connected.

The other day my friend Tj sent this picture to me:

Now, I’ll admit that I did laugh when I first saw it, but then a notion entered my mind.

It may have been my pot-rattled brain thinking into things a little too much, but at that moment I thought to myself:

 “Holy shit, this is on the internet... which means anyone could see it.”

A child’s first thoughts on Abraham Lincoln could very well be that he endorsed the idea, that if one was indeed brave enough, that any plausible item could be used as a dildo.

Now when I was a kid, I had no idea what a dildo was, it wasn’t even in my vocabulary. But kids these days are a little different. I’m sure that they know what dildos are the moment they are cognizant enough to realize that you can look up anything on the internet.

I suppose the point that I’m trying to make here, is that children these days are born connected and that pop culture is going to ruin us as people.

People no longer have to wait to learn about something or ask someone else who knows, they can immediately seek out the knowledge themselves. Which, in theory, is an incredible idea. It’s instantly gratifying: something as people we have grown even more accustomed too with our iPads and smartphones.

I myself own an iPhone, a Macbook and do at times find myself screaming at a small plastic box full of electronics because it’s refused to let me connect to the World Wide Web wirelessly.

But, I feel my generation, some of the last to be born un-connected, were very lucky.

We, as children, grew up with these new technologies coming into our lives.

I remember first using a computer around the time I was in kindergarten.

I wasn’t crying to crush the latest version of some time consuming application game, or using it to watch some garbage reality television show on the way to the store.

I was selecting different shapes and sizes to make monster caterpillars, which would then print out, in black and white, onto a piece of plain white paper.

This process never really sunk in with me.

I made things on the screen, then they were on paper. It was that simple, it was instant and my horrific caterpillars were very gratifying.

From that moment on it was an inevitable climb up a technological hill.

Our “on to the next” mentality is at an all time high, can we push it anymore?

As a connected world, we move through things so quickly it’s alarming.

We can go from Abe and dildos to Miley and her terrible fucking presence at the swipe of a finger.
We can see what Kimye is up to and then hate-like all that person's photos.
Snap a few selfies and post them on various online social outlets.
But do we really need to be able to?

I feel that older generations were able to take more time and appreciate the world around them, and these days we only ask “What’s next?”  

These may just be the rantings of a reclusive, old souled 24 year old, but for god sake’s people why can’t you appreciate the real world in which we live and stop fawning over celebrities and memes?

Applications such as Vine fully endorse the antics of the maniacs that are consumed by them.

Download the app and look at the popular page, you’ll see the same 15 people or the hottest “new vine thing”.

These 6 second skits and ideas are taken on in mass one day, and easily discarded the next.

Vine, Twitter, Facebook and Instagram are a scrambling rat race of likes, reposts and followers.

I suppose I’m not one to talk, as I’m on all of the above mentioned apps, but as an observationalist, as well as a blogger and someone who realizes the trauma social media is causing our minds and souls, you can fucking suck it. I’m trying to make a damn point here.

Did I ever think that posting my caterpillar monster on the internet would get me 1000 likes and a cult following? No.

Social media is the downfall of human beings, as actual living people.

Why be who we are, when we can be who we want people to see?

We can be funny or attractive if we say the right things or take the right picture, that’s what the internet has taught us, and will continue to teach many generations to come.

This is very scattered and very unorganized, but this issue is something that causes me to become flustered. Should it be? Probably not, but as an observer of human nature and condition, I must say that I am greatly concerned to see the technologies that unfold in my lifetime.

I will be the old man trying to properly operate my hover shoes.

I will be the decrepit, senile bastard mumbling to himself about “the times when you had to pull your phone out of your pocket to view and reply to all your text messages,” or  “still having to actually answer the door or go to the restaurant to pick up pizza.”

But it makes me happy to know that there will be a generation of crotchety old fuckers right along side me cursing this “goddamned technology.”

One final request:
That you please take the time to go outside and do something in the sun? Before there's an app for that too.

PS

These rantings are not the original rantings I had in mind. I was going to make a case on the forseeable doom that our children and children’s children face in the wake of this terrible beast, that we call being connected. I even changed ideas mid writing and didn’t even care to go back and fix them. Instead I took this moment to give you my thoughts (albeit, sometimes hyprocritical) view on people and social media.

alone.

We hadn’t really planned on this situation being long term.

He figured he would just run away for a month or two and crawl back to the city with his tail tucked between his legs.

But it had been three years now.

He had decided that it was time to leave when he was listening to NPR one morning. The rich had begun their race to space.

“Space Tourism” the voice on the other end of the radio said, and that was it.

He decided then and there that it was time to go. He walked out of his workplace without a word. He made his way home and grabbed anything he could sell for supplies.

Laptop.

Television.

Gaming system.

Printer/scanner.

DVDs.

CDs.

Speakers.

He penned a note for his roommates, apologizing for leaving so abruptly, before he left with a backpack full of clothes and toiletries to meet up with a man he had contacted via online classifieds about purchasing an old VW Bus.

Life in the city had worn on him quickly.

He had tried to understand people and the way they worked.

He thought he had come to the high rises and bustle to get away, but only ended up trapping himself.

He worked. But deep down he felt that his passion was writing.

Something he never thought would be the end to his own means.

He thought about it often. Life as a writer.

Truly inspired, one who could paint masterpieces with keystrokes.

His job, his thoughts, his life would always catch up with these daydreams

and soil them.

But now, he had all the time in the world to write.

To actually write, pencil to paper, and create.

He would lie in the back of his VW Bus and stare at the sky.

His ideas and thoughts would shape the clouds in front of his very eyes.

He would take long walks and imagine scenes playing out in front of him, in the empty forest.

As he tended his nightly fire, he would stare into the dark, beyond the reach of the flames and his stories would become reality. Twisting shadows and rising smoke, mixed to create vivid, visual serenades of the mind.

And then he would write it all down on his pad of paper. In great detail, explaining the things he saw through his mind’s eye.

This collection that had grown from the toils of his fingers and thoughts had become, in what was his most humble opinion, the best things he had ever written.

Of course, there was no one to edit these workings.

But perhaps, that’s what he enjoyed most.

They were his raw feelings, scrawled, scribbled religiously on all this thin yellow paper, without anyone to tell them how to arrange or display them to make other people happy.

Tears would come to his eyes, even when he wrote of things that were not sad.

He was purging a well that had been building deep inside of him for some time.

These words made him feel.

They made him real.

They made him who he was.

Lucille (a love story, pt. 4) .reconnected.

This winter... has been a long one.

I sat inside more than anyone I know.

I’ve brooded and sulked and dreaded facing days where I would see no sun.

You sat in the shed, tucked next to everyone else for the winter.

By the time I pulled you out of there, you were roarin’ and ready to go.

I remember we went out on quite the soggy day.

The snow had just melted and the salt and dirt and shit had made quite the soup of road scum.

Needless to say we were covered in it once we were home but we were both very happy. It had been so long since we danced and even though we were dirty, we had fun.

As the weather started to become fairer, we found ourselves out and about more.

Storming about our old stomping grounds, through the traffic and other sorts situations wea find in the city that we had to contend with whenever we were out.

But we missed all that shit we had to deal with. It’s what makes it fun.

One day in particular, very recently, shone the brightest in my mind of our recent ventures.

A long way to get coffee and breakfast that made for and intricately woven route of retail and thrift stores all the way home. Legs and lungs aflame through some, cruising through plenty and you weren’t really complaining either ;)

It was like all the days I’ve shared with all these people before.  6 hours of you and I are gone before I know it and I’m left with nothing but good feelings…

Did you know you inspire me? I thought of several things to write about that day and I don’t believe I would have if it weren’t for you. If you hadn’t given me the chance to just let go for a little while, I don’t think I would ever be able to think.

It makes me sad that your bottom bracket is now creaking. I just got so caught up in all the fun we were having, I didn’t even think to check on you that much… I am so sorry. I’ll make it up to you I swear!

Sometimes I think it’s pretty fucking weird that I write about my bike like I do. I’m pretty much in a relationship with her. BikeSnobNYC says you aren’t supposed to get attached to your bike, as it always ends up leaving you somehow, through theft, unfixable damage, etc. but dammit how can I not love my sweet Lucille. I write about her because she is the only girl who hasn’t coerced me into it. I write about her because she inspires me to write, even if it isn’t always about her. She is there for me, to take me away when I need. To help me rid of unnecessary stress. And to learn more about myself.

Love you, Lucille.

dreams pt.1

Dreams. I don’t have too many of them, and when I do I don’t really remember them.

1.

I meet up with my friend at a bar. Out of the friends I have, I don’t recognize this one from my real life. We greet each other, exchanging hugs and smiles and laughs. This person must be really close to me; I wish I could put an identity to him. We sit and talk and drink beer. Smiles never seem to leave our faces as we reminisce about things that I cannot recall. They’re lost in the dream. We sit and talk for a few hours.

We decide to leave.

As we are walking out of the bar, my friend is behind me and out of the corner of my eye I can see him reaching for something inside his jacket. As I turn around to see what he is doing, he has a gun pointed at me. This is the part of my dream which is most vivid. The pistol, a small silver revolver which if I had to guess I would say it was something like a Smith and Wesson .38 Special, is pointed directly at my sternum.

“…you fucking bastard,” my friend says to me.

Before I have time to knock the gun away, he pulls the trigger.

I feel this incredible pressure, a touch of pain, smack dab in my solar plexus. I can’t breathe. My vision is blurry. A burning starts deep in my chest.

I remember the feelings I felt at that moment in my dream. I was scared, I was confused and I was hurt. Not just physically, but emotionally. Why would my friend have done this? Why would he sit and bullshit with me only to shoot me here in the street? I felt betrayed.

Before I know it I’m struggling to wrestle the gun away from my friend as he is slowly forcing it towards my face.

I wake up.

I lay in my bed with my hand holding my chest, and this strange feeling, a pressure directly where my solar plexus is. I take a deep breath and shake the rest of the cobwebs from my brains.

Throughout the next the day I wondered what it all could have meant. Trust issues? Or just a crazy dream?

2.

I’m dead asleep. My room looks the exact same as it does in the awake world. There are no lights on and it’s late at night/early morning, probably around 1 or 2am. The door of my room is shut, as it normally is. Blue ambient light is blocked out by drawn shades on my window.

There is a pound on my bedroom door. I snap up in my bed, tired and groggy. Confused and disoriented. I sit there a moment in silence and stare at the door. Did I dream that someone was pounding on my door?

There is another pound on the door, enough to make it shake on its hinges. Followed by another and another and another. How the door is not falling to pieces is beyond me. I spring from my bed onto my feet.

“WHO’S THERE?!” I yell.

Another pound. And another. And another.

It doesn’t stop this time.

I go to the door and brace against it with my back. The pounding continues.

“WHO ARE YOU?! WHAT DO YOU WANT?!” I’m screaming.

The only answers I’m getting are more pounds on the door.

The door is rattling, as am I along with it.

“PLEASE STOP!”

Whoever/whatever has knocked the door loose of the jamb and is able to reach a hand inside. Whatever it is, it claws and grabs at my arm. A gloved hand? A fucking paw? I couldn’t tell.
I could actually feel it pulling at me. Trying to get a good enough hold on so that it could tear me out of my room.

I’m totally losing it. I’m scared out of my fucking mind. Tears are running down my face, I’m sobbing.

I’m helpless.

I wake, lying on my side. Staring at the wall, with my back to my bedroom door.

Do I turn around to look? Feelings of fear, confusion and desperation are still fresh in my mind.

I slowly look over my shoulder at the door. Nothing happens.

I make my way over to the door and open it. Nothing but dark, empty living room.

Subconscious, you scare me.

urge.

“Jesus Christ, man… what a rush huh?” Steven asked as the lights of the interstate lit up the cab of his pickup, his knuckles were white as he gripped the steering wheel. He was an emotional wreck.

“Yeah…” I answered back, as the light flooded the inside of the truck again, my attention was drawn from the guardrails and highway mile markers to the knife in my lap and the little bit of blood that had found it’s way onto my hand.

A few hours earlier it had only been bunch of drunken talk after too much whiskey and beer.

“Just think about it!” Steven had said a little too loud while we sat at the bar. “The ultimate fucking rush man! Total power. Like a god or some shit.” He looked into his drink longingly. The small bubbles from the bottom rising up to the surface, like this primal urge he had decided to bring up that night. Something dark, buried deep inside that somehow makes it’s way from subconscious to conscious thought.

“Well, there’s a lot that would have to go into it…” I began to explain.

“NO PLANS! People disappear all the time, man. You think if we offed some old homeless prick the police would really give a shit enough to try and find out who did it? Especially if we took the body somewhere.”

“You’re really serious about this?” I asked.

“Fuck yeah.”

I told Steven to wait until we finished our drinks to discuss this more. I had to get his loud mouth out of a public place if he was going to go on some sort of boisterous, testosterone trip just thinking about the idea of what he was suggesting we do that night.

After we made it to his truck, an old farm truck that had been given to him by his dad, Steven couldn’t contain himself anymore.

“Well, are you in or what man?!”
“I mean I’ve thought about it before, I’m sure everyone has… but you realize exactly what it means right? Going through with it and everything…” I said. “You’re snuffing out an actual human life, you know?”

“Yeah, yeah, yeah dude,” was the only reply he could muster to that statement. “So you in or are you out?”

“In...” I replied.

As we drove through Wendover we traded our highway lighting for bright neons of casinos and dim glows of all night fast food joints.

“Fuck, what if someone looks in the back?” Steven asked nervously.

“Just chill out, that’s why we threw the other tarp over him. Don’t drive like a dick and get us out of town and take us out on some dirt road.

“Which one?”

“I don’t care Steven, just get us on one.”

We had stopped at my place, Steven pleaded that we go there instead of his apartment so we wouldn’t wake up his girlfriend. We stood in my kitchen discussing the plan and setting aside any materials we thought we would need.

“So we’ve got a garbage bags, a tarp, a few rolls of duct tape and rags.” I said.

“Fuckin eh, man! We’re really going to do this shit!” Steven exclaimed as he practiced stabbing motions with a large kitchen knife I had left out from cooking earlier in the day. Each jab he made with the sharp knife looked comical, like he had been doing it in the mirror for weeks, it was almost hard to take him seriously.

“Well how are you going to do it?” I asked him.

“Hmm, not the knife. Too messy for me I think. What if I just take some of this rope and strangle the fucker with it?”

“Any way you want, man.” I answered back.

Before leaving my place we packed the tarp and tape in the truck and at the last moment I grabbed the large knife that Steven had been playing with.

“What do you need that thing for? All we need is my handy-dandy rope.” Steven said with a sick grin on his face while he dangled and waved his piece of “strangling rope” as he had come to call it, in front of my face.

“Never know, we might need it.”

Steven was botching it. The old man had begun to turn blue in the face but still continued to struggle against him, and as the sweat formed on Steven’s brow I could tell this whole endeavor had become a struggle for him. Steven had cut the length of rope that he was using to strangle the man too short and decided that maybe his hands would work better. There was a pause in his actions. Maybe it was in this moment that Steven realized that this was all grandeur, an idea that many people never bring to fruition because they simply can’t bring themselves to face the reality of it.

I could have just pulled Steven off the man and we could have let him go, because who would believe some drunk old hobo, but Steven had brought me into this. And whether or not he could actually go through with it now, we had to finish what he started that night. Without a word I pulled Steven off of the old man and buried the kitchen knife into his chest, almost to the handle. Pain and helplessness filled the eyes of the old man, like when a child burns their hand on the stove. Confused, hurt, scared. He wheezed but continued to struggle against me. Pushing at my face and chest until I put the blade into his chest three more times. And as we stepped back from this scene in the quiet, dark alley on the West Side of Salt Lake City where we had followed this homeless man, I said “Steven, get the tarp and the duct tape.” Steven was visibly shaken. He had turned pale and his eyes were glazed over. His hands shook and his knees were slowly beginning to buckle. The sweat on his brow continued to pool.

“Holy fucking shit, man… I… we…you…”

“Steven,” I said as I turned to him, meeting his now empty gaze, “get the tape and the tarp.”

We had been traveling down a dirt road for about twenty minutes in silence when Steven said, “I can’t stop thinking about it.”

“Well, how do you feel about it? You wanted to do it, right?” I asked him.
“Yeah… sure… of course I did…but just thinking back on it, man. You fucking stabbed that guy to death…”

“You weren’t doing a very good job of strangling him. What if he had gotten away or something? Then what?,” I asked.

“Well I don’t know… I wanted to use the rope because it was cleaner. I mean now we’ve got this dudes blood on us because you decided to stab him.”

“You’re making it sound like I decided to kill this guy.”

“Well… I mean you are the one that actually killed him… you stabbed him all those times.”

“Four times,” I said.

“What?” Steven responded.

“Nothing.”

“Anyway man, you were the one who stabbed him. Like you said, I probably wouldn’t have even killed him, I couldn’t even do it right.”

“Stop here.” I said.

“What?”

“Stop here, Steven.”

I moved the blade from my lap onto the bench seat of the pick up and looked Steven in his eyes. “Are you saying that this is all on me?”
“Well I mean if it ever came down to it and lawyers got all technical I suppose… that you would be the one to blame… but …” he replied nervously. “... I don’t want you to think I would ever tell anyone about this…”

A very strange moment of silence filled the cab of the old farm truck as it sit in the middle of the Nevada desert.

“Let’s talk about this later. I just want to get this taken care of.” I said with a nervous grin on my face. “We can stop somewhere and get breakfast and then we’ll get home and sort this all out.” Steven seemed relieved by me saying that.

“Okay, man,” his face grew a nervous smile as well.

“I think this will be a good spot to leave him.” I said. “Why don’t we get it over with?”

I waited for Steven to step out of the truck first.

“I’m just going to grab some extra tape in case we need it,” I told him.

And as he moved to the bed of the truck, I grabbed extra tape, a few garbage bags and my large, sharp kitchen knife from the seat of the truck, as I would be needing it all to deal with Steven.

shock.

I need to take a second.
I had a bunch of really rude, ignorant things written down. But I deleted them.

My trip home was great. A week in Elko felt like an eternity away from SLC. I swear I'm still having trouble getting back into the groove of working and remembering exactly what my job duties are... it's been two weeks.

Being back home, was kind of strange.
I loved every moment of it don't get me wrong. I didn't have a bad moment there.
It just got me thinking about a lot.
My father was talking (only in theory at this point) about buying a piece of land in the middle of rural Nevada and starting a little homestead for him, my mom and 3 cats. And I was welcome to join, he told me.

As we flew over a Battle-Bourne state, we kept our eyes open and searched the foothills, a place near a stream and at the foot of the rolling hills nestled in trees.

We saw the perfect spot.
A area with level ground, tucked at the base of a foothill through which there was a flowing stream. All of it shaded by trees.
There was even a small airstrip with an area for a plane about my dad's size (Cessna SkyHawk II, a piece from the late 70s I believe is what my dad told me) to be able to turn around, take off, land.
I can't even make that up.

As we flew passed we talked about how incredible it would be to set up at that spot. But we knew damn well it had to some lucky bastards camp for hunting season.

My mom and I would talk in the time my dad didn't have me helping him with the list of projects he had made while I was away. She showed me small spiders, made of bead and wire, a "new pinterest find" of hers. We went over her many beads and tools that she uses when she makes her crafts. Lanyards, keychains, necklaces, bracelets. Between the things my dad (wind chimes, hobo stoves, cups made using old beer bottles and so many other little projects) and my mom make, I think they'd stand up as serious competition here in Salt Lake. But I can never convince them to bring some of their wares  to the city and sell them.
They'd rather give them away.

My friends and I went to a house party, the host was an old friend from high school. There weren't that many people, which is fine. The host and some friends of his were DJing the party, while others sat around and we played pool. Tj insisted we "get turnt the fuck up" and he proceeded to feed me Cognac, which was fine. We were in Elko, Nevada and all and one does tend to get pretty goddamn hammered while they are there. Justin, Tj and I hung around the table while TiAnne and Winni set off to socialize. I love watching these two work the room, make the rounds to everyone but still end up where they started, not forgetting us.
It was a good night.


"I bet you can't steal that pool cue."
"How about I steal that pool cue and this hand chalk," I said, sliding the chalk into the inside of my jacket leaving obvious white streaks on my shirt and jacket. "I'll see you in like 5 minutes."

"Hey so you know how I stole that stuff earlier?"
"Yeah," Cj grunted.
"Well check this shit out," I said pulling a bottle of lighter fluid out of my jacket. "I was going to take the barbecue grill, but then I saw this. I got them sticky fingers man, you gotta get me home."

We did a pretty good job of setting the gutter in front of a cantina on fire. The metal bench in front of the furniture store didn't take so well, which really didn't make a whole lot of sense to drunk us.
"It's liquid and flammable, what in the fuck."
We got bored and decided to get Jack-in-the-Box and Trevor was nice enough to come get us, thank god.


This trip to Elko wasn't weird.
It just made me miss being home.