For Doug

I don't know how to start this one. Everything floating in my head seems either preachy, or hackneyed, or just plain sad. But, the show must go on.

I guess I can start with this: Doug was a hero to me. He was the kind of man I wanted to be. He was confident. He knew music. He worked at the coolest bar on the planet. And he smiled readily. The fact that he also managed to start what is quite possibly one of the cutest families in the history of families is also not lost on me. He was a Burque Renaissance man.

I met Doug when I was 13. Back then, he was a lowly barrista at the coolest coffee house in town (seeing the theme here?). Even then, he exuded "cool motherfucker" as easily as spent air. He kept everyone around him smiling. He still does.

I'm still at a loss for words. The vacuum of grief is powerful. When we lose one of God's own prototypes, it's like losing the last black rhino. There will most likely never be a genetic configuration like that ever again. And we were lucky to have been a part of it while it lasted.

Godspeed Doug. And if God won't take you, come on back. There's plenty of room on my side of the bar.

When when is when.

I just had to do the hardest thing I've had to do since being out of the hospital: I canceled my month and a half long road trip to the lower 48. Why? Because I'm just not feeling 100% about it anymore. I'm getting the same feeling I get when I'm out skiing and find myself out of my league. And then, as it is now, is time to pull out. 

I suppose this isn't really the hardest thing ever. I was really looking forward to 4 days on ferry coming down. I was looking forward to seeing my friends in Seattle and other places I  now won't be going to this summer. I'll still be heading home for a few weeks, but I'll be flying instead of driving and be more limited without a vehicle, but I'll be making the right choice for my health. I think this is the first time I've ever really done that.

Maybe this is what wisdom is. Maybe I'm beginning to touch on that often sought state of "enlightenment." Or maybe I'm just not being stupid and listening to what my body is telling me. Either way, this may be the most adult decision I've ever made, when distilled down to it's very core. It's almost as if I'm learning.

What a concept.

Summer In The North

I've been trying to get my thoughts together and do a blog on self-determination, but with the amazing weather we've had since I got out of the hospital, I haven't quite found the time. Camping on beaches whilst shooting guns really eats up your time. Luckily, I pushed myself out of my comfort zone today and wore shorts for the first time in a decade, so I now have a subject to write about.

I'll start off with this: I'm terribly self conscious of my legs since I've broken my back. Most of the time I look down and see these shriveled, knotted sticks where these powerful limbs used to be. But today, that all changed. How? I forced myself to go out in public and present my matchstick legs, for better or worse. And you know what? I feel better about myself. Now, when I look down, I don't see broken, unusable parts. I see me. And it feels great.

As I write this, listening to Bad Brains at high volume, marveling at how much my attitude towards my body has changed over the last 4 years. I used to see this frail, broken reflection in any surface with half a shine. I used to cry myself to sleep because I thought no one could ever love this body, including myself. Now, I just see me. I see my body for what it is, and for the first time, I really accept it. I love it. I love it because it is mine, and no one else's is like it. I am not broken. I am a unique specimen, amongst a sea of unique specimens. And I will swim on.

So, I have a project for you all. Do something that scares you this week. Put yourself out of your comfort zone, even if it's just a little and for a moment. You might be surprised with the results. Word.

Thoughts On The L.A. Riots

I just watched a documentary called Uprising: Hip Hop And The L.A. Riots. It is narrated by Snoop Lion (formerly Snoop Dog for the hip hop illiterate) and tells a pretty objective account of what happened during the end of that history making month of August in 1992. It did a very good job of showing the oxymoronic aspects of the events during and after the riots, such as showing the unifying of the African American community (to destroy their own neighborhoods and raid Korean shops).

I remember watching the riots on T.V. I was 10 and a naive pseudo social anarchist and wanted so much to go to L.A. and see what was  going on for myself (again, naive). I've always been a rebel, and I was fascinated . There was fire and looting and fighting back against the police and everything else that goes along with a city when, as The Roots album that would come out seven years later would put it, "things fall apart." At the time I thought that it was a perfectly logical reaction to the injustice that sparked the largest riots in U.S. since the 1960s. But, being 10 years old, I had no real idea about how truly insane and self destructive the events of the spring of 1992 were. But in the years to come, two events in my life gave me an intimate perspective on violence and rioting.

Almost a year and a half after the L.A. riots, I was living in Sheridan, Wyoming when a man walked onto the football field during 2nd period gym class and began shooting in random directions before taking his own life. I remember hearing the shots, the screams, the teachers melting down in front of their students. Then, during my freshman year at Albuquerque High School in Albuquerque, New Mexico we had a full scale riot at my school when the power went out during a storm and when the backup generator failed (unfortunately I can't find any articles online about this event. If anyone out there has any information about it, or if you were there, please post in the comments section.) These two events changed my opinion on "civil unrest" forever. 

After experiencing these two events, my naivete thoroughly destroyed, they just make me wish we, as a species, could figure out how to treat each other with at least some modicum of respect. Sure, my two examples pale in comparison to what transpired in L.A. in 1992 (or the Watts riots in 1965, for that matter), but they served, in my life, as examples of what not to do. Riots solve nothing. Attempted murder followed by suicide doesn't fix anything. Running wild in your school setting trash cans on fire and fighting anything that moves doesn't solve anything. The only thing these events do is scar our minds and destroy our communities. Rioting and looting may look cool on TV, but in the real world, all they do is perpetuate the division of our species and make it nigh impossible for us to begin the process of making our society better and safer, for everyone.