There are frogs nearby singing the last chorus of a wild rap, channeled down the canyon creek between the roads and tracts; I hear them less this year by half. Traffic has increased at night, the bump of manmade hip-hop rises and re-echoes with an argument for show. There's no real fight, it's just a tact to sell to more stuff, to make the noise that people make; expressions of rage corrupted, packaged, replacing anger at the world with bling. The suburban consumer doesn't know the origin, doesn't care, right or wrong, it hears that beat and lets it mask the sounds of earth, that dying gasp of how we lived before, that sweet soft music of amphibian spring.

I have more to say, but I get to repeatin' myself, like an old bum in a tan overcoat and bright red socks mumbling on a street corner, face all black from sleeping on creosote, fingernails a half inch long. "It's the end of the world, you know, it's the end of the world. Did you know it's the end of the world? Well, it's the end of the world."

There are some TV shows poppin' up that won't do any good cuz even though the hosts are young and hip (well, youngish and hippish), they say the shows ain't no good, and that Elvis would shoot the TV set, if they hadn't taken his gun away when he died.

I got flubbermigasted t'other day watching another hot show when the host laughed himself non-green at the jokes of a contemporary doing a guest turn, riffing on his old schtick that 1.8 degrees a century doesn't make any difference at all, you can't even set that on your thermostat, or some lame gag that made John Stewart haw-haw and act all giddy and obsequious. Anyway, Dennis Miller was--in his inimitibly smarmy "I know better" way--dead wrong. It does make a difference.

By the way it's the end of the world.

Oh, yeah. Earth Day. That one day a year when we give props to the planet. I knew it was coming but I kept putting off buying a card; they're so treacly, and I just couldn't figure out what I wanted to say. The Earth never writes back anyway. Makes me feel kinda rejected, if not outright alone on this speckled, crowded middle-aged globe, only geologically young in spots, so old otherwise, getting up there anyway, ready to go when the sun does but for now in want of a transplant because what used to be on top is going fast. They're working on flying in ice from Titan or possibly Pluto, though that procedure is expensive and according to some...unnecessary. Polar bears can move to Tuscon like everybody else.

Ping-ponging at a full stop over 36 years I rolled to the edge of this master planned community, and another year later I still don't get it; I mouse into Ralph's to buy milk and silently feel disdain for sparkly fish stickers on the cashier's lapel pin; I moved out of the Bible Belt, not to get away from that superstitious craziness, mind, but happy about it as a side benefit. This is California, and I know Ronald Reagan stumped against Reds in Orange, but those days of baron heirs and nervous farmhands are over. In Aliso Viejo, founded 1989, nonsense swings fully. It's suburbia hot-glued onto former rangeland (aka wilderness) and though somehow a few people got hold of the corporate heads/churchgoers and squeezed some earth from their grasp, it's all hodgepodge; nature and city vistas intertwined, so much clutter. Stop lights and speed limits, Wal-Mart (small version), The Home Depot once a mile, every conceivable stockholder's dream in form of a restaurant, $2.63 minimum for gas. And churches, by god, churches, temples, chapels, cathedrals, mosques everywhere. Pope pushers and other smiters distract the sinners from the sin, corralled in this gated pen. You get fries with that.

Scrounged around in the old junk pile yesterday and found nothing of value. Nearly got bitten by a few rats. A lot of running around, not much payoff, a small challenge to propriety or dignity or somethin'. Survived of course, except for a few scratches, nicks, bruises, mostly avoidable by...not scrounging around in junk piles. So there ya have it.

See the writing on the wall but read it anyway,
face the other way and there's a reflection,
run and you return.

This place is yesterday's
less than a minute earlier,
the earth nudged slightly left
or right in its orbit.

Human excretions collect around us, and of course sometimes it can't be helped. While surfing (cyberwise) I coast onto this terlet, which makes me laugh. They're as low as $1,550, unless you buy one before the 25th. Until then you can get a 15 percent discount. So hurry up!

Here in south O.C., laminated purple signs on the groomed hills read "Do Not Drink," meaning, well, that the "water" that just sprayed on you as you walked by is recycled.

Should one compost one's own? Urf. Used to be we kept our privacy out back--far back--where our jakes consisted of trenches or deeply dug wells. I guess it was, in a way, more natural to bury it and hope nothing leaked into the nearby crick, lessin' of course it was downstream from where we bathed.

Anyway it's impossible now. Most of us don't have back yards, and those of us who do would not want that there. We'd rather have it in a room of its own a few feet from the kitchen. Thomas Crapper, the British sanitary engineer who developed the ball and suction thingy in the tank, actually saved the world billions of gallons in fresh water (and so billions of dollars in utility bills). Indeed, were it not for Mr. Crapper, we might still be going out back in the winter, except that there are so many of us now, we'd never have a moment to ourselves.I think the ultimate can will evaporate all waste or beam it into outer space. Tourists on journeys through the solar system will simply have to look the other way. That is when they're not busy.

Now what to do with the waste we don't really need to make.

"Commute"

Returning to work, walking,
I wind between cars in leaf-strewn shadows
stuck to the edges of the hot parking lot.
The lost dusty route of Junipero Serra
scratched a thin bloody line
across this spot,but I am not accountable
for the zeal of a madman,
an obsessive or driven self-martyr possessed
by desire to reroute geography,
to harness the wild and end its authority,
to gather and squeeze the life out of people
who wandered these similar hills.

I think of these moments in panic.
Up and down the land and particularly along it,
accelerators wait; they wait because the brakes
get so much attention,

and though I know a river sometimes washed along this way,
I could not show you water--only grouted banks.

No clear reason to keep this up. One struggles to be heard in a cacophany that has no melody. Speech made humans evolve and now causes society to devolve. TV news, talk radio; everybody is listening but nobody really hears. By "nobody" I mean, well, hardly anybody. I mean, there are a lot of people in the world--so many that we are eating our own tail. And yet, nobody reads this blog for instance. Millions of blogs, by their nature self-involved proselytizing, preaching to a choir of one, linked to a larger world of unread things, are abandoned by their authors and their readers for a distracting ball of string called "news." There is nothing important about an old man dying. Do you know how many old men die? All of them! Meanwhile nature cries out, but no one answers. Do you know that I have tried? I'm over here! Do you hear?

I don't know the names of flowers and I don't care to. There sure are a lot of them around. Clouds came in around 5 o'clock (which a day ago was 4 o'clock) so I had more light but less sun. Purple what-look-like-poppies shooting out of the high green grass, tiny yellow-white blossoms low to the ground, red bells, webby orange moss, miniature blue poker-uppers in that classic floral pattern a child draws: five or six elliptical petals around a circle in the middle. Clouds and flowers all around me as I trek the ridgeline with a cold; no special post-demise reports on NPR to overwhelm me (some dogmatic inelegant icon done returned to his maker).

The strange and wild winter rains have turned up sand, quenched thirsty seeds and made a paradise for bugs. There isn't a flower without an insect climbing around inside of it; lady bugs, ants, tiny flies. So much life. Beetles crossing paths, lizards jumping rock to rock, snakes slipping over boulders; bigger, sleepier creatures just waking. My stomach grumbles and something behind that oak growls back! This is my church.

Some chick dies--finally--and that's the news. That's the news? Meanwhile, desperate prognostications that we are all in for it, that the earth's feeding tube is about to be unplugged, woosh by unnoticed, like that flock of birds that should be gliding overhead, but isn't, because the species went extinct.

Mother nature--our mother--what is the phrase? She isn't quite herself today. We've ripped her apart, stuffed her full of sawdust and stitched her back together, propped her up in a chair. She looks pretty bad, and it's hard to pretend anymore. Maybe once she has become totally dessicated and...well, she has smelled really bad for a long time now, but we stopped noticing... but maybe when her head falls off and rolls past our feet, we will think... huh... we killed her... and then we watched her rot... Prolly shouldn'ta done that. :(

Nature again rears its hideous head with scythes for teeth and takes a bite out of humanity's side. Though, frankly, earthquakes don't kill that many people. I mean, really, let's blame the manmade objects that fall on top of them, okay? Ouch.

What can one do about this business? According to the news, offer condolences. That's what Americans do best: offer condolences and canned creamed corn, a little pocket change. Oh, and prayers. Prayers are the glue that bind the sticks together that make a house in Indonesia. Of course they use other materials; you can see, too, they live just like us! Crap everywhere.

Purists say thatched works best. Thatch crushes less people. There's a rat problem though. Rats like old thatch. They like barbecues on balconies in south OC, too, my friend Robert says. He could use an owl. Should we send owls to poor and impoverished Sumatra? Won't help prevent an earthquake, you're right. Wasn't thinking. Just tossing out ideas.

Too much work. No time. Besides, very few--two--readers last week.

Rode last night under an irrelevant moon and the perpetual day that exists in southern California anyway. Have a bicycle headlight, but what fer? The rule, essentially. Won't get run over, and if I did, who would notice...no one right away, except the boss. I watch the rings of the soft light smooth out the pavement in front of me, as the orange lamps make my bike into a crisp silhoutte for traffic to squash.

Then it took a long time to drive to LA today, what they call a looooong time. Sixty miles is relative; I think I could have traveled it by horseback long ago and camped under that moon. It hasn't changed much except for some 35-year-old footprints and a flag, and maybe a few more dings and dents from meteors opening their doors too carelessly.

But I don't have that option of traveling slowly and under the moonlight now; everything is rush-rush at a slug's pace, no matter what time of night or day. Price of gas? No problem. Just waste money. Go. I had to; I'm down here and doing crazy things like riding my bike at night. Gotta go back to the city once in a while and eat Thai.

Out of town a few days along the (rainy) Central Valley, over a couple blossoming hills, through a few muddy canyons, beside topped-off lakes, along flooded orchards. Banners say "Food grows where water flows." Water is flowing.

At the base of the mountains, acres of purple flowers look like a tilted pond in the near-drowned sun; on the way back, cattle swims in the clover. The water in San Luis Reservoir is as choppy as broken glass churning in a tumbler. A tornado hit south SF, but missed me by an hour or two. I was already east of Gilroy, a garlic town seemingly owned by Con-Agra nowadays (based on the signs beside old farms) following an RV through Pacheco Pass. All this open space to the untrained eye looks undeveloped, but it's being worked: migrant workers, stored water, wine and cows. Some is "saved." Early last fall if I remember right I stopped at Pinnacles and hiked; one day I'd also like to visit a mysterious place quite a bit south, and possibly Henry Coe St. Pk. higher up...all by myself.

In the City Friday morning to kill an hour I got soaked walking from my parking space to the book shop to Mission Dolores, which I guess is a religious establishment. I only wanted to see it because of its relevant history. It was, coincidentally, built at the base of a bunch of empty hillsides, too.

No, really, that's okay, no fish, please. Too smelly. Oil prices are NOT sky high. A gallon is still cheaper than other stuff, and if we'd stop driving so much, we could save enough Lincolns to buy another DVD or make some more cell phone calls while stuck in traffic. I have a novel idea; move closer to work. In another kinda non-sequitor, China sucks. Or does it? I don't care. Used to be my stuff was made in Japan. It was a little sleeker, maybe. Can't remember. I love oil, like to scramble eggs with it instead of butter fat. Also it's good in lip balm and plastic bags, cuz ya know they don't even axe if I wants paper or plastic no mo', just load everythin' up in plastic; takes the worry out of it, saves me about three seconds so I can wait at the stop light a little longer and burn some more of that expensive petroleum distillate I love to read about. Oh, it's all just too much.

Our Chancellor and his oil Nazis want to go Krystalnacht on the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and plan to propose a final solution next week. Undeveloped wilderness is forever the put-upon minority, but in this case America will not be there to fight the war in its defense. In fact, nature is an unwilling ally, part of the coalition of the willing strong-armed into the fight against terrorism, Iraq and all things great and Arab.

The so-called elite du jour made much of their money by sucking up oil like a mosquito on the frontier's neck. If you found it in your backyard you became rich overnight, bought more land and kept on drilling. If you never found anything, God didn't like you. Tough beans!

Texas, the Germany of America, dried up years ago, and OPEC has had a one-up on the oil lottery by being in the right place and the right time for far too long, says our President, friend and whipped slave of Herr Moneybags. Backdoor deals in the stealth of night and roundabout politics make for interesting history, but for now they mean gobs and gobs of gooey cash for guys already living in more than one mansion.

This leads us to the essay question part of the exam:

1) Why do people complain about gas prices when they drive trucks three times the size of anything they reasonably need?

2) Why are people willing to listen to anyone with a quick fix to their diminished McBudget when the plan is neither quick nor a fix?

3) Why do people blame foreigners and environmentalists when they themselves have increased demand and decreased supply?

4) Do people seriously think they can solve their "problem" by allowing the Bush-Cheney cabal to tear off a piece of Alaska's coastal plain merely to polish its pride?

5) How much of the money we've spent "supporting our troops" and "rebuilding Iraq" has gone directly into the pockets of the same investors hoping to tap into ANWR?

6) Does the promise of short-term "energy independence" mean we have to go to war with China now because it supplies everything else we consume?

More ranting later; I'm sure you're tired. Or, if not, here's some counter propaganda. Don't be offended; it's pro-business.

On the beach there are more people than gulls; waves filled with human flotsam, not kelp, surfboards hide the sharks. Everywhere I go someone else is already there. We have a dearth of empty places, open spaces; climb a mountain, someone's up there on her mobile telling her husband how, like, beautiful it is and that maybe later he should pick up something to eat from Baja Fresh or should they order out from Papa John's? Nowadays something that seemed inaccessible even 20 years ago is not; you can go there if you want to and you're totally entitled; you can fly there, rent an SUV, drive up to it, climb with high-tech shoes and a squeeze bottle and chatter about how great an accomplishment it is the whole time. You don't have to be serious and plan ahead much; National Geographic Adventure spells it out for you and with precision. Besides, you can't get lost, you have your GPS and you could always call and ask for help if you trip and knock your head against a rock (but that will never happen because nature is so feng shui). Wilderness as sport has made the only way to get away the Kevorkian way, and that's no fun, who wants to do that? Hmm.

My brother wants me to write about seeds. I don't know about seeds. I think most people don't. That's why they can take seeds out of our hands. They shouldn't, but they want to. Who are "they"? I don't know. Aren't all seeds genetically modified? Not in a lab, but by breeding and select cultivation? For thousands of years people altered plants and animals (chihuahuas and Granny Smiths aren't exactly nature's way), but suddenly a company can patent a gene. Explain.

My friend Marie sent an email that supports a petition to warn Warner Bros. against bastardizing decades-old cartoon characters that by all logic should have become part of the public domain years ago (their creators having all died by now). But in this case, the "they" still exists in corporate form and so "it" can do whatever the heck it wants. Frankly, I don't see why the WB shouldn't be allowed to devil-up already devlish characters. I think we should all have access to Bugs Bunny and do whatever we want with him because he shouldn't belong to anyone. Maybe secretly Time-Warner is adapting because eventually it will lose ownership of the original. Of course, that eventuality is upwards of 120 years from when Bugs was born, so maybe around 2050 we can start putting him in a suit instead of a dress.

Meanwhile the President in his ad nauseum way talks about an "ownership" society where people "own" their own money (in contrast to social security where the government, "belonging to the people," watches our money for us, which, in a sense, turns out to be "us" watching our own money). But we can't "own" anything unless we have tons and tons of $, which we don't. We have a few thousand dollars culled from our paycheck over the years, and the money still won't be ours--it will be invested for us, into the very corporations that don't want us to own anything. We can't buy land and protect it from them; if we do wrestle a parcel away from agribusiness or real estate developers, we won't be able to plant with "their" seeds, and if we turn on the TV in the afternoon--which we shouldn't--we will only see what they think we want them to think we want to see.

Seeds of confusion.

On parole in L.A. my feet find their way. I know I'm not really missed (I made no impression while I wandered here for 10 years or so), but it is still a comfort as my shoes greet the sidewalks all friendly-like.

The city is a blanket that curls up around me for a hundred miles. Out there in neosuburbia, my feet stick out. I like the trails, the sea, but I get cold toes.

Here in the center of my old home I'm all warm and cozy. I know it's tattered and smelly and threadbare, it's stained with spots and needs to be stitched up in a lot of places, maybe even thrown out. But how do I rid myself of something so comfortable? Its patches of exotic cloth may clash, but they exist at a known intersection, they somehow belong. They are like my memories of living here, of all the walks along the boulevards and avenues in the baddest moods, seeing the same homeless faces every day, hearing all the noise, smelling all the funk. I am selfishly fond of these moments.

Maybe if I didn't know the history, it wouldn't mean as much. But I'm aware that Cherokee, a street where I used to live, is inaccessible today, near the nucleus of that wide circle protecting the Oscar ceremony from the lower classes. A few years ago they wouldn't have thought they'd come back to this filthy place, but the stars, such as they are, have returned. I can't blame them.

I could sense by the volume and duration of Friday night's 12-hour downpour that a lake had formed over Laguna Canyon Road again. And sho nuff some time before dawn one of those stealth divisions of local government had snuck orange cones across both ends, redirecting mindless drivers who thought they could carry on as if the sun was shining Saturday morn. A deluge is a deluge, folks. Stagecoach needs to rest a while.

People have so much faith in their own survival and in the infallibility of their plans. They can't wrap their mind around this nuisance known to the rest of the world as weather. Southern California is designed for the sun. If it rained like this every year, a lot of people would pack up and move on to Mars.

It's Tuesday morning now; still coming down. It's disappointing when the curtain of water rises and it quiets for a spell. I don't know what to do, I feel like the popcorn bag is empty, there's nothing to watch on the screen, only static on the radio and a blank canvas on the wall. It's all so post-modern, until I remember those lovely words: "scattered showers." Ah, here comes the rain again.

So this is sorta pointless, like I said before. Who's gonna read it besides so and so and what's his face, familial familiarity and some people who click with curiosity and flee quick finding no nekkid pix and nothin' to needle the needy neurochemicals of noodles all dry and gasping from too much prattle on the TV. I am this close to dropping away from the cliff, no catcher to intercept me from the field of rye; that field long gone since roundabout 1975 they mowed it down and made it into a subdivision, addition, development, community what have you, and called it Cuesta Verde or Quail Oaks or Ho-Hum Estates. Gotta woods behind my house with a fort; we build an igloo in the winter, no plans, but it works, it's nice and cozy but kinda small near the swingset, though it melts so fast; winter is always over really quick. You hate it too long to start to love it when it's gone.