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Forward

The country was relatively quiet. The U.S.S.R. had fallen, and "The Bear" behind Castro had made the 90-mile buffer between Key West and Cuba an occasion for sentimentality. It was a time when the preoccupation was for the best cafesito amidst the thriving Cuban population in Miami rather than a concerted effort to redress their flight to the U.S. as refugees. To be sure, it still rang in the rhetoric, but if anything had been resolved through the Mariel boatlift it was that they had conquered Miami with a navy of rafts and without a single gunshot.

Bill Clinton had charmed Gen X-ers with his saxophone solo on The Arsenio Hall Show, and by 1997, his second term was charming the pants off their parents by the seemingly boundless prosperity of the Dot-coms.

Fortunes were being made with every mouse click, Enron had yet to fall, and the United States presided over its hegemony as the first and only state in history to enjoy unequivocal world dominance. Things were good, and if there was a war to be fought, it was the so-called "War on Drugs."

Miami at this time had made a breakthrough as it approached the millennium. At last, it had secured its position as a cosmopolitan, global city. During the late 1980's, South Beach had continued to fester as a desolate, run-down relic of the days when Jackie Gleason had made its beaches a playboy paradise. Its economy, built on Social Security checks, sweltered in the Coppertone atmosphere, underwritten by the memories of scores of elderly sitting quietly gazing into the vast beyond of the surf and sun.

By the mid-nineties, South Beach had made a great turn around. Art Deco was "in" as an institution. Gallon after gallon of pastel paint had been used to bring color and life back to the mold and rot – a place now befitting Sunny Crocket and Tubs. The polka and shuffle board lessons were replaced by loud speakers, liquor and neon, and by 1997, South Beach had resoundingly taken its place amidst other thriving nightlife and cultural districts such the French Quarter in New Orleans, Haight-Ashbury in San Francisco, Greenwich Village in New York City, and OTR in Cincinnati. 

The party was raging, and in South Beach, it was raging all the time.

In the midst of this domestic prosperity and tranquility, the Gen X-ers and creative-types were presented with a troublesome dilemma. It was one wrought, not from a lack of talent, training, or community but of geography. That is, while the city feverishly tried to establish its artistic identity with the likes of public works that propelled pop-artist, Romero Britto; and, while new "districts" emerged as if by proclamation – all tracing their etymological naming from something having to do with the fine arts, areas formerly considered the stuff of “Bonfire of the Vanities,” were re-branded as "The Design District," or the "Art Deco District."

With every vibrant flag affixed to light poles along Biscayne Boulevard, the city tried to inspire its citizenry to embrace Miami's identity in the arts. And it worked ... except for the unfortunate problem that Miami was the last stop on the Florida peninsula. There was but one road in and one road out, I-95. Alligator Alley had only recently been re-purposed into I-75 – a direct route to the western coast.

As such, once you arrived in Miami you were presented with a choice: to continue on to that string of islands, The Florida Keys; or, one could double back and trek endlessly through the swaps for the next oasis of something resembling a cosmopolitan arena: Orlando. 

This geographical aspect of Miami had some significant consequences. First of them was that only well-established national acts – artists, musicians, theatre shows, et al – were the only culture to venture to its sandy shores. Those indie, up-and-coming acts that kept live music alive in college campuses across the heartland of America did not make a stop in Miami. It was a simple logistical problem to plan a tour going to or leaving out of South Florida. If there were live performances, it was more often than not at the Miami Arena, and the acts performing there were of the most established in their trade. Emerging acts like the Red Hot Chili Peppers were relegated to mid-sized venues like the Cameo Theatre on Washington Avenue. David Byrn, a titan of music, used the same venue in the late-90's. The Who used the newly built Joe Robbie Stadium. In short, from a local, home-grown perspective, Miami was artistically isolated from the rest of the country.

While the local brood of young musicians and artists made ample use of this lack of competition, their small, local following could not support the pubs and the truly local performance centers, especially in an environment where prosperity was dripping like sweat in every other sector. Before the millenium, Rose’s Bar and Lounge, 754 Washington Ave., South Beach, the equivalent of New York's CBGB's closed its doors, and the opportunity for local musicians to perform simply dried up.

Regardless, the native cultural creatives pressed on. Several troupes managed to organize into loose confederations, and there arose a small but vibrant scene of artist co-ops, most of them comprised of warehouse spaces that were also the dwellings of the artists. Of the most notable, a group had secured a large space along the Miami River and branded a series of bacchanals under the banner of “C-Roc.” Another group established what were dubbed “Agape parties” at a house in Lemon City, near Downtown, where the curtained windows featured Fellini-esque silhouettes of dancers costumed in angelic wings; several stages set up in the house’s patio ushered up a roster of music, dance and conceptual exhibitions. Rehearsal spaces in Hialeah became a locus for film screenings, and North Miami warehouses were opened up as venues as well.

 

Performance at C-Rock, Downtown Miami, c. 1999

 

Others made liaisons with out of the way lounges, establishing grass-roots, DJ-inspired gatherings such as Pop Life that spun British retro-pop vibrations rather than what had become the country-wide mainstream performing on stages during the Winter Music Conference. Others had tried to embrace the nation-wide hip-hop movement, but recasted it outside the Miami Hip Hop Weekend at a desolate, dockside pub in Aventura named Thunder Alley.

Perhaps the last and only bastion for a cross-pollination between local acts such as The Laundry Room Squelchers and emerging national acts was a dive called Churchill's Hideaway. It continued to be a stop for travelling acts while embracing local productions such as Sticky Stuff Wrestling – female lucha-libre-style wrestling in kiddie pools filed with things like Jell-O pudding. However, it was situated well off the beaten path of Miami's self-ascribed artistic districts – Downtown and South Beach. It was, instead, situated in Little Haiti, tucked away in what was still considered a marginalized community. Truly, that was the reality for those who had been raised and fed by the Florida sunshine with a penchant for expressing their experience in some form of artistic medium; marginalized despite the overt assertion by Miami that it had raised its bar of standard for the arts.

The local creatives, left to their own devices from the broader picture of art in America, had managed to galvanize into an intimate community that continued to put forward their humanistic vision for modernity. The scene oozed with the stuff of the Burrows and Kerouac of the 50s; their subterranean musings inspiring each other and waxing at every turn into philosophical dirges inked into ratty sketchbooks, simultaneously waxing with contemporary themes, but remaining well within the tropes and forms that had dominated art historicity.

Art was wherever and whenever it could be. The community ebbed and flowed by its own mechanism in loose confederations possessed of an uncommon unity in the closely knit scene. There was no one to compete against; there was only the small but vibrant places to convene and perform. Self constructed venues became the places to congregate, and the roster of artists constituted a broader cross-section of the local Miami scene as a whole. In-bred as it was, a cross-pollination of ideas, techniques and aesthetics did manage to occur if only at a local level and for a local audience.

And yet, while there was an air that something or someone would break through or spill over into the broader picture of the aesthetic discourse in America, the movement continued to grind on its own gears. The products of self-expression remained unpublished in the piles of sketchbooks, demo discs or tapes; a memory of a significant breakthrough the night before continued to be worked out at a Dunkin Donuts or at a Denny’s , through a thick cloud of cigarette smoke or a hangover, but never at the conference table where it might have proliferated to a broader audience.

But, if one is to define an artistic movement as a group of individuals dedicated to inspiring one another towards new avenues of expression, at that time and in that place – in Miami, a sketchbook was enough. The yearning to loose it upon the world at-large was an aching presence, and that urge forged strong, enduring friendships that, to this day, remain intact, if not somewhat estranged in the post-analogue, post-9/11 world. The sense that the period would reap an authentic voice for Miami’s artists; that its labor to legitimize those orgys of shared moments of inspiration seemed palpable and within reach at the time, but, eventually would wane down to nothing. The kingdom was at hand, or at least it seemed to be just before the Twin Towers went down.

More than twenty years later, hindsight says that the movement was, squarely, still-born. That is to say, the body of work produced during that time remains in sketchbooks and on cassette tapes. It resides in the hearts and minds of those who lived through that period. It continues to live as a dream unfulfilled, and as a memory of what could have been but didn’t – a loose end, a longing, an itch for those who were there.

Soon after the millennium turned, the luster of common purpose seemed to pass, and as if a spirit of hope for local artists slipped away the scene seemed to evaporate not with a bang but with a whimper. By year 2000, the proving grounds and venues were places to disclose airplane fare for other artistic markets. Some would choose the west coast while others New York City. Others hung up their instruments, pencils and paints and retired alone or with their spouses to la vie quotidian. In short, by the year 2000 a diaspora of “the scene” had begun for the Miami creatives of the late 90’s.

To be sure the dates for this record, 1997-2000, are arbitrary. The scene, as it were, had its precedents and antecedents prior to ‘97, and the diaspora was (and still is) a long process that continues to unfold. Also, Miami has its scene, as it always will. It could also be argued that Miami creatives did, in fact, manage to tease out a unique aesthetic half-way through the millennium's first decade: The Aughts. It was epitomized by acts such as The Spam All-Stars — described best as, perhaps, Afro-Cuban Disco. 

The dates chosen here, 1997-2000 are merely to serve as a lens to focus and shape the discussion and bracket a much larger process — a process which one could argue is prescient to the “now.” This record, hopefully, can communicate this “last hurrah” of a classical, pre-digital world, unfolding the circumstances which crafted for those who participated the self-same vision that has galvanized every generation; reconstructing in each the fundamental aspirations at the heart of the “human enterprise.”

In other words, this record could, potentially, serve as testimony of recreating the “Millenary Kingdom;” it is a record of youth filled with camaraderie and of the sharing in that abiding memory of Camelot. This volume hopes to tease out and keep at the fore the proverbial Grail for civilization as it undergoes its radical transformations.

Perhaps, it is presumptuous to think that subsequent generations have found it difficult to assert a similar analogue; but, for what it’s worth, this was how it was done in the late-90’s in Miami, Florida. This is the story of that vision and an account of that stillborn revolution.

JC Martinez-Sifre

Brooklyn, NY 2012

Edited and abridged, May 2025, Main Library, OTR, Cincinnati, OH.

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So He said, "I am The Light;"

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It could be unbounded; un-complex,

Honest and close,

open,

all of which is unusual for me.

I forsee an uninterrupted  horizon,

sublime connection,

easy kindness and caring … fulfilling,

all of which I could get used to

… at last.

I confess:

I am love-bombing;

But, since you are the balm,

It'll likely unfold like an eternal flame.

Or, at the very least,

Like the unknown soldier

who, despite it all,

made an indelible mark on the fabric of the cosmos;

or,

As with any flower

— an alive thing,

Which when nourished by good soil,

and sunlight,

and climate,

It flourishes.

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Her eyes glower at me, trying to contort into condemnation:

"How dare you take the chicken-wings away, JC!"

"We finished them."

"To the bone!?!"

"Grissel and all," I say, nudging the half-filled glass of white wine at her while trying to re-spark the spliff in my lips.

Etc., etcetera:

And, yes! for sure! I'd forsake tobacco for a solid chance at kissing her for hours on-end. What fool wouldn't.

But, her glowering at me, flush with the reckless abandon at the sports bar, so … so chere; chère … cherecherécheré … and all sorts of fancy things like that … ;-)))) @}--,-- …

+ + +

It took quite a while that night traversing less than 10-meters up the block, draping her in my sport-coat … there being Turks and goat cheese and a lots of lost time with old friends; and, not enough of her usual pauses saying, "Go wash your hands JC! … go smoke outside. FUCK YOU JC!," and all that Jazz that I'm charmed by.

It was a homecoming, after all … implied, as it were.

Like: "AHHH! that!" she says when slaking the butter knife clean of the aged, artisanal cheese with one's lips. I hadn't noticed the honey in the jar earlier …

+ + +

In some past life, we had been working our way down the caldera of Santorini on a mule … who knows who was the mule or who had been the man that time, Agamemnon having gone off for stranger things than just getting-by: a man (or woman) and her mule.

+ + +

Sometimes I draw (illustrate) what makes me smile in awe. It's usually naked figures in some sort of rapture. Sometimes the gladness comes simply in humming along to whatever the Bluetooth is casting: and, sometimes (very rarely) I find the words to communicate that ineffable delight the abides and becomes more noticable in times of quite repose … like the kind I find in having met you and the joy I'm suffused with while in your company which sustains for a few days afterwards like the tone of a gong working it's way toward quiesence.

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The Apple of Discord

by JC Martinez-Sifre

You gave me this glass orb long ago, Lee, while you were still in high 

school — a birthday gift (see attached picture). I suppose it was originally meant to serve as a paperweight. I think you gave it to me when Nathan and I were starting to rub each other the wrong way — the period leading up to my moving out of the Biscayne Park apartment.

The birthday you gave this orb to me may have been in the same year our band, The King's English, played its three or four well-rehearsed originals at the Miami Shores Country Club, one of the songs, if you remember, was about necrophilia. I bet none of the “landed gentry” assembled there noticed what that song was about. They were probably too absorbed in their polite conversation and mini-quiches floating about at the fund-raising soiree.

That night at the Country Club, I remember Mr. Wicker — our acting “agent” rather than in his usual role as the school’s music teacher — was smiling broadly from the stage’s wings. I had thought at the time he was smiling out of pride at seeing his students, both current and former, fulfilling what he slaved over daily; what he had dedicated his life to; what has, at times, developed into a nervous twitch in his face.

We had written the songs; we practiced and polished them; we performed them. We channeled the Headmaster’s yearly litany to the student body of cultivating one's “Six Potentials,” revealing what the curriculum of our small, private, high school intended to foster in us -- future leaders. That night we managed to have our performance intersect, meaningfully, with the world we would, hopefully, inherit and replicate in time — just as our parents had for their parents.

Our performance that night was, ultimately, for the true beneficiaries of all the school’s endowments; and board of directors; and “tenured” teachers-become-institutions like Mr. Wicker; it was for our parents-parents — our grandparents. You know this to be true, Lee, now that you’re a dad like me; and, if you hadn’t thought about it like that, you know I’m right about the place our necrophilia song occupied there and then.

In retrospect, though, the music director may have been the only one listening to me slapping the strings of my bass guitar while Felix-Ramon belted out the chorus: “It’s natural; it’s natural; it’s only natural.” I’d like to think our teacher (and mentor) was getting a laugh at both our naivety and the subtle irony of “sticking it to them” for once … and with total, realized Grace.

No one complained — that’s for sure, because a few weeks later we were on stage playing to the hoi polloi of the village during their annual July 4th celebrations at the country club. Even though Felix-Ramon, our front man, was out of commission that day, having come down with a severe, immobilizing flu, the show went on. To my reckoning, no one littering the 18th hole that afternoon on their beach blankets seemed to mind the lack of lyrics to our tunes. We did it karaoke-style — like with that pop-song whose buzz was only beginning to die down on the radio stations ... the one by Lenny Kravitz.

I think, by then, Lou had come on board as the solo guitarists.

Man! You two were both wicked guitarists as teenagers! I can’t imagine how much more depth and feel you both must be able to add to the chops you had already mastered. These days, the pictures Lou's been putting up on his wall’s profile -- he looks like he’s rocked with Carlos Santana or Hendrix. Bet he (and you) could rip with them, though I suspect you’d be rolling with Prince’s entourage ;-).

*

Again, in all likelihood, you gave me this paperweight as a token of the friendship we had forged the same year we both played a set with the Miami Shores Community Band at the public tennis courts. We had been marshaled again by Mr. Wicker for some village groundbreaking ceremony. The town officials officiated with their speeches; and with their golden shovel; and with a small audience assembled on bleachers; and, … and all of us roasting in the summer sun.

Meanwhile, the small wad of LSD we had taken before we got there was still under my tongue. The colors of nature — the green-ness of the trees, the blue-ness of the sky — had started to get really amped up. I remember giving you the classic musician’s nod in the middle of our last tune, which was, perhaps, Appomattox March or a John Phillip Sousa arrangement. 

Those were some good times, man. To this day, I still sing the Star Spangled Banner’s harmonizing the part that I had played at every home, varsity football game and at every assembly throughout high school: “second chair,” B-flat Cornet.

If you remember, later or some other night shortly afterward, Nathan charged into a party we were at brandishing a cheap, nylon-string guitar with a warped neck over his shoulder. We were all tripping that time, too (ehem! band practice 🤔), and we were failing miserably at adapting the lyrics Felix-Ramon had given on a sheet of loose-leaf paper, into a song. It wasn’t five or six minutes before his tuning of the guitar to Open C before there was a song, brother; a song arose — born out of being frivolous; and carefree; and full of spirit; and from … from the recklessness of youth … from us being together.

You know that anyone who was there that day has that song branded in their psyche; it remains in lasting memory for all of us — just like Nathan still does — both as a memory and_

I don’t know if you’ve been back to the campus, but he also lives on as a wizard mosaic that was installed in the last five years along the art building’s facade.

I managed to make my peace with Nathan before he passed away. It happened a few years after I left the Biscayne Park apartment; after you and your class graduated and drifted away … to college, I suppose. Honestly, I didn’t pay much mind back then to all the people that merely drifted out of whatever hustle I had busied myself with; trying to whittle away at my own brand serenity … becoming progressively more settled; trading in my unhealthy passions for a more abiding sense of interdependence with the rest of the world; to arrive at an abiding sense of fulfillment. 

I can’t tell if it's me, Lee, or if it’s all the fear floating about in the air, and on every screen; the state of our Nation and history, but the pervasive sense of ease I’ve managed to carve out for myself is cut with an equally jagged edge of loneliness … much more profound than the one underscoring of all those daydreams of love during my teens.

No, Lee, that sense of being an outcast, East of Eden, the crusty character of an Ancient Mariner going Aqualung at a wedding reception. Yeah. Ripe, bro. Ripe old age. Everyone says I’m still young, but my daughter talks about Flock of Seagulls and Michael Jackson as if they are pre-historic. That’s how she puts it: “from the old days.” No shit!

Ripe, Lee. I’m feeling ripe.

At any rate, the night Nathan and I managed to make peace, was a July 4th. I was having a slice at Steve’s Pizza, when the stray thought of him crossed my mind. I could see him trudging the lawn, loaded down with milk crates and several orchestra stands.

Twilight was already well underway. I knew I would miss the fireworks, but I drove over after my slice to deliberately “bump” into him. I found Nathan sweaty and finishing up the last of his part of loading his Tuba and other equipment into the school’s van. We both expressed excitement to be in each other’s company.

I think I drove him home that night, and we caught up on the long ride up the Turnpike. Driving him past the Casino and the drive-through tailers you and I used to buy cartons of cigarettes from The Seminoles, tax free.  I don’t know if you ever noticed,Lee, but the house Nathan grew up in was also adjacent to a very large cemetery.

We stopped at a Miami Subs Grill before parting ways — the one near his mom’s place. Go figure, our last encounter happened at the same place we conceived the plan to move out of our folks home and into the Biscayne Park apartment. I can remember having the sense that I would not see him again for a very long time as I waved him goodbye, turning out of the driveway. It didn’t occur to me, though, that this would be the last time I would see him; but, then again, I couldn’t imagine what confluence of circumstances would bring us back in each other’s company. In that sense, I did acknowledge that we may never see each other again; it’s the same kind of a tacit acknowledgement I give myself every night going to sleep, thinking, “This may be it; what if I … ? What happens then … .” Like Seneca says, “[The Sage reckons] all that a man cherishes in life, even his own personality, as temporary holdings, and he lives as if he were on loan to himself, and is ready to return the whole sum cheerfully on demand;” in that sense, I said my goodbyes to Nathan — without regret or remainder.

I don’t have any regrets either about those days. They still resonate like the finely woven bubbles that form the swirling helix in this orb you gave me another lifetime ago. I don’t have regrets for the acid trips or having gone permanently and certifiably nuts from them.

I sometimes stare at this thing you gave me. It has fallen several times on hard floors, and it has developed some character beyond what the boutique or esoterica shop you bought it from had originally intended. You’d have to come fly over and visit to see the ripples emanating from fractures at a few spots along its surface, cascading into the glass’ lattice. It’s remarkably beautiful where it remembers the blows of Fortune from those falls.

I also don’t regret pantomiming Jedi lightsaber battles in front of Nathan’s lawn where he had nested during all of high school into his early adulthood like an angry dragon — the entire floor of his bedroom covered, two-layers deep in toys and yellowing underwear. I wonder from time-to-time about his mother and his sister … whatever became of them? I don’t really care for an answer; the thought crosses my mind every so often, though.

I’ll tell you what, Lee, the memory of Nathan that naggs me often, is the one of this night talking to Nathan on the porch of our apartment. It was the conversation that, eventually, culminated a few weeks later with me moving out.

It was the dead of night, and I swear, Lee, on that porch, I saw a glowing red aura around him even through the darkness and the sound of cicadas. I was sopping up a midnight snack of Fruit Loops in grape juice on the porch before going back to my bedroom for my “second sleep” when he opened the door and sat himself down in front of me. I couldn’t tell if he was intentionally trying to be theatrical about it. You never knew with him_

Like, you could never be sure if you should believe his staunch,purist rhetoric about how he’d never been stupid enough to try drugs or alcohol; or, if the rumors were true: that he had conducted erotic rituals drenched in Goldschlager with that polyandrous girl and some other dude. The thought of his natural odor of sweat that had fermented in the deep folds of his fat wiped clean by that girl’s armpit and leg hair;  by the dense, limp,  uncombed hair that could properly be called a “mane” … all washed by cinnamon spirits, the flecks of gold from the bottom of the bottle glittering on their flesh. The image still gives me the willies. Both extremes were equally plausible with Nathan, if not deliberately cultivated.

I was groggy, but since Nathan and I were now totally strained as friends, generally interacting little, I was cautious with my pleasantries as he sat himself in front of me. He seemed to be so angry in those “last days” in Biscayne Park, that whatever was on his mind had also resulted in him and Felix-Ramon growing estranged. The rage poured out of every part of him; and, to this day, others that would occupy our couch still talk about him as an agent of true evil. But, I never witnessed anything strange; just an overpowering sense of “the willies” — terror.

It wasn’t a far stretch to go there with his fascination and study of secret societies … his fervent, evangelical stance on the dogma surrounding Discordianism; his odd practices: asking my best friend to piss on a wooden cross made from table legs; his violent outbursts like the time he smashed a cardioid microphone into his forehead until he bled because, as he said, we fudged a take or two of his original composition during a rehearsal.

That night on the porch, he was clearly trying to communicate to me, in good faith, a revelation he had had. I couldn’t understand it. He tried to relate it to me with some analogy of three orbs swirling in and through his hands and arms and around each other. All I saw was the color red. Him. Red with rage, and I just didn’t get it. I still don’t get it.

I could understand by then why he would have been filled with anger — a morbidly obese giant raised by a well-meaning single-mom, self-evidently at the school as a recipient of some grant from the Alumni association and not because he came from a well-to-do family.

You know his whole life was spent in devotion to that school — just about all of it. I was glad when I came back a couple of years after his death and saw the tile-mosaic of him near the art room -- an effigy of him as a grand wizard — cape, hat, wand and all. Certainly he was the harbinger of magic — that magic anyone can assume when delving into the latent imagination of one’s childhood.

The night still puzzles me. I wonder what Nathan realized and tried to communicate. I still wince a bit thinking that he may have been pacified — unburdened if I (or someone) had managed to understand him in and around that night. Memory can be unreliable, mixing events up; mashing them together and turning deep, spellbound discussion and dark rituals into a color. As with this memory: Poorchlight Red.

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the only thing that'd could've made today any better, is to have been here and now (dusk), listening to R&B and Jazz on the Bluetooth, slipping into peaceful sleep, worming our way into our tightest embrace -- like slimey snails; the fragrance from her neck: dry sweat and yesterday's cologne__

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In my first manic episode, 18-years-old, I had been restrained to a bed in leather cuffs -- hands and feet (standard protocol for psychiatric units at the time -- early 90's); and, while chewing at on the leather restraints, I was pondering what, if anything, was funny about that joke: "Why did the chicken cross the road? To get to the other side."

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Originally drafted and posted to a prior blog on Aug. 15, 2008.

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Those mild waves lapping up that you'd been trying "body surf" with lackluster success then grabs you and takes you in its undertow, tumbling you over and over; and, it seems like forever  ... undrowned and rising out of it, the salt-water mixes with the mucus, noatrils still stinging respiration still settling back into a rhythm. Building sandcastles didn't really matter anymore. Top of the nose and back already charred. Hurt. Would hurt, a lot.

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I had a very vivid dream just before I met you (not kidding; for real) -- one of those kinds of dreams that still unfolds though you've started going about your business for the day; and, I was very much in love in a jacuzzi with someone while mother-of-my child comfortably (and, approvingly) toiled away, unconcerned, on her laptop in the other room.

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Work in progress updated April 11, 2022 amidst the blossoming of cherry trees, Yorkville, NYC.

You seemed like the sort,

I'd've like to have met,

In St. Thomas where we both had,

Respectively,

Moored.

You … with those you traveled with and

endured;

And, me with mine.

Admiring the age on your face.

Cows nest … crabs feet,

You, so tan in your navy-blue bikini

The patina of burnt wisdom glazed with brine on your torso when you changed from,

a larged-brimmed hat from L.L.Bean.

Its chinstrap chopped off long-ago,

For ad-hoc laces on that tropical trail,

Using, now, a silk scarf to keep it

(and your bust — or hips)

buttressed against the passions of the Caribbean.

Though that was exactly the thing to embrace now (if ever).

Life begins and fifty, you'd shout!

Fifty is the new forty, I'd retort!

It was our common refrain, like the sails flapping on the tack when we went wherever we wanted to.

You always had your reasons for your moods,

And I, decades prior, learned,

You had your reasons for them …

So, I didn't question or try to understand them anymore …

So long as I could gaze on your sleeping face, and press myself against you every once-in-a-while.

More often than not, you preoccupied yourself with the BLTs,

Reveling in the pure piracy,

(or gentlemanliness)

whatever it's called nowadays;

• or-

with making sure —

calling out from the bow,

the anchor had dug in deep (to your satisfaction);

And, now we could rest and bask in the glory of creation.

(Sometimes that would mean my having the pleasure of your nakedness …)

I got off, really, on your bending over the railing, taking this enterprise so seriously.

I'd push the levers in and out of neutral,

Enough to jerk the boat from it's slowl drifting port-side, back to starboard …

just enough torque to let you know I was still yours to direct,

though, really, the tide and the current did most the work;

Smiling at how I had not thrown you off your balance;

Looking over the binacle at your bustling,

and at your boobs which never, ever have gotten (nor could they have gotten) old with me.

As many times as I had had you,

my forearm around the small of your back,

pressing your torso up into me,

Bending your back and lifting you off the bed

So that we

Could be

One …

Your digging your nails into the back of my neck (and, you weren't one to make a show about such things),

Those days being all about:

Fenders;

And cleats;

Lines, and Sea Bass, and the

tops of one's soles re-radiating,

All the sun they'd gotten beaten down with all day long;

Measuring out the days with teaspoons

— literally,

like the kids say it nowadays, hitting the "Tees" hard: LIT'really;

and, not like the lax "Dees" of lidderally drunks.

Earlier … when we had met and broken the ice with what had led us both here to this place: A dockside restaurant,

Enjoying a "Jamaican Black-and-tan"

Dragon Stout + Red Stripe

Discussing how we'd later take our chances with the trollys

Or the taxis we could hitch

Just beyond the gravel and chain-link fence of the marina …

(Flagpoles and the smell of diesel),

To find some place to have a cosmopolitan and dance together

(Dance kompa),

And be like a compass for each other,

Even if just for this night only,

orientating our movements much like the winds or aligning each other to magnetic north —

To each other's body, and the way each of us liked to move,

Or be touched,

And to know in it

That we belong, even if only to each other and our particular way of cruising around this world,

like:

Albatross!

That night, we met,

A parted post-carousing,

We basked in the trade winds aboard the vessel that had carried us here,

Long before the tides of fate would have us drift apart,

Only to find each other again i. Tortolla

And all those subsequent years of patchy comms

So that we'd each, eventually, learn to love, or at least, make do, suffering the fools;

Having always something to re-criminate besides each other.

But that first night:

floodlights out there rippling in the harbor, independent of anyone, but, always,

seemingly,

shimmering like The path to eternity,

Paved on the surface of the water, specifically for you or for me

(but, not for anyone else);

One of us dangling our feet over the bow or from the deck chairs near the transom.

Much later, heaven unfurling for us when we were being silly between the bed sheets: innocent (and, dirty) all at once.

Breathlessly reminiscing of those first few nights,

When we confronted our desolation independently, but

Already hooked with each other —

Restless, and unable to sleep,

Fetching some more drink from the ice chest,

Finishing it and anothe while resting our chin back on the spit and polish,

Before the dizziness had nothing to do with the surf, but,

Instead

The inevitable of what we'd grow inured and ambivalent to:

passing out, senseless, alone and wanting,

Amidst the sounds of the harbor lapping up on the hull.

Or, unable, to loose consciousness,

Filled with anticipation for tomorrow,

And watching the sun rise over another pristine horizon,

One eye closed, drawing inward into into the imagination,

Anticipating another encounter,

Feeling hopeful,

for the first time in a long time.

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reposted her for the pleasure of lady-friend - JC
source: http://illsandthrillsoflove.blogspot.com
date accessed: 03 Dec. 2016
date published: 31 March 2010
original post title: From There....to Here, From Then....to Now: A Year of Love Poetry, Day-by-Day

The Ivy Crown - W.C. Williams
------------------------ The Ivy CrownThe whole process is a lie, unless, crowned by excess,it break forcefully, one way or another, from its confinement –or find a deeper well. Antony and Cleopatra were right;they have shown the way. I love you or I do not liveat all.Daffodil time is past. This is summer, summer!the heart says, and not even the full of it. No doubtsare permitted – though they will come and maybefore our time overwhelm us. We are only mortalbut being mortal can defy our fate. We mayby an outside chance even win! We do not look to seejonquils and violets come again but there are,still, the roses!Romance has no part in it. The business of love is cruelty which,by our will, we transform to live together.It has its seasons, for and against, whatever the heartfumbles in the dark to assert toward the end of May.Just as the nature of briars is to tear flesh, I have proceededthrough them. Keep the briars out,they say. You cannot live and keep free ofbriars.Children pick flowers. Let them, Through having themin hand they have no further use for them but leave them crumpledat the curb’s edge.At our age the imagination across the sorry facts lifts usto make roses stand before thorns. Surelove is cruel and selfish and totally obtuse –at least, blinded by the light, young love is. But we are older,I to love and you to be loved, we have,no matter how, by our wills survived to keepthe jeweled prize always at our finger tips.We will it so and so it is past all accident. William Carlos Williams - American

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I lived for the Batata mornings

Breakfast in bed

The eggs scrambled into the buttery

Malawach bread,

The other one -- the one filled with Nutella

for after the Coconut waffle

and for after the fries

… for after the first feature; and, for

after some work done for the boss -- nakedly;

Or, later (or, after that)

After your unraveling a rendering of your weeks’ yield of the drama

the trauma

By this time; my head was on your thigh

warmed by both your legs and your laptop,

petting the dogs head resting on your other thigh,

All of it making your belly so warm, I’d have to jerk the fan closer to me.

And, then after some laughter;

And, then after some Heideggar and Hagel and Kant;

And, then, after all sorts of S’ak pase and Na’ boule.

And, after all that

Finally

Your yielding,

Goddamnit

… your toes would curl up; and your horse breath in my ear

Would make my scalp go electric

Time could have been a song; or just its’ refrain;

And, the space of between you and me disappeared for

Just

a

minute.

To drift back, almost immediately,

into the week;

drifting back into sleep, forgetful until

the hurricane we had made -- our child (us made one)

bursts in …

And tells us she’s alive

– very much so.

“Tamale; tamale!” We finally figured out

after a couple of stakeouts was:

A guy on a bike, every Saturday (religiously).

A block away, the Imam goes at it again,

Five times every day:

Five moments to reflect – especially during Springtime when the windows were mostly open

And the decay wafting in from the nearby cemetery was sweet, like

How it smells when rot transforms back into fresh

and virgin earth.

The trumpet of revelation always nearby and

within earshot

To have known then-and-there; or, in retrospect,

Especially, when we were being tame with each other,

(every once in a while)

… to recall at least one of those Batata mornings; in the R&B

In the sweet potato fries;

and, in all sorts of other pronouns we had for

for naughty things.

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Recollections of Charlotte, NC circa 1999 — in the wake of Mardi Gras.

Minor edits gramatical , 7/25/16; Mortimer’s Cafe & Pub at The Epicenter; downtown, Charlotte, NC, and also just prior to posting

I
George, I don’t have to tell you in this letter that Mardi Gras was a mess. It was unfortunate that our accommodations for Mardi Gras with you and your gang dried up. No apologies are necessary, brother. Instead, I’m the one who must apologize to you. Our intricate plans to spend your one and only drunken reverie for the year together never materialized after so much anticipation.

Beyond that, I feel a sense of impropriety to you, considering that I didn’t even have the courtesy to exchange farewells with you upon leaving New Orleans. There is also something I need to get off of my chest, and since you’ve always lent an impartial ear to any of the shenanigans I’ve shared with you, it seems to me that my confessions here in this correspondence would, at least, be received by someone with a kind ear.

Regarding the issue of accommodations, I had an ill-conceived backup plan, knowing that a friend of mine from high school lived near St. Charles Street. It was only a matter of finding his place. Now, I neither had his address nor a clear idea where to find St. Charles Street, nor had I called in advance to let him know that I would be arriving in town for the festivities. However, considering the upcoming week of reckless abandon that was ahead of me, I had neither qualms for not having a place to rest my besotted bones, nor was I worried about the triviality of finding my high school friend’s apartment. Zach, in is naturally somber demeanor, seemed to share my attitude.

After we purchased a map, we made our way towards the French Quarter, and since I had been to New Orleans, it was only a matter of dead reckoning as we wandered through the narrow streets to one side of St. Charles before we finally found one that I had a vague recollection of. We parked my car against the sidewalk, and to my surprise, it turned out that we landed ten yards from my friend’s apartment. I was certain we were at the right place. Unfortunately, when I knocked on the door, there was no answer. I walked through a small courtyard filled with small potted plants, and stepping on a cinder block, I looked through the windows. The apartment looked familiar, but dark and vacant. Zach stood on the curb and didn’t bat an eye when I told him that things looked grim. We resolved, after brief deliberation, to leave a note on the door. We then wandered without direction into the afternoon bacchanal that spilled out from every cranny of the city.

Well, George, the rest of Mardi Gras was, understandably, a blur. The note I had left on my friend’s door was never removed in the four days we were there. I suppose I didn’t tell you in our singular encounter that Zach and I ambled back towards my car after every raw, bead-laden night of carousing, and slept in it until the mustiness and sun beaten sweat of the next afternoon rose us from our intoxicated sleep.

We even found behind a set of low shrubs that lined a whitewashed house a hose spigot that we used as a makeshift shower. In the afternoons, we did our best to cleanse ourselves of the funk from the night before, dowsing our armpits and rubbing our face in the cool water. By the second day, though, I didn’t even bother brushing my teeth. It seemed illegal to be living in a car, but then again, New Orleans was replete with drunks and tits and doomsayers with their sandwich boards full of Bible passages.

Everywhere the mob of people pressed against each other down Bourbon Street along with the odors of stale liquor, puke, and bleach which oozed up in the afternoon sun as if from the concrete streets itself. Within the spirit of this chaos, I’d say Zach and I weathered it rather well.

However, by the third morning of this, I noticed that my beard had grown into scruffy sandpaper, and on several occasions, I reeled when Zach moved closer to me in the crowd, smelling like a filthy bum. The patina of hell incarnate grew thicker on my body by the hour, and a fog descended upon my spirit, so that not even the parades seemed interesting anymore.

By the fourth afternoon, I stirred in the back seat of my car, and found Zach in the front seat, awake and still twisted like a pretzel from his slumber. He saw me stir, and turned his head towards me.

“You want to get out of here?” he asked.

“Yeah, let’s go.”

I wriggled the car keys from my pocket while Zach squeezed himself over the armrest to the driver’s seat. I had a splitting headache. Seconds after the ignition started, I was asleep again. When I woke up, we were in Charlotte, North Carolina.

Now, George, I was grateful to be in Charlotte. It Zach’s city of origin, and we had agreed before our trip that we would make a stop there at his buddy’s place before returning back to Miami. It represented to me rest and recuperation. It represented serenity and a return back to the reality and order I was accustomed to. Most of all, as we maneuvered through the parking lot of the apartment buildings, I set my greedy thoughts on the luscious shower that was moments away—hot, scalding, and filled with the baptismal goodness of a return to a civilized life. And, detoxify we did. Zach and I spend most of our stay there as couch potatoes, playing Nintendo and watching television for most of the day.

Our time in Charlotte was relaxing, but I never felt truly comfortable there; a mild anxiety remained with me from Mardi Gras. I did, after all, have a discrete agenda while I stumbled through New Orleans. I wanted to get laid. Nothing would have made me happier than to lure a perky hoochy-mama back to, of all places, my luxury four-wheel-drive accommodations. I assume that you had a similar motives during Mardi Gras, George.

But, as it turned out, the women at Mardi Gras were stingy with their wild side—at least to me. I couldn’t trade my fancy beads for flesh to save my life. There always seemed to be a clause on the trade like, “No, I want that one,” or, “beads and a drink, or no go!” I even had a woman looming over a balcony throw back my beads saying that they weren’t good enough for her.

On one occasion, Zach and I shuffled through the throng on Bourbon Street, and just out of arms reach, a pa-pow honey lifted up her blouse without the aid of any beads at all. Instantaneously, George, every sex-starved man within arms-length radius lunged, and I saw over twelve pairs of hands reaching out to those poor, molested, perfect breasts.

So, George, playing Nintendo and the couch potato wasn’t going to cut it for me. I felt restless, and I moped around the apartment feeling jilted and even like a failure. Mardi Gras should have been a sure thing. I was, then, pleased when, with the coming of evening in the good old Queen City, Zach and I hopped back into the car and hit some of his old haunts.

On both nights in Charlotte, we found ourselves at a small pub and coffeehouse called Phat City. Apparently, Zach had helped build the place and was friends with the owner. I admitted to Zach that he had made a funky little place. It had a dark interior that favored the eclectic clientele with its black walls, an array of church-like candles, mismatched furniture, and a small stage. Leaving the place one night, Zach pointed out to me a derelict school bus that was parked with its flattened tires on the gravel parking lot. He told me, laughing, that he and the owner had taken turns blasting at the wreck with a shotgun. Our drinking binge continued, unabated at Phat City, and I felt my constitution wear thin.

After a couple of days, Zach and I bounded over to Asheville for a night to pass a few hours with another friend of his, but we returned to Charlotte no better than we had left it. My besotted discontent grew rather than dissipated. I have a vague recollection of a police officer jabbing me with his nightstick while I lay comatose on a lawn. The event seemed humorous to me the next day, but there’s only so much fun, only so much tequila, you can have, George, before it starts to wear you down and turn from pleasure into pain. An attitude of hollowness and detachment converged upon my degenerating spirits, and the outlook I now viewed the world with became disconcerting. The trade between lustful angst and drowned numbness left a sour taste in my mouth.

Zach and I stayed one more night in Charlotte, and in the late afternoon we packed our things for the ride home. We were lazy with the affair and were in no rush to get back to our lives. So, nighttime came before we climbed in the car for the long ride. However, Zach wanted to say his farewells to his friends at Phat City before he left, and we accommodated ourselves back into its familiar setting before venturing out onto the highway.

When we parked the car, and walked through the gravel lot, for the first time I noticed that the climate had dropped to a biting but tolerable chill. Since leaving New Orleans, the weather turned, and made its way down the thermometer, but wrapped up in my thoughts and stupor, this fact had escaped me thus far.

Enclosing the entrance of Phat City, then, the management had erected a large tent over a spacious wooden deck that housed several picnic benches. The tent had several plastic flaps along all of its sides rolled down to the floor, whereas in our list visit there, they had been stowed in tight bundles at the top of the canopy. As we walked towards the entrance of Phat City, and under the tent warmed by space heaters, I had the impression that we had stumbled onto, crashed, so to speak, someone’s outdoor wedding.

We walked inside, and Zach struck a conversation with the bartender in an instant. I was left by him, drifting towards the corner of the bar, unattended and with no one to speak with. I looked around, dejected, for a good couch to slump onto. I was through with getting drunk by this time, George. After a fruitless and undecided moment with the array of Phat City’s furniture, I walked back towards the parking lot, and grabbed a composition pad I had brought with me. I retired to one of the picnic benches and opened the pad but only starred at the blank page. By the time I snapped out of my reverie, I looked around the deck and noticed it had filled up with several other groups of people.

I hunched back over the table, and sunk into my thoughts. However, I shook out of them when my table lurched for a moment. Here, I beheld a truly unexpected surprise: a young woman - lithe, with a cru cut, a tank-top, and wearing camouflage pants - had stepped upon the tabletop, and loomed over me. She walked the length of the picnic bench several times, stepping over my composition pad. She shimmied her body around in palsied but seductive movements, and I was dumbstruck.

George, she looked down at me, licking her lips, and then she did the unthinkable. She took off her blouse, and threw it to one side like a seasoned exhibitionist. She danced, and she danced, and beyond that, she did this to the muted bass notes that resonated from behind the bar’s interior. Outside, the only music came from a group of rowdy men at another picnic table who had taken to imitating the woka-woka-woka refrain of a Seventies’ porno flick.

Now topless, she seemed to hesitate, though she continued to prance around with abandon right before my eyes. Then, George, she crouched down, and grabbed my stunned face in her hands. She continued downward, and soon spread herself supine across the entire table. She lay right over my barren composition pad like a sacrificial offering.

Now, a grin spread across my entire face. Though stunned into paralysis beholding this young woman, I lifted my hands from under the tabletop and wordlessly took up my most precious set of Mardi Gras beads that still hung around my neck.

I reached over to her, and she graciously lifted her head from the table — yielding, as I wrapped the beads around her neck and her porcelain chest. With that, this young woman grabbed the back of my neck, and drew me in towards her face, blessing me with a long, (albeit theatrical) wet kiss.

A small hesitant crowd, probably equally amazed by this young phenomenon, flowed out from within the bar. This young woman moved out from under me, from out of my personal spotlight, and jumped from my table, only to step upon the one housing the rowdy men. There she continued her performance, and soon unzipped her camouflage pants.

By now, Phat City’s owner had maneuvered himself onto the deck, and I thought that this madness would come to a halt — posthaste. Instead, he cheered along with everyone else, clapping and yelling out to the dancing girl to get on with it and take her final G-string garment off. One of the rowdy men, even, produced a dollar bill, and slipped it under the cotton strap. I have to admit, George, all of this was a bit overwhelming.

She didn’t bare all, but instead jumped from the table, gathered her clothing, and disappeared headlong through the plastic curtains, vanishing as suddenly as she had appeared. A lively chatter remained present in the wake of her performance, but soon it tapered off. The rowdy men returned to their somber talk and those who had come from within the bar, walked back in.

I returned to my composition pad with fervor. In a way, George, what I had been seeking in Mardi Gras became manifest in the young woman’s dance. I had my gratuitous flesh, and satisfaction was my reward.

A few minutes later, I was rustled once again from my calm meditations. The young girl returned, fully clothed, and to my amazement, she plopped herself down next to me. She had with her a large cloth bag that she placed upon the table. I took a good look at her now. Everything about her was tight.

She had a petit nose that turned upward and high cheekbones that gave her green eyes narrow and sharp contours. Though her skin was pale and studded with an occasional large freckle, the spots were not numerous enough to be anything more than beauty marks. Despite her paleness, her complexion had a peculiar quality of dullness, as if the ambient light became trapped into her pores, rather than reflecting out from them.

“What are you writing?” she said without hesitation and with force.

“I’m trying to write poem,” I said. “To collect my thoughts.”

“I write poems too. Do you want to hear one?”

She reached into her bag and pulled out a thick spiral notebook, and began flipping through the pages, deliberating for a moment on each one. She settled on a page, and she bent herself towards me, reading her verse. Honestly, George, I had a hard time concentrating on what she read. Instead, mental scenarios of how I might keep this creature tethered to me with insightful remarks kept my mind lurching. She looked up from the page when her presentation finished, and waited for my response.

“Do you mind if I read it to myself? I had a hard time getting it all the first time around.”

She handed me her notebook, and I still had a hard time concentrating on what I read. I studied her poem, assuming a thoughtful disposition. She leaned against my torso, and rested her chin onto my shoulder, presumably reading it along with me. To me, the poem expressed anger and confusion. I stared at the words, but I was still too turned around to understand anything but the emotion that underscored them. Without looking up from the page, I began nodding. “Wow,” I said after a solemn sigh, “I can really relate to this.” The reaction seemed to please her. Of course, I could relate to it — the rage, but I had no idea what she was trying to say through it.

“Here, read another one.” Still pressed against me, she drew out her arm, and turned the pages. I noticed something curious about her arm. Along the inside of her forearm, an array of thin scars were etched into the skin and arranged into neat rows. I drew back from her, and looked into her, this time with true sincerity. I took her wrist into my hand, and looked down at her forearm. I ran my fingers along the slight lumps as if reading braille.

“What is this?” I said.

“It’s nothing,” she said, her mood deflating in an instant into melancholy. I knew what those scars meant, and the sudden image of this young woman, taking up a knife to her skin, flashed through my head.

“I’m sorry for what you’ve had to go through,” leapt out of my mouth.

She looked away. “It’s really nothing.”

We didn’t say anything for a moment. “What’s your name?” I asked.

“Pain.”

I laughed, and that broke through her somberness. “How do you spell it, if you don’t mind me asking, P-A-I-N?”

“Well, really it’s spelled, P-A-Y-N-E, and that’s my middle name.”

“I suppose that it fits, though: P-A-I-N? Can I call you that?” I was giggling while I repeated her name several times.

“Sure.”

Our conversation turned back to the poetry, and we took turns reading from our respective notebooks. But, as we continued, the poetry fell by the wayside, and we spent more time in conversation.

“This one here is for my father,” she said. “My father’s in jail. He went in last week.”

“That sucks.”

“What sucks even more, is my mother’s dead. I don’t have anybody left.”

“Jesus. So, you live on your own?”

“I’ve been living on the streets.”

“Don’t you have an uncle or aunt you could stay with?”

“No. My family doesn’t live here.”

“So what are you going to do?”

“I guess I’ll get a job, you know?”

“Man, that’s a rough situation, having nobody and no place to stay.” By this time, Zach had come out from the bar and sat across from us. “Zach and I have been homeless, in a way, for the last week. We were at Mardi Gras, and we were sleeping in our car. So, I can relate to how rough that can be. For one, going to the bathroom becomes a pain in the ass, literally.” She laughed.

There was a pause in our conversation, and Zach tapped me on the shoulder, asking me if I wanted to get back on the road.

I looked at Pain. “Well, it was a pleasure meeting you. I had a good time with our poetry slam.”

“Yeah, me too.”

“So, what are you going to do now? I mean, where are you planning to sleep tonight, some bush by the gutter?”

“I don’t know. In the morning I’ll call a friend of mine, and see if I can stay with him.”

I began to lift myself from the picnic table, but a thought occurred to me. “Hey Pain, considering that you have nowhere to go and no place to be, do you want to come with me and Zach back to Miami? You could stay with me.”

“Sure,” she said casually. “When are you leaving?”

“Now.”

“Do you mind if we stop somewhere so I can pick up something?”

“Don’t mind at all.”

And, with that, the three of us got into my car, and drove with Pain’s guidance to a nearby house that she claimed belonged to a friend. She ran out and into the house’s alley, and came back a few minutes later with a garbage bag. Zach was silent while we waited for her in the car, but I couldn’t help expressing to him my nervous anxiety. There weren’t any doubts, but this strange twist of events made the world seem turned inside out.

I took the first shift behind the wheel, and Zach remained taciturn, as was his nature, beside me. Pain fell asleep in the back seat, and I figured it must have been her first comfortable rest in some time. I sank into my thoughts, turning this matter around in them. I didn’t know whether to be terrified or joyous. However, by the third hour of our drive, though, I had not come to any resounding conclusions. However, I felt comfortable with my notions of what was to come that things would play out all right.

After we refueled, Zach took the wheel. Instead of sitting next to him in the passenger seat, I moved into the back with Pain. I lay there with her, with my arms wrapped around her, and with my fingers interlaced into hers. While she dozed, I looked up at the car’s roof and felt her squeeze my hand periodically.

“Hey, Zach,” I said. “Where are we?”

“We just crossed into Florida a few minutes ago. I can feel its shittiness already oozing back into my bones.”

Pain squirmed, trying to readjust her body, stretched it, and went prone against me again. When she settled herself, I took her chin into my fingers, and took a disbelieving look at her face. In the darkness of the highway, her features appeared youthful to me.

“How old are you anyway, Pain?”

“You really want to know?”

“Yeah, really.”

“I’m sixteen.”

George, I’ll tell you that I felt all the blood drain out of me, and a sharp pain stung my neck in my usual sensation of panic. “You’re sixteen,” I said deadpanned.

Then, I had neither a chance to settle into my terror nor to begin my deliberations on what to do next. A tremendous thudding sound replaced the droning hum of the car’s motor inside in the cabin. The thuds became more frequent, and it drew my attention to the crackling coming from the windshield.

“Are we in hail yet?” screamed Zach over the thundering that overcame even the stereo’s music. “Are we in hail yet?” he kept repeating. But, George, he slurred the word, “hail,” in such a way that to me it sounded like he was saying, “hell.”

“Are we in hell yet?” I heard him repeat again and again, and I snapped into a maniacal laughter. The guffaws overtook me until there were tears streaming down my eyes, and my gasping took on the quality of weeping.

II
When we reached Miami in the afternoon, I found myself assuming an unbearable calm … resignation, I suppose. At that point, I still had not been told that transporting a minor across state lines was a felony. During the last leg of the drive, I resolved to remain chaste with her. I only considered how I now had a little girl in my hands, and that her fate was my responsibility.

As such, I took her to the Salvation Army after settling her into my beachside apartment and after making it clear to her through insinuation that her place in my home was on the sofa bed. I let her pick out an array of new clothes, and then took her to the grocery store, letting her fill up my vacant fridge with any goodies she desired. She was a child, though, so when she selected Rice-a-Roni, Hamburger Helper, and instant potatoes, it didn’t occur to her that these things needed, in addition, some eggs, milk or beef to be prepared. Furthermore, considering that she was destitute, I gave her an allowance. Can you believe that, George! I was now a twenty-six year old father figure, and not a mature one at that. I know you’re laughing at this despicable situation as you read this.

I insisted that she would feel better, more independent, if she found a job. But, after several days of shuffling her about to different stores, after picking up a pile of applications, it became clear to me that she wasn’t interested. I, of course, had to continue putting in my shifts at that coffeehouse you’ve been to. I gave her the option, then, to either accompany me to work, or manage for herself during the days by taking the bus. Instead, she spent most of her time baking her skin on the beach, which was, of course, behind my apartment complex.

Soon, though, I fell back into my routine, and by the second week, her absence was a deafening reality every time I walked into my home. I conjectured that she was still around by finding hair shavings in my sink, or seeing that her bed sheets had been shuffled around from the previous night. However, when I found her lingering in the apartment, I grimaced since Pain, as per our first meeting, was naked most of the time.

I have to admit, it was a strange form of torture. Though my resolutions remained intact, there were times when the gulf between us seemed to lessen. I overcompensated, fearing my inner passions by remaining away from my home as long as possible. I only went there to sleep, and as a consequence, I found that the only thing I knew that would help pass the time was to linger in bars until dawn.

On one occasion, I lay in bed, sleeping away one of my now common hangovers, when I rustled from my sleep only to find Pain standing over me in a bikini. She urged me to wake up, complaining that she was bored. I turned over onto my stomach, wincing at the thought of leaving my pillows. She nudged me with her foot several times, and then seeing that it was of no use, stepped onto my back like a geisha. I told her to just let me sleep. She sighed in disgust, and walked out of the apartment, slamming the door. I slept an awful lot in those days.

Soon, I found strangers knocking at my door asking for Pain, disturbing my comfortable dominion. Then, a friend of mine, a photographer from the coffeehouse, approached me with a spread she had compiled. They were all of Pain on the beach, and though the photos were tasteful, the expressions Pain assumed in them — here a seductive look; the joy of beachside abandon; her gait suspended in mid air on the film … it made a vulgar impression on me.

Then an event occurred that I don’t think I will ever forget by the sheer horridness of its nature. I walked into my apartment at dawn after a serious bender. Upon rounding the corner of the hallway that led to the beds, I saw, George, I saw Pain sleeping there flanked on both sides by two naked men. I looked down on the floor, and fixated for what seemed like an eternity on the used condom lying upon the white tile. George, I don’t think I’ve ever felt such a welling up of sadness in my life. I was sad for Pain, sad for how she had come into my life in good faith, only to turn into everyone’s pawn.

Disgusted, I walked back out of the apartment, and went to the coffeehouse, hoping that upon my return that sight would be gone. In the late afternoon, I ventured back, and was thankful to have my home to myself. But, when I awoke from a deep slumber that night, Pain sat across from me on the sofa bed looking troubled.

“Are you okay?” I asked.

“Sort of.”

“Do you want to talk about it?”

“Um,” she hesitated, “While you were asleep just now, um, well, I was on the beach with some friends, and we came back, uh, and I took your car keys out of your pants.”

“What are you saying, Pain?”

“Well, we got pulled over, and I said to the cop that you let us borrow the car. We couldn’t find the registration. They towed your car away, but my friend is going to pay you back, I swear.”

I clenched my teeth, speechless, but for some strange reason, I wasn’t angry “It’s okay, Pain. Don’t get stressed out about it. I’ll take care of it in the morning, no problem.” I said it more out of exhaustion than anything else.

In the following week, a change came over Pain. Her demeanor grew dark and reticent. Her usual zest turned sour, and concern washed over me every time I found her sulking either in the apartment or in the coffeehouse. Also, I noticed that she was sniffling often. At first, I assumed that it was a condition of her depressive mood, but in fact, she was getting ill. Furthermore, the bronze complexion from her beach-going no longer looked healthy. Instead, it was a mixture of red and peeling skin, where on her spotted back, the contrast of burnt flesh and her natural pigment, showed the brutal effects of too much sunshine.

Again, George, my heart broke when I walked into my apartment, and found her lying prone on the sofa bed, whimpering, feverish, and charred. I hustled back out the door, went to the grocery store, and paced the isles for any kind of remedy I could find for Pain. I approached two firefighters who happened to be in a checkout line, and asked them what I could use for an ugly sunburn. They suggested Noxema, and so I found myself back in my apartment, applying the balm to Pain’s back, gave her some fever pills, and asked her to drink as much orange juice as she could stomach.

From then on, I stayed with her, and she returned back to health. The downtrodden funk, however, remained with her. I tried to cheer her up by asking her if she had written a poem recently, to which she gave a flat no. Christ, George, all I wanted now was to find her content, and I racked my brain thinking of a way to dispel her malaise.

Days later we were driving home together from the coffeehouse, and I became bold with our conversation. “You’re not happy, are you?” I said.

“I’m not a happy person, you know.”

“Well, look. You’ve seen me, how I love to be in that freaking coffeehouse all the time. I don’t claim to be a fundamentally happy person either, but being there makes me happy.”

“And?”

I was unsure where my argument led to, but I pressed on. “Well, is there a place on this Earth where you’ve felt happy to be at?”

“I guess so.”

“Well, where would that place be?”

“This antique store back home. The woman that runs it is really nice to me.”

“If you could, would you be there now?”

“Yeah, but—”

“Do you want to go home, Pain?”

Her face lit up. “Yeah. Could you take me back?”

“Certainly. I would have taken you back any time you asked. Do you want to go tonight?”

“Could we?”

“Okay, then. It’s settled.”

So, George, we grabbed her things in my apartment, and drove onward to Charlotte without delay. Pain slept the whole way, and throughout the entire dark, silent night, I starred at the pale light my headlights cast upon the pavement. For the first time in a month and a half, I felt relieved. The tension slipped away from my being with every hour, and with its disappearance, the contrast of calm that replaced it reached an unbearable pitch. That sensation, though, was foreign, and again I reverted into an anxious state only to find that there, my tenuous footing with this emotion crumbled back into euphoria.

When dawn arrived, we were only an hour away from our destination, and I maneuvered out of the expressway into a desolate gasoline station. I stepped out from the mustiness of the car into the cold air of the morning. I walked underneath the hum of the station’s fluorescent lights, and my breath came out in vapors. Exhausted, I reclined against the side of the car while holding the pump tight.

I looked out past the station and towards a vast pasture that extended into the horizon with only a speckle of trees within the vista. The sun had yet to break through the Earth’s plane, and I beheld a cloudless sky, pure and painted with a rich palette of pastel blues, greens, and gold. A brisk wind resonated with hollow tones in my ears, and I thought, in my brief moment of repose, that this sunrise, this morning, this sight, with its absolute serenity, was one for the angels. I wanted to tell them about this, tell the angels when they asked me in my dying moments how my life had been. I wanted to tell their hungry souls, bereft of feeling—of human feeling—about this sunrise, and about how, in the last reckoning, the way I felt was inexplicable. Pain continued her dead sleep in the front seat, and I couldn’t help thinking of her, of the last few weeks, and of my place within those events. Then I looked once again into the pasture, at its indifference to me, or to Pain, or to anything at all, and, George, I felt humble in the presence of this panorama.

By mid-morning we arrived in Charlotte, and I prodded Pain back to consciousness. She indicated several rights and lefts, and soon we parked behind the place she spoke of the night before. She jumped out of the car, and I crawled into the back seat. She came back to the car, saying that the store was still closed, and I told her that I needed to sleep for a while. When I awoke later that afternoon, I expected to be alone once again. Instead, Pain was still in the front seat. Her place would remain closed throughout the day, so we drove for a few minutes, landing back where we started: Phat City. We had lunch together in silence.

There was no fanfare in our farewells, George. I stood up from the barstool, and looked at Pain. I thought I might hug her, or give her some advice. I suppose that I wanted be close to her, but when the moment came, I extended my hand with a word, and we shook. I walked back to my car, and turned the ignition, taking a right onto the expressway on-ramp,and I never saw her again.

The thing is, I’m neither proud, nor ashamed by what happened. I surveyed again the landscape of the last weeks as I drove off, and recognized how barren it was to me. The future, too, seemed equally empty, even absurd that it could and would arrive. George, there is a terrible aspect behind all these events I’ve managed to convey to you. I perceived wretchedness in all of this thrashing around, above and beyond the events with Pain. I set out to confess to you, and I must confess now. My horror was not in what I did or didn’t do, whether or not I might be good or evil for it, but in the fact that I felt nothing at all in the face of those things – no pleasure nor pain. I felt nothing, as I rode home, and I wondered whether or not I had the strength of character to accept it—to be redeemed in my indifferent destitution.

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It's strange that I wouldn't even remember his name anymore. We were good buddies, after all. I remember him as this wiry, meek looking little guy with a boyish enthusiasm and an immense talent for drumming and music. He was at once down to Earth and totally eccentric. He was a responsible man — a married man — a homeowner, but he had not lost the disposition to entertain me with a sort of refined version of show-and-tell when I would come over to his house.

He had majored in music while in college, specializing in steel-drums. He worked on a cruise ship's cabaret. He was paid to make calypso sounds for the passengers embarking through the gangplank towards registration at the Port of Miami. I remember a lot about him — even the way he looked and dressed — Hawaiian prints and with thinning, wispy hair; protruding adam's apple; lanky … I even remember when he showed me the keyboard he had plugged into his computer since he had been commissioned to compose the MIDI score for a theatrical production. But, his name … gone.

I had met him through his wife, Sarah. That I remember. She was this unbelievably exotic specimen of a woman. Brown, but with sharp, European features. Jet black, wavy hair. Curvaceous, and with an indefinable accent to her English that was neither Indian nor Pakistani nor really, truly from England. Turns out, her accent, apparently, was "Persian." She made it a point to be recognized as Persian and not Iranian. I had never met a “Persian” before outside of a ragged secondary school textbook in ancient history; she was a stunning woman, and she was dumb. She met her husband on the cruise ship they both worked on. She was a fitness instructor who guided the passengers through some synchronized movements at the shallow end of the cruise ship's pool. Some woman, Sarah.

She had begun to be a regular at the open mic nights — one of my regular shifts — at the Cool Beans Cafe. The place had already become, oddly enough, a major locus of performance for the artistic subculture of the entire county of Dade. It was no more than 300 square feet; it was established in one of the middle units of an aging strip mall in the most unsavory part of Biscayne Boulevard. It was known to run out of coffee, spoons, mugs and so on, from time-to-time, but it's open mics and its “stage” had become legendary, occasionally featuring emerging, unknown acts that, Behold!, were on MTV a few months after passing through the joint. Even the emcee for the open mic - a guy who dressed up like a wizard and maintained a long, white beard and told tales while striking a kind of tambourine with a lamb’s thigh bone — had become iconic.

Sarah wrote her name down on the sign-in sheet every single week to perform the two or three songs she knew on her guitar. She was new to the instrument. She was new even to the idea of making her mark as a performer. By God, she was awful, and in a way that no amount of dedication, practice or instruction would correct. But she was lovely; delicious. Even the emcee, Nicholas the Storyteller, who had been dubbed "Syphilis" by the high-school punks that were often in the audience, swooned and bangged the bone on his large, Celtic drum a little more vigorously when announcing her act.

Her act wasn't her music, it was getting to watch this fox make a complete fool of herself in front of an audience and imagine ... imagine ... like, imagine that in another era her act would have landed her an infamous role in Frank Zappa's orchestra (or at least a place on their studio's couch). Or, that David Bowie might might have morphed this “Persian” into the Babylonian uplink for Ziggy Stardust, bedecking his treasured background vocalist with silky golden robes, a jeweled headdress … white mascara and a tambourine.

To her credit, she had composed the two or three songs she performed. She claimed they were the product of the deep stirrings of her soul, but in retrospect the guitar arrangement was probably her husband's doing since she fumbled through getting her fingers in the right place to make the chords. The lyrics were likely lifted out of some very beautiful journal of hers which only contained ornate penmanship. The lyrics weren't all that deep and she sung them out of tune.

However, since I played electric bass; and, since, by then, Sarah had come to know me as someone who plays bass; and, since I had expressed, one of those nights she had performed, an eagerness to help take her act from a solo gig to full instrumentation (before I had known she was married); and, since I had come to find out her husband was a drummer, it wasn't long before I was invited over to their cottage-style home on A1A, in the oceanfront village of Surfside for our first “rehearsal.”

That night, I brought my small practice amp, a patch cord, and my black, Fender bass guitar which had been dubbed "Butter" years before by someone who had watched me perform and was strung out on cocaine. The name stuck, and as I walked up to the front door laden with my gear, I suppose I had also brought with me the expectation that, by some stroke of fate, this would all end, sooner or later, in an orgy (or something like that) — involving some nakedness … I imagined this band we were forming to be the music or the sex or both.

So when Sarah’s husband turned out to be this cool cat — someone I soon began to admire, I was somewhat disappointed, knowing that she was probably happy with him. He wasn’t the usual insensitive pretty-boy or outright derelict dope-head that I had presumed women like Sarah tend to glom on to. But, who knows how this would play out, I thought.

Her husband turned out to be a musician of the first order. There's always this sublime satisfaction when you have a chance to jam with someone who is either at the same or at a better caliber than you. You get this sense that the psychics were right all along in saying that all humans were endowed with ESP but had lost it shortly before the dawn of history.

Sarah's husband was a much, much better musician than me. Even though he specialized in bucolic instruments, especially the steel drums, he was deft with his jazz-style, powder blue drum kit and well-versed in the 26 Rudiments of Drumming.

After I had set up my rig and he had unpacked and assembled his kit from the closet; and, while Sarah was in the kitchen making herself a cup of tea before the first rehearsal of our power trio, her husband and I got acquainted — not through conversation, but by improvising on the blues in the key of E.

When Sarah came into the room, her husband and I were already deep into the bridge in what had started to sound like a Led Zeppelin tune. She watched us while sipping on her mug with a strained smile. We hastened to do one round of the head before our fortisimo finale — presumably for her, our audience. Aplauso, aplauso, she said, clapping mildly.

After her husband and I stopped laughing from all that shit-talking and the dirty jokes musicians are wont to trade when they talk through their instruments, we wondered aloud to Sarah why she hadn't brought out her guitar and begun setting up.

What could she do? She was out-classed, and so she did the only thing she could do — she got pissy at her husband for humiliating her. I mean, she didn't say anything out-right, but she balked at getting her guitar from the bedroom. She made a few crude remarks to him as she begrudgingly retrieved it and brought it into the study where we had set up. She snapped the latches to the case open, and she sneered at her husband while both he and I tried to explain how to improvise a blues in E — just a warm up, you know. You can't get it wrong, we said. It doesn't even matter if you're in the key of E or not, we'll follow you.

Well, before we all hit our first note together, she quit the band. She huffed and puffed back to her bedroom with her guitar back in its hard-shell case, and with my dreams of a the drug and drink-induced, careless threesomes shattered; and, with Sarah's husband facing a very long night after our rehearsal, we packed up our rigs, chatted over a few beers for about an hour while Sarah calmed down, and that was that.

Wasn’t she was the one wanting to be a musician? Wasn’t this all to fulfill the expression of her deepest passions? It was her dream, right? How else was this supposed to end, after all? Making music is a sloppy affair, and any band worth a squat is bound to be inbred and feckless with their organs and orifices while remaining true to the heartache and disastrous choices that drives it. Some musician she was, that Sarah.

So, as the weeks went on, Sarah sort of fell by the wayside while my friendship with her husband blossomed. We would meet at a cafe in Surfside’s small commercial strip for its weekly gathering of jazzy-types and jazzy-wannabes.

Its decor and ambiance distinguished itself by being truly the product of decades of geegaws being glued to the walls by any number of different temperments of the countless employees to had served there. The usual fare in those days were geegaws glued to the wall in the exact, same way as every other cafe or restaurant bearing the same name throughout America. This cafe displaced one’s customary, well-groomed and market-tested experience of a dusty floor littered with peanut shells and drinks prepared by trained “mixologists” for the momentary illusion of having stumbled into a run-down dive in Paris’ Latin Quarter. And, true to the atmosphere, it drew from a surrounding community built on retirees who could recollect the glory days of Jackie Gleason’s Miami. Sarah’s husband and I joined a uniquely eclectic club whose ranks were filled up by aging failures or former aspirants to the Blue Note or the Green Mill’s stage.

We watched lackluster performances of scat vocals. We sat in for the jams, adding our shared penchant for classic rock and ‘70s R&B overtones to Take the A Train. We tried to recreate, if only in our hearts and subconscious, the moment that Joni Mitchel and Jacco Pastorious probably waltzed in here for cocktails after a long day with the tourists at the Marco Polo Hotel on the other side of the causeway.

Oddly, it was kind of a sad scene. An oasis of the Roaring Twenties at the height of an era where Matchbox Twenty, Blind Melon and the like were saturating the radio waves. We were experimenting with and rehearsing a forgotten cannon of music while the vital subculture was coordinating with the “real” nightclubs in South Beach to establish Miami as the capital of hip-hop, electronica, techno and, generally, beat-oriented music. They succeeded in that enterprise not long before this curious little place and its antiquarian club wordlessly disappeared as if it was washed away by natural beach erosion.

I suppose that Sarah had that sixth-sense to know it was a sad scene unlike the Cool Beans Cafe's very much alive and acclaimed open mic nights because, while her husband and I snapped our fingers to recognize virtuosity, she never, not once, ever joined us or played there. At The Cool Beans, however, her regular, weekly performances were paying off by getting a small but dedicated following to listen to the same two or three songs — again.

But, as it goes, my friendship with her husband had matured into an outright “bro-mance,” and I’d often be at his place talking music and MIDI with him while Sarah was pulling late hours. I had spoken it over with The Cool Beans’ owner, and she granted us the stage when we decided to forego convincing Sarah to add guitar and vocals.

We were a duet, The Bones-Butter Rhythm Section, and the act consisted of completely unrehearsed, stream-of-conscious grooves, and our song titles were often called Five Minutes, or Ten Minutes. If we wanted to spread the sauce thick, we’d title it all fancy, like, Three Minute Groove in C sharp minor 7, Adagio.

Our performances were very well attended, and we continued to spread the values of our antiquarian club-mates by wearing either barrettes or turtlenecks or both to our performances. Turtlenecks in Miami, ladies and gentleman! We were praised for being, I don’t know, avant-garde in a city desperate to be counted as a cultural epicenter like New York or London, but really we were just show-offs and our grooves weren’t all that good or entertaining. I got bored by them while I played them on the small coffeehouse stage. Before half the set was finished, I would get weed-induced panic attacks knowing it would be another twenty minutes before I could get another complimentary beer. But, our audience — mostly older bourgeois and North Miami professionals — ate it up, excepting, of course, Sarah who never — ever — not once, attended a performance of ours.

I can’t even remember her husband's name, but I can understand when I think of it, that we must have been a bit cruel to Sarah. Here she was hustling to be a singer/songwriter while me and her hubby undercut her gusto by not only playing several gigs, but also packing the house with our cheap warez … no deep stirrings of our soul were ever put into the music, and there she was cut out of the band that she formed … still struggling to get through the F minor bar chord in one of her songs.

But, for my part, there was no awareness at the time of how my presence in Sarah’s life must have been affecting her matrimony. Only, one day towards the end of my bro-mance with her husband, the three of us were casually sipping beers and chatting amicably, and I could sense the envy and jealousy between them. Or more precisely, I could sense the envy and jealousy Sarah had for her husband, and I could sense his frustration in what I could only imagine were more frequent quarrels over nothing at all.

During one of the last times I was over at their home, I was leaning against the door jamb of a threshold between the kitchen and the dining room. I was gabbing with Sarah who was preparing her Chamomile tea on the stove. Her husband, on the other side of the wall, sat at the dining table.

Absent-mindedly, I began thumbing through a stack of papers on the china cabinet spanning the wall between the dining room and the kitchen. My fidgeting caught hold of a colorful piece of heavy-stock paper. I slid it out from under the stack of bills and paperwork. I thought nothing of it. It was just an odd sensation that demanded investigation. For a split second, though, I held a glossy eight-by-ten in my hands. It was Sarah’s breasts — naked and with a look on her face that expressed both agony and rapture simultaneously. They were voluptuous — the puffy white clouds in the background of the image. They crowned her while the tops of tropical palm trees thrust her exposed figure into the foreground.

I knew immediately her husband was the cameraman, lying under her in the sand of a Bahamian beach. He must’ve snapped the picture while their ship had dropped anchor for few hours or for a day. Sarah stared at me in her obvious rapture; her husband stared back at her with an expensive camera lense pressed to his face; it so happens that the camera was on the same china cabinet that night, just further down on another stack of papers.

It was only a brief second before I had realized the error of my curiosity. Both Sarah and her husband — each with a clear line of sight to me holding up the photo print, chest-high but without a line of sight to each other — went into high alert, both reflexively lurching towards me with wordless, throaty urgency.

I quickly re-filed the photo before they reached me, and we all awkwardly came to the agreement that nothing whatsoever had just happened. On the other hand, something did happen. We drifted apart, or at the very least, I was either distracted by something else and had stopped coming around, or maybe her husband stopped calling me to come over. I don't remember, exactly.

I still get, to this day, a bit hot and bothered by the memory of that image. Our band ended up in a threesome … sort of. Sarah, in hindsight, was a musician after all, and our band did, in fact, cut the muster. I was wrong; wrong about her. The whole affair was probably what led to the addition of another off-tune, mournful vocal melody in Sarah’s repertoire at The Cool Bean’s open mic. This, she confessed nervously into the microphone, was the first time she would be performing the tune. She was still grappling with shaping her fingers onto the strings of her guitar, but this song was … real; it truly was written by her, and I could tell because It was mostly rhythmic — one minor chord played with varying syncopated strumming patterns. It was thin on a clear melody. It had a verse, chorus, verse progression, but no bridge. Yeah.

She did a few takes before gaining enough momentum to break the orbit of her stage fright, and continue through to the last bar of the song. It wasn’t half bad. Not great; not inspired, but it was still, despite the critique one could levy on it, leaps and bounds better than the other two or three songs I had listened to a dozen times by now.

Her husband wasn’t in the audience that night. That wasn’t odd, though. He had never been there. Some marriage, those two.

Months later I had forgotten about them except on the rare occasion that I found myself driving through Surfside and passed by their home. As a matter of fact, the last time I saw Sarah, I was en route to, literally, the end of civilization: to Chrome Avenue — a two-lane highway which had a levee running along one shoulder keeping the swamp — The Everglades — damned up on the other side.

I was driving that night to set of warehouses near Tamiami Airport to meet-up with my band-mates of the last few months — another power trio, but this time, the fox was the bassist, I was the drummer, and Stan was the singer/songwriter. I had thought that if I switched to an instrument I only had passable proficiency in, some of the band tensions I had just stepped out of wouldn't arise. The fox was new to her instrument, and she, unlike Sarah, was not new to the aspiration to be a musician or to those disastrous choices and heartache that one feeds off of as a musician.

Plus, those two were both loose and having sex in the up-stairs loft Stan had constructed for himself in his makeshift live/work warehouse in the middle of nowhere. They had shacked up long before I joined their ensemble. Stan’s songs were about cat neutering and about the trials of constipation. He sold me weed but offered it freely to the bassist.

I was on my way there, passing through Surfside, not only for our regular band practice, but also to deliver my trumpet which I had picked up from the Miami Shores Community Band rehearsal space that afternoon.

That week, I had been feverishly ferrying all of my musical equipment that I had gotten hold of over the years to Stan’s place. I had already taken a PA system, a performance-grade bass amp, a four-track, and a drum machine, not to mention the broken drum kit I had fished out of a dusty garage, refurbished with house paint and set up permanently in Stan’s warehouse since the first rehearsal. I was in the process of trading it and everything — all of my gear except for my axe, Butter, and a small practice amp — for a derelict 1970-something Nissan Z car he wanted out. I even threw in the cardioid microphone that had been dangling by its patch cord like a noose from a rafter of Stan’s low-hanging deck. I was giving it all away, or rather making an even exchange, for the fixer-upper which had thick, haunted house-style cobwebs in its cabin from being under a tarp for so long.

I was fully aware that it was destined to spend several years on blocks, but I needed a new past-time. I was over being a musician in bands with all its drama and heartache. I never seemed to be the one getting laid, and it always seemed like being in a band inevitably devolved into petty bickering like that of an old, married couple ... with all of your band mates; petty arguments with three or four contentious, massive egos that comes standard-issue for musicians — especially the ones without any talent.

At any rate, the trumpet was the last of it, and I was on my way to deliver it. I was driving really slow through Surfside because I had learned the hard way after a late night frisking from one of the patrol officers of the village that those signs posted along the three-quarter mile stretch of A1A saying, “Don’t even THINK about speeding” were no joke.

A few hundred yards into the neighborhood, I saw just beyond my headlights Sarah’s rump bouncing stunningly in Lycra while she was finishing her evening jog. I don’t know what got into my head. Whatever it was that possessed me, I now mourn that I lost somewhere along the way — a sort of explosive impulse to improvisation. I probably lost it the day Butter was stolen from the trunk of my SUV in New York City while on my way to the town of Woodstock some years later. All that was left now of my musical muse was a pile of shattered automotive glass — translucent and strewn like gravel on Perry Street.

It had been months since Sarah and I had spoken, but so far as I knew, she and I (and her husband) were still on good terms. And so, on impulse I began unlatching the case of my trumpet in the passenger seat with my free hand. By the time I was rolling up to her, the mouthpiece was in place and the passenger-side window was down. I kept pace with her for a few seconds, observing her jogging with a kind of blank awe of a stranger who knew nothing about her. And then, I put the trumpet to my lips, pointed it at her and let out a blast that those who had been commanded to topple the walls of Jericho would have been proud of.

She jumped, startled and insensate at what had just happened. I began laughing maniacally, sensing that she couldn’t figure out where the noise had come from. It was a couple of miles later before the tears of laughter that had been streaming down my face dried up. Some jerk, I was.

I don't think I laugh like that anymore. It's more of a mischievous grunting these days — the kind you can type out like this

:

ha, ha, ha

All the heartache and poor choices didn't stop, though. It never does. What did stop was the willingness to improvise on it; what stopped — or rather was forgotten — was the laughter; how to laugh, like, really, really hard. It's strange to think one could forget a thing like that, but there it is — stuck in the deep well of time with Sarah's husband's name.

I never managed to get that Z-car back to a lot I could access since the tow truck driver that night needed its missing deed and non-existent registration to get started with the tow. But, it didn't matter. I never played with any serious intentions in a band again. Not ever. Instead, I managed to score a few months later, or more precisely, borrow without much intention of returning, an acoustic guitar. I resolved to write the crappiest country-western songs I could possibly compose. They ended up being very campy. They also ended up being very catchy. And, one night, I decided to perform them at The Cool Beans Cafe open mic which Sarah had abandoned long ago. The songs were received well and the suggestion came more than once that I ought to record them and capitalize on them. But, I didn’t. I couldn’t anymore. Really, I just couldn’t.

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Every so often, when something or another is going #retrograde, I find myself ruminating about my parents' death and getting all tearful about it -- same as I did when I was a little kid in onzie PJs. #JobberHats #PlayeroDaze #CondadoPR— at Rockefeller Center (Plaza).

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The Mark Of A Predator

Nuzzle. Together, a flimsy pale blue sheet is kicked and yanked until it covers both our bodies. I lie supine next to her. She has her head buried in an orange pillow, her hands curled under her across the chest. She tries to smile, but half of her face is pinned.The blinds are highlighted by a dark green rather than nothing at all. Dawn is breaking. I had only wanted to take a short nap against her warm body before going back home. My dog would need a walk since I went straight to her place from work. I take a deep inhalation of her shoulder and her neck through my nose. She coos mildly.

I had asked her to wake me up in an hour. She says to me that she knows I like to sleep. I agree. I like sleeping; I like sleeping with her more than anything, but_

"You told me not to wake you up," she says. She rubbed my chest.

"Sounds like me." I rub my eyes. There she is -- right there. She looks up at me. I don't want to leave her, but my poor dog.

"Your body said not to wake you up," she says.

"I did? I don't remember that."

She giggled. I kiss her shoulder.

I imagine my dog seated and exhausted in a corner of his kennel-- the other side of it wet with his piss and putrid from the droppings he couldn't hold in any longer.

"I really gotta' go," I said, hastily putting on yesterday's strewn clothes from off the floor.

I kissed her forehead and said, "I love you," but I have to admit: I was uncertain I was speaking truly to her -- in the storybook-sense. I did love the night we had just had (and had been having). There was the image in my mind's eye of her silhouette walking out of the room for a few minutes, the light from the hallway beyond the bedroom door making anything but the figure of her femininity indistinct. Her clothes had betrayed her beauty in the daydreams I'd been conjuring of this moment these last few months.

Then, there was the feeling of her warmth coming back into my arms and all over my legs again; I loved the squirming, and I loved just looking at her face so closely. Still do.

I still love the moments watching her talking to me about this and that; the perfect curve of her lips; her drifting back to sleep in mid-sentence - her tongue protruding slightly out from those lips -- her marshmallow lips.

This, frankly, is what I loved about her; and it was something I could love forever and ever. A fascination and wonder at being in her company so openly, and, presumably, with the kind of honesty that permits one to become vulnerable and unclothed, literally and in one's heart and soul.

• • Earlier in the day, after some kissing and love-play, before our conversation soured discussing arisen anger from the previous day — when then, after several hours of merriment from her repeatedly saying, "no me toques,"* (don't touch me) until the frequency started to sound more like truth than joking around; when then, she turned her lips away whenever my affections for her welled up within me and I leaned into her all puckered — as we lay rather solemn on the couch, she said to me that she can be “playful.”

What attracted me most to her was her "wanting." After all to say "I love you," in Spanish is to say that the person you love is wanted. Te quiero, I love you; I want you.When it so happens that her playfulness becomes an endless rebuff -- to be told you're unwanted in a way that she has the benefit of mirth while I, the consequence of confusion, I begin to wonder if I would have rather preferred a serious girl -- one who didn't confuse joking with refusal; one who didn't sleep on the couch of fully-clothed so goddamned often.I reason, I must just be taking things to seriously -- over thinking it, like I tend to do to a fault.

Sailboat Bend, Ft. Lauderdale, FLOctober, 2004Note: In the kitchen …*She embraces me vigorously — dressed, now, after the nighttime spent with our naked bodies pressed together throughout. She had come back to my place after working her fourteen-hour day on the set, saying, “I saved some of myself for you …” Also, days earlier at her place, she had said while underneath me, sweat dripping from both of us, “I haven’t been this happy since my dad was alive.”

There, in the flurry of kisses of the morning and in a deep embrace in the kitchen, the brewed coffee still permeating the space, I presumed her stroking of me further was to send me off to work with the attitude I now swooned in: strong and empowered by her blessing of me.

Indeed, throughout the day, I thought of her endlessly, eager to be wrapped back up in her naked embrace. Meanwhile, at my desk; during the commute back to her … there had been a discomfort while sitting.

Searching my back pocket, I find a polished stone — a tigers’ eye: what had been the “pain in my butt” all-along. Immediately it dawns on me that some of the amorousness and fondling from her in the kitchen that morning had been to put this token in my back pocket; something to ward off danger.

To have felt the desire of this foxy-beautiful and strong lady to want me to be safe — to have claimed me as important enough to preserve and to cherish, is, no shit, everything I had ever wanted in life.*
The Eternal Sunshine“That's about the size of it,” she used to say to end some discussion we had been having during the many nights we would talk for hours over the phone — in those days leading up to us becoming acquainted with our bodies. It was her way of writing it all off — everything we had said to each other — the innuendos and flirting — as if it were all a wash; a lot said, leading to nothing. That's about the size of it was code, in those days, for chalking it all up to the grandeur — the mysterious cosmos. Letting it be, as it were, but to be what?

I would always exclaim after she said that, “Is that all there is?!? I thought it would be huge -- and deep ... a much, much bigger ... very enormous!” Sometimes I would follow it up with, “And, I never got to see your boobs!”
Back then, her boobs were always the topic. I can testify after 16-years in close quarters to them, her boobs are very nice -- heavenly; perfect. But, back then, they were, presumably, going to fall off after an abnormal mammogram she had had a few weeks before suggested, per roentgenographic protocol, nothing more than a follow-up.Still, her anxiety over her boob's fate came in waves -- at least one major fit-per-day on a phone call that would make my right ear throb from having been pressed to the receiver for so long trying to console her.Sometimes, I wouldn’t answer her calls, knowing I’d have to, once again -- laboriously, and in great detail -- rehearse my firm conviction that her boobs would be okay. And if, God-forbid, their fate was something beyond either of our imagination during our early twenties, then I would insist -- flirtingly but with all seriousness that she would be gracious enough to let me play and fondle them before the surgeons had their way with her mammaries. I had become, by then, such a stakeholder in their welfare, after all ...And, Fuck me! Somewhere in all of that dalliance in the daily hoo-ha, I found myself hooked -- enchanted and enraptured by us going through this script we had crafted for ourselves-- our own private little daydream and private universe for us. I'd go there with her the moment she'd say, "That's about the size of it."It would go like this for hours, quite tediously: "That's about the size of it."
"That's it?" I would say. "Cummon', Easmanie, I think it's a lot more massive and throbbing than that." "But, seriously, what am I going to do, J.C.?" "First off, lady friend, your boobs will be fine. They just need to take x-rays a few more times." "But what if_" "You don't have cancer. But if it comes to that -- if it really comes to that -- you'll pretty-please permit me to inspect your boobs thoroughly ... a second opinion." "J.C._" "I'm serious! I have the whole pattern thing down for pressing on them!" "I did that already in the shower, J.C." "And, I bet they're now sore with all that panic; and, now you think they're gonna fall off." You remained silent, so I continued indulging my imagination: "What they need is to be relaxed and reassured ... with my tongue. We could give your boobies their last hoorah. I need to speak to them directly; make sure they know they're here to stay." "J.C._" I hadn't known yet, you didn't like that kind of dirty-talk, but, I felt like I made my point about needing someone to talk you down for hours on a daily basis. Either you deal with my flirtatiousness, or find someone else to tell you it would all be okay every single day -- twice-a-day sometimes. It really was a drag. I was always left perplexed that you weren't convinced once and for all that you would be okay.
Then again, you had your mid-life crisis about turning thirty-years-old on your twenty-ninth birthday.I would gab on-and-on with such gusto about how okay everything would be that I hadn't noticed you'd been trailing off into sleep for the last 20-minutes. Most of the time, I would listen to your light snoring for a few minutes before putting the handset of the cordless phone on my nightstand, shutting off the lights and drifting off into sleep with you.It was sweet and real with you n back then.But, yeah, that's’ about the size of it … and so it goes ... since, from then till now, it’s been the irreconcilability of those first few days or the months that led to them — the two extremes of wanting and of being completely turned away. “And so it goes,” you said that same week just prior to our consummating our wanting of each other. "And so it goes," you said was your having given up on your longing for me— the same week I was building up the courage to make something of that soft glow my sight now saw you bathed in.The glow was of warmth and welcoming. It appeared that night Cupid’s arrow struck me — the day I was gazing at you through the French doors that led to your yard. You were then, as now, surrounded by stacks of books all around you; and, that glow hasn't ebbed ... not even a bit.And so it goes ...It was a fine romance, to be sure — an exemplary one, as far as I’m concerned. I felt blessed, despite our having gone through all manner of hell-and-back together -- several times over; I still feel it as having been wonderful despite all the hurt we both indulged in, showing the small, but "deal-breaker"side of ourselves.It turns out that the small but infinitely disgusting aspect we both have in our natures was much, much more intolerable than all the virtues we saw in each other or bring to bear for each other. We were good, but those few hours every so-often when the worst parts of our nature took possession of us where enough, not only to erase, but also ruin any chances of either of us making the other fell safe and wanted.And again, it would seem any love we may have or have had for each other was insufficient to overcome our distaste for each others' flaws. At least we had found, if only in those first few days, the chance to travel through the world together in mutual thriving in and through each other, unfettered by what tends to happen just over the horizon of “happily ever after;” with all the inevitable hurt, and the rigors of parenting, and world-wide pandemics that cancelled our Karaoke nights and the grinding of our bodies whose union, you know as well as I do, is none other than the beauty and goodness we witness manifest in our daughter.But, that's not what we ended up being for each other, of course, even though we were smug enough to think we'd be the ones to make sure we'd live "happily ever after." We were stupid. But, we can't be blamed.It was the kind of stupidity that happens all the time -- the kind of stupidity that every harbors such as thinking one will never be the one to face great misfortune one reads in the newspaper, or like how no one truly believes that they'll, inevitably, die someday.*PRINCETON, NJ, Aug. 2019While enveloped in a tired
bitterness over
those things beyond anyone's
control,
I caught a glance at your thigh
in our unlit bedroom,
in which you slept now
after weeks
on
the
couch.

Seeing your skirt cinched up from
the spasms of your dreams,
I remembered I had forgotten to
thank The Lord
for having given me: you

— my woman.

And, I was struck by what must be the
bleakness you must have to facewhen I,
your man,
have grown distant,

turning away from

everyone, and
everything
including you ...

Even though we deny each other at every turn,

regardless,

those tribulations, which now have passed,
had me forget you are the sacred gift,
as I am for you —
The Blessing —
given us by our maker that
we both might chance at glancing Heaven
in those moments
our bodies
are intertwined.
* I love you very much, Easmanie Michel. I can't help it; can't help but admire you as a person, but also say, without equivocation, that you were a rotten lover. I'm sure most can understand what it is to be a rotten person, and yet, still be loved, regardless. If that weren't the case then, really, the whole human enterprise would be nothing more than evil made bare. To be unworthy of love, and yet to receive it ... God, ... well ... St. Paul did a great treatment of that ... most parents make that clear to their children (hopefully).I hope you get this notion, someday, of being irredeemably-loved. We are all worthless in the big picture; no one is truly worthy of anyone else's love, and yet, it exists -- this thing called "unconditional love." You know it for your daughter, if not for me.And, despite ourselves, and everyone and everything that says one must be alone; sovereign and self-sufficient ... I'll always be just a few thumb-flicks away for you or your mother or sister or you niece ... even, and notwithstanding any other distractions. I Shit You Not; and, I don't make promises lightly, don't cha' know. As far as me and my relationship to my daughter, I'm quite convinced that there is no power here on this earth or in heaven that will be able to prevail over what she and I are for each other -- "motherhood," notwithstanding (is if, that were all a child would need ...; or, what you could've allowed to be conceived in you by any man whatsoever). Alas, one must, as you know all too well, suffer the fools. That's not going to be my fate nor that of my daughter's because I'm very sure we both know that one is loved ... just because; and, one can be vulnerable (if only in this one place) ... that one can find (AND give) wherever and whenever: quarter.For what it's worth, it's my, personal, takeaway for the Metta Sutta.It doesn't take much for me to feel loved. A hug is a pretty easy thing to get once one allows it AND asks for it. There's a lot of people walking down the street who just want to be hugged -- like me. I feel sorry for those who find that a trivial (or meaningless) thing; or, worst of all, those who think it's optional or contingent on the exercise of one's will and want over and above another sentient creature's well-being.//JC

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Ashley and Joe,

Congratulations on your forthcoming blessing! Thankfully, Auntie Tiffiny, had the wherewithal (and the unquestionable authority) to include us in this celebration of your union into one. She did so with the brilliant suggestion that we submit a word or two about things we might have learned thus far in this journey of parenting.

Before I go into my less-than-comprehensive list, I can testify that Tiffiny's baby showers are legendary. She organized and emceed ours, and it remains one of our often-reminisced and cherished memories; so, don't f-ck it, up. I'm looking at you ... Joe.

And so ... I submit to you, Ashley and Joe; family and friends; those who are present; those whom we wish were present -- both past and those to come -- some thoughts to consider:

-------- 1 ---------

The value of the following verse from The Book of Matthew, chapter five, verse thirty-seven cannot be overstated as informing a solid parenting strategy. It reads:

"Just say a simple, 'Yes, I will,' or 'No, I won't.' Anything beyond this is from the evil one." - New Living Translation

Among the many things I could list about its value is that it will spare you at every shop, mall, park, extracurricular activity — just about anywhere — from your child developing a very costly habit such as a baseball card collection, or, these days, those goddamned Pokemon cards. Virtual currency and in-app purchases - “No, I won’t” all the way!!

I can testify that I only barely managed to skirt through the demographic of American Dolls unscathed. The horror when I think about its affect on the pocketbook. (wink @Nando)

-------- 2 -------

You will f-uck up, and you will ruin your child. Think of it as a "right of passage." That little bundle of joy delivered into your arms ... helpless and swaddled up like a bug in a rug WILL ultimately spend their late adolescence and early adulthood as a source of unbridled and unrelenting resentment.

Inevitably, they will resume their adoration (if not respect) for you when and if they decide for themselves that they’re ready to stand on their own two feet. Pray that this happens for your child in their early twenties.

Unlike the Klingon proverb, "Revenge is a dish served cold," turns out that for is Earthlings, "Revenge is a dish served with more than a dollop of cuteness." (Dr. Catherine Ward; Big Apple Pediatrics; Satori's Pediatrician and fellow Trekkie circa 2010)

-------- 3 --------

There's a very short window in which your are bigger and stronger than them ... not that that implies anything ... Buuuut ... my mother has an awfully strong hawk-like pinch; It made all the difference.

My grandmother (GranNina), so I hear, was a sharpshooter with a slipper. Just saying ....

But really, there's quite an enormous number of places in the blogosphere to SHARE those feelings constructively and anonymously. I SHIT! YOU! NOT!

-------- 4 --------

Becoming a parent: It's not what you think it is; not what you may have heard or been told. What's worse is that nothing anybody or any book can tell you can prepare for what's in store for you. It's something you'll have to pick up while you're knee deep in it — from within the wafting odor of the soiled diaper; immersed the magnitude of wailing only a child can produce … a child strapped onto your chest while the Starbucks in one hand spills out over the lid and dribbles onto the cuff of your dress shirt. Meanwhile you need to find the car keys, the wipes, the extra diapers, and there's also the urgent chiming of your smartphone buried somewhere in the Vera Bradley bag one of the grandmas has already likely supplied you with.

In short, you're screwed -- literally. It’s what got you here. Incidentally or by deliberate cultivation of that lifelogging, biometric apps wielding stallion — now you’re screwed.

White knuckle it if you have to. Don't worry, though. There are hundreds of thousands of years of instinct and ten thousand years of civilization and five thousand years of written history and at least a hundred disinterested Facebook friends and more than likely, ten or so contacts in your phone to get you through it.

Conjur up to your mind (or watch on Youtube now), the scenes in Parenthood (1989) where Steve Martin's face goes wonky as if he were riding a roller coaster.

In the first instance, there's an admixture of nausea and terror on it. In the final one, the look on his face is indescribable. The closest approximation resembles satisfaction mixed with awakening or realization; what I imagine the tone in The Lord’s voice when at the end of the day’s labor over his creation, he proclaims more than once: "it was good" (Genesis 1:1, NLT).

I sell it to you, "at cost," as my mom often says.

-------- 5 --------

It was a constant refrain of my mother's while growing up that, "The only thing a child needs is unconditional love." I believe that she was trying to say that to raise a healthy and whole child, it doesn't come down to any specific thing, status or economic situation. Instead, communicating that they are loved is truly the key to their wellbeing.

After all, what does an infant know about the difference between a mattress and a metal file drawer stuffed with blankets and plush toys. What does it know about park grass meant for a picnic versus the green carpeted area near the food court of Kenwood Mall?

I would, however, like to add that, in my humble opinion, a child also needs to feel that they are safe.

I often find my thoughts going to Psalm 23; I think it captures what it means for one to feel safe. I live in New York City, after all ...

Psalm 23: New Living Translation (NLT)A psalm of David.
1 The Lord is my shepherd; I have all that I need.2 He lets me rest in green meadows; he leads me beside peaceful streams.3 He renews my strength.He guides me along right paths, bringing honor to his name.4 Even when I walk through the darkest valley,I will not be afraid, for you are close beside me.Your rod and your staff protect and comfort me.5 You prepare a feast for me in the presence of my enemies.You honor me by anointing my head with oil. My cup overflows with blessings.6 Surely your goodness and unfailing love will pursue me all the days of my life,and I will live in the house of the Lord forever.Now that Satori is well into her ninth-year, it would seem that she's gaining her own independent sense of assuredness about things being a-okay. However, I'm sure she looked to me and her mommy as her de facto proxy for, “The Lord,” named in this psalm.

It dawned on me recently that Fear and Freedom (the conscious feeling of it) are mutually exclusive; one pushes out the other. And so, it's a good idea to think through what it means to be "a-okay.” The tendency for the mind is to construct extraordinarily vivid pictures, scenarios, and reasons for how it’s all going to hell, and though it will, the feeling you have for the world you chose to bring them into is the kind of thing that rubs off on them .♱

If you become supple and receptive to what should rub off on you from them is a renewed chance to witness the abundance and beauty that surrounds you as a father or as a mother; to be grounded in the special place you occupy in the march of history — to carry its march forward just like every one of your ancestors has to before; to share with them a moment in the mercy and majesty ... the awe of this creation we all have will get but a brief glimpse into.

Yours truly,

Juan Carlos, Easmanie and Satori

Brooklyn, New York

Summer Solstice

June 2017

♱ Erikson, Erik H. "Growth and Crisis in the Healthy Personality." Identity and the Life Cycle. New York, NY: Norton, 1994. N. 51. Print.

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Why would anyone have expected that he wouldn’t become unhinged after he was cast aside – with a glad-hand – by his family, both the one he had devoted himself, and the one of his upbringing (most, but not all, of course) ?

His friends found him very annoying (most, but not all, of course) … sometimes entertaining, but mostly annoying and sad.

They let his calls go to voicemail; and, their thumbs would hesitate before they hit the like button. There were too many dangers and duties to shore up anyway for anything as frivolous as “frivolous time with old friends.” Not even on Zoom. The Pilates hadn’t been done.

That's what preoccupied them -- something more august and noble than those who preoccupied themselves with video games and cable TV. They lavished themselves, instead, with the satisfaction that the Pilates (or whatever was holier that anything else) had been done.

Most were oblivious to the trends and ideologies that constituted the "now." And, yet they saw themselves as those to refashion the inertia of History to their own liking, like a hamburger ordered a-la-cart for their offspring, without knowing a spit about the trajectory it had taken since their arising into the cosmos.

Nonetheless, they were surprised … beside themselves that he went unhinged.

-– ¡Imaginate! Que verguenza.

They (those) were also the sort to be surprised (and continue to be) by the likes of … well, … anybody that’s in the news these days – fake or otherwise.

It’s not surprising, though.

What might have surprised them, was how flavorful the pollo encebollado came out. Lots of “umami” and a touch of saffron.

He had made several calls trying to invite someone, anyone to share it with him either in person or via a device. None would be available that day, though -- not even those whom he had offered to pay their round-trip train fare in addition to wining-and-dining them.

(this was before the global pandemic that would further distance them (ir give another convenient reason for it) though this situation would have benefited from their prior friendship and chamaraderie -- their solidarity as "friends.")

This was not surprising, either.

He had grown inured to their vague reasons for politely declining with remarkable consistently over the past few years. He had also both carefully investigated his suspicions, and collected anecdotal reports verifying that, ultimately, they feared him.

They seemed, despite the brilliance of their youth or education or lifelong experience together, to have succumbed to this national cancer of believing everything they read or saw in the news, distinguishing themselves only by what talking points they applauded for or reviled. Naturally, then, he would be feared as the prevailing narrative for people who were like him in the news was that they were very, very dangerous -- like how a tamed lion is, still, very dangerous.

Maybe they were right -- prudent. Nonetheless, he enjoyed the pollo encebollado very much, despite his lack of company. Black bean soup over white rice and garlic toast accompanied it, and he sopped it all up stoned, mildly tipsy and partially naked, sad for them to both have missed out on it and for how much their lives had become a continual response to fear.

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FRB_Issue 3 by JC Martinez-Sifre

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One of the most profound, if not horrifying, things about adulthood is the recognition and internalization that no one has the answers for you and that there is no power on this Earth that can prevail over you. If there is to be such things as Truth and Justice and Love and all those wonderful aspirations flourishing in one's life, it depends strictly and entirely on one's own commitments to those transcendental ideas. It's also the basis for one's surrender to the faith of one's upbringing - a Heavenly Father, so to speak (yet another transcendent idea that "rules them all"), because if the life of Jesus H. Christ has anything to teach us, is that it's much more likely that your commitmentment to those things will be betrayed by even your closest, most dearest loved ones who are trying to do "the right thing" a la #Judas, a coward. And, in a world that believes you can buy your way into heaven, striving towards righteousness is tantatamount to being The Fool, and The Fool is is the Commander-In-Chief.

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Upon the breach —
the crossing’s onset is signaled by ripples in the firmament
where the tears — the water of the life — begins
to flow.

There is silent weeping, waves of heaving;
way over there and enormous.
Then a pleasing warmth washes over the hurt that the fear for death’s closeness upon the afflicted heart had passed, my dear friends.

The balm surges out.
The breach, continues to unfold now pulsing with knowing that it,
the heart,will soon be ready to put this part of its reason for beating
to a lasting sleep … to end the sufferings,
but for a moment of relief … reprieve at last,Horatio, my dear friend. Were it not for The Love of a Mother
on which nothing more need qualify it

it: this short reprieve from being unborn.

O! and you, too, Atula! … For you whom they scorn at every turn!

All this is not for your glory, but for His — whose providence is fulfilled and felt when the capacity for His creation to abide in joy and love is in and through its knowing of the depth of its sadness

its despair
its …it is forsakenness.

When the surrender nears, it closes over, engulfing, a life that was
nurtured and cared for and which endured
even through this Valley of the Shadow of Death,folding over and collapsing in upon itself for union — re-union —an illusionworthy of laughter and love which had been His intended passion for his children and
for you to behold in all of this
since since sincethe very beginning.

In the breach, the heart becomes acquainted again with its true nature as capable of being eternally vulnerable
in the light of, in light of the lasting,
light ofcherished memories.

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《《Sunday, 1:13 AM, July 9th Omg Thank you so much
Love u so much
Been a ride
Seeing u all I feel a bit lost in the crazy fire I live in
♥️
《《Sunday, 1:20 AM, July 9th:

Miss u and everyone so much

》》 23min. ago

Been feeling similar, old friend - lost. Or, at least feeling like that morning when we (Big Dave, Taimoor, and I) pulled up in Key West after tripping on LSD all the way down US1.

We went straight up to the "Sothern-most Point" Buoy. The National Monument was empty. It still seems odd for it to have been painted like a Rastafarian flag.

Before the tourists began showing up, this guy with a Panama hat and overalls rides up in a bicycle. He stops near an old wood door covering a dug out in the Colonial Spanish masonry; rusted, cast-iron strap hinges.

He opens it after a few turns of the combination lock while still straddling his cycle. He smiles at us and says, "Morning! Great day for The Lord to come, don't ya think?"

I looked at the untroubled waters. Dawn was about to break, and then it did - dawn. A grain of infinite brilliance hadn't been there, and then there it was; It was beautiful, but it hurt to look at it.

I felt the presence if Cuba ninety miles ... just over the horizon like a harvest moon can feel close enough to touch.

He introduced himself as William. He said that the harbor master let him store some things in that locker. We each played a round of chess, and we all lost the five-buck wager.

I reckoned that he was right, unequivocally. It certainly was a great day for The Lord to come. And, then he did - The Lord. I felt His Mercy wash over me. I took a deep breath of the brine mist that had just splashed up, and I felt safe. Untroubled for a split second. Calm. It was remarkable!

I have felt like that in these last few days, except without being suffused in that sensation of immediacy ... lost. Forsaken?

The mood sounds like that Joni Mitchel song, Chelsea Morning, but played on a stereo with one speaker busted. It really is at the moment - playing but one of my speakers broke.

Complete verses with that dulcimer voice hollowed out and far away ... Like a ghost in the other room where the screwdriver and tape to fix speaker is stashed in some bin; like what I imagine a phantom limb to feel like or exactly like the taste of the blueberry pancakes I ate yesterday.

The mood will pass ... it always does.

Love always.
J.
Brooklyn, NY

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note: originally posted to Facebook friend's feed who expressed a reversal of views toward capital punishment in lieu of the recently published news article in the the New York Post regarding ... yet another tragic mass murdering rampage.

He said, "I used to say that peoples' fates are in God's hands. I've spent the better part of my life favoring life imprisonment over death penalties because I've felt that no man, woman or government faction should play God and decide when someone dies. [...]

I say that the father of this victim should legally be allowed to extract vengeance and kill his daughter's murderer. [... ]

Maybe I've gone cold and dark in the heart, but I'm tired of seeing psychopaths get cheap justice. Laws need to change. Times certainly have. Let the father kill the killer."

TL;DR - don't confuse topics in Justice with topics in Law; clarification resolves issues with the practice of one's faith and empowers one to engage the issue at hand ... inherit and reclaim the Earth.

full explain:

the following video was published yesterday, so we'll both have to wait for part 2 before passing jusdgement on what justice - with a big "J" - is, but take advantage of checking out some other videos on this channel. It's actively teasing out vairous issues of it - Justice and virtue for us moderns in a Post-Trump; Post-9/11; Post-Internet; Post-Atomic age.

Ultimately, I don't think the final youtube playlist will make clear what is warrented to address what kind of legal system can handle the kind of evil we're all encountering choicelessly in this age of information (which also, btw, is built by and for the benifit of those in power cf. Noam Chomsky's views on news media ... i.e. Facebook's shareholders in the case of this, particular thread ... eg. this comment may or may not be filtered out on your feed at their discretion ...)

The video points out that, according to Foucault, Human Justice (ius civile - Roman civil rights, as opposed to ius gentium - Roman common / intetnational law and ius naturale, Roman natural / God-given law ... which all form the basis of Christian doctrine and subsequently our inherited conception of justice in this Western liberal ideal ... ) is by and for those who are in power no matter what dogma, class, race or nation We The People happen to look like.

Frankly, I'm with you in this specific case; as a father, I'd feel like taking that A-hole all French-style like the video describes.

But, when and if we (or you or, really, our generation as a whole) wakes up, taking on the rightful calling of doing The Lord's work of being authors of a Just and Fair society (which we plainly must; which is our duty to try -- as parents to our children, caretakers of our aging parents, and and as stewards of this Earth), hopefully we will have studied how impossibly ill-equipped we are to do anything but fail better than our forefathers; understand the world we inherited (as morally bankrupt and dying as all reasonable evidence points to at present time in history) and are entrusted to refine or redefine or at the very least, find a way to survive and endure based whatever lessons of the past we have managed to learn as an individual, a society, a species.

Hearten up brotha'. Be thankful that you are not the one who has to either pass judgement nor suffer such an unbearable loss. Rather, that burden lands ultimately on civilization as a whole and on God; and, the worst outcome of this news is that you and I are so disappointed that we no longer can see the mercy and love that is presently and pervasively in our midst and prevents us from being kind to one another in the here and now; with whomever we're with - on and away from our screens.

https://youtu.be/EFaxgB5TygE

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For Part 1 of this "Essay in Draft" CLICK HERE
Orchestra director, Frank Lutz, uses "minority report" hand gestures to direct a choral ensemble for his forthcoming fugue.
Watch as he deftly conducts the focus group, eliciting from them the sexiest, most virulent string of words to define the tone, tenor and intensity of public discourse.
Lutz's ability to appeal and to inspire by virtue of his interpretations and by the excellence and finish which he will inject into the ideologies as given to him by the avid and experienced aggregation of social media "likers" has made his acclaim soar as much as his fees have risen in this fair and balanced market. ++
Critics say box office revenues will be staggering with production costs being so low. One focus group's total costs will likely not exceed greatly three or four telemarketers, hired on a part time basis at a few bucks per hour above minimum wage. In addition, the jury-sized pool of people recruited and who watch a lot, some, occasional or rare moments of online or cable news (any network; all that apply), with each costing, roughly, what one entrée at Outback Steakhouse costs. The administrative fees, conference room rentals, and a wedding/sweet-sixteen-style freelance videography company filling up the remaining expenses.
The number ideologies this one focus group can yield is limitless. The destruction and collateral damage of the rhetoric from focus groups such as these may be considered among the contributing factors in climate change and the sixth mass extinction which is already underway.
It is speculated that the amount of bloodshed and scorched earch will be epic.
Note:++ ripped and adapted from THIS ARTICLE

Also Check Out:
* #Camus #ThePlague cf. #Cottard character * https://www.ready.gov/nuclear-blast

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I just re-read my own post. It struck me that the topics it addressed are only now starting to become a talking point in the mainstream some six years later via stuff like Minecraft, VR Headgear, Pokémon Go, and so on dominating the current discussion on trends in the mobile market.
Gawd! I must've sounded like a lunatic to anybody who read through it when it was written and published here.

I suppose what I'm currently spewing in idle conversations these days is no different. I likely still sound like a raving lunatic (I see you all looking back at me all glassy-eyed ... I notice all the cordial uh-huhs that say, "I have no f@$ing clue what you're talking about, but I do care about you," when I can't suppress the impulse to nerdjack the conversation).

For what it's worth, today it's all about stumbling upon the Fujitsu Film Wonder Photo Shop this afternoon near Madison Square Park and soaking in the coffeehouse-like "experience" of the brand:
One small corner in the very back hosting their current offerings of DSLR cameras. They were tucked behind an immaculate hardwood worktable with a cutting board and a "condiment bar" of scrapbooking materials ... chalkboard-styled menu-like writing on various facades of the place, none of which were in direct line of sight to each other ... evenly spaced monitors along the walls -- all showing the same screensaver, but not a single drop of coffee and hardly any variety of merchandise; like the extension of what was chartered by the post-First-Gen-iPod Apple Stores (loitering at the Genius Bar as if being at a nightclub without the intendant drugs and alcohol); to have a spacial and sensual engagement with the idea of a thing; the elan of Apple or Fujitsu or Lego bricks or M&Ms unfolded and laid bare as a place one inhabits casually for a short while.

Insidiously, there's nothing there one might be able to truly buy but once every other year (if at that); there's no expectation in you that you might be familiar with anybody one finds there, and, despite appearances, there's nothing to do in the place since, really, all the objects are there, first and foremost, as decorations which serve the purpose of communicating the essence, the soul of the commodified corporation.

~.cf~

Kevin Kelly: The Internet, Cats, and the Future of AI from The Long Now Foundation on FORA.tv

Furthermore, !!IMPORTANT: that this type of retail store may someday, just over the horizon of the current zeitgeist, be re-created in a VR space with innumerable instances of the storefront arising and disappearing based on the number of currently logged in customers -- none of which requires any brick and mortar, rents and staff, and other mundane concerns of the prime material realm. Possibly, our presence and freely chosen use of any time spent in that VR world is not buy or be productive as Earth citizens, but to merely contribute at our whim the computational capacity of our human, electro-chemical cognition as a vital component to the overall operation of a self-aware technium (~.cf~) -- an AI whose consciousness operates on a much different order of being, much too sublime for any of us mere mortals to interact with it directly.

Perhaps, the answer to our specie's perplexed observations in reference to The Drake Equation and that we have, bafflingly, yet to encountering any signs of an other intelligence in universe is simply that, like any tree, if it's talking, is unrecognizable to mammals like us, any interstellar intelligence would be actively engaged with Gaia while both it and us would be mutually unaware of each other as something one might be able to say something to; it's like what we might think if someone suggested we hang out with Mike's liver rather than with Mike whom we can actually invite over for a beer and a slice of za.

POST PUN:

May I have a large, non-fat, , and leave some room in the cup for Milky Way.

At any rate, trust me when I say that I was completely unprepared for how potently visceral the experience would be when I finally got the means to plug my cell phone into a Gear VR headset. It's mad crazy!!
Edit 10/21/16: Cleaned up thumb keyboard grammar and rendering of links/images; added block quotes, art and embedded referrences; minor word choice and general style polishing

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... and his life - as we had known him - ended when he spontaneously combusted from the tip of his cigarette igniting his beard as his numb consciousness slipped away from his suppine, naked body strewn on the hardwood floor.
He had locked the door, and when we finally got in, all that was left was a tuft of his scalp melted into the second hand, spongy polyester cushion and the smell of what a salon and a speakeasy at closing time would have smelled like if you rolled them both into one.Those who found him said that his last meal had been a bag of unsalted UTZ potato chips.None of them dared say what each of them had imagined in the charred ceiling, and all of them had thought it resembled something - only something different for each of them: a pig, a hand, a tree, and so on; something and nothing, neither and both ... just like he had lived his life, you know, managing to drive those who cared about him at some point or another bananas.It was unclear if he had intended for this to happen or that his broken heart just simply gave out.
;

Note: originally composed on and reposted from Ello.Co profile

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Main Street USA, herein preserved by the museum town, Williams, AZ, is a fiction created for the generation of Americans born in the 1940's and early 50's in order to preserve their chances of retaining throughout their adolescence a sense of a safe, orderly and reasonable universe. Their counterparts in Europe, Russia and Japan -- other states with proclivities or histories of imperialism -- would not be afforded that possibility.

The ramifications of that fantasy continue to play a powerful and, arguably, globally-destructive role in the shaping policy and society of the nation.

Disclosure: this personal blog is currently in transition from topic-specific to general works by its author, and therefore, will continue to evolve in both content and style to reflect that change in ethos.

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Ms. Nip here captures, in my humble opinion, the essence of where new technologies in genetic engineering like CRISPR[1] seem to be taking us ... to the stars. And, by extension to her argument, it is yet another herald of the ongoing transformation of human animal into a transcendental liminality[2] where the Platonistic and Aristotelian dichotomy unite.

Lisa Nip:How humans could evolve to survive in spaceTEDxBeaconStreet · 12:51 · Filmed Nov 2015
Footnotes:[1] Cross-reference to an article posted in The Atlantic four months ago:What Can You Actually Do With Your Fancy Gene-Editing Technology?Wading through the hype about CRISPRED YONG | DEC 2, 2015 (READ BY CLICKING HERE)
And finally, my two cents-worth of an answer in the comment section of that article - transcribed here, becuase, c'ummon, I can't justify creating a blog post without making a contribution to the body of content :-P)

JC Martinez-Sifre 4 months ago

To the question of: "Even if we could edit human genes safely and precisely, why would we do so ..."Why? To colonize Mars and survive Climate Change.There a whole lot of flora and fauna already out there that thrive in exotic environments. Besides the treatment or eradication of diseases and the issue of designer babies, CRISPR makes any strand of DNA from any species current or even extinct a candidate for splicing into the human genome.I've heard that there's an active effort to un-extinct the woolly mammoth. It's not a far stretch to think of humans who can tolerate interstellar space with a bit of DNA from Tardigrades or photosynthetic people who breath CO2 and fart ozone. And, it's not unreasonable to think that the knowledge of how to do that effectively is in the not-too-distant future. After all, Custer's last stand and Armstrong's stepping onto the moon happened in the span of a single lifetime.

[2] An audio blurb: Terrence McKenna: what it's like when the species prepares for hyperspaceIf you cannot see the audio controls, your browser does not support the audio elementOriginal Source:Podcast 386 – “Loose Ends Time”
Posted on January 24, 2014 by Lorenzo

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Brooklyn was under the umbrella of a scorching heat while my neighbor from my block and I waited at the intersection of "18th Street and 3rd Ave" for more than 30 minutes. My neighbor had called a local car service to drive us back home. It never arrived.

We had just dropped off my neighbor's own vehicle at the mechanic for routine service. He had asked me to come along since he was unsure that his post-ACL surgery knee would be able to tolerate working the clutch on the drive. Should it give out, I was "on deck" so to speak.

| | | Old San Juan, PR 6-30-2014.Police state that their presence isdue to the peaceful demonstrationstaged by the Taxi Union in protestof Uber's possible entry to the market. |

Now, Uber has been an unavoidable topic this summer, appearing both in my mailbox in the form of political postcards and also as a real presence during a recent family vacation to Puerto Rico where the Taxi union had shut down the cobblestone roads near the Governor's Mansion in Old San Juan, protesting Uber's potential launch of service on its shores.

As such, I asked my neighbor while we waited fruitlessly for his car to arrive - me sweating and he sweating and hobbling - about his thoughts on Uber (Our neighborly friendship is founded on and based in, primarily, on our mutually active involvement in the local civic scene, and it was not inappropriate to ask his views on a current issue of public discourse such as Uber). I had offered to hail an Uber X while riding to his mechanic, and was somewhat surprised to note his response seemed to express disdain for the service though he had no personal experience with it. As it turns out, his disdain was based a perceived legal disparity for Uber drivers versus traditional livery services in New York City. It concerned him that Uber drivers, as far as he was aware, were unprofessional "average Joe's" like him had offered up their ride and who had not undergone the same rigor and oversight NYC required of its Taxi drivers and car services.

My rejoinder to him was that I was not well-versed on the legal and political issues and could only speak as a user of the service. I opened up the app on my phone, and showed him how the map disclosed the location, estimated fare, and aproximate arrival of both an UberX and UberT to our sidewalk at "18th St. and 3rd Ave" - some critical certainties that would not have been possible prior to something like an Uber app. I also gave him a rough sketch of my experience of price which to me has always been comparable with the local car services. After a few minutes longer of waiting on the sidewak, he finally acquiesced, asking me to hail a car through Uber.

I placed the pin on "18th St. and 3rd Ave" despite my phone's GPS signal indicating that we were nearby but not on that block. I had heard him call out the intersection on multiple calls to his car service to bring any skepticism to bear on what the Uber app was displaying as our true location. I submitted my request and a nearby car went into action tracing the four-minute route the app clearly rendered for the pin I had dropped.

A couple of times I brought my phone out of my pocket and showed my neighbor the display which showed the UberX navigating towards us. At a certain point, though, I recognized that our car ought to be right in front of us. It wasn't until our driver called me that we - my neighbor and I - realized that we had been standing at 20th Street and 3rd Ave. all along. The car that had been dispatched to our stated location would never have been able to reach out to us for clarification or correction of our own error.

The driver waited patiently while we walked the two short blocks towards him, and as soon as we stepped into his vehicle, there was a palpable sense of relief. And, it wasn't just the sweet, crisp air conditioning and the fragrance of a freshly detailed interior that did it. Rather, it was the fact that the the passenger armrest had been stocked with two complimentary bottles of water.

Now, we didn't avail ourselves them having already supplied ourselves with cold drinks at the deli which had been on the corner we had been waiting. But, the mere presence of the water bottles was yet another cue signaling to us an immediate sense of refreshment and comfort.

Our driver was not only cordial and content to deliver us home with nothing short of limousine treatment, but he also welcomed our need for convivial conversation with him. The chat was, specifically, about how Uber works from his perspective, and my neighbor seemed satisfied by the driver's responses - commercial plates and insurance; our driver's statement that he had been required to pass tests and training to gain the privilege of taking Uber fares; that Uber had provided him with a means to be his own boss (a value I know my neighbor holds in high esteem), and that he - our driver- expressed putting a lot of care and dollars into ensuring his vehicle remained consistently immaculate.

When our ride concluded, I showed my neighbor the invoice that quickly appears as a notification on my phone. My mere presence on this simple expedition was doing him a favor, after all, and he expected to be permitted to reimburse me for the fare - a little more than $12, which, to my estimation, was comparable to what his own car service would have charged.

At any rate, I informed him that should his first experience with Uber be sufficient to win him over in so far as he decides to sign up, that he would allow me to refer him via the app and qualify us both for a bit of bonus.

Finally, I want to say that our driver deserves that sixth star not only for his superlative service, but also for the fact that, when he was unwittingly tasked with being Uber's brand ambassador, he definitely succeeded, I think, in convincing my neighbor that there may be more nuances to the public rhetoric regarding the so-called "problem with Uber." Certainly, our driver expressed gladness for the additional choice he had at making his daily bread, and I, for one, am content with the service I've received thus far from the perspective of a consumer in a free-market economy. I may benefit as a citizen in educating myself on the broader ramifications this nascent, "disruptive," technology and be better equipped to appraise the bigger picture, but, in the meantime, give our driver that sixth star he truly deserves. He made you look really, really good.

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Note: this post was abridged on 7/31/15 - JC

Dear Pan Pizza (to whom it may concern),cc: www.podgnosticast.comI stumbled onto your site via the most recent edition of Kickstarter's "Happenings" newsletter. I've been a subscriber for more than a year now after a random act of boredom had me slide the small scissors icon located just above the site's footer - an Easter Egg. The newsletter which is copied in full below as a forwarded message has your site listed under the "Etc." heading.
I submit for your inspection a curious artifact produced by the digital age: a building simultaneously built and torn down; a structure existing in database whose port side and starboard side seem to be overwritten on alternating years.Location's address with GPS coordinates and URL:13185 Biscayne Blvd
North Miami, FL 33181
25.897081, -80.161048https://goo.gl/maps/0SR2f
:

| | | Street View from US1 northbound lane looking south, May 2015 |

| | | Street View from US1 northbound lane looking North, May 2015: |

| | | Street View from US1 southbound, April 2014: |

| | | Street View from E. 18th St. April 2014: |

| | | Google Earth View |

And if I may daydream for a moment:

Chances are that any Wynwood-style graffiti painted by March 30, 2016 and visible from E. 18th St. depicting what used to be the Pizza Hut there would be an exercise in adding a homebrew Easter Egg to those already made by Google itself.At the very least, this Pizza Hut and those documented by your site will live on in some chache somewhere waiting for an Oculus Rift or an Android or a Microsoft HoloLens developer to author a layer into their Virtual Reality or Augmented Reality app that displays both the outside and inside (complete with salad bar and a fully-functional Moon Cresta coin-op emulation) of what used it used to mean be a Pizza Hut.Hopefully, your site might someday be able to convince the companies above to hire some of Pratt's Library and Information Science students whom I've personally seen logging hour after hour of tedium plugging in all sorts of metadata from insurance records as part of their coursework at New York Public Library's map room; the end result I can only presume would be that some smart glass API would translate the publicly funded data of, for example, the atlas of Brooklyn in 1885 geotagged to the stereoscopic views collection and extra toppings such as an inter-library loan of the 1885 Brooklyn "Yellow Pages," and ecco, a Sunday stroll in the past is born while, simultaneously, pizza delivery of the, marketing bucks from The Hut itself and the bequeathed estate of your crowdsourced collection is ushered in.

Yours Truly,
Thin and Crispy Forever,
JC Martinez-Sifre
Brooklyn, NY

---------- Forwarded message ---------From: Kickstarter Staff no-reply@kickstarter.com
Date: Wed, Jul 15, 2015 at 5:47 PM
Subject: Happening: Bookmarks
To: ijcmartinez@gmail.com

| Admit it, you’ve judged a book by its cover before. It’s hard not to, and perhaps that’s why Design Observer just launched a project to exhibit this year's 50 Books I 50 Covers design competition winners. And while we’re on the topic of publishing, you should know that there's a great collection of books made with Kickstarter available now on Humble Bundle. Head on over, pay what you want for some stellar titles, and support both creators and charities directly in the process.Links We LikeStanley Kubrick's favorite films (Criterion)What does it take to revive a masterwork? (The Met)The most recognizable voice in New York (New Yorker)New & NoteworthyReal-life totems encoded with music and visualsA retro handheld camera powered by your iPhoneThis helmet design includes brake and turn signalsThe story of one of the world’s most popular 8-bit computersPenny Arcade is making a mini-series out of their 20’s robo-noirBill Nye, the Science Guy, and his quest to change the world with scienceThe best comics from The Nib, published together in one 300 page hardcoverYoung Muslim women learn to box from one of the first Indian female coachesIn his 17th project, David Walsh brings us more beautiful, handcrafted wooden bowlsCreative Commons is out to prove that there’s no conflict between “open” and “business”Ai Weiwei is going to build eight enormous trees in the courtyard of London’s Royal AcademyEtc.Used to be a Pizza Hut | | Have a story, a photo, or a video about a project you want to share with us? We'd love to see it! Share them with us here: stories@kickstarter.comDon't want to keep getting Happening? That's okay, you can unsubscribe.Copyright 2015 Kickstarter Inc. 58 Kent Street, Brooklyn, NY 11222Contact Us |

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David Chehebar, CTO of SEO company, WebMarketingForDentists.com, shares in this dialogue his reactions and reflections on a Harvard Business Review article, The Five Stages of Business Growth, by Neil C. Churchill and Virginia L. Lewis (May/June 1983) and how he believes that the accelerating access to and compounding of knowledge in the digital age gives the prevalence and concept of frameworks and design patterns a toolset for entrepreneurs in pursuit of business growth.

A big thank you to Les Blondettes for graciously providing the musical interludes. To listen to their music or for booking information, please visit: http://www.myspace.com/lesblondettes

LISTEN NOW:

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This video is about as close as it gets to revealing daily life in the maturation of the liminal Web:

A full write-up on the piece can be found at Mr. Harboun's site along with other products of this luminary's mind.Also, an insightful interview by Buddhist Geeks connecting the dogma and the digital can be found: ::Here::

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This post is in reaction the wonderful questions raised by Zachary Sniderman's article on Mashable.com "Should the Geneva Conventions Be Applied to Video Games?" posted Dec. 02, 2011. Original header and attribution included below.

Should the Geneva Conventions Be Applied to Video Games?December 02, 2011 by Zachary Sniderman

Once one gets beyond the heart of the matter - that games are precisely that because they exist outside of the “real world” and in a consecrated space1, and once one realizes the faulty logic behind suggesting that war games such as Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 abide by the Geneva Conventions, then the suggestion, nonetheless, brings to mind some untapped possibilities for the design and purpose of war games as a genre.Nowadays, gaming has become a recognized venue for instruction or concrete work in the sphere of social good or in humanitarian issues. Sniderman notes in his article that, “After beating a game, no player wants to then sit through a mock war trial for the civilian they accidentally shot in the first mission.”But is that really true? Certainly in the current context of how these games are designed, it would certainly fall out of the ken of what these games attempt to simulate - the part of warfare that deals with tactics and teamwork which is, essentially, the thrust of most first-person shooter games. But, what if these games had to abide by the Geneva Conventions?At first glance a whole bevy of character classes or sub-games could be created for just that very purpose. Consider a sub-game modeled after a Farmville/Sims-style game that allows players to administrate the prisoner camps or that new ranks of player-characters populate the game world such as "Judge" "Ambassador" or "Prime Minister" and which are only granted to players who have advanced significantly in game missions and whose overall kill stats more closely reflects the rules of engagement stipulated by The Geneva Conventions.That is, for the privilege of and for the game network clout of presiding over the “mock” war crimes trials conducted on fellow players by other players, one could imagine yet another instance of “motivational design.” Not only do these roles grant a player a certain amount of authority and prestige within the gaming network - a core reason people play games in the first place and which underwrites things such as leader boards - but also the so-called courtroom becomes the crowd-sourced forum for fair-play, best practices and community self-regulation wherein senior members of the gaming network act as the standard for the rest of the gamers as they debate how to adjudicated the “war crime.”There could also be a “peacekeeper” or “Military Police” character class that not only must be unlocked through specific actions by the player, but also this creates opportunities for additional, high-value missions such as a Saving Private Ryan-style mission for bringing a suspected combatant back to the so-called halls of justice.First-person shooters are generally testosterone-filled, jockish exercises in muscle, fraternal brotherhood and technical skill. What about a first person shooter that also includes the brainy training in a social good or achieves a richer simulation of other aspects of warfare such as diplomacy and rules of engagement?Granted, this what if scenario probably involves game design and coding beyond the capacity of the game systems that run them at this time. It would be no small feat to be able to realize such an idea.However, the addition of game systems that process the ethical standards of the Geneva Conventions not with built-in coding, prohibitive algorithms and game design, but instead by the creation of sub-games, earned character classes and in-game sysop privileges and that these systems that process ethical issues are administrated and enacted by the gamers themselves, then suddenly games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 3 achieves some of the didactic and community building functions2 that satisfy more completely why human beings are wont to play games in the first place.1 Huizinga, J. (1955). Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play Element in Culture (p. 3).Boston: The Beacon Press.2Bowman, S. L. (2010). The Function of Role-Playing Games: How Participants Create Community, Solve Problems and Explore Identity. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers.

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Aina Abiodun, founder and co-organizer for the Transmedia NYC Meetup group shares her experience raising her organization from a small crew talking Transmedia in pubs to a full-fledged institution sponsored by the Film Society of Lincoln Center with liaisons to Trasnsmedia meetup groups worldwide.

A big thank you to Les Blondettes for graciously providing the musical interludes. To listen to their music or for booking information, please visit: http://www.myspace.com/lesblondettes

LISTEN NOW:

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To be sure, Jesse Schell has become a hero to me, and I'm not one prone to having heroes at all. And, the profound admiration for his work and his public speaking was born not via his landmark 2010 D.I.C.E. Summit talk. I hadn't even heard of it or of him when I cued up the next episode in a podcast I had already been listening to avidly: S.A.L.T. (Seminars in Long Term Thinking produced by Stewart Brand of the Long Now Foundation). The episode Schell delivered was dubbed, Visions of the Gamepocolypse, and I've been a fan of his ever since.

Based on the introductary remarks, this lecture was to be the full exposition of the insights Schell only introduced in the one delivered to the D.I.C.E. audience. Over the course of the hour-long podcast, he revealed with remakable clarity what he dubbed "The Gamepocolypse," but beyond his bullet points of sensors, devices, and all the hardware advancements and Web ecosystems that would permit the end of the world as-we-know-it through gamification, two of his talking points made a lasting impression on me.

The first of these was somewhat ego-serving; he couched the beginning of his lecture on the presumption that if you pay attention, it is truly possible to forcast the future or at least have a really good guess at possible ones. It's not only a presumption I agree with as the title of this blog can testify to, but also it's likely the statement that rendered him, there on the spot, a hero to me rather than another thought-provoking listen on a podcast I had already come to love.

The other thing that, literally, put goose pimples on my forearms was his classification of the competing factions in this Gamepocalypse. He classifies them as such:

The Pursuaders:
"All these guys care about is making money ... They want to get the money and get out."
The Artists:
"They want to advance their medium. They wanna get something new out there ... for its own sake."
The Humanitarians"They want to make things that will make people's life better ... To help us improve metally, physically, spiritually."
The Fullfillers:
"These peoples want to fulfill peoples wishes, their dreams, desires, and hope."

About a month and a half later, a Google Alert I had put on Schell delivered to me another one of his speaking engagements, and yet again he closed this talk (which was on different topic altogether) with the same formulation: the artists, the humanitarians, the persuaders and the fulfullers.

This verified to that it was an important point in Schell's ideas, and it is. What to make of this, my meditations on gamification have yet to yeild a practical application for it, other than knowing it could potentially be the framework on which to base a business model for the capitalization of a Transmedia production.

Now, yesterday morning, I got around to watching a taped interview he gave while participating in the For the Win symposium which convened on Aug. 8 of this year. Perhaps it was the nature of the symposium, or that the conference room in which it was filmed was too drab in decor and conducted by an uninspired interviewer, but, for once, a wedge appeared in Schell's rhetoric that I, humbly, think aught to be addressed.

Also, to be fair, after watching the opening debate of that same symposium, I suspect that the event was rather stifling. In my imagination, and had I been in Jesse Schell's shoes at the time, I likely would have had my hand curled into "the bird" underneath the table while doing this interview. So, though I have my personal critique of this particular interview, I suspect that Schell had more things on his mind at the time than to be careful with his rhetoric. Regardless, his statements were thought provoking and merit a more thorough examination.

To a large extant, the interview questions and answers revolved around the topic-kernel of what is or what do we really call this "gamification" thing. At the 8:30 mark (the in-a-nutshell moment) Schell states:

"I think what people are really trying to talk about is the notion of motivational design, even though they don't always use those phrases. When I press people about it, it really is what they're talking about. They're talking about 'How can I create a system where you care; you actually care more about completing certain tasks within the system whether that system be trying to get you to fill out forms about car insurance, or trying to care about your own education, or an excercise program ... is it possible for me to create a system so that you care."

Personally I think that kind of recasting of gamification into "motivational design" has value from the standpoint of "The Pursuaders." That is not only the language Schell's persuaders use to talk to each other, but it is, in fact, what they're out to do - to make the banalities of things like insurance forms something we care about just as much as they do. Their job and their industry depends on us caring about their needs.

But, for anyone who has lived in New York City for any stretch of time knows first-hand is that the amount of caring anyone can sustain for anything that is constant and unrelenting (I'm thinking about the daily, almost hourly, solicitations by vagrants, alcoholics, self-anointed messengers of The Lord, and troupes of Mariachi bands dressed up as vaqueros) drops to nil just before it goes straight into outright contempt for even the suggestion of yet another "entertaining" performance.

Incidentally, as of late the Mariachi's have done a bit of their own "Motivational Design" to their act. Now they're being accompanied by what we hope is truly their wife and infant child and not their sweet cousin from down the block for whom they'll cut a piece of the pie in what she manages to score in the collections basket while they're are freed up to pump their accordion to La Bamba, again.

I think we will care the first or second time, but soon we will learn to resent the design of their act for the bad faith it uses in appealing to our treasured sincerity in a motivation that most healthy adults carry: to try our best to lend hand to the sick, suffering and those in a state of lack.

Again, to be fair, I believe that a better venue than this recorded interview - one that would permit Schell a full treatment to the question of what "gamification" is - would yield that his views are much more comprehensive and thorough than this nine-minute clip taken alone would suggest. Regardless, for just this, particular clip, I would have to say that gamification is not mere motivational design. It is that, but only amidst the persuaders.

In the middle section of this clip, Schell takes the tack that motivation is a well understood discipline whereas human pleasure remains a mystery even to those whose science aught to have a ready answer: the academic psychologists. I think at the end of the day, psychology will play a strong role in understanding pleasure, but so too will biology. But when it comes to gamification per se, and how it unites motivation and pleasure, there is already a thriving science and discipline to understand how it does so.

Specifically, I invoke the emerging sub-discipline of the social sciences dubbed ludology (the study play in human beings and in groups of people). Already the research has made thorough investigations of gaming cultures and the research has measurable dynamics of game systems such as MMORPG's, Fantasy Table-top role playing games, and game play as a whole1.

Once one starts surveying the essays, the studies and the literature that the science of ludology has already produced, it becomes clear that the artists, the humanitarians and the fulfillers should not only be invited to sit at the round conference table occupied by the pursuaders, but are, in fact, required to be there; to contribute to the discourse of gamification if the whole project has any hope of staving off the contempt that has descended on Facebook and the like. That is, if we, the general public (the users), are going to care about games, and that this caring is going to be a sustained one rather than subject to the tapering off that Schell describes in this clip, then Gamification ≠ Motivational Design. Gamification = Play.

And, if there is going to be a good discussion at this round conference table on how to package, produce and deliver play for a profit, (and why we will all ultimately care about it) then let's, at least, give an honorable mention to one of the foundational texts to the study of Ludology: Johan Huizinga's Homo Ludens: A Study of the Play-Element in Culture.

I've taken the liberty of posting at the end of this argument the first eleven pages of this book graciously made available for preview on Google Books. But, to summarize the essence of the entire opening chapter, Huizinga makes the following points:1. Play is significant 2. Play is a serious activity (think of how serious two chess players can be about their game). 3. Play is a voluntary activity. (If it's forced, it is no longer play, it's work. He equates play to freedom itself). "Here, then, we have the first main characteristic of play: that it is free, is in fact freedom" (8). 4. Play is bound by space; it occurs in a sanctified "playground"; it is somehow outside of the ordinary or real world. (Think: chess board, sandbox, a frame (as in fine art), a stage or a football field as the playground or, a better word, arena). 5. Play is bound by time. (There is a clear moment when the game starts and end, and it's iterative process (to play the game again) is a foundational part of play. You see this at work in Foursquare, for instance, when the leaderboard resets every week) 6. "it creates order, is order" (10). (Think that every game has clear rules from which intrinsic order arises in gameplay because of it. Think first down, second down, third down, your turn, then my turn, etc.). 7. Play is tense. "The player wants something to 'go', to 'come off'; he wants to 'succeed' by his own exertions" (10-11). (i.e. there are stakes involved and one can win or loose).

As an aside, Huizinga takes this framework of play and then analyzes some very adult activities such as philosophy, sport, art and fashion, and even war based on these criteria. Modern ludologists have already come to the conclusion that adult play is a vital component in community building, and it is evident that the Web or a particular Web page/platform like a forum, a user group or a social network thrives in accordance to how well the community (your community) is present and has clearly defined its rules of engagement with little to no users trying to "game" the system and be, in Huizinga's words, a spoil-sport.

And so, in this context, it's not too far of a stretch to see why and how motivation and pleasure unite in games and in the forthcoming gamification of the Web. On the one hand, people, like that old cyberpunk adage, "want to be free." And pleasure is a lot of things, but one ingredient of it has to do with getting what you want. There's pleasure in getting what you want so long as you don't have to give up too much of something else you also want to get it.

Also, in a world that is almost always ambiguous, clear order is a gratifying experience in so far as there's pleasure in understanding the "why" of things. This dynamic plays out in movies, TV shows and novels where we feel like we know the "why" in the character's actions and behaviors better than we know ourselves, our friends and our family.

Motivation dovetails into play specifically at Huizinga's point #7: in that striving for something to 'come off' and to work towards something where stakes are involved.

Elsewhere in the introduction Huizinga points out that play and games are "engrossing" and absorb the player (during his exposition of point #4). In a Ted talk, psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi presents an compelling explanation of how complete absorption in a task - what he calls "flow" - engenders a state of temporary bliss or euphoria. He studies artists, but presumably the results of his studies apply equally to gamers.

There is, in my opinion, sufficient evidence to construct a robust theory of how gamification can satisfy both motivation and pleasure. The task at hand is to design a competent study that can accurately measure how and when a game achieves this.

Ultimately, I think that what gamification is as a cultural movement and a trend is nothing more than an effort to reunite what has been for a few generations the separation between work and leisure. It is the means, the vehicle, and the pathway whereby those two activities unite once again.French philosopher Henri Lefebvre does an outstanding treatment in his first volume of Critique Of Everyday Lifeof unpacking the factors and forces since the industrial revolution that separated work and leisure for us into two distinct realms. However, another industrial revolution is in our midst which Schell recognizes at the For the Win symposium - a revolution in communication technologies and automation - and now, work and leisure are primed to become one again because of it or through it.Gamification then, in my humble opinion, is a manifestation of this cultural imperative. It is the thing that will ultimately make it okay to hang out on Facebook while sitting at your work-place, and the thing that will make it okay to work from home and at night or on the weekends. We're all guilty of complaining that this is happening already, and, frankly, we're overwhelmed by it in the current context. Now comes gamification, and suddenly, if all goes well and all players - the artists, the humanitarians, the persuaders and the fulfillers - do their job right by hashing out a fair compromise between them then gamification could possibly ameliorate this problem. Then, maybe, just maybe, what we all have to look forward to is that life for us and our children will be characterized by constant play.

On the other hand, if the persuaders, and the persuaders alone, have their way as they did with social media, the result of the gamification process could result in a commensurate increase in alienation and exploitation. This united work-leisure model for modernity will not have the quality of play. And so, like with all brand new technologies, we, as a civilization, are once again entrusted with the responsibility to put these new technologies at the service of progress and a better tomorrow while minimizing the intrinsic risk in their introduction.

Based on what I've already seen, read and learned from him, I'm confident that my hero, Jesse Schell, will fight the good fight in the arena of persuaders in making gamification a worthy new facet of not only my life, but all of ours.

1 Waskul, D. D. (2006). The Role-Playing Game and The Game of Role-Playing: The Ludic Self and Everyday Life. In J. P. Williams, S. Q. Hendricks, & W. K. Winkler (Eds.), Gaming as Culture: Essays on Reality, Identity and Experience in Fantasy Games (pp. 19-38). Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers.

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And I thought I was "way out there" with being able to hold intelligent discourse about a future that is present here and now in our midst, but luddite and virtual puppeteering architect, Jeff Wirth, has me beat.

This past Tuesday, I had the pleasure of attending his brief presentation where Wirth, author of Interactive Acting and former head of the University of Central Florida's Interactive Performance Lab, revealed some details about his current project, built upon his extensive work in virtual puppeteering and based on sci-fi thriller, The Diamond Age, to those gathered at The Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center at Lincoln Center. But, while his muse is drawn from a futuristic narrative, his work is real, it's here, and it's way out there in a future we can only pretend is in the distance. But, it's not.

For those who aren't in the know, and I was amongst them before Wirth took the podium, virtual puppeteering is the craft of animating virtual characters or avatars through the actions, keystrokes and chatter produced by real people at the helm of a console-like interface. Think World of Warcraft, but your avatar's actions are limited only by your imagination and personality, not the pre-programmed list of emotes compiled by the game designers. Instead, Wirth's work has you breathing life into your virtual characters, literally bringing human consciousness and free will the the digital world.

To that end, he has produced a comprehensive field guide for prospective developers and pioneers like himself entitled VPS Interface Design. To be sure, slides at the presentation revealed that the document, like all other documents produced for the cutting, cutting, very cutting-edge, is a strictly a technical read with graphs, labyrinthine charts and precision specifications. You can be sure that Tim Berners-Lee's early writings into URIs, HTTP and HTML, likewise, were equally not ready for print in something like the For Dummies series.

Suffice it to say, Wirth is definitely one of those keywords to add to your Google Alerts. In the meantime, you can follow his own explorations and ruminations on the emerging immersive Web on www.interactiveapple.com. And come on, people! Where's the Wikipedia entry?