Nobody's Property Chapter 1 a Free PDF

You can now download a PDF of the first chapter of my book Nobody's Property: Living on the Remains of a Life in California for FREE. View Chapter 1 PDF in Google Docs.

Nobody's Property now live on Podiobooks.com

Listeners can now subscribe to the remastered version of my free audiobook Nobody's Property: Living on the Remains of a Life in California on Podiobooks.com. I am working on scanning pictures and other ephemera from Jenny/Rose's trunk and on providing a free PDF of each chapter. Find the pictures and chapters on my living on the remains page.

Nobody's Property Re-Release!

Yes, there has been no new writing lately. I've been remastering the audio files for Nobody's Property in preparation for the book's launch on Podiobooks.com. Look for it this coming Monday, March 7!

What I Saw in California Episode 05: Two Walks

Summer: I walk past the Balboa park BART station, here in the south-central outskirts of San Francisco. This place is not on the maps of the city that you see in the travel pages or in guidebooks; usually it gets cut off just below the Mission. This is the last stop before Daly City. It is a place eviscerated by freeways, BART tracks, MUNI lines—bypassed, razor-wired, forgotten. But people live here, and on the side streets you can see sherbet-colored stucco bungalows built before World War II. The place is like a jigsaw puzzle made up of mismatched pieces from different boxes. You can’t put it together.

Carl Linnaeus quoted in Curious Universe, from the University of Montreal. Read more about Linnaeus in this Wikipedia article, or in this tribute from Smithsonian online.

Music from ccMixter: "I Need Something," by copperhead, featuring Admiral Bob, WillemWillem, Norm Peterson, and Robert Siekawitch; and "In the Garden," by snowflake.

You can view the license which governs the music used, as well as this podcast, here.

What I Saw in California Episode 04: Atascadero

My instinct, mid-stream in the molasses flow of late-afternoon San Francisco traffic, was to just keep moving. This was getting us nowhere. Mom sat beside me listlessly looking out the car window while I steered us around and around, trying to make out the logic of this neighborhood: a tangle of pockmarked city streets, overpasses, skyways, and gracelessly aging industrial buildings that housed sweatshops and auto mechanics. Here and there an artist had carved out a space in all the late-industrial jumble, but SoMa, that amalgam of material desire and millennial longing, hadn't been invented yet. It was still just South of Market.

Music from ccMixter: "I Need Something," by copperhead, featuring Admiral Bob, WillemWillem, Norm Peterson, and Robert Siekawitch; and "What It Takes To Be Me," by Alex Beroza, featuring FORENSIC and Nicolas Kern.

You can view the license which governs the music used, as well as this podcast, here.

What I Saw in California Episode 03: Thunderbird

I measure the imported rice, squeeze the plum tomatoes and chop them, chop the flat-leaf parsley and rosemary from the garden, the garlic, the onion. I grate the cheese and dice the celery, drizzle olive oil into a heavy casserole, eyeballing the measure. In go the garlic and celery. Dinner will be tomato parmesan risotto and rabbit with white wine sauce. The rabbit pieces are soaking in cold water in a clear glass bowl in the deep stainless sink. I lift each piece out and let it drip, then put it on paper towels I have spread on the granite counter. When all of the bits of the small body are arranged on the towels, like words in a poem, it makes me feel faintly ill to look at them. But I pat them dry as the recipe directs, then add them to the olive oil, garlic, and celery waiting in the casserole dish. I put the lid on (it makes a muffled ringing sound as it slides into place) and turn on the gas. It lights in a blue-and-orange burst and settles into two concentric blue rings. I turn it as low as it will go.

Music from ccMixter: "More Water," by airtone, featuring Adisa McKenzie; and "I Need Something," by copperhead, featuring Admiral Bob, WillemWillem, Norm Peterson, and Robert Siekawitch.

You can view the license which governs the music used, as well as this podcast, here.

What I Saw in California Episode 02: Domestic Water

Up at Pulgas Ridge Megadog and I walk the Cordilleras Trail past the multiple-addiction rehab center tucked at the edge of San Francisco Water Department land. This open space, reserved for hikers and their dogs, is flanked by the rehab on one side and the county mental health services on the other. Sometimes we see guys playing basketball out in back of the rehab building, its tile roof and pale stucco walls aging with Katherine Hepburn style under California live oaks. Sometimes we see them tending their garden, where tomatoes still ripen on the vine on into the fall. Occasionally, they are out playing cards in the morning heat, or washing cars to raise funds for the center. Today, no one.

Music from ccMixter by copperhead: "I Need Something;" and by Alex Beroza: "Too Young," featuring snowflake.

View the license under which this music is used.