To be Home

I like the subject line. I enjoy on these late nights in the northwest the debate of what to call my current activity. Maren left today though, and now my time here will be much less enjoyable.

For having my best friend within driving distance makes a lot of things a lot better.

Now im sitting here about to sleep listening to a new discovery Dosh. A one man musical explosion, it is incredible, sample after sample building on one another into the sonic landscape, once the biggest hit with hipsters. It went over their head after a while i think, it is too much to analyze new forms of old talent. Thus i wont try. It is incredible and the video linked shows it very well.

Brautigan's World

A very dear friend of mine left today for her journey to the Netherlands. In looking through my possessions i came across my tattered paperback of trout fishing in America. I had just re-read it during the idle time between pretending to catch fish. Thinking of Brautigan beside a remote trout pond in the northwest, a similar misty day. His Type writer (true story) and his family set up in a nice camp. His old station wagon parked up on a bluff. As a big trout hits his floating line to the right of his furverous typeing.

Trout fishing in America went on to sell two million copies, i wonder how many of the buyers knew what they were getting into, or gave it the time, soon realising that the very book has well nothing to do in the way of Trout fishing on first glance. In the end the book does, look very deeply at the mindset to catch a fish, a same mindset of meditation.

Chill out, Admire the beauty that is this Northwest frontier.

I think of Richard Brautigan when i drive through the streets of Tachoma Washington. The lazy city, that if you watch close enough eats its young. or so my father says. Yet this is the northwest still as beautiful except the streams caped, and the ramblers built ontop, soon followed by the concrete and so on. Yet in any one direction on a clear day there is always the everygreen in sight, and possibly not to far away a trout or some sort of fish to catch.

Your Catfish Friend

by Richard Brautigan

If I were to live my life
in catfish forms
in scaffolds of skin and whiskers
at the bottom of a pond
and you were to come by
one evening
when the moon was shining
down into my dark home
and stand there at the edge
of my affection
and think, "It's beautiful
here by this pond. I wish
somebody loved me,"
I'd love you and be your catfish
friend and drive such lonely
thoughts from your mind
and suddenly you would be
at peace,
and ask yourself, "I wonder
if there are any catfish
in this pond? It seems like
a perfect place for them."

(post note: I'm in Alaska have been for some time, just re discovered the internet. What a scary place)

Mahmoud Darwish, A creative mind for creative solution, to palestine. 

In Jerusalem
by Mahmoud Darwish
Translated by Fady Joudah

In Jerusalem, and I mean within the ancient walls,
I walk from one epoch to another without a memory
to guide me. The prophets over there are sharing
the history of the holy . . . ascending to heaven
and returning less discouraged and melancholy, because love
and peace are holy and are coming to town.
I was walking down a slope and thinking to myself: How
do the narrators disagree over what light said about a stone?
Is it from a dimly lit stone that wars flare up?
I walk in my sleep. I stare in my sleep. I see
no one behind me. I see no one ahead of me.
All this light is for me. I walk. I become lighter. I fly
then I become another. Transfigured. Words
sprout like grass from Isaiah’s messenger
mouth: “If you don’t believe you won’t believe.”
I walk as if I were another. And my wound a white
biblical rose. And my hands like two doves
on the cross hovering and carrying the earth.
I don’t walk, I fly, I become another,
transfigured. No place and no time. So who am I?
I am no I in ascension’s presence. But I
think to myself: Alone, the prophet Mohammad
spoke classical Arabic. “And then what?”
Then what? A woman soldier shouted:
Is that you again? Didn’t I kill you?
I said: You killed me . . . and I forgot, like you, to die.

Mutton Bursting

I found my new life goal:

Mutton Bursting Champion of America!

In my much needed research on the genetics and history of the subject of the previous post i discovered this incredible sport, once again highlighting the ingenuity of the American people and their love for useless sports for the Children to do. Strap on your child size padded vest and a helmet and join if you dear, in as one rodeo announcer claimed "The only legal form of child ab use" and off we go for a adventure in Bursting the Mutton.

"Mutton busting is an event held at rodeos similar to bull riding or bronc riding. In the event, a sheep will be caught and held still while a child is placed on top in a riding position. Once the child is seated atop the sheep, the people holding the sheep let go and the sheep then starts to run in an attempt to get the child off. Often small prizes or ribbons are given out to the child who can stay on the longest."

Just in! all children of America are being pulled out of Elementary schools to train for the Mutton Bursting. Proven tests have shown mutton bursting leads kids to live stronger lives and preform better in school after being continually humbled by sheep trying to murder them.


(side note there are a lot more clips like this, also to note the amount of people in the crowd)
I wonder if i can bet on these Mutton Busters?
Well i bought my vest and helmet, and off to try my skills. Lets hope i dont crush the sheep on the way out of the gate.

To catch a sheep.

Its an easy concept to imagine. Catching and isolating the one sheep (what we thought was the dumbest) is an easy and painless process.

Well you have four sheep and a majestic ram, who all are as un-trained as the for-Ovis aries of the mountains of wherever they descended from. The only way to collect this small flock of ours is with feed and a roll of twine. Hoping for them to come rushing into the small isolated paddock within their far to expensive pasture. This pasture re worked and wire restrung as many times as the sheep have found a way out. Rushing into what they see as free-er fields ahead, Sadly not the case, for our four legged friends will be on the plate by the time the sun sinks into the sea.

They have a simple life in this field, run from humans, eat food. Wonder into the paddock for grain every late afternoon making sure all humans are invisible. They seem to be happy, with their obnoxious noises and quest for food and fear. Catching them using the twine, grain and quick steps. Tieing the string around the small gate to the sheep lean-to. (Which is what it should be-- However my mothers overly love to share her creature comforts of her life with the sheep, ends with a large sheep mansion, with a catchment system to collect the water from the roof for these sheep).

Tieing the string i disappear, letting the sheep get use to the small white line far above their small heads. Shortly after strolling in with a galvanized grain bucket, as the sun is dropping low with its golden paintbrush. Acting like i had not just appeared with sting (of course not!) Swishing the grain around to make it painfully obvious grain in my had signaling the sheep that their brains can stop working, and that their stomachs should now motivate them. Rushing the grain into the bucket I walk out, hoping for the flock to rush over into the paddock. Hiding behind a dirt bluff, or more a sheep blind, sting in had i wait as they cautiously walk into their lawn in front of their lean-to. Only to find that the gate is attached by chain to the fence, or the dumb sheep stayed outside of the year around their home, or they saw me behind the sheep blind and the multitude of the five attempts leading me empty handed with what was requested, the white sheep.

This continues for another twenty minutes coaxing the sheep with a total of five buckets trying all sorts of ways of sheep ulterior motivation. Hoping the continue the thought process around food instead of fear. Attempt after attempt all hope behind the sheep blind is dwindling. I’ve also discovered what seem to be harmless shrubs around me are actually all covered in strange thorns, that have made happy homes into my epidermis. Slowly I wait for the sheep to see past the strange moving black hair, hope to see it as a new plant maybe…. Well this doesn’t work either.

The last hope as the peanut gallery appears on all sides watching me the soon to be bonafide sheep catcher at work. Running the twine up as far it goes, the fifth bucket of grain in place, I hid crouched waiting for the white sheep( the dumbest) to come within sights of the lean-to. The stickler of a sheep slowly makes its way to the grain as I run as fast as I can slipping and sliding to the string slamming the gate shut. The professionals soon took to isolating the white sheep, with ropes hogtieing it in the back of the truck, Eddie got the glory today, as for Me I’m covered in thorns and thinking of how many beers could have rather been bought instead of the idea that we need sheep. I’m not destined for the shepherd position at Pu’uo kumau ranch. Cows are much easier.

With the sheep set in a smaller paddock all taking refuge as one single entity it was onto the pros to extract the only all white sheep and relocate to a new home, hoping in the end that her stupidity, which is really smarts for she is most fearfully of people, an overall good thing. Leading to a smarter and friendlier flock.

Something I doubt completely.

In other news The tickets have been bought. On September 18th( my 21st birthday) 2008 @ 4pm EST, I’m leaving for Istanbul.

Its official my dream is actually coming to fruition. Hopefully without the need to Sheppard sheep any longer.

I'm existing on an Atoll. Well i guess it is a little bigger then an atoll. However I'm on an island, big in theory small in actuality. I sometimes expect to find a Gilligan here, bumbling and desolate with his only company those fellow stranded. In my mind it seems the isolation could not have actually spawned a functioning economy with utilities. Its so isolated. The function island has to be all dream, no one actually believes this is a good idea, do they? oh wait Zac yes they do, and some of them are related very closely to you.

I'm growing out of this doubt, of whether or not i agree with the idea of this isolation. I do like the reassurance that i can drive away from any one spot to another, always able to flee. Not much to flee to here.

Take away these doubts and i remember how beautiful it is here. The picture above taken a couple months ago as the sun was setting, painting and illuminating the terraced fields that once existed. The golden paintbrush turning the world around me into a magical hue of green. I chase after that color of green in my mind. Trying to find or replicate it, a color that reminds me of home, or my nuvo-home.

Its beauty here really does make it hard to question the if ands or buts of being 3,000 miles away from anything tangible.

I've been listing too on repeat Tom Waits, "all the world is green."

Driving up and down the topography at this magic hour, the rain has socked us in. This golden paintbrush still appears, sweeping across everything glistening and moving within the constant breeze. This song it plays in a similar light in my mind, as the sun sets in a sea of color, this illuminated grass continues in till dusk sets in and it fades out to the white light of the moon.

Here is youtube clip of Tom Waits playing the song, in a sea of blue lights on David Lettermen. (I'm trying to figure it out so i don't have to use Youtube, but I'm very internet illiterate.)