The Truth Is Out There: A Shoutout To Mulder

It started when i was kid, maybe seven or eight. I was to listening to P.M. Dawn and Belbiv Devoe, loved Kraft dinner and could occupy hours in the presence of Legos. It began: a recurring nightmare that I became a ship, a rocketship, blasting off from this Earthen surface toward the cratered Moon. I would burn through the atmosphere and watch the hue turn blue to black, stars appear like oncoming twilight, and up ahead our lunar companion slowly growing closer. About this time, always the same in each dream, i would realize my trajectory was amiss and that i would pass by the Moon. The overwhelming notion of Newton's Law on my young brain... (and countless sci-fi films like 2001 and Alien and later, X Files) i would float away forever~ same speed, same direction. If the Little Prince had been American...

I would awake heavy each morning following these dreams. The images and feelings summoned by the notion of eternal drifting left me shaken and only by early afternoon would i shrug it. These dreams faded after a sum of years and i happily returned to the innocent filth of youthful fantasy, dreaming of those girls in homeroom in strange places and positions. Then just reaching teen, i awoke one night to find myself curled in a ball and suspended ten feet from my bed (the high ceilings of my room allowing). Fully awake now but unable to render escape, i realized that i was hanging such as the Moon and... that i was the Moon. How lonesome it is, to be the Moon! I began crying out for help until my brother's girlfriend came and saved me. Her flashlight illuminating my room found me lying face down on my bed, eyes wide. We chainsmoked on the porch until i calmed down enough to go back to bed.

This is all to say, my fascination with the cosmos has always been acute and beckoning. I read of the methane seas on Titan, Saturn's largest moon. The splintered icy surface of Europa and the thick ocean below it, steadily orbiting Jupiter. The strange hexagon shape at Jupiter's northern pole; the solid geometry holding constant despite heavy storms about it. Water-eroded canals of Mars, its daytime temperatures between 50-60ºF; the erupting volcanoes of Io sending magma into space; or the acid-rain on Venus. And us, the blue planet, a pinprick in the cosmos.

Sometimes when i'm feeling cynical i think about our quiet steady evolution, our false notion of progress. All that we've learned and then relearned cos we'd forgotten. Our population and technology running like seismic waves over a span of countless time. I think about our accepted ideologies and religions, barely matured in a few thousand years. And that only a few centuries ago people believed the world to be flat... (of course, a few thousands years before that... they knew it was round), natural resources infinite, wigs and coursets fashionable. And look how far we've come.

Whenever i'm in a pinch i like to imagine the future, looking backward at a certain moment: a job interview, a breakup, a date, or a bender. It allows me to watch from afar and find the humor in an otherwise awkward, bumbling moment. I imagine the future now and see the obvious discovery of other lifeforms in the systems and galaxies beyond, which will fundamentally crumble our religion, false knowledge and virture. Without our God, our foundations for science and government, where will we be? And that's the humor of it; we'll be in exactly the same place without any difference except the knowledge that certainly... we are not alone.


The volcanoes of Jupiter's Io

Take me 270º

I should have been a cowboy, or maybe even a gunslinger. Simplify everything. Narrow my choices: there's steak and potatoes; there's whiskey and beer. There's no studying every knob on draft... just, give me a beer. None of that insolent top-shelf/bottom shelf debating and consequent swilling and sniffing, people sticking their whole nose in a snifter. No, just some whiskey in a shooter, and then it's gone. Nothing fancy.

And have you ever wanted somebody to just shut the fuck up? Well, cowboys can knock em out with one punch. It's amazing, seen it all the time on the tele. And what more, some people like Chuck Norris can do roundhouse kicks in Wranglers, a miracle in itself. I'd like to try out being a loose cannon... simplify my emotions a little bit. Be the quiet type, not brooding, just apt to take long looks on pretty scenery while a kind gal fawns on me. Tell people to back off with my eyes and carry myself real agile like a panther or something. Ready to spring at any moment.

Always liked to nap with a hat over my head, sleeping under an open sky, making a pillow of a bag or coat. All the sounds of night playing quick to your ears and a gentle breeze brushing your clasped hands or the hair about your neck. Always liked the hell out of dogs... wasn't one to talk my head off at them. I like their silence, dig their energy and howling nature. I'd have me a birddog or something and just take life one step lower.

These days pass by...

It's Monday. A thin layer of clouds drifting overhead, dogging the slow breeze looking down upon Noe Valley and the Mission. It's me there in one of those tan buildings gazing out my office window. I lost myself for a few minutes; and now, i'm wondering exactly where i went to. I've been doing that more and more in these past days. The onset of gerry years upon me at such a young age.

It hasn't been an unpleasant thing, nothing to cause alarm. There was a time a few years back that i experienced a similar episode. It lasted a sum of months and one night slipped away as i slept. If one could marry contentment and indifference... I feel anonymous and at peace, with no exigent need to assert opinion or stand by for anything but humor. And yet, also very distant from my own self... like i'm just watching from afar~ all these actions and reactions in succession. It reminds me of sleep deprivation or the third day of a fast, when the quiet loopiness sets in.

Today one of my students skipped lunch. His father had ran short on time and wasn't able to bring him the usual sack lunch at the 11:30 dot. I came into his classroom after recess and found him in the early stages of meltdown. I made eyes with the teacher in silent explanation and gently nudged him out of class. I stole some crackers from the kitchen and we sat on a bench overlooking the playground. As he mumbled his crackers and slowly came to life i talked. I don't know where it came from, this little sermon in the schoolyard about human bodies and our more subtle mechanics.

This kid is obsessed with Legos. In some aspect he brings Legos into every school subject. In math we add and subtract Legos; in social studies we compare Legos technology to Native Americans' (i'm not kidding...); and, in english we write stories (beginning, middle, end) about, yes, Legos, leading astonishingly anthropomorphic lives. And so, i compared our human bodies to Legos, instead of machines, explaining that one must feed and water the body or it'll be unable to function. He dusted some crumbs off his lap and commented on the strange texture of this particular cracker. I continued: that unlike Legos, we all have feelings and that they can become jumbled when we don't eat or hydrate (hence his issue earlier with another student). Or, that kids' thoughts can wander aimless in the classroom, unable to focus when the teacher's talking. That's when he asked me about kool-aid and how he likes the purple kind. You mean grape? i asked. No... purple, he replied.

Going for a walk.

There's this saying that i've been fumbling with in the past few years: When it goes wrong, it really goes right. And there's been variations on the wording but always the same idea. I've used it to brace myself against the fair travesties of events like Jackson, Wyoming ... a haven for cloned melo-emotions and me smack in the middle. Or the night i walked home drunk through a Maine blizzard and got pneumonia, but kept working my three jobs all the same. I remember holding a cough and running into the kitchen, donned in my serving tuxedo monkey-suit, and nearly falling over as i convulsed in the pantry. Then there was a morning on the ferry, i was sitting atop my backpack on deck looking through the rails; watching a side of wake and the town beyond i was leaving: best friend, home, and job.

We all could use a hand and who better than ourselves to give it. So i devised this saying to explain the true efficacy of otherwise sole negative haps. My brother tells me that a Libran Sun and Leo Moon proves caustic to my goal of stability. That's kind of a bummer if it's true, though it would put some discourse to the whole of my life. Astrologically-challenged may be a future term if a polite and liberal society like San Francisco wins the masses.

The essence of my personal adage is: despite a turn toward the less-desired, hence it goes wrong... at least an answer has been reached. And as human beings, we have such ruthless faculty for cataloguing events as they pass into our own history. It's nearly alarming how we can remove our sentiments and file away any occurrence resolved, if we see so fit. More misgiving is the unanswered thing in my life; i don't know what to do with it. Tricks to bring peace of mind, maybe that's what this is about.

I have this new friend. She's this engaging canuck with a sunny dispostion, who allays the usual histrionics of conversation, inviting ease. I went to pick her up the other day for a trip out of town. Backpack full of food and water, thermos of coffee strapped to the side. My car made five blocks and then stalled on the corner of 22nd and Folsom. All i could do was laugh as i pushed my car three blocks toward a vacant spot, drawing eyes of passerby with my push through a major intersection. Out-of-state plates. The early morning light still throwing shadows over much of the neighborhood grid and down on the streets. I left her there near a crumbling curb, beneath a tree scattering brittle leaves.

My friend came and picked me up and we drove across the bridge into Marin, through the rainbow tunnel. And the smooth ascension northward, not looking back except to laugh. Loosing any achievement for a day or two and feeling glad to be sharing this space with a friend. The stupid luck of knowing something went right.

Kairos on the corner.

We're covering new ground here... the brave beyond that i've been cautiously awaiting. Stretching out the fingertips, and most especially~ the mind, toward this feeling of home that's coming over me, gently. Was pushing across the Mission with a case of beer atop one shoulder, connecting the dots for proper consumption. Pantlegs rolled above the ankle, shirt-sleeves, and looking forward to the sandals at home.

It was down on Folsom crossing into my laundromat district, watching the tumble dry from midway over the yellow hashes. And as i regained the sidewalk i noticed a few buds sprouting on a treebranch overhead. Yeah that's right you fucking nerd, terminal and apical meristems giving it up for another swing through the seasons.

This new green above me, whorled and alternate and opposite, on some tree or other.... and then the grand scheme, sort of similar to when you dial in a raindrop or a snowflake falling from the sky. Then WHAM! focusing in... you can see a million of them. But, you have to recognize that first one, like this here meristem i was refering to. So i craned my neck a while, i've been told i look like a bird before. Perhaps that prehistoric flightless fucking thing from New Zealand. Had scales instead of feathers and stood ten feet, or some crazy shit like that. Giant peckin' Big Bird. Remember Follow That Bird? Goddamn... what a movie. I'm gonna park my kids in front of that one. Might wait on the whole Labrynth thing, lest they wish conjecture on Bowie's pod.

Anyway, i was stopped on the corner sidewalk musing this line of no-name trees, cos my botany is pathetic in the California + Ornamental department... and it struck me that i felt a maddening affinity for this neighborhood. It was beginning to belong to me, or me to it... whatever the case; and, moreover, noticing a change upon it was endearing of all things. Kinda like your little cousin learning how to shamelessly flirt with girls and convincing them he's worth their time (... really hope you're reading this Sam, you're pivotal in all things progressive).

There's so many things that i don't know and those needn't be addressed (cos i surely haven't the time to list). But, for what i do know... i find they must be constantly reaffirmed or i lose the meaning, and more so, lose the feeling of what it means to know them: bodily knowledge. And for me, i can't think of a more heartening thing than feeling that i belong (which i know is fiction...), and for just a moment in a day to be present. For one instant only, i was content and philistine with something as simple, and yet crucial, as a coming season. Lowering the bar cos it must be done.