DSB (The Billion Year Version) [This post is still under super-heavy construction.]

  -This Post is Slowly Under Construction-

    (It may take a few months.) [What an understatement! At the time of writing this note, it's already eight months out, and I still haven't done a thing with the post. Correction: I have since jotted down a few extra concerns. Whether they bring further clarification,  confusion, or condemnation, remains to be seen.]

    At first, it was with some enthusiasm I thought to make good the promise I made in a recent post, to shortly recount the personal events that transpired on the evening of Sunday, January 26th, 1975. (See the 2025-01-26 post I wrote commemorating the 50th anniversary of that long ago eve.) Then the misgivings started to take hold. The endeavor, I feared, was fraught with the potential to be greatly misunderstood.

    For starters, a straight forward, play-by-play rundown, a bare bones sequence of events, without context, without couching, would likely than not, precipitate readers jumping to preconceived but erroneous conclusions. Yet, who can know, or has the time to learn my personal psychology and history. Who too, knows the whole of the public persona with respect to the other key figure involved in this tale, as experienced by me (and not to mention even some of her closest associates)? Who has witnessed this person’s myriad behaviors from day one, or dealt with the questions certain of her actions have raised? Plainly put: one would have to have been there; not only for this event, but for the entirety of my existence and witness. Hell, it’s taken up fifty years of my thinking alone, just to come to grips with all the ramifications of this particular experience, and I’m the one who was present!

    If a lack of background, unavailable to the reader wasn’t enough with which to contend, then more aggravating still, in my simply trying to relay what occurred, is the pernicious linearity of language, Its word-following-word, ticker tape aspect is dauntingly slow. Nor does it help, that while the readers are doing their best to piece my thought together, the individual words themselves can have any number of different meanings and senses to them. The temptation and tendency therefore, for others to jump the gun or wrongly finish my thoughts for me is enormous. “I see where you’re headed.” Misunderstandings are bound to occur.

    So, I suppose, the only reader, who can truly understand the words I will henceforth lay out, and the way I mean them, will be me. That's fair. Which is why, all things considered, I write this blog partly with an audience of one - namely myself - largely in mind. Yet that only raises the question of why then I would bother to write.

    Let's face it, it's a testimony I’m about to perform here, and clearly going "on the record" to make myself at last "be heard" (by others) as no one else will or can speak for me. There's a part of my effort then, that truly wants to be acknowledged by another other than myself. Indeed, not being recognized, i.e, heard, seen, or read, will be an important, if not the most important, takeaway from my post.

    Dammit! now I’m having the strongest inclination to address this post straight to the one who continues to affect me! Richard, I tell myself, you can’t! It’s way too personal about the attributes of the other, some of them intimate! Yet I will go mad if I if don’t express what’s been bottled up all these decades. For I'm going to relay the one event that proved the second biggest paradigm shift of my entire life (the first was when I initially laid eyes on you.) How can this not lead to you being the one whose heart I wanted to address? 

     Anyhow this latter epiphany was all triggered by the most unlikely circumstance.  

     However, just on the rare chance someone should accidentally stumble upon this post, bear with me as I will have to preface all that is to momentarily begin, by covering a few extra points/disclaimers.  

    My apologies for the already lengthy setup...

•  First and foremost: No one herein is guilty - of anything. In what follows, it may seem like I am trying to assign blame as I try to understand the nature of personal responsibility, but I am not faulting anyone. 
•  I'm going to be giving my subjective impressions of the key individual on which this account and my whole world is centered. While my impressions are undoubtedly suffuse with whatever biases, misconceptions, and prejudices, I may be carrying, consciously or not, still, they are not solely limited to my interpretation alone. Others have noted the same patterns of behaviors, independent of me. We may be entirely wrong in our perception of this person, but this the way this individual came across. 

• That there is a sexual component greatly underpinning this incident, surely muddies the waters, yet biology is purely biology, and again no one is to be faulted. However, given the sexual undercurrent at play, also means we are not any of us, acting in a void.

 

    A diary.

    The Sunday evening in question...

   It is the 26th of January 1975, and my memory of the incident begins at about five minutes to seven PM. I am sitting alone in the high school classroom of my church, back when the latter was known as Bethel Temple. In the first row of folding chairs facing east and nearest that end of the renovated space (the large room used to be the church’s main kitchen) I toil, putting the finishing touches on the poster I have been tasked to create. It is a promotional for the Christian rock band of which I  a member. ‘Dayspring’ was our name. 

    As the start of services is only mere minutes away, I will have to pause, and resume the work later. After the service is when I’ll have chance to hang the poster next to the front entry of the church, announcing Dayspring’s upcoming performance. In five days we’ll be onstage, Friday January 31st, at Bethel Temple’s weekly Youth Service.

    While excited at the prospect of performing again in a few days, I am also a wee bit forlorn at the moment albeit for completely unrelated reasons. I have spent this day between the morning and evening services all by myself and another day apart from the only woman that means any and everything to me. That would be you. You even managed to turn twenty-one six days prior with no well wishes or celebratory participation as yet on my part.

    To think, you’re only across the hall, in the sanctuary, at choir rehearsal. Having fun, while I sit by myself as usual. Oh, the time again! The Young Sounds are breaking up having finished their weekly, hour long practice. I can hear their individual banter spreading out throughout the church. Time for me to stop work and eventually rise. There’s a guest missionary speaker from Brazil speaking tonight. He always gets into a sweaty frenzy. That’s all I need: another service, yards apart from you, having to wait for its conclusion before I’ll a chance perhaps to approach you. And with this guest, who knows how long church will be? I hear some light laughter immediately in the foyer hallway outside. The youth choir dispersing.      

    Why ever did they change my suggested name “Young Sound” to “The Young Sounds” —

   Then to speak of the Devil, from the far door at the other end of the room you enter. My back is to your hurried words of greeting: “Hi Richard!”

    Before I have the time to turn, you swish by. I should perhaps add to my return greeting with a birthday felicitation but my words catch in my throat. You meantime barely have a moment to reflect on anything but your explanation as you retrieve an item from the closet cabinet ahead. Moving like a whirlwind you are, as I looked on stunned. I don’t think I even saw or heard what you were after.

    Your dress, your skirt… it is the shortest attire you wore to date! It almost rivals that of your younger sister or the two [■■■■]*!

     Swooping out the room, without the slightest thought or concern, you flit. I am immobile. Stuck to my folding chair, and doing all to piece myself together. Billions of years of biology are beginning to boil over and I must somehow stymie all those eons of brute nature. My mind has snapped, and not in a good way, for there is no outlet for my sudden desire. I cannot enter the service across the way, but must now remain behind, holding a tight reign on my turmoil. The emotions are everywhere, but I cannot cry out or react - good or bad!

     What I feel, it’s personal, and nothing directly to do with religious settings and circumstances about me, or the religion itself , although those extra layers of social repression don’t exactly help. I cannot have you. You won’t let me—

    Quiet, Richard, quiet! Calm your hurt; your stress. Yet, the eons are on a rampage. They know what they want. I do too. It’s gonna be a bumpy night… 

    Now, to be clear, if indelicately so, I  am not trying to be cute by resorting to euphemisms. This is not my suddenly having a physical erection, which if it could occur, was oddly negated by duress. It didn't, so that takes care of that.

    Rather, I was absolutely frightened about my emotions being too telltale. I was more alarmingly worried, to the point of obsession, that the discomfiture on my face or in my eye, would publicly and straightways give me away to you, and directly condemn me in your eye! Getting a hard-on therefore was the least of my concerns.

    I know, I know, my seriousness in stating this.. who wouldn't want to snigger? (Dear me, even my own concluding admission make me want insert a double entendre: "Besides. that would come later." Not far from the truth either.)

   However, I truly was, I stress, more preoccupied with the Herculean challenge of being able to disguise my emotional upheaval. It would take time to tamp down my expression and formidably suppress my sexuality gone emotionally awry.

   Again I was in such a state of shock that my physcological and sexual self could be so effectively and instantaneously undone, that my body my person actually froze, precluding any chance for a tawdry boner. 

   I was on fire while at the very same time being dowsed by the ice bucket your regal yet indifferent beauty just dumped. I was afire - you were not. As much as I could not rid your indelibility from my sight, I could neither erase the rejection so clear to me.

    The minutes slow to a crawl. Your nonchalance and blithe indifference shatter my confidence. Your person now has total rule over me as I wait the long minutes knowing I must at some point,  look on you again. There’s no fooling myself. I pay the intercom broadcasting the missionary’s fervency barely the slightest notice. My fires; my fears are for the moment much, much greater.

   I try to distract my mind. Is that skirt a part of your having to work for Pacific Southwest Airlines (PSA) I ponder? One of their trademarks is the look of their female staff. [■■■■] got you that job, did he not? Concentrate, concentrate.

    Finally, the service is over, and believe it or not, I have managed to steel myself to whatever follows, though I also know there is an undercurrent lurking not too deep within me. However, I am functional for the moment, and therefore, to that degree, socially presentable… so I venture forth.

    I exit the classroom with the poster in tow; headed for the Sunday school office where the supplies I need are kept. Holy molé, tacos and frijoles, you’re also in the office! Talk about a blessing and a curse! Heaven and Hell! We pleasantly small talk as I take a seat facing the office door. I finish up applying tape to the front side of the Dayspring poster while you busy yourself behind me with your administrative duties as the assistant Sunday school superintendent.

    Oh, if I could only swivel in my seat, but I am trying to play it cool - nonchalant. You see, despite my sexual turmoil mixed with my inner repression and outward diffidence, there is also the unwritten social contract long inculcated into me. I must be honorable, chivalrous, curbing my “animal” impulse in the name of your “purity”. It stinks on the face of it, but in a way I actually am trying to moderate myself because I really do care about you. At some level, I truly don’t want to offend you in the slightest. Yet, the lust in my heart - it’s as unadulterated as your virtue! And I have it something terrible!

    The horns of a dilemma have me skewered. And they’re about to twist.

    Mrs. [■■■■ ■■■■] appears at the door. “[■■■■], have you some pencils?”

    Omigod, the pencils!

    In an instant of time, several simultaneous alarms and thoughts go off inside of me! I know where the boxes of pencils are kept! I was just recently up there. At the highest point of the room, where one has to climb atop the desktop to reach the top of the overhead supply cabinets, sit the boxes sit atop and above the cabinets!

    What to do? Should I interject myself and volunteer to get the pencils? Yet that might call attention to your skirt and my awareness of it. Awkwardsville, for one and all. And if I don't do the gentlemanly thing, what then? So should I wait for you to ask me, thereby once again bringing notice to your attire...

    But before my thoughts can fully form, and while I'm only beginning to gasp, I hear the unmistakably distinct sound of a folding chair being scooted into position! You reflexively ascend to the top of the table behind me almost without a thought. 

    Now, the unfairness starts. My blood begins to boil. Now all the onus is entirely on me to refuse to turn around! I fume and look toward [■■■■]. Suddenly, she seems just as caught off guard, but in a world weary sort of way. There's almost no expression on her face, as her matronly eyes remain leveled on the hem of your skirt, never once veering away. I imagine the thoughts her gray, undaunted eyes reflect. (See my fragmentary poem in the earlier post.) Is it envy, insight, or pity?

    You reach up, your hem hiking in the process, as you take hold of the pencil box and shortly descend with the goods. Angrily, I stand to my feet and excusing myself, make my way past [■■■■]. I know she cannot come to my defense, but like me, is as unable to do anything about what just transpired. I don't even she said "thank you" to you. She just nodded upon receipt of the pencil.    

    Retreating to the vestibule, here's what blew my cool:

-FIN-

*[■■■■]=[Name redaction: first, last, or both. Color coded to reflect specific individuals.]

I run the very real risk of placing myself in an odious light, and painting myself "terrible" in not further into the corner with every word.

 Even seventy one, I still haven't got all the sexual politics sorted out, it's still a miasma. I'm sure I'm still getting things wrong and making mistakes. 

You've have had your whole life to live out your side of the story. Sex and sexuality was always openly available to you. You never had to utterly suppress it. Repression was never a real part of your lived lexicon. I can't imagine anyone ever denying you. I, for one, sure as Hell can't. Yet "can't" is sumpthin' I have always had shackling me.

Eons old biology in which personhood is, figuratively speaking, but an emergent afterthought

We're all of us in this Miasma, endlessly effecting each other. 

I am responsible for my actions; not my reactions. (spontaneous, involuntary reflexes or processes, acting independent of my conscious will)

It's exasperating trying to figure you out

PK's

Circumspect pk carry yourself who must never bring reproach

Violate your personal integrity.

Letter spirit observation by another who personally knew you

A master of plausible deniability

Toying baiting

Maybe you didn't care. Maybe you did and wanted to get it over with. Or maybe you subconsciously jumped at the chance. Anyway, I can't think you totally unaware.

Again my subjective POV

Withering excoriating blistering rebuttal from the other perspective.

If I am ignored by you, who do I ignore? (This relates to unrequited affection)

We are all, in part, victims of circumstances outside of our control

Ethnicity white/brown fair/foul

Swarthy POC

Glass wall

Out in the literal cold

Window shopping

The turning point. The crack in my belief from which I never recovered.

YS practice.

Speak of the D-

PSA [■■■■] got you

El's, Tr, LK, R

Before I have the second time to turn and rise, my ears hear the distinct sound

Retreating to the vestibule 

Blind, brute, billion year nature

But I’d be the one to blame

deliberately conscious act

You weren't suddenly born with a miniskirt on you.You didn't appear out of the blue or magically fly up on that tabletop at the mercy of some unseen force beyond and despite yourself, finding your actions, all the while, completely without personal power or agency. Nor did the folding chair pull itself, by itself, out for you.

You could have asked.

I could have offered. I contemplated it, cut short only by your near instantaneous actions taking grey eyes by surprise (just a little), and me by five alarm. 

Dilemma: could you have asked or I have offered without calling attention to the obvious? Maybe that's why you promptly acted to get it over and done with.

Anyway...

I want you - with every ounce, every atom of my being. I want to do for you - what your doing to, and for my being. The pleasure is exceedingly exquisite, the torture, indescribable hell.

This post is so on the thin line _________: my saying sumpthin everyone will naturally assume is what is at play, arguing a predictable line of thought, which is the exact opposite of where I am coming or headed, only because it initially seems to be coming so close to typical line of erroneous thought.

 Oh ___, I cry, ride roughshod! Not over me, but through me!

Have I the right to put anyone on public display, even if no at all will read my post. Yet so tired am I of being invisible, of having to make myself completely disappear time and again for you. My story, my side is the one never expressed. I weary of the sacrifice, when I would rather bespeak my feelings, and have you know them: the good and the bad, the troubling and the gentle. Your life has been lived - free. My life, shunted to the shadows; the silence.  

[Randomly checking in - coincidentally one exact yea later - with yet another two thoughts to tie in. Both are indirectly similar to each other. The first was my reflecting on the fact that if you had wanted me then my desire would have been a welcomed joy to you. My desire would have the outcome you sought to produce. If your dress had anything to do with achieving that end, no pun intended, no secondary pun either, then so much the better. You didn’t want me. So now my same exact desire was something to be considered monstrous and vulgar. Nothing had changed with respect my feelings.  And though I understand your right to choose which loves you will grant access, still it astonishes me how a lust can instantaneously go from welcomed to horrid.

This suddenly reminded me of an interview between Alfred Hitchcock and Francois Truffaut. They’re talking about the power of editing and how it can entirely color an interpretation of any given scene. Hitchcock speaks of showing the movie audience a footage of a cute puppy then cutting to a reaction shot of James Stewart smiling. Now, substituting an image of an attractive young lady, cutting back to the same identical reaction shot. Suddenly the same smile connotes something entirely else. What was moments ago merely warm and appreciative is now laced with possibly darker ulterior motives instead. Yet it’s the same reaction footage!

 

[Now almost into May of 2026, another rewording or rephrasing came to mind]: You are in no way responsible or in no way be held responsible for my biology, but by that same token I am not responsible for your biology or should be held responsible for your actions. Also none of us are responsible for that biology in which we had no hand (no  (no double entendre intended), we are the inheritors of that biology that acts independent of us, apart from us, as it does directly on and in us. We are only responsible for our actions, our mitigations alone. I for mine, you for yours, and neither for that of the other.

My anger isn't at you or your actions or appearance. It's for dumping all the assumed guilt and lechery onto me. Blaming me for my very biology, over which I again have no hand. Once again, the only control I have is over my actions - not reactions [this is a rephrasing of my initial comment of more than a year ago]; my subsequent but not initial responses. The first is reflex and internal, the latter conscious, considered, and external.

Your choice was just that: YOUR choice. Fine. However, my castigation was absolutely unjust. To be sure, it wasn't directly levied by you. It hovered nevertheless, like an unspoken threat, now all the onus was placed on me not to act in the slightest on my spontaneous and internal reflex. I had to now do right by you, by the both of us, yet I was not the one who put us in this position - that YOU did by your own deliberate choices over which you had full control, that the social mores of our particular environment compounded. To top it off, that which my body felt towards you was never evil. No, I couldn't presume to take advantage of you or just help myself. Still, had I looked, it would not have been with the purpose to disempower or ride roughshod over you rights. Never. Isn't it strange however, that never seemed to enter your mind when it came to my personal and psychological space. [I say that fully aware you're responsible for neither. Yet, you never even offered me that return grace. Furthermore, I don't think it far fetch to speculate, that it was you actively counting on my respecting your space instead. Okay, okay, I would do that for you, but the potential opprobrium and unquestionably worse racism I'd face being a person of color (how dare a darkie look on white woman) just seemed so, so unfair. 

I was angry as Hell at the societal/social/interpersonal/intersexual* injustice that was suddenly thrust on me. You were atop the table, but I was on the hot seat. Frustrated by you in the short run, by highly prejudicial social mores in the long, and forced to frustrate myself, I left the room in a huff. I did so, never once violating you.

I loved you, I lusted you, but in all their pureness; never against you.

*Women have it far, far, far, far worse. Ruth, herself had to suffer my own incursions on her person over a course of several years. It took time for me to catch myself, doing those very abuses of which I wanted to think myself better, but striving to do better, by her especially, I did all never to impose on her again or act to her detriment. 

I was having to do the work for both of us. That responsibility was suddenly dumped onto me along with the culpability and guilt.

2026-05-10 More notes and iterations:

This is being told from my subjective perspective that by its very nature is limited. It is only my side of the story and not the whole. We don't have your POV to consider nor that of the third individual present that night, and I relay my tale fully aware of those missing considerations. I literally speak only for myself. These are my feelings being shared. This is an accounting of my emotional reactions and thoughts experienced that night. 

On another matter, it could be asked if I would have reacted or felt the same way if the person had been someone else. The intensity would have been less, because the emotional cost and stakes involved would not have been so dire. 

 My personal desire for you only made my lust all the more earnest in its sincerity. To have it deemed as sinister just broke my heart. That inner move toward you, that loved every inch of you and reveled in your physicality was pure in its regard of and for your. I would have acted only in love. Never harm or hurt.

Yet as I knew you did not have those feelings for me in the least, I did not act on any of my longings or passions. I loved you and had to respect your wishes instead.

But to think that I was a monster or possessed of something dark (POC) and vile was too much to bear. Even if I had looked, it would have been in awe.

That's what rankled me. I am not saying that you personally accused of anything or would have used this reasoning. I worried that you might had you been given the chance, however, that view was out there, everywhere in the immediate vicinity. And it angered me. 

Your rejection of me was extreme pain in itself, but had you held me responsible for my reflexive and instantaneous reactions decrying them as vile lechery while at the same time totally absolving yourself of your own deliberate actions/decisions... 

2026-07-18 Another thought, note, or iteration:

     I write knowing the other person involved hasn’t any voice or say. Her side of the story is entirely absent. I write knowing she and her sex have gone without a voice for so interminably long. Suppressed and oppressed by my kind. I am a man.

    Yet, I too have had no voice.

    She is white.

    I am not.

    She is fair complected.  

    I am Latino.

    Chaste.

     I? Only animal. A stereotype.

In my perfect world we would be all things and understood.  Both chaste and animal, her and I. Sexual without sin or shame. Just ourselves, open and free. I didn’t want to stop her. I just hated the lock out, and being trammeled. I lusted her, but earnestly, and innocently. I was unallowed however to be anything but squelched. She was free, though only to a small degree. I wasn’t even in the picture however present I was in that confined space.  

What a hodge podge this post is!



2026-07-19

What a laugh!

In four days I will be seventy two.

You know who the actual virgin here is?

That’s right: me!

You have been “sexually active” since January 20th, 1970, your sixteenth birthday. Fifty six and a half years.

My whole life, I have never “known” anyone.

That makes me the anomaly. The literal chaste as it were when defined in the narrowest sense. How odd! More chaste than you. Which of course means I must, by definition, be the monster.

[-POST UNDER  CONSTRUCTION-] [-PUC-] [+TAGS]

Remembering

    It was four years ago today, my siblings and I lost our sister Angie. As I write, the time is as it was then, and now the memories of that last day begin. I was going to chronicle the sequence of events, but decided to simply post this collage and short montage instead. 

Noncitizens

A couple of days ago, I posted an image of my parents along with their alien registration cards on my Facebook. I had this to say.

October 11, 1944. Although my father served in the United States Army Air Corps during World War II, my parents were never citizens of the country, ever.

Yet, I’m afraid, for that, there is an ugly sentiment in our land today that would want their remains exhumed and deported. 

SUNDAY, January 26, 1975 and 2025: 'Mayhem', 'Plate Glass'

At 6:55pm, it begins.

By 9:20pm… mayhem.

Wounded,

I step out.

My isolation, 

Complete.

My destitution?

To this day.

 

The setting in 2018

    1975, six days after your twenty-first birthday.

    It commences inside the doorway at the far end of the foyer (the last visible entry to the upper left, just past the larger of the two bulletin boards pictured).

    Two hours later, the main incident takes place within the lighted room; continuing, ten minutes later, before the smaller bulletin board. 

    While I was "up-close-and-personal" for the 6:55 and 9:20 events, I had retreated by 9:30pm to where, pretty much, this outside January 26th, 2018 perspective was taken. Back then, in 1975, there was a floor-to-ceiling, plate glass, window pane to the right of the silhouetted, door frame seen in the foreground of this later shot. Arranged in panels surrounding the entry, they made for the main entrance. They no longer exist, but it was at this adjoining pane, adjacent to the door, where my final point of view, four feet farther to the right, was situated in 1975.

    The floor was carpeted then, and colored a dark, grass green. The looped banister was not as wide, but much narrower and the handrail made of blond wood. Only its single row of descending balustrades was fashioned of metal (brush steel I believe). 

    With that said, other than what the poems and my brief description of the layout state, I cannot be more specific about what actually occurred involving the elements to which I allude.* Nothing salacious. Suffice to say, this happenstance was singularly, the most life-changing moment, by far, in the whole of my existence. From this night forward, I was never the same.

    There was no advocate.

    There was no audience.

    There was... 

    Nothing whatsoever.

    I loved you, body and soul.

    And was utterly, utterly alone.

    Desolate.

    The truest, purest futility a person apart can know.

 

    Now the actual fiftieth observance begins. It's 6:55pm once more.

    9:20pm.

    9:30pm: it ends, and I am struck by the relentless indifference of time’s arrow. Did its forward momentum pause for a moment? 

    Did it back then? No. 

    To change metaphors, how unaware nor concerned time sweeps over the present, sending this too - my fiftieth observance - into eventual oblivion. I am the one however, we all are, being dragged along with my ragged past tied to me, in tow, pulling on me, until time completes my destruction, and discarding me, moves on into the future I will not share.

    Yet perversely, that’s where you and I will one day be joined in forgotten likeness.

    I only wish we could know another moment in life. One more moment.

    You see, I still hope. I still stubbornly press my case, with or without audience.

    I cannot undo the truth of you, no matter whatever happens to me.

 

‘MAYHEM’

Dreamsteel-Blue,

Short is the work

Skirting her thighs.

Quick to give rise

To a surfeit of dreams,

Whose misstep,

What mischief,

Bestrode me it seems.

‘PLATE GLASS’

Plate glass,

Decades thick,

It’s clear what you reveal to me:

That pity ‘s blind

To any pain,

Which looks on,

Unrequitedly.

 

 

 

Music credits: 'NATURAL' by Florian Christl from 'Pianissimo' (2023)

ADDENDUM: There is yet another poem, a fragmentary portion from an early, untitled work, related to this instance. I started it but never finished, only liking this one phrasing in particular:

"...No shock to the gray eyes,

Which on my behalf,

Reflect back the hindsight,

Most youthful girls lack...."

*It may be that I shall yet chronicle the incident in full, though for reasons, not at this date or occasion. Rather, I will wait a short spell, and it will be under the rubric of Dreamsteel-Blue, that I shall detail the event.

 

 

 

 

Annually

 Once again... soft delicate wishes issue from my waiting lips.

Keep her precious, happy, and safe another year.

 

 

Felled (Image Rollover)

The tree which was... is gone.

It was too near the house. It was too problematic. It was too large and leafy, though a lovely sight in its spring bloom.

It was sad, but necessary to see it go.

Gone.

Ending Out the Year

   The look of "Magic eye" tubes  have always fascinated me, so I thought it would be fun to end 2024 and my forty-fourth post of the year with a GIF I created for myself in 2017. Ta-ta!

There Was a Time...

 ...I was so into...

Look Magazine Special Edition (1967)

 

 

See what I mean...

 That's my twin sister in the foreground and me behind her with the magazine she is calling to the camera's attention. Holy cow, it only cost $1.00 back then for the special edition. Anyhow, I liked that 'Look' so much, I had a back copy of the "Flying Saucers" issue up until 2021.

 

Humanitarian

James Earl Carter Jr. (October 1, 1924 – December 29, 2024)

 

 

 

 

 

 

'An Acrylic Digital Picture Frame is Worth...' (A follow-up)

     For my Christmas gift this year, my twin sister Georgene got me an acrylic digital picture frame (just like the above title and description on the box both say). Neat! I next created a video to be displayed, and set it to  the short piano piece entitled 'Miss Clare Remembers' from Enya's 1988 'Watermark' album. For the visual, I chose the 1985 poem I just recently posted twelve days ago.

      Here is the simple video I assembled:

 

 

 

 

According to A.I....

Presenting: me!

For reference, below is a photo of me from 2017. The above image more closely resembles my younger self than it does my present day portrait on which it was actually based. Flattery will get you anywhere.

‘Apparition: I Trouble the Moonlight’

 

 

 

 

I trouble the moonlight,

“Come, shadow me a spell.

 

In thy gray light,

It may be that I shall see her.”

 

A shimmer of luminescence, I know,

As long ago's go.

Patrolling the Earth...

 

Still, I wonder:

 

Clothed in the pallor 

Thy albedo accords,

 

Who is the haunt,

With this spectre,

A ghost?

-antaresrichard-

The Greater Half of My Life.

   This is it.

    I seem to passing one milestone after another lately. In a little over a month from now, I will be observing yet another golden anniversary. However, I just recently passed a milestone I almost overlooked. Had a thought not occurred to me forty years ago, none of these other landmarks would I have reached. 

    "If I die now, the improbable will become impossible."

    On the fourth of December 1984, defeated in love, and distressed at my employment prospects (I had gotten myself fired a year and a day earlier) I took a lethal overdose of sleeping pills and was waiting for the effect to set in. 

    It wasn't immediate as I had imagined.

    That's when the aforementioned thought I hadn't considered, with respect to unrequited love, crossed my mind.

    Needless to say the suicide attempt was aborted as I walked myself over to San Francisco General Hospital (which was just across the street) for emergency treatment.

    I have now lived more decades since that moment of crisis than I had leading up to it. This then is the greater half..

    As for my troth and my chances...

    At present, my hope is still improbable and one day, it will be rendered impossible, but I will let life do the final turning of the page and closing of the book. It will not be my own hand, for all hope requires is but the barest improbability to persist.

    Dying only cements ill fate - forever.

'This Then the Notion'

 This then the notion I confess,

A pure devotion have no less:

What lips to lips in  soft caress,

Address in kind, I too profess,

And offer mine up to thy "bess",

To that which grants sweet Heaven, yes!

 

I penned this way back in 1985, but somehow forgot to include it in  my little blog.

BAMPFA...

...with Birdie or, as she is better known on social media, Birdie Roy (Trish Keefer). To celebrate her birthday, I was asked to treat her to the Berkeley Art Museum & Pacific Film Archive (BAMPFA), which I did, and happily so.

 Roy (Trish 

Photo by Trish Keefer, who herself was actually in a James Bond flick, Vic!

Thirty-three+ Years in the Failing Part 2

 Continued from Part 1...

    Running off the temporary splice, all appears to be okay. The flow of electricity has been constant since the patch was installed. Till the field crews show up this will have to suffice.

    Then around 2pm I lose power at the laptop. Strange, three quarters of the house is down but the kitchen and livingroom remain supplied'. Yvette and I summon PG&E again.

    Joe returns at 2:30. The underground line to 1379 Northwood Drive (our nextdoor neighbor) is out, but the temporary splice is still drawing limited energy for 1385 (our residence). Alfred Pulonco, our neighbor, now totally without electricity, has also contacted PG&E. 

    Joe decides to leave the splice in place so that 1385 will not be completely in the dark. He does show me the master power switch used to shut the meter down should any major disruption occur. A second step-up in the case will bring the crews tonight. 

    4:30pm sees Joe depart and 4:55pm has Ken of JB's High Voltage arrive. He's here to mark the street and to assure Yvette and I of the ETA of the crews (both contactors to PG&E). They are about an hour to an hour and a half away and enroute from their prior job.

    Ken takes off at six. 

    Minutes later, a lone, non-company truck drives up and is joined by a public works vehicle from the City of Fairfield. The two occupants meet at the junction box across the street and after a little discussion the public worker leaves. The time is 6:15pm

     7:15pm: At long last, the field crew arrives to join that lone occupant of the truck. Holy moly, they are many! There must be no less than five possibly six big work trucks, representing JB's High Voltage, Inc. and Henkels & McCoy West LLC. The vehicles disgorge around ten crewmembers. (One even brings his five children with him!)

    That mystery man? It turns out, he's the onsite representative from PG&E, He spoke little and smelled a great deal of cigarettes (though I never saw him light up once the entire night). Hmm.

     The crew gets to work, locating the trouble almost immediately. It's under a tiny rose bush in our front yard and near to the side fence and mailboxes shared by our neighbor and we. Placing the dug up plant in a wheel barrel, the workers use high pressure water nozzles to spray open a four foot hole in the dirt which they suction using a high power vacuum aboard their big bruiser of a truck.

    I mingle among the workers with their permission taking photos and videos of the absorbing field repair.

    Dominic of Henkels & McCoy West (he's the one who brought his kids with him) uses my camera to take a close-up for me of the particular damage the crews hove found.

     He explains the "burnout" they uncovered. It was all due to a bad splice the construction people made when they hooked up both 1379 and 1385 Northwood Drive to the main, PG&E underground, electrical line some thirty-three or more years ago! The resultant short, decades later, took out twelve to eighteen inches of electrical line. Gone completely was the section!

    Whoever the developer hired back in the nineties to do the hook-up, has, according to Dominic, so far resulted in forty or so such burnouts in the Cordelia Hills home development of which we are a part. it's almost endemic to our community. Luckily for us, the neither the front tree or the the fence was the cause for the burnout. Though early on they were both under suspicion, neither will be impacted.

    by 9:15 pm the personnel expertly replace and hook the cables, fully restoring electric power to both homes. "Lovingly" they replant the tiny bush and with that, all is done.

    The only snag to occur at all was a tree limb that snapped across the street having accidentally latched onto one of the departing trucks. The branch had to be sawed off and discarded.

Photos and videos:

The crews acted like the job was one big get-together!

Dig, dig, dig!

About twelve to eighteen inches of braided wire are completely gone! Photo courtesy of Dominic

A souvenir clip of one of the burnt-out electrical lines.

It only two the crew two brief hours to do the entire job and restore Christmas cheer.

     The following day, Joe came out once more to close out the work order the crews, the PG&E guy, or PG&E itself, forgot.

Thirty-three+ Years in the Failing Part 1

    I will try to keep this concise.

    Around three in the morning, Yvette awakens to the sound of the office cam security trying to boot. When she turns on the room lights, she discovers they are flickering. Thinking it a momentary issue, she returns back to bed and sleep.

    At 5:55am I awake and think to use my iPad tablet. It cannot get internet. I go to the living room and find Alexa constantly cycling. When I turn on the lights, they are at reduced power and flickering. The kitchen refrigerator is turning on and off. I check the household electrical panel but the circuit breakers seem perfectly fine.

    At 6;25am I put in a call to PG&E. They remotely test the meter and though there is power to to the vicinity, my meter is dead.

    Joe arrives at 7:25am. I note to him that though our outside meter appears off, the next door neighbor's meter shows no such sign. Indeed, Joe finds our address receiving barely any juice and ratchets up the case calling in for a repair crew as he suspects a damaged underground line leading anywhere from the PG&E junction box across the street to our house. Other properties seem unaffected.

    Finishing his paperwork, Joe leaves at 9:30am. 

     Yvette is well up by now.

     10:20am sees the arrival of Jerry. As the field crews are currently tackling other emergencies, Jerry decides to place a temporary splice from the nextdoor meter to ours so that we will have a steady current. I text our neighbor to apprise him.

     Temporary power is restored by 10:58am and Jerry leaves with our thanks in tow.

     End of Part 1

The PG&E splice up close.

A mobile phone video of the same splice,

Thirty-three Analemmas Later

    In 1991, before the start of the Fall semester, I drew up a proposal for my year-long student project: to trace out the sun's analemma by following the shadows cast upon the SFAI student quad. Although Paul Kos, my teacher at the San Francisco Art Institute, very much liked the idea I proffered, he proposed another project of his own: to learn Spanish together with him. My idea was quashed as we set out to learn Spanish after hours, and I never did get to perform the analemma.

    Here below is that very artpiece submission I put forward to Paul.*

    As I was coming up with the idea, I thought surely the notion of recording the shadow must have occurred to others, but I never saw such a timelapse captured. 

    It would be that way for a great while.

    Finally, in 2024, nearly thirty-three years later, someone, a certain Nick Wright of Falcon, Colorado took note of his driveway shadow as taken by his security camera. Voila! On November 29th, 2024 NASA's APOD (Astronomy Picture of the Day) posted Wright's inverted "Driveway Analemma" on their YouTube Channel.

     Again, the decades long wait is not to suggest that no one else had ever thought to document the aforementioned shadows before me or since. I merely say, that in my case, it took that long at last see it so recorded by another.

    *ADDENDUM: Just to make the original 1991 proposal a little easier to visually follow, I added in some shading. Here it is with the building shadows in place.

Finality

     My final view from the San Francisco residence, high on a hill, of Karl-Heinz Teuber, who at eighty seven, departed this life just ten days ago. It is hard at the moment to think him really gone, and not merely abroad.

The northwest view from apartment 507, The Crestview, 1980 Washington Street, San Francisco, CA 94109

ADDENDUM: It is almost a year out (November 4, 2025) and going back over my photographs, which I'm eleven months behind in cataloging, I realized while checking in on this blog post, that I failed to elaborate on the events of the day covered, even if in brief.              

    In the wake of Karl's passing, his executors and good friends Bettina Pauley and Will Dempsey contacted me to see if there was anything of Karl's belongings I may have wanted or wished returned. There were only three art pieces of interest to me (two of which were my own works and one which was a painting that I formerly owned).  Bettina, Will, and I agreed to meet at Karl's apartment, where I would retrieve the items.

    Thankfully Trish Keefer, my bestest friend also pitched in to help. She would provide the transportation back from San Francisco to Fairfield. Hopping the Ferry to the City, I joined up with her, and from the Embarcadero, we zipped up to the Crestview Apartments. Trish waited by her Jeep while I met with met with Bettina and Will. 

    With Will's help, the big artwork of mine was brought downstairs and loaded into the accommodating Jeep. Only two items left with me, as the third, a caricature of Karl I drew long, long ago, had yet to be located. Though the drawing was subsequently found, Bettina and I have still to connect to complete its transfer.

 

 

Karl, a Life

     This is a re-edit of the very last montage I made for Karl, celebrating his life. That was in 2020. With a new beginning and conclusion to the video to mark the sad occasion of his passing, I share this work anew. Karl's large life was a colorful one, and I am truly grieved, along with others, to see him go. His friends were many.

    As always the music of Mozart was Karl's mainstay.

 

Karl-Heinz Teuber (February 2, 1937 ~ November 14, 2024)

    In memory of Karl-Heinz Teuber (Tuesday, February 2, 1937 ~ Thursday, November 14, 2024) seen here, in his film debut, playing the wig salesperson opposite Tom Hulce’s Mozart in the iconic “three heads” scene* from ‘Amadeus’ (1984). 

    Interestingly, on set Karl in his true capacity, was in fact, the assistant hair and makeup person for the production (his “bending hair” helping to snag the Academy Award-sweeping feature yet another win). This bit part, apropos to Karl’s then profession, was director Milo’s Forman’s onscreen reward to Karl for all his intensive labor.

     Having earned it, Karl could rightly take pride, ‘Amadeus’arguably being the quintessential exploit crowning his stellar career.** The role was an honor.

    And for nearly four decades, this notable person was also an intimate acquaintance of mine till we eventually went our separate ways. Nevertheless, I am profoundly surprised and sadden by the news of my former friend’s unfortunate and untimely demise .

    That said, he has at last attained his one, driving desire and become, in effect, a star - a luminary now solely comprised of light, shadow, and sound, removed and remote, forever reaching down to us from the past - the final, heavenly curtain having lowered on his person, his vocation, and calling. 

    Karl was eighty seven.

    Rest in Peace.

*Scene 44

**Karl often use to speak of ‘Amadeus’ “living on” for him long after he was gone, taking comfort in that knowledge and  prospect. His would be a celluloid immortality, Karl assured himself.

    That there now exists, only the celluloid memory, I for one, find it bitter at best; a cold comfort and solace alas.

Ever

This sentiment I like. 

Guest Antoinette Lee's concluding remark from Olayemi Olurin's 'Olay and Friends'.

 

 

In These Very Trying Times (update)

    With only three to go until the 2024 Presidential Election as of this post, and the grave, growing concerns of  a distinct way to yet "game the system" and steal the vote, I decided to update my graphic. Though the whole world is in turmoil, there is a mounting constitutional concern over the immediate future of the United States.

 

 

   The drama may not end until the crucial date of December 11th, as spelled out by yesterday's news interview of The Nation's Justice Correspondent, Elie Mystal by Amy Goodman of 'Democracy Now!' It all has to do with former president Donald Trump, and the "little secret" he has with the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson, likely forcing the Twelfth Amendment to come into play. Through a deliberate series of delays in certifying the vote, Trump and Johnson can subvert the Electoral College's process calling on a “contingent election” by the house, to snatch the election from Vice President Kamala Harris’ grasp via the said amendment should she “win”.

 

    To quote Mystal: "We in a constitutional crisis now, bro!"

 

    For details, follow the link  below:

'Democracy Now!' "Little Secret"? Elie Mystal on Trump's Likely Plan to Steal Election with GOP House Speaker Johnson

ADDENDUM 

    It is now post election, Trump has won the presidency, the senate, and I believe the house. The court is already stacked as the country shifts hard to the right. Fewer people overall voted, with a decline on both sides. However, the number of disaffected voters was by far higher on the Democratic side. The tunnel we’s about to enter… well, it’s quite possible I ain’t gonna live long to see light at the other side. That’s depressing. Still, like I just heard Antoinette Lee state on ‘Olay and Friends’ YouTube cast, defiant in the face of racism and the coming fascist state, “If you’re gonna shoot me… I ain’t gonna be on my knees - ever.”

Fall Back

     Just a little visual reminder I created for Facebook regarding tonight's upcoming time change. The clip is from the Marx Brothers' 'A Night at the Opera' (1935), the conclusion of the famous "stateroom scene". The unsuspecting actress is of course, Margaret Dumont.

 ;-)

In These Very Trying Times

    "Wringing your hands won't help!" blurted the less than sympathetic listener to my friend's troubled concerns about our darkening geopolitical circumstances. Obviously - oblivious to real point at hand (no pun intended).

    Anyway, with the nail-biting, presidential election just days away, that got me thinking and my creative juices flowing. With a twisted touch of wit, here was my comeback.

    It won't help, but what the hey, it can't hurt!

 

    ;-)

  

Doing My Best to Hide...

 Chiller!

 

;-)

 

 

Comet C-2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan - ATLAS)

Finally, a clear night and a clear shot at the comet!

Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinshan ATLAS)

At the same time I was snapping my shot, Adam Block, a serious astrophotographer, was taking theirs. (See the difference below.) 

Photo Credit: Adam Block

"Frost!!" (Take Two: The Fuller Account - Family Photographs Edition)

 

     I thought to backdate this post. Unfortunately Blogger doesn't go back any further than January 1st, 1970, and this picture was taken well before then. By the way...

[SEE ALSO: "Frost!!" (Take One: The Fiftieth Anniversary - Pathé Newsreel Edition) Posted: January 12, 2012]

 The Full Account

    Sunday, January 21st, 1962, Genie, my twin, awakens everyone in the house, excitedly yelling "Frost! Frost!" 

    She had never seen actual snow. 

    Yet there it was, everywhere on the roofs, the parked cars, and hospital grounds across the street. In San Francisco, at the Eastern edge of the Inner Mission District, this was an extreme rarity! Indeed, one can go decades without sight of a single falling flake.* Therefore, the white phenomena just wasn't in our childhood lexicon, though we had already known of it through popular media and the personal accounts of others.

 

San Francisco General Hospital, Sunday, January 21, 1962

    Most of the fall had melted by the mid to late morning, but not before we could gather enough of the material to mold and make a modest snowman.

   However, my biggest unfamiliarity was in how to put together a snowball. Packing one too tight, I unintentionally turned the innocent projectile into an ice-ball, beaning of my middle sister upside her head! Angie could have murdered me!

    The sunny afternoon later saw nary a trace left of the night's snowfall. Thankfully, our dad had slide film available and at the ready to record the exceptional event.

Above Photos Credit: Manuel Rubio Sanchez (our dad)

 

*Speaking of decades, Sunday, December 11, 1932: nineteen years before our family took up residence at 988 Potrero Avenue, and thirty years before our frosty encounter, it had last snowed on Potrero and 22nd!

Snowman at Potrero Avenue and 22nd Street (1932)

 

    Wednesday, February 13, 1991, 2PM: I stepped out of 988 onto Potrero, only to be struck in the face by a gentle snowflake drifting down from a passing cloud, the other flakes melting upon contact with the sun-warmed sidewalk.

    Now, I could have gone back into the house, to get my camera from upstairs, but that would have prevented my seeing the remaining snowflakes wafting down from the aforementioned cloud which was almost past, and taking the time to retrieve my equipment would have definitely caused me to miss the soon arriving, crosstown bus and the start of my next class at the San Francisco Art Institute!

    I chose enjoy the moment on my way to the bus stop.

 

40

       On this day, forty years ago, this person entered my life. Thirty seven years later, our friendship parted ways. That's me directly behind Karl-Heinz Teuber with the chalk and film slate in hand. Dan Gleich on sound, and Georgia Packard, assisting Emiko Omori (not seen) at the camera, are the other two crew members visible in the photo.

     The reason why I am intently watching the performance is to keep an eye on the Canon NF1 Karl holds in his hand. It belongs to me. Karl is using the motor drive which deliberately stops after firing thirty six shots and has to be reset.When it does, that's when I step into the shot. Mine was the only "dummy" professional grade camera on set, available for prop use. 

    The film is director Issam B. Makdissy's independent feature entitled 'A Hard Act to Follow' (screenplay by Terry Eubanks-Makdissy) released six years later in 1990. Karl has a bit part in the film playing a studio portrait photographer. His was the very first scene of the production shoot, though the above photo is of the retake, filmed half a year later, in January of 1985. The character of a publicist was dropped, requiring a reshoot of all the scenes formerly involving them.

    As for Karl, he was at the height of his career, his last role playing the wig salesperson in the memorable, “three heads” scene opposite Tom Hulce in ‘Amadeus’ (1984)! We would remain friends for almost four decades until our lives eventually went their separate ways.

Nine 26

 HAPPY BIRTHDAY to LEE PAIGE!   ;-)

'A Passing Glance'

Alone,

Silent in the shadows,

You danced,

Unawares,

That one,

Only time.

 

Then froze,

Averse to,

Plain sight.

 

As for me?

Perchance,

My gaze askance...

I was the dark,

Having glimpsed,

The divine.

 

 

-antaresrichard- 

 

 

 

While this short poem expresses the essence of the one and only time you permitted yourself to dance - before my passing shadow cut it short - it does not cover all the nuances of that brief instance, nor can it. Indeed, many unnamed factors figured into our chance encounter. Chiefly however, it was your trying to become invisible that struck me, whereas, I… always was - even to this day.

60 Years to the Day Now...

Yet again, from The San Francisco Chronicle and The Examiner:

 

Mining a Theme or Rather Milking a Joke…

It just so happens that my cousin Peter J. Aguilar is also celebrating a big life event on his birthday today!