Three in the morning

It's hours like three in the morning that are the most susceptible to the weight of lonliness. It wraps around you like a chain, pulls you down like an anchor. It's hours like three in the morning that allow you to see with unbidden clarity how profoundly alone you are, and how shallow your existance is. It's hours like three in the morning that let you in on a secret: all the other hours carelessly still let you hang on by a fragile, unseen thread of naivity. Three in the morning is unsparing in honesty.

Do No Other

I'm doing it. I'm finally actually really going to do it. I've been talking about that trip for two years now, and I'm going to do it. I haven't an idea in hell how yet, but I'm going. I'm tired of the complications of this life, so...I'll just make it simple. Why not? I don't understand The Box, so I won't use The Box. I never could make use of it anyway.

I am only whole with a rucksack on my back. I can't keep denying this. My happiest moments involve climbing out of my tent to something new each morning, crisp British Columbian air, rum in Central America, fire-throwers in Buenos Aires, songs in the commune in Paraguay.

I'm going. I'm saving up all my money. I'll pay off all my debts, sell all of my stuff (again). I'm going around the world, by means of cargo ship, yurt, and feet.

Truly, I can do no other.

Hoops

I come from a family of very good and successful hoop-jumpers. The collective resume sits taller than I, listing off lawyers and architects, CEOs and executives. Almost everyone graduated valedictorian from their high schools, and went on to have stainless GPAs in college. They are, for the most part, a proud breed of hoop-jumpers, who always have perfect form, and who always stick the landing just right. They have had good lives because of it.

I could jump hoops too. I did very successfully. I too toted around a valedictorian certificate and a stainless record. Then, something happened. Something misfired in my brain, or maybe my brain started to function correctly for the first time. I stopped. I realized it was just jumping hoops. And as soon as that realization hit me, I began to drift from the hoops. And by now, I'm pretty far gone.

It started about the second week here in Austin. Bon and I loaded up his car, and got our first flat on the drive down (I still maintain it was an omen). We were so young, so naive about the city. We had a little garage apartment, in which the floors were tilted, in the shade of which an old bum lived on a couch that had been thrown out. I could walk to the hoops, and things were simple. That's when I realized it, when everything was untainted, before I could have known that I should have never questioned it.

But once you question something, you can't ever take that offense back. Once you seek the truth, you can't un-know something. I've spent the last few years here in Austin trying to forget that it's just hoops, trying to let go of the miserable way in which I spent my inheritance, trying to convince myself that the hoops were worthwhile. But I couldn't do it anymore. I jumped through just enough hoops to find myself here, barely in the game, eyes elsewhere.

So here's the moral: just jump the hoops. Just put on blinders and spend your life jumping hoops for the corner office.

Or don't jump the hoops. Be content with ramon noodles under the overpass.

Hoops or no hoops, never question it. You'll find out both are miserable options, and then you'll have sold yourself to both, you'll be unable to do either.

Sometimes

Sometimes, I turn on that song anyway, just to remember how it felt.

simple thought

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Crux II

I went on a long drive. The night air was still warm, humid, occasionally struck by a draft of a weekend barbecue or by the scent of young Saturday-night adrenaline. Everyone seemed to be out, with friends or their families, their houses stood as castles abandoned to the protective gleams of streetlights. I stayed on the back roads, the suburban streets less frequented by traffic, which wind along the Greenbelt serving multimillion dollar homes.

On Monday I sign the consent forms for my surgery. The surgery won't fix me, but it comes with a 60% success rate and should make the incidents less frequent. The surgery itself isn't terribly dangerous, and neither is the 1 in 800,000 chance that I get AIDS from a cadaver part. It's just a leg, after all. No, the chances of death, well...are only slightly higher than those we take every day. I've taken worse risks, no doubt.

I took a lasting sigh. I was now thoroughly lost in West Austin Suburbia. A content, bittersweet sigh. There was nowhere else I would rather be at that moment than shaking off a few chains, profoundly lost.

Knowing that you have to decide what to do in the event of your death, nevertheless, makes you think. It forces you to realize all the loose ends you have left, all the things you did, all the things you didn't. It highlights your flaws and shortcomings, as if they weren't already bright enough in your eye. It makes you wonder what would happen if everyone knew all the things you had done, if you whole life was exposed out for them, displayed in a coffin for judgment. It's sobering.

I took a long look at the mansions passing by, looming skeletons of a man's life work, monuments to human effort and success. Surely, they will be gutted and renovated many times, previous owners realized as mere tenants. Their cars would be sold, and the proceeds spent on things that didn't remind the living of their predecessors.

I decided to donate my body. It wasn't a hard decision. If there is one thing I have learned, it's that, despite the large degree to which humanity baffles me, we're all human, and we all suffer. We all love. We all believe. We all sin, and sin again. We all stumble home once, and we all panic. We all die. And death, well, it's all the same.

What is it that holds together this tremendous unity? That we are all alone, ultimately, left here to chase the years of our lives by.

It was one of those evenings that you can sink into too far, too astounded by the simultaneous shallowness and depth of your thoughts, left dumbfounded by reality of it all. I suppose this is an unfortunate consequence of reevaluating your life, realizing all too well the quantity of people who would remain completely indifferent at your death, all too well the quality of the people you would leave behind. I can name six who would be thrilled I was gone beyond an ounce of remorse, and maybe four that would substantially miss me. I can name a thousand missed opportunities, three years of wasted time, two life-altering heartbreaks, a few hours of bliss. Hundreds of lies, a pocketful of secrets, a storage shed full of possessions.

"Not at this place, not now. I have too much life left to live," I thought aloud. That was the crux of the matter: There was too much life left to live, and there was too much life left to live.

And it was an even longer drive home.

Favorite Websites

This is by no means a comprehensive list, but these are some of the websites that I frequent and highly recommend. I can personally vouch that they are extremely adept at killing time for you.

Wolfram Alpha
Academic Earth
World Wide Telescope
Drop.io
Science Daily
Boing Boing
Get High Now
Zen Habits
Supercook
Project Syndicate
The Simple Dollar

Playlist: The Distance by Live