The Farm, Abbreviated.
I woke up at 9 am. I dragged my slippered feet out of the bedroom, making my way towards the kitchen on the other end of the farmhouse. Every room I passed smelled like weed. Yesterday was my turn to drive the truck to NYC to sell our wares at the Greenmarket. Those 20 hour, 3:30am-11pm, days really took the wind out of my sail. To say the least, I wasn’t in the mood to cook. Someone had left some lukewarm coffee in the pot, and a couple half burnt eggs in the 18” cast iron skillet. Score. I put the eggs on a piece of bread, and looked at the chickens through the kitchen window. I wondered which hen’s unborn child I was eating. I walked outside onto the front porch. From that vantage I got a panoramic view of nearly all 11 acres of the farm. Several people were in the main field, presumably picking greens for tomorrow’s market, while someone was running up the field, doing cartwheels.
Death.
Recently, my beloved cat, Cat, died. I was at work when my girlfriend, Ashley, called to inform me that Cat had just died in her arms. I had been expected this call around the year 2025. After being hit by a car, she crawled home, fought off one of the neighboring cats for a place to lie, and then died. I was bewildered and miserable, but didn’t have the luxury of grief. I still had a shift to finish. I work in a bar, so within 30 seconds I was smiling and telling jokes. The experience was awful, but I’m can’t decide which part I liked less: the sadness, or the cognitive dissonance of wearing a façade of happiness because it wasn’t a professional moment to grieve. I composed myself until I could leave.
When I arrived home my beloved Cat was in a basket, curled stiff around a bundle of sage and bougainvillea. I lost my poise. My bottled emotions flowed in cascades. I was angry. I threw my keys to the floor, and then approached her corpse. Her eyes were open. I attempted to close them –I’m not sure what possesses people to do this– but found that rigor mortis had already set in. I sat, tears dripping from my face, while her cold, lifeless eyes glanced in my general direction.
Cat had a brother, Richard Parker. While I sat on the floor next to the basket holding his sister, he approached. I expected see some recognition of the loss we were all experiencing. A noise, a hiss, a howl; something. Granted, he’s a cat, and doesn’t feel emotions to the degrees that humans do. But he’s still a mammal; a warm blooded, emotional, animal with attachments to others that clearly go beyond the pragmatic. So while he draws closer to his dead sister, I expect some form of emotion response. Instead, he walked up, sniffed her butt, and walked away. That’s when I noticed Cat was farting. Even in my grief, I couldn’t help but chuckle at the absurdity of it all. This is not what I would have hoped for Cat. But not for her, not for anyone would there be any true dignity in dying.
Despite the fact that had just finished a 12-hour shift, and it was 4:30 in the morning, I knew we would have to bury her immediately. God only knows what Cat would have smelled and looked like by the time we woke up. I grabbed a shovel, Cat, and then we all got in the car. At the top of the Berkeley Hills is heavily wooded park, Tilden, which has secluded areas appropriate for an ad hoc burial. After a brief drive in the last moments of the night, we parked with the sunlight spreading in the East.
We made our way into the park. After a moment of hiking, we found a spot off of the main trail, and I began to dig. The dirt was hard and dry, coming apart in heavy chunks that resisted the flat blade of the shovel. It was early enough in the morning that we had privacy, but before I laid Cat in that shallow hole in the hillside, an older man came by. He had a familiar look. When I was 13 years old, I was involved in a head-on collision. I remember standing in the freeway, looking back at the faces of onlookers. Part concern, part curiosity, like they’re watching the spreading of a disease that is both dangerous and entertaining. I was tempted to tell the man to fuck off. I continued digging, and he left.
As I put Cat into the ground, the sun crested over the top of Mt Diablo. Taking in the somber beauty of that quiet moment, I imagined what the final 24 hours of being’s life is like. I can’t comprehend how something as life altering as death can come without a harbinger. Can it truly be so random, so dispassionate? I suppose dignity is something only afforded to the living, and with death one losses all right to it. Meaning, purpose, and any of their attachments are erased like words off of a page. This was my profound realization. I stood in the light of the dawn, overwhelmed by the meaninglessness of the experience, of dying. Eventually I will die, and it will be on anyone’s terms but my own. Elvis Presley, The King of Rock & Roll, had a heart attack in the middle of taking a shit, and then drowned in his own vomit. My grandfather died alone in a nursing home. What does dignity have to do with death? I chuckled. Ashley and I stood next to Cat’s grave while we watched the sun fill the swatches of night in the valley. I told Ashley that I loved her, and we made our way back to the car.
Dawn.
Part One
The heading read, "Dawn In A Perfect World". There was nothing particularly interesting about this subway advertisement. Why it caught my attention is a bit of a mystery to me. Things haven't been go too well in my life as of lately. But I suppose you could say that about anyone's, really. The thought of waking up tomorrow to find myself in an entirely different situation, one of my own creation, where my wants and fears are placated and silenced.... that's something desirable. I can see the genius in advertising.
The photo of the ad was of a cityscape, silhouetted inside of a large, orange sun, half hidden under the horizon. Bright, glowing, and alluring, this metropolis is cradled in its celestial mother's warm embrace. In the foreground I see trees. I'm relieved to know that the perfect world will have nature.
The car takes a bend in the tunnel. I feel the man inches behind me press into my bag as we all sway with the changing momentum of the train car. Without a conscious effort I question whether this man has robbed me. Within a split second I've taken an appraisal of my sense memory for any evidence of a theft. I doubt it. The cacophony of information pouring into my brain has me feeling over-kneaded, paranoid, and claustrophobic. My impulses get the better of me. I turn my head slightly to the right to get a better look at the man that I've spent the last five minutes making spoons with. Years of avoiding confrontation has caused me to develop my peripheral vision so that I can watch people unnoticed. He's a bit taller than I am, wearing a grey blazer and a salmon pink dress shirt. Unshaven, though perfectly unshaven, which is in stark contrast to his hairstyle. Greasy and combed to the side in a fashion that has been traditionally reserved for actors playing Nazi war criminals. This is man is a stress-case, consumed by obligation, barely able to restrain his own flamboyance. My wallet is probably safe. I realize that I've been staring into the eyes of a woman standing 10 feet into the forest of people. She looks as if she can't decide whether or not to feel violated by my leering. I wonder how long ago she started to feel as if I were looking through her. It's that strange feeling you get when you make eye contact with someone, only to that realize you're looking at an empty, lifeless vessel.
Part Two
Dawn in a perfect world.
No screams, no cries.
No unhappiness or pain,
Guilt or shame.
No pressure, anxiety,
unfulfilled dreams, or living nightmares.
Free to do, free to think,
it really doesn't matter what we do.
I could stay here all day,
I could leave,
maybe I won't,
it's doesn't make any difference anymore.
Every meal is a banquet,
every bank statement confirms my fortune,
I lose my money,
yet I always feel richer.
I never make a mistake,
I understand my every movement,
repercussion doesn't exist in the dictionary,
because it has no definition.
I never sleep,
there's too much living to do,
but I always sleep in.
I never want,
I always have.
I'm never hungry,
but never gluttonous.
I look like a movie star on my bad days.
This is a perfect world but we are in it.
Nothing bad ever happens,
nobody is ever unhappy,
but that's also why no one knows what happiness is.
Things Ain’t What They Used To Be (unedited)
The video ends, and for several seconds the room goes silent. “You’ve got to be kidding me,” Phil says.
Ben rotates his yellow office chair towards him, saying, “I know, right?! The odds are infinitesimal!”
Phil scratches at the base of his black ponytail. “I don’t even know how I can get surprised by this shit anymore,” he says, “Everyday, it’s something else. We live in a fucking police state. Those fascists probably did it on purpose.”
Laid out on the couch behind them is Felix, who is now staring at the ceiling. “God, can you imagine? I mean…. that poor woman. You’re just out,” he makes a sweeping motion with arms, “walking your baby, and then BOOM!” he says while punching his palm at the exclamation.
Ben pushes the plastic bridge of his glasses to his forehead, then starts the video from the beginning. The room, again, comes under a silence.
Felix sits up from the couch, “But what the hell is she doing there, anyway?” he says. Phil turns to face him, pressing his index finger into Felix’ lips, “Shhhh.” On Ben’s computer screen there is a pixelated woman pushing a baby carriage along a wall of concrete and brick.
“Man, the quality is shit,” Phil says.
“It’s probably a recording from someone’s cell phone,” says Ben.
“It sure looks like it,” Felix says, “I wonder if this would hold up in court?”
A trail of white clouds enters the frame, and then all three shout in unison, “OOOH!”
They watch the mother as she scrambles to remove the canister from the baby carriage as tear gas continues to billow out, into her face. She retrieves it, then throws it from view of camera, and begins violently rubbing her eyes and coughing. Immediately, two armored riot police enter the frame. One of them aims a shotgun at her head while the other kicks her in the lower abdomen and tackles her. The officer with the gun pins her to the ground with a knee between her shoulder blades, while his partner binds her hands with a white ziptie. Through the tinny, granulated sound coming from the computer speakers, she can faintly be heard screaming.
“The 99% always get screwed,” Felix says as he leans back into couch.
Phil inhales loudly through his nose while clenching his jaw. “People shouldn’t fear their government, government should fear their people,” he says.
“Maybe they do,” Ben says.
“That’s from V For Vendetta, yeah?” Felix asks.
“Hmm,” Ben grunts while generating a flurry of clicking and tapping sounds.
Phil turns to Felix, “That’s a Thomas Jefferson quote, actually.”
“Well,” Felix says in an effeminate, Southern drawl, “I just had no idea how wonderfully damn progressive he was.”
While reading from the screen, Ben says, “When the people fear their government, there is tyranny; when the government fears the people, there is liberty.” He reclines in the chair, locking his fingers behind his head, “The quote was first said by John Basil Barnhill.”
“What? No. Who the fuck is that?” Phil’s brow furrows, “That was definitely Jefferson.”
“Apparently it’s a quote from a debate on socialism that happened iiiiin,” Ben taps a drum roll on his desk as he leans within inches of the screen, “1914. About a hundred years after Jefferson died.”
“Ha!” Felix smiles as he slips his Birkenstocks off the edge of the couch. “Can’t say I’m surprised that a socialist said that. Socialism makes so much more sense than capitalism.”
“Well, it looks like that quote is from a debate between a socialist and a capitalist,” Ben grimaces while loudly sucking air through the corner of his mouth, “and, believe it or not, the capitalist is the one who wrote it.”
“What?” Felix sits back up to squint at the monitor, “Where did you see that?”
“Monticello.org,” Ben says. “It’s a website for tourist information about his old estate in Virginia.”
“I don’t buy it,” says Phil. ”I was always told that Thomas Jefferson said that. Oh, and Monticello was actually a plantation. You’ve got to question the shit your read online. You can’t trust anything anymore. Not like you used to.”
“No shit, man,” Felix says as he leans back into the couch. “Anyone can say anything they want on the internet.”
Phil stares at the monitor, shaking his head. “That site is probably just some Founding Father porn that’s operated by the teabaggers. Those guy will rearrange the facts to fit whatever their agenda is.”
Ben turns to Phil, “You’d think that right wingers would want him to be associated with that phrase, don’t you?”
“But we’re in the information age, man. We’re all connected,” Felix says. “People will find out the truth.”
Phil crosses his arms, “You can’t hide from anyone anymore.”
“Hold on a second,” Ben says, “that quote could be used to to defend the ownership of assault rifles, neoconservative business practices, Citizens United, or to give a feeling of self-righteousness to all those terrified white people that have bumper stickers saying, “Don’t tread on me.”
“Hmm,” Felix raises his arm, as if he’s pointing to something on the ceiling, “or suicide bombers.”
‘Yes,” Phil says, “that’s why you’ve got to think for yourself. You can’t trust…” Phil is interrupted by the phone vibrating in his pocket. Once unmuffled by his canvass pants, the phone fills the room with the sound of Darth Vader’s labored breathing.
“Sweet ringtone,” says Ben.
Phil smiles. “Shit,” he turns and walks towards the door. “I’ll be right back. It’s my mom.”
Flannery’s Traveller
After my long return to Ellabelle, I exited Route 204, my anticipation peaking when I could see the phosphorescent glow of the Thunderbird Motel. Inside our room, the plumes of smoke that escape the cigarette draping from my lips, obscure the darkness that conceals her. As the smog dissipates, I see her leaning into the walls of a corner of the room. I watch for a moment while her dress waves in a breeze of the warm, Georgia air. I am entranced. In her coy smile, I feel myself sinking forward into the abyssal, sapphire blue of her eyes. Those eyes. Within them I see the glimmer grow brighter with each piece of her that I find. Tonight she stands on her own. She will never wait for me again. For months, we’ve lived here while I’ve roamed, collecting the scattered pieces of my love. I began searching two years ago, when I first realized she had been hidden from me.
Since I returned from France, in the summer of ’46, I’ve travelled the country as a door-to-door salesman. In every city, I changed my name, affected a different accent, and invented a different story about my past. With so many versions of myself, I had lost track of where I started. I couldn’t even remember my own name. But no matter how far I ran, or how much whiskey I drank, the tyranny of the deathless memory persisted. Alone, I lied in the darkness of motel rooms, watching my mind projected the haunting cinema onto those white stucco ceilings. It was always the same. Always the day I first saw her, when I caught her watching me from that field of lavender. There she was, but she was lost to me. Then one day, in Louisiana, I found her.
For months, I had been travelling through the South. Sometimes I sold electric can openers, sometimes Bibles. It was all the same. I only needed enough cash for bourbon and women. I’d give anything to believe that, if only for a moment, I was someone else; that I was somewhere else. In my pursuit, I visited a white, palatial, Victorian home outside of New Orleans. On that day I sold can openers, and part of my pitch was to demonstrate the machine on a can of tomatoes. Succumbed to my charm, the old widower asked me to stay for supper, using the tomatoes to make etouffee. I obliged. I was lured by something warm and familiar, and at the end of our meal I saw what it was. It had been there, watching me, over the plate of pecan pie and glasses of whiskey. In front of me, in this woman’s eye socket, was a piece of my beloved. In the gaze of that glass bead I saw the keys to my deliverance. Her graces washed over me like a hot bath in the dead of winter. I could remember. I relearned my name. Later that night, I seduced the widow, and claimed the eye while she slept.
After several months, my large, black suitcase had carried over a dozen pieces of her that I found hidden in others. There were eyes, hands, legs, hair, and several portions of tin masks. With the leg I bring to her tonight, again, she will be whole. We will never have to part. I take another drink as I watch her come alive in the darkness of the room. I can see the reflection of firelight dancing across her face; the delicate, red curls of hair following behind her as she runs; I can hear my voice overlaid with the lilting of her laughter; And permeating through everything is the cloying perfume of the day I found her amongst the undulating waves of a Provencal sea of lavender. After that July day, along with her body, I discovered that my dreams had been replaced by frozen, bleak nothingness. I am a corpse, watching the world through a glass coffin, a claustrophobic marionette played by the shadows of a love, long since dead. When I finally succumb to the lullaby of bourbon, I always return to the same places. And there, she will always, and never, be with me.
This is Berkeley.
I was in the process of pulling out of the driveway of natural foods store when it happened. The driveway was a one-way, and I must have missed the signs that indicated this, though I didn’t see anything at all. The driveway exited to a four-way stop, which had just turned green in my direction. On the other side of the intersection was a middle-aged woman in a pink, early 90’s minivan. Her car was covered in a plethora of doo-dads, tassels, the automobile equivalent of sequins, and other loud, flashy shit. The car got my attention. Over the distraction of her obscene automobile, I saw her raise her arms, shake her head from side to side, and mouth something with an expression that was something between anger and disgust. I was blocking her from getting into the parking lot of the health food store. While she cursed me for my indiscretion, I mouthed back, “Oh please. Relax, lady”. I took my free right, while she turned red in the face. As I drove down the thruway, accelerating to the 45 MPH speed limit, I looked in my rear view mirror. Through the driver’s side window of the car she had stopped in the middle of the congested road, above what appeared to be a finger painting of the Virgin Mary the size of a bed pillow, I saw her watching me drive away, clearly in disbelief that someone could possibly be so inconsiderate. This is Berkeley, California.
“New Age”
Despite my best efforts, there a lot of things I don’t understand. Math, spectator sports, that guy that always wears a Bluetooth headset, or why my cat keeps shitting a foot away from the litter box. I have a certain set of tools, and there are some jobs they just don’t work for. There’s one that has baffled me since I first learned of it. Well-intentioned, all-inclusive, and wholesome, New Age and I just don’t get along.
It wasn’t always like this. I can still remember when we went through our “honeymoon” phase. When we first met, New Age seemed to have an answer for everything. She knew how to fix problems I had, informed me about problem I didn’t know I had, and had solutions for issues that I had no idea were possible. At the time, I was having some health problems. So, I asked around. Sure enough, my body was a cornucopian sesspool of pollutants, food additives, and other horrors of the modern world. It was miraculous I lived past the age of 4. At the suggestion of a naturopathic physician (this is a doctor), I attempted to purify my body on a diet of psyllium husks and a tea of ginger, lemon, and cayenne. First came a cold sore, then the flu. I was told to eat more yogurt. It was clear that these people hadn’t the slightest clue what they were talking about.
I had my issues with New Agers’ feelings about “fact checking” and “empirical evidence”, but they were hard not to like. They were so damn… well intentioned. And for some reason, I can’t seem to avoid them. During 2011, I lived and worked on a collectively run garlic and herb farm, in Upstate New York. Other than the folks in Manhattan who bought our products, nearly everyone I came in contact with was really nice. They spoke softly, ate organic foods, practiced yoga, had an encyclopedic knowledge of “ancient wisdom”, and had an unshakable belief that nature was inherently loving. I mentioned that ricin and the bubonic plague were also “natural”, but nobody cared for my negativity. The logic was mysterious.
I’m a curious person, so I tend to ask a lot of questions. When I have that opportunity with a New Ager, it rarely ends well. When they state their beliefs, I hear so much passion, vitality, and hope. As I try to explore the beautiful vision they have for the world, each question unravels another thread of this reality. It confuses me. I’ve provoked several people to self-doubt or defensive anger in an attempt to understand their convictions. Anyone can tell me to avoid fluoride toothpaste, or that crystals have immense healing powers, but nobody can ever explain why. At some point, I realized that this wasn’t important to them. Their understanding didn’t need to dig far below the surface for the belief to be useful.
To be fair, I’ve also dabbled in mysticism. I once believed, with absolute conviction, that an obese white man was watching me from 1000’s of miles away. If he liked me, he would sneak into my house when everyone was asleep, and bring me gifts. I liked Santa. He was a master of breaking and entering and could bend the laws of physics, but the rewards were real. If I had doubts, there was the deductive logic of the half eaten cookie; last night there was a whole cookie on the mantle, now it has a bite in it, therefore Santa was here.
My parents taught me to believe, and so I did. So can anyone. About anything. Beliefs answer questions, and questions have answers. I don’t claim to have many of them, but I’m a firm believer that answers exist, and that they can be explained. For all the issues that New Agers claims to have solution for, it takes more faith than reason to apply them. I just want to know why the believers get so frustrated when I ask them about it.
At Least my Welfare Benefits are Liquid
I’m poor. But, thankfully, I’m not hungry. Food stamps don’t offer me the ability to eat much, or the foods I would prefer, but I get to eat. My diet rarely branches past cheap starches and cereals, or anything that’s palatable and priced to move. It wasn’t always like this. I’ve worked in a variety of food industries over the past decade (cooking, farming, butchery, to name a few), and one of the greatest perks of these jobs was the copious amount of free or discounted food. It was lovely. Now that I’m writing, I don’t have these luxuries, so I’m back to paying for my meals like everyone else. I’m always looking for opportunities, but I have yet to find a writing gig that can match the $12 per hour I was making. Hence, food stamps. Though, I suppose my life would be easier if I lowered my standards.
If money were of no concern to me (wouldn’t that be swell), I would buy organic produce and sustainably raised meats from my local farmer’s market, buying everything else from one of Berkeley’s several independent grocers. I am a firm believer that my physical, cultural, and economic environment is affected by the foods that I choose, so how and where I spend my money is a critical decision. If I eat an apple, I want to eat an apple; Not a pesticide glazed apple from other side of the Earth. I’m happier knowing that the money spent on that apple will go into the hands of the farmer who grew it, rather than a farm conglomerate or a massive distribution company. If the money stays local, it’s more likely to be spent local, and this will bolster the Bay Area’s economy. On a long enough timeline, that dollar will end up back in my wallet, and I won’t have to keep using food stamps. I will prosper as the economy prospers, and one day I will be able to afford a few luxuries, like visiting a doctor. Thankfully, I can avoid some of these future trips to the physician by eating healthier foods. The only problem is that I can’t afford to eat healthier foods.
Comparing the prices of an orange, from conventionally grown to organic, there is a notable price increase. If I wanted to buy either of these from a farmer’s market, I’m likely to pay around 150% to 200% more (there is a reason Palo Alto has a market but not in East Oakland doesn’t). In the middle of March, I bought 5 orange from the North Berkeley market for $9. On a monthly food budget of $150, those oranges constitute two days worth of food expenditures. I don’t regret my decision, but let’s be clear; this purchase was one of luxury rather than sustenance. Fiscally speaking, my action was irresponsible. I could have bought a 5# bag of organic navel oranges from my local grocery store for $5, but these are grown in Florida by a large farm conglomerate. I bought these too, but this demonstrates part of the dilemma I’m trying to highlight; on a smaller budget, frugality trumps ethics. At the market, my money went from my wallet into the hands of the man that grew the orange. They weren’t cheap, but farming isn’t easy. Regardless of my ability to pay, the price is fair. The $5 I spent on the bag of Florida oranges will be divided amongst distributors, shippers, wholesalers, marketers, the administrators of the farm cooperative, with whatever portion of my money that is left over going to the farmer, after taxes. Considering all of these factors, food prices ought to be higher if food producer are to have a living wage. A lot higher. But what about all of us on food stamps?
One of the amazing things about industrialized food production is that more can be produced, faster, and with fewer people. Even with all its inherent imperfection, this is still amazingly positive. In the US, people generally spend less than 6% of their income on food. In Australia, it’s 10%; in Brazil, it’s 24.7%; in Indonesia, it’s 43%. My budget is closer to Brazil, but it could be worse. If it weren’t for my food stamp benefits, I couldn’t afford to eat or live in the Bay Area (ethically or otherwise). I am grateful for the blessing I have, but this doesn’t change the facts: the food I eat affects my health, and the food I eat is determined by my ability to pay. For $30 per month, I can sustain my life on white rice and pinto beans, but an anemic diet is going to create health problems and make my stay on this earth brief. Add another $40, and I can eat industrial vegetables. Another $40, and I can add industrial fruits. With the money I have remaining in my $150 budget, I can add some meat and dairy, but these are going to be spread through the month in portions that make them seasonings to a meal rather than a functional part of it. This is enough to sustain me, and it can be done inexpensively. But eating cheaply has some major caveats. Along with my discounted meal, I will ingest my share of pesticides, herbicides, fertilizers, hormones, steroids, stabilizers, preservatives, genetic modifications, and other such enhancements. But what can I really do about it? Money offers option, so mine are limited. This is my reality.
Of course, I have the option of growing my food. I have done this, and it’s wonderful. Tending to your own crops is like caring for and raising a child, except when he’s ready to leave the house you eat him. The sense of satisfaction and gratification is tremendous, but similar to child rearing, farming is a full time job. It’s amazingly labor intensive, and it leaves little time for anything else. For me, producing my own food is impractical. There is always the option of a garden, but for that I would need dirt, dirt requires space, and space costs money. But if I had money, I wouldn’t have food stamps. Now we’re back where we started.
Eating decently on a budget takes some creativity. I have to make some concession (I can’t remember the last time I had a steak), but I can ensure that I get the nutrition I need. Luxury items like ice cream, beer, or anything for the grocery store deli are saved for special occasions. But to be honest, I’m alright with that. What bothers me isn’t that there are foods that I can’t afford, it’s that the one I can come with thing I don’t want. I understand that being poor also means that I have fewer options. Fine. Does that mean that my vegetable should be seasoned with RoundUp? That I eat genetically modified foods without my knowledge? Should I accept that my hormones will be altered because the cows passed their supplemental steroids and antibiotics into the milk? Must I financially support industries that can only function if their workers live in poverty? Do I give the little money I have to businesses that are completely at odds with my ethics? I shouldn’t, and I don’t have to if I can afford it. Which I can’t.
Occupy.
"It's a revolution!", Tyler said with enthusiasm. I couldn’t help but feel that I was watching the birth of a childhood fantasy. It was October of 2011, in upstate New York. I was living on a collectively-managed herb farm amongst yoga instructors, hicksters, vagabonds, artists, chefs, sustainability experts, and an aerospace engineer. It was a menagerie of alternative lifestyle advocates, loosely organized under the belief that we were reconnecting with the land we had lost connection with. There wasn't a farmer amongst us, and nearly everyone had grow up in an urban environment. The claim that we had lost something was, at best, theoretical. Something we had seen in a documentary, or perhaps a byproduct of the middle-class guilt we feel over the blessing that we know we didn't earn. What this lifestyle gave us was entitlement. The system we were born into, intuitively, felt broken. The systems of food, economics, class, social roles, gender, and profession all left us feeling dehumanized and disenfranchised. We felt barcoded and commodified, and going back to the land was our boldest attempt at civil disobedience. Despite the occasional appearance of a Che Guevara t-shirt, this was civil disobedience akin to Gandhi; non-violent, and culturally petulant. We were representatives of a generation that has been coddled, praised, and told that we could do anything. We were terrified of criticism and hardship, and had developed a deep fear of authority. As such, we had no leaders. We followed no example. This was intended to be the opposite of working life. The rat race was powerless here. There was no position of authority to strive for, or limitation on what a person could be or experiment with. Collectively, we would support each other, thereby eliminating the existential terror that results from career failure. All we needed was enough food to survive, and the group. It was a reclamation of our imagined community. We shared meals together, worked together, played together, and discussed ourselves. Something that was silently agreed upon was that we would never resort to anger, or even speak with it. Occupy Wall Street changed that. It wasn't that we were afraid of anger, it was that we were afraid of it being directed at us. We were a sample of a generation that had been taught to fear and repress anything that could lead to aggression. Whether or not we allowed ourselves to realize the sadness and rage that boiled inside of us was irrelevant, we now had an outlet.
I grew up in the Puget Sound, where I was raised to be an environmentalist. I believe in that. I can't say that I know that I would have turned to it if I were born in a less empathetic city. I am, to some degree, a product of my environment. In another situation, I could have become my antithesis. Others have, but how could I claim to be understanding if I refuse to consider their circumstances? That’s what I would think in order to calm myself. The truth is that my seething anger towards the oppressive is restrained only by my feelings of impotence and disconnection to a solution. Selfishness and ignorance have created evils all around us, and what I am supposed to do to stop it? What could we do? The best chance was to apply ourselves to a field that we could use as a platform for our ideals. We would take out loans, get an education, get a job, pay off our loans, and do something meaningful. This is America, after all. We’ve been told our entire lives that hard work and an education will get you to success. The folks on the farm were a sample of the larger situation facing the young today. There were people with masters and bachelors degrees in psychology, fine art, engineering, education, business management, culinary arts, communications, and aerospace engineering. Despite this, all of us were essentially unemployed, without prospects. The American dream was bullshit. When I started college, a bachelor’s degree would make you stand apart. By the time I graduated, a master’s was hardly enough. We had been promised so much, and we only received indifference from a fickle job market. We knew the bar had been set high, but it seemed as if it raised with the unemployment rate. We were lost. We had no direction, no example to follow, and no leaders. We tried to stay hopeful, but it was hard to ignore how powerless we were. All we could do was watch in horror as everything of value was commodified and processed. Except for us. We weren’t even useful enough for exploitation.
It had never been so apparent that the system favors a select few, while the rest of us do what we can with the scraps that they have yet to recycle. Occupy Wall Street came along, and gave us the power to speak up. All of us. Unfortunately, we approached this opportunity with the same confusion we bring to everything else. Rather than create an identity that may fail to satisfy everyone, we pulled in every disenfranchised, cultural outlier as a sign of solidarity. The intention was to be altruistic, but it was a poor strategy. This protest of “American fairness” included every subversive voice that had a desire to be heard, and, not surprisingly, the resulting cacophony was deafening. We were confused. The people that bothered to listen to us were confused. The people that tried to criticize us were confused. What were we for? No one knew. What were we against? If one included every opinion that was present, the answer was everything. We were against everything. We also had no demands. None. A protest, if nothing else, desires for a change of….. something. Generally there is some kind of a request. Voting rights for women, desegregation of school, the end of English imperialism, or breaking up a quasi-secret, international business cartel. What did we have? Bicycle generators, tents, the people’s megaphone, who knows. It ought to have been to promote urban camping. This wasn’t helping. We had the numbers but no unifying purpose.Without purpose, how could we find strength? Whatever message could be found was diluted in a sea of varying opinions. It was maddening. If one were to take a look at the picket signs that were found at an Occupy protest, there was rarely a unifying theme. Every political, cultural, or philosophical issue that took place in the last decade could be found on one of those signs. Considering this, I can’t blame anyone that had a hard time taking this seriously.
Reasons Why Space is a Real Motherfucker. (unfinished)
Directly over our heads is an incomprehensibly large universe that's filled with all matters of beautiful, colorful wonderments that have filled our imaginations for as long as anyone can remember. Many of us have memories from childhood of looking up into the sky and wishing we could hop into a spaceship to blast off into the great unknown. Astronomers and theoretical physicists are working tirelessly to try and illuminate the darkest corners of this unknown to try and glimpse into the mysteries that make up the universe. Unfortunately, scientists are finding the universe to be about as hospitable and violent as a methamphetamine addicted wolverine that's been dipped in crazy glue and broken glass. Space is an amazing and complex place that will end you and everything you love. If the universe had a voice every living thing in it would hear a disinterested, "meh", as a thousand solar systems are obliterated into nothingness.
1. Black Holes
Popularized by the most famous robot voice in history, Stephen Hawking, black holes are arguably the most destructive force in the universe. To put this to an analogy, imagine a pig pile involving twenty people. The person with the most weight on him is obviously the guy at the bottom. At some point there will be more weight on him that his body can support, and he's going to get squished. The force that turns that poor frat boy into a pancake is the result of gravity. Now imagine that you're a star with the mass of trillions upon trillions of frat boys. When that unfortunate pledge at the bottom goes splat, hhis smaller, denser body has a greater gravitational pull. This in turn will pull the next frat boy in even stronger. They are created when the amount of mass in a given place becomes so dense that it collapses it These fellas do to matter what you would do to your fridge after smoking a couple of doobies. The gravitation pull coming from a black hole is so strong that absolutely nothing can escape it, not even light.
2. Cold - Vacuum
3. Asteroids
4. Quazars
5. Solar Radiation
6. It's so freakin' big!
The dream of traveling into space to see exotic new worlds amongst the wondrously colorful mysteries of space is one that most adults developed with their childhood imagination. As much as we would love to see the sights of the universe, the chances of that happening are still in the realm of science fiction. Why? Because it's incomprehensibly huge.
Just for some perspective:
The farthest object recorded in the observable universe is a galaxy known as GRB 090423, which is 13 billion light-years away from Earth. If one were to travel at the speed of light (the fastest speed possible under Einstein's Theory of Relativity (Einstein set the odometer to light)) it would take 13 billion years to reach.
Here's some more perspective!
The nearest star to our solar system, Alpha Centaury, is 4.24 light years away. So when your spaceship hits lightspeed (BTW: the speed of light is 670.6 MILLION mph) it should only take you about 51 months to get there.
Perspective on perspective!
The fastest spaceship yet built by man travels at 30,000 mph. After a gravity push from Jupiter it could reach up to 47,000 mph.
It's time for some math!
A light year is 9.46 trillion km or 5,878,625,373,183.61 (5.87 trillion miles)
Divide the number of miles by mph: 5.87 trillion miles / 47,000 mph
= 125077135.6 number of hours travelled
divide by 24 hours to get the number of days = 5211547.31
divide that by 365 to get the number of years = 14278.21
multiply that by 4.24 light years to Alpha Centaury =
Reasons Why You Should Never Spend a Holiday with a Vegetarian
An all too familiar sentiment amongst hardline vegetarians is, "I won't eat anything with a face, but yours is ripe for punching. You sick, murderous, vile, meat-eating bastard". Unfortunately, many of these adorable dietary misanthropes masquerading as respectful human being happen to be people we care about, are related to, or both. But don't let that get you down. The holidays are a supposed to be a time of the year when we all give thanks to the ones we love, and are mindful of all the blessing that make our lives meaningful, beautiful, and worth living. Let's be honest though, if it wasn't for familial obligation, loneliness, or the Las Vegas buffet sized meal we probably would never associate with most of these people. Regardless, you may find yourself in a position where you'll need to invite a vegetarian to your holiday affair.
Here are few reasons why you might want to reconsider:
1. Chances are they're coming alone.
51% of vegetarians are single; mostly because they can't find someone compatible with their eating habits.http://www.eatveg.com/vegandating.htm
Loosely translated: I would rather spend my life miserable, sexless, and alone than associate with one of you soulless demons. Let us translate that for you one more time: there is a 50/50 chance that your guest is depressed, lonely, hateful, and to top it off... sexually frustrated. Yay.
The level of comfort in your dining room is going to be on par with Adolf Hitler showing up to your kid's Bar Mitzvah. If this sounds like your kind of holiday party then by all means, live.. it.. up. That dejected, malnourished, liberal arts major probably can't wait to talk to you about lentil pancakes, composting toilets, and the 99%. This dude is probably not a vegetarian. I've been wrong before, though.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0e/Anger_Controlls_Him.jpg/800px-Anger_Controlls_Him.jpg
Nothing says "Happy Holidays" like sharing a meal with someone that has an aimless, murderous (but virtuous!) rage in desperate need of an outlet.
2. Galeforce Flatulence
It's not the aging Labrador that your kid have been feeding microwave burritos and Pepsi, it's the vegetarian. According to gastroenterologist, David H. Van Thiel, M.D, "Vegetarians, who actually pass a lot of gas, frequently have quiet, frequent flatus because they have large, bulky stools and looser sphincters"
http://www.unusualresearch.com/fart/fart.htm
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2563/is-there-more-flatulence-in-a-vegetarian-diet
3. Many vegetarians are confused about what "vegetarian" actually means.
There are many people out in the world that claim to vegetarians, yet eat fish, chicken, or eggs. We'll be the first to admit that we know absolutely nothing about marine biology, but last we checked fish actually aren't vegetables.
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/food-and-drink/news/can-you-really-be-a-vegetarian-if-you-eat-fish-766673.html
4. They not so secretly think you're the devil.
It may just be a taste we have yet to acquire, but we've found that dinner is almost always more enjoyable when you're not being accused of murder or Nazism.
tp://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/mar/03/advertising.marketingandpr
As much as we want each and every holiday meal to be a drunken cacophony of happiness and gluttony, we can't help but wonder if some of our dearest friends and family wish the definition of justifiable homicide was a little bit broader. Of course, not every vegetarian is like this. And make no mistake, being a vegetarians isn't a bad thing. It's quite a wonderful thing if you consider many of its ethical, moral, and environmental benefits. We're really happy for you vegetarians. Truly. We just wish you would shut the fuck up about it and eat whatever bland, flavorless bullshit tickles your fancy. Where's the damn roast?
http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2003/mar/03/advertising.marketingandpr
5. Even if they don't equate you to a turkey Pol Pot, they probably see themselves as superior to you.
Tania Lombrozo at NPR sums this up perfectly, "People who are vegetarian or vegan for moral reasons do think their dietary choice is morally superior to that of omnivores. That's why they're vegetarian or vegan."
http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2012/11/26/165736028/its-time-to-end-the-turkey-tofurky-thanksgiving-food-fight
A study at the University of British Colombia demonstrates that vegetarians see themselves as more virtuous than omnivores.
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0195666311000341
6. Their hateful disapproval of your eating habits might be a cover for seething, ravenous jealousy.
One survey of ex-vegetarians, performed by the magazine Psychology Today, noted that 20% of their participants "talked about their protein cravings or how the smell of sizzling bacon would drive them crazy."
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/animals-and-us/201106/why-do-most-vegetarians-go-back-eating-meat
7. Let it be known, Tofurky is complete and utter bullshit.
If you question this point, I invite you to taste Tofurky. To include this in a holiday celebration is a recipe for sadness. The kind of desperation that would cause someone to eat this culinary disaster is like the desperation that would cause an alcoholic to drink hairspray.
El Panecillo
The brushed aluminum doors open, revealing the black, pockmarked granite floor of the atrium. I saunter past a weathered Ecuadorian man who is busily fidgeting with the safety on his assault rifle. I give the man a deferential nod in the way someone does to acknowledge a man holding an M-16. As I get closer to him, he reaches his arm for the cylindrical brass door handles that will let me into the hotel’s dining room. I enter hoping there are still some chorizo left in the steam tables.
The room is quiet except for a group of middle aged, American men, all of whom appear to have recently stopped shaving. Between the Rolexes, platinum wedding rings, brand name clothing, and unnaturally youthful appearances, each of these guys must have looked like a lottery ticket with legs. I had just spent two days in the care of a cab driver that proudly toured me through Quito. Despite the beauty and rich culture of this city, one thing I didn’t see was wealth. Well, at least not before walking into the dining room.
I try to restrain my judgments of the group of men I have yet to introduce myself to, but I can’t help recognize the familiar look of hubris amongst the loudest at the table. I am about to walk into a big fish story. I imagine that these are people that can describe every country they’ve visited by degrees of comparison to the US, as if they’re all a derivative. People tend to squint when they’re confused, and these men all look like they’re staring at the sun. I can’t help but wonder if they’re searching for subtitles. I look around the table, and it seems that most of them have passed on the chorizo. I take an open seat next to a man that resembles the villain from No Country For Old Men. He goes by the name “Big Sexy”. He’s friendly, though I can’t help but notice the irony of his nickname. After a brief introduction my attention goes back to the sausages. The conversation continues while I quietly observe, feeling nostalgic about my previous days Ecuador.
On one afternoon, I saw what is arguably, the most conspicuous structure in Quito. Located in the center of the city, it’s a 149-foot-tall, unpainted, aluminum statue of the Woman of The Apocalypse (from The Book of Revelations). Winged, haloed, and standing on a gigantic snake, she protrudes like a lightning rod from a hill names El Panecillo. At the base of the hill resides the old, colonial district, which is the most popular tourist attraction in the city. When I visited the area I had a bit of wanderlust, and I had intended to take in both sights on foot. The road to the top is a long, meandering traverse that circles around the hill. It first takes you through a densely populated residential area before it becomes cradled in steep embankments of grass and eucalyptus trees. It sounded like a great walk. Thankfully, I spoke enough Spanish to understand that the Quiteños insisted that I take a car instead. Looking out the window of the taxi, I quickly understood why. The perceptible wealth of the colonial district ends abruptly at the warning signs that delineate its border. The narrow roads that lay past it are lined with dilapidated buildings, many of which are thoroughly ventilated with bullet holes. El Panecillo is one of the most dangerous slums in the city.
In the hotel’s dining room, three men that ignored that warning are recounting the story of how they were mugged along the way. Will, a trained economist and port contractor, is fit, athletic, and well manicured. Imitaz, tall and overweight, is a trauma surgeon who has the distinction of the being the only American to treat a Black Mamba’s bite. Despite his Iranian heritage, he refuses to listen to anything except country music. Dan, enigmatic and forgettable, is a reservoir of nervous energy. His eyes suggest that he’s over-stimulated, yet, ironically, he seems like he could fall unconscious at any moment. Despite their personalities, in the United States these men are unremarkable in appearance. On El Panecillo, though, it’s obvious that their combined wealth surpasses the lifetime earnings of every person on the hill.
They had been touring the old colonial district, ajacent to El Panecillo, when they decided to visit La Virgen. The journey started with a leisurely stroll through an exceptionally dangerous, third world slum. Miraculously, this part of their journey passed without incident. Eventually they reached the steeper inclines of the hill, and began the long walk that circles around the hill to La Virgen. The road was delightfully picturesque and disarming, as a panoramic cityscape was visible beyond the steep, grassy slopes on the perimeter of the road. They were unaware that this area was, ironically, the most dangerous for tourists. As the road spiraled around the summit, they passed through several sharp bends that were blind for an uncomfortably long distance on both sides.
They walked in typical, American, every-man-is-an-island fashion. The longer they walked, the further they drifted apart. Will was in front, followed by Dan, and Imitaz was in the rear. Eventually they created enough distance between each other that they would disappear from view at bends in the road. As they neared the top, a pick-up truck drove past them, with several people leering out the windows and yelling in Spanish. They thought nothing of it. Will was the first to walk out of sight of the others. He turned the corner and saw that the truck had parked along the road, next to a van. One of the passengers was walking towards him. With his left arm outstretched, and the right held behind his back, Will assumed this poor, brown man was begging for money. A native of California, Will attempted to dismiss him with, “No dinero”. This was when he noticed that people were unloading from both vehicles, all with their eyes fixed on him.
“The guy was hiding a stick behind his back. A sharpened, fucking stick.” Will’s tilts his head to the ceiling in introspection. “ I felt like I was in some kind of movie. This sort of thing just doesn’t happen in real life”. I notice that this story is being told with pride that is completely untainted with the humility of embarrassment. How men, who are nearly twice my age, managed to miss such foreboding details can only be explained by ignorance, naivety, or, worst of all, arrogance. I suppose it could be misinterpreting confidence. None of them have so much as a scratch, so maybe they all have black belts in something. I take a bite of my pan de yuca, and quietly anticipate the rest of the story.
The Ecuadorian man finally reached Will, uppercutting his chest with the sharpened stick he was hiding. Fortunately, the whittled spike glanced off the thick shell of his mountaineering jacket. The fight escalated for a moment, with neither of them able to inflict any damage. Will saw that the attacker’s associates were getting much closer, and that they all had sharpened sticks of their own. Drastically outnumbered, he retreated; running down the hill, screaming.
“So, I’m tearing ass, as fast as I can, and I’m looking over my shoulder, and I’m yelling, “No ahora! No ahora!” Not today, motherfucker”. I’m reminded of the subtle power of language. I don’t have the heart to tell him that his taunt means “not now”. I try to imagine what it would be like to mug some hapless gringo who started screaming “not now”? Those words would have sounded like an attempt at misdirection, or a plea for mercy; the last, desperate whimper before they get the biggest splinter of their life. Will continues.
He was being chased down the road by a man, who was being followed by a mob, who were all armed with sharpened sticks. He continued his sprint around the corner, and finally came within view of Dan. Dan paused to catch his breath, trying to understand the situation that was about to be thrust upon him. With a look of frightened confusion, he stood motionless as Will and his pursuer disinterestedly ran past him. The rapidly approaching group of stick wielding mad men caught his attention. He realized he had only one direction to escape, and took off down the hill. In what must have been an incredibly bizarre scene to witness, Dan was running only a few feet behind the man chasing Will.
A tour bus was quickly approaching them from the bottom of the hill, and Will attempted to stop it by running into the road. The bus driver, finding two white men being chased by a dozen thieves, swerved to avoid hitting him before continuing to climb up El Panecillo. Not having a whole lot of options, Will kept running. Serendipitously, another vehicle was coming up the hill. There were three passengers inside a late 90s, blue, Honda Civic. Two adults were in the front while a baby was strapped to a booster seat in the back. Will repeat his previous strategy of running in front of the car, but this time it was successful. He ran along the side of the car, opened the back door, and jumped, head first, onto the seat with the baby.
“I screamed “GO, GO GO!” and they took off with me in the back. They were probably thinking, “Who is this crazy gringo?”, but they drove me up to the top of the hill without saying a word. I got out, and then used my satellite phone to call my wife.” Will leans back into his chair, going silent with an obvious sense of satisfaction and relief. His part of the story is over. The table becomes a mosaic of expletives to describe disbelief. Will smiles and rubs the spot where he was hit in the chest.
“Man, you must have been pretty scared?”, asks Big Sexy, his sly smirk framed in the margins of his beige bowlcut. I sense that his comment is more of an accusation than a question. His eyes turn to Dan, “So what happened to you guys?” Dan’s eyes open like they’re trying to escape the sockets. “I kept running.” We spend the next couple of seconds anticipating a response that never arrives. I don’t think he found this experience as life affirming as Will did.
All eyes turn to at Imitaz. He is a large, bearded man that speaks with a gentle, reassuring voice cultivated over 20 years in emergency rooms. Despite his bedside manner, he speaks without making eye contact with anyone, his gaze alternating between the table or the spaces between people sitting at it. He appears to be taking the incident better than Dan is, but it doesn’t seem that this was a positive experience for him either. He says, “I was standing on the sidewalk, trying to catch my breath after climbing up that hill. The other guys were way ahead of me, so I didn’t know about any of these things that had happened. I couldn’t see anything”, the octave of his voice increases with each sentence, the way some people do when they want to avoid complicity. “I was just standing there when I looked up the road, and saw Dan come out of nowhere. He kept coming, and then he ran right past me. When I saw all the people behind him, I put two and two together, but, I’m a big guy, I knew there was no way that I was going to outrun them. They took my wallet, my cash, my passport, and my Rolex. I was totally fine, though. I didn’t bother to resist. They took what they wanted, and left right afterwards.” He turns to Will, squinting. “I can’t imagine what you could have done to piss that guy off so badly”. All attention shifts back to Will, whose shoulders and eyebrows raise in unison. He then lifts up his shirt to exposing a plate sized bruise, while saying, “Check this out”.
Imitaz reaches into his jacket pocket, revealing a small, glass bottle of black truffle oil. He offers it to the table, to which I happily oblige. I put a dozen drops of the rich, amber coloured liquid onto my eggs. Aromas of earth and musk overwhelm my palate, dampening the sound of a dozen men in amazement of the destructive power of a stick.
The Bonneville
The Bonneville drifts over the double yellow line. “Stop it, Lyle,” she says. “Do you want to get us killed?” She turns to look at him, feeling a wave of disgust from the undulating movements of the wind rippling through his body hair. She gives him a solid push on the shoulder, and watches his limp body hit the door. His heavy, unsupported head slams into the window, sending his hat fluttering into the motionless air outside of the convertible. Recoiling into the seat, she registers the severity of her situation. The car, about to careen off the edge of Mulholland, has no driver. As she quietly blames herself for getting involved with Lyle, the tires thump over the orange reflectors of the median with a terrifying rhythm.
She’d met him six months ago at a retreat for community organizers. He was the hairest man she’d ever seen, and he wouldn’t leave the hottub. She felt uneasy around him from the moment he introduced himself. With the cacophany created by popping bubbles and the water pump, the discomfort got worse after he wadded through the completely vacant hottub to sit beside her. She felt repulsed by his appearance, but he had a hypnotic charm that escaped through the felt-like fur covering his body. Their conversation continued for an hour before she got up to leave. He drank some more wine from the paper cup and invited her to his room to “continue the conversation”. “Sorry, Lyle. Not now,” she said. He reached into between the folds of his towel, and handed her one of his business cards. What eventually led to the drive on Mulholland was the persuasive simplicity of his response.
“It can’t be now all the time,” she says, wishing she had never heard it. Lyle’s unconscious body creeps down the leather seat, increasing the weight on the gas pedal. The engine growls. She calmly looks through the windshield and sees the highbeams reflecting off an aluminum guardrail that runs perpendicular to the road. In 300 feet the road reverses direction, turning back up the hill. She looks at Lyle’s limp, drunken body, and says “This isn’t what I had in mind.” She unbuckles her seatbelt, opens the door, and falls out onto the road. Through the dust filling the air, her vision is filled with images of asphalt, intersparsed by red flashes of brakelight as the Bonneville exits the road, taking all that hair with it.
Blood Soup
My plane lands at 9,350 feet above sea level, pulling onto the tarmac of Aeropuerto Mariscal Sucre in Quito, Ecuador. I’ve come to climb Mt Cotopaxi, the second highest peaks in the Ecuadorian Andes. I’ve arrive a week prior to starting the climb, hoping to give myself enough time to acclimate to the lack of oxygen in the thin, cold, mountain air. I will have to haul my body up to 19,347 feet and I am from sea level. Without the time for my body to acclimatize to this new environment, I risk developing either cerebral or pulmonary edema –a potentially fatal condition where the brain or lungs swell with fluid. This isn’t Everest though; at worst, I’ll probably just get a headache. Still, I have to find something to do for a week, and my favorite pastime is eating. My conquests will start with my stomach.
Preparing to travel to Ecuador, I spent hours on the Internet, scouring any corner I could for a clue. I hoped to find something truly unique and authentic. Something to impart on me the essence of what it means to be Ecuadorian. So, I looked in guidebooks marketed towards Americans. I knew I could never adequately prepare myself, but I couldn’t be walking around a Third-World country with a tourist map and a guidebook. I might as well burn my passport as I step off of the plane. I made a list of different eateries and markets around Quito that I wanted to see, and then wrote their names, addresses, and descriptions on an inconspicuous piece of white paper.
I had two goals in mind: eat a broad swath of foods to get a grasp on the essence of Ecuadorian cuisine, and consume enough of a single dish so that I could successfully reproduce when I returned home. I decided on dish called yaguarlocro. Its name, translated from Quechua, means blood soup. It is an herby stew of grains, pork or lamb parts, garnished with tomatoes, onions, avocado, and fried blood. Fried blood. I wasn’t sure I would be able to stomach it, but eating something as viscerally repulsive as blood would be enough to convince myself of my mettle. That was, after all, why I was going.
On my first day in Quito, I head to a farmers market on the edge of the main commercial zone. Inside is a stall known for having the best representation of the soup. Walking through a labrynthian collection of small eateries and tourist traps, I arrive at the dilapidated, concrete warehouse that is the market. Three stories high, and filled with a cornucopic variety of fruits and vegetables, the interior is entirely lined in square, white tiles. I wonder how dirty this building gets that they designed it to be cleaned with a hose. It has the air of an abattoir. I buy a dozen granadillas –a small relative of the passionfruit that looks like a grenade– and head downstairs. The stall I’ve come to visit is located in the basement. In a corner, amongst dozens of food vendors, I find what I’ve been hunting for. The size of Volkswagen Beetle, there is a stall with a single sign, “yaguarlocro con cerdo”, blood soup with pork. I order two.
The stalls line the walls of the floor; the center filled with metal picnic tables painted the same white color as the tiles they rest on. I sit, wait, and ruminate on my decision. Here I am, thousands of miles away from home, preparing for what I am about to inflict upon my stomach. Blood soup. Regardless of the sterility represented by these pressure-washed tiles, I know this could make me very, very sick. I’ve come to climb a mountain, and I am completely willing to jeopardize that success for lunch. I’m on some Hemmingway-esque, hyper-masculine, quest for self knowledge. In my mind, I’m in a boat in the Mekong, listening to Martin Sheen pontificating, “You don’t get a chance to know what the fuck you are at some factory in Ohio.” Is this bravery, insecurity, stupidity, or some absurd combination of the three? I may have just ordered a bowl of pig guts and blood. People arguing that men and women are the same are idiots. Men are obviously the lesser sex.
Ten minutes later, an Ecuadorian woman, her skin the color of tanned leather, brings my food on a black, plastic tray. Two bowls, two plates of garnish; on which diced onions, tomatoes, and avocado surround a purple mound of desiccated blood. First, I taste the unadorned soup. Simple, earthy, and sweet, with strong flavors of marjoram, grain, and meat that come from stewed pork and small, unidentifiable vegetables – that I will later learn are varieties of corn that the indigenous call choclo. I take a two-finger pinch of blood and rain it over the stew. With childlike amusement, I watch the blood slowly rehydrate, leaving maroon striations along on the surface of the butter-colored liquid. I add the rest of the garnish, and take a spoonful. The onions and tomato added acidity that balances strong liquid’s base-note; the blood expounding on the earthiness with a flavor that is more ferrous than visceral. The avocado give brief moments of respite, adding an ebb to the overwhelming unctuousness of the dish. There are few things as spectacular as finding beautify within something inherently repulsive. If I reach the summit of Cotopaxi with dysentery, I will meet the challenge with a smile.
Little Climbers
Newton law of universal gravitation states that two objects have a gravitational pull on each other that is proportional to their combined masses. This means that the Earth’s gravity has a stronger pull on a Volkswagen than, say, an apple. Though, I have yet to see the force of gravity on a Beetle –and I wouldn’t miss the opportunity to– I’ve seen that downward pull on other things. Like me. And I’ve seen others that gravity has no effect on. Like gaggles of tiny rock climbers.
I’m a member of an indoor rock climbing gym in Berkeley, and during my time there I’ve been able to make some observations. One that I find odd is the demography of the other climbers. In general, they fit into two broad categories that have no similarity to each other. Most of the clientele are white men in their late 20’s to early 30’s, just like me. But then there’s the other group: 8 to 15 years old girls. I’ve been struggling to understand this since I first walked in the door.
Please, don’t misunderstand me. I’m not questioning these kids’ abilities. They are shockingly capable; doing things that force me to question my lopsided relationship with gravity. I’d like to think that I can finagle my way out of some tricky situations, but at no point am I able I forget that I weigh 190 pounds. I am, after all, bracing myself on only the tips of my digits. When I climb, there are moments when I have to contort my body into some spring or pretzel-like shape to finish a route up the wall. Despite that I share the same set to problems with the tiny girls, I look like a cat trying to claw its way out of a bathtub, while they look like spiders scaling the side of the Guggenheim. One task should be effortless, but to watch, you’d think it was impossible; the other looks like an impossible task made effortless. I am definitely not the latter.
When I prepare myself for a climb I stand in front of the wall, playing out a variety of routes than will take me to the top. I also have to consider how much energy I have; the mechanics of how I will move my body; the shape of the hand-holds, and whether or not I could maintain my grip; how much pain I feel in my feet –the shoes are less than comfortable–; ways that I can maintain or lose my balance, and, should I lose my balance, am I going to fall on top of someone? The girls don’t worry about any of these. They walk up to the wall, scramble to the top, jump down to the ground, find their friends, run around in circles, and then finish another route. While that happened, I was trying to put on my shoes.
My father introduced me to climbing, and each year we make an attempt at a different summit. In order to reach the top of a mountain, he had to teach a few things. How to cross glaciers, jump over crevasses, lower a person over the edge of a cliff, or how to make it to the top with enough energy to make it back to the bottom. These are lifesaving skills in a dangerous sport, and I learned them from his example. He isn’t Charles Bronson, but he’s tough in his own way. Now, that I’ve taken up a different sport, I look to those with the most skill to teach me how to be capable. I reflect on this often, and I can’t help but laugh when I do. I have many new mentors. Most of them are less than five feet tall; they’re all too young to drive; and the only job they could get would be selling cookies. But they are able to defy gravity and death better than anyone I’ve seen wearing a harness. I wonder what Newton would have to say.
Punk
Looking back on my childhood, it’s hard to discern the memories that are true from the ones that I’ve created over time. After a while, the emotions start to direct how I remember something, until all I have left is a feeling and couple scattered images. Either way, there is something that every fat kid knows to be true; Children are monsters.
Like a lot of other kids, I dreamed of being normal. I was fat, so I was teased. I was socially awkward, so I was teased. I was quiet, so I was teased. In every classroom, there’s one child that loves nothing more than to remind everyone how powerfully normal they are by shaming someone that deviates from that homogeneousness. I, unfortunately, was that outlier.
During prepubescence, I was teased for being overweight. If someone had told me I was stupid, I wouldn’t have been happy about it, but I could have defended myself against it. The really insidious thing about being teased for my weight was that I agreed. I knew that the things they said about me were true. Forming an identity is like building a house. To be treated the way I was at that age, laid in my foundation was the belief that there was something inherently wrong about me. The way I was treated had nothing to do with what I had done; it was about my existence. For the first few years of this I was depressed. Then, to put it mildly, I became furious.
Sometime around the age of twelve, I discovered punk rock. I can’t recall my first exposure, but punk was the solution to every problem I had. I had a studded leather jacket, a mohawk, I smoked cigarettes, drank, and regularly got into fights. For the first time in my life I felt that I had control. The constant teasing I endured in elementary school instilled in me a strong idea of how my life was supposed to be. Punk offered a formula that I could use to say “fuck you” to every aspect of the life I was supposed to be living. Oddly enough, I was rarely teased after my metamorphosis. Kids were scared of me. I loved every moment.
I’m amazed by the shift in opinion others had of me. Before I was socially awkward and aloof; after, I was stoic and contemplative. Before, I was weird; after, I was eccentric and expressive. Before, I was harmless; after, I was dangerous. One of the biggest ironies from all of this is that I wanted to be invisible. Punk kids are anything but. They’re loud, colorful, aggressive, opinionated, and will do just about anything to irritate anyone. Thinking back on it now, I understand why I adopted this lifestyle, despite its inherent ironies. People felt no less disdain for me after than they did before, but that judgment had changed. There was never a word said about my weight, or my demeanor. They talked about my hair, my clothes, or that I was a Marlboro-smoking 12 year old. What they didn’t understand (and neither did I) was that my lifestyle was chosen to be a decoy, and they aimed right for it. The focus was on me, but it wasn’t. I could rationalize their judgments of my choices (I invited it), but I couldn’t separate myself from judgments of my body. I realize now that Punk gave me a unique power: control of what people thought of me.
What the Hell is Wrong With You, Hipster?
It all begins with an idea.
Hipsters are a mystery to me. I can identify with so much of the culture but I haven’t the slightest clue why. Self knowledge is, without exception, the quality I strive hardest to distill from my experiences, and the quality I admire most in others. Many times I have asked myself, when observing or remembering someone’s actions, what possessed them to choose an action above other possibilities. I have choices. We have choices. We make choices, and we make them because there are options. The way I speak, walk, react, eat, or anything is rooted in a kernel of my humanity, shaped by the miraculous randomness of my upbringing, and filtered through my brain that will –consciously and/or unconsciously– weigh the options it is capable of imagining to choose the best course of action. If this is true –and I believe that it is– then everything a person does has a reason; a purpose. Going from living in New York, then moving to San Francisco, I have been able to witness a youth culture that constantly defies my ability to understand it. Hipsters.
Despite any assertion that the style, behavior, lifestyle, or culture of hipsters is a new invention, nearly every element of its identity is born in the past. History both distant and recent, but still rooted in another time than now. For instance, clothing. Any self-respecting hipster can likely give you a list of thrift stores that they can be organized by a variety of qualities. Hipsters talk about shopping for vintage clothing like it were sport. For Christ’s sake, there’s even a name for it; thrifting. Some places have better prices, others a better selection of pants, jackets, flannels, dress shirts, or whatever. Amongst hipsters there is a competitive spirit in finding the highest quality gear at the cheapest prices. Certain items are too rare or damaged to be able to supply a wardrobe with –shoes, for instance– and a walk through The Mission will confirm this observation. With the money they saved by buying all their trendy crap at Goodwill, they had $300 left over to buy a pair of calf-skin lumberjack boots. I’m not implying that the average hipster would avoid buying something new, but if one were to look through a typical hipster boutique, nearly all the new clothing was designed as an homage to a fashion long dead. But beyond fashion, there is the collection that makes up the identifiable and obnoxious hipster appearance.
Here are a few examples: Beards, which were obliterated in the fast money 80s; mustache fashion, which harkens back to the turn of the 20th Century; day-glow colors, which tend to be bought new as we collectively destroyed all but a few stragglers at the end of the 90s; oversized sunglasses, reminiscent of Tom Cruise in Risky Business, and there are hundreds of other variations that are never new, and always familiar. This familiarity leads me to believe that there is something deeply personal about the choices of the hipster culture, despite its overt conformity. I’m 30 years old, and I remember elements of the culture from various point in my past.
My earliest concrete memories are from the early 90’s. I was raised in the suburbs of Seattle, so mining my childhood takes me back to the years of grunge rock. One moment that persists is of a day my father took me to Pike Place Market. We had stopped into one of the many coffee shops that filled the streets bordering the market. But I only remember this because the scene is attached to my memory is of our barista. Dark and moody, she made our lattes with and unrestrained sullenness, doing her best to quell the disdain trying to escape from her like noxious gasses from a fissure in the earth. She wore a black tank top, Dr. Marten’s boots, and she had shaved the long, black hair off of the right side of her head. I remember her like I was ten years old five minutes ago. I may have been in love. That was in 1992, and I didn’t see that hairstyle again until 2010. But once I saw it, I didn’t stop seeing it. Once, then again, and another, after another, after another, until, like repeating a word until it loses all associations and meaning, the hairstyle that had forever altered my taste in women became strange and meaningless. I’ve been furious about this since.
I have had a few heated discussions around my feelings of this hairstyle. This impostor. I see it when I ride the BART, or on college students, on girls at the gym, or people waiting to order at the taco truck; and it fills me with a frustration that I haven’t been able to explain. I want to walk up to these phonies and make accusations. “Why have you do this to yourself? Are you the only one that doesn’t realize how hideous your haircut it? You should be an extra for a community theater production of The Road Warrior.” I’ve been having a hard time with this issue. Here is something that is deeply personal to me that is scattered across the metropolitan areas of the country; maybe the world. To see my memory made so drably ubiquitous cheapens it. But something I never considered until recently was whether my experience was as unique as it feels.
The svelte rebel of my memories didn’t invent her hairstyle, and she’s unlikely to be the only person that donned it. Around the country, there was likely a representative, a person or photo, who spread the rules of this fashion and others like it. How many others fell in love with a moody girl sporting a nonsensically subversive hairdo? How many girls secretly wanted to emulate her style? I can’t say anything for certain, but my brush with the ethereal clearly escaped the confines of that coffee shop.
If I am one of many that have a memory of this, once unique, style, then how can I explain its revival? I can hunt through the internet, trying to finding traces of it hiding in the basement of youth culture, hoping to find a pattern. But I know that it was as dead as her individual hairs; buried along with Mother Love Bone and Tank Girl sometime around 1995. So who exhumed it, and why? I don’t believe that human actions are ever random, so there has to be a motive. But what? Within the small boundaries of this hairstyle there wasn’t enough to explore. But within other hipster qualities there are too many familiar corpses for this all to be a coincidence.
“I cannot help fearing that men may reach a point where they look on every new theory as a danger, every innovation as a toilsome trouble, every social advance as a first step toward revolution, and that they may absolutely refuse to move at all.”
- Alexis de Tocqueville
Tocqueville never had the opportunity to meet Ann Coulter or Ted Nugent, but what he could not help fear happening has happened. Conservatives existed during his time, the early 19th Century, but only recently has the title taken on such a broad definition with so nebulous a goal. Today we can name religious conservatives, economic conservatives, moral conservatives, and throngs of other conservative that all clamor for the days of yesteryear when our lives and future were much brighter. Conservatism is, by definition, reactionary. Without a change in the world that is beyond a person’s ability to adapt, there is no reason to cling to the past, other than sentimentality and nostalgia. The petulance of Republicans fighting against the so called “welfare state”, or Evangelical Christians making a stand for “family values”, isn’t part of an argument for anything; It is made purely in opposition to change.
As much as I disagree with the arguments of most conservative Republicans and evangelical Christians, I see the logic when Ann Coulter so evasively asked in Mugged: Racial Demagoguery from the Seventies to Obama, “What about the idealized past liberals cling to?” The conservative Right gets a tremendous amount of attention from the progressive Left for being the barricade to social change. I doubt either side would disagree with that statement, but conservatives are not isolated to backwater, fly-over states or catered board meetings. Conservatives can be found in the Mission District of San Francisco, Williamsburg in New York City, or any other metropolitan area, domestically and internationally. Hiding in plain sight, hipsters.
My saying that hipsters are inherently conservative is likely to bring me a lot negative feedback, but there are qualities that they share with groups that we can all agree are conservative. Fashion is an obvious example. There are an increasing number of people arguing that culture has run out ways to reinvent itself, but regardless, fashion has evolved without the hipsters’ participation. Their fashion is no more new than Frankenstein was born. The combination is new, but the elements are not. As much as I enjoyed hearing “Sweet Dreams” by The Eurythmics laid over “Seven Nation Army” by The White Stripes, was this a new song birthed from two disparate parents? I certainly don’t think so. But either way, there is something comforting and familiar about it, and I believe it exists for those reasons.
Comfort is a dwindling resource. The world is changing faster than any commentator or speculator can predict, and it’s moving in directions that get bleaker before they brighter. For many, it’s a shitty time to be young. The industries of today are the relics of tomorrow, and the days are getting shorter. It’s been an American truism that the children of the middle class will find security in a college education that, by only possessing it, will bring them an income that will sustain their lives into the unseen but predicable future. I was told this. My working class girlfriend –who is the only member of her family to go to college– was also told this. Now that we have bought an education, we, like millions of other youth, are finding that prosperity to be more legend that truth. Despite all the talk of “job creation” and the diminishing unemployment rate, even economists can’t say for sure what why the rate is dropping. The unknown variable is the discouraged worker. Nobody knows how many people have just stopped looking for a job. Here on the ground, the situation hasn’t started looking any brighter. So what does this have to do with hipsters being conservative or mysterious brunettes puling shots of coffee? Maladjustment.
If there is a quality universal to conservatives it’s maladjustment. The world has changed beyond our ability to adapt, and this is terrifying. Pessimism is quantifiable, and hope always contains a degree of irrational faith. The educated tend to be secular, agnostic, or atheist, and within something a faith to rest their troubles on, hipsters are left on with the cold facts of logic. Logic, unfortunately, relies on a learned set of tools by which to make sense of the world. For many of us, we were taught to use tools that were useful in a time that has now passed. We were told to get an education, which would get us a job, that would secure us an income, that would bring us a great life or at least stave off the terror that comes from teetering on the edge of poverty. I’m not the only one trying to make my way in the world, and finding that I am completely unprepared for it. Nobody every taught me how to pay my bills when there isn’t a job to be found for my skill-set.
I have felt disdain towards hipsters that, at moments, has bordered on disgust. There is something about the culture that is both impersonal and familiar. That dissonance frustrates me. Walking through the Mission I see someone with my father’s mustache, my grandfather’s shirt, the mothers brooch, or my grandmother’s sundress. Across the street is someone in Kurt Cobane’s jeans, along with Burt Reynold’s aviators, and Michael Jordan’s sweatbands. He is walking with a girl in Patty Smith’s leather jacket, Daisy Duke’s shorts, Audrey Hepburn’s flats, with that haircut of the barista that made my latte in 1992. They are on the way to eat my mother’s macaroni and cheese from a food truck, to then wash it down with the Pabst Blue Ribbon I stole from my father in high school. The iconography of this youth culture is familiar and comforting because it keeps my attachments to a time when my future was still a guarantee. There was a time when my parents and teachers told me I could do anything, be anything, go anywhere, and live any life I could imagine. Despite the efforts my efforts, and the efforts of millions of others –who are trying to survive, while maintaining our sense of dignity– we are painfully unprepared for the situation we are in. We’re lost. These cultural mementos are the only things that we have left.
Children Are Monsters
Children are monsters. Other than that, I have very few thoughts that I can trace back to my childhood; most of my memories come as flashes of emotion scattered in a montage of vague images. Of these reflections, those that exist in their clearest and most vivid form are the sadistic behaviors of school children. This isn’t to say that I never had a tender or endearing moment, but those times blur into obscurity under the weight of every negatively reinforced social experience. From that, most of what I remember can be divided by one of two focal points: problems from being fat, or from being quiet. My childhood was not a happy one. Everyone deals with cruelty at some point, and we all have a threshold for how much of it we can withstand. I reached my high water mark around the age of 12.
Like many other children, in my most ambitious dreams I was normal. Overweight, socially awkward, and speechless aren’t qualities that a person’s would generally call desirable, though they were qualities that kids generally used to describe me. Most of my teachers found me unique and precocious, but because I lived on the floor of the elementary school pecking order, I could not possibly care less about what any adult thought of me. I had bigger concerns. In every school, there are children that love nothing more than to remind everyone how they embody the tip of the social bell curve, usually by shaming anyone that deviates from that homogeneity. I, unfortunately, was that outlier.
If someone had told me I was stupid, I wouldn’t have been happy, but I could have defended myself. The really insidious effect of being teased for my weight or my conversation skills was that I identified with every epithet. I knew that what they said about me was true, because it was. Forming an identity is like building a house, and the only building material I knew how to use was vitriol. By receiving poor treatment at such a formative age, laid in my foundation was the belief that there was something inherently wrong about me. Those children’s judgments had nothing to do with what I had done; it was about who I was. During the first few years that I endured, when I wasn’t suicidal I was depressed. But at some point, I realized that I wasn’t the problem. They were. Then, to put it mildly, I became furious.
Around the age of 12, I discovered the solution to every problem I had ever had. With loud hair, loud clothes, loud music, a foul mouth, and a bad attitude, I immediately fell in love with punk rock. For most of my life, I did anything to get permission to not be treated horribly. The anger, resentment, and disillusion that I accumulated had become the fuel that drove me. The only behavior I strove for was aggression, and my dress changed into a collage of nature’s warning signs. I sheltered myself in a leather jacket peppered with rows of sharp studs, my clothes were either day-glow or black, my mohawk came in artificial colors, I spoke in grows, and I breathed smoke. If I wasn’t in school —which was happening regularly— I was likely drunk, looking for a fight, being chased around Seattle like an escaped zoo animal, or a combination of the three. For the first time in my life, I felt that I had control.
Oddly enough, I was rarely teased after my metamorphosis. Most kids were scared of me, and I loved that. Positive or negative, everyone’s opinion of me had shifted. Where before I was seen as socially awkward and aloof; after, I was viewed as stoic and contemplative. Weird became eccentric; peculiar became expressive; harmless became dangerous. My life had changed for the ironic. One of the biggest paradoxes was that I original wanted invisibility, but I have couldn’t have possibly made myself more conspicuous. Punk is loud, colorful, aggressive, opinionated, and punks will do just about anything to irritate anyone. Thinking back on that phase of my life, I understand why I adopted a flamboyant and antisocial lifestyle. I was making the social equivalent of driving into the skid.
People felt no less disdain for me after my transformation than before, but their judgments weren’t the same. There was never a word said about my weight, or how little I chose to interact with others. They talked about my hair, my clothes, or that I was a Marlboro-smoking 12 year old. What they didn’t understand —nor did I— was that my lifestyle was meant to be a decoy. My persecutors were no longer judging me, but my shell. And that shell was deliberately made thick. For my entire life, I felt a constant pressure to aspire to some idealized version of who I was supposed to be. But the more I tried, the louder I was reminded of my failures. I would never be the star quarterback, be voted “most likely to be handsome”, have some remember my birthday, or hold hands with someone that wasn’t my mother. But then punk came along. Now I could meet every demand the world made of me by picking my nose in its general direction, giving it a big, heartfelt, “Go fuck yourself.” I was free.
Little Billy
Hello Little Billy,
Do grown-ups ask you, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” It’s a very important question. Do you know the answer, Little Billy? I bet some of your friends know. They probably want to be rockstars, presidents, actors, FBI agents, or someone that has lots of friends and money. That’s good. Do any of them want to be writers? I didn’t either. When I was your age, I wanted to be a rockstar. I imagined myself playing my electric guitar in front of thousands of my screaming fans. The first thing I had to do was learn to play a guitar. My mom bought me one for my birthday, and I played it all day long. If I was going to be a rockstar, I needed to practice. Have you heard someone say, “Practice makes perfect”? If you want to become good at anything, that’s what you need to do. Practice, practice, practice, and more practice. But there’s more to it than that.
Little Billy, I’m going to share a secret with you. I bet grown-ups tell you, “You have to work hard to be successful.” That’s true, but hard work isn’t everything. Successful people are naturally good at what they do, and this is called “talent”. If you work hard enough, you can do anything. But if you want to be great, you need to have talent. Everyone has one, but most people don’t know it, or they don’t see it. Remember that, Little Billy.
When I wanted to be a rockstar I practiced all day long. When I got good enough I joined a band. We made a CD, played some concerts, and went on tour. But nobody told me that I was good guitar player. Do you know why nobody told me that, Little Billy? It was because I was a bad musician. I knew how to play the guitar, but I didn’t know how to make music. Believe me, there’s a difference.
After a few years, I stopped playing the guitar, and tried to be a lot of other things. I was a chef, a DJ, a nightclub manager, a farmer, a butcher, an accountant, a salesperson, and I even went to school to be a doctor. I spent a few years working in each of these professions, but I noticed that other people (who worked as hard as I did) got all the compliments. People liked what they did because they were using their talents. I never thought about what my talents were before I noticed that.
When I was a little boy, my teachers used to tell me that I was a good writer. One of my teachers even called my parents to tell them I should become a writer. I didn’t think about it too much. When I got older, and got a job, sometimes I would have to write. During the times when I was in college (there were a few), I had to write all the time. The pages that I wrote always got more attention than anything else that I did. This confused me. I spent my time practicing anything but writing, but people knew me for what I wrote, not what I practiced. I never wanted to be a writer. I wanted to do something fun and exciting. If I couldn’t get dirty, stay up late, using bad language, or work myself to the brink of insanity I didn’t how I could enjoy myself. Writing was really boring. But it was also the only thing I seemed to have any talent for.
There will be a day when you hear the phrase, “Do what you love and you’ll never work a day in your life.” Do you know what “bullshit” is, Little Billy? I loved every career I had but it always became work. If you can’t beat the last level of a video game, no matter how hard you try, then you know what I felt like. I kept working, harder and harder, but I could never reach the point that I wanted to get to.
People love to do the activity that feels right to them. There are lots of reasons why someone could feel that way, but most people won’t be able to see it when it happens. They expect that it will look like something that it isn’t. They will think that they want to do something more exciting, something that will make them famous, or maybe something that will make them rich. Very few people will do something because they are talented at it. Many people told me that I needed to write, but I never wanted to. When I finally tried it, everything made sense. Do you know what confusion is, Little Billy? It’s what you feel when you put on your sister’s clothes and look into the mirror. Well… I suppose it could be what you feel when you put on yourclothes. I’m going to let you figure that one out. You’ve got options.
Just keep one thing in mind; Successful people do the things that they are good at. They do it over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over, and over…….