There is some deep peace to be found in the pre-dawn fog. Great swaths of heavy moisture sheeting lying over the land, like some enormous feather comforter covers over you in bed. Warming, quieting, soothing the earth to a gentle silence. Then, all at once, the sun comes up and flings off its shroud. The animals crawl from their burrows, the birds begin to sing, the geese in the pond by my office begin their obnoxious honking, and everything moves forward as it should under the bright light of the day. I like the fog, it makes driving a tad inconvenient sometimes, but its still a good thing.
I am sitting at work, in my office. I came in at 0200 with these grand plans for all of the wonderful things I was going to accomplish this morning. However, my background in the null-shadow box is torn, and the switch for the network seems to have actually died. This, of course, leaves me with damn little I can actually do that is productive. In a bit I am going to vacuum everything, but for now I feel like sitting and writing. This last week I was so busy writing assigned things, I never got around to writing for fun. I always miss writing, miss that cathartic review, putting all the pieces out on the table and moving forward from there.
“There is this thing that like touching except you don’t touch. Back in the day it just went without saying at all. All the world’s history gradually dying of shock. There is thing that’s like talking except you don’t talk. You…sing.” ~Dresden Dolls
Its strange, the way a song can take you back in a second to another location, so far away in place and time. There are a few songs in my music collection that will flash my mind back through time. To sitting around a campfire in Alaska, singing while watching the sparks fly dancing from the fire. Playing pool and laughing with a friend, pretending the pool cue was a mic stand (don’t look at me like that…if you haven’t done it, you have wanted to.) and singing along with some thoroughly ridiculous jukebox selections. Tearing down the highway, with all the windows down, listening to music played from a mp3 player, run through a tape adapter, singing at the top of my lungs as the cold air scoured my face and eyes until tears ran freely. So many songs, so many memories, so many people. Like snapshots in an album, stuck to the pages under the clear plastic sheeting, yellowing at the edges with age, yet still bright and clear if you wipe away the dust. Smiling faces, friendly embraces, fields of clover and miles of sandy beaches. Fast and hilarious road trips, lonely car rides, kissing and fumbling while the most improbable song played in the background. Laying and thinking, with the quiet sleeping breath of another on my shoulder, not daring to move for fear you might disturb their delicate and beautiful slumber.
“Step out the front door like a ghost into the fog, where no one notices the contrast of white on white. And in between the moon and you, the angels get a better view of the crumbling difference between wrong and right. Well I walk in the air, between the rain, through myself and back again. Where? I don’t know.” ~Counting Crows
Its almost a melancholy experience, this associative review of the music in my collection…none of these people are really in my life any longer. Some of them are still around, “Facebook Friends”, but they are not really THERE. Not in the same context they once were. People grow and change, moving away from one another, growing closer to others. Sometimes, they come back, sometimes they are gone forever, or at least as I can see. Some of the people of whom I am reminded right now will read this, in passing, many won’t. Some will wonder if I speak of them, some will know. Some seemed so close, and yet seem so completely unreachable. Friends with whom I was once so close, but through my own pig-headishness or their own, a wall has grown, walls that can be torn down by a simple hug and cup of coffee, yet stand as resolute the gates of Istanbul against a marauding horde.
Other songs just make me laugh, if I think about them associatively. “The Distance” by Cake…I remember being in middle school, in those little crappy trailers at Trinity Lutheran Christian School. I think I was in 7th grade, and someone brought that CD in. We would play it on the little CD player in the back of the classroom, a cluster of young boys around the CD player, thinking we were the most awesome thing to set foot on that campus, and we may have been, I don’t know…we weren’t up against very intimidating competition there. So young, so brave, so ignorant.
It is an off memory filled morning for me. In the absence of the ability to do paying work, I am going through all sorts of stuff from my storage unit to put up on eBay, and I stumbled upon my old box of memories. The box itself is a small wooden chest, given to my by the wife of a friend after he died. It had been his mothers, but his wife had no use for it, so it was given to me. I took out the old torn and shredded silk lining and replaced it with red velvet. Inside are all the little things I saw as important at one time or another. A envelope filled with foreign bills, a tiny bone chest filled with small mementos…a bead lizard my little sister made for me as a child, a few tin soldiers, a tape of me as a child playing on my grandmothers recorder, the trowel from my Masonic raising to the degree of Master Mason, the last sermon given by my friend Clyde before he died….like the music, so many memories, so many little things, fragments like sea glass, worn and polished by the years, memories smooth in your hand…the kind that make you feel that heavy warmth behind your eyes…the pressure of the years, the lives.
A small red poppy, a hand forged nail I helped to make at La Purisima so many years ago. Coins from all over the world, and all over time, from the early roman empire up until the middle of the last century. The weight of the years in a single worn coin is impressive…worn smooth by the fingers of merchants of millennia past. Men whose bones have turned to dust, but whose lucky penny sits on my desk.
A string of amber, a potsherd from Colossae, a bag of polished rocks, a trilobite, my pinewood derby car my father helped me make so many years ago, the bracelet given to my by the Turkish girl in the park, the letter to me from my mother that she hid in my suitcase as I left for Turkey, all shards of a life that sometimes seems to belong to someone else. A life so incredibly rich, made bright by all those I have come across. From my friends and family to those I have seen only once, a smile on a bright day, the laugh of a child, all my teachers who have taught me the things they know, and all those who have come to me asking for my knowledge, feeble though it may be.
Sometimes I feel we are the undying children of the sun, born on this earth in a flash of light…and we forget. Sometimes I wonder what would happen if we could just remember our potential, and look at the world through the same eyes we used as a child, see things for what they could be….
I was speaking with a very good friend of mine today, and we were discussing history. History is something that I have been raised with and have a great affection for, but is one of those things that the majority of the populace despises, because it is 'boring'. I will go out on a limb and say that the VAST majority of the history people are exposed to in their early years is complete and utter tripe. In elementary school we all made construction paper pilgrims and indians, the pilgrims all with shiny gold buckles and black hats, the indians with feathers in their glitter and glue headdresses. We were told stories about how they all sat down and held hands in an idyllic glade, feasting. We were taught about Johnny Appleseed, wearing a pot on his head and planting apple trees everywhere he went...just because. Or, horror of horrors, the story of George Washington cutting down a cherry tree, which is a legendary story that has existed for a very long time...but is for some reason presented as history.
History, as it is taught to us in elementary, middle, and high school has one purpose, and one purpose only...to turn us into cooperative and hopefully productive members of society. Each story is vetted for its relevance to this goal, and most things are left out. Think back to your middle school history books...the one that probably had a flag and a cannon on it, or some such thing. These history books painted the history of our nation in an entirely positive light, glossing over all the details that make the history INTERESTING. This version of history reads much the way any propaganda piece reads, some of the detail, none of the flavor. It tells the story of The Sons of Liberty bravely storming the East India Company ships to throw the tea overboard in protest of taxation without representation...but it neglects to tell the story of the same Sons of Liberty boarding the ship of Thomas Truxton to throw his two small boxes he carried for personal use overboard as well.
The history book gives you a tiny tiny description of the first world war, maybe inserting a single sentence about the execution of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, completely glossing over the mechanics of the situation. Do you know the story? Its a long one, and I don't have time to put it all here...but here is the basic details...pay close attention. I am not going to go into the entire socio-political context of the situation, simple the assassination itself...for a singular stupid event that has possibly caused more suffering than just about any other for the last couple eons, it is rather interesting.
The Archduke had come to Sarajevo for meetings and to be present for the opening of a hospital. Through separate political machinations there was a group of Bosnians who wanted Ferdinand dead, and this was the city they chose to carry out their plans in. The suicide squad was known as The Black Hand were stationed along the route that the Archduke's motorcade was going to take through the city. The course of events is basically this:
Motorcade passes the #1 Assassin, a man named Muhamed, who chickened out and failed to do anything.
It continues on its path past Vaso, the second assassin, he too chickened out.
It continues on its route past a man named Nedeljiko, who finally decided to do something. He throws the grenade he is armed with at the car...just to watch it bounce off the roof and explode underneath the next car in line, leaving his target unscathed. Realizing he was going to be caught, Nedeljiko swallowed his cyanide suicide capsule and leaped to what he hoped would be his death in the Miljacka River. The problem is the cyanide only made him vomit, and the river was 4" (yes, inches) deep at the time, so his plans were for naught. He was dragged from the trickling puddle and taken into police custody.
The cars speed past the remaining assassins, Cevjetko, Gavrilo, and Trifun, who are all unable or unwilling to do anything. The assassination has been a total abject failure. Not only was the Archduke still alive, but one of their members had been captured, and it would only be a short time until the rest were captured and implicated in the attempt on the Archduke's life.
Each of us have our own little things we do when we know we have failed miserably at something. Some people drink, some people smoke and ponder, some walk...well...Gavrilo liked to eat sandwiches. The assassins were depressed. They had failed their country, they had failed their group, and they had failed themselves. After everyone realized that things had failed, Gavrilo decided to go get a sandwich. Maybe he hadn't eaten that morning because of pre-assassination jitters, maybe he was just hungry. In either case Gavrilo went and bought a sandwich at Schiller's Cafe & Delicatessen. I imagine him, slumped over the counter, ordering his sandwich, fumbling in his pocket for some change, taking the sandwich wrapped in paper, and walking outside, hoping that a pastrami sandwich would life his spirits. As he stepped out the creaking door onto the cobble street, wonder of wonders, there was the Archduke, sitting in his car. His driver had made a wrong turn, and was stopped and backing up directly in front of Gavrilo. In a scene that happens in my head in slow motion, Gavrilo drops his sandwich, it falling dramatically to the pavement, as he bolts towards the Archduke's car, a way to save the day in his mind. He fumbles in his poor jacket for his Browning FN 1910, pulls it from his pocket, takes aim and fires, the first shell casing dropping to sit beside the sandwich on the cobblestone street. He fired twice, hitting the Archduke in the neck, and his wife in the stomach, killing them both.
While the belligerents in this contest were looking for an excuse to go to war, this is the one that set into motion a series of events that made so much pain and destruction possible. This threw the world into the Great War, the War to End All Wars. Casualties totaled up to over 30,000,000 killed, wounded, or missing (generally, that means dead). To put that in perspective, that is one out of every ten Americans alive today. How many great minds perished, tangled in the wire? Those are just the direct consequences, that is not even mentioning that the second world war would not have been possible without the Treaty of Versailles that ended the first one. So much of modern socio-political history can be tied back to that moment, when Gavrilo Princip decided to have a sandwich. What would have happened if he had a craving for goulash instead? How different would the world be? How many would still be living, what other atrocities would we have created?
Those are my thoughts on history for this morning. The real history isn't in the broad sweeping gestures of a nation, but in the action of a single person doing whatever it is they are doing. Normal men and women, doing things with consequences they cannot hope to understand. Look deeper, it is fascinating.
I am unsure of the origin of the phrase, “less is more” but for the large part of my life, I have considered it patently absurd. How can less be more? Less is clearly less, and more is clearly more. The idea of transposing two seemingly immutable quantities makes no sense, when thinking in concrete terms. A small pile of coins is clearly less coins than a large pile of coins, this is not open to debate.
However, reality and perception often diverge somewhere deep in the hidden recesses of the human mind, bent by our own internal processes. I have been finding in my own personal life, that the less I have of something, the more I appreciate what I do have. I find that as I sell the greater part of my book collections, I take those in I do own with a much more clear view. As I become detached from the idea that possession is a prerequisite for enjoyment, I am much more capable of enjoying the things around me. They do not have to be ‘mine’ to be enjoyed. Nor do I feel the same urge to keep what I have. I have gotten to the point, especially when it comes to books and many other material possessions, that if I feel someone else will enjoy whatever it is that I happen to own as much as I have, I feel no need to lend it to them, I would just as soon give it to them, let them take from it the enjoyment they can, and then do with it as they will. I have fewer books now than I have in a long time, yet it does not feel like it. I do not feel diminished. I have been devouring books voraciously lately, tearing through every tale I have been able to lay my hands upon, learning all that I can, and when I am done with it, passing it along to someone else as a gift, or selling it on eBay. Its actually rather liberating, I don't feel as if the things I own, own me any longer. The less I have, the faster I can move, the less cluttered my life is, the cleaner my minds feels.
However, reality and perception often diverge somewhere deep in the hidden recesses of the human mind, bent by our own internal processes. I have been finding in my own personal life, that the less I have of something, the more I appreciate what I do have. I find that as I sell the greater part of my book collections, I take those in I do own with a much more clear view. As I become detached from the idea that possession is a prerequisite for enjoyment, I am much more capable of enjoying the things around me. They do not have to be ‘mine’ to be enjoyed. Nor do I feel the same urge to keep what I have. I have gotten to the point, especially when it comes to books and many other material possessions, that if I feel someone else will enjoy whatever it is that I happen to own as much as I have, I feel no need to lend it to them, I would just as soon give it to them, let them take from it the enjoyment they can, and then do with it as they will. I have fewer books now than I have in a long time, yet it does not feel like it. I do not feel diminished. I have been devouring books voraciously lately, tearing through every tale I have been able to lay my hands upon, learning all that I can, and when I am done with it, passing it along to someone else as a gift, or selling it on eBay. Its actually rather liberating, I don't feel as if the things I own, own me any longer. The less I have, the faster I can move, the less cluttered my life is, the cleaner my minds feels.
I notice as I trim my body and mind down, tightening my sinews both mental and physical, I notice what I have much more acutely. I find that I have clung to my self-image of myself as being a ‘fat kid’ for so long, I have consistently fought change to my own personal image, hiding within myself. I began to serve as my own excuse for failures in several fields, seeing myself as a victim of circumstance or genetics or fate or whatever. I never wanted to admit that I was capable of changing anything about myself, because if I made that admission, I would have a responsibility to affect change as quickly as possible, to become something more. Since my admission that what I was doing in life was wrong, last semester, the harder I work at changing myself, the smaller by body becomes, the larger my life grows. The less cluttered my mind grows, the finer my focus and ability. I feel as if I am becoming a mental fencer, no longer burdened by the claymore of cumbersome weight, but now equiped by a much faster and sharper rapier, dodging and slashing at any opening, not just crashing headlong into whatever the issue may be. Discernment is key.
The more I am able to admit I do not have to control everything that happens around me, the greater my enjoyment of the world has become. I have found myself adopting a much more ‘live and let live’ philosophy, which contrasts sharply to some of my previous thought patterns. I do not need to control something to appreciate it. There are many times when control precludes the full enjoyment of something. A butterfly for example, beautiful and floating on gossamer wings of brilliant blues, cannot be truly enjoyed if pinned to a board. You can only truly enjoy it when you see it, floating along on the breeze, its iridescent wings beating with the heartbeat of the entire world. It is not necessary to capture and kill it, to be able to appreciate it.
Sometimes, one cannot see the forest for the trees, but often each solitary tree becomes lost in the forest as a whole. Its branches and leaves intertwined with those around it, interwoven and intermixed…it is impossible to see the full scope of a tree in all its glory when surrounded by all the others. Sometimes it is necessary to see the same tree, rising out of a open prairie, before you can truly appreciate it. Surely, there might be less available wood for harvest, but when it comes down to it, it only takes one tree to hang a tire swing.
On another note, this photo is from a shoot I did last Friday, just before heading out to Cloud 9 to meet up with some friends. I thought it came out fantastically. The video below is probably the best PSA I have ever seen, watch it.
I love listening to the sound of the rain falling outside. The billions of droplets seems to speak a multitude of languages, from the quiet whispers in the early morning to the harsh staccato exclamations of an angry sky. Rain is one of those things that makes one tend to think a bit. There is something about standing under an awning, looking out at the rain drenched world, that makes you turn over everything you know, holding each thought in your hands to run your fingers over its contours. Feeling the pieces that are smooth and careworn from too much contemplation, and the parts that are rough and jagged to the point of pain from your lack of attention.
It has been a while since I have had an opportunity to write. Things have been busy, and there is much that needs to be done. This last week was a decent week for me. I have made much progress in my own personal goals, I accomplished alot, got tons of work done, made some good connections, spent an evening walking on the beach (took this picture out on Morro Strand the other night), classes went well, overall the week went well for me. I finished the week out very nicely with an evening at Cloud 9 in SLO, smoking the hookah and spending time with some classmates. On the way home I got to talk to a good friend of mine on the phone for a while, I miss talking to her. Shes one of those people that you can feel intensely close to, but only talk to rarely. We have known one another for what seems like an eternity. From long, late-night conversations in our early teens, to today. From early barely contained arguments about meaningless things, to long discussions in which we will go back and forth for hours, only to find we were both arguing for the same basic points the entire time, but didn't want to admit that the other was just as right. A true friend and one who adds light to my life, to become a bright thread in the fabric of my existence.
She spawned a bit of an idea for me last night, so I might be posting a chapter or two of my novel in audio format one of these days. I really do need to sit down and finish that book. I wrote it years ago and it has been sitting it its box on the shelf, collecting dust. Hundreds of pages of manually typed pieces of paper, sun faded and tea-stained. Probably with some twigs and other detritus between the pages. Prior to writing the book, I sat on the deck overlooking the valley, writing haiku, all hammered out neatly on that simple and yellowing paper. Manual typewriters are an amazing thing. I intend on keeping mine with me, wherever I go, so if there is no electricity, I can still write. Granted, there is always the pencil and paper approach, but as many of my instructors over the years will attest, me writing by hand is something that should be avoided nearly at all cost.
If I close my eyes, I can still imagine the sound of the rain on the tin roof and pattering on the hood of the jeep parked outside. The sound of the wind moaning through the flying antennae wires, the sharp impact of the hammers, forced into inexorable action by my fingers pounding away on the keys. I think that when it comes down to it, writing in all its forms is an act of violence. Not always useless senseless violence, but the clear purposeful violence of a wolf stalking a deer through the silent snowfall. The writer is the wolf, and the thought is the deer. The wolf circles, cutting his path in the snow, the deer nervous and skittish before the wolf pounces. It sinks its teeth and claws into the meaty flank of the deer, clawing forward toward the throat, by which it can end the suffering it has inflicted. When it is all said and done, the wolf stands over its kill, the surrounding snow stained deep crimson with the hot blood of the deer, steam rising in the cold air from the mouth of the wolf.
The writer is this wolf, and the thought splayed on paper is a mere shadow of what resides in the mind of the writer. The death of the deer is necessary for the survival of the wolf, but sometimes it feels as if the very act of writing can harm and dismember a thought. How hard it is to put a thought on paper in its entirety, and allow the reader a true glimpse inside the mind. I always feel as if i stand over my kill, looking down at the idea splayed out on paper, feeling like there is somehow a bit of vulgarity to it. There are times I don't desire to write, but am somehow compelled to, compelled to spill my thoughts on paper like the lifeblood of some dark beast in whose heart ink pumps. I feel, therefore I write.
I think I am going to take a bit of time this afternoon to see if i cant get a few pages of that book scanned in and run through some OCR software. Maybe start editing, working out the bits that I knew were rough. Fixing the story where I broke it the first time. That would make a nice Saturday night diversion.
While I don't usually do this, I would like to take a second to plug a product. Paso Robles Produce Company, on Golden Hills Road is a new little fresh local produce store. The prices are very affordable, and they have a product there that is pure magic. It is called "Verjus", which is the grape juice of immature winegrapes culled so the others will be better grapes. It is a fantastic use of what would be a waste product normally, and holy crap...its incredible. I don't even have words to tell you how amazing it is. Its $6/32oz bottle, and so worth every penny. GO BUY IT! This is one of those great businesses that I feel might not make it due to the economy, but its stunning, and you should go buy this.
I am off to prepare for a Quincenera I am going to later today, as well as the birthday party for my little adoptive neice. It should all be good times, and I am looking forward to today.
Sleep comes in fits and starts, my head thrashes my pillow, my mind turns twice for each time my body turns, leaving my spirit twisted and distraught. A dream of Yeats' 'rough beast', shrouded in rags and shuffling along the cracked asphalt to the ruined city of Bethlehem to be born beneath a starless sky. Its cloven feet wrapped in shopping bags and duct tape, its knapsack filled with jerky made from the long grained meat of a less fortunate man's leg. Caked in the ashes of a dead world, it trudges on towards its final resting place
This one is going to be pretty gritty guys, so if you are weak of spirit or heart, you had best move on to something more cheery now.
Still here? Ok, then we press on.
As I believe I previously mentioned, I am taking 'English Composition: Critical Thinking' this semester. It is an awesome class, full of contrast and debate, taught by an instructor who actually encourages thought (which is rare in this area...very rare). Her name is Kymba, and she is every bit as fun and zany as her name would suggest. The class is an 'early' morning class fueled by coffee and adrenaline as we hash through recent events, and toss things around (recent hot topic is the supreme court decision in Citizens United vs. Federal Election Comission, which spawned an article I am working on...should be posted soon). Testing the bounds of arguments and rhetoric. It is easily my favorite class this semester, the rest being fairly boring (there is nothing wrong with them, they simply pale in comparison).
In any case, one of the books assigned to us this semester is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. The story covers a man and his young boy as they trek in a colorless post apocalyptic landscape. Those of you who know me well, know I have always had a soft spot for apocalyptic fiction. From the first piece I read, The City Not Long After by Pat Murphy, given to me by my mother when I was twelve or so...all the way up to more well known pieces like The Stand by Stephen King. Through every piece of post apocalyptic multimedia, the entire Fallout series, Brotherhood of Steel, Mad Max, Jeremiah, that one other show...all the way to writing my own book (which still sits in a box, untouched since I returned from the mountain), the thought of being assigned something like this is a wonderful thing. We are to read it with special attention for elements of Nietzsche and Kierkegaard's philosophies, of which this book is loaded. The two travel through the desolate landscape, fleeing from blood cults and trying to find food in the ruins. It opens all sort of debate as to the nature of life, the morality of survival situations, and what exactly the point of everything is.
Situations like this call into question the nature of existence and the durability of the human spirit. As the narrator wanders across the wasteland encountering challenges in the form of weather, starvation, cannibalism, sickness, and thieves. He carries a .38 with him with two shots, one for the boy, and one for himself should they get in a situation where capture is unavoidable or when things become too hard to carry on. He is also forced to confront his own humanity (or lack thereof) in interactions with other survivors seeking help. They meet the old man, Eli, wandering the road, blind and helpless. The boy wants to help the old man, while the boy's father has no such desire, as their food is precious and the old man will die anyways. The boy wants to help everyone they come across, while the father wants to help nobody. The father, like most fathers, in his zeal to protect and shelter his son, hides him away from the world. Skulking from shadow to shadow as one hunted, eating hayseed and canned food. At one point in time they flee from an area in which the boy has seen another boy. The assumption the man makes is that anyone on the road is a direct threat, when in this case, it is the same group that takes the boy in at the end of the book. A small group, comparitivly well supplied and well equipped, who seem unsure of how the boy is still alive and made it as far as they did...seeming to imply that the boy and his father were somehow doing it all wrong, as this couple and their children had been following them and were "so worried" about him. The implication is that the boy and his father had been somehow misguided in their actions and planning as they traveled. This group was somehow more capable of making it, even with two children and two adults, than the boy and his father were alone.
One of the themes that occurs throughout the book is the concept of cannibalism. The blood cults wander the road, seeking to devour hapless travelers who are unable to evade their bloodied grasp. Cannibalism is one of those uncomfortable topics nearly everyone shys away from, as it is something very repugnant to most people sensibilities. The act of anthropophagy (cannibalism) is one of those cultural pits nobody wants to look into. It has been practiced by all cultures in their past at one point in time or another, and in fact is ritually practiced today in the majority of Christian religions (the Eucharist). Cannibalism has a long history of being practiced in severe survival situations, the most well known instance of which was said to have occurred in the Donner party as they crossed the Sierra Nevada mountain range in the winter of 1846. Suffice to say it has a long history and widespread tradition behind it.
Heinlein, in Stranger in a Strange Land, explored the concept of necro-cannibalism after the death of members of the community as a way to "cherish them" and to ensure their body didn't go to waste. After the death of an individual, that being will have left their physical shell, leaving nothing behind but material...some of which had nutrient value, therefor should be consumed. This belief is similar to the Hindu Aghori sect, which practice necro-cannibalism of corpses from cremation grounds and from funeral floats in the Ganges River. The logic is that since a individual is both the spirit and the body combined, upon death that spirit is released, leaving nothing but meat behind. The medical dangers from cannibalism are primarily prion diseases like Kuru, which are mostly caused by cannibals eating other cannibals, which is why it had a high prevalence in societies in which everyone was a cannibal, such as some of the tribes in Papua New Guinea, and barely a mention at all among the Aghori sadhus.
The entire concept doesn't work for me in my non-apocalyptic life... especially when I can go out and buy a tri-tip, but I can see the logic behind it. It is a very pragmatic rational approach, while I find is particularly distasteful. I am forced to admit that this sense of distaste stems mostly from my own ethnocentric cultural perspectives, while in this case, I am ok with that.
One of the other things that crops up from time to time is the concept of god, who god is, and why he has abandoned the world. Eli, the old man they find on the road, says "There is no god, and we are his prophets." It is an interesting twist on Nietzsche's "God is Dead" concept. It calls to mind the thoughts of men wandering through the dead world, preaching to the perished landscape. Fighting with wearied movements and feeble struggles against the inevitability of death, the god who exists only within the darkness of the hearts of men smirking as they fall in the ash...breath heavily, and finally lie still.
As John Travolta's character said in Pelham 123 (a stupid movie, but thats another story for another day), "We all owe God a death," and that is a debt that will be paid (existence or non-existence of god notwithstanding...you still can't get away from that one.) We are all living with shadows. When it all comes down to it, we are all shuffling down our own road though the ashfall of our world. In our lives we should all strive to be 'the good guys' and always 'carry the fire.'
I have alot to do today, so I am going to go get to work and hammer some of this stuff out. I have some backyard cleanup to do today after the storms of last week. Get ready for Monday, its coming whether you like it or not!
Crimson Cannonball: The Non-Blog of Jason Brink
It has been a while since I have had an opportunity to write. Things have been busy, and there is much that needs to be done. This last week was a decent week for me. I have made much progress in my own personal goals, I accomplished alot, got tons of work done, made some good connections, spent an evening walking on the beach (took this picture out on Morro Strand the other night), classes went well, overall the week went well for me. I finished the week out very nicely with an evening at Cloud 9 in SLO, smoking the hookah and spending time with some classmates. On the way home I got to talk to a good friend of mine on the phone for a while, I miss talking to her. Shes one of those people that you can feel intensely close to, but only talk to rarely. We have known one another for what seems like an eternity. From long, late-night conversations in our early teens, to today. From early barely contained arguments about meaningless things, to long discussions in which we will go back and forth for hours, only to find we were both arguing for the same basic points the entire time, but didn't want to admit that the other was just as right. A true friend and one who adds light to my life, to become a bright thread in the fabric of my existence. 
