Cole Hardware on Cole. Showing that same old man a bulb I need to replace in my glass chandelier. A specific little teardrop, must be a proper name for it. Ohhh… that there… that bulb’s illegal. Can’t get ‘em in California no more—that’s gotta go straight in the trash. Really? Really… When? Year and a half ago or so… Man. I only just bought these up at Goodman’s… See shops were only allowed to sell their remaining stock. He pointed at an LED bulb twisted upward like a fake flame with four neon orange rods visible inside… Awww… The aesthetic… just so much nicer with the older bulb… I agree—you driving to Nevada anytime soon? I mean… Why is California so annoying? I’d remove the ‘why is’ and leave the rest. Where do we go? Nevada… Texas. My mom’s in Texas. Next time you go, fill a suitcase and post up out here with a sign: ILLEGAL BULBS and you’ll sell out quick. They really think this is gonna save the environment? They’re in the moral right? Who’s making more money now? Ohhhhhhh——they’re in cahoots! He rattled off on the energy companies and the state. Something about keeping money in California. PG&E and another acronym starting with a P. I dunno. It’d be one thing if the sincerity was real. Well, shit—thank you. Shaking heads, sighing, smiling. Thanks. See ya later.
Tag: california
The Birthday, 1958
Daryl, turning 2! Gloria pregnant with Dad. Shot by Don and Gloria.
days of covid
home
in transit
‘translinguistic glossolalia’
12 hours of Terence ⍥
“If flying saucers were to land on the south lawn of the White House tomorrow, it wouldn’t change the fact that DMT is the weirdest thing in the universe… I will never forget my first DMT trip because I was such a case going into it. I mean, if you had known me when I was 19 years old… I was into Jean-Paul Sartre, Camus, Marxism, Freud… I was a jerk. And I came down from it and I was like: I can’t believe it. I was in shock. I can’t believe it. I can’t believe it. Jesus. I can’t believe it! And I said I’ve got to go back to square one. In a single experience, I was converted from naive rationalism/realism/reductionism to my present position, whatever it is. Really all I’ve done is worked out the personal implications of the DMT flash and tried to create linguistic models of it… It shows you, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that the world is made of magic. That’s what the world is made of. Not natural law. Not interlocking cause and effect. Not any of these things that are normally associated… The world is magic. Not a little bit. 100%. Every atom from one end of this cosmos to the other is magic magic magic. Certain concerns just die in the first 30 seconds of the DMT flash and can never be brought back to my mind… Some people are not good candidates for the psychedelic experience because they’ve been damaged by life in some way, and so for them, boundaries shouldn’t be dissolved because their whole challenge is to keep boundaries in place. And I remember one case particularly: a woman, who was a friend of mine, I really liked her, but I thought of her as ‘fragile’—not somebody you wanted to lean on in a crisis—she smoked DMT; thrashed, moaned, rolled her eyes back, gave all the exterior symptoms of really having grabbed on. After about ten minutes, she sat up and said: It didn’t work. Nothing happened. I said: Nothing happened? Well, you wanna try again? No way… never, ever, again. So it did work, but the personality was somehow able to seal itself off from the implication. Because the implications quite literally would have destroyed that person. It was a truth they weren’t ready for. And I suppose it’s wonderful that DMT saves you from that. I felt in danger of dying from astonishment when I did it. And I do every time I do it. I mean I don’t know how they keep the lid on this stuff. I think that this is the secret that wants to be told. I think that we are, in a sense, involved in a little cosmic drama here. Fate has chosen you to hear about this. If you’ve never heard about it before, you’re hearing about it now. Now, you don’t have to do anything with the fact that you’re hearing about it, but you have been told at this point. If you now go forward and live in your mundane-stock-portfolio-BMW existence, it’s because you’re making a choice.”
Off to Oz
The tension before taking off. How do you pack it all and go? Zippers inside zippers. A tetris of objects playing tricks of easiness. Summer clothes. THC tea, a blotter sheet, Dr. Bronner’s soap, Goo Gone for sticky messes. Rhodiola and yerba mate. 37 books. I’m ready. Flying into another season. The farthest I’ve ever been from home. My cells shake, anticipate. Preparing for a whole new world. New rules, new government, new order. No more sativa mornings. Walks through redwoods. No more Bart rides to 16th. Delayed by people jumping. New transit, new accent, new coffee shops. Wondering what will be. A place that seems mythical. A place also fucked by foundations of colonization, but somehow seems to function in a streamlined smoothness of well-being that gleams from many Aussies I meet. Generally okay. No worries. And that’s what scares me. The main thing I’ll miss and maybe even crave in Australia is friction to rub against. Something to be bothered about. An itch. Something that makes me watch out. Something that makes me critical. All the chaos home provides. The subsequent yearning to make, to do, to deconstruct, to transform. What will I do in a land called Oz? The same as anywhere: think, feel, read, write. Burn and rebuild energy. But will Australia irk me the same way? Will the people agitate towards change like they do in the Bay? Will there be access to the same niches of information and conversation? Talks on Tuesdays. Will the people care about what’s happening around them? Or are they too far removed, hearing yesterday’s news? Will the flag be half-mast everyday there too? Lifted into the air by migrants on minimum wage while those who pay to have it risen stay inside, scheming. The American Dream. If everything is relatively sane and easy-going down under, then what is there to reach? (Isn’t simply being there wrong?) Where’s the dirt? (Paved by Victorians seeking gold. Stolen generations.) Maybe it’s fertile soil for groovy music and laid-back design of neon pinks and blues. Quality gastronomy. I’m not sure how far I’ll go slipping into pleasure. A new place to consume. You can’t compare the two, but you can feel them differently. When you mix all the paint the color turns brown. Once at a bar in Paris, drinking my favorite color green, I overheard a table of Aussies saying they’ll never go to the United States. Because of the ignorance, the obesity. All the shit. The competition, the stress, the drugs, the mess, the machine. But I’ll miss the mud that springs lotuses of reform the world watches and replicates. The tallest trees and the dry breeze. I’ll miss California. Not the border, but what happens within. Channels of hope to grasp in the dark. The ones that pull you through and push you forward. This is just a time capsule of thoughts. A photograph. Maybe in a year I’ll have some answers to these questions. Maybe I’ll be wrong, again. And look, I’m outside of myself. Already there, wondering how next will be.
*
Here. Made it. First impression: love.
Golden
Day of the fire
ericaavey.com 