Piece of cake!

Peace of mind?
Piece of cake!
Thought control!
You get on board anytime you like

I had un unsuspecting mini-birthday party. It was great. Lots of cake. Lots of things I need were bestowed upon me. Socks. Ties. Shirts. Underwear.









My biological birthday is Saturday. I hope my friends bestow lots of shots upon me.

Take a picture, here in the daylight
Oh, ho!
And it's a wild, wild life

Magic and Loss

When you pass through the fire
you pass through humble
You pass through a maze of self doubt
When you pass through humble
the lights can blind you
Some people never figure that out

I was trying to think of an appropriate song for yesterday's post. It was eluding my thoughts so I skipped it. This morning it came to me like a flash.

Lou Reed. Magic & Loss.

The lyrics throughout this whole album are as powerful as they are frightful and daring. I haven't listened to it in a long while since the topic matter is pretty bleak: cancer, death, reticence, anguish, loss. Not the most upbeat songs. Yet powerfully beautiful in their expression. A bent similar to Beck's Sea Change, just not as languid. Quite fitting for me right now, actually.

I think you need a good downer as a point of perspective, an anchor if you will. Life is full of highs and lows. Physical and spiritual. I've been on top of mountains out west, I've been happier than one man should be. I've been sucked underwater with the cracks of death anonymously close; and now the comforts of my physical world have been destroyed.

You have to be very strong
'cause you'll start from zero
over and over again
And as the smoke clears
there's an all consuming fire
lying straight ahead

I'm not going to say that they were only material things that can be replaced, because not one day goes by that I wish it never happened. I would not care about the indifferent things: books, music, clothes. Buy new things, that's what you do. Except that I still feel like I got raped and left for dead in some dark alleyway. Wounds may heal, but scars last forever.

When you pass through
anger and self deprecation
and have the strength to acknowledge it all
When the past makes you laugh
and you can savor the magic
that let you survive your own war
You find that that fire is passion
and there's a door up ahead not a wall

I need to reconcile these events; and realize that things will get better but they will never be the same. Layer new things and new memories on top of the cracks, fill in the gaps, salvage what you can and reconstruct the rest.

And if the building' burning
move towards that door
but don't put the flames out
There's a bit of magic in everything
and then some loss to even things out

From Lou Reed's Magic and Loss

Memory and Loss

Yesterday I began to tackle books. I consider myself an avid reader, so there is considerable volume to process. In general, my engineering, music, photography, art and nonfiction books faired pretty well; the cookbooks are shot (I had them in the kitchen); the fiction, gardening/horticultural, and historical books are all goners.

My personal gutshot was losing Larousse's Gastronomique, a tome I loved not only as a reference, but as an idiom of what cookery and cuisine are all about. I would sometimes read through it on Sunday mornings, when I had all I had planned for the day was "play time" in the kitchen. This baby will be one of the first replacements.

A dime for a cup of coffee

Old man down, way down down, down by the docks of the city.
Blind and dirty, asked me for a dime, a dime for a cup of coffee.
I got no dime but I got some time to hear his story.

Subject: CG'er TWO MARTINIS could use some help
Coffeegeeks one and all, I don't know what to say except thank you. From the bottom of my heart, thank you.

My coffee and espresso time will obviously be on hiatus for an undetermined amount of time. Some of my equipment made it; but most was trashed. I saved some cups, but of course my Rufus Willis cups were MIA. I don't know if my FF!X5 works or not. My Super Jolly isn't jolly anymore, it got super-trashed:



And here's a fitting end to Illy beans:


But don't fret CG-ers, I'm drinking a wonderful cup of Kenya AA (french press) from the one and only Counter Culture Coffee! These beans rock the casbah: black cherries, citrus and a winey brightness that I love (I'm a brightness freak).

I'm trying to keep my head up. I didn't lose my sense of humor either because I need it now more than ever! Perhaps I'll be one of the first guys with a Synesso for home use!


But I'll get back on my feet again someday,
The good Lord willin', if He says I may.
I know that the life I'm livin's no good,
I'll get a new start, live the life I should.
I'll get up and fly away, I'll get up and fly away, fly away.

Pork roll egg cheese and bacon

I got an awesome sound, goin' down
Got an awesome sound, goin' down
Got a pork roll egg cheese and bacon

Hit me again! Stop it. Hit me again! Oh yeah. Hit me again! Stop it. Hit me again!

All of my stuff reeks of smoke, of course; and you can even tell which mini-storage unit is mine just by walking past it. The funny thing is, the particular strain of smoky scent conjures up visions of bacon! A distinct bacon-esque component is laden in my stuff.

"Mmmmm, bacon" (Homer Simpson)

Here's my theory: the building was circa 1912, when lumber was real lumber and walls were made of plaster. A common component of lath & plaster walls was hickory lath boards. Yes hickory. Very stong and resiliant, even when split into thin strips. Also great for barbeque and various smoked meats...

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco

This ain't no party, this ain't no disco - this ain't no fooling around - No time for dancing, or lovey dovey, I ain't got time for that now...

More up-to-date information about the "fire inside" or whatever you want to call it. I've more or less got my stuff into a mini-storage and am proceeding from that standpoint. Tonight was laundry night; Josie and I laundered five triple loader's worth at the local laundromat. I think I managed to save about 25% of my clothing.

Speaking of Josie, I don't know what I would do without her. She's a rock! Having someone you can count on through a shitty time makes it a whole lot less shitty.


Thanks babe!

Letting the days go by/let the water hold me down

Letting the days go by/water flowing underground

Make that: seeing the carpet stained/water squishy underfoot

That was my first impression when the firemen let us back into our apartments. Just walking up the stairs gave us preamble to the soak-a-rama that was coming. Or, as Don Martin would have put it: SHKWITZ SHKWITZ SCHKLURT, SKLORK SKLORK SKLOOSH.

Man, all my sacred belongings were trashed! I mean, I know I had a lot of shit; but how can all of it be trashed?? WTF?? The coup de grace was that my Resto couch and chair were summilarily executed, instead of merely being tortured by smoke, water and char...








Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...
Same as it ever was...Same as it ever was...

Burnin' down the house

Three, hun, dred, six, ty, five, de, grees, burnin' down the house!

Well folks, not only am I a transplanted Northerner, now I am a homeless transplanted Northerner. In an amazing bong-related mishap that involved 16 squatter-hippies, a ball of hash and a bit too much falafel; Scooby, Shaggy and the whole happy-go-lucky crew managed to torch a vacant unit in my apartment building.



The irony here is that when I pulled out of my lot at work, I thought I caught a whiff of a little barbeque action as I passed Ericsson Stadium. Then as I got closer to my place I saw the plume of smoke. At first I thought to myself, "whoa, that's in my neighborhood; and what's up with that helicopter?"



So a bunch of us sat and watched the pyrotechnics until the fire chief told us to go get a good night's sleep; because tomorrow would be a long day for us.



The Charlotte Observer newspaper articles are here:
Multimedia | Photos from the Dilworth fire
Hot day, blaze spark biggest crew since '94
Aftermath: Scorched and soggy