The Black Sage Journal

  Golden Hell By: Noah Christian Rapture Still and silent Breath like the moon Sour lemon Erect she stands Equally I lay Eyes paralyzed Mouth agape. Soaked up to my waist Wading in wet Sweat painting a river Drowning my face. Sun pillar tongue Flesh blazing like stars Summer plums Rotting before dawn. Fever induced Appetite asleep She is the condor I am the meat. About the author - Noah Christian is a multidisciplinary artist from Los Angeles by way of Nashville by way of Los Angeles. His passions lie in performative music, photography, and poetry. You can connect with him on Instagram @_nc142 and @noahnathaniel_

  In order to protect the public and ensure that I am not a drunk, unethical, bigoted malpractice case just waiting to happen, the State Bar of California requires me to complete 25 hours of mandatory continuing legal education (MCLE) every three years. Of that 25 total hours, at least 4 hours must be in ethics, 2 hours must cover the elimination of bias, and 1 hour must address mental health and substance abuse (or as the Bar euphemistically calls it, “competence issues”). At least half of all coursework must be “participatory.” You can’t just pretend to listen to a program as you’re driving down the road or simply read an article on some topic obliquely related to the law. Instead, you have to physically attend a conference or seminar or participate in a live webinar.  The opportunity to get MCLE credits abound. A helpful, yet avaricious industry has sprung up to provide these courses to attorneys in need. My inbox fills up with offers of assistance from these vultures annually as th

  The other day I heard someone use the expression “put your John Hancock here.” I’ve obviously heard that phrase used many time in my life just like everyone else. It’s a commonly-used idiom that means “please put your signature on this document.” The phrase is an allusion to John Hancock, the first signator to the Declaration of Independence, who deliberately made his signature on that document excessively prominent so that King George would be able to read his name. It was a “fuck you” to the British monarch on top of a “fuck you” to the British monarch. And it had resonance. So much so that almost 250 years later, we’re still referencing it in our daily speech.  As significant as Hancock’s act is from a historical perspective, the phrase it spawned is antiquated. It’s one of those hokey grandmaisms like “get off your high horse” or “living high on the hog” that has been repeated so often that it is now engrained in our vernacular. Use any of those phrases with the current generatio

Every summer when I was young, my family would vacation in southern Alberta. The neighborhood kids I called my friends all thought it was quite exotic, but the reality was more ordinary. My parents were both from Raymond, a small farming town on the prairie that, aside from its dirt roads and residents who had the habit of ending every sentence with the interjection “eh?,” wasn’t much different than any small town in America. In fact, because of western Canadians’ contempt for the French-speaking eastern provinces that forced them to suffer the indignity of bilingual milk cartons, they viewed themselves as more American than Canadian. So going to Canada for vacation was about as alien and romantic as going to Tehachapi. For my parents, it was an obligation. We typically tried to schedule our visit around the first of July, the Canadian equivalent of Independence Day. That was when aunts, uncles, and cousins that I knew of but didn’t really know all made the pilgrimage to dusty Raymond

  My pops has been dead for almost two years now. I was angry at him for those two years too. Not because he died. He held no sway over death. No one does. I was angry at my dad because he didn’t live. Or at least he didn’t live my definition of the term. It was a dark emotion to carry around, particularly given how raw his passing still was. It isn’t proper to feel anger at someone who has recently passed. Sympathy and sadness are the only officially-approved emotions. As a child in particular, you don’t have the right to be mad at a dead parent. Regardless of age. The culturally-engrained and reinforced parent-child hierarchy forbids that kind of rebellion. So I knew my feelings were both impolite and inappropriate. But I just couldn’t help myself. My disobedient spirit wouldn’t allow me to simply let my dad lie.    Before dad died, I knew that day was on the near horizon. Dad had been diagnosed with inoperable and incurable cancer and had quickly been placed on hospice care. The can

Carl Spackler : So I jump ship in Hong Kong and I make my way over to Tibet, and I get on as a looper at a course over in the Himalayas. Angie D. Annunzio : A looper? Carl Spackler : A looper, you know, a caddy, a looper, a jock. So I tell them I’m a pro jock, and who do you think they give me? The Dalai Lama himself. Twelfth son of the Lama. The flowing robes, the grace, bald…striking. So, I’m on the first tee with him. I give him the driver. He hauls off and whacks one – big hitter the Lama – long, into a ten-thousand foot crevasse, right at the base of this glacier. Do you know what the Lama says? Gunga galunga…gunga, gunga-lagunga. So we finish the eighteenth and he’s gonna stiff me. And I say, “Hey Lama, hey, how about a little something, you know, for the effort, you know.” And he says, “Oh, uh, there won’t be any money, but when you die, on your deathbed, you will receive total consciousness.” So I go that goin’ for me, which is nice. _________________________________________

  "If you're honest, you sooner or later have to confront your values.  Then you're forced to separate what is right from what is merely legal.  This puts you metaphysically on the run. America is full of metaphysical outlaws." -Tom Robbins, Still Life with Woodpecker I don’t now recall exactly when I met Frank, but it must have been around 1977 when I was in the 9th grade. Frank didn’t live in my neighborhood and wasn’t a member of “the Ward” so I must have met him at school or through mutual friends. When we first connected, he lived a couple of miles away with his divorcee mom in a small condominium at the corner of Murray Holiday Road and Wander Lane.  I wasn’t very worldly at the time and neither were most of my pals. In large part, that was a result of my conservative upbringing. My parents were both good and obedient members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints and they were grooming me and my siblings to be the same. Consequently, my friends were