Night Train to Oceanside

Mangy-ass Angelinos roll in downhill after dark, to do their own thing while no one’s looking, a rendezvous of the senses to hang no ponga from rafters, wield lost boy skateboards in the shadows, cover up motives with backpacks and vapes, congruent with the incandescents but even more so with the dark, where all falling apart occurs.

No one, when the smoke clears, even remembers them. Invisibility has been a coherent strategy until very recently, and it’s been easy to confuse extreme isolation with deep belonging feelings. But a lot has transpired on the way to the future. The Blue Lounge closed when they shut down the world and has never returned. And in this reflective December in uptown LA, the hill decides who gets sold down the river, and when things go real.

The lights have turned on in every emptied building, a kind of magnificence that can be seen from the stars. The cool people are on the late train, where the flow of graffiti keeps up with the river, and the inner mounting light reveals itself: the scrapyard after dark, the floods on concrete mixers, cars washed with light and lather, a chemical plant cerulean swathed, the warehouse where the tree mushrooms grow have only a loading dock bulb over the door, then a lobby for once full – with light and truckers, every intermodal port occupied, every pot and cup of coffee filled, its lot of semis idling, soft in their red lights –  then the coaster rail rises, over the Slauson salmon lamps not even flinching upstream …

And the train, as if empathically, stops, rolls backward now to Commerce, to pick up perhaps one wayward lunchpail stiff, who would theoretically be grateful for the open door, hence our beacon in reverse through the dark graffiti, the pallets under glass, the weeds under lights more full of life than in the sun, the shipping and receiving under kliegs along with trailer hitch lubrication authorized personnel only. We arrive back-ass-ward to a glow of cell phones on the platform, like candles for choralers exhaling hallelujah – then we’re back Jack on the backtrack rack, past the mausoleums of tool and die, the luminous offices emptied of clerks. The lawyers on the train fall at this time into their historical fiction. The Burlington line still rumbles beside us as it always has, still fucking with everyone’s life.

The pack who walk off at Norwalk hobble swiftly, everyone carrying something, ears occupied with what listening might override in sight of their situation. But they are swimming now in the blue pools nearby, arms throwing spray up like dolphins do when jumping. At every station the loudspeakers are lit up like bows. A single office gleams in the train window glare a patina of pathos: the old computer, that particular calendar, the unmistakable bend to the chair. Then the open lumberyard in Fullerton and its saws officious as morticians, positioned in night-searching florescent for desolate inspection, Ma’s House Restaurant the only sign of light for a long stretch, then the Satin Topless arrow, the green claw machine in The Paramount Platinum Triangle, then Angel Stadium just waiting with its big A to be filled, a thousand identical dry rigs in the lot for the off-season, while the Modelo flag still waves illuminated, as if it can exist beyond the game. The parking structures are dotted with eyes to see.

Then the Christmas lights begin. The strings between the houses are frayed but they do eventually connect, amid the high palms and the green doors of storage garages, the warehouse with its Christmas tree. We ride above the houses now, above the snowmen. The train speeds up as the decorative flair thickens. But time has become like a rubber band that doesn’t bend anymore. The downtown water tower's on the right, radiant as an alien spacecraft, and the last McDonald's. The cupola over Santa Ana station has left its light on, high above.

On Location in Temecula

Film crews are the new donut loiterers, taking over for the PD, who are here too. This patch of cactus farms and grape acreage, neither a there there nor a nowhere, is a ready-made mountain backdrop hacksawed out of the hillside enough to be seen but mesas' away from being measured by the public relations firms. A train comes once a week, the only contact it seems with the outside world except for the cultural exchange at the Walmart. Horse trails meander onto Main Street and the hills crawl with Hobie Cats. 

The trimmed fat of the cattle lands has been  rendered into developers’ Ponzi dreams, complete with happy people seemingly bussed in, who seek the exurbian perfection of lake skiing and vineyard ballooning, the same name brand stores as every other strip-mall delivery locale in alien nation but operating on some alternative timeline without customers, barren of the duende of human misery as well, not near enough the homeless populations of LA, San Diego and even Riverside to provide any sense of things lost, wasted, of who, in the contrast, you are. 

Thus there is a sadness, at how we never know them and they never know us. They’ve gone with the clouds into the mustard, holding something they want us to see but it is only the distance, foreign and tantalizingly vague, not the confirmation they expect that it is real. It could only be that if we capitulate to the roadside circulars, call it a here, as we could, in theory, anywhere the longing machine doesn’t pre-record, and attend to the dust that attaches to its fabric as a mark of distinction. Instead, we try in vain to distinguish it from any other Anytown USA on any other temporary planet.

The way there is long, the way back familiar. The narrative arc caught a few snaps of recognizable life to be peeled back into the Burbank froth batter turner. But no trace of Temecula remains, for all our attempts to see ourselves in it. Home is nothing, it turns out, without the people you know.

The Regular Road by Uber

The Costa Mesa Grange, old Cali-style white, rumpriding muckraking wobbly-rousing revival hall style by the side of Victoria, no one ever there, like a ghost of agrarian unrest over silver or having to tent in irrigation ditches. The milk plums and honey kumquats have long since been plucked from the trees, the veritable Egypt of sun God oranges has been converted box by box into storage units. The Gospel Swamp that once spread clear to Newport Bay with its blood of the lamb ten foot corn, enough lima beans to feed the Israelites, potatoes no one had ever before seen, is a pestilence long gone, like the vaqueros and Pimungans and the rusted equipment that passes for stones of that last Atlantis outpost. All history is for bartering, on the bourse of whose account fools the most, like the shot I captured from imagination and experience of Mexican farmers with cigars and candlelit love in their eyes dealing cards and trading, talking the decisions on the fruit wheel through and invoking strange Masonic rites involving the Four H's to align spirit's laws with sound ag practice. 

Today the parking lot is packed. The Grange is rocking. Either the world has changed again, or there is an AA meeting, where the ghosts have to sing, and some chips at least are green.

Some Snow from a Neighbor's Antenna

Casey Stengel chewed through the Popol Vuh like Red Man tobacco, as if its Rosetta Stone would unlock the mysteries of the Mets batting order, but the problem was insoluble, even for Methusalah, even with the glove of Ed Kranepool, yet we all looked for solutions in those days, so we could continue in our ways of whine and poses: That we had to pretend every heart was not estranged and that what was called beautiful was more than pain, that resentment was only hunger, mass unconsciousness comfort and almost identical the same as individual, that annihilation did not hang like grapes over the most well-lit streets. It was all somehow the fault of the Greeks, who hurled the first thunderbolt of mind to level cities clean, creating centuries of pain and central plumbing and a whole lot of forgetting of everything that wasn't hell and especially of our complicity in our own slavery, as we dreamed, like horses, we were free and that we only chose compassion for our captors in the belief we would become them, having forsaken the carrot of knowledge for the stick of De Sade the Teacher, having made peace with the insidious beast of carnal desire for commodities, having settled for the drums that were taken from the chattel and strangely given to the outsiders whose gimcrack smack and fellaheen benzedrine made some want to crawl through the minor 9ths of derangement's fun house mirror cracks, but it was as treacherous as ever on the outskirts of the sublime what with talk and liquor never near cheap enough and Buckley hoovering up any holiness like the arch gay Jesus wannabe he was paid by the CIA to be, quoting from the scriptures of golden freemasonry, never disclosing that Tiki martinis and the Playboy Philosophy would be the keys to a new and distant day.

The Sacrifice of Eurydice at Yankee Stadium

The word “yankee” has been variously (and mostly derogatorily) used to signify “New Englander,” “northerner” or “American,” but it was coined by the early Dutch settlers in the Hudson River Valley to describe the more recent, less sophisticated English settlers.  Literally translated as “young Johnny,” the word’s connotation would in modern terms be roughly equivalent to “stupid white men.”

Dem Ehwz are behind 1-1 in the eighth. I sense a scab beginning to open. Home run by Frodo, er, Flaherty! It’s quiet as a movie theater except for the deafening leer of self-satisfied smirks. The requisite fat one-batter lefty comes in thanks to Tony LaRussa to squander a half-hour I will never get back, and then Hieronomyous Bosch, er Rafael Soriano, a grotesque assault on nature itself, er, a live arm, comes in, flapper like a frying pan attached to an obese turtle with an alarm clock for a head and a smile like the WB cartoon chicken hawk. Cal talks about the etiquette of taking. The widow has taken out her hair net. Manny Machado, the hardest working insurance salesman in this godforsaken town down the river, hits a home run to take the lead! No rip in the fabric, no groan, not even chattering teeth, as the fans en masse act like the game, the opponent, is barely worth their interest, so if they lose they can say “What game? Did you catch the debate?” but if they win you will be barraged with an unbearable and maddening cavalcade of hyperbolic hysteria and jingoistic jargon like no immortal‘s ever seen – until you finally cry uncle and admit your existence was never a threat to anybody. The noble birds try to tighten the stringent strings in a stringendo death movement, but the Big Apple Store sells it is what it is at the end of the day, and the side falls harmlessly to the ground like so many golden shells. Gonzalez is still licking the corner like a coroner, though, still splitting the straws that break the camelhair through the eye of the needle. Derek Jeter, obviously high on HGH, lets a smile pass his face as he condescends to react to the umpire’s call. ARod the useless superstar, the Sad Black Man seeking Stupid White Man for bondage and humiliation, is smoked by a 20 mph change-up. The wind pulls robins in. Jones blows a Topps bubble while chasing down a fly. The home weather advantage of the corrupt Bronx wind witches the ball out of his range. Television replays show routine fly ball after routine fly ball carried to the stands from the aforementioned home weather advantage. Does Ek Khan the Mayan wind God deliver to the Bronx? Can we call in a favor? Huitres the catcher, whose name means “oyster” in French, “raw oysters topped with lemon juice, hot sauce and saltine crackers at Lexington Market” in Baltimorese, picks one from the oyster bar to shuck to left – broken bat single, a bat shard hits the pitcher in the ass; he grabs his nuts as a conference of the stupes consult like pediatricians, then an elderly gentleman runs his fingers down the smooth pinstripe material before deciding he must be relieved. This seems to unglue the Stupid White Men, the indignity of it all. Nothing the Stupid White Men do is ever entirely honest – nothing – it would be laughably absurd if it wasn’t so shockingly appalling – it’s all so rotten to the apple core. The new pitcher thinks of running a spike through his mother as he uncorks a deadly screwball. As usual the Stupid White Man 3rd baseman has to fight with a fan for a ball that is neither fair nor foul. The wicked wind formed from the hot air of Stupid White Men facing down the cold hard truth starts brewing in the cauldron, and the next SWM batter finds his ball taken into the stands to seal the game for extra innings. Fans are standing like smirking turkeys, like cackling overfed vultures. I never thought I’d miss the tomahawk chop. Game stops for litter on the field. It was so much better to ignore the Stupid White Men and be thought a madman than to pay attention to them and remove all doubt.  As the orange and black winds of redemptive wisdom come in I see the Orioles as reforming pilgrims finding themselves in New Amsterdam gazing at all the abominations of Mammon amidst the old faith, then being lured into a “baseball” game where the real plan is to dispossess us of our very souls. The Tigers meanwhile are getting rested and ready to feast as they play. The requisite ex-Mariner sub-mariner in October relieves Gonzo and his jaw-dropping assortment of sinkers to throw upside down flying saucer sliders. He stamps his feet like a chicken, pitches like a beige praying mantis on speed, skims the arc of a sparrow. Can’t turn a double play because of the aforementioned home weather advantage! Oh to have them at George Herman Ruth Memorial Stadium for Game 5! We suffer because we can’t get with the program of ruthless domination based on materialistic soul-taking. We’re too soft-hearted. Some hail mary’s, reverse jinxology, and obscure incantations from the Popul Vul. Someday there will be other games and they will matter too in their own way … hard to imagine now. The owl has landed. Game over because gruesomely humorless SWM manager mourning father takes out useless superstar in 9^th for a pinch hitter who ties and later wins the game – it must go in some kind of management annals of the dark arts, goat-eyed managerial sorcery of the foulest and most depraved kind. It’s Red Harvest for the Maltese Vulture. A Bobby Valentine’s Day Massacre in the House That Ruthless Built. The mighty Negro League technicolor pharaoh has struck out. And when it happened, nobody in the Italian restaurant much bothered to look up from their plate, no round of applause or even the momentary wiping off of wifely frowns. No burning up the town or tearing down the rafters in irresponsibly joyful jubilee here, just the smuggest of smirks for the briefest of seconds. No nod to the bird kings, fallen like Icarus and playing for free. Oh the milk! (Orson Welles as Colonel Kurtz). Sad Polo Grounds of Divorce! Ragtime jingles from black sox park as the winds blow in like a bastard and the ghosts of October stake the heart of John McGraw twirling his mustache in his grave, but the Babe lets the moon shine equally on johnnys and junebirds, filthy lucre watchchains and indentured irredentists, new York minute rice and oystercrab sandwiches, the Met and the Walters Art Gallery, Mannahatta for some mardi gras beads and Fort McHenry with a wind from the Keys, Miss Parker and friends at the Algonquin Club and friendless Mencken at the Peabody Beer Stube, oysters rockerfella and crab Rangoon, a slice of greasy pizza with mshugina on the side and gwumpkies and kielbasa at the greasy spoon, the lady in the harbor and the widow on her walk, the Blue Note and Hammerjacks, Bobby Van’s and Haussners, the gaping hole that even complete domination can’t fill and the empty cackle filled with crabs, natty bohs and copious bonghits of shame. All’s fair in pyramid schemes, virtual night baseball and dreams. The streets will be running cartoon-red tomorrow as the vultures feed lasciviously on the entrails of Prometheus – you’ll need a mask to stay safe from the reek. It’s October Jake, fahhgettabutit.  All the perfumes of Araby will not sweeten this little hand. Stupid White Men win again.

Squinting at the Grid

The kleptocrat plutocrats and the permanent bureaucrats, the pundits and the pharmacists, the political parties and the hangover debt, the courthouses and the department stores, the universities and the transit authorities, the think tank snark and the shark tank stink, the Communists and the Oligarchs, the goombahs and the gossip rags, the intelligentsia and the saved, the prescription drugs and the oil-rich thugs, the publishers and the censors, the gay mafia and the SWAT-team traffic cops, the news and social medias, the drug cartels and the faith-based communities, the docudramas of child sexual abuse and the biggest stories not covered by the news, the vampires and the Vanderbilts, the Monarchs and the monarchies, the air-force drones and the sub-prime loans, the illuminati and the paparazzi, the literati and the twitterati, the teacher preachers and the featured creatures, the fashionistas and da gansta beasts, the BMW blue bloods and the NASCAR rednecks, the Monster drinks and the Monster trucks, the billionaires competing in the Olympics and the endless medical center annexes, the military-theological and the prison-industrial complexes, the terror threats and the blonde bimbettes, the scapegoats and the victims, the champions and the charlatans, the mirror-gazing women and the towel-snapping men, the televisions and the religions, the corporations and the foundations, the programmers and the consumers—everything else wants us to wake up.

After Work

5 o’clock commuters freed to green throng across the cross-walk, like the flight of pigeons over a vent except the faces, seen outside the hive, purse their lips with weary eyes, suddenly lost as to where home is, each wearing a different dimly understood cross. Others wait vacantly in lines outside the Griffon and the Pickle Bar for "The Bodacker” or “The Beast” or for the misanthropic moralists who turn the gears of cabs or buses or postal trucks; they stand perfectly still like ghosts except for their thumbs, having given over their souls to the boxes in their hands.

On the street, shadowed by towers, everyone leans underneath to speak, one guy even kneels on the curb so he’ll be heard. An endless bark of questions into cellphones: “What’s the rate?”, “What’s the hold-up?”, “What needs to happen?”, “Where were you?”. Then, with the pragmatism that never saw a fact that wasn’t something else, the answer comes, another question: “Who knows?”, “Who knew?”, “Who’s counting?”, “Who cares?”. It seems this makes the city run, that if anyone actually knew anything the whole black Gotham carousel would seize up in its chains.

Meanwhile they’re not getting paid to wait at the train platform, sheen of interlocking wire below, and the man on the billboard, no matter how many times you catch his eyes, remains a dick. Islands form on the concrete, in darkness, shrugging untracked hillsides, framing mottled shores. They board with summer looseness for Stamford, the city of big-horn sheep, red, joyous, relentless, where they move with intent, like Flamenco Dancers, with self-absorbed kindness and gentle violence, knowing what is right and what is wrong but too determined to be satisfied with the world as it is, for they have no patience to learn to be insane.

Once Around the Tower of Babel

In Tudor City everyone’s a diplomat, with badges and plates to prove it. They’re insatiable in their untranslatable languages, wires to their ears, scribbling on note cards. I hear every language from Telugu to Pinghua to Adyghe (add-dig-za), untranslatable, but I know from tone of voice they are choppin it up like pimp skillets about some cold piece of work booghetto scrub getting all up in their drink-drank with their janky cabbage. I translate what it means into my own private language.

There’s the requisite obelisk, and above it a translation: “swords to plowshares … learn to war no more – Isaiah.” Below the obelisk, protests in every language, untranslatable, something about power corrupting absolutely.

The Consulates all look the same, like dark supper clubs for the old men who control the world, and the people who come out of them all have the ceremonial garb of Hollywood celebrities. One of them’s been boarded up – near 51st and 2nd there’s something resembling reality, a glitch in the matrix, with panhandlers and poison traps – then more New York rhododendrons and United Nations restaurants: Hofbrau’s and Blarney Stones, Mango Lassi stands, “balanced Thai to go,” Pushmina for sale. Passport joints are thick as hot dog booths around here. On Dag Hammarskjold Plaza the tourists take pictures of homeless people, thinking they are wearing native costumes.

Not Noah’s Ark but Noah’s Garden inside the Ford Foundation Building, Eden three atriums high, security guards with wires in their ears, in a bubble of untranslatable silence. Around them blah blah blah in every language, untranslatable. In “Bars and Books” a man writes notes, untranslatable, all I can read are the signs above: “Perpetuities” … “Fine Cigars”. I pass Pierre Loti Wine Bar – no one knows where Pierre Loti is, and when or if he will ever return.

The Solitude of Crowds

It’s considered impolite in New York City to look at myself on the streets. One must look askew, with deep focus an inch in front of the eyes. I suppose this is for our own protection, like the rule that says we can’t look upward at the ornate belltowers and inexplicable greenhouses and dark-windowed C-Suites along the ridgetops of the city. Such a view would break our stride and jar us from our positions, just like looking at my faces would cause unimaginable distress, for I take so many forms, show such multitudes of expressions: now worried, now angry, now mischievous, now bored, now smiling for no apparent reason.

And the expression changes depending on how I am looked at, something that never can be known! Such bright and impenetrable surfaces, yet they look so familiar and so real. It’s a continuous walking thorn of imperfection, still every face glows with the holiness of a pure soul no matter how distorted the manifestation, whether green-haired waif or gold-bezzeled queen, bearded bum sleeping with mouth wide-open or old man with invisible earpiece dictating terms of surrender with a smile.

Most upsetting of all, I want to be seen. And I want to look back. Such dangerous confrontations can only be done as if looking at the sun, indirectly. A glance is too much. Still I flirt with myself, feel ashamed and repulsed at the sight, lose myself in the liquid of my eyes. I see at last how small and how large the worries of the world are. These faces, like a desert mirage, are a dream that goes on forever, a mirror within a mirror within a mirror, for I need so many different ways to feel, so many uncanny things to think about, so many distinct and eccentric traits to make me feel separate and apart.

There’s nothing sadder than this city of myself, being lost in the loneliness of the crowd. I stop to do the one thing they allow you to do here: look in a storefront window. I see through the foreign reflected face as if there’s nothing there, for behind it is Ernest Hemingway's actual typewriter, and I am comforted that time at least does not exist.