The Passage Of Time Leaves / Daylight Savings

Tonight at work while helping a customer, there was a loud bang, followed by the familiar sound of a collision.

Tires squealed. I knew there had been an accident. Minutes later there were sirens. Then more sirens. Ambulances. I could not step out to see what had happened initially. Instead I had to keep helping customers, some of whom were starting to come in, telling us something had happened.

"There is a body in the street." Somebody had been hit. Two cars had collided in the midst of the maelstrom, either as part of, or the root cause of the accident. As traffic to the area was summarily curtained off, customer intake dwindled. Eventually, I was able to go outside. The yellow sheet I had seen once before was there, slumped against the planter, dark liquid or some darkened mass beneath it running onto the street. I looked up the street, realizing what I just heard was witnessed about about 200 people out shopping during the Saturday night dinner and bar scene. Right in front of Whole Foods, about 80 feet from our front door, were many hundreds of people now gathering, surrounded by several trucks, police and emergency workers.

Then I had to go back in and help customers. For an hour.  I guess I must have this down, because I went on autopilot, thinking about how what if Bob read about this on the news and thinks it was me crossing the street? This level of freak out, I do not want.

A co-worker says there are some people who are outside saying they think he may have purposely dove in front of the car, not tripped as others say or saw. I know a bit about how people witness an accident or experience can differ greatly among eyewitnesses, so I tried not to pay attention to it. Later on the way home, I saw how it also totally disrupted all the inbound traffic on market for many hours.

At work I have difficulty counting out my drawer. I feel very anxious. Everyone's awareness seems...heightened. I cannot wait to get home. the day had been long before this. Our computers had gone down this morning, about 10 minutes after after I got on the floor. It was chaos, probably the biggest pain I had experienced since working there. It was only about 30 minutes but it seemed like forever. I didn't sleep again. Weird dreams. Missing Bob. Such a strange day and this caps the evening.

I am so grateful for whatever experience or joy it is that I have, and doubly so for those that others may not. Life is so quick. You can work so hard all your life for nothing, or be gifted beyond belief and die early. Survival is more about chance than is truly is about anything else. I've seen it up close too many times myself to mention here. It seems only by accident that most of us remain here sometimes. Whatever happens is going to happen. Maybe the only takeaway is you have to be joyful in the moment no matter what.

I know tonight I am home enjoying my life while someone else's life has suddenly been changed forever. I am so very fortunate to not be the man beneath that yellow sheet. Or anyone else directly involved for that reason. I hope that whatever good energy I am trying to put out into the universe will counter this, even if that is just to smile at somebody, for just a moment.

Remembering Everything I Forgot / Forgetting Everything I Remember

My anxiety is through the roof right now.

So much information. Too much information. Technical. Emotional. Irrational. My brain is more spun now than it has been in a long, long time. Trying to take it all in, hold it all in or just plain make sense of it all.

I'm not sleeping. Which is making me paranoid, angry and restless during the day-making it doubly difficult to think clearly at exactly the time I most need my wits and concentration. I worry about managing my stress. I worry about getting hired. If I get hired, I worry about making mistakes that will get me fired. I worry that my inability to keep a poker face will be my undoing. I feel like a stupid little boy still. One who wasn't instilled with either much confidence nor taught to forgive himself, but was taught to see himself as broken,  and that other people can see that somehow. I worry that I too angry all the time. I worry people will think I hate them. I worry that they might be right. That somehow there is not enough love in my heart to be a good enough person to help people anymore. That my bluff will be called. That people will think I am a liar. Even if I manage to get my head around the vast amount of technical knowledge that still feels unfamiliar, that this will somehow unravel into a knot.

I feel tempest tossed, lost in a storm. IN a city filled with people, I feel isolated. Burdened. Burdensome. Last night I had a dream about the black rabbit of Inlay. He asked me if I was tired. I told him I was.

A Treasure Of Quicksilver, In Time

What on earth

my eyes, half closed

half...unaware.

restless, almost asleep

my glance focuses into gaze.

soft light

shadows,

some parlance for joy muttered in another language.

quiet.

I don't know what I am waiting for...

sirens? Majesty?

Something untranslated...burning?

I came to herald you...but I ran aground on the moment

quiet, on the grassy field, covered in 35 mm,

coveted, consumed, like quicksilver

lost in a drain

lost like a derailed train

coaxed into the ether

a treasure of time,

history delineated into mystery,

misery, perjury, purgatory,

purchases, surcharges, and far off sounds imitating sinister hysterics...

quiet.

All is hidden here, in the moment,

stolen from the banging, semi-coherant draining

of the ceiling monster's clanging

inside tonight's apple-core head.

Spooling nothingness.

quiet...quiet, again.

-------------------------

Did you see it, There, in the faint misty drifts...?

Not Pop Songs (cacaphony for Kate)

Can't keep my eyes open.

When I close them, all I see are mistakes.
(what happened to that FM station?)

ice moves
overhead
moored boats locked in its grip
their undersides tattooed
with the shapes of black rabbits.

in the cracks in the grain
where water once flowed up the
tree like mother to child, from the earth,
hundreds of cars screech by
beeping, honking, fist-shaking cacophony reigns
everyone so bothered, jealous, pious
and angry
crushed together with all the people they hate
including themselves.
Their aches, and rattles
clamoring down
some noisy wasteland.

I look up again, at the ice,
barely moving, we're all trapped here
a sea of black rabbits chasing each other
into bright shiny boxes.

I can't keep my eyes open.
(wish I could hear the radio)
these dials are frozen over.
(step out into the liquid sky)
when the moon is in the water.

Witchful Sisters

Now you take off your head...

The horses run along the tracks
alongside other animals
hidden in the dark
compressed in the hinterlands
wreathed in ashen garlands
and in the middle...
remnants of an old spark.

Devils, witchfinders, sinister
kisses, viciousness and antebellum chandeliers
sway whenever ghosts are about
stay the shadows in crisp winged
victors, sisters, stab you like an
invisible twin, strips
two steps into some
random oblivion
like an old
skin.

Father's Day 2016

'Father's Day', Digital Type, 2016

666th Entry! Cats For Satan!

Talk About....The Past

Just a short entry on some of my creative shenanigans from the past.

 League of Sapphistry: An imaginary organization, started by Tasha, with a focus on a primarily lesbian-focused political agenda, with graphics by me. (see photo)

Border Patrol:  Fictitious design group; created to do larger projects where I roped other designers or technicians into the process for professional reasons. Still Working, technically.

KALX Commercials:  In 2004, I worked for 6 months as an intern, alongside Tasha, at KALX Radio Berkeley. While there, in additional to reshelving hundreds of records, I produced three airtime commercials for radio, political programming and event listings using the on-site pro-tools facilities at UC Berkeley. The ads aired roughly 12-15 times a week during peak hours.

Slideshow Test II

My Sister's big art deco jazz era mobster wedding!

Eric+Susan//Palm Event Center Wedding from Sandy Martinez on Vimeo.

A Face Forms In The Afterimage

It has been a while since I wrote.
too busy, too sad, too sick, too distracted.
too many reasons to write and not enough energy and focus
to gather my thoughts together.

Like a clock that winds down, I feel outside time.

Days pass. I cannot pick up a pencil to draw during any of them.
My brain alternatively turns on me or abandons me.
4 months of losing my heroes has taken a toll on me.
Not wallowing in it, but it is the truth.

Now I say goodbye to another hero.
Deaths come so thick and fast these days,
I barely have time to grieve for one
when the next domino falls.

Big names, small names, weird nobodies.
I'm supposed to be grown up
shrug it off
happens everyday
why should I care?
but then why care about anything?
throw in the towel of empathy
be one of those angry people
too angry to be sad
too angry to be anything else
but angry at everything.
Hoping my soul hangs in there
and doesn't let it get bad
and I wind up dreaming about black rabbits
and winding sheets
again.
one more day.
one more day.
one more day.
hang on
I say.

Back To The Spaceship

Your spaceship came
to pick you up
went back to the stars
to stir them all up
back to the stars
back to the spaceship
back to the galaxies and nebula that birthed the ages

too short to see it

too long to watch it happen

every dot aligns in the place it should be
everything is a conflagration to gasses
unleashed to run the gambit before ash and ashes
reveal the moonlight
on the dark side of the none-too-soon.
we're here
then we're not.
people die waiting on the phone
or during card games
holding hard on to secrets
running rum through old dreams
to keep it
intact
in fact
its nothing but truth eventually
old memories
eventually extinguish relvance in 100 years
we are old chords
sheet music from another age
"Look your Darling Girl!" in waltz time
with a hint of spilled soda water, silver polish; oysters
where old people sing and talk of their throat
imbeciles rail against guns and wheat
can you see what its done to me
to look back into through clocks into
those eyes for which in time there is no explanation?

(right here there is a burst of stars and nothingness)

standing on the rim of the sea
I never know how well I know the seam of the sky
there is no floating cabinet of shadows replicating
no rudderless complication
we're off on a dream
an occasional nightmare seam
a tangent, its plangent scattering evident
and everygreen
ever seen
like bugs on a glass  / autumn window in new york
polished with ash (the graves in chorus)
public and rubric
and stooped
in the valley
of explanation.

If I'm dreaming all my life

It started with Natalie Cole
then it was Lemmy
then it was the Tall Man
then it was David Bowie
then it was Alan Rickman.

before that it was Robin Williams.
before that it was Kirsty MacColl.
deaths that rocked me, gutted me and changed me.
Am I just too sensitive? Would I still give a damn if I wasn't?
Is it better to live in bliss but be torpid of mind or thin of desire?
Some days the choices seem to wobble.
would it be better to keep looking or decide on a bookend?
I'm getting past the point in my life where there are more stars dying
than there are new heroes being born.
I'm sort of torn.

I'm at the mouth of a bridge here.
I know it.

I'm seeing the end often enough to question my mistakes
I'm self critical enough to know I was made
to do something I'm not doing.
It wasn't enough to have my heart broken
or my spirit burnished but I'm still in it
for some stupid reason
I'm seeking
something.

Because I needed it today

Pictures With Friends

Best Buddies / Happy Fourth of July

Best Friends

(lifeforms) The Number You Have Reached Has Been Disconnected

perfectly painted
my pained reflection
noticing names
fanning old flames
in the garden of imperfections

Amongst the mold, old stories
and historic lines
my mind rolls back,
dirt floors
shacks
the wooden forms
that formed
the bristles
in the attacks

is it my name
or the other name
is my face in the same place
or is it smashed in again
your alleyway drunk
vagrant's demise
the bag of mystery
in the he must have been sad
for some reason
you know, don't you know
don't you quiet now, leaf-less, lifeless
lifeform, formless, before the storm,
raining non-stop,
soda laid over playbills fizzing into the gutter of the sunday mornings
of eternal nowheres
the last few bubbles
erupting and bursting
into the dank
drunk tank
darkness.

-------

In the void, cement tastes the same as rainbows

-------

What wasted words will I share with someone who won't want to remember me?

-------

...

-------

...and then?

Page From The Past (Popol Vuh Dream)

the sound of every car
going by with their radio
on with their window
down to chase away wolves
ring through the bells
and small devices

to challenge envy
remember what gentleness
was like
before you watched the guy with the wheelchair
get kicked over by girls
on scooters
with tattoos

and the cars go by
the wind is blowing still
like be bop
and wild dances
in the evening skies
it smiles, in the cloud lines
like azure, like sunset, like champagne
spilled into the Van Ellen belt
for dreams to bounce off of,
all those hands and sans serifs
waving like a bonfire sunset
full of pages of the *Book of Community
fiery ideals and victory
cast into the standards of past ideas
then forgotten.

Self(ish) Portraits On The Verge Of Boplicity

You know you're from Fremont if you grew up in a town full of small minded, inbred bigots and anti-intellectuals

I was over Fremont 25+ years ago.

I think I just realized I am equally over the people on FB from Fremont as well. Its the same old problem of the mentality. The boorish, anti-intellectual, pull yourself up by your bootstraps, salt of the earth folks who think anyone rocking their boat, calling them on their bullshit and otherwise asking them to behave like reasonable people is a 'bully'.

Oh, if they only knew how little bullying they've gotten from me.

I've always known the place was riddled with homophobia, with racism, with heaping spoonfulls of hate. I think the lure of nostalgia, of feeling like perhaps there was enough strong memory to keep my interest up, was a hollow notion. Recently, I made the mistake of trying to get involved with what I thought would be a helathy debate about a public art piece-el mistako grande. The term pearls before swine comes to mind. Not only were they not interested in making a dialogue happen, but soon it turned into inane questions about topics totally unrelated, false analogies, false equivilencies, straw man arguments and just outright "stupid poopy head" grade school insults, It just didn't seem like bothering. Well thought out points were treated with disdain over differences in political affiliation, not the issues raised in the statements themselves. The last straw was being constantly attacked by a NIMBY republican whose only book listed as reading(a single book) was "How to drive liberals crazy" by some Breitbart quack-hack. They wanted to whine all day about not liking something being a reason it shouldn't exist. and hey we have potholes to fix and our school need that money! why do we even need public art?

Why did I even bother? Why do I bother trying to hold on to good memories from a place that continues to produce bad ones?

So, with that in mind I decided to leave the group. I didn't say anything or flame war my way out in a blaze of glory full of nasty insults, even though I was certainly getting quite a bit directed at me. No, I just went up to the box marked "notifications" and clicked 'leave group'. Done. I felt mad, like I was walking away from a fight someone else had picked. I was angry. I am still angry! But I knew that what was causing the anger because I had let myself get wrapped up in caring about something, and trying to engage others to do the same with what were my best, most inclusive statements. Why art was important. why public art installations are not cheap-why the $200,000 they spent on this very large site specific piece was actually quite cheap compared to some pieces out there. When I pointed out that people shouldn't complain if they weren't willing to get involved or pay for anything themselves, they finally went over the edge and called me a bully. They said I was 'too educated for my own good' I guess I must have threatened them too much or pressed their 'you're not a special snowflake' buttons too hard. The hen party harpies and homophobia came out, then the personal attacks began. I started realizing my pulse and stress level were so high my forehead felt hot. Why was I doing this again? Because I wanted public art to be taken seriously? In my hometown?

Other than one or two dissenting voices who showed support, it was a chorus of "I don't know much(or anything) about art, but I know I don't want any of that hippy faggot shit in my town!"

You know what? Fuck them. Fuck their willfully ignorant stance. and I don't mean book smarts, I just mean basic willingness to tolerate other people's desires without demonizes them. I don't want a drag strip in town, but I wouldn't object to one if they were to go through the proper channels. I don't like broccoli either but I don't go out of my way to hate on those who do. Well, I learned Fremont California doesn't work that way. If you don't like broccoli there you hate freedom. Hell, someone, with zero sarcasm, even called me a commie-pinko! Simply because I thought public art was worthwhile. So I didn't call them out with fluffy puppy, cotton-ball gentleness, which they neither deserved or were showing me. Often times when this had happened with others, there was a lot of public nastiness, cursing and big public announcements that "I AM LEAVING THIS GROUP!" followed by lame 'don't let the door hit you on the way asshole' comments. I'm taking the high road, and just leaving quietly. Fremont doesn't, nor has it ever deserved my attention or consideration. It was and is still a cultural wasteland. I don't miss it, and now I have even less need to interact with the assholes from within it today. So long Fremont FB group. Won't be missing you.

Make a wish. Count to ten. Time to dream again...