Need Miracle Each Dawn

One more magic dawn in El Sobrante. If this is the burbs then I guess I like the burbs. On my first day back to work after family leave I passed a dead coyote on the side of the road. I was in a piss of a mood, and as I passed the carcass the sunken eyes caught mine and pulled them in, morbid vacuum pulling on my soul rich sockets. My eyes bulged with the pull of once vibrant wild canine. I heard canine thoughts ricocheting in that lifeless skull. They said, "What bright and alive eyes you have, which I would take advantage of if I were you. Use your limbs as I would mine, to lope from ridge to creekside, meadow to copse, and remember to smell the smells worth smelling. Run! Go you stupid human!" 

CIA Director Senate Confirmation Hearings

Listened to a chunk of the Senate confirmation hearings for the new CIA Director, Air Force General Michael Hayden, the other day. Beyond Orwellian, truly hypnotic with overtones of venomous slithering. When I was 14 I listened to baseball on the radio to relax sometimes, ball, strike, ball, blah, blah, blah. Worked OK for hangovers and feverish boredom but I had to quit. These hearings were like that times ten. Human intelligence, operational intelligence, integrate information, factors, shit, my thesis on multivariate statistics was more lively, and apparently quite relevant. You see, like I did, the intelligence miners want to find the factor[s] that influences the other factor[s]. Ways of harvesting meaningful conclusions out of too much crazy data. Going over it all in my head, the expectation of security and safety from our government seems further away daily. Robotic assassins seem close though. So much jargon/newspeak/brainwashing I found it impossible to concentrate for more than a few minutes and doubted whether any human could steadily follow it while remaining human. Dude kept attacking the media, saying they had to tow the fascist peeping tom line or wind up wearing cement galoshes, in so, so many words. Hayden's a real nazi's nazi, scum of the earth, but what other type of demon would sign up for such a job. Like MDC sing: "the police is the Klan is the mafia, and they're out to get me, and pretty soon they're gonna be out to get you, so you'd better take your stand if you know what's good for you" Don't believe me? Just give those confirmation hearing transcripts a once over and feel what side you're on. Plenty of good fight left to be fought.

Laugh Out Toes

Yes, May shapeshifts into quite the moonth, chock full of raw mid-spring energy, and today the extraordinary blessing of some solid rain. Got to ride one of my skateboards around Berkeley and Oakland before and after work, sliding on the slick pebbled surfaces, picking up speed for the lumpy concrete/asphalt transitions. I pretty much never ride anymore, due to associated pain, but suffered no falls and had a splendid time. Got an excellent smile from a passing rain moistened pedestrian as I roared by with that light in my eyes; also three frowns that were also appreciated. As I zimmed by the cops had to wonder if law enforcement still needed skateboard sensitivity training, after all the hating years. Proud to say I have been ticketed for both skateboarding (Berkeley) and hitchhiking (Sebastopol), which I view as essential art forms in a paved world.

New good feeling generation method discovered last Thursday morning: starting with your left big toe, laugh out it like playing "This Little Piggy Went To Market...", only you don't need to use that beat. Use a different laugh for each toe, saving real good ones for the little toes. A typical progression might go like ha ha ha ha ha, hee hee hee hee hee, hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo hoo, yah-ha-ha-hee-hee huey, whoooooooooo-hooooooo! Sure you'll have fun developing your own, the laughs of course dependent on your toes and mood. You'll want to start the laugh in your low belly and then use your abs and chest to direct it down the leg, pick up speed coming out of knee curve, controlled slide past ankle corner, then ride a bee line snug down each tarsal and meta-tarsal to each particular toe. If you pay close attention and see like me, various colors and vibrations will shoot out the ends of each toe. Holy Devil Girl! My toes just thanked me for the attention being paid to them in this post, in unison. The leader wore a silk tophat, and they had a gifted piano player in the background. They also respectfully requested a medium duration barefoot walk along the surf, and a cermonial dunk in fast moving Sierra snowmelt water. Wow, toes are the shiznits, my buds.

Guitar Star Child of Revolution

Playing guitar on the sofa, back in the good old days of life as an only child. The boy has had to do some fast growing up, what with the responsiblities associated with becoming a big brother, to which he responded by regressing and advancing, just like Papi. Ann had the good sense to give us a book called "So You're A Big Brother Now", which he enjoys quite a bit. After a little more than a week of family leave I started to get high anxiety about my unfinished work tasks, which came with a deflated mood. Hard to match the thrill of the birth and all, and my brain's funny like that anyway, never happy too long. I heard about a book by a guy named Roth, maybe Philip, in which he writes that some lie around waiting for inspiration while the rest of us go back to work, which is what I did. Good for something I guess (I feel somewhat better), although this transition time adjusting to a new family member proves more difficult thant first surmised. Challenges foment growth, so what the hell. The boy and I did get to ride the Steam Train in Tilden Park for the first time last weekend, so milestones continue to click by.
 

Father-Daughter Dreaming

Nothing like a much needed father-daughter mid-afternoon catnap. The marvels and benefits of sleep never cease to amaze me. I can only imagine how my heart sounded to her, lub-dubbing along so much slower than her own, in time with my heinous snoring. The in-laws from San Diego have come and gone now, leaving just us chickens & our pets. The weather has a timeless and poignant flavor, t-shirt in the night, the hills abuzz with insects and more. Found a new game to play while driving across the Bay Bridge the other day. When you get to the suspension part on the upper deck, start inhaling when the cables are at their lowest point. Keep inhaling, or holding your breath if you run out of room, until the tower. Then exhale all the way to the lowest point of the cable and repeat. Pretend you're riding the cable up and down like a roller coaster. Careful while driving though; don't want anyone passing out or getting "distracted". If you do it with whippets, you'd best be a passenger. I find that a minimum speed of 60 mph works best, although you can double breathe if traffic is slow or your lung capacity demands. Of course, the breathing is just a starting point. You'll want to incorporate any Pilates or kegels you know into it too, and music of course.  

First Night

Couldn't resist posting just one more, just to show off the hair. 

Vernal Dusk Hospital Air

Her eyes were wide open just a few minutes after that; you see us here still in the labor & delivery room. I maintained composure throughout the labor until a few minutes after the darling arrived, at which point I proceeded to sit down in a chair and cry & shake in the corner, in a very masculine way of course, felt excellent beyond compare. Kudos to those Berkeley nurses, and to our terrific doula, a birth team that could have placed at the Olympics, not to mention the very astute doctor. Maria, who was beyond helpful through the whole experience, brought the boy by to see his new sister just a couple hours after the bambina's exposure to the vernal dusk hospital air. He remarked "She's so cute. She's so tiny. She has a booger in her nose". Then he threw a fit and had to removed from the hospital. The funny thing was, that later that night the sweet infant had trouble nursing because of what the nurse termed a booger in her nose. Pretty good diagnosis for a two-year old. In-laws from San Diego have already come and gone. All quiet in the magic homestead. Can't seem to bring myself to snip of my bracelet from the hospital that says "FATHER".  

Momma with daughter, moments after delivery. This girl is off the hook in every sense of the word. Got to the hospital at midnight Wednesday night, delivered at 19:01 Thursday night. Went home Saturday afternoon. Heart filled with wonder and gratitude, positive visions of the future and meadows filled with life.  

Had a glorius morning of rainbows a couple Thursdays ago. The arch shown here graces one of my San Francisco facilities, out near Butchertown. Reminds me of a rocket trajectory. Too much Gravity's Rainbow perhaps. I finished the book less than a year ago, and just last night I noticed that, for a certain length of time, I felt trapped in a scene of the book, although no particular scene, and at that moment I also realized that I've been trapped in many such similar scenes from that book over the last few weeks. Insidious and male-centric book, delicious with a metallic aftertaste that resembles the path of a rocket. The concept that shines through most is the innate yearning for the heart of the mountain and the impenetrable security hidden there, there being Nordhausen in the book. Soon after finishing the book I found out that Jed had relatives imprisoned there at Nordhausen. Hard to wrench the humor out of that one. I miss the rain already. Expecting a new baby any hour now has our whole household going nuttyhead. In myriad ways this spring has seemed the first of my life, fragrant and spanking new, like it will be for the daughter. The wife showed me a healthy looking garter snake cooling in the garage last weekend; a very good red-striped omen.