End of the world 2012

I’ve drifted over the year,and am not too happy with it. To my friends, sorry. To others, you probably haven’t noticed. I’m deleting this blog in about a week to clean up and start a new blog on blogger, which is much more easy to use. No links will be provided, it’s giong to be a found blog, only.

Just sayin’

I know a little bit about a lot of things, which means means there isn’t anything I know much about at all.   With a little bit of age coming into existence, it’s a realization, that things are never that clear, the decisions are very simple, and sticking with it is pretty much the hardest thing to do.

Someone was shocked at the amount of sleep I get, and it’s perhaps unhealthy.  It’s been that way since years I can remember, but with blissful moments where 10 – 12 hours of sleep come by.  There’s rarely dreams, falling asleep is not a problem, but at some point, the mind says to pull the plug on unconsciousness.  And there it is.

Left town for a few days, and took the long road to and from.  There’s a place called vista point above this desert town; they’ve made it in to a cliche parking spot, with natural rock railings and large available trash cans.  It was about 630 and the sun was rising over the valley.  Over the edge and down the hill was about 2 years worth of broken bottles.  It was all very much.. a Robinson Jeffers poem in clear sight.

 

valley of

Hurtling along the freeway oblivious mainly to the passage of miles or time, absorbed by a desert landscape.  After a while, a weariness grows, very little sleep, a constant state of motion for the period of several days and things are now less directed speed to lazy missile.  At a rest stop, on the hills of some sparsely populated valley, it’s dinner; left overs from early in the week, eaten look warm, heated by the defroster for a few minutes before pulling off.

A rest stop is a slice of life, a slice of the strata of life, cut down, split open, and then paraded past in an unscripted abrupt flow of scenes.  I could stay here for hours.  Dinner, partially consumed over looking the sunrise in the west has taken second to the view of people coming and going.

I could stay here for hours.  A small man, who seems incredibly old strikes up a conversation with me about sunsets and the valleys.  He talks with incredible clarity about the hue of colors and the flow of the warm wind.  With some distinction, he mentions the names of mountains in the distance and begins to talk of harder journeys when a tall women, classic in the sense of being 20 years old but fresh from a scene in breakfast at tiffanys, rushes to him.  She grabs him firm by the bicep with uncanny grip, smiles at me, and pulls him away.

Left overs eaten at dashboard temperatures from a glass container.  The smell of 2^nd hand cigarette smoke.  The comedy of ‘been in the car toooo long’ yoga practiced by nearly everyone getting out.  The doppler effected sounds as cars float along.

Vegas loomed on the horizon.  It’s an easy city to dislike, or just make fun of.  1030 on a weekday and the streets are busy with people who’ve escaped reality and wander the streets in abandon of their every day demeanor.

After unloading, I wander to a bar on a back street a mile from the main drag.  A tired man plays jazz versions of rock songs on a keyboard.  A glass of wine and I’m in a corner watching people again.

The next morning, I run a giant loop mapped out in my head.  Even early, people are coming in and out of the casinos.  The heat isn’t strong, but it is ever present.

Skip lunch, with a pending dinner with people from the war.

We started as strangers, some of us didn’t like each other at the early days.  At the end of time there, we were so glad to have made it through..sane… that we were suddenly related.  Now, a few years gone, we’re back to tolerable at best.  We consume alcohol, re-tell stories, grow silent over those who are gone, and consume more.  A decision is made to get out, walk to clubs and bars and dance.  I wander back to my room and then, when things have settled, walk it off until early morning.

Driving back, early, hurtling down the freeway.  I stop at an abandoned gas station.  There’s just nothing to say.

exhale

It’s been a case of stress lately. It can be nailed down to over volunteering and lack of sleep. DADT came and went with a whimper. More time on the bike has probably made the stress bearable. Bearable in ways that there’s been no small out burst.

DADT. Growing up was weird. Both parents were, religious, in the way that we went to church every other weekend. Same sex relations were a “sin”, except of course, for dad’s hidden collection of 300 or so VHS tapes of illegally dubbed porn. That was my exposure to the first stage of religious hypocrisy. But, growing up in the bay area, the under current of gay was all around. My awakening to social consciousness was AIDS becoming prevalent on the news. My awareness of gay people came in highschool when some friends confessed their status in private after school conversations, walking home, or hanging out various places. Gay went from an interesting aberration on VHS tapes to a very real person, who was terrified of the big world, and driven to desperation for a normal social life. Funny is, once one knew that I was not driven to revulsion, others would seek me out for friendship. Funnier than that was the awkward passes made, and the confusion that followed.

So, once in the organization, it was even more a dangerous life. Some people were vehemently anti gay. Others were very closet, but nearly predatory once it was figured out that someone was “OK” with it.

Many years pass and my living arrangements have me in a small two person trailer in a country that starts with a vowel, living with someone who is gay. He told me about it early on when we were in a southern American state during training. 2nd only to having to live life in a secret is being a keeper of the secret for a friend. You’re barraged with questions when people figure it out, you’re whispered as being “deployment bisexual”, and sometimes just treated openly hostile. One of my bosses openly questioned me about his status for an hour one night. Deftly, but painfully, the conversation was steered one way or the other, in way to try to push away the topic. In balance was trust of a friendship, personal integrity, two careers and two families that relied upon both of us for support.

DADT going away brings a fear of a reversal, and of the revealing also of the bad side of some people, who would suddenly decide it’s time to act out on phobias, or extreme religious views. Time will tell.

I deal in retirements too. Retiring people from this organization can be wholly interesting. Some are just tooo ready to roll on, and cease to give a fuck about anything about a year way. Some are not ready at all and cling at any attempt that they can remain. Others are busy looking back and feel unfulfilled. The later are the worst. They want to build a personal empire, or establish a legacy, or make some lasting statement. Every conversation becomes tenuous. They are testy, demanding, angry even. Family members suddenly appear, demanding things, as if the last few days will correct the crimes of omission for a 20 to 30 year life. The look back can be painful. Mostly for those that politically fought their way to the top, only to find the foundation painfully hollow. Others upset at changes that have happened, not being able to hold onto the good old days. Some look back and are saddened at opportunities skipped, or sacrifices made for something that turned out not good enough.

It turns out, when the day is done, you can’t get it back; The future is uncertain, now matter how much you plan; The best thing you can do is work for a day that leaves you tired, but complete that you’ve done what you could..

Which leads to me, tired. I think, or rather know that there’s an underlying habit of over volunteering. It’s a single desire to know as much about life from a personal perspective as possible. Life from all angles, of many different people. There are three fundamental flaws with this..

One. Once you get to know people well, you can’t unknow them. And you learn some of their flaws that hurt your preconceived notion of who they are. Not flaws like, they pick their nose. But flaws that disturb you. Hidden racial views. Extremist religious views. Hippocratic lifestyle issues. . .

Two. Never having the time to maintain the friendships. Invariably, becoming a part of their life, one way or the other, requires time. And at somepoint, there is so much else to do, that keeping up a friendship is improbably hard.

Three. Being true myself. Admitting who I am, what I believe, deeply and reconciling that. It’s like a card game, perhaps.

With so much happening in the last few months, sleep has been short. Waking early, tossing, reading, staring at the computer, doing a million things. The lack of sleep has taken it’s toll as well. Muscles are not relaxing, joints out of whack. Focus slipping, and thoughts that simply run adrift..

I’m traveling out of state for a few days on my own to meet up with a group of people. While I’m not a fan of cars for the most part, road trips are perhaps the best. It’ll be good to get out of my head for a while.

waking hours

The last 9 months has been pretty quiet for me, or rather, I’ve kept quiet.  Writing wise, it’s the least I’ve written in years, riding wise, the most ridden solitary.  Quietly, the actions and exploits and adventures has been on my mind.  The question is, where do I fit in?

 

It was a default to step back and watch things for a while.  There was no epiphany, no startling event, nothing revealing, just a natural devolution into silence.

 

Sleep has been of short supply lately.

 

Work~work is work; swimming in the vestiges of a large, lethargic machine affected by government cut backs, a poor economy, and people in full fear of loosing jobs.  And others, lost into the confines of a system, trapped in a cubicle world, chained by fear of trying something new.  Fear of taking that first step.

 

I have that fear.  The responsibility to others is a heavy bind, and any step forward is done in consideration of them.  But it comes with virtually no regrets.

 

But, as waking hours and half awake wonderings are filled with wonder; the question is, what else is there.  Many in this situation fill it with something. Alcohol. TV sports. Odd causes.  Religion.  This seems to be an action of people getting too lost.

 

I reflected for a while, and now, look forward.

telling lies in the forrest of azure (aka holding to the dream of the wanderlust king)

I was never a good liar, but could take a good story and make it momentarily  memorable.  This is not a talent, but not a curse, it ended me in a world of murky neutral mediocrity.  Not quite court jester, not quite prophet of doom and not quite enthralling bard on the level of Bukowski, Jeffers, Morrison or Waits. Just someone to catch attention momentarily and put a new spin on something that makes everyone think differently, catch a distant perspective the way the chrome on a bumper might temporarily spark an eye, then fade out quickly leaving just a hint of what occurred.  Perhaps though, never thinking beyond the quick fast reflection.

San Diego is a city full of potential for moments like this.  The people I’ve met enthrall me, engulf me, amaze me with their stories.  Working in my cubicle enclosure, in airconditionednowindowblastproofinternetrestrictedgenderracereligionnuetral land, a chicken soup blandness coats reality and the only way to feel alive is to be brushed by the air rushing past on the ride down Broadway in high traffic or through the sounds of imperial late afternoon or the early morning of university at hillcrest.  Washed out homeless, synthetically revved up urban professionals, graying office commandos and the sounds of a million others competing for a place that has no first, has no last, has no start and has no finish.

Sometimes, just sometimes I’ll stop, lock up my bike, grab a drink and sit against a building on a busy street and take pictures of people walking by.  Its immensely interesting to imagine who they might really be, what their life is like, what they think, what they love, what they fear and what it would be like to talk with them for 5 simple minutes if I could get some sort of method of pealing back the reservations to talk to a complete stranger and engage them in conversations.  I’ve done this several times.  Sometimes people get up set about potentially having their picture taken, but the pictures typically don’t have a face shot, nor does it focus or grab sight of specific portions of their body that might be engratifying to peering eyes behind a computer in some dark corner of a house.  One time  a guy put 2 dollar bilils in my helmet.  Before words could come out, someone else put change in the helmet.  With in 30 minutes there was nearly 9 dollars.  The proceeds went to the guy at the corner who was having a harder time gathering this tax free income. He made me promise to wait, and came back shortly with a large bottle of St. Ives, and a pack of menthol GPC smokes.  So, we sat there, him with a box, me with a helmet, made no money, but drank out of a brown paper bag and smoked those generic cigarettes.  He told me a story, that sound like a mash up of 30 hard luck stories and one or two knew ones.  I told him my job and my income and my hobbies and where I lived and he looked me and told I was full of shit, and we laughed real hard about it.  It’s hard to remember a time feeling any better about being misjudged.

For about a month a year ago I played bike polo with local folks.  You had young and pretty-in-college and freshly-released from time and things in between.   Mostly I watched and listened and played a little.  Luck had it that I could hold up sometimes playing OK and didn’t get smashed badly.   We played on the grounds of a church and it seemed ironic and funny.  It grew awkward as the personalities grew more interesting and I began to listen and get to know people a little more.  As they reveal more who they are, the desire to reveal more myself became less and less and less.  It became a burden almost, knowing people and trying so hard to shut up or spin away from the reality I knew.  Eventually, I would stop at the fence and watch and then continue home.  They might still be playing today.  They grew big, started to travel and get serious.    At some point I just re-routed and didn’t ride past, but still have the hockey stick. 

Electronically many years ago, there was a guy who used to write these funny stories on a bike website, so I stole them, and told him they were going into a book that would be promoted by me, but credit to him.  300 hundred copies were made and they were sent world wide, dropped at local shops, handed out, sold, and ect.  It felt good being a part of something.  It made the idea of domistique make perfect sense.   Some of them keep in touch, living colorful lives of ups and downs.  Some of them fade on.  Once when buying a used set of caliper brakes, the seller admitted he knew me through the book effort.  The look was priceless, as to actually put a face to a nameless internet person, and not see what probably was imagined over months and years of reading and small interaction. Global but still unknown.  At somepoint, somewhere this will all have to take direction, or cease to exist.  Things just can’t cease to exist, so some sort of direction has to be taken.    Probably time to sharpen the lies, perhaps the stories will stick just then.

Salt water in the well

Yesterday was not a great ride home. The well ran dry, and the will grew thin. It was one of those contemplate the top tube and do brief glances forward kind of rides. Sweat, lots of it, ran many directions. It seems that my voice is coming back, slowly. It’s hard to come to terms with the idea that I have to keep quiet about being loud. It doesn’t exactly make sense. It seems, wrong. But, not writing has proven detrimental. Writing, like riding, is not therapy, but it’s a form of breathing. It’s strange desire to tell the world what comes in front of my eyes. I don’t own the vision, and don’t contribute value to the circumstance. But, like a photograph, want to capture it and hold it in perspective for a few moments longer that the original life span of that moment. Now that it’s back, it seems better to venture forward into the world. Hopefully, soon there will be some focus and then some clarity. Until then, it’s random thoughts.

- The world seems to exist more and more on genuinely temporary levels of sharing.

- Living a double standard in the name of being a good example is a heavy burden to balance.

- Pandora now convinces me that we have gone to good lengths with technology. A radio station you can tune into the frequency of your brain. Belle Brigade, Tyler the Creator, Iron and Wine and Tom Waits all in a 10 minute span.

- Vehicular cycling advocates, after a long time away, still make me ill.

- It’s coming time to talk about that trip. Such an odd thing.

 - I’ve started a photo collection on flicker. -

 I think melancholy is a horrible thing, and it’s taken over lately.