there is no time for mud pie

"If we consider the unblushing promises of reward and the staggering nature of the rewards promised in the Gospels, it would seem that Our Lord finds our desires not too strong, but too weak. We are half-hearted creatures, fooling about with drink and sex and ambition when infinite joy is offered to us, like an ignorant child who wants to go on making mud pies in a slum because he cannot imagine what is meant by the offer of a holiday at the sea. We are far too easily pleased." -C.S. Lewis

__________

Every time I travel back into Nashville from all those places, I play the same thing on the car stereo - right about the time my tires roll onto I-440. It's the only time I am even remotely tempted to smoke a cigarette.

When you're back in your old neighborhood,
The cigarettes taste so good,
But you're so misunderstood-
You're so misunderstood

I don't know if I'm misunderstood, but Jeff Tweedy seems to think so. Of course, that's assuming that the song is about me.
__________

I had a friend tell me recently to not fear being a broken record. I've feared being a broken record all my life. Perhaps that is why I am one.

He told me that riding a horse requires that you fall. The whole question about it is what you do when you're lying face-down with dirt in your eyes. Grass stains. Perhaps lacerations here and there. Normally, I tend to find some twisted sense of relief after a fall. Within seconds, I begin baking. Mud pies are riding down the factory line. That's right, I already built a factory. It's easy when I am wallowing in the mud. But who can blame me when they are flying off the bakery shelves? People are passing up holidays on the beach to eat a piece of this shit. I mean, mud. Pies.

It takes a while, but I will eventually realize what I am eating, and I will slowly, very slowly, saddle-up again.

But then I make a mistake that will later have me eating pies till I pop: I tell myself that I will never fall out of the saddle again if I can hold on tight enough. And with knuckles clenched white on the reins, I kick. Here we go again.
__________

In college, we had a poster of Bruce Lee hanging over our kitchen sink. He was ever present above our culinary endeavors, but more importantly, he kept a watchful eye over the dirty dishes. Someone, in a moment of pure civility, stuck a post-it note next to Lee's mouth that read: DO YOUR DISHES!

If I had small enough hands and my elbows were double-jointed, I would tack that very poster up inside my brain. Only, this time the post-it note would read: THERE IS NO TIME FOR MUD PIE!

shattering geocentrism

Wilco - "War on War"


I think a lot about identity. I have written about it before on here a good bit. Issues with identity cause, I believe, more destruction than any other issue. I might go as far as to say that identity issues cause all the other issues. Problems with identity are catalysts for every other anthropogenic problem in existence.

That is how seriously I think about identity.

Let's start here:

Everything in my own immediate experience supports my deep belief that I am the absolute center of the universe - the realest, most vivid and important person in existence. We rarely think about this sort of natural, basic self-centeredness because it's so socially repulsive, but it's pretty much the same for all of us. It is our default setting, hard-wired into our boards at birth. Think about it: there is no experience you have had that you are not the absolute center of. The world as you experience it is there in front of YOU or behind YOU, to the left or right of YOU, on YOUR television or YOUR monitor, and so on. Other peoples' thoughts and feelings have to be communicated to you somehow, but your own are so immediate, urgent, real. --David Foster Wallace in his May 21, 2005 commencement address at Kenyon College

When I do actually think about it, it's true - I cannot sense anything without filtering it through my nerves, muscles, synapses, and brain waves. But does that have to encourage conceit? Can I be my own Copernicus, igniting a heliocentric fire within my being?

YES. But it isn't easy. "It's a matter of my choosing to do the work of somehow altering or getting free of my natural, hard-wired default setting which is to be deeply and literally self-centered and to see and interpret everything through this lens of self." --David Foster Wallace

Now, what Wallace didn't say in his address, and I assume because he didn't know, is that it takes an identity crisis. It takes a force so strong, that is seems to rip apart time and space, but it does the trick. Just pray for it. Pray for a crisis, something that will take you to a place of brokenness - where you can see clearly all the rotten fruit that you produce on your own:

It is obvious what kind of life develops out of trying to get your own way all the time: repetitive, loveless, cheap sex; a stinking accumulation of mental and emotional garbage; frenzied and joyless grabs for happiness; trinket gods; magic-show religion; paranoid loneliness; cutthroat competition; all-consuming-yet-never-satisfied wants; a brutal temper; an impotence to love or be loved; divided homes and divided lives; small-minded and lopsided pursuits; the vicious habit of depersonalizing everyone into a rival; uncontrolled and uncontrollable addictions; ugly parodies of community. I could go on. --Galatians 5: 19-21 (The Message)

A friend of mine recently expressed to me a disagreement she has with her roommate. Because of the disagreement, their friendship is suffering - conversations are strained, if not forced. And so far, her method of dealing with the situation is to ignore and avoid. Until something happens to settle the disagreement, she is avoiding the topic. But she feels conviction - she told me she feels like the man who has a log in his eye in Jesus' parable in Luke 6. This is the kind of conviction that we feel when we see our own rotten fruit.

"As harsh as some of Jesus' words are, they are also beautiful and comforting. No more worrying about what an audience thinks, no more trying to elbow our way to the top. We have Him instead, a God who redeems our identity for us, giving us His righteousness." --Donald Miller in Searching For God Knows What

That is why being the center of our own universe takes so much work. We have to look just right, like the right music, go to the right coffee shop, like the right people, drive the right car, have the right brand of men's body spray, have a facebook, don't have a facebook, have a facebook, don't have a facebook. It takes so much work because we aren't supposed to be the center! Christ calls us to be Copernicus. We are to put Him, the Son, at the center. Everything revolves around Him.

I'll finish this with another longer section out of Miller's Searching For God Knows What.

This kind of life (one where you aren't the center) could take place only within a relationship with God, the One who takes care of our needs, the One who really has the power to tell us who we are, if we would only trust in Him.

Imagine how much a man's life would be changed if he trusted that he was loved by God? He could interact with the poor and not show partiality, he could love his wife easily and not expect her to redeem him, he would be slow to anger because redemption was no longer at stake, he could be wise and giving with his money because money no longer represented points, he could give up on formulaic religion, knowing that checking stuff off a spiritual to-do list was a worthless pursuit, he would have confidence and the ability to laugh at himself, and he could love people without expecting anything in return. It would be quite beautiful, really.

Do you know what King David did one time when he was worshiping God? He took off all his clothes and danced around in the street. Everybody was watching him and he didn't care. His poor wife was completely embarrassed, but David didn't worry, he didn't care what anybody thought about him; he just took off his clothes before God and danced.

Don't get me wrong, I have no intention of taking off my clothes on Sunday morning at church. I bring this up only to say there is a certain freedom in getting our feelings of redemption from God and not other people. This is what we have always wanted, isn't it? And it isn't the American dream at all, it is the human dream, the deepest desire of our hearts.

I would imagine, then, that the repentance we are called to is about choosing one audience over another. Jesus says many times in the gospel that He knows the heart of man, and the heart of man does not have the power to give glory. I think Jesus is saying, Look, you guys are running around like monkeys trying to get people to clap, but people are fallen, they are separated from God, so they have no idea what is good or bad, worthy to be judged or set free, beautiful or ugly to begin with. Why not get your glory from God? Why not accept your feelings of redemption because of His pleasure in you, not the fickle and empty favor of man? And only then will you know who you are, and only then will you have true, uninhibited relationships with others.

OR, as Jeff Tweedy puts it so sweetly, so simply on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, "You have to learn how to die if you wanna be alive."

Another quest to cure the world of Full Pocket Syndrome

"I am a model tenant and a model citizen and take pleasure in doing all that is expected of me. My wallet is full of identity cards, library cards, credit cards. Last year I purchased a flat olive-drab strongbox, very smooth and heavily built with double walls for fire protection, in which I placed my birth certificate, college diploma, honorable discharge, G.I. insurance, a few stock certificates, and my inheritance: a deed to ten acres of a defunct duck club down in St Bernard Parish, the only relic of my father's many enthusiasms. It is a pleasure to carry out the duties of a citizen and to receive in return a receipt or a neat styrene card with one's name on it certifying, so to speak, one's right to exist. What satisfaction I take in appearing the first day to get my auto tag and brake sticker! I subscribe to Consumer Reports and as a consequence I own a first-class television set, an all but silent air conditioner and a very long lasting deodorant. My armpits never stink. I pay attention to all spot announcements on the radio about mental health, the seven signs of cancer, and safe driving--though I usually prefer to ride the bus. Yesterday a favorite of mine, William Holden delivered a radio announcement on litterbugs. 'Let's face it,' said Holden. 'Nobody can do anything about it--but you and me.' That is true. I have been careful ever since." --John Bickerson Bolling in Walker Percy's The Moviegoer

Mr. Bolling is about to embark on an undefined search. I believe I can relate.

"What is the nature of the search? you ask.

Really it is very simple, at least for a fellow like me; so simple that it is easily overlooked.

The search is what anyone would undertake if he were not sunk in the everydayness of his own life. This morning, for example, I felt as if I had come to myself on a strange island. And what does such a castaway do? Why, he pokes around the neighborhood and he doesn't miss a trick.

To become aware of the possibility of the search is to be onto something. Not to be onto something is to be in despair."

I believe I am onto something, which is encouraging. I am no longer in despair. I will definitely let you know of everything I discover. I want to throw down a rope and give anyone a chance to be onto something.

I am not being self-righteous here at all. I am currently fumbling and grabbing at ropes that others are throwing down to me. I just want to extend the favor - the blessing.

More posts to come soon - I was pretty busy, tired, computer-less, and/or incapacitated during my last week and a half on the farm to post anything. But I am back in the States, missing my fellow castaways and excited to greet old outcasts.

the disconnect

When we arrived to the farm, one of the first things us R2R students did was to split into pairs and get to know each other. We discussed where we were from, what events brought us here, and what we expect to get out of the program. As my partner Dez and I were chatting, I started to realize, on a general level, why I came here. I became aware of my own desires. Specifically, a desire for connection.

There is so much disconnection in modern society, especially modern Western culture. There is a terrible lack of communication and education from generation to generation, so much so that we treat the elders of our society as a great burden with little to offer. Movies make jokes about old people that don't have any idea what's really going on while their 11-year-old grandchild text messages their friends using horrifying acronyms that butcher the very existence of grammatical rules in the English language.

This very example is what I mean by disconnect. Kids today are disconnected from the English language. They "use" it and communicate with it and write with it, but they barely understand how words are actually spelled, how to form a complete sentence, or how to write without emoticons.

I came here to reconnect. I realized that the things that my ancestors discovered, realized, used, and loved were lost to me. I barely had simple survival skills, let alone farming, building, and cooking skills. Not even electrical skills. Nobody likes a guy with no skills.

I wanted to close that generation gap and reclaim the things that are my rights as a human. To make fire, to grow food, to build shelter, to drink clean water, to eat natural, beautiful food. I didn't want to be removed anymore.

Many people today are completely removed from their food. They buy it, prepare it, love it, and eat it, but they have no idea what came before that. They don't understand the whole process. I want to be a part of the whole process, or at least know about the whole process.

Same goes with my faith. I want to be a part of the whole process. I don't just want to be on the receiving end of some divine light that miraculously shines on me and gives me good graces. I want to know Him.

Now, of course, this isn't necessary. It might actually be easier to go through life ignorant about everything. We humans are pretty good at ignoring things that make us have to get up off of our lay-z-boy. They do say "ignorance is bliss," right? Bullshit. Ignorance is a fleeting, artificial bliss that breeds cowardice and laziness.

So, though it may not be necessary by the world's standards, this reconnection is very necessary by life's standards. It is so easy to start a fire by pulling out your bic lighter and today's newspaper, but have you ever started a fire with nothing but a few sticks you found in the woods? It may take you all day, but when you get that dust to coalesce, and you carefully burn tender to get a flame, it is the most rewarding thing. You were part of the whole process. You were living.

I'll end with a line from one of my favorite Switchfoot songs:

"We've got information in the information age,
but do we know what life is outside of our convenient Lexus cages?"

changes | pretty soon you're gonna get a little older

It's been 2009 for a week now.

Isn't the separation of years funny sometimes? Why January through December? All it really is is the change of a date. The eight changed to a nine. That's it. But it means more, doesn't it?

I imagine people wanting to lose weight in November but waiting for January to formally announce their goal. I imagine slates getting wiped clean and records being thrown out. Records of wrongs, I hope.

Obviously, with all the observation spent on the phenomena of a new year, people will notice change. And like any other 12 month period, a lot has changed for me. One year ago, I was in school, desperately trying to finish everything so I could graduate. I was anxious about trying to figure out what would come after that. I took baths. And I was already completely over the whole election thing.

Now, I am a college graduate, I have moved away from Knoxville for the first time in 5 years. I am leaving for St. Croix in four days, and now I take showers. Oh, and the election is FINALLY over - (you'd think I am an old man from the amount of cynicism I have already built up toward politics and its media coverage).

But on top of all these logistical life changes, I can't help but want to acknowledge a change within me as well. I hope that I have become a better friend, son, and brother. As melodramatic as it sounds, I am serious - I absolutely love my friends and family.

roadtrip chronicles VI: birthday blues

cambria, california.
monday, 7/17/06.
10:17 pm.
some odd number of miles - who really cares at this point anyway?






Some things I've learned in the past two days:
- It is impossible to sleep in Vegas
- The Eraser is a good cd
- You can thoroughly clean your whole body at a rest area
- No one in L.A. knows what a trashcan is
- The Hollywood sign is not worth trying to get a picture of
- Niether are elephant seals
- L.A. has 547 Starbucks
- Something is wrong with my ankle
- Forrest Gump is a good movie
- Joon's airbags work
- Hostels are the way to go
- America is a sad and lonely place, until it pities you

roadtrip chronicles V: oh, my sweet disposition

las vegas, nevada.
saturday, 7/15/06.
10:11 pm.
3,050 miles.

Will and I woke up early yesterday morning at the Arizona Welcome Center. We actually got cold that night and had to cover up with a blanket. The sun had set into a cliff that night, and when we woke in the morning, we noticed several teepees and buffulo stand-ups and billboards boasting of authentic indian jewelry clinging to its rocks. We washed and headed for Flagstaff. The stretch of I-40 east of Flagstaff is sullen. The city is always in the back of your mind and you know it is close. For some reason it never seems to come and it is always looming in the distance. We passed by the Petrified Forest, we passed the dinosaur fossils, we passed the largest petrified tree, we even passed the largest meteor crater in the world, hoping Flagstaff would suffice for missing all those garnished attractions, but it remained in the distance. I think the reason for this is because the flat, dusty land is torn upwards in Flagstaff. You see the mountains waving in the boiling heat about 30 miles out, spinning your mind to an oasis trance. Eventually, and thankfully, the mountains become visibly solid and authentic giants.

I found myself feeling sad on the road. I thought how foreign the desert seemed. So foreign that it felt like another planet. I could actually understand why so many people in this part of the country have conspiracy thoeries and some even claim to have been abducted into silver saucers and anesthetized in spherical ERs with black-eyed doctors. I also thought about people back home. I wondered what would happen if I just stayed here and never went back. And it made me sad. Not because I knew that would be a terrible thing to do, but because I realized that I often seek other's love by acting like I don't want it. Instead of pursuing conversation or fellowship with friends and family, I ignore it until it hurts. And I was hurting this morning because I didn't know how to wander through Arizona and seek my friends at the same time. I think that is why I didn't want to even bring a phone or computer with me in the first place. Maybe I will stop dialing up and signing on and opening my mouth for the rest of this trip. Maybe then I will actually have something meaningful to say to someone when I get home.

I entered Flagstaff drained by my desert sadness. Will felt the same way. We decided to climb a mountian that shadowed the city, so we made our way down route 66 to the Elden Lookout Trailhead. We hiked up the 3 miles to the summit and rewarded ourselves with a cool glass of gatorade once we reached the bottom again. Something happened as we hiked that lifted the weight of our sadness, so we took our rejuvinated sprits to enjoy a Celtic festival that we found going on at an amphiteater in the historic downtown. I fell in love with the city then. The gray haired women, the german shepherds, the chaco wearing children, and the bearded fathers all poured onto friendly streets that invited me in with no questions. I found myself lying on the downtown sidewalk, wishing things and tearing things up inside me. I could not hold a single thought steady for more than 3 seconds, but I knew that something was wanting to change. It started to hurt after a while and I sweated in the coolness of the night. I was very sad to leave that city.

This morning we woke in a parking lot on route 66 and stole north toward canyon country. The canyon is too big to try and describe, and I don't think I will ever quite appreciate its beauty. It is grand, and it is a canyon. Now I sit in Las Vegas after taking Hwy. 93 over the Hoover Dam. This city of lights is obnoxious. It is too hot to care, and my fingers are melting as I type. I didn't actually plan on ever coming through Vegas, but here we are, and we could have done without. Driving through the downtown strip made my legs shake like a math exam. When we finally left downtown and headed to our vacant lot for tonight, I felt as if I had just been given a second chance at life after a traffic jam trip to hell. I'm just trying to appreciate the little things right now - like the fan in my car that's really just blowing the hot air around, or the granola bar rumbling in my belly, or the streetlight thats shining in my face. I really can't wait to leave Vegas.

roadtrip chronicles IV: another for the road (come on baby, light my fire)

on our way from albuquerque, NM to the arizona border.
Thursday, 7/13/06.
7:15 pm.
2,469 miles.

I think Jim Morrison had magical eyes. I know the Doors had a keyboard/organ player, but as I listen to them right now, I imagine him fueling all the music in some kind of solo, spiritual trick. His hands are raised high, pointing the fire how far up it should go - how far forward in time it should go. And that organ is presently tickling a BNSF train into a slow crawl in western New Mexico. I wonder if Jim Morrison knew that he could make a train move in the future. I wonder if he knew that I would be in the back of Joon letting his stare tickle the ivories that are my fingers. Come on baby, light my fire.

This morning, Will and I left El Paso destined for Albuquerque, NM. This stretch of the trip was very refreshing for the both of us. Will decided he wanted to talk for a while and slow his mind down. I think he is like me in the sense that his thoughts start to overtake him after a while. I do the same thing - if I am left alone with my thoughts too much, I sometimes try to hold them like little child with a hand-full of marbles. They slowly begin to slip through my fingers, and I am left crawling around on the dirty ground desperately trying to relocate, reconfigure, and reorganize. This is the comfort of conversation - it forces you to let only one or two thoughts form at once. When you have to shape those thoughts into words, your mind finally slows down a little and processes everything. Together, we processed thoughts. We talked of the roadtrip, and what it meant to each of us. And I told him how I have been trying to figure out why I really decided to go on this adventure. I know that is just what I wanted - an adventure. But why? ...I haven’t quite figured it out yet, but I know it wasn’t because I wanted to see the Grand Canyon, and I know it wasn’t because I wanted to sleep in the back of my car more than I already do in Knoxville. Perhaps it is because I am bored, but I’d rather think it is just that I am changing, but I'm still unsure as to what I am changing into. And maybe this trip is a way of letting go of all the stuff that gets in between me and God's changing hand. I am trying to see all the options and let Him shove me through the right door. I really just want God to punch me in the face, and I am pretty hungry for that right now. Hopefully He’ll punch me with an Arizona sunset tonight, or the Pacific Ocean in a few days. And hopefully, when I get back to Tennessee, He can punch me with my beautiful friends that I miss. I miss them like Winnie misses his pooh.

We also talked about how depressed I get sometimes when I leave Mckay’s Used Books in Knoxville. I usually feel this way because most of the people checking out beside me are old women with a cart-full of Danielle Steele novels. And I wonder if this emotional escape is really any different than pornography. And I wonder if I don’t try to emotionally escape through Sigur Ros or Bright Eyes or Wes Anderson or even C.S. Lewis. On my best behavior, I am really just like them.

I think our conversation eased both of our spirits and readied us for a beautiful afternoon in Albuquerque. We both sat in Lindy’s coffee shop for a long while as we wrote and read. It was incredibly hot outside when walked around downtown - women woo-hooing on motorcycles, hobos selling timepieces, businessmen with phones close at hand, so we just sat inside and the mad-hatter ate lunch at the table across from us. Albuquerque was pink and yellow with splashes of blue and green. It made me flex my mind and wish I was on a jungle gym or digging up geodes like I was 11 again. We left Albuquerque quietly.

The red mountains and silver shelves of New Mexico are passing by me right now as we drive toward Arizona. Joon is kicking up dust and the sun is about to give way to the moon. This place belongs in the moonlight. The tickled train is long gone, but Jim Morrison is still enchanting a keyboard. One in the past that sings his song, and one in the present that types these words. I feel God in the air right now - through the windshield and through my hat and through my skull. I feel Him in the silence - through the trucks and through the music and through the thoughts that constantly scream in my head. He is so much more than all that. Thank God.

I hope the sun sets in Arizona. We’ll be there in 11 miles and the sun is just now turning red. We’ve got some time.

roadtrip chronicles III: sleeping under the mountain star

El Paso, Texas.
Thursday, 7/13/06.
7:30 am.
2,048 miles.

Texas is selfishly big and strangely populated. Yesterday, we drove over 700 miles and about 600 of those miles were spent driving through no man’s land. The road cut into a curiously dry landscape covered in brown brush and cacti. Wrinkled hills and thin-skinned mountains lead quietly into older flat-lands that give nothing to sight besides a horizon held down by the most vast sky I have ever seen. (It seems like the sky is all there is in Texas). The strange part is that all this creation that’s spread out around us comes dotted with concrete monsters that try to swallow us as we yawn along the highway in Joon. Houston almost ate us when we hung onto its teeth for 7 or 8 hours, tempting its appetite.

Will and I finally left Houston and drove northwest. We slept at a truck-stop in Ellington and spent the next morning in Austin. We did our best to keep it weird. After a visit to Zilker Park, Waterloo Records, and the post office, we were off toward San Antonio and beyond. Once San Antonio was out of mind, we entered the 600 miles of gorgeous nothingness that gave me a casual crick in the neck and a speeding ticket. 9 hours later Will and I were in the midst of the El Paso lights. The lights spread out too far to account for in one direction. There was a storm cloud hovering ominously over the city, drilling it with lightning every few seconds. Under the cloud, the sun was setting, and we knew we had to sleep here.

I wondered what it would be like if we got jobs at one of the local Fuddruckers and rented an apartment among the Hispanic footprints. This is something I’ve been thinking about most of the trip, though. When I see shopping malls and Starbucks and neighborhoods, I wonder how different these people’s lives really are from mine. Will and I went to a Walgreens in Houston and I felt like the people there were just like me. They were buying stuff just like me, they all have homes and families and friends. They all wake up in the morning and go to sleep at night and read books and watch movies, maybe even the same movies I watch. I don’t know why this was such a weird thought, but it was. It honestly shook me up for a brief moment. I think I could live in El Paso.

We found a Texas Star made out of lights resting on one of the great hills that overlook the city. The 40 or 50 foot star drew us to it, and we found our way up the hill on a scenic drive bordered by overlooks and coin operated telescopes. We decided to sleep in a neighborhood just below the hill, and drove up to the summit at sunrise this morning. The eastern horizon was on fire. If I am ever in El Paso con una chica, I’m taking her there.

I am both happy and sad to leave Texas behind. Unfortunately, I will probably forget about its beauty for a while when I see New Mexico’s and Arizona’s for the next few days. I’m just like a little kid - both happy and sad, forgetting things I learned yesterday .....and wishing my mom could fix me a PB&J (with no crust).

roadtrip chronicles II: santa goes to the dentist

houston, texas.
tuesday, july 11th.
2:10 pm.
1,203 miles.

If you thought I was skinny before, wait until after this trip - I will be a skeleton. Last night was the first night that Will and I slept in the car, and it was almost unbearably hot... but just almost. Even though about a gallon of sweat left each of our bodies over the course of a few hours, we decided that we could handle it for a month. Plus, as I told Will, it will make his dorm room seem like a heavenly land of cozy, cleanliness. Once we rolled down the back windows and took off as much clothing as possible, we were able to cope. Man, I can't wait for Washington....

We left Pickwick late Sunday night and drove Cassie back to her sister's place in Birmingham. We stayed there the night and left early the next morning to get my glasses fixed from an unfortunate mishap at the lake - thanks Cassie (it was really my fault, though). After leaving Birmingham, we headed south toward Mobile and then west to New Orleans. Will and I spent a few hours exploring the city and feeling somewhat desolate as we were surrounded by destroyed, empty neighborhoods and strip-malls that were gray and feather-lite. It was quite surreal, actually. I felt like I was in a ghost town even though Katrina hit 9 or 10 months ago. The people we did see, though, were no less surreal. As Will noted, they seemed to know something we didn't - whether it was in their arrogant swagger, or in their meek stares - they just looked as if they knew what was up. That's really the best I can describe it. This observation was especially accentuated after a visit to the French Quarter, which, altough colored and heavy with life and money, seemed just as desolate as the abandoned cars and apartments or the trashed downtown streets.

We ended our New Orleans experience on a fisherman's beach, with concrete steps falling into the sea, and water lapping at Mexico's feet. We watched the sunset and listened to Spanish voices and planned our next move - food and sleep. So we drove toward Baton Rouge and ate. And we slept just outside of the city, and this part of the plan was almost foiled when a concerned homeowner decided to shine his flashlight toward our car from his driveway, forcing us to find a different resting place. And we did, and we sweated, and we talked because we couldn't sleep, and we woke up early and drove to Houston, TX where I now sit. We went to a Texas beach this morning, too. It was scuzzy, to say the least, so I think we'll leave the beach part of the trip up to California and Oregon. .....I'm hungry, I think I'll go buy Thom Yorke's album at Waterloo Records in Austin.....

roadtrip chronicles I: humble moon

pickwick lake, alabama.
saturday, july 8th.
9:50 pm.
220 miles.

I'm so glad there is no formula to life. I've always been pretty terrible at doing things the way they are supposed to be done anyway, so I like to think that there is no "best" way to live life. I try to think of it as an adventure. It is getting lost in a fusion of interstate exits, saying goodbye to loved ones, breaking your only pair of glasses, and fighting the wind with your lashes. Yet, so much of the time I look past all that. I long for something more - I long for heaven on earth. Maybe I should stop trying to pull the whole glorious place down here and just settle for splashing glimpses of it in people's faces.

Yesterday, my little brother, Will, and I set out on an adventure. We left Nashville, TN in a haze and drove to Pickwick Lake in northwestern Alabama to be with friends for a couple of days before we head west. I already feel like I've been away for a long time, but I'm sure this will all hit me a lot harder in a few days when Will and I are driving through the desert with nothing recognizable or familiar around us. And I can't wait.

This afternoon, we all went out on the lake. We stayed out long enough to see the sun sink into the horizon. Just after it set, I noticed the moon, on the other side of the lake, already high in the sky. Most of the time when I see the moon, it seems like it is right where it should be, above my head, desperately trying to shine and highlight its celebrity. But tonight, it seemed like it was next to me, tilting my head even higher, begging me to see beyond it - or through it. Through to the heaven that lies behind. And I didn't pull that thought down into my earthly reality - I was content with a glimpse. I hope America is as humble as the moon was tonight.

full pocket syndrome (tictoc)

In three weeks, my brother and I will be on the road - sleeping in the jetta, maybe staying in a cheap motel once every several nights to recharge our batteries (literally), driving thousands of miles, eating the oregon coast, grand canyoning, reading dickinson in montana, napping on the L in chicago, spitting off the space needle, hiking in the tetons, and learning how to drink coffee. I am planning on sending postcards from the highway, and I plan on taking cool pictures like the one shown here. I plan to live on water from a nalgene the whole time (no convenience store gatorade), and I plan on swimming in the san francisco bay. I plan on growing a mustache, and I plan on driving up hwy one to bob dylan's music. I plan on eating lots of fruit snacks, and I don't plan on ever wearing shoes or a shirt unless I have to. Will and I are going to spend as little money possible without stealing anything except for girls' hearts. I am going to have the best 21st birthday party ever somewhere in the middle of arizona. I am going to consider the interstate rest area my home away from home. I am going to wonder where time goes when I am sitting in a cold, metal, humanities desk in the fall.

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there are so many tictoc
clocks everywhere telling people
what toctic time it is for
tictic instance five toc minutes toc
past six tic

Spring is not regulated and does
not get out of order nor do
its hands a little jerking move
over numbers slowly

we do not
wind it up it has no weights
springs wheels inside of
its slender self no indeed dear
nothing of the kind.

(So,when kiss Spring comes
we'll kiss each kiss other on kiss the kiss
lips because tic clocks toc don't make
a toctic difference
to kisskiss you and to
kiss me)

-e.e. cummings
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we are terribly beautiful

There really is something about driving at night. It stirs up so much thought and emotion that you wonder if it ever would have surfaced had you not hit the road after midnight. There is nothing to look at except for the dark highway, and there is nothing to fill your head except for the spinning thoughts set in motion by the moonlit sky whizzing past your car as it cuts into the silence of the night. Oh, and the music, of course. The music is key. Not only does it make these thoughts spin even faster, but it actually gives a landscape on which to build and whisper dreams. An early A.M. highway accompanied by unforgivingly good music will always loose the anchor in my mind.

Last night, as I drove back from Florida with my mom and brother, I was able to be alone with the highway and the music for a while. With my mom asleep and my brother likely lost in his own thoughts, I was left to the will of my favorite night driving song, “Svo Hljott” by Sigur Ros. I have become aware that this song has a sort of magical quality, as I can still recall the first time I heard it and the emotions it excited within me. Last night was no different.

I have been thinking a lot lately about pain and sadness. As I have spent most of the past several months hovering over that side of the emotional spectrum, I began wondering if these emotions are more vivid than any other. I literally felt like nothing else was real. Any joy I could have had didn’t feel sincere, so I would wander back toward depression and sadness to feel something “real” again. And up until last night, I still wondered if pain was a more vivid feeling than joy. That is until I remembered the heartache that I felt the first time I heard Svo Hljott. I felt it again last night. I don’t know if I could explain it well enough to give it justice, but I think most people know the feeling. Different things cause it for different people. It could be the sound of a song, or the smell of a storm, or the thrill of a road trip, or the touch of a woman. It is an aching deep in the soul, a longing for something when you’re not even sure what it is...or why it is. It is painful. It is something so beautiful that it hurts.

I have come to realize that this pain does not have to be a saddening or depressing pain, but it can be a longing, a restlessness, or a motivation. God uses beauty to stir desire in us. A desire to be what He is calling us to be. And it pains us to see beauty because our sinful nature hinders us from being fully beautiful. When we witness perfection, or anything close to it, we see what we are called to, and it hurts to realize that we will be there someday, but not today.

Now, my problem was not that I stopped experiencing beauty - that’s impossible. If you ever think you aren’t experiencing beauty, just open your eyes. I definitely experienced beauty, I was simply reacting to it the wrong way. When I saw a sunset, or heard a lovely song, or witnessed a person living beautifully, I was pained because I felt like I would never be that sublime. Instead of seeing these things as motivation or as God himself, I saw it as a shortcoming I had. I saw it as a weakness in myself. Instead of eating the world, I was letting it eat me. I was letting gorgeous songs rip out my heart, and beautiful girls tell me I was worthless. All the while, I was being shown what I could be, what I wanted to be, and what I will be.

Pain is still very mysterious to me. There is something about it that cuts straight to the center of my being and opens my eyes to things I would have never seen without it. Things that spin around inside my head waiting for a dark, windswept highway to blow them out into the night air.

joe turkey

this weekend i saw my grandad and his wife arlene. she's my dad's stepmom and no offense to her, but she reminds me of debbie downer. my grandad is sick - he just had triple bipass heart surgery a couple of weeks ago and he is waiting to hear back from the doctors about a lump they found near his heart while under the knife. when a neighbor came to their room to pray over him, arlene said, "well, if we make it to next week, we'll get to find out the PET scan results." if we make it to next week? are you serious? that is not only tremendously pessimistic, but it is uncouth. i mean, who says that? oh, right. arlene does.

she also made me and my brother, and my dad im sure, very uncomfortable/stunned when she brought up my parents divorce. we were all chatting about california and the great city of san francisco when she began to wonder out loud, saying, "you all liked it out there didnt you. I bet if you had stayed in california, you would still be married." once again, uncouth. if she wasnt my grandparent i would have probably told her to go jump off a bridge.

my favorite part of the visit, though, was when she was asking me and will about school and the future. i said school was going great and that i'll probably be finished in two more years. the truth is, school is horrible and i want to burn utk to the ground. she asked my brother what he wanted to study, and he said he wasnt sure yet but that he thought he might want to be a writer. her response: "well you'll either be filthy rich or poor as joe turkey." i wish i had said something great like, "money really is what its all about, isnt it" or "wouldnt want to be poor, because then we would lose our ability to love each other, right?" but i didnt. instead i just sat there in silence, and i punched her in my mind.

you might think that she's just an old lady, and that i should give her a break. but this was just one visit. i could give you many other examples from other visits to chattanooga. my blood is beginning to boil just at the thought of her dating advice.

the point of all this is to say that i hope i never get like that. i hope i never regret so many things in life that i tell my grandchildren to make as much money as possible, and to never love someone too much, and to never hope that someone will get better if they are sick. i hope i dont ever become a bleak ben. i hope to tell my grandchildren that hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.

though they were sad, they rescued everyone. they lifted up the sun.

we live in a grand setting. yes, i said grand. it is a good adjective. and we are alive (for at least a while) in this grand place. we dont have to worry about not existing, and we dont have to worry about the sun burning out for quite a while.

...ok, i realize that this beautiful (grand) world is full of dark corners and covered in murky waters, but isnt that what the beauty is here for? yes?

men are dying in a war right now. children are dying of aids right now. some guy is saving money right now so that he can buy a bigger tv and some new blue jeans.

...those waters are murky...

....but there is also a beautiful sunset in Iraq right now. there are best friends playing soccer in africa right now. there is a guy saving money to support his loving wife and kids right now.

what are we worried about? dying? maybe. or maybe we are worried about living. i think we should be worried about the ugly effecting the beauty more than the beauty effects the ugly.

so we have a sunset and a war, which one wins? unfortunately the war seems to be winning. we have aids and we have best friends playing soccer. sadly, aids has the upper hand. and we have blue jeans vs love. i would like to think love is gaining some ground despite the commercials ive seen recently.

this is what im worried about: not fulfilling my obligation to pierce the dark corners and tred the murky waters. i feel it is my (our) duty to turn our heads away from the bloody ground and toward the purple sky. it is our duty to go to africa and play soccer. it is our duty to support a family instead of banana republic.

more, my friends...... more.

what would jesus do anyway?

you're hesitating arent you?
its ok, im really just doing this for myself.
but is that selfish? maybe.

sometimes i think im losing my mind, but then i realize i just left it at home. and on purpose. is that weird? is weird a bad thing? in who's opinion? should i care? why?

ok, seriously though - right now i am not in school. i am working and saving up money in order to take my brother and myself on an all over the country road trip this summer (and its actually gonna happen). and i really want to make a movie of it (which may or may not happen). and during this break from school i find myself wondering more and more if it really is just a break or if it is a strange goodbye. i really dont want to go back to school, and that is mainly because i have no idea what i want to study anymore. i mean, i could finish up with advertising (which i never feel like i actually started). or i could extend this "break" into next year and hesitate/stall/remain static. or i could do something else that may require more of me than school ever has. school only ever got half my ass. sorry school.

there are a lot of things i want in life, and there are a lot of things i want from myself. and im getting tired of the logic of american culture getting in the way. i need money and nice things to be successful, right? and i need to be clean shaven and tucked in to keep a job, right? now i realize that i have written about similar things before, perhaps the exact same thing, but this is an ever-changing thought process that i am going through here, so bear with me.

i dont think its a bad thing to want a nice life. things are cool. comfort. television. food. yea, those can all be fantastic. nothing inherently wrong with them. its just that im pretty much sick of it all, and not in a depressing, hateful sense (ive been through that already), but in a liberating, longing sense. i long for more. God, i know there is more to life than having a job just to create comfort for myself. and thats what i feel like ive been doing for so long, and now that i dont want to strive for comfort anymore, im having a hard time figuring out how to strive for.....more.

i want to see things that most people dont get a chance to. i want to create something that only i could create, and i want others to enjoy/benefit from it. i want to be uncomfortable. i want to give others all the shit that i have and dont need. i want to be able to hear the movement of everything. i dont want to be ignorant. i want to love someone in just the way they want to be loved. i want to be a servant. i want to learn. i want to teach. and i want to be broken enough to always turn to the provider of all and the lover of all.

how can i start doing these things now? i guess i can start by getting up out of my comfortable bed and laying on a mexican blanket under the stars. i think thats what Jesus would have done anyway.

nostalgia usually smells

has anyone ever heard that the sense of smell is very closely connected to memories? well, i have. a certain smell will bring back vivid memories of a time or person that the smell has been connected to in your mind. its usually unexpected, which makes it nicer, i think. but as i write this i realize it is difficult to bring back that same vividness without the smell to induce it. however, i can still remember a few that were brilliant enough to imagine long afterward.

i cant remember where it was, but i smelled chlorine recently and i was flooded with memories of my old house. my brother and i swimming in our pool, and wet hair in the summer sun.

with the grass beginning to grow again, neighborhoods are spotted with fresh cut lawns. this is one of my favorite smells and the memories that it summons are too many to recount. perhaps being sweaty, or sitting in the dried up creekbed.

almost painfully have i smelled the perfume of an old love and recalled memories of her. i am unfortunately attracted to wherever the smell came from. damn you, mass-produced victoria's secret girly fruit smell!

and just today my nostrils captured something i cannot quite categorize. there was a thunderstorm (understatement), a raspberry altoid, sweaty palms, and.....i cant remember. it was a mixture of smells along with the music i was hearing, i guess. i dont really know what it was, but it made me want to relish in some type of temporal lunacy. or maybe it wasnt lunacy, but rather.... love. its hard to tell the two apart these days.

i hope tomorrow i come across a blueberry pancake or a sticky pine tree or perhaps another thunderstorm.

the problem with me

i think i've figured out my "problem". and no, i did not just realize this all on my own. a book pointed it out, but thats ok because any inspiration i get usually comes from someone i have never met.

my "problem" is that i am never satisfied. and i do not mean that i am never satisfied with what i have. i mean i am never satisfied with the answers this world ignorantly gives to my questions. questions like, "why is money important?" or "why is golf fun?" or "why are some girls 'pretty' and some girls are 'not pretty'?" or "why do i need to pick a major?".

society quickly answers these questions for me. almost as if they were waiting for me to ask them so they could indulge me with some bullshit wisdom about "success" and "beauty". they tell me that i pick a career path based on what i love and what i am good at (too bad those are two more of my questions). what do i love? and what am i good at?... they also tell me that this will get me a job that I will love where i can make lots of money to support my beautiful wife in our nice home. this will give me a happy and comfortable life. apparently.

now, like an idiot i question all this. its my problem, remember? i first question whether or not this is all true. whether or not money/a good career/safety will give me happiness. and then i wonder if i even want comfort. or nice. dont get me wrong, i love a good pair of socks, or a clean crisp 20, but i have found that i sleep better in the back of my car in the middle of a floridan adventure than i do in my comfortable, boring, knoxville bed. (ok, that may be a lie, but at least its a more inspired and confident sleep).

sometimes all this lack of REAL answers makes me mad. and sometimes it makes me feel sad and lonely. right now, im not mad. i understand that the world is stupid and i dont hold that against them (hrmmph). and im not necessarily sad or lonely either - i have been that way enough the past two months already. right now, im just a guy who wants someone to give him the kind of answers that he wants. hopefully true ones. ones like, "money really doesnt matter" or "golf isnt fun at all" or "every girl is pretty because they were made in the image of perfect beauty" or "you dont need to pick a major because college may not be the route you are supposed to take in life". you know, real good answers like that.