Isn't it a little odd to see a Kangaroo in the Northern California Forest:

Isn't it a little odd to see a Kangaroo
in the Northern California Forest?

  

"I've spent most of my life avoiding jail time and criminal trouble. I've gotten pretty good at it, and been cheered and supported by most of my friends who've done the same. What makes no sense to me is, when someone is caught for a crime where we all want to find a guilty party, why are there mobs screaming the cry of injustice when no real case can be found for conviction?

If you're going to scream and cry for the not guilty to be found guilty, or for the mismanagement of case evidence, or shoddy police work, then may no one sit to listen to you whine the next time you're sobering up in a drunk tank for having one beer too many." 

It's one of the only, real, things I've written in months as I chase around this wild jackrabbit of life. Everyone always expects something these days.. Frankly, I don't see anything wrong with this plan -- I've always been exceptionally good at responding to spontaneous stimuli --  but what troubles me is that service seems to be needed at all; as if, somehow, all the sails and winds of life have been snatched up and stolen away, leaving an ocean of motionless sails and dehydrated sailors.

I've never understood why this service is in such short supply, or why the ability itself is so stunted. I've wasted many hours, postulating by 'old timey', as the locals call them, drinks -- the kind of thing you add a dash of bitters to and have taste like nothing but juice when they'll get you fully loaded --just trying to figure out what the problem is and why it's so bad. I thought, maybe, it was television, perhaps the news, or even a fear of one's own mortality that had blindly herded us into patterns of sedition from our own roots, but none of that made sense. After months of searching, I've come no closer to finding an answer and I'm not sure I ever will either.

I've never been one of those people, the kind who can't seem to make rhyme or reason out of existence or respond positively to the random happenstance that really makes up life. It's the things you never expect that have the greatest potential to motivate you -- even if they lead you down a road of damnation, to a place where paranoia sometimes runs rampant and you're left looking over you shoulder looking for some rabid, wandering, marsupial that is hell bent on consuming your very existence.

This is, fundamentally, why I want to visit Australia. It's a metaphorical embodiment of a lifestyle that is impossible to capture any other way. It's harsh, unforgiving, completely unpredictable, but absolutely beautiful.  It's raw in its form, but poetic in execution. It's one of the only places left on the planet where you can find a co-mingling of tribal roots and modern urban excess. It's not the kind of cheap, trumped up, theatrics you'd expect to see on a Vegas stage either, oh no, this is the real stuff. It's where life is life and the strong get eaten by hordes of the week, where new inventions rot the old, social, customs, and where all crime is punished by severe lashings with a sea salted whip. 

All of this is just fine with me, honestly. They say the road from hell -- and I honestly don't know what else you could consider this representational world we live in -- is anything but short and easy, and I've always been okay with that. I've found nothing in life where the reward hasn't been directly proportionate to the investment -- if not the risk. It's why I've always gone for the big money. I have no time to nickel and dime bet my way through life. I'll play big, win big and-- as long as my credit's good -- play with as many chips as I can borrow, beg, or steal. It's why I've always respected the game of high stakes poker. Play Big, or go home.

Life doesn't award us any other luxury odd. Everything's a once in a lifetime chance, and each and every one of them is worth being taken. It's one of those high stakes tables, filled with every manner of random drunk and fool who's struck it big in the most recent turns, ready to lose it all with one bad throw of the dice. It's the lonesome drifters, those wayward, quiet, souls rolling in for one last toss of the dice, hoping to land the last, great, score before turning their cowboy boots toes up in the sand.

It's an addictive, harrowing, ride and it'll leave you aged, like leather left out for years in the hot, Nevada, sun. Imagine a lifetime of desert driving, top down, head shaved, living on the borrowed promise of loud music and sunscreen free thinking; it's just this kind of life that will turn your skin to aged, brown, paper and leave all your wild ideas like faded articles to a, long forgotten, constitutional right to dream. After all, it's your right to dream of motor cars and high wages, to dream of a social order in which each man and each woman shall be able to attain to the fullest stature of which they are innately capable, to dream of being recognized by others for what they are, regardless of the fortuitous circumstances of birth or position -- even if that means being recognized for stealing words written by someone else, or being recognized as an absolute scavenger of the human condition.

It'll get weird at times too, you can be sure of that. There will be moments where the ride will pick you upside down and shake you until your insides are on your outside. It's not even a living thing -- despite how it sometimes might appear -- so don't rightly expect to be able to rely on compassion to save you either. It does as it does and nothing more. It'll toss you around like a rag doll, it'll make sure you land on your feet, it'll steal the gas from your tank and infest your house with fleas. Life will randomly keep the skies sunny at your party, tear your favorite jacket, and lace your brain with enough liquor to keep you quiet and content -- which helps everyone else sleep at night. However, no matter how strange or intense it gets, there's one thing to remember: These is absolutely no excuse to not remain in control of it at all times.

This kind of exposure to the harsh reality of the world is never easy -- but necessary. It's like the Tal Ben-Shahar quote: "I don't believe that things happen for the best, but I do believe in making the best of things that happen" We're never actually in control of what's going to happen to us, and it would be foolish to think anything else. We might be responsible -- which we almost always are -- for what happens to us, but in terms of the cards we're dealt? It's all random. We've just got to make the best plays can we have with what we've been given and, if the cards are shit, hope we can bluff well enough to convince the rest of the world we're sitting on gold. I have no doubt this is why Texas Hold 'Em poker has gotten so popular among the working crowd in the last few years.

So just remember, there are few facts in life that always seemed relevant, living, but the most pertinent one of all always seemed to remain 'Isn't it a little odd to see a Kangaroo?'. That one, above all, will always stand with you. No matter how weird it gets, or how strange everything seems, as long as you're not seeing Kangaroos in the California forest? You'll be all right.

Use that wisdom to sedate the noxious anxiety and dam up the endless flow of questions in your mind. Carry a coin in your pocket and flip it, once a day, to make a decision for you. Stick with the flow, and let life be what life is good at being. Find a way to enjoy the days it rains on your parade, chews on your soul, curdles your soup, or shatters your favorite bottle of spirits. Life has got a way of taking one raw turn after another lately for a lot of people, and it's getting harder and harder to stay on top of that wave. If, even for a moment, you can take home a small victory -- like Australia in Risk -- you defend the hell out of it and hang onto it with everything you've got.

Stop screaming at the Television, stop screaming at the headline, stop shouting at the internet chat room, be weary of Kangaroos in a forest where they don't belong, and be careful you're not chasing black rabbits when you're looking for life. Hold onto who you are and what you love when the waves get rough, never think you'll land on the shore, but always hope you're lucky enough to make it, never give up dreaming, never stop risking something. Understand you deserve it all only if you earn it all, work hard for what you want, play harder for what you demand. Take no prisoners and give no quarter to the desert and never leave home without some water and a towel.

Don't panic -- everything is, as always, going to be all right.

The problem with looking for signs of life: And not actually living it.

The problem with looking for signs of life:
And not actually living it.

I haven’t written much in damn near over a month, as I’m sure some of you have noticed. I took a hiatus – or something like that anyway – and just decided to get away from it all. Life had become a thing I spent too much time looking at and nowhere near enough time living, and that’s no way to go about your days. Life, in all its wretched splendor and unimaginable glory, isn’t something that should always be examined through a microscope. It’s not designed to be watched or experienced strictly vicariously – no matter the medium in which you do so. Life’s designed to be taken, hands on, no holds barred, with nothing held back. It’s not golf, we can’t take a mulligan on a shitty shot, though sometimes, wouldn’t it be nice if we could?

The point stands, however, that we can’t. We’re not given the luxury of remakes and we’ve certainly not figured out the mechanics of time travel – thank god – so we’re stuck with what we do, and what we’ve got. Isn’t that a real good, God Damned, incentive, to get out there and do something?

That’s exactly what I’ve been doing, really living. It’s been fly-by-night, spontaneous as anything, and has taken place from sunrise to sunset and, sometimes, back again. I’ve been filling the last 30 days with all manner of revelry and good times, things that genuinely enrich the value of life, and I’ve left no quarter to sedentary ideas nor spared any time for sitting still. There’s been a bit of everything, high powered intoxication, music making, travel, the ocean, hobo clowns, gypsies, art making and shows, extravagant food for any and every course of the day, parties, theater shows, acting, burning Christmas trees, – the works. There’s no plan to slow it down, not just yet, either but it has shown me something that I’ve found pertinent.

Don’t hold your breath, waiting for the moment to come to you, and then ponder over what to do. It’s like that, often abridged, Horace line: “Carpe diem, quam minimum credula postero – seize the day, putting as little trust as possible in the future.” Everyone knows the value of ‘Seizing the day’, but what’s often over looked is the moment.

Moments come frequently but are never, ever, duplicated. You will never have another, exact, chance for an experience that’s set in front of you, it doesn’t matter the moment. If you see someone sitting on the side of the road playing the banjo and waiting for a ride, and you love the banjo? Stop and have a conversation, petition them to play a song, maybe even give them a ride. If you see someone sobbing and down on their luck, don’t pass them by in the barren hope that someone else will tend the slack. If there’s a sunrise and you have nowhere to be? Stop and enjoy it. You never know what life will bring to your doorstep, but none of it matters if all you do is look at it through a peephole, safe on the other side.

There’s only so much living that can be done vicariously. Televisions don’t give you all the facts, nor cover all the right camera angles and even the most well written book will be skewed from the perspective of a conquering, or failing, protagonist.  Life is something that is designed to be experienced first hand and shared thereafter. Write a story, sit around the campfire and regale your comrades, keep a journal for people to find when you die, make tape and video recordings, whatever you want to do – but do first, because otherwise you’ve got nothing to share -- save maybe bunch of hand me down experiences that were never really yours.

So enjoy the river, swim in the waters, take risks – even calculated ones – step outside yourself, outside what’s normal, what’s comfortable, and just make the most of the winds that blow your way. Take advantage of the good fortune when they’re at your back and let them push you in all kinds of new directions. It’s this kind of, haphazard, new, and spontaneous, experience that could show you a whole new way to use your eyes – never mind all the other, slightly more important, parts of yourself.

Time is precious and everything about life is a one time offer. Nothing that happens in one moment will ever be the same, even if you’re one of the lucky few who have been offered a second chance at it. Make the most of every, single, day you have, doing whatever it is you have the chance to do. Talk to strangers, make a song, paint a picture, take a wild ride into the night, swim in the ocean, get out of the zoo, whatever you want to do – and can do without fucking anyone else over in the process – do it. Besides, you never know when there might be Chinese people in your future, just waiting to carve you up and make into the day’s ‘Chef Special’.

Never regret, just learn and grow. Never look back with disdain, just remember not to do it again. Never neglect today because of what might, or might not, happen tomorrow. Don’t save just for rainy days, and take the words of Horace to heart – and not just the parts that have become pop culture phrases in our every day language.

Original usage from Odes 1.11 –for the sake of perspective:

“Don't ask, it's forbidden to know, what end.
Don't play with Babylonia fortune-telling either.

How much better it is to endure whatever will be!

Whether Jupiter has allotted to you many more winters or this final one:

Which even now wears out the Tyrrhenian sea on the rocks placed opposite

be wise, strain the wine, and scale back your long hopes to a short period.

While we speak, envious time will have already fled.

Seize the day, trusting as little as possible in the future.”

Take the heart of the matter, the whole damn thing, and ride it off into whatever sunset you choose. Just don’t miss out on it because you’re lazy. Ride the wind, climb the wave, enjoy the ride, let it go where it will, but don’t expect it to do all the work for you. Memento mori – because you only get one chance to do as much as you can and anything worth doing is worth doing right.