It must be summer

You know it's the dog days when pundits, suffering from indescribable ennui as they wait for their next trip to the Hamptons, interview each other.

Psychopath, or just plain crazy?

Salon.com has an informative article (actually a week old) on Henry Darger and his work, by way of reviewing a John MacGregor book on Darger's life and work. Not just an overview of the reclusive "outsider artist" whose life work was a 23,000-page, single-spaced opus about a war against children, called "The Vivian Girls," the article mentions controversies surrounding the man who discovered Darger's work, art dealer Nathan Lerner.

I saw an exhibit of Darger's work in New York last spring. The paintings are fascinating. Obsessive, beautiful, weird, they are an amazing reflection of the clash between a disturbed mind and American culture.

The Salon article wonders just how disturbed Darger was. The question raised by the article -- pretty hard to answer at this point, as Darger has been dead for 30 years and his work is practically impossible to study in its entirety -- is whether he was just a weird, obsessed recluse or actually a violent psychopath who might have murdered one or more children. There's no evidence for the latter theory, but Darger's own work certainly makes the question an interesting one.

 

Kwatz!

My sitting in the morning -- zazen at HSZC -- has been going reasonably well. For several months I sat seiza style with the aid of pillows, but lately I noticed that I wasn't breathing smoothly for some reason. So this week I switched to sitting cross-legged with pillows propping up my knees. My breathing's a little easier but my feet still fall asleep. I guess I'm not supposed to let that bother me, but since there are times I manage to get myself into positions where my feet don't fall asleep, I keep thinking that's ideal.

After meditation and the chanting service -- I've finally managed to memorize the English version of the Heart Sutra enough not to need to consult the printed version -- we do a little work period, cleaning and dusting. While I was dusting the altar, the priest John was dust-mopping and François, a recently arrived resident student, was cleaning the windows. At some point they stopped to talk, and somehow the handle of the dustmop dropped from John's hand and struck the floor with a loud bang. "Ooo, I'm enlightened now," François drawled.

I got the joke. In his book One God Clapping, Alan Lew writes of his experience at the San Francisco Zen Center that roshi Richard Baker used to watch for students who were struggling at the edge of an enlightenment experience, and would sneak up behind them and bang the floor with his stick to send them over the edge. "But I saw him sneaking up on me, so I missed it," Lew confides. (His book is a witty and heartfelt account of a spiritual quest that took the author from non-religious cultural Jewishness to Zen Buddhism and back to a religious, mystical Judaism. I recommend it.)

 

Here we go again

I predict we will now have several years of inspirational crap based on the Appalachian miners who were rescued early Sunday morning. How long were they underground? Three days. You get the idea.

The good part? They had to "cuddle" to stay warm. I'd like to see the Franklin Mint figurine of that.

Focus on the Fundies

Saturday's New York Times had an article (Free registration required) on the religious-right group Focus on the Family. This group has been one of the most influential conservative voices for the last twenty years. Its voice has a huge reach, through daily radio programs that blanket the U.S. and Canada, plus videos, cassette tapes, magazines, websites and newsletters. Their email alert system alone has the capacity to get tens of thousands of conservatives calling and emailing their elected representatives on any "pro family" issue. Because they aren't a church or owned by a church, they are independent of any particular organization or religious agenda. Yet they've consistently reflected the most conservative mainstream religious-right positions. (They're mainstream, not radical -- they aren't some crackpot white supremacist cult from Idaho. They have mainstream positions that can be, and are, supported by mainstream politicians like the Bush family.)

My biggest exposure to FOTF has been through the radio. Because I like to keep track of what the enemy is up to, and for entertainment purposes, I've been listening to these jerkoffs for years as I drive around in my car. They are impressively subtle -- they don't rant and rave. Everything they say sounds reasonable. Many of the guests on their radio show are respectable people with advanced degrees. Many of the issues they talk about are linked to some legislation currently moving through Congress or a state legislature, providing their listeners some action to take when the show ends: call your congressman and tell him to vote for HR such-and-such. It's a frighteningly efficient influence machine.

The group is led by a calm, grandfatherly man named James Dobson, always identified as "Child Psychologist and Author." Dobson holds unshakable religious-right views on abortion, creationism, the role of women in society, capitalism, how much government should influence daily life, and free speech. And he has the ability to back up his positions, either by himself or by inviting some pedigreed guest.

But civic issues are not the only ones that FOTF tries to influence, as evidenced by the name of the group. Many of their topics have to do with intimate personal and family issues like raising children, how to improve your "Christian marriage," and depression. Of course, whenever possible, they make connections to civic issues. So if they're talking about how to get Daddy off his internet pornography addiction, you can bet they'll also discuss filtering technology, whether or not you can see porn in libraries, and those damnable liberal librarians who want to allow it. Their agenda, and their ability to push it, is complete.

The article says their funding has flattened off, which is well and good. I'd love to see them shrivel, just as the Moral Majority did. But as long as Dobson is still living, I wouldn't bet on it.

Here are some links to more information on FOTF:

• Queer Resources Directory (QRD) page on the Religious Right
• Know the Opposition, a page on the Feminist Majority's website
• California Abortion Rights Action League page on the Christian Right
• This article from 1994 by Glen Eyrie is a valuable look at FOTF at the height of its influence
• Religious Right Alert, a website of the Interfaith Alliance of California

 

Gadgets and gizmos

Among the several computers I use is a Gateway laptop I got in late 2000. I had gotten it because I was about to go away for ten days to write, and the only laptop I had was my work laptop that belonged to my employer. So I bought a too-expensive laptop from Gateway and transferred all my personal stuff from the work laptop to the new one, and went off to my writing retreat. I felt very smart for having done that when, a week after I got back from my retreat, I got laid off. Instead of worrying about all the pornography on my machine -- that's what I had gone away to write, I was finishing my book How I Adore You -- all I had to do was pick up my desk lamp and a few other things and walk out the door.

That was the last time I ever had to go to Pleasanton, a godforsaken cow pasture at a freeway interchange 40 miles east of San Francisco. Today I went back there, because the Gateway store where I bought my laptop closed and the next closest was way out there in Pleasant-not.

The trip turned out to be a waste of time. I went out there because I thought only Gateway would have an ethernet card for the laptop; but ethernet cards turn out to be an interchangeable commodity, and in fact they didn't even sell them. Fortunately there was a big Comp USA next door, so I went over there and bought a cheap network card and, somewhat on impulse, a Handspring Visor Neo. I did that to inoculate myself against buying a more expensive model. I don't need one that has a phone built in; I've got a cell phone.

But things were strange at the Comp USA (a huge electronics chain). Their section of PDAs and phones was completely unattended, and when I got somebody to help me -- all they had to do was unlock a case and hand me a box, I could see it right in front of me -- the guy who finally showed up didn't have the key to the case. He went to somebody and they wouldn't give him the key. So he just sort of came back and complained to me: "Man, why don't they give me the key?! I work here -- they should trust me!" Finally we waved somebody else down and, after about ten minutes, a manager with a very harried attitude came and opened up the case. Then he went away without locking it again, so I hope somebody goes in there and walks away with every single PDA, including the expensive ones with phones built in.

Then I ate lunch at a Chevy's and drove back to SF, listening to the ballgame. The Giants are playing the Dodgers -- I've got tix to tomorrow's game -- and they're doing crummy. They lost last night and they ended up losing today. I hope that makes it more likely they'll win tomorrow.

I found a place to work and wrote about 1100 words of the first part of chapter 18 of the novel I'm working on. I didn't get as much done as I wanted, but maybe tomorrow, after the ball game.

 

Reason no. 6075 I wish I lived in New York

The Film Forum (in New York) is showing every film directed by Akira Kurosawa and starring Toshiro Mifune. My favorite: The Hidden Fortress, which George Lucas used as his inspiration for "Star Wars."

 

"We abuse the hand sanitizer"

A very funny and well-written account of life as a clerk at a porn video shop is here. By the time you read this, you've probably already seen it blogged someplace else ... but it's worth it. I even paid them when they asked.

 

That's real dedication

When a newsmagazine ran a cover story on General Muhammad Naguib, shortly after he became Egypt's first president in 1953, the writer said that Naguib was such a modest man that his name didn't appear among "the 000 people listed in Who's Who in the Middle East" and that he refused to live in "the royal palace, surrounded by an 00-foot-high wall". A cable was sent to a Cairo stringer to fill in the data. The magazine never heard from the stringer, so they rewrote the story so that the numbers were not needed. Later, they received a cable that looked like this: I AM IN JAIL AND ALLOWED SEND ONLY ONE CABLE SINCE WAS ARRESTED WHILE MEASURING FIFTEEN FOOT WALL OUTSIDE PALACE AND HAVE JUST FINISHED COUNTING THIRTY EIGHT THOUSAND FIVE HUNDERED TWENTY TWO NAMES WHOS WHO IN MIDEAST.

That's from a wonderful article on fact checkers and their work, in the Columbia Journalism Review. (Thanks to Romenesko's Media News, one of the two or three websites I read every day, for the link.)

 

Little girl of the week

Officers gently stopped the girl, who spoke only Spanish. She began yelling and kicked one officer
in the groin, Pinkham said.

Three-year-old girl sets off in middle of night, searching for parents. -- SF Chronicle article

Death defying

Though it's sponsored by some f**king corporation that splatters its name all over everything like snot, I feel compelled to alert people to the upcoming annual Street Luge event this coming weekend. It supposedly starts at 8:30 a.m. on Potrero Hill at DeHaro & Mariposa Streets. I can't imagine anybody I'd like to hang out with going to that and standing around all day to see some deluded thrill-seeker whiz by on a glorified skateboard, but I can imagine avoiding it on purpose.

I was stunned, though, to read that St. Gregory's Episcopal Church -- my best friend goes there, and it's one of the most liberal, artsy churches in San Francisco -- is actually welcoming the event.

Go to de... window!

Leo McKern has died, according to this AP story. Best known as Rumpole in the British comedy-mystery series "Rumpole of the Bailey," McKern first came to the attention of American audiences as the portly, half-dressed leader of the religious cult that chased Ringo through the movie "Help!" Picture him in a phone box outside Buckingham Palace, trying to lure Ringo to his death: "Go to de window. Go to... de window!"

 

Four ring circus

My upcoming reading in L.A. is going to be quite an event, according to this dispatch from Stan Kent, the organizer:

As far as the evening goes it is very flexible -- this is not your normal bookstore reading at all. It's mostly madness in a live talk show setting. You'll have an enthusiastic audience, and I'll be the host to keep things moving or derailed as needed. Have some selections to read but be prepared for detours. Figure you'll have about twenty solo minutes in the spotlight and the rest will be interaction with the audience and other guests. We give a bunch of stuff away. That night -- since we'll have such experts of the craft on hand -- we'll invite members of the audience up to write a few sentences of erotica -- perhaps a lusty note to a lover -- whatever -- and you'll give advice, have a laugh and give out some prizes. We'll do book signings (and sales) before, during and after the event which kicks off at 8pm and winds up around 10-10:30. In addition to M. Christian we've added Alma Marceau, author of Lofting, and Susannah Breslin, who is in Fantagraphics Dirty Words Volume 3. I expect thirty to fifty people and they'll not be shy about asking questions, so be prepared for an interactive and fun night.

Whee! That's 8:00 pm on Wednesday, Aug. 14, at the Hustler Store, 8920 Sunset Boulevard, in West Hollywood, between San Vicente and Doheny.

 

Plugging away on chapter 17

I went into the church in the afternoon (it's Sunday) to get some work done on my novel. I’ve taken into going into the old office on weekends or holidays when no one’s around. I wrote a few notes, then took a little nap on the couch, then went into the sanctuary to meditate a little. Finally when I was just about all ready to go, I put on my shoes and went out to get some water. I ran into the pastor on the stairs, and kind of wondered what he was doing there, and then I ran into two members of the church council coming into the yard. So I figured they must be about to have some kind of meeting. I got my bottle of water, came back, and packed up my stuff and went down the street to the Muddy Waters cafe. I felt a little annoyed, even though they have a perfect right to schedule a meeting, and in fact I haven't gotten anybody's permission to go in there on my own and use the space for my own purposes. At least they didn’t barge in while I was napping on the couch.

I went to work in Muddy Waters, and finished chapter 17, after a fashion. I’ll go back and make it better later, probably. So that’s a 6300 word chapter, the sixth of Part 2. And with the ideas I got earlier this month that give me a lot to go on for the rest of the part, I feel like I have some momentum -- even though I should have finished the chapter last weekend. I would have if my computer hadn’t kept crashing.

Much more music

Yesterday I met Windy Chien, owner of Aquarius Records in San Francisco. Windy is the one who wrote me the fan letter a few days ago. Then she identified herself in a subsequent email, and I went to their website and saw from the staff pages that she is actually the owner. I was very impressed because the place is a real San Francisco institution with a great history and associations with some great figures of San Francisco independent rock and experimental music.

I stopped by the store on Saturday afternoon and introduced myself and chatted with Windy for a few minutes. It was a busy Saturday and I didn't want to take up too much of her time; I'll go back when I have time to hang out more. The fact is that I suddenly felt a little intimidated by someone who has, at least compared to me, an encyclopedic knowledge of modern pop music. I've made several stabs in various directions in the last couple of years, discovering a type of techo that I like, and being gratified that I'm not the only one who can see a connection between The Comas and The Grace Period -- both of whom I've seen referred to by the term "shoegazing." Maybe now that I have a friend in a record store, she'll help me find more stuff like that.

Then for something completely different, Cris and I went to see the SF Symphony's semi-staged production of Leonard Bernstein's "Candide." Seen as a Broadway musical, it's too long, and it telescopes some important moments while needlessly drawing out others. Seen as an operetta, it has too many transcendant choral pieces. But it was certainly enjoyable, if a little tiring.

 

No attachments

"One man's existential crisis is another's bargain bonanza." That's the conclusion of an L.A. Weekly piece by Christopher Noxon. He writes about a young rich guy named Scott King -- a film writer and producer -- who decided to get rid of his considerable possessions. He didn't give away his stuff, which included a pinball machine, a collection of vintage clothes, and a 1939 BMW automobile -- he sold them, to friends and colleagues, at a party he hosted.

There are many things that are so very L.A. about this story. First of all, the guy is wealthy by birth; secondly, he is, of course, "in the industry;" and thirdly, though he claims a post-Sept. 11 realization for his decision to get rid of his stuff, he's not changing his life. He simply wants to "find a tiny house on a big plot in Point Dume, where he'll work on his next movie -- this one a thriller about the end of the world set in contemporary Russia -- and live an uncluttered life with his two beloved dogs and a wardrobe of J.Crew basics."

While that last bit was no doubt a sardonic comment on the part of the writer, I'll take the rest of the statement at face value. So let's look at it. The disaster of Sept. 11 made the guy realize that "life is about your friends and your family and connecting and that's it" -- so to express this realization, he wants to make a movie about the end of the world, a movie that will no doubt feature hundreds of explosions, gunfights, screaming, etc. just like any other movie. And where's his family in his getting-away-from-it-all fantasy? His dogs?

As far as the reference to "Point Dume," I had to look it up; it's a state park 11 miles up the road from Santa Monica. Presumably he intends to buy a plot of land near the park and not in it. To state the obvious, it seems pretty ironic that, given the source of his decision to rid himself of his possessions, and his idea to write about the end of the world, he moves to a place called Point Doom (however you spell it). There's more going on here than meets the eye.

Recycle your PDA, get money

I sent my busted Handspring PDA, with the cradle and the original CD, to GetHighTech.com, and they sent me $24. I love not having to throw away tech.

The past is now present

Hey, I fixed my blog archives!

Not getting overcommitted

Since I did the one-day sesshin a couple of weeks ago at the Hartford St. Zen Center, they have been paying me more attention. I got invited to their monthly board meeting just to find out more about the orgagnization. Also, John, the temporary practice leader, urged me to come down to Tassajara for several months -- very flattering, actually, since I'm under the impression that you have to be taken seriously to be invited there. I've been sitting at Hartford Street every morning since February, except for when I went out of town, but I guess it took that second one-day sit to make them think I'm serious.

I understand why they're being so encouraging. In the months since I've been sitting there, I'm the only new person who has come along and kept at it, except for this one new guy who started coming about a month ago and comes about three times a week. It's a small place and I'm like the only new recruit. I have to be careful not to get too involved, though. Not because I don't like the place and the people, but because I continue to be very involved at St. Francis. I can't afford the time to get heavily involved in two spiritual centers. HSZC works so far because it's in the early morning, when nothing else is going to demand my time.

I do have to be careful to get more sleep, though. (I say that and it's almost 10:00 pm which is time for me to go to bed. Here I sit at the computer.)

Talking to John during a break at the sesshin, I found out something amusing, which is that he was raised in the same conservative branch of Lutheranism that I was, the "Missouri Synod." (I think the fact that we both ended up on Hartford St. says something about the Missouri Synod -- which is to Lutherans as the Southern Baptists are to the Baptists. They're so conservative that they are disciplining one of their regional presidents (equivalent to a bishop) for participating in the post-Sept. 11 interfaith service at Yankee Stadium!)

The past is the past

I'm trying to fix the blog archives link at the bottom of the blog page. It's something that's been broken for a while. Let's see if this does it....

Mitten ins Herz

The San Francisco Zen Center will sponsor a three-day Buddhist Film Festival from Sept. 20-22. All I have at the moment are two details: an information number (415-255-6534) and the fact that the filmmaker Dorris Dörrie will receive an award.

Dörrie is the feminist filmmaker who made a film called Mitten ins Herz (U.S. title "Straight Through the Heart"). It's about an aimless young woman who decides to liven up her life by dying her hair blue. Sure enough, she meets someone who changes her life, but not as she expected. The guy is a rich, but deadly dull, dentist. He is such a stiff that she decides she's going to make him fall in love with her, just to penetrate his shell. The consequences of this are frightening and hilarious, leading to lies, murder and kidnapping. That was in 1983 and the film is unavailable on video but I remember it so clearly.

Anyway, Dörrie will be receiving an award for her 2000 film Enlightenment Guaranteed, about two Germans adrift in Japan who decide to study zen.

There'll be a reception for Dörrie on Friday, Sept. 20. Call the number above for more info.

 

Sound money

A friend writes:

If you had bought $1000.00 worth of Nortel stock one year ago, it would now be worth $49.00.
With Enron, you would have $16.50 of the original $1000.00.
With Worldcom, you would have less than $5.00 left.
If you had bought $1000.00 worth of Budweiser beer, no the stock, one year ago, drank all the beer, then turned in the cans for the 10 cent deposit, you would have $214.00.

My current investment advice is to drink heavily and be sure to recycle.

I don't know if she lifted that from someplace else, but there it is.

As somebody who has been employed at a high tech company almost continuously throughout the dot-bust, I can tell you from personal experience that it's all dumb luck. Whether you have a job, or whether you've gone for a year without one; whether you made any money on all those vaunted stock options, or wiped your butt with them -- sheer luck.

At one company, I managed to be there at just the right time so that my options were actually worth something for a few months, and I cashed in a little bit before the stock (and the whole sub-sub-industry niche, namely B2B) went into the toilet. At all the other companies I worked at, including one where I stayed for five years, my options were never worth a dime. Now I've had my present job for almost 18 months, surviving at least one layoff, while thousands of smarter and more technical people are scraping by. Nothing to do with me -- just sheer dumb luck.

Sin boldly

Why it doesn't pay to think small: Boston-area teenagers used home computer equipment to counterfeit ten-dollar bills, then spent the fake money on junk food. The ringleader has been charged with four felonies, but he's a badass -- in nonrelated charges, he's also on the hook for rape. Looks like several others, who passed the bills, are getting a wrist slap.

The headline, "Sin boldly," is a refernce to a comment by Martin Luther, who said:

God does not save people who are only fictitious sinners. Be a sinner and sin boldly, but believe and rejoice in Christ even more boldly.

Most people just remember the part about sinning boldly, of course. The comment is a source of much humor among Lutherans, as you can see from this site. (Thanks to Annamarie for the link.)

 

Instant karma

In the ever-renewing cycle of San Francisco's summer weather -- in which days of warmth are replaced by howling fog, a few days of cold overcast, and then growing warmth again -- it's been cold all week. Yesterday I doubt it got over 60 degrees downtown, and it was plenty brisk this morning, too. I love it.

Yesterday I was rude to a beggar as I walked to the Sutter-Stockton Garage, where I had stored my car. As soon as I got to the car, I saw the battery was dead -- I'd left the parking lights on all day. I felt properly humbled, especially when I realized I didn't have an up-to-date insurance card with me, so I couldn't even call a tow truck. I ended up going all the way home and back by taxi, paying about $25. While in the taxi I realized that I could push the car myself to the down-ramp of the garage and, if I was agile enough, pop the clutch and start the engine. So I did it, and drove on to my next appointment, feeling very pleased with myself. When I related this story to Cris, she said, "That's a young man's action. I might have done something like that once, but I would never trust myself to be agile enough now to keep the car from smashing into the wall of the garage, or that there wouldn't be a car at the bottom of the ramp I'd run into before I had a chance to get all the way into the car."

When I checked my email late that night, I found one of the nicest fan letters I've ever received. I should say one of the only ones I've ever received. The writer really liked my story "Lessons in Submission" in this anthology. (It's also the first story in my book How I Adore You.) It was such a treat to get a nice letter.

Under construction

Interested in the "concept plans" for the WTC site in New York? Go to http://www.RenewNYC.com and click through the various proposals -- in 3-D! It's gonna be slow today, though -- they were just posted.

 

Bloggers do

Bloggers link to other bloggers. That's why it's called the World Wide Web.

So I am pleased to say that my favorite pure blogger (as opposed to something that's practically a magazine, such as Romenesko's Nedia News) is a Minneapolis-moved-to-L.A. gal named Kate Sullivan. I dig her style.

And as long as we're kicking links around, why not check out the Order of St. Benedict What's New. The Benedictines are totally hip to the web.

Listening: Work of Saws, Motivation and Watertower Grammar. Second-rate Guided By Voices-style low-fi.

Fit or fat

I don't usually pay that much attention to nutrition news, but this article in the 11 Jul 02 SF Chronicle about the danger and ubiquity of something called "trans fat" -- I think they used to call it "trans-fatty acids" -- was alarming. What made me sit up and take notice was the fact that the National Academy of Sciences put out a strong warning. So I started checking the stuff on my shelves. My Health Valley granola was OK, but not the Quaker brand.

Listening to Camper Van Beethoven's Tusk, a song-for-song tongue-in-cheek redo of the pseudo-classic Fleetwood Mac album.

New: On Saturday I went down to Kinko's and scanned in some snapshots of Stephanie. What a gal she was.

Heat wave!

Everybody's having a heat wave, but not us in cool, clear San Francisco. Yet another reason I'm so happy I got canned, late in 2000, from a dot-com out in Pleasant-not, where it's been about 109 all week long. I'm sitting happy in my office downtown SF, with a sweater on, actually. Ha ha!

Listening to: The Comas, A Def Needle in Tomorrow, one of the most beautiful albums I've heard in the last five years. It has everything I love about pop music: sweeping harmonies, catchy riffs, a Beatles-like freedom to explore and exploit memes and tricks from the last thirty years of pop. I listen to this album a lot -- just enough not to overdo it -- and it's just terrific.

I messed up my blog template, so this will look different to anyone who's seen it before (though I don't think there is). I'll try to change the colors back, at least.

 

Thanks for your support!

Somebody finally reviewed my book Too Beautiful and Other Stories on amazon.com. It's nice to see someone noticing, he whined.

I'm doing a reading with M. Christian at the Hustler Store in L.A. next month. Make your plans now, because it's happening on the always-busy and popular mid-Wednesday in the middle of August. That's Wednesday, Aug 14 at 8920 Sunset Blvd in Hollywood, California.

Idea factory

Yesterday was such a great day, even though I spent almost all of it sitting on my ass.

As noted in this blog in the past, I go to zen meditation in the mornings at Hartford Street Zen Center in the Castro. Every first Saturday they have an all-day sesshin, or retreat, that starts at 5:00 a.m. and goes til 6 p.m. I haven't been doing this long, just since February, but I took the leap and attended the all-day sit yesterday.

I had the usual difficulties concentrating, of course. But the good thing about doing the all-day sit is that you have plenty of chances to try. Every breath, in fact. I've counted them, and I take between 180 and 230 breaths in one of the forty-minute meditation periods. We do twelve of these forty-minute periods during the day, so that's more than 2000 chances to clear your mind. For most of the day, however, all I could think of was sex. Sex sex sex sex. I'd be counting breaths with one part of my mind still, but the other part was imagining startling and unmentionable things.

This went on for most of the day until the final two periods. While thinking about sex, I had been settling, settling, getting quieter and quieter, and finally the sex part of my brain boiled away and I was thinking about the dharma talk given that morning by Jim Biggs.

He mentioned someone he knew who had had "spontaneous enlightenment," which he described evocatively as seeing the world and its people with all the conflicts having evaporated. And I thought to myself the phrase "Everything just is" as a way of partially describing that, and then I thought that would be something funny to have somebody say to one of the characters in my novel, because the novel is set in 1960 and the young man is reading "The Dharma Bums" and now wants to be a buddhist, if only he can figure out what that is and where to join up.

Suddenly all these ideas started flowing for my novel. I'm in the middle of writing the first draft, and I'm already over 100,000 words. Yes, I have an outline, but I also am feeling my way as I go, and in the section I'm working on now, I never had clear goals. But suddenly ideas for resolving all these plot issues just started blooming in my mind like beautiful flowers.

I just let it happen -- I didn't worry about casting off these thoughts or anything. The ideas were coming unbidden -- fine. So I sat there and let them all come.

Now, I don't pretend that the phrase "Everything just is" is a very good way of describing anything. It sounds stupid, in fact. But I'm going to have Marilyn Monroe say it; she's drug-addled enough that it'll make sense coming out of her mouth; at least it'll make sense to the Kerouac-crazed young protagonist.

So I finally came home, having snagged some takeout Thai food in the Castro. I got home to find two nice things waiting for me: a royalty check from my publisher for my books, and a nice email from a guy I'm flirting with. More than nice.

A little Thai food eaten with my lover while watching a dog show on TV, a walk around the park, and to bed -- since I'd gotten up at 4:15 a.m. What a great day.

 

Hustler

Yesterday was the first day of a four day weekend. Since I got a key several months ago to the church so I could come in and do the Thursday meditation thing, I was able to let myself in and work all day long on my novel without being disturbed. I used the old office, now called the lounge; I wrote scene 17b and a little bit of 17c.

About 2:30 I went across the street to Safeway for some coffee. Outside they had -- for the holiday, I suppose -- a barbecue grill set up. They were selling hotdogs for two bucks for prostate cancer research. I needed something for lunch, so I got one and sat down on the concrete ledge of the planter nearby. A stripper came up and bought one too -- I could see by her outfit. She had on huge platform shoes, a plaid skirt, a black HUSTLER t-shirt, lots of bangles, and hair died strawberry red. She sat down next to me with her hotdog.

Did I speak to her? I did not. I just smiled briefly and then we ate hotdogs companionably.

I could have said, “Your hair totally rocks. I’m glad we have a place for people like us in San Francisco. I can see by your outfit, and by your slim, muscular legs, that you are a stripper. I love strippers, would you like to go out on a date?”

None of that seemed quite appropriate, though. Except for a simple compliment, it’s all about hitting on someone. I’m never good at striking up conversations with people, much less hitting on them, so I just let it go at a smile. I never seriously considered the possibility that she sat down next to me to invite me to say such things. Indeed, I usually assume attractive women allow themselves to be near me because I don’t look like the type who does that. And I’m not.

That’s the good thing about a place like the Market St. Cinema. If the girls don’t come up to you, put their hands between your legs, and practically demand you pay them for a lap dance, then all you have to do is go up to one and say “Hey baby, come over here with me.” It sure makes it simple. I can see why men resort to sex workers. No chance of rejection; everything very simple and straightforward.

There’s a blog by a girl named Tara who is insufferably superior and serious. The first year or two of the blog was about her career as a stripper; during the last couple of years she seems to be out of that business and into web page design or somesuch thing -- actually she's so vague about it, as if she's somehow protecting her identity, it's impossible to tell exactly what it is she does now. A while back while she was launching her business, whatever it is, she wrote an entry that goes, “I just got a _huge_ amount of valuable information for my infant business from a complete stranger. He gave me all this info and then asked me out for coffee. Ugh.”

Part of me sympathizes, but the other part of me knows that first, she’s naïve for thinking that a guy is not going to put all his energy into a long conversation without hoping to get something in return, and second, she’s either not being honest with herself for failing to admit that she was putting some flirtatious energy into the interaction in order to hook the guy long enough to find out what she wanted to know, or she’s got such an outsized sense of superiority that she thinks she somehow deserves to have people share their goodies with her without going to the trouble of giving them anything in return.

It’s this sort of misunderstanding that I hate and avoid at all costs, which is one reason I hardly ever speak to strangers, even if they totally look like strippers and are wearing a t-shirt with the word HUSTLER on it. If women like that have the idea, as expressed by the blogger Tara, that anyone who speaks to them inevitably hits on them, then fine, I won’t speak to them. As for the girl in the t-shirt, she had very recently dyed her hair, most probably for last Sunday’s parade, and thus was probably a dyke anyway. That’s the funny thing about being a man in San Francisco -- you have better chances with owomen because there are so many gay men, but on the other hand, most of the interesting, good looking women are dykes.

To be fair to the Tara girl, she does go on to wonder about the imbalance of getting information for free without being willing to offer what the guy really wants, i.e. some sexual energy. But she can't think of anything else she has to offer -- and judging from her blog, I think she's right.

One more Whalen memorial

Finally, from the Hartford St. Zen Center, where Philip Whalen was roshi (head priest and zen master) for several years, one last memorial page with several links I didn't have before, as well as the time and place of the main memorial service, to be held in September.

 

The Alarming Adhesive Vixen

That's my superhero name for today. There are no rules, but I'm making a new rule: You have to use the first one it gives you for at least a whole day. My symbol is a roll of scotch tape I stole from the supply room. It's better than a post-it note.

When I was a little kid, my favorite comic was Adventure Comics featuring The Legion of Super Heroes. They were all teenage mutant superheroes from the 30th century; Superboy regularly travelled through time to gig with them. My favorites were Brainiac 5, because he was the smart one; Chameleon Boy, because he could transform into any other shape. Phantom Girl was who I had a crush on; she could walk through walls. Analyze that.

 

Hotter than July

Not in San Francisco, where it's cool and foggy -- a typical first week of July. (Last weekend, when it was gorgeous on Saturday and Sunday for Pride, was exceptional. It should be foggy all month.)

But on the east coast, it's boiling. This 30 Jun 02 New York Times article (free sub required) recalls the summer of 1977, when NYC boiled over emotionally and socially. The Summer of Sam, Spike Lee called it. I still haven't seen that.

I can no longer stand hot and humid weather. As a kid growing up in the midwest and in Texas as a teenager, it was pretty unavoidable, and I think it's true kids don't feel the heat. I galavanted all over -- I don't remember getting sunburned, either. Now I'm a real shrinking violet when it comes to the sun, and as far as humid heat is concerned, I would rather be in San Francisco, where "muggy" means it's 70 degrees with 80 percent humidity. Three hot days a year.

And whenever I go anywhere, I so long for the fog. You know you love a place when it feels great to step onto the Arrivals area in the maw of the airport and feel happy at your first breath, no matter how full of exhaust, of the native air of your home.

 

Blazing sun

Courtesy of Random Walks, here's more on Philip Whalen, who died last week and who was cremated in Colma on Saturday:

• Woods Lot
• A Whalen chapbook and biography at BigBridge
• Jack Magazine
• Jacket Magazine (scroll down)

I had a near-death experience myself last week. I was in the basement walking on the treadmill when I heard a crash upstairs and a yowl from Cris. I jumped off the treadmill and tried to scamper to the stairs to make sure she was okay. (She had had wrist surgery a couple days before to cure the ol' carpal tunnel syndrome, and I was afraid something might have fallen on her.) But I never made it to the stairs. Attempting to negotiate the basement clutter, I skipped over a box, landed on another, and then skidded into a big wire cage Cris keeps around in case she has to catch a feral cat. I wound up on my butt with a number of scrapes and abrasions, but I landed so awkwardly I was just glad I hadn't broken my leg. It was that kind of uncontrollable fall when you realize something bad's going to happen, but before you know it, you're on your ass in a pile.

I staggered upstairs and Cris -- who was fine, nothing had happened except the handle came off the oven -- bandaged me and sat me down in front of the TV for the evening. So much for exercising that night.