Red Bank Regional’s 10 Year Re-Union
Category: Travel and Places

Is there a hyphen there?

Ok... so a couple months ago, Amanda B emails me:

Nice to hear from you. My life is pretty good. I'm glad you're doing well. I heard a rumor that people want you to be the high school reunion organizer. True or false?

Amanda was the third person to ask me this.  I'm not entirely sure how this rumor got started.  Let's clear this up right now: FALSE!  Ok... so let me back this up with some background.  My sophomore year I ran for junior class president.  I didn't campaign.  I was very adamant about that.  I didn't make posters.  I let people know that I was running, but I didn't go out of the way.  The big campaign event was the speeches.  Ok, think Napolean Dynamite.  We got up in front of the whole class and gave a speech about why we should be elected and this and that.  You know how mine went?  Neither do I.  I wasn't there.  You see, at the time, my father was working in a little town in Aosta, Italy... Borgo Franco if I'm not mistaken... but that's neither here nor there.  My family went over to see him for a month.  During that month, we had the speeches.  I typed mine up real quick and emailed it to Jesse Skinner to give to Marc Wallace... or maybe I didn't... I can't remember.  But nonetheless, it got to Marc.  I chose Marc for specific reasons.  For one, he's really charismatic, and he provokes good responses out of people.  He makes people smile and laugh, but not in a "hey, I'm a clown" type of way.  Also, Marc and I were similar in the fact that we didn't really have any real enemies in the school.  Either people liked us or they felt neutral to us.  There wasn't a lot of hostility.

I came back to a "Congratulations. You're the junior class pres." 

So what do you do as the junior class president.  Not a lot.  Well, that's not entirely true.  I did do a hell of a lot.  I spear-headed all of our fund-raising efforts.  Every car wash.  Every concession stand.  Every organized male prostitution ring.  Everything.  I was at every one. 

Sooo... I guess you could say that I'd be the logical choice to organize this thing.  But hombre!  I'm in Spain!  Thousands of miles away.  To organize this thing right would take the recruitment of a committee, dedicated manpower and fundraising, networking, and planning.  If you're going to do it, better do it right.  I simply cannot do it right from across the ocean. 

So as I see it, either someone is stepping up and doing it, or we're not having a 10 year re-union.  I think the latter.  It's already too late to have it this summer.

I nominate Allison Willey.  :)

Currently listening : Change By 12 Cents for Marvin Release date: 2005-12-06

5:36 PM - 7 Comments - 5 Kudos - Add Comment

Re-Invigorated
Category: Travel and Places

I think I'll open with a line from one of my journals.  There's no notes next to this.  No context.  No date (I put it at Summer of 2005).  Just these words:

Can I have your number?  Because I lost mine and I may have to call you later from Jail.

That being said, it's funny how these things work. 

I had what I guess you would call 'a moment of clarity' this past weekend.  Those that know me well, know that I get sucked into work.  Let's get it straight: I hate work.  All kinds of work.  However, when you are me, you have an over-developed sense of guilt... that translates to my inner brain as: if you're not working your ass off, or at least harder than those around you, then you feel guilty.  This is a problem.  Do you want to know why?  Because I don't need to work harder.  I'm a clever Son of a Bitch!  I'm clever enough to figure out how to get stuff done without killing myself.  What my predecessor could do in three hours I can do in one or two.  So do I really need to work until 7pm every night just to out-work my co-workers?  No. 

Anyways... there was a point to this post when I started.  That elusive point.

Ok, so I just hosted an Australian girl for a couple days.  I felt bad for her.  She was 'travelling Europe for six months'.  She was extremely well-prepared.  She had counted her money and made a budget.  She had routes planned, priorities set, standard operating procedures in place, spreadsheets, requisite travel books, etc.  Let me tell you what she didn't have: tolerance for inconvenience and/or delay.  Let me re-emphasize here... she was 'travelling Europe for six months'.  Not five and a half months.  Not five.  Not seven.  Six.  And this poor girl... she just couldn't catch a break.  Things weren't going according to the well-laid plan.

I appreciate what I have.

My entire career as a naval officer has been about teaching myself how to plan for specific situations.  You plan a different way for different evolutions.  I've learned that depending on what you're doing, you have to plan in an element of flexibility.  On a professional level, my flexibility is in the people with whom I've surrounded myself.  People that understand how I make decisions.  People that know when I need to be consulted on a decision and when they should act independently.  This level of flexibility allows me to make a plan and execute with minor or major deviations.  On a personal level, I plan in tremendous amounts of flexibility in my travels.  I'll give you an example.  If you schedule a flight for a certain date, in a certain location then you have to make the flight or else eat the cost of the ticket and find alternate options for whatever you're doing.  By scheduling a flight in advance, you may save a lot of money.  Shoot, you may save 200 Euro.  But now you're stuck.  How about this instead: don't buy a ticket... now the only restriction you have is that you need to be in a major hub when you want to leave (Madrid, Paris, Barcelona, Atlanta, Beijing, whatever).  If you can accept the risk of being delayed a day waiting for a flight to open up, then you can pay the extra couple euros.  I think freedom is worth that extra little bit.

So, there was a point here, and I haven't started on it yet.  I began with that little bit about work, and then I got sidetracked.  Here we go...

I just spent three months planning a big event.  It was consuming me for the most part.  Well, that event just occured... and now my work has faded to near non-existence.  This is a good thing.  I go through periods when I'm working 80 hours a week to periods when I'm working 20 hours a week.  When I came home from work on Friday, after this evolution... I was a bit overcome.  I didn't know what to do with myself, and I hit a major low.  To add to that, a couple of things were happening with my close friends out here which I wasn't sure how to deal with.  I went for a walk.  A long walk.  And I started writing.  It's what I do to clear my head.  I take a long walk, then I sit down and bang out a couple pages in a journal. 

I realized something.

I can only hem and haw so much.  When the rubber meets the road, I just need to get out and do what I want to do.  What's been holding me back to this point has been a certain need to be around friends.  If my friends want to go out, then in the past few months, I'd go out.  Or if I wanted to get out of town, I'd need to plan an event so that these guys would come.  I can't wait anymore.  I can't wait to get everyone on the same page before doing what I want to do.  Life is freakin' short, man.  We've got to get out and do what we're going to do.  I got back to my place around 9pm.  I had a beer, jumped in my bed, and eight hours later, I was on my bike heading to Decathlon to buy a tent.  Two hours after that, I was drinking a beer on the beach in Tarifa.  As Mike always says, "Shit or get off the pot."  Eloquent, yes... but accurate and brief nonetheless.

A took a stop in Vejer de la Frontera

Currently listening : Florida By Diplo Release date: 2005-04-19

8:05 AM - 5 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

I Want That Technology
Category: Life

My guilt rests firmly upon a deep, ancient misconception.  I feel bad about myself time and time again... and again... because I'm enslaved to a vision of what I should be and my place in the world.  I read an interesting speech the other day by a former high level CIA operations leader.  He talked about stats and demographics and the state of the world and major factors affecting global economy.  Global health in general.  So why am I guilty?  Why do I feel bad?  It's because I stray from what I've been taught to believe is the true path.  Listen, son... if you just buckle down, work hard, and make babies then life will be good.  The world will be good.  I drift, rely on wit and muscle, and have no babies.  Therefore the world is a bad place.  And it's my fault.

Currently listening : Fight With Tools By Flobots Release date: 2008-05-20

11:09 PM - 13 Comments - 7 Kudos - Add Comment

If This Weren’t a Dream, Would I Still Feel the Same?
Category: Travel and Places

A breakthrough.  Every lucid dream is a breakthrough when you're only having one or two a month.  They're so rare that each feels like it's the first one.  In my short, semi-meaningless life, I've found a couple pieces of steady, unshakable truth.  Footholds.  When my world is shaky, out of focus, I can fall back and wrap my arms around what I know to be true.  One of these things is that when I try to learn something new, I don't fail so long as I put forth an effort.  It doesn't have to be 113%, but it has to be a persistent, routine effort.  My conducting the exercises to gain control of my dreams is starting to bear fruit.

I had several REM cycles last night that I can remember.  Some dreams might be worth mentioning in a blog posting, but I remember my dreams nightly.  Last night, or actually this morning, during my 4th or 5th cycle I was walking down a flight of stairs to a subway station.  I felt a heavy emotion which I don't recall now, but I stopped on the stairs and said to myself, "if this weren't a dream, would I still feel this way?"  At which point, it dawned on me that I was reflecting on a different state of mind (conciousness), and I must be dreaming.  I put my hands above my head and took off.  I was ecstatic flying around the subway platform.  My heart was beating and my skin was tingly all over.  I held on for about a minute before I fell back out of lucidity.

In my dreams, I always seem to know that I'm dreaming... however, I don't yet have the ability to make my brain register each time that the fact that I know I am dreaming is a signigicant event.  I can't yet put it all together.

Currently listening : Desire By Bob Dylan Release date: 2004-06-01

3:44 AM - 13 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

The Summer Begins

After listening to a lot of B.S. from a lot of different people about how crazy El Puerto de Santa Maria is during the summer, Tommy and I have been waiting to see it for ourselves. Well, I mark this weekend as the official start. Maybe it's due to the the onset of the glorious month of June... or maybe it's something different.

Currently listening : Street Gospels By Bedouin Soundclash Release date: 2007-08-21

8:03 PM - 7 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

The Brain is Back

I've reconnected with my Brain.  And by "Brain", I mean my outdated, old school Palm Tungsten T2 that I used to control the world with.  You know which one I'm talking about.  Always out.  Always checking to see what I commanded myself to do next.  The one with Drug Wars.  The one with my popped Yahoo! mail and a dozen books by Twain and Dickens.  The one that I'd load with a modified (but complete) version of my division's CSMP (P.S. I'm a tool).  The one that would remind me of every last detail of even the tiniest request from the most insignificant of my co-workers.  The one which would sing to me sweet tales of meetings scheduled for the week.  Balls weren't dropped when the Brain was in command.  Well, now it's back after a streak of nearly three years missing. 

You see, the problem is... I'm lazy.  I need someone to tell me what to do.  I get distracted.  I walk in the door thinking, "upload the new version of Wordpress", or "sort through that stack of letters you've been saving since 6th grade", but I end up mesmerized by the antics of Vinnie Chase and Eric Murphy.  I don't know how this happens... but now... now, my friends, the Brain is back, and it's ready to reassert its strangle-hold on the Productivity of John.

So you may ask, "if the Brain was in such tight control, how did it get put into that miscelaneous Adidas shoebox next to the cutting edge TDK discman (you know... the one which could also play MP3's)?"  It stopped syncing with my computer is what happened.  Then, I'd run it out of batteries, and I'd have lost my whole months worth of taskers and errands.  Oh what to do, what to do!  I stopped using it.  Well, three years later, I find a new cradle, plug it in, and snap! it syncs.  Like an advanced case of syphilis, it's infiltrated my thinking space and already is spinning a web of action and milestones for my personal and professional life.

Maybe shit will start getting done around here.

Currently listening : Odelay By Beck Release date: 1996-06-18

1:09 PM - 7 Comments - 6 Kudos - Add Comment

The Birth of a New Holiday
Category: Travel and Places

I'm going through a housal purge.  In no way am I a pack rat... yet I am a nostalgic sommamabitch.  So I keep things which bring me back.  Receipts.  Scraps of paper with notes that I've made to myself.  Every plane ticket I've ever gotten (500+).  Movie ticket stubs.  Maps.  Scribbles.  Rat carcuses.  Ok, maybe not that.  But the point is: for every one thing worth saving, I save three things which should be thrown out.  So every couple of years, usually when I start running out of room, I purge.  I sort correspondence (every little thing saved).  I get rid of mementos which I had considered worth saving at the time but really are just trash.  I decide which mementos are worth saving and which should be tossed.  It's a trip down memory lane.  And then some.

Ok.  Present day.

I had at one point in the last couple months, tossed a box of all this crap into a trash bag so that I could get to it quicker.  Yes.  I'm an idiot.  It doesn't make sense.  But sure enough, it was one of the first things I got to during the purge today.  Inside: a once-used flask, dozens of Pom Iced Tea tops which I thought I might need, picture-hanging hardware, edge dressing for black shoes, more 3M adhesive than you can shake a stick at, and a load of stuff from one of my trips to Tangier.  Plus... plus, plus, plus.  Tons of other garbage not worth mentioning.

But the crown jewel... a note I had TYPED to myself on 07 November 2006.  Let me back this up with a little description of my life at the time.  I had been all-in on a relationship which ended really abruptly.  I had just moved from the god-aweful town of Santee, CA to the 20-something wonderland of the Gaslamp District in downtown San Diego.  I had maybe two friends out in California and a super terrible job providing the muscle and brains for a boss who didn't have any muscle or brains of his own.  The Point: tough time in my life.  It was a fresh start... I had strarted back up with Ju Jitsu and Judo, and I could see a little bit of hope on the horizon where in the past year and a half all I could see was unavoidable spousal abuse with me on the receiving end.  Without further adieu... (is that spelled right?)

****************************

The Birth of a New Holiday                                                    07 NOV 06

Fastgiving was born on the 6th of November in a Prestigious Think Tank called Bed, Bath, and Beyond.  The year: 2006.  The brilliant innovator: John Mastriani.  On a quest for window treatments, John stood in the soft section.  With beads of sweat dripping down his face from his work at the gym, John grimmaced at the thought of hours spent on a step-stool putting up over-priced curtains.

This was not the happiest of Holiday seasons.  A recent investment had fallen through; she had decided to go to Seattle instead.  From there, the next logical step: Hawaii.  John faced the prospect of Thanksgiving alone in a new apartment.

Immediate thoughts of masachism and self-mutilation gave way to a single ingenious idea: Fastgiving.  A turkey-shaped light bulb went off in John's head.  It was so simple but brilliant.  John, the ultimate non-conformist, would subsist on a diet of juice and vitamins while the rest of America would devour legs and breasts and wings.

Genious.  For seven days, John imagined himself purging the processed food from his system.  Once again with moleskin notebook at the ready in his back pocket, John would record his seven days of ecstasy.

Curtain rods.  Drapes.  Panels.  Fasting.  John smiled.  He imagined the days ahead.  He felt certain that his endeavor would cause hilarity to ensue.  Great writing was ahead.

****************************

I fought the urge to 'add' or improve as I typed this in from the crumbled up sheet of paper from that day.  I corrected typos.  They were numerous.  But aside from that... it's unchanged.

2:16 AM - 7 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

The Old Lady Makes Me Sign When I Foget My Receipt
Category: Travel and Places

I'm not a slob.  However, I'm not particularly a neat freak either.  And yet, I have this little obsession with well-kept records.  I don't know what it is... the idea, the concept, the repetition... it's quite appealing to me.  I get a little moment of happiness when I go to the dry cleaners and the little lady behind the counter makes me sign my name in the ledger.  I flip back to the beginning and see all those signatures of all those people that have passed through to pick up their suits and jackets.  Hundreds of people.  Thousands sometimes.  They've all stood exactly where I stand and sign their name.  But that's just one little baby example.  My tax records.  Maintenance on my motorcycle.  Stuff for work.  When it's well done, I'm content. 

Now, please make note.  There's a conflict here: I don't necessarily like to keep good records myself.  I can't even keep up with my dream journals.  The energy just doesn't materialize at crunch time.  What can I say?  I'm a slacker.  I wake up two or three times a night out of REM sleep and during a dream, and I just don't feel like getting up and writing it down.  Bad me.

Currently listening : The Documentary By The Game Release date: 2005-01-18

1:55 PM - 3 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

If Your Bike Doesn’t Start... Look at Your Hands and Spin
Category: Travel and Places

I told myself that I would spend at least an hour doing creative stuff every night. Or else. Or else what? Well... or else I'll end up being one of those couch-monkeys that spends all their time watching re-runs of Miami 5-0 or The Loveboat until 1am everyday. So I started working on another novel. I apparently have adult-onset ADHD, so I can only work on a few pages at a time, but I'm enjoying writing poorly.

But it doesn't stop there.  I'm doing other creative things... and in spite of my three or four months of slothliness, I have in fact accomplished one thing: I've done a great deal to train myself to wake up inside of my wee bitty dreams.  And I came a hair's breath (or is it a hare's breath... or did I just make that up) from inducing lucidity in my dream last night.  You see, we all have common themes in our dreams.  And one of the ways to 'wake up' in your dreams is to recognize these themes while you're dreaming.  Can you guess what one of my common themes is?  My bike not starting is a recurring inconvenience in my dreams.  It happens all the time.  And it happened last night... It's got something to do with the disappointment of going from being about to do the thing I love the most (riding el Biko) to being forced to do the thing I like the least (run errands - getting a new battery or finding someone to jump start it or whatever).  So I'm to the point where I recognize some of these themes, but I haven't yet mastered the art of not waking up.

So my next creative thing...

I've been blessed.  In many ways.  And in fact, I've been cursed in many ways as well.  Since graduating the Academy, I've lived in three places: Yokohama, Japan, San Diego, and now El Puerto de Santa Maria, Spain.  I figured to stimulate my atrophied blogging muscles, I'll go back and hunt down a couple of my Flickr pictures from my old haunts, and maybe it'll bring back a memory or two. 

Let's start at the beginning...

I graduated school in May 2003, and a couple months later I'm looking for an apartment in Kanagawa Prefecture.  I wanted to live near the beach... this is where I ended up:

I ended up in a house of my own right on Sagami Bay.  I was minutes from Kamakura... minutes from Enoshima... and a good 15 minutes from any other Americans.  Glorious.

Anyways, my ADHD has kicked in, and I need to go drink a beer.

Currently listening : Everything You Need By Slightly Stoopid Release date: 2003-03-18

1:23 PM - 4 Comments - 4 Kudos - Add Comment

Neither God, Nor Father, Nor Love
Category: Travel and Places

The spell is breaking, and it couldn't come at a more critical time.  There are some things which you can't do cold turkey.  I guess you could say I quit smoking cold turkey.  But is it really cold turkey if you spend years of trying and failing miserably to quit something.  It took me 10 terrible years of my feeling like I had no will power before I was able to stop for real.  Cold turkey.  I don't think so.  What spell are you talking about?  It's hard to say, hard to say.  But here I am, a stone's throw from Africa... shouting distance from Sevilla, and a ferry ride away from Genoa (a long, long ferry ride but a ferry ride nonetheless), and I can't seem to muster the strength to get out of my apartment... to pull myself away from Vince and E and Drama or Tom Welling and his bad acting on Smallville.  Why?  It's not culture shock.  It's not work-related stress (although my work is stressful).  I think that it's the looking forward into the abyss.  I look forward, and I don't really see anything going on there.  And it bugs me a little bit.  But I'm firm in my conviction of what I am and am not ready for.  I'm not going to sit down and start popping out rug rats because I think it might inject some meaning into my life.  Some things are meant to be... like... I am MEANT TO BE out in space.  I am MEANT TO BE confused about my life... for life!  Oh well.

But I accept that... and now it's time to stop moping and have a little bit of fun.  Not too much.  But a little bit.  Much like quitting smoking, I've been weening myself into personal productivity again.  Reading and writing.  Riding my motorcycle to stupid places.

12:57 PM - 9 Comments - 9 Kudos - Add Comment