NEW SEASON GOALS

WORK: Finish two novels by springtime.
EMOTIONAL: (1) Learn how to love people without letting them walk all over me. (2) Stay single.
SPIRITUAL: Meditate at least 5 minutes every day.
FAMILY: Help launch my sister's modeling career.
PHYSICAL: Surf all winter; be able to handle and ride 5-6 footers by springtime.
MENTAL: Learn to recognize the difference between my wants and needs. Choose only needs for awhile. (at least until i discover that perhaps they're indistinguishable).

last year i found an old list of long-term 'to-do's' in my diary. i didn't even remember writing it, but realized i had done each of the goals in some capacity or another, since that time.

The Last Supper

alone in LA, that is.
my little sister gets here tomorrow afternoon. for good. to seek her fortune in the (groan, clasp hands in futile hope) modeling profession.
I CAN'T WAIT.

we will drink wine and play in the waves and smoke weed and giggle like schoolgirls and bake cookies and take over hollywood.
whoo hoo!

GOOFINESS DISCLAIMER:
in pre-celebratory excess i have been sipping cabrenet - does it still count as supper if minus the bread? - and painting my toenails. with my roommate who now sports golden cuticles. (i don't think it's his color, and mine look like a 5 year old did them. i'm working on the girl thing, but i'm kinda bad at it)

Return to the Hippie Fold (or not)

from my latest novel...

It’s about the quality you spend on life, not the quantity. Esthar hadn’t felt that fact so keenly since she was a barefoot teenager hitchhiking to music festivals with her hippie friends. Everybody looks at you askance, the creatures on the fringe. Whimsical well-wishers and suspicious law-abiders alike waver between fascination and fear. To challenge and defy social norms is to risk the by turns tantalizing and terrifying label of freak. And now, after all her high-end dabbling and pretentious pontificating, Esthar realized that the disapproving, curious sideways glances were merely the look on the other side of the same people’s faces. And if the smoke and mirrors of social acceptance were all that were keeping her from feeling the sand between her toes and wearing what she wanted, they could crash and burn around her for all she cared. It was about forging her own path instead of following the maze that societal norms had laid out for her. Maybe she didn’t want to help put up those walls after all. Maybe she wanted to keep walking in a straight line.
Oh shit, thought Esthar. After all my maturing and growing and career-building I’ve come back full circle as a dip-shit conspiracy-theory screw-the-man hippie.
Except that now I’m older than the first time so it’s a little more absurd.
But she caught herself.
Ah, fuck it. I’m nothing but myself. And I’m being true to that. This is me.

Summer of the Sssnake

THE CATALYST



neighbors (closely related to the Lizard King)

Tarzan roommate



roomie's dodgeball helmet (the snake loves it, we're pretty sure anyway)


free of dreads for 1st time in 3 yrs.








Crocodile Hunter moment in my living room:

So, this afternoon I left the cage open, cause I'm really on top of my shit. The neighbors came over. 'Where's the snake??' SHITTTTTTTTTTTT.
'Oh, there's his tail, disappearing down the heater-hole. Grab it, quick.'
OH, he's going to fight. GRRRRRREAT. A flashlight, three helpers, sore muscles, a sweaty brow, and ten minutes later, we got the cranky bastard back in our clutches. I think I'll leave him in the cage for a few days.
Need I note that sticking my hand down a hole to grope for a snake's head that hates me while holding his whipping musclature in my other hand was not something my snake-phobia would have imagined when I moved in. Goes to show you can change anything.

buddhist 'wisdom' or 'defeatism?'

"Body impermanent like spring mist; mind insubstantial like empty sky; thoughts unestablished like breezes in space. Think about these three points over and over."

-Adept Godrakpa, "Hermit of Go Cliffs"

whatever the final judgement call on this attitude may be, I know one thing; life truly does seem to work like this. Does this make humans fickle or just one more species in nature?

more personally, am I shallow because my feelings change as frequently as the weather?

'you can't handle love, it's obvious...' thanks Bjork for the backup lyrics to my thoughts...

Roam

there is a spider in the corner bobbing in rythym to aphex twin's eerie-aery tune 'mould.'
the tangible poetry of this frozen moment feels like participation in a tribal dance.

i wish i could get work off to go to burning man. i need to roam. away from rome. soon.