Tales from Cul De Sac, LA County

So I know this 21 year old kid who just tried to commit murder.

The near victim (so you know no one dies...) was my upstairs neighbor, a kid with 19 years- who has a sister who's 16, going on 17.

Not too tough to see what took place here.

21 year old drinks with 19 year old, then talks shit about the 16 year old. Big brother swings at dumb ass. Dumb ass is knocked through a door. Dumb ass picks up some glass shards and begins carving up big brother. Big brother gets the fuck outta there, sprinting for his life into the suburban night.

Oddly, the real story begins here.

The 21 year old, whom I'm now imagining as the enebriated equivelant of Wolverine, in full berserker glory, shows up at my upstair's neighbors home, enters the kitchen silently at 1 AM

- carrying three knives- (not sure how you carry three of em at once, but this guy knows...)

and meets up with Cristian,

a long haired, 40-year old German guy,  wearing slick bottomed house slippers, boxers and a t shirt

for a late night snack.

"Hey...Who's that?" asked cristian.
"Jack."
"You're Bruce's friend?"..
yeah,..Im here to kill your son...
I don't have a son...oh, you mean my step son?
yeah..Bruce..
hes not here. why do you have three knives?
im going to kill him..hey man, i hear you're really good at guitar...
uh, yeah...
i want to take some lessons from you man...
well, uh sure.. (at this point, Cristain told me later, "I was looking for a bottle or something to break over his head...but I didn't want to fight him, because i had those slippers on..but just in case this crazy guy tries to attack me, I had to be ready...")
yeah, i really want to learn how to play guitar...
ok...well, yeah...hey..do you...i'll tell bruce you were looking for him..

Remember, I'm asleep a few feet below this crazy shit...

Jack staggers back into the night, christian calls the cops, and the 16 year old girl, who was going to have her "after" party at Jack's house in a month when she turned 17, receives a text

"Sorry for trying to kill your brother."

After the hospital,  and 17 stitches, after Cristian ID's Jack at Jack's home at 3 AM, Jack goes to jail- where he currently awaits trial for attempted murder....

computing parenting dilemmas

A week ago,  we got junior's report card. These inescapable judgements were later followed by a series of fiften minute conversations with each of Junior's teachers.

Now, jr. goes to a prestigious private school, so when I showed up with his mom to the first teacher conference, I thanked the teacher for her time, and she smiled, threw up her hands and responded, "That's why you pay the big bucks!" laughing..

By the time we had come to the last of 6 meetings, it was pretty apparent that our kid ..check this out..In two classes, he was noteworthy for getting up out of his chair and wandering the class during lectures. In others, he was a standout for not even reading the directions on his test, and being the first to finish, so he could...

I actually have no idea what he's doing instead.

I only have his study habits at home to make conjectural thesis statements.

A quick knock on the locked door- (don't lock your door, kid- why not?)
a quick takeover of the computer before its history can be erased, - (I'm doing my homework, DAD!)

shows that there has been recent surfing into fantasy-

fantasy football and basketball
manga

some social networking-
facebook (i'm trying to get assignemnts from people on-line, DAD!)

and the expensive private school portal.

I don't like having to police a 13 year old, when the imagination is ripe for conspiracy and oppression. But its a dad's job, so I do it.

"So, no internet until you have your homework done," I say for the nth time.

"And don't lock your door." I say as I walk out.

I wonder how much this is the typical inter-generational discussion that takes place whenever children are born.

"That damn technology isn't helping you none sonny."

I update my comments this way,"That fantasy shit is going to confuse you kid. You spend more time pretending to be outdoors and running around then you do in real life. In fact, go ride your bike."

Ironically people tell me this behavior is helping him to relate to his peers.  Like, what? They can kill each other from the safety of their bed rooms. And in the near future, they can sext?

I continue, "Maybe one day you can do all this as a brain sitting in a plastic vat somewhere. Wouldn't that be cool? You can do the same things as a 95 year old man that you are right now...That's cool too."

This of course, doesn't bring us any closer, though it does make me closer and closer to sending him off to Wilderness Leadership Camp for 2 months for a massive re-programming, a harsh encounter with nature, to learn how many layers suffocate that striving physical body propelled by a prepared mind and a seething spirit.

It's amazing to see how grabbed my kid is by this artificial, technological universe. And of course, he's not the only one, he's probably typical, at least on this side of the digital divide. (What, is outdoor recreation now an activity for those living below the poverty line?) 

I've even been warmed by a few, that  I were to pull all the plugs, that he might indeed have very little, or should I say, even less, in common with the other kids living above the poverty line. Because you know what- kids just don't play together the way they used to- at least here in LA.

But do I begin to bang the doomsday gong? Or, do I ride the zeitgeist-  because this mesmerizing tech is only going to grow more and more enveloping, more and more interesting than the bleak economic world we've created. The growth of fantasy, or the underlying need for fantasy, might just be shelter from the alienating, anomic,  world we are bringing them into.

To cap, I recently read a NYT article, which showcased a Bay Area kid, who is preparing a future for himself in film making, at the expense of his academic career. He can film, edit, and manipulate media in a way that was unheard of 30 yars ago. In fact, most kids can these days. Not my kid though, who really doesn't control his technology as much as he lets it control him- at least in my opinion. I mean, he's not producing videos, or songs, or publishing blogs, or any of the traditional things one produces with these "tools."

Check out the article.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/21/technology/21brain.html?pagewanted=1&ref=general&src=me

Such technology has not only shaped our lives, but the world's. For instance, last week, there were 50,000 kids in Warsaw going to Reggae concerts, when only 25 years ago, Iron Maiden was illegal in Poland (and all of the Soviet block).

Back to the point: my kid is showing signs of being controlled by his tech use, and not getting the benefits.
Short attention span, lives in a fantasy world, is angered when prodded into the "real world" - basically, any time responsibility to others is required (family, school, classroom, etc), and is not using the tools to empower himself, as is always touted...i.e.- become a producer of information, entertainment, whatever.

So where to go?

Back to the basics.
This kid needs to be active.
This kid needs to understand himself as a creation of nature.
He needs to know more species of flora and fauna than pokemon.
He needs to know how to make more things than he does how to kill another human (I'd guess he, and the rest of his Black Ops playing peers, knows more about guns, military tech, and martial art killing methods than any other generation in history.)

So now, after painting a bleak picture of the tech consumables which have become the equivelant of addictions (call them stimulants, and the metaphor works), my kid also does do sit ups, push ups, squats, and balancing excercises. He does play basketball every day at school, and with an outside team. He does go on hikes with me, at least twice a month. So, he doesn't want to "evolve" into a brain in a vat, and he's not yet sexting, though one of his friends is- age 14...yeah..

More to come.

Veteran's Day, 2010: Approaching 40 Years

Approaching 40

All is Not Quiet on Veteran's Morn.
A stray motorcycle slices the silence of 3 AM.
A wind picks up along the ridge, hissing like ice on a hot iron.

How to break into one's infinity with grace? How to slide down the backside of life?

The question begins to percolate behind the seething mind, once so  hedonized it was lead by the bloody tracks, the ripe fruit, the swaying hips, the narcototic howl of midnight. Now, a mind beguiled by less, and tipped toward the eternal contemplates star movements, seismic shifts, the price of oil, emerging markets.

It only took a small thing: Some buried memory, some fresh wound,.... some re-positioning of the cognitive needle,....and a valley floor opens beneath one's gaze, the tracks of their life a single path blazen through its midst.

Hindsight, and trajectory. All in one fell assessment.

Age 40.

When the cryptic language and foggy memories can no longer blunder along without temples falling apart.

When perhaps the temple protects almost nothing but the last remnants of a youthful fire that never burnt fields, scorched mountains, or endured tsunamis.

When perhaps the future looms like a monolith of light and hope, beckoning that you solve future riddles with mirth and lust, like a Leprechaun, lucky with your clover fields.

When perhaps you learn from your own words to a 2 year old daughter: "Only stand on things which are stable and can hold you up without breaking."

And looking around and answering that very question, in the only silence one gets these days- at 3 AM, with a single motorcycle slicing the silence like boiling ice on a cherry iron.

I had an idea, perhaps inspired by this looming 40th year of life (41st if you count in the East Asian birth calendar, which believes that the moment of conception is the actual moment of one's life, thus adding 9 months to most Westerner's age), of a drug I named "Epiphany." Imagine being able to synthesize, or at least isolate the chemical reactions one experiences moments before they almost die. That sense of time slowing down to tiny increments, of seeing one's life fly in their mind's eye like a warp speed slide show, yet complete with the entire, complex emotional content of that memory- so a wash of experiences, sads, happies, dazed, ecstatic, that accumulate into an emotional aftertaste, a flavor one can judge.

Imagine being able to take Epiphany whenever one needed to check in with themselves, know who they are, sense their decisions, their chosen limitations, and return to the roots of their happiness. Sitting here at the precipie into the after life, (kinda joking here...), I'm betting there'd be a rush at 18, then 40, then, perhaps before it was dying time.

Imagine a world where people are capable of correcting each negative or coercive influence on their life, and stay true to their real desires.

Hard to imagine how people would be different, but I'm betting for one that people would work less, feel bad for profitting off of someone else, seek to grow rather than to be served, and hum a song that was as confident, real and resonant as anyone's.

Vasquez Rocks

We were headed toward a distant cluster of cottonwood trees, which in the desert signifies permanent water, a lush pocket of congregating life. I had pointed it out to my cousin, Cheyenne, a hiking partner non paraleil, for her interest in going off trail, wading into the geology, discovering the raw, untouched places no path leads to. We were improvising our way there, along the spines of fractured ridges, eroded boulders, wind burnt caves. Rosa was too, and she and I were carrying our babies in our arms.

Now, we had meandered to a bad spot, which I had just noted to Rosa, who carried our 8 month old daughter, Bella, a few yards ahead of me. She worked her way eagerly, almost blindly, to a spot where one could edge down a shelf- a shelf strewn with chips of granite, like loose tile, on a hard, slippery rock, to a level spot beneath.

Rosa had no fear carrying the 8 month old on the lip of granite, and silently passed the Bellita from her pair of hands to my cousin's, Cheyenne's, who had already clambered down, needing both hands and feet to do so.

There was an elusive, diffuse point to being on the edge of a cliff carrying one's progeny;  improv. That is, the joyful sensation of following one's instincts. There's nature and art that promotes true freedom, true creativity, true, in-the moment-ness, and after that, for me, it's degrees of illusion. This meander through the ruptured and distended tectonic plates of Vasquez Rocks was long views toward distant destinations, and thousands of snap judgements about how to get there, with potential diversions at every turn. It was this creative whim which lead Rosa to this point.

I approached less whimsically, though certain of a routine, careful descent, when a cliff edge crumbled under my foot, my 2 year old daughter tucked under one arm. 

Time stopped, I tumbled toward the edge in a small cloud of falling granite. In front of me, I could see a massive rock spinning edgewise down, toward Rosa and the baby, and I reached for it, slapping it as hard as I could with the ends of three fingers of my right hand, trying to re-route it. At the same time, I was falling onto my left rib cage, against which my two year old daughter was held, tightly, like a football in my left arm. My elbow caught the ground, hard.

I imagined righting myself, so that no matter how far the fall, I'd land feet first, and be able to collapse, maybe breaking ankles and hips, maybe a bone in my arm, instead of landing sideways, crushing my ribs, internal organs, smashing my head on rock. I imagined making sure that my body was between the earth and Ariana's, so that i would cushion her fall with my body..

A woman screamed..

 The flush of granite rock and gravel travelled silently through thirty feet of air, and its clatter on solid ground echoed up the walls of the small ravine below.

Two seconds bloated into an eternity, and I found myself on my back, stopped, my feet and butt holding everything into place, a crying baby in my arms, a torn, aching left elbow, a woman, Rosa, screaming that she could not get down, that she was scared, and, strangely, tattered fingertips.

At the moment, I shrugged off my good fortune, relieved that my daughter wasn't even scratched, but as we continued our walk through the recently wet ravines and cliff faces, she said, "Daddy, you fell down a mountain! I fell down a mountain! I'm scared!"and the moment came back to me in its adrenalized delerium, where the bleary details were unclear.

Above is the best description I could muster.

I asked Rosa what she saw, and she said, there was a look, a startled look on my face, like I was thinking I would die, and that I was holding a huge rock in one hand, and Ariana in the other. And she asked me why I was trying to carry that rock.

Her description made me laugh...how could it look like I was carrying a huge rock, much bigger than I could actually carry, while sliding down the edge of the cliff?

From the safe, conjectural world of hind sight, (and my cousin agreed,) I looked like I was holding the rock in my hand because everything, the rocks, the humans,  moved down the hill at the same speed. What I remember thinking was a slap, was probably an extended shove, which deliberately moved the rock from its original trajectory. My hand did look like it was holding the rock in that split second.

In the end, it was probably the rock which saved my, and Ariana's, ass.

Reaching out to knock the small boulder from hitting Rosa and Bellita gave me something heavy to push against- that even though the rock was in motion, it absorbed my fall, and my shove pushed me backward just enough to land cleanly on the edge.

Miraculous, that an instinct to protect others before oneself could lead to self-preservation.

Still in one piece...

JP

1942 to 2010 - congressional medal of honor for JA

To continue the last blog, I learned that, today, Congress awarded Medals of Honor to the Japanese American troops who fought for the US Army in World War Two (in France, and Germany) while their families were incarcerated in "interment camps" (In the United States) Heralded as patriotism at its apogee: that grown men would fight for the nation that jailed their mothers and sisters- and would have jailed them unless they were willing to fight on enemy soil- the reward comes after a 68 year hiatus- meaning that the men who fought, and survived, are most likely in their late 80's now.

Surely, after the decades of commitment it required to build the political capital to reify such an act, it is truly an honor, mixed with relief, that one's sacrifice was recognized.

However, this blog is about to turn into a personal reflection on this history. It is a painful surgery to unsuture wounds now covered by scar and callous.

2010 + 1942= 1984

2010. Kubrick.

1942. Lucas. (Or is it Spielberg? Sometimes I get those two mixed up.)

And how can I leave out Orwell's 1984?

To explain what these years, (not the films), have in common with the book (not the year), I have to begin with the story of my grandma- Kikuko Nakao.

Kikuko Nakao was born in 1920, on a small island off the coast of California. It was pristine, with massive runs of bonito and mackeral off its beaches. Halibut and perch were easily caught from the shore. A short swim across an adjacent channel would get an enterprising swimmer to the growing municipality of Long Beach, known at that time for its...long beach.

Terminal Island, as it is called today, was then called Furusato, and for decades my grandmother, along with her family and approximately 3,000 other residents, formed a bustling community. Many were immigrants from Japan, though most had children born on this island, who were thus American citizens.  All spoke Japanese as a first language, though it mutuated into a unique dialect of its own, a "Janglish", so to speak, and the island was an isolated world centered around the tuna factories, for whom many worked for, or supplied tuna to as fisherman, to make their living.

Their community followed Tuna Street, the spine of the community. Along it, as with any small community, were the typical Houses of Worship, Associations, schools, businesses, all of which supported the culture and the values of the residents.

In this case, the enduring center of the city was the hardware and grocery stores, from which island traffic,  mostly on foot, though bikes and a few autos also prevailed, circulated.

By all accounts, it was a nice place to grow up- safely absconded from the rest of America, and living in orderly, intimate rows of homes, where everyone knew their neighbors.

However, my grandmother's father passed away when she was in her teens, and her life in the factories began at an early age. By the time she was twenty, she was not married, and instead of being able to pursue her studies, she had taken on the role of primary breadwinner for her family, helping her mother- a teacher at the elementary school, raise the younger brothers and sisters.

Locally, the Japanese community was tolerated as contributing, though unassimilated, neighbors. Though Terminal Island kids went to school on the mainland, they came home to "Little Hokkaido" and played mainly with each other. The fisherman and factory workers worked hard, were disciplined, and took lower wages than their white counterparts, so for the most part, Van De Kamp, and other canneries, were delighted to be working with the Terminal Island Japanese.

In fact, throughout California, Japanese farmers and fishermen were becoming succesful. A Truck farming industry was developing on the backs of Japanese labor, and such success was arousing a Nativist rage. How can these Japs keep getting more and more land? was the thinking, getting richer and richer?

Legislation outlawing the purchase of land by Japanese was enacted. Movements to limit Japanese to small ghettoes also followed. REntal of lands was also limited to 2 years, meaning family farms could not persist in one location.

And so when Pearl Harbor was hit by the Japanese Imperial Army, to preemptively cripple the US Navy nestled in the Hawaiian Islands, and the USS Arizona was sunk, despite early warnings, the match hit the tinder that had been building over the years.

In 1942, Executive Order 9066 was infamously passed, decalring that all residents of Japanese ancestry along the West Coast of the United States be given 48 hours to pack up what belongings they cold carry with them, and enter "relocation camps."

Consequently, 120,000 Japanese, the vast majority of whom were citizens of the United States, (and supposedly with all the rights that US citizens enjoy), were moved from their homes along the Pacific Coast, to desert wastelands (often in Native Reservations) ranging from Arkansas to Idaho.

My grandma was one of these 20,000. Kikuko Tanamachi, nee' Kikuko Nakao, was born on Terminal Island, worked the Van De Kamp tuna factory to help put her brothers and sisters through school, and was transformed by EO #9066 from a "US Citizen" to an "Enemy Alien" in the slash of a pen stroke. And in the space of a year, she had moved from factory worker, supporting her family, to "intern" at Rohwer, Arkansas, an area still defined by its proximity to untilled swamp land.

And what of Terminal Island? Today, it is surrounded by the largest port in America- Long Beach Port, concreted over, and blacktopped, surrounded by the nation's most polluted waters. A naval air field is built on one corner, and a penitentary is built on one corner of a sheet of concrete that has no other use expect the occasional transfer of cargo from boat to truck.

And what of the Japanese? Well, in my family, there is exactly one full blood Japanese male, and the rest of Kikuko's grandchildren are mixes of Japanese and German, or Japanese and Mexican. None of us speak Japanese. And only a few of us have even visited Terminal Island, let alone Japan. Our assimilation is complete. Our ethnic identity comes more from having non-white racial features, than being born into a Japanese dominated household, or Japanese influenced community.

Many sociologists have claimed that the high rates of outmarriage in the JA community, and decisions made by parents to not teach their children the Japanese language came from the experience of being vulnerable outsiders, and the drive to be "American" was a rational consequence to help their children "succeed."

So, that was 1942. What of 2010? And how does any of this relate to 1984?

More later...

Music Review #1: Subatomic Sound System

Not many know "the Emch."

But he's legendary.

His name alone (Emch) has been the subject of phonetic discourses, beginning predicatably, "What the F.. kind of name is that?"

Emch.

It has been shouted in households across the nation, as a non-sensical, ejaculatory uluation.

The word "Emch" has been used as a verb.

"In tiger skin loin cloth, he Emched his way across the jungle canopy."

Or gerunds...

"Damn, that's some filthy Emching right there."

Maybe that's why he goes by the name of Subatomic Sound System these days.

Cuz the Emch is a sensitive soul. The Emch is an artist. The Emch is a lover and a fighter. The Emch stands for entertainment that improves the planet, and expands your mental horizons.

And Subatomic Sound System has a new albumn out; a concetration of nectars that the Emch has been harvesting for the last two decades.

Take dub reggae, like Pablo Augustus, or Lee Scratch Perry,  or newer, Rusko, then, add avant garde electronic sensibilities, say, Flying Lotus, and even 70's Miles Davis, On the Corner era, and you're getting close.

The guy has been collecting sound since the early 80's in Seattle Wa., where sanctuary and sanity were first discovered in the meliflous riffing of Randy Rhoads, Stevie Ray Vaughan, and Manitas de Plata. From there, music lead him from diverse local bands like the U-Men and Killgore Trout, to the world, like Fela Kuti. I have a hard time finding music he hasn't heard, so I often challenge myself to do so- (and yeah, recently, I introduced him to Smood, and I always like beating him to the punch. In the past, I got him into Jane's Addiction. I take credit for Eddie Palmieri, and Omar Sosa, too.)

Needless to say, the guy personifies a love of music in all its variety, only insisting that it has soul.

His new albumn certainly has that.

In fact, his eclecticism finally gets served in all its variety,  pairing both Lee Scratch Perry, the dub pioneer heemself, and David Lynch, the avant garde film maker, with badass Jamaican chant masters like Anthony B.

You won't really know what to think on the first listen, because you haven't really heard stuff like it before. but after a third listen, your ear accomodates the poly-sonic vibe, senses the innate ruminations on peace and justice, and creates a desire for equally strong elixer, and an exploratory dance floor with like minded argonauts.

So, check it out. The Emch-neesh is for real.

http://www.kidult.com/news/entertainment/david-lynch-and-lee-scratch-perry-get-remixed-in-dub