Sunday, September 21, 2008

Predelictions for predictions

I always thought the weather forecast was the best part of the late newscast when I was growing up. Five day forecast. and weather.com has a ten day forecast. And then I check my horoscope fairly frequently, particularly when I am feeling sort of out of sorts for no specific reason. Like tonight. so I just checked that shit and the shit is freaky. I mean it is bringing up things like I have to not waste my energies now because I will need the strength in a few years and how I need to work diligently now to convince my employers and everyone that I am "worthwile" now, so that later when I am "challenged" things will go smoother for me. I mean I just want a regular horoscope. Just tell me something like: AM clouds, PM sun. Or 67% humidity or triple H's (hazy, hot, humid) or tell me about the wind chill, the bitter cold, the scorcher, the downpour, the t-storms, even the motherfucking wintry mix.

Thinking too far into the future has never gotten me very far, neither has concentrating on the minutia of the moment. Where is my present tense? It's in this headache and this vague feeling of wrongness and the 60 people who were bombed in Islamabad and I don't know what else.

I think I need to work out some interdimensional travel soon. Hopefully those hallucinogens will come through in time for my trip to the forest, or whatever's left of the forest. I will have to see the charred remains for the trees I suppose.

Saturday, September 13, 2008

I am I said


is what I'm listening to right now while I am typing this. Earlier I watched the fantastic Paul Mazurksy movie, An Unmarried Woman starring Jill Clayburgh and Alan Bates. That movie is so 70s, so laughably emotional, so emotionally engaging, and, in the end, for me, joyous. So good. I've only seen it once or twice before. It came in great handy today after a terrible telephone debacle with my father in the early afternoon. I won't go into details because it was pretty horrible, but at one point he said, "Now don't get emotional..."

But, basically, I am not even givin' a fuck about that. Not now, not while I'm killing this bottle of rum from Puerto Rico. I am prepping myself to go to my friend's karaoke birthday party. It's being held at an establishment in Japantown. The last time I went there it was six months ago. This time I will wear a hat.

I cannot change from the Neil Diamond pocket my mp3 player has landed in. I am prepared to walk to Japantown from here in the Noe Valley/Outer Mission hinterland. I am preparing myself mentally everyday of my life to go to Benihana Japanese steakhouse one of these days. Benihana is like Greece or Spain to me at this point. I can imagine going, I can taste it, but I will have to step through some real? imagined? perceptional or dimensional skein to actually make myself physically and mentally there. You know? Shilo is playing now. "Young child with dreams, dream every dream on your own. When children play, seems like you end up alone..."

Sunday, September 7, 2008

a weekend


It's been such nice weather in San Francisco - the summer, the indian summer, two months of pure delightfulness and then the cold backlash of damp rain that never pours just envelops. But later for that shit. I took a walk around Noe Valley on Saturday just to get out of the house. I considered heading to Ocean Beach, but didn't feel up to the bike ride that would've entailed and I didn't really want to take a streetcar all that way either. So I walked up Church St. to 24th and turned left and walked to Castro St. where I took another left and started climbing up into the hills. Around a corner after the first steep crest I saw these flowers. I've never seen anything like them. I continued on, getting winded from the hot still-winded day. It seemed to me that I was in one of those snow globes, except if the atmosphere shook, there'd be no kind of precipitation results, just the same blue bright stillness. I made it to a couple scenic vistas that were very satisfying. I called my grandmother from one of them and fielded her "so, when are you getting married?" questions for at least the twenty-thousandth time of my life. I let her know that I like my job now. She seemed satisfied with that and then started paying me a bunch of compliments, saying, "you come from a good background..." and so paying herself a compliment or two in the process. I love my grandmother. She's what they call formidable.

Eventually I made it to an art opening and then to Dolores Park for a bit before calling it a night.

Today I woke up late, made breakfast and had a coffee, rode my bike to the store to buy flour and nutritional yeast, went to Atlas Cafe and read some of Point Counter Point, the Aldous Huxley novel I'm reading, until these two ladies at the table next to mine on the sidewalk started raising their voices during the emotional squabble they were apparently having. Eventually, it became too much to endure, but not before I heard snippets of a quarrel about somebody's step-father and choosing not to continue friendships with people who one never got along with in the first place. To keep things short, it was a mess of third rate dross laid out by some typical-looking early-middle-aged ladies of the very tan, very much skin showing in mid-afternoon variety. I left to come back to the apartment and make Basil Pot gravy. I then feasted on 1 1/2 bowls of gravy, gomasio, red onion, tomato and shredded white cheddar cheese.

Full, satisfied, and fresh from reading an article about the mystery of who blew up the Los Angeles Times builing in 1910, I retired to my bedroom to make a mix tape for Mixing People is Meeting People - a monthly mix tape swap and dj nite that I think is an excellent idea. I'll head over there in about an hour I suppose. and that will be the end of the weekend. good night.

Wednesday, August 27, 2008

astro reflux


I'm pretty into my job these days. my supervisor just got back from vacation today so for some reason I decided to ask her about discussing some research I'd done while she was away. I figured since she's so busy, it might take a while for her to get time to talk to me. But tomorrow morning is when she said we can talk. Tomorrow motherfucking morning. She is really nice and won't judge me if I am disorganized, but I probably asked for time to talk before I was really ready to talk so I'm a bit nervous about it I guess. and then...

I checked my astro.com, which I like because they ask you shit about like where and when you were born so they can get your star-cast sharper. But tomorrow I'm supposed to be under a negative influence. check this shit out:


Keep it simple ***
Valid during several days: This influence signifies a time of great uncertainty and possible confusion. Your objectives are unclear, and you may feel incapable of coping with even the ordinary details of your everyday life. One of the best ways to cope with this influence is to make your everyday life as simple as possible, because you are so easily overwhelmed at this time.

This is not a time of robust confidence. You are questioning almost every aspect of your life, particularly your goals and ambitions, your ability to attain them and even whether you are worthy of attaining them.

At the same time you may feel that your universe is constructed in such a way that you cannot ever live up to your ideals. Disappointment, discouragement and pessimism are all likely effects of this influence. The danger is that this kind of negative thinking may actually undermine your effectiveness in your work or other important activities. Feeling insecure often creates circumstances in which you really are insecure. Do not take things so seriously! Your negative state of mind is probably not justified by the facts of your life. This is just one of those times when your spirits seem to sag.

You should try to hang on without making any permanent decisions or commitments on the basis of your current pessimistic views. In a short time, you will understand that right now your view of reality is changing in a way that ultimately should be very constructive, although it does not seem so now. About two years from now, you will be able to make constructive changes in your life based upon your new understanding. This is probably not the best time to make changes.

Now ain't that a kick in the ass?!

well, at least I know about this influence, so my conscious mind, or whatever the fuck, the 2 shots of espresso I'll be high on during the meeting, can counteract the influences of the stars. Now, I know that sounds like a lot to take on, but stars, come on! try to get me down, just try me, try to sparkle me into insecurity, I will fuck up your negative energies like I am not EVEN givin' a fuck.

**UPDATE**

today really has been weird and it's not totally over but I didn't screw up w/ my boss anyhow and even though I've been thinking weird thoughts all day, it is ok.

Monday, August 18, 2008

parallel bars


Tonight I finally tried the dark wood-laden paradise known as O'Greenberg's bar that sits less than half a block from my apartment. I've walked past it about 40 to 50 times. Despite it's abundance of tv screens, I loved it. It has darts and a pool table - neither of which are important to me, but both of which I feel are important for a bar to have, a bar like this, an old-fashioned neighborhood corner bar that is able to stay in business because it has 6 flat screen tv's all booming out NFL or the Olympics or Giants games maybe. But not booming sound. Nope, they had the volume muted on those obstructions of peaceful bar patronage tonight.

There is also a very compelling picture of the Golden Gate Bridge on the wall toward the pool table antechamber. I suggest going there and having your picture taken in front of it. It feels almost as good, if not as good, if not better, than having your picture taken in front of the real thing.

Also, the jukebox is amazing. Many oldies are to be enjoyed via its jukeboxitude. While there this evening, "Joanna" by Kool and the Gang played and I was moved. So many la la la la's...

I started thinking while I was there that lots of the landmarks or lifemarks of my time have been bars. I have spent large portions of my life behind bars. If I went to AA maybe this would be an appreciated metaphor - the prison of alcoholism. But I'm not sure I mean it that way. Maybe it's more like, we all make our own prisons, so why not make them full of good cheer! But really, "behind bars" implies or even indicates that I've tended bar when really I've only been a juice bartender and that only for 8 months. So, I guess it's fortunate that I don't go to AA or I could've tried to tell that joke there and no one would've laughed and they're probably all so cranky there because they could use a drink, they may have gotten violent, at least verbally violent, and that would've been totally unfortunate because then I would've had to retaliate and, you know, go OFF.

Here is a lil' list of bars that I have frequented, it doesn't matter where they are, they are in my heart, or at least in my liver.

Group Therapy, Art Bar, The Elbow Room, The Hop Leaf, the International Bar, Lakeside Lounge, The Blue and Gold, Holiday Cocktail Lounge, Cherry Bar, The Green Mill, El Sombrero Viejo, Frank's Hot Dogs, Annie's on Rosewood, Bohemian Hall and Beer Garden, Phone Booth, Glen Park Station, Cassanova, Catalyst Cocktails, The Makeout Room, The Levee, Teddy's, Mug's Ale House, Frank's (Bang the Party), The Whig, The Tempest, House of Shields

Thursday, June 26, 2008

soup

Maybe it's the smoke hanging over the entire Bay Area, even burning trees and crackling into Big Sur, or not being able to fully rest in a room of my own, or residual stress leftover from my recent housing hunt (shit, it only ended yesterday), but I am in a cranky mood and when I went to the grocery store to get some lunch and decided on a whim in favor of soup, chili actually, and some old dowager-lookin lady wearing dark sunglasses started to ask me questions, like, "which is your favorite soup?" and, "is this soup or chili?" I responded, "I don't know, I haven't tried them all." and "chili" and she goes, "is it spicy? it looks spicy.." and I just move away to the register thinking, "do I look like I work here bitch? do you see the words 'soup expert' or 'soup authority' anywhere on my person???" and now I am typing about it.hmm. It wasn't very spicy.

Monday, May 19, 2008

radio radio

A guy in a mesh cap and a moustache. It sounds like one of the twenty-somethings populating my neighborhood or Williamsburg or any of the relclaimed-for-ironic-youth old man bars in cities across the nation. But this guy was the proper age for this look. No irony, no shit. He had a portable radio - no headphones - on the train with him today that he pulled from a beat up old brown soft leather briefcase. He had coffee and a juice squeeze to drink and from the sound of crinkling paper, something to eat as well. I wanted to read my book, Imperial San Francisco : Urban Power, Earthly Ruin, that is my train-riding morning highlight. But this guy's lack of headphones was hindering my ability to concentrate on the old players, movers and shakers, scions and swindlers that built this city (I'm not sure that this city was actually built on rock n' roll, Grace Slick). I said, "Sir, will you turn that down please?" He complied. Thanks guy. It was kinda nice to see an example of the actual prototype that hipsters have been ironically mimicking for years now. But really that guy belongs in a bar, behind a cloud of smoke. Or at the counter of doughnut shop late in the morning reading a newspaper. Or maybe I am being too judgemental and wherever we go, including this guy, we belong. I don't know. I do know that that guy needs some headphones.

Thursday, May 8, 2008

unauthorized autobiography

I came up with a new title for my autobiography: What I did and What I Ought to Have Done by Lauren Spiro.

it's a fairly unfortunate title now that I look/think at it. But I so could write that book. What if I did write that book and I lost track of what it was that I did and what it was that I ought to have done, and what I did actually ended up being what I ought to have done. Well, if I could do that, then I really would have done something.

Saturday, May 3, 2008

It would be nice

To find someone nice, who knows the correct definition of vestibule and would never stand in a vestibule with me trying to argue about the meaning of the word, the meaning of the place.

Live and learn and so it goes and tea for two but all the sayings in the world won't rival actually saying something to someone that's true or real or at least purports to be.

That's all I have to say. The cleaning crew is coming to get all the cluttered thoughts out of my head and I'll have to leave the doors unlocked for them or leave the keys in a convenient if not obvious place.

moving on...

Sunday, March 2, 2008

Fuck the Ides of March

Forever more and evermore I suppose. Beware and wary until unaware, and unbeknowst forces were at work when you thought they were out to play. Tonight someone asked me what do I do? as an opener to conversation. She was from LA she said and so I excuse her. I suppose. Cab ride up and cab ride down. A dance remix of Don't Stop Believin' by Journey. Needing a different dance mix from the one I got. Timing probably. If I hadn't left, if I had arrived earlier. I think about the good news that I got. I don't trust it. I assume that it will fall through and I will be disappointed again. I am letting my fear of further disappointment interfere with my shit, I realize.

This is what it's down to. What's come up and what I can come up with. I let loose ends dangle as I am at my wit's end. It's beginning to and back again. That's the name of an album. Oh, it's an album by Wire, I find out after a quick search. I guess I always liked that album title.

Of so many minds, try not to mind it, don't mind me, I don't mind if I do.

It's possible that I will be up all night tonight. In fact, I predict that that will happen. If what is supposed to happen this month actually happens, I will try to take it as an opportunity to relax for a minute. But I will not go on travels and squander an opportunity to stay relaxed for more than a minute. Crossing my fingers at the possibility - I can't believe it yet.

Monday, February 25, 2008

Storm settlement

Big Sur on Saturday morning. In an orange Volkswagen bus, an old one still running, veering from side to side because of great winds and pummeling rains. On the bridges, on the Bixby Bridge for instance, I thought we would tumble over into the ocean. But we made it with our brave driver and our strong faith in reaching our destination.

They said we were crazy to go on the trip, that it wouldn't be any fun because of the rains and the winds and not being able to keep a fire going or take a walk to see the ocean. But we went anyway knowing that there would be a shelter and that we would find some way to embrace the rain. At least, I knew this. And I think my friends knew it too. We did make a fire and keep it going. We even almost put up a tarp to shelter us from the rain, but, after much to-do with bungee cords and rope, it didn't work out. Umbrellas were in order and we were fine with or without them. My jacket got soaked through so I donned a sweatshirt under a sweater. We kept the fire going for hours. We saw the ocean during a detour on the drive back when we pulled over to a seaside road near Carmel and saw the huge waves tear at the rocks. I don't remember ever seeing bigger waves. The water was white with the violence of crashes and the sight calmed me.

We drank seven bottles of wine between the three of us. We danced in our cabin. We danced in the tavern. We were there to see a band. And we enjoyed the opening acts.

And inbetween bands, I saw someone that I hadn't seen in years. So out of place in Big Sur as I had known her in South Carolina ten years or so ago. We were never close. She was a friend of a friend really. But seeing her stirred up alot of memories that I've only just laid in a shallow grave again after another long haunting. But the stirring up didn't punish me as it has before, it only seemed like another ending, another epilogue, not a mysterious sign or signal. Only a coincidence. And as I sit here in the city in a coffee shop, I feel both more separated from these memories and more able to contain them somewhere safe inside me.

Tuesday, February 19, 2008

Life's a gas

Pine trees aligned dream-like. a sharp fade into day from a long, long night. I am looking for a job and dream moments brush by my logic-laden rationale. The one I want. The one I am trying to pursue. The glances that bounce from me now, the reverberations not quite silent. So, begins from today another week of cloudiness and rain in this Pacific civilization propped up from behind with two by fours, marbleized cardboard facade.

The job. there is nothing romantic about it. It might not even pay enough to justify my doing it. Well, it really doesn't matter at all, oh it really doesn't matter at all...life's a gas, I hope it's gonna last.

Monday, January 28, 2008

ghost of christmas past

I took Amtrak because I had always romanticized trains having grown up beside a railroad tressel. I thought sometimes I might want to take a train across the country to California and so I decided to try it out with a run from Chicago, IL to Columbia, SC around christmas 1997.

I remember having to stop and change trains in Washington, D.C.

I remember being so excited to get back to Columbia. It had been only six months. I was leading a lonely lonely life in Chicago. A life without a group of friends to cling to, to watch tv with, to eat dinners with, have a beer. Nope it was just my great uncle Benji and me living together in his apartment building on the far north side of Chicago.

When I got back everything was all the same and different.

One night there was a little party going on. It was at this house that had belonged to this couple - he about 21, she about 41 - and her kids when I had left. It was a nice house, it was a grown up house, but there were kids living there now. All around my age. Some I had known from working at the same restaurant. A few I did not know.

Those close friends who brought me to this house on this night (I don't remember when but I remember it was on this trip), well, this was their new group of friends to watch tv and eat dinner and drink beer with. But I didn't fit in with this group and I felt uncomfortable and so I went to go and hide out in the kitchen and sulk about no one noticing that I was not there.

That's what I was doing when I noticed a painting being painted in the breakfast area of the kitchen. The painting was of some rabbits ice skating in a park. I looked over the painter's shoulder and made an approving noise. When I realized that I had rudely intruded, I apologized, then introduced myself.

I am haunted by this memory and a dozen others.

I am waiting to be able to begin to hope to be free of this haunting.

I found the experience of being on a train for eighteen hours without a sleeping berth was too uncomfortable and claustrophobic to attempt again. I haven't been on a long train ride since then.

Friday, January 25, 2008

The Subtle Disntinctions

is the name of a band in that novel i was reading.

I just realized that 1987 1997 and 2007 were all wild and crazy out of control weird years of my life. I moved to South Carolina in 1987, moved to Chicago in 1997, and had a crazy year in San Francisco in 2007.

I want to change my life.

Sunday, January 13, 2008

Significant snow

They're expecting snow - like it looks like a foot or so - in New York City. I used to get so excited when it would snow there. It's strange how snowfall was transformed into something less than magical during my time in Buffalo. At all other times and places in my life I have loved the snow. Snow days. Snow forts. Snow plows and snow angels and snowballs and snowbanks and snowflakes. All of it, and as much of it as possible, please. Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow - I invoked it.

I guess I was just so down in the dumps in Buffalo that even the snow lost its loveliness for me. It was only the time or the place tho because I am longing for a snowstorm now.



Here in San Francisco, it's the first warm and sunny day after a solid week or ten days - it's difficult to keep track - of rain and storms. I took a little walk.

Saturday, January 5, 2008

Thank you for letting me share your table

Since I am illegally, according to the landlady, staying in my friends' guest room and she came over today to fix a window that was broken by the storm, and the Mission branch library reading room was full, I sat drinking a hot chocolate in Cafe La Boheme for an hour or so's while this afternoon. In the middle of it, a lady sat down after asking me if one of the seats at my table was taken. She sat with a fat little notebook. She never ordered anything. She seemed to sense that her movements were distracting me from my book and so slowly inched away from me so that her chair was pulled up to the corner of the table. I just kept my face down and to the page for the entire duration of our table cohabitation. Then, abruptly, she asked, "Want to feel something?" I looked up to see her hand outstretched toward me. "Give me your hand," she said. "No," I said. She repeated, "Don't you want to feel something?" "No," I repeated. I went back to reading my book, carefully avoiding any semblance of looking up at her. Finally, after what seemed to me like hours, like time unfolding in another dimension, she got up and left. But not before mumbling, "thank you for letting me share your table."

Monster storm brings widespread impacts

Up all night last night waiting for the second of three storms scheduled to hit the San Francisco Bay Area in over around 72 or 84 or 96 hours I guess. Read a cool interview with Dennis Cooper about his old zine, Little Caesar, that he made in LA in the late 70s.



I figured out that I really like Mary Gaitskill's short stories. I'm wanting to read more of them. I saw her novel, Veronica at the library. I guess I've started reading Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem though. It's so weird how my old buddy Alison Bauknight from the Basil Pot (vegetarian restaurant where I worked in college) lent me all of those Jonathan Lethem books way back then and I read them, thought they were strange but good. But I never yet have read his two big new hit novels, Motherless Brooklyn and now that Fortress one.

I'm losing by 20 points on my current game of online scrabble, or Scrabulous. It sucks. I won by 20 points on the last game though.