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1/31/05 Sick again...been sick for about a week now. Finally starting to get better...which is good, because I'm REALLY tired of it man! You just reach this breaking point with a long-term illness...you snap, get depressed...then you get mad. The fight becomes a daily ritual. I flipped out yesterday. As much as I rue the modern world, with its inventions and sciences that yield curious new machines and medicinal procedures and cures that impact the earth (and our souls) in an unsustainable way, I can't help but think that it is because of the modern world and its technologies that I am here living the life that I lead... Orthodonture gave me a good smile...straight teeth supposedly prolong your life, although that could've been a key point in the DDS hard-sell. I'd be a silly-looking, buck-toothed recluse if I hadn't endured those five years of painful dental manipulation. Hardcore medicinals saved my life when I contracted malaria upon returning home from a family trip to Africa in '89. I somehow managed to not get the strain that recurrs periodically throughout your whole life, which was lucky...but would I have survived if the cure hadn't been available? A Bancardt procedure on my right shoulder gave me my arm--and my sanity--back. I first separated it when I was 17,18, and over the course of eight or so years I popped it out at least a dozen times. The last two occurrences were: once at the gym, working out with a potential date whom I subsequently never saw again(!), and; once in my sleep. I probably would've shot myself by now if it had continued to sublux and hinder me from having a normal, relatively pain-free life. I've never been more sick more often in my life than during my time here in San Diego(!), and I'm not sure why that is...although I've heard that the fires we had a year and a half ago might be a contributing factor. Maybe it's 'cause I'm older now...(?) It's a pretty dirty town...Mexico's directly South...who knows. Skateboarding has been a big part of my life, more than one might think upon first getting to know me...when I was younger I spent almost as much time on a skateboard as I did practicing guitar...only I realized I had to make a practical choice between them early on, especially when I finally came around to the reality that skateboarding had the more potentially dangerous by-product of debilitating injuries. I learned this early on, a couple years in, when I smashed the index finger tip of my left hand (my hand was on the ground when my board fell on it, all the weight of its fall focused on the board edge that hit it). My finger swelled up with blood under the nail and I had to file through the nail in order to release the pressure. To this day there's still a strip of the old nail growing underneath the one that replaced it, and that finger is wider than the index of its right-handed counterpart. I'm just glad I can still fret guitar strings with it! Then I ripped half of the nail off of the right index finger, caught it under my moving wheel. Then I sprained my right hand when I fell on my side and it folded underneath my body weight. Then I fully dislocated my left arm when I took a fall on a mini ramp. I've dislocated it twice since the first time...I hope I don't need surgery on that shoulder too someday. That's the downside of it(!!!)...but the upside of it, and I definitely see the irony of my conflicting points of view (technology vs. sustainability), is that I love the sight of smooth concrete. I look at a painted curb and, unlike your average joe citizen, I see an opportunity for steel axles to glide-grind across its edges, for board bottoms to slide along its length. I see a beveled transition in a drainage ditch, a highway on or offramp, or a public park, or in a concrete jungle downtown, and I see the sublime opportunity to ride up and down it like a concrete wave. Even a jutting seam in a run-of-the-mill sidewalk is a clarion call to catch air off the back wheels when I ride over it... I'll never forget seeing and skating my first half-pipe in Palo Alto, California...I was about fifteen or sixteen and had been reading Thrasher magazine for some time. My mind had been steadily filling up with visions of pros shredding wooden halfpipes, concrete skatepark bowls and empty backyard pools. So when my buddy Mason and I walked into the backyard of our friend Robert's house and saw this masonite miracle...sure, it was a bit awkward, with transitions of only about 6 feet in diameter (a full pipe has anywhere from 10 to 13 feet transitions, although bigger have been made--witness Tony Hawk's first 900, which he stuck on a mega-sized ramp)...but when it's the first time, as with OTHER first times (ahem-*), beggers aren't choosers. :) I don't skateboard much these days...music and bikeriding have kind of taken over. But in the back of my head there's a concrete dream...remembrances of ecstatic afternoons shared with good friends on one ramp or another...sometimes when I'm having trouble sleeping, I do the skateboarder's version of counting sheep--I think of skating perfect bowls, grinding and pulling airs and inverts that I'll never be able to do in real life...mixed in with memories of the fun I had skating pools, mini-ramps and curbs when I was younger. And sometimes I'll head down to Robb Field Skatepark in my old stomping grounds of OB (I used to live within eyesight of the skatepark) and I'll attempt to reconjure the youthful rush of pumping up and down the transitions (and grinding the coping) with my aging, brittle bones... I marvel at this strange, discomforting paradox, that I could take comfort in the miles and miles of cold concrete that smother the earth... 1/16/05 "Regret just means you've learned something. You've learned something you wish you'd known at an earlier time in your life so that you could've saved yourself a necessary headache." --Anonymous * * * The rains have ceased for the time-being and we're left with a banner three-day weekend. Nothing would belie the fact that it's still January other than the long shadows cast by a low, early-setting sun. There's too much to do and I don't feel like doing any of it(!). Some would call this procrastination...I just chalk it up to being on a different timetable(!). Seriously...the world is moving too fast. We're living these lives that we weren't meant to live. We try to do too much...our ambition(s) are constantly writing checks our body, psyche and spirit can't cash. Now I may never get anywhere in my field, but I'll be happier than most because I'm working at a reasonable pace, resting when I need to, making sure I'm healthy and happy ALWAYS, instead of cashing it all in on a sketchy, overblown version of a future I might never have. I was thinking about all of this last night as I watched the film Troy on the DVD, courtesy of my brother's Christmas gift subscription to NetFlix. Achilles in particular seemed troubled by his inability to balance his ambition with what his heart and soul needed and required. Can't believe I derived any insights from that terrible, TERRIBLE movie(!). That was one of the worst bits of Hollywood fluff I've ever seen and my mind reels at the bilious waste of resources used to make that bit of tripe. I don't need fame...loss of relative anonymity would totally kill me. I don't need fortune...just enough to cover all my expenses which, living in this country, are pretty astronomical(!), not to mention all the shopping Dubya expects us all to do to prop up the economy(!). I can't even support myself on the stripped-down necessities required by law in this country...auto insurance, etc. I cancelled my healthcare... I don't even want to think about the financial implications of something catastrophic happening to me, like a medical emergency, etc. Life seems to be a quest for immortality, doesn't it? Either you live the dream of passing your genes on and having a family, or you live the dream of seeking fame for your name that will live on past your due date. Some people get to do both to great aplomb and with accolades that stand the test of time. I think I just want to do both modestly, have the respect of my musical peers in my lifetime, and maybe become more well-known after I pass... I just want to make my living through my music; anything else that might stand to happen to me in my career will be gravy. Having a family is the best way to pass on your name anyhow... Time to take care of taxes and a dead car. I think my fiscal goal is to try and double the numbers of the previous year. I'm wondering if this is a reasonable goal(?!). We have to have SOME ambition, we have to keep dreaming and striving; that's what we do. We are here to evolve and build things in our lives. I feel like I'm doing a good job of this, if nothing else. 1/10/05 The New Year has arrived, and, coupled with the incessant rains we've had here on the West Coast, it has left the world feeling fresh and renewed. I think I'm having vitamin D withdrawals, though(!). I haven't seen the sun since I can't remember when. I feel pasty and bloated. Everything looks so vibrant after a rain...colors are all more intense. The grass is oozing verdancy, and even boring wooden fences and gates seem to emanate rejuvenescence. Everything has that kind of subdued Blade Runner-esque intensity. Maybe it's all due to a particular experience, or group of experiences, that I had in college... I'll preface the following with the disclaimer that I've only done psychedelic drugs on a handfull of occasions(!), literally one handfull, if that. But they were very intense experiences, if not life- and/or perception-altering. I don't recommend it at all...I'm just being the provocative raconteur. I dropped a hit of acid and went up to Forest Falls with two cohorts on a rainy day. We wore ponchos and planned to lose ourselves for a few hours before sunset. We explored mountain paths, both designated and undesignated(!)...we wandered up steep ravines and followed the pathos of our released psyches. Then the lysergic acid began to kick in and the mood subtly shifted to one of almost Homeric intensity. The climb up the narrow ravine became the adventure of our time(!), the quest for the holy grail awaiting us at the summit. Everything was of course already vivid because of the inclement day, but it became exaggerated. I cut my finger on a sharp rock and must have stared agape at the small trickle of absolutely vibrant, liquid-fire-hydrant-glowing, vampire's fantasy blood for at least ten or fifteen minutes! My friends were hard-pressed to get me to rejoin them on our quest. The first time I took LSD was with one of the two friends I spent time with that day on Mount Olympus(!). We made a point to be in Peppers fine art gallery at the U of R when we peaked, so we could see the art with new eyes. Sure enough, the paintings blew me away...but so did everything else. Even the mundane things we passed on our walk to the gallery took on a new and urgent kind of significance. Every palm tree glowed slick in the street lights as though they were gilt with fine-hewn silver...everything pulsed with life, and any fellow human we saw was absolutely amorphous with wild vitality. The stone columns of the buildings on President's Hill never seemed so strong, so colorful. Since then, and I doubt it's flashbacks(!), I feel I can see the brilliance in even the most ordinary object...everything seems so vibrant to me. You don't need a pharmaseutically engineered substance to see this(!). I sometimes feel autistic with the burgeoning weight of my visual percpeption...I can't always look people in the eye because it's too intense...my head is full of things I can't verbalize fast enough and wouldn't want to burden the listener with anyhow...but somehow it all feels like the genius of life's longing for itself trying to find a way into language. I have to recharge more often than most...people tend to drain me of energy because I end up internalizing them so completely...I have to swim away and untangle myself from my perceptions. Anyway, another year is here, the rains are doggedly persistent, and Spring slowly beckons...somewhere a boy is trapped inside a man, and he is smiling uncontrollably at the sight of a threadbare winter tree bathing in a streetlight's glare... |