12.31.19 pt. 2

Sediment filled with sentiment. 

The earth flies around the sun. 

Heartfelt messages lost in the margins of long lost passages.

One year under the bridge and a decade in passing. Sound the bagpipes and summon the spirits to carry off the coffin. Blaze a trail through the floodplain and never question the direction because it all just only ever ends in a paycheck and where we’re at in this climate we need all the checks we can get. Checks and boxes and extra big garages for our trucks and our toys and our imported domestic sedans. We are here in this transition and we are lost trying to find ourselves. We scurry up the scree and we try our best not to lose our footing and somehow we find ourselves above the tree line and we wonder how we will ever go back to the base where the freeloaders and hippies and the goddamn marching ants line up like sheep to get shorn. We wonder this and we wonder how it will ever get better. We wonder and we wonder and we wonder. We wonder and we wander and we wade into the murky water and we hope against our own hope that somewhere in the cloudy mess we’ll find the source of this spring and we’ll find the water that will fill us up and provide us with the sustenance we need to make it through another day and another week and another month and another year and another decade. We think about all of this while we’re standing in line to buy beer for the party we’re not going to make it to because we’re drunk again and the lights are still on and the dog puked on the bed again. We think about this until we forget again in the morning and we wake up and we go to work and we fall in line and we do as we’re told because it’s New Year’s and as soon as we can get to tomorrow we can start exercising our best judgement again for another week before the pattern begins again. 

12.31.19

I cannot, for the life of me, remember how long ago it was that I heard Jeff Tweedy say something in an interview about how making music and then giving it away to the public to listen to automatically ends the creators period of ownership. It stuck with me. For years. It stuck with me and I thought that I very much adhered to the concept. I thought, for so long, that I fully embraced the “what you give away is what you get in return” mentality. I thought did, but I didn’t.

For years I have walked around this earth with something sharp stuck in my side or my neck or my back. This thing, this sword or this knife or this spoon has plagued me and kept me up at night and prevented me from being my best self and has sent me to the far edges of the country looking for peace. Miles and miles and miles I have walked and ridden and driven trying to chase down whatever caused this pain. I wandered and wandered and wandered and I looked and I looked and I looked. I tried everything to make it stop. I even looked inside...or at least I thought I did. 

Twenty years ago I made a decision to set my life on an alternate path. As a result, I studied scores of books and bounced thousands of ideas off of all kinds of folks and what I learned was that my ego was the default source to most of my troubles. I learned this and I took it to heart. Additionally, I discovered that, because I had spent so many years taking from others to make myself look and feel good to myself, the best way to make this right was to give back to the community I had taken so much from. It was a simple ask; give freely of myself without intention to receive anything in return. I was promised that I would get everything back tenfold. That promise held up. 

What I find most interesting about all of this is that around the same time that this life path was changing, I was circling back to enjoying bicycles again while living headlong in a creative space that had me painting and making things. 

Like any good student, I set about to do the work immediately. 

For a couple of years I did the work and I gave freely of myself to others benefit. I did it and I kept studying and I kept bouncing ideas off of the people I was learning from...and then one day I stopped. I stopped studying and I stopped sharing ideas. I stopped because I felt like the work I was doing to give back was the whole reason I ever needed a change in the first place. I felt like I had concluded my studies and that my life’s purpose was fulfilled. 

I went this way for almost a decade. On my own in the world and doing what I thought was the best I could for the people I had taken so much from years before. As I sit here in this early morning hour I could not have been further from the truth. 

When I decided to leave Almanzo after the event in 2014 I felt a giant hole grow inside me. It was a massive vacancy and I had no idea why it was there or how I would fill it. I knew that I was done with the event, but I also I had no idea what I was supposed to do and how I was supposed to keep giving of myself because I had wandered so far off from the crowd that got me where I was. I lost track of myself and I had reverted to my old standby...my ego.

You see, I didn’t start Almanzo because I thought my ideas were grand. I started it because I wanted people to be able to enjoy what I’ve enjoyed by bicycle and I wanted it to create a space where people could feel equal. I wanted to make something that felt just like the atmosphere that I had spent so much time in learning and studying and bouncing ideas off of people. I wanted that and I made that and, for all intents and purposes, it was incredible. In all those years I saw so many people accomplish things they never thought they could. I saw unity and camaraderie. I saw strength in individuals and I saw strength in community. I saw a spirit that I had never known. I saw humans being humans and it was beautiful and inspiring. 

I poured everything I had into that event. Everything. 

I put it ahead of everything else in my life. I put it ahead of my family and my friends. I put it ahead of money and my own well being. I put it at the top of my list of things to give because I knew that if I did that, I couldn’t be doing anything wrong. It was like a protective shield and as long as I wore it I didn’t have to study and I didn’t have to bounce ideas off people because the feedback I was getting from people was that everything I touched was incredible. 

And then it stopped. I stopped. I walked away. I walked away because after the huge numbers of participants in 2012 I knew there was something wrong with my approach. I knew that taking bikes from manufacturers and money from retailers was wrong. I knew that being praised was wrong. I knew that it was wrong of me to take these things because that kind of benefit was perpendicular to the reasons I started this whole thing. In 2013 I tried to backpedal my efforts and by the end of the event in 2014 I knew I needed to leave...so I did.

I left the event that year and spent the next five years trying to figure out what was missing. I got divorced. I walked almost all the way away from bikes. I moved across the country. I changed my appearance online. I ran. I hid. I got angry with myself and I created a narrative to protect myself. I created a protective shield that I thought would buy me enough time to figure out what my problem was. I crafted a story that I told myself and it worked...until it didn’t. You see, I walked away from Almanzo because my ego got in the way and I knew it, but that didn’t prompt me to do anything about it. Instead it just gave me more free time to work around it. For five years I told myself that nobody really understood me or my efforts. For five years I quietly admonished the gravel road community because they never adhered to my defining principal of no entry fees. That is bullshit. That is my bullshit.  That is my bullshit ego.

Back to the Jeff Tweedy interview. If I make something and I send it out into the world, it’s no longer mine; it becomes property of the state. That was Almanzo. I made it and I gave it away and I have zero regrets about that. What I look backwards on with some shame and guilt is the way that I felt some sense of ownership after I had released it. I let my ego make decisions for me and it kept me from seeing everything that is beautiful about what has grown up around gravel cycling. Today I can say that Almanzo was never about one thing or another. It wasn’t all about free entry and it wasn’t about gravel roads and it wasn’t about bringing life to small, rural communities. It was about giving freely of myself to the people around me without the intent of getting anything in return. It was about abandoning ego and building a space where people could come and connect with each other and find something in themselves that gave them the courage or the motivation to do something bigger with their abilities. It was about all of that and the truth is that all of that still exists in the hundreds of gravel events across the country and across the planet. 

I didn’t create gravel and I didn’t create bikes. I didn’t father any kind of bicycle subcategory and I certainly make no claims to have done so. What I did do was make a real hard push to make gravel cycling a thing and I pushed to empower people to make their own events and do what I did. I taught what I had learned and I received the ideas that were bounced off me and gave feedback accordingly. I became the teacher until I could no longer teach. 

To all of the people that I silently held grudges against for the last five years, I am sorry. You never did anything wrong. Instead, it was me who was wrong to harbor such feelings. It was me who was wrong to put my ego ahead of the well being of others. It was me who was wrong to put my own self-interest in a position to be dependent on your efforts in what I thought should be my likeness. I made mistakes and I took things for granted. I took advantage of people’s kindheartedness and all the while it was all of you who were out there carrying the message that bikes change lives. You were the ones carrying the torch and doing the work and I was the one sulking in my own depression and remorse and for my behavior and for that I am sorry. 

I cannot change the past, nor would I want to. Today, on this final day of 2019, I can write this letter and let everyone know that my love for bicycles has done nothing but get stronger. I can let you know that I have returned to studying. I can let you know that I am finally at peace with myself and my surroundings. I can let you know that I finally understand what it means to love myself for exactly who I am. I can let you know that I understand appreciation as a two way street. I can let you know that I understand the value of self as self relates to others. I can let you know that I understand my ego and what it’s capable of and why it is oh so important to keep it in check. 

Most of all I can let you know that I am full again. I am full again and I am very excited to tell you that I cannot wait to see you at some events this year. I will be there riding and smiling and I hope we meet...again or for the first time. 

12.30.19

There are a million things to get upset about in just about every aspect of every human life. It’s the unfortunate byproduct of how we’ve culturally conditioned ourselves and our perspective. This is just a simple fact.

For the last 41 years I have spent the better part of my time examining how I interact with myself, how I interact with others, how others interact with myself and how others interact with others. It’s just how I’m wired. 

In recent times, I have had the pleasure (and the curse) of being a witness to all of these interactions and the way they unfold themselves in what seems very much to be real time on the internet, specifically on the varying versions of social media platforms. 

Having said that, I will say, respectively and without a shadow of a doubt, that as our interactions currently exist we are an abysmal, disconnected version of ourselves. 

Just this morning, as I was scrolling through the masses of posts on Facebook, I stumbled upon what seemed to be a rather important message from somebody I know in Oklahoma. The message outlined some changes this person had recently made to a bicycle event that they host. As a one-time promoter of a similar event, my curiosity was stimulated. I dove in. 

The article itself was very well written and outlined clearly the key components of any good first-hand account. That is to say, what things were like, what happened and what things are like now. 

Good enough...and then the comments.

Once I got to the comments section I concretely found myself looking at what I believe is currently our worst selves getting worse. 

It is tragic.

Some may remember (most likely don’t or have no idea at all) that I went through something terrible in the way of social media comments earlier this year. The cause for my experience was rooted in systemic, disconnected privilege. The cause for today’s unraveling of humanity is no different. 

The main takeaway, for me at least, is that words matter and they matter a ton. What we say has value and can impact people far beyond what we think our reach might be. More important than our words, however, are our actions that follow and while I will be the first to admit that I have made mistakes along my journey, what we do in the wake of what we say is paramount to all else.

With that, I challenge you. I challenge you to examine your words and examine your actions. Does the language you use connect and unite people? Do your actions build inclusive communities and strengthen bonds? Or, are the things you say and do dividing and excluding people, either present or past? 

We are nothing but the sum of our experiences and as such, it is imperative that we keep one of each of our senses on the past and the others right here in the present. 

I hope, with all of my faculties, that something I’ve written here resonates with you and I encourage you to share this message. We are more divided today as humans than we have ever been in our history. 

Connect, encourage and include. This is our time and this is our responsibility. 

12.23.19

A monument. A moment. A monumental moment. A catastrophe in a catastrophic cacophony of welled up emotions and hurt feelings and a million years of evolution all wrapped up in a burrito of cheese and chorizo and some bubbly water. I have no idea. Not a single thought on the matter or the manner or the makeup of any particular organism or how it grew into being some other life form. I have no idea how time exists in one space and somehow manages to show up completely different in another. I have no idea about ideas or thought processes or food processors. I have no idea about long walks before Christmas to a house full of strangers and the pictures I may or may have not taken along the way. I have no idea about the music that pours into the air from just behind my head. I have an empty brain and the only that’ll come out are these words and I’m trying like hell to put them in order so that someday when I’m old I can look back on these and kind of remember what it was that I was thinking. It’s a record. A snapshot of time. A picture in an album. A painting of a painting and an explanation of dreams about people bound in rope riding horses along some deadly ridge far away from anybody. It’s the painting next to my bed. It’s the one piece of yesterday that looms like a wall over me when I sleep.

Or is it?

Perhaps it’s just some happening of happenstance or a circumnavigation of circumstance? Perhaps it is perhaps. Per haps. Per caps. Per. Purr. Fur. Collar. Hollar. Yell and scream except I can never understand why the volume has to be so loud when it’s clear that the only people talking are standing right next to each other on the steps outside the hotel. On those steps above the path and adjacent to the road. That’s where they scream and throw punches and wait for someone to come and tell them to leave. That’s how they do it there in the city. That’s how it unfolds when the weather permits and when it doesn’t they wander in with their toil and they spend too long in the bathroom and they mutter odd things at the counter and they leave behind their belongings and they pass out and they piss on the floor. They do that because they can’t do it another way. They do it because it’s how life is for them in that moment. It’s monumental, their moment. It’s the life they have in their present and I doubt very much that it is anything they would have ever chosen had they been given the choice or the option or the long straw or the low card or whatever other method had been presented to them to pick out their future. Instead, they ended up here. On these steps over this path. Screaming and yelling and fighting. They ended up here by making choices in the their moments. They ended up here because so many other places wouldn’t take them. They ended up here. Under these bridges and in these bushes. Drinking and drugging and sleeping and stealing and passing out. They ended up here and somehow managed to get cast away from the comforts of everything else everyone else knows as comforts. They ended up here, on our steps looking for some kind of love or kindness or empathy or generosity. They ended up here never knowing what kind rejection faces them next. They ended up here with the doubts that shadow their every move. They ended up here and all we can do is smash our heads together and figure out how we’re going to get rid of them. That’s our best solution. Solve the problem by forcing it out or replacing it with other people that get along more like we do. We came up with that instead of speaking kindly to everyone and making allowances in our own comfort to help comfort those that aren’t comfortable. We came up with that big master plan to plant trees and install fences to protect our magical space from the wretches of our scene. We came up with it. We hatched our plan. We declared our moment as a testament to our monument. We wrote down our solution to the catastrophe and we put it up on the signs we jammed down deep into the earth.

We are here. So is everyone else.

12.21.19

From where I’m sitting I can count bottles and towels and little square napkins and I can hear the sound of the scoop as it slides into the ice bin. I can feel the pressure of the ticket printer and I can recall every nuance that follows along through a bartender’s night. Thirteen years I spent behind the wood. Thirteen. For so long I considered myself a professional. I knew the drink lists front to back and I had a short list of drinks that had my very own special twist. It was an honorable vocation. A trusted spot in so many people’s lives. The bartender is your friend and your lover and your confidant. The bartender is so many things to so many people. The bartender is everything and their wage is based solely on one’s ability to scrape together more money than the total of their bill and pass it along. Gratuity. It’s nonsense and so widely accepted that’s its vomit inducing. Servers are servants and that is how our culture looks at it. It might not be the most popular word to describe the situation, but it’s the truth. A long time ago, when I was still painting regularly, I created a series of sixteen panels. Each of the panels was washed in white paint and each had hand written on it, in black paint, the words “income based gratuity scale”. Think about it. The more you make, the more you tip. It’s seems logical and simple. It’ll never happen. 

12.20.19 pt. 2

You wanna walk out into the woods and settle this shit like a couple of 19th century boxers? Drop gloves as they say in the hockey arenas? For what? To solve the riddle of time and agony? Do you think it matters? Any of it? Our pangs and our trials and our tribulations? Myths. All myths. Everything we aspire to be in the name of bettering ourselves and those around us is perpetually influenced by the propaganda machine. The man. The king of the sheep. The master of billboards and the grocery store champion. We owe ourselves to their reign. Their rain. Their oh so acidic rain. Their apocalyptic barrage of nonsense and misdirection. Their crown of hate and misogyny. We owe ourselves to their capitalism and their greed and their abundance and reluctance to share. They are our leaders. They hold our leash. They command our attention and keep us locked to their tits. They give us only enough rope to not hang ourselves and you want to bark at me about some small disruption in our wavelength?

12.20.19

Abandoned. Stranded. Old. Irrelevant. Lost in the change. Floundering in the two way traffic of time. Where? What? Why would it matter? Go home to nothing because home doesn’t exist. The holidays. The responsibilities. The fatigue. The bags under the eyes. The stress. The heartburn. Age. Fragility. Relationships. Time.

Nothing matters.

We all race toward death.

Sadly there is no winner. Conversely, there is no loser. Instead we all just end up running out of time and likely lying there replaying the moments of our lives where we had pleasure and likely contemplating how one thing might have been different had we chosen a different path. That’s regret. Unavoidable. Comparison. Try to do it different and you’ll end up in the same place. It doesn’t matter. Nothing does. We covered that earlier.

For a moment you’ll have everything in your hand. In the next you’ll feel rejection and look at yourself in the mirror and wonder what it was that got you here in the first place. You’ll vomit. You’ll get up. You’ll put on a face. You’ll smile. You’ll convince yourself that everything is wonderful and remind yourself to remind yourself and you’ll go about this for a while until you get tired and then you’ll remember that everything is not fine and everything is not wonderful and you’ll watch your friends get drunk and make decisions that baffle you and you’ll wonder why you don’t join them only to remember that every time you do that you hate yourself more than you already do and you’ll remember that if you put yourself in a position where you hate yourself more than you already do you’ll probably kill yourself and that killing yourself would be disrespectful to the people that care about you so you stop thinking about that and put your pen down.

You put your pen down.

12.17.19

There is a lot at stake here and if something isn’t done about it right now everything is going to fall apart. Accept it. Make peace with it. Take the jacket off and stay. Reach out if that’s what you feel moved to do. Fill out the form. Lick the stamp. Drop the envelope into the box and cross your fingers.

There’s fog above the river and the snow banks are high enough to keep the deer in the woods. Appropriate the appropriate and leave the rest behind. Frozen ankles and wood lined walls. Climb. Climb. Climb.

Unrelated. I would like a house. A little house with a centralized kitchen and some windows that look out onto trees. A small room for sleeping just a ladder away. A desk for writing and a place to finally complete the longest essay.

That’s all. A simple list. A wood burning stove and a stack of split wood out back. A sleeping dog and a past that is fun to look back at. Go forward.

12.15.19

I vividly remember wondering why it was there, but I cannot recall my motivation for sinking so much money into it. I once found a slot machine in the middle of a National Forest. I dropped forty-five quarters through the slot and I never once hit a BAR. My pockets were so heavy walking in that my stride was off. The dog never wandered into the brush, but I think that’s because I had treats. Bacon. When I threw a stone it rippled the water on the pond just beyond the opening and I could tell that no one had been here in years. There was no electricity and no running water in these parts. I left my truck running on the side of the road as I was compelled to just get out and go.

Out of order stories are difficult to read, but fascinating to write. An exercise in what I hope will be a productive journey into the one project I have longed to complete…a book written in seclusion. Finally.

12.14.19

Song dogs in the hills that rise above the ocean. Music coming from the brush that lines the lookout. A cowboy hat on an escalator in the same house as Pollock. Translation. Transcontinent. Sing.

Wander on the top tube and bring the whole goddamn thing with. Write on the inside of cards and hand them out at the holidays and then wonder why everyone has strange side eyes. Bake cookies with judgement and make sure to turn the oven off because, after all, a broken ice machine never makes ice unless it’s sitting outside.

Call the police. Call security. Find discomfort in being uncomfortable. Live and let live, unless of course those that are being left to live are unlikely to and, while we’re at it, is it you’re place to interrupt anyway? Perhaps they’re hoping to die? Either way you’re going to have to check in to see if everyone is on the bus. Hopefully they are and hopefully they’ve found their seat and they’ve managed to store their foam cooler right in the way of the bathroom door so that every time somebody has to use that tiny little space it’ll be somebody’s job to move the cooler because that’s thinking ahead and it’s definitely thinking of others. It’ll be fine. Everything is fine. Everything is always fine. At least until it isn’t and by then it doesn’t matter and it never did and it never will and that’s just the way things go as long as things are going. Because they do, you know? They go. The things. They go and they go and they go. They go like a clock that ticks with broken parts, and somehow, on this clock, the expectation hand always seems to move faster than the our.

12.10.19 pt. 3

Hiding in the corner of a dark room. A subway car filled with people. A basement shopping center and a French press made from ceramics. It’s red. It’s the same one your friend used to have. It elicits wonderful memories. Leave it behind. Along with the donuts. Travel. Go West. Dry out in the desert. Find yourself. Lose yourself. Almanzo. The words come naturally now. Bits and pieces from decades of living. What is a hero? What does that look like? Sit still. Time yourself. Track it. Wear the watch and count the heartbeats until the watch burns a hole in your arm and you realize that your heart has been cold. Warm it up. Read articles about self care. Make a tea. Brush your teeth. You still live out of duffle bags, but your shoes are neatly arranged on the floor and nobody can take that away from you. Every three weeks throw things away. Stay mobile. Don’t let the roots take hold. The black floor will swallow you up if you’re not paying attention. The stillness provides comfort and the cold air breathes fresh. Windows. Doors perspective. Remember when you were younger and there wasn’t a thing in the world that could set you back? Remember that feeling? Do you remember when it vanished? Forever? Is it really gone though? Perhaps it’s just a state of mind that could be manifested through the correct amount of time spent meditating? Try it. You might like it? You might find that somewhere between caring for yourself and riding your bike and spending time wandering different routes you might just see yourself in the reflection of the river and fully understand that there is only one you and that there has only ever been one you and that one you is beautiful and amazing and capable of caring and loving yourself and everyone around you? You might find that? Or you might find a five dollar bill on the ground and it might be the best thing that happens to you? It’s possible. Everything is. Sometimes you just have to get out of your own way to see it.

12.10.19 pt. 2

Christopher Crying in Columbus Circle

12.10.19

Day dreaming through a cemetery on 46th and absently wandering my way through midday traffic. A meeting in the Deep South and a trip to Alabama twenty years ago. Forget the man you used to be. Walk away from that identity. Business suits have no place in this present and Santa Claus probably won’t leave you anything under the tree. Scrabble. Babble. Circumcised. You are your father’s son and a baker’s wife if you can count to thirteen. Donuts and bottles of bourbon and a thousand sailors songs about coming home. Try to follow along and you’ll likely get lost because there is no rhyme or reason to the manner in which things fall to the page. Errors. Erroneous. Existentialism. A fraudulent newspaper and a dozen dried up Bic pens line empty shoe boxes left out for the mailman and a dog biscuit in case the neighbors get hungry. The giant box truck in the driveway replaces the rotted out RV, but it lacks the black lights and the ambiance of whatever college party you can remember the most. I can remember riding up and over Lyndale and through the woods near Cable. Sometimes I wonder if the mistakes I made are forgivable and if, in some strange world of make-believe, I’d ever get a second chance. I doubt it. I really doubt it, but if it happened I’d be sure to not screw it up...after all, the moose in the front yard was worth every second.

Remember? The second of November? I only know it as a calendar date and as a piece that rhymes. That’s twice I’ve used that word.

Forget. Forgive.

Live in the moment and stand over your feet. Undo your achievements and give more than you take. Squander not opportunities to become a better version of yourself.

Reflect. Meditate. Burn that stick of incense because it’s routine and it calms you down and it reminds you that there is so much good in the world. Positive affirmations. Speak them. Incorporate the language into your everyday life and see the changes it affects. Smile. Compliment. Give.

Become your own brand and market it for good. You have the skillset of a leader, don’t piss that away on selfishness and ego.

Sleep.

12.09.19

A frozen window and some street that abuts the train playground. A playground that, in the summer months, exists as some kind of memorial to a time when kids actually left the confines of their homes to play in some kind of poorly constructed neighborhood park. In the winter the place looks far more inviting and much less like a place one could contract some kind of disease by accidentally stepping on an abandoned hypodermic needle. Silently it just lives there. At the end of all of the presidents. Just south of the rail yard. Just north of the strangest portion of the oldest section of the city. The train playground.

To the east is the car lot where the human excrement lies quietly between the parked cars. The same car lot where the salespeople look just as one would expect them to.

To the south are houses. Lots of houses and parked cars and lights on in second story windows. People. Living out their lives in their low wage jobs making ends meet when they can. Middle America. Low-income. Realness. Solitude. Isolation. Here it is.

And in here it’s real quiet and the dog is lying on the bed and breathing loudly and another stick is about to get burned. There is routine here for the first time in ages. There is calm and collectedness. There is peace and comfort. There is here and here is there and everything is exactly as it should be.

12.08.19

There is something agonizing and painful and lovely and encouraging about struggling through the perils of an average life without the escape that was once provided by a magical elixir. That is not to say that liquor actually solved any of my troubles, but it did provide an outlet that allowed me, if only for a moment, to forget about all that bothered me. To live without it, now for nearly twenty years, is to live alongside my demons as the manifest themselves in my every day being. At times they are silent and still. At others they are raucous and rambunctious. They are always there. Especially on Sundays during that long drive between there and here. They sit in the back seat. They whisper. They loom. They sit back there and they taunt me and they force me to live with them until the mundane existence of work reveals its patterned self on Monday. This is every week. Ninety minutes of memories and a soundtrack that would push most to pull into the nearest bar. Onward. Forward. Acknowledge the alcoholism for what it is and move on. Drinking isn’t going to solve anything and this has been made clear time and time again. Face the mirror and appreciate the reflection. Face the mirror and love the one who looks back. This tiny brain and all of its ability is wound to go back and forth between joy and misery and it’s just like every other tiny brain out there. Feel it. Turn the light down and feel and write and breathe and be. You are not unique. You are not special. The suffering you conceive it’s not unlike the suffering of others and your circumstance is not alone. Go until the end and whenever that day come make certain you’ve laid out your plans. Share them and be clear. Find those that fill your circle and make everything evident.

For example:

When I die you can drag my body into the hills just west of Borrego Springs. Drag me out there and leave under a pile of rocks because that is the first place I realized how amazing this life can really be. I’ve chased it ever since and when my time comes it seems only appropriate to return me to the place I found life. I don’t know when the day will come, but you can consider this my final wish. In writing.

12.07.19 pt. 2

A conversation about how power reveals a person’s true self. More words about influence and effect and how not all people that find themselves in a position of power end up being assholes.

I definitely had influence. The work I did leant itself to being adopted by the machine. I have no regrets. I do, however, find myself wondering how it was that what I did had such an impact while I was so lost as a human being. How was it that I could be an architect for an entire movement and not recognize myself in the mirror? How was it that I could live so passionately about one thing and, at the same time, be so absolutely insecure about myself and my place in the world? It’s a mystery to this day.

In hindsight, I think my ego had a major role. I think the fanfare and the accolades drove me. I believe that I had, at the time, a thirst for success and it isn’t that I don’t feel like being successful today, but rather I think my perception of what success is has changed. Today, for example, I believe success to simply mean happiness. If I am happy and content, I have succeeded. My younger self would disagree. My younger self would tell you that success was material. A house. A car. A bike. Influence. Power. All of those things meant so much because I was taught they meant so much and it wasn’t a hard lesson laid out by my parents and much as it was a soft lesson laid out by the world I grew up in. I grew up comparing things. Making observations and discerning differences. To have more things meant I was better than. This is part of the problem with our current culture. The lessons I learned as a kid and as a young adult are still being taught. It’s a thing. For certain.

Stuff does not define me. I am not the sum of my accomplishments. I have lived an incredibly privileged life and have had access to things that most do not. Undoing those privileges and unteaching those lessons is where you can find me these days. Loving myself for exactly as I am in this moment first and everyone else second.

It is never too late to wake up. It is never too late go lay down. Look in the mirror and if you don’t like what you see, do something about it.

12.07.19

What’s the goddamn difference anyway? Every fucking day I wake up at exactly three-thirty. Every day. I open my eyes and I wonder what time it is and then I check and I see the same time every time. Some days I can fall back asleep. Other days, like today, I can’t. Instead I’m just wide awake and listening to the dog snore and wondering a million different things about my life and how it intersects with other people’s lives. This is how it goes and I don’t think it makes any difference at all.

12.06.19 pt. 2

Holed up in a cabin near a lake in the deep woods on the North. A weeks worth of rations, a carton of cigarettes and enough coffee to fortify a month of mornings. Lock yourself in and write. Write all the words down and don’t come out until there are three hundred pages.

What would that even look like? Is it just the romance of the idea that captivates? Three hundred pages. A full book. Twists and turns and dead end streets. Walks in the woods with the dog as a stimulant for the mind. Couldn’t one just as well wrote the same thing in the confines of one’s own home? Why the need to escape? Make the date. Commit to the commitment. Just get out of your own way and make it happen. No circumstance is going to make it happen any faster?

Stop

Walk a mile in the shoes I have on and then you can come up to my desk and ask for the keys to my car. You have a lot of nerve asking for something that you never worked for and didn’t earn and you have no respect at all if you can’t even respond to the boundary. A simple fence was put in place and the posts and the rails very clear so as not to be disturbed and you can’t muster up enough common sense to respond with any kind of acknowledgement as to how you upended my peace of mind. There are a million miles of beach just waiting for you and your knuckle-dragged fists.

Bikes. They aren’t going to make you smarter, but they can take you to places where you can definitely learn.

12.06.19

Missed communications. Miss communication. Lowside, bridge club and a small set of stairs. Turn the tv on. Unlock the locks and make damn sure your clear with whatever manner it might be that you set your fence posts. Make sure you dig the holes at forty inches or everything you’ve done will be undone when the frost climbs and claws it’s way back to the surface in the Spring.

Text, copy, handwriting. Words on paper or words on a screen. It doesn’t make much difference insofar as to how the letters are assembled or delivered if there isn’t a fundamental understanding as to the intention with which they were amassed. If one hand is signaling one thing and the other hand another, the receiver has no choice but to be confused. It’s mixed signals from the sun to the moon even though there is no more heartfelt kindness to be found in either the left or the right because they’re both too full to hold what they already have. Love and understanding and empathy.

Maybe it’s a train ride? Maybe it’s a separation of thought? Maybe there is no segue? Maybe the inside of that rail car has no walls and there is no way in and no way out? Maybe the old man in the deerskin coat shivering to stay warm by the dying fire has no more place in this world? Maybe the homeless aren’t homeless? Maybe our understanding of the understood is all wrong and backwards? Maybe the question is to not question? An entire paragraph?

Write another.

Set the pen down and go outside. Clean the yard and mow the lawn and put everything in it’s place. This is how the creativity is born. This is how things fall together and thoughts come pouring in. The creation is in the routine organization and the formality of finding homes for things. Especially when the homes for things are neat and tidy and separated by size and shape and color and alphabetized. Straighten up and fold the clothes and stuff them inside the duffel bag. Pick the pen back up and smash it.

12.05.19

He sent the kid out into the night with one of those old railroad style flashlights. The big kind with the giant lense that unscrews to reveal a battery the size of coffee can. I hadn’t seen this previously. As the kid walked away, the flashlight tumbled and turned into the darkness and there, from the balcony, the father emerged. He leaned over the railing and said, “Go straight to your grandfather’s. And don’t talk to nobody.” The kid replied, “I know. I won’t”, as he ambled down the icy sidewalk.

A pause in the darkness.

The father again belted our from the second floor, “I love you.” The kid returned with, “I know. I love you, too.”