Into the Hornet's Nest with 'Alphabet'

I think a big part of why we're all so upset about being 25 and not knowing what to do is because there seem to be other people who have it all figured out, are happy all the time, and don't worry about this stuff. Mostly, these people are older. That should be enough to arrest us out of angst but it's not so we'll press on. New York could be a hornets nest, obviously. Or life after College. Or a band. Really, anything interesting and dangerous is a hornets nest. And that's everything worth doing. Is it strange that sometimes I envy Elphaba (the dog)?

My friend Evan says that I, like most people, am afraid of change. He's right, and not in a bad way or anything. Once you set up systems for yourself that you can fall back on - a job, a relationship, an apartment, roommates - abandoning those systems leave you open to all sorts of trouble. And lets get something clear: a well taken care of dog is an obvlivious rich kid. Take all the risks you want and someone will clean the skunk off of you. So how do you stick your muzzle into the nest unafraid of getting stung to shit?

Le'ts all do that thing where we sniff really quickly inoutinoutinout and then let out a big HHhhhhhnnnnnnn! and resume the inoutinoutinout. Cause that's how dogs start. I'll abstain from making a list of my findings (the things I'm happy and sad about in my life). Besides, this list is unimportant, irrelevant. It's not the specifics of the hornets nest, it's the fearless, happy attitude about exploration. Elphaba is constantly in a state of play. Everything is playtime. And why wouldn't it be? Eating, sleeping, running, jumping, sleeping, tug-of-war, fetch, car rides and sleeping are all so much fun!

So we've got two things to focus on that I bet will make life at 25 a whole lot easier:

1) You have to be fearless when it comes to change. New car? New job? New city? Great. Take a walk, smell someone else's ass, and go to sleep. It'll be a blast.

2) You have to balance the weight of detractors with the weight of reinforcements. For example, if you're going to be upset about going to work five mornings a week looking for a new job, then you have to be equally happy about sleeping in and watching a football game (or movie or hiking or Civil War reenactments) with your buddies on the weekend. In other words, if you're owner makes you hunt with him all day, make sure you catch a pleasant nap on the living room floor that night.

That's really it, as far I can tell right now. Besides, those two are pretty hard without having anything else to do. Happy and fearless. Happy about the good things and fearless about changing the bad things.

Hush

It's one of those things that no one warns you about: how cold it gets when the window shade is a damp towell hugging chipped paint with duct tape and cigarette ash.

Through a mask of hazelnut and hope, you walk like a zombie to the yellow brick N-train surrounded by people who share your boxed wine dreams.

(wake up, please)

Your best friends cost ten dollars and die between your fingers while you feed the murderer with complacent lighter fluid and mediocrity. Trade your secure top bunk for a pillow top with a phone bill and credit card debt. Ain't the internet grand?

(please, please wake up)

How many bookcases do you need? How many socks? How many flat tires to fix when the bike shop doesn't open. Walk across the bridge just to find out the cheerleader has run off with the asshole beneath the laughing cow suit? Really?

(oh god oh god, please help me wake up)

Shhhh. Hush now. It's just the highway you hear. But it runs all time and it's soooo loud! It's just a dream, Jimmy, go back to sleep. It's not a dream, I saw him, he was driving his car too close - I saw him!! Shhhh. Hush.

It Moves Fast

So you work a job. It pays well. Hooray! But can it support a college fund? I don't even know what that entails. In fact, do people set up college funds anymore? Maybe the whole world went to shit one day while I was taking a nap. How would I know? After all, I sleep pretty well and maybe I hit the snooze button by accident.

Max, one of my best friends, approached me on the couch last night holding his favorite blue toy in his mouth. Like any great friend, he dumped his slobbery, smelly mess right on my lap. Wagged his tail. I don't think Max expects much of me. I have to put out his food and make sure he gets outside every couple hours to take a leak. But then, Max really expects everything from me, doesn't he? Cause it's not the tangible, easy-to-pour answers that come in a bag. He wants me to be with him. To be with him. Fully present. Fully human. How did it get so hard to do that?

When I was little, before iPhones and Facebook and bills and a College degree, I woke up, wagged my own damn tail and chased after the only thing I wanted more than food and sleep: women. Andrea and Caitlin and Leslie and even Vivienne with the high-pitched voice. I was on a mission all the time for love and attention. Maybe now that I've got all the love I could ever want (read: the woman my dreams could not come close to conjuring), I have nothing to chase?

Like I said, my job pays all my bills and the debt. And like Garrison Keillor said, "Being comfortable makes you stupid."

My band is pretty good. Is it my band?

I don't want to feel better. I don't want to feel numb. I want to know what these feelings are. Name them like Bastian did in the Neverending Story.

Be a doctor, be a teacher, be a musician, be a father, be a mechanic. Be me. Wow. That's so annoyingly trite. But to press on just for shits and giggles, I'm sitting here on a couch next to the world's greatest dog, a phonecall away from the world's greatest girlfriend, a few emails away from the world's greatest bestfriends and I don't know who I am, what I want and how I went from knowing everything to knowing nothing.

I think I'll ask Max. I have a feeling he knows more than he's letting on. Stinky-breath mother fucker with his goddamn floppy ears flopping everywhere. And he's got crazy eyes! They don't go in the same direction for christsake! He's probably a spy. Hahahahahahaha.

If life were easy, it wouldn't be any fun.

If I were a wolf

Fun.

Fuuuuhhhhhhhhnnnnnnnn.

It would be fun.

Not fun like chasing girls or eating ice cream or chewing bubblegum outside of the library. Fun like slowly breaking every window in a house. Fun like watching someone on a cell phone walk gently into a glass door, crushing bones in her nose squeezing blood all over her shirt.

Fun like fighting.

Take your double-shot peppermint skim mocha whip and shove it right up your ass. I wouldn't get so angry about these things. To eat Arctic hare or not to eat Arctic hare, what's to be mad about?

Yippity yappity bitch-face dog, you weigh six pounds! Why are you so loud? And what are you so up-in-arms about anyway? Perhaps you're upset because the human holding onto your leash can lift you off the ground with one arm and does so quite frequently. That would piss me off too. Fortunately for me, most people don't come near me. I weigh ninety pounds and my eyes are white as a wraith. Although I'm quite calm, they see only the madness.

My friend Bill Stratton is part wolf. About a quarter, I think. One quarter bear, one quarter wolf, one quarter Native American and just a touch of Scottish. His reach makes him a dangerous boxer. He snores louder than a subway car. His eyes can

see.

right?

through you.

My eyes are yellow in the middle, as if there's a dying star being eclipsed by the black expanding cornea moon. The color darts out and dodges light in streaks and straws. It leaks onto the blue-green foundation behind it so on any given day they might be blue, green or something in the middle. But they're never white. They never peer out of snow drifts like sniper rifle tips, watching, waiting.

sure, i'll wag my tail and lick your hand. (Don't fuck with me.) yes. yesss. pet me. (I'll fucking kill you.) oh, is that food in your hand? sure, i would love some. (I will fucking tear out yourfuckingeyesandpissinyoureyesocketswhilegnawingyourkidneys.)

I'm not mad. I'm not. You think I'm mad

Because I walk to you and smell you and I know that when you take a piss, it leaks out for an hour afterwards.

Because when I look at you and you look at me, I'm seeing you and you're watching me.

Because when we go to the park and all the Golden Retrievers and Beagles and Shih-tzus run around licking their asses, I lay down waiting. Running on concrete isn't running, not like running across a thousand miles of snow and ice part of a team, part of a pack, part of a family.

Because if it came down to me or you, brother, it'd be you.

Grandpa Yaps

At eighteen, I was put in charge of eight boys. We spent most of our days together and talked all night. As they watched me hang out with my friends, other eighteen-year-olds, I realized that I was their older brother. If I was in a group of three other guys, I would catch little glances from my boys watching how I behaved. "This is great!" I thought to myself. "I've never had younger brothers before," and my ego is soaring.

One afternoon, one of my kids pulled me aside and asked if we could take a walk. His face was a little flushed, his eyes a little swollen, and by the time we arrived at the bench outside of Brody, he let out a well of tears. I thought long and hard before each sentence that I said to him. I was choosing words as carefully as a symphony conductor, delicately trying to balance comfort, support and humor.

My kid. My kids. I wasn't their older brother, I was their father.

Fast-forward eight years: On a Friday morning a couple of weeks ago, the director of Camp Dudley read aloud a letter sent to one of the Leaders, Teddy Dale. The letter basically said, "It is abundantly clear that my son had such an incredible experience with [Ted] that I felt compelled to put it in writing. But more than just a good time, he came home with a sense of personal pride and maturity that I have never seen before. Thank you, thank you, thank you."

Teddy Dale was one of my campers. (No, not the crying one.)

As Ted and I were talking one night a few days after the letter was read aloud, I congratulated him on being a spectacular Leader. I told him that I was immensely proud of his work as a Leader and overjoyed that I could tell people he was one of my campers. His response was honest and immediate. He began to tell me about all of the things I did when I was his Leader. None of it was illegal or out-of-line with camp protocol. In fact, it was the same type of thing that any Leader would probably do, just my version of it all: He described the way I cooked on our overnight. And the cabin games we played. The vespers at night. Funny kids in our cabin. Waking up early to play soccer and staying up late to listen to music. When he was thirteen, I was Ted's father. And now that he is twenty-two, he is someone else's father. The scope, the emotion, the meaning is overwhelming for me. If I return to camp in ten years, and Ted is there and one of his former campers is a Leader, then I will be a grandfather. Like Maker's Mark, as each new batch is made, a teaspoon of the old batch is added. Maybe it'll be early-morning soccer. Maybe it'll be a vesper. Just a teaspoon.

Camp Dudley has been around for 125 years. But that fact really only matters to the parents. The motto is, "The Other Fellow First." But that tidbit only matters to the campers. Or perhaps, those who try to follow it. Dudley is not about campers, it is about leaders. Not the college guys who direct activities. It's about the one or two kids in a cabin who show everyone else how to act. It's about the aide, 15 years old, who is more mature than all his peers. It's about the Junior or Assistant Leader, 16 and 17 years old, who is ready for his own cabin. Most boys try to follow the motto. These leaders are the motto.

So when you wonder why I've spent twelve of the last thirteen years at Dudley, sometimes for a few weeks, sometimes for an entire summer, here is the answer: Dudley is where I go to take care of my boys. Dudley is where I go to become the motto. Dudley is where I go to be a father.

The Wanting Comes in Waves

For the wonderful few who dig my writing, I apologize for virtually disappearing - I was in upstate New York for a few weeks, doing... making... um. I was in upstate New York, nevermind.

I'll try to get something up here soon. I've tried a few different things in the past couple of hours but nothing seems to stick.

The Harvest of Love

I really like the Decemberists, "Hazards of Love." I think I'm the only one outside of the hardcore fans. That's alright though. It's got some great moments and I appreciate the process/goal of the thing. Sometimes it's not about the crops, it's about the harvest.

Band practice the other night was really amazing. We were going at it until almost 1:00 a.m. in MJ and Rob's apartment. No instruments, no music, just pizza and a couple of Bud Lights.

I have to call Billy Stratton today on my drive up to camp - he can explain to me the fostering of an independant spirit and how it relates to Motorcycles.

Ilana comes home in about four weeks.

Faf will be gone when I get back.

Sometimes it's not about the crops, it's about the harvest.