it's good and it's everywhere

It is hot and it isn't helping my disposition today. I rode my bike to the trader joe's down the street. I continue to try to scrub the Tecate stank out of my carpet (long story). I wilt like a lily. I fall asleep on the carpet after eating a cold soy meat taco. I listen to Neil Young records.

I am eager for all the plans I've made over the past year to set in motion. I registered for my Teaching Assistant orientation today. Yesterday I rode my bike all day. I went to an in-store at Amoeba records and saw the band "No Age" for the first time. They were awesome and make me happy to live in Los Angeles where I will doubtlessly get to see them again. I finally got to riding my bike into Hollywood which wasn't quite as terrifying as I had made it out to be in my head. I can take Venice Blvd. East to Fairfax North which goes all the way up to Sunset without much pain, although it is still far from ideal. Also yesterday I got my hair cut and it looks awesome. After washing it this morning the glory had faded a bit but it was still a really great feeling to like the way it came out.

Foolish vanity, I know but as foolish as it may be I still tie up a great amount of my self-worth in my looks. It's a delicate balance for me at times to not let it become an unhealthy preoccupation. Nothing uncommon, nothing severe but it asserts itself in my life and it might always. Probably some sort of hold-over from teen years spent at 250+ pounds. I've met other gay guys with similar issues. It's funny really, somehow at 5'8" and 145 I can feel like nothing has changed. Anyhow, my point in all of this is that recently I've felt more confident about my looks, mostly due to having an exercise regime involving a portable ballet bar. It's all very absurd. I sound like my mom. Now is the time I give you all an unsolicited detailed description of what I ate during the last 48 hours. Intellectually I can reason all this shit to be totally fucking shallow but somehow the more immediate and visceral me is at the helm.

I've taken a liking to check the west coast visible satellite (see last entry). It's beautiful really it's like an ultrasound over the pacific full of swirls and spots full of meaning and consequence for millions of people. A Grainy greyscale wetdream. Right now a high pressure system retrograded from Arizona to Southern California and has put a damper on my day off. No marine influence. No gray mornings. No sea breezes, just hot. I was planning on going to the beach again earlier this week, waking up at noon and getting to the beach around four lying out on the sand watching the mass of white swallow the shore up. The beach empties out and it's only gulls and tangles of seaweed left on the sand and it is a lot to take in. Although the water is churning with swill and planes buzz overhead you feel for a moment nature reasserting itself and you are aware of your position on the globe. Grounding maybe. This gives me goosebumps. This makes me feel alive for a moment or so.







If ever I feel the need to explain my fascination with the weather it is this (or that last sentence of the last paragraph); The earth and it's natural processes are a constant of our collective existence, it is beautiful and tragic and inspiring all at once. It's temporal variation, over a year, over a season or day form much of our impression about what is true and what is familiar and comforting about our places. The tangibility of everyday life. When I was a ten I had a best friend that would come over whenever it was raining, we would stand out and get soaked, drink tea on the corner out of gaudy christmas mugs and run around the street. Walk to the top of the street where the houses ended and just sit and take in the smell of wet dirt. I have so many memories that are more based in the conditions outside, the exact lighting, humidity and winds than the interpersonal. They alone are enough to bring me to my knees. I guess it's all about paying attention, being present to feel it. That is when I am truly content, everything else is peripheral. It makes me want to sing, to lie still and love everything despite perceived imperfections. It is what makes me dream of my little mini-house off the grid somewhere. It is what gives me hope for the future despite all there is to fret over whether it is corruption of governments and corporations or the collusion of the two, ignorance, hate, fear, greed, or environmental destruction.

I know at this point I sound like i'm posing as some sort of new age guru but this is what really matters to me above all else. I feel as if everyone got to appreciate it just once in their life we would all be better off. As long as the value of all of it goes ignored we will look for it other places. We will shop and buy in excess, hate ourselves and others, kill and destroy biological diversity, ecosystems as well as ourselves to no end and manage to remain miserable throughout the process.

etc/misc.
-I have 9 days until my last day at the cafe.
-I have started seeing someone.
-I have been reading random shit on the internet: Oldest supercentarians, world's tallest women, the ongoing experiment involving emitting radio waves into the ionosphere out into space in hopes of contacting intelligent extraterrestrial life.
-I have rediscovered the joy of bike-riding

Maybe I shouldn't get excited too soon but it seems I was right in my uneducated guesses about the remnants of hurricane Dean... Northeast Pacific Visible Imagery - Satellite Services Division
(note the moisture pluming up from baja). It might just be really muggy for a few days but I don't care it is still good news.

I had no idea that Los Angeles could get occasional tropical cyclones. I just read that one hit in 1939 and killed 40 people in Long Beach. There was another that swept the coast from San Diego to Long Beach in the 1850s. wow. There's a chance that it might rain here next week if we get remnant from some sort of tropical storm, depression, remnant, most-likely not hurricane Dean. The only limiting factor for tropical cyclones in southern california is sea surface temperatures. During El nino events the pacific is a lot warmer. The intensity of these events is expected to increase in magnitude as long as global mean temperatures continue their current rise. In light of current events, (see Brazil below), it wouldn't be out of the question to see a low grade tropical cyclone hit Santa Monica bay during the fall preceding the next el nino event.

I've been fixated on environmental change the past few days. It's a natural fascination but some aspects of being a spectator to it all can still come off as being sadistic.

Some facts:
-Last year was the first year ever that a recorded Hurricane hit Brazil. (Denied by Brazilian gov't but confirmed by remote sensing imagery).
-Coldplay payed for carbon offsets in the form of planted mango trees in India to offset the release of their album and tour last year. Nearly all of the mango trees are now dead because they were not planted in suitable conditions.

Okay, so the whole carbon offset fad is really enraging in general as it seems to function as some sort of justification for the excessively extravagant lifestyles of the rich. Carbon offsetting is used by tons of celebrities so they can appear to be environmentalists. It's an awful band-aid fix. There are a lot of things like this going on right now. Stories touting the salvation of humankind in the form of cane-sugar ethanol are becoming more and more frequent. Although it is true that cane-sugar is superior to corn in terms of , extraction as well as efficiency, what these articles fail to mention is all the problems that would accompany a global economy that relies on sugar cane ethanol for a large portion of its fuel needs. There are two main problems, one, the increased strain on the land for cane-sugar would doubtlessly lead to an accelerated encroachment into the amazon basin. The destruction of more tropical rain forest in the name of minimizing our collective carbon footprint is horribly short-sighted when these same forests function as gigantic carbon sinks. Not to mention the importance the area might hold to the aboriginal groups, flora and fauna that live there. The second major flaw is the impact the shift to cane-sugar ethanol would have on agriculture. A shift of the magnitude proposed by many would send the prices of many crops skyrocketing, heavy government subsidies would serve as partial relief. Maybe Ted Turner and Sheryl Crow could will buy more carbon offsetting credits for their private jet travel and the Amazon basin could be reforested entirely with wilting mango trees. Surely that is the solution. "I am doing my part" they will all say.

-Al Gore and others are still trying to claim that it is possible for industrialized societies to make the fundamental shifts required to become much more sustainable without any economic sacrifice.

This is the one that really bothers me. This will never happen. This is the key to our collective failure globally. Business and profits come first. Property rights = pursuit of happiness. blah blah blah. Corporate greed in the name of personal freedoms while simultaneously our government seizes its opportunity to gut our civil liberties to the point that nearly any form of domestic spying, internment, torture and asset freezing can now be both justifiable as well as legal if invoking concerns relating to "the global war on terrorism".

I am in no way purporting to be perfect by offering up these criticisms but when our most public,"environmental leaders", spew shit like this from there multi-million dollar mouths it makes me frustrated.

It is my day off and I think I might go to the beach. I wish I had a parasol.

Listening to coast to coast and knitting plastic bags together. Yes. This is how I'm spending a Saturday night; conspiracy theories and garbage crafts.


I want to cover my walls in plastic bags like these. I will hang ornaments on them, found objects and more garbage, kind of like a christmas tree. I don't really knit as much as I knot, it started out as knitting. I'm starting to count down the days to when I get to leave my job permanently. I'm considering a trip up to the bay area for a few days, aside from that I need to do more reading. I gave up on reading any more of the fluid dynamics text I've been trudging through for the past month and started on a more basic and classic atmospheric text from the seventies. It's a real page-turner compared to fluid dynamics, (I am going to have to start a year long sequence on the topic in the fall), at least I have a small skeleton of a background on the subject.

I can't help but feeling a little daunted right now for the start of school. I am looking forward to the challenge but at the same time fear coming up short. Typical concerns for someone in my situation, I know this so I am not letting my fears get the best of me.

Speaking of fears:

The banking system, (see above mention of conspiracy theories).

The Atlantic hurricane season is finally picking up.

It is hot in Los Angeles.

Fires burn out of control in Santa Barbara county.

Huge earthquakes happening everywhere, (Peru, Indonesia).

The USGS held a press conference on the south-eastern extent of the San Andreas fault. It is over a hundred years over its periodic event cycle. It could erupt in one giant event.

Southern California is ringed by mountains. Vital infrastructure and fault lines both lie along mountain passes. Beach toxicity events in California are way up. A major seismic event could eventually cut off the aqueduct from the Colorado, power-lines, gas-lines.

I am not stock-piling water and canned goods as of yet, but it is a preoccupation.

Warrant-less wiretaps and asset freezing are no longer considered to be abuses of government power, and are now constitutional.

Greenhouse gas emissions are on track for a record breaking year.

hopes:

Boyfriend or at least a few dates in the near future.

A new better body thanks to my fluidity (portable ballet) bar. My posture is already improving and my back doesn't hurt me anymore.

Building a tiny shack someday, somewhere beautiful.

Living off the grid.

Finishing school and getting a job doing something I love. Researching environmental change, teaching earth-science, government forecasting.

Being out of bank-debt by next month.

Getting my 600 dollars worth of pinky-stitches debt subsidized or written off altogether by the hospital.

Trying Taran-Noah-Smith's (the youngest sibling from "Home Improvement") line of vegan cheese.

Liking Taran-Noah-Smith's (the youngest sibling from "Home Improvement") line of vegan cheese.

That my neighbor will stop blaring music on their stereo soon so I can get some sleep.

I've had a lot of fun the past couple days. I broke my near two month long fast from alcohol went to a few museums. I still haven't been to the MOCA or the museum of Jurassic Technology. Maybe during my next weekend.

I'm not sure if I had mentioned this but I was under the impression that I was 1900 dollars in debt with my bank earlier this week. Luckily for me I failed to realize that it takes a while for my paychecks to clear and I am only 900 in the hole, which is awesome. My goal is to be even by the start of school. I really don't know how realistic that is though considering how meager my tips have been as of late.

Even though they are forecasting mid 90s downtown tomorrow, I still feel as if summer is coming to a close. September inches closer day by day and I lose motivation at work, I shower less, my hair grows longer and sticks more out of the sides of the hat they make me wear. If it were not for starting grad school it wouldn't mean anything here. Hot days are possible pretty much year-round here. The rainy-season is unpredictable in behavior and occurrence, but somehow I still seam to care.

I have nothing else to say

update

I went to San Diego. It wasn't that bad although it had its moments.
I was talking to one of my cousins and was telling them about my job and I was telling them about how I answer the phone. He responded, "whoa that's really gay" and walked away. I did not really take offense, it seems callous to say something like that and assume it to be in good taste. A minor faux-pas in the scheme of things. When all is said in done they appear to be exponentially more functional than my immediate family. They are quite warm and nice people... so much so that I don't care for the most part that they are evangelicals. One of them said he would visit me here sometime. I exchanged emails with my aunt. I probably seem very cold but considering how crazy my parents were acting I am probably seen as a sympathy case. All in all it was not a mistake in going.

I have the day off today and I'm going to be spending it at my cousins' house in suburban San Diego with my parents. It will be a little more social interaction then I've become accustomed to over this summer. I will have a good time despite myself.

It's odd. It really is. I can remember how I felt when I was a kid. I told myself that I would break free the moment I could, and now I ride in the same mini-van on my own accord. I think it is partially due to letting go of the resentment I carried but also partially because I have forgotten so many of the horrible stories. The fights. The constant yelling and spoken and silent threats of violence.

They're old now. They have long drawn out discussions about socialized medicine and labor issues when I need someone to talk to. I feel like a sell-out still. I spoke to my sister last night and she said she thought I was the favorite. Twist the knife. Despite my rampant homosexuality I still can take the blue ribbon. I'm also the youngest and the house had mellowed some by the time I was older. Despite not receiving any assistance financially from my parents I feel spoiled in comparison. My other siblings had it much worse to the degree that I can start to view my limited functional behaviors and attitudes as a privileged position. I don't want to be the one who made it. The weight is heavy considering that there are nine other contenders besides myself and it is the natural result of my parents tempered praise. I honestly don't know what point is with all of this so I will stop here.

I cleaned my apartment because I am having a friend stay with me for a couple days next week. I found a lucky bamboo plant left outside the dumpster and i am nursing it back to health. My skepticism about the inferiority of los angeles curbside finds has melted away. The other day I even found a nice table. I can't decide whether I love it or whether I think it is tacky.


Zoe likes it, particulars it's rubbing against its edges.

Zoe:


My one eared 13 years old companion... She has been with me with only minor pauses since I was eleven. She only gets sassier and louder with age.

I get to give my notice to my work in the next couple of weeks. Something to look forward to. Despite the fact that I enjoy the company of several of my co-workers and I've becomes accustomed to the unreasonable demands of customers; I've become very comfortable with all of it. I will probably end up giving myself less of a vacation than I had planned before, especially since I do not know what I would be doing with my time between quitting work and starting grad school. It is my guess that it wouldn't be anything too useful. I also have to consider that even though i am making around $13/hr I remain over a thousand in the hole with my bank. For the present I've decided that I can't give my two weeks until after I have my meeting with my department to discuss funding and job duties as a TA.

err.. uhh... my parents somehow bypassed my security gate, (I didn't give them the code) and they are knocking on my door...

Cactus Flower Tea

I've had the past few days off, so I filled them the only way I know how to at this point. Ride buses go to parks, go find food, walk constantly. Always somewhere new, always something novel. This is the honeymoon period. No hiking was done, no ferries were taken, but I had a good time. I went to East Los Angeles to see the Los Angeles version of one of my favorite places in Portland; the Goodwill outlet center. Something was lost in translation. I was horribly disappointed by nearly everything about the place, (well maybe everything except this artwork):

THE MAGIC of GOODWILL

The inside of the "clearance center" was quite possibly the worst thrift store I've ever been to. There were maybe a dozen small bins altogether, they were all shallowly filled with the worst of the worst of items, (mostly giant tommy hillfigger jerseys with bleach stains, soiled teddy bears, and airport novels). All of them were never changed. I got real lost beforehand and I asked some guys working at an autobody shop for directions to an intersection. I was surprised by how eager they were to help me, I walked for over an hour and eventually ran into Los Angeles River Park. Which was both depressing and uplifting at the same time.

This is the L.A. river:

THE RIVER of ANGELS

I snapped the photo from a road overpass and there is a man bending over and washing his face with the water. I was gawking in disbelief that someone would think to cleanse any part of their bodies with L.A. river water -- truly photo worthy. The park was uplifting because the river is still presumed to have some value to it, and depressing for many obvious reasons. It still remains vital though. It floods in the winter. It swallows up someone every year. Its concrete embankments are a taggers paradise. The primered patchwork is evidence to that.

I took the new (to me) Metro rail to get to East L.A., then I decided to go to Health Express, the oddly placed, and affordable vegan drive-thru in Pasadena, (adjacent to KFC, roscoe's, and McDonalds on Lake Street).

Too much shopping was done, not too much spending but I think I must have been in seven thrift stores today. Plus a bunch of Japanese stores on Sawtelle. I feel like I have a hangover. Too much want instilled in me. Too much everything. I need to keep things as simple as possible. Next weekend I will have to focus more on outdoor activities. The city is what I make it... and if I want to make it into a giant fucking mall, (which is very easy in Los Angeles), then I have no right to complain. Perhaps my tone is too harsh but I feel like sometimes I must fight against myself and old habits. Constant want. Constant void. Constant boredom. Constantly uninspired. Self loathing. Everything becomes ugly. Negativity installs itself.

The way I see it, it's pandemic. It's compulsive and it's familiar. It's a lifestyle and a package deal. Not having a television helps but feeling very isolated geographically from anything I can relate to my more recent self does not help. Like the L.A. River, it's brutal in its honesty. It mostly dead, because we mostly killed it. It is diverted and channeled, and if you unfix your gaze on it appears to be just another highway to nowhere.

I can't really explain it. I feel this sense of authenticity about it. It's something to both wallow and revel in simultaneously. I feel it walking downtown, east of downtown, the san gabriel valley. Walking helps, the weather helps more. Everything is as it has always been for a moment and i have no concept of time or age as I have known it. Road tar is seen to have been spilled haphazardly and exhaust can fill the air at times. underpasses smell of urine, discarded blankets and shopping carts make it hard to pass. Sidewalks disappear, crossings become rare. In the dark underpass-like pedestrian tunnel I come with a couple inches of stepping on a limb or two. I walk down the stairs and it feels and smells like entering a sewer. The limbs owners are either too fucked up or sick to take much notice. I make it to the other side, walk up the steps to daylight and I am not fazed by any of this.

I am losing my humanity. I am more aware of the fact after a children's toy, (a four foot tall stuffed panda) left in the underpass elicits more of a reaction in me. Part of me even entertained taking a photo but thought better of it. The flash would stir something up in a junkie's mind that would undoubtedly yield bitter fruit.


My point in all of this is that everyone must admit to reality of life on Earth. That the awful and the beautiful are perpetually coincident. This is especially important if we care at all about living our lives in a way that reflects this reality. Responsibly. The river is a grounding force. It is meager. It says to us, "this is all you get". Like the children of the rich, we lack necessary boundaries. Abundance gives way only momentarily, but when it does it's powerful, sufficient to serve as reminder of a more balanced view of the world.

I'm in much better spirits now than earlier today partially due to the fact that I realized that it is the first of August and I will not be working as a barista for much longer. In less than a month I will give my two weeks and I won't have to sway to the whims of capricious customers any longer. Part of me will probably miss it though, not the actual work but the structure it brings to my life. Although grad school should have me down to a whole new routine in no time.

My frustration mellowed today at work. Now that I am fairly up to pace people, (co-workers only), are downright nice to me. They crack jokes we talk shit about customers and managers. It's become pleasant at times.

After work I rushed over to my bus stop and waited for nearly an hour. All the other commuters were cranky. A man started cursing angrily and part of me felt somehow threatened by it. As if among the people waiting for the bus he would somehow hand pick me from the lot for a transparent exchange of anger. We watched pair after pair of little white lights appear on the horizon, some in the street for a better view. I had saved a large bag of pastries from the dumpster and was planning to give to the bus driver and gave it to the woman who was sitting next to me. I made use of my primitive Spanish skills. I told her they were cookies and I think she may have been disappointed. When I fi nally caught the bus and transferred my connecting bus had half taken off without me and I chased it down. She stopped which was really atypical from experience. Take the good with the bad I suppose.

The past two days I have been using my French multiple times throughout the day. I feel like I might be getting a lot less timid about using it. Today a woman from Quebec came in and was really excited for me to speak to her. Then a couple from France that were both really stuck up. The woman came in and kept repeating obstinately, "Sandweech wit haam an' sheeze" slowly. I thought it was due to language so I switched over but it made no difference. The man had aviator sunglasses propped up on his head was wearing a green tennis shirt with a white wool sweater tied around his neck. He looked like he belonged in an ad for Newport cigarettes or an 80s Perrier ad.

I have a tendency to place importance on the change of month and other pointless mile markers particularly in the transition from summer to fall. Anxiously waiting for a change of seasons to arrive dramatically. I peruse the daily average high temperature charts. I am always waiting for something that never comes.

For anyone who cares the statistically averaged hottest day of the year in Los Angeles is August 5th, from there it is a gradual decline down about twelve degrees to the high in January.

a short rant

Things have been looking up lately. I had a couple of days off recently and decided to go on a hike in Topanga State Park. It was thoroughly enjoyable despite tripping hard on a rock, running out of food and taking a wrong turn that ended me on some canyon road in Malibu frequented by assholes in sports cars. For some reason the road wouldn't stop reminding me of the short lived TV show, V.I.P.. It was a TV series starring Pamela Anderson as a detective.




It ended up being a twenty mile hike. It left me sore and tired. I know it was hot and I know the terrain was difficult but it has still put a damper on my dreams of hiking the entirety of the pacific crest trail. I want to buy some camping equipment sometime soon. I've been reading up and a lot of places are very accessible by public transportation; Catalina Island, The San Gabriel Mountains, Malibu creek, some places in the desert and even a few places in the sierras.

I think a lot of the things people take for granted as apparent truths about Los Angeles are total lies. I say this mostly due to things in other cities I've lived have said about Los Angeles. Telling people you are from Southern California often elicits a violent reaction, sometimes empathic in tone. However, even local people I meet mirror the same attitude towards their city.

Yes you can ride the bus without too much hassle.
No it is not really that hot, (unless you live in the valley).

however

yes it is dirty, yes it is fucking polluted.
yes a lot of people commute hours daily.
yes people drive their cars to the corner store.

The problem with Los Angeles is its suburbs, not the city itself. There may never be the proper infrastructure in place to support the giant expanse of highways and clapboard mansions that blight the landscape for hundreds of miles in all directions. Peak-oil and other apocalyptic enthusiasts have a field day. Implementing sustainable practices seems impossible. Lawns need watering, pools need filling, air conditioners crank on for half the year.

The culture of materialism that runs rampant everywhere, but particularly in Los Angeles, doesn't help matters either. It has always seemed funny to me that the people who often try to appear the most environmentally conscious are moneyed. It is not too surprising considering the added costs of eating organic and "sustainable" alternatives to household products. But there's something else to it. There is a tendency for people who can afford to buy environmentally branded products to somehow think that they are "helping" the environment when in fact they have just chosen a lesser evil. This is especially true for non-essentials. People who think buying a Prius for your 3 hour commute is going to save the world. Okay, yes it is a good alternative to a standard car but what about not having a car altogether. The same goes for buying flax and hemp wardrobes, buying biodegradable disposable dish ware, remodeling your palace every few years with sustainable materials. Plastic shopping bags thank customers for "making the right choice".

It seems like so much of what is deemed environmentally friendly is completely hollow, luxury accessories and inaccessible to 9/1o of the people. I am convinced that people will have to alter their lifestyles fundamentally to really allow for any sort of sustained environmental restoration. I am also mostly convinced that this will never happen naturally as it would go against human nature. Instead just like in nature, we will compete for resources, nation against nation, class against class until, war after war until the buying power of the upper middle class slowly declines, but all of these are national if not global problems.

So keep Los Angeles out of it, its bigger than that. Its because places like LA, Phoenix, and Las Vegas have shown outward signs of lowered quality of life stemming from sprawl and environmental degradation that they have become emblematic. No matter where you live it still comes down to personal choices. Burning my trash in Los Angeles is just as bad as someone burning their trash in Washington. The natural differences in geography and added stresses of some 10 odd million additional people just make the action of more impact.

In short being a rich asshole in Portland, makes you just as much of a rich asshole as someone who lives in Los Angeles or Beijing for that matter.