Paper Blood

Way back in the 80's I used to drive in to San Francisco, sometimes I took Bart...anyway, one time I was sitting there in traffic, and I noticed a homeless guy going through a dumpster, and on the left, a stretch limo.... with two poodles in the back! with their froo-froo haircuts, obviously back from their groomer, the driver looked straight ahead as he waited there in traffic...
Meanwhile the homeless guy rummaged through the garbage bin...
It struck me at the time as incredibly ironic...shouldn't the Man be in the car? and the Dogs be over there in the bin?
No, this time, not here. It was all about the Money...
Money allowed the dogs to have the Limo, and the lack of Money caused the guy to be homeless...
Money is like Blood...Paper Blood...it flows through society and through our very lives, like blood through our veins.
It's what we need, it's what we want...It cuts through every aspect of everyday life...if you have some, you're cool...if you have none, you're screwed..
Paper Blood.

A Glimpse of the Sun

As you may have read, I've been working at the night crew.
I thought I may have caught a slight view of Life today...that is, I had a glimpse of what life was like, back when I had one...
On Monday, I drove back from a meeting, feeling flushed, feeling full of life,
"This drawing is awesome, now...Can you translate this next slope, in a drawing? Notice the 10 degree slope..."
"oh yes of course, you'll need to show that..."
"We'll need more drawings on this scale, you do 3D right?"
"oh yeah!"
"okay cool, can you do a 3D model based on these blueprints? and then paste them on layers?"
"oh yeah"
And this is how I ended a meeting where I felt Full, in other words....Alive again.
On most nights when I go in there to Safeway I have sometimes felt as though I'm somehow 'above' these people...I think to myself, 'I can't wait to get outta here...away from you damn PRIMATES!....and then I instantly feel a wave of remorse...in other words,
How am I different from these people? I'm in the same place they are, and I recognize that my smugness is hollow...
Juan is my buddy!...Nolan at 4, he's cool too...
I tried to explain to them, what it meant to me to get this cool gig, and how I was able to discuss really technical stuff, and then...uuh...uuh..well, okay, never mind.
All I know is, when I was sitting there at that starbucks I felt alive again.
These guys are certainly not primates, they are human beings who are just trying to earn a living, as we all do...

In the Middle of the Night

In the middle of the night, most people are asleep...that's where I'd like to be...and, remembering where I used to be, in bed...I remember my thoughts, my fears in the middle of the night...
But now, I am up all night, and all of those thoughts and fears hit me....and they hit me hard.
I think that I have somehow redeemed myself, as far as being lazy, oh no...oh hell no, I have been working my ass off, like never before...
Here's the thing...in the middle of the night, those fears that used to hit me in bed...they hit me full throttle when I sit there stocking shelves.
I'm left alone with my stupid mind...A ton of memories, a ton of idiodic things...A ton of memories that only I know about, and nobody in the world will ever know...or care about.
Sometimes I think that I'm going quite insane, it's as though a thousand TV channels are going through my brain, and I try to change the channel and organize them, and yet....I turn them off and I can't get past this fact...
Anyway...In the middle of the night I asked myself a really big question....When you got laid off back then, did that make you a loser?...or did that expose you as one?
Oh man

My Cousin Joe

Since I grew up as an only child, my cousins were my surrogate 'siblings' since I spent plenty of time with them when I was a kid, especially staying over my cousin Joe's...summer after summer when I was a kid, he always cracked me up then. He was one of those 'terrors' when he was little, breaking every toy I would bring over, with a sense of joy and fulfillment...and a laugh...a sense of humour.
In an earlier post, I mentioned how drawn I am to people with a natural sense of humour, who can laugh easily and anything and everything.
One time when Joe was about 1 or 2, he crawled into the fireplace and covered himself with ashes, my Aunt Carmen shouted, "Godaaammit Joe get the hell outta there!" and he only just cracked up, which made me crack up, "You be quiet Danny! this is not funny!"
ohhhh, but it was funny...ohhh it surely was, to me anyway.
In another time, Joe kept climbing over the seats of the car when I went grocery shopping with them, he did a flip over the seat and landed on the grocery bags, "Goddammiiiiit!"
(heeheeeheeeheeeee when you're a kid)
That evening, my dad, who came to pick me up each night, stayed for dinner, my aunt put this smashed loaf of bread on the table,
"I want you to LOOK at a this bread!"
"what happened? who sat on it?"
"THIS guy landed on it!" hahahaha all around the table...
The one real crack-up came when Joe and I were having lunch over there, chicken noodle soup...my aunt was reading the paper and started laughing...
"hey here's a funny Dennis the Menace, "hey mom! get dad quick! I got Santa Claus locked in the bathroom!"
With that, Joe must have spewed out an entire mouthful of soup, all over the dining room as he cracked up over that, and I did too....half the joke, half the spewing, until....
"Goddaamiiit!"
In high school, Joe's family moved back to San Jose and he went to the same high school I did, I was a senior and he was a freshman...we soon hung out in the same bunch and drove to ball games and whatnot, he was a buddy then, not so much a cousin...all the while...a comic timing, a cartoon soul...he has that. The laugh, that's the thing.
But anyway, lately I find a growing fondness for these things.
Lately Joe is doing fine, two fine sons, and they were terrors just like he was!

"Good Luck"

I can reference obscure memories in my mind...I can remember esoteric things, I can remember what happened on April 4, 1968....I remember what we ate for dinner on June 12, 1975.... I remember September 3, 1982...Thank god for certain memories, I guess...The unpleasant memories tend to fade, which I suppose is a survival thing.
I remember a vague scene from a movie, like a WW2 movie, two guys shaking hands on a bridge, one American, one British.
"Well, I'm going this way"
"And I'm going that way....Good Luck" It seemed to me at the time, though it was just a movie, that these were two men who were walking off to their destinies in life...'good luck'

Geneva, Switzerland on that September 3rd, 1982...
I was traveling around, I hopped on the next available train, still in a state of wonderlust, but also there was that certain home-sickness, not to mention the lonliness....oh, sometimes I felt it bad, I missed my family and friends, and sometimes just wanted to go home.
On a train to Geneva, about 7 in the morning, I had made sure to catch that train...I was going to see the band Genesis...
I got on, and got a coffee and croissant, my breakfast, and sat in an empty seating area...one guy came in,
"Do you mind if I sit here?
"No, not at all..."
"Oh! you're American, hehe...sorry."
"nahh, it's okay"
I think by my appearance back then, with my long hair, my week-growth beard, I knew I looked swarthy...but all I had to do was just say something!
And from out of this dark looking vagabond came, "Wow! it sure is great to meet a guy who speaks English! My name is Dan, it's a pleasure to meet you!"
"ohh! well yes of course, it's a pleasure to meet you too!"
At about 12 noon the train came in to the Geneva station....We had chatted for awhile on the train, his name was Vaughn, from Newcastle, England. He was a student 'on holiday' before he went back to school in about a week. I told him I was there to see the Genesis concert that night, he had no particular plans for the day, but needed to catch a 5:00 train to Italy, so we decided to have lunch and do a little sightseeing. We had hit it off and became fast friends, so it was never even discussed that we would hang out together for the day, we just did.
He spoke fluent French, the local language in Geneva, so that was convenient. He asked all about California, and was genuinely curious about all kinds of 'American' things, "Is it really true that people get shot at all the time?"
"well, not really, it does happen in certain areas, but it's not like the Clint Eastwood movies. It's really pretty mundane."
We went to the old part of the city, where the cathedral was. Many cities in Europe have a cathedral, old city walls, Roman ruins, etc. which are fascinating.
"To tell you the truth, sometimes I get 'cathedral burnout' like they all seem the same after awhile."
"Haha! yeahhh, me too!"
So we walked by a sidewalk cafe and decided to have a beer or two or three. It was past 4, so it almost time to catch his train.
"Well, guess I better get going."
"Where's the waiter? we haven't paid yet..."
We gave each other a look.
"You mean, should we be rogues and leave without paying?"
"Hmmm, nahhh...we better pay."
So we did, and headed back to the station, which was across the river. The Stade de Charle where Genesis would be playing was in another direction on the same side of the river.
as we got to the foot of the bridge I immediately thought of that obscure scene in that movie. So I said, "Well, I go this way."
"And I go that way."
"Good Luck"....just like in the movie.
We shook hands, and off we went in our own directions. We looked back one more time and waved.
Though we exchanged addresses, I never heard from ol' Vaughn again.