Cammies

Age 9: decide to wear "army clothes" whenever possible.

Age 13: join cadet group: wear suckass fatigues. Plot to improve situation.

Age 16: continue to wear various suckass green fatigues b/c cargo pants uniforms unavailable.

 Become familiar with genuine tigerstripe cammies my friend Brian has somehow acquired.

Age 18: spend entire life savings on crummy post-Vietname War commercial tigerstripe fatigues: 40 bucks.

Age 20: get groovy German cammies, arcane Desert Night cammies, wear all over Europe. 

Tell GF that I have decided to try to acquire every camouflage pattern in the world. 

She replies that I would then have exactly 2 patterns. Relationship does not last.

Age 24 or so: decide to finally get serious about camo. Cover office/guest room with camo jackets 

on cardboard to display their pattern, make camo director’s chair seats. Mix camo jackets with jeans.

Age 30 or so: transition from camo jackets to camo pants, mix with plaid shirts [Pendletons!] 

Focus on few, cool patterns.

Age 35 or so: own approximately 7 camouflage patterns. 

Age 40 or so: get multiple patterns in order to ease wear on few patterns, extend usefulness.

Age 50 or so: discover that exotic patterned fabric is much easier to find than exotic patterned pants that fit. 

Begin making pants. Start a Facebook page called Bad Camo, chronicling camo that is silly, stupid, and fascinating.

Age 55 or so: reach point that I can go an entire summer off from the school year wearing a different 

pattern each day.

Age 58: own 7 different Vietnam Tigerstripe patterned pants alone. See Age 35 or so. 

Age 60 or so: realize that by any objective metric, I have far too many pairs of camo pants.

Age 62: realize that I have be a much more stylish fucker wearing non-camouflage pants. 

The too much camo remains.

 

Marriage

 

You must marry ___ so your father can become more powerful.

You are not allowed to marry ___ because your parents say no.

You made the mistake of marrying ___ without permission, so the king shall punish you.

You made the mistake of marrying someone not for rational motivations, but for the absurdity of love, so we shall think ill of you.

You must marry ___ so they can acquire half your lands.

You married someone with a different imaginary friend, so your imaginary friend shall no longer allow you to imagine that you are playing with them.

You married someone who talks to their imaginary friend differently than you, so same consequence.

You married someone whose imaginary friend we take exception to, so we shall not allow your corpse to be buried over here, but only over there.

You married someone who looks funny, so we shall hang you, or them, from a nearby tree.

You married someone who used to be married to someone else, so kitty bar the fuckin' door!

You didn't travel to this place here just to marry someone did you? No, of course not. That would be naughty. 

You don't want to get married to someone just so we will let you stay over here rather than over there, would you? That would be the height of cynicism!

You're getting married? Well, of course, their mother gets to choose the silverware and the menu. I thought you knew that!!

You got married? Good. We shall now title you so that everyone else immediately knows your status. Unless you're a man.

You got married? Good. We shall now call you Missus John Smith.

You got married? Simply everybody wears a silly little ring, so we expect you shall as well. Weren't you told that?

How lovely that you got married? Now, dutifully go 'round to every bureaucratic office you can and deface your surname.

Thank you for getting married. You shall now peep out from every genealogical survey 2 centuries now as merely "Peggy", with no other data assigned to you except who you gave birth to.

You got married? Lovely! We would like to know all about it. Here, pee in this cup. Give us some blood. Let us swab your cheek.

You will, naturally, need to be licensed to get married, just as you would to drive a car. Yes, of course, there is a fee! Congratulations!

No, you can't possibly have got married. You have an innie/outie, and they've got an innie/outie, too!

You're getting married? That's disgusting! To hell with your cake!

Highly Advanced Motorcycle Hipster

 

I’m trying to figure out who this guy is. He's on a knucklehead (or panhead?) Harley, a flatly unpretentious, stripped down machine that looks at home in about 1970, but whose engine hails from 2 or 3 decades earlier. Its breathy exhaust note appears to stem from the fact that its exhaust pipe- not muffler- is simply pinched shut in a linear gap. It is not terribly loud, not ridden to be loud. It idles great.

 

Rider is about 35, maybe Latino. There is little to set him apart from any given crowd. Worn, dusty gear, ball cap under half helmet, rolled up jeans, boots for work, not for appearances.

 

So who is this guy? A dedicated motorcyclist who keeps this grimy treasure in running, "live" condition for Sunday rides around town? Hipster scum living out the biker dream of my-not his- generation? Actual biker? Mechanical whiz with a love for the old stuff?

 

He pulls away ahead of traffic, the engine no more than loping. Pulls in the clutch, engine at idle, reaches down to the left below his seat and JERKS THE SHIFTER INTO THE NEXT GEAR. This, then, is the infamous "suicide clutch", foot actuated, meaning you can't put that foot down at a stoplight without dropping into gear. A number of you may remember Fat Freddie of Fantastic Furry Freak Brothers comics having a misadventure with this, falling right over on the unsupported clutch foot side, saying, as I recall, "Oh, no, oh, no, oh, no!" on his way down, the choices being between falling over and suddenly thrusting out into traffic.

 

One more detail. That rolled-up pant-leg? Selvedge denim. That's one pretty danged advanced hipster.

On the Black Block, February, 2017

 

I have a limited familiarity with the black block phenomenon. Many lack even this basic familiarity. Here is what I saw on Wednesday before the demonstration against the fascist provocateur and paedophile who tried to speak on the UC Berkeley campus:

 

As I stopped on Southside for a tasty vegan snack, there was a small group doing the same. They were a nondescript group-- 2 young white men, one young brown woman, one skateboard. It was notable that they were wearing all black, with black caps and zipped up black jackets. Their shoes were interesting: 2 of 3 wore nylon/leather black boots, same as many law enforcement people. I did not look at them too intently, preferring to leave them some privacy. One, though, wore a body camera on his backpack strap, so they wore backpacks. I assume they also were black.

 

What they did not have is any sort of law enforcement or skinhead vibe or iconography. They also lacked any other sort of vibe.

 

On their own, they might have been just another knot of hipsters, but as i walked north on telegraph, I noticed more small knots of 3, similarly attired. There was a mix of genders. There was nothing at all flashy about them. There were some nonwhites, but no Black folks. They may have had any sort of philosophy at all in their minds, but no right wing ideation was apparent. They rapidly coalesced, pulled bandanas over their faces and threw up barricades completely blocking Bancroft with about 30 people working together. 

 

I saw no apparent right-wing action. I saw apparent anarchist coalescence, work and action. I did not see the people at the center of the crowd at Pauley Ballroom. There were fireworks including large firecrackers. These may have been different folks, though it seems a safe bet that they were the same folks.

The Four Sights

Prince Gautama Siddharta lived a sheltered life. His courtesans contrived to keep him away from the harsh reality of real life outside the palace walls.

One day, the prince managed to evade his handlers and began to wander around the city.

He came upon an old smoker with grey pallor and rheumy eyes. The man coughed  and wheezed. This saddened Siddharta, and he recognized that the life of a smoker was smelly, filthy and uncomfortable.

Next, the prince came upon a drunkard. The man was crawling in a gutter in a pool of his own vomit.  The further saddened Siddharta, and he saw that the life of a drinker made one bleary-eyed, incapable of walking, and nauseous.

After that, the prince saw a heroin junkie. There was nothing more to do for the man, as he was already dead. Siddharta saw that there were old smokers, old drinkers, but no old junkies. It saddened the prince to learn that heroin brought only delirium, sloth, and, all too easily, overdose and death.

Finally, the young prince came upon a hasheesh eater. The man sat, smiling, hands folded on a plump belly. From this, he learned that hasheesh was part of a full, satisfied life.

Siddharta resolved to be more like the stoner and to avoid the suffering of the smoker, the drinker, and the junkie.

Memory and Memories: A Patient Killer Stalked my Mother’s Mind.

    Dementia appears to me, watching it happen, to be a process of at least 10 years. Often, I wonder if something my mother, Cerini,  did or said was because of her person or because of her pathology. 

     She enjoyed learning of little tidbits, amusements to her curiosity. One I remember appears to be a product of her person. I suppose my memory is from about 15 years before her death. She had a National Geographic article about comparing beach sands under a microscope. “They’re little THINGS!,” she said, a usage of the word meaning “creatures”, referring to the recognizable shapes of the tiny animal shells composing beach sand under our feet. I remember the phrase because it is a linguistic sample*, but the reason I bring it up here is the wonderment it brought to Cerini’s face.

    An example that appears more like a product of her pathology is when she told, several times, of a TV news story relating to climate change. It showed the earth tilted. She seemed to think that the tilt affected climate change, whereas any 5th grader should know that is merely the basis for the seasons. What really aroused my mother’s suspicions was the fact that she never saw the picture displayed again.  The subtext of her story appeared to be that pernicious forces of social control had suppressed the depiction.

I can understand how an isolated person like Cerini could be fearful in their ignorance of the workings of the world, especially sipping information through the soda straw of television.

 

    Television increasingly was her window on the world, even as she drew the blinds on the literal windows of her house, anticipating the long, windowless sleep of death that she approached. On 2 occasions, the TV let her down. Once, she pressed the wrong button on the set, and a repairman had to come out. Until then, she sat in her living room and stared at the street with the 1 or 2 degrees of view that her front door afforded her. Another time, the electricity went out, and she was powerless in more than 1 way.

 

    In at least one instance, her TV reality bled over into her real one. Once, from a bluff in Avila Beach, we watched from the seats of the car as whales, orcas, I believe, surfaced to breathe a mere 500 yards away. Often, we would walk on the pier nearby, looking down at the water 10 yards below. An advertisement, which appeared regularly in this time, featured a giant fish, emerging with open jaws toward a fisherman. She conflated this into a story of an orca emerging toward us on the pier, a worrisome breakdown of her grasp on what was real and what was not.

On Treatment

 

It was good to be overweight beforehand. I lost 50#. That's 25% of my previous weight.

I practiced breathing exclusively through the nose, like by biking uphill, both inhaling and exhaling since about 8 years previously. The mask worn for radiation treatment is bad. Your mouth is totally blocked. You use whatever tools you can to remain calm: count your breaths (about 55), retreat into your mind, practice meditation/mindfulness.

Contact with friends is crucial.

Taking long walks is part of it.

It is a long process, and there are loads of details in the depths of that time. It’s been a year since my treatment started. I still have tiny little symptoms. I kind of forget how it was in the darker days.

Constipation because of anti nausea meds is awful. I had a fecal blockage 3 times and used home enemas. Next stop would’ve been ER where “they will dig it outa you”, as my friend Josh says.

I was at ER twice. Once to get IV nausea meds because Ii couldn’ keep the pills down and once because I passed out after a bath and cut my forehead open.

The kind of Zofran anti-nausea pill that dissolves under your tongue is amaaaazing! It takes immediate effect and can stop a nausea incident.

“Nausea” is a Greek term meaning “repaint  the walls with vomit”.

Relinquish any thoughts of drinking. I am thankful to have been able to get stoned. (I recommend small amounts of THC in gummis for exact dosing.)

The battle against depression is important. Stay stoked as much as possible. Avoid speaking to folx who need “stoked” explained to them.

You will take damage— teeth, salivary glands, hearing.

Main thing is change: this will change you.

And don’ sweat the whole death thing. It’s pretty much outa your hands. You know how to die just as well as you know how to grow your hair. It’s perfectly safe. Just focus on doing your job— getting to appointments on time, complying with medical advice, doing your swallowing exercises, eating and/or using the (fucking) gastrotube to get food in you. 

Put “death” in a different box.