The emptiness of sun-struck concrete

Erotic poem?

the midnight bodies
upending the world

the cold of interstellar space
upon a wine-dark dark sea

the apathy of the stars
a day going into night
the same sky above

Ride

Yesterday, at the greyed-out bus stop, the overcast sky dampening the thought of sound and thoughts themselves, the Asian dude who was doing calisthenics -- squats, push-ups -- on the first day at the stop drove up in a van and asked "Do you want a ride?"

 The open way he asked, spontaneously, since we rode the bus everyday together, made me spontaneously say yes. Plus, something about him seamed interesting and hardcore. His left eye, I noticed when I got in was slightly puffy, as if from a fight. He started complaining about the van. And I said it's not bad. He said he used to have a Benz. I asked what happened. He said the Feds took it, money laundering. Spent five years in jail, was in a half-way house near my new place. In jail for five years ...

Redwoods

Went to Mt. Tam this weekend and finally hiked its southwestern flank, the one that pours into movie-worthy and mad-tourist-hangout Muir Woods. It's heavily forested, and from Panoramic Highway, the road you take to short cut from Highway 1 on the south to Pantoll Ranger Station (and beyond, including a shortcut to East Peak, the mountain's stone ranger-hutted tallest point) -- passing the scone-spot Mountain Home Inn -- this section of Tam offers mysterious, fog-shrouded views of its redwood underbelly and possibly the only side of the mountain with all-year-running creeks.

Everytime I go to Tam, I'm impressed by the variety of landscapes that a single trail offers; it's a constantly-shifting landscape - one point open, with dry, dusty soil, another forested and rain-forest wet, another just woodland-like. Rolling, soft-footed paths, hard, up-and-down rutted trails, ocean-view meadows, powerline vapidity.


The redwood trees themselves in Muir Woods -- which is larger than you initially might think with its curated, bulk-touristed presentation and is actually free anytime (saving you the $7 per adult entrance fee and a much more organic, in some ways impressive intro) by backcutting in from any of the many trails that network into the park -- like the old-growth giants elsewhere defy the brain. Their heights keep going up and up. For the video above, I had to limbo back, almost bending over to get the crowns and rainy sky. Makes the chest swell ...

Dear Yeezus

For all those

not reading this blog, Barkada Bakery + Cafe in Oakland's Temescal neighborhood is the bomb.

For those of you wondering what baking books the cafe, which makes Gibraltars and other good coffee drinks among croissants (not that flaky, though) and petit desserts, has on on a shelf near a window that looks into the buzzing bakery room, they are:

Tartine Bread
The Art and Soul of Baking
Chewy Gooey Crispy Crunchy
Bouchon Bakery
The Professional Pastry Chef
Book of Tarts
Chez Panisse Vegetables

Mama's boys, swimming

Two mama's boys talking loudly, walking down the purple-flowered street that pours on to Grand Ave. "She didn't call," said one to the other, loudly, "because either she didn't like me, which would be the simplest and most likely reason, or she was so busy she just hasn't had a chance to get back to me yet.

"If I didn't like someone, I would wait four days and then call them and say, 'I'm calling you out of courtesy to say I don't want to see you.'" Whoah!

A girl at the bottom of the hill in a bright, floral skirt stands outside the door of the chaotic, dirty neighborhood corner store, which seems to have everything from hookah pipes to spices to yellow onions to a dirty-@$% ATM. She stands tall-ish, waiting but not waiting too hard with a white pit bull-boxer mix, who's a little overweight and is definitely waiting for someone to come out of that store.

Went swimming in the glorious Temescal swimming pool, that gets swam in several times a week, where you see lithe bodies swimming their laps, resting -- a little bit of a sexy place.