Pause

The rat race leaves little time to take five on the sidelines. That hare will surely speed by you dare a rose keep your attention too long. The simple things, like using your nose to smell a flower, become luxurious pastimes appreciated far more because of their rarity. This is the one beautiful thing about working too much, free minutes are savored like the rain drops in our desert.
So if you too are stuck in a workers rut with vacation relief seemingly far away, here are some everyday moments worth relishing in.

1. Watching a dog hump your friend.
Ageless, hours of entertainment.

2. Solving a puzzle.
Whether it's jigsaw or crossword, five minutes or five hours, your mind will feel refreshed and ready to solve one of your own.

3. Clipping yo' nails
Its meditative.
Did you know that you can get pin-worms from the funk under there?

4. Excepting invitations from random strangers
They are adventures and friends waiting to be met.

5. Watching Cat on a Hot Tin Roof with your dad
Dads aren't there forever. And neither will be movies like that.

my new tattoo , ive been saving up for, for like 1 month now. it's pretty damn sweet, it just came to me one night. ........... a medium aged dragon, standing up straight, wearing a pair of air jordans, and throwing a pair of dice. then, underneath that, in fancy cursive , the words , "high roller" . i know what you're thinking , the same damn thing i'm thinking, pretty effin' sweet!!!!

Waiting For My Pirate

Back story: I met this guy a couple of years ago, he was really sweet. He would come talk to me while I worked, patiently trying to maintain a conversation with me as I cleaned fish tanks and occasionally walked away to tend to other customers. He was diggin' on me. At the time, I was not feeling the same. Not that he wasn't cute, he was...it was just his fixation with pirates that kind of scared me away. He was in a pirate drama club of some sort and his deep and scruffy voice sounded just like a pirate's, minus the "arrgghh's" and "mateys" of course. But really, add those in and no need to fake an accent.
His long, dark hair was pulled back into a pony tail and on the first date it was hard for me to not picture him in the missing hat and eye-patch he must have left at home. Anyways, I was 24 or so at the time and just not ready to date a pirate.
A few weeks ago I ran into the guy randomly after not seeing him for years. He was still doing the pirate thing, even more so now. His drama club had expanded into a Pirate performance troop of some sort and they graced the stages of many a SoCal summer festival with their vestige of pirate themed songs and acts. His career masquerading as a plunderer had been more bountiful than I could have imagined--his pockets were filled with little leather pouches and chains he designed specifically with the buccaneering man in mind. I was offered the headphones of his MP3 player to take a listen to his voice, rapping, about pirate stuff. I was in shock. Even more so that he did not somehow throw in the word booty. "Of course," he explained, "there's going to be an entire album of pirate songs! They will all be different though. All different genres..."
And I gave him my number. But he didn't call. And then I began to wonder why not. Where was he? I have nothing to do this Saturday night. How desperate have I become I thought, to be waiting for a pirate to call?? Oh, ode to my missing pirate....

Once you beckoned to me from atop your mast
I was clearly in your sights
like the shrouded peaks of Bali Hai
Your scope skimmed our heights

But I couldn't walk a pirates plank!
Afraid to take the leap
Later waiting for your ship to come
Bare horizons steal my sleep.

(the following is a later addition)

We circled the waters edge
never breaking the islands veil
For one night, and me, you left your treasures
threw the wind into the sail

The stars painted stories in the sky
But by dawn, they were burned away
the suns brutal reminder, washed ashore
for pirates never stay.

Grand View

Standing on Grand View Avenue, wondering where the hell the name came from. I shared my smoke with an old tree trunk turned tiki-pole/roof support structure for Mar Vista Bowl.

Grand View? All I saw was dark streets lit by a Karate, Goodwill and Laundry Mat sign that glowed the stars away.

Go ahead tiki man, take a hit. I hoped the late night, three bikers I saw riding the Venice lane home didn’t catch me holding the lit cigarette to my wooden friend’s mouth. You gotta’ give the bikers respect. I talk a big environmental game but the true livers of the dream are those willing to pedal home at 1am. They actually fly by pretty fast, I felt me and my new friend were safe.

The streets were empty considering…Saturday night, West LA, bowling for $20 from 10pm to 1am? Where was everybody?

Screw um’. I was chilling. Inside my friends and a friend-with-benefits-gone bad were taking my turns.

Footsteps and voices startled me as they crept around the corner. People coming. I regained my composer and my cigarette. Two very drunk men crossed the street headed my way but a group of girls and their high-pitched good nights cut them off.

Phew.

Filled with liquid courage and the belly to prove it, one of the guys wobbled after them. Unimpressed, the girls kept their backs turned and haphazardly continued their conversation, pretending not to notice the strange man and his mumbles at their heels. It only took a couple of blurry, “Gimme some of that’s…” for him to realize they were into more sophisticated game. They all disappeared and so did my cigarette. I had to go back in. Damn.

I looked around one more time just in case I missed something. A couple of Fichus trees, pavement and asphalt, a tattoo shop, a liquor store. Nope. I turned my head down the avenue until it darkened. I stopped focusing on the corner I was at, obviously not the inspiration for the name Grand View, wondering, hoping that maybe down yonder it was more so.

No Space For Me

"You don't seem like the typical LA girl..." You're words run over and over in my head.

Were they foreshadowing the night to come when I walked into your stank ass, aged-bong water-smelling room, a house cluttered and dangling with everything thats ever caught your eye

and did not roll my eyes, kept my mouth shut.

Stayed and watched customers buy your dreams, colorful names and prices written in dry erase purchased the Samurai swords above them, the rarest, flesh faced puffer below. All your things begin to distract me.

But I laughed my way through the crowded, pungent, unfamilar surroundings

Wondering what the typical LA girl would have done

Tropical Apocalypse

My skin prefers global warming

to many things

above all others

is probably flamingos.

Their claws are painful

Talons hidden under pleasantly

pink feathers

So exacting they prefer to pick

shrimp from their shells

perhaps all too perfectly

Shaving the flesh from it’s coverings

in one immaculate swoop.

Devouring iodine

Turning pinker

Save for that

menacing, honest

black beak.

Saying Goodbye to the Sun

The other day I was part of an unexpected pagan ritual. Luckily there haven’t been any recent stake-burnings, but with current trends who knows how much longer one can get away with such lavishly earthly delights. It’s not everyday one takes the time to say goodbye to the sun with a group of humans to the beat of drums. But that’s just what I did.
Funny too that it was the last official day of summer--if you’re a Venice High School student anyways. (And where else but Venice beach could one bare witness and be part of such a cultist experience). The boardwalk was empty of the common tourists hordes since it was a Tuesday evening. Mario, the boyfriend of my long time friend Cheri, always manages to attract the most unexpected and socially unconventional characters. Somehow he stumbled upon a hippie while on a five-minute jog who invited us to witness the sunset and help make a drum circle, well, more round. The invitation was taken with a grain of salt as we went on about our own selfish adventures. Yet somehow we found ourselves right where we needed to be as the sun prepared to set. The drums must have lured us in the right direction but I can’t remember hearing them.
As we came upon the grassy knoll where the ritual was taking place I became very uneasy. Three different drummers played along with one another, all facing the sun while an amoeba-shaped group of maybe ten people spread around. A dark sister with long, thick braids held her hands above her head, tempting glances to her naval as she thrusted her gold belly chains back and forth. An unshaven, tan young man in cut-off jean shorts twirled a gymnastic-like ribbon-stick in circles and waves from atop a hill of grass as he interpreted the drums with his whole body. His ribbon and fancy footwork intoxicated a blonde who would every now and then concede to her obvious urges to dance too.
As I followed Cheri and Mario deeper into this circle of strangeness I thought to myself, “These people are crazy! They must all be on drugs!” I felt like I was going to be judged similarly by others as they passed. I begrudgingly sat down in the chosen spot, two feet from ribbon boy and his off beat twists and turns. Honestly, I wanted to move. But I was facing the sun, I told myself, I could focus on that instead of all these weirdoes. I am not yet a sufficient writer to paint the picture, but the colors splashed across the sky were fantastic. As the sun sank, the drums pounded louder, faster, aligning with the deepening yellows and oranges. The voice of a drummer in swaths of neutral cottons and headress started chanting, repeating over and over again the simple name, “Sun… Sun… Sun...”
It was infectious, gained voices, became the mantra. A man who looked in his thirties, wearing an old LA Raiders baseball cap from which escaped chunks of dirty blonde hair, kept looking in our direction as he delicately hopped on the grass. As the aura of the Santa Monica Mountains turned to reds and purples the ribbon waved faster and the dancers danced harder. A man with a half-blue painted face rolled up on his skates and stayed, maybe feeling a little more at home. As the music and chants and colors intensified others who had been waiting, doubted, and avoided the strange event moved closer. Some let the words and music move them. The sun was halfway gone and everyone who was within earshot could feel the fleeting light and quickening tempo sounding it’s departure.
It’s not something I normally do, the sun is always there, goes down every day, comes up every morning...but this moment shook me from that routine. This was the sun, powerful amazing warm, life-giving sun. It was leaving us, gave us our daily bread and I had been taking it for granted—until now. What if it wasn’t coming up again? What if this was my last chance to say goodbye? I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who realized. We were rhythmically carrying it away. We were it’s human protectors, appreciators of the life-force, callers of it’s morning rises and singers of the farewell praises. I became lost in a beautiful fantasy. My lips opened and I too was whispering.
“Sun... Sun… Sun…”
I now was one of these crazy people.
Even a Latino family picnicking near the ruckus joined in, shouting appropriate noises and screams in tempo. A tiny mustachioed man with a cowboy hat produced a bell and the chiming seemed right on queue. I spoke to the sun under the noise around me. Secrets.
Only a sliver of sunshine was left now and we could all feel it would be over soon. We shouted to it, sang, and whispered goodbyes as it disappeared behind the shadows of the Santa Monica Mountains until every sparkle went out.
An outline of the crescent moon hung over the ocean, begging for the same attention as the horizon darkened and the drums faded.
Considering the 10 hours a day I invest trying to pay bills, following the path of the dollar, 10 minutes following the path of the sun was nothing really. But for some reason I was sad to see it go. These are the last days of summer. I am not so good at saying goodbye. The irony is that I notice the metaphors of natural phenomenon too late. My brother asks me why I am the way I am. Why I use such an inefficient gauge, emotion, to direct my course of life, my actions, my reactions, etc. I will tell him next time, even though I had a hard time saying goodbye to the sun this day it doesn’t mean it’s rays haven’t stained a glow upon my skin.