beautiful sunday,
i sit in my house, trying to play half-life
that neighbor eric loaned me
(he's feeding my natural tendency
to abandon productivity for contemporary entertainment)

and young dudes i know keep IMing me
useful information

it's a sunny day
fortunately half-life crashes my computer regularly,
so like my grampa I enjoy
puttering - i get up and wander around, look for things to work on
and i realize, fixing up a house for me
is less about plans
and more about getting up from the computer and paper
and walking around the space
everywhere i turn needs cleaning
i have many ideas for painting
planting moving installing

my greatest challenge is remembering
what i was doing five minutes ago
and just try to finish one thing.

put on a pot of tea
burn some incense

charcoal and frankensense
start a letter to my grandparents
think about my reboot speech

of half the houseguests this week
ethan's soon to graduate
as i knew him,
a potter harmonicist mystic
eager and ready to raunch
now to work as my brother does
a young sales associate for capitalism

over brunch this morning we discussed
his career,
maybe fear - choosing against financial insecurity
and unsure there is any cause that is fully believable
because extending implications reveals a bitch
so until you know better
best to secure yourself a place in the (white man's) world
and a great education
working as a medic in the trenches of economic truth

ethan and alexis gave us a book,
a nice gift
sexual secrets
kama sutra, erotic woodcarvings
exciting stuff
that's the type of material
i stopped purposefully versing myself in
once i moved to the bay area
there's enough ambient oddity here
without having to seek it out

i like reading it now
i am excited to practice self discipline
and interpersonal curiousity
with my lover-spirit-partner.

but this watching the capitalist machine work
as the best way to know how to help the world
i don't believe it for myself i guess

i just leave the machine in its box running
and occasionally consult the engineers

i watch these socially conscious skilled young men
with attractive girlfriends

active with amnesty-international-type-shit
they move together to new york
and they come to respect rudolph giuliani
and they break up

and what am i
a curmudgeon
who insists on detailing for my provocative friend
the physical maladies ahead
the dearth of spiritual nourishment
the tragic fallowing of his artistic persuits

i sit on my computer and i've got guests

i recommend ethan "Bombardiers" again

browsing po bronson
i discover this
germain to business and creativity

and:

Writing is a pretty good business to be in. You can deduct from your taxes almost everything as "research." Last week I bought a new pair of roller skates, and just by mentioning them in this Q&A I effectively lower their price 36%. Also, if you write at home, the kitchen is never very far away.

and this!:

"What's the first thing to do when you get a parking ticket?" he quizzes me. Before I can come up with something, he answers his own question. "You find some nice car, a Jaguar or an older Mercedes, and you slip that ticket under their windshield wiper. They don't even bother to scrutinize the ticket. They're too lazy to go down to court to fight it. 85% of the time, they'll send in the money."

anyhow,
amy's wanted a cat for some time
tomorrow we start catsitting
carl's fernando
a week with a displaced cat
kathy predicts misery.

nephew
seven year old elias is to come over tuesday
that city boy with so many lessons and playdates
our oakland playdate is to dig up some dirt
and plant some clematis vines - frost resistant
with pretty purple flowers.

today i realized
my arrogance -
i think i'm going to be able to entertain a seven year old for three or four hours?
live and interactive?
working on projects around the house and garden?
playing on the computer
we'll probably end up wrestling
he'll ask me for cookies and i'll try to teach him something
that'll be boring
maybe we'll make cookies too
i look forward to the challenge.

ethan had a point to raise
i asked him to raise it here:

After having somehow cadjoled Justin into going out last night instead of staying home and reading e-mail or slashdot, I wondered what had happened to the man who captivated millions with tales of sex and flogging. Is Links.net now less about someone who is extremely candid and happens to have a web page and more about the experience of someone who has Links.net? I wonder what horizons are left if the present is less hyjinx and more server configuration. Family history? Most of that has been divulged. I suppose that in reading the paragraphs above about a visiting nephew, I think that there is a certain beauty to minutia. Also, Justin scrawls as much junk into his notebook and palm-pilot as ever, still approaches people for their stories, and is still generally a purveyor of information small and large. I wonder though what the composition of this information betrays about him.

ethan then quotes wilson
complaining last year:

i'm sick
of hearing about
the minutia
of chester's
fucking
life

- 18 april.
- 13 april

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