Beware the Bite

It is fortunate that Lucifer did not perish back in January because a film crew from the show Untamed and Uncut would not have been able to do a piece on him.

The Preying Dead

Lucifer died praying in my room tonight. My father tried texting me this news between the commercial breaks of 24, but either the universe was too upset by his demise, or the mind-control devices granted us by the almighty Steve Jobs were being punished for some kind of digital disobedience.

In the end the snake wasn't dead and the voice of logic and experience told me he was just sleeping. But I like to think he was actually praying to the unknown god of rat-strangulation, or even preying on the dreams of slumbering Ophidiophobes. Either way, it was a sad moment that I missed. But the tears my mother shed and worry my family experienced for how I would feel are now dusted over by a blanket of relief and amusement that will live far longer than Lucifer ever will.

The Skilled Slopesman: an Allegory of Pain

My well of words has been diverted these past few years into an unmeasurable well of trivial affairs and wasted time. Every day that my thoughts go unrecorded, the dusty black notebooks I carry extract a gram of personality from my soul. Hopefully this year I can fill that void.

I was recently inspired to take up skiing again this season. We went to Snowbird yesterday, and the skis I rented were about 10 cm too short. If I was a skilled slopesman this would have been fine since I could have carved sharp curves down the mountainside. But since I am not skilled it ended up being the biggest beating my legs have ever taken. It was an enjoyable sort of pain, however, and I look forward to their healing so I can abuse them again.

Sometime in the next month or so I will be migrating the entirety of this blog to another location, so be on the lookout.

Journal Entry: July 21, 2007

Her name was Anja and the sound of her soft voice, smooth with silk and honey, still lingers in my mind seven hours later. A sweet Polish accent and auburn hair held back in a clip with butterflies uniquely frame her smile. She hates the heat and American food. I treasure those brief moments we stood together. I'll never see her again.

Paean of Sorrow

A shadow walks through the narthex of my dreams
Trailing an oily pallor in its wake.
These cloven clouds of fancy writhe somnolence from the sky;
I look into the face of darkness to see my eyes gazing back.
Oh that monstrous visage! Draining light and warmth from the world;
It smiles.
The shadows scatter, fading into a vision of the city at night.
Constellations of light reflect off the clouds in a serene haze
as I float among the quiet buildings
filled with lovers, laughers and loners.
The clear light of this solemn place pulls at the seams of my heart.
It spills into the sky in a torrent, draining me
as the night wraith’s cloak is cast away by the furied light of dawn;
Rising over the hills like an ocean tide into the waiting pool of my heart.

Becoming the Rain

The rain watched me tonight as the Autumn sun disappeared behind a veil of desert clouds. Tiny voices swarmed my mind with hope and laughter as they fell from the sky, joyous in their falling. Countless droplets sought to drown my consciousness in an ocean of rainwater music, but every moment were silenced by the unyielding Earth. A collective symphony broadcast like a million dying whispers, chipping at the corners of my soul with the tragic beauty of its passage.

Arboreal Confusion

Today I witnessed a man standing in the rain watering a power line.

Corporate Battlefield

Today I arrived at work expecting to witness an Epic battle. I was sorely disappointed, however, because upper management apparently put the kabosh on the conflicting issue before it even made it to the ring. This makes my life much easier, but it still would have been fun to witness the polite and smiling faces of sniveling corporate drama.

Tangled Beauty

I sit here in the moonlight erasing unformed thoughts from a white screen. Maybe tomorrow I will be able to adequately transform my tangled mind into something beautiful.

Urim of Shadows

I drove around town tonight wearing sunglasses. Dangerous activities are not my usual Saturday night fare. Tonight, however, was different, but not for any reason I can point at or insert into a list. The night air just had a feel to it like it knew my fortune and was watching.

Sometimes I feel like a blind player in a cosmic round robin chess match. Only I don’t know who the players are and cannot see my pieces. Tonight when I put on the brass aviator sunglasses that appeared mysteriously in my glove box, it felt like I found a secret weapon in this game. The world I saw through those lenses wasn’t the same world I’d ever known. This place had a living darkness that hid anything mortal from my sight. It whispered in my ear sweet nothings of power and glory. Images of the safety without light flowed into my eyes like smoke from a black fire, revealing memories from a time veiled from my mind. I knew these weren’t Leland Gaunt’s glasses of wish fulfillment, or a shadow edition of the Urim and Thummim, but that’s exactly what they felt like for a few moments on the empty streets of Sugarhouse.

Noli Turbare Circulos Meos

Archimedes must have felt much like I do tonight as he uttered the above phrase just before being killed by a Roma soldier. On nights like this my head feels like something inside is ready to explode. There is restlessness in my soul that knows no cure, like a thirst no liquid can quench. At first when I experienced this sensation I would drive out to Saltair and walk along the dry lakebed of the Great Salt Lake. The serenity of that place can scarcely be matched, especially on a night like tonight when the moon is full and the salty surface of the mud shines as if by its own light. If the hour is late enough no traffic can be heard from the freeway, leaving complete silence. I would scream at the stars or lie on my back, immersed in the heavens and in the wonder that such a place could exist. The duration of my visits to the lake would vary, but inevitably I would leave with an inner calm, back in touch with my inner monologue which sometimes left or was silenced by inaction. Over time I realized that the calm state those trips brought was just as accessible from a walk down the street as from a trip to the desert. It was the nocturnal beauty the kept me going back, and only at night was that feeling of mystery present. During the day it was a barren place full of garbage and dreams. The odor made one gag and the salt sting the eyes; a historical curiosity to be visited on trips between Salt Lake and Wendover. Oh but at night! I would park outside the gates and walk through the parking lot. Each footstep on the gravel beaconed to the presence I always felt watching, as if that building were guarding the sand, mud, and salt that lay beyond. The feeling was never malign, only cautionary, reminding me of the forces to fear in this world. I’ve stood on that beach and watched black clouds unroll from the horizon and in minutes transform the clear starry sky into a torrent of wrath. As frightening as it was, the fell voice in the storm was worse.

My visits to the lakebed are less frequent now, replaced by long sleep or nighttime mountain paths. These nights like tonight feel as though I exist in a place between sleep and wakefulness. That by turning sideways I can slip into a tracing-paper overlay of reality, an opaque layer of existence dependant on the pattern of lives beneath it. In this place one can observe and mimic, but never interact. Questions of good versus evil, right versus wrong do not exist, only the state of one’s soul whether happy or sad. In states like this we are most vulnerable, and only by surrounding ourselves with people we love and cherished memories can we emerge from such tempests unscathed. Some people learn this lesson quickly. Others must learn the hard way.

Samhain Alphabet

Here is the whole alphabet made from pretzals. Always a hit party activity.

Sun Tunnels Video

Here's the video my brother Dave made of our trip last year to the Sun Tunnels. Less than two months until our next one. Who's in?

Oregon Coast

After several days of driving, we're here in Cannon Beach for a week of relaxation in the sun. Thoughts and musings may soon follow.

Where In Sam Hill?

Here on the dry Colombia River border between Oregon and Washington is a fascinating scale replica of Stonehenge. It was built by Sam Hill, a wealthy Portland socialite back in the day. Ever heard the phrase "where in sam hill?" This is where it originated. He moved so far away that the phrase stuck.

Celebrity Death Match: Starbucks vs Wal-Mart

Some things invoke an irrational fury in me. Like these self-absorbed yuppies lounging in Starbucks as if they own it. The only reason I’m here is the gift card I received from my mother, who in turn received it from a work function. Why is Starbucks so popular? Their egotistical naming conventions are scorned by nearly everybody not connected to a corporate fiefdom. There is something to be said about the atmosphere here, however. This place exudes an aura of comfortable gloom. It makes sense then that Starbucks began in Seattle. Sitting in here makes me feel like rain coats the sky, yet outside the temperature is in the high 90’s.

Yesterday I discovered a way to make going into Wal-Mart tolerable. I had some time to kill before picking up my handicapped friend, James, to give him a ride home from his second full time job. This time presented me with a good opportunity to look at desks, tvs, and other miscellaneous things I will need for the new apartment my cousin and I will be moving into at the beginning of September. While traipsing amid isles of Chinese manufactured capitalist slavery I listened to the new Muse album on my ipod nano (which I won in a raffle). Suddenly the hordes of squatty overweight people no longer bothered me. It was like walking through a comedic montage in a really bad teen summer movie. One thing I’d never noticed, however, was that everybody there seemed happy, or at least content. Here in Starbucks people hate their lives.

The difference between the crowds in Wal-Mart and in coffee-land is vast. The oiled sheen of affluence coats everyone in a crisp, custom-cut layer of manicured mannerisms like an outstretched middle finger to the Wal-Mart generation. I received some interesting looks upon walking in the door to Starbucks, with my tattered jeans, flip flops, and black skull t-shirt. “You don’t belong here,” one office monkey thought. “You are not important enough to be in this place.” He extracts a long clear booger from his nose and eats it, “This is my tree and you can’t have any of these bananas. Go pollute the fig pens reserved for your kind.” People broadcast their thoughts so loudly sometimes it’s a wonder nobody hears.

One of my favorite history professors, John Reed, once said that Wal-Mart is saving us from a class uprising in America. It is allowing those who inhabit the bottom rung of the socio-economic ladder to buy stuff, and as long as they have their curling irons, picture frames, and plastic thingy’s, they’ll stay happy. When I was living in rural Missouri, entertainment on any given night of the week for the locals was Wally World. The quaint old buildings in the downtown district were usually decaying husks from another life; forgotten except by squatters and termites. All the while, on the outskirts of town stretches a concrete and asphalt metropolis inhabited by screeching children and sweaty faces whose eyes and enthusiasm for commercial squalor roots them further into the mire of poverty and clutter. Why then are they so happy? And why in writing this am I not including myself among this group of people, since I am clearly one of them?

Apocalypse Now

Why do angry storm clouds make me so excited?

Stare into the Sun

My room is dark, fed by the oily night air seeping in through the window two feet away. My forehead is beginning to itch from a headlamp illuminating these keys, and my vision is washed out from the screen's bright light. I’ve been sitting here on my bed for hours working on my employer’s site map and listening to nostalgic tunes from periods of my life now fading into strange and distant dreams. The passage of time tends to weed out the troubles of our past. This leaves behind a path of filtered memories that can choke our lives.

Havasupai Summer

Here are some of my pictures from a recent trip to Havasupai.

Calm Before the Storm

Babel

"...let us build us a city and a tower, whose top may reach unto heaven"
Genesis 11:4

Snipe Hunt

The desert hillside where we sell ourselves to the gods of lead and powder.

Sun Tunnels

We drove into the fog and desert blindly, like small children running into a forest. Dave’s Buick consumed the miles in smooth, long strides while Pink Floyd massaged our ears from the Sirius Satellite network. I’d driven out to the west desert many times, but never cocooned in a thick shroud of fog. In Mr. Huntington’s Jr. High English class, we’d listened to Stephen King’s audio drama “The Mist”. Creatures came out of the fog and gobbled people up. I recall the images it left in my mind more than the story itself. The west desert is a fascinating place. It has a magnetism about it that pulls in those with wandering souls. Today the sun was absent behind the clouds and only a dozen yards could be seen in any direction. It was like driving into another world. After three years of failed attempts, we were finally going to see the Sun Tunnels. We pulled off I-80 just before Wendover and stopped at Sinclair to gas up and buy toilet paper. The attendant had never heard of Lucin or the Sun Tunnels, and knew that there was nothing up that road. We didn’t know for sure either, but were determined to find out. The wide, black asphalt gave way to cracked pavement, then a groomed dirt road. Once we were away from the station and the last vestiges of civilization, I felt the great coil in my spirit begin to unwind. To our left outstretched a ridge of violent and jagged rocks leading up to a tall peak. Old fences and abandoned farmhouses dotted the landscape, lending a historic and surreal quality to the scene. Every shade of yellow and brown poked up through the light blanket of snow and we could not help but stop to capture the beauty on film next to the Hastings Cutoff sign. According to the California Pioneer Trail sign, we weren’t very far from the Donner Reed pass. A part of me wanted to get out and search the mountainside for caves, treasure and multidimensional portals; a future summertime jaunt perhaps. The fog retreated to just before the horizon, and a murder of crows took flight one after another as we approached them from their successive fence posts. As five of them circled around in chaos, one crow remained at his station, watchful. Forty miles later we began to wonder about the correctness of our route and stopped at a farmhouse littered with gutted pickups, motor homes and bathtubs. Steve Galloway, a burly man sporting a thick, graying beard, told us we were only 6 or 7 miles shy of our destination. When I told him we were looking for the Sun Tunnels he gave me a fascinated look that said ‘why would anyone want to go there?’ As we thanked him and drove away, we knew that if we got stuck, he’d be the one to rescue us. It was his amused but cautious tone when he said,“Don’t get stuck” that said it. Turning around in his driveway, his wife and daughter stared at us like tourists warily eyeing two caged lions. His daughter had bolted out of the house upon first hearing my voice, with a short cropped mop of mangled blonde hair and wild eyes, and ran full bore at and then beside me. We left the mud and snow of Steve's compound and drank in the cool air in anticipation for what lay ahead. Our first wrong turn was onto a road lined with sharp rocks and a sign that said, “Unauthorized vehicles will experience severe tire damage.” It looked like a sign one might find in a western gift shop in Jackson Hole or West Yellowstone. It had a redneck yet serious feel to it, so we turned back and closed the first “Stay Out” gate on our way. The second wrong turn was an access road for a natural gas pipeline, but while turning around saw a big truck headed down a road a few miles down and know we were close. We’d spotted the Sun Tunnels while stopped at the Stay Out sign with binoculars. That didn’t make finding the right road any easier, however, so once the correct path was unveiled before our eyes, we approached the tunnels with great glee. Parked outside the perimeter of these behemoth tubes were several cars and numerous people milling around. A group of elementary school teachers from Logan were holding hands, dancing around their fire, and talking about bras. My own suspicion was that they were really a coven. A fellow UofU student named Dalton joined us in our marveling at the enigmatic structures. Everyone we met was disappointed that we didn’t have any beer. The sun tunnels are arranged in a cross with each arm aimed at the sunrise and sunset on the winter and Summer solstices. Each tunnel stands about 12 feet tall and 30 feet long. Cut into each one are head-sized holes arranged in constellation patterns whose corresponding stars can be seen from inside the tunnel on a clear night. Inside are mysterious swirling patterns that remind me of occult sigils. Pictures and words do the experience of looking through the tunnels no justice. It is a visceral, time-freezing moment that burns enlightenment into the brain like a Hiroshima shadow. The tubes, one appearing inside the other, seem to open a conduit into the heart of everything that is mysterious and beautiful about nature. It’s what the builders of Stonehenge sought. It’s what standing atop the Grand Canyon feels like: expansive, personal, and mysterious. And now as the fire dies away, with the logs so burned to ash that they appear covered in tin foil, my brother shakes the earth with the deep, primal thrum of his didgeridoo from within the tunnels. The quiet of the desert in winter eases my senses.
Dave and I wondered if sleeping inside the tunnels would incite strange dreams. My own recollections of those dreams are hazy visions of floating cities amid the cloud choked sky, and fighting crime. We were both warm and wrapped in our sleeping bags like burritos. Dave slept little but was comfortable while I sawed logs the whole night. By 5:30am we cleaned up our bags and blankets and were eager to watch the sunrise. We’d burned all our wood the night before, so we stood in the cold next to the video camera on time lapse and listened to a choir of wolves or coyotes very close to us. My heart was gripped with fear for a brief moment while images of tooth and claw mangled flesh flashed by. Just moments before dawn, a large pickup truck pulled in and a tall gentleman named Eldon got out. We turned down the satellite radio and the three of us stood and watched the sun peek over the mountains. As sunlight touched the clouds, the temperature also plummeted and we shivered for the first time since our arrival. Eldon regaled us with tales of his adventures as a nudist, the local burning man group; sharing with us the camaraderie that forms in a mysterious place like the Sun Tunnels. He left us and Dave cooked a dozen eggs and sausages while I carbonized some bacon. We cleaned up and bade the Sun Tunnels and their mysteries farewell, determined to return every solstice from then on. As the morning desert passed us by, we listened to an NPR program on mythology that seemed fitting for the mood of the day and place. Passing the ghost town, Lucin, which sits next to the railroad tracks, we were even more excited to return in the summertime to sleep while trains roared by, shaking the ground. Nancy Holt’s Sun Tunnels are an obscure and hidden jewel in the Western Utah desert. Along with the Spiral Jetty and Tree of Life, the tunnels stand as a monument not only to human ingenuity, but to the power of art in capturing the essence of imagination, mystery, and the important things in life.

Thanks to Dave McEntire for many of the above photos.

Winter Solstice

Tonight marks the longest night of the year, and what better way to celebrate the occasion than by camping out in the west desert and watching the sun go down inside the Sun Tunnels. I'll be sure to post many photos and any extraordinary experiences I have once I get back from work tomorrow night.

Mare Insularum

The Salve of Silence

I drove home in silence tonight surrounded by a soft white landscape and accompanied by the static hum of the defroster. A swath of salt and ice smeared the windshield, clouding my vision like a frozen man blinded by cataracts. It was one of those rare nights where the ever-raging storm in my brain was calm and a blanket of peace floated upon the landscape.

Rarely do I drive in silence. Usually there is music to suit any mood, but tonight was different. I was experiencing a lucid moment and knew that any music or talk from the radio would dampen the transcendent clarity. Driving like this is something everyone should try occasionally. It is too easy to hide from our thoughts behind a barrage of information and sound. The undisturbed, rhythmic vibrations of the road force us to process the good and ill of our lives while letting those miles disappear beneath our feet.

But now as the haze of sleep washes over my consciousness, distilling what my resolve may have been, I cannot help but be grateful for that thirty minute drive home in the beautiful winter silence.

Slave Masters

Waiting Room Musings

I'm stuck in the waiting room of Big O Tires with a dead pen and nobody around with a replacement. Not even the employees have one i can use. Boohoo... I'm going to apply for a staff writer slot at the Daily Utah Chronicle and also begin pounding out my book since the last plot details came to me in a flash last night while reading "Goetia: the Lesser Key of Solomon the King" I'm very excited.

The Void of Sleep

I just left a noisy land of smoke and spirits yet my vision swims with clarity that will die if i retreat home to the void of sleep. A trip to the lake would be foolish on such an icy night, nonetheless, that is where I am drawn. Where the elixer of my wonderous life can be extracted into savage and beautiful tonics.

Decemberween

December was seventeen hours old before I realized November was gone. This occured at the bookstore while cashiering, like a trained monkey chained to a music box, and a woman haraunged me for not knowing the date. I should have told her that time is an amorphous antique that should go away. I don't care about the date or time of day. My personal happiness and sense of well-being do not hinge on any knowledge of chronological correctness. Calendars, clocks and schedules are necessary evils created by our "civilized" environment and I use them because the alternative would be a life of homelessness and destitution (although homeless destitution on a tropical island wouldn't be half bad).

Let me give you an example of how little attention I pay to the passage of time. A few weeks I was delivering the Skid Row and Quiet Riot tickets to Graywhale and saw my friend Pete who mentioned his upcoming birthday. He asked how old I was and I honestly could not remember. Either twenty-six or twenty-seven, but I had to pull out my drivers license, look at my birthday and do the math to realize that I am in fact twenty-seven years old. Sure that's how long I have been on this planet, but 27 is just a number. It's not who I am. It doesn't constitute my identity. If I didn't have an Ansel Adams calendar on the wall by my desk I would never know the date. I just don't care. The only way I even know the day of the week is by my class schedule.

Maybe someone can help me out with this. Is my dislike for mankinds need to record the passage of time (if it even exists) irrational? According to Einstein, time slows for matter as it approaches the speed of light. Would that translate to someone living above the arctic circle aging faster than someone near the equator? If that question doesn't make sense then stick two pins in a globe, spin it around a lot, then think about it for a while.

Subjecting ourselves to the timelines of other people is not necessary for fulfillment. Being in control of our time does not make us in control of our lives.

Catatonic Turkey Shock

I am now an hour removed from the catatonic turkey shock of dinner. This sensation should be familiar to all who indulge in the sacrificial gobbler; that invisible hand reaching up from the stomach, heart and chest, up the neck and into the brain where the bloated Thanksgiving fist shuts down your consciousness. Some people lay on the floor and moan while others fall asleep. Currently experiencing these phisiological reactions to food, abstaining from food for a while would make sense, yet still I sit here and munch on chololate covered orange sticks. My mom tells me she's never met anyone so skinny who eats so much, but she also says that people engage in self-defeating behaviour because it initially provides them with comfort and joy. But unhappiness begins once the joy of discovery gives way to frenzied ingestion of sensory desires.

In the currently muddied waters of my brain, the only thoughts I can extract between fits of sleep are questions about how genuine are we about giving thanks? Or is Thanksgiving just the inaugral celebration of the holiday season? The human race is constantly engaged in a vicious cycle of discovery and excess, and I wonder if this season is just a month long celebration of this process. I must say, however, that the ineffable holiday essence which infuses the air with generosity and kindness to all is something that our world desperately needs all year round. My perspective may be somewhat tainted by working as a retail monkey, but the die-hard romantic in me won't let the cheery fervor of December-scented giving die.

Sensory Assault and the Nature of Creativity

The wooden ceiling and graffitti-laden brick walls of the Pie surround me as I sit in a state of total relapse from my resolve to eat healthy and abstain from carbonation. When I walked in here and looked on the menu their "Mountain of Meat" Pizza sounded delicious so without thinking I also ordered a coke. My stomach is distended from grease, dough, processed swine, and now death by carnivouous over-zealousness is not far off. The complex mixture of meat flavors, cooked flour, sauce, and soda have brutalized my taste buds with the typical unrefined flair of American cuisine. Not that a cacophonous fusion of tastes is bad, because I love spicy food, but what is the difference between a confused pilling of victuals and the elegant bite of a well-crafted meal? That is a question I am not skilled enough to answer, but the core principle behind it is something I would like to pick apart.

Anyone can cook a meal, take a photograph, draw a picture, or sculpt something, but what seperates the ordinary from the exceptional? It is a persons ability ot discern what is truly being crafted and which sensory ingredients are best suited for excellence. Carl von Clausewitx has some good words to say about this,

"Any complex activity, if it is to be carried on with any degree of virtuosity, calls for appropriate gifts of intellect and temperment. If they are outstanding and reveal themselves in exceptional achievements, their possessor is called a "genius"."

Everybody has genius brewing inside them to one degree or another. Clausewitx calls this genius, others call it talent or just being good at something. Whenever I see someone who is very skilled at what they do, I am amazed. This stems from my own struggles to tune out the innumerable distractions offered by our consumer-oriented society while concurrently trying to create maningful and exceptional artistic work. On that subject Clausewits says,

"If the mind is to emerge unscathed from this relentless struggle... two qualities are indespensible: first an intellect that, even in the darkest hour, retains some glimmerings of the inner light which leads to truth: and second, the courage to follow this faint light wherever it may lead."

For myself, this inner light refers to the seeds of creative inspiration that drive anyone to make sense out of the craziness in their brain. If you are lucky to have genius in an artistic, or culinary, area, this process can produce amazong results. Ask anyone who has seen Michelangelo's statue of David in person, or any Ansel Adams photograph, and they will say that is the work of a true genius. The question that lingers in my mind, however, is if genius is innate or if it can be grown through hard work?