full moon lithium blue

In San Jose, the orchards brought pickers, the pickers brought canneries, the canneries brought converted lofts and isolation booths for young urban professionals. Somewhere in there my dad and mom came, separately, in the 1960s, bound for a tragicomic collision course more tragic than comic with my life making up the bulk of the comic part. In San Jose the cops give you a $250 fine for riding your bicycle at night without lights. Last year it was voted Safest City in the nation, or some shit like that. There was a bar my dad went to, I think it was called Lupe’s or something, and they had all these pictures of Prince back when he first started hitting it big, Delirious, Controversy, Little Red Corvette. My dad always took me to the bars with him after we finished working at his wrought iron shop. I knew all the divey Mexicano places around town, which ones had jukeboxes with cool music, which ones had pool tables, which ones had table Ms. Pac Man. Alberto’s, Latin Village, La Estrellita, Mario’s, El Dorado. But this one, Lupe’s, with the Prince posters, I always got this vibe there. I was a pretty young kid, but kids are way more hip to that stuff than we remember once we grow up. I remember my dad was really tight with the owner, Lupe, this big, loud woman in her fifties. The place was more than anything else a hardcore Mexicano place, but like I said, there was also this other vibe to it. Maybe it just had a gay night once a week, maybe it was totally gay, maybe they just had very effeminate pictures of Prince all over the place (is that redundant?). Anyway, there was something going on there with my pops. I mean, even if he wasn't bi (or gay?), it's really cool that he would hang at a gay bar and not trip out.

I remember one time we went to Lupe’s during the day. My dad had a black eye from the night before. Next to the bar was a patch of ivy in front of the parking lot. He starts combing through it, tells me to help him find his sunglasses, which apparently fell in there when he got his black eye—the black eye, of course, being the reason he really needs them now because we have to go visit one of his customers. They were those big 1970s aviators with gold frames and gradient brown lenses. We were there a long time poking through the ivy, but we never found his lentes.

Now the place is part of this big yuppie monstrosity of trendy bars and restaurants, and in another part of town, my dad is a born-again evangelical Christian who sells reptiles, t-shirts, and baseball caps at local flea markets (last I heard, anyway). He transports all his reptiles and other merchandise in a converted mobile home van full of aquariums. I haven’t seen him in about five years; before that, it was eleven years. I’d really like to ask him about Lupe’s, but he’d probably be all stupid weird and macho and fundamentalist Christian about it now.


TRANSCRIPT: 5 OCTOBER 2006, SANTA BARBARA, CALIFORNIA, USA
Persona A: “I’m glad the moon isn’t totally full tonight.”
Persona B: “Why?”
Persona A: “Cuz it’s bad when the moon is totally full.”
Persona C: “Why?”
Persona A: “Cuz when the moon is totally full, people get crazy.”
[pause]
Persona C: “But it’s not just bad. It’s also good.”
Persona B: “Why?”
Persona C: “Well, it’s bad when the moon is full, cuz people get crazy. But it’s good when the moon is full, cuz people get crazy.”


(Prince: “I get delirious, whenever you’re near. Lose all self-control, baby just can’t steer...”)


I once found a text message scribbled on a Post-It note: “I HAVE TAKEN A SACRED VOW OF TEXTUAL REPRESENTATION. FROM NOW ON I WILL ONLY REPRESENT MYSELF VIA HIEROGLYPHS, BINARY DIGITAL CHARACTERS, AND PHOTOGRAPHIC IMAGES. NO BODY LANGUAGE! NO ORAL ALLOWED!”


I’m a persona, he’s a persona, she’s a persona, they’re a persona, wouldn’t you like to be a persona too?


Have to keep in mind at all times just how damaged we all really are versus the need to jerk somnambulists/self to life. Note: There is always risk involved in approaching/detaching from those who refuse to take risks; for some it’s easier to analyze dreams than to actually dream.


I once received an anonymous electronic love poem in Spanish. It vanished as I read it, each word dissolving as soon as my eyes took it in. It was a sweet gift, but it was addressed to the wrong persona. I responded:


DEAR ANONYMOUS LOVE POEM SENDER,

I REGRET TO INFORM YOU THAT YOUR TEXT HAS DISAPPEARED DUE TO CONTACT WITH THE WRONG CONTEXT. THESE DAYS I AM HAVING TROUBLE RECONCILING MY NIHILISM WITH MY NEED FOR LOVE. UNFORTUNATELY, ACCORDING TO THE LAWS OF PHYSICS, THERE IS NOWHERE LEFT TO FALL ONCE A PERSON HAS HIT THE BOTTOM. IN THIS KIND OF SCENARIO, THE ONLY HOPE FOR FLIGHT INVOLVES: A) A TREMENDOUSLY IMPRESSIVE GUST OF WIND (AS FROM A NUCLEAR BLAST, FOR EXAMPLE); B) A NEW UNDERSTANDING OF QUANTUM PHYSICS THAT DOES NOT RELY ON WRITTEN OR SPOKEN LANGUAGE FOR ARTICULATION; or, C) MAGIC.

IN ADDITION, PLEASE BE ADVISED THAT THERE ARE RUMORS FLOATING AROUND THAT FASCIST ELEMENTS IN THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT ARE ABOUT TO ALLOW PART OF ITS NAVAL FLEET TO BE SEVERELY ATTACKED AND SUNK BY IRANIAN MISSILES, IN ORDER TO CREATE AN ATMOSPHERE OF TERROR AND ULTRANATIONALIST PATRIOTISM, AVOID LOSING REPUBLICAN CONTROL OF CONGRESS IN THE UPCOMING NOVEMBER ELECTIONS, PROVIDE AN EXCUSE TO IMPLEMENT THE DRAFT, AND PROVOKE THE START OF WORLD WAR III. APPARENTLY, U.S. NAVAL STATIONS HAVE BEEN EMPTIED OUT WITH SHIPS BOUND FOR THE MIDDLE EAST. I REALIZE ALL OF THIS COULD BE SEEN AS JUST ANOTHER ELABORATE ATTEMPT ON MY PART TO AVOID ROMANTIC ENTANGLEMENT, BUT THE TRUTH IS THAT I AM ALSO EMPTIED OUT.

HOWEVER: THIS IN NO WAY IMPLIES THAT I NEED OR DESIRE VALIDATION OF ANY KIND. THE TAOISTS SAY THAT IT IS THE SPACE INSIDE THE BOWL, NOT SIMPLY THE BOWL ITSELF. LIKEWISE IT IS THE SILENCE BETWEEN THE WORDS, NOT SIMPLY THE WORDS (OR THE SILENCE). ETC.
AT THIS POINT, THE RESPONSE TO YOUR ANONYMOUS LOVE POEM HAS, OBVIOUSLY, GROWN FAR TOO LONG FOR THE FUNCTION FOR WHICH IT WAS DESIGNED. BUT THIS GOES WITHOUT SAYING.

SINCERELY,
XXXXXXXXX

P.S. The everyday lived experience. Grand festival, insane, asylum, arguments, gossip, expectations, desires, bodies colliding, disappointments, bodies engaging in private and communal acts of consumption, digestion, defecation, sex, defiance, all of it mixed up, intermingling, lips engaged in sacred oral sex soon kissing cheeks in sidewalk greets, hands, fingers, pores retaining someone else’s pheromones and other chemical traces of desire long after the moment has passed, shaking hands, preparing to eat, all of it sacred, all of it holy, every living thing, conversations, communicating something else always, shaping space with our bodies and the languages we use, shaping our bodies with the languages we use, tagging one another with existential graffiti, false claims to flooding honesty flooding honesty with noise to signal, constructing ourselves, over and over, empty texts, palimpsests, illusions stenciling our fears and desires onto one another for the whole world to see, smell, taste, ignore, x out, buff, replace, comment, count the hits, don’t count the misses.