Out of my journal (shoot- one of my journals. I have like ten of them, all starting and stopping at strange intervals. I also have TONS of stuff written while driving in scribbly handwriting on the backs of reciepts or torn out pages of newspapers and magazines. I HAVE to write stuff down, my memory is so bad. I feel like that guy from MOMENTO.)

Out of my journal from like a year or two ago. Undated, of course. I'm not the picture of organization.

There's never a dirty dish in my sink unless it's mine. No hair caught in the drain. No arguments over paint colors. No dirty laundry on the floor. No fighting over the channel changer and no TV. I always get the last popsicle.
There's a battle raging inside of me- good versus mediocre. Or at the very least, extreme versus mediocre. Obviously there’s more to it than that.
I've lost my pizazz- or at the very least, someone’s borrowed my mojo.


I've spent a lot of time reflecting on my past- introspective, self examination- looking for something or someone that messed me up... ...I have spent enough time but to on avail. I now see that the problem
Very well could be that I never looked far enough back.

Fred Mullen, Beer.
My mom had a few boyfriends along the time that I was growing up. Jim Thompson was probably the best- though Dick Munks (sic?) was also a really cool guy. Fred Tiege kept his car keys in his Speedos when he swam at the beach, and would try to hand them to us and ask us to get him something from the car. We always declined.
Fred Mullen was a strange one- kind of a cultural anomaly. He had a big beard and looked a bit like Santa when caught in a black and white still, but I never recall having Santa-like thoughts about him when he was ever around. To my recollection I considered him to be one step away from homeless. But whatever- it wasn’t too terribly long after that when I found myself to be homeless, and so live and learn. Whatever- dunno what I’m thinking I was supposed to learn there.
Fred Mullen made fish head soup and peanut butter soup. I can’t recall any of his philosophies or guiding principles if he had any, but I definitely remember the fish head soup. That’s the kind of thing that lodges itself in an eleven year old’s brain. I don’t suppose he was a bad guy- he was just someone that my mom met and apparently was attracted to on some level, and so I suppose that should be good enough for me. It actually is, now that I think of it. So onward and upward.
Fred Mullen also made home brewed beer- an amber ale if I remember correctly- which was my first taste of alcohol with which I caught a decent buzz. As an adult I’ve always had an affinity for the subtle, gentle beers from Japan and China, and I have to wonder if this comes from my encounter with Fred Mullen way back when I was eleven.
So anyhow- my mom- she wasn’t really someone who let her kids drink and do drugs. Albeit I drank and smoked weed when I was eleven- not regularly, but whatever- I was doing it- and could buy acid from Cathy Haslam in my art class in eighth grade and was ditching school and frying on shrooms on the beach at that very same time. But my mom never was the type to let us do dangerous stuff- she let us run amuck at all hours and carry on and she came home from work like four hours after we got out of school in the afternoon- we fought and tortured each other and I suppose we drove my eldest sister out of the house completely- god knows something did- but all in all, when mom was there she wouldn’t abide by us shooting heroin. She was a good woman with the best of intentions.
Except when she was drunk on Fred Mullen’s homebrew.

Now everyone in our family claims that our lineage is too muddied to be able to discern the origins from whence our bloodline came- despite the family tree being fraught with Scotts and Micks- and I take a step back and look at myself from afar and I see the Scottish/Irish thing straight off. I read a Norman Maclean novella not so long ago that described a character so like me it was uncanny- except that I was always as terrible a fly tier as I was a fly fisherman- but otherwise the idiosyncrasies of this character- Paul Maclean- were so similar to me that it was both comforting and unsettling. Black Scottish- that’s what Norman Maclean referred to it as. Amazing- it’s just really comforting to find some hint as to where I come from and why I’m such a complete nut. Nice.
So here’s my mom and Fred sitting on the back porch that my mom had built off of her bedroom at our house on 1140 Lorna st in El Cajon, California- and they’re drinking some beers that Fred had made wherever the fuck guys like that reside when they’re not hanging out in the houses of single moms with three kids in el Cajon, California. Honestly- I shit you not- I think I can clearly recall that it was a pretty decent ale but had a bit of a bitter aftertaste- something that I avoid, as I like my micro brews but I prefer them wimpy and light- for microbrews, that is. I probably made that up though (the memory, not the rest.)
And so anyhow- I’m fluttering around on the periphery the way eleven year old boys do when there’s beer or wine or naked women or motorcycles or sharp knives or explosives- whenever there’s stuff that is off limits around- I’m “nonchalantly” being around and hopeful I can finally “drink a beer”, something I’d seen my pop do bunches of times- one beer at lunch when he was working out in his garden during the summer- and maybe- maybe probably- he’d say to my step mom “I think I’ll have another one before I go back out.” And he’d pour it and savor it in the same fashion as he did the first- slow pour, careful to not raise so much foam. A moment of silence as he watches the dew glistening on the surface of the glass. With a deft flick of the wrist he’d have the pint glass betwixt his forefinger and thumb and he’d lift it slowly to his mouth, not so much pausing but just moving it slow enough that he could admire the way the sunlight coming through the window in the kitchen plays upon the amber liquid, and then he’d take a short draught off of it, savoring the flavor and relishing this time with his beer before he heads back out into the hot afternoon sun in the dry dirt of his garden seven miles north-west of the Tecate/California border.
And so that was how it was for dad, and I figured “yeah- that’s how it’s gonna be for me.” Wrong. If dad were drinking like that around me now it’d be fair driving me nuts waiting for him to pull off the long draught and kill that soldier. Though I don’t make it my business to dictate to others how they should partake of their nectar, I get really annoyed at the length of time it takes for someone who has a big production coming up on sucking one up. I think chiefly the problem there for me is that the waiter isn’t going to come back until all the pints are at least half sunk. I fucking hate that- I’ll sink mine in the first minute and then some sap’ll keep the waiter at bay for the next twenty minutes with his half filled pint, chatting us up and making me pretty much crazy. Half the time I’ll just get up and head over to the bar and tell the waiter that we’re all set for another round. This serves the dual purpose of getting us our ice-cold beverages as well as maybe getting that chatty bastard halfway soused so maybe he’ll shut up and drink.
So Fred Mullen and my mom are sitting against the railing on my mom’s unfinished ten by ten redwood deck that mom had built off of her bedroom on our home at 1140 Lorna Street in El Cajon, California- and Fred apparently notices my preadolescent need for an ice-cold beverage- and so he assumably looks at my mom for consent and she assumably shrugs and gives him the nod and he takes the tarnished Colt45 bottle opener from his beat up ice chest with the foam showing through and he cracks the top off of an old brown bottle and he hands it to me and I take a sip, then a drink, then after he encourages me I take the long draught and kill that motherfucker. And apparently mom gives me the nod and I get another- because anyone with any sense knows that the thirst of any eleven-year-old boy with any Celtic blood at all isn’t going to be satisfied with one pint. No- he cracks me a second one, and after I kill that I feel pretty funny- tipsy and dizzy and giddy and high.
Now in retrospect I figure that mom and old Fred the fuck-wad were out to teach me a lesson. I figure that they wanted me to learn that if you drink, you become sick. And I did become sick- I puked all over the bathroom and hugged the toilet for an hour or so and then I passed out in my bed and woke up the next morning a little shaky but otherwise not so badly the worst for wear and tear. I was eleven for god’s sake- an eleven year old’s powers of recovery are probably man’s ability to heal at its peak- top notch.
And so I woke up and shook it off and remembered the afternoon before with some hesitancy and I ventured out into the house cautiously, testing the waters, assuming that I was on thin ice. And upon entering the Formica shrine to the seventies that was our kitchen and finding that I had to face only a few comments about the night before and no punishment whatsoever- assumably as mom and Fred are pretty hung over from the balance of Fred’s beer that I left in the icebox after puking and passing out- I went out and played a game of pick-up in the street with the neighbor kids and forgot about all that adult angst and turmoil. Plenty time in life for that.

And so. When Fred Mullen was so fucking confident the next day that I’d turn down his offer for another beer because he assumed I’d learned my lesson with last night’s antics- when he offered me a beer expecting me to blanch and cringe and decline and run scared- and I didn’t even glance up at him but just casually replied “sure.” Confident now that there really was no penalty. Of course he didn’t give me one that night. Can’t recall his face, but I’ll bet it was halfway between surprise and worry. Can’t recall much, but I was pissed he didn’t give me that beer so I waited til he was drunk and then stole three more.

Part 2

Deep dark swells march in from the horizon like dark, brooding warriors come to do battle on shore. The roll unfettered across the open sea until they hit the Pacific shelf three miles out from Church Beach, where they expend some of their energy on the shallow bottom but gain a certain defined delicacy that makes them unique to the coastline. Ceaseless they batter the shoreline of California, slowly wearing down the sandstone cliffs, washing away the sand and then bringing it back. Tirelessly men go back again and again into the sea, some trying to conquer it, others trying to learn it’s secrets, precious few learning to coexist and master it.
Everything comes with a price, and even the best man eventually has to pay.



As much as Ronnie Sainz disliked being landlocked he hadn’t been in the water ten times in three years. He’d spent a lot of time looking at the ocean- in fact he never strayed more than a few blocks from it- and even slept many nights in the sand under the pier. But despite the fact that he was naturally gifted and had in fact been one of the most talented big wave surfers ever to come out of Church Beach- and despite the fact that he spent his entire life in the 3 mile stretch between Ryker’s point to the North and the harbor jetty to the South, with all of the area’s challenging tabletop reefs and shifting sandbars and submarine canyons that had historically channeled open ocean swells directly to his doorstep- and despite his possession of a deep awareness at a very young age of details like high and low tide, moon cycles and wind direction- despite all of that Ronnie Sainz no longer owned a surfboard and hadn’t paddled out at all in the past year and a half.

William Ronald Sainz was at one time the top dog out at Church Beach and Tabletop Reef, riding the high tech equipment for the time that was built for him by craftsmen that not only believed in him but also realized the value of having Ronnie Sainz dominating every swell on their boards. Back in the day the guys that were really heavy- the ones who showed up when it was big and hollow and throwing top to bottom- they referred to him as Ripper Sainz or just “Ripper” or “Sainz” for short. His close friends knew him as Ron or Ronnie or Rip. The rest of the crowd didn’t say anything at all to Ripper and Ripper didn’t say much to them- he just let his performance do the talking. Ripper went deep and late and the rest just got out of his way.
Ronnie Sainz grew up under the watchful eye of his mother in a beach cottage two blocks inland and just North of the Pier. Rebecca Sainz willfully raised he boy on her own rather after enduring several let-downs from men beginning with her own grandfather and then her father, and ending with the last one- ripper’s father. Being an astute woman she realized that history tends to repeat itself and so was determined to see her young son raised well and given the every opportunity she could afford to live a better life. This wasn’t easy for a young woman working two jobs, and so young Ronnie often had the sand and the sea to look after him, and soon he formed a friendship with the ocean that was both healthy and comforting.
Ronnie was what people that lived to the South of the Pier and to the North of the Jetty referred to disaffectionately as a pier rat. The demarcation line between the population on the South part of town and those to the North was both definite and visible. At one time near the turn of the previous century the pier was a central point for a town that was new and fresh and fun and touted in advertisements as “good clean California living”. Ronny’s great-grandfather- a son of Scottish immigrants by the name of Edmund Alfred Ryker- had followed that dream, traveling along route 66 until he came to the Pacific Ocean. Investing all of his savings he purchased a piece of land North of the pier and enlisting the help of local tradesmen built the Ryker Hotel. A favorite for Los Angeleans and San Diegans who wanted a quiet weekend at the ocean and in the country, Ryker soon added a dance hall and pub. Soon the depression came and though he tried to hang on and make it through the hard times, eventually his debts caught up with him and the banks foreclosed on the property, leaving Ryker to start over from scratch. Ryker never totally recovered from the setback, having put his heart and soul and literally everything he had into the endeavor and then lost. He made a couple half hearted tries at opening pubs and ended up declining into alcoholism from which he died at the age of sixty-five, leaving behind an ex wife who would no longer acknowledge his presence and half grown child who retained his mother’s maiden name.
Although the area grew steadily throughout the fifties, shortly after world war 2 as neighboring communities grew and flourished Church Beach began a slow descent towards becoming the dreary, neglected area that it was during Ron’s childhood.

Ronnie’s childhood haunts around the pier were decidedly old and drab and the inhabitants of the area took on a certain similar camouflage while the newer parts of town- the outlying areas to the north and South- became vestiges for the hip and influential. Ronnie and his preteen elite surf squad wore their drab camouflage like some sort of badge or uniform- all flannel and denim and sheepskin vests like the winos downtown- and they wore it to stand out from the homogenous elite that cast aspersions on them from their pretentious mini lofts near the jetty- and as soon as the richies caught on to a style and tried to adopt it as their own Ronnie and his clan would be onto the next thing. It wasn’t ever a conscious decision- it was purely an unconscious evolution that kept the clichéd rich at bay while the poor enjoyed their one luxury amidst the scraps and squalor allowed to a declining middle class- the ability to dictate style.

Some where between fifteen and twenty Ripper Sainz became a legend. After thirteen he was riding every big swell that hit the coast, but by the time he reached fifteen he was riding it as well as anyone ever did. Ripper had an innate sense for nature and his surroundings, an ability to block out the immediacy of his environment and to think ahead and anticipate and react and adjust before things actually happened.
By the time he reached twenty-one years of age he had reached a plateau in his art, and found there was little more he could do to refine it and quickly became aware of the idea that the rest of his surfing life would be measured in baby steps. He also knew that if a surfer wanted to make it in any big way, they had to make a showing in the huge winter swells of Hawaii, and he just couldn’t see any way to pull that off. This struck Ripper in a dark, hard way and his already reserved and mellow demeanor became dark and brooding as he gnawed on his anticipation of the lifetime ahead of him.
This darkness he carried with him like a black cloud, affecting everyone around him and holding him back from progressing. He began to dwell upon his perceptions that he was a “have-not” and he carried his loathing for the “haves” that lived across town like a standard being carried into war.


3

Robert Patrick Dahl was in many ways similar to Ripper Sainz. HE too had a special connection with the ocean, a place to escape to and be safe from parental interference and to do as he wished without having to endure the consternation of his elders. Bobby grew up bearing the burden of being the only male grandchild of Patrick Michael Dahl, his grandfather. Pat Dahl had acquired the Ryker Hotel in bankruptcy when Ripper’s Grandfather had lost it. Bobby had grown up spending the warm summer months in the sand and surf in front of the hotel. Winters were spent surfing the frigid Aleutian swells that battered the coastline and sitting in front of the fireplace that dominated the hotel’s lobby.
Bobby Dahl was what most parents would call a good kid- he did his homework, he got good grades, he was both intelligent and athletic. Bobby did all that was required him without complaint, though he felt a certain obligation that took some of the joy and satisfaction from those actions. Patrick Dahl had too many times pointed out that the preteen Bobby was the sole heir to the Dahl legacy and so had certain goals to meet and obligations to fulfill. Bobby bore this mantle without protest but from the time he was aware of these expectations he escaped to the ocean every chance he could get.


later...

Winter, 1982. Crystal pier is vacant except for two tourists out on the end, fishing with cheap drugstore rigs and drinking a few beers. Ronnie sits on a milk crate two-thirds of the way next two several empty quarts of Schlitz malt liquor, nursing his last one and gazing off North towards the Point. The sky is dark and brooding and shows more likelihood of raining than it does brightening. The surf is coming up and Ron can feel the pier shake a little as each set passes beneath him.
Thinking about a few more beers, Ron glances towards land as if by some miracle he might see an answer, but instead he sees an old man walking hand in hand with a small boy and it reminds him of himself and grandpa Pat twenty years prior.
Shortly after he lost the Hotel, Pat Ryker shared a small two-bedroom cottage with his daughter and grandson. The arrangement was as much a convenience for the wearied hotelier as it was for Mrs. Sainz, who had given up her job at the Hotel couldn’t afford day care with what she made waiting tables in a café not far from where they lived.
So Ronnie’s days were spent with grandpa Ryker, who couldn’t yet afford to swallow his pride and take a job working for someone else, and together they fished and explored the shore of church beach, the underside of the pier, and the marshes of the bay just inland. For ten years before coming to California Pat Ryker was a sailor in the navy like his grandfather before him- and as a child he fished and hunted in the countryside of Massachusetts- and he liked nothing more than to sit on the shore watching the sea. So now with so much time on his hands he would take Ronnie’s hand and they would walk the few blocks down to the sea, stopping briefly at a market on the way for a few pints of beer and a root beer for Ronnie and a small bag of bait to fish with.
The first time they went Pat Ryker showed Ronnie how to tie the hook and bait it without poking himself, and Ronnie being an eager student he soon was baiting and tying his own hooks. And so there they’d sit on the Church Beach pier and Ronnie was happy as could be, eagerly awaiting a tug on his line and stealing sideways glances at his grandfather to be sure he was doing it correctly. To Ronnie his grandfather looked absolutely regal, sitting there in his pea coat with his pole in one hand and a pint of beer wrapped in a paper sack clutched in the other, the smell of apple pipe tobacco wafting around them as he puffed on his meerschaum pipe as if he hadn’t a care in the world.
Together they caught their perch and rock-fish and carried them home wrapped in newspaper where they cleaned them on a slab of butcher –block on the front lawn and then rolled them in a batter made from beer and breadcrumbs and ate them with boiled vegetables and a slab of butter and lemon.

An exceptionally large swell shakes the pier and snaps Ronnie out of his reverie, nearly making him drop his beer. He finishes it in one long pull and wipes his mouth with the sleeve of his flannel, standing up and taking a serious look at the building surf that is battering the pilings that hold the pier up. Several guys are out on the North side of the pier, clad in black wetsuits, hanging in there and riding the waves like a bull rider rides a bull- 9 seconds- Maybe 12 if they’re lucky. By fifteen they’re dodging the pilings beneath the pier.
He takes one last glance at the surf and stands, weaving a bit but not too bad, silently blaming the pier. He kicks the milk crate he was sitting on as he trudges landward and thinks to himself that he has mixed feelings that he outlived the old man that ran the pier.


What the whole thing started with...

For Ronnie the past five years had come and gone with barely a sigh. The years went by leaving him nothing but hazy recollections of bottles and bars and hangovers and last cigarettes, and the illusion that this is all life had left for him. Of course at the present he was “okay”- “better” for lack of a more accurate term- but he didn’t really feel “better”, only different than he felt before. Not quite a year before he was measuring his days in sixes and twelves, pints and ounces- today the hands on the clock marched slowly on, monotonous as each waking moment seemed to drag him forward with it. Some things seemed to hang onto him, while he seemed to hang onto some things. Dragging ourselves upwards or down, forward or backwards- it seems like nothing stays the same except for the shuffle of our feet on the boardwalk and the rythem of the ocean keeping steady cadence with the dull ache of the heart.
On the tail end of a half decade that is a series of unconnected non-events- a drunken haze that forms a triangle from waking to drinking to sleeping. Unable to recall all of it- most of it, actually- and most times the place where one wakes is not not the place where one recollected going to sleep. Waking in unhealthy places, dangerous places where it was dangerous to sleep unprotected and unaware, but after a bit it really didn’t seem too alarming- just another plodding step towards nowhere, one step closer to an undefined end.



At one time I was a different person that I am today, living under an illusion of invincibility and strength. Back then I was quietly confident of being in control. I knew most times out that I was one of the better surfers in the water, and at the time it seemed like the silent recognition I received from my peers was enough for me, that it was almost something tangible in it’s importance. I suppose the dawning realization that it meant nothing at all was one thing that undermined my confidence and began a slow erosion that quickened as it progressed. One thing after another took me down one notch at a time, failures and disappointments, realizations that come with age, the creeping awareness that only comes with age, and one day you wake and find yourself human and fallible and neither weaker nor stronger than the next guy, just another human being, fragile, subject to the passage of time. No matter what kind of shape I’m in, no matter how late I drop in or how deep I ride in the end I die just like anyone else, taking with me any unfinished dreams and over the briefest flash of time forgotten to all but a precious few.
The realization gnawed at me and I made my unfortunate position even worse by worrying about it. I spent less and less time in the water, making an uncomfortable decline into alcoholism that in my youth I’d been strong enough to keep at bay.
There was no radical change, nothing extreme at all in my actions except for the hours I kept and the amount of alcohol I put away. It was more of a passive decline where one night I’d be too drunk to get home and one morning I’d start drinking a little earlier than the next, putting them a way a little faster than the day before, oblivious to the raised eyebrows and looks of consternation of those around me. Those were easy to ignore if you pickled yourself well enough. Pretty soon I’d show up to chack the surf, reeking of alcohol and cigarettes and an hour or two later than I used to, and I’d get the fishy eye from some and others would look the other way, hoping I’d take my troubles and solve them before anyone has to say anything. Friends left me to my own devices, knowing me well enough to know that one way or another things have a way of running their course. Soon those friends were people I used to know. Pretty soon I knew the names of bartenders and patrons in dark bars all over town.
Early on my shaper made a comment that we were going to need some extra thickness on my boards to carry the extra pounds I’d been putting on. I heard the message he was sending but wasn’t in any kind of place where I could deal with it properly, and instead I just avoided him, and that next board just didn’t get made. I let the boards I had go, on consignment at the surf shop I’d been doing ding repairs at forever. Glen took the last couple and hung them on the wall behind the counter. Handing me the cash he told me that they’re too nice of boards to let go and when I want to buy them back they’d be there. The whole deal left me sheepish, and coupled with the way people I knew would quickly edge away whenever I came around I just opted to hang out down the boardwalk a ways, on my own.

I was no kid anymore. Alcohol and oxycotin were my main staples, and coupled with a steady diet of bullshit, denial and self-pity I shuffled around with my head down and my body aching, my spirit beaten. The forecast called for pain and there really seemed to be no hope for the future. Given enough time by myself I thought about drinking and quitting, missed opportunities and hopelessness. I’d dug myself a hole with steep sides and me at the bottom, and the way out was more difficult than I was willing to try. For a while my life seemed split pretty evenly between getting sober and getting drunk, but pretty quick it was just getting drunk and rationalizing why I did it. Could have been anything- a broken heart, a blow to the head, the loss of a good friend or a three wave hold down. It didn’t really matter what it was that started it- you can’t indefinitely avoid the inevitable and everybody has to pay the piper. And I guess it was just too much for a never had been on the periphery of not quite greatness entering the twilight of his obsolescence.
So one night when the cops found me asleep in the sand next to Crystal Pier they took me in. When you’re fifteen and drunk in the sand people chalk it up to teenage hijinks, but when you’re 42 and they find you there they have a whole different interpretation- they tell you you’ve got a problem.
I’d been picked up a few times- a couple when I was too drunk to get home from a bar, one time when I took a swing at a cop who was trying to arrest me. I was no stranger to the drunk tank,

Sometimes I think I'm a mix of Douglas Fairbanks Jr., Peter O'toole, Humphrey Bogart and Ian Fleming. While I did grow up surrounded by academics I was an adventurous kid. I was pretty shy and polite until I got beat up several times and pushed around a bunch. When I turned fifteen I had grown enough and was smart enough to know I had some decisions to make, and I decided I wasn't going to let people treat me so bad anymore. I got in a lot of fights. At fifteen and a half I left home. I was playing in a punk band in San Diego and living with a bunch of guys I grew up with that were older. A couple had jobs, most sold drugs to navy guys on the boardwalk to make ends meet.

Later- lots later- I kickboxed and studied Jiu Jitsu, eventually teaching Kickboxing and helping teach Jiu Jitsu (that's such a technical sport to master, it's a stretch to ever say you're an expert. I studied under the Gracie Family and will probably never say I'm an expert, having seen how proficient they are.) Anyhow- the reason for this little bitof preamble is because sometimes my writing rubs people the wrong way. People tend to get all politically correct on me and want to leverage me with accepted social convention. Not usually people in the program, however. But still- I just wanted to note: The past is the past, things are what they are, people fight- it's a fact of life. The history of this planet has been fraught with wars and I'm afraid there has been no time in the past two thousand years that there hasn't been a war taking place somewhere. Plus boys will be boys and sometimes hitting each other is just a seeminly harmless way that we blew off some steam.

Nowadays I like to meditate and prune my double purple hibiscus and listen to a little Prokofiev and spend time with my kid at the playground. But if I had it to do again, while I'd do things so totally different, I'd certainly feel bad for missing the education I got the first time around.


Sometimes a poet, other times a Viking- most times for me it’s tough to tell the two apart. Eloquent through the first bottle, I’m relaxed- nearly a perfect gentleman with just a few cracks at the seams. Slowly losing speech capabilities into the second, the grin I turn on my adversaries turns to a toothy smile, nearly a grimace. From the top of the third we’re reduced to guttural monosyllables and it’s easier to strike with the palm or the edge of my hand than to make a fist- going to the ground is wise at this point as it’s hard to keep my equilibrium and the time is long past that I’d even want to try to explain my position with words. At some point I just want to see my demons embodied and my fears quantified in some physical form and I bare my teeth and growl and confront them and employ every attack until either they’re dead or I am- at some point it all seems so real and the madness that burns in the back of my mind seems finally to make some sense.
It was way too many fights ago that I knew better- too many times the solitary figure on a lonely back street late at night. Been a long time since I flinched or cowered in the dark. Been a long time since I backed down. Been a long time since I had any reasonable, realistic, normal, sense of self-preservation. Been a long time since I was willing to eat dirt. I never invited danger but neither did I change my path or turn it away. Maybe it was just too many Mickey Spillane novels and Dirty Harry movies and Louise L’amoures and Humphrey Bogarts and too goddamn much Hemingway and Kerouac and J.D. Salinger. Something certainly skewed my sensibilities and left me all bent out of shape when it comes to what’s right and wrong. I don’t think most people have such a huge gray area between the two. I sometimes have trouble telling one from the other.
I look across the years at my own faded reflection in the bathroom mirror and only see a hint of the man I once strove to be. Beaten by time and my own self destructive tendencies I realize late in the game that I’m perhaps just a product of a twisted environment that maybe only I see, operating at a physiological disadvantage that sometimes leaves me alone on a solitary path, searching back into myself. And upon that realization I carefully extract what’s left of my pride and nurture and care for it as if it’s the very heart of me, realizing that perhaps it’s all that’s left of me. Over time the wounds heal and the scars fade and sworn enemies cease to recognize me as who I once was and I stand alone on a windswept beach, hair bleached and skin cracked from the salt and sun and I squint into the late afternoon sun and the fearless sun only stares back at me.

Thanks for the compliment. I'm challenged with a lot of the more esoteric talk that goes on with a lot of people. I grew up around it (I have had LOTS of family in various programs) but still I guess I think in simpler terms- or maybe the opposite.I dunno. Anyhow- I tend to be more coarse in my speech. I have a gravelly sense of humor that offends my P.C. older sister to no end and forces her to attempt to "correct"me inmy wicked ways.

But alas, I may sound coarse but those are just the packaging for intentions and beliefs that are.... better than she thinks. ;)

Merry Christmas, you people over on the other side of the date line. :)

Thursday, May 26, 2005. 7:30 PM Sitting in the bar, thinking about a beer. The only plug in the airport is in the bar. This is life. Sitting in the bar at the airport waiting for my 8:45 flight to Los Angeles, where I’ll disembark at 4:45 a.m. and board another plane to San Diego that lands at 7:30 a.m. in my hometown. San Diego- a town that doesn’t mean a thing to me anymore. It hasn’t been my home for over twenty years and I’ll walk off of the plane and drive the streets and nothing will be familiar to me. There’s nobody left from the old days. Everyone’s gone and no one sees me and recognizes me and asks me where I’ve been and raises a toast to old times. No one does and no one cares. God knows I don’t care. That town never did me any favors and looking around me and listening I realize that practically anyone here now wasn’t here back then anyhow.

Going to say goodbye to dad. Dad’s been gone for over a month but this is the soonest we all could be together, I guess. My step-mom was tired from caring for him and she needed some time to fall back and regroup and get ready. All of us were tired from the stress of not knowing how we could help or what we could do for him. Truth be told there wasn’t anything we could do but wait and hope he’s comfortable and tell him that we love him and hope he hears. I love you dad. Dad’s already gone but from such a great distance it’s difficult to tell. He’s been gone now for over a month but still I can listen to his messages on my phone and hear his voice. God knows the longer I wait to erase them the worse it will be.

The barmaid has been eyeing me for a while now, watching to see if I’m drinking or if I’m just taking up space in the bar. There are a couple glasses on the edge of my table from the customer before me and it’s busy enough here that she can’t be sure, but I think I’ll have a couple beers before my flight anyhow. I am a terrible drinker, but what the fuck- what else do Irish/Scottish people do when they’re going to one last time say goodbye to their dad? And lord knows I hate to fly- everyone that knows me knows that. I hated to fly since the first trip but you put one into the ocean and all the sudden it all takes on a new, pressing reality. Shit happens. Hope it doesn’t happen tonight.

The beer tastes good. Two max, tonight- I can’t afford to be a lush anymore, and god knows I’ve been one in the past. My little brother told me when I dropped him off for his flight two days ago that we all oughta toss back a couple beers together after the funeral. That’ll be rich- bunch of Scottish and Irish guys, crying in their beers. Actually that sounds beautiful. I haven’t cried enough yet this month- not nearly enough as I should’ve. It’ll be nice to be surrounded by the people that I’ve known and that know me- mostly the siblings and cousins and old friends- and it’s comforting that all of us with all of our idiosyncrasies and each of our individual troubles- we all just love each other and care about each other and we all can stand each other for a couple days and feel a ton of warmth and comfort (and god knows if it were more than a couple weeks we’d be at each other’s throats) and it’s just warm and fantastic to think about a couple days with everyone and maybe I’ll be able to have a proper cry about it and maybe I’ll be able to put dad to rest and quit thinking that he’s just off away somewhere and sooner or later the phone would ring and I’d hear his voice telling me he’s some literary figure gone awry. “Sherwood Forest- Robin Hood Speaking!”

675 words never came and went so easily. It’s easy with grief to write what you feel. If I could so easily personify happiness I’d be a wealthy man. Jimmy Cliff is singing on the house PA that you can get it if you really want- if you try- try try try-… I love it here. I wouldn’t mind terribly if I missed my flight and could go home and lay in a hammock and have a beer on my porch with that sweet girl that is there worrying about me right now. I’ll call her before I board my flight and she’ll hear the beer on my voice and worry about me most the night anyhow. God damn-it I never can please everyone anyhow, but I guess if I had to choose I’d like to please her and I a little together right now. I think she smiles a little at how “off” I really am and the gravity of my idiosyncrasies. I hope so. I guess it’s a lot to ask to actually want someone to understand what a nut job I am and appreciate it as some kind of “genius” or something. I just hope she’ll put up with me. But it’d be nice if someone saw the things I see and said “Yeah- that really does mean something.” My photos, my writing, my dreams and stupid thoughts and predictions and all that stupid irony that seems to be so at the forefront of my mind- it’d be nice if eventually somebody thought that if it means something to me than it must be something to me and that’s good enough for them. I don’t expect miracles- just humor me and I’m great.

Lot of tourists in here- funny to watch, funnier to listen to from the next table over. People seems to know so much about this place I live. Too fucking funny how they see my home. Crack up. I see it as someplace I accept and adore and trust and believe in and work so hard to hang onto and keep inside of my heart and they see it as some sort of culturally diverse Disneyland built for their entertainment. Okay- that’s maybe a little harsh, but I think it gets the point across.

I hope I can write for a bit on the flight. Either that or sleep. The house PA is playing old Marley now. One Cup of Coffee- trippy. I love this place.




Friday- May 27th- Landed in San Fran at 4:30 am. Landed in San Diego at 7:45. The rental car radio is playing an “80s resurrection weekend” and it’s almost as if I never left. Same station, same DJ, same music. It’s a comfort and I feel for a second like I’ve come home. 10 minutes with mom and the moment had passed.
Visited with mom and went to the places where I used to love to go. Balboa Park. Spanish architecture and Art. Got fed up with mom’s constant pushing and nagging and left early for North County. Picked up fresh fruit at a stand I always used to go to on Del Dios Highway near Lake Hodges. Strawberries, Bananas, Avocados, plums and apricots, Homemade tortilla chips. Tamales. Stopped at a little Mexican place I found by accident back around Christmas and picked up lunch for everyone. Headed up to the Kzynski manor to meet up with the lot of them and see what needs to be done and how everyone’s faring. No matter where he lived Dad’s place was always way off of the beaten path. Giving or following directions to dad’s house was like working out pieces of a puzzle. This last house was one of the toughest- lots of “go to the fourth mailbox on the right and look for the house with the fish-kites. Turn right where ‘768’ is painted on a rock.” Luckily I was just here at Christmas and so it wasn’t too tough. I only had to backtrack twice.

Saturday- May 28th 2005. Dad’s Memorial. Spent most of my day hiding behind a camera. It’s an easy way to detach myself from a situation and pretty well hide from my feelings. It works for fear as well as pain, FYI. I’m sure a therapist would find it food for thought, but whatever- sometimes I just don’t feel like feeling pain. Go figure.
I busy myself with running to town and getting supplies. When I get back I take beverages into the fridge at the back of dad’s shop and as I look around me I realize I may never be able to immerse myself in the comfort and safety of dad’s shop again. The familiar smell of wood shavings and 3-in-1 oil- Dad is everywhere in here. I set up my laptop and break out my camera and proceed to shoot hundreds of photos, first in the dark with no flash- then in the light. I am hurried as I only have the day and work with the realization in mind that I’ll probably have to touch everything up later but try to get the best stuff I can. I turn on dad’s radio and am not surprised to hear National Public Radio, and as the radio drones on I look at life through my camera, and I see dad busy in his shop, building and tinkering and adjusting- maybe building his workbench that he always wanted to build.

Sunday- May 29th 2005- 3 am. Woke up and ran the hot water over me for ten minutes in an attempt to feel human again. I stand naked in the doorway to the bathroom drying my hair with a towel. I had a little trouble finding my phone charger last night and now my crap is strewn pretty much throughout the hotel room. I dry off and brush that dry, gritty film from my teeth. Packing in silence I run my schedule through my head, hoping I don’t miss my flight as I’ve been here long enough and need to be home where I feel safe and stable. I pack what’s still folded and fold a couple things more and then stuff the rest in on top and squash the suitcase closed and zip it shut. No matter how orderly things begin somehow they always end up in a mess. I really want a cup or six of coffee but have high hopes of getting a nap on the flight and so drive by braile, images in my head of Alex De Large of a Clockwork Orange- eyes propped open by sheer will instead of toothpicks- as the Air conditioning blasts icy air on me and Tears for Fears blasts Mad World from the radio.


All around me are familiar faces
Worn out places
Worn out faces
Bright and early for the daily races
Going no where
Going no where
Their tears are filling up their glasses
No expression
No expression
Hide my head I wanna drown my sorrow
No tomorrow
No tomorrow
And I find it kind of funny
I find it kind of sad
The dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had
I find it hard to tell you
I find it hard to take
When people run in circles its a very very
Mad world
Mad world

Running on autopilot 90 miles per hour down nearly foggy highways that I hardly recognize. Windshield wipers keeping cadence with cracks in the pavement, tail-lights materializing out of the fog in front of me and whipping back into the fog behind me as I pass, out of sight out of mind. I keep an eye on the rear view for the inevitable Highway Patrol cruiser but it never materializes. God must figure that I’ve already had enough.
I can feel the rear wheels slip a little as I navigate the interchange from Interstate fifteen onto interstate eight, and again from interstate eight- but I don’t really slow down and instead just roll with it, accelerating out of the turn and into the straightaway towards home. Downtown the fog has lifted and I cruise the surface streets navigating solely on twenty year-old memories. I make one wrong turn but quickly right myself and manage to get into the rent-a-car return lot and after a brief exchange with a bleary eyed agent I find myself standing alone in the darkness for twenty minutes, waiting for a shuttle that it seems may never come.
It feels good to not be driving- to have someone responsible in charge of my well being. I’m so fucking tired and we’re all just sheep being herded from one gate to the next, through turnstiles and checkpoints and onto planes where we’re packed as tight as if we’re in some sort of space aged cattle-car heading out to pasture or off to the slaughter. I decline breakfast or coffee and drift off to sleep, waking in San Francisco where I disembark and get a quick bowl of Donburi at a Japanese place in the airport and then board my flight home. I get settled in the cramped little space they have allowed me, no room to work at my laptop and too tired to read I opt for two sleeping pills and drift in and out of consciousness the entire 2800 miles, pretending to sleep as if I can fool myself into relaxing. I pretend to sleep, eyes shut and breathing well metered- and I try to ignore thoughts of midair collisions and pictures of me strapped to this little chair, hurtling through space towards some dramatic impact with the unavoidable surface of the hard, cold earth.
I land in Kona- home. Two days and everything’s just the same as I left it. Not even time for dust to settle on my dashboard. The lawn is the same length, and as I pull into the driveway I silently wish I’d mowed it before I left. Same bat time, same bat channel. Same old shit. Life goes on.




Monday March 30- 6am in the morning. I dialed dad’s number and his voice came on telling me that I’ve reached the answering machine. I love his voice and wish there were some way I could save it on my end. He sounds so confidant and strong and alive- in charge of himself, just away from the phone for a minute, out making everything okay. In a way I wish someone had answered, but in a way I’m glad I got to hear his voice again.