The Papers

Forgive

2011-03-07T19:42:00.000-08:00

Yesterday was Forgiveness Sunday. In a vespers service after Liturgy, the parishioners gather in the temple and, after some prayers and hymns, proceed to prostrate before each other, and ask forgiveness. Each person, in turn, bows before each of the others, young and old, new converts and cradle-born. Even the priest himself will fall to the ground before little Timmy, and the middle-aged matriarch before her teenage son, and ask for forgiveness for wounds they’ve inflicted, known and unknown:

“Please forgive me if I have harmed or offended you in any way…”

A great procession is formed. Even visitors, people not yet Orthodox or only interested or there only for the food, can participate. It’s strange, I know, especially in a culture as laid-back as ours. People ask forgiveness, though many seemingly having done nothing to the person they bow before, but all put their foreheads to the ground with the knowledge that each of their sins, have affected the world in a way unknowably profound, and sometimes frighteningly direct. Like the reverse of Pay it Forward.

I got into my truck after the service yesterday raw-eyed and tired and convinced that the last hour or two had been the most real thing I had ever been apart of as a human being. We embraced one another, and people thanked me for apologizing and for accepting their apology. The deacon with salt-and-pepper hair pulled me close and whispered in my ear his regrets and his joys in knowing me. The young woman I had talked to, then avoided, then thought badly about, then continued avoiding, listened sincerely as I tried to express my own trespasses against her. A guy my age who always stayed cloistered in the corner during services and never came to meals, the same guy who I judged and silently scoffed countless times, stood before each person present and asked for forgiveness for his distance, fear, and neglect.

The work of forgiveness, after all had met face-to-face, had begun. I realized that I had never before put my back to such a hefty task. I stood listening to the prayers and hymns beforehand and slowly became aware of the great spiritual debt I’ve incurred at the expense of others. I choked on the immensity, the impossibility, of the job. To forgive and be forgiven. Why, I could spend years learning just to forgive myself! I’d need another lifetime or two for the work I’d have to do with others!

And to think, in the early Church, people confessed their sins aloud, and in front of all. I bet all those saints are thanking God that there’s two thousand years between them and me, otherwise, it might have taken that long when my turn to stand at the front came.

In this great, complicated, sputtering life I’ve grown used to my own failures and, I guess, half-expected others to accommodate them as well. This blog, sadly is a glaring example. In six years, I’ve posted nearly 200 entries on The Papers. They’ve contained many things. Anger, suspicion, sarcasm, lighthearted observations, despair, incoherence, recreational vehicles. There are some things that I regret writing just as there are things I regret doing. I’ve considered deleting this blog entirely and striking from the record the dawdling, wayward record of a boy wading through the muck and blackness that he thought was the outside world, but was really just his own flooded and darkened soul. But, just as it does no good to repress and avoid the harm I’ve done to someone in the past, I don’t see that removing The Papers from the historical record will accomplish anything redemptive.

Instead, I want to ask for your forgiveness.

Please, please, if in these last six years of writing, I have wounded you; if I have scrawled out something that caused you confusion, or sadness, or anger; if I have hurt you when I described things low and vile as if they were glorious and beneficial; if I have caused you to doubt the True God; if you were tempted to throw virtue in the gutter as I often did; if I have singled you out in any way; if I deceived you into thinking that my life was right, was true, was directed or suggested that others’ were flat, or misguided, or immature; if my pride, even in this very post, works to project to you a Benjamin Dolan that is not a child of God, that is not utterly dependent on great, heaping servings of Grace just as a kidney patient needs dialysis; if any of my various transgressions or evil thoughts or wayward intentions has somehow whispered its way from the shambles of my soul and stained, somehow, your own…forgive me. I fall down before you with as little melodrama as possible. Forgive me. Seventy times seven. I’ll probably need more than that, but start there, if you will.

Oh, I forgot to tell you about the best part. When the priest asks for little Timmy’s forgiveness and is on the ground in front of him, Timmy, just as every one will in turn, reaches down to his spiritual father, takes the broad shoulders in his small hands and, while he helps the man to his feet, says:

“Father, God forgives and I forgive.”

And mothers speak this to their daughters and daughters whisper it to their mothers, strangers say it to strangers, friends to enemies, wives to husbands and brothers to sisters. I hope, also, that it isn’t too far fetched or strange, for readers to say these words to a nervous, delinquent blogger.

Thanks.

Thinking on a Mountain

2010-09-11T21:41:00.001-07:00

We shouldered our packs and started trudging up the mountain, shaded by aspens and spruces and cooled by the little creek that trickles there. Occasionally we passed slower hikers, backpackers mostly, heading further into the deep folds of the Sangre de Cristos before the real cold hits. I can already feel it coming. I woke up last night in the RV, which was four thousand feet down the mountain, and I was cold. Way up there the air seemed even more frighteningly autumnal.

When we reached the little wooden sign that humbly harkens the entrance into the Pecos Wilderness, we turned right and kept along the Raven's Ridge trail, a trail I had trod several times in the last few months with the group of kids I shepherd at a local summer-camp. The little path stays along the saggy barbed-wire fence that marks the boundary of the wilderness area and wanders up the backbone of the mountain. It was right there, about two hundred feet from that wooden sign, that my young summer-camp wards usually found that they absolutely did not have the will to go on any further, and though it was 10:30 AM it seemed an appropriate time to eat lunch, because if they had to take another step that wasn't downhill or in the direction of the smelly 15-passenger van that bore them to this alpine hell, well, they were going to keel over and wither next to a nearby clump of angry looking mushrooms. Of course, being the compassionate-type of summer-camp counselor, I ignored them. And when they asked if we had to go much further before lunch, I answered simply, “Yes.”

But today was a mid-September Saturday, and summer-camp had long been over and the sweet, intense freedom of those hot days had laid down for a nine month nap. I found myself now accompanied only by two adults and noticed that the conversation was tending towards '70's era film and worthwhile novels, instead of video games and inappropriately funny jokes about noisy bodily functions. The only whining noises I heard were the grey jays squeaking overhead, waiting for us to drop a tortilla chip. No one was talking about their aching feet, or their pounding head, or their failing legs, or their dad's rifle. Amazing. I relished for a moment the company of my peers, and considered how much lighter my pack was when it wasn't weighed down with thirty-four pairs of eyes glaring and grasping at my jugular vein.

The first lookout was achieved in what seemed like seconds. We sat for a while and talked about birds, because there were lots of birds. Birds were shooting across the ravine below us and sailing up invisible currents to points higher than our strained eyes could see. There were chipmunks, too, which were bold little boogers who didn't seem to mind getting cracked on the head with a well-aimed pebble. The grey jays finally showed up and loomed in the branches of the spruce near us, probably casting lots for who would get the first taste of salami. We sat on some rough rocks that shone because of the micah flakes. We talked about Jeremiah Johnson. I never had to tell either of my comrades to sit down, or to stop throwing things, or to apologize to the person they just smacked with their walking stick. I never had to listen closely to make sure Jana and Chris weren't discussing something inappropriate, something that I might have to mention to their parents. Nope, no“quit its”or“don'ts”or“in a second's.”We probably sat there for nearly an hour and a half.

We kept on hiking after that nice rest, just a few minutes further up the mountain that only a handful of kids had been able to conquer this summer. The trail becomes steeper and eventually leads you to Deception Peak and its brother, Lake Peak. However, maybe five hundred feet from that first lookout is another nice spot, a rock scree on the opposite slope of the ridge. From here a partial view of Santa Fe is achieved, and we could see the Jemez Mountains and the little villages to the north of our city.

And what I've noticed about this rock scree, though I've only visited it a couple times now and with very different company, is that, whether they're ten or twenty-four, whether they've got $20 or $20,000, whether their parents woke them up this morning or their parents live three states over, a person must sit down on those big rocks and stare out over the tops of the evergreens and aspens at familiar pieces of the city below. They must grow silent and their gaze will only be broken, but for a second, by the movement of a little rodent below. And whether a person deals in business cards or report cards, they might think for a moment of the things that aren't with them on top of this mountain. A person might look north-west and think of the apple trees bending in exhaustion in a little valley in Central Washington, waiting eagerly for a wayward young man to relieve them of their load. A person might consider Denver, beyond those low, curving mountains to the north, and Texas at their back, boiling in the late summer sun. A person might wonder at the whereabouts of a former lover, or the health of a grandparent. Up there, it seems like everything, every last detail of a person's life, is visible in all its minutia and every complication is somehow clear and as approachable as a math problem after a moment of epiphany.

A person might begin to realize that the sun above them is so warm and the rock below them is so cool and that they are just another member of the billions of tiny, spasmodic creatures that crawl around in the great terrestrial sea of mountains and valleys so vast that they could never climb enough to see all of them like they can from their place here in this scree on the side of Raven's Ridge. When that thought comes into their heads, it is only right that they think next about the one Person, the only One that can never be seen from any altitude but begs us to keep trying, to keep climbing down, down from our inaccessible heights. Thoughts like these often occur in wilderness. Smallness, longing for true humility and understanding. They come not as miserable shocks like they might at the dinner table or when the phone call ends with a person's girlfriend. These thoughts come gently through the trees, quietly and, sitting there calmly on the rock scree, a person is ready for them, invites them, even, and meets them in neutral territory a little closer to God and a little further from man.

And, whether a person's favorite TV show is Degrassi or Dexter, such clear vision certainly flows into other sweet thoughts, because when a person's behaved them self and stayed away from Carrie, who gets them in trouble, and John, who only talks about poop, then a person thinks its only right that, in this ecstatic moment of clarity and understanding of a Higher Order, they should get Baskin Robbins as a reward for being so painfully and perfectly good, because they never get Baskin Robbins except after these really hard hikes and we've been sitting here quiet long enough.

"Ben, can we get a sweet treat today?"

There's nothing like the sounds of the mountains.

Lessons from Other People's Pasts

2010-07-05T20:45:00.000-07:00

On top of one of the canyon walls near Cañones, New Mexico a city once stood looking over the river and the canyons it cut. I imagine the people who lived there predated any boot print or influenza-like cough. Their homes were built from over-sized bricks hewn from a soft, volcanic stone resembling pumice. They cut wonderfully circular holes in the rocks for putting things in, I guess, or just to prove to easily-excited 19^th century white people that circles weren't invented simply for controlling an iPod. They had pots and jars and other pot-like jars. Somehow they had enough water to sustain a small town despite the nearest source flowed in the canyon floor, at the bottom of a steep slope covered in sand. They hunted with arrows. They probably watched the sunset.

In case you were wondering how I developed such a knack for mapping out ancient cultures, well, I'll just say that I could have minored in Anthropology had I taken two more courses.

Here's more: the tribe that lived there doesn't anymore. How do I know? Well, I've ruled out the possibility that the tribe leaves very early each morning after toppling each house into little more than piles of bricks. It's just not a realistic lifestyle. Why? Well, the only place to get something decent to eat is Bode's, a little gas station with what I hear are top-notch burritos, and that place is closed sometimes. What do they eat when it's closed, huh? In fact, I'd like to propose the theory suggesting that they came to leave their beautiful city atop the canyon wall when, years ago, Bode's closed for a month of remodeling. Of course, at that point they had long forgotten how to hunt and had grown fat off green chile and bean burritos. They were without options. Imagine spending all morning pushing your entire town to the ground, shattering all your pottery, and driving for miles down a pot-holed highway to show up at your only source for food and find a sign saying something to the effect of “Sorry, will be closed until August for improvements”? If they didn't flee for fear of starvation, they most certainly did out of heartbreak. This story seems, at first glance, to be another sad tale of modern civilization choking the life out of a native people.

But they didn't die! Oh no! They stood near the locked glass door of Bode's—children crying, dogs whining, women pulling at their whiskers—and the chief stood before them on the curb and spoke in a language mostlyinaudible to the European ear. He inspired them with his calm words in their time of distress. He told stories of their elders, of the time when they fashioned sharp rocks and attached them to sticks as a way to slay a running deer, of the time when Bill George's house fell (before they were knocking the city down each morning) and the whole town worked together to rebuild it in a night and Bill George was a only teased a bit for his misshapen bricks. He told the story of his great-grandfather who had grown tired of tramping down into the canyon each day for water and so, after a late-night epiphany, had developed a water pump system that would make the city a veritable floating garden. Did he give up after the candy bar fundraiser only raised $38 when $15,000 was needed? No! He just kept walking down in that canyon for water! He wasn't going thirsty! Not him! And just like his great-grandfather, he wasn't going to just wither here beneath the fickle shade of the Philips 66 awning! They would learn new ways of survival. They would struggle and grow and find a new land, one flowing with food and drink, one worthy of every man and woman of the tribe.

They forgot their city-on-high, their creek shaded by trees and wild roses on the canyon floor below. They took with them only the clothes on their backs. They left behind the beautiful vistas and the sweet summer evenings watching the young New Mexico sun fall below the mesas to the west. One teen went back for the Walkman he stashed under a tree near his family's brick pile, but the rest began marching down the highway. A mass exodus, a trail of wonder and fear.

Years later, as their city lies calmly waiting their eventual return, the people of the ill-fated tribe are alive and well. They've developed new skills. People flock to see their new homeland. Some leave with riches only to be dreamed of.

And if you come to visit me sometime, we'll walk the trail of this tribe. We'll go to their abandoned township, we'll drink from the little creek that quenched their forefathers' thirst and we'll eat a burrito from Bode's that filled the stomachs of the ancients. Most especially, we'll go to the place where these people have built a new life and, if you're here on a Tuesday, the blackjack buy-in is only $5 and the first round of beers is on the house.

If all goes well we, too, will leave with our pockets and our hearts filled with the abundant riches of a tribe tested and hardened by the potholes and remodelings of history.

A Letter of Apology

2010-06-19T10:53:00.000-07:00

Dear CONSISTENCY and his child, ROUTINE,

I've spent many years and countless breaths running from both of you, most especially ROUTINE, who seemed to me so obviously evil, so blatantly backwards, that it behooved me simply to go wherever he was not and to do the things that I knew would anger him. I took jobs that would prevent me from ever seeing either of you, working late into the night and returning home to beer or bed, waking the next day at an irregular time, and going about my day quite randomly and with only my emotions as a guide. Only a couple weeks after graduating from college I abandoned our already shaky relationship and fled to New Mexico, where you certainly did not find me. I hitchhiked here and there. I met many people then said goodbye. I slept in abandoned lots in Kansas, in basement rooms and old apartments in Washington, in tents along rivers, in an old RV in California, in an Arizona monastery, in a driveway in Denver, on a skinny bunk bed, and in a new RV in Oklahoma and Texas. I've driven miles and miles and miles and I know that I can always stay ahead of you two, because you're slow, and predictable, and reluctant. In my head I've stirred the mental pot simply so as to avoid even thinking like you. New ideas and plans and moralities clicked in and out of my brain like cars at a busy traffic signal: some stopped, some sped through, but all moved on eventually.

Don't think I haven't noticed your ever-growing relationships with some of my friends. I've often scorned and judged them as they sit down to dinner with you each night, or take you to friends' houses on the weekends. Me? I've been spending time getting to know TRANSIENCY. He's got a friend, too, that he calls EXPERIENCE. You know them, I'm sure. They cuss about you all the time. TRANSIENCY was a little suspicious to me at first but every time I started to get down on him he called this gal EXPERIENCE and she came over with lusty curves and cigarettes and new ideas and all of my senses were lit up and time and time again I got that itch, and I started to think about you two, CONSISTENCY and ROUTINE, and with a little wine in my gut I quietly regretted allowing either of you ever to trick me.

But that guy TRANSIENCY never stops. He never rests. On a hike we might see a beautiful flower and he wants to move on after only a minute because he thinks there's a waterfall worth seeing around the bend. And when we get to the waterfall, which is also very beautiful, EXPERIENCE sets her camera to the sepia tone setting and she takes thirty-four pictures of the sun beams coming through the water. They never stop talking, bantering on about the closeness of nature and how one must be detached and removed from the material world. I am the only one that sits. They each tell a story about times in which they were in beautiful places, then they each tell more stories trying to top the other's. We leave rather quickly as there is a party we told someone we'd attend that night, and EXPERIENCE wants to upload one of the photos to Facebook.

All I wanted to do was pause and spend time with that beautiful flower.

They're relentless, these two. They slap me on the back when they see that I'm waning. They hand me a beer when I'm shuffling my feet in the corner at a party. I found out some time ago that TRANSIENCY and EXPERIENCE are in love. However, every time I've wanted, I sleep a night with EXPERIENCE and she gives herself to me in a way that I begin to think I possess her. But in the morning she always leaves. And when I awake and find her gone, I'm off again chasing her. Some months ago I realized that I would never catch her, that she was TRANSIENCY's girl. She's nice to be with, though. She has such a wonderful fragrance and her body yields to you in the moment.

As far as I've run, as many nights as I've wallowed in filth and pleasure and ignored your silent knocking, you've never left my mind CONSISTENCY. I tasted it in early mornings in the orchard, when the cold air wrapped around my knuckles and when I heard the familiar calls from the other pickers echo from down the row. You got a few words in at St. Anthony's when, in the pre-dawn services, the monks sounded out a foreign but sweet ritual. Though I don't think you were anywhere near Denver at the time, I could feel your presence each night as I lit my lamp and read the words of Christ and the Fathers and Mothers who have followed after Him.

They talk about you. Two thousand years of Christian voices sing your praises. A Russian ascetic and a bearded monk in California and scores of others somehow know you and know you well, and all seem to suggest that you are one of the most important allies as we work out our spiritual lives. I had no idea you spoke Russian.

And to top it off, they also talk about my old pals TRANSIENCY and EXPERIENCE. They mentioned all the things that were really rubbing me the wrong way about the pair. And they don't call EXPERIENCE by her pet name, but by her real name: DISSATISFACTION. Only TRANSIENCY and his crowd, apparently, call her EXPERIENCE. Actually, I've come to find out that one of your friends is named EXPERIENCE, sometimes your refer to her as TRUE EXPERIENCE just to be clear. But she's so quiet and modest and unimposing! How could I have ever met her? That small girl in the corner at church each Sunday? She didn't seem too talkative or exciting, so I just let her be. Turns out that she is TRUE EXPERIENCE. Who knew?

Well, I'm still spinning from my extended time with TRANSIENCY and his girl. When I think of them they make me a bit nauseous though, I'll have to admit, I still sometimes long for that woman at night. I know that you and ROUTINE can't hang out with those two stumblebums. But, if you can forgive my hateful words and deeds towards you over the last few years, would you and ROUTINE come visit me sometime and maybe stay over for a while? I'd like to talk with you some, not so much to get things straight but to keep things straight. When you guys are around my mind settles and I'm able to see things more clearly and simply. Ever since I stopped hanging around with those other two losers I've been a little lonely, and I've had a hell of a time trying to get ahold of you guys. I'm begging you. I can't stand the thought of living this life without you.

I'll be waiting. You know where I live; I'm off of work every day at 6:00. After I water the garden I'll sit outside and have some dinner, and I sure hope you'll come. If nothing else, I'll see you at church this weekend. Maybe after a while your friend EXPERIENCE can come over too, you know, when I get things sorted out a bit more. I'm sure you've got plenty of people for me to meet. And, to be honest, I'm a little scared.

Love,

Benjamin

Things change and people become confused.

2010-06-04T21:20:00.000-07:00

It's been a two months since my last post, I understand that. Don't be mad. Once again, I have been treating the blog badly. If you are not used to my swings and slumps by now, well, you can stop coming here. I can't blame you, of course, but if you leave, that'll be about 14% of my readership gone. After this last dry spell, you may actually be the only one left who even remembers that this site exists.

I return to this blog mostly because it was mentioned to me by my friend Steve, who is tall and a graduate of Stanford and knows many things. He said, “You are one hell of a writer, Benjamin Austin Dolan.” This proves that they must not do a lot of critical reading at Stanford these days. Too much brainy work. I think he's mostly used to reading technical manuals about the innermost workings of the human mind or the stuff that makes up the universe or bicycle cranks.

He went on to say, after the above-mentioned flattery, that my last post, “We're from There,” was the most interesting. Now, I may, after all, be a grad-school drop out, but one thing I remember from my short stint in post-secondary thought-weaving is that one should never, ever use the word “interesting” when describing anything. Like, “George Orwell's sopping, lethargic description of the Burmese jungle is interesting...” or “It's very interesting that ideology, in a Marxist system, is unavoidably the currency of power...” These sentences would have made my bookish and skinny lit crit professor reach desperately into a desk-drawer for her emergency supply of saltines, for use only when students do stupid things like say something is “interesting.” It's like an engineering student starting a paper on electricity by saying, “The study of electricity is scientific. Thus, through scientific inquiry must we approach the study of electricity.”

(However, I strongly encourage the use of these phrases when looking for puffy filler in an undergraduate paper. “Interesting” allows you to use a whole bunch of proper nouns and long, blurrily-defined adjectives to produce a hefty sentence that really, in all reality, says nothing that is original or useful to the world. But, after all, an undergraduate education is neither of those things to begin with.)

But, Steve, my friend, though you've done the unthinkable, I will not think poorly of you. I've already embarrassed you enough by quoting your misguided praise. You're right though, my last post was different, in these ways: it had been seen by peers, edited, redrafted, edited again, redrafted, picked over, hated, redrafted, forgotten, redrafted again. I don't find it odd that the first polished post I published on my website in four years made people go, “Hey, what the...this isn't the normal acidic pile of rotting innards we're used to!”

Look, don't get upset. I'll start rolling out the filth again. That last post was just a passing fancy, a pre-prepared piece that bought my some time with the ol' Ben Papers publishing house staff. Believe me, those people are ruthless. A deadline every two months? How should a man with my schedule accommodate such an aggressive timeline? Between slapping the snooze button for thirty minutes, eating mustard sandwiches, and rolling top-notch cigarettes, even the most organized man could barely find time to blink. And I am not, after all, the most organized man. I'm close though. Fifth in the U.S., I bet. Maybe top twenty worldwide.

To catch you up, briefly, with the things that have happened since March 26, 2010.

--I was baptized into the Orthodox Church, after a year as a catechuman, on April 3, 2010, the Saturday before Pascha (Easter). I was given the name Anthony. The church has become, as you might have guessed, a huge part of my life but, to be honest, I have no idea how to approach this experience in writing. Besides, if I wrote about it, you might again be upset by the quality and substance and I'd get an email saying something was “interesting.” I think I'll stick with what I know: fluff.

--On May 5th I abandoned Denver, drove the Tiger to Texas, piddled there for a few days, then drove West again to New Mexico, landing in Santa Fe on May 11th . I plopped the RV in it's spot and I've been staring at the trees there ever since. I'll be in Santa Fe, God willing, until September, though maybe longer.

--I planted a garden: five tomato plants, four pepper plants, a squash plant, basil and oregano. I lost a pepper plant to pneumonia and I think one of the tomato plants has mono. I recognize the symptoms—it's losing weight, doesn't seem to want to move, and it's been missing its appointments. I'm hoping that, when the mountain nights are consistently in the upper fifties, I'll get some growth. Either that, or I'll need some Vicadin for the little guy.

--Next week summer camp starts. Also, another friend, Chester, begins his work in the forest east of town next week, too.

So, now that you're back in the groove, I'll be able to proceed from here with the typical eye-melting spittle that we all have come to love so much.

As Buzz Lightyear and Tim often say: “To infinity, and beyond!”

P.S. If you haven't visited my mom's blog, you really should. She's more consistent than me, much funnier, and includes pictures and recipes. In fact, I'm unsure if I should tell you about her blog, as there'd be no reason for you to come back here. Anyways, the link is in the upper corner, under Places I Go Sometimes.

We're From There

2010-03-26T13:32:00.000-07:00

I submitted this piece recently for an assignment in a non-fiction writing class. The assignment required us to write a short essay centered on a single idea: "sense of place." Not sure if I succeeded, and I've yet to get the grade from the professor.

As I watched Hayes Carll stand alone on stage in a faceless bar surrounded by warehouses and dimly lit streets in northern Denver, each passing song further convinced me that he understood my plight, my rootlessness, and my inability to locate home. Indeed, I've never forgotten his enigmatic response to an interviewer’s inquiring, especially in a genre that sings mostly of heart break and hard times, as to how he had much of a musical story coming from our well-to-do suburban Houston community:

“Well, we all got problems.”

I turned that phrase over in my mind while standing in line to meet him after the concert, pondering how close Hayes and I were, though we had never technically met. We tread the same blacktop as children. I played with his younger brother. I'd been in his parent’s house and played his very own Sega Genesis. There wasn’t a single dastardly woman he sang about, in my estimation, that had played his Sega Genesis.

I took his outstretched hand with a knowing confidence.

“Hi Hayes. Hey, I just wanted to introduce myself...”

Hayes was a tall man, with big, pointed cowboy boots. He wore a plaid shirt and blue jeans. He had a full beard and hair that hung down to his chin; his eyes were small and reserved and his smile was polite and humble. He nodded a lot. He looked over my shoulder as if he was counting the number of petitioners he'd have to field before the night would end. I spoke louder. He bent down to hear me better.

“Yeah, I'm Ben Dolan, I grew up on Slash Pine.” I thought this would surely bring fireworks or cause him to break into verse. There were maybe only twenty families on the block; we were like brothers. Maybe he'd ask me to go on tour with him. Our band could be called the “Slash Pine Kids” or something.

“Oh yeah?” he said, manufacturing emotion, it seemed. “What'd you say your name was?”

A little thrown-off, I told him the whole story. He listened intently, smiled warmly, and shook my hand again.

“Well, it isn't often you meet someone from there, man. Glad you came to the show.”

And with that I was shuffled incredulously past the merchandise table.

I became very depressed, like a pirate who had followed the map but found the treasure already dug up. Hayes knew what those tall pines looked like at sundown. He knew what the street felt like on your knees when you fell of your bike. He knew how many passes it would take to make a touchdown in the field in the middle of our neighborhood. I began to doubt that these memories were anymore than non-descript images of everyone else's American childhoods. I stood pouting under the bar's orange lights for a while, watching the grovelers smile and take his picture. I realized that I had been stupid to think he might know something about me, that we might share something. We were not brothers. Hell, we weren’t even acquaintances. I loped from the bar and lit a cigarette in self-pity.

Of course, Hayes stood casually near the door, smoking a Marlboro Light. This only made it worse: I'd have to meet again with that same indifference reminding me I was a satellite orbiting the rest of the world, distant but not free. As much as I didn't want to further my disillusionment, I felt that we couldn't just stand there, the only two suburbanites sucking on cigarettes in the empty silence of the sleeping brick warehouses all around.

“How's Jon doing, man?”

“He's doing good,” Hayes said, looking at me kindly, obviously waiting to catch a ride home. “He's living in Japan now, doing something with translation there, I don't really know.”

He laughed a broad-smiled laugh. We talked a little more about our parents, about the exact location of my childhood home in relation to his. He mentioned familiar names, schools, and streets. The talk was comforting in a way, as I thought happily about the place where I was raised, but the conversation soon lost its fervor. I spoke finally, as if to make one last significant point:

“Yeah. We all spent most of our lives playing in that creek behind your parents' house, you know?”

His eyes widened a bit and then he looked over my shoulder again, nodding his head. Our cigarettes steamed between us.

The creek behind our suburban neighborhood was not as much a creek as it was a drainage ditch. We called it the Creek and it was a creek to us, though at most places even our nine year-old legs could straddle easily the little trickle as it made its way south, curling by paisley neighborhoods, through mossy culverts, and over concrete spillways. It originated, as far as we knew, at the pro-am golf course up the street from our homes and, once or twice during the rainiest months, the Creek would carry in its brown water hundreds of wayward golf balls, purged from the golf course's man-made ponds, and deposit them in the sand near our little path that led out from the woods.

Part of a green belt, the creek was bordered on one side by a strip of trees thick enough to make us feel far enough from home and, on the other side, a hike-and-bike path seldom trod that, with each passing year, became more and more obscured by youpon trees and rotting pine needles.

The water in the creek rose and fell with the rains, and in the summer we'd walk down the dry creek bed in order to avoid the spindly green grass growing on its banks. After big spring thunderstorms we'd rush through the woods to see how high the water had risen.

A handful of boys ruled this place. Though hundreds of other upper middle-class dwellings filled with numberless nuclear families stood within a stone's throw of the thin strip of green that held our Creek, we would rarely encounter other children playing in the muddy water or jumping from the little clay cliff near the retention pond. The bridges we made, the forts we constructed, the rocks we stacked, even the things we drew in the sand were left alone, as if we were the only inhabitants of a distant planet.

Upon my first discovering the Creek, I remember thinking that it was something huge, a grand and impactful secret much like, a few years later, the image that popped on our new Compaq computer screen showing me, for the first time, the parts of a woman's body I had never seen. The Creek was as mysterious and as curvy as the smooth line of that woman's hip and thigh. It had a natural cycle and a strange way of changing even when we'd rather it no. The Creek taught me about the joy of commitment and steadfastness: for ten years I'd return to that creek nearly every day, maybe walking along it with a fishing pole in my hand on the way to the pond downstream, maybe looking for tadpoles or even a crawfish, maybe dreaming of walking hand in hand with a girl down this same stretch of grass and dirt.

Logs and stumps were our building blocks. There were big holes that looked to have been dug years before we started playing there. We built forts then let them rot and fall. One guy broke his collarbone there. In junior high, I once found a woman's purse lying strangely near the brown water and, a couple weeks later, there was a set of men and women's underwear draped in some young trees. In my high school years I'd often walk slowly along the slithering line, thinking about how miserable I had become (which I got over), or how beautiful Liz White was (which I never got over), or how I wished that I could just drive to New Mexico (which I eventually did). The Creek was always new, offering golf balls and woman’s unmentionables and a humble ear for my woes. It was a place I had never forgotten and it still moves quietly through me though I’m sure it has changed by now, as it never stopped changing before.

Hayes and I stood smoking, a thousand miles from that place, two men who had never before met, who had been wandering, looking for home, singing songs about ideals and hopes, taking up space at bars, listening to old friends' strange lives, building and tearing down and mourning lifestyles and relationships that weren't what we wanted, but were closer than before.

Truth be told, I hadn't talked to Hayes' brother Jon since I was fifteen or so. I didn’t even know Jon’s older brother’s name until my mother mentioned his recent country-music fame. I began to drown a bit realizing that he and I were nothing alike, that he probably knew his brother about as well as I did, and that our home was little more than a flickering candle's flame in us, and didn't shed much light on my current path.

Hayes looked down the street pensively, nodding his head as he had done all night. He took another drag of his cigarette and turned his face to me. I noticed his expression wasn't politely distant, as it had been, and in his eyes instead was a soft feeling, a deep recognition and love for something so common and backwards as the wood-paneled tract houses we had called home.

“Yeah man. I know that creek.”

I'm Telling Me

2010-03-07T14:44:00.000-08:00

If I could split both the lives
That battle in my heart,
I'd live them each in their own way—
Keep them arm's distance apart.

They wouldn't live together long;
They'd have different paths to tread.
One would sleep in tents, on leaves,
The other prefers beds.

One would smile and walk the girl
Politely to her door.
The other'd order three more drinks,
Hoping for some more.

One would eat just enough
To keep him breathing fine
The other would eat mostly cheese
And drink gallons of red wine.

Time and time again the first
Would smile at sky and sun
But the other'd wake long after noon
Just in time for fun.

One would listen to Chopin and Bach
The other'd opt for Cake
The same would drive through Burger King
While the other prefers to bake.

If both were mutts at the local pound,
One would find a home.
The other would bite the keeper's hand,
Escaping just to roam.

If both were books on dusty shelves
The first would bring a tear.
The other's plot would bump and jolt,
It's theme and tone unclear.

If both were parks on summer's days,
Where lovers came to dance,
One would push up flowers and grass,
The other's have muds and thorns and ants.

Sure, both these people make my person;
Like how lungs both breathe and cough.
But I'd love if one would have the gumption
To tell the other: “Piss off.”

And Your Kicks For Free

2010-02-21T19:07:00.000-08:00

Albertson's, the grocery store nearest our place here in Denver, has begun a particularly subversive and painfully effective marketing scheme. Really, the hurt is compounded by several factors: 1. Whole Foods is eight blocks farther away (which, all said and done, matters little because A. I make $14 per week and B. snowflakes the size of thumbnails are floating about in the sub-freezing air), 2. it isn't even cool to shop at Albertson's, 3. they've had especially noxious navel oranges lately, and on sale, and 4. I could resist free Snicker's tasting, kissing booths, and piles of money better than I can resist their current method of subliminally-reinforced consumerism.

No, I'm not talking about television ads or newspaper inserts. I'm not talking about old ladies giving out free samples of pretzels on aisle 2. I'm not even talking about major sales on Kashi products. Albertson's, like its second-cousin in the fast food business, has found a way to combine all of these things and more, so that when I heard the cashier speak in matter-of-fact tones as she weighed my tangelos, my eyes tilted in a passionate violence and I could've jumped her like Golem did Frodo.

“Have you gotten your Monopoly board yet?”

What was that? What did you say? Monopoly? My veins expanded audibly.

“Why no, no I haven't.”

Trying to stay composed, I took from her hand the game pieces she held out to me, six in all, and grabbed a Monopoly board from the stack. A great demon awoke in my stomach from a deep, deep slumber. Its full name is Something for Nothing.

“I see they're up to this ol' thing again,” I said with a chuckle, trying my best to act like I didn't give a fairy's spleen about their silly game. I might've even faked throwing the game board away.

But the truth was that I could hardly get out of the store before I greedily began to tear at the little perforations on the game pieces, eager to see if I'd won a...uh, well I didn't even know what I might win, but I wanted to win it all the same.

In case you were living in a hole most of the '90's, or in case you think the best marketing strategy McDonald's ever had was putting Beanie-Babies in Happy Meals, I'll explain quickly the premise of this ingenious and embarrassing marketing ploy involving the harmless and rather boring game of Monopoly.

You see, McDonalds printed a hundred billion Monopoly boards, complete with all of the properties, colors, etc. On a large drink, a sleeve of fries, or a box of McNuggets, you'd get to peel off a game piece, which was a property corresponding to a place on the game board. Marvin Gardens, Pacific, Baltic, etc.

Monopolies got you stuff, like cars and boats and free McDonald's until your heart fails at 43. It's genius. Combine the American pioneer-like desire of acquiring property with the American pioneer-like desire of filling one's belly for no money or hard labor.

Over the years, McDonald's has done quite a few rounds of this game, maybe once a year or so. At first, I played wholeheartedly, and with an extremely unrealistic hope of success. So as a pre-teen I'd laboriously gather and paste the pieces I got on the board, counting down with excitement the remaining pieces needed to win a projection TV or a Nintendo 64. However, about a month in, after tossing away the seven hundredth duplicate of New York Ave., I was struck with a very depressing reality. I needed one more piece for nearly every color, and so did all my friends, and so did the plumber in Wisconsin, and so did the mother-of-three in suburban Seattle. One more. We all thought in unison. One more until...

None of us would ever see that one. Only three or four pairs of eyes in the US might see Tennessee in all its majesty, and at least one pair of those eyes would be an old woman's, who had thought Monopoly was a technological digression into idiocy when it came out in 1651. She probably threw Tennessee in the trash.

Odds are a very, very difficult truth. That's why they're called odds. It's odd if you win. How odd, Mediterranean!

But McDonald's, just as Albertson's is doing in its wake, foresaw the brick wall of desperately impossible odds that might hinder even the more dedicated players from continuing on in the game. So what did they do? Birth INSTANT WINNERS! Use all capital letters! Throw them a bone! You INSTANTLY win more french fries, or a small coke, or a hot dog. Wha? Me? A winner? Well that's not so hard! I won after all! And INSTANTLY. So you continue to play, telling yourself its for the free stuff, like Big Macs and apples pies, but still secretly allowing your heart to sink when you see North Carolina again, hiding its face against the sweaty cardboard of a medium soda.

But that's not all, my friends, that's not all! It doesn't just stop there, oh no! The entire scheme is much deeper and even beyond simple branding.

What, truly, is the most inspirational, fantasy-fulfilling, and diabolically twisted method yet employed for causing us to continue buying, to continue stuffing our faces, to persist in peeling and ripping and licking and pasting and pulling our hair out in hopes that we can break free from this monotonous life if only for a moment in our new, totally free go-kart with headlights or a shiny above-ground pool?

Charlie!

That damn Charlie!

He, like all of us, tried to avoid the hype. He didn't have the money to blow on wild, risky fun. He worked hard, supported his family, listened to his grandparent's wisdom. And one day, he found by chance a dollar in a gutter, and what did he do? He bought a Wonka Bar and, a month later, he owned an entire other-worldly and physics-defying chocolate factory.

Charlie, an heir of the more socially inept and frightening Willy Wonka, is the true American forefather. He taught us the most important of American traits: hard work, kindness, gentleness, and that, if we really are worthy, we'll find all our wildest, fantastically materialistic dreams lying unclaimed beneath a soggy metal grate in the gutter.

So keep buying, friends. Keep ripping those Monopoly pieces and praying. Besides, what would Charlie do? Charlie would play Monopoly. He'd fill every piece but one, just like all the rest of us poor schmucks. He'd become depressed, even to the point of abandoning the pursuit, of taking the bus to another grocery store, like Whole Foods, where you never expect to get anything more for the exorbitant prices you pay for your groceries. He was just like us. But now his ancestors are great, happy, chocolatiers and slave-owners.

I'll keep trucking. I believe in Charlie, first among American consumers, foremost among lucky bastards. His spirit will help me along. Though I may be persecuted, abandoned by my friends, and flat broke, I'll keep on, probably with the power of Visa. And, when I inevitably find Boardwalk hiding under a peanut-butter jar on aisle 13, I'll forgive you your weaknesses and come pick you up in my brand-new Ford F350, and you will witness first-hand the true happiness and contentment offered to those of us beaming recipients of gifts from the great Something for Nothing Higher Power. I'll be the guy in the big truck. The guy wanting nothing more out of life.

We'll just have to split gas, you know, because I didn't win the Free Gas for a Year Monopoly. I still need Connecticut for that. I just need Connecticut...

Cactus

2010-02-16T10:14:00.000-08:00

You have to have an iron rear
To sit upon a cactus.
Or otherwise at least a year
Of very painful practice.

--Shel Silverstein

This is a very, very important poem, of course, and has stuck with me since childhood. Never has there been a more holistically wonderful poem written, with such a clear image.

So, keep trying, my friends. It'll take a little while, but we'll get it one day. We'll get it one day...

Willy-Nilly

2010-02-04T17:02:00.000-08:00

Tim was sitting on the couch the other day, and he looked at me gently while I was pulling on my socks.

“You see, your product is good, but your approach is horrible,” he said.

“What?”

“I think the thing you're talking about is great, but the way you talk about it is so messed up.”

He and I have been talking about Orthodoxy for a couple months, now, maybe longer. We've been talking about life, the best way to live it, how much or how little we should drink and smoke, how far we should venture into the mysterious world of females, how many words we should say to someone we don't like, how we should or should not judge people, how many carrots we should eat, if granola is healthy or really healthy, if we should stay here, go there, or saunter back to Texas.

Tim will often be the catalyst—he'll ask me some question about girls or about the Church or about a topic I know absolutely nothing about. I'll start like an old outboard boat motor and sputter stuff out incoherently until something clicks in my mind and my mouth begins to move on its own, pouring out wisdom and opinions that may come from experience, but probably are being invented right there on the spot.

“Wait, wait. Where the hell are you going here?” he'll say with a scrunched face.

We started out discussing the unconscious and innocent materialism of our suburban upbringing, and I'll have, by the end of my five-minute diatribe, ended with an analysis of the board game Candyland.

You see, it all connects so beautifully in my brain. I see the shining summit that we're striving for in all its beauty and perspective, and I scramble and bite the ground and grab on to anything in sight to get there. And when I'm there, I feel so spectacular, but when I look down at my partner in the climb—every good conversation is a climb—he or she will be hanging by the middle finger, covered in rocks and rubble that I've knocked down in my scramble.

In fact, I may have done this to you the reader, in nearly every blog I've ever written, and this is why I've taken a hiatus, and had left my blog for dead. I may have already lost you in this post, and I'm not even 500 words in.

So I'll struggle to be more clear. For example, I went back and read the last blog I wrote, the one about the Ralphie the Buffalo. I mean, what the hell am I talking about? Mascot buffaloes relating to human culture? What? How did I make that connection?

This disconnect between my vision and my ability to relate it came to a head when, as I haphazardly rushed about to make application deadlines to MFA programs, I sent a story to my aunt and uncle that I planned to include in my portfolio. Actually, I took the thing directly from a post I wrote a while back.

I felt pretty damn cocky about the story; I didn't change a thing. You're reading exactly what I sent to my aunt and uncle, both former professors now in their sixties.

They called me back and told me as gently as possible that the piece was entirely incoherent, was without direction, and was just a mish-mash of weird images and shivering cold. My aunt asked: “What is this about?”

Ow, Charlie, OW. That hurts. But I started looking at the piece differently, and it made me sick to read. They were right. The idea was good, but I communicated it about as effectively as an ostrich speaking to a termite. I was embarrassed, but I saw more clearly what I was going for. So, I ripped the piece down to the studs and started from scratch. It took a long time, and it was not easy, but when I was done, the story was actually a story, instead of a pile of vomit I sprayed Febreeze on.

Everything I had heard about writing actually was turning out to be true: that first drafts are pretty bad, that it takes consecutive drafts to get to the kernel of the story, and that you don't just get to lay an egg and walk away from it, expecting it to hatch into a beautiful bird. This came as quite a shock to me.

Of course, naturally, I turned back to my blog. It was full of first drafts exactly like the stinking mess that I had sent my aunt and uncle. I was horrified when I realized that there was stuff that was worse than the Lauterbrunnen story. Good night. What am I doing here?

So I figured I'd stop blogging and get rid of the blog. But, all said and done, I couldn't bring myself to delete it. I couldn't. I tried to make it impossible for anyone to reach it, and I don't know if I succeeded. Basically, I beat the dog as much as I could, I slapped it and hated it, but I couldn't kill it. I knew that killing it would make me a bad person, and that I actually loved the stupid little thing, and that I should stop blaming it for my imperfections.

So after it laid in the corner for a while and recovered, and I after I had cooled off a bit, The Papers and I are back on speaking terms.

But you, the reader, must know that I do this mostly for the ideas, that I will continue to write on this blog and it will probably mostly be first-draft quality. Don't let it go. If something tees you off, or if you have no idea what I'm talking about, or if you like something I said, don't just let me walk on in my blindness. Send me an email and kick my ass a bit.

Don't be like the fifth grade girl where I work who asked me how to add fractions with unlike denominators. After dragging her along through some left-field explanation of prime numbers and filling half the page with fractions that weren't the ones she was dealing with, all the time saying “Let's say you got...”, she just nodded and said “Ok, ok. Right. I see. Thanks. Yeah. Ok. Great. Yeah. Thanks. I think I got it.”

And out of the corner of my eye, I noticed that she put the paper away unfinished, and started eating her string-cheese in a daze, probably making a mental note to never ask me a question again.

I'm nuts, and I know it. My mom has the best phrase for this insanity: willy-nilly. It's not a good or bad thing. It's just willy-nilly. And it might be fun to watch me bump blindly into things, but what about that little girl? She's going to go to school and take a test and when the teacher asks her why she scored a 33%, she'll point to the page filled with random numbers and say, “Well, let's say you got...”

Doesn't that make you sick? Do it for her.

Buffalo

2009-11-08T12:36:00.001-08:00

Pulling into Denver unshaven, without job or female prospects, and behind the wheel of a battered 70's-era RV is like arriving at the first meeting of your freshman biology lab with a tutu and a Public Enemy cassette tape. I figure that I am essentially unprepared, uninitiated, and unsure. There is street-sweeping to consider when parking. Bars can be “hit or miss.” I can be almost sure that I will never again see the girl I thought was giving me eyes at the coffee shop. In Ellensburg there was no street-sweeping, the bar is always “hit” because there's only one worth going to, and you have to be careful who you ogle because she's probably your landlord's daughter.

But in Denver, in Denver, people are moving and trying all day. They are constantly scanning library cards and opening shops and pouring drinks. It's not any more fast-paced than any other place, I guess, but even when you pack a room full of people doing nothing but breathing the environment changes. Likewise in Denver there is an aura of living, of physical existence, of things like food, drink, rubber, time, sex. There are many people doing all of these things, and they are interacting with others doing these things, and all of these reactions yield profit, marriages, tears, and coleslaw. That's nice, too, because I like coleslaw.

I've been on the road for some time now, I'll admit. I have spent a considerable amount of time alone in the last two months and much of that time has passed in places where there aren't many people. My worldview has become idealistic probably because it's easy to think about how to live or how to love when I've got nothing but miles to drive and no audible responses to my ideas other than the generally neurotic creaking of the Chinook.

I can roll into San Francisco, or LA, or Bakersfield, or Tucson and I can hug friends and tell them the stories of the road, but none of that matters, because tomorrow they have to get up and do the normal thing again, the Tuesday thing. I don't have a Tuesday thing. I don't even have a November thing.

Today I went to the first A&M football game I've attended since my sophomore year of college. The Aggies were playing the CU Buffs, which was nice, because there was a real buffalo named Ralphie. Ralphie's even got a thing. Saturday. Wake up early. Poop on the ground. Eat what they give me. Go into the trailer. Ride to the stadium. Wait until halftime. Leave the trailer. Run very fast in a stampede that has one buffalo and eight guys in black cowboy hats praying to God that I run where they had planned. Run directly into the trailer. Poop in the trailer.

This is good. Ralphie knows that his Saturday will require certain things of him. This routine, I'm sure, frees his mind to think about other things and soon Ralphie will be the most enlightened buffalo in history.

But all of us buffalo in the city are concerned. We're in this big herd and we's gosta think about food because if we don't, we'll be hungry, and being hungry is something we don't like. We's gosta think about having some sort of buffalo pad where we call home, or maybe we have no notion of home because we're continually moving and trying to find a better place, so actually much of our time is taken up by being depressed because we have no home then moving and trying to find one.

However, don't be fooled just because he's living the life of mascot royalty: Ralphie is not free of concerns. Ralphie has ample time to think about the things that are given him, and I bet he's started to wonder if he's really a buffalo or if he's only living the ghost of a buffalo life. Besides, he's nothing like other buffalo. He's started hankering for a female buffalo, maybe, and the guys in the black hats are not looking very attractive and so he begins to wonder about who he truly is, how he should live, and if his life would begin as a real buffalo only when, instead of running into the trailer for the hundredth time, he tramples the overweight security guards and runs out onto the streets of Boulder. He probably won't do that. But he likes to think he could.

After Ralphie did his little jog, I noticed below me that there was a man being escorted from the stadium by a gaggle of blue-feathered officer-birds. He was resisting like he was on TV or hoped to be. I didn't hear him say “You'll never take me alive, pigs” or “You got the wrong guy” but maybe he was muttering it as he thrashed about. The gaggle forced him to the ground where they then discussed, probably in soft tones, how screwed he was and how he was only continuing to screw himself by flailing his limbs like a toddler.

When he got back up, calmer now, he had a small cut on his face. He disappeared from sight with the officer-birds leading him. A couple minutes later three kids slowly followed an officer-bird out of the stadium. The herd of us in the stands above felt something as we watched the thin, wide-eyed pre-teen lead his little brother by the hand to the officer-bird's nest. We didn't know what we felt but we definitely felt. Anger? Nachos? Disgust?

They probably have a million stories already, those kids. We were part of one of them, it seems. We could just hear the grown young man confiding in his first girlfriend: “My dad got wrestled down to the ground by cops right in front of me and my little brothers at a college football game.”

Maybe they'll learn the lesson early. Maybe they'll realize that the stories are pictures of the life that made them who they were; they're like the rest of the herd only in type, in language. They will never be able to un-live that moment in order to be like the rest of us.

But they're not like the rest of us. We're not like the rest of us. The most backwards thought I have daily is that people need to be more like me so the world will be better. The second most backwards thought is when I think I need to be more like someone else in order to make my world better.

Silents

2009-10-20T23:28:00.000-07:00

I remember people saying to me that “silence is golden.” Being a loud-mouth, I often took this as rebuke.

“HEY NEAL REMEMBER YOUR GIANT TEDDY BEA—”

“Silence is golden, Ben.”

“I DON'T UNDERSTAND THIS PROBLEM CAN YOU HE—”

“Ben! Silence is golden!”

“WEEE WILLLLL, WEEE WILLLLL ROCK—”

“Ben, have you ever heard the phrase 'silence is golden'?”

Yes, I've heard it. I've heard it over and over again. I've heard it from the mouth of teachers, youth ministers, friends, girlfriends, and parents. I've heard it, dammit, but I don't understand it.

And the fact that I don't understand it would not be a surprise to Mrs. Hill, who booted me from history class almost reflexivelt, though I probably deserved every visit to the wrong side of Mrs. Hill's door.

Once, a branch fell from a tree above the portable classroom's roof. It crashed through the ceiling, pinned three students to the floor and cracked an outdated globe like an egg. As the dust settled and the whimpers of the trapped students began to be heard through the screams, Mrs. Hill stood squarely at the front of the class and said, in a calm voice:

“Ben, please step outside.”

And it was a sunny day outside; it was quiet in the hallway. And there I began what has turned into an unending search to find the essence of silence, the Truth of it, and its source.

In my final year of high school, I met Bethany at an amusement park in Dallas. She went back to Henrietta, I returned to The Woodlands. As did our ancestors, we immediately began a relationship, enlisting the help of Cingular Wireless. We talked on the phone for hours. I would hide my voice from my mom, attempting the utmost stealthiness while still trying to seem like I wasn't afraid of my parents. I explored new levels of quietude that I had previously feared my voice wasn't capable of. Bethany, however, wasn't completely satisfied.

“Why is it that, every time there is silence between us on the phone, you try to fill it by just talking about anything? Are you afraid of silence?”

I was afraid of silence. I saw it as nothingness, deadness, emptiness. Silence is a vessel meant for carrying the noise I make. Silence is blankness. Ever heard a silent song? Or a silent word? Those things suck.

Then, as I dated this girl in college, I learned about pregnant silence and black magic such as the devastating and cruel Silent Treatment. Even my uncle, who is nearly seventy, falls to his knees with only a light application of the Silent Treatment from my aunt. It is an ultimate power, a trump card among relational techniques. In an effort to better combat the crippling effects of the Silent Treatment, I've dedicated my life as a single male to a rigorous training routine in which I slam my body, quite violently and at higher and higher speeds, into a three-foot thick brick wall covered in thorn bushes.

Imagine if Hillary Clinton had become President:

“Hi, Mr. President Mahmud Ahmadi-Nejad? Yes, this is Hillary Clinton. How are things in Iran?”

“Oh, it is good to hear from you President Clinton. Congratulations on your victory over George Bush.”

“Yes, I really appreciate you speaking with me, President, and I'll have to say that the U.S. is not the only nation highly concerned about your nuclear program.”

“Yes, I understand that is the unfortunate case.”

“Well, Mr. President, I hope that you will be willing to submit your program to some global regulations regarding—”

“I'm going to have to interrupt, President Clinton, to say that submitting our programs to regulation is out of the question.”

“I see.”

“President Clinton, are you there?”

“Yes, I'm here.”

“Why have you stopped talking?”

“I don't know.”

“Is there something wrong, President Clinton?”

“No.”

“Are you mad at me?”

And everyone knows how it ends. President Ahmadi-Nejad would personally send a boatload full of every nuclear device or fuel available. He even would ask Iraq to lend him a few nuclear somethings, just to make a lasting impression on Hillary. He would coat the outside of the boat in red roses and send it floating across the Atlantic Ocean. Then, he would videotape himself pushing the button that would sink the boat and all of its cargo to the bottom of the sea. President Clinton would receive this video and a short note begging forgiveness for whatever crime he committed and recalling a time when they were better friends and spoke on the phone so happily.

We're all learning, I guess. Just like Ahmadi-Nejad, I've begun to realize the value of keeping my trap shut. Though I can't say I've become a good listener, I've tried to allow others to speak more without interruptions and without trying to best them with a story of my own.

“What's wrong, Ben?”

“Oh, nothing at all. Why?”

“You seem awfully quiet.”

Well, hell. There's no winning, is there? This all seems like a recipe for depression. It all sounds like good reasons for abandoning this quest for the Truth of Silence. Nothing but confusion lies on the rocky trail to the summit of Quiet Mountain.

Finally, though, I met my 1978 Toyota Chinook.

She's as loud as I was on Spirit Day in sixth grade. She screams and putts and roars and squeaks. She's got sounds coming from every inch of her. Every part speaks and sings in a metallic chorus that tells a story like a good opera. I'm only now learning the language. It tries to tell me but usually I'm too damn thick to interpret its warnings [see previous post, “Prayer”].

I sit silently in my highly uncomfortably driver's seat and listen to its banter. Bird chirps over my left shoulder, crickets behind the speedometer. There are bees above my head. Way in the back some little dogs are yapping, probably near the rear door. The blinker sounds like a child dropping quarters into a plastic bucket. Wind whistles through the door at my side. The mirrors flap about outside.

As I was highballing down I-5 in this strange concert, it struck me: people are unclear about the true meaning of the phrase “silence is golden.” Gold is good and nice, I guess, on the surface. More importantly, though, it's rare as hell, cracks friendships, and causes wars. Yes, like gold, silence is certainly something many seek. But, as I stood outside of Mrs. Hill's door and pondered the meaning of the phrase, it occurred to me that I didn't care any more about giving my attention to Texas history and, despite the new-found quiet in her classroom, neither did any of my classmates.

Prayer

2009-09-25T16:45:00.000-07:00

Imagine driving 450 miles northwest-west from Denver and passing through the town of Evanston, sitting in silent punishment in the bottom, left corner of Wyoming. You are headed to Salt Lake City, 100 miles to the west, and are looking forward to being out of the high hills of southern Wyoming. You are picking up a girl there (or a guy, if you prefer) that you dated in the spring and haven't seen in four months; they have flown to SLC from the distant place where they spent the summer.

Imagine that you are not really sure if you and this person are still dating but, imagine being excited regardless.

Imagine the steep hills before you reach Evanston—The Sisters. You're trying to get radio stations because you're tired of listening to cassettes. Third Eye Blind is barely audible through the static but, hell, you know all the words anyways.

Imagine looking at the temperature gauge. No problems there. Gas? You will need some in the next town, but you've got a quarter tank, so no worries. Oil? Imagine convincing yourself that there's plenty of oil in your engine.

All in all, you're feeling good. Maybe you just spent a few days in, oh, Denver, with some friends. Before that you were visiting family, which is always nice. You've got some money in your pocket. You've got a couple bicycles. You've even got a woman waiting for you in Salt Lake City. You're pretty sure that women who fly to other cities to drive with you back to their home towns, at the least, don't hate you, which is great.

You've got a healthy engine temperature, enough gas, a theoretical abundance of oil, nice memories of friends and family, a little dough to work with, and a girl that doesn't hate you. You're living the American Dream.

You look around at the surrounding landscape. Deep in the blue Wyoming distance are tall peaks that have summer snow. Sprawling ranches stretch out from the interstate for miles. The sun is setting in front of you but you don't mind the glare because the engine is as close as it gets to purring and Stone Temple Pilots is on.

Evanston, next three exits.

You flip on your blinker at the second Evanston exit and pull slowly in to a gas station. Gas prices aren't as bad as you'd thought. You fill up. 23 mpg? You smile. You're going to tell the girl that doesn't hate you about the 23 mpg. She'll love it. In two hours she'll be congratulating you on your 23 mpg.

Back in the vehicle. Start it up. Flip on the lights for good measure.

Imagine that the clutch pedal, when you press it with your foot, feels like you're not pressing anything with your foot. Well, instead of imagining, right now, wherever you are, lift your foot in the air about 6 inches. Now, move it forward another 6 inches. Put your foot back down. Imagine that feeling while sitting in your vehicle, trying to depress the clutch.

Imagine not being able to shift into first gear.

Imagine that you are not sitting in a 2004 Mazda 3. Imagine selling that months back. Now imagine that you are sitting in a 31 year-old camper truck. Imagine that you bought it only months ago and, for all you know, it could be running off of sawdust and rat shit. You know as much about vehicles as you did when you were fifteen. Further, imagine that, while in Denver, some bearing had started squealing like a three year-old but you coolly chose to ignore it until you were at your destination in the Pacific Northwest. Imagine a guy at Autozone warning you:

“Oh, that bearing'll drive 100% until it's 0% and then it won't go anymore.” You decide to interpret that nearly Biblical maxim in a loosely positive manner.

But now you're not thinking of the omens, the warnings, or your own ignorance. You push the truck behind the gas station. You have unrealistic high hopes. You pop the hood and push on metal rods and, wielding a can of WD-40, think to yourself, Its probably something up here in the engine compartment. You know damn well it's nothing in the engine compartment, but saying the words “engine compartment” make you feel more in control. Indeed, you know it is something deep, deep within your truck. It is something that is immersed in fluids, encased in thick metal, held fast by rusty bolts. It is the pancreas, if you will, of your retirement-aged recreational vehicle.

It is your clutch, actually. It's gone. You can't fix it. You are immobile. Damn.

The girl who doesn't hate you arrives in SLC on a plane in an hour. You become depressed. You were hoping, well, just hoping. That's what this trip has turned into—hoping to make it to Waco, hoping water wouldn't pour in every seam in a north Texas squall, hoping you have enough oil in New Mexico, hoping you can make it back to Lincoln St. in Denver, hoping that horrible squealing sound coming from beneath you isn't as big of a deal as it sounds, hoping that you could just get far enough to see the girl.

Most everything you possess is sitting in the stubborn and inflated ass of your 70's RV. You have a stove, a few drawers, an empty sink. You even have a bed. You, however, don't want this bed to be in Evanston, Wyoming. Nonetheless, you resign yourself to one unfortunate reality: you have no clutch. There is no clutch. No clutchey, no drivey. You go to sleepy.

The next morning brings the obvious: calls to local mechanics. You're feeling pretty hopeful because your Google search informs you that half the residents of Evanston are mechanics. You begin calling them.

You are devastated. No one can see your truck until, at the earliest, Monday. It's Friday. You begin the process of fabricating a sail and mast out of a broom and bedsheet. If that doesn't work you'll consider using the bicycles in order to convert your 1978 Toyota Chinook to pedal-power.

You make one last ditch call. A couple results had come up for mechanics in a little town forty miles to the west. Lyman, Wyoming. Lyman. Why, man?

What's that? He can fix your clutch today? He has the part? Incredible!

An hour later you are sitting in a tow truck, highballing along the same road from whence you came. Your truck is riding ass-backwards on the flatbed behind you. The tow truck driver is kind. She smokes Marlboro Reds, as do all tow truck drivers. She speaks in short bursts, like the others. She charges me a lot of money.

Imagine sitting, later that night, in a tent two miles from Lyman, Wyoming, at a KOA Kampsite. Imagine wanting to weep. You want to weep. The part the mechanic had was not correct. The metal donut of a bearing was ¼ inch too thick. You weep inside. ¼ inch. That's a very small amount. You've already lost that amount of brain thickness in the last 24 hours. The mechanic says he'll get the right part, tomorrow. It'll come in on a truck from Idaho.

You choose to ignore the fact that the town is incredibly small, far away from Idaho, and tomorrow is Saturday.

Instead, you lay in your tent outside of Lyman, Wyoming and send a barrage of prayers up to God. Your truck is eight feet in the air with its innards spilled out and you pray for it, maybe the first time its ever been prayed for. Imagine cracking the one beer you have in your back pack and brooding over it. Imagine praying more. Imagine praying that, if the wrong metal donut is currently in a box on its way to Lyman, Wyoming from Idaho, that God might transubstantiate that metal donut into the most Holy of Metal Donuts. You pray to God that you might be the lone recipient of the Holy Metal Donut. You aren't upset about your life, you tell Him. You're ok with being nomadic, without bathroom facilities, and alone. Well, you're not completely OK with being alone, so you pray that the girl in Salt Lake City will continue not hating you until tomorrow when, please God, my truck will be fixed.

Now imagine sitting in a 31 year-old camper in Ellensburg, Washington where you have arrived with the girl that, well, is damn sure she doesn't want to date you but, still, doesn't hate you. Imagine standing in rows of trees with bag-fulls of fruit. Imagine finishing a hike to an alpine lake that your dad and you never finished 10 years ago due to bad weather. Imagine seeing people with beards, and hawks flying overhead, and hearing at night only the rush of the winds through the pines around your beautifully-aged recreational vehicle.

Imagine believing, more than ever, in prayer.

Hippies, Hipsters, Hypocrites,and Hippos All Have Hips

2009-08-16T15:40:00.000-07:00

On Friday, I'll begin the slow roll downhill to Pampa, TX to attend a wedding, then onward to Houston to see my folks and recently graduated brother. This will be my last week scrambling around amidst the brown corners of the little city at the foot of the Sangre de Cristos.

Santa Fe sits at 7,200 feet, whereas Houston, my hometown, sits at 36 inches or so. This fact makes it hard not to place too much significance in Texas being downhill. But there are no mountains there. The rivers aren't freezing. There isn't a Lotaburger or a Burrito Spot; you can't buy Santa Fe Pale Ale. There aren't many Democrats or Buddhists or people living off the grid—if there are, they keep quiet.

For this reason, my descents into Texas since I've graduated have been trying. I find myself again in a humid, congested metropolis. I sleep fitfully in a large, soft bed and I drink more soda than normal, and almost no beer. I wake up very late in the morning and every idea I have is met with a moist, suffocating vapor that fills my brain and doesn't usually leak out until I get further than 50 miles from Interstate 45.

Mountains are nice because they make boundaries where civilization must stop and think. Only after parking the car and stepping out of flip-flops do mountains go from being boundaries to being staircases. Just last week I hiked with 25 kids to Atalaya Peak; in two hours of hiking we could see out over the entire valley where Santa Fe resides. We could see the Jemez on the other side of the city. We could see the green shoulders of the Rio Grande. We could see Sandia's gentle slope as it tucked itself under Albuquerque, sixty miles south.

Of course, Houston has no boundaries geographically, and will continue oozing every which way until it sticks its nose in the butt-crack of the Metroplex and its hands in the armpit of San Antonio and on the sweaty forehead of Port Arthur. The only place from which you can see all of Houston is a couple skyscrapers downtown and even then, the smog has to lift.

It wouldn't be hard to say Houston was a place not perfectly suited for a person so highly refined as me. Frequently I find myself dropping subtle hints to friends:

“Oh, it's hot in Houston? It's 65 degrees here now.”

“Oh, you're sitting in traffic? I just drove to Diablo Canyon in 20 minutes and hiked through the riverbed. Didn't see a soul.”

“Oh, you're eating at Chili's? I just got a goat cheese, artichoke and garlic pizza at Rooftop Pizzeria downtown, washed it down with a local beer, I forget its name.”

“You sat in traffic on the way to Chili's then had to wait out in the sweltering heat to get a table? I put on a sweater and walked downtown for the pizza. I didn't mind waiting outside and watching the free live music in the middle of the Plaza.”

If you think I'm being condescending, keep reading.

I'm being condescending.

After all, look at me. I's gost long hair. I live in a 1978 Toyota Chinook. I eat vegetables. The closest grocery store to me is an organic co-op and sometimes I pay twice as much to buy a carrot that came from a place 300 miles closer to me than those at Albertson's. I wear Teva sandals that I bought at REI, where I'm a member. I hung lavender in my trailer once. I go to the farmer's market. I ride a road bike. I sold my nice car and gave up the religion of my youth. I don't wear deodorant. I don't shower much. I'm reading Henry Miller.

I'm a hippie, right? It's ok, I've heard it before. I'm a big hippie. The Pope is Catholic, Roger Clemens is a pitcher, Scooby-Doo is a dog, and you're a hippie, Ben. You like things that weren't made by machines and, if they were, they had to have been made by machines no less than 30 years ago, when machines were more moral. You voted for Obama. You live without electricity.

Hippie.

And hippies don't belong in Texas. There's no forest service roads on which to park the camper van. There's nothing to do on Sunday because all of the pot dealers are at church. You have to commute to get to a Vegan cafe.

You may be right. Maybe I am a hippie. Maybe Bin Laden's dead. Maybe Joe Biden is a Conservative. Wait, maybe you're a hippie. Maybe you're a mom. Maybe you're a businessman, or an addict, or a Baptist, or a teenager, or a trainee, or a cripple, or a dog-sitter. Maybe you're fat. Maybe you have nice abs. Maybe you're experienced. Maybe your grandparents just died. Maybe you have two Boston Terriers. Maybe you eat too little. Maybe you like pasta. Maybe you like being naked. Maybe you hate it.

Maybe you're confused by the way I write. Maybe you quit reading when I talked about DFW's buttcrack earlier.

Hell, there's plenty of maybes. Five things are sure as fire, though. I may have a Washington license, but I'm still a resident of Texas; I love each of you Austinites, Houstonians, Dallasians, Wacolites, Aggies, Groesbeckers, and Henriettaphiles and long for reunion; I drink a Dr. Pepper every day; I just got back from Walmart and will probably go to Albertson's tonight for cheap carrots; and, finally, I didn't vote for Obama.

Mathematical Proof That There Is Only One Type of Person

2009-08-02T18:10:00.001-07:00

Given: There are two types of people in Las Vegas, Nevada.

On one side, there are those in pleated khaki shorts and in expensive woven shirts. They pull their women close to them on the street; they wear sunglasses because the sun is too bright. They finger the cash in their pocket and tight waves of pleasure run up their spines. They are pale-skinned. They look up at the lights on the buildings and at the drunken young people with wide eyes.

There are, also, those in jeans and in sneakers tortured by pavement. They pull at cigarettes as they walk; they don't look up but at the sidewalk. They wear sunglasses to avoid eye contact, to cover the bags under their eyes or the redness after smoking a blunt. They finger the cash in their pockets with worry, or with security, like a man wiping blood from his blade after a battle. Their arms are deeply tanned. They walk alone.

I'll mention again that there are two given types of people in Las Vegas, Nevada: those who want to be there and those who want to be anywhere else.

Those who want to be in Las Vegas, Nevada get there by airplane. Before they are off the jetway, they are greeted with the spinning banter of the slot machines in the middle of each terminal. They are brought into town via shuttle or limo and are left with well-dressed concierges who stand at the entrances of each elaborate hotel.

Four Queens. Golden Nugget. Plaza. Off-strip. Thirty-five storey boxes that had to have been dropped in by helicopter or Satan himself. Great flashing hamster cages. Towering prisons with voluntary inmates.

Those who want to be in Las Vegas, Nevada walk back and forth through the great doorways, sit in and stand out of limo seats, pull plastic cards from wallets, feed paper money into slots. Those who want to be in Las Vegas, Nevada plan their next trip to Las Vegas, Nevada as they peruse the hotel buffet line. There are those who want to be in Las Vegas, Nevada so much that they move there and do the things mentioned above on a more permanent basis.

These people are very visible. They are the ones that stand in front of the musical fountains, the ones that laugh at the Blue Man Group, the ones that buy tall plastic cups full of liquid. Their patterns vary little.

But there's always one, no?

For some reason, one of the people who wanted to be in Las Vegas, Nevada, upon walking outbound through the entrance of the Plaza Hotel (where this person happened to be staying), decided that he would not get into the limo but would, instead, walk around the limo, cross the street, and enter the Greyhound Bus Lines Station.

Those people who don't want to be in Las Vegas, Nevada get anywhere other than Las Vegas, NV by Greyhound Bus. This method of transportation is the penguin among planes, and limps along the surface at very slow rates, though it is always warm, no matter the season.

Before he even got through the door, he was sterilized with a cloud of smoke from Basics, Marlboros, Pall Malls. He was asked if he had some change that he could give up. He was sized up. He was measured. He was judged and convicted.

Once inside, he wouldn't be able to see anything because the line behind Gate 3 (the Phoenix route) was backed up to the door and, at the end of the line, was an enormous man, strong simply in weight, who had smoked three joints and popped two Valium before he arrived at the station.

“Yeah, I smoked three blunts and took some sleepin' pills 'fore I came.”

The young man sitting at the big man's feet, long-haired, dark face, replies shrugging:

“That's the only way to get through this.”

A girl off to the side pipes up.

“Which color do you guys take?”

“Green,” said Big Man.

“Oh, I take the blues. I've always wanted the pink ones though.” She smiled dreamily, revealing teeth so twisted around one another that they looked more like bushes. She wore shorts that were more like thick underwear and a push-up bra that would make the man (remember, the guy that wants to be in Las Vegas that spontaneously walked into the Station?) wonder if she was a prostitute because, though he had never gone nor would ever go to one, he knew that they belonged here. He might then think of rats in the sewer: repulsive but if you take them out of the sewer, won't you be upsetting some universal balance? But wait, there's an interesting conversation our man overhears:

“...starting to bust prostitutes now. Pulled one at one of the hotels the other night.”

“There ain't work in this town even for whores.”

“That's why I need to get the hell out of here.”

With that, everyone—the overweight man with long hair and a whining voice, the high-school kid who ran away from his home in Dallas and started hanging out with drug-laden folks who like to juggle things, the drug-laden guy who's juggling, the middle-aged woman with a tight pony-tail of thin hair and a writhing tatoo on her lower back—looks longingly at the door behind which the Phoenix bus sits, waiting to ruin someone's day (see http://bendolanaroo.blogspot.com/2008/12/greyhounded.html Greyhounded)

The man who wanted to be in Las Vegas notices that people are looking around nervously, even when they talk, waiting to hit someone up or for someone to hit them up. They're worried that they won't get on the bus. They're worried that their ride won't pick them up when they get off the bus.The young man with long hair is sitting on his pack, wondering why he didn't just blow a bunch of money and take a cab to Kingman. He had money.

“I lost two-hundred bucks today,” says Big Man, “so that means its time to get the hell out of here.” Big Man had no money.

The man who wants to be in Las Vegas, Nevada, sees people tired from work. He sees addicts and bums and children in diapers. He sees that, unlike at the airport, there is no place to buy a shot of tequila and the only things to eat are those things that come from the vending machines. The man sees that his clothes are different than those of the people standing there, waiting for the bus. His face is rounder. His two children (back at the Plaza) are quiet and enjoy playing portable videogames while there are several here in the bus station that seem clinically insane.

His fingernails are clean. His teeth are straight. Hell, his teeth are in his mouth, and not in a trash can or in a ziploc bag in a drawer beside his bed. When he speaks, he separates words with silence instead of with words he wasn't ever allowed to use.

He's probably beginning to get very uncomfortable. The crowd is thickening and becoming restless as the boarding time for Gate 3 approached. A woman asked him something in Spanish and he just stared at her. The young man with long hair said something quickly in Spanish to the woman and she nodded and stood still again.

Finally, he noticed that, when he met eyes with the young man with long hair, the young man didn't simply glance away as most people do, but continued to look at him straight in the face.

“Need something, bro?” he asked shortly.

Our guy—the guy that wanted to be in Las Vegas, Nevada, the guy that had quiet, video-gaming kids, the guy that had pleats, the guy that decided to go around the limo—would be suddenly gripped and, while looking longingly at a door (which? The door he came from, or Gate 3?), he would say:

“I need to get the hell out of here.” Everyone nods.

So, as you can see there's really just one type of person in Las Vegas, Nevada after all.

Llama Truths

2009-07-18T10:47:00.000-07:00

The Papers, though I try to run away, seems never to be far from my mind. I haven't posted anything in a month or so, as you may have noticed. Sorry.

I returned yesterday from a four-night camping trip with seven kids, aged ten to twelve. Three days of the five were spent with a man named Stewart and seven of his llamas, who schlepped our stuff up and down fifteen miles of trail in the Enchanted Circle of northern New Mexico.

¿Cómo se llaman las llamas, you ask?

Well, the oldest was Azul. I fed him a pancake with my lips.

Next was K-2, the “Alpha-male-in-training.” He carried the coolers and liked to bonk others with them.

Rusty was an interesting llama and, for some reason, he began stopping on the trail at random after lunch the first day. The little girl who led him was eternally frustrated with his stubbornness. I decided not to remind her that his name wasn't Well-Oiled.

Maccu, a black llama with white spots on his face, ran away at one point. He jogged to the bottom of the meadow where we had set up our base camp. One little girl said, “Maccu's running away,” then watched pleasantly as Stewart and I sprinted from camp to wrangle the wooly camel on the lamb.

Stewart told us that “the world was Raja's popsicle.” Raja the Llama licked everything, including trees, backpacks, and cold coals in the fire pit.

Onyx liked to sit down.

Finally, Zephyr was the one I knew best as I was walking behind him most of the trip. He had a size-able rear and abhorred hugs from the kid who led him. He was always the first to start spitting fights among the llamas, despite his small stature, but was constantly stuck at the back of the line.

I was continuously looking up the trail and smiling at the procession of llama-kid-llama-kid, etc. It was endearing to see the kids take a warm ownership of their beasts; the most common phrase uttered for three days began with “My llama...”

“My llama likes to eat.”

“My llama is sitting.”

“My llama likes your llama.”

“My llama thinks yours is ugly and brutish.”

And so on. The kids loved to narrate the llamas daily lives. Much narrative was given for Raja, the licker, and for Onyx, the sitter.

“My llama attends college courses,” Stewart once remarked.

The meadow we camped in was large and had two creeks running through it. There were wild strawberries and, at night, the stars were so brilliant that I tried to convince the kids to stay up past ten o'clock to see the Milky Way with little success.

As I hiked along at Zephyr's tail-end, I experienced the natural simplicity of thought that monotonous physical activity provides. It was the same state that tortured me so heavily while picking apples. I think being alone with one's thoughts can be like a meeting with a monster in a dark room or like diving deep in a calm sea.

Not even a year ago, I met with a monster in the rows of apple trees. It asked me, how was I going to live alone? What job would I do? What was my life for? What did I believe? I picked only 1/3 as much as my fellow laborers on my best day. They told me I was thinking too much.

Those questions never go away, I guess. It's taken me nearly a year to realize that they beg activity, not answers. What next, what next, what next? It was one of the most common questions asked of me at my family reunion. I even caught myself asking it of others.

What next?

I don't know.

These last few days, however, I learned from the llamas, a prey animal traveling in herds for protection, that instead of asking “What next?” I should expect no “next”; I should stick closely with my fellows no matter how strange they are, continue to walk until I am bidden to stop, be gentle but unafraid to spit, carry others' burdens when I can, and eat as many green leaves as possible.

Moses Must Have Laughed

2009-05-28T10:09:00.000-07:00

Descending from the mountains,

I could see the broad shoulders of the storm from end to end.

I could see where it shed its rain in solid sheets,

And I could see the spots on the earth

Where the lightning fell, sharp as glass.

The cloud passed over the cowering valley like an angel;

I saw it pour out its judgment on the others.

And, descending from the mountains,

It hadn't yet looked up to see my little car

Driving weakly towards it, feigning innocence.

I knew then that I was the one it sought.

I slowed the car and could picture people on their doorsteps,

Squinting their eyes and peering at the grey mist above them.

It's really going to pour, everyone said aloud but,

Everyone's soul sighed and whispered—I'm glad it's not me.

Well-fed drops began to reach my windshield.

They sounded the warning and the others came, a deluge parting before me.

The figure flying face-down above me
Glared knowingly through my sun roof.

I lifted my hand slowly and pulled the shade forward.

I had been discovered.

My hands gripped the wheel tightly;

I leaned forward and strained to see the road.

One false move, one more blunder: really,

Judgment is only complete when it is heard clearly by the damned, no?

That's why, in Los Alamos later that night, I chuckled

When I saw the cop stiffly navigate his vehicle past me twice, windows down,

As I, long-haired and bearded, leaned on my car in the Smith's parking lot

And smoked a cigarette like a man in a trench might when the quiet comes,

When he realizes with confusion that he had somehow lived.

That's why I laughed aloud—I mean I smiled wide—

When I started my car and saw, like one of Pharoah's chariots,

The skinny man in the thin uniform flick on his headlights

And slowly follow me out of the parking lot

Into the glass-clear black of the New Mexican night.

"You as well."

2009-05-06T21:01:00.001-07:00

Though the restaurant had a sign advertising free wireless, it didn't have a sign with its name on it. I figured free wireless meant some sort of diner. I deserved a soda after a day's worth of driving.

Within about a seven-second time span, I realized several things about the establishment which I entered. During the first second, I discovered it's name, Stonebrooks Restaurant. In the following second, I discovered that they served breakfast, lunch, and dinner, which reassured me of its status as a diner—the cursive typeface of the restaurant's name had frightened me a bit. In the third second, I understood it was open thirty-three hours every day. Upon opening the door during the fourth, fifth, and sixth seconds, I worried, then thought “It couldn't be,” then confirmed that I was right, the overwhelming smell that I first perceived was not a fluke of the senses. It only took me another second, the seventh, to identify the smell.

In an uncharacteristic effort to avoid scandalizing my more sensitive readers, I won't be too crude. However, I will say that it smelled like somebody had something in the seat of their pants that shouldn't have been there. It smelled, more specifically, like that something had been there for two or three days. And, as we followed the host to our booth, I noticed that there were more suspects than I had originally implicated in the smell-crime. I will take this opportunity to describe the clientèle of Stonebrooks Restaurant, not divorced from the smell.

I'd say at least a third of the population had a cane leaning behind them on the booth. One or two had walkers. All of them were very old.

Feeling a bit guilty for my adverse reaction to the smell (I smiled and whispered something about “checking everyone's pants”), I sat down and attempted to draw in my smile and keep my eyes focused on the menu. Kathryn's eyes were swimming.

I ordered a soda and Kathryn a coffee. The cups of brown liquid looked somewhat unappetizing when they were set on the table. And though this sounds unbelievable, I ordered, with almost no thought, the brownie “blast” or “explosion” or “burst” or “accident”—whatever the hell places like these call brownies smothered in shiny, half-melted ice cream and chocolate sauce.

After realizing what I'd done, I was relieved enough that the dessert didn't come out with chocolate ice cream that I was able to spoon a couple of bites into the old airport hangar.

Over the glass of chalky brown soda, I noticed a new pair of customers enter the restaurant. Two women stood at the hostess' stand and looked about. One was larger, with a long dress that hung from her like volumes of robes. Her calico hair flowed seamlessly into her garments; it looked like only her face was visible from behind a bulky costume.

The other woman looked very old. I took her to be the mother of the first. She scooted along with a rolling walker. A skinny waitress, with the same teeth and hair color as the larger woman, walked up and addressed the old woman as “Mom.” Both the skinny woman and the larger woman, apparently sisters, began to speak to the older woman like she was behind a thick pane of glass, their lips made huge, slow-motion words. None of the three seemed to notice the smell.

The larger woman and the older woman were sat in the booth next to me. I could see them over the top of my computer screen. An older couple from the back sauntered up with foam boxes in their hands.

They immediately began a discussion about coupons. The larger of the seated women spoke first.

“Well, we had the coupon so we thought we'd come in today.” I noticed a painfully large gap in her upper teeth as she spoke. The visiting couple, standing and almost on cue, produced their coupons and waved them above the table.

“Yep, we got ours. Now they're only Buy Two and Get The Next One Half Off.” She pointed at her little piece of newsprint rent from some Sacramento daily.

“Oh I know! Where'd you get that one?”

“Oh, The Broad, let's see, Thursday's Broad.”

“Well, we get ours from The Ticket, Tuesdays and, uh, Thursdays. No, Tuesdays, Fridays and Saturdays. No, no, Tuesdays and Saturdays. Well, anyways.”

“Ok then, well I'll keep an eye out. Gotta do what you gotta do, no?”

And with that the couple waddled off to redeem their thin piece of newsprint for tomorrow's lunch, still steaming in their hands.

Another man hobbled up to the seated women a couple minutes later. He had a cane and a shirt that said “Million Dollar Swipe” from the California Lottery. He tried to bend over to touch the larger woman on the shoulder but made more of a grasping motion, falling short because his enormous sling of a belly and, I'm guessing, a bad back, prevented his bending much.

The larger woman, however, sensed a presence and swung around.

“Oh well, how are you?”

“Oh better now,” said the man. “It's my birthday.” He smiled a bit and looked around the restaurant.

“Oh, well. Happy birthday. You're looking better.”

“I feel about one hundred.”

“Well, how have you been doing?”

“Oh, not so good. But they trimmed my lawn and my hedges today. I've been feeling pretty bad.”

He began retreating towards the door. The larger woman offered him her goodbyes. He continued his shuffle all the way out the door.

Soon, another couple sat in another booth near me. She was larger but with cropped hair and a vibrantly printed dress. She sat with her husband, who had a wooden cross hanging from his neck almost as large as the cane he carried, and began speaking hurriedly about the coupon they had laid between them on the table.

“Oh well,” she said. “You'll get one and we'll get the other for free. That's how it works.” The man nodded his assent.

They ordered a Captain's Dinner and a plate of fried shrimp. Then, like happy teenagers, said emphatically:

“And we have this coupon, so we'll have two root beers.” The couple looked at one another and the waitress confirmed their order. They then began a passionate and agreeable conversation centered around the fact that the young preacher's content was great, but his delivery was rotten.

Meanwhile, the larger lady with the elderly mother was talking on the phone with her granddaughter, who could not come over this weekend and loved her very much though she didn't know if mommy and daddy got the home loan and would count to three and make kissing noises before grandma could hang up and eat her large salad, which, after the phone snapped shut, received only insults:

“You know, I think the shrimp were much larger last time. Oh yes, they were for sure.”

By this time, my bowl of brownie boom had turned into a chunky sort of sludge. I had not yet acclimated to the smell and the waitress kept bringing sodas and coffee though neither Kathryn or I were drinking any of the brown beverages. The phone buzzed in my pocket; Tim's voice.

“Hey man, I'm in a diner in Sacramento, I'll call you back in a second.”

“Oh. Sacramento sucks, doesn't it?” said Tim. “I mean, I don't even really have any examples, it's just no good.”

I smiled and said goodbye. As I emerged from my booth, our waitress, the same that had informed us that we were in the veritable “hood,” waved her arm as I spoke.

“Thank you!” I lied.

“Oh, you're welcome, have a nice day!” She piped.

“You as well.”

“And have a safe journey!”

I responded automatically: “You as well.” I faded off as I realized that she wasn't really going anywhere except back to the kitchen then to table 14.

As I walked into the more palatable air of Highway 50, I told myself that I had not responded wrongly. Yes, I may be traveling thousands of miles to get where I'm going. I guess that's a bit of a journey.

But she's the one that, everyday, has to live through that same seven-second marathon of the senses, has to tote heaping plates of fried shapes to coupon clutching seniors, and, after all that, has to smile. Bringing a couple extra Dr. Peppers by my table and talking about camping wasn't much different than the last-minute detour we took through Lake Tahoe, which was beautiful, and fleeting, and just unusual enough to make the next mile worth seeing.

We both had unanswerable questions, and they were at once the same and shared and neither person could be said to be more passionately hunting the elusive answers:

Where do I go from here?

And, where the hell is that stench coming from?

Thaw

2009-04-21T11:54:00.000-07:00

Yakima River Canyon

The wildflowers are beginning to bloom on the hillsides. A green hue has alighted on the ground and the river is about to flood camp. Each of the last couple mornings, I've awoken in my sleeping bag with sweaty legs. Discarded shells of nuts that are annoyingly adhesive have dropped on the roof and begun to stain the tent yellow in spots. Geese are an even more bothersome alarm clock every morning. The windows were opened last nights to let out some of the woodstove's oppressive heat. The ice in the cooler melts too fast. People have begun to fill the canyon on weekends.

I'm in a coffee shop, but the guy ordering at the counter just said, emphatically, “I'd like a large ice tea, please!”

“Yes sir!” The girl behind the counter replied, beaming with understanding.

“Yeth thir!”

My Clothes Are Dry, But I Think I'll Put Another Quarter In

2009-04-04T20:01:00.000-07:00

The laundromat is empty when I returned to pull my ragged clothes from the washer. No mothers stuffed endless amounts of shirts and pants into dryers; no bachelors stood around awkwardly and there was not even a petite college girl to eye, possibly explaining the absence of the bachelors. The place was tranquil and I was a bit thrown. The coin I put into the dryer made a hollow clank as it dropped into the machine and the dryer was slow to begin its numbing tumble with a belly-full of my moist clothing.

Spring sunlight made one side of the room glow. Overpowering the fluorescents overhead, the wonderful light gave the room of dust and dirt and many-washed things a feeling of new-ness, of crispness. The edges on the machines seemed a bit sharper. Even the hastily-posted “Out of Order” signs looked comfortable on the foreheads of the waiting machines. Rolling baskets are strewn about the room but instead of looking like receptacles, they look under this light like plants growing spontaneously at the final resting place of the mother seed.

This transformation seems so strange to me.

I'm reminded of a particular hill in Germany (whether it existed or not is of no matter—I remember it) on which big stumps stood in rows where pines had been planted then harvested some time ago. Among the stumps, on them, despite them, a new life had begun to emerge. Of course, environmentalists and intellectuals might scoff at the scale of the re-emergence: the trees went from seventy-foot tall monsters to sticky stumps in a matter of minutes; in a matter of years a sapling stands that is no bigger than a man's arm. There was grandeur in those trees, they might say. They provided shade and oxygen and habitats for birds and vertical lines that pointed to heaven. They were bigger than us, stronger than us, and lived longer than us and, with a couple horsepower engine or a stinging saw, they fell at our feet.

And I remember thinking of those things when I saw that place in the German hills. Green was beginning to become apparent in the sea of brown and grey. All of this nature so obviously wrangled and roped and quartered by men and then, nature's slow recovery from the disease of consumption; yes, I could see why people might be upset.

But God, if they could just see the way the light is shining on these stumpy white machines sitting patiently in this old laundromat—if they could see this bright, hazy emptiness that is the same misty breath I witnessed sticking to the big boulders on the California coast, the same hollow pregnant heaven that stood atop the Swiss cliffs—if they could see that light...well, damn, maybe instead of staring incessantly at our feet in shame over the messes we make, maybe we'd learn to keep our eyes upwards a little longer and ponder for a few seconds the Source of life that never ceases, no matter how many holes we poke in the atmosphere.

Mah-No-Nuke-Lee-Oh-Sis

2009-03-06T22:43:00.000-08:00

Over the last few weeks, I have ventured through the rugged terrain of mononucleosis, a filthy, insipid, sickness. I have been nearly strangled by my own tonsils at least three times. Every morning and evening, I've battled back their advances with a session of salt water gargling and two Advil.

I've drank every liquid imaginable, with the exception of the alcoholic kind, which you're not supposed to drink, lest your spleen explode.

I've taken Vicadin and Aspirin and Progesterone.

I've stooped over the sink with a Netti Pot shoved into my nostril.

I've filled the stand next to my bed with bottles and cups half-full of a disgusting spit concoction that is too thick to pass by the rebellious tonsils, but too intolerable to keep in the nasal cavities.

I've awoken to a beard moistened by little strings of drool retreating from the oppressive conditions that have replaced their normal paths to my stomach.

I've been to the doctor four times in a week.

I've been dog-sick, I guess, but I don't necessarily say that to gain your sympathy. I say that to simply set the stage for the last point I made in the above list: my doctor's visits.

It's worthwhile to mention that, a week ago, I thought I had a sinus infection. A sinus infection is where your brain makes another brain then tries to push it out your nose. I thought this was the problem.

After discussing with others possible remedies for my throbbing head, I came to the point where stoicism was becoming too painful. I made my way to Rite-Aid in search of the Netti-Pot.

Included in the Netti-Pot box are 50 packets of saline mix, a small, blue plastic teapot, and several pages worth of information on all of the canals and secret tunnels that slither throughout my head. They also had pictures that showed all of the canals and secret tunnels filled with yellow stuff. There was no mention of brain coup.

The Netti-Pot is a rather simple device. Basically, I fill the Netti-Pot with saline water, stuff the spout into my nostril, tilt my head to the side, and allow the mixture to makes its way through my nasal cavities like Pacman.

I guess I was expecting something to pop out the other nostril. You know, like a ball of hair or something. Nothing did.

I went to the doctor. I told them I used the Netti-Pot. They smiled. Everyone seems to like the Netti-Pot.

As I informed them of the depths of my sinus infection, the head nurse suddenly shoved a long q-tip down my throat then said, “Follow me.”

I followed her to the lab and they pricked my finger. They told me to go back to the room. I heard them say “mono” in pious voices.

Back in the room, I noticed with some delight a familiar poster hanging on the wall near the window. In fact, it was the exact same poster that my pediatrician had in his office for all those years I visited him.

The poster is a pictorial presentation of the inside of our ears. It shows all of the membranes and little bones and cavernous pools and bottomless lakes. It has several pictures in sequence of problems in the inner ear.

I looked fondly at the photos of the “ear tubes” that had been installed in a child's ear who, like my brother, would have to wear a funny head band to swim lessons and would be eternally pestered by his older brother for his prostheses. I remember seeing that picture and thinking of how weird my brother was because he had things like those in his head.

Finally, in the poster's bottom right corner, there is a particularly memorable illustration. Depicted is (I believe) the ear drum: simple, translucent, pastel. Almost elegant. However, from the bottom right corner of the illustration, like a strange probing finger, a scalpel has been drawn cutting into the ear drum and, at exactly the place of penetration, a single tear drop of ear juice emerges.

That day—Friday—the nurse walked in and named my ailment in such a way that it sounded like she was trying to prepare me to survive through a tidal wave that just hit the building down the street.

“You have mono. Here's Vicadin. Here's Progesterone, take one twice a day. Drink lots of fluid. Absolutely no alcohol. Rest. It could get worse, it could get better, I don't know. I want to see you on Monday.” She looked at me with a feverish intensity and I struggled to remember all she said.

It got worse. When I returned on Monday, I told the receptionist that I would be seeing the nurse at 11:00, and if they wouldn't mind, would they bring in the sub-machine gun and shoot me in the face?

Because it was the Student Health and Counseling Center, she was obliged to look at me sideways and say uncertainly, “Well, we don't administer that kind of treatment here.” No? Damn.

I looked past the nurse as she grimaced while peering into my mouth. On the wall behind her was that wonderful poster. Ear infections. Cesspools. Everything is so symmetrical on that poster, so well laid-out, a lot like actual ears. And, just when you think you've seen it all, there's a wonderful diagram of the cochlea at the top right.

The nurse began scolding me for not remembering the right dosage of Progesterone. My weekend had been hellish. My tonsils were the size of Bomb-Pops. She asked if I had been using the Vicadin. I hadn't? Was I trying to torture myself?

My eyes moved to the bottom left of the poster. I remembered sitting on check-up tables just like these, covered in paper, dreading shots and wooden sticks in my mouth. I stared at the single tear drop of ear juice.

I remembered my mother and my brother.

She used to sit there with me in the check-up room while I stared at that same poster. I used to point to the ear tube and then at Nick and, no matter how sick I was, I'd raise my eyebrows mockingly. Then she would give us a look that showed us she knew how the pointing and eyebrow raising would cause face-making, then name-calling, then pinching, then conking, then tattling, then punishing. She knew all that and she foretold it with that one look and Nick and I saw it in her prophetic eyes and quieted ourselves in awe.

I guess mono's not so bad when you have family around.

Any ideas?

2009-03-05T18:18:00.001-08:00

The Flew

2009-02-15T20:07:00.001-08:00

I can see Denver,
April turning into sun
And the mountains browning
Under the heat.

I can see Santa Fe,
Late March stomping in
Shaking the snow from its shoulders
And bellowing for the cold.

I can see Austin in May,
The weeds on the water's edge green again
The rock warming under my hands
The smell of pasta in friends' noses.

I can see Houston, College Station, Highways,
L.A., North Carolina, San Fran, Lake Whitney,
Canyon City, The Redwoods, Rocky Beaches,
Northeast Oregon, Feet of Mountains, Dallas, BNSF Rail lines.

Every ounce of each place
Weighing my brain down, dripping into the back of my mouth
Where I can taste it.
Sometimes I cough it up and am reminded of my affliction.

4 Years: None of Them

2009-01-25T11:51:00.000-08:00

Maybe if I was a mountain man,

Just maybe,

I wouldn't have to deal with this deal

And then

This feeling in my stomach would release

Somehow.

Not of vomit, not shit, not tears.

What is it?

Not lament, not song, not power.

None of them.

Maybe if I lived in the woods,

Just maybe,

I could get out of earshot

And then

The ringing in my ears would cease

Somehow.

Not of fear, not whispers, not melody.

What is it?

Not pain, not memory, not God.

None of them.

And if I left things here just as they were

Just maybe,

They wouldn't notice my absence

And then

I could find a world full of something else

Somehow.

Not of books, not philosophies, not sayings.

What then?

Not arguments, not opinions, not reassurance.

None of them.

Just to forget my broken Kubota riding mower

Just maybe,

To forget the borrowed F-150 repair manual

And then

Forget how I came to have both

Somehow.

Not from parents, not pals, not strangers.

Who then?

Not priests, not teachers, not lovers.

None of them.

None

Them.

A Poem for Preposition Lovers

2009-01-14T13:29:00.000-08:00

Aboard, about, above, across,
After, against, along, among.
I propose a world in which
Prepositions are always sung.

Before, behind, below, beneath,
Beside, between, and by.
We could go singing through the streets
Though people may mumble “Why?”

We wouldn't answer them, of course,
For we'd have singing to do.
But if asked to where we marched? Oh ho!
Inside, instead of, into!

Greyhounded

2008-12-28T14:04:00.000-08:00

The girl looked straight at me. Every time she tossed the yo-yo past my row and every time it hit my foot as she dragged it back to where she sat two rows in front of me, she looked at me and smiled. Toss, drag, foot, smile. Toss, drag, foot, smile.

After a couple or thirty tosses, the Greyhound bus passed under a bridge spanning the highway. In the second of darkness, the gangly girl with big teeth and scraggly pigtails discovered with a gasp that the yo-yo glows in the dark. She looked directly at the man seated in front of me, who had previously been the next foot after mine on the yo-yo's marathon circuit, and asked:

“You wanna see my yo-yo glow?”

The man was middle-aged, probably slightly perturbed he was riding the Greyhound. He muttered, forcing politeness.

“I saw it. That was neat.”

And just then the bus slid under another overpass and the girl held the yo-yo above everyone's heads like a beacon. People stared at it. I stared at it. The darkness of the abnormally wide overpass seemed to linger enough to where you almost forgot—nope. The bus emerged into the Dallas sunlight again and the girl looked around for someone who dared not believe. Everyone's eyes averted to the backs of the seat in front of them and each person began counting the bitter hours, or days, that they had left in the ostrich of transportation that was baring them to home, or away from it.

The terminal that morning had been a new sight for me. I had been in plenty of airports, and had ridden the Greyhound occasionally. I had seen people bleary-eyed from travel, students stranded in foreign countries. During my last trip oversees I had learned the art of the travel daze, in which I could glaze my eyes and achieve almost suspended animation; boredom was diverted by taking a leisurely walk through my thoughts. I had sat next to babies that bawled then slept. I've seen business-men with every possible travel remedy. I've ridden planes and trains and automobiles to get to more planes and trains and automobiles that would then bring me to more of the same.

But that morning, as a friend and I stood in the line waiting for the arrival of our “coach,” I heard something I've never heard before as one man spoke to another with tired eyes.

“Man, I talked to that ticket agent. Said there's bad weather or somethin' in Cleveland and they gotta put me through Atlanta in order for me to get to New York. That's another two days right there.”

And before that I heard a young girl and her traveling companion:

“So, the lady says that we can catch another bus and get there at two in the morning.”

“Oh, no. No way. It's not our fault our bus broke down.”

“Well, that's what she said. She said we can wait in the line and try to get on but she said the bus probably wouldn't hold half those people.”

“This is ridiculous. Ridiculous. I'm gonna talk to her right now. Two in the morning? That's ridiculous!”

They were college girls, it seemed, well dressed, bleached hair.

I pitied them. Two in the morning is the hour of the traveler. They had simply not realized it yet. Every person, who has put themselves at the mercy of any company, plane or train or bus, whose only business is to get you and a whole bunch of other people from here to there, has been here at two in the morning, wanting and expecting to be there, asleep in a bed. I imagined that they were probably similar to me before I learned, standing on a deserted platform in some obscure Italian town, that only maybe twenty people of the seven billion on this planet care where I was at 2 AM. I figured that they were going to find out rather quickly that the stooped lady behind the Greyhound counter would probably never be included in that group of twenty who cared. At least she spoke comprehensible English.

As I sat in the terminal that morning waiting for my bus, I watched with interest the charging station where cords were tangled like vines erupting from the sockets in the wall, fruiting with cell phones of all different types. People were lifting some to their ears, others were holding them out in front of them with consternation. I plugged mine in. I sat it on the counter to charge. People were complaining mostly, or sighing. No one talked of the quickness of their trip, nor did they praise the service of the Greyhound employees, nor did they assure the person on the other end that Greyhound was truly the way to travel.

Because everyone knows that Greyhound is not the way to travel. Greyhound is not the way to anything or anywhere one might want to get to. Greyhound is not reliable, modern, or in a competitive market. Greyhound is the way to get stranded, frustrated, and sapped of energy. It is the way to feel on edge, confused, and, like those poor girls at the terminal, anonymous and helpless. Greyhound offers roundabout service to every small town that exists in between you and your destination. It double books its buses as one might pack extra underwear. Greyhound is the best way to drop certain habits like sleeping, bathing, and eating food with nutritional value. In fact, the nature of Greyhound encourages or exacerbates habits like drinking and smoking and fondling but absolutely does not allow them in the bus, permitting them, instead, at the rests stops, which is not this one, folks. So please stay in your seats. Hilsboro, Texas, folks. That's Hearne, Texas. This is not a rest stop.

And as the bus passed beneath another overpass, everyone saw that yo-yo glowing in the corner of their eye. Along with everyone else sitting their stiffly in the shadows, I imagined myself in the back seat of a friend's car who was able to make a trip to Dallas after all or feeling the bump of a plane landing on the Houston runway while I held the remnants of a ginger ale in my hand. We all imagined something like this, I bet, as we crawled through Central Texas.

Greyhound Bus Lines, however, takes our money when the friend is busy, and when the airplane is too pricey. Greyhound Bus Lines makes an effort to get you to where you want to go. Greyhound Bus Lines takes all of the amenities of more luxurious travel, such as approximate arrival times and reliable vehicles, and trades them in for routes that look like spirals instead of lines and buses that look like, well, old instead of new.

Greyhound's spirit will never be gone. Say America, through some horrible oversight, builds high-speed rail lines? Or say airlines become economical? The buses can't continue to run, no. You're right about that.

But some day, you'll be in a fix. You will. It'll be two in the morning and all you'll want to do is simply move, in any way possible, towards your destination. Trains won't be arriving for a few hours. Planes will be booked. You'll be standing at the station with a tired look on your face. 2 AM. This is ridiculous.

And then, coming down the track or runway will be some monstrous, smoking thing, clad, it seems, in stainless steel, with a sprinting dog tatooed beneath its windows. You'll watch as the passengers fall from its doors like a beast's drool. Some will hail taxis or greet inconvenienced friends. Others will plod up to a counter to ask about connections.

Against every ideology, every instinct, you'll walk up to that wrinkly lady behind the counter and say, without introduction:

“I need to go...” There. You'll want to add “...anywhere but here.”

Boarding pass in hand you'll stand among the surprising cloud of people needing to go there, away, to anywhere but here. You'll bum a smoke off the college kid sitting on his duffel and suck it down like you're taking your last breath before going underwater.

And if you don't smoke, you'll wish you did.

Addiction, or, Why I Support Nuclear Proliferation

2008-12-03T17:09:00.000-08:00

I am not a smoker, per se, because when someone says they’re a smoker, it usually implies addiction, which I can't claim. I have smoked maybe a pack’s-worth of cigarettes in my life—well, smoked may be the wrong word. Puffed may be more accurate as my pipe-smoking (in which you don’t inhale) habits have simply carried over to disposable tobacco vessels.

I usually tell people that I only smoke cigarettes occasionally and mostly for the taste of tobacco, which is certainly not in its most appealing form in cigarettes. For this reason, I only smoke cigarettes on the rare occasion that I want to smoke, don’t want to pack a pipe and spend thirty minutes smoking it, and have access to cigarettes. Rarely do all of these requisites align.

However, such an alignment took place a week ago as I was on my way to Portland to pick up Timmy for a quick bootleg play to Ellensburg ending with a quick reverse to Seattle. I had a rider along with me for the jaunt to Oregon; I had placed an ad for Rideshare on CWU's website. She and I began our drive south, 30 miles and over a low pass to Yakima, where I stopped briefly at Border’s Books to pick up a CD. She had spoken very little on the drive to Yakima and had answered my questions with a dry brevity.

Where you from? Texas. Oh, wow, me too…What part? Abilene. Ok, they got a lot of wind turbines there. Do they? Well, last time I drove through there they did. Aha. Been to Portland before? Yes, I lived there. Oh, neat…did you like it? Yeah. I heard the mayor has warned people against moving there, says there’s no jobs. Not too many, I was unemployed for a year. Oh wow.

A little over thirty minutes had produced this anemic body of information. We sat mostly in silence. She kept her hands folded neatly in her lap. I stared ahead.

When I got back in the car in the Borders parking lot, she was rifling through her possessions.

“I think we have a problem,” she said.

“Oh?”

“I forgot my wallet in Ellensburg.”

“Oh wow.”

“I’m so sorry.” She leaned forward, put her hands on her forehead.

“I went to buy cigarettes before you picked me up and I don’t think I left it there, and it’s not in here, so it must be just sitting on my couch at home.”

“No problem, we’ll go back. I’m in no hurry.” Timmy and I weren't scheduled to meet up in Portland until much later that night.

“I am so sorry. This sucks. I’m so sorry.”

“Don’t worry about it. Really.”

We relapsed into silence. Her hands moved tightly in her lap. She stared hard into the early Washington darkness beyond the window. I searched for a way to alleviate her guilt or worry or whatever was brewing in her mind.

Cigarettes. She's a smoker. Smokers like to smoke.

“Hey, if you need to smoke you’re welcome to.”

“Really?”

“Sure.”

“Thank you,” she said with a significant release of breath. She dove into her bag at her feet and pulled out a pack of American Spirits.

“Do you smoke?”

“Sometimes.”

“Do you want one?”

“Not right now.” I was hungry and didn’t want the tobacco to pull at my stomach. She began talking away about her life, her move to Ellensburg, her experiences in Europe. I had unlocked the door that was holding back the social flow and the key was white and tubular.

I smiled thinking of my small social triumph, sealing the sweetness of my offer with a slight chuckle.

“Poor girl, I guess trips like this are always hard if you can't smoke.”

“Yeah, it is.”

The conversation began to lag again and my eyes began to droop only an hour into the (restarted) four hour drive. I reconsidered.

“Hey, can I have one of those?” The beautiful thing about smokers is that they are all willing to share.

I decided, for the first time in my life, that I was going to attempt to inhale this cigarette. I had nothing to lose. I didn't know the girl so if I coughed or threw up, well, we only had a couple hours more together. Why not try? I would look cooler. The smoke wouldn't just eek out of the side of my mouth, wasted. I could breathe it in like everyone else.

She lit it for me. I took a couple preliminary puffs. Here we go.

Not even a sputter. I was proud. I smoke like a big boy now! Look at me! That smoke was in my lungs, friends. Inside my lungs.

And then I began to feel warm all over. My hands got hot and felt like moving. My eyes stretched open. I could feel my blood moving through my body like it had been pressurized. I felt enlivened.

Cool.

Cigarettes are small, so the experience was quickly over. I felt good as I realized that I had joined the ranks of the millions and millions of people in world history who had experienced and enjoyed the hazy gift of the tobacco plant to mankind. I hadn't simply dabbled with the superficial mouthing of the cigar or pipe. I took a big bite and made it part of me. I felt confident in the fact that I had gained a merit badge in the human club. I was connected to my

ancestors; I was extended into history.

And lately, I'll catch myself thinking about cigarettes. Not often, but I do think about it. I dreamt of smoking last night and watching the smoke escape from my mouth. Maybe I'll buy a pack? Besides, Steinbeck smoked and he produced some of the most tremendous writing, in my opinion, that a man could hope to produce. He always looked like he was doing something genius with a fag in between his fingers. A few Presidents smoked, I bet and, hell, they were Presidents. Head chefs usually smoked. That's an impressive list.

Then the other side of my brain, the social side, bellied up. I began to think of the health risks, the smoke breaks, the eternal smell of smoke on your person. I thought of cancer and expenses and premature greying and brittle hair. None of my friends smoke. My family certainly doesn't smoke. I would be the odd man out, the smoker in a room of pink-lungs. Even our President elect had to give up smoking, otherwise—and it isn't difficult to fathom—we might not have responded so warmly to his lengthy speeches if he had held a cigarette steaming between his fingers as they rested on the podium.

The only thing left for smokers is the addiction. They stand holding their cigarettes in almost shame, often silent, looking out but looking at no one. They've been kicked out of the Oval Office, out of restaurants, out of doorways. They've been given little solitary confinement booths in airports and they've been banished to the side of the library farthest from the doors. They're forced to associate only with the people who would go to such places—the addicted—and others, non-smokers, pass them by quickly, or cough audibly if they feel the smoke is too near, or gawk at the exhibition while reminding themselves that smoking makes you look like an outcast and makes your teeth yellow.

They've been uprooted from barstools. They've been made to feel guilty for the corruption of others' lungs. They've been blamed for their childrens' addictions. They've been pitied and rejected, more and more marginalized. No one hopes for a smoker's determination unless it is in quitting the nasty habit. No one accommodates their cravings with anything other than a judgmental eye.

The addiction is all there is. Smokers have only that to cling to. They've not got a comfortable meeting place nor have they the blessing of their landlords. Why smoke? It just means you'll have to stop the conversation, go out into the cold, or suffer through a long drive with a non-smoker.

But, I've got to stop writing now because I'm quite hungry. Truly. And it sucks because my landlord doesn't let me keep food in the apartment anymore. He's worried about the health of the people who visit me, thinks I'll make them fat. I'm not fat now, but there's always the potential. And he also doesn't want the kitchen to smell like onions in garlic.

So, it looks like I'll have to hop in the car and drive through somewhere or get a table for myself, maybe eat my burger alone in the car or sitting in the small corner booth. I'll chew on that burger or wrap in shame as families sit down near me; I'll see them but I won't look at them. They're addicts too, and some so young, so we don't talk.

And maybe soon the day will come when Burger King is banished from selling their wares within the city limits and you'll have to be 18 years or older to order fried food at a bar. The legislation will be triumphed and passed by the leagues of those who are addicted to nothing, who watch only an hour of TV every three days, and drink no more than one cup of coffee each morning. Everyone knows that there's nothing worse than an addict. One day, maybe we'll get rid of all of them, once and for all. We'll take every single craving slave out with one grand educational program that will really bring the truth of addiction to kids in schools, to colleges, to everyone.

And that's why I support nuclear proliferation.

Ms. Rainier

2008-11-30T11:02:00.000-08:00

In a funereal voice the pilot directed our eyes
To the left side of the plane.
Ms. Rainier knocked on our tiny windows, asked for us.
Most were surprised to see her.
Her smile made the whole procession cringe and stare.

Maybe I'll break the porthole with my elbow,
Squeeze my body through with a grunt,
And fall to where the snow slides
Down the north face
Like a gown's strap down a slender shoulder.

I've wanted to wade through those hills to the north,
To walk with sage in my hands
And to see how far you can go
Before the earthen ripples
Quiet and shrink to flatness.

Arriving on the shores of Idaho
I could climb a tree and look back
Over the golden ocean
I had sailed—my dad had always said
That my feet were boats.

Far above the planes slink through the clouds.
Maybe I'd see a figure, barely distinguishable
Drop from the plane and fall.
I'd mourn for all of the souls so near death
And pray for the one who had escaped.

How Many in Youh Pahty, suh?

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

Three nights ago, I decided to have for dinner some leftover rice and vegetable. In a flash of inspiration, I dug a can out from the cupboard and poured in the contents. It was crab meat. Once the concoction was warm, I poured in the last bit of crumbly blue corn tortilla chips in the bag. I put all this in a bowl, cut up an apple, and cracked a beer.

The crab meat smelled and tasted like it had been out of the sea for too long. The whole mush was really a miserable experience. The bitterness of the beer didn't help the food. I sat at my dining room table and stared at the bowl full of pinkish, brownish slop, accented with the jagged blue corners of the tortilla chips, and regretted bringing something so foul into existence.

It was truly disgusting.

I don't usually experiment in such ways with food. I usually keep ingredients simple, separate. Rice. Vegetable. Meat. Fruit. Cheese. My uncle introduced to me the pleasure of plain yoghurt added to freshly cooked rice. I add sage once in a while to vegetables. I make my salad dressing out of olive oil and balsamic vinegar and garlic.

I don't know what it was about that can of crab meat that coaxed me to take it from the shelf, open it, remove a little paper doily that dripped with liquid, and pour it un-conscientiously into the rice and vegetables. I don't know why I felt the addition of the chips would be beneficial to the mixture.

More than anything, I don't know why I ate every last bite of the rot, hoping with every fork-full that I would see the bottom of the bowl, washing it down quickly with beer.

There was a point, though, after the first few bites, that I put my fork down and looked up with something near amusement. My smile faded as I realized you can't take a high-backed wooden chair out for noodles at the Thai restaurant downstairs.

Tomato

2008-11-03T08:23:00.000-08:00

Ideology

2008-10-20T15:52:00.000-07:00

I was walking through the grocery store today, peering confusedly down the aisles, when I heard a child’s voice say “Woah, look at that guy.”

I looked down and a young boy hanging on to the cart and his sister sitting in it were staring at me intently and without shame. The boy had his finger in his teeth and grinned. The mother was bending over into a freezer and hadn’t heard anything.

When at a coffee shop the other day, I heard a dad say in an explanatory tone as he bent over a newspaper, “Well, some guys just have long hair.” The little girl, turned around backwards in her chair, looked straight at me as she said, “Huh. Weird.”

Texington

2008-10-12T15:56:00.000-07:00

Dining tables with no chairs
Are beards with no mustache.
Sleeping on faux-leather futons
Is cutting a knife with a good steak.
A bedroom without a bed
Is an onion in a locked safe.
A claw foot bath tub
Is a beautiful woman in a personal ad.
A Texan in Washington
Is a Texan in Washington.

Winter's the Only Thing Coming For Sure

2008-10-03T14:06:00.000-07:00

Ellensburg, WA.

I started classes again. Graduate classes. Classes in which people have support for their opinions. Classes in which the professor has a difficult time putting in a word. I got my backpack and my beard and a bike that some guy gave to me, so I blend in well.

I found a plum tree outside of the library here. The branches are just high enough that you have to jump a bit to grab the fruit. I don’t think people know about it really, because it’s away from the pavement a bit.

Oh well, more plums for me. The only reason I’m telling you is because you live far away.

Maybe this poem will help you to feel near:

The apples left within the trees

Will drop down someday soon.

A bird will see the fallen fruit

And sing a finder's tune.

The frost will come and cool the leaves,

Cause the skinny branch to split,

And all that's left from harvest-time:

Bare limbs and birdie shit.

I miss all of you more than you know. I’m going to hole up for the winter and wait until one of you comes to visit me. We’ll drink beer (in the case of a non-drinker: I’ll drink your share) and live cheap and maybe you could get a part-time job and I’ll learn to bake bread. We’ll watch the hills freeze and thaw and thoughts of spring will warm us. And if two or more decide to come up, we’ll be one another’s family, which is the warmest thing in winter, until we don’t want to be a family anymore.

Choose Your Adventure

2008-09-13T08:59:00.000-07:00

Ellensburg, WA.

Highways look different when one stands on them. Of course, that idea doesn't sound too novel, but think, how many times have you had your feet on a state highway, much less an interstate? A flat tire. A fender bender. Both render you stopped in a space meant for movement, fast movement. 70 miles per hour seem about 60 too fast as you rummage through your trunk in an effort to find all the components necessary for changing that damned tire.

I mean, people really move in those fiberglass bullets.

Suddenly, you're stopped on the side of the road and you're praying to God that someone doesn't drift a little too far over those wake-up bumps and knock your little rear to the next mile post.

It's funny that we feel safer on a highway when we're in a vehicle moving at a fast pace.

~

I don't know why I started hitchhiking. I think I was a bit inspired by Nathan Newman, a Baylor grad a year or so older than I, who had story after story that dissolved my fears and piqued my desire for adventure and relatively free transportation.

Getting over the fear of it was the most vital part, I guess.

The first time I hitchhiked, I stood underneath a gas station awning and held out a sign that said “BERLIN, BITTE ” I was three hours from Berlin. It was raining.

A guy stopped and yelled at me in German. I yelled back that I didn't speak German. He told me, in broken English, that he was going about halfway to Berlin before he exited off the highway.

Why not?

I fell asleep as he chain smoked—a German plumber working in the Netherlands, returning to his hometown for the weekend.

There's something about being at the mercy of our fellow humans, I think, that people really hate to address regarding hitchhiking. Usually I'll get responses like, “Why? You have a car. You're not poor.” or “Well, girls just can't do that.” or “I don't want to get raped, killed, or talked to wrong.” More than anything, I wonder if we just hate to be subordinated, to be put in the hands of others, especially those we've never met. We're afraid. We're distrusting.

I'll stop philosophizing about hitchhiking. I don't think people consider it an option. I guess only people who are from a middle class family, raised in the church, and have or are seeking college degrees are able to hitchhike.

Did you say something?

Oh, and, uh, someone whose...uh...initials spell B.A.D. Whew. That was close. You thought I meant you for a second. Sorry.

You know that guy on the bus or at the street corner that you think is crazy?He probably thinks you're just as nuts. You know that man walking on the highway with his thumb sticking out? He might need to go where you're going just as bad as you do. You know that girl who works at the grocery store who does her hair every day, rain or shine, and dons that ugly shirt to come in and pass your cereal over a scanner? She may have a better taste in wine than you, and she may know a little something about professional boxing.

How about that old man walking his dog? He's got 50 years on you. Or that little kid standing in line with his mother at the post office? He just got a new DVD, The Secret of Nimh and hell, that's one of your favorites.

That's one of your favorites.

Do something fearless in public today, or tomorrow, I guess, if you've got stuff to do.

I know I'm putting myself out there because my readership could be a sad, sad few, but I want you to respond to this post by saying what you did recently that was fearless regarding society. There's a little button, I think, at the bottom of the post that you can click to respond.

If you don't want people to know who you are, respond anonymously and use this this structure:

“Today I _______________.”

Sang on a street corner to see how much money I could make.

Talked to the lady at the meat counter about McCain.

Rode one stop further than normal because she was talking about her political science professor, and she was cute.

Made chowder for my neighbors, whom you've never met, because I didn't have cookie dough.

Skipped. And people saw.

Said “yes” when a guy asked if I wanted a smoke.

At the end of the conversation, said, “Hey, what are you doing next Wednesday afternoon?” instead of “Ok, well, I'll give you a call sometime and we'll hang out.”

Responded to this post.

Alright, I'm taking them all. There's got to be at least 10 things left. Like saying “Well, I've been a bit confused at my life's direction lately” when the bank teller asks how I'm doing.

Ok, I'm sorry, that's the last one, I swear. There's still 9 out there.

If I get two responses I'll do something fearless myself. Three and I'll go back to school. Four and I'll stop eating meat on Wednesdays and Fridays.

I've never done this before. To be honest, it feels a bit like standing on the shoulder thumbing it.

Dallusional

2008-08-26T16:17:00.000-07:00

Richardson, TX.

Right across the road from Annie and Lee's apartment complex there lies a shell of a grand monster, surrounded by a hedge of overgrown Texas sedge.

An Article at Texas Instruments.com from October 2004 explains:

“When completed, the site will represent an expected investment of up to $3 billion by TI over a multi-year period and be one of the most advanced semiconductor manufacturing facilities in the world. . .The fabrication facility, or “fab”, will be the centerpiece of over a million square feet of planned office, manufacturing and support space that includes a clean room measuring more than 220,000 square feet.”

1 million square feet. And the only feet that have touched any of those 1 million square feet are the people who laid the carpet and the occasional sweaty-browed businessman. Right now, it is one of the most advanced wastes of space in the world.

The TI Company timeline said the building was finished in May 2006. It is still empty two years later. People call it RFab.

An expert on building things just because you can, Rick Perry had a little something to say. (Rumor has it he was thinking of designing the Trans-Texas Corridor to empty out on the roof of RFab, after a double loop-de-loop and a Western-themed tunnel.)

“'TI’s example can serve as a model for other companies as they consider Texas as a site for their next investment. The jobs that will result from this effort demonstrate how the Texas Enterprise Fund can and does work to stimulate our economy,' said Texas Governor Rick Perry.”

Oh yeah, the jobs.

“The 92-acre site, announced as the planned location in June of 2003, is expected to employ up to 1,000 people when fully staffed.”

Mars is also expected to host a population of 500,000 once the planet is oxygenated and the interplanetary causeway between Des Moines and the Red Planet is completed.

Ha! I'm sorry for being so sarcastic. It is purged from my system now.

TI mentions on their website that they are employing a “small staff” until they begin to equip the facility.

As far as I can tell, that's three or so guys that trim the hedges and cut the grass. There's also a guy who circles the mammoth space in a small white truck with orange lights on top.

I know none of you have seen it. But, I was thinking, maybe sometime in November, we could all get together and throw big rocks at its windows or jiggle the door handles. At least we could give the guy in the white truck something to do.

Maybe, in the end, that guy never gets tired of orbiting the giant piece of tupperware that is RFab.

I have no idea what I'm getting at here. I walked by it today on my way to get some groceries and it was like walking by someone who is sleeping with their eyes open. Creepy but, for some strange reason, attractive.

Dallas is weird.

November. Bring your own rocks. Maybe there are 1,000 silent readers of this blog. I implore you, rise up! We'll stone every building from Ennis to Plano, except for the Camp John Marc office and the hospitals.

And when we're done, we'll pool our money, pay off the guy in the little white truck, and hole up in RFab. We will immediately have to begin digging a tunnel to the Tom Thumb, the closest food supply about ¼ mile down the block. That will also give us enough time to apply for a Tom Thumb Rewards Card so we can get two dollars off cantaloupes and bottles of wine. Bring your cars, there's plenty of parking. We can probably have a killer warehouse-warming party in the 220,000 square foot Clean Room, though we'll probably have to rename it the morning after. Happily, our bills won't be too outrageous:

“In addition, the facility will be environmentally friendly, with a host of features such as a rainwater storage pond, native landscaping, and water reuse and recycling expected to reduce the water requirements for the facility. Energy conservation features such as waste heat recovery, natural day lighting, reflective roofing, and solar water heating should reduce energy consumption and resulting emissions. Extensive use of recycled materials and recycling of construction waste will also be employed. The project is already registered with the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program.”

Splick.

MORe-ALITY

2008-08-18T22:40:00.000-07:00

I'm standing on my head on a medium-sized meteor, throwing triangles into a fire, except the fire is actually the opposite of fire, whatever that is, and everything else around the anti-fire is actually fire. Happily, I'm not burning, but I don't know why.

Zip. Stoink.

Triangles, made of nothing but thought. Burning, or anti-burning. I guess, in a sense, the reason I'm not burning is because I'm not actually there. I'm actually in The Woodlands, Texas, land of stop-lights and khaki shorts. And, since the thing that is standing on that meteor is a not-me, and since a fire only burns things that exist in the physical world and since the physical me is not there on the meteor, the fire there cannot burn the not-me that's there, since it's not physical.

The triangles are nothing but thoughts, I guess. And the annoying thing is that nothing can ever get rid of triangles in the same way a good fire gets rid of most garbage. So, the only way to rid of triangles is to stoke up the anti-fire.

It's not that I don't like triangles—I do. Triangles are the foundation of shapes, the precursor to boundaries, the basis of navigation, I guess.

But, for all that is good, I feel like I just got married and I forgot to register at a department store: everyone just bought me the same thing.

Triangles. Everywhere. Nothing more than bi-products. We breathe and we eat and we move and then, in our minds, we make triangles. Why? Well, so often it makes the breathing and eating and moving easier.

So, I figure if everyone's going to keep sliding triangles under my door, I'd better find some sort of method for their disposal before I drown in them.

I'm leaving soon for Washington. The Washington with actual mountains, not paper ones. My aunt and uncle have an apple and pear orchard there. I'm going to help them with harvest.

I guess it won't do much for my resumé.

I don't foresee it being a springboard for a lucrative career.

I don't imagine it will save starving children.

I won't get another degree or certification.

It won't return to me things I've lost, I guess.

I'll be far away from my friends and family (except for my aunt and uncle).

To be honest, I have no idea why I'm going. My dad suggested that maybe I was running from something. Maybe. One guy didn't believe that I was serious when I mentioned the harvest. Other's laugh, and tell me I should be a writer, because I guess I would fit best in books—the only places where those that don't fit are heroes.

Things don't necessarily feel as out-of-whack as this lifestyle might look.

I just don't want to dog-paddle in this big sea of triangles any more. I'm tired of only staying afloat. I's gosta get on. I got to do and be and stop living a life that's no more real than a perfect triangle.

And when I say 'real,' I am speaking strictly physical. The “conceptual” is certainly a real thing, as triangles are real concepts that can be approximated in the physical world.

But, tell me this:

If you are eating a Pop-Tart, and you are enjoying that Pop-Tart (for what reasons? Who cares?), are you approximating the act of enjoying a Pop-Tart? No. That's a stupid thing. You're just eating the friggin' Pop-Tart, and liking it. Just like I am not approximating the act of writing these words right now, but instead, I am simply writing them.

So, who's up for tossing a couple triangles in the anti-fire with me? I'm talking about ditching compromises and approximations. I'm talking about being biological (physical) and not moral (conceptual). We are biological and our morality grows out of it.

You show me a moral being and I'll show you a round square. Morality? That's a big fat approximation of perfection and it has continually failed me. I'll toss it in. What noise should a triangle make when being disposed of in an anti-fire? Splick? That's good enough.

Governments? Approximations of perfect sovereignty. Splick.

Social convention? Relational compromises. Splick.

24-Hour Fitness? Books about selling all your stuff and dying in Alaska? Movies about race-relations? Abstinence?

Splick, splick, splick. Spliiiick.

All of these things are things we possess but fear. We possess leadership tendencies and ideas about communities but we schlep them off onto the backs of politicians not because we love them and believe in them, but because we don't want to do their jobs. I guess the only reason they have a job is because most everyone doesn't want to do be that political.

We possess stamina and determination and the desire to climb mountains but we don't have enough time, even on a three day weekend, to make it up a 14,000 foot peak in Colorado. Besides, when you're blowing thousands every year on tuition, mountains seem a bit childish.

We have the desire to travel, to be free to choose those things for which we want to be responsible, but instead, people rename 'forced responsibilities' as 'duties' and say that you can't just run away from responsibility. Rent checks and cell phone bills. They're just part of living in this world, right? Thank God Christopher McCandless died so all the loose ends of a life without responsibility could be tied up nicely with the torture of a starving death. Made for a good movie, too.

We have the desire to be sexual and intimate, but the gap between genders keeps being fortified, and Seventeen magazine keeps defining love and sex and men keep wondering what those things are and none of us are on the same page. Just be intimate, people. Be loving. We're young. We'll probably never feel like this again. We'll probably feel like something else pretty soon.

Spending my time trying not to feel a certain way is probably pretty useless. I've never been very good at that sort of thing anyways. Moral victories are impermanent. And victory implies a battle. A battle implies struggle. And right now, I feel like going off into the woods somewhere so I can't hear the gunshots anymore.

Nuns Not Guns

2008-06-26T13:05:00.000-07:00

I wrote this during the Young Authors project two weeks ago. We cut words and phrases out of the newspaper and wove them together using our own words as thread. The words I added are in italics.

Who am I?
I am wininess.
I am a foolish Chuster.
I get no relief under yellow lights.
I am I am
WORK & MONEY
I’m the one that sold you a lie for FREE.
I am not out of the woods yet.
I’m tired of being in her shadow.
I’m just a tainted tomato, people.
I will hold my head high
And keep food in my briefs
Until the drought runs out of rope.

I was going to publish the kids’ poems on here, but I’ll refrain for now. I only had two kids for this project, a 14 year-old and an 8 year-old. Both wrote equally crazy and expressive cut-up poems. I got to be loud and say “Yeah, yeah, YEAH!” when the kids expressed their desire to remove the ‘g’ from the word “guns” found in a headline and put an ‘n’ in its place.

And I realized, only just now, that if everyone would just start changing letters like that 8 year-old, things might get done a bit differently. More nuns, fewer guns. More rain, less pain. More hope, less dope. More beer, less feer.

Definition:

2008-06-06T18:36:00.001-07:00

“But opposition is creative and restriction is non-creative.”

--John Steinbeck, Log from the Sea of Cortez

I think of restriction as boundaries, lines, definitions. Definitions provide distinction and eliminate possibilities. Our world is saturated with distinction through definition. Think about insurance companies. Cell-phone contracts. Waivers. Health screenings. Official contest rules. Everything seems more and more hemmed in each day by its own restrictions because there's nothing that we hate more than those who somehow find the holes in the boundaries. We call them cheaters. Rule benders. Sloths. Shortcutters. Loophole-divers.

And us, the moral elite, the kings and queens of right and wrong, the ethical legislators, become livid when the boundaries are breached. So, we set up further boundaries, fortify those which are in place, split and create new denominations, sects, schools, and lines of thinking. Those that choose to disembark from the moral railroad on to which so many cling with fear are followed with jeers and hateful comments.

Camp John Marc is no exception. I am once again thrown into a community in which I am dealing with people my own age. I am surrounded with passion and fiery eyes. Conversations jerk along as people desperately try to inject their opinions and anecdotes before another is able to inject theirs. We are all trying to make people understand us and recognize us as individuals. We are obsessed with defining to gain distinction.

Presence is camouflage. Existence is creative and without definition. A tree strives for the sun but never removes itself from the soil. Trees are not things, they are ideas, hopes. They are striving. They are never the same. Maybe we are nothing more than a striving.

Return to Oak Trees

2008-05-21T19:27:00.000-07:00

I left New Mexico bathed in its crisp sunlight. I'm not sure what I felt, what I still feel, about leaving. I'll admit, I was going a little nuts over those last couple of weeks in my semi-loneliness. I was getting nervous and antsy. I was beginning to look down a lot more. I stared at people's shoes and looked at the waiter's neck when I ordered. I drank my glass of wine in silence, over a book, and had no reason to drink another.

But then again, I walked out of my door in the morning and through squinted eyes, could see the rough Sangre de Christo Mountains wide awake under the sun's watchful eye. The city seemed part of the mountains, roads seem to be their appendages and arroyos their brothers. I would sneak a peak at the mountains all day, grinning as I shared the city's secret. I like to think that other people grinned back at me.

I've had several people, of all personalities, tell me that New Mexico is the “Land of Entrapment.” I understand their sentiment. There's nothing better than knowing a secret, and there's nothing better than that other than sharing that smugness with others as you walk the streets. Why leave? You'd just go some new place where you don't know the secret or you'd go back home where the secret's old and flat.

But I highballed across southern New Mexico, through Roswell, on to Abilene and then to Meridian. I left. I had to leave.

I made it to Camp John Marc and now I'm learning a new secret, one that has baffled me for three previous summers. I am putting a light to the darkness that has frustrated me more than any before. B and I fought through bad phone service, busy schedules, emotional distance, confused realities and so many other disconnects in the name of Camp John Marc.

And now, of course, B and I are entering this place together, though not together. I've been tinkering with the new fear and it is more complicated than the manual said, though not overwhelming. This thing is connected in three places where I hadn't noticed before, that thing is twisted around that feeling, that thought is bigger than I thought and actually is under that other experience.

And that's my secret, I guess. And I think there's a few people here that might be interested in it. I can hear the big oaks whispering to me and I imagine all I need is a few nine-year olds to interpret their quiet chatter.

I Guess It'll Grow Out of It

2008-05-13T23:33:00.000-07:00

I was whistling beneath the streetlights as I swung the little bottle of milk in my right hand—the last bottle of milk I'd buy in Santa Fe for who knows how long. It was a nice night, cool enough for long sleeves. The ridiculous New Mexico wind goes to bed not long after sundown like the rest of the citizens whom it spends the day tormenting, so things were as still as they get at 7,000 feet.

The streets are relatively dark in this town. I dig it. College Station was lit up like tomorrow morning at all times. It was maddening, in a way. I guess people feel that if things are adequately lit, nothing dark can happen.

My pipe had just stopped drawing smoke. I felt the bowl with my little steel pipe tool and, happily, only a tiny bit of ash remained. It had probably been three weeks since I lit that beautiful green pipe, and tonight, there was no lingering unlit tobacco. I receive a particular joy from a completely smoked bowl of tobacco. It works as an omen of good tidings, usually, and it says that I had time to focus. And it says that your teeth have been thoroughly yellowed.

All that to say that I was feeling pretty swell. Certainly better than I have been feeling, and the Santa Fe night and the smoke that brushed my cheek did something to quiet the urgency of my frantically darting mind. I was quiet, though I whistled, which has been rare lately.

Right as I tipped the last bit of ash out of my pipe, I heard something from a house on the other side of the street. It was yelling—angry, defensive. It was screaming, actually. Pull-out-the-stops screaming. The kind of screaming where the words don't matter as much as the decibels.

I couldn't really make out most of what was said, but I stood still in front of the house trying to hear anything I could.

“I CALLED HER AND I HUNG UP THE PHONE...LEAVE ME ALONE!”

A woman's voice screamed back. I couldn't hear what she said. It was a bit more frantic than her male counterpart's. For a second, I doubted she was even saying actual words because she seemed to be simply testing the maximum noise level she could achieve. But, I craned my neck a bit and heard an exaggerated “BOY-FRIENDA!!” and I knew she was laying it on with both words and wind.

I've had those times. I can think of a couple times with B in which I screamed my face off for no other reason than to scare her into thinking my way. I can't even begin to count the times I only yelled. I don't even want to think of the smell that would ensue if you piled all my arguments with anyone on top of one another.

I stood staring at the garage door, imagining the boyfriend or husband or brother or lover in the converted garage playing Xbox, yelling over his shoulder. I saw someone move in a window. The room was lit by the flickering glow of the television. I saw a woman bend down, then straighten. She held a small baby in her hands. She put it on her shoulder and walked out of the room.

There is love and there is pain. There is emotion and there is fear. Beauty, depth, confusion, guilt. In her bosom I found it all. Its difficult to think that our union produced something that I can take up in my hands, hold close, and remember the passion and love that made it, regardless of the way in which our eyes fall in insecurity from each other's locked gaze—the same gaze that we used to dance in like soft rain, trying to make it last.

Take it in my hands.

It sure looks weird. Misshapen, as I see it. Pretty messed up. Like a lizard.

Clueless. Like, Totally.

2008-05-09T18:28:00.000-07:00

Man, I'm clueless.

Clueless. I've never really thought about what it meant to be “clueless.” I am certainly “without a clue.” I don't mean that jokingly or loosely either, as someone might when asked by a child, “Do you know where I left my lunch box?” Many people might say, “I haven't the slightest clue.” Well, we have plenty of clues. For example, we know that the child has not been to, say, the Marshall Islands, so we know it is on the mainland somewhere. We know that they have not gained the ability to digest plastics, so they most likely didn't eat it. In fact, we might even remember seeing them setting it down near their chair at the lunch table and the vague reply we give to their questioning is to both avoid work and encourage them to continue their lonely search for the missing lunch box.

My clueless-ness isn't so much like that. My lunch box could be anywhere. I mean anywhere. It could be somewhere I've never been. It could be in Denver. In Texas. In a river or canyon. In the grocery store. In my medicine cabinet. In the back of my car. I don't even know what the damn thing looks like.

I tend to be quite ambiguous on this blog so this time I'll shoot straight. I've come to realize how far I've left to go or maybe, more accurately, how little ground I've covered. If there's one thing that college does for us, it makes us quite big-headed. If there's one thing a four year relationship with a woman does for us, it makes us think we've got things figured out. I mean, what dummy, after four years, hasn't figured out that flowers are good and fast-food burgers are bad? What fool, after knowing someone for that long, thinks about asking her best friends if she really does like him? Nobody. After four years of college and intimacy, you begin to feel like you've just got things right.

I felt that way. I realized only a couple days ago that I've got very little figured out. Its been two months since Bethany and I broke up, and only two days ago did I start to really get scared when thoughts of inadequacy started to flood in.

Go ahead. Ask me a question. Anything. I bet I have no idea how to answer you. My inability is the only thing that seems solid right now.

What do you think you need right now, Ben? Who do you need? What's the plan? The next step?

There was a scene in Kill Bill in which Uma Thurman finds herself newly freed from the hospital room in which she was being “mistreated” in her comatose state. After smashing the offending nurse's head in the door repeatedly, she makes her way by wheelchair to the parking garage, where she finds a truck that matches the keys she had lifted from the crushed nurse. She lifts herself from the wheelchair into the back seat of the truck (her legs had atrophied while in the coma). As she brings her breathing under control, she begins to focus, saying only “Wiggle your big toe. Wiggle your big toe.” She stares at the toe. After some intense flashbacks and concentration, she wiggles her big toe.

As able as I thought I was, as able as might have been before (Uma Thurman was, before the traumatic event that rendered her comatose, a ruthless mercenary and fighter), I've only just woken up. I thought I knew what love was. I thought I knew what life demanded. I thought I understood how love and life interact. I thought kisses were more permanent than words, that money was only paper, and that other people could be understood and bested after an hour and a beer or two. Not a week ago, I wrote a giant post that basically explained perfection in clear and passionate terms, and gawked at those who don't seem to see with a similar clarity. If only mine was the blog with thousands of daily readers. If only my words rung in society's ears like Mr. Friedman's. I deserve it; I've fought the demons and now I deserve ears.

Actually, I'm clueless. Without a clue. No leads. Just dead ends. The demons were bite-sized and my words are like kindergarteners' coloring pages, out of the lines and beautiful only to the artist and his mom.

I have friends getting married, friends moving on to more dynamic relationships. Graduate schools are filling with thousands of people like me. Big companies are prowling for certified C3POs of about my stature and programming to do their bidding. The only person that's called my resume “impressive” was a guy looking for stiffs to write keyword-rich copy for pharmaceutical websites looking to trap clueless (see how that word tends to come up frequently?) surfers with credit cards.

The next step, you ask? What do I think I need right now? What's the plan?

Wiggle my big toe. Wiggle my big toe.

Presence, Cont'd

2008-04-27T22:42:00.000-07:00

Pueblo, Colorado.

Our fire illuminated the patch of sand next to the railroad that we had chosen as our night's lodging. The tent was erected and the wood was gathered and the guitar was retrieved. The fire spat flames violently from the dry wood we had found. Somebody said, “Mind if I have the last one?” without looking to see our heads shaking as he plucked the last beer from the cardboard carrier.

We didn't pay to be there. We didn't even ask. We just pointed to a road marked “Unpaved” on the gas station map and drove there. Up a dirt ramp and there we sat, night porters of the railroad, keepers of the desert fire. The black bowl of night that covered us was cracked here and there along the horizon by the white light from a mobile home, a scrapyard, a mobile home scrapyard. Dogs called to one another with muzzle to chainlink.

And I sat casually on the cot, staring at the flames, smiling at Scott's song choice. My mind soared away from there, leaving little but a ghost next to the fire.

I sat down briefly in the backseat of the little red Saturn that was putting its way through the streets of downtown Santa Fe and watched as the driver and passenger exchanged words and expressions. I watched as they moved their arms and turned their heads slowly, lethargically, and tried to control the rising anticipation that the night brought...

Scott pounds a chord on the out-of-tune guitar. My eyes snap up. His face is stretched with the effort. The flames jump between us. My eyes lower again.

I am in College Station and Meridian at the same time. My beard is full. My hair a bit longer. I smile smugly as I tell the story of Scott the Software Designer, Tim the Teacher, and Ben the Busted and their night in Pueblo, Colorado. I emphasize the parts about cigarettes, cussing, and squatting near the railroad. The people around me listen to my teachings...

Tim slams a large stick on the ground in an effort to break it into more burn-able chunks. I watch as he negotiates the motions of log throwing and beer stabilizing. He gives up.

Back in the Saturn. The back seat always was crowded and now I feel like I'm going to suffocate. I claw at the two in the front seats but they don't respond. In College Station I realize that everyone has moved away and no one is listening. The summer is over in Meridian. The cell-phone minutes beep away and a new voice is on the other end each minute, gone the next, replaced.

The universal Facebook mind plucks at my eyes, and I look up. I begin to wonder how this could be spun in a movie that will be made one day about my life. I imagine the captions of pictures in cleverly named albums. I think of how my name wouldn't show up in blue but in grey, a dead end. I project myself three minutes ahead and imagine the conversation we could have, the conversation we should have because we're young and free and a-materialistic. I plan my move.

From the back of my throat to my eyelids comes a singing of metal. I know the sound. It grows, becomes palpable, cutting, terrible.

The engine thunders by us and drags its empty cars along behind it. The monster is sliding over the desert and is roaring and calling into the blackness. The air pulses regularly as each car passes on the other side of our little tent.

“You couldn't catch that one, its going a bit too fast,” says Scott.

I look at him and then look back at the two dimensional sheet of metal scroll before my eyes. Power.

About four years ago, I walked down some “Unpaved” road in Henrietta, Texas, sat down on a stack of tarred ties, and watched as the great steel beast sailed by me, not the length of a man from my perch. I remember thinking then: Controlled power. Tons upon tons of material, metal, and bone that would render me unidentifiable in a matter of seconds. Yet so directed. Power. Direction.

Back in Pueblo, as I watched the train shiver down that cold hard spine of Southern Colorado, I thought of that power again. I didn't think of sitting on the stack of railroad ties but I thought about the power that was being spoken to me in the gluttonous whisper of the rails.

The last car went by. I shifted my weight in the Saturn. I awoke from a daze in Texas. Facebook clanged happily along the track trying to catch up with the train.

All night I awoke to that promenade. Singing steel bands. Roaring engine. Pounding cars. Slicing tail. I awoke with a dread and fear at the first sound but listened to each rotation of each wheel and heard every empty space between the freight cars. I dreaded it because I knew that train was keeping me from moving, binding me in space and time. My mind lashed out thinking of derailments and police but was soon quelled by the stomping of the freight.

I succumbed all night. Laid still each time I heard the singing. Awaited the beast to turn its back. I listened for its snarl in the distance proving that it had moved on. I settled down to a fitful sleep in the back of the Saturn, under the tree in Aurora, and in a plastic bunk in Meridian. I shivered with cold in the thin air of Denver. I smiled my best for Facebook albums.

Each time the big engine came by it tugged at all of these selves. I fought each time to maintain it. And the train, the rolling and crashing creation of man, had somewhere to be a bit further on, so it didn't tarry. It just whispered its regards to my aching ears and kept moving, leaving Facebook shattered and the little red Saturn slightly dented. Because everyone knows and hates that it's true, but a train isn't a train if it isn't moving.

Presence

2008-04-20T13:27:00.001-07:00

Diablo Canyon. The fire has died down to a glow—perfect for the tomato, pear and chicken kabob that I dangle above the coals. Though there are no flames I can see my surroundings clearly. The full moon illuminates the sandy bottom of the wash on the edge of which I've placed my cot. Through the branches of the gnarled junipers around me I see that high, flat crown of Diablo Canyon and I wonder how the sushi party is going at the opposite opening of the canyon where I parked my poor car, panting and aching from the treacherous washboard road that follows the dry river.

I look down at my kabob. The chicken is turning white. Finally.

Lee, Simon and I, after one too many days of bread, cheese, and discount cold cuts, walked the 45 minutes from where we were camped to Lauterbrunnen, a funny little tourist town in the Swiss Alps. Groceries were expensive, especially for Lee who had been an unpaid intern in Berlin all summer, especially for me who hadn't much money to begin with, and especially for Simon who had just returned, via Thailand, to Germany from a year in Australia. We decided to buy uncooked brats for dinner that night.

The campsite where our tent was parked was really nothing more than, well, a parking lot for tents. No fires were allowed, there were no trees. For about thirty-something USD per night (if I remember right), you got to plop your tent down in a big field next to 25 other highly prepared and well-traveled campers. We had no footprint, only two sleeping bags among the three of us, and a rain fly that covered about half the tent.

So, the nights had been long, the summer expensive, and the food meager. The rain was a bad joke.

Because we couldn't build a fire at the camp site, we decided to walk up a trail and find a place deeper in the valley that would permit our culinary endeavors. About a half-mile or so upstream, we found a place beneath a big boulder where it looked as if people had cooked before.

My memory tells me it took us two hours to get the fire started. The wood was wet with the Alpine moisture. Everything was green. We blew at the little coals for eternity. We fanned and puffed until we were lightheaded. We laughed with urgency and bellowed at one another when we thought we saw a flame. We poked with sticks and dragged big logs out of the forest and broke them by throwing them on rocks. We roared in triumph. We spoke exaggerated German and cussed.

And then, there was fire. We sharpened sticks with a dull dinner knife that my host family had given me in Lubbecke.

(That messer might have been the greatest thing I had in my pack. We never cleaned it. In the mornings, it was passed around like a wand, cutting brötchen and spreading butter und nuttela und marmalade.

“Where's the messer?” Might have been the most common phrase used in the tent during the whole trip.

“Gimme the messer.” Another common communicative tool. Or, when your need is anticipated by a companion as you reach for the last brötchen, you might grunt with affirmation as you take it in your grimy hand:

“Ah, das messer.”)

Soon, a brat dangled precariously over the fire. We stared at it like buzzards circling above a dying dog. It sizzled. Our stomachs jumped. Occasionally we yelled at each other about the status of the wurst. Too close to the flame. Stick too flimsy. Needs turning. Use das messer—is it cooked?

It was.

We wrapped the first warm sausage in a toasted hunk of bread, topped it with senf, and smiled and laughed as the first bite was taken. It was hot. We fed it to each other as we held more drooping sticks over the flames. Messer. Senf. Hunger nicht mehr. Our faces lit up. The wurst dropped into our bellies and stretched out, surprised by the room. We made bad jokes about sausages and spoke bad Deutsch with food falling from our lips. Beneath that big boulder as the river roared by we loved each other and laughed and breathed the smoke from fire and tobacco deep into our lungs, wanting to waste none of it, and wanting never to leave.

We remembered then that though our lives, the lives we longed for as we slept fitfully in the soaking tent, were thousands of miles away—folded in the arms of beautiful women, stooped over measly bank accounts, boiled in the Texas heat—we were alive then, now, and the sun above us was Swiss, and coins in our pockets were Euros, and the river in our ears was too cold even in the dead of summer, and the smiles and chuckles were, at that moment, love, presence, and reality.

I'll Be the Poor Guy

2008-04-07T12:44:00.000-07:00

“My advice to writers just starting out? Don't use semi-colons! They are transvestite hermaphrodites, representing exactly nothing. All they do is suggest you might have gone to college.”

-from Armageddon in Retrospect by Kurt Vonnegut

A year dead now and I am still getting bested by him.

I have entered a part of my life in which I find myself much like Kevin in the first Home Alone film. I woke up two weeks ago and realized that I was alone, not in love but in physical location, and I had to think of something to do. If you remember the film, you might remember the scene in which the young Kevin makes a trip to the grocery store for the necessities—toothbrush, toilet paper, milk. I went to the grocery store last night and all I bought was a toothbrush. I guess it's not as cute with a 22 year-old.

As pitiful as it might sound, though, it doesn't feel that way. I'm guessing that I am not the only person that has been in the position in which I find myself. Surely there was a point in most people's life where the fear of the unknown, the blackness of the future not yet come, has haunted them. I've learned to cope with the ghost of the future, though, and now I feel not scared but mystified. I am utterly unsure, copiously confused, powerfully puzzled. I am not the only one that feels this way, I'm sure.

It seems that there comes a point when we must decide between osmosis or rigidity. America does an excellent job of making osmosis, the movement to a less dense and resistant environment, seem desirable, inevitable, and comfortable. The insanity that results is the denial of self, which we've come to glorify. The insanity isn't a result of denial of self like offering your sandwich to a homeless child. It is something different. It is denying that you even have a sandwich. It is the denial of the creative spirit of man, an effort by individuals to maintain comfortable individual anonymity but to mount extensive campaigns aimed at social uniqueness and eminence. To be anonymous to yourself makes conforming to popular values, or any values at all, rather simple.

And the intelligent learn to command that society by manipulating themselves in ways that people admire. Celebrities, politicians, and Joel Osteen (each included in the others) are at the forefront of society, developing new ways to bend the social environment that gains the praise of hyper-sensitive eyes that roam the landscape, looking for something new to fill the void where self once was.

I know that sounds very critical and I will try to flesh it out though I fear it will turn into only flesh if I speak much longer.

It comes down to this: there are things we want to do, and things we must do. We want some alone time in our week, we want to spend more time studying, but we must work so many hours a week and we must make this phone call. (At this point, you may switch your brain off as you hear another critic trying to topple anything popular or mainstream. Hopefully I can play a new tune.)

The things we want to do, as illustrated above, are incessantly at odds with the things we must do. In fact, many religious people spend most of their lives attempting to reconcile the angel and demon on their shoulders. Most try to relinquish their wants and attempt to perfect their lives through ascetic mustism. Don't look that up, I just invented it.

This clash is inherent in sex education and, as youth move from finding sex gross to finding it alluring, we give them a lists of “musts” to check off before any decisions are made. Also, this proves a perfect playing field for my main point.

Who is determining the “musts?”

I recently read a book written in the 1990's about middle-school life for the developing young lady. In sex education, their sexual desires (many times for women, as much as I can tell, are hardly physical but, instead, are anchored in social interaction) are shown as something to be avoided and they are meticulously reminded of the consequences of sexual activity. Boys are directed to do the same, to avoid desire and remember the consequences.

To put it simply, both can do neither. Girls can't avoid the desire to be intimate and boys can't avoid the desire to feel sex. The consequences instill enough fear, though, that many are scared away from giving into their desires. Along with religion, young people find themselves in a vast network of fear and “must” reinforcements. Everyone but them determines what they must do and their, rather our, wants are marginalized and eventually stifled.

When it comes to sex, the clash between the thing we want to do and the thing we must do is highly institutionalized, well documented and left out of few half-intelligent curricula, whether religious or secular or Disney.

Such a large part of my life, then, has been determined by fear and by others' “musts.” My own morality is not my own. I've been afraid of having children, so sexual intercourse is avoided and sexual activity is funneled into and stunted by pornography and guilt.

I've been told that God is not glorified by this, and that I mustn't do that.

And on a short visit to Texas last week, things haven't changed for us. Though for me, it is a reminder of people that care. I heard “move back to Texas” much more than I heard “explore Santa Fe.” I heard variations of “you need to be a writer” more than I heard “you are a successful person now.” I don't blame anyone for saying these things because I say them to others myself. The structure of “musts” is so inherent that we've come to expect it from others and also expect to give it freely.

I know, there is a “want” in me, more of an idea, that writing is not something that will ever disappear from my life unless I begin American Osmosis. I love to write, as you can tell, and I love the power behind squiggles on white surfaces. But I must write, you say? I must write and so I do, on this blog and in a journal. Must I get a job writing? No, I mustn't. I may want to, but at this point, I don't. Maybe tomorrow, someone will say, “Ben, you're a good writer and I want to pay you to continue. Maybe write something for my magazine.” That would be cool.

Must I have a career? No, I mustn't. Christ had no career. He was a carpenter. I am a writer. I am a lift operator. I am a child-care provider. I want to work, must as Christ might have, because I enjoy working and seeing results. I enjoy the society of a job and the interactions that result from work. Must I have a degree? No, I mustn't—yet another “must” that is determined by everyone but ourselves. Think, even the people who say they want a degree want it because they must have it to succeed in today's world. I guess some like the idea of having a fancy piece of paper with their name in elaborate letters across the center. Isn't it nuts that I could have walked out of my Spanish final, received a zero, failed the class, failed to obtain a degree, becoming barred from most well-paying jobs, even teaching, until I received a diploma? That is perfect proof of a “must” determined for me, not by me.

What is the lesson here for poor, future-less me? There is no lesson. No lesson. No more lessons. Only experience. Only shared beauty and hardship between people. Only love and fear. There is the “must” of existence, which is no different than desires that lie at the base of our love. I guess the only thing to do is to try to understand which of our desires are guided by fears and which by love. And I know this for sure, I sure as hell ain't going to pull that off without you guys. Ya'll, I mean.

East er West?

2008-03-24T10:01:00.000-07:00

My Easter was different than any I've had before. For probably the first time in my life, I didn't get within 100 feet of a church on Easter day. Even last year, in the midst of disbelief and loneliness when Bethany was gone in Africa, I went to church—sat in a pew in the auxiliary chapel of the A&M United Methodist Church and wrote a poem on the bulletin.

This year, I got up early, ate a big bowl of cereal with strawberries, packed a confused lunch, and drove off to meet the shuttle that would take me up the mountain for another day of work poking buttons and lightly scolding customers. It was an extremely boring day at the top of the double chair; the highlight was using this new briefcase-sized fold-able toilet while watching the occasional person go by on the chair.

I came down rather quickly, hitched a ride with another liftie who insisted that he liked DMX because he raps about killing gay people. I mistakingly said “Really?” and he proceeded to play the song as we sped down the windy mountain road in his parents' Volvo.

I got back to my room and found out that Bethany's plane from Dallas was delayed and that I would be able to make it to the airport in Albuquerque to pick her up when I didn't think I'd make it back from work on time before.

I had an hour or two to kill before I needed to drive to the Neon City. I looked on several church websites to see if there were any night services I could attend. Nothing. I took a shower and thought about my Bible lying on the shelf, unopened. I thought about Texas.

I decided to take the alternate route to Albuquerque, since I had some extra time. The Turquoise Trail is a slow, two lane road that winds through the ghost tows of the Ortiz foothills south of Santa Fe. On the way, I pulled over on the side of the road and watched that same New Mexico Crayola sun dip below the Jemez Mountains to the west. I saw the last bits of light settle on the railroad tracks between which I stood and my eyes followed the two silvery lines to their vanishing point and wondered what lay beyond the next bend.

I stopped in Madrid, an old mining town that has been filled with artists after the prospectors left, and had a beer at the Tavern there. A jazz band was thumbing away at their instruments. I left a big tip to make up for stopping at the bar on Easter. I like that bar, though. Full of long haired black smiths and short haired, leathery older ladies with baggie shirts.

Bethany and I certainly had a rough night after I dropped her off at her house. I'm not surprised she feels the way she feels, to be perfectly honest. I mean, look, I started each of the preceding four paragraphs with “I.”

My Easter lesson was not “look to the Cross” or “look to God.” My Easter message was “look to anyone but yourself, Ben.” I've been staring at that damn track, contemplating where the two lines meet, imagining reaching that apex, and I hadn't realized that the light was diminishing around me. Now it's dark and I'm a bit worried and lost.

Fear in a Handful of Dust

2008-03-16T21:36:00.000-07:00

April is the cruellest month, breeding

Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing

Memory and desire, stirring

Dull roots with spring rain.

Winter kept us warm, covering

Earth in forgetful snow, feeding

A little life with dried tubers.

and further on...

In the mountains, there you feel free.

I read much of the night, and go south in the winter.

What are the roots that clutch, what branches grow

Out of this stony rubbish? Son of Man,

You cannot say, or guess, for you know only

A heap of broken images, where the sun beats,

And the dead tree gives no shelter, the cricket no relief,

And the dry stone no sound of water. Only

There is shadow under this red rock,

(Come in under the shadow of this red rock),

And I will show you something different from either

Your shadow at morning striding behind you

Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you;

I will show you fear in a handful of dust.

I sat and stared at this excerpt of poetry for a good fifteen minutes after reading through it again after a year or two of distance. I have twisted and wrung my mind but nothing has fallen to my lips. I have never before understood this first section of The Wasteland with the mindfulness that struck me just tonight after wading through a rocky conversation with B, a finicky post from Spencer, and a jovial email from Jono. I have sat for some time trying to think of an interesting way to illustrate my new understanding so you poor schmucks at home could instantly think and feel exactly like me, therefore making you perfect and pure in mind, as I surely am. Happily for me, I soon realized that, were I able to express that new understanding in words while maintaining its integrity, I would probably write a poem as equally beautiful, sharp, and tangible as the poem quoted above.

I guess that's forthcoming.

Yes, I'd Like a Season Pass for Deedlessness, Please.

2008-03-11T10:56:00.000-07:00

“Hey man, you got any spare change?”

We were both still walking: I, the young twentysomething with acceptable clothes, a brisk gate, and a girl close at my arm; him, the aged thirty year old with crooked teeth, disheveled clothing and a shifting gaze.

I slowed my pace only a little to pat my pockets and lift my arms in apology.

“Sorry, I don't have anything.”

We passed each other: I, not without a fear of discovery and a certain shame; him, not without a disappointed glance and a prolonged stare.

I thought of the seven or so bucks I had in my wallet. Each paper bill sat in an ashamed silence as Bethany and I wandered past the expensive shops and restaurants in the Plaza, thinking about photos she could take for a class.

What? What am I supposed to do? I am barely breaking even here. I make about $1,500 per month and am paying for health and car insurance, a hardly inexpensive rent, utilities, food, gas, and various other little expenses that I deem worthy of my hard earned cash.

I didn't have any change, just so you know, not a single coin. I didn't lie, per se. I answered his question: “I don't have any change.” Not dollars. Or did I say that? Change. Maybe I replaced "change" with "anything." Ah, what's the difference? I mean, who even has change these days? Sounds like that guy needs to alter his approach; he could hit the jackpot in Santa Fe if he started asking Plaza people for spare fifties.

Besides, who's going to give away that which would make them poorer than the recipient? Who gives their lunch away, and then offers up their dinner? C'mon, love is all fine and good but we're trying to survive here. If I die because I've given away everything, what good is that to the human race? The key is to make a fortune, give 15% to the church and become a politician, a good one, and change lives that way.

Those seven dollars in my wallet would have just gone to booze or drugs had I given them to him, right? In my case, maybe they'd buy a beer for a buddy and I, but we're not alcoholics. We're just twentysomethings. America expects much of us and spirituality expects little. Love will come when we're old.

Love will come when we're old.

Because I deserve this, right now, don't I? I deserve to watch a movie on my laptop with a girl lying with her head on my arm. I deserve the occasional lamb dish at the Greek place and I deserve a good glass of wine. Why not? I've put in my time.

Christ was Christ. I am Ben. Universal loving-kindness is a goal, just one of the folds in the Path, right? If I give away my being, my security, and my sustenance, what do I gain? Hell, I walked the aisle when I was thirteen and they dunked me the next week, so I'm forgiven either way.

I got my ticket and I can't give that up, can I?

Santa Fe Desert Railroad

2008-02-25T21:49:00.000-08:00

Sure, in Santa Fe there are fewer Mustangs and more Subarus. There is an organic grocery store near me. There is new art to see daily. Lotaburger (the superior fast-food restaurant) is around every corner. I can buy gas with 10% ethanol and I can ride my bike to work. The choice in good restaurants seems endless and there isn't a Chili's until Albuquerque. There's skiing only thirty minutes away and rock-climbing even closer. There's even Cerrillos Rd. and the beautiful purple zeppelin-like clouds that hover on the horizon of the New Mexican dusk.

And when I was in Switzerland, the sun wouldn't peek over the canyon walls until 9:00 am and you could watch new waterfalls form on the steep shoulders of the Alps after a good rain.

I was alone in the thick silence of Diablo Canyon, alone on floors of trains passing through endless European towns, alone on the wonderful cliffs of Lake Whitney, and alone on the short walk along the creek to the pond near the house where I grew up. I was alone during each step with which I crossed George Bush Drive in the orange College Station nights. I was alone in hostels, in tents, and in hotel rooms. I was alone in pews and in praise bands. I was alone with pleather-bound Holy Books and 50's beat literature. I sat alone in hammocks and in cars.

I was alone in beauty and magic. New Mexico is truly enchanting, much like they say, and I am surprised almost daily with a new feature of the sparsely populated terrain in which I now live. I returned to Diablo Canyon today with Bethany's sisters, Rachel and Lydia, and Thomas, a Couch Surfer from Die Schweiz, and I detected a new completion in the empty canyon, a certain fullness and welcome. Before, the sad canyon seemed to mourn its solitary plight even deeper when it heard my lonely steps plodding through the soft sand of the riverbed; today, it seemed encouraged by company.

And then later today, on my walk home, I turned around to see a black Hyundai Santa Fe pull into a driveway over which I had only just crossed and, for a sweet moment, my heart fluttered a bit with familiarity as I thought Annie had pulled over to give me a ride home (we were going to the same place, after all). Maybe even Tykie would be staring with a twitchingly nervous expectation from the passenger-side window.

As cars (mostly Subarus with groceries in canvas bags sitting in their front seats and liberal political debate plastered to their bumper in sticky rectangles) shot by me, probably headed home or out to eat, I realized how far I was from 503 Aurora Ct. and its counterpart three doors down, and maybe even those bums across the street. I want all of you who read this to know how deeply I miss you.

Lydia mentioned today that she had realized that choosing a job or school in which you would remain near family and friends is not bad. In fact, maybe that should be the main reason that we choose anything; there will always be a more beautiful canyon, and there will always be another sunset. If we are pursuing those things, those experiential, quantitative merit badges, we will never become an Eagle Scout. There will always be another culture to see, another country to visit, another language to learn. There will always be jobs and money.

However, 503 Aurora Ct., at least as I know it, won't always be there. People are not like sunsets; if you don't pay attention, they might not be around tomorrow. The only thing, I think, that ranks above sexy materialism is love. We have the choice to pursue either and the other must be sacrificed in choosing the one.

I love you guys and, Lee and Annie, I'll brave Dallas highways and suburban sprawl just to see you in the mornings. Neal and Rachel, I'll sit through any pastor or bland hamburger to hear your laughs. Jono, I'll talk like a snob about wine and act like I really can taste the tannins just to see the red on your cheeks after a couple drinks. Heather and Andrew, I'll wonder at your inner-workings and buy the biggest damn umbrella that Seattle's got to offer. Charly, I'll listen to any amateur band and cringe only slightly with your quite demeanor if it means I get to sit across from you at dinner. Tim, I'll act like I get the jokes and dry humor for twenty minutes of good conversation. Nick, I'll try to imagine every trance song is different than the other you just played just so we can seek out a good life as brothers. Mom and Dad, I'll buy any insurance policy and or cell phone contract just to hear your comforting voices. Bethany, I'll spend every last dime just to hold your hand with each step.

I'll wash every dish, mop every floor, choke down every criticism, play nice with every Boston Terrier, listen to every Shane & Shane song, eat every jalepeno and cheese infused burger in the whole damn freezer, step over every piece of crap on the stairs, drink every bottle of wine, wake up everyday to ESPN, watch every Kiefer Sutherland and Denzel Washington film in existence, and bite my tongue in every bad mood just for a couple of family meals and three or sixteen rounds of MarioKart, not even AGame play.

But, sweet Bethany lives in the deserts of New Mexico, Aurorians on the Court, the Family in the pines (along with poor, unemployed Nealbert), and Tim in the Grey City. All I got is a little hatchback, a couple hundred bucks, and a about six more 49-cent stamps. And, to top it off, I just drank the last of the tequila we bought when you guys came in January. I'm so confused. Then again, being lost never felt so right.

Maybe that's just the tequila in my belly.

Diablo Canyon

2008-02-20T00:01:00.000-08:00

Diablo Canyon.

Perched atop a pillar of fallen rocks, I watch the last car, other than my lonely silver hatchback, leave the dirt parking area below and speed off down the one road back to the city. I hear its engine fade into the movement of the air in the canyon.

I am alone. I am unsure of what to do. Meditate, yes, I should meditate.

I close my eyes and try to focus on my breathing but all I can think about is the ringing in my ears. My ears ring at all times. The last Mofro concert did some long-term damage I think. And now I'm thinking about Mofro with my eyes closed in the middle of a canyon seven miles down a dirt road.

Three minutes later I stare at the shadow spreading over the parking area, wondering how long it will be before I must climb down from this perch and return to the city as well. Because I know it just won't do to have me sitting out in this canyon, thinking of silence but hearing something else, watching wisps of pipe smoke curl into the air—it just won't do. And I know I will oblige, I will give in to the city lights to which I can read by after the sun set. I won't forsake the comfort of a tightly shut door for a permeable tent flap. I won't even meditate much. I'll allow myself to be worried about the safety of my car, being on time to work tomorrow, and cleaning my room.

I am alone and weak. As much strength as I want to prove by hiking around the riverbed with a backpack filled with camping supplies, I know now, as I sit atop this rock, I will return that backpack to the back of my car having only pulled the water bottle out.

A friend mentioned recently that his brain knew that certain things were right but his heart wasn't connecting. Essentially, he knew in his head that many aspects of our culture, our religion, and our lifestyles are selfish and, in the end, self-destructive. He knows that a lift operator can impact people in diverse ways just as Joel Olsteen can. He knows that love is the only sustainable energy source. Love is unbound by physics (which he may know a bit of as well). The biggest critique of the intellectual is his cold distance and calculated interactions. And that's what everybody is saying, that our heart isn't in it.

But I think it's opposite. I think our brains need convincing of what we already detect about life. Love is something we detect and understand in a way that, and I think I will have the support of centuries of novelists and poets here, we simply can't express well in words. In other words, the brain doesn't compute it. The brain cannot be convinced of the soul's longing, it can only be hired. It can be hired help and as the individual understands more about the way in which love grips them, they will be able to control the brain. But the brain will never be convinced.

Then, Tim asks, why try? What's the point? Isn't it simply smarter to give in to the thing that seems to have the most prevalent hold on you? We have to eat. We have to move. We have to reproduce. If the brain can never be convinced, we are screwed, in a sense. The brain says eat when the heart says give. The brain says stop and rest when the heart says someone else needs rest. We long for others but we short for ourselves (wasn't that clever?).

It seems that I have heard a lot of explanations of faith, but I have never thought that faith might simply be the acceptance of the brain's inability to be convinced of the truth and its subsequent demotion from admiral to the decoder boy in the ship's bowels.

We'll Touch Base

2008-02-14T12:48:00.000-08:00

Neal was right, people lie. I'm going to write it out for him because he has no Ben's Papers.

People lie. Everyday. It is a mass epidemic of people that actually cannot utter something real, something reliable, something solid. It is frustrating, if you begin to think about it, or are in the position that we recent college grads have found ourselves; relying on another's “word” is like being a Ralph Nader supporter: the chances are slim to none that you'll find yourself in the winner's circle. However, if you don't think about it, you're fine. You can exchange “I'll give you a ring tonight” with someone and, if you both are really unconscious of whether or not you actually will, then a failure on either part to call is not a heart-breaker.

I think, more than straight out immoral deception, we are simply living unconscious lives. When we say to someone that we will meet up with them later, there isn't some fiendish desire to see them crouching in vain near the phone, teary eyed. We do it for much the same reason the Western Scene Hotel on Cerrillos Rd. has a sign that says “Recently Remodeled,” though the sign itself looks about 15 years old. We put bumper stickers on our 1984 Nissan truck that say “Save the Earth.”

We are just dazed. Forgetful. Distracted. I didn't call you because I didn't have service. I didn't come by because my mom wanted to talk for an hour. I didn't reply to that email because I was swamped at work. And then, we respond sometimes with disgust, other times with passivity but, either way, we usually find ourselves saying the same things the next time we are in contact with any sort of communicative life.

I'm not sure, but I do believe phones were initially praised because they made communication quicker, not because they were perfect for the subjection of your friends. Cars were manufactured so people can move quicker, not define mobility. Let me ask you this: Have you ever stood in the middle of an empty highway? Or even a road? The feeling is strange, as if you don't belong there, as if this piece of land was not made for shoes. We treat cars like they are vessels for traveling over inaccessible terrain. And what about eBay? Or grocery stores? Or gas stations? Or tap water?

All of these things were made to provide humans with more efficient products and activities. We would say you must learn to expect these things and, if you are terribly ascetic, become a monk so you can appreciate luxury. However, most people believe a phone is like a second vocal cord and when it breaks, it is as if a body part has atrophied. We don't expect our thumb to work—it is even more hidden in our minds than that—our thumbs just work. It is an activity that lies happily in our subconsciousness.

Why are we trying to force every part of human existence into that same shadowy place in our beings?

I will admit, being born in this life seems to come with a particular amount of subjection. Your thumbs are for texting, Johnny. You have to learn to type, Georgy; how will you ever learn to write? This check card holds daddy's money, Susie.

And Susie will sit there, baffled, until one day, her dad will hand her her very own plastic rectangle and oh the places we will go!

“The obsessive fear of Americans is that the lights might go out...Everything has to be working all the time, there has to be no let-up in man's artificial power, and the intermittent character of natural cycles (seasons, day and night, heat and cold) has to be replaced by a functional continuum that is sometimes absurd (deep down, there is the same refusal to the intermittent nature of true and false: everything is true; and of good and evil: everything is good).”

-Jean Baudrillard's America

Fargo's Spirit

2008-01-28T12:59:00.000-08:00

I watched Fargo last night.

And then, when I laid down to sleep, I started thinking about needles.

I hate needles. I hate the idea of them; thin, metal tubes that are meant to be poked through your skin, all in the name of good health or healing. They look so disgusting, so sinister.

And if anyone on this earth says the sensation of the stabbing by that little piece of misery is not detestably strange and unsettling then they need to refer me to their doctor, where the shots are made by the Nerf Company.

It slides beneath your skin like some mechanical finger. There is a sharp pinch which persists. You can feel it inject its poison. Your arm aches as the liquid is forced into your muscles and veins. Sometimes you can sense the metal in your arm, touching something meant not to be touched. The needle is removed but the sensation remains: a dull, untouchable ache and a mild burning.

As you can tell, I simply abhor shots. I will sit in the waiting room and discuss, with whoever is available, how maniacal and backwards it is that I must get injections and how close I am to simply not allowing it. Of course, I always arrive in the little room with the creaking metal table, hide my broken soul from the nurse, and almost unconsciously lift my arm to the syringe, like a man tilting his head up to accept the descending noose. I await the pain and the violation. I look away. I leave silently.

One time, Bethany and I were walking out of a dorm at A&M and, near the entrance, a blood drive was taking place. You could see a handful of people reclined, gripping those foam balls, staring at their arms like a body-builder might. The lady working the desk yelled out to me.

“Hi there, sir. Would you like to give blood today?”

“Oh, no ma'am, I wouldn't,” I remarked quickly, not without a nervous twinge.

“Well what if your girlfriend here got in a car wreck and needed blood?”

I laughed angrily and didn't say anything. Such an insensitive remark. Later, I got a little guilty that I would prefer someone getting in a car wreck to allowing some machine to take a little of my life giving fluids.

But last night, for some reason, I couldn't get needles out of my mind. It was like my mind had drifted into my upper arm and was reliving its memories there. I could feel the dull ache. I began to think of how horrible shots were. If I went to Africa or something, I would have to get a whole drawer-full of injections. I then decided that I did not want the shots which would, or should, prevent me from going somewhere for which extra shots were required. But then I overruled that thought by mentally proclaiming that I would not let any fear of sickness prevent me from going anywhere. Malaria isn't that bad, is it? But then, I thought, if I did get malaria, I might have to get an IV, which is a kind of permanent shot. And then, for a split second, I gave up on Africa or any other place that required such ridiculous moral sacrifices.

I stared up at the ceiling with a feeling of mental defeat. How could the world be so twisted and unforgiving? How can I be expected to live when I have to give up so much of who I am? Can I get through this thing whole? or is nothing whole and shots, cell phones, and Facebook are the only way we can live even a lean-to life?

Not the word, but the feeling of meaningless-ness gripped the back of my eyes and I fell asleep.

North Dakota is cold, without definition, and empty and I don't like shots because they give me a stinging booboo.

Liftie

2008-01-18T21:18:00.000-08:00

Santa Fe.

I had been riding by at night, watching the people at the bus stop, seeing their empty faces as they waited the approach of home. I had been seeing the thick beards shrouded in smoke as ageless men crouched near the ground and watched the passing cars.

When I hitchhiked to Berlin and the rain was seeping through my pitiful coat, I began to feel a distaste for every car that passed that had an empty seat. Every car in which a three-person family stared at my ruined sign and shaky thumb through the tinted windows of their warm sedan but didn't turn their neck as they passed became a sort of enemy to me. It was a miserable feeling, knowing that my hitching had nothing to do with status, character, personality, wealth, race, skills or any other imaginable traits that are supposed to get you somewhere in this life, but instead, the whole thing required trust. Basic human trust.

When that car passed by they had to lock eyes with you and see benevolence, anticipation, and goodness.

That feeling had been seeping back into my life again. Working only part time and wondering how long I would keep scouring the classifieds and contacting jobs before I might shake a welcoming hand began to wear on me.

I saw the look in their eyes. It wasn't disdain so much; I guess that had long worn off. It was resignation, yes, but it was deeper. It was like their soul had atrophied or something. Its the way smokers seem to always smell of smoke. Resignation had crept into the skin of so many of the after-hours bus riders, going nowhere in particular, returning every day, and was eating them.

I was getting a little angry. I was tired of watching the world blaze by with so many empty seats. I was tired of feeling so beaten, so cold.

And then in a flash of paperwork and training videos, I stand on the side of the mountain at the top of Easy Street Lift, watch the floating powder catch on my ski mask, and help roll up the fences at the end of the day. The lifts are closed, the guests long gone. The sun is even caught snoozing behind a cloud. And, just before the Snow Kat roars to life and begins its long hike up the runs, there is a wonderful silence. It is a silence full of the sounds of rocks and aspens and snow. It is the thickest silence. It isn't a silence created by barriers, like walls or windows, but by openness. Your ears ache to have more of it.

And I look up to the sky where the sun was about to step out from behind the clouds and think:

“I'm getting paid for this.”

Comply

2008-01-14T23:58:00.000-08:00

Not two hours after I finished reading Into the Wild, Bethany and I pull in to the long driveway of Djoro's house, where Bethany is renting an attached studio apartment from the former-Yugoslav turned engineering professor.

He is an older man. He has round eyes that are framed by the drooping skin beneath them. His head is large and he leans it toward you when he talks. His accent is thick and he has a habit of quietly mumbling at the end of sentences in which he is making a particularly poignant point, as if he was telling a sad story.

And most of the things he talks about are sad stories. Corruption at his university, the apathy of students, Yugoslavia's crumbling under the checkbooks of venture capitalists, the misleading American media and other such tragedies. He is passionate about these things, knowledgeable in world history, dedicated to education and an excellent host.

In fact, the afternoon Bethany moved in, he invited us in to the main home, saying he would give us a drink “we had never tried before.” He laid a shot glass in front of Bethany, Andrew (who was visiting on his way home from Colorado), and I. He filled these glasses with Slivovitz, otherwise known as plum brandy, and said drink, drink. I quickly found out that the worst thing you could do was empty your glass because, like a doting mother, he would quickly refill the glass.

He is a gracious host, always offering food and drink, always willing to converse. He is a smart man; he showed me a patent he was working on and I was about as tangled as the detailed diagram he thrust into my hands explaining the bandwidth recover-er. Talking to him is very enjoyable, to say the least.

He told us to drop by last night and eat some leftovers after a party he would be having had fizzled out. We quickly got into an in-depth conversation about the direction of American education, business, and society in general. It was all getting very bleak. I like and share most of his ideas regarding the politicization of almost every area of life in this country, but he is able to give examples, show failures, and explain the inevitable success of corruption using personal anecdotes and historical proof that give a nasty stench of rot to what I thought was only a dark shadow.

As expected, I had eaten more than capacity. I was slowed by the smoke of his pipe drifting across the table to me. I was just, uh, distressed. After a long pause in which he got up from the table, walked into the kitchen and talked to Bethany, I spoke up.

“So, what to do then?”

“What to do, what to do. What to do is you talk to publishers, you keep writing, you fight your way in. You take any job for any pay and you work hard and you show up on time and you make friends. You build your resumé. You keep talking to people.” I wasn't meaning for the conversation to turn to my life decisions.

“But I've talked to people, I've emailed people. Nothing doing.”

“You don't email, you walk in, put your resumé down, and tell them you want to work.”

His thick accent was really defeating me. I was lost in a barrage of Slavic advice. I told him that I didn't want to be involved in the politics that he said inundated every inch of life. I told him I'm fine with part-time jobs, anywhere I can work. I told him that I wasn't exactly sure, but it seemed like his advice to me was to comply, to defeat the politics from the inside with strong personal values and hard work.

He leaned forward. He whispered.

“You must comply. You must have food. You must do the work.”

All this was all very difficult to hear, considering I had just finished a novel about a modern, non-fictional non-conformist. Into the Wild was yet another story in my life that seemed to glance off my life windshield carefully crafted by society. I keep going but I can't help looking back and trying to see what I hit. And most of the time, all I want to do is stop—stop and get out and leave that stupid vehicle behind and hold Chris McCandless in your hands and mourn him, bury him, learn from him.

There was Djoro and there was McCandless. There was compliance and there was abandonment. Politics and rice. Wealth and sleeping bags. Existence and starvation.

Always, McCandless' option is more enticing. He was free of financial obligation and free from possession. He was free from compromise and could live his ideals out without question or interruption. If he believed federal laws prohibiting people from hopping trains were extreme, unjust, or superfluous, he would jump on the train. If, consequentially, he was thrown in jail, he had the freedom to wait until he was released. Sometimes, I think a couple nights in jail would be preferable to the eternal frustration and hoop-jumping required after receiving something as basic as a speeding ticket.

Djoro's option is that of a floormat. Lay-low. Do you work. Gain world power but don't abuse it. Worldly power changes the world. McCandless' power is canonized as a good-story and applied through a scholarship fund. George Bush takes lives; McCandless just makes readers' brows furrow.

And here I am with only a vague idea of the amount of money in my bank account, looking for another part-time job, and waiting, anticipating, craving the next time my brow furrows.

Breaking Silence

2008-01-13T11:18:00.000-08:00

It's a strange feeling sitting at the wheel of a fifteen-passenger van filled with elementary school children as they squeal and laugh. It's weird being bundled up and still feeling cold. It is unreal to pass street signs that you have never seen but criss-cross your city and it is eerie to navigate a big, rattling van down a road headed directly toward the distant white slopes of mountains whose names I have yet to learn.

I am in a funk, as some might say. I spend my days trying to retreat as quickly as possible to my new, spacious room, where a familiar comforter lays across the provided futon and my books fill half of a book-shelf. Outside my private entrance is ice and a cold nose and activity. Outside are people—people in cars, people on the street, people with big beards and dreadlocks, people with children, people with long black hair, people with berets—all of them uninterested in me, uninterested in my fairly typical and uneventful life.

I told Tim the other day that I can now understand why people can cling to a religion or deity with such fervor and often, irrationality; loneliness and anonymity eat away at your brain and make you feel that everything you see or experience is getting stuck at the back of your eyes, nothing reaches the heart. Because the rational says that, in this world, I have about as much utility as a stitch in a quilt: my absence may cause a temporary hole, but it is quickly patched and forgotten.

And that makes me wonder: are we all just fighting to leave a bigger hole? If we are trying to be a bigger stitch—maybe an entire thread or a tile—so we can hold more together, touch more people, be more important, and make the the whole better, shouldn't we expect a giant hole to be left upon our exit from this life? And through the hole that's left, won't people just peer down and again realize the infinite abyss that exists above and below this thin worldly existence that seems to ring in our ears with death which is ironically the thing we are trying to avoid by constructing such a quilt?

That might be the most amplified example of anonymity, of futility, and of loneliness that one feels upon moving to a new place or walking into a crowded classroom without a friend. It is the way I feel at New Year's of every year. It is the way you feel as you get in the car and pull out of the church parking lot after your grandmother's funeral. Its the way you feel in a trainstation and when you're alone in an airport waiting for a flight.

And it makes my sparkling ideas of community shrivel like styrofoam in a fire. It makes you want to fall back on unconsciousness and a hope that you can stop pursuing God and just have Him, hold Him, and rub Him like a lamp.

Or, is there another way to live? Is there something else other than our American or Western Narcissism that says value exists in or is defined by uniqueness and rarity? I sometimes feel like I am battling with others to prove my purity much as a jeweler would grade a diamond.

Living in a community is not like this; value exists in each person because each contributes to the community. Gold is as beautiful to a community as the content feeling after a good turkey sandwich and a bowl of soup. Living in community does not put value on knowledge, which is quantitative, but on awareness and understanding, which is something different.

I feel, now, void of any value, real or imagined. I am hardly a vital organ of a community. I have no “real” experience, my resumé is as bare as an aspen, and any wealth I have has been generously given to me. I feel like I have “community” experience, passion as red as cedar, and financial freedom to pursue something other than wealth.

Santa Fe, as I guess any city would be to me, at first, is a desire to work out the second group of attributes but an inability to find an outlet. Where there are plenty of outlets in which the first group of attributes are useful, I don't have the qualifications or the desire to pursue them.

And so, like a child in some museum with a thousands wondrous things to look at, I drop my head and shuffle off as I feel America's hand on my back and a thousand instructor-like voices saying “Come on, we have to go now. You have to take a bath, wash your clothes and get a good night's sleep because tomorrow is a big day. You have bills to pay. Work to do. This community thing will be here when you come back.”

And on occasional weekends, I'll come back, maybe with some friends, and peer through the glass, ask "what if?" and then remember that I only paid for an hour of parking.

#136

2006-12-19T16:19:00.000-08:00

It occurred to a friend and me only a couple of weeks past that we got it all wrong. We got it all wrong.

Countless religions and spiritual leaders pace the stage and offer perfection as the end-all of the human race. They condemn sin and error as giant scars on a white surface, the flaws that keep us from perfection. We are to be perfect, without sin, and in utmost communion with an infinite God.

In the course of human events, it seems, Adam and Eve were the first to be perfect. Even if you don’t believe the story it offers an interesting perspective. Adam and Eve existed in some sort of ‘flawless’ relationship with God. They were without sin, essentially perfect. What happened? Why would a perfect creation choose imperfection?

The mistake Adam and Eve made seems more of a decision. Adam and Eve might be the first to admit the phrase “ignorance is bliss” but why would they choose anything more? Were they ignorant of their ignorance? If that’s the case, as I think some preachers might offer with some security, then isn’t ignorance an imperfection? Their ignorance led them to imperfection but, were they simply imperfect to begin with?

So many would say, “Surely not.” Was the ‘perfection,’ as we love to call it then, not so perfect? If there was anything better than perfection, wouldn’t that simply be God? Isn’t perfection God? God is perfection (for that is the definition of God) and neither Adam nor Eve was God, and if this is so, were Adam and Eve perfect in the way God is perfect? Either way, they chose imperfection and God, if He is perfect, can never ‘choose’ imperfection because the two cannot mix, they are what the other is not.

Therefore, the perfection that God embodies (it is difficult to put it in such organic terms) is more than the perfection that Adam and Eve lived.

NIV:
“For God knows that when you eat of it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:5

KJV:
“For God doth know that in the day ye eat thereof, then your eyes shall be opened, and ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil.” Genesis 3:5

Let’s examine this tree. Why would God place it there? Some offer the explanation of necessary choice or free will. According to this verse, though, Adam and Eve had no knowledge of good nor evil so, what was their choice between? Were they forced to make a choice between a bad and a good that they simply were not aware of? Were they simply fooled by Satan? Why would there be a Satan? necessary choice and free will?

This all just seems a little difficult to me. If God wished for man to not eat from the Tree, it seems to me that he would simply but up a big bouncer angel who might punch the couple in the teeth every time their curious fingers groped for the fruit. Free will you say?

I say free will is a curse without total consciousness.

Adam and Eve chose total consciousness. They chose a knowledge of good and evil: the most basic definition of consciousness or your conscience. Total consciousness is an attribute of perfection. It means awareness of everything; every spiritual movement and physical outcome, every palpitation of soul and heart. Consciousness itself means simply awareness of good and evil but total consciousness, perfect consciousness, is an awareness of all good and all evil. Omniscience literally means “all knowledge.”

I’ll cut to it. I think the perfection that we seek is more than whatever it was that Adam and Eve had. I cannot regain ignorance. Once an event has occurred then it has occurred. It is my choice to keep that even in my awareness or by some strange act let it drift from view.

Adam and Eve chose consciousness.

NIV:
“When the woman saw that the fruit of the tree was good for food and pleasing to the eye, and also desirable for gaining wisdom, she took some and ate it.” Genesis 3:6

KJV:
“And when the woman saw that the tree was good for food, and that it was pleasant to the eyes, and a tree to be desired to make one wise, she took of the fruit thereof…” Genesis 3:6

Consciousness has no connotation but it is only with this factor that both good and evil can be realized. The knowledge of nakedness inspires a new idea – shame – that requires another tier of awareness to combat.

Churches are not teaching this kind of spiritual life. We perpetuate ignorance, pasting maxims to paper plates and hoping that the kid simply does what it says, without asking questions because so many of us, deep down, wish for the ignorant bliss of childhood. It is difficult not to wish for that but, I guess, we must realize that we cannot return.

The perfection that is left is an omniscient perfection – much different from Adam and Eve’s world. We must not abandon knowledge in pursuit of God because He, by definition, is all-knowledge. In fact, our consciousnesses are the only things that simply cannot be left up to fairy dust and prayers; perfecting (I use that term loosely with humor and also because it is late and my vocabulary droops like my eyelids) awareness looks to me like a movement towards God.

#135

2006-12-07T12:48:00.000-08:00

Kierkegaard takes on a rather probing discussion regarding the seldom-explored “movement of faith.” This idea about faith as a capacity, on a similar level as knowledge, suggests that we have had a misconception of faith as a commodity that we can have and not have. He addresses the “movement” directly, saying:

“[The movement] requires passion. Every movement of infinity occurs with passion, and no reflection can bring about a movement. That’s the perpetual leap in life which explains the movement, while mediation is a chimera…What we lack today is not reflection but passion. For that reason our age is really in a sense too tenacious of life to die, for dying is one of the most remarkable leaps, and a small verse has always greatly attracted me, because having wished himself all the good and simple things in life in five or six lines previously, the poet ends thus: ‘ein seliger Sprung in die Ewigkeit’ [a blessed leap into eternity].”

On the knight of faith, who is the most dedicated mover of faith:

“For the knight will then, in the first place, have the strength to concentrate the whole of his life’s content and the meaning of reality in a single wish. If a person lacks this concentration, this focus, his soul is disintegrated from the start, and then he will never come to make the movement [of faith], he will act prudently in life like those capitalists who invest their capital in every kind of security so as to gain on the one what they lose on the other – in short, he is not a knight.”

“…the strength to concentrate the whole of his life’s content and the meaning of reality in a single wish.”

This is a sort of focus that we have whored out to culture. We have taken the words ‘passion’ and ‘ambition’ as interchangeable and I think that the whole of life and the central struggle in mine depends greatly on our ability to separate the two.

It is the death of spiritual capitalism, sure. It is the birth of a wayward and insecure new regime in which faith picks up where knowledge (or rather the limits of knowledge) had failed us every time before. It's creepy and exciting and difficult and it seems like everyone in the world is ten times better at this than I.

Neglect

2006-12-04T10:30:00.000-08:00

Your eyes do not deceive you; I have not posted in some time. School is stupid. I have been writing excessively for my writing workshop (hard to believe, I know) and, like a tired husband too tired to please his neglected wife, I have been too 'exhausted' to do anything about this site.

Roll over reader and sleep soundly, I promise it'll get better.

Too Potatoes Two Many

2006-11-13T21:35:00.000-08:00

"Everyone here has had the typical crappy job experience. Write about yours."

Here you go, Larry. Eat it up.
**Ahem (clearing my throat).**

“Spud Hut this gonna be pickup or delivery?”
“Uh, delivery.”
“Can I get a name?”
“Theresa.”
“Lisa?”
“Theresa.”
“Oh. Phone number?”
“845-0101.”
“Address?”
“2403 East Jersey.”
“Alright, what’d you need?”
“Uh, I need a barbeque potato, no butter or chives.”
“That it?”
“I’ll take a Big Red, too.”
“We’re out of Big Red. Sorry.”
“Um, ok. What else do you have?”
“We got pretty much everything but carrot juice.”
“Oh, do you have ginger ale?”
“No.”
“Ok, I’ll have a root beer.”
“Is diet ok?”
“I guess I’ll have a Coke.”
“Alright. That gonna be it?”
“Yep.”
“Alright, your total’s $7.55. Give us about twenty to thirty minutes.”
“Ok, bye.”

“What’d she want?”
“Barbeque no butter or chives.”
“Who gets a potato without butter?”
“Uh, Theresa, obviously.”
“She’s probably three hundred pounds to begin with and she’s making a desperate attempt to keep her heart beating.”
“Maybe she just doesn’t want butter.”
“Shut up. Hey, Chase had to leave early today for his hearing so I need you to stay until 5:00. It’s just going to be you until about then.”
“Great.”
“It should be slow anyways.”
“Sure.”
“Hey, go ahead and make this potato and then get out on your route. I’m gonna have a cigarette.”
“Alright.”
“Oh yeah, you guys got to start getting back as fast as you can so you can get more deliveries and go, no more screwing around in the kitchen. I’m not paying you to stand around.”

“Spud Hut this gonna be pick up or delivery?”
“Uh yeah, hi. I called about twenty minutes ago and ordered a potato. It hasn’t come yet. Is your delivery guy on his way?”
“What was your name?”
“Theresa.”
“Lisa?”
“Theresa.”
“Oh. Well I have your ticket right here and it says you called at 3:06, its 3:18 right now.”
“It’s been twenty minutes by my watch.”
“Ma’am, can you hold a second, there’s a call on the other line.”
“Well, I…”
“Spud Hut this gonna be pick up or delivery?”
“Delivery.”
“Can I get a name?”
“Damon.”
“Phone number?”
“What you need that for?”
“In case the delivery guy gets lost or is running late.”
“Well maybe he shouldn’t get lost.”
“Uh, ok. Can I get your address?”
“Yeah. Bring it to 111 Louisiana. I’ll be out front.”
“What did you want?”
“Uh, bring me one a them chicken friend steak potatoes and a Big Red.”
“We’re out of Big Red. Sorry.”
“No Big Red?”
“No sir.”
“You want to go check real fast?”
“Sir, I assure you, we are out of Big Red.”
“Damn. Just give me a Coke.”
“Ok the total’s going to be $7.55. Give us about twenty to thirty minutes.”
“$7.55?! That potato only costs 4 bucks, plus a buck fifty for the drink. Where’d you get $7.55?
“There’s a $1.25 delivery charge, sir.”
“You charge me to bring that food out here? I only live two blocks over.”
“Did you want to come pick it up instead, sir?”
“Well no. I want it delivered. $7.55. That’s robbery man.”
“You still there, ma’am?”
“Yeah, I’m still here and I still don’t have my food.”
“Ma’am, it is just now 3:22, which is only 16 minutes after you called. The delivery boy has already left and I’m surprised he hasn’t made it to your house yet. Maybe there’s a problem with traffic.”
“Well, I hope he doesn’t think he’s going to get a tip for this.”
“Oh, he doesn’t.”

“WHO WAS THAT?”
“Same lady that called earlier, she’s already mad about it taking to long.”
“WHAT?”
“BUTTERLESS LADY IS MAD THAT HER POTATO HASN’T COME YET. CAN’T YOU COME IN HERE AND TALK?”
“I JUST STARTED THIS CIGARETTE. SOUNDS LIKE YOU NEED TO GET THOSE POTATOES READY AND GET THE HELL OUT OF MY KITCHEN.”
“Sounds like you need to shove that cigarette into your drugged red eyeball.”
“WHAT?”
“I’M WORKING ON IT.”

“Spud Hut!”
“Finally. Do you normally take forty minutes to get people their food? I’m so hungry now I probably won’t be able to eat this.”
“No ma’am, your ticket only took twenty seven minutes. We said it would be twenty to thirty. Your total’s $7.55.”
“I am not paying for this potato, it took you people thirty five minutes. The guy I talked to on the phone was pretty rude, too.”
“Yeah, he’s like that sometimes. But I can’t give you the potato without you paying for it, ma’am; you can file any complaints you have with my manager. You’ll have to come into the restaurant…”
“You think I’m going to go all the way to your store just to complain about your employees. I got bad knees and allergies. Here, give me the potato and take this money. You’re lucky I’m not in better health, otherwise you wouldn’t have heard the last of me.”
“Sorry about the trouble ma’am.”
“Just don’t let it happen again. Thirty minutes!”

“Sir, I got your potato here.”
“My what? I don’t know what you talking about, man.”
“Your potato. From Spud Hut. With the Coke.”
“Oh yeah man, I thought you was somebody else. Just pull into the next driveway, behind that fence right there.”
“Uh, alright.”
“The total’s $7.55.”
“Alright. Here’s ten bucks. I need that change.”
“Ok. We don’t carry small change so all I can give you is two bucks.”
“You don’t have any small change?”
“Oh wait, here’s a quarter.”
“Man, this ten bucks ain’t even my money. I gotta get it all back.”
“Uh, well, I can look through my car if you really need it.”
“Yeah, do that.”
“Ok, I found a quarter.”
“Alright. Did you get that Big Red in here?”
“No, we didn’t have Big Red so you got Coke instead.”
“Boy, sounds like you guys need to get your shit together.”
“I’ll tell my manager, sir. Sorry about that.”

“Son, you know why I’ve stopped you?”
“No sir, officer.”
“You ran that red light straight out. You didn’t even slow down. Where were you off to in such a hurry?”
“I’m a deliver boy for Spud Hut, I was trying to get back to the store so I could get my deliveries done and get off of work.”
“You ran that red light because you have to deliver someone their potato?”
“Yes, officer.”
“You put people’s lives in danger so someone could get their baked potato two minutes quicker?”
“I guess so. I was supposed to get off an hour ago. The other delivery driver hadn’t shown up yet.”
“That’s no excuse to run a red light, son. I’m not gonna give you a ticket but you need to realize the consequences of your actions. Here’s a tip, too. Take your time and do a job right, then you won’t have to rush around at the last minute.”
“Thank you sir, that’s my first tip today.”

Hijacking

2006-11-02T21:45:00.000-08:00

I wore overalls to school today. I like overalls. They're pants that let my shoulders in on the fun. They are slightly warmer than jeans and, it being a bit brisk outside, I thought this would be the perfect day to don my comfy pair of poorly made allovers. They even have a button crotch and an abundance of pockets. It was a good choice and I was feeling confident on my way out the door. Wind, blow your coldest! My vital organs are protected by an extra layer of denim, so do your best fall weather!

I arrived at the yearbook office and sat rather quietly for some time until someone walked in and immediately noticed my overalls. I thought they were going to comment on my practicality and all around good sense but, unfortunately, I was insulted.

"Wow Ben. Overalls. That's mighty Red Ass of you."

'Red Ass' is A&M's rather silly way of denoting something or someone that is full of school spirit. I like to say it because I find it funny to compliment someone by mentioning their ass, especially in a professional environment like the bureacracy that is the MSC basement.

"Well Ben, aren't we just filled with school spirit today?"

"Well, well. You're not a two-percenter after all!"

A two-percenter is A&M's rather silly insult for those at the University that are not filled with school spirit, as 2% milk is not filled with fat.

I was doubly insulted. To suggest that I am a two-percenter is, I think, giving me too much credit and to suggest that I might actually ascend beyond that level is, well, dreamy at best.

I just like my overalls.

It seems that Texas A&M University has succesfully hijacked yet another symbol and again brainwashed the fair citizens of College Station into thinking that, somehow, they invented something as technologically impactful and beautiful as overalls and they can, by some magical spirit, inject meaning into another lifeless and quite inanimate piece of apparel. They've stolen a color, they've twisted an ancieant profession, they've even claimed an entire breed of dog - it's exhausting.

Next time I see my overalls hanging there, begging to be hung from my shoulders, I'll think twice. Either that or I'll respond to their compliments with something like this:

"Why thank you. But I can't take all the credit; you have the biggest Red Ass of any of us here. I can see it in your face."

On Responsibility

2006-10-24T16:54:00.000-07:00

I’ve come to this narrow gap in the lusty rock wall I had admired from a distance only a few months ago and now I’m doing all I can to squeeze through the sharp rocks without losing pieces of my soul and falling hundreds of feet down into that violent, muddy river that they used to call the American Dream.

I stood back and saw that beautiful mountain range on the horizon and thought to myself, that’s where I’m going. When I decided to pursue writing, things began to look really grand. I saw the greatness of such a pure art in the distance. The imposing mounds of earth were beautiful and rugged and I wanted to start walking there, anywhere. Anything was better than leaning back in the chair and throwing the line into the pond one more time. I wanted to do and get done and have scars to show for it.

I walked on happily towards those big, painted peaks for a while. I trudged along purposely, observing all around me and lacing everything with a new sort of magic I had found in words. I talked to people differently. I looked at things differently. I turned my head differently. I saw almost everything.

I didn’t see the miserable drop off into the narrow canyon. I stepped into mid-air and before I had time to realize my mistake, I hit the dusty floor of the canyon and the only way out was in. It was hot and uncomfortable there, oppressive and bright. All I wanted to do was get to those mountains and now I was wasting my energy with web sites and waiting tables and yearbooks. Obligation made my stomach wretch. Schedules make me grumpy.

I’ll end the shoddy and over-extended metaphor here.

I am now stuck in a world of responsibility. It sucks.

And don’t you dare say anything like, “Well Ben, that’s just how the world is. You have to have responsibility every once in a while.”

Not your kind, I don’t.

Your kind of responsibility deals with air. Responsibility and obligation are some of the most over-used words nowadays. Quite often, we use the same word to describe the relationship to our boss as we do the relationship to our spouse.

They are not the same. The “responsibility” you have to your spouse or your children is so much different than the “responsibility” you have to a ten page report on your company’s budget. The responsibility I have to God is radically separate from the responsibility I have to the yearbook’s editor in chief.

My responsibility to God now includes the job description of writing. It is more than a career; it is a spiritual pursuit. I doubt my writing career, per se, will ever reach very lofty heights. Even still, what kind of responsibilities/obligations are those that give us the utmost joy, such as the pursuit of God or love for a child or wife?

I want to wander off in the woods where I can deal with only the most fulfilling “responsibilities.” I want not to be dragged along by obligation; I want to be lured on by beauty and light. I want to go where the only deadline is the thick, black line of death.