if everything went right you heard a satisfying metal clang, when things didn't there was still a sound, but one of bagged refuse on plastic coming much sooner because of the truncated airtime granted by a closed lid. this meant having to walk around the stucco enclosure whose floors were stained with soup de garbage'. once you had gotten around the fort built to hide the dumpster you had to build something to stand on. the lid was heavy for a nine year old and getting up on a sturdy box or piece of old furniture meant you could lift and flip the top with your arms and legs instead of toes and fingertips, it also meant somebody had decided that that box you were standing on, or discarded desk was too heavy to lift and properly dispose of. this way you could take a quick look in the dumpster too, make sure there weren't any mummy-shaped rolls of carpet. there they were, noticing and reaching. quick with the trash, making sure to avoid the trash juice now dripping from the bag damaged by landing impact and subsequent sliding onto floor. quick out of the trash place, they had gotten out of the dumpster. faster around the building and up the stairs you could see through horizontally, taking them two at a time because you can almost see their tiny white fingernails reaching from the other side of each step. into the house and SAFE.

clay and funny people

lately my education with pottery has been a bit more intensive than in any other semester. Donna, the lab tech at school has taken a different approach to my barrage of questions and i am more than grateful for it. instead of answering she's been directing me towards potters dictionaries or coaxing my train of thought onto the solution. i learned that the difference between black and red iron oxides is reduction and that red iron oxide acts like a flux while black as an anti-flux. my professor for the weekend is also facilitating my learning she let me borrow The Potters Workbook, a manual on wheelthrowing techniques. also i was given a real sketchbook in which i've been drawing up my current project. drawing is to lead to proper execution so i'm glad to be participating in that.
reading the book that genny gave me it started with a page on the CV or Curriculum Vitae and that i need to build a personal portfolio. "at all times ad for all purposes, you need to keep a portfolio ready to send out for professional jobs and other applications, for publicity of all sorts and for your own records. this means keeping an up-to-date, detailed chronology of your personal history with an exhibition record, articles and books you have written or that have been written about you together with photographs of your recent pieces. a weel coordinated pitch will help clients and galleries remember your work." (\excerpt from the craft and art of clay by susie peterson. this whole thing seems incredibly daunting and intimidates me that i have not much inthe way of a show or experience in clay works. i told Donna this and she quickly reminded me that i have been awarded a scholarship to attend a workshop just last fall. i feel like i'm very much being helped out. i'm very interested in applying places for internships and the like and need to take a serious approach to enabling success in clay. the book goes on further to state that small shows at libraries are also great and that airports are great places to exhibit work.
i watched funny people today and really liked it. there are handful of actors that i can say i'm familiar with and enjoy their quirky work. tom hanks with meg ryan movies, tom cruise in vanilla sky, leo decaprio, paul rudd, matthew broderick's election. anyways the movie made me really happy. also, this: