Wednesday, November 30, 2011

Getting High on I-5



It was 1990. My college boyfriend, J. and I are driving back to school in San Diego after spring break. We stop at one of the many gas stations that sit along the insanely tedious I-5. After we walk out of the mini-mart, we come face to face with some buddies from school! WHOA! “Hey, how are you guys doin’?” Well, lucky us, they invite us into their car to smoke a doob. We climb in the back and toke up for a couple minutes before returning to our own car. All in all the exchange is 7 minutes before we get back on the road. After gaining some momentum, we look at each other and laugh and laugh. What just happened? we ask each other. There is never a more absurd 7 minutes in our lives. Never again a better gas stop for the rest of our days.

Tuesday, November 29, 2011

Psychological profile

It's a little bit of this....



...and a little bit of that.



Mixed with a lot of this.


During the winter, here.








For Love of Keaton



Los Angeles really kicks the ass of San Francisco when it comes to art and art shows. We have Barry McGee, true, but he SHOWS in LA!

Here's something else LA has that we don't and it makes me wanna cry cry cry that I can't be there for it.

("Keaton" was a name on my baby list for my daughter for a time. If Guy had been into it, I would have gone there).

Monday, November 21, 2011

Courtney Love Joke

             

Thursday, November 17, 2011

Wednesday, November 16, 2011

Worm Zit Dream



dream last night:
I’m pinching a major cyst on my face and a big hole opens up and out comes a worm. He had tons of legs like a millipede, but slid smoothly out like a worm. it was a fat worm, like the width of a Camel cigarette. The visual sickened me greatly in my dream. I became aware that my mind revisited the image of the worm slithering out of my face several times while I was asleep and it sickened me every time.

Tuesday, November 15, 2011

Sweet Apple




The Year Punk Broke finally arrives in the 21st century




This absolutely positively most-shredding-est video by Sonic Youth buddy Dave Markey is finally here on DVD. I've already used every appropriate adjective I can think of, so I'll leave it at that for now.

Go git it!

Tuesday, November 08, 2011

"W Hollywood Uber Alles"

From my friend TC, braving the wilds of Southern California...

Seems the W Hollywood has a sense of humor about the tiny space allotted their smoking fiend guests, while also making a statement about the stupidity of controlling smokers outside.


Friday, November 04, 2011

Life Joke


It's so easy to be beautiful

Start with NO shopping in the stores everyone shops in.

Start here.

Scenes from a commute


Daylight savings time ending means no more sunrises at 8am. Larkspur Ferry Terminal here.
Sunrise over San Quentin.

Waiting for the boat. 


Reflective arrival.          
Sleepers. About to dock at San Francisco Ferry Building.

Thursday, November 03, 2011

Wednesday, November 02, 2011

Kid (s)

There's lots of talk about having a second kid. It's all, Oh, your child needs a sibling! and Oh, we always wanted two! Other stuff I hear, "Don't have two. Now THAT really changes everything. Your life is put on hold completely." and "Are you gonna have two? No? Good. We always cringe when we run into a friend with her two kids. It's chaos. You don't even want to be around them. It's endless."

But now, as I watch Gene Simmons Family Jewels—the episode about how their family came to be—I almost decide that I could deal with the HELL that is a contraction...again. I almost think, "Kids are can be so fucking unbelievably awesome! RX is beyond! We could have more of that!"

Kids are a slow-creeping drug that catches you in a claw of love that pulls harder than the purest china white.

Good luck to all of us who continue to stick to the idea of One.

Scenes from a Commute


Mommy, what happens when we die?


When I asked this question as a kid, I was told that if I asked Jesus to be my savior, I’d go to heaven, where the streets are gold and everything is perfect. I was told I’d see all my relatives and even my pets, which were in an adjoining animal heaven.

How depressing it was when I realized the Bible is just a story, it’s not a secret held within regular paper pages of how this world came to be or will come to an end.

I never thought about me dying, myself, until my grandparents died when I was 30. Where are they? Where did they go? They went somewhere.

I have at times seen what feels like heaven, 40,000 miles in the sky over the Bering Sea. I saw the most beautiful droplets of silky caramel dribbled on the edges of clouds silhouetted against a rainbow horizon with a fade so gentle, it was clearly made of elements we don’t understand. The beauty there above the ocean made me cry, an emotional outpour from love and other things...beyond words. I’ve wanted my plane to crash into that heaven. I’ve felt unafraid in the face of emotionally devastating beauty. I’ve felt that is where my grandparents are. Somewhere indescribable. And not in a body, bodies stay on Earth.

I think my grandparents can feel, rather than see in the afterlife. I’ve felt that it's like living in one’s mind. No eyes, mouth, tongue, teeth. Just knowing and feeling what is around, who is there, what is seen in others' minds, all shared. This is death to me. Knowing and feeling my grandparents, my pets and being with them in a bubble of peace and painlessness.

Near death experiences are discounted as wires getting crossed in the brain, how the brain reacts to lack of oxygen, just the body dying and various other hypotheses that are incredibly short-sighted. I am developing a belief that these people, doctors, scientists are right. We are experiencing those things in our brain and those things make us feel good, but I add on top of that an idea that we are traveling outward from inside our minds, and those things are parts of the journey. Our minds hold a portal for escape from this dimension, this reality. We travel through that portal as our brain shuts down. Well known phrases such as "The answer is right in front of you!" and "God lives in you" "Your body is God's temple" come to mind. And finally make sense. This is my faith. My faith is in a kind afterlife. When we finally see it, we go, "Ohhh, of course!" and everything that ever was makes sense, and our place and what we do makes sense. All the near death experiences you’ve ever heard are true. I believe in them. I believe we need to go one step further and say, It’s a beautiful thing to die, look where we get to go if we believe in kindness and exercise kindness and trust that kindness is there.

Steve Jobs was a man looking for enlightenment in many different places. He believed in reincarnation. His sister, Mona Simpson’s eulogy is very beautiful here. And she tells us something very private, but something very encouraging, the perfect last message from a man who saw more. Steve’s last words:

OH WOW.  OH WOW. OH WOW.

It makes me smile. He got out and it feels good and I’m right. This is it. Yes.