a confession:

I like to drink
eat red meat
shoot guns
everyone calls me a hippy but I don’t believe them
I stand at my kitchen window at 3:23 in the morning eating little pig sausages, smoking grass and contemplating the myriad fallacies of capitalism, patriarchy and non-organic milk.

I plow through another four boxes of books, my bread and butter
I sell crazycrazy books on the internet about how to manufacture all sorts of drugs
books on how to kill people
books on how to import your Filipino mail-order bride
or how to hide your psychedelic mushroom garden in a tree…
I also sell mystery novels
books on tape
home canning books
the bible
harry fucking potter
as opposed to all the good kids books I also hock
clifford the big red commie

My hen lives directly above a family of weasels
I spill chainsaw oil all over my driveway and
litter the front lawn with BBs, birdshot and shotgun shells
we need more counterculture descriptive adjectives.
still, I get called a hippy.
the hippy here by Spencer Lake,
complete with pony tail.
If only they knew I was really a samurai
and that this was a top-notch.

See, I’m really a book slinging young radical father samurai with
way too much time on my hands
way too much beer in the fridge
and way too much silent space for my multiple personalities to incubate.
I try to take time to make time
and my cakes always rise.

I piss on my vegetable garden to reconstitute the vitamins most folks flush,
smoke American Spirits to avoid the arsenic and cyanide laced chemy ciggs,
clean my home using primarily good old-fashioned vinegar.

Today I listened to:
David Sedaris Nine Inch Nails Nina Simone NPR
The Traveling Willburies J.S. Bach Romanteek & Free (Pirate) Radio Olympia

I read or perused:
Country Living Is Risky Business
Charles Simic’s Poetry
You Are Going to Prison
The Joy of Cooking
The Unbearable Lightness of Being
Tiny Giants
Wait Until Spring Bandini
Secrets of Methamphetamine Manufacture (hey, if you had it lying around you’d look at it too!)
Marianne Moore’s Poetry
& Beaver Comix – some strange pornographic Canadian smut from the 70s

not to mention:
The Olympian
The New York Times
Boing Boing
CommonDreams
Green Parenting
DaddyTypes
So Close
Technoccult
and 27 other assorted blogs and news feeds,
I aggregate therefore I am,
I clean my cast iron with salt and no water.

My red worms already finished off this morning’s waffles
while I watched P.K. Dick’s A Scanner Darkly at nap time,
folding clothes and layers of my being
buttonholes.
I put off weeding my garden until it’s too late.
I’m a fantastic lover until you get to know me.
I barely sleep at all.
I talk too much or not enough, never in-between.
My temper is buried deep but ugly.
I live for the local but stoop to drink Schmidt Ice

Do I contradict myself? Very well then I contradict myself, (I am large, I contain multitudes).

I fish and crab without a license
neglect my typewriter
and eat pasta and potatoes half the week.
I want certain women to really know me
but they never do.
I don’t like to wash my socks.
I need a live-in cook and a driver.

My two-thousand year old Kombucha chinese mushroom tea disc
needs me to feed it black tea and sugar
and I keep prolonging the process
because the tomatoes are thirsty.
I get up in the morning and make an enormous pot of baked beans with bacon
thinking about how maybe all I really need is a woman who can party for 36 hours straight and then sit through Akira Kurosawa’s Dreams without getting bored (there’s probably a few other graduating criteria).

I have an old printing press in my living room
and all I do is look at it guiltily.
All my friends are drunks.
My mailbox is a quarter mile away.
I can hear cars sometimes but I pretend they aren’t real.
Every now and then I leave my sweatpants on for days,
go for two week stints reading nothing but Bukowski and graphic novels.
I think that and the garlic keeps me young.
I dumpster dive food, shoplift from Fred Meyer and dump my garbage illegally.
I’m not sorry. It's what I do to survive and have a good time doing so.
I milk whole systems, pirate anything I can.
The world is my open-source oyster
and so I shuck it.
Jive until
I die.

one cute thing, one annoying thing and stupid stupid myspace

okay, so just this evening Lyli and Scarleht started calling each other while they were following me around watering the gardens. "come shu-shu", which was followed with either a change of direction and another "come shu-shu" or an incredibly adorable "coming". absurd. the word cute held only a derrogatory space in my vocabulary before having kids, now I can't shake the damn thing. Cursed four letter words.

it's really starting to get on my nerves and I'm curious how other parents have handled it: Lyli and Scarleht keep prefixing every proper noun and every single one of my "service verbs" (diaper change, cooking food, etc.) with "mi" or "my"... being an anarchist I can't possibly stand for this blatant display of would-be-ownership that will only transmute into our current common blend of ego-capitalistic perspective later in life. What in whatever god's name do I do? I tell them: "I'm papa to both of you and you have to share me", "please don't be so goddamn possessive honey", "property is theft sugar bean", "please don't fight over your papa", "actually that chair doesn't belong to anyone ladies", "it's my frickin' chair, not yours!", "can you get your stressed out papa another beer from the fridge?" (just kidding). Any advice? Do I just have to stomach this possessive phase until it evaporates or evolves into something worse? How can I just nip it in the ass and make it go away forever or, better yet, change into some collective turn-taking socialist kid-play? I am at an instinctual loss for the first time in my bout with fatherhood.

plus i went and developed an addiction to Myspace (burn in hell, Rupert Murdoch) so now when no one messages me all day long I get a horrible stab of lonliness, like the world has set on my pretendpire and everyone has forgotten who I am.

Currently reading: Eric Partidge's Short Etymylogical Dictionary of the English Language (give it a go sometimes, you'll learn all sorts of lofty new ways to insult people... critque, I mean critique, not insult).

Ahhhhh, it's late and I've been looking up books for two hours already. Should I dive headlong into another two? Yes, I in fact should do just that.

mediocrity's momentum

rocks us to a standstill, lullabies us to complacency and contentment, two of my least favorite venues to play out this drama of life. My fantasy life is no less real than the junkie's demons down on Railroad. I live my dreams with eyes wide open rather than play someone else's game every day until my eyes bore themselves out of my skull. The only real truth is in an artist's work and the only real work is work that one enjoys. This is technology in search of an artist, the hammer seeks a hand from which to swing.

New phrases and words:
"toy-ett papuh"
"wype bumm"
"steweo too woud"
"ho 'and" (hold hand)
"salal"
"wa fee" & "wa 'an" (wash feet and hands)

Lyli counts to two twice, finding some basic multiplication easier than fundamental (and linear) counting. Crazycrazy and I soak it up smiling. Today is a lense thru which I gaze at all my tomorrows. Which reminds me, my father told me about a group of indigenous folks dwindling away in their native Andes whose word for "Past" is what they can see in front of them, the familiar, and whose word for "Future" is what lies behind them because they cannot see it. Awesome! Goddamn Western Man and his convoluted logic, backwards medicine and unslakable greed.

Good old salt Trevor comes with his classic whirlwind in tow. Monday we drink and smoke and talk the afternoon away. Steph arrives early evening to drop the girls off and Trev entertains us with horror stories of the operating room. Later he whips up an excellent chili-pepper dish, I put the girls down and we retire to the front yard before it gets too late to fire off his 12 gauge Mossberg tactical shotgun (I am not a fucking pacifist!). Frankly quite surprised the shotgun didn't wake the ladies (Not to mention our 2:30 a.m. drunken bottle rocket extravaganza) but hey, forget about it. We kick around memories of college years, fish that got away, all those other bulls we matadored around our respective yards or living rooms. A late, late night indeed.

Up on Tuesday morning, Trev cooks breakfast and spoils myself and the girls rotten (we'll get into that later once the statute of limitations is well and gone). The girls put "ka inna bag" (rocks in a bag or bottle), their new cooking game at the end of the driveway, and serve us on the porch over and over and over again. Reflected in their tireless thirst for life I see my own sleepy motives birthed so long ago in that grief-stricken mind I might as well have remade rather than recycled. I see the initial sparks that drove me to open the bookstore, that drove me to look in Steph's eyes and say yes, that drive me today to bouy any life close to mine with fierce optimism and fiercer individualism in the face of rampant homogenization and hopelessness. Look to the children, they say. And they are very wise indeed.

Trev and his dog take their leave early evening style, leaving the girls and I to recoup, recharge and tidy the downstairs so they can wreck it again tomorrow. I think of blood and time and rivers and bridges and how when Trev and I talk or watch each other's eyes it seems not a single day has passed since we were younger and so full but hungry. Good times indeed. My batteries delight.

papa parties like a rock star

old friends and new at the 4th ave early in the day, pitchers and fries and wild talk like old times. fellow father mark and i hang out for the first time and super-mama heather is there as well! it was Rec the Place's (the record store in back of Last Word Books) 2nd birthday party at the store yesterday afternoon, The Pasties play a nice gig on top of the record shop loft, Membership cranks out a nice set as well. champagne at closing owen, rob, mark, heather, eamon, kevin, carly and others throw word-bullets back and forth through the smoke. then drunkenly up the hill for the record shop after-party, carrying fallover Rob, kegs and greens and sushi with tons of wasabi, records hanging from every square inch. The Cool Guys rock it out in the living room. More talk with ears I wish I knew better, business partners getting to be casually happy together. rob vanishes, we look but have to leave back downtown at Ten of the Dark to grab Big Pat (my rock carvign ex-marine badass cynical buddy). We abscond to safeway for beer, Pat, Mark and I and then run into the I-5 woods just outside the downtown to the infamous Swamphouse. so many thirsty mouths and burning palletes, beautiful people, poetry, more writings on the walls. quick nap under random car x at midnight(?). It's a super hero themed costume party but I just rock my torn up tacky bright green hawaiian shirt like tomorrow and I never met. kisses from new and old mouths. some quality time and talk with Keagan, old salt. new faces, connections, emotions. then at end of eve to friend's apartment for sleep and sweat and skin contact and sunlight through my eyelids early, mind foggy but alert and in love with my own thoughts, oh id, oh ego, oh art. soon to break this fast at the Reef or Voyeur over bloody marys and more more more go go go good times.

eamon and I pick up the 21 foot sailboat in 3 or 4 days and have a whole new project to crack out on. getting a jump on the mountain of books in our living room, had a nice relaxing welcome back to oly/shelton but this week it's back to work. more from the Papa Pirate's swirling seas shall soon follow.

links and language

Lyli awakes at 2 am to Rob, Eamon and my humble self firing BB guns off the front porch, effetively shredding several empty cans of ranier beer. armed to the teeth with a rifle, shotgun and pistol we plink the night away with no regrets. And the words of pop songs filter through the BB gun fire and the whimpers of a waking daughter and the clink of wine bottles. And so I leave you, dear readers, with a nice, long list o' linkages I have been perusing this day and night and morn and day again on this farm where we walk the party we want to see:

Stay-at-home Dad Stats courtesy of Rebel Dad
Excellent links courtesy of A Little Pregnant (dot com)
A Family Runs Through It nice family blog from Idaho
Partners in Parenting
Because I'm Your Father
Great Green Baby
Eco Street Blog - work-at-home opportunities for green anarchist parents
Mamaphonic
Green Scare - Persecuted Environmental Activists
- North American Earth Liberation Prisoners Support Network
Creative Playthings and the Rise of Creativity - courtesy of Daddytypes
A People's History fo Iraq - thanks Anarchist Info News
Clandestine Summer Reading
Rough Draft of an Obituary for Photography
Grandmamas Get Real: Deadlines, Fathers and, Thank Goodness, Grandchildren
Hey Grandpa, Er, I Mean "Dad" - thanks Daddytypes
Parents Face Flurry of Reports on Studies (The WASCL is a bunch of bullshit)
Why was aid so slow to get to the New Orleans convention center?
Automobile Asthma Index
Handmade Clothes By Little By Jenny: The Heirloom Tomatoes Of The Baby Industrial Complex - thanks Daddytypes
Improbable Movies From Children's Books, In Increasing Order Of Likely Suckitude - thanks Daddytypes
Oaxaca: Millions against tyranny
Kids Jazz Alphabet Flash-Vids
Mommy Blogger Festo - courtesy of Peanuttgallery
Kola Boof - supposed lover of Osama Bin Laden and resident badass feminist chick
Forbes article on China's success with an AIDS vaccine
Cool Mom Picks
Give the Kid a Cell Phone and We're All Doomed - courtesy of Daddytypes
Science-Nerd-Baby Flashcards
Our babies are getting fatter
Buy a Costco Pirate Tree House for Your Kids - since you're too inept to build one yerself for a tenth of this absurd cost
Eugene, Oregon: Trial pushed back in ecosabotage case
This list is for anarchists in the bioregion known as Cascadia to network, organize and share ideas.
Steal This Movie - More from the Frontlines of Sweden's Burgeoning Pirate Movement
Mexico Boiling Over: Oaxaca and Chiapas

Marne Lucas - Northwest Natural Erotic Photography
Steve Diet Goedde - Fetish and Erotic Photography
Libertarian Book Club
Potty Training from Green Parenting
I hope you know about this debacle...
Report: "My 6-year-old was traumatized by Barney's penis"

New phrases from the terrible two:
"Al dun peet-sa" - All done with my pizza
"kataboo downapoo" - Caterpillar go/went down (read: under/through) the porch
"pirate shirt me"
"ah lilee-kahlee" - lyli and scarleht (in reference to some drawings and photos)
"week gahdun" - rake the garden
"week n shovo" - rake and shovel
"buenosh dee" - buenos dias
"como ih-tah" - como estas
"bohn dur" - bon jour

girls still like me! so i guess I have to talk to them... shit.

I'm supposed to make logical step-by-step decisions and keep my emotions at bay, according to those lovely stars and the metaphysical wackoes who propagate such nonsense. I'm much more prone to believing in the magnetic pull of the planets and stars than I am in the psuedo-creative interpretations some old acid-heads are dishing out.

you are vastly more in tune than I, mayhaps that is one explanation for my attraction? the student's need to learn a lesson from the teacher, or perhaps another student? but aren't we both both? i blather.

i am wanting so much to be something i have not had time to be and i feel you bring it out in me, that him I have not had for years now, that angel and demon, saint and sinner. you juxtapose my assumptions against themselves and I grow the greater for it.

you are much more sexual and worldly than I at this stage in the game... you actively re-learning and remembering and living your dreams, me floundering with these thoughts of memories of who I used to be in beds across some muddled landscape.

I am glad that you are so free right now, to learn about yourself and forge a new path through your own private wilderness. I only hope that I am on your list of future loves and real family (of which my conception has radically evolved as of late).

but what if the more we learn about one another the less we like each other? not that we could possibly avoid getting to know each other, just theorizing on the pitfalls of bullshit, forgive, forget, move on.

i wonder what it is you see when you look at me, as I know you wonder the same about my stormy eyes. should we speak those lines of poetry embedded in our souls or leave them nameless, naked before this coming gale?

i am, i be, i camera obscura

so, i'm curious if any other parents have experienced anything remotely resembling what I am about to describe herein:

since becoming a father, perhaps even during the pregnancy/build-up, I began developing a sixth sense I have only recently realized. This sixth sense is a sort of locality-based flash-scan photographic memory for physical objects... I hope that was lucid enuf to grasp, dear audience (familiarize yersef wit me dear ol' matey Heisenberg and his most glorious of princip'oes). But seriously, especially in my own home I can tell you where virtually every object in the house is located, down to a matter of inches or, if I cannot describe it's exact physical location I can walk almost directly to it and unearth it, even buried under fifteen days worth of accumulated clutter. I am actively training myself in other locales as well. For instance, I can walk into a place I have never been before, look at the general layout of the room and either memorize or surmise (probably a mix) the placement of every visible object in the joint. Crazy huh? Of course I have to attribute this newly discovered skill to fatherhood, what else could explain such a dramatic shift in perceptive powers? What else could define a mind turned inwards and outwards too much at the same time? What else could we assume about ourselves, learn from ourselves, if we acknowledged the simple fact that our minds are capable of so much more than we will ever know? Interesting to perceive in action are the inner workings of the stressed out human consciousness growing beyond its own means, motives, ends and justifications.

ouch

If I was on the moon I'd have a beer right now. Instead I'm on this 3rd chunk from some star having a beer. So what's the difference between our dreams and our realities? Landscape? Setting? Scenery? Pray to your god that reality is not the best it can be, then do something productive to change your mundane life, actively fashion it into your Eden and walk through it to see what's on the other side.

Lyli and Scarleht are enunciating the world around them, spewing it out their little gorgeous mouth holes, wrapping everything up in a neat hundred word vocabulary with a cute little bow of a smile. It's quite frankly the most amazing thing I have witnessed in my short fast life. Today they play around me while I work online, giving their baby dolls rides on their "bicycles" (read, plastic vehicular thinggummies, one looks like a motorcycle of sorts, the other like a lawnmower). I revel in this observational helper role, just watching it all fold up into the two towering personalities they are earnestly becoming.

Drinking with beautifully tragic Olysouls last eve at the good 'ol Bro-Ho. Reliable whiskley and old hat mirror ponds well into the morning, lost journal, slept in car, hungover drive home with the rising sun. sobering, that fucking sun sometimes. but not as much as a daughter or two.

six hours in a car with sleeping passengers. my father nods off in the front seat, his head doing the customary dip and rise of the habitual cat napper, girls in the back seat emitting slight squeals every hour and twenty-seven minutes. coming over the rise from tri-cities into the Yakima valley the sun burns a brilliant deep pink on one side of the sky while a mellow orange sinks down to the left, as if our world was gifted another sun for this evening.

quick, uneventful trip across this great state shrouded in darkness. haunting thoughts of women passed by the wayside. my mind toys with the idea of longing, patience, love in her myriad disguises. i wrestle through writing a letter to my mother in my mind and fail for the time being. my mind and time, two cruel bitches of which I have most certainly had enough. too many words to filter through my full heart, who wishes it didn't speak english.

old friends drift back into my peripheral life, as if their lack of presence forbode my missteps these three years gone, invested in foreign banks. now, with wine and sci-fi shorts, Eamon and I relax in this place not quite home. upon waking we will crank the gears on this old beast we're building, set in motion the movements which will carry us into tomorrow. a mountain of books in the living room portends next week's toil and tuck (that means work and food, mr. illiterate 21st century man). tomorrow or the next we will start the dig and count the dollars slowing rolling in. curious feeding off this world of books for so long now... I haven't had a real job in, well, almost never. That's why I loved Joe's new title from Microcosm: How To Work Any Hundred Hours a Week in Your Underwear. My life in a nutshell... except I work any one to two hundred hours a month that I want. Granted it's sometimes drawn out and sometimes packed into one solid five or six day period. And then I work on it in little bits and pieces every day, here and there, like a quilt you pick up when you have time between the bullshit.

so many projects. eamon just bought our friend's 21 foot fiberglass Luger Southwind sailboat with no interior. so that's our next endeavor for the next ____________. it will be nice to have a different project to work on periodically, aside from all these ones so personally tied to me. plus I've never done anything like this before and I really, really, really want to sail as much as possible.

girls had a good run in walla walla, summoning up and stringing together a new storm of words this weekend. don't have my notes in front of me right now unfortunately. tons of time with grandma, a nice sunday with grandpa, solid play/walk in the park. no time at the cabin this trip, although eamon and i made it up on sat. for an hour or so to see 'er in the swing of summer.

this wine sucks. my balls itch. it is good to be home.
tomorrow it continues with green ben on the streets and in the gutters.
stay tuned for more news from the good ship fatherhood.

The disappearing of self-doubt

Submitted by Libby of Being Mommy.

The disappearing of self doubt if only for a moment may have been the greatest gift given to me today. I will be forever thankful for that sweet breathe of relaxations. The girls and I went to the park with a friend of mine Sky and his twin daughters lily, and scarlet; Sky being the same age as me and the girls being the same age as Emily. So much of their father in these girls eyes makes me wonder is my girls will get the chance to have any of their father in their eyes. I think I may have been a little jealous of the daddy time his girls get to have. Now dont miss understand, when my husband is home his is fully attentive to those girls, but sometimes it feel like he will never be home again. And I have to wonder if this is how life will be for the next 17 years of our military adventure.

Seeing Sky made me remember just how important being a parent is. Hes been able to combine working from home and being a full time parent beautifully, and the wonderfulness of his daughters radiates from them because of it. The calmness that I felt in his presence for amazing, and I had to take of moment to let it all in and breathe. It was like for the first time in so long (perhaps since the last time I saw him) I was with another parent who didnt think we had to pretend that being a parent was a piece of cake. I didnt feel like I had to hide the every day stresses of being responsible for making a human being. I could sit there and talk about how much I love it but at the same time wanted to pull my hair out and his understood. In fact he reinforced that yes other parents feel that way too. Why is it that as parents we are not more of supportive of each other, that we put an unsaid competition between us of who is doing a better job? When in fact all we need from each other is a person to share war stories with. Where did the mentality of it takes a village to raise a child go?

This question will bug me for a while but lets go back to how nice it was to be with another parent for an afternoon. Emily and Makayla have perfected the art of playground playing. Makayla being the bossy overbearing one, and Emily being the quite do my own thing one. And though they were to busy in their own play to have much interest in me, my friend, and his daughters, they did from time to time run by to say hi and welcome the new girls into the park.

Lily and Scarlet however were a little more reserved. If was as if they were seeing a playground for the first time and it was amazing to watch their eyes. There may have been 20 to 30 kids there today the most theres been in awhile and the two girls were just not ready to enter the unknown on their own. So Sky not missing a beat let his daughter take the lead and slowly but surely they entered the toys. And the smile came shining though. Though daddy couldnt leave their eye sight, they did slowly find their way to move though everything on their own.

Daddy and girls moved beautifully though the pains of going off on their own. By the end of our adventure they were pros and you never would have known that first it was a little scary to them. And the best part is they did it themselves, no pushing, no forcing, just support, and a little hand holding and they were golden. And through slides and swing Sky and I found time to share, talk, and relate. And I found someone to breathe with.

Pessimoptimists

Pessimists dwell in the past, begrudge the present and fear the future. They are virtually incompatible with the momentary folk who live on the passing breeze, as well as the artistic forward thinkers, unless they share a common cynicism and can bemoan together what they despise most. Unreceptive to change are the pessimist's staunch idealogies, which they opine at any breath of chance. Marked by an absolute refusal to the ideas and suggestions of others, a self(-and-others) deprecating attitude, tone and vehement rhetoric of hopelessness, the pessimist is indigenous to those areas most prone to failure and self-loathing and is constantly holding themselves up to an impossible abstraction of themselves, a melting candle uplifted towards an imaginary sun.

Equally I abhor the saccharine optimists who attempt to gloss over all the horrible happenings present in our twisted sheets. Rather than wallow in self-pity and the cold throwes of harsh criticism, they blind themselves with shallow grandeures and the ignorance of overzealous dreaming, achieving a perspective just as mundane and basically evil as their philosophic counterpart. Skin-deep are their fantasies and unquenched their eternal foolish thirst for happiness. Forced ignorance of their own shortcomings and a pig-headed stubbornness herald a woe unwished for but well derserved.

This ground we play on

I cannot stand the weight of incessant questioning and worrisome stress. My mother breathes these out from her very being, to the constant annoyance of myself, my father and just about anyone else in the near vicinity (and she's gonna read this too, I better get my shovel). Patience wears thin, especially when the bulk of mine is dedicated to twin two year old whirlwinds. The result is a short temper and sharp tongue, neither of which she particularly deserves but also, neither of which have I much luck in suppressing. We all find our outlets into which to vent. I bite my tongue a thousand times and am vilified the one time I cannot bite it.

Okay, with that over and done with for the time being... we played in the park today with Makayla and Emily and their mama Libby, my old acquaintance turned life-long friend what with our dabbling in this commonground of kids. We met at the playground, foreign soil for Lyli and Scarleht indeed, especially with so many kids around. There were about twenty kids playing there today, with parents of all ages, Libby and myself being the apparent youngest. It was good to see her again, been a few months now and the last time I didn't have the girls. Makayla is almost five and Emily Joe is a week older than my girls. Both of them are substantially more social! Libby's husband Ben is in Korea right now with the Air Force and is in for the long haul, another seventeen years or thereabouts. Whew. Not what either of them were expecting and I sense a bit of regret in Libby's overall demeanor but she is one of the strongest women I have ever met so my worry refuses to enlarge itself.

Watching my girls slowly learn to open up and play with strangers is interesting... especially in a playground setting. I wonder if their parents would be put off if they knew who we were and the lifestyle we embody. But that's the beauty of it I guess, some basic common ground that precedes any other knowledge of an individual. It sort of cuts the bias off at the seed.

Eamon and Will call me from the farmhouse, having just unloaded the wagon full of books Eamon drove back this afternoon. Strange, having other grown men call me to tell me a job is done, a job I would normally do alone. The evolution of my own dreams beyond the scope of myself is becoming a common theme, what with Last Word Books and its ever-growing sphere of influence and lack of dependence on me these days. I thought my travels were almost over for a spell but it seems I will be returning to Walla Walla on Thursday for another load of stuff and books. 'Twill be good to have a night alone with my father though, good sparse words and better whiskey well into the night I imagine.

Unused to the quiet this past month. My mind devours itself whenever gifted the opportunity, flames licking up towards tomorrow's word-kindling. Looking forwrd to a relaxed day at my father's dilapidated cabin, maybe a quick fish, walk in the woods, pop off a few shots from the old pellet rifle at some indistinct target just beyond my field of vision (those are the most fun). I quiver thinking of home and yardwork. Wine and tacos before the drive on Monday. I'm stocking up, not drinking and driving, don't fret.

Sold a copy of Pirate Papa 'Zine over e-mail today to DaddyTypes! One of my first fifteen purchases still, it has yet to lose it's allure.

Walla Walla is fucking hot. Supposed to be 104 on Sunday, a scant matter of hours from now. I revel in my self and these moments of solitude in the darkness of my high school basement. Remnants of my childhood litter the floors and walls, as memories litter my befuddled brain. My heart aches a bit for those lost souls onto which I wanted to hang. Hallowed and hollow are the bones of my belief that inside each of us is a thing of beauty, a creature capable of changing itself a million times over, of donning and shedding a thousand masks, of doing evil and spreading good, of feeling love, hate, remorse, hope, compassion, sympathy, empathy, sorrow. The trick is in the blending of this smorgasbord a dish delectable in its unique qualities, rare but precise in its bloody rage and artistic in its temperaments. Outside thunder from a sporadic flash of heat lightning tamps out a muffled drum roll on the underside of the sky. would that I could live up to my own language. adieu.

new pix you folks'll want to get yer grubby mice and keyboards on

more to follow when I get some time

99th pirate papa post

dug thru 1167 dusty books first thing this morning in my mother's garage, texts courtesy of Whitman College and my ongoing biblioventures. lyli and scarleht pay little attention to me when around their gramma and grampa, it's a mix of insult and relief and understanding and prioritizing and thanking god(s) for letting me get everything done and still have easy time to read, write, drink, nap in the grass!!!! woo-hoo! can't remember the last time I did that. So, for my 99th post, this one isn't incredibly deep or informative. I'm in Walla Walla working sporadically and my folks are getting some grandkid fix. Here until monday and then back west to work on books and crack down on the farm house. Only spent a smattering of days there in the last month. Give me the chills but sweet. Started (if I did it right) a Papa Blog Group on Myspace today, we'll see what happens. If you know what you're doing, my-space page can be accessed here.

more Walla Tacos from the bus, horchata in August tastes better than any other time of year. Here's a recipe:

6 tablespoons long grain white rice
1 1/4 cups blanched skinless almonts
1 cinnamon stick
approximately 1 tablespoon lime zest
1/2 cup white granulated sugar
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
5 cups water

preparation time: 24 hours (approx 45 min active time)

Grind the rice using a blender or coffee grinder, as smooth as possible.
Combine ground rice, almonds, cinnamon, lime zest, and 3 cups of water.
Cover and let stand overnight.
Blend the rice mixture until as smooth as possible - several minutes.
Add 2 more cups of water, half the sugar, the vanilla and blend a few seconds more.
Pour the liquid through a fine mesh strainer to get out most of the solids.
Pour the strained liquid through damp cheese cloth.
Add more sugar and water to taste.
Cover and refrigerate.
Serve over ice.
Thanks Life Begins at 30!

Will throw some new pics up tomorrow when I am not falling asleep on my keyboard. Thank you, as usual, my faithful fans, and goodnight to all of you. Keep your knives sharp, your doors open and your prize right between your eyes (or thighs).

I'm back.

pizza and beer and good talks in ma's backyard with Lyli, Scarleht, Rika, Eamon, my mother, father, dog and open sky. Wine at 26 Brix, their bourge' spilling out of the gaudy stuccoed ceiling. Tales of ice in the urinals but I fail to investigate. Informal tours of the Walla Walla "historic" downtown. All these fucking wine snob tourists and their stinking money turn my fucking stomache. I'd rather the town was still poor and I was the only teen wandering the streets at night romancing the moon and fire escapes. I ran this town, or like to think I did those nights run wild with booze and daring escapades and young girls with loose morals. reputations were forged and then abandoned for the still wilder heights of college and that world outside our fields of dreams that stole us and will not give us back. so many of my friends have moved on down the road without a glance over their shoulder. some are stuck inside their shells in some rural gutter, lying where they fell, cartridges fired from a needless gun. I try to call them sometimes, to tell them I am here again and wanting them. to no avail.

i consider it my mission now to track back down the pages of that book we wrote together in those days of yore, glue back the binding I so callously, carelessly tore to shreds, and hand it back to that old friend turned man who hides from stories surrounded by his clocks. we all bear our wounds, the trick is sharing them. too many lick instead of sticking, tick instead of clicking. i ramble and the moose drool gets the best of me this late-fate night fallen down around my ankles. I read some Hemingway, some Charles Potts (that arrogant bastard), some of Joe's story of starting Microcosm in his underwear (inspiring for folks like me with no job save their heart's impassioned duty, which conveniently happens to make them money).

I fall in love again for the 42nd time this hour with the 24th girl (damn you myspace for aiding and abbeting my memory banks in this terrible recognition of the beauty of forgotten folk) and I miss her more than all the rest combined. This, among other things, I cannot tell her however, for fear... well, for fear. I'll drink to that. This moose will drool for that, for love, quiet love on her throne of thorns and rainbows.

I read 'zines to forget about love momentarily. My mind reels in slack line and recalls that Eamon just bought a boat! 21 foot fiberglass sailboat with no interior we will park in our driveway and slave over until she's seaworthy I'm sure and ready to glide us towards whatever Valhalla we can imagine. dreams come together as past lives move on into the dust. i gather both dust and dreams around me to tell a story with my feet, if anyone's watching me dance today to an utter lack of music.

A line from Ernest catches my attention, the smell of ionized air and moose drool heavy on the eastern washington air:

"Another brandy," he said, pointing to his glass. The waiter who was in a hurry came over.

"Finished," he said, speaking with that omission of syntax stupid people use when talking to drunken people or foreigners. "No more tonight. Close now."

The night is long and I am but a walker in its depths. Were it made of wood perhaps I could choose a road, pick a fork, pluck a string. Her busy name rings like a shot bell tolling its last loud peal out upon an ear too far away to hear in time, shallow time, this ebbing tide, this lark.

This morning I drank coffee from a mug with my childhood face emblazoned on its side and felt secure somehow in time's passage, my bad posture, poor manners and misguided ethics. Then the sun came up, as usual, and I reverted to my more cynical, natural self. All smiles, despite the heat or rain. For those of you who know me... I'm back.

stationary man – decompressing on the train from the ‘Zine Symposium

I wonder what we gain and lose inside our fragile minds by travelling non-stop versus staying stationary… never in my life have I travelled this much in such a short period of time. I am become whole cosmos. I free my being. Keep roots planted while romancing stars with my limbs. Too many thoughts. Train 506 enters a tunnel. My beer between my legs. Preppy cute knit sweaters and yuppie t-shirts. Amtrak sucks but it makes me feel so much better about myself seeing all these normal boring middle-class people and their frightened eyes. And of course I do it in proper pirate style: beer at 1:30, queer zine stickers prominantly displayed, counter-culture emanating from my very being. Paused but are my days of sneak-a-tokes in vacuum flush toilets. I wear my principles on my body. Perhaps I should just have them inked directly on, my busy sleeves of ethics for the world to see.

China plants deep thoughts across the surface of my mind and morality, she allows me to see parts of my own future which hitherto lay darkly shrouded in those innocent immature robes of inexperience. We swap stories and perspectives on relationships, counterculture, family structure, father figures, ‘zines, monogamy, and countless other topics. We talk so much so fast I have to duck away to this Pyramid Thunderhead Ale and my greedy keyboard. She believes that young people are more ready to be parents then our society gives them credit for, especially more prepared to be single parents, due to their sort of shared innocence with the newborn child. I still didn’t say that very well but it fits me to a goddamn tee. China says that relationships are the adult, grown up thing, while raising a kid is more fresh and spontaneous and unlearned. This is my sentiments exactly! That’s why I never read the stacks of cliched parenting crap and just forged my own way. That’s why I haven’t gone out seeking a support network until now, when my girls are past two. I had to do it alone, myself, to learn who this new me was. And that’s okay. Take your time, hide in your shell before you come out into the world with your new ideas. That’s why I’m so good at parenting. Because I learned how to do it on my own and it instilled in me an incomparable sense of self-worth and gave me back my self-confidence she stole with tiny insensitivities and one-sided sex, making me into something I wasn’t and couldn’t be, could not sustain, couldn’t keep it up.

and I say damn but goddamn life moves sometimes. my mind is on fire, wits sharp and all about like tiny knives despite the cloudy hangover and boisterous amtrak lady who collects chins. I feel alive! Booming and blooming and blossoming and coming out of my various cocoons.

I embrace these new technologies, dreaming of electric sheep. I utilize the burgeoning info-sharing networking waves of the present/future perfect, graft them to my existing skills and toolset, see how they mesh and coalesce, what their upsets will pan out to be. “Is my new Norelco™ Smooth Glide Shaver w/ Accessories going to be compatible with my Japanese insta-blogger USB interface port or will I need to purchase yet another liquid crystal piece of crap?” (or something like that)

China: “people think if they feed their kids organic broccoli they’ll grow up to be little revolutionaries” when in actuality they might still turn out to be one of the most normal teens on the block. I listen to her stories of her 18 year old daughter Clover (who is Nadja) and try to imagine myself 16 years from now, age forty. China is so strong, mature in ways my inexperience can only envy, and I try to retain as much of her scattered praise and advice as possible. Just having someone you admire express their confidence in you skips one up a few rungs on the ladder of self-respect and rebirth. I will eternally be grateful for having met her at this time in my life, a veteran in this war we're waging with ourselves and the world.

chatter chatter chatter box thoughts in my full but hungry mind – I wonder what I will become in the pending...

“to dream, perchance to sleep, aye THERE’S the rub”

Outside hawk wings catch the wind, winding up into the blue. My train shoots north, landscape and scenery blending into a blurred zoetrope of past, present, future, and dream. I sit back, breath deep, and keep on living at whatever speed the moment serves.

Pirate Papa Rocks the PDX 'Zine Symposium!

So, anyone who isn't down here in lovely, sunny, green, awesome Portland is missing out. The 6th Annual Portland 'Zine Symposium is in full-swing here at Portland State University in the downtown. Hundreds of crazy counter-culture zinesters cruising around an enormous room of independent publishers, colorful comix, zine libraries and distros, bike nuts, radical wierdos and strangely attired punks, hipsters, hippies and our ilk. I feel slightly out of place running around talking a mile a minute to so many folks whose names go in one ear and, well, you know the rest. Earlier I had a cell phone, a digital camera and my laptop and was using all of them at once in this uber-urban setting. Odd coming from a place like Guemes Island in the San Juans a few short days ago to a settings such as this.

Sales are slow and I've spent way too much money on way too much cool shit over the past two days, and there's still tomorrow to think of. But that's the kicker about the book world and conferences and shit like this, you spend ten times what you make and then over the next year recapture your losses with all the cool shit you score for trade and resale elsewhere. At least that's how I do it. Ironic that in addition to an already spendy road trip I have to spend even more to break even eventually.

China is super cool! She arrived yesterday afternoon and we immediately hit it off with a mix of shared joys and complaints. Road weary rockstars are we. Cool too since we're sitting next to Shannon Wheeler, creator of Too Much Coffee Man. China showed up in proper style with a pint of Hennessy which she and Eamon and Shannon and I mixed into our Black Teas in order to take the edge off these social dynammics we are forced to be good at. Met Shannon at the Olympia Comics Convention when he was one of the keynote speakers a few years ago, if you're not familiar with his work check it out as he has an amazing sense of humor and draws one of the funniest contemporary comics out there.

Got food poisoning from some fish tacos yesterday and spent four hours last night sticking my finger down my throat and examining the inside of Dr. Gabbo's toilet when I wasn't sitting on it shitting with my head in his bathroom sink. Whew! Haven't ever experienced anything like that but felt alright this morning. Goddamn. Tonight promises more beautiful debauchery with old friends. I'm excited because Steph is bringing the girls down for the last hour of today's symposium and I will get to run around with them in this little slice of paradise. If I were to live in a city right now it would be this one, or maybe Victoria, B.C.

Spreading the Pirate Papa word has been fun, spent 2 hours at Kinkos when I got into town polishing up the first Pirate Papa 'Zine! It looks fantastic and I even got the damn pirate fonts to load! Let me know if you'd like a copy, they're $3-$5 each, depending on what you'd like to pay me or I love bartering for non-monetary goods. I'll post some images of it when I get some time here (when the fuck is that going to happen?)Got to jet back and spell Sir Eamon at our table, this place is hopping! More to follow perhaps from some wi-fi barroom later this evening. Stay tuned.

tons of cool links and the first Pirate Papa Zine

I am officially cracked out on my computer. i spent almost 24 hours working on the first hardcopy issue of Pirate Papa, anthologizing the best material from the first nine months of this website. when i walked upstairs last night I couldn't see a damn thing. stuppid computer screen. i need a beta-carotene vacation.

the zine isn't anything fancy, but it'll do the trick well enough I suppose for this weekend at the 'Zine Symposium. Excited! I am! Yes! This is going to be sweet. Tomorrow Eamon and the girls and I abscond with our bad selves to Guemes Island to descend upon one Mardesich residence, solid fisher folk on a tiny island in this Sound of Puget. Nice calm before the storm of Portland. And if anyone wants a copy of my 'zine just let me know, I'm not sure what it's gonna cost yet 'cause I have yet to do the printing, but it's sixty fucking pages long so I'm thinking $5-$10 - whatever my clientel seems able to afford.

okay, so I've been working on a million other things and haven't posted for a few days, sorry. here's a nice little list of cool stuff for your perusal though:

"Organic" Milk Boycott
Indie Tits - Amusing Webcomic about Indie bands no one's ever heard of
Ecologist Genius Murray Bookchin dies at 85
Sweet Minimalist Swedish Kids Clothing Company thanks Daddytypes!
Digg - I just became aware of this amazing reader voted popularity journalism site. Check it out, I'm hooked.
Finally! - Advice to Parents, Know Your Video Games
Mumsnet - British Mums Site
The Case for Boycotting Israel
Israeli anarchists blockade air force base SWEET!
Olympia Dumpster Divers Recycled Art Blog!!
Population & Puget Sound

This news aggregator's going to fucking kill me. I can't believe I'm addicted to this technology I don't even like.

For all you parents of twins or triplets out there:

"There was a young girl who begat
three brats by name
Nat, Pat, and Tat.
It was fun in the breeding
but hell in the feeding,
when she found there
was no tit for tat." -Anonymous

and all of you wanna-be radical parents out there should check out this book from Paladin Press: How To Raise Up A Kid Or Two(ISBN = 1581603940) by Dr. Andy Kane. Excellent brutally honest advice: "Add up all the teeth in your and your mate's immediate families. If the total is less than 25, forget about having kids."

the bombs sound like drums in the distance across the water at the Fort Lewis testing grounds. i've never heard them sound like this before, a whole string of muffled firecrackers disguised as the foot-stomps of my children asleep upstairs for which I keep mistaking them. they light up the sky to the south-east, strobing their way over the sparse clouds to my secluded yard, turning the treetops silver in their wave and wake. the constant percussive whump mimicks a beating heart, then quickens to a more rapid pace before fading back into the neon nothingess glow of tacoma.

makes me wish more folks new it was illegal for the testing grounds to be where it is, above the sole source aquifer for king and mason counties. all that RDX seeping into our water supply. mmmmmmmmm. Ahhh, gotta love ignorance and the mass media and justice's blind bound eyes.

papa's bruised rib, scarleht's foaming mouth, internet adventures and sunshine

okay, more links from the pirate dork's latenight internet adventures:

Smokin' Barrel - "A view from the eyes of a Christian husband, father, and gun nut" This guy's my new friend, he just doesn't know it yet.

An excellent piece from Raj @ Green Parenting - Concerning whether or not to hire a Mayan woman to provide childcare. The Mayan couple left their own child in the hands of family to come work here. Thin lines indeed.

India Bans Child Labor! - Thanks Klint @ Rose Colored News!

New study shows breast-fed children handle the divorce or separation of their parents better than bottle-fed kids. - Well duh, that's 'cause we're better than them. (note sarcasm)

woke up yesterday with a sharp pain in my left side, feels like I remember bruised ribs were like but I have no idea how I would have done that... every now and then I will have coughing fits in my sleep, usually when I'm smoking too much (shocking!) but this doesn't feel like that either. Strange. Arnica, stretches, deep breaths to stretch the muscles out again, don't suppress breathing. Ow.

my mother and her friend judy come out for lunch:

stirfried potatoes, kale, carrots, tempeh, broccoli, radishes from my garden, cilantro, honey, black pepper, nutritional yeast with a blackberry-chile vinaigrette (misspelled that the other day) and now that I think about it most vinaigrettes are served cold and I've served mine hot all 3 times now... hmmmmm.

---

scarleht re-discovers she can blow spit bubbles and promptly drools all over herself and brings me individual bubbles to keep for her in my imaginary pocket. the sun here is shining and life rolls on at my favorite Sunday-morning pace.

uh-oh, we're gettin' deep

my eye drawn to the simple symbiosis of an abandoned mole-hill-turned-chicken-dust-bath-bowl.

succulently intellectual on a down-farm level, yes?
but the first scholars read the earth (while they took care of their kids!).

Good words over roaming hours promising tomorrow with my Irish punk printer poet bard roomie Eamon, who moved in today. Danish ales and Irish ballads on the porch, a few of my roots entwined.

My singular components integrating into a more indivisible whole.
or
My distinct elements mixing into a more inseparable totality.
(whichever suits you, Fancy.)

Or, for the scholar/samurai/book farmer/philosopher/savant/scribe or screenwriter in you: Individuation.

Today I realized the correlation between Lyli and Scarleht's word for "politely" = "Palimpa" and the idea of the palimpsest:

a manuscript page, scroll, or book that has been written on, scraped off, and used again. The word palimpsest comes through Latin from two Greek roots (palin + psEn) meaning "scraped again."

(Which is really just the literary word for the contemporary graffiti movement and the literary crowd doesn't know it, but that's a topic for an entire essay)

Dwell on that while I drink some wine and make dinner.

"All I am is what I'm going after."

Al Pacino in the movie Heat.

Here's some solid links for a decent 1 a.m. start:
Little Hell Raiser's Punk Kids Clothing
Portland Punk Parents Yahoo Group
Punk parents on Tribe.net
Excellent article on parent bloggers from the 2005 New York Times.
Islamic Parenting Blog


After getting in trouble yesterday for hitting her sister Lyli sternly lectured her sock monkey and made her have time by herself in our living room chair. Fascinating! Kind of scary! Am I raising little drill sergeants? Scarleht and Lyli's mimicking skills are improving too quickly for me to catalogue. They will repeat up to six or seven word sentences sometimes!

Let's see... what else cool.

Started reading Milan Kundera's

The Unbearable Lightness of Being today and it is blowing my mind on page seven. What is it about the synchronicity of literature? How do certain books find their way into your hands at the right time? I wonder if much writing has been done about this phenomenon. When a book grabs you by the 2nd page you know you're in for a ride:


"But is heaviness truly deplorable and lightness splendid?

The heaviest of burdens crushes us, we sink beneath it, it pins us to the ground. But in love poetry of every age, the woman longs to be weighed down by the man's body. The heaviest of burdens is therefore simultaneously an image of life's most intense fulfillment. The heavier the burden, the closer our lives come to the earth, the more real and truthful they become.

Conversely, the absolute absence of a burden causes man to be lighter than air, to soar to the heights, take leave of the earth and his earthly being, and become only half real, his movements free as they are insignificant."



On a lighter note, my mom showed me an amazing Pirate Cook Book today! (ISBN = 0789415194) Check this shit out:


It's written in Pirate talk and shiver me sprogs (those be the raw 'n rowdy recruits) if she ain't a right fine beaut of a book, aye!


Yarr, just wait 'til the Pirate Papa gets into full swing in his galley! Then ye'll see some treats to feast yer purty plump eyeball tummies on. Just wait for the pirate recipes to start flowing.


Also reading Czeslaw Milosz's Collected Poems and found this gem:

"...but the moments are short when it seems to me that, at odds with time, we hold each other's hands. And I drink wine and I shake my head and say: 'What a man feels and thinks will never be expressed.'"


Another from Kundera:

"But was it love?... Was it simply the hysteria of a man who, aware deep down of his inaptitude for love, felt the self-deluding need to simulate it?"


I'll end with a simple breakfast recipe:

Cous Cous or some other light grain

Yogurt

Honey

shredded carrots

some kind of leafy green

diced onions

tomatoes

black pepper and/or ginger


stir


take the leftovers and make them into slop/leftover muffin mix in the afternoon

last week in the civilized world, DEtachment parenting, a poem & a dank crepe recipe

awake to four cute crying eyes wanting to cuddle back to psuedo-sleep
another hour, 1/2, 2
who knows?
downstairs to phone, dishes, blog, books and my mix of child care, domesticities, business, writing, diapers, and food, gardening and pets, garbage, laundry, recycling, post office, book scouting, compost, feed the red worms, cats, chicken, collect eggs, weed whack, chainsaw, pull weeds in the garden, last ditch attempt at carrots and beans, water the strawberries, the potted plants, the vegetables and the flower garden, pick blackberries and salal. freak out at how horribly dirty our ancient carpet is. do something else for awhile.

intermittantly I sit down at the "poo-koo"
check: 4 e-mail accounts
post on one of a smattering of blogs
read half a dozen blogs
check booksales
check pirate papa
check stupid corporate myspace
netflix
bank statement

all this gets me in the mood to decide what I really want to do that day, since it's barely nine a.m. yet
I could either run around like an ant and get chunks of a myriad number of extended projects done or I could buckle down and do two or three things well and almost to completion.

---

Guilt gets the best of me sometimes, with twins I feel like I embody a mix of attachment and detachment parenting. It makes me feel very manipulative and deleriously free. At any point I orchestrate Lyli and Scarleht will pretty much play with each other unintterupted and virtually unsupervised. They will come to me if they are fighting, hungry, tired or need a new diaper. Other than that I can focus on whatever task is at hand like no other parent I have spoken with. Who else can sit down and read a book, weed the garden or take a shower when they want to? Maybe a few other parents of twins or triplets, or families with several young, well-behaved siblings. Maybe I just have super kids. But then again, they still seem to be little violent terrors around their mother so I really have no idea. Why do they listen to me and not to her?

I have no doubt that this is partially due to the sheer ammount of time I have spent with them throughout the first two years of their life and the fact that I taught them sign language before they were one year old. I highly recommend this tactic to any new parents, it will make little angels out of your children as long as you are the one doing the teaching and you maintain a consistantly determined attitude and constantly add new signs to the mix. I have been slacking this past month since Lyli and Scarleht magically became so articulate. We're up to 3-6 word sentence/thoughts!! Soon, when they have acquired a bit more verbal vocab I will jump back into signing on a regular basis. I'm just stalling because this next leap will require a lot of study and participation on my part and I'm trying to be lazy as long as possible. Plus who am I kidding? It's just nice to bask in the moment and watch their language grow on its own with no outside stimulus.

Twins are incredible that way. It's like watching a play unfold before your eyes. You may hold a few puppet strings but don't wield nearly as much control as in the beginning of their lives. I wish I was in touch with more cool parents of twins, or that I would/could take the initiative to seek them out. It's fun to compare notes over blogs but nothin beats play time together.

---

"ay-yeh" means "under" the picnic bench-barricade at the end of our walk - scarleht

"mi cuddo gramma, yu cuddo papa" (I bet you get the gist of that one) - lyli

---

O cheers to my changing self!
Stagnant static gone, replaced
by a graceful misty bliss,
O cheers newfound fog and rebound heart!
O cheers the liver and the doer!
Cheers the hop and hard road dust!
Cheers the magnificent rump of heaven!

The stunted pine grows strong in shadows.
I must remove this rainbow before it becomes a blindfold.
But O cheers the beating heart, O bloody drum!
Cheers the dark salal and himilayan black berry!

I sing of cracked sidewalks and deer in the city.
I sing of the rose and concrete,
of river and her times,
of road.
I sing of sadness certain but for hope.
I sing of fuel and of the fire,
artist and canvas becoming one.
And O cheers the day and her divinity!

Cheers the blue collars and buses and bustle!
Cheers the mossy firmament, the ancient cedar,
babbling brook, book of us all.

Cheers the animal instinct of art!
Cheers to revolution, turning soul and soil and seed,
flower and weed, mind and need.

O cheers the absolute complexity of being
and cheers the single breath!

---

Okay, so I made the best crepes ever last week and wanted to share my recipe, just replace the necessary ingredients with whatever suits your vegan fancy:

8 eggs
2 cups flour
1 cup milk
1 cup water
1 teaspoon salt
4 tablespoons butter

either blend it or mix it very well for a bit
you're supposed to let the batter sit for an hour but we were starving and it worked just fine right after blending.

on high heat pour enough batter to cover the bottom of the pan and brown on both sides. doesn't take long, once you get good at it you can make quite a few in a short period of time.

as for fillings and toppings, try any combination of the following (or all of it!):
avocado, arugala, basil, cilantro, honey, black pepper, pears, chevre (or some other awesome goat cheese), and green onions. The kicker is the Raspberry-Chili Vinegrette sauce I invented from scratch:

take one pint of strawberries, one cup brown sugar, 3 or 4 table spoons of your favorite chili paste (I use Tuong Ot Sriracha, made by Huy Fong Foods, Inc.) and 3 or 4 tablespoons balsamic vinegar. These measurements can be played with to adjust to your taste buds but it should turn out amazing. Let me know what you think.

deeper in debt?

another year older? funny, I don't feel too different.

writing again has gifted me that illusive power of present-tense hindsight, as if I can see consequence and end result at the first strike of the match, whole systems laid out for me to poke and prod and poem over. Rob and I disembark this fair city, headed back to the anything but dismal reality of our fantasy lives in Olympia, the pages we walk upon and write about unravelling from the soles of our shoes. Oh hard heart why canst thou not crack wide open like the head? Weave me an allegory that makes me make sense.

Roll on, ye Stars! exult in youthful prime,
Mark with bright curves the printless steps of Time;
Near and more near your beamy cars approach,
And lessening orbs on lessening orbs encroach; —
Flowers of the sky! ye too to age must yield,
Frail as your silken sisters of the field!
Star after star from Heaven's high arch shall rush,
Suns sink on suns, and systems systems crush,
Headlong, extinct, to one dark center fall,
And Death and Night and Chaos mingle all!
— Till o'er the wreck, emerging from the storm,
Immortal Nature lifts her changeful form,
Mounts from her funeral pyre on wings of flame,
And soars and shines, another and the same.
Erasmus Darwin