November 2005
Dust bunny – When deep down you don't really believe in free will then what you end up doing when you aren't trying to do anything is as authentic a personal expression as what you do when you try really hard. Wha
November 2004
Alexandre Despatie – As attractive as I find wee Canadian diver Alexandre Despatie, it's unlikely that anything will ever happen between us. There are many reasons for this, but the most relevant are that he doesn't know
Breakup – I have decided to leave civilization as I feel we are a bad match. It's no one's fault and I'm not interested in assigning blame, although I'm sure an objective observer would see my side of things wi
Distraction – The world can be a noisy place, but it could be worse. Everything can always be worse and many or even most things will be worse, and if you're lucky enough to live a long life you'll be able to sampl
It burns – I berate myself, such a tedious script. It's the familiarity of the emotional sequence that's most irksome and tiring, so tiring. Why do we live so long when we're so obviously over ourselves by the t
My inner beauty – I am not an ugly person, I mean physically ugly. I'm not beautiful either. Like the vast majority of people I fall within the basically okay range. Some people are unattractive, there are things going
Such delicious pie – During those long lonely days when Mr. Smith was away in Washington, Mrs. Smith perfected the frozen pie. She did not particularly care for pie, truth be told, but Mrs. Smith was a sensualist and baki
Ten tomorrows – 1. Coffee, then the first foreboding of the day. 2. I murder innocence and flee on a snowmobile. (winter version) 3. An attractively dressed man runs at me with a hammer. Luckily his target is the man
The end of history – When I think of human events taking place after my death, the emotion that accompanies this thought is primarily annoyance. It's kind of a burning sensation in the face, one of those profoundly infant
The pending fiasco – I've been asked to speak about the pending fiasco but I seem to have misplaced my prepared remarks, my rubber-banded collection of index cards containing my prepared remarks, and so it's left to me to
True holiday memories in the form of genuine dream imagery – My mother, a woman distinguished during the holidays by a kind of ornate weariness, who deflects all praise of her heroic courage in the face of overwhelming adversity, floats into and out of the dini
November 2003
A rare remembered dream – A lake, two lovers in a rowboat, the stillness of the summer afternoon. Too perfect, cliched, like a TV commercial. A few feet below the surface, the water quickly turns dark where the light can't rea
Anatomy of disgust – Those fibrous ribbon-like strands that cling to ripe bananas after you peel them, what are they called? I'm not the least bit bothered by them, but I can see how they might disturb some people. Actual
Blind spot – A car coming up on your right! Watch out! Objects moving at particular points on the edges of your field of vision, due to the lack of sensory apparatus where your optic nerve enters your retina Your
Careful – There are always times when I wish I didn't read things into facial expressions. I'd like to have a break from interpretation, a time when people and things and situations didn't carry a freight of co
Cereal – I wonder how many bowls of breakfast cereal I've consumed in my lifetime. This is a big number. Placed in a row, these bowls would stretch all the way to I don't know where, someplace almost certainly
Descent from the mountain – I came down from the mountain bearing two tablets. My journey was arduous, my trials many. I assumed a countenance of stern authority and, holding one tablet aloft in each hand, proclaimed to the asse
Duck redux – I wonder how much of what crosses my mind is completely insipid. Certainly a substantial percentage. Hefty. A goodly amount. Of course one keeps most of these inanities under wraps. I assume I am like
Duck shoe – My left shoe has acquired a rather marked squeak. With every other step I sound like a quacking duck. When I went by the duck pond in Laurelhurst Park today, I could've sworn this one drake (or maybe
Else fine – If I were a used book, I would be tight and free of edgewear, with an unbroken spine, but my cloth-covered boards would show just the slightest evidence of rubbing. My endpapers would be lightly foxed
Glance – I saw you and I looked at you, very very briefly, like a passing glance, only (I'm fairly sure) because when one is walking on the sidewalk one has to look somewhere and I am trying to stop looking do
Gnaw and suck – This excruciating holiday. Memories of torpid dusky afternoons in brown overheated living rooms, watching uncles watch football on oversized televisions and drink Coors. I was trapped in the boring de
Heavy as eyelids – This is a heavy conversation, but not as heavy as my eyelids. I'm going to go to sleep, and unfortunately leave you hanging, sitting out here on the porch, with the empties and the blooming ashtray an
Honey bucket – Ever since I moved to Portland I've seen portable toilets on construction sites, at outdoor public events, the usual places, with the brand name Honey Bucket on the side. For some reason this always v
Intense personal interest – He is a hospital junkie, his attachment to its aura of physical crisis and threat of personal annihilation is so moist and enveloping that it makes any distinction between religious worship and erotic
My dangerous hotel – Sometimes simply living with yourself is like walking down a long corridor past many open doors. You try to look straight ahead, stay focused on one particular door, your destination, but out of the c
My imaginary bookshelf – Excerpt from Decaying Orbits and Death Spirals: An Oral History of the L.A. Psychedelic Underground, 1966-1971, pg 214: Bryce Dobler, singer and guitarist for L.A. band Cinnamon Threat, a late 60's f
No idea – I haven't got the slightest idea what the phrase "it's all over but the shouting" means. I've even used it in conversation. I've quipped, "Well, I guess it's all over but the shouting!", to general no
Oblivion – Dinner tonight with friends at Red Robin, which always sounds like a filthy remark more than a restaurant. A glowing oasis of briskly transacted food commerce in the middle of the vast and forbidding
Other people's mothers – I never had good luck with mothers. Not my own, I mean others' mothers. Once in a while you meet someone's mother and you're completely blown away by her, and what's more the unexpected excellence of
People who park their cars in glass garages... – In my neighborhood there's a multi-unit building I sometimes walk by, a fourplex, with the apartments above a set of four one-car garages. The garage doors are glass. This gives the building the appea
Question – Years ago I worked in a secondhand book shop in a so-called marginal neighborhood in San Francisco. Polk Street at one time was the hub of gay life in the city, but after the Castro ascended to queer
Quiz – Hey guys, take this simple quiz to reveal hitherto latent homosexual tendencies! 1. When your buddy playfully punches you in the shoulder, you respond to this physical contact by: a. punching him ba
Random notes – I nodded off while sitting upright, reading a book. My first thought when I woke up, after that weird little split-second of alarm and disorientation, was that if life is a lunch box then I'm the tin
Reading books – The nature of my attachment to books and reading changes over time. Fiction, I mean. I read almost exclusively fiction, which I keep meaning to change since my knowledge of the world is painfully inad
Senior horrors – Atherosclerosis A lonesome, prolonged dotage of somber pointlessness Those giant wraparound sunglasses
So Divided – If I recorded an album of songs about my ambivalence called So Divided, the CD tracklisting would be as follows: 1. The Waffle Song 2. C-H-O-I-C-E-S 3. Ballad of a Fencesitter 4. Hey Mr. Uncertainty
Summary of life – I know exactly what you mean. Wait, maybe not. Say again? This is so delicious/erotic/fun. I want more. If I had more, I'd be happy. I am so lonely. Hey now, don't smother me, give me room! If I coul
Tasty – How I despise the word 'tasty.' There's something so mincing and so pointless about it. People go on and on about the food they've prepared, which is already not exactly the most interesting thing in
The problem of animal pain – In this ward, we have some sad sick monkeys. This chimp, as you can see, cowers under his blanket. This is typical. The clipboards at the foot of each small bed describe their maladies and courses of
Two contestable facts about him – 1. He believed that volumes of space could be sculpted in such a way that intimate physical transactions with other people would not despoil the purity of his aloneness. 2. His strategy concerning ro
Ways of seeing – How I adore your spatulate fingers. When you grab my ankles and bear down, why, it's like being raped by an alien being. I mean that in the best possible way. I love the curious asymmetry of your nose
Will someone turn that music off? – Lately there have been times when I've become aware of faint and/or distant music playing, like from a tinny transistor radio left on in another room, or from headphones lying on a desk. This has hap
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