a third of the workforce

a man can learn a lot about himself in the woods. he can find his voice is more like the rich tonal chords of a wooden guitar than the whine of a puppy he once thought it was. its not always a safe thing to be traipsing about the woods looking for yourself. there are a lot of opportunities to stab yourself in the leg with stray twigs. opportunities to turn your ankle on a rock, or get your socks all wet and walk around in the miserable mud all day. but there are almost no opportunities to work in the woods. you will sweat and you will suffer, just like a man does at work. but you wouldn't add to the gross domestic product, or the economic value added, out there mincing through the pines.
so why do it? why do something hard if your not adding anything. If your just looking for something thats in there ANYWAYS, why bother looking for it? Isn't it enough to know that its there. Safely bottled up and trapped. canned, locked in, sealed, placed, frozen.
maybe its only there when your looking for it. i dont really know. i just march forward. on to the next lake, the next look out, the next summit. i itch my mosquito bites. i marvel at the stars, i note the silence of the night. it adds nothing, it changes nothing, and i do it still.
and i know that someday soon it will end. the trail will find me in a parking lot. someone there to pick me up. remark on my skinniness. i wont have much to say, and that will be ok.
and here in this interview room myself will be in a tightly sealed jar in my sternum. safe and muscled. so i will be charming, or i will come off poorly, or i will be silent and awkward. it wont change what is happening. i am in society to be judged. judged against my peers, judged against my historical averages. judged by my diction divided by my vocabulary. and that is work. its not work if no one is comparing it to something else. because no one mans vision, no matter how hard and clear, is perfect. its only through collaboration that we can come to an agreement.

sundry tomatoes

I am so tired and lazy all of the time that i must have mono. what is my problem exactly? and then when its night time is the time when i have the energy to do the things. and i never have the focus. i want to do the things! i want to do the hard things, the admirable things, the worthwhile things. i want to really dig down deep inside and get into the nitty gritty of the things. i want to harness my potential, utilize my talent, go above and beyond. reach for the stars and get straight to the heart of the issue. i want to be a little bit naughty. i want to get away with a few things. i want to savor the moment. i want to enjoy shirking off. if only i could enjoy the shirking of responsibility. being a bad friend. being a bad boyfriend, a bad son, and bad athlete. haha. i wish i could make the smells these africans make. i wish i could make any of these food smells. my food smells are just hot Costco smells. they signify nothing. they are a puzzle piece for my strangely shaped stomach. i wish i was a bird. i wish my legs were stronger. i am seemingly indestructible and in imminent danger. i want a vietnamese sandwich and a trip to vietnam. where is a better therapist than typing into a blog that no one reads. i want no one to read. i want to bare my soul. my bear soul. i am a polar bear. she is a jaguar.

i one time spent the night alone on a beach in spain. it was a romantic notion of a husky boy. i was woefully unprepared. i had my backpack, containing all my things, a liter of cheap spanish beer, crackers. i spoke no spanish. i don't remember the towns name but it wasn't famous or notable. it was just a town on the beach in spain. i got to the beach far too early in the day. it was still time for swimming. a group of boys played soccer. they talked to me and i told them i planned to sleep on that beach that night. i was determined for adventure. i remember it being pretty scary. i broke off from some english speaking people on the bus i took to the town. they didn't want the same adventure i did. i walked through the town during the day and there was a depressing project full of very dark african people. i didn't know about that diaspora then, i thought it was just some weird anomaly, but it scared me just like everything in the world scares me.
i went in the water for a while. which was dumb. the night was salty and scratchy. but it was part of the adventure. the doing of whatever i wanted. my sister was nine years old at the time. my grandmother had died a few months ago when i was in scotland. i didn't make it through the whole night on the beach. the wind coming off the Mediterranean was very cold. the Mediterranean is an ugly body of water. theres smoke that hovers above it and big rusty ships. it feels very much like a desert of water.
i moved up from the beach and slept on some crab grass behind some palm trees so i couldn't be seen from the street.  then when dawn came i emigrated to the train station to wait for the first train out of that town.
i think it left a mark on me. like the scar on a chin of a friend of mine who fell off his scooter in thailand. i think there is a mark on someone who slept somewhere exposed, urban
and unsafe. even though it was my choice. i chose that adventure. and i think it left a mark on me.

terrorists will never win

i work in an air traffic control tower at a small, regional airport. having a job is very nice, but the work is not fulfilling. you all understand how air traffic control works, i'm sure. planes land, planes take off, it   goes on and on. planes can do all this without my help of course, but pilots are a pushy flock and need someone to organize them and set boundaries. can i land now? no, not yet. can i land now? someone else is landing right now, hold on. how about now? yes, now.

there are some planes that would like to disregard my advice. these planes are flown by men who signify their aloofness by owning planes too new, powerful, and big for any possible need they have. planes painted maroon with tan leather pilots seats. when i direct them i am greeted with long, huffy silences. as if i might should apologize for ensuring your safety at the expense of four minutes.

there are other planes though that direct themselves. i tell them what they already know. one plane in particular. it is a small blue and white plane with a single propeller. the pilot does not bring a lot to the table, conversationally, but he is easy to laugh. this plane stands out in particular though, because i am almost certain that the pilot, this jovial man, built it. who builds their own plane!

this is a thought i often have during the times when nobody flies. nobody flies after lunch but before work is over. nobody flies right after breakfast. and sometimes when i am eating a hamburger in the cafeteria i think about the small blue and white plane. it is one thing to build a house, a boat, a car. but a plane? where are we? since when can humans, with their own hands, endow themselves with the power of flight? it is a blessing, it is an abhorrence, I cannot believe god exists.

there are eels in desert

you wake up. your girlfriend says goodbye as she leaves to go to work. you say something, in your moon-logic child mind. yes, she says, the water did spill. and it is saccharine sweet. you think about it when your alarm goes off a fraction of an hour later. and you turn off the alarm. you are tired but awake. awake and alone, rudderless. here you are in your bed. in your place where you belong. in the place where you begin and end every day. always you leave the bed, always you return. it is the best bed you have ever owned. and that means a lot. it means progress. it means you are knowing what you want and knowing how to get it. but does it mean you can support it. do you deserve it. you have had worse beds and worked harder for them. isn't that unfair. it is hard to spend this time in extacy. imagine if you could sleep like you do and every night the night before you had to wake early for a job you hated that seemed like it never would end. but life isn't like that. you are a little cowboy, and you ride through the desert before you ride through the forest. and thats just how the trees got planted.

i am smoking a joint in the queensbridge projects
flying away, all swag
and this finger pattern is me justifying my existence. what does it mean to be more conscious than the next? i am no happier for it. can you take it for granted, consciousness. can you feel undeserving of it. can you be working on appreciating it and finding a way to not be so undeserving.

when i was 31 years old i would wake from my light sleep to the sound a church bell alarm. the same phone i'd had since i was 26, with the alarm clock noises changed every six to eight months, just to keep things interesting. most of the time i would be hung over. all of the time i would be late. all of the time i would put something in my mouth to smoke. sometimes it was a cigarette, sometimes a weed pipe. getting through the day was not a celebration, it was a rehearsal of numbness. i knew somewhere in my heart that this was not best practice. i really had to do it though. sitting in a padded cell, with the sun making its motions across the sky without my oversight was too painful a vision, it had to be done.

a business is built on two things; excellent customer relations and back breaking labor. i am no golden goose, but i understand that equation and in so doing make myself indispensable. so i listen to the single mothers and broken english. i can nod and sympathize, and give my condolences and my false hope. and i can turn back to my computer and work on the spreadsheets and the hoops brackets that make such class stasis possible.

then i woke up on friends couch. coming down off a white drug high, it was raining outside, the apartment was disgusting. i decided to get a colorful tattoo of a hunt, with the hunted animal over my heart. then i decided to move to denmark. fuck it. fuck this job i hate, fuck these drugs, fuck the grind. i'm going to europe to eat pastries and wear scarves.

Kirkland of Kent

I can tell you now, with science on my side, that someday in the distant future everything that I am doing now that feels easy will seem hard. Despite the fact that I am a habitual easy road taker, despite the fact that I have little to no ability to turn down temptation. There will be a day in the future when I look back on this era and marvel at my ability to do regularly what I do daily. I wish I knew what that thing was. Is it waking up and sitting on the toilet immediately? Is it the ability to be endlessly distracted by the internet? The poop jokes? If I knew I could fortify that part of myself to make sure I never lose it. But no, it is some part of myself so deeply ingrained, to which I am so blind, which I take for granted on such a level that I am not aware it exists.
And I notice, to be a hero I do not necessarily need to follow the exact same path as my heroes. It is not necessary for me to sell crack to be like Jay-Z. I do not necessarily need to perform in tattered flannel to be like Kurt Cobain. I can be a faithful boring student boyfriend internet browser, grow up to be a mid level banker and maybe grow pot in my basement and still be my own hero. I don't know why. But this is clearly the healthy kind of thing to tell myself. Like eating a pair, but for my psyche.
This is my writing exercise. It was not inspired. I might get joy from reading it later. An average drunk driver has driven drunk 80 times before their first DUI.

Maybe I Was Meant to do Nothing

When I was a younger man I thought of writing stories of an even younger me, building and sailing the boats I think I might be able to when I am older. I thought of the dories and the kayaks, and the garage at my childhood home. The smell of sawdust and epoxy, enjoyed through the filter of a gas mask. It would be a lot of work. The sanding, cutting, measuring, gluing, resting, sawing, drilling, opening, unscrewing, clamping. There would be a lot of clamping. Out on the lake though, in the reeds, in a boat of my own...It would all be worth it. Because I would be as a boy the man I hope to be. The job search of now wouldn't seem so daunting.
I wouldn't feel quite so hopeless, so without a destiny. I after all, had built boats. Yes boats! Not just one. That would never do. I built one and I liked it, but I saw how it could be better. So in a manner consistent with my morals and ideals, I found a good home for my first boat. I knew the boat would be happy there, and the owners were happy to have it. They offered to pay me market value, but I could not accept. It was enough that she found somewhere good to be. Eventually though I relented and let them pay me at least for the materials used. And I set my sights on a larger project, to be done faster and better, with more expert hands.
My first project was something of a puddle jumper. Something to poke through the reeds with. This next project was a little bit bigger. It would do more that float. It would take me away.
But that was all another time. Something that I missed because I couldn't focus. I couldn't understand that value then, of cutting out the easy things for the things that are hard but worth it.
And now I am a man without a boat, without a story about a boat, and without a passion. I am meant to do nothing. To reflect on the reflection in the water of a boat that I have built in my mind in 9 minutes. The water is still. Flecks spray off the bow as I paddle with a big dumb shit eating grin. In this world all my answers to questions scaled one through ten are smart, well informed, unique and insightful. I know what I want because I have a passion for passion. Employers love that.

On a scale of one through ten how helpful is it to ask questions scaled one through ten?