For hopeful-wanters grassed

The living-despaired strip their clothes to them naked-silent in the streets; vendors of goods rather-wasted. Procured of wisdom-pained in old world grace, never-fathomed.

Gentleman's blistered toes and wet feet, tiptoed-ruins in cities of splendor. Nights never-ending to hopeless sunrises, with drab glitz and calmed, seemingly-virtuous seas.

The day passes, and night falls hard. We summon the poison, to relive the night as fast as the day's blitz. No faults of promise, no leaves of spring, and no reality to calm the voracious day.

Tempted peace never-passed for hopeful-wanters grassed. Trampled the beast ever-pressed?

Sistern-whispers heather spotters, ever-fisted no fall wished.

Symboled swans, expired tears aged-fleeting trembled yawns.

of my time?

What did I make of my time?

A more appropriate question than to ask: did I live a life-fulfilled? Asking for specifics is genuinely more attractive supplementing the detail within a feature of life. Yet more importantly in remembering such things that led to a fulfilled life. For without the small awkward hugs from acquaintances or belly-aching laughs with a friend - there'd be little to the summation of a soul.

And as we sit in silence; our truths binding us to obscure seclusion in the name of morality, and doubt seeping deep from our minds to the creases of our couch-cusions, we know. Set to knowing in a life-unfulfilled, destined for something greater - a passing hope not fulfilled by secularity - where we are the judged and they the victors. Destined for greatness, oddly enough, leaves a life seemingly unfulfilled.

Ever a day passes, as a brush scratches and falls, we find there is no purpose in uncharacterized successes. Rather, our hope through Truth rests on divinity and in its unceasing obscurity. Yes, we are the crazy ones, set sail to worlds-unlimited - destined for gilded perfection.

Midnight City

Loving how fast a person can drive without scolding or LAPD handcuffs, I turned the wheel softly right and then sped to the green arrow, made a hard right - bracing myself with my left hand clutching the underside of the seat - and then another slow-then speedy right just as '101 South - Los Angeles' became visible; a stalwart occurence with freeway signs in Southern California.

Gracefully fumbling my tethered iPhone, I hit shuffle within the song category - as I often do - landing on a less-desirable M83 song, instantly enlightened to switch to 'Midnight City'. Fleeing the scene, I rolled the windows down to feel the humid 49 degree temps of the San Fernando Valley. Homeward bound, my black hood pulled to cover my chilling ears taking in the brilliant sounds of M83s masterpiece and the booming of the wind through the open windows.

Speeding and moving to the right, grasping the 101, I made the freeway my own. Just as I cleared Universal - Tujunga before that - I glimpsed Hollywood and then the faded-glossy downtown scene. I am making this city my own, and no one is stopping me but myself.

Within that instant - as flurries of sensations lightened my peripheral - I lived in L.A., and I didn't need any thing, action, word or other person to pull me close to her bosom, or tell me to stay. She was my lifestream, my bride - in a sense - and I dreamt nothing, but to hold her tight and make her my life.

Back to LA and loving it

After a whirlwind trip back to the mother land, which was full of oddity, raucous laughter and not-enough giving of myself, I lurched back into my ride and headed back 'home' to the West Coast. I didn't feel refreshed through Indiana, Illinois - falling asleep in the middle - but by the time I awoke - with a bit of procurement - I was ready to get to California and make it happen.

The long and beautiful trek through Western Colorado, and Utah took the entirety of the day and evening of last Saturday. --Whoa, has it only been a week?!-- By the time I scaled the Sierra Madre and saw the lights of Rancho Cucamonga, I knew what is often clothed and hidden in my heart; I'm back to where i want to be.

And, in saying that I didn't feel bad. But it hasn't left me feeling a sense of peace about the entire thing. I love my family, I'm proud to be from Indiana, but I have felt a strong pull to stay there, a reservation from fellow family and friends - unapologetic about their desire for me to be 'home'. In that instant of seeing the artificial beacons in the warm valley below, I felt I'd escaped that pull, which for all intensive purposes, has been a monstrous burden for me. Some people move and leave all behind, start a new life, make new friends and call the 'new' place home in a matter of weeks. They obviously weren't a member of my family. For as far as I travel I'm latched to their loving grip, and I have yet to fully 'move' away. If I make the break to start a life I want - and need - to live, I become someone dismissing the importance of family, condemning their love and

But, it's nothing like any of that. The greatest fault in remaining within the same community or region for the entirety of your life, is in how you rob your senses of perspective building exercise that only adventure, travel and interaction with those different than you, can bring. Therefore, you could never understand my perspective - and through my experience - I can never honor yours, in its full capacity.

----

I slept until I had to awake early to clean and deliver the van, not around the corner but 3.5 hours away to Fresno. Thoroughly exhausted, both ways, I made my way up and back; crashed at 5:30 p.m. and didn't rise, except to watch an episode of Downton Abbey at midnight, until 10 a.m. on Sunday.

Monday I attempted to catch up on what has become my life - with no complaints. I drove a car out to Mira Loma and picked up another - a car that will soon attach a fantastic story. (more on that this week).

Tuesday, after having cleaned and serviced my ride for the past few months, I delivered a car - to be leased - to a recently-returned missionary family. The couple had been in Morocco for 17 years, church planting and had done quite a bit of traveling on all other continents. As I pulled into the drive way, I stepped out and awkwardly shook Cary's hand. Immediately we switched from my job with MATS - which we hadn't even begun to scratch the surface - to Tim Tebow and his NFL Christian-heroics. We then transitioned back to my job, and thirty-five minutes later, I found myself being ushered into - what I found out later to be - his sister in-law's house. We chatted for literally hours about MATS, the car business, education, perspectives on traveling, perspectives on life, mission work, business, journalism, the business of journalism and our common distaste for the downfall of genuine interaction in young people.

Later, after much talking, lunch with the family and a maze of a Northern California strip-mall parking lot, Cary dropped me off in Tracy, Calif. to pick up my next ride. A lot of ride out to Tracy included silence, which was a new development for us as we'd talked for seven hours straight. However, we touched on the importance of mission work and bringing real-world-tangible education and experience to the villages in which his mission administers. For the first time I had at least reached the hurdle that had plagued me for many years - the very thing that has quelled me about mission work. For the first time I realized and/or put together the practicality of the Western-educated into low-income, low-educated mission fields, helping to first create a better-way of life, then to minister the Gospel through action and word.

I had a wonderful time and didn't want to leave those seven hours.

During my drive home, other than listening to Grapevine Fires about 19 times, I thought about my future - as I always am - and how I could now see myself, using my talents to procure the needy in the places where I dream of going.

Next hurdle; find out where my talents lie.

I speak candidly off the record to those who ask.

when it comes time for petty own thoughts, But.

Why does a person live a life, without living their life?

My stomach twists and flops with obligatory anxieties, living life unfulfilled creates nothing but a desire to be killed.

The 30 second-intervals of the smoke detector beeps

Squeezing myself out of the egg, and we're off

Five minutes is all it takes, then I'm up on a broken-boarded bed.

I think about nothing, and everything - desires to sing, endless dreams far-removed from these waning streams

One morning, or afternoon - a guiltless charles' the only to know

The egg will crack, in a cold-empty room

And, then through; no longer a-chiefed

One step toward the moon, finally allowing the lovers swoon, and all before the stroke of noon.

We Are The Faceless

A growing, faceless crowd continues to be swept under the illuminated rug of most cities.

On any given night an estimated 80,000 people are homeless in L.A., and before you check the figures, think about what you're trying to dismiss through your action to dispute. What difference does it make if it's 80,000, 2 million or 15? Americans are homeless and I'm at fault for not doing more.

And so are you.

Personal triumph, self-deceptive apathy, and a greed-centered society have citizenry more emotive about the Kardashians than with real people like Joe; a once-proud husband, teacher and LA-resident who now stands in soup lines, and spends most evenings huddled under freeway ramps.

Are we that heartless, or are we just too busy? While efforts go to making our lives productive, perhaps even volunteering a few hours of our month in helping the weary and ever-increasing homeless population; we don't do enough. Our philosophies and tactics of wealth enhancement have us looking long-term at unforeseen challenges - and even worse - our own retirement, while the injustices of our time are tragic, and on our doorstep. A disregard toward helping others has been created out of our need to milk efforts for higher profits, sometimes even in the name of charity, but what we're missing is the point that these pursuits are wasteful and short-sighted.

The other day I talked to Joe, under the Sunset Blvd. bridge on Silver Lake. He had been a teacher, had gone to college and done work toward his master's degree. But when collection agencies for hospital bills came calling after his wife died, following a long battle with cancer, and he'd lost his job due to cuts within a school district that graduates barely more than 40 percent of its students, he was forced to live on the street.

Joe, like so many other faceless Angelenos and Americans, begs while we brush past, too busy and too focused on the future to realize the present from which we're running. Cities of people are starving in a country still celebrating record corporate profits, while boasting of great humanitarian efforts and balanced opportunities. If that doesn't bother you or have you scratching your head with consideration, then your focus and motivation is probably wrong.

For those who are already helping our brothers and sisters; great! Do more. For those of you who don't or are unwilling: what is wrong with you? There are many ways to help, even if it means simply stopping on a street corner to talk to someone like Joe - putting a face on the present-day faceless and giving you an induced-perspective of what really matters.

Why do I weep with red wine, while others postier and smile? Is it not the sound of silence, or the knowing that tonight is a lonely one, as the one before and the one tomorrow?

Fortuitous is the foundation of relational attraction and knowing; they know no bounds in the mind of me. Or the one who've come before. And while I romance the ideas of those they don't understand, they sit in amazement at their own lives. Lives of peace. Lives of true romance; of love and of abounding joy. I could write for ages about how the condition of not knowing is greater than the condition of feeling; of understanding and of true desire to love.

But I won't. And while Shaw criticizes, I sit in silence; dull to the world and to myself, for my own inaction and the misunderstanding of a world that is too caught in peace than love.

And, why shouldn't it be?

LA blog

I'll get back to this at some point, but for now check out a new endeavor here: http://inaboutown.blogspot.com/

I'm trying to keep up with the events surrounding a move to LA that is now past being, 'in the works' and is reality, instead.

Later.

A changing time brings a wave of disturbing newness.

When we've made a plan we can't recount. It is essential to stick to plans and to follow through, or we'll lose all legitimacy to ourselves and to others.

And that's where I find myself. Unaware of the future, but surely at contempt for the prospect of failure. But, while failure seems all but impossible in this world of second and third chances, I can't convince myself that everything will be fine. Perhaps it's an acquired attitude. Regret for past failures.

No.

It's the feeling that little has been accomplished with the tools and talents acquired and blessed by God. I've yet to publish a story, or a book of poetry. And, in my undying ability to create words of thought, to lance the fat from the crap rivals sow, I've not been able to use my own whit to hunker down and establish what I'm meant to do.

Perhaps, all else shall fail if I lay, head back in a canoe, on the river of my dreams. For, when a man finds his voice, all will try to quiet him. But he must not let them. All things seems impossible, until the man takes hold and discovers what it is he is meant to be. And, I've done that. But do I have the know-how and the angst to follow through with producing what I should?

I must, or fear will continue to conquer and life with become more drab.

Fear has become my life. I live in fear, moment to moment, and it is reality, which has become the true fiction. I’m afraid of everyone and regret pours over me. There are no fancy words and/or phrases to describe its clutch upon my heart and soul. I’ve made big plans and must stick to them, but I’m afraid I’m destined to fail amidst my inability to be productive due to the dread. I can’t keep people close, because I’m at fear of my affect on them, deepening my regret and their angst for departure. Anxiety for daily activities I seemingly can’t perform, leads to overwhelming regret and depression within, to fear of the future and of the past; killing hope and reckoning my life to tattered shreds of contempt for myself.

I wish I knew the way to hope. I’ve tried God and when I disagree or can’t decide what I believe, I feed my furnace of regret. I have tried to keep friends, but can’t because, my dread has spread to them. Music has no ring, colors are grey and the prospect of new adventures brings nothing, but anxious worry.

I want out of this nightmare, to a place where things are easy and can be completed. Where I feel as if I matter. And where I feel smart again, and able to stand on my own two feet. To be a champion of the day, happy with whatever successes are attainable and not greedy to be the best in all fields, just good enough for someone else and for myself.

I've told people, and yet I fail myself: don't try to like something you don't.

It just doesn't make sense to the inner most reaches of whatever it is that we have which decides what works and what doesn't to the inner most reaches of whatever it is that we have.

I'm also learning to keep as little attachment to things as possible, psychoanalyze situations before they happen, prep for them and you'll be free to do what you want to do with your life.

Attachments are misguiding and they retort nothing in regard to happiness. Let your mind wander, create and you'll find guidance in all you need.

Saltine crackers and budweiser make a good lunch, especially when the cup on the patio - trapped by the wind and the flanking fence - won't stop it's rolling about.

Seeing Nothing and Saying Nothing

So, it goes like this:

These guys come up to us on the street; we're smoking cigarette after cigarette, talking about Middle East peace resolution and why things are named what they're named, like Kentucky blue grass, for instance.

We're just talking and they approach and the one guy, kind of short and square-eyed; you know what I mean, right? Square-eyed? Almost, like a cartoon character, the short guy, dressed in a blue turtle neck, dark-blue-faded-at-the-knee blue jeans and a worn red toboggan, opens his palm and says: "take a look."

So I say: "Look at what," to him, peering down and then looking at both the short guy and his friend, a fiendish looking bloke with a square head, black-rimmed glasses and an itch to be somewhere.

And I meant it, to what? There was nothing there.

So, he said look again and so I did. Still nothing.

I turned to my friend and I said, nothing.

I guess some people see somethin', but I don't when there's nothin'. And, even worse, some people talk about nothin' when it's just that.

Cormier Plage

We took time to see the city of Cap Haiten and the rural areas outside the city. To the entertainment of everyone else - and myself - I opted to ride in the bed of the truck most the time, to both snap photos and take advantage of something not allowed in our over-lawed society.

Two Fridays ago, Fr. Andre took the three of us, as well as Bob and Ann; a couple from Montreal, staying at the orphanage simultaneously, to the beach. Taking the high road - and the bumpy one - we etched our way through the northern stretches of Cap Haiten, into the highlands and further and further from the 'somewhat' paved streets of the bustling city. Climbing into the mountains, we snaked our way passed 'tap-taps' and motorbikes, down and out of ravines within the road, sculpted by the rain water draining down the cliffs.

We passed and people stared; mainly at me, villages and streams where women washed clothes before setting them on the cactus bushes nearby in the morning sun to dry. Nearing the apex of the climb, I noticed a break in the mango, spruce and banana trees and then, the immense blue. The next turn brought full view of the Caribbean sea and a lone sailboat, beat by the waves, some of which crashing and spraying the rocky coast.

We made our descent, very slow now on the increasingly windy and thin road. As we got closer two trucks loaded with 10 people in each bed were closing in to our bumper. Turning the corner - a clear blind spot - Fr. Andre honked and as he did the two trucks passed us, missing motorcycles by mere feet and another truck, which in passing bumped driver-side mirrors with ours.

We soon arrived at Cormier Plage, a resort of sorts. We spent the day at the beach, in the warm sea and I got sunburned to the point I'm dealing with it as I write.

Days have passed and I have yet to make a concrete assumption as to what my trip to Haiti meant; to me and to my mission for the betterment of those I feel charged to help.

The details are immense of dissimilarity to the conditions we find as norms in this country, to the landscape of Haiti. But oddly I found myself mere hours into the adventure sympathizing not with the lack-of, which Haiti is victim, but to the access-to that I find so paralyzing, for which the people of this country fall victim.

The children, desperate for love and starved for parents having either died of natural causes, lost in the mix or in the 2010 earthquake, could grasp the heart of any person for which they came in contact. I found myself pitying them, but thankful their conditions are as they have been placed.

Father Andre; a gentle, caring but enthusiastically intelligent man has started two schools, the orphanage of the children I am speaking, is pushing evermore to give back, as he was given as one of Haiti's own lost children. Raised by nuns, educated in Haiti and the United States, Fr. Andre came back to Haiti only to return to the streets, pulling children from the dusty and poorly-paved roads of Cap Haiten and starting an orphanage to house those not much unlike him as a child.

I watched in their eyes as they played, as we gave treats - a single Oreo to each, in one case - and I saw something lost in the eyes of many. While we have found ways to destroy the bonds we are blessed and/or lucky enough to have, depending on your perspective and/or assumption, these children truly hold each other close; brothers and sister's not of birth, but of a common upbringing. One night I watched the oldest, with a plate of the leftover rice and beans from lunch, systematically scoop and allocate even portions to his 19 'brothers' and 'sisters', taking care not to miss anyone. As he did, one of the smallest girls did her best to mouth the scoop of food, while I cupped my hand under her mouth to catch the bits that fell.

The children were not shy, but boisterous and assured in their need to be held, holding our hearts at the same time. The first night, we sat at the picnic-style tables in the living room, watching the fuzzy 12-inch television, as one sat on my knee, his legs rapped around my right leg locking in and holding on, surely to take advantage of closeness of which he is starved.

We would play to exhaustion, while the children became more energized as the mid-80s heat and sun beat down on my back in their small play yard. And then we'd stop, I'd sit and five or six of them would pile on my lap and shoulders and back, pulling my hair rubbing my whiskered face and asking me questions in their native Creole, I'd try best to understand.

I learned to love them without a curriculum of understanding or without trying.

One particular boy, his parents having died in the catastrophic earthquake last year, attached to my hip and every time I'd come down the steps from our quarters, his eyes would lock into mine and his arms would shoot to the sky, begging for me to pick him up, hold him and sometimes toss him in the air. I spent hours watching him, when I didn't hold him as he etched on a magnadoodle, and in my moleskin. "Ecris, Ecris," he say softly to me when I'd bring my notebook to scribble down observations. I'd let him draw and oftentimes, he'd be practicing cursive figures of vowels, i noticed the teacher had left on the broken chalk board in the rudimentary classroom/play area.

Yes, my time in Haiti was not for me, but for the children. But it was a rejuvenation of sorts and a time to see, as I've already assumed, that there are innumerable perspectives to experience.

I'm

a ways from home. but, will be further soon.

a bit of jerk, sometimes.

hungry, most all the time.

a slob, but only when i'm alone.

radical in my beliefs and style.

not trying to be anyone but myself; whoever that is.

searching for answers to questions i can't read or write down.

not looking for help.

institutionalized in grief.

fed well by societies requirement.

taught in Thoreau and believe in nothing.

trying to disappear when i don't answer your calls.

155 pounds of uncompromised uncertainty.

disgusted with the way of life of others.

no relation to you, though.

moving to California

in May

and

u

I watched the circus roll through town.

I saw it through my dining room window, the circus I mean. On wheels, they were, moving quickly in line, down the street. And then, they were gone. Out of the sight of my dining-room window.

So, I looked down at the snow. And the house across the shared-apartment yard with the neighbors dogs shit everywhere. i don't really mind it, I just noticed it was there. Just because I acknowledged it, doesn't mean I mind it. I don't mind very much; I should be easy to get along with, but I'm not because people don't know that I don't mind much.

I thought about going to the store to buy groceries and didn't. I don't like buying groceries. Food costs too much and I can eat what food I have. I don't like paying as much as they ask for food. I'd steal it if I could, but I'd get caught. I'm terrible at stealing food.

Seeing things is hard when you're locked inside all day long. Well, not really locked, but closed in all day long. I don't mind it though. But I mind not writing. And you have to see things outside to write about them. Don't write about things if you haven't seen them. I need to see things, so I can write about them. I can't be locked inside all day long, well, not locked but closed inside...all day long.

Where'd the day go?

There’s a hippie in a dead shirt and red toboggan, smoking a cigarette and talking to himself, strolling anxiously through the melting snow, down College avenue.

And that’s the problem with people; they’re always looking down at their feet when they’re walking, disregarding what they should be looking at. So what if you slip and fall down; you’ll see more that way. Feel more.

Is is creek or a river. I don’t really know. Some people say a creek. Some people say a river. I don’t really know.

I’m not waiting on the red light to turn, they are. I’m walking. I don’t wait for lights to change when I’m walking. I just walk.

I get caught looking at my feet when I’m taking a walk as well. I catch myself looking at them, as they are getting more and more soaked. I need shoes with better soles, but I don’t care about better soles. I only care about fashion. That’s why I wear sneakers. They aren’t fashionable. I hate fashionable shoes.

Running homeward to write down my thoughts, I fear I will lose them. I run like I’m going to lose them. I get in the door, peel off my soaked shoes and I’ve lost them.

There’s a blue shopping cart down there in the river or creek, whatever you want to call it, you can call it. I call it a shopping cart.

I take walks to see things. I want to move to see things so I can have more to write about. That’s where the writing comes from, from seeing things. They say I haven’t looked enough and should stay here, see things and write about them. I say, you haven’t looked either, or you’d see that there’s nothing to see. That’s why I’m moving, because I’ve looked and there’s things to see there. I need things to see, to write about.

People seem to be smiling a bit more today. People always smile when something is changing. It feels good to change. I like to see change. Stagnancy is scary. Humans are scary. Humans are, for the most part, stagnant.

I can be whatever I wish to be. The possibilities are endless. You should have endless possibilities, as well. But you choose not to. That’s why I’m leaving to see things.

To decide if it’s a river or a creek.

To not wait on the lights to change.

To not have to have soaked feet on a slush-covered sidewalk.

To wear my dead shirt and my red toboggan.

To make it home, not have to run and not forget things I want to write about.

To not be stagnant.

To not be human.

a rocked gut
fly-over without displacement and/or acknowledgment

a nasty disputation and a violent wind sweeping under a dress

a rustling rodent, striving for warmth and we have much
settling in alone or
not.

come now, pray the prayer they've taught you to pray

of all is understanding and faith in reason
when there is none.

The news seems dead as does the surrounding landscape
but we press on into the darkness ahead

no one really knowing what's lying in our way.

Why is it our way, I ask myself
don't ask so many questions, he said once

You'll be much happier with the answers if you don't ask for them
they come easy
painless
and free.

They said you'd be here, you said
I say 'no' but, she said
that i was coming and I haven't made my mind up
because I don't care.

Deliberate actions speak enough and the children run, even when told not to.
into the street and to the neighbors porch, you don't trust.

What are you going to do now, they ask
my indecision scraped on my forhead like a scaring wound emblazoned by choice and not
experience.

I don't answer but let the actions fortold of, do the talking
while they keep
asking.