SPEW :: to jubal

created: november 26, 1996

You know that feeling where everything you come in contact with, if it were to appear on a readout like an EEG, would just be a series of some minor spikes and valleys? I’m in that now. I’ve got no reason to be. I’m doing really well…really. I’ve got a graet fun job that pays really well and has no signs of relaxing. Anna, as well, is employed and we have a great appartment in Tiburon that was a fucking steal. What am I talking about? I have an Idea…see, there was a two month period there where my whole existance was like a kite flying on a spider-web. I had already tied up all those loose ends in LA, and had minimized my life to what would fit in one Jetta or one closet. My only obligation was to send my cousin like $150 every quarter for the storage of my shit and my cats. Other than that…I was “this close” to being able to bolt out into the great wide open. No commitments. As much as Anna would be crushed if she were to read this, I would hve NO reservations about just filling up and leaving. See, I wasnt paying rent…AND i was working. For a while there, I hade close to 2000 in the acount…which would be more than enough to extend myself for god knows how long in what direction. Who knows? Sell the Jetta, buy the BMW, and tour the SW until the winter blends into spring. By that time…you KNOW what I’d have seen? Who I would have discovered? I guess I miss that opportunity. The point is, I was as close to my nomadic state as I fear I’ll be in a while to come. I now have a lease…a legal binding that will follow me if I were to break it. I will continue on that all-too-American of paths and just make the most of my situation. I want to be able to make my situation the most. The latter is a pro-active stance. Making my situation the most would be something like waking up somewhere on the Mogillon Rim in central Arizona and wondering whether I should head south and hang with the cats in Tucson, Vegas to see my good friends father, KC to see an old girl-friend, or to just continue to head out on a path of unknown origin. THAT is my dream, Jubal. THAT is what I desire. In comparison, who the fuck needs a job with George Lucas? Yeah I want to make a name for myself and I want to create breath-taking digital artistry and I want to achieve some sort of recognition that seems to only come from powerful commercial/corporate elevations, but I’m not willing to sit on this FUCKING uncomfortable wooden horse while I strain out there to grab some silly brass ring when, by the time I…ME…gets around to it, I’ll just want something different. If there’s one thing that the SHAMAN has learned in these 26 years, is that there need NEVER be shame in bouncing from interest to interest. You ever heard my “life is a hiway” analogy? I’m on a highway driving along. Its pretty well fogged in. (luckily) I cant see too far in advance. I’m driving at my own pace despite all the other activity and distractions on the highway and yonder. I keep taking a series of off-ramps…never the same one twice. The off-ramps, if nothing else, afford me the chance to look around…at how far I’ve come and just gain some supplies before I get back on…head back down that road towards….? See, the highway is my life: travelled at my own pace…. REGARDLESS. The offramps, are the punctuation marks of employment and experience in my life.

The supplies I gain while at an offramp are occupational experience. You see, Jubal, by moving up here, I took an expansive offramp…on where I camped out for a while. And it was during this pause that I began to realize that I dont HAVE to get back on that Hiway. There are some pretty intersting trail to check out…over there…and over there. But I’ll be honest with you. Know what keeps me getting back on that hiway and keeping up a steady, if somewhat swervy pace? The faith…the knowledge…the hope that someday I;ll be able to fund one of those jeep-trail motorcycle tours into the interior of this great country…in style. Sure I could do that now, and the spreading myself thin would teach me more than I could have ever imagined. But I’ve grown accustomed to a certain way of life. I’ve made, in my lifestlye and lifetime, a habit out of busting my ass JUST so that I can feel good about the rewards and so that NOBODY can say that I dont have my shit together. Is that neurotic? I really am in doubt. I dont see any alternative for that it is simply who I am and how I make my way. Its great for the employer and even better for me for if I was to ever just set my sights on one finite goal or purpose, I’d do some trully amazing and wonderful things. THAT is the faith of which i speak. THAT is the rhythm to which I chant. I neednt woory about the devil and my hands ever being idle for I make my way as a busy man. REGARDLESS of what it is that I craft from these hands or from this mind…I know it will be honest…even if my employers are not. Even though it may take a slap in the face before I realize that its well and time to get back on that hiways and find another mine-shaft, I’ll know that its time to go for it will be a decision that is mine and mine alone. So here I am at an odd position. It is me and me alone ho has place the SHAMAN in the North BAY. I have my very best friend in the world right by my side, and I by hers as we conjur up wild and expansive and wholly realistic views of how great our lives will be…on a scale of cathedral, jubal. And not Catholicism… echoic…sounding our signal through the fog. Keasey wrote of the fog in the Cuckoos Nest. His fog was different than mine though. His, as seen thru the mind and eyes of the Chief, was one malicious, produced my the “Machine” which was probably more rooted in fears of actuall real-life white-male entities than a “crazy indian” would be given credit for. But while his fog was purely of halucinagenic nature it was similar in that it obscured clear vision…forcing the individual to fucus on immediate surroundings and to place judgement in terms of criteria very close at hand. Our fog is similar in that sense. DISsimilar in that HIS induced, for that decade, irrational behavior that warranted his intern. Mine simply keeps me from traveling down that hiway at to break-neck a pace. Woe is the young professional who can see far enough ahead that s/he races past the thorns to reach the rose.

An hour later and my spew hath no end in sight. I must tell you, though. While we migrate further and further apart spacially in distance and temporally of handshake, I never fear that one day our thought patterns, coupled and flavored and spiced by those we both know and love, will some day create something of lasting beauty and spiritual permanance. Whether this is of physical nature left here on this Earth or a center for appreciation of things beautifly and naturally non-linear. It is not finished.

SHAMAN

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