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May 24, 2005
Beat poet bums smoke in the forest, at 11.
A minivan just drove by my house with a kid in the passenger seat howling "Happy Birthday!" out the open window, into the air, to anyone, to me. Thanks kid! You're alright.
I like our new neighborhood and all of it's mysteries. Our neighbors to the left seem to communicate almost exclusively by yelling, screeching really, at each other with this crazy fierce affection. Like they are feeling the everyday stuff so intensely, they just have to LET IT OUT NOW: I'M IN THE GARAGE! CLEANING! THE! CAT! BOX! HONEY! GODDAMN! I FUCKING LOVE YOU! They drive a minivan too.
Our neighbors to the right are totally mysterious and possibly hip. They watch TV late at night when I get home from the studio, they might be daysleepers, the guy rides a cool bike, the girl dresses kinda like Ski, the are fascinatingly silent and utterly inaccessible. Minivan parked out front.
The neighbor across the street fulfills the "reprobate on the block" archetype, what with his all-hours towing biz and *really* rocking-the-Metallica penchant. He offered my wife free towing, wink-creepy-wink. He waves at me when I leave the house. I call him Cletus. I do not know his real name. 80's Ford Bronco and oversized shiny tow truck. No minivans here.
I have an afternoon, well, day off. First in a long while. Although I did get to go camping in Big Sur with Will and Brian couple of weekends ago, which was all kinds of rad. MAN CAMP 2005 is live! Basketball, moderate man-hiking, broken digi-cams, port, rivers, grills, poetry, poets, scuba divers, Mr. Show, vodka, trees, man-boots. Live! We went to the Henry Miller memorial museum, which was a tight call by Will. I had forgotten how much I love that crazy old man. Henry Miller, that is. Although I love Will too, he's just not old. Possibly as crazy.
Anyway, the tight call: the "museum" is just a vortex-like repository of Henry's later life in Big Sur and a magnet for artists and poets and weirdos and such. I wanted to stay there indefinitely and just read and talk, but we had hiking to do, and eventually, lives to get on with. MAN CAMP 2005! Here's the thing: Henry Miller strikes me as being a duder who was completely self-aware and alive and kind of in touch with the Buddha-mind, if you will. A happy, dirty old man with a fire in his gut, in his heart, to do the right thing, the only thing, the art thing, and that's inspiring to me. I found a book there I'd never seen before called "Henry Miller on Writing", a collection of ramblings and mini-manifestos and mistakes. It looks pretty good, but I haven't had time to read more than two pages, of course.
I picture MAN CAMP becoming a yearly event, as we get older and hopefully wiser and more set in our ways. The wives or girlfriends (or boyfriends) will roll their eyes as we pack up Leathermans and Rashomon DVDs and good cheese and nudie playing cards and head off to the woods or the wherevers. We'll spend as little time as possible man-bitching, then get down to the gritty gutsy truth. Or just get drunk and play "Horse" or "Sartre" til the sun goes down and the bugs eat our skin or the other campers yell at us or throw pine cones. We'll wear ridiculous hats. Invite the loony wandering beat poets in. Play poker. Journey and GBV covers 'round the campfire. You get the idea.
What am I doing in this place?
Henry Miller had friends in Sacramento, right? They wrote him postcards and visited the beach on the weekends and laughed at themselves, silly til they died.
YOUR FRIEND,
DANA
posted by dana at May 24, 2005 09:35 AM
