The Ozone Shack's Top 13 Albums of 2013

2013 was a little bit of slim pickins. Approximately 56% of the music made was acapella covers of "Royals" on Youtube and most of the rest was by bands whose album covers look like they were taken through an instagram filter. So here's what we got. But first I should address...

The Problem of The Afterman

In 2012, I screwed up. I mean, I screwed up in a lot of ways with my professional and personal life, but I also screwed up with my album of the year. I gave the first half of a double album the album of the year. Remember when Return of the King won best picture? IT was obvious it should have gone to Fellowship of the Ring two years earlier, but there's no way you can give the first installment of a planned trilogy best picture. And that's what I did. By giving Coheed and Cambria's The Afterman: Ascension album of the year, I gave Fellowship of the Ring best picture. Now Descension comes out and I can't give it album of the year. So I removed it from the running. But really, it's de facto album of the year. I just won't recognize it as such. (But you know it is.)

#13
Stone Sour
House of Gold and Bones

Much like Afterman, House of Gold and Bones is a metal concept double-album about a comic book written by the bandleader, in this case former Slipknot vocalist Corey Taylor. Bluesy metal riffs meet with pyrotechnic rock, hardcore, and post-grunge. To be honest, I don't know what the story is about, but it has something to do with a character called "The Human" who begins as a ball of pure existential pain, in a strange sphere that is part of a Milton-esque cosmology. This may be an unpopular comparison to someone coming from any musical perspective, but House of Gold and Bones sounds sort of like everything early Avenged Sevenfold should have sounded like. There's gritty vocals, crunchy guitar timbre, and drum beats that walk the fine line between groovy and blasting.


#12
Volbeat
Outlaw Gentlemen and Shady Ladies

Michael Poullsen says he got his inspiration for this album "listening to Johnny Cash and Elvis in one ear and Creator and Merciless Fate in the other." So here we have it, a Rockabilly Cowboy Metal band from Denmark. Tonally and harmonically, it's much more European and classically based, but the ethos is American blues based metal. And harmonicas, did I mention there's a harmonica? It's interesting to hear a Scandinavian's take on Western ballads and Johnny Cash-esque tales from the wrong side of the law. Forget spaghetti western, this is a Smørrebrød Western. There's also a cover of Young the Giant's "My Body," because apparently one band whose vocalist has a slight but noticeably comical accent needs to be covered by another.


#11
Dream Theater
Dream Theater

This is the quintessential Dream Theater album. So it makes sense they just called it Dream Theater. Asymmetrical riffs pulled off with technical precision, a Rush tribute riff, dancing chromatic sixteenth note triplet guitar runs, dire yet uplifting philosophical lyrics, throat singing, and of course, a 20 minute suite. "Enigma Machine" might even be the quintessential dream theater song. These guys are the Giving Tree of prog metal. They've given us so much already and just keep pumping it out.


#10
Kurt Vile
Wakin on a Pretty Daze

Well shit, look what I done. I listened to some goddam indie band with a pretentious name (does anyone actually know who Kurt Weill was?) and I'll be slurpin corn pone at the county fair if I were to say I didn't like it. Also, please don't make me slurp corn pone at the county fair, I don't even know what that would be like, how much I could eat or if people would be watching or if I could just do it behind a tent alone with nothing but my shame, while on the outside world, rosy cheeked wholesome teenagers exchange promise rings and win plush whatevers from gap-toothed carneys on the run from the troopers two states over. Because that's what we're all doing, really. Except our corn pone is metaphysical poverty, and the the tent that sequesters us from the world is our cult of materialism. And Kurt Vile? He's outside leaning against the propane generator, having a cigarette.


#9
Steve Wilson
The Raven that Refused to Sing (And Other Stories)

Steve Wilson, the antidote to Thom Yorke, gave us this sprawling prog epic of excellent musicianship. I had been hoping for a long time that Steve Wilson's band, Porcupine Tree, would pump out another album sometime soon, but instead we got this nice substitute. Strap yourself in for 54 minutes of genre discord, haunting melodies, and top quality studio work.


#8
Valerie June
Pushin Against a Stone

A daughter of Memphis soul and bluegrass teams up the Black Keys' Dan Auerbach to make a haunting, bluesy album. It comes out of the dusk on a languid breeze, both enchanting you and making you feel like the loneliest person in the world. Auerbach's influence shows on tracks like "Can't Be Told," but there are also some bluegrass tinged gems like "Someone to Love" and "Tennessee Time."


#7
Bombino
Nomad

Oh look, this one was also produced by Dan Auerbach. For those not in the know, Bombino is a guitarist from Niger, playing in a style known as desert blues. It's basically traditional Berber and Tuareg music electrified. Because this music shares a lot of its harmonic language with the Blues (in fact, this is where it came from) it sounds a lot like the blues. But make no mistake, it is not derivative, the desert blues is its own tradition. And of course, like on every desert blues album, there's the obligatory song about how the Tenere desert is both harsh and beautiful. We get it already.


#6
Scale the Summit
The Migration

I discovered these guys a few years ago when they toured with 3 and Cynic. Formed by two Houston-to-LA transplants Chris Letchford and Travis Levrier, Scale the summit is all about technical perfection and incredible musicianship. On The Migratoini, they roll out a carpet of triumphant leads, aggressive riffs, and delicious bass lines. Speaking of bass solo (bass so lo you can't hear it!) there's the song "Evergreen," reminiscent of Jaco Pastorius' "Portrait of Tracy." It all wraps up in a finale which the band described as "their most difficult song yet." With the skills these guys have, that's saying something.


#5
Unknown Mortal Orchestra
II

If I had to call this album something (which I guess I do since I'm writing about it) I would say minimalist psychedelia. Drums, bass, slinky guitar work, and soft-spoken, harmonized vocals. And drugs. So many drugs.


#4
Portugal. The Man
Evil Friends

Portugal. The Man runs the line between enlightenment and hedonism, or at least that's how they want us to see them. Really, they're just weird. A couple of weird dudes from Alaska with guitars and drums and a few synthesizers. This took a little more getting used to than 2011's In the Mountain in the Cloud, and there was no song that stood out as much. (In fact, the lead single was probably the weakest on the album.) But there's some more maturity here, and after pumping out eight albums in nine years, Portugal. The Man knows how to make a Portugal. The Man album. "Atomic Man" may just be the best breakup song ever written, with the line "After you I don't know what I believe in / After you hell should be easy."


#3
Palms
Palms

What do you get when you take three members from Isis and mix them with Chino Moreno of the Deftones? You get Palms, a tapestry of dark ambient post-rock. Whether you're brooding in a dark room, skinning racoons in your garage, carving cryptic messages into the walls of your basement, or running from the monsters that live in your brain, this is the album for you.


#2
Janelle Monae
The Electric Lady

Janelle Monae set out to create "something nobody had heard before," and while she didn't quite transport us to a new sonic dimension, she came pretty close to her goal. Futurism meets oldschool in this masterwork of soul. Oh yeah, and Prince is on the album. Fucking Prince! From the hip-jiggling "Dance Apocalyptic" to the strutting "Rock and Roll" to the epic power ballad "Primetime," to the neo-soul of the title track, this album weaves together a tapestry of slick urban sound.


#1
Crash of Rhinos
Knots

I picked Knots for Album of the Year on speculation. I don't believe it has reached the level of appreciation I will eventually feel for it a month, six months, a year, maybe even a decade down the line. But I can't know that until the time comes. This album feels like one where I'll keep noticing things to appreciate over the years - just as I have with albums like Second Stage Turbine Blade, London Calling, Pikul, Gut the Van, Graceland, Wish You Were Here, and Deloused in the Comatorium - rock (or rockish) albums where you appreciate something you hadn't before with each listening.

I suppose I should share the story of how I came across this album, for it involves being a judgmental asshole. My roommate and I were sitting around talking about pretentious indie bands with stupid names. We somehow got it in our heads that Pitchfork review scores were based entirely on how stupid and pretentious the band or artists name sounded. To test this, we went on Pitchfork and looked for the band with what had, in our estimation at the time, the worst offending name. At that point I didn't realize there was a band called "Fuck Buttons" (really) and if I had I would have never found Crash of Rhinos.

My roommate clicked the link and started reading the review aloud to me. They had a pretty good score so our hypothesis hadn't been debunked. But it actually sounded like they were a pretty cool band. Or at least that's what the review sounded like, I can never actually understand what Pitchfork reviews are saying and they may indeed be written by bots. So my roommate downloaded the album, and we listened to the whole thing that afternoon. We were impressed.

We agreed, Crash of Rhinos is what Explosions in the Sky would sound like if they were a hardcore band. The guitar work somehow manages to be ambient and driving, and you paradoxically float over this driving groove. It makes me feel like I haven't since, really, freshman year of high school. Where you're both cynical about everything around you but you have the feeling of wonder as everything is still new to be discovered. It's good to remember that. I still have much to discover.



Song of the Year
"Whopper and a Forty" by Brad Neely


The Ones that Almost Made It (But Didn't)

#14 Pearl Jam, Lightning Bolt

#15 Jim James; Regions of Light, Sounds of God

#16 Superchunk, I hate Music

#17 Sigur Ros, Kveikur

#18 Jake Bugg, Shangri La

#19 Nine Inch Nails, Hesitation Marks

#20 Queens of the Stone Age, ...Like Clockwork

#21 Low, The Invisible Way,

#22 TesseracT, Altered State

#23 Iron & Wine, Ghost on Ghost

#24 Pretty Lights, A Color Map of the Sun

#25 That one Neko Case album with a really long title

#2 Dance Gavin Dance, Acceptance Speech

#27 Streetlight Manifesto, The Hands that Thieve

#28 Deafhaven, Sunabther

#29 Colin Stetson, New History Warfare vol. 3: To See More Light

#30 Daft Punk, Random Access Memories

#31 August Burns Red, Rescue & Restore

#32 Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros, Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros

#33 James Blake, Overgrown,

#34 Gogol Bordello, Pura Vida Conspiracy

#35 Killswitch Engage, Disarm the Dissent

#36 Karnivool, Asymmetry

#37 Cass McCombs, Big Wheel

#38 Noah and the Whale, Heart of Nowhere

#39 The Strokes, Comedown Machine

Biggest Disappointment: Tegan & Sara, Hearthtrob
I was expecting another delightfully weird release from the alt-something duo of Canadian lesbian identical twins. Instead they made a bunch of garbage pop songs.

Well that was 2013. I expect the list for 2014 to be dominated by washboardcore and recordings of Jeff Tweedy's night terrors.

A Veteran's Day Story

Veteran's Day is a national holiday, but this isn't a story about American soldiers. Since the holiday originated as the more globally-minded Armistice Day, I think there's room in this day to honor the soldiers of other nations and other causes, even if the causes they first started fighting for were as simple as baseball and beer.

Elliot Dalton joined the Queens Own Rifles of Canada, a kind of army reserve, during peacetime. Canadian military bases had a competitive league, about the same level of play as mid-level minor league teams. Elliot was a pretty good baseball player - not quite Major League caliber, but good enough for his talents to be of use in the Canadian Armed Forces League.  It being peacetime, the bases were more concerned about this league than they were about preparing for war, so it seems, because the Queens Own Rifles enlisted Elliot as a ringer.

His brother Charlie Dalton heard from Elliot that they were allowed to sell alcohol on army bases. Charlie loved beer, and this was a problem, because back then the whole province of Ontario was dry. Except, for some reason, the military bases. Again, it was Canada in peacetime, very few fucks were given.

A few years roll by and it's not exactly peacetime anymore. In fact, it's World War II, and the Canadians are fighting alongside the Allies. The brothers Dalton are both officers in the Queen's Own Rifles, and both end up commanding battalions landing in the first wave at Juno Beach on D-Day. Before loading into their respective landing crafts, their only parting words were "I'll see you tonight," confident they would both make it through one of the bloodiest days in human history.

Elliot had the distinction of being the first Canadian officer to land on the beach on D-Day. Not only did he and most of his battalion survive, but they were able to secure their position of the beachhead, make it off the beach, and push inland, making it all the way to Bernier by mid-morning. Things didn't go as smoothly for Charlie and his battalion. His landing craft hit a mine in the water and he had to swim ashore with a piece of shrapnel in his ass after abandoning most of his ammunition to stay afloat. When he found his way to a foxhole, he picked up a non-jammed rifle from a dead soldier, and then managed to rally his troops, who were in severe disarray, and lead a charge on a pillbox. In doing so, he ensured that the second wave of troops landing in that area were met with almost no resistance. As they tried to move inland, they encountered a Panzer division and were forced to retreat across a minefield.

In the confusion, Charlie Dalton was presumed dead, and his family, including Elliot, was told as such. A few days later, Elliot was wounded, grazed by a bullet in the head after trying to advance further inland. But the whole taking a bullet to the head thing was taken by the higher ups to mean that he was dead, because that's usually what happens when you take a bullet to the head. So while he was recovering in a field hospital, the rest of his family was notified that he too had died.

Several days later he was taken to a hospital in England. As he was being processed, a nurse told them that there was already someone in the bed they had planned to put him in. Elliot told her that was ridiculous, because that bed was reserved for Major Dalton.

Then nurse went in to ask the man in the bed who he was. "He says that he is Major Dalton," she reported.

"Well I don't care who the hell he says he is," said Elliot, "I'm major Dalton dammit!"

Once another bed was made for Elliot, he was rolled into the room to find that there was, in fact, a Major Dalton in the room. It was Charlie, who had been taken to that same hospital the same day he was presumed dead. Like Elliot, Charlie had also been told that his brother was dead. Their mutual indignation turned to joy when both brothers discovered the other was alive. Oh, and despite the headshot and infected shrapnel wound between them, they both recovered in time to liberate the Netherlands.

Elliot and Charley Dalton were two of my dad's uncles, making them both my great uncles. I wasn't sure how much of that story was true and how much was added through the family oral history. But a few years ago I found out that it was all true, when the Queens Own Rifles of Canada named an armory (they spell it armoury back up there) after them. My dad went to Toronto for the dedication. There was a military parade and some speeches. But when he finally got the chance to ask about the story in the military hospital, he found out it was all true. In fact, it has become a piece of the Queen's Own Rifle's of Canada lore. So remember that your veterans weren't always fighting for an ideal or some imaginary line on a map. They were fighting for baseball, for beer, and for each other.

An East Bay Original

Man has to create karma, that's the way it is / Man has to keep going way beyond his will / Man has to keep on being 'cause there's nothing else / A man just always has to go for himself"

-Van Morrison, Man Has To Struggle

Young, liberal, educated people should not use cliches, my young, liberal, and educated brain tells me. We should not think in cliches. And we certainly should not see the world operating in cliches. But despite all that, I can say with certainty the "baseball as a metaphor for life" is a shadowy figure stalking me in a dark alley.

It's the eve of the NLDS between the Oakland A's and the Detroit Tigers. And we once again have the familiar narrative of a team on a shoestring (by Major Leagues standards) budget going up against a Goliath. Even if, they're really not the underdog, having secured home-field advantage. Even if, they've proven every year that when an economy-class player comes to Oakland, magic happens. But they're still perpetual underdogs.

The truth is, most of us are perpetual underdogs. The A's are perpetual underdogs; on paper, going into any season or playoff matchup, they will not look as good. We have to prove ourselves at every opportunity. Because of their lack of star power and admittedly decrepit stadium, the A's have to demonstrate, every time they're in the spotlight, that they deserve to be there. You have to exploit what's not being exploited. We've all seen or at least heard passing mention of Moneyball, so we know that the A's have been forced, out of necessity, to find gold where everyone else sees garbage. We're all trying to assert who we are, and we're more like the Oakland A's than most of us realize.

Back in my former life as a runner, I ran for a mid-major level school in the NCAA. Our coach would tell us that as an athlete for a team in our position, you had to make the uniform happen every time you put one on. There was no flashy University of Oregon O on the front, no BCS Conference logo anywhere. There was no cache that came just from putting on the uniform. You had to make it with your performance. You have to, no, you get to, make make the identity that comes with the uniform, each time. And every time, you had to, no, again, you get to, create that identity from scratch.

Most people know this, though not necessarily in a sporting context. You're doing this every time you represent where you're from and who you are. I don't mean that in a hip-hop REPRESENT kind of way, although that is an excellent example. Chances are, you're from a place that's second to somewhere else. For Oakland and the rest of the East Bay, that place is right across the water.

San Francisco has attained that kind of mythical status, along with cities like New York, London, Paris, and Rome, where the name alone is enough to conjure an air of romanticism and wonder. People living in these cities or moving to these cities don't have to do anything to contribute to the culture; the culture exists as an innate part of these cities, built into their very framework. San Francisco is a city rich in icons and mythology. It's a place you go to find yourself because the city can give and you don't have to give anything back in return.

This cultural monolith both absorbs and overshadows the other cities in the Bay Area. There's nearly 6.5 million of us living outside of "The City." Still, many people place their identity in San Francisco because it sparkles more, the name carries more weight. There's Hunter S. Thompson riding a cable car while eating the world's most authentic tacos from the Mission. People are a lot less willing identify as being from places such as Oakland, San Jose, or Fremont, not because there's anything intrinsically wrong with those cities, but because San Francisco is an identity magnet. It's a place people want to be from because it makes them interesting without actually having to be interesting.

(Oh look, it's a Coastal Californian bitching about how where he's from doesn't get enough respect. Cry me fucking river!)

In the East Bay, we have that mid-major situation going on. We have to make an identity for ourselves with every action. And the A's, in a lot of ways, are the mid-major team of the Major Leagues. They will be underrated. They will receive proportionally lacking coverage for their successes. You could say putting on the green and gold jersey doesn't carry as much respect nationally as some other jerseys. That is, until you start winning.

The A's aren't just the area's "other" team, like the Angels, Mets, or White Sox; they're the team from the area's "other city." People are not only swayed by Giant's nice new stadium where they can watch players hit baseballs into the ocean, but because it's San Francisco.

They'll be going up against a team whose star makes more than their entire payroll, but that's nothing new for the A's. The identity, carved out by years of performance and then brought to the nation's conciseness by Moneyball is that they will hold their own against, and win, in these situations. But that identity only gets reaffirmed upon performance. There's no magic that comes with putting on the uniform and stepping out into the ballpark. It's an identity based on showing up when no one thinks you will. A scrappy underdog can only be one by performing and an undervalued player can only show he's undervalued by defying expectations.

I'm not going to go so far as to say the A's are America's Team, or the People's Team. But they represent a predicament that most of are caught in. You have to work every day to make and maintain your identity. Nobody is going to hand you a positive version of who you are. That is made by your actions.

Every day you put on the uniform that is your skin. What are you going make of it? What will you have it represent? People might write you off as a bum or a thug or a loser, they might write you off because of your skin color, how you dress, how you talk, where you're from, and what you don't have. No matter what, or who you are, you're probably an undervalued player in life. You might be playing in the shadow of a mythical city, and you will be struggling to define yourself. It's a struggle that will never end. But every time you show up, and you make it happen, your task for the day will be accomplished.

Entropy

"But if I had never tried, how could I try again?"
-Joey Eppard, Balloon

Running is one hell of a drug, and I seem to have relapsed. And believe me, it was a drug I abused. Some people ran for recreation, or for breast cancer, or to get balls of color thrown at them. I was apparently on a mission to destroy myself. I'm surprised it took me so long to do so, because my body is apparently held together with dental floss and chewing gum.

Once I stepped away from the track (at the time, I thought it would be forever) my body was no longer saturated with cortisol and I could think clearly. It was then I began to realize all the things I had been doing wrong, all the coulda shoulda wouldas in my career. But then I realized all the things I could do which had been so off limits before. Simple things like staying up late or making spontaneous road trips were now things I could do as I tried to integrate into baseline humanity. I also realized something else. Since I had never needed to exercise just to stay in shape, I had no concept of recreational exercise. I couldn't fathom that you just go to the gym or hit the roads just to keep the entropy away. Or that you even had to. So entropy happened to me.

At first, everything started to feel better because it didn't have to carry my 80 miles every week. It was nourished by high energy foodstuffs such as hydrogenated soybean oil, high fructose corn syrup, and flour so refined it doesn't even know what farting is. For a while, this was all good. I needed to repair. You can't make repairs while you're moving, and you certainly can't make repairs without parts. Then the aforementioned entropy started creeping in. Everything just got so weak that all the injuries that forced me to quit running started getting worse even though I wasn't running a step.

That's another thing I learned. I used running to escape my crippling social anxiety. It makes sense that you're staying in on a Saturday night if you have to get up and run 18 miles on Sunday morning. But when you don't have anything to do on Sunday except watch football and maybe nurse a hangover, it's a lot harder to reconcile why you're sitting in your room watching Netflix on the preceding Saturday night. (I guess now I could justify it to the world by posting "LOL I'M AN INTROVERT" on my facebook page but that seems like cheating, and would most definitely be lying.)

I had both the indulgent personality and savviness of a college freshman away from controlling, moralizing parents for the first time. Lump on top of that a kid from a household where soda and candy were taboo and who certainly wasn't allowed taco bell. Maybe even throw in a pinch of an Amish kid on Rumspringa. And all of this was hitting me at age 21, where I first had the opportunity to live like a reckless young person but paradoxically felt I had the body of an old man.

A brief side story about the Amish because this is too good of an opportunity to pass up: There was an Amish man from a nearby community who would show up to parties at my cousin's frat house at Penn State. At the end of the night he would stumble to his buggy. My cousin once asked him if he would be able to make it home on a night when he seemed particularly intoxicated. The man replied "I'm fine, my horse knows the way!"

Right when I started being able to jog for a mile or two without feeling like the disintegration of my body was imminent, I got a concussion by falling and hitting my head after giving blood, proving that no good deed goes unpunished. Now that was entirely my fault, since in the course of the previous two days I had killed half a 30-rack of Coors Banquet Beer and then only had two bags of fruit snacks for breakfast. Upon being revived, my blood pressure was 80 over 20. In layman's terms, that means my heart was pretty damn close to stopping. Now being in a blood bank is a pretty good place to have your heart stop, I would imagine, since they have a couple AEDs in the room. So concussed and unable to exercise, I grew soft and doughy.

There were bouts of regular physical activity. I would go on a few runs in a week, I would play Frisbee, I would swim in the ocean. But I kept getting sick or my back would get jacked up again and then I was back to being Cecil the Sessile Slug

I remember at one point, walking for two miles made my hip hurt a great deal. But three months later, after a journey across the country and back, which included lots of walking and some mad dashes to catch buses, I walked from the rim of the Grand Canyon and back in a single day, chafing at the bit because some people in my group had to slow down for a thing as silly as heat exhaustion. Spine in allignment, hips stable, ankles sturdy, muscles moving in perfect rhythmic integration. A journey makes you younger. I wanted to get back in the shape I once was, because now I knew I could. And I don't know how to do that by just exercising; I have to train. So I thought, why not, I'll try again.

This time is not the same. I don't have the time, resources, or durability to train like I used to. I'm training for shorter events, probably solely focusing on the 800 meters, because it requires less volume. I have no delusions of grandeur and am not expecting any kind of success. I don't ever expect to run a personal best ever again, (although I will certainly try). And I'm not using a training calendar, or even a specific workout schedule. I have a list of workouts which I plan to do, in order. When I do them is entirely based on how I feel. If I feel good enough, I'm hitting the track hard. If not, I'm jogging easy on the roads, or just sitting on my ass and letting things heal. If I miss a day of training, it will get done eventually. I'm under no time crunch and I certainly have no expectations.

Training is kind of like making a mix tape for your physiological systems. You need to send the right message, not too strong, but you also can't beat around the bush. That's why you have to calibrate your intensity to Goldilocks levels. And I didn't realize this until it was too late.

But now I'm just glad to run and to move around. Maybe just for my sanity, maybe just for something to focus on. I've got a stack of index cards with workouts written on them that I draw from every few days, and a dirt track right down the street with my name on it. I might not have any money for shoes or nutritional food, but neither did Kip Keino at one point. So fueled by frozen food and a lack of fucks to give, I'm off, once again, booking it to nowhere in particular.

Vasco da Gama

Evolution is a privilege reserved for the underdogs.

In the 15th century, the Ottoman Empire kicked the Portuguese out of the Red Sea and blocked most of the overland trade between Europe and Asia. They created a world empire, one of the largest the world had ever seen, with the vision of restoring the Roman Empire under Islamic rule. They even used Rome's second capital, Constantinople. (Which of course you know was re-branded as Istanbul thanks to They Might Be Giants.) They got in power the way everyone had for the past two thousand years before them - conquering, subjugating, and culturally dominating.

Now the people on the Iberian Peninsula weren't too happy about this. They were blocked from the overland trade routes which had connected them with India and China since the Pax Romana. And they figured they would prosper because they controlled these trade routes. They would sit on the established patterns to success which they had commandeered and rake in the gold bullion. They had the Afro-Eurasian trade networks by the balls and thought that things would always be that way.

The Spaniards and the Portuguese now had the privilege of being the underdogs. Instead of looking at the world and assuming that it must continue as it always had, they were forced to find new ways to gain power and wealth. So the Portuguese did what no one else had done before and sailed strait to India, all the way around the Cape of Good Hope. The Spaniards made an even greater leap, attempting to sail to India by going west, something no one had ever dreamed of before. And it would have worked, were there not a whole hemisphere in their way. So instead of the traditional land-based empire, extracting tribute and coming in with the imperial army once a decade or so to trash the native population, they opted for a maritime-based, mercantile states.

Western Europe went on to write the next chapter of world history, doing all kinds of horrible things to the native peoples they encountered. And the Ottoman Empire would enter into a slow decline for 400 years until Britain and France, who were the runts of the litter at the time of Ottoman Turkey's ascendancy, carved up the Middle East according to their own designs.

Maybe the cycle has started over. Maybe the empire of trade is over. I wouldn't know, I'm an American (partially). I don't have the perspective of the underdog. I can't evolve.

Interstate Blues

Standing in Buffalo Park, a bluff above Flagstaff, it's hard not to be struck by the full moon. At an altitude of over 7,000 feet there's less atmospheric interference so it looks like there's a floodlight on everything, every diction you look. But it's not just the altitude that makes Flagstaff a unique city for looking at celestial phenomena. It's the world's first dark sky city. Meaning, it's the first city in the world to actively minimize its light pollution. The streetlights are designed to emit barely any ambient light on anything but the streets themselves, and there are strict codes on what kind of lighting setups businesses can have. And even up here in Buffalo Park, looking out over Flagstaff's dark sky, you can still hear the roar of two interstate highways meeting.

But this city owes its existence, or at least its current state of existence, to that very interstate. Flagstaff is located only 70 miles from the South Rim of the Grand Canyon, and it's the city you have to drive through to get there. And you'll probably end up staying here too, since Nature in all her wonder doesn't seem to be enough stimuli for the people who hop out of their cars at the rim and wave their iPads around for a few minutes and then go to a motel so they can watch real hosewives of somewhere on the story box. The next day they will drive another eight hours to spend another few minutes with their iPads in front of another natural wonder. It's where the tourists come, and it's also where the truckers come, and the road trippers who haven't seen anything but mountains and desert for hours in both directions. It's also the place you have to pass through to get to Las Vegas or LA from a big chunk of the Midwest and Eastern Seaboard. And it's all because Interstates 40 and 17 meet right in the center of town.

It's not hard to see that for many Americans, where you live has been determined by the Eisenhower Administration. If you look at one of those pictures of America at night, or for the more empirically minded, one of those maps where a red dot represents x many people, you'll see that population patters form a Cartesian grid across the middle. The people go where the roads go.

Flagstaff itself might be the exception that proves the rule. It first rose to prominence because of the railroad lines, and then was sustained by the oft-romanticized Route 66. Now two only two trains stop each day, one going east and one going west, and Route 66 is a creation myth. But it survived as the hub of Northern Arizona because, well, as far as the interstate patterns go, it is the hub. It's why Flagstaff is Flagstaff, instead of Holbrook or Winslow or Bellemont or Williams. And it wasn't just a silly name that's kept Tuba City from taking that place. Instead of the roads fitting the population geography, the population geography fits where the roads are.

But how has the interstate system shaped our minds? Or more specifically, how does the interstate make us think about where we are and where we're headed? (In a strictly literal sense, and not the kind of literal that actually means figuratively.) Because if you're headed somewhere, you're probably taking the interstate.

That's how I got to Flagstaff. It was in a van that doubled as the owner's house. I found the ride on Craigslist. We left Albuquerque at 10 AM and got to Flagstaff at 2:30 PM, the whole time taking just one road. We needed no landmarks to navigate. We crossed the Continental Divide without having to find the most gradual ascent or the most suitable passage. The interstate took us there.

And still, this is some of the more scenic fare the interstate system has to offer. Between the Rockies and the Appalachians, all you can see from the interstate is urban sprawl and signs for gas stations on top of long poles. There's no navigating that has to take place other than figuring out which exit to take and maybe a few interchanges.

The problem I have with this way of navigating is that you're not aware of how where you're going is related to where you are, and you certainly aren't aware of any of the points in between. There's no spatial awareness being developed, no mental map being made of the land and the terrain. It's just a series of tubes that will get you to your destination. Every place becomes an isolated location in which you just appear.

Now we don't even need to look at a map. Your phone just tells you where to turn if you ask it. There's no brainwork involved in figuring it out.

I've always been a person who values knowing exactly where I am, and where that is in relation to everything else. I have a smart phone but I don't use the GPS. I look at the map and figure out where I'm going manually. Why? Because I like my mind being engaged that way. And I want to know where I am.

The most useless people when it comes to orienting themselves are generally the ones who grew up in mass-produced suburbias. They've got to be driven everywhere in your mom's minivan, with a gameboy or DVD player in the backseat to keep them from looking out the window and observing where they're going. These kids grow up thinking you just appear in places. They don't see how all the places are connected. And most of us, thanks to the interstate system and internet-assisted navigation.

Now I'm all for progress, but I don't know if I would call this progress. Technology has advanced, but our brains have regressed in a certain kind of spatial understanding. Call me idealistic but I think that technology exists to make humans better and more effective, not the other way around. (I think even Ray Kurzweil could agree with me on that one.) Technological advances are a failed endeavor if they downgrade humans in the process.

So let's be aware of where we are. Look at a map, look at the landmarks, watch the subtle changes in ecosystem and landscape as you go. And find your way without asking the internet or your phone where to go. Think of it like a game. And you get points for doing well. Those points make your brain level up and then eventually you get a better brain.

But if you don't use your brain, it will never level up.

Bob

"We left Worchester with our boots and our bags and America dressed herself in front of our eyes"
-State Radio, Adelaide

Skinny trees. I remember, as I dozed off, being struck by how damn skinny the trees were in Louisiana. The pine trees, that is, or at least the ones I could see from the train. The trees in New Orleans were thick, covered in ferns and dripping with vines. But from the train leaving New Orleans, headed towards the Texas border, all I could see were tall skinny pine trees coming out of the swamp.

I woke up just over the border in Texas as we crossed the Neches River and I saw fish actually jumping out of the water. I didn't know they did that outside of Porgy and Bess. Ten minutes later we stopped in Beaumont, Texas for 45 minutes, which is approximately 44 minutes too long. Now I am sure Beaumont, Texas is loved by every one of its residents and there are many great things about it. But all I got to experience was the Amtrak station, two toothless old railroad enthusiasts taking pictures of the train, the thousand percent humidity East Texas air, and the Dollar General, which has nothing for sale for a dollar and reeks of the crushed dreams of its employees and customers alike. I guess the dollar store has been killed by inflation and the general store has been killed by specialization in the commercial sector. Not that the latter is bad. If it weren't for the specialization that came with the industrial era, we wouldn't have railroads, and I wouldn't be getting across Texas on anything with more horsepower than a horse. Several very nice Texans asked me if they could help me find anything. I told them "no, I'm just looking," because I didn't want to tell them "I'm doing an ethnography or your town's pathetic dollar store."

We had to get back on the train to make it to our afternoon-long layover in Houston, so I couldn't explore all the wondrous sites that Beaumot has to offer. For some reason the train needs to spend a couple hours idling on the tracks in Houston, and the passengers are free to roam around the neighborhoods north of Downtown. Although you're close to Downtown, there's nothing to do there and you're separated by a wall of Texas highways making convoluted overpasses. Maybe if I had some more time I would find NASA mission control and try to talk to space.

Instead I wandered around trying to find a bar to hang out in for a few hours. And that's how I met Bob. He looked maybe sixty, his hair gray but his eyebrows still black. Salt-and-pepper beard. He was wearing a Hawaiian shirt and red suspenders. Could have been that this guy had wasted away too much in Margaritaville. He walked with a cane and the accompanying cane shuffle so at first I resented him picking me as a walking companion. But we had a similar goal and old people are great sources of wisdom and encouragement.

There was nothing around. We wandered for over an hour, ready to settle for a convenience store with cold beer but even that couldn't be found. It's just a humid, sticky mess out there, filled with smog and nowhere to go.

Circling back to an intersection near the train station we met up with another passenger. His name was Troy, and he was moving back to Portland from New Orleans, where he had been working as a pedicab driver. The French Qaurter is filled with these. For those of you who don't know, a pedicab is a rickshaw without a canopy, propelled by a healthy American on a bicycle, rather than an orphan on the streets of Calcutta. He had come to the Crescent City a few months prior in a school bus converted to run on used vegetable oil and with the seats replaced by beds. They had to stop every four hours or so, depending on the quality of the oil they had picked up at the last stop. He said they would always look out for Mexican restaurants, since they consistently had the cleanest oil.

We decided to head north, away from downtown, the only direction we hadn't tried yet. After 20 minutes of walking we saw a sign on the other side of the street with a Belgian flag and a sign that read "Cafe Brussels." No way. No fucking way there's anything even vaguely European in Houston. (Sorry for all the riffing, Houston. I only do it because I know you can take it.) Aside from King Leopold raping the Congo and having a region named after Ned Flanders, the only thing I really know about Belgium is beer. Delicious beer, made by monks and smiling, ruddy, stout innkeepers. We walked inside to glorious air conditioning and a bar with a panoply of taps. Bob asks "do you have beer?"

"Of course we have beer," says the owner, a tall middle aged woman with a Walloon accent. "Belgian beer is the best beer in the world."

Bob stared at the taps for a few minutes, looking increasingly confused and distraught. "Now, I like Budweiser," he said. "What do you have that's like Budweiser." She pours him a glass of a white ale (Belgian, of course). Gracefully. No jokes about how American beer is like having sex in a canoe, just lets the product do the talking. Bob approved. The owner said this was the first Monday they were open, and that she was unsure they would get any customers. We lucked out.

On the walk back to the train station Bob told us why he needed the cane. He had some form scoliosis since he was fifteen, and as a result had horrible arthritis in some of his discs. When he was diagnosed as a teenager, the doctor said he would be in a wheelchair by the time he was 40. Here he was in his 50's and still walking upright, although not exactly bipedal. I told him about the stress fracture I had in my back, and my herniated disc that would probably never heal. We were back pain buddies!

We played blackjack in the observation car during the next leg to San Antonio. In our economy, half a pistachio shell was one money, a banana chip was five, and a plastic cup was twenty. When someone ran low on shells we just took more from our federal reserve of snacks and Amtrak plastic cups causing mass inflation in our little economy. As the game progressed and we plodded across South Texas, Bob began to look more and more pained. He kept grabbing his back and wincing. Eventually he went to his seat and grabbed two bottles of painkillers, different kinds he was supposed to take together. One of them I recall was Vicodin and I can't say I say I remember the name of the other.  He took some of both and for a while it seemed as though he would zone in for a hand and then zone out again. I don't know if it was because of the drugs or the pain. With spinal problems, the pain can be just as debilitating as any narcotic. He started bobbing around in his chair like a Hasidic scholar reading the Torah. Occasionally he would get up and walk around.

Some time before midnight we pulled in to San Antonio. Another layover of a few hours. All we had to eat that day was delicious Belgian beer and pistachios, so we decided to find a Denny's which we had heard was nearby. We walked towards downtown. It seemed Bob was in a lot of pain but he said that walking was the best thing for him. Having gone through something similar I knew this was true. Walking is the best thing for a hurting back. Sitting just makes it worse.

Bob mentioned something about being hospitalized a few years prior. He said they thought he was homeless. For the first time I doubted whether a spinal deformity was the worst of his problems. Maybe there was something more going on here. I even wondered if it was just a mask for a drug problem. But then I saw the way he moved and I recognized it immediately. That was how I move when my disc flares up. And there were times he would slip back in to perfect lucidity. He was there in the conversation, engaged, the pain ebbing, and then it would come on again in another wave, demanding his full attention.

The waitress brought him his some coffee and as he was bringing it up to his mouth another spasm of pain washed over him. His hand made a sudden jerk and he spilled the coffee everywhere. He offered to clean it up but the waitress insisted she do it. Just walk around in the parking lot, I told him, we'll be out soon. I shared my doubts with Troy. He didn't know what to make of it either. He did take a lot of drugs on the train. And they didn't exactly seem to stop whatever symptoms he was having.

When I broke my back - it wasn't too serious, you have to keep in mind, only two hairline fractures in the lateral processes of my lowermost vertebra and a herniation in the disc above it - there would be days when I would feel nothing. Then there would be days when I couldn't concentrate on anything except the sound of my own moaning as I lay on my back. (The bone has healed but the disc probably never will. It just usually stays asymptomatic now if I stretch a lot.) When there's a problem with your disc, you can be fine one moment and then all of a sudden you will feel a tightness creeping up on you. You try to ignore it like a superstition but it gets stronger and stronger until there is pain radiating out in all directions from one node of pure 24-carat distilled pain. You have no choice but to be useless as you ride it out. Clear your calendar and find something to distract you that can be done lying down. That's what must have happened to Bob. He was fine when he got on the train, fine wandering the streets of Houston for something cold to drink, but all that sitting, putting pressure on the spinal column, must have triggered something. I hoped it was just that - back pain. But then part of me hoped it was something else, because whatever afflicted him, if it was indeed with his spine, was the mother of my Grendel.

We asked Bob if he wanted to go back to the train station to find a place to rest. He said walking made it feel the best. Nobody can come to San Antonio without seeing the Alamo, and even though it was almost 1 AM, we had to check it out. Today, it's hard to picture the Alamo as a makeshift outpost garrison in the middle of the desert. There is no dirt for Davey Crocket to draw a line in with his boots. The whole building is surrounded by paved walkways, rolling lawns, and informative plaques, lit up with floodlights all through the night. I guess they figure Texas is where all the energy is coming from and they're going to use all they can. Bob asked me to take picture of him in front of the Alamo with my phone and then gave me his email address and I sent it to him.

We then went across the street to a fountain, which we followed down a staircase and through the lobby of a hotel. It ran all the way to the San Antonio River Walk. Basically, the city of San Antonio has decided to use their oil money to create an artificial river that winds through downtown and also extends something like forty miles outside of the city. I had actually started a draft of a story set in a fictional Central Asian nation that suddenly became wealthy from oil deposits and built a new capital complete with an artificial river, but I scrapped it after I realized I had no plot, just an interesting setting. Looks like San Antonio had the idea first, but could actually follow through.

The River Walk is set a story beneath street level. It's this little bubble of lushness and attractive building facades that feels a world away from the streets on the surface. Not that there's any natural greenery or soil to speak of; everything is paved over and the banks are the stone walkways that line both sides. There were ducks though. Sometimes we would walk under a bridge and see some ducks roosting for the night. They knew at this point that people were less of a threat and more providers of food. It was pretty dead, being past midnight on a Monday night (Tuesday morning?) and the only people out were overdressed, screeching drunk women and busboys cleaning up outdoor tables. I heard a jazz trio closing out at some chain restaurant's bar, but after New Orleans I new that if I went in to give them a better listen, whatever I heard would be a disappointment. Bob would sometimes zone out of lucidity and into pain-induced delirium, but the walking did seem to be doing him good, in the aggregate.

We made it back to the train station in time for our train's 2:30 AM departure. Troy and I crashed in the observation car, keeping an eye on Bob. Sitting down looked like it did a number on him and his face would sometimes contort in pain. He started bobbing and weaving around again.

At some point I must have drifted off and I woke up in the plains of West Texas, gradually browning as we made our way west. Cormac McCarthy country. I needed to do some stretching to shake off the night of sleeping in an observation car chair, watching the sun rise over the plains. Then I remembered Bob. I found him at the far end of the car, sitting in a chair, waving his torso around like one of those wacky inflatable arm-flailing tube men which car dealerships display to announce sales where you can buy a car for nothing now and be making payments for the rest of your life. Troy and I were unsure of what to do. He had already taken a copious amount of painkillers. At this point he was even difficult to talk to. I got him some water since it was all I could do, and then just waited. I sat there, trying to read but it I couldn't keep focused. But there was nothing I could do either so I just tried to read or enjoy the gradually changing landscape.

And then my spidey sense tingled. I looked up at Bob's end of the car and saw the conductor standing next to him, on his walkie-talkie. Based on my experience with Amtrak conductors, I knew this was not good. These are the people who kicked me off a train for having a non-permissible bag the day before Christmas, who will take any attempt by a passenger to preserve some dignity as a personal offense. At least that's how my negative experiences have gone. To be fair, there are plenty of times a train ride passed without incident. But if they don't like the way you're acting, they will not hesitate to throw you off the train.

I saw the conductor taking Bob to the downstairs compartment of the observatory car. I followed him down and once he had sat Bob down I pulled him aside and told him what was going on. He's just got a little back pain, I said, there's nothing to worry about, he's not drunk or anything. The conductor brushed me aside and went further back to the coach cars. I followed him trying to explain the situation. I finally corner him in the back of the train and ask him what's going on. He says that he's going to have to kick Bob off the train because he was "bothering people." Who was he bothering? I asked.

His response was "there are over 200 people on this train I have to worry about."

"Who? Which of those 200 passengers was he bothering."

"Well if he is in pain, like you're saying, he needs to get to a hospital."

"So what, you're just going to strand him here?" I knew he didn't have much money and might not be able to afford buying another train ticket when the train came through again in three days, let alone a place to stay for that long.

"Hey, you want to get kicked off the train with him." He turned to leave.

I blurted out the most verbose thing I could say at the moment. "Aw, fuck you man!" I'm not sure he heard it.

I paced around wondering what I should do. Maybe I should just get kicked off with him. I was only going as far as El Paso and I had no pressing engagements there. Was it time for me to just sack up and get kicked off so I could take care of him? I wanted to see America and maybe the best place to find it was in some water stop in West Texas. I decided to fight tooth and nail to keep Bob on the train and let my future on it be determined with how the conductor decided to react. Because tyrants only have power when they take your authority, not when you surrender it. But I wouldn't be alone.

We rolled into Alpine, Texas, a deceptively named town of 5,905 people. Waiting for us on the platform were four police officers. The conductor walked Bob out and started talking to the sheriff while I tried to explain to another officer that Bob hadn't bothered anyone and that the best thing to do was get him to LA, where his daughter and her family were waiting for him; they would know what to do best. And then other passengers, who were out on the platform stretching their legs, came forward. There were about fifteen people all butting in to the conductor's conversation with the sheriff. One woman just kept repeating "he aint botherin nobody. He aint botherin nobody!"

I had another exchange with the conductor and at the end dropped the f-bomb a second time, saying "this is fucked up, man." This time the conductor turned around. "What did you call me?" I stated back at him. "I didn't call you anything. I was just expressing my displeasure with the way this scenario is unfolding, that's all." One of the officers pulled me aside and told me I did good not mouthing off to him, because the conductor was trying to get me kicked off for profanity as well. If that were to be my fate, then so be it.

An assistant conductor and a third officer asked Troy and I for our side of the story. The assistant conductor seemed adamant that Bob shouldn't have even got on an Amtrak train, since he had other options. I pointed out to him that he couldn't afford to fly and that taking a bus is even worse for someone with that kind of back pain. When we tried to see if maybe Bob could use one of the handicapped seats, he said he couldn't, because he didn't know if they were going to be full later with reserved tickets. I tried to tell him that as a conductor in 2013 he should be able to know this information, because of things like the internet, and wifi, but I guess Amtrak is not with the times.

I walked over to the conductor and sheriff. The other passengers were still tring to keep Bob on the train. Some of had broken off and had formed a circle. They were praying. And Bob, right now he was standing up, lucid, competent, calmly telling the conductor that he didn't have the rights to do this. The conductor maintained that Bob was bothering "at least 12 people on the train." I reminded him that it's a bad idea to lie  to a police officer but he kept up his tirade of bullshit.

Again, I felt obligated to grab my backpack from the coach cabin and get out here, in Alpine Texas, of all places, and make sure someone was taking care of Bob. I paced around the platform for a few minutes, walking to the other end. But as I was walking back I noticed Bob getting back on the train. The sheriff walked up to me and shook me hand. He looked me in the eye and said "thank you." I couldn't believe it. I should have at least said "no, thank you" or something along those lines, but I was so dumbfounded as faith in humanity once again washed over my brainscape I just stood there grinning like a midget on stilts.

We did it! A bunch of strangers actually came together and helped our fellow man out of a situation with two kinds of authorities. You don't get that kind of camaraderie on an airplane, that's for sure. On a cross-country flight you just stare at your magazine and cultivate your hatred for everyone around you, especially the guy behind you. But on a train across Texas, you're family by the end.

There was an RN in the group of passengers on the platform advocating for Bob, and she had agreed to sit with him all the way to Los Angeles, making sure he was okay. There would also be an eyewitness to confirm, still, that he aint botherin nobody.

The rest of the way to El Paso I kept an eye on him too, getting him water so he could take his painkillers and some snacks so they wouldn't sit too heavy on his stomach, while his personal nurse for the rest of the trip talked to him to keep his mind off the pain.

I last saw Bob on the platform at El Paso. He had gotten up to stretch his legs and alleviate some of the pressure on his spine, and I was getting off the train for good. I would walk through the deserted streets of El Paso, into the Second Ward, and then across the border into Juarez. What I was looking for I don't know. "Vaya con Dios, my friend," he said. We shook hands, I threw my backpack on and walked off to find my next adventure.

A Cure for Writer's Block

"A richer people could give more, but they could never give as much." -Flavor text from a Magic The Gathering™ card

Tomorrow, I'll probably quit my job that I started today. At least I plan to. Friday, on an unemployment special mid-workday run, I pulled up a tab off a flyer on a phone pole for some kind of grassroots campaigning gig. I called them at 1 in the afternoon. I interviewed at 4 that same afternoon. I started Monday morning, and now, on Monday night, I have decided to quit.

Quitting this job is a luxury I cannot afford. But I'm not just quitting this job; I am quitting on principle. That is a solid gold bidet at Versailles with single-cut diamond taps and that runs aged cognac. And in part, one of the principles that caused me to luxuryquit out of my means was that this job was causing me to contribute to the culture where activism, or doing anything else on principle, is a luxury. Which gives me a nice, hermetically sealed, full-circle(jerk) way to justify leaving. (Wow, two paragraphs in after my return from the Wilderness and I'm already packing in the cock jokes. And I think I just made another.)

The cause. It's a great cause. Let me tell you about how shit is fucked up in our great state of California. Let me phrase that better, since my parents or pastor or impressionable youths might be reading. There are some major issues in the battle for California's future, and one of them is how we're going to handle what forests we have left. I can tell you these facts because I was spitting them out all day to disinterested passersby who were just trying to get their damn kids to soccer practice so they could go home, close the blinds, and read 50 Shades of Gray while eating something vaguely resembling chocolate, or something Greek yogurt-based, in their brief 90 minutes of respite from those little fleshy bags which preserve their DNA at the cost of a ruined 18 years. Here's the deal: we're going to lose over a million acres of forest in the Sierra foothills in the next few years. 65,000 acres get chopped down every year, and then the logging companies, just to add the Mr. Burns finishing kick, spray the ground with arsenic and a cocktail of up to 300 other noxious chemicals, none of which are regulated by the state. Since 80% of our drinking water comes from forested watersheds, this is bad news for everything in the state that needs water, like crops, endangered herons, humpback whales named Humphrey that for some reason swim a hundred kilometers up the Sacramento River, and oh yeah, people.

But you might say we need to replace forests with apocalyptic wastelands and put cancer in our drinking water for the economy! Because jobs! Because, you know, all those loggers are going to be out of work and there will be no building materials to build job-creating infrastructure. Environmentalists are killing progress and it's all Obama's fault, or something like that. The truth is, you can log without clear cutting. It just doesn't give you a big yield right away. Instead, you have to manage your resources so you have both a steady stream of lumber coming to market and enough living trees to keep that stream going. You have to be responsible, budgeting your forest. Investors prefer clear cutting because it provides a quick and dirty return on their investments.

These are real issues, issues which, admittedly, I didn't know about until Friday afternoon. But now that I know, I'm using the only means I have to really do good, writing about it. Because it's out of my hands. It was even out of my hands when I was working for the people trying to stop it.

It's coming down to a lobbying battle. I was standing out in front of a Whole Foods with a Sierra Club shirt on going up to people who conveniently developed a trendy gluten allergy sometime in the last few years, and these people just wanted to sign something. They see a clipboard and a pen and hear me talking about one of the millions of awful things in the world and ask "where do I sign?" Well shit, I don't have anything for you to sign, my superiors just need your damn money. Because the timber industry has its tentacles going deep into the lobbying scene. Since their money comes from commercial ventures and investors, who have incentive for it to succeed, they are going to get however much money they need. The Sierra Club needs to get members to contribute so they can get money to hold their own in this battle. And they will always need more money.

So this is where I come in. The agency I work(ed) for is not actually the Sierra Club, but an organization called Grassroots Campaigns. Basically, they're a progressive gun for hire fundraising institution, contracted by various organizations like the Southern Poverty Law Center, Oxfam, the ACLU, and of course, the Sierra Club. I'm no economist so I don't know whether or not this cuts costs or ads in overhead. Maybe if I were an economist I would reason that if they're doing something, it has to be saving them money, because in the Economist's Dimension, all decisions are made based solely on financial gain. However, I'm not sure if contracting Grassroots Campaigns to do some of their fundraising was the most cost-effective way to do things. Canvassers are paid eight dollars an hour with commission past a certain amount of money raised. This is going to make you pushy. This will make sure you shake everyone by the ankles. And if, in a week, you average canvassing less than $140 per day, then you don't keep your job. This practically makes you mug people for charitable donations.

I spent my first morning getting the rap down, a set of talking points which, although it only takes a minute to recite on rapid fire, is far too cumbersome to give to a bystander who wants to get out of there. Most of the facts pertaining to the issues I have already given, but far more eloquently. Of course, there's also the stuff about "GIVE US MONEY ON A MONTHLY BASIS OTHERWISE YOU'RE BASICALLY PUNCHING A BABY OWL IN THE DICK!" and how you can do it monthly with a credit card to make it easier for the Sierra Club to budget for a long-term Western Front style lobbying battle. (I often wonder if our Lost Generation will be one lost to apathy.)

After a good old fashion grassroots organization let's all get energized meeting, we break into groups to go to canvassing locations. My group was going to the most far-flung location. At least I get to see the world in this limited sort of way. We piled into a rental car with two canvassers for the SPLC who were going to a nearby location. There's another piece of overhead. To get to some of these spots at the periphery of the Bay Area, Grassroots Campaigns has to use rental cars. More getting billed to the Sierra Club.

They listened to top 40 radio. Top 40 radio is a way to identify when people don't really care about music, they just like having it on in the background. They'll like what is convenient to like. Ian, a kid from East Oakland who would be canvassing for the SPLC said he had done some research on them and found that about 60% of what they raise goes to the top of the organization and the rest goes to the actual fighting for causes like taking down hate groups. But all he had to say about it was that it "seemed kinda sketchy." I found myself wishing I could compartmentalize my mind like that, do my job without thinking about how it's all connected, where I fit in the machine. We need someone to fight those hate groups but should it really be people so corrupt? It's hard to find the greater good when nobody is doing it.

Getting farther from the Bay Area's population core now, we lost the top 40 station and someone started flipping through stations until he settled on some kind of 20th century synthpop. "Hahaha, this is so Eighties man!" he said. I need to find a way to bottle the 80's aesthetic and sell it as a tincture in organic stores. I would make a killing.

We set up in front of a whole foods. Two of us flanked the sides and the third covered a park across the street. I got about 15 minutes of observing my supervisor canvassing, and then we switched roles and he watched me. Then he cut me loose and I was alone in the mighty Whole Foodsian jungle. In the next hour and a half I was able to get one donation from a guy who said that he studied marketing psychology and that my tricks would not work on him. (My "tricks" were limited to shaking his hand and telling him my name.) He handed me a 20 and told me to go away.

Now people are supposed to fill out forms with their names and addresses, and we prefer credit cards over cash, probably for purposes of corruption. (First off, nobody trusts you with their credit card information, even if we don't need the security code on the back. We write down the information but we do make a rubbing of the embossed numbers on carbon paper using a coin, but who has time to sit around doing that?) One really strange thing we needed was, from those paying with a check, a second check left blank except for the word "void" written on it. This did not sit well with the one person who gave me a check. Since it was a struggle to get the first check out of her I let her off the hook.

I talked to some people who had been members of the Sierra Club for a long time. Since I was out there for a 3rd party contracted by the Sierra Club, I really had nothing to say to him. I knew nothing about what else the Sierra Club has been up to. I couldn't even tell people what their membership would get them other than a good feeling and junk mail. But these lifelong members, they thought I was awesome. I didn't want to tell them the truth because being told I was awesome already made me feel awful inside. One woman even said "I bet your parents are really proud of you." She thought I was doing a good thing out of passion for the cause. But I was just a lousy progressive gun-for-hire. I know that the reason for feeling awful was because of a discrepancy in how I was perceived and in what was actually going on, and that if I told them it might actually make me feel better. But I just nodded and smiled. I can be a bit of a sadist. Sometimes I would just take the cop-out of "it's my first day." There are so many things that need your attention now, but all they ask for is your money. We've got government espionage, civil wars across the globe, racially motivated violence, and now even my hooded sweatshirt has become political by appropriation! And here I am trying to get you to cough up more than a few bucks to save some conifers! There are awesome people out there, doing awesome things that will make a difference, and I am not one of them. Do not inflate me.

And then the euphoria of not caring came over me. I was a zen monk (not the trendy fake American kind but the real deal) and beheld a sizable chunk of causality in an instant, seeing myself standing in a whole foods parking lot as the logical conclusion of my car breaking down all those years ago, a time trial in American flag running shorts, recycled emotions slapped onto a blank CD, singing Billy Joel in an MRI machine, a late-night phone call to make me useful again and a chance meeting the next day when all I wanted was to be useless, discovering my beard had turned black in a Wendy's restroom, a promise to myself I knew I would break, Flagstaff hailstones the size of golf balls, a spilled Jamba Juice, a concussion on the floor of a blood bank, being stuck one too many times in LA traffic, a few too many empty bottles of Trader Joe's wine, a broken window, the weight of all my blown opportunities, and a road trip to Long Beach which would end up taking me as far as Boston, all coming together like history in the mind of a delusional Saleem Sinai preparing for his birth, all an unbroken chain of accidents and artifacts bringing me to this very whole foods for this very purpose, telling me this was no fault but my own and the only way to break the cycle of the birth and death of my aspirations was to abandon whatever passivity-borne-of-confusion had left me so incapable of transcending my own mediocrity. I used to feel like there was some kind of manual to life that everyone but me had received, but in this moment, it becomes clear that there is no way there could be a manual for all this, for all I've done and seen, and for all the people I've met along the way. It's all just choices in a the wilderness and I was going to have to make one. I think it was around then I decided if i really objected, on principle, to what I was doing, then I would have to do something about it myself.

On the ride back I talked with the other canvassers about how to distinguish who is going to give you money and who is a waste of your time. Sometimes people want to talk about the issues but aren't in a position to give money. We are supposed to get them out of there as quickly as possible, to get money from people who can afford to care more. They told me soon I would undergo a session of "Awareness Training," which would help me better identify who would be willing to give. Isn't the purpose of a "grassroots" campaign to build a broad base of support to the point where it incites a mass movement? All this does is raise money that will get poured into the Sacramento entertainment industry as lobbyists take state senators for a night of schmoozing on the town. It's putting the people who already have the power (and the money) in a position of more power.

During my "debriefing" I brought up how I felt really conflicted about shaking people down for money this way to support a lobbying battle. Notice that I didn't say I felt bad, I just felt really conflicted. This is an issue that needs to be addressed, and unfortunately, lobbying is how these things get done now. My super told me I can't think of it that way. The antecedent to "that" was not the conflict about structural flaws in the ways we make changes to the structural flaws in the macro-structure. I didn't tell him that much. I just told him I was conflicted about asking people for money. He then went on to tell me that I just have to think of what I'm doing as the 100% right thing to do.

And I certainly didn't. The first thing I thought when I walked out was "shit, I need to go do something that does some real good in the world to absolve myself for what I've been doing today." And then I realized that's not what your'e supposed to be thinking after a day of working for a grassroots organization to protect the majestic splendor and beautifully complex system that is God's Spaceship Earth. You're supposed to see all the corporate sellouts, the people splurging on needlessly frothy coffee, and all the conpsicuous consumption around you, and feel like you've done a truly good thing while everyone else keeps their head down.

Whatever other work I end up finding will probably be something where I do nothing for the common good, except maybe help people which brand of toothpaste to buy. I won't be doing the right thing, but at least I won't be doing something that keeps the wrong thing going on.

All I can say for now is try to be one of those passionate people. Follow the news, do research, make your own opinions. Drink chocolate milk if your stomach can handle it. Drive with the windows down, wear silly hats, grow your own food. Vote no matter how long the lines are, give people rides, take the bus, tell your friends to take the bus. Read books that aren't on a screen and reuse all your things until they fall apart. Remember that nothing has to be the way it is (except for things like the laws of physics because we can't change those) and make some fucking eye contact with each other for once! Say hungry. Say free. And dammit, do the best you can. Because that's all I can ask of anybody.


Sorry to break the mood with a shameless plug, but you should really consider following the Ozone Shack on twitter. https://twitter.com/TheOzoneShack

Brooklyn-Bound Chiropractor

There's something special about being alone on the New York Subway in the middle of the night. Yes, there is someone operating the train but they're so removed and so invisible it might as well be an automated system, a force of nature propelling you beneath the city of illusory insomnia, because everyone must sleep at some point even if their city doesn't. You step in to an empty, silent cavern and a cascade of sound and light fills the building, heralding its destination. The doors open for you and only you. They close and seal you as the solitary entity on this mystic journey through the dark. I wondered if the Warriors would hop on, joining me on their escape to Coney Island but no one else came and I sat in a chair facing backwards.

The gentle rocking of the train jostled my rib cage, it jostled my neck and my lower back. It squeezed my calf and hamstring muscles. It loosened my knees. My back cracked, my neck cracked, my arms popped out of their sockets and back in again. My hands flopped over into the anatomical position, the scar tissue in my forearms and wrists shredding in an instant and then recoiled back, a chain reaction of cracks releasing down my digits. (You'll get arthritis doing that, I clearly remember my eighth grade English teacher telling me.) The handholds came down and grabbed my neck, the best chiropractor in the known universe yanking it to both sides, then up, then down each vertebra, releasing the tension on each one. The metal poles came in and slammed against my glutes, shoving the sciatic nerve into place and a wave shot down my legs causing every molecule to vibrate at the same perfect frequency.

They pulled apart my fingers and my toes, cracked every joint and released every muscle. Each rib was pulled as far from my spine as it would allow without being ripped out and turned into a woman and then snapped back in place, the cartilage stretched and the ligaments made new. The feeling of well-being, of alignment  spread through my body, once again a complete system, no longer a crumpled mass of scar tissue and regret.

And then at the next stop the people got on again. In their suits and their makeup and their put-together personal lives, their places to go, their dates to be on and people to meet in social situations well-defined by the media. Shoes matching hats. Demeanor matching scent. Agenda matching indoctrination. And I was once again misaligned and calcified, bruised and broken, atoms vibrating in a grating dissonance.