Can manage to do a little bit, everyday

As I walk through the new snow, splashed and sprinkled in different spots all around Boulder, I think about how long my footprint is going to be in the last spot I stepped today. Will it be there later? Tomorrow? Will some of the shady spots preserve it even when the sun comes out?

I don't know. It's the uncertainty that death might feel like for most.

My mother's uncle Don died last week. His funeral is today. I was going to go, but instead, I'm making footprints in the snow, thinking about what time I should catch the bus.

I didn't know my mom's uncle that well. I do know that he fought in Korea, was partial to German cuckoo clocks and drove a bus for more than 30 years around Colorado.

I know that he seemed happy on the few occasions that I did see him. He seemed finished. Not finished like washed up; finished like he was done with a good book and ready to think about it.

And, as I look back at the small trail I made in the snow, I think about what I'm going to feel like, look like or be like when I'm finished with the good book that might turn out to be my life.

No selfish, shameless plugs for myself here. Just an admiration for a man I never really knew, but closed a chapter in my mother's heart.

It just doesn't stop.

Thanks for looking, voting and rocking so hard.

Wanted: a better way to fill an easy life

So far, this year, I've spent most of my time pursing everything I loved when I was younger. I'm using film cameras in stead of digital, I'm writing about whatever I want, however I want, I'm not lying to anyone, I'm not making resolutions, I'm working on getting to a place I've never heard of and I'm scribbling my dreams down in a notebook that, maybe, no one will ever see.

And I've pieced together chunks of myself that I thought had seeped away from me like a high school lover discovering how much fun sex with everyone else is.

I've been filling my life with less and less banal minutia and more and more meaningful activities that will determine the path of my unplanned life.

Number one: using a film camera. 35mm that is. Have you ever tried it? Do you know how to develop film? It takes a long time. It can be cheaper. It feels like it means something. It feels like you're creating something.

Not to dismiss digital photography, but, this 22 year old doesn't want it. The age of point and shoot needs to end. Care and professionalism need to make their comeback; and, I know, what a hypocrite for blogging about it, of all things.

Number two: no money, yet again, and life couldn't be sweeter. Of all the countries I've been too, all the shallows I've managed to climb into for rest, choosing scraping over indulgence will always be better than never knowing the former.

I live fine. I have a computer, internet access, food and knowledge, instruments, time, gas and places to be. But, using the places I need to be as apexes of my time; a good hotdog as a climax higher than a genital orgasm, makes me feel more human than anyone I know with a Range Rover and a girlfriend.

Lastly, number three: I remember my dreams again. Not just the real life dreams about how bad I want to be a fireman-astronaut-superman-batman-war-hero, but actual dreams that are as arbitrary as language, but as important to me as any loved one.

Any time I wake up in a cold sweat from a ageless nightmare, I feel real. I feel capable. I feel like life was sucked out of me be red lips softer than rabbits ears then forced back into me by a shotgun, full of all the fear, doubt, anger and lust left in the tiny corners of my mind.

And I love it.

2009 will be nirvana.

Mahalo and more later...

What it Feels Like Just Past the Point of No Return

In my life, I've had a couple points of no returns. Some are loves that have grown old, some are moments just before car accidents.

But, the best point of no return is more of a... devious one. It's the point in life when you finally bog down and come to terms that people who are as tall as you but are younger than you are actually faster than you.

I'm not old. I would never say that considering the surplus of old people on the planet right now–no offense meant–but I am at a point in life where I can only push my body to limits that are starting blocks for someone a few years younger than I am.

I can do back flips, I can do front flips, I'm only really afraid of mountain lions and I can keep up with anyone I meet.

I saw Travis Pastrana come to this realization and I saw the hurt in his face a couple of weeks ago. He landed the double back flip on a motorcycle and said, "that's it. That will be child's play in a couple of years."

Then I had mine. There was a kid at the skate park a while back, not much younger than me, but younger, and he put his body in limits that I used to imagine were years ahead, only to realize I was already years ahead. I came to the limits of my time and I continue to wake up everyday to find ways around those limits and create new ones.

On a skateboard, on a dirt bike, you just need to remain fixable. It takes too long for me to be fixed right now. Nine months for a ACL repair when it used to be six.

So, listen to Obama when he tells us that kids and progression are where it's at. He's right. He's smacked the nail with a wrecking ball.

I'm glad that I see the other types of progression that I can always be at the forefront of. I love it. I'm going to stay that way. I'll always be in the lighthouse, searching for the becon from a ship that I never really thought about.

What it Feels Like to Re-Evaluate Everything You Like After Christmas

I've not had a tangible Christmas gift in years. This isn't some hippie rant about how we should just give love instead of gifts, but when you hear about someone being trampled at a Wal-Mart for like the umpteenth time, maybe it is time to give a little love.

So, retail was bad this year, boo-hoo. I wasn't all that bad this year. I drank, I ate, I pooped, I puked and I still love Christmas cookies.

I didn't depend on a Christmas bonus compiled by relatives and handed out in old shoe boxes at a family gathering. I didn't ask for a dancing Santa, a TV or a lamp that's overpriced.

I didn't ask for my family to be there to greet me at the door or fill glad containers with stuffing that I've never really liked.

I didn't ask for anything. And I didn't because it's sort of disgusting.

Before Christmas, I had a friend that wanted an engagement for the 25th. Nothing else. Good great and dandy, and engagement.

I don't think the person needing to give the engagement sees the full picture. Sure, it's engagement now and then years of Christmas freebies and foul-ups.

You hear someone say, "all I want for Christmas is you," is worse than when you hear some one say, "the n-word." They're lying and acting like they are not responsible for their actions because they can disguise it with the beginning of itself.

If I'm all you want for Christmas, doesn't that mean every Christmas and lifetime to come, or are you going to go ballistic when you don't get the puke colored drapes from World Market next year?

And I'm putting what I've accumulated in perspective. I never want anything for Christmas. It's just a day; another day with crazy cultural innuendos attached to it in the late twentieth century that causes many people to flip the fuck out.

I have many great things. I have a roof. I have a great life. I even have a pool and a computer to write on. I bought them all on different days and didn't take mind to the fact that it wasn't the 25th of December when I bought them.

Everything I have felt special when I bought it because it was. It was priced, planned, gifted and gracious in the middle of August as it was the day after Thanksgiving.

Why it's so important to have something given to you on Christmas, well, I'll never really understand.

What it Feels Like to Look Outside From the Inside and Think, "I want to do that, but I can't."

In 22 years of living, I've had four major surgeries to repair my knee, arm and clean various infections.

One month ago, I had my last major knee surgery. It doesn't hurt. It just feels the worst.

I look at the mountains I used to climb every Friday and look away quickly with a slight frown on my zitted face. Poor me, I think. Poor, poor me.

There are a few crazy parts of me that become selfish and act like I'm never going to heal. There are parts of me that act like I don't have access to the top of the line exercise equipment, physical therapists, surgeons and drugs.

Then, there are parts of me that know I'll be fine, but can't wait for that moment.

Anytime someone jogs by me on the street while talking on a cell phone, or rides a bike past me without wearing a helmet, weary of ruining some daily hairstyle, I feel like breaking their legs.

I feel like giving that person a taste of what so many people go through.

It isn't because I'm bitter. I've thought about this. I don't envy the people who can do these things, and I understand that I'm only seeing them in one context, but I know that many of these people have never experienced real pain.

How can I say that? Right. Let me explain:

I can do anything I want because I'm young, capable, educated and strong. I knew that immediately after my doctor told me I wouldn't walk for a long time when I was sixteen years old.

And I'm not turning into a motivational douche-bag either. I'll never be that preacher.

Anyway, when any person hears someone with any sort of knowledge tell them something sounding almost sadistic about their own human condition, their real human starts to come out.

I couldn't see any light, I didn't think breakfast tasted any better the next day but I did identify with a lifestyle that I never knew existed. I felt like I knew why so many of my capable human buddies wasted days on a couch in front of a screen with a controller in their hands. I felt like anyone who got the ass end of life handed to them since they were born were more capable and smart than I ever could be.

I felt like I'd been given a chance to exploit a life I never knew I had.

All those friends I have in Kenya, all those girls I lived with in Guatemala, all those kids that chased my truck in Uganda–at least, a lot of them, don't let me be too general–knew the life they had and would seize any opportunity to exploit it the way every human should.

But, a lot of the time, they can't. Don't worry. It's not because joggers talk on cell phones or people ride motorcycles without helmets. There are a billion reasons why everyone is different and a billion different forces as to why everyone isn't on top.

And everyone knows, somewhere, that they can be on top of whatever it is they need to be on top of. And it feels like looking outside from the inside and imagining what you would do if you were able to be in the mountains where you feel most human, most capable, most ingenious, most certain that you can charge your condition with the strength you didn't know you had until someone told you that you won't be doing what you love for a long time.