Categories
Glot

That Job of Yours

It’s all lifestyle, really. It’s how you live. And where you spend 8 hours a day 5 days a week is a pretty big chunk of life. So how can you be a cool person, an interesting person, a valuable person, if your job isn’t cool, interesting, or valuable?

Well, I suppose it would be hard. I can’t really say—my job doesn’t suck. I like the fact, working in a hostel, I get to talk to people from Germany and Canada and Japan on a daily basis. Sure, I talk to them and take their money. And tell them they can’t drink in the building. And give them directions to McDonald’s, sometimes. My job doesn’t suck, mostly. There’s advantages and disadvantages and such things can’t ever be changed, and that’s a truer and more cliché adage than I’d care to reflect on right now. Only difference is how much you get paid.

I know people with cooler jobs. Some jobs carry a lifestyle in and of themselves (“I’m an artist” …and what do you do in your off time?). It shapes how you are as a person because, well, you are what you do. There’s a responsibility, a damnable adult responsibility no matter if you’re dedicated to your craft or if your job description requires nights and weekends wearing a beeper. It’s odd to finally understand that.

Categories
Glot

Womb with a View

Home. Returning home. I want to return home.

That was me, four days ago. I’m back. I’ve returned from returning. I got stuff. New undies (manties), some chocolate, some booze, some womper speakers. I got a new book about San Francisco and writing. I got a mind to do a lot of things. One of ’em is to write.

So here I am, writing the wannabe sublime. I wonder how many of my friends and family realize that a blog is not really a window to the subconscious? Glot. Glot glot. Editing is for sissies.

My feeling about the hostel has undergone a shift. I understand why those who live here, live here shortly. It’s a great place. But it’s a place where space has to be constantly claimed and carved out, where one’s status is never in comfortable stasis. Even more so than the ever-arriving travellers, I understand this: one is judged by one’s actions—in the past week. It is exactly the same as when I came here more than three months ago. It should perhaps at this point be pointed out that the point of moving here was to find a job and settle somewhere. I applied to SFSU back awhile ago, but never finished the application… so I never went. Now here I am, living in the city of San Francisco but not quite of it, living in a limbo world where I greet the world’s visitor’s who take in the place in larger doses than I’ve had since too long ago.

Returning home brought me back into a place where my mere presence is appreciated. Being here again is like emerging from the womb again, cold and blinking and more than a little confused. It’s a different view. It’s something I need to think about more.

Categories
Glot

The Tragedy of Blogs

The tragic irony of blogs is, if you have enough time to write about your life on a consistent basis, then it’s probably not interesting enough to merit reading.

Except for me.

Categories
Glot

…is Fourth of July

With the tide coming in and the fireworks reflecting off it, and even the billion little bacteria come to show their patriotism by glowing in an awful nice way, I remember thinking it was a pretty good 4th of July. Explosions were happening off the pier, from someone’s house, from zoomers lit right on the beach. Some narrated events on cell phones. Some attempted ecstatic epilepsy (or is it epileptic ecstasy?) with strobe wands bought for $4 apiece. I sat on a rock and wrote on a thick sketchbook on a page of doodles I didn’t like, and all the while the tide kept coming.

toy fireworksThe fireworks crackled in stereo up and down the beach.
BOOM. BOOMBOOM.

You got your sparklers, your poppers, your whistlers, screamers, thumpers, swimmers (my favorite), smiley-faces, two-timers, and of course your duds, all in blue and red and green and white, purple even. That I’ve had before. You’ve had them before. But have you ever had the very waters of the ocean aglow for you on the fourth of July?

Categories
Glot

A Walk in the Night

I’ll be damned.
That did solve something.

You never think of walking as being a real prouctive activity. A to B.
Maybe that’s culture. But… allow me to explain.

I’d been dicking around on this damnable website for at least 5 hours. Not doing anything, really, but reading and researching the life out of me. And so I got up. Tried to trim my stache but the razor was dead. Remembered that I needed to move my car from the closer lot to the faaar lot because I’d get another ticket otherwise. So I got my brown blazer on, the one that used to be Emily’s Dad’s, and headed out.

As I started walking I start listening. The first thing I heard is this clack-clack-clack as some kid rides his skateboard across the cracks in the wet pavement behind me. Then my own shoes on the concrete stairs. My car beeping as I unlock it. The engine turning on and the jazz station. Wheels backing over a curb as I, dumbass, went over it. Then the softer sound of tires on wet road. Between the barricades I run over a large metal ring lying there in the crosswalk, which has a sound I enjoy but cannot describe. Then back to the parking lot the new way, the new road they just made way, as I realize there might be available paking spaces. No such luck. As I was about to go back the way I came I heard voices, people walking up the parking entrance whom I didn’t even see. I waited but didn’t want them to hear the silly Santa Cruz reggae that had come on. So, I drove to the BBC parking lot and on the way I HONKed my horn at the police station for a good solid second because I was pissed at the stupid cops for giving me stupid tickets.

This is important,

I think.

So I get out of my car and I’m all kinda mope-y cause I have to park here so faaaar away and I pull out this rope to see if I can rip down that fucking parking sign with my car frame. Verdict: probably, but I’m not that hardcore and/or an anarchist. I walk back. The rain starts again, even though it’s been dripping from the trees all along. I start talking to myself. A monologue of alternating bile and self-chastisement. Mostly about cops, how much I hate them and then me rationalizing why I really don’t. As I get back to the quad what did I see, of course, but an officer doing nightwalk. Nightwalk is this thing where any girl student that calls can get a fully armed polizia to walk them to and from their dorm. I power-walked ahead of these two, the cop and his escortee the Resident Director, trying to get into the elevator before them. Sooo close. They come in just as the door opens and I run inside jamming the close button and as I do, the officer says and I quote,

“I smell pasta.”

I’m sorry. Really. But if one is pissed pisssssed at cops in general and one of them comes into where you live and says something so retort-worthy and inane as “I smell pasta,” or “I smell anything,” for that matter well…

I’m sure you can’t blame one for uttering “I smell bacon.”

Thought I got away with it too. Damn. I didn’t. He stuck his flashlight/beatstick in the door and asked what I said. I don’t even remember what the hell I answered at that point. What did I not do? Make some shit up. Get in his face. Stonewall him. I think I probably apologized. Kept his stick in there till the ellelater was buzzing something nasty. Then he let me go up to my room.

I’m beyond irked, at this point. I’m making bestial sounds and my spit is frothing at my lips. I’m not really making words anymore. People used to say you had a sharp tongue if you could curse viciously enough. My tongue was blunt and spiky, like a mace. I didn’t stay long in my dorm.

I took out the trash. Pfft, why not. Was I looking for a fight when I went out? Kinda sorta. Walked by his cruiser. Didn’t spit on it, though I was tempted very tempted. Called myself a pussy a few dozen times. Finally I settled on going back to my dorm and being angry.

When who … do I see … again … but Officer Brown.

Officer Brown was his name. Young guy. Probably on University Police till he gets enough experience. Brown hair efficiently cut, kinda short-ish. I run into him and the RD on the second floor. My first instinct surprisingly enough is not to shout and curse and be pissed off. I say sorry again this time I’m sure. I invite him up to my room. But I was on the wrong floor of course and said it was one of those days. He said he’d had a few of those. Once inside I offered him water and a seat but he said he was fine. I explained where I was coming from and the tickets I’d gotten and why I was so frustrated and he tried to sympathize. I think even he was a little taken aback by some of the tickets I’ve gotten. We had an okay conversation. I kind of unloaded on him, which was alright. He told me he didn’t write the dumb overnight parking tickets and that, yes, there were some ticket-happy guys on the force.

We had a human mutual respect moment. He’s from CSU Fresno. His name’s Matt. He knows now that sometimes I follow foxes on my bike, even after midnight. He had to go and we said goodbye. I accomplished clearing my head. I felt better.

20131029-090213.jpg

And I finally had something to write about, thank god.

Categories
Glot

Awake

It’s 3 AM the morning after Christmas and I know I should be asleep but I can’t. I just keep thinking.

There’s so much to think about. There’s a new year and a new semester and I have the chance to change my life. I have the need to change my life. I don’t even know what it is, but I have this need to explode across somewhere, that I’ve been bottled up and there’s so much potential and energy and ideas that I can’t keep it in anymore. I want to dedicate myself. I want to stop procrastinating and sabotaging myself. I want to be a daytime person. I want to write, and often. I want to listen to more music, and make more music, that which I haven’t done in years. I want to have life on my own terms and vivaciously; to strike out with the force of mind and will to make a mark on the great big world that I can tell my grandchildren about. And I want grandchildren.

That’s another thing when I’m home is I notice more and more how my parents would make such excellent grandparents. I love them so, and I love my brothers, and as we all get older the dynamic changes and I see our roles changing. Patrick will be 17 in February, which absolutely amazes me. I found a picture of him and me in his baby cradle. I had snuck in there to join him and he just has this look of utter fascination towards me and I’m giggling. I am regularly amazed by how well our parents raised us. My dad once said before I was born that they talked about it and agreed: “yes—let’s have some kids, and raise them too.” That’s very important I think. You raise them. I can’t imagine the sacrifices they’ve made for us. They’re both such incredible people I wonder what they would’ve been without us. But they did have us, and the world is better for it. I keep thinking about if I want kids, and I do, but I can’t make that commitment yet and I don’t know if I can. I don’t know if I could be as good as them. And part of that is because I couldn’t raise them the same.

That’s what really frightens me about this last election, what really truly chills me. I don’t think I want to raise children in this country. It’s scary. The system is scary. The people in American society are scary, and I’m not talking about things my mom is afraid of like murderers or child molesters but just people on the street. Average people who would screw you over in a heartbeat if they think it’ll make their lives just a bit better. To make some money, or just to get their way. There’s so many dumb laws and nobody remembers the law of grand Karma. If everyone treats everybody like shit, then everything goes to shit. I want real morality and that’s a societal problem not a presidential one. It doesn’t matter one fucking bit what the president thinks of unborn babies. He’s demostrated in a disturbing variety of ways that he’s willing to kill actual, breathing human beings. But that alone isn’t frightening. We’ve had plenty of twisted politicians in the past. But usually democracy recovers and rights itself. To believe that the people would willingly re-elect representatives like the Bush administration is the most bloodcurdling thought for American democracy since… well, ever. That’s why there are so many Americans in denial. The other half I can’t speak for since I really can’t understand them. I know them though, some are even my relatives. All I can say is faith is no excuse for ignorance right or left. And fear, fear of terrorism, is no excuse for blind faith.

I don’t condemn Islamic terrorists. I don’t. They’re people with problems, and they’re trying to rid themselves of those problems any way they can. In a primitive reactionary and violent way, perhaps, but the only way they’ve found effective. Some fault America as the source of those problems but a lot of Americans can’t see that at all. On a meta-level, it’s the clash of civilizations and it’s inevitable and probably about time. Now the American people might be personally, tragically responsible for the actions of their government and the decadence of their culture. Democracy is uniquely accountable in that way. Re-electing Bush was a big ol’ fuck you to the arab world and all it’s legitimate concerns even though they don’t take kindly to foreign cultures anyway. It says so in frickin’ Genesis. In choosing Bush, America chose to fear. And that more than anything a terrorist could do will break this country.

But mostly I try to keep my mind off things like that.

I try to think of new ways to amuse myself on the internet. Or new things to say to people. I try to think of new things to create, when I’m feeling ambitious. I try to write in my journal so I don’t forget my life. I try to remember that I’m still alive. I hang out with people and we’re alive together. I dream sometimes of intricate and surreal beauty. My life is small and so is yours buddy. I’d like to be a great writer or inventor or musician, but I am humble. I don’t expect to be. I hope to live and live well. That’s the best any of us can ever hope for.