the last day of February! we are almost in daylight savings! while I feel tired and beat from the events of the past week (a fever dream if there ever was one), I also feel renewed and hopeful after a day of rest and indulgence (and a 3 hour FaceTime with Catherine.) I was feeling mildly conflicted about when/how to go to LA, but all of that dissipated today, and I feel faith that it will all be okay, which is something I don't feel that often. to be alone with myself is a particular joy, and one that I think I only really came to appreciate over covid. how crazy to think that I will soon get the vaccine, an end to such an arduous but rich chapter of my life. (and thankfully devoid of any major loss...) the to-do list does not ever get any shorter, but I think it is okay to leave without tying up all the loose ends, because there will always be ends that are loose and things to do. and besides, I will need things to occupy myself with when I find myself back in San Francisco... without anything to do I would feel very strange indeed. I showed my mom a pic of skinny legend in my bed and she thought it was hilarious..
yesterday I felt alien and frustrated with myself for not being confident, secure, or gutsy... it didn't help that I was drunk and have a bit of a death drive... the alcohol helps me overcome my visceral sense of cringe, but I wish I didn't have to be drunk to say what I feel... the remnants of private shame run deep, and it is a lifelong process to unlearn the feeling of being undesirable, or undeserving of desire. there's no use fretting about the past, though, and I feel confident that the sun will shine in my back door someday...
an end to a long and fun feast(!)
RIP lawrence ferlinghetti (1919-2021)
nextdoor and patch promote fear / like people who believe in hell
Central ca coast - shark capital of the world
1997 killer whale vs gw shark @ farallons
examples of animals being evil or cruel
Egg war (1863) / murre eggs (how to buy)
lot going on these days - quick recap:
"Indulging in American Basque Cuisine" — Smithsonian Mag
"The Essential Guide to Eating California" – Eater
"The Guide to California’s Cowboy Country" – Eater
"The Central Valley Is the Heart and Soul of California" – Eater
"The Little Pepper That Could" – Eater
yesterday was so lit, I went to go run errands (im on this diy eat local buy local thing lately) and i couldn't believe how much just a simple lifestyle change like that affects my quality of life. I had to return a ups package and turns out you can just drop it off at the local cornerstore (sick). then I had to get some sculpy to make magnets so I went to the craft store and met a cool emo looking girl who was a writer. then I got some currants and dip from Haight St market, and when I reached the corner of haight and Ashbury the sounds of morning dew floated through the air, jerry Garcia's croons, from the loudspeaker of the resident hippies... I walked to ritual to get some chemex filters and two Cool Guys were working there listening to some emo, they introduced me to my new fav band, Mom Jeans. these Cool Guys were cool and I want to be their friend, I guess I'll have to go back to ritual soon. maybe I should call ritual and ask Nico? Miko? to make me a playlist. and I got some exercise walking up and down the hills. to think, I could have sat on my ass and ordered magnets, groceries, and chemex filters on my dang computer... what a waste! the joy sucked out of life! a return to the old days is in order...
a quiet still day in cloudy San Francisco/
I spent last weekend in Calistoga with my mom/ first, wine tasting at Brian Arden, where I met a girl (Megan) who lived in Santa Rosa and knew all about wine chemistry/ I thought, that's so cool, I wish I lived somewhere random with a random job like that/ it says it all that I consider that a random life path and not just as normal as mine/ we went to chateau Montelena after, which won the 1976 judgment of Paris/ i like to ask a lot of questions everywhere because everyone knows so many things/ I decided I don't like Malbec, Im big on chardonnay/ a cab is an acquired taste/ I wore a bright yellow dress that I kept with the firm idea that I could wear it wine tasting, and I wore it and everyone on the street complimented me on it, maybe because it felt like the first day of summer/ I went in a cool gallery with some multimedia art of [insert guys name later], I met the guy and the gallery woman said 'you are so beautiful... you have such expressive eyes' and it felt so sweet and strange/ we had dinner at a restaurant opened by fancy restauranteurs, of zazie and meadowood and Michael mina, and our vegetarian (but not gf) meal tasted homegrown and delicious, aside a glass of brut rose (as one does in Calistoga)/ the art and science of wine fascinated me, what a ritual, what a storied craft, what an intricate and special thing, but also how lucrative/ they have 3 wine majors at cal poly, Megan said/ the Chardonnay grapes at Brian Arden were burnt to a crisp by the fires, but the winemaker thought it was poetic so he left them there/ what I thought was poetic was how their winery was saved by private firefighters hired by the neighboring four seasons/ god bless the four seasons, we laughed/ I tried a grape and it was sweet but ashy, and maybe carried some fungus/ I took a long bath in the whirlpool jacuzzi at our inn to be extra indulgent, and to distract from some latent stress about my love life/ in the morning I dressed cool and casual in Vince for a walk around town, some lackluster coffee from Calistoga roastery, a brilliant antique shop further down from the main drag where I bought all sorts of things, some smart black cowboy boots, kitchenware, a gift for Ella/ then lunch at solbar, a swanky stylish poolside spot at the auberge, where we got green drinks (a cucumber vodka for me and a 2 spicy jalapeño margs for my mom) alongside some snacks, a caviar topped French onion dip/ then off we went, tipsy, to the petrified forest, a place that blew my mind, and my mom's/ petrified trees from the Pliocene, 3.4 myo, scattered around this beautiful ancient forest/ as the story goes, mt. st Helena is the remains of what used to be an active volcano, then the volcano exploded and the ash buried the entire forest/ the ash, rich with silica deposits, seeped into these trees' cells, then hardened into rock when water seeped through it, preserving these old oaks, redwoods, just as they would have looked back then/ the bit then is that these rock-hard logs were fully undiscovered until 1870, when an eccentric homesteader named Charles Evans was digging around on his property and hit one, and he was like 'wtf is this?'/ fun fact, he was homies w Robert Louis Stevenson, who apparently visited and wrote about it in "The Silverado Squatters"/ and actually, there's a piece of this petrified forest in Central Park/ there's so many pieces of rock, I'm kind of like why can't I just buy one to take home at the gift shop?/ it was crazy to walk around this place and feel these rocks that were just so goddamn old.... see the golden light seeping in through the trees and think about how this landscape probably didn't look too dissimilar then, 3.4 million years ago... time continues forever backward, it's impossible to conceive for me even 100, 200 years ago, let alone 3.4 million... it made my head spin, and I felt so small and inconsequential, in a relieving way, and for the first time I felt secure in my death, I had been feeling recently that human experience is so vast, and we only experience such a tiny sliver of it, we being the wfh yups that stroll through the haight, we saw some homeless merrymakers the other day walking back from Cole valley and thought about their interiority, their community, their whole life, and it is so, so different from ours, and they would probably find ours so strange and unfamiliar too.../ and now I stood before these trees, mouth agape, and realized humans themselves are such a tiny sliver of life, life has been thriving in all its forms for far before and certainly far beyond humans, and as my life is a sliver of humanity, humanity itself is a sliver of life, and when I die I will melt into the universe, gladly and rightly so/ these trees and plants amazed me, they've really been doing it for so long and have it all figured out, and we humans are so foolish, so young, we think we know it all, when really they know so much more than we ever will... 3.4 million years old... can you believe that?/ I felt humbled and harmonious.../
yesterday we drove to 2727 California in Berkeley so I could pickup some food from Salimatu Amabebe, a Nigerian-American artist/chef who makes delicious food and interviews local Black people on the subject of convenience/ she was so kind and pretty and comfortable, and the food (a cured olive loaf, an oatmeal chocolate chunk cookie, some naija spice milk tea) was SO good and gf/vegan/("good for you")/ I was thrilled, of course, especially because I wanted to grab another tea for zach, and she gave it to us for FREE/ I thought that was so special, and I really felt like she got it, or understood, or was on the same vibe/ you share, give, spread, to the degree that you are able/ we surprised Jon and darren by showing up unannounced at their oakland home, what were we calling it again? ah yes, 739, or perhaps 44th St/ darren was on his way to lab but postponed so we could enjoy some fresh art toast in the kitchen and FaceTime Catherine for a bit/ we trekked to Albany to grab some banh mi with darren, he led the way and we drove closely behind him, no phone zone, only following and occasionally trying to kiss his bumper/ we sat in a patch of grass at the median and munched on some Vietnamese, saw a man take an absurd u-turn over median (pretty epic) then darren dipped out/ zach and I went to the most beautiful plant store we happened to park next to, I got a large pot for my Norfolk pine which hasn't been doing too hot lately and zach got some Yerba buena and cilantro seeds/ I love my honeycomb pot, it feels beautiful and special/ they had a little airstream trailer serving coffee so I grabbed a little 8oz and we found our way back to 44th street without any directions, only using the landmarks we'd noticed along the way as our hints, our guiding angels (some kindred painted cars, 'breads from India')/ we got to theirs and it was locked, so we went around back and made Jon open the patio door for us/ he was still busy with work so we sat for about 20 seconds, then decided to make ourselves useful and tidy up, and then eventually clean/ we tidied the foyer area, Darren's bedroom, then the kitchen, cleaning, scrubbing, organizing, (making Darren's bed)/ we enjoyed the work, it gave us something to do, and felt so happy to see their kitchen clean (they live in filth because they are so busy doing Important Science)/ then we left and drove to union square, so I could return my Saks package/ (I love going to Saks, those department stores feel so opulent and grand, so honestly and indulgently consumerist, I feel like a dazzled carrie walking through the golden halls, everything feels pristine and nice)/ I gazed up at the dewey monument and felt like I was in 1906, in the aftermath of the earthquake, walking down Post and feeling my world shaken, (sometimes I feel like I have too active of an imagination)/ but that dewey monument is really something, it really spoke to me right then amidst the cheery evening lights of union square, I felt like I was teleporting to another dimension, a bygone era, a time where everything in San Francisco was so totally different (except, of course, the dewey monument)/ (who even was dewey anyway? a question for another time)/ how many generations have walked along union square and gazed upon this monument like me? how different were their lives from mine?
wow, I feel so conflicted now/ i just read a beautiful building, the Fitzhugh building, was built on union square in 1922/ but then was demolished in 1979 by Saks to build their department store/ this makes my heart break:
:(
yesterday night Jon and darren and Daniel came over for some general tomfoolery, we ordered pizza and a delicious baked pasta from Giorgio's (est. 1972, by mr. Giorgio Anastasio of ischia, but sadly not owned by him anymore, but by some close family friends) and drank squirt tequila and talked about sex/ then we went on a nightwalk to the conservatory/ we were sleepy early, around 12:30am, Jon went home and darren stayed over, in the morning we took him to karma and then z and I went to the farmers market and got today we will go over later to 44th St. for a bbq...
z and I j watched tales from the green valley ... it's SO GOOD!!!! I'm super high (I worm like notes from class...but interesting notes from the things I want to learn, not lectures...its like online notebook.... so fun....) anyway, now we're really into feasting — on the hunt for pagan holidays to celebrate... how sick to just eat and be drunk and hangout for 12 days? I want to do that... with everyone I love... also apparently people taste like pork... fucked up we kill the pig when we taste like them!!! we stick the guts into a slimy intestine sac... like a horror movie...!
i feel so sad today... i don't even know where to start with it... it probably doesn't help that im hungover from yesterday night drinking with jeffrey in the dogpatch, after drinking some wine at crane cove with our old college counselor. we had red wine, then moscow mules, then champagne and more red wine, then pizza, then chainsmoked by the harbor until we were sober enough to drive...today i feel deadened, sad that the guy i was talking to is not coming back, or at least not coming back in any discernible time frame and so is as good as dead to me... or something. my therapist told me i was avoiding the problem, and so i should just ask him when (if) he's coming back, and it sounded reasonable to me in the moment, and so i did... and the answer really was probably the worst thing i could have heard, not a no, not a yes, and when, but a sometime... at some point... maybe... and to me that killed it all, killed me, the hope buried in an emoji sad face that could not possibly convey the complexity of my feeling, the intensity of disappointment... in some way it's probably my fault for wearing my heart on my sleeve like this, but also the irony isn't lost on me, that in the beginning i was so skeptical, put up so many walls, convinced myself that it was a fraudulent feeling, a fraudulent connection, totally unreal... and slowly i disarmed myself and actually let myself feel like something might happen, that i was maybe not so perpetually loveless as i had felt for so long, that there was hope for me... and for what? for this... for the pain of romance, of love, of human connection, the poison... now i'm back to square one, i guess, i find myself thinking about my exes and missing them, wanting them to want to be my friend, at the very least, wanting them to want me in their life, i wonder if they ever think about me, clearly not enough to remember my birthday or maintain a conversation...how foolish of me to think those connections weren't tenuous, that they would always be so strong...but they are still so strong for me... they were so special, and now i realize, so rare, i have found myself recently grieving for their loss, a hobby that lends itself easily to obsession, an obsession that lends itself easily to armchair postulation about my inability to find love again... in some ways it helped me get over my last ex to feel so deeply and strongly about someone, to be moved by someone in that way, to feel some hope about the future...now the hope is dead and gone, i'm tired of being disappointed and in any case it's not even a choice i'm making, i feel today marks some sort of quiet end to something, an end that i guess was a long time coming... in some ways this feels like a new dawn, i can do what i want, perhaps i'll take a trip to the mountains, or to los angeles, and shake things up a bit... what i wanted is not what's happening though, obviously, and i think today was a process of making my peace with it, and 'coming to' a little bit... my therapist was probably right that i was dealing with the situation with avoidance, i guess maybe i was scared of the confirmed indefinite future and would rather float in the safety of hypotheticals, of the unconfirmed future... zach says he's just waiting till the end of covid, because there's nothing to be done till then, and i think he's right... dating apps are a scourge upon the earth, i think it makes me actively sad to be on them, both that they totally have no bearing on real life, who you'd actually be interested in, and that the interface is draining and unpleasant, and also that they remind me of my abnormality, and my inability to settle, or find a kindred spirit... i've been relating so profoundly to alanis lately, i cannot believe she started writing jagged little pill when she was 19... "all i really want" is my bible these days... sometimes an angst can feel indulgent, when it is light and maybe not connected to anything in particular, but the particulars make it painful, disappointing, all-consuming... i feel a deep loss today, which is so much more than this guy not coming back, seems like it resurfaced so many other feelings, and obviously i am prone to dramatizing everything and reading cosmic lessons in what someone less emotional might consider a fluke or a mundane happenstance... in any case, this is who i am, and who i feel like i am right now is someone quite glum, someone who will have difficulty finding love, in all its beauty and splendor, for likely the rest of my life, someone who is destined for peculiarity and perhaps a nontraditional romantic life, but when i do find love, maybe in 1 year, maybe in 5, maybe in 30, i hope it will be everything i remember... gleaming, like twilight, and so rich and potent that it makes my heart swell..."a soul to dig the hole much deeper..."
a fleeting memory of riding in a convertible to Miami Beach in the spring of 2019... hungover in the back seat with an orange drink in a styrofoam cup, whipping in the warm breeze, riding on an overpass looking at the glimmering water aside us... everything so carefree, so nice...whose convertible was that anyway...
we are all really beat, when you think about it... diversions take the form of conversations, about anything and nothing... committed to knowledge and hedonism... learning the best ways of doing everything... seeking wisdom in everything... in coffee... in sound systems... in history... in science... in art... a lifelong search for ? ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
my ex didn't text me on my birthday... I remember Catherine and I biking down the Main Street in Santa Barbara under the dark shadow of night, buzzing by bustling restaurants as if in a dream, golden glowing lights against blue, a town alive and unencumbered, what global pandemic... floating in the water at Avila like jetsam, bobbing with our boogie boards in the heat of the California sun... joyous and young... right now, I grieve my own death, preemptive tears of melancholy at my pending demise... how strange to sense one's own mortality, how outside of time... how terrifying it is to ponder... thinking about Robert Hass' "faint music"...
"First an ego, and then pain, and then the singing..."
yo la tengo in the background echoing my pensive mood... I sit and talk with z in the evenings over tea about nothing in particular, the world goes by... the egg in the boiling water as I watch the clock, 5 minutes, 4, 3, 2, 1... tomorrow, a new day, like Minecraft, we sleep brief and then wake to the morning sun, we putter around then hurry back to bed, before the creepers get us... again the next day, again the next day, and so on til we die... maybe it makes sense to treat life as a sort of game, but the consequences seem far too serious and grave... my ex didn't wish me a happy birthday, but I heard he isn't going to jail anymore, and for that I am relieved.
reading about michael mcclure... some things that stuck:
"All gratuitous choices, such as taking peyote, are a risk for that is part of life. The risk [is] that of giving up warm preconceptions for a cold unknown where all must be made anew.”
“I know that young people are striving for change, but it seems like they don’t know how to rebel or what to rebel against. The ones I know don’t have the fire in them that makes them dislike things. Everyone is amenable,” McClure says. “We’re living in an electronic world of communications that ontologically doesn’t exist, where we’re all one-dimensional. They’d be happier if they found their inner life, but they can’t. This is a flashing world of passion, which can be a beautiful thing and a terrible one.”
pretty funny video of mcclure reading poetry to lions at sf zoo
i read this article about alex nieto this morning, which brought me to tears
also reading about goya's disasters of war, otto dix's der krieg, guernica, paul nash's We Are Making a New World...reminds me of morning dew...
i like this article on the beats from wapo...
some poems i liked from my reading session today:
"America" by Allen Ginsberg ("America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?")
"2 for theodore roethke" by Michael McClure ("This copse is earth's cockade, this corpse my drum")
"A Terror is More Certain . . ." by Bob Kaufman
laughing remembering how bad Howl (2010) was and how geeked James Franco probably was to portray Allen Ginsberg considering how much he conceives of himself as a "Creative" "Intellectual" — I was so high watching it and couldn't tell if it was terrible, stilted, and senseless because of the weed or because it was just bad, but then I realized it was just bad.
also an interesting paris review article on lucien carr (who briefly was at uchi)'s murder
everyone is dead or dying...i don't know how best to support people but i guess i am trying...i don't know that i have any special insight, i am just fumbling through life like the rest of us...
i'm fully album mode now for casual listening, only song mode for djing or when trying to find songs for a set...song mode is way too stressful for just hanging out with friends...can't believe it took me this long to realize that...
sleepy today...😴 wondering if i should try to date or if it would just make me sad...coasting on a vibe right now that feels pretty good, but i wish people wouldn't say 'i'm sorry' when i tell them i haven't had sex in [redacted]
the time goes by.... my birthday was nice! we celebrated this weekend... i had my company retreat and a lot of work last week, but our last thing was a wine tasting, which got me drunk at 6pm on Friday, waiting for darren and jon to show up...they came over and we smoked and drank i guess, we made pasta (i went un-gluten-free this weekend), ate leftover cake, then went for a walk to the conservatory of flowers, then to the haight, and i was so crossed i thought i was tripping...we got back and ordered a pizza, it was lit, then we were so tired, we went to sleep
then saturday we woke up, made some coffee, sat outside to drink it and watch the soccer team...then jon went for a run, darren and i went to go pick up my cake from schuberts, zach was gardening, then jon came back and they dug some stuff outside and darren and i watched while we waited for jeffrey, jeff got there ready to rage so we had a bunch of champagne then made our way to sausalito to get some seafood, the weather was beautiful if a little cold and outdoor dining just opened a couple days ago, which was perfect... we got a dungeness crab and it was fun and sort of ritual to eat it, it felt nice to do this thing i'd never done before, something very san francisco and that could only be done right now, during dungeness season! then we drove back through san francisco and went to buena vista cafe to pick up some to-go irish coffees, and we sat by the maritime museum and drank them to warm ourselves, watching the unreal sunset over the bay...then we headed home, drank more champagne, smoked a cigarette, smoked some weed probably? jeffrey ordered some caviar but then they sent all the blini, creme fraiche, chives without the caviar... lol. so we ate that then somehow were hungry again, we (mostly jeffrey, bless him) roasted a bunch of veggies in my cast iron, purple cauliflower and romanesco and parsnips... we sat on the floor and ate and drank then someone presented me with a soup bowl full of mushroom tea and i guess we were doing that, so i drank it with my hands as did everyone else but jon and then we were tripping! we laid around and listened to the grateful dead, we cuddled and hung out for a bit, then zach and darren went on a walk, jeff and i sat around and then they came back and we dj'ed a little and cut my princess cake, kept drinking, hit the bong, the cake was so good, we chatted for a bit then zach went to bed, darren was falling asleep, jon and i drove to ocean beach around 6am and walked along the water... then came back and crashed, the next morning jeffrey dipped early to drive back to coop, we leisurely woke up, jon left, darren me and zach went to the farmers market to grab some produce and then got overpriced as always but always good brunch at eats, it was a crisp and beautiful sunday, as they always are here in san francisco, we came back home and hit the bong and chatted for a bit, then darren headed home, zach went outside to garden and i sat outside on the balcony looking at the gray ocean and dj'ing some chill/ambient electronica out over the soccer field and the patio... good vibes all around... then i made some roasted cauliflower for dinner, we were so tired, i just came back to my room and downloaded a bunch of music to start my library for djing...it's sick to have this new board, i'm so geeked on it...
anyway today i'm reading about shrimp boy and peter chong, j tony serra and alicia lo, mayflower and club touche, leland yee and the golden dragon massacre... crazy stuff going down here in san francisco, as always...
so larger than life... so fucking epic lol
