Reflections on an Afterthought

New Medium

2009-07-30T14:58:00.000+09:00

Moved to http://reflectionsonanafterthought.wordpress.com/ after very little thought or deliberation. Enjoy.

Memory #10

2009-07-30T10:25:00.002+09:00

Who were these crazy people? Lunatics all of them. One in a purple jumpsuit and a giant beard talking to an imaginary friend on the other end of a rum bottle, another holding a giant dinosaur toy screaming something about the end of the world, an apparent gymnast flipping himself off a tall balcony and climbing back up again and again, a black lesbian telling me about the crazies as she circled me and spoke like a broken robot, a short bald man with a bottle of whiskey singing in a scratchy voice what sounded like an old sailor tune, . I wasn't really sure how I got here and I sure as hell didn't know how I would leave. It seemed to me that there had been a conspiracy to put these psychopaths all in one room as the rest of the world silently self-destructed around us, leaving only this untamed box of madmen to drift endlessly in the empty vacuum of space.

Of course, I was one of them. I didn't know it then because it was all so normal but I was part of the insanity, the dirty captain standing on a chair in the middle of the spacecraft searching for the signs of sanity that were nowhere to be found. It makes sense now; these people and their craziness. We had all gone normal and the rest of the world had always been crazy. Where the hell am I and who the hell are these crazy people?

Memory #9

2009-07-29T10:01:00.002+09:00

I remember the Oklahoma City bombing. I was in 4th grade at the time. Everyone was sitting in class. Whatever was going on in class has now turned fuzzy in my mind but I remember the moment when the bomb went off in downtown Oklahoma City. I felt it. Not in a spiritual sense but physically. My elementary school was about 10 miles along straight suburban roads from the actual bombing but I felt it. So did the rest of the class.

I was sitting in my chair at my desk. There was a pencil on the desk. A muffled but deep noise rumbled and shook the class like a tiny earthquake. My pencil shook and rolled off my desk as I caught it. It was only a second and none of us knew what it was, our teacher was just as confused. Everyone threw their ideas about what the phenomenon could be around. I'm sure that, being 4th graders, there were lots of ridiculous explanations but the one that we all agreed seemed the most plausible was one kids declaration that the strange occurence must have been a sonic boom caused by a jet. I didn't know what the hell that meant but I had heard the word sonic boom before and I knew jets were really fast so maybe this kid was on to something. I don't think anyone really knew what that meant but I guess that only made it more believable. We all nodded our heads in agreement that it must have been a sonic boom.

Later that day I found out that it was a bomb. Of course, I didn't at all understand the importance or the implications, I still FELT the raw weight of the tragedy that comes with such destruction, and ever since then the memory of my pencil rolling off my desk has been etched into my memory.

Memory #8

2009-07-28T09:43:00.003+09:00

"What do you guys wanna do tonight?"
"Let's try to buy beer."

I was in the backseat nervous and excited as we pulled up to the window of the drive-through convenient store. It was a run-down place owned by an old Vietnamese man that was famous among high-schoolers in the area as the place they could buy alchohol. This was our first time.

I looked out the back window into the darkness of the night, glancing quickly at the store with only my eyes hoping not to look suspicious. I looked the youngest of the 3 of us so I sat in the back seat sitting as tall as possible straining to look calm and natural. I didn't want it to be my fault if the conspiracy failed.

"ID please."
It looked like our conspiracy had been discovered. If we showed him ID he would take one look at the date and see that we were 6 years too young, prompting him to keep the ID and call the police. We hadn't talked about this happening.

The driver took his wallet out and handed his ID to the Vietnamese man. He looked at it and handed it back to the driver. "What you want?"

The driver looked at the passenger. We all half-expected our experiment to be over with the ID debacle so we froze in shock for a moment. Each new question spiked our senses and pushed us at once closer to the abyss and closer to the promised land. My eyes darted from my window to the old Vietnamese man in the store.

The passenger said in a rushed whisper "uhh, tell him Heineken. Tell him heineken"
"Heineken"
"Okay"

It worked! My head rushed with adreneline as we passed another unseen roadblock.

"How much you want"

Oh God, I thought. Another question. He's onto us now. Stay calm. I looked at the driver. He looked around. The passenger rushed another answer, "a 6 pack. 6 pack."

"6"

Good. It's over. That was easy.

"A 6 pack of Heinekin?" The Vietnamese man said in a disbelieving tone. My eyes grew wide as I concluded that he was joking with us to build up our hopes just before smashing all our hard work. What a bastard. My heart pounded.

"Yeah, a 6-pack"

"Okay. That 8 dollar"

My hands gripped each other. It was working. He fell for it. Excitement shot through me as I tried to keep myself from letting out a nervous laugh.

The driver handed him the money. The beer was passed back to me in the backseat and we drove around the corner to put our stash in the trunk.

We did it! I was stunned that he actually believed we were 21 (of course, he actually didn't) and sold us beer. 6 Heinekin...this was revolutionary. The next night we went back and bought over a hundred cans and bottles of different kinds of beer without worry. The 6 beer revolution had changed everything and there was no going back.

Memory #7

2009-07-27T11:43:00.002+09:00

I was accused of cheating after my freshman year of university. It marked the beginning of the lowest point of my life but there isn't much to remember from those 6 months. The accusation came after I had just finished a stellar semester of writing programs for my classes. School was out for the summer so I planned on working on several ambitious personal programming projects. I was at the peak of my excitement for the field when I got a letter from the university informing me that I was being accused of cheating in one of my classes. I was completely sure that this was some kind of mistake and I tried contacting people to get it sorted out. I had the knowledge of my innocence on my side so I figured it would be simple. It wasn't.

Throughout the summer I tried to convince my accusers of my innocence but nothing worked. The accusing teacher believed that the fact that I always made near perfect scores when most people scored average to be proof that I was doing something wrong rather than proof that I was doing everything right. When another student and I had almost the same perfect program we were accused of conspiring together.

I was helpless. Everything I though proved my innocence only pointed to my guilt. I wondered how it could be possible that I was being punished for being too good at what I do. I spent hours defending each line of what I had written but it was useless. I had put all my faith in the truth but the truth wasn't working for me. The irony is I spent my entire high school career cheating on every possible assignment and everything worked fine. It was only when I stopped cheating and started excelling that I was accused and almost kicked out of school.

At the end of the summer the charges were suddenly dropped. Not because I had shown them my truth but because the teacher had moved to California and wasn't physically present to pursue the charges. Things could go back to normal but they didn't. My passion for programming died with the false accusation and my life took a different path afterwards. Towards freedom.

Memory #6

2009-07-14T22:06:00.004+09:00

The cold rain soaked into the tiny, flimsy tent. My small blanket was already soaked through and I covered myself in my jacket as I curled into a ball. It was a mild Oklahoma winter by most accounts, not even cold enough to turn the rain into snow, but it was miserable at that moment. I was camping and not at all prepared and the endless patter of rain had no sympathy. I almost said the endless patter of rain outside but that gives the wrong impression. Outside the tent and inside the tent was pretty much the same. The thin layer of the tent had stopped being a shelter several hours earlier and was now simply an extra blanket.

I slept a few times. Each time I would fall asleep I would wake up feeling disoriented, weary and tired but unable to sleep. It felt like I was asleep for several hours but when I checked my watch it was usually only 10 minutes at a time. I never felt farther from anything good than then. Sleeping in cold rain does that I guess.

The next day I left the tent and saw my friend in the same state as myself. We had planned to camp another day or two but that morning there were no illusions about our limits. We never had a conversation about going back, we just did. Soggy boots and bags in tow we marched back through the forest like we were coming out of the trenches, exhausted mentally and physically, with each step feeling like a step backwards, away from comfort.

We got back to civilization to find that everyone had conspired in our abscence to make life much more comfortable, sleep much more easy, and food much more invigorating than it ever was before. That was nice of them.

Rusty Metal Poles Pointing Towards the Great

2009-07-09T19:13:00.003+09:00

Memory #5

2009-07-09T18:15:00.002+09:00

I remember first stepping across the border into Tijuana. We parked in sunny San Diego with its pristine beaches and perfect weather and walked to the border. On the other side was San Diego's sister city, Tijuana, and I'm not sure if there has ever been an uglier sister in the whole world. If there were no border the cities would probably blend into each other effortlessly but the border cuts the urban sprawl into all the opposites you can imagine. Looking into Tijuana from San Diego its hard to understand the poverty, the filth, the depravity, the drugs, and the violence that exists on the other side and looking into San Diego from Tijuana over the impenetrable barbed, graffiti stained wall its hard to understand that anything else even exists in the world.

Walking in from the American side is comically easy. As I walked through the cement covered border crossing station I felt relatively relaxed. I caught glimpses of Mexico in those poor, ragged Mexicans who had managed to make it through the border but they were rare. Finally we came to the border. It was a metal rotating gate that you could only push one direction, into Mexico. There were no guards, no security, and not even any attendents watching. Just the gray, metal, rotating gate. It was the same kind of gate that they set up at carnivals, state fairs, and amusement parks, with horizontal bars staggered so that they spin through each other as the gate rotates. But this was easier than any amusement park because I didn't need a ticket. I didn't even need money or a passport to go through. As I pushed the gate the sound of metal grinding against metal rang out and I looked up as Mexico revealed itself to me. Mexico: The Ride.

Tree Trunk

2009-07-07T20:03:00.002+09:00

Memory #4

2009-07-07T19:09:00.002+09:00

The city of Big Bear was 30 minutes away from where I lived in the forest with 20 or so other people. It was winter and even though we were in between a desert and the great yellow smoghole called Los Angelous it was snowing. To get from Big Bear to camp you had to take a small highway that wrapped itself around the edge of the San Bernadino Mountains. From the highway you turn on a small side road through the Ponderosa Pines and up several steep inclines until you reached a wooden post for camp. Then it was another mile and a half down a dirt road before reaching where I lived for those 6 months.

I was in a small blue S-10 pickup truck for the next 6 months and the snow was coming down hard enough that I knew I needed to get back to camp before the roads closed. It was my first time being on a mountain with snow and I had just found out that my snow chains either didn't fit or I didn't know how to use them. Either way they weren't an option. The snow soon covered everything and my small truck was having trouble climbing the relatively easy inclines of the highway. Traffic stopped on one hill close to the turnoff and when it started again we barely persuaded the engine to give us enough push and the tires enough pull.

Once we got to the steep road away from the highway the snow was thick. People had the sense not to drive off of the highway so the road here was fresh with white powder. Each incline was a test to see how much speed we could gain before the next one. Then we would hope that we got enough speed to get us to the top before we started sliding back down. Eventually the truck couldn't keep going and we were stuck. The other, more able car, drove into camp and told someone to come pick me and my passenger up. I manuveured the truck backwards down the icy hill until we found a good place to park and we rode into camp with our rescuer. It was almost 3 weeks before I was able to retrieve my car out of the piled up snow.

Memory #3

2009-07-03T15:40:00.003+09:00

Rain engulfed the car in what felt like a tidal wave. It was the strongest rain I've ever been through and it forced me to drive on the interstate at a crawl. We could have ran faster. Or maybe it felt like that because of the sunburn that seared the entire front side of my body, causing every tiny movement to send send a burst of pain through my nerves. One second takes a while when it's filled with burning pain. I wanted to soak in the rain outside but it was strong enough that it probably would have hurt more.

My shirt was open and despite the cool air from the storm I had the air conditioner on and the window cracked to relieve my skin. I was coming back a blues festival in Dallas riding with my friend in the passenger seat. I don't know if he slept or not, it hurt to turn my neck or talk. So I focused my attention on the blurry dark road ahead and tried to avoid my burn.

Earlier in the day we sat in a stadium watching blues legends like BB King and Buddy guy stir the crowd with their emotion filled control of their intstruments. I only opened my brown, pearl snap, cowboy shirt for a few minutes but that was enough to turn hours into days on the trip home. The next weekend I spent 3 days in the Tennessee at another music festival.

Memory #2

2009-07-02T23:13:00.005+09:00

Growing up my family would always take a road trip during summer vacation. We had a big van that me, my sister, and mom would ride in while my dad drove. It wasn't a mini-van but a full sized van that could have fit a couple other families in it if we wanted to bring them along. We never did and the size of it let us relax pretty comfortably for the long journeys on the road. There were 2 seats in front, 2 in the middle, and the back folded out into a large bed. There was a small round hole in the floor that you could stick a pole into and even set up a table to play cards or eat on. I can remember pressing my ear on the floor of the van listening to the tires glide across the asphalt and each tiny rock bounce against the metal underbelly of the van. I remember looking through the hole and seeing the gray blur of the road and wonder what it would be like to reach through and touch the ground. From what my elementary school eyes could tell the ground didn't even seem to be moving at all. Of course, the hole didn't actually open up to the ground. But laying there with my ear pressed against the floor, I could imagine it as pretty damn real. Or maybe there actually was a hole.

When the back was made into a bed I used to crawl into the little cave where the bed met the 2 seats in front. It was small enough that even at such a young age I could barely fit, and even then I could barely move. I guess it was pretty dangerous and I would have been killed pretty quick if we had an accident but we never did. I would lay in my cave, usually with some toy, and pretend that whatever toy I had was exploring the deep and dark, mechanical cave. The good guy toy would claw along the metal underside of the bed, almost falling of a few times, before reaching the point of no return, where a bad guy was conveniently waiting. They would see each other and the good guy would leap across the abyss and cling to the seatbelt that the bad guy was climbing up. Here they would fight until one of the tired and then they would fight again. Since no one ever really won I had the chance to replay the scene in as many ways as the cramped space would allow.

Then someone would open the door and light would pour in over my head. I would crawl out of my cave and we would go out into the real world for whatever adventure awaited us. I guess in this way these trips were constant adventures. First in the van, which was really an adventure in my mind, and then in the real world.

Memory #1

2009-07-01T18:03:00.003+09:00

I remember stopping my car along the side of the road and staring silently at the mountain range that cut from horizon to horizon. It rose out of the earth suddenly and sharply and though the top was cut like a broken piece of plywood, random and jagged, the perfect line it drew across the earth seemed oddly deliberate. It was as if someone jammed the hulking beast against a wall and when its rocks reached 14,505 feet they took away the barrier leaving nothing but sheer cliff. The road wound its way into the dry valley and crept right up to the edge of the range before it realized that there was nowhere to go but North and South, for hours.

I felt utterly tiny. The mountains make sure that rain doesn't make it easily to the other side and the East side is all desert and hot as hell. They call it Death Valley but The Valley of Death sounds a bit more ominous than that so that's what I'll call it. The Valley of Death runs right up to the giant granite gods of the Sierra Nevada before being consumed.

A warm wind rose sharply from the East and I remembered where I was. There hadn't been another car since I stopped. I could understand why less people come this way. It doesn't go anywhere. To make it to the coast you have to drive several hours South on small 2 lane roads and go completely around the range. Going through isn't an option. I could understand that. But I couldn't understand on an emotional level why people wouldn't come to this spot on the Earth and for just a moment add something Epic to their own life that eclipses anything they've ever seen in a movie or read in a book.

Since I wasn't going anywhere in particular the Sierra Nevada proved to be no obstacle at all.

I was going West.

Like Light on Water

2009-06-20T14:18:00.002+09:00

5 Stories on Life and Death

2009-03-30T09:49:00.001+09:00

Story 1:

I was born, lived, and then died.

Story 2:

I lived afraid of death and died full of fear.

Story 3:

When I was born I feared everything except death. I was shocked when I was told that not only was death real but that it happens to everyone. I was just as shocked when death proved me unexceptional.

Story 4:

When I was growing up people always told me that life is short. I never really understood because from what I could tell life seemed very long. It was so long, in fact, that it was the only thing I could even remember experiencing. My final moments were flooded with variations that thought. But all my wishing, hoping, and twisting didn’t stop death from happening, and probably didn’t even change when or how.

Story 5:

Sometimes in life a person faces the choice of accepting that something they love will be gone or rejecting the possibility. Nobody ever told me which was the right way growing up and I always seemed to be gone when other people chose their path. When I was much older I found out the thing that every person loves most in the world is their own self and that most people choose the path of rejection. I faced that choice coughing up blood in a wrecked car on the side of a mountain, first with hope that someone might save me, then disappointment when no one did, and then with anger at the world and everything in it, and just before I died, with a desperate prayer to God that he would let me continue in Heaven or Hell.

Autumn Falls

2009-03-13T23:44:00.003+09:00

Experience, Beauty, Growth

2009-03-13T23:03:00.004+09:00

It was peaceful where I sat. The fresh scent of the hot spring floated through my senses. Rain pelted my open face. A small waterfall vibrated effortlessly in my ears. My eyes opened just enough to see the surrounding light so I could see colors but no details. The empty branches of the nearby trees cut through the sky like broken glass. I continued my thoughts. ‘What is your 100% perfect lifestyle?’ It was harder than it seemed.

At first I tried to actually picture myself living out my perfect lifestyle. It was a style of living so I tried putting stylish things in this imaginary world; a nice house, a nice job, a nice TV, a nice car. I could picture all these things in my mind but I knew that wasn’t what I wanted on a deeper level. I don’t value any of those things but they were the easy to imagine. I kept thinking.

'If that’s not it what else can I put in my imagined perfect life?' I couldn’t think of anything to add. Then I realized I was trying to put tangible things in my perfect life and tangible things aren’t the focus of my ideal life. They’re in the background. They’re just unnecessary props to make the set seem more real. They don’t play any important actual role outside of that. The things I value, the values I my way of living, my style of living, are less tangible. I kept thinking.

‘What do I value that I can translate into a way of living?’ Growth. ‘In my perfect lifestyle I have time everyday for growth and reflection.’ ‘But it I have to make time for growth what do I do with the rest of that time?’ I don’t want a lifestyle where I solely focus on growth. As good as it sounds I know myself enough to know I wouldn’t like that life.

‘What do I do I value outside of growth?’ Experience. The greatest moments of my life so far have been from experiencing the world. Talking with people and learning new stories, new emotions, new thoughts. Experiencing nature and exploring the wilderness. Doing things that push my own boundaries for the sake of experience has always led me to amazing places. But experience and growth still felt like just parts of an incomplete lifestyle. I made a decision: Everyday I’ll do something that I didn’t wake up planning to do, even if I have to go out of my way to do it. Little acts of spontaneity to spur an active life.

‘What else do I want in the world?’ Beauty. It’s why I enjoy nature and it’s why I enjoy learning about people; because of the discovered beauties. I don’t enjoy sitting silently staring out over a great view because of the experience. I am completely engulfed in the beauty of the moment. I think about the experience of it before and after.

I sat up in the steaming water. I told myself I wouldn’t leave until I made progress on answering my question and I was satisfied. Three words kept repeating in my mind as I left the hot spring: Experience, Beauty, Growth.

Growth – I value growth. A man is not a rock. I want a life that supports, allows, and encourages growth. This means I need a lifestyle that allows for reflection. Whether it is alone or with other people I need to reflect on my life and determine how to become a better person in all aspects of my life. This also means filling my life with people who help me grow or at the very least people who don’t inhibit growth.

Beauty – I value beauty. Beauty is nature. Beauty is music. Beauty is art. Beauty is words. Beauty is the aesthetic and the sensual. It is in people; it IS people. Our senses bathe in beauty. I want a life that allows me to actively appreciate the beauty around me, a life where I continually seek and draw out the beauty around me.

Experience – I value experience. I want experiences on all levels. I want a life full of experiences. From the crazy to the sublime, I want to create my own story from the stuff of the world. I want a lifestyle with travel, exciting people, adventure, and spontaneity. I can’t wait for experiences to come to me and I can’t limit myself to the known. I must go into the unknown and find out what experiences are possible.

Of course these all overlap with each other and they don’t constitute a concrete lifestyle but what they do is set the frame for my ideal lifestyle. The details will come together on the journey. Experience, Beauty, Growth

Escalator Blues

2009-03-08T16:13:00.002+09:00

Winter.

2009-03-08T14:08:00.002+09:00

Snowdrift

2009-01-28T08:39:00.002+09:00

Snow drifts and swirls listlessly over the icy road. As the frozen mist dances it gives form to the wind. It's a force that usually prefers to be felt rather than seen but today, as if unaware of its own voyoeurism, the wind manifests playfully without hesitation.

The Universal Idea: Connected by the Lights

2009-01-09T23:26:00.000+09:00

Motionless

2009-01-09T22:12:00.001+09:00

For three days he lay there,

motionless,

struck by the beauty of things.

Imagining Wasted Time

2009-01-03T17:45:00.003+09:00

Cigarette smoke wanders through the dark hallway while the chatter of voices rolls in and out with the opening and closing of the door. A man sits with his head down and arms crossed on a stool where the hall ends. Above his head the cracking paint strikes down like lightning bolts.

Sorting through the trash behind a club a beautiful woman is forgotten for a moment. Her face is unguarded now that she is away from all the seeking eyes on the inside. A cold breeze blows through the alley as she sets her face to go back inside.

A girl lifts her head from her book to scan the coffee shop. It's crowded. She tightens her small blue blanket to hide herself from the cold open air, searches once more, and shivers while she returns to her book.

Glass separates me from the river of people outside. The angled reflection of my writing hand melts into the lights and movement on the other side. A slow jazz tune floats in the background. The flood of people and the sea of lights...

A woman stands under the pale light of the street, whispering to each man that stumbles her way. Piles of trash line the street and shadows play on the darkening buildings. Finally, a drunken, unshaved man wobbles towards her and they walk into the night.

Two girls are squatting in a dark area near the exit of a bar. Chin in her hand, one of the girls flicks a shared cigarette. The ash tumbles onto her black leggings and the other brushes it off then puts her forearms back on her knees. They go back to staring slightly away from each other.

The Hollow Sound of a Pipe on Water

2008-11-14T22:25:00.000+09:00

I was asked by a friend recently to tell him about my travels, specifically Japan and how it differs from Japan. The following is what I told him:

Sometimes people follow a path. They know it and see it, and with each step their focus tightens on the rays of the sun just rising over the end of the path. I’ve never been a focused person. I might have a stretch of focus that goes on for some time but for the most part I’m spread thin. The path I’ve taken is much darker than the one that’s known. Not dark in a looming or cryptic way. Dark like the nights when you can count the stars forever but you can’t tell a tree from a bush. On this path the reward isn’t at the end of the road. The reward is the road.
In the summer I drove through the lush mountains of rural Japan almost everyday. The same dense forests that burst with color in autumn are thick with green in the summer. I remember the most memorable road I’ve taken so far. There were a few hours of sunlight left after I finished teaching for the day so I turned randomly down an interesting looking road, instead of taking the usual route. Like many roads in Japan, it was narrow. Anywhere in America it would be one way street, but here it was any way you need to go. The mountain roads are narrow enough that one time I had to reverse for 10 minutes along with a cliff 1 foot to my left and the mountain 1 foot to my right just to let another car pass. But this road was deserted. As I drove, plants slammed into the side of my car from both sides. The forest was overtaking the road. Stones markers half-covered with vines pointed towards hidden shrines. Dirt paths into the forest were overgrown with moss, vines, and spiders. The mountain forest rang out with the sounds of cicadas, never ceasing their cries. I stopped my car at the entrance to a bamboo forest. There was a path that looked like it went up so I took it and used a dead bamboo stick to bat down the many spider webs. The tall bamboo hollowly rattled in the wind. As I walked I felt like I was in the unexplored ruins of a forgotten civilization. There were traces of manmade things all around. Even the paths into the forest were once large enough for a car. But now everything had been overtaken by the forest, the mountains, and the earth. At the end of the path was a small decaying wooden shrine with a mirror inside. They were ruins; the modern ruins of a people whose society still exists.

Now, the fall leaves color the mountains with vibrant shades of red and yellow, orange and green. The wind that a month ago felt like such a relief from the stifling heat now bites through every cracked window and un-insulated house, and it’s only getting colder. It’s autumn so that means I won’t be able to buy the same vegetables that I did a couple months ago. And when I have dinner with Japanese people I’ll have different types of food than I had in summer. In winter it will change again. Japan flows with the seasons.
The Japanese are culturally closer to nature than we are in America. I see old Japanese couples every time I go hiking through mountains or gorges. One of the aspects of the Japanese native religion, Shinto, is that gods, or spirits, can inhabit all things, even a piece of paper. Shinto shrines are everywhere in Japan. You walk through a ‘gateway’ and to a main shrine that houses a god. No one except the Shinto priest is allowed inside the shrine, and he only enters as part of elaborate ceremonial festivals to pay tribute to the god. At the festival I saw the priest offered a large fish head on a platter as he chanted prayers from an old scroll while deep drums beat by the townsfolk who circled the shrine. This happens at the larger shrine complexes that are in almost every town. There are also thousands of smaller shrines that are sometimes no more than a small wooden structure that houses a statue, paper, a mirror, or nothing at all. They dot the land and almost every mountain is made ‘holy’ because of the shrines on it. People pray at all these shrines. Age doesn’t stop Japanese people from climbing mountains to pray at these shrines. Mt. Fuji is over 12,000 feet. But every year hundreds of Japanese, many of whom are well into retirement age, climb this mountain every night just to watch the sunrise on this holy mountain. I went towards the end of the climbable season and there were over 200 people at the summit. I could not imagine Americans, much less older Americans, doing the same in such numbers. But climbing these holy mountains is not just something that a few people who enjoy hiking do. It’s a cultural thing that everyone does.

Peace,
Darren

The Neverending Face Factory unfinished

2008-11-09T21:55:00.002+09:00

The air shivered with the cool dew of the morning. The blue shade of early dawn was slowly drowning out the hard light of the nearby streetlamps. Several birds began their morning calls, fluttering around in the trees, anxious from the silent night. And the crickets ended their nightly vigil, quietly entering the daylight. The bustle of the oncoming day interrupted the sound of waves crashing ceaselessly on the nearby beach.

This particular morning, however, Ian and Nate didn’t notice any of these things. No, they woke up with a jolt like a person just fallen asleep, confused and thoughtless. They woke with a sharp chill under their skin and a pain in the back of their head from a night of too much drinking and not enough of anything else. Underneath the two was a bed sheet resting on the grass between a few trees and a wooden fence; which, along with the sheets, belonged to a beachside hotel called the Mission Beach Inn.

They were an odd looking pair, even aside from the fact that they were currently waking up in the bushes of a hotel somewhere in San Diego. To the average man, Nate was as much a strange hallucination as he was a living, breathing person. He wore tight black jeans, purple sunglasses that would look fitting in a Star Trek movie, and a black hat with “Wasted” scrawled on the flipped up bottom of the pink rim. His thin, well-defined face was hidden behind a beard as big as a birds nest; and under his hat he wore a Mohawk that almost always fell loosely down the left side of his head. A sleeveless shirt with “Suicidal Tendencies” stamped on the front showed off his skinny arms and a tattoo of himself, oddly looking like Jesus, elatedly standing next to an uninterested Toxic Avenger. He was a throwback to a time that never existed when spacemen, metal bands, hobos, and Jesus all partied together on the back alleys around Sunset Boulevard.

As he lay there shivering, Nate remembered how he had snuck into the laundry room of the Mission Beach Inn while the Mexican housekeeper stepped outside for a smoke, grabbed the sheet out of the laundry cart, and darted off triumphantly to the Ian waiting by the fence. He clutched the sheet for a moment and decided that had been a good idea.

Ian was a different breed of the same animal. Everything about him looked different to the casual observer. He wore a camouflaged University of North Carolina hat and a short sleeved, red and white plaid button-up shirt. His jeans were loose and ripped, not for style, but because he loved those jeans and he’d be damned if he was going to stop wearing them just because of a little tear in the thighs. He wore flip flops most of the time, only wearing shoes on the few occasions when he absolutely had to. He was relaxed, and his face was round and childlike with rosy cheeks, giving off a warmth that made people around him comfortable and open. Nate called him his personal Jimmy Buffett. Despite their differences these two men shared something that many people lack; the desire and the will to enjoy the lives they were given.

Ian sat up, ran a hand through his messy blond hair, put his hat on, and looked at Nate. “Dude, what the hell…” His voice trailed off in disbelief at their current situation. “Is this the hotel we were at a couple nights ago?” he asked himself and Nate at once.

Nate came alive with a high-pitched burst, “Ahhh! Last night was in..sane.” The soreness of sleeping cold on the ground had trouble muffling his energy. “You remember how we got here, right?”

“Not really.” He had a few vague images but mostly just wanted to hear Nate tell it.

“We wanted to go to the beach so we got a cab out here with this big ol’ Kenyan guy. It was about 40 bucks and neither of us had any money so we told him to stop at 7-11 so we could get some money out. I got out first…”

Ian cut him off, “…yeah! Then that asshole tried to grab me sayin’ ‘you stay!’ in that accent a’ his.”

“…I said ‘Fuck this, run!’ And we ran our asses off down to the beach.”
They both laughed at the thought of themselves running away from the grasping hands of an angry Kenyan cab driver. They stood up. Ian rubbed his eyes and Nate brushed some dirt off his pants. A car passed by them as Ian spoke, “I wonder what happened to Mark and JJ.”

“I don’t know man. I lost track of them somewhere downtown. JJ probably just slept in his van and Mark probably got a hotel.”

“You got your phone on ya’? Mine’s dead in JJ’s van.”

Nate reached in his pocket and pulled out his phone. He opened the phone and pressed a button. It turned off. “Dude! I knew this shit’d happen!” Nate’s excitement accelerated. “We’re gon’ be left behind in San Diego! We ain’t got no money, no phones, we’re 200 miles from home, and ain’t no one know where we are!” Although his words seemed desperate his voice had the frightened excitement of a child on a roller coaster.

Ian laughed. “Oh man, we’re retarded.” He paused. The sun had now risen over the horizon, pushing them West towards the sea. They let the sun wash away the fatigue they felt in their body and mind. “Fuck it, let’s go to the beach.”

2

Ian and Nate walked along the deserted beach. A jogger ran past them with black sunglasses blocking his eyes and music blocking his ears, passing the two disheveled wanderers with guiltless indifference. They decided the best plan for getting back would be to find an internet café and find the phone number they so desperately needed online. It was a good plan. ‘Thank god for the internet’ they thought. They laid down on the beach to rest in the morning sun.

A blurry, demanding voice woke them from their mid-morning respite. “What are you boys doing here?”

Nate opened his eyes and gave a surprised squint at the sight of a woman police officer on a horse looming over him. “Sleeping” he said truthfully.

Black sunglasses hid here eyes as they read the word ‘Wasted’ on Nate’s hat. “Have either of you ever been arrested before?” She asked, asserting her power with the vague threat.

“No”

“No”

Her eyes gestured towards Ian’s bottle he bought with his last dollar. “What’s in that bottle?”

It was Gatorade. “It’s Gatorade.”

She was searching for a reason for authority. Clearly these two vagabonds were wrecks on society and even if they weren’t breaking the law they were still criminals who needed to be separated from society, she thought. These people are why the police force is in so much trouble these days. They try to challenge us by thinking they can do what they want but that’s not how it works. “Doesn’t look like Gatorade to me.”

That's because it was Gatorade AM. “That’s ‘cause it’s Gatorade…AM.” Ian emphasized the ‘AM’ for dramatic effect that was lost on the stern officer.

“You ever been arrested for public intox before?”

“No”

“No”

“Well you two need to get out of here.”

Nate broke in without apology, “We ain’t hurtin’ anybody.” He knew his reply didn’t matter. And he knew it didn’t matter if they were hurting people or not; that’s not what the law was about.

They left the beach, asked someone where they could find an internet café and were directed to a small place that was closed on Sundays. Suddenly, their situation wasn’t as optimistic. The hope of a spontaneous rescue was slim. JJ and Mark were probably looking for them in downtown San Diego 30 minutes away. Cell phone address books ensured that neither of them knew any of their friend’s phone numbers. They were almost four hours from where they had to work the next morning or risk losing their barely paying jobs. Neither had money in their banks and only Nate had money in his pocket: 6 dollars and 36 cents. Nate looked at his reflection in the mirror. “I know my dad’s number. He lives out in Missouri but maybe he can get online and find out JJ’s number.” Nate said in a more serious tone than Ian had known him to use.

He stopped a woman on the street used her phone. It rang. At the sound of his Dad’s voicemail Nate’s anxiety peaked and an urgent excitement accelerated through his voice. “Help! We’re trapped in San Diego! We’re homeless! We almost got arrested! Find JJ! Tell him we’re at Mission Beach! I don’t know whose phone this is so don’t call back! Ahhh!” He ended the message mid-scream and laughed. The woman looked at him awkwardly, took her phone back, and walked away.

Ian laughed. “He’s gonna think we robbed a bank or somethin’, then stole a phone an’ now we’re hidin’ with the homeless.”

“Yeah man, but it don’t matter either way. At least he’s gonna laugh his ass off.” Even in desperation Nate had trouble giving in to despondency. No matter what the situation, Nate always carried his energy to live out in the open for all to see. Excited bursts of yelling or laughing were an everyday thing. Some people hated him for it, others loved him for it. The ones that hated were caught off guard and offended by his brazenness, saying he was ‘rude’ and ‘just needed attention.’ But people like Ian loved him for it. Where they saw injury of decency he never saw Nate harm a soul. Where they saw disrespect he saw a constant wild fervor that added nothing joy to life. And for Nate joy was one of the greatest things a man could have in his life.

3

During the warm months, which are abundant in San Diego, people flock to Mission Beach from all over to bask in the sunlight and party by the sea. Bars, condos, and souvenir shops selling key chains, magnets, and postcards litter the seafront. By now Ian and Nate were looking at San Diego through the gauzy lens of no food, little sleep, and futile circumstances. As they walked they wondered if anyone actually lived the apartments and condos or if they were just places for white-collars to go when they get that constantly craved break from their everyday life. The only people who seemed to live here were the homeless who slept on every street corner.

*unfinished

Nothing New Under the Sun

2008-11-05T22:42:00.001+09:00

Location: The summit of Mt. Daisen in Tottori-ken, Japan

Powell on Obama

2008-10-21T21:28:00.002+09:00

From 3:34 to 6:34 is particularly insightful on the problems that we face with certain segments of political society today. It is a response to a question about the what role the McCain campaigns negativity played in Republican Colin Powell's decision.

At the Showdown

2008-09-24T19:48:00.000+09:00

Location: Fukuyama, Japan

The Sky's a Road

2008-09-24T19:19:00.000+09:00

Location: Mt. Fuji

The Hidden Appeal

2008-09-09T18:05:00.006+09:00

Title: Hidden Places
Location: A canyon near my house in Japan.

Title: The Moon
Location: The Moon.

Growth in a Coffin

2008-09-02T18:06:00.001+09:00

I’ve been obsessed lately with growth, specifically the development of my self beyond my core identity. I think change is an inevitability. With that in mind I am making a conscious effort to better myself by engaging the world on multiple levels and subjecting myself to whatever Truths happen my way… a kind of moral duty to my self out of fear that I might possibly have reached the apex of my own understanding of the world and my relation to it at the age of 23. I deny that remaining unchanged amidst the wealth of new experiences, knowledge, thoughts, dreams, and desires that come with the passing of time is possible. Only the infinitely wise or utterly stagnant never change. Some people react bitterly to change. Not seeing how they have changed over the years they demonize all change as the supreme contradiction to their own existence. Like children sledding down a snowy hill, one will try to use his feet to stop but finding that the hill is too steep tumbles and crashes to the bottom. Another using his own body as a weight will find that he is able to control the speed and direction of his descent with considerable maneuverability. I want to maneuver my self towards growth, Truth, and understanding.

But I didn’t have to travel to the other side of the world to change my self for the better. If one were particularly motivated and so inclined they could grow inside a coffin. The key is to keep your mind active. Passivity is the path to stagnation and nothing good can grow out of stagnant water.

It’s easy to get jaded in our daily lives. The monotonous grind of the days when life seems as though the only reason you wake up is to fulfill the obligations you’ve managed to make to society, your job, your family, even yourself. The repetition makes it so you don’t even have to think about what you’re doing in order to be competent. You might even be able to succeed without breaking from the memory built by repetition. So we build walls and fences to keep our things from escaping us and forget about that creative part that didn’t help us build the walls and the fences. We hide it away because the cathartic experience of keeping our minds vibrant can’t be kept and can’t be owned and is a fleeting thing. But I believe those fleeting things are some of the most important. Smiling and saying ‘Hello’ to the stranger you won’t remember in 10 minutes then laughing when they look at you like you’re crazy and smiling silently to yourself when they smile and say ‘hi’ back. Dancing like you’re exorcising a demon from the person in front of you and then laughing because you know you looked like a fool but smiling because everyone stopped looking so sullen. Climbing into the rafters of a bar and yelling at the customers like God himself so everyone might laugh a little bit and stop being so afraid of saying the wrong thing to the cute guy or girl standing next to them. Giving your friend shit when they do something dumb because you can both laugh about it and you both know next time it’ll be you.

As easy as it is to get jaded, it’s just as easy to smile and laugh; and only one of those choices leads to happiness. If we are ever to avoid stagnation we must smile and laugh. Out of the simple, fleeting things a more permanent happiness will grow. And therein lies the connection of happiness and growth; they are choices we can all make that do nothing but enhance the short time we have in life.

Another Pilgrimage to an Airport Bar

2008-08-25T10:16:00.005+09:00

Drinking a glass of beer at the airport bar has always been a sort of ritual I perform whenever I’m waiting for a plane. While I was in LAX waiting for the plane to Tokyo I passed the time talking with other people headed to Japan on the same program as myself in the bar of the airport Chile’s. Unlike myself, the three had lived the expatriate life in Japan during college on study abroad programs and were now returning to the place they remembered so fondly. They all knew enough Japanese to get around without English, they knew all the little cultural rules that help a person blend into a society, they knew the things to eat, the places to go. They knew the cultural significance of one thing or the religious meaning of another; but most importantly they knew why they were about to fly halfway around the world in 2 hours.

Like most people I talk to lately, everyone wants to know why I want to go to Japan. The simple answer is that I came here because I don’t know Japan. When I made the decision to go to Japan I knew almost nothing about it besides what we learn in high school history class and that it was something to do with why John Lennon left the Beatles. Japan was something of a blank spot in my mind, so when the opportunity arose I decided to fly half-way around the world to travel through the unknown places of my experience. I came to learn about the things I didn’t know existed. I wanted to keep my expectations at a minimum and let my experience shape my understanding to slowly map out that blank part of my mind. I flew out of the airport that morning to see why Japan is worth experiencing and to deepen my understanding of the world at its most shallow point.

A couple days before stepping on the plane to Japan I found myself at another bar in the Will Rogers World Airport thinking about what I was leaving behind. On this particular 10 am visit I was caught up in thoughts about Oklahoma. I remembered the sight of the open expanse of land, the fresh smell of the earth after a rain, the way the clay reddens the landscape. I thought about my friends and family and the current departure I would have from them; and I thought about the time spent with friends squeezing out just a little more life from the long hours of the night.

But it’s funny what seemingly obscure thought can enter a persons head when they’re caught up in reflection. Of all the thoughts I had, one in particular kept entering my mind: a tree. It was a massive, lumbering tree that hung over the road like a guardian, keeping constant vigil over the path from Mustang to the airport. I had seen it before but for whatever reason it never become apparent until that day when I sat down for a beer. I could see it clearly in my mind, all of the leaves and the branches twisting out from the trunk and the solitude of that single tree in an open field. Even though I was leaving my friends and family for over a year my thoughts kept returning to this one tree. I had been on that road constantly growing up. I had passed that exact tree countless times and probably even glanced at it more than a few. And after years of indifference to this everyday thing of beauty I was finally able to admire this tree, whose beauty rests in its relation to all things. It has existed my entire life, and will probably remain for many years to come. And what I realized in that bar just before leaving Oklahoma is that all the beautiful works of art, cinema, photography, or poetry are trying to capture what this tree holds in its existence. They are reflections of the beauty contained in the world. A painting or a poem of the sea isn’t trying to be the sea; it is only a reflection of the Truth the artist or poet sees. So, like a sunset or an open field, the things we encounter everyday that usually go unnoticed can turn into works of art if we are receptive and let our mind become the World’s canvas.

Inaugural Post

2008-08-14T15:14:00.003+09:00

After a certain amount of consideration I have decided to create a blog. It came to my attention that since I have become something of a nomad in recent years a good way to send a part of my experiences back home would be through the Internet. So through the writings on this website I hope that others can in a sense share these experiences with me and maybe learn something new about the world as I am continually doing. I am approaching this wholeheartedly as a creative means of expression so please bear in mind that this blog will not always be a purely autobiographical undertaking and could quite possibly contain elements of fiction, poetry, scholarship, or even philosophy.