Avatars and Cheese

Over the last two-years, there were numerous times I’ve caught myself making decisions so that the "story" would be better. The blog had become a bit of a hybrid creative-outlet/ego-feeder; something I too closely identified with. I liked the idea that I was doing something that others either couldn't do or were afraid to, and naturally that appealed to me! Telling the story has, at times, shadowed why I'm doing it. Nothing personal, but what I'm doing should have nothing to do with entertaining you!

Now, there is something potentially noble about allowing people to live vicariously through you. Maybe as a “what if” example; trying to share a vision of how to live a principle or trigger thoughts of how things could be “if only ‘X’ were different.” “X” can be anything you choose: marriage, kids, money, fear, or laziness. You’ll ALWAYS find an ‘X’ if you want to, and some folks count on that. "If only..." is often the crutch of the career victim.

Rather than taking actual steps ourselves, it’s safer to adopt avatars; to watch others do what we wish we could--while we, personally, risk nothing. How nice for the cowardly would-be adventurer to just ride along! Then, when that avatar inevitably stumbles, the couch-creature can then sing their own verses of disengaged brilliance! 

See how wise THEY were wise to remain safely rooted to the couch!

Or, perhaps when the avatar fails to meet their ever-increasing entertainment standards, the anonymous couch-creature can pretend he’s watching a reality show and, wallowing in the aforementioned cognitive dissonance, tell himself (with the benefit of hindsight) how HE surely would have done it differently--and much better! Chris tells of actually receiving hate-mail when he interrupted his cross-country walk! Hate-mail from a couch-creature who had attached their own personal meaning to his achievement!

I’ve encountered this vicarious mentality occasionally over the last 2 1/2 years, and even momentarily and disastrously fell into its trap last spring with Ray. In fact, I've adopted several avatars as hopeful mentors and standard bearers over the years. Those I've looked up to were either co-opted or became a huge disappointment under the weight of unfair expectations. Once people try move from idealism to implementation, standards and ideals often become secondary to convenience, convention, and self-preservation. People become captives of institution, slaves to doctrine, or simple mental masturbators.

I've traditionally elevated to a pedestal, sometimes unwittingly, those who show the courage to act on principle and accept the consequences rather than sit, speculate, wonder, then ask themselves a year later why life sucks and won't change. I've elevated those who question convention. I admire those that ask 'why?' and wont take "I said so' for a answer. However, it's been my experience that when I look up to someone either as an example or standard bearer, they, predictably, fail miserably in these roles because WE are the only ones who can legitimately set our own standards. We only do that effectively by living life in person.

Numerous people have told me how they would like to "do something like this” but, for numerous reasons, just can’t. At first, I was genuinely flattered and surprised at how some identified with what I was doing. Considering how long it took me to finally engage, I'd actually considered myself a coward!

"WHAT WOULD YOU DO IF YOU WEREN’T AFRAID?"

Only with the benefit of hindsight, I slowly realized that what I experienced in the years leading up to my hitting the road for the first time was something shared by everyone: fear.

I, myself, have had a habit of seeking out avatars to show myself that my ideas and visions were possible. Ironically, that’s how Chris and I originally met in 2004. I was living in Florida and he was in Denver at the time. In August of that year, I had rekindled the notion that the notion of life we’d been sold was maybe horseshit, and had a harebrained, cloudy, vision of setting out down the road with a backpack! I had yet to hear of McCandless or anyone else who had done it and, intimidated by the prospect, needed to see that it could be done, and that I wasn’t crazy! I did a web search about others who had done it, and found his website.

It’s no insignificant fact that it took 4-years for that vision to manifest. I tiptoed around the fringes, but never overcame the fears of “what if.” It was a long process, and made longer by my own laziness and refusal to accept full responsibility for who I was, where I was, and the future tenses of both. Chris initially served as a bit of an unwilling role model and inadvertent mentor; a guide as to the general direction I needed to take myself.

I intermittently battled fear (usually losing badly) from the day we moved from Taos to Denver early in ’05 to the day I stepped out in May ’08. It’s astounding for me to think back 5-years and recall the molehills I mistook for mountains! All along the way, fear was a constant companion and like everyone risking something, it remains my most tenacious sparring partner. The only thing separating myself was that I somehow stumbled from pretending fear shouldn’t be there--

• to recognition, acceptance, and meek confrontation
• to beating myself up, assuming its continued existence meant failure
• to realizing it never “goes away”
• then consciously working to act despite it.

The simple fact is that, despite all the rhetoric to the contrary, we’re all much more alike than we care to admit. Fear isn’t something ultimately “conquered.” Rather than a dragon to be slain, it’s closer to a game of Whack-a-Mole. With a ton of hard work and perseverance it can be befriended and controlled, but like the ego it never dies. Anyone who claims otherwise is a fucking liar. Tell ‘em I said so! When you reinforce one wall, fear simply sniffs out another one of our weakness and moves on.

With the right attitude, like many other things we prefer to avoid, fear can be our greatest self-investigative tool. For me, an enormous key was something I read shortly before leaving in ’08. It was a question asked in a cute little book called Who Moved My Cheese: “What would I do if I weren’t afraid?” That brilliantly simple little question shifts focus from "what if" to what we’re missing out on; from the unlikely negatives to the potential positives. Pursuing something you want is usually more effective (and far more enjoyable) than fleeing from the imaginary somethings you "think" are behind you the whole time!

Escapist Voodoo

To recap once again, after 2009s travels ended with Port Townsend, I settled into last winter by starting down a path that, quite frankly, I was unprepared for. When I jabbed my pen into Don Quixote, the notion that each of us silently deal in secret, disguised and silent self-delusion, I struck a mammoth vein of fool’s gold. I certainly hit something incredibly significant, but I was also stunningly naive about what it meant, and more foolish still in believing Freud’s Dragon wouldn’t turn on me!

CAVES 

Unfortunately, roads such as these come with neither maps nor disclaimers attached. The paths this brand of honest introspection inadvertently illuminate can lead to dark, frightening caves concealed deep within own own psyche. These are the places we are usually afraid to visit and rationalize away, even at the lowest of our most solitary, self-loathing moments. The ones spent silently trembling in dark corners, (hopefully metaphorically) weeping while we wonder why we are who we are, or what happened to who we were supposed to be. When we ask, "Why does the reflection in the mirror never measures up to what we see in our mind’s eye?" "Why do our words never echo those whispered in a frail voice into our mind’s ear?" We beg, in Pink Floyd's quiet desperation, for answers that are only be found locked inside these deep, dark, psychological caves.

I don’t know the specific clinical definition, but it seems clear that these caves harbor what seems to amount to a flawed, terrified, neglected, naked child: “Us.” The “us” we’re too terrified to acknowledge, or even a glance toward out of the fear that someone else will see it’s there, and recognize us as the frauds we (all) really are.  

Think I'm just cynical? Not so fast.

While we endlessly work building thick walls of vanity built with the materials of wit, charm, and achievement to assure "we" are kept sequestered far away from a world that just won't "understand", I believe the jokes on us. Would we, by freeing this metaphorical imprisoned self, ultimately be able to accept and embrace that we’re just as pathetic, flawed and insecure, just as fucked up, as everyone else? More importantly, I believe, would we then recognize that everyone else is secretly just as fucked up as we are? I’ve occasionally mentioned Santa Clausification, and this is it on an everyman scale. As Ray succinctly put it, “We’re all just flawed human beings” 

Along with psychiatry and Madison Avenue, I’ve concluded, much to my ego's chagrin, that we’re all much more alike than we’re comfortable admitting. I’m constantly astounded by the cavalier attitude, even acute allergy, toward understanding ourselves. It's as though we're either completely engulfed and mesmerized by our own fabricated bullshit, or simply incapable of internalizing the truth.

It's becoming apparent that, like the drunk sorostitute at her first frat party, we willingly buy the jock's loaded-line that we’re "special, unique, hand-sculpted snowflakes" righteously fluttering down from on-high. We buy the bullshit because, in the mundane experience of today's world, we desperately crave a sense of meaning, and purpose. We need to feel like something more than another car stuck in traffic or generic face in the crowd. Advertisers and societal/religious leaders have long understood and exploited this. That's why the most intoxicating and dangerous delusions sold throughout the "culture" are intentionally, and maliciously, tied to our self-image.

With that in mind, perhaps these psychological doors are locked for a reason. Maybe they’re designed to be pried open as a painful rebuke in response to brazen, ignorant naiveté and presumptuous arrogance (as I believe was my case), as a reward for the incredible amount of courage usually only mustered by those hitting what we glibly refer to as “the bottom”, or most honorably (and rarely) after an incredible amount of self-observation and honest introspection. Maybe that child isn’t a prisoner after all! Perhaps he’s held in protective custody! 

"WTF?"

THE ESCAPIST VOODOO OF RELATIVISM 

Of course, a sense of all this will lead to a glimpse at the gulf between who we THINK we are, who we WANT to be, and who we actually ARE. People often simply write their own convenient, subconscious  narratives, then reposition and peddle it as “their” reality. To me, it remains ridiculous to hope to justify that new-age Escapist Voodoo of multiple "realities."

J.H. Kunstler put it best, and there’s a reason I have this displayed at the top of my page: “The trouble with self-delusion, either in a person or a society, is that reality doesn’t care what anybody believes, or what story they put out. Reality doesn’t “spin.” Reality does not have a self-image problem. Reality does not yield its workings to self-esteem management.” 

In varying degrees, we're still the 5-year old who thinks that if he closes his eyes, his pissed off father will disappear. The problem is that it's a silent, internal process of self-delusion; dad's not there to smack us out of it.

The standard definition of Reality from Wikipedia: "...the state of things as they actually exist, rather than as they may APPEAR or may be THOUGHT TO BE." Reality is not something that's open to redefinition on the basis of convenient, skewed perception or a whimsical, egocentric interpretation-of-choice.

Relativity exists in matters of perceptions, interpretation, and opinions. But, PERCEPTION IS NOT REALITY. Like it or not, we’re not entitled to hijack the lone reality we all share with our own special snowflake of interpretation and perception. The only thing our interpretation and perception affects is how we alone experience our little sliver of reality. 

There is something that should be said about the limitations and variety of our perception. I equate it to standing on the beach looking at the ocean. Individually, we each only perceive a tiny piece of an unimaginably vast sea. Yet, thousands of others--each standing hundreds or thousands of miles apart--experience other seemingly unrelated pieces of the same body of water.

To claim a personal reality, in my opinion, is equivalent in arrogance to claiming ownership of the Pacific because your toes are dangling in Monterey Bay! To take is a step further, I also believe that enlightenment--which is a DESTRUCTIVE process; the stripping away of false perceptions and untruths--alters perspective the same way a rising altitude alters your scope of vision. The higher you ascend, the more you can observe and interpret.

This was neither the first nor will it be the last time I've been forced to reevaluate and deconstruct an antiquated, suddenly obsolete self-image. The more I learn and observe, the more MY OWN defenses wither. I figured the Don Quixote path would empower me, not make me more vulnerable.

I should be thankful for that, and I am, but at the end of the day I wasn't prepared for it. I've said numerous times that there are days I'd put Don and his insights back in his bottle and return to my state of mystically ignorant bliss if I could! What I've learned and used as a tool against others has come back to feed on me. I've also come to realize, much to my dismay, that truth does NOT always come with peace & contentment. Truth is like nature in that it has no interest in your particular well-being. Truth owes us nothing but itself. Truth could care less whether or not we're prepared to handle it!

Today, there are fewer & fewer rationalizations to crouch behind. As a result and as I said before, that experience has helped me to at least grasp the philosophy of inter-connectedness. We all feed on and/or affect each other in some way.  Profound....

Nosce Te Ipsum

γνῶθι σεαυτόν

Know Thyself

7/13/10: Upon Further Review...

A famous singer once said that when you start explaining yourself, you’re fucked. Another wise man also said, “Hope floats, but so does bullshit!”

With the help of friends over the last couple of months, I’ve come to several conclusions. Counter to our claims, truth & honesty are NOT highly regarded! Most would prefer insulating their image and feeling good at any cost—reality be damned. People go to remarkable mental, verbal, and physical extremes to avoid any challenge to often fictitious personal narrative. Protecting these narratives has inadvertently become the dominant theme of the past year.

The Sabbatical

In May, I removed the Cambria-Monterey posts and explored a new direction. I miss the exciting, happy “days of discovery”; meeting people who were (clearly!) conjured up by a Purposeful Universe just for me! Unfortunately, I spent the winter slowly dissecting that philosophy and wondering if it was just a new spin on old mysticism. Was I simply plagiarizing existing doctrine, adding myself, then claiming it as "my own"? Probably, and that rattled me because it spoke to my own pesky tendency to narrate from ego, and to Azzie's credit, he served as the mirror reflecting this.

I hoped to recapture some of the excitement lost since last June, and to that end began believing my own concocted narrative while internalizing some old, familiar criticisms: "arrogant, unforgiving, judgmental." I wondered: Had I engineered or attracted these things, as Chris might claim? Had I attracted these "negative" experiences simply with a preoccupation with negativity? I actually began to think so for a few minutes. "Hope floats, but so does bullshit. The trick is knowing the difference."

Perception v. Reality

I’ve said it before: Reality is NOT subject to the whims of self-delusion. How you choose to interpret or disguise reality does NOT alter reality itself. A pacifist army of clever hippicentrics have shown their egocentric friends that blurring the line between perception & reality conveniently makes life...easier! Eventually, they learn to completely corrupt facts by mainstreaming infantile notions like: “your reality!” If I close my eyes, you go away!

There is no Reality-on-Demand! Somewhere, there ARE concrete answers. To everything. Whether they're incomprehensible or we simply choose not to see them doesn't matter, they are there. Reality is not subject to our wants, needs, or beliefs and therein lays the problem. People willingly base their vision of reality on narratives and beliefs, rather than basing their beliefs on reality while committing to see it authentically.


People gleefully construct rationalizations (narratives) while speaking from a position of "want" rather than one of fact in order to hold their Happy Zone! What results from this process is our "narrative." Each of us, at some time or another, blatantly refuse to see reality as it actually is. I’ve known this for a long time. I also understand that some people simply must exist dependent on these fictions. What I didn’t realize is the degree to which some desperately clutch to these narratives. Part of my own "floating bullshit" was thinking that people wanted to see this at work in their lives! Ha!

The struggle it seems is to simply cut through our own "floating bullshit"; to “Know Thyself” through a commitment to at least trying to find pure truth. Resigning ourselves to a flawed perception as “the best we can do” is intellectual & spiritual laziness. There are things we’re not capable of understanding, just as cavemen couldn’t explain thunderstorms 10,000 years ago. However, our inability to comprehend did NOT mean Thor really hurled lightning bolts! Nor does it mean the universe shape-shifts to the whims of “your reality.”


Shouldn't people embrace “I don’t know” rather than applying ridiculous egoistic explanations?

Moving On

Things are finally transitioning, and I’ve decided to re-post and finish the Azrael’s story as well as the rest of March. Azzie, to his credit, has obviously proven to be a powerful mirror and the experience is bearing fruit, although it’s slightly bitter.

I’ve repeatedly agonized over what to share and keep to myself. I’ve struggled over better and more important people than The Reaper; people such as Chris, Andre, my father, and The Hens. Considering that I’ve sacrificed each of these relationships as a result, EVERY person I’ve asked agree:

1. He chose to leave me in Monterey without warning.
2. I offered the chance to tell “his side” of the story.
3. He declined.
4. Fuck him.

Despite this (and his threats) I actually believe Azzie’s well-intentioned but inadvertently hoisted himself atop a pedestal when he hitched his wagon to Jesus's mule, began doing newspaper interviews while soliciting money with his "righteous calling" as a marketing tool. These create expectations that are tough to meet, and rightfully so. Rather than an unquestioned pat on the head, they command an accountability from anyone saddling the camel to ride the Bible to a “book deal”. If thinking so makes me an “arrogant jackass”, so be it. I’m not running for office, and I'd rather be an asshole than a hypocrite. I’ve been threatened by tougher and called worse by better. Intentions aside, I said in another post that Azrael strikes me as someone co-opted to play the part of a walking billboard; an unpaid extreme traveling salesmen. In retrospect, I see no reason to amend that.

Finally, I should clarify what many of you have surely noticed. While the places and events are real, Azrael/Rael is a fictitious name—he’s the first I’ve offered the courtesy. I’ve stripped his image from my site because I don't want to promote him or his cause. Nor do I have an interest in personally embarrassing or humiliating him.

Yet, I believe this story should be told because he serves as a powerful example and insight into humanity and the short-comings of the many we wrongly hold in excessively high esteem. He is Santa Clausification personified.

At least Azreal believes in something and pursues it. However, for us the trouble with idols, heroes, and role models is that as soon as we believe they’re special, it can relieve us of the responsibility of ourselves being the people we imagine. We can choose to live through our heroes rather than live ourselves, and can resign us to waiting for The Miracle; “someone or something to show you the way.”


What if it was taught that no one’s particularly remarkable, there’s no need to try to be special because we’re all equally, fundamentally, and hopelessly flawed…thus equal? How many MLK’s would arise from their couches?

Good luck, Rael. I hope you find what you're after and you were right about one thing: We are all flawed human beings. Thank fukkin' God.

Enough of the happy-happy, joy-joy shit. I now resume my role as The Master Realist…

8/18 Nashville- McCandless

Yet another day of unbearable excitement, the kind that makes for compelling travel- writing. I left Kim's house.

WooHoo!!

We transferred home- base from Kim's to Rich's place in Goodlettsville (NE of Nashville). They both had to work, so I hung out with McCarty and did more 'research' on Chris McCandless, looking for more detailed information that may indicate, as I've long suspected, that there is more (or less) to that story than that peddled by Jon Krakour. Always seems to be the case.

I did not realize it at the time, but it happened to be the day, August 18, that they estimate he died. Of simple starvation. There are aspects of this story that, when you think about them, simply do not add up.

It is quite suspicious that Krakour would fail to mention in the book that McCandless DID have a map, instead of cleverly saying "... if he had had a good map." Alternatively, Sean Penn failing to fully- disclose his employment history on the road. Penn conveniently omitted how long he actually worked at McDonald's in Bullhead City, AZ (not Burger King), and glossed over the fact that he worked with Westerberg long enough to earn $1,000 AFTER he'd met 'Ron Franz', and immediately before he set off for Alaska.

These are NOT minor details or meaningless omissions. McCandless has reached Anti- Capitalist Cult Status in no- small part because Krakour and Penn "took the liberty of bullshitting you.”

The fact strikes me that there are legions of kids whose ideas are coming from his "story". They are burning their money and social security cards, and chopping up their credit cards (not a bad thing). Then they are trying to live on dandelions because they are trying to emulate what amounts to a fairytale.

The full story would indicate that he failed at living sans- cash. Why else would he have worked so much, if as Emile Hirsh says in the movie, he "didn't need money"? Is making Quarter Pounders THAT satisfying? A question Penn chose not to address when he almost deleted one of the more interesting aspects of the book: Bullhead City. Did McCandless conclude that living without money was either impossible, or just not worth it?

I wonder if he experienced a bit of the frustration I did, and in the end concluded that it best to "invert" the system. Working just enough to provide necessities, while eliminating the 'illusory' necessities (comforts) as time went by.

Maybe he got to the point where he was frustrated by a lack of ability to be as self- sufficient as he would like, and decided Alaska was the place to go to get that knowledge. Or die trying.

Believe me, this is NOT just idle speculation for speculation's sake, although we obviously will never have any way of knowing. I have experienced similar thoughts and frustrations, and find it maddening that these 'entertainers' intentionally ignored them, needlessly corrupted a story that would have been just as remarkable on its own, then marketed it (Krakaur) as fact. Creating the mythical- superhero living out the Heroic Epic helps sales.

I doubt McCandless had any preconceived ideas about becoming a poster child for anything. He did what he did because he felt it was the thing for him. I have never seen the actual journal entries published-- anywhere, and know of no one who has. Why? What I do know is that, if my thoughts are correct, it could have served as a better example than propping the kid up as some sort of superhero, whose Kryptonite happened to be bad roots. This is why I've tried to include as much of the not- so- flattering reality as I could!

Hero worship and idolization is folly. For whatever reason, we seem to need examples of people who do amazing, almost impossible things. We need to look up to people who accomplish things we believe we could never do, then deify them as means to an excuse as to why WE should not even try. "Only ‘Saints & Superheroes' accomplish anything worthwhile."

Santa Clausification.

I've been guilty of this as much as anyone, but the more I learn about these prestigious pedestal- occupants, the more I see that, with few exceptions, they belong right down here with the rest of us. We all have doubts, faults, neuroses, hypocrisies, and skeletons in the closet. No one out there is superhuman. HOWEVER, if that is true, then we all have the SAME capacity to accomplish 'great things' anyone else has.

Why do we never hear about our idol's shortcomings? Struggles in the beginnings of whatever the endeavor of choice? Why are we so 'crushed' when we do? Why do we never hear about King's depression? Plagued by self- doubt and needing members of his staff to push and encourage him; remind him that he WAS indeed right? Martin Luther King Jr.? DOUBTED HIMSELF?? Wow.

I cannot get past this. Why? Is it because if we take away their perceived 'superpowers', we are left with the stark reality that we too are capable, and perhaps that injects uncomfortable senses of responsibility, to ourselves, that would be more comfortable to avoid?

Heroes are fabrications. In my not- so- humble opinion, we should view them as examples of ourselves, complete with OUR faults, but the ability to transcend them. I doubt that most even thought about transcending shortcomings. Most, I suspect, are driven by something they simply 'must' do. They probably had no choice but to follow it. Is that superhuman- courage? Or something else?

Who knows, but do me a favor? Consider pulling your heroes back from their pedestals. Try being your own.

That was pretty much my day. Not much for singing happy- songs, but interesting nonetheless!

I decided to go to a Tennessee Health Care Campaign meeting with Kim on Tuesday evening, so I would be staying until at least Wednesday. I really wanted to see what exactly was going on at a grassroots level, but not optimistic that I will come away happy. I hope there is something more than "progressive", idealistic chit- chat and something that resembles courage; or at least a little anger!

5/30- 6/2/08: An Interlude

June 2
Santa Fe, NM

I woke up on Chris’s couch at about 1:30 Friday quite hungover. It’s not that I drank THAT much, but obviously have next to no tolerance; a good thing. I stumbled around for awhile, then after Chris woke up we just lounged around for an hour or so then walked to Dazbog’s and Barracuda’s so he could drop off the rest of the tip for our waitress from the night before. Who DOES that? Friar Chris does.

He had a meeting to get to, and I had 330 miles to drive, so I left his place and walked to the car, drove back to his place to pick up the pack and hit the road. I finally left Denver at about 5:00.

The drive was nice. It was about a perfect day, and even the 5:00 traffic seemed to cooperate as I headed down I-25. I hadn’t really thought about it, but having the time to reflect on the last 10 days alone in the car was nice. I realized I hadn’t really accomplished much, relatively speaking, but it was an important step. I now have some confidence, and know more about where I want to be or, maybe even more importantly, where I DON’T want to be.

I reflected back on my mindset before I’d left and realized that I had definitely felt ALIVE for the last week and a half; something I mostly hadn’t felt since last summer when we moved to New Mexico. The beauty of the Front Range was intoxicating too, especially in that state of mind. I love Colorado; never gotten sick of being there.

I turned off I-25 at my familiar spot in Walsenburg, and started down US 160 just north of the Spanish Peaks and headed toward La Veta pass and eventually Ft. Garland where I head south toward Taos and home. The sun was setting, and even if I could create a day, I wouldn’t change anything. Warm, blue skies, and the setting sun shining hues of red onto the mountain sides.

I of course was questioning the wisdom of heading home so quickly, but whenever I’d think about that I have to credit myself with the fact that I WOULD have taken any ride headed toward California! I broke camp with Fresno as my goal, but as is seeming to be the case more often than not, my plans never seem to be realized. Improvisation is the method of choice, and since I got a ride to Denver I could now return the car to New Mexico so my girlfriend wouldn’t have to gather it later on. That really is significant, although it wasn’t part of my thinking when I left Rawlins!

I got to Santa Fe at about 11pm, and was glad to be out of the car! Saturday was pretty uneventful, although I must confess it was nice to relax. I also realized that one of the Santa Fe Library branches is staffed by hippie-Nazis! When I left the library, there was a bright, shiny object sitting stationary in the southeast sky. A funny looking thing that seemed to have a glimmer to it; obviously inside the atmosphere but NOT moving from its position. It also appeared to have a dark spot in its center. Nothing like it do I remember ever seeing. Of course, we all know what the explanation was that night on the news. Weather balloon!

Sunday was another lazy day in a sense, but I did begin to process more experience v. the philosophy. I wrote a whole diatribe that I was going to publish here, but decided against it. Instead, I'll just post a fraction of it, and save the rest for later on. I also noticed myself getting a bit comfortable here; the same as I did in Glenwood Springs. I'm slowly coming to the conclusion that I may need to set one rule when this continues this week: the Two Day Rule. I think that's plenty of time anywhere, and after that I begin to adapt too well to my surroundings. We'll see how that goes!

I've decided to leave again either Tuesday or Weds. I've not 100% decided which direction to go yet, but am edging toward I-40 going west. I'm a bit intrigued by Okalahoma, and keep eyeballing the Chama river north of here toward Colorado, but I think I've spent enough time up there.

Things here have been nice for the last few days, and have noticed a sense of calm about myself; a sense of calm that NEVER lasts! I'm soaking up the atmosphere, and beginning to gear up mentally to leave again. I'll let you know how that goes!





Thoughts over the past few days:

Rules and expectations are a funny thing. Especially other people’s.

I resolved to have no rules; be beholden to no one’s expectations but my own. Did I expect to be back in Santa Fe after 11 days? Of course not, but if there are no expectations other than living and experiencing the freedom of the road; riding with fate; why question it? It would be easy to compare other people’s experiences and judge my actions accordingly, but I’m not trying to re-live anything or emulate anyone.

I’ve heard the ‘Into the Wild’ comparison a lot, and there are some similarities there when it comes to an innate disgust of a corporatist society, yet I’m not nearly as rigid in my personal expectations and methodology. I’ve been asked, ‘What are you running from?’ several million times and the answer is...expectation, servitude, and someone elses ‘program’. I want to find my own answers to life and where I see it going rather than simply accept the ‘answers’ I’ve been given. Indoctrinated with. I believe these ‘answers’ are bullshit, and I want to find the truth.

There is more to life than economic servitude. Working to attain material status. Produce, consume, repeat. That’s the point: escape from this Matrix of Materialism in search of the truth of existence. Pretty heady stuff, and I’m not kidding myself in believing I’ll ever find all of these answers. The truth of one’s existence has been sought after since Joe Caveman stumbled onto fire. Enter religion.

I simply believe it’s the one thing that each person should seek out independent of doctrine, ‘social norms’ and the expectations of the “Ministry of Standards & Practices”: family, friends, education, institution, and especially the media and it’s golden image of ‘success’ that’s portrayed in every single frame of every single broadcast.

Styx’s ‘Grand Illusion’: “They show you photographs of how your life should be-that’s just someone else's fantasy...”

Think about it next time you watch something. Your told what you should look like, how you should talk, and what & how much ‘stuff’ you should have to be ‘happy’, ‘comfortable’, and ‘successful’!

Who defines happy? Comfortable? Especially ‘successful’? What the hell IS 'Normal'? And who benefits when these are defined FOR you? Surely not the investment banker with four boats, a huge house, and an emptiness in his soul the size of Montana that he can’t fill with his Capitalist Achievement Badges.

I’ve also been fighting a battle with self-doubt, ego and my own self-perceived arrogance for a while now. Quite a potpourri of traits! It’s sometimes hard for me to accept that I’m actually RIGHT, and the personal responsibility that comes with it. I have a tendency to seek out people who seem smarter, and are more accomplished and ‘educated’ than me in an effort to actually prove myself wrong.

Yet, with almost NO exception, these people always disappoint. I have to take them right back off that pedestal and every time it happens, it reinforces the conclusions I’ve already come to and I’m quite straightforward in saying so. If that makes me arrogant, so be it. I’ll be the first to let you know when someone enlightens me! Friar Chris tends to think I have a low opinion of myself, believe it or not, and thus battle arrogance AND self- doubt at the same time. Talk about duality!

I’ve come to the conclusion that’s because we’ve been engineered to believe that we ‘ordinary’ people are incapable of accomplishing anything of substance; that greatness is only attainable by the truly ‘great’. Those who have been deified by the culture as flawless: those who have been “Santa Clausified”! We’re led to believe that if you’re not perfect, you should just give up because we’re unable to change or offer anything, or to live an ideal.

Martin Luther King is a perfect example, and one I use a lot. Here’s a guy who probably accomplished more in the 20th Century than any other American, yet he was besieged by self-doubt and was a flawed human being! He cheated on his wife regularly! He wasn’t a saint in any sense of the word, but he progressed his people and offered hope and inspiration in a way that no one else could. It just astounds me that MLK was plagued with self- doubt and depression! How could he doubt his cause?

Lincoln: depressive. Jean Jacques Rousseau, an architect of the French Revolution: manic depressive. I can relate to this, and understand, to a degree, where it’s coming from. It’s that inner sense that ‘something’s wrong’ and either being unable to decipher what it is, and/or change it. An inner- struggle for singularity of mind and body: bringing the vision to reality.

I’m convinced that there are literally millions out there that just know instinctively that something’s amiss, but can’t explain it. They just ‘feel’ inner turmoil and the wounds of that battle manifest themselves in depression. These people may the truly ‘blessed’ ones because they are part of the evolution. Oftentimes, but not always, they are scorned as alcoholics, addicts, derelicts who refuse to conform for, apparently, no reason. Their minds receive a frequency that they can’t quite tune in and it causes a disquiet: White Noise of the Mind.

They’re all over.

They simply have this ‘feeling’ that they’re afraid to talk about. That ‘something’s coming’. Something devastating, but natural and inevitable. I’ve had that since I was a tiny kid, and I meet random people who after a brief conversation, their eyes light up in understanding when I mention it. It’s like “YES! I’m NOT crazy??”

I’ve heard a lot of mention of the year 2012, and the Mayan calendar. The Theocratic/ Fundamentalists in Christian society will poo poo the notion as utter foolishness; blasphemy!: that nature could POSSIBLY correct ITSELF! Yet, these same people clutch desperately to the idea that there’s an All- Powerful Manlike God, sitting on his throne in the sky, watching everything we do; keeping score so that he’ll know who’s ‘good enough’ to live in ‘Paradise’! Seems a bit shortsighted to me, and borderline hypocritical.

It seems to me that nature has a funny way of righting itself when things become unbalanced. If you doubt there’s a lack of balance in the world today try to find a clean river to drink from, or a spot that’s not been polluted either with chemicals or someone’s inconvenient trash.

It seems that with all the technological ‘progress’ we’ve lost many of the skills and most of the knowledge our ancestors had. And forgotten how to relate to each other. With every technological dependency comes a loss of skill. Try calling a friend without your cell- phone in tow. Grow some food. Build your own shelter. Could you even build a little fire if the bundle of firewood wasn’t provided to you? We’re pretty much at the mercy of technology. Without it: prey.

A lot of thoughts and reflection this weekend. As I told Dennis on the ride to Glenwood Springs, I believe that all the answers begin within. It’s a cliche’, but a good one. Once you begin to listen to and BE HONEST with YOURSELF about who you are, what you think, and what you want, the answers will slowly begin to present themselves. It’s a mother being honest with yourself, because there’s no one there to challenge your clever, witty little rationalizations; YOU have to do it! Yet the only way out is brutal honesty: truth. If Gandhi swore by it, it’s good enough for me!

Yet, even trying it is the hardest thing I’ve ever done. But alas, waiting for Pink Floyd's 'someone or something to show you the way’ is an exercise in futility. No one has your answers but you; trust yourself.


Wayyyy too much idle time this weekend?!?!?!