I spent some time working today

I spent some time working today. Its so hard to find enough work to work hard all day, and its hard to keep working when you know there’s no real push to do much of anything more than just enough to validate your job. I was encouraged by my enjoyment of hard work, as I was afraid I would be unable to work hard upon returning to the states after such a long period of relative inactiveness.
I spent a fair amount of time surfing the net to find pictures of surfer girls, waves, beaches, and sunsets-preferably all together. Upon reviewing my downloads, however, I discovered that some of the pictures had not downloaded completely. I am reconciling myself with this fact. Its not the pictures I wanted, but the classically romantic thoughts that my mind associated with them. Beaches and sunsets help me become calm, return to square one, slow down an reflect, or just not think. Surfer girls are attractive because they’re fit, good at a sport they love, and in tune with the mother, mother earth.
The day was finished off with a concert by Charlie Robison and Kevin Fowler, two very good, accomplished Texas Country musicians. I have wanted to see them for some time, but never thought it would be here. The show was similar to the Cross Canadian Ragweed concert I drove all those hours to see in Colby, Kansas in that we stood at the back, with our beer (this time without the crucial ingredient) and talked amongst ourselves. However, this time, we were able to go up afterwards and shake hands, get an autograph (what an interesting tradition-I didn’t even really want one but they gave them without asking). The most important part for me was a minute to tell Charlie that his music had gotten me down quite a few miles. There was one roadtrip in particular (although his music finds its way into every roadtrip, for obvious reasons once you listen to it) where we were punch drunk form lack of sleep when we got to eastern Kansas, I forget what town. It was March 2005, and we had driven all the way from Huntsville, with a stop at the Jack Daniels distillery. Anyhow, a stop at a drive thru Starbucks, a quick thought of that Starbucks junkie I knew in Virginia Beach, and we were bombing down the final stretch into McPherson, out of our heads from no sleep and cracked out on caffeine. I played “Good Times” about six times in a row, and we laughed and sang along as loudly as we could. Once we got to the house, we collapsed into bed and passed out for hours.
There are so many stories from the road, little snippets from short trips, long trips, what happened at the end, or why they started. It could be anything from burning semis in the early morning, swimming trunks flying out the back at 110, timbers to pick up on the other side of the country, or the opportunity to work on the Gulf of Mexico (very enticing when its cold and snowy in the mountains). There were weddings, funerals, job changes, concerts, women, motorcycles to pick up in the snow, you name it.
I used to think the path your life took was predetermined from the beginning. However, the other day I got to thinking about where I am and how I got here. who knows how far it goes back. If I hadn’t sold Tyler that Honda, I would not have been as good of friends with him to stop on my way from Colorado to Mississippi, and had I not stopped there, he wouldn’t have mentioned going to Iraq to make lots of money, and I wouldn’t be here today. If I hadn’t gotten pulled over in Arizona, I wouldn’t have been at that gas station when I got the heart-wrenching phone call from mom about Grandpa, but if I wasn’t friends with Gary and Brian, I wouldn’t have put Akron on the itinerary, and if I was the sort that used maps, I wouldn’t have been in Sterling! And if I weren’t so lackadaisical about motorcycle maintenance, that headlight wouldn’t have been totally useless all the way to the airport, at ninety miles an hour, crying. And if I hadn’t quit the job I took after I quit the one before to work on log cabins, I wouldn’t have had enough money to take such time off. If I hadn’t talked to Kelli that day at school, I wouldn’t have been as good of friends with her that she would have offered the classes I needed for free. Is it all coincidental? Who knows.
No matter where you end up its all a matter not of what might have happened, but what did happen. Its fun to think about everything that could have happened-how not waiting to cross the street one day could have changed your life forever, or how it might, someday to come. But whatever happened, did, whatever will, will, and whatever is, is. What you make of it is the key. What you take away, what you learn. Hell, what you forget is just as important. If you didn’t forget it, it could change the rest of your life from that moment forward.
What I want to know is, how does the brain store memories? How are we able to access any memory at will, why are they not always crystal clear, and how is the conscious thought process generated and perpetuated? Are our brains like computers? Are computers like our brains? Why is one person attracted to snowboarding and punk rock music, while another likes painting and punk rock, and another likes stealing? Why does one woman like brown-eyed men, and one man prefers curly-haired women above all others? Why does it feel like I have written this before?
I know one thing for sure-if I wasn’t in debt, I would never work this job. As soon as I get out of debt, I hope to work one month to put in the bank, and another month for total play money. Once I am done here, I will be perfectly happy to plug away in the States, enjoy my freedoms and pay my bills. Yes, the money is easy. I can make enough in two months to put a supercharger, big brakes, and flashy rims on my truck. The time passes quite quickly. However, a little voice constantly whispers in my ear, “Remember when your life was yours to live as you pleased? When you could do as you wanted, travel wherever, not look at the skies with apprehension, drink real beer?” Yet somehow the days pass quickly, perhaps because they’re all the same. Perhaps because there’s no large push to get anything done quickly. Patience is a wonderful virtue, and it grows and grows. I’ve never had to sacrifice this much for something I wanted. I’ve never had to face the music this much, buckle down and do something, endure something, I didn’t really enjoy to accomplish a goal. I don’t know if that means I’ll be able to do it again, or if I’ll go back to doing whatever makes me happy and avoiding that which does not.
I haven’t been good at writing letters lately. I feel pressure from myself to do so. I feel like I owe people. Why? Why am I such a people pleaser in that department, when the rest of the time, I don’t care what they think? When the time feels natural, I shall begin to write back. I wish the daily ignorance I’m faced with from every side would go away. Just because I wear a thick chin strap beard people compare me to an Amish man. I have been faced with people making ignorant, stumbling comments about my appearance since middle school. One day I would like to be around people that didn’t feel the need to express their stupidity verbally. Lately I have received two letters in return-one needed postage and one was the wrong address, but it went from here all the way to Georgia and back. Are these signs? Whatever I finally believe will be the conclusion that puts me on the same path I was destined to be on from the beginning. Or will it? Could this perhaps be the beginning of the rest of my life? If she doesn’t get the poems, will that change our relationship? If she doesn’t get the searching, confused letter, will she always think of me differently? Do I care? Is it worth the brainpower to think about it? I think I will, just for fun. Everything’s for fun. I work this job to get out of debt, because debt isn’t fun. I do just about everything else because its fun. I work the jobs I have and will because I think they’re fun. I drink because I think its fun. I smoke because people don’t want me to, and the right person hasn’t come along to make me want to quit. Well, a couple have, and I can blame it on them all I want, but its me, in the end. I like it, what you think about that? The Rebel without a cause smoked, John Wayne, Marlon Brando-MEN smoke. Yea yea, real men don’t. One of these days. I definitely ride bikes because its fun, but its also meditation, release, escape, relaxation, and thrills. Snowboarding is the same. You can make it easy and gentle and harmonious with the song of the earth, the song flowing through your body when everything’s working right, or you can make it a dangerous thrillride through the trees, down an unknown mountain, destination and path unknown. Life is the same way, come to think of it. You can make it whatever you want or need it to be. Slow, calm and gentle, or fast-paced, hard-pushing and reckless, or both on different days. Or the same day. A childhood of pushing the limits to see what I could get away with turned into a lifestyle of pushing the limits, pushing the buttons, pushing myself and pushing others. A childhood of searching, reading, wanting to know more, has turned into a lifestyle of the same-what can I learn today, where can I go, who can I talk to? Who do I want to talk to? Here’s a question: why do I dislike being touched on top of the head? Why do I hate having a flashlight pointed in my face? Why do I not like people poking me in the back? Why can’t I stand it when people stand behind me? Why don’t I like to talk in the mornings? Where did these traits come from? What part or parts of my childhood made these random things part of my life? Is it important to understand why, or should I just accept them and move on? Should I search for a reason, or will it come to me someday? Willie Nelson sang, “I laugh when I can and I live with the rest/I learned that holdin’ on means lettin’ go” and “whatever it is that’s meant to be, sooner or later it’ll come to me.” John Hiatt wrote, and Kevin Welch sang, “I cry when I have to/and I lie when I can/and I die a little slower/on the train to Birmingham” and “I just like the feel of goin’ home.” My home will never be what it was, and it’ll be awhile until I have a home that isn’t bright blue and on the asphalt. But the feeling of home, of going there, of arriving, being there after being somewhere else, that is a wonderful feeling. Oh, life brings many things with it. Each one is different, and they’re all the same.
“Pick up a pizza, pineapple ham/put it in the back of the Good Times van/go around and pick up the rest of the band/we gonna have a good time.” So many things I miss, now only memories. I have been very blessed.