In times like this, I wander

I wonder as to what the weather was like

In the Summer of 1961

North and west of here in the summer

Maybe rain had just come through

Or I imagine the land to be dry, arid

Green lands, yet dusty. Mountains in the distance

The outside green, but the inside blue

Was it the taste of gunmetal, or of scotch, brandy, wine

Am I allowed solidarity

Did we or do we feel similar

Did you have yours, while I have mine?

Our end begins again, every moment

Yours however, was always your own

So many times evaded

In your own hands, you owned it

So many years later, pollen dancing in the sun

Yes the land is green and dotted with flowers

The outside green, the inside blue.

Is the summer now, like the summer of 1961?

I was recently shocked by something unexpected. There were times in my life where events of a greater possible magnitude did not shock me like this moment, but this moment did the trick. This was enough to make me stop eating a meal, and go outside and yell for a second.

And now I am in a similar place where I started and I don’t miss anything and my body just feels numb and surreal, like I’m on a terrible drug that doesn’t exist. It is a bad trip.

“This is it chief,” I say to myself. 

“You can not take it or leave it. You can only take it. You must absorb your experiences into your person, you cannot ball it up or compartmentalize it. Accept this and breathe it in and continue living. Live in a way that nourishes the brain and body, have no regrets, brush your teeth and take your vitamins and enjoy the smell of spring that is a new feeling to you, a new sense. You are now experiencing a new season, even another one. You are feeling a feeling, a wave of unexpected and unwanted emotion that is coming with haste, these flood waters of undesired yearning are coming high, by hell prepare yourself. That dam was prepared a long time ago in so many storms from so many past times, but now the levee broke chief and you can sink and bloat and become a piece of carrion flotsam in a godforsaken swamp, or you stand up, and take it, you are allowed a grimace, but nothing more, and you move on and melt away negligence of the personal being and charge forward to your end which may come soon, or late, but it is not now, so charge on chief, charge on with strength and perseverance and communicate to stressors in a new light because the old light is all burnt up but a new one can be just as bright if you gave it a god damned chance. You have always been a beautiful son of a bitch, don’t fall into a bottle of something clear or brown but always alcoholic, this is the way of the old man, and you aren’t old but you are a man. Put more hair on your chest by battening down the hatches, biting your lip, getting a haircut and a shave, sow your wild oats in other fields, take pride in all of your work, have love and conviction and passion for all you do.

“And there will be another time chief, where things are the same or worse than they are now. And damnit, you will think back to this time and you will think the same thing you are thinking now. You will think that you have done this before why is it so bad now and you’ll have the same discussion you always have and then you’ll wake up and be ok.”

“Get it done motherfucker. You always fucking have.”

I’m ok. Everything’s ok. Everything will be ok.

Those wide open roads used to be home and I would drive them often through hills and scrubland to find patches of green and brown to walk through. Hills stretch to other hills where others have stacked small rock towers to mark trails. I followed these without hesitation. 

The airport was busy but intimate and this was also home. I remember twice a year where invaders and infidels would come and ruin things. 

Stepping on rocks would make my feet hurt, but the water would ease the sun sting on my shoulders and back. Clear water, pure and dirty all at once.

And that rock, that beautiful dome protruding from the scrub land like a granite postule, that was a journey. We find its caves and crevices and inched through. I tore the back pocket of my newly purchased hiking shorts and we both were sweating a cool sweat. The pizza we ate was served with love and the fennel was nearly overpowering and we both drank shiner bock at three in the afternoon before our drive back through the perfectly green spring time Texas hill country. Bluebonnets were easily mistaken for small pools of water in the distance. People stopped to pick them, though this is illegal.

When I start to think

I have learned a thing or two

I start to forget

I have staked a claim

Not meant for myself or my stage

And when I look out into the darkness of that field

I lay back with visible breaths

And wonder why I’m here.

I sit in a Japanese restaurant in St. Louis. I’m listening to Neil Young. When I run my fingers through my hair, I notice a few strands hang there, attracted. Looks like I’m balding.

I’ve missed too many moments of writing recently. I’ll throw words around in my internal monologue and tell myself “Yep, that’s it, going to write that.” I never do. Such glorious scenes missed. Hiking in California, driving a rented Mustang through coastal mountains I may never see again. Cruising  outside of Portland, Oregon with a snow capped behemoth in the distance. The town was named Sandy, and I ate Thai food there out of a restaurant that was also the owner’s house and I drank the Thai iced tea the owner had suggested, it tasted of tamarind and it was one of those moments that I try to savor. Later that night I ended up drinking too much beer and woke up in a hotel room that I can’t even start to recall right now. I had a headache and a flight to catch and a bad taste in my mouth.

My journal hasn’t travelled with me lately. Now that is a sin on my part. I remind myself to pack it and I never do. I feel like my journal judges me, like an old friend who texts you trying to get something back that you borrowed and you never respond out of guilt. Or a pet that you’ve neglecting. There my journal is, looking up at me with big watery eyes. I grab my pen and look at it and turn away with a sigh.

That black Moleskine, the best birthday gift. It tells a story too sad and perfect and predictable to be true. Scriblings in those earlier days. That first trip to Philadelphia. What an innocent and unknowning man I was there. Twenty years old with no idea what this job was but yep I’ll take it. Now my head is a few hairs less and my demeanor a bit more serious and not just serious but I often feel like a phantom, where my actions carry no weight but in reality they carry more weight than before. I just move from one motion to the next. My life doesn’t just move fast, but it’s jet fueled.

I run out of Neil Young and go to Pavement. “Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain.” It’s a really solid album and features their closest thing to a mainstream hit, “Cut Your Hair.” You’ve all heard it.

I have been to Hollywood. I have been to Chicago. I have been to the Bay Area. I have been to New York City. I even had a job in Austin. Oh what a lovely day where I got to drive my own car in my own town and eat lunch at my favorite Vietnamese restaurant on the company dime. I recently did a twelve day straight stint. The worst part is I eventually enjoyed it. When you travel that much, you start to put your homeward thoughts behind you. I kind of liked it. What if I just removed an apartment out of the equation? Or a car? Constant travel and life on the road, a closet with wheels containing approximately seven proven outfits that, even with a few rewears, could be maintained and washed and when one failed, a Brooks Brother’s is never far. I could be considered a business vagrant, a professional, professional vagabond. So many complications removed.

Recently, I’ve had a strange desire. In certain cities while cruising around in my rental, I think “What if I didn’t take this exit? What if I just kept on and kept on this unfamiliar highway until the car ran out of gas and from there just go on foot. Just go in my business casual, with my suitcase behind me, throw all my phones out of the window on the way there, they would find the car probably two weeks later, but I would be far and gone. I would take my cash out early, and just live off of that. I would throw most of my wallet out too. I would fall off of the grid and no one would know where I was. They would ask, and maybe even search and maybe even find me. But after that it wouldn’t matter. I would have seen the other side and be gone for good. With my strange patchy beard that I grow and an unkempt head of hair.”

I’m not sure what it all means. Maybe I’m losing it.

I had a moment in the Arizona desert on Tuesday. I hiked alone through cacti and sage brush. There wasn’t any shade and the sweat crept in a dark vee down my neckline. Just the sounds of my footsteps and my breathing. Lizards of various shapes and sizes cross my path. I hear a rustle in the brown grass at the side of my trail. And a rattle. It’s a rattlesnake. It rears its head towards me, its tail quivering. I continue on. Up rocks and sand and along rock faces and the brush rubs against my legs and I taste the sweat and sunscreen taste on my lips. When I look too far into the distance, I have to squint from the glare off the sand. 24 Hours ago, I was on a Southwest 737, and in 3 hours, I will be in another Southwest 737. But right now I am in the Arizona desert.

A rock becomes a bench and I eat a granola bar lunch and drink near what’s left of my water. It doesn’t alarm me. In that moment, I didn’t care about much. I saw for miles, the expanse dotted in every direction with familiar brush, giant cacti forking above, mountains in the distance with that purple hue that they keep at all times of the day. I can’t see the parking lot and I don’t see other people and It’s alright. My legs burn and my skin burns even through the sunscreen. I drink and the bottle goes empty. I turn on the trail and head back to the rest of my life.

—

On Monday, I woke up in Austin, Texas and this Tuesday morning I woke up in the Presidential Suite at the Oro Valley Arizona Best Western. When I got to the room on Monday night, the room didn’t feel very presidential. The paint was chipped in spots and the regal granite countertop had a soapy film. The Jacuzzi tub that was so proudly displayed had a few stray hairs stuck to its side. I cleaned out these hairs and tried the tub. You don’t often get the chance to use a Jacuzzi tub fit for the president.

The water was near scalding. I laughed to myself. There was a campiness to the scene. The novelty soon wore off and I realized just how vile the situation was. I let the water drain out and took a shower instead.

The bed sheets had a roughness to them. The A/C blew warm, like it was just circulating air from the Arizona desert night. I didn’t feel like the President.

This entry is a warm up. This entry is me getting back into the groove. It is time to write again.

I’m not dead.

I’ll update this soon.

The truck was silent at first but that was to be expected. It didn’t take him long to carry on as if nothing had happened, but this isn’t new and what happened isn’t new so I carry on as usual as well. He planned what he was going to say as he listened, being as inconsiderate in conversation as he usually is and I remember where I come from.

We arrive and I think he starts to make a move to grab my bag, I tell him I got it and I give a quick goodbye and I don’t hug him or shake his hand. His attempt to get my bag might have been an attempt to make the goodbye an apology. I regret not letting this happen.

I have evolved as a business traveler. I spot the inexperienced gaze at the touch screen ticket kiosks confused.  At the security line I get behind a man in typical business nomad garb. I observe his speed and believe at first that I’ve made the right choice. I detect a nervousness as he removes his belt and I know this doesn’t bode well. When he asks the TSA agent if he had to remove his belt, I know I had chosen poorly. I step around him and no one notices.

The six AM flights are the hardest for me the sleep on. I’d gotten maybe three hours of interrupted sleep the night before, but here on this Southwest 737, my eyes are wide open. I watch Houston wake up below me, ants in cars making their morning commute as I make mine. The sun rises on the east side. Uninhibited gold blazing atop dark clouds. The west side stays asleep as if the plane is a barrier between night and dawn. The pilot’s landing is smooth to the point that people sleeping stay that way.

St. Louis is how I left it. Cold and washed out, like everything falls through a grey filter. I declined a rental car this week and opted out for public transit. The wind bites through me on the elevated platform. The light rail arrives on time and it’s not much warmer. It speeds through the dilapidated outskirts of downtown. I see a junk yard, flattened masses of former cars stacked like cards or flapjacks. A man huddles burning wood around them like a single solemn guard, the fire warding off the oncoming grey. I see dirt fields, and dirt fields, and brambles thick to the point of becoming a wholly solid mass. I see graffiti. I see good graffiti and I see bad graffiti and I often see both juxtaposed. The phrase on a storage unit: “While you sleep…(a few feet away)…WE CREEP.”

Local citizens enter and exit like automatons, all emitting a lugubrious aura. So many faces I’ll never see again and they interest me the most, all going somewhere but in my mind, nowhere at all. All cold and unhappy. Do they think the same about me? This strange and unimportant out of towner on equally unimportant adventures? No, they think nothing of me.

An update: Yes, it’s been a long time since my last entry. I felt compelled this morning though. Hopefully it’s a trend. There was so much going on that it was hard to keep up, so I decided just to start at where I am right now. I’ll give the cliff notes version. 2012 started with a bang, I hope it keeps the same pace. I had dinner with my boss of bosses in Austin and it was great. Tim. L is leaving the company. I turned 21 on the 16^th. I spent it in St. Louis with Tim S, who I had an amazing conversation about my future with. And life goes on. Of all the things that have happened and are happening, I’m still just trying to stay grounded and tell myself that it’s not a dream and it’s reality and the things I do actually matter. When I can realize this, I will truly be happy.