Switching Title

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The reasons for which half the leaves on a tree remain in Summer, While the rest turn into Autumn may be scientifically explained, just as to why the sky is still grey even when the sun is up.  But as long as I cannot explain it, the observation is a youthful one, a wonder.

Classic beauty is easy to distinguish.  Watch the trends in T.V., art, fashion, music, architecture, radio, automobiles, technology, literature, movies, interior design, photography, web and graphic design, cuisine, hair styles (including facial and body), and pornography.

Shape and color, sound, smell, feel, and taste.

Can beauty bypass the senses?  Beauty may be experienced by the mind using representations of what the senses can interpret.

It is classic beauty because a majority agrees it has represented beauty for an extended period of time.

Other types of beauty include: original, unique, "in the eye of the beholder."

A unique or original beauty may only be perceived by a unique or original mind.  This can only occur upon some thing in existence, either physically or mentally.  A unique or original mind may then perceive the thing as beautiful and attempt to translate its perception to others as beautiful.  If there is any agreement, the thing has a chance of becoming classically beautiful.

It's colder tonight than it has been in a while.

Even in Suburbia you can hear the sirens wail at night.

It's about all I hear, aside from an occasional Big-Rig hauling down the freeway a half-mile away from the house, and crickets in the yard, and the second hands of clocks, ticking away at sixty beats per minute.

I lay in bed, my eyes reading a book to my brain, regularly distracted with thte question, "Is what I do important?"

I also miss my friend who gave me that book.  And now that I mention it, he's an asshole.  So I don't miss him much any more.

"Symphony of Souls" by this guy.

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The crow is the first and the loudest of many birds to perch on top of the tallest tree in the morning.

This if preceded ten minutes by the Sun's early arch rising above the treeline.

Which comes after dozens of pairs of legs cross my view of the sidewalk between the brim on my baseball cap and paperback.

Which was given birth by a bloody sinus and the thought of the necessity of raking leaves.

Now I will rake leaves.

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Biked to a closing Borders Bookstore to scour, but I was still too cheap to purchase anything.

 Had pizza and beer.  And salad. And watched football.

One coffee. Started listening to metal.

Metal and churches mix.

Insomnia.  Add the Relapse Records Sampler.

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A man walks out of the coffee shop from which I am sitting down-wind.  His perfume is vulgar-sweet and un-natural, and smells like the shopping mall across the street.  He stalls at the patio table next to mine and fumbles in his pockets.  What's this?  The scraping sound of a match being lit, then the odor of its sulfur.  It battles and begins to nullify the department store stench, when soon, the acrid smoke of the man's cigarette hits my snout.  This is bliss!  He walks twenty feet down the sidewalk, finishes the cigarette, jumps into his red and black Smart Car, and drives off.  I plunge into my bold cup of coffee.

With music

I'm trapped!

Like a worker bee

in rhythms,

in patterns.

If you find yourself at the coffee shop at seven in the morning, you are received with the sun on your back, keeping you warm in the cool breeze.

You may also find that you can't get a word in with Miller because every printed sentence of his makes you think he wrote it for you, and you think why, and by the time you're done you may find yourself with eyes glazed over, staring somewhere between the page and the street twenty feet away.

A passing gentleman says, "morning" to you, as if he knew you were lost in your memories, and you snap back into the present, observing the worker bees, rushing in and out of the coffee shop.

I will acquire a synthesizer.

At a coffee shop

a conscientious

smoker discusses

the etiquette of

smoking.

Then, after a final

drag, she throws

the butt into the

sidewalk's gutter.

Just me and my tea.

I don't even like tea.

I like coffee.

Finally Punk

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I received an email from a friend about her upcoming first art show.

I made bacon and eggs for breakfast, like I have been all week.  I mixed a punk-rock recording I made with a friend of mine on the previous day and sent the mixes to him in an email.  I walked down miles of Ocean Beach with my shoes off.  I noticed more sand dollars than ever in my life.  I saw one that had a pinkish color to it and picked it up and realized it was alive.  It had dozens of little feelers reaching out to grab a hold of something.  I put it back in the sand.  I got back home and watched the second half of the Alfred Hitchcock movie, "Rear Window."  I napped a few hours.  I bought a half pint of whiskey and some rolling tobacco and caught the bus to the mission district where the art gallery was.  I met my friend and talked to her about her exhibit.  It was about going through a process, hoping to find something, and finding nothing at all.  I jumped back on the bus to return home.  Between transfers, I urinated in a dark corner between buildings.  I ate left-over pasta, rolled a cigarette and sipped a bit of whiskey on the back porch and watched the fog lurk through the gardens behind people's houses.

I will watch another movie now.  Probably "Walk Hard - The Dewey Cox Story."

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I had many discussions about creating media with my family this past week during my visit to the cold East Coast of the United States of America.  What we always decided was to always go through the motions of creating and not to worry about what will come of it.

I had at least one coffee every day there.  One cup was not from Starbucks.  It might as well have been, except it was in downtown D.C. where we sat inside at a cramped table with a giant wall-window view of the street-corner intersection.  We watched men and women walk by in P-coats as taxis almost hit them when they crossed the street so they flipped the taxis the bird.

I always take the lid off the to-go cup so the coffee has time to cool before it hits my lips.  The froth was rippling on the surface of the drink more than I had ever noticed.  Swirls of small paisley patterns whipped fountains of steam into the cool room temperature.  When we left, the fahrenheit of the coffee was low enough that I was able to chug it down so we could enter the Ford Theater to watch "A Christmas Carol."

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The slower you are, the lower you are.  You can own a jet.  You can own a car.  You can own a bike.  You can still have your legs and feet.  Maybe, one day, you can own a rocket-ship.

If the day comes when people can teleport, we'll see how many of us still choose to walk.

I always tell myself not to write when I have something I want to write.  The urge is to share it, but the fear is that it wont be good enough to share.  Then I tell myself to go read Henry Miller and learn how it's done.  Then I'll be able to write well enough to share.  But then the moment is gone.

I wanted to write about a the first coffee shop I went to when I moved into the Outer Richmond District in San Francisco.  Now I don't remember much.  But the longer I leave it unwritten, the more soul escapes the experience.

It was small.  It had my favorite breakfast: eggs, hash-browns and toast with a coffee for four dollars and ninety-five cents.  That price seems about fifteen years old in a restaruant.  An  Asian lady ran the counter while, what I can guess, her husband cooked and her son did everything in between.  Every inch of shelves and surfaces were used.  It didn't look dirty, just cluttered.  It looked like they used the cheapest ingredients.  Canned coffee, bulk mustard...

I sat down on a stool at the counter next to a guy.  He immediately got uncomfortable and sort of scooted over as far from me as he could without falling off the stool he was sitting on.  That was okay to me because I felt a bit uncomfortable as well.  It was either I sat next to him or the only other guy in the place at the other end of the counter.  He looked grungy, near his sixties, with greasy long hair slicked back, which must have

once been blonde; now it was grey with only the slightest gold where it shined.

That's all I can say for the coffee shop now.  It seemed more interesting when I was there experiencing it.

I go out looking for inspiration, and it always comes, but usually I am unprepared to docuemnt, reproduce, or express it properly.

Anyway, the old guy left right before I did and I noticed he got into a shabby landscaping truck.

I planned to take my late Grandfather's old thirty-five millimeter camera out and take some pictures around my new neighborhood for the rest of the day.

After hiking about for an hour or so, I came to a place called China Beach on the North-West edge of the city.  There was the old guy from the coffee shop.  He was stripped down to his underwear on the roof of the bath house that sat at the  head of the beach, bronze as a god, basking in the sun.

It wasn't until I left the beach that I noticed his landscaping truck in the parking lot.  Then I thought it was somehow a profound moment.  So I went back and took a picture of him.

I thought he might be what I will be like in thirty years.

Now I should go read Henry Miller.