Ideolocator

"And I don't know where I went wrong
All I know now is I got to do something... right?"
-Streetlight Manifesto, We Are The Few


So I'm not sure if you've noticed (of course you didn't notice) but I've been posting even less frequently than my already lax posting habits normally allow. This is because I'm on a magical quest of introspection and self discovery and doing something I call "dynamic meditation" where I basically pace around my room and point at the walls and sometimes yell. (This is how I think.) Why do I need to find myself? Because on June 10th at approximately 8:20 PM I yelled "I AM A FUCKING BEAUTIFUL ALBATROSS, AND I AM BEING CONFINED IN A CAGE; A CAGE OF THE MIND, A CAGE OF THE SPIRIT, A CAGE OF THE SOUL!!!"

I have about three and a half weeks to finish finding myself. Most people have to do this in their late 30's and only if they have the time and money to go to Morocco or Tibet and could at least be loosely classified as an artist. I can't even buy booze yet, I consider going to Panda Express a night on the town, and my "art" consists mostly of saying "shit man, that's so sci-fi."

But being a metaphorical caged albatross isn't a good enough explanation for you, is it? I think the albatross explanation is a better one, because the concrete reasons have to do with a) depression and b) the only thing I've had to deal with that sucks more than depression, which is running. Both make you not want to get out of bed and both make you eat a lot of random things at random times. Oh, and I'm also lactose intolerant now. Not sure how that one happened.

But basically I ran so hard that I broke my back in two (2) places and then after doing rehab for a few months realized that I liked hanging out with Scully and Mulder better than I liked hanging out with my real friends. But I just thought I was anemic, and when I went into student health for a blood test they also tested my white blood cell count and cortisol levels and all kinds of other crazy things that sometimes show up in your blood, including blood parasites, and even tested me for something that sounds like the exact opposite of diabetes where eating any kind of simple sugar makes your blood sugar immediately crash. Then they told me I was probably depressed but of course I know better, depression is just a made-up disease by the media and the government and the man, so I hung out with Scully and Mulder some more until I realized there was nothing actually physically wrong with me except for excessive scar tissue in my foot and lower back and a disc that's herniated by about 6 millimeters. But really this all has to do with running, and more importantly recalibrating my brain so that I can be good again. Because having two stress fractures and a herniated disc does even more mental damage than it does physical damage.

So I opted out of living in the mountains and growing a beard and pooping among God's creatures for the summer, and instead am working part time for corporate America (I am legally obligated not to say anything bad about the company I work for) and spending lots of time reexamining myself and, of course, running.

The obvious solution, which I'm doing my darndest to avoid, would be antidepressants. Antidepressants are the American Dream finally come to fruition; it's happiness in a pill. And not only do we have happiness in a pill, we have skinny in a pill, boner in a pill, not-baby in a pill, even hair in a pill. Our forefathers (well, not my forefathers, but somebody's forefathers) crossed this great continent with nothing but willpower and dysentery so that one day, we could take a pill that made all our perceived troubles (but not our actual troubles) melt away and rock-solid erections that lasted up to four hours. They also envisioned places where you could buy funnel cake and then puke it up thirty minutes later without having an eating disorder.

But yes, I am rediscovering who I am as a runner and hoping that will help me realize more about myself as a human. Actually, it's become sort of the opposite. I'm learning about myself and contemplating the human condition and the soul and the mind and, ok, who am I kidding, I'm running to the point where fatigue and mild dehydration fries my brain.

Here are some things I have realized so far:

• I'm edgy. I got a gritty reboot, which makes me edgy.
• The Virgin Mary cries tears of blood every time you read a book by Deepak Chopra.
• Most people think in clichés, and some can only think in clichés. But like my grandma always said, "three in the bushellbasket is worth five on the lampstand!" Why get a college education when you know that little gem?
• The mind is probably some sort of interface mechanism between the soul and the body. I have identified seven factors (and counting) which determine the nature of one's soul. They are too complex and too nascent in my mind at this point in time to explain in bullet point form.
• Being lactose intolerant is way more fun than being lactose tolerant. Instead just having one kind of milk to choose from, you have soy milk, rice milk, almond milk, oat milk, hazelnut milk ,and even hemp milk. And don't even get me started on all the varieties of fake ice creams I can experiment with.
• Loving something or someone means that you are willing to completely destroy yourself for it. By this definition, running may be the only thing I've actually ever loved.
• This means that Billy Joel was wrong when he said he never loved his first wife, Whatserface.
• If you have lost all faith in humanity, then, and only then, can you justify believing in an ideological absolute.

This whole expedited process of finding myself has taken me through some phases rather quickly. A few weeks ago, as I was preparing finals, I had the introspective (and sleep-deprived) phase where I looked around me and saw nothing but empty people sucking the conformist corporate teet. Then as my blood became less blood-based and more caffeine-based I had that manic, crazy, thousand thoughts a second won't shut up won't somebody please listen to me about how our generation needs courage phase. Then I got edgy, real edgy, got irreverent, got a tad hedonistic. There followed a brief twelve hours of disassociation from reality. Then I had the nihilistic phase, which came in two parts, the first where I realized that my essence at the atomic level is nothing but bullshit and that everything I had realized recently was void because of my own character flaws. Then I had the drone phase, where about four days passed and I don't think I thought anything. Then I had a rekindling of my faith in humanity and the importance of interpersonal interaction, and now I've been two days in the austerity phase, where I just get things done and live simply. It's been a little over a month. I may not find the true essence of myself, if that even exists, but I will probably find something.

But now that I think about it, happiness in a pill isn't exactly the American Dream. Finding yourself in 6-8 weeks, that's the American Dream. And I can't decide if that makes me spiritually bankrupt or just one helluva self-actualizing man.

Let's say neither, for now.

Something To Chew On

"If you choose not to decide, you still have made a choice"

-Rush, Freewill

We all like to think that we're different, that we're smarter than the average person in whatever demographic we may inhabit, that we're going to make it, that our own individual experience is somehow unique - you act like you're the first person to fall in love, the first person to give birth, the first person to have terminal cancer, the first person to think your car is a spaceship, the first person to be blown away that one time you discovered Rush - we believe we're going to beat the system, we believe we're the universe owes it to us to dispense equal and fair justice that's just a little biased towards ourselves because we all know that we're at its center, we think that history is just one big setup that culminates in Right Now, that it has all lead up to this point, that our dreams mean something, that our actions mean something, that we are more important than just the atoms we're made of and the space they take up, that we are independent, rational, free-thinking, logical children of the enlightenment, endowed with the gift of sapience to solve the Rubik's Cube that is the universe, when really, we might have to come to terms with the fact that we're just being influenced by quantum mechanics and instincts we don't understand.

Creation vs. the Creative Process (Nate Offends Everybody)

“First time I read the bible

It struck me as unwitty

I think it may start a rumor

That the Lord aint got no humor”

-Gogol Bordello, Supertheory of Supereverything

The greatest, most imaginative and inspiring work of science fiction is our own universe, in its entirety.

It is with the utmost humility that I make the following statements. For I am no more inclined to understand the mind of God than anyone else, and I am certainly not a prophet. With that said, I am now going to make a rather bold claim, which I believe will shed some light on a misconception that has existed both within the Christian and the secular spheres of reality for, well, somewhere between 6,000 years and several billion years, depending on your particular cosmological persuasion. And speaking of which, I am going to settle that dispute while I’m here. So I will now climb from the trenches of insecurity, meekness, and deference, where I make my home, and don the mantle of authority, if only for a few minutes, before being booed off the stage, and I will at least be able to take solace in that everyone is in agreement, even if they only all agree that I am wrong.

In this age of reason, Christianity is taken about as seriously as astrology, and is seen as even less intriguing, to boot. It is seen as anti-intellectual, backwards, oppressive, and generally irrelevant; we don’t need those kinds of answers, one will argue, because science has answered them for us. Which is why I feel it is more socially acceptable to admit that I don’t like any of the songs off of Thriller than saying that I am a Christian. (Seriously, I must be missing something because I do not understand how seven of those songs were in the top 10.) I believe that I have a richer perspective on Christianity, and religion in general, because it’s not something in which I have always believed. Growing up I spent an unnatural amount of Sundays with my dad at the planetarium or at the local wetlands museum (which is way cooler than it sounds), or simply dissecting insects and animals I found in the woods, and a grand total of zero at a church of any kind. My mom had the churchgoing habits hammered out of her years before, but would occasionally go to random churches and sit through a service to get free coffee if, we couldn’t afford any, because, like addicts of any other drug, caffeine users need their fix. So I believe in science, all of it, and all of the post-hippie fallout, minus the vegetarianism, because physiologically, we pretty much evolved to be pack hunters, which is an entirely different subject to tackle in an entirely different essay. Growing up free of any religious instruction, I am now free to make intelligent, rational conclusions about my faith. Despite whatever problems I have with doctrine, authority, and organized religion as a whole, choosing to follow Jesus was the surest my otherwise cripplingly indecisive mind was of anything. Taking close second was the decision that I wanted to be a writer. (In third place: “Indian food is delicious.”)

I’m not exactly sure why it happened when it did, and I’m equally mystified about what I wanted to do with my life before, but I was literally in mid-sentence when I decided that I wanted to be a writer. I think before this revelation, I wanted to be some kind of scientist, probably having to do with biotech, kind of, because enzymes are pretty rad, and there are at least as many in the human body as there are words in the English language. But there I was, an ambitionless kid about to enter his senior year of high school, for whom dreaming big consisted of fitting upwards of thirty grapes in my mouth at a time and maybe talking to a girl without crapping myself (not at the same time), and all of a sudden I had this conviction that this was what I needed to do with my life. And yes, I may end up living in the box for an Ikea lamp fixture underneath the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, but right now I’m on a mission. (And for the record, of course it will be under the Brooklyn end of the BQE, because that's where all the artsy people live.)

The problem then arises, for us intellectually-inclined Christians (which should be all of us), is how to reconcile scriptural “truths” with scientific facts. Viewing the bible this way, as simply a list of facts, turns it into a storybook, and takes away from what it was intended to be: the most important instruction manual that exists. But the debate still rages as to the veracity of the opening passages. Predominantly, this focuses on the origin of the universe and the origin of life, whether or not it was created, or it evolved. After finally figuring out how to take my writing seriously, I have come to realize that both sides have misunderstood the issue, because of a pernicious misconception about what it is to create something.

Any kind of sentient creator or architect for the Universe would seem to be out of synch with standard science, in which the universe is roughly 12.4 billion years old and where everything came to be the way it is today, life especially, through gradual changes that were based mostly on trial and error and accidents, some beneficial and some not so beneficial. Everything from evolution to the big bang theory, and even Copernican cosmology, seemed to fly in the face of the notion of what it meant to be “created.” When these alternative theories of creation emerged, the church’s knee-jerk response was to condemn them, because the church felt that they were antithetical to the notion of a divine creation and undermined everything for which the church stood. And if man was nothing but an accident, then what is the impetus, if any, behind salvation, or is there even salvation at all? The notion of evolution causes one to question whether there is even a creator at all, with the conclusion usually being that there is none. The two theories seem irreconcilable. And they are, with our current, working definition of creation. But the Christian conception of creation, of the creation of life and the universe itself and everything in it, is nothing more than a gross misunderstanding of what it really is to create something. I do not know whether this is due to a lack of creative people or simply because so few rigorously partake in the creative process, but I did not understand, until I undertook to rigorously perfect my writing, that there is a long and complicated series of events that take place between impulse and the actual product of that creative impulse.

When one thinks of an idea, it is just that, an idea. It has nothing physical by which to be represented, and it is fuzzy, lacks form, has holes, lacks internal cohesion. It is only when one tries to act on that idea, and turn it into something physical, that it begins to take shape as something that can exist in a physical universe, and subsequently be understood or consumed. In other words, the limitations and complications of putting a creative idea into practice, although they may alter it, serve to perfect the original idea. As it is translated from thought into action or physical form, every detail must be painstakingly constructed, so that the entire creation fits together as a perfect whole. And at a certain point, details are generated spontaneously; nuances in language and connotation lead to entirely new ideas, the structure of one sentence can shift the direction of an entire passage, subconsciously the idea is constantly reevaluated and updated to accommodate how these accidental details affect the whole.

And an idea is never static when it is being creatively applied. Things aren’t necessarily changed because the old was inferior, but because one inspiration generates another inspiration.

Then there are revisions, numerous drafts, where ideas that don’t work are thrown out or are modified. And I can’t even imagine how many more I personally would have to make were it not for the magical word processor. The whole structure can be changed, every minute detail can be changed, and sometimes only the core idea or motif remains. And even that is not set in stone. But it is these changes and revisions that preserve, then distill and clarify the idea. Tolstoy re-wrote War and Peace seven times. Leo, bless his sanity, wrote the novel six more times than most people will read it, and he certainly couldn’t skim over any passages. It’s an arduous process that takes many many attempts, each attempt a wholly different macro-entity.

When I say revision, I do not mean a re-write where mistakes are corrected. I mean a recreation of the work, articulating ideas differently, experimenting with structure, form, cause, and effect. And in this case the revision is constant.

The difference between our creative subjects and God’s creative subjects, and what complicates the model more than a little, is that God’s subjects seem to be, at least to a certain extent, up to their own devices. Subatomic particles decay at a rate that is constant, but when the specific particle decays is completely up to chance. Atoms and molecules vibrate randomly. UV rays slice through DNA and other organic tissue. And then of course, there is the added dynamic of free will to complicate things. Imagine if some of Chaucer’s pilgrims had decided that, hey, they didn’t really want to go to Canterbury, and instead headed off to London or Venice or Baghdad or off to find the New World. It would certainly create a problem, wouldn’t it?

Whether or not we are the final draft is another sticky subject, and the answers may not be as universally apparent. But if man is created in God’s image, would it then mean that we are the end, the final draft? We may have reached God’s physical image but the world is still changing and we continue to have the power of changing it. And I like to think of God’s work as never being finished, so there isn’t going to be a final draft. The first one was good enough to publish. The revisions may go on forever, just for revision’s sake.

We cheapen God and we cheapen the majesty of His creation by thinking of it as a singular process. To think of creation as a single, temporally isolated event – rather than one which is in a constant state of revision and re-perfecting – is an underestimation of the wisdom of God.

And you may say that I am yanking God off His pedestal and placing him on a human level, bound by earthly constraints and all the other baggage that comes with existing inside the universe. That this take on creation, that God’s initial concept of the universe and everything it contains, from protons to platypuses, was not already supremely perfect from the beginning, would imply that God himself is not perfect. And, this potentially reeks of understanding God on human terms. But once again, you are selling both God and yourself short. A superentity of the utmost perfection would surely use the most perfect method for creating the most perfect work. Creation on a whim, that is what is imperfect, and that is the action of an imperfect being.

Instead of thinking of things as something that came to be with a “thou shalt be this,” it makes much more sense that it is one of a string of infinite possibilities, that many ideas of it have been tried before, and many more ideas will be tried in the future. We are part of God’s creative process, and I feel blessed to be part of it.

Becoming a Christian doesn’t mean that you automatically become a good person, and despite what people will tell you, it doesn’t make you into any worse of a person either. It’s applying that creative process to crafting a righteous person of yourself. And everyone will fail at some point, I know I have. That doesn’t necessarily mean a pious person or a clean person or a sober person or even a person with strong morals, but someone who will better the world, and have faith that the world can be bettered through conscious reevaluation of the self within and of the universe without. And that is why I write, both to better the world, and to understand the process through which the world is bettered, that process being the creative process. Creativity made the world what it is today, and creativity can save the world. But we can’t be scared of it. We can’t be scared to throw out what doesn’t work, accept what does, and constantly revise everything, and I, too must not be afraid to throw out sentences, paragraphs, whole tracts even , which are insufficient, and push my comfort zone to find what is sufficient.

I want you to question what you believe in, be it total atheism or literal biblical creation, and everything in between. Let’s say this is third in the hierarchy of things I am certain of, edging out “Indian food is delicious.” Everything we know and observe came to be exactly how scientists will tell you it happened, and the change was driven by the exact same mechanisms. But that is creation, that is God whipping things into being, as He sees fit, because the God in whom I believe is the most creative individual I know, and I would pray that I could have an infinitesimally small fraction of His creative genius, if genius is even a loaded enough word.

And this conclusion is only the beginning. May peace be upon you and may the world never stay the same.

Tri-tip for Congress!

"I'll get all my papers and smile at the sky
For I know that the hypnotized never lie"
-The Who, "Won't Get Fooled Again"

Our system may be a broken mess of corrupt partisan bullshit, but I still believe in democracy, because democracy gives me free tri-tip sandwiches.  Or at least Tom Watson does, who is running for congress (I'm pretty sure) as a Republican (at least I think so anyway).

We were sitting around our living room one evening when one of my housemate's friend comes in saying "dude, they're giving out free tri-tip sandwiches in that park by Embarcadero."  Being strapped for cash (probably because this site generates shit revenue, you know how to help out) I jumped out of my chair and headed for the door, which was a bad idea because I have a stress fracture in my back.  But free tri-tip!  When we got there, we discovered there was much more than free tri-tip.  There were tank tops that said "Tom Watson for Congress," bottle openers and ping-pong balls that bore the same insignia, and, holy shit, Tom Watson himself!  I recognized him from the TV ad where a supposedly rational yet nonthreatening woman rips on our current congressperson.  Tom Watson seems like someone who wouldn't mug me in a dark alley, and told me that he was a pole vaulter in college as he shook my hand which had cheeto dust on it.  Oops.  There was even music playing, including "Won't Get Fooled Again," which I never thought I would hear at anything to do with the Republican Party.  Times have changed.  But what as conspicuously absent was any sort of issues or even mention of politics at all.  We got free meat and some shirts that could be used as viral campaigning, and for a lot of people, that is enough.  "I'm going to vote for Tom Watson because he hooked me up, dude!"

This is a viable alternative to democracy.  Beware!

Now, I'm not so easily fooled, but I realize that I know nothing else about Tom Watson other than the fact he essentially bought me dinner.  Now, if he is elected because of this barbecue propaganda session and the decisions he makes while in office lead to economic collapse, that may be a very expensive dinner after all.  And what about his opponent, incumbent Lois Capps?  I don't know much about her either, although the vibe I get from her supporters reminds me of vegans and the smelly bra-burning friends that my mom has over sometimes.  I get the feeling that she would be serving tofu instead of tri-tip at her rallies.

But I know nothing about either of these candidates' policies, platforms, visions for America, Masonic connections, and so forth.  And the third guy is running as an independent, so I don't even know his name since he's effectively banished from politics by the two party system and therefore has no supporters.

This election cycle is a contest between the tide of moronic inferno that is the TEA Party movement and the impressionable idiots who are still feeling the "Yes We Can" hangover.  And while this could be a golden opportunity for candidates to change the way politics is conducted by educating voters on issues rather than empty talking points, it has become worse.  From watching the ads put out there by Jerry Brown and Meg Whitman, it makes it seem like these candidates are willing to go into my memories and kill my childhood pets with a rusty shovel.

Come November 2nd, I'll probably be voting for a tri-tip sandwich, because I know it can deliver.  And that's more than Tom Watson or Lois Capps can say for themselves.

Edit: For congressman, I ended up placing a write-in vote for "A Tri-Tip Sandwich" today.  And I hope you did too.

Pukistan

Note: I'm posting this one unfinished.  I think this is supposed to be the type of post that has been successful lately, the self-deprecating ones with some personal bullshit injected in.  I'm overdue for an update and I kind of have to puke again, for whatever reason.  I'm stuck in a box and can't get out.  Please send some of that magical janitor's sand and a carton of hugs.  Thank you.

"There was nothing special about the room, but they say even a prisoner in the Bastille would wax sentimental over leaving his cell after languishing in it many years."
-John L. Parker, Jr., Once a Runner, Page 142


"I'll lay awake for a while
I'll leave the light on a while
You couldn't last a lifetime..."
Coheed and Cambria, The Light and the Glass


It's been a year since Spaceship Earth died, or sort of died, I'm not quite sure what exactly happened to it but its mind lives on with the rest of it is not.  Whatever Spaceship Earth was I'm not sure.  I understood what it did but can make no assertions about how it did what it did and now it's dead.

This is not exactly normal.  No one is supposed to think their car was sentient and definitely isn't supposed to be mourning its passing a year after it became scrap metal.  Maybe this is normal for a dog or something, but not a car.  I do know that it was alive though, and I know that stranger things have happened (both before and after noon).


Sometimes when I'm lying awake I think "hey, it's not supposed to be this way."  I wasn't supposed to break my foot and get depressed and become totally uncool and I would be kicking ass in some major conference and getting free shoes by the truckload instead of underachieving athletically at a mid-major school but setting world-leading marks for lameness. (It's true.  This year, I ran world leading times for the 5000 meter go to bed at a reasonable hour, 3000 meter diet high in fiber and whole grains, and the 1500 meter sit in your room on a Friday night watching Season 1 of the X-Files.)

To everyone in my building this year: I'm sorry I was kind of an ass-hat.  I'm sorry I dropped the f-bomb on you guys so many times about the lounge not being clean, I'm sorry I messed with the cable, and I'm sorry I took Becca's cookie that one time.  I may have also taken somebody's yogurt, but since it was unlabeled I can't be sure where to direct my apology.  I wish I wasn't so cagey and antisocial.  You're not bad people.  I just don't get 4chan as much as you do I guess.

I used to be intelligent and semi-useful, but you can bet I did away with that pretty quick, when I decided to go to school for creative writing and have this stupid pipe dream of running really fast.  I could be building bridges or discovering forms of alternative energy, or at least figuring out how to make sure America doesn't become as useless as I'm going to become.  Come 2039, I'll be spending my 49th birthday in a Chinese-owned, American sweatshop, treating baby toys with asbestos in order to feed my family, which won't exist for one of two reasons.  This could either be because they have been shot for not supporting our Dear Leader, or because in the next few years I'll be too useless to maintain not smelling like week-old elephant carcass and my inability to interact with humans will exponentially increase.  This is entirely because I have chosen to pursue a completely useless career path.  Every kid in China is going to grow up to be a kick-ass engineer while we're all trying to find ourselves while writing whiny songs about our heart-wrenching breakups in our v-necks or soaking up beers in the back of a pickup truck to get ready to watch hour after hour after hour of cars decked out in corporate logos do infinity laps around a racetrack.  I probably should have been learning to program computers instead of reading (and re-reading, and re-re-reading) The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test.  I'm sorry America.

Also in 2039, I will attend my 30 year high school reunion and everybody will have jobs on asteroids or the moon or some kind of artificial satellite because they decided to do something with their lives.  There will be a fifteen foot bubble around me because I will be very smelly.  Lord knows how I will get there.  Maybe I'll just roll into a ball.  A lot of times I just roll into a ball.  Maybe I'm trying to hide from the world, maybe I'm trying to get somewhere without walking, I don't really know.

At least when Spaceship Earth was around I could actually write semi-goodly, and now all you get the crap up here or some things of similar consistency.  Right now, my writing lacks a certain quality that I like to call quality.  It's kind of like you stuck a Twilight novel in the blender, added a solution of equal parts clamato juice and whale bile, splattered said concoction all over the walls, then demolished said wall with a bulldozer and had homeless men defecate all over it for a good year, threw bird entrails over it, and had USA Today do a feature story on this pile of disgustingness.  That is how I would describe my writing.

What is an Ozone Shack? (A Letter to Earth)

"Bend the metal, my glory box has failed
We're rocking in our reclining chairs
Drive away that car that brought us all this harm
Those are the pieces of my story line


I'm all alone so far up here
And my oxygen's all gone"
-At the Drive-In, "Hourglass"


The universe is filled with all kinds of angry angry particles that can shred you to pieces (on a molecular level) if you're not careful.  It's a crazy scary world and we need a place to take refuge.  That's what an ozone shack is for.  And the Earth is our own shack of ozone in this crazy universe.


Spaceship Earth's windows were so tinted I doubt it was legal.  But I never got pulled over. (I would say that this was because I'm not a minority, but I realized: how could anyone tell?)  It may seem like the only benefit to having tinted windows in the front is that you can pick your nose in traffic and sell drugs out of the front seat of your car.  But really, it makes you feel like you have your own bubble of space, which is all anyone can really ask for.


Now all that's left is the shipboard AI, detached from its body and emanating confused thoughts on random frequencies to anyone who will make the effort to pick them up.  I feel that there should be a more dignified way to let whatever is left of Spaceship Earth keep existing, but it's doing what it was meant for, albeit its effectiveness is limited.  Right now it's sitting in someone's room, trying to create another Ozone Shack, a place where everything makes sense and where you're safe to exist as you are.


I had originally titled this project "The Continuing Story of Spaceship Earth," as a tribute to my dead sentient car, crazy as it sounds.  This still is that story, but I can't kid myself any longer.  Spaceship Earth has ceased to exist in whatever capacity it had when I discovered it.  It is less physically and more conceptually, but it can no longer function as a finite area of space where things made sense.  It do not doubt that its brain will keep working for me and for everyone else, but Spaceship Earth as I knew it doesn't really exist any more, and I can't kid myself about that anymore.


Going into the world requires that you step out of your comfort zone, that you step outside of the Ozone Shack.  I will be the first to tell you that I have no idea what I'm doing most of or all of the time, depending on how I feel on the day.  Before I do anything I have already failed, because I have seen myself failing, and I need to fix that.  It will not be a quick fix because I must work continuously at this, but I need to visualize myself doing things exactly right and being in control as I am in the moment.  I need to visualize the ideal version of myself and I can become that ideal version.


So let me say this, Spaceship Earth.  You helped me help myself get out of a very bad place, a silly place, an awkward place, a place where nothing made sense.  I'm still not exactly sure how you worked the way you did, but you were an awesome piece of semi-logical, metaphysical machinery.  Even though you started vibrating when you got over 65, even though your windshield wipers could never get the insect guts off your windshield, even though your right rear door couldn't be opened from inside, even though you couldn't pick up any good stations, even though your trunk wouldn't stay open unless somebody held it there and would frequently slam down on the back of my head when I was reaching around for something, even though you kind of always smelled like a combination of sweaty running shorts and moldy power bars, even though your headlights were weaker than old-timey whale oil lamps and your interior lights didn't even work, even though your glove box could never stay closed, even though your horn was barely audible three feet away, even though finding the little latch to open your hood was always a five minute affair, even though you were that lovely awkward green color, even though you crapped out on me in the middle of nowhere when I needed you most, you were the best damn car anyone could have ever had, because you were so much more than a car.  And I want to tell everyone about you.  And that's what this still is, this is still your continuing story.


So Spaceship Earth, if you can read me, know that we both still have work to do.  I don't know how many more miles I have in my legs or how many more people I can reach, how much sanity I have left in the tank, or even how many days I have on God's Spaceship Earth (which is not the same as Spaceship Earth, which I know is confusing).  I'll fail more than I succeed, I'll bottom out and get punched in the face by life, UV rays will slice me apart while carcinogens eat me from the inside out, and some days I may not even have the willpower to open my eyes.  While it may seem arrogant, in my rare moments of self-affirmation I think that the world needs people like me, and it needs machines like Spaceship Earth.

I - Cover Your Burns,

“We’ve been through

Some things together 

With trunks of memories

Still to come

We found things to do

in stormy weather

Long may you run"

-Neil Young, "Long May You Run"

God has definitely turned up the gravity levels. I feel it. I feel heavy all the time and all I want to do is crash on my acceleration couch and keep the blood from pooling in my feet or bursting the capillaries in my eyes. I need one of them OTC, Alter-G treadmills just to be normal. And that's the life I live now. Why it has to be this way is an entirely different story.

According to all results, both official and unofficial, as well as all spectators, I covered 3200 meters in nine minutes and twenty three seconds on May 30th, 2009. During these nine minutes and twenty three seconds (besides running fast) I did two things. The first was to make everything - coming back from an injury which the doctor said would likely preclude competitive running for the rest of my life, banging my head against the wall in training, banging my head against the wall in racing, making sacrifices so I could chase my stupid dream - all worth it; an affirmation that I was not laboring in vain. And the second thing I did, well, that's a little more complicated.

...but first let's back up a bit...

The best stories are the ones that feel like lies. When you tell them, you feel like you're getting away with lying, even though they are completely true. Sometimes, you don't even feel like they actually happened, like the universe itself is lying. I have one of those "the universe is lying" stories. Even I don't believe it happened.

That number, 9:23, it's got some significance to it. Before I even started running, that number was in my head. I was introduced to the sport by Mr. Colby Pines, my friend, neighbor, and frequent navigator aboard Spaceship Earth, who's brother Justin run 9:23 in high school. When I heard that number, my middle school brain could not fathom that it was possible. Later, I would hear from my coach freshman year the story of how during his senior season, when everything seemed to be falling apart for whatever reason, he made a comeback by doing everything right, including sleep, even making his goal time of 9:23 his bedtime. Whenever I could, that was the time I would try to at least by getting ready for bed by, just because I had heard that number, and it had worked. At the beginning of my senior season, when I opened with a sub-par 4:41.5 mile, my coach told me that if things went right, I would be running that same pace for two miles at the end of the season. (For all of you keeping score at home, a 9:23 is a 4:41.5 mile run twice). And in what could have been my last race ever, when I finally stopped caring about any numbers except place, I ran 9:23. As I was taking the train home from the meet, my dad looked up the results from the race where Justin ran 9:23. It was the same meet six years prior, and we were both in similar situations, wherein the way the race unfolded tactically put us out of position for qualifying for the state meet. My dad told me that I had beat his time by one tenth of a second. And even now, I feel like I'm telling a lie.

The night before that race, as I was trying to relax, I wrote this:

What I have done was meaningful, in some way, even if it didn't turn out the way I planned. It will end, and I will maybe have a good story to tell. I've got a state [cross country] medal, a team that I can call family, and some well scuplted calves.

And an adventure. I've had an adventure.

Now it seems stupid, but reading over this again, I realize that I genuinely thought that the next day, I would probably run my last race ever. It was this race that opened up the doors, that convinced me I could run collegiately and that I had so much farther to go, based on where I had been a year before, or even months before.

But now I wonder if I am doing the right thing.

Am I wasting my time trying to replicate something that maybe should have happened only once? I know that running 9:23 justified all the sacrifices I made to get there, but does it justify all the sacrifices I made and will make afterwards, in order to try and accomplish similar feats on a greater level of magnitude?

I don't know if I can get there, and I can't guarantee that anything I have done or will do post-9:23 will be justified. But I know that running is part addiction, part virus, and part stigma, and that you can never walk away from it, however hard you try. I used to think it was stupid but it's true: runs end, but being a runner never does. Add to that my personal caveat, where if I do something, I have to do it as best as I possibly can.

I have come to the conclusion that because of the structure and workings of the Universe, nothing is a waste of time; everything you do prepares you for the next thing you do.

The Dead and the Running

"I saw tail lights last night in a dream about my old life

Everybody leaves so why wouldn't you?"

-The Gaslight Anthem, "Great Expectations"

Runners are two people. They exist as the person and the runner. Something about running competitively causes this subtle duality to emerge. Call it an alter ego or whatever you want, but the simple fact that the farther down the road a runner goes, the runner becomes someone separate from their standard self. Nate the Runner has become a separate entity from Nate the Person. It's not more or less ideal, it's just different, a new person with different attitudes about things. The more I observe runners at my level and above, the more I have come to realize this.

And when a runner quits, that other self dies.

It's a sport where the attrition rate is high, and we are familiar with this kind of quasi-death.

Still, whenever I hear of someone who has hung up their spikes for good, without seeing things to their end, I always get the same feeling, albeit weaker, as I feel when I hear about someone who died before their time.

But they still are in the land of the living, possibly more so than those of us who claim to be hanging on. No matter how much you try to invest yourself in it, and no matter how you identify yourself, running is something you do, not something you are. Part of me doesn't know that, and part of me is still fighting to stay alive, even if attrition and a lack of heart cuts down all those around me. And I know that letting that part of me die would be the easy solution, and I have never been one to take that option.

And I know that those who do quit will drag that corpse forever.

Also, prayers are requested for victims of the Haitian earthquake. Thank you.

The Crew of Spaceship Earth

"I turn my back to the wind

To catch my breath

Before I start off again

Driven on without a moment to spend

To pass an evening with a drink and a friend"

-Rush, "Time Stands Still"

"I'm a lucky man, to count on both hands

the ones I love"

-Pearl Jam, "Just Breathe"

"I'll love whatever you become

And forget the reckless things we've done

I think our lives have just begun"

-Muse, "Falling Away with You"

(Yes, I realize that this is an excessive amount of song lyrics. I couldn't decide which one to quote, so I quoted all of them.)

To all of my friends, the people whom I love, the people who have helped me over the years, who care about me, and whom I care about, you are the crew of Spaceship Earth.

Everyone is having fun and I can't join them. I would love for my circadian rhythms to be offset in a way that made everything so damn convenient, but I have a mission, unfortunately. I get to see these people for about two weeks, three at the most, and I can't even capitalize on it because of some stupid dream.

I rang in the new year with some of my friends from back home at a friend's cabin. I was up there for about thirty-six hours. Almost everyone else is still up there, crackin open a box of fun. We were joking that fun is actually an anagram for "Fuck You Nate!" That was thirty-six hours out of the total number of hours that the universe has alloted me to spend with them, and I wonder how few of those hours actually remain. I will always be a degree removed from the people I love by, space, time, sleep, dreams, hours in a day, degrees of perception, convictions, the speed of light, the loss of a spaceship, fears, insecurities, doubts, and my own damn fallibility. I'm back here in my room which is not my room, thinking about a dream which is not yet reality. Making hard decisions has never come easy to me, and again I have to decide it everything I am doing (or not doing) is worth it.

I am no Quentin, I am no Mizner, and I am certainly no Denton. As everyone else needs sleep to stay sane, I need my stupid dream in order to stay sane. I'm scared of being normal, human, I'm scared of going further down the rabbit hole, and I certainly can't afford to straddle the middle. Then I remember that I am human, and I will bring Spaceship Earth, and all her crew, all of you, along with me, because what was once a spaceship of metal is now a spaceship of the mind, and unlike metal, the mind is not bound by the laws of physics.

I will carry the crew of Spaceship Earth wherever my adventures take me, because you, my crew, are what has shaped me, accepted who I am, will be manning a Spaceship that transcends these limitations.

On the way up to my friend's cabin, while taking a side road to avoid traffic, I drove by the mechanic's shop where I last saw Spaceship Earth before it was just a brain in a jar. I'm still carless, so I was borrowing my mom's car. The engine temperature gauge seemed to smile at me and say "hey, well, I still work!" Yes, but I don't like you, you are not a spaceship, just a car, and a non-sentient one at that. Everything I love falls apart.

This last year was the year I stopped being a robot. I knew something had changed, but I couldn't tell exactly. It wasn't that I learned to not care about things, because I didn't. It wasn't that I learned to balance things, because I didn't. It wasn't that I learned to take risks, break the routine, live like an organic system rather than some fleshy clockwork device.

It only recently occurred to me that before this last year, I couldn't really emotionally invest myself in people. Yes, I cared about people, and yes, I was capable of normal relationships, but I was never willing to put myself out there. Now that I have, my life may be a lot more complicated and sometimes less enjoyable, but I'm living now. And this was all set into motion because inside a spaceship disguised as a car, everything resonated just right and molecules vibrated just right that everything started to make sense.

In my moments of despair I want to wake up. There is a specific date, (Wednesday, December 13, 2006) after which I sometimes hope everything has been a very lucid dream. The chances of this happening are slim to nil. But I still want to. It used to be for stupid reasons, so I could avoid breaking my foot or not be depressed or maybe cut my hair two years before I actually did. Now I want to wake up because I realize that if this is a dream, then I have learned a lesson. Since I learned to invest in people then I can be a person, and I really wish that I didn't have to be so damn late in rehumanizing.

But dream or not, this reality shows no sign of stopping at any point. In my reality, having a car-shaped spaceship's brain in a jar sitting on your bookshelf is not out of the realm of possibility. You eat microwavable chicken treats for breakfast, martinis for lunch, and garlic bread ice cream for dinner. We need to be prepared for zombies, robots, and mole people. It is entirely possible that Elvis is alive, Paul is dead, and Tupac is coming back. The future may not be the brightest it's ever been, but we will never get bored as we resist the robotocracy, evacuate coastal areas due to the rising, sludgy ocean, and maybe, some day, cruise around the galaxy in a real spaceship.

Until then, I will be chipping away at my task, a task that I have learned is in no way absurd. It's everything else that's absurd.

Fist-to-Face-itis

"I'd rather take the punch
Than not give you a shot
I'd rather find out who you are
Than who you're not"

-Ben Harper and the Innocent Criminals, "Fight Outta You"

Nothing puts life in perspective like getting punched in the face.

It was a Sexy Saturday night when I decided to partake in some good old fashion, freedom-loving, wholesome(-ish) streaking. At least thirty people ran a naked or half-naked mile down the main street in the St. Collegeberg party scene. I was wearing shoes, and for some reason, gloves, I think my logic being that if I was going to be losing body heat through my junk, I might as well conserve some by covering up my hands.

We assembled in a driveway and removed most of our clothing, except for underwear. We ran a few blocks, and then as we turned a corner, it all came off. I was holding my boxers in my hand, so I could have theoretically upgraded (or downgraded, depending on how you see it) to being only half-naked.

As we ran, I became more and more comfortable, and eventually I started weaving through groups of people, whipping people with my boxers, etc. When we got to the end of the street, some of us decided to run back, still naked, and I of course decided to come along, as I was beginning to realize that nakedness equals happiness.

On the way back, I became even more brazen, charging at groups of people and having them disperse before me. But then one guy didn't get out of my way, so I decided to move him manually. Bad idea.

He goes down and actually skids on the pavement. A few seconds later I see him in my peripheral vision, and he is running. In retrospect, it probably would have been a better idea to outrun him, because I know that I could have easily done it. But at the time, I felt safety in the group, and if I were to get in a fight with this guy, I wanted to have my friends around me. So I turned around and tried to juke him. The instant I turned around, I saw a fist, then a lot of stars, and then pavement.

I broke my fall with my arm and was up as quickly as possible. The last thing I wanted was to be lying naked in the gutter with a guy kicking the shit out of me. Before I'm even up, one of my fellow streakers throws my assailant against a car, gets a few hits on him, and he goes down. We kept running, we kept singing, I didn't really even feel a thing. (I would later learn that this was because my Infraorbital nerve had been rendered temporarily inactive from the blow.) We ran back to the house where our clothes were. A few blocks away, I turned to the guy next to me and said "you know, I think this is kind of what the first Olympics was like, back in the day, what with them competing naked and all."

I had a bloody nose that lasted fourteen hours. I had one hell of a shiner. I have a good story to tell. It was all worth it.

The Insomniac Symphony

"Time is the essence

Time is the season

Time ain't no reason

Got no time to slow

Time everlasting

Time to play besides

Time ain't on my side

Time I'll never know"

Blue Öyster Cult, "Burnin' for You"

Program Notes

Because of my rather disastrous burnout my season is now over. October isn't even over and I'm already taking time off before base building for track. My coach told me to do something that I had always wanted to do, but never could because of my training. I am taking this opportunity to venture into the wide world of insomnia, because it has always been something that I wanted to experience. Here are my observations, in all of their late night/early morning glory.

Allegro: Space-Time

Space time is not something that I fear anymore. If sleep is not important, then I have more time to do things. This gives me a theoretical eight extra hours. I look at the clock, I laugh at the clock. I am laughing at time, because time no longer scares me. And time is the only thing that makes us aware of space, and the distance between things. Therefore I am afraid of neither time nor space. I am not afraid of space-time. I'll fight black holes, wormholes, neutron stars, Higgs-Bosons, whatever the universe throws at me, I'll take 'em! I'll break the speed of light, I don't care if those PhD's say I can't do it. So what, they have their hadron colliders and their fancy lab in Switzerland, but they are still afraid of the very fabric of which they are made. I have transcended science. I am an insomniac, for the time being anyway.

Schertzo: Coffee

It has been several months since my last cup of coffee. My life goal is this: I can only consume coffee if I am in a social situation, and I will have the minimum possible amount of caffeine, short of ordering decaf. I refuse to use caffeine for any utilitarian function. At a certain point, everyone who drinks coffee needs coffee. You know why the best part of waking up is Folger's in your cup? Because you're a fucking addict! "I'm a coffee drinker." "I'm a vegetarian." "I'm addicted to methamphetamine and as a result am HIV positive." All part of the same spectrum. No caffeine for me.

With that in mind, I decided to have four cups of coffee in twenty minutes.

I think I was part of an experiment, but I can't be sure. All I know is that there was a video camera in the room, and I had to sign a release before I could enter. (Maybe they just know that my squiggles will be valuable some day.) I think that the experiment was observing people talking in a room to study human interaction. They lured people in with free coffee and various munchables. There was sugar, Splenda, and powdered milk solid available, but I know that stuff is for pussies. I take my coffee like I take my men! (Oh my, I am tired.)

There were two types of people in the room: those who were there for the conversation and those that were there for the coffee. I was there for the conversation but ended up living by the old maxim: "when in Rome, attend a morally depraved spectacle of gratuitous violence, slaughter and assimilate indigenous people, and eat so much that you vomit all over the the entryway to your home in a proto-bulimic binge-and-purge cycle." So I had some coffee.

I sat there, gulping down bitter liquid. This girl comes in, and once she sees the coffee start to flow into her mug, she sighs and says "ambrosia," her voice quivering as she does so. We really are a society of addicts.

So twenty minutes and four cups of coffee later I start to notice something: my hands are moving. I am not really aware of this, nor am I consciously making it happen, but I am gesturing at something. I am apparently very passionate about whatever this object of my gesturing is. And I am talking, a lot, and there is just this fountain of bullshit coming out of my mouth. I am moving energy with my hands, I can almost see it! I am buzzing. Off of coffee! This does not make sense but it is happening. I get another cup. I am holding it in my hand. I am holding power in my hand. The energy seeps out of the cup and into my hand, energy through osmosis, my power level is over 9000! Power, there is power in my stride and power in my gaze, or there would be, if only I could look at something for more than a few seconds.

This is how they hook you. This is how and Starbucks and all those other trendy froth coming out their asses places rope you in. You can buy power in a cup. You don't need to sleep because now you can just get your energy over the counter. You get something without working for it, you take a shortcut to your basic human needs. And like anything else that you don't work for, it becomes meaningless, because eventually, it goes away and you're crawling back for more and pouring out your wallet so you can function again. We want the benefits without the sacrifice and we get both.

"Ambrosia." I'm fine with my food for mortals, thankyouverymuch.

Adagio: Panda Sauce

Orange chicken sauce, now that is ambrosia. It is made from everything bad for you: high fructose corn syrup, hydrogenated oils, MSG, and enough dye to render a whale infertile. Nothing tastes better in the wee small hours of the morning (while the whole wide world is fast asleep / you lie awake, and think about the girl / and never ever think of counting sheep) than refrigerated then nuked orange chicken. I don't care if it clogs my arteries, ruptures my pancreas, and turns my balls into barren bundles of oh-so-sensitive nerves, I will allow myself this one transcendental moment of pure indulgence. Because in two weeks, two weeks time, this haphazard existence will end and it will be back to my labors.

Finale: Structure vs. Volume

I live life differently than most people my age. My life is based on a routine. Yes, I may deviate from that routine, but the routine is the structure and the maintenance of that structure, and the benefits of that maintenance, are what motivate me to get things done.

For most other people my age, life is based on events. They get things done so that they can cram as many events into a frame of time as possible.

They measure success by entertainment. I measure success by the process of completing a task. One of these days, things will switch.

They will go into the wide world of jobs and careers and families and garages and bills to pay. If things go as planned, I will live life for experiences and the chance to grow with every misadventure, failure, and rake stepped on. They think that this is their last chance at youth. But that is only if they choose to grow up. (At this point anyway), I don't really care about financial stability and hallmarks of success. I just want to tell stories.

"I remember being that way when I was your age."

"Well I'm on a mission. Were you on a mission? That's what I thought."

IV-V7-I-V7-I

(pause, cough, is it over?)

ba-dommmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

(Applause)

Burnout

"It's better to burn out

Than to fade away"

-Neil Young, "My My, Hey Hey"

Something is wrong. When I say that, I mean that there is something wrong presently and superficially. I have DNFed my last three workouts with the team, and the last ten minutes of my "long" run last Sunday, ten miles of stumbling, felt as though I was swimming. Everything from biking to calss to getting up to take a leak in the middle of the night feels like a daunting effort. I'm trying to think of an explanation. It is not anemia, I know that. My ferritin count is 61, a number which Bethany says she would give her pinkie finger to have. It can't be mono, because I've already got that out of the way. My sleep has been good. I took three days very easy and that didn't help. I may be going flat, burning out. June 20th was the last time I took a day off. I am fatigued beyond belief. I just want to lie down right here. I want to hibernate.

I may have been starting to go flat the week before the time trial, but three days easy and adrenaline allowed me to gut it out. That may have given me a little shot in the arm that lasted to Interior Concretestan Invite. Kinetic Village probably took a lot out of me, too. Right now my quads are ravaged and I feel as though I am going to collapse just sitting here, watching my laundry dance in the dryer.

Maybe my problems run deeper. The superficial wrongness is simply a symptom of deeper wrongness. I may just have a case of bitch. I am still just a 9:50 guy or a ten flat guy even, who got lucky and now gets an opportunity to try another four or five years of pretending he has potential.

I didn't think I would still be running at this point. I was sure I would be done by the time trial. That was back in April when I was still a nine-fifty-crap two miler and a four-thirty-crap miler. That day at Edward's Stadium I ran through a solid iron door just as it was slamming shut. I considered myself so lucky, I had done the impossible. Now I realize that I had only begun to challenge the impossible. I realize that I may have ended up on the wrong side of that door.

That door is made of something heavy and metallic, but wherever I am is certainly not metal. I am not sure of the size or the scope of this chamber, or if it is any kind of enclosed space at all. It is a place where everything is moving quickly yet subtly and being still for a moment will get you crushed, smashed, mangled, maimed, exsanguinated, defenestrated, or just have the life force sucked out of you by some vaguely human but obviously alien proboscis. This is the place where we live now. There is no sky or floor, only a forest with strange machines filling up any empty or habitable spaces. Welcome to living the dream, asshole!

So since I am here now, what do I do? I am in a place where I have an opportunity. I may not be on the pleasant side of those hungry iron doors, but I am on the side where I can better myself. Most people are on the pleasant side where they can afford to make mistakes and afford to live a life with little routine, live a life without standing on the edge of physical reality and leaning forward. They can find little meaningless gems of meaning in the wee small hours of the morning. I know these people and love these people, but I cannot be one of them, at least while there is still work to do, while there is still an opportunity to better myself as best I can.

A week ago I had a dream. My dad was driving me to the time trial, and we were arguing about the same bullshit we always argue about. At some point, I challenged his masculinity. He pulls over and says "oh yeah, well look what I just bought!" as he reaches for the glove compartment.

He pulls out a Glock.

"How does just having a gun make you a man?" I ask. "Or are you trying to compensate for something?"

"It's not the fact that I have a gun," he says. "It's what I'm about to do with it." He puts it right up to the back of my head.

"You're too much of a bitch to pull the trigger," I say. "You're trying to prove yourself but you can't.  You're too much of a bitch."

Then he points the gun at my knee and fires ten rounds right above my patella. "Good luck with your running career now, asshole!"

But in the real world, I am still intact.

Kinetic Village/Revelation Lake

"But I don't need to bother you, no, I won't play that part

I just want access to the inside of you heart Access to your thoughts on the way that I should be So I could start to change and maybe you could access me"

-Phish, "Access Me"

I realize that this post is a little late in coming. You get what you pay for. If you want me to post when I say I will, cut me a check and I can guarantee any number of subsequent posts (based on how much you pay me) will be up with all due expediency. But until one of you steps up, you will have to deal with this after-the-fact bullshit. Enjoy

Sometimes you have to cut your way through every layer of bullshit to stab at what you are looking for. This was relatively easy in Spaceship Earth. The dimensions were right, the shape was right, the thoughts just bounced around and the AI would get inside your head, break down the barriers and the inhibitions and, as they say, you could talk some real shit. You can call it a heart to heart or opening up or a sencere discourse or even a mutual expounding of truths of the mind and soul between two or more consenting parties. But it all reduces to "talking some real shit."

You could do that inside Spaceship Earth. It worked to a degree even after the ship itself died and only its brain in a jar was present. But the brain is still alive and sitting in someone's room. He is someone who needs it. New Gibraltar needs Spaceship Earth. But dammit, so does St. Collegeberg. Everywhere needs a brain of Spaceship Earth, but there is only one brain of Spaceship Earth and it is sitting in someone's room in the town of New Gibraltar, which is located in Greater Balboastan. (If you do not know what these places names actually are, try to figure it out. If you do I will give you five ozonebucks, which are good for, well, absolutely nothing.) I am currently away from the brain of Spaceship Earth, in a town called St. Collegeberg, which is located in the northern regions of concretestan. The area is known as Ferdinand's Folley. Ferdinand's Folley is about a five and a half hour drive from New Gibraltar. Can you figure out what these places are actually called?

Anyway, that is not my point. The point is, the world needs people to be sencere both with each other and with themselves. You could do that in Spaceship Earth.

And now that we have no intact Spaceship Earth, how do I do this?

Well it just so happened that I went on a vision quest.

The vision quest was a rite of passage used by the Sioux Indians. Men would sit in a hole for three days with no food or water and would have dehydration and hunger-enduced visions. I did a vision quest-lite. Less fulfilling, but better for you. I went out in the woods for a few hours. The whole team did this during our stay at Kinetic Village.

The place I am referring to as Kinetic Village is a town whose population is less than its elevation in feet above sea level. It is a beautiful place with lots of trees, endless trails, spectacular mountains, and very little oxygen.

Even though I went up there to train with my team in the weeks before class starts, I won't talk much about the running. Most people will not be interested in hearing about my running, and this is not a Flotrack blog, where I could talk about my running and the life lessons I learn from it and how it's so damn important and trancendental with some sort of metaphysical construct placed precariously on top, or if it is Ryan Hall's blog, an awkward paragraph about how his tempo run related to Hebrews 11. Running is not something that is complex and philosophical. It is the opposite. It is life stripped of everything complex and philosophical.

I will talk about the radio stations in Kinetic Village. Kinetic Village and its greater surrounding area are very sparesly populated. Therefore, these radio stations really dont' have very many listeners, and therefore generate very little advertising revenue. These radio stations therefore get to play whatever the hell they want. I don't mean that they can play the slightly less popular Nickelback songs or the uncensored versions of songs that are labeled as explicit. I mean that they play whatever the hell they want. A set could go from a country western ballad to a smooth jazz porn groove to early Jefferson Airplane to a Texas blues. And this was common. One station had the classical hour every morning at eight, followed at nine by the speed metal hour. One show was operated at the hands of an old man who played mostly Old-Timey music and sounded like he was having a stroke when he was talking. He also seemed to have seen most of the artists he played live and in their heyday.

In mainstream America circa 2009, you don't play a song because you like it, or even because you think it should be played. You play it because it's what people want to hear it. People want to hear it because other people want to hear it. This may be a bold statement, but I doubt that more than 10% of the people who consciously listen to the song "Birthday Sex" actually enjoy listening to it. It's popular and it has novelty. And what about when people want to sing along? You put on "Don't Stop Believin'," because we all know the words and it's catchy and singable. I'm sure that a lot of people, in the rare moments when they are honest with themselves, don't really like "Don't Stop Believin'." They like it because it is a cultural common ground, something that everyone can agree upon. But when you go up to Kinetic Village, where the air and population are spread thinner, you get DJ's who really don't need to rely on what people want. It's a beautiful thing, if you don't mind having your relaxed mood, created by listening to the Bach Cantatas, suddenly interrupted by "Enter Sandman."

My vision quest involved a lot of climbing rocks, for some reason. It was something I wanted to do. I saw a cleft on a rock face, and wanted to get there. By the time I got there, I had decided that it wasn't cool enough, and wanted to go to a cleft that was higher up, and would therefore require more climbing. I had a notebook with me to write down my thoughts. I kept climbing up these rocks until it got really steep and I had to carry my notebook in my teeth so as to have two free hands. I ended up yelling at myself a lot, and singing Phish's "Access Me" for some reason. I realized that Phish could have been recognized as a really good band, and not just a really good jam band, had they taken their studio efforts more seriously. As I knocked loose rocks hundreds of feet down, I was reminded of the Chinese proverb about moving a mountain by moving small stones, and how I could theoretically move this 9,000 foot peak if I just had enough time on my hands. I saw the entire valley as this sphere and I was swirling around in it. I climbed up to a cleft and looked out at the mountains in the distance and knew that on the other side there was nothing but desert and casinos and concealed UFO crashes. I knew that behind me lay a subcontinent that I call my home, but that I will never truly understand. I didn't see the ghost of FDR, I didn't speak in tongues, I didn't see the face of the Virgin Mary on a tortilla. I just knew that being afraid was pointless, even though the slightest clumsy motion could send me falling hundreds of feet, and that I would die wearing those stupid sweatpants with snaps on the side so that you can rip them off. I yelled at myself because of all the things about myself that I hate, and how I am inheriting all of my family's problems and shortcomings.

I could resurrect Spaceship Earth, the whole thing, enough mind power and willpower and it could be whole and functioning and one foggy day we could get in and then go, some place. Even if you go in circles in Spaceship Earth, you are going somewhere. You figure things out. We can talk about what happened on the day when the windshield of the world was smashed and a whole new reality rushed in. You don't know what I'm talking about and it's better that way. I just want to figure it out. But I can't. Everyone has a demon, some event that haunts them. And my problem is that my demon is someone else's demon.

Some runs will make you faster. Some will challenge you. Some will make your quads stronger. Some will reveal secrets. Some will show you things about others. Some will tell you what you lack. Some elevate your mood or crush your spirits. But there is one run that reveals who you are.

There is a lake near New Gibraltar. The trail around it is a fourteen mile loop which gains a net total of at least 1,000 feet of elevation, possibly closer to 1,500 feet. I ran this loop four consecutive Sundays this summer, and I saw who I am. I do not like who I am.

But in Kinetic Village, I saw what I can become. And I like what I can become.

Then one day I'll come back to New Gibraltar and chase the demons out of all of you.

Preparing to Elevate

"And we all got to ride this river

And we all got to feel the rain

And we all dig what we're given,

Even the pain"

-The Yellowjackets, "Even the Pain"

It's time to go to altitude. I guess everything I'm doing is not hard enough, it needs to be done with less oxygen now. I will be going to "Kinetic Village" with the team for a week. We will live and run at 8,000 feet, and we will be thinking much more about the latter and very little about the former. And this will drive me crazy. I am already losing it. I need to talk to some people that are not runners, I need to talk about something other than covering ground quickly on foot and how to do it better. I will not find that in Kinetic Village. We will probably have daily quoting of scripture from Once a Runner and will most likely also discuss many factual runners. If I could go back a year in time and tell early September, 2008 me what I was going to be doing, he would be extatic. Now that my perspective has changed... wait, scratch that. Now that I have perspective, I realize that the best way to get good at something isn't to think about it all the time. Sure, you pour your heart and soul and blood and nuts into it, you can even live the lifestyle and center your life around it, but if you can't focus on anything else, you will not accomplish anything.

I want to sit down with the people I know, I just want to have those conversations we always would have, where we talked about everything and nothing at the same time, where stories were swapped and hypotheticals were discussed and allegations of dude-kissing were made. Even on runs, I want to talk about something other than what we're doing. I miss my old team, with Brondello's childish spirit and wit, Robert's racist ramblings, Baffi's comments that were nutted by the line that separated the lewd from the philosophical, Ross's attitude of a 400 meter runner, Colby's contrapuntal opinions, Bongman's occasional gems, and Budge's depraved sexual fantasies. I never thought I would miss that but I do.

I need real people. I'm sure that everyone on this team is a real person, but the problem is that there is only one thing that unites us: we are runners. In high school, your whole team grew up together, you lived in the same town and you had to bullshit for the same teachers. Now we're just a bunch of kids from all over the state who have one talent and interest in common.

And the workouts, they all make me so tired. So much damn running, drills, abs, even stretching takes a couple lifetimes. I'm eating healthy, which means nothing that you enjoy eating. My calves are shredded, my quads are twitching, my hamstrings are tightening, my hip flexors are quivering, and my butt is, well, let's just say I feel like I've been dropping some proverbial soap quite often.

So what do I do in times of adversity? Do I take advice from my pianist Joe Zawinul and cry out "Mercy, Mercy Mercy!" No, I grin and bear it, because I know that I can put up with bullshit for longer than the universe can throw it at me. Have you kicked aversity in the balls today? Because I have, and I shall continue to do it on the daily.

Major bonus points if you got the "Mercy, Mercy, Mercy" reference.