Wave Goodbye

tarnished string

2012-01-08T22:53:00.000-08:00

One song is all my fingers have been able to play for weeks and weeks. That one song that has yet to fall into completion, the words and the music fall premature. If a song had a birth certificate it would read five pounds four ounces...It's that song that always had an argument as an epilogue..."Girl from Carolina fits better..." "no...sweet girl from Arkansas sounds more fitting" and on and on that line of assertion and rebuttal would continue. How many years has that song been sung half written in kitchens and stairwells? For the life of me that recollection is lost. Granted this glass is full of wine and wine at times makes the memory falter. But that song (and the wine) brings me back to relive each moment...be it violent or tender or seemingly unremarkable and beguine which no amount of wine can make me forget...There was a time back oh some five years ago coming back to the commonwealth from empire state where wine and music made up the ebb and flow of my days. That was before I knew, that was before the world broke open and spilled it's truth in the dead center of my life, before I could ever write songs of that magnitude for one must feel the love and loss of an equal depth in order to compose a song such as that one. Art still mirrors life.

It wasn't but five weeks ago I played guitar on the stairwell for the last time. After I tried and tried to create something from the chaos I took the guitar strings and ripped them apart, so nothing more would resonate from the hollow body....and then i wept in your kitchen for reasons known and unknown. For losses felt and losses soon to make themselves manifest. That guitar was still resting in the chair when I walked out the door for the last time. It's strings hanging spent and torn...and that song will never be completed. And perhaps I will never play again...that week it wasn't simply guitar strings which lay tattered and torn but emotions and hopes that were left in shambles. And tonight....tonight...how many glasses of wine has it taken to simply put these words down, thoughts, damn worthless thoughts but two paragraphs....there is nothing to get right if it can't be written. But nevertheless I have played that song for weeks and each time it has sprung forth from lips and fingers the words remain "sweet girl from Arkansas..." and so it will remain as late and unwelcome as the conclusion to any argument. It should have always played that way. And in this case I wish I could go back and make life mirror art.

I seen what I saw....

2011-09-20T22:01:00.000-07:00

In spurting rain and that chilled September wind he wandered about the teeming streets in half trance taking the noise into his person as if to replace the clatter in his own mind with something more ambient something closer to abstraction than the thoughts that ran endlessly. The city was a place of loss, of useless striving the street people there of their own volition, addiction, or neglect conjured future incubes' of his own fear. That he, himself would be reduced to such poverty..living on the scraps of other peoples consumption. Crossing Third from the corner of Burnside seeing the porn house, bars, nude clubs, and the constant line at the 24 hour donut shop it all seemed false like a nightmarish dream scape born out of some devilish philosophy and the people, of which he was one, were caught by some unfounded cords whose origins were unknown, forgotten, and accepted. To what end did they breathe? That answer was as soon coming as the fabled second coming and the answers in each individuals mind as mythological as that old orthodoxy. There can be no greater falsehood than the image we construct of our own lives. On the streets it becomes clear the people are in the throws of labor attempting to birth reality into their construction. He sat at a table smoking and observing many of the faces of those he had seen before but in those other faces he could find no recognition.

An old women was barely shuffling across the cracked pavement pushing a cart with all her material possessions. Her one leg swollen, purplish dragging like an off rhythm drummer while the other foot was knarled, the large toe firmly under the adjacent two and in her hunch back deformity she struggled on in some unknown task calling forth guilt and revulsion on the passersby like some silent Elijah calling forth consuming fire from heaven. He struggled in his hopelessness to effect any long lasting change. And even if her health and material poverty could be elliviated what of the mental, dare it be said, her spiritual poverty. In truth he felt less sorrow for her than the affluent woman coming down the side walk in the opposing direction. At least the hunch back knew the truth, each day is a new suffering, there are no illusions for the dispossessed.

A heavy drone a heavy sway...

2011-09-20T21:38:00.000-07:00

Upon first glance there seemed to be little out of place in the small Midwest city of Minot. Lights where on, vehicles on the road, restaurants where full. Save for the disproportionate number of help wanted signs it seemed to be a quintessential farming community before the harvest not ground zero for record flooding. Speculation was high as was the growing discontent after three days on a school bus. As we pulled into camp the faces of our fellow workers were gaunt and tallow like meth heads and abusers. The taunts and jeers of fresh meat, cat calls, and other absurdities left us all wondering what the hell was going on. It was a far cry from the situation described at orientation. The whole atmosphere was one of a prison bus full of the newly convicted pulling into the state penitentiary.

Luckily three of us new comers where snatched up by a few guys who where less desperate and people I would gravitate towards anyway. The next evening we were all on job sites ready to do the work we had planned on doing without much knowledge as to what we were really there for. The revelation fell heavy that we were there only for the cheap unquestioning labor we provided,we were there for the desperation...desperation feeding desperation. Feeling a sense of misguided nobility when asked about working a double I said sure. This merely translated into 24 hours of labor. During those hours the reason i boarded a bus to Minot became clear namely to work off my transgressions, to toil in a hell for redemption never to be found after death in some eternal dream.

There is no redemption to be had. Not even in a flooded out town festering with disease and decay. Why even seek redemption in the obvious fulfillment of life? Ruin.

A journey to sleep...

2011-07-25T10:42:00.000-07:00

I, am tired. Stress the space between the syllables, the pause before enunciation, feel the weight of articulation. There is a weariness which transcends sleep...and it is intimate, abiding in the soul like the spirit of some heathen apparition.

The man in front of me works with well measured movements. Each step calculated to maximize productivity. The check in desk at the airport opens in four hours, four hours to wax the floor, four hours to disassemble and reassemble the poles and ropes all the while dodging pedestrians who heedlessly walk in the way. Each individual has a role to fill in the operation of the leviathan. The smoothness of the operation dependent on the calculus of uniformity. Betrayed autonomy wears on man, having ones actions mandated by the needs of a personless abstraction undefinable erodes strength.

Waking in those predawn hours, choking back autonomy, being sure to be ready for the day or days to follow for it was anyones guess when we would again see home all for the profit of a few men. The operations board dictated destination it was our life, subject to change at the whim of the salesman, company, or unforeseen circumstance. Daily we would clock in and look to the board sacrificing our hours, relationships as if they were doves and the board the alter. Looking to the workers in any industry I see the same sacrifice, the same cost benefit analysis. Life then becomes a conflict, a conflict between the non physicals needs of the human and the need to provide home and food. Some navigate this chasm effortlessly. Others balk and refuse to give to pressure. Those who refuse conformity can become heroes but more often then not become tragic images littering numerous and nameless sidewalks.

It has been numerous weeks since leaving the patch and now my eyes have seen I can never forget the how of industrial civilization. What remains a phantom is the why? Why we have expanded and constructed such a wasteland, why we give ourselves to consumption, and why we see the increase in mental pathologies but refuse to draw the connecting line between pathology and root cause. In bible college we were taught that context is king but in our daily analysis we refuse to contextualize.

In the past few days my nights have been spent in Portland and in the woods overlooking the Pacific. When night falls in the basement of the city I hear the bustle, the sirens, the drinkers stumbling in, and that wonderful blend of languages from Arabic, Farsi, and English. But that myth of progress that is the city can only tantalize for so long. Contrasting the nights in the city to the nights in the open brings the whole mess of civilization into focus. Hiking up to the dense forest on the coast leaving the drone of vehicle engines below the tree line I began to breathe. Despite my years of tobacco consumption I felt strong, alive, aware, unwinded. As the sun sank into the sea and darkness feel on the forest floor I made camp quickly, started a fire with ease in the dampness, smoked my pipe in the stillness, and laid out my wool blanket on the ground. Despite tree roots, cold evening air, and damp ground I slept and snored. Sleeping in the dirt brings us into communion with our beginning. If some deity did form us from the dust or if we evolved it does not matter in those moments. We are living beings, growing, decaying, going through the life cycle of all beings. Sleeping in the city, living in the city separates us from our origins.

As I nodded off to sleep on the ground I thought of that operations board...I breathed easily knowing my sacrificial doves have been returned. The next morning I woke with a rested soul.

Concerning touch....

2011-07-07T19:26:00.000-07:00

Moving into that space between bed sheets she whispered. She demanded my stillness, demanded that for once I allow myself the experience of pure sensation. As if sensation could be divorced from thought, that one existed independent of the other. In failing

I told her we had never touched, for all the sweat and weight we have never put flesh to flesh. Without words she protested, placing fingers to lips. Standing in obstinate fashion attempting to impart the reality of pure tactile emperasism. Yet resolute in my solitude despite bruising pressure I told her of atomic fields, opposing force, and the empty space composing the illusion of solidity. How I wished that our separate electrons would explode on impact, spinning out new galaxies in chaos, creation from pressure and heat. That I hoped the remenats of our subatomic construction could reside in the nebula of cascading particles somewhere out in the vastness of the expanding cosmos, then perhaps I may feel her, know her. But here now in the illusion of flesh and otherness I could never touch her, we would always be separate bodies attempting to fill in the space between electron and nucleus, forever solitary. Weepingly resigned to solitary existence I left her, left all hope of true contact. Break us down into our elementary components fling us around a supercollider and in that catastrophic collision we could possibly know love.

exposure

2011-05-24T16:00:00.000-07:00

This town is wind swept bleached by hundreds of days of pure sun. The buildings stand precariously on the edge of collapse giving the area an atmosphere of neglect, isolation, devolution...as if the desert wishes to incorporate these structures in a purity of wildness. Each day these structures make a stand in their isolation, in the staunch disregard to encroaching sands, even as they are swallowed. In these years of travel and observance a peculiar truth has made itself manifest. Generally the state and appearance of structures reflect the state of the individuals who abide within, have constructed, or passed through their walls.

After five hours of rough sleep, the sleep of the exhausted is seldom as deep or restful as needed, I made my way across from the hotel to a diner to read and write as long as my mental faculties could with stand the fatigue. As I sought to enclose myself in a world of concepts, reflections, contemplations etched onto paper the presence of the people broke in continually. Never have I been in a place where I am allowed the solitude I see others afforded. But no more will contempt for these interruptions hold any power.

A middle aged woman of Mexican decent began the interrogation by simply approaching and breaking into that delicate silence I was attempting to construct. After the obligatory questions of origins, occupation, and how did you, an outsider, arrive in this place she launched into a discourse of her son who is serving in the military, her dead husband, and the satisfaction at the happiness of her only child. But she seemed lost attempting to make sense of something she had and still has not been able to conceive of properly. There was a sense of her grasping at something intangible something just outside her ability to know. So she rested in the arms of a comfort constructed by her sons happiness and success...she seemed caught in the tension between her child's youthful striving for meaning and the ultimate finality of death. She like the structures surrounding this place stands on the edge of entropy. She is lonely. And the quiet unknown which seemed to shadow her is the knowledge that soon she will follow her husband, her son will follow her, and her grandchildren will follow him into that space where all striving becomes nullified. She needed to be heard, to be seen, before that firm inevitability of eternal breathlessness breaks upon her frail bones.

But is that not our collective story? Each individual seeks to be seen, known....we reach out to our parents in youth and seldom are we seen, so we reach out to gods who are either deaf, mute, blind, or nonexistent. And as that cycle of exposure and misunderstanding rolls on and breaks ceaselessly we expose ourselves to strangers in hopes that they will see us, that someone will look past themselves and see the exposed as a person, as an entity not as an object before we find ourselves silenced buried in the deep, forever unknown.

West Texas

2011-05-21T11:49:00.000-07:00

Standing in the west Texas desert under the sweltering heat attempting to reduce the relentless sounds of our equipment and that of the drilling rig three hundred yards east so that i may hear the silence. And by silence i mean those subtle sounds of wind through mesquite, dust pelting skin, and the calls of the desert birds in their seemingly careless watch for food. Transferring to west texas from east Texas was a decision made in the subconscious. Little did I know my own thoughts before penning them on paper as a request to my superiors. Sometimes intuitive logic far exceeds the capacity of linear reasonings. When asked to explain my reasons for requesting the transfer all I could very well say was "there is nothing there..." and the response would be the same "you're damn right...".

Well, we speak in language that can be comprehended. Words are merely the symbols used to point to objects, concepts, images, and feelings. The nothingness I spoke of was the absence of cities, teeming masses of people and they understood the nothingness that I was referencing. But in truth in the absence of masses of people, cities, never ending static noise there is something...many somethings. There is the land, the creatures, the wind, the silence. I spoke of nothingness as purity they spoke of it as a void which needed filled. And in truth it is filled with weapons of war. Drilling rigs are scattered over the desert plain....the lights from their towers punctuate the night like some unholy devastation. Surely the vibration of motors and pumps keep away the creatures of the desert. We fill this arid space with moisture, pits of drilling mud, waste water, chemical compounds. There is something here of our creation and this desert war zone is the first step in the creation of cities.

But I come here to see the vastness, to taste the dust, to weep for our collective soul...as I weep now. For the more we fill this nothingness with emptiness and manifest hollowness with our creation the sooner we become abstractions losing our particularities...mirages which fade upon approach.

Machines

2011-04-09T14:39:00.000-07:00

These nights spent is semi vigilance attending to machines droning seem lifetimes. The deep solitude of darkness is meant for only rest attending to dreams subconscious earnings suppressed in waking hours. Steadily attending to fuel, watching gauges, and the tightness of a spool of pipe vibrating along with a thousand horses changes the mental processes of the individual in attendance. In this eternal blackness the ambient phantoms of progress float on the mental landscape sculpting half truth cannons; highways paved with omissions. Modernity was an inevitability, industrialization was and is messianic in proportion...oh these half spun garments laced with illusion. But supposing this world has lost it's center would these concepts therefor hold the presence of the imago dei in the presence of such absurdity. For when lies become too tangled to unravel truth is but a knot undistinguishable. But would it be lending to much credit that these phantoms perform such immaculate conceptions in the thoughts of these men.

When touching a machine that has been operating constantly for nearly a week does it not leech into the physical being of humanity? It's resonance vibrating and altering our own? If thoughts have the power to alter the tangible tactual universe would not those objects have a similar effect on our own? These machines do as commanded operating without thought only with that tenuous precision of mechanization and while it may take a measure of thoughtfulness to command such precision it certainly does not take mindfulness. Drone for drone like begets like. Machines posses no compassion. While eating dinner someone mentioned the most recent earthquake in japan instead of a somber thought considering the pain and fear being experienced at that very present moment the general consensus with only one solitary disinter was "fuck 'em". It would seem that sympathy was not part of the gears, not intrinsic to it's own operation therefor unknown. Thoughts may as yet be unquantifiable in mass and density or measured in proportion to cause and effect but some measure of correlation does exist. These long hours lacking in quiet simplicity dealing exclusively with mechanical processes and toxic chemical compounds must hammer these monotone

notes into neuropathways molding thoughts and patterns of thought.

During those few precious months spent on the commune with little interaction outside the naturally evolved one could feel a depth and complexity transcending instrumental rational thought. As mentioned before in various conversations spending hours with fingers cultivating soil and bodies melding with snow melt infuses a natural rhythm into the our otherwise irrational movements.

It is little wonder some men become as mechanical as the machines they operate.

extraction

2011-04-05T11:00:00.000-07:00

We don our flame retardant coveralls, hard hats, safety glasses, and steal toes. These are our uniforms, protective gear meant to stave off the heat and pressure the falling iron and the renegade forces we toil to contain, to harness. We are the foot soldiers in the war to subdue and manage the world...to bend the physical forces to human construction. Upon arrival on location the task at hand is to rig up to the well head. We hammer up pipe, make connections, raise equipment by crane hovering over the well head, that entry to the underworld. Once all the preparations, the cleaning of muskets and loading of ammunition, we are ready to make the final connection open up hell and do battle with the unseen.

There is a vast difference in the mindsets of extraction and cultivation. One feels much like nurture, partnership, communion...the other feels much like rape. While that may seem a harsh statement the similarities go much further than simple feelings. In extraction the companies use massive equipment to clear the fecund land to bare and level ground...removing all particularity from a space. At this point rigs are brought in to penetrate that which should remain unscathed to depths of astounding distance. Forcefully penetrating the crust to remove and inject with no calculation other than monetary gain and further material expansion leads to a reality which acts on those principles. The parents produce the offspring and that which is fed to the young is what the young become.

How can we expect a world of peace and compassion of mutual respect and dignity when we base our entire realities on the consumption of a "resource" produced in such a manner. Theodore Herzl said of the Jews..." we have become what the Ghettos have made us...". It is not an overstatement to say we have become what consumption has made us.

This post is stained and forced...writing is taking on a laborious nature due to the obvious time and mental constraints currently under. But if organic creation is to be done it must be done in the midst of toil and bondage. If we allow it to these constraints allow for refinement of thought and gritty truth that must accompany pure thought.

I will end this post with another quote from Mr. Herzl, for even truth can be spoken from the mouth of a monster..."No one is wealthy or powerful enough to make civilization take one retrograde step.." and he is correct it is only in the collective where the power resides.

Thoughts while in a monastery...

2010-12-08T18:55:00.000-08:00

Early December finds me in Colorado Springs frequently visiting a Benedictine Monastery, which would be called a Convent if it were not for negative associations or an Abby if it were more theologically aligned with Rome, nestled in a grove of spindly pines on the outskirts of this sprawling city. Here the young and old devotees seek out what Plotinus once called "the flight of the alone to the Alone." The sisters here are quiet, seeking the ultimate unity collectively and deeply personally, each striving in her own way. Some stay strictly to the worn path Catholic mysticism others draw from numerous traditions. They stand in solidarity with simplicity and a modern interpretation of renunciation and self abnegation. There is a peace about this place which strikes me in the same way evening vespers stuck me in Mt. Angel on numerous occasions. I wonder if some here ever doubt there vows or at the very least the value of their vows. Or if and when they are assaulted by doubt do they find solace in the new physics...in the unified field theory or in the non duality which persists in the subatomic levels of the cosmos. If it were myself who had taken vows I would fall into a war of definitions not wanting to attribute spiritual attributes to a purely, and no less mysterious, physical reality. But in no way can anyone fault these women or their male counterparts or even their fellow contemplatives in other traditions for their vows. It is my belief they resonate with the cosmos more truly than most. Not even to mention the selflessness which comes from living in community for a lifetime.

These past several days I have been able to sit in on conversations between MIT Ph.D's, Zen Masters, Vietnam veterans, and nuns discussing the dissolution of the ego. It would seem that a constant conversation of ego reduction only serves to swell and empower what T.M. would call the false sense of self. Although I no longer claim Christianity it would seem that if one truly desired the dissolution of the ego it would be most productive to act upon the words of Jesus in the Sermon on the Mount....a selfless less life seems better than a selfless orthodoxy.

another

2010-11-02T06:29:00.000-07:00

Autumn has arrived south of the Mason-Dixon. The grey chill in the air reminds me of the North West. Jamaica has come and gone as has New Orleans, Morgan City, and the cotton farm. Travelers accumulate experiences like bank notes and restlessness like a genetic disorder compounding with time. Our boots were stitched from songs about highways...but highways are wearing my soles and waiting is wearing the more intimate fabric of my soul.

2010-04-19T11:36:00.000-07:00

How does one mark the passage of a year spent in waiting? That continued birth and death of expectation...living for 365 days oscillating between promises of two weeks and the undetermined has left no other recourse but to plot onward into an increasingly hazy and obscured future. Since this time last year the country has been crossed four separate occasions for truly no other purpose other than movement, as if one could replace the movement towards goals and transatlantic life with the passage of domestic miles. Alaska is no longer that large state to the North but a place known at least on the surface and Canada has worn my boots down as well. As I contemplate those miles, encounters, and hours spent on the open road I can not find in it the vitality travel once brought. No longer can I confuse one for the other.

This years has been fraught with loss. Most recently my dearest friend has gone away to die in seclusion from cancer. All that stands in his memory left available is a rock wall built together, a zippo lighter, and at night while in bed the quiet wheeze of my lungs which was audible in his throughout the day.

...Now my departure from OR is looming once more...but the destination is yet unclear and not without it's consequences...and still I wait for the job in Tanzania to show itself real...

2010-01-23T15:00:00.001-08:00

to hell with all of it.

the price...

2009-12-20T15:00:00.001-08:00

nothing left...empty

2009-12-08T12:12:00.000-08:00

another bus bound elsewhere

2009-12-01T05:47:00.000-08:00

...back on the east coast..lost.

2009-11-07T10:54:00.001-08:00

Leaving OR tomorrow morning. Perhaps this is wrong...

2009-11-01T17:49:00.000-08:00

far too much...i'm holding on but i'm not sure how much longer...if November 3 comes and goes like all the other "departure dates"...i just don't know...my fingers are most definitely slipping

2009-10-02T23:07:00.000-07:00

No longer can I wait stationary, unmoving. I spoke with the boss today and he is waiting for the word from the U.A.E as to when this month they would like him back in Dar es Salaam to complete whatever it is multi nationals need to complete. When I pressed for anything concrete he was unwilling to give a general time frame.

One of my dear friends is on a ranch in Montana and I asked if they need another hand...if they don't I leave OR and go to Seattle and then on to BC for at least a week if not more depending on funds. but it is no longer an option for me to sit and wait by the computer for an email that won't come for at least two more weeks.

life

lived

the

movement

2009-09-27T22:30:00.001-07:00

Tonight while smoking the last of the days cigarettes George and I stood out in the yard contemplating the rotation of the universe, the solar system, and our humble planet. The conversation moved to the constant expansion of the universe...old stars dieing, new stars coming into existence...entropy seeming to exist only in the short term constantly birthing beginnings...i said "...so we breathe in the eternal...if only temporarily..." and we both sighed for the briefest of moments losing our anthropocentric egotism, our geocentric heresy caught in the sublime movements of the eternal...

at the moment when I felt i could be lifted from the perception of the finite here and now the sprinklers lifted from the ground plunging me back to the tension between my numbered days and the infinite...

2009-09-24T10:49:00.000-07:00

My time in Silvertown is drawing to a close. Along with the completion of the wall. I placed the last stone in place yesterday morning before the fog had been chased from the hills. The wall was not merely a job it was the object into which I could pour all of my restlessness it was the object of creation something to be formed with care. Now it stands. No longer in need of care. Saturday morning I leave what has become "home" to spend a week or so with my grandparents and then to where? Africa still has the solidity of a dream.

Allowing myself one evening of self loathing, self pity, and self destruction I bought a bottle of the cheapest whiskey I could find. It didn't last a great length of time. Ten thirty found me curled up in the back yard in nothing but my undergarments, weeping, and ridding my body of the vileness recently consumed.

Early in the evening my dad inquired about a relationship and I spoke about responsibilities not ready to take on, lifestyle changes for which i'm not ready for...truth be told...that is all bullshit.

Truth is it's fear...she's what I want and I'm a damn fearful, prideful fool...

2009-09-19T10:37:00.000-07:00

Oregon is in full bloom. Meaning the fog has descended, rain is pelting the leaves, wool socks paired with Birkenstock are in full force, and insignificant to some the average simple black birds are no longer on the wire. My fascination with migration and migratory patterns of birds is a new interest. Perhaps only from an emotional empathy concerning movement. Only a few days ago a group of some six black birds perched on the wire above the hedges and would chirp, whirl, chatter, caw, and all sorts of other avian acrobatics. Telling either of dreams or travel strategies. I prefer the former. The life expectancy of the average black bird is 20 years, a number expected to be far less. of course it's expected to be less because we as humans usually equate value and life expectancy with size. Perhaps all of this exposition on the life span of birds is pointless, mental drivel...perhaps not.

My thoughts are many....perhaps the contemplation of birds is a noble endeavor...it at least is of nature although not void of abstraction.

2009-09-19T00:32:00.000-07:00

Tim stopped by my fathers work to have a message passed on concerning Africa...essentially "soon" was the message but still without definition. He also revealed the nature of the contract and the financial compensation will be significantly more substantial than previously thought which was already considerable for a minimalist such as myself...

yet...

perhaps in the pursuit of this dream, this life, this goal i have just made a fatal mistake. One in which I may never know the extent of the loss. Does the realization of one goal prohibit the realization of another...is it not a human gift to unify the thesis and the antithesis, to junxtapose the life of the family man and that of the wanderer...is it possible to place them so close side by side that they become entangled, intertwined in a brackish haze?

find me 'neath the killing cliff

2009-08-17T16:30:00.000-07:00

As the time drags on from the meeting on August sixth between the company and the Tanzanian government I find myself more and more weary. I did find work and am building a stone wall for a Belgian women. A bit of creative masonry work never did anyone any harm. It's good to employ these hands and arms in some work in which the end result is only beauty.

Ending relationships barely begun is a painful ordeal. I feel as if an abortion was performed three months in...just far enough along the line to get comfortable and then...a void.

Eskimo Sages and Fur trading philosophers

2009-08-01T14:45:00.000-07:00

Saturday in Anchorage having just arrived back in the most populated city in Alaska I thought it was high time to venture out on my own. Portland has the corner on public transit and Anchorage while being far better than Norfolk took a bit of time to figure out. Finally making it downtown dropped off on the corner of C Street I did what I usually do when exploring a new city...walk with no direction.

As an aside: There are moments when an unspoken idea grips me and I have to meander along until it makes itself clear. For example during Advent I felt like I should go to the Abby and after having arrived walking up the steps three deer eating blocked the walk way so we stood in silence for thirty minutes observing. When the moment was broken I drove back to the ranch knowing I had experienced what I had come to experience.

So meandering down the sidewalk a fur shop can into view and no longer being of the P.E.T.A. persuasion I stepped into the shop. Within seconds the introduction was made by the older Asian looking gentleman, apparently the owner of the shop. He was sitting in front of a wall filled with foreign currency, strangely not an odd site in Alaska. Immediately I came across the Mongolian currency and I pointed it out. Which of course prompted mutual inquiry and dialogue.

As the fates would have it he was a native Alaskan and by native I mean grew up in an Eskimo village in the bush. Joined the military under Harry S. Truman and served in the Pacific under MacArthur (before Truman sacked the general calling him a "dumb son of a bitch"). This gentleman, whom I'll call affectionately "the Eskimo" because his name I can't pronounce or spell, is not the poster child for native Americans of any stripe. It would take a vast amount of space to describe in full but he is an articulate, traveled, educated, gentleman....with a strange sensuality. When one thinks of sensuality one thinks of Mediterranean cultures or exotic Persians. Not articulate traveled Eskimo fur traders. Like with all well traveled older gentleman the course turned to my travels and then life lessons from those who have gone before. He bombarded me with questions such as: Where did you spend your first 20 years? Why are you going to Tanzania? Where did you learn to speak so well who is responsible for that? and the formative question which turned into life lessons "Are you at peace?"

The main point he attempted to drive home is that "one look is worth a hundred readings" ~ Confucius . He encouraged me to use my "good legs" and see everything for myself for to only view the world through pages is a partial and incomplete view... "Stand before the Mona Lisa!" "Stand in the middle of Ulanbattar" Of course these aren't ideas I don't know but it was an encouragement to hear it from an older "successful" man. When a drunk on the streets tells you to keep the faith and keep moving around it's disregarded as quickly as the dollar you just relinquished. But from a man of substance it lasts.

We spoke of Rembrandt whom he called "a personal friend" no doubt from the 35 times in St. Petersburg. He told me how to approach African women and despite the "aristocratic way they hold their neck" to pass on any romantic liaisons. And in the end of the conversation, mostly due to the fact I'd had one to many cups of coffee. He told me my English was very good but it had to much Richmond, to much Billy Graham, too much Ronald Reagan. He said i should rub shoulders with the Oxford and Cambridge educated in order to refine my English.

Sages, priests, and teachers can be found anywhere...sometimes they come in the form of Eskimo fur traders in Anchorage, AK.

Belonging

2009-07-30T09:30:00.000-07:00

There is much in my head this morning. Much that needs not be littered over the net. My time in Alaska has been formative to say the least. Ones first impression is of course of the mountains, glaciers, and other such natural phenomena that leaves the observer with feelings of awe and frailty. But of course visitors have expounded on these things to such a level of saturation I don't care to rehash it here.

An Italian gentleman told me once. "Nicolas, you remember always remember, the meeting is the art of life." And it is meetings and conversations that brings me to this rugged geography. In the course of life I felt very much like the outsider, the unknowable member of the family (perhaps this was merely the angst of living in a large family) but in the course of two years I've met nearly every member of a family I never thought I had. Despite my own trepidation and fear they have integrated me into their own with compassion, joy, and acceptance. I marvel at the similarities the subtle subconscious mannerisms. Taking photos with my two aunts yesterday I was shocked that I looked truly looked like them...there was a continuity to our physical features previously held only by my twin whom I now i have little more than physicality to show our biological closeness.

Belonging is a strange feeling. It was interesting to experience it with my father...but to experience it with others is astounding. Feelings of cautiousness still follow and that faint expectation of the other shoe falling is still lingering....but fading.

yet I feel honored and grateful and over joyed that when I go I can return to a family whom i love and who loves me. Who places no expectation on me other than to live life fully.

I'm still waiting for the email...ambiguity still persists...

...the seas are raging...

2009-07-21T11:47:00.000-07:00

Last night, once again unable to find sleep in the confines of trusses and support beams, my mind allowed a much needed self examination. I would be remiss not to mention the unavoidable fact that I have been an insufferable ass. Fatigue often softens rage stemming from uncertainty and tension born of ambiguity. Reliving the conversations of the day, for days are nothing but conversations and narratives, my conversation with a dear older lady replayed. Now this particular lady worked medivac during the Vietnam war, fought for the V.A. for better medical care, and amongst other things had a successful career in Hollywood. Usually our conversations cover history, literature, poetry, philosophy, and horsemanship but yesterday called for a more personal and intimate dialogue. Being a woman of experience any cover up would be noticed so when asked how I was holding up I was forced to say "..terrible...a bit like T.S. Eliot." We traversed the conceptual forms of simplicity, greatness, love, action, movement, and most importantly not being the 21st century Vasco de Gama caught in perpetual circumnavigation.

As we spoke and absorbed she related the best moments of her life...strangely some mirrored mine...bare back riding through snow covered mountains in cougar territory...feeling the 1,200 pounds coming off the ground in rhythmic patterns...flowing seamlessly into one entity...in spirit becoming for a brief moment the mythological centaur...

The purpose of experience and action should lead one to these moments...oneness unity...contentment. My trepidation concerning Africa is that it holds the possibility of all the goals and dreams held since childhood...it holds the road to the continued moments stated previously. My traveling days are far from over...my boots will always have holes...i just hope these travels lead to those moments...not lost in perpetual circumnavigation.

...a hope delayed...

2009-07-20T18:39:00.001-07:00

Anger. An old feeling I thought I'd done pretty much away with. Contemplation has all but been pushed out and silence is all but whisper. I feel myself all too tender and sensitive. The meeting between the Tanzanian government, the investors, and the company I will be working for has been pushed back till the sixth of August. The lease will be signed with little delay and we will be on the ground doing the surveying and making the ground ready for rice. But in the interim I wait with thin jeans and worn boots...biding my time and losing my soul.

all in

2009-07-18T13:06:00.000-07:00

Restless. My fingers are burnt and stained with tobacco. The consistency of my blood is probably more akin to something found in a French Press rather than anything human. Weeks away, merely weeks, the tentative departure to Africa and still where is the plane ticket where is the certainty? Living with ambiguity is dandy as long there is nothing on the line. I'm all in, no aces in the hole nor up my sleeve and I've got nothing left to lose if this falls through. Sacrifice after sacrifice relationship after relationship has suffered and my alleged "selfishness" has been the cause of many arguments and controversy. A friend asked me what if this doesn't pan out...I couldn't answer. Even the possibility of this not working out petrifies me. The only response was simply that "i'm all in" to which was asked where will you go. Silence again, although my thoughts spoke loud and clear...the ground...but you can't say that to people...

The depth of this need to get across the ocean is non rational....completely and utterly non rational. I need this.

Perhaps I'm struggling to convince myself of my own validity and worth. That I have some fucking reason to be sucking air and taking up space....that if i go and do this...i've validated my existence. Maybe I won't be worthless...

I'm not trying to prove anything to anyone other than myself...

questions

2008-06-27T08:11:00.000-07:00

Is it morally right to bring a child into an overpopulated decaying degenerating world rife with violence against nature and humanity? Is it correct to bring a child into a fragmented family? Why should we continue to procreate when between 1950 - 2000 the global population doubled and will double by 2025? Why have biological children when domestically and internationally multitudes of children are orphaned and homeless? I recall a gentleman i worked with whose idea of birth control was relying on "the Lord" to stop he and his wife from conceiving. They have four children and have been married 5 or 6 years, more are soon to follow. This form of family planning is closer to the 'pull and pray' method. Sexual irresponsibility is not simply a reality for hormone dripping teens and college students but for all people, especially life partners.

While i'm happy for Justin and his girlfriend, happy for my father who will share a birthday with his first grandson, pleased with the notion that perhaps Justin can reject instilling fear and feelings of inadequacy that were placed upon us. But those questions are still ever present.

a morning listening

2008-06-20T10:52:00.000-07:00

After making a cup of tea and a bowl of oats this morning I found the little patch of sunlight making its way through the canopy and sat down to listen. Not only did I hear the breeze through the firs and the oaks, the sparrows and the rooster letting us all know that the morning had arrived (since 4:25 in the morning), but whispers of words I finally began to understand:

"I do not consider myself less ignorant than most people. I have been and still am a seeker, but I have ceased to question stars and books; I have begun to listen to the teachings my blood whispers to me. My story is not a pleasant one; it is neither sweet nor harmonious, as invented stories are; it has the taste of nonsense and chaos, of madness and dreams-like the lives of men who stop deceiving themselves."

2008-03-08T14:01:00.000-08:00

Having flown down to Little Rock to borrow a truck to get down to New Orleans with hopes of boarding an oil barge bound for the heart of the gulf of Mexico with nothing but my banjo, a few books, and an old army backpack I found myself in the middle of a tornado, dead cattle, and fallen trees. The next day I heard from the company the job that would surely get me back into university or at least out of the country was but a good idea nothing more. Before flying back to Oregon my father and brother asked and reasoned with me to stay due to having sold my car and having nothing but a banjo, an old army pack, a hundred dollars, and a poncho. The night before I flew out my father and I shared a class of whiskey in room 213 while I shared the few true reasons for my departure and that my biggest fear was that I would simply become a portrait of fragility amidst ruin.

Now I'm back in Oregon working three jobs with the my outstanding balance to Ozark Christian College within a few months of being paid and either homelessness in Europe, hiking the Pacific Rim trail, or Evergreen University within the year. Having traveled abroad and seen most of the U.S. in the last five years my desire is still the same...work in orphanages and refugee camps. I now can honestly say that it's closer than it was yesterday...

always leaving

2007-08-25T20:35:00.000-07:00

Always leaving. Leaving has become my staying while hellos, introductions, hugs, and handshakes have all the unspoken spirit of a quiet goodbye. If there was ever a place for me to stay would I know it? Or would I simply strap up my boots and get to walking? Perhaps I find excuses to leave always looking for something to cover the tracks of my restlessness. If I found what it is my heart so desperately seeks would I know it or simply pass it up like so many other beautiful moments I only tasted ever so tentatively? Am I ever to know? Will I ever find peace?

The true reality of sin

2007-02-01T07:00:00.000-08:00

"The sense of sin is something deeper and more existential. It is not merely a sense of guilt referred to the authority of God. It is a sense of evil in myself. Not because I have violated a law outside myself, but because I have violated the inmost laws of my own being, which are, at the same time, the laws of God Who dwells within me. The sense of sin is the sense of having been deeply and deliberately false to my own inmost reality, my likeness to God....The sens of sin is, then, something ontological and immediate which does not spring from reflection on my actions and comparison with a moral code. It springs directly from the evil that is present in me: it tells me not merely that I have done nothing wrong, but that I am wrong, through and through. That I am a false being. That I have destroyed myself."

~ Thomas Merton - The Inner Experience

....Something that captured my attention this morning over breakfast....

Jasmine and Lavender

2007-01-22T19:36:00.000-08:00

All I seem capable of writing about is the culmination of my selfishness, the death of purity and innocence. Even in the paper and ink journals there has been scarcely any words written not dealing with that travesty. It lingers in the air like pipe tobacco smoke, but this is simply suffocating. There is hollowness in my words of the divine, shallowness in my songs of praise.

The simple joys of my life have been reduced to the taste of Jasmine and the aroma of Lavender on my pillow case. No longer do I pine for the company of a woman, those soft precious touches hold no sway. Perhaps, finally, I'm arriving bit by bit at a place of inner solitude one in which there are no soft kisses, gentle words, five dollar pitchers of Amber Bock, or Turkish coffee on the corner.

We learn don't we...perhaps the road ends somewhere we never imagined existed...but its there and we have little choice but walk the wilderness for a spell. Hopefully I can shed this exterior while in these elements...emerge new.

Redemption

2007-01-12T14:25:00.000-08:00

When one experiences redemption is it merely for the purpose of salvation or does it heal the wounds of a selfish life? Does redemption take away guilt? I was asked a playful question at work this afternoon. A question whose very presence in conversation is simply a means to illicit laughs, smiles, and jokes all around. For a brief moment I contemplated uttering a falsehood but for some reason I said "as a matter of fact, I have, unfortunately, done that." I said the word unfortunately as if the action had taken place by a series of chance events. Yet it was, at the time, a desired and thought about action, one in which I had planned in order to be seen as the victim, not as the architect.

A little under two years ago I was given the opportunity to do such a thing as I did else where, but I didn't. It was not nobility and moral fortitude that stayed my feet but time. There was simply no time. But later on, given a chance to reclaim a bit of fractured dignity, I proceeded to crush whatever manner of moral guidance and spiritual mindfulness beyond recognition. As the weeks wore wearily on, no amount of pipe smoking, solitude by the lake, strumming John Denver songs, or attending Evening Prayer healed the wound I so readily inflicted upon the spiritual self.

Depravity knows no bounds, I know that I have not reached the depth of depravity that human kind is regrettably capable of reaching. But is there any need of knowing how deep it truly goes? I care not to know. I know how deep I have descended and care not about sinking further down.

So does redemption heal these selfish wounds? Does it restore one back from brokenness?

have mercy

2007-01-10T19:49:00.000-08:00

Miserere Mei, Deus. Have mercy upon me, oh God.

I recently(November) made some prayer beads in the Anglican fashion. The smallest of the beads, which number 28, has the prayer "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." The prayer has allowed me to see the depth of my own depravity. Often we can scarcely see the real vileness of our actions over the seemingly harmless activity in which we find ourselves engaged. Growing up debating the tenants of Calvinism vs Arminianism was a useless debate at the time, it had more to do with being able to win the argument than actually understand the value of either perspective. The first part of Calvinism states that man is totally depraved, incapable of doing any good on his own, including turn to the father. As I watch people, myself with the most depth, I've seen the true depth of depravity we are capable of reaching. Yet I'm not ready to say we're totally depraved, I am also uninterested in debating the topic internally or with others.

We are so far removed from the holiness we were created in. Looking back on my actions since August in some situations I have been so despicable I can scarcely bring myself to even whisper "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me a sinner." Can scarcely acknowledge what is plainly seen, my explicit need for redemption. As I walk down the cobblestone streets of Old Towne where I work, completely alone, no one to come home and call, no distraction I see the need for a sacrifice, the need for redemptive love.

One day the waters goin to wash it away

2007-01-08T19:45:00.000-08:00

Knowing the divine is foolish to the man seeking the external life. I seek not the external but the divine within, above, and beyond. Nothing exists outside, below, or above the divine. All action is movement towards or away from unity with God, every second is a choice to know God or the self. We exist not as ourselves but creations, extensions of the divine within the physical. We are not ourselves, our life is not ours to live. It is for the divine. I'll be a fool to know God.