Early Blogs

So here I am, back in San Jose, awaiting a golf tournament for a fallen comrade and I am glad to say it still feels like I’ve arrived at a vacation destination, rather than going home. But that is this and this is now so I continue.

Scott tells me to meet him at Tony P’s, but I have never heard of it due to my “home bar” mentality. I am an anachronistic ghost of a name, traveling old streets remembering how they were built and cursing the time it took to build them, but before I can make a wrong turn, Scott texts me saying it is on such and such street, both streets I know, both of which the place isn’t on, so I make a right and head towards Downtown San Jose hoping, like I always do, to accidentally run into my destination. 10 seconds into my new trek. Feeling like someone is trying to wave me down, I make a quick U-turn to see Heidi, 6’ into the street, waving her arms like she is drowning in an invisible pool. “I am here, finally!” I say, trying to put some “Bad Ju Ju” that has been interrupting my self-analysis during this road trip. I can hear Missy, who is out on the “porch” of the bar say “Well, it looks like he’s walking straight” to Scott. They both laugh, but I am not mad at this comment, because it is a valid one. So I say my hellos, wondering why Missy is here, then I see Jay and wonder if Scott had invited them out to dinner too. “Is this it?” I say with the notion of dinner still playing its song in my head. “No, everyone else is inside.” He says mixing up my version of what we are doing here. I roll through the words that were texted to me, mulling them over in my head…diner, drinks then some drinks and dinner…I was stuck on the only two words I can remember. Finishing our smokes we walk inside what seems to me like a small joint to me. It opens up to a gigantic bar as Scott yells “Guess who’s here!” To the crowd. That’s we… My thoughts are interrupted by shouts of surprise, along with my awfully un-famous battle cry of “Shialabeouf!” from behind the bar. The bar, the old Branham crew is there staring at me from all the different vantage points from around the bar. They were drinking, talking, yelling, watching NASCAR and drinking. “What’s everyone doing here?” I ask feeling important, proud and oddly famous as the strangers that don’t know me try to figure out if I am, in fact, famous. It takes a second for them to realize I’m not, then they turn back around to what they were doing, which was drinking, talking, yelling, watching NASCAR and drinking. Kevin, Janae, Robert, Bob, Jay, Marlo, Dustin and other assorted drinkers from Branham were there, celebrating a day of NASCAR…and drinking. “This is where everyone comes to watch NASCAR. Need a drink?” He says the magic word. “YES!” I yell at him and we belly up to the new bar.

“Shialabeouf!” I am met with a familiar sound from behind the bar and the now famously worldwide known face of Clay. He throws a bot and a sheer my way, I throw a couple cups his way. “Good to see you, man.” I say, already filling my quota of “mans” for the day.

The next hours are spent re-explaining my departure to friends that didn’t know. But like always, time spent at the bar flies by on rails and I am in the Jeep heading to Heidi and Scott’s house for the night. I recognize the road home, but my Jeep wants to go into another old bar, in hopes of seeing some of its old familiar friends, so I let her turn in. But this bar is far from what it once was and way too empty for a Saturday at 9pm. I say hello to this forgotten place like I would and old girlfriend, being cordial but not interested in hopes of making a quick exit. Scott and Heidi mimic my mood and we are out of there after a drink.

We pull into Heidi’s driveway and I remember it, because I have walked, rode my bicycle and parked my car on it before, years before…almost 30 years before. I had forgotten the potential weirdness of Scott and Heidi dating, because she was my first girlfriend 3 lifetimes ago.

I am completely amazed at my lack of knowing what the hell is going on in the world. Being a 49er fan, I had visions of 6 - 0 floating around my head all day yesterday, practicing my bar speeches on how there was no statistical way the Ravens could possibly win. Then this morning, with visions of the future swirling around my computer, I began the long lonely task of beginning this website and connecting blog. "I'll write about the 9er's win the first chance I get." I said to myself in the middle of my stupid house. But then I fell in... Pictures, stories, backgrounds, paragraph headings...FONTS! I was in creative heaven, working like Steve Jobs or Bill Gates presumably did. Even when a girlfriend of mine came over for a visit, I didn't fully understand why she was so rushed. "I'm hitting all the SUPERBOWL parties." She says to me (I highlighted the super bowl because now I remember her SAYING it). I just blew it off as one of her personality defects, barely realizing it was MY personality defect that was showing me first hand that I am way too consumed by this new venture.

All in all, at least I didn't see them lose...and that's a big plus in my warped mind. So off to a pretty good start here, keep reading and I'm fairly sure I will do something else completely insane (almost said, by the end of the weekend) soon.

As I've said, I tend to play down the situations I get myself into because I don't like anybody worrying about me, including me. But worry we do, like we should. Case in point, I remember the week I spent wandering around my house like a drunken, sleepless ghost, which inspired my short “The Limit”. That was quite an experience, but it is an experience I do not recommend ...for anybody. I reminisce about that learning experience and wonder who I know would survive. I've met a lot of different people in my travels and to survive that kind of willing dementia you have to be made from a certain cloth. Only two other people that I know could have possibly made it out of that fiasco unscathed, and both of those people have already passed the finish line. Both their deaths were awfully boring, worldly deaths, which in sharp comparison made them seem almost normal themselves, which is how our kind go. It doesn't matter if you're strong willed or high I.Q.'d... or any other kind of personality trait that a doctor can label. You need an understanding in the abstraction of the human condition. Plus, you need a gross unhealthy willingness to continue the journey, because you know the end result. There is no turning back once the world knows you’ve begun the trek, doing so gets your face in the paper and a lot less freedom. So, I am telling you, as a friend and somebody that knows that road, do NOT do what I did...you will NOT make it. My self-medicating had just gotten to such a tragic point that the demons and ghosts were giving up. I had nowhere to go but metaphysical. But even at my deepest depression, there was never a threat of death by my hands or theirs. My want to see what was over the next hill and down in the valley blossomed during that week giving me a new terrible want. I want to see what "The Big Man” throws at me next. During that week I challenged him, willing to believe in him, if only for the sake of battle, and if you know me or have been reading my stuff, you know that I like to battle unseen things, and he is the biggest unseen thing around so our war was reinvigorated by my idiocy. 28 years I've been going toe to sandaled toe with him and until I did my little half-departure, he had given up on the fight. So, I sit and wait, ready to cry my barbaric war cry, damning the torpedoes and screaming into the void for ramming speed to combat his formidable blow. 

I throw away the good and enable the bad, all the while complaining about an unfair world and the way it's abused me. Luckily for me, I am an asshole, so I really don't mind what the god's throw at me because to me, it is what I am supposed to get. But why do you people stick around? I've gone out of my way to alienate friends, family and loved ones, then try to explain to them in my own metaphysical way that in the end I am right about the decisions I've made. What bombastic favor I must think I am deserved, what ego driven decadence I feel is mine before others and yet I have a multitude of friends as varied as the world’s religions. This is a part, albeit small, of the reason of why I exiled myself to the mountains, and limited my time in the slow country society. I couldn't stand to see me act the way I did with almost no consequence. "Ah, that's just Chris...doing what he does." I can imagine a friend saying to someone else so I don't get my ass kicked. I know Dan Hale has saved me a number of times. But I believe what I believe or to put it another way, I believe my own shit, so I have been punched a couple times, but instead of my friends chuckling under their breath and whispering out of the corner of their mouths, "about time", me being hit equates to a call to arms...I could almost hear the horns the last couple of times it happened. Which is why I bring this up. A couple of days ago I was having another one of my "candy" attacks. But it was another hot day and leaving my very cool house, for whatever reason, simply pisses me off. The candy continued to call as I finished my shower and attempts at drying my "pain in the ass" hair. Something was right underneath the surface of my usual mellow demeanor, showing itself briefly as I snagged my brush in this horrible mop I have on the top of my head. "Fuck You!" I say as the brush leaves my hand and smashes through a glass I had on the table. "What the fuck is wrong with you!?" I yell at either the brush or the glass. Maybe it was the eight hours of sleep I had gotten, maybe it was the lack of nicotine in my body, or maybe it was just time. I hadn't thrown a punch in thirty years, longer! The white-hot feeling of hatred, reminded me of high school and the day I was expelled, and terrible thoughts coursed through my mind, like they did that day. "Got to get my candy." I say while rubbing my face hard and fast, trying to rub away this awful feeling. In the jeep, hair-tie in place, radio on, out of my driveway and up the road I could feel this second skin underneath mine, moving the opposite way I was, making a sound that I hated from childhood. Halfway to the store I realized I was clinching my teeth, but only because my jaw started to hurt. With that unforeseen tension gone, I began to relax because it was almost candy time. I pull into the usually empty gas station that serves as my "go to" store, passing up a carload of what seems like babies, but they are young men and women, "flatlanders", heading up to the lake for a weekend of fun. I pull around them and park in my usual place which is usually out of the way, I give it no thought as I prepare to exit. "Hey, move your Jeep, we can't get through." The sentence is lost on me as I try to put everything away, like I usually do...the act is pissing me off. "Hey Mister!" The kid says, I hear him again, but before I could look his way, his girlfriend chimes in. "You can't park there, it's red, move your truck so we can get out." I'm halfway out of the Jeep when she finishes, it stops me in a weird position, but I stop anyway and look at her boyfriend. "Color-blind Fuck." The guy’s friend says obviously drunk already. My hatred for the "entitlement" generation snaps me forward. "This is my fucking red; you get back in your fucking car and wait to fucking leave." I say loudly while walking toward them. I know exactly what I want to do. "Shit, get in the car Cole." The girlfriend says and jumps into the back seat, Cole turns and gets into the passenger seat. I stop when the door closes, thinking of my very smart, unheralded joke of putting "I'm Bruce Banner", as the "banner" on my cell phone. But now I see the accidental hilarity of my wit. "Just wait." I say, turning around to go get my candy. They are gone when I get out of my store with my candy, smokes and lemon-coke. I think of my banner on my phone and smile as I climb into my Jeep. 

This fight…this battle…this war…this changing of the guard continues as I head towards the final stand. The Center for Idiocy, fortified with its special weapons, looks menacing as the mid-morning sun slices through the trees over its roof. “Good.” I say, still pissed that this fiasco was pushed upon me with no warning. Their years of technology was strong on all fronts, all I had left was gumption, worry began to sneak into my subconscious. But warning, or no warning, worry or calm, I am war-ready having won my battle against saying, “Sammy Hagar”, “Red Rocker”, or “I can’t drive 55”, this same morning. Unlike my present situation, I had been waiting for five years…no, I had been waiting since 1984 after hearing Mr. Hagars song for my 55th birthday. Why have I been tirelessly been holding my tongue every time someone said anything to me this weekend, fighting the terrible urge to say, sing, or scream his name, his nickname, or the title to his hit song? Surely it can’t be just because the numbers match. Yes, it is just because the numbers match, and leave that poor girl Shirly out of this. Forget about the politics behind the 1974 law that made the speed limit 55mph. Forget about the who and why Van Halen broke up. Even forget about who I was versus who I am. What we’re left with is the irony, that on the day I had been waiting to be able to connect my age with the national speed limit, I very rarely drive 55mph, never over. Take THAT, rebellious youth. But I digress, wanting to get back from places unknown and enjoy an empty house on my 55th birthday, filled with uninterrupted video game play and the tragic weirdness contained within YouTube, I stop at the gas station at the top of hill for a Mtn Dew Code Red, a pack of Camel Crush Menthol Silvers, and a single stick of Pepperoni Smoked Sausage Beef Stick in order to facilitate said day of joy. If I only knew then, the evil that stick was about to unleash on me, that was to be this short, but telling confrontation. Because I can see this is becoming a little long, we will forego the ten minutes spent in the parking lot of the gas station trying to open the beef stick with all means possible, finally leaving after I look up to see a crowd forming, and also forgo the three time I almost drove off the road on the way down. We will skip to the end inside the aptly named Center for Idiocy. I walk in and put my quarry on the kitchen table, the code red now reminds me of Sammy Hagar, while my silvers properly represent my rebellious youth. I try one last time to open the beef stick, safely sitting at the table. My fingernails, like my ego, fail after another ten minutes and like magic the Center creates the answer in the form of a pair of scissors, putting them in my hand. I snip off the end of the Devil, but I will not let him win, so I throw it in the garbage. A 55-year-old man probably shouldn’t be eating a stick of beef, let alone drinking a code red soda, and for sure not smoking menthol cigarettes. The day is a draw, but the lessons learned are worth a soda and cigarettes. 

Mondays don’t feel like they used to. That space in the middle of you that holds a spark surrounded by something flammable. I hated worrying about that inevitable explosion, it ruined most of my Sundays. But I think I’ve finally dowsed that flammable worry and now I don’t know what Monday’s feel like, or any day for that matter. It’s all a continually confused non-day, kind of like when you forgot about a long weekend, then spend all of Sunday either trying to dowse or ignite that flame, just to realize right before you go to sleep that you have to do it all over again tomorrow. “Well, shit” …would be my goodnight to those non-days. I don’t say any good nights to the days now whether they are non or not because I don’t care take that stupid flame anymore. All in all, Although the days are confusing, they are pleasant, and I like that. 

The Amador County Community Center, Northern Branch, otherwise known as the “Center for Idiocy”, I’m surprised they don’t have a bus stop in front of my house for all the friends, neighbors, second family members, first family members, friends of friends, the emergencied, the bored, the paranoid, the drunk, the sober, and anyone simply looking to take a break from wherever they’re from, whatever they’re doing, whoever they’re ignoring, whenever they can, and why?....It’s a weird spot to be in since I don’t like people, and relish my privacy, yet I hear myself encouraging people to, “come by anytime, I’m always home.” I hate that there is someone always here, but I love when they drop by, or spend the night, or weekend, or have to park they car in my driveway for a couple of days (or months or years). I hand out my sarcastic council like a reverse mailman as each person comes by, and revel in the mostly mundane gossip about our little slice of the mountain, always hoping for the big story of the week to pop so I can call someone else and idiot. Maybe I just say I don’t like people, because it’s what I’ve always said, and probably will continue to say but I think I might be lying. 

It's almost a year since I moved up country to my new little hometown of Pioneer, but I started this life track in another semi-small town in the Bay Area called San Jose.

I remember the streets ending in fields that looked like the pictures of deserts I saw in books. Apple, Cherry, Peach, Plum and Pomegranate orchards could always be reached on my bicycle and I would lose my fool kid head in them every chance I could. Fond memories of my dad teaching me the constellations in the back yard of our home, while my brother and other assorted neighborhood kids rampaged through the pool in the cool summer nights. 15 years of living in the wonderment of an unexplored land, never wanting to come in for dinner, never wanting to go to bed, lest I miss a meteor and night upon night of exploring new neighborhoods and adjoining communities. This is where I grew up and those memories are the reason that I can still remember what was, and unfortunately what was to come.

Society changes, ideas die and the world moves on at a pace that I cannot fathom. The death of San Jose began in the 1970's with the onslaught of computers and Silicon Valley, and I was a willing participant in actuating and perpetuating it. For 30 years I tore up those fields and orchards, replacing them with concrete and asphalt, while my machines and vehicles polluted the air. Guiltily I would say..."This is my job; this is what I do." Using an aberration of the Nazi excuse..."I was only following orders." Year after year I worked while my friends went to college, got degrees, got married, had kids and did, not necessarily good things but less destructive things. Long days and long weeks I worked moving my destruction up and down the California coast, then inland, then mid-state, always looking for more open space to change into money. 25 years went by in a flash and I began to doubt what I did for a living, remembering what the place I lived in used to look like. Driving to new jobs I remember the summers I would go with Dad for the day and how he would show me the work he'd done before me; I would get excited when I saw my last name stamped into the sidewalk and run through the projects that had not been built yet.

Now I cringe as I drive passing our new projects and detouring around our old ones. I began to make suggestions and proposals to my boss/father about "Renovation" jobs instead of what we, as a company and a family, had become accustomed to. I was always met with his indifference, which almost equaled the indifference I received when I would show him my "hobby" of storytelling. I quit in 2010 at the age of 43, living like a drug addict, letting my house almost foreclose while selling my furniture for cigarettes and 7-11 burritos. But I felt different...and different was better than I had felt in a long time. These memories still seep into my cognitive mind...sometimes, and I push them out as fast as I can because I don't like the ending of that, or my, "story". It always ended with me saying..."I remember the orchards, they were beautiful." Or..."You could see the Milky Way!" Or..."The end of town was just past that street, nothing but open fields came after." I fear that I must let these memories, fond and not so fond, move on as the world does, but only because I cannot differentiate the two...they will be forever connected.

Then something happened tonight, I remembered where I live. The cold mountain air gave me back memories that had almost been consumed by the others. We had a cabin in the Sierras, just past Pioneer, that my Mom and Dad had built before I was born. This is also where I grew up, but it never dawned on me to think of it that way. I wasn't a concrete contractor up there, I was an Aparicio, this is where my family came from, and this is where they grew up. Decompressing usually happened on the trip up while the road home, listening to K.C.B.S. news, turned into preparation for next day at school, or the next day on the job. The days in between were spent roaming around the deep Sierran forests either by foot, jeep or motorcycle, fishing at the lakes or water skiing behind Dad's old 1969 Star fire boat. Even though I never liked to fish I would still go and watch my dad and Brother, understanding the “what and why” behind it. And even though I never liked water skiing, Dad would always let me drive the boat. The picture on the front of this website was taken at that lake...from that boat.

These days were filled with things to do, even if I didn't do them, but the nights were the most special. The card games, bat-catching down by the dam, cooking, extreme stargazing and the storytelling around the campfire would be the main driving force behind the day for me. Hearing about Jackson and Sutter Creek in the 1950's and the antic's they pulled with my grandma's and grandpas made me laugh so hard that I would go to bed willingly and with a smile. But listening to Mom and Dad, Aunts and Uncles, older cousins and neighbors tell their "non-kid" stories around the dinner table is where I cultivated my love for telling stories. I would fight sleep off, learning new words, trying to hear the end of their shenanigans, always waking up with the surprise of morning.

The place became my haven. So, I get out of my Jeep tonight and accidentally look up, something I'd been forgetting to do this year. I see the Milky Way in all its ancient grandeur, then the smell of pine hits my nose and while I exhale, I watch my breath dissipate slowly into nothing. Something cracks in the woods surrounding my house and for a moment I remember a story my older cousin told me about a saber-tooth tiger that used to live in these parts and it all comes rushing back to me. "This is what I'm doing here." I say, like I always do, to myself while remembering why I moved here. I've always said that my life is either a third over, or two thirds over in respect to age and the mileage I've put on my shell of a body, but now...tonight that turns into a three-act play. First Act: Exposition and introduction of the protagonist. Second Act: Protagonist reaches his lowest point. Third Act: Equilibrium returns and resolution is obtained. How perfectly it fits, in this perfect place during this perfect time. Tonight, I stayed out in my meadow for an hour, just looking up at the stars and waiting for the saber-toothed tiger to show his scaredy-cat face so I can get an update on what's been going on since I forgot about him.

My house is alive again with movement and sound as I sit here trying to figure out what the hell I should wax poetic on today. I am not bothered so much as being distracted sitting at my pseudo-writing area that doubles as my dining room table...which still to this day has not been used as an actual “Dining Table". So, I sit, waiting to be enthused about something said or something done. Two hours pass as I drink my stupidly large wine glass full of something somebody else fixed for me. It vaguely tastes like vodka and I am not completely sure what it is...but at this point it really doesn't matter.

Another day another fucking party, which is my hell. The sun hit's my eyes through the blinds, surprising me with the change of season while the girls fix dinner chattering away like a couple of chickens. "Bock, bock, bock, bock, bock, bock...." I do my best imitation of a chicken that somehow ALWAYS pisses women off when they are talking. A piece of ice hits me in the head acting like a muse and changing the music to "The Alarm" singing their song "Sixty-Eight Guns”, from the past that acted like a battle cry for us at Mitty when there was booze or girls around. It reminds me of when I went to see Bob Parker, a fellow soccer player, at his college while I was at mine. It was just a scant twenty-minute drive up one of the crowded Los Angeles freeways to get to UCLA where the first televised concert for MTV was happening. It's good to see someone I know so far away from High School, being the only one to be sent somewhere I didn't get into, so I finally get the feeling that I belong again. We sit and drink our drinks in the packed parking lot, getting ready for the concert like most nineteen-year-olds did, reminiscing about the times we spent at high school, and how very far we've come since then...which seemed to me like a lifetime. The craziness that was happening in that parking lot reminded me about the parties I used to go to, and host. Blatant sexuality and drunkenness filled my eyes and ears putting me in the mood for my second concert ever. Wading through the crowd, swimming our way toward the stage, I lose Bob and his friends as the waves of screaming teenager/adults crash around us, sending me to the bottom of the beach like usual. This is when I lose it. This is the point when I created my phobia about crowds, as I was tossed and turned, trying to make my way to the surface, failing numerous times, finding myself next to a pole. All hope of finding my friends were gone as I looked over the voracious crowd that had a movement that seemed like a snake. Twisting back and forth I hold on to the pole in hopes that I won't be swallowed again, sending me to certain death. "Watch out Man!" Is screamed in my ear, and by the time I turn around the voice is already by me, shimming up the pole, looking like drunken Koala, that now I see camera's on to record the concert.

The Alarm starts the song with a necessary MTV, over produced, corny crash. I lose my fear for a second as my head, like everyone else's turns towards the stage...we all start singing the song. A warning from someone in the crowd screams..."He's Falling!" I don't connect the scream with the song until I remember the Koala. I look up to see him lose his grip, right underneath the camera's and watch as he falls, making a horrifying thud ten feet from me. A new feeling of fleeing fills my bones as I quickly turn and power-walk through the crowd out to my car. Leaving my friends and hoping that I will not be on MTV news.

Driving south I hit Hwy 110, hoping the guy that fell is ok, while envisioning what the people at home saw...The momentous start of an MTV daytime concert, watching the band playing their most awesome song while the crowd bucked and swayed to the first couple of cords...then a big drunken, Koala-like face that scares the little kids watching this very young channel. In a second that face disappears, leaving the scene like it was before. The crowd, but only a section, turn for a second in tragic awe, living the moment like they knew him until the chorus starts again. The song continues through the second verse as that section turns back around, forgetting about their Australian marsupial-like comrade. If you look close at that broadcast, you can see way in the background, beyond the throngs of college students, through the trees and past the security, someone leaving the venue looking like he's in a power-walking instructional video.

The phone startles me pulling me out of my computer once again. It rings three times before I scream. “Pick up the goddamned phone!” I am screaming at no one. I realize this when the answering machine picks up the call. Still in a dazed fugue, I walk over and pick up the phone. It’s my houseguest, needing a ride back to my house. “Where is everybody?!” I yell at her as the full impact of finally getting some time alone in my home has been wasted preparing my computer for School. I don’t hear her answer, I don’t hear her at all because now I am concerned about the last couple of seconds of freedom I will have. “Ok, I’ll be there.” I say and hang up, wondering if that was what she called about. I stop and close some programs on my computer, then I freeze, listening to the complete calm of a forgotten empty home. The neighbors dogs are barking again, barking still, but they are far enough away to be just an ambient part of this mountain, my new home. Still not moving I take in the lost quiet, slowly getting angry that I’ve wasted it. That’s when the house plays a cruel trick on me and clicks off the refrigerator. Now it is quiet. I remember this quiet, I remember and wonder why I purposely ruined it. I can hear a car begin to make its slow meander around the back streets of my community, I can picture it as it makes the first turn, then the second, then like magic it appears in front of my house and makes the turn on the main road in an attempt to escape. I grab my keys and walk out onto my deck, listening to the door latch as the car sound slowly trail off toward Highway 88. In the dark meadow in front of my house, something small makes its way toward something it wants and I listen to its trek. No dog noises, no brainless young people fighting, no adult conversations that are too loud, no television or radio noises, no yelling, no cursing, no distractions from this immediate night. “Fuck!” I say to my friend in the meadow, telling him in a summary of sorts, of how I feel about having people around me all the time. Shaking my head horizontally I walk around my deck to go pick her up and bring her back. I have completely wasted this precious time because my escapism was working when it didn’t have to. The thing in the meadow hears another curse word that bounces off the trees and on into the quiet colors of the night.