Me and my metaphor

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I have this recurring dream in which the brakes in my car give out. The shudder these dreams share is that moment when I’m pressing down but the car careens.
I’ve had this dream in various forms for probably twenty years or so. Not too often — every couple of months I’d guess. I had a version of it last night as one of my last late-dawn eye-flitters. The thing that struck me, as I yawned myself into the day, is that we’re hardwired for metaphor.
Our brains could operate in a much more literal fashion. We could fall asleep and a fast-talking phantom self could give us an eight-hour lecture on exactly what it is we hope for and what we fear. But instead we close our eyes and we generate these little poems for ourselves.
In my case, my brain seems to have found a metaphor it likes and it’s sticking with it. I suspect that the brakes meant one thing when I was twenty and they mean something a little different now that I’m two times twenty. But the image persists. Or maybe it’s been the same mortality song all along: “hey, wait — stop time!” And wouldn’t that be nice?
That sensation of soft brakes is so real, I find myself wondering if I ever owned a car that had this problem. Was there something wrong with the brakes on that strawberry-scented Chevy Impala I drove as a teenager? Or the gold Accord that carried me from New Jersey to the West Coast?
I don’t think so. These aren’t real brakes, after all. Just a poem I tell myself at night.

Harold, asleep at the wheel

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This morning while dropping my kids off at school, it occurred to me that California is now my home. I’ve lived here longer than I’ve lived anywhere else.
I spent seventeen years on the east coast, interrupted by five years as a kid in Holland. Meanwhile, my California experience will hit nineteen years this coming July.
Oh, I’ve been keeping one eye out for the “when will I have spent half my life out here?” milestone — it’s waving at me from about 3 years down the road. But this subtler calendar-flip slipped past me in the night.
If I was super-dooper rich, I think I would hire someone to scan my personal numerology, looking for just this sort of Highly Significant Moment.
“Mr. Vortex, did you know that your heart has now beaten more times than a bumblebee’s wings will flap, using standard bumblebee life expectancy charts and such?”
“Thank you, Harold.”
“Also, if all the work emails you’ve sent were compiled into one document, it would be eight times longer than Finnegan’s Wake.”
“That’s fascinating, Harold. Here’s a gold doubloon with my face on it.”

it’s me

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I saw you watching when I got up
and I want to reassure you,
it’s not you, it’s me. It’s not the way
you were snapping your fingers. Or how
loudly you were breathing. Sure,
I don’t like your shirt. But
there are lots of shirts
here I don’t like.
Look at that guy, for example.
No, this is about me.
And the choices I’ve made.
The potatoes I had last night, for example.

Eskimo (not Inuit) Rock n Roll Recall

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Back in the 90s, there was an SF band I loved called “Eskimo.” They had one song in particular I was so sure was gonna be an alt-rock super-smash. We’d go to the shows and this tune (“Dado Peru”) would kick in and the crowd would start to sway….
Well, Dado never broke out the way I expected it to. And I kinda sorta forgot about it until this past weekend, when it showed up on my ipod. I played it for my 10-year-old daughter, who agreed that it was the most-est. And we drove down Franklin in Oakland, raising our arms in the air, swaying like we just didn’t care….
When I got home I started thinking, golly, I know it’s against the law, but wouldn’t it be great if I could rip that tune and put it up on Cecil to share with the world, without going to jail?
Lo and also behold — the world wide web has saved me from a life of crime. Turns out the band was kind of enough to post the tune right here. May I recommend that you crank the speakers?
For Bay Area folks who share fond Eskimo memories, that very same site contains eight (8!) Eskimo tunes I’ve never before heard. I just downloaded them and will, yes, get to swaying momentarily.
Yiba ho!

Monkey Vortex (Flash)back Theater

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From 2004 to 2006 I was part of a loose cabal of audio-oriented miscreants known as Monkey Vortex Radio Theater. Between us, we produced around 35 or so short bits of MP3 whackiness. Yes, and it’s hard to imagine a time when we had the brainwidth to produce 35 or so short bits of MP3 whackiness. But there was such a time.
Anyways, somewhere along the line a very nice fellow named Hank offered to make a Flash animation out of our theme sound-bit and one of our cartoon mascots. But — the shame! — I never got around to putting it up on the site or even plugging it here on ye olde Cecil.
Well that smudge on my conscience gets watered down today with this very link. Enjoy! And thanks “so-called Hank,” wherever you are.

Obama and the Inuit

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Lots of noise this week about Obama and the former minister at his church. I’m pro-Obama, so I’m gonna see things through that filter, but I don’t think there’s substance to the issue. If O. hadn’t repeatedly rejected what Wright has said, that’d be different. But he has.
I think most of us like and associate with folks whose political views would look, um, unhelpful repeated over and over on TV. This hits particularly close for me, as many of you know. Heavy sigh.
I have this pal (let’s call him “Bill”). Bill believes that for several years now — since shortly before 9/11 in fact — Eskimos have been taking the marmalade out of these homemade marmalade jars he makes and replacing them with store-bought marmalade. Now, I didn’t choose “Bill” as my friend because of his ignorant theories about the Inuit. In fact, I’ve repeatedly rejected and denounced his statements.
But he’s still my friend.

The popular vote canard

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There’s a slow-motion scam being perpetuated by the Clinton campaign and I must speak out.
The short version: Barring a complete Obama meltdown, you know, I know, and the American people know they can’t win on elected delegates. So you’re increasingly hearing them talk about the popular vote. If Hillary wins the popular vote, they argue, she should be our candidate. And that sounds like a pretty reasonable position. We all went through Florida in 2000. Electoral College? What a crock! Democracy is about one person one vote. If she wins the popular vote, little d democrats should insist she be the nominee, right?
The problem with that canard is that while you can argue “one person, one vote, electoral college, grrr” in the general, the nomination process is different. As we all know way too well, some states caucus, some states run primaries. As we also know, caucusing, like ’em or not, take a much bigger time commitment than pulling the lever in a primary, so the turnout numbers are dramatically depressed.
If the caucus states all have substantially lower vote turnout percentages than their primary bretheren, selecting a nominee by counting the total votes makes votes in a primary state worth a lot more than votes in a caucus state. How do fix that problem with the math? We find a neutral measure that assigns a total # of votes to each state based on their relative size. And yeah, we call those neutral measures “delegates.” That’s why, in the nomination process, delegates are a much truer measure of “popularity” than the popular vote.
I know the popular vote is popular. We should invite it to parties. We should buy it drinks. We should ask it to sign our yearbooks. We just shouldn’t use it to choose our nominee.

The Lavender Lemonade Is Back

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This poem was originally about the joy of lemonade and coffee shops. Over time it became about other things that go away and comes back — like creativity. But these last few weeks, it’s become about missing lemonade and coffee shops again.

From The Lavender Lemonade Is Back: Poems and Stories, now available in print/kindle on Amazon.

The Lavender Lemonade Is Back

The lavender lemonade is back
at my local coffee shop.
I’d given up on her.
All the lemon factories, moved off-planet.
“We Thank You For Your Business.”

Empty cups, traced with
mint and cane.

I’ve been lost
behind the
lost
behind the
dark berry side of this Lavender Moon.
Here comes the lemonade.