The Runny Pen

Marina Del Rey

This familiar place is new to me. It is fitting to live here, this neighborhood near the beach, during this chapter. I am infused like an energy drink. Running the park this morning I saw an enormous, shallow-based tree had overturned itself since yesterday’s run with Karim. I looked for evidence of a lightening strike but it was just top-heavy. Ferocious and amplified I write long lists and cut them down with a red Sharpie. Push-ups are no longer frozen treats. I feel like a cigarette being smoked by Danny Bonaduce.

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Crosswalk

Her socket looked cheated of the eyeball. The bandage was a plastic cotton circle and seemed as though it were cut from a baby diaper. The patch didn’t bulge it caved inward like a dimpled chad. I marched by her at the end of my walk along Admiralty Way. I admired her or felt sympathetic towards her because of her defiant way of standing. She investigated each passer by. Her stance looked rehearsed or settled upon but either way it seemed like an effort. She was Mexican, maybe Michocan or Oaxaca. A pretty girl in her early twenties with an unbuttoned pink sweater clinging to her shoulders.

And as I passed I looked at her face and its lacking globe and she angled away. I wanted to tell her how bad my left foot is fucked and about the back pain I’ve endured and the relief of arch supports. But of course there could be no solidarity. I walked on towards home and she waited for the WALK sign to ignite in front of the Washington Mutual Bank as the six million dollar yachts in the Marina Del Rey harbor laughed at both of us.

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Predictable Ligament

…could be the name of a punk band formed by former physicians. Or, I could just like the way those two words sound together…

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The Clackamas

I woke disoriented. Fan blades pushed heat around the room, the leather couch stuck to my back and there was a slight knock at the door. I let my brother-in-law in. Josh was on me, it was time to go, I’d overslept.

I’d laid out the St. Croix rod the night before along with my fly tackle and a cooler stuffed with steak and bread and chicken from the BBQ. Josh poured espresso in his mug and we were gone. The Clackamas river is about a half hour outside Portland. I am always slower to get ready but Josh is a machine. By the time I’d pulled the straps of my waders over my shoulders he had his pontoon inflated at the river’s edge. Josh did the rowing and we sat back to back as the pontoon is only designed for one person. We slid through a small set of rapids and the extra weight caused a dip and a wave of river water soaked the inside of my waders. It was six a.m.

We pulled into the first tailout. The shore was littered with guys throwing puffballs from baitcasters. We shot our flyline at them from the center of the river. After about ten minutes a guy near the head of the tailout yelled ‘Fish On’ and the others retrieved their lures to allow him to pull his catch to shore. Soon his friend was netting an eight pound, chrome steelhead.

We moved through slower current and came upon a family of beavers, one of them with a tree branch in mouth. And with a collective tail splash they disappeared. Blue Herons and cranes and a family of ducks as the sun rose higher in the sky. We fished another perfect looking stretch of water and then ate some steak and a banana and a handful of cherries. Josh and I each rolled our preferred brand of smoke and we absorbed the scene. The Clackamas River lacks the crowds of fisherman. The picturesque waterway makes you want to set your rod down for a bit and just absorb the landscape.

I asked Josh for some advice on my cast. The last time I fly fished was with Josh at Castle Lake on Mt. St. Helens. That was two years ago. I’ve been fishing Southern California and Mexico the past two years, chucking bait and lures and some of the finer subtleties of my cast had been lost.

I wasn’t doing a single-haul cast. I’d just been muscling it, not allowing the rod to properly load itself with energy. Josh has become an accomplished fly fisherman in the span of my absence. He tied my box of flies. He handmade the rod for me three birthdays ago. Josh tied all the wraps in a metallic silver as he knows that I like things that are shiny. Known as ‘The Diga’ rod (an inside term) it now sang. I was getting my line out there thirty and forty yards. Neither of us caught any steelhead, salmon or trout but I fell in love with The Clackamas anyway.

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Interstate 5

The cruise control grabbed 79 mph as me and Hammy pushed north past one million cows flanking the highway through Coalinga. We gave a shout to our boy Jeffrey Michael doing a life sentence at Pleasant Valley State Prison five miles back. Could there be a more ironic title for the most overcrowded prison in California?

I drove the whole way through the heat. We pulled into Novato and got a small bottle of The Goose. Mixed with Mandarin orange Jarritos and Squirt and a generous load of ice we slept before sunset. The next morning we rose early and worked near the McNear brick factory in Peacock Gap on the waterfront. Berkeley smiled from across the bay. After work, Hammy made an impulsive steer south towards Sausalito. He pointed to the fishing rods in his truck bed. A box of squid and I was pulling a 50 pound stingray towards the rocks as the gathering crowd cheered.

My mother picked me up in Novato and it was a long hug because I haven’t seen Joanne in eight months. Sliding through Santa Rosa my Nana joined us for a glass of wine at Traverso’s deli. We arrived at her house near Montgomery Village where she’s lived for fifty years to find her submersed in a mid-day nap. Nana is ninety-one years old. Brunson was pouring his VERGE label at the deli and I knew Nana would be psyched to see Bill Traverso. Nana’s two favorite words ‘free wine’ made her rocket out of bed and apply make-up. Within a half an hour we were sipping Mike’s phenomenal Syrah.

Tia and Enrique’s ranch-style home overlooking Rincon Valley reminds me of Tuscany. We BBQ’ed a tri-tip with garlic bread and stood slack-jawed watching all the blues and oranges and human sea of tai-chi masters that was the 2008 Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies.

Mike and Gayle Brunson brought a surprise to my uncle Lee and auntie Susie’s home off University Ave in Healdsburg. The porch light was out when I answered the door bell and I saw someone behind my friends and I actually extended my handshake to introduce myself. My old pal Darren Moffet appeared from the shadows and I pulled him in for a bear hug as I haven’t seen the guy in fourteen years. He is the mechanic out at Lake Sonoma. Shaggy hair and smiling eyes the guy hasn’t aged a bit even though you’d thinking climbing El Capitan’ three or four times would add a few lines to the face.

We connected from Healdsburg by way of Knight’s Valley and this is where the landscape towards I-5 is impressive. I couldn’t help thinking about how much I wished Jeff could escape his ‘Pleasant Valley’ for this one. The true heart of the wine country seen adorning the cover of Sunset magazine and Bon Appetit’, there’s a reason Joe Montana and Robin Williams live there. The valley looks like the Led Zeppelin album ‘Houses Of The Holy’ sounds.

Mom knows all the speed traps after numerous drives from Portland to Santa Rosa and she cruised past drivers speaking with CHPs on the road’s shoulder. I slept an hour or so and we let her old black lab Betty out for a piss at a rest stop. I did the driving North of Redding as that highway carved through mountains and over Clear Lake. Mt. Shasta is bald without snow. Safe as summer we drove over the mountains at the Oregon border. The sign welcomes but the winter punishes a vehicle without chains.

Roseburg, Eugene, then Portland traffic. Every major city has it now, I guess. I saw my twin nieces Lucy and Lyra and my sister Colleen and my bro-in-law Josh and my cousin Catherine. And yesterday I bathed in the sun in Yvonne and Trevor’s Oregon Country Farm backyard. And for two nights now I’ve slept over ten hours.

Some say when she’s alone my Nana is heard speaking with relatives from the past. A brother who died in The War and her aunts and co-workers who passed decades ago, even her ex-husband, the grandfather I never met. She repeatedly asked me about my tattoos and commented on their beauty. She’s now more in tune with children and birds and (my cousin) Cristina’s small dog Clayton who lives with Nana and her Fijian caregiver Soco.

Nana is blunt when she speaks her mind at the most inappropriate times and there’s morphine for the pain of two broken arms in that last two years; her only stays in the hospital since bearing children in her twenties. I laid next to her for five or ten minutes as she awoke that day for the wine tasting. She double blinked, clarity still twinkling from her Irish/German eyes. And the words she spoke to me were carried over from her dream she said. Nana said someone unknown to her wanted to tell me something from the other side. She said I should ‘pay attention to everything’…

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Fishing From Shore

See, the word Malibu just rolls off the tongue nicely. Malibu rum has a cocoanut flavor. The beach in front of Gladstone’s restaurant produces fish. A twenty-seven mile stretch of Pacific Coast Highway better known as Paradise. 

I awoke to the image of Jimmy Carter on my television. Rosalind still looks hot, a bit of a Gilf. He spoke of peace and gave a provocative title to his new book. I haven’t read it yet and I’ll post commentary if I it’s a mindblower. The book’s title is PALESTINE: Peace Not Apartheid. Just the title has rubbed some people the wrong way. But Jimmy’s not afraid.

Schmidt was on San Vicente at nine a.m. My first hook sank into the bright Lycra jersey of a passing cyclist along PCH. He swung back and I was prepared for peace or protest. Luckily he was okay. Schmidty caught a pelican and then we both caught a shitload of kelp. Alice In Wonderland entertained the kids on the sand and I extended a tub of wiggling sand crabs. The kids squirmed and smiled and poked at the crustaceans.

Right after I assured Schmidt he was hung-up on a seaweed patty his fishing rod danced and he beached a little halibut. My next cast was fruitful. Some kind of spotted sea bass wiggled from the whitewash. Just an August Saturday morning on the west coast.

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Glitch

I just wrote this title and I immediately realize that I hate the sound of the word. Glitch. Sounds like you’ve got too much spit in your mouth after sucking down a sour-apple Jolly Rancher. Glitch. There’s other words I hate, just the sound of ‘em. Slacks. Dollop. Kind. Spry. Never was fond of the proper name ‘Darryl’. But that’s another posting entirely.

I discuss glitches here only because every now and then a glitch goes in your favor. Once I was in my car trying not to spill coffee on myself and jerked-the-styrofoam cup-moments before it soaked my white t-shirt. Simultaneously, I accidentally gassed-it and ran a stop sign just before the three cars behind me rear-ended each other. There was steam from their hoods and that sick, crumpled metal sound as I drove away shocked that I escaped unscathed. I pulled over after a few blocks and celebrated, pumping my fist in the air. And today I was using a ‘write only’ version of a screenwriting program and somehow it allowed me to save my project. It wasn’t supposed to allow a ’save’ but it did. Glitch. I wonder how many people cancelled their flights on 9/11? I guess that’s beyond a glitch, that’s a fucking supernatural event.

After reading the Webster’s definition of the word I learn that its use is most appropriate in reference to machines or electricty. But it’s also used in sentences as a verb. For example: ‘an accident glitched our plans’. But noone talks about life glitching in their favor and goddamnit I think we should. I’m not sure glitches really are glitches. I could go all Deepak Choprah and say these are mystical portals to a predestined plane of fate. But the mysticism is probably better left to Dr. Choprah. All I can say is that program glitch saved my ass today. Saved my screenplay too. How has a glitch worked in your favor?

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S & M

Metallica’s “S&M” (Symphony and Metallica) DVD is the first of its kind in that the experience of watching the DVD (or just playing it in the background while doing laundry) is actually better than just listening to the CD. I know it came out a number of years ago but I’ve rediscovered it lately. Many live bands produce dead DVD’s. But theirs isn’t one of those.

There is a palpable interplay bewteen the band and orchestra musicians. They’re all blown away and you can see it in their eyes, the surprise at this unique and strange amalgamation working so well. Everyone seems to be concentrating just a little harder than they have in a few seasons. The expression on the face of (now deceased conductor) Michael Kamen is priceless. There’s the Asian cello player riffing with Kirk Hammett. She can’t resist smiling and you can see her relief that now her nephew will finally think she’s cool.

The concert was filmed at the Berkeley Community Theater and I remember seeing Kenny G at the show with his kids. I read that Francis Ford Coppola walked out miffed because he thought the event would be the band covering Mozart. Wrong. It was still a Metallica show only more so. A clever title spin on the DVD’s cover shows the symphony’s ‘S’ as a musical note against their lightening ‘M’. It is my favorite concert ticket stub within a fairly heavyweight collection.

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Freak

The ultimate spiritual test for modern man is obviously traffic. Just watch your friend slam that horn when someone cuts him off. Or watch your sister’s forehead wrinkle away her Botox as she rides the bumper of the old lady driving ten miles an hour under the speed limit. Or better yet, watch yourself.

I have a friend who yells out the window at people though she claims this now happens only once or twice a month. She commutes two and a half hours a day so that’s a pretty good average for a Los Angeleno. She seems happy with her improvement. She used to yell cuss words but now she just yells “freak!”

Last Saturday an old Toyota pick-up came barreling past me at a hundred miles per hour on the 405 North just over Mulholland . The truck had a shattered rear window and collapsed leaf springs as it bounced up and downhill. This out of control ‘Bullit’-wannabe swerved from the slow lane all the way across the freeway into the commuter lane. Just as I thought it was going to demolish the rear-end of an Oldsmobile the truck lit up its brakes enveloping it in a gray cloud. Then it bounced off the Oldsmobile’s bumper, then off an Explorer, then swung far right towards the offramp for the 101 South. The Toyota just barely missed the guardrail and I’m sure caused a seventeen car pile-up somewhere down the road. But I didn’t check the news so who knows? Probably the driver pulled into the safety of his garage, beat his wife and kids then slugged down another half gallon of Cuervo.

My driving disposition has mellowed considerably over the past five years. I let people into my lane and allow myself adequate time to make my destination. But I sped up to check on the Oldsmobile driver. The elderly grandmother was crossing herself as I passed her. My knuckles white on the wheel I screamed at the long-gone Toyota driver until my throat coughed blood.

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12:59 a.m.

Figured I’d double-dip the pen in the inkwell and see what flowed. Wrote the last one from work about an hour ago. The sprinklers come on and I am sitting here with tired eyes and an excited mind absorbing the room’s 180 degree change in furniture arrangement. 

There’s a guy I work with named Jett! He uses the exclamation point, that’s not me. A young editor and DJ I’m sure you’ll see him spinning in Hollywood some Saturday night, cranking out the drum and bass. Jett! will be twenty-one soon and I was slow to absorb the fact that he was born the year I graduated high school but suddenly I understood all the new white in my chest hair.

Driving from Marina Del Rey to Hollywood I passed three theaters with long lines to see Ledger’s last performance in ‘The Dark Night’. There’s a full moon. I’ll bet he has a great seat.

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