Remain

Constellations

2012-01-16T05:40:00.000-08:00

"The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness."

~ John Muir

A Green Grace

2012-01-01T09:25:00.000-08:00

The mountains rise up like great green tidal waves, a chlorophyll canopy dancing in the sunlight, resting beneath the moon.

Ancient songs pass through me, incantations of era’s past and present wafting through the deciduous deluge.

I follow this vein, letting it carry me through stream and stem, observing every stone and cone placed before me on this path.

Daynight

2011-10-23T06:29:00.000-07:00

Pale blue light creeps in,
the drawn black curtain losing ground
as twilight slowly ticks by.
Daylight hums just beyond the folds.

Daynight lingers within these walls.
Specters still crouch in the corners,
haunting loose floorboards
and unoiled hinges.

Bones grow restless.
Legs slide and stretch.

The burden of consciousness
swoops in like a vulture,
picking over the entrails
of half forgotten nightmares
and oft-regurgitated failures.

Covers tossed aside,
feet meditating on the
mediated spaces to come.

The veil is lifted.
Earth stretches out before you
with the kind of resplendent beauty
normally reserved for the sacred.

Birdsongs ring out.
Ancient tomes being sung
in a language
not yet remembered.

Imagination takes flight.

The day has just begun
yet night is already
a passing apparition.

RainFall

2011-10-14T04:10:00.000-07:00

Out Of Mind

2011-09-18T17:26:00.000-07:00

It was a quick scramble up the trail with the light fading fast. I knew I could make it to the rock overlook before dark. Arrival. Took time to sit and meditate while facing a beautiful forested valley. It was good to get out of my mind.

Owl calls rose above the canopy. Night had come.

I descended back into the valley with only my headlamp blazing the trail before me. Bats swooped in low, me ducking a couple of times for fear that my head might be mistaken for a meal.

In Remembrance

2011-09-11T18:12:00.000-07:00

I’m still waiting for the narrative to change. Still waiting for some perspective to be brought into the dialogue. Looks like ten years isn’t enough, I’ll try back in another ten.

For now, let the flags wave, the speeches drag on and the tall tale telling continue.

We’ve made fear into a diseased blanket we drape on the shoulders of foe and friend alike.

Beeing

2011-08-30T18:19:00.000-07:00

Max Patch

2011-08-21T20:26:00.000-07:00

Not Quite Blue

2011-07-05T04:22:00.000-07:00

It took me a month to make it into the hills. Between a new "full time" job and acclimating to this funky city in which I now live (Asheville) I just couldn't find the time for a proper escape.

The Fourth was an open window and I jumped through it. Drove way up the Blue Ridge Parkway to a popular spot called Graveyard Fields (sounds ominous, it wasn't).

Ended up hiking a few more miles than anticipated but I felt great and the weather pretty much cooperated (while eating lunch I watched huge thunderheads build on the range just to south of me).

Passed huge stretches of wild blueberries and blackberries at varying points along the trail. It was still too early in the season to harvest.

Guess I'll have to join the tourists and bears in a month or so to get my fill.

Some "not quite blue" berries.

A huge storm receding from this gorgeous valley left room for the Sun to illuminate this giant sleeping rock.

Shades of Grey

2011-05-19T09:21:00.000-07:00

Chaos

2011-05-15T15:04:00.000-07:00

Lots Of Death

2011-05-03T20:01:00.000-07:00

Bin Laden’s dead (or so they say). I sat quietly in the nook as the t.v. flickered images of jubilant youth chanting inane slogans and engaging in flagrant displays of uber-nationalistic disgust only a truly brainwashed child of the flag could appreciate.

What I didn’t realize right up until this very moment was that so many of those faces on the screen, faces that belonged to humans almost a decade younger than me, were 10 years old when the towers fell on September 11th.

That means that perhaps these kids were acting out nothing more than the rage, hatred, bitterness, helplessness, divisiveness and fear that have been so much a part of there upbringing for the last decade. They are the direct product of their parents’ reactions (and the indirect product of their elders inaction). They are the national lightning rod, the societal barometer of our national hopes, dreams and fears. This is the future acting out the past in the very real present.

Is this what it might have looked like for the generation that would eventually go on to become soldiers in Hitler’s Nazi party? Is this what a decade of fear, ignorance, lies, apathy, powerlessness, bigotry, and outright scummery has wrought?

Is this “Generation Kill” in the truest sense? They see “any” unity, even unity around the grave of a dead person, as “good unity”. How far have we as a people come when this is all we have to offer as a cohesive social institution; War as the new church, Death our new god.

Are they only channeling what their parents are too cowardly to act out themselves? Are they mere conduits?

Just yesterday I stumbled upon a quote from that wise old Chinese sage Confucius. He said, “Before you embark on a journey of revenge, dig two graves.”

The ocean was his, where will be ours?

Lots Of Life

2011-04-17T20:28:00.000-07:00

More Spring photos from spots near my home. Love this time of the year! Wildflowers, trees in bloom. Epic life all around me. Enjoy.

Spring

2011-04-01T18:18:00.000-07:00

The Tent

2011-02-21T06:46:00.000-08:00

Death is a tightrope you traverse, each day a new way to walk a little further down the line.

Entire ways of being, ways of seeing, ways of jumping and running and scrambling and fleeing are constructed in an effort to negate and ignore the inevitable.

What if you let death in, as with an honored guest, asked to sit with you long before your last song was sung?

What if you stepped down off the string and strung up a tent beneath it instead? A multihued orgasm of light and life filtering through the patchwork of lived experiences past and present.

What if deaths presence beneath the cacophony was acknowledged and welcome; as much a part of the experience as life itself is?

Winters Bed

2011-02-10T06:13:00.001-08:00

God of the Doorway

2011-01-02T08:12:00.000-08:00

She finds the only sliver of sunlight illuminating my room and curls up in it. White fur reflecting rays back at the window. Mom went out to feed the big dog and came back cringing about a rat lying lifeless on the concrete floor. The rat was stretched out in the sunlight; birds singing outside the half open garage door while leaves shook off the damp night air.

I scooped the sleeping rodent onto a shovel and shuffled out into the woods. Dug a shallow grave, roots sticking up through the dry forest loam.

Went back inside, made a bowl of oatmeal and sat on my rocker, watching dust particles spin and twirl in the late morning light.

Thirty

2010-12-24T20:29:00.000-08:00

"Speak a new language
so that the world
will be a new world."

~ Rumi

In Passing

2010-12-09T12:01:00.000-08:00

It’s just broken stones and old bones turned to dust. An alder chip path careening through the decay, me crunching a million specks of memories and reasons for living beneath the heels of my well-worn boots.

Some fought in revolutionary wars, others in civil ones, all fought the quiet battles of internal strife and individual responsibility.

I can feel the stories of the dead seeping through my soles.

It’s time for a new pair of boots.

Addis Gap (In Winter)

2010-11-28T18:59:00.000-08:00

Split and Fall

2010-11-26T14:39:00.000-08:00

Into The Woods

Late To The Funeral

Words

2010-08-24T05:16:00.000-07:00

I've been at a loss for words to share in this digital echo chamber.

This video is a beautiful reminder of the power of the spoken (and unspoken) word.

Enjoy.

Lopez

2010-08-05T04:28:00.000-07:00

"Beyond this – that the interior landscape is a metaphorical representation of the exterior landscape, that the truth reveals itself most fully not in dogma but in paradox, irony, and contradictions that distinguish compelling narratives – beyond this there are only failures of imagination: reductionism in science; fundamentalism in religion; fascism in politics.”

An excerpt from the essay entitled “Landscape and Narrative” by Barry Lopez

Repose

2010-07-10T07:16:00.001-07:00

The Southernmost Appalachian range at sunset, mountains in a seemingly constant slumber.

Fear As A Foundation

2010-06-25T13:45:00.000-07:00

I wont carry on in this post (well, at least not too much). No long diatribe about how disgusting it is that the G20 summit comes to Toronto, erects a 10 foot high, miles long fence to keep protestors out of the conference area. I’ll be straight to the point.

This is what a police state in action looks like. 20,000 police officers using sound cannons, mounted police, pepper spray bottles that look more like fire extinguishers, coercive tactics, rubber bullets, batons, and the list goes on.

This unprecedented show of force only belies the utter fear with which the Canadian government and the G20 nations are operating from. They fear the average citizen who dares to exercise their right to be informed and then verbally takes that information to the street in the form of a protest.

$1 billion. That’s how much is being spent (paid for by tax dollars, mind you) to protect the talking heads descending upon Toronto in their helicopters and black caddies. This is a meeting of the mega wealthy getting together to talk about how they can continue to stay mega rich.

This isn’t about you and me, it never was and it never will be. This is about fear, greed and the continuation of a corrupt world system that robs from the poorest to feed the wealthiest.

This is what it looks like when you use fear as a foundation.

Italicization Of Experience

2010-05-23T08:02:00.000-07:00

For the last month I’ve been inching my way through this book, The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan. It’s an interesting read with a unique perspective on the plant kingdom. He tells the story of four plants (and their fruits) and how humanities story has become intermingled with the story of these plants (and vice versa) for hundreds and thousands of years.

Sometime last week I arrived at the chapter on marijuana. It has been a fascinating chapter, to say the least, which has helped to put words to an experience that many people have had over the centuries. The awareness of existing in the Now is one that eludes most of us for all of our waking lives, save perhaps for those transcendental bubbles that float in front of us allowing a brief examination of the shape, size and color of the sphere just before it disintegrates back into ether from whence it sprang.

These moments of perceived clarity, when the curtain is lifted (or dropped) and you see that it’s only one small man shouting into a giant megaphone, come without warning. The Emperor stands naked for a split second and then in the same moment is clothed again with the projections and manifestations of the current culture and the stories it’s telling itself about existence.

Pollan quotes Carl Sagans thoughts on “being high” and what the real struggle might be after coming down from the experience:

“There is a myth about such highs, the user has an illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved while high are real insights; the main problem is putting these insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we’re down the next day…If I find in the morning a message from myself the night before informing me that there is a world around us which we barely sense, or that we can become one with the universe, or even that certain politicians are desperately frightened men, I may tend to disbelieve; but when I'm high I know about this disbelief. And so I have a tape in which I exhort myself to take such remarks seriously. I say, “Listen closely, you sonofabitch of the morning! This stuff is real!”

But this entry isn’t about “being high”. It’s about being in the moment and how much of a struggle it seems to be for most of us to achieve that being. Our thoughts are constantly pulled to some future bliss (filled with pastures unimaginably greener than any you may happen to inhabit in this current time and space) or past horror.

I spoke with a good friend yesterday about how I seem to be perpetually haunted by a deep sense of discontent with the “here and now” of wherever I happen to find myself. It seems to me that in order to live a simpler, saner and more content life I must learn to focus much more on the beauty of whatever moment I happen to find myself in than on how this moment could be better if only...

Really honing in on the now is more about turning off that constantly churning motor of past and future and allowing your mind to sit quietly in the present as it is.
For those magical moments in which I have been able to examine the ether with a clarity like never before I am often rewarded with the sensation of novelty about things which I have seen or heard a million times before. There are many varied and intricate layers to any moment we happen to find ourselves within.

Just this morning Pollan gave an example of novelty that made the Deadhead in me smile from ear to ear. The significance of this particular example is exactly what I was envisioning:

“You know how it goes, this italicization of experience, this seemingly virginal noticing of the sensate world. You’ve heard that song a thousand times before, but now you suddenly hear it in all its soul-piercing beauty, the sweet bottomless poignancy of the guitar line like a revelation, and for the first time you can understand, really understand, just what Jerry Garcia meant by every note, his unhurried cheerful-baleful improvisation piping something very near the meaning of life directly into your mind.”

The grass beneath my feet couldn’t be any greener.

Moth On Grid

2010-05-21T08:37:00.000-07:00

Headlong

2010-05-12T18:31:00.000-07:00

It’s 11,880 miles away, and as a result should feel far enough removed for me to not even give it a second thought. Yet I do. Headlines tell a tragic story, kindergarten children being murdered in far away Chinese cities. Cities I have never heard of and can’t even pronounce the names of.

I can’t ignore the headlines. They tell too much of our common story to be dismissed as mere insanity. The world is changing, changing faster than any time that has come before it. Empires seem to rise and fall overnight. Everything seems to be in a boom or bust cycle. Entire nations booming and busting. Displacement of whole families, villages, cities.

In all of this “progress” I wonder. I wonder what is the real cost of this supposed “advancement”? What is the true cost, in humane and human terms, of what we are doing?

And really, what are we doing? I was telling my mother that it feels as if all of humanity is rushing headlong toward the edge of a precipice. Some of us can see the edge clearer than others. Some of us are wondering what’s beyond the edge. This is a strange time to be alive. A strange time to be a part of the human race. Never before have so many of our common destinies been so intertwined.

We are rushing at break neck speed toward something, and I hear barely even a whisper being murmured about what that something might be.

The Wonder Of Place

2010-05-03T18:58:00.000-07:00

I’ve spent a long time listening, and the story is still being told. The four seasons of nature instill within us the hope that our own life seasons will somehow blend into this seamless transition that lie between each turning as it comes.

This last year has found me starring out of windows, out of doorways and out from beneath boughs of evergreens and hardwood branches laden with life. This has been a difficult season, one of great beauty the likes of which I would venture to say I’ve never known in any of the 29 years that have preceded it. Also one of unprecedented despair, chilling loneliness and debilitating hopelessness that’s brought me to my knees and woke me from sleep, defenseless and starring into the void from my bedside long past the midnight hour.

The tension between utter insanity and irrevocable bliss has never been strung tighter. Never before has the lens of perception been so tightly focused on the natural world around me. The spiritual is something I am learning about, a new way of viewing my place on this planet and the planet that holds me in place. I am not learning new boundaries, only the ancient boundaries that have always been known by those who are watching. It is a way of respecting this place and the people that inhabit it. It is a way I have to relearn, a way that a part of me has always known but is now in the process of remembering.

I am in the midst of what seems to be the almost glacially slow process of trusting myself again. Through learning to trust nature, learning to trust the cycles of life, decay, rebirth and renewal I come out from within that frightened place in my mind and step into wonder.

It’s been said that the mind is a terrible thing to waste, even more so I am realizing that the mind is a terrible place to waste away inside of. The movement from mind to heart is a slow, almost imperceptible journey. Yet a journey is underway.

This place I stand, this middle place somewhere between all that has come before and all that may lie ahead, this is a good place to be. No, not an easy place, and not an altogether pleasant place, but a beautiful and authentic place nonetheless.

I’ve been in this place before, but I was very young and the memory of it is too far way, lost in the dense forest of growth that springs up in the mind as the seasons fade from one year to the next.

As Barry Lopez once said, “We simply do not understand our place in the universe and have not the courage to admit it.”

With this in mind I continue on a journey that is nothing more than a human trying to admit his lack of understanding of the “place” he finds himself. I do not know this place but I know that this place, this place most assuredly knows me.

"Evolving Times"

2010-04-16T09:34:00.000-07:00

Yesterday, while painting deck spindels white in the mid Spring Sunshine, I listened to Terence McKenna relate his personal world view to an audience of inquiring minds (self included). Below are a few transcribed excerpts from the two hour lecture he communicated (and here is a direct link to the audio of said lecture: "Evolving Times").

“…the Ego is the return to consciousness of this psychic structure related to the patterns of dominance…the ego is like a cist…or a tumor that gets going in the personality and if not treated it becomes chronic and then there is no cure. There can only be a certain amount of maintenance and medication of it.”

…the issue as was always sensed, since the ‘60’s forward, is not simply an issue of religious freedom, or an issue of an eccentric minorities social practice being tolerated by the majority…the issue is in fact what kind of people shall we be? And then, what kind of society shall we put in place?...

…our unhappy, addicted, ego-driven condition has become not simply the source of our own unhappiness, that was bad enough, but now it’s the source of great discomfort and dislocation for all life and human society on the planet. We are out of control. We are basically severely addicted to things, and cannot stop ourselves. And we know, or we should know, that there is not enough petroleum, heavy metal…in the planet to give all the thing addicts all of the things that we know they must have in order to be happy. We have spread this intellectual virus from pole to pole.”

~ Terence McKenna

10 p.m.

2010-04-02T19:37:00.000-07:00

He lightly pulls me into the night, collar jingling happily at the end of his retractable leash. A lone streetlight throws amber waves of tungsten illumination at my ill adjusted pupils.

The old Episcopal Church sits empty, tall leaded windows flank both sides of this simple house of worship. Tall windows built before we had harnessed the night with our glass-enclosed filaments and buzzing electrical currents.

Above me a screech, then an owl floating from Oak to Cedar, Cedar to Hemlock and perhaps back to Oak again.

No wind stirs the leafless branches tonight.

A blooming tree gives off a fragrant reminder that Spring is now your companion, taking you by the hand and slowly leading you into the long haze of a Summer that will soon be upon us.

These still evenings on glowing side streets are a kind of unrelenting redemption.

We Are The Ones

2010-03-21T19:42:00.000-07:00

The equinox wanes. A crescent moon quietly burns behind the quickly diminishing cloud cover. The torrent subsides. I finish oiling both pair of boots while watching an old Hitchcock film with my parents. Well made leather boots make my life feel more permanent than it truly is. I’ll break off of this family tree one day and fall to the ground, decay will take over and back to clay I’ll return. This does not depress me.

I reflect on a quote found earlier in the day,

"Banish the word 'struggle' from your attitude and your vocabulary. All that we do now must be done in a sacred manner and in celebration. We are the ones we have been waiting for." ~ Hopi elders

It is a good quote and one I will spend a lifetime trying to live into. For the first quarter century I lived on this earth I was told and believed that this earth was not my home, that this body was a curse and that my soul was at war with both body and planet.

I will spend the next quarter century learning to be at peace with myself and the planet that sustains me. I do not wait for a savior to arrive. We need no finding in so much as we were never truly lost. Misguided and divorced from ourselves, perhaps. Lost, never.

The sacred manner has already been revealed, I need only look within to remember the way in which it is shaping me.

This journey will be long, from eternity to eternity as some have already said. Remember the true work of the soul cannot be rushed. With open eyes and open hearts you will be blessed by the beauty of all that has come before and all that is yet to be revealed.

A new season is upon us.

Supplies

2010-03-03T18:36:00.000-08:00

The hours passed slowly, he sat watching the hands on the clock grow smaller and smaller all the while feeding the ghosts of days gone by. Insatiable beasts of burden they were. Never leaving his side, faithful and steadfast in the worst possible way.

And then the sky would break. He would slip on his boots and stride out into the open air, waiting for an explanation that would never come.

2010-02-10T21:25:00.000-08:00

I step outside to fetch a log for the dying fire inside,
Cassiopeia slipping quietly behind the last stand of pines.

Embers above, embers below.

We must keep this fire going as if our lives depended upon it,
Even though they really don’t.

Deviscive Erosion

2010-02-02T11:36:00.000-08:00

You stand on an errant piece of land,
earth moving silently beneath your being,
being shifting in such a phantasmic
and abhorrent way as to keep all life
in a constant state of flux.

You’re 5, 12, 21, 29, 33, 42, 950.

The earth cares nothing
for the architecture of our arithmetic.
It tears down our numbers,
our meticulously calculated kingdoms,
one glaciated striation at a time.

# 361

2010-02-01T00:32:00.000-08:00

she looks out across the grey,
sky holding water
and me holding my breath.

i wait for her
to turn 'round,
all the while knowing
she never will.

i'd whisper a prayer
if i knew what to say.
but she is already gone,
lost before i can
even find her.

Forgo The Ego

2010-01-30T23:07:00.000-08:00

If this hollow earth doesn’t swallow me whole, may the pagan Sun burn away all that is near and dear to me.

Ego can be let go. Leggo my ego. I'm in there somewhere. It can often be so hard to see the forest for the “me’s”.

Make me as integral and organic as the photosynthesized water droplet. May my being once again be simple and sustainable.

Let the insanity cease to hold me. The shock is wearing off, although my ears are still ringing.

I wasn’t born a prisoner, I won’t live like one for the rest of my waking days.

May my eyes remain wide, in awe of the nutrients and spirits that collaborate to sustain this body of wonder.

To hear, to touch, to see, to love and to appreciate. To quietly know deep within what does not need confirming from anything without.

You sit beneath this tree and listen, beneath this sky and hear.

You are “home” as much as you’ll ever be; this field is where you belong.

The Long Decline

2010-01-21T17:17:00.000-08:00

I am not
but a dot.

My being some cosmic
accident.
A fell wind that blew left
when it should have blown
right.

These days I am given
are no more than a sigh.

I am here
to simply
catch glimpses
in the glances
that stray from
beneath your guarded
eyes.

Night In Boston

2010-01-17T19:25:00.000-08:00

Two suns came shining in through the window, one burning as bright as the next.
Two suns to light the way but still the shadows remained.

I need toast cooked in the oven, marmalade spread thin across its half burnt face.
A harmonica will be my salvation, my savior, my kingdom come.

a[poem]priate

2010-01-17T18:52:00.000-08:00

i envy those
who live in two places:
new york, say, and london;
wales and spain;
l.a. and paris;
hawaii and switzerland.

there is always the anticipation
of the change, the chance that what is wrong
is the result of where you are. i have
always loved both the freshness of
arriving and the relief of leaving. with
two homes every move would be a homecoming.
i am not even considering the weather, hot
or cold, dry or wet: i am talking about hope.

~"where we are" by Gerald Locklin

Two Quotes

2010-01-07T20:39:00.000-08:00

We tell ourselves stories in order to live…We look for the sermon in the suicide, for the social or moral lesson in the murder of five. We interpret what we see, select the most workable of the multiple choices. We live entirely, especially if we are writers, by the imposition of a narrative line upon disparate images, by the “ideas”, with which we have learned to freeze the shifting phantasmagoria which is our actual experience.

~Joan Didion “The White Album”

I distrust summaries, any kind of gliding through time, any too great a claim that one is in control of what one recounts; I think someone who claims to write with emotion recollected in tranquility, is a fool and a liar. To understand is to tremble. To recollect is to re-enter and be riven…I admire the authority of being on one’s knees in front of the event.

~Harold Brodkey “Manipulations”

2010

2010-01-05T09:47:00.000-08:00

A hand pulls the frayed white curtain back to reveal a sky of grey, black birds three propelling dark forms across the vast sea of early morning uniformity.

Retinas register what the mind already perceives.

It’s winter in Seattle, pensive and heavy.

I wake at 3:00 to a house that is quiet inside and out. My mind brings me dark thoughts on a silver platter. After some minutes of nibbling I commit wholly to a few. The minutes pass as I reflect back on years of personal cowardice.

Seconds and minutes accumulate on the black ribbon of time, the hand falls to the next hour as my wakeful eyes gaze out at an uncertain future.

Exhaustion eventually wins out and I slip from this world into the next.

I feel small in the night and uncertain in the day.

Equatorial Disdain

2009-12-22T23:21:00.000-08:00

The hillside lights up slowly, three blinking towers on the crest to make a crown. The sunlight dies, quickly, quickly now it dies. I wait patiently, day after day, for the full moon to come. Clouds skew my vision, take up all that open space and spit it right back at me.

You sons of bitches, you. You bloated equatorial currents of evaporated air billowing in from off of the Great Blue, shimmering deep and wide. I despise your condescending condensation, causing me to bend low muttering curses that sound like prayers.

This blue moon will drag me to it, right from 28 straight into 29.

This Ikea star hovers above me, throwing incandescent promises into the deepening night.

The Egg Before The Chicken

2009-12-20T18:07:00.000-08:00

It’s raining in Seattle again, and I don’t know what to do with my life. I’ve never really known and never understood those who seemed to decide their life path with such grace and ease.

Maybe if I lie on my bed long enough and stare at the ceiling hard enough it will come to me. I can memorize the ridges and bumps and holes and lumps that make up the drywall covering and perhaps all of those intricate mishaps will somehow coalesce into a life plan.

I'm almost 29 and find myself asking the same questions I did at 12.

Fuck searching for an answer, I'm hungry and feel like making an omelet.

And omelets, as we all know, make everything better.

Quiet In The Fall

2009-12-03T19:00:00.000-08:00

It's been a long month. I'm moving (again) and not feeling that great about it. In fact, I'm not feeling that great about much right now. A very low point indeed. I think I could use a little help from Superman. But since Superman is busy saving the rest of the world, this cry for help will have to suffice.

I asked you a question
I didn't need you to reply
Is it getting heavy?
And then realize
It's getting heavy
Well I thought it was already as heavy as can be.

Is it overwhelming
To use a crane to crush a fly?
It's a good time for Superman
To lift the sun into the sky
Cause it's getting heavy
Well I thought it was already as heavy as can be.

Tell everybody
Waiting for Superman
That they should try to
Hold on the best they can
He hasn't dropped them, forgot them or anything
It's just too heavy for Superman to lift.

~Waiting For A Superman (As covered by Iron and Wine)

Most Appropriate

2009-10-27T21:41:00.000-07:00

"The Grateful Dead played a lot of 'free', often spontaneous, concerts in the Haight-Ashbury years-though the term 'free' seems somehow inappropriate given the band's ethos and the general zeitgeist of the time and place.

This show is remembered most fondly of all, largely because it has become regarded as the band's goodbye to the Haight, and because, after the ravages of the summer of love, magic could still happen. The concert came about after a nasty dust-up between hippies and cops two weeks earlier. Hoping to ease the tensions, the city proclaimed a 'street festival' for March 3, with the streets of Haight closed to traffic. It was an opportunity the band wasn't about to pass up. Playing atop a flatbed truck with the power tapped from Strait Theatre, the boys kicked off with 'Viola Lee Blues' and as the first notes crackled, the people began to gather until the streets (and stoops, and roof tops) were packed."

~ A passage from the book Grateful Dead The Illustrated Trip

And now for the show: March 3, 1968.

From Where I Stand

2009-10-26T19:16:00.000-07:00

Just existing in America. Not going forward, not back, just standing still. Road blocks at every turn and there is no light at the end of this endless tunnel. Can someone please end this tunnel or do I have to do it myself? A generations worth of prose on the tongue but no ears to listen, no one willing too hear what we all know to be true but refuse to confront. We have forgotten how to hear the clarion call of LIFE. We accept cheap imitations, shadows of the original. Hopes deferred until WHAT!?? What are we deferring until? Until life hands you a golden goose egg, until the heavens open up and a deluge of dreams and wishes come true rain down upon your weary and waiting head?

WHAT???!!!

O.K., wait, I know what it is. I missed some critical speech the other 307 million of you tuned in to, right? It’s my fault, I know. I don’t have a television and I missed it. Would someone please tell me WHAT THE FUCK that message said? Must have been some powerful shit to put the whole 307 million of you in a deaf, dumb and blind stupor.

This life is killing me. This country is destroying my spirit. Wearing me down like a river over stone. I look into the eyes of Americans everyday and see a crushed people, a people enslaved to a system that cares nothing, NOTHING, for them nor their best interests.

America will not cease to exist by forces from without its borders, it will die a slow and sad death by what happens from within them. We’ve no need to fear those that hate us abroad as it is our own self-hatred that will eventually do us in.

I know no one, self included, wants to read this. No one wants to hear this. We want to believe that a country so many once immigrated to is still a great place to be born, a great place to live and a great place to be from. But from where I stand (and believe me, the ground I stand on is shaky at best) all I can see is what I have written above.

What about you? What do you see from where you’re standing? Or have you even stopped to think about what you are seeing all around you?

Dark Harbor

2009-10-25T22:46:00.000-07:00

I can hear it coming long before it reaches these shores. Blowing its mournful horn through the foggy recesses of my thoughts. This ship sails into the minds harbor and stays for quite some time, finding safe passage through the brighter moments only to put off mooring for exactly the right time and place.

The time and place is now. Where it goes when it’s not docked here I know not, I only know when it is coming (and rarely when it will be going). It brings with it a darkness I have come to recognize but will never grow fond of. There are lessons to be learned in this darkness, I just sometimes wish they could be learned in the light as well.

This gently rocking vessel drains me, exhausts me, destroys the me I like best in an attempt to keep things in balance. Yet it leaves me in tact just the same (but never the same as before it came). I do not think it will kill me, at least not by itself alone.

Fear and Self Loathing are its cargo, Doubt and Insecurity its freight. There will be beauty again; there will be laughter and song and dance in its proper turn. Now it is a different time, a turning of day to night. You cannot always live in the light, as the darkness helps to remind us of just how beautiful the light can be.

So now the time has come, to let the dark mantle descend.

Black and White

2009-10-11T21:54:00.000-07:00

I found it at a yard sale, maybe a month or so back, just sitting on a table with a bunch of other junk. It wasn’t in a frame, only glued to a piece of weather stained cardboard that was curling at the edges. This old black and white picture had seen better days and today was not one of them. It had water damage on the top half but not enough so as to ruin the photo entirely, just partly.

But all of this was not relevant information when it came to the point of purchase. I knew I would buy it, trading in one hard earned quarter to posses this small moment of local history preserved for the ages.

The photographer stands on a small hill overlooking the logging camp. From the hill you can see a team of six horses; black, white, then back to black again. Big, strong quarter horses. Horses bred for relieving these tree-laden hillsides of their heavy wooden burdens. The horses are harnessed to a wagon, which is attached to another wagon. The wagons are loaded with lumber cut into planks. A man sits atop the first wagon holding the reigns in his hands. He wears a cap and a winter coat. To his right is a wooden shed with a chimney pipe sticking out of its metal roof.

Behind the wagon he sits atop is an old Ford. Not a model T but something similar to it in style. The vehicle is the period marker. The Ford is not alone, though, as another rests on its four rubber tires not too far away. Behind the motorcars is a wall of cut and stacked planks, planks waiting to be loaded onto the two wagons with the six horses and the one driver. A large stand-alone chimney rises up from behind these planks, issuing forth a plume of white smoke that dissolves into the water stain at the top of the frame.

And where there are two cars there are also two men. The other man stands away from the wagon and away from the cars. He holds nothing in his hands and seems to be looking up at the cameraman wondering just what exactly he should be doing with the moment at hand. He is smaller in size than the man leading the team and wears a different kind of hat. It’s hard to tell but his skin seems to have a much darker complexion than that of his counterpart. I don’t know the logging history of the Pacific Northwest in the early 1900’s well enough to determine whether or not this man could be Native.

And then there’s the forest. Ah yes, the forest! The whole reason these men and horses and cars and smoke are all here. The trees are there, silently watching this whole scene unfold, quietly thankful that they are too small to be of any real worth.

Sometimes I bike around this old logging town, trying to imagine just what it might have looked like a century or so ago. I have found a few of the “old” trees left behind. The ones that for some reason were unmolested and allowed to continue their heavenward expansion. They are magnificent testaments to what once was. Within less than a half-mile of my house are two huge, red trunked wonders. In the Giant Sequoia family if I am correct. Sometimes I just stand beneath their bows and listen closely for the stories they are telling.

And listen you should, because they are telling stories like you’ve never heard. Stories different than the ones I know, different than the ones I can tell you here and now. Different in stature and height, stories with roots growing down into the earth, into the soil. Tales sent on the wind or the wing of a bird passing by.

Time may not be eternal, but the stories they tell me are.

A Season Ends

2009-09-21T20:59:00.000-07:00

You have to slow down to see it. Slow…way…down, down, down. Pull back on the brakes if you have to. That’s what I did.

I did and this is what I saw: streets aglow in the warm orange light of a fading summer sunset. The last sunset of the summer to be specific. And floating above those streets: various winged insects, dandelion blooms aimlessly (but full of purpose as well) searching for a new place to call home, spider webs catching the last rays of the season.

Tomorrow, with little pomp and circumstance, Fall will begin. My 28th Fall in this body to be exact. Apples will be pressed into cider, leaves will burst into flame, the nights will grow cooler and the days will call it quits sooner and sooner.

Fall comes and I feel ready. Ready for what I cannot say, but ready nonetheless. Change is in the air, and if you know what to look for you can see it coming long before it arrives.

Thoughts From The Subdued City

2009-09-06T12:45:00.000-07:00

On a day like this, how can you not write about the wind? Howling loudly through the cracks, careening wildly down brick alleyways, carrying along with it anything not bolted to the pavement.

I watch it tug at the green leaves. The green leaves not yet ready for the Fall. Ready or not, here it comes. Riding in over the Bay, like some derelict banshee out on parole, accruing violations and making enemies as it wreaks havoc on this quiet college town.

I'm in some ancient diner now. Well, ancient for this part of the world. The old Horseshoe Café has been doing what it does best since the late 1800’s. Food: meh; atmosphere: ok; waitress: friendly in that subdued Bellingham kind of way. A baited friendliness, one that comes across as being laboriously unsure of itself. A few college-aged students occupy booths. A Vietnam vet or two stare up with vacant and pleading eyes from cups of steaming coffee. How many years has it been since we bombed those villages? Obviously not long enough for these men.

But they had competition now, a fresh batch of disaffected and abandoned Vets were roaming these streets with their own tales of sorrow to be told. Like those that came before, they too were destined to become the abandoned nephews and nieces of their conniving Uncle Sam. Uncle Sam, that decrepit old bastard, still telling his same worn out lies to another generation of eager ears, pure hearts soon to be broken down by waylaid promises made that he never intended to keep.

This is where all the dreams of the great Western myth come to die. Some live longer then others but rest assured, they’re all on their deathbed. The fever grows as the heart slows its rhythm. Beads of sweat form on the brow as the eyes gloss over with that far away look. Looking toward a heaven they never found on earth, a paradise lost long before they were born.

But I suppose this is as good a place as any to watch a culture calcify, topple over and live vicariously only through the stories of a bygone era.

Last night I rode around this small town, letting my body absorb the cracks in the sidewalk, the gaps in the road beneath my tires. I found myself gazing in on darkened storefront windows, searching for god only knows what. I stopped in front of a café after hearing the bend of guitar strings float through the open doorway. Guitar strings being bent in such a way that you just had to call it the Blues.

Now, as Leadbelly so eloquently put it before his recording of “Good Morning Blues”, “never was a white man had the blues, ‘cause nothin’ to worry about.” I concur with his sentiments in the assumption that some well-heeled white man simply has no cultural context from which to truly sing the Blues. The Blues came out of slavery, oppression and the like. Something most white folks in the U.S. have never truly experienced.

So, to hear a middle class white man play the Blues is almost a bit too much for me. The whole scenario too rife with irony. But that is life in the good old U.S. of A. Ironic at best, something wholly unspeakable at worst.

Needless to say I stopped long enough to watch these two white boys play black tunes with all the heart and soul they could muster. I sat on my bike, propped up against a red brick wall. Black night without, warm incandescent glow within. A woman passed on my left, glancing over her shoulder long enough to meet my gaze before she dipped inside the café. I couldn’t read the gaze, I never can.

The night wore on and I coasted around town for another half hour before retiring to the house I share with three women. After a meal of red soup, white bread, and green salad it was upstairs to my small room with the well-trod wood floor.

Tacked up the curtain, turned on the fan, read a book written so well it broke my heart just to think it would soon be coming to an end, then shut off the light. It was time to dream of my own paradise that would never come to be.

The Long Weekend (Part One)

2009-08-31T18:38:00.000-07:00

I feel as though a small disclaimer must be passed on to those of you who follow this roller coaster ride of emotion I call my blog.

I'm insane, in the most sane way possible.

It would be in your best interest to take what is typed here with a rather large grain of salt. In fact, you might just wanna bring the whole damn shaker along before you read these musings. I write to help calm a dis-eased mind. When the soul is quiet, when the mind is at peace, you’ll see my public musings taper off, as they have for the last couple of weeks.

For the most part, I don’t feel compelled to write when all is well. When the sun is shining, the conversation flowing, the mind feeling healthy and the soul feeling fulfilled I simply don’t have as much need to process what I'm going through in writing.

I understand the inherent tragedy that this situation presents for you the reader. You often hear from me in the midst of the storm rather than when the sails are up and the boat is gliding effortlessly across the strait.

The last three weeks have been beautiful, marked with moments of sorrow of course but overall some of the most soul affirming I’ve had in a long while. Some very good old friends and a few new ones have helped to carry me along. This is the best kind of journey, the kind that gives you just what you need right when you are most in need of it.

The power of human connectivity to change a life should never be underestimated. Compassion, caring and understanding, you can never have too much of these although we often don’t get enough of them.

While I could carry on like this for sometime I think I’ll wrap this post up for now. It's late and...(I broke this post up into two parts after realizing that it was really long).

The Long Weekend (Part Two)

2009-08-31T18:29:00.000-07:00

I'm exhausted after another weekend spent in Canada with my Maple leaf loving friends. My buddy Steve and his bride Stephanie were married last night at one of the more appropriate places I’ve chanced to end up. A small farm about a mile from the U.S. border with a gorgeous glade of cedars and orchards and a truly old barn exuding so much authenticity that with the right kind of ears one could almost hear all the stories it held within it’s wood planked walls.

Oh, it was heaven.

After the realization of my close proximity to the U.S. border I thought it absolutely ridiculous to ride with my friends all the way back to Vancouver only to pay eighteen dollars to ride the Greyhound back to Bellingham. So, after much personal deliberation I decided to have said friends drop me at the border so that I could walk across and try my hand at hitching.

The crossing went smoothly (as good as any crossing can be when dealing with government agencies which force you to recognize the imaginary lines they’ve drawn up). I walked into Blaine and immediately began searching for a spot that looked good and felt right (in hitching I’ve learned that a good spot makes all the difference). After some wandering around I chanced to meet a woman walking her dogs beneath a bridge. I asked her if she was indeed from Blaine (lots of tourists around town this time of year). Yes, she was. She told me the where the bus stop was and then I asked if she knew of a good spot to hitch out from.

She pointed to the only highway ramp in town and said that she had often seen people standing there trying to hitch out. I thanked her and before I could move on she told me of how she had ran away from home when she was fourteen and hitched her way across America to Blaine. She told me of how she’d been here for thirty years and how back in the early 70’s she had helped smuggle draft dodgers across the border into Canada.

A person of conviction with the actions to back it up, now that’s my kind of woman.

I thanked her and took up a very short lived residence on the highway on ramp. A few cars went by and no takers. No worries, the sun was out with not a cloud in the sky, I had all the time in the world.

Then I saw him. He sat at the stoplight just before the onramp. His big white box truck said “Fountain Rental” on the side and I knew that the gods were smiling upon me. Today was my day. Fountain Rental is not a chain rental company. They only have one location that I know of and that location just happens to be located no more than a five minute walk from where I live.

John pulled up, opened the door and I climbed in, a broad smile spread clear across my sparsely bearded face. He asked where I was going. To exactly where you are going, John. Exactly.

So we rode down the highway exchanging stories about jobs in America and how much it had changed over the last forty years (John was in his late fifties, maybe early sixties). I asked him where exactly from back East he was from before he told me he was from back East. New York. The accent is unmistakable. I told him my family was from Long Island (and when you’re talking to a New Yorker it’s best to pronounce Long Island as one word, not two, dragging the ass end of the g right up against the I’s lonely left side. Longisland. One word, not two).

John spoke in that very direct Northeastern American way I have come to love and cherish. The Pacific Northwest is full of its jellyfish people with their jellyfish speech, no spine, no substance, no direction for the conversation to flow. Some of the most socially inept humans I’ve chanced to come upon exist in this part of the world. There’s good possibility for it being one of the main factors that will eventually lead to my packing up and moving away from this physically beautiful yet socially retarded part of the world.

So John dropped me at my place and rode off down the street toward the rental place. As I strolled up the front steps I was reminded of the fact that some of the best folks I’ve met in life are when I'm hitching.

It was a very good day.

Moving Inward

2009-08-10T19:18:00.000-07:00

There is a growing part of me that wishes someone could have told me that by twenty-eight I would be spent, hollow and bent low, low, low to the earth. How is it that I feel like an old man already? Creativity, gone. Curiosity, banished to some dark corner of my being. Some dark corner of the soul that I cannot find a light bright enough to illuminate.

I wept hard the other night. The small room I inhabit absorbed the sobs and threw them back at me, bringing me no solace, only a sad ringing in my ears.

A recent phone conversation with my beloved mother found me saying into the receiver, “if this country wanted to break me it has”. Here stands one broken citizen of the crumbling empire with nowhere to turn. You can leave this country one of three ways: by throwing large sums of money at whatever country you want to inhabit, holding a degree in something “in demand” (a lot of money is needed to obtain this education as well), or marriage.

What about the penniless wanderers? Is there a place for them? When my great grandfather came to America he held no degree, had little money and was not marrying anyone in this country (but would eventually do so). My, how the world has changed in less then a hundred years. For most of the world’s population they are effectively “trapped” in whatever shit hole they happen to be born into.

I’ll stop there. I’ll climb down off this horse and hitch it to the old worn out post for a while. I’ll give you the reader a break. I’ve been talking in circles, feeling very much like a caged animal. I did not ask to be born into this zoo and as a result have found myself feeling infinitely embittered by the cage that is the United States of America.

The utter lack of anyone to seriously converse with about my perspective of this country has been the final blow, the one that’s really taken the wind out of my sails. I wish, for my own sake, that I could say I had a group of others who felt the same way I did about this place, a group who saw the writing on the wall and were making serious plans to escape. For reasons beyond my understanding this is not the case. It’s as if the whole populace has been lulled into some sort of collective lie that “this is all there is”.

Sure life is kind of crappy here in the States, they say to themselves, but it’s much worse everywhere else. Right?

Wrong.

I am beyond appalled at the lack of any sincere foresight for the future of this country by my fellow countrypersons. I am broken and absolutely devastated by it. It makes me sick to the point that I wake up in the middle of the night thinking about it.

How can I feel so alone in something that seems so apparent?

This has struck too close to the soul, too close to the core of my being, for me to speak on it much more. A silence will soon be necessary. I’ll plug away internally, finding strength from a place within I still have yet to tap in to. The Titanic is sinking and I am not going down with it.

I Was Lost...

2009-08-03T18:42:00.000-07:00

And now this book has found me. Ishmael is not only one of the most important books I've chanced to lay eyes upon but sums up (and confirms) much of what I've felt about the culture around me. Things I've intrinsically "known" since a very young age are in this book. Words I have not been able to express nor articulate are there as well.

Tears stung my eyes as I read the following excerpt. I could not nor have ever met anyone who has summed up the way I feel about humanity better then Daniel Quinn has in this small novel.

The following is an excerpt between the teacher and his pupil:

"So when the people of your culture concluded that there's something fundamentally wrong with humans, what evidence were they looking at?"

‘They were looking at the evidence of their own history.’

“Exactly. They were looking at a half of one percent of the evidence, taken from a single culture. Not a reasonable sample on which to base such a sweeping conclusion.”

‘No.’

“There’s nothing fundamentally wrong with people. Given a story to enact that puts them in accord with the world, they will live in accord with the world. But given a story to enact that puts them at odds with the world, as yours does, they will live at odds with the world. Given a story to enact in which they are lords of the world, they will act like lords of the world. And, given a story to enact in which the world is a foe to be conquered, they will conquer it like a foe, and one day, inevitably, their foe will lie bleeding to death at their feet, as the world is now.”

Thoughts Of A Hypocrite

2009-07-31T18:45:00.000-07:00

I can’t help myself, I really can’t. My mind instinctively wanders to the more obvious questions of where all this, this, is leading to. What are we as a species doing with ourselves, with the planet we inhabit? What is the breaking point? When will we hit the Wall…the WALL??? My new job, the one that requires me to drive around all day consuming a very finite fossil fuel and helping to aid in the meltdown of that beautiful glacier sitting atop Mt. Baker, gives me much time for introspection.

Upon observing the daily goings on of the town I live in I have this reoccurring thought that I am witnessing the end of a culture…life as we know it in the first world (and in the United States in particular) is coming to an end of sorts. I'm not claiming nor subscribing to any fantastic “end of the world” scenarios, my ego is not large enough to allow for me to think that I can somehow predict the future.

And I know what you’re thinking. Every culture that came before us has, in one way or another, had some overarching “end of the world” myth. We are not alone in this thought.

The Wall I am thinking of isn’t in the form of a giant asteroid shattering the masses of land we exist on or anything like that. In fact, I think the planet will continue on without us the same way it always has.

Earth does not need us, it never has.

The Earth, and everything in it, is in fact not ours. If anything “belongs” to anything it would make more sense to say that we belong to the Earth, not the other way around.

For now, I am too exhausted to carry this thought any further. I’ll have to set it down here for now and pick it up later. If anyone reading this has anything they want to add by all means, add away.

Glitchin'

2009-07-06T11:26:00.000-07:00

Trash day is a strange thing, the trumpeting sounds of hydraulic brakes conjuring up memories of Jurassic Park dinos and childhood mornings spent in a last minute dash to get the garbage to the corner before the truck passed your driveway. Should have listened to your mother, should have taken it out the night before you lazy troglodyte.

I’ve moved, for the trillionth time, into a nice little house with three others. Relocating happens so often that I don’t give it much thought. My life is motion marked by brief periods of stillness. Three months here, six there. Collect some junk then two months later drop it all back off at the same Goodwill you acquired it from.

Goodwill: Life, Recycled.

This is the American Dream at its finest; a room full of someone else’s previously owned shit that you now call your own. Lifestyle, recycled.

It all comes down to one bag. One ugly grey and yellow backpack purchased from a rather large chain “outdoor” store. I really hate this fucking bag. But it’s been the one constant, consistent artifact in a life of ever changing street signs, city names and home addresses.

History between us be damned, I still hate this fucking bag.

And now for some random pictures.

There's a fungus amongus.

Bro looking tired and old in an Irish kitchen.

Midnights Descent

2009-06-20T21:25:00.000-07:00

It came to me two mornings ago, maybe it was three. To believe that the Sun would rise, that the earth would spin blindly upon it's side, took more faith than I could muster. I sat next to the window, peering out at the horizon where I supposed the orb would appear. Birds sang out, cars cut through the dusk, headlights ablaze illuminating an asphalt wasteland.

And I sat, watching, pensive, not quite persuaded that the light would come. Streetlights, with their sickly pale glow, flickered as if to announce the forthcoming arrival of what I could not yet see.

Oh sparkling horizon, do not tempt these wanting eyes. Either burst into flames or altogether disappear!

The Accidental, Existential Crisis

2009-06-14T14:30:00.000-07:00

Ok maybe it wasn’t an accident. Perhaps some deity, some movement of the cosmos, some alien race from a billion years back planned it all out and I'm just playing my part in the big puppet show called Existence starring humanity (well, at least we like to think we are the stars).

For me, it all happened very simply. I grew up as an introspective child with a love for (and deep appreciation of) the natural world around me. I spent my younger years camping, hiking, exploring and learning about the forests, hills, mountains and fields around me. I was a member of the Boy Scouts and had a subscription to Ranger Rick. I wanted to be a Forest Ranger when I “grew up”, when the time was right.

At 28, it appears the time still isn’t right.

By my early twenties I was in need of some serious direction. I lived in a small town with my parents and had the typical small town conundrum of “find something to do with your life before you “accidentally” get someone pregnant”. So, I applied at the local technical college and enrolled in the Photography department. It went well and I soon discovered a natural ability to turn the lens on subjects in a way that was not only interesting to me but apparently interesting to others as well.

I enjoyed photography.

Then came a very intense phase of Christianity. I was a freak, somewhat brainwashed and very into what I believed “god” was wanting me to do. This phase led me to become a missionary for some years. I lived in various parts of the world volunteering my energy to help humanity and teach others about the “god” I believed could change their life. In all of this religious fervor I never lost that introspective part of me, that part of me that still would wander into the woods, fields and mountains of whatever city, town or village I found myself in to ask the deeper questions of life and what my purpose in it was.

Fast forward. Fast forward past the collapse of my religious belief system (it happened slowly and consistently, like a mountain being eroded by wind and rain), past the spiritual crisis I suddenly found myself in, past years of lonely wandering (an ongoing part of the story) and deep disappointment of the world around me. Much of my disappointment stemmed from the fact that I grew up in a somewhat sheltered environment. I was taught many things about the world that held less and less water the further I journeyed out into the world. Expectations met reality and, well, reality won.

I don’t pick up the camera much these days. I'm just not that enamored by what I see around me. This is a sad realization to come too, especially for one who was once so enthralled by the world around him. Writing was once a safe place I could retreat to, a place I could write down all that was consuming me. Now writing seems more like an act of great mental duress then a calm harbor to shelter in. My thoughts come out sounding boring and redundant. I sometimes want to write but most often don’t due to the fact that I find myself unable to express what I need to say in any kind of creative or interesting way. Simply put, I don’t want to subject others to my drivel (and by writing this entry I am doing exactly that!).

I can almost visualize the kind of life I think I want (or more appropriately put, “the kind of fantasy I want to be living within”) but have no energy left to try and make it happen.

This is a severely tough spot to be along the river that is my life.

Biggie Fries

2009-06-02T17:58:00.000-07:00

"Most of them were from middle-class backgrounds, but not upper bourgeois, more petit bourgeois...homes with Culture but no money or money but no Culture."

~The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test

The last two months have found me slowly chipping away at this book, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. Not slowly because it’s boring, slowly because of my lack of discipline, my lack of “quiet time”, my lack of you fill in the blank.

If you haven’t read this book, perhaps you should. It’s really hard to say since I really don’t know who I am “speaking” to on this blog. Speaking at might be a more appropriate way of saying it. Speaking into the great cyber space void.

But here is this little book, a crazy piece of hippie memorabilia from the late 60’s. A loose chronicling of the early days of the acid movement, the be-here-now movement, the giant social upheaval that spawned from the psychedelic experience movement (a movement that still continues to this day).

The author, Tom Wolfe, takes the audience (which at the time of publishing was mostly a straight, middle class, “silent majority” readership) on a fantastic journey into the day-glo world of Ken Kesey and his band of merry pranksters. They paint a bus, take lots of acid, drive around America and basically help to ignite what eventually becomes the hippie movement.

So that’s the basic rundown. And throughout this strange tale of strange people doing strange things Wolfe asserts, or more likely stumbles upon, some very interesting observations about the American culture as a whole.

I opened this entry with a quote from a paragraph I read just today. Today being the second day of June in the year two thousand and nine. Today finding me in a country that has little culture to speak of, and what little culture there is isn’t even worth mentioning.

And this is perhaps one of the greatest tragedies of my generation: we are inheriting from our parents generation not only an unheard of amount of debt (60 Trillion and counting!) but also a culture that has been so exploited, so wrung dry of any uniqueness, any semblance of authenticity that we literally find ourselves standing amongst the ruins (in our case they are sheet metal strip malls instead of the large stone Pyramids) of an utterly mind numbing landscape devoid of anything worthwhile.

We are the generation of no money and no culture. Welcome to the future, would you like biggie fries with that?

Funky Little Shack

2009-05-24T11:27:00.000-07:00

Alive

2009-05-16T09:25:00.000-07:00

I wanted sunlight in the kitchen,
but all I got was rain.
I wanted diffused bliss,
of the late afternoon variety.

The kind of light you find
at the higher regions
of this spinning globe
we call home.

Not blinding, not demanding
but encompassing and inviting.
The kind that welcomes you
into the room,
imploring you to see
what's been viewed before,
with eyes shot through with wonder.

I looked for sunlight in the kitchen,
but all I found was rain.

Respect

2009-05-14T15:13:00.000-07:00

I was o.k. with it at first, this turning tail and running back down the mountain from a rather large rattlesnake that blocked the trail. But then the cute college girls in the tie-dye t-shirts showed up in the parking lot. When I told them to watch out for the rattler about a mile up the trail they didn’t seem perturbed in the slightest. I tried to make them understand that she was big, aggressive and probably guarding a nearby nest. They thanked me for the information and headed off up the trail. Made me rethink my decision to traipse back down the trail.

But here’s the story. There’s not much to it but I’ll tell it to you anyway. It took me some time to find the trailhead. Many trails in the Southeastern U.S. are poorly marked. After three stops at local establishments I finally found the way up Mt. Yonah.

The ascent was nice, with boulders poking up from beneath the fallen foliage and undergrowth. Squirrels did their thing (you know, their “squeak, squeakum” thing) as I hiked past their nests. I found a small purple flower that gave off the most beautiful scent. The kind of scent that wasn’t overpowering, the kind of scent you had to lean in close to experience.

Then up, up, up the trail I climbed, past more purple flowers and a rather large Oak tree. And then, rather abruptly, it all came to a halt. I was just walking over a rock on the trail when my eyes registered a rather straight looking stick lying horizontally across the length of the rock. After another millisecond my brain registered what my eyes had just seen and I jumped back. She did the same, slithering her scaly body into a defensive coil.

Next came her unmistakable rattle and my unexpected adrenaline rush. I'm sure she was just as afraid as I was (if not more). I weighed my options. I could a) blaze my own trail around her, hiking through the abundant poison oak all around (after more research I learned that the plants I thought were poison oak were actually Virginia Creepers. An apparently common mistake.), b) jump off of the rock she was coiled at the base of and possibly risk her striking at me and not missing or c) simply turn around and head back down the mountain.

As you already know, I chose c. But not before I snapped a few shots of this venomous creature that had altered the direction of my day. Snakes have my utmost respect. I am no Steve Irwin (man I miss that guy).

Hope the ladies had a better go at reaching the top then I did.

By The Sound

2009-05-10T19:41:00.000-07:00

Maren being Maren.

Getting It

2009-05-09T09:13:00.000-07:00

"The Dead scene is "more inclusive than exclusive" and "has to do with integrity...the point is, we're not trying to be famous or rich, we're just trying to make music as well as we can, and get it out."

~Jerry Garcia

Spoken by a man who truly "got it".

Only The Next Exit

2009-05-03T20:18:00.000-07:00

The road is sometimes a hard black surface I meander down in the middle of a comfortable Georgia night after my truck, oh this truck, runs out of gas. This night patience is not worn thin. It's 2:30 a.m. and the road is quiet.

This is where i've been. On this lonely highway with the sound of crickets in my ear. Leaves, the verdant green of mid spring all around me, being lifted with a sigh by a slight breeze.

It's only a broke down old truck, it's only 2:30 in the morning, it's only 2 miles to the next gas station and I'm only trying to see the world with new eyes, to hear the sounds I normally speed by, to not grow too tired of life too soon.

Collected Perspective

2009-03-14T21:27:00.000-07:00

I feel like it needs a name, but what name to give it? How do you name something that is more a feeling or an inkling than a concrete piece of matter or evidence you can point to and say “ah, yes! I know exactly how to describe that thing. I know just the name it should go by.”

This sounds like gibberish, I know. Bear with me though; it’s been a few weeks since I’ve written anything. The “thing” I would like a name for, or if not a name than at least some insight into, is my near inability to see the forest for the trees. Move those damn trees, and then maybe I could see the forest beyond it. Oh wait, the trees are the forest you say? How can that be? It looked so different in my minds eye, in the recesses of my imagination, in the culturally ingrained perspective I project onto everything around me, including myself.

Idealism has always been with me, and I hope it will always be so. For the most part, idealism has been more than a welcome companion on this 28-year journey of my life. But that’s changed lately. I’ve found myself frustrated and demoralized with the clash of the idealistic world I’ve envisioned myself living in and the world that I actually wake up to every morning.

Expectations can really fuck everything up. I’ll give you an example. Let’s take poverty in the U.S. Now, being poor in America is obviously very different than being poor in a third world country. Even the poorest American has more readily available access to modern conveniences than a poor person in Africa or India. But, someone living in poverty in a third world country has something the poor of America know very little about: solidarity. Poverty in America is tough not only because of your limited means but also because you are poor in a country that expects much of its citizenry in the way of material wealth. The expectations for what is considered the American dream are much higher (and more unreasonable) than those for someone in a relatively impoverished country.

And this issue of expectations goes hand and hand with the idealism I am trying to find a happy medium within. I’ve always had my eye on next destination. The green grass withers away far to quick. The ability to be content with the space I currently inhabit, the town, city, state or country I happen to be living in at the moment has been held at arms length most of my life. A place to call home has always eluded me. I’ve moved often and loved less with each move.

If I know how to do one thing well it would have to be moving on. I’ve tried to turn my nomadic ways into some sort of story that others might envy me for, something for them to define me by (and something for me to be defined by). But unlike the nomads of the past I have no traveling nomad community to carry me along when I grow tired of journeying. I might meet another journeyer along the way, but those are too few and too far between to give the life sustaining community that humanity is meant to be a part of.

Expectations in themselves are not necessarily a hindrance. It’s when you’re expectations make it near impossible for you to enjoy and be grateful for the life you are living that they become poisonous. Unrealistic expectations have a way of destroying you slowly, from the inside out.

And now I stand at some sort of crossroads, at a point where I recognize the desperate need for deep community that has always resided within me. This time I’ve chosen to take the road that leads to the closest semblance of a home and community I’ve ever really know; that being my friends and family back in Georgia.

Yet this trip back to the South is not without great trepidation. For me the South holds my family and friends but not much else beyond that. I see the southern states of America as some sort of bastion of traditional American values. Traditional American values like thoughtless allegiance to some perverted version of a god that if it truly existed would scare the living shit out of me (and does scare the living shit out of the many who believe in it), blatant and outright racism toward anyone besides the white race and the small town, backstabbing gossip that demoralizes everyone who chooses to swim in it’s cold, muddy waters.

But perhaps the South isn’t really all that bad. I mean it’s just my perspective, right?

And that’s what this whole thing called life really boils down to; perspective, expectation and the idealism one chooses to deploy in an effort to create a world around him that currently does not exist.

Thoughts, anyone?

I Am Gregg.

2009-02-28T00:40:00.000-08:00

I am Gregg. At least that’s what Erma says. And what Erma says is good enough for me. So for now I am Gregg. She points to a hill and tells me about a large tree she once buried her shelter rescued dog beneath. The tree is still there; at least that’s what she tells me. Erma tells me about her new dog, a mixed mutt she picked up at the shelter not to long ago. The new dog snoops the ground and bushes ahead of us.

At some point in the conversation Erma asks my name again. I tell her mine and ask hers again. I'm horrible with names. I often make apologies for my habit of forgetting someone’s name. But I don’t really feel all that apologetic even when I'm apologizing. A name is a nice thing to remember but it’s not everything. In conversation I'm striving to treat you as if I am genuinely interested in everything you are saying to me. And in this enraptured state of conversational bliss I will probably forget your name.

So what if Erma forgot my name. I forgot hers as well.

I think Erma is like me: a bit lonely and looking for someone to acknowledge that she does indeed exist. She is in her 70’s and walks somewhat hunched over. I am 28 and walk slowly beside her, not knowing anymore about her than she is willing to divulge to a complete stranger.

I am the stranger, but so is she. But after five minutes I know that she’s lived up on that hill for over forty years, that she is originally from Germany and that shelter dogs are the best kinds of dogs.

And then the trail splits off, one way leading up the hill, the other to the train tracks that run along the shore. Erma tells me, with much sincerity in her voice, that it was nice meeting me; perhaps we’ll meet again. She heads up the hill and I head toward the water.

She calls after me, “take care, Gregg”. Thanks, I say, you take care too, Erma.

A Quote (And A Cat)

2009-02-25T23:32:00.000-08:00

The following quote was heard today on an utterly fascinating Rick Steves podcast about Iran. The cat above has nothing to do with the quote below. I enjoy both the photo of the cat and the poem, I thought you might too.

"Out beyond fields of wrong doing,
and fields of right doing,
there is another field.
I'll meet you there."

~Rumi

Work

2009-02-19T22:48:00.000-08:00

West Of Ole Miss.

2009-02-09T20:43:00.000-08:00

The old West is dead. In fact, it died a long time ago. But the myth, yes the myth of the American West, well that myth lives on in the thousands of books, movies and songs that continue to carry it back and forth across the Mississippi, through the deserts of the Southwest and onto the beaches of the Western shores. The myth of the American Western is just that: a myth. But I’ll be damned if it isn’t one of the better myths to try and construct some semblance of a life around.

Just today I was walking around Fairhaven, the old port town that sleeps on the shores of Puget Sound just down the hill from my current residence, and saw a stone marker stating that a saloon was once located on what is now a grassy patch between an old pharmacy and a new bank. The saloon was apparently a place where at one time “vigilantes met”.

And then this morning, before I left the confines of my four-walled abode, I was reading about Meriwether Lewis and how he moved to and lived in Georgia during his younger years. This was around 1791 and at the time Georgia was considered “the frontier”. Can you believe it, Georgia a frontier? My god, I lived in Georgia for the better half of 15 years and all I stumbled upon were hastily built subdivisions, mega-malls and churches the size of those mega-malls (are they one in the same?). No frontier in sight.

The reality of the world I live in is this: I can traverse the same distance Lewis and Clark took over a year to slog across in less than 5 hours. No loss of life, no eating horses, no befriending of Native Americans is needed to make the East to West journey a success. Look how far we have come.

But, and this is a very big but, what have we lost in the “progress”? What of the mystery, the uncertainty, the utter madness that was the West? What have we given up in the name of “progress” and “comfort”? What of the wild and unpredictable life that once was America?

Well, let’s just say it’s been subdued. And by subdued I really mean to say it’s been crushed, destroyed, squelched. America today is made up of everything but the “wild West” it once was. You cannot saunter into any town across this landscape and expect there to be a warm welcome, if there’s a welcome at all. If there are jobs to be had they now require resumes and drug tests: your word is no longer good enough.

Today while walking through Fairhaven I met an older woman (late 70’s perhaps) who talked about this younger generation (my generation) and how they saw physical labor as something to be looked down upon, something “only Mexicans would do”. I understood what she was speaking of.

Somehow the people of America have become to good for the land, to good to labour upon it, to good to directly derive their living from it.

But a day of reckoning is soon to come. The people of this land will soon be subject to it. We are not above the laws of nature, as much as our recent technological “advances” would lead us to believe we are. Our lives are more in tune with our surroundings and the seasons than we may at this time realize. Culturally, we tend to think of our “rough and tumble” past to be just that: in the past. But the past has a funny way of repeating itself, especially for those who refuse to learn from it.

[Hi]story

2009-01-30T11:26:00.000-08:00

Expectations. That’s what it really all comes down to, right?

Here’s how it goes in America. Imagine you are 25 years old and living in the U.S. You went to college right out of high school. You couldn’t afford to attend college but then again, who could? You received some money from your parents, worked a little (or a lot) while in school but mostly paid for college with loans. Four to six years’ worth of loans. On average, you’ll be buried beneath $20,000 dollars worth of debt the day you graduate from college. Congratulations. That’s 50% more debt than you would have graduated with just 10 years ago (adjustments for inflation accounted for).

Take this same principle of going into massive debt just to try and get an education and apply it to everything that is the “American Dream”. You want a house? Car of your own? Good job? Marriage and a family? Good luck. The American dream is dying one defaulted home loan at a time.

And here’s where it gets tough. Try talking to your parents about how hard it is to get by in America and they are likely to scoff. Things were tough when they were your age, that’s what they’re sure to say. And while your parents may have had it rough, they never had it this bad.

Ok, so enough with all of the numbers and percentages. I hate numbers. Numbers have a way of dehumanizing the situation.

This is not meant to be a “woe is us” post. Societies rise and fall (as do the governments that rule over them). This reality is as much a part of history as it is a part of our daily lives. To hear our parents tell of what it was like growing up in America is the same as to hear our grandparents tell of what it was like growing up during the Great Depression. It’s history and there is much to be learned from it. But it’s important to realize and keep in mind that it is History with a capitol H. Life will not (and cannot) happen exactly the same way twice. The way your parents lived is not the way you will live; no matter how much they think it should be so.

For me, the importance of what I do with the time I am given hinges less upon who’s expectations I am living up to and more upon what expectations I have for the time I am living in.

I am not my parents, nor my grandparents who came before them. And while their stories will surely live on within me, influencing the actions and decisions I make, my story will not be theirs, and theirs will not be mine.

Perhaps it’s time for a new dream.

Wirzba

2009-01-26T23:23:00.000-08:00

"The frantic, stressful striving going on all around us indicates that we are profoundly lost. We seem unable to ask with any seriousness or depth the question of what all our striving is ultimately for."

~ Norman Wirzba

Where To From Here...

2009-01-22T22:18:00.000-08:00

It’s all up in the air. It always is with me. Sometimes I feel like a cowboy in an old Western, even if that’s not what I'm shooting for. There’s this one scene in “The Magnificent Seven” (truly a great Western film) where all the gun slingers are gathered in a village. They are defending this little Mexican town from a group of roving banditos. So all the hired guns are sitting around sharing the various hardships of being a cowboy and one of the cowboys speaks a line that resonates deep within me:

“Rented rooms you’ve lived in - five hundred! Meals you eat in hash houses - a thousand! Home - none! Wife - none! Kids... none! Prospects - zero.”

Sounds depressing, don’t it? But no, I'm not trying to live the life of a cowboy. Not trying to live like a gypsy or a nomad or Kerouac and the Beat Generation nor the Hippies that came after them. No, this isn’t how I'm trying to live my life. How I am trying to live is much more difficult for me to explain, much more difficult to formulate into coherent sentences grouped together to make paragraphs that might eventually go on to become a story you might want to read or perhaps even be a part of.

I'm not there yet, wherever there may be. The storyline that is my life is still a sketch, still just an outline. I catch glimpses, every now and then, of what might be to come. But nothing holds water; at least not for very long.

And this is beyond difficult. This time in life is hard. Some say I should just give up and give in. But what, exactly, am I supposed to give up on and give in to?

But listen, I mean you must understand that I do not hate my life, quite the opposite in fact. I choose how I live. Not many people can say that about their lives. I'm beholden to no one, which at times has its advantages and disadvantages. I live simply. No debt. Not much to speak of in the way of material wealth. I have a family that loves me deeply. I have friends that love me deeply as well. I can pick up and leave at the drop of a hat, and sometimes I do.

Then there’s the loneliness. You’ll often hear people romanticize the kind of life I'm living. Hell, you’ll even catch me romanticizing it more often than not. But most skim over this constant companion of loneliness that often stays close by us on our journey. It takes time, energy, and a constant supply of curiosity to meet new people, make new friends, share of your self in the same genuine manner that you hope others will share of themselves with you. I find community; get my “community fix”, in small doses these days.

It’s not like it was just a few years ago when community on an almost consistent basis surrounded me. It’s hard to go from being a missionary surrounded by others who shared at least some semblance of a common goal to being relatively alone with your thoughts, finding folks that “get” you only every so often and even then not nearly as often as you might hope.

And this is the thing about wandering, the thing about journeying that I am only beginning to understand. This loneliness, this acute awareness of never really being understood, this is one of the truest things about me. The beauty of the wanderer is that he begins to understand and perhaps eventually accept that loneliness is not something to be rid of but rather something to embrace and live within.

Don’t ask me where these thoughts came from. I just got lonely and started writing.

I’ll leave you with this fine tune (Arthur McBride) performed by Paul Brady back in 1977. A good story sung well has buoyed me through many a long, lonely day.

The Beginning.

2009-01-20T22:31:00.000-08:00

Looking to take a ferry to Alaska? This is where you begin. The Fairhaven ferry terminal, the southern most stop on the Alaska Marine Highway System. This port also happens to be at the bottom of the hill from where I live. Who knows, perhaps one day I'll be on that ferry, headed north to the future.

Nostos Ou Topos

2009-01-15T09:25:00.000-08:00

“San Francisco in the middle sixties was a very special time and place to be a part of. But no explanation, no mix of words or music or memories can touch that sense of knowing that you were there and alive in that corner of time and the world. Whatever it meant. It was madness in any direction, at any hour you could strike sparks anywhere. There was a fantastic universal sense that whatever we were doing was right. That we were winning…that sense of inevitable victory over the forces of old and evil. Not in any mean or military sense, we didn’t need that. Our energy would simply prevail. We had all the momentum. We were riding the crest of a high and beautiful wave.”

The above is an excerpt from Hunter S. Thompson’s novel, “Fear and Loathing In Las Vegas”. I was reminded of this beautiful passage from Hunters journal last night while watching a documentary about him entitled “Gonzo”.

I must have been 18 or 19 when I first watched the Johnny Depp version of “Fear and Loathing”. I remember how strange that film seemed to me then (and how strange it still appears to this day). But I also remember the above passage, and how when it was first read chills ran down my spine, tears stinging the corner of my eyes. I was arrested by the nostalgic utopia and wonder of it all. These things have always arrested me.

Isabel Fonseca, the author of “Bury Me Standing: The Gypsies and Their Journey”, had this to say about nostalgia for utopia:

“Nostos is the Greek for “a return home”; the Gypsies have no home, and, perhaps uniquely among peoples, they have no dream of a homeland. Utopia-ou topos-means “no place.” Nostalgia for utopia: a return home to no place.”

This became the fate of those children of the Sixties. This nostalgic longing for a Utopian dream that they were sure really happened. They were there, they saw it, they were it. Peace and love were real and tangible beings, not just some cheap bumper stickers, slogans on a t-shirt or fridge magnets.

And then the wave crashed. It wasn’t that the vision of the Sixties was so unrealistic that it surely couldn’t sustain itself. It was that the children of the Sixties, with all their “flower power” and flowing dresses, had a vision beyond this world. A vision this world was not ready for; may never be ready for.

And in many ways those who refuse to give up this vision long after the Sixties have come and gone are beset by a similar fate as that of the Gypsies: a deep and discernible longing for a place and time that, try as they may, they can never return to.

Last Night

2009-01-10T10:26:00.000-08:00

I left the party. Left the warmth, the light, the subdued buzz of bodies gathered around the kitchen table sharing stories late into the night. I began my walk and was quickly overwhelmed by the stinging wind whipping against my parka. I pushed through the wind and over Sehome hill (well, sort of around rather then over). What kind of folks walked these sidewalks tonight?

A couple, dressed for an occasion not befitting their midnight stroll, clung tightly to each other as the chill evening blew right through them, irregardless of improper garb and dress.

Friday night in this sleepy college town saw only a handful of cars inhabiting the roadways. Stoplights stayed green or red, the traffic patterns electronically set for a quiet car less night in the dead of winter. But this winter night was anything but dead. It was one descriptive verb after another but definitely not dead.

I passed Joes Gardens, the rows turned over in anticipation of the spring plant. The rows would have to wait. Spring was still a few months away. Further down the road whirring lights rushed by me, alternating reds and blues warning all of danger! More lights up ahead, sedentary and forming a giant peace symbol. ‘Twas the season for peace. I wished for four seasons instead of just one.

The cops cruised by, flashing a spotlight as they passed. One turned around, drove by me again. No doubt suspicious of me and the time of night I chose to propel this bag of bones through the wind and darkness. What dark deeds might I be up to?

Fairhaven came and went. One empty intersection with papers blowing across its motor less expanse. The bridge delivered me safely, as it had for many who came before, across the ravine and over the stream to the other side of town. The hill to home came in sight and I watched the fluorescent lights of the city clash with the reflective glow of a hidden but almost full moon.

The night ended, or began, with a tug of the door into my apartment, heat cascading from within. This was the last walk home. Or at least the last walk home until I chose to wander away again.

3:45

2009-01-06T13:09:00.000-08:00

This cat, the fat one I call Gato (the one my mother calls Cinderella) lays about, caged like the stupid animal she is. She used to be free. Used to have free reign of the house, inside and out. But then the errant shit began to materialize, first in the tub and eventually on my mother’s side of the bed. The bed she shares with my father. That was the final straw, the straw that doomed this spiteful animal to the outdoors, the “indoors” being seen only through the metal wires of a 2 by 2 cage.

Stupid Gato.

But enough about the cat. Enough! I’ve been needing to write something, everything, anything. The inner perfectionist (the one I despise) requires absolutely the right mood, inside and out. The sky must be just the right shade of grey, the silence the right kind of silence, the rain just so. If I could, and perhaps one day I will, say fuck the grey, fuck the silence and fuck the rain I would. But I'm not there yet. The muse is fickle. It wanders away, takes to the road, takes to the hills, takes to the sky or the sea or anywhere else but where I happen to be.

Then I go quiet, my voice goes on a journey and leaves me behind, speechless and dumb. There’s no guaranteed time of return, no day on a calendar to denote it’s possible homecoming (do muses even have homes to come to?). But then I leave as well, searching for I don’t know what. The muse? A home? A place where I can be myself or no one at all?

The clock ticks out a loud 3:45. Not the dark, brooding 3:45 of the early morning hours. No, this is the dull, grey 3:45 of a wet afternoon in the south. Just a few days into the new year and I'm already tired of it. Where is 2010, 2011, 2012? They’re on their way and will be here sooner then I hoped they would be.

That’s the thing about the future; it either too early or too late.

But here is the present, right on time and boring as hell. That clock is driving me insane.

Thanks

2009-01-02T20:39:00.001-08:00

A lot.

12:54

2008-12-24T21:54:00.000-08:00

I just watched Twenty-seven fly out the window, out the window and over the trees. Now Twenty-eight comes in, pulls up a chair and begins to sit with me for the next year. We talk about the coming year and what lay down the road and just around the bend. But Twenty-eight knows the future no better then Twenty-seven and all the years that came before.

Twenty-eight. 28. Toowenty ate.

Sark

2008-12-11T08:38:00.000-08:00

No, that is not the result of a seal and shark mating together. It's a real place (an island) off the coast of Britain. Every once in a while, when i'm up for learning something new, I will cruise over to Wikipedia and read their front page.

Today there was a link for Sark (something about feudalism being abolished). As if feudalism still existing in a Western country wasn't strange enough I found this piece of recent history about the island. I'll just cut and paste it straight on to this entry.

One-person invasion attempt

"In August 1990 an unemployed French nuclear physicist named André Gardes attempted a singlehanded invasion of Sark, armed with a semi-automatic weapon. The night Gardes arrived he put up signs declaring his intention to take over the island the following day at noon. He was arrested by Marc Nemeth, the island's part-time police officer, whilst sitting on a bench, changing the gun's magazine and waiting for noon to arrive."

Now that is funny.

Quiet Desperation

2008-12-08T17:20:00.000-08:00

Athens is ablaze. For the last three days “rioters” (as the media likes to call them) have taken to the streets in massive protests as a response to the murder of a 15 year old by two police officers.

I am intrigued by any protest, riot, direct action, etc. The media generally shows only one side of the story and usually attempts to utterly trivialize any kind of civilian uprising. Only government run (and civilian funded) armies or police forces are portrayed as justified in their violent actions. If a civilian acts out violently in any way towards a government sanctioned force they are automatically deemed an “insurgent” or “anarchist”.

All of that said I would like to go on the record in stating that I do not endorse violence as a viable solution to any problem. It appears as though violent governments and the agents who are paid to peddle their violent world views have devolved in such a way as to strip themselves of their ability to listen to anything that is not delivered in a violent manner. They live and operate violently and respond only to the language they most often speak: that of violence.

In watching some of the raw footage from the protests in Greece I notice that the cameras are nearly always trained on the “violence” being done to “private property”. The destruction of inanimate objects such as windows, dumpsters, atm’s and the like are what the media trains their cameras on. In societies that value property over people this makes sense. To destroy a corporations property is to destroy its soul.

For many of these protesters the felt helplessness against entities much larger and more powerful then them is nearly palpable. In most countries decisions that dramatically affect the lives of citizens are usually placed far beyond the reach of said citizens to such a degree that when the opportunity arises to let the collective voice be heard it often explodes from within in a fit of violence and rage.

I know all about the jackasses who see protests as nothing but an excuse to “f some shit up!” I am not talking about them. I believe there are many disillusioned citizens around the world that recognize this: there is a worldwide system in place that sees the citizens of any given country as nothing more than labor to be exploited.

When this system comes to your country, your city, your town and your home you feel it. It influences everything from the way you view your own life to the lives of those around you. This system comes to cripple your town, your family, your relationships and your community.

After the system is firmly in place the sense of loss is felt deeply, and often subconsciously, by those who have grown up in it.

In all of this I am reminded of the popular Thoreau quote that goes, “The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” This quote is pulled from an essay Thoreau wrote called “Economy”, in which he observes that most men are slaves to their work and enslaved by those who they work for.

It is with this perspective in mind that I often view violence against a government system as an act of desperation. An act of quiet desperation made loud.

Step Outside (Your Mind)

2008-12-06T14:30:00.001-08:00

“Sometimes we live no particular way but our own,
And sometimes we visit your country and live in your home,
Sometimes we ride on your horses, sometimes we walk alone,
Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own.”

Eyes of the World; Grateful Dead

Recent sites I’ve been perusing:

Digihitch: Think no one hitches anymore? Here’s a whole community of folks that share their hitching stories, warnings, tips and support with each other.

Road Junky Travel: Ever thought of living in a van down by the river? Well, you’re in luck because there are plenty of people that do live in vans (but not always by rivers) and love telling about their experiences.

Dropping Out: At my friends house they have this old snowboard mounted on their wall with the phrase “Tune In, Turn On, Drop Out” advertising itself in raised letters across the length of the board deck. Ran Prieur has an interesting essay written on this exact subject.

The counterculture in any culture has always intrigued me. Curiosity has been a constant companion throughout the entirety of my waking years.

Peace (And The Lack Thereof)

2008-12-03T16:32:00.000-08:00

In JFK's "Strategy of Peace" speech given on June 10, 1963 he had this to say about the United States involvement in helping to bring about world peace:

"What kind of peace do I mean? What kind of peace do we seek? Not a Pax Americana enforced on the world by American weapons of war. Not the peace of the grave or the security of the slave. I am talking about genuine peace, the kind of peace that makes life on earth worth living, the kind that enables men and nations to grow and to hope and to build a better life for their children-not merely peace for Americans but peace for all men and women-not merely peace in our time but peace for all time."

Today a treaty on banning cluster bombs has been signed by over one hundred countries. And, to no one's surprise, the U.S. government has refused to sign the treaty. I specifically say "the U.S. government" because I can tell you that I am one of many U.S. citizens that vehemently disagrees with this governments decision to not sign the treaty.

It saddens me to realize that a government as oppressive and violent as the one that rules over the U.S. is often seen as some kind of worldwide representation for what it's citizens believe. This government, for the most part, does not represent me nor my interests.

This is, in large part, why I choose to stay as far outside of this system as I am comfortable with at this point in time (that comfort level is being expanded on a fairly consistent basis hence allowing me to venture further and further away from the insane ideologies that many Americans have allowed themselves to believe in and live by). My hope is that I will one day be able to live my life as a complete outsider (within a community of other outsiders) of the despotic government and hollow culture I am surrounded by.

The journey continues...

Night Lights

2008-11-30T22:12:00.000-08:00

After the celebrations had ended came the dark, and eventually the fog. He stood beneath the street lights watching the thick night air swirl around the subdued glow like moths on a warm summers evening.

Help Wanted: No Blue Collar Need Apply

2008-11-29T22:41:00.000-08:00

Piece by piece, I watched them tear it down. The concrete and brick walls came down with a mighty crash, the machines playing a dance around this relic of a bygone era.

There were some good reasons for this factory to have ceased production. This plant, that sat for decades overlooking the bay, had it’s own dark secrets. For many a year it spewed it’s toxic waste straight out into the cold waters that lapped it’s concrete embankments. The environmental damage was staggering. It would take decades, if not centuries, for the bay to repair itself.

As I stood on the bridge overlooking the demo site other thoughts came into my mind. Here was yet another small town in America that was losing its blue-collar industry. As the baby boomers traipsed across the American landscape looking for “a nice place to retire” any town that happened to be located near open water and hills that overlooked it (white people love views and open water, they’ll do anything they can to have both at once) was fair game.

White collar America wants views and nice parks by the bay. Places to dine and shop while listening to the seagulls cry overhead. And what white collar wants, white collar gets.

It dawned on me, and not for the last time, that the blue-collar worker in America had been outsourced, underpaid and overworked on a consistent basis since the mid 1970’s. Americans had bought the lie that they were too good to work with their hands (but apparently the hands of ten year olds in sweatshops in India were completely acceptable). They began to believe that life would be better if they just had more schooling, so to school they went. And went, and went, and went until their high school diplomas, bachelors degree’s, associates, masters, PhD’s and doctorates meant nothing more than the pieces of paper they were written on.

When my mother and father graduated high school in ’73 they needed nothing more than a high school diploma and a good work ethic to earn a real living wage. Contrast that with the current working environment where you need at least four years of post high school education to even think of applying for a job that will pay you enough to sustain a somewhat decent living.

I take up serious issue with the validity of the many white-collar jobs that have been created in the last twenty years. What does the white-collar worker actually do for the society around them? What tangible things do they have to show for all the “work” they do (besides money and all the shit they can buy with it)? They aren’t building homes, painting houses, repairing cars, growing food or fixing leaks. They don’t (for the most part) mow their own yards, clean their own homes or raise their own kids. So if they’re not doing any of these things than what the hell are they doing? Oh you can find them pushing paper, filing lawsuits, lobbying government, and many other types of activities that I would deem closer to doing nothing (a.k.a. “looking busy”) than actually doing something to directly benefit the society around them.

And this is what four years or more in a university does for many people. It teaches them how to “look busy” and make lots of money while doing it. It is partly because of the “workless” white-collar workers rise to power that the blue-collar worker has seen a decrease in everything from their paycheck to general societal respect. To be blue collar in “modern” day America is to be looked at as someone who was too stupid or too lazy to get a “real”, white collar job.

My mother and I have had an ongoing conversation over the recent state of our failed nation state. America has come upon a time of great reckoning. It may come to pass in this time of reckoning that the “workless” white collar workers will be exposed as the true drain on society that they are.

When the rubber meets the road and the almighty dollar ain’t worth shit you can bet I’ll be turning to the farmer before the stockbroker for help.

Further processing: Only a few short hours after posting this entry I listened to a Bill Moyers podcast that confirmed much of what I had just written on. Here's the broadcast link for anyone interested: Bill Moyers

Black Friday

2008-11-28T12:34:00.000-08:00

“Wal-Mart Employee Trampled to Death by Customers”

This headline is, tragically, not a joke. There isn’t much too say in response to a headline such as this. In order to “save” (it’s always amused me how the advertising industry will use the word “save” in an effort to try and convince you to spend. You can’t save money by spending it) a few bucks on shit they didn’t need a human life was taken.

The effectiveness with which consumerism has “successfully” brainwashed an entire culture is one of the more frightening psychological developments to come about in the last 100 years.

I often wonder, how did we get here? Where did the devolution process begin?

A few years back the BBC put out a documentary titled “The Century of The Self”. It starts out with Freud’s ideas of human nature and the ability to control societies by preying not on the strengths of humanity, but on its weaknesses.

I firmly believe that capitalism has been the incubator in which the idea of “self above everything else” has not only been nurtured but also been fed a consistent diet of dissatisfaction with everything in life.

The simple act of living is no longer satisfactory. To be “alive” is to be left wanting.

This is not only a horrible way to “live”, but also an equally deplorable way to die.

Broke

2008-11-26T16:44:00.000-08:00

Upon cruising the Craigslist job board I realize two things: most of the job listings are scams (fake emails directing you to fake companies) and real work is hard to come by. Recently I have seen a lot of posts on the board from people who are not offering work but instead looking for it. The most recent one I read was from a person who has a family and will be out of work for at least a month.

That’s a tough one for me. I mean things aren’t great for me (monetarily speaking) right now, but I'm a single guy with no family and no one depending on me to “bring home the bacon”.

Looks like a lot of folks will be flooding the welfare office if things don’t change soon.

It’s sad to think that the government is bailing out those who need it the least (rich CEO’s and the like) and leaving the rest of society to fend for itself.

I wonder if the government will give me a bailout? I promise I’ll ask real nice like.

Capitalist pricks.

Before The Dawn

2008-11-20T07:43:00.000-08:00

I don’t know why 5:45 am. Tim was moving around up stairs. It was hot in my bed. Four covers were not necessary. I walked outside and watched a plane come in to view. The slow moving orange glow of landing lights twinkling in the early morning dawn. Actually dawn had not yet come and the better half of a waning moon still shone quietly behind a thin layer of clouds.

Then the eagles woke up and one started screeching at the other. They have a nest in a tree not but 600 feet from my doorstep.

I went back inside, put the kettle on, ground some beans and washed a few errant dishes leftover from last nights meal.

I should be an explorer of the early morning. Of those fleeting moments before the night gives up all of its ghosts to the coming dawn. I should be one of those ghosts.

My Cup Overfloweth

2008-11-18T13:54:00.000-08:00

There have been many subjects, most influenced by media or pod casts I listen to, that have been running through my mind as of late. Living away from the friends I would normally talk with about these subjects has caused me to sit alone with these thoughts. This is sometimes good, sometimes bad, but always useful.

So here’s a brief rundown of a few of the many subjects I have been pondering:

Gay Marriage. Not really sure why the Mormon Church, or any church for that matter, has amassed huge sums of money to “fight” against the right for gay couples to be married. I’ve heard many irrational, unscientific, panic ridden arguments for those opposed to gay marriage but not really anything that strikes me as an informed argument. What is the fear here? Does anyone out there know something I don’t about gay marriage? Will America somehow implode in on itself the day gay marriage is made into law? I encourage you to listen to this pod cast (it’s basically about a Mormon high priest who is so against his churches stance on gay marriage that he is willing to face banishment).

White People and Guns. So America has elected its first black president. I am more than ok with this. But apparently many white folks are so scared of, yet again, god only knows what that they are flocking in droves to gun shops. They are not only buying guns and ammo in record numbers but buying assault weapons, assault weapons people!!! Is this for real? I don’t listen to any of the hate radio jocks so I have no context for where these people might be getting their misinformation from. Misinformation like “Obama is going to take all of our guns away from us.” Do these people know something about Obama that I don’t? Am I missing something here?

Welfare and Wealth Distribution. With at least 12.7 percent of America’s population living below the poverty line you would think this country would recognize the need for a better social welfare system. It hasn’t. If anything, it’s become increasingly harder for those struggling (self included) just to make ends meet over the last 20 years. The cost of everything (food, shelter, energy, healthcare) has gone up while wages for a large number of Americans have remained stagnant. What is this information alerting us to when the richest country in the world also has the highest percentage of those living in poverty amongst any of the other “developed” nations? Guess we’re not as “developed” as we purport to be.

Last rant:

Infinite War. Iraq. Afghanistan. Pakistan. Iran. Syria. Russia. North Korea. The list goes on. How much longer will America feel the “need” to be the world police? What does “winning” a war look like? How much longer will the American people continue to watch their tax dollars, dollars that could be spent on welfare reform, public education, healthcare, be made into bullets and bombs which stuff the pockets of “defense contractors” (a.k.a. criminals that should have been imprisoned long ago) with our tax money and destroy the lives, families and communities they are dropped upon?

Agatha Christie said it like this, “One is left with the horrible feeling now that war settles nothing: that to win a war is as disastrous as to lose one.”

Any thoughts?

Cuppa

2008-11-13T08:18:00.000-08:00

It’s steamy and sultry,
but this is no romance novel.
There’s no lust in this cup,
just straight black coffee.
Hold the cream, hold the sugar,
a good cup should be able
to hold its own.
I'm awake and addicted,
sipping away in the
dim grey light
of another sunless morning.

Post Point

2008-11-11T19:13:00.001-08:00

Out In The County

2008-11-07T11:16:00.000-08:00

I wake up in a very “fuck all of this shit” kind of mood. It’s not the rain, the lack of work to be found (and conversely money to be made), the lull in good conversation to be had or the fact that I loathe my camera and have descended into some kind of valley where creativity is no where to be found.

No, it’s none of these things. Or maybe it’s all of them. I'm not really sure yet. At this hour I am only sure of two things; my hands are shaking from the caffeine intake and my stomach is trying to tell me man cannot live on coffee alone.

Then there’s the ten o’clock train. I can hear its whistle in the distance. Steel on steel pushing north through the rain.

Since that’s all I can tell you about today, let me tell you a little about yesterday.

Linda takes me far from home. We drive “out in the county”. This is local speak for any place located more than a couple of miles from downtown Bellingham. “Out in the county” is beautiful. She lives on an old homestead way down Mt. Baker Highway, not too far from the great volcano itself.

Upon arrival I meet Suzy, a somewhat ornery Dalmatian mix that never quite settles upon whether I am friend or foe. After a conversation about Michael Crichton’s recent passing and what it means to Linda (for three glorious years Linda dated Michaels younger brother, Douglas) I meet the amiable yet guarded Don. He is one third of the remaining Mitchell clan that live on 40 acres of land his great grandfather homesteaded back in the mid 1800’s. The signs of what once was a dairy farm are rapidly returning to the earth from whence they sprang. Roofless barns and outbuildings tell the story of a hundred winters past.

Don, his twin brother and their aging father have lived here all their lives. Linda’s told me the story of their mother; it’s a tragic one that has changed the course of the brother’s lives. I dare not ask about this story while talking with Don.

We spend a couple of hours enjoying each others company; eating, laughing, smoking cigarettes on the tiny front porch that shelters us from cool fall rain. This is a very humane interaction, one where the humans and their stories are the main act.

Then it’s time to leave. Linda fills a plastic bag with apples from the tree next to her house. The apples are a gift for me. I am great at receiving gifts, not so much at giving them.

On the way back home the conversation turns toward creative ruts. Linda tells me she’s written a few novels. Their lack of widespread recognition (a.k.a. being published) does not diminish their importance; these manuscripts are brought to life by the writer, not the publishing house. She then tells me it’s been over ten years since she’s written anything.

I am reminded that true creativity, and the manifestation of it, cannot be forced. It does not follow the mandates of a production-obsessed culture. No, it seems to come and go with no regard for the changing seasons that pile up between it’s last visit and the next. It is a good friend, but one that makes no excuse for it’s comings and goings.

Utah Once Again

2008-11-04T20:02:00.000-08:00

I am watching the 2008 presidential election votes roll in and can't help but think of one man: Utah Phillips.

Here is an excerpt from an interview conducted by Amy Goodman a couple of years back. These are words that I have wept over many times.

"The long memory is the most radical idea in America. That long memory has been taken away from us. Listen, you young people I’m talking to, that long member has been taken away from you. You haven’t gotten it in your schools. You’re not getting it on your television. You’re not getting it anywhere. You’re being leapfrogged from one crisis to the next. You know, you can’t remember what happened last week, because you’re locked into this week’s crisis.

No, turn that off. You know, walk away from that. Walk out your front door. Go find your elders. Go find your true elders. Go find your people that lived that life, who knew that life and who know that history. And get your hands down into that deep rich stream of our people’s history.

We divided our culture up into a market for youngers, a market for young adults, a market for young marrieds, a market for older people, you know. It’s not that way. And mass media contributed to that by taking the great movements that we’ve been through and trivializing important events. No, our people’s history is like one long river. It flows down from way over there. And everything that those people did and everything they lived flows down to me, and I can reach down and take out what I need, if I have the courage to go out and ask questions. That huge river, you know, it’s like tributaries that flow down into the polluted river and purify it."

Amen, Utah, Amen.

Ridin' On Down The Road...

2008-11-03T12:51:00.000-08:00

The bus ticket cost 28 dollars, and that was 28 dollars more than I was willing to pay. The goal was to travel from Bellingham to Seattle, it had been months since I’d moved north and I was jonesing for a good “friend fix”. The rideshare boards on Craigslist were filled with offers for trips in every direction except the one I wanted to go.

So, with my choices narrowed down to spending money I didn’t have or hanging around until the next day when a friend was heading south I made up my mind: I was going to try and hitch my way to the Emerald City.

Immediately after making up my mind I went into action: jumping in the cardboard dumpster outside my door, ripping of a good sized piece, uncapping my fine point sharpie and penning the words “SEATTLE, PLEASE” in big, black letters across the expanse of brown cardboard that would serve as my roadside voice. I dawned my backpack, dropped my plant off with a friend and headed on down the road.

Hitching is a strange thing in America, it’s become an anomaly in a country that is obsessed with the idea of “making it on your own” and “relying on no one”. The simple act of standing on the roadside with your thumb out and a smile on your face has become a radical statement. The average American family owns between two and three cars, and that’s a “conservative” estimate at best. It is with this figure in mind that you would think it completely plausible, hell, maybe even easy, to hitch a ride down any of Americas many paved thoroughfares.

But the simple fact that I am recounting a story based around the act of hitching should alert you to the reality that hitching is not the norm in the U.S. This was not always the case. In the not so distant past millions of young, and old, Americans took to the road via the thumb and a smile. This was apparently a time when Americans were either too stupid, too naïve or simply too trusting of their fellow man (and woman) to understand that hitching a ride meant almost certain death, for the hitcher or the unsuspecting person who gave them a ride. At least that’s what Hollywood would have us believe.

It helps to understand that Americans, like people the world over, love a good story. Hollywood, perhaps better than any other capital endeavor, has grasped the fullness of this love. And like any other business that wishes to succeed they have seized upon the few, and somewhat true, stories of hitches gone wrong. There have been entire movies dedicated to the myth of some serial killing hitchhiker with a lust for blood.

And so it is with this cultural meta-narrative of fear flowing just beneath the surface that I stand at the highway on ramp hoping for a ride from someone who can trust me as much as I am willing to trust them.

Many, many cars pass me by, with some of the occupants using hand gestures to communicate that they are only going a small piece up the road. The hand gestures are an act of kindness that I come to appreciate. These people have no obligation to communicate with this roadside freeloader their reasons for passing him by; their kindness carries me through.

After 15 or 20 minutes of advertising my need for a ride middle-aged man in a luxury SUV stops to pick me up. I climb in as he tells me he is only going a few exits down the highway. I thank him for stopping to pick me up and tell him a few exits down the road is closer to my destination than I was just a minute ago. With hum of the highway beneath us this soft-spoken stranger and I talk about the psychology behind hitching. He says he’s picked up many hitchers over the years and many of them have had apparent psychological issues. Living in America has the potential to drive you crazy, and for many it does. He tells me he has to pick up a friend who wants to walk with him and his dogs around a lake. His friend is an attractive young blond woman who is surprised to see a random man sitting in the front seat of her friend’s vehicle.

After brief introductions we are on our way. The driver says he can drop me off at an exit where a popular casino is located assuring me that it shouldn’t be hard to find a ride from there. I thank him as he drops me off at what appears to be a very desolate off ramp. There is the casino in the distance with its flashing light board promising riches within. I find a “good” spot to stand and resume my silent, cardboard request for a ride further south.

Many potential rides zoom past me with no regard; it’s as if I am invisible. I begin to wonder if I am. And then my most unexpected ride of the day stops to pick me up. A white Isuzu Trooper pulls up beside me and the Hispanic driver asks me where I am going. “Seattle”, I respond. She says they (there is also a man and a baby in the vehicle) are only going to Mount Vernon. I graciously accept the ride and climb in the back next to a car seat containing a baby boy. I only mention the drivers ethnicity because this is the first ever “minority” ride I’ve been given. I make small talk with the young driver (she’s only twenty) and her older male passenger (I try to guess the relationship of the two and finally settle on boyfriend/girlfriend). She tells me if she were alone she wouldn’t pick me up. I tell her I completely understand.

I look at the baby who is nursing a bottle and fighting a losing battle with his heavy, sleep laden eyelids. He has only just stopped crying, a tear resting just beneath his left eye attests to this. We ride for a while in silence. Eventually we exit the highway and I once again thank them for their generosity. I go through the same routine: locate the on ramp, find a safe spot to stand, pull out my sign, my thumb and a smile that hopefully conveys the flimsy presumption that I am harmless and trustworthy.

This time it’s a newish V.W. Passat that pulls over. Another middle aged white man is behind the wheel and I wait for him to shift his things from the front seat to the back before I take my offered seat. We head down the highway while exchanging names and occupations. He is heading to Seattle (finally!) to appraise a few pieces of real estate; he can take me wherever I need to go. We chat about the housing market in between business calls (one of which required my rough secretarial skills of scrawling his verbally dictated details of a potential clients contact info on the back of my cardboard sign).

It’s only a few minutes into this final ride that a steady rain begins to fall on the windshield; I am grateful beyond measure. Steve is a kind soul. He tells me about growing up in Seattle, and about eventually moving north with his wife. He offers to drop me off in Fremont (my final destination) and I begin to refuse his kindness but then think better of it and graciously accept. I couldn’t have asked for a more perfect hitch. I step out of his car and onto the cracked city sidewalk only two and a half hours after I began my journey. The 28 dollar bus doesn’t get me here this fast.

It has become more important now, perhaps more than ever, that Americans begin to trust those that surround them. This journey, like so many of my recent journeys, has been a hope restoring and fear dispelling exercise.

I have come to believe that to live in fear is to just stop living altogether.

Learning To Listen

2008-10-27T10:33:00.000-07:00

This time it was from Boston that he called to tell me about its colonial style houses and red brick buildings. He was excited about a city he thought I would be excited about. My relationship with American cities is tentative at best. I find most of them tacky and disconnected from everything: the past, the present and the future. My friend has a much more graceful perspective on Americas architectural dysfunction.

The conversation quickly shifted, on my prompting, to questions of immigration and his pending green card status. He had been jumping through all of the hoops the American Government provided for years now. Piles of paperwork, fees upon fees and endless months of being strung along had left my friend tired and frustrated. I told him that unfortunately he had happened upon America at a bad time, a very bad time.

Some seven years ago he came into a country that was quickly sliding into a place of fear, ignorance and increasing government control. Since then it’s grown considerably worse. Laws were being passed at a rapid pace that set out to make America an unwelcome place for everyone but a select few. The American government took up, and has since sustained, a stance that extended the middle finger instead of the olive branch to the rest of the world. And then it turned that finger upon it’s own citizens.

After some commiseration I reiterated my feelings of helplessness in moving the green card process along and tried, unsuccessfully, to lend some words of encouragement.

I said my goodbyes and dipped into the pub. It was Sunday night at Skylarks and that, as I had only recently discovered, meant traditional Irish music was being played. The music was lively and it soothed my perplexed spirit. I met a nice couple that had recently moved to Bellingham from Minneapolis. The music drummed on while Jason told me about working for Frito Lay and how most people didn’t know that his company owned Mrs. Vickie’s (they make some fairly tasty baked goods).

Then one of the mandolin players took a break and I took the opportunity to ask her about the troupe of musicians she played with. She had only recently begun playing but had a beautiful hand made instrument to learn upon. Her name was Mixie (she said “it rhymes with Dixie”). She was in her mid fifties and I could tell she had seen much in those 50 plus years of roaming around this planet.

We talked for a bit: about music, about the evening in 1995 when she and her husband were walking across the Golden Gate bridge and came across people mourning the loss of local guitar legend Jerry Garcia, about life in general. Just before I got up to leave she asked me if I was settling down in Bellingham. I told her I wasn’t sure if I’d be able to settle down in America. She didn’t ask why (the reasons where blatantly clear to anyone who was paying attention) but only suggested I consider Australia or New Zealand.

I thanked her for the advice, left a small tip for the musicians and trudged my way up the hill beneath a dark sky shot through with stars silently keeping watch over this wearied traveler.

Berry's Wisdom

2008-10-25T11:57:00.000-07:00

I picked up a book of essays by Wendell Berry called "The Art of the Commonplace". I just finished reading through the first essay, A Native Hill, and needed to share a few quotes with you from this meditative piece of text.

This first bit is from the forward written by Norman Wirzba:

"The frantic, stressful striving going on all around us indicates that we are profoundly lost. We seem unable to ask with any seriousness or depth the question of what all our striving is ultimately for."

Now for Berry's thoughts:

"We have lived by the assumption that what was good for us would be good for the world. And this has been based on the even flimsier assumption that we could know with any certainty what was good even for us."

"This peace is partly in being free of the suspicion that pursued me for most of my life, no matter where I was, that there was perhaps another place I should be, or would be happier or better in; it is partly in the increasingly articulate consciousness of being here, and of the significance and importance of being here."

This last one feels very applicable to many in my generation:

"The hill, which is part of America, has killed no one in the service of the American Government. Then why should I, who am a fragment of the hill? I wish to be as peaceable as my land, which does no violence though it has been the scene of violence and has had violence done to it."

This essay was published in 1969. We would have done well to heed his words so many years ago.

If I'm Honest

2008-10-23T11:55:00.000-07:00

It’s finally grey enough for me to write. Yesterday and the day before it the Sun was too brilliant, the sky too blue, the leaves too on fire with the hues of fall for me to sanely consider holing up with my thoughts.

I returned from Canada to find a full mailbox: junk, voting pamphlet, voting ballet, voters registration card, and a copy of the Sun. It appears as thought my voting registration went through, as did my subscription change of address request. This was a bad time for election decisions, but a great time for the Sun.

Can we delay this election? Can we push it back until politicians are honest, until your average citizen actually believes that what they have to say is being heard (and maybe even acted upon)? Can we call a temporary halt to the onward march of this crazed civilization? Is it too much to ask for a week or two of national meditation and reflection on where we’ve been, where we are and where we are going?

A flash of emotions rushes through me when looking at the ballot. I want to do one of many things to it: fill it out and send it in, spit on it, set it on fire and light a cigarette from the burning embers or simply resign it to the recycle bin with the rest of the scrap paper that blows through my life.

I'm struggling with thoughts of my great grandfather. Tell me again why he left Ireland for America. I don’t see what he saw in this country. I don’t know that I ever will.

My thoughts straddle the border. Do I immigrate north and leave this despotic government to it’s own devices? How bad did it have to get before my Irish ancestors boarded the ship and set sail for the new world, how bad will it get before I do the same?

Here is an excerpt from Sy Safransky’s Notebook. It’s words like these that keep me sane.

“No matter who’s elected president, daffodils will bloom in the spring. Men and women will fall in love and, sadly, out of love. Inconsolable grief will still be inconsolable. A broken heart will nonetheless keep beating one hundred times a day. No matter who’s elected president, writers will write. Painters will paint. Three in the morning will still be three in the morning. The door in our psyche we don’t want to walk through will still be just down the hall. No matter who’s elected president, life will hand us the invisible thread that connects us all; love will hand us the needle.”

In Context

2008-10-13T13:13:00.001-07:00

I am listening to the most recent Bill Moyers podcast and just had to share one very poignant segment from the show with you. It was a great example of the kind of critical thinking we desperately need to be having in America. Listening to Moyers is beginning to restore my belief in the power of journalism to effect positive change.

BILL MOYERS: This week, speakers at McCain rallies were consistently using Barack Obama's full name, Barack Hussein Obama. Now, that is a fact. That is his name. What takes that into the realm of dirty politics?

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: I worry whenever someone stands up and treats the name Hussein as if somehow that's illegitimate, as if that constitutes an indictment. We've really failed when a name that many, many, many Americans have, a perfectly legitimate name, is somehow now automatically associated with terrorism. Why should it? Why does it?

BILL MOYERS: Well, it shouldn't. No, I agree with-

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: It means there's something so wrong-

BILL MOYERS: What's wrong with being a Muslim, for example?

KATHLEEN HALL JAMIESON: That, well, that's the other problem. I mean, look, every time someone says, "Senator Obama is not a Muslim." You know, how dare you say that he might be a Muslim? How do you hear that if you're a Muslim? We ought to be able to say Senator Obama is Christian without making being a Muslim something that is something we've tagged as being a negative identification.

We've taken all these categories and we've let people use them to prompt inferences to tie to 9/11, tie to terrorism. And we've taken a whole part of our own community as a result, people around the world who identify with us as well, and we've labeled them on arbitrary grounds to be something that we ought to despise and worry about and oppose and react viscerally to. The failure in this discourse is that we even let these kinds of inferences sit out there unexamined when they first started percolating to the surface. I'd like to be able to use anybody's name and not evoke 9/11 without a problem.

note: This interview takes place on the second half of this weeks podcast. You'll have to skip past an earlier interview with George Soros to hear Kathleen Hall Jamieson speak.

(Un) Civilized Discourse.

2008-10-11T10:01:00.000-07:00

Is this the modern day lynch mob?