Tuesday, April 25, 2017

Her Name Is Nona

























So now all I write in is juxtaposition.  It's what I see in.

In a state in which only one arm works, everything is compared to what happened before it.  Before and after.  Night and day, it's polarizing, north and south, good and bad.  Yesterday, the office was a veritable hell with the high distorted accompaniment; a mess of doodle papers, a stolen dog and stolen sunscreen. A sunburnt wasted hick he was with an amp and a guitar and a microphone strapped to his face; the embodiment of aggravation.  Today was a quiet clean latin man with leopard pants and a Stratocaster, and he kept his mic in his pocket, and he played near-perfect renditions of Purple Rain and Stairway to Heaven and Hallelujah among many others.  His is a voice to melt pain, if you can understand that.  Remember, my arm's in a sling.

The day before I crashed, was one of those entirely wonderful days.  It was a day in which I did everything that I'd like to do in a day; a solid day, a productive day. I went surfing, I went to work, I rode my motorcycle to get some ramen, and then I drank tequila with two girls at an old late night Mexican joint.  The next day in the morning--first thing--I hit gravel in a turn on Tuna Canyon and dislocated my shoulder.

[Nona is the first of the three fates in Roman mythology; she's the one that spins the thread of human destiny.]

Monday, January 9, 2017

Blue Is The Warmest Color

I'm sure someone's said that before, or it's some quote or movie title or something of the like, but nonetheless it's true.  Do you know why?

I do.

I'm not sure where to start though.  When I worked at the surf shop we sold sunglasses that were called happy lenses--no, let's start in the present.

I work two jobs now; at a bakery in the morning and a hotel at night.  It's some miserable existence I'm sure, but wouldn't you know, I'm rather bemused by it.  I find myself laughing constantly in my own delirium.  Maybe it's the lack of sleep, mais je ne sais pas.

I have a secret weapon as it were, one that is really of any real substance in a city like LA.  It needs to be almost always sunny, and on my break in the morning, already on my second meal for the day, I turn my face to the sun and close my eyes.  There's different shades of darkness with your eyes closed, and in the sun it's the brightest.  Blind man's light, and when I open my eyes, everything's blue, the whites are blue, the grays are blue, the red are blue, the yellows too.


That's when I smile and get giddy, and I remember those times at the surf shop, selling happy lenses.  They had a blue tint to them in the sun.  In the literature, the company told us seeing that tint blue releases melatonin in our brains, which is an antioxidant and our first defense against oxidative stress, whatever that is.  It makes you happy.  But you don't need sunglasses or a pill or prescription to get it, you don't need a doctor to figure it out.  It's right there free for the taking, you just need to close your eyes and stand in the warm sun.  There's precious few things that star won't cure.  If you're not happy, it's not some grand mystery.  Ask any sad plant, she'll tell you. If I were to worship anything it would be the sun.

I'm a buffoon, I know.  It's much too easy for me to be happy these days.

Wednesday, November 23, 2016

Blackhat
























I've been thinking a lot lately of how it all went wrong.  There was a time when we had it so good.

I ask the question: "What could I have done?  What should I have done?  When did I misstep?"

The first time she left me, the cold shock and all the lights went out, and I didn't know who I was for a while.  I gave my things away.  I wanted to die.  The ease of it fascinated me, the simplicity, the finality; just a little more pressure of the thin wedge, a little more, a little more, but I never did; just a little more weight on the pedal, faster, faster, don't turn the wheel, but I always turned.

It's not so much that I wanted to die really, dying's frightful.  It's the thought that creeps up out of the shadows in the dark corners between cries and when you squint your eyes.  It's the not knowing what comes next, like "don't loose her because then what's next," what happens?  It's numbness, what a rotting feeling.  Numbing is a terrible pain.  It's your legs falling asleep and bringing with them everything.  It's not that I wanted to die really, I just didn't want to live.  I didn't feel anything, no attachment to the living, so I gave what I had away; my precious works, my treasured chair.  I'd mucked it all up.

Not this time.  Realizations come quicker and stick longer when you learn from the past, and I try not to forget things, hence the writing.  I'm sensitive to patterns forming and repetition.  I see all the things clearly now that I hadn't before, back when I was blinded by the thought of loosing her.  And to think, even now, I still want to be with her.  Even after the concert, I still wanted to be with her.  After all she'd been through, all the damage of her life, all the late nights, the bending over backward, the thought of being by her side truly warms my heart.  I felt like someone needed me.  I felt like I belonged.  I belonged to someone.  I wish she'd understand that it's not about the sex.

She said she didn't want to be with anyone for a while, and I told her I understood.  She told me I was very important in her life, she told me she makes bad decisions with men when I'm not around, and I'd have to agree, and I told her I could be her friend until she was ready.  I asked her to do one thing: never to friend-zone me.  I told her I wasn't going to be around if she met someone new.  She got upset and said it was shitty that I would only be her friend if she belonged to me and no one else.  I said of course because to me it was so simple.  I already belonged to her. I had naught to say on the matter, that's just the way it was.  If she suddenly gave herself to someone else, it would be shitty I feel.  Let's just say she has that tendency.  She's never satisfied.  Something must always be wrong.  She's impatient and self-certain to let's say an obvious fault.  I know that now.  I realized it tonight at the hotel, in the midst of seventy-two hour work week, when I finished my nightly movie, Michael Mann's Blackhat.  She had gone to see it with her rich older ex while we were together.  She'd said it was no good and they'd walked out in the middle and went to a bar for drinks.  It's actually a pretty wild movie once you hit the turn.  Michael Mann films are always slow to start, that's his style.  Anyone who enjoys Michael Mann movies will tell you.  He mixes pace for contrast.  I know this, and I also know what friends are and what they aren't.  I have my friends, both guys and girls (more girls actually), and I know that her and I will never be friends.  We never have.  We're (I'm) too romantic tragically.

Friends don't belong to one another.  Friends don't go grocery shopping together each week.  Friends don't come over after bad dreams and hold each other like lovers do.  After I let her borrow my car because she'd crashed hers, she said we were never going to be together.  She'd said that before.  So I took back my things, my lovely chair and my flowers and my frames and my sailboat and Paris, and I said goodbye.  I'm miserable again, but there is no numbness now.  It's a feeling instead of not being good enough, and nothing lights a fire in the soul like not being good enough.  Nothing makes the horses push harder.

That was my last time backing out of that driveway I think.  It's time to move on.

Friday, September 9, 2016

Femmes: Les Chats Noirs
























Fleur looked at me with devilish eyes; devilishly blue and British.  I've always loved English girls.  "You know," she said, "the whole thing with black cats, it's not true.  They're not bad luck or anything like that.  Not if you just see one.  If it crosses your path, maybe.  But just seeing one?  No, that's actually good luck."

I smile. "Is it now?"

"Well, there's different beliefs on the matter, all kinds.  Some believe that if a black cat crosses your path left to right it's actually a good omen, that only if it crosses right to left it's a bad omen.  Or wait. It might be the other way around-"

"You sure know a lot about black cats."

"I love black cats."

"More than other cats?"

"Black cats are the best cats. They're beautiful.  They've just got this stigma about them.  It's a shame."

"Maybe it's part of the beauty."

"They just get a bad wrap is all.  But they're not bad, I don't believe that."

"I guess they are whatever you want to believe them to be. Make no mistake though, they're certainly that."  Olivia looks at me as I speak, cocking her head.  "Anything's only as true as you believe it to be.  And the exact opposite can be equally true to me, if that's what I believe.  It's just a matter of belief darling," and I put out my cigarette.

*****

Whoa, hold on.  Where am I?  We're not there yet.  Let's back up here.

*****

I had a layover in Moscow, two hours.  Now I know that sounds a little out of the way to get to Paris from LA trust me, I know.  When you look at a flat map, it sounds stupid, I know.  I'm not an idiot.  Why fly all the way over and up to Moscow just to get to Paris?  Well for one, it costs about five-hundred dollars less.  For two--and this is important--when I followed the flight path between movies on the plane (I watched Sicario and that god-awful Batman Vs. Superman), I realized something: this world is not a flat map.  We live on a sphere, a globe really. There's an infinite curve to it's surface, and this can be complicating to some.  Things aren't always straightforward on a curved surface.  There's a third axis in play.  That can fuck with belief systems.

It's actually quite a quick flight, LAX to Moscow.  About the same as it is to Iceland, ten hours, although you probably wouldn't believe it looking at a flat map.  Look at a globe, and you'll see what I mean.  You don't always have to go half-way around the world to get from LA to Paris.  Sometimes you can just go over the top.  It's tricky though, it fucks with you right by the north pole.  You cross a lot of time zones in a very short distance up there.  Like I said, it fucks with you; makes you think crazy things.

Before the flight, I was planning to kill myself somewhere in Europe, not sure where.  Maybe Spain, I thought.  Maybe jump off a pretty bridge in a land I'd never seen before in the south.  I'd found a little less than a dozen of them, pretty bridges, and I slowly started culling the herd in the terminal by a combination of height and how pretty the surrounds were.  I certainly didn't want a mediocre last curtain.

Yeah sure, maybe everything was ash in my life at that point, and I was just going through the paces, and I had no will to live, and the whole world felt like a yolk on my shoulders, but for Christ's sake I still had my dignity.  If I was going to turn out the lights you better believe I was going to be looking at something beautiful.

I should warn you: this isn't going to be a pick-me-up.

*****

This Paris.  This feels like some star-crossed love affair, like I'm Gregory Peck and she's Audrey Hepburn.  I'd watched Roman Holiday with Claire, right there in the middle of everything falling apart, before she'd broken my heart, but maybe not before I'd broken hers.  Such a wretched time to be watching a love story true, but it was something to hold on to.  Love stories can be miracle workers sometimes.  Sometimes, not always.  And usually with those individuals unlike myself who aren't absolutely miserable timing-wise.


I remember this.  Waiting for a girl I've never met on a Paris street in the 14th.  I've done this before.  I'm seasoned.  Still, the building code doesn't work so I have to wait outside until a lovely Japanese girl who doesn't speak much English arrives and lets me in.  Still, I have no idea where her room is.  My phone's on airplane mode, it always is when I travel, and I don't have any wifi connection.  I do have Elena's phone number though, written down right next to her address.  Lot a good it does me.  I haven't seen an operating pay-phone in years.  Lucky for me, the Japanese girl who doesn't speak much English walks through the lobby again eventually, this time on her way out.  On her way out at 12:30 in the morning.  It's Paris after all.

I say, "Excusez-moi, je peux utiliser votre telephone? S'il vous plait?"  I hope that works, and I smile.  A smile usually helps more than my butchered French.  She looks me up and down for a moment, she sees my desperation, and wholesomely obliges.

Elena picks up on the second ring, "Oui?"

"Elena! It's Brian!" I say.

"Brian! Yes, are you here?"

"I'm downstairs.  I didn't know what room was yours."

"Oh, no! I hope you weren't waiting to long.  I'll come down."

"No, not long at all." I smile again at the Japanese girl who doesn't speak much English.  I give her back her phone, "Merci beaucoup."


[stop]


All the while I'm following Miss Elena, I'm thinking about, hm, she's probably fucking that other guy right now.  Right this moment, in his Audi coupe somewhere in LA.  And this girl I've never met is leading me to her flat to sleep; a small studio it turns out, a box with a bed, a bathroom, a terraced window and a kitchen and a table.

I haven't had proper sex in months, maybe since Claire.



Saturday, August 6, 2016

Femmes: The Flamethrower (Alice) Semioli

She has an old gold digital watch and hair dyed blonde some months ago, and a wonderfully patterned rouge scarf, it's Paris after all. Denim jacket and doe eyes when I catch them. Her full lips parted for just a little teeth to show. She's beautiful. We're alone now in a familiar room, familiar now like an old dream on repeat, an old scene on repeat with different actors, similar do-overs, and a tap in her foot as she thinks of some new thing to feverishly write in her notes, we're racing now it seems. She's Italian.

"To the end of a brief episode
make it one for my baby 
and one more for the road."


Friday, August 5, 2016

Femmes: More Black Cat

Well at least the last scene, which I guess can always be a wonderful place to start. It ends in death of course, just like all things: two strangers set at a cafe, one man, one woman at St. Michel, two stupid tourists maybe. They see a black cat. Our guy sees the black cat, he's at the curb with his love. The black cat draws him across the street, into the path of a bus.

The same crossing where his love saved an old woman from the path of a bus a year before.

The cat is let out by the landlord. The door is not locked because the cat broke something as a patron comes in with her bottle of Chambord from the store downstairs. The patron is never satisfied. She dies a slow death of poison in a bare room trying to get to her treasure of jewels with her black cat looking on. It's the last thing she sees.

The last thing our guy sees is his love. He's finished the unfinished script with the other girl, he's fulfilled the passion with his love, he's complete.

The patron has amassed all these jewels for sale, but hasn't sold them, she's even priced them and imagined the holiday with the money. She loves money. She breathes it in when she sells something.



*******


OPEN on a BLACK CAT from a flat looking down from a terrace window, looking down at a coffee shop where GUY and GIRL work.

CUT to GUY and GIRL working on a script. It's ambiguous, not related at all, but the GUY suggests that a character kill himself in the final scene. And the cat looks on.

GIRL: "What are you doing tonight?"
GUY: "I'm gonna see about a girl."

LOVE, she's going to see love not for dinner, but for a drink. There's a back and forth of wild eccentric friends, one, well, you'll know.

GUY: "I love the fat pigeons here, the elegant ones.

CUT to an old French lady, PATRON, alone in an auction house, for a live auction, an estate sale. The auctioneer is a little confused, or maybe pissed off. PATRON buys what she pleases on the cheap and thanks the auctioneer.
<<OR>>
PATRON and a senile old woman are to lunch at an old lavish country home. PATRON has a notebook and she's interviewing the old lady. PATRON checks her watch, they're talking about Weimaraners for a periodical. And then the senile old lady's head lolls back. PATRON, much quicker than she looks, gets up, shuffles quickly into the house. Two Weimaraners come up and she gives them treats and goes through the house emptying jewelry boxes. There's no one else in the house.

[SENILE had kept calling to her husband for tea. They talked of her children. They visited every other weak and called regularly.]

PATRON doesn't take all the pieces, just the ones she wants, which is most of them, maybe half. She goes to the kitchen and procures a tea-bag with a gloved hand from her attache and puts it in a tea-tin with an evil smile and an air of devilish pride.

CUT to CU of SENILE. She comes to in a drowsy fluster and looks around. Across the table PATRON is scribbling feverishly in her notebook with her eyes down. Without looking up she says something to the effect of: "That just about covers it. I'll mail you a copy of the article okay?" SENILE walks PATRON to the door. PATRON thanks her and her husband for the tea. She shuts the door, calls out to her husband who isn't there obviously. There're pictures of him in the hallway.

SENILE: "She was nice."

CUT to PATRON at a train station in Marseille, on the platform. We see the train is going to Paris. With a rush the train is off.

CUT to bus rushing by to reveal GUY on curb. He checks his watch, and crossed the street, turns a corner to a corner cafe, and a young blonde with daring eyes takes notice as he walks towards her. They talk about, you know, each other, if she's working at the coffee shop tomorrow.

LOVE: "Why? Will you come by?"
GUY: "Maybe to flirt with you some more."

She's English. They talk about spritzers and the difference between Aperol and Campari, if there even is one. The bartender's a dick. After a spritzer, they go somewhere else for dinner, maybe talk about belief systems and politics, right and wrong.

GIRL: "Have you ever stolen anything?"



*******


More than anything, questions ask people. The more people a question asks, the more interesting they are. And remember everyone farts.


*******


CUT to PATRON in a familiar-looking apartment, that of the cat. She's reading a newspaper, the obituaries, and she farts.


*******


They put menus behind the crosswalks in Paris.


"How about here, how about here and here. Here. Here."
     - The Avid Father Photographer

Thursday, August 4, 2016

Femmes: About the Black Cat

There's a curious duality on the plane with me back to Paris in the form of two Russian twin flight attendants; deportation. Something strange is happening to me. I started and shuttered a book in one day, all in Russia, Russian author too, and for the first time ever I might say, but then again I'd never been deported either. It could possibly be the subtle insanity of fluorescent that hasn't escaped me since Paris, since going under at Temple. I was sitting with Olivia and her friend Nate and an acting acupuncturist not long before that, and like the color sinking with the lines into a Polaroid before my eyes, I see the image now crystallize.

Black Cat, second story window.

Olivia jumped with delight as I pointed it out, all the while that slow still sinking feeling flooding over me. I thought it'd merely be the layover.

I think it was Elizabeth of Lili and the Dirty Moccasins who said she once considered the thought that we could be cursed; said she thought she was at one time.

It's important though to know that for her it was a passing phase. She didn't believe it anymore and maybe because of that, the lack of a strange maybe misguided belief, because of that she was better off.

Maybe she was. Maybe it's safer to think that, but really a rejection of one belief only leads inevitably to another; in this case one of coincidence; a belief in randomness after all is still a belief. It's to believe that the things in our lives are not connected. And then that's how is has to be. A belief above all things no matter what it's in, is absolute. It has to be, otherwise you don't really believe it, do you.

For example, I haven't abandoned my cursed nature, not yet. I believe in the connection of things, in their meanings, in the meanings of everything, everything that holds in my mind. True, sometimes I choose to ignore it (which specifically isn't to say that some things don't mean anything), that simply means to me that I was too lazy to grasp the meaning. Do you know what I mean? It makes sense to me. I'm a very lazy person when I choose to be.

And yet, I was just deported back to Paris. There's a reason for that. I cut my finger with my old razor today, and there's a little red scar on it, my finger, the middle right, and it looks like a tear-drop or a rain-drop or maybe an eye.

I wonder what it means.