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glennskin

glenn says he's immune to his ego. i don't buy it.

napa, week one: two story fragments

Four days ago I started as an intern at a winery in Napa. I'm working with twenty Mexicans. They're all very nice people, almost always smiling and joking around. They package and bottle and clean and drive forklifts. They work hard and don't complain. Some speak English, but most don't, and for that reason I'm sort of isolated, unable to say much.

So far I've had one major task. There are all these big silver tanks that sit atop steel stands. I work with this guy Juan, and all day we sand the rust and old, flaky paint off of the stands, then we give them two coats of blue paint. In the time I've been working there (forty hours) Juan and I have completed seven or eight tanks. It's hard.

A week and a half ago I wrote this in a notebook:

"I look forward to Napa - to be put to work & make some money, to be broken in."

Today I kept thinking about how in six months I'm not going to be the same as I am now. I will be different. In my life I've worked hard, and I've worked long, but this will be, by far, the first time that I've worked so hard, for so long. Right now I'm at forty hours a week. Not bad. But before long it will be seventy-two and up.

I go home at the end of the day and look in the mirror, and I'm so dirty that it looks as if I've been doing all the shoveling on a coal train. I have paint all down my arms and on my clothes and in my hair. I take a cold shower and have to scrub to get it all off my body. My hands are dry and rough from the sanding, and out in the country it's slow and I'm sort of lonely. Yesterday I had a piece of scrap paper and a pen and I wrote, "I can't help but wonder what it would feel like, for a beautiful girl, to have her bare ass grabbed by these hands."

The next six months will do something to me. They might sharpen me, or they could dull me to a block of wood. Whatever happens, it should be good.

Juan and I sit in the shade on pieces of cardboard beneath a tank. We wear goggles and respirators and sand the rust and old paint from the legs of a steel support. This fills the air with dust. Time passes slowly, but I try to think only about the task at hand, instead of counting down until the next break, or until lunch, or to the time when I can go to my car and leave.

Fortunately for me, Juan speaks more English than I do Spanish. Still, our conversations are strained and disjointed, and sometimes we just have to accept that we don't know what we're talking about, and drop it and move on to the next thing. But at the same time, it's as if this challenge in communicating grants us the freedom to talk about whatever the hell comes to mind. Rather than talking in depth on certain topics, we touch only the surface of ten times as many.

We sit beside each other and work on this thing and try not to splatter paint, and we work to better know each other's language. I tell him that I want to learn Spanish, and he asks why. I say, Me gusta Mexico, y me gusta la comida de Mexico, y me gusta chicas Mexicanas.

Juan is thirty-two, and has spent most his life in a small town in Mexico. He's a very curious guy, and although he's been in America for eight years now it's as if he's hardly ever spoken to an American, and that might just be the case.

Juan asks if I have ever been in a boat, and I say yes, and then I ask if he ever has. He hasn't. He doesn't know how to swim. He asks where the Titanic sank and I say I'm not sure, Europa, somewhere, I think.

He asks if I ride horses, and I say I haven't since I was poquito, and he corrects me, chiquito. He asks why, and I say that I don't have a horse. He saw a big horse dance once. It's hard to train a horse, he tells me. You need - he can't think of the word - patience, I tell him.

I ask if he has a wife, and he says no. He asks if I do, and I say no. He asks how old I am and I say twenty-four. He laughs and says that I'm too young to be married. He asks if I have a novia, and I say no, and he laughs and asks why not, and I say that I'm not sure.

Juan asks what kind of car I have and if I know how to fix it, and I say that I drive a Volvo and that I don't know anything about it. He asks how many miles I have on it and I say I can't remember, but I tell him that there was once a Volvo that drove a million miles, and he can hardly believe it.

He has a girlfriend, but she lives in Reno. He goes there every two weeks to see her. He asks if I've been to Reno and I say I've driven through once or twice. He asks if I've been to Las Vegas and I say no. I ask if he gambles, and he says that he doesn't have the money. And he likes the discos, but he doesn't have the money.

When Juan was younger and living in Mexico he used to break horses. He says that he looked into buying a horse in America but was surprised to find out it cost 35,000 dollars. I tell him they sometimes cost a million.

He tells me that Napa is sort of boring, that there aren't many women. I tell him I thought that might be the case. He says that there are many women in Mexico, more women than men, and that if you have a nice car the women will like you. And I get excited about this. He's quick to remind that if you don't have a nice car the women don't care about you.

He asks me, Do you like Michael Yackson? Sí, sí, I tell him. And the Yackson Five? Sí, sí. And Carlos Santana? Sí.

Juan wants to know if I like milk, and I say sure, I like milk. But I like it more with chocolate. He tells me there's a tradition in Mexico where you squeeze milk straight from a cow's utter and into a glass, then mix in some chocolate and some alcohol. Sounds good, I tell him.

Juan turns to me all of a sudden with a big smile and says, Carlos, let's go to the rodeo!

Yeah? I ask, excited that he's just said this.

No, he says. Juan doesn't know of any rodeo, but he's been to one in San Jose.

Juan asks if I heard the news. No, I haven't. He tells me that his cousin lived twenty five miles north, in Calistoga, and that someone died, was shot, and for a while it's unclear who did the shooting and who was killed. At first it sounded like Juan's twenty-six-year-old cousin killed someone. But it turns out that it was his cousin who died. It happened a week and a half ago. It was over a girl. The killer fled.

It was eight days before his cousin's body was sent to Mexico for burial, and it cost 8,000 dollars.

As best as he can, Juan asks me how long Americans wait before burying the dead, and as best as I can I answer him. Two days, maybe.

Dos Días? he asks.

Sí. And in Mexico? I ask.

Two days, he says, and he looks at the ground.

Some time goes by. It's quiet.

Later, Juan turns to me and says, Carlos, let's go to Reno!

The man who killed Juan's cousin was arrested yesterday in Los Angeles. Juan asked me how long he'd be in jail and I told him 'forever.'

deer leg

suckin it

after a substantial absence from the blogosphere i am living alone in a rural setting. the chronicles are back and stout as fuck.

john gold inside the tantra pool, 2008

oakland psychedelia

recent foolings-around

take your spectacles off

since i've been back in CA: lost in the wood: a cell phone photo barrage

first thing i did when i got home was i picked up a salamander.

first thing the salamander did was pee down my wrist.

then i went to los angeles with my family. seen here is a photo of my mom and dad. then a photo of my mom.

but i was really just sneaking a shot of larry david sitting in the background.

then i got a job working for a woodworker named hank (this is not his real name, but this is what I'll call him). hank is an interesting guy. he makes really crazy ornate stuff, and this job that we were working together is one of epic proportions. hank's been working it for a year already and says he has at least another year to go.

the owner of the house is this really wealthy bachelor dork. he owns several houses around the world and will occasionally take off to africa for months at a time. this house of his has an african theme throughout, and in my opinion is totally over the top. over the top, like, life-sized giraffe heads made form copper coming out of the wall just above the toilet. over the top, like, rhino tusks attached to the walls, carved from old-growth redwood, for the purpose of hanging cook books from. 

the other day i went upstairs to work on a set of book shelves. the shelves are in the same room as the tv. on the ground there was an empty box of cracker jacks. on top of the tv, a box set of sailor moon dvd's.

so the owner of the house is pretty odd, as is hank, but hanky is odd in a cool way. more eccentric than odd, i guess. 

a friend's mom got me the job. she instructed me to not engage in any arguments with hank over political matters. i typically avoid political arguments at all costs, so i didn't make much of this advice.

hank and i didn't talk much at first. he went about his business and i went about mine. it wasn't until we discovered our mutual love for NPR that we began to talk more and get to know each other.

it was a great job. i was finishing all his projects. sanding, staining, and varnishing, all day long. boring? sometimes. tedious? yes, sometimes. incredibly laid back? yes. chock-full of zen teachings? yes! 

i could work outside, and i would do so in nothing but a pair of shorts, and i would have my headphones on, and i could borrow hank's bike to go get a cup of coffee whenever i felt like it.

hank took to calling me Sir Charles, and he referred to himself as Sir Lancelot.

masking tape coat

well, i know the guy who had my job before i did. his name is jamie and i'm currently subletting his room in oakland. jamie and i talked about hank a few times and he didn't seem to like hank much. i didn't get it. well, it turns out that one day jamie and hank got into a heated debate over gay rights, and hank was not on the gay side of things.

jamie was fired the next day.

jamie told me that hank was not only a homophobe, but a racist too. this really threw me for a loop. 

but jamie pointed out that if i ever decided i couldn't or didn't want to work for hank anymore, all i had to do was casually mention my mexican boyfriend.

for a while after this realization i was a little uncomfortable with things. it didn't help that hank and i spent 99% our time working together, and in that time the radio was always tuned to NPR, and prop 8 had just gone back to the courts for another vote. i was feeling like i was walking on egg shells.  it wasn't that i was nervous that we'd argue, and that i'd be fired. the problem was this: i knew that if hank were to go off on a tirade in front of me, about those fuckin' fags, or whatever, i would instantly lose my respect for him. and i didn't want to lose my respect for him, because i really liked the guy.

well, it never came up. last friday was my last day. it was 5:30 in the afternoon. hank and i moved this big, heavy shelf back inside and set it down. we shook hands and he said, "Thank you, Sir Charles." and I said, "Thank you, Hank."

and i never even had to mention my mexican boyfriend.

one time i asked hank about what he did before he started working with wood. he scratched at his chin and gave it a thought, "Well... I was in the military... and then I was planning on going to school for journalism, in San Jose. I was in my front yard, and I had just finished building a desk that I would keep my books on. A girl walked by and she bought the desk from me. True story," he said.

This morning I looked Hank up on the internet, to see if I could find any pictures of his woodworking. I found no pictures of his work, but to my delight, I did find this picture of him in the military, back in 1952.

maybe hank has a problem with people of different skin colors, and maybe the thought of people of the same sex having sex and getting married doesn't sit so comfortably with him, but when i look at hank i don't see a homophobe or a racist. instead, i see someone who grew up in another time, and i don't doubt that in my life i'll come up against change that i'm not so comfortable with.

there was this one time when i had just started working for hank that i asked him where he lived, and he kind of hesitated and then said "Santa Cruz." I came to learn that he lives in his van, and while I don't doubt that he's pretty much totally content in that, I think it's safe to say he's somewhat self-conscious about the fact, that maybe he sometimes feels that someone his age who's been working for as long as he has should have a house like everybody else, and when he's lying down in there at night trying to fall asleep, maybe there's a slight sensation of hiding out, of hoping that the neighbors don't realize he's living in there.

i read a quote once, not sure where, but it went something like this: "take it easy on others, because everyone's fighting their own battle." 

rawdog on the river

I took a canoe trip this weekend with some folks. Good times on the Russian River. Got a lot of sun. Too much sun.

black dove moan

my buddy rob's band is recording a new album. i went to the studio to take some pictures. i wish i'd shot more, but i was nervous and wanted to keep out of the way. however, i'm pleased with the dozen or so shots that i did get.

they're called the moanin' dove, and their album is going to be super rad.