What a Sweet Week

following a silver thread through the dust bin

Drove through Big Sur yesterday. Highway 1 reopened after years of workers fixing mudslides. Looking at the glorious earth dropping off into blue ocean it was evident it would keep crumbling. A game of whack-a-mole but with heavy cliffs and tractors. The temporary nature of things and man’s attempts to bat it back on dramatic display. We find beauty in uncertainty of experience.

We waited for burgers in Cayucos the night before while an orange post sunset glow lingered like I’d never seen it before. Our dog ran up to a bigger one whose young owner told me was blind in the dark. An Australian Sheep Dog on the sand. She said her family has had lots of them and they all go blind. I didn’t take for granted that I could see what was in front of me.

Earlier that sunset in Morro Bay a man fished in his kayak. An otter floated on his back. A flock of black geese flew haphazardly in the sky with no evident scheme. “Maybe they’re eating bugs or warming their feathers, or honoring the final light.”

Earlier that day we gathered among alpacas and goats and children. The kids and I tried to feed the furry ones sliced carrots but they would only sniff at our offerings. We theorized it having to do with the carrots being different from their usual shapes, a lack of trust from the animals, or possibly that I was being too loud

Earlier that morning, Marley and Josh invited us to their mom’s friend’s house to “feed the monks.” I myself did not assist in the food, though I asked if there was anything I could do. The Thai monks, robed in orange, chanted and we closed our eyes. None of us understood the ancient language the monks were chanting in, including the monks themselves who admitted as much, and yet we did understand the vibrations and rhythms emanating from their diaphrams. Our bodies went light, even as the dogs chased each other under our legs, “Notice the dogs with your full attention,” the monk said. “Then let your mind go again.”

Earlier that morning we woke up in the Santa Barbara Whale House. In a world of sterile building, passionless capitalism, and no reverence for the spirit of materials, this organism, a kind reminder that the things we make can be brought forth from the imagination and enchant us. Wood, stones, curvatures, trees, indoor and outdoor. What an inspiring message to human constructs. Inside, in the warm tub we realized we hadn’t felt relaxed in a year and had forgotten how it exists until visited by it

That same morning we leaned against cool boulders next to the river alongside the Whale and our dog companion Benito got the zoomies. He spun in quick tornados, darted back and forth on soft earth, and leapt up stone stairs and tumbled down leafy mounds.

The night before a man lay upside down in the tallest branches of an oak tree above the Whale House and played cello and kazoo while singing in gibberish. It unlocked dormant parts of the brain. Increased the feeling that anything is possible. That it is urgent now more than ever we live out of bounds drawn by evil controlling men.

After the man hung upside down from the oak tree, I stood right side up and crookedly delivered my sincere interpretations of the world. People sat in tiers on ground level and balconies, lent me their hats after realizing I forgot mine, waited as I went through costumes and music and made the gathering by bringing their attention to what I was saying about them and me. They laughed, they held silence.

What I said at the beginning og the two shows I did this week: I’m a comedian but don’t feel like being publicly funny. I’ve lost my inclination toward public playfulness. So much of our culture’s humor is about knowing everything while doing nothing. An impotence based on how saturated we are with media. Being funny as a comedian right now feels often like a deflection, an unwillingness to confront our participation in this madness. A sacrificial address toward a popular narrative that’s a flimsy facade. The times we do make jokes at the layers upon layers of violence and neglect embedded in this American experience, the laugh serves as a release valve but never a new engine. The jokes are hamstrung by the mediums through which they’re delivered. Big media, tech companies, even “indie” stages that service an asthetic all to maintain their conversations without threat of revolution. Hot takes about genocides, hypocrisy called out, punchline satisfied. Entertainment is an addiction not a salvation. We are addicted to commenting on society because we’ve lost belief in participating it. George Carlin already spit us the facts decades ago and now we’re repackaging our loss with irony to feed ourselves. Sorry, I’ll be funny again, I’ll forget enough to let loose or go dark or whatever service I can provide the loop. I’m sure its just a mood, the moon, or what’s happening in Minnesota or Gaza or all the suffering that becomes information and then content.

What I’m sayig is good comedy makes us feel sane but maybe we need to collectively go a little insane.

The day before that we had our baby shower at Sofia’s place in Silver Lake. She and Siobhan laid out the settings while I carried in the supplies and out the trash, bought bagels and drove back to Dominique’s to get the cucumbers we purchased and lemons we’d picked from Randy’s tree in Santa Cruz. We’ve been slowly incubating in Santa Cruz. Far from friends and social lives. Being among our friends was like being sewn an emotional quilt. A momentum of love toward baby and birth.

A baby shower is also a farewell party. Your friends encircle you as you no longer are as new life changes you. Brandon and Morgan both praised their kids and also mentioned wanting to fall asleep on the drive over. My brother and I once kids together, young adults, grieving sons, grown men together, sharing a bagel and lox like our dad once gathered for us most Sundays that were good, now fixing them ourselves and soon for someone else.

The day before that we honored the Nationwide Strike called for to protest a militarized mafia known as ICE, harrassing, arresting, imprisoning and murdering citizens and immigrants alike. We spent no money. We gave no labour. We did not stop the abuse but joined a collective movement building its muscles to eventually shut down and reroute this hurtling train of greed and displacement. They are enriching private prisons with bodies. They are treating criminal those who have been victims of imperialism theft from this very nation. Billionaires who victimize individuals and the collective continue their sick games while those without monstrous aims suffer and then band together to bat back the illness. We didn’t save the world that day, only made decisions affirming our belief in a better one. Starve capital, find each other and make care the currency. At our baby shower the next day were three friends from Minneapolis who spoke of the terror but also the community, Ari said her 70 year old mother texted her that she was out in the streets protesting but not to worry she didn’t get arrested yet.

The night before the strike I did my one man poetry show at the Elysian. Friends and supporters filled the room and something energetic happened, a conversion was reported by several in attendance. Brodie played his banjo. Cory disappeared into a character named Molly Bro. Beforehand we had dinner with Patsy and Michelle from Tucson in Los Feliz. I felt the energy of L.A. at its best, friends and expression friends and expression new friends old ones hungering for more contact filled after with the intoxicating cocktail of adrenaline and exhaustion, uppers and downers all from sharing in this temporary realm.

The morning of the show I went climbing at stronghold gym in Echo Park. The local KTLA news was there to document their planned closure for the strike. An employee who cleaned their gym for 12 years was kidnapped by ICE off the streets of downtown LA. It was personal to them, as it is to anyone invested in their community, able to interrelate with others and see not our exclusion but our inseperability. I might also be seen falling down a wall in the background of the segmemt then saying “Abolish ICE” when the camera was trained on me for B roll footage.

Then the first morning we were back in L.A.. In Echo Park where we met 9 years earlier. Two wild hearts moving at high velocity, steadying, slowing, now with a baby on the way. We stayed the first night at my brother Trav’s then the rest at Dominique’s in Glendale. The 5 freeway was grown green the entire drive down from the rains last month. We heard it was grown green from Arizona into L.A. from our friends who drove in from there as well. Green grass and new life for miles in every direction for a much needed time.