The Black Sage Journal

  South Bakersfield and I’m on the wrong side of the railroad tracks again. I’m not lost and I didn’t take a wrong turn. It was a deliberate choice to come here. The smattering of dhabas that punctuate this broken stretch of road home to trucking companies, taco stands, and skeezy bars brought me here. The magnetism of roadside dal, paneer, and curry is a potent, epicurean draw. In my blue collared shirt, green club tie, and mustard-hued dress slacks, I’m an anomaly here. Moving amongst husky fellows in oily jump suits, leathery farm hands, and dark, exotic men chattering away in Hindi , I feel like I’ve breached exclusive space. Like I’m not good enough to be here. Or perhaps it’s the opposite. I realize how egotistical that might sound, but I don’t know how else to explain the social discomfort from the flipped script. But no one gives me the side-eye. I’m invisible. And even if I wasn’t, it wouldn’t really deter me. I’m on a pilgrimage of sorts, a personal Kumbh Mela to the sa...

  This piece was first published in Volume 25 of Sky Island Journal . An encounter with a coyote one evening on a local trail was both the inspiration and a reminder of the burden I've been carrying around for a number of decades.  Coyote Ugly The canid materialized from the brush and onto the fire road in front of me like an apparition. Until he emerged into the clearing, I hadn’t noticed him. He moved invisibly through the gray-brown chaparral, his muted coat the perfect cloaking device for one whose existence depends upon stealth and surprise. Standing perhaps twenty yards distant, he was large and lithe as coyotes ought to be. I immediately paused when I saw him. Not out of apprehension, but instead awe and admiration. Coyote yelps, barks, and howls are commonplace in this place, but the boisterous culprits usually prefer to remain anonymous and unseen.  The coyote briefly paused too and looked my way. Not out of awe and admiration, but instead apprehension. The hoots...

  Mitch Robbins : Danny was embarrassed to tell the class what my job is. Barbara Robbins : They’re nine. They get excited about the guy who gives them change at the arcade. You just happen to have one of those jobs that’s difficult to… Mitch Robbins : …believe that a grown man does without losing his mind. I mean, what is my job? I mean, I sell advertising time on the radio. So basically, I sell air. At least my father was an upholsterer, he made a sofa or a couch, you sit on, it was something tangible. What can I point to? Where’s my work? It’s air! ~City Slickers I’ve decided that I like physical labor. Swinging the pick axe until I’m panting hard and my shoulders ache. Shoveling dirt until sweat drips from my face and stings my eyes. Ripping up sod in the cool morning air. Attacking militant weeds, edging an unruly lawn, re-staining a weather-faded fence, and fixing non-functioning fixtures. I really don’t mind doing any of it. In fact, I quite enjoy it. It’s an expedient to a ...

  Friday Night. It’s a beautifully warm evening at Tuttle Creek campground in the Alabama Hills. The encroaching night has taken the edge off the day's sweltering heat. Stars blink brightly above the eastern escarpment of the Sierra Nevada. The waxing crescent moon hangs in the darkening sky. Across the dirt access road, in campsite no. 3 sits a solitary old man reading a book. A motorcycle is parked at the entrance to his site. He waved to us as we pulled in and then again as we walked back to the camp entrance to register our site. We waved back at him. After we set up and got situated, we crossed the road to offer him a beer. It seemed like the neighborly thing to do. Not knowing him or his tastes, we gave him options. A nice craft beer from a local brewery or a mass-produced can of suds from Trader Joe's. He contemplated his choice for a moment before reaching for the can of craft beer. He held it lovingly in his hands as we began to talk. He was 71 years old with a comfort...

  That rangey boy  with wild hair and eyes, scampering across golden fields, ducking in and out of hollows, scooping up polliwogs  in the ditches that lined the gravel lanes. An uncorrupted spirit,  exuberant in the dream world of freedom and ideas.  That boy was a poet.

  Drive west on Sunset to the see Turn that jungle music down Just before we're out of town. ~Babylon Sisters, Steely Dan Just northwest of Chinatown, immediately adjacent to where the Harbor and Hollywood freeways become a Gordian knot, Cesar Chavez Avenue quietly becomes Sunset Boulevard, one of LA’s most famed arteries. Traveling northward from this transition point, Sunset passes through the neighborhoods of Angeleno Heights, Echo Park, Silver Lake, and Thai Town before crossing the Hollywood Freeway and piercing the heart of Tinsel Town. If you keep driving west, this windy strip of asphalt will take you through gay West Hollywood, the posh Holmby Hills, the UCLA campus in leafy Westwood, and finally to the Pacific Palisades where the blue Pacific ocean crashes against the continent behind Gladstones restaurant.   At the corner of Sunset and Silver Lake Boulevard, a bright lavender building houses Café Tropical, a Cuban café and bakery. I pull onto a side street, sto...

  Hullabaloo, and howdy doo! Musty prawns, and Timbucktu! Yeltsy-by, and hibbety-hoo! Kick 'em in the dishpan! Hoo, hoo, hoo!! ~Eustace Bagge, Courage the Cowardly Dog Almost cut my hair It happened just the other day It's gettin' kinda long I coulda said it was in my way But I didn't and I wonder why I feel like letting my freak flag fly ~Almost Cut My Hair, Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young A few years back, while I was busy yelling at a cloud one day, a compatriot of mine started referring to me as a grumpy old man. I was taken back a bit by that accusation. Sure, I’m old (in a comparative sort of way), but grumpy? Perhaps I was grumbling at the time, but I certainly didn’t feel grumpy. I wasn’t scowling. And I wasn’t rude or belligerent or mad or unhappy. So what made my friend perceive me as grumpy? Just because I said out loud what I was thinking? Because I dared to call a dark cloud a dark cloud? In the past, I would have never been accused of such a crime. From m...