the neck and the shoulders

it is not the legs. sure, they grow tired as they turn pedals time and time and time again, often fighting up rather steep hills. but my legs seem to have a deep reserve of stamina. rather it is the shoulders and neck. my fucking shoulders and fucking neck. about three hours into each ride, they begin to scream at me, and beg that i stop. consequently, as i climb the hills, i find myself alternating between massaging left then right then left then right and so forth. which is rather annoying. it isn't simply soreness, but a relatively sharp pain that refuses to relent. the tension then radiates to my head, causing a mild headache. my god, what have i gotten myself into? but at least today, i had sunglasses to save my eyes from squinting and bugs. yesterday, i spent a good twenty minutes attempting to flush the knat out of my red and irritated eye, which remained sore all day. many months ago, i stumbled across a pair of sunglasses in a store on haight street with kristina, that cost $300. i wanted them badly, which frankly is utterly absurd. $300??? but today motherfucker, i found a pair that looks and feels remarkably the same, for $19.99!!!!! i am tempted to go back and buy a second pair, for the time when pair number one wears out. perhaps i will have such luck with all of my equipment. perhaps even my neck and shoulders will follow suit. and now i will lie on my couch in the small piece of sun that breaks the silence of my windows, and listen to the new william hut record. oh to have a voice like that. oh oh oh. like my neck, i shall not relent. no no no.

elbib doownosiop eht dna yessirrom

sitting on my couch this morning, i reach the end of the poisonwood bible, and cry. and cry and cry, for so many things. the skies are again grey, like the taste in my belly. like the dried, windswept bones of ruth may and nathan, given over to the african soil. last night i struggled to sleep. goddammit. walked down the street to the theatre and watched winged migration, which contained some of the most beautiful filmed images i have ever seen. a bit long winded, but gorgeous nonetheless. walked home, and lay in bed awake for hours. i have finally concluded, that my insomnia seems to increase in direct proportion to the excessive amount of time i spend alone. perhaps i need to learn how to better silence my rambling mind in its solitude. i so often feel as though i am destined to walk this earth with none other than myself, which frightens me, and saddens me, but gives me strength at the same time. not exactly loneliness, for that is present as well, but an entirely different emotion. no, this is something deeper, that cuts into the flesh of my history. perhaps that sick young boy has never really left, and never will. during that small percentage of my life where i've shared my bed with another, the insomnia has been silent. afraid maybe, of interrupting two bodies intertwined. this morning, i listen to the breathy, mysterious, voice of morrissey. grey skies, wet eyes, and morrissey...oh how miserable he can seem~

"i am a poor, freezing cold, soul so far from where i intended to go. scavenging through life's very constant lows, so far from where i'm determined to go"

how do i?

difficult to imagine on this grey skied, cold aired day, that i was flying through those farmlands yesterday in the painful, dreary eyed heat. 103. oh how easily one forgets the deep power of the sun. i was completely strong and furious with energy until just before the fourth hour, when my body began begging of me to stop. at one point, i noticed that even my teeth hurt, which must have been a sure sign that fatigue was upon me. as the flurry of grassland and walnut groves spread out before me, my gaze locked horns with the cement. the black and poisonous cement, that cried out to me "jefferson oh jefferson, where are you going?" sometimes, i am uncertain. i am afraid. six weeks from this trip of mine, my body falters a bit and my mind follows. if i am tired after four, how will i ride eight, day after day after day? this is not a question for my body, but instead one for my mind and the spirit inside of me that guides it. and how do i not long for a better bike, one that is not seven years old and built of the most unforgiving aluminum? and how do i not long for new shorts, and sunglasses, and socks, and a tent that weighs less than ten pounds? oh, how loud the mind can be. how terribly loud.

and flying things

and on the roadside there are lizards. perched like birds on sticks, they whisper their silences and dart off into hidden places, for they are the shooting stars of the earth. the vertebra of a dead deer drying in the sun, calls out to you with its ghost sounds...and the bugs upon the bones' white ocean death, remind you of a certain story of a certain little girl who put a certain ant in a certain jar of juice on a certain plane, to keep it alive until earth was once again beneath her feet. the butterflies cling to dry grass as the wind tickles them and teases them. lusts for them. oh the things we see with eyes spead open jumping from place to place on this giant spinning ball of dirt and water and salt, with hearts ticking and breaking and loving and stopping. and oh so many other things. sometimes, you go away for a weekend and return to find that your entire world appears to have changed color and shape. it was once a brown bear, lumbering through the thick of forest, and now it is a white bird in the sky, wings laced red with fire. it shall burn and burn and in it's quick mortal gasping, you won't see where it is going. it will blind you and you will fall upon knees to kiss the ground. oh dear ground let my lips carress the belly of your soul and embrace these new places, this new land of sky and clouds and flying things. a wedding and a million moments that seem to shift instantaneously the place where my eyes land. land land land, oh how i love thee. tomorrow, i will drive to davis, and ride my bike for hours and hours and hours in the hot sun, on the vast expanse of flat cement. it will carry on before my eyes, as my life does with body in tow. feet hands heart head toes legs everything tied up in a ball of wonder and mystery. where will it go next? where?

throwing things

oh yes, i have words. so many of them. buckets and baskets and truckloads full of them. i feel rather honored that these silly photos of jeff pitcher have begun such a discussion, for mr. kiefer is indeed correct about that. and i would most certainly thrust all of my words, feeble as they may be at times, but today is not the day for throwing things. today is the day for wishing steven tiller a happy birthday, for his heart is one of the largest i've ever known. and today is the day for driving to santa barbara for andrea and matt's wedding. i will swim in the ocean, and sit on the sandy beach reading. yes yes yes yes yes.

not sleepy and quiet.

not sleepy. quiet.

sleepy and quiet

sleepy and quiet.

spinning world

who am i who am i who ami whoami who ama wi whoa iam aw whwo ama i?
a simple question with an impossible answer. what is narcissism? what is blood? what is sleep? what is sex? what is love? what is life and what comes next? oh we float and we sink and we rise and we soar impossibly high with the waves out here on this sea of crumbling cities, and unforsaken truths. we write sentences backwards just like adah price, ecirp hada ekil tsuj, but we find no palendromes. there is no circle of retracing one's steps, only forward movement, as the earth spins and spins. i find that i grow dizzy less and less these days. perhaps my rhythm with this giant ball of dirt and water and thumping hearts, is more aligned. i am tempted as the knife glides its tongue between skin and muscle, to hide behind curtains. i am tempted to bend and curl into ball, as i endlessly question this visual questioning of self. the lacerations of a stranger's words ferment. but i will not. perhaps i show things here that can't be seen in my words or my songs or the movement of my hands. perhaps time must stop somewhere just shy of my face and stare at me. only then will i find my true center. last night, when i arrived home from kristina's, a painting dana had given me years ago which was tacked to my wall, lay face down on my bed. how, i wondered, did all four tacks remove themselves from wood? two years and four days ago, she left my life, and a wake of great screaming and great silence and unbelievable beauty remained. perhaps the world spins, with much greater precision than we could ever imagine. it holds us in open hands, and spins and spins and spins.

come to me dear sun.

the sun is here and with strength. flooding the earth with endless, lustfull, nights of sweat, beneath a restless, black-boned moon. come to me dear sun, come to me.

some jim harrison~

what happens when the god of spring
meets spring? he thinks for a moment
of great whales traveling from the bottom
to the top of the earth, the day the voyage
began seven million years ago
when spring last changed its season.
he enters himself, emptiness
desiring emptiness. he sleeps
and his sleep is the dance of all the birds
on earth flying north.

srae ym struh

sometimes, the silence hurts my ears. srae ym struh. ecnelis.
love. evol. lonliness. ssenilnol. hhhhhhhhhhhhs.

don't surrender
your loneliness so quickly.
let it cut more deep.

let it ferment and season you
as few human ingredients can.

something missing in my heart tonight
has made my eyes so soft,
my voice so tender.

my need of god
absolutely clear.

~hafiz. zifah.

squirrels and deer and death

i have spent much time debating what animal is my totem. though i wish i could say with confidence that it is the all-mighty lion, i must indeed confess that it seems to be shared by two much less powerful beasts: deer and squirrel. though i figure we're only supposed to have one, i guess if i intend to actually live to 134, two sounds fair...and one of them is so little. so then, what does it mean when you're riding up the last of the hills and on the roadside to your left you see a dead squirrel? you imagine him running and playing in the trees...you imagine him nearly falling on your head, landing and darting off into the juniper. as you round another turn, 40 yards up the road, you are thinking about deer and squirrels, and why them. you again crook your head to the right and see a dead deer lying in the dirt. mangled and stiff. flies about. it makes you sad to see these things. your heart aches for so much. what is it with us people and our cars? darting around all over the place in a flurry of steel. perhaps they were trying to tell me something. perhaps they were saying "jefferson be still, be still."

apples and blood and sleep

one of the most difficult things in life is communication. sometimes, with people we know so dearly, we miss and miss and miss. the apple on the head remains unscarred while blood drips slowly on warm skin. but the world notices not. it spins and spins while we miss and miss and it laughs at us. us humans with our arrows and shiny apples and silly ideas. bedtime for an overly sleepy boy.

admit something.

sometimes, i try to write and nothing is there. no words. none. just thought.
but i should be full of words, for today is the day of so many things. two year aniversaries of emotional turmoil, and playing shows with new people for the first time, and living in a tent, and heather turning thirty, and lunar eclipses. so many things. i feel inadequate in my silence. shhhhhhhhhhhhh.

some hafiz~

admit something:

everyone you see, you say to them,
"love me."

of course you do not do this out loud;
otherwise,
someone would call the cops.

still though, think about this,
this great pull in us
to connect.

why not become the one
who lives with a full moon in each eye
that is always saying,

with that sweet moon language,

what every other eye in this world
is dying to hear.

ice cream & dysgammaglobulinanemia

when i was a young boy, i was unable to consume ice cream. i was often ill due to a rather rare blood disorder i have called dysgammaglobulinanemia, and any lactose would send my little body into a frenzy of hallucinatory fever, and ferocious vomiting. which i confess, was far more frequent than i would have liked. {but that is another story entirely, and an extremely long one involving the ever-present topic of mortality}. what this means today with regards to ice cream, is that i have developed an uncanny love for the substance. i will not say obsession for several reasons...no, this is most certainly love. though i still must limit my dairy intake, at this point in my life it only serves to cause an excess of flem which probably adds to the somewhat raspy quality of my singing. perhaps jeff buckley never ate dairy. so today after having lunch with michelle and an orange with sasha i came home to the remains of some chocolate raspberry truffle before my ride. i sat watching the people drink their beer at the pub across the street, sliding the bites gently into my mouth. how is it that something can taste so perfect? how is it that artists like michelle and sasha can be so stunningly brilliant and wildly inspiring, yet so humble and soft-shelled? i am amazed by such things. by great women and ice cream. by the sun falling in through my windows, onto my skin. bite after bite after bite.

i would be a ghost.

already, i begin to feel strange about yet another photo of myself. "who is this man staring back at me," i ask? "what dear secrets lie in the belly of his belly?" there are days on which i feel as though i know so deeply who i am, and other days when the man reflected in the mirror is a complete stranger. this stranger looks at me and wonders why i am looking so intently at him. we stare at one another, horns locked, in a timeless embrace of uncertainty. searching and finding and then losing again. sometimes, i wish to just sit down and stop thinking. i wish to lie on my back in the warm summer shade, and become a tree. a giant redwood breaking the sky, and redefining all of the sadly human notions of mortality. or perhaps i could be a boat, and drift aimlessly upon the sea. i would watch the water move by, following its own tail. i would be a bird in the night sky, pulling the tiniest of bugs into my mouth, and feeling them disappear into an eternity of hollow bird bones. i would be a boy on a bicycle, feeling the wind on his face, as the fog rolls in through the eucalyptus trees. oh how they creak. perhaps the sound of their haunted twisting is the moaning of long dead lovers crying out through the night...a ghost. i would be a ghost, spinning invisibly through the air, watching all of the lovers do lover things. argue and eat and cry and dance and laugh and fuck. yes, i would be a ghost and i would live forever.

another day

some days, are not ours to own. we try to twist them like soft clay into a thing of beauty resting in our hands, but they are frozen and solid. granite. instead, they taunt us and turn us inside out, as we become the playground of the world. the canvas upon which it paints. alas, toothbrushing time. face washing. peeing. sleep.

another day
we'll witness the resurrection of dried butterflies,
and still walking in a landscape of gray sponges
and silent ships, we'll see our ring shine and
roses spill from our tongues.
watch out! watch out! watch out!

~ garcia lorca

me me me me me.

sometimes, as i am out here in this terribly real and yet somehow make-believe world of websites {dreams and undoings} i come across one full of self-portraits, which fascinates me endlessly. i have long been somewhat obsessed with this myself, as i find these images of my earthly body and slight glimmers of my soul, to reveal some ancient secret completely impossible to comprehend. in my case, i believe these photos to be yet another attempt of mine to somehow stop this process of mortality. oh silly, silly, man your battle will be lost. but i continue nonethelss. for some reason though, i don't seem to share them all too often. i keep them hidden, tucked away in the privacy of my solitude. i wonder why that is? am i afraid of being perceived as narcissistic? am i really just a shy, shy man beneath a cloth of unbridled exhuberance? hmmmm. well, out of my shell i come. at least for an instant. i had the thought last night that i should take a photo of myself at the same time every day for a month, and place them here. i awoke, questioning that decision. currently, i am unable to shave, as i seem to have contracted a bit of poison oak, which has built its home on my neck and chin. i am uncertain whether the itching from the rash or the stubble is worse. last winter i stopped cutting my hair for some time; face and head. this photo is from the beginning of that time. i missed my face greatly. i felt somehow disconnected from my spirit. like perhaps i was hidden beneath a layer of peat moss, keeping the moist ground from the sun. and you see, here i am feeling absurd having written of myself. i feel as though i should be writing about our show saturday night at cafe du nord. how sweet it was that andrea and matt came with friends. that andrea's friend alex put a link to our site on her site. that brooke came, but fluttered off before i made time to say hello. i should write that the world is full of grace and beauty like that. i should write of the people who approached me after the show with their gushing praise. oh, what a beautiful and infinite gift. i should write of ben, up there in tilden park in that shitty old station wagon, listening to us on the radio. slowing up and speeding down as the reception ebbed and flowed. moments of clarity and chaos dancing their tango. he drove, windows down, as life moved in and out in a flurry of sound.

slayer of dragons

christian kiefer
slayer of dragons, donkeys and dogs, dogs and donkeys. slayer of souls and soothsayer of black-winged angels. oh christian, you are a giant with endless arms thundering across an arid land full of broken hearted lovers. and i am your weak-kneed brother, stripped of my history and looking out upon this vast place that you help to create. exercise machines and bullshit television, money and fame. oh how they lure us in. i sat yesterday looking at the april cover of vanity fair, telling the men on the cover to fuck off. but it is only jealousy and a premonition of my own potential "success"...wishing i was "important" enough for the whole world to pay attention. but maybe i am, and maybe they're just busy. maybe you are, and they are blinded by their cars and jobs and bad literature. if not the world, you have at least touched deeply the heart of this man. you have changed the color seen by my eyes, and i am forever grateful. so today is your birthday dear man. may the fish be plentiful, and the love too much. may you drown in happiness today as another year rolls by. a tumbleweed pushed on by wind, shaking loose its memories. cheers i say. cheers.

neuromuscular chauvinism

my daily ritual with tea often feels as though it lies just out beyond the smallness of my human world. as i pull the lion mountain keemun into my belly, it seems to fill my heart and soul with such an ancient and timeless warmth. it has the uncanny ability of planting the thumping listlessness of my feet upon the ground. i still feel unable to truly understand or express the depth of my relationship with tea. it feels as though it is an emotion, not a substance. i sometimes think that a wooden fence exists around our feeble bodies, that our souls spend years attempting to disassemble. board by board, laying in a pile on the ground. remnants of wood scattered about. somehow, this tea holds secrets and wisdom along the unknown path of wild discovery. i've had the same mug for nearly three years now, and though i attempt to feel unattached, it is seemingly impossible. for some reason, it doesn't feel inanimate at all, but rather has a soul of its own. perhaps my mug is made up of the leftover pieces of someone else's broken and shattered fence, their broken and shattered life. i am reminded of Skinny Legs And All.

"the inertia of objects is deceptive. the inanimate world appears static, 'dead,' to humans only because of our neuromuscular chauvinism. we are so enamored of our own activity range that we blind ourselves to the fact that most of the action in the universe is unfolding outside of our range, occurring at speeds so much slower or faster than our own that it is hidden from us as if by a veil...on the atomic and subatomic levels, weird forces are crackling and flaring, and amorphous particles...are spinning simultaneously forward, backward, sideways, and forever at speeds so uncalculable that expressions such as 'arrival,' 'departure,' and 'have a nice day,' become meaningless. it is on those levels that 'magic' occurs."
~Tom Robbins

white.

i return home to a different color. perhaps that of white deer. they were standing so recklessly in that field, their white bodies casting light on the world, already shimmering. how could it grow brighter yet? sometimes, there appear these flashes of light in our lives that sing to parts of ourselves we had never before known. distant parts from some ancient past or ancient future in a language we know not, but somehow understand. how is it, that i always have a million things to write, but often feel so silent? yes, i am mute in the wake of quiet and gentle and immeasurably loud travels; screaming and white.

some ray carver ~

in air heavy
with odor of crocuses,

sensual smell of crocuses
i watch a lemon sun disappear,

a sea change blue
to olive black.

i watch lightning leap from asia as
sleeping,

my love stirs and breathes and
sleeps again,

part of this world and yet
part that.