Any holiday film or (better yet) commercial tells you that the "Holiday Spirit" triumphs over all. And for all I know, that may be true. But what is also true is my living the same things of which California Gold is all about. And it does not exist in Minneapolis.
Not that it ever has. And not that this is news, either. But it had been many years since my last sojourn to the north during the darkest of hours. Whatever had changed really hadn't. The fact that Best Buy built 5 buildings where houses and a car dealer used to sit, the fact that you have more chain restaurants than before, the fact that it's 35 degrees instead of 20...these don't hide the truth. This is where your ambition slowly goes to die. Here, it does not die a quick death. In fact, you might not even notice it leaving. The only way you WOULD notice it is if you contact the world outside this cavernous mindset.
It's visiting relatives of family friends. They're all from Greece. They know no English at all. But they know how to cook. They know how to drink. Immediately you are good friends. You dance, drinking Greek Government-made "Tequila" while talking to them. And they smile, not understanding a god damn word. But you're all having a fantastic time.
"Come on, Trip, time to go."
Huh? We're living on the Greek Soul Train of Good Eating right now.
"No, we're meeting another group at a generic Brewpub."
Soul, wilting.
It's meeting a middle-aged ad exec at yet another Family Carnival Circus. They want to know of the "TV Biz" and they respond as if you are the end all to it. Well, not quite, but they are interested people and so you go on. You give details few know, while describing the joys of this life.
"Isn't it great having him back? I don't know why he left!"
Soul, thirsty.
It's sending countless text messages to your lady back in LA. Sure, you miss each other for multiple reasons, but you have another angle - you're not warm. You're trapped. You're having to relive all that you left again and again. And as much as you change, as much as the surface of this dark cavern may change, the inhabitants won't. And they won't admit you have, either. And you can tell of what you do, places you go, girls you grope, but it doesn't matter.
My soul needs sun. And more than that, it needs warm breezes.
Doing a week's worth of work in a day and a half (all while the Sun Bowl is on) is no way to live. But there is swank, there is said girl, there is plenty of beer. And yet, already back in the groove that wide lapels endorse, you can hear their cry:
"Come back! Come back"
And finally, after all these "vacations" back, it made sense. The outsider IS the sun there. It is the soul. It is the warm breeze (even the gas from the insane amount of salt that is in every foodstuff made). Without the outsider there, it is black ice, windshield fluid, added weight. Overtold stories, expensive liquor at city-owned stores, cream soups. Us? We have deviated from this cave and are now at a mental beach miles away. Everyone could enjoy this gold if they got out of the cave. But they don't.
That's why it's so good here.
Friday, December 29, 2006
Friday, December 22, 2006
The Hardest Hue To Hold
Hot springs bubble and spit, retribution brought forth from the slate and shale below, opening valves to The Core. No, really, all you have to do is go rent a spade and be under 80, and you too can dig down and unearth the magma leftovers. "Naturally Heated" it's called, as if there's any other way. Cold and hot, shadow and solar, it's all swirling around you in a dense fog of Nature, connecting you to it until there is no more separation - til it runs together like water and ice.
Green trims everything here, you can't hide from it - not that you'd want to - and it's only a shade away from gold. In fact, the closer we get the more it washes away the rest, the more that it burns into the retina, blocking the sharp colors and blurring the outlines. Sunlight simply shifts the balance, not the color scheme. The grey only turns the light around, radiating now from some internal place, no longer thrown and reflecting from the Heavens.
You'll have to excuse me. I've been here two months and have walked in oceans that have lured me in to the agua azul, as they say.
I'd like to stay there awhile. At least until human voices wake me, and I drown.
A walk into this heavy chop will more than likely bottom you out and double you back, but not before you might actually feel something, might actually see instead of just watch. You can push it to the maximum in whatever way you choose, but this plan forces it upon you. Tumbling in over your head, surf pounding away - temperature becomes relative and the Thoughts recede.
Sometimes the moods are just too much though, not enough sand in the world to absorb it all, you've got to send the rest back to the sea. The mood is human, it only gets in the way of what this is really about. Gold filtering through the horizon like a blanket - flecks of it looking like rain, like you might wear it if not for the wind. My humanity makes me reconsider all this, the senses lighting up to and fro, but still passing through the old Grey Block, and for that I'm sorry. The stories aren't any kind of respite, any kind of substitute. You'd be better off experimenting with drugs. In the absence of shadow, you might as well seek the dark.
Reflections all around, sun bouncing off the sea, ricocheting off the sky vapor, through the lens, upside down, played back like an instant film, reversed and thrown into the brain cavity, then reflected back through these fingers and past the last outpost, into the digital realm to be forever floating, never tied down. Sometimes it's like a pinball, so fast you can barely see it, all bells and buzzers going akimbo with bonuses, no rationality to it. It's when that path narrows out, when the stimulant straightens and quits bouncing off the goddamned obstacles, when it's straight from the money to the money, no man in the middle - that's the magic time. When the experience stands on its own merit, no interpretation, no bonuses, no humanity.
The earth can open up and offer a volley of ash and violence that could tear it apart at any time. That's why we have to hold that hue.
The gold that rains, it will rain forever, and the reflections will never slow down. Nothing in the way, nothing to stop them, no filters.
Even as the clouds fade to grey, people 500 miles west of here are watching the show, in awe, isolated in their own wicked human space.
It will happen again for me tomorrow. I can wait.
Green trims everything here, you can't hide from it - not that you'd want to - and it's only a shade away from gold. In fact, the closer we get the more it washes away the rest, the more that it burns into the retina, blocking the sharp colors and blurring the outlines. Sunlight simply shifts the balance, not the color scheme. The grey only turns the light around, radiating now from some internal place, no longer thrown and reflecting from the Heavens.
You'll have to excuse me. I've been here two months and have walked in oceans that have lured me in to the agua azul, as they say.
I'd like to stay there awhile. At least until human voices wake me, and I drown.
A walk into this heavy chop will more than likely bottom you out and double you back, but not before you might actually feel something, might actually see instead of just watch. You can push it to the maximum in whatever way you choose, but this plan forces it upon you. Tumbling in over your head, surf pounding away - temperature becomes relative and the Thoughts recede.
Sometimes the moods are just too much though, not enough sand in the world to absorb it all, you've got to send the rest back to the sea. The mood is human, it only gets in the way of what this is really about. Gold filtering through the horizon like a blanket - flecks of it looking like rain, like you might wear it if not for the wind. My humanity makes me reconsider all this, the senses lighting up to and fro, but still passing through the old Grey Block, and for that I'm sorry. The stories aren't any kind of respite, any kind of substitute. You'd be better off experimenting with drugs. In the absence of shadow, you might as well seek the dark.
Reflections all around, sun bouncing off the sea, ricocheting off the sky vapor, through the lens, upside down, played back like an instant film, reversed and thrown into the brain cavity, then reflected back through these fingers and past the last outpost, into the digital realm to be forever floating, never tied down. Sometimes it's like a pinball, so fast you can barely see it, all bells and buzzers going akimbo with bonuses, no rationality to it. It's when that path narrows out, when the stimulant straightens and quits bouncing off the goddamned obstacles, when it's straight from the money to the money, no man in the middle - that's the magic time. When the experience stands on its own merit, no interpretation, no bonuses, no humanity.
The earth can open up and offer a volley of ash and violence that could tear it apart at any time. That's why we have to hold that hue.
The gold that rains, it will rain forever, and the reflections will never slow down. Nothing in the way, nothing to stop them, no filters.
Even as the clouds fade to grey, people 500 miles west of here are watching the show, in awe, isolated in their own wicked human space.
It will happen again for me tomorrow. I can wait.
Saturday, December 16, 2006
Hang On To Your Ego
If you could, you would want to condense it all down, mash it together and release the awesome power of the Experience, devour it in one sitting. You'd probably like to relive the whole thing in one day, one hour, one minute if you could. If you had to have it, if it filled you up like some chemical, and seeing it was the only True Release you'd experienced in years, then you'd do whatever you could to personalize it, to capture it and lock it away, to take mental stock of the images and sounds, make it easy for replay later.
You'd want to, but it's impossible.
The Wanderers, they are out here on a whim, some accidental shove by society and they land all around the globe - tramping without so much as a windsock. The Believers, they look for it - specific, everlasting glory. They exercise faith in the Beauty, truths lying below layers of shells and obsidian sand. Their purpose is The Purpose.
I'm not either of those. Call me an Amnesiac.
They used to say that we're immortal beings, that one life just starts up when the last one runs out, and that the process of birth is so painful and terrible that it wipes our memory. Therefore, we have no recollection of any of the past things we've seen or done, even though we've been alive since the dawn of time. Pure mathematics and Common Reasoning has dashed this idea against the rocks, but it lives and breathes, if you give it room.
But maybe I'm too dumb for that. Maybe, if it's there, then I'm tapped into it because I'm lacking the motor-neuron development to push it aside. And hell, while we're at it, the Natives have some damn good ideas about the symbolism and function of the Sun, Moon, Stars and Earth. Much better than those fucks who bet against the stocks I own. Off the path I go, pull it back. It's too easy, too ignorant to push knowledge away, to say that a culture spent their entire existence believing and practicing something, but somehow we know better, so there you go, fuck off and we'll catch you on the dark side.
I'm tapped into it because I think I forget this shit too easily, and I need to record every moment, to somehow make it relevant in the future, as well as the here and now. It's not just images, it's the whole scene, the whole feel. The worst thing I can do is go back and work some dogshit job, clutching my fleeting memories of the Waves and the Gold Hue. But it's even worse to struggle to maintain it, only to lose it in the flush of Human Drama that exists throughout the entire American landscape. Goddamn it, there's not enough time for HALF of this shit, so why all the talk?
If we're going to do it, then let's walk right into the fucking surf, meet the monster on its territory and fuck telling the story. If I'm having a problem remembering the specifics of the bluish-green sway of the inlet, then I'm going to have to just go the fuck to another place, a better one, and define my life that way. It can never go away if it can't hide. And if I have to flush it out by ratcheting up the meter to Full Go, then so be it, I'll be that.
There's enough people in this world who are content to see what movie is TV tonight and live the Fake Life, through other people who may or may not even be real.
How do you prepare a face to meet the other faces that you meet? What if we can't connect, what if the sensors aren't lining up? What if this is the true drug, the opiate not of the masses but of the One? The one thing that causes all light and shadow to meld, the Brain Breaker, the breezes carrying ominous warnings of slipping thoughts and dying melodies?
It's not changing, because that would be to isolate it and make it separate from the rest of the world, which doesn't ever stop changing. But it's growing. The push and the pull, the sea singing back and forth, eternity staring right into your face - you with your petty concepts of time and space - this spiritual enigma is growing and exposing more and more.
I'm not a Convert yet, but only because I might be too stupid for it just now. But I'm on the list, and they'll be visiting my house more often in the future.
You'd want to, but it's impossible.
The Wanderers, they are out here on a whim, some accidental shove by society and they land all around the globe - tramping without so much as a windsock. The Believers, they look for it - specific, everlasting glory. They exercise faith in the Beauty, truths lying below layers of shells and obsidian sand. Their purpose is The Purpose.
I'm not either of those. Call me an Amnesiac.
They used to say that we're immortal beings, that one life just starts up when the last one runs out, and that the process of birth is so painful and terrible that it wipes our memory. Therefore, we have no recollection of any of the past things we've seen or done, even though we've been alive since the dawn of time. Pure mathematics and Common Reasoning has dashed this idea against the rocks, but it lives and breathes, if you give it room.
But maybe I'm too dumb for that. Maybe, if it's there, then I'm tapped into it because I'm lacking the motor-neuron development to push it aside. And hell, while we're at it, the Natives have some damn good ideas about the symbolism and function of the Sun, Moon, Stars and Earth. Much better than those fucks who bet against the stocks I own. Off the path I go, pull it back. It's too easy, too ignorant to push knowledge away, to say that a culture spent their entire existence believing and practicing something, but somehow we know better, so there you go, fuck off and we'll catch you on the dark side.
I'm tapped into it because I think I forget this shit too easily, and I need to record every moment, to somehow make it relevant in the future, as well as the here and now. It's not just images, it's the whole scene, the whole feel. The worst thing I can do is go back and work some dogshit job, clutching my fleeting memories of the Waves and the Gold Hue. But it's even worse to struggle to maintain it, only to lose it in the flush of Human Drama that exists throughout the entire American landscape. Goddamn it, there's not enough time for HALF of this shit, so why all the talk?
If we're going to do it, then let's walk right into the fucking surf, meet the monster on its territory and fuck telling the story. If I'm having a problem remembering the specifics of the bluish-green sway of the inlet, then I'm going to have to just go the fuck to another place, a better one, and define my life that way. It can never go away if it can't hide. And if I have to flush it out by ratcheting up the meter to Full Go, then so be it, I'll be that.
There's enough people in this world who are content to see what movie is TV tonight and live the Fake Life, through other people who may or may not even be real.
How do you prepare a face to meet the other faces that you meet? What if we can't connect, what if the sensors aren't lining up? What if this is the true drug, the opiate not of the masses but of the One? The one thing that causes all light and shadow to meld, the Brain Breaker, the breezes carrying ominous warnings of slipping thoughts and dying melodies?
It's not changing, because that would be to isolate it and make it separate from the rest of the world, which doesn't ever stop changing. But it's growing. The push and the pull, the sea singing back and forth, eternity staring right into your face - you with your petty concepts of time and space - this spiritual enigma is growing and exposing more and more.
I'm not a Convert yet, but only because I might be too stupid for it just now. But I'm on the list, and they'll be visiting my house more often in the future.
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