Fortitude

This was a rough week. I have one student who takes meds, but I think there are days where the effects wear off or when he doesn’t take them. It’s kind of disturbing to see the two sides of him: one where he attempts to model an idealistic vision of a ‘good boy’ (it is endearing but also kind of upsetting to see him try so hard to please me), and the other where he erupts into sadistic shrill curses and screams. This darker side of his two faces erupted after something had happened during lunch (a common occurrence with my students), and he began spewing angry verbal filth at me in the middle of a lesson. The guidance counselor couldn’t coax him out of class, and eventually he sat there drawing without saying anything, then finally gathered his things and walked out of class. I had to spend time that day and the next day discussing how to deal with anger and being upset.

What is interesting about this circumstance–and an innumerable number of similar occurrences–is that I constantly discover that I am learning the same things that my students are. It isn’t about multiplying decimals or writing complete sentences or Algonquian Native American wigwams; it’s about learning how to handle our frustration, deal with anger, mediate conflicts, and communicate what we feel in appropriate ways. These are the very areas that my students force me to struggle in. When they cuss me out to my face, when they turn around and have a discussion in the middle of my every sentence, when they are busier squirting glue onto their fingers instead of doing their math, when they fail to perform an activity I had planned, when they cry or yell or insult each other endlessly, when they hit one another . . . these are the times when I find myself struggling to force myself past the anger and hurt and upset and frustration and try to understand the root source of their problems. And most of the time, no, I am not the model of calm fortitude that I wish I could be. I end up yelling, bullying, forcing order and rigor upon their disorganized lives in every manner that I can. And part of this is necessary. Sometimes I have to yell in order to demonstrate that I care. Sometimes I have to be strict to give them the structure that they need. But sometimes, I know that I have failed them as a teacher, and I am yelling to obviate my wounded pride. I am yelling because I don’t fully understand their disabilities. I am yelling because I don’t fully understand their lives and their needs.

And this is what makes it hard. Not the hours of lesson planning every night and all weekend. Not the hours of meetings and paperwork and phone calls. Not the hours organizing bulletin boards and leveling books and creating SMART board presentations. It is the constant holes that are pricked in my self-esteem, the consistent reminders that I am frail human being with emotions and prejudices and self-induced blindness. The feeling and taste and texture of failure. Every single day. And this is the very experience that my students have endured since the beginning of their young lives.

The greatest struggle right now I have is trying to keep my energy levels up. I haven’t been able to run for a long time now, and my health is declining as a result. I’ve lost weight. I have strange growths in my neck. I’m developing asthma. So my focus, beyond simple survival–which is the mode I have been in–is to find a way to establish an exercise routine. And if I can keep myself healthy and keep myself positive, then I can keep myself calm and patient with my students.

The Battle of the Bereft

Last weekend a friend was visiting, and of course I began discussing my students, because what else do I have to talk about now? I talked about their problems, their behaviors, their tough home lives. So he challenged me to say what they were good at. And in that moment I realized just how bereft my understanding of them is. I couldn’t think of anything. Not one thing. I wanted to weep.

When the entire world tells you you are worthless, in what place do you claw to find succor?

I watch them clutch empty-hearted at the manufactured dreams of the complacent, and shit on the very fabric of their own existence.

Dreams of graduation into comfort seem to be the defining tunnel vision of my own survival. All I can envision are green trees, rolling hills, an empty swatch of air and bird ringed silence across my bedroom window. A river, somewhere, without the brown slogs of industry.

Already, I have abandoned them. To leave them to their trash strewn streets, the steps of apartment buildings that serve as the template for passing the time. To their endlessly working, endlessly shopping mothers, who give them whatever they want whenever they can.

In this ghetto of the soul, it’s all about power. You take it any way you can, you drag down those who might love you and beat them into submission.

This is the game we play, whether in the streets or in the classroom. Who is the powerful? Who is the one who will lead by the blood on his hands?

I am too battered right now to step away from the battle. I see only red before me. I am angry. I am filled with despair. And this is when I know that this is the only fight worth

losing.

With Struggle

I know that the wind has been knocked out of the sails of my blog posting. I’m finding it hard to justify setting aside time for self-exploration; much of my energy and thought and emotion, even when I’m sleeping, goes towards my students. I have dreams about them, and I lay awake thinking about them. It’s not like I want to.

I have a new student (I jinxed my luck in my last post), who I haven’t gotten a chance to get to know at all because he showed up yesterday, but there seems to be something going on in his home life that may make him a difficulty in class.

I made my first report cards this week, and I had my first parent-teacher conferences tonight, and two moms showed up. Which is one more than I expected.

I also broke up my first fight today. Fists and feet were flying. One part of me was angry for my student who began throwing the punches, but another part of me also recognized her need to stand up for herself. She has been getting picked on everyday, and she just couldn’t take it anymore.

So I am going to have to find a way to resolve the situation as a class. We will have to have a conversation about bullying and about the fight that happened.

I’ve realized that I can no longer ignore the way students in this class are treating each other in the cafeteria or in the schoolyard. Because they will bring it into class with them and then I spend the whole day trying to keep a lid on it.

So I have to teach them how to interact with each other. How to be friends. How to show kindness. Right now they think that picking on easy targets is “playing.”

So teaching is not only about meeting the standards. It’s about reaching your students where they need you in their lives. With material that will guide them and shape them. And that’s why I don’t have time to write much on my blog anymore. Every free second I have, even when I’m wasting it on Facebook or whatever, I always have it in the back of my mind that I should be writing lessons, planning units, writing goals, brainstorming activities. Many of my lessons at school just plain suck. I’m doing a lot of lecturing. I’m in survival mode as a teacher. But the faintest taste of success–knowing with certainty that I am making a difference in their lives, even when all that means is that I am keeping them in their seats–keeps me motivated to see it through. I’m not perfect, but lord knows neither are they. We give each other second and third and fourth and fifth chances.

Until one day, with hope, with struggle, we get it right.

A (perhaps) Premature Giving of Thanks

Well, now that I’m no longer terrified, at complete wit’s end, nor totally overwhelmed at all times, sometimes I even have these moments where I actually realize just how easy I’ve got it. Such that I almost even feel bad. For a moment. At just how lucky I am to be in my current situation as a new teacher.

Let me list the ways in which I am fortunate:

1) I’ve got 7 students. I expected to have 13 (I teach in a 12:1:1 special education classroom. For the uninitiated, that means twelve students to one teacher and one paraprofessional). If I had just 1 or 2 more students, the whole dynamic of my classroom could shift substantially — in the wrong direction. Even at the beginning of the school year, I had one student who didn’t show up ’til the second week. That one student alone completely changed my classroom from well-managed to always chaotic.

2) My para is great. She has managed to get all kinds of supplies for my classroom that I would have no idea where to find in my school. She leaves me apples on my desk. She’s been with my students for a few years now, so she knows the kind of trouble they have been in the past, and she continually boosts my frazzled ego to remind me of how much they have been turned around this year.

3) I’ve got a Smartboard in my classroom. Sure, it’s an old one and the projector is askew and it continually gets off-kilter whenever a student knocks into it. I have to lug my old 15″ laptop to and from school each day to use it. But it’s a great asset to have in a classroom. As a technology geek, it makes my life a hell of a lot easier for lesson planning. And even more importantly, it brightens the day of my students. Just the fact that they have a screen to stare at and a technological gadget to play around with is enough to make them slightly more engaged.

4) I’ve got windows in my classroom. This is a luxury not to be discounted.

5) I’ve got most of the supplies I need in the school.

6) My students may constantly harangue, harass, punch, and belittle each other — but they do not stab each other. They do not draw blood.

7) My students are all smaller than me.

8) It takes me less than 50 minutes to get to work.

Compared to some other teachers I know, I’ve got it cake. And compared to others, I’ve got it tough. It’s all relative of course, but the important thing is that I feel like I’ve got a handle on the situation at this point. I’m still strung out and overwhelmed by many a thing each and every day, but I’m beginning to get into a rhythm. I’m in a situation where I am learning just what I need to at just the right balance of overwhelming but not debilitating. And there’s a lot of helpful and positive teachers in my building who go out of their way to share when they have a spare second.

So I’m just gonna leave it at that and keep it focused on the positive. Because that’s what keeps me going each and every day.

Learning

Now that some kind of routine has been established each day, my new work incarnation as an urban public school special ed teacher has settled into a rhythmed pace, and the stress has somewhat eased up. Or at least become a more manageable kind of stress. Before, it was like fight or flight response high strung anxiety, with moments of frustration so intense that I almost cried. Now, I know that I can handle whatever is ahead in my day, even if I’m not fully prepared.

It’s that last half of the last sentence that still gets me, though. The not being fully prepared thing.

The fact is that at some point, I just shut down. I wake up at 5 in the morning and get to work at 7, where I spend my morning preparing my classroom until school starts at 8:30. Then after school I stay until 5 or 6 preparing my lessons. Then when I get home I tie up the loose ends, like printing out my lesson plans and worksheets or filling out IEP paperwork. By 8 o clock, I just can’t focus anymore on it. I need a glass of Chartreuse, a parsing of Facebook, a reality show on TV. That is, if it’s not one of the nights where I go to class for my graduate coursework.

Same thing on the weekends. On Friday after school, I desperately want to just sit there and take care of all of my planning for the next week. But I need to get out of there. And then I get home and I don’t want to think about it anymore. And on Saturday, I don’t want to think about it anymore. So on Sunday, I force myself to spend the day preparing.

But the things that I need to get done, I should be working nonstop. I should be working til 10 or 11 every night, I should be working every day of the weekend.

That’s what I mean by not fully prepared. It’s like I’m getting stressed out because I’m not working hard enough, but if I worked any harder, I would be burnt out.

The good news is, so far all I get is positive feedback from the administration and other teachers. That’s great, and it keeps me going. But at the end of the day, none of that matters. What matters is whether or not I am truly teaching my students and meeting their needs. They are the ultimate gauge of my effectiveness. And every single day I feel like I have failed them. Because I lose my temper, or I mishandle a situation, or I have not been able to differentiate my instruction effectively. They want to learn. They want to succeed. They want me to be the best teacher they have ever had. And I don’t think that I can be that teacher just yet. I just can’t. That’s the reality.

I wish that I was more OCD and more dedicated and just stayed in my classroom til 8 every night organizing, preparing, envisioning. But I can only learn and develop at the level that I am at. I’m the biggest student in my own classroom.

The 1st Month

Well, it’s been a hell of a month. But I’ve come out at the other end with some victories that are helping me to keep my chin up. I think what I am most proud of is that two of the most dominant (as in most loud and aggressive) personalities in my class, who are constantly disrupting, talking, getting up out of their seats, bullying others, and fighting with each other all day long, have been made into friends. Or at least have made a temporary truce. One day during a read aloud, suddenly some fight that had taken place during recess erupted into the classroom, shouting escalated back and forth between groups of students, based on the power struggle between those two aggressive personalities. So I stopped and decided to take it in stride. I listened to both sides and talked about how to resolve conflicts. I drew a feedback loop between two points in a circle, demonstrating how blame and aggression escalate and build endlessly. How there’s only two methods of resolving the situation: you either step forward to reconcile and forgive, or you step away and ignore. But it didn’t resolve anything and they didn’t really get it, because the two kids were still angry with each other.

Two days ago I kept the two kids behind the class when school ended and talked to them on the level. I let them know what I saw in class going on and how they were disrupting other students from learning. And then the real feelings started to come out, the hurts and the misunderstandings. I talked about how they could keep on fighting with each other, or they could act like sportsmen and forgive each other and shake hands. And finally, they did. Even exchanged numbers and agreed to meet online to play some game or something. So that was a success, because their vying for power and attention in class has been a constant problem. Which isn’t to say everything is great now, but it turned a corner in my relationship with them and with the class. I turned from being a hapless disciplinarian into a kind of tribal elder, and that was when I began to gain the vision of how to operate my classroom. Sometimes you have to allow for a bit of surface chaos in order to truly establish control.

According to commentary by others at the school based on these students’ past behavior, I have been successful in creating order in their school lives. They aren’t running the hallways all day long, breaking windows, stealing, or cussing out adults. Which isn’t to say that they are angels by any means, but they do stay in their seats overall, and they definitely don’t leave my classroom unless I allow them to.

Does this mean I am a good teacher? Not even remotely. I can’t even pretend that I am competent. I won’t be any good for at least another few years. I’m embarrassed by the kind of lessons I’ve been throwing together. But I’m doing the best I can under the circumstances, which means that I am flying by the seat of my pants. And it’s an extremely overwhelming experience, which does not even begin to describe how it feels. In teaching learning disabled children, you can’t teach a whole classroom lesson. You can’t tell the class to open their books to page 9 and complete the exercises after reading the passage. You can’t lecture. You can’t operate anything by any traditional means, because it just won’t work. Not that it works with students of any stripe, but it won’t even have a semblance of working with these students. Because they will erupt into chaos at the slightest sense of frustration or boredom. And I have 1 or 2 children who can read fairly fluently or do math relatively well, and then I have students who can’t decode words and can’t subtract. So I need to teach each student according to their level, which means anywhere from kindergarten to 5th grade — and in fact both and all at the same time, because I still have to pull them up their grade level standards for state tests — and that’s not easy to do when most students don’t work well independently and also don’t work well in groups.

The challenges are enormous. Unless you’ve been a teacher or are close to someone who is a teacher, you may not know how hard it is. You may think that teaching is easy, what with summer vacations and holidays. And maybe for some teachers in some schools it is. But for any teacher worth their salt, it’s akin to the kind of pressure and stress that a CEO of a company faces. You have to be extremely organized. You have to be a leader. You have to have intuition. You have to be a drill sergeant. You have to be a coach. You have to be a parent. You have to set policy and constantly tweak systems and structures. You have to plan for a year and plan for each minute. You have to attend meetings, conferences and join teams. You have to negotiate legal documents, compile and assess data, create forms and lessons and newsletters. You have to contact parents and create behavioral intervention plans. You have to organize your classroom artfully and advertise the learning taking place therein. You have be capable of immediate improvisation. You have to be in control every second of every day. You have to perform.

And this is minus the bonuses and societal recognition that a CEO would obtain. But the rewards — the love that you feel from a student who is finally recognized and challenged and feeling successful — almost make all of it worth it. I say almost because most days all I can think of is WTF am I doing? And all I can imagine is a nice quiet life somewhere in a forest where I am not being constantly challenged and harassed and disrespected. But the important thing right now is that my students are beginning to recognize that I am in it for real. They know that I care. And in a world of dislocation and upset and being let down by adults and society, that stands for something.

In the Trenches

There really is nothing that could prepare me for this. The sense of despair, of anger, of being so overwhelmed that the only thing I can do is focus on one piece at a time, knowing that it will not be enough. These children need help. They need help so bad that it is nearly impossible to do anything but scramble desperately in their wake, trying to band aid wounds that were inflicted long before they were born. The way they test me, tearing me apart, deliberately assessing just how committed I am to them. And it’s never enough. Because I’m not ready. And there is no way that I could be ready.

We all know that the first year is hard. But you don’t really understand what that means until you are down in it, in those moments of pure frustration, where you get so angry that you begin yelling in a way that you never thought you were capable of. And that’s when they’ve won, when they’ve wrested the control into their hands and empowered themselves in the only way they’ve learned to.

Oh yes. I have yelled, many times now. I have sent a child outside of my classroom already. And the sense of defeat I feel is untenable.

But every day is a new day. It really is. There are moments where I am soaring off of the eagerness with which they do things that they know they are capable of. They get so easily frustrated. Some of them can barely decode a word. Some of them can barely multiply. And I am trying to understand how to teach them at a level so concrete that I can barely even grasp yet myself.  Because numbers or words on a board can be too abstract. And they are perfectly aware of just how disadvantaged they are, and they feel ashamed.

Most of the time, I’m fighting just to make myself heard.

But I will not back down. Because this isn’t about me. This is about them.

Beginning a New Chapter

So my life now begins in its new incarnation. I finally obtained a job, after long last and many interviews, as a teacher of special education in the Bronx. I was hired on Friday morning. It takes less than an hour for me to get there, which is better than the up to 2 hour commute I had with my last gig, and the staff seems nice enough. But once I was hired, I was shown my classroom, given a set of directions about how to set up my bulletin boards, and suddenly, with a rush of adrenaline fear and stress, I realized that I was completely overwhelmed. See, it’s not like getting hired at any normal job, where they train you and induct you into your new duties and responsibilities.  At least, not this late in the game. Schools starts on Wednesday. That gave me Friday, and this upcoming Tuesday, to try to organize a classroom packed with junk that I don’t even know how to organize or use. As well as to plan my lessons and activities, establish a classroom management plan, and well, just about figure out every single component of how I will run my classroom. Which is kind of hard, since I haven’t ever run one before. And since I don’t even know what my curriculum will be, what my school’s policies are, what my schedule is, who my students are, etc, etc.

So I stood there, alone, in this massive classroom with no A/C, steaming in the sunlight, closets filled with dusty book after book, feeling adrenaline coursing through my system. I just had to start somewhere. So I started pulling stuff out of closets, dusting shelves, trying to figure out what I knew I could use and what I couldn’t. By the end of the day, after not having eaten anything and feeling completely lost out at sea, I finally took off for home, wishing I could have had 2 weeks to set it up instead of 2 days.

During the interview, the administration did its utmost to stress that the students I will have are the biggest behavior problems in the school. They wanted to make sure that I knew what I was getting into. Apparently, there’s a group of them that have established a reputation for creating havoc, cussing out adults, and running out of class. Apparently, simply getting them to come up from the cafeteria and into the classroom on time each morning is a victory.

But the reason I have elected to become a teacher is to be challenged. These are children who have been failed by the system. So they need me to be there for them, to see beyond their behaviors and diagnosed disabilities and into their hearts, to believe in them, and to push them to achieve. And at the end of the day, the only thing that I can possibly lose from the effort is my ego.

In any case, I’m going to be busy for the next few months just trying to keep my head above the water. So it’s a good thing I posted so frequently last month, because I won’t have much time anymore to do so. I will need to use this space for reflection and venting once I get into the swing of things, so keep checking back in, and I will do my best to continue to update. Wish me luck.

This One Makes It a Month’s Worth of Daily Posting

Well, so today marks the last post in completion of a full month’s worth of daily posting, thus meeting the requirement for  fulfillment of a National Blog Posting Month! I had tried last month but was unable to complete it. I came pretty close to not posting some days this month, but with the pestering and encouragement of my girlfriend, I was able to punch through it. I think it was a useful exercise to get me to free up my fingers and mind a little bit and just put something out there, whether I thought it was worthwhile or not. But I admit that I am glad to be done with it. Here’s to a healthy dose of silence ‘tween well-formulated bouts of speech.

Poor Claudia

Vincent and Claudia

I’m a little stressed out right now. I was just sitting down to write my daily (nightly) post and I had put the birds to bed, when I heard my parakeet, Claudia, fluttering frantically about in her cage. This isn’t too unusual for her, as she is a very spastic kind of bird and will frequently fall from her perch randomly and flap around. When I pulled up the cover to check on her, though, I saw that she seemed to be caught on a new toy we had just put into her cage. She had got caught like a fish on a hook somehow on the attachment, and it looked like she had her beak caught. So I had to grab her and then pull her off. The poor thing had got the underside of her beak caught, and I really hope that the damage isn’t serious. She’s bleeding, but she seems to be otherwise OK. All I can do right now is put her back to bed and hope that she can recover while resting and that the wound will heal. I’m canceling a Zipcar outing up the Hudson Valley tomorrow so that I can be around. Which maybe sounds weird considering that she’s a tiny little bird, but in the absence of children, she’s one of my babies. Poor Claudia! She’s a sweet, very active and vocal little bird. When she is out of the cage with Vincent, my Amazon parrot, she grooms him and they feed each other. She also likes to groom me and peck at my lips. When she is in her cage, she jumps around playing with all of her toys, especially the one with the little mirror with the bell on it. She sings practically all day long and mimics sounds very well–much better, ironically, than my parrot.

In other less maudlin news, I’ve been interviewing like crazy all this week, so I should find out soon where I’ll end up teaching. Which is good, considering the school year starts in another week. Today after an interview I went over to a music store and jammed on a hand carved djembe with one of the employees on drum kit and made a friend. It made me excited to start playing again. As he was reminding me, this city is full of people playing hand drums, so I really don’t have any excuse for not getting my chops back up. Time to start looking around for people to jam with. Time to start looking around for people, period. I’ve been in New York over a year now and have barely gone out. But then again, once the school year starts, I’ll be swamped anyway. Here’s to keeping busy. And to getting a paycheck.

And give a prayer for little Claudia, I just checked on her and  she’s not looking so hot.

Time Tells The Best Stories

I had an interesting conversation a few weeks ago that has made me think a bit as time goes on. I was out drinking at a bar in SF and it was reaching the end of the night after a festive occasion. I wasn’t overly drunk, but I had consumed a fair amount of wine over the length of the evening, so I was not perhaps in the best of conversational and intellectually reflective form. The person I was speaking to was kind of grilling me as to why it is that I am a capable writer, but I do not seem to have any ambition to do anything with it. I blathered on a bit about my blog and about how I’d made a choice long ago to simply write for the love and heck of it, not for profit, and furthermore that I have little attention span nor dedication to writing cohesive pieces, etc, but I have to admit that I do not feel like my answers really addressed what she was attempting to get to the heart of.

Now look, I was flattered, first and foremost, that anyone would even give two shits about whether I can write or not. And I was flattered that someone would have the empathy and zeal to even bother to press me on the issue. But I was also somewhat taken aback, as I am not accustomed to having to defend myself on the choices that I make that determine my life’s path. But before I could talk my way any further into any insight on the matter, the bar was closing and it was time to go.

I think I realized, as the conversation ended, that I wished that it could continue and that I could really explain my thought process and life decisions in a way that would convince ME. But I also realized that the reality is that truly having that level of conversation, reflecting about oneself and one’s passions and life decisions, is just a bit too narcissistic to really occur anywhere other than in a therapist’s office. Or, well, on a blog.  Oh yes, my friends, self-therapy is unfortunately sometimes and all too often the name of the game here on Manderson’s Bubble.

I mean, I don’t have any illusions of grandeur. I generally get around 100 recorded hits a day, with the majority of those hits consisting of people doing searches for guns and ending up on my post about my grandfather’s gun collection.  Which is definitely not the post that I would care to be remembered by, though it’s nice to know that it might be interesting to people doing research like I was doing.

But I do know that I can be a competent writer, when I apply myself to it. I’ve helped people to edit professional writings and academic essays, and I’ve been penning my bullshit onto this blog for some time now, of course. But what of it? Lots of people are competent writers, and they are out there making a living out of it.

I made a declaration long ago that I didn’t want to write to be published. And the more I tried to defend that long ago decision in that somewhat drunken conversation, the more I realized just how much of that decision could be attributed to the low self-esteem and angry alienation that I was going through at that time in my life. I’ve never really questioned that choice I made, but I have always wanted to write in some capacity, and so the only way I’ve found that I could keep positive and excited about writing was to share it with my friends. So in college, I started an e-mail list, and I would write almost daily prose/poetry pieces that I would then e-mail to people (some of which you can view under the category Pre-Blog Missives). And then later, I started a blog, because it seemed to make better sense to give people a choice as to whether they wanted to bother reading my shit or not, instead of stuffing it into their inboxes. And that’s what I’ve been doing ever since. Just writing to share with friends.

But what is this impulse to share my writing with you really about? Isn’t it at heart a desire to be recognized? Why shouldn’t this desire be translated into a project, into a book, into a career?

These are the questions that were raised in my mind. I want to take a moment to stress that I am not expressing regret for any of my life decisions in terms of career, academics,  or otherwise. I am happy to have taken the path that I have chosen, and I am extremely excited, currently, to become a teacher. But neither does my current trajectory negate any future potential for taking my writing to another level. And perhaps at the bottom of it all, no matter how I may declaim about how I like my writing to be imperfect and mundane and blah blah blah, perhaps I really do want to take my writing to another level, and I’ve just been too scared or too lazy to really take it there.

Deep thoughts, folks, that I will end this post upon. Whatever the case, thank you for stopping by occasionally and enduring such indulgent and amateurish writing. Will I ever attempt to write something more cohesive and profound? Time will only tell.

Vuelo back home

Sitting in the aeropuerto to vamoose back to The City. WTF happened to free wi-fi? Should be like water.

I had fun in the city, and must admit to feeling some pangs of regret that I don’t live in a place where I can walk down the street to a supermarket where they have absolutely everything you could ever hunger for, including 25 types of dark chocolate and the freshest bread basket produce ever. It’s been sunny as hell here, which I s’pose I cain’t really complain about, excepting that it has burnt my skin to a reddened crisp.

The nuptial ceremony was great fun, and I consumed so much red wine that I think I turned French overnight. The reading went well, although I got kind of nervous beforehand since the microphone didn’t work so I had to belt it out sans amplification.

I got to see and catch up with folks I hadn’t seen in years, which was nice. I couldn’t have asked for a better trip. Thanks for the carpet and good times, Willie, thanks for the sweet breakfast and recording, Seth and Shelley, thanks for the conversation and conviviality, Anna, and sorry I didn’t have more time for nargilah, James and Jenny and Ashley. And congrats again to Matt and Sue!

So long for now, San Francisco.

In Area of Bay

It’s funny how different different cities can be. As soon as you walk off the plane, there is a new vibe in the air that is particular to that particular city. Shit, even before you get off of the plane; the inhabitants on their way home set an intangible, introductory tone. San Francisco, with its REI wear hipsters, its segregated sidestreets of the strung out, its hippie bums who sometimes look relatively content. If I were a bum, I would live in San Francisco.

People in general look healthier, more wholesome in some sun-kissed way. Clothing is varied and colorful. The streets are wide, people wait patiently at stop lights. It is simultaneously liberal and yuppie at the same time in a sometimes contradictory but sometimes harmonious way. People bike through the city with their baskets full of Trader Joe’s tote bags. In the un-yuppified neighborhoods, if you don’t belong there then you stick out like a sore thumb.

A down-and-out man followed me across the street at one intersection, then good naturedly told me that he knew that I was loco. I thought he was telling me that I was a local at first. But then I got that he was saying that I was loco. “The way you walkin’, the clothes you wearin’. I can tell.” I took this as a compliment. If I appear loco, then that means that I won’t be fucked with. And I’m alright with that.

Bit of Tid

Well, I’m extremely glad to get out of dodge and escape the heated humidity of NYC to hang out, temporarily, in the ‘Bay Area.’ I’m going to attend the wedding of a dear friend and frequent reader of this blog, and I’m excited to do a reading (of mine own!) at the wedding. Congrats & best wishes in advance, Matt and Susan!

If only I had more time to spend out there, but duty–in the form of a job search–calls me back to my east coast abode all too soon. But even a few days back in Cali is nice.

Did you notice that my blog has it’s own little icon now? Yeah. Pretty cool, huh? Bet you wish your blog had an icon.

It’s too damn hot in this apartment to write anything more of substance nor detail. I’m going to go cleanse myself in the cool Catskills water that oh so gently trickles out of the faucet in my shower. So that I can go thence and sweat some more into mine pillow and catcheth some Zs, before I’ve got to wake up again at 3 in la madruga to catch the shuttle to the port of air. And onwards, thence. Pigs in space.

Exploring My Self

I have never been much inclined to write down the things that simply happen to me down in a journal. Such as “Today I went to the park and met up with Jane and played snooker,” and etc. My memory also mimics this disinclination. I completely erase from my memory occurrences or conversations which I feel are only of an overly detailed nature. This of course often gets me into trouble, especially with the girlfriend, who feels quite differently about the things that I have let slide from my mind like silicone through a tube. I am someone who thinks in generalities and integrating linkages. I see the connections in things that make two disparate concepts into a greater whole. I have never been interested in learning detailed specifics—at least not conceptually—because I don’t retain this information. I sometimes wish that I could. For example, when I read the autobiography of Malcolm X, I was especially impressed by Malcolm’s keen ability to retain facts and history, and to string these together in one moment in a penetrating response to any questioner. This made him dangerous, because his mind was a weapon, and he used it to blow apart conventional myths and assumptions. But I can’t retain information like that, even if I (*gasp*) applied myself. After I’ve read something like the People’s History of the United States, I wish that I could just spit up dates and events from it in the midst of debate. But instead, the only thing I retain is the perspective of what I’d read, what the overall meaning of those dates and events were. Once I’ve gleaned this overall meaning, I throw away all the details. I think I do it because I’ve learned that this is the manner in which I think most efficiently. I think best in metaphor and quantum leap. I don’t do well with logic, math, chemistry, or any other specific, sequential avenues of thought.

My writing on this blog truly is my journal. I’ve never kept a diary in which I continuously detail what has daily happened to me (although I do of course do it from time to time). But I’ve always written when something deep down in there starts to stir, reacting to these daily occurrences. The daily occurrence itself usually gets left out—unless it was of such enjoyment that I don’t have anything to add to it—but I don’t think that this is particularly important. What is important, to me, is the change that occurs within me, the transformation of myself as I adapt and respond to the cosmos. What happens within me is what happens within everyone else, and this is how I understand other people: through what I have been through, or through what I have imagined. Even when other people have grown up in completely different circumstances from me, I can still relate to them, because the exterior differences are generally shallow. Even when in different cultures, different countries, I feel like I can relate. Because deep within ourselves, we all go through the same innate processes.

I am watching myself, observing my feelings, my emotions, my loneliness, my happiness, my love, my pettiness. I am taking notes, and these webpages are the result. You can understand me. You can relate to me. You can know me, without knowing nor caring what my daily happenstance life may be. So what is it that you are knowing, really? Is it just me? Or perhaps it is also you? Or is it something that between the two of us is cumulatively greater?

Nostalgia and Adaptation

I have been having these recurring, viscerally painful moments of missing the West Coast lately, especially Tahoe. It’s these intense moments of remembrance of little details, like walking across the street from my apartment to go to Raley’s, or driving my beat up old Subaru (‘Subie’ or ‘Subarita’) down the winding, bumpy one lane mountain road to work, or biking into town on the bike trail to go to the library. And there are other things, like missing my family and missing my nieces and nephews growing up.

What’s even more strange, however, has been that I keep having these visions of New Mexico. I have never lived there and have only passed through, and maybe it’s just that I’m envisioning some idealized fantasy of dry heat as opposed to humid heat (as I sit here immersed in a pool of sweat) but for whatever reason, I am dreaming of terra cotta colors, green chile burritos, mountains, and cacti. And a lifestyle of space, light, and quietude.

I think the meaning of these visions and remembrances is that I am beginning to realize just how out of touch with myself I have become. At least, the parts of myself that I had more clearly defined in other contexts. I have always been a kind of lonely chameleon, adapting in superficial ways to my environment while trying to understand myself outside of that immediate context. But lately, my habits and modes of existence have been so thoroughly alien to the way I’ve lived most of my adult life that I find myself struggling with my identity and where I am. Part of that struggle necessitates nostalgia and fantasizing. I am shedding my past, shedding the parts of me that were defined by other worlds. And so I miss those contexts where I was comfortable, where I had established myself in some way. And I yearn for some immediate context where I can be what I see as myself, wherein I can stretch my wings and be comfortable.

I think that here in this wildly new environment, I have been sitting back and trying to adapt and to survive. I haven’t had time to be myself. I think you can see this reflected in my writing from this period of my life when you compare it to past posts. I am less reflective, a little more superficial, more passive-aggressive, less spiritual. Maybe, I don’t know.

As I come out of that hole of survival mode and begin to feel a little more established, I am taking a look around and then looking down at myself and wondering who the fuck I still am. I have been taking the city in, compromising with it, selling myself to it. And now that I am coming somewhat to terms with it, I am able to take a clearer look at myself and who I am within this new context. But not quite yet. The vision is blurry. I am still tied to my idealizations of my past self.

In any case, here I am, still struggling to adapt to this city. I am slowly branching out, putting down roots, finding my place, but I’ve got a lot of work to do.

Dusting Myself Off

Now that I am done with intensive training, and I have some free time before the start of the school year (whereupon I will lose any semblance of having a personal life–but I’m used to that now), I want to regain some of my health and personal focus. I’m hoping that by sharing some of my goals with you, I might actually make some of them happen. Here is a list of some of the ways I will seek to better myself in the next month:

1) Begin running again. I haven’t run since last September, and I miss it. My ass has lost its once herculean mold and decomposed into jelly. I’ve gotten lazy and I’m tired all the time. Which is either because I’m dying or because I stopped running.

2) Switch back to yerba maté as my caffeine source, instead of coffee. My fiancee broke my last maté gourd, and I refused to order what should be a $3 gourd on-line. So I tried to find a gourd in NYC, which given that this is the freakin’ melting pot o’ the nation, I figured wouldn’t be so hard. But unless I’m senile, I didn’t find no gourds on the Isla de Manhattan. I could find the loose tea, sure, no problem. My local Inwoodian C-Town has big bags of it, which makes me very happy. But no gourds. Now, I am aware that there are more concentrated Uruguayan/Argentinean populations in Queens, and I did in fact stop off the 7 one day after work in an attempt to find a gourd, based on some Yelp info I had read. But for whatever reason, I was unable to locate the store I was looking for, and I ended up giving up that day. So after months and months of straight French pressed Bustelo, I have finally given in and paid the exorbitant fees to order a new gourd on-line. I need a sustained caffeine kick, not that high and low shit that coffee seems to be all about. I like the taste, alright, but I don’t like the fact that it stains my damn teeth, neither. Maté, at long last, I am comin’ back to you.

3) Attempt to include more fruits and vegetables in my diet. I think I often borderline on scurvy. I’m going to start snackin’ on apples and oranges instead of raw slabs of beef. Not that I snacked on raw slabs of beef. But you get the drift.

4) Read fiction books again. For a while there, I’d been on a non-fiction book kick. Which is great. I learned a lot of stuff. Then I began my summer training, which included a fair amount of reading on things like classroom management, differentiation, disabilities, etc. So after that, I’ve needed some time off from reading anything. But then after a conversation on books the other day, I realized that I hadn’t read a fiction book in a really long time. And that I wouldn’t have to learn anything from it if I didn’t want to. So I went to my local library and picked out a bunch of books just from the A – B section, and I’m enjoying getting back into it. It’s like rediscovering my first love. Me and reading, we go way back. Curled up, the patter of the rain on the windowsills, the forward falling impulse of the narrative and a world outside whose demand has lessened, if only for a spell.

5) Get myself organized. Review all the material that I’ve been learning over the last 6 weeks, put together the stuff I will want to use, throw out what I won’t. Pull out all the stuff from the front closet, get rid of stuff, put it back in and organize it. Clean the floors of the apartment. Cut my hair.

6) Kill the cockroaches. They’ve infested our apartment in the last few weeks, and it’s gotten out of hand. Every time we walk in the kitchen at night, there are millions of them, scattering across the floor, swarming over the sink. Well, not quite millions. Just a few. But enough to feel disgusted. I’ve won the war against the mice, and I plan on winning against the roaches, too. I mixed together some borax and brown sugar today and scattered it around behind things, and I’ll see if that old school remedy is enough to do the deed. If not, I’ll move on to the more conventional weaponry.

7) Get a job. The hiring freeze for special education has been lifted, so it’s time to get myself placed. These next weeks will consist of resume sending and cover letter writing. Oh, joy. It reminds me a little too much of last summer. But at least this time around, I’ve got a little more solid direction to run in.

8 ) Explore outside of the city. I signed up for Zipcar a while ago and still haven’t gotten around to actually using one. I want to go up the Hudson Valley, see the non-city greenery, get a sense of my east coast environs. I’ve seen enough of the subways. I need to see more of the aboveground scene. I also need to plan a wedding, ostensibly. Which if it is to actually happen, would require a site in order to perform the ceremony. So a site must be located. Things must be planned.

Balance Acting

My summer fellows training has ended, so I have no excuse now for not frequently tending to this here blog. I will try once again to achieve a consistent performance of post-a-days in order to meet Augustal National Blog Posting Month requirements. We shall see if I can maintain such discipline or not. There are some days when I just simply can’t find it within me to write something, knowing that it will be ridiculously trivial and demeaning once I sit down and take a good hard look at it at some later time and date. But I suppose what I need to bear in mind is that part of the very reason why I have been consistently writing–without any higher goals or objectives of being published or successful–since middle school has been to deny the prevalancy of some idea that good writing must be merely pristine, perfect, and pure. I seek, therefore, to embellish informal writing intended to be shared with my friends–now in this day and age termed “blogging”–with a certain status and depth of artfulnesses, of deliberateness, while still using it for the therapeutic, temporal, connective intention that informal communication is largely about. But let me set something straight here: I am not a “blogger”. I have been writing in this manner since long before the advent of web-blogs became a hot ticket item. I am a writer. I write so I can live. A blog just so happens to be a highly convenient mechanism to share my writings with the world.

It’s like the difference between a jogger and a runner. When you jog, you are running for exercise. When you run, you are running to live. If you don’t understand that distinction, then you are a jogger.

The distinction between informal and formal writing is not so very clear in any case anymore. The immediacy of the language of e-mails, text messaging, and twittering has led to a natural aversion in most people to any form of abstraction or strenuous embellishment. And who can blame them? I share the aversion to staid words that serve no function other than pompous self-preening. Yet I also enjoy the playfulness of well-stated formations of words. The power and impact of syntax and artfully employed synonyms cannot be understated. The formal language of academia can either be sucked dry of all marrow of life, a limp husk of signification, or when deployed consciously, a tactful display of power, ripe with meaning and revelation, a preacher’s sermon more than a professor’s tract.

I think there is a balance that I seek to achieve between the lines of formal and informal language, where I can enact an impactful immediacy that lingers just enough to make you want more. I’m not saying that I gain this regularly. But this is how I want to write. To punch you in the gullet like a wine or whiskey that you taste. Something coming from a deep barrel of thought and feeling, combined in one moment of rubber and road. From which the journey continues. A fragment that is tied together somehow with all the fragments that came before. Not quite complete in and of itself, but suggestive of what will come.

Because that’s how life is. It’s beautifully fraught with meaning, but it’s never quite the dramatic, slow motion, soundtracked scene that can be encapsulated in a frame. It slips and sloshes outside of trite definition. We can’t quite hold onto anything, and this is what is sorrowful and what is full of light. The spaces, the gaps between neurons. From which sparks fly. From which stars shine. From which sentences are strung and minds are momentarily breathless from recognition of the void that exists between hearts.

Modality

Sometimes I have to force myself to settle on back to accept the shadowy recesses of modal shifts ‘twixt sunshine and moodiness. I tell myself to remember Miles. That dark master, a warlock that straddled the transition into an almost openly psychedelic world (momentarily), a paradigm psychological shift that erupted out armpit sized jazz clubs into studio produced cut/spliced internalized packages that traversed boundaries cultural and physical and otherwise, united in an aural depth of explorative bliss that was generated through uniquely disciplined collaboration, managed quietly by the ultimate anti-micro-manager, he who directed simply by presence alone. If only I could be so comfortable in my own inner vision skin, to sit back and preside over numinative formations in moments of over-riding mass mentality, in those times when the crowd dominates knowledge of self and I am lost in the over-arching eyes and critical judgements that come from fear and past submissions to low self-esteem.

Update from the sweaty pit of Summer

As you may have noticed, alas, I have been unable to keep up with my post-a-day dictum. Only one more week of summer school field training and coursework, and then I’ve got some time off to concentrate on acquiring a job (kinda important), visiting SF for a wedding, and enjoying what’s been a fairly mild summer for NY. Since I’m currently sitting in a pool of sweat, I’m not in the mood for posting much right now, either, but here’s some graphic filler for the meanwhile. . . (once you’ve entered into the picture gallery below, click on the picture again once you are on the next page in order to see it full size)

Lil’ City House in DUMBO

Downtown Manhattan

Central Park Pond

Birds bathing in the hot summer sun

Lotuses in a Central Park pond

Tree formed shade in Central Park

The pull of wool

I’m so tired I can feel my eyeballs sucking back into my skull. I was just about to tottle off to bed, finally, when I remembered that damn post-a-day business I’d somehow thought would be a good idea. So here ’tis. My post for today. Let’s see, what’s my big thought? I was thinking today about how it is mostly counter-productive to be immersed in rebellion and opposition to systems and bureacracies. The most productive thing is to be actively involved in addressing problems by deliberately inventing solutions. Otherwise, you’ll just end up bitching about everything, which just ends up making everything worse. But on the other side of the coin, I recognize that it’s easy to lose one’s perspective about what is really important in life, which is what is right in front of you. And to relate yourself honestly and with integrity to other people based on their immediate need, which you can only really determine most accurately through intuition. If you lose that intuition sense, that empathy, that honest relation to other people, then you’ve just lost your integrity to the pull of an overarching system. That’s it for now. See you tomorrow.

Swashbuckling Standards

My head is swimming in NY state standards right now. It’s easy to get caught up in a systemized language that is not my own when that is what I am required to speak in order to survive. But eventually, with enough swimming, hopefully, I will raise my head up out of the current to catch a clear-sighted view of what is beyond and around and above. When I am deep within it all, awash in the murky swarm of formulaic legalese and politically manipulated bureacracies, it can be difficult to retain my inner vision. As I gain clarity on the essential questions that uncoil fitfully, with artful prying, from the standards, I hope to achieve some semblance of holistic order and comprehensiveness that I can use thereafter to apply to creative, project-based thematic units. Here’s to Bloom’s taxonomy.

My Pad part iii

It is all about forming your own space of quiet and ease where you can sip upon your vino and partake of your mental detanglification whilst listening to Maxwell’s BLACKsummers’night. Chocolate consisting of at the very least 70% cacao should of course be consumed. What I’m talking about, as you may or may not have surmised, depending on what you know of the different histrionic episodes of my past, is Pumpkins and Monkeys part III. In a whole new part of the continent, with a whole new vibe and width and depth of being. Minus, unfortunately, a semi-constant influx of friends and neighbors. All that I’ve got right now is some birds and an occasional breeze. So what this means is that a) I need to make more friends in this friggin’ city; and b) y’all need to come out here and visit.

I just haven’t been in much of a position since moving out here to really get to know much of anyone, including meself. I did try to get involved in various groups, volunteer stuff, and whatnot when I first landed, but nothing of substance came from it, though I did get some pretty interesting crisis counseling training. Then after I finally got a job, it was, of course, out in the middle of another borough and it was retail, so I simply did not have any semblance of a life. It was simply work and transit. I got to befriend my co-workers somewhat, but there really wasn’t much chance for meaningful chatter there, plus I just lived too damn far away. So now I’ve gots my teaching fellow crew, and hopefully some connections will be developed therein.

I guess I’m also just simply a person who takes time to get to know, and within a certain context. I come off as perty unanimated and quiet right off the bat. It takes a little bit of chillin’ to get to know me better. I like to dance, drink, and be a social butterfly, but most of the time I’m content squirreled away in my little hole, perched up here on the 5th floor corner, listening to the street sounds filtering through the buildinged trees. That’s my best context for understanding: some smooth music, some liquor, and some conversatin’.

Tower of Babble

I wanted to just add one more thing about MJ, which I have realized is mostly absent from all the media speak: everyone is talking about the man, the myth, and the legend, but do you remember the arcade game, Moonwalker?? That shit was awesome! I remember some joyful time spent making Michael pull out his special dance moves to vanquish foes at the local Family Fun Center. I’m just saying.

This week has been tough. I had thought that after my last gig, schlepping over to Queens with 2 trains and a long walk through the winter cold at 3 in the morning with 4-6 hours of sleep under my belt to work long physically demanding hours, that doing coursework and working with kids would be pretty damn easy. It’s certainly not as demanding in many ways, and I get to see my fiancee other than when one of us is asleep, but I’m finding that the mental and emotional focus that I’m trying to maintain can be just as draining at the end of the day. I’m someone who is not accustomed to being challenged by classwork. But the thing is, this isn’t just a crackpipe full of academic bullshit: this is theory that we are learning to apply directly to reality. We are thinking critically about our experiences and analyzing every single thing that we go through, whether that is the job search, the school training, the coursework, or the interactions with our professional peers. I guess what I’m really saying is that I’m just not accustomed to really applying myself to thinking about things all day long. I generally think in short, dynamic bursts. Then I do a bunch of physical stuff and daydream. Then I sit back and relax with some vino.

So I’m tired. I’m beat. But I’m enjoying the challenges. I’m also learning about my own methods of learning. I never was an ideal student. I’ve always hated being lectured to and being stuck in a classroom. I used to like to think that it was because I am such a genius, but it’s only due, unfortunately, to the fact that I am mostly a kinesthetic learner. I like to learn things by doing things. Which is how I’ve achieved most of my real learning as an adult: at work and through life experiences and talking to different people.

Anyhoo. This is my daily babble. Here’s wishing a Happy Birthday to my baby momma!

Posting Flotsam

I think the lesson that I’ve taken from this whole hoopla over Michael Jackson’s death is that even if you’re a perverted recluse, as long as you’ve done something cool in the past and been famous for it, then you will still be deified upon your death. Like Elvis or Brando. Can’t do nothing wrong.

This post a day thing has been fine, but tonight it’s freaking killing me. I just extenuated my brain trying to make a lesson plan for PEMDAS, you know, the order of operations for mathematical expressions. So right now I just want to go to bed and lose myself in oblivion. But I’ve got to keep up with the discipline, you know. I can’t give up now.

There have been little victories each day that I am doing my field training at a summer school site. I have some challenging kids in one of my classes, but I’m learning how to approach their behavior problems. I’m learning to pick my battles and deflect negativity. You really do have to focus constantly on positive reinforcement and building rapport with students; nothing else will work. Integrity, empathy, and positivity.

Ok, so this post was totally weak and I would like to say something profound and relevant to all that lives and is and will be, but I can barely iterate a complete sentence right now. But if there’s one thing you learn quickly in the teaching profession, as terrible as today may have been, tomorrow is another day, another opportunity to get things right, to work on the little victories, the little steps forward, the little shafts of light that shine suddenly from out of nowhere. Until then.

National Blog Posting Month blog posting

Couple of things. I’ve been fairly reticent about posting regularly here ‘pon this blog, and I need a little spot of discipline to get back into that creative groove. So in an effort to make my ass post more frecuentamente, I joined NaBloPoMo, for which it is requisite to post every single damn day. I’ve generally avoided such haste in posting, b/c then my posts end up being trivial, superficial gleanings of my every day existence. But hey, that’s what the hyperactive fleeting browsing of visual data over a world wide network is all about anyway, right? So stay tuned for frequent updates here of mundanity, terse abstraction, and snippets of my teacher-in-training lifestyle.

While you’re here, scroll all the way down to the bottom o’ the page and click on my SocialVibe badge. It’s free, and you could potentially help prevent kids from obtaining malaria, or something. It’s easier and more effective than giving the guy on the subway your change because you feel guilty and ashamed that you wear clean socks most of the time and don’t have the gout, scurvy, or genetically handed down mental disorders. I just want to see a number other than ZERO on the damn badge. Let me know if it don’t work.

Also, go pop over to this summery blog, Summer Conversations, which is essentially a compendium of different folks sharing random stuff about themselves, and on which I will be posting infrequently as well.

Enjoy your 4th. I’m going over the New Jersey to eat some extended family cooked food and hang out near a pool, which I will not enter because chlorinated water turns my hair green. ‘Til tomorrow!

Color Awareness

There seems to be a direct link for me between insomnia and self-exploration via blog writing, so I will capitalize upon this opportunity while my sleep cycle is being disrupted. I admit that I have been frequently opening up a blank window in order to begin writing, only to find that I don’t even know where to start. It’s not so much that I have a lack of things to explore, but rather that everything inside there is so densely intertangled that I don’t know what strand is worth picking up to examine. In a sense, these past 2 weeks have been a sort of slow uncoiling of my inner and outer worlds as they seek to realign themselves together from out of their disjoint.

My sudden career shift has me excited, while also nervous. Nervous because I know that there are many aspects of indoctrined cultural training that must still be challenged within me; in dealing with systemic racism and socio-economic inequity, I must be able to explore the notion of myself as a member of a group, rather than as a unique individual. It is a group that I have tried, at times, to pretend that I am not a part of, even as I have partook in the privileges of its membership, however unknowingly. That group is the little box that I generally avoid filling in on questionaires, the one that says Caucasian or simply–and rather yawningly–White. Attach onto that the further group membership of Male, and even further than that: Raised in High Income and Highly Segregated Area, and there you go. That’s my grouping in this society, whether I like it or not.

I have been aware of what it means to be privileged for some time, based mainly on socio-economic status. But the fact is that I grew up in an area where people of color were few and far between, isolated into small, distant enclaves. So it was difficult for me to reconcile my awareness of socio-economic status with racial and ethnic inequity, however much I knew that it existed. It existed somewhere else.

When a white person finally has an experience where they are made jarringly aware of the fact that they are White, and that they are therefore Privileged, it makes them extremely uncomfortable. They want to avoid, at all costs, such experiences. It challenges their belief in their innate value as an individual, as a unique, distinct person whose worth in society is based strictly upon merit. I can remember distinctly one of these first experiences, though I’m sure there were many more before that that I have effectively blocked from my memory. It was while I was traveling alone in Peru, and I was taken to a part of Lima where there was a huge outdoor market of secondhand goods, in the middle of the city downtown. I was told that I needed to have a guide, that I absolutely could not go there alone. I was not to carry any valuables on my person, and to be aware of my belongings at all times. This was heavily stressed to me, to the point that I was extremely nervous before I went, though I am fairly adventurous when it comes to being in sketchy situations. And indeed, when I walked through the streets of that market, I suddenly became shockingly aware of my utter Whiteness. In the midst of a crowd of dark skinned people living in poverty, here was this white foreigner. The very fact of my existence in their midst signaled my privilege; that I could even travel there from so far away. I wasn’t wearing fancy clothes, I wasn’t wearing jewelry. I had worked hard and saved my money to travel there. But I knew that I was privileged just by the fact of my skin, just by the fact of where I happened to be born. I felt like an alien. I became aware of how strange it was that in one context—my normal environment—things like a nice watch and shoes are just things you get to fit in; but here in this place, such things were what made you stand out like a sore thumb.

And so what I was experiencing, essentially, was the idea of what it feels like to be someone defined as a part of a group based on immediate appearance. I was an Other. I didn’t belong there. That feeling of unbelonging stung. It was highly disturbing. We white people don’t typically understand how it is to be viewed as a part of a group. We resent being made to be aware of this grouping, not realizing that it is something that people of color have to deal with every single day.

It makes me uncomfortable even to talk about these kinds of things, just as I’m sure that it makes you uncomfortable to read them. Am I a racist? Certainly not intentionally. But my society is racist, and unfortunately, it has embedded its racism in me such that I have to struggle to remain aware of it in order to call it out on its existence. We like to pretend that everything has been put behind us. Slavery is a thing of the past. Segregation has been outlawed. Etc. And things have certainly gotten better. But when you see the statistics of the achievement gap in education, for example, or the statistics on prisons, or just simply journey to any inner city grotto, it becomes hard to deny the fact that we’ve still got a hell of a long way to go.

So this is, conversely, what I am also excited about in my current career shift. I am excited to be able to be actively involved in working to struggle against this systemic racism, even if that might be only just within myself. Being an educator in a “high needs” urban public school means that you will have to struggle not only with how society views your students, but with how your students and their families view you. Who are you? Are you just another one of them? Or are you a part of a grouping that goes beyond such petty distinctions, inclusive of all of humanity? The thing is, you can’t deny where you have come from, nor what you look like. But you can deny the urge to ignore your identity as a part of a group, and to stop pretending that everything is equal, that all the world is just. Because it isn’t. Not yet. But it could be.

Snip of Life

Well, it’s been some time since I’ve really scribed my inner self into this somewhat limited method of electronic sharing. Honestly, I’ve been so busy/tired over the past few months that I’ve become somewhat disconnected from my self. I’ve left my job as a store manager and have spent this past week re-acquainting myself with the notion of what it means to have some free time and free space. I’ve been settling into a wonderful new apartment and trying to acclimate my affronted parrot, who has not been taking the move gracefully, and unpacking all these things that haven’t seen the light of day for two years since I left Tahoe. As I ready myself for the challenge of teaching in an urban public school, I am simultaneously trying to unravel just who it is that I still am. As a New Yorker, now, some part of my inner self is always subsumed to overarching structures.

Spring Flowers

I Wouldn’t Have Had It Any Other Way

Fresh back from a vacay to San Diego with my woman, which included seeing the fam, going to the zoo—which I hadn’t been to since I was a wee lad—and getting a massage for our weary limbs. And eating lots of food. I think I gained 4 pounds, which I will promptly shed now that I am back to the grind. Whilst on aforementioned vacay, however, a glimmer of light suddenly appeared out of the tunnel of my grim existence: I was accepted, nearly a year after applying and being placed on a waiting list, into the NYC Teaching Fellows program. For those not in the know, this is a program that places people without teaching credentials directly into high needs schools and subsidizes their master’s in education while they are teaching. It thus allows highly motivated and idealistic individuals who are looking to transition their careers into doing something for the public good to infiltrate low resource schools. The problem with such a program, of course, would be that many folks quickly shed their idealistic ardor once in such a position, and come quickly to realize the dire reality that is the everyday effort of teaching in the public school system. But I have, by this point in my life maturation process, tempered my idealism with a healthy dose of pragmatism, and I have learned what it is to struggle, to suffer, and to learn from my everyday grind how to overcome, through patience and steady will, those obstacles that are seemingly implacable.

So in other words, I am ready for this. Being as it is that I am an English major, I always had it in the back of my mind that I wanted to be a teacher someday. I worked in the special education department in a high school as an instructional assistant after I graduated college, and I loved it. But I wanted to get some life experience first before I considered pretending to be someone that kids could look up to. And then I ended up, in the drift of life, becoming a housekeeping manager, and then now, a retail store manager. And during that time, the idea of becoming a teacher gradually faded, and I set my sights instead on a career at a different level of influence, in public policy. But then here I was in San Diego, sitting in a coffee shop checking my Yahoo mail, and I discovered that I had been accepted to become a teacher. It came out of nowhere. I hadn’t expected to hear anything back from the Fellows since it had been so long, and they have such a highly competitive applicant pool. It took a few days of processing and discussion before I realized that this is exactly the opportunity that I need, right now at this exact point in my life. And while I had been taking solid steps to apply to a graduate program in public policy for next year, taking an extra couple of years to be deeply involved in influencing children’s lives is not a step away from that. It is learning, rather, exactly how our administrator’s policy decisions can affect our everyday existence.

So I am extremely excited to be involved in this program, and I am aware of the challenges that I will face in the coming year. But I am excited by these kind of challenges, because I really do love working with kids and being able to get through to them. I am excited by the potential to change myself, to hone my capability as a leader and teacher and shed more of my ego, shed more of my past, in order to most effectively teach.

During the summer, instead of moving into part-time work as I had planned and studying for the GRE, I will now be entering intensive training for the program. So in one way, my life is only going to get busier. But in another way, it will also get more enriched, because now I will have somewhat regular hours, and weekends off, enabling me to finally spend time with my beloved. And because I will not be doing part-time work but rather earning a decent living wage, we will now be able to finally move out on our own and get our own apartment, and finally—after 2 years—take our stuff out of storage, where it has been boxed up since leaving Tahoe in ‘07.

It’s interesting how things really do happen just when they need to. My fiancee had been praying—in a non-denominational manner—for me to find a job where I had regular hours, and here it came. And when I applied to the Fellows last year, I don’t know that I would have been ready for it then. The experience that I have gained in my current work as a manager has been invaluable in preparing me for what I will do next. I wouldn’t have had it any other way.

Anniversary of My Arrival

So it has now been a full year since this intrepid Californian arrived on this eastern shore of dense urban life. In this past year I have been seriously challenged and have undergone some changes, some growing up, some facing of the hard edged point of now termed ‘Reality’, or—as we used to term it out on a small lake bordering a wilderness area out in Tahoe—the ‘Real World’. A quick schemattering of this past year in a nutshell:

• a 7 day journey in a Budget truck across a storm/flood stricken Mid-West/South with all of my worldly possessions, including my terrified White-Fronted Amazon parrot Vinnie and my girlfriend
• a living in the living room of my girlfriend’s family’s apartment, sleeping on an air mattress that we blew up each and every night and deconstructed again in the morning, so that our ‘room’ could reconvert into a TV watching arena, in which I was subjected to extremely loud marathon watchings of Dancing With The Stars, American Idol, and The View, just to name a select few
• a confrontation on the late night D train with a very large man who was seeking to kick both my and my girlfriend’s ass
• I almost threw up on a train and bus, but just barely held it in to spew it all out at a bus stop 10 blocks away from our street
• a proposal and subsequent engagement to my girlfriend, now henceforth to be known as The Fiancée
• my fiancee’s sister moved out, thus enabling my fiancee and I to move into her room, where we now sleep on two twin beds pushed up together. We’re moving on up in the world
• an attempt to obtain our own apartment failed; I got Lasik surgery performed on my eyes
• I was unemployed for 6 months and sought desperately for a job, undergoing strange interview processes and feeling my self-esteem rise and plummet on a minute-by-minute basis just like the stock market
• I finally gained employment—in a location 1 1/2 – 2 hours away by public transit in Queens, with variable and long hours

Well, that’s pretty much my New York experience in a broad and sweeping overview. In celebration of my survival and continuing eeked existence here in this city, I am going home to Southern California next week, to obtain some much needed R&R, as well as to see my family and especially my nieces and nephews, one of whom I have not even met yet. My fiancee and I are going to get massages, as both our bodies are falling apart from our respective jobs, and simply enjoy ourselves, as we haven’t been able to spend more than a few hours together from week to week.

Putting It All In Perspective

Things that were before unthinkable/untenable become routine unremarked events in this city of everything and nothing, of the richest and poorest, of the darkness and the light. Blood spattered on the pavement of a man splayed out in the street after being hit by an SUV—a drunken boy kicking his girlfriend on the train—a woman sleeping on her knees on the concrete with her head resting against a hard wooden bench—the nightly array of homeless in the plastic subway seats, resting in exhausted, bent, flopping angles, their skin bloated and gray.

The petty struggle of my own existence is thus kept honed in a perspective relative to the suffering that is the everyday realm of those society has passed over. A clarity of vision comes from these watchful late night journeys. I listen to soulful music and catch small packets of rest as I cultivate my ambition, stoking a striated core of determination that grows increasingly irrevocable, a hunger and confidence maturated by patience and humility. Before, twas the wind or lack thereof that determined my path; now, tis my work and will that paves the way. My inner capitalist thus fomented, I recognize the value in self-restraint mixed with a strategic and occasional allocation of self-indulgence.

Time is now not merely The Now, which certainly has its critical power and mystique, as evidenced by Zen and Thelonius monks, but furthermore The Day That Will Come, the nurtering long-term barter that results, someday, in the fruition of what was once but a dream in a shell of enshrouded loneliness. There is This, and there is What Will Be, all one in the grand scale of existence, the unseen weighted omega pull of dark energy that exerts its unyielding influence on still birthing oblivion. What will be will be only because of each individual sown effort, this momentous ephemeral daily struggle. This daily bread will be only because of what must become. All one picture that cannot be viewed by any one mind but only ultimately in the intermixture of eternal generations.

Nu Bidness

Bunch of stuff been going down en mi vida right now, so here’s a general un-abstract post to fill you in. First things first, I got my eyeballs lasered, and I am now in recovery mode, which is a bit harder than I assumed it would be, as I am still working while healing.

Getting your eyes lasered is a bit scary sci-fi-ish, I won’t lie. They lay you down on a chair and douse your eyes in some solution to numb them. They were supposed to have given me valium but they forgot. I wished I’d had it. I was clutching the little stress balls they gave me and kicking my wee legs against the chair in silent protest. Anyway, then they tape up your eyelids and put something (a speculum, I believe it was called) around your eye to keep it open. Then your eye gets like sucked upwards or something, and you’re staring at this red light surrounded by concentric white circles, and it zaps like something out of a B movie, and you can smell your eyeballs burning. Yes, you can smell it, and it’s not pleasant. But that is not the worst of it. They then drop endless amounts of ice cold water into your freshly lasered eye. That was the worst part, for me. I was getting brain freeze from all the water being flooded into my eye socket.

But the whole debacle is over in a few minutes, so it’s not all that bad, really, other than being extremely uncomfortable and unnerving and disturbingly like a bad sci-fi movie. Then the real pain and discomfort begins. The rest of the day I spent popping vicodin and laying in the dark with my eyes closed, as they could not be opened, as they flooded endlessly with tears. The next day was more of the same, though I could keep my eyes open for slightly longer periods of time. I shuffled about with the big shades on that they gave me that made me look like Ray Charles. Then the next day I went back to work.

My eyes have been getting extremely dried out, which isn’t surprising, given that I work 10 hours a day with 3-4 hours on the subway, so I have to keep my eyes moisturized constantly. But the eyeballs are healing, slowly; meanwhile, I can’t see very well and I continue to look like Ray Charles. But it’s all worth it for the luxury of glassless-ness, folks. I can finally walk outside and put on my sunglasses, instead of squinting about and giving my aging skin crows legs.

Other news: my fiancee (I love throwing that word about; it seems to have a weight and heft to it that makes me sound conceited) and I have honed in on an apartment exactly one block away from the location where we are currently squatting. It gets tons of light, it’s relatively huge for a Manhattan apartment, and of course, it’s in a building without an elevator, meaning that we get plenty of exercise going up and down the six flights of stairs.

But we don’t have it yet. We just got all the extensive documentation prepared and put together for the property management nazis. A word on obtaining a space the size of a closet in New York City: it’s absolutely nothing like renting in California like I’m accustomed to. In California, you plop down a deposit and a months worth in rent and sign your name and there you go. They’ll kick you out if they don’t like you. But in New York, they require bank statements, tax forms, W-2’s, employment and salary verification, IDs, personal references, and a 5 page essay on your long-term goals and dreams. Well, minus the essay, they require a shitload of personal information, which is apparently because it’s nearly impossible for New York City landlords to boot you out once you’ve got a lease. Pain in the fucking arse, is all I’ve got to say. But as they like to say here, welcome to New York.

At my store in Queens I seem to be a space alien to people sometimes. They look at my name tag, note that I am from San Diego, and then proceed to exclaim with wonder at the fact that I exist and work in New York City. Seeming to forget that New York City is comprised of mostly foreign elements. Why the hell are you in New York? they all want to know. Implying that California is a land of paradise. Which granted, at times during my half hour walk from the train station to my workplace at 3 in the morning when it’s below freezing and the arctic wind is blasting through my puny three layers, it may appear to be.

Let’s discuss this cold further: it’s been really cold. Like, so cold that my toes in my shoes and socks begin to freeze. So cold, that the air penetrates my pantalones. So cold that it’s like walking out into a freezer. Welcome to New York, indeed. More like Welcome to Minnesota.

Anyway, I need to get off the computer, because it’s straining my still unfocused newly laser minted eyeballs. Another post will be forthcoming at some unknown date in the unforeseen future.

Orange Winter Light

My posts have been a bit abstract of late, I know. That’s what happens when I’m struggling with something internally, unable yet to articulate it fully to someone else. Also, I’m sidestepping around a central point of negativity. I’m perfectly aware that nobody wants to hear bitching and whining. So I’m attempting to navigate through the minefields of my strenuous days to pick out the slivers of light that still shaft through the bricolage, eternally everpresent, a golden sheen added even to shit when you look at it with the right attitude.

And ultimately, that is what it all comes down to: my attitude, my determined perception and predetermined reception of events. How close to the earth must I bend, swaying in the wind like a broken tree? Until everyone who knows of me sees only the light.

But I’m waxing sphinx-ish again. Let me discuss the things that are beautiful in my life right now: when I walk from work and I raise my eyes to the skyline to witness the waning winter afternoon orange colored light slipping across the tips of brick buildings and rooftops; when I make a child I’ve never met before smile, a light that breaks from beyond a wall of shy uncertainty; coming home to the loving exclamations of my parrot, fiancée, and tail wagging dog; when my breath is solid and full on the subway train, and I’m listening to a sitar bended over synthesized drums; when a package arrives from family or friends now far away, or when my cellphone rings; when people at work see a momentary glimpse beyond my professional facade. These are the little things that keep me fighting for tomorrow. It doesn’t take much to fill a receptive heart up with love.

In other news, I’m considering publishing a book compiled from the detritus of my past blog posts. If you have a post in mind that you would consider your favorite or that you would consider essential in such a collection, then please let me know. I’m trying to whittle the compilation down to something solid. Thanks.

Song to Myself

Well, so it had to happen, barring the carcrash anomaly or the premature cap in the ass, etc: I’ve hit the big 3-oh. Yes, it be my day of birth, albeit 30 years prior. Sagittarrius to my core, I love spicy food and traveling, whatever the profile happens to say. I think I’m supposed to feel something, it being a certain type of landmark in the process of aging. I think that I’m supposed to be reflecting on what my life has (not) been and start panicking about where it’s (not) going. But really, the superficial notation of years has less to do with it than the cumulative fruition of struggle. I’ve come a long way from begat baby, and while I haven’t exactly risen from out the ghetto, it still feels like an accomplishment to be reaching some kind of standard of maturation. I’ve been writing creatively nonstop for more than half of my current life (17 years). I’ve been running for 12 years—until now. I have been hitting the djembe skins for 10 years. I have been bombarding world wide web sensibilities for 5 years. And while I haven’t written a symphony or invented a way to accumulate mass amounts of money, I have loved and befriended and altered the generative shape of the noosphere in certain indefinite but nonetheless cumulatively critical manner. Yes, I do so believe. I have achieved some kind of minor accomplishment simply by continuing to be myself. Sigh of relief. While still maintaining that steady focus on kaizen.

Every day is an opportunity to develop, to learn, to grow, to expand, to love, to reach out beyond the surface structures of tepid understanding and straw nuzzle down deep into a divine mystery that is everything that is beyond myself.

I’m proud of myself. If any motherfucker out there has got some beef, I’m ready, in a reserved and ninja turtle-like manner, to take them on. I’m not frightened of a wilderness forest at night, and I’m not afraid of an urban jungle at night. And I’m not afraid of the darkness of the inner flight. I’m 30, and my life is exactly where I would want it to be had I planned it out in any conscious manner. No more, no less. Keep on keepin’ on.

Flashes of Random Stuff That Constitutes My Current Existence

Some random New York City thoughts:

• It struck me the other day as I was journeying by morning bus through Queens of how a mere year ago I was in Lake Tahoe, California, where the skyline is drawn by cragged piney mountains, and as I looked over towards downtown Manhattan, where the skyscrapers loomed in the dawning sun into the bracing air, I realized that this mancrafted landscape holds its own mute beauty, distant and unintelligible, yet comforting and beloved all the same. I experienced a fleeting moment of affection for the city. It’s like it’s so unnatural that it’s natural.
• When I’m sitting on the subway train and I don’t have a book to read, as I stare unfocused out the darkened window I think of how cool it would be if the windows of the cars had some kind of screensaver type backlighting, so that as you were traveling through tunnels, you could look at a background of fish swimming around or something. Just something to stare at mindlessly so you don’t have to play that I’m-not-really-staring-at-you-but-I-kinda-am game.
• It’s true: Californians really don’t know diddlysquat about what cold is. It gets friggin’ cold out here. When that wind blows—forget about it: suddenly all that ski-bum wear that got you by on the West Coast feels like tissue paper. It requires fur, wool, dense thickets of nylon, scarves, and a phat cap. Yet you will still see pretty young thin things wearing puny little cute jackets over their skin tight jeans. Other than for their Ugg boots, it’s a mystery to me as to how they keep themselves warm. Perhaps they’re harnessed with alpaca thongs?
• The economy really is bad. We’ve got people applying for jobs at our store from Wall Street who were investment bankers for 13 years, etc. Well, thank god for the service industry, eh? Makes me all the more resigned to the fact that I’ll continue to be overworked and sleep deprived for the next year on, at least. Oh, joy.
• The subway ain’t the ideal venue to study mathematics in.
• The subway in the night during winter is full to the brim with homeless people who have nowhere else to go to sleep and get out of the cold. And it can get just a tad stinky. I think that the city would be much better off if its public representatives were forced to ride the subway in the middle of the night. Might give them a whole new perspective on things.

NYC vs. California

Now methinks it is time for more meditation upon the topick of la ciudad Nueva York, as I have now resided here for 8 months, and have become a daily inhabitant of its subterranean commuter lifestyle. Many New Yorkers seem to have a distaste/idealization of California in general, whereupon they either think that Californians are too laid-back and boring, or they think that California is paradise. As a native Californian, I can now bear witness to the differences between NYC and Californian lifestyles: really, the only difference comes down to a matter and concept of space. Allow me to elaborate.

In California, we are accustomed to vast amounts of physical space. We drive on wide freeways and vast suburban expanses. We sit in our SUVs and trucks by ourselves, and grow agitated when people drive too close to us or cut us off (although we are accustomed to sitting in thickets of single occupant cars in the midst of traffic jams). We think backyards are normal, and we are off-put by giant crowds.

In New York City, physical space is negligible, for both rich and poor alike, though obviously the rich have more routes and spaces of escape, and they tend not to be packed into their apartments like sardines. All riders of the subway brush up against each other during rush hour, are pressed against strangers in the compress of Times Square, are sideswiped by other shopping carts in the narrow lanes of gourmet grocery stores. All drivers here expect and are undeterred by the close proximity of other vehicles, bikers, and pedestrians.

In NYC, the people are somewhat more homogenous in a sense. Fashion on the street is echoed everywhere—women wear the same Uggs, men wear the same stiff caps, hoodies, or black jeans. There is a certain type of coat and messenger bag style that proliferates. Both women and men here tend towards a fashionable kind of asceticism: stick thin, utilitarian, and dark colored. There is a certain style of self-consciousness in many New Yorkers. They are accustomed to being overheard, stared at, and ignored.

Thus, there isn’t really all that much substance to the stereotype of “New Yorkers are aggressive”, and “Californians are laid-back”. It’s simply a matter of density. When you are shoved all together into a small physical space, then you kind of have to be “aggressive” in order to move forward. But contrary to the stereotype of “aggressiveness”, New Yorkers are also much more accepting in the face of adversity, as they know that people being in their way is a part of life. And contrary to the stereotype of Californians being “laid-back”, Californians tend to be very good at being completely unsympathetic to people and situations outside of their comfort zones, as they aren’t used to being forced to deal with diversity and difference.

What I love about New York is that people of all types are forced up together. And while they may not like each other, they are used to dealing with one another.

What I don’t like about New York is that it is dirty and industrial. All of the subway stations are falling apart, and as good as the public transit system is here, it still sucks—if you take middle-of-the-night trains like I do and you have to actually get somewhere on time. Too many people still insist on driving cars, and drivers here don’t have any patience for pedestrians. Let’s face it: NYC is the epitome of industrially created environments. It’s a completely leveled island on a nearly perfect grid system. This is both what makes it cool and what makes it suck, because all of what makes it hold together always seems on the verge of falling apart.

New Yorkers, being near the northeast with its abundance of rainfall, also don’t seem to understand the preciousness of water the way Californians tend (relatively speaking) to. All day long, I walk by New Yorkers with hoses spraying down vast swaths of concrete, as if that’s cleaning anything. What a waste of drinking water. I’d like to see how New Yorkers would cope with a drought.

I’m still ambivalent about what I think about NYC, just as NYCers themselves seem similarly ambivalent in their views of California. I like that even as big and dirty of a city as it is, people here love their neighborhoods and their communities, and this tends to imbue the city as a whole with a feeling of belonging and acceptance, even in the face of all the travails (i.e. unemployed young men) that urbanity brings.

In any case, I’ve developed an intermittent Queens-style accent, which seems to enable one to make sarcastic and ironic statements in a conversational manner. I have a tendency to adopt regional accents when I am trying to fit in somewhere, such as while I lived in South Lake Tahoe, I developed a slight drawl, or while in Peru, I would speak English with Spanish inflected vowels. Although I have been told by a New Yorker that I have a “California accent”, so the ruse is not complete.

As to where my affiliations ultimately lie, I will always love California, but I don’t know that I want to live there again any time soon. I think that I could live anywhere, and I will always take a little bit of that place with me, and I will always reject some part of it. I am an American, I am a nature boy and an urbanite, I am a hippie and a capitalist, I am a writer and a retail worker. Will I ever find some place that I can finally and with finality call home? We’ll see.

Engagement

I had surreptitiously slipped it in at the end of another post, but just to reiterate it more formally and proudly: I am now engaged to be married. My fiancée and I have been living together for some time, and we could have continued to live together for some time hence without the formal commitment of betrothal. But I came to an internal realization vis-a-vis formal and informal commitments: I had already demonstrated to myself that I was deeply committed to my relationship. Whatever my superficial doubts, fleeting emotional resistance, and mental ruminations might be, I want to support and love my beloved as fully as I am capable. I have lived with her in the mountains and pine forests of the Sierra Nevadas, journeyed with her through the jungles and mountains of Colombia, been bored to tears with her in San Diego at the home of my parents, driven across the American South in a truck with my Amazon parrot to live with her and her family in a dense city on the other side of the nation, and am now enslaved in a long commute and demanding work in order to make it in said city. Why would I do all this if I was not deeply committed? So why not ask her to marry me, and cast away both of our doubts and fears? To formalize this commitment is to turn away from the past, turn away from doubt about the present, and face fully the future.

It’s a demonstration of just how much I have changed from the Monk of yore, the fact that I would even consider getting hitched. I have bloviated in the past against the institution of marriage, and swore that I was never to be married. I was an anarchist, a free spirit, a subversive and enlightened alien whose journey was determined by the happenstance wind. However, my resistance to the institution was challenged when both of my sisters, whom I love very much, became engaged, and I became involved in assisting them with their wedding planning. Because I admire and love my sisters, I had to come to a grudging embrace of their decisions to become married, and finally even came to recognize the reason why individuals would deliberately choose to formalize their temporal relationships. This was around the same time that I was becoming aware of how the personal is political, of how our personal development is integrally attached to our professional development, of the necessity for planning, diplomacy, and collective agreement in our lives.

So when the decision now came before me, it actually wasn’t a hard one to make. My life had already made it for me, and it was really just a matter of coming to terms with my reality. It didn’t feel weird to set about finding and purchasing a ring. It felt just about right.

As to the story of how I proposed, I’m afraid it was about as unromantic and informal a procedure as could be. Everyone loves hearing “the story,” as I’ve quickly come to realize once I made the announcement at my workplace, and so I might as well relate it here.

I had ordered the ring online from a reputable retailer, where you can design the ring yourself. I then left for New Jersey for a two day management training session, knowing that the box would arrive while I was gone. I was hoping that I could just put the box aside without opening it. But as soon as I got home, she kept asking me about what the box was and insisting that I open it. The box had no markings on it that would betray what was in it. I told her that I thought it was an Obama T-shirt that I was getting for having donated to his campaign, which is in fact being delivered to me shortly. I thought that she wouldn’t be that interested in seeing a T-shirt, and that I could then re-direct the conversation to something else. But she was not to be deterred: she wanted me to open the box. I tried several times to redirect the conversation, and had even hidden the box from sight while she was in the other room, but she continued to implore me to open the box, or to give her the box to open it herself. At that point, I decided that I might as well get it over with anyway, and so I said, sure, go ahead and open the box. It’s for you anyway.

She opened it up, and then got still when out of this big box was discovered a little tiny ring box. She said quietly, “What is this?” Even though she must have known quite well what it was. I said, “Open it up.” And then I asked her to marry me, while she was sprawled out in bed, and we were both in our pajamas.

I had had a whole proposal speech typed up and printed out, and I had meant to wait until my days off, so that we could take a walk together in the park and I could make it more dramatic. But instead, I just handed her the speech I had written and we read it together. In a way, this was more fitting for us as a couple in any case. We are pretty low key. For us to have one of those dramatic, publicly announced proposals, where the guy gets up on a table or loudspeaker at a stadium or something, would just have been too weird.

I think we both felt a little tripped out by the “adultness” of the situation. But it feels good to be able to make the announcement. We aren’t planning on a ceremony anytime soon, as we would both like to be more secure in our careers first. But at least now we can start thinking about plans together without feeling scared or weird about making them. Before, when we talked about future long-term plans, there was always this element of “maybe we won’t still be together at that time.” Now that doubt can be erased, and we can move forward in our relationship and individually in our lives.

It’s Obama Time

Well, I’m staying up past my bed time, which means 5 hours 4 hours of sleep or so tonight, but what the hell. I feel the need to post something; what was once only oft a means of circumventing loneliness or merely a form of mental masturbation has now become a luxury in my life.

First of all, what can I say about Obama getting elected? It has turned from hope beyond hope into reality. It is a paradigm changing event. I went to bed once he took Ohio, but couldn’t sleep anyhow because everyone in my neighborhood proceeded to uncork champagne bottles, scream, and set off firecrackers once he had reached the necessary amount of electoral votes. I went to sleep happy.

I then attended some management training classes for 2 days, which were useful even if only for ascertaining that I’ve learned much of the right stuff mostly on my own already. I think the Tao Te Ching is ultimately the best piece of literature on effective management techniques.

Obama seems to have taken to heart the Tao Te Ching. He is able to influence vast and sweeping change without appearing to break a sweat. He knows how to let others act and speak for him, how to maintain constant discretion, discipline and restraint. He is indeed a capable leader.

If ever there was a “mandate” behind an election, I think this has been it. Regulation and the curtailing of unrestrained markets have been given a clear green light, which sets the stage, finally, for a possible regenerative economy and environmentally sound agenda.

To be perfectly honest, I think electing Obama came down to a matter of our children’s survival. We would have been fucked otherwise. Free market capitalism and individual rights to do whatever they damn well please is apparent as no longer viable in an age when the failure of an emerging nation to develop its economy and to sustain its natural resources is recognized as critically important to the success of rich nations. An interdependent globe is only as strong as its weakest link.

So thank god Obama is our president. The world and the sane members of the United States can collectively breathe a sigh of relief. Now it’s time, finally, to get to the real work of dealing with the mess we are in. Let’s get to it.

In other news, I am now engaged. You heard it here first.

My Heart, The City

In the midst of the city, the light, the electrified transmission of energy, the movement and motion towards securing a better day tomorrow, if not for oneself than at least for one’s children. The strained acceptance in the faces of the waiting people on the train, swaying together to their destinations.

The way the jagged skyline of downtown is like the electronic visualization of sound. The way our lives are organized somehow towards a possibility, a potentiality beyond our own capability, grounded in everyday effort, a struggle steeped in mystery, faith, and irrational desire, yet somehow blessed by scientific technological development, by the evolution of market economies and political entities. How we strain towards betterment, despite the worst in ourselves and each other. How we adapt and orient ourselves against the steady erosion of our world. Communities huddled together against the unknown. Killing each other, loving each other. Living, dying, blessed, bereft.

I have joined the struggle of the masses by learning to become something lesser than what I can imagine. I will subsume my burning passion to the steady and solid rootedness of the earth, of this place and time and here and now that is my life and my love and my place in the world, stabilized against the storms of change. There is no greater adventure out there, somewhere exotic in the the vast cusp of the alien distance. My struggle is to live and to die by what I know, by what I can hold onto and cultivate within me, beneath me, around me. Homeward bound.

The wind blows through me as through the arms of a tree, unharnessed, a movement betrayed only by the shuddering of its leaves. I will harness the light.

I will surround myself with a community that will support me, that I will support, reinforcing one another against the void. Allowing myself to become weakened to become tied into something stronger, something wider, something encompassing of the cosmos.

The way the transit lines pump through the arterial lines of the city like the life blood carriers of a gruesome divinity. The way a trumpet echoes through a late night subway platform. The way my heart beats with you, for you, against you, to you.

Venting/Elaborations

Convenience—luxury—the basking in a belated glow of ignorant ease, is made possible by armies out there embedded in the cusp of entrenched effort. They slog through ungodly tasks and hours, enduring what we would not like to think about, so that we can have what we want, when we want it, at cutthroat prices, in vast arraigned heaps of information and packaging.

Today, royalty includes vast swaths of consumers barely cognizant of their status. You, dear reader, are one of them. You are being served like a pagan deity of yore, a pound of nard for your feet and a waitstaff attending to your every vaicarious bowel movement (BM). You eat food grown, trucked, wrapped and served by ancient fossil fuels that took milleniums to become transformable into rapidly wasted high heat energy. You drive down to the market, where all you have to do to meet your meticulously calculated nutritional requirements is pick off some pre-packaged products from the shelf. You work hard for this privilege, yes: but do you work as hard as a farmer of old, the farmer who rose before dawn and worked past sundown to generate a (possible) surplus? You consider such work to be beneath you, behind you, inhumane, third world.

Do I sound critical, post-modern? Am I deconstructing the dynamics of consumerism? Let me be more clear. I think that the world of commerce and capitalism, generated off of the hard labor of man in conjunction with his machines, is just as it should be. I like to work hard. I do work hard. I work perhaps not as hard as our aforementioned farmer, but just about as hard as I can endure, with sleep deprivation, physical labor, and long hours at all times of the night and morning. I feel at times like I am a soldier, off battling enemies for a society that is barely aware that what I am doing is for their benefit. When I come home from the battlefield, no one wants to hear of my stories, nor will understand them, like Hemingway’s soldier in A Soldier’s Home. I am part of an army of people out there working extremely hard so that you and I can walk into a store and buy what we want without applying any thought to it. Providing service.

There is a tremendous amount of work that goes into providing a lifestyle of convience. And hence, an enormous amount of money to be spent and made. Such is capitalism, and this is its bounty. We can criticize it and predict its demise—ala Marx—all we want, but ultimately, this is the fabric of our economy and the defining nature of our existence, for better or for worse.

But I want to be clear about something else. I do need to whine a little bit sometimes, I need to deconstruct a little bit, critique and discern. So that I can go back to working my butt off and earning my hard-earned cash, providing my customers with the best in customer service. I begrudge no mindless consumer their complacent royalty. So don’t begrudge me my need to vent, my need to be recognized in some manner and degree. I don’t like to complain, or even to talk much about work in general. But it now defines my every sleeping and waking moment. I have to discuss it in some way, shape and form. I have to beg for some kind of empathy and understanding in the midst of the grim reality of my exhaustion.

How long can I do this? How long can I last? Like the soldier who keeps wanting to go back to the front even after his leg is blown off and his mind is frayed, there is something addictive about being pushed beyond your limitations. Something in me, the masochist ascetic who also loves running likes the fact that I am being stripped of all prior associations. Lain bare of my weaknesses, honed by a trial by fire of necessity, of everyday effort. As the trepidations of my initial newbie legs wears off, I grow ever more confidant in my capability. I can live on 4 hours of sleep. I can shed my excess body fat. I can survive on the middle of the night subway amidst sketchy perverts and petty criminals.

I am being shaped by the fires of the city. This is what it is to work. This is what it is to commute. This is what it is to mesh into movement, energy, mindlessness. The city, the compressed motion of commerce, renders us nebulous. We move in multiplicities. We are not one, we are many, defined as one by each other. We are clouds, we are spray, we are bullet points littering across the empty space, sentences to something that is unseen, organized by something beyond that could be cold, heartless, and angry, or could be warm, embracing, and loving, depending on what you make it out to be through the fog of your weary hope.

Trivial Mundanities, aka TMs

Trivial Mundanities. Such is the stuff of life. I am beginning to think that underlying much of Thomas Pynchon’s works is an attempt to demonstrate just how much of history is formulated by the forces of completely officially ignored and hidden aspects of existence—strange sexual encounters, anarchist theorems, pot smoke enshrouded pontificating into the night, etc.

Just to give you an example of the current T.M.s of my daily life: I left for work Friday at 12:06 midday in order to begin work at 2 in the afternoon. I then worked til 2:30 at night. I arrived at home, due to some mistakes in getting off at the wrong stations due to construction, etc, at 5:30 Saturday morning. I then again left for work that morning at 12:07, after waking up at 11:30. Blah blah blah. The point of this enumerating on timeliness is that work, in this (a)typical example of another crazy night in my life, can consume—inclusive of the transit time involved in getting to it—a grand total of 17 hours of a day in my life. That particular scenario left me with 6 hours of sleep, though in actuality it was more like 4-5, given the time I spent showering when I got home and the fitful type of sleep that was to be had.

That’s not much of a life outside of work, now, is it?

Just to give a few more T.M. laden tidbits subsequent to aforementioned Hell Night: I woke up, sort of, in the morning, stumbled creakingly into my clothes, fed my screaming parrot, ate a granola bar, brushed my teeth and washed my face, and made my way out to the street, hence towards 1) the shuttle bus to 2) the A train to 3) the E train to 4) the Q53 bus. It being a Saturday, the place wherein I work was slam packed with frantic consumers, and due to some problems we’d had with a fire at our frozen warehouse, our intranet ordering system failing, etc, the day was even crazier and more stressful than usual—and as always, compounded by the fact that I am still new and “learning the ropes” as a manager there. So I didn’t get a break to eat and sit down and drink water until 8 at night.

So I’m sitting here and it’s past 3 am in the quiet of the witching hours and I’m beyond exhausted. It’s my “Friday” however, meaning that I’m now into my weekend, which will consist mainly of sleep and attempts to pretend that I’m not going back to work again soon, very, very soon.

It’s funny that I have been for so long wishing to put the “car culture” of California behind me, and here I am, fulfilling my ambition, logging in my plentiful hours within the New York MTA system, breathing in its subterannean fumes. I spend most of that time reading my library books while listening to my MP3 player—which may have just died actually (I haven’t had to time to analyze the situation: does it just need to be hit, recharged, taken apart, plugged in, re-re-booted, etc? Or is it really, finally, after so many years, Dead?)—closing my eyes and attempting to relax/nap in the hard plastic seats of the subway while my head nods to and fro, or staring at a single point at the ground and trying to pretend that I don’t notice the weird dude who insists upon starting blatantly at me as if I’m some kind of anomaly that does not compute.

The trains late night can really lead to existential crises; you will find yourself sitting in a murky, decaying waterlogged station, the tiles splotched with grime, a vomit spill projecting on the ground in front of the puritanically designed hard wood row of seats, a midget with a black cap and a dragon embroidered denim jacket asking you if you speak Spanish and then saying something completely nonsensical to you in any language, a number of high pitched alarms ringing just slightly off time from each other for some reason that is unknown and obviously unimportant. You sit and wait, and wait, and wait. This could be hell. Trains in other tunnels rumble unseen on their way to somewhere else. Men in hardhats, doo-rags, and florescent vests walk about the station and wave flashlights. A rat mama and her baby scuttle across the tracks. Trash scatters everywhere, so ubiquitous it is unseen.

You get onto a train, finally, and random people of the night settle and are settled into states of disarray, disheveled post party/event states, bodies splayed at awkward ankles, heads nodding, a besotted woman guffawing at her partner’s slurred unfunny statements, an old man across from you pressing his head into the corner of the wall—you think at first that he is crying, and then you grasp the darker truth—his nose is pouring—literally pouring—out snot, and it is dripping down onto the seat, and he is embarrassed, attempting to hide it, trying to flick it over as it pools onto the seat with his finger into the crevice on the side. You pretend that you do not see what is transpiring.

Another man hacks up sputum and spits loudly onto the floor of the train. He stares belligerently at a man wearing an MTA uniform and hat. He spits a number of times more, to make it clear that he is spitting to make a point. He shakes, perhaps with delirium tremens, or in some state of spiritual dishevelment. He is dirty, he has bags of probably useless objects. He is talking to himself, complaining incessantly. Apparently, he has fallen asleep and missed his stop long ago, and blames the MTA system for making him miss his stop. He stares at the man across from him in MTA clothes and shakes, and spits audibly, and then continues to complain. To whom? Is it the Train Gods that he rails against? The forces of the ominous sounding Metropolitan Authority? People in the train pretend that this is not occurring, that they notice nothing, though they see everything.

Ah, the trivial mundanities of my existence.

Accidents and Appropriations

Last night after work my supervisor was giving me and another guy a lift to the train station and a girl in a fancy car with no brain decided to turn directly in front of us. We hit the side of her car and then went head on into the car behind her. Fortunately, no one was seriously injured, though the two cars that didn’t cause the accident are pretty much wrecked. I just bruised up my knees a bit on the seat in front of me and my back and neck hurt a bit. I went to the hospital to make sure I was OK, and didn’t get home til 5 this morning. The good news is, that means I have today off!

I consider it highly ironic that I have moved out to NYC partially in order to avoid having to even be in cars any longer, and here I get into a car for just the stretch of a few blocks and get into an accident.

Another Day in a Death Star Trench

In other news, I’ve finally realized what it is that I’m always reminded of when I go downtown and traverse its imposing/exhilirating canyon streets: the Death Star. There could totally be Tie fighters and X-Wings zooming through downtown Manhattan. Just an observation.

It’s fall now, and I am falling in love with the city more because of this. I could barely stand the sweat dripping humidity of the summer, but now that the air is crisp and the light diminishing, I am enjoying being here more. I love that feeling of waning, the way the orange light falls at an angle on a cool street in Queens, the way everyone is suddenly looking the way one envisions a New Yorker looking, with their nice coats and cold weather wardrobes and hoodies. I am someone not accustomed to much of an autumn, being from California, and it’s a distinct feeling in the air that I cherish. I’m just waiting for the trees to start exploding for the Wow factor really to kick in.

I obtained a Not For Tourists mini-booklet for the city, which should come in handy: it’s got little maplets of every neighborhood, with stores, bars, and restaurants listed. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been in a certain section of town for some specific purpose, and then wish I had known what else was around to know what else to do. Not being a local, I’ve had no other option but to hop back on the train and go back to my little out of the way ‘hood. Now I’ve got my little handy info-book in my arsenal to combat my lack of intrinsic native knowledge.

My woman and I attended a new Van Gogh exhibit at the MoMA—which thanks to her inside connections we got VIPed right in—and I really enjoyed seeing some of his most famous paintings up close and in person. You can feel what makes him so visually captivating as an artist, the way he establishes an intuitive rhythm, like a musical etching, with his brushstrokes. Both her and I especially liked his Starry Night Over the Rhone, even a bit more than the more famous Starry Night—something about the deepness and tranquility of its thick blue hues—it almost looked good enough to eat, like icing on a cake. What I especially like about Van Gogh, I realized from this exhibit, was that he combines observation with intuition.

Separation in Harmony

A friend said to me the other day something that resonated with me greatly, when we were discussing relationships and the problems or non-problems thereof: “It is important to separate, in a relationship, your own personal issues and development from the issues and development of the relationship.” Well, she didn’t say it quite like that, but I was already getting drunk off some wine that I was drinking so I disremember what it was exactly, but that was it’s general import. It struck me because it was something I had been attempting to articulate to myself internally, but had not yet arrived at in the cusp of outside understanding, which of course is why we have friends, so that they can state the unstated for us.

This is an important insight, on many different levels. At its most obvious, we must pay heed to the distinction of restraining ourselves from blaming our own internal problems on our partners, or from projecting our insecurities on each other, or what have you. But at an even more fundamental and general level, think of this in application to our relationships with wider society. How often do we blame our own issues on the problems of our society?

But let me disregard the more abstract and generalist applications of this idea and bring it back to myself. I have discussed my problems with over-analysing my relationship in the past, and it is a constant issue with me because I have strongly defined myself based on long bouts of loneliness, self-sufficiency, and a lone wolf lifestyle. For me to be in a long term relationship is still something that I find to be a novelty at times. I thus almost automatically question it and challenge its presence. How essential is this to my self-definition? Is this restricting my ability to be myself? These are the terms by which I question things. But we must note that these questions are fundamentally skewed, when brought into the light of the original insight with which I began this post.  Because I bring my own personal issues and stages of development and project them onto my greater relationship with my loved one, thus delimiting the capacity of my relationship on the terms of my own need and hubris.

Because the fact is that my relationship is quite beautifully stable in and of itself. It is only when I bring my own personal instability and lone wolfishness into the mix that I complicate and negate positive things. In separating my own problems and personal issues out of my relationship, and in learning to distinguish these issues from whatever issues I might share with my beloved, am I able to better appreciate what I do truly have before me.

Rock Facing Water

In this contemporary juncture of my life in the continuum of heart-space-time I am being challenged, challenged by this giant density of city, challenged by the commute out to my work and by the long hours on my feet and by the loss of sleep, challenged by the people in the subway and the street, challenged by my living situation, challenged by my own limitations, challenged by my relationship, challenged by my expectations, challenged by everything that currently exists here and by everything that has led me summarily to this point of now.

I have not been writing frequently, as you may have duly noted, both because I lack free time outside of my days off and because I am having trouble enough grasping physically with my reality not to want to expend effort psychically and mentally untangling my emotions into worded strands. But I have a need. I have the pent up panopticon of my unvented frustrations and shattered hopes to deal with. I have the neglected plot of my blog awaiting tending to, calling out quietly for growth and development, for creativity and courage. I have myself to answer to, to nurture, take care of, love, and maintain.

Suffice to say that the challenges I face are far beyond the expected penance that any great dislocation can incur. I am realizing just how naive I still am, almost 30 but still sheltered in a collegiate sort of way. The struggle to actively prepare for the future is beyond all hopeful reckoning. I am understanding now that I must be prepared for disaster, for worst-case-scenario. I must be prepared to seriously and tenaciously endure. I must be ready to subvert my own natural inclinations and proclivities and breathe slower, breathe deeper, pace myself, hang back and await the unknown mystery that will come. To accept what I am given, patiently, with quiet ambition kept stoked hidden in a secret place from the world, to be unveiled only when the final cards are ready to be faced.

I think I seem to be implying that my reality is terrible, but it really is not. This is my point of this whole story. Things are not bad at all. The things that have been horrifying and distressing me are petty and largely irrelevant but to my battered ego. The challenges that I face wisp away when stood up to in full. My commute is focused reading time of the bounty that I skim from the wonderful NYC library. My work hones my body and teaches me humility and how to relate to a wonderful diversity of people and how to maintain a maturity and integrity of perspective and action. My living situation incorporates me into an extended family who supports and loves me. My relationship is committed, full of daily love and constant tendering. My expectations are evolving to include a much broader range of what my life is meant to be. And this giant, dirty city is teaching me what it means to truly live with and love humanity.

So these challenges, I am finally and wearily realizing, are welcome challenges. Though arriving in completely unexpected ways, rendering me momentarily defenseless, they are exactly and precisely what I desired and required, when seen for what they are. Something within me is rushing to the brink of a certain type of extinction. And beyond this shattering momentary loss and delimitation lies the widened horizon and incorporation of a greater sea.

So go we all. The economy, the body politic, the bedoeling roads of science, culture, and intuitive grasps at divinity. We journey our disparate paths to oneness. However embattled, however frayed, these droplets will find their way to their unexpectedly perfect destination.

A Summary of Work

Well, so 10 days and around 100 hours into my new employment, I guess it’s time for an update on how things are progressing.

I’m exhausted. But the good news is that even though I’ve had to quit running due to having no time at “home” other than to sleep and shower, I’ve slimmed down and built muscle mass in my arms, back, and abs. The bad news is that I’ve got bags under my eyes, my left knee is killing me, my cuticles are scabbed up and I’ve obtained several deep cuts on my fingers, and while lifting a stack of bread racks last night I felt something pop in the bones of my neck and it’s been extremely painful since and I’m still trying to ascertain how serious and long lasting the damage may be.

I’ve been thrown to the wolves, so to speak. The 1st day I showed up at my job no one there even knew I was coming (organized this store is not). The billionaire owners are flying over for a site visit this week, and all the managers have been freaking out, and thus haven’t had time to properly train me, let alone even hold a decent conversation with me in order to enlighten me on what the fuck I am supposed to be doing. So I’ve just been working with the part-time crew, following them around trying to figure out how to master the basics of things such as registers, bagging, staging deliveries, restocking, and so forth, and gleaning whatever wisdom the best of the workers can bestow upon me.

As to whether this is a career I really want to dedicate myself to is another question. At the moment, it’s simply a job, and the way the economy is headed, I’m just happy to have a decent one. But it’s hard, physically demanding work, and I don’t know that it’s something I want to build a long-term career out of. But at least the option is there, and the company, beyond the store I happen to work in, is a fairly well-managed one.

I’ve been thinking a bit lately about what my approach to managing people is. Here are some of the principles by which I operate:

• Power tripping is never appropriate; it is a sign of weakness and low self-esteem
• Similarly, never talk down to your workers. Even when they are not performing well
• You are always responsible for your workers performance. Never blame the under-performance or thievery of your workers on them. It is your fault.
• Similarly, never blame a worker’s failure to follow your command on their lack of understanding. It is rather your lack of ability to clearly communicate and articulate your command so that they understand it fully, and your failure, furthermore, to clarify that they have understood, and to make yourself readily available and open to their questions should they have any.
• It is your job and your role to function as a person who tells your workers what to do. They shouldn’t have to think for you. They aren’t paid or positioned to do so. Don’t complicate this relation by obfuscating your commands with excuses, justifications, or apologies.
• Similarly, the reason you are paid more and have a position of authority is because you are supposed to be working (or thinking) harder. You are supposed to be not only working harder, but have a deeper and broader understanding of all aspects of the work of those below you. If you think you have “earned” your position in order to sit back on your laurels and be lazy and arrogant, then you aren’t managing appropriately.
• If you can’t relate to your workers as fellow human beings, friends, and compatriots, then you won’t be able to earn their respect and they won’t work as hard as they could for you. You might be able to earn their fear, but fear only goes so far, and it backfires in the end (other than in the small, confined space of kitchens or classrooms).
• Similarly, don’t pretend to be someone you are not. If you are quiet, then be quiet. If you are obnoxious, then be obnoxious. Whatever you do, just be yourself. If you are forcing yourself to manage according to some idea of the “right” way of interacting with other people, then you are being unnatural, and no one responds positively to someone who is unnatural.
• Similarly, don’t try to mentally confine your workers into a collective box. Every worker is a human being with different backgrounds, thoughts, creative solutions, and analytical capabilities. You have to treat them as individuals, and treat every problem situationally.
• One of the most important and fundamental aspects of good management is integrity. Do what you say. Lead by example. Don’t be two-faced and don’t pretend to like people who you don’t.
• And finally—the most important principle, in my opinion—don’t enforce artificial divisions between management and staff, whether through gossip or action. Obviously, rules and laws exist for a reason. But everyone is a human being. We operate based on incentives and disincentives, and not all of them are related to money. Relating to your workers as equal human beings is probably the most single, important key to being a manager they will respect and want to work well for. They understand that it is your position and role to be a manager. They don’t have to be bludgeoned over the head with that fact. Beyond the role and functions and duties of your position, you are a human being, a person with weaknesses and desires and hubris like everyone else. Allow yourself to be a human in interacting with your workers, and similarly, allow them to be humans. Allow them their weaknesses and foibles. Encourage them, nurture them, and love them. Provide them with a positive and fun work environment. Help them to grow. If you can accomplish that task, then you are indeed a good manager.

New Horizons

Thus gainfully employed, I am now having my true “New York experience”, consisting of long public transit rides (2 trains and a bus) in the wee early mornings, people scattered throughout the trains in all manner of exhaustion (you know, when you pass out on a seat and your neck is all bent and floppy like a dead chickens), working with a diversity of youth and old local folk with heavy accents who hold conversations that could only be held in NYC (I couldn’t even begin to characterize it yet; read Don Delillo’s Underworld to get an idea: terseness, machismo, and tangential reference are its defining characteristics).

After having been stationary for so long, being actively on my feet for 10 hours each day on top of 3-4 hours of transit time has been debilitating to my aging body. I wake up sore all over, barely capable of moving. But by the end of my 1st week, the muscles have been slowly adapting, and I have been surprisingly not as tired as I would have thought during my shifts except at the very end, which is either due to the influence of the eternal florescent lighting, or to 14 years of running. In addition to honing my body, I also seem to be developing an accent and the ability to declaim aggressively in an ironic and self-mocking manner.

It’s interesting to see the other side of the grocery retail world, and to realize just how much hard work goes into supplying the spectacle that is the consummate consumer experience. Behind the facade of colorfully arrayed specialty products lies constant labor and activity. All for your convenience, for your grazing pleasure. You walk somnolently through the diversity of choices demanding your attention, picking and choosing wantonly or stringently depending on your personal restraint and desire. It’s a disturbingly unconscious yet powerful aspect of our industrial daily lives. It’s beautiful and terrifying.

One thing is for sure: you can bring in all the tote bags you want, you environmentally conscious people, but take a look at all the plastic packaging that went into the little convenient product that you just purchased. Our lives are built a little too much, perhaps, on expediency. But who am I to talk? I like having the power and freedom to wander through international markets choosing at will just like anybody else. I suppose the question is whether or not we can sacrifice, as a culture and society, a little bit of convenience in order to reduce the amount of waste created in bringing us the exotic products we desire. But who would want to give up the global market? I love exotic chocolate, fruits, nuts, and other fun and delicious items. The crux of the matter boils down to transport efficiency and product packaging, in addition to sourcing locally, seasonally, and organically as much as possible.

But in the meantime, keep on using your tote bags. I’ll be taking a hard look at the packaging waste issues as I become more deeply embedded in my position.

At Long Last, Employment

I have been unemployed for a substantial time now, and I can tell you that I am extremely excited to go back to work. Certainly, some of that term of unemployment was intentional. My girlfriend and I both elected to leave our idyllic Tahoe mountain lives in search of a new locale, with pit stops in Colombia and San Diego arraigned for the interim. But once I’d got rid of some guns and we’d decided to move on to the biggest city in the United States, I was all hot and bothered to get me some paychecks back under my belt. I figured that it would take some time, but I was not counting on 6 months (that’s not counting the temporary work I did at an environmental expo). I figured that I had a somewhat solid resume, I had practiced fielding inane interview questions, and I was eager and willing. But as time dragged on, and I was rejected from the few opportunities I was given, I became dejected and depressed.

When I started my quest here in NYC, I actually came quite close, initially, to landing an amazing and challenging job at Columbia University. I was green, at that time, in interviewing, but I think I impressed them with my energy. They also liked my stories about chasing bears in Tahoe. But I didn’t have quite the administrative experience to land the position. I think I would have gotten it had I been more prepared for interviewing, but at that time I was still new to the process.

Another job interview for a law firm, the boss took me out to lunch, and he basically told me he liked me and that I just had to iron out the details with the HR lady. For some reason, she took an immediate disliking to me, probably because I corrected her on an e-mail mistake she had made (she sent me an email intended for her boss in which she was asking him about what he thought of me), and I never heard back from them after sending them my college transcripts, which are admittedly underwhelming—but that was 7 years ago, folks. C’mon.

Another job interview for a bar which has a mechanical bull as it’s (only) feature in drawing drunken crowds (yeah, classy joint right?), the guy asked me about 5 questions, one of which was: “So let’s say you walked out this door right now, and there was a starving cat and a starving dog outside, and you could only choose one to save. Which one would you pick?” Color me confused.

Another interview process was so extensive that I interviewed with 5 different people over the course of a month and a half, and had to do a 15 minute presentation and writing exercise as well. I did alright on the interviews, I think, but at some point in the journey, one of the head haunchesses of the joint determined that she didn’t like me. This point seemed to coincide with when I introduced her to my blog address (with caveat included, mind you). I also misspelled her name in one of my thank-you follow up letters. Not sure which one of those missteps pissed her off, but oh well.

The job which I have finally landed puts me right back squarely into the service industry. But to be honest, after the process of fake ass interviews with fake ass people, I’m more than happy to be working with folk who are down to earth, straight-forward, and hard-working. I’m working for a reputable company that retails products I can stand by because I’ve been shopping there since I was a youngster in San Diego. They treat their employees decent, the people are fun, and best of all—I can wear pretty much whatever I want. So I can put aside those fancy button-downs I’d acquired for job hunting and go back to the kind of “whatever” wear I’d been sporting in the mountains for the last number of years. Sweet.

The hitch? Transportation is going to be a bitch to my starting location in Queens. Especially when I get off at 3 AM and the ‘A’ train runs local. And on top of that, the shifts are 10 hour days, with the shifts changing from late to early throughout the week, such that I will lose sleep. It’s going to be physically taxing.

But you know what? I couldn’t be more thrilled to get back to work. I like working hard. And I see the long train and bus rides as an opportunity to get some reading done.

One of the things that resonated with me in some of the speeches from the recent Democratic National Convention was how they talked about the “dignity” of having a job. And I can say that, yes, no matter how much we might idealize leisure time, the fact is that not having a job (in the absence of a trust fund) sucks. It’s demoralizing. Yes, I know, I’m going to look back and reminisce wistfully about all the free time I’ve had throughout this job hunting process, about all the hours of mahjonng, library books, and running wantonly through the park. But when you don’t want to spend any money, you can’t really enjoy yourself all that much, especially when you don’t even have a space to call your own, and you’re sharing a twin bed. Bitching and whining, I know, I’ll stop.

I’m grateful to be employed. Grateful to be working my touchous (well-shaped from running hills now) off. And to all you folks out there who are currently unemployed and looking desperately for work, I feel you.

End note: Let’s just get Barack Obama into office so that we aren’t losing even more jobs to failed policies, OK?

My ‘Hood, Inwood

I live in Manhattan—but not the part of Manhattan that you might typically envision, the jagged architectural skyline looming over Central Park midtown kind of thing. I live uptown, up-up-up past where your visitor guidebook map cuts off. Settle on down into an empty seat on the ‘A’ train heading uptown; don’t worry, one will open up soon enough. Get some reading in. Turn up your I-Pod to drown out the well-crafted pitches of beggars that hop on at 59th St to petition a captive train on the express run to 125th. Go ahead, doze on off and stretch your legs out. When the train reaches the end of the line, where the Harlem river diverges from the Hudson and forms the northern tip of the Island of Manhattan—that’s where you’ll get off. Welcome to my ‘hood.

Inwood is a primarily Dominican flavored neighborhood. The boys on the streets wear askew stiff baseball caps, long white T-shirts, and plaid shorts. There is a guy selling syrup dashed over shaved ice on the corner. In this part of town, instead of a Starbucks on every block, there’s hair salons and thrift stores.  There’s always a baseball game going on over at Inwood Hill Park and Dyckman Fields. Fancy sports cars and SUVs hurtle down the residential streets at all times of the day and night, bumping bachata and merengue at top volume. Motorcyclists thunder by, triggering car alarms right and left.

Go to the corner of Seaman and Cumming, and take a picture of the happenstance juvenile humor created by their adjoining signs.

Step into Inwood Hill Park, the only unmaintained “natural” forest remaining in Manhattan. The only maintenance performed there is when a tree falls down (every time there is a storm, a tree falls on Payson Ave and hits a car; no, seriously), the tree gets limbed up and then pushed to the side. Sometimes the City will come by and even pick up the remains of the tree. Mostly, within the park, they are just left there.

This is the kind of park you can get lost in. In the summer months, the vibrant animal and plant life is jungle-like in its density. Rabbits hop along in front of you. Rats scurry from one bush to another. A surprising multiplicity of birds call out from within the canopy. Mosquitoes invisibly fester onto any exposed spot of skin. During the weekday, you may even be one of the only human life forms inside the park, aside from the stray dog walker, the pair of teens smoking a joint or dry humping, or perchance a lone free-baser sitting along the walk with his shirt off. Dime bags litter the pathways going into the park, but otherwise the park is remarkably free of sketchy intrusion, as most idlers seem to be too lazy to infiltrate any deeper. You can go to the viewpoint and watch barges float past down the Hudson. I run in this park almost every single day, and I love it.

Adjoining Inwood Hill Park is yet another giant amazing park of a different stripe, Fort Tryon Park. Here there is a greater presence of human life, runners going up the steep paths, people sitting around the flower garden, dealers sitting along the wall in the out of the way places. You can go to a trendy cafe and see live music or visit the Cloisters museum. There’s even bike trails in this park!

I would say that having immediate access to these gems is what I really love about Inwood. I haven’t yet explored whatever semblance of nightlife there might be here, which seems to be either hanging out in an upscale Dominican restaurant, or diving in one of the Irish pubs that still remain along Broadway, a hold-out testament to the previous inhabitants of Inwood before the succession of the Dominicans. Otherwise, the only other thing that seems to happen around here at night is sitting around on park benches or lawn chairs and sweating. Capital of hip and trendy life it is not—but that’s not why we live in Inwood, now, is it?

Under the auspices of my surrogate NYC Puerto Rican family, I have grown to appreciate my new home, and to even feel that I would much prefer to live here than the expensive movie version parts of Manhattan. I sometimes grow peeved that everyone feels like they always have to hang out downtown. Sure, if I could ever afford the $6,000 a month to live across from Central Park, I would. But I’ll take Inwood Hill Park for now—that is, until I’m pushed off the island of Manhattan completely due to the ever rising prices of NYC real estate. . .

Snippets of NYC

More thoughts on New York, since I don’t seem to have many thoughts on much else at the moment:

I now understand what undershirts are all about, and why when I used to think of NYC, I always visualized hairy men sticking their torsos out windows in wife-beaters. Yes, sweating is a fundamental aspect of living in NYC in the summer. There is no getting around it. I tried to ignore the issue for a good long while, pretending each time that I got up in the morning that today I would not sweat profusely into whatever set of clothes I was putting on. Then I would stand on the subway platform in the subterranean swampiness with beads of sweat rolling down into my pants and pretend that it would all just disappear once I stepped into the AC of the subway car. But I’m slowly coming to realize that I am not going to suddenly cease sweating. I am going to sweat no matter what I am wearing. I am going to sweat whether I sit in the apartment all day or if I venture out into the streets or if I am dressed up in a tie and going downtown for an interview.

Hence the intrinsic value of an undershirt. Undershirts exist in order to soak up the sweat puddling out of your pits and down your back and prevent the external world from viewing massive sweat stains on your shirt. This seems fairly self-evident, I suppose, but as someone who had never worn undershirts except the occasional wife beater when I tried to be cool, I just never really understood what they were for.

Now I understand. I’ve purchased my discounted packs of slightly irregular white t-shirts and I now wear them frequently, allowing them to wick away the sweat from my self-consciousness.

People here are weird, but there’s so many people, and so many weird people, that no one really seems to notice anything strange, except when someone pulls out a gun or gets into a fight. I can’t quite define this weirdness yet, but it has definitely been noted by my awareness; it’s on my radar, and I’m silently taking notes on the street and on the subway.

Perhaps the weirdness is linked to the fact of the sheer density of NYC. There is no avoiding people here. They are standing in your way on the street, they are staring you down on the subway, they are running you down in taxis in the crosswalks, they are biking through pedestrians, they are hanging off scaffolding and running in packs through Central Park and flocking to free concerts and cramming into museums. They don’t necessarily speak your language and they don’t necessarily live here. It’s just people, people, people. So there’s almost a sense here that individuals don’t really have distinct identities. We mesh and merge into each other, sometimes lost to ourselves. We have to shout, push, fight our way back into self-awareness.

Speaking of fighting, I almost got into my first all-time fistacuffs on the subway several weeks ago. My woman and I had gone to the MOMA to view a weird film called Irma Vep, which is essentially a film about a director obsessed with this Hong Kong actress, and the actual director of this film also apparently wanted her himself, as he then married her after the film was made. Then they divorced, signing the divorce papers four years later during another film they made together. Anyway, so you know how after you see a really weird film you’re just in a totally weird state of mind? It was fairly late at night and we got onto the D train going to the Boogie Down since it runs express, then we transfer to the A which takes us (the long haul) home. The train car was full. After a stop, some seats opened up and my girlfriend went up to claim them. A big guy sitting there told her that he was holding it for his wife, in a rude kind of way, and my girlfriend snapped back something sassy back at him as she walked away. She later claimed that this sudden impulse to be a smart-ass was due to her strange state of mind due to the weird artsy film. He then raised his voice and said something in reply, and she again sassed back at him while walking away. He then turned around and started shouting “Fuck you, you fucking bitch!” and other such sentiments. At this point, I’m not going to just stand there and allow someone to call my girlfriend a bitch in front of a whole train car, which was avidly watching the unfolding scene, so I said, “Fuck you, motherfucker. Shut the fuck up” and other such sentiments. The big guy gets up and walks over to me and gets in my face, saying things like, “What are you going to do about it?” To which I replied, “And what are you going to do about it?” Everyone on the train perked up, eagerly awaiting somebody to throw down. It was about to happen. I was about to get in my first fight i.e. get my ass whooped by a big old dude on the subway train.

Which by the way, getting into a confrontation while locked into a car on the subway late at night is probably about the worst spot to be. There’s no one who is going to help you there. There’s no running. You’re cell phone don’t work. There’s no police. This guy could have taken both me and my girlfriend on, realistically speaking, as he was probably about 50 pounds heavier than me. I do have some rusty ninja skills, but as they haven’t been tested out lately, I wouldn’t want to rely on them. Fortunately at this point, his wife, wherever she had been, walked onto the train and came up to her husband and asked him what the hell was going on, and then led him back to his seat as he cursed us out repeatedly.

The lesson? Don’t sass anyone on the train, even if you’ve just watched a weird artsy film.

In other news, the mosquito season has abruptly ended. I’m not quite sure when it occurred, but I’ve noticed that in place of mosquitos, now the “water-bugs” i.e. cockroaches are now in high tide, scurrying about on the sidewalks, over countertops, and in your cereal. I’ve also been witness to a giant primordial dragonfly that was flapping about haplessly on its back on the sidewalk, with two cops standing and watching it. I walked up to it and let it latch onto my index finger, which it then proceeded to attempt to bite. I have to say, that was another first for me. I have never been bitten by a giant dragonfly ever before. It then flew off right as the cops excitedly told me to take a picture of it on my finger.

Jobless Funk

Time passes, and I have been in a sort of funk, due to the ever lengthening term of my unemployment. I have been shooting for the stars, so to speak, in terms of what I’ve been applying for, as apparently transitioning from a housekeeping manager into the non-profit sector isn’t exactly a logical step.

I am at this point resigning myself to remaining a service industry worker, which I am not fundamentally opposed to. I am not someone who likes sitting in an office anyway. I like to be constantly busy, on my feet, and physically active most of the day. But my hope had been that I would be able to get into a field somewhat related to public policy, as my future goal is to become more involved on a policy level of influence.

I know everyone is talking about how bad the economy is and how the job market is terrible and this and that. But it still sucks. I had been keeping myself afloat in momentum for a while through volunteer work and free cultural events, but after a while the frictive forces of frustration have begun to eat away at me.

So I have to again put some of my immediate aspirations on hold, and simply now seek the employment that will at least pay the bills in the interim. While working in the service industry, I can study (once again—I’d put it on hiatus during the job searching) for the GRE and work towards graduate school for public policy, after which point at least I’ll have a master’s degree to show my commitment to that field.

The Dream Boy

My grandmother and her sister—Gunhild and Helga—were what were once known as ‘witches’, and now known more aptly as psychics. However, they would have both had a conniption fit if they were referred to with either of those phrases, for they were both devoutly religious. My grandmother was a strong influence on my life, and I’m surprised I haven’t written much about her here before—perhaps because she is so close to my heart and upbringing that I don’t even think to speak in a detached manner about her. She left behind a lot of materials, both written and spoken, that I want to sift through when I finally get my stuff out of storage, and I will then write in detail about her amazing life and stories, as I think it’s about time.

But right now I wanted to introduce you to a story that she loved to tell, because it is all about me, and after all, that’s what this blog is mostly about, right?

When my father excitedly called his mother with the good news that another baby was on the way–two girls had already been born–my grandmother said, “Oh, I already knew about that.”
“And how did you know that?” my father inquired, bewildered.
“Helga has seen it in a dream, and she’s not sure, but she thinks that it is going to be a little boy.”

Yes, indeed, a full year before I was born, my great-aunt Helga had had a dream in which she foresaw my birth. She had not seen it fit to announce this dream to my parents, but she obviously believed enough in its veracity that she called and shared it with her sister Gunhild.

Sure enough, soon along came little Manderson, his peepee a-flapping in the florescent hospital lighting, popped out on the exact day, as a matter of fact, that his sister had come out two years prior.

So I was henceforth referred to by my grandmother as “the dream boy,” and she was so impressed with her sister Helga’s prescience that she felt the need to share this story about me to complete strangers. She would wrap up the story by pointing her finger at me and dramatically stating, “And there he is!” I was an extremely shy child and this always made me feel mortified, though perhaps vaguely proud, as if I’d somehow done anything other than just be birthed. She even felt the need to reiterate this story at Helga’s memorial, and as she wrapped up the story with her standard climactic finale, leveling her wobbly finger at me, all the random nursing home folk that had come by for cookies and gossip at the advent of another death turned around in their seats to get a peep of this mystery “dream boy.” I smiled weakly and hesitantly waved my hand at them, feeling that perhaps I was a disappointing sort of child to have been predicted. This trauma, perhaps, may explain my prior hesitancy in bringing up the story on these pages.

Gunhild’s sister Helga was a quiet lady who lived on her own in Los Angeles, and she tended to speak to my grandmother in Swedish and keep to herself, so I don’t know what other psychic events may have transpired in her life. But my grandmother had bucketloads of stories that could either be termed psychic events, or manifestations of God, depending on your inclination. I will re-tell some of these stories as time goes on, as they are simply too priceless to not be shared.

My grandmother has been on my mind some lately, so I had been remembering some of these stories, and I figured that I might as well share my little “dream boy” snippet. As you can perhaps imagine, having this story told about me constantly tainted me for some time with a slight insecure messianic complex, as I felt the need to somehow live up to that sense of promise and prophecy. I felt that I had to have some kind of purpose, that I should have been announced telepathically before even forming within my mama’s fallopian tubes. Now, however, the story is simply one of humor to me, in remembrance of my grandmother and her sister’s playful psychic abilities.

Universal Skin Care

Females got them all kinds o’ products that they apply to their faces, their hair, their skin. It’s probably mostly a slew of completely nonessential crap, but at some point, a guy kinda notices that in general, women tend to take fairly good care of themselves, at least in terms of immediate appearance. There was a point in my development, years ago, when I suddenly rejected the idea that female skin is fundamentally different then my own. And I was tired of having clogged pores and dodgy skin. So what were the womenfolk doing that was different then simply washing their faces with soap and water? I decided to look into it, surreptitiously, and observe, in an anthropological sense, how women took care of their faces.

I learned about the concepts of cleansing followed by exfoliation, toning, and moisturizing. It’s not quite as alien to guys as it might seem, given that men have to take care of their faces somewhat in terms of learning how to shave. Applying aftershave is toning, and applying an aftershave balm is moisturizing.

So that was just a general introduction to the personal development I underwent in defeating sexist notions of taking care of my skin. I realized that there is nothing wrong with wanting to have clean, healthy skin. This is not a topic, however, that I would discuss at the bar drinking a whiskey with the guys. Hey guys, what kind of toner you use? What? You don’t know about toner? Shit, brother, well let me clue you in to some beauty secrets. . .” Taking care of our skin is just not really something that guys generally discuss amongst each other.

I have discovered, however, that when it comes to talking about the art and techniques involved in shaving, that suddenly all the beauty secrets begin to come spilling out of the closet. Guys love to talk about their shaving techniques. It’s really a touching thing to witness, actually, after all these years of self-repression and denial. I discovered an on-line community, Badger & Blade, which demonstrates this very well, when I was in the process of learning about ‘wet shaving’, since I was having major issues of razor burn with electric and cartridge razor shaving methods. I mean, guys are chattering away about their colognes, their aftershaves, how many times they swirl their whisks to achieve the perfect crests in their preferred shaving creams . . . It makes you realize that guys have just been holding all this shit back, just waiting for the proper forum with which to express their skin care discoveries.

That is also the forum where I learned about ‘the oil cleansing method.’ This is where you mix up castor oil with other oils such as coconut oil, sunflower seed oil, or olive oil and rub it into your face, then ’steam’ it out of your pores by opening them up with a hot washcloth draped over your face for a couple of minutes. It’s cheap, effective, natural, and simple. Given my penchant for self-sufficiency and non-toxicity, it felt like just the right thing to do. After having done it for a few weeks now, I can definitely recommend it. When I moved out to the East Coast, my skin wigged out, because I was used to dry climates, and now I’m in extreme humidity. I was breaking out like I was a teenager again. The oil cleansing method has re-balanced my skin. And it also leaves the skin feeling like its breathing, relaxed, and alive, not all taut and stretched out like harsh acne soaps do.

So there’s not even any reason to rely on your conventional array of expensive and probably toxic cleansers and moisturizers. All you need are the oils you want, which you can mix yourself, and then probably a toner on hand to finish it up. This can save you a lot of money down the road. And this method of skin care, best of all, is gender neutral. It’s just about the simple conception of oil as the most basic and essential of skin functions.

Setting Anew Course

I have been looking back over some of my more recent posts lately and realized three things: 1) my writing and/or subject matter has grown increasingly dull; 2) my audience has grown increasingly silent and/or fled cyberspatially elsewhere (I still get a healthy amount of hits each day, but a large percentage of that is now from searches on guns, of all things); 3) I’ve been preaching in a generalist fashion a good bit more than is healthy. (By the way, there’s always something edifying about making impromptu numbered lists. It somehow seems automatically intentional and organized.)

So I hereby propose a conscious effort to steer this here ship back to some semblance of worth. I will write either more strictly on subjects that I can speak with more authority about—meaning myself and my mundane existence—or else only speak more broadly about those subjects that appear to be of some interest to the general public such as love, death, mental masturbation, and the other fundamentals of existence.

I do use the palette of this blog to “try out” ideas and thought tangets, as it were, so essentially what I’m acknowledging right now is that some of these forays and tangential excursions as of late have fallen far short of the goal of being worth your fleeting perusal. So, dear invisible reader, oh you IP addressed hit in the dark, I will henceforth write less for fickle me, and more to tickle you. If at all possible. Tally ho!

–Your neighborhood Blog Writer

Why I love my woman

After being at work all afternoon and evening and finally arriving at her last subway stop, she finds a baby pigeon stranded there. She obtains some paper towels from the subway station workers and spends the next half hour frantically trying to catch the baby so that she can take it back up outside. When she is unable to capture it, she walks back home and comes into the apartment—where I am waiting wondering why she is so late—sobbing at the baby pigeon’s tragic fate.

Who could not love this girl?

New York Impressions

New York, New York, no denying its a dense thicket of human and infrastructural networking nestled in veneer of steel, tile, concrete, and glass. One can easily feel submerged in its structural grandeur, its art deco apartment buildings, staircases into the swampy depths of the subway, plated cars pushing a foreshadowing wind through the hair of scattered denizens waiting to be lost again in the motion of crowded progression towards some omega point of hidden comfort awaiting in a box somewhere in a ubiquitous, guarded gray unmarked building.

As a child of California now swimming through the tidal press of NYC, it can at times be an alien, out-of-body experience, to find myself carried along forward into some frontal lobed consciousness of the masses, dimly lit intuitive corridors of the citied species, swaying pendulous through the streets with a chip on my shoulder. But here am I, finding my way, learning how I must perform when the chance opportunity is flittingly opened, to dive heedless headfirst into the fray without hesitation, after eons of pent-up waiting.

Rats will be seen rocketing quietly about from the corner of your eyes, they move quickly through the background landscape of your conversations with a see-sawing motion of their bodies, unmistakably unbalanced yet somehow poised, self-confidant, that dastardly eternal persistence inherent in their step. Also now, during the summer months, fireflies will fleetingly appear in flashing arcs against the dusk, a magical sight to someone wholly unaccustomed to them. I feel like a child every time I witness them dancing their temporal and unintelligible flights in the onset of another humid summer night.

And that’s another thing foreign and alarming to me: the humidity, the heat. The sweat puddling down my back as I sit in the apartment. The unexpected flashes of lightning and rolling thunder, a catharsis of rain, almost immodest in its passion and hurried release. The other day I was caught in an inopportune downpour that began innocently with a mild drizzling, proceeding thence into ponderous heavy drops, still spaced enough that one could pretend to hide beneath a tree, then suddenly twisted into a literal outpouring of liquid sheets from the heavens. Without any cover, it became quickly apparent that it was useless to try to deny it. I was soon soaked completely, and my contacts were beginning to slide down my eyeballs. And then it began to rain yet harder, against all understanding or belief, it came down like something known only through hearsay, like tales of monsoons, hitting the concrete so hard it almost came back up. I then wandered about through a Whole Foods, dribbling puddles of water everywhere.

Another thing is the mosquitoes. I am hoping that it is possible to develop some kind of immunity after some time, as so far when I venture into the park across the street, I get bit an average of 7 times, each one swelling up to a half-dollar size and itching like beejesus. I am frequently struck, when the temperature is 90 degrees or higher outside and the humidity is thick, by the sense that I am in the Amazon jungle.

I am now honing in on a job, wending my way through 2nd rounds of interviews to see which offer might hopefully be made, which path my life will take. It has been a process fraught with depression, stress, and the sheer inertia of despair, but the sense of change stirs somewhere in the air, like the firefly flashing its silent message of joy. Or is it warning? The channel runs ever onward, and the decisions I can make at this point are only responsive; I am at the mercy of the flow.

There are certainly moments too many to count when I realize that the city is welcoming and even forgiving beneath its exterior shell of aggression and constant movement. It is like how I learned to look at hiking down boulders and rocks when in Tahoe: the rocks look hard, and they certainly can be hard and perhaps fatal if mistakes are made and they are taken for granted. But if you look at them like something soft, something pliable that you can trust, they will support you, they will be as supportive as pillows to your knees. You can run like water along their points. Giving everything to every step, your weight presses the rocks down into balance, even when they shift, you move with them. So as with rocks it is with the city. Running with its appearance, trusting in its integrity, it supports you and moves you forward.

Creating Personal Space

I am someone who is accustomed to a certain level of privacy/loneliness/personal space. Some of this comes from having lived most of my life in Southern California, the sprawl capitol of the nation, wherein we travel individually in cars acrost mile-wide expanses of tar in the suburbs. My travels in South America served to introduce me to the concept of living in compressed communities, with local transportation often a matter of being shoved into a Korean mini-van with sacks of potatoes, chickens, scantily clad women, and old men with hats, virtually sitting in each other’s laps. I thus gained the understanding that having privacy and personal space can be a matter of privilege that many people do not have a concept of nor access to.

It is therefore fitting that I now reside in the densest metropolis in the United States, where personal space is most directly equated to public space. I also am currently living in a situation where I have little privacy, as I am staying in somebody else’s living room.

I bring this up because all of this directly impacts my blog. You may have noted already that most of my posts since moving unto NYC are matters of externality. I traditionally write with a focus primarily within, as I feel that is where the locus of development lies. But I find it hard to sit down here and really turn inward. It has made me realize just how reliant I am on the possession of personal space and privacy, a privilege I have oft took for granted.

Just to give you an example of the level of problems I have with this: I have never been able to write with someone looking over my shoulder—even if it is just the possibility of being able to look over my shoulder, such as sitting with my back to a window to the street. It’s almost like I feel that there is something subversive in the act of writing, something that I need to hide (until I’ve finished writing, of course, whereupon–apparently–I wish to post it for the whole wide world to see). I don’t know where I acquired this fear. If we were to follow this neurosis further, we would discover that I also have an aversion to displaying true emotions and spiritual depth in any public manner. I used to consistently be asked by strangers whether there was something wrong in places like the grocery store or at work, because my face tended to be so neutral in reacting to my surroundings and situations that people took it for anger or sadness.

I’ve gotten better about projecting a more apt public appearance, but my bashful writer’s block is still in full effect (I also have a bashful bladder as well, unable to pee when there is either too much pressure or other people about—but I know I ain’t alone on that one). So either I will adapt to being more capable of turning inward in public spaces with no privacy or physical space, or I won’t be able to write much of depth until I acquire my own apartment, which god knows when that will occur.

I’m working on it.

Reasons for Positivity

As you can tell from my frequent subject matter, I am highly concerned with issues of personal, social, and economic development, focused specifically on issues of human rights, sustainability, poverty, and spiritual insight. One of the encouraging things I’ve been realizing lately is that many of the fundamental insights which I have developed in my own mind are already in application in the real world. Now that I’m at a point in my life where I am reaching out beyond myself, and can safely maneuver beyond my ego, stubbornness, and insecurity, I am finally recognizing the enormous amount of networks and organizations that are in existence, actively disseminating and applying information in their communities. I am now overwhelmed with the amount of learning that I have to sift through.

I admit that there is still a part of me that wants to reject others developments, so that I can find my own way, find my own insights and developments to claim. I want to have something powerful and uniquely my own, something new, something revolutionary. But of course, it is simple conceit to imagine that anything I could come up with hasn’t already been done, as well as to imagine that I could possibly create some philosophy to right all the worlds wrongs. Humbleness is required in affecting change.

Once I recognize this essential humility and get beyond my ego, I’m finding a lot of reason for hope and positivity out there. It’s easy to feel like you are isolated and that nothing is changing when you think of all of the world’s problems, especially when you read the daily news or just watch TV. But now that I’m looking around and reaching out, I’m realizing just how many groups, schools, non-profits, individuals, and even businesses are out there doing a lot of amazing work towards understanding the root sources of problems, guiding individuals into supportive communities, and finding methods and solutions that are practical and that work. It’s encouraging. And it’s making me extremely eager to start discovering the tools that others have been using and find a way to combine them and apply them in my own life and community. To get involved, get my hands dirty, get my heart dilated.

My goals: I want to find a way to connect public policy directly to individuals and communities and render its processes transparent. I want individuals to have access to funding to green roof gardens on their buildings, install rainwater harvesting systems, utilize graywater, and compost all of their communities’ foodwaste. I want everyone capable of starting their own business. I want plastic to reflect its true cost and become prohibitively expensive to produce. I want chickens and goats to infiltrate our cities. I want to combat poverty, rats, and pigeons. I want practical, immediately applicable, and effective solutions to all of my society’s problems, and I want them now.

Updates on how I am progressing towards these goals will be forthcoming.

What I’ve Been Up To, As If You Wanted To Know

Here’s another (unrequested) update on my existence here on the Eastern Coastal city-side of things. I’ve done a few interviews for jobs, and I’m not going to talk anymore about it right now because I don’t want to jinx it. If and when I finally obtain employment, I will talk about it then. Keep your fingers crossed for me.

I’ve been looking into doing some volunteer work in order to keep busy and possibly build some connections, and I’ve learned that volunteering is not as easy as one would think. In fact, it can almost take as much effort to volunteer as it is to obtain a job. You have to interview, attend orientations, fill out applications, aggressively pursue the volunteer position with phone calls, etc. It’s a little ridiculous, when you consider that all you are trying to do is offer your god-given FREE TIME for FREE in order to help an organization out. I understand that there’s some legalities to cover and that many organizations don’t have the time, money, or man-power to deal with it, but at the end of the day, it should be made as effortless as possible for the volunteer so that they can just get in there and HELP.

This is where NYCares comes in. Realizing that it is obscenely difficult for people who want to help out but don’t have the time nor inclination to deal with such a mess, some intelligent do-gooders formed NYCares to provide a direct, organized, and efficient means of connecting volunteers with needy non-profits. Instead of having to interview with each place and apply and make an extended commitment that you may not be able to provide, you just go on-line through NYCares, look at the calendar of upcoming volunteer needs, and click to sign-up for the day(s) that you have time for it. And that’s how volunteering should be. Welcome to the 21st century.

I’ve been trying to keep myself busy, which has involved tinkering around with my new Ubuntu system and trying to kind of learn the command line Linux stuff. It’s like the old DOS, but I don’t understand any of the commands yet, and probably never will. Which is OK. I’m alright with being someone who has to have everything simply supplied in an easy-to-use graphical interface.

I’ve also been trying to learn some basic HTML and CSS. It’s fairly straightforward from what I can tell, but I’m just not sure that I have the necessary devotion to get into it. I have visions of designing my own website someday. WordPress.com is wonderful for its ease-of-use, sense of community, and–of course–FREENESS, but you can only go with the blog templates that are provided, unless you want to learn a little HTML and get in there and make your own.

As you can probably tell, the arrangement and archiving of this blog are not ideal for what I’m doing. The only way to go through my past writing is by digging around in the extended list of categories or by date–but in order to get to the first post in a series, you have to really dig. I want a new method of linking and ordering all of my writings that makes it more logically accessible, such that–for example–if you wanted to look at my writings on Peru, you would be able to click on Peru and it would take you to the first post on that topic, not the last, and you would be able to quickly scan within that sub-tree by topic, date, tag, etc.

I’m not quite sure how I would structure it yet, all I know is that I want something different, organized specifically for my needs. I write about a lot of different types of topics, so it’s hard to simply use categories to organize them coherently. If any budding web designers out there have any ideas on what would work best for this blog, let me know. I really want to take my blog to another level, but I’m not sure how to do that yet.

On other fronts, I’ve learned that being in California all my life has spoiled me in terms of having access to fresh air. I’m used to wearing sandals. I’m used to being able to sit in a room with air from the outside moving through. Now in NYC I’ve been wearing close-toed shoes and realizing that my feet are gonna have to learn to adapt to not being able to breathe, cuz those motherfuckers STINK. Also, I’ve been sitting in the apartment and just sweating, because even with the window wide open and the fan on, I still don’t get enough air flow. So apparently my body is just going to have to learn how to survive with stuffiness. Or I’m gonna have to start spraying anti-perspirant all over my body. Or get botox injections.

I’ve also been reading a great trendy green book, WorldChanging, on the subway, which has become the place where I fit my reading time in. This book is the perfect guide to anyone who is remotely interested in positive and sustainable change. Lots of neat ideas that are exciting.

Here’s some observations on New York and New Yorkers:

• All the residential buildings are made out of brick. However, most of these bricks are not “brick” colored. They tend to be off-whites, yellows, and greys. When one does finally encounter a brick building with brick colored bricks, it’s like a breath of fresh air. Which is to say that the environment in NYC just tends to be remarkably drab. Which leads me to my next point:
• The peops on the street in New York tend to reflect their somber surroundings, and they wear mostly dark colored clothing. They also have a tendency towards certain accoutrements, like women towards high boots, and everyone towards large impressive looking coats. Due to these nice looking coats everyone wears, I tend to feel underdressed.
• One often will be an unintended witness to random barfings. Within the 1st week after I’d moved here, I saw two girls, on two separate occasions, in the middle of the day on a week-day, huddled over against the wall barfing, one on the street, the other waiting for the subway. I was scratching my head over the frequency and strangeness of this witnessed act until I ended up doing it myself one night after guzzling down two of the mandatory drinks you have to buy at a comedy club. They were Long Island iced teas, and my tolerance is way down. On the way back home, in the sway of the subway, and then on a bus, I started to really feel the mix of cheap alcohols. So I shoved my way out to the street and subsequently barfed all over the sidewalk, the kind of public act I haven’t performed in quite some time. But it made me realize something which leads me to my next point:
• There ain’t no public restrooms anywhere. As someone who has a bladder the size of a pea, it can be frustrating when I’ve had a cup of joe, hopped on the hour-long subway ride downtown, and then have to pee as soon as I get out. It’s then a matter of walking 10 blocks to some Target or Old Navy to use their bathroom, if you know where one is. So if there’s a quiet epidemic of a noro-virus spreading throughout the city, for example, then it is quite understandable that a certain segment of the populace can be found huddled against a wall somewhere out in broad daylight barfing their brains out. There needs to be some kind of public hole out on the street-level for the masses to unload into. It’s inhumane. I think everyone around here must be severely dehydrated, or they have evolved to not have bladders the size of peas.

In other news, I’ve quit drinking coffee, as it not only made me need to pee a lot, but it also stained my already stained teeth, and it also made my energy levels fluctuate too dramatically for my taste (heart attack level nervousness –> hardcore crashing). I had gotten addicted to the stuff while in Colombia, and I’ve been drinking it everyday since. I’m glad I’m done with it, as I can now go back to my most beloved form of imbibing caffeine: Yerba Maté. In case you don’t know what maté is, it’s a South American herbal tea that is primarily drunk through a filtering straw (bombilla) from a gourd. It looks, to the untrained eye, kind of like some illegal smoking apparatus, which is what also makes it cool. It is bitter tasting, so some people add milk or sugar or whatever their sweetener of choice to it, but I like it straight myself. But the best part about it is that it not only gives me a great burst of energy, but it is a sustained energy that lasts for hours, and that energy doesn’t make me crash later on either. So I highly recommend trying it out if you want to find an alternate source of morning caffeine.

Renewed Life in NYC

So, it’s been 3 weeks so far, and perhaps you’ve been wondering: how the Big Apple is treating the Manderson, how he is adapting, surviving, handling the new environs and cityscape and compressed energized lifestyle after 5 years living tucked away at over 6,000 ft near Lake Tahoe? The answer, dearest concerned citizens, is that I am thriving here thus far and cherishing the potentialities of my new abode.

When I talk to many New Yorkers about my present life-shift, they express astonishment that I would desire to come to a big, dirty metropolis after living in a pristine, mountainous, evergreen town. But au contraire, I reply, twizzling the oil through the tip of my imaginary mustache, living semi-hermit style in the boondocks has in fact made me all the more ready and willing to be subjected to the major city lifestyle. I love the diversity. I love that when I look across the subway tracks, every single person I see there is completely different from me, and one another. I love that there is so much life jutting up against itself, pressuring everything upwards. I love that there is so much music, so much nightlife, so many potential networks lurking in every block, with groups, non-profits, organizations, meetings, showings, plays, movies, bars, all waiting to be tapped into with the simple output of a little effort. Living in a place with little culture, little nightlife, little community has made me all the more appreciative of just how many things there are to do here.

I have been keeping somewhat busy, I sold coconut oil and coconut-oil based soaps at an environmental expo last weekend, and learned how to become a salesman in addition to a sales team manager (by the way, did you know about the many health benefits of unrefined coconut oil? Seriously, look into it). I’ve been looking into doing some volunteer work. I’ve gone to a permaculture group meeting. I’m going to venture into a comedy club this weekend, and today, I attended my first full-time job interview, which included, surprisingly, lunch. I have now heard a bit of very positive feedback on my resume, so after a period of concern, nail-biting, and despair, I am finally feeling validated. All of that work and effort WILL pay off. I WILL be able to move out of my girlfriend’s parent’s apartment eventually and not have to sleep on an air mattress in their living room anymore! Yes, it will happen. Eventually. With time. And money.

Coupled with these events is the sudden and explosive onset of spring. The giant park across the street suddenly has green things sprouting everywhere, flowers are blooming, and sometimes the sun even shows his face for a whole day or two.

So the answer is: Manderson is enjoying NYC very much. He has grown much in his Tahoe time as a sort-of-wilderness man, and now is adapting well to his new evolution as refurbished urbanite. And he can’t wait to take his drums, nargile, and other assorted STUFF that he can’t even remember all of anymore out of long-term storage and arrange lovingly, once again, into an apartment home. Until then, over out outside in.

-m

I’m now an Ubuntu geek

I’ve made the leap into a completely new operating system for my laptop, Ubuntu 8.04, and I am extremely happy with my decision. For those of you who don’t know about Ubuntu, as I didn’t until very recently, let me fill you in with a quick overview: Ubuntu is a completely free operating system which is offered as a platform for Linux, which is an open source/free software kernel for computing systems. It is just as powerful as Windows Vista or the Mac OS, except that there is a collaborative, open-source community behind it.

I grew up with computers, and I was what one would definitely call a computer nerd for a good portion of my developing life. My dad is an electrical engineer, and so he liked fiddling around with new gadgets and technology. He brought home our first computer, the Apple IIe, and I can remember sitting and watching the computer booting up off the floppy disks for 15 minutes, saying “please wait . . .”. I would play games like Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego?, or Oregon Trail. I also would make up my own little games or graphics in the BASIC language.

DOS was something that I could understand. I knew how to navigate in it. Windows 3.1 threw me for a loop at first, but eventually, I grew used to that as well, and learned how to configure it for my needs and know its shortcuts. During this time in my computer geekiness, which was now around middle school, I would spend hours on-line in chat rooms, learning how to type at super quick speeds, learning that I can be witty if I have time to type it out on a keyboard, and learning also that there are a lot of weird people on the internet (I almost had an affair with an older married woman). But then the next version of Windows came out, and I suddenly no longer felt engaged with my computer any longer. Windows shut me out. It was overly secretive and didn’t allow you to configure it and personalize it easily unless you delved into much more complicated and confusing languages and processes. I was also growing older at that point and had other interests and methods of relating to other people, and so my computer nerdness was put on a long-term hiatus. Since then, like most people, I’ve only used computers primarily to write emails, use the word processor, and surf the internet.

Now that I’ve switched to Ubuntu, however, some of my computer geekness has suddenly came back out of the closet. I am excited about messing around with my computer again, not simply using it for my normal computing tasks. I feel once more that I am in control, that I can personalize it and configure it however I want to, as long as I spent some time learning and exploring the new environment. I feel like I’m engaged with a community which is just as excited to explore new possibilities that are all oriented around the power of the individual, not simply the power of a corporation making money off of the individual by keeping its information secure.

There are other benefits, too: Ubuntu is simply faster and better organized, allowing for higher productivity. I had already been using the OpenOffice.org’s suite of office programs, as I was unwilling to shell out the doe for the WIndows programs, and programs such as Mozilla’s Firefox have long been on my must-use program list for the same reason. The difference between Ubuntu and Windows is like the difference between Firefox and Internet Explorer: one is extremely quick, secure, and easy-to-use, the other is cumbersome, fraught with latent security issues, and overly programmed. Guess which one is which.

Ubuntu, Linux, and other open source and free software communities are all about computer geekiness and that excitement that spawned the computing revolution and internet sprawl in the first place. So I highly recommend switching to Ubuntu if you have any computer nerdiness lurking inside of you, waiting to come out.

Soul Searching

The purpose of this blog is as a venue for me to dig down deep inside of myself to find connection to my greater environment. I feel that I’ve been extremely lax of late, for various reasons that are not all my fault, but still, I feel the days slip by without a cathartic post like a weight over my shoulders. I feel like I’m letting not so much my readers down but the very blog itself. It deserves better. It deserves my best, my most attentive and heartfelt soul searching, my most creative and risk-taking aplomb.

I believe that the act of creative writing is of the utmost importance to everyone who searches, not simply to “writers.” The act of writing creatively is to reach down inside of yourself to discover meaning and purpose from places that you may not have known even existed. It is something much deeper than journaling—though journaling is a step in the right direction. It is an attempt to move beyond surfaces, plunge straight through into the threshold between sub and super-conscience, to delve beyond action and narrative and directly into feeling, and to bring these inarticulate ranges into sound, into sight, into the world where they can be related, communicated, and transformed. To write, then, is in a sense to shed, to seek, to grow.

It is also a stepping outside of time, outside of the everyday world, to take stock of what is within. It is an alternate world momentarily created in the space between my fingertips that rove over the keyboard, and thence between your eyes that draft over the word bits on the screen. It is movement into the void, into the darkness within yourself that folds over you in times of stillness, despair, and loneliness.

It doesn’t have to be pretty. In fact, it shouldn’t be pretty at all. It should be challenging, breath taking, anguished, perplexing, staring you down across the subway tracks. It should call out to you like a baby in a vacuum, words mouthed through a telephonic lens, fire capsuled in a flow that can’t be confined simply to this subject, this person, this place. It should reach through, eventually, somewhere, at some level, to everything.

Tracing the path of the roots to the sky is the reason why I bother to focus on this, at the behest and detriment of my everyday self. Here, I can find something better, yearning, unashamedly ambitious and desirous of beauty, yet still backed by my own breath. Here, I can try to be what I can’t be in the busy ebb and flow of surface life, the self that sits, the self that waits patiently to speak when the passionate pulse of life is through. Here, I search and I seek the soul that meets me halfway in the night to you.

Hanami

It’s springtime in New York City. I’ve been enjoying the fruits of being in a major metropolis, even if I don’t got no money. This city has got plenty of free or cheap shit to do. Hell, for a lad such as I, whom has been hiding away in the mountains for the last 5 years, just walking around the city–anywhere around here–is a complete trip. I love it. Yesterday I went down to midtown and saw a guy playing a kitchen sink and some other assorted detritus on a street corner, and he was amazing. I wanted to take my djembes and doumbek out of storage and jam with him. A couple days ago I went to a Takahashi Murakami exhibit at the Brooklyn Museum of Art–intriguing shit. His artwork is anime/manga on mushrooms, infused with a healthy dose of capitalism. An example of two of his statues: 1) a cartoon woman with gigantic breasts squeezing milk out of her huge nipples, which forms a jump rope which she is gaily swinging over her head; 2) a cartoon man with a hard-on triumphantly jizzing a spiraling jet of magic sperm into the air like it was his special move in Dragon Ball Z. Another interesting facet of the exhibit: a collaboration with ritzy hand-bag maker Louis Vuitton, a bunch of kind of ugly handbags sold at exorbitant prices in the middle of the museum. At first as you walk through the exhibit, you think the whole thing is a joke. By the end, however, you begin to take Murakami seriously—while still enjoying his take on Japanese pop art immensely. It’s disturbing, bizarre, hilarious, and just plain . . . what the fuck?!

Appropriate to the Japanese theme of that day, I then went over to the Botanical Gardens in Brooklyn after viewing the Murakami, and then did some flower viewing. Right now the cherry blossoms are exploding into the warming spring days like pink and white pearls of swollen libido. Here’s some pictures of said seductively blooming flowers. Enjoy!

Political Transformations

7-10 years ago, whilst embedded in what was seen as the necessary destination after completion of high school—college (I can’t believe it was that long ago)—I was a very angry and depressed young individual, aware to some degree that many of my peers were sheltered and unconcerned with problems in our society that existed visibly and blatantly all about them (this was in Los Angeles, a city which provides immediate and stark contrasts between those who have and those who ain’t got). Like many other somewhat intelligent folk I know, this resulted in a lashing out (psychologically speaking) against the structures, edifices, and assumptions of my society. Part of this backlash in my mentality was the rejection of a vanilla cultural identity, as well as a rejection of the standard mentalities of history, economics, politics, progress, and science. I also deliberately sought to detach myself from family structures and their repressive definition of self, as well as reviled the destructive processes of globalization and corporate defined superficiality. Nothing could be more sinister in my mind then a corporation, tied into the political structure of commerce and propaganda, backed by a heavily armed police force and hazily endorsed by a god.

But I’ve undergone some fundamental shifts in perspective since those bitter days of yore, and I’ve come to recognize the bittersweet value in structures, histories, economies, political congregations, and general networks of humanity. I’ve come to terms with capitalism, evolution, and superficial identities. And I’d like to share the reasons for these shifts in my own mentality in the hope that perhaps I can help bring into the fold other similarly angry, deliberately disenfranchised folk.

I know a lot of intelligent people out there who share a lot of the misconceptions I had, and who thus do nothing for themselves nor their society because they refuse to be part of a profit generating workforce—i.e. “becoming a suit“. They are frightened of losing their identity and integrity to commerce—even though they never really had a solid identity to begin with—and they fear structures due to reluctance to be put easily into a box and defined. So instead, they drift laxly from one menial seasonal job to another, growing older but not wiser, allowing all of their personal power to be subverted by “the system,” despite their thinking that they are the ones keeping their power. They fail to recognize that there are many profit generating and non-profit institutions which are working within the system to change it dramatically from within.

I have not shifted my mentality in the sense that I no longer think my society—and the world et al—has any problems. I still see the same problems I did—and more—than when I was angry and detached and bitter. However, I view these problems through a much different lens. I no longer see the solution to these problems as being a matter of attempting to dismantle the greater “system” and all overarching structures, and letting it all collapse in something like a revolution, and starting it all over again “the right way”. A lot of people think this is the answer, either overtly or unconsciously, and they aren’t usually the fist pumping anarchist that such ideology might seem to produce. Rather, they are simply confused, apathetic, and storing pent up frustration, because they don’t see any sure and definite methods of achieving their idealistic visions. So instead, they complain about how fucked up things are, and they do nothing about it, except to abstain from interacting and changing the “system” in positive ways, which only ends up increasing its problems.

An easy example of what this attitude results in is demonstrable in the election process in the US. For a long time, I refused to vote, because I didn’t want to take part in something I didn’t believe in. I used to view politics as an exclusive club run by the super-rich in which my actions had no influence. And then when I finally did start voting, guess who kept getting elected? Exclusive club/dynasty member #1, born again son of the Bush clan. It was disheartening, to say the least. But the reason such politicians keep getting elected is simply because no one who really wants it to change is voting. And this is because they are so idealistic that they are in actuality apathetic.

My argument for voting is simple: pragmatism. I don’t believe that by placing a vote I am going to change much of anything. I don’t believe I’m making the world a better place. I don’t believe that my chosen politician will turn things around, start raising the impoverished out of poverty, start taxing the rich, and refuse to listen to the siren lobbyists for corporate welfare. BUT—if I believe that the system needs to change, whether I believe the system needs to be completely overturned, revamped, updated, or just slightly tweaked, whether I am an anarchist, Libertarian, Green Party member, Republican, or Democrat—then the fact is that voting should be viewed for what it is: a very, very limited tool to implement change from within the system. And as someone who wants to alter this system, I need to use whatever tools I have been given. Starting with voting. Then extending logically into lobbying, petitioning, writing, calling, e-mailing, pamphleting, blogging, networking, and so on. THAT is what democracy is about. It’s about people using whatever limited tools they have been given to enact the changes they want to see. Otherwise, all of their power has been relinquished, and the super rich who abolish all taxes for the super rich and subsidize the corporations of the super rich will continue to be placed into positions of power. And as long as the idealists refuse to get their hands dirty and utilize limited tools to effect limited change, then politics will continue to not reflect their concerns and interests.

So to bring this all back to myself and my evolution in mentality and where I am today: I have subdued my rampant idealism in favor of an optimistic pragmatism. I believe that I can change the world, but that I can most effectively do this by working with whatever means I have—whether it is within established structures, or whether it is outside of those structures. Altogether, any action that I choose to make has a consequence and a power, whether it is part of a “system” or not. I no longer completely reject these systems, these established structures, these histories, these given identities. Rather, I embrace them in order to change them, to enhance them, to re-design them, retrofit them, work within them and outside of them to strengthen them for the future. I can change my identity to suit whatever need I have at the moment: I can be what others tell me I am, I can be what I think I am, I can be what my job function is, I can flit from box to box without being confined in any, because I know where my integrity lies, and I am not frightened of losing an identity I never had any longer. My identity is all these things, my face, my heart, my genes, my nation, my soul. Undefinable and easily photographed.

I no longer believe that corporations are evil, or that capitalism is contrary to human nature. I think that such views are kind of like someone who comes into a plot of land which hasn’t been farmed well, and they decide to level everything, till the earth, hose down the weeds with roundup, apply fertilizer, and start completely anew. It can be done, but it’s not the best way. It’s better to look at what is growing well, and to learn from it, and chop back what is not doing well and mulch it, and utilize knowledge from all sources to enhance and nurture new plantings to add nutrients to the soil. To look at the system as a whole, and seek to balance all components with each other and foster interrelationships that work together, instead of in opposition.

So politically speaking, I’ve come to learn the value of meeting with the “other side” halfway and understanding where they are coming from. And I think a lot of other people are coming to the same conclusions, because if you look at the current run-up to the presidential campaign, you see that there’s a lot of people straddling what were once indivisible walls between left and right. There’s a movement and struggle not simply towards the left, but towards the center. Republican, Democrat, and everyone who is undefined by such categories are all attempting to find a common standard of political understanding, a basis for shared understanding of what we all need to do to move forward into this great evolutionary unknown that is the future.

Summation of the Road Trip

Lacking an internet connection most of the rest of the way, I’ll just highlight excerpts of Days 4-7 on our wondrous Truck ride through the American south up to NYC.

Day 4: OK City to Memphis, TN

Billboards advertising God. It makes one pause to contemplate why an everlasting all-powerful omniscient Creator would require billboards notifying interstate drivers of His existence. Apparently God also has hotlines, as well as graffiti, working in His name. I haven’t investigated this yet, but I have a suspicion that He may have set Himself up with a MySpace page as well by now.

We just missed a storm (by minutes) in Arkansas apparently, as we passed by recently flooded fields, a minivan stuck in the mud in the grassy median, and a semi rolled onto its side down an embankment.

I was tuckered out on this day, and Vincent, the little green one (aka ‘chicken’, ‘worm’, ‘penguin’, ‘pigeon’, ‘duckling’, ‘dinosaur’, ‘gargoyle’, ‘turd burglar’, amongst many others, all with the interchangeable preface of ‘baby’ and/or ‘little’) was also looking a bit beat, so we stopped in Memphis for the night, one of the first real cities we’d seen since. . . well, since San Diego, and I don’t even know if you can call San Diego much of a city, for that matter. Phoenix, similarly, is a sprawled tesselation of suburbs in the middle of nowhere in the desert, dotted with retirement communities that are like Disneyland for the old and complacent. OK City isn’t much of anything to look at—in fact, I tried not to look at it at all. Memphis is set on the banks of the Mississippi, and one can tell immediately you’re in what has been a booming port town for ages. We stayed in a hotel which we found through it’s coupon which advertised it’s pet-friendly policies and high speed internet. A sign was posted in the lobby stating “no pets”, so we smuggled in the parrot surreptitiously, and no internet in the nearby airwaves was to be found.

Day 5: Memphis, TN to Abingdon, VA

Vincent seemed to be adjusting to the truck ride. He stayed fairly quiet all day, closing his eyes as he rocked in the sway of the highway through the corridors of trees just awakening into bud. We’ve been waking up at 6 am (local time) on the dot each day on our trip, so we’ve adjusted ourselves to the time changes we’ve been undergoing along the way as we fight against ebbing time.

As we drive along rolling green fields and trees and winding rivers, I envision the Civil War, which is furthered by all the museums and battlefields commemorating it along the way.

We’ve been eating mostly Subway and other assorted types of junk on our trip, and I can feel my ass losing its firm mold and spreading outwards across the seat like jelly as the journey progresses. For our dinner in Abingdon, we ate sandwiches which consisted mostly of mayonnaise and cheese. Our cheap motel smelled like a mixture of cigarettes, semen, perfume, and scented spray sprayed to in a hopeless attempt to mask the other smells. We had to listen to the forced bovine moans of a not-so-classy couple next door through a separating door between our rooms which was nailed closed with a strip of siding, as it rained bucketloads and we worried about our stuff inside the truck and wondered if the truck was waterproof. On a side note, all of the cheap hotels we’ve stayed at between New Mexico to Virginia have been operated by what appears to be Bangladeshi or Pakistani folk. I comment on this because it’s strange when you arrive in what seems to be a rural town set out in the Appalachian hills, and the motel is run by an Indian family.

Day 6: Abingdon, VA to Waynesboro, VA

This day was a truncated day, because we were stopping to stay with my girlfriend’s friend in Waynesboro. So we slept in for the first time and then wended our way through the hills there, and spent the best night of our trip there drinking wine, beer, and whiskey, and eating a homecooked meal and telling stories. Vincent also seemed very happy to be there, and gorged himself ravenously on seed, clucking happily and preening himself with delight at his own beauty. He was very upset in the morning when we had to leave, even though we reassured him that this was to be our last and final day.

Day 7: Waynesboro, VA to NYC

A week on the road with an Amazon parrot in a 10 foot Budget truck is exhausting. We were extremely, extremely thrilled to have this be our last day. The roads through Pennsylvania and New Jersey are terrible. I thought the wheels of the truck were going to fly off. Vincent had started off the day very upset, screeching in unhappiness, but by the end of the day when he had settled down, he was even singing and talking, as if he knew the trip was almost over for him.

As we crossed over the George Washington Bridge on a Monday afternoon, and the city loomed across the river, I felt exhilarated and also just plain tired. New York City once had a glimmer of ‘bright lights big city’ to me when I was younger, but right now it’s just another city, another place to live and struggle in.

We unloaded most of our stuff, once again, into long-term storage, not knowing when my drums, books, and hookah will ever see the light of day. It’s been 5-months since we’ve been living out of our travel bags, and it will most likely be 5-months more. We unloaded the parrot and got him situated in his new temporary home, and he began straightaway cracking open seeds, a new travel-experienced bird.

In NYC, you can’t park a commercial truck on the city streets overnight. So we had to turn in our truck. The place we were returning the truck to was down on 35th and 10th, and we are on the very northern tip of Manhattan, so it wasn’t a journey we were looking forward to, especially in rush hour traffic. So we drove all the way down there, since on-line it said the place was open til 11. It was a crazy journey, akin to driving in Colombia, rocketing over deep sewer covers and cutting around taxis in a truck.
Unfortunately, somewhere along the way on our road trip, I’d lost the contract papers for the truck. I figured that it wasn’t a big deal, since we’re on the computer. Problem is, we got down there, and the only guy there was a security guard, and without the papers, he wouldn’t take the truck, and the office was closed so no one could look up the information. Panic began to set in as we realized that we had nowhere to park this truck, we had just filled it up with gas to return the tank full, and we didn’t want to drive it all the way back to NJ to park it at my girlfriend’s aunt’s house. We called Budget and negotiated another drop-off location, this one way over up on the east-side. Evening was beginning to descend. All we wanted to do was shower, eat, and go to sleep. But the trip was still not over.

Afterwards, I discovered that I actually kind of enjoyed getting a little scenic tour of the Manhattan streets in a Budget truck, discovering first-hand the craziness of New York drivers, and gunning the truck through narrow passages where I wasn’t even sure if I would scrape or not, but didn’t care anymore one way or the other. I figured that if someone hit me, then that was their problem. The New York City streets are ridiculous. Just like in Colombia, lanes don’t really seem to signify much, at least not to taxi drivers. Also, there’s no ‘green arrow’ when you’re trying to turn here. Good luck. But all said and done, it was like Toad’s Wild Ride through Manhattan. Since I wasn’t driving my own car, I happily gunned the engine and bounced over the deep depressions in the street at full speed, no longer concerned about whether the wheels fell off or not, and no longer burdened by a sensitive and terrified parrot.

We filled up the gas, again, and finally dropped off the damn truck, once and for all, after having put over 3,000 miles on her in the course of a week, and pumped probably over 800 dollars worth of gasoline into her belly. Fittingly, the guy who checked our truck in was Colombian. It seemed fitting because in a way, Colombia was the first step on the journey that led us to NYC. And after all that crazy Colombian-like traffic, it was the final book-end that closed that chapter on the road-trip. We then took a ‘gypsy cab’ back.

So here I am, at my place of destination, a bit frazzled and fattened but otherwise OK, with my stuff intact and my bird sitting contentedly out of reach of the crazy old dog that resides here. The job hunt now begins in earnest, and my new life here unfolds.

Day 3: Oklahoma City

A long day through flatlands, with stops only for gas at Love’s, a sammich at Subway, and some hotel coupons at the OK visitor center. We’re smack-dab in the center of our journey, and the weariness is beginning to set in. I can’t say I’m very impressed with OK City from what I’ve seen, which is admittedly just the highway + cheap hotel + Cracker Barrel. The highway, as soon as you enter the city, is literally fragmented into shards. I thought the wheels were going to fall off of the truck. I’m sure Vincent the parrot felt like the world was finally ending. Tomorrow we shoot for Jackson, TN, another 540 something miles. I wish we could cut our days shorter for the green lad, but the journey must go on. One can see by looking into his wide brown eyes as he huddles down on his perch within the cab of the truck, dazed and in shock, that he is immersed in a world of torment and utter bewilderment. I wish I could explain it to him so that he could understand, but the truth is that I feel pretty much the same way. It seems that after a long period of doldrum lull, I have entered into the streaming vortex, with no turning back. My life henceforth with be propelled headfirst out of a weeklong haul in a truck into a world strange, wired, and unwelcoming. This whirlwind initiation into new realms is entirely self-willed, fortunately. But it’s still a little overwhelming, stressful, scary. A storm advances just ahead of our trajectory, flash flood watches posted akimbo. Across the nation we advance, into the unknown, further away from my past, closer to something beyond what I have previously used to define my understanding.

Day 2: Albuquerque

The bird has adapted, sort of. He kind of goes into a daze while in the car, where his eyes stare at nothing in general and he crouches on his perch and hangs on for dear life. Then when there’s a bump or something disturbs him, like hunger, he begins pacing back and forth and then climbing around the cage. But in general, he’s fairly calm, and sometimes now doesn’t even react to small bumps in the road. Once we stopped at our destination, today Albuquerque, and got him settled into our cheap but actually quite pleasant motel, he was back to his usual self, munching away on his seed, checking himself out in the mirror, grooming, making pleased little sounds, and showing off his pretty feathers.

Driving interstate is interesting, because we’re supposed to stop at all the weigh stations now, as if we were truckers. They just wave us through once they note that we’re hauling just a bunch of mostly worthless personal shit. Also, on the trucker side of things, I feel more in tune with the semis that are everywhere on the roads. They all mostly respect the rules of the road, and they pass and maintain speeds just the way anyone who has driven a lot should do. It’s all those other idiots on the road that don’t get how to drive on a highway. They speed up, they slow down, they pass on the right, they ride your ass, which is a dumb thing to do when it’s a truck they’re riding. See, when a truck is cutting into your lane, it’s because they can’t just slow down easily. They’re hauling lots of weight. So when they know they are going to be passing another truck, which is all done with respect and is simply noting that “hey, you’re cruising at 70, I’m cruising at 75: I’m going to pass”, they will simply move into the next lane, and you had better let them do so, instead of speeding up and trying to box them in. They can’t get up to speed or brake very quickly, so they have to maneuver around things. Seems simple enough, but cars zip around trucks and try to cut them off constantly.

We’re driving with a Budget truck rental, which was nice and cheap, comparatively, especially with a discount, but I’ve realized since then what the difference between a Budget truck and a U-haul truck is besides the price: a V-8 engine. The U-haul truck dribbles like butter up mountain roads at 75 -80 with nary a shudder. The Budget truck lets you know when you’ve gotten above 70 by spasming like an epileptic choking. But whatever, as long as it gets us there.

Today we tried buffering Vinnie’s cage with a bunch of pillows so that he doesn’t slide around and is cushioned from all the bouncing. It seemed to help a bit, though he doesn’t ever get used to it. Poor thing is exhausted now after gorging on seeds: he’s sitting with his little foot curled into his feathers, all puffed up and falling asleep.

Well, it’s off to dinner now, and then some Top Chef watching. Tomorrow we’re shooting for OK City, but it’s a longer haul then today, and it looks like there’s some major storms a-brewing around them parts, so we may just cut off for the nearest motel whenever things get hairy. The nice thing about these one-way truck rentals is that they give you plenty of time: we’ve got 10 days to do what should be a 6-day trek. So if needs be, we can rest our laurels and ride out a tornado or flash flood. But another day is another dollar that could have been another meal in New York whilst unemployed and destitute. . .

Synopsis of Day 1

The parrot did not like being in a car—he was freaking out pretty bad for the first couple of hours, and we were extremely concerned that we had made a bad decision. Thankfully, he calmed down after a while, and he only got riled up again whenever we went over a bump in the road, which unfortunately was pretty often. We also learned that in order to eat, we have to stop the truck so he feels stable again—then he runs over to his food dish and starts cracking open the seeds. So apparently this trip will be a little slower then planned, so that we can take frequent rest stops for the traumatized parrot. C’mon, lil guy, you can make it! By the end of the trip, he’ll be a veteran of the bumps and sways of the road.

So here I am in Phoenix, Sun City, an interesting mix of a retirement community, Disneyland, and Jesus Camp. I’m going to hit the hay now at 8:30; this old man is beat.

On the Road to NYC

The Budget truck is all packed up and I’m ready to move. We were awoken at 7:30 in the morning to the sound of pavement being pummeled and jackhammered outside on the street. Looks like the city might actually be fixing some pavement! Amazing. Of course, right as I leave. The weather is also abnormally cold and drizzly here in San Diego, as if letting us know that it is indeed time to go. No more sunny days and long walks.

And it really is time to go. I feel like I’ve been undergoing some deep sea changes as of late, and the surface manifestations are just beginning to ripple. Finally, belatedly, almost at 30, I am almost an adult. I’ve spent most of my life coasting along with the way the wind takes me, and settling down into stagnancy when nothing moves, and now, after many tentative forays and excursions, I’m stepping out on my own, with absolutely nothing in sight but what I make mine. I foresee that for a time things will be pretty difficult in certain terms, such as still living under someone else’s roof, and it’s going to take time to find a new job, and it’s going to take time to get used to a completely new world, etc. But all that just seems exciting to me, because at least it’s a challenge to work that much harder to find my place, as opposed to simply waiting for things to come my way.

Also auspicious for this date of departure is that I had a dream last night that Rihanna had a crush on me. Which is funny given that I don’t even know what she looks like. But it’s still a nice feeling to wake up and know that someone out there who can sing so well about umbrellas might cherish me in an alternate universe.

So on the itinerary for hoy: out the I-8 to Phoenix, wherein my Aunt Ruth dwells. For breakfast we’re consuming the remnants of the excellent spicy Indian dinner from last night (thanks Karen!). That should provide for some later entertainment on the road in the cab with Vinnie the parrot wedged in between our seats, most likely freaking out and getting traumatized.

Off the agenda for tomorrow is the Grand Canyon, alas. We realized that leaving the parrot in the car when it’s 90+ degrees outside, even for just a minute to take a peep, probably isn’t a nice thing to do. So it’s pretty much just directamente out the I-40, heralding spring and new becomings along the way.

One More Week til Leaving

So my life here on the West Coast has just about come to its official end. One more week and I and all my things—including my Amazon parrot, Vinnie—will be traversing the interstate highways out to NYC. Since my trip to Colombia, I have spent my time here in San Diego straightening some things out, such as figuring out how to deal with my grandfather’s gun collection, determining that I want to go to graduate school for public policy, remembering why I would never want to live with my parents ever again, and babysitting my adorable niece Sophia. It’s been a long month and a half, and I’m looking forward, desperately, towards change. It remains to be seen just how long it will take to acquire a job in the big apple, so my fancy new resume that I spent a couple of weeks working on will be put to the test.

I will be staying under the auspices of my girlfriend’s family in NYC, and even though it will be tight in terms of space, I’m 100 percent certain that it will be decidedly more positive then the experience of staying with my parents. It’s never easy to up and move out to a new location—at least this way we have some kind of a base and network with which to begin.

Along the way we’ll stop at the Grand Canyon, since my girlfriend has never seen it. Other than that, however, it will be a long 6 day trek in a rental truck, with the only other pit stops being urination stations and cheap motels. I hope Vinnie the parrot holds up OK—this will be his first trip pretty much anywhere, other than when he was smuggled in as a wee babe through Mexico, somehow escaped and flew over to my mom’s friend’s mom’s house (got that?), and latched onto the windowsill, whereupon she scooped him up with a spoon and gave him to her daughter who already had 5 other parrots, who then gave it to the young Me. I’ve never been in a living situation stable enough to keep him with me, so he’s been sequestered with my parents until now. Here’s a picture of him eating my cereal:

Hopefully I’ll be able to post a travelogue of the Budget truck adventures across the nation, but I don’t know if I’ll have the energy nor the wireless connection to do it. In any case, I’ll keep my anonymous readership posted as well as I can. Until then.

Guns and Me

I have to say that I am sick to death of guns. As I’ve already mentioned enough here already, I’ve been dealing with the strange and unforeseen inheritance of my grandfather’s handgun and rifle collection, and it’s turned me into a grudging part-time dealer and historian of curio and relic firearms. I have also participated in some gun rights debates, both here on my blog and on other forums, and I’d like to get this whole gun thing off my chest, once and for all, so that I can sleep at night without bolt action rifles dancing through my dreams.

Debating with pro-gun folks is always interesting, if not for their often over the top extreme fervor and passion, then also for their often very articulate and informed responses.  There’s a lot of meat-heads out there, of course, in love with their phallic guns and their patriotic gun rights, but there’s also a plethora of what I call “gun nerds.” These are kind of dorky older men, generally overweight and often with glasses, of the type who might just as easily be involved in crafting intricate miniature replicas of airplanes, or spending years building an elaborate train set. For some reason they picked guns, perhaps because the unquestioned manliness of the subject makes them feel tougher. Whatever the reason, these gun nerds are serious and informed hobbyists, and can detail historical, technical, and legal nuances of guns to make your head spin. These mostly gentle, studious men are one example of why guns are probably OK. They just like to oil up their guns and fix them up with new parts, or collect historical rifles and antiques, and go and shoot them at immobile things.

I have to say that there is some kind of embedded masculine excitement that is ignited naturally by guns. We just kind of like the idea of them: they are the quintessential toy, useful for plugging little rodents or distant hummingbirds and other such diverse and sadistic activities that could only be appealing to a boy. We like the feeling of shooting things, perhaps because it is a synthetic and empowering extension of our ingrained sensation of holding our little peepees while we urinate in fun outdoorsy places. Who knows how this gun fervor develops so innately in a full-grown man. All I know is that even I, who have attested repeatedly to having no interest in guns, developed a slight “gun fever” when I saw the sight of my grandfather’s beautiful collection laid out in the sun after I took them down from the attic, all those walnut stocks and glistening blued finishes.

But I have also been frequently of the mindset of what is termed “liberal,” and I have de-programmed parts of my innate masculine instincts, and so another response which I also obtained from these guns was one of horror and disgust. The history of guns is one of conquest, warfare, and murder, and we witness their continued extensive aggression being vented daily on the news. Guns made me feel sick, and while I felt their draw and power, I was also repelled by their intent, their murderous design. These are tools made for killing.

But now that I’ve gotten a little closer in understanding to guns, and even shot a few, I’ve come to a new understanding of them. They are both weapons and toys, all in one. And they are really somewhat silly.

I don’t know that I can quite understand why people get so worked up about the possibility of a gun prohibition. I mean, people are extremely passionate about this subject. I wish that people got more passionate about more important things. I don’t see why having the right to go shoot your gun at immobile objects is such a desired and fundamental right. Can’t we find other things to do with our time? Could we perhaps apply all that free time and studiousness to converting our lawns to growing food? Could we maybe petition and lobby our local and federal politicians and bureaucrats for better public transportation and more intelligent community design? Something a little more constructive than our right to bear arms?

That said, I do not think that guns should be banned. I think they should simply be strictly controlled. I don’t think that if gun nerds want to go into their dens and ranges and shoot their cherished penile extensions at things we should stop them from doing so. I also think that destabilized teenagers and adults should not be able to just buy whatever gun they want to on-line.

There. That’s all I really want to say about guns. They are toys and weapons all in one, and I think we all need to just kind of get over them, from both ends.

Resumé Writing

I’ve been spending a lot of time lately working on resumés lately, both my own and my girlfriend’s, and I’ve learned a little bit about resume writing since then. I’ve never liked looking for jobs, most notably due to the self-advertisement that is required in the process. I don’t like having to sell myself, and I’ve never really put much effort into writing my resume in the past, so it’s not surprising that I haven’t heard back from many employers now that I’m applying for more challenging jobs on the other side of the continent. So I’ve been doing my homework and putting in the effort to really beef it up and present myself well to a potential employer.

One thing I’ve learned is that you can—and should—be creative with the format of your resume. There is no reason to present yourself according to a template in your word processing software, nor according to what “experts” might say you should do. There’s a lot of good information out there, of course, but you’ve got to take it all with a grain of salt, because ultimately, a resume is about presenting you, not anyone else. Like a wedding or an essay, the format of a resume exists to convey specific information. Within that format, you can be as creative or as traditional as you like, just as long as that information is effectively and powerfully conveyed.

Another thing I’ve learned is that making bullet point lists of your job descriptions and functions is just as boring for a potential employer to read as it is for you to write. They don’t really care if you had to answer phones or input data into a computer: they want to hear something interesting that you accomplished or contributed. Even if you’ve just been a shoe salesman or a clerical monkey, you’ve contributed a lot more to the success of your company than you might think. You have to pull out your viewpoint to the bigger picture: think of the numbers that can help convey what you’ve done, such as the revenues that were pulled in while you were a sales rep, or the amount of applications of students that you processed, etc. You want to convey not just what you did but what you were a part of.

When I help people with revising their essays and personal statements, I always make sure that any piece is written to assume that the reader knows nothing about what is being discussed, even in specialized fields like law, business, and medicine. I believe in describing things lucidly enough so that a “layperson” can get the gist of what is being conveyed. The more obtuse and jargon-filled a piece is, the more likely that it’s a bunch of bullshit. I’ve found that the same principle applies to a resume: never assume that the reader of your resume will read between the lines for you. Clearly explicate your accomplishments and contributions so that anyone can understand them and be suitably impressed.

And this is not easy to do. It’s not really the kind of thing I enjoy applying myself towards. But I’ve realized that if I’d like to get a job that I’m really into, I’ve got to put a lot of work into it. I’ve realized that I knew that my resume was weak, I just didn’t know how to approach it; after all, it’s not something you learn to do in school (though you should). So I’ve been looking at examples and formats and getting a feel for what works and what doesn’t.

Another annoying and time consuming process is that you should target your resume for each specific job you are applying for. Each employer is looking for certain things, which they convey through keywords in their job posting. The “experts” on resume writing say that you should cut and paste these keywords into your resume, but I feel that can be a bit conspicuous and even desperate. I think it’s just as effective to take the meaning of those keywords and elucidate it in new ways through synonyms and arrangements according to your own particular and unique experiences.

It’s a lot harder to create a good resume than one would want to think. It takes a lot of time, brainstorming, concentrated effort, and endless revisioning. But you’ll KNOW when you’ve written a good one. If you don’t feel confident about your resume then there’s probably a reason for it. It’s like writing a poem or story that will hold up to the minute scrutiny of a highly critical academic audience—it’s got to be hewn out of stone, every surface holding just the right amount of light to convey a whole perfect piece of understanding.

Personal Update

Here’s a lil update on the personal status: after a lot of thought, questioning, anguish, hope, defeat, and bickering, it’s been decided that New York City is the place where I will live for the foreseeable future. It fulfills a few of my major requirements in a place to live: good public transportation; cultural diversity; amazing music and nightlife; and proximity to a body of water—though it happens to be a completely different ocean than I am accustomed to. It doesn’t have quite the climate or proximity to mountains and forests that would constitute my ideal locale, but it fulfills a much more important need: that of keeping my girlfriend happy. I myself am simply happy to have finally narrowed down the boundless potentiality of the future to one option, so that the quest for the Holy Job can be concentrated.

So now that that has been decided, and now that I pretty much know what I want to do with my life for the next 2 or 3 years (grad school for public policy, after some time spent in the field interning or whatnot), it’s simply a matter of selling off the majority of these damn guns my grandfather acquired and then packing up a truck with all my shit which is still sitting forlornly boxed up in the closet, ready to go. Time passes quickly in this slumbering state of limbo here in San Diego.

When you think of San Diego, you probably think of sunny beaches, scantily clad and scantily brained women in Pacific Beach, and similarly dim witted men in suits in the Gaslamp District. What you might want to include in that fairly accurate picture is also the absolutely horrendous state of the streets everywhere: potholes, dips, cracks, fissures, fractures, whole chunks of tar completely gone. And we’re not talking about like the city has been surreptitiously allowing the streets in run-down areas go to shit; we’re talking some of the richest areas, in the residential neighborhoods of multi-million dollar properties. I’ve never seen streets this consistently bad, not even in Colombia. It should be embarrassing to a city to allow all their streets to publicly fester and decay. But apparently it’s not a big deal to anyone here. They just buy bigger SUVs.

So I will be happy to leave. Happy to be moving on to something big enough to possibly squelch me underneath its giant shoe like a bug.

My Grandfather’s Rifle Collection

I’ve been spending the last few weeks researching my grandfather’s rifle collection, and I figured that I might as well share the fruits of my labor here, for those interested in history/firearms/collecting things. My grandfather, whom I never knew except as a wee babe before he had a sudden heart attack due to all the fried chicken he ate, was into the whole Wild West thing (my older sisters recall his house—which is now my parents’—adorned with pictures of cattle and the like), and he loved to target shoot, and was a card-carrying member of the NRA. I even have his sharpshooting medals. He certainly knew his guns, and amassed himself a handsome little collection of rifles, extending from the late 1800’s to WWII. 2 of the guns are considered ‘antiques’ (pre-1899, which means that I could UPS them straight to your front door step without any legal issues (kind of scary)), and the rest are WWI-WWII era, which makes them ‘Curio & Relic‘ guns (C&R). He obtained 4 of them through the NRA (I know this because I have his original receipts), and the rest who knows—maybe from when he was a Coast Guard or something.

In any case, I’ve been doing a fair amount of research on them these past few weeks, which have included: 1) an on-line appraisal to get some idea of what I was looking at, as I didn’t even know the first thing about guns or their worth; 2) a trip to a local gun show to talk to dealers and corroborate their info with what I knew from the general appraisal; 3) going downtown to the central library to sift through a Flayderman’s guide on antique guns; 4) scanning through my grandfather’s book on rifles that I had at home, as well as another book on bolt-action rifles I picked up at my local library; and 5) extensive internet googling and wading through the on-line threads of other people’s queries, historical information pages, gun auctions, and other various catalogs, cross-references, and resources that could be plundered for free.

In the process—which has actually been somewhat thrilling in a nerdy sleuthing kind of way—I’ve learned a bit about the history of each gun, as well as learned that almost every little mark somewhere on the gun has some kind of significance which can lead you to more information. Now let’s begin:

1) Remington Rolling Block Military Argentine Contract Rifle

Details: 3 bands; full-stocked; .43 Spanish caliber; Patent dates May 30, 1864; May 7th June 14th Nov 12th Dec 24th, 1872; Dec 31st 1872; Sep 9th Jan 12th March ? 187?; U” on barrel; “R” on stock; no other discernible markings. Over 1 million made.

History of the Rolling Block Rifle: The Remington Rolling Block was one of the most successful single shot weapons yet developed. The “rolling block” refers to the system of a rolling breech block on a pivot backed up by the hammer for centerfire cartridges. According to Wikipedia, the first rifle based on this design was introduced at the Paris Exposition in 1867, and within a year it had become the standard military rifle of several nations. This rifle is also well known for being the rifle that drove the American Bison to extinction in the 1870s-80s.

According to Guns Magazine, July 2005, the rolling block was “universally popular in military circles” because of its “simplicity. The rolling block is a deceptively simple and ragged action with few moving parts and an operation that is self-evident. Any untutored conscript could be taught the manual-of-arms with a rolling block in quick time. One merely cocks the hammer, rolls back the breechblock, inserts a cartridge in the chamber, closes the breechblock and pulls the trigger. In function, the hammer not only strikes the firing pin but progressively cams under the breechblock, locking it firmly in place at the moment of discharge.”

2) U.S. Springfield Trapdoor Model 1873, 3rd model

Details: Serial #: 216xxx; 45-70 caliber; 2 barrel bands. Model 1879 rear sight. Tulip-head ramrod introduced in 1882. Year of manufacture 1883. “U” on barrel bands; VP(graphic of eagle head)P (barrel proof marking) and “R” on barrel; 1882 stamped on stock, with “SWP” in cursive; SWP refers to Master Mechanic Samuel W. Porter who inspected the rifle at Springfield in 1882. (For a picture of Sam W. Porter, scroll down on this page at the Springfield Armory Historic site; he’s the dude in front in the black suit). 73,000 total of all types made.

History of Springfield Model 1873: This is a famous “Indian War”-era rifle, the first breech-loader used in standard military service. It is nicknamed the “Trapdoor” due to the flip-up breech-loading feature, which was first utilized on the Model 1866 to convert the slew of percussion rifles (muzzle-loaders) left over from the Civil War. The Trapdoors were used frequently by the Army against the Native Americans, and vice versa (Sitting Bull and Geronimo were both captured with their Trapdoors in hand). The Trapdoor was also used in the Spanish-American War. Manufacture of all models was terminated in 1893.

3) Winchester Standard model 1906 slide action rifle, Blued-Frame version

Details: Serial #: 642xxx; .22 caliber; 12-grooved pump forearm; “B” on barrel, as well as “P” with circle around it. Manufactured in 1924; 13,562 were produced in that year alone.

History of the Winchester Model 1906: The 1906 (introduced in 1906, of course) was essentially a modification of the most popular pump action Winchester made, the Model 1890, which was mostly used in target shooting. The 1906 was made to be sold at a lower price and available to wider audiences. The 1906 was also very popular, and 731,862 were made until it was discontinued in 1934 to make way for the Model 62.

There were three versions of the 1906: the first model, the .22 short, only accepted short bullets; the second model, the Standard version, was able to shoot short, long, and long-rifle bullets; and the third model, the Expert version, had a better stock and metal. My grandfather’s is a blued-frame version of the Standard.

4) U.S. Springfield model 1903 bolt action rifle

Details: Serial #: 1404xxx; 30-06 caliber. Year of manufacture 1932. Star-gauged barrel. Stock is stamped as a rebuild by Rock Island Arsenal, RIA over FK, inspected by Frank Krack, 1920-1930. Barrel stamped SA (Springfield Armory), with cartouche, followed by 10-30 (October 1930).

I have my grandfather’s original receipt for this gun. Purchased on Jan 13th, 1949 from the San Antonio General Depot for $15.00 + 2.85 S/H.

Signs point to this being a National Match 1903, which greatly increases it’s value, as only 11,000 of these were made and are superior target shooting rifles. However, there were also an unknown number of guns re-manufactured with star-gauged barrels for NRA members. Because of the rebuild stamp from Rock Arsenal, it probably points to the latter.

History of the Springfield Model 1903: According to Philip B. Sharpe in The Rifle in America, this is “one of the finest rifles ever designed and constructed.” This model was officially adopted as a service rifle in 1903, until its replacement in 1936 by the M1 Garand. It was used in both WWI and WWII, and is still utilized even today by drill teams and color guards, due to its superb balance. The 1903 is seen as the successor to the popular “Krag” rifle–the Krag-Jorgensen–which was an invention of two Norwegians.

Each year between 1920-1940, Springfield Armory would make a small quantity of specially selected 1903 rifles for National Match target shooting. These were distinguished only by their “star-gauged” barrels (meaning that they underwent testing to ensure uniformity, and were stamped to display that they passed the test), and the fact that they were selected for superior bolt and receiver quality, with the receiver and bolts made of either double heat-treated carbon steel or nickel steel.

5): Eddystone 1917 bolt action Enfield rifle

Details: Serial #: 376xxx ; Year of manufacture 1918. Barrel: JA (Johnson Automatics) with graphic. Sporterized with Fajen stock.

I have the original receipt. My grandfather purchased this on Sep 11, 1947 from the Red River Ordnance Depot in Texarkana, Texas for $7.50 +1.85 S/H.

History of the Model 1917: The “Enfield” rifle was originally contracted for British use by manufacturers Remington, Winchester, and Eddystone when Britain entered the war in 1914. The Brits then canceled their contract in 1917, as they had enough production ability by then on their own turf. When the US entered the WWI in 1917, the government enlisted these three large manufacturers for help, as they were already equipped for rifle-making. They had to re-design the Model 1914 used for the British to accommodate the .30/06 Springfield cartridge, as well as standardize all the parts for interchangeability and assembly speed. This new design was the Model 1917.

Enfields were made available to members of the NRA in the late 40s through the Director of Civilian Marksmanship for less then ½ the cost of a brand-new gun. I guess my grandpa took advantage of that deal–he bought one for $7.50 in 1947!

6) Remington model 03-A3 bolt action rifle

Details: Serial #: 3881xxx; Year of manufacture 1942; 30-06 caliber. On the stock: “P” with circle around it; RA, FJA with square around it. Remington Arms (RA) followed by the ordnance escutcheon and the inspector’s stamp (“FJA”), presiding inspector Lt. Col. Frank J. Atwood. Most likely a government rebuild from various parts. On the underside of the stock: 14, 22, 69 all with circles around them, and 33 with triangle around it.

I have the original receipt. My grandfather purchased this on Jan. 27th, 1958 from the Anniston Ordnance Depot in Anniston, Alabama for $15.00 + 4.50 S/H.

History of the Remington 03-A3: During World War II, the US suddenly discovered that all of its war reserves of rifles was pretty much kaput, as the government had charitably donated most of their stock of 1917s and 1903s to Britain after the Battle of Dunkirk. As rifles were desperately needed, the Model 1903 was resurrected, as all of the tools necessary to make it were in storage at the Rock Island Arsenal. The machinery was shipped to the Remington Arms Co. in Ilion, and they began re-making the basic design of the Springfield 1903, except this time with a few modifications. They made three different versions: the A1 Modifed, the A3, and the A4 sniper rifle. The “A” refers to “Alternate.” The most notable modifications for the A3 was the new rear sight, as well as the fact that since 03-A3s were needed in vast quantities—and quickly–they were modified for mass production, and thus were slightly less superior than the original 1903.

7) Ranger .22 bolt action target rifle

Details: .22 Caliber LR. Has target sights and front sight hood. No other identifying information marked on it. Judging solely by its appearance, it seems like a Savage Model 19 Target Rifle, given that “later production [was] equipped with extension rear sight and hooded front sight” (Gun Trader’s Guide, 9th Edition). These were made from 1933-1946.

History of the Ranger .22: The Ranger was a Sears Roebuck brandname made by various manufacturers. I looked up all the Sears models that I could find, and none seemed to quite match up with the version I had. In any case, this is a quality target rifle, and I’m quite certain that it was gainfully employed by my grandfather.

Update: I since determined that this rifle is in fact a Savage NRA Model 1933.

8 ) U.S. M1 carbine Caliber 30

Details: Serial #: 1895xxx. Receiver marked Quality H.M.C. (Quality Hardware); Stock: “RMC”, referring to manufacturer Rock-ola, with cartouche; Barrel: “Rock-ola”, “P”.

I have the original receipt. My grandfather purchased this on Sep. 4, 1964 from the Tooele Army Depot in Utah for $17.50 + 2.50 S/H.

History of the M1 Carbine: The result of a series of experimental designs for a fully automatic gun by Winchester, which after testing along with other models by the US Ordnance Department in 1941 at the Aberdeen Proving Ground, was developed into a semi-automatic gun, which became the US Carbine Caliber .30. Winchester’s engineering department was on an extremely short deadline to design the new semi-automatic gun; 14 days for the first model, and 34 days to perfect that design. The day before the scheduled testing of new models, they had all the parts assembled and complete, but discovered that there was a malfunction with the piston receiving insufficient gas. Pressed with time and sleep-deprived, the engineers took a last-ditch approach—they drilled a larger hole in the gas port, and hoped for the best. This turned out to solve the problem, and the gun outperformed all others during testing.

Large quantities of this new feat of engineering were desired, far beyond the scope of any one gun manufacturer, and a number of other companies were enlisted in the effort: General Motors, IBM, Underwood-Elliot Fisher Co, National Postal Meter Co, Standard Products Co, Irwin-Pedersen Arms Co, Quality Hardware, and Rock-Ola all manufactured M1 Carbines during the war. Not all these manufacturers were associated with guns in any way—Rock-Ola, for example, was best known as a manufacturer of jukeboxes. Due to the large quantities needed, and the difficulties involved with machinery and engineering, not all manufacturers always made all the parts. Rock-Ola and Underwood-Elliot-Fisher mostly manufactured the barrels, which were then supplied to Quality Hardware, Standard Products, and National Postal Meter. My grandfather’s M1 is an example of this: the barrel and stock components are made by Rock-Ola, while the receiver and serial stamp are Quality Hardware’s. From a collector’s standpoint, the Rock-Ola-issued components add a premium, as Rock-Ola only manufactured 3.7% of the 6,221,220 M1s (228,500). They also are valued as collector’s items because of Rock-Ola’s fame as a jukebox maker.

Now for the foreign rifles:

9) Japanese Arisaka type 38 bolt action rifle

Details: Serial #: 82xxx; Caliber 6.5; Series 22; Manufactured by Kokura, 1933-1940. “Mum”is intact.

History of the Japanese Arisaka: The Arisaka is named after the Colonel who oversaw its manufacture in 1897. It is called a Type 38 in reference to the 38th year of Emperor Meiji’s reign. Most Western thought on the Arisakas during and after WWII was that they were inferior rifles and not well-constructed. This was a bias that was quickly debunked by field tests and direct battlefield experience by soldiers. Arisakas are some of the strongest and most well-designed bolt actions ever made.

When the Japanese soldiers surrendered their arms, they ground out the imperial seal on their Arisakas, which is known as the “rising sun” or “chrysanthemum” emblem, in order to preserve the honor of their emperor. Arms which have been captured on the battlefield retain this insignia—or “mum” to collectors—intact. When my grandfather’s Japanese gardener found out that he was trying to acquire these Japanese rifles, he walked away and never came back. Having the “mum” intact may be a boon to collectors—but to many Japanese, it was simply dishonorable.

10) Japanese Arisaka type 38 bolt action rifle, half stock

Details: Serial #: 1990xxx; “S” on barrel; No series marking; Half stock; Manufactured by Koishikawa (Tokyo), which switched from “B” to “S” barrel proof mark in the late 800,000 range. 1906 – 1935. “Mum” is intact.

11) Birmingham Small Arms Cadet Martini Rifle .310 Model 4

Details: Serial #: 290xx; Commonwealth of Australia; Stock: C.M.F., N.S.W. (New South Wales) 13621 8 / 11
Barrel: +310 12-120 *; Kangaroo on top of receiver. Manufactured by the British B.S.A for Australia, 1910 – 1921.

History of the Cadet Martini Rifle: This is a colonial-era gun (known as the “weapon of empire”), manufactured by Greener and Birmingham Small Arms Co, both of which are British; they made this gun for sale to the Commonwealth states. In 1910, the Commonwealth Government introduced a system of universal cadet training, and they were issued the Cadet rifle. This rifle was also popular for small game hunting and target shooting. 80,000 made.

12) Italian Terni manufactured Fucile Corto Carcano model M38 carbine in 7.35 caliber

Details: Stock: 046xx and Terni cartouche; “PB”; Barrel: R.E. Terni, graphic, 1939 XVII, 046xx, stamped over with “6A”

History of the Terni Carcano M38: The Carcano bolt action rifle was adopted by Italy in 1891 as their official military shoulder arm. The Carcanos were unusual in that they are the only military rifle in the world which employed the “gain twist”, in which the rifling starts wider and increases in pitch towards the muzzle. Italy had a problem of supply in terms of arms and ammunition, because they made so many different types and calibers of weapons that they never had enough for any one type of gun. Italian troops often carried assorted ammunition on them that sometimes didn’t even fit the weapons they were using. Reflecting this confusion is the plethora of markings to be found on the Carcano. The dating system used on the Carcanos manufactured during the fascist reign of Mussolini included not only the date, but also the “fascist year”—so on my grandfather’s Carcano, for example, it is stamped 1939 XVII, meaning the 17th year of Mussolini’s reign in the year 1939.

The Carcano is also infamous as being the gun which Lee Harvey Oswald used to assassinate JFK. He obtained his rifle through mail-order.

References

Here is a cursory list of the references I used in compiling the information on my grandfather’s gun collection. I stumbled across an infinite amount of web pages that I didn’t mark—this list serves more as a guide to anyone else who might be doing similar research.

Books:

The Rifle In America, 2nd Edition; Philip B. Sharpe, 1947—This was my grandfather’s—perhaps it was used in determining which guns he wished to acquire. The author is opinionated and All-American.

Bolt Action Rifles; Frank de Haas, 1971

Flayerdman’s Guide to Antique American Firearms, 7th Edition; A good reference for antique appraisal and values

Gun Trader’s Guide, 9th Edition; Paul Wahl, 1981; My dad got this at a Big 5 Sporting Goods store in the 80s when he half-heartedly did his own research into the collection; he gave up and stowed them up in the attic instead. I was surprised at how handy this guide turned out to be in the end, even though it was outdated.

Websites:

Gun Appraisals.com — I used this site initially to get a rough idea of what type of guns I was looking at and their approximate value. The guy doing my appraisal did a really good job given that all he had to go on was some pictures.

Homestead Firearms — This site was useful for specific model and serial information on the Springfield Trapoor and Winchester 1906.

1903A3 Rifle Site — Good site for research into all things 1903A3.

United Kingdom’s NRA Historic Arms site — I found initial info on the BSA Cadet Rifle on this site.

Digger History Info — Great history and background on the BSA Cadet Rifle.

Carcano Info — Excellent information on the Italian Carcano, especially under the Model Identification section.

Cross Reference of Store Brand and Manufacturer — I used this cross-reference in an attempt to identify what model of Ranger .22 I had. Highly useful if you’ve got some identifying markings to work with on your gun, which unfortunately, I did not.

Markings on Arisaka Rifles — Highly detailed and useful information on what the markings on Japanese Arisakas signify.

Pocket History of the M1 Carbine — Concise details on the making of the M1 Carbine, as well as useful statistics on the numbers from each manufacturer.

Military Surplus Rifle page — Quick reference guide with links and specifications for all military surplus rifles.

Springfield Armory Historic Page — Some nice pictures and condensed history of all Springfield weapons.

Gun Data.com — Good reference for historical firearms; some of its data actually conflicts with some of the other pages (such as Homestead Firearms), but it seemed more accurate given some of the other data I had acquired.

Brain Drain

I feel the need to post some explication of my recent reticence in updating my blog, as it is not due to any lack of will or desire for writing, but rather from my energy being sapped by the tedious demands of actively looking for a quality job on the other side of the continent. It has been awhile since I’ve had to buckle down and scour the earth for jobs, and I’d forgotten just how draining and depressing it can be. First, you’ve got to update the resumé, stretching down deep into your coffer of conventional business verbs (“initiated,” “implemented,” “directed,” “spear-headed,” “supervised,” “ensured”, “experienced”) to somehow compel interest in a medium of disinterest. Then you’ve got to spin your monkey-see-monkey-do capabilities into an attractive and concise cover letter for a job that looks to be out of your realm of experience based simply upon the appearance of your scattered employment history. All while sifting through the shallow yet murky realms of job search sites, which are like walking through a red-light district in the night—bright, neon calls for easy jobs that promise stay-at-home ways to make money. Somewhere scattered in the midst of these spam offers for spam jobs lie some real offers, which are generally administrative office work. And then, maybe 2 times a week, a job posting that is genuinely sort-of exciting, though most likely inundated with resumés more enticing then yours. You wade through the listings all day long, and are happy if you’ve found one job worth applying for. It’s draining because it feels like you are putting a lot of work into something that’s leading nowhere.

On top of this, I’ve also been doing the tedious research into the surprising windfall of my grandpa’s antique gun collection, which included a trip to my first gun show yesterday. I have to admit that I was a little bit disappointed: I expected lots of patriotic pasty folk with full beards and confederate flags, but it was more like a flea market with a few guns scattered here and there. Some normal looking genteel couples wandering amidst mostly hobbyist looking kind of men, with of course a few scaries swaggering about. I didn’t glean much info from a pair of old antique gun selling salts, but I did come away with a bottle of scotch bonnet hot sauce. Still much more research to be done, which may require the enlisting of an expert appraisal.

All of this on top of attempting to apply myself, somewhat ineffectively, to studying the math gymnastics required for the GRE, while trying to keep sane while living temporarily with my parents, who are driving both my girlfriend and I up the wall. We may have to just cut our losses and move out east without any jobs and live in cardboard boxes for a while.

Middle of the Night Math Blather

Ah, insomnia. Sometimes sleep is just not an activity that my mind wishes to engage itself in. I thought I was done with journaling after returning from Colombia, yet find myself unable to step back into my somewhat standard methods of disassociative discursive writing. Partly this is due to existing currently in a state of limbo, as well my current dedication to studying for an inane test, the GRE, which apparently was crafted to “weed out” people who shouldn’t be applying to grad school, i.e. people who have better things to do with their free time then study irrelevant things for an unimportant test. I have not intended to neglect writing on this blog, in fact I kind of need it to stay sane and balanced, I just have not had the personal mental space necessary to turn within and get it out. Hence the insomnia.

I am well aware that the details of my personal life holds little of meaning nor interest for the outside world, and I generally cringe from bothering to sit to transcribe my mundane existence onto a blog, except when I am traveling and my mundane existence is somewhat more interesting—but I have little recourse at the moment. This is therapy, in a sense, a salve to my sleepless and seeking self. An attempt to write myself into a stability and stillness necessary for movement onward to hopefully a time when I can write something much more meaningful and applicable to the general populace.

Anyway, I need a topic to write about in relation to myself, so I’m going to write about math, because it’s been on my mind as of late. First, a brief personal history: I have never been “good” at math. I used to explicate this deficiency as a result of the way my brain worked: I was “fuzzy brained”. I didn’t think logically. I was a writer, a draw-er, a right-brainer. But I have since realized that these were simply excuses to cover over my laziness and lack of will to learn something that I believed was useless. I have always been stubborn, and when it came to math (and science), I simply didn’t want to learn it. In my old age, I now realize that I was and am perfectly capable of applying myself to math. The problem is, with math you are supposed to keep building on the foundation of what you have learned, so that one year you learn decimals, and then the next fractions, and then the next ratios, that kind of thing. You are suppose to retain information and then develop your understanding with this foundation intact.

I stopped retaining my mathematical learning in the 3rd grade, when I decided that I didn’t think math had any purpose in my life. This obviously made things difficult in school, as I never really learned how to do much except the most basic of arithmetic. The only way I got through was by utilizing the fact that even when you don’t understand how to do something, there are always examples for each type of problem. So you can look at all the answers to the odd numbered questions in the back of the book, which are essentially identical to the even numbered questions, except with different values. It takes little effort, as it’s basically monkey-see-monkey-do rather than an innate understanding of concepts. That’s how I got through math, up to pre-calc. And then, other than the SAT, I thought that I was done forever with math. This was a more or less accurate assessment, except that I had to ostensibly tutor high schoolers in the subject when I was working as an instructional assistant. However, the math was easy, and my students were all special ed and needed extra reiteration (don’t think for a second that I’m saying they’re stupid; they just don’t generally grasp bullshit standardized subjects very quickly because their brains don’t function in a “normal” manner), which meant that I got pretty good at explaining how to do things just by doing examples over and over again. But other than that, I’ve always been able to do what little math I’ve had to do in my life with the assistance of the handy invention of the calculator.

That is, until I started recently studying for the GRE. I breezed through the reviews of the antonyms, the word comparisons, and the reading comprehension sections. There are a lot of weird words that I’ve never really learned that I’ve got to memorize, such as pulchtritude, or splenetic, but on the whole I find the exercises fairly straightforward, if annoying and snobbily academic. Then I got to the math section. And suddenly I went from swimming in the sea to fumbling in the rocky rapids. My self-confidence dropped to my knees. And I was reminded, harshly, of the fact that I had stopped applying myself to math in the 3rd grade.

So now in my belated adult existence I am attempting to teach myself math all over again. It’s akin to learning a new language for me, and it takes double the effort because I still have an ingrained bias against math in my mind. I keep telling myself that I am fundamentally incapable of learning it, even though I know this is untrue. And I know this is untrue because while I was reviewing the verbal sections of the GRE, I came to a sudden realization of something: analyzing literature and utilizing words effectively is actually much closer to the process underlying mathematics and science then one would think.

I have had this realization before. In college, I had some roommates that were studying engineering, computer science, and pre-med, and inevitably the issue arose in conversation regarding the nature of the different majors, the fuzzies vs. the logical reasoners, the English vs the hard sciences. I was always frustrated that people seem to think that when you are writing an essay about literature, that it is all completely subjective bullshit. Sometimes it is—but then it isn’t good writing. The fact is, all good writing is based quite firmly on what is given and established, just as a scientist proceeds with his hypothesis based on established research. When analyzing a piece of literature, the essayist must thoroughly examine it, and accumulate the evidence that will contribute to his thesis. He then takes all this evidence and ties it all up into a convincing argument, bolstered by flourishes of flow and nifty word placement. It’s like what a lawyer does when he researches past cases and nuances of applicable law in order to write up his case. It’s an effort that is completely logical, and defensible through evidence and a coherence of presentation.

Such literary efforts can always be made through differing points of view—but these points of view must be defensible by what has already been established, or else they hold no water. You can argue, for example, the far-fetched notion that Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs is really a covert parable of a spiritual science of the seven chakras—but you’d better be able to provide concrete evidence from the movie that corresponds directly to metaphysical literature on chakras. Otherwise, it’s just a bunch of bullshit. In other words, you can posit any kind of thesis that you want, but you have to be able to defend your position, and convince others that your position is superior. If your thesis is confirmed by the wider community of critical scrutiny, then it becomes part of the established canon of literary criticism. Just as the process that occurs when a scientific hypothesis is confirmed as valid and takes its place as established theory until another theory comes along that is more inclusive.

Anyway, so the gist of what I’m saying is that the process of thought that is applied in either the conceptual effort of math or writing is essentially the same. It just takes some rote memorization and a concerted effort on the part of the thinker. So I’m like a little kid again, going back to school. We’ll see if my experiment in applying myself as fully as I can to mathematics will work or not. So far, the outlook is dim, as I still remain just as stubborn in my old age as I was when I was a young whippersnapper. But I’ll give it a go.

Wish me luck and let’s both hope that I am able to not only get some much needed sleep, but that I also eventually start writing some good non-mundane and non-mathematical posts real soon.

Fun with Guns

Funny that I should have just been having an involved discussion about guns—I was reminded that my grandfather had a gun collection, and that my sisters and I had been meaning to find them, clean them, and see if they were worth anything. So this morning I interrogated my dad about their whereabouts, and climbed up a ladder to the top of the garage to sort through mountain heaps of dust and old furniture, carpets, and linoleum until I discovered them all wrapped up in an old blanket, tucked away in the corner.
They must have been well-taken care of by my grandfather, as evidenced by the fact that they’ve been collecting dust and moisture over the last 30 years in storage, but are still in fairly good condition. I felt like I inadvertently got a little closer to my grandfather, whom I had never really known except when I was a baby, as he passed away when I was two. I knew that he was a Southerner in spirit, and that he liked to grill and sail and eat fried chicken. Turns out he was also a sharpshooter, and had an appreciation for guns. I also found a bag of his old golf clubs up there, from back when the “woods” were really made out of wood.
This was this first time I’d handled “real” guns, other than for a pistol that had been discovered by my housekeeping crew last year underneath the pillow of a guest, who had just left it there when he vacated his room. That was certainly a weird circumstance. I wasn’t sure if I was supposed to give the gun back to the guy or hold it and check its legality. That was the first time I realized the awful power and physical presence of guns. It didn’t help that the guest was kind of weird about it, and claimed that he just used it to go hunting in the woods (with a pistol?), and then started going off about his constitutional rights. I ended up giving it back to him.
Anyway, so it was with a strange mixed feeling of awe and fear that I dusted these rifles off and appraised them, 12 in all. I don’t like guns conceptually, nor most of the stereotypical people that think it’s their god-given right to wield them, but I have to admit that I find my grandfather’s rifles to be objects of beauty, finely crafted of quality wood and metal. They are obviously nice rifles, apparently from all over the world, as 2 of them have Japanese or Chinese characters on them, and one is made in Australia. I don’t know enough about guns to know what types they are, but they appear to be from the WWII-era. I’m going to do a little research and discover how much they are worth, and clean them up a bit, but I’m considering keeping a couple for myself for display. I don’t have much interest in shooting them, I just think that they are family keepsakes not only of a bygone past, but also interesting talismans of our day and age. We’ll see. I’m still ambivalent about keeping any kind of weaponry around the house (even if sans ammo), but I guess it would be the logical addition to my wooden nunchuks . . .

Where Will You Live?

Out of the infinite variability that constitutes the potentiality of the future, out of the multiplicity of the many worlds that coexist parallel and pristine, you’ve got to narrow it all down to one: one choice, one place, one determination. It’s like the vision of god as one descendant into the fractured multiplicity of material existence, mirrored in the microcosm of your little world, each moment, this stand, this decision, this displacement of all the other possibilities in favor of a moment’s will.

Of course, everything that you do is some part of a cosmic vision, and though you are granted infinite variable self-choice and will, your course is like the trail of water that descends a rocky hillside down to the river—one way or another, gravity guides you to your wellspring, your purpose, your given direction. Though you could go this way or that in any given moment—eddied into a stagnant pool, perhaps, to percolate into the soil, or caught up into the tendrils of a thirsty tree—in the end, you are a part of a whole system of saturation that serves the goal and function of the greater purpose no matter where you turn, no matter whether you stay or go or will or no.

But still. To play at god even in the small confines of your own personal choice in direction can be a frightening occupation. How to choose? By what grounds? By what randomized set of desires, goals, descriptions?

Which city, which town, which municipality, which state? Where will you live? How can you know how you can live there until you move there and try?

AARRRRGGHH!!!

It is times like these that you understand the innate human tendency to be led. How much more convenient it is to have guideposts and fences, gently directing you into a commonly assured fit, a manufactured contentment. A family patriarch who determines what career path you will follow. A professor who takes you under their wing. A lover who firmly puts their foot down. THIS way. Choose this. Offering you either embrace, or rejection. Reject them, and turn away oppositely into another direction that comforts just the same in its inevitability of need.

So which voice within yourself, then, will you follow? You take on the voices of each prospective city, calling out the luring wares, the multidimensional facets of descending there, landing your hope and energy and body there.

I must be a studied consumer, a smart purchaser of my own future. I must think through where I might possibly want to go. Which career, which business, which graduate program, which river, which ocean, which political majority, which crime rate, which housing cost. . . which sand speculated speck of a clear-eyed dream will you feel, deep within, to be manifestly necessary, appropriately situated within the embedded heart of your hope, representative and symbolic of the love that you wish to grow, the life that you wish to expand, the vision that you wish to nurture into reality, into the grounded body of flashing light that is this city that will shape you, mold you—or that you will take into the palm of your heart and mesh into the stream that is your absolute becoming?

To fall into this glove of motion like a goat down and up the rocks, like Coltrane up and down the scales, ascendant, descendant, picking through the shadows with a light that makes a trail into heaven through the spine of every word combined, every aspirant thought flashed into a connecting, consuming vision. Does it matter where we go? We could go anywhere. We can only come back to this, here, ourselves awakening into the terrible beauty that is ourselves in the midst of an ocean of strangers, our selves cast off lonely and bickering into the night to find out what was here all along, within ourselves.

Home, of course, is always there. I know it is there. And so I can go where I must go, where I will go, where I choose to go. I’ve just got to whittle away this thought a little more, until there is no thought left and only force of movement in its stead.

Luggage Update

So my luggage has been returned, after 3 hellacious days consisting of phonecalls that led nowhere, listless employees that wouldn’t help me until I got pissy with them, a COPA airlines desk that had no phone-number, and when I finally went all the way back to LAX to talk to them in person, I found out that they also don’t even work at their desk until 8 or 9 at night, depending on who you ask. It was a successive series of tragic/comedic errors, culminating in the final punch-line of opening up my long-lost luggage only to find that it had been pilfered by a strangely selective thief. They stole: my Colombian hammock, my REI quick-dry T-shirt that was given to me as a gift by my sister, my Spanish-English dictionary, my Lonely Planet guidebook, my Tom’s of Maine deodorant (!), and my few remaining multivitamins (!). Weird. I’m really mostly pissed about the hammock and the T-shirt. But at least I got the majority of my clothes and luggage back, right? I also had purchased travel insurance before I left, and it should (supposedly) cover missing baggage items. Although I will never be able to replace that hammock. While that hammock was only $14 down there, it would probably fetch anywhere between $50-100 in the States. Damn.
But they DID NOT take, thank god, the two tropical jams that I had obtained right before I left, my mermeladas de lulo y uchuva. I’m pretty excited to give those suckers a spread on some fresh bread.

Luggage Lost and Dreams Deferred

—Sorry, I just re-read this piece after having posted it first thing this morning, whilst still fuming in exasperation. I just realized how absolutely pissy the whole thing sounds, so I apologize. I will leave it posted, however, in the hope that you find some humor in it, and also because I think it still stands as a necessary rant to get it all of my chest—

It was almost like Colombia couldn’t let us escape that easily—we had to be put through the fire of inefficiency, rudeness, and utter chaos and confusion before we could leave its dastardly clutches. Yes, I am now safe and sound in Los Angeles; but minus a piece of luggage. If it were that simple, of course, I would not be elaborating. Alas, the whole truth is not quite so pleasant to remember. . .
It began in Bogota, although at the time, we hadn’t realized that it had begun. It began with our interaction with the Aerorepublica (the carrier for the Copa airlines ticket we had orignally gotten through Orbitz.com) representative who gave us our tickets. As the first leg of our flight was simply from Bogota to Medellin, we were checked in domestically, even though our final destination was international. I tried to clarifiy this with the Aerorepublica chica, and that we only had a mere hour in between flights. Oh, no problem, she reassured us. I double checked. We still had to go through customs, get screened, pay the airport tax, etc, and I was worried that we wouldn’t have time to do that. And what about picking up our luggage, and then re-checking it in? Nothing to worry about, she said flippantly, just ask when you get there, it’s easy. At least, that’s the jist of what I understood she was saying, as she was, of course, speaking in rapid Spanish.
So we arrived in Medellin, and retrieved our luggage. There were no clear signs anywhere to be seen that would give us a clue on where to go next. We asked an official where we should go for our connecting international flight. He pointed us vaguely towards some stairs, and up we went, hurrying because we only had 20 minutes until boarding time for our next flight. We arrived at what looked to be the international gate, which we determined from the sign that said, “international departures.” But it also said Avianca. We approached the gate, skirting around a cluster of a family who were simply standing there talking to each other. Suddenly, the lady in the red coat at the gate snarled at my girlfriend (people in Colombia always speak to my girlfriend, not to me, because she is Latina looking, even though I technically speak better Spanish) and told her that there was a line. We looked around. Apparently, those people who were just standing there were in the line, although they weren’t making any effort to move towards the gate. So we dutifully stepped behind them until they ended whatever involved discussion they were having and moved. Waiting and waiting, getting frantic because we were running short on time. When we finally got up the lady in the red coat, she looked at our tickets and said, “oh, this gate is for other destinations. For Panama City, you have to go up there,” and she pointed up some more stairs. Well, thanks for making us wait in a non-existent line without checking if that was where we should be, biatch. So, we trucked up the stairs, still carrying our luggage, because we had so far seen no such thing as an airline counter. We then arrived at customs. We then dealt with 3 different officials, NONE of whom gave the slightest indication that we shouldn’t have been going through with all of our luggage on us. They passed us on through to the military checkpoint, wherein they go through every inch of your bags, rifling through each page of your books. As I have been to Israel before, this didn’t perturb me that much, as I expected them to be pretty thorough, given that their country is in a civil war and plagued by drug trafficking. What I wasn’t so thrilled about was that they really took their sweet time, and my plane had been boarding for a while now. The soldier going carefully through my shit was actually a nice young lad, and was trying to make conversation with me. I think he was complimenting me on trying to learn Spanish and telling me that I could speak well. Which was funny, because I didn’t understand a damn thing he was telling me, for the reason that he was looking down the entire time and speaking down into my luggage very softly in rapid Spanish. OK, so I finished with that, and then waited, and waited and waited as my girlfriend was being checked. She was obviously having some kind of problem, and as she speaks even less Spanish than I do, I tried to go over to assist her, but of course the soldiers wouldn’t let me. When she finally got through, she was in tears of frustration, because the soldier had taken some items from her. That was when we found out that all of the luggage we had on us was considered to be carry-on items. Where were we supposed to have checked them in?
We arrived at our flight gate, the final passengers to board. The lady took our tickets, and then looked at our luggage. “You can’t take those on,” she told us. Well, what were we supposed to do? We also hadn’t yet paid our airport tax. Now, let me remind you here that we had just been dutifully following the directions given to us this entire time. If anyone had told us, hey, you need to go to the airline counter (wherever that may have been) and check your bags in, then we would have done so. No one told us this at any step durning the time-consuming customs and security process. No one said, hey, you can’t carry on all those big items. NADA.
So anyway, after the lady freaked out, and we freaked out, she frantically took our airport tax (which fortunately we already had the money ready, as we knew about the tax) on the spot, and they took our luggage and gave us little hand-written slips.
Great, so now we were headed to Panama City, and who knew where the hell our bags would end up. And my girlfriend had items taken from her (one of them given to her by her grandmother) that she would never get back, all because 1) the stupid lady at Aerorepublica in Bogota happy-go-luckily just sent us all straight on into doom; then 2) the offical in the luggage pick-up area who send us straight on towards customs; then 3) the Avianca bitch who held us up and then misdirected us (it looked like there were other airline carrier counters behind her, but who knows what those were); and finally, 4) the string of officials we went through at customs who didn’t even blink an eye at the obvious amounts of non-carry on items we were trucking around.
We had been summarily fucked by the whole Colombian airline system (as well as by my retarded tickets, which were the cheapest by far I could find, but which decided to route me through 2 different stops, one of them domestic, before I could head towards the States). Thanks guys!
Well, it would be nice if I could end this tale of tragedy and woe right there. But no.
We switched to our flight to LAX in Panama City, minus our luggage this time, which we could only hope would find their way. However, in my point of view, things were going about as smoothly—minus the hassle in Medellin—as one could hope, given that all of our flights were on time, and we were able to make our connections without delay. We were now on the plane towards what I could only conceive as HOME (i.e. toilets with lids, hot water, vegetables . . .), and though we were still worried about our luggage, at least we knew that we would make it, without having to spend hours stranded in an airport in Panama city.
After the 6 1/2 hours of flight time, which oddly felt like way longer, even though we’d recently been on 14 hour and 10 hour bus rides that felt way shorter. Maybe it has something to do with the strange timelessness of high altitude flight. Or the everpresent smell of air conditioned poo. Anyway, so we arrived in LA at 11 in the evening, as sheduled. My sister’s husband had already kindly agreed (in fact, insisted; a kind soul indeed) that he would pick us up, so we were glad that everything was going as planned. We were taken outside and then shoved into a bus which shuttled us over to the luggage area. People were shoving and running as if they were going to get anywhere fast. I think we were all just thrilled to be on our feet and going somewhere. We were all thinking of hot showers, non-airplane food, and giant, peaceful, toilet-seated dumps. We went through the initial customs screening, and then waited diligently by our alloted luggage carousel. And waited. And waited. Now, let me first get into the scene here at this carousel, which is pretty much repeated in every carousel around the world.
Why is it that human beings are so self-absorbed and greedy that they have to shove to the very front of the luggage pick-up with their little hand-carts, as if their luggage is going to be the first to come around? Why can’t we all just hang back and wait patiently, so that everyone can see the carousel, and then simply step forward and grab our luggage as it comes around? Why is this dream so difficult to realize? Everyone was pushing, shoving, shouldering, elbowing, bumping their little carts into your shins, until you couldn’t even see the carousel at all. And it hadn’t even started yet.
And another word on these f’ing little luggage carts. Why does it have to be right next to the carousel? You can’t haul your stupid luggage 2 feet?
So everyone had their carts all lined up side-by-side like racecars along the carousel. And then . . . the luggage began to thunk down and circle about the carousel! A fight broke out between two large men. A squat lady in heels frantically leapt at her oversized luggage, and fell back with it as she ripped it from off the carousel and into the throng of people, swinging it into my leg and shoving me back into one of those stupid little carts, almost knocking me backwards over it.
People kept doing this—frantically lunging at their luggage when they spotted it, desperately fumbling at the handle as it passed them by and hanging on for dear life because it was too heavy for them, until some kindly large man would gallantly pick it up off the carousel for them, whereupon they would grasp at it and swing it out against all surrounding bystanders. It’s like what, you don’t think your luggage is going to come back around on the fucking carousel 2 minutes later?
One lady stood in front of me lined up in the front-line of the carousel, with her foot propped up on her cart behind her, shoving it back into my shin continuously whenever she would crane forward to see the luggage as it passed. When I saw my girlfriend’s luggage pass by, I shoved between people and grabbed it, taking pleasure in manhandling this lady’s cart and shoving it out of the way, as I had been anointed with the blessing of a luggage in hand.
Good, I thought, there is hope. My girlfriend’s bag is here, so mine must be here too. We waited, until the luggage train petered out, and it wasn’t to be seen. I looked everywhere for the supposed Copa airlines official who should have been there so that I could alert them to my missing luggage. Of course, none to be found. I talked to another airline’s official, and asked them where I could find the Copa representative, or file a missing baggage claim. She looked around wildly and shrugged. Do you know who I could ask who would know? I asked. She shrugged. I walked around the chaotic luggage area, looking for anyone somewhat official who could help me. The most I could wrest from them was that I should go to the airline counter for Copa.
It had now been 2 hours since we had landed. We then got in line for the final little customs crap, and were shunted out into the night. Luckily, my sister’s husband had not given up on us yet, even though our Copa flight was mysteriously completely missing from the list of arrivals, and he had been beginning to think that he had mistaken the day of our flight.
We then followed the signs at the terminal which said that Copa airlines should be at Terminal 6. We passed by it, seeing no Copa counter. And furthermore, it being the middle of the night, all counters were closed anyway. So we went back to my sister’s apartment.
This morning, I tried to call Copa to file my claim. The lady I talked to told me I was talking to Copa in Panama City (even thought it was a US 800 number), so she couldn’t do anything for me. She gave me the number for the LAX airport. I called it and found the number for Copa: the exact same number I had just called. I called the lady I had just talked to back, and she said she didn’t have any number for the Copa at LAX, but she could give me an email address. Great.
So right now I’m just waiting until tonight, when I can get driven back to the airport, where hopefully I can find the Copa desk, as well as an English speaking Copa representative, and where I can then hopefully locate my luggage, or file a claim, or something, whatever shit it is you do for these kinds of fuckups.
The good news is, I’m back in the States. The good news is, I expected to lose my luggage, so my most valuable possessions I have on me. The good news is, I was able to spend some time on a toilet with a seat on it! And I could throw the paper into the toilet! I keep worrying that I’m going to clog the plumbing by doing that. The good news is, I have now taken 2 hot showers—totally hot, and it doesn’t start running out 2 minutes into the shower! This is fucking paradise.
I’ve had a couple cups of the Juan Valdez guajira coffee I’d gotten in Colombia this morning, and now I’m just enjoying being back. I just wanted to get that whole nightmare that was yesterday off my back. Colombia, I made it. I have escaped your clutches intact, with most of my stuff. HA!
Stay tuned for a Colombian wrap-up post, and an update on my luggage. I know you’ll be hanging on the edges of your seats. Sit tight. Drink some coffee.
—Mr. Peeves

Esperando para Los Vuelos a Casa (eventualmente)

I’m sitting here at the airport El Dorado in Bogotá, awaiting my flight to Medellín, where I must then do all the customs crap within the hour before the next flight to Panama City departs, whereupon I then change flights, yet again, for the final long last leg to Los Angeles.

There’s pretty much everything you could desire here at the airport, including donuts de maracuyá at good ol’ Dunkin’ Donuts, artisan stuff, Juan Valdez, and internet (as you can see). I also just got my haircut here at the airport, and it was a damn good haircut! My hair was starting to get pretty ridiculous after 55 days here (i.e. outgrowths and tufts of hair projecting out of my neck and over mine ears), and I had been meaning to get a haircut for a while, but never seemed to find a place open (how typical here in Colombia). It was a hell of a lot better, and cheaper, than the Supercuts haircut I would have received at home.

If you’ve popped over here from Poor But Happy (I just noticed a connecting link to my page was added, thanks to whomever that was!), welcome and please peruse through my various rants and mundane adventures from my trip in Colombia and see if any of my (mis) adventures bear any relation to your own trip, or trip-in-the-making. If you want to ask me any questions or want my opinionated advice, I’m more than happy to share, and thanks for visiting!

If and when I make it back to Los Estados, I’ll post a lil wrap-up and summation of the trip entire. Until then comrades, hasta luego, piiiiigs iiiiiin spaaaaace . . . . .

Stop the Press—It’s Raining

Well, just when I began to think Bogotá was a civilized modern city, it goes and rains. Not a lot of rain—just your normal intermittent rain shower. And quite obviously, we’re talking tropics here. It rains pretty frequently in Bogotá. And yet—no one, apparently, when they were laying down all those miles and miles of concrete and tar, thought to design in some storm drains into the streets in the city center.

This morning we got up bright and early so that we could grab breakfast and then go do some stupid touristy activity outside the city. And it commenced to rain heavily, of course, right as we walked out the door. Alright, well, no big deal, I just busted out the umbrella that I had ready for such circumstances. The problem, it turns out, was not the water coming down from above, but the water which began to run in rivulets down the sides of the streets. As we huddled together under my umbrella on the little miniscule broken sketchy sidewalks (you’re never quite sure if those hole-covers are going to fall through or not), we then began to get absolutely drenched—not from the rain, but from the taxis and buses which happily swamped us with all the running water in the street as they sped obliviously past. It was a bit of a farce, really, to try to avoid getting rained on when we had buckets of water coming at us sideways. And then when we got to a crosswalk on a bigger street, there were torrents of water gushing down along the sides of the sidewalk. There was no avoiding it—you had to plow along straight through it, ankle deep, your pant legs dragging. It could have been kind of funny, if I wasn’t totally cold and soaked and pissed off, to watch the businessmen stork-stepping frantically through it to get to the other side without being hit by an oncoming bus. And by the way, I don’t think I’m doing it justice by calling it water—this is black-brown city-liquid we’re talking here. All the dog poo and garbage and cigarrette butts and food scraps and all the other nameless and unthinkable detritus of a Colombian city street all washed up and mixed in together, slushing into and saturating your sandals.

It’s just kind of unfathomable to me as to how you could possibly have torrents of uncrossable water alongside of city streets in a city where it rains all the friggin’ time! Exactly what is so complicated about storm drains? Huh?

Not really something to put one in a good mood first thing in the morning, when I probably only slept maybe a solid four hours at the most (can you tell that I’m snappy?). We ducked into a café for breakfast and canceled our plans for venturing outside of the city, electing instead to spend the day hiding away in internet places and cafés and reading and drinking hot chocolate. I sat there cursing the city for its ridiculous lack of human design—and then of course, a beggar on the street spots us through the window and decides to pop his head in and commence yelling at me for money. Now, the thing to note here is that he yells specifically at me, while there are other people sitting there and walking all around him. This is a 5-times-a-day occurrence here in Bogotá—beggars spot my blonde hair and come running from miles around, as if I’m Santa Claus. They ignore all the hordes of well-dressed, moneyed Colombians all around them and hone in on me. Which means, apparently, that gringos must really be shelling out the doe. People actually will wait outside of restaurants for us to come out, poaching us for the pesito. They will follow us for blocks. One kid the other night had us staked out in our restaurant, and came literally running from a block away when he saw us leave, a big smile on his face like it was his birthday. It’s getting pretty old. As a general policy of mine, I never give money to beggars. For one, I don’t like being treated like a faceless cajero automático. For another, I don’t think that giving random individuals on the street money does anything beyond salving one’s conscience in terms of bettering anyone’s lives or taking people out of poverty. There are times when I will give someone a spot of money, if they treat me like a human being instead of like a source of money, and I’ve talked to them for a while. But call me heartless, but I don’t feel much compassion for people who harrass me shamelessly on the street.

As to what my ideas are on actually doing anything about helping to raise people out of poverty, I’ve been working on some thoughts here in Colombia that I’m going to try to work through in another post.

—-Mr. Whiny-pants

Travel Story

Traveling is an experience that always compels a re-evaluation of your own habits and customs, and throws you continuously into new situations that further impel you to critique your own perceptions, your own self-image. During my trip to Perú, I had found myself going through a lot of introspection, for I was traveling alone and often had little else to do but contemplate and turn inward. I also had been dealing with the death of a friend and co-worker, and overall, the whole trip became rather spiritual in nature due to this thought and self-exploration. I was learning self-reliancy, confidence in new and challenging situations, and the ability to allow the universe to manifest some of its boundless potential.

As in any trip, therefore, my trip to Colombia has a sub-context, a narrative that extends throughout, present beneath all of the surface-level passings of circumstance and activity. The whole trip has not been anything at all like what I experienced alone in Perú, and the reason is quite simple: I am traveling with my girlfriend. And thus the underlying story of this trip has been one of our relationship. I had foreseen this before we’d left, knowing that travel is always stressful for relationships, whether between friends, family, or lovers. And it has indeed been a rocky road. All of my experiences on the trip have been filtered through the window of our togetherness.

At first, I found myself frustrated with the lack of freedom. While traveling alone is often lonely, it also gives you the ability to freely associate with strangers in ways that you are buffered against while traveling with other people. You tend to drift into random conversations with people in bars, on the street. You speak only in Spanish because you don’t have any other option, other than just hanging out with other gringo backpackers. You are more open to being placed into potentially sketchy situations, because you have only yourself to worry about.

Traveling with someone changes all of that instantaneously. You have someone to conversate with at all times in English, so thus anywhere you venture into, you always have a buffer of safety with you, wherein you can speak your own language and avoid contact with strangers. And traveling with your girlfriend, you feel much more protective, and less willing to be placed in potentially sketchy situations. You are more secure, and thus more unwilling to take risks.

So I had to contend with these differences and realize that this trip was not going to be the trip that I had envisioned before coming to Colombia. I was not going to go out dancing all the time, I was not going to meet and hang-out with many locals, and I was not going to speak much Spanish beyond the interaction of commerce and transport. Thus, other than the time spent with my extended Colombian family, I have had little insider insight into the culture, and have rather been stuck on the outside, and somewhat bitter about it, I suppose. This has resulted in some squabbles between my girlfriend and I until I came somewhat to terms with the trip as it is and will be.

And on the other side of this has been the self-questioning I’ve been undergoing about our relationship in general. Basically, I was getting something like cold feet, because I was thinking too much about the future, and could only envision the looming mirage of marriage, kids, etc, and this only made me frightened. When all of this internal torment finally came out and I laid it on the table, my girlfriend made me understand that I can’t think that far ahead into the future. I was thinking so much about some distant, uncertain future that I couldn’t allow myself to enjoy what I have right now, which is all that really matters anyway.

When you spend every waking and sleeping minute with another person, all of the bad sides of yourself can’t be shuttered up or given the space needed to be released without inflicting suffering on the other person. I’m the type of person that doesn’t know what he feels immediately, and I need some time to process and work through things before I understand where I’m at. So sometimes, before I know what’s happening, I’ll just start to be mean, because I’m trying to work through something and I don’t know it yet, and I’m trying to get space.

So this journey in Colombia has been a learning experience in ways that go beyond the bus trips and hostal stays and excursions and forays and food and cafés. I’m learning that I’m not always the person I want to be, neither for myself, nor for my girlfriend. I’m learning that I need to learn how to lead, and not just hesitate and wait for things to happen. I’m learning that I can be a difficult person to get along with. I’m learning what it is to be loved in all of my daily and eternal imperfection, and I’m learning how to try and give that love back, unconditionally.

So where my trip to Perú was about introspection and self-questioning, this trip in Colombia has been about my relationship, and about going beyond myself. I think it is somewhat fitting in some ways, given that Colombian culture in general is more fast-paced and based on the fleeting moments of the everyday, with its coke and its plastic surgeries and its ongoing warfare. On another post, I will attempt to grapple some more with what impressions I’ve gotten of Colombia as a whole, as that is a whole ‘nother beast to tackle. Til then.

El Peñol

Yesterday we ventured out into the surrounding countryside outside Medellín to visit El Peñol, a giant monolith plopped down into a lush valley spotted with lakes. The road out there, of course, is intermittent, hole-filled, and packed with diesel spewing trucks and buses. The rock itself is massive, and they’ve built these crazy concrete stairs up the side of it, and on top, crowned it with this crazy looking castle-like lookout (that last sentence was cool). You haul yourself up these tiny, spiralling concrete stairs, shouldering through the hordes of Latin American tourists and their kids, and after 649 steps, you’re up on top, with a gift shop and snack place! There are some spectacular views of the surrounding valley, if you can make some elbow room to take a picture.

We trekked on back down to a nearby resort/hotel to grab a bite to eat, and it was there that I realized that I am sick to death of Colombian food. I don’t really like criticizing a whole country’s national cuisine, but the fact is that it is really pretty uninspiring. It’s meat, rice, arepas, and platanos—with the platanos being the best thing on the dish. I kind of like the bean soup they have, but that gets old pretty quick as well. This isn’t to say that there aren’t good restaurants and food here—it’s just overall, the typical dishes you end up eating most days are just not anything to write home about. I comfort myself with the everpresent jugos naturales. If it weren’t for the jugos, I’d be up a tree for sure. Speaking of which, I tried another new fruit juice, called feijoa. It tasted like a really tart strawberry. I really will miss the juices. I will miss the juices, the hot chocolate, and the tintos.

Anyway, so then we had to wait around on the side of the road for 40 minutes until a bus passed that wasn’t completely full to the brim with passengers. But don’t get me wrong—the bus that we got on was full, and then got fuller. We were in the bus drivers compartment up front, and I was shoved in directly behind the driver’s seat, such that whenever he reached back to push the lever to open the doors, he had to shove past my leg. My girlfriend and I were sitting on this little seat with our asses hanging over half of it, and my leg was shoved against some level panel, and my shoulder against some window switch, and we were both squeezed in by an overweight lady who took up most of the little seat with her ass. It was a highly uncomfortable bumpy and windy 2 hour trip back to Medellín, to say the least, and not to mention the fumes that were gassing up our lungs. I am glad that there are very few buses remaining in my Colombian future. Just the 9 hour one tomorrow down the Cordillera Central and up the Cordillera Oriental. . . Ack!

¡A la orden!

Yesterday we embarked upon a chiva (a colorful wooden bus) tour of the city, visiting the scenic convent on the hill and the tunnels of the fortress of San Felipe. The tourists, most of whom were Colombian, took pictures of everything—sometimes clampering over each other to fight for a picture of themselves in front of something . They were like the paparazzi of tourism. Some had video cameras, others even had tape recorders and would hold it up to the guide as he gave his speeches. The most annoying facet of the tour, however, was that there was an official videocamera recording the whole thing, so that they could try to sell you the tape at the end for some outrageous fee. The guy with the camera would always be there, as we came up the stairs or out of a tunnel, blinking in the light, waving at us with the videocamera in our face calling, “hey gringos! hey Ingles!” I would try and ignore him, or just glare at the camera. For those putzes who actually purchased the video, I’m sure they’ll enjoy making fun of the awkward, impolite gringos.

 

It being Sunday, absolutely nothing is open except a few restaurants. It’s somewhat unnerving to walk down the city streets and be the only ones there, aside from pigeons. One wonders where they all disappear to. Don’t people need to waste their time and money on Sundays too? I suppose all the tourists hole away in their Bocagrande section of town, where all the giant expensive hotels are (and I’m sure a number of crepes places as well).

Other than that, the other interesting tidbit for the day was that I found a place that sold jugo de borojo. Not having seen that fruit before, of course I had to try it. It was pretty tasty, kind of a berry type of flavor. I then later found out it is considered to have aphrodesiacal properties. Great. That seems to be a theme for me in South America. . .

Let’s see, que más. . . Ah, here’s another thing to love and be miffed at by Cartagena about: the whole “a la orden” thing. It literally means something akin to “at your service,” except that vendors use it here like a catchphrase. It’s basically the set response to anything from someone selling you something, whether in a restaurant, in a store, or on the street. They also say it to you as you pass by them as an attempt to lure you into buying their wares. The funny thing is, though, that no one says it in a “customer service” oriented fashion at all. It’s just the thing to say. “A la orden” they unenthusiastically mumble when you enter their restaurant. “A la orden,” they say when you’ve made your food order. “A la orden”, they say when you say gracias as they place your food on the table. And so on and so forth, throughout the entire process. It’s like alright already, I get it, you’re at my service. Thanks. How about trying out some other service oriented phrases for a change, eh?

Cartagena

 

Cartagena is pretty much what we’ve been looking for this whole trip: good pasteles everywhere, an abundance of fried goodness, juices (supposedly; I’m still looking for them, I know they’re here), nice cafés and restaurants, small colorful colonial streets that you could wander aimlessly in all day if you can stand the heat. Unfortunately, we can’t eat anything much because our stomachs are still caught in the vise-grip talons of our stomach dragons. The good news is, they have these great little bakeries scattered about that vend fresh pan de queso, which as it’s name implies, consists of bread melted with cheese, some of them with some mermelada de maracuyá spread inside as well. So at least we can munch on those while waiting to recover, and drink chocolate caliente. We are in full vacation relax mode now, with my main objectives in the next week simply being to find a good juice stall, a good café for chillaxing in, and once able to eat, a nice cheap restaurant. That’s all that’s on the agenda, really, besides celebrating Christmas Caribbean style.

Parque Tayrona

 

We’ve just returned from the beaches of Parque Tayrona, which is the requisite post-Ciudad Perdida-trek stop on the traveler’s circuit. We had envisioned ourselves swaddled in hammocks, supping on fresh tropical juices, relaxing on the beach, swimming in lukewarm Caribbean water, and watching the sunset. But I am sorry to say, this trip to Parque Tayrona—one of the number one tourist destinations for Colombianos on holiday as well—was just slightly disappointing. A list of some of the intervening factors: 1) A long, muddy hike into the site, all too clearly reminiscent of the 6-day trek to Ciudad Perdida; 2) you can’t even really swim at these beaches, because of the strong currents—there’s only about 2 slightly dippable bays; 3) you have to walk far to get to these somewhat swimmable bays, except if you’re staying at Cabo, which I’ll get into in a moment; 4) some non-mosquito insect bites the living shit out of you; 5) not many juices at all, and none at Cabo; 6) everything is overpriced, of course; 7) no refrigeration + tropical heat = stomach problems; and 8 ) the hammocks are either not comfortable at all, or it is too crowded and no space, or some people decide to stay up late right next to you and chat away at full volume all night long.

The first night we were there, we stayed at the 1st place you see in Arrecifes. The hammocks sucked (though they look nice enough), but they provided mosquito nets, and the showers and bathrooms are better than any of the hostals we’ve stayed at thus far. And there’s actually toilet paper in there!

Once we had settled our stuff into our nice little wooden lockers and put some food into our stomachs, we went off to dip into the water. After all, the whole point of being in Parque Tayrona is it’s beaches, right? We walked down from our thatched palm structure down to the water, which was a mere few strides away. To find that the sand stretched all about was empty. No one sunbathing, no one frolicking in the surf. And then we noted the no swimming signs, and the fact that the waves were bearing down on the weary shore like taxi drivers on a pedestrian in Bogotá. So, no swimming there. OK. We followed some people who were walking on ahead, and we walked, and we walked, fainting in the sun, until we arrived at a sort-of-bay. It looked plausibly dippable. They sold orange juice at a stand there. We plunked our weary haunches down on a fallen coconut tree and my girlfriend tested the waters, only to be swept up in a strong backward current and plunked down into the sand on her bottom. Not this one, then. We walked on, through dense thickets of jungle foliage and mud, and finally, arrived at La Piscina. There were people there! Sunbathers, popsicle vendors, children in water! We gratefully jumped into the sea. Only to find that you can’t really go too far out, because even in this sheltered bay the waves are strong. You can only really just frolick like children in the first few feet of surf. And then lay in the sun. Or sit in the shade and read a philosophical treatise, as I did. That’s it.

We walked the long haul back, showered in the ritzy showers, ate dinner, and hunkered into our hammocks to sleep. But other people in our sleeping area obviously weren’t ready to sleep, even though there was little lighting. One set of teenagers smoked pot on the steps, a mom smoked a cigarette down the way, and a family conversated loudly in Spanish right next to us. Plus, the hammocks were hung too loose, and I could never get comfortable. Plus, it got cold at night after it rained, and even with my sweater and socks on, I found myself wishing for a blanket. So, no sleep that night.

We decided the next day to hike all the way to El Cabo, which is apparently the spot where most backpackers/gringos end up. It’s a beautiful cape, with its own little mini somewhat-swimmable bay. But the accomodations are a different matter. First of all, it’s crowded. A line of hammocks were strung up side-by-side alongside the restaurant, so close that whenever I would get up to pee in the night, I would bump my ass into the face of the girl sleeping next to me. Second of all, it wasn’t any significantly cheaper than the much nicer 1st place. Third of all, there’s no juice out there. That’s right—no juice.

To compound matters, my girlfriend decided to come down with a fever that morning, and spent the entire rest of the day laid out in her hammock, listless and incapable of movement. Not being much of a beach person in the first place, I didn’t feel very compelled to lay about by myself on a somewhat swimmable bay. So instead, I went off on yet another trek through the jungle, out to another set of ruins called Pueblito, which is essentially identical to la Ciudad Perdida (i.e. bunch of ruins of rocks in terraces where huts once stood), except that rather than trekking 6 days through the jungle for, you only have to hike over an hour’s worth out of El Cabo. It’s actually a fairly strenuous hike, mostly uphill on the way out, with these boulderous semi-steps leading most of the way. Unburdened of my non-hiking girlfriend, I happily mountain-goated my way about, losing the trail at one point and getting lost in thick foliage and sliding my way down a mountain. When I got to Pueblito, about the most interesting thing I can comment on seeing is the baby parrot sitting on an opened coconut and happily munching away while surrounded by a papparazi of Aussies snapping pictures and video. I gave in and took a picture as well, because he was damn cute.

I turned around and headed back, going too fast and slipping and falling a number of times as I sweat buckets. Upon returning to the boring but beautiful El Cabo, I joined my girlfriend in laying about in the hammock, and tried to read as well as I could without straining my neck.

That night, I met up with some trekkers I had seen on the way back from Ciudad Perdida, and shared some of their rum with them and drank some beers. I went to bed at a fairly reasonably late hour, I thought, considering that it gets dark at 5:00, but another group of people stayed up much later conversating right next to the line of people strung up in hammocks, laughing their asses off at things that weren’t even funny and annoying the shit out of me. Apparently, not many people stop to consider that the 30 other people strung up quietly in the night like larvae are actually trying to sleep.

Also, they do not provide you with mosquito nets at this luxurious Cabo location, and I was getting bit the shit out of by some unknown insect whose bites have welled up double the size of normal bites.

Also, I had to keep getting up to piss, because I’m not accustomed to drinking anymore. Which involved a stumbling about in the dark and bumping my ass into the face of the girl next to me, waking up my girlfriend to get her headlamp from her, and then stumbling out and peeing somewhere nearby and then trying to locate which hammock was mine out of the line of 50 other hammocks without shining the headlamp into everyones´faces, and then bumping a few more times into the girl next to me.

Also, I could begin to feel my stomach acting strangely, and could tell that I had some unpleasant bathroom time approaching first thing in the morning.

Also, I couldn’t move or stretch my legs sideways too much in the hammock and get comfortable without fear of swinging into the girl next to me.

Long story short, I slept even less than the 1st night. We had planned on staying three nights at Parque Tayrona, but now having witnessed the scene that is the somewhat-swimmable bays, non-refrigerated overpriced foods, and lack of various fresh juices on-hand, we decided to book it.

So we stumbled in the morning heat back through the jungle, back past the beach, waded through the water, and then had breakfast on the way out. We then tramped slowly back the long way out from Arrecifes through the windy muddy path all too reminiscent of the Ciudad Perdida christening, both my girlfriend and I growing increasingly weak and dizzy.

It was not over yet. The jungle wished to extract every ounce of pleasure and goodwill from our bodies. From the entrance of Arrecifes, it’s another long hour or so walk back to the entrance of the park. We had taken a jeep on the way in, but no transport was to be found on the way out. So we walked, and we walked, the approaching noon heat beating down. This walk down the road, in any other clime or time, would actually be quite pleasant: overhanging shade of dense green trees, a lack of frequent bypassing vehicles, and a slight breeze against the skin. But today, it was a hellish last haul, as my girlfriend stopped to vomit up the dregs of her morning ensalada de frutas, and my stomach burbled away dangerously. We stomped slowly by the remains of giant (giant) grasshoppers slewn by motorized vehicles. And finally, we made it to the entrance, where we just had time to buy a Gatorade before hopping on the bus that drives the hour back into Santa Marta.

And of course, our bus had to be the one stopped by the police and searched. We all had to disembark and watch as the police went through every compartment of our bags. The commanding officer was actually quite pleasant, and conversed with us about where we were from while another policemen shuffled through my backpack.

Anyway, so the synopsis of all of this is: our 3 days at Parque Tayrona was most definitely not relaxing. And yes, the park is beautiful. But the beaches ain’t really for just living it up and swimming, unless you just stay in your hammock all day long. We are more exhausted now then we were before we left, when we were just trying to relax after the long trek. And to top it off, now we’re ill. So my advice to you if you are planning on this requisite trip to Parque Tayrona: be aware of what you’re getting yourself into. Hawaii it may look like, but Hawaii it ain’t.

Books and pictures

Scroll down to some of the earlier posts and check out some of the photos I just finally got posted!

 

As you can see from this picture, I made a slight miscalculation in the size and quantity of books that I lugged along for the trip. I know, The Life Divine probably wasn’t the best pick for light travel reading material. But my thinking on that one was “how else and at what other time will I actually slug through this damn book?” And I have been reading it much more in Santa Marta, now that the only thing to do during the heat of the day is to find a shady nook near the Juan Valdez café. The Spanish-English Dictionary, well, yes, I could’ve brought a smaller one. The Footprint South American Handbook I am going to leave behind, as it is from 2005. And my Spanish books, sadly, have been largely neglected, and my Spanish speaking ability seems to decline each day that I am here.

The trek to the Lost City

 

We are alive, tired, and resting after the trek to Ciudad Perdida. Here’s a synopsis of the 6 day hike into the jungle: uphill, downhill, mud, more mud, lots of mud, slipping in the mud, falling in the mud, getting stuck in the mud, sweating, sweating profusely, getting bit by mosquitoes, getting bit by ticks, getting bit by bedbugs, wading through the river, wading through the river again, slipping on rocks while wading through the river for the 8th time, climbing up and down a thousand tiny steep steps, sleeping in hammocks, sleeping on ratty old mattresses. That’s pretty much the trip in a nutshell. For the nitty gritty day-by-day details, continue on, intrepid reader:

Day 1

After breakfast crepes and tintos, we bundled into the jeep that would take us over the river and through the woods to the little town wherein we would commence our journey. In the jeep we met the other 3 members of our group: an English couple and a lone Englishman, all of whom were already world-travelers, bent on conquering the globe for the next year or two . Other travelers we met along the way also fit this mold: traveling for 5 months to 2 years, traveling all over South America or over the entire known universe. I myself can’t even fathom being away for that long. 2 months or 3 months seems quite substantial enough to me. I think this difference, which can be delineated between the European and American travel norms, is that in the US we pay so much to go to college that the only recourse we have is to immediately embed ourselves in the neverending indentured servitude of a career, whereas in other modern countries, they pay less for the university and it is expected for them to go backpacking and experience the world before settling down to pints in the local pub. Whatever the case, one meets loads of Israelis, English, Aussie, and Kiwi everywhere in South America, all traveling for insanely long amounts of time and with no apparent lack of cash for the journey.

Anyway, to continue with the topic at hand: the jeep ride down the unpaved mountainous road to the small town where we would disembark was a mini-adventure in and of itself, bumping, swinging, and jostling as the driver sung to himself or told vulgar jokes to the guide. We nearly got stuck in the mud at one point, but managed to swerve out of it as chunks of mud spattered across our faces. My girlfriend was visibly pondering what she had gotten herself into.

We finally arrived and we stopped to eat some bologne sandwiches on the ubiquitous white bread which Colombians seem to relish. The journey by foot then began.

Now let me stop to clarify something: when I say that this trek was muddy, I am not speaking of little puddles of mud that you can step daintily around and avoid. When I speak of mud, I speak of the kind of mud that you can only ultimately accept as a part of yourself, the kind of mud you must become one with, the kind of mud you must slog ankle-deep through, the kind of mud that slurps into your sandals and cakes itself to your legs and clothes, the kind of mud you cannot escape.

The first day of the trek was muddy. The lone Englishman had purchased Wellington boots (or “wellis”) specifically for the trip, and he took a certain relish in tramping directly through the muddy bits while the rest of us slipped and slid about. My girlfriend and I only had our Chacos and our Keen sandals, respectively, and these were definitely not the proper footwear for excessive mud. I nearly lost one Keen within the first 20 minutes, when I got my foot completely sucked in by mud and couldn’t remove it. I had to pull my foot out of the sandal and then extricate the sandal by hand by pulling with all my force. I then had to walk barefoot until we reached a river where I could wash them out.

It rained quite a bit that first day as well, rendering what would only have been a strenuous hike into a humid, hot, wet, muddy nightmare. My girlfriend now was appalled at what she had gotten herself into, and I was starting to have some doubts myself. She fell head over heels in the mud. I slipped and did some kind of funky split and pulled a muscle in my leg severely and I thought for a moment that I was through. It was exhausting.

5 hours later, we finally arrived at the little house where we would spend the night. We met a group of fellow travelers there who were passing the night on the way back in from the city. We ate a substantial dinner of eggs, rice, potato, onions, tomatoes, and tinto. We slept in hammocks with mosquito nets, and it took me a while to get comfortable in it, and even longer to fall sleep, because a little child at the house kept waking up and wailing all night long.

Day 2

One of the extracurricular options for the morning was to venture to a nearby cocaine factory, if the group all decided they wished to go and would pay a little extra for it. We decided we would go. It wasn’t a real cocaine factory; it was more a cocaine factory exhibit, set up specifically for the gringos coming through. They took us through the process, from leaf to paste, and showed us what solutions were used at every step. It was highly educational. Among other things, gasoline and sulphuric acid are used in extracting the cocaine from the leaves. Doesn’t really compel you to put it up your nose. It’s a quite simple process, however, and extremely cheap. Considering that it is cut up to 20 times before it even reaches the market in places like LA or New York, it makes you realize that someone out there is making a hell of a lot of money. We were allowed to try the paste at the end, and it made my mouth really numb.

Then off we went for our second day out. This was supposed to be an easier and shorter day. It wasn’t. However, the good news was that it didn’t rain during the hike, so not quite as much slip n’ slide.

Along the way, we passed through an indigenous village.  Called Kogui, they wear robes of white and have long hair and carry little sacks (mochilas) slung over their shoulders. The mochilas are woven from a cactus-like plant called Maguey, which is related (but not the same) to the agave plant in Mexico that they use for tequila. The men also carry poporos, which are little gourds carrying a lime solution that they use in conjunction with chewing coca leaves. They are not necessarily unfriendly, but they are obviously not thrilled by the sight of hundreds of gringos tramping through their village and forest. They will usually say hello to you when you pass by them if you initiate the goodwill, but otherwise remain aloof. I can’t say that I blame them. Our guide wouldn’t even give them a name when I kept asking him what they were called. He just said, “los indigenos” every time I would ask. This probably reflects a general attitude towards the native peoples.

I had asked our “guide”, who is a just a 19 year old local boy, about cacao earlier, and along the path today we passed a cacao tree, and he cut down the fruit for us to try. I was pretty excited, because as anyone who knows me is aware, I eat dark chocolate on a constant basis. The cacao fruit is a large yellow-orange fruit the size of a football, and when you open it up, it has white custardy sectional pieces inside that look rather like garlic cloves. The fruit tastes like a cross between guanábana and banana. They prepare the cacao for chocolate by drying out its seeds just like coffee. On the way back through the village on the 5th day, we saw the seeds being prepared out on a tarp. I have to say, I am quite happy to say that I have eaten of the fruit of cacao.

After a massive neverending downhill section, we arrived at our camp site, which just happens to be shared with the Colombian army. In Colombia, service in the army is a mostly compulsory 2 years for men, and the young lads out in the jungle were quite obviously bored. They pass their days playing cards, jumping off rocks into the nearby river, and ogling the trekking gringo women. It was indeed a bit strange, to be sitting there eating your soup while the soldiers sat there with their semi-automatic weapons and stared at you. They were for the most part quite friendly, however, and one came up to me and started a very awkward conversation with me, the awkwardness further compounded by the fact that I could barely understand his rapid clipped Spanish and had to keep saying, “¿Como?”

Before we went to our hammocks, the guide told us that we should keep our cameras and money in the hammock with us. During the night, some animal—I think a pig—was rooting about our stuff, and I thought at first it was a thief, and I pulled my backpack up into my hammock for a while, until I realized it was just an animal.

Day 3

My girlfriend’s feet were cut up and she was having a very hard time. She isn’t the hiking type to begin with, and while for me hiking through the mountainous jungle is an adventure, for her it is a nightmare. Had I known just how difficult this hike was to have been, I would never have made her do it. This day was a long and difficult day, with over 7 river crossings. By river crossings, I don’t mean stepping across rocks. I mean wading through the river. We finally arrived at the foot of the stairs to climb into the city in the early afternoon. Fortunately, it had not yet rained, so the stairs weren’t slippery. Every other traveler we had seen on the way had told us the stairs were hell. But in fact, the stairs are the easiest part of the trek. They are at least solid and straightforward, if tiny and steep. Apparently the Taironas that built them were the size of midget elves.

After the 1,200 something little mini-stairs up, we were in la Ciudad Perdida, and we had it all to our little group of 5 for that night. As it was my birthday the following day, I broke out the bottle of aguardiente I had hauled along for this express purpose, and we drank a little bit after dinner (mostly just me). At one point in the evening (before I started drinking), I walked over to the bathroom in the dusk and began to urinate. Halfway through, alerted by the sound, I suddenly realized that I had been pissing all over a closed toilet lid! The group had a good chuckle over that one.

Our evening entertainment, aside from relaxed conversation, was in watching the multitudinous bugs come out of the encroaching darkness to fly into the flame of the candle on the table. This was surprisingly good entertainment—better than television.

Our accomodations in the city were ratty old mattresses. We fell asleep to the rain, and awoke to the sound of a waterfall, as well as the moquitoes clamoring outside of the mosquito net to get in.

Day 4

My birthday. Birthdays seem to mean less and less to me the older I get. I also don’t seem to be having any crises about getting to the cusp of leaving my twenties either. What better way to spend one’s birthday? I was out in a historical site in the middle of the Colombian jungle!

The Ciudad Perdida is quite large, although most of it is hidden from sight by the jungle. It consists mostly of stairs and the terraced remains of where family huts once stood. The city is said to have housed between 2000 to 4000 people at one point, before being vacated by the diseases and other tribulations brought on by the Spanish conquest. The Taironas left behind many gold pieces, which were looted in the 70s upon its discovery by a family of looters. Some of the pieces were preserved and can be seen in the Museo del Oro in Bogotá and Santa Marta, and are quite exquisite. They are very small and intricate, some depicting frogs or cats or snakes.

All of us boys took a dip in a little swimming hole in the city which is said to bestow youth. It definitely took some years off my life—but only on the other end. That water was cold. On the way to it, I slipped on the stairs and cut myself up a bit. I was beginning to feel a bit embittered by all of the falling. As someone who prides themself on possessing an exquisite sense of balance and rarely falling, two big falls were more than enough. My girlfriend logged in something like 3 falls a day.

That afternoon, another group arrived at the city with another tour agency, ruining our peaceful personal enjoyment. This group was huge—28 people—and my girlfriend and I had almost ended up in it, because we had been considering delaying our trip by a day. The guide had lied to us and a number of other people, saying that there were only 8 people in the group. In the group were an older English couple and an older German man. The couple looked exhausted, and later that night the old man twisted his ankle, and then later fainted. I hope he made it back alright. The German man (on a trek with his daughter—good sport) had fallen on the rocks in the river and had a big gash in his forehead. Luckily, he happened to have a large bandage for it. That’s one thing to realize about this trek—it’s dangerous, and the guides don’t appear to be equipped with any medical supplies. Our guides (teenage brothers) didn’t even have headlamps, and kept borrowing them from the English couple in our group.

At the cabaña of what seemed to be the site’s caretaker was a little puppy named Shakira whom my girlfriend grew enamoured with instantaneously. I think for my girlfriend, the pinnacle of the trip was not the ruins of an ancient city, it was in holding this little 6 week old puppy.

Day 5

During the night, I kept feeling something biting me, and thought that it was mosquitoes that had gotten into the net. In the morning, I realized that I had been eaten by bedbugs in the ratty old mattress I was sleeping on. So my advice to you if you are going on this trek is: cover up those mattresses before you lay down on them with anything you can.

In the morning, after eating our tuna empanadas splattered with generous doses of ají, we managed to get our guides to actually depart early (something that was difficult to do), because on this day we had to complete in one day what had been days 2 and 3. We had to go back down the trecherous midgit stairs, wade through the river 7-10 more times (the guides said 7; I counted 10), and then after lunch at the army camp, trek back up the giant neverending mountain that we had descended before.  It was a long day.

On the way to the army camp, my guide remembered that I was interested in the Kogui mochilas, and he obtained two from some huts (the guide said something about one of them being a shaman) we passed for me to buy. I was pleased to have obtained a handmade item from the middle of the jungle.

When we got to the army camp, we ate lunch and took a dip in the nearby river and watched the soldiers diving and belly flopping off giant rocks nearby. For the afternoon, we rented a mule for my girlfriend to take, as her feet were cut up and bleeding. The rest of us began the long upward journey, sweating like pigs in the over 100 degree heat and humidity. We finally made it to our desination after an 8 hour long hiking day (which was quick). We were fortunate, again, not to be rained on.

My girlfriend obtained 3 ticks from her mule and had to rip them out with tweezers, presenting yet another facet of the trek for her to be delighted with.

Day 6

The last leg back down to the village. Tired, sun-beaten, feet swollen and cut, little pebbles in my Keens shredding up my ankles. The hellacious tunnels of mud and more mud. But we made it, and then it was just a matter of enduring the 3 hour long Jeep ride back to Santa Marta, with the driver blaring ranchero music. I made the mistake of telling him that I liked the music, whereupon he turned it up and we listened to the same damn 3 songs over and over again. When we finally arrived back at the coast, we stumbled into our hostal and took showers. Then lo and behold, out went the electricity. We spent a very hot and airless night, but I slept like a baby anyway.

So that was the trek. What would normally have been simply a very strenuous hike was made extremely difficult by the extreme heat and humidity, and the excess muddiness and slipperiness. This is not an easy hike, and the trail is nothing more than a river of mud in various states of wetness (except during the months of Jan-March, when it gets extremely dry). So my advice to any future trekkers is: bring some “wellis”, or at least a good change of footwear for the muddy sections, and bring a sweater, because it gets cold at night, and bring something to sleep in that can keep you from the bedbugs. And bring soap, because there’s actually showers at every campsite.

Our guides were little more than teenage boys cooking for us and walking along with us through the jungle. So take your time before you embark and find a guide who you like beforehand, and make sure you are going with a small group. We definitely got lucky with our group, and we in fact realized last night that we rather miss them now that the hike is over. The English couple was particularly nice, and neither my girlfriend nor myself could have made it without their generous donations of foot tape.

As for repellent, well, I used my all-natural Burt’s Bees and I seemed to fare no better but no worse than my companions who were slathering DEET over their bodies. The fact is that you are going to get bit. Just like the mud, it’s something you’ve got to accept and become one with.

As for my girlfriend (read her much more humorous account at her blog), she is not very happy to have done it, but I think perhaps it was a good experience for her to have been pushed well beyond her normal boundaries and capabilities. Her feet hurt, she’s got bites all over, but I think maybe she came away with something more positive than just having held a cute little puppy named Shakira. I know I did. This trek was more like a rite of passage.

Treks and Crooks

 

I hadn’t expected to go on any hiking treks in Colombia due to my girlfriend’s disinclination to venturing into sweaty, mosquito-ridden, trecherous jungle areas. But today—perhaps due to the 100 plus degrees of heat and excess of caffeine, or perhaps due to excess of boredom wrought by days spent sitting at a table drinking strange juices—for some reason she caved in and ventured the idea that we might go into the jungle on a 6 day strenuous hike to la Ciudad Perdida. I, of course, leapt upon the opportunity to be eaten alive by mosquitoes and we booked our trip and we set off . . . tomorrow morning!

First, a little background: the Ciudad Perdida is, as it’s name suggests, an ancient city discovered by looters and later excavated by the government and opened for visits by tourists such as myself—although it’s been an area of paramilitary activity for some time and was too dangerous to visit until very recently. It’s somewhat like the Maccu Picchu of Colombia, except much less touristy and established. It’s set deep in the jungle, so this is our time to see some real wildlife—much better than the zoo, that’s for damn sure. We’ll see how my sunscreen repels on this one. I have the feeling that I’ll get bit the shit out of no matter what I do. But I’m really excited about it, as I love the jungle, and this is a great chance to get a unique perspective on it.

My girlfriend and I just had our first terrible rip-off scam experience here in Colombia, and I am still quite angry and sickened by it. We were walking along the waterfront, where there are a lot of little restaurants and bars, looking for a place to eat. Some guy swept us in, and the dish of the day sounded alright, so down we sat, ordered some beers, and waited, for a long time, for some meat that turned out to be harder than beef jerky. Seriously, it was nearly impossible to sever, let alone chew. But like the good sports we are, we ate as much as physically possible, and then I asked for the check. One of the guys came up and told me it was 76,000 pesos. In US dollars, that’s about $38. And this is when normally you can get a huge, delicious meal anywhere for less than $6. And this is when the food was just outright bad. Obviously, this was unacceptable. I then spent the next 15 minutes using the best of my little Spanish telling them that this was unacceptable. Some other guy came into the scene, who may have been an innocent passerby, or may have been part of the scam, who tried to play the intervener. At the end, I ended up paying 30,000 pesos and walking away. I had thought to yell at a passing policeman, but at the time, the last thing I thought I needed was more confusion, and with the police here, who knows what’s gonna happen. On hindsight, that’s what I should have done. So we got fucked, basically, and we both felt sickened by it. I didn’t even think that such a thing would happen in a restaurant. A taxi, a street vendor, etc, yes, but a restaurant? So from now on, we’re going to be a lot more careful about where we eat. It just sucks when a few crooks end up putting a big dent in your perception of a place, when you know that most people are not out to get you.

Anyway, cie la vie. Off to la selva, where the worst that can happen is just being kidnapped by a rogue soldier or eaten alive by a giant insect or snake!

Stomach Dragon Update! and other topical news

 

Now, finally, to answer the question that I know has been in the back of all of your minds this whole time: my stomach has been just dandy all throughout the trip thus far. I’ve had some spots of unsettledness here and there, but otherwise have been just great. Whether this is due simply to the anti-biotics or whether the probiotic pills are really making the difference is a question that is best left up to scientific research. The first week that I was here, my stomach did make some interesting noises and burble about quite a bit, but nothing came of it. Also, I haven’t been eating anything too sketchy, except for that street vendor-concocted shrimp cocktail last night on the beach, which was delicious and which I highly recommend trying if you are ever in Santa Marta. This old dude plopped down his bags, pulled out a plastic cup, filled it partway with camarones, then some onion salsa type thing, then squirts of mayonese and ketchup, a couple squeezes of fresh lime, and mixed it all up and handed it to me with a spoon, crackers, and a napkin. It was a great sunset watching snack, that’s for damn sure. I’ve also been rinsing my mouth with the tap water after brushing my teeth since I’ve got here as well, and that hasn’t been a problema.

In other news, I fucked up my beloved pair of travel pants (see link above) when I placed a pen in my pocket and it leaked out, forming two large, undying black spots right on the outside of the pocket area. I’m heart-broken, and have been trying to cope by drinking lots of tintos and jugos naturales.

As for Santa Marta, it’s fucking hot. The sun in mid-day heat is no joke. You have to dodge it from shadow to shadow in the city streets like a civilian from snipers. About the best thing that can be said about it is that your clothes dry extremely fast after washing them in the sink.

As for insect bites, the first day here my ankle swelled up so much that you couldn’t even see the bone. What’s especially perturbing about the whole thing is that these mosquitoes, or whatever it is that are biting, are completely invisible and soundless. You don’t hear or see anything. Suddenly you are just aware of this palpatating itch coming from your ankle, or elbow, or neck, and you’ve got to exercise Zen-like restraint to prevent yourself from scratching at it.  Although I suppose in the long run it’s actually a good thing that you don’t have to be further tormented by listening to the little buggers buzzing at you all day long.

However, I seem to have found a repellent that works! No, it was not the all-natural Burt’s Bees which I had expressly brought along for that very purpose. And no, you sceptical nay-sayers, it is not simply that all-natural things do not work. My girlfriend has been applying her supposedly effective DEET based formula and still getting bit up the ying-yang as well. What I observed is that I was not getting bit on the areas of my body to which I had been applying my suncreen. So I’ve been slathering it all over my ankles and hands and arms and neck as well, and it seems to be doing the trick. What is this wonder repellent? Why, it is my all-natural Badger 30 SPF sunscreen! This stuff is not your everyday kind of sunscreen: when you first apply it, it makes you look like a ghost due to the whiteness of it. You’ve got to really work it into your skin, massage it in, and then it disapparates into your pores and does it’s duty quite efficiently, as well as moisturizing and making your skin smell herbal-y. I think the repellent qualities may be due to all the essential oils in it, blocking the pores or something, who knows. But it works! ¡Sweet!

The Trip to Santa Marta

Alright, so I am now in Santa Marta, sweating my balls off and trying desperately not to itch my ankles. We just spent a long, very long 31 hours in and around the truck. And while I may have garnered some backpacker street cred by having been driven from Armenia to Santa Marta in a truck delivering oranges, it is not something that I would recommend. It was slow—slow—and the truck broke down at one point and had to be fixed in the mid-day heat. It also wasn’t the most comfortable of journeys in the world either, as I sat most of the way in the middle with the stick shaft between my legs. However, what can be said of the journey is that it was cheap.

It was nice sometimes to be able to take in the countryside at a slow pace, because the countryside here is gorgeous. It is literally green everywhere. Which isn’t surprising given that we’re in the tropics. But still.

We got on the camion at 6 in the evening on Monday. Franky, our chofer, loaded our luggage up into the back with the oranges, and off we went up the windy roads in the Cordillera Central. It’s interesting to think off all the runaway truck ramps they have in California whenever there is a steep downgrade, and then to compare that with the road out of Armenia. It is steep, windy, narrow, and there ain’t no runaway truck ramps, and about 90% of the car traffic on the highways here is trucks. Massive trucks, small trucks, trucks hauling pipes the size of a monument, trucks hauling fruit, trucks with military stuff. . . And the trucks will be passing each other right and left on these two-lane mountain windy roads in the heavy rain in the night, somehow slipping in right as another truck comes barrelling down the other way.

We stopped at midnight and Franky slept in the back for 5 hours while we attempted to somehow sleep in the cab as some insect made an annoying continuous chirping sound nearby, and the gas station blared reggaeton, and the dogs endlessly barked at each other across the town.

There are military and police (cerdos=pigs) everywhere along the roads, and you will see them searching trucks, buses, and cars everytime you pass one of their stops. Everytime we came up to one of these waystations, Franky would yell to us to put on our seatbelts, as he frantically grabbed at his, and we would grab it and hold it while passing by the police, and then promptly let it go afterwards. One time the police stopped us, and as one of the cops walked up to the driver side, Franky slipped him a quick bill, and we were allowed to drive off.

Another time, when we came up to a weigh station, Franky pulled off some spare tires he had in the back and loaded them into the car of someone he’d commissioned (friend? who knows), and we jumped in the car and waited for him on the other side while Franky got the truck weighed.

At 2:30 in the afternoon, something went wrong with one of the front wheels, and we waited in the shade of a nearby restaurant while Frank drove off on a motorcycle to get a new part. Even in the shade we were sweating profusely and eaten mercilessly by some unseen and unheard insect. Finally, at 5:30, the wheel was fixed, and Franky, covered in oil and sweat, cleaned himself off and ate before taking off for the final, long last leg of the journey. Apparently, when you are a truck driver in Colombia, you must not only be a good driver, but also nimble in dealing with the cerdos, as well as a mechanic, able to fix problems as they arise.

The road to Santa Marta was terrible—bumpy, potholed, incomplete—and loaded with trucks. I got whiplash a number of times throughout the night because I was so tired that my head would swing back without any headrest, and then snap back as I came to over a bump. At 3:00 in the morning, we arrived in Santa Marta. I washed my face, and a thick film of black exhaust came off, along with the accumulated oils and sweat.

I’m just happy to be here and not sitting in the cab of a truck.

En Cali

The drive to Cali was around 3-4 hours from the finca, a lush verdantly green drive (as is apparently all of Colombia, come to think of it) with zaman trees all along the road through the Valle del Cauca, listening to Thievery Corporation and Shakira. Cali is one of the three major cities in Colombia (Bogotá, Medellín, and Cali), and like Bogotá, when you get into the nice parts of town, suddenly you realize just how modern Colombia is. The leaders in Lasik and plastic surgeries reside here (Lasik costs less than $1000; I was tempted), and the plastic surgery can indeed be seen projecting quite visibly from the chests of many women on the streets in Cali. It is also not uncommon to spot some folks (both guys and gals) walking about with tape on their faces from their recent facial enhancements. The breast augmentation is so common, in fact, that there is a term for women who may lack personality, but possess large bamboombas: it is said of such a woman that she has pechonalidad, a mixture of pecho (chest/breasts) and personalidad (personality).

The evening we got to Cali, we met up with my cousin’s extended family at Chipi Chapi, a ginormous brick mall converted from old train warehouses that puts any North American mall to shame. Chip Chapi is not only a mall—it is the place that the well-to-do meet up in, hang out at, have a drink, eat some food, people-watch, plastic surgery assess, etc. We seemed to start all of our excursions here. Chipi Chapi, by the way, is the name of a native tribe that used to reside in the area of Cali, and who have now been honorably immortalized as a gigantic shopping center.

While driving into Cali, we were slowed down by a mass of people on horseback in the streets. This event is called cabalgata, and seems to be some kind of fiesta/horse competition. The horses do this weird kind of high-step/quick trot and demonstrate their prowess. People drink aguardiente. Fun for the whole family.

Once we met up with the exended fam, they took us out to a restaurant in the San Antonio neighborhood, which is the old historic section of town, kind of like La Candelaria in Bogotá, except that people actually live there in Cali. The restaurant, El Zaquán de San Antonio, served comida tipica, which seemed to consist solely (of course) of various forms of fried meat. I gorged myself on empanadas, puerquitos (platano mashed with chicharrón), chicharrón, bofe (smoked cow lung), and costillos (rib). I ate most all of it myself, out of the 10 other people there, and yet somehow did not get ill. I was told that I have the stomach of a Latino, as I kept grabbing at the bofe.

I had a great time showing the family my list of Colombian fruits that I intended to try, and was pleased to see that they got as excited by it as I do. They kept telling me new fruits that I’d never heard of that I needed to try, and when they spotted a níspero tree nearby, two of them got sap all over their clothes trying to grab a fruit for me. So on my list still to try: curubas, badeas, caimones, chontaduros, guamas, mamuncillos, mairoños, grocellas, piñuelos, zapotes, and nísperos. Phew!

The next day we had a large breakfast with the requisite doses of coffee, and I tried pan de yuca, a bread particular to Cali, which is best eaten dipped in coffee or lathered in butter. Then we took the niños out to the zoo. My cousin drove us there, taking a hump on one of the streets at 80 mph and getting a few feet of air, much to the delight of the unbuckled children, and much to my pain and discontent, because I came down right on my tailbone and bruised it.

The zoo was listed in my guidebook and sounded like it would be interesting. It had been a while since I’d been to a zoo, and I’d forgotten that essentially a zoo is just a bunch of cages with miserable animals inside of them. If miserable, dislocated animals is your thing, then definitely go to the zoo in Cali. There you can watch people banging against the windows trying to get a rise out of the monkeys, and see potato chip bags littered all over the floor of animal’s cages. At the Cali zoo, you get very close to the animals, such as in the aviary, where birds will walk along the bath browsing amongst the humans. I felt a little saddened especially by the grizzly bear and the camel at this zoo, both of whom looked to be wondering about why they were in a climate completely foreign to their biology (kind of what I’m wondering right now, as a matter of fact). In any case, I was happy to see a lot of guacamayos and other types of cousins of my amazonian parrot Vinnie.

We ate at the Crepes and Waffles at Chipi Chapi (which seems to be quite the trendy place to be), and then drove back in the night, my cousin’s Toyota landcruiser taking turns at the highest possible speed without turning over.

It is extremely expensive to travel long distance here in Colombia, as there are toll booths located seemingly every several miles or so. We spent almost 30 dollars just on the way to Cali alone. And gasoline is expensive here as well—which is why you will see cars that run on both gasoline and natural gas, such as my cousin’s Landcruiser. Natural gas is less expensive than gasoline, but it also doesn’t get you as far. I imagine it must be somewhat more dangerous as well.

Fiestas en Armenia

We are waiting at an office in Armenia right now for the truck that will take us to la costa Caribe to swing by. We left the finca on a tractor, sitting in the windows and hanging out the sides.

In Cali, I didn’t get the chance to make it to a salsateca, but the night before we had a night on the town in Armenia. It began with some aguardiente drinking at the finca. Aguardiente pretty much just tastes like anise, so if you don’t like that flavor, you wouldn’t like it straight, but otherwise it’s quite smooth and strong.

We then picked up a guy called German who worked in a coffee vending shop, and who had already been drinking some aguardiente himself. He offered me a shot and I obliged. We then drove out to a club in the outskirts of town called “Mint,” with German pontificating loudly about coffee speculation, which of course I didn’t understand any of anyways.

Simply because it was the 1st of December it is a time to party in Colombia, apparently, and on the way there was traffic stopped in places because people on motos were swinging flour (I think that’s what it was) at each other in the streets. Once we arrived at the club, we promptly began swigging another bottle of aguardiente. In Colombia, when you order liquor in a bar, it’s generally by the bottle rather than by the glass. They know how to party.

We danced a little to some salsa and merengue, when suddenly the music when into hardcore techno crap mode. Even the Colombians who brought us to the club realized that it was a bad music night, and we took off. My cousin has a penchant for driving over curbs and islands on the street, and promptly began doing so in earnest. We ended up in front of a bar after one of these displays of car-damaging machismo and we heard live music, so we went on in. It was an old-school bar, with two guys playing traditional Andino music on two guitars. We had a round of beers and while the rest of the group had fun taking pictures and making fun of German—who was passing out in-between rubbing my head and telling me something about “todo el mundo”—I had a great time listening to the music, which was especially refreshing after the stuff in the club.

On the way back to the finca, hordes—literally hordes—of people on motos were crowded everywhere on the streets, faces white with flour. Sometimes 3 adults were packed onto one moto (these are Chinese motorcycles: tiny, cheap, and dangerous).

The next day we drove down to Cali, and I’ll fill you in on the details later (such as a visit to the Zoologíca), because right now I’ve got to go hop on that truck to the costa Caribe. ¡Hasta luego!

Fincas y el Futuro

 

Yesterday I accompanied my cousin out to another finca to observe the harvesting of platanos, as well as the general operations of organic platano growing in Colombia. They actually cut down the platano tree in order to cut off the platanos, and another tree grows alongside of it in it’s stead, while the former tree is hacked apart and placed around the new tree as a mulch, along with compost. My cousin would lift up the pieces of former tree and show me all of the little bugs and various critters living underneath. You can tell immediately whether the platano farm is organic or not because the ground between the platano trees is completely covered with greenery at an organic farm, while a non-organic farm has only dirt in-between.

While at the finca, I drank three tintos (small cup of black coffee) and was wired, as even though I’ve begun drinking my daily cup or two of café con leche, I still am not accustomed to strong coffee. Literally shaking. We went to my cousin’s aunt’s apartment in Armenia for lunch and I was a little embarrassed by the trembling of the fork in my fingers.

Today I was shown the composting operations at my cousin’s farm, but mainly I just sat around most of the day until I finally had a cup of coffee. Apparently I have now joined the worldwide league of coffee addicts.

Tomorrow, we plan to go to Cali for the weekend (not a cien porciento sure yet)—the capital of salsa. I am hoping to venture into a salsateca and see whether I’ve still got some swerve in these gringo hips of mine. We’ll see.

After that, we are planning on heading straight up to Santa Marta en la costa Caribe on one of my cousin’s trucks delivering oranges. Yes, so we shall see first-hand whether riding with oranges will be crazier or more tranquil than riding on a bus. It may be that oranges are more valued than people, so it may be a smooth ride. Stay tuned for more pictures (they will come!).

Parque Nacional del Café

On the 28th, we journeyed to the nearby Parque del Café, which is a themepark—with rides and shows—for the coffee bean, by hopping on a bus and promptly going the opposite direction, thus effectively extending the trip by an hour. I comforted myself by reminding myself that I do that even in my own country (once in Brooklyn en lieu of an interview, and not familiar with the city at all, I jumped on the subway and ended up in the orthodox Russian Jewish section somewhere in the opposite direction (Brighton Beach?), instead of Manhattan).

The Parque del Café is fairly large, with a little introductory sterile museum section devoted to the history of coffee and its methods of consumption and production, and then a large food court, some rides, and a large walking section of the park where you can look at flowers, coffee, bamboo, and other more natural attractions. Apparently the Colombians mainly enjoy only the food and ride sections, as we only saw maybe 2 other people on the walk around the natural areas. It had been drizzling lightly during the walk, and we were treated to a beautiful arco iris (rainbow), as well as a squadron of squawking wild parrots flapping about the sky (apparently parrots have to squawk constantly whilst flying). And then suddenly, at the end of the day, as we were wading through packs of schoolchildren on an outing back to the teleférico (cable car, which took you from the entrance down into the food court/rides area), it began raining heavily. By “raining heavily”, I mean a torrential monsoon downpour. We stood in the middle of the teleférico in a puddle of water trying to keep under the tiny roof, and the side of each of us that faced outwards got completely soaked through. We were also apparently the only people in the park who actually brought an umbrella, so we weren’t as soaked as everyone else. It’s a strange thing here—it rains nearly every day (though not quite as heavily as it did that day), yet no one carries an umbrella. When it begins raining, most people can be found standing along the sides of the street in doorways and restaurants, waiting for the rain to pass (if it passes).

We managed to hop on a bus back to Pueblo Tapao, the little town near the finca, but still had to walk the long road back in thunderous rain from the street out to the finca, and got completely soaked through by the time we made it back. It was also getting dark, and as we were trotting back trying to avoid deep puddles of mud, I thought I was tripping out when I saw a brief light flashing in the bushes out of the corner of my eye. Turns out that it was a luciérnaga (firefly).

Salento

 

On  the 27th, we went to Salento, which is a little town located up in the mountains an half an hour or so from Armenia, which doesn’t really have much to observe except for its stairs with the 14 stations of the cross alongside up to a viewpoint of the valle de cocora. Apparently, the point is to empathize with Christ carrying a cross by comparing it to the burning in your calves as you plod directly upwards. Other than that, the only other requisite thing to do there is to eat some freshly prepared trucha (trout), which we obligingly did as well. It was quite tasty, with pink flesh. A little gato mewed pleadingly underneath our table as we devoured it.

We had meant to journey from there to the Valle de Cocora to see the palmas aceras (giant wax palms that grow in the cloud forest), but unfortunately did not realize that you could only catch jeeps to get there at 8:30, 11:30, and 4:30 throughout the day, and we had just missed the 11:30 jeep. Oh well.

My Spanish has been getting a little bit better, as my cousin speaks English even worse than I can speak Spanish, so I am forced to attempt to conversate with him as much as possible in Spanish. I seem to speak better the more relaxed that I am. Poco a poco.

Bus Trip to Armenia and General Observations

¡Vale! so we’re now located on my cousin’s beautiful finca (farm) outside of Armenia in the Quindío district in La Cordillera Central. It’s very lush, green, and tropical out here, and you can bet that I’m gorging myself on exotic fruits. But before I delve any deeper into the sweaty scene here, let me first describe the bus journey to get here, and a few more things I wanted to say about Bogotá before I’m done wid it.

First of all, you know that you’re in trouble when you arrive at the terminal de buses (bus station)—which is a very large, clean, and organized station as far as such things go—and there is a large sign situated outside of the entrance listing all of the different bus companies and their number of accidentes (accidents) and muertos (deaths) for the year. Yes, so apparently the way that one keeps track of the quality of service down here is not by cleanliness, customer service, or food options, but rather by the death tally.

Why this is so becomes apparent once one is locked into the bus, swinging from side to side sucking down fumes as the bus whips down the windiest, narrowest road descending 6,000 ft going 70 mph around hair-pin turns on the wrong side of the road passing horse-drawn carts and families sunning themselves on the side of the road and men lounging in all manner of distraction, and women in tropical wear (read: scantily clad) strutting along in heels. The scenery itself is beautiful, lush, and Hawaii/Amazon/South East Asian in greenness and density of flowers and trees. The views from the mountainsides are breathtaking, but fortunately (and I’ll get to why it is a fortune in a minute), I pretty much nodded off the entire time, happily tossing gently in my soft reclining seat like a potato in a nest. It was fortunate that I was pretty much asleep the entire time, because if I had been awake, I probably would have been pissing in mis pantalones when I saw the kinds of manuevers that my bus driver was making. As it was, I was for the most part blissfully unaware, until the latter part of the trip when I woke back up and watched the bus plummeting seemingly brakeless around a 75 degree turn with no separation between myself and a cliff-drop to oblivion.

What’s interesting about all of this, of course, is that this method of driving (i.e. without any apparent concern for safety) is completely 100 porciente normal here.

So that was the trip. Now to finish with some observations on Bogotá: on Sundays, they close off some of the main streets to cars, and runners, dog-walkers, bikers, and rollerskaters come out in force, for what is perhaps the one day of exercise for many of them. It’s a beatiful thing, seeing them all arrayed along the road in various states of enjoyment or exhaustion, women in sweats swiveling their hips and stretching, men with short-shorts running heavily along, dogs that normally never leave the house suddenly stretched along their leashes and barking joyously, children in spandex uniforms and helmets rollerskating . . . which leads me to my next point:

The uniforms. As in Perú, people here are really into clarifying their roles. Whether you are pumping gas, a policeman, someone cleaning up trash, or a worker on the side of the road, you’ve got some kind of colorful uniform on to denote your function. It seems to even be inherent in the language itself when it comes to delineating the distinctions between masculine and feminine—and thus, women and men themselves seem to have a kind of standard uniform to denote their gender: the women wear tight pants, and the men wear collared shirts (a broad generalization, but when you walk around the streets, this is the kind of stratification you’ll observe). In other words, despite the chaos that is the pedestrian and vehicular traffic, things are still very formal in many other ways.

One other thing: there are security guards everywhere. Standing next to cafés, in parking lots, in every room in museums, in malls, etc. Everywhere. In addition to the police and military standing about everywhere as well. It’s somewhat disconcerting, especially when a security guard comes up to you when you are just taking a picture of a mannequin in a storefront window outside of a mall and tells you not to take any pictures. I asked my cousin about all the seguridad privada and he laughed and said they were there to protect la policía. I guess that makes sense when you consider the broader situation in Colombia.

Movin’ On to Armenia

The last few days we’ve essentially just walked around a bit and drank some coffee and hot chocolate. We’ve been downgraded to hostal status now that my parents have fled back to the states. This translates into an old, hard mattress covered in plastic with a wall that doesn’t quite separate the room from the outer environment, and thus is freezing at all times of day, as well as a shared shower which is located directly alongside of the toilet. Used toilet paper must be placed into a bin, wherein it proceeds to stink up the joint. Towels that are essentially thin pieces of fabric more suited to be used as rags than as moisture absorbants. Rowdy Englishman and Australians and subdued Chilean backpackers. You know the scene.

We’re in La Candelaria section of town now, which is kind of like the old-style, narrow-streets, old-colorful-buildings section of town. It also is known for its “bohemian” atmosphere, which really just means a few scattered Colombians with dreads or weird hats and some bars with swing seats instead of stools and some cafes where you sit on pillows on the ground. That kind of thing. We had been staying in the business district of downtown before, which was fairly unexciting, so it’s nice to be in a more colorful part of town in any case.

One thing that’s strange about Bogotá is that there’s a lot of crepe places around here. Like, crepes seem to be quite the “in” thing. Also, there seems to be a certain trendiness imbued to Mexican eateries here as well, which was unexpected. I expected the McDonald’s and T.G.I. Friday’s and what not . . . but crepes? And “burros”?

We ventured into the Colombian yuppie part of town today, Parque de la 93 and the Zona Rosa, which was bumping on a Saturday eve. There’s some malls around there to rival New Jersey, and people wearing the kind of designer clothing that would get them second looks in Beverly Hills. We popped into a Juan Valdez café and I had me the standard café con leche and we people watched for a bit. Like a mix of the Upper Westside of NYC and the San Vicente of Brentwood.

Tomorrow morning we are about to embark on some new adventures: we are meeting up with my cousin and his new wife (just fresh from a honeymoon in Aruba) and taking a bus out to Armenia, to see his finca and hang-out with the extended fam. I can’t say that I’ll feel any great sorrow in saying goodbye to Bogotá for now. I just haven’t gotten that fresh experience or new connections here yet that makes me want to stay. Part of this is due, no doubt, to the fact that I have been unable to explore any of the live music, bar scene, or go out dancing at all—the only reasons one would really want to be in a large, crowded, dirty city—which I blame fully upon my girlfriend and her disinclination to venture into lively situations. I’m going to get her out one of these nights, though.

To Armenia it is then. Hasta pronto.

Learning Anew Language part II

So thus far I am being humbly reminded that I know nothing of Spanish, in reality. Whatever tentative forays into intermediate levels of comprehension I might have gained 2 years ago in Perú have been lost, apparently. And to be honest, I think what I truly gained more from that trip was a self-reliancy and an openness to potentiality in others rather than any kind of deeper understanding of the language. Here in Colombia, I must begin anew, from scratch. I can’t seem to understand anything anyone says to me, which is not helped by the fact that I have seen little evidence of the supposed clear and slow anunciation that Colombian speakers are purported to have. Everyone we talk to speaks rapidly and in hushed tones, and immediately gets flustered when they are not understood. All I know is that I am going to have to work very hard in the next 2 months to get on a level where I can interact with people as much as I would like to.

Learning a language when you are in the country is much more than just grasping the rules of grammar and memorizing vocabulary—it is also learning the conventions and mannerisms, the assumptions and habits, the way that things work, the way that people interact. If you gain an understanding of these things, you don’t even really have to gain much of an understanding of the language itself, as I’d learned in Perú. You know what is expected when you walk into a cafe or restaurant. You know how to get on and off of the bus. You know how to greet a friend or stranger, and so on. And all of these things are really only comprehended through direct and continuous experience. It’s a new culture, a new system of human interaction, a new methodology of approaching everyday life.

Another day in Bogotá

I have to say, the café here in Colombia is indeed quite tasty. I’m not a coffee drinker at heart, I’m really more of a tea drinker. But I’ve decided that drinking coffee is one of those things that I’ve got to succumb to whilst here, in the same way that I pretend that driving 50 mph in the thick of dense city traffic without seat-belts is my normal mode-of-existence. So even as a normally non-coffee drinker, having a black cup of joe here is unlike any other coffee drinking experience I’ve had before (which is of course not many, however). I can drink it straight and it barely even tastes bitter at all. It’s really quite tasty, and I think I can get into the pleasant habit of a cup in the morning and a cup after a large lunch to aid in the digestive processes.

Today we had two adventures with my parents: 1) we went to Monserrate, a spot located on top of an overlooking mountaintop above the city, which you get to either by hiking up 3,000 feet and killing yourself, or by taking the teleférico—a cable car. The views, such as can be seen on the top photo from my last post, were very nice, and hopefully we’ll get a chance to see it again with a sunset, hopefully by hiking up to it (fat chance, says my girlfriend), and 2) we actually got to stumble lost and confused through the city streets all afternoon, looking for the Museo del Oro, which was doubly confusing because the exhibit had moved to another museum due to construction. By the end of the few hours it took to straighten out where the hell we were and where the hell this museum was, we had finally understood how streets are labeled, which is fairly logical once you grasp it. At first, however, you feel like you are in a directionless maze, getting pointed in one direction by one local and then another by the next, all speaking such rapid Spanish that you just nod your head as if you understand and then walk away vaguely towards where their finger pointed. There are no street signs, of course, and we learned to read the street numbers on storefronts.

It was good to get out in the streets and feel a little more comfortable meandering about and getting a sense of understanding formed from chaos. More shiznizzle to come soon—my girlfriend has got to pee and my hour is almost up. Hasta luego.

En Bogotá

After a long day of traversing the upper atmosphere, I have finally arrived at my long awaited destination. Here’s the nitty gritty on how it all went down:

11-20: 6 hours of extreme heat and smelliness on the airplane to Panama City, leaving LAX at 1:15 in the morning. I was seated in the middle of a row, squished by a man who should have, in an ideal world, had two seats—hell, give the fucker a whole damn row—to himself. His gargantuan legs couldn’t fit in the small space normally allocated to the average sized human being, and thus were pressed against mine the entire time, compounded further by his annoying tendency to commence waving them from side to side. Another pleasurable trait which this man possessed was that he farted continuously throughout the flight, and due to the aforementioned air-conditioniong problems with the plane, I could smell it quite clearly as soon as he had cut it. To add to this general bombardment of the senses, the blanket which I was given for the flight also smelled extremely rank.

Anyway, so long story short, I didn’t get a wink of sleep on this night flight. Switched to another smaller, functioning-air-conditioner plane in Panama City for the next hour to Bogotá. There at the airport, I was met by my parents, who were already in the city for my Colombian cousin’s wedding. (“There was a lot of salsa dancing!” said they about the wedding.) Exhausted and jet lagged, my girlfriend and I were then led into great exhibition, by my parents, of How To Be The Most Gringo Tourist On The Planet. I don’t really care to get into all the gruesome details of the ensuing nightmare that was the debacle of my parents attempting to sort-of speak Spanish and hail a taxi. Suffice to say that they got ripped off a good solid 3 times before we even made it to the hotel.

However, the hotel is quite plush (in comparison to where we will be staying when we are on our own) with a great view of the hills and overlooking Monserrate. I’m trying to enjoy the space and privacy while I can, and endure the overbearing gringoism of my parents with as much grace and gritted teeth as I can. The benefits are that we get some free meals at some upscale restaurants that we would never have attended otherwise.

First impressions of Bogotá: much like Lima, except with lush greenery and better architecture. Although it is dirty and gas-fume-permeated like any other large Latin American city, it has a sense of cleanliness to it, which I think is due to the large amounts of rain, which washes some of the pollution away from immediate visibility. There also seems to be less obvious examples of extreme poverty in the main parts of the city. Like Lima, the women are tightly clad in jeans or pantalones, such that you wonder how the ass cheeks managed to be squeezed through the top of the pants so that they could be encased so perfectly. Also like Lima, the traffic is noisy and death defying, and Colombianos are packed like sardines into Korean mini-buses that skirt like racecars around corners.

As soon as we arrived at our hotel, we showered off the accumulated oils and farts from our skin and slept until 9 (Colombian time—only three hours ahead of West Coast time). We awoke hungry, but were still slightly trepidatious about venturing out into the darkened alien streets in our jetlagged and hapless state. We also knew that we were in the banking, business district, and that most restaurants were closed by 9. We walked out anyway, past the ubiquitous semi-automatic machine gun armed soldiers standing on the corners, and stumbled into a happy coincidence: Argentina and Colombia had a futbol match, and all self-respecting Colombianos were watching any TV available (we had passed by a congregation of people on the street watching a small TV next to a bus stop). So we found a cafe-hole-in-the-wall a block away that was still open due to the game, in which Colombianos were drinking beer and affixed avidly to 2 TV screens, which were color-warped and hazy from time and chicken cooking fumes. We ordered 2 arroz con pollo dishes, which turned out to be massive, and enjoyed our first cheap comida criolla, eating only a 1/4th of a dish each. When Colombia scored the goal over Argentina, the place went crazy. One man in a suit stood up and pumped his arms up and down at the TV and shouted effusively in short, barking spurts for a good couple of minutes. We then stumbled satiated like blood-fattened mosquitoes back to our hotel and fell asleep for the rest of the night.

Some More Time-Killing and Thoughts Before the Trip

Now that I’m all packed up for the trip and ready to jet and have some free time to ponder and pontificate, I figured that I might as well take a moment to reflect on where it is that I am going and why it is that I am going there, and what my expectations are for the trip, as well as more existential concerns.

I am going to Colombia for some very simple reasons, which I have already detailed elsewhere, but will very quickly enumerate again in a cursory manner: 1) I had a great time in Peru two winters ago, and fell in love with South America in general, and knew that I had to go back down to explore some more; 2) My cousin, who just got married in Bogota 3 days ago (we’d already bought our tickets before the marriage was announced; I really wish I could have gone), lives in Armenia and grows platanos, cafe, and raises cattle; 3) a dollar still goes far in Colombia; and 4) what other reason do I need? Colombia is beautiful!

I always try to reduce my expectations for any event in life as much as possible in order to allow for the unknown, but I know that I still hold certain notions in the back of my skull about what I want to occur. For instance, I am very hopeful that the bag I am checking in will not be lost either on the way to or on the way back from Colombia. This is a somewhat dubious hope, considering that on the way back from Colombia, we swap 3 different planes. It’s something I guess I’d just rather not consider, because there’s nothing I can do about it one way or another. The bag must be checked, so I must remain hopeful.

I also have certain expectations based on my last trip to South America. I have the expectation that I will be able to waltz into any town and find cheap accommodation. I expect that the women will be beautiful and will wear very tight-fitting jeans. I expect that there will be the highly visible scourge of poverty everywhere I go. I expect to be seen as a gringo and have some con-artistry attempted to be performed upon me frequently.

But I realize that even as I have these expectations, that Colombia is also a completely different country than Peru. Different ideologies, different histories, different everything. Many cultural aspects, of course, will be comparable. But I want to give the country the chance to speak for itself before I relegate it to the vast gringo conception of “South America.”

What I want to occur on my trip is: I want to experience the people and the culture as it is, not as it is boxed up and presented to a tourist to strip him/her of their money. Such manners of accumulating experience are: talking to everyday people in their contextual environments and in their language i.e. on the street, in bars, in their homes, etc; experiencing daily life in as close a manner as to the locals in each location i.e. using the same transport methods, drinking the local drinks, eating the local food, dancing to the local music. In other words, I’d like to experience Colombia in as an ungringo-like manner as possible. This is impossible completely, but not completely impossible, you know what I’m saying? It’s mostly achieved by not only being adventurous and somewhat willing to take some risks, but furthermore by befriending and hanging out with locals as opposed to backpacking foreigners.

Traveling is also an interesting dilemma when viewed from an environmental and social conservationist conception. To travel by plane is to create a large carbon footprint. To exchange one’s money into another currency wherein it is stretched out multiple times its value is a possibly unscrupulous enterprise. To simply have the express freedom to even travel at all includes you in the percentage of a limited aristocracy in comparison to the vast multitudes that can’t ever leave their country, let alone travel far from their place of birth.

So I do not want to take this trip—nor any trip—lightly, and this is why I even bother to sit and inscribe these inarticulate sentences into my blog right now. I am fully aware of just how fortunate I am to be able to travel for so long (55 days, to be exact), and just to be able to travel at all. This is an opportunity to learn, an opportunity to become enriched with life experience, to gain more understanding and insight into a language and a people and a differing perception of the world. So I do not see this as a “vacation,” especially given that I don’t even have any work nor home of my own to come back to. This is a form of schooling. This is an exercise in understanding, a training in dealing with alternate universes. And I am extremely excited to be doing this!

The next post will thus successfully convert this blog into a full TravelBlog for the space of the 55 days that I will be there. So it will become even yet more mundane, even yet more trivial, then my normal meandering abstract posts of yore. But hopefully, also more grounded in reality, more palpable to the touch, and more fruitful in vicarious excitation. Til then, hasta luego.

Itinerary

Today: Pack all our shit, clean up the house as much as possible. Amtrak to Los Angeles. Dinner with sister and nephew.

Tomorrow: Stumble around in the sun most of the day in LA. Lunch with friend. Dinner with another friend. Fly out of LAX at 1 in the morning. Arrive in Bogota at 1:30 in the afternoon. Stay with parents, who are on their way out after attending my cousin’s wedding, for 3 nights. Next 2 nights stay in hostal in La Candelaria. Meet up with cousin and his new wife, drive to Armenia.

And then . . . wide open unknown

Do I sound stressed? I might be a little stressed. Only an hour more and then it’s go time, we’re on the road and on the move from here on out. All my bags are packed. I’m waiting for this stupid laptop battery to drain down to 40%, which is supposedly the ideal amount of juice to leave lithium ion batteries at for storage.

Next post from me I will most likely be in Colombia, unless I get really bored in LA and find a computer to scribble on. Tally ho!

Preparations for the Trip

Last trip to South America, I was nearly constantly beset with intestinal problems due to the influx of bacteria from the food and water. This time around, I’m comin’ prepared. I’ll be taking along some Culturelle, which contains the clinically researched bacterium Lactobacillus GG, a probiotic which has been proven to make its way intact through stomach bile and colonize the intestinal tract with “good” bacteria (as opposed to the bad bacteria which tend to gain the upper hand whilst traveling). Also, the malaria prophylaxis which I will be taking, Doxycycline, will of course be killing all the bacteria in my stomach indiscriminately like a pesticide kills all insects, both good and bad, so the Culturelle will doubly serve to re-populate the bacteria down there to keep everything functioning as it should.

I also have discovered another product called Florastor, which is a type of probiotic made from a strain of yeast, which will serve pretty much the same function as Culturelle, although it is also more specifically oriented towards battling the sorts of yeast problems which can afflict women when taking antibiotics. But I figure I’ll take it too, because it will also help battle the introduced bacteria from water and food. It certainly can’t hurt having an influx of the good bugs in there since there’s about to be a daily influx of the bad ones.

Furthermore, I also found some info on berberine, such as Oregon Grape, barberry, or tree tumeric, which can also serve as herbal antibiotic assaults on all that diarrhea inducing bacteria. So I might pick up a bottle of one of them as well, in the case of any cataclysmic outbreaks of vomit/diarrhea such as occurred on my birthday the last time I was in South America. So I’m being proactive this time around. As much as I enjoy losing all of my excess fat within a few days, I would really rather not spend my time engaged in a cyclical traversing back and forth to the john all day long.

Other items I’ve obtained for este viaje:

1) A new, phatty Jansport daypack with 10 million different compartments, as well as a reinforced laptop carrying pouch so that its function will switch right back into an urban laptop transporter once I’ve returned from the trip. I also found this particular bag for 1/2 off, somehow. I asked one of the REI workers to make sure I was seeing it right. Once confirmed, I hung onto this find with both hands through the check-out line. Thanks for the gift certificate to REI, camp!

2) A new pair of lightweight travel pants with a sweet little zippered pouch at the bottom of the leg. I wanted a pair of pants that would be easy to care for and able to breathe well for the tropical weather and even be used for possible trekking adventures, but also look good enough to ostensibly serve as going-out pants. These are pretty much what I was looking for, other than for the weird little plastic snap buttons for rolling them up. Which I guess will be fine for the Caribbean coast beach strolling, in any case.

3) A new Moleskine notebook for recording thoughts and observations, as well as for jotting down new words and placenames.  A friend of mine (thanks Vince!) had generously gifted me one of these for my Peru trip, and it had been just exactly the right size for capturing the journey, sliding neatly into my pocket and easily accessible for quick reference when I was trying to remember that one word I had just learned the other day, or for love poems in Spanish from pretty local girls, or for inscribing complex addresses of recommended discoteques. So I had to get me another one for Colombia (along with an extra fine point pen, because I can only write neatly when I have a finepoint pen, for some reason).

4) A new pair of earbuds for my Creative Zen Touch mp3 player (I highly recommend this mp3 player, by the way; I’ve had it for over 3 years now with nary a problem). The ones that came with it hurt my ears so much as to nearly be unusable, and so I decided that it was high time I got something that wouldn’t feel like a continuous raping of my ear canals. I found this pair at Brookstone, and I’m pleasantly surprised. The sound quality is much better than the ones I used to use, and they fit very comfortably on top of my ears without inducing any discomfort. Perfect for long bus rides.

Other than that, it’s just listening to my Spanish CDs and trying to read my grammar book. So far, the Spanish studying hasn’t been going too well. I’m being lazy. In any case, though, I’ll be speaking it one way or another once I get there.

Knowingly Into the Unknown

Standing on the cusp of the breaking wave of my life, I look out into the wide horizon and see only unknown, only uncertainty, only the undefined. And this is as it should be. If I knew any more about who I will be, and what my future will hold, and what I am supposed to be doing in the next year, then I’m afraid that I would start to feel confined. I suppose it’s in my Sagittarius zodiac sign or something. As much as I am self-controlled on many personal aspects, I could never feel comfortable with all of my future already defined. I’ve always been naturally allergic to plans and formulas and expectations. I am firmly in the Fukuoka school of acknowledgment that I know nothing, and will never know much of anything, and that no one else knows nothing just about as well as I do. That’s about the best summation of my view of philosophy, science, religion, and humanity in a nutshell right there.

Who cares, though, what I think anyway? Why do I bother scribing random scribbles across this computer screen? I suppose I am always hoping for the flash of inspiration that only too rarely ever fully hits. I am waiting for that cathartic spill, that cathedral dirge, that cataclysmic splooge of beauty that every now and then filters somehow out through my fingers. Tonight, unfortunately, is not one of those times. But the practice and training of forcing myself to write is good nonetheless, even if I know that I alienate my fickle imaginary audience. But part of why I write (as opposed to why many other people write) is for the very reason of combating the thought (in my own mind, at the very least) of writing as needing to be perfect, grammatically sound, soul wrenchingly deep, suspensefully clever, and/or breathtakingly beautiful. I wish to combat this Hollywood-ified ideal of writing that the industry of New York Times bestseller lists and college writing workshops uphold. I want writing to be about me, and you, and what our actual mundane lives truly constitute. And then, of course, I want it to be all of that other aforementioned stuff as well, but that’s secondary to the mission.

Because our lives be messy, imperfect, trivial, glorious, and filled with worldbreaking news everymoment, everysecond. If only we learned to pay more attention to it. The live-brought-to-you-now of our eyes, of our fingers, of our feelings. And while we might like to think that we’ve got our selves kind of nailed down and our friends supportingly cast and defined, the fact is that we only know our future just about as well as weather stations with the latest up-to-date data and supercomputer technology know the long-term forecast: with some percentage of certainty only for the next few days, if even that. From then on out, it’s all subject to change.

Because every little thing is a part of every bigger thing. Because every door that is opened into a new perception is another pillar demolished upholding the former universe, and another jack sprung up into the sky of some new one. Every part interacting with every other part combining into an incredibly complex whole that is unknowable, uncertain, and uncontrollable. No matter what anyone may think the future may hold, the only thing that is verifiably certain is that we don’t know shit.

So to get back to me and my little trivial bullshit daily life: like I said, I’m just a-sitting here up on the crest of a crescendoing adulthood, looking out into the open unknown that is my future and only knowing this: I’m looking forward to a few months of 90% chances of dancing, aguardiente drinking, malaria prophylactic taking, and numerous blog post making. After that, god knows. And she can keep it to herself.

Haunted by Home

The strange thing about coming back to where you were weaned is that everywhere you go there is a memory lurking around the corner. There, the beach where you would hang out after school; there, the street where you first made out with some girls; there, the restaurant that you first ate duck in when you were sick and it was your birthday . . . Things that you’d forgotten about completely, that were no longer even relevant (or so you’d thought) to your self-conception, begin springing back up as if they’d just been pooling dormant there beneath your skin, only to be triggered by the moonlight on the waves, by the scent of something in the air, the subconscious adherence to the same old car routes. And it makes you wonder: is all of this quite as bad as you remember? You’d relegated most of this past here in this city to the trash heap already, but you find yourself unable to step apart from this wreckage of your past associations and look at it all anew. This city, to you, will always be the city that you once thought you knew so intimately and so disassociatively as a youth: excessive boredom, nights spent in the backseats of cars, hazed eyes and meandering conversations on the meaning of life, drumming in the full moon on the beach, first love, pushing back the boundaries of every convention you could while still being lazy, desire, loneliness, depression, self-absorption, friendship. Sunny days, warm nights, your first Benson and Hedges menthol cigarette, listening to the waves breaking along the shore, watching sunsets, running, finding yourself, hating yourself. This city was never good enough. You were never good enough. You had to leave, and swear never to return again.

And now stepping back into this (temporarily), after you had conveniently forgotten all of yourself that you had left behind, is a strange circumstance. You want to see all of this without the recollections of your past imposed on all of its surfaces, but you find yourself unable to break completely from what you once were. You are still that person, you are still all of those experiences, all of those places, all of those moments. For all of the failing that you see in this city, you see it in yourself, still. Because you can’t shed it all completely and look at it with alien eyes. Like a spurned lover, like a prodigal son, this place defines you still in absence. You can never leave it completely behind. You can never leave yourself completely behind.

The Little (Rediscovered) Acts in the Margins

I’ve been cleaning out my closet here at the house of mis padres, and when going through an old high school binder, I stumbled across not only some sweet doodlings (if there’s one good thing to come out of a lot of time spent being bored in class, it would definitely be the enhanced creativity that occurs in the margins of notes), but also a few old writings that I thought had been lost forever in the Great Hard-drive Crash of ‘97. I’m going to post some of these shortly after this, so that they can join my on-line repository here, so stay tuned.

It’s fun going through personal historical archives, filtering through old track and cross country medals (now on their way to the dump), sifting through elementary school-era journals and cartoons, and discovering random pictures of me I didn’t even know were there of me with long hair (which was a weird and disturbing phase in my physical existence that is probably best left buried in the past). What’s fun about it is not only the kind of vain fulfillment of harkening back upon one’s gloriously depressed and socially inept days in middle school and high school, but also in discovering that the most important things to you are not all the stupid things that adults tried to mire you down in—what stands out from the bricolage of your historic memorabilia are the moments and trinkets that best captured your sparks of creativity, your flares of individuality and defiance in the dark sea of conformity, insecurity, and complacency. The little short stories and poems that—while no longer quite so passionate and eloquent as you once might have thought them—become revealed as joyous moments of exploration and quirky pathos. The little tormented drawings on the sidelines of your algebra notes that were once just a way to keep sane in the midst of utter boringness—now they seem enlightened with depth and verve, especially given that you no longer feel that you can draw that way anymore. It was natural then. Now you no longer have an excuse to sit there and draw weird things.

These little archival snippets of yourself in youth—it is a remembrance of struggle. It is to remember who it is that you have become, forged in the flames of all the mundane shit that once seemed to dominate every little thing in your world. It is to realize that even now you still stand swaying in the ocean of homogeneity and peer pressure, and the only things that will ultimately redeem you are those shots of brilliant, selfless creation, which will yet come to define you. Beyond all of the teachers, all of the bosses, all of the nameless acquaintances and strangers and masses that would tell you what the world is—it’s really just those little creative acts in the margins that truly make you who you are.

Running as Meditative Achievement

Some peops like to assume foreign positions and breathe deeply, farting out their toxins and achieving yogic feats of stretchiness. Others like to simply sit, zen focused, breath leveled and mind emptied of all but immediate attention. For I, my meditation consists in running. I think that running is oft overlooked as a potentially meditative and ecstatic and spiritually emergent activity. Most people pass it off as a rather painful, smelly, and impractical endeavor. It’s certainly not the most glamourous of past-times: I blow snot-rockets every few feet as I go along, and I probably look somewhat like a frenzied chicken, or perhaps a beleagured muskrat, as I stride along with sweat accumulating along my neck and back. Yet I love it. I love the feeling that it gives me, I love running fast, I love sweating profusely, I love going somewhere—preferably alongside of the ocean—with the sun on my skin. Because as any experienced runner can tell you, once your body has adapted to the stress and circulatory demands of running (which can admittedly take quite some time—you’ve got to be masochistic at the outset), you feel great thereafter almost every time you run. The endorphins that flow freely like a shot of sweet morphine through your veins as you hit your stride and fall into a pendulumic sway. The steady trance of breath, of footfalls on the asphalt (or dirt, or grass, or sand). The pretty girls in sportsbras who pass by you on the boardwalk. The sun glinting off of the sea. The feeling of self-control, and flight, and music, and discipline. I used to try to force myself to sit uncomfortably on the floor and empty my mind and meditate. But I’ve realized that I already do my own style of meditation; and while I would like to become better able to sit and focus my mind while doing nothing but sitting, I also think that learning to center yourself in the midst of bodily frenetic activity is the flip side of the same coin. Easier in one way, and harder in another.

Moving on into it

Well, we did it; I’m in San Diego in one piece and all of our shit is out of the U-haul and packed away (mostly) somewheres in the closets of my parents’ abode. I perhaps shed some years off my life due to the stress of selling off my goods—including my first Subaru—packing, cleaning, and then driving for 9 hours and getting stuck in gridlock traffic and having to pee really bad. It’s done though, for now, and we can relax somewhat for the next 2 weeks whilst readying ourselves for Colombia by halfheartedly browsing through our Spanish books.

I have to say, that U-haul truck really hauled. The V-8 engine propeled us along at rocket speeds over mountainous passes as we swung around other lesser vehicles in our path. It was surprisingly aerodynamic as well (as claimed on the side of the truck), and just purred right along at 75-80 on the 395.

So we are now officially jobless, homeless, and ready for adventure. Since I’ve got little to do, perhaps you’ll see some more posts here from me, as I tend to be much more prolific blogging-wise when I’m bored. Til then.

Sick and Student

 

I’m sick as a dog, laying in bed blowing my brains out my nostrils, waiting for my body to wallow through the bacterial battlefields to recovery. Being sick is an interesting experience: it overcomes you, it overwhelms you, it possesses you. You are fighting a piece of the outer world that has invaded, that has successfully rendered itself into altered forms that can captivate you unawares, that propagates itself through you. You suffer to know of this outer alien unknown, your body pantomimes the precursory throes of death, and your mind feverishly dilates and contracts between dreams, desire, and despair. There is nothing to do but allow your unconscious self to take over, and wave to it from the chambered tower of your limitations like a damsel with a kerchief to her knight off to battle. At this point, the rational mind begins to bend itself into borderline witchcraft superstitions, thinking perhaps this remedy, or this potion, or this activity, or this thought will somehow summit the tipping point into victory, and suddenly the cascading mucous membranes will cease their tireless assault of your throat and lungs, and suddenly you will be free! Free! Alive! For indeed, if there is one good thing to say about getting sick, it is that it fully makes you aware of just how fortunate you are when you are well, and balanced, and breathing. How it makes you savor that feeling of non-infected sinuses, that full breadth of air into your lungs without hacking up quivering piles of sputum, that fresh, clean unsludged mind that can move, that can think, that can act! But it makes us stronger, in any case, right? To fight off naturally the invasive replicating hordes of ever evolving microbes? I certainly hope so, and that my time spent aching and feverish in bed is for a just cause. I like to think of it as when I connect on-line, and my anti-virus software automatically updates itself. My anti-virus software is updating. Tooling about in my tissues to reinforce the battlements with fresh data, to keep on top of the freshly mutating wave of evil that always lurks somewhere just at the edges of perception, the parasitic lifeforms that exist seemingly only for the purpose of endless propagation and otherwise simply for the cause of teaching mankind a lesson. The suffering that exists to lead us into recognition of what we have lost, and that in the regaining of this loss, we can then remember, for a spell, the brilliant numinous joy that is everyday existence in health, in fullness of being, in balance of breath. Until we go under again . . . and again, until one day we are assimilated by the Borg of alien teeming mutating ecstatic multitudinous dance of death-life that is one and everything in the universe. Until then, I suppose I will have to suffer this sickness gladly, and take my lesson and my medicinal tea in full, humbly, as the imperfect, fallible human structure that I am. Here’s to colds!

Leaving

Days passing like framed blurs of autumn out the car door window,
suggestive of the way to a death that is really just life hibernating in the frozen cold depths of looming winter,
I press my cheek to the cold that transfers from outside to within,
watching the cinema whirl of images that are pressed as if to convey
a certain something
just outside of the frame of reference,
waiting for a winter that will not affect me,
because I am leaving you, Tahoe.
I am leaving the snow bound pine trees and still mirrored blue skies of lakes, the cutting sierra wind over ridges, the midnight pagan jeers of packs of coyotes, the dumpster rumblings of your displaced bears, the meth and alcohol addictions of your youth, the snowboarder bum idols of your winters, the South American Heavenly workers, the Eastern European card dealers and taxi drivers, I am leaving.
I am going to where there will be no snow, no winter, no corporate ski resorts, no sucker casinos.
And I’m going to miss your dense tinderbox ridgelines of trees, and your multitudinous desolate lakes, and the skin cutting sunshine even in the midst of powder packed snow depths. I take with me my memories of friends, death defying hikes, full moon rye whiskey tequila sodden nights stumbling in the wilderness, drumming by the waterfall, casino club dollar drink dancing, sandwiches and Boont at Divided Sky, biking 9 bumpy miles to and from work in the summer, walking 30 minutes through the red dawn black ice to take the BlueGo to Stateline to work at a ski resort in the winter, my old Subaru sliding sedately on the one-lane rollarcoaster curves on Fallen Leaf Road in the morning like a skiier, all of these memories I take with me and hold dear, but I will not miss you, Tahoe. No, I will not really miss you. It is time, it was time a long time ago, for me to move on. And so now, finally, I am moving on, looking forward to the future, bundling up my history here with you and packing it up into small boxes and renting a minivan to drive it all on back home to San Diego, where it can sit and collect dust while I’m away somewhere in another country, enjoying a winter without snow, without snowboarders, without the English language. So long, Tahoe.

Leaving the Workplace

 

In a matter of weeks, I will be leaving the place wherein I have worked on and off for the past 5 years. I’ve developed significantly during this time, both professionally, emotionally, and socially. Some of that is attributable to the place itself: located beside a beautiful and cold 400 ft deep (in spots) glacially formed lake, nestled into the Sierra Nevadas, a wilderness area located next door, surrounded by rocky moraines dense with pine. Bears bumble through and must be chased away, raccoons nest periodically beneath the cabins until captured and relocated, squirrels and chipmunks and mice propagate exponentially and go on daily raids throughout all the cabins, scurrying frantically about on forays for cookies (until we set traps that slaughter large amounts of them; something I’m going to work the rest of my life trying to karmically repay). Most of my development, however, is due to the people that I have worked, drank, hiked, and lived with. A seasonal gig, most people come and go, except for those who work there year-round. But bonds are formed even with the seasonal workers that are there for 2 months. People come from all over, from all kinds of different backgrounds, to work here in California in the mountains. Some people have never gone to college, some are waiting to attend grad school, a few have retired from their professional careers and are just looking to keep busy and have some fun.

The work itself has been trying, both physically and managerially. The organization of the place is haphazard, and the pay isn’t good. But the friendships, experiences, and the discovered inner strength and capability have proven to be invaluable. This last year, I’ve already been spiritually and mentally half out the door, and have only been staying on to save up the moolah in readiness for departure and further exploration. But I don’t regret any of the time and effort I’ve spent here. I don’t regret the terrible emotional experiences I’ve been put through here, the deaths and the drama and the loneliness. I don’t regret the vast number of bathrooms that I’ve cleaned, nor the hernia I’ve gotten surgery for, nor the vast amounts of alcohol that I’ve filtered through my liver.

I met my girlfriend here—something I never expected to occur in a seasonal gig where most people my age come through just to party and have multiple fleeting, shallow relationships. I had no expectations of forming a lasting relationship here, and it was a pleasant surprise to have met her here, of all places. Without searching, without expectation, without the modern quest for the Holy Woman: bars and clubs and on-line sites and speed dating.

Prior to working here, I’d worked a string of office jobs, where I filed stuff, answered phones, sorted mail, input data into the computer, and played Yahoo! dominoes and was bored out of my skull and hated all of it, even though I was paid decent. I thought of work as something to despise and endure. I used to use all of my sick days whenever I got them. Now if I use more than a few hours of sick leave in a year, it’s a surprise. I lift 80 lb buckets by myself. I take a 15 minute lunch break and work over 8 hours. And it isn’t necessarily that my work is gratifying. It’s often stressful and sheer grunt work. It’s simply that I’ve discovered that I like to work hard, I like to keep busy, I like to manage things, maintain organization, look at the bigger picture, see the beneficial result of my efforts. I like using tools, installing hardware, figuring out how to fix problems. I like physical labor, and getting down into the midst of things, working beside my workers, getting to know people and what makes them tick. I also like sitting down and looking at how to change things for the better, and creating a plan of action and a design to implement increased environmental and social benefit.

I’m proud of the changes that I’ve implemented during my time here: I changed over all of our cleaning solutions to non-toxic homemade solutions; I initiated a food-waste composting program; I alerted the head honcho to a number of problems I saw amongst management and with the general communication between management and staff; and a number of smaller little organizational stuff.

So saying goodbye to this place, I feel good, I feel that I’ve taken what I’ve needed for that time in my life, and that this has been a wonderful stepping stone to the future. So stepping into the future, I am confident. I am positive. And I am ready for change.

Grappling With This

This is an attempt to grapple directly the demon by the horns, to look straight into the face of chaos and give to it name, to keep balanced and sane on the flurried crest of waves breaking in all directions. Keep things held within long enough, man, and suddenly you may find your self pushed, pulled, beaten, and probed by the outer world into shapes that are no longer your own. Here. This is mine, I take this moment into my gut to recreate myself in these words that come from the integrated depths and surfaces of the world that lies eternal within and lies infinitely varied and fleeting without.

You see, sometimes I just let the world, it pass, it passes, it flurry, it swirling all around and past and through and it’s like an invisible sand sifting through the fingers into the cosmic spread of desert . . . so I’ve got to speak, at some point eventually, compelled not even by vision or thought or some cohesive direction at all, but simply by extreme and dire NEED. I have to do this, I have to stop the world and offer this fragmented piece of myself imposed onto its stream, the moon of my self-desire wavering whole for fragments of time, before passing again through into the flux with the rest of it all. . . before I’ve got to do it again, redefine myself again, respeak the flame that burns quietly and hidden throughout my depths to be shot out into the light to spark so suddenly and spontaneously into the night.

If you think that this is a hobby, as I might even myself say if you asked me and I were forced to say what this is, then we would of course be mistaken. This is my life force, the stroke of strings that gives to the soundtrack of my days meaning. Because on the surface, I am nothing, and none of these things I do in the outer world mean much of anything. And deeper within, the cosmic dance begins to become more manifest, the colors, the fires, the intertwinement of space within form, a wall of moving pictures. This is a necessary and critical reckoning with what it is to live, and what it is to exist, and what it is to feel. This. Me. I. Now.

Seasons

First snowfall of the season last night, awoken to the feeling in the air of tension released. Things are shifting, systems transforming, not only in the macrocosm, but in the microcosm of my world as well. I am looking forward soon (but a month!) to a time of rest and relaxation, to spending time with my family and running alongside the ocean with the sun on my skin. And then onwards thenceforth into Colombia, to salsa and aguardiente and coffee, into the adventure that is another society, another perception of the universe, another mentality. And beyond. . .into the unknown, a place wherein I may find the future. A place that I can make my own, that will mold me into the new form that I am to take.

Fitting

Words have not been coming to me easily, which speaks itself of some disconnection between within and without. So in struggling for reparation of these unseen scars, I know that the only way to heal is to hurt, to allow myself to feel some pain that has not been expressed, but easily, so easily repressed. It could and can be something as abstract as the disconnection between sublimity and mundanity, between possibility and actuality. Or something so small as a moment’s ignorance, a shadow’s fall across that page in time. Locating the exact pinpoint of dislocation is not so important, I don’t think.  I think it more critical to address this very moment’s division, in which I would attempt to pretend that I have nothing to say, that there is nothing to say, that there is silence within, nothing worth writing about, that I am incapable of writing effectively about what I might happen to think of, etc.

So this is an incantation, a spell, a charm of words wreaked to heal, words woven to address a lack of words. Sometimes I begin to think that everything that is written must be deep, must be good, must be pure, must be whole. And so the imperfect, unchosen words slip away, disappear, hide fragmented into the folds of silence, and I am left with nothing at all to speak, because nothing, in the beginning, is good enough of itself, no word on its own can embody completeness. All of these imperfect pieces must be strung together, stitched and woven together, until something beyond themselves, something beyond myself, begins to make itself known. And how can I know what this complete vision will be until I plunge into the shrapnel storm of potentiality, and begin to pick and choose fragment by fragment, brick by brick, carefully placing and replacing and deleting, until a stairway to something has been made?

And so here it is, this beginning entry into renewal, rediscoverance, rebirth. It must be done again, again, everyday, this remembrance of what can never be captured. I must start anew at every step, forgetting momentarily what has come before and concentrating only on what is to come, and what will be formed. And then it fits.

In Portland

I’m currently in the city of Portland, which doesn’t necessarily translate into the Land of Port, although perhaps it could, as there are a surprising number of wine shops around here, and a just as surprisingly small number of liquor shops. At least in the area I’m in.
The last time I was in Port-land—for a day—it was springtime and sunny and flowers were a-bloomin and all that kind of jazz, so it appeared the vision of an idyllic city of cleanliness and orderly environmental goodness. But now that I’m here again, of course, I’m seeing it for what it typically is: overcast, hazy, drizzly, dark. Which isn’t really that bad, except when you’re from southern California and have never lived anywhere where it’s gray or rainy for more than a day, and even then everyone starts getting crabby and rear-ending each other on the freeway.
Portland often comes up as a possible place to inhabit in my near and uncertain future, because it fits very well some stipulations which I have for wherever I’m going to move to next, post-Colombia. And that is: an adequate public transportation infrastructure, bike friendliness, good live music scene, and a reasonable proximity to bodies of water and masses of trees.
But I just don’t know about this whole lack of sunlight thing. I think I would have to sit under a bright lamp half the day or else I would bite someone’s head off.
Nowhere’s perfect, of course. I’m just sick of living in places where you HAVE to own an expensive luxury item in order to have a social life. I’m also sick of living in places where the greatest sense of community you can find is by going into a coffee-shop and getting on the internet. I’m an idealist, of course, but at least I know what I need to feel good about being alive.
Anyway, if you know of some idyllic dream place in which to live in that has not been completely Californicated, drop me a line. This particular Californian ain’t lookin to fuck up anywhere else with yuppyism, tract housing, and franchised homogeneity.
It’s pretty hard just to decide, out of all the endless possibilities, on some particular place to settle down in. I also feel like where I go to next just kind of needs to fall into place, and that’s what I’m hoping will happen soon, because I have no idea about where I’m going or what I’m doing, and I ain’t going to fret myself sick about it neither. I don’t like pretending that I have complete control over my life and what I’m doing. My direction is happenstance and driven by something greater than myself. I often feel that it is simply a matter of allowing that force to sweep me up in its divine wind, and not fighting it; maybe stepping over the edge of the cliff in order to allow it to work it’s ways. So, I’ll see where that takes me, anyway. And I’m sure I’ll get a little bit of say-so in the matter, but I don’t want to completely overrule chance, as chance (or a necessary happenstance) is what has given me the best things in my life.

Til Then

At times your life is simply one of waiting. Sometimes you’ve got to be practical, patient, pragmatic, holding onto your trump cards until a later date. You yearn to be free, unrestrained, galloping through the dust at red dusk like wild horses on the plain. But the fruits that you desire must be allowed to ripen on distant limbs, far beyond immediate reach. You know that they are there, swelling with potential. You know that the time will come when the seeds that you have planted will bear an abundance in the future. You can smell it in the air.

But for now you must wait, confined to the present, to innumerable nights spent without social stimulus. For now you must stockpile your energy and hoard your inner light. You exist and move somewhere deep within, beyond immediate definition, unknowable but to the closest and farthest from you. The time will come, when the background shifts, the contexts transform, and for a space of time, again, you will shine.

I will wait til the time comes to exist momentarily in my fullest potential, like a track runner training endlessly for a few brief seconds of flight on the day of the meet.

Music List

I’m an avid music listener and lover, and I thought it might be an interesting exercise to look back over my music listenin career and pick out albums that have influenced and moved me the most in my youth. The following list is broken down by genre, in no order of precedence, and by no means inclusive. What are some of your favorite formative music listening experiences?

Pop/Rock

Counting Crows: August and Everything After
Radiohead: OK Computer
Bjork: Vespertine
The Smashing Pumpkins: Pisces Iscariot
Ani Difranco: Living In Clip
Tori Amos: Boys for Pele
David Gray: A Century Ends
Paul Simon: Graceland

Electronic

The Orb: Orbus Terrarum
Aphex Twin: Richard D. James
Future Sound of London: ISDN
Underworld: 2nd Toughest In The Infants
Talvin Singh: OK
Deep Forest: Deep Forest

Jazz

Miles Davis: Live-Evil
John McLaughlin: The Heart of Things
Keith Jarrett: Vienna Concert
Terje Rypdal: Skywards
Cassandra Wilson: Blue Light Til Dawn
Mahavishnu Orchestra: Inner Mounting Flame

Hip-Hop

Hieroglyphics: 3rd Eye Vision
Talib Kweli/Mos Def: Blackstar
Eligh: Sidewaysdaze
Pep Love: Ascension
Dead Prez: Let’s Get Free
Common: Like Water for Chocolate

R&B

Sade: Best of
Erykah Badu: Baduizm
Lauryn Hill: The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill
Jill Scott: Beautifully Human
D’Angelo: Voodoo
Anthony Hamilton: Comin’ from Where I’m From

World

Cheikh Lo: Ne La Thiass
Sizzla: Black Woman and Child
Trilok Gurtu: The Beat of Love
Jan Garbarek/Anouar Brahem/Ustad Shaukat Hussein: Madar
Den Fule: Quake

Blog Apologetics

Just wanted to throw y’all a quick update and apologize for the infrequency and latency of blog posts from yours truly. Between a serious bout of writer’s block and the fact that I canceled my internet connection due to the attempt to save as much money as possible between now and Colombia, I haven’t been able to post much of late. However, there’s some things in the pipeworks that will be posted when the intermittent wireless that I sometimes can just barely pick-up at home comes back in on a beneficial breeze. Keep stopping by.

Sitting Around in a Hospital

I woke up Sunday night and my girlfriend was out in the other room sobbing. I figured she just had a bad dream, and tried to doze back off. When she didn’t come back to bed, I got up and checked on her, and she was having severe abdominal pain. We’d had a massive lunch, and a late dinner, so we assumed that something just wasn’t sitting right in her stomach, either bad gas (which can be extremely painful), or mild food poisoning. My stomach was a bit queasy too, so when she threw up later in the morning, again I just thought she had gotten a virus or something. She continued to throw up throughout the next day, and the severe pain in her stomach did not go away. When it got to the afternoon, I began to realize that it could be something else, so we packed up and went to the E.R.

They performed blood and urine tests and an ultrasound, and sure enough, there on the ultrasound screen were found some gallstones in her gall bladder. So she was checked into the hospital (after 5 hours of sitting in the E.R. room) and put on an I.V. and given some potent painkillers, and I spent the night in a weird half-reclining chair that made my butt sweat. This is the first time I’ve ever really been in a hospital ward, other than for a brief time when my roommate in college got in a motorcycle accident. The nurse brought me some breakfast on a tray this morning, and I can now say that I have eaten hospital food, and that it is indeed pretty bland. But I was hungry, so I ate all of it. And it was free.

She’s getting surgery this afternoon, and we’re just waiting around until then. She’s dozing off in a narcotic induced daze, her I.V. machine purring intermittently by her bedside. The surgery is supposedly pretty routine, so it’s not too scary, but all the same, I am a little frightened by general anesthesia. The local hospital we are at isn’t exactly world renowned either. We’ve heard of people who work here that say they would never get surgery themselves here. Great.

Anyway, wish us luck. And here’s to hoping that the bill doesn’t completely dash all possibility of a journey to Colombia this winter. . .

Why Travel? Why Live?

Why travel, and spend money that could otherwise be spent solidifying a home base? Especially, why travel to places remote from what you know and place yourself in potentially uncomfortable and destabilizing situations, where you don’t know the language well and where there aren’t established tourist traps and familiar corporate franchises and resorts to squirrel away into?

I’m speaking of course about going to Colombia, a destination that makes most Americans express dismay and shock that you would even think of venturing to (thanks to our sensationalist and terrorist driven media). I’m writing this not only to remind myself of why I want to go there, and why I love to travel, but also for my beleaguered girlfriend, who is perhaps not sure why she is accompanying me other than for the reason of making sure that I don’t run away with some random colombiana.

The reasons why I love to travel are really quite simple: I love to dance to different music, drink different drinks, eat different food, see different environments, and meet different people. So when you travel with me, that’s exactly what I’ll be doing: enjoying a new and different culture. I’m not very interested in seeing monuments or ruins or museums. I’m not very interested in snapping photos of myself standing in front of panoramic viewpoints. Essentially, I travel because I want to know what it is to live. And part of how I gain that understanding is by exploring how other people are living: what makes them alive, what brings them joy, what makes them them.

I don’t know where my life is going. I don’t know what career I can fit my attributes into. I don’t know where I want to settle down. I don’t know any of that, but I do know that I want live my life as fully as possible, and explore myself as deeply as possible. So to me, traveling to Colombia is a form of determining my future. This is just as viable to me as studying for the GRE and applying for grad schools. I don’t know where it will take me, but I do know that it will change me, and that that change will determine where I will go next.

Colombia, despite what the scars of narcoterrorism and political corruption have wreaked, contains a beautiful and passionate people that I want to get to know. It contains a land so varied and beautiful that it seems impossible to fit into one small country. It contains salsa, vallenato, and cumbia musics. It contains some of the best coffee in the world, and Carribbean, Andean, and Amazonian cuisines. The people arguably speak some of the most well annunciated and easily understood Spanish in South American, which means that I can bone up more on my slim amount of Spanish speaking capability. Furthermore, the one cousin I have in this world is a native colombiano, growing plátanos y café orgánicos.

In these strange times many of us feel displaced, without history or tradition or identity. So we must seek whatever connections we can find that will tie us into a true sense of family, sense of community, and sense of time. I go to Colombia to know these connections, to rediscover humanity. My girlfriend comes with me because we are family. Together we go because we don’t know one another nor ourselves completely. We go to find our place in this disconnected, fragmented world. Sometimes one must travel far from home in order to understand just what home really is; far from normality to know what normality really is; far from self to know what self really is.

We travel far so that we can come closer to where we are truly from.

Reminder

When my focus slips from within me, I exist temporarily solely on the outside, a representative of what I do not know, a physical force with nothing behind it. My daily existence, my mundane tasks define everything that I am.

It is hard to keep the focus inward, when the world outside demands your constant attention. Sometimes you have to shut it out, stopple your mind, and just breathe.

We have developed a world that battles with us constantly for our energy, attention, and time. All of our spare moments spent watching something, doing something, playing something, smoking something. To turn off all of this extraneous noise takes the self-discipline of a monk at times.

Often I just sit and stare into this empty computer screen, waiting for the need to write to grow strong enough for something to explode out of me like it was meant to be. But then I close the window and play a game or watch a movie instead. Because I did not have the patience to sit and listen and wait for the words to come.

It takes struggle to transcend. It takes patience to get beyond the surface. It takes discipline to chisel out the god within.

How I need to be reminded of this, every single day.

Fire Away

Fire’s pretty much kaput. Firefighters are heading home, or to fight one of the multitudinous other lesser fires burning somewhere else in the arid West. We all came back to work today, and of course, soon’s I get there, suddenly I wisht I was on vacation again. Vacation only seems to be meaningful as a time off work when you should otherwise be at work. Enforced vacays ain’t no fun.

Tourists pouring in like the roads were never closed, it’s back to normal in Tahoe. Let the temperatures rise and the last residual tenacious spots of snow on the mountains melt! It’s summer alright. And the fire danger remains very high.

Just as the media attention shifted as soon as the fire began to get contained, so too the kind of focus that disaster achieves in a community has begun to erode almost immediately. The frantic people running about the streets, the wondering disaster gawkers standing on roadsides, the fervent and almost patriotic supermarket checkout line communion is all gone. Only the people whose homes were destroyed (and that weren’t “vacation homes”) are left with the burden of ongoing struggle with loss and destruction. I can imagine how that must be: all the world has continued on like nothing happened and you’re stuck trying to pick up the pieces.

I personally am happy to not have a car stuffed full of my belongings, and to not have to be constantly awaiting to see whether I have to skedaddle or not.

Anyway, lesson from wildfire learned today, children, is that you’d best make yourself some phatty defensible space if yer living out in the middle of the woods.

Fire Update

Best sites for checking on the updated status of the wildfire are:

Tahoe Daily Tribune — www.tahoedailytribune.com

US Forest Service Angora Fire Incident Page — inciweb.org/incident/725/

Yesterday, the winds didn’t pick up as expected, and the danger of the combination of high winds and high temperatures was thus avoided for one more day, and all day long the fire lines were strengthened. Today the winds are definitely picking up, but so far the fire has been kept under control. High winds are expected through Saturday, so it’s never quite certain how or if it will spread.

We’ve moved back into our apartment yet again, hopefully this time for good. I feel pretty confident, given that they are allowing people back into neighborhoods right along the fire line. Of course, things can change in a minute, and we’re keeping the car packed. But at least we don’t have to be driving around town and trying to figure out how to kill time.

Since I can’t get back into work, I have nothing to do, which seems like it would be a good thing—except that I have a car full of valuables so I can’t just drive anywhere, and I can’t go hiking or biking or running because the air quality is so bad that I’m coughing just from laying in bed. I wish I could enjoy this enforced vacation a little bit more, but truth be told, I’d rather be at work.

Things I’ve Learned From Proximity to a Huge Wildfire

1) Flames can appear a hell of a lot closer than they are

2) A few people start freaking out; then suddenly everyone is freaking out because they see other people freaking out, and haven’t been sure yet whether or not they should freak out

3) Flames don’t spread quite as rapidly nor thoroughly as it would appear; they leave some houses intact, while wiping out whole structures right next door

4) In times of disaster, people get stressed out and will commence yelling at each other over nothing. In the supermarket I’ve witnessed a civilian yelling at a firefighter; walking down the street, I’ve heard people on balconies cussing out one another over who has lost more in the fire; in the parking lot of my apartment building, two guys were calling each other punks and threatening to kill one another; and my girlfriend and I have been snappy with each other on a frequent basis.

5) You can look at people’s faces and literally see their attempts to cope with something beyond their understanding

6) Information changes swiftly, and having the most current source of information gives you more confidence and makes you less afraid, even when that information might not be the best news in the world

7) Being patient can calm you down a lot more when you aren’t sure what do to or where to go next; if you’re running frantically around trying to do something when there is nothing to be done, you work yourself into a high level of frenzy; waiting until you are given a clear directive makes it a lot less stressful

Evacuation Nation

Now it’s official; we are evacuees from the fire. Yesterday and this morning had instilled a sense of false comfort in us, and we even had just walked over to the supermarket and meat market to stock up our refrigerator. Then the wind suddenly picked up, and all hell broke loose. People were driving frantically from their houses down the street. The fire leaped across the highway and into the adjoining Tahoe Keys area. We held out for a while, knowing that the fire was still a few blocks away (I have a radio from out where I work and could hear the fire dispatches). The sky again turned into a deep hue of orange and ashes fell like dirty snow. Neighbors were, in a touching act of desperation, watering the lawns in front of our apartment complex. Our landlord went from door to door and told us that it was time to leave. We grabbed some of the yogurts that we had just bought and fruit and bread, and I grabbed my six-pack of beers and the excellent bottle of mezcal that my girlfriend had bought me in Mexico.

What is also worrying me, aside from losing the wonderful new apartment that we had just moved into (ironically enough to get away from cigarette smoke; now we’re sucking down ash and fumes from burning trees and buildings), the fire seems also poised to move into the Fallen Leaf Lake region. So great, I could also lose my employment.

In any case, after already having gone through thinking that my place had burned down, I’m a little bit more relaxed now. I know that all I can do at this time is just to wait patiently to see what occurs. Thanks, by the way, for the concern expressed by some of you, I’m perfectly fine and in no danger, other than being slightly dizzy and nauseated from breathing in smoke and ash for the last few days.

Morning after Apocalypse

Last night at around 3:30 we heard our neighbors starting to move out, and so we got up and looked out the window, to see fireballs of flame leaping to the sky a few blocks away. We got in the car and drove across the highway, and watched what seemed to be the inevitable approach of destruction to our apartment complex. Ash fell in blankets in the apocalyptic night. We drove across town and crashed with a friend for the rest of the morning.

Miracle of miracles, our apartment complex is still unscathed. From the way it looked last night, it seemed an impossibility that it wouldn’t burn down. But I’m also not exactly going to jump for joy just yet, because the fire line at the moment is literally blocks down the street, and the fire, as of last press released, is only 5% contained. So I’m just keeping my fingers crossed and counting my blessings in terms of having at least some of my most valuable possessions with me.

Business trip is postponed, of course. All our guests have made an exodus to the north shore, and we’re still scrambling to figure out what to do.

It’s a strange feeling to go through your belongings and pick out on the spur of the moment what is most valuable to you that can fit into your car. And you come to realize that there is very little, really, that you need. But it’s also strange to literally kiss the majority of your things goodbye, leaving them, quite potentially, to burn.

At least 4 of the people I work with have homes in the fire ravaged areas, and I hope to god that they still have something to go back to. Because having thought that I’d lost my home last night, now I know what it can feel like.

More fire, lots of fire

As of the last update that I’ve seen, 110 more homes were burnt within the last 3 hours while I’d been asleep. I got up at 1:30 to pee and looked out the window and saw flames licking high in the sky not very far away at all. We’ve loaded up the car with our small valuables and are now just waiting to evacuate, and given by looking out the window right now and how close those flames just got a second ago, we may just bail now instead of waiting for the official call. Now there’s no way that I can sleep. Not sure if I’ll be going on any trip either, if I feel that my abode is going to burn down. . .

Wildfire

Like they say, when it rains, it storms.

We had to evacuate my workplace this afternoon due to a massive wildfire that blazed up out of nowhere, and they wouldn’t allow us to turn down the road that would take us to our apartment; instead, we had to drive the 80 miles or so around the lake just to get 6 miles away from where we originally were . . . At the time, though, we weren’t even sure that we would have an apartment to come back to. At least 50 homes have already gone up, and I am looking out of my window right now and literally watching flames eating away at trees on the hillside a few blocks away, and my eyes and lungs are burning. We’ve gotten some of our stuff packed up and ready to go in case it makes its way down here, which it certainly looks capable of doing right now.

So many things happening at once. I am also getting ready to leave tomorrow morning for my first ever business trip, which I am highly excited about, as I am visiting the headquarters of Patagonia, Inc, which is THE most environmentally proactive business on the planet. This wildfire certainly chose a bad time to spring up, but it also wasn’t unforeseen. The ridge-line where it started is like a tinderbox of condensed forest due to the last 50 years of fire prevention.

Another amazing thing that occurred today is that I approached one of my bird-houses today to check on it, and out popped a little swallow’s head, looking at me inquiringly! This was the first inhabitant thus far that I know of in one of my bird-houses, and I feel elated. I expect to start receiving rent from the little bugger 1st thing next month. . . That is, if the whole place isn’t burnt down in the next few days. . .

Man, it’s kind of hard to wrap your head around something like a massive disaster like this, even when it’s going on directly outside your door.

Maté on a Monday Morning

Colombia-Ho

I’ve been contemplating my future direction for some time now, and I still have yet to determine a trajectory in terms of how to make my money in a manner that I might be alright with over the long-term. (Considering either grad school for Public Policy, or opening up a wine/fine liquor bar/used bookstore/hookah bar/whole foods restaurant/dance club). But for this year at least, I’ve made certain decisions about my immediate future: for example, I’ve decided that I must journey to Colombia, and I’m pretty excited about this. This will occur at the end of the year, and I’m still trying to determine the exact length of time to be down there, but I’m hoping for at least 2 months, if not more.

Why Colombia? Well, for starters, my cousin is a Colombian organic farmer (go figure, considering I’m mainly Swedish in heritage), growing platanos and café, and as I haven’t seen him since I was a kid, I figured that now’s about the time, given that I am getting into permaculture and planting concepts. Furthermore, given that I had a wonderful journey into Perú last year and picked up a little bit of Castellano, it only seems natural to continue exploring the wonders and beauty of South America. And also, of course, it is extremely cheap down there as well.

Different this time around will be that my girlfriend plans on accompanying me, which will change the experience of travel in many ways. She’s terrified of being in a foreign country and of dealing with strangers in another language. Especially a country that has the cloud of narcotic traffic terrorism hanging over it. When I am by myself, I never feel very threatened, both because I am secretly a ninja, and also because I can be very accepting of people when I need to, even when they appear threatening. But with her by my side, I may feel more of a protective urge and not be as inclined to place myself in potentially sketchy situations that could also lead to interesting adventures. But at the same time, I also think that I will be more adventurous in other ways, such as when I want to go check out a local bar playing criollo music, I won’t hesitate to go out since I will have a companion. Many times last winter when I wanted to check out some local joint and I hadn’t made any local friends yet, I was a little bit nervous because I was alone, blonde, and didn’t speak very good Spanish, so I didn’t feel comfortable just busting into some bar and dancing merengue, even though I really wanted to. I’m not sure how it will be exactly, but I know that it will be a whole new experience unto itself.

I’m excited already, I love to travel and explore foreign cultures, where sometimes I feel more at home, and also feel more self-explorative then when in my native environment. I feel like the juxtaposition of being in a strange and foreign environment challenges you to appreciate difference, and open yourself to wholly new perspectives that you wouldn’t normally consider nor accept.

Standardized Tests as Soul Deadening Exercises

I’ve been taking a look at the GRE lately, as I consider graduate school as a potential future direction. The GRE, as far as I can tell, is just the SAT with more writing involved. And just like the SAT, the testing seems to have nothing to do with your intelligence, grasp of basic subjects such as grammar or math, or with any kind of general understanding of anything real at all—it is simply to test your endurance and stamina for 3+ hours of wading through questions designed to numb your soul and trick you into being misled by hazy wording or vague comparisons. It’s like all it is really testing is your ability to study and take that specific test. It has no application in reality, other than garnering you a score so you can apply to expensive schools. It does not demonstrate your intelligence nor capability to achieve.

What is it with our nation’s obsession with standardized tests? The very fact that they are standardized ensures immediately that they will have no relevance for anything other than gauging how much a student is capable of sifting through academic bullshit. Because that’s all it is—academic bullshit. I don’t think the test is hard at all, nor did I think the SAT was hard either. It’s just so tedious and dry that it deadens your brain and soul to the point that you just stop caring a third of the way through the exam and stop applying yourself to it at all. At least, that’s my problem with these tests. I can score adequately on them, but I don’t apply myself enough to score excellently. I have no interest in “studying” for this test. I have no interest in taking bullshit classes on taking a bullshit exam. What a waste of goddam time, in my opinion. This is time that can be spent actually learning something useful, such as how to make a seed ball, making your forehand topspin stronger in Wii Sports tennis, or how to be mounted by a loa and eat hot coals.

Oh sure, I’m going to touch up my math a little bit, because I never actually did learn any math in school. I never considered it worthy of my attention. When I worked as an instructional aide at a high school, and I had to work with students in algebra and geometry, and demonstrate to them how to do it, I suddenly discovered that math wasn’t very hard at all. So I think that I’m OK, if I go over all the basic stuff that I was supposed to have learned in elementary school. But that’s all the studying I can handle. I have never been able to study anything that I have no interest in. In college, I discovered that when I had to take classes that I could care less about, such as a general biology course, all I had to do was buy the reader the night before the final and flip through it. Then it was fresh on my mind, and I could score adequately on the final enough to pass the course, without having attended any more than 2 or 3 classes. See, that’s what I call intelligence. But I don’t think that most graduate schools would agree, unfortunately.

Changing Spaces

I’m exhausted. Moved out of the secondhand smoke ridden apartment and into a natural gas ridden apartment. Moving is kind of neat in that you suddenly have a whole new space in which to go crazy with your amateur interior design skills, but it is also a pain in the ass in that you have to move all this minuscule annoying shit that you’ve somehow accumulated within the space of several months. The new apartment is older, has holes all over the walls, and is woefully graced with a veneer of faded shag carpet—but it also is bigger and gets tons of light during the day, which means potted plants can finally be domestically cultivated. Our neighbors seem generally tweaked out in that Tahoe specific way, but friendly. Last night my neighbor next door left her apartment—or fell asleep in a drug induced coma—and left her DVD of Stomping The Yard (from what I could see by the 1.5 minute looped options screen, it looked to be inspired by such high quality movies as You Got Served) on the intro screen, where it was looping endlessly this annoying bass beat that was cranked up at full volume, causing the whole building to shake. Her door was unlocked, so I just went in and turned it off, hopefully she didn’t mind.

If I’ve been somewhat lax on posting lately, this is the just cause.

Do it for this, dude

There is nothing I hate more in this world than when someone is overly full of themselves. Especially when it’s me. I’ve always hated braggadocio and flossing. I immediately dislike anyone who feels the need to continuously attract attention to themselves. I try to knock myself down as often as I can, if I feel I’m starting to get too big for my britches. I sometimes feel that my writing or my thoughts can get out of hand if I’m not careful. I try to read myself over again, to make sure that I’m not sounding like some hoitie-toitie nincompoop.

One thing that I always try to keep in mind is that everyone has their own beauty and context and manner of deep expression. Some people might seem as dumb as a rock, but they can dance like divinity. Others are socially inept, but they can craft amazing spontaneous feats of origami. Some people lament their inability to do anything artistic, but they have social presence to die for. Some people express themselves with their bodies, some with their minds, some with their hearts, some with their eyes. The fun thing, to me, is in learning to express yourself deeply through as many avenues as you can. We conventionally term “genius” anyone who is so specifically adapted to one avenue of expression that they have taken it as far as anyone else has gone. But I think that the word genius can also apply to people who apply themselves through so many means as to perhaps not be world renowned at any, but capable in all.

Anyway, to return to my point, if I had any in the first place. I guess this is a venting post. I just really don’t like it if I ever start to get too big of a head. Because this leads only to greater insecurity, in the end. Because you can’t always be on top of your game. You can’t always win. At some point, a little pin will find its way into your bubble, and everything blows up, leaving you with one big empty hole. The best thing to do is to be so secure in yourself that you don’t have to toot your own horn, ever. You don’t even have to let anyone else toot your horn, either. The horn does not need to be tooted. As long as you are secure in yourself, then you can just do what you do best, without doing it for recognition, or for a cookie, or to be patted on the head. You do it because the joy it brings (I just realized that that is almost an Ani Difranco lyric.) You do it because this is how you express yourself. You do it because this is how you connect to others. And that is the most important thing, always. The connection. The connection which is greater than the two disparate things that were. You and me and this formation we are together.

Stop wanting anything other than for this connection (I tell meself). Do it only for this. Not for money. Not for fame. Not for self. Not for world. Ever. All these other things only distract us from each other, and form fissures between us. As if we could be so conceited as to think that we are wholly divergent beings, sitting alone in our amniotic fluids. We do it for each other. To create the world. To create the currency of what can be. To know ourselves in each other.

Late Night Ponfiticate

I’m tired. But I can’t sleep, which necessitates, of course, a blog post. Something to do with the lingering scents of cigarette and bleach. Funny because I stopped a Harry Potter flick midway to go to bed, but here am I, fingering the little keys of my laptop like herein I might find the meaning of life. I write generally because I am in need, need of expression, need of compassion. Call and response of the heart and mind. It would seem that everything in life is causation, simple cause and effect, spark of synapse and subsequent baby manifestation, but we know this ain’t the complete picture. That there is something still, calm, centered, beyond the action, beyond the forces, some ultimate blissful unknown. Not god, necessarily. Like a you within yourself that is not yourself but everything which includes you and moves beyond you to include the cosmos. You glimpse this glimmering place within yourself when you breach that line between ego and insecurity, and find something more that connects you to everything else. Like you could die and this would still be there. Contexts shift and ebb and flow. Your heart flutters like an aspen leaf in divine current. But there is within yourself still this stillness. Unspeakable, unshakable. Closest thing you could do would be to sing unprotected. Producing fairy children out of thin air with the sheer volume of living magic exhumed from your lungs. Too often we are fearful and layered, buffered in sadness and joy. Unable to breakthrough to anything beyond what we would tell ourselves and each other we are. When in reality we are so much less, so much more insignificant than anything we would ever imagine. Ourselves, as we know it, are nothing. The sheerest, thinnest stretch of connection between galaxies. Rolled endlessly between infinitude and a single pointed finger. What seems at first glance like utter madness is in fact the most logical of steps descending into knowledge. Beyond appearance and self castigation lies this lakebed realm of playful alien forms defined only by our own seeing. What do you see? There it is! Simple, powerful, devastating. The world flattens, bends, shifts to our limitations. We can ruin everything, but it wouldn’t really matter. Because what matters is beyond matter. The sparrows flit from bug to bug over the water, wings bathed momentarily in sunlight as you eat your spaghetti. Everything would seem to center on the sauce, on the light. All is everything. Not just this, not just that, but every single minute thing collects itself into a picture which cannot possibly be deconstructed. So you fly, you sing, you move from point A to point B and in between the weather changes and you comment on it and people say “how are you doing” and you nod and say “good.” and the world explodes all around you to fall at your feet as you craft fantasy after fantasy after TV shows and spam filtered half lives, but nothing will ever quite approach what is there in the movement of the image of light to fall into your eyes backwards to right itself into your retinal after perception firing into thought, into perception, into meaning.

You take a breath. The whole universe quivers. What will be created? What will be destroyed? What will be understood?

Snippet of Happenings

Day off yesterday; slept in til 11:30 and then hung out with a buddy and smoked nargilah and drank dark coffee. It came upon us that rather than going out for dinner with girlfriend and her guests as planned and blowing a bunch of cash on some shit that some faceless hairy men in dank back rooms had cooked, that we should cook up a fat meal ourselves, because why not? And because we actually like to cook. Said friend is a cook by profession and I am a cook by fantasy and inclination, if not always by deed. Having recently attended some classes on Indian cookery, I at first thought to conjure an Indian feast, replete with samosas, bread, and curries. However, it seemed a bit daunting and we were unsure as to where to start. So we threw out that idea. But we knew that we wanted something spicy, because spice is necessary and good. Corn seemed to be a necessary component to this spice factor that spring afternoon, which immediately pointed us in the direction of southwestern cookery. So we hopped on our bikes and made the rounds to the local free-range meat market for chicken and a bottle of port, thence onward to the local organic store for fresh vegetables and 100% cacao dark chocolate, then finishing up at the supermarket for residual items such as habaneros, mango, and pineapple.

The meal became evident as items were acquired. A sweat inducing pineapple-mango-habanero salsa with brown rice and black beans. Chicken cooked in a marinade of apple cider vinegar, chili powder, cinnamon, cumin, habanero, thyme, rosemary. Red chile tortillas. Ripe avocados. Red wine. Pineapple and mango slices as the womanfolk waited to be served. Conscious r&b, reggae, and hip-hop blazing on the Bose stereo. Small kitchen space and multiple pots and pans simmering and spitting.

The meal was delicious and right on time, just as tummies were grumbling. The red wine was polished off, the dark chocolate passed around, the port sipped and pineapple slices finished. Satisfied, full, and righteous. This is the way that meals are meant to be made. For many people to share, sitting around with some music and some fermented grapes.

I realized just how important such an act is. To be a community, sharing something so simple and revolutionary as food. As communal good times. Feeling good. Riding high off spices and dark chocolate. We could conquer the world. So we collected ourselves and went off to party, drinking too much gin and tonics and dancing because it felt good. Because to shake of the booty is to express and partake of joy and divinity and indefinable beauty. Good times.

Accepting Chains

Your primary instinct, when caught in a frame, is to attempt to escape. Ever notice how normal people, if confronted with a video camera, shy away, as if held at gunpoint? This applies to any attempt to capture, to confine, to reduce any human being. We shrink. We shy. We hide. We are afraid that what will be caught is not us. It will be our greatest fears, our ugliest indefinitions.

This is why we are drawn to the stars of Hollywood. They are captured by the camera eye with poise, beauty, and supreme confidence. We all know that this is not an easy thing to do, to be confronted by the cold observant eye of the screen, the bullet point precision of the pixels. To be taken out of context, to be simply image, simply surface, to be only what is given and shared and defined.

In our lives, our first instinct is to run when we feel caught. I feel this at my job on a frequent basis. Caught by the limitation of my similarly stunted peers, by the need to project a professional image, by the performance of a role that is not always clearly defined. I want to run, to leave, leave it far behind me. I work hard without many people understanding how hard I have to work. One of the hardest parts is in having to distance myself from my workers in order to perform my function as a manager. Sometimes this entails disciplinary verbiage, or the delegating of unsavory tasks. And sometimes I can get so caught up in my duties that I forget that I am not really that person, either. That in fact, the best way to manage others is to simply maintain my own personal integrity.

To see how you appear to others, fully, is painful sometimes, when you have been hiding. It hurts to realize just how distanced you’d become from yourself. Just because you are too busy performing. Too busy playing into some role that you were given. That was already predefined.

It’s too easy to blame others for your insecurity or inability to be flexible. You could say that the stringency of continuous gossip, the limitations of your function within the whole, the economic confinements of your small salary, the regressive mentalities and pettiness of your peers, etc, etc, are holding you back. That the staff ain’t working hard enough. That the weather is shitty. That you are developing cancer in some remote and cornered part of your body. But all that can really be said is that you are not developing. That you are not allowing yourself to awaken, to grow, to extend your boundaries beyond blame, beyond fear, beyond bitterness.

Because every little thing is this world is a mere form, a mere shell, a role, a given function, a time-spatial placement, a part of a whole, a piece of the universe. It is what fills, what flows, what connects, what expands, what moves, what transcends that truly defines what is, not the lines, walls, and titles. The energy that sparks to fly across the vast and petty emptiness between synapses. A symphony, a sonnet, a wedding, a sentence: these are all hollow forms that are defined not by their structure but by their content. By what feeling flows through their spaces. A house contains conscious thought and space. Designed intelligently, it can hold power beyond wood, beyond stone, beyond itself. By uniting with the wind, the sun, and the earth.

It is more than what you are given. It is in what you bring to it. In what energy, what love, what fresh hope and positive vision.

I don’t want to keep hiding. My job might suck sometimes, but I’m going to keep exploring myself within it as long as I am working it, until I am truly ready to leave, to expand, to move, to flow. Not because I have to. Not because my money is made from it. Because I care about myself.

Writing On Writing In the Early Morning

I can’t sleep (what a surprise!) because the jerk downstairs comes home from work at his gas-station at 1 in the morning and commences chain-smoking. I once smoked cigarettes on occasion (Kamel Red Lites) until I started living and working out in the wilderness and realized that it doesn’t really make sense to fill your lungs with nasty shit when you’re breathing in pure mountain air. Now that I breathe in the second-hand smoke on a frequent basis, I can only think of cigarettes with the utmost revulsion. See, the problem with second-hand smoke is that you don’t get any of the benefits of enjoying a chemically enhanced stick of cancerous compounds manufactured by large corporations—like the nice little buzz and the visceral joy of holding a tiny white rolled piece of toxicity in between your two fingers. All you get from second-hand smoke is the residual nasty odors that seem to linger at least an hour after the cigarette has been smoked, leaving a burning sensation in your throat and eyes. You get all the shit without any of the pleasure.

In any case, I don’t feel like ranting about it, because I’m already getting hypertension from it as it is, and besides I’m a little sick of ranting, it’s so negative. So I’ll pick a topic and expound on it for the pure relief of tension that it gives me, to expound on things, which is the purpose of this blog—a forum in which to expound freely. Some expoundings are more eloquent then others, it must be admitted. Sometimes I wonder if I should exercise more QC and just post things that I consider truly worthy of being read, which would definitely slim back my posts substantially. Part of the thing about a blog is that it must be updated somewhat regularly, otherwise it will just look like a ghost town . . .
Why don’t I talk about writing? I began writing (deliberately, not as a class assignment) regularly starting in 8th grade. I wrote kind of emotional short stories with abstract story-lines told in the first person. Then at some point in high-school I began dabbling in poetry for some reason. By the end of high school I think I wrote mainly just poetry or short vignettes as opposed to longer short stories. My last year of high school my computer that I had had since 8th grade crashed and I lost all of my writings up to that point. This was when computers were still relatively new and it hadn’t really been quite established to laymen that you need to back up your shit if you assign any meaning to it. Losing my writing was devastating. I felt like part of my identity, part of my history, was lost. I couldn’t write for almost a year after that. It was like I had never written, I couldn’t believe that I could, without the evidence.

In college I majored in English with a concentration in poetry, and I took poetry workshops where you sat in a room with a handful of poetry freaks and criticized each other’s shit. The whole experience of attending a large college in a big city ruined my desire for writing—or at least, for a certain style of writing that colleges manufacture. That whole academic thing, that incestuous writing that looks like the real thing and uses all the big words but somehow is completely devoid of spirit. It was at that point that I realized that I didn’t want to write for a living. Because to write ‘good’, publishable stuff, to me, meant selling my soul.

During college I began sending almost daily e-mails of writing out to a group of friends. Through this I developed a new style of writing—immediate, fragmented slices of everyday life skewed into something that could be simultaneously prose and poetry. I would just sit down and write whatever came into my heart or head. I think they even have a name for this style of writing—”flash writing.” It was like a journal except not, because I was talking about events through the lens of my emotions and inner being, or I was writing quick short stories, or haphazard poems. (You can view all this stuff, by the way, if you click on Pre-Blog Missives under Categories there on the right.)

I didn’t discover blogs until 2 winters ago, when I was extremely bored and depressed and had nothing else to do. I discovered liberal and informative sites like Talking Points Memo, DailyKos, Cosmic Variance, all that kind of stuff, and was kind of amazed that I hadn’t really known about this whole parallel universe of blogging. I had been blogging all along, I just had been doing it through personal emails instead of posting it on the web. The advent of free and easy blogging tools such as Blogger and WordPress.com convinced me that I should make the switch, because you don’t have to be a computer geek to figure out how to post on these things.

For me, writing has always been a form of self-exploration, an outlet, a means of working through my daily existence. I don’t think that writing necessarily has to be perfect and conform to some kind of standard. I think the most important thing about the act of writing and having someone read it is in the inner connection formed between two people. The communication of hidden worlds that can’t possibly shared through surface level daily interactions. I consider writing to be much more than a hobby for me, even though I don’t get paid from it. I consider it to be a lifeline, a sustenance and an outlet, wholly necessary for me in order to proceed through my existence here on earth. I have other outlets, sure, I play djembes and go running and hiking, I MySpace and drink mint juleps and watch Netflix movies, I draw weird little alien faces. But writing has always been one of the foremost means for me to know myself—and through knowing myself, knowing other people—and sharing who and what I am. Writing is a struggle for expression, it challenges you to formulate thoughts and emotions you would just let foment otherwise. It is a struggle for transcendence. It is a struggle for embrace. And I recognize, my dear reader, that your reading this at all is truly a blessing. Thank you.

Googly Eyed Over Ghee

I’m taking an Indian cooking class, and it’s pretty fun to make curries and chutneys. I’m realizing how much ghee is involved in Indian cookery. It’s in everything. And it’s damned tasty, and it’s not at all hard to make, and it’s better to cook with than normal butter. So why doesn’t everyone use this stuff? Over my girlfriend’s alarmed objections, I took the pound of butter from our fridge today and promptly boiled up a batch and poured it into a jar. The stuff keeps for at least several months at room temperature. Again, why don’t we all use this shit? I’m sold. Trade in that old butter and upgrade it to ghee! It’s ancient ayurvedic alchemy!

Things to be Excited About at Work

I don’t usually discuss my work or my workplace usualmente aquí, pero tengo que porque I am very excited about some things in the year which are manifestly about to occur. After a period of personal study in the matters of permaculture and sustainable ecological design, I suddenly thought, why not attempt to apply these concepts to the beautiful environs where I am employed? It was one of those moments, wherein a horizon is unveiled that had never before been perceived, that is wider, deeper, and yet still inclusive of all of what has come before. Why not actually attempt to unite what I am actually deeply interested in with where I work?

So here are the coming attractions: I have made 2 bathouses in which to provide penthouse suites for bats, because during the summer mosquitoes are an everpresent nuisance: one bat can consume 1,200 mosquitoes within an hour. Much more effective than a zapper. Here’s me standing next to one of my bathouses:

Also, I have built 8 birdhouses, specifically built to house native birds to the region: chickadees, bluebirds, nuthatches, swallows, and northern flickers. I will mount these next week in the surrounding forest to further encourage birds to populate the region.

Throughout the year, in conjunction with these actions, I will plant native pollinator attracting species, such as phacelia, pennyroyal, lupine, larkspur, columbine, aster, goldenrod, and penstemons; and also plant bird attracting shrubs, such as thimbleberries, serviceberry, chokecherry, elderberry, and mountain ash.

The idea is to condense and enhance the natural wildlife of the area. To further the biodiversity. To foster the interrelationships of insect, bird, bat, plant, and man. To educate and enlighten those who come to visit on the deep webs that interlink all species into verdant existence.

Also on my agenda is the goal of eventually building a compost system to compost all of our food waste, and thus to have a wonderful medium to build up the soil of the area with—currently, our soil is just thin residual soils from glaciation, with a lot of exposed granodiorite rock, and dense pine trees and some dry shrubs like tobacco brush (great tinder for forest fires, those). My eventual goal will be to build up a moist, nutrient rich soil, with dense interplanting and abundant wildlife, even in the midst of invasive humanity.

In my particular department, I am also converting completely to all non-toxic solutions. There is absolutely no reason, I’ve discovered, to use a solution that is even remotely toxic. Vinegar is the most toxic you need to get. I am also converting all of our lighting to Energy Star rated compact flourescent lighting.

I’m sure you’ve noticed by now that projecting a “green” image is fast becoming trendy amongst businesses. It’s not because there are more hippies in upper management, or because suddenly corporate humanity is growing a conscience. Rather, it is because sustainable business practices not only work to benefit the environment, but because sustainable business practices save more money after initial investments, foster positive employee and guest and community relations within the business, and push the business to the forefront of a new market and economy. It just makes sense, basically.

On Alcohol

Entertained some folks the other night and broke out the nargilah and Scotch. (I have always been a lover of rituals and experiences involving a sensitive, attuned focusing within—such as drinking an earthy red wine while eating some spicy tapas, or drinking a sweet, surprisingly deep port while munching on at least 70% cacao dark chocolate, or smoking mint double apple shisha in the nargilah while discussing the visceral joys of passing gas, or playing djembes next to the beach under the full moon and drinking a bottle of rye, or sipping maté in the early morning while the sun rises over the ridge to shine onto the still, glassy lake.) I was surprised that none of my guests knew what goes into a whiskey (or whisky, depending on what country you be in). I don’t really know much about it, to be honest, but my general understanding is that most forms of what we term whiskey consist of certain percentages of barley, corn, and rye, the percentages being determined by the type of whiskey being made and the government regulations for said type. All I really know, really, is that a Scotch is quite different than a bourbon, which is quite different than a Canadian whisky, which is quite different than a rye. And that I love a good one, no matter the type.

In any love, there is that first experience of depth, passion, and beauty that draws in the lover to his beloved like a moth to the bulb. For me and whiskey, this occurred around 7 years ago while standing on a bridge next to a waterfall, after having gone on one of my first willfully taken hikes of my young adulthood, 6 miles round-trip. I had neglected to take any water, but I had taken a flask of bourbon along (shows what kind of priorities I had at the time). I wasn’t particularly enamored with bourbon in any way yet—I think I had obtained it for the trip just because I had been reading some Hemingway beforehand. I hadn’t yet drunk any of the flask, because it was a hot day. But once the trip was ended, and we were minutes away from the trailhead, standing in the cool shade in the spray of the waterfall, I suddenly remembered the flask, and decided to take a pull—why not, I was here to enjoy myself, which in young adulthood generally entails some form of fuckedupness. I took a long swig, the sweat on my skin commingling with the droplets of airborne fresh mountain water. And I don’t know if it was because I was severely dehydrated and sunbaked, sensitive and receptive to any and all liquids, or if it was because I was breathing in the air of a beautiful mountainous forest at high elevation, or what. But I could suddenly taste every grain in the whiskey, whereas before all I tasted was alcohol. I could taste the corn, so sweet; the malted barley, thick; and the smoky rye, all mixed and aged into perfection. It was like a revelation. It was a revelation of not just the amazingness of whiskey, but of all fine alcohols: that it is not really about the alcohol at all—it’s about the divine feeling and taste and experience all together. This is a lesson that has stuck with me, and taught me that getting drunk is really just a tributary in a stream, not the outlet goal of the wide ocean. If you want to get drunk, then go drink some gasoline or Everclear or something. Drink Bud Lite. Drink moonshine. But if you want to experience something more, something deeper, something that takes a little effort and thought and receptiveness, then seek out the more expensive but more worthwhile liqueurs and whiskies and tequilas.

It might seem that I am an alcoholic from such statements, but I actually drink quite sparingly, when I drink at all—generally a glass of something at night, maybe two. One beer or two. (Which has been proven to actually be healthier than not drinking at all.) I am not an alcoholic. I am a lover of fine alcohols. There’s a difference.

But let me say something before you think that I’m just some kind of snob that spits out his wine when he goes wine tasting: I also enjoy getting drunk. And I am here today to tell you something: getting drunk off of good drinks is a hell of a lot better than getting drunk off of Everclear or Ancient Age or Jose Cuervo or some shit drink like that. It feels better while drunk. It feels better while after drunk, unless you mixed it with 5 other types of alcohol (never do that. Especially with good, moderately expensive liquors). And every type of liquor has its own unique drunk to it. An absinthe drunk is quite different than any other (but not hallucinogenic. It’s just an alcohol, alright?). Tequila and mezcal drunks are superbly unique and revelatory, in a class by themselves. Chartreuse drunks can not even be compared to anything else. Whiskey drunks, depending on the whiskey, are always interesting, sometimes rough, sometimes sweet, sometimes smooth, sometimes elegant. And wine drunks—we all love those, the warm feeling of comfort and happiness that spreads through your belly, the thickness of the tongue.

But being drunk, you see, is not simply taking shots of something and suddenly acting like a simpleton and releasing all of your inhibitions (read: secret yearnings), such as jumping up on tables and shaking your ass, or humping anything that moves. I despise the taking of shots. It’s contrary to everything that is good about enjoying the experience of drinking. It’s the simple effort to get as wasted as you can in an extremely short period of time, with extremely shitty alcohol. So that you can act like an idiot and vomit. You see, drinking a good alcohol is about enjoying it at every step of the way. You look at it in the glass, the syrupy way it swirls against the curved glass siding and slowly rolls down. The way light refracts off of its mellow tones. Then you smell it, your eyes tearing up against the burn of alcohol, until you catch the residual scents of fruit, earth, honey, or whatever else it is that is magically contained in its amber ether. Then you sip it, you taste it, you think on it, you embrace it, you challenge it, you love it. And it warmly spreads through your body and into your mind. That’s what it is to drink.

Anyway, this here little rambling treatise on alcohol was just something that I thought I should share with the wider world, because I am continuously amazed when not many other people seem to have arrived at the same conclusions.

Patriot Bidet Brigade

I’ve got absolute insomnia tonight, and no idea why. I just can’t sleep a wink. It’s perplexing because I should be utterly exhausted, yet I feel as if I’ve had a quart of caffeine. The good news is that because I was alert and awake in the middle of the dead of night, I’ve discovered that there are mice living underneath our sink, which I heard chewing away at some plastic containers waiting to be recycled.

Rather than spend the night either tossing and turning and growing increasingly frustrated at being unable to enter the gates of blissful oblivion, or surfing mindless pages on the web, I figured I might as well be constructive with my time and write a blog post. Lucky you!

My topic for tonight, or this early morning, is to be one of a decidedly impolite topic: dirty bums. If you are sensitive upon such issues, and find absolutely no humor in potty humor, than I suggest averting your eyes immediately and moving back to your Christian Science Monitor or asian porn pages.

Let me say this first and foremost: Americans are a disgusting and uncivilized people. It continually amazes me how we can pretend to be at the forefront of progress and freedom, etc—-and yet we all have dirty, smelly asses! There, I said it. I done let the cat out the bag: Americans don’t wipe their asses good enough.

Now, sure, our bathroom behavior may be more advanced than say in such foreign lands where it is said that you shake with your right and wipe with your left. But don’t kid yourselves, we are not much further advanced.

And what’s truly disgusting about the whole thing is that Americans are growing increasingly obese (not fat: OBESE. That means exceedingly fat.) and eat junk food and dairy and abnormal amounts of red meat on a regular basis. And we all know what kind of effect these foods have on our bowel movements: they are smelly, messy, and just an all around literal pain in the ass to clean up after (as someone who works in the housekeeping department, I can readily attest to some graphic examples of this).

And what does the American do to clean up after they have sawed some logs into the john? Well, they do the only thing they CAN do, which is pull off some weak little squares of scratchy tissue paper and wipe their beleaguered asses with it. Now, let me make a simple observation on this time honored outhouse tradition: essentially what is being done here is that you are just spreading stuff around with a piece of paper. This would be akin to washing your hands by taking napkins and wiping your hands with it, without wetting it or using soap. That would be gross, right? And we’re talking not just germs but hazardous waste here. This is coming out of your intestinal system, let me remind you.

In some more civilized nations, they not only wipe, but further use what is known as a bidet. It perplexes me that this simple hygienic device is so foreign to Americans. The fact is, you’ve got to get a little warm or hot water up in there to truly clean that shit out. And the only recourse a hygienically concerned person has to take in the absence of a bidet is to jump into the shower immediately afterwards. This is obviously impractical on most occasions.

I really think that there should be a national lobbying group of concerned citizens—called something like the Patriot Bidet Brigade—taking this issue to the forefront of the 2008 presidential elections. I could give a crap about the occupation of Iraq: I’m much more concerned about the fact that over 95% of Americans move their bowels at least once a day under unhygienic conditions. That should be national security issue number one, as far as I’m concerned.

Acceptance of Less Than Ideal Locales

As I get older and a little less ornery, shedding some of the idealistic righteous anger developed during adolescence and young adulthood, I discover that my perspectives on things I once abhorred or disdained are shifting, ever so slightly, towards tolerance. For example, I have suddenly found, to my surprise, that I no longer am harboring hatred towards Los Angeles or San Diego (sentiments which could be gathered in my last post before I left for these destinations). Maybe it’s just because the weather is summertime hot and sunny, the flowers are blooming, and women are scantily clad. Or maybe it’s just because I’m so grateful to be on vacation and no longer in a winter enshrouded location. Whatever the case, I even felt a kind of rekindling of love in my heart for Southern Cali, which once only aroused my ire. Sure, the traffic is still horrendous and the Bel Air inhabitants still superficial. Sure the cities are still ever sprawling and politically mismanaged. Sure, water is still wasted by the gallons daily on manicured lawnscapes and fruitless shrubberies. But for the first time in Los Angeles, I felt a real sense of community, whereas before I only felt detachment and isolation. The Mexican communities, the Korean communities, etc, are all thriving and bustling and filled with life and interconnectiveness. It’s akin to the perspectival paradigm shift that I felt in Perú, in regards to Lima–at first it was just a big dirty crowded city, but by the end, I saw it as colorful, vibrant, and beautiful. I suppose it is really simply a matter of the places that one sees, and the viewpoint that one gets from that particular position. When I lived there before, I lived in an overly expensive, disconnected-from-reality area, and that tainted all of my experiences, because I didn’t own a car and thus rarely ventured far from that established viewpoint. This time in LA, we acted more as tourists–we went to the tarpits (did you know that there were native camels in the LA basin?), we went to Olvera St and ate some excellent comida Mexicana. I also visited my friend’s ecovillage in the heart of Koreatown and ate salad greens picked fresh from his garden. We went out to see live cumbia in a bar smaller than an armpit (definitely not up to firecode) where there were no signs except for a little piece of cardboard telling you to go around back, where it was so crowded you could only kind of stand there and sway and jump up and down, but it still was good.

In San Diego, the 80 degree weather is maybe just slightly too hot, but it’s still a welcome change from snow embankments and icy walkways. Walking along the beach, smelling the flower laden air, running along the boardwalk . . .suddenly San Diego doesn’t seem so shitty. Sure, the city is corrupt and the traffic is getting just as bad as LA’s (give it 5 more years). Sure, the music scene is still dead and the sense of community is often missing. But it’s a place to live, and there’s always the everpresence of the ocean, primal, impervious to human pettiness.

There are certain overarching tendencies in any given city, which lends its force and inertia to the general vibe and flow of lifestyle and commerce. But within these dominant trends there are also eddies and subcurrents of wholly different and unique peoples and mindsets and musics. Let’s be honest, Los Angeles really does typify many of the stereotypes that it is branded with: there’s a lot of really superficial, boob-jobbed MILFs and shiny luxury cars and actor wannabes living on credit and sheer appearance. It’s Hollywood, it’s Beverly Hills, it’s Bel Air, it’s Westwood. But then there’s East LA. There’s Watts. There’s Compton. There’s Skid Row. There’s concrete fortress towers of luxury condos and then there’s rows of cardboard box houses right along outside. There’s the appearance and then there’s the reality. There’s the movie and then there’s the living life coming to the block near you.

And really, of course, ultimately, what it really comes down to–in any place where you might happen to reside in–is you, and what you choose to do with what is available. Is you, creating new perceptions or simply going along with whatever the latest herd fashion fed to you on the billboards, the radio, the TVs, the clubs. Is you, fighting to find what makes you alive, fighting for friendships that give you strength, fighting for love that gives you wisdom, fighting for space that allows you to grow. This can happen anywhere, in any city, at any time. Guess it just took me a while to grow up and learn to stop blaming everything around me for keeping me down, when all I really had to blame was myself for not reaching out.

Vacation Time

It’s time for a vacation. We’re renting a car and driving down mountainous forested passes and through the flatland desert and into skyscrapered Babylon and scantily brained beaches. Granted that all I’m doing is going back to the sunny nether regions of California to visit the fam, wherein I was calved and raised, not going to the Bahamas or some Himalayan retreat, but even this little week-and-a-half long respite will be enough to give me some fresh air to breathe, some sun to imbibe, a new perspective to be formed. Sometimes ya just gotta get the fuck outta Dodge, youknowwhatimsayin?

It’s kinda fun to return to a place–where once you struggled and took the bus to work and drank excessive amounts of alcohol–and to re-view that place in the less attached perspective of a person just passing through. LA-LA land put me through hell and back, and while I’ve never felt much of an affinity to the place, I do have a fondness for it in the way that one has a fondness for memories of a brother who beat the shit out of you when you were younger and nearly killed you a couple of times, but you survived. So, I survived, and I revisit it and fondly remember nights of binge drinking and using empty cups as ashtrays in trendy bars where women were fashionably unapproachable, vacuously self-aware; I fondly remember getting anxiety attacks on the hours long bus ride going down Wilshire on the way home from work, crammed between strangers like mayonnaise on a po’ boy; I fondly hark back upon the loneliness and the hunger, the electricity of the city and the gaps between synapses, the this and the that and the wherefore and the then.

And then it’s down to the border beach town of San Diego, where the malaise of sun and misdirected money hovers over the wide traffic strewn interstates in the salty desert air. This is the place where I was reared, where I ran 800’s, where I hauled my giant djembe down cliffside goat trails to attend full moon drum circles, where I first loved, where I first peed (into the nurse’s face), which I still call Home as a reflex, given that the majority of the years of my life thus far still have been spent therein.

Given that now my family is actively extending itself–i.e. my sisters have each now beared children, and my niece and nephew are the cutest little kids I’ve ever made the acquaintance of–so of course being their uncle I want to see them as they grow (way too fast) as much as I can, which generally translates solely into a couple times a year. This extension of life and family compels me to spend my precious vacation time visiting them rather then trekking through exotic foreign lands–but perhaps such is as it should be.

Concert Rant

Being as it is that I live in a small resort mountain town–in which the greatest variety of culture and arts on any given night is to go down to the casinos and listen to a black guy on a synthesizer crooning to washed up old white gamblers drinking at the bar and talking to each other out of their throat holes, or to go clubbin’ (in the same casinos) and rub up against imported South Americans/Aussies/Kiwis/Eastern Europeans who come to drink excessively and snowboard and provide cheap labor–I guess it really isn’t all that surprising that there is a general dearth of good live music. And then I guess I really shouldn’t be surprised either that whenever a somewhat decent band does happen to come rolling through, they don’t seem to feel compelled to play a good show–they come on late and leave early and just kind of half-ass it. I guess I further shouldn’t be surprised that even when maybe they do kind of play a decent set, then of course the sound guy fucked it up and you can’t hear the mics or the guitar is too loud or something is fucked up enough so that you can’t enjoy the music at all.

But it had been a while since I’d seen a live show, and I used to be someone who would go into major depression if I didn’t see live music at least once every two weeks when I lived in a city, so when I heard a couple of good underground MCs (Zion-I and The Grouch) were coming through, I decided to shell out the $20 and see the show. And true to form, it was a waste of money and time. Let me run through the problems, which exemplify any given concert in this shitty tourist town: 1) flyer says the show starts at 9; I show up at 9, and they won’t even let anyone into the bar until 9:30, which means standing in the freezing cold; 2) opening act doesn’t even come on until 10-10:30. And they suck. I generally feel that if you are white and are attempting to MC, then you had better come up with some good flows if you don’t want to sound like just some white dude attempting to MC–but these guys just sounded like dorks trying to MC–maybe it might get them laid at house parties in Reno, but it didn’t do much for my ears; 3) these opening act guys thought that the crowd loved them, because some other dorks in the front row were bobbing their heads, so they have to keep doing just 2 more songs; 4) after one more act, the headliners finally take the stage, and they were good–but they only did several songs, and left with almost an hour more before the bar closed–and by that point, I was too drunk to even really enjoy them anyway.

That’s some bullshit. I paid and came out to see the headlining act, not have my ears abused by idiots. I just don’t understand why concerts these days has to be like going to the doctor’s office: you make an appointment at a set time, but then you just sit in the little room for hours, until the doctor finally deigns to come through, and then they just check you out and send you out the door as if you weren’t paying any money for it. Same thing with concerts: you show up and the thing always starts too late, and then when it finally does start, you’ve got to sit through a string of shitty amateurs–so that by the time you finally get to the whole point of being there in the first place and the headlining act comes on, you’ve drunk one too many Jameson on the rocks and there isn’t even much time for them to play anyway. That’s bullshit.

And I know that the crowd in this little town isn’t exactly cream of the crop, especially when it comes to hip hop. There’s maybe one or two black people in the crowd, if you’re lucky. It’s mostly skinny stoned snowboard bum wannabes with black baseball caps and pants too big for their methed out bones. Not too much is going to register on these guys beyond a steady bass beat and some hands waving in the air. Keep the hands waving and they’ll think its a great show.

But despite all of that, I still think that if you have any kind of self-respect as a musician, and truly consider yourself an artist, then it is your responsibility to always rock the house, no matter the crowd. Even if you might only be getting through to one person out of that whole audience, that’s still one person more who is going to come away with some light and energy. Otherwise, you’re just a whore playing a show for money.

Quantum

I admit to having a certain fascination with quantum physics, especially as applied to cosmology. But I have absolutely no propensity for mathematics, equations, or really anything scientific at all. I just like the ideas that come out of it. And I find that oftentimes some of the principles and theories that arise out of those areas of research seem to make a philosophical, poetical sense. Poetical in the way that a quantum tunnel can be formed across seemingly uncrossable barriers, so too in language a metaphor links together seemingly unrelated things. Philosophical in the sense that as Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle states that any attempt at measurement will be subject to some form of uncertainty, so too the philosopher recognizes that the very attempt to define and articulate certain aspects of things only blinds one to other potential viewpoints.

If quantum theory can be applied to the entire realm of the physical universe, as it is in quantum cosmology, then I do not see why it could not be just as readily applied in the realm of everyday thought and perception. I think that Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, for example, is readily understood on a conceptual level when it comes to individual perception and its power on the formation of potential outcomes in the universe, on the everyday scale of life. For example, if we look or talk about other people in a certain way, we can delimit or expand their potentiality, we can effectively destroy or create some of their possible outcomes. This is the power of gossip, the power of the observer.

Walking On Water

Studying as a Path to Action

It’s raining cats and dogs here, instead of snowing as it should. Rain is falling through a hole in the roof directly into my bedroom wall, bulging out the paint, and trickling down from a nail-hole behind my picture of two loritos.

I’ve been enacting a program of self-study, in which I am attempting to glean information on permacultural precepts and high-altitude gardening in order to draw up a proposal so that I can apply these ideas on the land where I work. It is somewhat like fitting pieces of a puzzle together. I now feel like there is never enough time at the end of the day, or on the weekends, and I find myself wishing that I was like the robot in Shortcircuit, able to flip through a book in seconds and retain all the information in my memory banks. Alas, of course, I remember little, so I’ve been using index cards instead.

I have to say that I am grateful for living in this age of information. The internet is such an incredible reference tool. Alls you gotta do is type in some search strings and a whole shit-ton of information is out there on any conceivable topic. It’s like people are just bursting at the seams to spew out their little insights and tidbits of wisdom. Look at how people are falling over themselves to post free and intricately detailed reviews and overviews on sites such as Wikipedia and Amazon. I guess we have to thank our corporate nation god for all of that wonderful idle time that office jobs give intelligent people. Without laziness and boredom (which is what drives you to read this very page in first place), there probably wouldn’t be much of interest on the internet at all.

It’s funny because I was a lazy ass motherf-cker in college (I can’t believe that was 6 years ago), and I prided myself on never studying and still passing all my classes without getting a slum village grade point average. That’s the advantage of being an English major and having reading and writing come easy to you. I wasted my time. I was bored. I was lazy. I hated the establishment. I despised academia. I couldn’t understand how anyone could devote a whole night in the library to studying, let alone their entire lives to some generalized, inapplicable ideas. I still don’t, to be honest. But I have found that when I am truly interested in something and I really want to learn it, whether it be Spanish, wines, housekeeping, or Permaculture, then I will gladly spend hours, days, and even months immersed in texts and on-line searches, my body in strange shapes of contortion to catch lamplight onto a page. Because this is knowledge that I know that I can and will apply in the real world. True knowledge is, indeed, an empowerment.

But of course, ultimately there is no superior teacher to actual live wire trial by fire, the hands-on training, the experimentation and eventual mastery obtained only through feeling, intuition, observation, and repetition. You could read all day about how to perform an Aikido reversal on someone coming at you with a punch, but until you actually put your hands on someone and attempt it, over and over again, you won’t be able to do it in a fight. I have found, however, that just having read someone else’s account of how to do it, and the tricks they have learned, gives me the confidence to quickly master my own approach to a technique. It allows me visualize the process, to learn what to expect, and most importantly, minimize my own mistakes by finding out what a master has already had to go through to get there.

On Memory

OK, so I have a terrible memory. I honestly cannot remember many things beyond the immediate moment in which they occurred. As in, someone will be talking to me, will say something to me that I responded to, and then will say something else in relation to that thing, and I will have no idea what they are talking about. Or I will meet somebody multiple times over the course of 2 years, and have great, in-depth conversations with them each time, and then I will tell them, “Hey, didn’t I meet you before?” And they will sadly and politely inform me that they had this conversation with me the last time, and they will give me their name, and I will promise them that I will remember it this time for sure (and I won’t).

My girlfriend thought I was just kind of being funny when I first told her that I didn’t have a good memory, the first few times that it appeared as if I had total amnesia. But now she’s come to realize that, indeed, I really can’t remember things. You know that movie Memento? I’m not that bad, but I really do have to write things down immediately if I am going to remember. Otherwise, it’s pretty much guaranteed that I will forget it.

Which isn’t to say that I don’t remember certain things. I like to think of my memory as selective of the core essential heart of memorable moments. I remember generalities, summaries, abstractions. I remember feelings, faces, and overall outcomes. I don’t remember names, conversations, or circumstance.

There was a time in my life that I consciously decided that I would not remember anything. I had arrived, philosophically, at the conclusion that the past was meaningless, and thus it was purposeless to attribute any value or time to history and memory. This was during college. This posed some social consequences, in that I frequented apartment parties every weekend in which I generally saw the same basic group of faces–which of course I could recognize–but I had absolutely no idea of what their names might be, and whenever I would see some of these people in the course of walking around campus or at the next party, they would say, “Hey Mark!” and I would respond, “Hey!” or “Hey, dude!” dependent on gender. At some point, I’m pretty sure they caught onto the fact that I had no idea what their names were, and this definitely caused some pause in their consideration of me as either friend or acquaintance.

I have since determined that the past and its accompaniment of memory and history have value and meaning. I now try very hard to remember people’s names if I meet them more than once. But I still just cannot remember most mundane details for the life of me. I think sometimes that this is just the way my brain works. I cannot remember facts, dates, and details. But I have no problem remembering emotions and lessons. I feel like I naturally just remember the things that I feel have value, and discard the rest.

I have learned to work with my disability everyday. At my job, I carry a piece of notepad around with me and a pen so that I can reference lists of what I need to accomplish, and to jot down anything that comes to me. If I don’t do this, I end up standing for long periods of time trying to remember what I was going to do next. I also utilize other people around me who do have memories to remind me of things that I need to remember but know that I won’t remember unless they tell me.

In some ways, this is why I spend so much time writing all of my various thoughts, feelings, and meandering visions onto this website: because there is no better way of preserving my own memory and history then in these writings posted on meticulously backed up networked hard-drives spanning the globe. Honestly, I need this outlet. I need to write myself down. Otherwise most parts of me would be lost to that void of my own negligence. Every now and then I go back a little bit and re-read some of what I have written, and it shows me a continuum that I had forgotten. It reminds me of where I have come from and how I have come to this moment in my thought and existence. Otherwise, I really would not have much of an idea of who I was.

Anxiety as an Inability to Voice What is Within

A man is programmed to hold his suffering within. And when this becomes too great to bear, his body turns on him, his throat constricts, his arteries strangle his own blood flow, his mind takes control of his lungs and subverts the most basic and essential of functions–breathing. How can this lonely, inexplicable impotence in the face of oneself be shared, voiced, exorcised?

The rush of adrenaline that comes in the face of danger, the so-called fight-or-flight response, is a residue of our evolutionary past, the reptilean brain survival mechanism. When the adrenaline fires without any visible signs of danger, without any immediate reason, how can this be explicated to anyone else? The fight and the flight is activated by oneself, against oneself, almost like an act of spite, an act of contrition, as if you are making yourself suffer for things that you are unable to define. It is not in the vernacular of our society to voice such things. How can one say, I am hurting, I am bleeding, watching people I care about destroying themselves, watching my nation destroy its future? How can one say, I cannot ignore this death around me, I cannot ignore all of the hidden suffering of everyone around me, I cannot pretend to be OK, I cannot pretend that everything is as it appears? How can one say, I am an open wound, I am not healing, I am scared that everyone else is also suffering alone, and there is nothing I can do, and nothing I can say to reach them?

So it is held within, to the point of bursting. It pushes away everyone you love. It expands a gigantic void within yourself, and you stumble through the day like a hollow husk, not knowing what is wrong, fearing the coming of the night, where you will toss and turn despite utter exhaustion, where you will feel like a track runner right before the gun goes off, where you will gasp like a fish at air seemingly devoid of oxygen, no matter how much you take into your lungs.

And how sweet, and how bitter, is the release when the tears suddenly well up in your eyes and your heart springs open to this hidden, inarticulate world of suffering that we smooth over so well everyday. This world of death, and pain, and suicide, and addiction. These are things we do not discuss. These are the things we fear.

Everytime someone you know passes from life, you sense the rupture in the barrier that you had put up between yourself and them. You feel guilty, as if you were involved in their death. Because you pretended that death did not exist, that they could never die, that you could never die. And now what is there to say, when you know how everyone is suffering, alone, hiding it, smiling, working through the day? How can you possibly reach one another across this void that keeps you apart even from yourself? How can you say anything to heal this, when you know that there is no healing of this wound?

Apocalypse Now

It is somehow ironic that what devastates me the most is my own mind.

Here, in this place of adrenaline, shortness of breath, and a terrible self-awareness, I find the truth in just how alone I can feel, even when I am in the midst of comfort. I render myself unable to sleep, unable to breathe, unable to feel anything but suffering. I feel like these are the vestiges of my individuality, struggling to remind me of my bodily constraints. You can’t escape yourself, I seem to tell myself, my throat and veins constricting, my skin growing cold to the touch. You can’t escape your fear, your self-awareness, your thoughts. I can’t control my self.

Is this what we do when we are too comfortable, with too much idle time? Do we torture ourselves? Do we toss and turn in our beds even when we are exhausted, unable to stop thinking? Are we trying to teach ourselves what suffering is all about? Punishing ourselves for our nation’s affluency, for our luck of the draw, for the lethargy of our culture?

This place within myself is a warzone.

Children of Men and Grilled Cheese and Kimchi Sandwiches

I just watched a pretty sweet movie: Children of Men. Yes, I know, it’s a rare event indeed when I actually see a movie in the theatre, but it was just one of those kinds of days. And I just added another reason to the list for not going to the theatres: they turn up the audio way too friggin’ loud. I don’t understand this. Are people progressively going deaf? Last two times I’ve been to the theatre, I’ve had to stuff tissue in my ears so that I’m not cringing throughout the entire movie.

That said, I really liked Children of Men. It took place in the future, except that this imagined future is disturbingly real, disturbingly and eerily relevant to the present. The premise of the movie–revolving around a time when, for reasons unknown, women can no longer bear children–might at first seem far-fetched, but it actually acts as a pointed (but veiled) metaphor for reality now, in that we are actively destroying the future for our children. We’ve lost sight of the importance of human life and continuity, and it is in this continuum of critique that the movie operates so effectively. Every battle scene, every person shot in this movie, feels all too vividly real. The shots of illegal immigrants being detained and forced into refugee camps doesn’t seem outlandish at all. The acts of terrorism, the shoot-outs between the military and dark-skinned people doesn’t seem to take place in the future, but rather to just be a really well shot version of what’s going on in foreign countries at the present.

So put it on your Netflix. In other news from today, I’ve made an important culinary discovery that I think that all of the world should be made privy to: try putting kimchi (preferably spicy) in your grilled cheese sandwhich. Yes, it sounds nasty, but once you taste it, there’s no going back. We’re in a new global century here. We’re movin on from chicken and waffles, and peanut butter and burger, to grilled cheese and kimchi.

As to how I discovered aforementioned combination . . . well, I just like to eat kimchi as a side dish sometimes, cuz I like that shit, and I happened to have a grilled cheese prepared for me, so I plopped some kimchi on the side, and subsequently discovered that it meshed perfectly with the sammich–whereupon I immediately placed said kimchi into the sandwich itself, and was then transported into a new state of grilled cheese chewing bliss.

Insomniac Scribbling

I can’t sleep right now, so I’m back here, writing again, just trying to work out the anxiety and tension that won’t allow me to fall into sweet unconsciousness. I’ve realized that there’s this strange swirl of emotions going on inside of me, and I need to work through it, consciously, so that I don’t turn into a basket case. I’m simultaneously sad and happy at the same time. Sad, because someone I respected and looked up to (even as a father figure of sorts) died unnaturally. Happy, because I am in love and my love grows ever stronger and deeper every single day. This is indeed a confusing mix of emotions, because when I am feeling happy, I suddenly remember the sadness, and then almost feel guilty for the happiness, even though I know that I shouldn’t. And when I am feeling sad, my beloved gives me so much comfort and love that it is impossible for me to remain sad.

Which is to say, I guess, that dealing with untimely death this time around is more bearable simply because I have someone to support me.

And it is this love that I am so grateful for. And witnessing the heartbreaking self-destruction of people I know only makes me more grateful. I am incredibly blessed. I know what it feels like to be lonely, depressed, and only wanting to die. I’ve been there. I’ve been taken back there through Rod and Toby. And this only makes me realize just how important it is to have deep love and connectedness in life. It is the only thing that saves us from ourselves. When we tunnel down deep into the emptiness, the only thing that ties us to life is this knowledge that we are more than only ourselves. If you can go deep into this darkness with love in your heart, open to your suffering, then you can withstand the loneliness, you can withstand the surface storms of circumstance.

I had thought that maybe this place I work and live in is cursed. And while there are certainly some problems there that are in need of some major healing, I just got an email from a friend, and he also just heard about one of his friends killing himself. And I know someone else whose friend killed herself last year. So this sickness is not only in this place I’m at. It is in all of us, everywhere. This sickness of loneliness, inertia, and addiction. This sickness of disconnectedness, detachment, and disassociation. And all I can say is that we need a lot of love in this world right now. We need a lot of healing.

And when I say love, I’m not talking about finding some perfect person like in Hollywood movies. I’m talking about loving yourself. I’m talking about loving strangers. I’m talking about loving being alive, loving the light that comes through the trees, loving the mountains, loving the skyscrapers, loving the fall of clean water from your faucet, loving every minute, every second, every day.

And then it comes

I guess I was just in shock. I was standing in the middle of the room drinking wine when the pain hit me, the soul-ripping emptiness that collapses everything in your life into pure suffering. Beyond words, beyond logic, beyond anything but what it is. I think it was when I had to tell someone who didn’t know yet what had happened that brought it home to me. There’s no avoiding it when it comes. It hits you like a truck and runs you over. It seems like it was a long time ago that it happened but it was just yesterday afternoon. Still trying to associate the body with the man that I knew and connect the pieces. I just realized that it is actually more healing for the grieving to see the body, to visually and viscerally know that that person is indeed gone, that it is real. Then you can’t pretend or dissociate things with your mind.

I feel like an old man, tired and depleted. I feel like I’m living in a warzone. There’s really no words for this.

The Morning After the Cold

Given some more time to reflect, I’ve found that I am not emotionally devastated by Rod’s death the way I was by Toby’s. And I think that has to do with the knowledge that all of Rod’s friends were doing all that they could to help him. And he was reaching out. But then he decided to refuse all help. He consciously made his decision. This was a slow burn and downward spiral that everyone could see. When someone deliberately chooses to die rather than discover new life, it is sad–but ultimately you can only respect that decision. In a way people could see it coming–but no one ever wants to acknowledge just how horribly real the prospect of demise is. You think that with time they will pluck themselves out of their self-created mire, and find a new vision and purpose with all the life left before them. And everyone involved wanted him find that new path, but he refused to let go of the past. So there aren’t as many of those confused feelings of guilt and inaction that is generally involved in this kind of death. Like a cornered lion, he cleared out the space around himself, he readied others for what was to come. I feel really bad for his kids and family and for his closest friends, who still have to work through the bricolage of anger and pain for years to come.

24 Hours Back Home

OK, so somehow I find myself back home in the woods after a 24 hour long day of travel and stress. Things that went wrong: 1) turns out my girlfriend is dyslexic and mistook “American Airlines” for “United” on our itinerary, so we missed our flight after waiting in a United line for an hour and a half; 2) the flight we finally got onto later was delayed;  and 3), the clincher, my car broke down on the middle of the freeway on our way back from San Francisco. So we were awake exactly 24 hours, because we’d woken up at 1 o’clock to catch our flight at JFK, and we arrived back in Tahoe at 1 o’clock. Needless to say, I was pretty cracked out, and I’m quite thankful simply to be alive and here at all.

Of course, any travel day is subject to delays and problems, and if anything, the day made me grateful more than miffed. Grateful that I didn’t get in an accident when my car stopped running in the midst of fast-paced traffic and I was attempting to coast over to the side and nearly caused a major collision involving two other cars (who of course were just trying to pass me as quickly as possible and trying to get around my right, where I was attempting to move the damn car before it lost all acceleration). Grateful that I have a friend who was willing to drive out from the city and install a new alternator for me. Grateful that it was only a shot alternator and nothing major. Grateful that I was able to drive back all the way even though I was exhausted (we did have to stop in some boondock church parking lot so we could take a power nap). Grateful that all the problems that arose during the day were quickly overcome.

Happy Family Holidays from NYC

Here’s another thing that I find interesting about New Yorkan lexicon: when they join a line of people waiting for something, they say that they are getting “on line,” as opposed to what I am accustomed to, which is saying that I am getting “in line.” Also–and this may just be my girlfriend’s family and not symptomatic of the tri-state region itself–I have heard people referring to “turning off” candles, as if they were electrical appliances. And of course, you gotta love the accents, like how “orange” is pronounced as “aah-range” as opposed to the West Coaster’s “ohrange,” or how “god” is pronounced “gaad.” I even find myself slipping into a Bronxian accent at times, as I have a tendency to imitate the speech of others.

I just saw a weird ass Chinese movie, The Curse of the Golden Flower. It’s an orgy of nobility, incest, and death, like Shakespeare mixed with Oedipus Rex and opera. One thing I’ve noticed about this line of Chinese martial art/visual ballet movies (Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon/ Hero) is that the women characters, when evincing overly dramatic passion and pain, must mouth breathe at highly audible levels, as if they put a microphone right up to the actresses’ mouth to capture it (probably dubbed in by some industry gimp whose specific role is to mouth breathe the actresses in all of the top Hong Kong hits). The queen in this movie, Gong Li (who has got quite a bosom on her), mouth breathes such that the theater literally quakes with it basically throughout the entire film (there’s a lot of dramatic passion going on here). There’s also a plethora of quivering bosoms in this movie, and it’s kind of a sub-plot delight, to observe the various bouncing bosoms in different lighting and horse riding and ninja battling scenes. So if you’re into copious amounts of heavy mouth breathing and jostling Chinese bosoms, this movie is for you.

New York has been treating me well, I’ve been eating mass amounts of good food and spent a Puerto Rican New Yorker family Christmas, replete with gigantic presents and pernil and rice and beans and a bunch of people shouting at each other to converse. It helped remind me why I no longer care to “celebrate” Christmas, i.e. buy a bunch of junk for my own family members that they don’t need. C’mon people, if you are really into the holiday season, then realize that it’s all about spending time with your family, not spending money. Cut out the whole giving of presents (except to the kids, who of course need to be indoctrinated into our capitalistic consumer culture) and just hang out with your family, share a nice meal, talk, drink spiced wine. Remember when there was that whole Pentagon ad campaign a few winters ago, where they equated buying consumer products with fighting terrorism? It’s ironic, given that we are actually encouraging terrorism (desperate poor people fighting to be heard and empowered) by contributing to mindless products made in “third-world” countries for the profit of corporations.

Anyway, hope you had a good time with your family, as human beings rather than consumers.

Bagels n Jazz

Some more New Yorkian tidbits: when people talk about “crossing over” here, they ain’t talkin about a psychic who can tell you the name of your dead loved one, but rather about going across town, as opposed to up town, or down town. And when they talk about places in the city, it’s always in terms of cross streets. It’s “20th and 1st,” etc. Which makes sense, of course, given the grid system, it’s just not something I’m accustomed to hearing when discussing regional areas of one’s city. In South Lake Tahoe, we just say that it’s either “near the casinos,” or it’s “far from the casinos.”

Went out last night and scoped some avant-garde jazz in a club the size of an armpit. I can always appreciate experimental music, and raw kind of hard-hitting meandering free stuff, but ultimately, if there’s no solid rhythm to it I tend to get a little bored with it, because it just sounds like chaos to me. Which apparently some people are pretty into, given the swirling head-thrashing movements of some of the avant-gardian audience’s heads. It just seemed mostly noisy and pretentious to me, but hey, whatever frees your soul. I was sweating like a pig, and felt a little embarrassed everytime I burped, because we had just consumed mass amounts of Ethiopian food and the spices were bubbling up my mouth throughout the entire show in dense thickets of furnace gas. If you’ve never had Ethiopian cuisine before, it basically consists in shoveling piles of meat and curried sauces into your mouth with your bare hands with some thin spongey bread. Good stuff.

I also went to a couple of bars as well, both of which specialized exclusively in Belgian beers. Which leads me to another I like about this city, which is that there is apparently a niche for everything here. So if you wanted to eat pancakes with alfredo sauce and listen to happy harcore techno while drinking bean curd martinis, then there’s probably a hole-in-the-wall restaurant here somewhere for you.

For breakfast, I ate two fresh bagels with cream cheese and white fish salad. And as I was stuffing my face with this goodness, I was like, why the hell can we not have good bagels on the west coast? My friend told me it be the New York tap water that makes them good. Well, ship that shit out to California, then.

Mas Aventuras en Nueva York

Went out last night to a Spanish tapas bar in Chelsea, and I have to say that tapas may be the future of fine cuisine. Small portions of gourmet shit that you can share with other people and get stuffed on, and sample tons of different foods. It’s like what I love about going out for Chinese and Indian food with amigos–you alway order different shit and then share it. You could do Indian tapas, Mexican tapas, California cuisine tapas, and so forth, and it would be perfect cuz you could just sample tons of different shit instead of having to limit yourself to one dish. Good New York fancy schmancy eating experience, all trendy and shit, with a good wine selection and a militantly fashionable and attractive staff. For dessert, even though we were stuffed, I just had to try the flan de naranja, simply because I love any dessert item coupled with orange. Now, a word firstly on flan. Let’s be honest, flan is generally never that good. You always eat it and then are like, ok, that wasn’t amazing. But there’s always something about it that makes you order again later on down the road. Like, there’s this potentiality in flan to be amazing, it just never quite measures up. But last night, this orange flan was some good shit, I mean, that potentiality of amazingness in flan came to the fore and smacked you in the gizzard. I was stoked that I had made the choice to order it. And I was by that point into my second glass of vino tinto, which for me these days is enough to get me feeling warm, fuzzy, and conversationally inclined.

Then we went to a some random bar to get out of the rain. I had a Glenlivet on the rocks, and we ended up playing pool with a big black dude named Charles who was apparently on a combination of drugs mixed with his alcohol–as in, the dude would try to say something to you, but it would mostly end up coming out as sputtered, laughing nonsense, as if he had taken ecstacy and then snorted cocaine and then drank way too much, and his verbalization abilities were somehow getting shortcircuited. It seemed like he had good intent, so I would just nod my head and smile, and we were all equally horrible at pool, so it made for an interesting pass of time, if weird and somewhat disturbing. When we made our hurried exit, he was trying to get our phone number, but we cheerfully informed him that it would be pointless for us to give him our number because we were only visiting and lived far, far away. “Israel?” he slurred sputteringly. We nodded and ran back out into the rain. Might as well be Mars, given where good ol’ Charles was currently at in headspace. The dude was strangely fashionably attired, though, given his state of fucked-upness. He had a Jets sweatshirt paired with intent to jeans with designer silver spraypaint.

We then made our way to a restaurant that had a bar that served drinks in ginormous goblets, guaranteed to fuck you up to high heaven. I got a strawberry margarita, and every suck you took of this adult slurpee contained enough alcohol to kill a small child, not to mention that there was an extra shot nonchalantly placed into the goblet in a plastic shot tube, like a cinammon stick in a hot chocolate. At the bar, I briefly conversed with one of those dudes who sit at bars by themselves and order drinks and look about them, waiting for the chance conversation or single woman to come by (I have myself been that dude many a time, especially in foreign countries). He was sippin’ on a long island ice tea, and he informed me that it would fuck up a rhinocerous for your money. Having been a student in LA, and thus having learned what drinks to get in expensive bars to maximize fucked-upness with coverage of alcohol taste for less money, I then gave this dude the advice to either try an Adios Motherfucker, which is yet stronger than a Long Island Iced Tea, or for an even stronger drink that is still yet drinkable, a Zombie, which is probably one of the strongest mixed drinks you can get. Have one, and you’re drunk. Have two, and you’re fucked up. Have three, and good luck, unless you’re an elephant.

Then we went to an improv show, the Stepfathers at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater. It was only the second improv show that I’ve been to thus far in my existence, and it was pretty funny, especially given that I was quite sauced as this point. It was different then the other improv I’ve seen, in that the comedian-audience interaction was pretty minimal, and I was a little disappointed by that, because what has always interested me about improv was that connection where the comedians are feeding off of audience feedback. But it was still pretty funny and creative nonetheless. I think the lack of audience interaction was mainly due to the audience itself, anyway–the people who spoke up for the word from which the comedians were going to act out scenes based on could only come up with “plane,” and “Fred.”

I have another thing to add to my list of what I like so far about New Yorkers: they all wear dark colors. You don’t see any pinks, yellows, any of that kind of pastel colored crap that Americans have an embarassing tendency to wear.

The Californian Esta In NYC

Yours truly is currently on assignment in the city of all cities, NYC, for the Christmas (read: CHRIST-used-as-excuse-to-aMASs-consumer-goods) season. This was after a 7 to 11 traveling day to get here via train, plane, y carro. 3 ½ hours in my old Subarita to San Francisco, wherein we abandoned her to the mercy of the streets, hoping that she won’t be broken into and peed inside of during our absence, and then we hopped onto the BART for an hour’s ride into the airport, commencing thence onto the final 5 hour leg of our journey via sky.

So I’m now here in an apartment in Manhattan, listening at this very moment to cars outside of the window bleeping their horns assertively—if there is one thing that NYC is about, it’s assertiveness—and trying not to itch my eyes because an old smelly dog in this apartment is apparently activating allergies in me I didn’t even know I had. I can’t say that I know much of New York, having only been here 2 times before, but I do admit to feeling a certain affection for it, mainly due to its immediate contrast to Los Angeles, where I lived for 4 years. After LA, the aggression of New Yorkers seems positively loving. They engage with each other. They verbalize their thoughts. This is refreshing to me.

I’ll try to take field notes on this fast-paced alien American world and see if I have anything new to say about it.

Nature Porn

I just went to Yosemite for the first time. It’s a beautiful place in that dappled valley, with the myriad histories witnessed by those glaciated rock walls extending from the world renowned exploits of Camp 4-based climbers to the natives who once summered there, the maize ground by squaws atop rocks. But I have to say that as much as I enjoyed my stay there, and hiking up its steep winding trails, the domestication and Disneylandification of the valley left me with a bad taste in my mouth.

I understand that the wonderous wilderness should be able to be enjoyed by anyone and everyone. But I had the feeling that something sacred was being desecrated by such a wide-open welcoming of the masses. I had the feeling that maybe some things of natural and rare beauty demand a sacrifice to be viewed appropriately. Simply being able to drive right up to Glacier Point takes away from that feeling of awe and appreciation that is felt after one has hiked up to its inclusive viewpoint. And in the valley, there are houses, a courthouse, and a supermarket. There is a bus system that was making its night rounds completely devoid of passengers but right on time (if only South Lake Tahoe had a bus system as reliable and efficient as that). Ever since the valley’s wresting from the Native Americans by greedy, unscrupulous gold diggers, the magical valley has been used more as a profit-generating resort for urban tourists than experienced as the sacred, pristine example of divinity that it is. I would rather not see busloads of Japanese tourists snapping picture after endless picture of El Capitan. I would rather not see suburban-bred pasty people who can’t walk one mile to save their life eating candybars and ogling at bears. And while I understand that the age of enjoying forested areas devoid of insensitive human life has long since passed before I was ever conceived, it still irks me when I see a gorgeous natural place made out to be Disneyland.

I guess that’s the flip-side of the coin in an age where we expect and demand instantaneous gratification, communication, and information. We don’t want to work at understanding the depth, history, or complex beauties of the world around us–we just want to point and click. We want to disembark out of the plane, off the bus, or out the station wagon and say we came, we saw, and we conquered. Come to Yosemite for some good nature porn!

Time Passes

I have been going through one of my quiet phases, where I internalize my daily mental and spiritual and mundane experiences, and thus when I sit in front of the screen I can’t find anything to say. I’ve become more comfortable in my older age (27 soon to be twenty-eight) with just letting myself be silent when I am silent, and allowing myself to talk when I am talkative. When I was a teenager, I was so self-conscious that when I didn’t have anything to say I would get stressed out and anxious by silence, feeling like I had to say something. This then had the catch-22 effect of rendering me unable to say anything at all. Ah yes, those were some wonderful times.

It’s kind of a cliche that old folks harken back on their times of youth and sigh, wishing they could transport themselves back to those idyllic times. I’ve heard people in their 30s set on a solid career path reminiscing misty eyed about their drunken drugged out college exploits. I, on the other hand, have been finding, thankfully, that my life and my perceptions and my experience of life only improve with age and time. To be honest, I mainly hated my college years, though I certainly had my moments of glory. High school was alright, once I had forged some meaningful and wonderful friendships, the ties of which still hold true to this day. Middle school was hell, a time when hormones and societal norms wrecked havock on souls and bodies alike. Elementary school was a waste of time, being alternately abused or condescended to by bitter post-middle-aged women.

Now, well past academia, somewhat settled into a job but nowhere near stuck in a career, I feel more confidant, more in love with being alive, more aware of the world in which I live, then I ever did. I spent my young adult life being depressed and hating myself and everything else. I still have a lot of anger against the world, but a little bit of anger, I feel, is justified. I see no reason why the advance of age should pose a slew of regrets, bitterness, and fear. (I talk like I’m an old man, but let’s be honest–this culture makes you start feeling passé by the time you hit 25. American consumer culture is all built around youth, vulnerability, and the inability to think and feel for yourself.) I suppose once I hit 80 that I will then begin to grow frustrated at my limp penis, varicose veins, and general shrinkage of body mass–but until then, it only gets better from here. Here’s to evolving with time.

Traffic Rant

After 10 1/2 stressful and trafficful hours on the road, I’m “home” for Turkey Day. I have to say that I just don’t understand how anyone could ever tolerate stop-&-go traffic every single day of their working existence. I understand that if you have to, then you gotta do what you gotta do. But as to how one can do it without eventually either killing a stranger or suffering a heart attack and/or stroke is beyond me. The feeling which I had whilst immersed in an endless succession of single or two person occupied vehicles, none of whom appeared to be able to understand the concept of flow, was that I wanted to scream and beat people senseless. So it’s gas, brake; gas, brake; gas, brake for 2 fuckin’ hours. That was just going through LA. But all the way down the two lane interstate from northern Cali, there was enough traffic such that all of the idiots (which is apparently 95% of all drivers on the road, according to my own personal research) that just sit in the left-hand lane–which is the passing lane, motherfuckers–continuously bottle necked the flow, because these idiots are barely even going the speed limit, and then they have to hit the brakes anytime they want to slow down. Alright, idiots, listen: when you’re on the highway, you don’t need to hit the brakes to slow down, unless there is an emergency. Otherwise, just take your fuckin’ foot off of the gas pedal. It’s pretty simple. Otherwise, you cause a chain reaction of every other person down the line hitting their brakes. Good job, motherfuckers.

If people were robots, this estadounidensian culture would be much more tolerable. Then cars would flow perfectly along in traffic, there wouldn’t be any idiots clogging up the road, you could bypass people on sidewalks without having to walk into the street to get around they fat ass. Unfortunately, Americanos are not robots; they only pretend to be robots. Which means that every road and highway is doomed to constant and ever increasing cluster fuck-ism. I just wonder at what point does the general populace begin to go crazy as a result? I guess they already have, come to think of it. And I think that if research was made on the connection between spontaneous murders of random people and stop-and-go traffic, then social scientists might make some headway.

In any case, as long as the auto industry is making money, and the oil industry is making money, then it ain’t changing anytime soon. Good luck, humanity. And a pleasant Turkey Eating Day to you, as well.

Fuel Reduction

Winter hath begun. We’ve been doing a “fuel reduction” project after the facility closed with the remnants of staff that remain, which entails walking through the woods with handsaws, clippers, and polesaws, and essentially gardening the forest. We gather the branches and dead trees and make piles and burn them. Because the forest is now a dense thicket of white firs and brush set amidst the older junipers, incense cedars, and white pines. Originally, back in the day when the natives came to this region for their summer vacations, forest fires were a cyclical process that cleared, weeded, and returned organic materials to the soil. The pines and cedar trees had ample space to grow. Now forest fires are cataclysmic events, spreading rapidly and destroying whole forests, rather than a small percentage of its undergrowth. All because Smoky the Bear, in his infinite wisdom, decided that fires, all fires, were bad, bad things. So for years the forest service did all it could to prevent all fires from erupting, thus effectively creating a forest dense with fuel. The natives, of course, understood the necessity of natural fires, as they understood many other simple things through observation. The industrial “revolution” and its subsequent detachment of humanity from nature created a mentality of manifest destiny, in which men decided that all of nature lay underneath their jurisdiction, that in fact nature needed to be controlled, regulated, and harnessed. Because they thought the forest couldn’t regulate itself.
Well, so now we seek to emulate what was once completely natural. We must prune the trees, thin the shrubs, collect all the dead materials and burn them. Because if we don’t, all that shit is just waiting to go up, and take our homes, and the entire forest, along with them.

There is always a tendency, in civilized (repressed) societies, to delimit everything to one-dimension, in which it is either totally bad or totally good, black or white. Complexities, subtleties, many faceted aspects of things are destroyed in our obsessive demand for appearance and immediacy. Doesn’t really matter what’s right or wrong, as long as we are reassured that it is right. Polls have demonstrated time and time again that George W. Bush strikes (or used to strike) a key note in the populace due to his “integrity”–meaning that he sticks to a plan of action, even if it is a completely misguided plan of action, even if the original intent behind the plan of action is false, even evil. In other words, we don’t care about true integrity, only the appearance of integrity.
Going back to the subject of forest fires, we painted all fires as “bad,” and so sought, quixotically, to put all forest fires out as soon as they began. And thus created a situation 20 times worse than anything we could have imagined. Through the attempt to control something that was already self-regulatory and natural, we created imbalances that now lead only to greater disaster and destruction.
I had talked earlier about how this misguided idealism, this noble attempt to control all nature and eradicate all bad, is leading to problems in the field of healthcare, such as antibiotics being rendered nearly completely ineffective. This misguided idealism is rampant everywhere in our efforts, whether it is the effort to make pest resistant or drought resistant food crops, or the effort to eradicate crime. We label things, one-dimensionally, as “bad,” and then operate based on these one-dimensional assumptions, while the actual reality grows ever more dire and destructive due to our own destructive, limited perceptions. Because–as any policeman or politician could tell you–things are much more complicated than they appear.

More on this topic later.

Knowing the House

Playing house is an enriching task, I’ve discovered recently, having moved out of my bachelor cabin at work and into a new apartment in town. We discuss placement of furniture, items to be acquired, what kind of meals to be cooked. Eventually, what was once chaotic uncertainty begins to coalesce into a space where no more thought is required. The glass of wine goes here. The alpaca jacket hangs here. The blinds are pulled up in the morning, both locks are locked on the door at night. As settled life commingles with the onset of winter, I find myself struggling to retain the wildness within, without sacrifice of comfort or happiness. When someone else is reliant upon me for emotional support and constant stability, it is more difficult to find vent for things that I don’t even know yet I need to express, because I had previously used the space of solitude to give it form.
I have long been on the road to getting to know myself, and had thought to have made some headway. But this knowledge was based on myself alone–and now, finding myself with someone else, consistently, I am temporarily lost. The context has shifted. It’s like waking up in the morning and you have no idea for 2 seconds of where you are and how you came to be there. It has quickly become evident to me that it is much easier to know yourself when you are lonely. It is much harder to explore yourself when the boundaries between you and another person have become so blurred as to be at times indistinguishable.
It is a matter, as with most things, of letting go of preconceptions while looking at the true reality with full awareness. What I have been doing is struggling to maintain my self-identity as what I knew before–while in fact who I am is now a larger self, encompassing more, a mesh of two persons, like the definition of embrace. To embrace is to accept into oneself someone who is beyond oneself, such that in that moment of conjunction, the two become unified while still maintaining their own prior integrity. To put that less technically would be to say that who I am now is no longer what I had come to know, because my orbit has fallen in step with another’s. The gravity has changed. The light has changed. I keep looking for myself where I once was, but that person leaps away. The person I see now is looking me right in the face but I haven’t learned yet how to say it. I am now longer simply I. I am now me-with-her. I am now her-with-me. I am the same man-boy I was before, but I am also someone different. My role has changed, my function has changed. I was once only a lonely young one searching for his place in the wider world. I still am that. But added to that I am also man loving woman, steadily, every day, building brick by brick a house of dreams that floats on the visible world like a palace, accessibly to all only by connection to the heart stream, the flow of magic that is love, that is everything and everyone but that comes to be encapsulated quite simply between only 2 people.
So here now I build my house, searching wildly for myself out the windows while my own breath fogs up the glass. I then turn around to find myself being embraced by someone else. The vision clears. When living itself–simply living, breathing, eating, enjoying the fact of being alive–gains precedence, the search for myself loses meaning. Which is to say that coming to know myself is coming to know simply the moment in which I exist, which is never anything but now. Now, and now, and now. Which is life, which is death, which is tied all together in one ultimate, universal embrace by love. I’m getting too vague, so I’ll stop now.

Winter Coming

First snowfall of the season today. Having grown up in Southern California, where the change of seasons is marked only by holidays, I am growing to cherish the feeling in the air when a season here shifts. The winter can be felt approaching, and things grow quieter, and I find myself similarly turning inward. A form of hibernation, I eat heavier foods and crave the occasional coffee drink.

I don’t want to be morbid or to give the appearance that I am dwelling on dark feelings, so please don’t take this the wrong way: in a couple of nights, it will have been exactly a year since a friend and co-worker of mine was found hanging in his room. This isn’t a topic I care to discuss much anymore, but I feel also that it isn’t something that I should be afraid to talk about. I’ve learned something about pain and grieving since then. I’ve learned that grieving isn’t something that you should ever hold onto, but it also isn’t something that you should ever deny, when it comes. It comes less and less now, like residual shockwaves rolling outward from a rock falling into a pond. The rock has sunk down into the deeps, to settle like a solid emptiness in my heart, a quiet stillness where once there was violent struggle, like the ruins of a sunken ship on the bottom of the ocean. Grief comes when it comes, and it rolls through me and then I’m left a little more at peace than before. When it comes, it’s just like it was that first night–the simple question that will never be answered . . . why?

A hollowness that will never be filled, a piece of yourself torn from the deepest essential core of you, the part that connects you to all your friends and family and loved ones. In bridging the wound, you discover at the end of the tunnel that you are even closer now than ever to strangers, to acquaintances, as well as to loved ones. There is a kind of strange and cruel benediction in the healing, in which you find that Toby, through his self-destruction, has shown you the path to greater love. Never again can you take someone’s solitude for granted, assuming that they are alright with being alone. You know now the silent violent churning of loneliness within, and what kind of destruction it can leave in its wake when finally it is shared with the world.

Our culture of extreme individualism has created an environment where people are isolated and lonely, desperately searching for a way to be deeply interconnected but not knowing how to find such access. People use chatrooms, personals, MySpace, clubs, bars, searching searching for someone to see through to their divinity. Hungry to have the chance to show it. Hungry to the point of starving, hungry to the point that when the feelings finally come out, it is monsterous, and violent, and steeped in bitterness and anger.

In European cultures and in the beginning of American society, intellectualism–political and ideological debate–provided fuel for networking and conversation and sitting around sharing drinks and smoking. Now when we go to coffee shops or bars, it is to sit by ourselves or with a single friend. We are allergic, of course, to anything resembling intellectual elitism or artsy fartsy-ness, as well we should be. But we need to find a way to get together in groups, beyond concerts and clubs, a way to congregate and debate and share stories and find a way to acceptance of our differences and a way to understanding of our essential humanity. I guess blogs are a start, and that’s why I do this. But it’s still disconnected in terms of physical interaction. We need touch, we need voice, we need laughter.

Find a way to build this space for people, a place where they can interact without having to be alcoholics, a place where they can talk without having to wear designer clothing. There are, in fact, already places like these all around you–it is simply a matter of opening yourself up to them.

I miss my friend, I miss seeing him everyday. I miss his grumpiness and good work ethic. He taught me never to take anything or anyone for granted. He taught me that you can never know what another human being is going through inside. He taught me that I need to find a way to connect to other people, even when they give the appearance of not wanting a deeper connection. Everyone wants so desperately to be loved and understood. And everyone deserves to be.

Writer’s Block

At periodic intervals in my journey through life, I stop and step outside of myself and wonder if I really have anything to say. There then ensues a period of silence. It happens enough that I’ve stopped going through the “will I ever write again?” anxiety, but it still perturbs me nonetheless, because I know that every single day of my existence I need to get things out that I normally can’t express. My writing goes through phases: sometimes all I will write about are mundane daily occurrences or thoughts; other times all I will write is abstract poetry.

Writing is a constant struggle to root down to the Source of all things. At some cosmic level, I believe all things to be interconnected. This is the basis on which metaphor, the language of poetry and spiritual introspection and surprise, rests. That ultimately, any random thing can be interrelated to a greater whole, in which it is embraced and liquidated, a drop in the sea.

Postmodernism was an interesting intellectual and cultural exercise in which we recognized the idea of the fragmentation of our identities. But we’re moving beyond that cold shizophrenic paranoia, thank god, and evolving to see that even our very selves be simply shrapnel in the sea of a divinity that defines and repels us all in the same breath.

Once it was black and white, and poor and rich, and women and men. I’m hoping that our culture is quietly evolving beyond such facile reductions of our godhead.

In any case, the moon is almost full here on the lake at this fall time, bringing with it a whole slew of questions and remembrances and sorrows and light. I’m writing here at this very moment because I am alone, and you are alone, and we are together. The most important thing, I think, is that we understand ourselves through each other. I will continue to write, searching to uncover the line that strings our hearts together across the oceans of time and space.

Healing Rituals

This weekend I came to realize how powerful ceremony and ritual can be in our lives. Growing up going to church and subsequently rejecting it’s regimented, institutionalized blather and feel-good propoganda, I instinctively shy away from most semblances of worship. But getting together with a group of amazing friends and sitting down and making a concerted effort to truly get beyond appearances and on into deeply spiritual life matters is a consciousness broadening experience. We sat in a circular manner and expressed gratitude to various forces in our lives which had brought us to that moment. We meditated and we sang and we played instruments. We planted trees and plants. We looked into ourselves and we looked into each other. And I realized afterwards just how important doing such a thing is–how in fact it may be necessary. Reaching your own inner realizations is of course a beautiful thing. But when it just sits inside of you and doesn’t bear witness and corroboration in other people, then it can wilt and fade away. Sharing your inner heart with other people who have similarly looked into themselves is a joyful and heartening experience, because you understand then that you are not alone–and it gives you hope. It gives you connection and beauty and power. And then you can go back to your daily mundanity with this flower within you, knowing that it is more securely there, and blooming.

Thank you to all those of you who were there–and for everyone who wasn’t, even if you don’t know it–you were.

Limited Postings

So my old Compaq Presario laptop finally went kaput, and I’m currently computerless until my new Dell comes in. Since I do all my writing via my laptop because I can’t hold a pencil right so it takes me forever to hand-write shit–that means I won’t do much posting until then. I invite you to peruse some of my past writings, maybe the Chronicles of My Journey in Peru. Until next time.

On Video Gaming

I grew up with Atari, playing Pong with my dad (the only game straightforward enough that he could tolerate); Pitfall with my sisters in the summer; Indiana Jones and the Raiders of the Lost Ark, an incredibly hard game because nothing made much logical sense. I then moved onto Nintendo, of course, and would rent games at Blockbuster and try to beat them in the alloted 2 rental days. Super Mario Brothers, Blaster Master, Ninja Gaiden. I even admit to enjoying the electronic scores penned by Japanese game composers, sometimes purposely lingering on certain levels just so I could hear the theme replay a couple more times. Then I got the Super Nintendo when it came out, and fell in love with The Legend of Zelda, which even still today, this version is an amazing game.

In 8th grade (if I remember correctly), about to transition into High School, I made the decision to sell off my Super Nintendo and old Nintendo and all my games. I had decided that I was getting too old for playing video games. But then, The Legend of Zelda came out for Nintendo’s new system, the N64. And it was everything that I’d dreamed of a video game being up to that point: it was completely 3D, immersive, with a wonderfully imaginative world and accompanying storyline. In this game, for almost the first time, you truly felt like you were really in the game-world, an alternate universe where you could suspend your disbelief and explore at will. So of course, I had to give in and get me a N64, even if only for that game. Perfect Dark was another amazing game that came out for that system, with nearly endless replay value. I’ve never played a platform game since that I enjoyed quite as much as Perfect Dark. The ability to change all the settings for each level ensured that every game was new and always challenging, especially when you put the computer opponents’ intelligence at its highest.

I also was an afficionado of ID Software’s computer games, starting with Wolfenstein 3D, on through Quake II. My friend and I would design levels for Doom II that were nearly impossible and we would get perfect at being able to beat them every time. In the dorms in college, I would play Quake II on-line and get slaughtered by people who had obviously been spending all their free time playing the game. Then at this point, computer games started getting much too high tech for my old computer, and I stopped playing them because I no longer was willing to upgrade.

But I kept up with Nintendo onto its next system, the Gamecube. Again, The Legend of Zelda was pretty amazing, trumping all other games of its time in terms of creating a world that fully immerses and engages the player. Metriod Prime also demonstrated why Nintendo is the best at making amazing games.

I have to admit, I’m pretty biased when it comes to video games. Nintendo has my undying loyalty. Remember when there was that whole Nintendo vs Sega bullshit? It was never even a real comparison in terms of well-made games–it was just advertizing blitz by Sega, pretending to be cool. Now Sega makes games for Nintendo. Nintendo is an easy target to pick on: they never put up much of a fight, choosing instead to quietly go about making amazing games and revolutionizing the industry at every step of the way. They also tend to be more “family-oriented” in terms of their game-making, meaning that they tend to work on immersive storytelling and imaginative worlds that all ages can relate to, rather than relying on excessive bloodshed and “coolness” to sell their systems. The whole debate about Sony or Microsoft vs Nintendo still seems like bullshit to me. The fact is that Nintendo makes the best games. Period. Which is not to say that 3rd parties can’t make good games. But the best games, The Legend of Zelda, Super Mario Bros, Metroid, etc–every new game in the Nintendo series pushes the envelope for gameplay.

2 years ago I again made the decision to sell my Gamecube and give up video game playing. This time, I made the decision not because I felt like I’d outgrown video games (I still love playing them, as you can probably tell from that last impassioned outburst on Nintendo), but because I felt that the time that I spent playing them was time taken away from being with my friends or reading a good book. There just isn’t much redemptive value in playing video games, let’s be honest. It’s entertainment at it’s highest form–you are forging a personal narrative in strange and wonderful worlds and learning how to overcome sometimes complex and intricate obstacles–but you aren’t really gaining much from the experience other than having your attention captivated for a few hours. Plus, the fact is that games are so incredibly complex and time-consuming to program now, that the games just aren’t the same in terms of replay value anymore–one game lasts you maybe 2 weeks at the most, and then you’re done with it–and each game costs 50 bucks a pop. That’s a lot of money to pay for a short-term high.

A good game should be able to last you years. But such games are few and far between. Most are just straight forward linear affairs–once you’ve beaten em, that’s all she wrote.

I am tempted, I admit, to purchase Nintendo’s new system, the Wii, when it comes out. Once again, Nintendo is leaving competitors in the dust by completely changing the dynamics of gameplay. They have always been the innovators when it comes to control–the Xbox and Playstation’s controllers are simply echoes of the N64 controller. The Wii already has the gaming industry on its feet, because the controller this time will not be a space-shuttle complex of buttons–it will just be a few buttons on a remote control like thing, with the rest determined by the movement of your hand and arm. It is to be a completely 3D controlling experience. It’s ingenious, really–so simple that Sony and Microsoft must be slapping their foreheads.

I don’t think I’m going to be buying the Wii any time soon, if ever. But I will enjoy seeing it being played when I get the chance. I miss playing video games. But the fact is that I would rather chill with people that I love and have a good conversation with them or jam on some music, accompanied with some sips of vino or whiskey, alongside some premium shisha, any day. Connecting to real people is better than connecting to a video game system.

Medicalism

Apparently I have labyrinthitis, a viral infection of the inner ear. So all I can do is take anti-inflammatories, anti-nausea and dizziness medications and wait for it to pass. I’ve been stumbling around like a drunkard all week.

I had been getting fed up with doctors and dentists after this past month, when I had to go to the dentist 4 times to try to correct what began as a simple filling and turned into a crown. The doctor I went to last week when my vertigo started was incompetent and a waste of my co-pay and hour sitting around in his office.

But today, I went first to my dentist, to make sure that it wasn’t my tooth which was causing the loss of equilibrium (it wasn’t), and she and her receptionist were genuinely concerned for my well-being, and made sure that I called them after my visit to the doctor. Then the doctor I visited later took her time with me and listened to my symptoms and patiently explained to me why she diagnosed it as she did. And so I feel a little bit better about doctors and dentists now. Apparently, women tend to be better care practitioners for me, so I’ll just try to get women from now on to look after me. Guy doctors always seem to make me feel like I’m wasting my time visiting them unless I’m near death.

In any case, I feel like it would have been just as effective to go to a shaman and have them blow mapacho over me and then suck the evil from my body while tripping deeply off ayahuasca. I mean really, what is the difference, when the doctor can’t really diagnose what is wrong with you except to prescribe painkillers and tell you to wait for your body to heal itself? It’s just as effective to get some esoteric healer to placebo effect your mind, and at least a shaman gives you a sweet performance to boot, making you feel like they’re really investing something of themselves in healing you. A doctor just comes in and diagnoses you and scribbles some shit down and gets their nurse to clean the cerumen out your ears.

Vertigo

I’m setting here and the computer screen is attempting to spin left on a contiguous basis, such that I have to shift my eyes to the right continuously in order to compensate, such as when you are drunk and have the spins, and as much as you try to focus on something and stop it from moving, it keeps moving until finally you either pass out or vom.

I’ve got vertigo in a pretty major way. The real vertigo, not the momentary kind induced by looking down from a great height. As in something inside the chambers of my inner ear are fucked up and screwing with my sense of balance.

So if I don’t update this blog for a while, it’s because I can’t focus on the screen for long enough without getting sick.

On Depression

Change is underway in the heavens as in the heart; summer hath terminado, fall’s begun. It’s great. I look forward to not knowing the future, with only the assurance that it will be as good as it is now. I trained my new staff on how to clean the shit out of toilets.
The only glitch in the system being that my ear is fucked up and I’ve somewhat lost my sense of balance as a result. Hopefully the inner ear will heal and I can get away with not going deaf.
When everything around you is beautiful, you’ve gotta climb to the top of the highest mountain so that you can see it right. Got to keep yourself in perspective. Stop and breathe and look down.
I’m getting older, I can feel it, and I love it. My life only gets better from where I’ve begun. I dragged myself through the mud to get to where I am, and I know what the sun is.

Which reminds me of a topic I wished to explore. I was thinking the other day of how depressed I was in my formative years, and of how I no longer ever feel that way any more, and I then thought of how there’s so much shit out there on the market about self-help and what not, such that it’s quite apparent that in a lot of people’s lives there is a lot of depression and anxiety, and I thought maybe if I figured out why I no longer get depressed, it might help other people.

I want to addendum that statement with the fact that I am not saying that I live like in some steady state of bliss or anything. I get very moody and I feel down and lonely some days, a lot of days. But it never gets in the way of my thoughts and my self-image the way it used to when I was depressed. Which may be the point to which I am leading: my own conceptions of what it is to be depressed have shifted, not necessarily the fact of “feeling down.”

First of all, let me tell you something: depression is NOT a disease. That’s some new age psychiatry bullshit. Depression is a state of mind by which you are letting yourself in on the fact that something ain’t right with your life, or your perception of life. Depression is you telling yourself you need a change in your situation, in your mentality. So even if you take some drugs that makes you feel happier, you’ve still got the root causes of depression laying all around you like snakes in the grass, just waiting to be stepped on. Which isn’t to say that you shouldn’t take drugs to make you feel happier. Just to realize that drugs serve a certain function, but that they can’t make you change–they can help you change, but they are not the change.

To be always happy is unattainable, and in fact not even desirable. To go up and down like waves is the way of life. We pulsate. We learn, we move, the current flows. We see things from high and low. To be low is not unnatural. To keep yourself in that state of mind, however, certainly is.

When I was in junior high and high school I had a lot of problems with my self-image. I was shy and introverted and kind of awkward socially. It wasn’t enough to keep me from making friends or anything, but inside of me it affected me greatly. I was extremely self-conscious and didn’t really feel like I could express myself around most people. Which later in life I’ve come to realize is a form of vanity. But beyond my basic social anxieties and feeling of inadequacies around cute girls, there was something deeper that came in the form of constant depression. I had a feeling of hopelessness. Like it wasn’t just me, it was everyone, it was the whole world that wasn’t good enough. Like people were just kind of hopeless as a species. Like all of life was kind of hopeless in general. It was just ugly, bitter violence and stupidity.

I thought about suicide and all that kind of stuff. But never very seriously, because at some level I realized that people did love me and care about me and that it would be just vindictive selfishness to take my problems out on them like that. And believe me, I can tell you for certain that that is what it feels like when someone you know kills themselves. Go read what I went through and you’ll know. If you’ve ever thought about it, even for a second, listen to me: it’s fucking selfish and if you really are hurting so bad that you can’t see a way out of it, do this: sell everything you own and buy a plane ticket to South America. Go to the Amazon and immerse yourself in the deepest darkest jungle. Then think about it again and see how the idea appears to you at that time.

My first year of college, I was so unhappy after a break-up and being in a place that I hated, that I would just walk from my dorms to class with one sentence running through my mind: “i want to die.” It was kind of scary. I was nearly to the point of going to seek professional help or drugs, but I decided that at that point, having already been through a lot of depression, that it would be a cop-out to give in then. I felt like if I could just get through that darkest period of my life, then I could get past it.
And I did. That was the worst time in my depression, and it was like I let myself get so low that I finally saw the way out, and the only time I’ve ever felt like that again was when my friend Toby killed himself, and he brought back all of those feelings in me for a little while.

Look, those feelings will always be there in some part of you, and they will come out in times of pain, when someone you love dies or goes away, or when something inside of you changes. It’s impossible to smooth out a steady happiness and contentment without destroying some essential part of your mind or soul. Pain is how you adapt to change. To change is to grow. To grow is to expand your capacity for suffering–you channel out in so many ways that even if part of you is up in flame, another part is embedded in water.

So for me what has become key is never feeling like all of me is low. Part of me might be down, but part of me is already moving ahead. That in fact, to be “down” doesn’t mean there is anything wrong with me. That it is a part of my existence. If I am down all the time, then what it means is that I need to change something.

2 winters ago I was down for a while, and I could tell that it was starting to affect my mentality and the way I treated others. So I sat down and drew up a list with what was wrong with situation and then set a plan on how to go about changing it. Even just the simple act of making that list made me feel better. I had to shift my mentality. The low is to make you appreciate where you need to swing up to next to get to where you need to go.

Ancient Connections

I went on my first real hike of the year (finally) today, and watched as a forest fire sprung up on the other side of the ridge. I ate thimbleberries and right now I am drinking pennyroyal tea from leaves that I collected. I’m an idiot for not hiking more often. I hiked at least once a week last summer, but a number of things such as the World Cup and mosquitoes have prevented me from going thus far this year.
Anyway, I was thinking about some things as I hiked, and one of the threads regarded our civilization’s conceptions of “primitive” or ancient humans. We regard them inherently as simpleminded and lacking in sophistication. Even when there is ample evidence as to the contrary. We seem to have a hard time accepting that people who lived thousands of years ago could possibly have understood things on a deep level. And so when we come across irrefutable examples of their ingenuity, creativity, and intelligence, we inevitably attribute them to space aliens, or simply relegate them to yet another of the past’s “mysteries.”

Localized ancient wisdom, such as the understanding of herbs, plants, roots and how to make healing medicines from them, is swiftly passing away in the face of globalization and homogenization. But even as it is passing, something makes me think that this wisdom isn’t something that will just be lost forever. The only thing which can be lost is our ability to listen.

Shamans almost universally make the claim that their knowledge of plants comes directly from the plants themselves. I think that this is a claim that should be taken more seriously. Take the example of the Amazonian concoction of ayahuasca. It’s an amazing phenomenon to modern botanists and chemists, because the mixture of different plants which constitutes the hallucinogenic beverage is extremely advanced–on the surface, requiring a knowledge of chemical botanical interaction with the human brain that only modern science could provide. Yet ancient shamans have been crafting the brew for centuries, without science and without “proofs”. To say that they discovered the concoction through trial and error is akin to saying that we invented computer chips by banging rocks together. So unless you subscribe to the cop-out space alien theory, you have to accept the conclusion that there is a different system of acquiring knowledge than what we commonly accept. This system of acquiring knowledge does not rely on logical explanations and research. It relies, I would argue, on creative empathy and sensitive and attuned intuition–the ability to make associations between seemingly non-related and disparate things.

I think that we have a lot to learn from the earth and life itself, and that we have forgotten what it is to listen. We are so full of ourselves and our accomplishments as a species that we assume that we innately possess more wisdom than, say, a chipmunk or a tree. Yet the fact is that the earth breathes. Life is vast and delicately interconnected like the system of nerves and veins in your body. If a shaman says that he learned how to make ayahuasca from the plants themselves, than I would be inclined to accept his statement. I don’t think that plants talk. But I do think that if someone is in touch with themselves, than through the use of their creative empathic abilities, they can hear the call of things related to themselves, and the fact is that we are deeply interconnected with plants.

Humans are an extension of the earth. If you subscribe to the idea of evolution, which is supported quite firmly by scientific evidence, than you should know this. Which is to say that deeply embedded within our own minds lies the roots which connect us to all the world. The connection which we have temporarily forgotton, due to all the blinding surface lights of our modern conveniences, is to ourselves.

Green Cleaning Solutions

As your housekeeping manager, I would advise you to stop buying those fucking toxic chemicals that not only pollute the earth but also burn your lungs and give you a headache and make your skin break out in rashes. I’ve been investigating “green” cleaning solutions, and I came up with a concoction that is easy to make, effective at cleaning, and, best of all, cheap. Alls you got to do is get yourself some Borax, Baking Soda, Dr Bronner’s Castile Soap (preferably peppermint, simply cuz it smell good), and Vinegar.

For my All-Purpose solution, I mix 1/4 cup borax and 1/2 cup baking soda for every gallon of water (preferably warm to mix better), and then I squirt a bit of Dr Bronners peppermint soap up in there, amount is up to you. I then put this lovely smelling and clear admixture into a squirt bottle. It cleans effectively and you can aerosolize it all you want and it won’t kill you.

For glass and mirror cleaning, all you really need is vinegar and some newspapers. Make a spray bottle with 1/2 vinegar, 1/2 water and wipe that shit down with a sheet of newspaper and you’ve got yourself a clean window. Or, alternatively, you can make a slightly stronger solution with 1 cup vinegar and 1/2 cup cornstarch for every gallon of warm water.

I’m switching over to these methods this fall for my housekeeping staff to dabble in, and I’ll see if it works on a grander scale. So far on my test trials it’s worked out just fine. The major problem, of course, in running an institution based on these household cleaners is that the All-Purpose solution won’t do much in terms of killing germs. But I’ve determined that it is just as effective to clean with this solution and then afterwards to spray down the surfaces with a Clorox Disinfecting Spray, which pretty much kills most anything. The Clorox spray ain’t “green,” but I gotta do what I gotta do to kill them germs. But at least I will have achieved the major goal of keeping my workers and myself from breathing in tons of aerosolized chemicals in the small confined space of a bathroom.

Oh, and for bathtub cleaning, use Bon Ami. This is a scouring powder which is non-toxic, and it works really good, especially with a scrub brush in hand.

And since now you’ve got all that Borax, Baking Soda, and Vinegar sitting around, I’ll let you know that those all have multiple household uses. Look it up on Google or Ask.com or something, there’s a lot of info out there.

Another thing I would advise is that you stop using chemicals to kill household pests like ants, roaches, etc.

For ants: spray vinegar around door and window frames and ant trails. They also dislike mint, cayenne pepper, and lemon juice. For ant bait, mix together baking soda and sugar and sprinkle along the cracks along the wall and in doorways. Borax and sugar mix will also work, just don’t place where other animals (or small children) can access it.

For spiders: they dislike eucalyptus oil.

For mice: they don’t like mint. Distill spearmint oil and spray around entryways. You could also just try brewing yourself some mint tea and dropping or spraying that as well.

You see, all those pre-made toxic chemical solutions that you buy in the store are a kind of conspiracy, in a way, just like all the other crap you buy and don’t really need and that creates waste and pollution and general unhappiness and discontentment. It’s a conspiracy of convenience. Making your own cleaning supplies, making your own food, fixing your own stuff–all of this is suddenly almost taboo. It’s like supposedly our civilization is all smart and advanced and we are plumbing the deepest mysteries of the human brain and genomes, etc. And yet we’ve forgotten how to mend our own clothes. We’ve forgotten how to cook our own food. We’ve forgotten what it is to take care of ourselves, and we’ve slowly let corporate convenience dominate our lives. And all it really comes down to is someone else making money off your ignorance and laziness. Sermon over.

Experential Divinity

In order to know divinity, you must know your self, beyond all that previously defined you. You must look within, stripped of all pretension. And there you will find a terrifying unity, terrifying because every little butterfly flutter of your heart has universal implication.

Which is to say that to know of God is an entirely personal affair. I learned this the hard way growing up. I grew up a Presbytarian Christian, went to church and youth group every week. The driving spiritual force in my life, however, was my grandmother, an immigrant from Sweden who prayed multiple times a day and read constantly from her bible. When she prayed, she went into a kind of trance and spoke in tongues. She would tell stories, of which she had many, of prayers answered and miracles in her life. She was intensely spiritual, and I always respected that, and I wanted to believe the way she believed. I tried. For years I tried to pray and to know god the way that she did. And it took me longer than that to finally understand that I could never know god the way that she did. I could only know god in my own way.

And this is where institutionalized, fundamentalist religion goes astray. Religious indoctrination would tell you what the word of god is. It would tell you how to think, how to feel, how to pray to their god. It would tell you of all the mysteries. But you would never experience these things directly. God has to be translated for the masses, according to institutionalized religion. And all of these things may be a good introduction. But they will never take the place of personal realization, a direct relationship and communication with the source.

Bruce Lee concocted his own martial art, a martial art which took him beyond tradition, close-minded indoctrination, and habits, and through which he learned to attack directly and quickly without waste of time and effort. But he admonishes those who would blindly follow his martial art. He tells them that Jeet Kun Do is only his own personal way, not anyone else’s way. That you can learn from it and take what you will from it, but never to follow it as a complete and universal form. Which, of course, people did anyway, and continue to do.

A more enlightened view of any form or school of thought is to think of it in terms of Ken Wilber’s concept of holons. A holon is something complete within its own parameters, yet which still opens and connects into something beyond. In which everything is a holon, a whole unto itself and yet a part of something greater. A cell in your body is a holon. Christianity is a holon. The earth is a holon. To ever say that something has no connection with anything else or that something has no relation or ability to evolve and change with the rest of the universe is fundamentalism of the sort that leads to warfare, anger, and close-mindedness.

People who think that they are completely separate and isolated from all the rest of the world end up killing themselves. People who can never understand themselves and can only relate to themselves in terms of external indoctrination end up killing others. And all the little gradations in between that lead you daily to prejudice your mind against the world.

Within my own lifetime, I simply want to try to make myself better than who I am. I want to carry a light inside me that can not be touched by the wind of another human being’s insecurity. I don’t want to be a human being who just takes, and takes, and takes. I want to give, and take, and give. And give. And the only one who can help me do that is myself–a self that is connected with all the world.

Zen Industrialized

I once used to be addicted to buying CDs. Any extra money that I ever made in college went to Rhino Records, which was probably something like a 6 mile walk from where I lived round trip–I recall starving for 2 weeks once when I spent all my money on CDs and then didn’t have anything left to eat with. I ate 75 cent muffins out of the dorm vending machines. My musical horizons were expanding exponentially, I was devouring Miles Davis, John McLaughlin, Keith Jarrett, Terje Rypdal, and a whole other slew of amazing music that all seemed eventually interconnected as somehow there was always a musician on one set who had played with another musician who played . . . I developed a love and appreciation for the sound and aesthetics of the ECM label. It was not unusual for me to come back from the used CD aisles with 5-10 CDs clutched in my paws. I was always able to dig up some good shit that was probably too weird for its previous owner.

Those days are long gone, and it’s rare that I purchase a CD anymore, which is mainly due to the complete lack of any kind of adequate music stores in South Lake Tahoe. The last time I was in San Francisco, I went to Rasputin Records on Telegraph, and of course I had to buy some friggin’ CDs, the old CD addict in me was jolted awake like a coke fiend with a speedball. I managed to limit myself to only 2 CDs, which I was pretty proud of. These items were Cheikh Lo’s latest, Lamp Fall, and John McLaughlin’s latest, Industrial Zen. At first, I was slightly disappointed by each. Lamp Fall, because it is over-produced. Industrial Zen, because it’s got cheesy synthesizer sounds. However, with repeated listenings, both of these recordings develop depth and intricacy and warmth, and reward the listener who is willing to invest some effort in them.

I’m going to focus on McLaughlin’s Industrial Zen here, because it is the harder nut to crack. Let’s be honest: John McLaughlin has never been about accessibility or easy listening. He is a highly intelligent, virtuostic, and intensely spiritual musician who makes music on his own terms. I think what has always attracted me to his guitar playing is the sheer ferocity and ingenuity of his lightspeed licks. He is uncompromising in his ability, and he is similarly uncompromising in his songwriting as well, unhesitant with atonality, Indian influenced rhythms, and playfully dabbling in artful mixes of alternate beauty and chaos. His name is synonymous with the word ‘fusion.’

Unfortunately, to me, McLaughlin also has a fascination with high technology, with synthesizers and electronic drum kits and the like. I have nearly every album of his, from Extrapolation (1969) to Thieves and Poets, and now, Industrial Zen. And McLaughlin certainly has a cheesy streak running through him, I won’t lie. Albums embedded deeply in the 70s such as Visions of the Emerald Beyond and Inner Worlds attest to that. I love these albums, don’t get me wrong. But there’s definitely some cheesiness going on there. And I can dig it, I like a little cheese now and then, as I can openly admit being someone who owns just a little too many Dream Theater albums. The problem of cheesy, with John McLaughlin, is never a great danger, because he is just too good a musician for it ever to get in the way of his music. That said, I still have a hard time swallowing albums like Adventures in Radioland, when McLaughlin gets too much synthesized sound going on. It’s not that the music is bad, it’s just the sound that is hard to get past. And unfortunately, that synthesized sound is just abounding in all it’s glossy glory on Industrial Zen.

So when I put on the first track from Industrial Zen, the first thing I hear is that annoying synthesizer sound. And much of the remainder of the album is similarly drenched in the sound, and dammit, it just sounds cheesy. Goddammit, John, stop fucking around with the goddam synthesizers! But I’ve kept forcing myself to listen to the album (attempting to do it when no one else is around to ask me what the fuck I am listening to), and I have to admit, that over time, the album is beginning to grow on me.

Perhaps McLaughlin is aware of the effort of concentration and willpower which is required to get past the surface of his new album: it is called Industrial Zen, after all. One must essentially be a Zen master to shut out the annoyance of the Industrial synthesized sound effects. But with some effort, as always, McLaughlin’s music rewards. It is complex, virtuostic, and challenging. Not bad for an old man, really. He could just sit back and fart and play ballads on his acoustic, but instead, here he is again, pushing boundaries and sensibilities just like he did in the 70s with the Mahavishnu Orchestra. And his guitar playing is still rocking, even while immersed in synthesized sound.

I wouldn’t recommend this album for the faint of heart. But if you’re willing to be challenged, McLaughlin delivers. He’s still fusing the hell out of everything he lays his fingers on.

A Trip to the Cinema

I went out to the movies last night, something I haven’t done in a long time, and I subsequently remembered why I hadn’t in a long time: movies are a rip-off. Nine dollars and fifty cents to see a friggin’ movie! I ain’t old, and I can distinctly remember when movies were 5 bucks. I suppose the reason to go out to see a movie is not only to be the first to see the latest piece of Hollywood blitz, but to enjoy the fruits of surround sound, huge visuals, annoying strangers talking throughout the movie, etc. Speaking personally, I don’t watch a movie because the effects are cool or because the sound is neat. I watch them (when I do ever watch movies, which is pretty rare in any case–although this is soon to be changed, as I just signed up for Netflix for the first time the other day and my first movie should arrive . . . today: Grizzly Man, in case you were wondering. Then Dave Chappelle’s Block Party.) because I want to gain a new perspective, because I want to see a good story that can open my mind, I want to understand the characters and relate myself to them. I could give 2 shits about the special effects, unless it is one of those Pixar films where everything is essentially a special effect.

So, in other words, why would I waste 10 fuckin bucks to go see a movie in a theater? I’m quite content to watch a movie on a tiny ass laptop screen. It’s 10 bucks per month to sign up for Netflix and get 1 movie sent to you whenever you want. As opposed to 10 bucks to blow your load on one potentially bad movie in a theater. That seems like a good deal to me.

Anyway, so the movie I saw was A Lady In The Water, a movie by M. Night Shyamalan, which was actually a pretty enjoyable flick, I thought. Not enjoyable enough for $9.50, of course, but worth sitting through. This is one of those kinds of films that critics are nearly guaranteed to dislike. It’s full of nonsense and myth, but if you are willing to suspend your disbelief (beginning with the ridiculous opening sequence), it leads you along a child-like twisting and turning imaginative thriller. The whole thing feels quite heart-felt, and perhaps this is why the writer and director himself casts himself in a central role. I think Shyamalan is trying to take us back to the very thing which I was just saying above: story-telling. This film has all the visual tricks and special effects of other Hollywood productions–except that behind it all is something extremely quirky and different. It is a children’s tale told to adults. This isn’t a slick production or a plot twisting narrative–it’s just a creative yarn, with a heart, showing off gleefully it’s holes and failures. Just when you think it’s going to collapse on itself, it touches you.

I can’t say I’m a great fan of the director or anything. I thought Sixth Sense was cool, just like everyone else. The only other movie of his I saw was The Village, which I just thought was weird. But what I think is interesting about A Lady In The Water is that there is a kind of self-consciousness from Shyamalan, like he’s trying to break free from the Hollywood whirlpool that sucks all life and freedom out of ingenuity and creativity.

So this isn’t a movie that I recommend to go see. But I would wholly recommend getting it on Netflix when it comes out on video.

Positive Potentiality In Peops

I talk often in my writings of the need for openness in perception, the lack of expectations, such that another human being can exist more fully in their potential, which is ultimately infinite. I write of this often because it is one of my frequent, daily shortcomings in my interaction with strangers. By the way, if you ever feel that my writing is preachy, take it with a grain of salt, because I am not preaching necessarily to anyone but myself. Writing is a way for me to discuss issues and provide myself with advice that normally I can’t distance enough in daily life to see.

Anyway, so in the professional sphere, dealing with rich, complacent assholes is a frequent occurrence. Actually, a lot of them aren’t assholes. They are just weak minded and kind of pitiful in their ignorance of reality. They make a lot of money but they don’t have such basic social skills as courtesy or the ability to hold a conversation with someone outside of their limited social sphere. They drive an SUV mindlessly, without any idea of what cost such a thing might have to anyone else. They have spoiled, obnoxious children who will most likely grow up to be just as dumb and sheltered as they are. They like to power-trip over people who are only courteous to them because it is their job.

I can’t stand these kind of people, and unfortunately I have to deal with them frequently. But the truly unfortunate thing is that out of the numbers of people that I see every day, it is really only a few who are like that. But that few taints my perception of all the rest. And so I end up classifying a whole group of people and writing them off, such that I really don’t give any of them a chance to be anything more than just another moronic, well-off American.

It’s hard, incredibly hard, to shake off negativity once some stranger has been rude to you. I worked as a ticket seller for a gigantic ski resort one winter, and I dealt with a lot of rich to pretending-to-be-rich people who only knew how to be demeaning and dehumanizing to me once they couldn’t get their way. It got to be after a while that I wouldn’t be truly nice or open with anyone at my window, because every individual turned in my mind into a stream of idiots, bitches, and assholes. And everyday, every hour, there would be some idiot to reconfirm that. So I would just be indifferent and cold to all of them.

It’s like that receptionist, you know the one, at the doctor’s office, or that person who you talked about your refund with at the customer service window–that employee who was just outright rude to you, and seemed to derive no pleasure in life except to be rude to you for no reason. We’ve all dealt, way too often, with such a person, and they ruin our day. They are unhappy, bitter people. You know that all they do is go home and then talk shit about people from work.

I’ve been that person from time to time. All it takes is one rude motherfucker, and I close up and try to limit my interactions with guests as much as possible. And I thus effectively close off any potential in any of these people to be anything but what I view them to be. Every now and then there is that one person or family who is truly, genuinely nice and warm, and it is a shame if I can’t allow them to be that in my mind or in my interactions with them. And the fact is, further, that even the worst asshole, even the most representative complacent, close-minded sheltered bigot, has a side of warm intelligence and creativity, in which they can be viewed and understood within their own unique, personal context. It is simply that I must get beyond my own ego, I have to learn to see the bigger picture–such that if someone is being rude to me, that I should not take it personally. Such that even if someone has been sheltered and suckled on ignorance and wealth all their life, they still have that boundless potential as God. To allow myself to be mired in bitterness against them is a waste of my heart and mind.

It is, of course, much easier to say this than to manifest it in my life. But I’m hoping that if I say it enough, it will work its charm. Because I believe quite firmly that it is in the everyday that the world is changed, and if I or anyone else can’t get beyond appearances than we are just allowing the bullshit to perpetuate. It is not just Gandhis who change the world–it is the nurse you dealt with at the hospital, it is the guy who took your change at the Taco Bell, it is the person crossing the street at the stop sign, it is every person in your day, every person in your life, every little positive interaction. You know that warm feeling you get, when you smile at a complete stranger who is only interacting with you because it is business, and you get a smile back, and it is real? And you’ve actually connected to this person, and you’ve made their day, and they’ve made yours? That is what it is to cross boundaries and change the world. Positivity. Every day. Every moment. The potential in every person for love is boundless.

An Unscheduled Wine Tasting Pit Stop

It was hot and I was getting a bit testy after more than 3 hours in the car and still not even close to Sacramento, and we were supposed to be driving to San Francisco, normally a 3 1/2 hour long drive from South Lake Tahoe. The traffic had been horrible before even getting out of town. Galen said, “hey, we can go this other route and avoid the traffic.” I was down, it was a nice day, and I was ready to cruise. Little did I realize just how far out of the way this back-route was to be. It was also quite a bit more mountainous than I would have liked to have put my 16 year old car through. After 3 hours and headed towards Stockton rather than Sacramento, the heat pulsing through the car windows, we decided that we needed a wine tasting break, being as it were that we were passing through the southern tip of Lodi. I definitely needed to relax a bit, and I’m always down to do a little wine tasting. We pulled off at the first winery that we spotted in time enough not to have to slam on the brakes in order to turn into it.
We stepped out of the steaming heat of mid-day in the flatlands into the air-conditioned cool of the wine-tasting room. The server, a man on the cusp of youth and middle age, was polite and professionally circumspect in his questions and answers, yet at the same time an obvious roustabout by his manner, inclined just as much to drinking the wine himself as to serving it. His father was an immigrant from Greece who had worked hard and via hard-headedness, will-power, and ambition had eventually run his own restaurant in Lodi. He then grew bored with the restaurant business and moved into wine-making. His two sons assisted him in the endeavor, and after one year, they already had a thriving business. I was unimpressed, frankly, by the wines, although the scent they gave off was nice. The merlot had a strong strawberry scent, while the cabernet sauvignon had an undercurrent of molasses, like sniffing shisha. We were served a tasting round of all of their different wines, Galen sighing and saying how great all of them were. I just nodded and swirled it around and then put it down the hatch. At that point, all I really cared about was getting some alcohol in me, which this wine could adequately serve the function of.
A very large and loud couple then came into the tasting room. The man declared, upon tasting the sauvignon blanc, that it tasted as though an angel had come and pissed on his tongue. His name was Hubie, he had a Germanic accent, and he had served as a rescue worker in New Orleans 5 years before Katrina, where he met this woman, Adell, when he pulled her from the river. They were a well paired match, it seemed, Hubie saying off-the-wall comments designed to be funny–although they were mainly just strange and kind of awkward–and Adell would guffaw loudly at them and look around at us to verify that Hubie was indeed the funniest man in the world. I pretended to be immersed in the wondrous odors of the cabernet.
The tasting server–his brother and father safely out the door–then decided charitably to take us all on a tour of the back area, where wine was mixed and stored in giant steel vats. I think he was simply taking advantage of his father and brother’s absence in order to sample some of the other goods. He took us from vat to vat, pouring a sample directly from the spout, as we gulped half glasses of red wine, growing increasingly drunker. I felt like I was in Willie Wonka’s chocolate factory. Hubie made weird comments and Adell burbled about how this was the best tour she had ever been on. The wine server had never explored the back aisle of vats, and led us down them, exclaiming at the mystery of the unlabeled vats and then pouring us glasses from them. It seemed he was really using this opportunity to explore his father’s heretofore unexplored domain. My tongue was dry and sticking to the roof of my mouth. We wandered back to the tasting room, where Galen purchased a bottle of cabernet, and another couple came in right as we entered. Seeing that we had come from the back room, the wife exclaimed, “Well, now since we know you’re giving tours, you’re gonna have to give us one, too!” to the server, who was probably much drunker than us. Galen and I left to hit the road once again, in much greater spirits.

I’m an Uncle Squared

At about the same time that I was getting one of my teeth filed down by a dentist today (roughly 4 in the afternoon), my sister Karen was getting her baby pried out of her stomach in a C-section. I’m proud and happy to say that I am now the uncle of another baby–this time a girl, 9 pounds straight out the belly. Here’s to Sophia, as well as to my new crown. I’ll find out tomorrow morning whether or not I’ll need a root canal.

Learning

As I get older, I am growing to learn myself. As I grow to know myself, I become more and more aware of the life around me as well as inside of me, and I become more and more aware of the need to pay more attention to this life, and care for it. The wildflowers, the trees, the scurrying rodents, everything. I want to learn their functions, their relationships, I want to know the names given to them by our inaccurate methods of labeling.

A belated discovery for me in life is that I love to learn. I didn’t feel that way when I was in college–which just goes to show that I shouldn’t have wasted my time with it until I knew what I really wanted to invest my time and effort in. Now I’m gaining a better idea of what I’m interested in–I want to learn how to garden, how to build water systems, how to fix my car, how to cook well with whatever I’ve got on hand, how to make a splint out of sticks. There’s tons of shit I want to learn, and I’ve barely gotten started on it. I kind of wish that I had realized this 10 years ago and started cracking back then–but I suppose it’s better late than never–and those last 10 years I’ve been learning things too–learning how to get to the point where I could see more clearly my goals and how to attain them. I think, in some way, I’ve always known what I’ve wanted. It was simply a matter of gaining the insight apart from all the other things people wanted for me.

Alright, Already, So I Bought a Stinkin’ Car

Well, so I’ve now capitulated to the system. Yours truly now owns his first automobile. I know what I said. Circumstances beyond my feeble control forced me into this purchase. The fact is, I am landlocked out in the boondocks here on a lake in the mountains, and my shitty bike (which was free, incidentally) can only get me so far. Nor can my shitty bike get my girlfriend anywhere at all, which was the main problem. So, all things being what they are, I now am in possession of a beat up old Subaru. First chance I get, I’m driving into San Francisco so I can shake my booty, cuz it’s been so long since I last shook it that I can’t even remember if I can dance or not, although I do have fuzzy memories of shaking it ten hours straight (no joke) last year in the city. So now I have the ability to do so without having to hitch onto other people’s plans and schedules.

Looking for a car has been a major pain in the ass, being as it is that I lacked any car to go look at a car, and it takes at least a half hour just to bike into town from where I am. I finally bought this one from a surly old fart who had put a new engine into it and was very possessive of this thing he was purportedly selling. I finally wrenched it from his barnacled clutches and drove it back today. I am happy simply to be done with the process of shopping for a car, but now that I am in possession of one, I just feel like it’s another thing to worry about. I can’t wait until that far off ideal day in the future where I will live in a beautiful locale where no car is necessary, where all essentials are within walking distance, where I am growing my own food in my own garden. Someday. This is my dream, and this is why I am so attracted to Permaculture.

On Trees

“The root fungi intercede with water, soil, and atmosphere to manufacture cell nutrients for the tree, while myriad insects carry out summer pruning, decompose the surplus leaves, and activate essential soil bacteria for the tree to use for nutrient flow. The rain of insect faeces may be crucial to forest and prarie health.

What part of this assembly is the tree? Which is the body or entity of the system, and which the part? . . .[Such] separation is for simple minds; the tree can be understood only as its total entity–which, like ours, reaches out into all things . . . Life depends upon life. All forces, all elements, all life forms are the biomass of the tree.”

I finished the chapter on trees in my Permaculture book, and have picked up some new understanding. I had never really quite known just how powerful and affecting trees are on all living things around them. They create precipitation, they recycle water, they protect and nurture the soil, they break and redirect the wind–they harness the light–they cool the heat–they warm the cool–they take life into themselves with the least amount of destruction–they give back more than they take.

This brings my memory back to a time when I visited Sequoia National Park and went on a hike in its forest, and in the midst of this density of trees, far from the road where tourists would drive past the Sherman tree and eat candy bars and take pictures with their kids, stood the most immense living thing I had ever seen–an ancient grandaddy giant Sequoia tree, rising like a god above the surrounding forest. I fought an irresistable urge to prostrate myself before the tree and worship it. Because such trees deserve respect, bearing wisdom far beyond the scope of mankind’s feeble attempts at playing god. All trees are wise, and they can teach you things just by looking at them–where the most light is gathered, from where the hardest wind blows.

Studying this book on Permaculture brings me back to the wonder and mysterious pleasure I felt as a child when I would play in the wild, dense trees and bushes that I was privileged to have growing in my yard. I would lay on the branch of an oak tree directly outside of my bedroom. I would hollow out secret headquarters in thickets that still bear the shape of my childhood to this day. There is a mystery and power and beauty in growing things that is easy to forget in the midst of a city designed for convenience; this can be remembered when you venture back out into the wilderness, when you climb up mountains, walk on swaths of boulders through green trees, listen to a silence punctuated only by animals and wind and an occasional airliner. This sounds like a Sierra Club advertisement, but it is surely criminal to cut down any old growth forests. I don’t believe in religion, but I think if there is such a thing as sin, then it would be to cut down a tree needlessly. You go to the movies and watch dramas that turn morality into black and white, dioramas of good and bad. But there is no simpler and more direct drama of good and evil being played out than the real-life story of the Amazon jungle, and of how every day it’s thriving, truly wild, mysterious, beautiful life is being destroyed by gold diggers, oil drillers, drug traffickers, and short gain agriculture. Here is a story of the wickedness of shortsighted men raping and pillaging something far beyond their understanding–something powerful and wild and dangerous and so full of life in its density that you can’t hear silence, you can’t see the sun, you can’t find your way where you are going or from where you came except by sound and pattern–maps or GPS systems are rendered useless.

Human life is so interdependent on trees as to make our destinies indistinguishable. Disease, drought, and famine follow naturally from deforestation. The promise of replanting trees by loggers is useless in consideration that the trees they are cutting down are irreplaceable–for old growth forest can not simply be “replaced.” The soil will be changed. The climate will be changed. Trees are sacred, and we don’t need to revert to animism to recognize this. The evidence is there, before your eyes, in the science, in the mystery, in the living entity that breathes and dances in the wind, that fosters all creation, beauty, and life.

One Gross Night

This has to have been one of the grossest nights of my life. There has been an endemic of what is most likely some form of Noro-virus around my workplace these past 2 weeks, which means, in laymen’s terms, that there has been an extreme amount of vomiting. Being as I am the Housekeeping Manager, this means that I, on occasion, get the rare pleasure of cleaning up post-vomitus scenes and materials. Tonight’s was a real gem: this kid had barfed en route to the bathroom, and didn’t quite make it. He had subsequently chundered aqueous and solid chunky gastrointestinal material in basically every nook and cranny leading into and within the bathroom itself: carpet, door, tub, walls, toilet, sink, shower curtain, tile floor–everywhere. I was frankly rather amazed at not only how much spew there was, but also in the sheer expanse and coverage of said upchuck. It took me a good half hour to clean up the main spewage and corollary chunks, using a combination of baking soda, borax, Comet, Clorox Disinfecting Spray, and vacuum–meanwhile the whole time the mother was reading a maritime story to her sick boy in his bed. This cleaning occurred immediately after I had eaten a rather sizeable dinner myself, consisting of beans, rice, casserole, jalapeños, and a buttload of Valentina hot sauce.

This was not to be the end of the grossness. I was then cornered by one of my bosses, who informed me that since I had myself been one of the first to come down with the noro-virus (minus vomiting), that the health inspector who came that afternoon wanted to take stool samples of 10 people who had been infected. I was one of the chosen few. The aforementioned Mexican-style food I had eaten not so earlier was burbling quickly along through my intestinal tract, and so I gathered my stool sampling materials and hurried to the bathroom. I had to lay down some saran wrap over the mouth of the toilet and move my bowels onto it. Unfortunately, my poo at this time consisted of a series of volleys (extremely loud, like echoing gunshots rebounding off the tile walls) of largely yellow aqueous material, some of which managed to make it onto the thin strip of saran wrap. I then had to take a wooden stick, the kind that doctors push your tongue down with, and ladle this steaming shit into two very small and thin vials. This is not as easy as it sounds, especially when the consistency of one’s poo is that of a slurpee . I will end all details here; suffice to say that it was not quite the efficient and sanitary process that the instructions obviously wished it to be. Don’t worry, I disinfected surfaces when completed.

Man, it was, as I said, a gross night. I am pleased to have shared it with you.

Fasting

I’m onto my 3rd day of fasting now and feeling rather lightheaded. It began rather involuntarily, with a flu in which I purged myself and was unable to eat for a day, and I decided, still lacking any appetite and having always wanted to try fasting, that I might as well continue it. It’s difficult because I can’t be very active–just going for a little walk yesterday evening, I had difficulty going uphill and had to stop to rest. It doesn’t feel bad though, and I’m not hungry at all, which is surprising. I have been eating a little bit here and there to sustain me, things like bread, grapenuts, and bananas, and I made an interesting discovery. I have always been extremely gassy, and I’ve never known what is the cause of it. And I’ve always eaten tons of bananas, because I love bananas, being as I am of primate heritage. Well, all I ate yesterday was bananas, and I farted every 10 minutes all night long, and it smelled like baby poo and it was terrible. So I’ve discovered the source of my gassiness. It is saddening to me, because I do so cherish my 2-3 bananas per day, but I suppose I will have to move on to some other fruit. Sigh.

Vegetarianism Rant

I ate a lot of meat this winter in Peru, and maybe that influenced my thinking (and my colon) a bit. But I’ve been altering my thoughts a little on vegetarianism. Before, I basically considered myself a vegetarian in spirit if not in action. I’ve never rightly been a vegetarian, but I do avoid meat in general and red meat in particular, and the times (winters) when I do not have massive meals prepared and laid out for me and I have to buy and cook food for myself, I do not eat any meat at all. I have always been sympathetic to the cause of vegetarianism, which is, as I see it, a socio-political one. There are many things wrong with our huge agri-business in America, not the least of which is the gross mistreatment and terrible living conditions of the animals being prepared for mass consumption. Then of course the sub-standards of the meat packing industry. I don’t think that eating the meat of highly stressed and overcrowded animals can be healthy. I wouldn’t be surprised if there was some kind of linkage between increasing cancer rates and this nasty meat people are eating way too much of.
Anyways, all of that said, this does not mean that I do not enjoy eating well-prepared animals, nor do I object to their slaughter. As I said, I see the cause of vegetarianism as that of a socio-political one–I do not believe that it is wrong to take the life of an animal in order to gain sustenance from it. I love animals and respect them. And as long as the animal that I eat was respected in its life and respected in its killing, than I have no problem in eating it. Unfortunately, there are no kinds of guarantees on packaging which states that an animal was cared well for and lived a fairly healthy life and was slaughtered humanely and with respect. Simply because an animal was “free range” or “grass fed” does not mean it was treated with respect, although its meat will certainly be of higher quality than that of animals fed crap and stuffed into cages. Maybe we could have a designated official who puts a “kosher” type marking on respected and healthy meat packaging.
But here is the thing. I work and live and eat at a place which prepares a substantial amount of food for its guests and staff. This includes, of course, a lot of meat. And this meat will be there whether or not I choose to eat it. One beneficial cause I attribute to vegetarianism is that it does have an eventual effect on the meat market, because the less there is a demand for meat, the less it will be produced. But when it is already cooked and laid out for you. . .exactly what good does it do to avoid it, other than ensuring that it isn’t clogging your colon? In moderation, anything is ok. And this applies to meat, even disrespected and agri-business enslaved meat.
So basically, my beef is this: there’s vegetarians and vegans out there who act like they’re committing some kind of religious infraction (I’m not referring to those for whom it IS a religious infraction) by putting a tiny morsel of meat in their mouths, let alone eating vegetables or rice cooked alongside meat. These animals–they gave their LIVES to sit on your plate. So show them and the person who cooked it for you some respect. Eat it with respect. Give a prayer or some token of appreciation for the animal that gave its life so that you could enjoy it. Burp appreciatively.
I think the biggest problem with people is not that we eat too much meat. The problem is that we eat without any consciousness or concern for what we are eating, no matter what it happens to be. There are vegetarians who show no level of awareness of the crap they are putting into their body. Meat, veggies, cheese, whatever–it needs to be prepared with love and consciousness. It needs to be chewed well with love and consciousness.
And here’s another thing: I’m sick of hardcore vegans who make a big deal about how much they care for the well-being of animals, and then turn around and are abusive and angry towards other human beings. If you really have compassion for animals, then you should be able to have compassion for all that lives. I’m tired of vegetarians who act like they are better human beings because they choose not to eat meat, like they’re all self-righteous because they are abstaining from what the majority of people partake in. vegetarianism, done consciously, I support. But I do not support fanaticism of any kind, and frankly, I think there are way too many fanatic, obsessive vegetarians out there. It’s healthier to be a selective omnivore, in my opinion. It’s healthier to be able to appreciate anything and everything that might be prepared for you. A vegetarian, for me, becomes fanatical when they are in a stranger’s domicile, and they are given a home cooked meal that consists of meat–and they refuse to eat it. Hey, just suck it up and eat it. ONE MEAL of meat is not going to kill you. It is not lessening your cherished ideals. It is returning the hospitality and love which a stranger has given to you.

Updating

I know, I know, I’ve been pretty flakey on posting these days; between Harry Potter (halfway through the 6th book now), the World Cup, a new love in my life, and transitioning between spring and summer seasons at my workplace, I’ve had little free time to do anything, let alone sleep. Once summer gets in full swing here, I’ll be able to settle down a little bit and begin self and world exploration through words once again. Please keep coming and visiting. And watch the World Cup and force other Americans to watch it as well. It disappoints me how few Americans I’ve met who are willing to put aside their personal lives and free time for an event as critical as the World Cup. C’mon people! This shit only comes around every 4 years! It’s better than Quidditch!

On Reading

I’m hoping to be done and over with these Harry Potter books soon, so that I can get on with my life. I sat up for 4 hours last night finishing the 5th book, I felt all cracked out afterwards, wishing that I could have just put it down and gone to bed instead of having to keep reading it, but at the same time feeling a king of sinful pleasure in indulging my hunger to consume the narrative of the book all in a couple of gulps.

The narrative of the books really are compelling, they propel the characters and events forward like a suspense movie. All good books do this, although some page turners, such as books by John Grisham or or Michael Crichton or Dan Brown, do this at the expense of quality character development. JK Rowlings pushes the narrative forward at breakneck speed without sacrificing, I feel, any imaginative depth or character evolution. I haven’t sat down and read a book for hours at a time and devoured it like that in a long while. I used to do it nearly every day as a child, wolfing down everything that sat on my bookshelves at home (thanks to having a similarly voraciously bookish older sister) until I had exhausted them, whereupon I then would make weekly excursions to the library and load up on a pile of books.

I’m a snob when it comes to popular culture–when things get too trendy and popular, I stay away from them. But Harry Potter is one of those few popular and trendy things that are healthy for humanity. First of all, in a modern world where we increasingly turn to digital, visual stimuli for entertainment, anything that gets people back into books and reading is a good thing in my opinion. Second of all, the books are actually not only a good, fun pulp read, but they are subtley and gently enlightening as well.

I say the same thing to Dan Brown’s The Davinci Code. Sure, it’s just kind of a romance novel with some scientifical/conspiracy theory stuff thrown into it, but at least it’s getting a wide and broad audience to begin to think critically about the function of the Church and institutionalized religion in their lives. I’ve heard enough propaganda from the Church in my lifetime. I’m quite pleased to hear some opposing stuff, even if it’s fluff, that challenges conventions and beliefs.

As long as people keep reading, than I’m happy.

Thoughts on Harry Potter

Due to several friends’ insisting, I’ve been reading the Harry Potter books, which I had ceased to continue reading a few years ago when I was working in a high school. Man, these books are like crack, they’re fucking addictive. I’ve been sitting down for several hours at a time, finishing the books in a couple of sittings. At first, I was looking for a reason to dislike the books, due to their overwhelming popularity. And the fact is, they aren’t exactly great literature, and the imaginative world that Rowlings creates is nothing special compared to Tolkien or CS Lewis, or the Dark Is Rising series of childrens books. But they are undeniably compelling, and I’m trying to put my finger on what it is, exactly, that makes them so immersive.

Part of it seems to be that Rowlings has an ability to grow along with her characters, and avoids ever settling into too much habitual stereotyping. The books do, indeed, grow increasingly complex and more adult as they progress, and Rowlings inserts subtle jabs at the media and government and society at large.

Sometimes I think part of the genius and efficacy of these works is not that Rowlings is creating anything entirely new, per se. The magical universe that she draws upon has been fairly established already (giants, wizards, witches, goblins), she simply embellishes it with wonderful quirks and details. The magic that Rowlings possesses is in her ability to put everything old and new together into a comfortable and imaginative mix, to combine various elements into a fast paced narrative with plenty of plot twists to keep it surprising and engaging. At some level, the Harry Potter series is a bit like those children/teenage social books (Sweet Valley High, The Hardy Boys) that function as literary soap operas. Harry Potter, after all, is a post-post-modern creation, able to draw upon pop culture just as well as it draws upon myth and magical lore. Harry Potter is the star of the series, humble and fairly well-balanced, and we always want to see him and his Gryffindor house triumph. But by the end of the 4th book, we do get a feeling, perhaps, that Harry Potter has been too lucky and victorious in all things for his own good. Rowlings senses this, too, and in the 5th book Harry is allowed to give vent to his darker, hormone infused angst and baser aspects of character. It is this sensitive character development that sets Harry Potter series apart from most other series of anything, in that usually the first couple of books are the only ones worth reading, and the last ones are desperate affairs sucking all of their energy from the inventiveness of what came before. Harry Potter books, on the other hand, grow as they are written, they develop along with their characters and the depth of the universe they are creating. In other words, they keep getting better.

Also what seems to set them apart is their establishment in a contemporary world that feels relevant to our world now. Many fantasy books such as Lord of the Rings and The Narnia books seem to have a tendency for pure-blood and noble birth idolatry, making all of the enemies into “dark” creatures and the good characters into light haired, blue eyed people. There is none of this subconscious racism in Rowlings–in fact, she deliberately infuses her stories with side universes of slaving house elves, “pure” and “mixed blood” taunting by other students at Hogwarts, and tidbits about goblin rebellions and bigotry against werewolves and giants by the wizarding community. She never preaches about such things–simply presents them as facets of the wizarding universe, and it is an embellishment which serves to make it more real, more relatable to our own universe. And yes, she throws ethnic diversity into Hogwarts as well. But it is never in a way that feels as forced as the PCness of a Star Trek Next Generation episode, for example. It feels, well, the way it did going to college or high school. We live in increasingly ethnically diverse communities these days. We think it’s perfectly normal for a character to be named Padma or Cho, just as normal as it is to be named Ron or Percy. Rowlings ability to interject these characters and issues into her novels without making anything of it is part of the beauty of the Harry Potter series. All of the flourishes and embellishments of the imagined universe never get in the way of the story and the characters–they enhance it.

Timeshape

I had a revelation today of the interrelatedness of the past and the present and the future, of how they form together a shape, a changing formation of time. Of how the past is not some dead, determined thing, forever captured and unchangeable. I was thinking of our lives, of how in our human existence we begin often making many mistakes, many growing pained expressions of angst and anguish that become understood and fully grown in our later lives, when we bloom, and the struggle of our tendrils to catch the light, the fight of our roots to grasp down deep are validated and given meaning, even if at the time they caused us incredible suffering and isolation. Or sometimes events in the past or the way we manifested our personalities becomes darkened by our future actions (he was always such a quiet boy. . .).

I thought of this because a friend who I had looked up to and had many good times with a few years ago has now gone through some hardship in his life and made some bad decisions, and the aspects of him that before were quirky or passable as being weird have taken over the aspects of him that were positive and fun, and he has become, for lack of better words, extremely sketchy. And I was remembering today the good times that I had shared with him, and I realized how much they had been tainted by the negative image of him I now held. This is how the past becomes changed.

Everything that we were shifts in the light or shade of who we are becoming.

Because we make important decisions, along our individual paths, that determine whether we are growing or whether we are allowing ourselves to be blinded by our weaknesses. And of course we go both ways, struggling in our humanity to find our way. But eventually some people run into something within themselves they just can’t get their way around, and they give up and stop growing. They stop growing and then just hold on, they hold on and wither away and everyone pretends not to see what is happening to them, because what can you say?

Only a true friend will tell you when you have blinded yourself to suffering and have decided to stop growing. All the rest of the world will smile and nod their heads when you lie to them and allow you to die slowly. Only a true friend will make the effort to break through your carefully constructed walls of illusion, even if it might mean losing your friendship.

Your enemies are the ones who coddle you, who tell you what you want to hear, who comfort you to your death. Like advertisements on TV, they have no interest in seeing you grow. They want you to shut up and fit in so that they don’t have to be disturbed by you any longer.

It is those who challenge us to grow that are our friends.

But this is a tangent from what I began with. I was speaking of the intertwinement of past and future, of how time is a stream, not a disconnected progression of points. This is why it is so great to keep up with childhood friends, and with all the people that you have run into along the way to now. Who can predict what is to come? The picture that we all collectively form, with all of our varying pasts and personalities, is amazing to behold. We shift-shape, we change, we grow, we diminish, we move, we stay. And hopefully, we all are helping each other along the path to beauty, along the path to finding within ourselves the key to unlock the flow of divinity from our minds, our powerful, creative minds, our powerful, interconnected hearts.

Another Clubbin Rant

Went “out to the club” last night, which in South Lake Tahoe entails going to a casino which pretends to be upscale even though it is quite obviously anything but. I’m pretty good about being able to get my ass shaking even when the music sucks and the atmosphere is shitty, but both of these combinations, coupled with a plethora of sketchy ass guys, served to make it difficult for me to have a good time. (This post is a companion piece to my last rant directed at girls in the club.) I’m just fed up with these sketchy dudes at dance clubs. They bring down the whole vibe of a place because they lurk about the dance floor–except that they don’t dance–instead they shove past you and then stand and stare at the girls, maybe chewing their gum, their hair slicked back, pretending to check their fancy little cellphones–you know the type. Eventually they find a girl who they consider worthy of dry humping, and they proceed to rub up against them without further ado. Hey, sketchy dudes–try just enjoying yourself on the dance floor instead of simply trying to find some ho who might be drunk enough to have sloppy sex with you if you dry hump her for long enough. It’s bad enough that most guys just stand around the outskirts of the dance floor and stare abstractedly at the people having a good time. We don’t need you out on the dance floor getting in the way and turning the vibe from “dance and have a good time,” to “let’s try in the sleaziest manner to hook up.” You are the reason that most clubs suck. You’re the reason that girls dance together in protective packs. Stop being sketchy and forcing your sleazy penis up against girls who are trying to have a good time. It’s all fine and well if that’s what the girl wants. But it’s pretty damn obvious when a girl doesn’t want it. And I’m just kind of sick of watching you sketchy guys not taking a hint, and continuously persuing girls who are trying to let you know, short of punching you in the face, that, no, they don’t want to go back to your motel room or SUV or bedroom at mom’s house to fuck. Yeah, these girls are dressed to kill. Yeah, they want attention. But they want positive energy, not sleazy bullshit.

Sippin on Mate This Mornin

O Yerba Mate! I will herein extoll thy many virtues. You give me the energy to run around like a speed freak every morning even though I didn’t get enough sleep and drank too much the night before. You infuse my weary mind with light. You taste bitter, yes, but sweetly bitter, like a complex green tea. The apparatus from which to drink of you looks rather like a bong. Guests look longingly/frightened at me in the morning as I sip from you. You must be passed on the left hand side. One person acting as the host, the hot water (but not boiling!) re-filler. Your bombilla not to be touched except by lips once the session begun. I drink you alone. I pass you around. I drink you on the boat dock, listening to the sounds of man and geese arousing themselves into another new world. I drink you in the dining room. I drink you as I write this. Your caffeine stimulating but not nauseating in the manner of coffee. Next to you, coffee is a brute, a hairy unfocused shot in the arm. Mate, my friend, my lover, you go straight to the dome.

The Lake

Camp

The snow melts quietly away in the heat of the spring sun, converting to liquid, trickling down the hillsides across the roads into the lake. Life begins again, birds call out amongst the pines, the geese herald each sunrise with joyous honking, tourists creep down the mountain road gawking at nature, and I feel the urge to be out running, to be out hiking. Dripping sweat in the sauna, nights spent sipping on expensive liquor, getting my chops back on my hand drums, trying to stay away from pastries, eating Grapenuts for breakfast. Laying out on the boat dock and watching ducks bob sedately on wavelets in the sun. The little dramas and entanglements of relationships. Organic dark chocolate. The constant need for napping never fulfilled. A contentment and an urge to leave. Rooms that once were dark filled with light. Short fuzzy quips over the radio. Opaque cups. The sound of my world revolving like the seasons, thinking of the other side, yearning for somewhere else, even as I daily renew the love I have for this place.

missive

always missing something. i was in peru and missing here and now i’m here and missing peru. i miss the excitement of discovery, the day to day challenge of finding out who i am. here, i am easily defined. i maintain as much mystery as i can, but i know myself too well. i limit myself to those places wherein i am comfortable.

there is much to explore here. there is much to experience anywhere, simply to live, to breathe, to move your body and know that it is yours and everyone’s.

i have a tattoo on my back to remind myself and other people that my body belongs to me and doesn’t belong to me.

but that setting out for the sea. when all the surplus is boxed up and put away for some uncertain future. and all that exists is the horizon, and i am ready for it, ready for all the ups and downs of movement forward, ready to be chiseled to starvation, ready to be loved into kingship, ready to do anything that it takes to find myself in a world of everpresent wonder and joy.

ready to suffer death to discover life. ready to put aside everything that has given me myself and accept that which has denied me.

burning for the future.

On Freaking

I was out all night dancing, swerving like a spastic snake, and I’ve got that exhausted after-glow after a good night. I just had a couple of words for the ladies out there who like to go out to clubs and shake what they’re god given: Look, if you want me to dry hump your ass, that’s all fine and well, I’ve got just as much mongrel in me as any other guy. But I’d really rather see your face first and dance with you. Please don’t do that “ass present” thing that all the other girls on the dance floor do–you know what I mean, where you give me a little backwards glance and then position yourself so that your ass is directly in front of my crotch. It’s very flattering that you’re so ready and willing to be dry humped so soon in our relationship. But I kind of like to move more than just my crotch when I dance–and while I am highly interested in you and your fine ass, I am not necessarily ready to move to that level so quickly. Let’s get to look at each other a little bit first, check out each other’s moves, make some eye contact, make it something a little more personal and special. I mean, do you really like being treated like just another leg to dry hump? I’m not trying to say that I want to marry you because you’re cute and you are dancing with me. I’m just saying that you could give more than my crotch a chance when we dance.

Anyway, had to get that off my chest. I just find the whole dry hump dance thing (aka freaking) a little weird sometimes. It really makes me miss the music and dancing in South America. Down there they do the dry humping to pop tainted ‘hip hop’ too, but what I really love is the merengue and salsa, where the dancing is sensual as opposed to sexual. Instead of just rubbing one’s crotch against the girl’s ass, one actually has to demonstrate some dancing prowess, and look into her eyes. Yeah, I know, there’s salsa clubs in the states too. I’m just bitching because the dominant form of dancing is freaking. Look, it just don’t take much skill to dry hump on the dance floor. We’re all trying to get some love and express our appreciation of each other’s bodies–that’s the whole beauty and fun in dance. But there sure should be a lot more to it than just our sex organs.

The club we went to was playing pretty run of the mill boring 4/4 electronic beats, so I guess I can’t really blame most people for doing little more than moving their crotches up and down. But once upon a time, back when I was a young whippersnapper, techno music wasn’t just about trying to hook up with a girl. It was about expressing freedom and love through dance. Now it seems like it’s become so commodified that house music is just for dry humping in expensive and trendy clubs.

my pad part ii

i set up my pad back up again, so now i’ve got me a home to reside within for some space of time once more, and as i sat there on the sofa and drank a nutty, dark brew, it hit me how important space is in relation to the objects in my life. how important the objects are in relation to space. how important it is to have this zone in which i feel established as myself, in which i can just sit and chill and listen to music and think or read or whatever. and that is the best thing about coming “home.” is finding again that context wherein i am comfortable and can truly relax.

i used to just throw all my shit wherever, in a kind of endlessly replicating pile, in which whatever i used last goes on top. such can be functional in terms of knowing exactly what you need for the next day, but it goes nowhere in terms of organizing anything beyond immediacy. now i’m pretty into the feng shui of my space, i feel the appropriateness and purpose of the objects that i place and their interrelations with the rest of the room. it really does matter. i’m not anal retentive, i simply have come to realize the importance of maintaining organization and clarity in my life–and that includes my chill space. i want people to come into this space and share it, so i purposely try to foster an atmosphere that welcomes others while at the same time delineates itself from the outer world. it is mine, yet yours, yet mine. know what i mean?

I am learning

What can you write that has never been written before? What can you do that has not already been done?

Thinking in such terms leads to urges to conquer continents, to climb peaks, to scavenge oceans.

When all along, everything that is completely unique and completely new and completely beautiful resides within your heart.

All I can really write is what I feel and what I know. I am learning.

Why I Don’t Got A Car

Hi, my name is Mark, and I don’t own a car. This is a conscious decision that I have made, not owning a car. It is not that I can’t drive. I consider myself a pretty good driver, having only been in one accident ever in my life, involving only the corner of a small parking garage wall which suddenly LEAPED out at the side of the car and scraped up the door, which of course was in somebody else’s car (sorry Gitig!). I enjoy driving very much, in fact, especially when I’ve got some sweet R&B or hip-hop or electronic music bumping. When I was a youth, I used to cruise through the streets of my hood at night just so I could drive, zone out, chill, and listen to music.
In college, and beyond, (8 or 9 years total) I have been essentially car-less, although I drive other people’s cars now and then, or rent a car to go wine-tasting in Mendocino or drive to San Francisco, or drive the vehicles at my work. Frequently enough so that I can maintain my driving skillz and feed the fix of the open road. But I do not personally own and possess one of these vehicles, nor, in fact, do I truly desire to own one of these vehicles. OK, yes, if I was a millionaire, I would probably have a car or two. But money isn’t the only reason why I do not own a car.
The fact is that I refuse to own a car. That’s right. I’m one of those idealist people, somebody who enacts diminutive changes to their personal lives in order to fulfill idealist fantasies of the way the world should be.
In case you are interested in what kind of insanity I might suffer from that compels me to throw away my social life and all chances at success in meeting hot and successful American women, here are my reasons:

1) Since when did a luxury item become a necessity?
2) I produce a substantial amount of waste simply by shitting every day. I don’t really care to produce any more than that by polluting the air with yet another car.
3) I refuse to give in to the dominance in my society of the greedy auto and oil industries, who basically have controlled and shaped all of our lifestyles, products, and city planning.
4) I don’t even know how to fix the damn thing. I don’t know how an engine works. Why would I want to own this thing that requires constant maintenance and upkeep if I can’t fix it myself?

I haven’t exactly been living in the greatest places for carlessness. I’ve lived in San Diego, Los Angeles, and now South Lake Tahoe, none of which has adequate, integrated, nor extensive public transportation systems. And so my social life has suffered, and I have been at the mercy of others in order to “go out.” Basically, I’m pretty much restricted to the social sphere of where I live and where I work, both of which, right now, are combined. This is fine, this is dandy. But where one lives and works can become restrictive after some time if there are not all that many womenfolk thereabouts.
I need to live somewhere where I can walk or bike to the local market. I need to live somewhere where I will not be stigmatized by attractive women because I do not have a sleek oil guzzling machine. I need to live somewhere where I can hop on a bus or subway or whatever and get to where I want to go! Dammit!
But such is the price one must pay to live according to ideals, no?

Rain

Last night the rain steadily drizzled, gathering on the eaves and falling to hit a plastic table outside, resounding like the tinkling of many small, hollow bones. Rain has always given me a special feeling, a lonely beautiful feeling when I listen to it in the night. It seems to portend of the natural, wild world that can still invade–even simply sonically–through the warm comfort of bedroomed rest. Out there, one can hear, is a cold, wet world. And I am drawn to it, even though I do not wish to get wet. I always fantasize of laying outside on a patch of grass, enveloped by a thin, clear bubble in which I could listen to the rain and watch it fall and be in the midst of it while still retaining that warm, dry outsideness.

What I am drawn to, I think, is simply the sound of it, the steady, staccato patterning of natural release. The pregnant clouds release their burden of gathered water into droplets that fall, called by gravity, back to the earth to try to find their way back together, to find their way back to their source, back to the rivers, back to the sea.

The sound is primal, but soothing. It can be steady, but you never know when it might suddenly stop. I never want it to stop, not when I am listening to it fall at night. But then it does.

Draft from October 3rd

When the lights are so faded that there is nothing beyond karma to sustain you, because when you know that who you are cannot be seen by anyone in your immediate vicinity, only by some stranger stargazer millions of years away; when that’s what it takes for someone to see your beauty, apparently, then you know that you’d better be able to believe in something beyond yourself. You better be able to focus on your future, knowing that your trail is what is seen, not your intentions. Politics is a matter of opinion. But what matters is what is lived. There is no question in regard to your life. You are either living in now or you are living in fear. And what can be respected in hesitation? Nature has no regard for your considerations. There is balance or there are accidents.

There is so much beauty around me. Sometimes I forget to watch the sun lapping on the sierra wind stirred lake waves. And I will be sitting in my cabin and drinking Jack Daniels before I remember to remember. That I am blessed. That all life is blessed. That every step forward in time is a celebration, and should be commemorated as such. No matter what may be left behind. For what is left behind is dust.

Love Decisions

On the road again.
Estoy en San Francisco ahora, a city which grows on me a little bit more each time I visit, because I always have a good time.
I did some jamming last night, and it was good to play drums again–after three months in Peru I wasn’t sure if I could still play. I can still play, all praise due to Allah.
Back in Tahoe a few days ago, late at night with the snow outside silently, fluffily falling, I was sitting up looking through my past writings. I do this from time to time when I get lonely or bored and feel like I have nothing to write about. In some ways writing for me is a preservance of memory, because I have a bad memory and will forget how and why I ended up where I am today.
And I was looking at emails that I received and sent from last winter. And I remembered why I had ever decided to go to Peru in the first place: it was because I had fallen in love with a Peruvian girl and I wanted to see her again after she had left the United States to return to her home.
I raised this topic to ponder an issue that we have all gone through at some point in our lives: that time when you ask yourself whether you are going to make a life decision based on your love for another person–whether you are going to move somewhere for them, or stay somewhere for them, or in any way alter the path of your own direction for this person. Is it right to alter your path for someone else?
At one point in my not so distant past I had made the statement to myself that I would never alter my life for another person again. This was after I had elected to stay in a place I didn’t really want to last winter for someone, and the relationship didn’t work out. I was left feeling depressed and hopeless and angry with myself that I had made that decision for someone who didn’t care for me.
But in the end, being where I was turned out to be a wonderful experience when I finally gathered myself back together and remembered where my balls were located. And I ended up meeting someone else who did care for me.
The question of whether or not to change your life for someone is obviously dependent on circumstance and a certain level of practicality.
In the end, I had elected not to pursue this Peruvian girl–I still went to Peru, but not until the end of that year. If I had wanted to pursue her I would have left immediately after she did. Well, I did want to, but the practical voice in my head informed me that if I did that I would only have enough money for the flight and less than a month there, and that when I returned to the states I wouldn’t have a job.
So when confronted with the option of pursuing her love, or staying in the states, getting a job, and saving up money for a later trip, I opted for practicality.
At the time, I told myself that I would still be able to see her later in the year. But of course the long distance phone thing fizzled quickly. And so the original reason why I decided to go to Peru was for a girl, yes–but the girl quickly receded from the picture.
It is interesting how decisions that we made for someone else can lead us into beautiful eventualities that are completely beyond the relationship that we were pursuing. The love we altered our direction for fades, but in its place we discover something new.

Thoughts and Feelings On the Cusp of Evening

Estoy muy cansado ahora mismo, no estoy acostumbrado a trabajar. He bebido un rompecalzón, y mis memorias venido inundando en mi corazon. Si, tengo un poco conmoción a mi corazon con la cambiado de cultura y lugar. Todo esta diferente aquí, la comida, la gente, todo.

Coming back to where I have all my “things” stored, I discover I have too much. I had been living out of one piece of small luggage for the past three months, and I had everything I needed, minus Chartreuse and my stereo and my drums, of course. But all this other crap, what do I need it for? All I really need is a floor to crash on, my sleeping bag, some food cooked with love, some good music, and a little glass of whisky or vino. I don’t ask for much, really.

I have to admit that this “peak oil” thing really freaks me out. I’ve been realizing lately just how much the thought that we are quickly approaching the dawn of an apocalyptic era of reckoning has been lurking in the back of my mind and changing the way I look at everything. Everytime I think of anything remotely related to the future, I think–rather selfishly, I might add–of what I need to be doing now to be able to survive during a time in which I can no longer be dependent on corporate super-structures to supply my every need. Before I ever became aware of the idea that the world as we know it might come to an end, I had already been thinking along these lines, simply in terms of sustainable lifestyles and being less dependent on power structures which rely on inequality and suffering in order to make my life numb and complacent.
Whatever one may think of the “peak oil” thing, I think it isn’t really a big secret that the world as a whole, and we in the United States in particular, will have to drastically alter our habits if we wish our grandchildren to realize the potential that many have been squandering so greedily in pursuit of fleeting comfort and rapid growth.
That is not to say that I am pessimistic in any way for the future of humanity. But I believe that if we are to face the future and its challenge to our existence, we must face it with full awareness of what the worst to come may be.
Just as I must face my own future head-on, and seek to realize what potential I carry within my heart. All of the events and people in my life have served to bring me to the point of now. There are constant decisions that I must make in order to decide who I want to be. I have been waiting long enough to be told. And now I must learn myself.

Home

Well, I’m back in my mountains, where it’s cold and there’s snow–although not very much this winter. I’m sick as a dog right now, inevitable I suppose after the multiple shocks to my system of the flight back, the dancing all night and drinking too much in San Francisco, and terminating my malaria anti-biotics.
It is strange to be back at work, but I don’t feel any kind of “culture shock,” at least, not yet. It’s hard to say what I feel right now, which perhaps is due to aforementioned shock. The trip already feels very distant, almost like a dream. It’s amazing how quickly the self that I was there faded into the self that I am here. It seems to have something to do with not being able to speak in Spanish any longer–my mind has quickly reverted to it’s standard English thinking state. I’ve been writing emails in Spanish at least.
As I was driving down the 50 back from San Francisco, and ascending into thickets of pine and rocky passes, I realized how fucking beautiful it is here. Everytime I come back from somewhere else, I am always amazed. This is a truly gorgeous place and I am lucky to live here. As much as my hearts yearns for city life, I don’t know how I could ever say goodbye to the crisp blue skyline punctuated by pines.

Esperando para mi vuelo

Wouldn’t you know it, my flight was cancelled, so I’ve got another day to kill, and then I leave at 2 in the morning. If you ever make plans to fly down to South America with Lan Peru, be aware if you buy your tickets in advance that Lan Peru changes their flights constantly (my flight to Perù was also changed), and you might not find out because they don’t apparently maintain much contact with travel agencies or other international airlines. Annoying as hell, it’s a good thing I planned my return with a bit of leeway before I need to get back to cleaning toilets.
So I’ve returned to Miraflores to kill some time and enjoy some more Peruvian food before I leave for good.

Coming Home

Tonight’s my last night in Perú. I’m trying to get the few people I know here in Lima together for one last meal at Pardo’s Chicken. I’m sure as hell gonna miss the food here, not to mention the beautiful women, the discotecas, the exchange rate, the fruit, the jugos frescos, the warm weather, the cold showers, the pisco sours, the ever-present cheap taxis, the drivers with a death wish. . .Well, the latter one I won’t miss so much.
However, I do admit to looking forward to going back to the culture I know so well and usually dislike. I’m looking forward to eating a phatty burrito and throwing some hot sauce on that shit. I’m looking forward to not having diarrhea for an extended period of time. I’m looking forward to a dark, heavy, bittersweet microbrew. I’m looking forward to articulating myself in English using big, complicated words. I’m looking forward to being able to throw my toilet paper into the toilet. Yes, all of these things. But most importantly, I am looking forward to seeing YOU–my family and my friends–again and sharing what I have been through with you and seeing your beautiful faces again and drinking some wine, or whisky, or Chartreuse with you. Oh, and yes, I have tons of pictures that I am going to make you suffer through as I describe each and every one in excruciating detail. Look forward to seeing you soon.

Jungle Bites

I was just on Google looking to see if I could find out what kind of insect bite I’ve got on my arm–it itches like beejesus and trails down the length of my arm, ending in a sizeable bite that seems to be steadily increasing in size. I didn’t find anything on the web about it, but I did find this cool BBC site with lots of interesting facts about the jungle.

Summation

I’m back in Lima once again, four more days until I’m home, this is the homestretch. I ate my last bit of home-cooked jungle food, cecina, platanos fritos, arroz and ensalada de cebolla, palta, y tomate, con jugo de papaya, with Rosa and then hopped onto my plane, saying goodbye for now to humidity, charapitas, and mosquitos. Iquitos was like a kind of wonderful summation of my trip to Perú–love, food, exotic drinks, and dancing. The night before I left Rosa’s sister took me around the town on her moto. The wind in my face, gripping the back handles, half-assedly trying to understand the things she was saying, I felt a kind of peace settle over me as I thought about my experiences here. This trip has turned into everything that I would have wanted it to be had I scripted it out. The fact that I didn’t at all makes it all the better. Without any kind of direction, it has evolved into a very balanced and full experience–I spent a good chunk of time in three very distinct and different places in Perú, representative of the 3 main types of climates here: the mountains (las sierras), the coast (la costa), and the jungle (la selva). I met incredibly hospitable people and tried all kinds of different foods typical of each region. I danced frequently and drank little (comparative to my normal alcohol intake). I gained a functional ability in the usage of Castellano. And ten million other little things that make up the stars in the sky. Because these memories will light up whatever darkness of solitude I may suffer in the year to come. Did I say memories? It doesn’t seem like the right term. Memories are something in the past. I feel like there are things on this journey that I picked up that I will carry with me for the rest of my life, that will grow inside of my heart because they dug out a little space for themselves there. Anyone who can burrow their way into love will stay there forever if this is where they would like to be. The doors are open and here wine is served 24 hours. Why go home again when you can be drunk all the time with the friend?

Salsa de Cocona

I think I’m starting to get the hang of the salsa beat, a little bit at least. You’ve got to get one cheek of the buttock swinging forward on the cusp of that double conga swat as you move the foot up, then conversely step back and hit the next conga swat with the other buttock. Of course, I might be totally wrong on that one, but it felt a lot better for me, as if my ass was finally starting to make it’s first forays into a fuller understanding of the rhythm. I just went out for what may prove to be my last dancing stint in Iquitos, I’m really going to miss these damn discotecas here with their live orchestral groups. I’m so fond of the local music, in fact, that I’m going to see about getting me a disco compacto of some of that shit. Once you’ve got you’re ass shaking to it, you forgive a lot of whatever aspects of cheesiness there may be to it’s little jumpy synthesizer licks.
I discovered that cocona not only refers to the fruit, which is delicious, but also to a certain female body part. When I was in the jungle, the 70 year old cook (who made some great basic typical foods (always with the required side dish of platanos fritos of course)) was asking me if I liked cocona, when I had said that I had tried jugo de cocona, and I didn’t understand why they all started laughing when I avidly replied “¡sì, mucho!”
I also learned from my guide the meaning of rompecalzon, one of the tragos (local drinks mixed with aguardiente that double as aphrodesiacs). It refers to the forceful removal of underwear, suggesting that to drink of this potent elixir is to be infused with sudden and intense sexual energy. I don’t know about that, it is possible it has that effect, although I just thought it was the hot women and the extreme humidity. I just kind of like the taste. It’s funny though because I’d been ordering this drink for a while here without knowing the meaning. Now I feel a little weird when I order it, like I’m asking for a viagra or something.
Just one more night and day to enjoy this little slice of jungle life and then it’s back to the big city.

The Promise

Laying in my hammock in the jungle, listening to the gallìnas crow and the insects whirring and feeling my blood slowly draining through the continuous multiple straw sucks of the mosquitoes, I began to think of my journeys in Perù and of how these experiences have changed me. I really do not feel like the same person that I was when I came here. The windows opened to the vistas of a new world have shed light onto another person dwelling inside of me–there all along, of course. Once I return to the habits and customs of my nation of birth, I wonder how long these changes can persist. But that is perhaps not so important. What is important is that I have seen these new horizons at all and that I know now that they can exist.
I have been so blessed on these travels, given so much by so many people, that it would be impossible for me not to be changed. When one’s life has been filled with blessings, there is nothing to do but try to find some way to fufill the promise and opportunity these blessings have bestowed. Because I know that there has to be some kind of karmic payment for all of this wonderfulness. Maybe some of this debt has already been payed and this is the reward, I don’t really know, but what I do know is that I am humbled in the face of gifts that are beyond anything that I could have expected. All I can do is try to find a way to give this love back to other people and spread the light around.

Back in the Rubber Boom Town

In the jungle, during the night (well, all the time, actually, but it’s more prominent in the night-time) the insects weave patterns and textures of sound so sinuous, repetitive, and geometric that it’s almost visible to the eye, these frequencies crafted of the wing. The air is so dank it’s hard to breathe, and you feel as if you are in the midst of a dream as you walk through the dense growth of neon green trees ripe with bananas, anonas, pijuayos. Apparently I have sangre dulce (sweet blood), because I was needled into by so many mosquitos that my feet look like they’ve broken out in hives and my arms look like the tracked up veins of a junkie. Of course, this is what occurs when you are not from the jungle and you do not slobber on repellent. Yes, I elected to forgo the repellent, mainly because the one time I did try putting it on it had no effect whatsoever, probably because I sweat it right back off. I figured that I needed to put these anti-malarial pills to work anyway, and the bites aren’t so terrible as long as you don’t scratch them (impossible, unfortunately, with the feet, which are rubbed constantly by my sandals as I walk). So at the lodge I stayed at, I basically laid around in my hammock sweating and eating different jungle fruits while watching mosquitos draw pints from my blood like it was happy hour.
Some new vocab for ya: Caimito–a yellow/green fruit with very sweet, refreshing, and extremely sticky fruit. After you eat it, your fingers and your lips almost stick together. Mamey–actually a pomerosa, but called Mamey anyway, this tree bears these shockingly pink spinal flores that scatter in a heap beneath it, providing a stark and beautiful contrast with its green surroundings. Maracuya–another fruit, somewhat like my beloved granadilla–I tried some of its juice, very refreshing on a hot sunny day en la selva. Anona–green in appearance until it is ripe, when it turns slightly yellow, this fruit looks exotic with little tendril hooks curling from its rubber-like surface, and it tastes like pudding. In fact, the taste and texture and seeds of the fruit of the anona is very similar to that of the chirimoya, another of my favorites. I ate like 10 of these things while at the albergue. It’s like dessert. Mata-mata–a prehistoric jungle turtle, it’s head looks like a hammerhead shark and it’s got a very long neck. Pijuayo–a tree growing in the jungle that bears two wonderful gifts–chonta–the heart of its trunk–is delicious and served commonly in salads with limòn and salt, and it’s fruits–also called pijuayos–are like little tiny sweet potatoes ready to eat–you pry them open and then dab a little cocona salsa on them. Tasty.
Like I said, this place is paradise as far as I’m concerned. Now that I’ve made a few friends I’m going to stick it out for another 5 days, giving me only 3 days more in Lima before I head back home.

Un Otro dìa en Paraiso

Another day in paradise. Today I met up with my friend Rosa and she and her friend Judy cooked me up some pescado with aji and arroz, with cocona salsa and platanos fritos, served with some jugo de cocona as a refresco. There’s nothing quite like getting comida tipica cooked fresh for you by beautiful women. Then Rosa took me to Lake Quistacocha, a beautiful laguna a little ways outside of town, where they’ve got all sorts of various jungle animals such as pumas and monkeys stuffed into tiny little cages. I felt sorry for the animals, but it was nice to see them since it’s pretty rare to see much in the jungle unless you spend over a week venturing deep into the heart of it. So tomorrow I’m off to la selva–you won’t hear from me in four days.
The jungle term for hot peppers is charapitas. This term could also be used to denote the Iquiteñas. It also refers to small turtles.
Last night again I went out to dance, apparently in Iquitos there are a couple of big orchestral groups that play mostly the same songs, and they’ve got their own large dancehalls as well. The first group I saw was called Kaliente; last night the group was Explosiòn. Both groups have a trio of dancers up on stage wearing next to nothing and swinging their asses as if they’ve got prehensile buttocks. Last night I was too tired to really shake anything too much, however. I was feeling heavy and 100% gringo as I feebly tried to step in the appropriate time signature to salsa music.

Letting yourself go makes everyone happy

Wow, tonight has to have been one of the most interesting booty shaking experiences I’ve had in Perù thus far, mainly due to the fact that in the midst of a crowd of Iquiteños I was the only gringo in sight, and I was dancing my little white ass off. This girl Lorena and her little sister took me out to a local joint where there was a local group playing live cumbía, merengue, salsa, chincha, etc. I love it when Peruvians look kind of dumbfounded when they realize that I can shake my hips like there’s no tomorrow to musica latina.
I’m impressed with the people in general here in Iquitos, they are amazingly laid-back and accepting. In other places that I’ve been to sometimes I get the “what’s the gringo doing here?” kind of vibe (to other places’ credit, not very much of this) but in Iquitos, I just get hot eyes from a few of the chicas and smiles and maybe just a little bit of query in some looks but not in an unfriendly way. People here don’t seem to have many hang-ups other than driving their mototaxis like they think they’re in Ben-Hur. It’s got to be the year-round heat that makes people so laid back. Iquitos really is another world apart from the rest of Peru, which is not all that surprising I guess since it’s only accessible by boat or by airplane. And did I mention that the women are phenomenally beautiful here? It’s almost obscene. It’s somewhat perturbing because many of these Iquiteñas seem to be deliberately looking to bag themselves a gringo husband. There seems to be a kind of expat Texan scene for that kind of thing–you know, get yourself a hot young Amazonian wife and buy a restaurant and drink cervezas all day.
So it’s 1:30 in the morning now and I guess about time for me to head back to the hostal. Man, I love shaking the booty, I always feel so damn good afterwards, like I just wrote a cohesive thesis on the half-lives of diaphanous insects or something. It’s just one of those pure expressions of being, of being alive, of being filled with the light, of passing and sharing this light with everyone around you. What I love most about it is how you can almost visually watch the dynamic of the whole crowd change with the influx of positive vibes from an individual dancer who is letting loose. Letting yourself go makes everyone happy.

Booze, Aphrodesiacs, and Intellectual Conversation

Yesterday I took a boat out to a butterfly farm, where they also had a bunch of rescued jungle animals such as a jaguar, giant rats, a tapir, a manitee, an anteater, and several monkeys–one of whom, Tommy, kept jumping onto our shoulders and licking the sweat off our necks. I met some guys from New York at the farm, they work in the independent film industry. We ended up running into each other again later at a bar, where I was trying all the different types of jungle concoctions that double both as alcholic beverages and aphrodesiacs. There´s uño de gato, rompecalzones, uva-chado, 7 raices, 21 raices, and chuchuhuasi, all rather medicinal but interesting tasting drinks that consist of aguardiente, a potent rum made from sugarcane, mixed with different types of roots or bark or whatever, depending on the drink. It definitely gave me a little heat on the inside, coupled with my already sun reddened face. Unfortunately my malaria pills make me even more sensitive to the sun than my pale skin of scandinavian heritage already curses me with, and it’s basically pointless to use sunscreen because I’ll just sweat it off within 5 minutes.
Anyway, so we met up with a friend of the New Yorkers who has been living in Iquitos for 6 months and doing medical work, and we made our way over to another bar that he knew about that was right over the water in a little jungle shack kind of structure–perfect for boozing it up in the midst of shirt drenching humidity. I think it was last night when it really began to dawn on me that I may be in some kind of paradise here.
Of course, being with New Yorkers, we had to have involved conversations about things like David Bowie, films, relationships and DP, and other random tidbits of intellectual cultural topics, the sort of which I hadn’t had in quite some time–let alone any extended conversations in English. We got pretty good and smashed. We ended up returning to the first bar where I talked until 1 in the morning with the bartendress. You know, I had been thinking that my spanish was getting fairly good, just moving past the ‘hablo un poco’ level, but now that I’m in a new place, my ability again has gone back to the ‘hablo muy poquito’ level because they speak differently here–much faster without anunciation, usually while some kind of radio music is blasting in the background.
I just scheduled this morning to stay for 4 days in a lodge in the Amazon. I’m going to head out on Sunday, I wanted to give myself the weekend to go out and shake the booty.

Jungle Juice

Iquitos is definitely a different world than the Perù that I’ve seen thus far. It is much more laid-back here, and the tourist feeding industry is not quite as rampant and savage as it was in Qosqo, maybe because it is a dead season for tourism here right now. The only other English speaking tourist that I’ve seen thus far was a girl from Wales who cornered me when I got off the plane to take a taxi with her into town. I accompanied her to her backpackers hostal to see if I wanted to stay there too, took one look at the room, and peaced out. Why would you pay 17 soles per night for a room with ten other people when you can pay 20 soles per night for a room and a bathroom to yourself?
People warned me about the women in Iquitos before I came here. Yeah, they are kind of aggressive. I go to eat lunch and the waitresses will linger next to my table making small talk and then try to set appointments to meet later on. I don’t mind the attention though.
These malaria pills are kind of zoning me out when mixed with cervezas. I’m contemplating terminating the pills, because there’s not really any mosquitos in Iquitos. I suppose it will come in handy when I venture into the jungle. I was just talking to a lady (who seemed to be quite honest because I talked with her for an hour) about staying in her lodge in the Amazon for 20 dollars a night. Seems like a pretty good price to me.
The interesting thing about Iquitos is that it still kind of retains that feeling of the rubber boom era, I feel like I’m in a Joseph Conrad book when I walk around here, other than for the everpresent roar of motorcycles and mototaxis through the streets.
I just went walking around looking for a bar to sit and quaff a few at, and found a little joint playing some of that sad kind of romantic music that Cesaria Evora sings. I ordered me a siete raices, an alcoholic beverage made with 7 roots that I believe also serves as an aphrodesiac, and that tastes like the wilder, stronger cousin of a bloody mary. Some older ladies came and sat at my table. This one lady kept saying slurred things to me in Spanish that I couldn’t understand, and then she was trying to get me to dance with her. Did I say the women are aggressive here? This old fat lady with missing teeth was tugging on my arm, not to be denied. But I had to turn her down, even with the siete raices coursing through my system.

En la Selva

So I am now stationed in Iquitos, the gateway to Peru´s northern Amazon. It´s 80 degrees and motorbikes and motortaxis zip about like bionic fireflies through the humid evening streets. I didn’t purchase a return flight, so I have as much time or as little as I desire here.
I am feeling the looming date of my departure to the states approaching, and to be perfectly honest, I am right now just about ready to leave. I think this is due in no small part to the fact that I am drained right now after 4 or so days of having the little food that I eat run straight through me with the swiftness that I used to forget a lecture as an undergrad.
It´s amazing to me the amount of travellers that I meet who are in South America for something like 8 months. Where the hell do they get the money for that kind of trip? Of course from their parents, considering that these people are usually in their early twenties. I don’t know if I could handle travelling for that long without some kind of a job to keep me occupied and a place to call my home. I’m pretty bored frequently, I’m used to working, and now with all this free time to do whatever I want–I don’t know what to do with myself, so why, I babble my inane world outlooks onto this blog, of course.
I had been considering working on an organic farm for a spell on my trip, but the fact is that there really aren’t many in Perù–I would had to have gone to Bolivia or Chile. So perhaps in the future.
Sorry, I´m going to whine a bit here for a minute, ignore this paragraph of weakness if you will: I am still increasingly feeling homesick. For what exactly I am missing it would be hard for me to define, all I know is that I feel a kind of weariness with being a constant foreigner and with being continuously reliant on either the beneficence of strangers or dios to draw me into commonality beyond appearances and circumstances. Yes, so I am missing the habits and comforts of what I am trained to be accustomed to, yes.

Movimiento adelante

It’s interesting how one’s perspectives shift. Originally Lima had been for me a large dirty noisy city. As time passes and it feels more like home, things that before seemed disorderly or dirty now appear full of life. The buildings are colorful and everywhere is bustling with the daily haphazard fiesta of movement. I stroll across 6 lanes of busy traffic like frogger without a thought.
What is most interesting is that it has become strange for me to speak solely in English, as I realized last night when I went out with some nice folks from my hostal and spoke in English all night. We went to Calle de las Pizzas in Miraflores and drank a bunch of cervezas. The goal had originally been to go out dancing, but we somehow ended up in a karaoke bar first, and when we finally made it to a little joint with some musica latina, right at the very moment when I stood up to commence shaking my booty, they lowered the volume severely because at 2 o’clock pizza street shuts itself down volume-wise.
I found myself tending to speak very simple English, with a Spanish accent. This is probably something I would snap out of after a few days of speaking English again, but I thought it was kind of weird.
Miriam, a gal from the Netherlands, and I ended up having a wonderful profound discussion regarding life, travels, gifts, tragedies, and blessings until 4 in the morning. Miriam and Frank, my guide for my trek in Huaraz, went out to get more beers but it turns out the stores stop selling them in the wee morning hours–which is probably for the best given the feeling I’ve got in mi cabeza right now. The stomach dragons have been tearing a hole in my stomach with their restlessness, you can hear the rapid liquid fire burbling of my stomach like it’s a hollow sink drain.
Anyway, so I’m off to Iquitos tomorrow. I’ll start taking my anti-malarial pills today.

Aventuras con Religión

Hot and sunny in Lima todos los días. Day before yesterday I wandered around the sun-baked streets of Miraflores until I found Huaca Pucllana, a very large pre-Incan mound. That’s really all it is, a mound, but it was nice to have found it anyway without consulting anything except my confidence that I would run into it through the grace of dios. Speaking of the latter, I had an interesting adventure yesterday with religion. A friend of a friend of mine, Roxanna, who I had chatted with most of the night a few nights ago, took me 2 hours outside of the city today, to Ventanilla, to her church to get me converted. Now, let me tell you first of all that I had no idea where she and her friend Manuel were taking me. We had agreed to meet up this morning, and I had some vague idea that we were going to go out dancing somewhere eventually. We get on this old reconverted school bus and drive through the heat of the early afternoon out to where the sand dunes are. We finally get off the bus and step into a church. I’m thinking, ok, I’m going into a church, this is kind of weird, I thought we were going to the beach or something. Some biblical looking Peruanos in white button down shirts led me upstairs and sat me down at a table in a room filled with ladies in nun-outfits. Then another biblical looking dude in a beige tunic sat down and began speaking to me, solely in rapid-fire Spanish of course (translated at times by Roxanna in slightly less rapid-fire Spanish (it was rather touching to see that she thought this might help)), about his beliefs in God. Thus commenced an hour-long kind-of dialogue in Spanish regarding his beliefs and mine.
It was actually quite intriguing, he was telling me about how his church believes that the Incans knew of the Ten Commandments before the conquistadores ever trampled Incan turf bearing the ‘good news’ and greed for gold, that in fact in Isaiah 2 there is a reference to Macchu Piccu. Which couples with another interesting facet of religion here in general: the Catholicism is mixed overtly with the native religion of the Incas, and there is not seen to be a contradiction in this, which is refreshing.
Anyway, so we had a pretty deep talk about God and stuff while I ate some good lomo saltado cooked by a matronly looking lady in a nun outfit and drank Inca Kola. I told the biblical looking dude in the beige tunic that I believe that god is in everyone and to know of this god is ultimately a solitary internal affair, a matter of cultivating consciousness so to speak, beyond laws and language and logical comprehension. We agreed pretty much on matters of the spirit, but then it always came down to their ten laws that they have based on the old testament (including maintenance of the Sabbath on Saturday), and how it was only through following these commandments that one could be one with santos. I was given a copy of said commandments and told that I held promise as a minister or prophet of “el señor.” Then we went downstairs to the church which was now in session. I was introduced in front of the congregation, and then they played some Andino music about Jesus, which was actually quite beautiful, and some ladies in nun outfits danced around with the spirit.
Yes, I call the kind of tourism that I undergo the tourism of the happenstance. Events sprung from the unknown are what I have come to see.

Ceramica Erotica

Yesterday I went to a couple of museos and looked at some more ceramicas and earrings and rocks and stuff. At the Museo Larco (the museum from whose collection was drawn my favorite museo en Qosqo, el Museo Pre-Colombino there is a collection of erotic ceramics; it was quite delightful I must say, they’ve got water carriers with people, skeletons, and animals going at it in all positions. They’ve even got some with people with venereal diseases putting medicine on their diseased parts. Makes you realize just how important a form of expression these water carriers and pots and cups were for ancient peoples. Which isn’t all that surprising considering that water is the substance prior to gold which held the most value, and will probably be the premier substance in the end after gold and oil have lost their value over human life again.
The stomach dragons have re-emerged from their slumber after a long period of inactivity. It’s going to be one of those days.

Adventures in Affluency

Last night Karina and her friend Monica took me to Jockey Plaza , yes, el centro comercial más grande del Perú. It is basically exactly the same as a mall in the US, including about 75% of the stores, such as Ecco, Tommy Hilfiger, Starbucks, etc. What’s amusing to me is the transmutation that some of the US restaurants have undergone in their transplantation aquì–por ejemplo, Pizza Hut here is a luxurious dining experience, 50 wooden tables with cloth napkins, and the pizza actually looked kind of good. McDonald´s, as another example, are not the tiny little freeway stop-offs that we’ve all gained a few extra pounds from on roadtrips–they are gigantic 3-story edifices here. Although junk food is junk food by any other appearance.
After eating some Italian food, we decided to go to el cine, the favorite past-time of young Limeños. We watched La Mujer De Mi Hermano which was of course entirely in Spanish, meaning that I understood nothing except what I could gather from the on-screen visuals. It basically was a slow-moving plot about this hot chick who is married to a gay man, and has an affair with his brother to break the boredom of her marriage. This is what I gathered from what I could see. It made me realize how far I am from being anywhere near conversant in Spanish. Karina would ask me if I understood, and I would of course say no, and then she would proceed to tell me what was going on in Spanish, which didn’t really help me all that much. Oftentimes Peruvians, once they have established that I can speak rudimentary Spanish, will proceed to talk to me as if I am a native speaker, which is flattering, but then I am forced to pretend that I understand everything they say and inevitably feel a bit embarassed when I have to remind them that I didn’t really understand much of their extensive monologue directed at me.

He vuelto a Lima

After another 20 hour bus ride, I am back in Lima. It was a bit harder this time around because the bus had some kind of problem so the driver kept stopping and getting out. There were also random rocks scattered about on the road due to mudslides from the heavy rains. After 20 hours of sitting in recycled air you want to scream, especially because a little girl puked a bunch of times in the very beginning so you could smell the acrid puke smell the whole time mixed in with the inevitable multitudinous farts (pedos) and the greasy recycled-air-smell of packed-in human beings. Luckily I had the seat next to me unused, although later in the journey a cute chica moved to sit there, which was fine by me.
It is now officially summer in Lima, and it feels great to be back here after the constant rain and cold in Qosqo. It feels a bit like coming home, I’m back in the same hostal that I was in before, and I just ate some tasty pescado in my favorite little restaurant in Miraflores.
Yesterday I got my first major dose of home-sickness, I think mainly because I was talking with Danitza about my favorite liquors such as Chartreuse or a good Scotch or Rye, and I began thinking about imbibing said liquors in my cabina with some amigos and listening to some sweet R&B on my Bose system. I miss the pine trees, I miss my drums. Well, only a little less than 1 month left here, and then I will return home so that I can begin getting Peru-sickness and wishing that I was back here.
I met back up today with Karina, a girl I had met in a disco in Huaraz earlier in my journeys in Peru. Ella conoce muchos lugares buenos en Lima. So I will probably hang out here for another week or so with her and Natalia and get some good booty shaking in some more discos, and then probably voy a Iquitos, because I want to see la selva before I leave.

Details of the Journey

It all began at 5 o’clock. We met at the shop and then took a taxi up into the hills. El maestro led us into the ruins and into a cave, where he set up some seats. He then gave us our prepared concoctions. We were also given some wooden staffs which seemed to serve some kind of protective purpose. The San Pedro was thick and almost gelatinous in texture, and the taste wasn’t all that great, but I didn’t think it was very bad either. Almost a bitter kind of green tea-herby kind of flavor. Paloma had a hard time getting it down, however, nearly retching after every sip. We then sat for a time and watched a small fire of sacred wood burning. El maestro then began to shake a rattle, and eventually he started up on a little song, beginning with whistling and then moving onto lyrics. After a while of this he led us through the cave and outside and around, and when we got back into the cave he had us dance for a time. Once this first hour had passed, it was time to separate from each other outside of the cave and enter into our own personal journeys. It is difficult to recount all that passed in my mind during this time, because many things I couldn’t fully understand, and much of the time I was preoccupied with my thoughts and with being extremely cold. When I sat for a while with my eyes closed I began to see lights, and I sensed that these lights were the energy of my fellow travelers. However, the maestro also said that I could have been seeing the residual energies of the ancients who most likely practiced much the same kind of rites on the same grounds in those same caves. In any case, that was when I began to see glimpses of another world using my ‘clairvoyant‘ senses. At this point I became aware of a specific entity of light which apparently was attempting to show me things. At first this entity seemed to be a kind of feminine gentle energy, and I thought that maybe I was sensing the anima of the San Pedro. Later this entity seemed to morph into the white bull creature with many eyes. The maestro told me today that the bull creature was in fact myself, which didn’t actually surprise me, because I sensed that at some point in the journey. However, it was a different me, a spirit me in another time and world. The bull was playful, I remember thinking of the word ‘payaso’ (clown) frequently in conjunction with its image. It seemed to be trying to lead me certain places and show me certain things, many of which I couldn’t understand or didn’t have the concentration to follow. The things which I did understand were: that in the context of this kind of journey, perceiving things through a veil of religious or preconceived spiritual philosophies would be detrimental to learning, because many of the things seen would appear to be daemonic or even evil. But none of those things, including my frightening bull self, were evil at all, simply forms of another world which possibly contain much power. I also understood that there are capabilities within our minds for much more sentience than we allow ourselves to believe, and that we very frequently receive input from these faculties and deny or ignore them. I also learned that to give energy to another is almost always something from which you will expand, and that the only thing that really sucks out your energy is the attempt to hold onto things. There are other things I think I learned but it is hard to separate much in my recollection. We sat in the ruins until around 11, and then we took off for the road. A taxi was supposed to meet us there but it didn’t show up, so we ended up walking in hard rain for a half hour. Then I headed back to my hostal and spent the night and morning tossing and turning with the lasting effects. There’s a kind of vibration that the cactus gives you, my muscles would oscillate sometimes with it, and towards the end of the morning it turned into kind of tremors, as if my body was attempting to shake it off. I am still feeling the effects right now, mainly because I’m kind of fried with lack of sleep. But don’t think for a second that that will prevent me from going out tonight and shaking my booty all night long and getting tanked.

Aventuras De San Pedro

Wow, I don’t quite know how to put into words exactly what occurred last night. Suffice to say that it was indeed an adventure. The ceremony took place amongst the upper ruins of Sacsayhuaman, a place filled with fog shrouded tunnels still retaining the spiritual imprint of the priests of the Incan times. The dogs throughout all of the hills in Qosqo were yapping frenziedly at the spirits wandering in the full moon. San Pedro apparently opens up the mind to pyschic dimensions, where you can sense things using your 6th sense so to speak. I had a little creature that was trying to show me things, he/she was some kind of white bull, minotaur-like creature with multiple eyes, it looked like something out of a Picasso painting. It taught me, first and foremost, that the things that I am frightened of, things within the spirit world that would seem to be daemonic, are simply pieces of the light just like everything else, that in fact everything is of the light and that there is nothing to fear. The creature itself would normally have been an object of fear, an archetypal Incan incarnation of San Pedro perhaps, but he was for me playful, continually trying to show me things, such as how they put the rocks together in Sacsayhuaman, which I couldn’t understand of course. It was very hard for me to concentrate, my thoughts kept getting in the way, and it was extremely cold as well. But I never felt fear, it felt really good, although at times this morning it was difficult (San Pedro lasts a long time, roughly 10-20 hours). I’m still feeling quite funny right now and I am very sensitive to the light. What is interesting about San Pedro is that while it is of course quite intense and transports you to the threshold of other dimensions, you can open your eyes and walk around (albeit rather clumsily) and feel quite normal. It is only when you close your eyes that the effects really begin to make themselves known. I could sense the psychic manifestations of the rest of the group–Mike, a Brazileno who imbibed Ayahuasca that night, Juan Vargas, the shaman, and Paloma, a pretty Argentinan who was trying San Pedro for the magazine that she writes for in Argentina. We were all off by ourselves, but I found Paloma again later because she was frightened and was not having a positive experience. We stayed together for the rest of the night and this morning, and in some ways I felt like it limited my ability to fully immerse myself in the San Pedro, but in other ways it was wonderful because I felt like we were creating the ultimate light of all–love–and the ultimate point of any spiritual journey is thus.
It is hard to recount all of what transpired within my journey last night, many things that I just couldn’t fully understand, although I could sense that I was being taught many things, or at the very least, the creature was trying it’s best to guide me. I apologized to it for my turbulent obstructive mind, but it had much patience. It seemed quite frankly happy to have someone to play with and show around the ruins.
Ok, this is the fuzz brained morning after account, I’ll transcribe some more perspectives of the night mas tarde. At 4 this afternoon I’m returning to the shaman to discuss the things I saw and to have him explain some of these things.

Revving the Engines

Today I ate tons of food, not exactly purposefully, the chicas took me to probar adobo and I didn’t realize it would be a whole nother meal after I already had lunch, and then I got hungry again later at a disco, so today I have eaten a total of 4 phatty meals, but I suppose that it is for the best since I will eat nothing mañana. I learned some great phrases from my spanish teacher today, such as “¡andate a la mierda!” (fuck off–or more literally, walk yourself to the shit), and “tetas” (titties). I took a salsa lesson today, it was pretty basic but how much can you learn in an hour anyway? The chicas took me to a nice disco with mostly latina musica, and I will most likely return there after this message for some musica de salsa en vivo and to practice my few little basic steps. I don’t feel all that bad about my dancing abilities because a lot of Peruvians also don’t know much more than I do when it comes to fancy salsa moves. It’s perfectly acceptable to dance by yourself and just shake your ass around to it. It’s really damn hard not being able to drink anything. Saturday, despues my spiritual adventures tomorrow, will be the grand fiesta para mi, I will drink and dance my ass off, and most likely head my ass straight on back to Lima on Sunday. The time has definitively come for me to leave, as much as I love the rain every single damn day. I’ve got to get my ass into some new places before I get settled down and have kids.

Cusco Living

Today I found a real shaman off the beaten path in a little tiny shop and sat with him for a few hours listening to him talk with a lady from California about the differences in philosophies between real shamans and other forms of mystical understanding. He was saying that there are four levels of shamans, and only 7 in the whole world are on the first level. Of course he was one of them. I don’t know about any of that, but he does seem to be a legitimate ceremonial guide as compared to the other expensive gringo ´esoteric tours´ that lead thousand dollar ayahuasca journeys in jungle lodges. He was also talking about the restriction that philosophies have on the paths of many spiritual seekers, limiting their ability to expand their minds into other universes; also he was saying that he doesn’t agree with many “gurus” who lock themselves away on a mountaintop and don’t pass their teachings on to anyone. He saw no problem in utilizing modern technology such as internet and cell-phones. I’m going to try San Pedro, a type of cactus that, when imbibed in a prepared concoction, allows a bit of spiritual dimensional traversal, on Friday. He recommended that I try San Pedro first as opposed to ayahuasca, because ayahuasca is extremely potent and requires some amount of spiritual, physical, and mental preparation. On Friday I will not eat anything and only drink water until 3 hours before the ceremony. I also can’t drink any liquor before then. Should be interesting.
Tomorrow I am going to take some salsa lessons as well. I really need to get out of Qosqo but it’s proving to be difficult. I’m shooting for the 15th right now, but who knows. I’ve got slightly less than a month left now in Perù. Everyone keeps asking me if I’m going to other countries and this and that, and I’m starting to feel bad for being in one place for so long. Yes, I would love to see all of South America, I want to see Venezuela, I want to visit my cousin David in Colombia, I want to see Bolivia, I want to see Uruguay (my Uruguayan friends got me hyped to see this lesser-visited country), I want to dance to samba in Brazil, I want to drink wine and dance all night in Argentina and eat good beef, I want to drink wine in Chile and see Patagonia. But this trip I am concentrating upon one country. There is much to see here, let alone in all of South America. My next trip–and yes, there will have to be another one because I love it down here–I will be better prepared with a greater understanding of castellano under my belt, and perhaps then I will visit some more countries in one go.
But I do like getting to feel like I am at home here. I have a few friends and I know where to go to eat and I know where the good places to dance are. Not to say that I really know it any better than any other gringo might, everyone will have their own unique personal experience in this crazy place.
I’m a gringo, no getting around that one here. As soon as I show my pale face in the Plaza de Armas the shoeshine kids scramble to bid for a chance at scrubbing my 6 year old dancing shoes, the cigarrillo sellers wave packs in my face(their strong selling point apparently is that they have “Che Guevara” cigarrettes–whenever you shake your head the first time, they pull out the pack of Che’s and say, “Che cigarros,” as if that’s suddenly going to invest you with the desire to pollute your lungs with the vestiges of whatever revolutionary spirit the name invokes in you), the old women on the side of the curb angle their weathered palms into my path, little girls waggle finger puppets at me, the taxi drivers honk as they wheel speedily past, cute Cuzqueñas press flyers for massages or free pisco sours at the latest disco into my hand, and at night, seedy looking men standing next to the pillars along the square murmur “amigo, you like cocaine, marijuana, amigo?” out the sides of their mouths as I stride by. Ah yes, Babilonia.

Hyper Latent

You may or may not have noticed that I am attempting to interject more hyperlinks in my posts (I have retroactively scattered links throughout my former posts, many of them referencing past writings, because I often have reoccurring themes). I realized that I might as well utilize this cyberspatial interstitial forum and expand beyond the simple postance of escritura. Maybe I should start thinking about creating a whole Manderson themed on-line universe, replete with ads for logo´d undies and bubble bath sud friendly action figures. I could design hoodies, cars, tattoos with those weird alien faces that I like to draw. Ah yes, the possibilities are endless. Veniendo pronto a una pagina de web cerca de ti!
I have been reading 100 Years of Solitude, Cien Años de Soledad, in both English and Spanish. When I first tried reading it in Spanish a month ago, I could understand maybe a few words per page. It’s extremely satisfying as throughout the learning process I recognize a little bit more each time I try. Now I recognize different past tense conjugations, more words, and more of the connecting pieces like “como,” “le, lo, la, se” “èl mismo,” etc. It still takes me a half hour to slug through a page, but I’m beginning to get that feeling like when I used to try to read “Green Eggs and Ham,” and it was always impossible, until one day I picked it up and read it aloud to mi tìa and it was easy! It will be a while ’til I get anywhere near the “easy” point with Cien Años de Soledad, however.

In Limbo

I got up today and went and got a massage for my tired limbs. Less than 20 bucks. They cost like 70 or 80 bucks in the states. I am trying to decide today where to go next. Either La Paz, or the jungle near Cuzco–Manu, Puerto Maldonado–or back to Lima and then to Iquitos. We’ll see. I’m going to give myself a few days to put my finger in the air and test which way the wind is blowing. I’m a bit tired of the Qosqo scene, the constant stranger on the street’s “amigo” this, “amigo” that, but I do know that I would miss what I do have here. I’m going to take some more private classes for Español, except this time it is the much more reasonable 10 soles per hour instead of 8 dollars like it was last time, and the lady will come to my hostal for my lessons. I went into some “shaman” shop today to find out about imbibing ayahuasca, but they quoted me 60 bucks for a ceremony. I know that for locals it’s something like less than 10 soles, so I peaced out on that one. I guess I’ll have to do without hallucinogenic substances for this journey.
This afternoon I met up with Danitza and Julie and they took me out to Saylla where we were going to visit Tipon, but it began dumping rain, so we ducked into a chicharronería instead, where they serve chicharròn de cerdo, a dish very typical of Cusco. Chicharròn de cerdo is basically fried pork, but as is always with the meat dishes here, the taste is different than in the states (almost always better, truth be told). One thing about Peruvìan food that is interesting is that a lot of their dishes are without any kind of sauce, except for dishes like Ajì de Gallìna or Papa a la Huancaìna. This always kinds of disconcerts me, because I’m definitely a sauce kind of man, I like to have something to dip my greasy food items into, I like to hold a bottle of something in my hand and splatter it all over my food as I am eating. I guess it makes me feel like I’ve got my own personal input into my food. I love hot sauce, let it be known, I put that shit all over all of my food. I feel like I’m making it better, enhancing the food. This is why I hold a special place in my heart for burritos, because after every bite you are given the chance to dunk into it some more hot sauce and salsa. Here I can’t really enjoy that kind of eating experience often. They have a kind of sauce made from ajì, Peruvian chiles, but it really isn’t that spicy, and the sauce is generally kind of weird tasting and detracts from the food rather than adding to it, although I still of course continue to dunk each papa frita into it as a matter of course.
I also tried some pasteles tonight after we returned. I tried conito (a cone shaped pastry with chocolate filling), lengua de suegra (which means “tongue of mother-in-law”, so called I think not because of it’s sweetness but because of it’s length), alfajo (like a giant cookie with sweetness in the middle), and a pye de manzana (apple pie). I have to say I’m not so impressed with these pasteles. Seth, you could kick all of these pastries’ asses with your hands tied behind your back. They’re for the most part just kind of flaky things that get your hands and pants all messy. Tomorrow wait for the update on the tortas, I’ll get my hands on a few different cakes and give them a test run.
Anteayer with Danitza and the Uruguaynos, Nacho and Mary, I tried a few new fruits, as well as enjoyed some more granadillas. We tried tumbos, which are these little football shaped fruits that contain tons of orange colored seeds that you suckle upon and taste kind of like mandarinas. We couldn’t find any more chirimoyas, since it is not their season, but we found something similar, albeit much larger, called Guanabana, which unlike its much tastier counterpart was chewy and kind of weird tasting, although it was kind of interesting. Yo probè un Pomelo, cual es igual de “grapefruit,” yo pienso. Also a Pepino, which is a kind of melon except lacking in any kind of flavor. Capulis were pretty good, they looked like cherries but didn’t have that kind of sharp cherry taste. Today I also tried ciruelos, which are like little miniature plums, which of course I liked because I love me my plums, yo.

The Blessing (Finding Measures of Peace)

The night before I left for el camino del Inca I had a dream in which Toby appeared. He was just the way I knew him, he was alive, he was smiling in that gruff yet child-like manner that he had, and I woke up because I realized in the dream that he really was gone. When I woke up his spirit was there with me, just like the first time when I dreamed of him a while ago, except this time he was close and I was not afraid. I was not afraid because I knew I was not imagining things. It was very real and very powerful and I went back to sleep almost immediately afterwards, at peace. For those of you who do not believe in spirits, wait until you are visited by the spirit of one whose death was close enough to you that you cannot push them away. I realized at that moment in the night that I had been visited before, because I knew the feeling well. But this time I was finally without fear for the first time. It felt like a blessing, and in fact throughout el camino del Inca I felt like I was carrying him with me.
A feeling I have had throughout this journey is that many things happening to me, the people I have met and the experiences that I have had, have been meant to happen. This is a feeling I’ve felt before my travels, but it’s an awareness that’s intensified in this kind of setting, where my spacial dynamics and language and social environment are constantly shifting. I feel like the more that I open myself to what is meant to happen, the fuller and more meaningful these experiences are when they occur. Por ejemplo, when I meet someone new, if I am in the kind of mindset where I am willing to suspend my expectations and am not delimiting who they can potentially be in my mind, then they open up in the immediate future with life affirming gifts of knowledge and love for me. And it is then that I sense that this person was meant to be there in that path in time just as I was meant to be. Gifts invisible at every turn, just when you gave it all away. I don’t mean any of that in the sense of predetermination. I mean that there is a potentiality in everyone for god. And when you catch a glimmer in someone else you catch a glimmer in yourself, and it is then that you know and you believe and you are strong, for an instant, for a moment, and there is nothing but one blood flowing through the limbs of one tree. Then you disintegrate back into yourself and them and you move on into tomorrow with one more piece of the light shot through you.

En Qosqo Una Vez Màs

 

I’m back in Qosqo! La noche antes de irme para camino Inca, estaba caminando en la lluvìa demasiado tiempo, y estuve demasiado mojado, y despues, por supuesto, yo me resfriè. Por todo el camino estaba lloviendo y entonces yo estuve mojado y constantemente frìo. El resfriado estuvo dentro de mis pulmones, finalmente. Ahora todovia tengo mucha congestiòn en mi nariz y mis pulmones. ¡Puta madre! Me molesta mucho. Pero, a pesar de la lluvìa y enfermedad, tuve un muy buen tiempo en el camino Inca. El grupo para la caminata fue muy interesante con muchos diferentes tipos de personas–hubo una pareja de Suecia, hubo una pareja de Uruguay, una pareja de Canada, y cinco muchachos de Argentina. Nostros tuvimos muchos conversacciònes muy interesantes.
It rained the whole time on the Inca trail of course, although luckily it was perfect for the last day at Machu Picchu. The trail was harder than I expected, given the sheer volume of tourists that traverse it each day of the year except Febrero, when it’s closed for maintenance. I was doing great on the trail until the third day, which was mostly all downhill on these extremely steep steps, during which an old injury in my knee reappeared, and I limped like a dog hit by a car for the rest of the way. But other than being sick for the whole time and the constant everpresent rain, it was actually a wonderful experience. I was surprised, actually, because after the first day I thought it was some easy gringo bullshit with tiendas all along the way selling Snickers and Gatorade. It is still some gringo bullshit, let’s be honest, you get to eat phatty meals all along the way and most of your shit is carried by porters, but it is quite a difficult trail if you are attacking it without taking breaks every five minutes. My group was a wonderful mix of nationalities, work experiences, and personalities. There was a couple from Uruguay, a couple from Sweden, a group of rugby player chicos from Argentina, and a couple from Quebec. We had some great conversations sitting around in the food tent drinking coca tea. One of the Argentinos worked in Lake Tahoe and has family from my hometown of La Jolla. Un poco mundo.
Spanish speakers are extremely supportive of my attempts to learn and speak Español, I am constantly receiving the compliment that my Spanish is really good, although I don’t understand how this can be so when I am expressing myself on the level of a kindergartner. I think they are simply happy to see the stray foreigner making an attempt to learn the language out of the hordes of foreigners that come through speaking nada–in any case, it’s certainly nice to receive constant encouragement.
There is much to tell from the trek that is all kind of jumbled up in my brain right now. I think more will become extricated as I unwind in Qosqo. I took tons of pictures of steps made from rocks and of clouds. Muchas ruinas, por supuesto. The more I learn of the Incan culture, the more impressed I am by their organizational coherence and governmental oversight. They achieved remarkable heights of culture, art, and architecture, they manifested herculuean feats of organized manuel labor, and they did not use slaves, and they respected la Pachamama in everything they did. There is a habit of the Andinos passed down from the Incas in which whenever they drink chicha or chew coca, they give a little piece of it back to la tierra. The Incas molded their towns to the landscapes in which they harmonized their lives. Their structures carved patiently from stone still stand in the cloud forest although their lives are long gone, their legacy decimated by the conquistadores. In our culture ahora we take and we take and what do we give back to that from which we are taking?
More mundane details of the journey to come!

Viajando a Machu Picchu

Getting ready to go to Machu Picchu mañana, I hope all that cigarette smoking won’t kill me on the passes. So it will be four days until you hear from me again. Feel free to leave comments. They make me feel read and loved. Leave more of em, dammit. Or post a link to your favorite website or your favorite topless picture of Britney Spears. Speaking of which, the other night I went to a local disco called Muki’s where it was 90% Peruanos, which is the way I like it, and they played merengue, salsa, and, of course, a little reggaeton. What was funny, though, was that on a big video screen alongside the dance floor was projected some VH1 special on Britney Spears. So while you’re dancing to salsa you look over and see Britney doing choreographed dances with that everpresent entourage of dancers lined up behind her doing a much better job of dancing. It’s kind of funny, those dancers, because you know that they’ve worked their asses off trying to make a career out of dancing and their big come-up is being one of those pieces of fleshy music video scenery that you don’t even really notice except as a backdrop behind Britney Spears. Have you noticed how intent those dancers always look? It’s like that must be part of how you get to be in that prime of a position as a dancer–by looking really really intense as you dance. Then maybe you get a five second window of you dancing from behind Britney Spear’s ass. You’re lucky if your face gets shown on the video at all.
Anyway, that was kind of a tangent. My damn right ear is really hurting from that fucking pyrotecnico that went off right in front of me the other night.
I’m beginning to get sick, just in time for Machu Picchu, great. I walked around in the rain for too long yesterday. The sleeping bag that my Inca Trail agency gave me is like a summer sleeping bag. So if you don’t hear from me in five days I’m probably frozen to death somewhere in the mountains.

¡Feliz Año Nuevo!

¡Feliz año nuevo todo el mundo! Yo esperanzo un prospero año para todos mis amigos. I hope everyone had a great time for your New Year’s celebration, wherever you happened to be. New Year’s in the Plaz