Lost: One Male Libido

LOST: ONE MALE LIBIDO

This libido (center figure) was last seen on December 31, 2016.  It is approximately ten feet tall, six feet wide and four feet deep.  It has between twelve and twenty horns of various descriptions.  It's covered in long brown fur and has eyes all the way around its cylindrical body.  The number of fingers, tentacles and hands it may possess are unknown as it can sprout extra limbs at moments of high stress.  It is not very intelligent but possesses a wild cunning that can catch pursuers off guard.  If you see this libido DO NOT APPROACH IT.  DO NOT ATTEMPT A DIALOGUE.  IT IS NOT AMENABLE TO REASON.  Call the local sheriff's department, dial 911 or email me at artsdigiphoto@gmail.com.

 There are commonly available and well known techniques that calm this libido but I discourage their use except in extremely dangerous situations.  Under proper conditions this is a highly trained and valuable libido.  I am reluctant to cause it damage or harm. You might call it by one of its names: Thor, Zeus or Johnny.  This tactic may backfire, however, for if it is Johnny and is called Thor or Zeus it gets very upset.  Likewise if it is Thor and is called Johnny, etc.  The best approach is simply to say, "Hey big guy.  How's it hangin'."  It has been trained to recognize this as a non-threatening mnemonic.  It may trigger my libido's desire to return to its so-called master.

I repeat: DO NOT APPROACH THIS LIBIDO. CALL THE AUTHORITIES OR NOTIFY ME AS SOON AS POSSIBLE at artsdigiphoto@gmail.com.

REWARD OFFERED: I will give you, free of charge,  my guaranteed technique for healing all stress, depression and emotional trauma.

SPECIAL CAUTION: Do not mistake this libido for the so-called Bigfoot, Sasquatch, Yeti or Skunk Ape. It is not a primate and is immune to veterinary drugs. Rather than seek out police or Forest Rangers it may be more useful to find an old shaman from the Chumash or Miwok tribes. A qualified shaman will likely be more useful in the safe return of this treasured libido.

The Ironic And The Absurd

March 9, 2017

            We were watching TV and there was a commercial for the network series The Bachelorette.  The ad featured three girls, three Bachelorettes.  Girl One said, "I love horses." (video of girl with hair blowing in wind, saddled on a gorgeous animal). Girl Two said, "I rescue animals and I rehabilitate Rottweilers." (Footage of tender treatment of big dog's wounds) Then Girl Three said, "I haven't had an orgasm in my life." (Footage of her from the waist up, simply standing there in a suburban back yard).

            Wait a minute.  Run the DVR backwards a bit.  She actually said, "I haven't had an orgasm in my life."  I could almost hear the stampede of men.  It was going in two directions: half the men were running away from this girl, they were terrified by the pressure.  And half of them (the cocky douchebag half) were running towards the girl.  Each of the latter bachelors was sure he could open the floodgates of orgasm for this attractive cherry-picked TV crash- test dummy.

            I turned to my partner and said, "I guess honesty is the New Honesty."  I considered for a moment, then amended my perception. "Or is it honesty is the new Authenticity?  Or maybe Authenticity is the new Honesty?  Something like that."

            My partner, Fox, is accustomed to my sense of the ironic and the absurd.  She knew I was reaching, perhaps over-reaching into sheer nonsense. Still, I'll let it stand..

            I am aware that there is a wide spread  hunger for experience that can be perceived as Authentic.  Why?  Do people feel that they are synthetic beings, that they're so coddled and softened by living in this affluent civilization that they've lost an essential component of human experience?  Do people feel unreal?  I think so.  That's why there's such an appetite for TV shows about people living off the grid in Alaska, or marooning themselves, naked and afraid, courting utter misery for the sake of "testing their limits".  We are the species that has come from competing with hyenas for fresh kills to the species that is sending spacecraft to other galaxies.  We've done this in a breathtakingly short span of time.  In achieving this magnificent push, upward and outward, some people have been left behind in their sense of self-worth.  They don't feel brave, tough, worthy.  They've lost their warrior spirit.  And they feel this emptiness every time they go shopping at Target or Walmart, every time they exploit the incredible ease of getting the groceries and the hair gel.

            "Girl-without-orgasm" was simply following the cultural norm as it excavates this new authentic territory, this candid self-disclosure that, to her, wasn't even embarrassing.  She was just letting the world know: she's in search of an orgasm. She needs a partner who can help her master new skills in erotic communication.  She needs a soft slow hand from a tender buddy to help her over the hump.

            I was embarrassed for her.  No doubt it will make good television for those that are into that sort of thing.  I cringed.  What naivete!  How many years will this stuff follow her around?  She'll be "no-cum" to her grandchildren.  It's out of my hands.  I won't be watching the show.

             

The First Time I Cried In Ten Years

Rahsaan Roland Kirk in all his glory

When I was sixteen years old, I was passionate about Jazz.  Passionate! 

My passion for jazz was so crazy that I left home the day after I graduated high school   I was going on a quest.  I had two hundred dollars in my pocket when I stepped onto the  ramp of I-80 and stuck out my thumb. My plan was to hitch hike from St. Louis to New York City,  in order to find a musician who may not want to be found.  I had to talk to him!  I had to meet him!  Ornette Coleman had liberated my creative vision.  

Word on the jazz grapevine was that  he was "taking a sabbatical".  In the jazz world this is sometimes shorthand for kicking a bad habit.* When jazz players take breaks from their careers it can mean they're in rehab. I was hip to drugs: I was an all-grown-up weed smoker.  Whoopee. I didn't  understand addiction the way I would understand it in another ten years.  I didn't know why so many musicians fell down the abyss of heroin.. I would know, later in my life.  Oh, I would know, I would understand, far better than my sixteen year old self.

 This is all in my novel, "Confessions Of An Honest Man."  It's a three dollar e-book and more people should read it.  End of promotion.

I wanted to share an experience I had this week, an experience entirely related to my love for jazz in the 60's. First, let me tell you that I can't remember the last time I cried.  It could be eight or ten years. That's a long time to have a Pandora's Box of emotion  locked up inside my soul.  This part of my life has been one of silent agony.  There have been times when I wanted to die, but I am resolved to not be a suicide.  I saw a therapist for several months.  I managed to squeeze out a few dinky tears.  It wasn't the catharsis I'd hoped for.  It was better than nothing.

I first heard Rahsaan Roland Kirk when I was fourteen.  This was in 1961  I was crazy for Roland Kirk. (the Rahsaan name came later). The moment I heard his record I was so smitten that goose bumps climbed up my spine.   Wow!  This was a musical three ring circus with elephants and zebras.  It had midget cars out of which climbed dozens of quarreling clowns.  Roland Kirk was technically masterful, innovative, insane and very funny.  Roland Kirk was a grade A bona fide original

Thanks to streaming sites like Spotify I can listen to anyone I care about.  Rahsaan has been gone for thirty years, but his albums are still here and I settled in for a visit to my past, to the passionate sixteen year old  who couldn't get enough music.  I was listening to an old standard, "I've Got Your Number", from Kirk's superb collaboration with Benny Golson.  It's an amazing album, as good now as it was in 1964. I was sitting in my chair in front of my computer and I started weeping.  This was a real shoulder-heaving sob session, a huge catharsis.  My spouse saw my hand covering my face, saw my body lurch..

 "Are you crying?" she asked gently.  "It's all right, boo," I said, "it's good, it's very good." 

The music came through the speakers and I felt as if the sound of Rahsaan's saxophone was tapping at my chest, as though it held a key to open my heart.  It got through to me.  All my frozen emotion came welling up.  I saw my life in its difficulties and frustrations.  I saw myself at sixteen, I saw what an extraordinary person I was.  My New York quest was lonely and unlikely to succeed, but I found Ornette Coleman by the craziest accident.  I was getting on the subway at Forty Second Street.  There was a man getting into the next car, a black man attempting to carry five or six instrument cases.  I rushed up and tapped him on the shoulder.  I wanted to offer my help.  I knew from his knit cap and his attire that he was a man of Jazz.  So, this stranger turned around  There he was.  Ornette Coleman.  I had spent the last ten days searching up and down Manhattan looking for this man.  "I can carry some of these horns if you..." and then I realized who it was and I stuttered, "You..you're Ornette Coleman!" We got on the subway together.  Hardly anyone else was in the car.  It was headed downtown. 

           

I hadn't rehearsed a speech or anything. I told Ornette how much I loved his music and how profoundly it had influenced my own work.  I told him how far I had traveled.  He gave me his phone number and the rest of my experience in the world of avant garde jazz unfolded, just like in my novel. 

That was a long time ago.  In the present, the important thing is that I regained connection to my emotions.  I'm a psychological person.  I know what it means to be shut down, to have no feelings, not even feelings of love.  It's an inner act of self-preservation.

It's a response to trauma.  It's better, more joyful, to feel sorrow and love, to be alive to emotion.  I accepted being numb.  I didn't recriminate myself.  I allowed the numbness and the mental torture to unfold and do their job.  Pain is always telling us to change things.  "Change things!" pain screams, and so I began to take action.  I began changing my life, one tiny bit at a time.  I'm feeling more creative.  Art worked its magic on me; it healed a child who was in mourning for a man who seemed to have failed.  Music helped me revive the most important part of myself.  Here I sit, right now, at my computer, sharing this personal and private story.  I'm grateful that I can, grateful that I'm alive when a few months ago I thought I would die of sheer misery.

I'm still here.  

Ornette Coleman in 1960

*I never saw any evidence of Ornette Coleman using drugs.  He was taking a sabbatical because his music had incited a furious controversy and that scared away promoters.  Ornette couldn't find work. He passed at age 85, world famous and widely respected as one of music's most important innovators.

 Confessions Of An Honest Man, my autobiographical novel

About My Book, CONFESSIONS OF AN HONEST MAN

 Old School. That's what this is, this book about a dysfunctional family that begins in 1957 and carries the reader through to the present day. I started this book in 1976. In '78 I made a splash by winning Best Short Story Award from Playboy Magazine. I signed with an agent and there was a lot of interest in this book. I had lunches with my editor in New York City. It was classic author-stuff, from another era. I had an opportunity but I wasn't ripe, the book wasn't ripe and I didn't finish it until 2014. I had to do some living before I could write the stories in this book.

            I've drawn a lot of autobiographical material into this narrative. I was the kind of kid that Aaron Kantro is in these pages. I was still in grade school when I first heard jazz on a recording by Louis Armstrong.   Can you imagine a twelve year old closeting himself in his bedroom and listening to Charlie Parker and John Coltrane? Can you imagine that today, or fifty years ago? This is a precocious lonely child.  He doesn't fit in well with his class mates.  He gets bullied but he doesn't cringe easily, doesn't give in.  

            Aaron's mother, Esther, is horrified. She regards any deviation from her plans as personal attacks. Her sons will become professionals.  They will be doctors or lawyers. Her daughters will marry socially prominent men of wealth and have two or three grandchildren apiece. She gets, instead, a dreamy musician who listens to what is called, in Yiddish,"Scvhatze music". She is convinced that her oldest son will become a bum playing at Bar Mitzvahs and her younger son...well...he's crazy, he goes into trances and hurts people and then he can't remember what he's done. Esther's dreams are fueled by a pathological insecurity that develops into full-blown Manic Depression, today's bi-polar disorder.  On top of her clinical disturbances, Esther is flat-out mean. She's sadistic and clever.

            This is starting to sound a little depressing.   I promise you, it's not. The book has darkness, of course. But it tracks the development of two creative children who get no support. They need determination and strength to follow their dreams.  The other two children are interesting in their monstrousness, their violence and greed.  By splitting the four children into two teams I've created a laboratory, showing the corrosive effects of parental abuse.  The outcomes depend on the child's innate moral nature.  Aaron and Sarah survive and become productive only through enormous courage and tenacity.

            This is the Kantro family. A father, a mother and four kids.  Two of the kids are sweet and two of them are monsters. Max knows that something is wrong in his family. It is the 60's and he has few tools available.  He's trying, but it's hard to maneuver through the family's emotional problems.  There's always trouble.  Aaron may be experimenting with drugs.  Somehow that's not so bad as Mark's propensity to collect weapons and lurk on the outskirts of thuggish mayhem.  The world  has yet to fill with more sophisticated knowledge. There are few books to be had  about family dynamics. Eating disorders are unknown. When Sarah dives into Bulimia, she hasn't a clue, nor does anyone else, about this compulsive behavior.  It's a total mystery and the only option is to put her in a mental hospital for a month or two.  

            In "Confessions Of An Honest Man" we travel the Hero's Journey with Aaron. He's brave enough to defy his mother. He goes to New York City at the fresh age of sixteen. He's searching for his jazz hero, the legendary Avian Coulter.

He finds Avian.   The man is Avant Garde, a polarizing figure in the jazz world.  He's also an addict.  Avian takes Aaron under his broken wings and turns him in the direction he needs to go.   He introduces Aaron to the successful blues n' bop saxophonist, Zoot Prestige.  Aaron needs to play Black, Aaron needs to be in Chitlin' Circuit clubs in Detroit, Cleveland, Indianapolis.  Avian trusts his friend Zoot more than he trusts himself.  Zoot will watch over Aaron and keep him from getting into too much trouble.  The gigs with the Zoot Prestige Trio are wonderfully goofy.  

            This is a fairly large book and it goes a lot of places. We meet Jimi Hendrix and we fight the Soviet Army with the Mujahiddin in the Eighties. Read the book.  F'god's sake, it's $2.99. Then leave a review.   Every author needs reviews.   Thanks for being here.

Car Disasters of 2016 or Bad Fortune Cookies

                  

            I was driving sixty miles an hour on Southbound 101 when the car abruptly died.  It was my nightmare fantasy come true.  My heretofore trusty '98 Jeep just  stopped.  The radio went off, all the gauges slid to zero and I realized that I was coasting to a halt in a busy freeway lane.  I tried to restart the car.  I had no lights, no nothing.  I couldn't even put on the emergency blinkers. 

            I was terrified.  Vehicles were hurtling towards me at seventy miles per hour and they had no clue that I was dead in the right lane.  All it would take would be one dreamy driver to plow into me and I would be both cause and outcome of a multi-car  possibly fatal accident.  Should I get out and run for it?  Should I wait here?  I didn't know.  It seemed more honorable to stay with the car, to go down with the ship.

            A Highway Patrol car materialized behind me, its lights flashing.  I was pleased, for the first time in my life, to see Law Enforcement flashing its lights at me. The officer walked briskly to my front window.  He gestured to me to roll down the window. 

            Problem is, I can't roll down the window.  The Jeep's driver's side window doesn't work.  I had to pop open the door to hear the man's voice.  Embarassing?  And maybe illegal?

            "Put it in Neutral, sir.  I'm going to push you to the shoulder."

            Thank god thank god the gear shift works.  The CHP officer squares off behind me and bumps my fender with his big front pusher bar.  The car moves!  Oh! 

            There's another CHP car about two hundred yards upstream from us, slowing traffic by weaving across the freeway.  I get to the shoulder and the officer appears again.  He shouts at the closed widow.  He thinks I'm a moron. "Have you got Triple A, sir?"

            "I do.  I do. I do." I feel like I'm getting married.  "I do I do", I stutter, my nerves shattered, my forehead bathed in perspiration. 

            "Call 'em right now.  What's wrong with your vehicle, sir?"

            "I don't know, it's been running fine and then, suddenly, whammo! Dead.  D-
A-I-D...dead!"

            "If this vehicle is still here in two hours it will be impounded.  Do NOT exit the vehicle unless supervised by your tow driver.  Stay in your vehicle!  You're lucky I don't write you a ticket for reckless driving.  I'm feeling benevolent today. Today's my lecture day.  If this was tomorrow I'd write you up for twenty different violations."  I'm listening to this through the open crack of my driver's side door and the opened rear window, and all the other open windows except the one next to me that doesn't open any more.  I'm praying the policeman doesn't notice the passenger side front mirror, because it's taped on with duct tape and is not glass but a piece of reflective plastic whose images are distorted  beyond recognition.

            I call Triple A and wait for the tow truck.  I get texts every few minutes relaying the progress of my rescuer.  "Recovery Vehicle has departed current location at.etc. etc......ETA 45 min."  When the tow truck arrives it conveys me to Bowens Automotive Repair, a garage that I picked at random off the internet.  The mechanic does his tests and I absorb the diagnosis: My alternator is shot.  The car needs a new alternator.  Price tag: Five Hundred Dollars.

            I have no choice.  I call my partner to pick me up and drive me home in the other car.

            The Other Car.  The '96 White Chevy Blazer.  It was once a luxury car.  Leather seats.  Key fob operated remote lock/unlock.  We haven't driven it in four years because it doesn't start.  I would presume its got a dead battery but I swapped another battery into the car and it still didn't start.  So, maybe a blown starter motor?  Bad solenoid, frayed ground wire, failure to make contact somewhere within the fiendish complexities of its electrical jungle.

            The Jeep has always been our go-to car.  I haven't had the money to repair the Blazer. But now I must buy a new battery.  If there's something else wrong with the Blazer  I'm wasting my money but I follow this handy rule:  If the car doesn't start, and the battery doesn't charge, replace the battery.  Maybe the swapped battery was dead, too. 

            The moment of battery replacement is fraught with tension.  Will it, won't it...start?  I connect the new battery, turn the key in the ignition and....hallelujah!  It starts right away.  Oh, what a relief.

            I drive the Blazer to work the next day.  We've been using the Blazer as a storage bin.  Its rear is filled with linens, dishes, books, tools, all kinds of stuff  loaded up to the line of sight in the rear view mirror.  If we put any more stuff in there, I won't be able to see what's behind me.

            I drive to work.  I work.  I prepare to drive home.

            The driver's side tire is flat.

            Shit!  Where's the spare?  Is it underneath all that storage?

            No.  It's under the chassis, riding beneath the rear wheels.  The problem is that the tools for jacking and removing lug nuts is underneath the dishes, the linens, the books.

            And there's a trick to getting the spare to come free, a trick that I don't know. I've been using a sledge hammer to whack at the wing nut that constrains the spare.  I whack it and the nut turns but it's not un-threading.  It's not coming free.

            I begin to unload the stored goods in the cargo compartment.  Maybe there's a special tool, something to help me understand the spare tire conundrum.

            A motorist rolls up beside me in the parking lot.  He's driving a Blazer.

            "Are you stumped by the spare tire riddle?" he asks.

            "Totally stumped." I admit, raising my shoulders.  The back of my t-shirt and pants are black with asphalt and tar.  I don't know this, yet.  I can't see it.

            The Good Samaritan emerges, opens his rear hatch and pulls a variety of jack stuff from a compartment.

            "If you take this to a pro tire shop they won't know what to do either.  It's the great Blazer Spare Tire Riddle."  It turns out there's a hidden slot next to the license plate.  When my new friend inserts a blade-style tool into the magic slot it turns a cog and the spare tire DESCENDS on a cable until it hits the ground and I slip it off the wing nut.  There is no thread.  There is just this clever but now-obscure arrangement.

            Flat tire off; spare tire on.  Drive to the tire place.  Spend $120 to replace the spare.  Okay, the car runs.  As I drive, I see the one thing THAT I MOST DO NOT WANT TO SEE.   The dreaded SERVICE ENGINE SOON light comes on.

            I hate those lights!  Hate em!  They utterly destroy my peace of mind.  They are the manifestation of worry on the Material Plane.  As we all know, The Material Plane is dominated by concerns for automotive hygiene.  If you don't got transpo,  you don't got shit.

            I try driving the Jeep.  I'm too scared by the friggin' SERVICE ENGINE SOON light on the Blazer.

            The Jeep takes me to work the following day.  I detour through Novato and prepare to drive to Petaluma.  I'm going "the back way" because north-bound 101 is a parking lot.  It's always a parking lot from 3 to 7 P.M. five days a week.  What is this insane life we live?  Why do we spend four hours a day sitting in automobiles?

I'm heading for South Novato Boulevard when a giant cloud of steam erupts from under the hood.  GIANT CLOUD OF STEAM!  NOT GOOD.  NOT GOOD.

            I pull into the parking lot of the last shopping center before I embark on twenty miles of rural winding roads.  I buy a jug of coolant and I fill the Jeep's reservoir with the gooey green stuff.  I wait twenty minutes and I attempt the drive home.  The Jeep runs, somewhat jerkily, and I spend the next forty minutes of back-road driving in a state of profound alarm. 

            I make it.  I'm home. 

            I know a little bit about cars.  That kind of volcanic eruption of steam can indicate a water pump has gone bad, or the thermostat has failed, or the radiator is toast.  Or all of the above.

            My neighbor, Mike, knows about cars.  "I'll change your thermostat," he says cheerfully.  Mike is attending AA meetings and has just got his thirty day chip.  That's not an issue for me.  It just adds to the air of tension: Mike struggling to stay away from drink.  His wife has quit smoking and is on Day 27.  My neighbors are deeper in poverty than we are.  No wonder Mike eagerly volunteers to change my thermostat.  Mike is all over the place helping people. 

            I purchase a thermostat.  Mike replaces the old one in about ninety minutes.  He doesn't want to charge me.  I give him fifty dollars.  The new thermostat works, the Jeep stays cool.

            I didn't want to mention this before but it just happens that the Blazer's registration is due in a week and I know, for a fact, that SERVICE ENGINE SOON means that it will not pass the smog check.

            Fuck.

            Nonetheless, I feel safer driving the Blazer and I take it to work the next day.

As I'm coming home on North Petaluma Boulevard I hear a sound like a very large and joltingly loud motorcycle cruising up on my driver's side.  Wow!  That's loud!  I look to my left and I see no motorcycle.  There's no traffic at all.  But the Blazer is crunching and flubbling.  It sounds like a propellor blade being demolished by a potato masher.  The Blazer is behaving as if it has the hiccups.  No question: another tire is flat.

            I get over on the shoulder to inspect the damage.  Holy Shit!  The tire is literally shredded, it's nothing but four inch strips of rubber hanging from a punctured black matrix of nameless stuff.

            Call Triple A.  Second time in three days.  An hour later the big yellow truck pulls up.   A toothless rail-thin old guy gets out, grinning happily, and tells me that my tires are sun-damaged.  They've been sitting for too long and the heat has soaked the oils out of the rubber. They're all about to blow at any second. I need to instruct the tow truck man how to get the tricky spare out from under the Blazer.  Once the tire is changed I drive straight to the tire place and get four more new tires.  That is, after I've cued the guys at American Tire Co. about the Great Blazer Spare Tire Riddle.

            There are days when nothing goes right.  When to touch a machine is to wreck it.  Or when one makes an error due to a lapse of attention that causes a ten foot fall off someone's deck into a bed of blackberry bushes.  I'm having one of those days.  I put on the coffee.  It's a stove-top espresso maker.  I wait for the boil, wait and wait.  I smell something burning.  Uh oh!  I take a pot holder and lift the coffee maker.  Oh man!  Oh man oh man! I forgot to put water in the bottom part of the Vigano stove top coffee maker.  Now the rubber gasket has melted and scorched the threads and the coffee maker is a casualty of Morning Mind Mush.  In spite of the damage, my partner is greatly reassured.  My error is comforting to her.  She thinks she's "losing it".  Now she knows she's not the only one who's "losing it".

            I must locate a smog shop, a Star Certified Service Center, one of those in cahoots with the smog-fighting money-sucking bureaucracy of the DMV.  I pay for the smog test.  The Blazer fails.  How much, I ask, will it cost to fix it so that it passes the rigorous standards of our state's air-quality guardians?

            The Blazer needs a tune-up, a forward oxygen sensor, a rearward oxygen sensor and a catalytic converter."That would be about nine hundred and fifty dollars," answers the mechanic, whose name, Kelvin, is stitched onto his dark blue jump suit.  Kelvin's wife/receptionist is named Tran.  They're Vietnamese.  

            How many times have I said "shit" or "fuck" in the last three days?

            "Kelvin," I ask, "is there some kind of discount for the poor and the elderly?"  I have been poor my whole life.  The 'elderly' part occurred while I wasn't watching, about three years ago, when my left hip began to feel as if a strong man was applying pressure to it with a vice grip.

            There is, in fact, a program for the poor and the elderly to pay $500 towards smog repair.  I get the papers downloaded and send in the application.  A week later the grant arrives.  Five hundred of that nine hundred fifty dollars will be paid for.  Hell yeah!

            The smog repair takes two days.  I wait eagerly for Kelvin's call.  At last the phone rings.  "You passed your smog test," says Kelvin.  I'm so happy!  I'm thrilled.

I had needed a victory, any victory, a small victory, whatever, I'll take it.

            "But there is a problem, I'm afraid," says Kelvin, and my heart takes up residence at the ends of my toes.  I can feel my pulse down there, bumpity bump, pulsing up through my toenails.

            "A...uh...problem?"  Fuck!  Shit!

            "I think your water pump is about gone."

            "You think, you THINK.  Is it gone or isn't it?"

            "I don't know.  There was a pool of coolant under your car when I came in this morning."

            How much does he want to repair the water pump?  Well, you see, one should also replace the thermostat when one replaces the water pump.

            HOW MUCH?

            Four hundred seventy eight dollars.

            Stop everything!  HOLD THE PRESSES!

            I'm not stupid.  I check online and a water pump plus a thermostat costs about sixty bucks.  My neighbor, my pal my buddy Mike will do any automotive task for fifty dollars, gladly.  The work boosts his self esteem and it keeps him out of his RV and away from his jonesing wife.

            The Material World is a challenging place.  Our current model, this 21st century science fiction hip-hop deodorant-peddling appearance-worshiping stage set is peculiarly complex, is like a cross-word puzzle without a solution.  No one wins in the Material World.  All endings are bad endings.  If I'm lucky I will die quickly and without indignity.  If I'm lucky.  Meanwhile, as I wait for the denouement of my life, I must endure and meet the challenges thrust into my face by the invisible spirits of Destiny.

            Is the cup half full, partially full, partially empty, or totally empty?  The Highway Patrol Cop did not write me up.  The guy in the Blazer showed up as if dropped from Heaven.  I got a five hundred dollar grant from the DMV. The battery in the Blazer started the car.  The Jeep still runs.

            The cup is the cup.  Whatever's in it is what I've got.  I may as well accept that fact.  It's all those things, partially full, partially empty.  Life is blessed and sublime and life can be unspeakably vile.

            While I'm at it, I should check my credit rating.  I might want to purchase a recent model used car.

The Fish Under Water

            We're just like the fish; we don't know what water is.  But the element in which we swim, the element that is impossible for us to recognize, is stress. 

            You may think you know you're stressed.  This isn't the kind of stress I'm talking about.  We have become denizens of a culture that is actually a Torture Machine.  It drives us insane by presenting demands so complex as to be impossible to  achieve.  Every day, it issues orders to our nervous systems.  Turn your left blinker.  Pay your insurance premium.  Pick up your kids' school uniforms.  Don't forget the doctor's appointment.  Where'd you put the McFarland file?  Where are the paper clips?  Why is this milk sour?  Now I have to return it to the store.  Screw it; not worth my time, flush it down the sink.  Are the dogs' vaccinations up to date?

Do I have the receipts for my tax audit?

            Why am I always left with the feeling that I've forgotten to do a homework assignment?  Who is this screaming at me, right next to my ear so that it hurts?  The Occupy Wall Street people are scurvy hippies.  Our government is letting corporations steal on a massive scale.  My bank account only exists long enough for the auto-payments to hit, and it's gone and I've got nothing left to spend.

            I think I'm going crazy.  I don't have any sexual desire at all.  The last time I felt truly alive was....when?  Have I ever felt truly alive?  I don't think so.

          There's nothing to look forward to.  My old age will merely be a time when insurance machines squeeze the remaining dollars from my estate, leaving my kids with nothing.  Zero.  The globe is warming up.  It's true.  The waters are creeping on shore, slowly.  The future is a tsunami.

            OUR SOCIETY IS A TORTURE MACHINE, so complex that it takes a genius to maneuver its daily routine.  It tortures by its relentless pressure.  We don't need Stalin or Hitler.  We have modern life in Amerika.  See that guy with the cardboard sign sitting at the parking lot exit?  "Will work for food."  He isn't a pathetic loser.  He's you or me or someone we know who just cracked under the pressure and opted to sit in the TIME OUT box in front of everyone.  He couldn't take the complexity any more.  Now he's doing better. He has a shoe box where his money piles up.  He's doing better than I am!  Could I take sitting in the TIME OUT box in front of everyone?  I don't think so.  I'm not tough enough.

            Life has always been complex, but not like this...Hunting, gathering, fighting off raiders, that was easy stuff compared to this.  The modern Torture Machine can't be dodged.  Your assignment is late!  Punishment will be swift and merciless!  Your interest will rise, your credit will be cut.

            The injustice of it!  I'm choking on injustice.  I can't breathe!  Give me a cigarette.  Where are all these voices coming from?  Let me turn off the radio.  The off switch doesn't work.  The voices are coming from my pocket.  It's my Z-Phone.  Its off switch doesn't work either.  The argument continues, shouting everywhere, lies compound in blatant and shameless huckstering.  Everything is a trick.  Even the tricks we know to be tricks conceal more subtle tricks.  Those Black Lives Matter types are going to burn down Los Angeles in a giant riot.  Quick, we'd better launch a pre-emptive pogrom, mow them down before they find out where we've stashed the money.

            The fish don't recognize the sea. Modern humans don't recognize the element that dominates our lives.  I will coin a term for it: Phobagonovia.  Phobe-ago-NOVE-ee-yah.  It causes us to curl up inside our homes with the giant TV playing football games and scripted "reality" shows where people are abused by their in-laws.  Phobagonovia.  We are afraid of new experiences.  The Torture Machine has implanted this condition in our nervous systems.  We are afraid of relating to one another openly, of crying in front of strangers, of expressing feelings easily, of hugging or kissing spontaneously, lest we be inappropriate, our strait jacket is "Appropriate", we haven't a clue how to dance in a circle while deeply in love with members of a clan, to sing ancient songs, to sit around a fire feeling wonderful under the stars.  That doesn't mean we want to go backwards.  We want to invent new communities.  We are dying of Phobagonovia.  Our neck ties are cutting off our breath.  Our high heels are warping our skeletons.  The future is over.  Rush Limbaugh will be reborn as a talking pig that can only sputter nonsense. The people of his remote village will laugh at him holding their sides with mirth.  They will postpone the time to eat him. He's so strange that people come from villages far away to throw him pieces of rubbish.  His time will come, at last.

            When the chief takes the first bite, he will spit it out.

            "We laughed too long," he will say.  "This fat talking pig tastes like shit."

Starting a Novel

Interesting experience, starting a novel. I've written 12,000 words so far. It's about a pair of police detectives who specialize in crimes against animals. They bust puppy mills, protect abused horses and farm animals. Poorly funded but committed to the work, this man and woman land in the middle of violent confrontation. That's (working title, only) "Breeding Hearts". I don't know where it's going or what will happen. I only know that if I write daily, a story will develop. I want this one to be finished in six months. roschbooks.com/work-in-progress-breeding-hearts/