Very Most Good

Keep It Together

2012-02-08T22:51:00.002-05:00

You can do this watching Grey's Anatomy.

You can do this piece by piece.

You can do this with stress, with the space between lines, with a ponytail.

You can do it with crystal blue eyes that go for miles.

With a British accent that goes for miles.

Everything can go for miles. Nobody gets to choose.

It can be your second wind or your third career.

Be kind. People will keep on dying.

That thing you read? It's happening hundreds and hundreds of times every week.

Mattresses are wearing unevenly all across America.

People are sleeping on floors all over the world.

I used to love sleeping on couches and some day I'll love it again.

Would "There Will Be Bleeding" be an even better movie?

There will be Thursday, first, and I'm hoping the big me shows up.

Location:Washington Blvd,Baltimore,United States

RiverLINE, Exit to Wallenberg Ave

2012-02-07T15:57:00.003-05:00

I can't thank you enough for the uneventful ride.

And the weather out... perfect.

Thanks for the nice walk earlier, the woods were nice and the air was so fresh.

I thought I was gonna get mud all over my shoes, but I didn't.

Adrenaline's a funny thing.

Lots of Giants jerseys. And striped shirts. And striped hats.

Who has time for striped hats?

Who has time to see the doctor?

I better get on top of this throat thing.

Imagine all the geniuses gone.

Imagine everything, all the time, at every moment.

And that photon again and that neutrino and the beginning and the end.

I didn't sleep well.

Waiting happens one moment at a time.

Location:S Clinton Ave,Trenton,United States

When It's Saturday and Tomorrow Is Sunday

2012-02-04T07:24:00.001-05:00

When it's Saturday and tomorrow is Sunday

When it is Saturday and coffee is on

When it is Saturday and all eyes are on Indianapolis

When it is Saturday and the sky is looking pewter and feeling good about the day ahead

When the whole world thinks one thing and so you can plan on something other

When you feel like a nut and at the times when you don't

Winter will never be Spring, but it'll always be more than you think

This is February, this is Saturday, this is philosophy of a kind, I guess

This is predictable if you've spent time around here

And my phone will tell me the weather to expect in Baltimore and DC and Princeton and Wellsboro and Paris and Marfa

Hit the road, hit the street, rent a van, rent storage space, make a dining room, make a good time, eat some lunch it is Saturday.

Location:Penn St,Baltimore,United States

Shit's done gone crazy.

2012-02-02T00:50:00.001-05:00

So When It Happened

2012-01-29T02:42:00.002-05:00

And so there were popcorn.

The heavens opened and we heard it -- the sound of water rushing forth, brass, and clocks.

Meanwhile in England, they were choosing to read at Oxford, the do battle at Birmingham, to wallow in Wales.

Who put the hail in this day?

Who put the heather in the picture?

It's late and everyone is sleeping.

Beds. Couches. Glasses on tables and faces.

It will be new.

It will be tears of joy and days of awe.

It will be searching.

It will be hovercars for Christmas.

Seriously, digestion is a real bitch sometimes.

Enough already.

Location:Dover St,Baltimore,United States

Large Motor Skills Involve the Use of Long Limbs

2012-01-27T16:40:00.002-05:00

Watch your head.

Break your neck.

Dress up.

Deep sea cove.

The seat of hatred, the county seat, the seaside by the seashore by the seat of your pants.

Drinks with a minister, stories revolving around the trials and tribulations of a crack addicted prostitute (in 2012!), multiple personalities, transubstantiation, more Thomas Aquinas, search, and eventually bad behavior.

Search and bad behavior.

Search and those that love them.

Search and a bag of chips.

Search and its discontents.

Search and ever after.

Search and decant.

Devalue. Devour. Defend. Denote.

The Rivers of North Africa salute you, sir.

The Lakes of the Great North are pleased to make your acquaintance, ma'am.

Location:Battery Ave,Baltimore,United States

The Trial, The Fourth

2012-01-23T23:09:00.002-05:00

Night time, right time.

Day time, day time.

I have it, for you.

I have it, I have it.

Stepping backward in the summertime.

Stepping backward carefully with flowers and weeds and garden snakes.

Location:W Pratt St,Baltimore,United States

My Lord, By and By

2012-01-22T10:38:00.003-05:00

How many Sundays do you read about some new something with abstracted and mysterious military influences.

David Bowie, you didn't start this.

Prada, you didn't start this.

Or the physical phenom in high school.

Or the prodigal son.

I'm going to take this coffee and this delicious muffin and go elsewhere.

It's not like I woke up on the wrong side of the bed, entirely.

My military influences are neither abstracted nor enigmatic:

South Weymouth Naval Airbase
The other day I was telling someone how you didn't hear / notice the hospital helicopters that constantly flew over our place -- except for the way they momentarily scrambled the TV reception. But then Margaret was, No you can totally hear them. And I was, Oh yeah, I grew up on a Naval Airbase.

Or that I was applying to the Academies -- I'll tell you those stories sometime -- or that I had a ROTC scholarship that I was fortunate enough to turn it down even if things were a little touch-and-go feeling at times. I'm all for ROTC, it just wouldn't have been right for me.

And then there were the Naval Academy guys in the peacoats when a friend's family took me to the Navy Academy's wrestling tournament. I'm pretty sure that'll be in my list of "best gateway drugs" at my life's-end award gala.

I was really into WWII as a kid -- though it never strayed to obsession and I can only share the most useless trivia about that war and the Great War.

Do you know why we call them tanks?

Time travel.
Everything all at once, forever.

Sundays have been so many things.

"Dimanche" really does sound amazing in the string of French days.

Lundi, mardi, mecredi, vendredi, samedi, dimanche.

I can't remember Friday, and I'm sure I can't spell, but it still works -- you can feel it.

I'm feeling better.

Look at this amazing traffic circle.

Take a deep breath and edge your way to the right.

Keep on edging and it's all gonna be ok.

No the "right" part isn't symbolic -- I still believe in taxes.

I'm still an unrepentant pinko.

Did I tell you about that time I peed next to Bobby McNamara? Wicked, huh?

Let's get something done.

Location:Portland St,Baltimore,United States

Explaining Phone Booths to a Nine Year-Old

2012-01-21T07:50:00.001-05:00

That is how it was.

Now snow. Now Baltimore. Now early morning.

Now ten fingers. Now coffee. Now laundry heading into the dryer.

It'll be jeans today and boots and a sweatshirt.

I need some new shoes that'll be black and nice and last a long time.

I usually wear my black shoes until they blow out, scramble to make it through the day or the week with superglue, then get another pair.

Over the last 15 years I've accumulated three great pairs of black shoes that just need a little cobbling.

Walk down the "just need a little cobbling" path a little while -- metaphors and trite and whatever.

This is what happens when you have ten fingers again.

My across-the-street neighbor growing up back in Massachusetts. He only had two thumbs -- one on each hand -- no other fingers. I seem to remember that he'd lost them at work, that he was a mechanic of some kind.

Margaret asked how he got by -- financially. Me-at-ten hadn't really thought about that. Me-at-thirty-eight assumed he must get some kind of disability checks and is going to ask my mom.

I remember him working on his car out front.

I remember a little bit about how he'd hold things.

I remember him smoking, but I don't think that's real.

Just everyone smoked back then and t-shirts were tighter and the kinds of haircuts people from military families had or the people that lived near them and cans of Schlitz and cars the way they were and smaller houses and a basketball hoop out front.

Remember the gyms that had rubberized floors? Who thought that was a good idea?

I think my neighbors name was Jim and he never sweated whether Pluto was a planet or not.

Meanwhile my other neighbor, who may have been named Jim, too, seems to have started the astrophysics program at the Air Force Academy.

Quite a neighborhood, huh? Two people named Jim!

(That one's for you Adam.)

We are great great great great apes.
There are many many many many planets.

I'm going to put some laundry in the dryer and figure out what the hell I'm going to really sweat from here.

Total aside and in a totally different reality, I want to paint a picture of an iris and write under it, "This is not a rhizome" -- but I don't know if I should write that in French, instead. I was thinking about this while driving on 95 in the early early morning. I didn't write it down -- so I'm glad I remembered it.

Good luck other-reality-me.

Sweat what you need to.

Fuck a buncha everything else.

As an Iron Stomach; As You Were

2012-01-14T11:03:00.001-05:00

There is a man

There is a sky

There is packaging

There is daytime

There are cards

There is confusion

There are stairs and

There is a ladder

There is a sky

There is food

There is drink

There is Saturday

There is a cat

There is all livestock
There is all livestock

Location:Dover St,Baltimore,United States

Bulls, bow-cows; the string and the day; ways of eating; utility, aperture, ever after; and you

2012-01-12T22:48:00.001-05:00

Location:Dover St,Baltimore,United States

Boots!

2012-01-11T22:18:00.001-05:00

Location:Dover St,Baltimore,United States

I Could Use a Stronger Line

2012-01-07T13:39:00.003-05:00

A more confidant line

A starter sketch with blue lines

Scratches and one over two

Birds, bushes, tomorrow a day away, parsley

Parsley to cook with and cooks who garnish

Unseasonal weather

Unnatural unions

Artificial flavors

Myriad sweeteners are what they want

Location:Southwater Point Dr,Annapolis,United States

That Feelings

2011-12-31T04:35:00.001-05:00

(Thanks Bob Massey and Joe Gross for this picture -- and thanks to the universe that made it possible.)

I don't use my fingers for this anymore, really.

But it gets to be that hour and

In Florida a Marine was helping his girlfriend sell a necklace on Craigslist and ended up shot, plugging the wounds with his fingers to save his own life.

And there is a volcano making a new island in the Red Sea.

And celebrities are making all kinds of horrible fashion choices.

This is how the year is going out, people, and it is arbitrary.

2012 will not be the Year of the Arbitrary so help me God we have an election people.

The complete list of film sub-genres.
War on general purpose computing.
India's way
The Saturday Profile
Polarized Iraq
Neil himself saying things that involve Neil

Some things have existed for all time and other things haven't.

Let 2012 be the Year of Perspectives

Let 2012 be the Year of Perspective, too

Let 2012 be 366 days long and full of good sleep and good food

At least enough food, eaten at regular intervals

No binge-ing of any kind (how do you really spell that?)

I'm here, you're not
And then you're here and I'm not and that's the magic you see when you look real closely

There is a point when I'm here and you're here, but I think 2012 will be the Year of We Don't Care About These Little Things

There are still littler things that are important and there are very big things that are important and I'm sorry that this will be a year of no easy rules of thumb, no sunscreen, no chicken soup, none of the things from kindergarten or rainbows or short simple phrases

It's gonna be one of those years and I'm going to get some new boots for it.

This Is a Fog Area and They Mean It

2011-12-28T17:08:00.003-05:00

Clouds that weigh tons

Clouds that look like cloud sausages

The nation speaks, builds signs, buys gas

And the clouds move on from east to west

They drift north

They get caught in jet streams

Planes crisscross our path at unexpected intervals

They are massive

They restore the principles that made us the greatest nation on Earth

Spending ticks up and interest rates hold steady

We go from town to town in search of music or magic or scenic overlooks

We go from town to town in search of gas and lodging

We go from town to town in search of food while more law enforcemet officials are being shot at and shot

They won't take my blood anymore

That's stupid

Here are my receipts. Here's my taxable income. Make me something special.

Will it smell like strawberries?

Will there be flowers?

Fireworks?

Here comes 2012, doing its best to make everyone proud

Location:West Haven,United States

You're Next

2011-12-26T12:55:00.002-05:00

Your next meal

Hour after excess excess makes

You're next up for judgement

There is nothing great about this room save the space between people

We stand at the center of a problem and see problems as far as the eye can see

Look in your heart, what do you see?

Look in the garage, what do you see?

Look in the fridge, there's a leftover ham -- we'll all eat well tonight.

Tucked in later

Tuckered

Thank yous everywhere

Goodbyes

Another year of this and we're heading south

It's a good plan

Location:Bebe Ct,Centreville,United States

Keep It Set

2011-12-18T08:08:00.002-05:00

Go and go and go and go.

Go and go and go.

Hello lovely facility and and and.

+++

How far forward?

Subway stops, lunch, walking, purchases and happiness and gifts, more subway stops, dropping things off, more subways stops, dinner, movie, taxi, sleeping, showering.

I hear you both.

We're in the middle of it.

Someone invents slogans.

Someone decorates trees.

Someone else burns trees.

Still others burn trees to celebrate success at war, or birth, or co-opting the local take on victory for a birth a thousand miles, a thousand years, and many months away.

That's something else.

+++

They caught up with the tree.

They dreamed the most boring dreams because they lived in the future.

But the fish never slept and were visited with waking dreams of glory and maple-flavored cotton candy.

Castles made of gorilla glass; gorillas made one piece at a time; peace on Earth and underwater prismatic rain forests.

You couldn't see your hand two feet in front of your face and then you can see for miles.

They were wonderful fish living in wonderful times.

Location:Starr St,,United States

Thumb-typing Your Way to Healthy Eyes

2011-12-16T16:25:00.002-05:00

Who's your mastery?

What's your last, best damage? Or chainsaw? Or spoon?

How are you doing over there with your evolving sense of self?

I'm me.

And then I'm me. And so on.

I have all these great pictures to stitch together into fantastic panoramas and domestic oddities but it keeps crashing when I go to save them.

I should update the OS on this thing, I'm just afraid of whatever time-consuming hiccup I'll hit.

It's all about time and then I'm me again -- but not all over.

I need to be doing this more often.

I have a backlog.

I need to tell you about the songs Sweatpants once covered.

I need to tell you about iPhone voice control and how tools train us even while we train them and how learning's always a two-way street.

I need to tell you about how male spiders are just the way female spiders talk to one another over generations.

I need to tell you about clothes I'm getting rid of, places I'm going and want to go, this sabbatical I want to plan, my birthday, what my daughter is up to, more San Francisco and some New York.

Being overwhelmed by so many things; sunlight; lunar eclipses; the God particle; the super-organism that once comprised all the life on Earth and how I think it's still that way, really; the speed of light problem.

What do you need?

There's time.

Why don't you come over.

We'll have a drink.

I want to show you all these books I'm gonna read.

Location:Union Dr,College Park,United States

Bears, Safe Houses, How We Pass the Time

2011-12-13T06:34:00.002-05:00

Who's your mastery?

M_'s story of being on vacation with her Aunt, Uncle, and cousin. Getting separated from them. Waiting with a store clerk while they called over the intercom.

Following song lyrics in the booklet while the CD plays.

Usually disappointed when I learn the actual lyrics.

The unlearning

Location:Henry St,Baltimore,United States

Cooperation Is Appreciated and/or Futile

2011-11-28T21:17:00.003-05:00

Doing like 82% of smartphone owners.

That's not so great (sounding).

Other groups all over the news.

On our way to trying to figure out clusters and other economic systems.

Non-contiguous everything.

Massive living things.

Really massive living things.

A sturdy backing still means a lot around here.

A trade and a wrapper and the future of salt.

The future is salt.

The future is nitrogen.

The future is mostly water with some trace elements.

And then the future is clay and ash and lots and lots of hydrogen.

Always lots of hydrogen.

One is the most common random number.

The future-er gets further and further and then farther.

It'll all be neutrinos, we've talked about it before.

But twice they are moving faster than light some say.

Well then some and others others say that begs chicken-egg questions,

But you say they're wrong.

You know ladders go up and ladders go down.

And if you lay a ladder on the ground it'll go north or south or wherever the fuck you want it to go.

Crazy, I know.

Just don't make it hurt.

Everybody.

Slowly now.

Temperate.

Heading to gray and ever after.

Location:W Pratt St,Baltimore,United States

Between Us and First Class, The Thinnest Curtain

2011-11-23T00:08:00.003-05:00

Some songs remain the same.

Maybe four-ish years ago I read a bunch of Cloud Atlas-and-earlier David Mitchell alternating books with Murakami and it's all mixed up in my head.

My favorites moments of each stay separate, the egg glowing in their hands... being able to see stars from the bottom of the well during daytime... the flaying in Manchuria.

I have a thing for flaying in stories and I guess that's probably a little gross.

But who has the goatman and the stories in the RV?

Yakuza plots crossing back and forth.

In Palo Alto I half-fell down some unlit stairs (a small set -- maybe four steps) and caught myself with the back of my hand against a concrete wall leaving three scrapes on my knuckles where I caught myself.

They are well-scabbed and on their way to gone now.

I didn't know the stairs were there.

In Palo Alto I banged my leg against a handle that stuck out of the desk in my room and got a pretty nasty bruise.

That's almost gone now.

Heading into Palo Alto, I got a wicked headache in the descent. A real skull-splitter up front.

My heads feeling good right now.

When we land it'll be Baltimore, middle of the night and I'll be all congested and blowing my nose will make me dizzy and my ears pop.

Happens everytime I fly.

The cocktail is an American invention, I hear. I'm proud of that.

Vodka came to America by way of the Moscow Mule, San Francisco. Try one some time.

If you already have. I know! Crazy.

Soda with bitters at the end of a good vacation.

Sleeping in your own bed at the end of a good vacation.

Just a little more cheese at the end of a good vacation.

Seeing your daughter at the end of a good vacation.

The news is still there, though I hear the Supercommittee is done.

Pepper spray and all kinds of shit.

But I'm not quite back yet.

Gonna head upstate for a little bit.

Location:In the air between SLC and BWI

How It All Happens So Quickly

2011-11-22T09:42:00.002-05:00

We talk about how incentives change behavior.

We talk about being able to tell you speed or location.

We tell you about the invention of the spoon, or oil paint, or the computer and how they changed what we did with our mouths and hands and eyes and stomachs and so on.

This Tuesday in San Francisco is one of those on a much smaller and right here scale.

I had the opportunity to tell you this was written from the Friends of Dorothy Travel Service or the Masonic Center or something less exciting and yet just as less true, Huntington Park. This new app asks me to pick a location from a short list instead of just telling me -- I went with the neighborhood.

It didn't give my hotel as a choice. And it certainly didn't have my room number, or the chair by the window in that room.

It didn't have this place I'm at where I wish I was here a few more days (so much great food to be eaten) even while I'm hoping for no problems as we race eastward shortly to make it to a ceremony at my daughter's school tomorrow.

...and then a sushi boat dinner with her, or adventure sushi, or maybe we can find a boat-based adventure sushi like Margaret and I saw in Chinatown a couple days ago.

Embrace tourism.

Embrassez those you love.

Chinese donuts stuffed with red beans? Embrassez them, too.

Or lotus bean-filled pancakes? Embrassez.

Steep steep hills, up or down, by car or by foot? Embrassez, even if they make you a little queasy.

Rush hour traffic to the Bay Bridge? Fuck it. Embrassez that, too. It's vacation and you have cell phones and they'll understand why you're late and certainly you can find a good radio station in the Bay Area.

If we were trying to make a plane, it'd be a different story.

But now it's almost 7am and this has gone worthless.

You didn't pay for it in any real way, though.

Maybe you'll never be back.

That bruise? It's pretty much gone.

I Could Use Some Telepath Friends

2011-11-20T13:20:00.003-05:00

I just found the oddest bruise on my thigh. It's all mottled... one of those polka-dotted ones -- a base of that aged blood-seep yellow-brown with red-pink dots. Almost like the dots you see on ostrich leather?

It is ostritch leather, right? The dotted kind of leather you see on cowboy boots some times.

I like it when ridiculous and ridiculously good keep switching places. If I catch myself catching it, it always makes me think of electrons not really being in orderly orbits at all.

But hopping back and forth, and really somewhere in between and there's not really a word for it.

But then not that either, and more like clouds of percentages all the way to the edges of the universe.

Some joke about going broad here.

Some joke about pieces of me moving through pieces of you, even if it is years from now.

So many years even that I'm dead and the information churns on.

Like -- and I mean the joke about the pieces, not the dead part -- that Donne poem where his blood mixes with his date's in a flea that's bitten them both, so -- you know -- they might as well fuck.

That John Donne. He had a way with words.

I have a way with memory and reality though -- and it's likely that it wasn't even Donne.

And I know he didn't say "fuck," though that poem is aching for an update.

And that update belongs in a scene in a play that maybe feels a bit like Rent.

And that scene itself, I guess would be echoing that "let's do it for our country" scene from Grease in the bomb shelter.

Was that Grease 2? The movie.

Michelle Pfieffer. Seeing visions of her she-thinks-he's-dead Australian hottie in white leather.

She's dressed as a season. Winter?I can almost see it.

And she's lost the thread of the song all the other girls are singing and she's staring off at the boy who isn't there.

San Francisco surely steeped into me quickly.

Somewhere Kevin Killian is waking up or heading to brunch and he feels a disturbance in the force.

And he's peering into the astral plane (because I'm pretty sure he can do that) and he's telepathing at me, "Jamie you're doing this all wrong."

"I mean, shit, who cares about Michelle Pfieffer."

If I could telepath back at him I'd apologize and then cover my tracks by asking him if Pfeiffer to Cameron Diaz to the Olssen Twins looked like someone working through drafts of something to him.

Does to me.

And then more of the not caring about these starlets.

But more with the telepathing, he could just read that off the surface of my brain.

And if I was lucky he'd drop some suggestions for dim sum places while he was in there.

Telepaths don't need Yelp.

And on good days, their friends don't need it either.

--
Ed note: Did this just come around to being dedicated to Chris Toll? I thought I was heading toward telling you about remembering the first lists I ever wrote... and how I realized this list thing that I talk about sometimes and chide myself for at others goes way farther back than I thought. Further? Farther? I'll write all that this week sometime.

Ed note 2: I haven't thought / read about Killian's work in ages (more than 10 years I bet), and I'm surely going to let a San Francisco bookstore help me with that today. I'm willing published copies of his celebrity plays into existence right now if they don't exist already somewhere. Listen up universe. I'm willing.

Location:Touchard St,San Francisco,United States

The Smells of the Cincinnati Airport

2011-11-16T08:55:00.016-05:00

Haven't done this early-morning-commute-by-air thing in quite a while.

This is the "with rain" version.

Memories of the "with snow" version coming into Lansing the day after a blizzard.

Memories of the "with in the middle of reading a Harry Potter hardcover on the shuttle from terminal to terminal (Dallas?) in a wicked storm" version.

Little bits and pieces that have gotten so bitten and pieced like sugar does in coffee.

I'm not platinum. I'm not gold.

Garlic.

Roaster chicken.
Fresh. The fresh and the green.
Plastic against a heating element.
The guy at the Sunglasses Hut.

I'm heading to San Francisco and I'm surrounded by people heading to San Francisco.

It's Boots Season.

It's You See It Everywhere Season.

Who wouldn't like a little more time? That's no way to separate.

Memories of borders and all the things I want to get done or get going in the next six months.

Visions of the get-got, tasting the get-gotten and how good that'll be.

One, two, three.

Let's do this thing, k?

I Once Tried to Figure Out a Written Version of Crashing the One

2011-11-14T23:25:00.003-05:00

Coughing, sniffling, skating, skimming.

Treading, getting, keeping, holding.

If and or but.

On by with without.

Before I'm through I'll change the size.

So we can all get better.

Get it better.

I mean, read it better.

The tense will change. You'll turn the perspectives round.

I was in a conversation about Rubik's Cubes this weekend hot on the heels of one on the supercommittee.

No shit. And at a birthday party.

I had coffee with milk.

The DMV closed before I could get there, only it was the MVA because this is Maryland.

Later, my team would lose.

Earlier, I don't remember what I was up to.

I didn't sleep well.

My stomachs was aching.

But the weather

It was gorgeous out.

I've got some travel coming.

[UPDATED: Photo updated... It got crunched and became illegible when posted from the phone... New blog app time for my phone?]

Location:Penn St,Baltimore,United States