muzzle nuzzlin'

muzzle nuzzlin' on a sun-knee sunday afternoon ain't a bad way to live amongst so many ghosts, the wind so alive, flicking and frolicking along the whiskers of our dead head fed front lawn. sipping with high spirits, it occured to us the best way to celebrate our passed new friends was savouring and flavouring their eternal naps with a picnic, not over, but beside their resides. what would they have wanted? to be remembered as sour grapes? or to be remembered fermented and fine? we toast the ghosts - sardo, roquefort, havarti and ffej.

i bet i am the first man of two silver toes to ever sit in this exact spot and you the first of winter goddesses to lay eyes upon these exact skies. and as we graze the nibbled crumb talk, life and meaning, it occurs to us all we have found it. it being here. here being now. now beginning then and then and then.

<anyone got a funny name?>

New Technology on the horizon! I recently read an AP article entitled, “What’s that smell? Oh, It’s the Police.” Apparently, police in heat-stroking Ahmadabad, India are sweaty smelly. It’s not their fault – they’re out of doors all day in the hot sun directing traffic and keeping the peace. But hope is on the horizon for these odoriferous officers. The plan is for new uniforms using a light-weight, sweat-free scented new fabric called <anyone got a funny name?>. <> comes in soothing rose, tangy lemon and new car smell. I had heard of a new fabric that would reduce, or even eliminate, the need for washing machine visits. Sounds like a great idea to me as long is it isn’t itchy rashy uncomfortable. We’ll see.

the immaculate deflection

I love this story.

Seems some time ago Davis Love III was barely leading the AT&T Pebble Beach National Pro-Am when he shanked his tee shot on the par-3 12th hole. The shot bounced off the far end of the green and began its descent down into the rough, when it miraculously deflected off a photographer's shoe and bounced back onto the green to within four feet of the pin! Love was able to make birdie, which set the stage for a photo finish win over Tom Lehman on the 18th hole.

The "immaculate deflection", as some writer called it, was pure luck. And luck is a big part of the game of golf, as it is in the game of life. But luck alone cannot win the day. Love was at the top of his game and the bested Lehman wisely observed this.

"That's golf," Lehman said. "That's what happens to you when you have really positive things in your mind. I think a break like that happens very often when you are just all systems go, charging, looking for the pin, expecting nothing but the best."

Lehman and Love, true captains of their destinies.

Journal

Monday, March 12, 2007

Road tripping is where I long to be. And so I find myself already missing my beloved SF incense innocence, in a sense. Perhaps I will never see her again. I hope to round the bend from LA sometime in the Fall. But LA is a long way from June, the month of my beginning. And it is not good to dwell upon the future at the expense of the present, someone said sometime.

It is beautiful today, here, looking out my Presidio-view porthole, a polite hoNk? in the distance. Where are the cherry heads, my red-masked friends visiting from Telegraph Hill? Where are the soaring pigeon-doves? Where are the cawking crows? The spit-fire hummingbirds? The little brown, furry cheaps? I will come out to play later. But now I must write, right?

bzzzzzzzzzzzzz

bum bum bumblebee,
buzz home to your honey tree

bum bum bumblebee,
your honey trips
keep you at sea

bum bum bumblebee,
your honey trips my
lips to tea

bum bum bumblebee,
buzz my ear and shake my tree

HONK!

audio version at hqhunter.podomatic.com/

Some accidental tourist misjudged a polk-green uturn, finding himself facing this author sipping his Americano under pitched café canopy. If this unfortunate autobug didn’t act quickly, he was about to taste the wrath of…HONK cried the first car on the scene, a Porsche, the driver donning tan leather driving gloves and J-loaded sunglasses. This autobug may have had a chance to finish his turn had he not been flustered by the… HONK-HONK swore the Porsche guy. And in that instance, our poor little tourista released the clutch and sank the engine, finding himself wedged in now by both traffic directions two cars deep, completely awry of the traffic flow, and unable to move.

Now I was minding my own, out of doors under great big cotton ball gray san francisco skies punctuated with occasional visits from the sun. And I was having that Ria moment when the sun speaks out and you’re not sure when it’s going to stop talking so you point your face to the sky and stop to listen unperturbed and you pray undisturbed….HONK-HONK-HOOOOOOOOOOOONK!

My german auto mechanic once told me he never worked on porsches…Porsche owners he said. Now I hate to stereotype. Some of my best friends have porsches and there’s no need for those amends among friends. But this guy was starting to get on my…HOOOOONK!

Without thought, my pitching arm seized the $2 americano half-n-half sugar spitball and, winding up far behind my right ear, eyed my potential strike zones. The windshield would punctuate my displeasure nicely. Perhaps a glancing shot off the roof? Then I saw the open window…and the cute redhead riding shotgun. Poor girl. Pimp rides and fat bank accounts are a strong aphrodisiac. HONK-HONK-HONK-HONK-HONK-HONK-HONK! This dude needed a nice lukewarm lattee in the teeth. The red head be damned!

I cocked the hammer on my caffeinated fastball and no sooner had I made the decision to let fly, his eyes met mine, glowering, focused, pure evil. I lowered my pitching arm slightly and fell into a more relaxed posture. The passenger window rolled up. Maybe there’s a gentle man there after all or maybe he doesn’t want to mess the leather. Either way, he’s mouthing something unintelligible to Red and has rested his left hand on the door handle, a subtle threat.

With my eyes still fixed on his, I motioned my invitation to the dance, mouthing something unintelligible of my own. “Your car is ugly and your breath smells of onions,” was about all I could mustard. And he bites…game on.

By now the traffic has thinned a little. No new cars enter the Polk street parking lot and those on the ends were finding freedom in reverse. Soon our autobug would be free. But thinking without time, Mr. Porsche continued on through his motions and it occurred to me I was about to be presented with the perfect opportunity to caffeinate his face without inconveniencing the lovely Red.

The moment of transfer was coming, that point where his eyes left mine for those few crucial seconds while the door ajars, his feet hit the pavement, and his head rises over the roof horizon, breaking his stare long enough for me to launch a perfectly placed strike upon his….HONK!

Waking from my daydream, I scanned the street to find no Porsche, no autobug and no Red. Only a Land Rover in their stead with a cute…HONK!

The Truce

Day 11 and they were back into my liquor cabinet. Sure those bitty critters can carry many times their weight but what ego! Thinking I had won, I let down my guard. They did not. But something was different about their approach. Their lines were disjointed, irregular and I could find no obvious end point - just a bunch of scrabbled groups grabbing crumbs. They passed right by the jar of honey, fragrant and impentatrable. And then it hit me - they were not looking for food so much as they were trying to escape the tempest outside my kitchen window. It poured and shook my apartment building like never before. Light bulbs labored to shine. And so a truce I called. No more windex bombardments or squishings. And they too promised to behave themselves, right?

16th and Valencia

audio version at hqhunter.podomatic.com/

throat stinging of mexican shine
sipped under greasy neon-lit reflections.
dull beat thumping, thumping, humping my mind
peace like an oversexed chihuahua. will it ever stop?
Sanely, I walk out, out among the gristle and chop
of the mission - 16th and Valencia - and find my way to a bar where punkgoth meets irish wake amidst a near suffocating haze of sweat and american spirit.

the city i live to dream

audio version at hqhunter.podomatic.com/

Tonight! Baton down your hatch-ed city domes
the tempest rattles slick below your sill and between
the seams of happy homes, without invitation or effort,
uprooting naked buds and tall oaks alike, without the mind peace
sold in cozy bubble-wrap suburban dreams with foundations unquestioned.
There is no wrought iron safe keeping
Nor cuddled Pinkerton to insure amens
But equal chaos in the skinny, fat districts, and the fat-skinny too.
This is city living, chaotic San Francisco, on the abysmal edge of water and wind and nothing.

guilt

The anticipation of regret.
And the fear of consequences
Binds men to earth
Without sight,
Or dreams fulfilled