AI

Leer in with an initial skepticism: the jump from trad RNNs to attention-only was not — could not be — that dramatic, right? A tired argument, I know, but I'm setting the stage. Continue on with a more formal (but still limited) criticism: induction does not produce knowledge. The pig that gets fed every day thinks nothing of the axe replacing the pail. Ninety-eight, 99, 100 (°C) and yet the temperature in the kettle does not continue. You can't always follow the trend to the next bit, and so

Good Morning, California

I MISS YOU I LOVE YOU I WANNA KISS YOU I WANNA SEE YOU I WANNA EYE-SOCKET YOU I WANNA LIVE WITH YA I WANNA DANCE WITH YA I WANNA HOLD YOUR HAND AND GO FOR A NICE LONG WALK WITH COLD AIR IN OUR NOSES AND HATS ON AND THE PERFECT AMOUNT OF COATS AND I WANNA JUMP ROPE WITH YA AND I WANNA MAKE PLANS WITH YA AND I WANT TO MAKE A GYM WITH YA AND I WANT TO PLAY CATAN WITH YA AND I WANT BOP AND BOOP AND HOP AND SKIP AROUND THE WORLD WITH

A marriage ends.

He realizes all the meaning he’s taken for granted, now gone. He weeps, the image of which he immediately imagines as being sympathetic. And then, immediately after that thought (i.e. that he looks worthy of sympathy while weeping), actually during that thought, he’s disgusted. A massive loss of substance, and he’s preoccupied with his image. Reflecting further: this vanity and conceit must be why his marriage ended in the first place; what he offered was thin and presentable but not sustaining.

Chic?

You’ve been of age for years, but midway to the bar you still get nervous. Walking there, it’s dark out and your jacket is too thin to block the gusts. Wet, coarse asphalt, alongside the concrete, alongside chainlink guarded baseball fields and three-story apartment buildings. The occasional back-alley yellow-cab making that dopplered paper rip noise cars make as they coast past through shallow puddles. Street-lights tinting things the rarely realistic slight-sepia of city night. At the e

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I’m gonna lick your heart. I’m gonna floss your fingers. I’m gonna inhale. I’m gonna read your work. I’m going to pluck your apple, honey; and press its taught skin to the inflection between my nose and upper lip. I’m gonna smell your fields, and doze absentmindedly in your radiance. You’re gonna crack the igneous shell in my head and let forgotten fragrant life seep out in relieving streams of cool viscous purification that flow over my open eyes and open mouth. We’re gonna leapfrog the

Jet Lag

Woke up unusually early, six o’clock or so, the happy accident of light jet lag. Shower, teeth, fold the laundry I left in the dryer the night before. It’s still dark out, dawn is an hour away, and the wind is rolling in hard, preceding the sun. It sounds like surf, but not confined to the hearth of a beach. It’s all around, louder, sporadic, and as a result more mesmerizing than the ocean. Right after waking up, or even way after, it’s rare for me to be able to focus. In the morning I’m

A Note To Myself

I am evolution and this is just one of my forms. The Spirit is the chain of evolution, ever better, never ending. The ideal that all which exists results from. Realized or not, you can think of the idea of a Quality human. That individual represents the best a human can do in making things better, making them persistent and sustainable and harmonious. What might it look like: imagine we are each one of the wholly spirit centipede’s infinite toes moving it forward. The idea of the best append

jon and i messing around in the rv

i trust in the electronic eye. it sees all things and it knows what’s right. crackers and carrots, contemplating chain links and emails. johnny appleseed and john carmack playing tug of war. scratch away the pornohraphic veneer and see clear for the first time in years. love shackled behind brass battled doors of technology and habit. where is george’s tums, he’s got the runs. not fun, not fun. high dynamic range cyborg organic eyeballs to see fluorescent sunlight with. the whole fucking

The Zen of a Shitty Crowd

I recently went to a show with a shitty crowd. An outdoor venue with people sitting on the floor of the pit, pissed that others could be so rude as to think grooving in front of them was somehow appropriate. Rage that the rail didn’t have at least five feet of space per person. Disgust that a shoe or two might of been stepped on, or worse that their picnic-blanket-colonization of the limited real estate was being disregarded. Others leaving during the set, returning with entire cafeteria tr

A Daydream

We kiss and our teeth clink and smash and disintegrate into each other, collecting below our floating heads in a pile of shared dust. We walk over this newfound sand, hand in hand. Eternal desert, endless horizon, two androgynous silhouettes, without nipples or genitals or mouths, pursuing the sun on the surface of mars. I sniff you into me, and your hair is pasta, my mind melted butter. A good dish, like a big broken-in leather arm chair in front of a dusty, ray-laden, library window. Nig

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Beerful and joyful, swaying to live music, dizzy and dimpled. I open my eyes, and I where’s-waldo you on the same side of a small basement stage. I’ve seen you before, but only ever as a patron, never as a companion. Do you wanna be friends? Do you wanna dance with me and sing with me and remember that, just because you do this vocationally, doesn’t mean you can’t also do it professionally, confessionally, like me, for free. Ha! Who am I to doubt! Your authenticity was never in jeapordy. You’

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Am I tripping or am I oppressed? Are my desperations the ephemeral result of a missed cup of coffee or are they the bedrock conclusion following a hollow narrative? Are my motivations arrested by the contents of my schedule or stifled by its arrangement? What am I missing and where should I be looking for it? Am I a coward? Or an idiot? Or am I just temporarily tired? Am I investing? Or am I squandering, supported by superficial status-quo canon? Am I cranky or am I lucid?

A Place

Feet buried inches under hot sand; ass planted on a reclined beach-chair, slipping between watching the waves and sleeping; the sepia of dark glasses or the bright black back of your eyelids; optional towel over your head, accommodating if you’ve had too much sun or want to sneak a peak at a neighboring surf-bum’s bathing-suit; cold fruit from an ice-filled cooler; slightly salty lips; the refreshing relief of the right drink; and the pleasure of knowing you have nowhere to be for hours, if not

A Poem After Some Wine

I have escaped the matrix and am here to show you the way of past misfortune and current wisdom. Let’s have some fun, for the sake of all that is good and great and good. Trust in the banjo and banter. Revel in the bliss of bluegrass and the banquet of breath and breadth and burden, too. Why not?! WHY NOT, GHAD DAMN IT!? It’s good for you. Take your medicine, you spoiled blood-line of mine. Good times. Good times. Long live The Beatles.

Something From the Journal

A sweet sadness. Disappointment, not despair. A realized risk reminding you that the game is real, and that there’s something substantial on the table. A proper bet. A contrast for both future and past accomplishment. Escapes and excuses avoided for fear of dulling a deserved pain; a pain that you need to periodically participate in. A practice that defines priority and provides perspective. A reminder to be modest, to know pride’s pitfalls. Embrace it, live in it, then move on.

An Italian Poem

Happy. Lover. Fun. Sweet sadness. Sun. Boating. Company. Shallow, innocent, smiles. Immovable, balanced, aimless beauty. Salty rocks and dark, clear, water. Gross, impressive, sail boats. Lighthearted, short-lived, jealousy. Virtuous, incorruptible, happiness. Minimal, intense, natural color. Neighbors. Shipwrecks. Wild, mountaintop, cactus fruit, thorns and all. Those endless clouds again… Fish flowers, dumb and delicious. Everyday a new view. Squinting, purposefully, purely.

Ya' do it cause you gotta do it...

Too many people looking for prestige in their performance. Ya’ do it cause you gotta do it, cause it’s the thing you should be doing. Prestige and power is us and them. It’s isolation. More of the same. Music for music’s sake is a reminder that we are more of the same. Temporarily separated, but barreling back at break-neck speeds to the abyss of togetherness. We’re going back there, to where we came from and where we’re going to, to spend an infinite multitude of time, peacefully balancing wi

Flow

When the cliff hanging over you is so dense that you’re eyes need to adjust to the sudden darkness, you know you’re in it heavy. A building, in the middle of implosion, falling toward your back, and you’ve got to out run it or die. Each direction chosen in real time, each bump dealt with through a combination of light like reflexes and weathered wisdom, all the while traveling faster than you though you could think. No options, just momentum. Perfect flow. Perfect immediacy. Truly continuous

Tweaking

Abandoned ruins appropriated as valuable, no one asks why they were abandoned in the first place. Typographic diarrhea, shallowly swooned over. Overused, under-thought, in-cohesive spew masquerading as appreciable underneath a king’s cloak of fog and smoke. The same people evangelizing detoxification, living in asbestos lined buildings built on top of broken bottles and cigarette butts. It seems something is wrong, practicing yoga in a town with no trees. Loglo selfishly employed, naively sol

Mindful of the Music

It’s a tragedy to see a show sitting down. Watching some nostalgia machine pump out its product in a room full of dead women and lazy boys. A single suit stands, his tie long gone along with his hair, but he doesn’t care as he dances in the open aisle. Most ignore this dude’s craziness, pretend he isn’t there, because they’ve been dead so long they don’t remember what life looks like and they are embarrassed by the void. That guy dancing in the aisle, though, he’s eternal, he’s the light of

A Jotted Down Memory From My First Trip to New Orleans

I’m sitting in a cafe, reading “A Moveable Feast”, decompressing after a day’s work with a Sierra Nevada beer, and waiting for Tommy and Lauren to come in and join me. In the meantime, another potential love interest walks in, and I make eye contact with her, I smile, and she smiles. It happens again, and a handful of times more, but then my friends finally arrive, and I shift my concentration. I start talking with my friends and, it being the finish of my stay in New Orleans, there are a lot