MobileChelonian

In July of 1999 a dam in upstate Maine was ordered destroyed by the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. The hydroelectric Edwards Dam, on the Kennebec River was found guilty of inhibiting salmon in their urgent need to swim upstream to spawn. The benefit of clean, pollution free electrical energy was found to be less important than the inalienable rights of salmon to freely travel. In short, the welfare of the salmon, or, “nature”, was seen to be more important than people. The salmon are not to be fished, or farmed, or otherwise mistreated. Their existence justifies itself.


This weekend, a wasp flew into my apartment. I know how he got here: the metal screen door I have doesn’t match the door frame very closely at the top, and likely the wasp just buzzed in. I saw him when he was running himself into my living room wall over and over again, next to the floor lamp. He was flying around the room the way a little kid gets around a swimming pool - staying near the edges, and pushing off every few feet to get some momentum going. I grabbed a rolled up San Diego tribune classified supplement, and prepared to do battle. I knew from growing up in the deep South, wasp stings hurt like a sum-bitch - no reason to take chances. As I didn’t have any bug spray in the house (because I thought San Diego didn’t have insects. No, really.) I was forced to attack with mere paper. I cautiously approached the intruder. Swat! Wave! Jump! He wouldn’t land on something hard so I could squish him. Instead he flew right for me, then veered off at the last minute and headed into the dining room. I fanned him, blowing him into the kitchen. He made straight for the highest, darkest corner. In my apartment, that’s not very high or dark. I approached again, bludgeon ready. He darted into the kitchen window, which I quickly closed. So now, he was trapped between the screen and the glass, unable to get out. I watched for a bit, to make sure he didn’t have a tiny pair of wasp-sized bolt cutters, or a small and very complicated wasp-shotgun. No, he was just confused. My girlfriend asked me later why I didn’t open the screen and let him fly free - I pointed out that I lived on the second floor, and was she going to rent a ladder? He’s still there, half dead and probably very irritated with me right now.


I walk slowly down the trail towards the dam at Mission Trails Park. I can hear the duo before I see them.
“The difference between sale price and purchase price is my profit or loss…”
“I know!”
The pair of middle-aged men bicycle down the trail, specially designed bicycling clothes stretched across their pudgy bodies, helmets atop their graying heads. I move aside.



It seems like an oxymoron, interacting with nature when living in a city. I know that growing up, I always had the idea that nature was something that you traveled into, like a maze. Sure, there are trees, and vermin, and small furry creatures living in the trees, but that’s not really nature. If you want to see nature, you have to go a Park. Or a Preserve. Not in my back yard. Nature is what we eradicate when we build cities. Nature is the anti-city. Nature is good, and terrible in her vastness, and as unapproachable as a pillar of fire in the desert.



.
Last week, I was walking outside toward the alley behind my apartment complex at night. I was on my cell phone, talking to someone as I took a bag of trash out to the dumpster. I opened the ever-unlocked gate to the alley, and there it was. A large dark, furry shape. Bigger than a cat. Wrong shape for a dog. But it had a really big black and white tail - oh, crap. My redneck pattern recognition skills immediately snapped on, and I froze. It was a skunk, tail in the upright and locked position. An alert neighbor across the alley helpfully called ,”Hey, that’s a skunk!”. I didn’t breathe. It took off across the alley and ran under a parked car. Now, I live in what can charitably be called a concrete jungle. I live pretty close to the edge of a mountain, but when you look down, all you can see is yuppies buying Swedish furniture at IKEA and used cars for sale at Qualcomm. There’s nothing, well, natural about it at all. Yet, there it was. A skunk, living in my alley. How did it get there? What drew it to my gate? More immediately, when I walked to my car, was I going to get sprayed with stink-juice? I don’t know where the skunk finally went off to, but I haven’t seen him again. And that was another brush with nature in my own neighborhood.


REI is having a sale - Great Gear Deals! Up to 30% Off! For the uninformed, poor, or recreationally challenged, REI is Recreational Equipment, Inc. - the nation's largest consumer cooperative with more than 2.8 million members. They do a pretty good business around here, judging by the copious amount of spandex, neoprene, and impact resistant plastic I see adorning hikers, bikers, runners, and rock climbers at Mission Trails Regional Park. The only people I see at the park who aren’t outfitted in designer active-wear and protective equipment are the old people, slowly walking for no reason whatsoever. They haven’t gotten the memo yet: nature can only be experienced properly if you’ve purchased the right gear.



Nature has its own philosophical movement, its own art, its own music, its own writing. The concept of nature as “everything humans aren‘t” is old, traditional, venerated, and completely wrong. San Diego of course has nature - “Dude, you can totally go from the beach to, like, the mountains in 45 minutes”, was one of the first things I heard when I moved here. Sure, but in that 45 minutes, what is there? When you’re barreling up the 8 at 70 miles an hour, you’re passing the pigeons that are nesting in the overhang over my porch. They coo and flutter seemingly 24 hours a day, and leave little presents for me on my doorstep. They’re nature too. You’re passing the skunks in Normal Heights, and the squirrels in Balboa Park who have apparently organized into a cute street gang. But also, you’re passing us. Humanity. We are part of nature too, with out designer imported furniture, our Ugg boots, and our fossil-burning vehicles. We can’t afford to pretend that nature is a separate entity, that we can rope off and visit whenever we feel the need for a spiritual experience. We shouldn’t overlook the fact that nature is everything we use on a daily basis to change our lives. Oil, wood, cloth, metals, rubber…all these things make up the tools we’ve created to adapt to our world, the same way Native Americans used buffalo and more buffalo. (Jerky for dinner AGAIN?). And, we shouldn’t get so enamored with the idea of nature as the Not-Humanity that we forget that we’re animals too. Clever, upright, hairless, and social. The Indians weren’t more in tune with nature because they crapped outdoors - they just didn’t have piped water. They were just as human as us, and it’s time we started acting like it, and maybe learning how to better interact with what’s going on around us instead of treating it as a theme park. We aren’t going to the park kids, we are already there.

Posted by Aaron at 8:03 PM | Permalink | Comments

Murder By Death isn't just the title of a farcical 1979 Peter Sellers detective movie - it's also the name of a Bloomington, IN based band who have been compared to Nick Cave, Radiohead, and Johnny Cash. I don't know what it is about the Midwest, and their production of unusually talented musical groups - I'll suppose it's the flat terrain, broad expanses of corn and nothing else. Their latest album is titled In B occa Del Lupo (In The Mouth of the Wolf) - and it's like listening to some American Gothic revival novel set to music, with Satan and the ghost of Johnny Cash dueling for your immortal soul. They'll be here in San Diego in 2 weeks, so I'll have a better report for you all then. Until then, check them out here on their website and here on their Myspace. Their latest album isn't a theme album like their last one, Who Will Survive And What Will Be Left Of Them, which told the story of a small Mexican town under siege from the Devil - but I can tell they love good narrative regardless.

Hmm, what else? The Ditty-Bops have a new CD out, which they are supporting by a bicycle tour, biking cross-country to gigs while their instruments are ferried in a bio-diesel fueled van. How very Willie Nelson of them! Plus, they juggle, use shadow-puppets, and dress in costumes for their shows. Kind of like an acoustic, vaudeville Flaming Lips, minus the giant bubbles. They are sadly not coming to San Diego on tour, but they might be coming to a city near you. So look them up! Two cute girls playing their own instruments and who sound like the Boswell Sisters by way of Bob Wills and the Texas Playboys. What's not to like?


Also, for my Creative Writing class, it was necessary for me to attend some sort of open-mic poetry night and write about it. Sad, but true. I procrastinated all the way through the Spring, and finally dragged my skeptical butt to Lestat's across the street ftom my apartment. Herein lies the record of my adventure, which my teacher recommended I publish. So here it is, for you, bceause I'm too lazy to proof-read it for actual publication.

Lestat’s is more than a coffee house for the disaffected and painfully gothic. Lestat’s is more than a venue in constant use for a succession of singer songwriters, poets, stand-up comics, and Jesus freak metal heads. Lestat’s is more than a twenty-four hour hangout for street people and insomniacs. Lestat’s is an experience - a thrilling ride that starts with a cup of coffee and ends only when you get your tongue pierced and style your hair into dreadlocks. I don’t go to Lestat’s, I go to Café Cabaret down the street. It’s a lot less effort, and the coffee is cheaper. However, in the interests of research and this paper, I went into Lestat’s for “Open Mic Night with Isaac” on Monday. The format is simple…signup starts at 6:30 and each performer has ten minutes to wow the audience with their own unique blend of vaudeville and emotionally overwrought creations. I sat near the back, next to a large man in a white beard and flannel shirt. The fun was already in full swing when I arrived. On stage was the Little Dave Band, which was one skinny guy in a t-shirt playing the acoustic guitar. His song was “I Tried My Best For You”, which might get described in a music magazine as a “vulnerable, poetic, finely tuned expression of longing”. Also, it could be described as “I wish I was Jack Johnson and chicks threw panties at me”. Either way. He tried his best for us, and we clapped, so he played a Radiohead cover. This might have been unremarkable, except for two things. One, there were a lot of young girls there, by which I mean 10-14 years old with their grandparents present. Two, the song he covered (Creep) has a chorus that runs like this, “..I wish I was special/ so fucking special/ But I’m a creep/….what the hell am I doing here?” Indeed, Little Dave, indeed. The grandparents looked puzzled, and the girls looked uncomfortable.
We quickly forgot about Little Dave when The Wolf took the stage. The Wolf, who had us howl wolf noises when he grabbed the mic, was wearing a sleeveless Metallica tshirt and spiked knee pads over torn jeans. His hair draped in an oily rope over his forehead like a rat-tail wig on backwards. I believe his intention was to perform music with a black guitar, but since he couldn’t play or sing, I’ll class it as poetry. Loosely speaking…very, very loosely. He spoke to us of his heroin addiction, and described his influences as Early Kurt Cobain. He spoke to us about Seattle, and nicotine. He spoke to us of Jesus Christ as the only answer. Sometimes he would strum the guitar and look thoughtful. I was taking notes in the dark, as this drama played out, and looking back I can clearly see in deeply impressed print “HOLY FUCK THIS SUCKS”. Yep, that’s Wolf. He did another song, or poem, whatever you want to call it. It was also about heroin. He left the stage making wolf noises and pumping his fist in the air.
The next contestant was pretty good…a Chinese stand-up comic named Wally Wong which is the best pseudonym, ever. I’m fairly sure he ran over ten minutes, but he was funny enough nobody cared. He made a lot of ethnic jokes, which is OK, because he was Asian. It’s a rule of stand-up that you can be as racist and deliberately provocative as you want to if you’re a minority. It’s OK, white people, you can laugh. His humor was topical, and reminded me that I was missing President Bush’s 8PM speech about immigration. I think Wally was a lot funnier, albeit intentionally so.
Remember the young girls I mentioned? Well, they weren’t there just because they were regulars, and liked the scene. No, one of them was having a birthday. And to celebrate her birthday, “Rhiannon” was going to treat us all to her own songs. She was a cute 14 year old with a guitar, and the world was her oyster. Much like with trained animals, the bar is set so low for kids that it’s almost impossible to fail. Half the audience was either her friends or family, so it wasn’t a hostile crowd. She started off wailing in the style of the Cranberries, and sang a song, entitled, no kidding, “Who I Am”. From the content of the song, she fit every stereotype that Seventeen Magazine and The Gap For Kids has ever tried to reach. According to her lyrics, Rhiannon is that girl who:
1) Likes to shop
2) Likes to dress up
3) Likes to wear her hair in a ponytail
4) Go to the beach and watch the waves roll in
5) Um, you know, that girl.
She was, in short, exactly what you might expect out of a 13 year old who wrote her own material. Following this amazing bit of insight into her psyche, she treated us to another self-penned composition entitled “Pink Canary”. This one went out to her friends in the audience. This song was much less clear, as I couldn’t tell if she was singing about being a bird, singing about owning a bird, or wishing she had a bird. But, regardless, the pink canary was pluckily determined to do things her own way, to express her individuality through singing and flying around. It was heady stuff. Of course, “Isaac”, the emcee, had to banter with her, and get the audience to raggedly belt out a chorus of ‘Happy Birthday’ as the goths and overly hip people tried to slink into the darkness to avoid the appearance of mirth.
Poetry. That’s what this was about, right? I came here for the poetry man, (The Wolf notwithstanding). I read about this on San Diego Poetry Slam.com, and that’s why I came out. And now, a bonafide poet took the stage! His name was Alonzo. Alonzo looked a bit like Fez from That 70’s Show with a self deprecating style that was a huge hit. “Hollow Mannequin” was his first effort…it was about, “you know, breaking up with someone, and how they see your faults, and shit like that. You know. Anyway.” Yes, Alonzo, we do know. Hollow Mannequin was 4 minutes and 13 seconds long, and was surprisingly upbeat despite the subject matter. Alonzo. Dude. Smiling mannequins are just creepy. Pick another metaphor. The poem itself was “modern” which means, “doesn’t rhyme”. The next poem was “My Love Is Not Enough”. It was remarkably similar to the first poem by him, in that it dealt with breaking up, loss of love, the dwindling of the light of the sun, and rhyming moon and June. His delivery was low and disinterested, because he wasn’t talking to us. He was talking to his ex-girlfriend, who wasn’t there, and so couldn’t hear him anyway. Poor guy. She probably dumped you for The Wolf - at least he had a guitar.
That was the end for me. As I was getting up to leave, a guy in a Packers sweatshirt was getting up to do stand-up comedy, and he had actual notes laying out on the stool behind him. I decided if I wanted to laugh at a jackass trying to read material off notes, I’d go home and watch the President. I could at least mute him.

Posted by Aaron at 4:25 PM | Permalink | Comments

Summer blockbusters: bleah. In the last few weeks I've seen MI:III, The Poseidon Adventure, The DaVinci Code, and X-Men III. None of these were really of my own volition, I got invited to go with friend(s) - and guess what. They all sucked (the movies, not the friends). I would like to write a witty and pithy, scathing, Rotten Tomatoes-esque review of them - but I don't have the energy. Plus, I've lost so many brain cells watching poor acting, spastic action, banal dialogue, and transparent plotlines that I am having trouble even speaking English. Since there is a bill afoot in Congress to make that our national, official language, I could be in deep trouble. I have a proposal for a counter-bill: make speaking English illegal when burning a US flag. Think about it! Protestors will be forced to learn another language, forcing them to go to school and actually accomplish something with the copious spare time they must have. Second, national pride. We've stopped most flag-burning, without trampling on anyone's precious civil liberties. Where in the Consitution does it say that you have the right to burn flags AND speak English? Nowhere, buddy. Nowhere.

I should be a legislator. Speaking of which, how about this idea: let's make any evidence obtained through warrantless wiretapping inadmissable in all cases except terrorism. This is only a stop-gap measure, but it might placate some folks who are worried about the idea that the federal government is heading down the slippery slope of collecting data for the sake of collecting data. Say Johnny Law was data-miningfor Al-Qaeda, and found out evidence that a prominent Senator was accepting bribes. And evading taxes. Yeah. Well, under this law, that evidence would be totally inadmissable. 'Cause obviously, we can't legally keep the President and the NSA from collecting phonecalls, but we can make sure they don't use it against us. What do you say, voters? Are you with me?

Posted by Aaron at 1:49 PM | Permalink | Comments

The pipes have finally frozen solid. The thin trickle of rust colored water that has faithfully flowed at the turn of a wheel for weeks has halted, mid-course. With the failure of the plumbing, any claim we had to living in a city has vanished in a strangled gurgle. Outside, there is nothing but the cold static of snowfall.


Cities exist in threes: the one we are most familiar with is the city on the Earth, or city as it is. But just as important are the City In the Sky, and the City Underground. The heavenly city sits, atop a vault of clouds suspended in the firmament by thousands of very fine lines, like spider webs. In it, imagines the city on earth, only the rarest of metals are used to work the streets and signposts. The buildings are polished marble, and the entire thing glows with such brightness that none can look upon it. The inhabitants - for what city has no inhabitants? - are, as the structures reflect, the higher manifestations of the Earthly equivalent. Above, there is no jealousy, no pettiness, no avarice or sloth. Inside this city are the highest hopes and dreams of the humans below it, recreating daily what the city could be if only people were perfectable. Ironically, should a person from the City on Earth actually attain a state of grace, or beatification, their heavenly version will vanish, suddenly, like a bubble bursting. This is because the two souls have fused, like sand becoming glass under intense heat. Daily life in the City Above is a regular thing, a constant susurration of prayer flowing over the emerald streets and silver lights with the regularity of a great crystal machine, intricate and measured. And this is what the City on Earth imagines it would become, if only it could.



We thought that walls would make us safe. We thought that walls would make us a city. We told ourselves that to be a city, the fundamental thing was to shut off the wilderness, to reject with stones and mortar the Not-City. Then, having risen the walls high and strong, we set about dividing ourselves with smaller, but equally effective barriers. Decades of having our identities marketed at and pandered to had made us collapse, exhausted, into sub-groups based on criteria such as our favorite brand of soap, or our opinions on semi-colons. As soon as we had exercised our dominion over the Outside, we looked at our hammers, and scaffolding, and set-to with the same will in order to divide ourselves. After all, was this not civilization? We could all be separate, all be equal, and all be safe from each other. Civic planning on how to equitably divide resources, like water, and electricity, and basic services went on for the better part of a decade. As the project progressed, the sky above us grew clearer and thinner, and more stars were visible every night. The great lights that lit broad expanses of plazas and parks dimmed and went out, as the need for greatness decreased. Buildings ceased being built, and became subdivided. A craze in efficient living swept through the design world, and inches became as feet. As the darkness above at night became more transparent, some imagined they saw angels flying high above the city, and this was taken as a sign of favor in our city. For a while, the neighborhoods called to one another, each to each, until the final brick was set in place between them and the city fell silent in the shadow of the walls.



The third city is the City Beneath. In it are dumped all the evictions, the foulness, and the sins of the City on the Earth. It lays miles below the surface, lurking in the drainage of its betters. Its streets are paved with black, viscous liquid, and its buildings decay in the phosphorescent light of fungi. But because it too, is a city, it also has inhabitants. They are stunted and deformed, possessing only the iniquities of the people who dwell far above. If the shining city in the clouds is a golden mirror of humanity, then this city is a warning in a fairy tale, the fly in the ointment. Life goes on in a vicious cycle of betrayal and crime - in every alley there is a freshly murdered corpse, in every home an adulterer with his spiteful mistress. Should a person from the City As It Is become damned or forsaken, his counterpart here will actually double in size, becoming a grotesque abomination with likewise increased appetite and desire. People above imagine that this city does not exist ,and that even if it did, they would certainly have no malevolent twin. While the City On Earth hopes for heavenly glory, at night its tortured dreams are of revenge and lust.



As our experiment drew to a close, it became inevitable that the luxuries and standards we’d had before would cease. First, the wireless sets failed as the neighborhoods turned ever inward on themselves. One could talk, but who would listen? Even the idea of circumventing the walls with radio waves seemed heretical - we were a nation of cultists, proclaiming our ideals as we slowly burned at stakes of our making. Then, in June, the power went out. Generators failed as the supplies of coal and oil dried up, and machinery ground to a halt. Lines began to fall, and transformers went up in sparks. Halloween came and went, barely noticed. What would we dress up as? We’d seen each other’s masks a thousand times already. The city grew darker and darker, and it seemed that we grew thinner and more translucent. Spoken words were heard less and less, and we learned to communicate with a gesture, a delicately raised eyebrow. Water continued to flow, barely, and enough food had been set aside in each area to see us through the coming winter. Some began to question the wisdom of the walls, but it was too late. The snow began to fall, and the roofs were laced with ice. Nothing on the television, silence from the radio. Only the crack of falling limbs and the murmur of the wind.



All three cities must exist, because we can conceive of them. In an infinite world, all things thought of must be true. But which city is more real than the other? None of them, I would say, none of them. If I am telling you of a place, it is because I have been there and seen it with these eyes. Each needs the other to tell it how to be, how to think. If beauty is that which is not ugly, and sin is that which is not virtue, then all three cities are still there, filling each other’s voids and mirroring each other’s souls. It is like an arch in a cathedral. A pure, geometric curve supports the weight of stones and institutions - all of man’s hopes and fears carved into gargoyles and saints, heavy and unreal. Yet, there is no one stone that is more real than the other, in this arch. There is no one stone that holds it all up, that makes the arch support the weight of ages. It is the idea of the line, the relationship between the stones and the concept of an arch, that works. The idea is the reality - the form made function. If there is a lesson to be learned, here, from this city made of walls, it is that one. Learn it, or follow us into the dark.

Posted by Aaron at 5:22 PM | Permalink | Comments

Sing it Stevie...oh yeah.

So, yes, I've been absent a while. No reason, other than general apathy, but there are some significant world events that require my comments and keen observational attention. First:

1) George Lucas has un-fucked himself long enough to do this. And there was much rejoicing. Now I can finally burn my crappy, poorly sounding overly CGI'ed versions. Han shot first!

2) Radiohead is coming to San Diego! And I'm going! Got tickets this morning via Ticketbastard, who through the power of soulless chicanery changed $37 tickets into $52 tickets. Convenience fee? What? Who even thought that up?

3) Scott McClellan was canned as WH Press Spokesman, and replaced by Fox News talking head Tony Snow. The next day, the Whtie House declared May 1 "Loyalty Day" - so those brown skinned people in the streets carrying flags aren't protesting immigration laws, no no no. They're celebrating Loyalty Day!

4) Steven Colbert bombed at the WH Press Correspondants Dinner. I watched clips of this - he really wasn't all that funny. The funny part was the reaction in the blogosphere where frothing journalists defended Mr Colbert and his "feisty", "pointed", and "deadly" barbs. Sorry guys, the Colbert Repor(t) is funny - this wasn't. Stand up comedy is not his forte, and the pedantic jokes and fairly stupid video of him running from Helen Thomas...yeah. What's next? This is about as funny as the video the military is circulating of Al-Zarqawi fumbling with a machine gun.

5) Zacarias Moussaoui got life in prison instead of the death penalty. Conservatives are super angry, liberals are super happy. I think this was the right decision, Moussaoui's grandstanding aside. If he was sentenced to death, the endless appeals and added publicity it would give him would just give this jackass additional opportunity to make ridiculous comments into a camera. As it is, nobody's going to remember him in a year. Also, I don't think he was really guilty of everything he claimed to be guilty of. Denied matryrdom is a worse punishment than, well, marytrdom.


6) The best hamburger in San Diego is at Hodad's in Ocean Beach...succulent veggies....fresh fries...mmm. And so huge! Go there now, but be prepared to wait for a table.


7) And, I'm out.

Posted by Aaron at 7:48 PM | Permalink | Comments