SPEW :: to julieana

created: april 25, 1997

“what the fuck?”

Good question. Emotion as yet unfiled. I guess that there is something to be said about the fact that I handnt talked or heard or made an effort to contact Jubal more than 3-4 times while he was living in SantaFe. I seriously doubt that he would be thinking along those lines…that kinda scorecard when making out the list of who he wants “included.” However, I guess that the longer it goes, the LESS likely he may be to call ANY OF US. Analogy forthcoming: See, Maria, the girl that we lived with…the one that I dont really get along with and vice versa…her mom passed away a week or two ago. Anna is horrified that I havent “reached” out to tell her something. Personally, the views I have concerning that transition are
deeply rooted, and frankly, the last thing I would ever do was to tell her that I’m sorry. I TRULY am sorry for her loss, though. Its just that if I was her, and I knew full well that Sean doesnt care for me, I would be overly offended if he came up to me and said sorry…regardless of how sincere I KNEW he was about it. Theres a spike in her life right now. Everything is spry and random and out of control…she’s got a SHIT load to deal with right now. Once again, I would be wrought away from those obligations if someone that I didnt care for came up and said the same thing that EVERYONE’s been saying for weeks. Now, having said all that, I do have very definite plans to write her and to tell her, in phat detail everything I’ve said here. WHY i didnt “come” to her in her time of need. WHY i have the feelings for her that I do. WHY i view the transition her mother encountered the way I do. All of these things and more. I just want to wait until things, for the lack of a better phrase, “die down.” AND THAT ID WHAT BRINGS ME TO THIS ANALOGY::

There is a spike in Jubals life right now. He KNOWS that we’re in the dark about all of this. He KNOWS that he should call us. He KNOWS that this has been diametrically opposite to everything WE thought Jubal was (is?). And most importantly, he KNOWS that we know. And no matter how he re-iterates his little mantra about “the way I live my life…”, he knows that theres something that needs to be done: Something as little as simply telling us that its true, to something more deep like “This is everything and why.” All this he knows. And the spike that he’s dealing with now WILL die down and he will come around. I CANNOT say that I dont want or need to hear what he has to say. It’s killing me as I’m sure it is you too. To hear about something second or third hand like this… something so massive in a cats life… and this cat, BY DEFINITION, is the best friend you’ve ever felt…to be out of the loop is weird. I feel no hurt. I feel no negativity. I feel only like what a dog must feel/look like when it hears/sees something it just does NOT understand: That inquisitive cock of the head. We like to think that we’re “due” an explanation. Tell him THAT and you’re likely not to hear from him for a while. He runs his life by a different clock than most, J. And if you make requests or demands before either he’s formulated one or is ready to spew it, than he;ll take the defensive. That is what I think.

Jubal is nothing if he is not unintentionally throwing curves to the people who think they know him. Sometimes he pulls off doing this INtentionally… and making it look like as random as the wind. But as you say, “The Undercover Smart.Guy” has no regrets about his forward progress. I’m actually looking forward to hearing not only WHAT he has to say, but HOW he says it. You can tell alot about how someone feels about something by simply listening to inflection, or lack of it, in their voices and their stories. I have this vision of him calling and telling me about it, and his voice is just going to de deadline and deadpan. This seems TOTALLY arranged!!! Or sould I say DE-ranged? I never had any doubt abthe two of them spending the rest of their lives together. Perhaps I was even in denial about the fact that they would most likely be married in 1/2 a decade…regardless of the conversations that I had SEPERATELY with the both of them about how irrelevant marraige was in the Western World. But all of that just takes a back seat to the fact that there was not outpouring of “whatever” after they’d done it. FINE…go off and have a secret marraige with just yourselves and a select few. Couples have been doing it since antiquity. And while I could CARE LESS about not being warned or invited, I DO have some reservations about how I’m supposed to feel when I realize that if I never called and investigated, I MAY NEVER HAVE KNOWN.

So the controlled experiment is this: Since he knows that we know, how long will it take before the tension is relaesed by EITHER party making contact? What if its another 4 weeks? What do you say? What DONT you say? Why will it MATTER so fucking much when that happens?

NOW, in light of all that, rmember two things:

He’s living in PHOENIX… that’s a whole ‘nother 27 paragraphs in and of itself… He’s distanced himself even further from sources of soul and inspiration….

….and that SUCKS…for him and us.

SHAMAN

SPEW :: to jubal

created: spring, 1997

It’s never that I thought of myself as a counselor. I never in a million years EVER considered myself one who was there to gove advise as to the “right Path.” I do, however, have a knack for affording the right situation with the (somehow) appropriate analogy or metaphor. And it is this that I unconsciously accell at. Unfortunately, there is a weird situation here. I feel like there is a load of shit that somehow got dumped on my friends good fortune now that I left. Now, I’m enough of a realist to accept that it has nothing to do with my departure. It’s just that there are some similarities between whats going on down there and whats going on up here. Yet, without going into the details of how our situations allign, let me just spew. Spew again, yet never quite the “end-all be-all.”

Anna and I are not necessarily strugling, but there are some issues. I have embarked on an unprecedented journey. What I thought was a nice, comfortable situation back in LA, I have swapped for this stilted, unprepared attempt to enhance this chapter of my life. I have always though that as long as we keep altering our environments, we will never be at a loss for stimulii. So, regardless of what advances the SHAMAN had made in LA, he gave them up. He was not, I repeat: was NOT following a girlfriend. In all actuallity, I hated LA. There was narry a day that went by that I didnt curse the Basin. Yet, once I left…on my own terms, mind you…I found that I was riddled with self-doubt….self-doubt that directly belies that “own terms” shit. For example: If I keep saying that I want to be a 3D computer artist with / around / in / for / behind… etc the motion picture/TV industry, then why did I move from the proverbial hotbed of talent (prospective and proved alike) and into more of a corporate world then I ever cared to address whilst I lived in LA? Basically, I moved away from “hands-on” world of, for the lack of a better phrase, “playing with the goods” and into a world where if you dont know how to program this shit at the CODE level, then get to the back of the fucking bus. San Francisco is a place where the geek, the professional, the executive and the artist are expected to blend into one ambiguous form, ever vigilant for the opportunity when one persona’s skill will be needed over another. See, back in LA, there was evil looking over you at all times. But there was always such a bottom rung that there that you were always afforded a seat…regardless of how shitty it was. Here, I dont know…it’s different. I now know why in LA they recruited so heavily from up here. The cats that they were talking to from up here were originally put to work because they knew what they were doing…however they got that experience. I’m in the loop though. I’m having my ends meet better than they were back in LA, and that, after a recent relocation, is more than I could ever have hoped for. If nothing else, I’m learning, first hand, hoe it is that things work out here. Jubal, I had one day off…the day that I drove up here. The next day, I was put to work at a job that could very easily go “full time.” And in this building, are the very 3D workstations that I would like nothing more thsn to be making minimum wage on. Sure, George Lucas and ILM need my help more than I can put into words, but its always been the appreciation of the bottom rung that allows you fathom the view from the top. “It takes poverty to love a toy” -Widespread Panic SO…although I’m making a decent living, I’m finding, just about dusk every night, a feeling that I should be sitting down to this computer to write the latest, inflatest cover letter to a resume that I’m not so sure is all I thought it was. I put it this way: I am converting what it is that I want to do FOR A LIVING to something I’ll fund as a hobby. Because as you must know by now, what I can accomplish today for $5700 worth of equipmwnt can be done 2X faster and in 1/2 the storage for 1/2 the price a year from now. And who knows, there me be some marvelous turn of events in the near future where I’ll be asked upstairs to “feeelance” where the have all the Silicon Graphics and the 3D Studio and the Digital Audio Work Stations and all the AVID’s. But in the meantime, I’ll just put on that “sponge” routine and soak up as much skill as possible…in the off-chances that some other company up here will find it necessary. Which leads me to my next event: Do we really have enough time in this life to devote ourselves to pleasing those who pay us MONEY?
Arent theere more important things to involve our subconsciousness?

“I left at the top of my game.” “I left on my own terms.” “I left with the intent on using what LA taught me against LA.” Let’s face it: I left LA because I felt drawn. I’ve always known that there was an unavoidable attraction to the North. I’ve remarked upon this in any number of my Spew’s. And Redfield made it the lynchpin of his book The Celestine Prophesy. Basically, there is one thing we sould keep in mind during this life: The natural world is one we should embrace. There is something to be said about the draw and the energy that surrounds either a natural, “original-growth” forest and/or rock outcroppings that mimick organic formations. Jubal, I’ve seen these. I’ve felt what this author and the thousands he’s spawned are talking about. I’ve felt it drug-free and I’ve felt it as real as in my own hand. He mentions theorems that force us to believe that the further we move away from “nature” (natural, old-growth trees, and those FUCKING rock formations), the further we’ll get from the most productive thoughts we’re capable of. When one’s in the city, one has a very self-centric look about tghe world and how it pertains to him/her. They fall right in line with the cult of the dollar and they spice it up with the belife that they do it for they really love it, or they need to keep that apartment in the sky or over the water or they need to keeo that special someone happy or they need to maintain those payments on that Saab or that BMW so that their precious credit report which they’ve never physically seen wont get tarneshed so that they can keep extending themselves on fake money called credit so that they can keep repeating the evil steps A thru F. And all this day by day, paycheck by paycheck, quarter by quarter, and I KNOW they only dream about getting back to a time when they moved at their own pace. “I dont fantasize about industrial breakdown, I wait for it.” “I dont need to return to Hunter-Gatherer, I want to HAVE to return…either by methods apocolyptic or viral.” -shaman. Read the Unibomber manifesto and tell me what YOU think. Money is great, and you need not combat that. There was a wise Paleo-lithic who was so efficient at hunting, either cuz game was sparce or that new design, that there began to be a horde. These “man” was so efficient, that he began to accuulate susstinence throughout the winter. And along with his gatherer “woman,” even though probably 1/2 of all women were out there hunting as well, he began to accumulte a wealth of commodities. He had something others wanted (food, warmth, survival), others had something he wanted (service). Commerce was born. Labour furthered this. Soon, we began to employ our children to enhance our lives. Holy shit, what a tangent!

What I’m trying to say, is that there are some promising advantages to living in a complex of comerce as well as some disadvantages, which we neednt go into. As well there are some advantages to living in a place where events and the people who ive them….take…their…time. I, for one, miss this. Tucson was a place where life was hitting the snooze bar while still conscious of advances. And either way, how the hell could you get out of that bed on the wrong side? In a town that operated at that pace, there was plenty of time for reflection. You could not only see things coming, but you were able to deal with them in the pace that all things in this life deserved. There was a multitude of vehicles to explore the avenues life. The only thing that I would worry about now that I’ve seen the other side is that there is too much a delay between the advances and the tangibilities of those advances. Are there enough stimuli? Are there enough other things to do without gluing yourself to the world’s outside events?

SPEW :: to jubal

created: spring 1997 (i)

UTTER CONFUSION speckled with little or NO DOUBT…

There is so little that needs to be said. Yet, there is a mountain of memories to go over in order to make sense of it… not that it has to make sense, mind you. But, notwithstanding you leaving the message and the subsequent e.mail, I was alone at sea on this one. SHAMAN sailing solo, wind ripping at the sails, rain stinging as a shout from the quarter-deck: WHAT? I’m trying, to the best that my foggy recollection will take me, to remember the conversations that I had with you. The conversations that I had with Lindi. Sitting in a smoky room just watching the two of you. Or listening to you bicker about some damn cafe and then just laughing at each other for you both, at least right then, realized that feuding is, by definition, futile. A whole host of subjects. You and I would talk about the whole spectrum. Lindi and I would, among a great many things, talk about you. I would attempt to figger out just what was going on with the two of you. For all intents and purposes, y’all were straight up girlfriend and boyfriend. Even a cursory view of you two by a relative stranger could reveal that. But then there was the reaction that either one of you would give when accused of being the latter. You BOTH would spout about how the two of you were something different…if not more than that. Something about what y’all shared meant that you were above the petty pricking bullshit that usually ripens or rots a girlfriend/boyfriend-type relationship. Not that you two didn’t fling that bullshit at each other. But, as far as I can remember, the two of you told me of the same feelings for each other…separately from each other. Need I ask if either one of you remember having a conversation with me some damn Fryday at the Firehouse… talking about the other, bouncing your ideas off of me, threatening me with life and limb if I ever told the other what was being said? The two of you did this with me separately from the other…and y’all said the same damn thing. You both threw curves: Jubal would… well, be Jubal and Lindi would say that it doesn’t really matter for she alone knew the score. There is no nutshell. There is no summary. There is no rehashing NOW what I think the two of you were about THEN. That would be straight off the desk of the Department of Redundancy Department. But what I WILL allow myself to recollect with some degree of accuracy…which will help me explain SHAMANs initial “silence,” is the similar views on the institution of marriage.

Wether it was I who offered my overtly pessimistic view on the institution of marriage, or the conversation just drifted that way is irrelevant. I do not think I need to remind either of you about the way I feel about the Western marriage. But what I recall fairly clearly is that when expressed, my views on the whole subject were resounded by agreeing comments from the two of you… once again separately. No detail need be given here…it wasn’t THAT meaningful a topic. SHAMAN spitting bile about that which he most likely fears…as you say: denial of inevitability directly precedes realization of imbecility… read that twice, okay? But, if there was a request for me to describe either one of you two with a series of phrases, there would be something said concerning what I thought were your views here. In my minds eye, with lack of direct input, I was comfortable in my prognostication of the way you two would “end up.” It differs little from the way I feel towards Anna. The two of you loved each other… intrinsically; as if counterparts to one grand encompassing theory…. two defining points to an engaging argument, for the lack of a better word. Regardless of eithers attempts to apply your lives’ wayward spirituality and sense of vagabond to the relationship, you fooled only an unnamed few… the message was clear. Despite the way the two of you fought… I realized that it only looked that way from the outside. Most of those looking in were duped into thinking that two “in love” just didn’t have to do that. I had little or no doubt that the two of you would spend the rest of your lives together. And, knowing how the two of you felt about the institution of marriage, I was resided in the fact that you may never get married… at least not in the terms described by Westernism and Catholicism. There may be an “exchanging of rings” and there may not be a crowd, but the two of you, AS I KNEW YOU, would breath your last breath into each other. My only variable was just how far distant the two of you would allow the two of yourselves to get before the circle worked and weaved itself together again. When Jubal moved to SantaFe, and Lindi didn’t, well… that was a mere formality. Honestly, I was more concerned about what leaving the Venice lease did to y’all’s credit… and, of course the condition of my PetSun. To me, there was just an unconscious request by one of you for a wee bit more water under the bridge. No speculation was given for how things would go. I do not do that. I have a passion for letting other peoples’ lives progress at their natural cadence…regardless of how close those people are to me.
“To the feelings I can’t even match”

So, when I heard the phrase last Monday… and requested it be repeated, then asked for another… there was a massive firing of synapse in the old brain. “WHY” was never considered, read above. “WHEN” was irrelevant. “WHO” was insulting. “WHERE”… well, I was curious… “how” kinda figgers into that. My questions were far too complex to grapple with. You’ll get blunt here: I was confused as to why there was no invitation. Not that spontaneity ISN’T the spice of life, but even the hint…a puzzle piece if you will…to such an event… I cannot say that I do not feel inquisitive as to why you did not at least inform prior to the even. Its not like the two of you were alone for the event. What WERE your criteria for making those last-minute phone calls? Later, this petty, jealous emotion was quelled by the realization that this was y’all’s day, and that nothing can ever touch that. If I wanted to have my wedding hanging upside-down from a tropical rainforest canopy, then crisson (sp?) it by humping in the offal of a decomposing rubber tree, well…thats me right, right? You two promised each other something LONG ago. How you consummate that legally is less than a formality. After that shit died down, I thirsted for information. In the same breath I wanted to congratulate the two of you, then to drill you for the questions that I cannot think of now to save me life. I wanted to hear not only WHAT you had to say, but HOW you said it. I was feeling like Nostrodamas: I was to listen to the inflection if both your voices, then deceiver what could never be said. At one point, I accused myself of wanting to hear how you sounded so that I could infer what was “really” going on, but that didn’t last. What was really going on was the sound of two keen friends growing up…making a giant leap forward. MAN, the clarity for the future the two of you must have right now. Make no mistake: I am inherently proud of you. If there was a way that I could admire the breadth of either of you more than now, then tell me for I am reeling. I’ve only been to one wedding in my entire life, and I was fully unprepared for how it would effect me. I learned more that day than in many since. My sister…my brother. I knew that to condemn marriage, as I had done so many times prior, was wrong. The conversations I had that night were profound. My spite was directly transferred from the institution OF marriage, to the institution that sought to “perfect” it. My hatred for the Cross would grow actual flames because of that day. But the day brought me an amazing calm…a lucidity. I knew then that there is simply a timing issue…an alignment in your life, if you will, that must occur FIRST before you can lock down the rest of your life with anothers…and that “act” is void of critique, is free from fear…and should be embraced…when the time is true. It scares me so much it fills me with astounding inspiration…how much I love Anna. As you said in not somany words: I would jump in front of a flying bullet for Anna. I would devoid my life in its entirety if it would spare hers. And, as I said somewhere above, I intend to spend the rest of my life with this woman…and my life is aligning beautifully without me even putting the Heat on it.

I’m tired. I’ve been writing since 9 and I want to go to bed. You can tell by the fact that the whole thing is coherent that I’m too fucking poor to afford my daily intake of IPA. But that’s a whole ‘nother 12 paragraphs. Lets just say that Anna got an internship at WIRED magazine and has had to take on a second job…and “may” still make rent. Everything else is up to me. I love that though. Isnt that the most mascultine thing you can think of? Supporting the woman you love while she learns a trand and skill and meets friends and makes contacts so that one day she’ll make more fucking money than any combination of Gods and then return the favor when we decide to tour the SouthWest? Well, thats just ONE of the things I fall asleep to at night. All is well. All is kind. You two must be the same frame of mind as THAT. And, incidentally, from here on out, you will be hitherto be called, The Thompsons. You will take everything that goes along with it. I know that the two of you saw that there isnt a damn thing that has changed, but there are some impending changes that you MUST consider: The fact that the two of you together are going to fare a whole shitload better with the IRS than each of you would seperately. How you can STILL rack up the wedding gifts. How, in accordance to the song: “Fist comes marraige, then comes the….”

SHAMAN
….Yet to be addressed….
You going back to school…
Your musical plans and how they’ve mutated, migrated, or masticized…
My plans to camp in the SouthEastern corner of Arizona on 5.15 – 5.16…
The fact that I’ve rented a ’97 Ford Expedition with which to execute the above…
The retroactive bachelor party you slippery mutha fuckah…
My Pet Sun and how he may finally allow me to cultivate the beauty of Zafo’s Freshest….
You impending visit up to the Bay Area….

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