Enclose Me In Your Gentle Rain

"The days are bright and filled with pain
Enclose me in your gentle rain" -- from Crystal Ship by The Doors

Good rain today. Went outside and felt it on my freshly shaved scalp, stuck out my tongue to taste it, smelled it, felt it with my face, saw the pigeons lined up on the wire, dripping, happy.

Leaning back in my chair I balance a small piece of Mount Everest on my forehead, imagine myself the mountain, peacefully cold in late October, neutral.

I Feel Numb

"The numbness started in her fingertips. She felt it flow up through her hands, into her wrists and on along her arms to her shoulders and through her shoulders to her heart and up her neck to her head. She was a numbness, a thing of nettles and ice and prickles and a hollow thundering nothingness. Her lips were dry petals, her eyelids were a thousand times heavier than iron, and each part of her body was now iron and lead and copper and platinum. Her body weighed ten tons, each part of it was so incredibly heavy, and, in that heaviness, crushed and beating to survive, was her crippled heart, throbbing and tearing about like a headless chicken. And buried in the limestone and steel of her robot body was her terror and crying out, walled in, with someone tapping the trowel on the exterior wall, the job finished, and, ironically, it was her own hand she saw before her that had wielded the trowel, set the final brick in place, frothed on the thick slush of mortar and pushed everything into a tightness and self-finished prison." --from Ray Bradbury's short story Interval in Sunlight, published in his Long After Midnight collection.

Almost out of the October Country, for better or for worse. It's been an amazing month. Hard to believe how much got packed into it, but now, like the girl in the story, I feel numb, and more than a little trapped. Just my subconcious telling me get more exercise and meditate deeper, because when push comes to shove, I am as free as the wind, and can send the numbness away at will.

Know Her Quiet Love

Racing round & round the hills & valleys of these beautiful Bay Area counties I have gradually come to realize that, deep within, my true search is always & only for the Goddess. She etches figure eights around Twin Peaks, ambles enlessly around the peaks of Mount Diablo, sits in silent meditation on lonely beaches from Alameda to Tennessee Valley, suns herself by the shores of Lake Merrit, whispers through my open windows, lays waste to ego & self-consciousness when the inevitable tears of joy storm from my eyes. When I find her I receive whatever gifts she bestows with loving reverence & grace, and request nothing more for all eternity except to know her quiet love.

"…I waited on a bench for my next bus trying to sleep on my arms on my rucksack but kept waking up to see the pale ghosts of American bus stations wandering around: in fact one woman streamed by like a wisp of smoke, I was definitely certain she didn't exist for sure. On her face the phantasmal belief in what she was doing...on my face, for that matter, too." --from Kerouac's The Dharma Bums

Pig Butcher Chen

The Butcher's Wife by Li Ang

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
Lin Shi's mother was all dressed in red. Her legs were bound with several coils of a long, thick rope. Stretching her arms out toward her daughter, she said over and over: "Ah-shi, I'm hungry, I'm hungry, I'm hungry...go beg some food for me, I'm hungry, I'm hungry."

Lin Shi discovered that she couldn't move a muscle, but she didn't know why. Momentary confusion followed. Unable to wait any longer, Lin Shi's mother plunger her hands into her own abdomen, fished out a mass of bloody entrails, and hungrily shoved them into her mouth, giggling as she said: "I've got nothing to eat, just this sweet-potato mash."

--excerpt from The Butcher's Wife



This is one of my wife's women's studies books that I just happened upon and found readable. Based on a true story, it's deeply sad but also oddly neutral. This book, maybe because it is Chinese, seems quite distant from the other women's studies type books I've started, most of which I could not make it through. I have to wonder about what's lost in translation, perhaps quite a bit. Even though the man is of course an evil fucker, the author manages to practically force the reader to empathize with him. One aquires an acute sense of being trapped in relationships: marriage, family, societal, and the world of pain & sickness to which those feelings lead. Tom Waits sings about in that song where "Frank hung his wild years on a nail that he drove through his wife's forehead...bought himself a couple of Mickey Bigmouths, then he parked across the street, watching the thing burn all Christmas orange, and laughing; turned on the top 40 station", or something like that, folks losing their minds because of persistent belief in limits & measures in a limitless & measureless universe. It's the goddess forsaken dark ages in homes around the world, unfortunately.



Trapped as you agree to, trapped as you want to be, is how I figure it. Do whatchalike Kid.


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Fantasy Beach Cottage

A weathered ghost of a stainless steel kettle on an antique stove prepares to
whistle for our tea in my fantastic daydream, a small vase with three
small geranium blossoms in it graces a table carved for two. The ancient hardwood table waits with unimaginably vast patience & poise. This is a voracious & recurring dream that cyles deep, corkscrewing itself from one end of my mind the the other, and back again without rest.

When I wake into yet another dream I sit cross-legged on dry sand, near waves, with a few symbolic pieces of driftwood forming five sides around me. The wind calls coldly & the ocean wears a gray cloak. I hitch hiked there, and now wonder about my ride home, because dusk has come and soon will go, but I am so very happy.

Much thanks to Matthew Lichau for the picture.

EPMD @ Club 6 in October Rain

Wowie zowie this night sparkles in the rain. What a great night, for all the right reasons. Met one of my brothers and his girlfriend at Club 6 to see EPMD, the legendary rappers. I got a call from my dear friend Anjeni while parking my car, and it turned out that her plan with her couple friends wasn't working out, so spontaneously, at the last minute, she shows up with her buddy Manjou and her osteopath mentor/boss. It was shaping up to be a fine fun night anyway, but when those lovely osteopaths and Manjou, who compliments them well because he's an acupunturist, showed up the dance party blew up bigger than life. We were wild, we were crazy, we knocked into people, Anjeni and I bumped knees as hard as I've ever bumped knees with anyone. We danced upstairs, downstairs, I danced in the rain in the smoking pen, we watched the too-cool-for-words break dancers upstairs, they went off. I had so much fun that I gave a homeless guy paper money when he asked me for it after the show, which I don't do except when in full celebration mode.

Anjeni & her entourage split, which left me to join my brother & his girl for a tasty breakfast of waffles, eggs, and bacon at Mel's Diner at Mission & 5th St. And I'm still in a good mood, so thankful for the unexpected night of dancing with some crazy good dancers. It rocked, way-way-sha-nay-nay-way-hay-eh.