Sweetness into Rant

This is where I have to pull myself up short, and take a look at where I'm going with this current run of musings on a particularly sweet season. This line of reflection can very quickly descend into toxic nostalgia. I've got a full pitcher of it sitting here, just waiting for me to pour another glass half empty.

What happened then, was that I needed to run away from an ugly environment, and I did. Let me repeat that for emphasis: I ran away. And it was not the first time that I had done so, nor would it be the last time that I would do it. It's not one of those admissions that you wear on your sleeve. It's not a point of pride.

Escape. That's what it is. And there's a huge part of me that wants to do it again right now. But it's not just me. I talk to several casual friends on a fairly regular basis. Even the couple of folks who are committed obamanaifs, are just spooked. And truth to tell, even the LA Times isn't exactly gushing praise on teh prez. I was not a huge Clinton supporter, even though I voted for the guy both times. I remember being irritated by the impeachment business. The guy was a sleaze. It's not surprising that the kind of men who are compelled to seek great power and influence, probably have voracious, predatory sexual instincts. I don't think the nation as a whole was well served by the whole business. Call me a prude, but maybe we were better off in the days when such stuff was swept discretely under the media rugs, to allow the commander in chief to do his job. Gore was just too creepy for words. I was used to voting Dem, but somehow, when I got into the booth that year I just couldn't do it for Gore. So I jumped ship from the donks, and voted a straight Republican ticket.

Especially, I voted for Bush. I don't want to belabor the point, but consider the media's eight years of vitriolic, unapologetic hostility to George Bush. First off was the 'stolen election' meme, which lasted from the election all the way to early September. The man was allowed decent media treatment for a short while after 9/11. But when the bombing of Afghanistan made it clear that this Texan was going to- you know- actually hit back, the gloves came off, and the media plied their trade like so many wormtongues, poo flingers, and slander masters, and in more than one case, had no problem with an outright lie or two, letting a secret slip, or publishing a little open propaganda for the enemy. Nothing in any of this has changed, incidentally.

And the same hate machine is now in reverse operational mode gushing out oceans of froth to try and cover up for the fact the teh prez we got now is a lightweight; He ain't up for the job; he's in over his head. We elected a charming fellow with all the intellectual depth, and about two thirds the wisdom of Sean Penn, or Cher. If America was a high school, we just elected to send the Homecoming Queen to represent us in the academic decathlon. I didn't like the thought of losing the election, and seeing the Dems take over. But I figured the country would keep chugging along regardless. I didn't think much of Obama, but I actually hoped that he'd get in there and do a good job. I figured he'd be a guy I'd disagree with a lot. I didn't figure he'd be a guy so shallow, so naive, so incompetent, and apparently thin skinned, petty, and vain. Oh, and rather lazy. In short, This guy is worse than a sharp Democrat in power. Obama is like some dude who went up a few times in his buddy's Cessna, and once even got to try the controls! Well, the dude has just been jumped into the pilot's seat of a 747 in bad weather, with a whole nation of scared, and/or pissed off people on board.
What the hell are all these buttons switches, and dials, and stuff? What's that thing do?
Oh, yeah, he was just too busy this last few weeks to select a flight crew... oops. So his reaction is to get on the PA, and announce how he's never done this before, he can't figure out how half the shit works, he doesn't have a crew, but he'll get the hang of it sooner or later, and in the meantime, he's totally stressed out, so Stop listening to Rush Limbaugh, and don't panic.

Besides there's three or four hours worth of fuel left. In the meantime, Fight 93 is available on your screens for a slight fee.

So, like a lot of people I just sorta want to run for it, or something. But now there just ain't no place to run.

Oh- a note to potential trolls, should you show up. Don't bother. I'll just nuke the post, and supress your freedom of speech. Because I can.

JWM

Turning the Dials Back Down to Four

Somehow, yesterday's random ramblings ended up on a pleasant memory from the spring of 1982. Something about girls and cars, and- you know- stuff. That's a long time ago. If You threw that incident into a novel, the teacher would take pains to explain to the class how the author was foreshadowing the good times that the season would bring, and then go on to explain the Freudian symbolism of the boobs...

You can go ape shit crazy trying to divine symbolic meanings out of an amusing event. All the more so if the event is a work of fiction, part of a made up world completely contrived by the author of a story. Or, if it's just a bullshit line invented by some poor soul to try and impress everyone with all the cool shit that never happened to him.

But that event wasn't something written into a story. Nor was it BS. It happened. In real life. No (deliberate) embellishment in the re-telling for dramatic effect. A random event. Nothing more than a coincidence that I just happened to be right there, right then. So, if there was, indeed an author to that particular flash of insight, it wasn't me. Sometimes, however, there is evidence of a Greater Hand...

Anyway. It was a good start for the season that would strike a chord so sweet and clear that the resonance of it still defines spring for me twenty seven years later.

I guess, like I said yesterday, that a great deal of it had to do the abruptness, and stark contrast of the change. It was a blessing to escape from the grit, shit, and drama of living in Hollywood. It was liberating to not have to meet obligations, or listen to the horror stories that were the stock in trade of meetings in the city. That year too, the coastal eddy settled in forever. I remember weeks on end of the monotonous pewter sky, and bland temperatures. It was like turning all the dials back down to four, after having them pegged on eleven. It was healing to resume a quiet routine set to the rhythms of tide, wind and swell.

Mornings I'd drive the '68 Falcon down to Huntington cliffs. There was a spot where a couple of parking meters were missing, but even if those were taken it was still just a quarter for an hour, so a dollar would take care of most surf sessions. The Cliffs was the ass end of Huntington. There were oil wells pumping away on the bluff, and a mask of shattered concrete, and broken chunks of highway covered the bluff face to protect the oil wells from erosion. There wasn't much beach to speak of. At high tide, the shore break washed right into the surfboard eating concrete teeth of the lower bluff. But there were consistent sand bars off shore that produced a decent wave from any swell that happened to be running, and the wave field was scattered and random enough that you could manage to get rides no matter how crowded the place got. And while it was never a great surf spot, it always had something worth paddling out for. It was funky, ugly, and my favorite place. The old pintail that my brother gave me was really more of a big wave board; it was stiff, and hard to maneuver on small mushy days, but it suited the way I liked to surf. I had never been into carve, and slash surfing. I always tried to pick the longest cleanest line, and execute the ride as smoothly as possible- that casual 'waiting for a bus' kind of style. It didn't take long before I regained, and then exceeded the proficiency I'd had five years earlier. I was confident, strong, and deft in the water.

Other days I'd take the cruiser out for all day bike rides. Sometimes I'd travel out Carbon Canyon Road, which started just east of Brea, and twisted some twenty miles through the Chino hills. Back in high school, when I first had a drivers license, Carbon Canyon was an empty road to nowhere. Perfect for a solo slow cruise on a sunny day with quart of beer, and a fat joint of cheap Mexican weed. Better yet if you were ditching school for it. To get out there you had to head out of La Habra on Imperial Highway, and drive east just past Brea. Once you got past the dump, Carbon Canyon road snaked up the into the Chino hills in sweeping 45 mph curves before making a steep straight plunge of a half mile or so into the canyon itself. It was a workout on the heavy five speed, but the old style Schwinn cantilever frame, and balloon tire bike handles remarkably well at speed. Those old clunkers were stable at over forty miles an hour. Going down hill through the canyon was huge fun, but the long straight drop was actually kind of scary. Right at the bottom and a few turns down was La Vida Hot springs, and a couple miles past La Vida , a small community of very old houses called Sleepy Hollow nestled into the canyon. La Vida had been a popular resort back in the 1920's. The hotel was closed, and I never did see the actual hot spring, but the restaurant drew new owners every few years. It was a great location for a secret spot restaurant- a place just loaded with atmosphere, a word of mouth treasure of an eatery... but no one could pull it off. Last I was out there in the early nineties, it was a biker bar. I don't know if it's even still there now. Carbon Canyon Road ended up in Chino. Chino was important for dairy farms, and a state prison. Now it's a huge city. Much of Carbon Canyon was incorporated into Chino hills State park, but the rest of it was incorporated by land developers.

But in that spring of '82 a ride down Carbon Canyon Road was still a day of long immersion into the soft lit, hazy spring colors, drinking in the soft resonance of that season with the weedy sweet perfume of the unspoiled hills.

JWM

Changing Shifts of Season

I like being able to get out of bed before the sun comes up. Like this morning. That's easy to do when daylight savings first kicks in in the early weeks of spring, and it's easy again for a while in the last few weeks of daylight savings before real time returns in the fall.

And the spring pattern weather is returning, stretching out into those gray, cold mornings, when the sun doesn't get out of bed until early afternoon. Today it cleared by about eleven, and the temperature hit the low sixties. I know if you're in Idaho, Washington, Missouri, Connecticut, or even Arizona, a high in the mid sixties sounds damn near tropical. For me it's uncomfortably cool, but I doubt I'll win much sympathy if I gripe about it.

Fall- even the tepid excuse we have for Autumn out here, was my favorite season for a long time, but now I enjoy the spring here more. Spring in Southern California is an acquired taste. Like turnips, or brussels sprouts. Most years give you several long spells of coastal eddy weather that comes and goes from April to early July. Silver days. You wake up, and it's overcast, and somewhere in the mid sixties to the low seventies. It just stays like that for eight weeks. No wind . No shadows. No change in temperature, day or night- not warm enough to be warm, or cool enough to be cold. Maybe the sun breaks through for a couple hours. Maybe not. A lot of people find it boring, and vaguely depressing. I find it soothing while it lasts, because you know the gray blanket that buffers the temperature, and softens the light is going to catch fire and burn into summer sooner or later. And there's no one curmudgeonly enough to not get happy over the first real day of summer. There are days like Christmas, and Easter, that are so deeply saturated with tradition, and ritual that it is impossible to not feel their specialness. In the same way, we all have our personal mythology with its own sacred calendar of significant days:birthdays, anniversaries, and other personal milestone dates, or seasons. I have a pretty fair collection of springs. Some were better than others. But it was 1982 that secured Spring its most favored status among seasons. That was the year I quit the gas company. I've talked about it before. You see, the thing that made it so good, was the crap that preceded it. By the fall of '81 I was stuck with a job I hated. My personal life was - well, let's just say that I was diligently working away at my qualifications for a seat in an Alcoholics' Anonymous meeting.

Not long after, the other folks in AA welcomed me as card carrying member of the club. I jumped from a job I hated to a job I hated worse. I ended up living and working in Hollywood. I was going to AA meetings at night in Hollywood. You can imagine. I quit the job in February of '82, but hung out in the city for several weeks before leaving. I hadn't been surfing since sometime late in'79. So one day, I decided to ditch off the meetings, screw the little obligations, and go to the beach. My surfboard had been lent and lost. So I grabbed the old boogie board, and my ratty wetsuit, and went out to Zuma beach. There wasn't much swell, and it was windblown, choppy, and cold. I put on the churchills, and backed into the shorebreak. The water was colder than shit. I ducked under a wash, and kicked out to where the sloppy little waves were breaking. Damn, I was out of shape. But I flippered into a little swell, flexed the soft foam board into the wave face, and managed two seconds worth of slide across a greenwater slope before ducking into the churn, and letting the wash carry me to shore. That was all it took.

AA gets to be like a family. I had some friends from the program by then: a regular group who used to get together for coffee after meetings, and talk into the small hours. I had a coffee commitment, and a birthday cake coming up for a year with no booze or dope.

I didn't so much as extend a phone call to anyone.

I didn't bother to get the birthday cake.

I didn't tell anyone goodbye. I just left.

I didn't have much stuff at all. It was a furnished apartment that I'd taken over from my brother. I filled up my car,unloaded it in Whittier, and my dad, and I drove out the next morning to pick up the rest of the stuff. The last possession I had left there was my bike, a five speed Schwinn Spitfire Deluxe. It was about nine thirty in the morning when my dad took off, and I pointed the beach cruiser east on Melrose avenue, and headed out of there. It was a thirty some mile ride from Hollywood to Whittier, and the parts that weren't going through bad neighborhoods, were the parts that were going through dangerous neighborhoods. But nothing bad happened. The scenery just changed gradually in that soft silver lit spring morning. Block by block, mile after mile I poked along through the run down, industrial, and poverty zone corners of LA on that heavy old cruiser. Early in the afternoon I swung onto Washington Boulevard, and a few miles later I was in town, finally riding along on familiar routes. It felt good. I heard quick repeated blasts of a car horn behind and to my left. I looked up as a carload of high school aged girls slowed beside me in the right lane. One of the girls leaned out the window, pulled up her top and flashed the finest set of young breasts that nature ever created. They sped off laughing hysterically before I could even exhale.

When I pulled up to my mom's house, my brother had been there. He left me his old 7'5" Russel pintail, but the fin box was broken. No biggie. I could glass in the fin and the thing would work just fine.

JWM

Sunday Morning Blues

The sitemeter stands at 994, which means that the world famous blog will probably break the 1000 visitor mark sometime today. I still haven't quite figured out the difference between a visit and a page view, or what it is that site meter actually meters, but getting that 1000th hit should be a milestone, and a cause to celebrate. Maybe I'll eat some ice cream, or take a couple of xanax.

Or something.

I recognize most of the hits from my friends in the coonosphere. Some of the hits come from odd Yahoo or Google searches. Somebody got here a couple weeks ago after searching for cartoon dogs. I hope they weren't too disappointed. The ones that are intriguing are the visits from Europe, or Asia. But those are mostly the result of the toy robot article and pictures, and the links from Robot-Japan, or Toybox DX. I doubt that many folks in Europe or Asia are much concerned with my post-middle aged musings, or observations of life here in Southern California in the final days of the world as we know it.

As I mentioned yesterday I am getting hugely burned out on the news. My contempt for the newspapers, cable networks, and television in general has accelerated into a gut churn of pure loathing. If I hear one more scare story about the environment, or the economy, I'm going to go out and go into massive debt for the sake of hunting down, and killing some endangered creature, and burning it in an SUV so I can help melt the north pole. And the whole of the internet has become a lot like a visit to rotten .com. No I don't want to see a picture of some guy who got his head caught in a punch press, *click* Yaaarrrggghhh, why did I click that? Oh, wait- a guy who couldn't outrun a freight train on his mountain bike, *click*, urp. The latest story on teh prez *click*, oh, holy shit... I should have stayed with rotten .com.

And even when I go over to Walt's place, or Mushroom's, or Gagdad's to get my metaphysical fix, and tune in the faith aerials, I come away vaguely disappointed. Not by the material, but by my static filled reception. Something in me wants a light to go on, but nothing seems to hit the switch. And something in me wants to craft some poignant, moving piece that will hit someone right where they live, and they'll be so moved that they link it, and it'll get picked up by somewhere else, and somewhere else, and then... What? I don't even know.

I went down to the corner a couple of times yesterday. That's a hit, or miss proposition for entertainment. There are some people there whom I really enjoy seeing. And some for whom I can just about rise to indifference. And of course there are a few that I just can't fucking stand. I ran into one of the later group, as luck would have it- a pugnatious little jerk, some years older than myself, whose idea of a conversation consists of baiting people into arguments, and then getting hysterical defending his point. Normally I don't even talk to him. But I had heard that he'd been quite ill- heart trouble and stuff, and when I saw him, he looked as if he'd been quite ill. I said, "Hello", and broke my usual rule to ask how he'd been. I swear it didn't take the guy five minutes before he started slinging ridiculous assertions about the war, and all wars, and how Bush was the idiot who got us into all this mess...

I just left.

Went back home, and clicked on the internet. Another story about teh prez. And so it goes.

JWM

Slow and easy on Saturday.

Catalina Island

It's an insanely nice day here in the Southland- warm, sunny, clear enough to see the ocean, and Catalina island from the nearby hills. Considering the ocean is about twenty miles from here, and the island is another twentysix more, it's not bad at all. There are rare and exceptionally clear days when you can see out past Catalina to San Nicholas island as well. It isn't that good today. So why am I in here typing instead of going out there to enjoy the weather? Sloth mostly. I got no ambition to speak of, and I already went for coffee.

And to tell you the truth, It would be better for me to get away from the internet for a while. I enjoy doing this- sitting here sharing an observation, or just shootin' the shit about things. This stuff is fun. And it's good to be exercising the creative energies. But every time I venture over to American Thinker, Gateway Pundit, or BabbaZee's place, I just get that gutdrop. It's just too tempting to start feeding on the toxic smorgasbord of depressing, and scary stories out there. Sometimes you get that urgent: I GOTTA DO SOMETHING ABOUT THIS! feeling, but -you know- just what is it you figure you should do? I know! A passionate editorial complete with lots of links to demonstrate that teh prez is a facile idiot, who should be tarred and feathered, and run out of DC on a rail. That'll do it! Sure. Or pick any part of the mass insanity that's going on out there; focus on it; make it a cause; fight it...

Look, I don't mean to get cynical. Nor do I mean to demean, mock, or denigrate those who are putting forth an effort to 'stop the madness'.

But you have to divide this stuff into the categories of: Things You Can Change, and Things You Can Not change, and if you can keep your wits when those about you, are stampeding into the The Things You Cannot Change side of the line. Then you're a better man than I am Gunga Din.

I just gotta give current events a rest.

And at this moment I don't even intend to get into serious events of any sort, but I will share this from American Digest: World Builder. You have to scroll down a little. Very strange. Haunting. (to me)Discomforting.

Beautiful. And that's what I have for now.

JWM