Category: Uncategorized

October 16, 2016

Dear Old Bob,

Hope you’re hanging in there Pops, what with you being so old and all. If you waited forty years to read this (and managed to stay alive) you’d be at least what, 85, 86 now? Damn. I’m surprised you made it, given the lack of octogenarians on the family tree. Not sure why I’m calling you Pops, considering your stubborn refusal to pass on your genes. At least, I’m assuming you still don’t have kids. You never know, considering all the potential medical breakthroughs between my time and yours. Lately I’ve been hearing a lot about this “Trans-Humanist” movement, where people are lining up to become cyborgs, to have chips implanted in their bodies that automatically open doors and turn on lights, that sort of thing. Frankly, I don’t see that going anywhere but to that scene in the Matrix where the people have all become batteries, or whatever. It’s been a while since I’ve seen that movie. Anyway, at the very least I’m sure there will be a period between my time and yours when there will be a whole lot of fat guys living in basements who never take off their virtual reality goggles. Anyhoo, where were we? Oh yeah, potential parenthood. Maybe they’ll figure out how to grow babies in vats, along with those fake meatballs I’ve been hearing about, or maybe you and the wife decided to adopt a 35-year-old at some point. Truthfully, it’s harder to picture you as a transhumanist than as a father. I mean, I still don’t own a smartphone in the year 2016, and I sure as hell wouldn’t want some corporate-controlled piece of technology embedded in my body, literally tracking every move I make. Fuck that shit, Old Bob. Of course, there’s always a caveat attached to all this transhumanist horse-shit, and it’s that these amazing technological advancements can only happen if we don’t destroy ourselves first. A pretty big IF, if you ask me.

If you are around to read this, then I suppose full-scale destruction has not set in. Yet. Not sure if you can remember the whole social media thing that cropped up in the late aughts and spread like a dandelion infestation throughout the twenty-teens. You know, Facebook and all that shit. (Please tell me Facebook went away at some point!) Anyway, I had fun with the sense of connection, at first, but now I’m not so sure I want to know so much about what’s actually bouncing around in everyone’s heads. Social media has lifted the veil, and the hideousness of what I’ve seen can’t be unseen. It’s just an undeniable fact that a scary percentage of my former and current associates cannot think critically and reasonably about matters which are of the utmost importance to the future of civilization: namely, politics and religion. You know, those topics we’ve been instructed to avoid at the dinner table over the holidays. Now I understand the sentiment behind those instructions. It’s just too depressing to expose oneself to so much irrational thinking. At this very moment the American people are strongly considering electing Donald Trump to the highest office in the land. Of course, you know how all that plays out, OB. If Trump does end up winning the election, maybe reasonable humans eventually flee to Mars, and you’re reading this missive through the inter-planetary wi-fi.

Who knows anything about anything. Not me, Old Bob. Not me. I’m starting to feel a bit old myself, with 46 waiting for me at the end of next month. I’m sure that 46 doesn’t sound too old to you OB, and maybe you’d like to stick your leg through a wormhole and give me a transtemporal kick in the ass. Maybe that’s just what I need. Despite being part of the most fortunate cohort of humans to ever exist, I still find myself feeling weighed down much of the time by the very things that the vast majority of humans on the planet are desperate to enjoy, such as having a full-time job. “Do what you love to do?” Who put this nonsense in my head? As if engaging in an enjoyable pursuit necessarily involves the transfer of other people’s money into your bank account. Ah fuck… No sense going around in those circles again. I hope that you’ve freed yourself from that orbit by now OB. Or else that you’ve been forcibly pushed from it by one of the many asteroids the universe has no doubt hurled at you. I’m thinking you probably just don’t give a fuck anymore. I mean, isn’t that the beauty and horror of old age? Knowing that there’s nothing to be done about anything anymore? Supposedly there are a few among my own age-mates who have already figured this shit out. Not me, Old Bob. Not me. I’m still fighting the same stupid, pointless fight. I am getting tired though, and my hands are starting to drop. It’s almost like I’m hoping to be knocked out cold, so that I can be spared another round of nauseating gut punches.

Well, I’m glad we had this talk bro. Hope it brightened your day a little bit at least. It actually felt good to reach out to you in this way. Maybe we’ll do it again sometime soon.

Peace out,

Young(er) Bob.

Change the strings.
Trim the beard.
Make the bed first thing upon arising.
“Little things…”, as Mom likes to say.

Take a stroll.
Clean up the garage.
Fill in that hole in the back yard that you dug up five or six weeks ago.
Grab up a few weeds while you’re out there,
while you’re at it,
while you’re in the mood.

Sing a few songs,
old songs you haven’t thought of in a long time.
Write a few new ones,
ones you’ll forget about for a long time,
or maybe forever.

Remember your father.
Little bro.
Think about the good times,
the beginnings that came after the endings,
and the moments in between when all seemed to be lost.

Light a fire.
Let it burn out in its own time,
on its own terms.

Lay back and sink down into the dream once more.

“To do a good self-portrait, one must look into the ashes. Man builds on the ruins of his former selves. When we are reduced to nothingness, we come alive again. To season one’s destiny with the dust of one’s folly, that is the trick. In the ashes lie the ingredients for portrayal of self.” – Henry Miller

I’ve overloaded the circuits is all. Too many devices flashing and beeping at once. Information everywhere and not a nugget of truth to be found. This body, this brain—a sensitive sponge sopping up whatever pool of vomit or horse piss it finds itself in. How much longer will I pretend this is all well and good? How much longer will I resist the urge to fling myself over the rail? How close to the jagged earth will I be when I finally spread my wings?

I’m somewhere above Lake Erie, contemplating what it means to find one’s edge. I suppose I’m circling around in the same old holding pattern. The edge, of course, is just another way of conceptualizing the here and now, another way to say “Head the gong.” At this point, I think I have a pretty good idea how to get to the edge from wherever I find myself and, once I’m there, to recognize that I’m there. It’s just that I find it difficult these days to hang out on the edge for any length of time. I take one peek over the precipice then retreat back to the comfort and relative numbness of the familiar circles.

In less than one hour I’ll be back at the starting line. Back where all the ghosts scud like clouds over a full moon. Home. Less than an hour till the wheels touch down. Always a heartbeat from the edge, if only I’d remember to feel for the pulse.

This morning I woke at 3am to the terrible squeal of the alarm clock. Drugged with dreams, I pushed through the internal clouds to get to the bathroom, the garage, El Paso International Airport, the line to board my flight. Now I’m up, above the clouds, the baseball diamonds, the fingertip of Erie as it probes into Pennsylvania. Heading due East, to the edge, which can be on the ground or in the air or twenty thousand leagues under the sea. It just takes a second to feel for the pulse, for the blood flowing under the surface, through the vessels, into the tissue and over the bones.

*

The weather here in Vermont is spectacular. Last night we saw several shooting stars and marveled at the glow of the Milky Way. When the sun’s up, trout dart through the pond out behind the house. The color green seeps into your soul, especially when you come, as I have, from the arid Southwest.

These lazy Vermont days have been a real tonic for me. I’ve been reading, writing, playing music, sleeping in, drinking too much, taking in nature, and enjoying all sorts of other delicious indulgences that put me in the finest fettle. It’s been so nice to have my attention span to myself, instead of caught up in the demands of graduate school.

A cool breeze drifts in through the window, carrying the steam from my cup of coffee into my field of vision. One doesn’t realize just how important creamer is to a good cup of coffee until one is forced to take it black. It’s like cocoa without sugar. Some things were made to go together. The birds are singing their morning songs, and my father-in-law has just returned from a wild mushroom hunt. His basket is full of Black Trumpets. The early bird gets the worm, the mushrooms, and the last of the creamer for his cup of coffee.

I’ve been reviewing some of the old bits of writing to see what might be worth compiling, but I can’t shake the sense that it would be better to focus my attention toward finding the edge and developing my capacity to hang out there for more than a nanosecond. Perhaps I’m being too hard on myself. It’s just that I’m so goddamned content, so edgeless, so round and soft and sleepy and secure. So pointless. I’m a cup of creamer with no coffee in it. A spoonful of sugar sans the cocoa.

*

A light rain is falling on this, my final morning here in tranquil, soul-rejuvenating Vermont. The rain dripping off the leaves reminds me that I’ll need to pee soon. I’ll also need to pack soon, to ready myself for the return journey. A four-hour drive from Vermont to the airport in Albany, NY. Three flights to get to El Paso. An hour drive home to Las Cruces. It’s been a nice break, just what the doctor ordered, and I’m ready to resume my role as regular-life me. I think I’ll be able to deliver my lines with a bit more gusto this time around. And… action!

Checking in with my breath I soon notice the weight of my bones and then the pulsing of blood through the vessels. As my attention sinks down and in, it settles on a rapidly intensifying sense of urgency. I need to poop. Right now. Welcome to the edge.

I had to ask the concierge how to get to the Powell & Market train station. Once there, I had to ask how to buy a ticket and which train would take me to Church Street. Turns out nineteen years is long enough to forget all kinds of things, and plenty long enough to transform the face of a neighborhood. I did manage to get out on the correct side of the Church & Market station, and when I emerged from underground the first thing I noticed was the neon sign above Aardvark Books. Then it all came flooding back. I was twenty-three years old and settling in after a rocky first few months of the San Francisco experiment. I moved from upstate New York all the way across the country on the hunch that the “something more in life” I was longing for would be more likely to announce itself in an unfamiliar setting, and that once I discovered this something more it would knock me out of my low altitude orbit toward the deeper space of my personal potential. On an early expedition of my new neighborhood I wandered into this used bookshop, picked up a copy of Ken Wilber’s No Boundary, and officially commenced my love affair with eastern philosophy, growth-oriented psychology, and the city of San Francisco.

I lived in the Bay Area for five years before returning to the east coast. This period was the most intense and life-altering chapter of my life thus far, and the streets of San Francisco, specifically the Lower Haight neighborhood, have impressed themselves upon the core of my being. Curiously, I had not found my way back until this past weekend, when I had just a day and a half to run around town while my wife attended her annual anthropology conference. It rained hard almost the entire time we were in town, but during a brief break in the weather I did manage to hop that train to my old neighborhood, where I visited my old house on Waller Street, walked up Haight Street to Buena Vista Park, to Ashbury Street where I went to graduate school, then all the way up to Golden Gate Park.

Of course, much has changed since 1993. There is now a coffee shop (Bean There) directly across the street from my old house, as well as countless businesses up and down Haight Street that I swear I had never laid eyes on before. CIIS (my former grad school) has moved to another part of the city, but the old building still made my heart skip a beat when I stood in front of it. The streets still felt electric to me, the overall vibe of the town still filled me with a sense of hope and possibility. Eventually, the clouds gathered again and rain started to fall, so I hurried back down the hill to the train station. Before I left the old neighborhood though, I just had to pop into Aardvark Books. I went straight to the psychology section and, sure enough, a copy of No Boundary was sitting on the shelf, waiting for the next kid with his head in the clouds to pick it up.

It’s strange how years turn into decades, how the lines around our eyes creep in and eventually give us away, how a sense of hope and possibility that buoys us along for so long can turn into a sinking feeling in the pit of our guts. I’m not quite sure what to do with all that’s been stirred up by this walk down memory lane. Next week I turn 42, and it’s true, I miss that sense of hope and possibility, that feeling of anticipation that comes with believing that anything might be around the next corner, that something more might announce itself at any moment. For now I’ll just sit and watch the swirl of images rearrange themselves in my mind, let the rain soak me to the bone, and wait for the storm to pass.