Hat hangin'

With all this talk of houses I remembered having gone on a tangent on hats. Particularly, the ol' saying that home is where you hang your hat has taken on multiple meanings for me. For one, I've had a hard time keeping hats in my possession. It's as if my hat hangs at the last place I lost it. I miss some of those hats. RIP. So... I'm a man of many hats, in a matter of speaking. And I tend to like that diversity. I don't endorse particular products, teams, or bumper sticker philosophies for such extended periods of time like Nascar race winner interviews who switch multiple hats while drinking multiple beverages from their car's sponsors. It's hilarious that their victory speeches almost mimic their costume changes...."I'd like to thank Budweiser, my king, Jesus, my savior, my pit crew for the gas and rubbers, and the new blueberry flavored energy drink for the colorful pee stain down my pants, etc...."

But I digress....

Hats. Pictured on top is one of my fav's, still in my possession, perched atop Hope Peak, in Resurrection Valley on Turnagain Arm south of Anchorage, AK. Not a bad place to hang my hat if I do say so. If you ask me, and most people don't, I'd say it was 10 miles high if it wasn't 2. This incredible hike was payback for a crazy bike tour of Mpls that I gave Jeff (pictured) a few months earlier. While I apparently left him for dead (easy pickin's), this hike left me hobbling for a week afterward. I thought my knees were going to buckle every time I went down a flight of stairs....not from soreness or pain so much as a feeling that my muscles lacked the strength or stability to negotiate the weight. And this went on for a week...seriously. Needless to say that this experience sticks out in my head.

This is where I think the ol' saying lends more meaning than I had originally considered. Instead of picturing the typical finale to an 8 hour day culminating in the return to the nest like Mr. Rogers hanging his jacket in the closet, I'm extending the idea past simply answering the "where" you lay your hat to include the situation leading up to it, what has made it the place to lay your hat.

Honestly though, all my hats are on a hanger in my apartment and I don't often even wear a hat (albeit a fashion decision or for hair loss prevention), but when I do, it is humorous to conceive of how a hat's diary might read and tie that into what new meaning "home" derives from such background. While the Mr. Roger's example drowns in "normality", I'm stretching my imagination to find some unconscious corollary, that somehow the gesture of taking off one's hat marks a break in time, initiating hindsight and foresight after a period of constant now. It's works like removing a costume accessory to show one's true identity, taking a rest from an activity to view the accomplishment. In all of this there is a kind of positing of existence, the short term recollecting of thoughts and actions that have gotten you here. So yeah, here's one of my favorite hat hanging stories:

Going way back to my Xmas tree farm working days with Myron Jackson, one of the best mentors anyone could have, we took lunch on the ridge of the field of Xmas trees we had just shaped, half done and half not. Having arrived early enough to scare off some deer, we labored tree by tree only looking around to see how far down the next row the other guys were or which direction we'd send the leeder flying (a fun and exceedingly precision chop to complete a perfect tree trimming). By the time lunch came, the sun was reaching its apex, clothes were dirty, sweat mixed with sap over taut muscles, and the lap of machete cuts around a tree had become so effecient as to make John Henry proud. In times like this you relish the taste and purity of water knowing that its refreshing quality is more of a life force. It feels pretty good dumped over your head too, but you gotta take your hat off for that. Yep, that stinky sweaty hat. After shaking out your machete hand, taking the catcher's guard full of little nicks off my right leg (nothing makes you snap to attention like hearing machete slap against guard on a weak/off swing), grabbing sandwich and beverage out of the cooler before replacing the top to use it as a seat. And here it is....my dirty, sweaty hat is on the ground next to me, my legs stretched out to the sides, hunched over a bit, my entire posture revealing signs of fatigue and need for rest while my mind seems completely clear, alert, and open. With fresh air, blue sky, and the sounds of nature surrounding us, words weren't needed, especially between PB+J bitefulls, but in looking out over the field we see to our center and left all the gorgeous rows of perfectly trimmed trees that in a few hours time have turned from 6 or 8 yr old pine trees to potential centerpieces filled with magic for some lucky family's xmas celebration. Then, in looking to our right lies the other half of the field, untrimmed....waiting, but not for long.

Pimp my Cave

Livin' the sheltered life?

What a bunch of dandy's!

I'm probably not ready to throw on a loin clothe and start eating raw meat off the bone of my most recent kill but it's alarming how "far" we've come that people can stay indoors for such great lengths of time and have provided for them so many modern conveniences. Why lift a finger if I don't have to! Or breathe for that matter? No but really, I have this picture in my head of prehistoric days when shelter was just that, shelter. I picture a safe place to eat, rest, be protected from bad weather, and if you're lucky, room to store your bare essentials. Otherwise, you're out in the world under the sky. And I romanticize this, no doubt, but getting into the great wide open where sites reach the horizons, voices echo from mt. tops, you can smell approaching weather, hear the wind whip, and it's all more than refreshing, it's living; interacting with the world, not just what's inside your cave walls or in your noggin.

Now, we fill these spaces with so-called "valuables" that are not simply to improve resting, eating, and hygiene but items that keep us more and more from the outside world. As the years quickly pass, I find myself acceedingly susceptible to the allure of privacy for events that might typically take me into the public domain. I prefer cranking my home stereo in listening to a favorite artist's new album over fighting a sold out crowd of beer spillers screaming irrelavent jibber-jabber mid-hit/fav song while all the 7 ft tall people find their ideal viewing spot right in front of me. (sidenote: I still take extreme pleasure in the rare occasion of finding the lesser known, up-and-coming band, who play intensely entertaining shows at smaller venues to a more appreciative and captive audience, where all you can do is wipe your bleeding ears and yell, "Rock Harder!" (Thank you Dead Meadow for your most recent 7 st. Entry show)) I'd rather kick back on the couch to watch the game with good store bought micro-brews for the price I'd pay for lite beer at the stadium, not to mention there's no line for the bathroom. Movies are the same except I don't eat popcorn or drink soda by the bucket. But this complacency has gotten to such an extreme that people are more likely to find out the weather by turning on the TV rather than opening a shade, window, or door.

Privacy is nice, and in part, necessary. Don't get me wrong, I wouldn't be the same without it. But the safety and security of the nest is over reaching and society seems to be losing it's community built foundation. Blame it on population, there's simply too many of us to meet and remember (sad really). Somehow we assume that we relate due to proximity but we really don't know. For instance, I'm from the same home town as Harry Houdini and Joseph McCarthy (Red!), etc... but, well.... I guess we all have our versions to conjuring accusations. I prefer to direct that kind of magic upon myself.

On the other hand...

The dry farts of our society grow exceeding fat and lazy while anxiously pressing the "easy" button awaiting their next free rations, their share, cut, cause we are all owed that much, right? Welfare, social security, ect... is about asking what our country can do for us, and seemingly the noblest thing we can do for our country is take a bullet. I wish there was more. To adapt the joke, we are less and less Ameri-cans and more and more Ameri-can'ts. And I do believe that it is tied to all the materials we snuggle into our nest, addressed early in philosophy as the issue with private property, going against Native American's belief that the Earth does not belong to us, that we belong to the Earth, and in the tough, Fight Club speak, "The things you own end up owning you." And it certainly is remarkable how the money to fun ratio are synchronizing without much notice. Are the best things in life free any more? I still want to believe it but...

All of this comes about as I make every attempt to get excited about the biggest financial decision of my life. I'm getting a nest, a new cave, my biggest material purchase yet. And somehow in the search (what a great market really!) I'm seeking out this imagined chi, the inspiration feng shui, an energizing central stasis, the epicenter of calm, nooks and crannies to expand thought processes, stretching creativity, letting the force flow from a jedi, so I can sweep the leg and get'em a body bag like any ninja would. What's going to get me there is a tricky equation, and everyone has advice to give. "Foreclosures are a steal." "You can change your house, but you can't change your hood." "You don't need a Realtor." "Realtor's are paid by the seller." First time owners discounts, how to get the best rates, making'em an offer (they can't refuse) 20% less than the asking price.... Ugghhhh, compounding all this decision making is that it's followed by the physically exhausting (no doubt some mental exhaustion as well) of coordinating the actual move. This is so f'n FUN!

I've been listening to The Black Eyed Snakes song "My New House" in which Chicken Bone George throttles the mic screamin, "SEEEEEEEE MYYYY NEEEEEWWW HOOUSSSE!!!! MY NEW HOUSE!!!" Yep.

A Rat's Ass

Go to your "happy place"
Find your fucking power animal
Seize the damned day
Get sick sucking the marrow out of life
Choke on that half full glass
Eat shit and die on that cloud's silver lining
And at all costs, keep lying to the mirror

While you're at it, be thankful
Be thankful no one understands, especially you
Remember the bliss of ignorance or...
Remember your plague, your disease, your faults, shortcomings, forgetfulness
that long list of mistakes, regrets, shortsightedness, lack of and mis-understanding,
utter confusion, that false sense of who you are;
the confidence, assuredness, the blessedness, self-righteousness,
all that talent, natural ability and oh yeah, certainly that bad-ass rebellious side.

Let it really sink in so you know why

You take your medicine
Rock your scotch off godfather
smokin like a hippie, stoner
Mary Jane and Randy
Tricks and nose candy treats
You're the fungi, fun guy
Mary Poppins those Pharmies
Climbin' Jacob's ladder
You're in Disney now Mickey, says Bukowski
And just like Alice, you're Mama's little helper's bitch
Another nail for the coffin
Puff, puff, give....up
Needle around some more
Go get your fuckin shine box
and Vaffanculo!

You're a regular short bus racing champion
A bullet catcher in life's war
Leading the charge of the knuckle draggers
fighting for your one certain right
Left right, left right, left right
6 feet into the ground
Better yet, place the ashes in a tray where they belong
Bow your head and blow
Amen, a man no more

Half smiles and Handshakes

It's casual.


Like so many everyday encounters and activities that fall under a routine, there's a veil of the mundane, the universal commonality that everybody else is going through relatively the same thing. We're all stuck in our own traffic jams, racing the clock for one reason or another, maneuvering around this obstacle or that, and dealing with it all with our best defense mechanisms. We know this works because it has all been done before, tested and true, and we're still here to prove it. We can practically do it with our eyes closed, in our sleep. Turn on the autopilot and suddenly the day is just going through the motions. The familiar is so comfortable this way. For as much as this involves personal habits and tendencies, what's really illuminating is the way in which these habits form societal norms, setting "appropriate" behavioral expectations to given circumstances that become so standardized that any diversion seems so improbable that it's virtually against the laws of nature to do otherwise. No doubt, practicality stands paramount to such populous living amongst one another (relatively) peacefully and there are advantages to regulating activities so as to encourage polity, convenience, and access and to discourage invasion, strife, and disorder, but what of the complacency and contentment of behavior, personality, individuality, creative expression that results? What happens to originality? Authenticity?

So this is it.

I stake the claim. Amidst all the elements that funnel humanity into neat little categories, patterns, and all the unbenounced criteria that positions us to do, make, say, think, etc nearly identically to so many others in our society or the world, predicated upon magazines, TV, newspaper, or any form of media distribution pronouncing some image or idea as fact or the prime example, like an endorsement to products and services that turn want into need, fashion into status, money into power, etc all with an homage to the common "good" or seemingly common sense, there always remains choice, will power, motivation, inspiration, imagination, etc. to see things completely different, to see based more according to our own logical or illogical reasoning. Then with the Stoic powers in each of us, we can posit our existence with greater respect to our personal beliefs, instincts, thoughts, feelings, etc. Though this diversity is not inherently subversive or rebellious, the variations in which people "flow" with or against the grain provided each unique situation stands to offer "more" for the simple fact that stakes are raised, the issues hit home, and your "cause" placed in question.


Half smiles and Handshakes....

is a mockery of our ho hum existence and the way it progressively accustomizes our outlook or idea of life or reality. We continue to gloss over more and more of the world's subtle nuances in their seeming repetition. This repetition can fascinate if recognized as such, but it's the opportunity to break free of the mainstay in expectation that can lead to greater appreciation of our place and time, a dropped jaw at the infinite possibilities (the forest for the trees and the trees for the forest). So as much as it is a mockery, it is also a call to action, to realization, to being present in the moment so that when you're going through life or when you meet John Doe, you know like Socrates that you know nothing; that each breath could be God and ol' John D might be Jesus C. So pay attention! Cause if that happens you're not going to have to ask WWJD, you're going to have to know what the fuck you're going to do.

"Hi. How are you? Blah, blah, blah....Neat to meet you. Buh-bye"

Find out what it means to be the change you want to see in the world (Gandi) and declare your independence by taking responsibility for the thoughts and actions within your ability to do so. Respect others for doing the same even though they may oppose you. Show them what you got, what you're made of. Make your best better. Show what it means to you to be alive. Shake the world with clenched fists, bleeding heart, and a fervent bellowing that awakens the living and echoes in eternity. I AM ALIVE!

If Half smiles and handshakes doesn't interest you, perhaps I could give A Rat's Ass!

Period

The cold of death comes to us all

It takes us as we are

The worst part is not the pain, the cold, or the lack of breath

Simply the lack of a life of living

No reaction to stimulus

No foreshadowing a future

No feelings of emotion

No thoughts to yourself

No memories

No connection to a place in the world

There is no more

No nourishment

No love

No family

No friends

Nobody

No words to describe it

We become nothing again

As we were nothing before

Yet somewhere

Somewhere in the middle was our time

Our stories all end with Death

So it's the matter and how it's told

An Aggregate of Indications?

An Aggregate of Indications.....is from a paper I wrote in college. I received permission to attend a graduate level course on Freud's Dream Book: 100 yrs later. I had taken other courses with Prof. Thomas A. Pepper and had thoroughly enjoyed the challenge and intensity in which he conducted class and the way it reflected his overall personality. For example, in a previous course with Pepper I learned quickly that one of the effective methods he used to ensure a student's preparedness was to single them out to answer questions and/or recite out loud passages he wished to cover. He had me read one of Shakespeare's Sonnets for the class, Discourse on Love. I was a decent reader but was stumped on a question that he finally opened to the class. "What does it mean in this passage, to die?" After several shrugged shoulders and many adverted eyes, Pepper finally exclaimed, "to FUCK". Well ok then. Looking back I still don't imagine myself standing up and yelling that answer and having it be correct but it will certainly stick with me and that's what learning is, right. More than most any class and even many experiences, I left Cultural Studies and Comparative Literature courses, especially Pepper's, with this feeling. Not a small thing.

Back to the point.... The course on Freud's Dream Book took place around a large rectangular table (probably 4 large, heavy wooded tables pushed together) in the library of the CSCL Department HQ, an offshoot of the main office. Recognizing I was sitting among TA's I had for other introductory courses, I couldn't help but imagine the feeling of a meeting of the "League of Extraordinary Gentle(wo)men" or even Aristotle's "Symposium". The syllabus was set that each "student" was assigned to lead one half of a three hour lecture. The other half was covered by Pepper. The class was held once a week so these presentations were expected to be very polished. I was assigned the very last week, after all the other TA's and grad. students had set the bar. I don't believe that my paper was cutting edge poignant, polished, or even came to a real ending but it read well and I was complimented during break from one of the brighter students (almost worth as much as my grade for the class). When we returned, I was asked without too much success to defend the title. Unfortunately I had not sited the page and could not/have not researched to find it again but it was a broad brushstroke to describing the method by which Freud analyzed a patient's case history...and I'm sticking to it. You heap together all the little bits of info and take to issue the highest likelihood (a guess) of inter-connectedness, cause and effect of symptoms, and proceed with an analysis. This method fails scientifically although whenever I visit the doctor it certainly seems to me that I report my situation, they hear a cough from the chest, feel my lymph nodes are swollen, look at the back of my throat, etc. and then diagnose (guess) that it's strep. Regardless of its lack of scientific merits, Freud's impact on literature was substantial to say the least. Every little spec contributes to the bigger picture in some fashion. In many respects there is still a "leap" made to how a person registers their analysis/perspective of life and reality or makes light of the millions of specs to their daily lives. It is truly incredible to realize that every single person is processing their own reality differently. One person can deny the Holocaust and another will insist the world is not flat. And we are all constantly piling up our heap with thoughts, based on who knows what, to come to some conclusion that this is the way it is, the way it was, going to be, should be, the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but. Here's my reality. It really makes sense. You can't disagree with it. But the funny thing is, that is so limiting to define things as diametrically opposed, right and wrong. It's a heap of shit really and you can't help but whiff the influence: family, friends, pets, the weather, the climate of opinion, shelter, working for the (wo)man, preoccupations, obsessions, compulsions, instincts, reactions, motivations, a sign, a message, circumstance, time and place, context, interests, the media, fashion, music, literature, art, language, senses, power, the will to...whatever, nourishment, health, money, politics, foresight, memories, hindsight, forgetfulness, mistakes, luck, the birds and the bees, a good pair of shoes, a fresh glass of water, coffee, beer, wine, etc., medications, scenes, moods, planetary alignment, transportation, belief systems, and blessed be all the other words that mean one thing to one person and something entirely different to another, existing, changing, until it doesn't.

Considering all the angles of influence within one person's life, it isn't hard to concieve of tracking such wavering sentiment. This leads me to another favorite collegiate study of mine; Soren Kierkegaard, who utilized pseudonyms to differentiate between voices often publishing two works at a time so as to add to the intrigue. Works under his real name were religious in nature and many even attacked the church mostly for reasons that it cheapened Christianity with its contradictions, adaptations of interpretation, and business mindedness. His pseudonymous writing took on more carnal topics that eventually were turned upside down to illuminate some issue of spirituality, etc.... I found Kierkegaard's pseudonyms (Johanne the Seducer, Johannes de Silencio, etc) to be particularly clever, enough to take a generic version of them for my own. It takes the fun out of it in explaining it but Johannes D (my chosen user name) not only leaves the end descriptor open to the exceptionally wide range of my moody ass but also rolls off the tongue sounding like "your highness" perhaps refering both to royalty and the state of being high....like on a Mt.

Everywhere around us, there's a mystery unfolding, a flip side not considered. Senseless, disconnected, hard to explain. Plain as day, stumbled upon, previously hidden, a firm grip on the obvious, all the clues present themselves. And then there it is....unpredictable, messed up, beautiful, and ever changing.....an aggregate of indications. Perhaps something/nothing more.

This too shall pass

That’s what I thought….

The World we know.... is mesmerized by the heaping evidence that attempts to verify, legitimize, substantiate the way we see things; forecasting the weather, recognizing governing forces, the order of operations, rules to the game, the modus operandi, patterning the chaos, mapping the world, documenting meaningful accounts, all to delimit our threshold of the obvious in the spirit of conjoining to a singular reality.

It’s noisy really, with the way in which we seem to pursue this meaninglessness, defending the keep we never had, the important things that never were, the passion that wasn’t. It’s fickle, yet here we are…for a time. We assert volition to validity with empty gestures of cluelessness on the path to nowhere. In the end all we really get is one point of view, but what of it?

The art of life relies on the language utilized in positing existence, the record of words and actions that bring us here and now, history in the making. Seeders and bleeders alike, life giveth and taketh away, fighting our various plights, defending delusional merits of grandeur. But let’s be serious cause it’s funny. We contend with great worry, doubt, paranoia, fear and obsession while compulsively magnetizing ourselves to acts of valor, faithfulness, bravery, sacrifice, heroics, and that which leads us to hope and compassion. Taking a line from a movie that exemplifies this, “Death smiles on us all, all we can do is smile back.” In other words, “Whadaya gonna do….cry about it?”