WE ARE HERE TO MAKE WORDS.

I wanted to be an astronaut until I realized that I sucked at math.  That was the fourth grade.  I’d failed the same stupid test for the third time in a row, consequently developing a deep, psychological hated for red ink pens…

My next “when-I-grow-up moment” didn’t really come until high school, when I decided I was either gonna be the guy who made monster suits and spaceships on movie sets, or I was gonna be a writer.  I’d been writing since I could hold a Crayon and figured it was as good a destiny as any.

I was still a freshman in high school when I typed up a nine page short story about a guy who drove around the country hunting down the losers of a state-sanctioned lottery as an alternative to global thermonuclear warfare.  I sent the story to my parents, who unbeknownst to me sent it to a publisher, who in turn called me up and told me that if I finished the story before the end of the summer, I’d have myself a book deal.  I panicked, blindly polishing every spark of creativity out of the story, missed the deadline and shelved it forever.

But the experience gave me a real push toward words.  From that point on, I became obsessed with writing.  Maybe this was a doable destiny!  I started forming the idea in my head that if I just focused on this lone and immaculate objective, I’d someday perform a great and magnificent feat: I envisioned doing something amazing, something that could change the course of history and unite the world in a common emotion, like an athlete who trains their whole life for one shining moment while overcoming great obstacles along the way.

I decided that I wanted to be able to express human emotion in a way that no one had ever done before.

Still in high school, I looked into haiku on the advice of a much-respected English teacher, quickly becoming a fan of the medium’s prison shiv beauty — short, sharp and, inserted just beneath the ribcage, designed to take your breath away.

In just seventeen
syllables, I swore I could
smell cherry blossoms.

As you can imagine, I was crap at writing haiku.  Everything I wrote looked suspiciously like something someone else had already written a long time ago and I felt ashamed.  Plus, I’d made the mistake of telling the wrong people my dreams.  Presently I gave up on haiku.  Why not?  I was nowhere near a temple, and there were no monks to guide me.  Sweeping the floor was just sweeping the floor, and a glass of water was just a stupid fucking goddamn glass of water.

Still obsessed with words, I then had the notion that a person could somehow open their mouth and let brand new sounds tumble forth — words and phrases never before spoken by a human mouth, in any language, by any race, anywhere on the face of the Earth.  Beyond dead languages, beyond glossololia.  I thought that maybe the key to expression was locked inside this new box…

Except I had no database or monthly scientific journals to base my findings upon.  So I made a lot of retarded noises and jotted them down, hoping one of them might be even slightly virginal in nature.

(It’s no wonder that I remained in a similar physical state until I was in my early 20s.)

After that, I wanted to come up with an answer for the question of why we find some people more attractive than others.  I thought that maybe it had something to do with the measurements of the human face — the height, width or angle of the nose, the spacing of the features, the length of the jawline, the width of the mouth, or the specific color of the eyes.  What if all these factors added up to some sacred number, one that doomed a small group destined to succumb as prey to holy integers?  Years later, I would find this on the internet:

It’s nice to know that as an adolescent, I wasn’t completely off the mark; just off my rocker.  And understandably horny.

Following high school, I gave up on my dream of being a special effects artist.  It seemed the only way to achieve this was to move to Los Angeles and hang around on movie sets until I found someone to teach me.  Instead, I applied and was accepted to a prestigious Midwest art college.  I was hopeful — until they told me how much it would cost.  So I revisited my writing dream and, after reading too much Hunter S. Thompson, decided I wanted to be a war correspondent.

And Uncle Sam was gonna fund it, because I sure as fuck couldn’t.

At first I considered a stint in the army, or maybe the Marines.  I’d need to learn some very valuable survival skills before setting out into the wild.  I had a vision of myself in four or five years time; a half-smoked cigarette permanently attached to my bottom lip, a gaggle of battered cameras slung around my neck, an ancient carbine across my back, dust-caked goggles pushed high on my forehead, and an ancient Underwood under one arm.  Once I finished my enlistment, I’d take any assignment, no matter how dangerous.  And wandering to some of Earth’s far-flung shit holes, I’d explore the last remaining exotic lands still hidden from the light of Western progress.  I would write stories about the things I saw there, and take photographs of the fascinating people I met.

And one day I would simply miss my deadline, never be heard from again.  That was my retirement plan.

I was not yet 21.

So I approached several recruiters and attempted to make an intelligent decision based on the horrible lies they were paid to tell me.  I tested well, and applied for jobs in photography, journalism and for some reason, cryptology.  But the recruiters all told me those fields were closed, and that I should pick something else.  We went round and round in this manner until finally, disgusted and hopeless, I stormed into an office and spoke thusly to a Navy recruiter:

“I want the most far-flung, whacked-out job you have, something that will take me to the far side of the globe, without threatening to bring me one inch closer to the chair I’m sitting in.”  And that’s the story of how I never became an astronaut, or a war correspondent, or the guy who makes monster suits or spaceships for movies.

Had I known that recruiters are instructed to ‘guide’ people into certain job fields where their respective service was experiencing shortages, or had I only been willing to wait.  Well, the outcome might have been different.

Instead, I went to Europe and built bombs for four years.

I’m pleased to say that the desire to write came with me.  I started keeping a journal just after high school, and I took it with me where ever I roamed.

Journal writing frustrated the fuck out of me at first.  I lacked skill, and I was impatient.  I was in a big damn hurry to write perfect things and powerful sentiments.  I didn’t know the first fucking thing about real writing but I still wanted to do something amazing, something so insightful that it could lift the veil of reality, and part the curtain to another world.  I wanted to write modern spells and conjure new truths.

I wanted to surpass all previously written works for their ability to inspire and split foreheads with the lightning of the profound.  I didn’t even know what the fuck I was gonna write about, but I figured that once people read these holy words the message would spread like wildfire…

The world would lay down arms.  Millions of people would wake from a terrible dream, weeping and gnashing their teeth.  The leaders of the world would turn to one another and exclaim, “Goddamn, but we’ve been going about this all wrong!  The last book has been written, all words can rest!  We must now aspire to fuck one another with the cock of peace and harvest grain together under the same sun, washing our clothes together in the great river and turning our swords back to plowshares yet again.  God won’t save the world.  Science won’t save the world.  The earth plain-ass wasn’t meant to be saved.  This book has said everything we’ve been trying to say, everything we ever thought about saying, and everything we probably would have said in the next ten thousand years, but didn’t know it yet!”

Sure, I was a pretentious ass.  I wanted to write magic holes through mountains, and weave spells, blah, blah, blah.  But I also genuinely wanted to understand beauty, and lust, and savagery.  I secretly hoped I’d go crazy when I got old so I could map my experience in a journal, holding on clarity like a fading lamplight as I ventured down that last and darkest of tunnels.  I was convinced that there was so much more to the world, but I didn’t know how to express it beyond my diet of tabloid headlines, song lyrics and science fiction movies.  Sometimes the words were right there on the tip of my tongue.  I wanted to be able to communicate anything to anyone, and make the whole world understand everything.

But how could I?  I didn’t understand myself, and I couldn’t separate myself from what I wanted to write about.  I didn’t know where to begin, or where I ended.  I didn’t know jack shit.

So I kept writing.

I continued to write through my early twenties, but without success.  Journals came and journals went.  I wrote letters about this, that and the other thing.  My friends were full of praise, and they let me live in the world I’d created.  I was The Writer.

I devoted years of attention to the recommended greats – the Beats, those who’d come before me and who by measure of their poverty and fearlessness were far more devoted to the craft than I knew how to be, each of them a pioneer in some regard.  They explored and exploited their own wormhole, staking their claim to a particular voice or style one step ahead of the gold rush.

The voices that called loudest to me were: drugs, music, sex, and road trips – oh, my!  And the strangest of those voices?  Assassins.  (Giant fucking millipedes??  Really??)

I wasn’t prepared to give up on writing, but I also realized I wasn’t very good.  Still, I promised myself one drunken night in a land very far away that if I ever became homeless I’d still carry a pen and a piece of paper.  “You can abandon your work, but your work will never abandon you.”

Years passed, and I thought that perhaps stronger measures were called for.  Suppose I made a Robert Johnson deal with You-Know-Who, and waited my turn at the midnight crossroads, armed with the wing of a bat and the eyes of a newt.  Would the Horned One grant me my deepest desire based on the strength of a pinkie swear, or was I going to have to slit my palm with a crude dagger carved from the jaw bone of a murdered stag?  Headless hooves stomping in the bloodied winter grass, the end result of my quest to harness above as the below…

But I didn’t believe in the Devil, and I didn’t actually think I could murder a stag.  So that plan was out.

Time passed.  Journals were purchased and filled.  The majority were dog-eared, covered in duct tape and existed pretty much as ad space for my ego, their pages weighted with stapled concert stubs, proclamations, one-liners written on airliners, photographs of models, quotes torn from magazines, strange things and coffee rings, but mostly drunken heartache.  Twenty years, nine countries, five states, three islands, one Indian reservation, and one snow globe later, and still I have no idea of what I was trying to say.

My apartment is pitch black tonight, and my hands look so much older by the glow of this laptop screen.  Time is out there, snorting and stomping the snow, exhaling demons from its nostrils, waiting… sometimes I think I can almost feel it at my elbow.

Like right now.

I’ll be 40 in a few months, and no closer to writing anything more powerful than a good one-liner.  In the absence of my all-powerful epic, I’ve managed one novel, sixty short stories and thanks to a second enlistment in the other nautical-sounding of our Armed Forces, a stack of official-sounding press releases — none of which has ever escaped being disemboweled by a red pen.

There is the known, which we sometimes tire of.  And then there’s the rest of it.

All I’ve learned about life is that I don’t know much.  And from what I can tell, neither does anyone else.  Everything we think we know takes place on this planet, and in this dimension.  We are born here, and we die here.  We are bound to this rock.  The stories we tell are of this world, for this world, and by this world.  They describe our experiences in this dimension, and how we live this life.  And we know only these stories and their endless spin-offs.  We’ve described our home to death, and pretty much worn out our tongues.  I don’t think there are any virginal sounds left.

I recently deleted The Doors from my music collection, but I’ll give Jim Morrison one last nod: “No one gets out of here alive.”

There’s no such thing as magic, only science we haven’t figured out yet.  Emotions are not facts, and love – as much as you wish it wasn’t true – is purely chemical.  Relationships are all about timing, security and chemistry.  And one man’s words aren’t gonna change the world, so long as there are people around to disagree with them.

Being successful in this life only means that your physical needs and comforts will be taken care of while you’re alive; inhabiting your body, existing in this dimension and playing your role in this traveling production.

The pawn and the bishop go back in the same box when the game is over.

But there has to be more!  Something just beyond, something left behind, maybe something we’ve forgotten?  I feel as though we’re living in a collective dream, standing tall on the edge of a trance:  All the while you thought you were having a lengthy conversation with Iggy Pop in a half empty bar late one summer night in 1993, in reality you’ve been standing in the checkout line of a Memphis convenience store for the past ten minutes, transfixed by the mutated face staring back at you from a Pringles can on the conveyor belt, and frankly people are beginning to notice…

In the end, maybe Words have failed me.  Maybe I failed the Words.  Maybe there was nothing to fail.  George Washington Carver once said that if you love something long enough, it would give up its secrets.  Was I deemed not worthy to peek behind the curtain?  Did I perform the wrong spells?  Whatever the reason, whenever the moment, when it came time to select my Holy Path, I chose the soft option.

And so my reward was a different life.  Instead of leaving this world on a pillar of fire to walk among the stars; instead of traveling to distant lands and capturing beauty reserved for only the bravest; instead of a day-to-day fight for survival and a life lived on the edge of a fast-moving knife; instead of summoning sentences both sage and surreal, crafting tales with the power of the Old Gods like the Jackie Chan of Juxtaposition, or the Wolverine of the Who, What, Where, Why and When…

Instead, I’m writing this blog.

Thanks for reading.

(There may be secrets left, but I’ll be damned if I know where to look for them.)

All Hallow’s Eve in Voodoo City

'Something, something, the pain of being a man...'

27OCT07 – Alexandria, VA – There’s just something about the view from the roof of my building. Looking out over the traffic lights is like trying to read the mind of the city computer, watching an endless wave of little red lights bob along the river of night. Some of those lights seek pleasure, some of those lights are working, and some of those lights have nothing else to do, and nowhere else to go. Somewhere is a man who can read those tail lights like Braille. Maybe it’s just me, but in another lifetime.

I’m packed and ready for tomorrow, though I’m not sure what to expect. Everyone I’ve talked to seems excited for me. “New Orleans? Oh, you’ll have fun! You can walk around naked with a cold drink in each hand, and no one will stop you!”

It sounds a bit overwhelming, to tell the truth. My knee jerk response is to lock myself into my hotel room, order a pizza and watch the Sci-Fi channel, occasionally peering through the blinds at the mayhem far below. Large groups of drunken people make me nervous. I’m always worried that I’ll be the victim of a pickpocket, or find myself cowering in the filthiest corner of a dead end alley, arms around my head, surrounded by an organized gang of inner-city sixth graders as they take turns puncturing my chest with a homemade knife, my plaintive cries for help drowned out by bad rock music and shouts of “Take it off!”

None of that seems possible tonight, not in this silence. The sky is on fire, a perfect progression of golden orange that fades to silver and midnight blue. Far overhead, the cold black of deep space is looking back at me, monstrous, terrible, beautiful and ancient.

Watching stars and planes/
drawing quadrilaterals/
on the night’s blackboard.

I used my last $10 to buy a greasy double bacon cheeseburger and a large order of fries from a place called Five Guys located just down the street from me. I know I should’ve saved that money for something else, but I can’t help think that one day I’ll be too feeble to eat anything more than gruel. In a sense, that’s a small part of the meaning of life – sometimes you just gotta eat it over the sink.

Next morning, riding the Yellow line train towards Ronald Reagan International Airport, carrying enough gear to start an invasion – or document one, anyway. A sign above me reads: “Words can’t describe what your eyes bring to life.” I think that’s the secret of language, why a picture is equal to a thousand words and not the other way around.

It’s raining finally, the reset switch on a weird week. Nothing tangible about it, not in any measurable sense of the word. I suppose your high-powered business execs would be quick to point out that if you couldn’t measure it, it didn’t really exist. I beg to differ. Suppose that ‘Weird Feeling A35′ influenced you to make ‘Impulse Decision Q36′. Since one is a direct result of the other, doesn’t that make it measurable and therefore real?

Now on Flight 3419 to New Orleans – somebody said something to me at a party a few nights ago. “Washington D.C. will make you mean.” I’m starting to understand that a little. Some son of a bitch on this plane smells like they threw up in their seat and tried to mop it up with a wet dog. Thankfully, it’s a short flight and I’ve been asleep for most of it.

(I’ve been dreaming about a strange machine lately; a low-slung thing with a centerline cockpit that handles like a Mini Cooper and takes the straightaway like a Formula One. It requires a special suit and helmet to keep you plugged in, and the reflexes of an 8-year-old jacked on pure Colombian marching powder just to drive it. With large tires and a short wheel base, it’s meant to negotiate between large numbers of similar vehicles, jockeying for position as they run like hell toward a finish line that never seems to appear. I’ve been driving it in my head, building it bit by bit on the way to work each morning. It makes a high pitch whine, and it can be refueled on the fly. Does that make sense?)

28OCT07 – Bourbon Street, New Orleans. Sitting in a derelict doorway hunched over my journal, the ink pen in my hand doing a furious little St Vitus dance in an attempt to keep up. It would seem that the Big Easy has returned home. The sights, the smells, the sounds. All of it. I’ve seen very little proof of the Flood. Walking along this ancient avenue is like writing out a shopping list for a Good Time. It’s all here; music, drinks, laughter, good food, bright colors, and the wall-to-wall promise of sex. But going grocery shopping when you’ve already eaten makes all of these seem like an impulse purchase, mints and magazines at the register. Love has finally found me, and I walk peacefully at the side of my lion.

Signs of this city’s age are everywhere, but what seems ancient to us is but infancy to Western Europeans. I scoured the Voodoo stores looking for something different, but found nothing that caught my eye, nothing one-of-a-kind. And who’s left to believe in Voodoo when we’ve got WiFi and cell phones? All of science has its backwoods roots in redneck magic, like the MIT grad student who returns home to the hollers of West Virginia from whence he came. Eat the pies, meet the nephews, pay your respects and get to the airport on time, back to this century as fast as humanly fucking possible. So I skipped on the plastic trinkets for tonight, placeholders for a greater emotion. And besides, when the hell would I wear a t-shirt that read ‘Fuck you, you fucking fuck – New Orleans’? A state dinner, perhaps.

The streets are crawling with a spectrum of spectators. In a way, they’re like boat riders. The young bow riders sit way in the front, their face full into the swamp and spray, searching for a cheap thrill. Brash bold ignorance is bliss to those who’d trade every clean pore on their bodies for the promise of a good time, determined to live each night as though it were the Last of the Fun.

Then there’s the well-heeled convention attendees, sitting safe amidships; the type of person who’d send their food back at a fine restaurant in order to impress a client. They make idle talk about this and that as they stride carefully down the middle of the street, avoiding the barkers but peering carefully in through the doorways. Their gold-ringed fingers trail the water in search of something shocking, something dirty, something unbelievable. They seek scandalous cannon fodder for the water cooler face-off come Monday morning, stories of decadence designed to make their corn-fed co-workers shake their heads in disbelief. “Can you imagine? What are these people thinking? What ever happened to Jesus?”

Far and beyond, the strangest animal in the zoo is the Roman, the streetlight drunk, the burned out local, stumbling from place to place with one hand out for spare change and nothing to offer in return but a slurred grin and a funny story, a ragtag figure not entirely certain of his own name. When the Hopefuls and the Well-Heeled retire to their air conditioned rooms and busy schedules, the Roman will still be here, stumbling down these beer-stained cobblestone streets with a few crumpled bills in his hand, his synapses half-firing like an old engine.

Still, it’s no place to judge. People have always sought distraction from the drudgery of the Big Machine, and Bourbon Street is where you find it.

31OCT07 – Lobby of the Marriott, Canal Street, New Orleans. No matter what I do, where I go, I tend to dress as though something were going to happen. Bring a camera, bring pen and paper. Bring a bottle of water, some mints, a cutting and prying tool of some kind. Carry a lighter at home, matches when I fly. Tie my shoes tightly, check my pockets. Be aware of my surroundings, maintain situational awareness. Keep a clean bandana in my right hip pocket, fully charged cell phone in my left, wallet in my right. Take only what I need, leave the rest with my tickets and my passport hidden in my hotel room, the door locked. My clothes are clean, but non-descript. My shoes fit most occasions; comfortable enough to walk in and sturdy enough if I have to run. I am the product of a lifetime spent watching spy thrillers. Remember to have a good time, but keep your head screwed on tight…

Tonight is no exception. Halloween on Bourbon Street – I’m bringing my camera, and emptying my bag except for the basics: flashlight, blue and red lenses, a small First-aid kit, a black towel to cushion the camera (it’s a big universe – you’ve got to know where your towel is!) pens, and my notebook. Wear the bag high on my body, easy to protect in the crowd. Cell phone in the pouch across my chest, so I can feel the vibration of an incoming call like a tiny heart attack.

The air in the lobby is civilized – it’s only 6:45. By 10 or 11 p.m., this place will be a heaving madhouse of a drunken freak show. I want to be in a position to harvest the data, and document everything. I should look into getting a balcony, and in hindsight, I should have brought the Nikon. Just didn’t feel like carrying all the extra gear.

It’s funny how we see the same people over and over throughout our lives. Across the lobby, I can see a woman I thought I worked with back in 1989, my first job at a movie theater on the east side of Columbus. Kathy Something? I’m not sure, but I know she was dating some scrawny little fuck named Billy. That’s all I remember, and even that I’m not sure about. I suppose if I walked over, the mirage would fade away and I’d look bit of a stalker trying to re-acquaint myself with a perfect stranger. Time passes, memories shift, and you can never step twice in the same river. You can never go home again – you have to call it something else.
I walked the length of Bourbon Street about eight times that night, my head moving from side to side in search of Weird, or anything that caught my eye. My Fuji was too slow to catch the true light, and again, I kicked myself for not packing my Nikon; it’s a faster camera, takes better images, and comes with more options. Either way, there was too much to see, and no end in sight.

There were masks and costumes representing every color, sexual appetite, and television and movie personality; an endless throng of inebriation, novelty, originality, magic, blood and horror. Sheep fuckers to the right of me, dirty nurses to the left, pregnant nuns on the balcony, and werewolves in the gutter.

Professional wrestlers clogged the sidewalk taking pictures of Mexican wrestlers taking pictures of the Jedi knight in the crosswalk. I posed with a deceased Gonzo journalist on one street corner, and photographed zombie cheerleaders on the next.

I saw wizards falling from their barstools, Gypsy queens smiling back at me, breakfast cereals throwing beads to Crayons on the prowl, fresh fruit kissing, giant bongs laughing, and I stepped aside just in time to avoid a getting run over by a fleet of leather men roaring past on brightly lit Harleys, the growl of their engines rattling windows for blocks around. I spoke to demons, and watched a group of men dressed as housewives screaming for topless cowboys who danced for bottomless businessmen who drank Martini’s, while the Pope served Hand Grenades.

I was nearly run over by horse-mounted patrolmen. There was a sudden sensation of something large and ominous breathing down my neck, and I turned around just in time to see this giant fucking beast taking yet another step toward me, with no where to duck, hide or run to. Too fast, even to get a shot. I gave money to and photographed performing robots, southern belles, tap-dancing children, dead musicians, Norse gods smoking cigarettes, and was personally flipped off by the vice-president. I watched a tall, thin drink of a girl dressed as Rainbow Brite draw hungry stares from every wild-eyed dyke who passed her.

It seemed that there was always a bigger wave just behind the next one, and soon I lost track of the individual. It was like watching the Discovery Channel, Animal Planet, Fox News, CNN, HBO and QVC all together on one perfect plasma screen, each channel howling for attention, battling for supremacy of your eyes and ears, and it didn’t stop till 4 a.m. I, however, called it quits at 11:45, too tired to walk any further, and too goddamn over-stimulated to care.

01NOV07 – Mothers Restaurant, 401 Poydras St., La., a diner steeped in tradition. The menu on the wall dating back to 1944 and signed by the owner recalls a time when black coffee was black coffee, and it only cost you a nickel a cup. Basic eats; good food. I had a Creole shrimp omelet with a side of grits, a cup of strong black coffee, and a piece of pecan pie.

Later that day, my companions and I found Café Du Monde, which promises and delivers café au lait and fresh bignettes twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. The thought that you can have fresh elephant ears and a strong coffee at any hour of the day or night is a comforting thought, and I entertained the thought of a three-month stay, living in a tiny apartment somewhere in the French Quarter with only the contents of my suitcase to comfort me as I documented the stories of a handful of these tragic Romans. Incidentally, I’ve asked my cab driver, the doorman at my hotel and a number of street vendors what it was like during Katrina, but they all told me that they came later.

I spent my last day in New Orleans walking the streets with a pocket full of dollar bills to give to the street performers in exchange for a good picture.

P.S. They serve soul food in the departure lounge.

TWM