Lost Toast

You've changed my mornings forever -

The way you taught me
To sprinkle chocolate
Over my fresh coffee grounds
And as the water pours through -
To stick my face
Into the hot, steamy clouds of chocolatey aroma
And breathe in deep.

This little ritual
Holds the place in my life
Where you once were.

I wonder
If you still spread
Avocado on your toast
To eat with your chocolatey coffee
Every morning -
Like I taught you.

Winter's Reminder

I go outside to listen
To the morning birds sing

But they can't be heard above
the din and whine of power motors
improving the suburban landscape around me.

Pale land owners blink
inside glowing cubes
Tapping away the days

While brown men
Carve, and clip, and blow about
the leaves with cacophonous inefficiency

Hiding the rot from dewy eyes - unprepared for winter's reminder.

Where have all the rakes gone?

Combing the yards of yesteryear
into fluffy piles of detritus
For children to jump in
and play, and toss about.

Somewhere out East
I imagine

Where time moves like treacle
And there's nothing better to do
than lean against the barn
and listen to the birds sing

As you watch the leaves fall
and feel the air around your neck
nipping colder..

Thoughts on Technology

I've been hearing a lot out there about technology and it's influence on our ability to connect with each other and the physical world around us. I say that it's not a binary choice, but rather like any tool, in how you use it.

The question is, are we prepared as a species for the pace of change that modern technological advances bring? How does it effect our humanity?

UCLA research has shown that people under a certain age are losing the ability to recognize emotions in facial expressions, and with it the ability to empathize. Have we substituted emojis for deep interaction, or really caring?

Like the discovery of fire, we are living in an age where technology will radically change the course of our evolution. Whether we learn to contain this tool, and use it appropriately, or whether our adoration of the flames will blind us to the fact that our home is burning down - remains to be seen.

Here are four great american thinkers with competing essays on the subject. "Technology - Freedom, or a Trap?" I found this to be an excellent debate, and I hope that it rages on. Our survival may depend upon it.

http://www.think-off.org/

#worldsurvival #empathyproject

Street Theater on a Blood Moon Day

Walking down Howard .. After the Faire.

I spot some pretty boy's assless chaps poking out of the ferns
In a tastefully decorated open garage.

He's being playfully flogged by the girl in the perfect leather kitty suit, and peals of chardonnay fueled laughter follow me down towards ..

The next piss soaked street corner of the housing projects
where neighbors gathered on the sidewalk pass the afternoon
grumbling matter-of-factly about the smell down the hall.

"Y'know when that 'rigo mortis' sets in, and the heat just blows you up 'til you're 'bout ready to pop?" .. "Well, that's what he be like, and nobody comin' to take him away 'cause the streets all gay."

As the murmuring agreements carry me on, I push it all
through my senses and into my head.

The Stench of
Sex and Death.
Of privilege and poverty
The sense of camaraderie
Drama and Comedy.

And I, passing by, with an ironic laugh, carry on as if nothing about this is wrong

Which is true .. After all what can I do?

Invisible and alone, with this poem, I think why?
Do we do this to ourselves. In our own little hells.

Whistling past graveyards .. Is there somewhere I stand?
With my eyes and ears open, and a pen in my hand.

My Home Town

I've lived in Santa Cruz for 25 years now - not counting 8 years off in New York - and like any long term relationship, it's had it's up and downs. Even though at times the town's flaws are grossly magnified, and the grass may look greener elsewhere, I'm trying to take responsibility for my own input to the dynamic, and I've begun to see her in a new light that illuminates the opportunities within her challenges, and even some endearing qualities to her awkward growing pains.

That being said, some changes I've seen over time have hurt me to witness, and I see a lot of good people leaving town because of them. The best way to sum it all up for me is that this place has become way more cutthroat.

I blame this on the expensive housing market and the fact that the town has a limited local economy to support the high cost of living for it's citizens. This has led to a sort of transitory residence of students, tourists, and silicon valley types that build large houses, but have to commute over the hill to pay for them.

It seems these days that only kind of people that can afford to put down roots here come from the very high end of the economic scale, and working families have been fleeing in droves to more affordable areas since the aftermath of the earthquake in 1989.

This leads to a more competitive, less altruistic environment overall. On the roads, in the work place, and in community attitudes towards the poorest members of our society. Stress and struggle for basic survival can make people do horrible things to each other, and to be fair I've been guilty of some Machiavellian moves in my early business decisions here. Experiencing the intense desperation of scarcity, I simply felt I had no choice.

It shouldn't have to be that way, and it hasn't always been. When my family moved to Santa Cruz in 1980 it was a decision prompted by something my mother experienced here while my academic parents were exploring which university towns they could relocate to. Although Santa Cruz was low on the list due to it's relative isolation and backwater reputation, my mom was charmed by the random kindness shown to her by strangers just walking around town. On her last day here, she fell on the concrete stairs and broke her ankle while attending a hippie music festival in San Lorenzo Park. Many bystanders rushed to her aid and offered her a ride to the hospital. No one would leave her side until she was stabilized and on her way to the doctor, and upon hearing her story, several in the crowd offered up their phone numbers in case we decided to move here and needed help getting set up.

Although this scene could have played out similarly today, sadly there are hardly any commercial-free music festivals in the park these days, and I can see it's teen-age-homeless-meth-head population laughing at my mom falling down the stairs, and certainly I imagine less people offering her help finding housing.

My point is that the prevailing mascot of the town has slowly and incrementally turned from one of a mellow, slightly backwards, well intentioned hippie, to that of a stressed out and ambitious LA-style go-getter that can't be bothered helping his neighbor.

Of course these are my own stereotypes, but I think long time locals that have seen these changes will back me up. I'm leaving some annoying things about the past out, like the conservative political power structure, but one could argue that today's 'progressive' status quo offers about the same diversity of opinion, and very similar results.

My personal response to the increasing expense of living here has been to level up my professional game, and to help create jobs locally that can provide a good living and a fulfilling vocation for folks who choose to stay here. I try and see the daily challenges as less of a curse, and more of a puzzle that I've got to change my perspective about if I want to enjoy solving it.

These days Santa Cruz has more economic opportunities and a growing support network for entrepreneurs. You just have to look for the silver lining in changing conditions. For instance, when I moved back here after the 90's, I was struck by the increase in traffic congestion, as well as the higher income bracket. My formerly sleepy surfer town had turned into a grinding mess of Beamers and Mercedes taking an hour to get across the city during three maddening rush hours a day.

Of course coming from Manhattan I could recognize that these were the perfect conditions for a professional bike messenger company. Santa Cruz was rapidly outgrowing it's britches and needed help managing it's now precious time.

I've been helped in my long term attitude towards my home by the ability to get away at times, and I'd advise this for any relationship that you want to sustain, even if it's only for a couple of days. Also, lately I try and concentrate more on the things I can do with my time here that I love, like gardening in my back yard, or biking up into the mountains.

As far as the long term intractable problems here. I believe they are caused and compounded by short-sighted planning by uninspired local leadership that is pushed around by the biggest players on the block like the Seaside company, McMansion developers, and a University system seemingly hell bent on endless, unjustifiable growth in a limited housing market, squeezing locals out.

Meanwhile crime statistics and police budgets continue to rise while the homeless, drugs, and gang problems remain largely unaddressed.

What can we do? For me it's about committing to the community. Not running away. Sure these problems are huge, but they are everywhere and require the same shift in all of us if we want to preserve our way of life.

We need to change our attitudes first. Take responsibility for the problems in our society and for the worst off among us, rather than hiding from and denying them. We need to love our community and forgive our neighbors for their trespasses against us. And finally, we need to be grateful for this amazing place we find ourselves in, and pledge to do our best to leave it an even better place for those that come after us.

-RG

Poem for Dad

Three years ago,

On Mother's day, my Father's Spirit learned to fly.

In the form of a seagull, he stumbled off a cliff.

Just like the Parkinson's had stricken him.

Plunging down to the rocky sea floor, I caught my breath to see if he knew.

A swell of light crystals rushed out on the tide,

His wings beating once, and then stronger, twice more,

He swooped up the face of a cresting wave,

And then soared free .. to God knows where,

I was happy to see him flying away.

-----------------------------------------

Not long after

I felt him pacing me wing for wing,

As I speeded my bike along the cliffs.

Looking over to say, with his sly seagull eye,

"Cmon! You can do better. I'll race you to the end!"

So I took him on .. and I've been chasing him since then.

---------------------------------------------------

I love you , Dad.

But I've got to let go.

You have to understand .. it's okay when I'm coasting.

That I still have a long way to go on this road,

And I weigh so much more than your soul.

I'll catch you at the edge, when I get there, my friend.

I'm not in a hurry

To reach the horizon.

--------------------------------------------------------------

Today

I found my Father's Spirit

In a porpoise swimming by.

Taking his sweet time,

Carving long, lazy lines, down the slow coast of life ~

Street Walking Jenny

I saw Jenny on the street a few months ago. She looked healthier than I've seen her in a while. Put on some weight in jail I guessed.

She was holding up one of those 70% discount furniture signs for passing traffic, clutching her oversize parka tight against the biting wind. I could see it was her through the layers of scarves. Her big hair and high cheek bones were the give away. Bright green eyes peered out of the darkness wrapped around her and she recognized me as I approached her corner on my bike. Smiling that old familiar smile, she flashed her perfect row of buck teeth at me, sticking out from her face like a snowplow lashed to the front of a '57 chevy.

I smiled back, glad she was doing better, the last time I had seen her was on lower Ocean and she was near the bottom. Street hookers in Santa Cruz are the dregs of society. I don't know how she got that way after high school but you could tell she was one of the worst addicts around from the looks of her. For a few years she had held up well, as she strutted for potential johns, even having a gangster attitude about it, reminding me of her swagger in high school. But after awhile I'd see her hunched over on a curb, her backbone sticking out like stegosaurus, picking at her scabs, done trying, but still turning tricks to feed the monkey on her back.

Jenny and I were friends at The Ark, a drop-out high school with lots of emphasis on academic freedom, which meant as long as you were doing what was required for graduation the teachers gave you most of the day off for independent studies. This meant we all met at school just to sneak off to the skate park to smoke pot and drink 40's.

In the 80's there was a lot of tension between the factions at school. There were 'jock' metal-heads, who hated us 'faggot' punk rockers, and they would constantly berate us about how lame the Dead Kennedys were in comparison to Metallica. Fluffing their long, feathered hair, they would throw bottles at us yelling, 'in your neck, turd burglars!' There was one guy who accused you of looking at his butt whenever you glanced in his direction. "You looking at my ass, queer?" he'd sneer at you threateningly, sticking his butt out farther in the tightest of designer jeans.

Laughable as this was, a far more serious divide and source of conflict was the animosity between the latino and white kids. Especially between those who considered themselves gangsters, or thugs.

Jenny's brother Jackie was one of those gangsters, and you could see him organizing weaker boys around himself. Jackie and his crew were taking cues from an emerging Southern California Vato culture, and the white bullies in school were way behind the curve. When white kids fought each other it was mostly play acting, fisticuffs and one on one, with some older student stepping in to declare a winner and stop the fight when it got too bloody. All that changed with the advent of 'rat-packing'. Now, when a white kid fought a mexican kid, or when two mexican kids from rival crews fought, eleven or fifteen people with knives and bats would jump in and it wouldn't end until someone or several people were in the hospital. And then, the endless reprisals.

It got so bad that kids gathered in exclusive clusters for protection, and started wearing colors to advertise their affiliation and back-up.

None of this mattered to Jenny and me. We had a good old fashioned high school crush, and we would flirt shamelessly in class and eat lunch together on the quad, driving her brother and other bigoted members of both our groups crazy. The filthy punker dating the gangster princess was a stick in the eyes of all the racial and cultural purists that were ruling the scene at the time, and I was taken aside by her friends and gently warned that things would not end well for both of us.

I was most afraid of what her brother would do to her, and we agreed to break it off for the sake of calm in her family. We remained friends in secret however, and sometimes she would miss her bus home so we could walk downtown together along the railroad tracks after school. At the end of one of these walks our senior year, I finally got up the nerve to go in for a kiss. I remember her full lips parting and she just took control. Her kiss was like a world I fell into and left everything behind me as her warm curves took me into her embrace. I just held on and enjoyed the ride... It was like nothing I had experienced before. It was Latin Love.

Then it was over, and she was walking away, laughing at me over her shoulder as I stood there dumbfounded and blue-balled to the hilt.

I knew it would never go past that day, and after graduation I lost track of Jenny, until years later I saw her in Watsonville. She was full teen-angel style gangster by then, with hair to the heavens and a black leather jacket, the comb in her jeans back pocket doubling as a switch blade. She had a crew of wannabes trailing behind her, just like her brother, and one girl, smaller than the rest was especially subservient, cowering at her side, and watching her every move like a beaten dog does it's master.

I nodded and smiled at her, and she stared coldly back, as if I didn't show proper respect to her station, on her turf. It's always been a beautiful escape plan of mine to bike away, and that's what I did, thinking I would never see Jenny again, but certain people have a strange connection in this small town, and we haunted each other's lives over time.

The next time I saw Jenny she still had her little girlfriend, but she was hooking now and had begun her long, slow decline into drug addiction and poor health. Her thuggish swagger eroded into a bitter and drooling scowl, driving customers away and making her situation worse. Her girlfriend eventually left, and as I headed home from my bartender job in the evenings, I would see Jenny alone, the last whore on the street, gray and shuffling towards the next fix, or death. I doubt she cared which.

Eventually she disappeared from sight. I was vaguely aware of something wrong in my routine for months before I noticed she was gone, and I became sad. More sad than I was seeing her suffer. I was like she had given up, and I realized that even though we had taken such different paths in life, seeing her survive and continue walking had inspired me to keep struggling through my own every day problems.

I hoped she had somehow been given a second chance at life, like in the movies when a dashing millionaire takes a shining to the pretty prostitute he sees something special in. Maybe she got a ticket out of town to get off the drugs. More than likely she overdosed, and what are you gonna do but put it out of your mind?

Then I saw her! On the street corner again, but this time holding that giant discount furniture sign up against the wind. She was proud once more and full of sass, tramping towards her spot in the morning, her tall frame leaning forward through the elements, and a smallish woman scurrying behind her, carrying a hot thermos.

At the end of the day, sometimes in the rain, I'd be riding her side of the street on the bike ride back from Watsonville. I'd pass her and nod, and she'd flash me that brilliant smile, her eyes crinkling up the sides of her leathery face.

Then she was gone. The weather changed to unseasonably warm and some other poor sucker was sweating in her place. In my cynical nature I assumed she went back to jail, but part of me entertained an elaborate fantasy about her working her way up in the business and forming an elite crew of sign-holders that dominated the market. I could see her staking out the best street corners and chasing off competitors like she used to when she was working the bus station. I smiled to myself thinking of Jenny running a sign-spinning crew like a top-notch street gang. Taking over the city block by block.

I did see Jenny again the other day. She was back in the flats and hooking, but something had changed. Her ever present puffy coat was held open to show what was left of her figure, and she had stuffed her blueish feet into cheap high heels, but now along side she walked an old, beat up, red cruiser bicycle.

Smiling as we passed, I looked back to see her jump on that bike, and face up to the wind, begin pedaling slowly towards the Eastside.

Her Luminescent Egg

Her luminescent egg.
Beaming with love, broadcasting hopes and desires.
Casting her full influence, she tugs at the sleeves of fate.
Only to be brought down to earth again
Sinking into monthly deflation
and rest anew
in secrecy and darkness.

The Rites of Spring

Pitchforks and hoes,
Dirt between the toes.
Turning the fava beans
into
Nitrogen...
Hearing daffodils
Whispering...
The rites of spring
As everything
Is poised...
to begin again