A human being should be able to change a diaper, plan an invasion, butcher a hog, conn a ship, design a building, write a sonnet, balance accounts, build a wall, set a bone, comfort the dying, take orders, give orders, cooperate, act alone, solve equations, analyze a new problem, pitch manure, program a computer, cook a tasty meal, fight efficiently, die gallantly. Specialization is for insects.
Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.
The ruins of the unsustainable are the 21st century’s frontier.
I know it's been ages since I posted here, but today seemed the right time to make a comeback.
Californians: Today's our big moment. Let's make it happen.
(I feel like blessing myself and muttering some apologetic prayer to the god of climate change before starting this.)
I've been all over this year. Between work and (now that I've finished my Masters) personal holidays, I visited 14 cities in 4 continents in 2007:
- Dublin
- Turin (well, actually snowboarding tragically close by)
- San Francisco
- Galway
- Agadir
- Essaouira
- Marrakesh
- Newcastle
- Seville
- Belfast
- Aukland
- Christchurch
- Queenstown
- Seoul (just overnight, but I'm counting it)
But it's only made the travel bug worse. I experienced the most amazing places I've ever been this year, Morocco and New Zealand especially, and I can see that I've only begun to realise the possibilities that adventurous travel has to offer me, and that I've only begun to touch them. It's a never-ending chase, but I love the experience, feel hugely broadened after, and have the best travel buddy ever.
For the first time in ages that I can remember, I've now got a blank slate in front of me: no plans yet settled to move out of the country. But ideas are stewing, and I fully intend to make the most of them.
Unless it is the one below.
Years ago, I was in a band called Hamotam and I had an enormous beard like Sam Beam and a homemade mohawk. Our motto was never the same song twice, and we essentially would all take the stage with no set plan, and start jamming on various instruments none of knew how to play led by semi-maniacal front man, mr. matthew rampage. Real time improvisation. Non-musicians making music. It was all very puzzling, and ended badly in a cocaine and methamphetamine-fueled cycle of self-destruction that sent two of the founding members off packing, homeward bound to live with parents. Harper and I had skipped out long before that. We didn't like to snort things up our nose, and the madness was just too much. There was talk of touring Europe, for example, a preposterous notion. Of becoming famous, and playing at The Greek, even more ludicrous. The "music" wasn't even bad, it was utterly unlistenable. An assault on your ears and senses. Completely horrifying. It was the kind of premise only someone mired a deep in dark black hole of addiction could possibly entertain. At some point, the actors forgot they were engaging in a joke, in guerilla theater of sorts, and began to actually believe that it was a band. That what we were making was music.It was grotesque, and I felt betrayed by my friends. I began to hate them and their antics. Although I had left already, the madness still followed. There were angry phone calls. Threats. I owned hamotam.org, our domain, and when one of the principals discovered this, he threatened to sue me. He left obscene comments all over my blog. By this point it was just he and one other guy, and I couldn't be bothered anymore. Cocaine, it's a hell of a drug. Methamphetamine too.
Not long afterwards, we left for Asia. The fellas all went their separate ways, and each in his own time got his head straight. One remains one of my best friends whom I see all the time. Another is still a close, close friend, although we rarely talk. The third, well, things happen. Sometimes you say things you can't take back. When I came home again, after six months abroad, I was, quite honestly, glad they were gone. Glad it was over. Glad everyone, finally, seemed to have their shit together. And I didn't miss it. At all.
But now, I look back on that period. We were all blogging and writing and making music and art. Hanging out constantly in a tight-knight circle of friends. And, despite the drama and the madness, I miss it. I miss that creative rush. That buzz.
And every once in a while, I get hit right in the forehead with a reminder. A couple of weeks ago, one of my friends sent me this file. A relic from that era. It's our frontman, rampage, who after some voice talent failed to show, was pressed into the service of pitching Crazy Glow. I smiled when I saw it, and dropped it into iTunes, then promptly forgot about it.
And then yesterday morning, while I was working, it came on in the shufffle. And I thought of Hamotam, and Matthew and Jeff and Ezra and Harper and me. Onstage at the Hotel Utah. In front of a crowd at the Cafe International. Playing astride the Mckinley Statue in the panhandle. Playing in the sun in Golden Gate Park. At parties and on street corners.
It was madness, it was madness, it was madness. And, oh, how I miss it so.
Like all good San Franciscans, we spy on our neighbors. Well, spy may be a bit strong. But we are familiar with them. We have nicknames, even. The nicknames started when Harper hurt her back and was largely confined to bed for a year. The neighbors became like her TV show, there being no TV in the bedroom. She was living Rear Window. Complete with our own cast of characters: the couple, comic book store guy neighbor, the girl who is always at home, the big oaf, and, our favorite, the boy. The boy started off as a normal college-age boy. He played guitar. He drank beer with friends, and grilled on his porch. One night, he almost got into a fight with The Big Oaf outside on the sidewalk. (I broke this up, by yelling out the window. "Shut up!" I didn't really care about he noise at all, truth be told. I did it to forestall a fight, re-directing their mutual aggression at me, rather than each other. The Boy would have gotten his ass kicked, and that would have made me sad.)
But then, at some point, The Boy quit being a boy, and started being a user. I'm not quite sure when that was, but it was certainly when Harper's back was still hurt to the point she was largely confined to bed, so at least a year and a half. He quit going out. He quit having friends over, and more and more of the time, he just sat motionless in front of his computer, for hours on end. Not typing. Just staring straight ahead, holding a mouse in one hand. I took the picture below on the left in March. The one on the right was taken last night.
He sits like that for hours on end. Typically, he's there from the afternoon at some point until the early morning hours. I wake up pretty early, it's often still dark out when I get going for the day. And repeatedly, time after time, I've woken up and seen The Boy sitting there. Obviously after a long night of staring straight ahead.
Sometimes, I like to think that he's not just wasting his life. That he's working on some super-important project. Some sort of code that's going to change everything. That will make us all honest and enlightened and happy and free. A comprehensive system, a unified theory.
But that, I suspect, would require typing.
The Boy makes me sad, and maybe he shouldn't. But there have been times when I've wanted to intervene. To throw rocks across the street at his window and say, "Hey, you, Boy! Look around you! You live in a great neighborhood, in a great city, in a great region, in a great state! No matter what you are into, you can find it here! There is all kinds of life happening, just over your shoulders."
And then I think it's none of my business, and I just go on about my day or evening or night. And I tell Harper, "The Boy is at his computer again." And she replies "All is right with the world."
Right then. So I don't use Vox an enormous amount, and I probably should. I don't talk a lot about what's going on in my personal life on my main blog and this would be a decent place to do it without worrying about bloody Valleywag or whatever. But that's not the point. I thought I'd give people a quick update, just in case they were interested.
Bicycle!
Bicycle, bicycle, bicycle, bicycle!
Remember when you were ten, and you woke up on Christmas morning, and there was a bicycle under the tree?
"Bicycle!" You said. "Bicycle! Bicycle! Bicycle! Bicycle! Biiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiicycle!"
That's still how I feel today. I went out today and rode my new bike on the trails at Golden Gate Park. I flew through them. Most I know from running. But I've never gone so fast on them before. And I felt like I was fucking good. I was moving, going fast, uphill. I bounced down hills with wooden steps set into them, and across rocks the size of railroad ties. I went head-over-the-handlebars, once, v e r y s l o w l y. I was riding what amounted to single track along a steep hillside along Fulton, heading towards the back side of the Conservatory, when I hit a fallen log hidden in deep grass and (then) over I went like the minute hand of a clock. It was mystifying to me, how I kept moving like that.
11Flip1
I'm already envisioning myself in Xterras. Flying.
