My Robot Is Pregnant theme song!

Another moment destroyed by trying to capture a picture of it. The moon was huge and as white as the blimp. My therapist says I should live in the moment and not try to record things in my head. Or on film, for that matter.

Why do people freak out about going to therapy? I got to talk about myself for a whole hour! It was fun. Here are some things that I remember:

When we are babies in the womb, everything is cool. Then we get born. That’s traumatic. Like in the Bible, there is the garden of eden, and then they got kicked out. I forget why that makes me screwed up, but it does.

As far as why I always want to break up with a woman after a few months…I start to feel connected and that feeling of connection is a threat to my independence.

The attachment is created by a chemical. Mother’s release that chemical during childbirth so they don’t look at the ugly crying thing that caused them so much pain and drop it in a river immediately (sometimes it happens anyway). That chemical is also released during sex.

I asked if there was a chemical blocker so I wouldn’t have to feel attached. She wrote something down in her notebook.

I don’t like people to ask me questions. That is a threat to my independence as well. I really want to be independent, yet I long for a deep connection others. I’m conflicted.

People questioning me has, in the past, led to me getting in trouble, so I have learned to not want any questions.

I’m not sure what happens next. I’ll go back in a week or so and ask some more questions.

“I will not rest until we have our own stadium on the moon, with amplifiers pointed towards the sky’s infinite expanses, so that we may truly rock the galaxy.” – Craigslist ad (photo of The Flagpoles by Corey Evans!)

Which reminds me when I used to drive CEO’s in a black Crown Vic with barely legal window tint. I rolled up to the biggest brick single family estate in downtown Portsmouth, checked my black tie was straight, flexed my fingers in my driving leathers and scooted to the front door. The trunk gets popped before I leave the car, so I had the bags handled and we were back on the road in about the time it takes a lesser man to check his mirrors. I thought I was good, but this particular ride was gonna teach me a valuable economic lesson.

I’ll give it to you up front. If you want to make big tips, ignore the client. That’s the lesson. These people are paying $150 for a ride to the airport because they don’t want to talk to people like me, or you, or whoever rides SuperShuttle, a bus, or drives a cab. But I was new. I tried to engage him. I tried to listen to his conversation on the phone. He knew – he threw out a question mid conversation – something pointless like “What time is it?”

“8:15, sir.” I shot back, glancing at the green digital clock set into the dash on those late 90′s models. That was my mistake. Just a set up, the client wanted to know if he could talk freely or not. Of course I didn’t realize it at the time. I thought I was being helpful. It took a few more months before I stumbled on the secret of ignoring these people.

A man and a woman were in the back this time. Driving back from Logan Airport through that stretch of farmland on 95 just before you hit the New Hampshire border. The guy had to speak to me twice before I was shaken out of my daydream.

“Huh?” I asked, startled.

“Would it be possible to stop for cigarettes somewhere?” He asked me.

“Of course sir.” When I finally dropped the couple off at their home, the man laid a fifty on me and said, “You’re a good driver.” I don’t think it’s because I indulged his addiction with a stop at Cumberland Farms. It was because I wasn’t driving with one eye in the rear view trying to look at his wife and didn’t have one ear cocked to their conversation. I was off in space playing intergalactic bass.

Of course there is always an exception. That’s what makes life so difficult. Take for example the older refined gay gentleman that I dropped off at his home by the beach in Rye. As we neared his residence, he began moving around in the back seat. It did catch my eye, this wasn’t the gathering of a briefcase and papers. He had rolled up one pant leg and was adjusting the garter for his thin silk socks. I’ll never forget the lurid look in his eyes that met mine there in the rear view. Had I been in the business, I could have made quite a tip that afternoon.

As the economy falters and my good friends find themselves looking for jobs they may not have previously considered, I put it out there. Rich people will continue to need rides to the airport. If you can put together the cash for a black suit and tie you might have a job. I hope it won’t take you as long as it took me to learn when to look, and when to look away.

photo posted from my iPhone

I’m thinking about setting up at the flea market. It’s $45 bucks for a spot at Alemany in San Francisco. I’ve brushed elbows with a few full timers in that trade and it takes a strong stomach. The gates open to the public at 7 am and you need to be set up and ready for the sharks, the self employed wild bucks who support God knows what with this lifestyle – what kind of drugs would you be on to show up at 6:30 am Sunday morning to stand in line so you could be the first to sift through a dead person’s possessions?

You know they are specialists by how they hold something. Like an ass-man they flip everything over and look at the back first – is the teapot marked? Are the bronze bookends stamped? Is the painting in it’s original frame? Is the vase signed?

They flip everything, but not like homebuyers. They buy with a target in mind. They will hold onto a piece and wait for the big Deco sale in New York, or the Rose Bowl Flea Market in Pasadena. Annual events that bring in high end buyers who drop big bucks on rare items. These early morning hustlers are competing with pickers who buy to resell immediately to other dealers who don’t get up so early, or may be across the bridge at Alameda, the once a month flea market on the old Navy base.

People are cranky at that hour, and it’s still dark and they have two thousand bucks cash in their pocket and they’re scared. Scared they’ll miss a deal or make a mistake. It feels desperate out there, pushing and shoving, cursing, stealing. Anyone who knows anything keeps their mouth shut. Don’t tell the seller what he might have, don’t show excitement about a piece or another buyer will appear out of no where to drive up the cost. It’s like the floor of Wall Street, people want to make fast deals and get to the next stall and have a look. There is no one in that crowd saying, “My grandmother used to have one of those.” That kind of mentality will get you pushed to the ground and stepped over. These people are brutal as arms dealers in a war zone.

About ten years ago I opened a junk shop back in New Hampshire. I got used up by these people. People who make their living driving around looking for something they can buy low and sell high are people who are at all times somewhat insecure. What if they come back empty handed? All that fuel and time wasted…no fresh meat. Most likely there is a garage or a barn loaded with stuff, but they need something new. If shoppers were content to see the same thing in the same place day after day, grocery stores wouldn’t run specials or switch out the end caps. Shampoo wouldn’t be in aisle 6 one day and aisle 12 the next. Sellers know that to shake money out of our pockets, we need to be shaken up ourselves.

I got to spot these sharks by how methodical they were, and how they could spin a story about there hobby and how good my shop looked, Jon, and I have a lot of nice stuff, Jon, and if they bought a bunch of stuff usually they got a better price, right Jon? All the while they are looking not at me – definitely not in my eyes. They are on their hands and knees going through some dusty box they spied behind the counter and asked me to pull out. They said my name hundreds of times because I was a little baby they were lulling to sleep and they would soon have stolen the candy right out of my hands.

By the second or third time they came through I got wise and raised prices. And they got mad. Now it was high pressure sales, with me the salesman being bullied into a corner. I didn’t know what I had and they did. But I had it and they wanted it. Things got nasty. I was hungry but didn’t like being taken advantage of. None of my local customers wanted this stuff, so I needed these guys to spend some dough with me. Their bullying worked. They dictated the prices.

After nearly two years in the junk business I gave it up and moved west to chase the cowboy dreams. Those are behind me too, and now I’m ready to get into the flea market. Get to know some of these characters, the buyers and sellers. From a distance, not relying on them for my rent. There is a lot of freedom in that lifestyle, and freedom tends to burn people out. A loosely regulated cash economy of hustlers. I’m ready to jump back in.

Treasure found at a yard sale in Angel’s Camp included a 1912 fishing license and a block of handmade matches. (That’s the blob thing on the bottom. A chunk of wood was whittled into sticks and dipped in sulphur. You break off a match as you need it.)

Pay dirt is a funny term. Refers to striking gold. We all knew that, but we forget it. Then we head to Angel’s Camp, California – gold rush country – with our father. HE CAME ALL THE WAY ACROSS THE COUNTRY WITH A PLASTIC GOLD PAN. I didn’t mean to use all caps, but since it happened, I’m gonna let it ride. Because it is that dramatic. He came from New Hampshire with a back pack and a gold pan. It’s green and shaped like a small wok with some grooves stepped into one little pizza slice size part of it. That traps the gold flakes.

As I look at him and think, “How am I like my father? I’m not Republican. I’m not Christian. I’m not into marriage. I’m not into a safe 9 to 5 job,” I realize he is the reason I have all these romantic get rich schemes. He couldn’t even admit to me until this morning as we got in the rental car for the three hour drive from San Francisco that he wanted to stop and pan for gold.

“Where?” I asked.

“It’s legal on any federal land.”

He didn’t have any place in mind. Just wanted to stop the car and pan for gold alongside the highway. As if men were too busy building a road to notice nuggets glinting in the river seven feet away.

We reached Angel’s Camp, it’s a winding two lane through Live Oaks and hills. It was nothing but open land until the edge of town. (Population 3,100) There someone had set up sun-faded two foot plastic Mary and Joseph kneeling over plastic baby Jesus on a card table at the end of the gravel driveway.

Sometimes I think the Catholic Church goes a little overboard spending all the poor’s alms on stained glass and Gothic arches, but having witnessed that barbaric tribute in brittle plastic, I can finally understand. Jesus was trying to comfort the hopeless. That table with its crooked folding legs and Chinese made molded Jews perched on top almost made me lose faith in mankind.

Dad pulled into the Visitor’s Center, directly across from the Lode Hotel. “Better bring your own sheets,” he quipped. We went inside and looked through the tri-fold pamphlets lined up in a wooden tiered rack along one wall. There was a potter and vintner and some other hokey lost souls who tried through a half witted implementation of desk top publishing to lure us into spending time and money at their retreat from reality up here in the spent and hollow hills of former Gold Country.

“Any hoss-back riding?” The old man asked. That New Hampshire accent was coming through loud and clear. He spoke slowly in broken Spanish to every brown skinned person in The City, including the Pakistani at the corner store. Out here in the woods he was back at ease and made little jokes through his mustache and dreamed about gold.

Ostensibly the point of this trip was to find a place for he and my mother to come this summer. She wants to go horseback riding, he wants to go metal detecting. Then he showed me the gold pan. This three hour drive through windmill country to peruse brochures could have been done from the internet back in New Hampshire. It’s actually connected to the same internet that’s in Angel’s Camp. But his lopsided brain that leans heavily on the side of fantastical has us in a 2008 Pontiac with an Enterprise sticker halfway to Reno. Take a look.

See that man there looking for Gold? That is why I am in California today. It’s why I climb into dumpsters and haul garbage. I am the son of a dreamer. He has a wife and two kids, so his dream has been deferred, and here he is sixty one and out of breath trying to get on his hands and knees to dip his pan in the river, and moments before his diabetes swollen feet almost teetered him into the water, and moments later he will need my help getting to his feet, and he will stand there staring into a pile of sand and fish out an acorn and some pebbles and he will keep looking into the sand, and swirl the pan, and look again, and the childhood dream is coming true right here but the only gold in sight are the Golden Arches of McDonalds just up the banking and on the other side of the street.

“The dream is the biggest part,” he tells me later in the car. Every summer I go back to New Hampshire the biggest highlight is wading in the low tide muck of a brackish Piscataqua river digging around for old pottery shards dating back from the time when Portsmouth citizens as a whole threw their garbage in the water. I’m not a gold panner, but I understand him. I’m in Nature, with friends, and might possibly become fabulously wealthy.

I recognize how lucky I am to have parents that care about me, and I’m honored my pops came all this way to check up on me (and pan for gold). When he told me yesterday in the Pupuseria down in the Mission District that he was worried I was lost, I understood his concern. That’s the curse of a dreamer. I am lost and far from home, but I don’t stop looking. I don’t stop believing that if I buy a crude instrument and go off into the hills, I will find what I’m looking for. And the dream is the biggest part, so when I come up empty handed, I know how lucky I am to never stop believing anyway. And he and Mom believe in me too. Thanks.

Pops flew into Oakland today, so I left early to catch some shopping at my favorite flea market – Coliseum. Open seven days a week. No questions asked. 50 cent entrance fee.

This masterpiece that foreshadowed the current economic crisis was going for five bucks. A smoking hobo clown reading the Wall Street Journal? Yes I bought it!

Then I bought a box of old six pack holders for defunct sodas. Nowadays only beer comes in glass bottles and cardstock carriers. There are some gems but I thought I’d scan in the Tab ones, they remind me of my aunt.

Dad bought a german coin. He said he could double his money. He spent fifty cents on it, so he’ll break even after the cost of admission. It’s like there’s no way to make a buck lately. He blames the unions for the downfall of our economy. It should prove to be an interesting visit, as he explains that one to me.

from La Cenicienta, a Spanish version pop up book about Cinderella

Cinderella. Her sister wants to marry the prince so she cuts off her heel in order to fit in the shoe. The prince discovers the fraud. It is the little feet of the the child who empties out the fireplace that fit the shoe. And so girls learn the importance of small feet when finding a husband. They learn the sex appeal of glass slippers. I caught that revelation in “Who Are You, Polly Maggoo.”

And as I cruised wikipedia, I noticed this jump rope song:

Cinderella dressed in yellow, went upstairs to kiss her fellow, made a mistake she kissed a snake, how many doctors will it take? 1, 2, 3

which sounds a lot like Young MC’s line, “Dressed in yellow, she says ‘Hello’, come sit next to me fine fellow.”

But what’s that matter? At least things rhyme with yellow. How many stories have we lost because we can’t rhyme with orange? There’s a lot of talk about Obama getting rid of Daylight Savings Time and doing some other things to make our lives better. How about inventing some words that can get orange into a jump rope song, Prez?

I’ve been kicking this jingle around in my head for a while. Still don’t have music for it, so enjoy a story a capella. Just click the button to start and stop it. It has an adult theme.

Hella.

That’s a funny joke. I’m trying to figure out where this photo is taken. On the back the stamp from the processor says Ohio, 1971. But is that where the photo is? Here’s another from the album. I left it upside down because it looks cool. Anyone recognize the building?

all around me men were finding love
in bullets they died from
in fights they bled in
in bones they broke
in hate they spewed
in racism they snarled
in fast cars crushed around steetlamp poles
in cases of beer and LSD
in music
there was love everywhere
except between men and women
– Jimmy Santiago Baca

photo posted from my iPhone

Blogging isn’t easy. I’ve spent three hours trying to get my printer to send an image to photoshop. But FUCK IT, I’m going to bed defeated.

Corey’s house – the new haircut will make it easier to calm the parents down

My dad’s coming to visit next week. He and my Mom read the blog and they are worried about me. It’s like the Jim Jones Massacre anniversary that’s been in the news recently – Jimmy got his start here in SF thirty years ago before he split to Guyana. Anyway, my Pops, like a senator, is on a fact finding mission. It’s nice to have folks who care, so I appreciate the trouble he’s taking to make the trip West.

I know part of the thing is, they are Christians and I’m not. They worry about my soul, of all things. Not that they mention it much any more, but Mom let’s me know she’s praying for me. And I tell her I’m drinking for her.

Now I think I have the gout. My toes were killing me in New Orleans, and my diet consists of meat and alcohol – the very thing Wikipedia stools out as the culprit. Soon as I got back from The Big Easy I took a breather. Laid off the sauce and after a few days my feet were feeling better.

Maybe it’s a coincidence, maybe I don’t have health insurance. I definitely don’t have health insurance. SF has a few free clinics, so I’ll head to one this week and I guess they can test levels of uric acid in your blood. That’s what gout is. Uric acid crystallizes and builds in the joints of your toes. Painful stuff. I’m a hypochondriac (self diagnosed) so let’s hope it’s nothing as bad as that.

That being said, maybe I do need someone to check in on me. A warden or something. A den mother. I don’t know. A flight attendant even. Someone who can tell me to shut up and sit down. After two weeks of the dry spell up here on the wagon I’m starting to wonder if I might just find the Lord. I thought I did one other time back when I was drinking.

“Here He is!” I screamed. “Found ‘im! Up on top of the refrigerator this whole time!” Turns out I was looking for my keys but got confused. I started to lose faith in Jesus back during childhood wiffle ball games. I played them by myself by throwing the wiffle ball up and hitting it against the side of the house. The little white ball would bounce off the shingles of the gambrel roof and I’d drop the bat and try to catch the ball. Sometimes the wind took it out into the weeds by the brook.

I’d pray to God that I’d find my wiffle ball. Heartfelt earnest pleas that only a child out in the woods with no one to play with would cry out (but silently in a Puritanical New England composure). There were no promises or bartering with God, just a petition that He would help me find the ball. I needed to know that someone was going to help. And shortly I’d find the ball under a sumac sapling struggling up through the golden rod.

I don’t know how many times I lost the ball and sent up a prayer like a shallow infield pop-up. But it wasn’t too long, maybe a season, maybe not, before I realized I could just look for the ball and I’d find it just as easily without the prayer as with one. So I stopped praying. Then I outgrew playing wiffle ball with ghost runners. I guess I didn’t want to believe in ghosts either. It was probably the summer Nathan Slocum moved into the neighborhood and I finally had someone real to play with.

Not too long ago I read about the evolutionary trait of belief. It is something most of us have, the capacity to believe in something, because evolutionarily speaking, it helps us survive. So I can’t say I don’t have the capacity to believe. There is still something in me that wants to find the Lord. But unlike keys or a kitten, I’ll never put my hands on it and know the search is over.

photo posted from my iPhone

This little girl was selling her paintings on the sidewalk in Hayes Valley for five bucks each. Just up on the next block so was a middle aged hipster. I figured I’d support the youth instead of middle age. The picture on the right says, “Mr. John McCain”. Kind of a happy reminder that he isn’t President, just Mr.

photo posted from my iPhone
Here’s that wide load wheelchair at the hospital. It was like the website that allows me to post photos here directly from my phone took a break for the holiday and now it’s working again.

photo posted from my iPhone
Somehow my phone took a picture of the screen display during a phone call. Not sure how.