It was fucking nuts. I didnʻt look punk. I was fat. But I saw Another State of Mind 100 times, so I felt like the carpet in the van. You were living a life tra la la trying to make sense of the world. And I was pushed into being alone at 12. Punk rockers strippers and whores. And i donʻt mean that word as a pejorative. We all gotta do we have to do. It was my tribe. And she was just as likely to buy me breakfast at Egg ʻn things as my father was to bust my head. I watched a pimp shoot meth (I think it was meth) with a needle into a hooker and then asked me if i wanted some. I said no thank you. He was a big black man that would crush my chest with a stern look. I let him drive my car that night, he had sex with the hooker, then dropped me off with her. I paid for her cab. And these stories all sound like bullshit. Kūhiō and Seaside
Kaumaha
So tired. So angry. So tired of being angry. This program exhausts me. The only thing I can say against it is that itʻs too much sometimes. When you preach to the choir, theyʻre listening already. Who is this for? Everyone in this class chose to be here. The way they say “white;” the anger is palpable. We needed a radical in 1993. It was so brave to say, ʻWe are not American. We will never be American. I am not an American.” I have hoahānau that served in the U.S. military. What do I do about that? I went home to Oʻahu last month and I bristled constantly. “Thatʻs not how you say that. Thereʻs a kahakō. That place is not Yokes. Itʻs Keawaʻula.” No oneʻs going to call it that. Part of me, when I watch this, makes the argument, “Sanskrit is dead. Latin is dead. Hawaiian is alive.” And if it is alive then Yokes gets to be a part of the conversation. Then I go to the palace. I walk those hallowed grounds so many times. I look out the window of that empty room where they kept her. Promulgate. I didnʻt even know that word. Iʻm getting angry again. Why didnʻt she listen to Charles Wilson? Arrest three men and take a gamble. I went to a gathering on Lā Kūʻokoʻa. What is ea? Ua huhū au nō. Kaumaha. So heavy. Sadness is correctly described in ʻōlelo Hawaiʻi as heavy. I could write about thus until you say, “Stop!” Venezuela. Greenland. Ukraine. It’s all the same fucking day, man.
If
If they have an arrest warrant, go outside and close the door. Don’t hide inside. They will destroy your door to make a point. An arrest warrant doesnʻt let them search until you hide. Go outside and close the door. And, as always, donʻt say anything.
Reason
Reasons are limited by their definition. Reasons make you have a reason. Don’t choke on what you swallow. That is the only rule. Live. It’s harder than you think.
Make enemies and see more. Love life and see how life repays you.
God
What monsters are alive right now when god is not awake? The time is short. Spacetime is a difficult concept. Matter bends spacetime in a way that’s difficult to wrap your mind around. Matter moves spacetime. More matter, more movement. But your and my time is short. We don’t live in the capacity of spacetime. I mean, we do, but our capacity to understand can only see years. Minutes. Sometimes, seconds make a difference in our understanding. Time, as we speak about it, though, is a human construct.
We talk about what I would do if Hitler were alive. Read. Read. And then read. Know. They aren’t putting Jews in an oven. But this is what happens first.
Go
The moment is so small that it makes bigger things happen. The moment has to happen now, so it has an advantage. It insists on being like a second on a clock. It says, “Whatever the fuck you want.“
I love pace. I see why it matters. I love compulsion. I see why it matters.
I love the parts that are compelled to go, “Go go.” And I love the parts that have the self-control to say, “It will be better tomorrow.”
Ozzy
Here’s the secret about Ozzy and about life. He didn’t write the songs. Those are Ozzy songs. He wrote none. Iommi. Lemmy, So many lessons. The smallest of which is, if you care, youre not looking where you’re supposed to look. A lot of him was an affect. What did you expect? He came from nowhere, They gave him everything. Everything. He made it 79 years. I have nothing. Iʻm trying as hard as I can to see 60.
Santa Monica civic
I sat behind you at this concert (Portishead, Santa Monia Civic Center, if you don’t remember). You were a dancer. You did ballet. It seemed far too refined for me. For my birthday, you bought me a plastic hula dancer for my car that bobbled when the car moved. You thought about me outside of our interaction. I suppose that was good. The hula dancer was horribly inappropriate, the worst kind of appropriation of something I actually do care about, but I wanted to fuck you, so I didn’t say anything.
Imagine flashbulbs going off. Life is that. What do you remember? A flash? Butterflies at the beginning. Love at a moment? Love ends. And then what? The way we deal with the way love folds our emomotional clothes. It puts things in their places.
Lost. It’s hard to find the bathroom.
Love works separately from how you’d prefer it to work. It’s an octopus that squeezes to fit the empty spaces. Lost is lost. Love is not different. Love only hurts a little less because there once was something. It’s gone. There will be no more questions. If there were a few, theyʻre gone.
Vowels
Ask. I can almost guarantee you will disagree or maybe hate me. I don’t really mind. Life is a pole slathered in vaseline. I slip toward the floor. I belong on the ground. Bleeding and oozing is what I know. You are a problem. So pretty and so French. The words come out of you. I have to make the words. I have to make them mean something. You slink. I trouble to be hidden when I try.
You have a boy’s name in French, but you’re Swiss. Where I’m from, I just have my name. You are vowels, and I am consonants. Hard at every guttural stop.
I know you love me, but you can’t love me. That’s a hard love. I’ve lived it before, and you haven’t. That is what life is. I’d expect nothing else.
Consensus
The thing about doing the right thing. You’re probably going to piss someone off. There is no consensus. Think about it. What question has a consensus answer? Beatles or Stones? Creamy or chunky? Tits or ass? You want to go a little deeper? Buddha or Jesus? They both kind of said the same thing. There is no such thing as everyone agrees unless someone with a gun is pointing it and saying, “Agree!” At that point, come on. I’ll say anything with a gun in my face or a knife at my throat. The irony is we’re all the same. We’re all exactly the same. There were different traumas along the way. We’re all verily, similarly fucked up. In the same way, when you watch Discovery, and you thought chimpanzees were herbivores, and then they rip a monkey’s head off. I mean, you understand they have to eat, but that was violent in a way you don’t learn at the zoo.