The Madman Eats the Loaf

So I lost the game. Sometimes destiny has bigger plans. I’m outside in the great adventure. I’m deep in the frequencies of the unknown, in the massive flow of energy that is New York, 10 million monkeys living in an expansive, thriving hive. It’s a massive monkey jungle they call the Big Apple. Can you imagine how many people are having sex at any one time in this pulsing little creation? There is a lot of sex here, which in some strange way may mean you need less of it. I’m not sure about that quite yet, but I am still distracted by one who I may very well not ever need to see again. She turned on a light in me, so bright that it has taken 29 years to get a hold on. Nothing to complain about there. I guess it took this long to be ready for this place. However long we longed for that gal we call the Jew, that angel who turned on my love light, as long as I can still see light in the day, I will want for her happiness. There is no need for her to be in my life just wishes for her well being. There is still something in my heart that seeks her on the streets, and wants to connect, without any expectations for what will come. But the future makes its own plans. I'm happy to be in this jungle of humanity. It's just a whole lot of us looking out at ourselves through each others eyes in this miracle of creation. One big human family.
Aloha

naked

claws of this world
the giant clam inside the computer
the flimsy flaky slime of matter
the dirty little game

The Dillema between the big apartment on 25th between 7th and 8th, which could be awkward, or the place the real party wants at Spring and Mulburry

So what's my biggest complaint? Looking for love in New York City now that I know I've already let this cat out of the bag on this B-L-O-G? And how stupid does that sound? Well, that's about as stupid as it seems. Here we are, trying to find ways to say hi in a shortened form. That's text messaging for you. Screwed up spelling just makes you seem smarter. Text messaging is pure genius. You can waste your time endlessly. Wait, let me just spark another joint. And that pretty much makes me feel retarded. So now I feel like I can't say anything more. Well, I could say how much more I would like to say how happy I am that I'm crazy I could maybe talk about how happy I am to be alive. Life has given me great gifts. There were hardships, but they were overcome. At 29 years old, to feel truly grateful to be alive, is a great gift. I am grateful to be alive. If I were to die tomorrow, I would know that I have lived a life. I have lived a full life, in the midst of friends who have supported me, and been my friends, though I have been gone from them, many moons. And that reminds me of a joke I know. A guy walks into a bar, and he says to the bartender, hey! “Let me get a big handy on the rocks,” but he really needs to drop a deuce. So he goes into the bar and he says “hey, let me get a big handy baby, and it’s time for me to use the old porcelain lady.” After that I would step into the old ladies room and put it all up there. After that, we all know the game. So this guys goes into the bathroom, and he goes into this toilet because he needs to go, and as he’s sitting there, pausing for his deuce, he looks down into the toilet bowl. He sees a little Indian down there. The Indian looks up and waves at him with his little headdress on. The guy is looking down and he says to the Indian: “hey, how long have you been down there?” The little Indian looks up at him with a long, forlorn look on his face, sweeps his hand over his head in a rainbow with his arm and says: “many moons.”

The First Days and Enlightenment over a hamburger

Small Chieftans disappearing into the Andean stream
Walking softly through the French parade
Dreaming about spring
Rejoicing in fields of Jesus colored wheat
Hair fading into the grasses
Drinking blood that tastes suspiciously like wine
Every evening the illusion and the little hearts made of felt
Inflate themselves
and the farm animals shuffle about looking for sex
A million lemmings march off the launching at Niagra Falls
We don't know where we're going
We know where we've been
That place is the same
That's just the same place
There is no negative or positive in the beyond
In the secrets of the beyond
Not the tai ji But the wu ji
Everything is one at the source
What comes
Cannot not come

Oh the Idiot on Parade

So the lunatic up and runs to New York, all because he can’t get this girl out of his head, but he has come to the point of submission. He no longer knows which way is up or down, the lunacy finally beat him. The opinions mean nothing anymore and faith is replacing questions. OK, here I am. Drove in through the Holland tunnel at about 7:30 am, having left Louisville Kentucky the day before later than expected, about 3:30 or 4 in the afternoon. Drove through the night, medicated with only coffee and red bulls. The Denver to Louisville route was more energetic but that all ran out in a little Kentucky bar with my friend who has the fondest taste for heroin. Couldn’t even get a Screwdriver on arrival this morning. The Aspen snob has found this reputedly high class establishment less than satisfactory. Went to sleep around 9 am, woke around 1 and took the dog on a long walk around the down town area. Searching for elusive dog parks we took a stroll down into Battery Park City. Kingston just wanted to jump in the river. I was given directions to 3 or 4 different dog parks. “Just two blocks up there and 1 block down,” “yea there’s a big one just down there, just walk up that ramp and it’s right there.” I didn’t find any of them, but it was one of the most perfect days I’ve ever seen in the city. I’ve been lucky that way in NYC. The temperature was soft, warm but not quite warm enough for sun bathing, just a touch of cool wind for freshness. There was not a cloud in the sky. The dog and I walked for hours. Had a few glasses of wine and a sandwich and risotto at Oniels on Grand. I think I may have spent the larger part of an evening there a few years ago. Talked to Tim the art collector, a very nice fellow who made many recommendations for my potential living situation. I went back to the hotel and slept for the late afternoon, maybe fell off to the dreams around 6:30, woke around 11 pm. About 11:45 pm it was time for another walk with the dog, we’re getting used to the city, and poor little guy, there’s just not much privacy for his business now. I can’t just slide the back door open anymore and let him roam down to the river and run with the elk, foxes and bears. But I’m a man after all, and there are many men in this city, and many dogs. Kingston found the stimulations most satisfactory. There was no friction. His friendliness was apparent to all, and New Yorkers seem to like the little black dog just fine. As we left the room for the late night walk, the lobby of the Tribeca Grand was bumping bass music and as we walked out the elevator, and past the bar area, I was aware of my alien nature. I’ve never seen these levels of fakeness before, as if there is such a thing, but I’ve never seen Chachi like this, even in Aspen. After a nice little walk, the young dog was brought back to his room, and the Reverend Scott took another stroll. I walked downstairs again, thinking that maybe something would change if I just gave the place another try, and besides the guy at reception had given me a couple free drink tickets. I couldn’t even approach the bar, free drinks or not, I scrambled out onto the street and into the night air. Not my scene. So I just walked. Walked into SOHO, passed the SOHO Grand on my left, that’s how I knew I was in SOHO. Then I recognized fading yellow paint, a bar on my right, and a bright lit sign that I may have last seen on a morning a few years previous. The Cupping Room, a restaurant. I walked in. It was a nice scene. No Jenn. Was this where we had breakfast the last time we saw each other? I believe it was. I didn’t sit down for a drink, and I missed the band. So I walked out, and down the street a little farther and thought back. It was morning, another blue sky day, and she walked off down the street with her dark hair blowing in the wind. The heart has its reasons whereas reason knows nothing. At least, that’s what they say. Was it Pascal, translated from French? I’m trying to forgive my heart. We go where the winds blow us. Here I am. What, expecting to run into the girl on the street? It’s about 1:30 am now, and I walk to a little grocery store and buy a sushi roll in a plastic box, some sliced mango, and a Kombucha, walk back to the hotel, through the pounding music, through the loud, stylishly dressed look-alikes, the beautiful girls, and I’m just not interested. I’m in New York, and my heart led me here. I’m looking for this girl who has a little cabin in my chest. We may have met in another universe, or our molecules danced once for an afternoon. I may have been chasing her for lifetimes, watching her walk away, as she turns and smiles over her shoulder, with her dark hair blowing in the wind. It’s a nice image anyway. Good night winterberries. Pray for the will of the All.

25 Tao Te Ching-Wilhelm version

There is one thing that is invariably complete.
Before Heaven and Earth were, it is already there:
so still, so lonely.
Alone it stands and does not change.
It turns in a circle and does not endanger itself.
One may call it 'the mother of the world'.
I do not know its name.
I call it DAO.
Painfully giving it a name
I call it 'great'.
Great: that means 'always in motion'.
'Always in motion' means 'far away'.
'Far away' means 'returning'.
Thus DAO is great, Heaven is great, Earth is great,
and Man too is great.
There are in space four Great Ones,
and Man is one of them.
Man conforms to Earth.
Earth conforms to Heaven.
Heaven conforms to DAO.
DAO conforms to itself.

There is a lone howler monkey outside in the darkening evening singing a melancholy song of despair. He seems to have been abandoned by his tribe, and is perched alone at the top of a desolate tree. I told him it was going to be alright, to keep the faith, to never give up hope. I can hear him whimpering, he no longer howls in his old grunting virile way. He is a humble monkey now, begging for forgiveness, begging not to be alone. I wanted to stand there and talk to him, to give him company and love. He was quiet when I spoke. In the silence he began his sad prostrations again. I invited him over for bananas, a little something to make him feel better, to take his thoughts of worry away, if only for a moment. But alas, I don't think he spoke English.

New Swine in Aspen

How convenient it is that the Swine flu outbreak should arrive just in time for the Aspen mayoral election. The sickness is here, rearing its ugly head like a savage birthing duckling. Our Mayor, Mick Ireland may not be perfect, but the calls for change from every direction are deceptive. The swineherds are licking their lips on the sidelines, and they have a new representative. Her taste for the grease of Fat City is fresh and desperate. Do not listen to the spin. There is a tourist running for mayor, and her name is Marylin Marks. She’s just passing through, unless we allow her and her porky ilk to successfully finalize their take over of our little mountain town. Slowly but surely Aspen has become less and less affordable for the people who actually live here. When we elected Mick Ireland, we didn’t elect a politician, or someone who wanted to be mayor so he could get a few years of fame. We elected an educated working guy who walks the walk, and rides his bike to work every day, who has tried to defend Aspen’s right to be vaguely livable for people who can only afford one home. Then Marilyn Marks came, she saw, and she started to complain. She dropped her little Red Ant right into our pants, and started moaning about the way we do things from the day she arrived. She thinks Mick Ireland is failing us by being slightly less friendly to second, third, fourth, 5th, 6th, and 7th home owners, with a few time share holders in the back field. These are her constituents. And she is out there to make them feel good about their investments. She told us she had no interest in running for office. Now she says she is willing to work for free. Clearly she wants the celebrity of being the mayor of Aspen, even at the expense of those who would suffer the charity mayor. Aspen can afford to pay its mayor, but thank you anyway. Mick Ireland is not perfect, but he understands the soft heart of our beautiful town. This whole crew of candidates, running on the platform of change, are trying to get rid of Mick, possibly because Mick is not a greedy little land grubber sucking at the fat of the land, and the new Aspen Plan is an insidious play for greed and madness, dressed as usual, in the cloak of change. What are these candidates for change, really going to change? For one thing, they are going to encourage the Aspen Police to do undercover drug operations “under necessary circumstances.” This is not a good policy, and Mick Ireland understands the Aspen Brand enough to not mess with an ethos that we have held dear since the 1970’s. He is the only candidate who said he would continue our policy of no undercover activities by police. These operations are dishonest and wrong. Aspen is not supposed to be uptight, and this has only helped our success, even as a high end resort. Undercover drug busts are bad for business. Marks, Kole, and Erspamer don’t get it. You can’t do wrong in the name of doing right. Telling a drug dealer that you want to buy drugs and then arresting them for giving you what you asked for is just plain wrong. We want locals and tourists alike to feel safe and secure in our town. We just don’t want the tourists to forget to go home at the end of their stay. Marks represents the type of newcomer Aspen elite who have made Aspen a check mark for people who just want another exclusive resort home to add to their list. She is a retired business executive, a savage whiner, a woman after my own heart. She may be giving Aspen the full play now, but it will begin to bore her. Before long she’ll be just like the rest. They spend a few days in their home around new years, then they host lots of lavish parties during Food and Wine and Ideas festival, they feel important, and that’s nice. But while they may employ a caretaker and a maid while they are gone, they are not frequenting restaurants, shopping in our shops, and most importantly they are inflating real estate prices and creating huge swaths of empty livable space where people who actually want to live in Aspen, can’t live. We don’t need a mayor who is going to be more friendly to these people. Mick is nice enough. A representative government doesn’t just represent people who only spend two months a year in their outrageously huge energy sucking houses which sit vacant most of the year when they could be housing 4 families of working locals if the space was utilized by something other than a conspicuously consumptive waste of livable square footage. We need to keep our hotels full, and so we need to encourage these high end clients to come and visit, but we need to create disincentives against them buying or building homes that will sit vacant most of the year. The Marks platform is the opposite of what Aspen needs. If we want to fix the entrance to Aspen issue, all we have to do is eliminate the line of cars that comes all the way into our town every day all the way from Rifle, and out the same way. That means making living in Aspen affordable enough for people who work in Aspen. When I was a kid, the West End wasn’t a ghost town most of the year like it is today. There were children running around the streets and lights on in the homes. Making Aspen more friendly to its workers can only help us as a high end tourist destination. True 5 star service only comes from employees who are comfortable in their situation, who aren’t worried about their hour long commute at the end of the day, or the second or third job they are going to be heading to when they finish serving your fettuccini. Great service is difficult when businesses are dependent on transient workers like many of our hotels and Skico are presently. We don’t need to become a budget destination. We should leave the lift lines in Vail, and continue to welcome the pits of the Ritz, but we need to foster a community of working people who feel they can afford to fall in love, have kids, buy a home that can appreciate at free market value, and not just work and drink themselves into oblivion before they move somewhere they can afford to have more than a ski bum life. The Ferrari driving geriatrics will still of course be welcomed, but if they own a home, our government could do something like encourage them to provide at least 1000 square feet of housing for the working population for every 7000 square feet of living space that they own and do not live in at least 10 months a year. Just an idea. As for Marilyn Marks, Andrew Kole, and LJ Erspamer, put the fat in the fire and vote for Mick. He’ll keep Aspen peddling in the right direction. As for paying too much for the BMC land parcel, it’s just a right of passage. Anyone who has ever bought land in Aspen has paid too much. Shouldn’t’ the city of Aspen pay too much as well?

Pliant Earth

Same old dreams
The sanity sings its empty song
Lizards crawl frantically through the stream beds
and the strawberries
The wild Indians are dancing,
The vegetables ripe in the icebox
Gelatin in the sink
Nothing left under the microscope
Another reason to drink

The Hooker-Beating ShamWow Guy Is a Renegade Ex-Scientologist

Another French Horizon, and the Jews said a prayer for the Sun.

It’s quiet here in Aspen and everything is the color of mud. The time shrimp are disappearing and the endless whispers of the moon are beginning to appear. This mud is going to melt all the snow early, and maybe cause flooding. Later, there may be drought. All because of mud. Mud can be a terrible thing. But it can also be fun to play in. I haven’t seen anyone playing in this mud lately; but it has been cold. That’s about all there is to say these days, what with all the shrimp heads and the hand grenades. I figure it’s about time to take a break. Things are getting weird around here. I don’t think Marilyn Marx was wearing a one piece out there on Highlands closing day. Aspen may be getting ants in its pants, and the laundry is in the oven. Maybe it’s time to get a little more education, then let’s make a comeback and run for mayor. We could make this A-town again, where you don’t have to spend half your wages for a room in a three- bedroom house. We’ve got to make sure we don’t let them turn the beloved Popcorn Wagon into something out of Monster Garage. OK, they already did that, but there are other things to be done, or undone. I hope somebody gets on it. Goose Wrangler is off to the city. Over and out. I hear you loud and clear boss. Come in Honolulu. Do you read me? Over.

Love

Words the mixed confection
Of crisp slow dilapidation
In the midst of now

Woman calls 911 over lack of shrimp in fried rice

Life is Strange

Moves of the heart are a mystery
Twisted grooves of symmetry
Senseless dreams of whispered fate
The hearts wings fly their way
Clouds beating against the breast
The soft horizon
Pulls

Guest Check

Plop
The French lisp drops
Down the horizon
And the icy crisp
Loosens its loins
And falls gently to the ground
Waiting for the morning
Eighteen french polyps
Give their smile to the day
But they all make a wish
And send their wishes
To the future

Disturbing.

I really don't have a clue, or even an opinion, when it comes to the middle east, the disturbances between Muslims and Jews, or any dispute between any religions. Does the fact that this report is from Al Jazeera mean it's biased? I don't know. But it's all a major bummer. Why human beings have such a hard time treating each other as if we were all human beings, I don't know. If someone is a Jew, we are all Jews, if someone is a Muslim, we are all Muslims, we are all Christians, we are all Buddhists, we are all Hindus, we are all nothing. We are all Everything. What is God? Can I buy a vowel please?

Three Cheers for the Kid who gets it

Same old lines
I've been scribbling
All this time
Hocus
Interconnected
Pocus
Under water
Sleeping
Running through dreams
Empty spaceships
Waiting for the sleeping pills to kick in
One foot off the wagon
Practicing early Metamucil
Hiding from despair

I got nothin (I mean I'm posting the twelve steps of Kabbalah, clearly things are becoming desperate). Groovy videos for a change.

The 12 steps of Kabbalah--- short and sweet

Flossing monkeys 'proof' animals teach tool use

every day more evidence that we are not the only smart monkey.