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Indeed, verily, e’ery post e’er made.

A Pirate Looks at 25

Julian1 Comment

I sailed five hundred miles today, of course to see a girl.

Docking tonight on this Pacific beach, pausing my quest ‘round the world.

She’s just one of many, and she knows it too, and that makes her mightily sad.

But if she wants more or less than I am, she best find a different lad.

 

Two long years I built this life: learned a trade, hired mates, built a ship.

Launching each day into uncharted lands—maturing is quite the trip.

 

If you ne’er stood alone on a beach in the night, you’re missing Poseidon’s roar.

The waves crash about you, scalp shivers in tingles and heart begins to soar.

You’ll thank every lighthouse and follow the wind. Try it. It’s what we are:

We’re conquerors, explorers, skullduggers and knaves. We pillage and rape and steal.

And when you’re done plund’ring your fill of the booty, pray the wench will cook you a hot meal.

I had a feeling I could be someone.

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You’ll only feel me by listening

to the same song,

fifty versions,

but none better than the downtown boy

with hair like Dylan

accepted to Yale when I was

but dropped out

and now plays to a Farmers’ market audience–

an empty picnic blanket and me.

 

At 24 years old,

he looks more like twelve

and sings folk like a wizened bluesman.

Will he go anywhere

or stay in Fairfax forever,

wearing the same uncool shoes

as the classmate I bullied in 4th grade.

 

If America’s misfits come to San Francisco

and SF’s go to Oakland,

where go Oakland’s?

We’re only fifteen miles north of The City,

but you can believe astrology

and we’ll still believe in you.

 

If you move too quick,

you hit the speed of loneliness

like a too-fast car,

breaking the sound barrier,

collapsing personality,

emptying you out.

Time moves consistently, but mine doesn’t.

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Time moves consistently, but mine doesn’t.

Subjective perception of time is altered by all sorts of stimuli. After a drink, it swims faster, blurrier. Right before lunch, it slows as I savor it more. “Time” is an objective measure about the world—a construct based on collective human experience. Each person’s time, however, is subjective. Experientially, there is such thing as a fast second or a long day.

At twelve years old, late at night in the hold of a sailboat, I wept at the realization that time only moves in one direction. Correct, precocious pre-pubescent philosopher young-Julian: correct, but incomplete.

I also recall, earlier, as a tyke of about seven, telling a friend, “we should have fun for the next hour so it passes faster.”

While I couldn’t yet articulate the difference between subjective and objective time, I already understood its implications: Subjective time is inconsistent. You can manipulate it, and thereby manipulate your experience.

So what?

So play with it. That’s as much as I’ve got. I’ve discovered a powerful tool and have little idea what to do with it, so let’s experiment and see what works. Try slowing subjective time by sensing the subsections of each second. Speed it up by losing yourself in thought. Objective time moves at a consistent rate in one direction. That’s our creative constraint. What we do within its bounds is up to us. If you discover something, tell me. 

Traveling around the U.S., with no nine-to-five, I revert to a pre-1800s sense of time, which I find brings greater focus and emotional depth.

How long have I been writing this? Wrong question.

Is it valuable? Better question.

Is it what I should be doing? Right question.

I don’t deserve your sympathy.

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When I sleep poorly, I harm myself,

not with pills or knives

but doughy pizza and poker.

 

These might sound small—verily they are,

but I’ve avoided loving any people who die

and only been once dumped,

on my quest for #2.

 

Still a kid, a spoiled millennial,

these problems equate to self-inflicted boredom.

The world will crush me. It crushes us all.

Build your ark. Recession’s a-comin’.

 

Who but you? and I still cry

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Who but you? and I still cry

Broke for a month—two now, nigh.

At 3am I beat the streets

Hands grasping for you, clasping at our lapse,

Clutched like the touch when we rushed

Our first late date in a state where I ate just to skate

More hours with you, boo, and a coo Jew too, who,

Not kissing wasn’t dissing but avoiding risking missing

A mended friend to send if romance is no dance.

Does shoving love like I did above

Make man weak, meek, where he will seek

For him and women to simmer unlimited,

But dimmer without your almighty shimmer?

Even Meth Heads call their Mom…

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… if only to ask for money.

“Can I borrow your phone? I need to call my mom. I’ll give you a dollar; don’t even need to touch it. “ This comes from Chris, the Chicago Bulls hat with misshapen teeth and meth sores.

I dial the number for him, put the phone on speaker. “It’s 3am in Ohio,” Chris’ mom tells him.

“I’m sorry,” Chris says. “I didn’t realize.”

“Did you get the hundred-dollar MoneyGram I sent you? Can you come home? I’m worried about you. Have you talked to your dad? Did he send you any money?”

“Not in a while.”

“Okay, here’s the code:”

Chris’ Mom gives Chris the number for the MoneyGram. Chris writes it on his palm using the pen I lent him.

“Thanks, Mom. I gotta work in the morning, but I’ll call you at lunch.”

Chris played online poker until the US government shut it down seven years ago. Now, he teaches tennis and plays poker in Vegas, but one-tabling live is not the same context or variance as twelve-tabling on the web.

I suggested he go international—like to Cali Colombia, where he can play online again and live like a king for $1k a month. As a bonus, I told him about two ¿cartel members? who lose $1k per day in the only non-profit casino I’ve ever heard of. (A money-laundering front for the cartel? Probably.)

Chris calls his friend Red. Red’s got something for Chris. Chris writes an address on his palm next to the MoneyGram code and the “HoHoHo” he doodled while chatting with his Mom. I don’t know what Chris is going to pick up, but my money’s on meth. When he asks me for $3, I don’t know why I give it to him. Maybe it’s pity. Maybe it’s hope.

I wish he would go to Cali. The cocaine cartel in one of the most dangerous cities in the world would probably be safer company.

How to celebrate in a predatory place

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(On New Year’s Eve in a Las Vegas Casino)

How does one celebrate in a predatory place? I evidently celebrate by feeling sad. The band didn’t play Auld Lang Syne as their first song of the New Year. Unacceptable, but not why I feel sad. I feel sad because I spotted a little girl. She’s celebrating New Year’s in a casino, which feels icky to me, bordering on harmful. My being here doesn’t feel icky, however. Is there a difference?

Maybe. Perhaps it’s bad to teach a child to associate predation with celebration, while I’m old enough to make my own decisions. I chose to be here. That’s one difference. It’s not particularly strong—it doesn’t justify the existence of casinos in general, but it explains a bit of the ethical difference in my gut.

The girl and her family stepped away. A mother and her two young children arrived. One, a baby boy in a stroller surrounded by stale cigarette smoke—you should have seen his thousand-yard stare.

Everyone’s fighting a battle you know nothing about 

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I hate my sleep apnea.

Hate, hate, abhor.

I can’t breathe when I sleep so I awaken repeatedly,

Nap on the daily,

and feel beat.

A lived life must be more than annoyance and suffering.

 

Ten years a-questing

To fix breath, life force, qi.

The first doctor declares me a statistical anomaly,

Second finds nothing

In a test improperly run.

So I find the right team—

The world’s experts, wouldn’t you know?—

Who spot it immediately, can solve it in a day…

As soon as I can get on their booked-years-out schedule.

 

The process is the punishment,

The surgery the solution.