(See what I am saying?)

The birthday boy

"I just couldn't live like that." he said. The town was dark and the streetlights bled down the wet windshield as we drove out of town.

"But that is me. and I am not you." he added, before i could even recognize that he should have said it.

We were leaving the mexican restaurant, where the mexican waiter brought him a Tecate and a sombrero to commemorate his 20,440th day inside his skin. We were driving home and the conversation continued about what will happen in the new year. I tried my best not to talk about me, but we did. and we talked about what i wanted and where i was going. He sat there beside me in the truck and for the first time i felt okay not being like him and okay not comparing myself to him. and i have logn since stopped using excuses and apologies as explantaions to anyone.

But i know what he is. And he is not me.
Sometimes that is more than i can say about myself.

But what he is, is a father and a son. he is a brother and husband. he has worn coat and tie, and bellbottoms and beards, and he has worn nothing at all. he has grown his hair long had it cut off at boot camp. he has fallen off tractors and has fallen in love and stayed up late and fell asleep early. he has been up the creek and he has walked down the aisle. he has strummed his guitar and he has revved his motorcycle. he is a teacher and he has been taught. he has people look up to him and he looks up to others. he has pulled the trigger and pushed the paper. he has hitch hiked to hawaii and froze his ass off in alaska. he has believed in youth, he has made promises he has kept and he has made resolutions he has forgotten. he has been young and hip and poor. he has gotten a job, and grown up, and he has wished the all money he made could make him young and hip and poor again. he has been drunk and he has been lonely. he has made up his mind and he has had his mind changed. he has buried his mother. he has buried his father. he has outlived his sister. he has outlived fashions. he has had a son and a daughter, and has seen them bring the fashions back in again from his closet. he has picked up new born animals from their afterbirth and has brought them into this world and he has buried them in the ground when they have died. he has planted trees in the ground when he could pinch their fragile trunks between his dirty fingernails. he has watched them grow up and die and cut them down with a thundering crash to the ground again. he has swung a maul and drove it down into their trunks, splitting them through the pith and stacked them neatly in piles in barns and under porch roofs. and as the water between the wood grain turned sour and fermented and evaporated, he has burned them into ashes to warm the house his father built and thrown the ashes back into the ground. he has lived how he has chosen, and he has lived how he had to. and he tries to understand his son and he does. and he doesn't.

"Well," I replied, "You don't choose what you love. but I have chosen to follow it."

The black rain bled down the wind shield. He nodded. It was a nod to tell me he understood. and that he didn't understand. And he didn't say anything more.

I-70, mile marker 59 to 61:

If anyone ever asks me why i do what i do, i am telling them now.

I chose this way maybe because it is easy, it is easy to see all this and i am lazy not to search for something harder to do. or maybe it is because it intrigues me and excites me i am scared to not to live a life that is not exciting and interesting. or maybe it is because i am dumb and i can't see past it. i can't look past these simple things. but they are what i learn from. i can look at letters on highway signs and dashboards and the numbers on watches and hands that tick on their faces and i can look at the patterns on the soles of shoes and i can look at lines made on the interstate and the lines made on people's faces and the design made in the furrows in the fields where the half melted snow sits between them running in parallel lines around the topography. i can look at the truss-work in the frames of half built barns and braided barbed wire and the stripes and grids made in grass just cut by lawnmowers. and i can look at the rust bleeding our of rivets in iron beams like bleeding bullet-holes in the buildings in new york city and the peeling paint on water towers in kansas. hubcaps. license plates. and i can look at words that are spelled right, and i can look at words that are spelled wrong and i can think about words that have never been written down on fine blue lines on college ruled notebook paper. and i can look at the silhouette of a sycamore tree when the leaves have fallen on the ground and feathered out around its trunk and geese flying in lower case letters across the sky. and i look at ticket stubs and fast food menus and dry cleaner receipts and designs stitched quilts and down vests and in the aluminum sheet metal on the back of tractor trailers driving down the interstate that ask "How's My Driving?" i can see all of these things, and i wonder if anyone else see what i see, or if they do and are able to get over it. and i wonder if what i do is important enough, or smart enough, or if it makes a difference, or if what i am doing is only adding more of the same to what i already see. but it makes life interesting to me and that is the way am choosing to live it. and i can't stand to live with my eyes closed. and i can't stand to live without thinking about it, so i look around and this is what i see, what everyone sees, or maybe no one sees it but me. but it is what makes me think. maybe i all i am doing is adding more of the same tangled and contradicted mess to the world i see. but at least i am not taking away. i don't ever want to take away.

(*recorded on a Belkin iPod voice recorder. thanks for the christmas present mom. ((driving alone while missing someone may be detrimental to your carrer plans and is bad for your general well being.))

Search Party, Part 2.

"Do you think about God?" she asked.

It was snowing in Pittsburgh as the earth sat slanted on its axis and swung around the sun. it was Pittsburgh's turn to lean away from the light. and as pale sun shone low and lazy across the leaning latitude, we sat in the kitchen on the dimmest quarter of the globe on the darkest day of the year.

"Are you searching for answers?" she asked, not looking up from the table. she was sitting beside me on the white chair. One knee was tucked up under her arm, and her foot sat flat on the seat of the chair. she was in her bare feet and i was sitting still. and her words ran into me like freight train.

I stood up to see if my feet were still under my knees.

"The spoons are in the drawer by the sink." she said.

I smiled. she didn't see it. I smiled because i wished she knew that i am searching. i was searching for eating utensils. and i am searching for god. i am searching for love and understanding and some clarity wouldn't hurt either. some of those things she has seem to have found. and i am not sure she was even looking for them. but i am. and the only thing i know less about any of them is what will happen if i find them. because i will still be alive, so i am told. i just stood there at the sink. My brain ached like i have been shouting at the top of my lungs in the bottom of the grand canyon my whole life, and i was left waiting to hear the echo.

the pale kitchen fell silent. and as the freight train passed through me, i wondered if i was just running along beside it, waiting to find an open to door to hitch a ride on it. waiting for an open door to carry me down the tracks. i pulled open the drawer and found a spoon, and decided that i will keep running. i will keep searching. i will keep wondering. until i find my place to hop on board and be taken away.

i looked out the window above the sink and wondered why winter makes me happy.

I looked out the sliding glass doors and into the dark yard covered in snow and wondered why sometimes i can't sleep at night.

I looked at her with her leg tucked up under her arm in the pale kitchen light and wondered why we sit in the seats we do as we spin like a fifty cent ferris wheel ride around this solar system.

I sat back down beside her at the table, and as the sun set on the darkest day of the year, i decided there are some things worth finding. there are some things that will make me stop searching. and there are things that i am letting take me away.

I looked at her and the dark world upon the snow outside. and for a minute, with a spoon in my hand, my brain stopped shouting, and the world was simply black and white.

Search Party, Part 1.

I looked out the window at the barren fields framed in barbed wire. They were gray and harsh and the world looked like it was shot on black and white high speed film and blown up until the grain washed the black and whites into sea of grey.

"He is always searching." She said in the gray grain inside my picture frame.

"I think some people would rather search their whole lives, instead of ever finding anything."

We were listening to Dylan recite his last thoughts on Woody Guthrie. The words came out of the speakers and moved through gray moan of the afternoon like stitches move through the seams of blue jeans. She was sitting beside me in her bare feet. They were propped up where the window meets the door. It began to snow. I thought about the very personal and perpetual definition of truth. i thought about people who hang answers like a carrot on string in front them, just within sight, but just out of reach. just close enough to be reminded they are there. too far away to understand complety.

"I think some people would rather remain deciding than ever end up finding." I said to her bare feet propped up where the window meets the door. The grainy gray world panned by us on high speed film.

I thought about what i search for. i thought about what i have found. i thought about living and looking and never finding. i thought my carrots on strings and the songs i'll never be able to sing and the thought of satisfaction that searching will never bring. I listened to the words and I felt like my whole life has been spent sharpening my knife, but i was too afraid to ever draw blood.

she sat there silent and beautiful and barefoot. she sat there and looked out at the gray world we were in. i can search forever in this world. and finding isn't finality. finaltiy comes from choosing. and finality comes from being chosen.

I have watched her shop for eyeglasses and guess and second guess her frames. And as she finally walked out of the store with new glasses she still looked at the frames on the wall. she wonders still if she made the right choice. and so still she stops and looks in the windows of eyeglass stores, waiting for her prescription to change.

There are infinite juxtapostions of shapes in space and colors under the sun. there are infinite ways to ask a question as many ways to answer it. i wonder if what i make will ever be right. i wonder if what i think will ever be true. and so i still work, still i sharpen my knife. still i search for answers. still i listen to Bob Dylan. and still i find comfort in her bare feet, and the this sea of gray, searching for the black and white.

My back against the wall

I thought the doors would be open. i thought it would be them on one side, and it would be me on the other, and meeting them would be a way to walk through the door to their side, to work with them, to be part of what they are doing. i thought there was a door, and thus, a wall that separated me from them. i imagined a division between us that was a barrier that kept me from being successful, accomplished, and satisfied. i want to be part of what they are doing. i want to be like the people who i admire, who are better than me, and who make me understand i nowhere near as good as i should be.

We walked through the doors of the aomaya spiral and past the man in the black suit holding the sign that said "Canon, 3F." i got our name tags in the third floor lobby and looked around at the other attendees. they were standing there. they looked like me. actually they didn't look at all like me, and no one else spoke the same language i use, and without words, i sat there and watched. leanne left because she was hungry. we were supposed to enter in the double doors to take our seats in five minutes. 4 minutes later the elevator doors opened and she walked into the lobby smiling. she was holding a ham and cheese sandwich. she is always smiling. but i didn't think she would doing so with a ham and cheese sandwich in tokyo.

The room went dark as everyone sat silent and well dressed. not dressed up as much as dressed down very well. the hardwood floor was filled with black chairs and the stage was lit like a sapphire fireplace in a lunar ski lodge. The judges for the contest walked in single file and sat in the front row. Leanne started in on the second half of her sandwich. the lady at the podium swayed between japanese and english. i watched the judges on stage, and the winners get their recognition. I watched the very well dressed down winners walk consciously onto the stage and bow and shake hands. i listened to the judges, on the stage, on the other side of the wall. i went on stage. i went past the wall i thought was there. but it was just a stage. lit like sapphires on a hardwood floor in japan.

i sat back down in the dark in the black chair and felt my self zooming out. i felt my self walking backwards until the i saw the wall that separates me from them, the wall that separates me from success, accomplishment, and satisfaction, wasn't between us, it was around us.

as leanne finished her ham and cheese i felt my frame of reference change. it was like had been leaning my head against the wall this whole time, and all i could see were the bricks right in front of me. i couldn't see the people who i admire, who are better than me, and who make me understand i nowhere near as good as i should be. just the wall in front of me. and as i sat there i began to back up and look around and see that i was leaning my head against a wall in a room, and inside the room we were all together. we were all there, on the hardwood floor, dressed down very well, and lit in sapphire light. and the only door had a sign above it that read exit in 2 languages.

suddenly i realized that there is no division. i realized that they are who i admire because they are doing what they love, and their are doing it their way, and their way is only for them to do. they are not on the other side of some invisible division, or in some exclusive club where fancy business cards, expense accounts, and studio space, and health insurance is given out upon entry. they were sitting right there in the same room on the same black chairs.

and on my black chair, i realized i cannot be part of it. i cannot be belong to what they are doing. the best i can do is be in the same room, even if ti is with my face to the wall standing alone in the corner. by even wanting try to be included with them would be selfish. i would get in their way, i would not add to them, i would only take away. i can't work for them, because they are working for themselves. they are doing the work they love, and they are doing it by themselves, and they are known for it.

so as we clapped our hands and headed for the door that read exit in two languages, i realized that the only division is in my head, and the only door is the exit, and hot ham and cheese sandwiches are available in tokyo. and while success, accomplishment, and satisfaction is still somewhere else, i began to turn around, and at least for now, start by putting my back, not my face, to the wall.

looking elsewhere

The sky was gray as we walked off the airplane in Narita. Immediately i knew what it felt like to be illiterate. The escaltors shone chrome and quiet as we stood like sailors leaving for sea, rising through the glass walls reflecting the gray sky. Immediately i knew what it felt like to be a minority. Signs hung calmly encrytped from the cielings, arrows spliced off, pointing into the pale white spaces around us. and i knew what it felt like to be completely and absolutely lost. i held her hand and felt my aching eyes open wider than they had in a long time. and for the first time i felt very aware that the earth was a sphere, and that i was looking at it from the other side.

We pin-balled through the arrows and gates and ropes. We percolated through the metal detectors and customs and past the smiling men in ties and caps and past the straight faced men in helmets and combat boots. We followed the arrows that told us which side of the stairway to walk down and I had my last english conversation in line for customs with an entrepreneur of diesel engine technology from Missouri.

We walked out of the airport. The entire world was a different color, shape, and size. The scientists say that when pangea broke up geographical isolation created variant species. That phenomenon also applies to industrial design. Public phones have cross bred with cash registers, and toilets look more like a piece of consumer electronics than a porcelain plumbing fixture. Cans of coke are what i would call propane fuel canisters and typography crawled over the landscape like posion ivy, growing up and over everything that could sit still long enough to be read, and could be read – by everyone but us.

I heeded my warnings and we avoided taxis, until 3:00 am on the last night, when we left our american friends with the Japanese cowboys at the mexican bar, and bartered our way home. The taxi ride home, and accompanying cell phone photo shoot turned out to be a highlight or our trip. -So instead of taxis, we studied the Tokyo subway map like Egyptian archaeologist in a Pharaoh's tomb. We learned the system, and soon began to dilute into the city. I never learned to translate the language, but i did get almost used to translating propane fuel canisters for coke cans, volume knobs for bidets, and I sunk below the structures of objects, and began, if only briefly, to see the ever thinning line between America and everybody else.

I was staring at an Iowa Hawkeyes stocking cap with a yellow furry ball on top. I was standing in a basement thrift store in Shibuya listening to Mirah Carey. I guess it was then that i became aware of the pros and cons of belonging to a culture so popular. On the wall hung a colorado license plate for 1000 yen. The guy behind the counter was wearing YMCA t-shirt. Just when i started to get uncomfortable Leanne decided to try to ask the YMCA shirt if he was interested in buying some of her clothes. 10 minutes later she had involved our Fodor's travel guide of popular Japanese phrases, all 5 employees, and i had corralled 4 of Shibuya High's best and brightest uniformed sophomores as translators in a delightfully futile meeting of the eastern and western youth. In the end i think they thought we wanted to buy the store from them, or that we wanted them to pay us to get naked. Either way, i found a strange comfort in knowing that there are still some fundamental differences in this world beneath the block type stocking caps and under the vintage t-shirts.

The rest of the visit in the store was reduced to polite smiles and nods. i was feeling very foreign despite walking through what resembled my dad's closet. among the corduroy blazers and levis i found common ground with the japanese girl with the mohawk and Twisted Sister t-shirt.

I couldn't speak to her, but i understood, that she, very much like me, had her mind on somewhere else. I had traveled across the ocean looking for chopsticks, samurais, dragons and things that were new and foreign to me. i wanted to buy a silkscreen in Japanese script. i wanted to be involved with somewhere else. i was tired of what was i was surrounded by. i went looking for something new.

she went downstairs to the used clothing rack to look for punk rock, midwest colleges, Illinois fire dept. softball uniforms, and t-shirts she couldn't read. she wanted evidence of life outside of her own. she was tired of her surroundings. she was looking for something new.

and once again the understanding hit me like lightning. it was right there in front of me. i had to cross an ocean before i could see it see it so plainly. everyone wants to know – and be known – as being aware of more than what they are surrounded by. everyone gets used to their surroundings. and everyone likes t-shirts they can't read.

and no matter what language we talk, or clothes we wear, or music we listen to, we want to be aware of somewhere else.

traveling to tommorow

"okay, so remember. NO TAXIS." he said.

The TVs in Chicago O'Hare were blaring Opera Winfrey loud enough to drown out the both the trilingual airport announcements and our cell phone conversation.

"Got it. I won't use the taxis." i replied.

Josh Davis was explaining to me the pitfalls of public transportation in Tokyo. Leanne was eating a ham and cheese sandwich, while talking to her father on her phone. Opera Winfrey was discussing interior decorating. 4 hours ago i was jogging through times square. 4 hours from then i was to be 8 hours in the future.

Sitting at the gate, i looked out the wall of glass at the sunrise and the largest piece of mechanical equipment i had ever seen or was about to ride in. Leanne was doing calisthenics. The 777 sat fat on the tarmac like red white and blue balloon that was about to be tied into a datchund, or some other domestic animal at a 5th grade birthday party by some white faced clown.

Only later, - or earlier - depending on which face of the flight attendant's watch i read, did i try to understand my present situation, and the events leading up to it. The two-faced watch placed lunch with a smile on Leanne's tray table. She looked the tray of food divided into modular white plastic portions like space shuttle cubby holes and smiled. if nothing else, I was treating her to a steak dinner and her first ride in a Rolls Royce. Or at least my first ride in one. The turbines seared through the sub-zero Siberain jet stream as I tried to retrace the chain of events that led to sitting in Leanne's closet, otherwise known as aisle 24 on flight 153, over the Bering Strait. i watched as she dug into one of her bags on the floor and pulled out a 1 gallon zip lock bag with a puddle of balsamic vinegar in the bottom of it, and promptly poured it over her salad in it's white plastic container. I watched the scrolling japanese script on the LCD screen in the back of the headrest in front of me. i watched the man at the end of the aisle try real hard keep his head above his shoulders as the classical music from station 1 on the armrest phone jack played out of the headphones hanging around his wobbling neck. i watched the sun out the crack in the window shade as it refused to set, and instead, followed me around the northern hemisphere.

There is a lot to see. and as Leanne ate her salad and the man at the end of aisle fought off gravity, i realized that i am seeing it. i realized i am seeing more that i expected, with people i never expected, and in places i never expected. and as Leanne prepared our self test of Japanese currency and common phrases, i wondered why she liked vinegar so much. i wondered what time it was. i wondered why taxis were so expensive in Tokyo. i wondered what in this world i was going to see next.

In a strangley comforting way, i know i will never be able to know all those answers. i will always be asking questions, and i will always be far more aware of what i don't know than what i do.