My xanga (meebo) IM stalls at the “Signing in, please wait” point. I recently installed Firefox 8, but I’m not sure that’s it; Internet Explorer seems to have issues too. Anyone else having xanga IM problems?

Yep. I used to post. And I will again. But this Sunday, please indulge me in this reprise of a little old-fashioned, sappy, complicated, light.

It’s amazing how long it takes to work through the memory of a large character in ones life. I just woke up from a dream that ended with me on the bank of a creek, using a long pole to keep my father’s stiff, lifeless body from being carried down and away by the current. It was hopeless (but please read on, because this post is not).

What the hell is this thing called life? What is death?

Now there’s a couple of “Featured Questions” to work on for the duration, huh?

I’ve been looking for a handle on life since I came out of the Poppin’ Fresh Dough Machine. Lookin’ for that handle has bought me a lot of time, both good and bad. 25 years ago I faced death and ran like hell in the opposite direction. Since then I’ve had a lot more time to ask myself why I ran so hard. Until recently there always seemed to be a working answer. I’m not so sure there is any more. But that’s not a bad thing, see? I don’t think I would run so hard now. I might not run at all. I don’t think I’d need to.   

A friend just posted something that ended with the thought that maybe all we really need is love.

Years ago I would have said, “All we need is WHAT? Oh come ON. Get with the program, you silly love songs. A sea slug can find a better handle than THAT.”

And so I kept looking for it.

And I kept running my hand across the massive inertial surface of this thing called life, tenuously drifting through the blackness with it, sure that eventually I’d find that handle. A few times I thought I’d found something, but as soon as I tried to grasp it, I realized it wasn’t a handle at all, but at best the smallest of convexities. Still, I kept searching.

At this point I’d like to report that I’ve been over this sphere-life-thing several times, with a fine-toothed comb.

There are no handles. And there is nothing else.

However, I have discovered a certain warm softness to it; a certain doughy pliability. I think, Instead of seeing myself as something separate and this lifeball as something to be managed, maybe the thing to do is simply press myself into it – to become one with the Pillsbury Doughball. Maybe I already am one with it. Maybe I always have been.

Anyway, I gotta tell you…this Pillsbury Doughball…I’m pretty sure it’s Love.

(doesn’t it just figure there are no love-handles?

I commented back to my dear friend that I hope love is all we need, because it’s certainly all we’ve got.

It might even be all there is. But I’m not quite there yet. I mean…I’m not sure how to fit Drakonskyr in there. And stuff.

So go ahead, Dad. Drift on. It’s all one Big Doughball.

Love

…getting longer as the days grow shorter.

just re-read this. i still like it. it’s from a dream. don’t be misled by the leisurely wind-up.

***
my mother, she always had a knack with gifts and when i came home for good this time there was a ’68 ford falcon convertible waiting. it was a peach and it was creamy with red interior and three-on-the-tree. it was like new, only old. the syncro-mesh was shot so i couldn’t downshift into first until fully stopped. no big deal.

i rolled the top down after the first rain and took a drive with some friends i’d known forever and we were bouncing and rocking on that springy old suspension like we were all punch drunk in a bathtub together, laughing down the narrow overgrown road, green and wet and steaming after the sun came out and pretty soon we were at the party and there were a bunch of happy nice people there too, like everybody.

the happy people were assembled at a big old wooden house only it wasn’t old it was new and downstairs the back doors opened onto a porch and the porch was perched atop a grassy slope and the host was there, grilling, and i wandered around and then decided to explore the pretty house so i climbed the stairs and pretty soon i found a small room that would have been the turret if this house had been a castle, except it was square and wooden not stone and cold. there was a big split window in the wall with the best view, and a narrow wrap-around deck that you had to climb out the windows to get to and i was alone in the room except for a boy and his girlfriend, both raven-haired and wild perched like love birds on opposite sides of one of the windowsills, backs toward me. sometimes one would speak but mostly they just sat silently, gazing out across the verdant afternoon landscape. they didn’t seem to know i was there.

my first lover was there too, the one that drove me crazy and still does in too many wrong ways but definitely a few of the right ones and she was there in the corner shadow, still surprising me like a cat, she was as beautiful as when we began and pretty soon after we began talking about nothing i started to wonder how she got there but when she jumped me and wrapped her legs around my waist the way she always used to i stopped wondering

wrapped around me natural and this turn she took felt as natural as a diving bird, and the way the day creates the way we turn as i hold her swaying, purring, slowly burning

it’s a dream so of course my pants are (what pants?) and she’s completely bare below the waist and smooth as silk RAWR she smiles coy at my discovery and nestles over me nestles onto me and then i am in her holding her, facing silhouettes in the window and she’s all up in my face looking like she ate a canary (i still can’t decide if she’s a bird or a cat) and here we are now together. i swirl inside her, past the feral boy and his hippie girl and out the window above the sea green for a moment and the scents after the rain, floating like me. i am drawn back when suddenly she rocks on my hips and whispers I love your cock inside me

it would have been trite or even coarse from other lips but her lips slightly parted and her eyes sweet slits watching infinity on TV and the trace of her neck bent the way it bends when she absolutely loves my cock inside her, it isn’t coarse or trite at all.
 
i say nothing about not having children and how i do regret that, but when i think  it she suddenly opens her wide eyes wide – zooming back to Be Here Now while i watch in endorphin overdrive, watch as her cosmos re-condenses to a point and explodes again, reborn as impetuous phosphorous flash

she tosses her head back and speaks: Well that’s what *this* is for, silly. she tells me with words first then again with nuzzles and grins and she bows back and straightens my imaginary bow tie and shimmies down on me like she can’t get enough of what this is for

but her eyes are full of something very deep now.

and by this time the boy and the girl in the window have discovered us and traded a view of the nature happening outside for that of the nature happening between us, this being natural and i watch them watching us and it wasn’t planned and i was happy and so were they and we were all one that day together.

i wet my index finger, slide it down her spine and down more until it is enveloped by the deepening furrow of her line of symmetry, pressing and prying gently savoring the reverberations of the song we both once wrote. down more, till i dip inside her soft power and steal it wet to retrace a path upward toward Now

I’m your patron saint of adversity, baby.

in slow motion she unfurls from my waist, arms and legs wide and she’s weightless, levitating off the rest of the universe, impaled on me while I continue to ply her, slow and strong and steady. the wild young boy and his girl observe, rapt and slack-jawed and i watch them track this beautiful creature’s ascent until finally the wild girl says breathless Oh my God! and the boy (who turns out to be English) exclaims That. Was. BRILLIANT!

i purr deep, like a cat diesel.

afterward we all lie together outside and talk and are silent until late into the night, in love on the emerald grass.

high above, a falcon soars.

***

(Originally posted July 2009)

Took a bunch of shots on my ride to work the other day. The colors speak for themselves.

Wishing you all a productive and happy change of seasons,
Phil

I know I sometimes gave Steve Jobs a hard time…but that’s mostly because I’ve always sort of considered him a competitor. And well…he’s Steve Jobs and I’m not, right? But the truth is we’re from nearly the same generation and are both imbued with the same spirit.

Have a look at this commencement address he made in 2005. There’s a great spirit here: hungry and foolish and in love with this fleeting journey. We won’t all get to be Steve Jobs, but that’s certainly no reason not to live life this way.

You done good, Steve.

As for the rest of you…stay foolish, my friends.

now back inside.

Every so often I gotta watch this one again.
On pretty much any metric, from metaphysics to balls-out execution to tear-tugging beauty, it scores B for Badass.

Keep it spinning, lovers.

So my Pisces horoscope for today reads

“An important matter is coming up — again. The subject is quite delicate in nature, so do restrain yourself from being too blunt at the wrong time, just this once. Not that anyone could possibly love you any less.”

LOL

Life: for something so fleeting it sure does have persistence, don’t it?

I wonder if the universe remembers us after we’re gone; if the Cosmos isn’t one giant nostalgia factory.

Dreams and memories. Nothing else hits our soft spot so well. Certainly never the present.

Sometimes I wonder why

but. by then I’ve spiraled into the next moment.

heh. these two definitely kept their inner children around.