Wednesday, September 29, 2010

Homeless Encounters.

Got on the bus today and was looking well. Headphones on. Backpack full of books on Inquisitional Spain guarding the seat next to me. Ready for the future but still biting my lip. A woman gets on. Old faded Levis cut to shorts that covered just over her butt and frayed like mad. Skinny like an abused puppy. Wild eyes that showed through her dirty, blonde tangled mass of hair that let down in strings all over her face. Black tank top with a Playboy emblem of the pink naked sprawling woman right in the middle. No bra. Tattoo of two hearts with names in each linked together by a chain on her right arm below the shoulder. Typically bad teeth. Track marks.
       So I took my head phones off. I stopped reading my book. I sat and observed her for a bit, kind of like when you are a kid and watch the double dutch jump ropes swinging and crossing in front of you as you try and time the perfect moment to jump in. It was now.
       "Hi." I said plainly.  "Hey what it is brother?" she answered, nodding her head and pulling out her headphones.
       " Where you headed?"
       " Well all different places. I gotta go to f**kin Wal-Mart and then my f**kin boyfriend is being an idiot so I gotta go see him." she said. She looked about thirty five. Maybe? Who knows. She had scratches all over her legs but she was clean shaven. This was very interesting to me.
       " Ah. Boyfriends. Where do you live?"
       " Well mostly with my boyfriend but I dont really live anywhere really. Out. Around. You know." she explained to me quickly without any reserve.
       " Hey Im homeless too. Well I have this van. I live all over."
       " No F**KING WAY DOOD!" she yelled. People on the bus began to scoot and shift uncomfortably.
       " Yeah! For real. I live all over. Slept up on a billboard. Under an overpass. Hang out at the library and schools and stuff. I dont mind it at all." I explained to her that I had a job and went to school and church and that I was homeless just for a bunch of reasons and she got a real kick out of it all. She told me she was Mormon once and "......was like 'F**k that sh*t'...." She had been doing drugs for quite sometime you could tell, anyone could, but she, for better or worse, seemed high functioning. She texted someone. I asked her if she had a job and she said no. I asked if her boyfriend payed for that phone. She said no, and that "Uncle Sam pays for this sh*t". She said she's been on welfare and needs it to get off that stuff. I agree by nodding. Its a nice phone. I ask her if she is hungry, if she needs any food or anything? She makes a joke about me asking her out and says she is fine. Her phone rings. She answers.
      " Im sittin here listening to f**kin' Let The Bodies Hit The Floor and you call and Im like 'You are so f**kin' Disturbed! I love Disturbed man!"
        She yells over the sound of the bus and the traffic and the whispering conversations in the front seats and some heads turn, some toward her and some away. I put my headphones back on because I may as well have disappeared to her. She continues speaking to the person. Then minutes into it she pulls the cord that dings the bell that lets the driver know that a stop has been requested. The bus slows and stops. She hits me on the arm and I take my phones off and smile.
      "Later brother! Good luck out there!" she yells
      " Hey you too. Oh by the way, its Drowning Pool." I say.
      "Whats that?" she asks as she steps off the bus.
      "Its Drowning Pool not Disturbed!" I yell back as the doors close. She has no idea what Im talking about. I look around. Everyone has opted to put their heads down except for the guy across from me with the shirt that has the big black lettered word "Fukinnehh!" in front of the Canadian flag on it. He smiles and I pick my book up again and continue reading.

"Let the bodies hit the floor. Let the bodies hit the floor. Let the bodies hit the floor."
    
  

Tuesday, September 28, 2010

Let the free seed of love gush forth!

Spence: Hey brother
Kurt: Hey brother (said like Buster or Arrested Developement)
S: Hows it goin?
K: Good. Just too hot in my van this morning, so I thought I'd drop by.
S: Sweet.
K: Also I have some money for you and......... can I take a shower?
S: Ok yeah sure.
K: Thanks.   ...........uhm........
S: Whats up?
K: I think I may have pooped my pant last night. Also. By the way.
S: What!? How? Wait how do you only think?
K: Im just saying! I havent checked but it definately feels as though I may have had a tiny little poop in my sleep last night! I dont know!
S: Ok! Wow. HOw do you........ Ugh.

Kurt then goes to the bathroom with his shower gear and Spence gets ready to leave for school. Before Spence walks out the door he says...

S: Ok bro Im leaving have a good one!
K: Ok! ........... Oh hey Spence?
S: Yeah?
K: I did. I did poop my pants last night.

Spence walks out and closes the front door behind him.

K: Thank you Spence!

Saturday, September 25, 2010

A conversation I had at 3 a.m. last night....

“I had my heart set on opening up that boiler room though” he said disappointed. He pointed over to the double doors and shirked a little.
“Well this is just as good.” argued Kurt. “I mean, yeah, I want to do it too but you gotta admit that making crystal meth here is so much harder than making pralines.”
The boiler room gurgled and protested deeply from behind its grey metal doors. Then Ryan, after thinking deeply for a moment said “ Yeah, I guess I had my heart set on the meth. But we could do pralines.”
“How do you make candied nuts?”
“No idea.”
“The boiler room is locked. Im going to go get a Dr. Pepper.”

Thursday, September 23, 2010

A STORY I WROTE

DANIEL

Daniel lived out on the end of the neighborhood by the old entrance sign that read in cursive Covered Bridge, carved into thick chipping slabs of grey stubborn ply wood that were posted on either side of the road deep into the ground, below the soft top soil and into the Georgia red clay. Daniel made you ache, deeply in your stomach below your diaphragm, when you ever saw him. No one ever saw another member of Daniel’s family. Just Daniel, out in the garage working on his salvaged junker that he one day hauled up the bleached driveway and into the garage with a silver pickup that no one had ever seen before, or he would be working on his ’85 Honda Rebel propped on it‘s center kickstand. Walk along the sidewalk by the driveway and without any doubt you would see him under his precious metal, laying there with his legs bent up, knees swaying in the air, tweeking and wrenching at the bolts and the hardware. The intensity with which he worked put beads of sweat up above his brow that would periodically need to be wiped away as they irritated his lashes that would flap and flutter and the little droplets would roll off the sides of his forehead and get soaked up in his sideburns or pool up around his ear as he lay. He was always working so hard. He kept a look on his face from it. It was a look like looking far off at something. If you didn’t know any better you would think he were angry all the time. He had eyes like black diamonds. You only ever saw them far off because you never came close to Daniel but you could see them stuck back in their holes and they would flash in the light of the streetlamp if you caught them at the right time, staring back at you from under the thinned out shadows casting out from the spot where he lay under the car.
Most of the boys on the block were coming up through school all in the same grade but Daniel was different. He was a year above them and only a handful of kids in the neighborhood could say that they were in the same grade as him. When all the kids were getting on Mr. Peaveys bus in eighth grade Daniel sat out on the curb by his mailbox and waited for the high school bus which followed sometime after and was driven by somebody but no one knew who. You would look out the open sliding windows from the back seat and follow him, as he was looking down, with your eyes as the bus rattled and bounced and pulled away around the corner, never losing sight of him until he was swallowed up by the weeping willow that grew right up close to the street on the Garcia’s front lawn. It was the mystery, the consistent silence he kept that kept you thinking about him all the way to the school. Your thoughts could run away with any number of ideas about Daniel that would keep you working on it for a good while. Through all the years and all the kids that lived on Iroquois while Daniel was there you couldn’t find a soul who could say anything more about him than that he worked hard at the things he loved from what you could tell by walking by his garage.
A long time off, years and years later Daniel moved to California and took his rebuilt Camaro and his Honda Rebel with him too. He found a job working security at nights for one of the docks and he found a woman who he loved. After work one day he went home and hit her on the right side of her face, landing just over the temple, with a brick from their unfinished patio out back. He put pieces of her into different black heavy duty garbage bags and took them to the wooded path by the 605 Southbound freeway at El Dorado park in Long Beach and buried them there real shallow, maybe two or three feet under and maybe twenty yards off the bike path. The bags didn’t get dug out by the dogs until the following Friday and no one saw the pieces laying on the path until Saturday morning. That was the last thing anyone from the neighborhood ever knew of hard working Daniel.

I Love My Van!

I have my routine finally all figured out. I am a professional.

I want to be a producer, not a consumer. Im sick of consuming, literally Im worn out at just the thought of consuming one more thing. I hate being less than independent. Buy this, eat that, I can do this for you. You scratch my back I scratch yours. Eff it.

I dont want to owe anybody anything. Its the most difficult thing I can thing of to owe nothing. I owe my God, and my church and my parents. I owe my spouse even though Im not married. I owe my children. Other than that, Im out. Whats going on has nothing to do with me. There is something to be said of a man who, like Simon and Garfunkle, declare themselves rocks and islands! Is it right to want to be an island? What if my island builds bridges to the mainland every once in a while? That'll work.

"I want to make enough money so that I can get out of this place. I cant keep doing this on my own with these people." 

 Just another brilliant quote from the film There Will Be Blood, only the GREATEST MOVIE EVER MADE.

Wednesday, September 22, 2010

Summer is Over

I showered at the gym today. Worked out pretty hard. Fixed my bike because the back tire was wobbly and getting flat. I downloaded Cee Lo's "Eff You" song as my ringtone. I hung out with a girl I like last night. You know, I dont think you realize how nerve wrecking it is going into a non homeless situation when youre homeless. Its terrifying. If I could put a theme feeling to this whole experience, all three or four months so far, it would be PARANOIA! Im always looking over my shoulder, waking up in the middle of the night to noises in the park, in the bushes, on the street. I constantly am over aware of my appearance and am checking myself constantly in public places. I look at people to see if they are looking at me when they see me with everything I own practically on my bike, headed somewhere. "What are they saying!? Are they talking about me? Making fun of me?" I hate it when people dont like me. It bothers me. I like EVERYBODY. Well mostly. Paranoiattack! Is she judging me? Is he talking about me behind my back? Are they just using me? Am I disgusting? Do I smell? Doesns it matter? Should I just go away? I fight off these questions constantly and its exhausting. Granted, they are a small fraction of the thoughts in my head. I think about way cooler stuff all day. Like about how when Im a Grandpa Im going to have the coolest effing stories to tell. About how one day, when I slide into a crisp cold set of \Egyptian cotton white sheets on a bed that is my own that swallows me in and keeps me perfectly all night Ill appreciate it so much more than I would have. I think about how there are people making hundreds of thousands of dollars every year and spend even hundreds of more thousands of dollars than they make and how, even with the nicest bed on the market, they must toss and writhe all night at the thought of it all. I feel sad for them. I sleep like a child. I wake up with a smile.

Tuesday, September 21, 2010

Once again the mall has become my Waterloo!

      So I found my old journal and have be relishing in its pages and remembering the things that made me write in it. I think Ill share one of those entries here. I like it. I dont even remember writing it but I like it.

August 6th 2009,

     I just walked about five miles from the Long Beach airport to Atlantic Ave. and the 405. Now Im in the ghetto, a real ghetto, like my ghettos south of Atlanta, waiting for Hayley to pick me up. I walked barefoot and have blisters now. I walked up through Signal Hill and past all the massive rusty oil machines churning and pumping up that black gold from the earth. I saw industrial ships and tankers in the harbor, docking and shipping out into the Pacific against the sun as it turned yellow to orange to red.
     Where I sit there is the hot thick smell of baked flour tortillas and beans. Girls are passing on their way home from somewhere, shopping bags draped from their fists clenched, nails done, heels on.
     The endless sound of traffic, a constant flow trudging by just by me and off in the distance forever. As I sit, back resting up against an abandoned car rental shop, a pathetic industrial driven breeze creeps around me, flares my nostrils and chills the skin that sticks to my shirt.
     My bags are heavy. Ill sit and wait until Hayley comes for me.

"Yeah but youre going to do what you want to do. No matter what I ask of you. And you say youve got the high hand, I have my doubts. I come from Chino where the asphalt sprouts." - TMG

                                                                               - Kurt Russell Anderson

Monday, September 20, 2010

One Single Man


There was a time in my life when I wanted nothing more than to be a man and to be a good man. I indoctrinated myself with the qualities that a real man would have and started collecting the experiences and attributes that would, as a whole, qualify me for the position of manhood. Some of those qualities, which I found on a list recently that I made when I was 17 are as follows:

- Smart. Book smart and street wise. A lover of knowledge and keeper of wisdom.

- A survivalist. A mans not worth his spit if he cant get himself into a situation and then get himself out.

- A minimalist. Use it up, wear it out, do with it, or do without.

- Generous. A million dollars for one person doesnt make a whole lot of sense. Give give give

- Funny. Men are funny.

- Interesting. Like that Dos X's commercial: The most interesting man in the world.

- A fighter. I dont like fighting but I think if you cant defend yourself and the ones you love your useless to them

Those are just a few.

        I became a man. I remember the day well. Whats interesting is not what I did to become a man (and no it wasnt sex) but the thoughts that came to me immediately after. I said to myself " You spend your whole life and every part of your day trying to become a man and then you finally do... just to realize...... youre just a man." Wow. What do I do now? Where do I go from here? Ive been trying to answer those questions ever since. And I think Im coming close to an answer. I thought it was to love, to be a lover. Not true. After all, the greatest lovers were murderers first. I though it was success. Not true. For Ive seen quite a few of successful children, though they may be well into old age. What is it!?
       I cant say for sure, but I had an idea today. The greatest men, in my opinion, who I know - Jesus Christ, Joseph Smith, George Washington, My father and my brothers, Brother Greenburg and Brother Johnston- all have a few things in common.

- You cannot say anything bad about their character. Try as you might, and many have, the dirt you dig up on any of these, though it be dirt, is fertile and good. You cant say a bad word about George Washington can you? Try. Seriously try.

- They dedicated their entire lives, everything, literally EVERYTHING, to someone and something other than themselves.


- They never did anything, after a certain age, anything at all for themselves. Everything was done in the service of someone else. They had a mission, all of these men and in no part of their mission was there room for a single selfish desire.


And so I think this is the key.


A man, or the man I wish I could be, is someone who lives for something other than himself. Thats what I want. Life just doesnt seem worth living if youre doing it for you. 

This shoul dbe intewretsing



So I thought it might be funny dt cd do what Im doing right now! Ha I just woke up after an entire weekend of not sleeeping. I havetn slept for mor ethan an hour or two at a time since thursday night and i just got about five horus of sleep. I once tried to blog when I woke up from a super slumber like this once and it turned out exactly like this one. I think its funny. what Ive done is not removed any of the typo's that i didnt notice unti lafter i have completed the subesequent next word. Alsooo..... i kinda want to talk about stuf like:

- why cant my computer have bullets instead of these lawzy stinking dashes all the tinme?
- how come human babies are the most ugly babies to humans, and like sloth babies are adorable?
- when i die im gonna cash in my meet one person ticket that they give you as soon as you die and im gonna try and find out what George WQahsington sisi up to!
- If i could have one wish it would be to be a trillionaire. because then i could buy happiness, and gold, and a new bike, and a Corolla
-I ran out of lists.

OK so I spent the entire weekend of work watching a show called The Wire and it detroyed my universe. I talk like a dirty cop now, or a gay BAD A gangster from the dirty streets of Baltimore who is on the trail of vengence because a rival gang killed his lover slash hold-up partner.
      If i invented a clear lid for candy boxes, and it caught on like wild fire, do you think that phrase life is like a box of chocolates would ever be the same again?
      I have to go learn about ancient Pre Incan civilizations now. Or the civil War? or the battle at Flanders? History is too much stuff.....

Loveyameanit!

Saturday, September 18, 2010

The Loophole Adventure....

Hawkward

OK so this is a conversation I had after I had another really good conversation. Also this conversation took place in my head.

" Im gonna eat my feelings. J Dawgs? No. Smells like Banana peppers. Call Amanda. Ugh I cant believe I dropped her phone down the Grand Canyon! "

" Creamery. Effing candied pralines! Order 6086, got it. Should I feel guilty for getting my ice cream before everyone else? Is that the girl I was in love with at the gym!? It IS her. She's married....whoops. Good thing I never hit on her. She is so beautiful! That guy is scooper duper lucky. I wonder if her voice is high or deep. Old married people dont laugh really. They just mumble. Those kids shouldnt be talking about a rated R movie. Gosh darn why are the skirts so short at BYU this year whats wrong with this place! Better buy more food storage."

"My eyes burn. It sucks that my van smells so much like gas all the time. It would suck worse if I didnt love the smell of gas so much. Why do people keep passing me, Im going the speed limit. Hey eveyone, Im proud of how slow I drive. I love you."

" Thirty minute parking? Its late, they wont tow they always tow why should I have to live in fear of towing in America. Ugh. Thats a long line. How am I going to get this girl to think Im awesome? Am I awesome? Ugh."

"Waiting. Always waiting. Sort of. There must be like 100 people in this line! 'I count the freckles on her face one two three hundred times a day!' oh there they are, what movie are we going to watch, nightwatch is going to be easy tonight. The Wire!"

" Watching people play the Wii is waaaaaayyyy funner than playing it. And cheaper too. 'And Im like EFFFF YOOUU OOOO OOOUU!' "

" Loopholes..... loopholes...... loopholes....... the shorts dont prevent me from doing what I need to DO!"

And that is a look into my head. I kinda like writing that maybe Ill do it more often.

Friday, September 17, 2010

Whats So Great About Depression Huh?!

         Below is a short story I wrote. I was thinking. Which isn't ever good. But I used to be obsessed with sad things and dark comedies and depression and being heavy laiden and burdened with some emotional trouble. Now that just is a part of life that I use and control and take care of. I like being happy. And besides the fact that reincarnation is for reals true, you only get one life. And so I say...... LIFE IS A GARDEN, DIG IT! Ha I made that up no I didnt its from Joe Dirt. Speaking of which......

       I have planted about thirty of my 120 bulbs of various flowers. I got them at this wondeful little place called Brambles on S State Street. The lady there is phenomenal at gardening as is proven by her immaculate garden out front of her shop which, by the way, she did by hand without chemicals all by herself! 
      My van is currently in the shop getting fixed what what! It gives me a measure of security to know that Ill have a running car come winter time. However I fear getting lazy. I have put off getting it fixed for this long because I love working my body to the dregs every day and working out my own salvation, if you will, in a physical and spiritual sense. I feel that if I have a car Ill start using it more and more and more. Ugh. I guess its not so bad. I just really dont want to get lazy come winter. Because then the lovely, wonderful, enticing depression will come walking down the street, skipping every house and then come knocking on my door. So lets keep those spirits up folks and those pedals turning, gears shifting! 


"Fight off Your Demons" - Jesse Lacey.  


                                                             - Later Gators

Army Crawl, A Short Story.

                                                          Army Crawl

He said he army crawled out of the womb. He said that when he came out he did it hands and head first; his elbows out, arms in alternating flapping sequence like a chicken or someone climbing a ladder. He demonstrates for me. It looks like he is stretching. When the nurse put him on the table all crying and reaching desperately for warmth and covered in scraps and afterbirth he said he flipped right over and started army crawling his way to the edge. That nurse just looked away for one single second he said and he was belly faced down and on the move. He almost crawled right up to and over it onto the floor, and he would have too if she hadn’t turned around and caught him just in the nick of time. I asked him where he was headed. He said he didn’t know. He didn’t know then and he didn’t know where he was going now either.
Casper Wyoming is the perfect place for an army crawler really. There is enough room to go anywhere and enough nothing around to make it pretty interesting to get to. Most people’s lives in Casper take after the landscape. Their days are like the road that runs up into town from Rawlings, 111 miles of barren flatlands, fenced off on either shoulder for seemingly no reason at all, with no rest stops or conveniences and two lanes scattered with wandering passers by on their way to someplace from somewhere. Coming into town you first hit the Walmart. That’s how you know you’re in town really, no matter what town your headed into. Just look for the Walmart. Everything else was just as typical. A Ford dealership. A Quiznos. Further down was a public school with its baseball field and adjacent student parking lot. After we picked him up we headed back the way we came and I guess its not surprising that looking out the window at the scenery we didn’t see anything new that we might have missed on the way in.
He was a liar. Everyone knows you cant crawl and you especially cant flip over when you’re a baby until you’ve been working at it for some months. There were other things too. He said he knew and loved one of the songs I was playing from my Ipod, Paul Simon’s Graceland, but when I looked in the rear view I could tell he was just mumbling and mouthing trying to predict and match what Paul was saying as he was saying it. He could usually only catch on to the last syllable of a word as he copy catted the melody. He ruined one of the best road trip songs ever for me. He would pause from his predictive sing alongs to ask random questions like “Do you know where the jail is at in Rawlings?” How was I supposed to know that?

If you’d be my bodyguard I can be your long lost pal. I can call you Betty. And Betty when you call me you can call me Al.

We pull off in Green River. The snow is less white here but more quickly falling. The roads are covered and its getting late. You never know when your going to see another Subway sign so I decide to stop for a five dollar foot long. He doesn’t want Subway. He wants McDonalds so we go. We go through the drive thru but as we circle around the building I glance inside and notice the inside is really nice and must have been newly redecorated. I have noticed all day that all the McDonalds in Wyoming have been remodeled. They are beautiful really. Why is that? After a few minutes of the typical sighs, the ahs and oohs that come with indecisively staring at a fast food drive thru menu he knows what he wants. I let him order because its less confusing that way but also because I, for some reason, think it will make him feel responsible and grown up to have the ability to order his own meal. He knows exactly what he wants.
“Yeah. Can I get a cheeseburger. With cheese. And a coffee.”


Thursday, September 16, 2010

Homelessness

        



          In my apartment I had a couch. My roommate and I went in on it together. It was brown and darker brown fabric and it wrapped around the room in an almost 'C' shape. It was comfortable and cheap. We bought it to replace these sticky, slippery, absurd leather couches that were there before. He had one side. I had the other. It was entirely comfortable.
         We had a TV. The TV had DVR. The TV was hooked up to the DVD/VHS player and we had A/V cables that ran to our PC's. We could watch the wireless internet and DVDs and television all over the place.
          Sitting on that couch you could look behind you and find the kitchen, complete with dishwasher. To your right the washer and dryer and a closet for my clothes. The left, a hanging picutre of Christ calming the seas. The bedroom had two beds and a bookshelf filled on his side with text books, financial advice novels and LDS church history reads. My side was neatly separated into topics. Religion. Philosophy. History. Americana. Pop Culture Commentary. Comedy. "Classics". And others. I had laundry hampers under the bed.
       The bathroom was small but we had a shower curtain displaying a map of the world and all its countries capitals that kept us busy memorizing and exploring. Yeah back then I had it all.

      Here I sit, tailgating in my van, wondering if any of the students walking by are alarmed at my presence. Wondering if someday someone will complain to someone else that I dont belong and Ill be removed from all that I have. I, day by day, feel myself slipping, perhaps being pushed, into the shadows. I am no longer welcome some places. I dont feel comfortable where I used to feel free. I notice that thoughI havent changed, people have moved me into a different category of society. I am recategorized for convenience and to preserve the beauty of the town. I am less than, not equal to. I may not be treated as such but it is the way I make myself feel. I dont belong where I used to thrive. I retreat around to avoid embarrassment, hiding the actions that I once never gave a thought to. I wander. I have a purpose but I cannot take the most direct path to it, I am limited to the side streets and back alley ways. So I weave through town in the most polite way I can, offending none, keeping to myself, and moving quickly.
       I have this van. I have a framed picture of Washington kneeling by his beloved horse, Nelson. I have tupperware filled with gadgets, wires, movies and books. The books are in one category now: Misc. I have a basket of clothes. I have blankets to sleep on. It was so difficult to coax myself to sleep the first night. My body drops to the bed like a dying man every night now and I stir almost never.
      I have my bicycle. I would cry if something happened to that thing. It facilitates my every move, my actions through a day. Without it I'd have been worked to tears by now. It turns my output into more than I can do on my own and for that, I cherish it.
      I have a garden. I have 110 tulips, daffodils, and chrysanthemums planting, stored up for the winter and anticipating spring already. I have three rows of corn coming in. I have land to do with what I might.
     I have friends. I have friends in my life that cannot be found or matched by another. I have loyal companions who I am loyal to. I have confidants, confederates. I have a gang. I am part of others lives. I live vicariously through them and they through me.
        Sometimes I think back on my house growing up, my apartment, the cars Ive owned. I think "my how it would be good to be back home" and then from in me comes a little chuckle. Silly me. Why would I want to give up all that I have now for that! I have so much more than ever and it all is exponentially better in quality!
        And sometimes I think to the future. And in it there is no van. There is no shadow and no ducking, hiding, crawling. For a family and a wife, and a house Ive built with my own hands with a wrap around porch; for the security of eternity Id light this van all ablaze and run it off the highest cliff. Id do anything.

                                                                                           - Kurt Russell Anderson

Listening to: The Mountain Goats, a song called Genesis 3:23
Reading: All Quiet On The Western Front

Wednesday, September 15, 2010

Rememeber This?

Ok Ok so remember all this stuff?

TAMAGOTCHI!

Remember how they pooped Hershey kisses and made you fail 8th grade to take care of them!

SKIP IT!



Theres a..... counter on this ball!!! Skip it, skip it!


CROCODILE MILE!


You run, you slide, you hit the bump and take a dive! Ok that may have been the theme to another slide.

POGS!



Oh snap! I had a stainless steel slammer once, with a grooved indent for your thumb


HANGIN' WITH MR. COOPER!



Thats SOOOOOO Raven.


HANG TIME!



This show got me a good talking to every Saturday around noon because I'd watch it instead of doing my chores. Can you blame me?

FRUITOPIA



Yeah what ever happened to that? Huh.

All Quiet on The Western Front!


This book moves me, it is moving mountains in me. I was saying earlier today that I definately believe in reincarnation now because the book is but a flashback to me, a glimpse at a life I used to own and a man I used to be. I was for sure an American (maybe British, but absolutely not French) officer out on the front lines at the battle of the Somme.
(The front lines at The Battle of The Somme)

        Here's the thing. I hate war. It doesnt make logical sense to me. I do not understand it. I have a hard time saying that "No I wouldnt run to Canada if I got drafted that would be cowardly!" because I dont all the way believe that it would, depending on the war. 
         This book is more than that though, more than war. Tears came out of my face once while reading it and Im only halfway through. The above picture is a fourth of what I would consider a piece of artwork. These men are French and they are hopping over their own wire into no man's land toward the Germans, bayonets fixed. They are charging on flat ground with civil war guns toward an army of machine guns, grenades, and artillery mortars! It insane! This picture is one of four surviving stills taken from a propaganda film to promote the war. I could not find the next three but here is what happens. The next still, half of those men are left and a little farther advanced into enemy territory. The next, there are about three of them left. The last, one man, falling. All this happens in a matter of seconds. All those men you see up there died in two or three seconds. Incredible. In the first hour of the first battle of WWI 60,000 British troops were killed. To contrast that just know that in the whole Vietnam war America lost 63,000 men. Astounding. Ok Im done ranting.
         



Tuesday, September 14, 2010

Rough Draft of Part One of Iroquois Trail:

                                                                          Mr. Peavey

Mr. Peavey was the nicest man that anyone on the street had ever met up to that time. He drove the school bus for all of the Duluth middle school routes that fell south of the city limits and Iroquois Trail was as south as you could go before you had to transfer over to the middle school in Norcross. So Mr. Peavey ran that route too. The kids on the block were proud that their bus driver lived on their street, no one else at school could say that. One of the years his oldest boy got to sixth grade and Mr. Peavey took great pleasure in pulling up to the stop right out in front of his own house and letting on his little boy. His smile was real and it felt good to see it form and whenever he whined and squealed the brakes to a stop in front of his own driveway he smiled especially big. His little boy was nervous and understandably embarrassed at first but when he knew that the rest of the neighborhood kids approved of the unique circumstance of which he was a part, he eased into it pretty good. Mr. Peavey would leave early, before the sun got up, before anyone got up, and would drive to the gravel lot where they kept the buses behind a rusted barbed wire fence that the kudzu and ivy would slowly crawl up and weave itself through and he’d trade out his car and then get set up in the bus. It was a flat nose. Not too many of the drivers had flat nose buses anymore, but Mr. Peavey did and he rather liked it because he didn’t have to stick the nose out into intersections or anything like that to see both ways. He warmed the engine up a bit and got everything situated  and put in its right place, his coffee and thermos, his morning paper and his little black bible with the red tipped pages, Then he headed right back to Iroquois to start his route.
            When Mr. Peavey wasn’t driving the bus he was a pastor at the First Mt. Carmel Baptist church over where Gravitt road met up with Old Norcross. No one knew this about him for the longest time after the Peaveys moved into the neighborhood. One by one, everyone slowly found out and though it may have been surprising to learn, it wasn’t in the least bit something you couldn’t see him doing and doing well. What is surprising is that no one on the street ever went to see him preach, and no one on the street ever was a member of his congregation. That part of his life always stayed a separate piece of him from the neighborhood. As a whole, Iroquois could have been considered an honest collection of God fearing peoples, but when did fear ever keep anyone from staying home from church on Sunday mornings? He left for the church on Sundays in the same thing he wore when he was driving, or working in the lawn, or reading out on the front deck. Blue jeans and a flannel shirt tucked in always, a pair of dirty worn white tennis shoes with streaks of blurred green from the damp grass after he would cut it, and his little black and red bible. 
The church was not exactly on the corner but tucked away behind some lawn and a few pines. It was built almost in a day on account of its materials, no different than a warehouse, steel framework -that red rusty steel- and a thin fiber glass shell for walls and an even thinner burgundy tin roof that lay horizontal, sloping down the width of the walls, adding the only bit of flare that the place could claim. He had a strong, faithful following that came over with him from his former appointment as the head of Sunday School at the First Baptist church downtown, the one across from the land that the Castleberry’s owned and later moved on to. They all gathered early one Saturday when the dew was still enough on the ground to soak your tennis shoes lightly and they raised that church like an Amish barn. Mr. Peavey took from his own savings to buy the refreshments for the dedicatory celebration that afternoon. There were center cut steaks, more than anyone could have eaten. There were scalloped potatoes covered in sauce and white cheese. Canned green beans, almost a whole pallet, opened and served up in cheap crinkled aluminum casserole pans. The corn on the cob though was brought over by Eligh’s family because their crop had yielded well up in Gainesville earlier that year and they brought it down that week and gave freely. Some of the members would say that the corn was donated because Eligh’s father was too stubborn and prideful to submit himself to the law of tithing, a principle that Mr. Peavey put a great deal of emphasis on during his preaching. Miss Dixie Butts spent the whole week baking and cooling and preparing several pies, pies bigger than any you could find at Kroger or Publix or anywhere, and she forced a boy in her neighborhood to working in her kitchen as her aid and then again putting him to work the morning of the festivities carefully carrying the stacks of delicate pastries to and from her big blue Buick to the picnic tables that the clergy broke out of storage. The plastic tables were long rectangles, able to seat seven on either side. They were covered in white sacramental cloths, used ones, faded and stained a shade of dull yellow in places but still beautifully laced around the edges. There were the pies and the steaks and the potatoes, the woven baskets of fresh fruits, some bought and some picked that morning from the orchard by the elementary school, the just ripe peaches that were plucked out of the church’s own peach tree and washed at the water coolers that sat on the table ledges, and there were the tables and the plastic silverware, Dixie napkins and red and blue plastic Solo cups with the white rims, and the pitchers of lemonade and water. Everyone ate passionately that afternoon and gave thanks for the progress of the gospel in Duluth. 
The insides of the church were insulated and dry wall was tacked over the insulation for acoustics and comfort and ease, and carpeted with the cheap stuff that you could  find up in Dalton in the dead season when the sales were getting real attractive, the kind of carpet that had a sort of confetti speckling to it. The only way anyone actually ever saw the inside though was when they went to vote, the church being the polling place designated to the area surrounding. When you walked in there you could just see Mr. Peavey up there on the stage in front of or behind the cheap little podium discoursing plainly about Daniel or Elijah. You could see how much he cared for his new church as he cared for his new flock -watching over it, fixing the leaks, repairing the damages caused by the weather of the years, keeping it clean and presentable. The truth was there never was a pastor quite as dedicated to his flock as Mr. Peavey tried to be. 

Dont you know that you were on my list?

Ok so there are things I want, things I want to do.

- I want to ride a horse. Ive done it before but I want to do it more.
- I want to get out of college. Well at least get on the other side of the classroom and teach
- I want to be in a hardcore band again and play live shows
- I want to not owe anybody anything ever again
- I want to go to Iceland
- I want to buy a motorcycle and go from Pacific to Atlantic
- I want to build my own house. With a wrap-around porch. And an unattached garage in the back with a guest             house over it. And a tree house.
- I want to have a collection of bicycles
- I want to run for a whole day
- I want to ride my bike to the Grand Canyon
- I want Lasik Eye surgery
- I want to name my firstborn son Washington Anderson
- I want twins
- I want to sail any ocean I please
- I want to publish a book and I want to make money for it
- I want to play professional soccer
- I want to fight at least three professional boxing matches
- I want to have THIS SONG playing whenever I walk into a boxing ring
- I want to hold onto the bumper of a car inconspicuously on my bike and hitch a ride
- I want to jump a train
- I want to raise an animal
- I want to buy a six shooter
- I want to defend a womans honor
- I want it all
To be continued..........

Ugh I cant believe Im doing this......

Thats what she said right! Hah! Ok. So as everyone knows (because I cant shut up about it) Id like to be a writer. Id like to write. Id like things to be written and read by me! Get it? Ok so Im working on a book slash story slash work of literature-ish. I like it. And Id like to put the intro on here so that you can see it. Now Im doing it because I hate the way I write on this blog, its not the way I write and so Id like ya'll to see how I really like to write. You probably wont like it. But its the opening page and so deal with it. Later.

                                                                          IROQUOIS TRAIL

          Iroquois Trail is a street like the rest of the streets in the rest of the neighborhoods that collect themselves up around the outside parts, the dirty dusty corners of Atlanta. Here the houses spread out comfortably, liberally along each side of the little road and they are filled mostly with Mexican and South American families, and their extended families too all living together. Their trucks with the shiny stainless steel wheels and chrome trim, the airbrushed decals and landscapes that resemble the rural parts of Mexico painted on the tailgates, parked out front one after the other, lined up and backed out into the street and cul-de-sac. There are the black families too and they don’t come out much. You can tell their houses from the Latins. The Latins always were working on their houses. The yards, the siding, the driveways. They could turn a pile into a palace in a week’s time, re-pour the driveway and bring it all the way around to the back of the house. They laid the white concrete, you can see them out there sometimes leveling it, knee pads on and on all fours swiping back and forth smoothing out the rough spots with their wood handled smoothing plates. They make those old houses on that street new again. They paint them all kinds of colors now -sea green, sky blue, salmon pink, Easter yellow- and they stick out too, bright and contrasting against the earthy worn brown of the other houses. The black families don’t mind it and never say anything about it. They stay in mostly and keep to themselves. You usually can catch them in the early, dark blue morning hours when the sun hasn’t broken the crisp cool wetness out of the air yet, their hunched over tired silhouettes hurrying off to work in their dull rusted junkers, clanking against the cold and spitting out of sight. The white folks seem to find something wrong with the Mexicans though. Most of the whites, the ones who started out there and grew up right along with the rest of everybody since the beginning, they moved out a long way back. There are only a tired, lonesome, sorry handful of the white families left. A couple bent up old houses, ripping at the seams and looking grey and contorted, with a stubborn few of the washed up old hold outs boarded up inside and staring out through their dusty cream white blinds and wrinkled plaid curtains and through the overgrown pines and willlows at the road they grew up on going all to shit. That is the way it is there now on our street. But this is not the story of how our little road is. This is the story of how it all used to be. This is about the way things used to be on Iroquois Trail.

Grand Canyon, Grand Mistake, Grand Vacation, and I found a grand....

So a few weeks ago I decided to visit my friend Brittani down in the hellhole, sweat pot, sauna, death country of Arizona and to catch a glimpse of the Grand Canyon for the first time ever! A few days before I leave my bestie Amanda decided she would like to come along and that made me so happy and the day came and we were off!
The roadtrip started at seven in the morning and with this song: The Pursuit of Hapiness by Kid Cudi

Now the rest of the trip is pretty awesome. However to hear about it you need to go to Amanda's blog because she did such an amazing job reporting on it I could never match it and so go here and scroll down til you get to the trip and read how crazy it was. Teaser: Someone or something falls into the Grand Canyon. Amanda eats a Navajo. I fight a snake and a scorpion at the same time, both of which have been mutated by radiation. And everybody dies..... and lives happily ever after.


SCHOOL......
....sucks, is the end of that sentence. I want out. But Im in. All history classes. Im getting it all mixed up, the dates and cultures and events. Im pretty sure that the Nazis did not settle America in 1492, bringing with them AIDS and sliced bread, and teaching Budhism to all the local chinese railroad wokers. But I just dont know anymore. I love though, that I have not met one single new person in any of my classes.
      I try to avoid meeting people in my classes because if you make friends with someone who is stupid or less motivated than you, they will notice the opportunity and then comes the dreaded "hey we should form a study group and then you can carry not only your own scholastic burdens but mine too, not to mention Ill have all of your information so if I cant get a hold of you...... dont worry..... Ill find you." And that hasnt happened yet this semester. I keep to myself.
     I am so happy to be back using public transportation full time again though. I love the bus! I get to read and put headphones on and listen to music that everyone thinks sucks or wont give the time of day and sight see all the way through Provo. Its great. There are some important things to remember when riding the bus though:
1. DO NOT MAKE EYE CONTACT- I dont know what it is but crazies ride the bus in every city all the time and they stare at you and if you make eye contact with them ..... BOOM.... thats their opportunity to swoop in and start telling you about the one time the worked at the D.I. and had an affair with the bi polar boss who might be a man but also might be a woman and how he hit her (or him) and then they moved in together and she's been riding the bus every since. How does that even correlate? No idea. So just keep your eyes down.
2. Always get on the bus last. If youre a man you know that it is incredibly rude and weak to sit on a bus and make an old woman stand up and reach with her liver spotted, arthritic, brittle, disgusting little bones up to the bar and try not to fall over and break a hip at every stop. So get on at the back of any line and your sure to be the one left standing if there are not enough seats and this saves you the awkward "ma'am.......MA'AM...............MA'AM!!!!!!!!!! Would you like to sit here? No? Please sit here? Come on. Sit. Lady just sit. Lady if you dont sit Im still standng up and then its just going to be an empty seat so SIT DOWN HERE BECAUE I SAID SO AND AM BEING (was being) NICE!"

So just a few helpful tips. Ok so whats next.......

oh yeah. check THIS out! Its the Lip Sync Kid ya'll look out!!!!

Next time Ill put up a butt ton of pictures of stuff.

Im Awesome

Ok so Im back! Ive taken an extended vay-kay from the blog scene, and my life to be honest, and now have returned better than ever! Where have I been? Ive been here...and there.... all over.

Updates:
-I found a home! Sort of. I live in the van still but I was offered a gravel lot behind a log cabin in the middle of Provo. So I park it back there and I cant tell you what a relief it is to feel less paranoid in my sleep than is usual. Sleeping on the side of the road is tough. Constantly thinking of all the bad people and all the bad things that could befall you and hesitating to get out of the van until no one is around so as not to startle the fragile young, if naive, BYU students. I try and keep a very low profile, minus all the news stories (hah!), and dont like to make people feel uncomfortable. So when I was offered this spot tucked away behind the old cabin I said yes and sighed a little bit. They let me run an extension cord out of the back of the house and in exchange for that and the parking spot I am to water the old garden (its a weed-grown slab of dirt and rushes) and to do some gardening and planting.

-I love gardening! Oh my. This choice to hit the road and get out of my apartment has brought so many wonderful things into my life but I think none more satisfying, fulfilling, none more satiating than being able to make claim to my own little borrowed plot of land. It is mine to do with what I will. The guys who gave me the parking spot said "theres no way you can make it worse than it is now so just do what you want". Music to my ears.
     I spend last friday from morning until nightfall weeding from the root up, churning the soil, loosening it, watering the new soil, and landscaping the surrounding fences and walls. I got blisters, bloody hands, and a back ache. I went to Carpenter Seed Co. and Brumbles on S. State Street slash Main Street and got some tools and good, good advice. I have a gameplan. And Im so excited about doing it that this may very well turn into a Lawn and Garden blog and not a homeless blog.
     There is something about working for yourself against nature that you just cant find synthetically. I lust after it, covet it, cherish it. I have done a lot of manual labor in the past, but moving out to Provo to get educated has afforded me no such opportunities until now. When you break your bones over the earth, trying to make a dent, an impression that you can call your own in the ground, I dont know, food tastes better, the air gets thicker and comes into your lungs with a newer, more pure sense of purpose. I feel just a bit more complete. Like a when you go back home to visit after a long absence and slide into your old bed, and cold sheets again. I feel great out in the garden.
       Today Ill be planting bulbs! There arent a great deal of edibles that can be planted in the fall but I have bulbs of all types and colors to plant just in time for spring flowers! In addition to this, ill be manicuring the surrounding area a little more and building a trellises, arbors, Palladian climber fixtures and hanging vines. Seriously Im gonna have the nicest yard in Provo and it wont even be mine, nor will I have a house. Ha!
This post is getting long so Ill write another one and update you even more on my life..... in like..... five minutes.