Love's Debris

When I was nothing more than love’s debris
Then I never wanted to be set free
There were many rivers to cross
Daunting mountains of silver and dross
Before pale return
To mournful reality tossed
Aside the educated guesses of
My horrified refinement
Trained nothing more than
My atavistic confinement
Skipping like stones over
The oceans of boil
The gleam of which
Twitched, ripped, and roiled
The figures of illusion out
Without a doubt
Given the proper preparation
Even raging infernos
Can make ashen landscapes
Feel like a home and a haven
Within my dome I’m slaving
To
The dark elements
Can purge the last recital
And the last recital
Can shatter the star
And open the portal
But I don’t have the time
And yet I have the infinity of time
I’m working on the roots, shoots, and tendrils
Of something far beyond sublime
You’ve heard it yourself
In quiet scared little peeps
The 3:00 a.m. knocking of elite little treats
Wrecked, rocked, struck, and struck again
Like distant misted quivering
Grey horizon diaphragms
Quickness is a virtue
Slowness is a vice
And the quickness of water
Is solidified as ice
Ice expanding destroys all cells
Blood expanding rocks the bells
The body ripped asunder
Shoots over, beyond, and under
To shoot the moon
Beat the boom
And catch up with leonine room
Of the universe at external gates
Infinite yet expanding
At extraordinary rates
With practice you can catch up
To that liminal realm
And pass through it like child’s play
Light years ago
Yesterday, tomorrow, and today
Swirled, squirreled, and served up
On a tray
Like a mid-morning snack
For the gods at play

Panic on the streets of London, panic on the streets of Birmingham

"Panic" by the Smiths

Boy, if this isn't the theme song of the last few days I don't know what is. I just can't stop listening to it, even though some wags say another Smiths classic, "Shoplifters of the World Unite and Take Over" might be a more appropriate anthem.

Stand and deliver, the old highwayman's code.

The Clash's "White Riot" and "London's Burning" have their place. These riots are as much about a cathartic violence and a momentary feeling of power for the powerless and disenfranchised as they are about opportunistic looting. So violent thrashing songs like these two from the Clash might seem more appropriate. Although the Clash often sang songs of solidarity and collective action with a clear political agenda, which a riot for kit doesn't have.

I bet the rioters were listening to something a little more contemporary though, given their age.

Dig Franz Fanon for the first and last word on the cathartic violence of decolonization. Make no mistake. We are decolonizing ourselves. From banker occupation. And it is far from over. Far from over. Far from over indeed. In fact, it is just beginning.

I don't think their gated communities and their dog armies and their special forces will help them in the end.

Since the late 1970s, TPTB thought they could just fuck us as long and hard as they wanted and nothing would happen, even as they dissolved the most marginal and hypocritical of social contracts into the most brazen, systematic, relentless and remorseless corporatocracy possible.

They were wrong. The people are waking up all across the world, even if in ways sometimes inchoate and random.

The masses know instinctively now that their governments no longer represent them and the thought of working for redress though the political system is a farce, and not even a funny one at that.

Sorry, plutocratic assholes. You brought that on yourselves. Payback's a bitch. So is karma.

The wheels of justice grind slow but they grind exceedingly fine.

In spite of rage as a partial fuel for the England riots, there is something about the feyness and perfect poppiness of this song that makes it the soundtrack of the riots in my mind's ear. And this is from a die-hard, life-long Clash fan. There is also something intensely harrowing in its very feyness and perfect poppiness

From all accounts, the vast majority of the rioters are teens and pre-teens. Guess cutting the summer programs to feed the insatiable maw of international finance capital wasn't such a good idea after all, was it Mr. Cameron?

Doubtless, almost all of the rioters weren't even born when this song came out. Nevertheless, it reverberates with me. And with many another aging hipster, to go by the Youtube comment boards.

I thought the Smiths were a little too swishy and soft for me as a teen when I first heard them. But then my sainted uncle, more of an older brother really, said they were one of his favorite bands and he was hardcore punk. So I reassessed. Indeed, the Smiths were genius. Timeless they remain. Highwater marks. Your first impression is not always correct. As one of my favorite early modernists, Picabia, said "our heads are round so our thoughts may change directions."

Best commentary on the riots here.

BBC live feed on the riots here.

Hang the DJ (of international finance capital)

I have only been this scared of the black swans twice before.

The first time was a particular date when many on the blogosphere thought Israel was going to attack Iran about a year or two ago. That still not off the table. Watch for a false flag terrorist attack in America from Israel again, especially with a U.N. vote on Palestinian statehood expected this September.

The second was the “tipping point” Half Past Human predicted in January 2011. It was right around when Congresswoman Giffords got shot in Tucson. I don’t think that was the “tipping point” itself. I think maybe that a kind of line unseen that was crossed on or about that time.

Then, the rioting started in Greece, which still percolates. Then the Arab Spring, which still percolates. Then Wisconsin, to a degree. Now London, Spain, and even Israel are either rioting and/or demonstrating en masse.

And now, the third.

Thursday the markets lost 5% worldwide. Friday Amerikkka’s sovereign debt got downgraded by Standard and Poors. Monday, they downgraded Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac debt too. Asian markets seem to be stabilizing on Tuesday after heavy early losses, which is good. What will Tuesday bring at the NYSE? We can only keep our fingers crossed. If it is another 5% loss, the system could buckle. Gold has already popped through the roof of $1,700. Last time I check the Swiss Franc a few months ago, it was at 1.10 on the dollar. Today it’s 1.33. Holy fucking shit! That is almost a 20% gain in a few months!

There is “Panic in the Streets of London,” as the Smiths say and “London’s Burning” as the Clash noticed. The Youtube comments section are fascinating, all atwitter with the relevance of these songs to the events of the last few days in the England.

It is because the "Youth are Getting Restless" (Bad Brains).

It’s a lot like the most recent L.A. riots: legitimate but totally unbridled directionless rage ultimately resolving itself in looting: the consumerist paradise: free stuff!

Free tuff!

It’s a reversion to the 1970s, the worst period of urban decay in the big cities in the core states of global capitalism but aided and abetted by cell phones, texting, and live television, and the decimation of social welfare and education programs as every "major capitalist country" abandons any pretense of the consent of the governed, any pretense of serving the people, and instead absolutely unconditionally give themselves and their countries away to the banksters in the most brazen and complete way possible.

The new technologies help create insta-mobs. Like Vancouver a few weeks ago. Talk about pointless.

Personally, I think it is time for every body to say “I’m Going to Run to the City of Refuge,” like Blind Willie Johnson suggested.

Find your village of refuge. Move towards it. Now is the time. Don't wait. The cities will be painful.

US-Sino Currency Rap Battle

Remy: Raise The Debt Ceiling Rap

Lifting the Veil: Obama and the Failure of Capitalist Democracy

Mos Def Close Edge

Keep Cool Babylon by Ras Michael

I never said I was that mature

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The Big Wang Theory
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog The Daily Show on Facebook

I've watched this 20 times in the last week.

Black swans taking wing

There are so many black swans taking wing, I can barely keep track.

Like Vault-Co says: You had better pack it. Because itz coming.

Hard hitting and never quitting

part 1 of 4

A few years old - but timeless.

Harold Pinter's acceptance speech for the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2005.

Dear Obama fans: all your man did was codify, legalize, and better sell all of this horrific shit

Pinter: a master of words and morality at the height of his powers.

800 views on You Tube after two years. This planet is doomed.


part 2 of 4


part 3 of 4


part 4 of 4

A99 Operation Empire State Rebellion - Communication #1

There’s a Secret Patriot Act, Senator Says

"I’m talking about instances where the government is relying on secret interpretations of what the law says without telling the public what those interpretations are," Ron Wyden (D-Oregon) says, "and the reliance on secret interpretations of the law is growing."

Rise like lions after slumber
In unvanquishable number
Shake your chains to earth like dew
Which in sleep had fallen on you
Ye are many - they are few

- P.B. Shelley "The Mask of Anarchy"

Geronimo, Prescott Bush and Osama bin Laden

So apparently the codename for the operation which just killed a man who has probably been dead of natural causes for about decade was "Geronimo." Or maybe that was the name of the "target." Who knows? It is hard to keep up with the ever-changing storyline of this clusterfuck of a psy-op.

Either way, take your pick, it won't affect the punchline of this story.

We have also seen a fair amount of news lately from pissed-off native Americans registering their frustration that, yet again, a native American name and symbol is being unfairly vilified and disrespected.

Look at all of those sport team names for starters. Pop cultural appropriation of native American names and symbols seems like one of the last socially acceptable forms of racism in Amerikkka.

What I have not been seeing, however, are any stories linking this latest use of the name "Geronimo" to the Skull and Bones, even in the normally vigilant blogosphere.

I am sure a lot of you out there know about the Yale secret society Skull and Bones, an old and spooky outfit with immense power, far disproportionate to its 15 person a year size.

If you know about Skull and Bones, you probably also know about the persistent rumor that Prescott Bush stole Geronimo's skull, femurs, and horse tack from his grave.

According to many reports, like this one from a few years ago on CNN, it may be a bit more than a rumor. It may actually be true.

It may be a coincidence that this recent "commando operation" or its purported target was named Geronimo. I mean, there are only a limited number of widely-known superstars in the pantheon of resistance to the Amerikkkan Empire and they might have just picked one of the more prominent ones nearly at random.

Or, could it be another episode in the ancient and ongoing war of symbols, a case of the super elite hiding a big "fuck you!" to the masses in plain sight?

TPTB might be saying: "we subdued Geronimo by force for daring to confront the Empire, lied about an offer of amnesty, and kept him as a prisoner of war until his death. Then, one or more members of a super elite secret society desecrated his bones, stole them, tried to capture their power by transporting them for permanent display in their headquarters, and then we named the operation/target of a transparent psy-op after this very desecration!"

It is not impossible. Oftentimes, coded symbolic references to their most vicious and brazen accomplishments in crushing The People under foot are exactly what TPTB most love to hide in plain sight.

Could this be such a case?

Fanzine post for Casey Abrams from American Idol

I don't even remember how I ran into this guy. It wasn't from watching the televitz. But first I encountered his Austin audition for American Idol, embedded above.

Wow.

Big ups to Steve Tyler and his long career, but Casey Abrams is already a better singer than he ever was.

Abrams' version of "I Don't Need No Doctor" for the audition was at least as good as Ray Charles' original.

Which is saying something.

Lord knows I love me some sweet soul music.

To continue to savor its delectable pleasures well into my old age is one reason I am not already dead.

If he stays off the drugs, remains humble, and his voice doesn't change radically as he ages, he could enter The Pantheon of soul singers, rock-soul singers, and jazz bassists.

So then I watched everything he had on youtube and after awhile discovered his pre-Idol youtube channel pierceabrams, and I watched all of that.

He can do 6 and 8 part harmony - with his own damn self!

He has jazz as awesomely as he has got soul, and a little rock-and-roll never hurt nobody.

Idol voted him off? Insane. Amerikkka, quit being so incorrigibly nutz. It will not end well for you.

Good he got voted off. More freedom for him. Less contractual obligations.

He is destined for far greater things than Carrie Underwood and all of the other "successful" alumni of that factory.

His music teacher, Marshall Raymond Hawkins, should be very proud of all of his pupils, and especially proud of this one.

This is an absolutely unhinged monster talent before us!

This is even more spectacular than the last hyper-ringer that also gave me goose bumps, Susan Boyle.

I hope he keeps it together and gives us many decades of awesome music.

Amerika is devouring its children

Absent appropriate flexibility, the fusion of quantum physics, deep ecology, “prophetic pragmatism,” and any number of other sources of deep and abiding wisdom one might care to mention which might help to create a new sense of the spiritual, a new sense of community with nature, and a new sense of social justice, will be that much harder to bring about. Absent this new conceptual framework for the coming paradigm shift, the extraordinarily painful and convulsive transition we are entering will be even more painful and convulsive. But perhaps there is no escape. Like all junkies, this junky civilization of the first world will probably have to hit bottom before it can begin to mend its ways. Unfortunately, this will cause suffering and death on an almost unfathomable scale.

As Nietzsche says, “the objective of all human arrangements is through distracting one's thoughts to cease to be aware of life." Nowhere is this more true than in America. America does not often inspire the moral courage needed to:

"desire the opposite - to be aware precisely of life, that is to say to suffer from life - so strongly? Because he realizes that he is in danger of being cheated out of himself, and that a kind of agreement exists to kidnap him out of his own cave. Then he bestirs himself, pricks up his ears, and resolves: 'I will remain my own!'"

Instead, America (and much of the rest of the world) use technology in such a way as to have no meaningful interaction with nature.

America and the first world’s last hope for survival is to create a cadre of people with transformed ways of being in the world who can 1) create the liberated territory of a new society, islands of alternative culture that grow into each other like a reef displacing the sea, 2) speak truth to power and isolate how evil is done, and 3) walk the long march through the primary institutions of society, emplacing righteous people in strategic positions of responsibility in the courts, media, think tanks, schools, and elsewhere.

This might be possible through education; it might not be. After all, as Nietzsche states, “to educate educators! But the first ones must educate themselves! And for these I write."

We must facilitate the immediate emergence and implementation of a philosophy of education for peace, social justice and sustainability, with domain content areas rectified accordingly to make visible the repression of the hidden curriculum. We must also reimagine the education encounter in a way that does not reiterate the existing social relations of domination, subordination, extrinsic motivation, and credentialing.

By waiving their obligation to provide informed consent as the governed in exchange for overconsumption and “protection” from fears manufactured by the powers that be themselves, the American people have grown accustomed to using material goods to satisfy non-material needs. They have become mired in a suspended state of preadolescence.

The same diagnosis goes for much of the rest of the “first world” as well. Education will have to play a central role in returning these polities to mental health, eventually. As the aphorism commonly attributed to Victor Hugo goes: “education is a race between history and catastrophe.” If education succeeds, then the world may stop tolerating economic and political systems that rob us of our natural joy, freedom, dignity, curiosity, and the full development of our faculties. Only then will we stop profaning the miracle of our ability to think, imagine, love, and use tools.

To regain our natural propensity to love, be creative, and live in harmonious connection with the earth blossom will require a major shift in character and a wholesale healing of perception. As Edward Dowling has said, “The two greatest obstacles to democracy in the United States are, first the widespread delusion among the poor that we have it, and second, the chronic terror among the rich, lest we get it."

Emmanuel Goldstein declared dead

Emmanuel Goldstein and Barry Soetero enjoying a luau together

I subscribe to the theory that Osama died of natural causes around a decade ago, probably related to his kidneys.

But now Emmanuel Goldstein has been officially declared dead.

It knocks the royal wedding off the news. It knocks Obama's asinine fake new birth certificate off the news. It knocks the intervention in Libya off the news. It helps him draw attention away from his "national security" team reshuffle of warmongering imperialist scumbags. It helps him start the campaign season off with a bang.

I must say, politically, this is one of the best moves Barry has been put through.

Here's the crux though:

Will he use this to get out of our current world war, temporarily staving off disaster for the dollar in the process?

Or will Usreal use this as the perfect excuse for a false flag terror event to attack Iran or others and ratchet this cluster fuck up a few notches?

Cool Yugoslav public sculpture

Neat stuff at this link.

Somewhere between Mestrovic, Goldworthy, and Stalin.

Interesting.

Research hat tip to Vaulty.

Birtherism, yet again

So the Donald has nudged a new certificate out of the pResident.

I hate to agree with so many right wing idiots, but this still doesn't cut it.

I see some forensic problems right away. This irritates me because I am swimming upstream against a heavy current of mainstream media, which calls this all the most craven and racist nonsense.

I don't know. It doesn't matter in the least.

When I last gave a shit about the status of Obama's birth certificate, it was nothing more than my last burst of affection for the constitution.

That feeling has passed.

Amerikkkan government serves Israel, corporations, and militarism. That is its function. Insightful observers saw the hidden cues Obama was sending to these quarters during his candidacy. Therefore, we suffer no shock in him not delivering on his so-called "promises."

Oh dear

The "paranoid" blogosphere has been wondering when TPTB would start making it difficult to even escape from the Kwa when the SHTF.

An insanely complicated and invasive new proposed passport application now under a public comment period seems like a major step in this direction.

Funny how this surfaced days after the IMF issued a report saying China's economy may surpass Amerikkka's by 2016.

Meanwhile, NASA admits the solar storm anticipated to arrive in December 2012 could devastate the electronics of the planet.

The rich getting richer, the poor get the picture

It's the Inequality, Stupid

The One Percent

Wealth, Income, and Power

Dead among the Living: Zombie Politics in the Age of Casino Capitalism

Can We Live Free in an Unfree World

The Slow Death of the Middle Class

The two Americas

Of the 1%, by the 1%, for the 1%

Concentration Of Wealth

Greed is Not a Virtue

The Peasants Need Pitchforks

Citigroup Oct 16, 2005 Plutonomy Report Part 1

Tiny homes rock

A low impact woodland home.

Tiny house blog

Want to live in a shipping container?

The year of mud: Cob and natural building

This tiny house

Lloyd's blog

The hermit's cabin

Small house society

Tumbleweed tiny house

Small house building

Living small catches on

You're going to build a what?

EPDM pond liner for living roof construction

U.S. Government Printing Office needs 350,934 National Detainee Handbooks printed by 29 April 2011

Here is a larger screenshot of the above - which got pulled within minutes of being posted!

The U.S. Government needs 350,934 National Detainee Handbooks printed by 29 April 2011, even though the GPO solicitation only went out on 18 April! - from Cryptogon

Even though the solicitation got pulled, it is still in Google cache for now.

That is an awful lot of handbooks needed at what, for government procurement, is lightening speed.

WTF?!

BRICS tell dollar to go get bent

"The BRICS group of emerging-market powers kept up the pressure on Thursday for a revamped global monetary system that relies less on the dollar and for a louder voice in international financial institutions." - from Yahoo Finance

Zoellick says world "one shock away from a full-blown crisis"

"The president of the World Bank has warned that the world is 'one shock away from a full-blown crisis'." - from BBC

International sovereign debt default moving right along

From a recent evaluation by the Standard & Poor's ratings agency -

"S&P affirmed the U.S. federal government's "AAA" rating but, for the first time, changed its long-term outlook to negative from stable, signaling there is at least a 33% chance that it will downgrade the country's debt rating within two years."

The Bronx Zoo snake names are all lame

The five Bronx Zoo snake name finalists sucked.

My name, "slinky spice," should have been a nominee.

Alas, cruel fate.

Amerikkkan political prisoners must be set free!

They are having a contest to name the snake.

I named her "slinky spice." It was one of the pet names I had for my last ex-girlfriend. But the reason I offered it is because I think it is also a compliment for all snake-like beings.

And it gives you three times to use the letter "s" in speaking about the suddenly special situation spawned by a certain snake circulating serendipitously through the streams of symbols we see daily.

But seriously; free all of the real political prisoners too.

The first reason to give a shit about twitter

The escaped Bronx Zoo white cobra is having a good ol' time in the town so nice they named it twice, New York New York.

I hate all "social media" but this is actually pretty funny.

It gained 150,000 followers in a day!

Joe Bageant dead at 64

Joe in Hopkins Village
1946-2011 R.I.P

That was worth a few deep soul sobs.

We volleyed a few emails back and forth once. What a treat that was.

The truly great writers still writing on the internet can be counted on one or two hands. We just lost another one. I loved his humor, his geopolitical and economic analysis, his sense of rootedness in the South, no matter where he was physically at the moment - and we both discovered Belize at about the same time.

But what kicks his work up to the next level, to genius, is his understanding of the cosmic nature of the above, its unity with the unseen.

As he said so often, the consensus reality is nothing more than a vast hologram emanating from the manufactured consent of the plebes.

I don't see how we can replace him. And lost just when we need him the most, on the cusp of the crashing down of this consensus reality, perhaps even on the cusp of a very slow and very painful yet nonetheless very definitive birth of the first inklings of sane and sustainable attitudes of humans towards each other and the planet.

We will pick up your torch, Brother Joe. Your words hit many of the people in just the right way and you can't do much better than that. They will reverberate. We will make sure of that.

In Art and Labor,

Stonefruit

Banker plows through a Critical Mass ride in Brazil

At about 1:00, a vicious psychopath plows through a Critical Mass ride at 40 or 50mph.

This is what our overlords think of us. Which is to say nothing. Our lives, our health, our felicity is simply a joke to them.

Socializing the costs, privatizing the benefits

Fighting Bob LaFollette - lead the way my brother!

PIMCO, the world's largest bond fund, just dropped all of its U.S. T-bills. Who will buy them when the private bank known as the Federal Reserve, which has been almost the only buyer for nearly a year, stops buying them, as it plans to in June 2011?

It is buying them with money it invents out of nothing. Digital currency not even worth the paper it is not printed on. An increase of the money supply that is sure to lead to hyper inflation. I can't believe it is not already here. That is a testament to the power of being a "reserve currency," not one to the strength of the dollar.

As so many commentators have being saying for so long: the dollar is about to become bird cage liner.

But the other candidates for reserve currency like the euro, yen, and yuan also have their own problems. One or more might also collapse along with the dollar.

The recent plethora of moves aspire to elevate IMF special drawing rights to the level of a new international currency.

As the Kwa empire and its dollar collapses, the "Northwest Territory" governors are trying to roll-back the gains of organized labor to the point of the Robber Baron era. Almost all of the putative gains we have made since then in statute have been chipped away at since Reagan and the PATCO strike.

From Madison, it reverberates.

Winning

What an interesting case and very entertaining to watch.

Is he having a psychotic episode and spiraling into madness?

Quite possibly.

Is he also breaking a necessary taboo by criticising the nearly impervious therapeutic model that rules Amerikkkan mainstream thought, one which disallows madness and substance use as a response to the suffocating ennui and misery of everyday life in the "first world," a paradigm that would have us all adjust to insipid, death-in-life group norms in which we are all good "well adjusted" worker bees and consumer drones?

Quite possibly.

Are some of his rants poetry unseen since the height of French surrealist poetry in the early 20th century?

You betcha. Especially the one he gave wearing a red shirt.

Give it a listen.

The shit is no longer in mid-air

It has hit the fan

I have been glued to Al Jazeera and RT lately, watching all of this unfold.

I think of the counsel I gave myself and others a couple of years ago.

Big troubles ahead. Adopt the lessons of nature. Play dead, camouflage, retreat, evade the authorities until they play themselves out, etc.

Some of my other more rebellious friends said: "Fuck that - I want to lead it!"

The marvelous mayhem some have prophesied is finally here. And it all looks so entertaining and righteous, I might finally be interested in participating.

We are many, they are few.

Once you hit a critical mass and the masses get over their fear factor and their energy is unleashed, it is game over for the fascist dogs.

We win. They lose. TPTB know this.

As we look at international events, let us not forget to factor in Wisconsin. This turmoil is about to spread to Illinois, Indiana, Ohio, and every other Murkin state that is bankrupt. Which is to say practically all of them.

California going apeshit will be the game changer.

Maybe the salvation or impetus will not come from the union of far right and far left - although this is still probable, eventually, in some incarnation, the consequence from something that did not intend to unite them. Maybe for now it is the union of the proles in the third world living on $2/day and the proles in the first world who can't make ends meet on even $200/day of household income.

This world revolution is not stopping at Tunisia, Egypt, or Libya. Or Bahrain, Yemen, or Saudi Arabia. This is going worldwide.

All of the evil doers will face their karmic bill in short order. It's not stopping in August with the astrological Saturn-Pluto-Uranus T square either. This is going to extend well into next year.

It is the apocalypse. Not in the popular sense of universal destruction but in the original root sense of the word: an unveiling.

The scum-sucking money changers, theocrats, and princes are all being unveiled. There are not enough hotel rooms in the Davos Switzerland of the mind to help them all plan a coordinated response.

But, alas, not without plenty of suffering. Unnecessary? Perhaps. Nobody wishes suffering upon anyone but perhaps it is necessary, according to archetypal and ritualistic patterns operating on a vast, timeless, and cosmic scale.

The ultimate repercussions of these initial shock waves will be almost unimaginable. Fiat currencies will collapse. A nuclear WW III is possible. Mass starvation likely.

I caught a robber red handed yesterday. I was downstairs in the family duplex, heard footsteps above when there should not have been any, rushed up and snatched back two laptops a guy was splitting with. I think he was an emissary from the future. The shock waves of the future sometimes blast backwards into time as their supernova explode.

As I watch Libya implode, I am intrigued.

Qadafi is the perfect example of a guy who is brilliant, savvy and practical, and yet also totally bat-shit crazy. Does he reside on the fine line between genius and madness? Maybe there is no line, just a conflation of both?

This nut has already killed 1,000-2,000 people in this latest uprising with his goons and air strikes. In a country of only 6.5 million.

The response of the west has been muted. Why? Because of business? To some extent, sure, but not really.

Because they know this tsunami will be at their doorsteps in short order and this is exactly how they will respond, because they don't have anything else in their bag of tricks, beyond impulses for command and control.

His attacks are crimes against humanity? This is laughable. I mean, of course they are, but when this shit hits the core states of global capitalism: how they will respond? Exactly like this.

When Amerikkka finally does all this type of shit, the world will initially be befuddled and at a loss for words. It was bad when Libya did it but OK when the Kwa did it?

Not for long.

Foreign governments then will basically repeat what Obama and Clinton are finally saying now. But by then, of course, Obama, Clinton and every other shill will be talking about the need for law and order, constitutionality, and the whole boatload of bloviating bullshit. A mask for raw power We The People will easily see through.

Responsibility. Some of it is ascribed from your birth, some of it is achieved from how you lived your life. All of it must be taken seriously, or there will be hell to pay, on multiple levels.

It is time for all leaders, activists, educators, artists, intellectuals, clowns, shamans, weirdos, and roustabouts to know their responsibility and live up to it, finally and definitively.

The stakes are high and the anguish ample but the birth pains of a new order are never easy.

Unfortunately there is no other path forward.

Meanwhile, there is a military readiness exercise in three places in the Kwa, one of which is where I live. Convoys of military choppers transit the skies by the hour.

It feels like war already.

One of these days

We are going to have to make them stop!

Home

There is so much going on in the world today, economically, environmentally, geopolitically, it doesn't seem necessary to comment too much.

We all know what we need to do.

So now, for our edification and aesthetic enjoyment, may I suggest this beautiful video about nature and the evolution of humyn's place within it.

My only criticism with it is its adherence to global warm thinkery.

UFO over the Dome of the Rock/Temple Mount

From a distance...


...and more close up.

An extraordinarily bizarre UFO sighting over the Dome of the Rock/Temple Mount was captured on tape by multiple videographers from multiple positions in Jerusalem recently.

Consider this...

Over one of the most sacred sites on the planet.

In this time of turmoil in the Middle East.

Against the backdrop of so many other recent UFO sightings worldwide and so much attention to UFOs and visitors from beyond in current events and infotainment lately.

Do you still think I am overstating it when I say we have entered the weird times?

Put down the Cheetos. Do your homework. And pack your rice.

And a child shall lead us

Alexandria, February 4, 2011, 5:22pm local time

The world is on fire but the people are on point

photo from Al Jazeera English
approximately 5:20 am or shortly before
Thursday 2, 2011, Cairo local time

Follow the latest from the best sources in international news, Al Jazeera and Russia TV.

Al Jazeera: live blogging

Russia TV: video coverage

It is a good time to live!

The earth is going absolutely bat shit, with flooding, earthquakes, volcanoes blowing their stacks, magnetic pole reversal, and a solar maximum due soon to rock our world to the core. You name it. If it can get weird in the earth sciences, it is doing it now.

All at once.

Civil society is going bat shit as well.

Egypt is nothing but pure inspiration at this point.

All power and all solidarity to the people of that proud, ancient civilization!

They are not only cleaning up after their demonstrations, they are recycling, they are pushing the water of water cannons down into the sewers.

This is incredible and sublime. Such dignified comportment in the midst of such turmoil!

It won't stop with Egypt. You can be sure of that. It won't stop with the Arab or Muslim world either.

This is going to hit country after country after country, around the world. That is why China is censoring coverage of events in Egypt, for one.

The pent-up grievances of the regular folk in the countries run by corporatist/bankster/imperialist/authoritarian swine - which is to say, virtually all of them - are about to explode.

Not all of the revolutions to come will have the dignity of Egypt's. Some will be weird, wild, rollicking, and punctuated by mayhem.

We will also have food shortages and Mother Nature to deal with.

But, on balance, this will be the year of the people.

Old, seemingly indestructible paradigms are dissolving before our very eyes.

The people world-wide are awakening from an ancient slumber. I concur with good ol' Les Visible.

The shit storm has arrived.

It will be messy but on balance it will be a good thing - for the people.

But not for the TPTB. Every decision they make from now on will be wrong and only make them more insecure and vulnerable.

Egypt hit the kill switch on cell phones, the internet, and trains. Do you think that will stop the people? I don't. The core states of global capitalism will try the same when the "contagion" gets to them. They will fail too.

Our transition to freedom, social justice, environmental sanity, and personal health and development is just about to become greatly accelerated!

This is going to be fun! Or at least interesting.

Hoka hey, it is a good time to live!

Egypt on fire

First Tunisia and Lebanon.

Then Egypt. These protests began Tuesday. They are not even a week old.

Mubarak and his family do not stand a fucking chance. His son has already fled.

Just look at the video.

This type of courage and desparation signals one thing and one thing only: the end of a regime.

Next Saudi Arabia, then perhaps much of the rest of the world.

Food prices will be a major driver.

Meanwhile, a barometer of the MSM like yahoo.com is leading with "the best dips to serve at your Super Bowl party!"

The weird times have begun in earnest.

This is your brain on reality

"Normal" 1950s Amerikkkan housewife on LSD

Betelgeuse may be about to explode into a supernova and appear as a second sun to our eyes.

The magnetic poles of the earth may be reversing.

There are massive storms, snow, and flooding worldwide. Millions are homeless.

Food prices are about to surge. Shortages may occur.

August authorities are expecting food riots and war-gaming for massive urban unrest in the core states of global capitalism. In many of these countries, it has already begun.

There are strange mass animal die offs worldwide.

Volcanic activity is increasing worldwide.

Meanwhile, the TPTB continue to do the only thing they know how to do: enhance command, control, and surveillance. They just launched the largest ever rocket on the west coast, at Vandenberg, for the National Reconnaissance Office. The payload is classified but suspected to be a new high resolution spy satellite.

Even though I think we have entered the weird time, I think it is only going to get weirder. Weirdness equal to what that housewife saw.

While I don't know if the definitive caesura I crave will ever arrive, perhaps the events I am thinking about have such a massive, geological, cosmic time frame in their unfolding that a transitional phase of even a few decades is the caesura.

A day on

As they say, MLK day is "a day on, not a day off."

Let us utilize his implacable moral courage and sophisticated political, philosophical, and theological analysis to examine ourselves and the social world we live in, not only one day a year, but everyday, especially in this time of trial and tribulation, in this time of apocalypse (which is not a universal destruction but rather an unveiling).

And what it unveils is that Babylon is falling.

Everything MLK said was spot on. The content of his prophetic outrage has never been responded to by "the system" in any meaningful way. In fact, everything he identified as an abomination has gotten much, much worse.

On Monday, January 10, the Department of Defense's general counsel Jeh C. Johnson said MLK would support the permanent wargasm.

"I believe that if Dr. King were alive today, he would recognize that we live in a complicated world, and that our nation's military should not and cannot lay down its arms and leave the American people vulnerable to terrorist attack."

So wicked. So foul.

Anyone unfortunate, stupid, deluded, or bored enough to still be paying attention to the MSM has been subject to saturation coverage of the Tuscon shooting and fawning adulation of Obama's speech given there, which glorified the state as much as it consoled anybody.

Listen, he authorized a Predator drone strike in the sovereign country of Pakistan on the first day or so of his pResidency and has escalated their usage even over and above that of his giggling blood-soaked mass-murdering predecessor.

Obama does not giggle.

Each attack kills 2-3 times more than were killed recently in Tuscon, at a minimum.

1.4 million have been killed in the other "theater of operations," Iraq.

The Kwa keeps these wars invisible to itself. These wars are not invisible to other people. Virtually every other country in the world see them and excoriate them, except perhaps Britain and Israel. They are certainly not invisible to the people being slaughtered in Pashtun wedding parties by unseen Predator drones.

A million have been made homeless by recent flooding in Sri Lanka.

An area greater than the size of France and Germany combined is under water in Australia.

Over 600 are dead from flooding in Brazil.

The litany of horrors could go on ad infinitum but none of them of covered by the pack "journalism" (sic) of the MSM.

Don't satisfied with the last 15 seconds of MLK's speech in Memphis the night before he was killed by covert Amerikkkan state power, as the civil trial regarding his assassination found. Listen to the whole thing.

Then live up to it.

Is the New Madrid fault line about to blow its stack?

It's tough being a bird in the South lately

I'll get up to New Madrid in second, but first, a news mash up.

Anyone who still doubts Obama is anything but a toady of Wall Street, Big Business, and the existing power structure need look no further than the appointment of William Daley, JP Morgan Chase executive and brother of Chicago mayor Richard Daley, as new White House Chief of Staff to relieve them of those doubts. This from a president who told "60 Minutes" in 2009 that he "did not run for office to be helping out a bunch of fat cat bankers on Wall Street."

Horseshit, liar.

That is exactly why you ran and even the Obots are finally starting to figure that out. Of course, the bloviating punditocracy is spinning Daley as a "centrist," which is a code word in pundit-speak for "fuck the liberals, they have no where else to go, and keep capitulating to Big Business on every front."

All this to attract those non-existent swing voters.

Meanwhile, the orderly movement away from the dollar as the international currency of reserve continues apace with the first issuance of yuan-denominated bonds by the World Bank. Although it was relatively small, only $76 million, and sold entirely in Hong Kong, whose yuan deposits have exploded by more than 150% in six months to October 2010. With it, the World Bank joined a number of other entities that have already floated yuan-denominated bonds, such as the Asian Development Bank, McDonald's, and Caterpillar.

With China poised to become the third-largest stakeholder in the World Bank after the United States and Japan, starting to buy PIIGS paper (potentially “saving” the euro and indebting the Eurozone to China and the yuan), and agreeing, with Russia, to conduct bilateral trade in each other’s currencies last month, it will be interesting to see what happens to the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights. It is currently a basket based on the dollar, euro, pound, and yen.

Given that Obama has pretty much solidified his administration as a third term for Bush, it will not be long before the United States is completely isolated on the world geopolitical stage, with only Great Britain, Israel, and possibly Japan as significant allies. The rapidly rising power bloc of China, Russia, Iran, Venezuela, and Brazil (and perhaps India, although they are masters of playing both sides off the middle) might decide to apply the coup d’grace to the tottering American empire by either creating a new international currency of reserve on their own or muscling the dollar off the IMF Special Drawing Rights and replacing it with one or more of their own currencies. This might not be an entirely fiat currency either. It might be linked to a basket of commodities.

The American deficit is closer to $200 trillion than the $14 trillion figure being bandied about during the current discussions about raising the debt ceiling. A telling symptom of the collapse of international investor confidence in the dollar can be seen very clearly in one simple fact. Foreign buyers have stopped showing up at Treasury bill auctions. The Federal Reserve has been the main buyer for the last six months and they plan on buying $600 billion more in 2011, the majority of what is planned for sale this year.

So the Federal Reserve invents money out of thin air and uses it to buy the unwanted debt of a bankrupt country.

As some official from, I think, the Nixon administration once said "that which cannot go on forever, won’t." Indeed. If we make it through 2011 without a dollar crash or hyperinflation, I would be surprised.

How about that national security insider, John Wheeler, who apparently had very high-level expertise in aerospace, cyberwarfare, and chemical and biological warfare, found dead in a Delaware landfill after witnesses in a Wilmington parking lot and train station found him looking so "disoriented and disheveled that he was mistaken for a homeless person?" Police were said to have "spent the weekend searching Wheeler’s homes where, it reported, floorboards had been removed from the kitchen."

Lord only knows whose toes he stepped on and how.

It also appears there has been another unexplained missile launch on January 2 like the one off of Los Angeles in November of last year. This time, it was off of the coast of Texas, at Padre National Seashore near Corpus Christi. It headed straight up and was much, much faster than the one off of Los Angeles.

Could the Chinese be playing a game of cat and mouse? Could their submarine technology have possibly gotten that good? Was the Newfoundland "missile" last year related to these two "missiles?"

There has been a spate of mass animal die-offs world-wide.

Click here to view a worldwide map.

Especially troubling are those located on and around the New Madrid fault line where Illinois, Indiana, Missouri, Arkansas, Kentucky, Tennessee meet.

These include approximately 5,000 blackbirds falling from the sky in Bebee, Louisiana on January 1 dead of (according to the Arkansas Game and Fish Commission) "acute physical trauma leading to internal hemorrhage," 450 grackles, starlings, brown-headed cowbirds and red-winged blackbirds dead near Baton Rouge, Louisiana on January 4 of broken beaks and backs, dozens of dead blackbirds in a Gilbertsville, Kentucky woman’s yard, and 100,000 dead drumfish along a 20 mile stretch of the Arkansas River in Franklin County, Arkansas.

The New Madrid Fault Line was the site of four of the largest North American earthquakes in recorded history, all approximately 8.0, in a three month span between December 1811 and February 1812. Because this is also the confluence of the Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, and Tennessee Rivers, the ground here is highly saturated and apparently has the potential to become essentially liquid during quakes of that magnitude.

"In a report filed in November 2008, The U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency warned that a serious earthquake in the New Madrid Seismic Zone could result in "the highest economic losses due to a natural disaster in the United States," further predicting "widespread and catastrophic" damage across Alabama, Arkansas, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri and particularly Tennessee."

Animals are well known for their sensitivity to the time right before major earthquakes. Shifting fault lines might also be releasing poisonous subterranean gases. Could all the oil that escaped from the BP disaster have affected the plate tectonics? Could the relatively rapid migration of the magnetic North Pole towards Russia be throwing animals off? Some say we might be in for a magnetic pole reversal soon too.

Is the New Madrid fault line about to blow its stack?

What if there was a New Madrid earthquake in the 8.0-9.0 range AND the Yellowstone super-volcano blew?

Then it would be game over for the 'Kwa.

"Please feel free to email me" (revised and enlarged)

“It’s hard to eat shit
Without having visions
And when they’re real
The world’s like heaven.”
– Allen Ginsberg

I quit my slave labor university job and moved out of my rental house which was collapsing all around me and just started stealth camping in the hidden pockets of Honolulu. I had a regular circuit of about 7 or 8 places I went to in rotation, although I spent most of my time up on a ridge above campus.

I thought I would get to “all but dissertation” in my PhD in a matter of weeks but it just kept dragging on and on and on. I love living outdoors now and then but it was starting to be a bit of drag. Rainy season didn’t stop when it usually does in March but just kept going on and on and on. I was schlepping 50 pounds in a big backpack a few miles on a bike almost daily.

My mom’s downstairs tenants of five years moved out. We cut a deal. I’ll help you fix up the downstairs in exchange for you letting me live there for a few weeks. This was late May.

I put up a profile and some pictures on a free dating website. Same as usual when I try my hand at this. I send out 100 little textual probes and get a tiny handful of responses, all of which fizzle out within a few back and forths. Except for one. One chick dug my profile and sent me a note. I checked out her profile. In one of her photos, she was holding two pistols across her chest in an x, wearing a long black skirt, red stockings, a funky wool hat, sunglasses, and a wry expression. She was Russian. A lawyer. A New Yorker.

Hmmm. Intriguing.

Date: May 24, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: aloha
To: T.R. Ponchik

Thanks for complimenting my profile.

Pistol packing and black-belted? What are you, Putin's niece?

Date: May 24, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Re: aloha
To: Stonefruit

Hi :) I like your sense of humor. Tell me a bit about yourself pls! Where/with whom do you live? Single? Kid(s)? Job(s)?

Date: May 24, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: RE: aloha
To: T.R. Ponchik

Thanks, I think humor is very important.

I live by myself in the neighborhood I grew up in, Kalihi. Single. No kids. My last job was at the University of Hawaii as a professional education researcher, but I quit to write my dissertation. Like my profile said, my work has always been in school administration, education law at the state legislature, and non-profit administration. Some teaching. Stuff that is gratifying but doesn't pay well.

My mother, father, and ex-wife are all lawyers and I've grown up around the culture my entire life. I've known hundreds of them and can count the ones I like on one or two hands.

I feel some insight into the Slavic soul from a junior year abroad as an exchange student in Belgrade. Recently I traveled back to the former Yugoslavia, so I saw it before and after the war.

Your turn. Why law? Why did you leave Russia? Why did you come to Hawaii?

Date: May 24, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Re: aloha
To: Stonefruit

I live on X St.! Sounds like we are neighbors?

Why law? Why leave Russia? Why Hawaii? Serious questions! But would take way too long to respond in writing. Running out in a few minutes to take my kid to gymnastics. Perhaps, if you'd like, we could chat over coffee or a drink? It is the most efficient way to get to know each other and ascertain chemistry, don’t u agree?

We could move to texting, if you'd like?

Date: May 24, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: Re: aloha
To: T.R. Ponchik

We are indeed neighbors. Drinks or coffee sounds great. Maybe something in the neighborhood?

We can text. My number is X.

I didn't see any Ponchik in the Hawaii Bar Association face book.

(I took her to a friend's backyard BBQ for our first date. I knew that would be a good call. She is a malahini (new to Hawaii) and a backyard BBQ would give her a good slice of island culture. There would also be a lot of people, so we wouldn’t have the pressure of constant one-on-one attention during our first date.

I rolled up to the intersection she identified as being near her house in my mom’s Austin mini. She was in North Carolina sorting out her parent’s estate after the recent death of her father, my granddad.

T.R. showed up at the side of the car and dropped her phone getting in. It seemed like she was flustered, but in a good cute way; like “this seems interesting – whoops – my phone!” She got in. She was wearing glittery eye shadow.

“That glitter is gonna make me lose my sense of direction on the road!” I said.

She laughed and smiled. We stopped at a grocery store on the way and bought some oysters for grilling and condiments, lemon and Tabasco, seasame oil and shoyu.

It took me a little while to locate the party even though I had lived in that neighborhood for six years as a teenager. I finally found it. I parked and we walked up a steep wet driveway into the dark but towards the noise, a small well-lit house on the side of steep ridge.

I shook the hands of the men I knew there and kissed the cheeks of the women; our standard island greeting.

From then on, T.R. and I grilled oysters and pretty much ignored the party, happy to be digging each other and learning about one another’s backgrounds. She had a Harvard B.A. and a Yale J.D. She wasn’t no idiot. Pretty hot too. Tall skinny Russian Jew. She went to the “fame high school” in New York City for painting after emigrating from Russia at 13.

Alright! Arty! Bonus points!

Date: May 25, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: Stonefruit

Thanks! I had a great time last night.

Date: May 25, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: T.R. Ponchik

Me too.

Date: May 25, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: Stonefruit

Let me know if you'd like to hang out again some time!

Date: May 25, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: T.R. Ponchik

I surely would. Anytime.

Date: May 26, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: Stonefruit

Guess u prefer not to text? ;) I have a nanny this afternoon. R u free?

(I’m thinking “nanny?! Take care of your own damn children.”)

Date: May 26, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: T.R. Ponchik

I am free this afternoon. What is your pleasure? I'd be happy to show you some highlights of our neighborhood, or whatever strikes your fancy.

Date: May 26, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: Stonefruit

Nanny arrives at 2:30 pm. I wanted to bodyboard. Called surf report but doesn't sound like there's much surf. I would love to go on an adventure with you! In the neighborhood or otherwise. Hoping your dealer got back to you! ;)

(Weed dealer that is.)

Date: May 26, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: RE: Those websites
To: T.R. Ponchik

If you want to get your gills wet, we can, even tho there is no surf today. There's always something at Sandy’s or Makapuu at least.

We can swing by my friend's place on the way but he's still not answering my calls.

Date: May 26, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: Stonefruit

Sandy’s or Makapuu sounds fun! When should I be ready?

Date: May 26, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: RE: Those websites
To: T.R. Ponchik

We can go now, but I’m car less. Map quest X street.

Date: May 26, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: Stonefruit

Just left you a vm - see u in 15-20 min?

Date: May 26, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: Re: Those websites
To: T.R. Ponchik

Perfect

(She rolled up in a BMW 635 with one side smashed in.

"What happened here?" I asked.

"Oh, I hit the wall while I was going down the driveway of a parking garage."

Hmmm. OK. I think I'll drive. Less trouble telling directions too. If she was new to town, she wouldn't have known how to get where I wanted her to go.

I took her to Spitting Caves on the way to surfing, an incredibly beautiful 60 foot rocky cliff on the sea. Two fisherman guarded their poles down by the surf. We ensconced ourselves in a brushy nook in the heights above them. She said “you’re cute!” and we dove into one another and started making out. Kissing, sucking on her little bitty titties – oh, one is pierced – feeling up her cunt – oh, it’s pierced too.

Damn, we might have a freak on our hands! Will those fishermen see us? Ah, who cares.

We spent so much time making out we never got around to surfing.

On the way back to town she mentioned a Bloodhound Gang song she liked. Neither of us could remember the title, even when she recited most of the lyrics. I recognized it right away. I like the Bloodhound Gang too. “You’ve had enough of two hand touch, you like it rough.” I even called my best friend, who had turned me on to them in the first place, but he couldn't remember the song title from the lyrics either. Finally, the google machine helped me figure out which one it was. I bit torrented it, and sent her the file.

Within two weeks of meeting one another, we were professing love and discussing baby names. I was announcing my ownership over her, to her delight. For the next two months we were inseparable, shoulder to shoulder, hip to hip, 24/7. Our base of operations had a lanai with a beautiful view of Honolulu harbor, surrounded by the yellow-white and ruby blossoms of Tahitian ginger and Plumeria.

By day we tooled all over Oahu in her BMW, which was an absolute joy to drive. It just purred. It was so heavy, so powerful, and made such a great noise. I gave her the full-on puka shell tour guide treatment, all the secret beautiful spots.

I did all the driving all the time and loved it.

But mostly we just surfed. All over the south shore during the swells of summer. Well, I surfed. She mostly bobbed and tried to avoid actual waves.

I surfed more that summer than the previous five years put together.

By night we macked. Grilled more oysters (which rapidly became our signature dish), shrimp, filet mignon, fish, whole calamari, vegetables marinated in extra virgin cold pressed olive oil, balsamic vinegar and garlic. Drank champagne with caviar. Drank nothing but top shelf whiskey, scotch, wine, and beer. Smoked the best weed. Listened to the best music. Watched the funniest videos (Chappelle, Ali G, Beavis and Butthead, Will Farrell, you name it). Looked at the greatest art. Read each other poetry and fucked each other senseless.

I tried to show her arty stuff I liked. She seemed to tolerate it but never quite get it or be interested by it. My curiosity is insatiable and omnivorous. I was surprised to learn hers was not, even though she had been such a great painter. It became a pattern. Many of the things I loved the most, I couldn't get her to understand.

Even Russian art movies like "Andrei Rubilev" by Tarkovsky. Nothing.

I remember one time I went to a volunteer work day at a local nature preserve/community garden in Kalihi valley, the valley I grew up cruising around in. I worked with 50 little kids from a Hawaiian culture-based charter school I have been associated with for a decade.

We built garden beds. It was adorable. After they left, the job candidates (myself among them) and a full-time AmeriCorps volunteer and eventually the main administrator took us on a tour of the land. Even though they had cut down the trees, I still retained a primordial muscle and visual memory of the topography of the land everywhere we stepped. The old Japanese tea house where I almost squatted. Everything.

When I came home to try and share my overwhelming bubbling enthusiasm with T.R., I could tell she didn't get it. At all. She is a New Yorker. What could my incredibly passionate love of being outdoors, native Hawaiian culture, and environmental conservation possible mean to her? Oh well, I still wanted to try and make it work.

For the honeymoon phase, it did. We just utterly fucking macked.

Nicknames were involved. She was monkey, penguin, penguin of my monkey, monkey of my penguin, baby cakes, cakes of my baby, milfy, milfy spice, apple of my eye and fire of my loins, and a few others. I had a bushel full of endearing nicknames for her. This is only a smattering. Naturally, they all had a back story too.

She said "you’re always finding ways to compliment me.” Like it was flattering but at the same time overkill from someone she wanted to be more authoritarian.

She was not without baggage. Within a couple weeks, I sensed she might be bipolar. I asked her straight up "are you bi-polar?"

"Sometimes."

Lord almighty, here it comes.

She admitted to smashing a new flat screen TV still in the box and not one but two functional laptops. She was still married and living with him in separate rooms (even as he dated three chicks while T.R. and I were together), a six year old daughter, $200,000 in debt for student loans and credit cards and needing to declare bankruptcy, a DUI in Arizona that (she alleged) prevented her from taking the bar in Hawaii, even though she had already been here for a year.

Even though she was still married, I ain’t the cheating type. It was all upfront with me and this guy. T.R. and I often went over to her place to steal his food and Glenlivet. She seemed to take special delight on these pillaging runs. He didn’t seem to mind too much, like he had become accustomed to a pattern.

"Varishka!" he called her, Russian for "thief."

Sometimes we even hung out with him and whatever girlfriend he was with at the time. We even went to the beach with girlfriend number 2 as a double date (even though he wound up dumping her by text too - what a tool - they deserve each other). For awhile, everything seemed cool. Not like I was sneaking around with a married woman. Hell no. I would never do that. We all knew the score. Boy, what a nice, mellow, and understanding boyfriend I was.

She said the marriage had been emotionally over for two or three years and they just hadn't gotten around to divorcing, in part because they had a kid. Hmmm. OK.

Early on she said “you can’t ever ask me about my previous sex life." Why, because of quantity or depravity? Perhaps both? What were we talking about here, dozens of lovers a year? Some uniquely hideous kink?

She did have a sexy latex two piece number and we were talking about a threesome from the start and she talked about S & M shows she used to go to in NYC (and she wanted to go to one in Honolulu during our relationship) and she talked about a few of the girls she had been with. “Don’t ever ask me about my sex life” is a phrase to surely pique a fella’s interest. I was right next to her when she called her doctor for the results of her STD test, so we could stop wearing condoms (or if it wasn’t a real call, she sure was a convincing actress).

So I thought “Well, if she is clean and the skills she has developed from her experience accrue to my benefit, I can live without knowing." But I there were definitely moments when I wanted to say “Tell me your entire sexual history, everything.” I’m no prude. I don’t think there is anything she could have said that would have shocked me except maybe incest I guess. I always figured there would be time to ask about that later but the clock ran out on that one.

Kind of like that time I was hanging out at a friends house and saw this image. Two of my friends, surfer boys, great physiques, both wearing rubber slippers, board shorts, no shirt, sunglasses, coconut frond hats, and each holding a gay Paris Hilton dog. They looked like twins. How funny. Masculine looking dudes with little gay dogs. How incongruous. I should have taken a picture. Ah well, I see them kind of often. There will always be time to restage the picture when I have a camera.

One of the dogs got run over a few days later.

In spite of all the warning signs and red flags, did I care? Hell no.

I was like Kanye West in one of the theme songs of our courtship, our honeymoon period: “you can’t tell me nothing.” We were strictly balling and I was macking as hard as I ever macked before. She was gorgeous and the sex was hot. Even though I couldn’t bust a nut inside her, which was weird. That had never happened before. I couldn't get her off either, which had also never happened before. Just like I had to finish myself off manually and blow a load at her eyes, so to she always had to finish herself off with her Hitachi Magic Wand, what she called her "Japanese girlfriend." But once she got rolling with that thing, look out. She might cum four or five times.

And porn! Tons of porn! She almost couldn't have sex without a laptop or two of youporn.com going. Well, definately she could but she sure preferred it on.

I did freaky shit with her I never did with anybody else. Fisted her twice, plenty of anal. She was dying for a threesome. So was I. Then she was dying for a foursome. “You think I’m gonna let some dude fuck you?” “Why not?” she asked. Oh fuck. This chick is gonna be trouble.

She loved to suck my cock, which she called "majestic." She made the “glug glug” choking-on-it sound instead of the light moan most chicks do, a real turn on. And she used to deep throat it all the way down, constantly, another turn on.

She swallowed gallon upon gallon of cum and never spit once. I blew loads all over her and you know what? She invariably slept with it on.

One time she said “Use me however whenever you want. If you want to fuck me and I’m asleep just start fucking me.”

She was a freak. I loved it.

She was also my height, tall for a woman. Her legs were even longer than mine. They were so long that when I bent her over for doggy style, her twat was still inches above my belly button and I had to shove her legs to the side to get the twat and the cock at the same altitudes.

She said many beautiful things. “You're the ideal man for me.” “You're so good for me.” “You’re so good for the twat.” "You are a masterful lover." I even believed it. I thought this had the potential to be my last relationship. I wanted to grow old with her.

I saved her life once when she got thrown against the rock walls of Point Panic, a surf break in town. I was bodysurfing, she was body boarding. I surfaced to look at her position every two or three minutes. I saw her fading into the rocks. Oh shit. I knew she wouldn't know what to do. I started hauling ass swimming towards her. After a minute, I am half way there and she has begun climbing up the rocks. Oh double shit. She can either climb out of it or get into even deeper, more dangerous territory. I finally arrived at the rocks after two minutes swimming top speed. She ducked behind boulders as the surf pounded in. Not bad. She is struggling but she has good instincts.

"Throw me your fins!” I shouted. She did. I stuffed them in my board shorts as I swam, hovering around her.

“Throw your board in the water!” She did. Waves slammed it into the rocks. Forget about that. That is the last thing I care about right now. She ducked to avoid another set of waves pounding into the rocks.

I shouted “come more down and jump into the water when I tell you, after this next wave!”

Crash went the wave. She lodged herself behind a boulder. As the spray and foam dissipated, she started inching her way cautiously down the rocks. I wanted her low enough to make a safe jump and to do it half way between waves.

“OK! Now! Jump!”

She did. I knew the next set of big waves was rolling in. I grabbed her and threw her arms around my torso in a lifeguard hold.

“Hang on baby. We’re moving out,” I told her and started swimming to safety out of the waves with a body as big as mine on my back.

It is like the visionary comedian Bill Hicks said: “It’s gonna take a very special woman to make me happy. Or, a lot of average ones.” I thought I was her special man. I would come to learn I was only one of her average ones.

She liked it rough in the sack. She wanted an authoritarian, domineering man. I've been a feminist my whole life but this has been changing lately, even before I met her. There are differences between men and women. We each have our natural roles and the natural male role it to run shit. We are bigger and stronger. It is simple evolutionary biology. We protect and provide for. The timing was incredible.

One time she said "you don't even rape me, hit me, spank me, or handcuff me," very peeved. Shit, you must be kidding. I bent her over my knee then and there and gave her five swats on each ass cheek.

One time she said "beating and spousal rape used to be common in the old days in Russia among the peasantry. It works.”

God, what a weirdo.

I brought up the legal implications of her attitude on occasion after that.

"If this relationship ever goes south, and I've actually done the kind of shit you keep asking for, that will be my ass, not yours."

"I wish you would leave that kind of talk out of the bedroom."

Well, it will still be my ass and not yours, no matter what you say now.

Then one time I spanked her again thinking that was what she wanted now and then and she said "It is so demeaning when you do that."

What the fuck did this chick want?!

She said she was a painter. I asked to see her portfolio. I was expecting to see some cute little sketches of this or that. But my god, she was absolutely incredible. She showed me a little book of snapshot-sized photos. They were all photographs of large color paintings she had made. I instantly thought of Chagall, Moreau, Redon, and some of the other most esoteric and visionary artists of the last two centuries. She was that good. But apparently quit since college on, except for some totally indifferent abstract crapspressionism over the last few years.

She showed me a Fiona Apple video of the interior of a house getting destroyed. I thought “I’ll see your gratuitous destruction and raise you arty” and showed her “Media Burn,” a famous media piece, a short video of a rocket car smashing into a wall of televisions, and some Chris Burden shorts, like the one of him getting shot and the one of him crawling naked over broken glass.

Early on in our relationship, it seemed like the cockier and more self-assured I was, the more she liked it. “I’ve already forgotten more about art than you will ever know." She responded with adoring approval. Then I saw the photo book of her amazing paintings and thought “maybe I spoke too soon.”

For two months, our honeymoon phase was incredible.

I took T.R. and her little girl to the state farm fair (food! rides! games! pig races!) and other things. She kept saying how great I was with her, over and over. It felt like it was true. It was fun being a step-dad. Quite draining because the girl was very precocious and an absolute sponge for all the attention you could give her, but a cute role for me nonetheless.

I even played host and puka shell tour guide again for her heavily-accented Russian family from New York City when they came to visit Honolulu. Now that I look back on it, her dad did have a lecherous aspect. Did he sexually abuse her? That would explain a lot. The sexual freaks in my life have almost always been sexually abused.

She had lots and lots of sexy underwear. She said “You dress for dinner, I dress for bed.” One time I was doing our usual dinner routine, grilling something delicious on the lanai. She came outside in this incredibly sexy puple ensemble. A bra/camosile, panty/ultra short skirt and garter strap and stocking thing.

People standing on the lanai are completely visible to anybody on the street just 15 feet below. Now, I dig people like the Beats, Henry Miller, and Anais Nin for bringing a frank discussion of complete erotic reality into contemporary literature and I think it shows in my writing. There is not a whole lot sexually I wouldn’t be willing to talk about with anyone adult. But even I have certain limits of propriety.

“T.R., you look fabulous but, c’mon, there are little kids riding bikes on the street.”

“So?! It won’t traumatize them.”

“Go put a robe on.”

I played tour guide for another friend of hers, a very young Yale law professor who was a major ass dweeb. I took them to some beautiful remote tidal pools at the bottom of a high cliff. They wouldn't have had any idea about this place without their native guide.

It seemed like I was settling into a role. I was an only child until 14, then one half brother for each set of divorced parents. I loved my solitude and guarded it jealously, even during my marriage, which probably helped to kill it. Maybe I would be a family man for the second half of my life?

During our honeymoon trip through the Pacific Northwest after being together for about two months (without her kid; she had been at her two sets of grandparents on the mainland for most of the summer), I thought about a hypothetical conversation with her husband: “Dude, I'm taking your women. I’m taking your wife and I’m taking your daughter.” Our trip was a combination of motels, camping, and visiting my friends and her family. It was incredible.

One night, it was a little dangerous. It was her first time camping, my 5 millioneth. We had a beautiful site right next to a medium sized but solidly pumping river. We were isolated, in the corner. Several spots were empty until the next occupied site. She was so excited to be there. At around 11pm she just started bouncing all over everywhere in our campsite. She even got up on our rental SUV's roof. Come down from there you silly goose. She is still bouncing around. Oh fuck, she is by the edge of the river. She could fall and smack her head or break a limb and we are hours from civilization. I started to get nervous and moved towards her. She stumbled on the river's edge. Oh shit! Ah, she only scraped her shins. She got off lucky. What a relief. That could have been bad.

“Ok, when we get back you're moving in with me.”

For awhile, it was awesome. I'm a step dad! Instant family! Just add water! The little girl made friends with other kiddies in the neighborhood, just like I had 35 years ago. T.R. said the girl had never had that before since they moved to Honolulu a year before. They didn’t know anyone. The little girl’s last neighborhood didn’t have any kids. Her last school sucked and she didn’t make any friends there either. I bet she was the only snowflake there.

We moved in together. Her husband had arranged to move her enormous amount of shit out of storage and into our place. When we got back from out trip, I couldn't believe it. It was neck deep in every room. How am I going to fit it all in? But I did it and built two disassembled beds because I loved her and thought we had a beautiful future together.

We shared media together getting to know one another. We watched things of mutual interest, mostly her favorites she turned me on to.

50 cent “Candy Shop,” Kanye West “Flashing Lights,” and others, which almost invariably involved hot cars and hot women.

Now, I have always thought those kind of videos were crass, materialist, and appealed to our basest, most trivial instincts. Actually, when I was 15, I was already reading the Beats, deep into a lifetime study of Zen Buddhism, and listening to arty, esoteric music. Even then I was an urbane, sophisticated, and sensitive artist-intellectual.

But watching this stuff with her, I wanted more and more. The hot cars in the music videos got me on a car kick. I started you-tubing every high end sports car I could think of, preferably going as fast as possible. I started watching a lot of off-roading. Rally races, Paris-to-Dakar, Baja 500, stuff like that.

Low brow comedy became another staple. And of course porn, incessant porn.

One day I said “you got me acting like a 15 year old. Just checking out hot cars, hot chicks, and retarded comedy.” She laughed and smiled approvingly. But the deeper I got into it, the less she approved of it. After a week or two, if I had watched more than half an hour of cars, she might say “ that’s boy stuff” dismissively.

Same with the dumb humor. “Boy stuff,” although she never lost her insatiable appetite for Beavis and Butthead.

WTF!? Did she want me to cultivate archtypical male appetites or not?

One time, her daughter's best little girlfriend, a Filipina girl of 8 or 9 came over, and asked T.R. about me: “Is he a teenager or a man?”

T.R. laughed. “A little bit of both, I think.”

Then domesticity starting to taking its toll. I tried to kick Xanax, thinking a four year dependency might be the biggest part about why I couldn’t bust a nut in her guts. It led to an insomniatic withdrawal nightmare week.

Date: September 14, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Pls let me know how u r doing, Baby S
To: Stonefruit

Better, thank you. That late night walk was a life saver. You are a treasure. I finally slept a few hours too. If it isn't convenient for your daughter to stay with your husband tonight, please feel free to bring her home.

(Then I had a heavy flu/cold thing for two weeks. Then I had a week of debilitating headaches. I never get any of this crap! I usually only get sick every couple of years.

I finally started to recover. I went to campus on my bike daily to establish a structure and encourage progress on my dissertation writing. I finally had a good schedule going. I was feeling better and getting traction on my thesis. Everything seemed to be getting back on track.

Then a moped rammed me from behind at 35 mph while I rode my bicycle home from campus. It destroyed my bike, a real Maserati, a carbon fiber Trek road racer.

For a month, this woman who said she wanted a macho authoritarian dude saw me instead enfeebled, my virility at low ebb.

Domesticity continued to aggravate our love. I sensed a distance growing between us. We talked about it. We agreed we didn’t want to break up.

One time, she said "you don't even like my husband. He's the father of my daughter. You don't even like my daughter."

WTF?

"No. I don't like your husband." She knew that. Seems like sometimes she didn't even like him. Or maybe, liked him as the father of her child, but didn't respect him. "I think he's a tool."

In a publicity photo for a book he wrote as a young man, he looked like a surly Gene Vincent. A rebel. Then he got an Ivy League degree, pulled a 180, and became an imperialist running dog of the national (in)security establishment.

A Yale PhD in international relations and yet he knows absolutely nothing about international relations beyond the superficial consensus reality, which is completely full of shit. Which he doesn't see. Also a bit of a dweeb. And his art sucks. So fuck him. "Your daughter is a handful but I assume there will come a moment when I fall in love with her and then I'll be able to tolerate anything from her."

So where was this animosity coming from? It seemed more than a bit schizo. Maybe she was schizo, not bi-polar. Some of her medicines were prescribed for both.

I went to Texas to visit my dad and family I hadn’t seen in four years and to make plans to develop land we had just bought on Big Island, so I could move my girlfriend and stepdaughter there too. T.R. seemed down. We were going to homestead and live off the grid. I thought she was into it. I guess I was wrong.

Before I left, we had a little fight about cleaning. She had been doing her new job for about a month and every other day we had the kid and she had to take her to school, so she was usually up around 6:30 am and out the door at 7:30 am. Invariably, her daughter had been up since 6:00 am and was talking to one of her grandmothers on her cell phone about fairy land and all other kinds of imaginary realms, invariably ruled by discipline, procedure, authority, law, and order. Not necessarily justice. Very Saturnine for a a little child. It woke me up every time, drilling through the closed door of her room and the foam plugs in my ear.

T.R.'s lack of help cleaning was starting to piss me off. I was about ready to dress her down for it. One night she brought home this small stuffed monkey with huge plastic eyes that was waving hello. She clearly adored it and saw it as a token of our love, since one of my pet names for her was monkey. I laced into her about the cleaning.

I said "When I stay home to write my dissertation, I spend at least two hours cleaning up after you guys. You leave food everywhere, crap everywhere, the lights on, the doors open. At least just put your dishes in the sink. At least just give me a thank you now and then."

She got defensive. "Well, there are lots of jobs we have to split."

"What are you talking about?"

"Like driving. I drive to work every day."

"You drive to work every day? Of course you drive to work every day. I pedal or take the bus to campus everyday. Aren't we both in charge of our own transportation? What the hell are you talking about?"

“And another thing,” I was on an authoritarian roll (role?) “This monkey stays in the closet. I can’t stand cutesy wootsy shit and these eyes are disturbing."

She started crying silently. Oh shit. I have gone too far. I might have broken something. Oh fuck. I screwed the pooch. I overplayed the macho role I thought she wanted but I was still learning how to inhabit. I “displayed fear,” (always a no-no for those drawn to alpha males). I shit all over her trite, commercialized, but obviously heart-felt token of our relationship.

As I look back on it, this was about the time her mood started to shift. Giving the monkey a place of esteem on the bookshelf in our living room or its own little nook by a window didn’t help. She began to grow distant.

At the airport as I left to visit my family in Texas she said “promise me you will stay faithful and monogamous.”

"Of course, cakes of my baby.")

Date: October 8, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: Hi sweetie!
To: T.R. Ponchik

Hey babe!

Made it to Austin safe and sound. Boy my train from Dallas to Austin took forever. It is great to see my family again, especially my brother. We all met at the bar he works at. A very cool place. In fact, Austin itself is as cool as I remember. Sure has had a lot of building development in the four years since I was here last though.

Let's get on Skype. My name is stonefruit_X

I hope we can IM chat and videophone a lot while I am here. Still planning on 2-3 weeks like I said.

I had another nightmare last night - ugh.

Miss you, love you. Hope everything is going well.

Your hot bf,

Stonefruit

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: October 8, 2010 1:08 am

Howdy. Awake? Feel like chatting? : )

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: October 9, 2010 1:19 am

Let me know if you wanna chat

(I checked out her Facebook wall. She posted "Boyfriend in Texas. Landladyfriend in North Carolina. Boss in Egypt. I could go on." Guess she felt abandoned. It had only been a few days. Then she posted: "It's easy to break up by text. Just type 'It ova.' That's local for "We should break up. Fare thee well."

Major league WTF!

First, big foul for lame use of pidgin, our local dialect of English here in Hawaii, by a malahini. Second, how could she even think about doing something so entirely craven as breaking up by text?)

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: October 10, 2010 4:36 pm

Love u

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: October 12, 2010 4:55 am

V unhappy. Not optimally functioning alone and with this communication. Better break up? Sorry. Let’s stay friends please.

(WTF! I tried to contact her and couldn’t get through. I tried texting, telephone, email, video phone. Nothing worked.)

Date: October 14, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: wtf?
To: T.R. Ponchik

was that break up text?!

(Was she fucking kidding me?! I couldn't believe it.)

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: October 14, 2010

Will look up my Skype info. Husband has houseguests so daughter staying w/me. When would you like 2 Skype? Any return plans?

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: October 15, 2010

Skype name is TR.Ponchik. I’m home if you’d like 2 speak.

Text message from Stonefruit to T.R. Ponchik
Date: October 16, 2010

What is going on?!

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: October 16, 2010

Daughter’s bday party now, not a good time 2 talk. How about 2nite. I’ve been busy and exhausted. What time is good?

Text message from Stonefruit to T.R. Ponchik
Date: October 17, 2010

I love you, Ponchik.

Date: October 18, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject:
To: Stonefruit

Stonefruit, I am sorry you feel upset. You knew I was unhappy. I loved you, then I became unhappy because of our differences, and I stayed unhappy. You are an awesome, brilliant, enlightened, unique man, but we are different. Your leaving and our lack of communication after you left was only one factor in my unhappiness.

Please be kind to let me know your return plans because I would strongly prefer not to have any surprise confrontation. I can pick you up from the airport and otherwise I sincerely hope our friendship survives. In any case, I would really appreciate knowing the date and time of your return when you know.

Date: October 18, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject:
To: T.R. Ponchik

Just out of curiosity and because I am always looking for ways to improve myself, what were our differences and how did I make you feel unhappy?

I heard you say “you're the man of my dreams,” “you are so good for me,” “you're so good for my twat,” “you are a masterful lover,” and variations on these themes so many times that I actually believed them. You know what? I thought the feeling between us was always mutual and profound. Great sex, easy warmth, a deep and abiding bond. Then this. It seems so out of left field. That is what I can't get my head around. If there is any hope of salvaging a friendship, I am going to need to know what went wrong in more detail.

"Me leaving and my lack of communication was only one factor" in your unhappiness. What were the others? Why didn't you share them with me before running off AWOL? I know you were frustrated that you felt I was neglecting you by working on my dissertation some evenings and weekends. I was frustrated with your hypersomia and many other things, but I took the bad with the good, which I thought is what people do with relationships. At least, that was the main thing frustrating you which you articulated. The dissertation was going to be over in a few months. Then I would have my life back and could give you a whole lot more attention. Which I was looking forward to a lot.

I wasn't at all sure I was going to move to the Big Island immediately upon my return to Hawaii - because then you wouldn't be with me right away. I wanted to go ahead of you and daughter by a few months if I had to, to build a place. But to wait until May after daughter’s school year ended for you guys to come over - that really felt like too long for me to wait. I mean the point of being together is to be together, right? I was torn. I do think the shit is about to hit the fan sooner rather than later in the outside world, and I wanted my family (you, daughter, and I - and my Texas folks) to be prepared for it, but then again, I passionately wanted to be with you on a daily basis. So I hadn't made any decisions about what I was going to do upon my return in 2-3 weeks at all.

Believe me, if I was going to fuck off, I would've put all my shit in storage before I left. I thought about that but didn't do it. To my mind, a major vote of confidence our relationship. Which I guess was not interpreted by you that way at all.

For a few days after I arrived, no, I didn't want to talk to you. I admit I did need a few days to myself, partially to process how suddenly and deeply we had (I thought) fallen in love. Then I spent a long time alone with my brother, who I haven't seen in four years and is one of the main reasons I came up here. I didn't even bring my phone or laptop when I went to go cruise with him. Then I wanted you to get on Skype, cuz I didn't know what my phone payment plan was. I'm on Stepdad’s family plan. I don't know if there would be some massive roaming charge or what. So I tried to get you on Skype, because I really wanted to communicate with you, preferably for free and not $100s in roaming fees.

And the time zones suck too. I know weekday mornings you are always rushing to get out the door so that leaves weeknights. With a 5 hour difference, when you usually come home around 630pm, it is already 11:30pm my time. I am usually asleep or winding down fast by then. By my second weekend away, I was trying hard to reach you, to no avail.

Also, besides wanting to see my family that I haven't seen in many years and to make concrete plans for the Big Island/survival of soon-to-come significant economic-geopolitical strife, reasonable goals, I think, I know you know what I was going through in the weeks right before I left. For goodness sakes, I was having repeated nightmares about sleeping and waking in our very own house! Wouldn't you like a change of scene in such a case?

If you honestly hope to salvage a friendship out of this, then you will call me tonight and help me make sense of what happened.

(I was finally able to get in contact with her through Skype IM. No, she doesn’t want to do a video call. I try to pin her down.

What the fuck is going on? What is it about me you don’t like?

Maybe there is room for movement. She wouldn’t explain. Finally, the most I could coax out of her was “you don't like my being on my phone, you don't like Facebook, you don't like rats, you don't like to know anything about my job.”

Phone, Facebook, rats, and her job?! Are you fucking kidding me?!

Yes, she was always on her phone, which I saw as debilitating her life skills (could she even read a map if she could no longer use the mapping function?), a tool of social atomization from the reality of her surroundings, not a means of true communication. But fine, she's Gen Y, I'm Gen X. If that is her bag so be it. Except for some occasional grousing, who cares?

Same with Facebook. A Facebook friend is not a real friend in flesh and blood. More social atomization. She had deleted the "My boyfriend is gone" and the "it ova" posts on her wall. Well, I guess between a break up text and being deleted from a Facebook wall, I am officially persona non grata to a Gen Y-er.

I wasn’t Gen-Y techie enough for her, even though I have made three websites, I blog, I am a digital videographer, I had online videos up before practically anybody, etc etc etc, blah blah blah.

Oh well. And then the rats. Oh, the rats.

She asked me early on if she and the girl could have rats. They loved rats and had had them before as pets. OK, you can have one rat. They came home with two. "It's ok," she said. "They are both sisters." Fuck. Whatever.

Their cage is initially inside our apartment. They are throwing food and shit onto the carpet all around their cage. I put a towel down beneath their cage. Even that is not enough to capture all of the shit they are flinging everywhere. I move them outside near our kitchen window. They start to get too stinky. You can smell it from inside. I move them to the backyard.

A few weeks later the girl goes "this one has a bump on its tail." Ah fuck. They are brother-sister.

Still later, the girl and her main playmate on the street forget to close the cage tightly after they are done playing with them and they escape. Wonderful. A pair of breeding rats on the loose.

About a week later, the girl finds them hiding in some cracks in a rock wall in the backyard. I'm relieved they are found and not on the loose, but pissed they are back in my life.

One day T.R. says "Now don't get mad." Ah fuck. That is never a good phrase to hear. It usually means "Get ready to suppress your totally natural reaction to be furious." "Now don't get mad, but the rats just had children."

Wonderful. I approved one rat and now I'm stuck with a family of inbred rats.

"You can keep the adult male and take the rest to the humane society."

"That's one option," she said. One option?! What happened to her love of an authoritarian man? I was starting to get pissed.

I don't like knowing anything about her job? No, I didn't. She has a Yale J.D. but instead of being a lawyer and making $200,000 a year, she is a secretary making $40,000 a year. For a tax attorney. Is it possible to imagine a more dry and excruciatingly tedious legal practice? I asked her about her job now and then to be polite though, because I am a nice guy.

"I love it! I get to exercise my creativity! One time, I made this report, and I made some of the papers green and some of them blue."

This from a painter I immediately compared to Chagall in my mind the first time I saw her work?!

Or: "how was that lunch? Weren't all the secretaries going to take you out to lunch for a hello thing?"

"It was great. I had ginger chicken. They were all so nice to me."

Shit, howdy, and goddamn. Sounded pretty boring to me from top to bottom.)

Date: October 18, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: Re:
To: Stonefruit

Skype was not working for me.

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: October 18, 2010 7:07 pm

I sent you an email. Please find the kindness, compassion and understanding in your heart not to be angry with me for feeling we are too different to make each other happy.

Date: October 19, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: Re:
To: T.R. Ponchik

Well, clearly we are not meant to be.

Quelle domage. I wanted to help you and support you and be your strong shoulder to lean on so you could have at least a fighting chance at living a rich, rewarding, and fulfilling life.

Good luck being insane and yet still somehow also unmedicatable, having a kid that will eliminate your freedom of action for the next 15 years, being trapped in a sexless marriage, financially bankrupt, and unable to work in your professional field.

Text message from Stonefruit to T.R. Ponchik
Date: October 19, 2010

I apologize 4 that hateful email. It was written in rage, confusion and heartbreak. I 2 aspire 2 civil relations. May all the good things in life come 2 u.

(I returned home to Hawaii from Texas and moved all of my stuff upstairs while she was still at work in one afternoon.)

Text message from Stonefruit to T.R. Ponchik
Date: October 23, 2010

Hope u r well, erstwhile gf, new friend. I will always cherish our brief time together. All the best 2 u in yr next phase of life. Be at peace.

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: Saturday, October 23, 2010 5:03 pm

Hi Stonefruit, saw you called. Thanks for your last 2 texts. I appreciate our relationship as well, wishing you the best. Pls let me know what u wanted to talk about.

Text message from Stonefruit to T.R. Ponchik
Date: Saturday, October 23, 2010 5:11 pm

I want 2 talk about us, for closure, clarity and self-improvement.

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: Saturday, October 23, 2010 6:16 pm

Please feel free to email me.

Text message from Stonefruit to T.R. Ponchik
Date: Saturday, October 23, 2010 5:11 pm

Well, u didn’t respond to my last email, so no point 2 that. Face2face would have showed proper respect 2 what we had but I guess this is our postmodern goodbye.

(As we were breaking up. It was next to impossible to get any type of communication out of her, most of all voice. Definitely not face-to-face, phone once or twice. During a call she said something something something “my therapist said” something something something. I immediately forgot the words surrounding “my therapist” because they were so patently retarded I knew instantly and intuitively they would be a waste of brain space to remember but I also knew just as intuitively she had talked about us in therapy and her therapist validated her decision to dump me and she was grateful for his professional stamp of approval of her impulses and eager to use the credentialing support in her mind.

Who was this quack, to be so firmly convinced she is acting in her best interest breaking up with me? To arrive at such a conclusion, there is no way he could possibly know the entire story. I googled him. He got his medical degree in the Dominican Republic. Great. Probably not the best and brightest psychiatrist in the world.

One night I'm upstairs and I see her arrive at 12:45 am with a dude carrying a guitar in a soft case slung over his shoulder like a haole Kikaida. Uh oh. Chicks can't resist musicians and men can't resist her. I hear one quick shower, one quick tooth brushing, and nothing else. No wine cork popping, no talking, no laughter, no music. Then I heard kissing and make out noises. Maybe sex, who knows?

This is barely a week after the breakup text.

She brings this douchebag to the home I grew up in in, to the house we had such a great summer in?!

Are you fucking kidding me?!

This chick sure doesn't wait long. I walked outdoors to listen to them outside of their window. Yup. They were making out or fucking or something. And in the little girl's room, not even the master bedroom. Should I storm in on them or leave them be? We are kind of broken up, aren't we? But in the house I grew up in? During a month I had still paid rent on? She didn't have the common courtesy to at least go fuck him at his house?

Ah fuck it. I go invade. I still have the key.

Every door was bobby trapped with pieces of a drum kit she had never assembled since she moved in. In opening the front door, I send a cymbal clattering across the room. She stormed out of the bedroom, thankfully wearing a negligee and not completely naked. Although who knows. Maybe it was already up around her neck as she bobbed up and down on his cock. “We’re broken up blah blah blah” she said. I dashed past her and flipped on the lights of the 6 year old girl’s bedroom of their conjugal bliss.

Some shirtless dorky half-bald 30ish guy looked sheepish and confused under the sheets.

I went down to greet them on the street, where they would have to pass on their way to her car. She jumped back when she saw me leaning on the garbage can. “I can’t believe you,” she spits. You can’t believe me?! Oh really? The dork walks by. “So,” I ask him “what band are you in?”

“I’m not in a band.”

“Oh. OK.”

They drove off. She must have gone to an open mike and said to herself: “I am so gonna fuck someone tonight.”

Before she brought that poor slob over, I had put the monkey on a chest of drawers in a place you would see immediately upon entering the front door and put a black cap on it, one I had bought on our Pacific Northwest honeymoon trip. After I had smoothed over that one enraged email I sent, it seemed like we were about to part amicably, with some degree of mutual gratitude for what we had experienced, so I thought placing the monkey there like that would be seen as a whimsical gesture of reconciliation as we parted ways. Sunday morning after she drove off with her fuck buddy or whatever he was, I went down to there again during daylight. I found the monkey and cap thrown behind the piano.

Fuck you too, cunt.

I twisted its head off then and there and threw the two pieces in the kitchen garbage can. Let her see what she has done to our love and any modicum of respect I might have retained for her, that stupid psycho slut bitch.)

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: Monday, October 25, 2010 1:28 pm

I did not want to hurt you at any point. I am sorry about the weekend incident. I am sorry I caused you pain and I hope you and I both find happiness. I plan to sign a lease today. Because my daughter and I need to pack, pls let me know your plans with regard to where we used to live together so I can plan accordingly. I hope some time we can restore friendly communication if not friendship and I continue to wish you the best.

(I tried to leave it on a happy note.)

Date: October 26, 2010
From: Stonefruit
Subject: Re:
To: T.R. Ponchik

I won't be living down there and Landlady is eager to rent it out as soon as possible, so feel free to move out as soon as possible. If I happen to be at the house upstairs when you come by, don't worry, I won't bother you at all.

You were definitely sweet, sexy and fun, Ms. Black Belted!

You are one of the most exciting and gorgeous women it has ever been my pleasure to meet, let alone be with. I wish we could have hashed our differences out instead of ending it so abruptly but such is life I guess. I hope your new guy friend can give you what you thought was lacking with me.

Love,

Stonefruit

Date: October 26, 2010
From: T.R. Ponchik
Subject: downstairs
To: Stonefruit

Stonefruit,

Thank you for this note.

Thank you for the kind words.

I texted Landlady: tonight I will work on making the place presentable for showings, most likely moving out fully on Sunday.

I profoundly appreciate our relationship, past, present and future.

Hoping our communication remains open and we remain assets in each other's lives.

Text message from Stonefruit to T.R. Ponchik
Date: Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Burning the purple kine bud under a bridge…

Text message from T.R. Ponchik to Stonefruit
Date: Wednesday, October 27, 2010

How is everything, Stonefruit?

Text message from Stonefruit to T.R. Ponchik
Date: Wednesday, October 27, 2010

I’ve certainly been better

(She moved out slowly in phases over about a week, leaving the place in shambles and leaving tons of crappy furniture behind.

One time when she was downstairs with her Craig's List movers or where ever she found them, I saw one of them in the street below with a fishing spear that looked just like one of mine that I had in the back of the house. I don't know these people from Adam. I went to go challenge him and take it from him. "I wasn't going to take it," he whimpered. Whatever. Another mover claimed it was his.

Without bothering to check if my two were still in the back, I said "This looks like one of the two I got in back."

"It was from my truck."

From his truck? Who takes spears along on a moving job? "I don't know you guys. I don't know if you are walking off with my shit. Spears are cheap. Take it."

"You better find out whose something is before you take it."

"Whatever."

The spear carrying idiot said "Quit looking looking out of the windows, you prick!"

Prick?! You insult me on my land, in my family home?! I got half a mind to pound you out and I haven't even been in a real fight since fourth grade.

But I let it pass.

And she left her rats there. Since that was one of the main reasons she said we had to break up, I figured they would be among the first things she would take to her new place. Nope. Instead, they were the very last. One time when her Craig's List movers were doing their thing and I was upstairs, I watched her fat 40ish female mover clean their cage. The little girl watched for a minute and then wandered off. The fat lady closed the cage. "I sure hope she closed it up tight," I thought but didn't double check on it because I wanted to give T.R. and her crew their space.

The next morning I'm drinking my coffee in the backyard, taking the air. Ah fuck my ass! The rat cage door is open down on the ground and there are rats everywhere! I grabbed the nearest bucket I could find and started chucking them all into it. I think I got them all except for one of the adult fuckers back in the crack of the wall they escaped to last time. Probably the goddamn mother and probably already pregnant again, fucked by her brother or son.

An old lady who lives next door, the matriarch of a three generation Chinese family living there called me by my name. "Your mom is trying to get in touch with you." She was still on the mainland dealing with her family's estate. "Those rats have been there all morning."

I told her "I think I got all of them but one." These rats have been nothing but a pain the ass the entire time we had them.

I called my mom and told her the rats got loose again and I think I got them all but one. My mom texted T.R. to the effect of "Your rats are loose. What are you gonna do about it?"

My mom told me T.R. texted back saying "I'll send somebody over to catch them."

I arrived on the scene in the afternoon again. There were cheetos all over the place around the cage. One baby rat was near the cage, still loose. I scooped it up and chucked it in the cage.

One of the adults was still missing. She didn't fully recapture all of the rats that had escaped, on top of the job I already did for her in that regard. Since she had already left them unfed and unwatered for a week, and she or her minions had failed to recapture at least two (and God knows how many others still lurking around), there was no telling if or when she would be back to get them at all.

I made a judgement call. This was a public health hazard. A potentially pregnant rat and an unknown amount of inbred baby rats at large. A pet owner who is clearly not responsible. A neighbor was already peeved.

So I sealed off all of the cracks in the wall with concrete.

By this time we are already well into November, which she hadn't paid for. Instead of arranging to have her remaining shitty furniture taken away, she sent a Salvation Army truck to pick it up. Not surprisingly, she wasn't there to oversee their arrival. I left the door open downstairs and ignored them. They passed on all of it. It was all decrepit crap, like you might find on the street. In fact, that was probably where she found it.

When the Salvation Army truck left. I went downstairs to assess the situation. I saw a preprinted tag on the door handle. A box was checked off which read "We are unable to process these items due to (X) Furniture with stains and (X) Requiring repairs." They had passed on all of it.

There were about seven or eight large pieces of furniture. Tables, chairs, a huge bookcase, a huge long chest of drawers, a bed, mattresses. Her Russian "maid," another killer find from Craig's List I am sure, had been lurking about downstairs the previous night. Of course, again, T.R. wasn't there to supervise.

Judging by what I saw downstairs the next day after Salvation Army left, I am not clear what if anything she had done down there. There was a pile of cloths and shoes on the mattresses. There was rotting food in the refrigerator. Tons of kitchen crap in the kitchen closets. The carpet hadn't been vacummed. Her trademark glitter was everywhere. There were two things still hanging in the closet of her daughter's old room in dry cleaning bags. One was a nice raincoat. One was a simple and very lovely baby blue dress. I had an intuition it held great sentimental value for her. Why hadn't she taken it with her first thing then? Whey were her fucking rats still here if she loved them so much and we had broken up over them?

She hadn't moved out on time. She hadn't overseen the last couple visits of her maid or movers. She hadn't overseen the arrival of Salvation Army (even though they left another tag on the door saying "Donor will be home"). She had left the place in shambles.

I was starting to get pissed. If she was willing to donate everything remaining in the unit to Salvation Army and they passed, well fuck it. That was that.

I started throwing it all off the lanai where we had grilled so often and fucked once or twice down onto the street below, chucking it in such a way as to maximize it exploding on impact. Within 45 minutes, I had created a huge pile of debris. Once everything was out of the unit, I went down to the street and smashed everything to splinters and tied and bundled it into neat little packages for the monthly "bulky pick up" garbage men to carry away.

This should have been her job but I was glad to be rid of her.

Her husband finally came that night to grab her rats. Not her. Her husband. He also took one of the five or six garbage bags I had made. Probably the one with the little blue dress. He tried to get my attention at the locked door, but I ignored him.

Another reason we needed to break up, one she had mentioned a few times, was because "I didn't like her music." True, she only had about 30 artists she liked and listened to a lot, while I had 200 gigabytes of mp3s on an exernal hard drive and 12,000 songs on my iPod, from all eras, places, and genres. Way vaster than her musical horizons to say the least. But of her 30, I dug 20. She turned me onto a lot of pop music I hadn't been exposed to before which I would up digging. And a couple of cool Russian bands. And we both came into the relationship loving Kanye.

One time she looked at my iPod. I told her to just pick something. “I don’t know any of these people.” Hundreds of artists. She was flustered. "There’s too many! You give me more to love about you every day,” she said.

When you are falling in love, sometimes it seems like every corny ass love song was written just for you. In my case it was Justin Timberlake's song "My Love." Along with about five or six other tunes, it became a major theme song for our honeymoon phase.

"If I wrote you a symphony just to say how much you mean to me.
What would you do?
If I told you you were beautiful, would you date me on the regular?
Tell me would you?
Well baby I been around the world, but I ain't seein' myself with another girl.
Like you.
I can see us holding hands walking on the beach, our toes in the sand. I can see us on the countryside, sitting on the grass lying side by side.
You can be my baby, making my babies, girl you amaze me.
We gotta do nothing crazy.
See, all I want is for you to do is be my baby."

"What's the point in waiting anymore, cuz girl I never been more sure.
That baby, it's you."

As all honeymoon phases have their theme songs, so too do the breakups. I went on a massive Bob Dylan kick. I found an old demo of his I had never heard before, "Long Time Gone."

"You might see me on your crossroads when I'm passing through.
Remember me how you wish too as I'm drifting from your view.
I ain't got the time to think about it, I got too much to get done
because I been a long time comin' and I'll be a long time gone."

We haven't spoken since that last text and I doubt we ever will again.

It is hard to suss out just what the fuck happened. Best I can figure, I caught the benefit of a three month manic cycle with this hot bi-polar psycho slut and the tragedy of the beginning of a depressive cycle.

"Fare thee well," like she said on her Facebook wall? Bob Dylan has a killer break up song where he goes "Goodbye is too good a word, babe, so I'll just say fare thee well." It worked for me breaking up with my Texas girlfriend a decade ago but not for this one.

I hate to contradict the Bob, but in this case "fare thee well" is too good a word so I'll just say - nothing, except for that last poem and this short story.

I've done a whole heap of traveling over the years. I've been all over the world several times. I've hitchhiked back and forth and up and down all across North America more times than I can even remember. I know what a crossroads is. I seem to have lived there my whole life, literally and metaphorically. I have been there a million times.

I know the way the wind blows a rusty metal sign back and forth slowly on its creaky post.

The old small town crossroads. No people, no traffic no more. Everything has moved out onto the interstates and the Walmarts at the edge of town.

An old school crossroads is even lonelier now than they used to be back in the day. You half expect a tumble weed to blow by, even if you aren't in West Texas or New Mexico.

Lonesome. Lonesome traveller. Lonesome traveller traveling.

That has been much of my life until now. That seems to have been my way, my path, my gift, my curse, my blessing, my aptitude.

I thought this girl would help take me out of all that. I thought this girl and I could build a future together. I thought we might make a self-sufficient little homestead together, one ruled by a few simple ideas: "maintain aesthetics, allure, discipline, fabulous posture, and practicality at all times."

Fuckin' A! Can't go wrong with those!

I saw an adorable cottage being built by our own hands. I saw a beautiful garden being tilled. I saw little bambinos running around in the tall grass. I saw contentment. I saw an idyll.

I thought that was what we had coming up. I was relieved. I was excited. I had finally found the right girl to take to the land. We were going to build a life together. We were gonna make it.

I was madly in love.

But she was clearly troubled, wildly troubled. She was, as the Hopi say, "koyaanisqatsi": out of balance. Just like the technological world she was so obsessively connected into.

I thought I could help her and make her mine for the rest of my life. I ain't no patron saint of troubled chicks or lost causes but I wanted to be her lover, her protector, and even her nurse. Most of all, I wanted to be her best friend and she mine. Forever. Maybe nature, village life, hard physical labor, and gradual detachment from electronics would help cure her of her mental ailments as well.

Maybe. I guess not, as it would seem.

We only go around once on this crazy blue marble of ours. We might as well find a good mate and stand by them shoulder-to-shoulder through thick and thin. Especially with the shit storm headed our way.

Especially now that my family has land. Not only land, but land in a community with people who care about us. Even though Hillary Clinton has turned into Lady Macbeth, she had it just right when she said "it takes a village."

A man alone doesn't stand a chance. A family alone has a tough row to hoe. A village? With the right people, the right skills, and the right natural environment, they have got a fighting chance. Maybe even more than that. They are probably gonna make it just fine.

That's what I thought we had. That's what I thought we were both moving towards together. I was wrong.

As I began to inhabit my new role as an alpha male after a lifetime of feminism, did I veer off into domineering asshole territory? I am sure I did. After spending money like it grew on trees during our honeymoon phase, did I become a whiney bitch about how I had been living off my savings all year? No doubt. Did she ever come to me with any of these concerns before she wandered off AWOL?

No fucking way.

Did she clutch? Did she "mean what she said?" Was she "leading me on?" Did she "mean it when she said it and therefore she wasn't lying?"

Did she even know what the fuck she was doing?

I don't know. Does it really matter? These things happen. When we had that calm conversation about potentially breaking up right before I left, I was completely ready to pull the trigger. But coming from out of left field like that a couple of weeks later was a real kick in the stomach.

If she had come to me with her issues and tried to talk to me about them, if she had dumped me in person or at least by phone, if she hadn't have fucked someone within a week of dumping me, if she had ended the relationship with any modicum of class, I might have taken her back, even with all of her baggage. But she didn't, so I won't.

In the end, all we can do is pick up the pieces and move on.

She was a lot like my other sexually charismatic flings: CW the belly dancer, KG the painter, SC the carbon credit trading executive. They all wandered off after a short while too. Because they could. They were hot and accomplished.

She has about 5-10 more years of sexual charisma that will allow her to keep wandering off at the first sign of boredom or frustration. After that, she will have to start working shit out with whoever she is with. Which she doesn't have the inner resources to do. Honestly, if she makes it to 40 years old without killing herself or becoming permanently incapacitated, I will be surprised. Maybe she can make it as a cranky fat lesbian.

I know it is corny to say you have "to love like you've never been hurt." But you do. Again and again. Everytime. Sometimes a tired wilted cliche is a tired wilted cliche because it is also a miniature poem of ancient wisdom.

I was sure I wanted to go all in. Not because I did not see the warning signs and the red flags. I surely did. But because I knew, good or bad, this would be one hell of a ride. I wanted to put as much on the table as I needed to see all of her cards. It wound up being a lot. She didn’t lay down the hand I might have hoped to see. I lost. But she did not win either.

It has been a strange year.