A Kind Of Holy Perfection..

In a room in a dirty second floor apartment, decorated with more local punk rock flyers than seemed rational or commensurate with defensible taste, we divided up our tabs of acid as Husker Du sang about how we've got to Keep Hanging On and time mysteriously carried us forward by some unknown and rarely considered mechanism.

After the dividing ritual, we got in the kind of car owned by teenagers who work car wash or record store jobs and drove on the highway toward Lone Pine canyon, arms out open windows, as an immaculate night sky quietly hummed above us like a withheld explosion.

We chased LSD with swigs of Gatorade and talked about aliens, sex, secret doorways and the holy hierarchy of guitar solos.

As the sun disappeared over the hills, It kicked in; and the three of us wandered deep into a forest now teeming with consciousness; tree limbs leaped out of the darkness and proclaimed greetings in a solidarity of living things, touchingly extended to us mere human teenagers, an unexpected grace.

Our provisions were three bottles of water, a joint and a bag of apples. I found the skull of a small mammal long dead and wore it like a crown, unaware of course that I'd just inhabited my life's most pagan moment; the fact that we can't perceive all of time at once may be the greatest of the many tender mercies extended to us.

After what could have been minutes or centuries, the golden sun came around to kiss our skin again and the field we ambled through burst into a sea of purple.

Down in the vast distance of the ancient valley below, a train undulated across the earth like a snake.

It was a kind of holy perfection I might never see again.

My Magic City..

It's like when a murky line in a song you've been listening to and digging your entire life suddenly makes perfect sense; when the clouds part, the dirt washes off the windows and all you see is a garden pathway illuminated by the sun.

Somewhere between the revolving art galleries, the tent cities, the dive bars and the taco trucks rests the unobscured unredacted truth of our city; which is both shamefully ugly and crushingly beautiful, like the ornate and the austere violently colliding to make some kind of deadly, new and righteous dualistic vision.

L.A. is Raymond Chandler, David Hockney and Arthur Lee doin' it nasty up in the park (and you know which park). Sometimes, I still can't process the brutal and near perfect sweetness of it. It's a dirty, fetid city, full of haunted sidewalks and carnival barkers, scabrous neon wonderlands and dangerous alleyways, but it'll always be Magic to me.

Damn, I'm gonna miss this place someday.

Don't Be That Guy..

We are all trapped in our meatsuits on this beautifully strange spinning rock together, and pain and heartache are an inevitable part of the ride/journey/mystery. That being said, allowing this peculiar predicament to infect you in such a way that you become a naysaying cynic or vicious critic at every brush with beauty, artistic expression or mystery, is a rather dark road to travel.

I'm not advocating a position of reverence or even adherence, but if nothing else, maybe we could at least try to never be the reason why someone who loved to sing, doesn’t any more. Or the reason why someone who dressed so uniquely has decided to sheepishly conform to societal norms. Let's not be the deciding factor in someone who has always spoken of their dreams so boldly and wildly suddenly learning that it's better to remain silent about them. Try your best not to be the reason someone gives up on an integral part of themselves because you were demotivating, vocally non-appreciative or mercilessly sarcastic about it.

Creativity, art, self-expression, dreams, goals, life paths - These are sacred things. So let's not trample them with our own fears, insecurities or disapproving conditioning. And if you just can't be supportive, maybe try finding a little more "shut the fuck up about it" in your heart.

Happy Thursday, y'all. 😊