2010
Jan. 28th, 2010, USA
5:45 am
Got work on a commercial fishing boat last month, the "Aguero". It's been a big plus that Jeremiah, the captain, liked Job so much and allowed me
to take him with us everyday. I've missed working on the water...and will.
March 25th, 2010
Got a new job working with and training animals at a private zoo.
April 18th, 2010
Something has to give. There will come a day when we will say "we can't keep living like this." I don't know when that day will be. When an irresistible force meets an immovable object something has to give or something is going to break. Though I've felt broken many times, oxygen continued to enter my lungs and I continued to live. The truth in me is both irresistible and immovable though I have tried to resist it and the world has tried to move it. I can not change the world, but I can change my life. I can be responsible for what I am aware of and behave accordingly. I can refuse to condone what my conscience, my higher power, my instincts, tell me is unacceptable. In every worldly instance, the truth is either the irresistible force or the immovable object and when they collide, the hard truth will be revealed. We can choose to embody the truth that we are aware of or we can choose to ignore it until the choice is no longer ours. The longer we wait the more likely we will discover it truly is an irresistible force and we truly are not an immovable object as we lay in its wake. The sooner we choose to accept it the better chances we have to align ourselves with it so that we may embody it's universal and timeless character.
As a young man, I choose to believe that any true statement about life is universal to all and useful to all those willing to be honest
with themselves. I had "found myself" by, finally, being truly honest with myself and this solidified a loyalty to the truth. Honesty being the
pathway to the truth. Though I was not perfect, I naively believed and attempted to be honest in every situation I found myself in with the faith
that something miraculous would happen. This was a very difficult way to live and I often found myself trapped in situations where to be truly
honest would sabotage my success in a specific situation. So, I would remain silent, keep my head down and work twice as hard hoping it
would somehow distance me from the lie I was aware of until eventually I would have to leave not being able to go along with it anylonger. I believed others who
believed the same would recognize my efforts and we would establish a genuine connection. In short, I believe it takes one to know one. Though
many times I found myself completely alone in the truth that I see, I have no choice, now, once again, to accept that it is an irresistible force
and I must become movable to align myself with it. For those who believe the same, to tell our stories driven by honesty, not ego, we help one
another on our individual journeys as well as keep one another connected on our universal one.
For the past year, I have attempted to live differently and I have been unsuccessful in my eyes. Always succeeding at finding work
and earning respect from my employers, I've had ten jobs in 12 months in a wide range of fields. The previous year was more of the same. All the while
I've been care-taking on a piece of property that I had told the owner I was only interested in taking on if the possibbilty of buying it someday
existed. As the things progressed and it became clearer that this was not a real possibility it prevented me form investing my own time and energy
into it especially when even getting paid for the caretaking I had done during this past year's was so difficult when a winter of heavy rains
required me to come and go everyday by canoe.
It always
came as a surprise to whoever I was working for when I would decide to move on. They were very happy with my work because I took their "business"
and it's responsibilities very seriously. They liked me for what I did for them, but pleasing them was not going to address everything I see and am
painfully aware of regarding how we are living as culture. They all required me to turn a blind eye to things that are too important to ignore. I realize this is "just a part of life"
and all jobs require this to an extent, but the compromise is far too great for me. Neglect is part of the formula for disaster. If a situation
prevents us from being ourselves it can turn our gifts into curses. Every job required me to forget about the life I have lived and everything I
have learned up until now and just join the crowd. I have toughed it out long enough, but there is no point in it. If I had reasons to justify
"sucking it up" for the sake of my family or other immediate responsibilities maybe things would be different, but I don't and all I am doing is
trying to sustain an unsustainable lifestyle that doesn't make me happy. There is a reason why I don't have these things and it is
because I have deliberately chosen not to start that chapter in my life until I had adequately addressed the world in which I would be starting
it in. This has given me an opportunity to do what others can not do because of their responsibilities and I am going to take this opportunity
and do what I believe I still have a responsibility to do. And this time, I am not going to sacrifice my own health and well being to do it like
I have in the past. If I believe so deeply in the message, I need to take better care of the messenger. This is one thing the last two years has
taught me.
Sept. 20th, 2010
I think Job is ready to hit the road. Carrying enough dog food for this guy and providing myself with enough electricity to power my laptop sufficiently
were the needs I wanted to address.
Nov. 4th, 2010
Left the property in late afternoon on foot for the maiden voyage of the newly built wagon. Had to wear my rubber boots to negotiate the flooded driveway. Took them off and stashed them by the roadside. Flip-flops are much more comfortable.
The wagon did well. After the familiar embarrassment of doing something that looks weird to people was gradually replaced by the growing faith in
the functionality of my new contraption, I started to feel pretty good. Didn't flip one person off:) I didn't have big plans for this first little
trip. In attempts to persuade myself to finally try out the wagon and postpone making every little improvement that needs to be made before doing
so, I told myself "You don't have to go far. Just walk out to the bay" which is only a mile or two down the quiet country road that my little cabin
in the woods is located on. I
knew I was right. A statement which is dangerously close to talking to myself or insanity. I had to leave. I had to do something. I was going mad
out there in the woods everyday by myself not for any internal chemical imbalance or whatever psycho/medical terminology they use these days, but
by the simple nature of my predicament. I was trapped by my own stubbornness and I had to go. I had to get out. Bad things were coming if I didn't.
Sitting in the warm sun by the bay playing my guitar, Job rolling and wiggling around on his back in the grass the way dogs do when they're happy,
a peaceful euphoric sigh of relief was let out of someplace deep inside me. I wasn't prepared to say "I made it." If I was going to do what I was
contemplating doing with this little wagon I had built complete with a solar panel mounted on it, I wasn't even close to beginning. What I had done
though was put an end to the rut I have been in for the last year and a half trying to force myself to live a life I wasn't ready to live and
for this I was serenely happy.
Give your energy something good to do or it will find something bad to do. It's hard for one person to know what's best for themself when they
keep their own audience for too long. I have spent days, weeks, months at a time alone and it has completely suited me. I never thought twice
about it in regards to my mental well-being. Though my heart, on the other hand, has always longed for connections, especially a romantic one.
Camped on a table rock under the desert stars at night, for instance, is only bittersweet because I wish someone else was there with me to share in its beauty,
but bittersweet is survivable. Spending days, weeks, months alone in a completely unnatural setting is very dangerous I've come to find out in
the last year and half. I didn't just find myself lying in an amazing place staring up at the moon in the southwest desert of Arizona. I had walked there
from San Diego and though this may seem unusual to some people it is completely natural. Walking is the most natural form of transportation known
to man.The fact that this may be surprising to some is just one indication of how far off course we truly are as a people. It took a sufficient
amount of energy to get me there from the coast. It took me a healthy amount to get me there from the spot I'd camped the night before 30 miles
or so away. Had it not required a healthy amount of energy, lying there in the middle of nowhere at night in a place that could possibly resemble
the surface of Mars might be unsettling to a person because all the energy they hadn't use to get there naturally would now fester
in their mind not allowing them to be at peace with their surroundings and situation. A lot of times, life simply comes down to energy management
and most of us are not using anywhere close to the amount of physical energy we need to be using everyday to be healthy and relaxed.
Personally, I found it more difficult to fall asleep on the rare
occasion I find myself in a motel room even if I had used up a lot of physical energy that day to get there.
Every so often, I would meet someone who would insist out of sheer generosity that I let them get me a room for the night. I remember paying for
my dinner at a diner in White House, Tennessee when a nice family was leaving at the same time. The father struck up a conversation with me. I
always stuck out a little carrying my back-pack with a big American flag on it and the next thing I knew they were dropping me off at a motel where I had a room waiting for
me. I say "the next thing I knew" because even riding in a car moving at such a speed and talking with the nice family happened at a pace that
was surreal to me. Forty-five minutes later sitting in a nice motel room having just taken a shower my socks that I had just washed in the sink
drying on the heater I'm wide awake looking at all the creature comforts like a bed, a t.v., lights, chairs, a table, hot running water, heat, a
vending machine just outside the door, clean towels feeling like a lab rat. All this stuff for one person. What in the world was I going to do with it all? Maybe it was
all the straight lines and right angles that formed the box I was in. Maybe it was the bright lights when I was used to the dark, but it would take
me hours to finally fall asleep as tired as I should have been. I can't imagine what it would be like if I hadn't carried 55lbs on my back for
eight hours that day.
This is something I hadn't accounted for when depression set in after spending months stranded in a small one room "house" in the woods flooded in
by the winters rain with nothing to do but stare at the walls for days on end. All life requires a proportionate amount of energy in the form of
work to sustain itself. It's a beautiful, harmonious, natural balance. Alter that balance artificially and it will eventually catch up with you.
After strumming out the same two chords over and over for ten minutes and never growing tired of it, I decided we should probably get a move on as Job done playing with the empty juice bottle I'd thrown at him kept coming up to me trying to interrupt as if to say "C'mon, it is that it? Let's keep going." Before putting my guitar away hidden in the pocket of the case I found an old print I'd stuffed in there three years ago. I'd salvaged it from the rubble of an old camper I was cleaning out to live in up in Astoria, OR. What a pleasant surprise. I'd forgotten all about it. It depicted a man on a horse meandering down a country road with a dog walking along behind them. The road winded along a creek just like the one we lived on. It was even called "November Evening". Hmph. I packed up his water dish, threw the chewed up 2qt. bottle of Juicy Juice in the wagon and we headed down the busy road along the bay. It was almost 5:30 and people we're rushing home from work. Fortunately, California has bike lanes on many of it's scenic roads. I wasn't sure where we were headed, but I still had lots of energy and plenty of daylight to make it up as we went.
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