El Salvador

All time can be inhabited, all places be visited. In a single day the mind can make a millpond of the oceans. Some people who never have crossed the land they were born in, have traveled all over the world. The journey is not linear, it is always back and forth, denying the calendar, the wrinkles and lines of the body. The self is not contained in any moment or any place, but it is only in the intersection of moment and place that the self might, for a moment, be seen vanishing through a door, which disappears at once.

Lies
There is only the present and nothing to remember
Time is a straight line
The difference between past and future is that one has happened while the other has not
We can only be in one place at one time
Any proposition which contains the words ‘finite’ (the world, the universe, experience, ourselves)
Reality as something which can be greed upon
Reality as truth.

Truth

Its all just a plate glass window begging for a brick.


On a side note, my word still means something...so please don't make a liar out of me.

Good Morning Baby

Woke up early Sunday morning as N kissed me goodbye and headed out the door. I tried to roll over and fall back asleep but no luck... I was up. So I wandered out to the livingroom in my midmorning midhangover haze and flipped on the boob tube. Dateline. I felt a gentle nudging to keep flipping, because for some strange reason I seem prone to absorbing the feeling of a thing. When I watched 'Beyond Borders' I immediately sat down afterwards and devised a six phase plan to move us to India and open up an orphanage. Something about this program had me intrigued so I watched. Big Mistake. Before long the mood shifted. The negative, angry, intensity of a young man who'd murdered five people he claimed made racist comments about him on a train. The mood hung heavy on my shoulders, infecting my perception. I began to detach myself from everything around me. Observe the world in third person. Just then a commercial for a new show similar to 'cops' came on. Vice something or other. Which featured a young wash out hill billy throwing around a prostitute we'll call "justice." I tilted my head to the side in utter fascination. as if this were the first time i'd ever seen anything like this. Let me get this straight humans....you perpetrate crimes against eachother, then hire other people to enforce your own mercurial sense of morality on them. and film it. and then other people, the same people who are so terrified of having these crimes perpetrated on them, watch it?

human subject considers question and replies...

no no, not me. I find that sort of thing atrocious. I watch Law and Order.

so let me get this straight...Some of you humans are offended by the voyeristic implications of a film like 'COPS' so you pay other people, to PRETEND they are perpetrating those same crimes on other people, film it and watch that instead?

you people are fucked up.

i flip off the tube and decide to go for a hike to clear my head but my mind is plagued by thoughts of this mornings broadcast. murder, rape, violence. and on lesser scales, lying, cruelty, dishonesty. what the hell is wrong with us?

sometimes i feel myself slip on the hard cold edge. hang a toe over. begin to believe that this world is full of cruelty, full of hate, full of liars and tigers and bears. but then i get down to the waters edge, beyond the bluffs of broken hill road. i watch the water slap itself against the face of the cliffs, small children splashing euphorically in the afternoon swell, i see an old man and an old woman sitting on a bench pointing to a ship with its jib up, tilted to the west, breaking up the surface of the sea and i realize that this world is not full of evil. its full of people who don't know what to believe. people who allow others to define their perception instead of creating their own. Sometimes, I am one of those people.

So i guess the point here is...if you find yourself in that grey space....don't watch dateline.

it fucks with your head.

Excerpt From the Meso American Journals

Maybe the best day. My heart is buzzing. All electric with the nexus of humanity, the humdrum zing of homosapeus communicanus. We are sitting atop the pyramid facingone another with our hands held out, palms flat, touching but not. When two people of faith (not religion) get together, truth is born. If they bow their heads and clench their eyes shut tight and just hold on to it long enough, that truth shoots off into the universe, like the iris of an eye, in a million different directions to shine.

Mexico City is fucking magical.

hind sights

I sat on the ground with my back against the old stucco wall of the cantina. i ran my fingers around the rim of my hat and looked west down the old dusty road back toward antigua. The bus was late, it didn't raise any concerns because pretty much everything in Guatemala had been late. my flight, the train, the meal we shared at Carls place. Carl is a friend of Michael and Kate, whom I met on the flight down from Mexico City. They're teachers and staying in a small village called San Pedro outside of Guatemala city. Carl owns a restaurant which he started out of his garage about a decade ago when the influx of american consultants working with Pfizer created a bit of a tourist boom on the carribean coast. The place has grown since then and so we found ourselves sitting beneath a cabana in Carls backyard at a large picnic style table. Christmas lights were snaked around the red painted wood beams which criss-crossed their way above our heads. The daylight was fast retreating, casting a faint blue and yellow hue over everything. The heat of that days sun still hung in the air around us and so i was quite comfortable in flip flops, jeans and an old tshirt. I reached for a beer and considered the week i'd spent in Mexico. this sent a smile spreading across my lips which did not escape michael. He raised an eyebrow, asking an inaudible question. I just shook my head and laughed. I was considering where to begin when carl appeared from behind the old red sheet which hung in the doorway seperating the patio from the kitchen. his arms were loaded with plates venting off steam. My eyes widened as the abstract colors came closer and formed themselves into our dinner. Fish cakes smothered in papaya pimento sauce. My mouth watered and i set my beer back down, anticipating the burst of grilled citrus. I wasn't disappointed. we let carl do all the talking, the three of us digging into the bowl of rice, beans and fresh homemade tortillas. The fish kept marching over from the grill and flopping itself onto our plates. we ate, drank, laughed and sat in absolute contented silence until late into the evening. I crawled into the hammock and stared up at the stars, letting my body fold inward and relax. I wanted to go back to Mexico. I wanted to see it one more time. I wanted to crawl those seven flights of stairs up to the old wooden door and slide my borrowed key into the lock one last time. I had not expected to fall in love with that city, or the people that shared their homes and stories with me. I felt infinitely open and vulnerable in the best ways. I couldn't stop smiling that night as i faded into a soft happy sleep or the next day as i climbed out of the hammock and stretched myself awake, or sat watching the boy and girl kick a ball around, waiting for the bus to rumble down the avenue and carry me home.

I'm back

I have returned from my hiatus. You may be asking yourself, "what happened to Her?" Shut up. It's none of your business. Just focus on the present. In this case, the present has two meanings. In its first usage, it is temporal. The present is the here and now. It is also being used to mean "a gift." This web log is a present from me to you, the reader, because you do not pay for it and I am giving it to you. Enjoy your present (both meanings).

Ode to Dan

So there's this guy at work and he deserves an entire blog all to himself. His name is Dan, but for the purposes of this blog, we shall call him Dan. Ok so Dan...he is like this walking dichotomy of personality. At first glimpse he appears angry and bitter about life, but at second glimpse he is just downright hateful. No that's not true, if you are able to peal away the many layers of D you ultimately get down to this giant, cuddly, paranoid schizophrenic teddy bear. I love him. Ok so Dan is a big dude, not so much "jean claude van damme" big, more like..."we had to order special chairs" big. And he has no shame about this, infact some would even say, he takes pride in it. It's not unusual to walk into the office and smell spare ribs coming from his cubicle. No joke, the guy plugs a george foreman into the powerstrip and BBQ's at his desk. By some stroke of luck, I have managed to wind up on the guys good side. There are like four people on Dan's good side. Our Supervisor, This little old lady that he house sits for when she goes to visit her son in florida, me, and the guy who puts extra onion rings on his cheeseburger at Carls Jr.

So anyway, today i walk into the office, the office mind you, a place where we pretend to conduct real business. and the guy is sitting there widdling this piece of cedar. i look over his shoulder and it's a fucking plaque with whinny the pooh on it. This is a bit like stumbling upon Jeffrey Dahmer engrossed in a coloring book. He also has a small torch plugged into the power strip and he's wood burning shading into Pooh's tree. I look at him with this squinty...'do i even want to ask' look and he just looks at me and shrugs and says...

"it's carving this or carving bodies"

nuff said.

Vincente

Poor Van Gogh cut off his ear and gave it to a prostitute who flung it away in disgust.

silly van...whores don't want ears, they want money.

i guess that's why you were such a great painter...
you didn't understand much else.

I made the recent discovery that Captain Ahabs first mate was named Starbuck. It all makes sense to me now. I can just see him standing on the deck of the pequod with a parrot perched on his shoulder like legions of other sea worthy characters, bellowing commands. Repeated in unison by his swearthy shipmates;

"Right Rudder left!"
`Right Rudder Left!"

Jib up the starboard side!!
Aye, Jib up the starboard side!!

and so it is today...in the very coffee house that bares his name...that the distant echoing calls of the old first mate can still be heard..

Tall Nonfat Vanilla Latte!
Tall Nonfat Vanilla Latte!

Viente Mocha Frappaccino!
Aye, Viente Mocha Frappaccino!

and the large white whales roll up and away from the marble counter....

Thar they blow.