#uncoffeed...

A dire realization kept pulsing up from the deepest recesses of my mind, id and superego conspiring against me. I wanted more, and I couldn’t tell myself more what because the math was bad. Traveling artist, traveling musician, multiple levels of baggage and an old-school Encyclopaedia Britannica-sized stack of things unknown. Jeffrey on paper looks good, but what’s under his bed?  Something primal had taken over. The daydream couldn’t be supported and yet I was unable to let go of it.  I couldn’t do this anymore. I had to break up with someone I literally wasn’t seeing.  I had to break up with this house. This is, in a way, one of the messiest breakups I’ve ever had because my mess isn’t real. It’s allegorical paint splashed over a bloody crime scene, such vivid and leaky whorls as will not leave their tinct. Maybe I’ve done what I do and pushed too far again, impulsive; maybe this was always the end. But I’m not comfortable here anymore. I’ve made it weir...

The next time I was in LA, I deviated from the usual thrift stores to one next to a pet shop, and then I went into the pet shop. I’d never consider bringing an animal back to Ian’s place but I thought it would be fun to look, like a wee urban zoo. And it was fun, quaint even, until I found the Blue Damn Oranda. In a different life, I tried to breed guppies for color. My mom was tolerant when I explained we needed two tanks to separate the males and females, but refused to let me have a third “hospital tank” for the babies to mature, uneaten, until they could be sexed. She bought bigger fish that ate guppies.  In a different different life, I was given a 55-gallon hexagonal fish tank which housed only a clown loach and a plecostomus. I bought colorful cichlids, and quickly learned that the Africans and South Americans cannot live together peacefully. So I bought another large tank, and then - yes - a hospital tank, which became home to seven Oranda goldfish, five blue a...

Back out East again, I was still looking for new venues to show my art. Funny how Cali is the land of Disney, but over here everyone’s into sweetness and light. Bad Warhol impressions. And flowers. Every time I leave a gallery with another business card in my case, I mentally map out some sort of bloom with some sort of tentacles hidden within it. Maybe I could paint pastoral landscapes with decomposing animal carcasses strategically placed so almost nobody notices.   I got a text from Ian, who should have been in Canada: “Hey, I cut myself on this thing in the kitchen with all the blades. Jack wants to know if you have a lawyer?” Shit. I’d forgotten to get rid of the mandoline. The guy makes money on operational digits. You don’t leave sharp objects lying around musicians. Shit. I didn’t have a lawyer. Ian’s phone went to voicemail. I hung up without leaving a message. He called back at 5 AM my time. “Hey, sorry, I guess that was a crappy joke. You okay?” It...

owned & shot by Bill Goodell Everyone in Lo-Cal waits all year for that one week of rain. It usually tapers into a drizzle by afternoon but every morning is a downpour, like when I jumped out of the airport shuttle with my bag at 10:50 AM. I was drenched immediately - no reason to run, then. I strolled to the patio, relishing the magic - living in the desert taught me how precious rain is, and I’ve never forgotten. As I turned the key, I looked around me. I could see the next door neighbors standing on their small patio, beatific, holding their tiny twin babies up to see the rain. Upon entering, I found Ian’s acoustic guitar in the living room, smashed to freaking bits. Splintered, in a pile just outside the hallway. Like someone had jumped up and down on it. That beautiful Seagull Phil never touches. I couldn’t figure out what could have happened to the guitar unless Ian did it himself. And I couldn’t figure out what would cause him to do it. The Seagull was a high-end inst...

The Zorya - debora Ewing - detail It's much more interesting to find quirky travel mementos on Craigslist than to buy them at souvenir shops. You get a story, a connection. I’d collected a bunch of succulent cuttings, a stainless steel whistling tea kettle, and a large plaster vase which looked smaller in the picture. A nice man who lived a few blocks away drove it over in his car. The vase looked perfect on the patio, but so far I only leave kitchen items at Ian’s place. I packed up the succulents inside the tea kettle and tucked that into my checked bag. My vase was 16 inches high and weighed about that many pounds - it would have to travel as my one personal item in the cabin. At every checkpoint through LAX I had to explain: No, this is coming with me. It got its own plastic bin to go through the x-ray, and every nearby TSA agent watched to see if anything was revealed. I have to admit I was curious, too, but it was solid plaster, no contraband. As I boarded my plane, the ...

Porn for Writers Come on and take a ride across the border to a place that once was mine Out of focus, out of order, pictures from another time Nobody who was present will forget that perfectly-timed crack of thunder as Dan Navarro wove oral history through the opening bars of We Belong . One of the kids said it out loud: " We belong to the thunder! "  And we laughed; and we did belong, crowded under the patio roof for what became a sing-along. Lowen & Navarro's beloved hit segued into (and I'm not sure why) Steve Miller Band's The Joker , and then something I can't remember because I was overwhelmed by the night and had to pull back into the misty rain. Afterward, I found our hostess Alexandra and thanked her for creating a space where I was comfortable to be what I am, to draw pictures instead of staring at the musician, dance in dark corners. She'll email me, she said, when they have another happening. On the outside turning lighter, s...