The word, the line, the way

I plucked Charles Bukowski off the shelf at a rare book store in Monterey, after telling the owner how much I liked shops like his. “The best way to support us is to buy a book,” he told me, and so I happily did this and carried on. Arguably one of the more abrasive writers of the 20^th century, particularly when discussing the opposite sex, I cannot exactly pinpoint why this troubled tired old man who authored more than 45 books of poetry before his death struck a chord with me as California rumbled by outside. But passages both obscene and beautiful, as these things go, will forever be associated with a string of memories out along the Pacific Coast Highway in December. It’s that rhythmic flip flip flipping of pages and an assortment of words that function just like songs and like smells.

“We were made to accomplish the easy things and made to live through the things that are hard.” That was something I came across one night just outside Kernville I believe, nestled in the back of my car surrounded by high reaching Sequoias. It had started to rain there on my abandoned campground, the world pitch black outside, and as I look back on that trip and other trips all the way back to the cold sand of last year's Zanzibar, it's hard not to find a few places it fits. For other purposes, The Great Escape I'd also recommend ["I got off my stool and climbed right up the supervisor and then I reached up and pulled myself right out of there. It was so easy it was unbelievable but none of the others followed me"]. And then there's, So you want to be a writer? [If you have to wait for it to roar out of you, then wait patiently. If it never does roar out of you, then do something else.] There's nothing in the world like stumbling across that perfect set of words at just the right time.

I ran with Charles for two weeks, really, sufficiently marking him up and reading out the final page in closure. This was the road trip I dreamed of so many months back in the chaos and the quiet. It was the one I engineered slowly based off the little hunches difficult to explain. Each mile put all that 2014 was and wasn't further and further in the rear view mirror. Yes, Charles and I went together up the curvy roads of Big Sur that fall down into the sea. We went together into the delightful craft breweries of Monterey and San Francisco and Mariposa. We sat atop the lookout over the Golden Gate Bridge at sunset as all the world's couples came and went, and as the bitter wind settled in for the night. I got drunk with him on Polk Street one Saturday when the entire world was dressed as Santa and Elves and Grinches. And we walked together into Yosemite Valley, up and down the trails, leaning out over the Falls, breathing in the cold fresh air.

We are adventurers and explorers at heart, and so adventuring is merely connecting with our long-standing roots and our instincts. This is how we advance and this is how we heal. The next hill will be something new, a chance for us to spring out from ourselves into the million hills that follow, eclipsing where we were before. The next fork in the road will be the biggest decision of the day, one that trumps all the decisions you ever made before because it's happening now. The next tank of gas will be infinite freedom, because of how far it can take you [and for the record, it's quite far]. I cannot describe what that does to a person, or how that opens you up. I cannot explain all that means to me.

But for what it's worth, beyond all that, I am myself again, with an extra kick in my step bursting forth into a new January, and that is the me I've always known. You may have known him too. “In the totality of all things, of course, our petty agony is stupid and vain,” another poem declares. “But I feel that our dreams were not.” 

Far from you

I think I'll always be too far from you
Just past that sunset
Under some other moon
And I know that doesn't work
The maybes, the somedays, the hazy tomorrows
That may never come.

But I wanted to let you know
That I took a walk today
Alone on a hilltop
That looked off on a big mountain covered in snow
In a place so far removed
Even the satellites cant reach it.

It was one of the most beautiful things I'd ever seen
And I thought of you.

The man at the bar in Monterey

Bill told me a lot of things, that man at the bar, but he had that rare demeanor of someone who more often than not is asking for details as opposed to speaking of his own conquests and aspirations and vacuous desires. We went back and forth on a lot: the strange path my life has taken, balancing risk and adventure; the ins and outs of San Francisco, which soon I will understand; his challenging personal situation, one that made him look tired, which at one time I could certainly relate to. It was refreshing all around, over a couple cold pale ales, and in my long history of sitting down at random bars in sidelined cities, clamoring away from most conversations that just don’t seem to end and people who do not know when to shut up, I recognize you don’t run into Bill-like characters every day.

I should explain more about Bill. He is seemingly straight-laced, probably early 50s, no children, recently divorced, and a financial planner. Naturally, in one of my more introspective moments, expecting a bland and by-the-book response, I asked him for advice. I asked what he would recommend to a young budding 25 year old who wants to balance experiences these days with security in future days, and as a response, he gave me without hesitation two short stories.

In the first, a client with an especially well-designed retirement package found out one day, out of nowhere, that he had terminal cancer with a year to live. That money, as these things go, would then go to his only son, who has proven himself to be especially irresponsible and impulsive in his late adolescent years. There was understandably a tone of tragedy and hopelessness to this one.

Then I was told of a man who, though everything is done, continues to come back to Bill seeking advice. Bill tells him the same thing again and again: you are fine, you have done everything right, now go do what you want to do and enjoy. “But I just don’t know what to do with all this spare time,” he continuously replies. Arguably some retirement stories solicit more empathy than others.

In a world where we are all navigating future outlooks and obsessing over risk, and perhaps even some utopian time yet to come, this all meant a lot to me from the horses mouth. There may come a time that I wish vaguely I had set more aside, planned this or that, had a 401K going at 23, and many other fiscally responsible ventures. That time may come indeed. But I’ll never regret those days cruising slowly up the Pacific Coast Highway, and the night I landed in Monterey, before that great storm blew in out along the Pineapple Express.

Back in Seville

I cannot tell you what it means, or the strange paradoxical thoughts that run through my head every time I fly in and out of Seville. It holds such a special place in the recesses of my heart, somewhere that creates longing for things that will never be, and longing for things that of course, shouldn't be. Let's be honest, Seville is close minded, slow moving, stagnant in many ways, enchanting to the masses only because it is historically rich and culturally flamboyant. The way my old Spanish host brother speaks about it is reminiscent of what I said about my own Texas suburb when I was young and could not wait to break out of the cookie cutter brick houses and checkered roads to explore other parts of the world. He, like me, feels the burden of his hometown. Things are always romanticized by the foreigner around for the long weekend, while the true realities on the ground are apparent only to those with a long-term and more permanent view of the place. This is to say, I do not belong there forever.

Still though, Seville has its allure for me, both permanent and impermanent, like some distant, vague, second home now with a family that accepted me years ago and does again each time I come back. The brothers are like brothers, cousins like cousins, mother like mothers, and for brief moments of extravagance, it feels like I grew up there amidst them all. I find this remarkable because it embodies all I did to become apart of something so remote and foreign, which I say not to toot my own horn, but to state a fact about my existence. The articles for traveler magazines that write about food and flamenco and the old churches along the Guadalquivir and warm summer nights under the stars say nothing about what it takes, all the sacrifices you make, to call something like that your own in a language no one understands back wherever the hell you were before. "When are you going to move here, rent a flat, marry a Sevillana, and start a family?" one of the cousins asked me this time around. "We could be neighbors again," I responded smiling, and sometimes that seems like the best idea in the world.

The hardship is the reminders of course, that come in various shapes and sizes, that I'm not and never will be Sevillano, and the realization that in fact, I wouldn't want to be either. I will always come back, maybe for long stretches at a time, and go to clubs with Carlos and look at all the lovely people, none of which give a damn where you are from. I'll continue learning new words that probably aren't even understood north of the Andalusian border, but that generate a giggle each time they are said. I will take runs along the Guadalquivir and drink by the water on Calle Betis. I will talk in English with the newest American student living in my old bedroom and tell him how great his situation is and how much he could do with it even though we all know he will leave soon and forget everything. I'll take that Spanish girl to lunch again and again and toy with the idea of what if because it is fun and excessively irrational to think about, our own personal episode on "Espanoles por el Mundo," even though the table between us might as well be here to the moon. The view from the rooftop, or las Setas, or the highest church tower. The view from the river, or the bedroom, or a table out in front of Miami at night, peering down San Jacinto. So many views from so many different angles, and so many memories from so many different stages of life all rolling over onto one another.

I love these things but am utterly frustrated by these things. I believe after all these years that the allure sits in that paradox alone: I'm there truly, as much as I'll ever be, as much as I think someone in my shoes can be, unique, exotic, superb, but it all remains something just out of reach. For every beautiful moment of success, of recognition, of fluid adaptation, comes ten in rapid succession that bring you back down to Earth.

But that one moment is worth it every time. And that's why I'll always come back again. 

Those lights across the way

The 1970s flickering light display of the Intercontinental Hotel that comes through my kitchen window each night evokes a certain kind of nostalgia, for what exactly, I'm still not sure. My immediate thought, as I sit and write this now, is the radio towers across from Mt. Bonnell, that brought comfort on good days and bad days, cold afternoons and warm nights, that time back in Austin that might as well be another life. I must have spent days up there spread across various points and phases, on dates and with friends and more often than not alone, mulling life over, looking down at the expensive waterfront properties and wondering in the silence of the night what I'd need to get there too.

But the reds and yellows and greens could likewise be more Nigeria-centric, reflecting a time when this whole socio-economic Nigeria project was a hopeful enterprise, which comes when anything is new and fresh and yet to be tainted by things like basic human greed and selfishness. I've seen videos taken from helicopters high above Lagos when Nigeria had just become Nigeria, and in so many ways, my idea of those buildings in faded shades of roughed up colors is what I see across the way right now. The country has changed very little, but has also probably changed a lot.

Nostalgia is in the end, a personal emotion. It draws on your own unique longings and memories of what is and what was. It plays on your desire to feel those things again. Was it freedom you felt? Was it comfort? Was it wonder? Was it needing nothing but the cash in your pocket that would buy your next tank of gas to another small forgotten American town? Was it that sense of excitement flying over the landscape of a new country you didn't know yet but surely would soon? Was it this need, without logical explanation, to have someone in front of you again and be able to put your hand on their cheek? I have felt all those things, and many more, and more than anything now, as I sit here, I feel the need to throw 2014 in a sack and shake it around a little and there is no better place to do this than out on the open road.

New images sprout to life. In one such dream, I am weaving along the Pacific Coast Highway all the way up past Big Sur to Salinas, the true John Steinbeck country, and then continue all the way to San Francisco. And if I have gone that far I might as well keep going because off to the right on the map is Yosemite, where John Muir spent endless summers in his cabin, before dedicating his life to its preservation. It would be a shame to not sit and see what exactly all that was for. Further north still it's wine country, which is a part of any country I have learned graciously to love. And then perhaps a final culmination in Redwood National Park, where some of the oldest living things on Earth tower peacefully above the forest floor as they have for a few thousand years, if anything just to remind you subtly, when you start feeling big, as to how small you still are and how short your life is. "Oh shit, we just killed something older than Jesus," a druggy remarked to his friend after accidentally burning down one such tree recently in South Africa.

What about sleeping in a shady cabin in the woods, or my mom's couch, or my dad's spare bedroom, or the back of the old Nissan Versa shivering in the cold? What books would I pluck off my shelf and toss into the trunk and draw on at various points along the way? What does cold weather feel like to your ears and your nose (I have by now long forgotten) as you tie a scarf around your neck and throw a hood over your head?

These are all new experiences, and old ones. They are fresh starts, quiet spaces, views, smells, and sounds. They flash in and out of my mind in tandem with the lights across the way.

Johannesburg Nights

There is something wholly blissful about cold light beers on a rooftop, watching the middle afternoon sunlight turn to the extravagant colors of Sunday dusk. People constantly alternate between sunglasses and no sunglasses, hiding behind occasional pillars or the shadow of the person on their right. People laughing, standing, sitting, moving, buzzing, interacting, living. You can order your brunch now, or later, or after this beer or that bloody mary. You can have a drink now, or later, and who really cares; just whenever you feel like it but you should certainly have another. The DJ plays a song you don't really hear as anything but background noise and a beat. This peace, this casual conversation without any rush, is intoxicating. It is what in my mind Sundays are made for. It is one last beautiful man-made pause, a footnote, a moment of fleeting contemplation, before the rush of the week begins.

And then the day turns to night, which in my case might be the last sunset I will ever see in South Africa. That makes it all the more urgent, this being present in the various tiny moments of splendor. What follows is a flurry of packing and repacking and sporadic lunches that come when you usher yourself along quickly from one intermediary place to another, and then the trains and the cars and the customs line and its passport check with an officer who for the first time in your life, actually cracks a joke, and then another, and then you fly and watch Invictus on the plane, Namibia and Angola floating by out your right side window, but fixated on Morgan Freeman's depiction of Nelson Mandela, all because it feels right, that one last dose of a country before it is gone again and completely out of reach, accentuated in that final moment when the South African Airways flight attendant on the television screen in front of you says, "we wish you a proudly South African goodbye" in a lovely accent with a smile, all before falling again back into the chaos and the unearthly smog and the Third Mainland Bridge that shoots you out forcefully into the tremendous city of Lagos. But for those last few moments with good people and a beer sweating in your hand, on some deck that you could never find again, you can enjoy.

These were the Johannesburg afternoons and nights: that humble dose of civilization, where things - the little details people only appreciate if they have spent time to the truly dysfunctional and compromised countries of the world - function naturally and as they should until the end, and your entire being, the parts of you always on guard because everything is something - a risk, a con, a challenge, an obstacle - finally sits back and takes a breath and that is all there is. 

Abuja to Lagos

A chance set of circumstances put me next to a young American guy on the flight from Abuja back home to Lagos. He wore sandals and baggy pants, and sported an impressive beard, which by any standard satisfies the typical NGO look spread across Sub-Saharan Africa. In Nigeria however, nothing is as it seems, and I soon discovered he was into commercial farming, owning about 200 acres in the North of the country. When asked how a white American happens to end up in the middle of nowhere growing a variety of grains with four tractors, he said it was a random and unpredictable series of events.

Knowing the challenges operating out of Lagos, Northern Nigeria is hard to imagine. He enlightened me on a few of the things he deals with, including crime, lack of basic infrastructure, and spiders, scorpions, and snakes ("always watch where you step!"). A prominent Indian businessman was recently killed when a cobra came up through his toilet and bit him while on the pot. "The worst are the people though," he said. "I am always armed. Since all my staff are pious Muslims and I am Jewish, I was watching the Gaza crisis closely. Didn't know if one day they would all revolt and cut off my head as retaliation. Luckily nothing happened." The conversation had an oddly casual tone of voice when referencing such things the average population would hardly take so lightly.

We talked about his wife, too. He married a local Nigerian he met one day at the Ministry of Agriculture and Rural Development while getting his land titles sorted, and fast forward to present day and his current flight will lead to another flight to watch her give birth to his first child. As a footnote, he advised me as a rule not to mess around with the average locals here, because there are a lot of diseases. I assured him I had no intention, though he was particularly concerned, in that case, about what I did for girls. We also talked taxes, which he hasn't paid in ten years. He doesn't expect anyone to come after them now in the remote corners of the Sahel. "But you're a suit and tie guy," he said as he motioned to my outfit. "You definitely have to worry about that stuff."

I wish I could have recorded the conversation. Too many jewels are now missing, lost forever, just hours and days later. All in all, he was the most ridiculous human being I have met in a long time and probably a little bit crazy, but he seemed happy, genuinely happy - that aura of confidence someone has when they need nothing from you or anyone else and are just along for the ride - and that is more than most can say in most parts of the world, and I appreciate that in somebody. The whole 55 minute flight got me thinking, or more helped me remember something I knew already, which is that there really are a million possible ways to live your life, more than one could ever dream up or think suitable for themselves, combining the big decisions and the little ones, and it really is never too late to wipe your slate clean, pick up the pieces, buy a ticket (yes, that part of it actually is that easy), and start the whole thing over again. Whatever it takes to find your own niche; whatever it takes to live your own life. No matter how far flung some people end up, and how off their rocker some people seem, I will always respect the hell out of a person who at the very least has the courage and the balls to try and figure things out - in practice by doing, and with much less talking, which is really the only way.