Learn From It

I can't explain it. I was sitting here, just being, with the boyfriend. He's iLiving his new iLife. Music created, catalogued. Video imported, edited. Photos tidied, organized.

I'm doing one of my websurfing binges, a Safari with Safari [groan]. The mind wanders from one topic to another, but abruptly I find myself thinking of Enkhuizen, NL. Basic google searches get me very little, until I remembered that you can search images on google. Off I go, finding plenty of pictures which remind me of being reminded of times I shouldn't have remembered. The stadhuis, the canal in the centrum, brick house after brick house. The marina, looking exactly as I expected it to look even though I was about to see it for the first time with these baby blues.

The memories of actually seeing it fade, and the memory of the memories fades even more swiftly; I need to go back. I want to go back. I want to see the Netherlands again. The best picture I found was from this site. Click on the image for the full 1600x1200 resolution (using my own bandwidth).

Posted by Jeff at 10:22 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

create your own visited states map or write about it on the open travel guide

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Tucson was, for me,
Nothing but the place where he
was so far away.

Tucson was, for me,
Featureless and desolate,
Grid imposed on sand.

But now it's the first
place I don't try to compare
to San Francisco.

Because it's a game
Where one of the game pieces
Just cannot be moved.

"Don't think, do!" is all
that is requir'd to live in
Interesting Times.

A curse? A blessing?
Why not both? It's two...two...two
[senti]mints in one!

The game is afoot.
The foot is a vehicle
It starts with a step.

Haikusdays reborn?
"But why, Skippy, why?" you ask?
Effete play on words.

(Definition Three,
Royal Smart-Asses out there.
You know who you are.)

Tucson v. Tuesday
Sound it out, say it aloud.
That's it, more or less.

Now speak your own words.
You hardcore Dune geeks out there
Catch my lev'ling drift.

Dare Ya Dare Ya Dare
Ya Dare Ya Dare Ya Dare Ya
Double Dog Dare Ya.

Posted by Jeff at 10:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

"Everyone knows vegetables grow best in the desert, Jeff."

--the BF, after I wonder whether the tomato in my salad will be
any better than the crap tomatoes we get in California.

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He's doing this, and so on, and so on. One of the patterns which seems to be emerging in the whole blog thing is a) my aversion to words like "blogdom" and "blogosphere" and b) that it's more than people just writing for writing's sake.

So here's where I've been. Not much so far, but that just means a bigger blank canvas to work with.

create your own visited country map or write about it on the open travel guide

Posted by Jeff at 11:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Am on my way to Tucsam. Consumed so far:

• a medium-sized block of cheddar cheese at home
• one hot dog, with mustard and relish, and a huge Budweiser at SFO
• 3+ Bloody Mary's, due to a zealously chummy flight attendant in First Class
• another hot dog, with sauerkraut and jalapeños, a bag of Fritos and a Barq's at Las Vegas Int'l

Someone will pay for this, certainly.

Oh, wait. Me.

Posted by Jeff at 11:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

For once I'm not going to bury the lead: it can't work. Societal Eugenics, I mean.

As far as I know (no, I haven't googled it), I just minted the phrase. So sue me. Or blame me when you hear it everywhere.

Science (valid, or bastard versions) take on a strange, dark and unnatural quality when applied to society. I mean hell, what doesn't, really? Even a clear, simple sense of fairness gets bolloxed up when it goes from a notion to a nation.

<beat>

Ok, ok...so I have to google it. So it does exist, but apparently only in rather literalist ways. I'm not talking about making society better by engineering better babies. I'm talking about culling the culture of ideas that are bad when measured against some rather literal idea of purity. So I'm good. You did hear it here early on, if not first.

<beat>

The Right is naturally past-minded. Or unnaturally so. If that conjures up ideas of brain-eating zombies, well, all the better. They're not far off the mark. Brains, deep-thought, gravitas, are all consumed by the Right, broken down into their constituent parts and used as energy to fuel the dream of a society that believes in Nothing New Under the Sun, a Past-as-Present world where no thought is required. The Past settled everything important, right? Right, Right?

I've gotten ahead of myself. Again. Why would anyone wish for a society where no one thinks? Even as a means of plotting one's own ascendancy, what would that put you on top of? What drudgery. Hell, even god created Free Will to keep herself from being bored to tears by the inevitability of a predictable future.

I honestly have no idea, except to suppose that the Right is simply not....wait for it.....thinking.

But still, why is nuance the nemesis of those who are on such a path as the Right have embarked upon? Easy: it dilutes the story. It's hard to be on-message when the message is so complex, so variegated, so subtled and nuanced that followers start to consider the content of the message. Begin to think about second-, third- and higher-order notions, consequences, realities. Hell, just that they begin to think at all.

Conversely, when agreement itself is more important than the things agreed upon, the thinking has already stopped and the ascendant path becomes adequately lubricated.

I have a shorter version of the message the Right is delivering: Nothing Unobvious Exists.

Nice economy of words, mostly understandable already, obviating the need to look up "hard" words, to consider anything beyond the "10 words version". Bite-sized, snack-sized, fun-sized!

So have at it, Ann Coulter, you curiously-silent-about-the-ACLU-and-Rush-Limbaugh traitorous bitch. Use it, Sean Hannity, you poisonous wretch. And Rush? Even the OxyContin haze shouldn't prevent you from getting what it means.

And Andrew Sullivan? You're lost. Hopeless. They don't care about the chockful-of-consequences writing of yours, they just want the unnuanced version; you're just a faggot. (hey, their sentiments, not mine. I'm a big ol' 'mo, too).

Gravitas is the truest victim of the Right. Most of them probably don't know what it means. Most of them won't bother to look it up.

Posted by Jeff at 08:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yep...I'm heading back to Tucson tonight. The BF and I have been apart exactly 19 days, 5 hours, as of this writing. "Only" 19 days. Yikes. 19 days is nothing...am I sure that's correct? Yep. iCal says so, so it must be true. Yikes again. Feels like so much longer, and will continue to feel like it's been much longer until the moment I make that last turn towards leaving the secured area of Tucson's airport and I see him standing there with that small smile that would look tentative if I didn't actually know any better.

But I do, and I can't wait to see it again.

So at that moment, these 19 days will have evaporated, and the continuity will have been reestablished. There's a dreamlike quality to it (or a sci-fi/nightmarish quality to it), as if someone gave you memories you don't remember making yourself, these 19 days of kicking butt at work, of spending time with good friends, of still having the privilege of living in such a mantic and magical and bewitching city—a city in the United States, no less!—of imagining what it will be like in less than eight months to be living with the one I love.

And, coincidentally, I'll actually be there for the opening of a new Apple Store (something I've never done), and on the 20th Anniversary of that little machine that changed my world, the Apple Macintosh^® (Click here or on the picture for a retrospective, if you're so inclined). What fun! I'll see if I can win me a t-shirt and maybe a shiny new iMac.

Coming up next week, just to warn you (and by that I mean you and you), Haikuesdays return!

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From the Apple Developer documentation for Cocoa.

O, Sweet iRony.

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Turns out, my own take on America was written many moons ago by the Butler Boys (Psych Furs).

you have to have a party
when you're in a state like this
you can really move it all
you have to vote and change
you have to get right out of it
like out of all this mess
you'll say yeah to anything
if you believe all this but

don't cry, don't do anything
no lies, back in the government
no tears, party time is here again
president gas is up for president

line up, put your kisses down
say yeah, say yes again
stand up, there's a head count
president gas on everything but roller skates

it's sick the price of medicine
stand up, we'll put you on your feet again
open up your eyes just to check that your asleep again
president gas is president gas again

he comes in from the left sometimes
he comes in from the right
it's so heavily advertised that he wants you and i
it's a real cowboy set, electric company
every day is happy days
it's hell without the sin, but

don't cry, don't do anything
no lies, back in the government
no tears, party time is here again
president gas is up for president

line up, put your kisses down
say yeah, say yes again
stand up, there's a head count
president gas on everything but roller skates

it's sick the price of medicine
stand up, we'll put you on your feet again
open up your eyes just to check that your asleep again
president gas is president gas again

Posted by Jeff at 11:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBacks (0)

"Good fences make good neighbors".

Y'all know that Robert Frost was being ironic, right?

Two years ago and for the first time in my adult life, I have been enormously blessed in having next-door neighbors who are real neighbors. I have lived in this small house on Bernal Hill for 10.5 years, the last 8.5 years alone. Bill and Edgar have been my neighbors since New Year's Eve, 2001.

In a very specific way, I suppose my 8.5 years alone in this house haven't been alone since that evening, when Bill apologized for not 'having much here' to serve to me, even as he presented a warm Brie with mango chutney and water crackers to go with our champagne.

I knew even before leaving their house that it was a new year, a new time, a less-alone time for me. I knew, as sometimes you just do, that I'd come to count on them, to have them count on me. I knew that 3 separate friendships had begun that night: one between Bill and me; one between Edgar and me; one between me and the Bill-and-Edgar household.

I have found myself over the past two years referring to them as my next-door neighbors, each time realizing that it was important that I'd said "next-door" and also realizing that the term 'neighbor' didn't nearly cover it.

Both are extraordinary men, extraordinary human beings. They are my friends and I am their friend. It's more than that, though. These are people with whom I am more comfortable yelling over the short fence between our backyards than calling on the phone.

That's why I'm going to make sure they at least have a webcam when they complete their move to New York City.

I was thinking about this tonight as I walked their dog, have been thinking about this as I've been walking their dog three times a day since Thursday. They are the ones for whom the little hillside community is "ours" and not just "mine". They are the ones for whom driving home is also dropping me off at home. They are the ones who have just Been There, literally, when I have needed them, when I have wanted to talk to them.

I have had more San Francisco-specific adventures with them than I can count. Edgar sometimes makes me laugh so hard I cry, and has even diverted almost-crying to guffawing laughter without even knowing he did it.

I already miss them more than they know.

All you New York people that I know, please take care of them for me, okay? I expect that Sam and I will have to fly there to check up on that, in either case.

Thank you in advance, you're lucky to be getting such awesome new neighbors.

Posted by Jeff at 08:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

A big thanks for the extra page hits to my blog generated by the snot-nosed game-monkeys kind folks who inhabit the forums at (I kid you not) http://boards.biscuitservers.net.

Though it was surely meant as a homophobic putdown, there have been quite a number of people who have come to check me out, and have stayed on for multiple page-reads.

Curiosity never really hurt anyone; the hurt generally comes from assfaced jerkweeds misunderstood children like "><aos" (a self-described "persona non grata") who tend to punish the curious because the curious are seen as a threat.

For the record, he called me a 'fruitcake'. Hey, just because I shop at Pottery Barn doesn't make me a fruitcake. In my own defense, I'd only buy stuff from there that came in "rich and masculine" colors.

May I be thought of as butch now, pleeeease?

Posted by Jeff at 09:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

...Fat...

...Wrapped in Cake...

...Wrapped in Fat...

...

...Wrapped in Foil.

Posted by Jeff at 07:44 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Yep, it happened. This gay boy's blog comes up if you go to google.com, type in "gynecological delectation" and hit the "I Feel Lucky!" button.

The strange thing is, I've never 'been there'.

Posted by Jeff at 01:20 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

In celebration of 20,000 visitors since I started counting on 2003.06.12, I'm not above quoting Dante. In the original Italian. And Latin. Ahh, Life's Rich Pedantry.

I started thinking about the topic at hand last night, which led me to watch the final episode of Buffy again. There was a scene in that episode that aped a scene from the very first episode of the series. So, in turn, I was compelled to watch the very first episode from my DVDs.

This was not a search for closure or for literary bookends. There was no dysfunction driving me to turn an ending into a loop in order to avoid the pain of Things Passing.

Instead, there was the realization that Time is merely an agreed-upon stage upon which our stories unfold. Implied there is the notion that we are an audience, captive in a finite house.

You'll excuse me if I find that rather dreary.

It strikes me as odd that the full multimedia experience of being alive has been pigeonholed by vulgar consent into a dimensionless vector. It strikes me as odd that people somehow find that comforting instead of maddening. It strikes me as odd the desperation in the voices of those who claim solace in hanging their worldviews from the soft white underbellies of Absolutes.

In overlaying the scene from the very last Buffy onto the very first, I didn't create the loop so much as interrupt the ordinal. In an instant I leapt seven years back.

In another moment, seven and a half forward to now, to January 12, 2004. Another ordinal. Another day. Another year since the last January 12, and the prior and the prior and the prior, and for my part, I could make the leap back to a time before I was born, to the January 12 of 1958 when Allen Howland was born. Then forward another 37 1/2 years to the day he died.

Back to now, back to then, back to the day we met. Back to a Beginning. Forward to an Ending.

Forward to a Beginning is a much cheerier prospect, though, isn't it? But you don't need motion to get to a Beginning or to an Ending. Endings happen, find one in your own memory, if you're up to it.

Beginnings happen, too, though. Every moment, if you've got the energy for something like that, or almost never, if you're so dourly inclined.

The linearity of Time can stop making sense, has stopped making sense for me. If Time is a path, it brought me the wonder of Allen Howland. It brought me the wonder of Sam. It visited the POX upon me, visited the death of Allen upon all those who knew and loved him.

The linearity of Time demands judgment of one thing in order to serve another. Should I be grateful that Allen was removed from me in order to serve the presence of Sam? Should I feel guilty for such gratitude?

Obviously it's not that simple.

Renewal. I choose how often and when I am renewed.

Choice. Any choice limits you somewhat. Not choosing limits you entirely.

Limits. Renewal resets the bar.

"So begins a New Life."

"In that part of the book of my memory before which little can be read, there is a heading, which says: ‘Incipit vita nova: Here begins the new life.’"

Posted by Jeff at 08:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

Traditionally, the artist must suffer. Inspiration is derived, then, from the general malaise that attends the suffering, or from the negativity that suffuses a long interval of suffering. The artist must suffer. So they say.

I can't say as how this has held true for me. It wouldn't be the first time that conventional/historical wisdom has had little to offer to a gay man, I'd reckon.

It's not that I haven't suffered, and rather pointedly at that. Everyone has and I'm not special in that regard. It's that I haven't ever written anything signficant that I have been proud of while I'd been in the midst of the suffering. I was too busy suffering, I guess.

It's been in the emergence part of the grief curve that I found voice, found words that further illuminated an already-brightening space. Maybe it's just a limitation of mine, a literary variation on the computer-science-y "bootstrapping" problem: I cannot strike the match that lights the candle that illuminates the darkness, but I can grandiloquently (at times) cover the dimly-lit walls with vivid Story. And Story is another form of Light.

So I wrote a lot in my journal when Allen died, but none of it was ever good enough for public consumption. About a year and a half after he was gone, I started writing real fiction, which turned into a short story, which continued, ad hoc, into a novella-length piece, which blew right through that form. In the first 8 or 9 months I had written (and seriously edited and re-edited) about 90 pages. And then something happened. I remember that it was March 1, 1998. I had hit a stride. Or the characters in the story had reached a critical mass of well-roundedness. Or the moon just stopped being in the House of Ca-ca. Whatever. But for the rest of that March, I wrote 120 pages. April had me writing another 150. May, another 100, at least.

It slowed down some, with having met the man who would become the POX, but still, I completed a "final" first draft in August of that year, a manuscript weighing in at about 550, all told.

You must understand that I am almost completely without discipline for writing. It comes when it comes and I enjoy the fuck out of it when it comes. I wrote because the words were there. I continued writing the story because of the story's pressing need to tell itself to completion and my enjoyment of listening to it.

Until this blog came along, I was one of the only ones who'd read the manuscript. I have had no interest—or at least no discpline—in going through the hell of getting it published for real, even though I know I would benefit in so many ways from following through. As it stands, it appears here, chapter by chapter, weighing in at a much-edited 525 manuscript pages.

The story is there simply because it wasn't there before I wrote it. The story is here because it was unplanned.

Ad hoc ergo propter hoc; post hoc ergo ad hoc.

Posted by Jeff at 11:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

He's here for only about 12 more hours. Instead of enjoying it and compartmentalizing the missing-him, I'm already missing him.

Ugh.

Posted by Jeff at 06:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)

New Year's Day Night.

He sleeps on the floor while I watch my West Wing DVDs. His profile is beautiful, his own. One of a kind. I already know his face better than my own. He's not moving here soon enough, that much I know.

I'm awake because we were out dancing until 6 this morning, and after another hour of further physicalities, we slept, slept until 3pm, slept to sleep off a serotonin deficit.

He sleeps, as I said, but I can't. It's nearly midnight.

I love him. Have I said that enough? Can I ever say that enough?

I'm happy. Have I been that enough? Can I ever be that enough?

Posted by Jeff at 11:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBacks (0)