05

Apr

in the land of bicycles and therapy

Rick worked part-time at Villa Santa Maria; he stopped by on weekends and played baseball with us boys. He impressed me one day with his ability to fix any bike, however broken, rusted, or in general disrepair. We hung out in the Shop, our affectionate name for the tool shed where each boy stored the bike he brought from home. I asked him to fix the brakes on mine one afternoon. Joe Ibarra was there. So was Tyler the Runaway. They rummaged through boxes of parts and joked about putting a pink seat on my bike.

Instead of reaching his long, soft fingers along the brake cable to show me what might be wrong, Rick pointed at the lever, invited me to do the same. Said, look at what you have. The lever, the cables, the brakes themselves. What do they do?

I pulled the lever on the handlebar; it retracted the cable, and the brake pads pushed against the wheel’s rim. I explained what I saw to him like an 8-year-old trying to impress an adult. Big words where they didn’t belong. He chuckled kindly. Everything he did was kind. In a residential treatment center for boys ages eight to fourteen, Rick showed up after the homework was finished and before the evening’s activities tired us into conflict. He was my pal; a confidant and friend, he didn’t hold me accountable like my assigned counselor, Nikki, though I would have preferred it.

Rick asked me if I understood the bicycle’s brake system. I looked at his funny white tennis cap, then down. I wanted to leave, to joke with Tyler and Joe about nothing. I wanted to be anywhere but there. My eyes welled with tears. Nearly melting into a puddle, I said, no. I don’t get it. I’ll never get it. This is stupid.

Blurry eyed, I felt his hand squeezing my shoulder. It’s okay, he said, look. And he pointed once again to the plastic lever, and to the brake pads. When you do something over here, he said simply, it affects this other thing. Like life, but easier. I smiled, my cheeks red. The trick is, he said, when you do something, to get the results you want. Got it?

I nodded. But can’t you fix it?

It’s not my bike, he said. You’re the only one who can fix it. But you have to understand the problem first. What’s wrong with it?

I walked the bike outside and pulled the brake lever. The cable pulled with it, the pads squeezed the rim, the wheel stopped. Nothing, I said.

Rick smiled and said, then go ride.

===

I dream about Rick sometimes. His kindness, a trait I seldom witnessed back then, modelled for me something I didn’t know how to embody. He didn’t stick around that long. Or I didn’t. He told me once that he was in college, for what I don’t remember. I remember his dark hair and widow’s peak and greying beard. He must have been in his thirties, at least.

That was 1995, eighteen years ago.

For me he was a monumental blip, a one-page angel in a sad flipbook. I barely recall the sound of his voice, yet seem to know the devastating consequences that might have occurred had he never spoken to me, or not been assigned to my group of troublemakers during those few weekends in spring. Or was it summer? I admired him like few men I knew knew how to accept, wanted the best for him.

I felt at eight the sensation of the traveller in me at 26 when I experience the energy of someone I’d like to spend time with, to learn from, and the visceral emptiness of thinking, we’re not in this for long. I’m going to get whisked away from this place by wonderful and caring foster parents (or a midnight train headed for the Mediterranean coast), and you’re going to graduate college and be a social worker or something. I’ll be one kid in your rolodex of hundreds you’ll affect. And, good for them. They need you.

At the time, I didn’t know how to articulate gratitude. Now I do.

Thank you, Rick.

48 days ago Short URL 1 Comment

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02

Apr

the beginning of all things to end

A viscous yellow dawn lit up the prairie desert. As far as we could see, pale grass and cacti were all that inhabited the earth. Occasionally a dirt road perpendicular to the highway scratched into the unknown. Out my window, north, as foreign to me as the recent past. The rising morning sun, nowhere to be found, warmed nothing. The Greyhound bus rolled at the same fifty five miles an hour it had since San Antonio.

Behind me near the toilet we weren’t supposed to use, three men who’d just been released from Leavenworth gambled candy bars and coins over a deck of cards featuring Playboy models from the 80s. I picked one up from the aisle. “I haven’t seen titties since 1994, son,” one of them said as I handed him the queen of hearts. He should’ve been wearing a shiny purple fedora and diamond studded glasses to match his gold teeth. I returned my headphones to their rightful places and turned up the volume on my discman.

Hey, I ain’t never coming home
Hey, I’ll just wander my own road
Hey, I can’t meet you here tomorrow
Say goodbye, don’t follow.

On Texas highways tears dry quickly. Keeping track of them has for me always been a useless trade. The afternoon before, I’d departed my father’s house. Another home, another family. My pace was quickening. Six months before my mother’d said, energetically, conform or leave. I left. A few weeks before the bus trip west, my father picked up the phone just as I said to a girl that Kansas was a pit of foolish racism and self-hatred, and that I was leaving as soon as possible. He took me to the bus station himself. I climbed into the air-conditioned coach, a final reprieve from the oppressive Midwest swelter. My father stood and cried where we’d hugged.

Many of the moments by which I’ve defined myself have looked like this. Sometimes they take place in airports, other times gas stations. Rarely a smoke filled Waffle House at three a.m. My favorites are bus stations and depots. Always with different people, most of whom I’ve loved. Chances are I love them still. For me there’s nothing like leaving, departing, moving on, embracing the Next, especially when it’s the unknown; a peaceful fear washes over me, and I am left with a sense of balance. Will I see this person again? Will I return? When? From where else will I go?

The feeling used to seem like an oxymoron. Fear does not at once seem peaceful at all – it seems wrenching and panicky, like cowardice. Something to regret. Since that Greyhound bus on the desert highway, I’ve done all I can to say goodbye without looking back. It seemed weak. I wanted to embrace the next step, and honor whom and what I’d just departed because inside I was gone, already giving my whole self, nervous knees and short breath, to the Unknown. From a perspective that says unabashedly and inconsiderately it only gets better from here, looking back for me is a counterproductive burden. If my presence is my greatest gift, then I have given all I can. Thank you for being a part of it. A part of me.

So, to Portland, home of my savasana winter; to the communities I’ve orbited; the playgrounds on which I’ve learned how to manage my energy; friends, tribe, and family, all of whom I love for your contributions to the world around you, for your willingness to do the work it takes to grow and go where necessary to make it to the next step, the unknown – thank you. I’m headed off for my circuitous adventure, another enamoured summer on the seas along Alaska’s broken coastlines. See you on the other side.

51 days ago Short URL 2 Comments

journaling/Prose

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20

Mar

the slippery fish game.

The last week has been a taxing few days of fishing jargon thrown about barstools and living rooms, fisherpeople saying this and that about fishing and people. It’s about the who can impress who, and who did what, can’t waits, have tos and wink wink nudges. Heather’s getting ready to run her boat by herself for the first time, and the old guys all have something to chuckle about the new girl in town. The ‘new girl,’ who grew up amongst them, just under the radar, working on the fiercest boats around. She’s one of a handful of female skippers in a fleet of 1600, and the preseason stress is as demanding as the fishing

While she prepared to send food and gear up on the barge, she evaluated her crew members, who, months ago, by some cosmic joke fell into a deep infatuation with one another – I heard one call it love – and wondered what she manifested. All this amongst our social goings-on with Bristol Bay’s finest.

It’s difficult to think of the commercial fishing world as any different than how I imagine other niche work cultures operating. Here, one needn’t search long to find evidence of a dominant patriarchy – in Alaska, it is typically fuelled by cheap beer and diesel engine oil. Every interaction with crew is somehow symbolic of the skipper’s authority. In the boatyard, crew is usually relegated to sleep on the boat, and report promptly in the morning to the skipper’s container van regardless of the previous night’s shenanigans. There they learn the day’s agenda, and set to it until the day is done. The PAF boatyard, indeed all of Dillingham, plays the stage for the preseason crescendo of net hanging, boat cleaning, oil changing, welding, and beer drinking. Deckhands install grates in fish bins, take inventory of food and nets, eliminate potential net snags, paint buoys. There are no clocks by which to ensure eight hour workdays, supervisory cameras, or days off. They work until the skipper says to not.

Most first-timers arrive to the Bay excited and ignorant and wanting to make a difference. Offer their suggestions. Reassure their skippers that they’ll be the best deckhands ever. Make promises like “I’ll wash the dishes every meal all season long,” as if it wasn’t already their job. We call these bright-eyed butterflies greenhorns. Lower case g.  Like beautiful women, greenhorns need not divulge personality, for it will not be valued, and in many cases even acknowledged. There are reasons for this, and it suffices to say that greenies are appreciated for their hard work and ability to keep their mouths shut. Ideally for the entire season. Preferably two.

I preferred my first few years of fishing on unknown boats with skippers newer to the shores. I knew no one else who fished. Outside the doors of the airplanes on which I rode to and fro the season, I had no opportunity to talk endlessly about nets and cork lines, hydraulic systems and crew shares. When fellow travellers or students asked about my occupation, I told them about the magical vistas of the sea; the slithery strength of a salmon in my hands, refusing to die; that we delivered fish to the crab boats from Deadliest Catch, whose vacations were our peak season.

Back then, I knew few of my skipper’s quirks, or the dozens of his jolly mates. I happened to this folklorish world, one in deep denial of its impending armaggedon, by accident. A pebble skipped into the sea by some child within me. I’m getting polished in the breakers and taken out with the tide. When the sea spits me out she does so with a knowing smile that it’s only time before my return, and time matters to the sea not much at all.

And my acquiescence grows stronger every year – the stakes feel ever higher when I check in with myself about leaving the fishery. It seems now I’ve got so much more to lose. Like any relationship worth staying, I’ve built and with every interaction with fisherpeople am building a reputation, a career, a story. I fish with a legend, and he just gave me a raise in responsibility, pay and faith. His recommendation is stronger than iron in our microcosmic world of gruff pretension and unsubtle oneupmanship.

He sees that I don’t play the game, and moves his piece anyway, to gauge my reaction. I don’t need the job, I tell myself. I don’t need to participate in the dick-measuring games they play. It’s not that I’m above it – I just don’t love fishing that much.

And fear: with what other job on earth can I have a grand Alaskan adventure every summer, all expenses paid, and walk with a healthy five digit check?

Do I want to sacrifice the rest of my summers to fishing, what years there are left anyway before Pebble Mine poisons Bristol Bay beyond hope of repair, to end up like my ex-crewmate Bob, who at 50 wished he’d done something other than fish, only to quit and to make money sell the trinkets he’d collected from decades of world travel paid for by his seasonal lifestyle? Is that how I hope to become? It scares me that the answer might truthfully be yes, maybe.

64 days ago Short URL Comments

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15

Mar

a first birthday, finally.

Marai’s first birthday celebration didn’t go as planned. He blew out the candles on the decadent espresso cake, one of three desserts one the table, and as the last off-key echoes of Happy Birthday died, the baby Carmelito picked the warm candles from the cake and sucked icing from the ends. I grabbed Marai’s hand and brought him back to the table. There’s another custom you must know, I said.

The Lybian/Egyptian Portlander sucked icing off his birthday candles and the partygoers laughed. Cameras flashed. Are you laughing at me, asked Marai with an accent that brought us all to a far away land, to a sultan’s tent, to camels and desert dunes unfathomable. A diligent and curious student of culture, he asked about the apparent cultural differences between our worlds rather than take offense. He’s thirty-five, or thirty-eight, depending on which passport is in his pocket, and celebrated his first birthday party with a gesture of trust.

Who of us knew Marai? How did we meet him? Question of the night. A reaching across entire communities, philosophies, and ways of being. We met in a cafe. On the street. We heard his voice at a dance jam (“I am honored to be here,” he had said, “This is a YES!”), and showed up at his house two weeks later. He opened the door with open arms. Sometimes we misunderstand each other, and work through it over tea and ice cream. We show each other our flaws and ask, can you love and accept me now?

Last night people who would not normally resonate communicated through a fiber optic thread named Marai (that’s muh-RYE), a being of light that transcends its lamp and shines shamelessly.

Happy birthday, my friend, Happy birthday. You came into the world today, like the first chapter of a novel you’ll never stop writing.

69 days ago Short URL Comments

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14

Mar

night time railyard jam

In times of abundant solitude, when I find myself in the right place, I remember that I vibrate a very specific frequency. Like any musical note, I can play in a group, key, or song, and the result can be anything a jam session or album can be – a ludicrous cacophony lubricated by and written with intoxicants, or a sweet melodious story told by a child sitting on the lap of his grandfather, who adds context when necessary.

And I can also ring alone, in a hum or whistle, with rhythm or without, and associate my sound with a place, mood, or feeling. My frequency can be found amongst the raucous metal of a train yard in the pre-dawn hours.

The monolithic ministers of power, thousands of gallons of diesel swishing in their bellies, move slowly down one track and up another with rumbling fortitude. Assembling a train can take hours of slow laborious movement. Railroaders call it Tying Up. Great metal hooks smash and latch together like fingers grasping just before losing grip. An air hose connects the engine – the power – to the Fred, a portable traffic light of sorts, that replaced the caboose as indicator of a train’s derrier.

The process is slow and done by tired men – there are precious few female railroad workers – fatigued by long and odd hours, and assembling occurs without any grace at all.

Stop n’ go is not like your kind Amtrak conductor, or the gentle European rides through Southern France; cargo trains bang and slam and squeal for lack of oil.

When dozens of cars in a line and need to be attached, engines push down the line to quieter cars. I picture my back to a wall, a Mack truck coming at my face at 60 mph. The result is a sequence of small, controlled explosions, milliseconds apart. Watching the phenomenon – a daily occurrence , by railer’s standard – excites me. Two hundred thousand pounds of box car, cylindrical tank and lumber frame jilt six inches to crash into its neighbor, disquieting it from meditative stillness. Inside the clang, my note rings through the steel, part of the railyard song. Our jam sessions nightly under the highway bridge, the river running north. Our giant horizontal domino set decorated in graffiti and rust prepares to travel, like birds on a wire waiting for a southerly.

70 days ago Short URL 2 Comments

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10

Mar

Free: Knowledge!

Two months ago, I was sitting on the toilet enjoying a moment of peace when a sudden feeling of stupidity came over me. The bathroom fan sucked up the pungent scent of my shit, and with it my intellect. My thoughts became mush, which stuck to the sides of the three-foot-deep plastic sink like dried razor hair. I couldn’t conjure words, book titles, or a single philosopher’s name, and was hard pressed to remember how many of the dozens of coups in Latin America alone the CIA has admitted to helping execute in the last century.

Oh yes, zero. Beside the point.

I felt more than a mere lack of knowledge; I thought I’d lost my need for a breadth of knowledge and understanding. Life had grown entirely devoid of intellectual stimulation past that of my daily philosophies on how to manage energy, a topic I by that point had earned a scribbled honorary doctorate in. Heather’s and my conversations have always penetrated to the core of the issue; when they do not, one or both of us feel like we’re missing out. Such a dedication to working out and solving problems has propelled us through and past emotional turmoil and catastrophes that I’ve seen break up marriages. I say this not to boast, but to give you an idea of how much exercise we give our vocal cords. Voice yoga, you might call it. So much of this talking about myself, however, led to an awful drought in learning about things outside my cute Portland bubble of positive experience, delicious local, organic food, and healing walks along the Willamette; all for which I have infinite gratitude – and, I could read more.

By the time I flushed, I had what I thought was a brilliant idea to get smart quick. Because my intellect and bank account were running in alignment at the time, going out and buying a bunch of smart people books wasn’t an option. And, the libraries in Portland seemed oddly deficient. Small, boring, and pastel tan, the corner store-sized venues of mystery novels, bestsellers, and children’s reading areas felt more like vessels for dozens of computers copiously occupied than community centers for knowledge and divine, cobwebbed shelves packed full of obscure literary criticism.

In part due to the vast success (and beautiful wooden shelves) of Powell’s Books, independent bookstores are scarce in Portland. Occasionally I’ve found a house converted into a used bookstore, old titles shoved into the deep crevices of not-anymore bathrooms and what were once children’s bedrooms, more stacked on staircases shaped more to shelve books than footsteps anyway. These comforting, homely places run by stressed women approaching menopause and lonely bearded men I worshipped in and visited infrequently. Used books were an option; after all, any reading is better than no reading.

I considered what I’d heard from so many college graduates since I deliberated taking the traditional college route: I’m so overloaded with debt, how will I ever find my way out, what did I actually learn, will I ever get a job, or, worse, I have a six digit debt, and no desire to pursue what I studied.

Years later, during my brief but dedicated foray into university life, I wondered, where did we find the idea that knowledge cost money? Was it sitting in a gutter somewhere, or did it spring up during an annual stockholder’s meeting? Did an entrepreneurial teacher think she could be better paid by her students than the Department of Education? It was a capitalist idea, to be sure. Plus, it’s free! This is America; we love free things, form ridiculous lines and arguments to obtain them. What makes a free tank of gasoline, or samples of cheese at a store more important than information? In some countries, education is downright illegal for women. The value then, to female students especially, increases exponentially. You wouldn’t see the students fortunate enough to be taught playing with their iPhones during class. I mean, have you read Reading Lolita in Tehran? It’s marvelous, and I’ve never once in my entire educational experience seen that kind of voraciousness for knowledge in a group of students.

Knowledge, as stated by countless smart people throughout history, is the most powerful tool, toy, and weapon available to a thinking species. It is why libraries exist; it is why the internet is the greatest revolution of our age. It is also free as hotel pens, restaurant toilet paper, and smiles. I don’t need a $100,000 piece of paper with my name and major written in calligraphy; I need what it represents! I need the visceral memory of being enraptured by William S. Burroughs when I was assigned Milton. I want to set up shop in a library row full of century-old leather-bound books, to run my hands along the spines and feel interpretations of Othello and Paradise Lost, to get lost in Latin American anarchist poetry and biographies of unstable dictators. America, you succeeded in convincing me that education was important, and actions speak louder than propaganda. 

My goal, I decided as I made my way from the bathroom to the living room, to make quality, focused education accessible to me. If I wanted to study something, I thought, I would delve into it, read, write about,  and learn it. And, if I felt so inspired, to write a song, or paint, about it. That is true integration for me; mastication and regurgitation of information never cut it. In school, I rebelled against academic writing in my papers simply to annoy my professors. They in turn refused to view my rebellion as artistic expression, and I received appropriate marks.

As with all of my great ideas, I told Heather my revelation, which wound up on a post-it note labelled ‘Research Days.’ I stuck the square sheet to a kitchen cabinet door, along with the first topic I wanted to learn about. The idea was to dedicate one or two days a week to researching a particularly interesting or unknown subject, and teaching each other what we’d learned in a fun and interesting way. Going to a coffeeshop to teach someone about body language is much more effective, for example, than making faces in front of a class, or explaining in a lecture that matching gestures indicates interest, or putting your hands behind your back during a conversation subtly shows superiority. How would we remember the zeros and ones so to speak, unless we gave each other and ourselves permission to get out of the lecture hall and watch people interact?

Do you ever wonder why we so coveted field trips in school? Of course not; they removed us from our normal learning environment, changed the scenery, provided opportunity to socialize with the outside world. All of the most obvious reasons! So why, if educators were so interested in providing quality educations, not apply this model as a form of schooling?

Thankfully, institutions like the Northwest Youth Corps established the OutDoorSchool on similar principles. ODS provides an academic foundation with a container of outdoor education, leadership training, work experience, and application. It is a credited high school able to grant credits, diplomas, and transcripts, leaving the social stigma and cultural associations of ‘alternative’ schools up to an open-minded public. If only I knew about places like this when I was 14!

The post it note is still stuck to the cabinet. Granted, the idea was a lot greater than the follow-through, but I have hope for my brain. Finding the methods by which I learn best helps (entire education methodologies have been developed on this subject alone – look into it!). Personally, I find inspiration in TED talks and well-written non-fiction (books such as Bananas by Peter Chapman and Lasso the Wind by Timothy Egan were integral in my desire to pursue writing), and many magazine stories, in such rags as Harper’s, Mental Floss, and one story in Mother Jones in particular have fascinated me beyond hope of repair. My brain will never be the same. My hunt for knowledge is on high. I am finally reading books I bought years ago, and wonder why I didn’t read it the day I got it?

Well, because I was meant to read it now. On the toilet. In grocery lines. While waiting for the food stamp or DMV people to call my number. When work is dull. When I’m pacing around the house looking for something to do and end up eating more out of boredom than hunger. Read a book. Break out the Kindle, or the Nook. Whatever your preferred medium (mine is paper and ink), carry it around, and in free moments, spend your time gathering ideas, so that when you go back to your phone, you have something titillating to talk about.

How do you acquire knowledge? Do you make time for reading books? Have your desires for new information continued past what you learned in high school and college?

75 days ago Short URL Comments

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06

Mar

the language of pocketknives and outer spaces

Love, sex, poetry and art, religion, political influence and education; people seek to leave their mark on the world, something that says in our special, dynamic way, I was here!

When was the last time you visited the underside of a bridge, a park bench, or a dingy bathroom stall? In silver, green, blue, and pink Sharpie marker, kids tag monikers and philosophies in secret, at night, subsequent to flushing their urine, a primitive territory marker. One sided lovers carve their initials next to their beloved’s, name a favorite band, paint a marijuana leaf, practice cursive.

Some of us sense differently; where I may smell pungent perfume on a woman in a cocktail dress, she most clearly hears the baritone voice of her lover the jazz singer on stage, who, blind, navigates his world by touch. When I’m taking a shit in Portland, New York, or Dillingham, and I see the permanent marker tag of Bosco,  a young man from the Indiana ‘burbs unaccustomed to the foreign likes of individuality, self-expression, and creativity. It depicts a penis with six pubic hairs and a speech balloon containing four incoherent and misspelled words, comments to the toilet paper dispenser.

I heard once that bathroom graffiti was the purest form of art: it is anonymous, public and without expectation of payment. You get what you pay for.

Here, we can elevate our progress to bumper stickers. The other day, a Ford Escape cut me off on I-5 before realizing that we had the same destination: three miles ahead, exit, turn left, go six blocks, down the hill and into the railroad yard. I parked next to him when we arrived. The railman didn’t acknowledge me as we walked into the building, but insisted with his bumper sticker that he was raising his kids “Right,” three small GOP elephants behind a large one. Later that day, I ended up giving he and his crew a ride north. The conversation quickly turned to guns, and how it should be legal to shoot birds, deer, and liberals.

I digress. My frustration flares when I experience inabilities to communicate. I hear in coffeeshop voices a fear to reveal what begs to be said; I see lies plastered on signs glued to the face of America and no one asking why. In place of communication, we stamp impatiently for a chance to speak, then talk at each other, hoping not so much that the other will listen and possibly adopt our views, but that we will feel heard and acknowledged.

For example, the governmental deadlock over the past five years has been far less a result of incompetent people doing stupid things, but a large group of well-educated and self-centered people who seem unwilling to listen, acknowledge, and accept their counterparts and co-workers. The Republicans think the Democrats don’t hear their outcries, so they throw tantrums and block bills; Democrats complain that the GOP doesn’t want anything to do with progress, has only their interests in mind and otherwise are concrete and stoic. All of these are assumptions, and how much communication actually happens in the House of Representatives?

This is one way how relationships fall apart: I want only you and me in this, and if it doesn’t work like that, then I don’t want to do it.

Sometimes, objective and wise perspectives – for example, from those not involved in government matters or a particular relationship – reveal blind spots and issues that may benefit all parties to deal with.

Crimeney! I’ve started rambling. Graffiti, sex, and politics. I’m reading one of the most concise and helpful books on writing I’ve come across, called The Weekend Novelist. It lays out plot lines, character sketches, outlining. It encourages, as all writing lessons should, unabashed, let-the-fuck-go free writing. Use strong verbs, it says. Anyone can use weak verbs. Use images. It says, the first word picture in a novel determines the architecture of the book. No pressure.

All things we’ve heard before. But it helps to hear them again. And again. And read. Lots. Like Timothy Egan’s Lasso The Wind. Someone let that cynic loose on the great American West at the end of the twentieth century, and you get a coherent, emotionally charged mix between Chuck Palahniuk, Hunter Thompson, and Joan Didion.

No list of smart awesome people would be complete without Neil deGrasse Tyson, Astrophysicist Extraordinaire. He was on Coast to Coast AM tonight. I would learn quantum physics if it meant I could have a conversation with that man. Two notable things he said:

1) Everything we know about the universe right now is accurate. It comes from observable data. There’s no group of scientists getting together, he said, wishing the universe is one way or another. Common Sense doesn’t apply to concepts humans cannot make sense of, so all you can have is a hypothesis, and the data. If the data matches your hypothesis, great. You’re on to the next problem. If not, you’ve just learned something new.

One such observable fact: science can observe the past of the universe. Know what they see? That it was smaller, and hotter. And, if you go back far enough, all the energy of the universe (remember, energy cannot be created nor destroyed, only changed, so there is no less and no more energy in the universe now than at its birth) fit into the space the size of one atom. One Atom! Do you know how small one atom is?

Really fucking small; we’re made up of quintillions of them. Which brings us to the astounding fact that the atoms from which we are made are traceable to the stars and galaxies which have made up the universe since it was the size of one atom. Which means – ta dah! – we are made of stars. Wrap your common sense around that, and tie a bow; you’re a star.

The second thing he said that struck me regarded robots on Mars. Neil was grieving the passing of the Astronaut Age (“The day the last man on the moon dies will be a very sad day”), and mentioned that were humans still at the forefront of exploration, they would garner much more attention than the machines sent in their place, and kids would grow up dreaming of being explorers again (as a traveller myself, I grieve this also, as the best I can hope for is finding a country whose government is so strict with visas that it would only seem like no one had ever been there before).

The fact is that we cannot let our questioning limit us. If we seek rocks on Mars, we will find and learn about hard objects. But what if we find something squishy? Are we prepared to deal with squishy? We cannot limit our potential simply because we are not asking the right questions! It is the realm of the unknown unknown. If we don’t know what questions to ask, how can we find answers?

One solution could be to send a robot with the capabilities of inspecting squishy things. Maybe we could let go of our expectations, and send a human. Maybe an astronaut. Maybe a graffiti artist. Maybe not – they may only be concerned with tagging the surface of the Red Planet to let us know they were there.

Thank you for your attention; please return to your normally scheduled lives. I have a novel to write.

 

79 days ago Short URL Comments

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25

Feb

time is running out

The weekend had offered more than we could handle: workshops on sacred sexuality; the New Warrior training with the ManKind project; the FisherPoets Gathering in Astoria; Fire Conclave practice; further recovery from the worst flu either of us had ever experienced. And I suppose I could have worked.

We’d been out of commission for two weeks, during which Heather took a road trip to California, and I shifted between the futon and the desk to edit my novel. The day after Heather returned, a dear friend stopped through Portland for a day, and work threatened our visit. I found him sitting in a Burger King on Hawthorne at ten at night, vagrants outside searching the trash cans for aluminum and cigarette butts. It wasn’t the first, or even the thousandth, place I’d expect to find Hargobind the Sikh yoga teacher who liked to discuss the intricacies of love and relationships over tea in the deserts of New Mexico. We all went for pizza instead.

Twenty four hours later, Heather and I sat in squeaky floor chairs in the old Masonic hall on 17th. A British woman rambled on about the secret sanctum (“do you know where that is, ladies?” she asked, giggling) and how it was impossible to reach Christhood if you’re not a priest or priestess. Occasionally her partner said something about embodying the masculine sexual expression, to which she rambled in response. Twenty minutes in, thirty-five of forty people were dozing off. I pretended to stretch and took a nap. Heather and I passed notes, which was okay because we sat in the back and weren’t bothering anyone. “Let’s go spin fire,” I wrote.

In the hallway dozens of photographs of prom queens decorated the walls. Names like Edna, Gertrude, and Esther matched the years in the captions: 1933, 1956, and through the ages. Sally smiled most recently, in 1994. Her teased blond hair glowed like 80s glam rock. The girls’ grandfathers’ photos adorned the opposite wall. I felt as if I was looking at a brick wall – rows of grumpy old white men in small glasses and corny suits hiding secrets in their kerchief pockets. I’m not sure they would approve of the candlelit woo-woo rambles in the other room. We left before the dead had their say in the matter.

From their we found the Watershed, an artist studio where some Fire Conclave people meet to trade spin tricks and show off their social awkwardness. The Conclave is a collective of jugglers, fire spinners (which includes staff, poi (think tennis balls on the end of a chain, one in each hand), hula hoops, bull whips, swords, and anything else you might want to set on fire and spin into shapes), and other circus arts performers who attenuate the flames at Burning Man, and make the world a beautiful place for acid trippers and children alike.

The next night, we’re sitting in Clemente’s, a restaurant in Astoria, Oregon, listening to FisherPoets read nostalgic passages of their seasons on the sea. Like the writers on the stages, we’ve got stories to tell, though we haven’t let thirty summers pass before we care to tell them. Though I’m ten feet away from the painted podium I can’t hear for shit; the sound man seems to have gone AWOL, and I check the PA system for syphilis. If only it was that good.

Later, a sexy fisherpoet named Tele (Norwegian for ‘tundra’), a Mat-Su valley girl who trolls out of Sitka, caught Heather’s eye, and we spent the next two hours tailing her words til she asked for our digits. Her musings on Home were as nomadic as mine, and after she read her essay I wondered what the hell I had to say anymore. Inspiration’s a bitch sometimes – she says ‘thanks for your attention, now go think something else.’ Like what? I need to find a day job, because this fishing thing is working out too well for me? I haven’t been doing it long enough to know anyone who’s drowned yet. (Though the skipper of the F/V Ark Angel was killed in a motorbike wreck in Thailand recently – does that count?)

I performed a piece for a poetry contest that ended the festival, and got a response from a 100+ person crowd any slam poet would likely cream his pants for. A twelve year old named Chloe took the contest, though, which might get her to take up poetry, or fishing. But I’m not sure how much money will be in either by the time she’s old enough to drink, a likely addiction of both professions. We took to the dance floor, then the road, and then bed, grooving to hip-hop beats and hopes that tomorrow we’d suddenly have more money in our pockets, more happiness in tow, and some resonance to flee with toward the fishing grounds.

Funny how we glide through experiences with the enthusiasm of travelers, adventurers, inventors, and our younger selves, asking the universe with sidelong glances how it could get any better than this before the madness slows, the highs and lows equalize, and we’re walking through the slurgi like companions of the day-to-day. With illnesses our bodies scream for attention – you’ve stressed me out, and now you’re gonna pay. Stare at the wall for a few days, slurp soup and eat vitamin C like candy, and I’ll think about letting you run through the hills, climb rocks, or see the sunset without seeing stars. Wait a minute. Your ambition is not as important as you think. Breathe in. Express. Breathe out again. Repeat.

And isn’t it funny how as soon as they let us loose again, were off for more adventures, impatient for experience. Connection, pizza, sex, fire, poetry. In two months I migrate to Alaska once again – for fishing, for writing, to bring in the abundance. The year is almost over, and it seems it’s just begun.

88 days ago Short URL Comments

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18

Feb

literacy rate: rare.

For weeks, nigh months, I’ve felt an intellectual drought. It has felt at times that out of a want to be clean, I’ve stepped into the bathtub, and, not knowing what to do once I got there, drowned.

It never occurred to me before to be ashamed, or embarrassed, of suicidal thoughts. Thank god, too, because that could have added a whole schema of complications that I was not prepared to cope with.

For days I’ve been sleeping with books. Thinking, if I spend enough time around them, maybe I’ll want to read more than a few pages. At home, true immersion rarely happens. You know, that Imustkeepreadingthisnomatterwhathappens feeling of being spun into a climbing rope long enough to rappel from your first LSD trip. I had that with The Chronology of Water recently. I wanted to make love to Lidia’s words so often I’m surprised Heather didn’t become concerned. Maybe she did. 

The point is, three pages of Wendell Berry and I’m at capacity for well-articulated thought. Inevitably, I get caught up in stories at friends houses, at parties, in hat shops where books are exclusively decoration. And just before I’m due for an appointment. In fact, that’s usually when I’m most productive: when I’m supposed to be somewhere else. For example; just three minutes ago I told Jordan I’d head to the climbing gym to meet him. I hung up, sat down, and started writing.

Something is seriously wrong here.

94 days ago Short URL Comments

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16

Feb

how I do math.

This morning I had a breakfast date with my bank accounts. We don’t meet often. Sweet granola crunched into my molars, innocent cashews and cranberries whispering ‘we’re healthy’ as the sugar rushed through my veins at speed. The accounts had tea instead. Awkward silence.

“So we should talk,” we said, in unison.

“Where to start?” I asked.

“Let’s begin at zero,” the older one quipped. I checked him over. His eyes struck me as indomitable, which translated in my mind to trial and hardship. I knew the peaks and valleys to which he’d been in the fast few years: my glaciers had carved them. The walls came tearing down after that. He wore too-big clothes, like he was trying to be someone he wasn’t. Sunglasses and a beanie. What? That’s not professional. Who was he trying to impress? Me?

My own clothes were questionable. Designer jeans from Goodwill, a $50 hat from New York City bought years ago and never worn til now, a necklace pendant made of horsebone; a trinket to remind myself that the wide world is not that far away. That I never had to Stay for very long. I thought of an excited puppy, who wants to listen so bad he jumps up for more attention to fetch the next adventure. Who did I want to impress? Everyone?

I laid my hands on the table to make my case. “Look, guys, I’ve got a few important things I’m working with that are time-sensitive. I’m all about stuff happening exactly when it’s supposed to, and the time is now. What can you do for me?”

The younger of the two chipped in. “I’m coming up in the world and feeling good, my friend. What do you need?” Next to him, the gaunt old list sipped his tea.

“I’m looking for access. It helps me to feel important. Wanted. Worthy. For example, Burning Man tickets just went on sale. All my friends are doing yoga over their computer screens to get at ‘em, and I had to shove that pretty little $380 ticket into a crevasse to put it out of my mind until I talked to you.” I paused. There was more, but I didn’t want to seem like all I wanted was more, more, more – though it was true. I needed to climb, to keep me sane; food, because not eating is, well, bad; I didn’t want to worry about rent anymore. Couldn’t I just get by on my pending merit of being a good person? Please?

Numbers filed, sorted, calculated, added and divided longways into my debt, on the short side of my gas tank and monthly rent, and reached out for my will to simply have Enough. They curtained me in green matrix text, offering heaven and its bliss for a price. I hit the AC button. “Don’t tempt me, mathematicians, you know I work with words. Enough is not Everything; it is efficient sufficiency. I have found the world that I desire, I simply wish to move about it freely.”

“Then I suggest,” said the elder of the two, “you replenish us with some of your voracity for life. We can help you only as much as you help yourself. There are no magic tricks in math, wordsmith. If you wish to get your Burn ticket now, you may, but at the cost of starting at absolute zero tomorrow. As in the rest of of your privileged life, the choice is yours alone.”

96 days ago Short URL Comments

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