[sic]

Forty-six seconds of Pumpkin enjoying breakfast specifically and life in general, this clip documents what has to be a serious contender for the title of Happiest Most Satisfied Sound Ever, and I’m lucky in that I get to hear it every morning.

I sat down on Friday to enjoy a persimmon and a guava, and brought my trusty little lockback pocket knife with which to slice them. The persimmon and the guava were part of a bag of backyard goodness my friend and neighbor David brought over. The knife, pictured below previously belonged to our tenant Joe, and was discovered in a fishing tackle box of his that I found in the basement a year or two after he died in 2008. I’ve kept it nearby ever since. It’s a great little knife.

I didn’t realize it’s above-average attributes until I brought it with me one recent Saturday to the Rio Hondo College and as I was sitting at a table with others in my class and using it to slice up an apple, a fellow student picked it up and commented on it. He read the “Japan” stamped near the base of the less-than-two-inch-long blade, and was impressed, remarking that this must be a vintage knife as it’s rare nowadays that such a small blade would be made with Japanese steel. Stamped above the “Japan” is “440 C Stainless,” which I later came to learn is the highest quality 440 stainless steel.

It made me appreciate the knife even more.

Back to the persimmon and the guava on Friday. Turns out I didn’t even need the knife because the persimmon was so ripe you could eat it like an apple or tomato — the guava the same way. I followed those up with a store-bought grapefruit and again the little knife wasn’t used because it was too small to quarter up the fruit’s large diameter.

Afterwards, I took the paper plate upon which the inedible fruit bits sat and I scraped them off into the nonrecyclable trash bin before putting the plate in the recyclable bin. Unknown to me then was that I’d placed the knife on the plate and piled the rinds and stuff atop it and scraped it into the trash, too.

It was about 24 hours later, when I decided to have another persimmon and guava and grapefruit that I realized the knife was missing. It was not in its usual place by my desk. It was not on the table by my chair in the livingroom, and I went into the usual dark funk whenever something of mine is not where it’s supposed to be. Of course, I also was quick to say what my mom has always called The Magic Prayer: “Nothing is lost. It is simply not revealed,” but my heart wasn’t in it. Logically, I checked under and around my desk and my livingroom chair, Illogically I checked places the knife would never be: upstairs, outside in the backyard. Finally it dawned on me it might be in the trash, so Saturday afternoon, I did some searching of the containers in the kitchen and the cans on the side of the house. Still, no knife.

So I groused and I fumed and I frowned and I nashed and I looked again in all the logical places I’d looked before, and again in the illogical places, too. Then this morning I wrote the following on my Facebook page:

With apologies to WH Auden, stop all the clocks and shut off the phone… this is me obsessing: My absolute favorite pocket knife has maddeningly gone missing and its disappearance happened at some point after using it to slice some fruit either yesterday or the day before (I’m not sure which). Compounding my frustration is that the fruit was either ripe enough not to need slicing (persimmon and guava) or too big for the pocket knife’s short blade to be effective (grapefruit). Having searched in all the places it might be (as well as many places it absolutely wouldn’t), I then did a cursory and unsuccessful search of the discarded garbage, my fear being I accidentally pitched it with some other trash. But I’m afraid I’m going to have to don some makeshift biohazard gear and dive in deep to the budding repulsive compost-in-training for a more complete examination that leaves nary a broken eggshell, turkey bone, coffee ground, nor grapefruit rind unturned. Few things frustrate and fixate me more than a cherished thing that’s just up and vanished, so like I said, silence all the pianos and stop the dog from barking… this is me obsessing.

After getting back from a wonderful 3.5-mile hike in Griffith Park with Susan and Ranger, I finally rolled up my sleeves and plugged up my nose and this afternoon dove determinedly into the outdoor cans. Damn the stench and the stickiness and the sog and the yuck and the muck I was going to go piece by piece until I found it, or threw up trying.

And I did. No, I didn’t upchuck. I found it. When I lifted the three-day-old remains of our Thanksgiving turkey, there it was sitting in a damp and dank bed of coffee grounds.

And I wrote this on Facebook and posted the above photo:

Start the clocks back up and turn on the phones… This is me no longer obsessing over my gone-missing absolute favorite American Valor 440 Stainless Japan steel pocket knife, pictured here after it was recovered from the trash into which I so unknowingly and ignominiously discarded it. And no I did not literally cry for joy when I found it under the turkey carcass and covered in coffee grounds. I just smiled in relief.

Nothing is lost. It is simply not revealed.

May I present to you 35 seconds of our calico cat Patches being… Patches. There is a perfectly and freshly filled bowl of water not 12 feet away, but after I finished the breakfast dishes and accidentally left the water trickling from the kitchen faucet, Patchy opted to hop on up into the wet sink and slake her unquenchable thirst with absolutely no regard and/or problem with the fact that in order for the water to get into her mouth she had to let it course down the side of her head.

To break the monotony of her 5′x5′ backyard hutch, I’ll let our Russian tortoise Buster out to explore. But contrary to what you might think about tortoises being slow, I have to keep an eye on her when she’s out because she moves often with a purpose and at a pretty good clip, for a tortoise, at least (seriously, there have been times where I’ve let her out of my sight for a couple minutes and I come back and she’s nowhere near where I last saw her).

Anyway… in this clip, Buster attempts to cross over a line of river rocks in the backyard and in doing so teaches two very important lessons about perseverance, which is the hallmark of Chelonian species who’ve been persevering on this planet from more than 200 million years:

1. If at first you fail, do it again, and if you fail again, do it again
2. No matter how ill-equipped we may seem to be, we can overcome obstacles before us.

And listen to ambient electronica while they do. So there.

Since the May 2 orientation, I’ve had to get a fair number of Rio Hondo College ducks in a row in preparation for my first day, June 6.

Last on my list was: haircut. But of course there’s a backstory. Not counting a slight trim in a salon shortly before leaving for our vacation in Thailand and Cambodia in March 2011, my last time setting foot in a barbershop for your typical regular haircut was February 2010.  This was due in part to my getting a buzz-cutting kit at Costco, and deciding to try my hand at DIY barbering, which I got pretty comfortable with along the sides and back of my head. Not so much with the top.

As a result the top just grew and grew and grew, until I had something like 10-inch-long unruly follicles that I did my best to keep plastered back and down either with hats, or with a combined overuse of haircare products.

Frankly the long hair was more trouble than it was worth, but it was my long hair dammit. And I was quite enamored with it since its ceaseless growth was occurring at an age when some men have long got over having lost theirs.

But then came the decision in August 2011 to thrust myself into a this new environment and I knew my ‘do was a don’t.

But getting the ‘do done in proved to be the easiest thing for me to put off, and it kept getting pushed down the list of priorities — past the combination lock — until it finally had nowhere left to go.

Now from a barbershop perspective, my go-to place had been Tony’s in the shopping center on Glendale Boulevard and Fletcher in Silver Lake, a couple miles from me. I started going there when I moved to Silver Lake in the winter of 2003 and was a faithful customer up until 2010, when I embarked on the good ship Cut Your Own. And my barber there had been a wonderful old gent named Louie, who was in his 80s (but looked to be in his 60s) and was not only a genial old-school barber but also always gave me a great cut.

As that was two-plus years ago,  I decided to call and make sure Louie hadn’t retired, and if not find out what coming day he would be working. Tony picked up the phone, and to be polite: Tony’s a character. He’s ornery and short-fused and he proved it on several occasions when I’d be in there being attended to by Louie. One time he got in to a full blown shouting match with a customer and kicked him out. I think Tony’s motto is “The customer’s not just always wrong but full of shit, too.”

So Tony answers the phone and I tell him it’s been a while, and that I was wondering if Louie was still there. Straight away, Tony starts breaking my balls.

“Ooooooh, Louie? Yeah… let’s see. Well, here’s how it is. Louie’s about 90 years old now. And for Louie to cut your hair we’d have to go to his house and get him and bring him back here.”

I look at the keypad of my phone wondering if there’s a *69 type combo I can punch to block bullshit.

Instead I cringe and risk further Wrath Of Tony by following up with “Do you mean he’s not in today or… uh, he’s no longer working there?”

“Ooooooh, you’re not getting the picture are you? Let me see if I can explain it more clearly: See, Louie’s about 90 years old now. And for Louie to cut your hair we’d have to go to his house and get him and bring him back here.”

Clearly when Tony repeats the same sentence that qualifies to Tony as giving me the clearer picture — even though of course it didn’t clear anything up. But I took the hint and stayed silent admiring how so basic a question could so set Tony to baloney mode.

Maybe sensing he’d ornery’d on me a wee bit too much, he eased off and  invited me to come in, somewhat in the way Count Dracula bids Jonathan Harker entry to his castle. “Come on in. I’m here,” he said. “Ramon is here. Either one of us can take care of you.”

I started to say for that to happen I’d need him to come to my house and bring me back there Louis-style, but instead just thanked him and hung up.

So instead I went to Figurin’s, a shop literally around the corner from our house that I should’ve been going to since I moved in with Susan in the summer of 2004. But never did — and I’m not really sure why.

Better late than never, I took a farewell snap of my long locks then traipsed over there. Covered up and ready, I snapped a pre-during shot there in the chair and then in less than 30 minutes with the skilled hands of the very much Louie-like proprietor I was traipsing home fully satisfied to snap my Rio Hondo-ready ‘do.

Preface: You are being duly warned that this is an odd rambling post about the throwback Citizen wristwatch I’m presently wearing, brought about by the sudden and surprise arrival of a 1988 photo of me — sent and taken by my friend Joel Ordesky (that he found while searching for other pics) — in which I happen to be wearing the first Citizen I ever owned. You should also prepare yourself before continuing beyond the jump for the mint-green sweaterlishousness I was wearing in said photo, plus the fact that I was once young with nary a gray hair on my wrinkle-free head that still sported a baby face some of whose original parts were lost six years later in my motorcycle accident:

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