Seeking cadence within the confines of attention defecit disorder.

I've been waiting for that rapt attention to steal me back and bring clarity to this existence. Like a sail awaiting wind, or artist biding time for inspiration, or lonesome old fool praying for a good piece of mail in the post. It has been some time and i believe i'll wait longer...

This city lulls me in a comforting din, sooths my assent to being without escort. Days have tripped by in a growing haze, content yet aloof to something greater than myself. I had a few days to spare and so drove southward into the Mojave Desert, hoping to cozen an epiphany or perhaps elude my growing reticence for a spell.

The skies were limitless and draped a shimmering web of stars overhead. I skipped my poor sedan through empty washes, planing on washboard, dipping into sandy culverts. And with the coming night joshua trees turned to silhouette astride spiny saltbush, creosote, and brittle bush. I drove into the empty desert dusk. It was reckless and i knew it, but it felt like life and so i welcomed it.

The first night i laid aside a tuft of desert aster and felt the days heat radiate from the coarse ground. The wind sailed above me but settled with the final waning light to the west. I only awoke once to the assault of nearby coyotes giving unified cry a few tens of yards away. I talked myself back into my bag and fell asleep until morning.

The following day found me hiking into the canyon and up unnamed slopes and peaks. The silence deafening, welcome sounds of a train in the distance or falling rocks as i scrambled a loose ravine. I don't know where i lost it, but somewhere it caught up to me. I don't want this; this is too much, too big, too open... i need a translator! So midday i drove into town over the dusty washboard again. Thought about my day with a goblet of margarita in my hand at a dusty mexican joint on the roadside. I felt sense coming back, no matter my failure or the absurdity...

Bought a six-pack on the way out of town and returned to the Mojave. Watched the sun set over the Clark Mountains, leading toward the logistical hell of Los Angeles. I started humming a song that seemed appropriate to the occasion. Leonard Cohen said it, "I fought against the bottle... but i had to do it drunk. Took my diamond to the pawnshop... but that don't make it junk." I sat back against the hollow refuse of a downed joshua tree with a bottle of red ale in my hand. And only then could i let everything in... the immensity of space.

Thoughts from a year to date...

I was born a few years after Mt. St. Helens erupted on the exhausted holiday commemorating Christopher Columbus. For this reason, and perhaps also due in part by my Libran nature, i've been forced to solve the riddle of decision-making. Columbus was not so savvy in discovering much of anything and his accounts show stretches of the truth and, at other times, flat-out lies of reaching the New World. Instead, Columbus' alleged route took him directy into the tropical doldrums where he and his crew awaited near death by dehydration, while they scrawled pretty delusions such as, "What i thought was the land was but a cloud."

I've recently discovered that doldrums are not only confined to 0-30 degrees latitude, but seem to wreak the same havoc at... let's say 45 degrees, in the domain of the prevailing westerlies. I feel akin to each, since i'm certainly prevailing here in the west, though at times i feel like a recyclable plastic bag blowing in the breeze, or at other times just lying in the road waiting to be swept up by artificial vehicular wind.

In recent days i've been cast about on a sea of snow and ice wondering to whence i came and to where i go. And to more neoteric times, i've returned to a splendid summer mantra that kept my engine upon the rails for the warm months: "Lower the bar. Be Philistine." Which upon utterance, quelled feelings of alarm and anticipation, anxiety mind you. With the return of these passing nuances, adjustments have been made and this calming sutra has been reinstated.

It seems that we are all at the mercy of our own scrutiny and introversion. I, for one, would greatly appreciate the absence of deep thoughts for a spell and more profoundy contemplate the complexities of NFL football in its final weeks. Wouldn't that be a more worthwhile ponderance than continuing to wrack my brain upon a future that will never come, for the present is ever-residing?

I've been intently considering the metamorphosis to a Himalayan blue sheep, or Bharal, which is hypothetically an evolutional divergence between goat and sheep. Bharal especially enjoy crashing their heads and horns together in a way of solving dispute (rather than sitting astute and solving nothing by way of thought).

"For most creatures, such an encounter would be fatal, but bharal are equipped with some two inches of parietal bone between the horns, together with a cushion of air space in the sinuses, thick woolly head hair, and strong necks to absorb the shock, and the horns themselves, on the impact side, are very thick and heavy. Why nature should devote so many centuries- thousands, probably- to the natural selection of these characters that favor head-on collisions over brains is a good question, although speaking for myself in these searching days, less brains and a good head-on collision might be just the answer." ~Peter Mathieson, The Snow Leopard

Pause.

This morning i tossed all of my clothes and towel into my hiking pack and walked to the corner laundromat. This neighborhood, in the Mission, should be renamed for its many laundry options. It seems every other corner has a laundry; i've never seen anything like it. Further down toward Bernal Heights and Potrero, the corner laundromats are replaced by corner day-workers. Three to four Mexicans per corner, sitting on the curb, leaning against convenience store windows. Yesterday walking from the library, i counted twelve of them dispersed to each of the four corners at an intersection. They speak excitedly amongst themselves, smiling, and frenetically gesture at slow-moving vehicles. I walk by and nod...

I brought my book this morning, occasionally glancing up to watch the tumble cycle or to doodle on the steamed window pane. Besides the clothes on my back, every single sock and skibby and shirt was tumbling in that dryer. This simple existence i was thinking, and still i have no idea what i'm doing. For the past two weeks i've been signing my name, printing it, filling in the boxes, checking yes and no. Potential employers, strangers, and friends... they've been asking me, what do i want to do? And i've been answering them in complete sentences, begging decent grammar and syntax. I've been pretending that i know just what it is that i want. Do any of us truly have a clue?

Day to day i fill my time with trips to the park, grocery, library. I pore over books, read them and give them away, i search for good music and then attempt to turn others on to the same. Every now and again i stop, and looking around i wonder what i live for. Do i live for these activities i fill my day with? Am i waiting for something? Do our ambitions and motivations drive and sustain themselves, or must we only use our imagination...

Cardinal Crumbs...

Have you ever loved someone that you barely even liked? Oh... what a royal pain in the ass! I was burning some home-made tortillas in a skillet and had music on the shuffle. And somehow a song managed to make it to the play... and a feeling got me from nowhere. It was a song that once brought me thought of her. An old face, a young face... and how i loved her. But she was mad! She was a selfish brat! I thought about it, looking down from a second story toward the corner of Haight and Scott. A quick-stepped bald man hurrying about the corner barber shop turning out lights, readying for home. And the evening cold pushing down the street over our many-bodied hills.

Nursing a bottle of Wild Turkey and feeling better about it. Not really a sore thought in my body tonight, only the thought of why and how i could love such a person so fiercely. Those tremorous thoughts come once in a while, and sometimes i'll receive them. And it struck me that maybe, yeah maybe... it had nothing to do with her. What a thought! "Baby, i love you, but..." A real mother.

Since technically everything is in your head, maybe i should elaborate. Love is not something one could simply conjure at will, and that's a fact (i've tried to... i really have). But, every now and again it sneaks into the strangest episodes and nothing will fit for reasoning. It makes me fantasize of the door opening. That familiar face looking toward me. I'm on the couch with my sixth drink smiling... "I really love you. I don't know why. It has nothing to do with you. You are beautiful, but that's not it. I think if you completely changed it'd work out... Still, for what it's worth, regardless... i love you." Yeah. That's about the extent of it... the Devolution.

On Tour in America...

I was never much for new year recap and resolution, but it does have a certain charm about it. And my good friend, i hope you don't mind if i borrow a page. For this past year was quite interesting and it will never be again...

A sigh for the innocence lost, that adolescent associative that neither existed in time nor place. It couldn't be helped... and now it's time to move onward. I wonder at which point i lost this undefinable, imaginary precept. Was it as i came of age, clueing into the melding wheels of academia and vocation? Maybe earlier, as i swirled my cap'n crunch berries in a sea of purple milk? Or later, holding a straw to the broken bulb? The three beds in a week that i slumbered?

The year began a veritable mess. Key components: a brain of booze, packed car, six thousand feet elevation, hour of midnight, and a blizzard, and the going-away gift of drinking water thrown in my face. Salud! Young Werther! Yet hey, when you start low, the inevitable climb awaits.

I climbed into the Sierras from the upper-plains of Nevada. A dear friend awaited with Mt. Gay Rum and Jameson and some similar turmoils. We mulled our thoughts together in the old-fashioned way, on the rocks. Then to the lights of Reno and the banks of the Truckee River for a spell, onward to the Bay for a spot of regathering my wits. Seven lanes of traffic brought me in and those same seven took me away. But the city was glorious with its music and food. Reconvening old friends and lovers; absurd situations that turned the dial and forced an objectivity to my life, just when i needed it.

I worked a few months for my parents in Washington, found the calluses in my hands and dirt beneath the fingernails. Caught a flight to Florida to visit an old friend. A week of smoking and margarita stupors that found us shouting prose at the alligators, joining a pool tournament in some Buffet bar, and pushing the mangrove coast to Willie Nelson on repeat.

Flew back to the West and repacked my car, pushed it across the flats of Eastern Oregon beneath the double-arch of the most amazing rainbow i have ever seen, and then up into the high valleys of central Idaho. Andrew and I scoured the hillsides for woodpeckers and bluebirds. We did this project on behalf of humanity, funded by hard sought taxpayer money. We marvelled at the scenery and our growing collection of bottles and cans.

Then it was the Inside Passage beneath the wing, flying over the southeast panhandle toward Baranof Island where recreational drinking compliments and strikes awe to the scenery. I haphazardly fished, visited the cultural saloon centers in my slippers, and became a familiar face to every librarian and grocery store clerk.

My year ended restless again without much learned or gained except that the wings of whim can be soft and gentle. If you're driven then do it, because we can only let ourselves down, and i can see now... there's really no need.