I am outrageously angry and disgusted. For long months we have been witnessing our tyrannical government invading US cities with the intent to cause grievous and despicable harm. And they are literally murdering people in plain sight. There is much we must collectively do to respond. I have been on the verge of despair, but today, right now, I am refusing to let them push me off that ledge. For a brief moment this morning, I saw some light, and I want to share a bit of it with you. This post is messy, rushed, and incomplete. But I am compelled to write, if for no other reason than to reassure myself, and you, that we are not alone in this.
I spent the last couple of weeks of 2025 visiting with good friends, the kind we call ‘our real family.’ Much wonder and fullness was had, but I am always mildly traumatized by travel, especially when it involves time zone changes. It usually takes me a week being home to feel grounded, but this time it’s taken two, and I’m not sure it’s even took.
One of my OCD comfort tasks is to organize shit on my computers, so that’s what I’ve been doing this year. But after a while it becomes chafing, and I start to feel like my brain is blistered and needing to be popped.
I’ve been my prime antagonist my whole life, which I suppose is the norm. Please agree with me that it’s the norm. I am what I am, and that is my own nemesis. My own worst enemy, as we say, and every time I remember this, I look for a white flag to burn. I love the smell of burnt cotton in the mourning.
Seriously, I’m a mess. My tinnitus is raging and I’m constantly exhausted, and by that, I don’t mean I’m tired. I mean it feels like the only thing that comes out of my orifices is a dark vaporous cloud of angst. Among the best protest sign I ever saw was in Berlin, days after we (meaning US) started bombing Iraq. It said, “Wir haben Angst.” I’ll never forget the impression it made on me while I was hiding from the protest march behind a giant metal facade.
ICE is English for Gestapo
Yesterday morning, I said to Pam, “I just realized I haven’t done anything creative in weeks. Maybe that’s my problem.”
So, I lit out for my person-cave to make some bad art and good noise. The first thing I did was tune one of my guitars, or rather, I attempted and failed to tune one of my guitars. I couldn’t figure out why it wasn’t working. Every string was uncooperative. And then, of course, I broke a string, because that’s what happens when try to tune your tenor guitar into Chicago tuning. Tenor is CGDA and Chicago is DGBE. Numbnuts tried to force the latter when the guitar he was holding uses the former. Fucking shit. No replacement string was to be found among the hundred or so I have in my toolbox.
Things got better after that. I drew some words in Sumi ink with a black turkey feather on white paper and the result was deliriously, delightfully messy, and fun. Then I plugged in La Bruja, which is a small box with a bunch of mysterious electronics and wires inside and eight switches with knobs and twenty-four metal contact points on the outside.
I don’t understand what most of the switches or knobs do, but in my defense, the one page handwritten instruction manual it came with warned me that neither does the guy who built it for me. What I do know is that when I put it in a chain of guitar distortion peddles, and fiddle around with things, it makes a gorgeous squealing static-like noise. I only captured approximately 29 minutes and 30 seconds, but that’s enough to work into a song or two. None of this helped my mood, though. I came home feeling as unsettled as before.
Schrödinger brought an elephant into the room and everybody and nobody is talking about it.
My elephant, in this case, is the fact that the we find ourselves with a tyrannical government invading a US city with nary a militia to be found in opposition. Nah, let’s not gripe about hypocrisy from nazi’s.
Of course also, Venezuela, Epstein, Ukraine, burgeoning Trans-Genocide, Pedophile Presidents and Princes, you know what I’m talking about.
“US Out of America, Now!” has gone global. The people I follow on Mastodon who live elsewhere, when they’re not beseeching each other to never visit the US again—which I fully support—have been promoting and investing in SETI. Remember that? The Search for Extra-Terrestrial Intelligence has a new urgency now, in the hope that aliens will come looking for our leaders, so that people can giddily comply.
Butt seriously… my unsettlement is because I have angst. Or had, because today it’s shifted into rage.
That weirdness that I sent you yesterday? I’m quite proud of that. But I imagine it made a few of you wonder if I was all right. To be honest, I sent it to you because I wanted to write like I am writing now, but I couldn’t think of anything to say. I wanted to reach out, but I didn’t think I had anything new to say, nor even anything I wanted to ask for. Given the lack of context, my Hymn to the Scum Goddess, was really just my tiny voice shouting, “I am here! I am here!” Maybe if we all shout it loud enough, we can save our planet from being boiled in oil wars.
Things shifted for me this morning. Briefly, I had a moment of wonder. I saw beauty all around me. And I thought, “this! this is it! this is what I can write about.”
I was outside early this morning, before the sun. I wasn’t dressed for how cold it was, but that just gave me energy. I was feeling bouncy on my feet. I was on my regular corner, 42nd Ave and International Boulevard, a very busy intersection and neighborhood in East Oakland. It’s a beat that I’ve been doing for a few months an I enjoy being there.
I’m mostly by myself, but there are a lot of minor engagements with the locals walking, biking, or driving by. Oh, and scooting, of course. We smile at each other. Directly across the street, a large flock of pigeons post up on their favorite extra wide telephone pole cross cars. Sometimes I’ll snap a photo as they take off in a group. There are also a lot of gulls and a few crows always swooping around.
Just before sunrise, I looked up to the East and saw a long contrail from a passing jet airliner. It was pink. It was pretty, especially against the dark blue sky. I’ve never seen one colored like that, or colored like anything other than white. I smiled as I pulled out my phone, and I shook my head as I saw that the image could not be captured. The camera’s sensors can’t see what I see with my human eyes.
I rutned to the right and saw a pure white half moon about halfway up. “Why isn’t it pink?” I thought for a millisecond. The absurdity of the expectation made me think about the distance between the moon and where I was standing. I imagined astronauts standing up there, looking down. It’s a small world, after all, but it’s part of an infinite universe. Remembering this was a liminal moment.
In the art of haiku, the poet is attempting to create something like this moment apart. We call it an “aha” moment. By drawing images through words, we’re trying to bypass the intellect and stimulate a sense of recognition of ourselves being of this world.
There were pink clouds underneath both sides of the moon, and birds. Soaring and circling pigeons, gulls, and a crow or two. The sound of traffic faded away and all I heard were bird sounds. This is when I thought of you.
As I brought my gaze back to the street, I saw beauty in all of it. Every metal surface around me, from the fence surrounding the Burger King, to the traffic light poles, to the utility boxes, to the bollards, are covered in tags, which technically aren’t graffiti. Tags are more like signatures than graffiti, but of course, there’s a lot of middle ground.
On this corner, there is a lot of litter. Garbage. Junk. Tires. Car parts. So much discarded plastic. But there are even more tags and graffiti, both. So many people leaving a mark. I don’t see vandalism or urban decay. I see people, and I hear those people saying, We are here! We are here!
Most tags are signatures, but there are also messages. Some of these are cryptic, such as TRADES ONLY REMANDS, but others are cries for angst, FUCK THE WORLD, or community warnings, 157 ON AMBROSIO BECAUSE HE IS A CHILD MOLESTER. Most are done with fat, wide magic markers that are manufactured and distributed for exactly this purpose. These can be bought at any hardware or art supply store. Some are still done with paint, and one person in this neighborhood even does them with pencil, which requires some effort and dedication.
There is traditional graffiti, too. Over the Smart & Final grocery store there’s a giant VOTE painted in round 70’s style flower power lettering. On the side of the Tire Shop is a large mural dedicated to Central American revolutionaries.
But wait, there’s more! There’s [sic] flyers! And stickers! Oh how I love the stickers...
Does anyone else think that Smart and Final is an odd name for a grocery store?
Next: It's People!
