I only had a couple of minutes to read the other bogs on filbert this morning, but it was like a book I couldn't put down. Only later when I was at work in San Rafael did it occur to me that the growing collection of people submitting words (on filbert.net) has begun to emit an energy greater than itself. Or I should say, for me, its meaning has deepened. I began to wonder if I couldn't detect a pattern or rythmn of life - faintly - the ripple across our many private consciences. Huh.

Everything seems kind of crazy and upside down, but no one is getting hurt, so I'm not worried. I'm trying hard to get Terry and David Hale to conribute blogs to the page, so hopefully we'll see some new blood.

Why does that seem suddenly morbid? Seeing new blood?

Today I was working for Brad, trying to figure out why a 220V dryer plug was smoking at a house up in Marin. The power was supposed to be off, and I was a bit absent minded as I rapped with Tim, and Don the customer. I was squatting down, prying the the plug out from the steel box with a screwdriver when it suddenly blew up: There was still current in the circuit from some hinky, old school wiring job done in the early seventies, and I'd inadvertently shorted it. The arc was shooting out blue/orange flames about a foot, and sparks of burning metal poured onto the floor like as they would from a mini-crucible. I pulled my hand back as fast as I could, but not before it was burned and blackened. Tim said later it was smoking as I tucked it into my armpit and said; "I'm burned"

But it seems okay, so I'm not overly upset. Like the car crash Matt and I had on Fountain St. in Hollywood; no one was hurt, so I thought it was pretty cool. I'm beginning to realize that I'll take anything over normal, day to day life. The only things that make me feel alive are emotions, and I only respond to the powerful ones anymore. Addiction.

Sex seems to be the furthest thing from my mind. How odd. It's as if my body spares me the distraction, becasue it lend snothing to the process in which I'm living. There is nothing cosy, or sweet or sensual - sleep-in-on-saturday-morning about my existence. It's all mental fucking discipline. They say (in martial arts) if you control the head, you control the body. I'm astonished to see, at 33 years old, that I've finally wrested control from my pay-per-view imagination.

Terry and I dropped into the mst fascinating place tonight. He had noticed an arresting, old-timey diner on Bayshore blvd. called SILVERCREST (WE NEVER CLOSE) and insisted that we go. I've driven by the place many times on my way to Visitacion valley, but it had never occurred to me to drop in. Well tonight was the night.

The SILVERCREST diner is all crimson red-painted stucco on the outside, with red neon lights from the sevnties announcing its pleasures to the passing vehicles. We pushed open the back door to go in, and it was 1970 inside. A group of cool, streetsmart, older black guys were playing pool in the darkened backroom bar, A scratchy jukebox had a James Brown track going - something i'd never heard before. And all night there were old soul and R & B songsplaying - that I'd never heard before.
A man walked past us and suddenly asked: "How y'all doing?" He wore an oldtimey brown, pinstripe suit and sandals with socks. One of his eyes was obscured by a milky cataract: The other was framed by a scar that could have been made with a chainsaw. He walked up to a row of five identical vintage pinball machines, pumped a quarter in one, and proceeded to play at it for no less than an hour and a half. He left without ordering so much as a coffee.

We sat the bar, a little bit unsettled by the perfect otherness of our surroundings, when the owner himself walked up and gruffly asked us what we would have. The old guy had his gray hair combed into a hustler's pompadour, and he wore his shirt open to show what once must have been a very alluring chest. I was scanning the breakfast menu when Terry suddenly started yammering at the guy in Greek, without so much as asking where he comes from. Of course terry had found the one Greek in san Francisco.

We're like family down there now.