Blur

My nightmares entertain me ..it takes a sonic boom to wake me ..daylight blocks my view ..ideals surround me. I follow a windy road ..compounding delusions as I go. People whoosh by like signposts at ninety ..their expectations confound me. Daylight dissolves into disappointment ..and the mist of ideals fading ..but that’s OK ..most of them are my own anyway. My niece Karla spent the day ..which I enjoy greatly ..goes by like a blur though ..we ate at IHOP ..walked around the lagoon at UCSB ..Andy explored ..I showed Karla where the students live ..we cruised Isla Vista ..walked on the bluff ..Andy ran into a volleyball game ..they told him it’s his turn to serve ..got a pair of converse for Karla ..then everyone disappeared ..people sure hang on and let go in a hurry ..only the voices in my head still remain.

Aria

I think my neighbor needs an exorcist for her teenage daughter ..while I don’t believe in medicating troubled adolescents ..it's gone way beyond a ‘talking cure’. Yesterday she took her mother’s new BMW for a joyride ..without permission ..and smashed it into a tree on a winding road. The car was totaled but fortunately no one was hurt. I drove the daughter, Aria, home while her mother rode with the police officer. Aria was in the twilight zone, as you might imagine ..but she did manage to tell me what her two biggest concerns were: “I wonder what my mom is telling the cop ..” and “I don’t want to go to jail”. I tried to assure her that she wouldn’t go to jail for this ..although things could get awfully tense around the house ..she might prefer jail. She didn’t laugh ..instead she went on to explain that one of the conditions of her probation was that she not drive. I asked, probation for what .. bad driving ..? No, for assaulting an officer. Did you slap him ..? No. I kicked him. Like, in the shins ..? (I’m thinking traffic stop). No, in the face .. I knocked him on the ground first. Was he giving you a ticket ..did he get out of line ..? No, it was at the police station ..he grabbed my arm before I could kill my mother. Turns out she was being released to the custody of her mother .. after being held for assaulting her mother ..and when mom arrived ..Aria attacked her in the lobby of the police station. It took three officers to restrain her. Although Aria is only 16 ½ years old ..she’s six feet tall ..athletic and well-ribbed ..with the temper of a mad bull ..she regularly uses her mom as a punching bag ..and trashes the inside of their house so often that the building department has condemned it ..the mother has been staying at her office (she’s an architect) ..while Aria stays with the only boyfriend she hasn’t beaten up ..at least not yet anyway.

New entrepreneurs

I wake up feeling pretty weird ..the toothpaste smears ..coffee spills ..it rained last night so the newspaper is soaked ..everything I touch turns to shit ..the toaster oven malfunctions ..and the top of the blender isn’t on right ..but there’s a momentary break in the clouds ..so, I lay the paper out to dry ..give the plants some sun ..walk up the road .. chat with a teenager sitting in a cherry ‘38 ford pickup ..because a friend of mine has one too ..he tells me he’s waiting for his girlfriend ..and they’re late for class ..I can hear them saying: “Really professor, there’s a long-haired lunatic out there ..!” I expect another visit from the police. Back inside, I experience a momentary break in consciousness ..and reawaken in the shower. Downstairs, the coffee is hot ..the newspaper is dry ..I sit down to breakfast ..and read about a group of marijuana entrepreneurs turning quiet suburban homes into hydroponic gardens ..in my old hometown no less (San Gabriel Valley) ..how ingenious ..until you get caught ..then I wonder ..if marijuana were decriminalized; perhaps a suburban homeowner wouldn’t wake up one mourning to find that his neighbor is a pot farmer ..and there’s a swat team outside the door.

Virginia Tech

They’re calling it a ‘thought disorder’ instead of a ‘personality disorder’ ..I suppose that’s because this goes way beyond driving cross-country, wearing diapers, to whack a romantic rival. It doesn’t make sense to say that someone committed mass murder because of a personality flaw. But, thought disorder ..now that sounds like something that registers higher on the scale of mental disturbances. I watched the video where Cho talks about being: “forced into a corner” ..but he wasn't sweating much ..not like I’d expect from someone who really felt threatened. Judging from the things I heard, he didn’t have much in the way of social skills .. I mean, stalking isn’t the best strategy for ‘hooking-up’. Sounds like he pushed people away ..and pushed himself into a corner ..then turned around and blamed others .. like the trust fund students ..for the situation he was in. I’ve seen other students deal with this by joining fringe groups ..I remember a kid who actually cut himself with a razor to show them how tough he was. However, in Cho’s case ..he was trapped by his own delusions ..and the only way he knew how to get out ..was the way he got in ..cold-hearted disordered thoughts.

I feel pretty heart-sick about the whole thing ..I guess a psych 101 post is my way of explaining it to myself.

Day at the beach

I get up in the morning ..splash water on my face ..go outside .. sit on the deck and drink coffee while reading the newspaper. There are more reports that dinosaurs aren’t extinct ..they’re flying over my head ..and I think of ‘Leghorn Foghorn’ ..except I know he can’t fly. There's absolutely zero breeze ..I figure the windstorm must have blown over. I grab a towel ..put the top down and drive to Butterfly beach. Now I’m sitting in a powerful onshore wind ..watching the surf getting chopped to smithereens. I take a deep breath and jump in ..to the amazement of everyone sitting on the beach. Arctic currents have replaced the warm water that was here yesterday ..feels like an iceberg just melted ..the pain knocks the wind out of me ..my brain freezes up and goes numb. I ride a wind-wave back to shore ..cover myself in towels that people have donated ..and shake uncontrollably ..trying to imagine what they think of me. I hop in the car, figuring a few minutes at the sangha might do me some good ..but the roads are closed for construction ..and people are forced to use surface streets. So, I decide to take an alternate road winding into the mountains ..and get lost. I manage to find some relief by peeing in the woods ..but end up rattling around for about an hour and a half until I find a road I recognize. Now I’m sitting in the sangha surrounded by people meditating ..trying to keep my hands from shaking ..my lungs from breathing too heavily ..and still trying to imagine what people think of me.

Monster wind

I found out what a ‘60 mph wind’ is like ..it’s a wild beast that howls through the canyon at night ..with jaws that gnash anything that hasn’t got sense enough to get out of the way. Like me, I spent the night staring at the ceiling ..imagining what a ten ton eucalyptus tree would feel like ..and wondering what the odds are of surviving the wind storm in a pickup truck on highway 101. I spent the morning clearing debris from a path of destruction coming right up to my door step ..and singing a tune, out loud, over and over ..that goes something like: ‘The sun will shine in my back door someday ..the sun will shine in my back door someday ..March winds will come and blow my troubles away..’

Ordinary events

The ringing in my ears turns into an air raid siren ..my heart starts racing and the room is spinning. I stumble downstairs ..check my laptop for messages ..then pop a provigil and a shower. I pick up a large cup of coffee at Muddy Waters ..which empties onto the passenger seat a few blocks later ..I pick up another one at Starbucks. I duck into IHOP ..chat with Adrian ..spread the contents of the newspaper on the table ..order a stack of German pancakes ..and wash them down with grapefruit juice and the Starbucks coffee. It says here that ‘shock jocks’ show just how low social values can go. I disagree. I think they show how low someone’s ‘verbal inhibitions’ will go ..especially when they’re rewarded so highly for broadcasting the first thought that crosses their mind every second of the day.

IV league

I’m walking down the road in Isla Vista with one foot in the present and the other foot somewhere in the past. Street vendors sell jewelry from the sixties ..the fragrance of incense and ganja drifts out of open doors and windows ..UCSB students, with dreadlocks and tie dye shirts, weave skateboards between people and cars ..girls on beach cruisers chat as they ride by ..defying traffic laws ..that’s why Diane won’t drive here anymore ..she says they do that to cash in on insurance claims. I don’t think they’re looking that far ahead. On campus, bicycles have the right-of-way ..out here, traffic signs don’t register ..there is no borderline ..they’re probably unaware they left school grounds. It’s a ‘beachy’ college town. Chris surfs the point in the morning, then leans his board against the cliffs, puts on a pair of Tevas and walks to class ..he’s back in the water before noon. Students with sandy feet cluster around computer screens in the library ..some are playing galactic conquest ..others are downloading articles from scientific journals. I can usually count on seeing Joseph here ..he lives on the beach but drops-in on classes in the religious studies department. He tells me that they’ve released a new volume of letters by Thomas Merton. His beard is neatly trimmed and his clothes are always clean.

Deception detection

I’m hiking up a trail wondering: does the building department protect the identity of people inquiring about construction permits ..or will my new neighbors end up hating me forever ..and are they really the new owners ..or a diversion set up by real estate developers so they can start excavating without permits (which can take forever in this town) ..or am I being paranoid ..distrusting soul that I am ..I do believe that I am being misled and I don’t like it ..after all, I’m smarter than I look ..and if it turns out that, I am just being paranoid ..well, I’m sure that my inquiries will remain anonymous ..another bend in the trail ..should I keep going or should I bail .. it feels all right so onward I go ..I think the ‘Phrenologists’ had it almost right ..they used to believe that a person’s ‘character’ could be traced to specific areas of the brain ..they even had a map for traits like ‘honesty’ and ‘integrity’ ..nowadays, we admit ..we do not have a clue where ‘character’ resides .. but we do know the location of various ‘mental abilities’ such as ‘speech recognition’ and ‘impulse control’ ..I wonder if they’ve discovered a site for ‘deception detection’ yet ..and if so, does it border on the site for paranoia ..?

Monster calamari

God-awful, gigantic, flesh-eating squid are swarming off the coast of California. They’re so big that, if you made calamari rings out of one of their tentacles ..they’d be as big as tractor tires. What‘s more, they don’t limit their diet to fish ..they will devour human flesh just as fast as a school of piranha. I always thought that ‘monster squids’ ..the kind that could crush ships and eat people ..were myths ..the things that horror stories were made of. Apparently not ..they’ve been around a long time ..but only in water so deep we never see them. That’s changed. Pollution and agricultural run-off have tilted the balance in their favor. By depleting the ocean of oxygen, water at the surface is beginning to resemble water in the deep ..allowing these foul creatures to rise up ..escape the grasp of their natural predators and multiply like crazy. They’ve been piling up on beaches in San Diego, Orange County and Palos Verde. I guess that means it won’t be long before I see them in the waters off the coast of Santa Barbara and Monterey ..joining the ranks of all the other horrors that populate my nightmares.