Show me some skin

I e-mailing my prof about being locked out of the building when an AIM Video Chat Invite came from LoopyLoo.

It's been three weeks since I saw my wife-to-be. But I can never be too careful around her, so I made sure there was no one else around before accepting it.

Then the Video Chat window grew and showed a preview of myself. I looked tired with a colorful backdrop of books on the shelves of the science library. I tried to look awake, and adjusted my hair and scooted closer to the computer and then the window grew to show her sitting in the swivel chair in my room.

Her hair was black, her nails were black her choker was black her tight sequence top was blue and she showed me her black skirt, smooth legs and these scary looking blue fuzzy boot things that covered her leg from knee to foot. She had cookie monster shins!

Birra Purra

I like beer. And what I mean to say is I like the flavor of beer; not getting drunk, although that can be fun at times too. No, what I mean is I like the flavor of beer.

I remember the first time I had some. My father had a big tall pilsner glass with a golden brew in it, most likely a Pacifico. And I said, "Whats that taste like?" and he handed it to me. And I took it with a smile, looked to both my mom and my dad who both said it was OK. So I tilted it towards my mouth and took a small mouthful, like a two small sips, but at the same time. And I remember it tasting like dirt/old coins and handing it back coughing the whole time. I remember saying, "That tastes gross. I will never drink that nasty stuff again." because Dad told me to remember me saying that. He also made me remember other similar times. Like the time I swore off girls:
"Girls are gross. I will never have anything to do with them." And he told me to remember I said that.
As well as the time I swore off clothes:
"Clothes are stupid. I never want to wear this stupid stuff again."

Anyway... what was I saying... oh yeah beer. I like it now, and I don't remember when the switch occurred. But anyway, yesterday I was at the store (for the 3rd time ever on my own for just me--scary) and every so often I get a new six pack of a new beer I havent tried before. Maybe I will start a beer blog?

anyway I got this new Italian beer called...Whats it called...Bier...no thats german... its... oh yeah! Birra Peroni Nastro Azzurro. Which, kinda, sounds, bad...Nastro sounds like the italian for nasty, but it means ribbon.

Anyway I popped the top of it off and it had a mist oozing out of the bottle that was pretty cool that some others havent had. Before I drank any I gave it a smell. For wine they call it a bouquet, but for beer I think they call it ... a bouquet, which is kinda silly because they usually smell like dirt and not like fruit, though both grow in dirt...

Anyway the birra purra de italia comes from Rome! And it isn't one of those owned-in-Rome-brewed-in-the-states kind of things either. They make it in ROME and put it on a big boat that sails from the boot all the way across the Atlantic, then by train, then by truck, then by dude, then I buy it and bring it up the mountain with me. But it's from ROME!

I imagined the journey and the craft involved to make a birra purra de italia and felt like it was special because of the journey it took to reach me in the mountains. Like we were destined to be together!

That didn't last that long though. I drank it and I want to describe it for you.

Beer connoisseurs have this fancy language to describe the flavors and how it rolls across the pallet and stuff that I think is a brazen attempt to compete with the snobbishness of wine snobs.

Anyway the birra purra de italia is described as "Crisp" and that is exactly how it tasted. They got it right! Once! They got it right. It did taste crisp. And the golden liquid bubbled and fizzed and I thought it was amazingly crisp and yummy flavored.

Then the flavor after that was...beer. :-(

That is to say it was what I remembered beer tasting like when I first tried some. It was EXACTLY that flavor I sampled ... 16 years ago back when I was 8. (that's a guess). And thus I had to share because the birra took me back when daddy handed me a glass and I swore it off.

How to eat a Mango

My best buddy Mike said once, “I don’t eat fruit that I need a tool to get into—this includes coconuts (not a fruit), pineapple, kiwi, avocado, melons and the like—unless it is prepared like in coconut (not a fruit) pudding or guacamole or pumpkin pie or something.” Which would mean he does eat fruit like apples and pears and bananas, oranges, peaches, nectarines, plums and the like because he can buy those in the store, give them a quick wash and bite into them without an intermediary between him and his fruit besides water, maybe.

I asked him if he thought most people were like that and he said they probably were. So I asked him who was buying all that weird stuff in the store like coconuts (not a fruit), pineapple, star fruit, mangoes and the like. We didn’t know. So we went to the store, the one I used to work at during high school, and went to the produce section, which as far as the store layouts go is the focus of this particular store. The one in Ventura is wine and spirits; the one in Oxnard is a bakery. Anyway we noticed the produce section was dominated by apples and oranges in the center, big pyramids of them, but the perimeter was a smorgasbord of strange fruit and veggies. We bought a coconut (not a fruit) for some reason. And spent a long time trying to get into by whacking it and smashing it with heavy stuff. It is remarkably resilient. But that is not the purpose of this post. Mangoes…

Mango is a strange fruit and I remember once I was mopping a dirty spot in the store when Eddie The Produce Guy was checking the produce. Form one box he pulled these big pear shaped things. I asked him what they were and he said they were mangoes. I had never seen one before so I took one and scrutinized it. It was kind of like a big pear. I could feel that the skin was really thick though. Eddie watched me and I asked what does it taste like and how do you eat it. So he takes the one I held, cleans it off, pulls out his knife and cuts a big hunk of it off, so the skin is like a bowl holding the dark yellow flesh in the center. Then he cuts into the flesh over and over making a giant tic tac toe board. I had no idea what he was doing and how one would eat a mango. So then he takes the skin and pushes up from the center reversing the concave and turning it convex and as he did this it opened up like a little city with rectangular buildings sticking up in neat little rows. I remember a child like vocalization of: “Whoa, cool!” and he gave me the skin and told me to bite off each little rectangle in turn.

That was a flashback fyi so I could show this:

walking into Albertson's (the arch nemesis of the stores I had worked at, Vons) the first thing I saw was the produce section and as I walked down the aisle with lunch meats and sandwich cheeses on my left and fruit on my right I came across a stacked pyramid of big pear things. I picked one up and held it in my hand like it were poor Yorick. And I had this desire to take it home and cut it up, remove the skin in a hunk make a tic tac toe cut and invert the skin revealing those rectangular buildings on a small planet I held in my hand. And then like Godzilla eat them all! (Godzilla never purposely ate buildings, it was always accidental--I remember one time my dad showed me it was a guy inside Godzilla with small model buildings he tramped through. I couldn't believe it.)

I purchased one mango at $1.13, took my two foot receipt and recycled white bag before walking through the parking lot of blackened bubble gum and then driving home. I put it in the refrigerator. It sat for a week.

one week later:

I removed it expecting it to be mushy, but it wasn't. It was firm. I picked up a knife and cut a big hunk of it off then made 5 vertical cuts and 7 horizontal cuts. I put the knife down. With both hands, or both sets of fingers rather, I pushed up the center pulling the flaps down, flipping concave convex, opening the slices up like canyons in the earth until you get this:

It's the LIES that matter.

Inspired by Erin:

Tuesday, November 4th, 2008, 2:11pm:

In Renaissance revolutions class I was taking notes one day and I was writing down everything the professor said and he said, "And it is the LAWS that matter." and I wrote: It's the LIES that matter.

Did you see that? I sure did. So I put a line through it and wrote it again:

It's the LIES that matter.

WTF? I thought to myself.

I wrote: LAWS LAWS LAWS LAWS LAWS and then tried again:

It's the LIES that matter. LIES. I stopped taking notes that day...

When I got home last week I looked over my notes and it said: It's the LIES that matter. It's the LIES that Matter. LAWS LAWS LAWS LAWS LAWS. It's the LIES that matter. LIES.

and I thought it was strange.

Thursday, November 13th, 2008, 2:37 pm:

I was taking notes on my computer. And the Professor said, "...to survive you need good laws."

And I typed: 2 survive u need good lies.

All those strange memories from earlier smacked me in the head. I deleted it and tried it again:

LAWS LAWS LAWS LAWS. 2 survive you need good lies. lies lawslieslaws.

and flew into a free write right there: lies are laws laws are lies we make laws to lie and lie to make laws are laws and lies that related laws are truth not lies but lies are not truth so lies can't be laws and laws can't be laws wait yes they can lies can be laws if laws allow lies to make laws of lying for laws.....BUYCLK WTF is THIS??????

I closed my computer and listened the rest of the day without notes.

Saturday, November 16th, 2008, 1:38pm:

I was talking on my phone to Mike and he said, "I think that is an unwritten law."

and I said, "Lie." like I was correcting him.

and he said, "What?"

"Nothing. I say LIE when I mean LIE. Er, LAW."

"Thats pretty freaky. Lets do it again."

"k"

"Those are some crazy LAWS, don't you think Brian?"

"Yeah."

"What are they?"

"LIES. Dude WTF is wrong with me."

"Who knows, but you should write about it."

"That's stupid. And I'd probably LAW about something else entirely."

"Dude you said LAW when you meant LAW just now. Wait, lie. Law. Now you got me doing it."

"I got to write this down."

"I'll look into my DSM-V for law-lie convergence. You probably have a tumor or something."

"Its nat a TUMAH!"

"GET TU DA CHOPPA, NAW!" and I hung up.

Sunday, November 16th, 2008, 1:37am:

I was watching Mind, Body & Kick Ass Moves and the guy said, "There is just one law to remember..."

And to my computer I said, "LIE to remember." And my Riley my rat sneezed.

Monday, November 17th, 2008, 4:37pm:

In the science library somebody walked by and said, "It's not like it breaks any cosmic law of the universe."

And I spun around and said, "LIE." And this guy and this girl looked at me.

"What?"

"Cosmic LIE of the universe."

They looked at one another and then walked away, quickly.

The swallow never lands where the tiger roams.

law

lie

Expose'

I finally completed the 1st draft of my new story due on the 18th. It is 25 pages long exactly. As I wrote it I was thinking, "Wow this is fun" and then I got to page 21 and I thought, "This sucks. No body will like this. I am wasting my time and energy. I am so stupid." and then after I finished it I was like, "Hey this is pretty cool." I think those worthless feelings are normal and should be embraced because it means I am putting myself on the line, writing honestly. If I never get that feeling I think it means I am lying to myself.

I like honest writing even if its weird or offensive or "meaningless".

One of friends wrote this really easy-reading story about a librarian (that turned out to be her in actuality) about a trite comment a lady made to her that she thought was a little thing that bothered her for weeks until the lady came back a month later and apologized. It was so honest and fun. I loved it. (I think I read it when I was on pg 21 of writing my own story)

but anyway my story: I did a month of hardcore research to get as much info as I could to make this story...well not "true" per se but...accurate! Accurate is a much better word. Anyway, I had an idea that started it all from a logical process of inductive reasoning: Either something is true or it is false, if you have many things explaining something there is a greater chance for them all being true or all being false rather than one of them being true, proving the other wrong. So the thought went like this: What if all the myths and religions across history (Norse, Greek, Japanese, Chinese, Indian, Korean, Egyptian, Middle East, Russian, British, Aztec, et al.) were real, or the opposite of what I believe. Just to try that on for a moment. What if...

What if it was ALL real? What would that mean? What if all the Gods and Goddesses shared the planet? How would that work on a pantheistic scale?

There is this notion people have had since forever: The more believers a God has the more strength he has. Many religions have laws that talk of converting people and not worshiping other gods and so on in an attempt to gather more worshipers. If I had followed this notion the Muslim Pantheon would be the top dog because Islam has the most worshipers unless you roll Roman Catholic, Protestant, Orthodox, Anglican all together. In that case it has almost twice the number of adherents (2,116,909,552 vs. 1,282,780,149). But if I did that I would have to break all the other religions down into their little groups and the ones I am most interested in (Mythology: Norse, Egyptian, Slavic, Japanese) would be very insignificant because very few people still believe those old ways.

So I came up with my own idea: What if the power of a God would be tied to it's physical link in this world, based on time? Like Stonehenge, the Pyramids in Egypt, the Pyramids in Mexico/central america/ south america etc.? Those places were built by people for religious reasons often for the Gods. In this case the Egyptians would be strongest because they have the grandest, oldest physical "tie-in" to this world. But this would mean that the Christian religion would be rather insignificant because they have no Pyramids, no Stonehenge but fancy cathedrals built less than a thousand years ago (in some cases 1/4 of the age of Stonehenge). I wasn't happy with this notion so I tried one more and it was the hardest.

The power of myth. Each myth explains the world and the power of the Gods. In Ancient Greek Mythology Zeus hurls thundrbolts as his main method of attack, on top of his incredible strength (he can lift mountains and hurl them at his enemies). But Thor has armor and a sword and makes ligtningbolts ON ACCIDENT while he works his forge. He is the greatest warrior and his armor makes him impervious to lightning bolts. Thor trumps Zeus in this example and could stomp many other gods like the christian one (who at times is rather peacful, but can be wrathful and sends plagues and floods etc.). I had to do a lot of reaseach with this idea to find who was the top dog so to speak. In so doing I found the Villain of the universe: Typhon/Seth (god of chaos and dischord) who is featured in many religious traditions as a shapshifting Draconic badass that tries to kill the king of gods and take his throne (Egyptian, Greek, Norse, Asian). So in this process I learned that the egyptian god of Death Ap-uat has arrows "more powerful than the gods" which the Greek Goddess Artemis (bow and arrows) is mentioned as highly accurate with her bowshots but she does not have arrows more powerful than the gods, so if these two fought Ap-uat would surely win with his arrows of god slaying, a dangerous dude indeed. But some of the claims are incredibly strange and weird and seperated gods into categories of "creation" and "patrons of" so the christian god is a creator, more like a force that can't be directly asaulted, as is Ra and many others. I didn't want to limit myself so I found this idea (complex and time consuming) missing something.

So what I did was take all those ideas and meld them together to get my story, which seems the only way to do it. So the Christians dominate the world, but many pantheons still hold power because of their physical ties (stonehenge, Pyramids, etc.). And the mythic strength allows for a hierarcy of strength/power so to speak. So when the Egyptian Goddess Ammut (devine retribution) meets Archangel Michael, He doesn't attack it because she is a goddess and he is a powerful messenger/general.

I think accuracy is important, so I did tons of research to make sure my descriptions/representations were accurate and true, and that the character is captured. The Archangels were the hardest because they are described as having no emotion, because humans have emotion and that is why they are weaker. So there were times when a really angry Archangel Michael would have been really cool, but he would never show emotion, not for real anyway, and that is a cornerstone of that mythology, angels without emotion, so it was hard. Also the research I did countered my preconcieved notions about the gods which was good but required my original story to be altered drastically, thus Ap-uat was added because Anpu was like a patron saint of the lost (souls, orphans etc) and described as both cold and generous. I had a lot of fun and I sent it out to my Cadre for thoughts and opinions on my 1st draft. I get those back soon. I hope they like it. And I wonder what the Advanced Fiction Workshop will think about it... I'll tell you how that goes.

Free write

I might have explained this earlier, but a Freewrite is writing free, letting your left brain hemisphere go off into lala land and you write what comes to your mind. Ideally you right at the speed of thought and try to stay grounded in the concrete. So don't write things like, "She looked dvine" but rather, "her hair was the color of organic honey" utilizing those 5 senses. Because things like divine, and hope, and peace and beauty and whatever else are abstractions--or place holders of a weak nature until the actual words can be found.

To steal a quote from the great Erin Fletcher: I describe the color of grass and you describe the color of grass and they are different and then there is the actual color of grass.

So strive for the actual, in so doing other people can't help but see/smell/feel/hear/taste what you are writing about. Also it can sometimes trigger memories--follow those wherever they go, stay in the concrete as much a spossible.

This allows me to write anywhere anytime about anything. as an example here is a freewrite I wrote in class about a strawberry (i have done this like 4 times now):

little seeds on the outside-little yellowish green teardrops in no particular order except the point of each seed grows generally towards the bottom where the seeds are--the skin--a red color--not one color but a variance of dark red like curdled blood to a pinkish at top to a white until greenery of a different texture grows--as i lift the fuzzy green leaves i see small yellow feelers like on a catepillar--the light red flesh of this fruit grows tiny transparent hairs--the skin has smooth tight places and wrinkeled loose places--this one has suffered some trauma--like a cancer--that has been removed to save the whole--this leaves an inner layer or scar tissue--also at the bottom is a sunken depression like a belly button--deep down in there is a seed--its as though the seeds only go so far--connected to the center--and as the skin/flesh grows outward the seeds hold it back and create slight depressions--where there is much pressure the skin is tight--where it is loose--it hasn't grown far enough to have the seeds pull it back--or limit it rather--the bottom of this berry has recently been damaged and bleeds its juices onto my fingers--it reminds me of mom and me putting a humming bird feeder up filled with that red liquid and some of it spilled on my hand and stained it a sticky red that crawls between the swirls of my fingerprint and collects in the deepest little cracks--because it is bleeding i can smell the insides of it--a pleasant smell--one part sharp two parts sweet and one part that demands i eat it--what a successful plant--so delicious that surely animals will eat it and scatter the seeds all over for more strawberries to grow--as i bite it i feel the sharp sweet flavor leap through my taste centers replaced by a tang--as i munch i feel the seeds breaking between my teeth like crustal shoeboxes or tiny crackers--because i feel the smaller pieces still--the flesh sticks to my teeth--as i look to the center of the now partially eaten berry i see wet goey flesh around the outside like twisted canyon walls--the center is rough and full of bubbles and the bubbles are arranged in strings and the center is hollow--is the bubbles seeds that couldn't make it to the outside--

Research

As I was researching archangels for my story I accidentally found "The Hymn of the Cherub" 1st, 2nd, 3rd and 4th tone sung in Byzantine chant. It's eerie. And while I am not remotely fluent in Byzantine (haha) I feel moved none the less. Here it is for your listening pleasure. I suggest kicking back, closing your eyes and letting the chant wash over you:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MmH0Ntc1aAU&feature=related

It sounded like Arabic to me so I looked up a Qur'an Reciter. Again do the same thing as above.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SISX-0CBRFM&feature=related

And totally unwarranted, a memory: My first girlfriend Fatimah (her American name was Erin) reciting her Qur'an to me. She was Thai and short and cute and sweet and she wanted to read to me because I was an infidel, a good looking infidel she amended later, but an infidel none the less. This was half joke, half truth for her.

She sat me down, opened her book with the strange squiggles and read from right to left (rather than from left to right like I do) and sang this passage to me. I don't speak Arabic, other than basic stuff and some openings to chant. I didn't understand what she was chanting to me, but I didn't need to. It was for her, not for me. And before she started I have to say I was expecting some boring "...and he said onto him, have ye spoken ill of me? To which he answered not I said he..." Kind of like those people in my grandma's church that sang the hallelujah that didn't sound like a hallelujah: Hah-lay-loo-ya joy-us-ly we sing.

So she opened her mouth, her face became serious and she recited it to me. And it blew me away. It was so smooth and beautiful with such emotion. She was in another world and I was captivated and just watched her. It was like singing, but slow. It had a definate seriousness to it that only added to its beauty, which added to her beauty reading her holy book to save my soul. She looked about ready to cry, but never did.

And it was at that moment I relaized the implication of what this meant. It was her other life in the UAE and Malaysia and Thailand and everywhere else--her unamerican life--shining through. She had stopped covering and was kissing boys, well one boy anyway, that handsome infidel mentioned above. I only realize now how crazy her life really was. At the time she was just the girl I loved. The exotic girl with so much crazy history (her dad was born into a jewish orthodox home and converted to islam on his own. He was abusive and crazy and his parents stole Erin from him to live with them in Ojai and fought for custody which they got. They were orthodox Jews she was muslim--December was interesting to say the least) that she had a hard time dealing with. For two years I helped her get over it and relax, she was in America now and safe from her dad. But her grandmother didn't like me, or rather she did like me but thought it was time for her to move on. So she did. Had to.

But the Qur'an...its weird that they chant it, rather than read it in a townhall kind of meeting and discuss it. Anyway got to go to class, just had to share that.