And they all grow up... but some grow stranger than others.

People in the Northwest talk a lot

For every one of us there's a conversation that can never be had. Not a finite ecumenical law for every subject on the planet, but a profound thought that every individual experiences uniquely for which they can't communicate. A certain gripping realization or theory for why we do any number of things, in any given situation. I don't know what mine is... i thought i knew a few weeks ago.

Recently i was visiting an old friend in Seattle, the city that looks nice but has never once roused a warm feeling or personal invitation to sojourn. It reminds me of something vacuous and hungry. What does it want i wonder? Anyway... we were talking late one night after dinner and i was invitedly experiencing one of my frequent neurotic episodes and wanted to share it with her. A quick personal defintion: psychotic~ everyone is crazy. neurotic~ i'm crazy. I often enjoy these feelings which are symptomatic of discovering my physical location. Think about it... 'i am here.' That thought procures the easiest access to a certain sensation. 'Wow, no shit, i am here.'

Depending on where exactly you're at, there's no telling how much you might trip out. I don't like the term 'to trip out.' It's impoverished and connotes in every negative direction. For theory sake, i've been thinking about creating my own word for my own defintion (like all those yahoos we use to read... remember?). I would like to call it objection. It's effectual placement of becoming present, and subsequent observation of yourself.

You know how it is, you see old friends, family and lovers and your insides can be muddled. You don't know what you're feeling or thinking, exactly, except the bold cognition that something strange is taking place. I love that feeling, i can learn so much about myself and my surroundings. Perhaps it has little true value, but it seems mentally productive.

I often assume that everyone has similar influences and tendencies. Therefore with the right words or in the right instance we can communicate a common, yet often unbreached idiosyncrasy. I was asking my friend about this in relation to my frequent objection in social circumstances. Does everyone trip out like i do while watching people, or conversing, or witnessing any number of commonplace events? She looked at me a long while and i was pretty convinced she was going to ask for further explanation about just what the fuck i was talking about. Instead she calmly answered 'No, i think it's more rare than that.' And she said it in a way, that at once denuded i was no unique specimen, but that it was okay. That got me thinking about that old rag 'I'm okay, you're okay' that was situated on my bookshelf somewhere between John Gray and Deepak Chopra, and i had to have a good laugh. Are you okay? Goddamn i hope so man....

Songs about Jackson

Every singer/songwriter must have at least one nostalgic song about Jackson... Tennessee, Mississippi, Minnesota. Ballads and odes in sweet remembrance and longing. There's a girl waiting there, the smell of pine trees or some such thing, the color of some polluted river. It's an american archetypal placename for musicians in the same way that Caroline is, though like many others i've never actually met a Caroline.

I wonder if any of those songs are talking about Jackson Hole, Wyoming. I'm leaning towards 'no.' I recently returned to this town and it wasn't due to a two month appetition for its rich edification. It has been two months since i left this place and it certainly wasn't time yet to revisit any old self or previous community. My old partner needed some help moving her things a few states over. I wasn't up to much of anything and volunteered to help.

I rolled into town on the first evening after driving 900 hundred miles in twelve hours. I was looking in the rearview mirror astounded at the long line of trucks behind me and nearly rear-ended the Dodge Ram in front of me. I made it just in time for the sledneck 'hill climb' that draws thousands of snow machiners from all over wyoming, utah, and idaho. Men and women gather around their snow machines and hold epic tailgate parties before ascending the local steep mountain for a record time. This is a laughable rough-and-tumble group that reminds me of a slightly watered down Hell's Angels gathering. The presence of this crowd added with the town's own extreme citizenry reminds me of some dangerous chemistry solution, imagine two vaporous vials mixed to explosion.

I'm in a different mindset this time around and i thought it might be a good time to explore my reasons for repulsion to this area. In the past, decisions and motivations were muddled in the unsuited habitat for optimum growth. Sometimes i like to imagine myself as a cholorophyllic body searching for select niche conditions. This time around i feel more objective and freefloating, not in search of grounding. I was hoping this would allow me to mull things over better.

An epiphany struck me at the Cadillac Grille and Bar. It was happy hour and i had a few beers in front of me and a burger on the way. The place was packed and the noise deafening. I was feeling particularly queer and couldn't keep my eyes off the women in my vicinity. Not a single female soul that i could find was timid to the eye, and i found myself freely staring at women staring back at me. What struck me at first was how i didn't feel a single drop of real connection or sensuality in these episodic staredowns. At first i internally fought this by pointing out to myself that i really wasn't that special, nor much of an apparent catch anyhow and perhaps this was a good revelation. But by further introspection i discovered the true cause of my antipathy...

When i first meet someone, whether they be the deemed future friend or partner, i try to display a panoply of what i think are decent traits. First on my list is sincerity, because even the least intelligent of people with sincerity are worthy friends. The next thing would likely be consideration, show that you're actually listening and interested. These are the top two, and the list definitely goes on... In Jackson, Wyoming people don't care about sincerity in its purer forms. They much prefer to burke the trait or accept some obviously transparent and generic version of it. This immediately cuts my tactic of initial connection with a person. Secondly, you may be holding a light or heavy conversation with someone, but this in no way keeps others (and everyone 'knows' everyone) from at any point crashing the scene. In this way you're left with splintered points and dialogue and you find your company quickly disjointed, attention defecit, in a blink of an eye holding conversation with a newcomer. It's cheap and schizophrenic, and if you're not up to the challenge of gregarious roaming laconic devolutions, then you'll certainly go mad!

Autonomy... wireless

I have a list i keep in my pocket. It's ongoing, an equal measure of pen or pencil scribbled on old receipt paper and letters. This is where i enlist myself to certain chores or tasks to fulfill by day/weeks end. In the past months i have had many names written on these, reminding myself to reach certain people and say hello... or whatever.

Equally relevant is the fact i broke my phone during a San Francisco argument (i dropped the thing in between a sigh and a scream), and i've lost most desire to discuss antiseptically life's latest on any telephone. I feel bad (sometimes) for all the things i've neglected to do, and the people i haven't connected with. The brunt of the occasion is my moietous girlfriend, who believes that such a thing is impossible, rather, this resolution reflects my Dolean ineptness and austerity. Poor girl!

This particular person has a knack for calling tri-daily with often a kind word, but otherwise nothing to report. Oh phone people! Please understand us not-phone people! She has never made my lists because her name, instead, has been engraved upon the inside of my fucking brain! C-A-L-L {blank}! For some reason the possibility of calling becomes even less enticing. And for all you out there that might understand me (Andrew!), it is no shoestring burden to be the sole focus of anything. Unless you like that sort of thing...

LoseCo.

Last week i fell into the grips of a WinCo Foods in Longview, Washington. It didn't help matters that i was severely sleep-depraved and on the verge of collapse due to hunger. I sadly followed my cousin inside the automatic jaws of the front entrance. One of the cart collectors was bringing in fifty carts; her metal caravan was led by herself and the rear brought up by an automated 'short circuit' with a blinking light. I'd never seen anything like it...

I immediately felt familiar as i entered the store. WinCo has been popping up everywhere alongside Ross, Starbucks, DollarTree, Home Depot and Target throughout the West. Every store is designed exactly the same, with the exact same products and the exact same music playing overhead. I was marvelling at this homogenized world lit by an overwhelming voltage of ultraviolet lighting, while simultaneously trying to avoid being hit by a cart. Despite the incredibly widened aisles for 'economy-size' everything (including the customers), one needs to hold a wary eye to avoid being run over. It reminds me of playing that old game Frogger on Atari. Trying to cross these streets and intersections without being crushed.

So i was wandering about, checking the deals, and trying to make the time pass quickly while my cousin filled his cart. I began noticing the outrageous prices that no ma and pa store could ever compete with. And then admist the disgust, some sort of quasi-shame for ever having shopped there emerged. I found chicken for .25 cents a pound (not on sale), perhaps dog-food grade but it looked normal. Boxes of Post cereal for a buck, all sorts of out-of-season produce for under in-season prices. Apples the size of softballs, bell peppers of electric christmas colors, chard with ears like skunk cabbage, and avocados for fifty cents a pop. Fifty fuckin' cents!

I couldn't take it anymore, i needed a drink. So i ran to the wine and beer to find endcaps of bullshit wine for pennies and decent wine for pocket change. Domestic beer giveaways and ungodly priced imports. It would be like pulling into a chevron today and finding gas costs 79 and 9/10 a gallon (the first price i remember seeing as a kid).

This isn't winning people! We are not winning here at WinCo. I was feeling a little foreboding and despondent and felt like shouting this ananity. Deciding it was time to leave i began weaving through the customers and their bereft mountains of stock. Approaching the sunlight, passing through the sliding doors, a great weight was lifted. If only there was a place like this for illicit drugs and other paraphanelia. I would love to check a shaker of blow, some various tablets with bin numbers written on dime bags, and a book of stamps. I think i'd be a club card member at that place and i'd still bring my own bags.

Cars on the lawn

Washington is a beautiful state. It's where i'm from and i like it for it's diverse landscape and ecosystems. Mountains, rivers, deserts... many species of bird and fish. I only come back to this state once a year, if that, to visit old friends and relatives and reconvene with the many old selves i've once been. It's my place of transition between ending and beginning, a place where i try to revisit old feelings, find my position, and move on. Time stops here, it's infinite and for that reason perhaps dangerous.

Does it ever seem like the most beautiful states have the worst, least intelligent stewards of the land? Think about that Montana governor who wants to raze the entire eastern half of his state for its coal. Creating a clear diesel gas that's somehow a new source of energy to relieve reliance on the Arab world. Or beautiful Idaho and its anti-semitic past; haven for the AN. Or perhaps the best example~ Alaska. Home to the Murkowskis, the governor Frank and his daughter Lisa the senator. Always trying to tap ANWR, giving public lands to indian corporations for mining and timber harvest, applying taxpayer money to cruiseline cleanup and the aimless tankers running aground. Or Maine's stalwort republican Olympia Snowe backing Bush on many agendas, few representing protection of Maine's pristine lands and waters.

Is there perhaps some invisible universal law requiring certain state residents to check their brains at the border? For example, here in Washington everyone loves to talk about television. 90% of homes, whether they are grandiose or more likely a manufactured unkept box or double-wide, have at least one satelite dish beaming down hundreds of channels; the dish located above numerous cars on the lawn. Parts cars, fixers-upers, old skeletons of the past. But television, above the rest, is the least avoidable conversation here, second to cars.
Question: Did you see the episode of "[insert show]" last night?
Answer 1: No, i've never even heard of that.
Answer 2: Yeah sure [even though i've never heard of it].

I've learned to switch between the two answers for the simple reason of avoiding further discussion on the topic. In many cases Answer 1 will be recieved by thorough explanation, including pantomime, copious dialogue and an altogether intensely boring account of uninteresting material. All to which one can choose to laugh politely or quietly disregard. Who could ever expect one to watch television vicariously through another, and enjoy it? First-hand television shows are difficult enough in themselves.

Answer 2 i've learned is a truly brilliant solution to this problem. By answering "yes," one can limit the conversation to a few replies such as, "Oh yeah, that was a good one," or a less committed, "Uh-huh." A tremendous breakthrough in communication.