Once, I had a favorite place.

Once I had a “favorite place” This was my first real environment that could remotely be considered back woods, or rural. A small town with a population of under ten thousand my father found work and moved us there.

Our home was centered on two acres of land with I mowed every weekend, usually all weekend, as my father was not the type to by a riding lawnmower when I could mow it all in just under 8 hours if I tried. At the end of a long gravel road, with only 3 other neighbors, we had corner lot, corner to a lake that is.

The shore line if you will was more of a steep rocky and treacherous embankment that although passable you took care wandering through. Thick hardwoods and cedars deep brush and snake dens specked the elevation decline of some 50 feet that provided a cover and concealment in the summer and sharp contrast to the glass smooth lake in the winter.
From the back porch, a larger than living room, fully enclosed and screened in extension of the home I would sit and stare off into the underbrush. This porch was my favorite place.

To the west was the lake after the stretch of our property. A huge carpet of rich green evenly mowed turf flanked all around by towering hardwoods protecting the shade and the creatures that lived within it. To the east on the other extreme of our plot of lad, was out only visible neighbor in the form of a low lying log cabin before even denser forest that would be tall and majestic were it not for the 400 foot cooling tower with its never ending belch of hot steam rising up into the air.

Looking ahead the earth fell away to the boundary of the property, where sharp rocks and boulders gave way to soft grass and then dense forest that fell down to the water. The swift moving current of the intake canal drifted fishing bots back and forth in a lazy dance against the thirst of the nuclear power facility that sucked the lake into its belly before spitting back out the other end one hundred degrees year round. Now and again deer would come from the woods, and down to the water where our boat was docked and seldom used. They always had a cautious eye on the house and the man on the porch, perhaps wondering if I had my shotgun or a silent bow.

Clearly out of place in this hot and muggy environment where the bugs sung so loud at night it could keep you awake like the police choppers in los angels or the traffic in Chicago was my Siberian husky, ever faithful and sweet as sugar Katie Kate. Despite the tepid humidity she would lie beside me in the rocking chair and fwap her tail as casually stroked her puppy soft fur to the sound of the woods, less the bugs, insects, spiders, snakes and scorpions the almost invisible screen protected us from. Within the right conditions my brother and I would pull our bed mattresses out onto the porch and sleep deeply through the night. The best of these nights is when the rains would come, these were by far my favorite times.

As the sun went you could smell the rain coming in the air, dancing on the wind infecting your mind without filter from your consciousness. The light fades earlier than it should as the thunder clouds work their way through the jet streams to destinations unknown. Signaling their travel with distant rumbles mimicking the train on the other side of the lake as the breeze becomes a wind pulling moans from around the wood. Without hinder the wind flows through the screened porch chilling the sweat of anticipation on your flesh as you await the storm. You sat both fearful and excited and the ferocity of nature that is soon to be unleashed. The temperature drops and although there is sound everywhere, everything seems to be quite. The slither of snakes in the bushes, bird cawing and bugs mating has gone as they seek shelter from the impending storm. All that is left is the wind in the trees, though the grass and over the rocks to fill your mind.

This wait build tension in your gut as the wind brings you the faint traces of something sharp in your nose. Picking your memory you know the scent, but smell it so rarely, that you forget it exists until you know it again. Once you realize what it is, the storm is here. As if to announce its presence night becomes day for a fraction of a second as the sky splits open and thunder booms into your bones startling you despite your long anticipation. Ozone fills your nose and mind as the rain begins to assault dry earth, pulled down by gravity and thrust upon the landscape by the voice of the wind.

Sitting in the protection of the porch, the storm would rage around me with my rapt attention. With each dagger of lighting came the ominous boom that both humbles and inspires your spirit. Quickly the air become crisp and clean from the cleansing rain as the thunderclaps travel miles away across the lake only to return again as echoes in the wind.

Drawing to it like a moth to a flame, the cooling tower high above the landscape was ringed in lighting rods. As if deliberately, the storm would light the night in a purple blue sliver burning white hot to touch it with a ferocious clap of thunder. Perhaps needing reassurance all is well, or just looking for a little more love. Katie would rest her chin on my thigh soliciting a slow scratch behind her ears for the loving embrace when the storm was at it climax.

Gallons upon gallons of rain poured off the roof and over the sides of the porch adding to the noise of the squall as it beat holes in the grass and battered puddles without mercy. Bursting at the seams, the puddles would burst and make channels and streams rushing to lower ground making its way to the lake witch reflected the light show in the sky with crystal clear perfection. The wind not to be outdone by the mighty rain, assaulted all in its path, snapping branches and felling trees somewhere in the darkness. Urging the rain as it could through the semi-permeable barrier of the screens to reach us because we were dry, or perhaps just because we were there. Though, no matter how furious the wind whipped through the tress, the gallons that fell or the sensory assault from lighting flashing or thunder booming, the storm was never was quite violent enough.

Years later, I did watch a storm roll in that proved to enough for me. This time it was palm trees over hardwoods and the elderly over bugs. For 4 days and nights I watched it come with growing anticipation. It was big enough to name Andrew, and it was a category 5 hurricane. Again, I sat on my back porch overlooking a lake of glass beyond witch a downtown skyline stood between me an this mother of thunder storms, smelling a scent your don’t quite recognize, and remembering another porch long ago once upon a time in Arkansas.

We're here to help.

I wonder if as a society we will ever come to move the line in which a police officer is considered to have been assaulted. A few recent news articles really got me thinking just how silly and absurd at the legal diversity at which a law enforcement officer is permitted (eg never punished) to “protect himself” when they are under the impression they have a threat against them.

The most glaring example of which and you can find these videos all over youtube as well as I, is the trade mark officer who blocks in a car with his curser, then proceeds to get out to go gang busters on the dude. But the dude instead decides that he’s going to leave again. Now, seeing that the car is making a move in his sometimes general direction at a relative low rate of speed as often due to being blocked in, or at a dead stop, the officer immediately finds himself “threatened for his life”, and rather than making two steps to the left and getting out of the way of the 3mph moving car, jumps on the hood. rides it like a pony while unloading a fucking clip into the drivers face.

(skip to 3:50)

What about in a controlled jail environment while being ordered to remove her shoes, a bad ass and studly, (most likely a ninja or UFC street fighter) in the form of a 15 yr old 100 pound girl kicks her shoe off in a “fling” type manner, striking the 6’-2” 220lb pig in the shin. Thank god for his training without that he could not have protected himself from this violent assault! Relying on his years of intense training and experience of a recent shooting where he was acquitted for shooting and killing a man in 02, and shooting another in 06…. The skillful front kick to her stomach opened her up for the heavy right hook he threw catching her lethal ninja skills off guard enough to allow him to grab her by the hair and slam her face into a concrete wall. Tough but not out of it, her master would be disappointed as her hair wasn’t cut short enough allowing the cop to grab upon it again, and throw her to the ground where she continued to resist arrest! Two more over head rights.. BAM! BAM! to the back of the head made sure she’d go peacefully. Which she did, and the officer not lost to civility helped her to her feet carefully not touching any of her feminine body parts (as that may be misinterpreted) but instead just takes hold with two fists full of hair lifting her up from the ground.

It’s a shame that officer wasn’t as fortunate as his friends in Louisiana, where after the flooding they came across a 65 yr old school teacher, and rather than respecting their authority and submitting to their pressing questioning and detainment he had the audacity to look them in the eye. Well, good thing those veteran cops didn’t stand for his resisting their arrest. To think even after 14 punches to the back of the head, throwing him to the ground, stomping and kicking him while handcuffed, he could still fight back threatening their lives at 65!. Wow, good thing they got that criminal off the street. Not that he was ever charged with anything.. but I’m sure he was a criminal waiting to happen, just like the associated press reporter who had the audacity to even witness justice.



To me, evolving this brutal and unregulated culture of our so called public police force needs some serious revamping. And I do know that only 10% of the cops are responsible for 90% of “alleged” beating and shootings. The problem is, that these are the same 10% that rarely get kicked off the force, and even more rare prosecuted for their actions. In the cases noted above, there was no legal repercussions to any of their actions. The case with the girl, he is charged though like the new Orleans incident, he’ll probably be acquitted.

The biggest change that needs to happen, is that cops must be held to the same standards as the rest of us in what is construed “reasonable force” for self defense. That brutal beating of that girl because of a shoe…. If that response would be justified for me in a bar, then its justified for him in uniform. And that alone should be the standard. If you have a legal permit to carry a gun, and someone is driving toward you and you interpret that action as a threat to your life then I too should be able to empty a 13 round clip into their face at point blank range and walk away without blemish after 6 weeks of paid leave. If a cop has more freedom to defend themselves than a regular citizen, then what silent regulation is there to protect innocent civilians from their assault and batteries? Lets face it, its very unlikely that someday cameras will be everywhere, and its safe to assume that very few incidents make it on camera. Lets not even mention how many states do not allow you the right to defend yourself under any circumstances regardless of the threat…..unless you’re a cop.

Next, a database available to the public like the federal sex offender database must be made to identify, track and publish the reports, investigations and resolution of all police use of force claims. Despite the insistence (and successful litigation) of the police unions, use of force data is not a matter of private personal files and therefore protected by employment privacy law. They are the records of public servants interacting with innocent civilians who until convicted by a jury of their peers, retain the presumption of innocence regardless of the evidence against them.

This will also help with a single bad cop getting fired from one department and simply moving to another department to pick up a new badge and new gun with an acquitted stamp on his jacket. Further, internal police investigations need a federal directive to be completed within 90 days (as opposed to several years while the “heat” dies down) with each ruling reviewed and approved by a publicly elected magistrate and not that of an internal, secret police review committee.

Rules regarding use of force should be standardized on the federal level, made available for public review and comment and require a special oversight committee in congress to revise, modify or alter those rules. There is no justification that the people most interested in keeping the rules vague, lenient, and corrupt are the only people who are tasked to create, maintain and oversee those very rules.

The reality is we are not living in dangerous times. Federal crime statics from the department of justice report that current violent crime levels are at an all time low not seen since the mid 70’s. Although one could argue that since incidents of police brutality have gone up it’s had a positive effect in crime overall. I will disagree. Id wager since the advent of the video camera, cell phone and dash cam, incidents of police brutality have, maybe, might possibly stayed the same.

I can understand cops have a tough job, and probably 95% of them are good men (even if their loyalty system is fucked) Just to stand on the side of the highway hoping some dumbass doesn’t sideswipe them is enough to get a merit badge in my opinion. The reality is, I’m ashamed to actually be afraid when I see cops. I don’t know how it will turn out as Ive no idea what comes up on their screen when Im pulled over, or how they interpret it. The shield on their doors states clearly to serve and protect, though in the backs of our minds we know that if we step wrong intentionally or otherwise we can be in for a world of hurt. There are those would say, “if you’ve done nothing wrong you’ve got nothing to worry about” and that’s a great ideology and I totally agree.

Though another great ideology is “innocent until proven guilty”

Wake Filled Realities

Throughout my life, Ive gone out of my way to discover what it is I don't like about people. Often its misinterpreted as hate and rage, though for me its the tool I use in self reflection to purge myself of the attributes I care not to retain when existing in this world. It is not hate after all, its simply frustration at understanding somethings existence to a depth that I view the interconnection of a seemingly isolated act or emotion whether it be tyranny, fear, betrayal, cowardice or deceit to all the points in the time line that lead to up to that moment and all that will evolve after it. This frustration manifests in anger, and anger being one of the most constructive emotions available to the human pallet drives me, motivates me and propels me into becoming the anti-Christ of what I see to be the worst of us.

I try to purge myself of these feelings so that I may be free of them. Though I find I no longer, or probably never had the language to release these and other feelings into the universe, into the void. Im no longer a musician, or an artist, and have never been a poet and in writing I find myself needing to invent words as English simply falls short of what it is I'm trying to express. The problem with words is that you must rely on your audience to interpret your vocabulary, the nuance within the choice of terminology, and the deconstruction of the careful arrangement in which you presented it to them. So you're left with the choice: Express yourself in the language you understand and most likely be misunderstood, or fail to express yourself in an inadequate language used by others. Like trying to grasp a glowing ember in your soul, I haven't the tools to facilitate the job.

As now I struggle to convey the underlining essence of my list of evils: tyranny, fear, betrayal, cowardice, deceit. There there is no word to envelope all that there is about these horrific feelings and actions. No one word or phrase of words that I may use to give the all panoptic view of what they mean to me, to you, or to society as a whole as I see it. If it were a sound it would be a low grumble of subs with hints of high frequencies surfing within reverberation and resonance without feedback, slowly drifting in a methodical yet hypnotic free flowing evolution as it transcends above and below 20htz. Were it a light it would be deep and blue, shimmering as if through the throb of your heart below your breastbone with black abstract shapes, like an amoeba or distant galaxy of stars. Textured like a flowing stream at night caught though with a slow shutter under full moon within a moderate canyon. An unimaginable depth and scale that invokes both great fear and deep humility though captivating and beautiful despite the vulgar humanity that envelopes it.

One of the primary results of getting into the more metaphysical and spiritual aspects of yourself and your environment is that you begin to experience outside of yourself a prevailing synchronicity around you. People within, and the elements of the world at large are full of overlapping patterns and what is seemingly random chaos is really a series of constructs that when viewed objectively are intertwined and codependent on each others existence. The space betwixt these elements is where people live, think, and go about their lives. For lack of a better term I refer to these places as “The Gap” and its within the gap that I direct my gaze as thats where the quite lies, the soft viscus tranquility that buffers one harsh reality against the other.

More and more often I find it hard to settle into the gap and free myself from this seemingly never ending mass of interconnections that represents nonlinear dynamics in its most altruistic form. Snowboarding allows me the easiest gateway into the gap. Its on the mountain that I connect with the universe submitting to the physics of gravity, momentum, force, velocity, inertia and my own humanity, fear, exhilaration, joy, beauty, and love. Its there that my mind clears and all that moves me has left my spirit and Im left with what an alcoholic would describe as a moment of clarity in which all that exists in this dimension is the intuition that guides my muscles and the indifference of the mountain below me.

Most time of any day, I fill my mind with music as it dulls the noise of patterns and coincidence. Without headphones I play the songs that suit my mood or feelings as if on an infinite play-list surging though feelings as if grasping to understand them though the soul of another. Now and again in rare moments Ill stuff lyrics up on my facebook as if inviting others into the space where I happen to exist in these moments. Moments in which for brief period in time I identify with the music so completely I shudder, and have an experience wash over me similar to the concussion of a explosive detonation vibrating every molecule in your body in sequence for a thousandths of a second.

Perhaps one day Ill find away to extrude these moments into minuets, and minutes into hours hours into weeks, and so on. Building a lifetime of such experiences running in concert with my ambition, dreams and wake filled realities.

Anger as a Motivator

I think most people use the terms hate and anger interchangeably which causes a lot of confusion to say the least. Hate is reactionary, volatile and inherently destructive emotion for both the creator as well as the recipient because its a flowing energy like a river. It must go somewhere. Just like love must go somewhere. Its compulsory, it makes you do things. You manifest anger with hate, you manifest love with sacrifice.

The biggest issue with hate is that it serves no real purpose in a civil society. You can not purge yourself of hate without destroying the instigator of that hate. Witch means the inevitable destruction of institutions or lives. A general disdain from imprisonment keeps the vast majority of people restrained enough to never destroy those they hate so they are at an impasse. They are filled with hate which only severs to destroy but they can not, so the hate turns inward. At some point you begin to hate yourself for not being able to unleash your wrath on the instigator and it builds upon itself until it becomes a rage. This rage turned inward is known as depression.

I think much of whats wrong with the world today is because we've got all of this bottled up hate that we have no constructive outlet for. We're told what to do what to like, how to behave. How to think, how to speak while the entire time suppressing who we really are and what we really feel. We cant tell jokes or make light of an uncomfortable situation less offend the politically correct, we cant take a side or have an opinion without having an adversary to shout us down. In our heart we know of this betrayal to ourselves, and deep down in a dark place it fills us with resentment and hate. Its no wonder we're so medicated and distracted, blinking lights and sound bites. If we actually stopped for a moment to actually experience the things we feel, and discuss the ideas we have we just might find we're not so different from one another.

Anger I find can be one of the best motivators within the human emotional pallet. It is a state of being, a presence, like a lake or a mountain that exists for its own sake, never evolves and can remain for eons just like its counterpart, serenity. It is not an action orientated emotion like love or hate is. You are not compelled to do something to resolve anger it can co-exist with you internally just like serenity. This is where courage and fortitude is manifested and integrity is forged without being compelled to destroy.

It is anger that allows you to stand in the face of adversity and say “I will not fail” while others try to destroy you. It is anger that can fuel the fires deep in your spirit to keep thrusting one foot before the next shutting out pain, ignoring fear and defeating the desire to quit. The anger burns with the loss of your self respect, the birth of the self loathing you would see looking back with the eyes in the mirror each morning. Anger is the calculated sum of measuring yourself against your goal, or principals and to find yourself wanting on the scales of your own merciless judgment.

In my world, this scale of moral evaluation is the essence of integrity. For a man who can not disappoint himself is a man who is not held accountable to any law.

If I Had A Time Machine

I was thinking today while watching the solar eclipse in a cereal box about the Mayan and Aztecs who would hold huge parties that lasted for days leading up to a solar eclipse while fucking, and getting drunk on spit beer and of course sacrificing tens of thousands of people. No shit, TENS of THOUSANDS a number that’s almost incomprehensible to categorize in the context of mass murder unless of course you’re playing the “who’s a better dictator” game. But then I really started to work the mechanics and decided I would have loved to have been there.

No, not as a peasant watching the bodies tumble down headless or heartless 800 stone stairs into a fire pit. Not the guy ripping the still beating heart out of some cuties chest and thrusting it into the sky “unga bunga!!!!!” to the cheers and the adoration of the crow. Definitely not one of the dudes who got their rib cage split open and head cut off. Not the guy responsible for cleaning up that whole mess after the ceremony, No, Id want to be the physical trainer to the executioner high priest. I mean, come on.. killing 30 thousand people in a couple of days has got to be a real feat of athleticism!

Im sure this guy was just as important as the priest themselves, they would need coaching and training, motivation and encouragement. Like any other “pro” athlete they would need to perform at their best. Peek levels to not only put on a good show but appease the gods or else, what’s the point? I mean for real, if he blows it like a game winning field goal, their entire civilization may collapse. Talk about pressure.

So I would train him, first by chopping wood for hours a day to make sure his head-cutting-off-maneuver was in top form and strong. Some times at high altitude for better oxygen efficacy, other times, while in a swimming pool for dynamic resistance. Then, I would have him cut though thousands of reed hammocks with a dull flint blade to perfect his breastbone cutting open-stab and draw was in impeccable condition. I wouldn’t eliminate any style from his technique, after all, showmanship is all about style. I would try to refine it so that he can make the best technical slash while at the same time look good doing it. Such as focusing on the artery. Arterial spray although messy in sacrifice, is a great crowd pleaser.

Then on the days of the ceremony, I would stand back to his left in my bone and peacock feather head dress, grass skirt, and flip flops and murmur encouragement for flawless execution. Provide tips regarding technique for real-time feedback and every hundred sacrifices or so when their washing off the blood when it gets a little too slickery as it does in the Amazon sun, Id give him a quick deep tissue massage on his chopping shoulder, sharpen up his flint blade or bone ax and be otherwise be supportive of his game. Hell, I may even have a young virgin standing by for some close practice to evaluate a particular flaw I may have spotted or be just generally available for rape and murder.

Yeah that’s who I would like to have been.