Oooh, let's have a snarky soap opera of a blog for once, why don't we?

It's not like my relationships are any better than anyone elses. For the most part I have no relationships, but being surrounded by various kinds of unhealthy couple moments this weekend made me for a moment proud to be single. Or rather, it made me feel gross and uncomforable, which in turn evoked a kind of reactionary, atavistic bachelor pride.

This bravado was summarally deflated when a girl approached me at the bar on Friday night and I went to pieces like a 16-year old.

She was a stranger to me at the time, but I gather now a friend of a friend. She looked at me just as we were walking in and there was a spark. I thought I knew her from before, she looked roughly similar to that girl I'd talked to on the phone a couple times but who'd decided not to ever meet me for a drink; tall, dark hair, possibly a slavic hint to her features. I panicked and walked past.

She followed very close. I could feel blood rushing to my head, the heat of her body behind me, a flustered sensation to say the least. This just from walking into a bar. I was aroused and excited, but then paranoid and defensive at the same time. Where the hell did this come from? Showing desire is declaring vulnerability. What the hell was happening here?

In any event, I mishandled it. She passed me, tugging at my hand. For a blissful second I didn't even think and went with her through the crowd. An elated sense of coming unstuck overccame me, but the power of doubt quickly took control and I started lagging. She glanced back once, let the light grip on my hand go and continued on to the back. I started after her once; checked myself. Looked back to try and see where my friends were. Looked at her again, stutter started and then finally headed on back to see what was what.

I was scared. I don't know what of, but I was not relaxed. "Do I know you?" I said in a highly accusatory tone.

"No... I just thought you were cute," was her quiet response. She slipped past me quickly and out the front I presume. 90 seconds later when everything made sense again and I realized the score she was gone. I couldn't see her anywhere. It was all over, all in the span of four minutes. So many things I didn't want to be worrying about then... who wants to be uptight? That little axe-wound of tension between my shoulders is killing me.

So I sit here, stewing slowly in lust and regret and Charles Mingus. Happy Halloween. Maybe I'll dink around with Friendster for a little bit. Lots of girls down here put up their Burning Man photos; a lot more squares too; interesting.

Maybe I'll think about what I aught to be able to be doing, engage my identity crisis in a bout of grappling, map out a plan of action for taking over the world. Maybe I'll think about taking care of myself for a change.

It's a rough time, you know. We've got a lot of problems; a lot more than we used to, it seems. We're quickly learning that we're not invincible. Though some still try to resist the lesson, the question on eveyone's lips is, "what do we do now?"

It's ugly to contemplate, to fully let in the awfulness of this world. But believing you have the power to change anything means having the guts to look at how screwed up it really is. If you want to get the high highs, the low lows come prepackaged, friend.

It's time we shifted gears here; got to start increasing our power ratio or we'll burn out in first. You gotta believe. Feels like a throwaway line at times, but it's also the fucking truth. You do indeed gotta.

We've got to bring more people into this process. We've got to engage another section of the population. We're doing really well, but if we settle in where we are and start just running on what we've got, the results are in doubt. We need to make a couple quantum leaps if we want to insure the full revolution.

It's been a breezy couple of days, more social contact than ususal. I got to put up my favorite Hobo Lawyer for a night, a quick seven hour visit, and last night saw my friend Kate -- who reminded me again that I need to put her in my people page -- and some of her friends. It was fun and different, investment bankers and planners for the Gap, salesmen of fiber optic transponders. Even though I have a full time job for the first time ever, I'm still the token boho; riding my bike and pushing my non-profit. I get to take home the leftovers from dinner, not that I'm complaining.

Halloween is upon me. Not my favorite holiday because I'm poor at costuming myself. Nothing fits. One of the joys of being an actor has always been that someone else gives me outfits to wear. But I'll make a go of it for stress relief if nothing else.

Finally, pursuant to my last post about sexual harassment, I got a major boost from this bit of news:

A man described by authorities as a known sexual predator was chased through the streets of South Philadelphia by an angry crowd of Catholic high school girls, who kicked and punched him after he was tackled by neighbors, police said Friday.

Flash your willey, get beaten silly. Damn straight.

So I'm bouncing around the internet before going to bed -- my version of channel surfing I guess -- and I come across this site, the Anarchist Library and I click on the 9-11 link because I'm from New York and there's a post asking "why is conspiracy a dirty word?" or something to that effect.

So I think I'll leave a comment and lay my "conspiracies are disempowering" jive on these black and red beboppers, but then it tells me I have to register to post a comment. Yeah! Anarchy!

It occurs to me that my sub-par mood of late is probably in part due to the fact that I'm sitting on my ass eating crappy food getting under considerable stress for a good portion of my waking hours without regular source of physical activity. Know a good gym in San Francisco?

We had a housewarming party last night; a grand success given that Dan and I have put done no roots in this town as of yet. We half-filled our gorgeous apartment with decent people, liberally saturated with booze and food and loud music, and everything was cool. There was conversation and jest and sociopolicial debating, all the ingredients for a swirling cocktail salon scene sometime when we have a couple more connections. I got to talk art-school with some of Molly's student friends, which was refreshing but also made me feel a little old; a few years further out at least. In spite of the fact that there was no one there for me to romance, it was a damn good time. A sizling proof of concept at the very least.

That stuff makes me feel, makes me feel, feel, feel, feel, happy.

Day by day it gets a little easier, the new life. I miss rain and riding on misty mornings past McCarren park on my way to the bridge. I've hit that little stretch of Driggs maybe a couple hundred times over the past two years, and there's no pleasure like spreading your arms like wings and coasting under trees past green grass on either side in the middle of Brooklyn; that beautiful old orthodox church dome ahead on your left, the Empire State Building rising across the river on your right.

In weak moments, whistful or lovesick or something, I replay scenareos, how this or that might have been different. I remember being a teenager and in New England and the rightness of that, and how I kind of crapped all over it; made proud juvinile moves like I thought an adult would. Takes a while to learn these things. I playback the summer's timeline, wondering where I would be if I hadn't had a ticket to California. Pretty much where I am now, I suppose, but the possibilities tickle.

But hindsight is just a story, and usually a convienent one at that. You don't like being alone now. It's highly unlikely that a real solution to that problem lies anywhere in your past, as comforting as that might be to imagine. Better off roaming the streets looking for some bike-riding apparition to pounce upon than mining your past for nuggets of now-bittersweet memory. Chase too many veins of illusion and you might just get in too deep, suffer from a cave in or loose sight of the canary in the shaft, suffocate for lack of emotional oxygen.

The future is out there, and it probably involves a lot of people and places I've never seen before. That's a kind of comfort too, but rather of a cold variety on an unspoken Sunday night in California.

So yesterday I wrote about political ambition vis-a-bis HST's Better than Sex. The obvious collary is that I'd take sex. There's still a lot of getting over -- by my calculations a year or more before I'm fully settled -- but at the same time eye contact has become a dicy proposition. Sparks a series of impulses I find slightly unnerving but also totally fucking exciting. The juice is starting to flow again, even in absense of an obvious draw; just for the sake of being out there.

There's a lot to be said for sticking the right title on your condition, knowing the name of whatever beast is on your back. I am weary. There's all the work I've been doing, and the fact that what I'm doing now -- while still a highly enviable position -- is something of a come-down from the past two month's crazed running about, listening to the O Brother soundtrack and feeling a little like I did right after getting out of college, like those strange introspective days in Eugene in Arcata. There's also the strange new town aspect to things; not quite the same social support network.

But I'm not whining or complaining, more like admiting a problem; it's the first step to finding a solution. Think what you will of 12-step methodology (not a fan myself), but that's wisdom right there. I also need a neck massage in the worst way.

So I won't forget to breathe, and we're having a house-warming party this weekend, and that should be fun. I find myself tending to more grown-up pleasures lately; good conversation over good food and drink, an alternative to the half-bilnd groping fun of post-adolesence. Keep on truckin', that's what I'll do.

I'm not the first person to observe this phenomena, but I thought I'd tell you about it anyway. In a spam message titled "Re: critical an orgasm is just the beginning" the bottom of the email contained these lines:

and behind him were red sorrel and white horses. then i said "what are these my ?" the angel who talked with me said to me "i will show you what they are." so zebulun did not drive out the inhabitants.

This is most likely random text lifted from somewhere meant to fool spam filters (hence me looking at it in the first place), but it's proof if anyone ever needed it of the Tristan Tzara/Biron Gysin/William S. Burroughs "cut up" method. Technique so good, even machines can do it.

Rocking out with Tomoyasu Hotei vis-a-vis Tarantino's latest flick. Kill Bill, which I saw on Sunday with my old High School buddy Chris, is quite a good film. Quinten has the sense not to put himself in play and leans heavily on his strengths: mining past pop culture for its most suculent morsels and sewing together his pomo orgy of style with a deft and revealing skill for dialogue and timing. The result is succulent manga.

Critics made a great deal about the violence, but I would call it far less violent than Resavor Dogs. It's less about what blood means in and of itself -- the hard realities and consequences of living and dying -- and more about telling stories through combat; hemogloben is illustration. By abstracting the gore to an absurd level, it becomes a medium of connection rather than a bludgeoning tool, one more thing to choreograph. Much more so than any "real" action film, it made me want to have that razors edge of skill and the will to put it in action, to slice through the soft spongy guts of the cheeseburger day to day, through the fat and the blood and the shit and the mucus, to emerge in some kind of God-like arc of purpose. The Mission, yes, and a theme song too. I've a weakness for most things epic.

Tonight having a little conversation with Molly, this gem of language springs forth from her in jest, a parody of all the self-styled cynics out there who get by on meaningless work and various addictions. "I'm jaded, dammit! I've thought it through and it sucks!" A keeper.

But seriously thinking some about where I want to end up in relation to the comic book possibilities set forth in this film I saw. I'm no assasin -- a lover/creator by trade, thanks -- but might I not one day be similarly skilled? Dangerous? A professional? A man of some craft, of honor, a samauri in my own right? It's a popular fantasy, this notion of slipping outside the regular rules that people seem to have to play by -- job, singles bars, monday night football -- jumping off the squirrel-cage running wheel, becoming ubermench, awake. It would indeed be something, but would it be good?

It's up an down, this city. After a long long week of work work work, I kick back with Molly the old friend and roommate and her student cadre. Art school kids, priceless company; talking communes and cutting hair and playing music late after a turkey feast. I got lost on my way over, climbed a few hills I didn't need to. But no matter, the exercise is good. Ditoto on the way home with a head full of red wine, certainly lendeding a maniac edge to the downhill capers and a kind of grim solderly attitude to the climbs.

One lady pulled over to ask if everything was kosher -- me taking up a whole lane with my swerving -- so I had to explain how crosscutting makes a steep hill easeir to climb. The best was near the peak, cutting on a long shallow downhill grade and letting go of the handlebars, looking up at the giant radio towers and feeling the closeness of the streets, the sea-tinged divinity in the breeze.

Once I had a girl on rocky top,
half bear the other half cat,
wild as a mynx but sweet as soda pop
I still dream about that

I used to listen to that blazing little bluegrass ditty projing over the w-burg bridge in the late spring sun; a golden time back east. After a night -- a week -- of pushing hard here in the Bay it makes me think of all the people I love and miss back in Brooklyn, of Nick and his old-world W.C. Fields vaudville senabilities, of Julia and her balsy comic truth, of Frank and Jeremy and Alex and Wes and Kev and John and Joe and the thing that is the Meek, of Sasha, of Brendon and Sarah and Brandy and Carrie and Archie and Hugo and the rest of the friendly faces at the lyric, of Emily and Kate and Chris Kam and Frank Boudreaux and Christine and all the people I aught to have seen more often.

I seem to have traded a life of great social comport and little substantive purpose for something approaching the polar opposite. I'm just observing, not complaining. For the moment it's contrast, that grand and holy waltz which is the essence of life. I notice things. I learn. I grow. This is good.