Negotiate!

The sunglasses.

On the Tumbling Rock Trail...

... I was wearing dark glasses with yellowish lenses. On the way back, I took the glasses off and suddenly all that gray-looking quartzite rock popped into technicolor. All that purple and rose with tinges of lichen green!









What a crazy thing! Taking those sunglasses off was like dropping acid.

These pictures — all done with an iPhone — were taken at Devil's Lake.

Although I am wearing a white windbreaker and black sunglasses...

... it does not mean I am one of you.



I've read too much Greek Mythology not to find that a little scary.

Madonna: I am Michael Jackson.

Jackson died, and — don't you see? — it's all about Madonna. Her 5-minute speech at the MTV Video Music Awards:

Michael Jackson was born in August 1958. So was I. Michael Jackson grew up in the suburbs of the Midwest. So did I. Michael Jackson had eight brothers and sisters. So do I. When Michael Jackson was six, he became a superstar, and was perhaps the world’s most beloved child. When I was six, my mother died. I think he got the shorter end of the stick. I never had a mother, but he never had a childhood. And when you never get to have something, you become obsessed by it.

I spent my childhood searching for my mother figures. Sometimes I was successful, but how do you recreate your childhood when you are under the magnifying glass of the world?

She tells about the time she tried to befriend the ultra-strange superstar:

I asked him out to dinner, I said “My treat, I’ll drive — just you and me.”

I'll drive. Ha ha.

He agreed and showed up to my house without any bodyguards. We drove to the restaurant in my car. It was dark out, but he was still wearing sunglasses.

Just one more reason why you need to do the driving.

I said, “Michael, I feel like I’m talking to a limousine. Do you think you can take off your glasses so I can see your eyes?”

I feel like I’m talking to a limousine. Ha ha. Brilliant. I wonder if Madonna really does come up with  lines like that in real time or some great comic writer punched up the dialogue. Dead men correct no quotes.

Then he tossed the glasses out the window, looked at me with a wink and a smile and said, “Can you see me now? Is that better?”

[I]n that moment, I could see both his vulnerability and his charm. The rest of the dinner, I was hellbent on getting him to eat French fries, drink wine, have dessert and say bad words. Things he never seemed to allow himself to do. 

What a goody-two-shoes that guy was! Imagine getting lessons in how to be bad from Madonna.

Later we went back to my house to watch a movie and sat on the couch like two kids, and somewhere in the middle of the movie, his hand snuck over and held mine.

It felt like he was looking for more of a friend than a romance, and I was happy to oblige. In that moment, he didn’t feel like a superstar. He felt like a human being.

Who knew the peak moment of Michael Jackson's life was the moment Madonna made him feel — at last! — human?

We went out a few more times together, and then for one reason or another we fell out of touch. 

Dead men tell no anecdotes.

(Here's video of Madonna's speech.)

At the Sunglass Cloud Café...

... accumuluslate your thoughts.