Top Gun Casualty

We sit in our homes, at our computers, fridges full of food, running water, heat, electricity. A Palestinian family huddles in the corner of a bombed out building, hearing the scream of F16 engines overhead, the dull thud of explosions from US-made bombs shaking the rubble.

That’s F16’s. American made, American supplied. The same planes we watched Tom Cruise fly in Top Gun, in fact. And we wonder why people hate the US, why much of the Arab world treats us with such distain. We sell weapons to Pakistan, trade weapons for hostages in Iran, supply Afghani militants with arms to fight the Russians…

We create a culture of violence across the globe, supply more guns and more bombs, more tanks, more F16’s and act like we’re innocent when another mother loses a child to a US-made air to surface missile. And we’re the ones trying to push middle east peace talks?

Its times like these when I’m ashamed to be a US citizen. The sad thing is, these times are all I know. I was born during the first Regan administration. Cheney, Rumsfeld and company were in charge back then, just like they are now.

It sickens me. The doublespeak of our politicians, the gutless, sensationalistic “reporting” by our mainstream media, the ignorance and downright apathy of our populace. I wish I could do something about it, but I can’t. I wish I could forget everything I know about the atrocities committed  by our government, but I can’t.  I wish I could believe that a new administration will change anything, but I can’t.

I’m not trying to be pessimistic, I’m just well-read. This F16 is losing altitude fast and all highways seem to lead to the danger zone. Sorry for all the Top Gun references, its the only thing keeping me from hitting the eject button. Talk to me, Goose.

Goose?

Moving Forward

Ever been in a place where you don’t know anyone, don’t have a place to stay, don’t have any food to eat, don’t have a dollar to your name, or a means of transportation, stuck alone with nothing but your wits and a few warm clothes…?

Not many suburban US kids can relate to this kind of helplessness, and hopefully not many will have to. It’s a crushing thing, being homeless…It’s taken its toll on my psyche, and even now, almost 2 years after getting back on my feet, I can feel the chill of those cold nights huddled on a rooftop, stomach half-full of leftovers scrounged from the trash.

I was only homeless for a few months, but it lasted a lifetime. I can’t tell you how it happened, just that I kind of gave up on the world and decided to drop out of society for a while.  I was tired of working 60 hours a week just to maintain an apartment and pay my debt. What’s the point of having a home if you’re only there to catch a few hours sleep between shifts?

So I moved all my stuff into storage, packed up a backpack and took off after my friends got sick of me crashing on their couches all the time. I hitchhiked across Utah and Nevada, into California, writing in my journal, eating peanut butter and granola bars, trekking across more and more treacherous terrain until I found myself stuck on the side of some remote valley in Yosemite watching a flash flood tear down the granite slope I had literally just walked across. I sat there in the rain, watching the water rip watermelon-sized rocks out of the ground, down the hill and off the ledge to splash in the surging river 70 feet below. 

I realized something that day, after that near-catastrophe. I realized that life is full of peril, full of potholes and treacherous situations, and if you don’t keep moving forward, if you take too long to stop and get your bearings, you can easily be swept away by some unexpected force. You can’t take complete control of your life because there will always be something bigger and stronger than you to push you in a direction you never expected. That flash flood wasn’t some lame-ass methaphor for god, (I don’t believe in any one omnipresent, omniscient force, that’s fucking ignorant) it was simply a reminder to watch myself and my surroundings, to grow and adapt to the world around me instead of trying to drop out and do it all myself.

I spent a few more weeks out on the road, then returned to CO and got another shitty little deli job, lived out of a storage unit for a while, wrote a lot of poetry and read at a lot of open mics until I got picked up for an old bench warrant and thrown in jail for a week or so. Got out, found out I lost my job and almost took off again, but instead I wrote some more, kept looking forward…Within a week I got a call from my dad asking if I wanted to come to Hawaii and work on a ranch. The rest is history.

I know if society collapsed and order desintigrated into chaos, I’d probably be ok, I’d get by, I’d survive on the ashes and rubble of the old world and help create a new one, but until then, I’m going to live without getting caught up in some dead-end job, career or relationship that slows me down and distracts me from the path forward. In all my trials and struggles, the one thing I’ve established is that if you don’t progress, you never grow. If you don’t evolve and adapt to the constantly changing circumstances around you, you’ll get swept away by that unseen force and never find your way back.

I may have drifted away a couple times, got caught in the current and pulled downstream, but every time I’ve picked myself up and moved on. Its the reason I’m still here…

Road Ramblings

On the road man. To describe the feeling of hitchhiking across the country is nearly impossible. It’s a visceral experience, one that can only be lived, not captured through words, art or music. It’s the closest I’ve ever gotten to freedom in this country: freedom to decide whether you’re headed to Portland Oregon or Portland Maine; freedom to wander through some podunk town in Bumfuck, Nowhere just for the hell of it; freedom to sleep under the stars on top of a Ralph’s in Willits, California, where you’ve just shoplifted your dinner because you don’t got a dime to your name.

But it has its risks, especially traveling alone. I’ve gotten picked up by speed freak truckers who wouldn’t let me out of the cab until I pulled my knife out and threatened them. I’ve gotten picked up by crazy rednecks who decide to start shooting their pistol out the window while we’re driving down the highway. I’ve been literally kicked out of a car for stating my political views.

So why do I do this? Why do I live this way, take these risks, sitting on the side of the road with my thumb out, sunburned and dirty, stomach empty, head full of possibilities, lonely as all hell?

Maybe it’s a masochistic streak I haven’t let go of yet. Maybe it’s for the experience, something to draw from as a writer. Or maybe I’ve done the 9 to 5 bullshit and realize that it’s killing my soul and every dollar I make has taxes taken out of it that go to a government that perpetuates everything I’ve stood up and fought against, protested against, screamed myself hoarse about to anyone who will listen.

But who knows? Tomorrow I may meet the love of my life, settle down, have kids, get a job and forget about trying to change the world, forget about my dreams as a writer, forget about all the crazy things I’ve done and times I’ve had. The world we live in and the lives we live are constantly in flux, and if you can’t take every moment and spend it doing something that fulfills you as a person, why the fuck are you living at all?

College dropout

I wrote that last post almost six years ago, at a time in my life when I had no focus, no goals, no home, no purpose. Just another hard-partying college kid with a dream of being a writer someday, taking full advantage of my newfound freedom to indulge in every hedonistic thrill know to man.

I went to college because it seemed like the right thing to do, because I was sick of hanging out in the town where I went to high school, working shitty food service jobs. I took a year off after graduating high school, worked construction out on the east coast and travelled around Europe for a while, ended up back in Boulder, CO with a burning thirst for new experience, new knowledge, new social interaction.  So I took off again and did the college thing for a couple years, but right around 9/11, something shifted.

Now I’ve always been a wee bit disenchanted with our country. Probably has something to do with the fact I read books instead of watching TV, but after 9/11,  after reading every newspaper, magazine and investigative report I could find, I was sickened by the misinformation and doublespeak. The vast majority of American media was not even asking questions of the government, but simply acting as a mouthpiece for their rhetoric of fear and racism. I was going to school for journalism and this is the career I had to look forward to? Copying a press report from the White House and calling it truth?

I pretty much dropped out right around then. Granted I was still attending classes (every once in a while), but my focus shifted to the world around me, the Orwellian shift taking place at the top levels of our government. Facism in action, disguised as a holy crusade in the name of democracy and justice. I started publishing my own newspaper on campus, focusing on things like the PATRIOT Act, the CIA/Bin Laden connection, the Carlyle group, the rhetoric against Iraq that was increasing on a daily basis as Afghanistan was bombed into even worse ruin than we left it in after the Cold War.

About a month before we started bombing  Iraq, I attended a protest in Colorado Springs and had my first taste of street action. Choking on tear gas waving a sign saying “bombing for peace is like fucking for chastity,” I finally felt that I was doing something to stand up to this vast system of greed and injustice. I dropped out of college a few months later and began a new life…

The Birth of a New World Order

September 11th…

   I woke up in my dorm room with a raging hangover, still wearing the clothes I had put on 2 days before, trying to figure out why the hell I was being shaken awake by my friend Maggie when I didn’t have class for another three hours.

   “Cody…CODY! Wake up dude, someone just blew up the World Trade Center in New York,” she pleaded in a voice unusually solemn for her bubbly demeanor.

   “Sweet,” I responded, “You got a cigarette?”

   I sat up, sending a new jolt of pain through my already throbbing head, and grunted at my roommate Adam, who had just come in with Maggie. He looked pale, but who doesn’t after a three day whiskey and painkillers binge. He handed me a USA Gold (smoke of choice for broke-ass college kids), passed one to Maggie and lit one himself. We smoked in silence for a while, until I asked:

   “Fuck man, did we eat Percs again last…”

   Before I could finish, Maggie interrupted me, “Cody seriously, someone blew up the WTC and tried to blow up the White House. It’s all over the news.”

   “I know, I heard you,” I grinned, blowing a plume of cheap smoke up at the dirty cinderblock ceiling, “Did they get Bush?”

   Maggie gave me a look like I’d just decapitated her pet dog, threw up her hands in disgust, slammed her half-finished cigarette in an empty 40 bottle and stormed out of the room. “Jeez,” I giggled, still half-drunk, “I knew her parents were Republican, but what’s her problem?”

   “Its serious shit dude,” Adam sighed, “Just come to the student center. C’mon, I’m late for class.”

   “You go to class?” I quipped, and he just shook his head and headed for the door. I threw on my running shoes (sans socks), grabbed a dirty t-shirt of the floor and threw it over my head, muttering, “Hang on fucknuts, I’m fucking coming”

   The dorms were oddly quiet, no music blaring from open doors, no meathead ruckus coming from the communal bathroom. The people we passed were like zombies, staring blankly straight ahead or down at the tips of their shoes. Now granted, this zombie look is not uncommon on college campuses, especially among freshmen exploring their newfound freedom from authority (a.k.a. engaging in hardcore partying and promiscuous sex), but this felt damn peculiar.

   We walked out of the dorms, across to the student center which housed our cafeteria, computer lab and bookstore, when the door flew open and Jackie, a little hottie from Long Island with whom I shared a few classes, burst out with both hands covering her face, sobbing hysterically.

   “Jackie, you ok girl?” I asked, confused as all hell, trying to put on a reassuring smile.

   “Th..they…they got the other one…” She stammered, then broke into a fresh spasm of sobs and ran toward the dorms.

   “What the fuck is going on he…” I cut myself off mid-word, looking at the scene in the student center. The place was packed, but completely silent, with the exception of a few stifled sobs and nervous foot shifting. All eyes were riveted to the TV’s in each corner of the dining area. They were all tuned to CNN, but it wouldn’t have mattered what channel, because all the networks were tuned to the same image, an image that within less than a day became the most played image in media history: the second plane flying into the towers.

    I couldn’t tell you what my initial reaction to the footage was, but within a few seconds I had hundreds of questions zipping around my now completely sober head. Thoughts like: Is the country under attack? Who did it? Are there more targets; are there more planes in the air? Should we get ready for chaos and anarchy? Is this the collapse of western civilization?

   It took about 3-4 times to actually register that this was indeed real, it was happening right now. I shook myself from the daze, left Adam staring transfixed at the tube and headed straight for the computer lab. Sat down, logged on and took a deep breath. Then I started typing and feverishly clicking the mouse, and didn’t stop for a long time.

   I sat on that computer for the better part of three hours, checking every newspaper I could think of, every international news outlet, every database I had access to for my journalism classes, trying to get the real story, or at least a well-rounded picture of what was happening.

   See, the shit they were showing on TV wasn’t the real deal. That became obvious when CNN stuck in some footage of Palestinians celebrating the destruction, which was actually tape of a New Year’s celebration in ‘96. There was much more than what was being reported in the major outlets. I knew this. I also knew I was witnessing the biggest spectacle in media history.

   What I didn’t know was that I was also witnessing the birth of a new era, not just for the American people, not just for the Bush administration, but for myself as well.