Dude, where's my horseshit?

I am. I am trying to do it every day. However, each new day brings a brand new set of opportunities and obstacles. I am lucky enough to say that my days have been filled to the gills with plans.

Where does one get roughly a ton of stone for free?

Fifty years ago, half of Staten Island was undeveloped. I think it's safe to assume that there was rock everywhere. They came with their trucks and backhoes and dug up hundreds of thousands of foundations for homes, paved the roads that take us to places and carted all the rock away.

I'm not raging against the injustices of home-building or road-paving, or even the absence of precious rocks (although we all know I could). I am merely musing on the direction that our requirements for existence have taken over the past 150 years or so. I can go half a mile in any direction and find somebody willing to sign me up for a cell phone plan. All manner of food from the far corners of our globe can be prepared for my consumption and then delivered to my house for a nominal fee. The internet is literally everywhere I go. These are certainly achievements as far as the advancement of humanity should go.

Now with that said, the things that have been preoccupying my mind as of late are:

stones (large and small)
cow, pig and horseshit
bales of hay
massive piles of leaves

It is far from easy to procure any/all of the preceding. Bump me back in time 150 years or so, and I'd be tripping over rocks, stepping in all manner of animal droppings, and jumping offa bale of hay into a massive pile of leaves. And then after that was all said and done, I'd go and use them all for my garden.

That's right. I'm planning a garden. I am struck by how important these items can be, and how rare they are to come across without paying out the nose for them. Don't get me wrong, because I need my cell phone, I like to eat exotically, and I need that stinkin' internet to show me just how expensive and difficult it can be to get rocks, hay and animal shit. But I would gladly trade a little of modern convenience for the convenience of the non-modern.

In a perfect world, I pour hydrogen peroxide onto my toothbrush before using it

A wolf in shepherd's clothing

I see you park out front. Expensive, midsize sedan. You're probably a successful family man, or putting on the best front you can. Either way, the kids have been left home tonight. The car is full of other successful adults in search of what passes for a good time in adult land. There will be no live music show after this, no stand-up comic routine, no bar with 2 for one drink specials and ladies drink for free until midnight. There is only the impending meal. The meal is all.

I open the door for the four of you. Of course you've made a reservation, for four people at 7:30. Your name is Mr. Xxxxxxxx. Your look is confident, but it falters as I seem to not recognize this reservation, not to understand the importance of it. I allow for a brief twist in the wind as I say "Let me check the book", knowing full-well who you are and how many are in your party. I have been waiting for you.

Right this way, big time baller, sir, as I pull out all of your chairs. I ask if sir would like to see the wine list. Of course he will! How spectacular!

Now I look into your eyes. Your lack of knowledge concerning fine wine is apparent to me. Your wine ignorance is only surpassed by your compatriots'. I look past the gentleman in the suit who drives the Mercedes SLK parked so carefully out front to the frightened man-boy inside him.

This is not your turf. You are lost, hapless. A babe in the culinary woods. The wolves of uncertainty have beset your door. This evening needs to go well, or it will all fall upon your shaky shoulders.

Fear not, man-boy, for I have your interests at heart.You came to drop bills on this meal. I will learn you in the fine arts of hors d'oeuvres and entrees. I will tell you that our soups are gluten free. I will make sure the ladies have had their fill of alcohol and dessert.  I will ensure that tonight runs smoothly for you, and you will be known as the man for tonight's exploits. Do not forget what has transpired when the time for the check is upon us.

What waste?

While I was walking home I came across an apple that had been (to me) lightly grazed on all sides by the tiniest of hummingbirds and discarded. My brain immediately began to sing the lamentations of all that wasted apple meat; and then my conscious thoughts took a sudden shift.

I saw that same apple meat rotting into the soil, relaying nutrients back to the soil to be sucked up by blades of grass, who are then going to change poison into breathable atmosphere. I saw a raccoon come by and snatch up the rest of the apple and bring it home to feed 17 children. I saw ants dismembering its corpse over the course of a hot, sunny afternoon. Energy, be it in an atom or several hundreds of thousands of them covalently bonded together to form an apple, is never wasted. It has always been. This morning I recognized its form in the shape of a half-eaten apple.

Alphabet Family takes the mountain.

I rode the mountain with my family today. Every breathing soul played their part to perfection. My loving mother shelled out for the lift tickets withno reservations and drove us down and watched. My brilliant brother K and his perfectly matched girlfriend A, along with my pursuing-her-doctorate-while-PREGNANT(!) sister schemed cheap college day passes for us because they weren't riding and snuck them to us on the sly. My brother J, the expectant father and better-than-your-average rider amassed any gear he and his friends had lying around so everyone was outfitted with exactly what they needed, and nobody wanted for anything. Brother P, with the heart-of-gold who gets discouraged SO easily, listened with as much patience as he could muster to Brother J's sage advice after years on mountains from Jersey to Vermont.

Uncle J. brought the sport of snowboarding down from the mountains to our family more than a decade ago. This weekend he also brought his lovely daughter T, who kills it every time, and his fantastic girlfriend M who rides with exactly as much skill as Brother P, so they were matched well while learning to ride.

We broke for beers and overpriced soup at the lodge, while I resolved in the future to bring my own everything everywhere. I smoked my brains out with each lift to the top, rocked my headphone (keep one bud out to hear the dude behind you screaming "WATCHOUTWATCHOUTWATCH-OWWWWWWWWT!!") and knocked the wind out my own sails after a misplaced landing! There would be no giving up, no laying down.

We bombed the mountain with no remorse all day. We caught the last chair.

As in pen and again.

We woke in abrupt unison, fumbling for the phone and made sweet, groggy morning love; staving off the world already clamoring for our heads. - 1/4/13

This was the sweetest morning I have had in longer than I care to remember. I am not looking to live in my past, nor do I wish to cast my hopes to the future. I intend to live firmly in the here and now, celebrating all of existence even when it seems most difficult.


I woke on the morning of the fifth with this poem in my head:

"Then wear the gold hat, if that will move her;
        if you can bounce high, bounce for her too,
 Till she cry "Lover, gold-hatted, high-bouncing lover,
        I must have you!"

It was a very significant poem for my 16 year old self, I remember discovering it around the same time as reading The Great Gatsby in high school. I can spell out the author's name from memory, soley based off of the impact that this poem had on me.His name was Thomas Parke D'Invilliers.

I looked him up today, struck by how seemingly random it was that I woke, vividly remembering such an artifact from half a life ago. He doesn't exist! Thomas Parke D'Invilliers was a pen name for F. Scott Fitzgerald the whole time.

Begin

Get into the habit of writing and fall in love with our wacky, bastardized language all over again. Write something, anything once a day. Use it to convey your thoughts on life, your concern for our future, your love for your fellow man, and what he creates. Let your writing exercise the power of your own brain as it excites and engages those who might read it. May it satisfy the burning desire to both speak and be heard.

His room wasn't filthy, just severely untidy. The hardwood floor was beginning to lose its healthy lustre, the once-reflective surface now absorbing more light than it shared. There were errant hairs, both human and cat, that littered the floor amongst other bodily rejects. A fragment of fingernail here, a discarded bit of almond that had missed a mouth there; the dead flakes of skin had decomposed into a thin layer of dust that grew like algae over anything that hadn't been touched in a week.

There were vestiges of productivity amid the ruin, some signs of life amongst the wreckage. The book on the nightstand showed signs of having been read. The bed had recently been cleared of the debris that seemed to perpetually occupy its second half, perhaps even to make room for company. The bass guitar on its stand had been freshly wiped clean of sweat lines and string grime; the cable still connected to the amplifier.

Just like the solitary basil plant stretched itself with inhuman contortions to soak up the last fading rays of winter's sparse light, so must we work for the things we value, or risk being covered in the dust of a half-used life.