Something Something Blogpost

I want to write something that’ll make you stay.

Rather, something that would make you consider visiting, even just for a bit.

Since I don’t have a fable or personal experience that would click the gears in your head to call your feet to pace back here, I’ll have to settle for the other thing I’d like to write.

Re-reading some of the posts we’ve got here reminded me of the events that got me from being overwhelmed in the old sea of possibility to swimming with a place in mind.

Back when I was dating the poli sci department head’s daughter, I found myself making plans for our summer together post-graduation. I had nothing to contribute. Most of my thoughts about what I could do for the summer felt too private to share with anyone, and doing anything that didn’t involve making some kinda money felt selfish and wasteful after 4 years of gestation for the professional world.

She ended up dragging me along with her on her own adventures.

I was excited to see what we’d see and meet who we’d meet but I was just an ancillary in her little summer-trip-steamship. I wasn’t an active participant in what was going on around me but passively walked about being courteous and speaking when spoken to. I spent most of the time observing the new people I’d meet. They all functioned outside of the 9-5 structure and outside of what I’d consider an “average” lifestyle (in varying degrees). There were plenty of moments with little revelations that seemed to spur out of mindless chatter.

For instance, I was helping unload a container full of art books for my host’s esoteric vintage bookstore. I’d been asking about the ins and outs of the business, trying to get a grasp of what his day to day must be like and how it must play out through the years. He’d filled an entire shipping container with bookshelves packed with old, rare, one-of-a-kind art books that were out of print and each contained some awesome art. There were thousands of books and the thought of moving all of them to his new office in town between us was pretty daunting to me. When I asked him how we would do this he gave me a little smile – as if he was hoping I’d ask – he paused and quipped, “How do you eat an elephant?” Like a kid I pursed my lips and looked up into my memory bank for some possible nursery rhyme that I’d forgotten or a Wikipedia article on elephant meat. Then the obvious answer came as I returned the smile “one piece at a time.”

One piece at a time was all this man needed to turn a container full of somebody’s junk into his search for adventure – and a lifestyle for his family.

It was nice to see someone take on a task that at first glance may seem insurmountable. This didn’t really give me the roadmap I was in need of at the time. In fact, I was still struggling with how to assemble this roadmap. I figured most people just picked things they were passionate about and followed through with the steps needed to have said thing in their lives. I still didn’t know how to feel passionate about anything though. How do you know that you’re fighting for the right thing? How do you know you’re on the right path?

I was hoping to figure this out from characters that seemed to have chosen a different path than what I thought was conventional. Later on in our trip we visited my girlfriend’s cousins in Northern California. Her cousins had left their respective families along with their general disappointment with what a “normal” lifestyle was asking of them, to join a commune in Mt Shasta. When having dinner together on a couple of plastic chairs in their friend’s yard, I got to hear the whole story of how they came to this place together. It seemed like there was a conscious decision to leave the habits, people, and places of their previous homes in order to work for something more in line with what they identified with. The man told me about how he was very interested in what he’d studied in college but found work life very unsatisfying. Generally we talked a bit of how it seems people keep rather shallow unquestioned goals and blueprint their lives upon them. Like a thought process that said,

-let’s have a baby.

-Okay, what do we need to have a baby?

-A steady job.

– ON IT!

-Now that we got the house and the baby, we could use a hot tub.

-Let’s work hard so we can get a hot tub.

-ON IT!

…and so on, with no regard for a higher meaning or maybe a desire to tackle on some bigger problems drawn in their life schematic. So I got the chance to put forth the question, “how did you know you wanted to come here?” The man looked at me and tried thinking about it. He furrowed his brow and squinted his eyes. Then he said something pragmatic along the lines of, “well Athena was coming here and talked me into coming too. I thought about it for a little and came.”

When you spend a year or two wanting there to be a calling, wanting to have a pre-ordained destiny or just to feel a spark kindle from within that could validate your searching and give you purpose, hearing that somebody chose this fringe lifestyle for as simple a reason as his girlfriend wanting to do it (along with not being happy with what was immediately around him in regular society), can be a bit of a letdown.

I mulled over this phrase. I mulled only to get it eventually.

Wanting to receive an epiphany or to have Jesus come down and blind you with purpose is a bit selfish. You’re essentially wanting all the glory of a battle won without the struggle of learning what’s worth fighting for. You’re saying that you’re too ready – too prepared to take arms – to the point that someone else should be in charge of telling you why you’re fighting. Really, it’s wanting to be free of the burden of choice. Free of the possibility you might be wrong or that you might regret something you’ve done. Waiting for a higher calling, wanting the stars to align, biding your time till it shows you how to vindicate the millennia of apes and savages that had to evolve and withstand a history of unfathomable struggle to make way for your indecisive ass, is lazy.

I thought I’d been a little extra-inquisitive and introspective, and that this gave me a deeper appreciation or understanding of life than others. At least that’s how I justified my lack of initiative in my own life.

It was around this time that I stopped hiding from myself. I accepted the ideas I had which I’d felt were too private to share with anyone. I’d been quieting the voice asking to create life stories that could be my own, and now I did my best to bring myself to listen. I knew what it was saying. Finally, for once, simply wanting something because I did, didn’t seem like such a stupid reason. The ideas I had were pretty dramatic, they called for tying loose ends. I didn’t quite know when I’d be able to get to where I wanted to be, but I now knew how to get there – one piece at a time.

I felt that, strangely, it’s possible to hide your selfish ways behind a veil of selflessness. Growing up requires a lot of shedding off old skins and letting go of ideas you held a tight grip on. Thinking I was helping others by putting what I perceived to be their needs before my own, was one of those skins I had to molt.

Suddenly, wanting to do something in my life that didn’t have a defined end in mind, didn’t have to feel selfish. I could let myself like things and one day – dare I say – even be passionate about something. I put together a bit of a roadmap. I didn’t have to sit down and weigh the things I potentially could pursue, I had a good idea of what I wanted in the near future and what I’d like to have down the road. There wasn’t a looming feeling of watching my life go by, no more paralysis. Just the same struggles we all face in our days, but it didn’t feel so enervating when I could still tell myself I was picking away at my own little sculpture. When I’d lose faith in myself I’d take a breath and keep going. I knew that I had a degree of control over every situation I was in and that it was my job to mine it for what I was looking for.

And that’s a bit of what I did the summer after college. I learned that Earth-shattering epiphanies are overrated. How you make up your life is a conscious decision you take daily – not some alien Popsicle stick you draw from a hat with you destiny printed on it. Also, sitting around quieting your brain to find what’s right for you isn’t necessarily the way to go about finding that sort of thing. What you want, is mostly built up by you.

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22 000

22,000

that’s all I needed for a 3 bdrm 2bath dream home. A mobile home of all things, but a beautiful neighborhood, fantastic lighting, amenities included, appliances included. I don’t have large aspirations, I don’t have pipe dreams or delusions of grandeur, I wanted something simple. I don’t expect the American be handed to me, quite frankly I don’t expect anything be handed to me, I don’t wish to be lazy, I don’t wish to sit around and do nothing. I came here to work hard, save and obtain something for my hard work. You see however there is nothing to be had, there is no prize for that labor. I should work hard for what? For a moldy apartment that isn’t mine, that I should give up more than half of my salary for this piece of property I don’t even own, just so I can live somewhere, never be able to hang a picture on the wall, or paint the rooms for fear of reprisal of the owner. I should have to toil and groan for years laboring under a job that may or may not give me a one dollar raise for 10 years of labor, so that I can afford to spend a little more on food but still live in another persons home. No I am not lazy but that does not matter, it is those that work hard that get the worse deal. If I was lazy I would move into section 8 housing or apply for food stamps and never work…but what would that do…I cant sit around and do nothing its not in my nature.   When I get tired of that then what? I would find myself in a worse position as my history of being in a section 8 house and having applied and received food stamps would only further put me in a hole. I would be forever branded as a thing, a leech, a parasite of society. Not a single person would be concerned with who I am but what I look like on a piece of paper. Well why not do what they do in the movies, apply for a mortgage a loan and such. Well what they don’t say in the movies how virtually impossible that is, without a fantastic credit score, without a long credit and rental history, without a vast history of employment and any one of those disadvantages out casts the others. I have done nothing wrong, I have hurt no one to deserve this treatment. With all the money my mother had given me over the last three years just to make ends meet as no one would give me a steady job, I could have bought a house or at least this house that I saw as my only answer. I put no blame on the outside world or others but I can not find the blame in myself either. No job would allow me to buy a home. How anyone is able to do so is a great mystery to me, and in shame I find myself green with envy at the thought that there may be persons living their fairy tale lives. Perhaps it is my naiveté, perhaps my lack of world experience, it is quite possible that in truth many others feel as I do, perhaps more than I think. Still I wonder of these people who seem to have such a better life than I could ever offer my family. Is it that they were better prepared, do they know some secret that I do not, something I was never taught. I ask myself then…do they know how fortunate they are?…do they really appreciate and soak in they’re good fortune. I am stricken with anger and envy, sheer hatred, at the injustice. I blame none but I blame all, the hatred swells and I think of Eminems Rock Bottom and the lyrics play over on my mind of pulling up to someone’s lawn with guns drawn. Is this the frustration that so many “criminals” feel, perhaps at using the word criminal we alienate ourselves from the real problem…we deny that we are all in the same situation, or perhaps not all. Perhaps it is my sobriety that causes this fury. Indeed if I were a drug user or alcoholic, I would be content with my simple lot in life, I would be numb to my true despair. Some would say, how I should count myself lucky to have my wife and son in relative health, what they do not see is that the life I am giving them is a fate far worse than die, in fact to put a finer point on it is in fact a slow and painful death. Much quicker and humane would be to simply put them out of their misery with a merciful bullet or drown them in a tub…a rented tub no less, where the owners would have to clean the cold remains in order to put the home back up for rent to the next poor family of saps. Nay I ask not be handed anything, I ask only the opportunity to work hard and earn my keep, but to throw money away to make someone else that much wealthier, someone who does not even enjoy that home, someone who see’s it as nothing more than dollar value. Why should this person own this home, surely he or she owns their own home and is living in it at this moment, why then should they be awarded the luxury of an extra home they do not enjoy only to reap a profit from a poor and unsuspecting family that like the poor orphan Oliver takes the scraps that these elevated bourgeois throw them. Like a mangy street dog we eat the leftovers of those that have had their fill. It dawns on me that perhaps the very reason these houses are unattainable by the average working man is for that very purpose, to maintain the system of abuse, so that those who need nothing can take more from those that need everything. Perhaps if these heartless giants would but take only what they need their would be enough space for us all.

I am not blind to the toils of the rich either…I lived cluelessly among them all my life and I recognize that there are those who are in many ways undeserving of a piece of the pie. But to those “rich” I say we are not all bums…how dare you catalog all of us with a few bad apples. There are those that DO expect a hand out, that spend their days in the drug world, in the world of prostitution not out of necessity but out of apathy and sloth…they who achieve nothing because they despise hard work, they focus only on the satisfaction of desire. Yes I do see this as well, but I say to you I am not one of these, and there are many others like me, some short, some tall, some black, white or brown, yellow and red. Those of us who want no hand outs, who work hard, perhaps we are even as capable as those who attained ivy league education, we simply had an extra obstacle or chose family instead of the pursuit of wealth. It is happiness that we pursue however, not he happiness found at the end of a bottle, or the happiness in a pill at a club. It is to have our own space and to call it our home, where we can find shelter from the cold and uncaring world of outside, where our family can find solace in each others embrace, where a less fortunate friend of family member can find a couch to sleep on from time to time. A place we can call ours. We need not worry of a bank taking it from us, or landlord evicting us when we fall on hard times that are more often than not, out of our control…you see we are not lazy, we do not let time pass before we find another avenue of employment. The average man wishes not to rebel, wishes not to revolt, he has simple dreams and simple desire, he wishes for a home, a family movie, a chance to live in relative peace in this miserable existence we did not choose to be brought into. It is this system that makes us sick, it is this machine that causes us to begin an uprising…this malignant world that rewards only the sly and cunning, those that would trample on their fellow man…these too are white, black, brown, yellow, red, they may be well educated or born in poverty, but they have one thing in common, they are not of simple dreams, or simple needs, they want more than they can chew and worse yet they want what is yours. Is this so cut and dry and issue as I paint at times not, but more often than not it is…there is evil in this world and it has one. Power, and money are king and so long this king reign the princes of virtue and compassion have no chance to rule.

 

I am but a small voice, seedling of truth, but at times I am comforted that like the mighty sequoia, great things are born of little seeds. This is the dreamer in me, the fool, the child’s hope of a perfect world…that in truth is not even that perfect, it is simply a bit more just.

 

The truth of the world is harsh, good men are trampled down, the innocent are crushed without compassion and bad things do happen to good people.

 

On this cheerful note I end my statements.

This foolish rant over a home may seem trite…but consider that opportunities like this are few and all that I said is true, for me and many others, there is no home I will find for this amount, an amount I did not even have but would have at least tried to get, never will I have more than what I have now…how can I know this, well I just know how the world works, if you search your heart you will know it to be true. If you consider yourself safe, and disagree with what I say then you ought to consider yourself lucky, for little more than luck had anything to do with it…appreciate what you have, for it is less and less attainable as each day passes for many like me, and specifically for me.

I am without hope for hope has left this world long ago, it is why we make so many movies and books about it, because we mourn its passing. My credit like a black spot has served as a metaphor of what my life has become, an unfortunate turn of fate, that has replaced my heart with a tainted dark hole.

 

To look into my families eyes and know I can never offer them anymore than what they have…which is nothing…what have I done to deserve this, why should I be denied what so many others attain with ease. I am no less prepared and no less willing to struggle and earn, I am as every bit as intelligent but somehow I am unworthy of the simplest things. A home, a small humble plot of space, that I will only now be able to see in my dreams, and slowly even that will fade away.

Woe is me, that has lost the ability to dream.

Only nightmares have I, that are slowly becoming my reality.

 

(you as the collective audience must excuse my lack of respect for your intellect. I have not corrected grammatical mistakes, nor phrasal errors, nor have I proof read this paper in the least. Instead I opted to maintain the integrity of the speech…this is the very product of my physical self catching up with the mind as it feebly attempts to convey into writing what it thinks as it actually happens. This is a messy and unpleasant exercise akin to thinking itself. Perhaps in that sense it is true to the spirit and emotion of what I am saying…it is pure, it is honest and it is nothing short of the naked thought process shown on paper as best it can be done by mine hand. For this I apologize, I realize it must be a tumultuous ordeal to venture into my mind, but I assure you if you take the time to include empathy in your critique you will find it a truly enriching opportunity to relate as closely to another human being as possible without having actually met let alone touched this persons entity…at least that’s how I would see it, but what do I know most people think Im crazy.)

Misanthrope

12/11/13

I’ve noticed as of late that my ability to socialize has diminished, whether it be my lack of interest in mundane engagement or I’m simply a bit rusty at callous conversation. The fact I am will always remain a junkie at heart. What precisely does that entail, well lets see. One acquires/requires junk for a varied degree of reasoning, as the “inner self searchers” would call it, a coping mechanism for asocial archetypes. But really junk squanders in my opinion over 3 varying degrees of personalities. The first being the shallow, soulless types who junk finds on its own in an attempt to neutralize an otherwise dangerous sociopath, in that sense, junk is a savior of humanity. Jungian archetypes were never so prevalent in these ultra humans who spend their days fucking people over in a every sense of the word, their moral compass off by many a degree. The second junkie personality is that of the sweet innocent kitten whose heart is much too big for the BIG BAD WORLD. The first type would describe this sort in a much more rudimentary manner…useless cunt and mentality inferior. Perhaps those dropped on the head a bit much as babies but this fortuitous tragedy may have unintentionally saved them from the suffering the fate of the first sort…or worse yet the third sort, which I reluctantly place myself in at many times. This second sort are usually lovers of animals and small children, the sort that prefer victimless crimes to ones where it involves human suffering unless of course they absolutely have to or are otherwise outsmarted by the others sort and hence tricked into doing so. These poor souls are too stupid to pick something else besides heroin, they do it because it feels good and really for nothing more, and although the ever forgiving god may pardon their souls on account of their stupidity, they may never find piece in their lifetime without turning to religious fanaticism, the other opiate society provides for us poor fringe characters. Which leaves us the last sort of junkie I categorize in my glorious Heroin trinity of wild jungle animals. This is the worse sort, the misanthrope, the slightly above average intelligence, slightly above average looks, capable enough of feigning normal behavior and “fitting in” but who harbors a general disdain for all humanity being just smart enough to realize how useless and pointless their lives are but not quite able to understand the true meaning of life….ergo choosing in truly a brilliant way the inevitable choice all of us junkies eventually go for…That life is decidedly better on the scag than off, truly the only real problems one has when being a junkie revolve around it running out. Really I don’t see myself personally fitting into any one of these boots but I undoubtedly do. Heroin is a solution to a problem, the very definition of medicine, it gives meaning to this last sort, whom find a new lust for life with the junkie lifestyle, and believe me when I say that done properly it is a life style all to its own, a full time job one that defines and consumes your very nature in a sick and beautiful way knitting together all manner of cunts that on a normal basis would have nothing to do with each other. People who on more sober circumstances would rip each other apart like rabid dogs on account of their deep rooted differences, prejudices, preconceptions, race, sex, age, ideology. I suppose that’s the beauty of junk, it gives fuck all about ideology and strips everyone down to the same level of unifying conviction to one singular cause, the quest for the ultimate hit and the survival of the eternal high. Everything these nine to five types care about, furthering education, to obtain better cars better clothes, clean living and “fitting in” to accepted society seems far more survival of the fittest to me. Much more Darwinian only with a yuppie mind set in an Orwellian backdrop. You see as a junkie you expect your friends to rip you off, it be quite odd if you didn’t, no matter how many times it happens you can rest assure that within no time they would be sitting near each other rig in hand, sailing the calm seas of the SS NOD. Ah a beautiful life it would be were not for that normal world, always meddling and interfering, all those nosy self help types or worse yet those churchy folk thinking that they are doing you a favor but really it’s a about jealousy, you see they cant stand the fact that you’ve found a way to be happier than them and it didn’t cost you lifetime of hardship and strenuous effort…well maybe it did, but at least you were high most of the way. You see while those other types are trying to muster whatever pleasure they can find through their DIY Sunday, you are an invariable agent of pleasure, your brain is constantly bombarded with instant gratification, one that those “normal” types only feel for a brief three seconds post coitous in their once a moth pity fuck and even then you secretly know that they are no where close to what you strive to feel on a daily basis for as much of the day as they can handle. See most outsiders think that we junkies stay in one meditative position due to the effect of the narcotic itself, this is a common misconception, the truth is the narcotic is little more than an aid, the true magic lies in the trance like state we react to the junk, we are in a rudimentary sense praying to the god of junk, singing quietly his praise and receiving his joyous love, as the warm blanket falls from the divine point atop our cranium as it passes each nerve receptor to the ends of our toes and works its way back up again in slow waves. Junkie yoga, we are all tapping into that natural number of pain, pain of the soul, pain of the body and mind…the cure for the human condition. Perhaps this is why the Germans christened it HEROICSH…it really is heroic in that sense, our little savior in a syringe.   You see we are just like you searching for the same things, only we are more honest about it and decidedly committed to not wasting our time beating around the bush, we rather mainline the truth of existence…after all we don’t have the time to waste like you people…unlike you we’ve got junk to score, and as I said before it’s a full time business.

Ode to Kornut

Today I got lost on the way home from work and I took a detour. In reality you could say I took a detour from life. Atleast the life we pretend to lead…dont kid yourself, life is what happens in between work…however short that may be. We are so concerned with material possessions and “security” because we think that brings us happiness…well take it from someone who has had all the material possession and has also lived with nothing. There is no such thing as security and while we are so concerned with selling our lives for minimum wage or even for salary we usually forget to live. Correct me if Im wrong but life is given to us to live not to accumulate inanimate objects.

Cant say that I blame you seeing as how we have built up a system of living that is based around money…lets face it a guy cant even get a date if he dont got the dough…and women either have to find someone to depend on or fight twice as hard for the few positions available to them. Every now and then though we get a detour…from life. Today I will share with you mine. I lost on of my best friends today, in fact he was more of a brother, a crazy alcoholic, unstable brother…the kind of brother you love to death but avoid at all cost for fear of being dragged into some drunken brawl or near death experience involving a gun wielding drug dealer… but a brother just the same. Someone who quite literally took the shirt off their back to keep me warm, someone who at the very hint of me having a gloomy day would turn an hour trip into 10 mins and be on my doorstep before I even realized I was depressed. Somebody who gave and gave without expecting an ounce in return except an occasional 1am phone call that lasted well into the morning about god knows what subject. To say the least a saint, perhaps even an angel…a chubby hazel eyed tattooed angel.

Kornut taught me to never give up on my marriage, he taught me that life is a battle but it can also be fun, he taught me that if you couldn’t keep your hands up for three rounds dont even get in the ring. Kornut who would drag me out of bed at 3am to go jogging and shadowboxing in the dark…it seemed crazy at first glance but with kornut you always had the impression that their was a deeper life lesson at work…like a drunken blonde haired Mr.Miyagi. I wouldn’t always get it right away, in fact I got it only when it was too late…all the wonderful things he tried to part onto me. I know now that his time on this earth was always to be brief…you see he had already figured everything out, he just stuck around to help us guys that were stuck, stuck wondering and pondering the meaning of things. Kornut who quite literally was a jack of all trades..registered nurse, amateur chemist (mad scientist more like), glass blower, technician, mechanic, law student, gun aficionado, amazing tattoo artist and god knows what else. A wealth of knowledge in the most unsuspecting package. A true renaissance man, it would only make sense that the renaissance festival was his favorite thing of all. His next favorite thing was helping poor souls like me figure out their lives. Amazing human being….you would think a person like that would be worth staying in touch with…well after all the kindness and love I turned my back on him…for what…for life? I was always too busy or too stressed or too damn concerned with a career and keeping a car or working for a house and all the other meaningless crap we give meaning to because thats what everybody does. Well everybody is wrong.

marc palmer

He died alone, and sad and I should have been there. I should have waited on him hand and foot, I should have given him the same courtesy he would have given me…but I didn’t you see..I wanted to be like everyone else..like my parents like the status quo…who give up their heart for the almighty dollar…I couldn’t afford to have crazy friends like that so I opted to have no friends and focus on my career just like my father…and like my father I would live a miserable joyless life full of resentment and regret. Its because of this that my best friend died alone and I never got to tell him just how much he meant to me…that its because of him that Im sober, for him that I learned to value my son…my parents with all their bitching a moaning, my bosses with all their drug tests couldn’t accomplish what one very special human being did single handedly…and I do say single handedly because he shot of the index finger on his right hand, more than likely just out of boredom or to teach us some grander lesson that we are not yet ready to receive. So as I detoured to his house which i debated turning into and circled three times for fear that I would get a punch in the chest for losing touch with him for so long I was struck by the worse news Ive gotten since I can remember….I lost him. I lost my angel, our angel, the only one who loved him more than me was my wife and the only one that loved him more than her was my son, my son who he played with endlessly, who he talked with on the phone for hours because Evan refused to give the phone to me…who he lovingly called tuna for his inability to pronounce kornut.
I lost him I say but it is really the worlds loss…this ugly, greedy, disease stricken world lost one of their best…well I say the world didnt deserve him anyhow…no world that treats humans as badly as this one does deserves anyone as pure and kind hearted as him. I miss him and I was a terrible friend in the end, and I will never forgive myself…all I can hope is that if their is a heaven at the end of this hardship we call life…that he is their waiting…watching…seated across from kurt cobain and vincent van gogh, pounding drinks with Tupac and hemingway, teaching guitar solos to dimebag darryl, pissin in peoples drinks and causing general mayhem. Cuz if there is a Jesus he´s probably got a special VIP lounge for people like kornut, to have as his closest buddies and mostly to keep from scarin the general church goin crowd outta heaven. A piece of me is gone forever…hell a chunk..and I will never be the same again. Kornut I love you buddy and I miss you and I hope I can do you proud, I promise to keep up my dukes for atleast three rounds. and I am sorry I was such a shit friend, I hope I can see you again…Ill make sure to bring the vodka good buddy..and yes Ill make sure to get the biggest size they got.
RIP my brother
I´ll miss u forever
Love ya buddy….yes we´re still friends ya jackass… and we always will be

A letter to mom

“things too personal to share sometimes must be posted in the most public of forums…”

 

I came home before the sun came up for the first time, stressed tired and glad to be off for the weekend.

I got into the shower and to my sursprise evan was awake and had taken his clothes off and got into the shower with me.

He was half asleep and the only time he is docile enough to hold him.  he sat in my lap as the warm water fell upon us and i hummed a melody from childhood, a song my father had sung to me as a boy.

In that instant the universe opened itself to me and i was finally able to see how my hatred justifiable as it maybe was holding me back.

A complicated man, more than lousy father and monster of a husband when he wanted to be but that song reminded that however dim it may be now he once had a soul.

The reason I am writing this to you is for you…let me explain.

One day I will be gone, or further away and as much as we like to think our family will be as united as the partridges it is simply unrealistic.

The point I am getting to is that unlike other mothers and sons we are also peers and friends, which gives me the advantage of tapping into a wealth of knowledge that a mother could not give only an older friend….you get an inside look at you own parenting and a glimpse inside the mind of your children’s deepest crevices.

What am I leading into…

For the first time in my life, I received validation that i had been seeking for over a decade..the confirmation from the only human being that mattered to me in this particular issue…when you for the first time affirmed that I/we had endured a “lousy father”….I want you to understand deeply how important and significant it was for me to here.  I point this out to you because in your mind it might not have been transcendental, maybe in your head it was already a fact that you assumed all of us understood but would not vocalize for fear of creating an affirmation that would lead to resentment and disrespect toward him.  In reality,  ¡the only thing I ever wanted from you and you specifically was that..confirmation, approval and support that my complaints and sorrow was not unrecognized, for although my wife, friends, stepfather, relatives all talked openly and agreed with me…the only persons opinion that truly mattered was yours because only you knew the truth, you were there.

For the first time in my life you took my side, our side, the children’s side, like the mothers you read about who defend their kids against wild animals or moving trains.  When i finally received that approval, my fight was ended and a great burden melted off my heart.  Inside beneath he frustration and resentment was love, for my father.  You see once you publicly spoke the words, the shift of energy changed within our family.  Now I can begin the long road of learning how to accept and love who he is or was inside without letting the monster that possesses him hurt me or my family.

I know it is confusing to understand, but I know as you think about it more and more you will…I write to you so you can place another page in the manual for successfully rasing children inna sickened world and amoral society(no easy task).  What may have been simple and unnecessary to you was life changing for me, and likewise will be to my siblings.

So thank you, the rest is up to me but never think we are independent that we must fight our own battles, we are alone in our quests true, but we are also connected in more ways than i care to imagine, and something you do on any given day with a complete stranger could have a non linear effect onto one of us, I try and live my life this way, with the beauty and magic in every moment, but had you not had the bravery to take back your children and not just half heartedly but full by putting your very life on the line, I would never had been able to continue on with my life without passing on my hurt and pain onto my son.

So you see we fight our own battles but we all fight the war together.

and when it is all over we reunite and celebrate with our loved ones, in a place that knows no pain or anguish, no judgement or prejudice, no strife and grief, no death or illness.

But like you taught me…nothing worthwhile is without sacrifice…

The Plan

The plan I’ve had since graduation has changed a couple of times. 

It may have started as simply wanting to travel, or see other parts of the world. The world itself is probably one of the greatest teachers out there, probably better than libraries stocked with books and ladders to reach them. I stopped myself from doing that because I felt I needed more of a mission than the belittled “travel” idea. After that I think it changed to learning massage therapy in Thailand. Mainly because I think it’d be really cool to go to Thailand and I could also fulfill my long-held dream of sitting in silence alongside bald headed Buddhists in a monastery. After working for some time to earn money for that trip the idea changed once again as that trip felt a bit shallow and unsatisfying before even embarking on it. I didn’t want what I did to be perceived as a “vacation” from whatever norm my life follows but rather part of what I want my life to be. So after talking with a friend who feels somewhat similarly, being scheduled to graduate from his university in July, I drew up the current plan. On which I’ve been sitting for some time now.

My friend, Nick, is planning to bike his way from London to Singapore. I told him I’d be interested in joining him. This is the kind of trip I’d been hoping for. I’m not necessarily a fan of bicycles, I’d have preferred the idea of walking the distance, but a bike will be more practical for covering such long distances. I think it’s a natural desire in all of us to do something of this sort. I mean, Che Guevara famously did his tour of South America, and even my International Finance professor went on his own journey across the US via greyhound buses. Of course, Forrest Gump did his own run too and everyone made a big deal of that. Che wanted to see or study the situation people faced across Latin America, or  something of that sort was his justification post trip. My prof just wanted some time to think and see this country which he only knew part of, while bothering his friends to give him a place to stay- this was also the time he took to decide whether to go to the corporate world or stay in academia. And Forrest, well, he was retarded he didn’t have a reason and that baffled people into drawing their own conclusions and even following him. Which kinda says something about people wanting to believe in something, even if it isn’t founded upon anything earth-shattering in the first place.

Anyhoo, the plan is to bike across Europe, at the very least. There are issues with crossing the Middle East which keep me from joining Nick all the way to Singapore. Not to mention the possibility of reaching Southeast Asia in their monsoon season and being screwed either way. He plans to leave in early August, and hasn’t given me a path which to put a schedule on for our trip. We plan to camp and use cheap hostels or couch surf our way through. This also involves learning a bit of survival and a lot of bicycle repair. I wasn’t satisfied with just going on a trip without creating anything from it, though I should be ready to go on the trip for the mere sake of it. So, I plan on vlogging/blogging about our progress and raising money for a food distribution related cause. Probably the World Food Programme, but that’s not decided yet. Neither is the rest of the trip. I have no ticket bought and no logistics planned, yet this is the plan. 

Post-trip, assuming I feel as I do now, I will return to take the GRE and apply to grad schools. While gearing my career to working with a humanitarian or non-governmental organization. For now though, I need to raise money for this trip and for the food distribution related cause. 

A post on not posting

I haven’t posted anything to this site aside from the initial introductory post directing future posts and a post declaring African Americans should relax.

For the longest time I argued with myself as to what was appropriate, then eventually I got lazy. Now I’ve resorted to blatantly posting about how I don’t know what to post about, but thus have found something to post about and am now posting it..post…. A few minutes ago I thought of something profound to say here, now it’s on the edge of my mind and I can’t bring it to jump to the fingertips so I’ll just write something profound I meant to write to myself in hopes of later passing it off as some of the utter genius I shit out daily. I was thinking about how we don’t have enough time in the world to express our every intricacies or fully explain our individual paths that lead to the comprehension of each other’s words and actions. We resort to a few thought out sentences or blog posts to encapsulate how we feel today. Then I laughed in my burgundy leather chair with my old wooden pipe in hand as I realized that’s a high-brow way of saying “never judge a book by its cover” or the pre-colonial US version, “not until you’ve walked a thousand miles in a man’s moccasins can you imagine the smell.” Which isn’t really what I meant but still links to the idea that words are flawed.

And we express ourselves in words. I guess that’s why I like them so much. The difference in a written message can be heard, or seen I guess, in the small addition of a tail to the period. For the reader to get a fair look at what we’re trying to say, we’ve got all these rules agreed upon; I don’t know how to use a semicolon. Though I heard it’s not too hard; nothing’s too hard. Except for properly using these stabby things- what are they called? Hyphens. So we practice them daily, or regularly, so that we can write that sentence where nothing is gratuitous.Where every letter’s shape and white space between dotted I’s is meant to give a message deeper than the most succinct paraphrasing by the eventual cliffnotes dilettante. Similarly, we listen, emulate, and take up other’s vocal patterns. So that when the time comes we’ll have the right words. Said in the right way. That will be just enough to let the person on the the receiving end of a phone or standing with one foot out the door and the other turning away from you,  know just how much they mean to you, or enough to get them to turn back, and hang on. Language is fun.

Now I remember what I wanted to say. It was just a remark at how fitting it is for the blog I wanted to use to post about my ideas and plans is void from any. Except for the Nicolas Cage Collection, this is something the people need, and a good plan. I have had plans in mind but have never posted them, much as how I’ve never gotten them to be real. This blog is a good reflection then, I suppose, of the progress I’ve made towards them so far. That’s a depressing thought to close on though, so I’ll say this: I’m going to post what my plans are tomorrow, even if they change suddenly few seconds post-posting on posting a post in the future about plans I have.

relax….

relax….

….nigga

The Rationality of Irrationality

It is a common error to confuse spirituality with religion.  The bill of rights and declaration of independence clearly differentiate between the spiritual and religious.  The US government is forbidden to establish any religion, lest it impair the freedom of the people; yet these same documents presume that governments authority derives essentially from spiritual principles.

In fact the founders of the worlds great religions would be shocked at the profoundly unspiritual deeds wrought in their names throughout history-much that would make a heathen shudder.  Force always distorts truth for it sown self serving purpose.  Over time, the spiritual principle upon which religions are based become distorted for expedient ends, such as power, money, and otherworldliness.  Whereas that which is spiritual is tolerant, religiosity is commonly intolerant; the former leads to peace_the latter to strife, blood-shed, and pious criminality.  There remains, however, buried within every religion, the spiritual foundation from which it originated.  Like religions, entire cultures are weakened when the principles upon which they are based are obscured or contaminated by false interpretation.

Force often relies on rhetoric, propaganda, and specious argument to garner support and disguise underlying motivations. One characteristic of truth, though, is that it needs no defense, it is self -evident.  That “all men are created equal” requires no justification or rhetorical persuasion.  That it is wrong to gas people to death in concentration camps is self-evident; it requires no argument.  The principles upon which true power is based do not require vindication, as force invariably does_there are always endless arguments as to whether force is justified or not.

Many political systems and social movements begin with truth, but as time goes on, they become co-opted by self-seekers and end up relying increasingly on force until they finally fall in disgrace.  The initial appeal to communism was idealistic humanitarianism, as was that of the union movement in the US, until it became a refuge for petty politicians.

Todays truth:

We must share our knowledge with other people.  We all have abilities far beyond what we use.  Some of us find out sooner than others.  That you should check your vices before you come to this point.  If you do not, you carry them over with you to your  next life.  Only we can rid ourselves… of the bad habits that we accumulate when we are in physical state.  The Masters can not do that for us.  If you choose to fight and not rid yourself, then you carry them over into another life.  Only when you decide that you are strong enough to master the external problems, then you will no longer have them in your next life.

We must also learn not to just go to those people whose vibrations are the same as ours.  It is normal to feel drawn to somebody who is on the same level that you are.  This is wrong.  You must also go to those people whose vibrations are wrong… with yours.  This is the importance… in helping…these people.

We are given intuitive powers we should follow and not try to resist.  Those who resist will meet with danger.  We are not sent back from each plane with equal powers.  Some of us possess powers greater than others, because they have been accrued from other times.  Thus people are not all created equal.  But eventually we will reach a point where we will all be on the same level.  But only if…