(See what I am saying?)

as luck will have it

"well, i am finding out is not what i have, but what i do that makes me happy." i told my mom on the phone yesterday.

and now as my cardboard boxed lifestyle is once again consolidated, goodwilled, and moved, and security deposits, four months money down, and carbon copied signed on the bottom line is quickly making what i have less and less; and what i do more and more.

so in the spirit of doing more; i am leaving to go on a trip.
and in the spirit of loosing; the trip is to Las Vegas.

I have to wonder, as the space i occupy is getting as small as my bank account, if i will one day look back and see what a great trade off this has been.To have all the shirts on the hangers, the shoes in the bag, and the books in the boxes, get boiled away and leave me with, if nothing else, some clarity to know - and to do - what makes me happy without second guesses nor apology.

So now i am out the door to vegas, via cinncinnati and indianapolis. and while my luck might not offer itself there, i am lucky to know it is not what i have, but what i do that makes me happy.

a good night

It was late. It was dark, and the windows have been painted shut. The air was so dark and so quiet it made my eyes hurt as i searched for something to look at. My laundry still wasn't dry, so i went to the coffee shop to get some quarters. Outside the streetlights shone down on me like i was on a stage, but no one had showed up to watch.

The night felt like quicksand, and the air was so still i had to keep walking so that time wouldn't stop. I looked up into the sweaty summer sky. I wished the thunder would come, and the lightning would split this world open and bring me some change.

"Have a good night" she said from behind the counter as i walked out of the door.

A man and a woman sat at a table outside the coffee shop speaking Chinese. or maybe it was something else. i walked back out under the sweaty summer sky, and wondered why clothes never dry the first time in dryers. and why i can only speak one language. and wondered when my thunder was going to come.

*my reply

It was about 2:00 in the afternoon when at last some clarity about all of this started to surface. It made my ears ring and made me sickly nervous like I was back on the stage in the 4th grade spelling bee. I had to pull off the highway and try to write it all down.

I was driving on the interstate in ohio. It was hot. All my windows were down. The blurry sun shone heavy on everything. The trees breathed with their green-leafed lungs and the queen’s anne’s lace grew thick in the median between the double lanes of bleached asphalt. I was driving away. She had left on a train that morning that was headed, in every way possible, in the other way from me. I felt empty. Like the white rooms where they put people in straight jackets. I felt clean. I felt nothing. So in my clean empty white room, I began to think. I thought about her and the conversation she had with my father over the countertop in the kitchen last week. I could continue farther back through the events that have led to this, and all the evidence that has been mounting, until the day I was born, and likely farther back than then, but one week is all I need right now:

"I guess I just don’t understand it." My dad said to her as he leaned onto the white and tan patterned countertop in the kitchen at home, and rested his chin on his hand.

She was visiting from her internship in Manhattan, and was talking to my dad about the world of fashion design .

"Well," she shrugged, "Everybody does something. I guess that is what I am interested in."

"What I admire most, " my dad said, almost as an afterthought, "is the kid who lives on the farm down the road who can be perfectly happy wearing any old t-shirt and blue jeans he got at J.C. Penny’s."

I didn’t realize it just then; but I have been thinking about that discussion between them since.

And now, a week later I joined the conversation:

"But everything there is has been designed." I said to the gentle curves in the gray dashboard. "Every old t-shirt and every old pair of blue jeans that every kid on every farm wears has been designed to look just that way; -- to be just that way. Every book we read; every car we drive; every house we live in and every casket we end up in and all the clothes we wear along the way have been designed. Someone has dreamed up, sketched out, and devised everything, whether one considers it mundane or magnificent. Everything has been designed because it once was nothing, then only an idea, and now, it exists."

I began to get excited. I pushed in the clutch, looked at the white numbers on the tach, and shifted into 5th gear. Then I looked up out of the tempered glass and into the bright white world and saw the heavy sun and the green trees breathing in the fields.

Then my mind stopped. How arrogant I am for thinking that. And how concieted I am about all of us. There are things, beautiful and efficient, and mysteriously simple things out there that I - or anybody else - have had no part in their creation. This world has, and will exist without us. And with a frustration as long as a lifetime, I know it would be better without all of us. Everything in this world that is beautiful, and simple, and perfect we did not create, and we cannot take ownership for. We did not dream up the stars. We did not sketch out the sun. We did not devise who and what we love.

The biggest apology I can offer for my presence here is to aim to make everything that I do as beautiful, as simple, and as perfect, so as if it belonged here. I want to make everything that I do as beautiful, as simple, and as perfect as it would be had it not existed at all. I closed my eyes and began to see it all; and there is so much of it. Everything we design; the systems we contrive and the products and machines we build for our sustenance, our gratification, and our convenience, take up a lot of space.

We have designed our cars that drive upon our roads and sit in our parking lots. We create our meals put on our plates upon our tables. We wear our clothes that we buy in our stores from the advertisements that teach us to want them.

And right there, with my hand on the black steering wheel, driving between the yellow lines, and the red needle pointed at the white numbers, I began to finally feel like I was getting somewhere with all of this.

I looked back out into the white sun and thought about what I have seen, and about who I know and hold close in my life. And right there, I made a commitment to myself before I got any older: I want not to forget to always appreciate, enjoy, and respect what is in my life that I have not made, do not own, and cannot control. I want to learn to distinguish what I am able to create and control. I want to look for inspiration in everyone and everything that has happened without my effort; and to try my best to design towards that perfection with everything else that I can.

And with at least some certainty in my voice, I said to them, "There are beautiful and perfect things in this world. Everything else is left for us to design".

departures and arrivals

If someone ever asks me to name something that is both beautiful and invisible, I will name the secret feeling I get when driving up an on ramp onto the highway.

Even when leaving might be the worst thing i could do, there is something that always makes me accelerate onto the freeway, to look for something, anything, new to meet.

As i drove away, i thought more about it. I wanted to think about something else. But i realized that there is really no in between. In my life i am either waving goodbye, or saying hello. i have had my share of both. I was driving away from the train station. and like interstate on ramps, train stations are good, if for nothing else, saying both of those. and they are especially good for saying goodbye.

At a train station, departures and arrivals are one in the same. I was walking through the dusty shafts of light that sifted down through the galvanized roof and shone bright on the platform. Ahead was a young girl whose pigtails bounced off her thin shoulders as she ran to meet her father. Behind me a guy with a new tatoo was wiping away the tears from his girlfriend's eyes, and kissing her goodbye. I walked past parents waiting to say goodbye. I walked past children waiting to say hello.

As i stood among the guitar cases, aquariums, desk lamps, and empty paint cans getting loaded onto the train, I thought about all the things we take with us throughout our lives instead the people we care about. As i stood there among the daughters, and fathers, and brothers, waiting on passengers to arrive, i realized that is not luggage left behind, but people, that makes us return.

I stood there on the platform in the dusty shafts of light, waving goodbye into the dark train window, as it crawled away, playing the part of countless verses and choruses of countless songs. I walked down the stairs off the platform, past the duffel bags, trunks, and boxes, walked towards my car, and wondered, what was going to happen next. I stopped for a moment to listen to the sound of the train fade away. In front of me was a railroad map of all the destinations in the country. i looked at the map and thought about how many places there are in this country, and how many more there are in the world. but mostly i looked at the map and thought the people i know and how far apart and far away they are from me. As the train finally faded into the summer, i realized that my life, like others i know, are moving just as much as that train. i realized that i have faded away from many people in my life. I began to think about the baggage i have taken with me instead of them. and how many places out there i would have to return to to say hello to them all again. and finally, i realized that even if i could get to them all, they might not be there to say hello to. i am tired of saying goodbye.

As i left the station i arrived at a conclusion. my life will be moving again soon, and the direction that it goes is up to me. i have always been in love with the fact that my destination could be anyplace, but i am tired of saying goodbye. and now i am recognizing that destinations aren't always places.

As i drove up the ramp onto the freeway, I thought about all the times i have said hello, and all the times i have said goodbye. and somtimes, like in train stations, i have done both.

e.g.

I have discussed with my friends many times before about what irony is. It is, to my knowledge, one of the few words whose essense can only be captured by example.

and here is the essense of irony. or just bad taste in music:

i think a lot when i drive, but usually i listen to music. A few days ago i walked up to my jeep to see every part of the interior around the steering wheel removed, and the console emptied, and everything over 99 cents in value taken, and the rest piled politley on the driver's seat, leaving the wiring harness from the in-dash minidisc player and air ducts from the vents hanging out of the gaping hole looking like ground chuck falling out of a meat grinder.

so now when i drive, i get to think. all the time. about why i always get my car broken into and why my radio and everything in my car gets stolen so often. and now i don't even have turn the volume down to do it.

i was thinking just that today as i parked my car. i was trying my best to see my glass as half full – rather than half empty with a hairline crack in the bottom of it and a soggy coaster under it – and was admring how clean my car is now.

and there on the passenger floormat was the lone survivior from the pilfering. a minidisc with my own handwriting on it's label, almost like a letter written to myself to read as reminder. it read:

"DASHBOARD CONFESSIONAL"

and that, will be my definition or irony from here out. ..and my hint that maybe my music collection wouldn't be listened to - even it was free for the taking.

the detour

We came to a stop in the road and immediatly the breath exhaled from the gravel truck idleing in front of us and the asphault marinating in the heat poured in the car windows. She was sitting backwards in the passenger seat. Her head was against the dashboard and her legs climbed up the back of the seat until her feet stretched out of her blue jeans and up out of the sun roof into the sky.

We weren't moving.

We just sat there under the wilting flora along the limestoned lined ditches. We began to talk about going into business together. We talked about ideas, and plans and all the possibilites on the way to becoming successful. We talked about the future as if it were simply there for the taking. It was the kind of conversation that made me excited with the thought of moving ahead. I backed the car into the limstone gravel and turned around in the road and drove the other way. We passed the line of frusterated cars and turned onto a side road. She leaned her head aginst the door and the sun shone across her face. She smiled and said she could see the wheels in my head turning.

I sped up and into smell of summer hay fields and sycamore trees. As we talked, I forgot that my bike was stolen, and my car was broken into. I forgot i had no place to live and i didn't have anything in the apartment for dinner. I forgot about everything i didn't have, and wondered where this road was taking me. As i looked at the passing landscape sleeping in the sun, I realized that I can look back at every part of my life with a fondness for how clean and open it was then, but during all those times, all i thought about then was the idea of where i would be right now.

She sat up and leaned her head against my arm. the sun shone in the windows and the roof and flared through my sunglasses and her tangled hair blew into my memory. I turned back onto the hot ashphault down the road and out of sight of the frusterated cars and began to move again.

And as we headed again down the road, with the sun shining everywhere, i forgot and remembered at the same time; and hoped that as i kept moving, i could look back with fondness on today, and find some excitment in tommorrow.

separate ways

Three interstate hours got us to the gravel lane. My sister and i pulled up the under the english oak tree to home. i spent my evening working in the shop until after dark and burned scrap wood in the fire ring and swam off the sawdust and sweat in the pond. Up through the pine trees in the dark green evening i could see the pale blue flicker of the TV. my sister and her friend were spending their evening watching a movie with my mom.

i came downstairs in the morning at 9:00 and called my dad at work and told him to email woody at his work in columbus and have him call me on the farm. living vicariously through technology reminds me patience is still a virtue.

the phone in the kitchen rang at 9:06. it seems T1 data lines might be a good virture, too.

i told woody about the weekend plans and that he should get over when he can. He reminded me that he works for a living and i told him to tell his boss that 1/3 of the country's power is out. surely he could come up with a creative excuse to leave. He put me on hold. a few minutes later his boss got on the phone to tell me woody has no creativity.

I drove back up the gravel lane around 2:30 with a new suit and 16 1/2" phillps head wood screws to find woody in the front yard hitting tennis balls to the dogs with a raquet ball raquet. He had been there for almost 2 hours.

Woody drove my mom's purple motorcylce around the farm and i finished building a picture frame. Byron's red duely desiel churned up the gravel lane and woke woody up from his nap. Zack and Amber showed up not long after.

We went to the high school alumni soccer match . I was sitting on the field thinking about everyone i knew and didn't know who was there from my high school. and was watching the sun sink below the press box, admiring the low light that shone across the corn fields and through the tassels on the stalks in full bloom. I looked over to the sidelines. woody was rummaging through someone's bag and was lacing up someone's else's shoes over someone else's mismatched socks.

Woody was one person who didn't go to my high school, but me and my friends know him: close enough to qualify for alumni at my high school.

Knowing a girl from high school who is now a hometown bartender makes for a good and cheap night. When woody thinks she is cute, it means a less cheap evening and i drive his car home for him. i sat there among free shots and the alumni of my life and listened to their stories. I thought about how much has come between me and the people in my memory, how everything i know is unfolding, and that mullets really aren't all that bad.

later as we left the streetlights of town, woody sat shotgun. Byron sat in back with my sister. We talked of home, and our history, and everyone we know and the different ways that they had become. We sat under the old oak floor boards among the graffiti and dovetailed trusses of the covered bridge. And atop the stone support we watched the moonlight reflect in the miami river, and talked about everyone who has grown up, who hasn't, and who never had the choice.

Pancakes for breakfast and more alumni from my life came knocking on the door. James showed up, and immediatly contined his debate with woody from the night before about why abercombie doesn't offer a big and tall section. He, Byron, and I piled woody's jeep and headed out for a day on the lake in Zack's boat.

around the campfire after dark i watched Zack through the window help Amber clean up supper in their kitchen.

"Zack sure has changed since he got married." James said as he stared into the fire.

"I think everybody changes somehow somtime during their lives." I replied.

My night faded to black as we discussed every girl we used to know and every car chase and sheriff car's back seat we could remember.

When we returned home the next moring, and everyone gathered up thier things, we all promised to keep in better touch. We talked about Key West condo's and new cell phone numbers and plans for a party this fall.

then we said goodbye, and then my friends drove down the gravel lane; and went their separate ways.

6x4.5cm

I hung up the phone because my stomach was sinking. It was the sort of feeling you get when you watch the saddest of movies, or when you see and animal get hit on the road. The sort of feeling that makes you feel upset for what you are and the unfair life you are in.

I think the worst thing in life is not being able to look forward to tommorrow. sometimes i think the next worse thing is thinking about tommorrow at all. That converstaion made me think about both, and I felt like my life was moving away from me in every direction.

I put down the phone.

As i walked out the door i wished for some containment in my life. i wished to be able to see it all at once, right in front of me. i wished it would stop moving away from me. i wished for borders. borders that kept everything i knew inside for me.

I set up the lights and the tripod in the women's bathroom at the Smiling Skull Saloon, and got down on my hands and knees. I didn't want to think about why the floor was so wet. I didn't want to think about her. i didn't want to think about how far away everything and everyone i cared about was. I looked though the camera. and at 160 ISO, at f2.8, 1/2 second, i saw the toilet in the dark room in the back corner of the bar. I saw the porceline sink, and the rust covered trap that hung out from below like a tail. i saw the photograph of james dean and his motorcycle. I saw the paper towel rolls. i saw the circles. i saw the squares. i saw all the shapes and geometry. i saw the light that gave them depth and dimension in this world; or at least the wet dark bathroom in the back corner of the bar. and within the 6 x 4.5cm border i could create balance. i could make a compositon. i could control what i saw and make sense of it.

I walked back home. It was uphill and lugging the camera bag and the light stand and the tripod in an august afternoon should have made me uncomforatable. But it didn't. I was fine. and like countless other times, i had found comfort in my work when everything else was anything but. This world is big and have yet to find any edges to it. but somtimes i can put everything right in front of me. sometimes even dirty toilets can be beautiful. somtimes, even for just a 1/2 second i can find the borders, and see my world inside of it.

even if it is only 6 x 4.5cm big.

eating my words

I can never find the books i am looking for at bookstores. I walked to the end of the oak veneered bookshelf and into the ailse to tell him.

"Did you know that Henry IV had 3 children with his second wife while he was still married to his first one?" he said from behind a laminated, 3-hole punched 8 1/2" x 11" page, with the title "Shakespeare" on it.

He was standing by a point of purchase icon, a 6' revolving black wire book stand. and on top was a sign saying: "Quick Reference Guides".

"If I were still in high school, i would just come here before a test. You can learn everything you need to know here." he said, without looking up from his Shakespeare Quick Reference page.

I spun the blackwire rack around. the sign said you could get familiar with everything you needed to know by reading them. As the stand spun clumsily around, i read the titles, printed in black majuscule across the top of the pages: Accounting... Botany... Chemistry... Triginometry... Physics... Statistics... Economics... Law... Astronomy... Finance...

"There are alot of topics here." i agreed.

The nomenclature of our world has done well; and how nice to have everything so defined and condensed, i thought, as i stood there in the quiet bookstore watching the cumilated work of science and math since the start of written history revolve around the wrickety wire stand.

"do they have one about design?" i asked, then i stopped the rack and turned it back to the 'D" section.

The only page they had read "Digestive System".

Suddenly i felt very humbled and alone in the quiet bookstore. I had no idea whether to be deeply saddened or jubilant. The very idea that keeps me up at night and gets me out of bed on early mornings didn't make the list of everything i needed to know. There is no quick reference for design. What i thought about most as the black wire stand wobbled around in the quiet bookstore is that i had no idea what it would have said had there been one.

i looked around. letters, numbers, and color hung on the countless book spines like a catalouged testament to typography. they sat, stacked on shelves like butterflies in an insect collection, encased in doric bookshelves on faded paisley carpet. It is everywhere. and maybe because of that it cannot be so easily defined and condensed onto a laminated, 3-hole punched 8 1/2" x 11" page.

As the black wire stand came to a slow halt, i wasn't so sure the idea could be into any amount of words, and it might take me longer than all of written history to gain any clarity as to any definiton.

But at least today i did learn that the human oesophagus is approximately 25cm long, and that it takes chewing gum 2 to 3 weeks to digest.

luck of the draw

The poplulation of New York City is around 8,008,278 people.

We had just finished running the dogs through central park, and took a shower. i didn't have any more clean shirts so i took a less dirty shirt from woody's bag. We walked out into the hazy summer streets of the upper east side. We meandered south through the city. woody was still wearing his orange shirt with the state of california printed on it and flip flops, and i in a mismatched disheveled ensamble, stared back at the abstract plastic women through the clean glass of the store fronts. Having a dog named prada sort of takes on a different meaning when walking down madison ave.

We walked down 6th ave from 80 something street on down until numbers turned into names. I've seen x-rays before where people swallow barium and you can see it slide down through their innards. As we percolated down the spine of one of the bigger municipalities on the planet, i felt almost as transparent.

Over stimulation is when a golden retriever no longer wags its tail when a little girl is petting it. Irony is when you are sitting on a step with a dog among 8,008,278 people and a mailman sits down beside you.

We headed 90 blocks south into SoHo, and met up with Woody's cronies at the abercrombie conceptual design office, where a nice girl filled tupperware containers of water for prada and kiaya, as they wrestled on the hardwood floors.

Later we visited the heatherette studio, and met Leanne, and ended on a street corner bar in the East Village. Woody had walked the rubber off of his flip flops, and was complaining about his blisters between his toes, until 2 pair of good looking girls holding hands sat down at a table beside us and started kissing.

The poplulation of New York City is around 8,008,278 people. I was surrounded by all of them. but I was just fine sitting at the little table on the hazy summer street corner with Leanne and Woody, and the dogs sleeping under the table. and somewhere between 87th street and A ave., i had a slight change of mind about a longstanding thought: I used to think that being content with who i know only meant that i was being complacent. now i am starting to realize what it really means is that i am lucky.

We sat there and laughed and talked and watched the 8,008,278 people walk by. The trip was coming to a close, and in my mismatched disheveled ensamble, was reminded that what is most important isn't what you pack before you go, but what you learn along the way.

my red carpet

Woody can strike up a conversation in a morgue. and find a way to make it interesting. so captivating the two waitresses with romanian accents in an empty resturaunt at 11:00 and night was a cinch.

"We thought you guys were famous when we saw you walk in." Tali said in a eastern block accent.

"No." Woody replied. "I thought you two were gymnasts."

As the conversaion continued, i fought with leanne over the plate of nachos. We were both going for the soggy center ones that were full of guacamole. Across the aisle was a mirror. The scene caught my eye. There was woody, comfortably controlling the converstaion, and educating our two new friends about the gross national product of romainia, and inquiring about the exchange rate of the Leu to the Euro. And across the table was leanne. eating nachos and looking accidentally beautiful, and all lights from the resturaunt's false ceiling all seemed to be pointed at her.

My friend sam told me that i am good at keeping company with interesting and positive people. perhaps he was complimenting himself. regardless, i sat there and watched leanne get away with the best chips and thought to myself:

My friends are famous to me.

i thought about the people that are close to me. I thought about who they are and what they do, and what they mean to me. Sam said he feels good energy from the people i know. I think of it as medicine, as sunshine. i think about Woody and how wonderfully opposite his mind works from mine. I think about Leanne and how wonderfully opposite her mind works from everything. i think about my friends who fly on planes, who float down rivers, who use computers, cameras, and calulators to pursue their passion. I think about what it means to have them in my life, and what it means to learn from, and with them. I might not ever see their picture in the magazines, but i hang their posters on my walls.

I can never be everything. i might not ever be anything, but I look up the lives that i know hold them in high esteem for what they show me in this world. As i sat there in the empty resturaraunt with any empty plate of nachos in front of me, i felt lucky to be with the company i keep. and like a guest on the red carpet, i was excited to be among celebrites.

"Did you know we get a free ice cream sundae with our meals?" woody said. "This is awesome."

"Yes it is." i replied.

broken

"Well rules are made to be broken." said the little lady in the white brimmed hat as we walked past the sign that read "NO DOGS" and off the boardwalk into the coarse sand.

Soon after we unleashed the dogs and they plunged into atlantic ocean. The sun was beginning to set. we were walking along the line where the ocean meets the land. we were walking alone along the line where the sun meets the horizon.

I cape cod things are old. and with age, comes definition. Later as i sat in the evening light under a tree in front of the coffee house in Chatam, i saw more lines. Woody and leanne went inside to buy a drink, and i sat alone and looked at the world in front of me. The street stopped and grass started. the grass neatly bordered the flowerbed which in turn politley edged the white picket fence. i watched the people walk past. I noticed a void in age. Everyone was between the ages of 3 and 13, and 50 and 80. With the exception of the short haired girls behind the coffee counter with foriegn accents and tatoos sliding out from under their white polos shirts, my traveling companions and i were the only people within a decade in either direction.

I began to see the weathered clapboard buildings and the perfect green grass and the shiny cars parked along the intimate street and then understood that this is a destination. and it takes the majority of a lifetime to get here. The mercedes g-wagon with the handicap hang tag parked in front of the coffee shop reminded me that success and comfort take time to obtain. I thought about the definitons and the rules that people follow througout their lives. I watched the pleated kakhi shorts and white sneakers walk past. I wonder if age and freedom are the going rate for success and comfort. I saw the old couples walking down the neatly lined sidewalk by the clean flowerbeds and polite picked fences and wondered if they saw what i saw. Or was there heads filled with mortage rates, conference calls, insurance policies, 401k plans, and all the consequences of stability and content that weigh on the mind.

My pants were still wet, and the coarse sand stuck to my legs. I leaned back against the tree. My body was dirty, but my conscious was clean. And my pockets were empty, but my head was full. and the fact of the matter was, i was there. I had nothing, but saw everything. I didn't have the money to drive a fancy car, or even buy a cup of coffee. i didn't have the experiences to be sucessful, and i didn't have the assets to be comfortable. but i was there. and i was happy with the trade-off. and for now, was just fine with breaking the rules.