SYSTEMS
song: Black Hole Sun artist: Soundgarden album: Superunknown year: 1994 A corner case in a new corner of the city. It sits on the horizon like sun at the end of the day. A disk at edge, teetering over oblivion. I live for the edge cases, for the transitions. “Don’t get lost in the transaction,”…
SPACE
song: Only Shallow artist: my bloody valentine album: Loveless year: 1989 You must learn to observe the world yourself because no one is going to save you from yourself. You must learn to live with yourself and with your decisions. There is a new sense of place in this city. A new sense of time.…
TONE
song: So, What artist: Miles Davis album: Kind of Blue year: 1959 Set the tone. My biggest mistake so far has been running around spending fear like a disease. Like a false prophet who comes down from the mountain not to create and cultivate, but to destroy and shame, and I want to know why.…
THE BIGGEST LITTLE CITY IN THE WEST
essay – Laughlin How and when this happened, I don’t know, but as we walked through the casino floor on Saturday night, I had a revelation – this is how America see’s itself. Not in the glitz and shine of places like New York, LA, or Vegas, but in the roughness that this land still holds…
BEETLES
beetles are used to clean the last of the flesh from the skull and I wonder if they ever dream what they will become
GRANDMA
fiction – Song, Artist, Album, Year Song: Any Color You Like Artist: Pink Floyd Album: Dark Side of The Moon Year: 1973 Grandma Grandma is buried in Rose Hills, far East of Downtown, a beautiful and rolling piece of land from which you can see the entire LA basin stretched between Palos Verdes and the…
THE OUTER REACHES
fiction – “Who in this bowling alley bowled the sun? Who made it always when it rises set: To go at once both down, and up to get?” – Edward Taylor (1645-1729) The desert sky is full of stars. As the two drive in the big car through the night, they don’t say much to each…
PLUM WINE
fiction – She drives a 1980 Volvo 343 Blue Special that her Dad handed down to her after College. She sits in her car, down the block from her parents house, trying to figure out where to go for the night. Some friends text her earlier, and they presented options, but she has yet to…
TRANSISTOR (GREEN RIVER)
fiction – Mike rides like the wind on a night during the last slow stretch of Fall. Cold, fast, and gone before you have a chance to see it move the palms. From PCH to the 710 to the 5, straight into the heart of the city, we fly down the dark concrete band toward…
EDGE
essay – notes about art I imagine myself standing in a Vegas casino when these thoughts takes shape, or sitting at the end of a dark bar, drinking something with whiskey, or maybe standing alone in an elevator during the middle of the day. It seems as if the failure to connect, or the failure of…
OBJECTS
fiction – We’re in a cafe with red vinyl 1950’s style booths. There are tiny little jukeboxes on the ends of every table, and Sheryl Crow is wondering if it makes you happy over the speakers. Elle sits across from me, playing air guitar to the chorus of the song, rocking her head gently back…
HYPNOPHOBIA
The desk light is on and my watch shows 3:31 AM and the house is silent. I step out through the doors and onto the deck overlooking the grainy faded shoreline. As my eyes adjust I resolve the shapes of other buildings near the water and trace their sharp edges in the dark. Neil Young…
PLAYING NICE
A re-quote of Meditations and a used up personal improvement I could mention Marcus Aurelius or maybe even Proust but I haven’t finished Swann’s Way I’m driving Far and for a long time Past the time when the sun sets and the faint gold streaks break through leaves There’s a rumbling A thunder At first…
PASADENA
note – The future exists when you’re getting ready to expect nothing grand to happen in cheap thrill vehicles that keep moving until the sun comes up on this big-ass desert party.We don’t sleep, I don’t know why, but I speculate it’s because no one wants to miss the beauty. We’re drunk with it and…
THE LITTLE DEATH
fiction – “I can’t stand it to think my life is going so fast and I’m not really living it.” — The Sun Also Rises Jake takes a drink from his flask and a drag from his freshly lit cigarette. He has shaggy black hair and a black jacket on. It’s 7 pm on a…
INCANTO
fiction – “To see a world in a grain of sand And a heaven in a wild flower, Hold infinity in the palm of your hand, And eternity in an hour.”— William Blake The light in the car is bright. They are parked on top of a hill, with a view of the city to…
LIKE DUST
poem – “If man were never to fade away like the dews of Adashino, never to vanish like the smoke over Toribeyama, but lingered on forever in the world, how things would lose their power to move us! The most precious thing in life is its uncertainty.”— Yoshida Kenko, Essays in Idleness I think,…
STORIES WE TELL
poem – I. X born under one star, we go under the same late day colors burst light collapses on the fray your touch is what I miss smile, radiant heart bits of imagination illuminated from the start stay with me on this warm night in July far from Elliot’s cruelest month and Faulkner’s sad…
ANOTHER WEEKEND
fiction – The vacuum barrenness eats only when the night breaks into patches of in-congruent loneliness; images of revolution cures by electric city sky in the after hour drives up canyons where sheep eyes were destroyed. All this and more is in a box on the floor of someone’s bedroom. Equal barren patches litter the…
I WANT TO TELL YOU
poem – There is a distance in your smile A dark thin line between now and forever There is a moon, yellow Looking into frigid ocean While the waves erase our paths I want to tell you the world And whisper it in your ear If you would only let me do so There is…
MITG 