Contrails. You left one too...

This is a repost on the thought of staying in the Bay Area... circa 2007
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Above the patchwork of hued farmland and stricken cuts along the hillsides, veins scratched from logs dollied upwards. Metal jaws clamping and cinches loosed, the waiting trucks along the yellow-clay roadways. And my lorax northwest analogies... looking downward.

So far below and San Francisco a mile per second further behind. I'm leaving home and going home all the same, the same time. And poor Frank who i left nights back at that social/networking/drinking scene downtown amongst the lofts and industrial hangouts. I think of him and our philosophical discussion, bordering metaphysics and that whole pitfall of sugarcoatedness (which we miraculously sidestepped); his selfless confidence ringing. I always heard the confident tone; it sounds louder on my ears, i always could listen harder. You seem like somebody concerned with the idea of home, he said. I'd known him for only a few minutes. I was on a second glass of overpriced sauvignon blanc, my thirty-sixth hour of wakefulness, thirtieth hour of over-stimulation, fifteenth hour of pollyannaist ga-ga for the world and its inhabitants. The comfort of strangers... a few to mention.

Nearing Seattle, the lowering hum of engines aside me and the left wing stretching out toward the Pacific. I can see the mighty Columbia reaching the coast, its flat slow waters tamed with a shot of soma and hydroelectricity. Let's not save the world, I'm thinking. I'm done with anything even feigning that resolution. Maybe saving yourself... unlikely by abstraction alone, but feasible i guess... and at least acceptable.

Let's not worry that timing is everything. I still wanna hope that it was the right time, you know i do. And despite any leaning theory of governance and guidance, i don't wanna resign myself but rather push it in the direction of my hoped outcome. I'm not worried anymore if I'm lost or found. I'd like to be found, but it's out of my hands. And oh those Olympic Mountains... still white and starked with dark rocks and shadow. Enough to make me forget wholly any point i may have had. The only thing resounding is a sweet contentment...

Daydream #9

Each morning the northbound train carries an icy wind that cuts through my jacket and creeps up my pant legs and, as it leaves the tunnel my train arrives heading south along the tracks toward the City. We all know each other in way, standing in our rows each morning awaiting the same car and seat that takes us to an office somewhere. This is our routine- safety in the familiar; days bleed together. We don't talk, sometimes there's a nod. Many have their hands on devices, heads bent to a small screen, scrolling documents, social networking, who knows. Others thumb through the morning paper, middle-aged women proudly hold novels with rippling bare-chested men on the covers, lavender-colored with flowers and horses and rapturous looks. Others nod off with sorrow straining the lines aside their mouths, over-worked and underpaid, and as they fall asleep their faces relax and for a while they look peaceful.

I hide my eyes with sunglasses, turning away from the florescent overheads, and bury myself in other people's stories. And sometimes when I'm especially drawn I warp forward ten stops and nearly miss my station, wondering where the time went, where my sense of presence went. I was told that it's a form of self-induced hypnosis, when we lose ourselves in essentially non-thought. I like it, it feels restful and calm and I always wish to have stayed longer there.

These days I want to be a cowboy in Wyoming with rough-calloused hands and simple desires. I imagine a stretch of land, a small garden, and a few modest buildings that all need occasional tending. A fence needing mending or perhaps an old line of fence that needs removing to clear the corridor for the winter elk coming down from the surrounding peaks. Maybe there'll be a train there too, not so far away calling in the distance, not carrying these businessmen and women or semi-professional like me, but instead wood or coal, machinery, food. Everyone loves the sound of a train... I think you could say that, except perhaps the wildlife probably scared shitless somewhere in a hole. And then maybe a rocky stream with deep pools for fish and swimming. Yeah, that'd be good. I wonder if I could be happy with just greens and golds and square-dance swinging cowgirls on Friday nights at the grange. Everything, domestic. I'd like to think so, but I have to get to work now.

Dear M.

Dear M,

Four sets of seasons have passed and I’m still where I left you. I wanted to do the leaving and so I packed my things while you were out and left. I decided to stay here because there was really nowhere else for me to go. It also seemed to be the least predictable place to find me and I wanted to keep everyone guessing. It always came natural for me to run and I quickly set my sights on some mountains in the southwest where I’d never been before. It took all my strength to not go there.

I’ve been thinking about quantum physics and multiple universes lately, but the truth is I never took a physics class or read any credible writing on the subject and so I have a very limited understanding. I get that uni means one and multi means many. That was a big step. I understand that matter has some strict rules to follow and that its behavior is governed by outside forces. And, I also understand that math can have a mind of its own and imply answers to questions the mathematician never asked. That’s the part that most interests me.

The famous physicist Brian Greene was on the radio last month and then just yesterday I saw him on a talk-show. He recently wrote another quantum physics book that I’d never be able to get through but still sounds interesting. He thinks there are other us out there and pretty eloquently sold it.

I’ve been imagining that other mes just kept on going in those places where the me writing turned away and redirected. I was wondering if there’s a place way out by M83, millions of light years overhead on some planet that looks just like our's, where we went on together and still are. It doesn’t make any sense, yet then again what does? So many of our daily comings and goings are based on ridiculous assumptions of things impossible in nature. Like, why is your hair red? And what the hell is red anyway?

This isn’t to say I regret anything between us, because I do but that’s beside the point. I would prefer to strike the tenderness from my hand and dispassionately compare our situation to a simple cost benefit analysis or return on investment, which involves formulae and equations that probably added up to less than one. But I don’t understand economics or finances and so I wouldn’t know. I’m more into the natural sciences that touch on things like magnetism and repulsion and chemical weathering and survival.

So let’s just assume that there is in fact another M and she’s way out there by M83, having some discussion with an other me. Maybe she’s making two drinks at the kitchen counter and now she’s turning to bring them and the ice is clicking in the glasses as she moves. What’s different with her? She walks the short distance to a couch and coffee table with a few friends gathered around and hands the other me a drink, cold beads forming on the glass. And as she rejoins the conversation, I wonder, what is she going to say?

And precipitation is expected

My brother surprised me one time by raising a toast in my honor. I can't remember how he said it or what in fact he did say. I can't even recall the place or the occasion or the people around us. I do remember there was family and some kind of special occasion, perhaps a holiday altogether forgettable like the Chinese New Year or Easter.

He looked me in the eye, head half turned and bent with a mischievous spark and announced something like, I hope this year you don't hold any grudges. God, maybe it was the new year, Chinese or otherwise. Regardless, I thought, Wow! what the fuck did you just say? He was already laughing to himself, oh... that was a good one Benjamin. Because the truth was there, it was said, and it was dead on.

I hadn't really thought of it that way before. Goddamn, he was right! I'd always thought of my anger and rage as something dignified and gallant in its air of chivalry. Inconsiderate? then Fuck You! from here on out! Unfair, unsaid, unwanted? Well, there's the door. I have so much to learn.

I've been listening to some talks by this woman named Pema Chodron, a Buddhist nun and teacher. She talks about the Shenpa, which is human attachment or the hook in all its strength. Shenpa is the tightness we feel stemming from negative reaction to the world around us. Pema observes that the majority of a person's actions directly relate to the fear of facing the void and the devising of a complex system of distractions and lockdowns to ensure it from happening. Shenpa represents that binding fear and she instructs us to face it, feel it, and revisit it, until it loses its power or dissolves. God I sound like such a cult member already! Still, I really relate to Pema, her voice and her way of understanding and explaining. I'm not typically interested in anything resembling religion or self-help or over the top new-agey. But, there's something about this Shenpa thing that gets me...

It's still early on a Thursday night, my Friday by product of four tens, and I find myself sipping a nightcap on the couch and feeling utterly enervated from the week. I've been mulling this idea of revisiting old wounds and wondering about the thin line between healthy recapitulation and straight indulgence. I have the Fear as Hunter Thompson would call it, with every part of my body repelling the inward pull. And so I sip this drink and distract myself. I write old friends and lovers unsolicited letters of greeting and recompense.