I took the only seat in the house to hammer away on these keys in the hopes that I would string together some strain of sentences that resemble some forgotten sentiment, some pathway to the long compacted sediment under which my heart is buried. The poets and the songwriters seem to sum things up so well that my vain attempts at compiling letters into words and sentences and paragraphs seems like a road to nowhere littered with boarded up convenience stores. No fuel for the drive. No snacks for the car. Just an empty road that leads to nowhere. And don’t bother punching the clock because this work trip to the woods is on your honor and it won’t matter anyway because they’ll deliver the remainder of your meager earnings to the funeral home to help pay for your service. Just like they’ll do for all the poor souls that sold themselves to the company store. The work. The toil. The unending hours in the cave with the tiny yellow canary in the cage that just won’t stop singing that song about how you should have left years ago. Remember that? Remember the song? In the cave? In that dark, dark space where there was dancing and laughter and so much enjoyment that two people should have had to pay admission to see the seven shows? Drive. Get in the car and drive. Write the letter and mail it. Write the letter and burn it. Write the letters into words and send them all the way to space and back. It’ll change your life. It will. It will change it because you’re a good egg and you’ll end up right where your supposed to be and there isn’t anything that’s going to stand in the way of that because that’s how the universe works. It works out for everyone and nobody leaves before they're supposed to because if they did everything would be disrupted and nobody would have to go to work anymore because there wouldn’t be jobs and there wouldn’t be money and everything we know would be gone because somebody left before they were supposed to. It’s a chain of events. It’s dominos. It’s one foot over the other until it isn’t. Sentences. Paragraphs. Run-ons.
02.25.20
Disconnection. Reconnection. No connection. No understanding. No standing under. No nothing. Off the front with no one to ask questions of. The future is present in the past and a million decisions later the phone rings and it’s her. So angry. So justifiably angry. Onward. Show up. Bring consistency and play the long game. No anger. No hate. Radiate positivity. You’ll be in your grave soon enough. Enjoy the time.
02.19.20
Time and space and imagination and a bunch of circles colliding into each other to create Venn Diagrams. This is how we live. Every day. We are simply circles bumping into each other and sharing an intersection for a moment or several. What’s odd is that, sometimes, even when we aren’t directly in contact with another and their circle, we still overlap. It’s stunning really. Intersecting with another human being even though they cannot be seen or touched. Our minds are incredible in their capacity to leave the present and wander off into the past or the future. It’s a lot.
For the last several weeks I have been focusing on the concept mentioned above. As such, I too have not been fully present to my surroundings. I’m not certain it’s even possible to be fully present one-hundred percent of the time, but, alas, it is an excellent goal.
I digress. Venn Diagrams. Our intersecting points as humans. What does it mean? What is the value in this analysis? I have surmised the following:
I am one person. In being this one person, I occupy only the space above my feet. For the sake of keeping things simple, I have decided to view the space above my feet as a perfect circle that I constantly occupy. This circle, this space above my soles, is everything about me. It is my feelings. It is my touch and my scent and my audio and my taste and my sight. It is my emotions and my memories. It is everything that makes me who I am as a human. Like me, everyone else has a circle underneath them and their circle’s represent who they are.
When I interact with another, be it by sight or by sound or by touch or by scent, according to this visual way of understanding, my circle is intersecting with their circle. Where our circles overlap is key.
Imagine it this way. I have this circle underneath me that represents me and I am the sole responsible party for what the contents of that circle are. I get to decide what clothes I wear and what words I use. I get to decide how I smell and how I feel things when I touch them. I get to decide who I like and who I dislike. I get to decide who I love and who I do not love. I get to decide everything that registers as a thought in my brain. This is my reality. Everyone else gets the same with their circle.
When I find myself overlapping my circle with that of another, be it seated next to a stranger on a bus ride, or deep in a conversation with a loved one, the contents of my circle are mingling with the contents of their circle. How these contents interact it super important, but without mindfulness as to the overlap, things can get real weird, real fast. For example, I may not know anything about the other person and as a result, I may say something that is common place and comfortable to me, but that very same thing may resonate poorly with them. Because our circles are overlapping, where they intersect is no longer one-hundred percent mine. This overlap becomes a shared space. It’s not any different than having a fence around one’s property and leaving the gate open. With unabated access to this shared space, we don’t get to control what comes in and we should be prepared for anything. This can be scary. A ray of hope exists though because we do get to control, one-hundred percent of the time what we contribute to this shared space. If we want to say kind things, we get to do that. If we want to make positive contributions to the others circle, we get to do that. Conversely, if we want to be rude or spiteful or mean, we get to do that do. These intersecting spaces is where our humanity happens.
So…circles. They’re a thing. At least to me. What’s more about these circles is the way my mind occupies itself around the circles that I cannot see or touch. My mind, in all of its incredible wonder, somehow manages to find a way to intersect with folks that aren’t even close. On the surface it doesn’t sound like much. It actually seems pretty normal to think about the people I care about when I am not around them. This is all fine and good, but what about when my mind wanders to somebody that I do not care much about? What about when my mind occupies itself with someone that has wronged me or negatively interrupted my life in some way? What does this exertion of energy do for my emotional health? How does this pattern of thought remove me from the present and launch me into the past or the future? Does any of it even matter?
Yes. The answer, to me, is yes.
When I am fully present to my circle and to the circle’s of others as they are physically in my life, they are getting one-hundred percent of my attention. When I am thinking about someone or something else, my attention is diverted from what is happening in the immediate physical space around me and I am giving less than one-hundred percent. As I think about the people that I often see and genuinely care about, it troubles me to think that I may be giving them less than all of my attention. It pains me to think that I might be inconsiderate to their needs and their desire to overlap my circle because I am thinking about something or someone else. The Venn Diagram visual is a helpful tool for acknowledging myself in these situations.
All of this might sound jumbled and disorganized. It is entirely possible that it is. After all, these are just words being dumped onto a page. To me, though, this makes a ton of sense and it has helped me be more specific when I address and interact with others. Adopting this view of myself and myself as I interact with others has improved my mood and left me happy in places and times when I have previously been depressed and/or disappointed. It has allowed me the space to feel like I am in complete control of my life. It has empowered me to believe in my choices and my words and my actions. It has created a space for me to use the aforementioned as tools to foster kindness and build strong, healthy relationships with the people around me and while I realize that this method may not be for everyone, I am curious to pursue it more and discuss it at every opportunity that presents itself.
02.17.20
Full plates and a kitchen staff that moves in a million directions. The best dishes are usually not on the menu. Talking out of both sides of the mouth is the fastest way to end up silent. Cake. Pizza. A coffee to go. The best advise I ever got was when it’s done it’s done and the phone doesn’t ring anymore. I didn’t know exactly what that meant when I heard it twenty years ago, but as the saying goes had I known then what I know now. Truth. Say it. Live it. Two lines. An out and back. Washed up. Wash burned. A cabin on a lake. A stone fireplace. More beer cans than I’m comfortable with. I miss my friend and it’s dark and I have heartburn. Or is it heartache? Or is it the memory of depression? I’m not upset or mad or disappointed. I am accepting and I have a full heart. I understand and I also have boundaries. I have a fence with a gate around this beautiful house of mine in these beautiful woods along this beautiful river. All the way up here. All the way out here. Out here in no man’s land. Out here and over there and don’t bother calling again because the phone lines are down and the postman lost the address. Send it by pigeon from a rooftop in New York. Send it via telegram. Send it to somebody else because the gate doesn’t open and the mailbox just got emptied. Twenty years. Ten years. A handful and a shakers worth and we’re all racing to the same place. Go home, you’re drunk. Feeble. Fable. Stable. A bunch of horses running loose on the eastern plains. I’ll call it. For good. There’s a lot going on and I can tell it’s too much. Don’t bother coming back because nobody lives here anymore. They’ve all gone off to join the circus.
02.16.20
Sunday on the snow and ice and nobody cares where you’ve gone or what you’re up to and that’s the best feeling in the world. Get out there. Ride across the lake and don’t ask questions. Pedal. Forward. Never look back. Cut your losses and push your heart into the place where it’s about to explode and then keep going because the other end of this thing is going to be so much better than where you started from. Jump in. All in. There is only one life and one trip from birth to death and if the smiles aren’t there they simply aren’t there.
Return to sender. Undelivered. What happens while you’re gone is irrelevant. Don’t ask. Keep moving because this band sucks and they’re not going to get better, but they try hard and they showed up which is more than can be said for a handful of others, but it’s twelve months later and the whole world has changed. It’s Sunday. All day. Unless it rains, but we all know that isn’t going to happen because it’s only fifteen degrees in this event center on the edge of the ice.
Pound sand or crush gravel or crunch snow or kick rocks. It’s all the same when it’s swimming around in your stomach.
02.14.20
Checked my pulse and did pushups until my arms fell off in some vain attempt to maintain a level of fitness that has been pressed onto me by the magazines and the machine that owns my soul. Drank whiskey because the burn felt better than facing the fears in my life that only exist because my ego is too big to hide in this suitcase. Hid from my hiding spot when the sun went down.
Sorrow. Borrow. Tomorrow.
Don’t you know me? Haven’t you seen the sights named after me? Haven’t you secretly snapped your selfie with my likeness in the background?
Once a loser, always a loser. Shots fired...from a seventeen year old gun. Rust on the bullets. Dust in the chamber. What kind of person hangs onto that kind of anger for so long? What kind of person feels the need to cleanse their soul at the expense of another? You know. You know damn well and you know your tree lost all its leaves when you lied and when you left and there’s no chance they’ll regrow. That’s life. That’s how things unfold in real time. Everything ends. Even your ignorance.
02.13.20
Sitting on the curb with the trash and taking every piece of pent up energy from the last ten years like a toll booth attendant at the Holland tunnel takes change. Trash. Waste. Time.
You weren’t there. You weren’t. You can’t contest that and nobody is expecting you to. It isn’t a thing and you know it, but you do know that no journey begins without the first step and you took that this week and nobody is going to take that from you. Show up. Keep showing up. Things will change.
—STOP—
Soup for dinner and a cough that appeared out of nowhere. Plans for the weekend and an invitation. Do something. Anything. Do what you will because it’s nighttime now and that’s when the rest comes if it ever comes so just wait for it until you fall asleep. Maybe.
You’ll write more, just not today. Today isn’t the one. Maybe tomorrow. Maybe the next day. Some day.
01.15.20
There is a saying in the world about walking a mile in another’s man’s shoes. It references prematurely passing judgement.
Shoes. We all wear them.
Sometimes, when the situation presents itself, one can loan their shoes to another and perhaps whatever journey the other is on can be made a little easier.
That is to say, “Here, try these on, they’ve already walked a good portion of what lies ahead of you; they know the way.”
01.12.20
Ego and lies and expectations run rampant is this beautiful culture of ours. The purpose is to sell out. Sell out and earn more because more money and more stuff equates to more relaxation and more vacation time and more affection. Look at me!!! I am important!!! Why doesn’t anyone understand?
01.05.20
Marketing marketing marketing marketing. We speak to each other in pictures and we name drop the brands we like because we think it will bring us some kind of good deal on the next purchase. We do the work of the hand that feeds us and we don’t ask questions.
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.