Jamison On A Windy Day - An Ode to Tommy

"Life's a bitch and then you die. That's why we get high. Cause you never know when you're going to go."

It's one of those statements said in passing,
A gust of breeze between my leaves and your leaves,
mouth and ears,
and we walk, steps continue with the same old feet
and on we go.
Regardless of sayings, life goes on.
In the wake of death. Life goes on.

Fear and pain and the lot of madness that has encompassed existence for many a century,
and happiness too, though in small doeses that have a set time of action, like sleeping pills with a window of minutes where they take effect, love gives you a chance, we all get one, or two if we're lucky, three if we've the child of a saint,
but for centuries there's been worry and wonder, pain and suffering.
All cure's are temporary and we mock the future,
knowing, but not aware, that it will all continue to get better and worse.
For the rest of the lives of our children's children.

We're here now.

All of us walking and wishing and settling in.
Dreams are half lived and life is waited on, hand and foot, by the moments that we create.
Still. Half a dream. At most. Is all that most try for.

On the trains there are strangers who haven't said hello.
I wonder if I'm the only one yearning to yelp with glee or pain or acknowledgement of something, something, something.
And we all rock, arms tightly toward our bodies, no touching of neighbors, through the same twists and turns of the same steel track, forged and smoothed by machines and heat.
All the same, yet no one notices.

Sometimes there's a shock. A jolt of wisdom and you choose to let it pass.
Keep it and it may turn to pain, as all knowledge does when not watered and gifted to another before going stale.
But keep it. Chance it. Hold it till the breath fills the body with poison and the last moments of consciousness sit idly by, wondering if you'll let them do their job. Then, like the fine mist rising from a swamp warmed with summer stagnant heat, let it exit through the pores. Give it back. It was given to you. He gave it to me.

-------------

There's only a few reasons to drink whiskey in mid day when hours away from the night shift at a rehab. Today, I drink for you, my friend who left me too soon but taught me before his last day. And the whiskey won't run dry, nor will the hope that you've instilled in this sometimes fearful heart. To lose a brother is to loose a piece, substantial and necessary, of the soul.

A man who never questioned my friendship died a year ago today. A man who taught me about commitment, about faith, about the timeless bonds of brothers in arms, of old fashioned thugs and new aged knowers, a man who fought battles and drew the blood of another for me has left this place. He knew what I couldn't do but never mentioned it. He swept those floors when I said my back hurt and I'll never forget that.

Tom. I know you're there, watching and listening, smoking the best grass and patting each one of us on the back when it gets too tough.

I know you're there when the wind lifts the brim of my hat. I know you sat on that smaller rock next to me when the sun rose over the darkest and bluest ocean I've ever seen yesterday morning. I know I can always take from your strength and feed it to my feet when the walking just wont stop.

And I know so much. So little, but so much. Love, the bonds of friends, the strength of one, the purpose of living the dream despite disbelief, the beauty of taking it in and letting it rest, only to give it to the next generation for their hope, their happiness, their strength. I know the strength and truth of a friend and a brother.

The days get too dark sometimes. But I'll never let go. You'll push me back when I'm falling towards the pit. Good show man. You never stopped doing it right. There's no sense in feigning weakness when we all have the strength to save ourselves and the rest of the people on the block. And if we cry, we'll have our brothers. When we feel the fear, we'll help one another. When we can't keep going, we'll refuse to think about giving up. We've got all we need in the friends we have. Seen or unseen. And you are rocking the clouds and probably not even looking down.

If you do. Take a minute and know that it all stopped and started over again the day I got that call. One year ago today, I met a pain I knew existed but had never touched. Here we are. One year later. You're in the sky. I can see you smiling. We'll take care of things down here. Don't you worry.

I love you buddy. I walk this world with hope. And you are always walking with me, laughing at the strangeness of this maddening world, making me smoke blunts instead of bowls, getting me too high. Thank you for living your life. You've change mine and those of many others. We'll never forget you.

Another Proclamation To The Unknown

I'd like to start this off with a Bulgarian Proverb that was told to me by a Swedish midget in Germany. But I have no such proverb, nor do I have the corresponding story of how and when it was first heard. So I'll start with the present madness and the imposing presence of an adorable dog that is continuously wandering in circles around my cross legged feet.

I've got another morning pot of coffee steadily making its way into my body via the hand to mouth technique, soaking into my veins and creating a calm that can't decide whether it's booze or bean juice affecting my mind. It could be whiskey or wine. It's just one of those times when mornings are so clouded with the exhaustion from endless work that I have to consume something for balance. Today it's coffee and my fingers fly while my body takes in the sensation of now, and the dog, which is one of the more important aspects of now. I'll explain why.

There is a dog here, a well trained guide dog. No, I'm not blind yet. We get to borrow dogs which means borrowed tails for borrowed wagging. I enjoy waking to a shaking tail. I wish I had one too sometimes.

But that's not the point and my mind is slightly stuttering. This isn't supposed to be anything but a free rant, and that is what it's becoming. My smile and my solid seated form watch as the fingers from my hands take out what my mind says needs to go free.

And the music dictates these words as much as the surroundings at present and beyond that, this is merely an attempt at the creation of a window from the mind to the page. The hands do stunt the constant flow, but control and the methodical decisions of a conductor controlling the symphony of a living feeling can assist in the dictation of now.

Once again, I am lost in the infinite freedom of love and madness, living with a brutish style of passion, taking the path that I know I have found and must be followed, living a life that I have developed from many hours of smiles and frowns, and pretend dramatic sob stories and roof top celebrations with no one but the moon to watch. This is the epic story of now and it is found everywhere at every time. There's nothing stopping each moment from being that one we've waited for. Looking and waiting can only do so much. Pull it towards you, whatever you want, whatever you need, and breath easy with the truth that it all works out as it should. No reasons to worry. We are the masters of the individual destiny. While we live freely, the world is watching and responding. It's not just us, not just the outside or inside, it's the combination, the conduction of energy between two points. It's the relationship of one to all and back again. Intense, right?

I've clearly lost my mind in so many ways and I'm happy with that. The lost mind is a societal classification anyway, and I never bothered much with the titles of the masses. I'm a self designated smiler and thinker and lover and writer. The world can do what it does, and I'll be me just how I need to be. So yes, I've lost my mind, but I've found myself, and I'm happy to say this smile doesn't fade.

It's a calm confidence that spreads after the caffeine wears out, when the work never seems to stop and there's never enough time to have a thought. There's something happening beyond it all, beyond choice, beyond destiny, beyond words. We feel it for a reason, whatever it is, and some of us will follow that for forever and more, while some wait behind. Some people have decided to avoid losing their minds.

And with no real point to bookend any of these random thoughts I'll just finish this with a description of the unique grasses and trees of a continent separated from the rest of the world for millions of years. The grass is long and thick, more rugged than any I've seen. It holds on to soil dried by years of drought and stays strong with the hope of enough water coming soon. The trees have many colors and some are palm trees and parrots and all types of squeaking, squawking birds live within the branches. The birds are made up of yellow and red and blue and some of them talk, some of them even laugh. It's a weird island world with laughing birds. This giant hunk of dry land hasn't held hands with another continent for so long, and look what happened, look at what it became. This place is warm and hot during the day and night. It has dense tropical rain forests and barren deserts. It's a place of extremes, but it found a balance with it's constant imbalance. And I found a balance here, and it's time to go. Now, after my second winter of this year, I ready myself for another journey to another hemisphere where another winter is waiting. But there's more. There's so much more than winter waiting.

So here I come New York, but don't get used to my feet on your streets, because I'll only be there for a little while before traveling on with the help of a giant metal bird that supposedly flies with jets but there must be some magic involved in the process. Then Spain. Then this. Then a smile fulfilled. And my smiles never leave, no matter how hard the nights or how strange the trees. Soon, this deep breath can get released. I must be somewhere around chapter four in the great book of becoming at this point. This chapter is about the combination of peace and passion, work and love, hope and reality. This one's about people on a little blue dot in a big old universe. This one is about responding to it all. I'm going to do what I feel I must, follow what I need to follow, and I'll tell you how it all turns out.

My Letter To The World

My childhood was not easy. Many have had tougher but I had an interesting run of life before I knew anything about what that meant. For too long it felt unfair, like I was robbed and something was taken. Tonight I see clearly through eyes that have recently cried the most soulful of loving tears, why all of it happened and why I am here.

At the beginning of this summer I moved across the world for winter, away from love, towards an uncertain dream, hoping the fog would settle and a path would appear. In recent days and recent nights, all which never ask much of sleep, I have begun touching on things inside that I've seen before but only as they flee away with fear as though I'm saying to myself, I'm not ready. Now I am and it's shown through looks on the train shared between children and I, moments when the dying sit beside me and I refuse to look away for long. As the dying woman coughs I sit yearning for water and a glass to forgive her parched present pain, if only for a second. If loving one gets love in return, loving the world brings one straight past the certainty of death to the highest heaven. This is where I am and this is why I write to you.

So many nights I have been working, finding time throughout to scribble notes and type letters, while maintaining one of the hardest positions in the world by being one of societies replacement parents. During my time in and out of work I am constantly wondering whether I should live it, feel it, write it down, or just speak the story. It all happens with good intentions and blissful realizations. There's enough time in every day for all that we need. When words bubble up, out they go. When writing at a hundred words a minute is far too slow to transcribe the thoughts of my mind, I say it freely to a friend, learning from life as my feelings speak without hesitation. When writing a letter I am holding one's hand, taking them through where I've been and showing them how to land pleasantly in moments of contentment during any situation.

As with all of life, my words mean less when not directed at another, for saying these things to you makes them better than just saying them for the sake of saying them. There is a story I'd like to tell and, since I can't mail out a hundred letters of thanks to a hundred souls tonight, I'll write these words here, hoping that those I love grab my hand and wander through this moment with me.

Tonight I am working at a house, a contingency unit, where I've been working for the past few weeks. In that time children have come and gone, and those who have stayed have been waiting, or so I feel, to see what I was made of, to see if I could be trusted. This week has been tough. Sweeping up broken glass is something I got used to. Getting eye level and raising my voice to the stern growl of a lion has been the only choice. It's routine. A glass of milk gets dumped on the floor. The cup gets smashed. And so it goes, or has gone, but tonight I have no glass to sweep up. This house is one of a few where the unmentionables go. No home, no need to worry, no support from life, and no fear of death, this is their world. Ten years ago, even less, it was mine too.

When I arrived there was the little one waiting to see who was knocking. He hugs me, relaying his youth as he smiles like a child I worked with a world away. On rollerblades he skims through the house hopping steps and asking for cookies from one staff, then the other. We let him go, let the energy go out freely and before he went to sleep he and I watched cartoons and laughed together. He said something to me in French when I asked him to go to bed. As we hiked the creaking stairs of an old house turned make-shift home, he asked me if I knew any other languages. I said no, and asked where he learned French. School, he says as he speaks greetings in farewells in German and Italian as well.

I bring an extra blanket and he lies down in bed before I throw it over him with a one two three count that came with a smile and let him giggle a little before I turned out the lights. As I closed the door I whisper buenas noches and before the latch shuts he asks what I said. Goodnight in Spanish, I reply. Where'd you learn that he said? School, I said with a smile as the door fell flush with it's frame and I softly released the handle back to it's place, letting the silence of sweet childhood nights send him to sleep peacefully.

After that came the older one who smoked the cigarette behind his ear while talking on his phone for a few minutes before coming inside and heading straight to bed. He saw me, as he has all week, and for a second in his world of trouble I feel the truth of just being there, over and over again.

Later on, at the point when their absence lasted almost long enough to report their unknown whereabouts to the proper authorities, the other two came home. With the same noise and intention for disruption they usually have, they swore and talked of the abuses they faced during each of their four arrests today. I listened and my part time partner parent, the other staff, a man of almost sixty who exudes the love of a great father and has stories of playing the bongos with all the Aussie jazz greats, heads off to another house where things have gone sour. He checks in first. You ok? We'll be fine, I say, head on and take your time and good luck.

Then there in front of me my eyes began to see more than before as I noticed the two teenagers sitting there talking to me about what sucked that day and why it wasn't fair. Throughout their conversations of being busted and dealing with the consequences I heard many subtleties that deserved more focus. One said that he was thrown down by the cops, that it wasn't fair and that he hadn't done anything deserving of such a reaction. He then said how his buddy beside him pushed the cop because he messed with his friend. I stopped the conversation and began my explanation and interpretation of what I had just heard and what it meant.

So you stood up for your buddy in by pushing a cop, I ask.

Yeah, he says, it was bullshit and he didn't deserve it.

Don't mess with the guys in uniform, I reply, you'll get jail time for that and then it's over, but I gotta say that sticking up for your boy like that is a beautiful thing. You're lucky to have that.

Yeah, he said. Yeah, said his friend.

The conversation continues and I care not whether these guys go to bed ever. I'm stimulated. They are too. I tell them about my childhood and they listen. I explain why it makes sense to do it another way, and how life can give you anything and everything you need. I say it's always good to be there for your boys. One of them says to the other, I like the way this guy talks. And we talk on till two am and beyond.

There were so many moments of realization for me. I told them my story, said it wasn't much different than theirs, and told them I was proud to have made the choices I did and proud of what I had achieved. They listened and liked what they heard as yawns began to crawl over their young and often fearful faces which relaxed into those of children once again. We talked about jobs, about having money to do what you want, about women and children and how they deserved the utmost of respect. Then they told me about those who look out for them, the woman at the train station nearby who never makes them pay and tosses each one a smoke as they go past, the man in the park near Flinder Street who, during a brake from busstling to sleeping streets with his guitar, shares some of his grass with them.

I say, it's ok. You guys are fifteen. This is what's supposed to happen.

The phone rang and I answered to find my coworker's low raspy comforting voice on the other line calling to make sure I was alright. Are they in bed, he asks. No, I say, but we're having a great talk so take your time because we'll be fine.

And back into the room I go, sitting in the same sofa seat where these two teenagers waited to continue hearing me speak. They listened the way my friends do and I listened the way their friends do. At the end of it, when exhaustion reminded them of their youth and the comfort of warm blankets they went to sleep saying thank you in a way most people never hear. I walked one to his room and spread out his blanket, thanking him back. And off went the light as the last child fell silent. I walked slowly down the hallway trying not to make sounds with my steps, feeling love like I'd never known as tears came quickly without me even asking.

In the office the TV showed informercials for hair care products so I turned on the computer to find that a signal couldn't be reached and the internet world was unavailable. This, so often is a blessing, because there are times of beauty that require experienceing a feeling alone. So I changed the channel and found a fuzzy station with an old black and white movie complete with standard characters; a beautiful woman, a handsome businessman in love with her, another man who loved her first fighting for her back and violins singing the distance between scenes. I turned off the office light and sat with my feet on the couch eating a few cookies with creme centers as a reward for a life well lived.

The story unfolded on the screen but I didn't pay much attention to any of it other than the last scene where the other man, her first love, wins and they set sail out of the Hudson Bay and head off towards Paris, or London, or Rome. It didn't matter where they were going. In that last scene was that old black and white finish. With top hat and trench coat the man grabs his dark haired, full lipped, and porcelain skinned lover and kissed her ferousciously as the crescendo rose and they swayed while credits came rolling by.

So softly I stepped, as the credits rolled on, out to the moonlight of this never ending, always changing night where I smoked and smiled waiting for my co-worker to arrive back again but that didn't happen for another hour, most of which was spent lying back on a couch that's more comfortable than my bed, with my legs kicked on the arm of it, and my hands behind my head, staring contently at the ceiling glowing with the flicker of a silent movie that I didn't watch but lived instead.

With my eyes shut I almost slept but my mind wandered to so many thoughts. I work at night and sleep in the days, but recently I am lucky to get a three hour nap, but maybe it's not luck Maybe it's time to stay awake. I wanted to write but sat instead in the feeling of knowing I had changed a life, knowing that I was fifteen once and heard some similar words from a man working in a rehab in west Jersey who stayed on late to teach me some things on his guitar and talk to me about the way things really are. I no longer remember that guys name but I'll never forget his stories, or the fact that he always looked high, and always seemed more burnt out than I had ever felt, and most importantly, I'll never forget the nights when it was he and I in the staff office where I wasn't allowed to go, sitting and telling stories as he showed me chords but got too excited to play songs so I never learned guitar but instead learned of love and friendship and the truth that it is always there.

And now I sit seeing the time as six, knowing there's an hour to go of my last shift before a day off and plans for poetry reading and moments of freeing my words in front of others in moments on stage I now know I deserve. But this story hasn't ended and this letter must go on, but next comes the mopping of floors and the scribbling of notes and a walk to the train and a long ride home. Then, in the hours to come, when I reach my house still sleeping with my friends inside, I'll walk quietly in and finish this letter of eternal gratitude and love, this letter that says to all above, below and beside thank you, for I have found my purpose in life.

A Rant. (And I'll need a chorus)

And I ready the supplies which rest by my side for there are things to say and all fuel necessary for words sits readily available for use. Last nights whiskey tells me of my walk through the night with company in the form of wind and waves of air that shake trees. Some are lemon trees. But I think of moments before the whiskey when the world, and I wasn't expecting it, leaned over and kissed me.

Walking through a moment like this yesterday brought me into a world that shed it's tears through my very own eyes only moments before I arrived. Yes, until we are in it we are waiting and I stepped heavily into it, unsure and cautious, wrapped lovingly in music that was there to help the avoidance. But the world was waiting and impatiently knocking so lovingly on my face with the soft hands of a baker whose spent a hundred years kneading dough. "Wake up." It said. "There are things to see."

And I smoked, which I do, and stood in the sun, wrapped in accessories and heavily laden with a backpack stuffed with things I think I need. A man approached, walking slowly and surely and made a motion. I hand him a smoke and he waits. So I remove the tunes and listen as he speaks.

"Can I have a lighter?"
"Sure," I say as I reach into my pocket and remove a red bic.
"Thanks." and he lights his smoke, still staring at me. "It's been cold out. Do you think it will get warmer?"
"I hope so," I say. "But we'll see."

He nods his head and thanks me again while turning to walk away around the side of a brick wall that seperates the sides of the train tracks. I continue waiting and notice him come back around the wall, on the other side, looking suspiciously at me. He didn't want me to watch. His fingers went into the pay phone coin return, then the return for the ticket machine, checking for something. His pants were worn with nights outside and his jacket was needed for dark breezes. As he found no coins, he turned once more, saw my eyes watching his, and he looked down. Then he hurriedly walked away. It has surely been some time since he has seen his family, maybe it's been a while since he's eaten. But he didn't ask for food. And he didn't ask for home. He wanted to know if it will get warmer. I should've said yes, it will, with a direct assertion made by the hopeful for the sake of the hopeless.

As I stood there, lost in my previous tears and wonders and fears, anxious and unsure, a man approached me with the cool confidence of nothing left and asked me a question. The world came knocking with his foot steps. And I almost didn't answer. But the train arrived and the day continued.

My heart, rapidly beating to the point of leaping cleanly from my chest without a spot of blood, sat with me as I placed my bag on my lap and huddled into a four seat compartment with two young men who laughed and looked mockingly at me. I listen to the music and fear. So much fear. And I didn't know why.

From in front comes the poking up face of a child. Her hands grab the back of the seat and those are the first things I see. Then came the little blonde bob on the top of her head. Then came her eyes, round and young and excited to be hiding. I smiled and she drops quickly. The game is on. No need for nerves twitching and wondering about the madness of the big picture. In that moment the only thing that mattered was the intense game of hide and go seek that this child and I were wrapped up in. Her mother noticed. I share my smile with her too. And smiles are shared until they get off the train, with tickets in hand, for an event of some kind that I didn't know was happening. She won, of course. And maybe it was because I couldn't hide as well as her. But she won the game. I'm just glad I had a chance to play.

Then the city. The city always comes before I take the second trip. I commute to the city, to commute back out, then I walk to work, always at night except for this moment. This was my commute during the day. And I dreamed of playing a fiddle.

The buildings shine in reflection of the big bright blonde sun. Friends and lovers smile. Chips are sold with globs of sauce and small plastic forks to avoid the dirtying of fingers. Twenty minutes to wait and I just sit and wonder, not really thinking, but wondering by sitting.

Then the next train and a couple beside me in dark suit and dress. Her face covered gently with a short black screen, hanging lightly from her hat, and he looks at me when I notice this. In my own world there is pain and wonder. Not like theirs, though. At this moment I could not compare. And I sat hoping I didn't offend with my stare, two beautiful people on there way to the celebration of a life, and the acknowledgement of a death. The man looked at me and said something. I looked down, ashamed at myself for staring for the sake of stories, and not realizing till I looked that their story was harder than mine and that maybe, just maybe, it should be left to them to live before taken to words and told to others.

They depart from the train by the side of the large graveyard whose length I walk in its entirety every night that I work on this side of town. They walk tall, with surefooted steps. The man looks back. Our eyes connect. I wonder for a minute whether he was the killer before looking for another story sitting next to me.

And I guess I don't remember. But maybe I chose to forget. But something else happened. Another story was found. But, like the couple wrapped in black, I let it rest in it's spot, knowing I could find it another day and tell it in full, but it just wasn't the time.

So with confident steps I lurch my body, heavily laden with manipulated sorrow and wonders of what if, towards my first ever day shift. I arrive. I sit. I talk. I listen. I go. Another day over.

But when I walk home the night has returned and so have the quick footsteps of people who don't trust a bearded man in flannel walking behind them. They cross the street, a whole group of women in evenly set short skirts which need to be pulled down constantly to avoid them sharing their special places before they wish. What would I do? Why act so fearful? If these streets scare you, then put on some clothes, drop the drink a minute before you reach your stumbling drunken peak, and walk home with confidence. But no, they drank to much and barely maintain the perched presence of each high heeled step, as they run across ten busy lanes, to the safer side of the street. And I wonder what they see. If in the day, a child and I play subway games, and at night my presence alone causes great freight, then what of a world which holds it all?

Well it was late and I ran to the train. No point in waiting so I ran the length of the dark graveyard full of stories and grass fed by tears, towards a train station where one other man was waiting, smoking and leaning on his car which had boxing gloves hanging from the rearview mirror. He looked at me as he smoked, confident that his battle would be won. His arms barely stayed inside the sleeves of his dark colored t-shirt. I try not to make eye contact. He stares anyway. I ran all the way, and I think I made it on time but its the last train. If I missed it, than I have to walk south to the city and east to my house, fifty kilometers of night. And I don't want that.

The train slides in, gushing cool winter wind, threatens the resting of my hat upon my head, and opens its doors. Three cars on this train. Inside are five men. All of us, with me now making six, look suspiciously at each other waiting for a fight. What was earlier a place for games with sweet smiling children is now a potential battle ground. We wait for each others moves. He stands, I ready myself. The guys behind me act up, I jump for the front. We wait. We all sit and wait.

Te train arrives earlier than expected and we exit together walking separate ways towards stairs leading up and down, into a world where we no longer have the company of our combined momentary fear, our temporary readiness for anything. At the top of the stairs people run and laugh and hold hands as they head for the moments that lie in wait. There is a main entrance full of ticking clocks and people on phones calling the others they were supposed to meet. A man is kneeling in front of the steps with a camera pointing up. He holds steady his discomfort, taking a picture that I see before it gets immortalized. Three men walk by in white Saturday night shirts which aren't tucked in. One dances in front of the camera in strange and rhythmless steps. The camera man smiles and waits patiently. The man walks onward, content with his awkward behavior. Perhaps he was deserving of the high five given so gladly by his fellow mate. But I couldn't help but think that this man would never play as good a game of hide and seek as I, especially on a day time train, with recognition of a world in pain.

Then a bottle of whiskey from an overpriced pub near Federation Square. And back to the platform to wait for the next train. I smoke next to signs with circles and crosses drawn over burning cigarettes. Heavy fines apply. And I swig the brown of expensive American whiskey purchases in the middle of this Australian town. A train conductor walks by and smiles as I exhale my toxic breath. He holds up his smoke and takes a drag. Let's break the rules together. And I smile while saying thanks for that moment.

Another eruption of metal on metal between man made stone walls. I look up at the sign blinking above and board, taking a seat across from a man in a clean jacket, with a clean shaven face, eating gummy bears one piece at a time. I notice his patience as he rips apart each candy, chewing slowly on each head and set of gummy bear feet. He wraps up the bag and places it under the side of his tightly crossed legs and looks over at me, a strange bearded man in flannel drinking whiskey.

I wonder if the train will crash. Sometimes I hope for strange things. Maybe an adventure will just barge into my existence, maybe a new story will simply explode in front of me. An old man watches me drink. He smiles and nods. Maybe a former drunkard, acknowledging what once was. Maybe he hopes I too will leave the bottle behind one day. His smile leads to a yawn, and back goes his head to rest against the yellow plastic seat.

The train reaches home and I step out, walking quickly, thinking of people, and places they'd be. I hop on the tracks as the last car flashes by. The jump is so high that I stumble and nearly fall, but with my feet back on the rocks between the wooden ties, I feel comfortable like a man who is a child again, if only for a moment, and all of the whiskey and all of the wonder makes me want to get home early and see what tomorrow brings. But first I walk to the casino and have a few pints. I empty my pockets of money and hit buttons to watch it go. I place my empty glass beside the door with a sign that now says closed and walk home alone.

My steps fall slowly and I can't drink enough to stumble. I raise the bottle, threatening a smash to the sky, and place it back in my pocket. There's something to be said for growing up. Something happens when we walk alone, waiting and wondering, but always alone and most often at night. And this is what I do. I walk alone. I walk at night. And instead of breaking my empty whiskey bottles after nights at the casino where I am playing the games but wishing for a conversation and losing twice at once, I climb a tree for the sake of climbing.

Then it's 3am and I think of all whom I have ever loved and what it all means. I think of moments passed and desires for day. The wind knocks against each window on this house with the help of branches, of course. I go outside and smoke each time, but I no longer want it. If a cigarette was a friend, I'd never be alone. But while I'm here, while walking and nights alone with whiskey makes up my life, I think I'll smoke and see if I can get by. So I rest when I can, knowing that hope is something saved and needed, that I must be ready for train games with children and moments of potential madness with men, that I must not smoke too much to make me grow old, so I can always climb a tree when I drink alone.

Here I sit, in everywhere at the same time.

From the Belly of the Human Beast: a moment different, yet exactly the same.

I've thought that my mind is playing tricks on me before. There's a recognition, an awareness, that keeps me from believing that these tricks are more than that, more than a trick. The truth is that it might all be a trick, a combination of perception and proposed reality that we teach and tell ourselves about. I've done a fair amount of drugs. Hallucinogen induced madness is something that I can comfortably say is a familiar state. When I imagine that I'm hearing the song that was playing but isn't anymore, when I feel the touch of someone thousands of miles away on the surface of my skin, when something happens that doesn't make sense I can chalk it up to a life of misused mental energy, a side effect of drugs. But was that a mistake? Were drugs a waste? Maybe not. My first time on acid presented me with a depth of horror I had never known. I laughed and many stories were born in that moment, but what I realized during that trip that probably looked so happy on the surface was the same thing I'd known all along, the same thing that my “mental illness” provided me with at an early age. Each moment, every perception, anything that has ever existed or could possibly exist is real under the right circumstances.

Earlier today I wanted to write some words reflecting my current situation which I will do my best to summarize briefly as it, in itself, is no longer my objective of tonight's words. There's a woman I love whose love and connection with my life, has changed and birthed such a positive level of new possibilities. I am forever grateful of our minds and the human condition. We, as a life form not much different than any other on the most basic of levels, are the ones who express love in words that others hear and read. There are stories born from the hope that love provides. But what is hope? This is the reason I write. Although I'll organize my intention and breathe deep in order to finish the goal of summation first.

Not only has a new reality of love revolutionized my life, but my choices and the consequences of them are providing a similar level of new awareness. I've done what I thought I wouldn't, what I dreamed I wanted and have learned to be false. I've created the isolation that always fueled my perception of myself as some self diagnosed wanderer. After realizing how little a life of wandering means, I've finally achieved it at it's best.

I work with children. This is one explanation of what I do. My reality, the way it feels, is far different and can not be embodied in the term “youth worker.” The work done by myself and the others in the field of social services, those who, for whatever reason, do the grunt work of the field, are playing an essential role to this human existence and no matter how hard the day and how good the day off feels, there will never be enough recognition for these people. Humans throw away humans, and those are the people we work with. The grunts do the work that no one wants, in places that people ignore, at houses where the neighbors watch out their windows at night while clutching the phone, ready to dial the police. You see, I am here, in a suburb of a major city like any other. As we humans, one form of life, are not much different than insects, for all we know, I am in anywhere that people have been. This is New York City. It's the outskirts of L.A. It's the belly of the beast, the last ditch effort of the perception of pain, by our mistaken minds.

Two kids leave the unit and return with a pounding of a glass door. It didn't shatter, but it should have. If it did, nothing changes. This work requires one overall task. If nothing else, there is a reality that this one objective, the only real job description, gives me a simpler job than most. I have to do my best to keep these kids alive, for the hours that I work, and nothing more is required if I accomplish that. There's no need to worry when I go. On the train home I'm already on thoughts of my own little circus of pain and sorrow. The thoughts of these kids, the idea of caring for them the way everyone and everything, should be cared are not an option. At least not in the way we love our mother. You don't get caught up in this work. There's no choice on whether or not to attach. If you do, you're gone. You'll burn out faster than candle in the ocean, and then the kids are without you, as a worker, as a momentary protector, whatever that means.

At the end of the day, I can take comfort in these thoughts. No, I don't worry when I am not here, about the kids who I know are in more pain than most have known. Even while I'm here, I don't worry. Someone raped these children. This is a literal statement for some, and an ever present truth for all. People can break, and stability is a joke to those who know only harm. I'll never give up hope for these children, or any child who has ever been through immense trauma, but the reality is that they are broken. People are capable of more resilience than any of us can even understand, but there are those, the kids who never had a chance, that may do nothing else but live in pain, causing pain for others as long as they exist. Hate is all they know. Like a child passing through the early years during the development of language processing abilities who doesn't get the gift of being taught another language at such a perceptive time, these kids might not have the option or desire to believe that love is anything but a bluff, that fear and pain are the only true constants. If I told you that I had dark skin, that of a native African, while you were looking at my Caucasian colored face, you'd call me a liar. That is the reality of these kids. Love isn't real, so stop trying to rename pain. If there ever was an uphill battle worth defining that age-old phrase, trying to help a broken child learn love and hope is it.

So again I am sidetracked, but not far enough to lose the point of these words. My reality, the world I have created by believing that love isn't real for me, that wandering is the only way to happiness, the truth that I no longer live by which states that love could never be more than a transient experience and thinking it lasts is the greatest mistake. Thankfully, and much credit is due to the woman I mentioned earlier who has helped me to learn so much about my own heart, I believe in love's endless possibilities once again. And it's not just love. Life is potentially infinite, with all the facts of science and the power of faith crossing evenly and forming a center, a dot, the mix of the outside and inside, the universe and the mind, we are exactly where we must be. We are the dot, but so much more if we choose.

When I arrived at work last night I was lectured in an almost hostil way by my coworker for walking to the house where we work. She mentioned many logical concerns. We'd never met before last night. As this woman who didn't know me explained intently, with positive intentions forming the base from which she spoke, that I should have take a taxi instead of walked I began to wonder about what I should do next time. Melbourne isn't special. There's a vast amount of violence currently being reported by the media. Random beatings occur daily and are even caught on surveillance cameras and then shown to the public to ask for their help in finding the assailants. People are beaten, even killed, many put in such distress physically, that they are barely alive and may never be the same again. These people are caught on camera, the only true system of policing in this country, and still they are not identified. There's no stopping the reality of life. It's the only true reality. We live. We die. It goes on. Or stops. It has been, and always will be. But what is life without the perception of it?

Gangs of Sudanese refugees were the primary reason that my coworker was so concerned last night. She told me about the beatings that these groups have committed, and their reasons. These refugees, the ones that do perform violent acts, are much like the children I work with, only even more extreme. In Sudan, from the little I know, their daily reality might have been worse, even for a single day, than the worst day of your life or mine. What if you not only suffered the death of a family member but witness it as well? What if it happened often, family members died, were tortured, deprived of anything good about humanity? Would you believe in anything else? There's no point explaining to a group of people who have been through so much trauma that they don't fear death or taking a life that my life is worth living. If I meet one of these groups and they've made the choice to attack, I am helpless. Buy a gun? Use a knife? No. I'm not a liar. Those things wouldn't do anything to protect me from a group of people who exist without our western perception of a soul, that little thing that we all have which makes us all really good people underneath. I won't be biased. I won't fear these gangs anymore than I will fear the deadly spiders, no bigger than a dime, which hide under toilet seats in this country. The truth about life is almost half about death. If I die, I die. That is all. We can talk and remember but eventually, all memories will fade and life will be there or it won't. So it goes.

The woman last night was right to remind me of the natural hazards of walking through these heavily crime stricken areas to my night shifts. But what I wanted to say, what she couldn't hear, was that my reality, all of our reality, is exactly that way at every moment. We are always being threatened.

The nightly news just aired a report on Asian gangs suspected of similarly brutal beat downs of random bystanders. A new tax has been proposed on bars and clubs, a massive lift in permit fees, which the government hopes will stop the third major cause of these recent reported violent incidents: drunk people. So here we have it. The police chief of Victoria is on the news daily responding to the media's reports of his officers failings. There's not enough police here to do the job. He said, on a report last night, that some of the responsibility for this type of violence falls on the people. He said that it's important that people communicate about the wrongs of violence. It's a clear last ditch effort. The media blames the police. He blames the people. The people are free to blame whomever they choose. But the reality of my life, my manifestation of this time of wandering, is simple. I've moved to a foreign country, into an area where an American accent might be the reason I get beaten near death instead of just robbed, working a job that is by far the only activity I can equivocate with hiking to the peak of Everest in flip flops. The place is full of logical fears, the job as well. The woman I love has the fear that I'll make the same mistakes I've made before. I tell her things have changed. I know they have. I'd trade all of this perception, all of these lessons that everyone says I'm supposed to go through, for a night with her. This brings me to love, the other factor. Knowing it and being so far from the woman that I dream about, is yet another struggle. Don't get me wrong. I'm not complaining. I eat every day and always have a place to sleep. I'm alive. But, without realizing it, I gave myself everything I ever feared and asked for during moments of pure brash arrogance.

The life of a wanderer must be fueled by something. I've given myself that life, for now. I'm in love with one woman, struggling to be the best man I can be at every moment, while knowing that no matter what I do, whether I smoke or not, am rich or poor, I could get killed on my walk to work every single night or soon after I arrive. This isn't an irrational fear. The medias reports locate the main areas for violence. These are the places that I walk through to get to the houses where I work. So I can quite smoking, be calm and compassionate at all times, and here's the other side, the other truth, that could theoretically make all my understandings pointless, or just the utterings of a man cut down by life: There have been massive increases in local violence. The causes are racial and substance fueled. If I make it through the dark paths lined by barbed wire and far from the security cameras that barely can be called protection, then I get to a house where kids live who have blank eyes. Some of them, most of them, are sad children. But there are those few who, if you don't give them a glass of milk when they ask, would see no reason not to kill you or burn the house down. If I make it to work, through the slums, and survive the rabid possibilities that working with abused youth provides, I can take a shit and get bitten by one of the many deadly spiders in this area. Death is always haunting us, and this moment is no different than any other. Life is always paralleled by death and in this period of my existence, that fact is utterly inescapable.

If I ignore the the gangs, there's the drunks. If I ignore the kids violent behaviors, there are the behaviors of their parents or even some guy they fucked with that day who could show up looking to kill someone. At the end of the list, if I ignore the spiders, the snakes could kill me just as well. It's a game, or maybe it isn't but one thing is for sure. Life is fragile.


A moment comes and the phone rings. I'm currently working at a house, with the ever present dangers that I just described, with my best friend Pete. We're working together on the night shift. There's no better company than that in a job like this, or any for that matter. The phone call was from the emergency DHS worker who explained that one of us would need to go provide a transport for another client who is in the hospital at the moment. I hesitated on the phone with the man, hesitated to say that things were fine and the one night that I happen to be at work with my best friend, one of us will need to depart and actually could because we've stabilized our house. But it's my job. Things are calm here, for now. But they're not calm everywhere. At this house, there are two overnight staff who need to remain awake for the purpose of having an extra person in case something like this happens. And Pete broke his wrist and elbow yesterday. Not a life threatening injury, but it's worth mentioning that it happened within the first ten minute of Pete receiving a new skateboard in the mail. He got on the board, went down the hill, and slid out, falling backwards. He didn't get it from the gangs, the kids, or the spiders. Life is fragile. Pete got beat up by his skate board.

What this means is that Pete, who knows the area well, is unable to legally drive the company vehicle and therefore I am the designated floater and it's my job to find this hospital, in a world of right sided steering and left lane driving, and bring the kid home through streets that I have never seen. Life is fragile. So is each moment. I'm glad I had a chance to talk with Pete about life and cars tonight, some of our favorite subjects, before this moment. I'm glad I appreciated my best friend being here before the endless variables of life manifested in a phone call. Whatever comes next, nobody knows. Waiting for what we think will happen is pointless. This job provides a heightened experience of that truth. It's fragile. Every second where all are living and are well is potentially the last before the worst kind of metaphorical shit hits the blades of the whirling fan of life.

So now, after four pages, I come to my point. Distance, like all feelings and perceptions, is no more real than we make it. As my best friend, Pete knows what I'll like and what might make me think. Tonight, about an hour ago, he handed me an article and told me to read it. I put down the magazine I was reading and started reading the article he had suggested. It was about biocentrism, the best path science has presently to take in the pursuit of their scientific goal of making sense of it all. It was a fascinating read. As I knew it would be. And in it the writer reminded me of some of the other central truths that our world provides. According to Einstein's theory of relativity, distance between objects mutate depending on conditions like gravity and velocity. This means that there is no absolute definition of distance. Space is not empty, but instead full of potential particles made solid only by our perceptions. Distance is a perception. When I leave, and Pete is here, there is no real difference. As far as what we know from scientific studies, we aren't any farther apart than we were while sitting right next to one another. It's all subjective. I'm not trying to say that me being outside and Pete being inside is the same thing as us both sitting next to each other on the couch, but I will say that I am not sure it is at all different.

And my love, the woman that I speak of, the woman whose love and heart, whose strength and beauty, has shown me a new potential, although theoretically on the other side of the world, may not be that far from me at all. If space is not empty, than there is a line of potential particles which, if I focused on directly, could connect me directly to her at every moment, regardless of our individual placements in the percieved universe.

That's the point of these words and here is the brief summary. Life is fragile. Love, in my opinion, is the great gift of the thinking, expressive human mind. Love is the combination of the minds ability to create and the desire we humans have to believe that our hearts think too. Friends are never further than they feel. And fear should just as well be thrown out in general, rather than be something we apply to life's moments. If I fear the gangs, the drunks, the kids, or the spiders something I trust, like a skateboard, could jeopardize my health just the same.

At this point I feel the need to thank any of you who have read this far and hope that there is something that you have gained from these words. That is the goal of all of my words, of communication in general, to better the interaction, to heighten the experience. If someone has read this far, thank you for giving me the credit of thinking I know what I'm talking about. That isn't a self deprecating statement. It's the truth. I'm merely observing. What I know, I may never know. All I have is my perceptions and I thank you for indulging in their importance.

To any and all who support my writing, please note that it is not a choice and never has been. This is my favorite strength. I'll never stop writing. I'll never stop learning and watching the world. It is who I am, who I choose to be.

Since the realities that we are aware of, since the concreteness of everything is more subjective than we think, I'm going to pretend that I hear a violin in my ears for the remainder of my night. If I desire it, it will happen. A melody will accompany each step. A tune, soft as an angel's wing and as full of purpose as a bullet in a gun, will carry me through until tomorrow. If my mind likes, it can decide that it's a figment of my damaged senses, broken from drugs. Or I can deal with the other side, the one that I believe, the one that takes into account the immeasurable nature of faith and hope. With enough want, anything is possible. Throw in faith and hope to the scientific equations that leave us with little more than the truth that life is far more intense and complex than anything we have imagined so far and we've got a reason to live throughout any pain. If we know that we can manifest a sweet melody when logic says it isn't there, than anything, and I truly mean anything, is possible at any time. Every moment I spend living, thinking, sitting or standing, I am doing the most important job. And so are you. We're being human, one form of life. We're living, surviving, evolving. Life evolves. It is the only job. If we live, than we are doing whats best. Faith in the infinite nature of science and faith, of hope and a humble heart, is all that I need to carry me through until I reach the point where I just know that life is about to end.

We must trust our instincts. Although mine tell me that there is a serious need to worry, that this path I am walking is far more dangerous than I am even aware of, I have faith that I will survive to live the next important moment, whatever it is and wherever it happens. If not, I've lived and felt love, while knowing that all melodies are little more than manifestation available at all moments. That is the reason that I am happy to be a man and not a bug. But I know nothing of the perceptions of a bug so this is purely one sided.

The truth is mostly about not knowing. Discoveries lead us to more questions. Maybe it just is. Not that we shouldn't ask why and pursue the answers, but maybe life just is a combination of natural elements and the human creation of hope. Even if that's all we've got, I feel blessed to have it. Until next time, create your world exactly the way you'd like and you'll have it. Don't worry if it comes out a different color or if the shapes don't match your dreams, you've created exactly what is in front of, and inside of, you at all times. We are human. We hope. We know. We don't. The rest is up to you and I and anyone else who has ever lived. So good luck on your journey, I know I'll put importance on the idea of luck throughout mine, and I'll take the good luck you send back. Farewell, for now.

The Last Bits of Nothingness

I woke up today feeling good. While I slept, I played in my dreams with friends from across the world and friends from throughout my life. We broke into a building and had a war with fire extinguishers. That was my dream. I made it out just before the police came and began wagging there fingers at those they caught for doing such a wrong thing. It was the best dream I've had in a while. There was no death, no fear, no panic. I didn't wake up sweating or sad. My eyes just opened unassumingly, waiting for the waking experiences to dictate what was felt. There were birds chirping and I could see the blue of the beautiful sky beyond the bushes outside my window. There wasn't any need to worry. I woke empty, ready to be filled in by the day.

The clock said 7:30 when I rubbed my eyes and gave it a glance. The mornings are my favorite times, at this time in my life. But waking at 7:30 when you don't have a job and no money to spend, well all that does is give you more time to think or be bored. The beginning was boring. After I showered, I sat in the living room and watched the window for a few minutes. Then I opened the shades and went to the kitchen to make coffee. I love the mornings for many reasons, but take away all the beauty of the first moments of sun, and the contemplative silence that comes, and leave the coffee and I'll be set. I love the mornings because of coffee.

There might not be any spice to these words right now, but I'm ok with that. They are forced. These words are part of a last ditch attempt by some part of my mind, heart, or soul to keep me from doing the serious work, the scary work, the intense and longstanding work that requires only the best I can give. Well, I'll get to it after I write this and after I go back to the bathroom, which might take a while because I ate too much lamb last night and then got high and swallowed a box of Tim Tams, the magical Australian cookie that disintegrates into a blissful mud pile when it comes in contact with hot liquid, forcing the eater to shove all of the dark oozing goodness viciously into their mouth to avoid staining any clothing or furniture with drips and drops of melting chocolate. Yes, I might have to hit the bathroom again. But then I'll get to work. Well, no. I have a really good book and I'll just read that instead. I'll just bide my time until it has to get done. Well, it has to get done. Now is the time and people are waiting. Listen to my little delusions. Are people waiting to hear the story? Well how could they know they want to hear it, how could I know they are waiting? I haven't written it yet.

I'm scared, but that is why I must write. I'm bored, but that is just a ploy from the devilish side of my mind that doesn't believe in me. I'm curious and I know that the ending hasn't even happened and therefore can't be written. But that makes it all the better. I have loose outlines written down. My mind is aware of the correct formats, and what it will sound like, what it will feel like, if I do this right. If I write honestly, if I tell the whole story, if I tell it for the right reasons, than the end will present itself after I've written the beginning and middle. How does one write the story of their life when they have just begun living it? Well, you can discuss that question too, in the book. Just start writing it. Stop writing this and start writing IT.

Did I do that already? What of the many pages that have been written? Are those not the book? Ah, that is, in it's current state, just madness. It's like the young Chilean man said, the madness is the honest way of living, but if I can turn the madness into work, if I can organize it, than I can succeed with the madness alone. So the pages written are just madness. The words I have written are thoughts, fears, visions of pain and hope, memories of both, but without structure, without the work of turning them into a piece of the whole story, they are just pieces of a story that has never been completely told. It's time to tell the story. It's time to focus, get the outline down, fill it in, decide the right plan of action, put it all on a giant piece of paper and then light it on fire. Fuck the idea of planning. It is just another way to wait. Do. Just do. That is the task of one who is inspired and understands that the feeling of inspiration wont leave until the work is done. How do you just sit and write a book? Don't know, but that will make it so much more interesting to do it.

Am I wearing the right pants for writing a book? Is the temperature right, for writing? How about the music? Is this a good song to start with? Should I play it on repeat? Yes, that's right. Get it out. Let the last of this senseless waiting come out for your own eyes to see. The history of man may not have a single writer who was concerned with whether or not they were wearing the correct pants for writing. Maybe no one ever thought of how important that could be? Maybe I'm an idiot. Or maybe an intelligent idiot! Yes, I like that. Makes sense. And these are the perfect pants to write a book in, I can feel it. As long as I don't continue my Tim Tam addiction, I'll be able to continue wearing them and continue writing. Maybe I don't change pants until the book is done. Maybe I can do this all day, come up with excuses and ideas to discuss without ever really doing anything. I know I could. In fact, that's why I am writing this.

Yes, these words are for you, procrastination. You see, I'm done waiting and I just wanted you to know that you won't be needed for a while. It's a tough blow, I know. It sucks to feel useless. But you're not useless. You're a friend forever, just like anger, ambition, and all the rest. Yes, procrastination, these words are a small gift to you, a token of gratitude for keeping me in a state of, well, in a state of something, until now. Now I am ready and I'm glad to embark on my own journey. I might have been too scared before, but you, procrastination, you kept me from having to face that fear until I was strong enough. Now I know you might not believe it but I am ready. I am ready to structure my thoughts, to tell a story that might not ever be read, to take my days and nights and any moment I see fit, and continue the pursuit of a goal that will take guts, tears, and more. I'm ready to face the truth of my heart and soul. I'm already doing it. I'm living honestly, with fear and confidence, in the known and unknown. Now I'm ready to write the story, to write a story of a man who is learning.

As I began reading a good book by the heater earlier, after the shower and before I decided to write, I couldn't get through more than a page without having to put it down and write my own ideas on scraps of paper. Maybe I'm not a writer. Maybe I'm not going to write more than one story. But I am going to write this story. Maybe I will let go of labels, let go of sickness and health, of education and wealth, and just be. Perhaps that is what I want to write, a story about why most of what we know matters less than what we really need. Even needs can be argued. Food, water, shelter, love? What if you had to pick one and let go of the rest? Could love feed us and quench thirst? Could the body live on water and food alone, without love? Isn't love the only real shelter? These are the questions that feed my mind and drive my fingers. It's time to take this seriously. This passion is demanding I notice it. Yes, I'll write. And yes, I'll wait for sleep if I need to keep writing. Yes, I'll do what I must to remain focused while knowing that passion isn't a passing feeling but an emotion kept at the ready for whenever I decide it is needed. Is this a creative burst? Well, if it is, it's because I say so.

I am compelled to continue this journey, the story of living life, but I have reached a point where it's time to write it down, whatever I've learned or realized, it's time to write that story. So many people believe in me. So many knew this would happen. Not me, though. I just started believing. Before it was talk, and now I know. Being something isn't always a choice. We are who we are. Some of us do what we must, what our hearts tell us, and others wish they could. I'm not letting pride get in the way. This is not an ego dance. I do not desire anything but love and the completion of this story. That, at this point in my life, is what I need. I'll tell you why I worry, why I know that things are not ok a lot of the time, and hope that it helps. This story only gained worth in my mind when I realized that I needed to write it down because telling it made others wonder, feel strength, or become reassured that life isn't one sided. I've been able to talk and make people think. I've made many mistakes. I'm blessed to have had these moments. They may end. No one might read my words, but I'll write them. For me, for my family. For the ones who have doubted themselves and waited for death only to wait long enough that they feel the first moments of life, I'll write for them.

As the story builds, my life will change and all that I've already done may be worth nothing. But worth is a choice. Writing is worth my time. Sitting around bored, reading books and writing my own is worth it. I'll call my potential employer today and ask if they have made any progress with my application, but there's a reason I haven't yet. There's a reason I sent in one copy of my resume to one employer. The reason, maybe, is that I've got better things to do than get a job. I've got enough money to buy food, if eating is a need, and I've got love. Love has given me time. The story of love, the story of my love for the woman that I love, has given me this time to write it all down. She loves me, and I love her. We both know that this story must be written. My friends are close by and they would never let me starve. My family and I have not connected as much, but things are changing rapidly. A new brother, a new sister in law, a new step in the evolution of a family. Yet some are not happy, some of the people that I love back home worry too much and they're too busy to cry about it. I'm going to write for them. I'm going to sit here and click black keys with white letters on them. Yes, me and my college degree, my climbing debt and with the immediate end of the cash flow in sight. I'll just sit here and click keys because I know it is worth it. Even if these words do nothing but carry me through to the next day, they're doing their job. After all, words are just that - words.

But words save. Words change and grow. Words can help and hurt. Let's see what my words can do. Let's see if I can keep this up. Let's see if this is the final goodbye, for a while, to that jolly fat man named procrastination, the one who feeds me cookies and makes me run to the bathroom every time I have a good idea, the guy who knows just when to make my arm itch or my lips desire a cigarette. He knows just when to throw in some other thought or desire, to keep me from doing what I must. Well I don't smoke anymore. There's no more weed. I've watched all the movies, and there's no way I could have to go the the bathroom again. Wait, I think I do need to, real quick, wait, what was I saying? Ha. Nice try Procrastination, you beautiful feeling. It's already happened. There's nothing left to stop. I've begun. It's time to get to work.

Looking back while walking forward

It didn't take long, maybe only ten minutes, to read all of the scattered entries I've written in this public space over the past six months. There is so much smiling that must be done when I realize how far I am from where I thought I'd be. I believe it was an entry that I wrote in March that mentioned the importance of traveling through the United States so I could find the American dream. Well, I don't know much, but I think that looking for the American dream in Australia might not be the most realistic path. It wasn't long ago that I was set on driving across my country alone. It wasn't long ago that I was in winter, wondering whether or not I had the guts to finish those last few months of school, whether or not I was stubborn enough to go on with my plan. Well I had the guts to get through and I drank a lot, which helps stubborn people avoid anything but their own narrow minded stubborness, and continued on my cute little journey.

No, I'm not mocking myself. Yes I am. Ha. The truth is that the points of life that cause the most intense realizations, that come with tears and screams of, "what the fuck do I do with this?," well it's those points that should be mocked. I was amidst an intense apology to my new roommates the other night for being so aggressive with my negativity over recent days when something happened. There I was, begging for forgiveness from old friends and new family, when one of them looked at another with her finger over her lip. She had drawn a fake mustache on it while I was talking. I was in the middle of baring my soul and suddenly the two women nearby erupted with giggles which showed me a thing or two. If things are so intense, if a moment is so heartfelt that it could bring tears, if someone is demanding serious attention, just draw a fake mustache on your finger and giggle at them. It helps. It humbles. It's good to laugh, no matter when, and no matter what was going on before we laughed.

It's sometimes hard to find a song when I am writing. A lot of the time I spend writing, I'll be listening to a single song on repeat, letting a song that reflects my emotion and understanding accompany my moment so that I have the combination of melody and madness to get the right words out. I haven't found the song today. I hit next and the next song comes, but none have matched this feeling that I have. Its a feeling that I don't know, but every feeling is a combination of the simple feelings. It's like primary colors. All we need is a few colors to make every color. All we need is a few emotions to feel everything.

Ah. It happened. Got the song. Want to know what it is? Well, thats not important now. I have things to say. There were a few realizations after I read through my previous entries. It became immediately apparent that I was more stubborn than I would ever need to be. Well, maybe not. Maybe that drive was the thing that helped me get through the task of graduating college. So many people, for so long, told me it wasn't possible. Maybe I had to have that ego chest puffing session to get through. Still, I see someone confident but unaware. Even though much of my writing had bits of truth to it. I also realized that I repeat myself a lot. There are times when I, unaware of it at the moment, write the exact same things a few months apart. It's good to write things down and look back at them. It is helping me to take stock of what to do next and my previous rants are providing me with invaluable amounts of information on who I was so I can truly see the difference between that and who I am. Last night I shaved my beard. I bought a new shaver to trim the hair and keep the chin strap style face blanket that has covered my cheek bones for years, but the trimmer didn't work. I had to use scissors to get through the first few inches of the matted fur and then realized that I just needed to get it off. So I shaved my face with a razor. I removed my little wall and was astounded to see a face I didn't even recognize, hiding underneath. I have hesitated at the thought of saying it, but now I have to let it be heard. I've killed of Fester, the madman I was. And I've become Alex Raeburn, the madman I always hoped to be. Yes, madness never leaves. I like that about myself, and about life. But what has left is the pigheaded confidence of ignorance. It has been gently replaced by a mental step back and a man who looks and smiles because that is the best solution at any time.

I wanted to write something about addiction and fear. I will do this. These words are merely a preview. There is an extreme bond between addiction and fear, if we can even see them as separate. They are one and the same. On this, my eighth day of being a non smoker, I can look back at last week and know that smoking has always been much more than smoking to me. It was a constant excuse and it made room for other constant excuses. All addictions give us something to do when we don't know what to do. They replace the journey we all take, or moments of it, with the sense of comfort that only repetition, only stagnation, can bring. Even weed is an addiction to me. When things happen, when anything happens good or bad, when things get intense, I reach for something on the outside. I reach for a smoke or a joint, or a beer or a pill. I've changed my intake of these substances drastically in the past five years but I have trouble letting go of that little toke of weed every day. It's not just getting high to me. It's another physical representation of the indulgence in fear. Oh gosh, I'm so anxious that I need to get high. Really? Cause I bet you'll still be alive tomorrow, either way. If I don't have weed, what will I do? Take a deep breath. But I need SOMETHING? Ha, you've already got everything and breathing will let you see that. Maybe I won't stop smoking weed today. Well, maybe I won't ever believe that I can stand strong through everything and anything. This isn't some speech against weed. I need you all, whoever reads this, to know that weed is far less of a crutch than any other substance I have come in contact with. It is the lesser of many evils, but for those who search for any and all escapes, those who want to learn on a substance even after they've given up everything else, weed is just the last thing that is acceptable to hold on to. Most people get high and enjoy it. I feel like I'm responding to a need. It is detrimental in the end, for me. Besides, smoking weed and not smoking weed are very similar. In fact, they're so closely related that the only difference I can say is that you're just not high when you don't smoke. Is life better or worse when stoned? Not really. I mean a good talk or even a tasty sandwich has more effect on my body and mind than a toke of grass. Funny how life works. I'll write about the addiction/fear dilemma at some point. This is just a taste. Just one hit of truth, from my head, the place where truth doesn't mean much until it is there every day, through good and bad, and never stops saying the same thing. Time to be the monk. TIme to stop pretending.

So much to say. So much to say, but the flow is different than the other day. It happens. Words pour out like a waterfall on one day, and then they slow to the trickle of a bathroom sink the next. Tis life. Up and down. Tis honest. Tis. Love that word. I think its a word. If not, I declare it an unword. Hm. Idea. I'll write a book, an entire book, with unwords. Do you know what I mean? Funny if you do cause I haven't the slightest clue what it would look like, even though I know it could be done. Ah sillyness. I like it when my mind and fingers put out words that act the same as the curly black mustache my friend drew on her finger the other night during my dramatic moment. Time to laugh. Time to continue the adventure and get over the past. Time to let go and grab onto something new. New habits and new thoughts. A new look. A new man. Nice to meet, me. Thats what I have to say when I look in the mirror. It's so strange not having a beard for the first time in years. I walked by some glass store fronts today and kept looking at them like, who is this guy walking in my clothes at the exact same speed as me? I wonder what he thinks and what he feels. I wonder what this man is capable of. It's strange and inspiring. I don't know. Maybe I'm crazy, I mean that guy Fester, the one with the beard, he was nutty as a loon, but he had a good heart. Let's see what happens now, in this new life.

I am writing like I had hoped to. There was a moment last night, a moment after shaving when I was looking at this weird face through the fog of the wet mirror, when I realized how many pages I had written during the day. I thought about how I could measure how many pages I was writing per hour, for the hours that I am awake. I then thought how exciting it will be to measure the pages in the hours of the day, including those few when I rest in bed. I've been writing more than I have to say, which is weird but somehow makes sense. Maybe I didn't realize how much I really had to say and how much this journey would really mean. That's what I was thinking when I looked in the mirror. Then I smiled slightly with this new face and thought, "Holy shit. Maybe I will actually get a book done."

There have been many moments in life where I measure myself with my writing. Then I don't write enough and find peace in other ways, in talking to a friend, or walking and smiling at the sky. Those are the days I set out to write and end the day with, "Well, at least I made someone smile." I enjoy measuring myself like this. Have I done something positive today? If the answer is yes than be as happy as if you were Buddha. If not, let it go and be as happy as Buddha. There's always tomorrow. Now its different. I used to find the time to be a good friend and I'd find that experience so exhausting that I would resign myself to couch sitting for the rest of the day. Now I find myself finishing a conversation and not being able to linger. The tv is on and I've got better things to do. I'm glad to have had this moment with you, whoever you are, but I must excuse myself now because I need to write. I NEED to write. It's never felt like that before. Now I can't help but feel like writing a book, writing any book, would be effortless. I mean I am vomiting words like a drunk after a night of whiskey and heartbreak. I might as well let it fall into the bucket and see what it looks like when it is all sitting together.

People ask what I write and I never know what to say. Yes, I write poetry and stories but that's not what I really write. This is what I write. This is it. This is the start of a method of emotional searching and soul discovering that needs the writing to make sense of it all. This is the same outpouring of words that has always come but now I have a new level of honesty and a new lever of forgiveness for myself and the past. I need to write. But I need to follow my heart, as well. It's time to end these words and go back to the other side; living the story. I need to call the woman I love and hear her voice. Then, it's off to the post office to mail out a letter to a Buddhist retreat center, asking them if I can stay there for a month and work instead of paying. I know good will come. I know this is good, this moment. It's time to spend my days writing and meditating. There is no other answer. It's time to take stock of who I have become and where I fit in this vast universe. Too bad I need to get a job and spend time making money, in order to survive. Good thing I know how to make anything worth doing. I've given meaning to being a bus boy. Now I have a college degree, and a clean shaven face. I aspire to love openly and honestly, to challenge myself continuously, to forgive and understand that which I never could, and to sit in whatever it is that every moment brings while smiling and looking at each emotion, greeting it with these words, "It's nice to see you."

From the frontlines: An American heart in Australia

This place started as a prison. It seems fitting. There are many comparisons to be made. A prison in paradise? Yes. This is the most honest and fitting description for our world. We are all in prisons, to some extent, and beyond the walls of every enclosure is the freedom of endless distance, the beauty of the palms blowing in the constant breeze, and the happiness of knowing that prison is another word for fear. No man, no mind, no one with hope could ever be locked away. Sit still and think about it. Sit still and solve all of your problems by sitting and being still. Ah, Western mind, how you wonder about the simplicity of the only answers. Want to know how it works? Too bad. It does. Be happy with that.

Now, on this Australian morning, I sit still after waking with and shaking with the fallacy of fear. It's love, you see. Yes, love. That little part of life that was always a game but ended up bringing pain and the loss of the greatest sense of comfort. Love can change life, but love is just a game. Right? Well, men grow from boys and truth is always redefined. Answers look different from different places, at different times. And love, well the game got serious. Now there is no choice but to bet hard, to put it all in and stare stiffly at the table as the wheel spins. I hope that bouncing ball of stone lands on red, but if it doesn't, the only other choice it has is to rest in black. Back to the feeling of a morning and the blackness of waking alone when all I want is one. One woman to hold. One woman I dream of. Maybe it's because I dreamed of her and woke alone, maybe that's why I shook and worried, why I fought tears and learned again what I've been learning all along. Love is real and not a matter of choice, like so many feelings in this maddening play of existence. We choose to live. If we live, we will love. If we love, we feel pain. If we hurt, we're alive. And the cycle continues, letting us play our part so we never accept that maybe, just maybe, the story was written long ago.

The tears I battled and refused to let go, finally fell. The essence of the my body released in drops that reminded me where I am and what it means. They say I'm in Australia. I say it too. What a world this is! What a time! It took two days in a metal balloon with wings and I was slapped down in the middle of that place that people write about in books so it isn't forgotten because if nobody wrote it and nobody looked, this land would be exactly as it should and exactly how it is. It's here if you want it, but if you don't, those who know will enjoy it all the same. There are palm trees and wild parrots, strange accents and visitors from across the world. I'm on an island but I'll never see both shores. There is a desert here, vast and wide with surfaces of all kinds. There are mountains that turn blue in the setting sun. There are mystical meanings given to beautiful places by a people that may have been the first to bare the responsibility of being people. There have been firsts here. In a beginningless existence, first moments have happened here. Maybe this is the home of the start. Maybe coming here was necessary. Go back from where you came, take a minute and think, and return only when you're ready. The Aboriginal people have no words in their language for yesterday and tomorrow. Every day is today. I arrived in a moment. I'll depart in a moment. If today is all there has ever been than I have been born, lived, struggled, traveled, returned, and died all in a day. If that is true than I'll know it only when the day is done. But it is the start of this day and I woke to watch the first show, when darkness erupts with light and life forces its way back through the bleak. Power is present at sunrise. It's the collision of bliss and nothingness. I never thought that growing up would bring an appreciation of the moments before and after the sun has risen that must be similar to the moment when one watches a child being born. This is endless and it came from the place it's going. This is the answers inside the questions. This is a day worth living, worth feeling. This is a moment that I'll never forget.

But I've forgotten before. I've made mistakes twice and taken chances that I know will leave me alone. This is the mind feigning control. This is the thing that must stop. Yes, we choose and move, we walk and stand under our own control, but what about those moments when that control is lost and you just want one? I'm not yet ready to accept that there is no control, nor could I accept that my sense of control is anything but a sense. The feeling of love changes the look of mountains and the sensation of water from a stream on the skin of every being. The coffee tastes different after love is felt. Love, in every form, has meaning. But love in the true sense, love that defies logic and asks you to risk it all, it makes all the difference. I've loved and lost, taken care of people who have needed it, waited until the right time to act. But now I know. After years of logic and reason, years of thinking before talking and hesitating while walking, I'm ready to jump. Shit. I'm already flying. Isn't that the truth of it? One moment love is a game, that thing that keeps your friends happy for a while and makes your parents long for more, then it happens and love becomes love. No ideas of what makes sense work when love is in play. What will I do? Follow the intensity, take the risk, hope for the best, and walk confidently with eyes that may cry. There is no other choice and metaphors can only mask the duty for so long.

Let's try to be rational here. That's what I used to say. I still throw it out there for good measure. I use it to give logic a little play and let it think it still has as much influence as it once did. Let's be realistic. I am, in the truest sense, now. So you believe in love? I believe in this, more than anything. If life is lived in a moment, if that moment is the meaning of it all, if that moment contains heaven and hell, than that which makes us feel the most of the moment in every way must be followed. Life really is a series of moments. For me, there has always been a longing for love in the truest sense, a love that I rarely saw and rarely see but read about and dream about, a love that I know exists beyond reason.

There are stories about those who are taken by this feeling, lost for a lifetime in the eyes of another. There are people who wait and hope but never win. Then there are those who find it and feel it in a way that never ends. There are people who find another that fits and, if they're wise, they do what they must to keep the feeling, even when it's no longer nearby. Love isn't about trying. It's about accepting and acting. But I'm losing myself in the mist of metaphor once again. Ah, to be a man pretending to be a poet. Looks like I have done it again. I've spent a while putting down words without really saying what it means. If sitting still and smiling can be the answer to all the questions than surely this pouring of words is not entirely necessary. But it feels right. That is why I write.

My coffee has gone cold. The cup is warmer than the liquid it holds. And I sit wondering whether I've said what I needed to, whether I've said all that I could, whether there is more to come. Ludovico Einaudi plays piano in my ears and I wish to yell to the clouds and ask they to play the role of heaven for a second so I can thank them for the essence of melody that can be bent and broken or flow blissfully. I'm a man alone in a forgotten world, on an island that no one who believes only what they see would think to be an island. I guess that those who have been past the clouds are the only ones to have seen this place in its entirety. Imagine that our eyes could see all of it in one look. Imagine looking out a window and seeing everyone who has ever been known and the place where everything we know of thought and emotion has happened. What if we were in the space beyond the fog and on the edge of the unknown abyss? What thoughts would come?

Maybe the same thoughts and feelings, the same sense of being that love brings. I am a man in love with a woman. Yes, it is that kind of love, the kind that will never die and is willing to fight through anything. And I've had this love. I've felt her touch. I've been in a bed beside her, waking to see her sleep, watching her breath and knowing bliss. I've driven long hours to hold her hand. I've waited and watched love walk by. But it's still walking and I can see it over the horizon so I wont give up. Not now or never will this heart stop. I found it. I found her. I've met the woman of my dreams. This rational man who furrows his brow and strokes his beard while he talks has found something worth skipping for. Shit. I do skip, even though she isn't here. Just to know that I love her, that I've spent nights beside the woman that I love, just that is worth a smile that can last a million years before it can go a million more. Love is never lost and hope can heal all wounds. No negative can last. Hate, fear, and misery fade. Love lasts. Love. Breath. Love. That is all.

Are you depressed? Yes and no. Do you know what you're going to do? Probably but I'll realize I'm wrong as soon as I decide I'm right. I love a woman in a way that never stops. I'm blessed to know this. I hope she knows it too. I hope she sees my love revealed, reborn, revived in a way that shows exactly how powerful it is. Love is beyond the rising sun. And music! Music is heaven! But Love! Oh man, LOVE!

Now, I laugh. The coffee is cold and getting colder. There is no microwave to warm it. There is more coffee but my hands already shake because of the caffeine. I miss this woman that I speak of, more than I ever thought possible. Might even lose my mind for this feeling. Shit. Already happened. But I'm sane inside my insanity. I'm balanced with my imbalance. Yes, that's right. I'm a realistic man who is willing to row a bout across the ocean for a kiss. Ah, the contradictions and the smiles that come from watching life unfold. Its fun, this living thing. It's fun to say that you're going to move to Australia for a year and then go further. It's fun to drink wine for weeks until a moment in the rain forest when you wake inside and cry, learning what you had and have lost. It's fun to say, shit I fucked up and I need to go back. It's fun to try and live against the odds. But the fun is speckled with intense pain, like horrid, really bad loneliness, but life is still fun. I woke up sad. I actually thought the devil was waiting for me by my door.I saw his silhouette. Then I remembered I hung my raincoat on the door. It's not the devil, it's a raincoat! That, right there, is all one needs to know about life. Damn nicotine patches make me question whether or not reality is a dream or dreams are the truth. But that is also fun. I have no idea what is going on, ever. I mean none of us do. Is the sky blue and full of white clouds or is the sky white and occasionally flooded with only blue? Fuck if I know, I'll leave that to the scientists who will believe what their tests tell them. I'm a man of faith and feeling and love is my god. Loving the way I do, loving the girl that I love, well, that is all I have ever asked for. Now I have to do whatever it takes to make it work. I write letters and cry. I wake alone and paint, as though I'm a painter, like it would matter if I was. What a world we live in!

I hope she hears this. I hope someone reads this. No, it's not hope born from the ego. It's the other kind. It's hope that says, hey take a look at this and tell me what it means because I laugh and cry at the same time and never really learn enough to stop making big mistakes. In fact, the more I learn, the less I know. But, shit. I know love. I know I love a woman. I know I'll do what it takes. I know I'm a poet and plain. I'm sensational and the same. I am human. Humans like other humans. Sometimes humans like one human a lot. Sometimes its love. Sometimes that love wins. Sometimes humans smile. Ah, the smile.

Goodbye words and any who have read them. Time for me to go running or walking, or both, while talking or thinking, or both. Love life and it will return the favor. Hope can defy logic. Anything is possible.

Memories of the bus crash....

Thank you Sunday mornings. The movie came on. A love story I haven't watched in years. The first time I watched this movie I was jolted during the last scene when he asks her to take him back. Not because of the intense passion, or the acting, but because the bus that I was on pulled into New York city while side swiping another bus. I remember it well. The movie ended as we sat patiently in our seats, a tear grew from my eye, and before it fell I shook off the feeling and departed the double folding doors to ignite a smoke and wait for another ride.

The bus driver yelled at me for having the nerve to exit his vehicle on a busy highway. I told him that he had just hit a bus and perhaps wasn't the best person to be giving orders. He made a threat. I don't remember what he said, but I laughed and tossed my cigarette to the ground by his feet. I kindly thanked him for extending my fourteen hour trip from Maine that day because I now had an extra few hours to sit next to the aromatic portable toilet, between the guy passionate about cheese doodles and the blackberry addict.

The police came, told us we were wasting their time and sent our buses back on their way. Only in New York does a man watching a love story while riding on a bus that hits another bus get yelled at by the driver and scorned by the local police for giving them a hassle.

Then in Vermont, when I finally returned, I told another great story that couldn't have been found anywhere but on the road.

Wherever I go, whatever happens next, I will miss retreating to this little mountain paradise. The hills forced me to forge my own adventures, whether it be when walking up a hill while imagining the crest, or sitting on a bench at dusk waiting for a stranger to walk by and smile while looking me in the eyes. This beauty, this unrivaled human spirit has now been added to the wonderful, difficult to deal with, often spontaneous, and dreadfully passionate package that is me.

The next moment will hold great beauty, true pain, and endless moments for insight, but here and now I am happy with the mountains, with the smile of a stranger, and with the hope that the crest of the hill will make each upward step worth it. It isn't as simple as just starting a new day and believing once again. And although the mountains and smiles have saved me before, today my smile was given by a woman.

Her compassion and love leave me questioning it all, wondering what comes next, and understanding that none of it matters with her by my side. When she smiles her eyes smile too. Her hands touch so softly, and when she exhales with her head on my chest I feel the release and freedom of bliss that could never be found in a mountain moment when traveling alone. A hand tightens, grasping my body, as she breaths in. My lips touch her head gently but my gratitude for the moment goes beyond a kiss.

On the road of life, if we accept that we are always traveling and turning around new bends, we will surely find whatever it is we are looking for. Even if it doesn't last, as moments often fade, the truth that a connection worth leaving it all behind has happened can last a thousand years. As we are human, and destined to die, we can't escape the truth that one minute, one second of our lives can be spent with another in a place that can last an eternity. To be born alone with the truth that we will die alone is not a worry at all for anyone who has been truly alive for a single minute.

Maybe this morning, and the recollection of cigarettes and tears, has given me all I need to let me know that I am exactly where I need to be.

An Honest Life

Maybe I say it because it calms me, takes care of the questions without answers, and allows me comfort in the unknown. But I still believe that we are exactly where we need to be during every single moment. Perfection is always there but our doubt does a good job disguising it.

Where I am now is creating a disconnect that I'm not used to. Believing that I am on a mission to find my purpose in this world, that I am on the great adventure of self discovery, has caused a vast space between myself and all the people I know.

I intended to make this rant come out more clearly than it is. I am distracted by the thought of tomorrow, wondering about the possibilities of today, and lost in a world that is keeping me alone.

Unable to live up to even the smallest of expectations from those close to me, I feel like I am walking alone down a foggy road that will hopefully lead me to where I need to be. I wonder if I am giving up, letting myself down, and just saying that nobody gets it because everything could change tomorrow.

Maybe not. Maybe the combination of finishing college, the sunless Vermont winter, and the plans of traveling have placed me in a mindset that can't be broken.

Either way, it's time to be honest with those in my life. It's time to be honest with myself. I'm leaving Vermont, not going back to live in New Jersey, and going until I find what I am looking for. Each year produces changes, each day gives us a different perspective, but the life that I know is on the cusp of a great revolution.

Maybe I won't find anything other than the realization that I've done it all wrong. It could just be a subconscious tactic that tells me to pursue the unknown, while keeping me from a consistent state of happiness. Then again, I'm not sure that happiness can exist consistently. As life changes with each breath, so do the emotions that accompany each moment.

Life is speckled with great moments of beauty and sadness. The rest is just a series of seconds driven by choice. I choose to wander. It could just be the time in my life, or maybe it is destiny, but I don't think home will ever be a place I stay in for long.

The bright world of possibilities is my greatest love. The wind is my greatest companion. My mind is the world I wish to discover. The determination is powerful enough to take me away from all that I know and lead me on a journey towards a greater understanding. Whether I find it or not, I'll walk all along with hope as my guide.

The winter will end and spring will be reborn. I'll change my opinions on what it all means a thousand times between now and then. Still, this is my way of living life as honestly as I know how. At the end of the day, when I'm alone and wondering,I always find a moment to be okay with where I am.

I don't know much. There aren't many decisions I have made. God and love may remain mysteries that I may never solve. My path could give me great pain but, if all that I've learned is true, the journey will provide me with the freedom to live the dream I can't keep ignoring.

I'm lost and loving it, mad and inspired, determined and distant. Friends grow and change, lovers leave and stay, but the people in my life who know me will understand that I am doing exactly what I must. It's the only way. Inspire others, be alive in the moment, free yourself to every opportunity, and live life honestly. At the end of it all, I'll at least be able to say that I've followed my heart. I hope we can all say that, no matter what, we've done the best we could to be true to ourselves.