Author Archives: Tara Jepsen

About Tara Jepsen

Tara Jepsen is a writer and performer from San Francisco, California. Among her many performances, she has featured at the Porchlight storytelling series, the RADAR reading series at the downtown San Francisco public library, and at Litquake. She recently was chosen, with Beth Lisick, as one of five winners for the San Francisco MoMA's "I Want You" collaboration with Tony Labat. She has short stories published in the anthologies Pills, Thrills, Chills and Heartache (Alyson Books) and It’s So You (ed. Michelle Tea, Seal Press, 2007). She toured extensively with seminal all-female cabaret Sister Spit’s Rambling Road Show in October and November of 2007, as well as summer 1997, fall 1998, and summer 1999. Her most recent short film, Diving for Pearls (co-written, directed and acted with Beth Lisick), won the “Most Innovative Short” award at the Seattle Lesbian and Gay Film Festival (2004) and was selected for the “Best of Newfest” screening at the Brooklyn Academy of Music. She co-curates and co-hosts San Francisco's longest running queer open mic, K'vetsh (awarded “Best Open Mic” by the SF Bay Guardian and SF Weekly), with Kirk Read. She recently completed a sold-out first run of her live stage show, written and performed with Beth Lisick, entitled Getting in on the Ground Floor and Staying There. Beth and Tara will take their show to Las Vegas in December 2008, and to New York City's Dixon Place in February, 2009.

Engulfed in a Chevy Spark

This last week I went to Portland, Oregon to skateboard and go to a wedding. Guess which was more fun? NEITHER, THEY WERE BOTH GREAT!

Kristina and I rented a Chevy Spark. It is very tiny, like if one of my dad’s generic foot covers/shoes had wheels and three cylinders or whatever it has. A 9-volt battery. But it has lots of tiny pockets and tiny spaces, so we made a list of what we would hold in each area. Katy Davidson also contributed to this collection.

Where to hold stuff in a 2015 Chevy Spark

Passenger side compartment next to vent/above glove box:
Tacks, pushpins, paper clips, mini stapler, single hole punch, staple remover.

Passenger side door compartment under door handle:
Junior Mints

Driver side door compartment under door handle:
Werther’s

Driver side door compartment along bottom of door:
electric pencil sharpener, pencils, dishwashing gloves, Johnson and Johnson baby powder.

Passenger side door compartment along bottom of door:
Mini bike tire pump, single can of Dinty Moore beef stew, can opener, chopsticks, tongs, pair of no-see socks

Trunk:
Ceramic Santa, 6-lb. medicine ball, neon green Crocs, zebra print duct tape, one pack Salonpas sore muscle pads, strobe light, theremin, large candle (Fresh Linen scent)

Two Dead People from History allowed in backseat:
Gilda Radner
James Baldwin

Drinks we provide for them:
One cranberry chia drink
One smoothie made of: radicchio, craisins, caraway seeds, pinch of cumin, diced Good-n-Plenty candy for garnish

Glove Box:
Pack of Pall Malls (no filter), one can of Sofia, lighter, pack of female condoms

Under driver’s seat:
Puffy trapper keeper (matches car interior)

Under passenger seat:
TV tray w/ cold cuts: Bologna, Mortadella,

A Life from Years Ago

The year 2000, am I right?

It was a time. On a long life ruler that includes: being born and dying and the destruction of more species and the one time for ten seconds a butterfly landed on your finger and you called it Magic. It feels good to feel good. Let’s get more of that midnight snack.

People around me were making a lot of money. It seemed great. I remember watching Beth withdraw $100 from an ATM and I thought HOLY FUCK THAT IS SO COOL, I would like to achieve that level of casual around $100. I only withdrew $40 at a time. I had quit yet another job to go on tour. I needed work.

My girlfriend at the time worked for Macromedia. They paid her well. I was aware that making money was an option, and yet, I felt unclear how to gain access. I finally got a job at a web design company and, in true low-expectation form, I made $15/hr.

I was a copywriter. I don’t remember doing a good job, but I do remember caring about doing a good job. I learned a bit about designing a CSS and some basic HTML. At a time my friends were pulling in dough hand-over-fist, I made a babysitter’s wage.

The company I worked for rented a house in Potrero Hill to be our workspace. No one checked if it was zoned for working and then it wasn’t and the neighbors reported us. We were kicked out and the company folded. Because the money was drying up. My gf’s employer sent us to Las Vegas after she finished another Flash manual. They put us up at Treasure Island and bought us tickets to Siegfried and Roy and Cirque du Soleil. If I wasn’t young and combative it probably would have been more fun. I did pay $18 for a Siegfried and Roy coffee mug which I am drinking out of this second and should not have put in the dishwasher.

So I lost my job and panicked and lost sleep. Fret, fart, worry. My friend worked for a non-profit that needed a payroll lady, and I was hired. It was a very special time in San Francisco when all my friends were obsessed with cocaine and fucking each other. I chose not to get involved with that stuff because I knew I would go in way deep and never come back. My texts frequently went unanswered and I felt frustrated, alone and shut out from friendships I relied on before everyone doubled down on their drug and alcohol consumption.

My gf didn’t want to pay for everything and I didn’t want her to either. It caused stress in our relationship for her to shoulder the cost of all our sushi and other extraneous activities. Queer women are often profoundly uncomfortable with having mismatched resources, which I think doesn’t happen as much in straight relationships where men are understood to be more capable earners. Is that true or is this like when I try to describe what penises do?

My friend and her gf were selling coke to our boss and he was trolling for dates in Tijuana. He moved his boyfriend, his boyfriend’s wife and their four kids into the apartment under his in Santa Monica. They got a wonderful education in the USA. My friend’s mom was hired to be our boss’s assistant and so it was really all very intimate. My friend came to work ripped up and hungover almost every day, and it was hard to navigate her moody ups and downs. But I had a job getting people paid, taking out lines of credit for our boss’s rehab (same one as MK and Ashley) and his boyfriend’s (a lesser rehab). We also paid for the boyfriend’s family to go to Disneyland. I hope I see one of them write a memoir one day and I can read it and think, “I mailed the check for that.” More kids were born and they didn’t look like the first three. I salute that woman and her sacrifices.

Our boss had a fancy apartment with rented furniture in San Francisco. It all cost around $5000 a month and he was barely there. We were paying people the salary equivalent of $12/hr. and often paying them late, but our boss had oversized rented furniture from Cort, a downtown apartment and a membership at one of the fanciest athletic clubs in SF that we paid for. It was unnerving to be in such weird financial peril all the time. The people who hired us hated us but apparently, all the 22-y.o. recent college graduates who worked for us did great work and their spirits were not yet broken so the clients all got what they needed and stayed with us. Just like a marriage!

A woman named Sashamay was hired as our boss’s second assistant. Ugh he needed so much help!! She stowed bottles of booze in her desk and was a ripping 89 pounds wearing matching children’s clothing. She reminded me of my grandmother. She was diagnosed with Hep C and disappeared for several days. I was told to take a car to her apartment and find her. I climbed over the fence and found her apartment, then knocked and knocked until she answered. She was vague about her health and what support, if any, she wanted. My boss got her an appointment with his Freudian analyst in Marin, which was $300/hr. $350? I don’t remember. I was charged with driving her up there for her appointments. I remember the first time we got out of the car in Ross, a very wealthy and verdant community, she sniffed the air like a bunny and wondered aloud what they were spraying to make it smell so good. I wish I had pointed to a giant bottle of Shalimar but I pointed to all the plants and flowers and said I thought they were the cause. She didn’t believe me.

My friend eventually left the company and no one around there got sober. Apparently our boss became a BUDDHIST. Horrible. I gained a new boss who was very sure he was hiding his crystal habit, and you guys, he wasn’t. Our boss hired a VP he met in rehab who had a very big personality and even louder singing voice. He really let ‘er rip in the office, and from what I can tell, he heard a lot of “thank-you’s” that weren’t actually being said. All the high-up guys got along great in that way that narcissists do. You take the time to let the other person speak because THEN YOU GET TO!

Life was just a general bad feeling with occasional pizza and then my brother died. I had that stereotypical re-ordering of my priorities and was like FUCK THIS I’M OUT. My boss was really upset because he said he relied on me. Did he? Was I reliable? I was a really unhappy person. And I knew I wanted to get happy and I threw that shitty jerga from my shoulders and have never looked back.

I have to continue this later but you get the gist.

Where Are YOu

Hello and Right On! It’s been a minute (times a lot). Do you ever get sick of your dumb opinions and ways of doing things? I do get very sick of mine! Because what is legit heart of gold stuff and what is my anxiety taking flight, shape of a water dong? Ho boy.

You know what is real? General Store in San Francisco. It is a distillation of all things that are stupid about privilege and many whites. Did the show Last Man on Earth grow there between two $1200 zarapes? Or was it back in the $25 “VINTAGE” bandana stack? Stop it you YMCA camp handbook re-selling, crude shoe-sewing, essential oil over-pricing, wooden toy JERK-OFFS!

WAIT I CAN’T SEE THE SCREEN BECAUSE MY EYES ARE FILLED WITH DIARRHEA THAT IS EXPLODING FROM MY THIRD EYE BY WHICH I MEAN MY BUTT (not an original joke, I think that was in some performance art in the 90’s or something).

But you guys. As my beautiful writing partner reBETHa Lisick said, “I just can’t believe the last people on earth would be three white people in their 30’s.” Like for sure the least resourceful, poorly muscled and robustly educated chunk of people in the USA (if anyone has real intel on that please email it to dumb@shut-up.com) (or record yourself on VHS telling me why you have a VHS camera) (or mount a wall calendar above your desk and remind yourself to exist less every day).

I actually really enjoy many aspects of that show. But also it feels like a show with a guy at the center who gets to do lots of fun stuff like smashing cars and pooping in a swimming pool while the women around him are written for in a way that I can only say really facilitates the big bouncy house, rented pony, balloon-twisting clown, colorful ball pit, party time of the main character. BUMMER. They didn’t even indulge in the old, popular and wildly tired trope of casting all whites and one African-American actor. Maybe that’s coming down the road. I am biting my toenails to the quick!

Will TV get better with regard to race and casting? Reading Breyean Grayzher’s shock at the popularity of Empire was such a perfect picnic spread of Hollywood’s race problem (citation needed) (Chevy Citation, that is). There were exactly no comments that conveyed an awareness of the world as it exists for most humans outside wildly wealthy bullshit compounds in Los Feliz where you sign NDA’s at the gate.

But General Store. This is where people of all the different one kinds of people can pay $45 for one handcrafted coffee mug. IS IT that educated, upper-middle class people realized they didn’t want to be bankers or go into real estate and they realized they loved making things all by themselves (no machines) but could not handle the downgrade in pay so they charge prices commensurate with lawyer’s fees? My mom’s friends who make soaps and crafts in Wisconsin don’t price their handiwork like they deserve a fucking carved mountainside in a northern state for achieving greatness in mug-making. My friend Sabrina gave me the most beautiful mug in the world which she made in a pottery class (HER FIRST) in exchange for helping her with her garden. THAT is a legit economy to me. I still owe her that garden check. Am I ripping off artists? Ooooh, maybe one day!!

Wait do I need to say anything about why I went to General Store in the first place? Of course I went! It’s next to Trouble Coffee (which I like, and Giulietta is great, but seriously the way the people who work there model their eyes after Bassett Hounds is CRAZY. Why are their eye sockets so LOOSE. And also are they bored with life and do they like vibrant colors. And also I watched a lady who had already bought her coffee come inside to chat with the cashier while a line of people waited to order coffee and they just lobbed around a lot of How Are You I am Great Have You Been Surfing Have You Seen Roan Lately. It was STUNNING and for sure made me miss Target and manufacturing in general). Anyway I think friends of friends own GS. Or something. I thought it would be enjoyable on some level even if I couldn’t afford it and it just made me want to start a race war against the people who work and shop there.

Anyhoo I have work to do. Constantly. And I don’t mean on myself. Hope you’re doing well.

Friday Night F or F

Hey what’s up.

Friday! It is definitely a popular day for people and restaurants, one of which specifically thanks (god) for IT. I certainly enjoyed mine today, and I work all day tomorrow. How am I emboldened to feel free on the day before my abject employment??

I spent the morning writing. Then ole Bradford said he wanted to go check a pool in Pasadena, it’s a barge, Pat and Olen are coming too. TIGHT CRUE. We pile in a car and find our way to this joint. We skate. We leave. In a nod to gender stereotypes, Brad takes a wrong turn and when I say we should have gone the other way, the whole car of dudes disagrees with me and when it’s discovered I was right NO ONE comes forth and kisses my ring. Chivalry is dead.

I got home, ate a carton of cherries on my couch in a pool of my own filth, and then showered to go to the Maddy wrap party. I met Kristina there. We each drank a margarita and agreed that was a good choice. But we were starving! So we went to one of our favorite eateries, Zankou Chicken. There was one less than a mile away, in East Hollywood. Instead of going farther afield to a familiar rendition of this popular song, we went to this close one.

WELL. No one is regulating the brand at this joint. The lighting was like if you were in a dentist’s chair that was put inside a copy machine. Shadow was obliterated. I could detect Kristina’s eyes and hair and navy blue shirt but the rest disappeared into the glare. I think there is more mood lighting in prison. We got our food and it was in large styrofoam containers, which is very common in Los Angeles, but not at other locations of this Armenian food dispensary. Every element of the food we got was a garbage version of its proper incarnation. Soggy pickled veggies, gnarly rice (usually it is fluffy basmati but this was yellow-ish box rice. Someone is skimming off the top here and buying jewel-encrusted iphone cases or whatever, Lamborghinis, something.) The security guard at the door…kept something at bay? Homeless people? I don’t know. A pack of feral adult men who live in a cave with foil over the windows and eat cases of squeeze cheese for breakfast came in to dine. They were pasty in a way I didn’t think was possible among whites anymore. They all wore flip flops/house shoes and tear-away off-brand gym pants (I truly don’t know what those are called but whatever the pants are that if you cut them off they would be basketball shorts, billowing and stupid). They made noises and their movements were just controlled enough for me to think they weren’t meth heads (their choice to eat contradicted that too), but they still felt jangly and erratic. They arrived in a black Prius.

After dinner we had to agree not to talk about it for a full day until the food was completely digested because we knew if we talked about it we would both ralph so violently that new problems would open up like esophageal burning and pronounced malaise. We are all a sum of our choices.

New Undies

Oh you guys. What a life! Now that I’ve pooped my shorts on one walk, I can’t ever leave the house without wondering if I’ll blow my butt load AGAIN. What is a woman to do? Is my butt broken? It has a crack in it!

One thing I could do is attach a rope to the waistband of my joke shorts (I call them “joke shorts” because they are short and bright colors and 80’s rip-offs. Like how dumb.) and the rope could hold a roll of toilet paper. I could wear a fanny pack that has a plastic bag for soiled shorts, and a small container that looks like a kleenex box but dispenses disposable paper underwear. The paper underwear could have designs, just like paper towels! What on earth with greatness!

Here are some ideas.

Masculine Frontier Undies
Muskets
Long johns w/ butt flap
Five kids in one bed very tucked in, nose to toes
Tin lunch pails
Steel pump water fountains
Covered wagon
Game of jacks
Hoop to run down road with stick (too modern?)

Lady Version of Frontier-Themed Undies
Penny Candy
General Store
Horse hitch
Nellie Olsen taking voice lessons (probably won’t work re: printing/rendering)
Violent mother (quick to anger) (might be hard to convey on underwear)
Butter churn
Bonnets
Nightgowns
Candle holder with finger loop
Wash tubs

Park Theme
Geese
Bowties (Col. Sanders style what is that called)
Paddle boats
Senseless little bridges
Cinder block bathrooms
Slices of white bread
Hippie sleeping on synthetic 80’s comforter
devil sticks
boulders

Fuck You Theme
FB website mock-up
Broken shoelaces
Piles of poop
Slivers
Wind
Bombs

Somehow This is About Balls

Women’s intuition: can it benefit us all?

So often I keep my intuition inside the human-size inflatable performance art balloon of my mind. Because intuition can tell me something is not going to achieve the soaring heights of awesomeness I seek, and sometimes, you have to go over that bridge to madison county anyway.

I went to Garvanza last Friday night for some runs-n-buns. Good idea. Good friends with the names Jacob, Andreas and Brad. Ben Schroeder, who is a really warm and lovely dude, skated with us.

We skated the bowl. Andreas, whose ankle is still very much repairing from a brutal accident, dropped in the shallow end and got some runs in. It was a big deal (A, I HOPE YOU DON’T MIND ME SAYING SO), and all our stoke was high. A couple BMX dudes started riding the bowl in the middle of our sesh, and landing on their pegs on the coping. Everyone was bummed about it. I finally went over and said something along the lines of, “I know you guys are getting clips, and I don’t want to salt your balls, but you’re bumming us out by mashing the coping like that.” My feedback was not welcome. You might say the dude I spoke to wouldn’t even look at me. The guys are not locals (LOCAL TOWNIE ARREST SYSTEM ACTIVATED) and just didn’t seem to get the flow of the park or the people there. I went to skate elsewhere. I told a local biker dude, “You could teach classes on how to co-exist here. You’re so good at it.” He said, “Don’t make that guy angry. You won’t like what happens.”

THANKS. Way to threaten the 41-year-old woman talking to you. I can’t even run away because my sewing machine and crock pot are so heavy in my arms.

I told him, “I’m not responsible for anyone else’s actions. I’m a nice person, and that’s all I can do.”

So it’s pretty cool to feel afraid of some people at my local park. But I’m going anyway. You can’t let assholes rule the night. I don’t think that dummy even knew he was being threatening. I think he just thought that is something you say to women. Because he sure wouldn’t have said it to a dude. If I get in a fight, I might tip over on my big high heels and then get jabbed in the bone zone by my glitter-encrusted eyelashes. THEN who will vacuum the area rugs?? Men, well, their arms are just big Sawzalls. So they can duke it out and let the best biggest alpha dipshit win.

I don’t want to say I’m SPOILED to have so many sane, rad, intelligent humans of all genders around me. Isn’t that just what a person can have in the world? I guess I want to say I’m THANKFUL to know so many great people.

boom
BOOM

Sunday my friend Brad and I hit a few spots in a skateboarding way. We did a little Garvanza. We did a little backyarder. Why is there always a broken water pipe at a backyard sitch? Why always a broken wheelchair? Piles of boxes, discarded barbies never taken out of their original packaging. Except for the naked one at the bottom of the pool. The only usual thing I didn’t see was any feral cats with giant soft furry balls. As I type that I remember that Brad and I talked just about the fact of men’s balls and how it seems universally that they are considered kinda gross. Totally gross. Even among the people who actively sexually practice with them. Has anyone ever made a little ball curtain or ball skirt with a little elastic waist to hide them? Please don’t answer that.

One of the spots we skated Sunday included many adult men riding, and one of them had a 5-year-old son in the session. By “in the session” I mean that there were twenty adults skating, and one kid who jumped in the bowl between every single adult, and took long, lingering “runs” of going back and forth in a straight line. His mother was right there too. No one stopped him. Then one time when Brad was in the bowl, the kid threw his board in. We decided we were done. Really no reason to stay someplace where some kid is ruining the session and no one is saying anything.

We walked through the house and I got to hear the dad of the kid say, “Pool skating brings the real men out.” Brad pointed to me and said, “And women.” The guy didn’t notice. Just more blather about separating the men from the boys, which I think we know is only necessary in Catholic schools. BOOM! EASY JOKE! Bum out the guys who AREN’T pedophiles! Aw!

Sorry I got so Mars and Venus with this entry. I guess that is like saying, “sorry I wrote about my life.” So fuck that and scratch it. Like a big set of balls.

Sick of Being Sick

The internet. A good idea? Certainly it is resonating with me today as I exist with the grossest cold in memory (though just for overall life event contrast, I DID poop my shorts on a walk a couple weeks ago while over a mile from home and casually strolling through the Pasadena suburbs). So today I enjoy the knowledge that I can connect with you in a way that would have had zero meaning for any of the formative years of my life.

Last night I went to CVS to re-up on generic nyquil. There were a few choices, and I am a child of expansive alcoholism in the adult ranks of my family, so I had to get whatever formula seemed like it would really blow my hair off and leave me a baby possum of an adult human. I saw the words MAXIMUM STRENGTH. I grabbed the happy little gay married couple that is Dayquill shrink wrapped with Nyquill and paid a lady with braces to take them home. Kristina got a couple chocolate bars. HANDLED.

We watched seven episodes of Orphan Black yesterday. Why in the HELL have I been waiting to watch that?? It is a miracle of great entertainment! It has that Breaking Bad quality of never dwelling on one version of the storyline and constantly letting it evolve wildly. I take great inspiration from this rapid storytelling pace. I have such a slow, methodical, donkey wearing a boulder inclination when it comes to laying out STORY.

So last night after becoming bleary-eyed with TV and fatigue, I slugged a tiny cup of MAXIMUM STRENGTH (repeat: there is no greater strength than this, not even a mother lifting a car off her grocery cart or grizzly scalping an elderly gentleman and leaving him for dead face-down in a creek like on the Bio Channel’s “I Survived”) generic nyquill and went to bed. I laid on a few pillows so my schnoz wouldn’t fill with mucous, kinda like putting really large tires under the front of my car and tiny wheels in the back. I fell directly through the tiny doorway of a mushroom-filled cat planet where tiny wizards direct community theater productions of Gertrude Stein’s fever dreams. I dreamt my friend Michelle had another wedding and each table was exquisitely designed specifically for the people sitting there. I dreamt I was in an “experiential episode” of Comedy Bang Bang which meant walking around and experiencing hilarious scenarios, one of which was watching a fleet of forklifts drive by REALLY FAST (which, for the record, I did and do find very funny). There are a lot of other scenarios but ultimately who wants to hear me recount my dreams? No one. I tend to have really amazing insane dreams and these were no exception. I woke up with my eyelashes stuck together with crud, which I repeatedly cleared and it immediately returned. Fortunately I have a bottle of eye drops leftover from a trip to the Buddhist free clinic for pink eye last year. So all’s good!!

Gonna lie on the couch now. I can’t believe I finished this.

I Returned a Woman

Because who wouldn’t? They come with so many busted parts! Or the parts get busted over time and I’m like COME ON! What man has to deal with the empty parking lot of his barren womb and the attendant hormonal buffoonery and weight gain? Well I can think of a few who do but my real point here is to shine a light on the fact that there are a rainbow of genders and everyone has their own issues with their body and the answers are not likely to be in the next issue of Endomorph Fitness.

I returned home from a one-week Colorado skate trip last night! My cats were so excited they stood within ten feet of me all at the same time! I was so tired I felt like non-specifically barely crying for hours. I laid on the floor and let Kristina pull my shorts off and replace them with my much-vaunted sweatpants, which I will remind you have room for the both of us. I dragged my carcass over to the couch like a demon whose legs were cut off. I watched a few episodes of Cesar Millan and cried for the beauty. Kristina made us delicious food which involved vegetables and my experiences in the bathroom reflect that.

But HOW WAS COLORADO?

It was glorious.

We skated our faces off. I definitely have fainter fingerprints on my right hand, which I think is because of grip tape gripping. But if I’m going to pull off some notable crimes I should do it now because there will be little evidence besides a pile of (dyed) blonde hair and an organized spice drawer.

Injury Round-Up:

One big whack on my forehead which happened in the bathroom of a restaurant while waiting for my huevos rancheros (I always wait for my food in the can). I went to the bathroom and the toilet was handily close to the sink so you could wash your hands whilst still peeing. I bent way, way down my lanky frame to pull up my crappy giant shorts and whacked my head on the porcelain sink. I instantly cried very hard for five seconds then got annoyed that I didn’t have a couch or cable tv to heal with so I pulled up my shit straps and moved on.

Big bruise in the middle of my left thigh: not sure where this came from but I think from a few classic falls on steep drop-ins at Spring Canyon in Fort Collins. I came to party and the evidence is deep purple (not the band).

Cheese grater scrape on my left calf from falling at Tuck’s. Another attempt at what was apparently a steep drop-in. If the surface hadn’t been so rough I would have kept trying but my leg was bleeding, shorts were ripped and other people were waiting to shred. So I went to an easier spot and used that and I liked it.

People Round-Up:

The skateboarding scene in Colorado! I love it! I don’t totally understand why everyone is so friendly and warm and welcoming. I am so grateful. Everyone shared of their parks and private spots with great generosity. There were many of us over forty years old. The over-30 scene is CRACKING. There were also many women who SHRED!! Like over the shallow stairs, ripping loud grinds, airs, all that stuff that has names. It was so awesome! Being around multiple women who have a hunger for skateboarding, who cannot not skate, was so glorious. All pushing each other and trying things and everyone of all genders being equals. A paradise.

I could detail every day in every way but then I would be living in a time machine that doesn’t go back very far and that doesn’t seem fun for anyone. I took photos and they are posted on a phone application I use sometimes.

A Life Happens

A tree falls in a neighbro-hood. Who gives a rip?

Last night I dreamt extensively of roving around a candle store. An UPSCALE CANDLE STORE with moody hues and furry sings the blues. There were non-traditional shapes and unexpected scents with names like “sea balls” or “nard-vark.” Just kidding. I don’t remember the scent names. I do remember that I couldn’t find a candle I really liked and I felt like I couldn’t afford them anyway. WHAT COULD BE A MORE STUPID STORY.

Then I dreamt I was swimming with dolphins. I have been dreaming that frequently lately. WHY.

Nobody likes dream stories. But do they like dream stories with a sort of aggravatingly stupid story line involving trolling around a candle shop whose proprietors likely bought their coffee at a place named after two things related to hunting wildlife and carpentry? The names would evoke a bareness of bone and we would live with it in a sort of abstemious way. We would feel connected to a barbaric lifestyle with aristocratic distance and artful bathroom decor.

I rode my skateboard for the first time since Sunday this morning. I know that doesn’t seem long. But I whacked my noggin in the bowl at Garvanza Sunday, and was worried about watching myself grow dumber and dumber (or at least achieve Jim Carrey’s hair) until my frontal lobe withered into uselessness and I spent my life hitting on everyone in my family. Fortunately for me and the fact that I am not French that did not happen. I am just a regular person still, if a regular person means raising lots of cats and spending too much money on health food. Ugh that almost made me not love myself.

I went to Garvanza to skate this morning. There was one dude there I see fairly often who has a beard and a Welcome board. He’s a nice enough dude. There was also a white dad there riding his skateboard in running shoes with his front toe pointing forward. He was rolling around and loudly taking calls on his cell phone. He had his kids with him. Probably about 6 and 8 years old, both on scooters. Besides the fact that everything was wrong with them, they seemed fine.

I rode around and felt exhilarated that I could skate and my head seemed fine. I tossed out some frontside grinds, and that sealed the deal that I was okay. I had decided I would only skate for half an hour, just to not push my brain too hard (great strategy for always). I went to get a couple runs in the bowl, and the two kids were in there with their scooters. They couldn’t get out and their dad had disappeared. They handed me their scooters and I was talking to them about running out when their father, a man who appeared to be in his mid-40’s, came back in the park with his remote control truck. I saw him stop and talk to Bertha, and ask her why she wasn’t doing anything about the graffiti in the bowl. He brought his dumb truck up to play with it in the bowl so I asked him not to so I could skate it. I said, “that doesn’t really belong in here.” He said, “Yeah it does, it doesn’t say anywhere that it doesn’t.” Because the conversation was clearly stupid and he didn’t give a fuck, I just skated the bowl. I patted myself on the butt for not starting an argument. The dude on the Welcome board rolled over and I said, “Kinda next level kook to be driving a remote control car around.” He said, “I think it’s rad.” So I decided that if I was the only dissenting vote in this wonderful joy election, I was gonna let it go and just quietly think less of them all. It just makes me so fucking mad when some privileged dumbass comes busting into a scenario he doesn’t know, in a neighborhood he doesn’t live in, and swiftly imposes all his ways on it. If you don’t know where you are, why not hang back and observe for a good long time. Show respect. Be part and skate there, but don’t disrupt the existing vibe or bring your input to it until you’ve honored what’s there. I would say, “Your time will come” but if you are white your time is basically happening constantly so hang the fuck back for once. I love Garvanza and the skaters there so much.

Okay so there, those are feelings.

Good one.