I stare at a bowlful of grape husks and seeds, and think to myself, gently but earnestly, that re-location involves a lot of learning, and one of the most important things to learn is how to eat. The first time you receive a big bunch of these grapes from your co-worker who, in his turn, received them from his brother who received them from the earth after much toil and labor, you just start popping them in your mouth because you LOVE grapes—and this is a point worth emphasizing: YOU LOVE GRAPES! Well, you realize pretty quickly that these are grapes that have an interesting flavor, and you accept it is an inevitability because you are, after all, living in an entirely new country, and their grapes are bound to taste different—otherwise why would we have so many flavors of wine. It’s not a bad flavor, it’s just got this interesting combination of bitter and sweet that you just can’t quite suss. Obviously, this does not stop you from consuming the entire gigantic bunch, even though you also realize they contain seeds—but you’re a plucky chap and grape seeds have never even slowed you down. You don’t even spit ‘em out: “Here they come intestines... have fun!”

That’s one bunch down, but you’ve got another bunch in your refrigerator because Koreans never give anything in singles, always twos or threes: two for reserves and three for love. Well, because they were given to you inside your first week, there certainly isn’t three bunches, but you ponder what to do with this other bunch, knowing you will eat it eventually because it is the only food in your refrigerator at the moment, but at the same time being absolutely certain that you’re missing something. Something just isn’t right here.

When you arrive at your place of employment, a bowl of soup is placed in front of you, and you look down and realize that in the red chili base there are potatoes—which kind of makes your heart flutter—and the only real other “ingredient” is fish… in its entirety. Tools are kind of at a premium (from a westerners standpoint) in Korea. You get chopsticks and a spoon, and you wonder briefly how they expect you to eat a smallish fish that was tossed whole into soup with no real tools to bone it or remove the head that is kind of smirking at you because it seems to know your dilemma. Looking around, nobody else seems to have a problem with it and they just pick the meat off and drop the bones onto a pile of toilet paper—the cure-all paper in Korea, used for drying hands, it’s general purpose, and apparently for the piling up of fish bones. The teacher you gave you the grapes comes in, sits down, and says, “Oh! My favorite. I know how to eat this one.”

The next day, the other bunch of grapes is reduced to the stem and bag it came in. They’re good. They’re very good, but you’re still curious.

Time passes, and after a week, same said teacher invites you to eat duck in his abode two floors above you. Duck is delicious and spicy and perfect with a bowl of rice. Sitting with his family and watching CSI: Miami—which might be an entirely different entry—a bowl of grapes is placed on the table, and an empty bowl. Sweet. Grapes for dessert shall never be sneered at in your world. You go at them, but you haven’t watched TV in two weeks, so even a show with as many obvious shortcomings as CSI: Miami is somewhat interesting—sorry to those who may enjoy that sort of thing. You realize when you look down that there is only one difference between your teacher friends experience with the grapes and your own: his grape husks are in the bowl with his seeds.

Jackpot.

Well, being who they are, Koreans give. You are given another bunch of grapes before you leave—along with an apple because it’s always in twos and very rarely does it matter whether the two things are the same item.

Finding yourself peckish of a morning, your body cries out when you open the admittedly barren refrigerator because you espy a bunch of grapes. “Grab a bowl,” you tell yourself, and have a go.

That slightly bitter taste was because you were ignorant of the process. The meat of these grapes is sweet and fantastic and worth the effort of removing the slightly leathery skin—it would be the skin that needs to be removed wouldn’t it… something meaningful there—and spitting the seeds. You’ve just learned, after only three tries, how to eat.

Funny Thing About Anorexia

Well, today I'm feeling too much. I've been awake for half an hour and I'm afraid I'm bawling. When I woke up with morning, the first thing that hit me was an article from the New Yorker that a dear friend sent me about just home important this election year really is, and then I watched a video of a man who took his quadriplegic son on the Iron Man Triathalon, and finally, there's just so much in the world and so many words and I'm still shaking.

So, in an effort to allay the whatever it is, i think i'll try on some humor.

First of all, let me tell you that the pieces of literature which are chosen to help teach young Korean kids to read are interesting, if only for their subject matter, and it's probably a good thing that full comprehension is not really possible.

The most recent article we're reading is about diets and anorexia. I swear to god, and these Korean kids are barely into middle school. How do you explain anorexia in English to a child that age that actually speaks English, much less a child who only barely has a concept of the English language. (Admittedly, you need a degree in psychology to even come close to understanding it anyway... it's well beyond my ken, at any rate.)

Well, part of the unit is an article about Nicole Richie, one of the Olsen twins and Lindsay Lohan and that they have all admitted to a battle with anorexia (one quick note here: that might be the only time ever that those names appear in this blog--never say never I guess). The article says something to the effect of: Skinny celebrities are setting dangerous trends. The skinny American celebrities have all confessed to having suffered from anorexia.... etc.

Well, one of the Comprehension Questions was:

What do the skinny celebrities suffer from?

One of my kids put this down and goes, "Teacher! Teacher! Teacher!" and I had to work very hard to keep a straight face and tell him that while his answer was not technically correct, it was in a sense... and also very funny.

His answer:

The United States.

Life is an Opportunity

My Korean friend Bon made me think about that. We were talking of things, and he showed me a poem that you can’t even Google by a guy who’s name I can’t even remember. It’s called “Right This Moment,” and the first line is “Do not let this moment escape.” It goes on to say, “Do not spend this moment in vain. These moments pile up and become an entire life… You have to be joyful in the living of life.” How does a moment manage to capture the things I have wanted to tell people for so long? The fleeting arguments about who is right or wrong or stressing out over bullshit is quite simply a waste of time. Let it wash over your skin as the sea when you swim and do not think, only feel. The Korean translation of the English word “nature” is: “It has what it is.”

Ladies and gentlemen, there are things in life that require stability and consistency and constancy and so many other –ys, but unless you are involved in those things specifically, there is absolutely no reason to get caught up in them. Life is volatile no matter what you’re doing. I guess I don’t know where I’m going with this, and perhaps it doesn’t even really matter, because in this moment my fingers feel just so right wandering over their well-warn paths across the keyboard. Writing is a brain-out moment for me. There really is no thinking. It is just feeling and the feeling of the fingers flying and the brain on auto-pilot is like being on a drug. Don’t think, just be. When I am writing, there is nothing but the writing. It’s a little bit like daydreaming, except it’s more like actual dreaming when you’re awake. Something that feels so right is the quintessential sublime, and I’m beginning to think that the reason I so often feel like my religion would best be described as naturism is because there is so much of the sublime in nature, and there is a horrifying preciousness to it. It’s scary to sit and write and be only barely conscious of the fact that the brain is managing to work very hard.

One of the things I think I am most proud of is the ability to say that I do not miss the man or boy I used to be. (BTW: the smiths’ “There is a light that never goes out” just came up on random in iTunes, and I feel like it is so appropriate that it needs to be thrown in here…right this moment.) I appreciate what I used to be. When I was a child, the world I was in just didn’t seem to fit, but if it hadn’t been for that, I would not be what I am, and there’s something slightly unsettling about what I would be, or …

As much as I would like to finish this post, I have to go hiking with teacher Bone right this moment.

The Rules Are Changing.

Change is an absolutely essential part of our being. If we didn’t change from the time we were children, where would we be? I think that the physical changes we go through are some kind of manifestation, or symptom if you will, of the change going on inside our heads—or maybe the change that ought to be going on inside our heads.

Most of ancient Greek thought, or at least my understanding of it—which is admittedly only limited, deals with the goal of life and being pretty sure that the goal of life is happiness. I think they are right, because everything we do, we do because we want something (and we’re leaving motives entirely out of the equation for the time being): we wash the windshield at the gas station because we want a clean windshield, we do the piled-up dishes because we want the dishes cleaned, we believe because we want to believe. Physical reactions reveal (at their most basic) some kind of desire, and (at their most complex) subconscious desires. For example, you might be cleaning the windshield because you want a clean windshield, but you might be cleaning the windshield because somewhere inside you, you realize that this is mom’s car and you’ve been riding it like a bucking bronco and the good guy thing to do is give it back to her in better condition than she gave it to you, and so you find yourself scrubbing the windshield. You might be doing the dishes because you want clean dishes, but you also might be doing them because you know how hard your spouse works and you haven’t done this little chore for him/her in a long time because he/she is usually the one that does them and so you find yourself doing the dishes. You might be believing because you want to believe, but, then again, you might be believing because there is something unfulfilled in you about how your own father raised you and you look to another father—“Our father’s are our models for God” (a quote which is best-known from the movie Fight Club—based on a book by Chuck Palahniuk who once did a reading with one of my professor’s from St. John’s University and Irvine Welsh)—and so you find yourself believing.

I guess the key difference between actions that we are performing to fulfill conscious desires are actions that we move through, and actions that we are performing to fulfill subconscious desires are actions that we find ourselves doing—which is a pretty huge difference. I find myself moving to Korea pretty soon. I certainly want something, but what is it? And, for that matter, why want it?

One of the things that has just simply struck me as I sit click clickety click clicking away here is that by accepting the subconscious as a reality, I am opening myself to a belief—however it might manifest itself—in some kind of pschyoanalysis (although I think it’s more like cultural criticism through an understanding of a cultural unconscious which is probably more Jungian than Freudian in its origin). At any rate, I guess I give the brain enough credit to, first of all, be able to keep some things from us.

All you really have to do is look at the processes of the body. You don’t have to think about how you’re defecating, and you don’t have to think about how to keep your heart pumping, and you don’t have to think about how to keep your legs moving, they really just continue to do their thing. The subconscious desires controlling all of those things can be accessed, though if you think about all the mystics out there that can control their heart rate or stretch their ligaments and tendons beyond all comprehension. It is a much taller order to get in touch with the subconscious. Given all that then, the unconscious sort of sits out their as this thing we can only ever poke at, and the best we can do is attempt to study it through culture and art—which is probably why these things are so important.

I find myself going to Korea for reasons I can’t comprehend. It’s what I want to do, and I know that much, but I guess I don’t know why it’s what I want. For those of you who have been introduced to it, I have that classic “go complex” common among young men in relationships and escaped prisoners. At the end of “The Trial and Death of Socrates,” that “dirty” old man gives a speech about what we’ll call his “No Complex,” where he has a voice inside his head that never tells him yes, but clearly calls out no to him when something defies logic or when something contradicts virtue. I guess you could say that I have an alternate consonant complex, and my unfortunate issue is that I don’t have nearly so good a reason to go…usually.

Subconscious, psychoanalysis, and cultural theory aside, when you experience déjà vu in the matrix, it means they’ve changed something, and I’m experiencing the kind of déjà vu of mind that reminds me of times of incredible change and growth in my life. Anytime there is extensive change and growth, the rules change. When there is a revolution, there is sudden change—no matter who wins—and the rules are irrevocably altered. When there is pain, there is sudden change, and the rules of your life are mutated to avoid that kind of pain again at all costs. When there is pleasure, there is change, and the rules of your life are altered to how much of that pleasure is acceptable without being excessive. Anytime the rules (or perhaps we could say laws) are disambiguated, change becomes the rule.

All that being said, the rules of this page are going to change in response to the action I am undertaking. The format will change to a word I’ve been toying around with: travelblog. It might even be updated more frequently than it currently is (let’s say maybe once or twice a week as opposed to once every two weeks) and will start to contain elements other than simply the thoughts as transcribed thru words on the page. It might start to contain pictures, drawings, paintings, elements of the written Korean language, and anything else that I find interesting in my travels. The world has started to present itself to me in pictures as well as words and I’m thinking about attempting to convey those pictures somehow—even though my formal physical art training is…what’s that physics word…negligible.

But here we go, I suppose. I’ve been fascinated by eagles lately, and hawks, and all large birds of prey I suppose. The eagle and the hawk are, for all intents and purposes, the top of the food chain, and yet it is entirely possible for us to take a gun out there and knock a couple out of the sky without a problem. It’s kind of a perspective readjustment, and it still doesn’t manage to make the soaring hawk any less beautiful than it is when it’s hunting and maintaining its own food chain. I guess we’re moving into a place where I will be maintaining my own food chain, with the full knowledge that something else is out there controlling the predator population. Once I was a hunter, and I feel like the season is opening again.

I've Seen Some Interesting

stuff. And, strangely enough perhaps, I have seen them in the middle of Iowa, in places you might never hear about, but I have managed to see some of the most awe inspiring events of my relatively short existence in a town east of Indianola (a few thousand, a private college, the Hy-Vee and the Wal-Mart are the places to be any night of the week, and you can probably name the five bars in town and their typical patrons, and it has the old town square still in tact…a lovely place in its way) east of Ackworth (populations runs around eighty-five out here—which is only really five miles outside of Indianola, but what’s a suburb of Indianola going to be like, really) east of Sandyville (running a startling sixty-one—or some such preposterousness—and containing one of the largest dead car lots in all of Iowa—or so they say) and south of Beech (the most impressive point in this town in the church or school or used to be a church or used to be a school and is now a church or used to be a church and is now a school with an impressively blue roof—you can’t really make these things up: a Sandyville-sized town with an impressive building with an impressive roof) is a little nook of heaven that most people don’t have the faintest idea about: Lower Beech.

We’ll get to Lower Beech in a second, but first I want to say that all these other tiny towns along the way ooze beauty in a way that not many other things can. When I stay at my former professors farmhouse in Ackworth, I am adding more than one percent to the population. Furthermore, on the dirt road out to the previously mentioned farmhouse, I saw smoke. Lots and lots of smoke. Let me be clear on how much smoke I saw: I thought a house (the thought crept into mind that perhaps it was the farmhouse itself) was literally engulfed in flames. As I crossed the Middle River Bridge, I began to realize that it was just at the top of the hill and “my” farmhouse was safe, but it still begged the question: What the? Rounding the bend I saw that it was actually three of the most massive piles of branches, brush and wood items that I had ever seen. These things were twenty-five to thirty feet tall and running twenty yards at the base, and they were BLAZING! The flames were probably up fifty or sixty feet in the air, and the smoke billowing off of them could’ve choked God. Driving slowly by to take in this sight that few will ever have the opportunity to see, I see that the fire department is at the house and they are standing with a couple of guys who are standing around having a couple of beers and watching the fire. I’m pretty sure the fire department guys came out just to be sure things didn’t get out of hand, but otherwise a pretty standard burn pile.

I wonder about Sandyville. Where did it come from? Why is there a house on the edge (yes, on the outskirts of Sandyville) that has no basement—and we know because a friend of ours looked into buying it that it has no basement? Why are there so many dead cars in Sandyville? At what point did somebody say, “Yes, bring me your broken down coupes and Caddies and pickup trucks and I’ll lay ‘em to rest for you?” Why is the speed limit going through Sandyville forty miles per hour for less than half a mile when it picks back up to the Iowa highway ninety-two standard speed limit of fifty-five? So many questions, and I think that the existence of a Sandyville makes me one happy fat kid, for reasons I can’t possibly begin to explain or understand.

Beech and it’s blue temple. We have driven through Beech a couple of times. There is a corn silo on the corner to the road that leads to Beech—and, alternatively, Lower Beech—where a right turn (to the East) brings you to a road that makes a square around the town, where you can see the sights (big blue roof, families that love living in Beech, and the banker’s house which is twice as big as everybody else’s house). As you exit you think to yourself, “Having lived in a city and lived in the country, there is only one reason why you would choose to live either place: personal desire. They want to live here about as much as others want to live in a big city. I get it. Sometimes it’s all I want.”

But we’re concerned mostly with south of Beech about a mile and a half to a gate to the east. Don’t drive too fast in the fog, because you’ll miss it. [Funny story actually, it was foggy two mornings ago and I was meeting a co-worker our at Lower Beech, and he’s probably been out there more than I have (which is a lot), and he said he drove right past it. Not as funny as I thought in a haha kind of way, more funny that this Lower Beech veteran could manage to miss the turn he’s practiced for so long].

Anyway, there is a red metal gate across the driveway—classic farm-style—that used to be a metal rod attached to steel cables. Unlock it or remove the bolt with a ratchet if your key is not working properly and drive up the quarter-mile driveway to what we could probably call a small clearing. There are crops on either side of you. Last year it was corn, but they’ve planted soy beans this year to help the soil out—even though corn is a more profitable crop, and these are some kind of hulkified beans because they’re growing like three or four feet tall and it’s kind of incredible.

Let’s pretend for just a second that it is incredibly early. For those of you who are not early risers, let’s say that it’s a quarter to seven and you’ve already had your coffee and you’re doing okay, aware of your surroundings if nothing else. There’s a bend in the freshly mowed path—about four mowers-width—and the sun is just coming up over the horizon and you look up, your hands full of tools and gasoline and a lunch for the day, and you stop. You stop because in a field of grass in front of your eyes are no less than ten thousand spider webs. They stretch on forever. Some are massive and almost hurt your eyes as the sun picks up the morning dew on them. Others are very small and less intricately designed but more like a canopy so nothing can get up from below them and nothing can fall to the ground from above them. In a couple of them sits the proverbial artist waiting for a meal. It always comes. You realize very quickly that there is no way to fully appreciate or describe it without actually seeing it. People that hate spiders would probably be awe-struck at the sheer beauty of the sight—or at least lets hope that their sense of what’s beautiful is finely tuned enough to negate whatever negative feelings they may have toward our arachnid brethren.

I had a pretty long day out there by myself in what we lovingly call The Lake House (a.k.a the pond shack) replacing all the screening. This is no small task and requires ladders, spline, a splining tool, a cordless drill, a hammer, a giant flat-head screwdriver, a box knife, rolls of screening, a hammer and nails. There are twelve separate sections, each requiring various flexibility for nuances introduced by the builder (this was an, ahem, non-contract job, and kind of slapped together so everything is a different size). But it’s been nice, hard work. It feels good working with my hands again. But it’s time to close up shop for the day and after cleaning up as much as possible (knowing that you’re going to be back tomorrow to finish the job), you walk back up the trail, and out of a tree that has been providing shade for a car on what was only a modestly warm day comes a hawk, big as life and screeching to let you know it’s going and hopes you do the same. Startled but amazed at the size of this bird. Eyes wide open, as the saying goes.

You gotta wanna watch, it has been said. Sometimes there are things in this world, beautiful things that slip under the radar because of some kind of preposterous prejudice. I would almost wager that most of the beautiful things in this world are overlooked at one time or another because of some kind of preposterous prejudice. But I guess that amounts to irrational beauty hating, and that thought is kind of a bummer.

“I can’t go out tonight, my girl will kick me out.”
“Kick you out nothing. This is Ireland! Kick her in the teeth.”
--J.P. Donleavy

The sublime is all around me I guess.

There’s Just So

Much. It can be difficult to cope with. I guess that’s why I write about it. In any given week, there are so many things (and I use ambiguity for a reason here) that can happen. If one were of the appropriate skill level, they could take all the action around the world and comprehend it, but I don’t think that’s possible. Stephen Hawking be damned, nobody could understand the strings affecting the day-to-day. Come close…maybe, but full comprehension? Not a chance.

And Michael Phelps has seven gold medals.
And suddenly you’re on your way to Korea.
And without warning you owe Cablevision a thousand dollars.
And then you find the depths of your father’s irrationality.
And you have the worst sunburn of your life on the bottom half of your thighs.
And you are scared.
And the weight of history suddenly becomes too much to bear.

So many ands. To be blessed and cursed in the same moment, simultaneously in fact. How does one begin to pretend to see the sublime? The ability to ask questions is a big one, I think, having recently discovered that there are indeed people in the world for whom the questioning of information is an unused faculty.

“Kobe’s thirty-five and he’s been playing for like sixteen years.”
“Actually, according to Wikipedia he’s thirty and been playing for twelve years.”
“The days of spouting quote-unquote facts are over. Prepare to be checked.”

But then there is a feeling that washes over the epidermis, and thoughts flash through your mind about how perhaps you are precisely where you wanted you to be. You’ve been asking these questions of people for so long, and now you are asking it of yourself, even though you’ve already answered it. It’s time for the next question: “What do you plan to do about it? How do you plan to achieve this goal?” Good questions. I’ll get back to you sometime soon, I swear. I just need some time to think. A little quiet time with me and my psychosis to tighten things up a little bit.

“You know that I only live when I am near you… I have said that before, but I don’t think I ever came so near meaning it.”

--Kate Chopin, The Awakening, Chpt. XXXIV

Everybody has to find you. That’s the big quest isn’t it? Your love. He had it right all those years ago when he said, “Follow your bliss,” didn’t he? The words speak to me as nothing else ever has, and I am reminded each time they beg me to play with them, that it is love I have for the act of writing. It is a doing worth doing. There are so many doings worth doing, though, it’s about finding the right doing to do. The capacity of the human character to do is incredible, and it is possible that we haven’t even come close to understanding the peak just yet. Human technology. Athletes, academics, salt-of-the-earth: they are all human technology. Proof positive of evolution. The only real difference is that in this new era where we understand things like evolution, we can begin to see it happening on a very miniature scale. It took the human form almost five million years to figure out how to walk standing completely straight. We can see humanity develop under our eyes, and the funny thing is that it is moving in ALL different directions. A very wise professor once told me that that quality comes from quantity. He was by no means saying that a book or story is better because it’s longer, he was saying that the more material and more variety you have to work with, the better the end product is going to be—and anybody who has ever written a paper they are actually proud of would probably agree with me. The more material you have to work with, the more you can take out without feeling bad, the more you can develop into a recognizable mound, the more you can build a mountain range.

Cheap wine gives me headaches. Bummer.

On russet floors, by waters idle,
The pine lets fall its cone;
The cuckoo shouts all day at nothing
In leafy dells alone;
And traveler’s joy beguiles in autumn
Hearts that have lost their own.

--Housman

To steal somebody’s attention is a precious thing to take. You’d better be able to give a pretty damned good reason for it when you’re called up to answer for the things you’ve done in this world, and if it’s done for good reasons that turn out good, then sobeit it probably needed to happen. But if it was done for selfish reasons, or even if it turned out badly with the correct motives—which means that the stealer was probably unaware of the nature of their victim—there will be hell to pay. Maybe that’s what worries me. “Well I got that ol’ travelin’ bone, and I feel I got to move…”

Disjointed is funny thing to understand fully. Fuzzy connections looming up through the time fog: executioner’s singing, Orpheus’s emerging, models for writing, powers in their imagining, vanity’s fairing, new world’s braving, and in fuzzy relief they connect, but only to the one disjointed enough to make it make sense. This will be true because I will it so.

Can you see me? I can see you. I bet you’re sitting at your computer right now. I bet you’re a little bit confused. I bet by now you might even be shaking your head. You’ve gotten this far and you can’t see me yet. See me sitting in my basement domicile pecking away at my tiny computer, next to the ancient lamp acquired from my boss in Des Moines. Hear the ceiling fan whirring gently (it’s only set on medium). Taste the awful, cheap Livingston making me feel lower. Smell the smell of stale cigarettes on my fingers as I lean too close to the screen in an effort to make sure I’m seeing things as well as I ought to see them. See this morning’s coffee cup. Hear the Incubus come through the tiny speakers. See the books on my shelf. Taste the cool, circulated air-conditioned air. Feel the goatee with me now. Feel the closeness of my breath in the words. Feel the closeness of me in action.

I'm Doing All I

know. I am living in a fairly messed up world right now. There has to be something I’m missing, a key of sorts, because I cannot imagine why there is nothing out there for me. I have considered the fact that perhaps I am over-qualified for most positions I am applying for, but what kind of place is it that does not want somebody they know will be able to do the job? That has to illustrate something, right?

But all I really want to do sometimes is cry myself to sleep because of my apparent inability to find employment—although it is not for a lack of effort. So much time spent filling out applications and submitting them and re-working my resume and writing cover letters and investigating who’s hiring, and yet not a single nibble on the end of my job-fishing line, so here I sit, doing just about all I know how to do: write. Even that is questionable, I suppose, as I have never had anything technically published.

Let’s run down a list of occupations I have had—as I have been working since I was about fourteen. I started my working career with a paper route I worked with my mother. She drove the van, but I rolled the papers and stuffed them in their blue plastic bags and delivered them to the doors of people who would probably not even read them. I got a job at the grocery store across the street which ended badly and I don’t really want to talk about it. Let’s just say that youthful exuberance was too much for me to handle at the time. After that, I got a job at Maggie Moo’s Ice Cream and Treaterie as an ice cream technologist serving specially mixed ice cream to the masses. From there I graduated, literally from high school, and obtained a position as a construction laborer for a dodgy construction outfit. Then I went off to school and obtained a position as a janitor in the University of Nebraska at Lincoln’s student union. That summer I came home and managed to land a job at Target where I worked as an overnight merchandise processing agent for the time when the Target at 169 and Barry Rd was still new. I changed schools at that point and moved to Iowa where I worked in the mailroom of the school and sorted, delivered, and distributed the mail for the campus and the post office. After a while, it became very apparent that this was not nearly enough (5.25/hr) to fund my college experience with, and I got a second job—both of which I retained for my entire career at Simpson—with a wealthy older gentleman who needed strapping young fellows to maintain his yard and his house and his land. This was truly a landmark position for me because, as I like to say, if you could –ing it, I did it: mowing, cutting down of trees, removing said trees, painting, patching, fixing, building, conversating, driving, planting, dusting, organizing. I did it all, and I got pretty good at it—I even started cutting down trees with a chainsaw sans shoesus. Then I went to New Zealand where I was studying to be a teacher. I found out I could work up to fifteen hours a week to help fund my stay in the country, and I hooked up with Adecco and worked in a plastics factory as a quality control agent, an astro-turf laying agent, a grocery store merchandiser and re-fixturer, and I was basically interning to be an educator. Upon returning to Simpson I re-acquired my pair of jobs and worked them until I graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in English. I was planning to move to New York City and pursue a graduate degree, which I did, but there was an awkward couple of months in which I was living back at home with my mother and father and needed a job, so I became a substitute teacher in the Park Hill School District. A couple of months there and then it was off to New York City where I acquired a job on the overnight merchandise processing team of one of Fortune’s Top 100 Companies to Work For: The Container Store. I graduated from St. John’s University with a Master’s Degree in English and then got promoted to Full-Time at TCS. Three months after my promotion, my supervisor was fired, the other full-timer quit, and I was left to run the operation. They can say what they want, and titles aside, I was the overnight supervisor for six months, managing values and attitudes, ensuring efficiencies were met, communicating, and insisting on TCS core cultural values as the way to get that truck processed.

It occurs to me that I have screwed up a lot of these jobs. Something in me revolts when it starts to sit wrong. I am a bad, bad man sometimes. I get flighty because I have very definite thoughts about oppression, and sometimes all I really want to do is sit in my room and play my guitar for hours, or sit at my computer and type and type and type and let the click clickety click click click of the keyboard help me find zen, or read and read and read until I think my brain is going to overflow. “Gilgamesh went abroad in the world, but he met with none who could withstand his arms till he came to Uruk.”

“Rage: sing, goddess, achilles’ rage, black and murderous, that cost the Greeks incalculable pain, pitched countless souls of heroes into Hades’ dark, and left their bodies to rot as feasts for dogs and birds, as Zeus’ will was done.”

“Paul stood in the bookshop facing a shelf of books.”

“I can feel the heat closing in, feel them out there making there moves, setting up their devil doll stool pigeons, crooning over my spoon and dropper I throw away at Washington Square Station, vault a turnstile and two flights down the iron stairs catch an uptown A train.”

“I celebrate myself, and what I assume you shall assume, for every atom belonging to me as good belongs to you.”

“ “The Bottoms” succeededc to “Hell Row.” “

“In the beginning, God created the Heavens and the Earth.”

“While the present century was in its teens, and on one sunshiny morning in June, there drove up to the great iron gate of Miss Pinkerton’s academy for young ladies, on Chiswick Mall, a large family coach, with two fat horses in blazing harness, driven by a fat coachman in a three-cornered hat and wig, at the rate of four miles an hour.”

“We were somewhere around Barstow, on the edge of the desert, when the drugs began to take hold.”

“The village of Holcomb stands on the high wheat plains of western Kansas, a lonesome area that other Kansans call “out there.””

“I’ve been called Bone all my life, but my name’s Ruth Anee.”

“It is customary for those who wish to gain the favour of a prince to endeavour to do so by offering him gifts of those things which they hold most precious, or in which they know him to take especial delight.”

“A squat grey building of only thirty-four stories.”

“A spectre is haunting Europe - the spectre of Communism.”

But what good does it do me? I think I’m going to go fishing, but if you want to know about Post-Marxist Critical Theory or the importance of Hunter S. Thompson or Joyce’s Hamlet theory imbedded in Ulysses or how to play guitar or how to shade a drawing (I can only work in gray-scale right now, but I’m working into color) or how to tie a fisherman’s knot or how to fillet a fish or what it means to make a good business decision or how to string a guitar or how to roll a perfect cigarette or what Skip James and Robert Johnson meant to the world of music or why Led Zeppelin is so important or why I can’t get enough of Jeff Buckley or what the difference is between Tom Wolfe and Hunter S. Thompson or the appropriate way to style a conversation in a piece of fiction or what is meant by Zoom in reference to writing or how to make biscuits from scratch or how to make your own pasta sauce (and your own pasta for that matter) or how to play cribbage successfully or how to average three-hundred and fifty points in Scrabble or how to make a “Perfect Manhattan” or what it means to bruise the gin (and what gin’s made of for that matter) or what’s meant by Kia Ora in Kiwiland or what Surfer’s Paradise, Australia is like or how Fiji is one of the most beautiful places on the planet the philosophical understanding of the sublime or what I mean when I say “The Act reveals the subconscious desire” or how religion and spirituality differ or what Whitman is doing in Leaves of Grass or the appropriate way to create a pyramid introduction or the appropriate things to check before starting up a chainsaw or how to check the fluids in your car or what it’s like to wrestle in Bulgaria under the care of what can only be described as the Bulgarian Mafia or why I know that Les Paul still plays every week in New York City at the Iridium Jazz Club or the difference between an objective and a goal or what is meant by the perfect balance of speed and accuracy or why it is important to not be paying more in rent than in payroll or how to make a Red Devil or if you want go swimming or if you want to go hunting or if you want to sit around and talk or if you want, then maybe you could give me a call.

Or maybe a job.

In New York City they do a lot of painting in the subway, and they always put up very helpful signs that let you know when the paint is wet that say (you guessed it): “Wet Paint.”

I used to take two of those signs and create an alternate message for people to ponder:

We In Pain.