Omen or Coincidence

I took a walk through the hills. I planed it in such a way where it was mostly down hill. Why strain herself?

There weren’t many people around. It was just me and the occasional barking dog, that went bonkers when I approached. Dogs are interesting that way. I wonder what they're thinking. Do they really want to do harm, or are they bluffing because they’re behind a fence. I’m not sure. I don’t want to test the theory. I was just wondering.

            I was walking along, when I noticed an older woman with a water hose in her hand. She was washing down the sidewalk. I couldn’t tell what she was washing, nor was I all that interested. The only thing I could tell for sure was that the lady was hunched around the shoulders. I tried not to look at her as I neared. It was a nice day. I was looking at the trees and houses, and feeling a little awkward as approached the woman. She was busy. She didn’t see me coming. She looked intense from a distance.

            I was walking along when out of nowhere I heard a hollow thud sound. I looked to see what it was, and it was a bird, a black bird of some kind laying flat on his back. Dead. It had dropped from the sky, and it landed on a driveway between the old woman and myself. I didn’t see anything out of the ordinary. The bird just dropped dead right in front of me. I was instantly frightened. The bird’s legs were sticking straight up in the air. It was terrible. I kept walking. I didn’t want anything to do with the bird. I thought perhaps it was a bad omen. When I walked past the old lady she looked at me with the most  horrible of faces. She was hunched over. She reminded me of a peasant lady from the old country. She had cold, steely brown eyes, and when she looked at me, it was as if she wanted murder me right there and then. I’d never felt such terrible energy in my life. Can you kill a bird with bad energy? I kept walking. When I was some distance away I looked back at the lady, and wondered what it was all about? 

June Gloom

            I woke up to the sound of the coffee maker brewing coffee. I like to set things up the night before so all I have to do is roll out of bed and pour. It’s taken me years to find the courage to program the coffee maker. It seemed like a daunting task. But once I got in there and took the time to figure it out it wasn’t all that bad. Now my mornings are perfect. It doesn’t take much.

            It’s June Gloom here in Los Angeles, oddly enough, it happens every June where the marine layer takes hold and the mornings are cloudy. I like it. It’s nice and moody. Some people complain about it. I’m not sure why. It happens once a year. It’s fairly predictable, it’s not ugly, it’s just different. Angelinos are like that. If there’s any change in the weather, a few degrees here, a few degrees there, they start to whine. It's the Beverly Hills in them. If it rains, well, it’s the end of the world, and if it warms up, they’ll complain about that too. If the Santana winds come blowing in from the desert, some people will find a way to moan about it. It doesn’t make sense to complain about the weather in Los Angeles. It’s not humid, it’s dry, it’s not cold, it’s California cold. And when it’s warm, well hell, it’s the desert. It much easier to complain about the people, who complain about the weather. It’s June, and the gloom is where it's suppose to be.

Watsu

I have one more hippy compound story. I was sitting in the quiet pool, and there was a couple doing Watsu. They were in their fifties, or maybe a little older. The man was cradling the woman. She was face up, and her boobs were hanging to the side near her armpits. It wasn’t uncommon to see Watsu in the quiet pool.

The woman was levitating over the water, floating with the help of the man who was holding her with his palms up. He was rocking her softly and slowly through the water. She had smile on her face. It went on for half an hour or so, before she started to moan. It sounded like she was having an orgasm. Nobody wanted to hear it. It was bad enough they were hogging the pool with their movements.

At about the forty-one minute mark, the man grabbed hold of the woman’s hair and started pulling her about. She still had a smile on her face. He was roughhousing her. He was swirling her about like a man possessed. It looked like he had a magic wound in his hand, and was waving about. He was like a Watsu fencer. He was standing back and whipping her back and forth. People started to leave the pool. It was too much!

But it didn’t stop there. At around the fifty-first minute the woman affixed a swimmers nose plug to the bridge of her nose to keep the water from going in. The man still had a hold of her hair and he flung her about. She was doing summersaults under the water. With every revolution her giant ass would surface like a Gray whale surfacing for air. There were just a few of us left in the pool by then. It went on and on. It finally ended. She was happy, and so was I. 

The Quiet Pool

I was soaking in the quiet pool. It was a nice pool. The water was warm. There was group of us in there. Everybody was as naked as a Jaybird. The sun had fallen and the pool was dimly lit.

            There was a young woman sitting next to me. She was kind of pretty. It’s hard to sit by someone when you’re naked and not think about sex, or the potential for sex. Those thoughts did cross my mind as I sat there next to her, but one had to be respectful.

            I closed my eyes and tried to think about something else. I was successful, however briefly.

            It was a nice night. The weather was perfect. People came in and out of the pool. You did your best not to gawk, but everybody did in their own little way.

            I turned and looked at the woman next to me. I was checking to see if there was a pulse. There wasn’t. I had been sitting there for some time when I got a whiff of a foul odor. It was halitosis breath. I was sure of it. There’s no mistaking that smell. I wasn’t sure where it was coming from. It went away and I didn’t think much about it after that. A short time later I smelled it again. It quickly became an issue. I wanted to limit my exposure to it. I looked around to try to figure out where it was coming from. There was no answer for it.

            I sat there with my eyes closed. When I opened them, I saw the woman next to me yawning, and than I got a whiff of the halitosis. Her breath was perfectly unacceptable. I looked at her once more, and than slowly moved away.  

Too Hippy

The hippy compound had a common kitchen area. The mood in the kitchen was very serious. The importance of food had taken on a new meaning. I was somewhat intimidated by it, and I consider myself a good cook.

There were four or five people trying to put a meal together. The kitchen was set up to accommodate the numbers. There were three sinks, two stoves, and all the utensils you needed to cook and eat.

I looked around to see what all the fuss was about. There was a lot of tension in the room. I noticed a slender man with a stern look on his face, very intense. He was putting together a salad. Not that hard, not worthy of a intensive look that’s for sure.

There was a lady standing at the stove stirring a pot of water with some kind of pre-packaged ingredient in it. She had a scow on her face. Experts! These people think they’re exports, but they’re not! I had them figured.

I was slicing suquini into quarters. I was going to make pasta, with garlic, and olive oil with a splash of oregano, something simple and fast.

I was cutting the suquini, when a man with a humorless look on his face nudged by me and put two pieces of bread into the toaster. I didn’t think anything of it. He came back a short time later to check on his toast. You’d think he was doing something incredibly important the way he carried himself. He had a look on his face that suggested that he was. But as far as I could tell, he was making toast. He came back a third time. His toast was ready. He inspected it. It checked out. 

The Hippy Compound

I’m back from the hippy compound. The hippy’s are older now, and they’re into blending.

“Are you using that Blender?”

All health no fitness, for the hippy’s, nobody looked all that healthy to be honest.

The hippy compound is an old hot springs north of San Francisco. I made the drive and stayed for a couple of days. It’s gods country up there, hills and oaks, wild turkeys and the hot and cold plunge. The hippy’s were nice. They weren’t all hippy’s, in fact, very few were, there was a mixed bag of tourist from Japan and Russia, mixed in with everyday people who happened to be naked. It’s a clothing optional place, and to tell you the truth, I saw more people than usual wearing clothes, which made me think that the clientele is shifting.

All the young, good looking women were lesbian’s. I kind of felt left out of that equation. I was wondering why things had to be so cut and dry. Good for them. The only thing that bothered me about the lesbians, was my exclusion.

I took a hike up a trail, and followed a sign that said, Tea House. I walked up hill for a ways, when I finally ran in to it. It was an octagon shack that was perched on a ridge that over looked the valley. There was a sign outside the door that said it was to be used for mediation purposes only. Guest had contributed to an alter that was set up, and there was a couple of journals with notes that people had left behind. It was very interesting place. I was just starting to explore it when a naked man walk in. He kind of ruined my moment alone. He was a nice man. He told me the history of the place. I decided to draw a face in one of the journals. I used some colored markers that were sitting on the floor to make the face more interesting. I wrote at the top of the page in black ink, above the drawing, Don’t think.. trust.. if only it was so easy.

Dusty's

Jason and I went to a new bar yesterday after rehearsal, a little bar called Dusty’s. I’d seen it a million times before, but never had the guts to go inside. Our regular spot was being remodeled, a good thing or a bad thing, I’m not sure yet.

            We walked in and there was a room full of old bikers, with their long graying beards. I said hi to one, he grudgingly said hi back. There was a version of Black Sabbath’s War Pigs playing on the jukebox.

I bought the first round. Seven bucks. It was a lot cheaper than the other place.

            We sat down and tried to blend in. Nobody seemed to care that we were there.

            I noticed an older guy who looked just like a desert turtle feeding the jukebox. He kept playing Black Sabbath tunes. I didn’t mind. I like Black Sabbath.

            A man with a funny looking hat, came up to me, and asked if I wanted to play a game of pool.

            “Sure, but I’m not very good.”

            I looked over to Jason. He was rubbing his thumb and fingers together. He wanted me to play for money. The man looked legitimate. He had a booming voice. He kind of looked like a Yuppie. I played him straight up, although I should have played him for money. He was the worst pool player in the world. As it turned out, he might not have had all his marbles. He kept saying "Nice!" when the ball went in.

Frankly the bar felt like an insane asylum for hardcore drinkers. The clientele seemed just a little off. Mouths were turned funny, people were tight around the forehead. I couldn’t help but look around every now than to analyze the situation. Jason kept buying rounds. It occurred to me that Jason was one of them.