HEADING OUT. SEE YOU SOON

LETTING GO

My departure draws near, Wednesday, and I am busy wrapping things up and attempting to bring a conclusion to the experience just as I have concluded the manuscript. Thats right, 300 plus pages of ranting, confessing, musing, crying, plotting, scheming, screaming, scraping, analyzing, shifting, shaping has come to a conclusion, I found my ending. I must admit it feels good. I feel free from much of what I put down on the page, like it exists in the story now and I'm not carrying it all around in my head. Now I let it sit for a month, completely ignoring it and hopefully coming back to find something that has taken on a life of its own and it is then my job to attune to its needs and mold and shape. I have birthed this monstrous creation and now have to let it grow and eventually (still need to tweak, edit, tweak, edit) I will have to let it go.

To love anything, to truly let it shine on its own, I believe you have to let go. We find grounding, comforting, cherished things and places and we instinctively desire to squeeze them tightly to us, guarding them and preserving them. You discover an inspiring piece of art and sometimes you feel as if sharing it and letting it go from the personal relationship you share with it will diminish its magic. Also, you meet and get to know an amazing person, who burns bright and whose heat energizes and illuminates your world and the initial desire is to possess that person, keep them to yourself. Let it go. I think just let go of the possession, the protection, have faith in their freedom. I am tempted to cling to the immense stability of this retreat, this cabin because of all the health and peace I have found, but what good is it to keep it all shut in.

Here is something I have clung to as a great secret source of inspiration over the past months, a music video by the Icelandic band Sigur Ros. I share it now, sharing the stoke as they say when teaching new people to surf. The video, I believe, shows the journey we all share, often just unsure children underneath it all, making our way to the next place and if we do so with generosity and communion maybe together we can find the courage to let go of the stable ground and soar.

Do to copyright requests please click here to watch this incredible piece of art.

I am preparing one more blog post and then that is the conclusion. On to the next place.

TESTED

I have recently declared my love for the animal kingdom and reverence for all forms of life. Yes, I have been welcoming all, leaving out peanuts for the squirrels and waving hello to the pheasants along the road, a regular Grizzly Adams.  Now, I believe I am being tested.  A few weeks back I was driving to town and was going to eat a granola bar on the way, but deciding to save myself for dinner I threw it in the glove compartment thinking it would be nice to have on hand for a long drive.  A week later I am driving to Alexandria to visit my cousin and think it would be nice to have that granola bar.  I take it out and, thats funny, it has been opened and seems smaller.  I think, oh it must have been opened when I put it in there and the freezing temps have shrunk it, I'm new to this weather, what do I know?   I still go to eat it, but it looks strange and toss it back in the glove compartment, thinking I will throw it out later.  So, time passes and arriving home from town the other day I remember the bar and that I should throw it out.  What do I find?  The damn thing is gone, the package is all torn apart, and the nasty evidence of the culprit, its remnants are littered about the glove compartment.  

Is a tiny mouse hobo squatting in my car?  Does a little magician critter  sneak into my car at night and find his way into the closed glove compartment? Does this rodent Houdini live under the hood and somehow survive while I drive?   What the heck is going on here?   My initial reaction is one of violation and want to rid myself of this problem with extreme prejudice. After all, who wants their car to be notorious for a rodent infestation (I actually heavily debated whether to announce this to anybody).  I'm thinking a little rat poison in the glove compartment or a trap set on the floor would do just fine, but I am almost immediately struck by my hypocrisy.  It is one thing to love love love all life when it stays in its place but as soon as it infringes upon my space I'm all ready to go guns a blazin' in hot pursuit.   I calm down and let go of the anger for the infraction.  I just need to clean my car of all edibles, which is a good thing anyways and scour it for a little mouse home.  If there is no more food he will move along or stop visiting.  I have done so and assure you that your ankles are safe when riding in my pitiable hatchback.  What have I learned from this? Well that the Kia attracts stories like high dollar call girls allure high powered politicians, but more so that it is going to be a true test to live the life of which I have been writing. 

As my stay here draws close to its end (a matter of weeks now), I am wondering if I will be able to hold on to the introspectively accrued virtues and lessons when I launch back into the currents of society's seas?  Will I  be able to embody that which I have been writing and dreaming?  To treat all with respect and yet stand strong in my pursuits and aspirations.  To stay focused and yet allow the good things in life, the surprises, enter in as well. Can I keep my balance and equilibrium amongst the unexpected riptides and unseeable undertows?

I have mentioned it before, rising up after the fall, but stress it again, knowing there will be bumps in the road that will pitch me over.  This determination but also flexibility I believe will be important.  I have been operating in a controlled setting, everything is set up the way I left it everyday and nothing intrudes upon my schedule, an ideal environment to create.  I will now need to to adjust and adapt as there is bound to be a refrigerator in your lane on the freeway every now and then, what? that doesn't happen in places besides Los Angeles? Well, in LA it does, take note.  

However, the most important virtue to maintain in this relaunch I believe will be compassion.  I have been thinking about that quite a bit during my meditative seclusion, facing my past transgressions head on and forgiving myself in order to let them go.  A dear and beautifully contemplative friend of mine recently mused over the same subject of compassion and got me thinking of it again today.  Compassion towards others can carry us respectfully through all difficult human interactions, a truth to hold high as a lamp to illuminate, but perhaps even more important is finding compassion for ourselves, without which, we can never move forward.  So, it is not only getting back up after the fall but allowing ourselves the fall.  

My grand plans will need modifying, my words will need editing, my car will need sanitizing, but through it all I will aim  to be accepting and forgiving over everything else.  I bring forth the wisdom of the Tao to support the importance of compassion discussed by myself and my friend. 

Tao 67

I have just three things to teach;

simplicity, patience, compassion.

These three are your greatest treasures.

Simple in actions and in thoughts,

you return to the source of being.

Patient with both friends and enemies,

you accord with the way things are.

Compassionate toward yourself,

you reconcile all beings in the world. 

Also, thank you to all for the support and kind words for my Grandfather. He is out of the hospital and slowly recuperating in a rehab center. Day by day we hope to see him regain his strength and know your concern, thoughts, and prayers help him to do so. 

CHASING THE UNUTTERABLE

I find myself day after day looking for the right words, desperate to convey what I personally feel so strongly to be true, feel so evidently present in my chest yet impossible to bring forth in text.  I am beginning to wonder if the greatest truths and understandings are the unutterable ones. Inexplicable yet fully capable of being emoted and shared, I believe I am finding these truths, and the solace they bring, in the forms of light and music. 

Solace I have especially been seeking since my Grandfather was struck ill earlier this week in Arizona, suffering from concurrent strokes and is currently progressing through a slow and still scarily unknown recovery.  How we feel is natural, but what to say is difficult and it is strange how words lose most of their meaning and power when held against the striking grip of emotion.  As he recovers, I have sought out ways to face these emotions and reside in them, looking for hope and peace to accept the outcome.   

In this search, I went out with my video camera looking for a sunrise and found the encroaching spring, the grey gradually being worn down by the rays' increasing strength and the welcome sounds of new life. However, it is the light and music which we ourselves create that I have been finding  most appealing. The music and light that comes from within our own nature seems to bring the most comfort when in the rare occasions we are able to purely present it or bear witness to its presentation in others. 

 

 

I found the sunshine and later in the day I found the music (thanks to NPR), the Miserere (Allegri). The foreignness of the Latin insignificant as the voices of the choir bring forth the music's inherent peace. The story behind the Miserere is as wondrous as the indefinable assurance of its notes. Originating in 1630's, it was performed only for the Pope in the Sistine Chapel during Wednesday and Friday of Holy Week and was so highly regarded that it was eventually forbidden to transcribe or perform elsewhere. It stayed hidden from the world until upon hearing a performance,  a 14 year old Mozart miraculously recreated and composed the Miserere from memory the next day and brought it to us all.    

The song is a simple prayer for the presence of the almighty to be with us, a thought or meditation that crosses all factions of belief.  We yearn for connection and what ever can bring us closer to a communion is worth adherence.  I do not wish to hide or categorize away my feelings, and within the warmth of the light and the presence of the music I can find the channel running to my family's outpouring of warmth and concern and also deluges of worry and pain, funneling acceptance in the duality. 

Music has been my great companion in the inevitable loneliness I have felt out here, and I apologize for the bombardment of music I have been sending out to my friends and family these past months, but I find in it a way to share something with those I long to be experiencing life amongst.  So, as I long to be with my family by my Grandfather, I pray we can connect and share in the hope of the light and music we find in this new Spring, in each new day. In sharing the same sun and hearing the same songs we are together in  a moment of repose and comfort. 

              *        *         *         *         *          *

I have found that many great writers and minds have shared a bond in their esteem for the expressive power of music. Here are a few sentiments to read over while the sun rises and the voices reach out to the same light. 

"Music is the shorthand of emotion" - Leo Tolstoy

"Music expresses that which cannot be said on which it is impossible to be silent" - Victor Hugo

"Music can name the unnameable  and communicate the unknowable" - Leonard Bernstein

"Music is a moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to mind, flight to the imagination, and charm and gaiety to life and to everything"  - Plato

"A painter paints pictures on canvas, but musicians paint their pictures in silence" - Leopole Stakowski

"See deep enough, and you see musically; the heart of nature being everywhere music" = Thomas Carlyle

"In the end I think of music as a saving grace for all humanity" - Henry Miller

"Music is well said to be the speech of angels; in fact, nothing among the utterances allowed to man is felt to be so divine.  It brings us near to the infinite" - Carlyle

KILLING IN THE NAME OF...???

 

             I am not a hunter. My father was a hunter, I come from a long line of hunters, I am living in a land of hunters, but I am not a hunter.  Now I know I am going to catch some heat for my ideas here, to be labeled the soft city boy, but please just hear me out. 

  I am dog-sitting this week, a lively and sweet golden retriever by the name of Penny, and we are outside.  I am sitting off the end of the landed dock writing, enjoying the company of the long estranged sun and Penny is rolling about in the snow in such a genuine display of joy and health that it is all but impossible not to be pulled into an equally contented state.  We play fetch with a stuffed cow toy I bought her, and she pounces on it and upon bringing it back I give her a "good girl" and an approving scratch behind the ears. 

I let her wander off down along the lake shoreline and  when I whistle she obediently comes loping back with a big grin.  This carries on for sometime, but then I whistle, and nothing.  I whistle louder, still nothing.  "Penny" I shout and then again with authority.  I can see her now coming from way down along the trees, working her way towards me but stopping and lowering her head to the ground occasionally, and when she finally gets close I see she has something in her mouth. "Crap, she's been chewing on a dead bird" I think and jump down to get it away from her, but when I meet her she drops what is in her mouth, barks, and leaps about in ecstatic pride.  A little chipmunk lies at my feet.

  He is wet and matted, and hoping to find him stiff and long since dead, I tap him with my boot, he cringes, opens his eyes for a second and then winces them closed again.  Broken into pieces as tiny as his quivering paws is my heart. Reasonably, logically, sensibly I know it is just a tiny chipmunk, a rodent even, but in that moment he seems to hold all the world's pain and suffering in his little pulsating chest. 

  I pull a frenzied Penny away and being as this is what she is trained to do I have to tell her "good girl" as I lead her back up to the front of the cabin to be chained up again.  I go to the garage for a shovel,  it being my responsibility not to let him suffer.  Ready to finish Penny's work, I come back to my little martyr, bend down to examine, nudge him to assess the severity of his injuries. He is in pretty tough shape although not bleeding.  I stand and lift the shovel, locking my elbows and tensing to deliver an unquestionably finalizing blow. I hold, I hold, I lean into it, I can't do it. 

  Cursing, I throw the shovel aside and sprint back to the garage, greeted by a barking and frustrated Penny.  I grab an old towel hanging inside the door, then sprint back. Quickly I wrap him up  and holding softly the fleeting life that seems to weigh nothing, I raise him  high and hidden from Penny as I pass by entering the garage,  tuck him in a box wrapped up in the towel. If I can just keep him warm. Thinking practically long since out the window, if there is a chance that my warmth, my concern my care could be enough to heal him then I have to give it a shot.   

  He is out in the garage and I am inside the cabin.  Concentration is impossible, I keep checking on him, finding his little body still responsive yet his eyes cease to open anymore.  "What am I doing?" I think as I pace the cabin.  My own weakness is continuing his suffering.  This carries on until I check on him for the last time, finding him still this time, lifeless. I am relieved and saddened by the finality. It is then I know for sure that I am not a hunter. 

Being immersed in the hunting culture for the first time in my life, it has been an idea, a moral quandary mulled over in my mind since my arrival.   In November, I accompanied my uncle on a profitless day of deer hunting, and I even saw the last stages of a deer being butchered, from which meat I have dined on many times this winter.  I came to the realization that there was no difference between eating a hamburger in a restaurant and shooting a deer and eating it, and to think otherwise would be hypocritical of any meat eater. I still respect the long standing traditions and the use of wild game to feed yourself and your family. 

       However, especially influenced by what I witnessed today. I do vehemently rail against the lack of respect for life and nature that is the sport of killing.  It was not seeing a dead dear on the table or a raccoon in the ditch that struck me, but watching the process of death, the physical departure of life, no matter how small, that shook me. All life is of value, a gift and to watch it slip away frivolously I feel should incite deep frustration. Even the death of this small chipmunk that came at the instinctual jaws of the circle of life seemed like a waste.  Penny would eat her store bought dog food and biscuit treats tonight, not feast upon her kill, which admittedly fosters the highly debatable idea of man's own continued need to eat meat at all. 

             The Lakota Indians of the Dakotas would bow before every kill and graciously thank the animal for the life that would now help sustain their own. Reverence for life is what I am pleading for in the hunt, which I find embarrassingly absent in nowhere near all, but many parts of this culture. Satisfaction in a successful hunt is one thing, but to kill with such boisterous joy just seems to be loaded with a bloodlust that needs to be conditioned out of mankind.  

           So, Penny and I held a ceremony of reverence for our lost chipmunk. We held our heads and sustained a moment of silence to honor the small passing in our small piece of the world in one small moment, seemingly trivial but when we stop honoring these small moments from when and where do we start.   

             How could I stay angry at this face, this smile definitely a cherished gift of life. 

USE YOUR DELUSION

BRIEF CABIN TOUR & HOMAGE TO BRIAN WILSON & FLULA BORG

 

SORRY FOR THE ABSENCE, BUT HAVE BEEN HARD AT WORK. THOUGHT I WOULD SHOW YOU AROUND MY CONFINES JUST A BIT AND I UTILIZED THE FLULA BORG VIDEO METHOD.  FLULA IS A GOOD FRIEND OF MINE IN LA AND IS ALWAYS AN INSPIRATION. CHECK HIM OUT AT FLULABORG.COM

THE SONG IS "BUSY DOIN' NOTHING" BY A CABIN SECLUDED BRIAN WILSON FROM THE BEACH BOYS FRIENDS ALBUM (LATER YEARS)

HERE IS THE VIDEO INSPIRATION FROM FLULA AND MY FRIENDS BACK IN TINSELTOWN. 

FORTUNATE FALL

"Here we go," you think to yourself on the way down, realizing you are falling yet there is nothing you can do about it. Ice; the great leveler, the great humbler. It will bring you down, especially if you are still sporting your Dr. Martins that everyone has warned you are worthless up here.  Ego and ass bruised, you look around primed to vent anger at someone, something, but there is nobody, nothing to blame. Gravity maybe, but that is about as logical as blaming global warming on the human race; oh wait, there may be a correlation with that one. The truth is YOU fell.  So laying in the snow, I have a flash of insight.

I think of my chosen pursuit of writing the novel.  As with any goal I have designated a plan of action, a path I must walk in order to reach the desired destination (of course nothing less than a Nobel Prize in Literature, a movie deal for my next 5 books, and heaps and heaps of attention from the opposite sex).   The path entails  yoga and meditation upon awakening, vocabulary study over breakfast, guitar session to open the mind, dedicated work time, research over protein filled dinner, endurance testing exercise; all for the maintenance of a healthy body, mind and spirit to be used to create something true.  

All is grand, I'm dreaming of my Nobel acceptance speech and the flirtatious brunette in the front row when zooooop, I've failed to heed the icy conditions of the path and I am flying off my feet, only to find myself in the middle of a 13 hour Grey's Anatomy Season 3 marathon fueled by a 5 pack of Starbursts binge unaware if the sun just went down or is coming back up.  I see myself clearly, dejected by the failures of Meredith and Derek but really more frustrated with my own.  I have indeed fallen.  

Down, on my back, I could blame my cousin for lending me her Grey's DVDs, I could blame Shonda Rhimes (actually I probably should, that show really derailed in a hurry), I could blame the weather as it is STILL about 20 below outside, but I know where the blame lies.  I am the only one in this cabin, I am the only one who set crazily off after the grail, I am the one to blame.  So I am left with the question, what now? I have fallen, I am pathetic, so what is the next move? With nobody to blame the only logical choice is to get up and get back on the path, get some rest and start with yoga and mediation all over again.  

  In rising up and setting forth again, not casting the path or the mission aside, the stride becomes more resolute. I can't help but think of snowboarding and while riding the lift looking down at the little tykes barreling down the mountain fearless when eventually they yard sale, goggles and beenie flying.  They look around despondent yet their parents are not there to pick them up or feel sorry for them, so they get up and do the only thing that is left to do, keep moving down that mountain (unless they bust up a femur or something in which case they usually wail grotesquely and need to be sledded down by the ski patrol). Normally, however, the fall is a correction.  A natural lesson in balance, speed and autonomy.  The epiphany is that the fall surely fails to define us. What makes a person is what comes after the fall. 

So I get back up : meditating, praying, channeling, writing and researching and when I fall, as I know I will, I will actually be cursing my brother and his girlfriend  this time, who sent me The Wire DVDs and a box of Skittles in a very generous care package. "Somebody get the Ski Patrol!"  

TEXTING THROUGH TIME AND POP CULTURE

Since the beginning of my stay up here, I have noticed and have been told by others that my text messages don't always arrive directly after I send them. I don't think I always receive them promptly either, surely due to the remoteness of local. What has perplexed me, however, is where these texts go before they make it to their destination. I have hypothesized a few possibilities.

First, I thought that maybe they are grabbed up by a Puckish digital imp playing cupid on the wireless waves, snatching up my texts and insidiously delivering them at two in the morning, attaching a context that greatly alters the intent of my message. For example;

My friend texts to tell me to look for her in the Price is Right audience, so my text of "What are you wearing? Are you on the bottom?" is perfectly appropriate if it was delivered promptly, Yet not when waking up her and her boyfriend at 3 am.

Or when I text my friend, "Wish I was there to munch your grindage. Hear you got some spread". That would have made sense if it arrived at his Super Bowl BBQ, not at 2:15 in the morning.

I am lonely up here, but not THAT lonely.

Another possibility is that they are lost in time, maybe finding a portal to the past. So if I text my friend, "Check out Feist on SNL", or "Catch My Morning Jacket on Current", they just might be receiving it months or even years earlier, thus inheriting a wealth of "Cool Currency" subsequently sending his or her IMDB star rating soaring, and as we all know, buzz bands touted carries more weight than your resume in Hollywood.  This hypothesis also finally provides a plausible explanation for Zach Braff's rise to stardom.  

(I was listening to The Shins for like 3 years before that shmuck. Really, I am THAT cool. If you don't believe me just listen to Jens Lekman, Sunset Rubdown, Mouthful of Bees, Professor Lacroix, The White Buffalo)

Still another possibility is the crossing of dimensions.  Maybe my texts venture through a vortex, venturing into simultaneous realities.  So when I text, "Yummy, yum. Just made me a tuna sangwich. even cut up little pickles. ROCK ON!!!",  it could in fact be arriving to my friend who in an alternate reality works in government intelligence and my words could be a coded message that sets off the invasion and occupation of Portugal, leaving me grief stricken by the cultural atrocity that is a Lisbon with Old Navy, Hot Topic, and Cinnabon.  Oh wait, that is THIS dimension; all is lost.  I mean, come on, Cinnabon? What an insult to baking and the circulatory system. 

                              

                               

         (This is actually a Cinnabon Jordan poster, even worse)

Finally, I have been thinking that my texts maybe find their way to a metaphysical plane, reaching the dwelling of the divine.  Just in case this is true, I have been using the opportunity to text all the pertinent questions.  "Why do bad things happen to good people?" "What comes after death?" and "Why do only little kid pajamas come with the foot booties attached? I would love some of those right now".  You wonder what number I have been using to text the Almighty, well lets just say when I get back to Hollywood I am not legally allowed within 175 feet of Morgan Freeman.

        

              

I don't know where my texts are going or when they will arrive, but please keep texting me.  I'm not going to stop texting you, deal with it Mr. Freeman. 

EDITORIAL CONFESSIONS

If purchased for me or my flight is delayed I will eat a Cinnabon;  If it is on Comedy Central at one in the morning I do watch Scrubs and laugh uproariously at JD; and my 3 am texts to my old roommate Dave are intentional.  When it is 25 below zero, desiring a spooning isn't considered gay, right? 

GRATUITOUS SIDEBAR

Since I am quite secluded, please let me know if my cultural references are current. The Shins and Morgan Freeman are still of the hook, right?

INSPIRING SIDEBAR 

Here is a lighter and less apocalyptic cabin fever video. Just as some people don't trust those who don't like animals, I don't trust people who can't enjoy The Muppets.

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THIS WEEK'S MOMENT IN CABIN FEVER and history

THE RESTORATION OF MARCUS

"Hindsight is...well you know, it's a bitch," was the California DMV associate's tactful response to my query of how I was supposed to renew my registration since I was 3,000 miles away and they were requiring a California smog inspection. Before you take off on an eight month road trip across America to hawk shower curtain rings, be warned that the California Department of Motor Vehicles has very little sympathy for the plight of the traveling salesman, my adopted profession to rationalize why my car was so far away and not returning in time for a smog inspection. I was going to go with indie rock star on a low budget tour, but thought I would find more understanding for the Willie Lomans of this world. I was wrong. Feeling forced into malfeasance, I felt no shame in packing a little snow over my tags and rolling the dice, but the strong arm of my grandfather's conscience persuaded me to legalize it (I told you we were occasional rivals).

So I journeyed to Wadena for the nearest licensing bureau to register for Minnesota license plates, where I found their service to be lacking in all the charm of California's DMV. Not only did they smile, look me in the eye, say thank you, and refrain from belittling my intelligence and spitting on my shoes, but they actually restored my title with my given name of Marcus, replacing Marcos, the alleged legal owner of my car for the past three years.

Although it had its perks, improved dancing and ballad singing, I never did feel all that comfortable as Marcos. I have found a great comfort in being returned to my original Marcus status, for which I am most grateful to the state of Minnesota. It would be unjust to cast the entire blame for the misappropriation of my identity on the California DMV since the confusion began much earlier with Senorita Johnson's high school Spanish class. I am guilty as well, perpetuating the persona with post graduate Latin American explorations. Actually, when I come to think of it, the ascension of Marcos may date all the way back to the third grade with my acceptance of my Phoenix YMCA Basketball League Certificate of Participation.

The Minnesota title of registration will only be temporary, however, I hope to retain the sense of self that I am finding in the serenity of this rural escape of my forefathers. As if shedding the roles foisted upon by school, by work, by relationships, I feel lighter, stripped down to the elemental Marcus. I was once told, "In LA it is perhaps better to have a persona than a personality" (*). I now see the truth in that statement. In order to survive the ocean of egos and competitors it is smarter to reserve your true self for only a trusted inner circle of friends. A necessary practice, hiding your real nature away seems logical, but I fear it is detrimental to ones satisfaction and joy. Of course, I think it is quite possible to retain your true self in a metropolis. Those are the people who thrive, who shine.

Living in a cabin of my relatives, everyday I pass a picture of 3 year old Marcus that my aunt has hanging in the hall. I strive to find and take this Marcus with me after I leave my seclusion, and I am beginning to believe that we are not who the world molds, we are not even who we ourselves craft, but we are who we have always been.

THAT IS THE PRIMARY MARCUS ON THE RIGHT WITH BIG BRO AND GRANDPA.

(*) The owner of that statement is a wise and very funny man by the name of Opus, who maintains a fantastic blog you can find here: All New Year. You can also check out his pinata wrangling skills in a hilarious short documentary made a long while back (Pre YouTube Days) by my very good friends, Tomorrow's Brightest Minds, here: Speedy Pinata. These people definitely shine.

Tricky Predicament

"I CAN'T THINK OF ANYTHING GOOD TO THINK ABOUT."

Troubling words from my frustrated Grandfather on his nights of tossing and turning due to his recent inability to sleep any more than 2 to 3 hours.   Getting old can't be easy.  I told him he should think about working the graveyard shift at the the fill up station, only to be sternly informed that they close at 9.  Oh well.   

 

Also a recent comment has  asked me to find out why people live up here in this cold, cold weather.  From what I can deduce it is their love for knitted headwear.  They are absolutely crazy about it.

                        

Extreme Weathering

  What was once an exaggerated and romanticized enclosure has become a reality. The weather has become extreme, down to negative 20 degrees and still dropping, accompanied by winds inducing negative 40 wind chills.  I am now a  prisoner in my cabin, more specifically confined to one bedroom small enough in volume for the floor heaters to combat the creeping fingers of the cold, slowly inching through the walls and windows, a struggle being lost throughout the rest of the cabin.  Personified in my minds eye for the first time ever, the winter cold has revealed a cruel and unrelenting face stalking around every corner (not too disimliar to Tom Coughlin's heinous sideline visage; sorry, sports reference).  Humbling in it's power, the blanketing freeze indiscriminately encompasses all, squeezing tightly and mercilessly doling out an inordinate share of purple nurples.  

   The paralyzing cold seems to me an outdated idea, something we have evolved past and defeated, so when I now look outside at the rolling images wavering in the thin bitter air I am transported to times of lore, to tragic accounts of  all consuming depression and loss.  This must be the dearth and vacuous role winter has come to symbolize and embody.  Reduced to a briefly debilitating annoyance in our modern times of furnaces, motorized vehicles and instant oatmeal, the cold's unrelenting force yet remains unquestioned. They say a man will be frostbitten within 12 minutes of exposure to these conditions.  Our meek flesh has no chance in resistance to the bitter truth, the cold will halt every function of life within our bodies, stop our blood in its necessary paths, and propel melodramatic metaphors and pretentious prose from the fingers.  

  The wind through my cabin sounds as if the rear engines have been switched on for take-off and I can't blame it for attempting an escape.  I, however, happily hunker down, button things up, boil water for my tea, pull down my beenie tighter over my ears, insert my earbuds, surround myself with books; completely captured, only myself and my ideas and a heightened sense of my own existence.  I say, let it blow, I welcome the opportunity to strengthen my resolve.  I am just thankful that I don't have a real job, as venturing out in that mess would really bite. It is cold out there. 

The Fish House

Never eat a pickled egg from a jar at the drunken request of a 70 year old man mixing Keystone Light and Snow Grog Schnapps.  I don't know what other wisdom I obtained from the ice fishing party I attended out on Battle Lake.  Maybe I learned the more you bullshit with a man the better friend he becomes. Thanks for a good time you rotten old bums. I believe I have grown more hair on my chest. 

Welcome to Ottertail, Minnesota

WHAT AM I DOING HERE? I HAVE VENTURED INTO THE FUTURE TO CONFRONT MY MUCH WEAKER AND ATROPHIED DOPPELGANGER

ACTUALLY HE IS MY GRANDPA KEN.  A WISE AND KIND MAN.  WE ARE ONLY OCCASIONAL RIVALS.

Literary Term Education Time:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doppelgänger