Real Men of Genius

I started this WordPress four years ago just as I was finishing up my senior year in high school and preparing to ship out for the Navy. I had many motives for starting this blog, chief of which was my reaction to the culture shock of trying to survive in a school where people were more focused on fighting each other and having sex than succeeding in college and being as happy as normal high school angst would allow. I also started writing because my friends got tired of my mass emails that were directly resulting from my need to actively pursue a greater meaning and understanding of my life as well as my need to express myself through words.

It was around this time I had a conversation with the father of a good friend of mine about the possibility of world peace. At the time, my understanding of the idea of world peace was as vague as the average hippie’s and just as idealistic. “Yes, I’m joining the Navy for money for college. No, I don’t think what we’re doing in the Middle East is the best thing towards peace as I don’t think you can force peace with violence. No, I don’t think withdrawing completely and immediately would be a good idea either. I’m going to save the world. That is all.” That was the extent of my reasoning. Then I shipped out, and found out just how easy it was for me to get bogged down in the trivialness of being on the bottom of the totem.

You see, back when our Navy was young and Naval officers won Glory on the field of battle as well as the field of honor (Dueling: they would take a few paces away from each other, turn around, and shoot once. They would do this until one of them was either dead or was incapable of continuing due to bodily injuries sustained.) Enlisted members, midshipmen, carpenters, et cetera, were usually criminals. The menial labor was considered punishment for crimes. The captains usually ran tight ships, and punishment for negligence came in the form of extreme humiliation and public whipping.

Today’s Navy has taken away the whip and overall has become much softer and gives much better treatment in comparison to the treatment given those criminals at sea, but in my opinion, the honor that is derived from carrying out my cleaning duties and sitting here is about as glorious as being a janitor for the CIA. It is not enough to merely be a part of a “Global Force for Good.” I have opinions, and one of those opinions is that anyone who has opinions about anything, whether it involves something at home or something outside of our country, should do something about them. Don’t complain about society or the whales or your state’s governor or the deficiency of our school systems unless you aim to do something about it. I want to be more than the man who sits at home watching TV with a beer in hand who complains about “The Man.”

Granted, in the scheme of things I have nothing to complain about. For my first orders I was stationed in Italy. I upheld some of the oldest traditions in the Navy, older than even the field of honor. I’m not ashamed that I volunteered my fridge to be brought downstairs at cook outs to keep everyone’s alcohol cold. I was there when the fourth deck of BEQ 1 in Capodichino saw its last party, before everyone was moved off base to minimize the intense awesomeness that our parties endeavored. I’m proud of the endless pubcrawls in Rome and Florence and that I held my alcohol with the best of Americans, and British, and Aussies. Suffice it to say I won’t miss those days. I was dying to live; desperate for the feeling of being alive even at the expense of my own clarity. It was the Josef Green at the time. This is the Josef Green of this time.

I joined the Navy due to lack of direction and lack of money. I often lost sight of my goals, in truth because I had none less vague than wanting to feel alive and not wanting to find myself on my death bed regretting my life. If you utilize the military for this purpose, it is up to you to define how it turns out for you and whether it enables you to find direction and meaning or if it just postpones the inevitability of the moment when you have to make a decision about life and find yourself still at a loss for sure footing. It is easy for someone such as me to forget that the present moment, no matter how dull, is paving the way for a moment in the future in which true happiness is accomplished through achievement. My best friend, Silviu, understood this way before I have and in that regard, I envy him. This moment must be integrated into the strategy towards that moment in the future.

What is my strategy, you ask? Well, as it should, it involves my son. People ask me what I plan on leaving for my son. Do you think someone such as me looks forward to leaving nothing so much as my battered leather jacket or a little money for him to piss away? I arrived at the conclusion a long time ago that once a person is gone, stuff doesn’t mean much, not even their body. Memories mean everything. Ideas mean everything. Empowerment means everything. I want to leave wonderful memories for my son. I want to leave a better world for my son. I want to leave pride for my son. I want to be the rocket that shuttles his own into space and slingshots it towards the stars.

Doing this requires involvement and love, sure, but also something else. It involves a test. Let my life become the testament of my results of that test. Let the test measure me against the dauntless men of genius and action that moved the world on their shoulders. Men like William Eaton who led 1000 ragtag men including American marines, Turks, Arabs, and Bedouins- most of which threatened desertion countless times- across the desert from Egypt to Tripoli (and in less than 40 years, mind you, Moses would have been dumbfounded), with the force of American Naval power deserting him, and brought the tyrant Bashaw, the scourge of Europe, upon whose shores laid the mangled, rotting corpses of exhausted Christian slaves, ultimately to his knees. Even when Eaton finally reached Tripoli, his motley crew was outnumbered 10 to 1. It was his truly indomitable spirit that demanded order through impossible chaos and saw Thomas Jefferson’s intentions through to the end.

You and I complain and quibble over mundane trivialities in the 21st century and begrudge anything uncomfortable because we lack the motivation of honorable purpose. We lack that focusing drive towards greatness. We become too preoccupied with the mud pies of instant gratification. Happiness through achievement does not come without sacrifice or exertion of energy. Even Will Smith’s character in “The Pursuit of Happiness” knew that. And World Peace? Anyone who thinks world peace will come without violence is naïve. Due to the intrinsically varying nature of humanity, there will always be a group of people whose foundation of perception involves not the sanctity of life but in its stead the persuasion of their own agenda through force and violence. Humanity has not progressed in such a way that this fact will change in my lifetime and as long as it is a fact of life, pursuing peace and pursuing safety means being capable of defending ourselves from injustice as well as defending those who cannot defend themselves. That said, do we have the resources and money to fight everyone else’s battles? Not by any stretch of the imagination. As long as there are people who wish for violence, our military branches will always have an honorable purpose, but it will not be the method in which I pursue my purpose. I prefer a more direct road, a road more inviting for my strengths, talents, and passions.

This concludes the rambling, digressing, but well intentioned train of thought of this blog as I make my way from active duty enlisted sailor and into the next phase of my adventure: Fatherhood and beyond.

The Code

The processes that comprise my resurrection are slow-acting. My mental voice retains the sluggish intensity of a pre-infant whisper. I open my eyes and suddenly I am awake to a world of endless responsibility, but I cannot attach myself to it. Not yet. The chemicals in my body aren’t flowing fast enough yet. My entire existence hangs on the balance of retrieving my gumption from the farthest reaches of oblivion. Feebly, I realize this struggle cannot go on in this manner, so I painfully push myself to get out of bed and take my struggle to the shower. It is the struggle to become fully awake and I have fought it every day for many years.

The steamy water does not succeed in blasting my eyes comfortably open. They’re still painful slits as I dry off and put my clothes on. My mental voice gains confidence, but it is a bitter confidence. A resigned confidence. The Sun is not up yet, but it will be, and so must I.  That is where my confidence ends. It seems so little ground in comparison to it’s lofty goals of becoming the Josef Green that my friends and family love the most. But it is ground I’ve gained, and I methodically accept it and continue forward.

Despair makes itself cozy. Despair is everywhere my confidence is not and as I push my breakfast around in my tray it makes use of its mirthless cackle. I ignore it. I’m trying to gain my momentum now. I show up to work, not ready, unenthusiastic, but there. My actions must endure when everything else in me fails.  I’m rolling my boulder up my hill. Hours go by and I’m still struggling with my boulder. But my voice is louder now. Its edges are defined. It is a little more interactive in my surroundings. When I’m being spoken to, I’m no longer pulling levers and throwing switches in the most detached responses imaginable. Not as much at any rate. I’m fighting for my speech to be me talking to you and not just myself standing by and casually watching me perfunctorily respond to you, them, or whomever.

I fight to connect and submerge myself into my life. I am doing all I can to plug into the story that is exclusively my own. And then, after many imperceptible victories over despair and most of the 12 hour work day, I reach my mountaintop. My voice is the nuclear fusion of the Sun. And with that voice, comes a need. This need has been with me ever since I first learned how to read. It was the motivation that drove my ridiculous scientific disasters as a youngster, had me trying to run for class president at an elementary school I had attended for only a month, and had me trying to convince my high school friends to sell plasma so we could raise enough money to attend DEFCON in Las Vegas.

This need is driven by a fear. I am sure this fear wasn’t the root cause of the need, but as surely as I sit here typing, that single fear has developed. Subsequently I am driven to use the most accessible tools at my disposal to describe it. A rule we all learned in elementary school was that it isn’t adequate to define a word while using it in its definition. You can use the word in a sentence to derive its connotations and meaning, but in a simple definition, you must use completely different words. What about ideas about which it is impossible to convey their full gravity by using words alone at all? I would that my life becomes a legacy that defined an idea that could otherwise not be conveyed. I would that I base my life on truth, and not confuse opinions with truth. But what I fear most in this life is reaching my death bed having actively engaged in this world to the extent of a mere ripple. I have my voice back. I am awake. I am alive. The ocean and I are alike in our perpetual motion. I will be a tsunami. My raison d’être becomes my journey towards maximizing my life’s affect on the world. Anything less is not enough.

Of course, I am not a tsunami. I am not an indomitable force of nature. I am not Batman. I am a human. I make mistakes. Some of my actions affect others in ways I will never know. Not all those ways will be good. This is the fact of life; that action and reaction is chaotic because each of us can only control and be aware of so much in our surroundings. Many turn to religion for guidance and for wellness. Knowing that there’s someone out there who has everything in control would be a great feeling because I know that I certainly don’t. But it is not a truth. It is an opinion-based perception that is made tangible ONLY by faith. In no way is it made tangible by reality.

With this knowledge I choose to be free of the guidance as well as the opinion-based perception. I cannot accept the opinion-based perception, and when it comes down to religion, it really is all or nothing.  But for so long I had this idea that perhaps there was a subconscious part of me that was in touch with my road on a deeper level. I felt as if I could never regret any of my actions. That perhaps having an awesome life of a man of action would come effortlessly to me. I became too proud in what I was good at and forgot just how imperfect I am. My friends back in Tucson loved the Joe Green that was imperfect, who was always talking about being a ninja, who had horrible pick up lines. But in every aspect that could be observed, I was more imperfect than any of them. Even now, they are better people than me. I am loud about my good intentions, but they are doing more with their lives.  For me to achieve my dreams, more effort is required of me. It is time I accept that.

Upon accepting this, I realize I need a code. Without a code I’m going to end up as another statistic, continuing cycles of suffering. I would rather end my life this instant than to live with the fact that I continue cycles of suffering. I need to deliberately choose my behavioral vectors. I need to think through, in detail, my own road, to create the schema of guidance that is suited to my responsibilities as well as my mental and spiritual needs. Spiritually speaking, I must pursue my legacy. Responsibility-wise, I must work in ways that maximize production and results. A world merely comprised of starving artists and hipsters is not substantial enough. I need to give back to the world.  I need to find opportunities for activism and develop my will towards leadership. I need to earn for myself and my family. I need to supply the passion and stability for Jennifer, my son, and I to be a smooth and loving unit- truly a Ka-Tet. I need to become both an intellectual and a man of action (if there is a difference between the two. I’m not entirely sure there is…) in every aspect of who I am.  I need to create in myself a bulwark against my old foe, despair. And finally, I need to never disclose that code I create. It will be for me and me alone.

With this need comes awareness. The sanctity of life is at stake in the Gaza Strip. In Lebanon. In Iraq. In Afghanistan. In  Libya. In Darfur. In Somalia. In China. In Portugal. In Japan. In Indonesia. In North Korea. In the Indian Ocean. In Brazil. In Egypt. In Bahrain. In the countless women and children being trafficked across the globe. On the Ivory Coast. In America. Just as I can see through the outrageous propaganda the Tulsa Public School System is putting out to make their School consolidation sound like anything other than a desperate move to cut funding on education in the area, I can see through the Republican and Tea Party masquerades, through their explicit demands and their implicit power plays. There is too much politics in American Politics-across the board- and not rational, educated calculation. On so many levels, in so many ways, this world needs concise, inspiring action. And I know that as one person I can only do so much, so I look to the peers of my country, America, I look at all the young and able bodies full of vitality and potential, and see…

People arguing over the simplest things. People watching Jersey Shore on TV. People concerned about no more than their favorite fashion, sports team, bands, or political flavor. People looking at all our problems and saying, “It’s out of our hands! God will provide!” Or they spew out conspiracy theories and over a few beers complain about how powerless they are and how little their needs are met by what is supposed to be the greatest and most democratic, “For the People” country in the World. If they even get that far.

Chuck Palahniuk had it right:

“The sound shivers through the walls, through the table, through the window frame, and into my finger. These distraction-oholics. These focus-ophobics. Old George Orwell got it backward. Big Brother isn’t watching. He’s singing and dancing. He’s pulling rabbits out of a hat. Big Brother’s holding your attention every moment you’re awake. He’s making sure you’re always distracted. He’s making sure you’re fully absorbed… and this being fed, it’s worse than being watched. With the world always filling you, no one has to worry about what’s in your mind. With everyone’s imagination atrophied, no one will ever be a threat to the world.”

Mental baby food. That’s all we have appetites for, generally. It isn’t enough for me.

Because I am awake. I am making my code. I am imperfect, but I can see the world as it could be in my dreams. I can remember the dreams of my youth. I aim to do something about it.

But my nuclear fusion is too bright when night approaches. I push myself to the raggedy edge of my limits at the weight room to experience the euphoric high of physical exhaustion. I take a shower before slowly, awkwardly, climbing into my rack and closing my eyes. Then I spend hours just laying there, my thoughts too loud for me to sleep. If I’ve picked up a particularly good book, like that Harry Dresden novel I was reading last month, I’ll lay there, deliberately, desperately, lapping up the words. Desperately defiant of the time ticking away. In moments like those I have to make myself truly appreciate the pleasure of well-written words, of the escalating excitement of the storyline. I pause frequently to tell myself that it will be worth being extra exhausted in the morning, because there’s nothing I will be looking forward to this morning than another Monday, in a half a year full of Mondays, and my struggle just to once again wake up.

Changing Course

I know no one reads this. I just wanted to make my new direction tangible. I’m going to be spending a considerable amount of time on a boat for a while. Then I’ll be finally getting out of the Navy. My raison D’etre will be my main goal, which is to dominate the journalism industry. But in the meantime I’ll be working on my book.  No, it won’t be about me.

That’s all I’ve got.

Little Lion Man

A book is being burned tonight. In a large metal bucket it lays, pages saturating with lighter fluid, ink bleeding through the pages, a small pool of fluid on the bottom, the smell of fuel and metal. An old man sits with conviction, in the privacy of his back yard holding a box of matches like it were his final communion. He pays no attention to his wife who is watching TV. He doesn’t care about the dishes he’ll wash when steps back inside the house. He only has the single-minded desire to destroy the one thing he hates, has been told it is good to hate; he is trying to destroy evil. He closes his eyes for a moment, utters a breathless prayer to his god, strikes the match, and watches it burn. The fire in his eyes is known by many as conviction. He is burning a Koran.

When I was a young boy, I went with my family to hear a well established evangelist named Mario Murillo. I also wanted to become an evangelist someday which motivated me to memorized much of the bible. Whenever we would play those bible games in Sunday School like “find the verse first and read it out loud” I would always win. I considered myself a badass for Jesus. This particular night as i listened to Murillo preach, I drew a picture of him. I basically drew a stick figure on fire, standing on fire, on a page full of fire. I explained to my mom that it symbolized how on fire for God he was. Thinking back on it now, I realize it looked more like a stick figure in Hell. I’m operating on different premises now, but it is no wonder they wouldn’t let me give him the picture I drew.

Somewhere in The Holy Bible, written by the hand of God who’s ways and logic are incomprehensible to us (he does, however, exhibit standard human emotions such as jealousy and anger) it says that a person cannot serve two masters. People who read this tend to think of the cursory interpretations. Much like an obedient dog would confuse the commands of two owners whistling for him to run towards them both simultaneously, they count the road of following Christian precepts as one master and then categorize all the other ways under “The Way of the World” and consider it the other, lesser master.  This thought has of course been fully developed and exhausted. The way in which the two masters verse is more true is in regards to one’s Premises. You cannot serve two counteracting premises. The single most affective contradiction on Earth occurs when one person expects someone else’s premises to be the same as their own. The second contradiction occurs when a person does not live according to the premises they claim to accept. Of course before I can begin a discussion about Premises, which is by nature logical, we have to accept that which is logical, if only for a moment.

What are things that make us human? Consciousness, for one. Then the ability to consciously interact with our environment. Then the value judgments we create in order to give reason to our madness of being alive. Then, because by our very nature, we push the limits of our potential, we create systems that will make our lives easier by working with each other. Born at different time periods, John the baptist would have nothing more noble to look forward to upon reaching manhood than planting his crops(which is by the way extremely noble), then going off to the crusades to fight evil(which is extremely ignoble), and finally becoming the Commander in Chief of the Free World.(which has it’s perks, I must admit, but I don’t find any more noble than being a really good farmer and providing for one’s family.) In terms of religion, thousands of years before Judaism there were shamans on every land mass on Earth. In Japan, Shintoism was teaching people the reverence of life. Objectively, the stories that are associated with a belief system are unimportant. It is the affect the beliefs have on the individual and the motives it gives the individual to be alive and interact with his fellow man. It is the values a person derives from the beliefs that makes the belief itself seem necessary.

Psalm 119:

You’re blessed when you stay on course,

walking steadily on the road revealed by God.

You’re blessed when you follow his directions,

doing your best to find him.

That’s right—you don’t go off on your own;

you walk straight along the road he set.

You, God, prescribed the right way to live;

now you expect us to live it.

Oh, that my steps might be steady,

keeping to the course you set;

Then I’d never have any regrets

in comparing my life with your counsel.

I thank you for speaking straight from your heart;

I learn the pattern of your righteous ways.

I’m going to do what you tell me to do…

That being said, the motives for individual values must be fully internal. It has to be a choice. Otherwise, the contradiction of detaching from your premises occurs. Allow me to take this time to explain the premise of faith and how it differs from my own and why, by right of being alive, I would be living a lie to operate by it.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the evidence of things not seen. That’s somewhere in the King James version, word for word. In other words, faith is the evidence for things not tangible. By faith, everything not provable by science is provable. The flying spaghetti Monster came down from the heavens and with a noodley appendage  touched the Planet Earth and bequeathed life to it. It doesn’t take faith to know the chair I sat on this morning that felt sturdy then will not break when I sit on it now. It doesn’t take faith to know my mom and dad are alive and well. It doesn’t take faith to know your husband or wife loves you. It does take faith to make a gamble on a better job, but even that is within the realm of one’s ability to rely on their own two hands. It is still the interaction of humanity and part of the process of being alive. Faith requires a disconnection between mind and body. You enter a realm where reason and logic are inadequate. Faith requires that the value judgments operate from the fact that the body is evil and reason is obsolete. We are unable to understand The Almighty. We don’t need to use reason to walk when the path is already paved for us by someone whom we will never have a chance of comprehending. This life is, after all, just a shadow of the life to come when we die. However, when one detaches themselves from their ability to reason, they open themselves up to the perils of arriving at monstrous conclusions.

The Garden of Eden, ten thousand years ago. Adam and Eve were created as blank slates, as robots, without the ability to have value judgments, and were told not to eat fruit of two trees. One was eternal life and the other was the knowledge of good and evil. God told them that they would die. I don’t need to point out that if they ate from a tree of eternal life, they couldn’t die unless God killed them. A serpent spoke to them and told them they wouldn’t die if they ate from the tree. Without the knowledge of good and evil, there is no right and wrong, no obedience and disobedience, no sin. Thus the action of eating the fruit was not sin, but it is Considered sin, because the story is a symbol of homo sapiens becoming humans with the power to have values, to create, to achieve, to be beings for themselves in a world full of animals. The good and right aspect of mankind becomes evil by faith. Love becomes charity as it is required to be unconditional and eternal.

On the other end of the see-saw is the Premise of Public Opinion. These are the people who aren’t religious but take life for granted, or go to Church on Sundays because they’ve always done it and to not go to church would be like allowing someone to disrespect their mother. I think of popular music being predominantly about money, dancing, and infatuation. These sorts of people take everything at the cursory level. Their motives are whatever they were taught to be as children or whatever they feel like letting them be now that they are older and have control of their lives, but without putting thought into it other than thinking “I want.” and “I need.” For these people, what they refer to as love is the most prominent instant gratification.

There is a third Premise, scribbled on a tattered notebook in a box of my old junk. I wrote on it before I shipped out for the Navy. My motives for joining were simple and the fact that I share the same motives with many others is unimportant. I had a purpose beyond the Navy and for a time after the Navy. The light at the end of the tunnel was a quasar and I felt as if I had the keys to the kingdom. Even now I look forward to pursuing journalism, which is the single most important pillar of democracy. Then I shipped out, and it’s already been three years. Three years of limbo. Three years of putting my premise on pause, trying to be content with the Navy’s hurry up and wait policy. You see, the Navy doesn’t pay you for your accomplishments as much as your time. These four years  I haven’t just been working a job you can come home from. That annoying thing I have about bring work home with me? These four years are the job. A job that hurts my brain. A job in which in the ways I value, I am motionless. I have traveled all over the world and I’m rarely able to sleep in and yet I’m standing still. Moss grows fat on me. Stagnation causes the inevitability of decay, slowly at first then rapidly.

My premise is the love the life. There is nothing more sacred than Life itself. There is no greater cause worth fighting over. Faith is about death, and those bending over backwards for public opinion aren’t fully alive either, but I want to be alive. This is the one life I have and I could want nothing more. All values must be based on that premise. Right must be towards life and Wrong must be the other things. Love must be given towards the deserved and towards the values I hold sacred. Sexual intercourse not be evil, but right, accepting that the love of life means the love of self and the love of pleasure, appreciating every moment and a display of love towards the partner and of that partner’s values. Arguing about simple miscommunication isn’t a display of reverence towards life. How on earth have I allowed myself to decay, acknowledging the road, but losing sight of it’s purpose? I refuse the burden of original sin. My worship is towards life and my catalyst is my mind. The ability to reason is our most sacred ability. Logic is not subjective. Granted, common sense isn’t common, because each person’s common sense is subjective to their backgrounds, but Logic reigns supreme. There are no contradictions. As Ayn Rand would say, if there seems to be a contradiction, check your premises.

I have been living a lie only discernible through my attitude towards my actions and even some of my actions because I had lost sight of my purpose and of my premise. My motivation to be alive has subsequently been dying. To live other than one’s values is a lie. To force one’s values on another or allow another’s values to be forced on one’s self is a lie. In Italy, the rate of decay is faster than the rate of workers rebuilding the inhabited structures. They end up compromising little by little. On the outside, the buildings are no longer kept up very often but the interior is still decent. Then the appliances start breaking and they hang their laundry out on the balconies. Next thing you know, the filth accumulating on the streets where the gypsies dig out of trash that’s everywhere will come bulldozing its way inside their homes and they’ll lock themselves in their bedrooms and wonder what went wrong. And here, Mumford and Sons will sing Little Lion Man, just for me as I suffer from leprosy of the mind.

Not this time. Not ever. I’m calculating the rate of restoration…

Counting Heroes

I’m writing to you from behind an old desk,walled in by large brick in the early hours of the morning, as I stand yet another night watch. These bricks are painted white like the intentions of men are painted white. White like the padded walls where people are put when their mind is more gone than my own. White like the ruins that make up all that is left of the great rulers of Rome and Athens. White like the noise that slowly fades at the end of one’s life. But this isn’t about the end of life because hopefully, for your sake, the end of your life is many moments from now. My words tumble slowly as I write to you of a moment of mine when I was your age.

It is late in the evening and my mom is home from working her minimum wage job. We had just finished dragging our Charlie Brown Christmas tree three miles to our apartment. I’m still wearing my cowboy boots because we live in Texas,for now, and cowboy boots are what a young boy wears in this state. No doubt Mom was exhausted after working at the nursing home, but I was awake, alive with all the energy of a million well-fed leprechauns. I wanted to make spaceships out of anything and everything, stack the couch cushions and jump off, practice my kung fu in the kitchen, hide the experiments I was sure would become great contributions in the world of science(like when I poisoned the milk to be our first and greatest defense against burglars who decided to break into our run-down, second floor apartment *side note, bad idea*) or just play in a puddle of mud. Of course Mom was exhausted and needed sleep, and needed ME to sleep, but I couldn’t and so I would run to the window and point at the Sun that still forced itself into our apartment like an unwelcomed guest as if it was proof enough that I still had time to live. The sun has not gone to sleep yet. Why should I?

Now it’s your turn. The Sun has not gone down yet and you will not sleep, can not sleep, like your old man could not sleep and your mom and dad tell you they love you but that in the Summer the Sun sets later and that you need your rest to fully develop into the handsome, intelligent young man you were born to be, for in the morning we must all wake up early. Like your old man you run to the window, tear back the curtains and let in the truth that had been violently rapping on that window all along, the truth that it is still day and to go to bed now would mean to waste a vital moment in our life that we will never get back. To sleep now would be a crime against being alive. I take you by the shoulders, gently, and affirm your intuition, for this time you are right. This is a moment I won’t get back and I need to share it with you.

But before we all sit in front of the TV and search for something to entertain and occupy our minds, I pause and tilt my ear like hearing a familiar song. It is an idea forgotten, washed away with the constant tide of repetitive necessity. I realize it is time for a road trip. The following morning I take us all for a long drive and we sing to old mix cd’s I made when I was younger. I embed our car deep within the winding roads of the forest and stop at a convenient field. You follow me as I walk from tree to tree, putting my ear on one and listening, knocking on another and looking around. You ask where our destination is but I simply ask you to drink in the beauty of the scenery, the clarity of the sky, the refreshingness of the wind. We walk on. We walk deep into the forest and I end up putting you on my shoulders when we wade across a large creek. I caution you to tread more slowly as we pass deer and not to pluck the petals from the wildflowers. Finally, we reach our destination.

You’ve always known I wasn’t particularly religious. When it comes to strict, superfluous operation systems for life, I consider them too much drama. You also know I don’t admonish you to follow in my footsteps but rather to observe my perceptions and priorities as an example so one day you might make your own without the burden of ignorance weighing you down. So you know when I stop at this particularly large tree, it isn’t because it has religious connotation, but that I am about to share with you something I find important. I ask you to look at this tree. Judging on the width of its trunk it must be a very, very old tree. Being old in tree years means it was here long before I was born, or even before my father’s father was born. I ask you to stand next to the tree and close your eyes. You stand tall and proud, and on your young face your eyes share their spot with a look of honest inquisition. You want to know where this talk of trees will lead and so I take you there. I tell you that even though this tree is so old, it has been standing in the same spot all these years. Sometimes a bird nests in its branches and raises a family. Sometimes the wind blows through the leaves. Every year the autumn comes and takes its leaves and every spring it reaches inside and creates them again, but it stays still, unquestioning of its purpose in the big picture, not needing a purpose at all. I ask you why that is so. By now you understand and you tell me they don’t have brains. They don’t have a consciousness that automatically projects their existence into the world. They don’t think, but they still are, but they don’t think. We humans, on the other hand, do think. Our brains fire billions of sparks a near infinite times a second and so we cannot be still. To be still like the tree would mean to begin to die, really, die, and not just the dying that happens from birth naturally. We speed up that process when we stop using what we were born with. You understand then that we are not like trees, and to behave as trees would mean a waste of life, for the Sun is still shining through their outstretched branches.

Finally, we have made the long trek back to the car and the subsequent drive back home, have had dinner and it is late. I tuck you into bed and give you a goodnight kiss on your forehead but you tell me you have been having trouble falling asleep. I tell you that many people are told to try counting sheep but that people in Oxford discovered it didn’t actually work as well as popular culture has led us to believe. Perhaps the consciousness is not easily able to focus enough on such a mundane idea. At any rate I find it negative to meditate on an idea which so many people have unconsciously submitted their waking worlds to. Or less, that people even find themselves sheep, encumbered by a fence which they don’t care or feel unable to jump over to free themselves. Without attempting to find absolution in supernatural or other dimensional forays, which you know I humor for the sole purpose of exercising my brain and not in attempt to discover tangible proof of ghosts and phantoms(which is an oxy moron anyways) I present to you the idea of counting heroes. Perhaps counting heroes in all their various forms as they bravely walk into the sea that methodically crawls up and down their shore would put and unquiet mind to rest and perhaps, if the conditions are right, you could choose to share their dreams.

The American Dream?

What if hurricane survivors compared their losses? What if they were convinced that no one else had lost as much as they did and had to constantly prove it amongst themselves? Would they demand that no one could relate to their situation and thus render any objectivism into their methods of coping unsatisfactory?

“I was in an apartment but I had my 2000 dollar theater system and and every bluRay movie that has come out so far, and I lost it all.”

“I lost my home, all the personalizing Ikea furniture and both monster cars.”

“I was living in the same house my grandfather built and got to see my child take his first steps in but now it’s destroyed.”

What about those opportunist insects who stayed around to crawl through the shattered shop windows to steal big screen TV’s and other various big budget electronics? If held captive under the spotlight of justice, would they attempt to justify their actions? Would they maintain that during those extreme conditions, they were left no choice but to take from what was left to compensate for what they no longer had? Would they cry pardon for desperation?

What of Christianity? Half of a whole beleive and thrive within the culture and positivity that it’s nature becomes the catalyst for. The other half were born into believing and go through the motions of beleiving and even talk about the importance of delving beyong mere motions but they don’t beleive. In their heart of hearts, they only continue their facade because their brains can’t fathom a way to cope with existence without it. Those poor and timid souls are left unhappy, but worst of all, unhappy without realizing it and without realizing how little they know themselves.

How well do you know yourself?

What if the story of the Tower of Babel was real? For some reason a rowdy bunch of men with too much time on their hands decided they wanted to do something. One of them pipes up about something that was pretty important to all of them at the time- The Almighty, the one who had everything under control from their crops to making sure their sons and daughters didn’t die of some ancient disease that we probably have a cure for now. One of them pipes up that they should make a means to communicate better with this Almighty. “Let’s built a tower that will take us to him!” They build a tower. They advertise the construction. They use the most advanced ideas of their time to draft up the most logical blueprints. Their wives and children bring them breakfast and lunch and dinner in handwoven baskets. Then one day, the Almighty says “I don’t like this. I’m going to disrupt their plans.” What if instead of changing spoken word, he disrupted their priorities?

Day One. The tower is debatably twenty seven percent finished. Inth looks up at the sky, looks at how far away the clouds hover and the moon and sun beyond that still, and realizes the futility of their endeavor and upon deciding the whole thing rather silly goes home to live a happy life with his family. Eckgt wants to build an extension to his own house but is without the materials necessary to do it, so after everyone goes home, he quietly undoes the progress of the day and moves it to his own spot of land. Shwikt is still dedicated to the tower as it gives his life meaning, but he ends up spending his days arguing with his compatriots as to whether or not they should expand the base of the tower for so great an architectural feat. Most of the men just go home and find more common jobs to feed the mouths of their families, and on the weekends they’ll crack open a few too many beers, and on the weekend they’ll crack away their disatisfaction with themselves.

What about our priorities? Traveling around as much as I did at a young age, I realized how fragile the word “cool” was. Whereas, one set of children have successfuly been made to understand the importance of hard work, another group would be obsessed with their reputation, with pleasures through negative outside stimulation- drugs, tween sex, angry impulsive fighting, etc. Neither the worlds recognize the ability of the other to comprehend what it means to be alive in the other. Surely, it is impossible for the sheltered to relate to the suffering and the motives for prior actions of the unsheltered. Surely, according to the sheltered, ignorance is a choice in today’s world of constant communication. What if you knew all the worlds? Would those in the ignorant worlds shut you away because you were exposed to the more educated, more hopeful ones? Would they show you their hurricane scars and use that as explainantion for everything?

What about mental depth perception? They say whatever doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. I disagree. Pain doesn’t make you stronger. It forces you to cope and sometimes people cope in unhealthy ways. Responsibility makes you stronger. Leaving the nest makes you stronger. Soul searching makes you strong, if you’re actually intending to find yourself. Growing pain is sometimes necessary, and the physical discomfort that comes from breaking out of one’s tiny mental box is referred to pain but that’s not really it either. We try to make sense of our worlds and if we convince ourselves that the bad times, the hurricanes, were necessary but they weren’t. People don’t deserved to be punished randomly anymore than they deserve for the world to hand them happiness on a golden platter.

All this being said, what would progress look like? Must we somehow destroy the popularity of ignorance? Must we try to instill in children the importance of thinking in at least three dimensions, that relationships do not merely revolve around sex, that careers are more stable than jobs, that trying to be gangster and tough if foolish, that to not attend secondary education is the worst thing anyone could do to their future, that if they end up flipping pancakes or pushing grocery carts for a living at age fifty they have failed themselves and the world, that if they don’t find themselves in a niche that would contribute to society or be supportive of others or at least create something with their own hands by the time they’re on their death bed their lives will have amounted to meaningless waste and they will have been too lame to ever even be remembered for how lame they chose to be? Too harsh? Well then answer me, how many people are motivated towards beauty? Towards Progress? Who facilitates progress?

We are not all technical experts but we can all do something great by making the right choices.

What if a part of being alive means deciding one’s own priorities? What if having your morals and priorities decided for you by the group detracts from being alive? What if progress means saying “Here’s a push, these are the options and these are the most probable consequences.” Why is it important for children to be popular among each other? We live in a world where those children never grow up and their thought processes are never encouraged to develop and we end up with a world that is falling under.

People are protesting the wrong things in the streets believing false facts and for the wrong motivations. China has our economy in a stranglehold. Children are only worried about rabbit games because that’s all they ever hear about in movies and telivision and music. A sexual partner is the end all be all of life, so pursue that and you’ll find happiness. Humans turn into monkeys and gang rape a girl at a high school dance. A man with a machete pursues his american dream to maul a seventeen year old girl. America goes to war to fight ideas and spread democracy, if there is an idea we should be fighting, it’s the idea of regressing to Barbarism. of living solely for semi dimensional pleasure.

Is this what Thomas Jefferson envisioned?

I hope not.

It’s too much drama.

Turn off your TV and go play with your children.

These flowers need love.

Taking a Ride in the Heuristic Mindcoaster

(Which is to say I wrote this while more than half asleep last night…)

Her pupils scream the dialation of inebriation as she drives back from another college party. The muscles in her hands are relaxed as she adjusts the wheel to change lanes. She doesn’t feel herself slowly accellerating into the night and then she blinks too long through that red light. Her ears don’t hear the crescendo rev of the engine. They only throb with the phantom ringing of loud music and impulsive laughs as her car ploughs into the loving husband who was out only for an emergency diaper run and maybe a can or two of formula. Glass shards shoot into his eyes that haven’t yet been sent the signal that danger is happening. His neck snaps one way and body another as the car he hasn’t finished paying off crunches him thin. His blood, once a tissue, now is the liquid that paints his face the color of war and heralds his last ride into darkness. The weight of tangibly feeling his loving grasp loosen on his family- this is way too soon- tilts his head back to his last gander at a diurnal sky that burns into his eyes and slowly fades into never another new scene. God says, “I am only in their hearts for the ride.”

It could be the truth no man has privy to, that those blissful moments aren’t devine at all. He could preffer the

lonely ones, when those fortunate souls drag out their thoughts in agonizing scrutiny. Love, love, oh antagonizing love!

Behold that wrenching grip of the heart that guides men far from their untroubled gamboling in their mother’s wombs. It’s not about the emotional jerk offs and their impulsive excuses but the real deal the ones who wake up on the floor after tearing their minds apart until they are no more than a subatomic accumulation of noncommittal lives and cereal box treasure. It could be that He doesn’t want you to be happy. He wants you to be quarantined by your own desperation, refusal of compromise, phobia of routine, lack of deliberateness and meaning. And once you’ve reached that point, it could be he wants you to experience it, truly appreciate it, and never leave. It is safe there, in that limbo of faith in the unsubstantial.

There is something acutely beautiful- mesmerizing- about that raw urgency, that youthful desperation. We focus all our vigor and vitality into self-definition and impulse. We triumph when that flame in our eyes leads us towards something we can accept. We fall to our knees in bitter disbeleif when it leads us towards heartache. What of it? Screensaver, revert to game face. Approach it in a month or so when the storm has died down a bit. When you think you’ve found a clearer head to operate inside. When you can accept the forced complexities without question and try to find something to anchor yourself so you don’t float away, and not just any anchor will do, mind you. These days there are no roads, just a whole wide world of pavement. I move five steps north by northeast, now thirty miles West, now I am never alone but we are always alone. We are emotionally parsimonious for the sake of future dreams. We are always afraid, but we act anyways, we show off our bodies, we starve ourselves for attention, we try to be good at something so someone will find us charming. We see only the importance of seeming erudite and sexy. Be it that God praises our selfish talents. Be it that he guides our insatiable hunger for pleasure and our inability to live for the potential of our actions.

Of course, God is man’s metaphor. We are the ways, the truths, the lives and we’re all burning on the inside, picking up our deux machinas and walking anywhere but where we’ve ever been. And this is the challenge, not to be the hands and feet of a metaphor but to be our own, recognizing six billion little flames are all one wildfire, that our roads are all along a completely paved world, or that the pavement must be torn up and laid down again and in some way new. Except they already know this, they’re just trying to keep from drowning, so they think up some simple exit and build towards it, throw their entire being into it, their hope for getting out of bed. Yet it is only a temporary fix to buy them some time. The real question they lie awake at night trying to avoid is “what will you do when this bought time is over?” Someday freedom is going to hurl itself like a grenade and will you be prepared? You hope so. You refuse to abscond into the world you were born into. You test yourself, hoping to prove your will’s equanimity in the bleakest of storms.

Still, I, the same yesterday, today, and the rest of my life, am but a blind chameleon, matching only the colors in my iridescent mind’s eye, walking only with knots in the soles of my feet, defying only tradition and punctiliousness.This is what it means to be alive, to be here today It’s not worth being afraid when you live for the full extent of the purest intentions. As you sit meditating these things on the promontory of your mind, ponder this: Like our gods we all need to move from this where and this now. There is hope and life in the absence of stagnation. Let us ride together, your hand in mind, my “where” in you and all these other unlovely thoughts can find their own way home.