I tend to put too much time and effort into respond­ing to provoca­tive arti­cles and FB posts. So I’m reclaim­ing my own detri­tus from the sea. This is response to a friend who wrote that “I sup­pose its a hard thing for Democ­rats to under­stand but Repub­li­cans aren’t just for cut­ting pro­grams for aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures but rather desire gov­ern­ment efficiency.”

I’d just argue slight­ly with you when you say Repub­li­cans “desire gov­ern­ment effi­cien­cy.” That was true 40 years ago. It was true 20 years ago. There was a time that I can still remem­ber that a Repub­li­can was always the smartest guy in the room. They were hard­ened by tough eco­nom­ic real­i­ties in the late 60s and 70s, and their vision was­n’t cloud­ed by lib­er­al dreams of some utopi­an peace plan­et. They want­ed to lim­it, not destroy the gov­ern­ment. They want­ed to lib­er­ate, not dec­i­mate, the marketplace.

Even when they were wrong, they were hard to argue with. They sup­port­ed import tar­iffs and farm sub­si­dies, and they could­n’t stop them­selves from see­ing war as a shiny eco­nom­ic get out of jail free card.

But those guys are gone. I’m nev­er going to be nos­tal­gic about Rea­gan because I tru­ly believe he was a dim and destruc­tive fool, and his admin­is­tra­tion’s “trick­le down the­o­ry” is still clog­ging the Repub­li­can toi­let today. Clin­ton was just as bad in many ways, so don’t think I’m only attack­ing the right. Clin­ton suc­ceed­ed because he basi­cal­ly co-opt­ed the right’s eco­nom­ic focus and strat­e­gy when they weren’t looking.

But as bad as those guys were in many ways, they weren’t polit­i­cal extrem­ists, the equiv­a­lent of a sui­cide bomber who just wants to make a mess and go out with a bang. I’m all for dis­rup­tive change, but it has to be change that is vot­ed for by the electorate.

There are mod­er­ate, smart Repub­li­cans around today still, and I respect them and learn from them. But they are not in Con­gress. The Jeff Daniels char­ac­ter in The News­room (a net­work news anchor) gets in trou­ble for call­ing the tea par­ty the Amer­i­can Tal­iban. But I don’t see how that’s wrong. They don’t desire gov­ern­ment effi­cien­cy. They want gov­ern­ment to dwin­dle and dis­ap­pear, like an umbil­i­cal cord. They’re con­vinced that lib­er­ty and indi­vid­ual free­dom are the only prin­ci­ples that define Amer­i­ca. Not free­dom to do some­thing, but free­dom from some­thing, free­dom from being asked to coöper­ate, to rec­og­nize that as indi­vid­u­als, we are weak, but as a coun­try we can be not only strong, but efficient.

I felt the need to replace Mor­monism when I left it behind. I found myself say­ing to peo­ple, “I don’t believe in God, but I believe in kar­ma. I believe in some spir­i­tu­al force among peo­ple.” And I did believe that at first, but after awhile it became clear that I had replaced one cos­mol­o­gy with anoth­er. I’m not sure what the dif­fer­ence is between reli­gion and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty. By which I mean that they are after the same result. Sys­tems like reli­gion and sports and nar­ra­tive pro­vide the illu­sion of order and com­fort. They over­lay begin­nings and end­ings, rules and penal­ties, onto chaos and randomness.

I don’t kid myself that I am wis­er or bet­ter than peo­ple who turn to reli­gion or yoga to cre­ate mean­ing and com­fort ; I love fic­tion and art and music and sports, so I par­tic­i­pate in that sort of self-decep­tion too. What I have a prob­lem with is when peo­ple use a false con­struct of real­i­ty like reli­gion or spir­i­tu­al­i­ty to con­trol and judge oth­er people.

Yoga and med­i­ta­tion cults are ram­pant in Los Ange­les. Oth­er cities too I’m sure — the same ascen­sion to pow­er on the backs of the believ­ers that you find in reli­gion. That does­n’t mean there aren’t good noble peo­ple who want to bring oth­ers up a lev­el. It just means they are very few. And far between. I med­i­tat­ed for a num­ber of years — Vipas­sana med­i­ta­tion, Dzogchen med­i­ta­tion — but I found that I was using med­i­ta­tion to cre­ate the illu­sion of calm and peace, nei­ther of which are very use­ful in the world. Instead I felt removed, blissed out, and my emo­tions felt inac­ces­si­ble. If that’s a taste of nir­vana, I’ll stick with the brats and beer. I’m sure I was doing it wrong, but I pre­fer not to strive to qui­et my mind. Reli­gion and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty seem designed to pull us from our brains and put us in touch with oth­er mys­te­ri­ous organs : trust your ‘gut’, lis­ten to your ‘heart’, cleanse your ‘spir­it’. These don’t exist. They are metaphors for “instinc­tive behav­ior free of ratio­nal thought.”

Some­times instinct is impor­tant — fight or flight respons­es, for exam­ple. But how can any­body real­ly say that the big prob­lem with peo­ple is that we think too much ? We do every­thing we can to avoid rea­son and care­ful delib­er­a­tion — we want to be instinc­tive, to see with our third eye, to dis­cov­er the god­dess with­in, to walk in faith. But none of that is real. It’s just a way of say­ing that some prob­lems are hard to rea­son through and syn­the­size. The hard­er, more hon­est path is to see all the mis­ery, inequity, cru­el­ty, fool­ish­ness, and sad­ness in the world, to see all the sweet­ness, the love, the tri­umph, and the hap­pi­ness in the world with­out imme­di­ate­ly assign­ing mean­ing and causal­i­ty — to see the world with­out serendip­i­ty, kar­ma, fate, bless­ing, luck, reward or punishment.

I’ve nev­er loved life more than after I dis­missed reli­gion and spir­i­tu­al­i­ty from my mind. Each day is sweet­er, each touch more mem­o­rable, each meal more deli­cious. Each book, song, pho­to­graph, paint­ing has more val­ue because they are com­plete in and of them­selves. They don’t lead me to a well-hid secret about the soul. They don’t reveal God’s fin­ger touch­ing my heart. They are and then they aren’t. So it’s impor­tant to make the most of them, and us, while we are and before we aren’t.

It is ear­ly in the morn­ing, and I am in the base­ment of the base­ment of one of the tow­ers at the UCLA Med­ical Cen­ter. I have been here for forty-five min­utes, but with­out day­light, with­out the pulse of air and sound as doors open and close, time is sloughed. Nobody has hard-soled shoes down here. The clin­i­cians are on their feet all day, I guess, or they love to make chirpy squawks when they turn cor­ners, and the patients are in wheel­chairs with masks over their faces. When I walk in the Gon­da Hyper­bar­ic Cen­ter, my steps per­cuss. I am here to see if I need hyper­bar­ic ther­a­py to heal the skin graft on the back of my left calf. It’s been two years. Frankly I haven’t cared much. It hurts only occa­sion­al­ly, and after I put a ban­dage on it, I go about my day. But after see­ing my moth­er go through some anguish and mis­ery in the hos­pi­tal — much of it the result of gen­er­al self neglect — I am moti­vat­ed to heal this hole.

I did­n’t know who to expect to see in a place like this but I did­n’t think I’d see a cadre of healthy young men in wheel­chairs with masks over their faces. It turns out they are con­struc­tion guys who were doing some demo in a com­mer­cial build­ing and were exposed to car­bon monox­ide. They all start­ed get­ting sick the next day and now they are about to slide into a mas­sive steel tank cov­ered with NASA stick­ers for two hours. And after anoth­er ses­sion in the after­noon they will be good to go.

I leave with­out see­ing the inside of a cham­ber. I’m not dis­ap­point­ed. I know that most things that seem cool aren’t cool when you’re inside them won­der­ing if your blood is boil­ing. By the time I get home it’s still ear­ly morn­ing. My neigh­bors are leav­ing for work. My dog is hun­gry. By the time I walk to cof­fee to read the paper I’ve almost for­got­ten that there are caves of sci­ence and suf­fer­ing two sto­ries under the streets.

When I was six I could shred the shit out of a gui­tar. My old man had one from when he was a kid, a cher­ry red Suproson­ic 30. He couldn’t play it to save his life but he kept it any­way, big sur­prise, and when we moved in here, he shoved it in the attic with all his oth­er trash, big­ger sur­prise. We lived under a sag­ging roof because he thought every­thing he touched need­ed to be saved. He took his belt off so fast when he caught me with the gui­tar that he tore some loops off his pants before he laid in to me. I was four. I didn’t care.

I climbed up the next day and got it down again. There was no amp, but I strummed it with a quar­ter so that he could hear it all the way in the kitchen. I could hear him throw down the paper and clomp down the hall. When he came in, I was going to swing it across his knees and bring his ass down, but he stopped out­side the door and didn’t come in.

We were liv­ing in his girlfriend’s house, and I thought maybe she told him not to come in. She hat­ed our nois­es : laughs, cries, whis­pers, yawns, chews, burps, farts, swal­lows — it all made her apeshit. So if he was going to make us cry, she’d tell him to do it lat­er when she was­n’t home. But she was at work, so it could­n’t be her. I just kept play­ing as hard as I could, and he nev­er came in our room. My sis­ter was three. She killed our mom when she was born, so when she woke up and told me to stop play­ing I told her she killed our mom so shut up. I always told her that.

The next day, the old man didn’t say any­thing about the gui­tar. He knew I was already kick­ing ass. That baby was mine from now on. He gave me an amp when his cousin died and every­body got some of her stuff. My sis­ter would sing real­ly loud when­ev­er I prac­ticed. Sier­ra sang so good some­times I played just to lis­ten to her.

We played par­ties. We played at the the U‑Wash Dog­gie because the own­er was Sier­ra’s teacher’s hus­band. We played on the news. When­ev­er peo­ple clapped for us, Sier­ra would start laugh­ing and shak­ing. She would say, “I love the clap.” The old man thought that was hilar­i­ous. He called us V+D and made up posters. We did­n’t under­stand since my name does­n’t start with D but we did­n’t care either. Lat­er when we were a lit­tle old­er and I fig­ured it out, I didn’t tell Vera. She liked to say get­ting the clap was the best part about singing. That was fun­ny as hell. Now we’re old­er, and we don’t play or sing any­more. I think she’s still pissed at me for nev­er telling her what the clap meant, but she can go to hell. She killed our mom.

Why I should not write hip hop lyrics. I woke up last night with some rhymes in my head. That does­n’t hap­pen very often, so I pulled out a pen and wrote them down. You’re welcome.

Whether I’m rock­ing pas­ta fazoola

in clam­p­down Ashtabula,

or earn­ing ras­ta moolah

behind the vestibula,

It don’t mat­ter. I’m takin’ you out

of school and let­ting the truth

unspool like a silent movie.

So April came in like a bull with its horns in my nuts. I start­ed this post on April 5th, but I just delet­ed every­thing except the first line and am start­ing over. Why ? Because time + tragedy might equal com­e­dy, but time + time, for me, = glad. Joyce need­ed Tri­este to write about Dublin, and I need at least a week to write about any of the shit that means any­thing to me. A right­eous­ly pissed-off let­ter to some half-wit ene­my, a poem memo­ri­al­iz­ing a still-tran­scen­dent roll in the hay, a fresh take on a script or a sto­ry after see­ing a film — I’ve fired them off count­less times, and every time it was a bad idea.

April 4th was my moth­er’s birth­day. My broth­er and I drove up to join them for din­ner. Join who ? My moth­er shares her home with her full-time care­giv­er, Maria, who cooks cleans and dri­ves her to her hair dress­er every week. She also col­lects stuffed frogs and over­feeds the birds so much the back patio looks like a tiny guano mine, but over the years, Maria has become fam­i­ly to us, and so have her two sons and a daugh­ter, all great and kind peo­ple, who Maria dotes on and wor­ries about much the way she does on my moth­er. She is a Fil­ip­ina, and the agency who found her for us is run by a jovial Fil­ipino cou­ple. So for her 77th birth­day, my moth­er had din­ner at a faux-French bistro in a strip mall sur­round­ed by Maria and her chil­dren, the agency cou­ple, Tere­sa her hair dress­er and her hus­band and their kids, and my broth­er and me.

All of these peo­ple love my moth­er, despite her some­time short fuse and her weak body. When she was younger, she stood near­ly six feet tall because she nev­er went out with­out heels. She did­n’t talk to you, she spoke at you, and God help you if you did­n’t lis­ten. My father sold her his half of the com­pa­ny they owned when they divorced, and she grew it ten fold in a decade. She trav­eled the world, ran char­i­ties, and yet now she seems almost like a plush toy of her­self : soft, short, a lit­tle crum­pled. But she is still the sharpest mind in the room, and she seems to have an almost infi­nite capac­i­ty to treat my broth­er and me like princes. Con­tin­ue read­ing →

Every delay is a screech­ing halt. Every hour my mind unspools aim­less­ly requires sev­er­al more sim­ply to reel it back in. The gains are min­i­mal and the loss­es mon­u­men­tal. That must mean I’m onto some­thing good. 

I wish I could gloat with delight about Ratzinger’s “ear­ly retire­ment” but I’ve been slammed with a nasty food poi­son­ing. And, no I do not think the lat­ter is pun­ish­ment for the for­mer, in case any tongues were cluck­ing. I’m still hap­py about it, I just don’t have the strength for the actu­al gloating. 

For the past sev­en years, I’ve had a black and white dog by my side. He is called Bud­dy, but I did­n’t name him. My friend Julia had asked me to fos­ter him for a few weeks, and since I did­n’t plan on keep­ing him, I did­n’t both­er com­ing up with a bet­ter name than the one he came with. So he is Buddy.

.

He was two years old, and like most res­cued dogs, he must have suf­fered a host of indig­ni­ties and cru­el­ties, because every chance he got, he ran out the front door and as far as he could go before I caught up with him. He ate through the cage I left him in while at work and he chewed up the blinds and the french doors. He uri­nat­ed if I touched his col­lar. It was clear he did­n’t want to be here, and 

.

I looked for­ward to giv­ing him back to Julia.
Then one day I fig­ured I’d take him to work with me rather than leave him behind to tear up my loft. That made all the dif­fer­ence. He was still skit­tish, he still had a hard time know­ing where to pee, but he quick­ly became a good boy. And even­tu­al­ly, he became a great dog.

.

When I say he has been by my side for sev­en years, I’m not exag­ger­at­ing. When I’m home, he’s nev­er out of my sight, or, more accu­rate­ly, I’m nev­er out of his. When I run up to my bed­room — two flights of stairs either to work or to grab some shoes or a sweater — he runs next to me, nev­er ahead of me, and when I run back down, he does the same. If I for­got my keys and have to run back up real quick, he’s right there. He goes down to the garage with me, out to the mail­box, over toward the kitchen, and if I’ve been ignor­ing him for awhile, he’ll sit behind me on the sofa so my hand has to rest on his ears and give him a rub. When I sleep he jumps on the bed and cud­dles, but soon he jumps off again and sleeps in the hall­way so he can keep an eye on me and on any­body else who might be in the loft too.

.

Some­times I have to leave him home to run some errands, which is fine now. No more trau­ma or destruc­tion. But he does go ba-nay-nay nut­balls when I come home, jump­ing on me and run­ning through the house like I’ve been gone for days. Even if that’s hyper, it’s not a bad way to be wel­comed into your own home. I’ve had many good dogs who I love and miss, but Bud­dy is by the far the best dog I’ve ever had and real­ly the best dog I could ever ask for.

.

But I have nev­er been able to fig­ure out what sort of dog Bud­dy is. He has the size and some of the col­or­ing of a bor­der col­lie, but he does­n’t have the more aggres­sive­ly shaped head, the crazy hyp­no-eyes, or the herd­ing instinct. My first dog was a Brit­tany Spaniel we called Coco, and I always felt Bud­dy had a lit­tle of that tem­pera­ment. Not because I know spaniels so well, but because Coco and Bud­dy have a lot in common.

.

So the oth­er night, when we were walk­ing down Abbot Kin­ney, a woman stopped me and asked me what kind of dog Bud­dy is. Before I could say any­thing she said he looks just like their dog, and that she just learned that her dog is a Spro­l­lie. We chat­ted a bit but I did­n’t think much of it until I got home and looked up Spro­l­lies online.

.

“Spro­l­lie” is a term used for dogs that are mix­es of springer spaniels and either col­lies or bor­der col­lies. It’s not an offi­cial breed or any­thing, nor do I think peo­ple are try­ing to cre­ate one. I think it’s just a way of iden­ti­fy­ing their dog, and I have to admit, I’ve nev­er seen so many dogs that look like Bud­dy. This is a dog named Oscar (already con­fus­ing, since my youngest boy is Oskar) and he looks like a close cousin. Maybe even a half brother. 

.

It’s odd­ly sat­is­fy­ing to know where my dog comes from. It makes me feel like I under­stand him a lit­tle more, it makes me appre­ci­ate his instincts and his lim­i­ta­tions, and it makes me for­get how much I hate words like labradoo­dle and spro­l­lie, so that’s something.