I am in Guatemala. I have learned so much in Guatemala. I have been here for two weeks, alone. Each day my Spanish improves and I become less alone. The people are warm and generous and now I’m able to communicate with them. I have also gotten the opportunity to explore the beautiful landscapes, cities and some of the wilderness here. It is a complicated and beautiful place and I am grateful to be able to visit.
On the first day I arrived in Guatemala, I flew into La Aruora in Guatemala’s aptly named capital city: Guatemala City. One of the busiest airports in Central America it was immediately different from the world I had just came from. I checked my phone and received a text from my shuttle driver to meet outside the blue cafe by the airport pickup. There were I estimate 100,000,000 people waiting behind the security checkpoint. It was dense and hot and the air was humid and moist. There were predatory rental car salesmen and taxi drivers tugging on my shirt and asking to drive me. I sat for a while, waiting for my driver. A small stout man with an undercut ran up to me and said, “Reece Taylor-é” to which I nodded and followed him. The shuttle contained me and two other travelers that were dropped off at a nice hotel beside the airport. I, however, continued. The one hour drive took three hours. The driver, Mateo was talented, able to reply to and watch the horniest TikTok algorithm known to man whilst also driving 100km/h down the tightest, windiest and most densely packed mountain roads in Central America. We chatted a bit about Alaska and the US. He says he wants to visit and I told him he should wait a little bit. He laughed.
The houses in Guatemala city are small and dirty and made of sheet metal. I saw them from the window. I realized this was my first time seeing something like this. This is Guatemala’s middle class. Working families in multigenerational homes, with no potable water. I felt guilty. This is not mentioned to paint myself as some white saint visiting a developing place. Most people here live normal lives with family dinners, smartphones and regular jobs. It just looks very different than my regular life and that is worth acknowledging. It is also noting that Guatemala got here through a complicated history that involves Americans.
Guatemala was a part of the meso-american and Mayan world for centuries. It was conquered by the Spanish in the 1700s where it served as the capital of colonial Central America, its capital city being Antigua (then called Guatemala City.) A series of horrific and huge earthquakes and volcanic eruptions led to the city of Antigua being abandoned for higher ground. Under the Spanish it is a familiar story, with whiter people being held in high regard, their mixed children below them and native Mayan population being used only as human machinery. The nation’s people began to take on a sovereign identity from Spain and declared their independence in 1821.This led to more instability and a number of civil conflicts within the now named Federal republic of Central America. With a handful of power shuffles occurring every decade this gave the CIA a golden opportunity to back powerful dictators and do what the CIA does best; destabilize and rebuild in its own interest. Guatemala’s democratic party fought back and usurped one of its most prolific and corrupt dictators Jorge Ubico (known to actively and affectionately compare himself to Adolf Hitler.) This usurpation by democratic rebels led to a revolution or The Ten Years of Spring, an era of agrarian, social and political reform. Most notably reversing the effects of the American owned United Fruit Company. A company that traded fruit through the tropics. It did this by purchasing land cheaply from the government, that belonged to native people to then enslave them and reap the rewards for American investors. In 1954 The US backed another dictator after ending the period of revolution and reform in Guatemala. This led to 40 years of civil war. The military dictatorship was not popular a series of rebellions led by the Guerilla Army of The Poor punctuate this period. At its peak held 270,000 members, usually poor Mayan farmers. The US sponsored the war against these people, killing 200,000 civilian soldiers and backing an ethnic cleansing against the Mayan People in the 1980s. Eventually, the United States negotiated a peace accord which led to economic growth and democratic elections; the Guatemala I am in today.
I have only now read the history of this place, as I write this reflection. In Antigua I paid for a guided walking tour through the ruins and historical parts of the city. My guide called “Wilson” met me alone in the Parque Central of Antigua. I told him to look for the man so pale it would blind him. To my surprise I was the only person on this tour. Wilson, from a rural town near Quetzeltanango (another of Guatemala’s largest cities) is of Ixil Mayan descent. (The group targeted the most in the massacres by military forces.) I don’t find the Spanish colonial history of Guatemala that interesting, and unfortunately Antigua is full of it. I told him this early on and that I was mostly interested in meso-american history and the nature nearby. We walked the markets and I asked him a pointed and in retrospect ignorant question. I said, “What does it mean to be Mayan or native to you? Do you mind if I ask how this has affected your life?” He asked me to keep my voice down, and told me that he would answer as we left the markets. His answer was refreshing, he spoke only of the hardship and discrimination of growing up Mayan and not its recent history. Seemingly dancing around the words racist or discriminated. He mentioned that Mayan people don’t get votes and so they don’t get representation. This was before I knew anything about the persecution that happened so recently in Guatemala’s history. I was amazed by Wilson, he is a linguist and is very proud of his native history. Our conversations now reminds me of a quote by Stephan Jay Gould, “I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” Wilson also spoke of his time growing up in the woods. He was very interested in conservation, being taught from a young age that the Ixil are not separate from nature. This was exciting to me as conservation is something I connect closely with.
I have confusing feelings on conservation in a place like Guatemala. So much of the native jungle and forest has been razed for coffee fincas and fruit plantations. Profitable businesses that most of the world love and rely on. The most enjoyable moments of my trip though have been my moments of solitude in nature and I’ve felt there is too much commercialization of the beauty here. Conga lines of guided gringos line the trails of the volcanos, as local porters take the risk of doing this climb 2-3 times a week for only $30. I really think it should require a substantial amount of work and lack of convenience to see the beauty here. I think if that were so, these beautiful places would be more respected and less trafficked. The berms of trails and roads are filled with trash and the paths are horribly eroded. The porters and guides are here to make a living mostly, and take little responsibility for the trash and erosion as they have lots of work to do. Wild dogs line the trails eating trash and scraps scaring off native foxes, monkeys and unique and beautiful birds. This sentiment I realize is not a new one and is an echo of many naturalists who come before me. The truth is we are truly spoiled by our parks in the US. We have the best wilderness in the world. Nature is not something to be conquered, it is something we are a part of. We are not separate from the trees and rivers. But it’s easy to say that when I have potable water and an American income. How can we blame others for razing forests in search of a life commensurate with mine? After Antigua I went to Lake Atitlan.
Exploring Lake Atitlan was incredible. You could spend a lifetime in each village alongside the lake. A body of water resting at the same elevation as Denver CO, filling the bowl of what was once the ash cone of an enormous super volcano. It’s one of the most beautiful places in the world. Each town offers a more distinct feel than the last, there is San Pedro with its local feel and tourist driven economy. Panajachel is large and dense and bright with vibrant nightlife and great street vendors. I spent a few days in San Marcos. San Marcos is absolutely the most beautiful place on the lake. The water is cleaner, the views are spectacular. I spoke to a restaurant owner who tells a familiar story however. After covid, many people moved into town, working remotely and using their inflated wages to build massive compounds and homes. Driving up the price of the area. San Marcos is now a “spiritual sanctuary.” a place for ascetic types to learn yoga, meditation, spiritual practice all while benefitting off the locale. There are community efforts of course, to close the large disparities between the rich gringos and the people from here. But it’s funny to me. The lack of conservation in a different form. Can you blame them? It’s a beautiful place, it’s cheap and provides a great life and community for you or your family.
I am amazed with Guatemala. It’s a place of kind and patient people. They work hard and live vibrantly. Music and fireworks are to be played and detonated at all hours for every celebration. Cultural heritage is rich and family is important. But the history is dark, and plagued with interference from disaster and people with more than plenty. I enjoyed my time here. It is worth going, but there is just a general uneasiness around being a tourist. Tourist areas are policed extra, cleaned extra and lipsticked a bit extra. I feel as though I visited a Guatemala carefully manicured to make me and other drunk backpackers from around the world feel safe and adventurous. I hope one day I can return with better spanish and get a real feel for the place.
Adventure log: Coleman Cirque via Abra Cove
Trip goal: Climb up Abra Cove and camp at the alpine lake behind Coleman bay (and Abra) Trip outcome: Camped Abra Saddle, climbed to the Coleman Cirque and returned in one piece. Elevation Gain: ~2200ft, 2ish miles.
Day 1:
I am writing this after climbing up all of Abra with Jack. Nick Von Schlegell and Nick Witherbee joined us for a section of the climb, but left early as to be able to return home and sleep in their own beds before work tomorrow. Jack is a true adventurer and will be starting his work day tomorrow with a Think! bar and a 2,000 foot sketchy down-climb and then 45 minute paddle back to the lodge to start his shift.
The start of the absolutely bi-pass-able bushwhack
The climb began around 6pm with a “little scramble” up a fairly sheer waterfall that I wasn’t 100% confident I could get down with my very heavy bag on. I had packed my backpack like shit (not sure why) and it was very difficult to climb in. I was feeling slow and tired but my stoke was high and carried my legs upwards.
After we finished the waterfall section the beta (climby shit) got a bit easier. We continued directly through 1000 feet of alder trees and salmon berry brush. My 4 inch short shorts protected my legs very nicely from the waist deep thorn bushes we were whacking our way through. (on the descent we realized the entire bushwhack was unnecessary.
The final push up to the saddle we decided to camp at
We sat at the top of a granite cliff and rested briefly, looking out over Aialik Glacier and the northern side of the bay. This is where we parted ways with Nick² and began the second half of the adventure. The rest of the climb looked pretty much completely insurmountable because of how far away the top was. But we pressed on. We reached the first saddle before the upper ridge and decided this would be camp, as to give us clearance to make an expedited decent the next day. After dropping our packs on the ridge and setting up a tent, we ran to the top of the ridgeline.
The view from our campsite
The ridge looked impossibly far away. But we made great time and found ourselves surrounded by gorgeous waterfalls and incredibly slippery snow. We chose to stick to the rock as the granite was sticky and proved to be mostly sturdy. The ridge was in our sights. The thing that had seemed so far away was actually in-front of us. I told Jack, “Im going to sprint to the top.” And began to run as fast as I could up the grassy meadowy hill, I stopped breathlessly after 10 steps and waited for Jack to catch up. As we reached the top of the ridgeline, I felt a sense of tremendous pride in my ability to plan and accomplish something like this. I prepared myself to peer over the summit and onto the other side of Abra Cove. My calves were tired, my legs were aching and I knew the pay off was near. We crested the ridge and saw it; 100 more feet of scrambling to get to the actual summit that was hidden behind where we were standing. It was a brilliant moment, standing there and admiring a wall of rock. There was a very trust worthy and stable goat path that led us up to where we wanted to be and now, finally, we could see over the Abra ridge line. It was honestly pretty cool and I realized this wasn’t a wash. That was a good moment.
The lake held a lot more snow than I thought it would and is still mostly frozen over despite our 70 degree days lately.
Jack spotted the lake in the distance for the first time. It was very cool to see it from an angle that looked approachable (whereas the other time I have seen it, there was a crumbling cliff between us and it.) We admired a huge family of mountain goats clambering away from the ridge line and down towards the lake. There had to have been around 20 of them. The young goats yelped and cried for their mom and ran to meet with everyone else. We stood and watched the goats for a few minutes and then headed towards the lake.
The decent to the lake was very fine and manageable. The goats make nice trails for themselves. We got about 2/3 of the way to a nice viewpoint and figured the snow was not worth the pain of navigating and traversing it and decided to head back to camp. The view of the alpine lake still frozen over in late July was special though. It’s hard to celebrate accomplishments like that when you still have so much to do and so far to go and when your beer is in the bag you left behind.
Mostly snowy and mostly frozen! This is the lake that feeds the large waterfalls in Coleman. Likely formed from a glacier that carved away the material that hid the amphitheater.
We traversed slightly differently on the way back. I used my nearly bare butt cheeks as a sled to ride myself to our campsite, we arrived around 10pm. Cracking open a beer and cheer-sing over ramen and “tuna mac” we sat on the spongy meadow overlooking The Pederson Lagoon from up high. A flying fishes eye-view of the place we call home for the summers. The most remarkable place I know was now puny and smaller than me. I contemplated crushing such an insignificant thing with my now enormous fingers. I hesitated after imagining the mess it would leave. Too much to do, and in bear country it could be catastrophic.
The view from the Abra ridge looking west, Pederson lagoon, Slate Island and Aialik Glacier
After cleaning up dinner and loading up the bear canister I scouted for a suitable spot to rest it, far from camp and with all of our smellable belonging. The perfect spot shone itself to me like a burning bush, some mere 50 feet up the ridge line from our camp. I walked over and debated between two spots; one open and mossy, exposed. The other protected by the security of an alder tree. I placed the bear-can under the nearest branch, confidently. But the bear-can began to roll. I could do nothing but shout, “No! Please NO!” It continued to roll and tumble down a cliff . It was 11:30 at night. I ran to get my headlamp and Jack and I sent down the cliffs to try to retrieve it. Afterall, Jack’s Think! bar was in there (his entire breakfast) and he needs that make the descent tomorrow.
The bear-can can be seen in this image, a small orangey reflective speck nestled neatly in the grass about 1/3 up from the bottom on the image.
We found the bear-can about 150 feet down, rested on the flattest spot of the final ledge before a sheer drop to the bottom of the cirque. We felt grateful that this small ledge was here and that the bear can stopped rolling and did not explode.
We found it.
After returning, I wrote this log in my tent. Too tired to blow up my mattress pad and too exhausted to sleep, awaiting whatever the fuck tomorrow was gonna look like.
Day 2:
After an abysmal night of sleep, thinking of every terrible scenario that could happen on this down climb and also karate chopping mosquitoes that were loaded with my blood, we awoke at 6:30am.
The blood on my hands is my own. It was contained within the hundreds of mosquitos that made their way though the flaps of my tent. Not to be confused with what could be the blood of my now puny and tiny coworkers crushed by my enormous hands.
The night was beautiful, and Aialik bay was serene and calm. I watched the sun drop down and satellites pass over my head. It is finally getting dark for a few hours this time of year. There was a meteor shower, and the lack of artificial light meant that every piece of space rock disintegrating in the ozone layer was visible to my stupid eyes. A healing silence of this kind is an opportunity afforded to only those who seek it and found only in places like this.
In the morning I poured some ice cold water into my “mountain house granola, blueberries and milk” and stirred. Sitting on a ledge I put my butt in the wet moss. Not caring if the bog would soak though my pants. After a few minutes of stirring I took a bite and savored the taste of the rancid dehydrated milk. I had owned this premade meal for probably three years now and decided to finally use it. Maybe thats just how these mountain house breakfasts taste but I couldn’t finish it. I ate some trail-mix instead.
Jack and I packed our bags really tightly. We started down the chutes and flatirons trusting only the rubber of our boots to carry us. Much like standing on a subway platform and imagining yourself being sliced in half under a train, I couldn’t help but imagine what it would feel like to tumble hundreds of feet down the granite like a bear canister. That is a good motivator to not fall. All things considered, the down climb was not that bad for the first 2/3rds. The bottom chunk was exposed, and bare and steep, but after some path finding and repeating the phrase “I don’t love it but it looks doable,” every 10 feet. We had now made it to the start of the route. I had not felt this relieved in awhile. We shuffled our gear into our boats after moving them 200 yards to the low tide line. We paddled out for home around 8:45am.
In summary, definitely climb Abra. It will make you feel capable and inspired. It will make you feel terrified and humbled. It will challenge you to do moves you’ve never tried, with backpacks that are too large and on rock that might hold. Climb Abra if you are one of the people in the world that has whatever incurable sickness we had. The kind that makes you walk into brush, and shout at sleeping bears. It is one thing to go for a hike, its another thing to make a hike. Have fun out there.
Well well well. I wish I had a more grandiose excuse or even a passable one. But admittedly I am just lazy! It is the truth. I find myself angry at the end of some days because despite my best intentions I have not achieved what I initially set out to complete that day. This blog post has been one of those things, for a year. I struggled internally with writing anything at all because nothing I wrote was even that funny. Was it worth posting if it was not funny? I can not disappoint all three of my readers, or especially Grace as I wordlessly watch her read this (at gunpoint) moments after I upload it. So what is there to say? Really? I live in Alaska now and have been since May. There are no grand truths to be revealed about living in a mysterious place like this. It is beautiful, and that is why most people like it. Some like it because they are drunk and that is good enough for them. I respect those people. Because if you are going to come into the liquor side of the worlds-smallest-and-most-fluorescent-grocery-store to start today’s handle of Burnett’s. It may as well be in the company of a moose and several free-range dogs. I have written about Alaska on this blog before. It is the last frontier. As the summer sun dips below the horizon and hangs below there until May, the wounds of the state begin to appear more and more against the contrast of its pristine snowfall. It is far from a perfect place. I have met really strange and wonderful people. It puts you closer in touch with your immediate needs more than any other state in the USA ( aside from maybe Delaware, as one of the most fundamental human needs is getting the fuck out of Delaware.)
Working seasonally in remote Alaska is as everyone expects; dirty, fun and full of semi-hippie millennials. I wish we could dodge the allegations, but we are all the same. It was not a surprise to me that I got along immediately with all my white wanderlusty coworkers who love being outside! Wow, I have the same sandals! There was little to no drama. Days were spent working a lot for a little, eating together, drinking a lot of beer. Paddling to mind-bogglingly beautiful places to eat and drink somewhere else together. I want to throw like one genuine manic bush person or a never-booked EDM DJ or 11 Guatemalan dudes because that’s just what I’m used to. I can work with that. It’s like the episode of Spongebob where Squidward moves to that neighborhood with all the other Squidwards and realizes misery is actually what makes him feel alive. Not to say I won’t be going back, or staying. But if I have to hear about Infinite Jest one more time or have a nostalgic conversation about Twisted Tea I may sink the Kenai Fjords deep into the ocean sooner than scheduled. Is there a solution to this? I don’t really know man. It’s bigger than me, really. There’s not much else to be said about this summer. I lived in a Nat Geo documentary. Salmon ate bears directly out of the water. Seals flew by our heads. Birds calved massive blocks of ice into the water right in front of me. Glaciers dove down from hundreds of feet to reemerge on the surface with three fish in their beaks. I sacrificed a couple of comforts in order to do so but not as many as you’d think; shower a little less, no power in the cabin, internet in one place only and you cannot leave unless you take a long boat ride back. Standing behind the bar and being told nearly every day “I wish I did something like this when I was your age.” did help assuage any second thoughts I had. Granted I had already packed my already few belongings and driven nearly to Russia. Genuinely, it did. If you are reading this and thinking, “Hey that sounds so sweet and rad and I think I wanna do that too.” Then you are white and know all the words to Too Sweet by Hozier. But also, you should! Ask me, and I’ll tell you how.
I work at THE grocery store in town. The small-town feel is real. Everyone knows each other’s names, the Facebook page is always busy here. This is very new to me. I have never ever known my neighbors before. But I sort of know at least a little bit about everybody now. I had my first real small-town moment the other day; Running into someone I know at the post office and chatting for a little bit about absolutely nothing. Wishing them luck on their vacation and then speaking to the post office worker I also now know. Then walking out and seeing a man I dog sat for. It is strange to lose anonymity in public. I wonder if my world will shrink so much that I can no longer sit alone at bars and order eleven diet cokes silently for two hours without tipping. There is something cozy and heartwarming knowing there is a community of people here who like to ask me how I or Grace are doing when I run into them. We all go to the same three places so it’s often. They say in Girdwood, if you go somewhere and forget what you were doing just ask someone else. They probably know. The answer is most likely, drinking at 10 am.
THE grocery store has been good to me. It has been a rough ride. I got word that the old manager was fired for the usual. Being a drunk asshole and stealing a lot of stuff. As were many of the old employees. Nowhere else in town was hiring at the time that we moved in and my resort job didn’t start until late November. So in a panic, I took what I could get. It pays $18/hr and is very easy. I began immediately and pay was weekly. It was very funny to me in the beginning. Nobody knew I was starting or even coming in that day. I arrived one day and they were surprised. I was oriented to the most pointless task that could be assigned to a human: Take everything off the shelf so that I can put it back on the shelf again. I did this for 8 hours. My mind nearly melted. But I would make rent and that is all that matters. I worked the next day. Again, my manager was surprised to see a breathing human in the store and told me to follow someone around for a while. So I did. His name is Rob. Rob is a great, Alaska-grown, grocery store middle manager. He has lots to say and will say it all day to you constantly and immediately. I learned that Rob HATES Lesley. Lesley is the middle manager of the middle management. She is passive-aggressive and loves to find pointless tasks for new employees to do, so I did them. Because who cares anyway? Now. It was after the third day that I began to be a little confused. Hardly anyone had asked or remembered my name, knew I was coming, or spoke to me at all. It was clear to me nobody had absolutely any idea of my past experience when Rob spent two hours talking directly at me about the differences in the wines we sell. To this day they still don’t know. I truly believe there is no job that is below me. Except for this one. I am truly ashamed when people I know see me behind the counter here. I apologize to them directly for having to see me like this. To those who don’t live here, all I can say is, you’d understand if you were here. When I tell my friends where I’m working for the time being they say, “Oh man, there? Are you sure nobody else was hiring?”
“Do you like it there?”
Well, yes. I do. Not the grocery store. But living in Girdwood is in a sense magical. The scenery from my window is something I would have robbed a Subway for at any other time in my life. The access to the backcountry and the resort is incredible. We are still a reasonable drive away from town and can save a little on groceries and essentials by making the trip. We can go to restaurants or the climbing gym. Not to mention when ski season starts I have one of the best jobs at the resort, and a 5 minute walk to the ski lift. So what the HELL am I complaining about!?!???!? Nothing really. It’s great. It’s as great as I expected it to be. This was one of the best decisions I’ve ever made. Because I am the best. This just doesn’t have the same ring to it. But it is the truth. It is easy to see me wanting to keep a part of myself in Alaska forever. Despite its flaws. Of which I didn’t speak much on (other than the alcoholism) because they’re well covered and by much smarter people. If you’d like to hear stuff about them just listen to them. I mostly wanted to update anyone willing to read on how this has been and to prove to myself that I could shake off these cobwebs and maybe write one worthwhile chuckle.
I’m ashamed to admit how much time I’ve spent doom-scrolling. I’m ashamed to admit that picking up my phone is not a decision I make anymore. I have reached a point of anger lately, when I’m scrolling through stories. I just realize I don’t fucking care about any of it but I spend so much time looking at it. In a fit of brief rage, I have deleted Instagram again, and Reddit which are both of my biggest time sinks. I like Instagram, I actually love Instagram and I felt I was able to have a good relationship with it. But Reels and the algorithm do such a good job of gripping my attention that I don’t even realize I’m using it until I’m facedown in a puddle of drool three hours later. (Or at least that’s how it feels.) I feel like there is a war waged for my attention. I’ve spent so much time trying to cultivate it into something functional but I lose every time. My attention is like Osama, and Reels is like Seal Team Six.
What is attention? The technical definition is the concentration of awareness on some phenomena to the exclusion of other stimuli. Whether attention is subjective or objective is still hotly debated. But loosely, it seems that our attention operates multiple trains of thought at once. I prefer a secondary definition of attention as the allocation of limited cognitive processing resources. Attention is the result of an attentional bottleneck in terms of the amount of data that our brains can process per second. To me, this means attention is sort of like a flashlight in a dark room and can be pointed around at will to illuminate hidden objects (like dogs eating grapes) or sensations, (like the sound of a dog eating a grape) but the light has a limit to what it can illuminate (like dogs eating grapes.) However, the lens can change shape and size, but the photons it produces are limited.
Understanding the phenomenon of attention is I think the first step in understanding how valuable it is. When you remove all of your physical stimuli, all you are left with is the ability to point your flashlight around the dark interior of your mind. I know this because one time I took a lot of mushrooms and forgot who I was and how to breathe. So I’m an expert I promise. Our attention is not very good, naturally. It is more like a floodlight than a flashlight, and I believe this is due to our biology; someone who was more broadly attentive was more likely to not be a grape that is eaten by a dog. However, it’s not great for the demands of everyday life to just be broadly attentive: work demands focus, writing demands focus, drawing sonic rule 34 demands focus (especially when trying to get the details of the throbbing, etc.) I believe the solution to lack of focus, is nicotine. Eat my dick Buddha, and get a juul. Everyone should smoke cigarettes, all the time. A baby holding a cigarette would be badass. Although nicotine’s benefit towards attention unfortunately quickly becomes a law of diminishing returns. As you use it more, your tolerance builds very quickly until you just use it to become your stupid in-attentive self again. Eventually, without it, you are just dumber and uncool like the rest of us. So what can be done?
Look how fucking cool this is.
I used Sam Harris’ Waking Up app for a full year. I practiced “Mindfulness” regularly for the duration of that use and was earnestly impressed by the insight it provided. Admittedly, I downloaded the app purely out of existential curiosity. In my morning caffeine euphoria, I would anxiously rattle over the fears of life and death and general existentialism. Somehow, I thought that meditation would bring me closer to the answer. It did and I have achieved Nirvana. (Eat my dick, Buddha.) But it also taught me a lot about attention and how little control I truly exhibit over it daily. The introductory lessons begin as explanations of the practice of mindfulness and meditation; you are to begin by focusing minutely on your breathing and as other thoughts and stimuli interject, you are to observe them and return to the breath. It sounds tremendously easy and very boring and that is because it is. It is so fucking boring. I would much rather play Halo, I promise nobody would have thought of this boring shit if Halo existed in ancient India. Imagine fewer monks and more Faze clans. However, I found out pretty immediately that because I thought it was boring and didn’t like it very much that probably meant that I had very little control over my attention and impulse. So I doubled down. Over time I noticed I was able to handle much longer sessions, and was able to find mindfulness in observing stimuli outside of just the breath. My favorite of which being the visual field: Observing the full range of my sight as a flattened 2D painting that my brain conjures up just based on what it thinks the light that bounces into my eyes means. I also like the emotion-related practices, where we conjure images that invoke feeling and try to observe them as acutely as we can, and the way those feelings cause a change in our chemical physiology.
Add a couple holes in the wall and Mountain Dew and he’s going pro.
Did meditating really do anything for me? It’s hard to quantify how it has helped me and in what ways. But it did provide me some answers that I was looking for, indirectly. I now know that man is descended from sexy space dolphins and one day they will return to guide us into the stars. I am their chosen Messiah and will hurdle through the Milky Way laden with jewels on the back of their most desirable and sexy dolphin. But also that mindfulness is like a muscle that I tune-up every once in a while. I don’t have to do a whole lot of maintenance to reap its benefits. I think there’s a more intimate understanding of how my attention functions locked somewhere inside the folds of my peanut brain (likely tucked behind the entire script of Forgetting Sarah Marshall.) I think it allows me to handle pressure and emotion from a more objective and rational place than I did before. Especially in regards to my knee-jerk reactions and patience for others. I think also it has taught me that boring is sometimes good. I should seek to be bored because that’s usually when I do my best work.
Some of my best work.
Social media and attention go together like meth and more meth. The Zuck has done a great job at capturing my attention pretty much my whole childhood. I spent a lot of time on Facebook in my teens. There were button-collecting games that allowed me to display all my strange and often esoteric memes (not much has changed) to my friends via digital corkboard. My Happy Aquarium allowed me to care for the digital fish tank of my dreams. Farmville let me send invites to everyone I know, endlessly until they caved and realized the game was so fucking boring (sort of like mindfulness.) Then I discovered posting strange videos of myself to illicit reactions from my classmates and it sculpted me into the emotionally needy scarecrow I am today. I didn’t use Instagram until around 2017 as I never had the desire to keep up with a lot of different apps. I felt that Snapchat was a perfectly fine platform to share my happenings on. I especially liked that Snapchat was fleeting, I liked that my silly and carefully crafted stories would self-destruct and I would only hear if someone thought they were funny if I saw them the next day. Instagram was fine, but then it added stories and everyone I know has it. I was able to post little stories of things I found funny, beautiful, or thoughtful. Occasionally embarrassing poetry or something on brand with my sense of humor. I lived in harmony with Instagram for a long time until the arrival of reels.
I had already sworn off TikTok after shortly bearing witness to how great it was at monopolizing my attention. It had learned what I found funny and showed me nothing but that. I was never bored on TikTok and I began to miss being bored. So I decided Tiktok and I just cannot coexist. I was able to avoid reels for a little while. But Instagram sensed this and began to integrate them more heavily into their UI. I fell into the trap and as soon as you let the algorithm take hold it works quickly. I began to tick off minutes to hours to at its worst, full mornings into afternoons of scrolling nothing meaningful. Oftentimes it was just an exercise of capturing my imagination, my brain would dance with visions of what I wanted to create, how I wanted to live, or how I wanted to look.
It is hard to say I won’t keep social media in my life in some capacity, as I think I do a great job of keeping up with others in my life much more intimately because of it. I am very chatty. If I am drunk I will comment on everyone’s story. I also truly love making videos of stuff that I think is funny and showing those to people I love. I don’t like making these things in “The Age of Content,” however. I think the commodification and rebranding of art as “content” whether it be silly or informative or nothing at all is an injustice. Because content is synonymous with filling a space. It is tissue paper and it is easter eggs and it is the gift inside the basket. It excuses and rewards the constant posting of derivative and repetitive trendy bullshit because at least it keeps attention. It rarely rewards things made with heart and that are carefully crafted because “content” is all weighted the same. It fills the space. I cannot continue to allow my hours and days to dwindle away behind a screen. I truly wish I could have both, an Instagram account and the discipline to not use it. But I am a weak reptile and will lose the battle time and time again. I speak directly to you Zuck when I say that your creations are good at what they do, but sometimes you shouldn’t do things just because you can. (Like people who post handstands on Instagram. Admittedly I am that person.)
Idk what the fuck this is I just needed an image.
I think that in 10 years, social media will be like cigarettes. People will ask you not to use it in front of their kids. But babies will look really badass drooling over an iPhone. I understand it is on the consumer to navigate the world as desired but I think that far too many people have fallen in deeper than they’ve noticed. They are unable to crawl out of the hole. The only way to get out of the hole we are in now is to abandon it and hope for something better (or the French Reign of Terror-style guillotine beheadings. I am okay with either.) I fear there will come a day, (alongside the rise and growth of language models and sophisticated algorithms) when the medium of video becomes a form of visual heroine. A time when the numbers have become so good at tricking us that it’s no longer a choice to negotiate with them. Our eyes are currently the most valuable resource on the planet and will continue to be for the foreseeable future. Until the space dolphins arrive to cut them out, and I as their leader will scatter them as stars throughout the cosmos.
I went to Alaska. It is a place I have always wanted to go. US history paints Alaska as a frontier that’s full to the brim with the “American experience.” Bald eagles soar above ten foot men in fishing waders reeling in salmon by the dozen. The truth is, Alaska IS a visage of true America, just not in the way that we typically picture it.
I was planning on going this year. I spent $600 on this “all you can fly” frontier pass that allows you to book flights on frontier for the price of their taxes only, which is the price that flights on frontier should actually be (should you ever want to ride in a cardboard box with wings then choose Frontier.) Flights must also be booked a single day in advance (with blackout dates and exceptions blah blah blah. Immediately, I planned to go to the furthest place I could for cheap. It was a loose plan but then I met a really lovely someone who happened to be moving there in a few months and I tricked them into thinking I’m really interesting so they would invite me. So the plan really fell into place then.
I flew into Anchorage late at night and we slept in a plywood shack. It fortunately had everything we needed but none of the annoying over the top Airbnb amenities like windows or locks. The next day we drove down the Seward Highway (named after former Secretary of State appointed by Lincoln whom negotiated the purchase of Alaska during his presidency. This was a smart move by Will Seward (Willy Sewy) as there was not a single other pressing matter during Lincoln’s presidency. Purchasing an incredibly vast, dangerous and seemingly fruitless tract of land that was almost entirely separate from the US was a smart investment. Especially because now, it’s very fun to kayak there.) it was very foggy but I was still stunned by the scenery. The Seward Highway runs alongside the outer rims of two of Alaska’s metric-fuck ton of protected parks. You can throw a rock and hit protected land, and you will be promptly arrested for it.
William H. Seward never went here before negotiating the purchase. It’s pretty clear that he did not think the Union would win and Alaska was just backup America.
The second day was spent catching up over dinner. The views from Seward are pretty breathtaking and the people are very friendly and chatty. The weather was cold and very rainy, as expected. I experienced the “lack of sunset” that occurs this time of year and really felt uneasy about it. Sleeping with the sun up is strange but manageable. I covered my eyes with a shirt like I was getting ready to be waterboarded. Relaxing.
The next day we got to do some actual hiking. I saw a fucking glacier. It felt like seeing a dinosaur or a celebrity, or Tom Selleck. It was just kind of there, a very very old wall of ice. Throughout the approach there were these markers indicating the furthest reach of the glacier by year. It made me feel sort of uneasy having this very clear example of global temperature rise directly in front of me. Someone should really start working on that climate thing, seems important. The weather was bad but the hike was fun and I got to sled down on the way back. Sledding is really fun. My whole childhood in Florida was filled with anti-snow and anti-sled propaganda, or maybe that was anti-Cuban propaganda? It’s easy to get the two confused. Dinner was also great. Everything I ate was delicious and made by 20 somethings working seasonally to fuel their passion for being in fringe places and doing wild things.
Something about this feels vaguely anti-Cuban.
A particular moment stood out to me; The Seward highway is a single two lane highway that supports lots of tourism through Chugach and Coopers Landing. But! The summer is the only viable time to run road construction in Alaska, because it’s not Football season. You can be stopped and waiting to go alongside the next pilot car for up to 30 minutes: it can double your 2 hour trip time. We missed the window and were the first car in line for the next group. A young rugged looking girl around our age dressed in hi-vis construction gear and a hard hat smiled and jaunted up to the window to ask us what’s up? That was it. Just “what’s up?” So then we robbed her. After that we talked for 15 minutes maybe about the weather and work until she got a call on the radio asking if she wanted a sandwich. Life is slower there. People don’t mind waiting and taking time. It felt to me like Alaska is so vast and wide that your stresses, worries, fears just don’t take up as much space. But somehow, the small talk is bigger there. People aren’t really strangers, probably because there’s only like four of them in total.
This is actually the richest man in Alaska
Alaska is gorgeous. People come from all around the world to see it’s vast virgin spaces. The wildlife is abundant. The fishing is easy. The city of Anchorage is a doorway to the frontier. However, it’s a doorway with mirrors. Mirrors reflecting some the best and ugliest parts of the American dream. On one side of the door is the picturesque locale and slow small town life. The other is a not so pretty state that buries its poverty, drug abuse and natives under the rug in favor of its tourism. Despite this, the working people are hospitable and helpful. They’re tough and blue collar, soaking up every ounce of sunshine each summer before heading back to mainland or abroad. The toughest of them shovel themselves through some of the worlds bitterest and most inhospitable winters. Alaska is a place of extremes. The people who survive there are just like it’s indigenous people, plants and animals: tough and scrappy and strange and anomalous. But theres only like four of them so who cares. I really fell in love with it. I will certainly be back. I think the glacier I saw would really benefit from having a Walmart or a Macy’s nearby. It’s absurd to me that nobody has thought of this.
I was able to leave the country for the first time. It was a very long trip and definitely one of the best I’ve ever been on. A short retelling of my adventures.
I arrived at the airport with my friend Jarrett. We sat and had lunch and I bought a book. Our first flight was eight hours from Orlando to Manchester. I heard a toddler speak with a British accent and it was pretty hilarious. Some strange dance competition must have been happening in Orlando as there were many children adorned with metals boarding alongside us. Maybe they received the metals from a competition of “whose parents looked the most British.” I could tell most of them said “fink” instead of “think” just by the shape of their fleshy jowls. The flight was mostly empty and so it was very nice. I paid Jarrett a visit and we played airplane trivia for a few hours as well as an airplane game that claimed to increase your IQ with each successive play. Jarrett reached an incredible IQ of 260, he has since taken over as the “idea guy” for a cheese company.
Upon arriving in Manchester we were greeted with quite literally the worst airport imaginable. The architecture is brutal yet inconsistent. The layout is haphazard and terrifying. We walked around through seemingly endless maintenance hallways that stretched into a hellish sub basement wasteland you would likely never return from. (If you weren’t as experienced as I.)
A forlorn printing station I witnessed in Manchester Airport.
This maze finally led us to our terminal. In which our plane would not be assigned a gate until it had arrived at any gate. I had been awake for approximately 20 hours at this point. I marveled at the novel experience of a British convenience store with labels such as; black current soda as well as a nutrition label listing saturated fat as; “fat (of which saturates.)” That was the most entertainingly and bureaucratically British thing I had ever seen.
Our next flight (to Dublin) was on a propeller plane preheated to the temperature you can prepare a small personal pizza at. Admittedly I paid for a window seat as I am a motion sick person, but someone asked that I sit in the aisle so they could be next someone they know and I caved. I suffered nauseously in polite silence, a reflection of what I had learned about the British culture from my time in Manchester. (You’ll start to notice, I’m a bit of a worldly person.)
The pizza oven.
I am a person with red hair and in Ireland I admittedly felt like I belonged. Not a drop of melanin in sight. Genetic mutations as far as the eye can see. Certainly everyone in this airport knew that they could not trust their friends to apply the appropriate amount of sunscreen to their backs. We knew what it was like to get burned. I drank a Guinness (it was 8:30am) I had been awake for approximately 24 hours at this point. It was the best Guinness I’d ever had. Over here I didn’t really get it. Over there I see why they like it. It’s sweeter, creamier; like Malibu but for gingers. We sat for awhile, then boarded our final flight to Amsterdam.
Amsterdam is one of the most beautiful places I have ever seen. It is a very very old place that has coincidentally forced city planners to put people first within its infrastructure. The homes are densely and tightly packed, the canals are murky yet beautiful. Tourists scurry through Amsterdam Central’s head shops and knick knack markets. The character of the city feels earned. To celebrate our arrival, (after dropping off our bags) Jarrett and I settled on the most characteristic cuisine Amsterdam has to offer, McDonalds. I’m kidding that would be a gross waste of our time and money. Do you really think we flew across the Atlantic only to not enjoy the local cuisine? We had Burger King.
Everett arrived and we continued exploring. It’s an easy place to get lost especially when you do little to no research. I had been awake for approximately 32 hours at this point. However the excitement in the city and it’s crisp cool air carried me from site to site. Everett and Jarrett made sure to take pleasure in one of Amsterdam’s finest exports; Sinning. They played poker at the casino while I watched Manchester v Milan at a pub across the street.
The air was lively and a Dutch couple next to me taught me some words and wished me well. Manchester lost. We all took shots. I could feel the cocktail of alcohol and sleep deprivation churning inside my body. I left. I stumbled to a train car and realized my vision was tunneling. Fortunately a short ride and a short walk led me to the hostel in which I slept a brief 6-7 hour slumber to recover form 36 hours of travel. This is because my body hates me and I am not deserving of rest for that reason.
Malik arrived in the morning. He was probably very tired. But that was his problem. This blog is about me. We stopped off at a lovely cafe called Yusu and met the most attractive man in The Netherlands. His recommendations were great and our time together was special. I’m sure he thinks of me as often as I think of him (nightly.)
A matcha latte and a pastry topped with fresh fig, admittedly I only ordered both to impress the Netherman with my financial prowess. I believe it may have worked as he brought it to me.
We stumbled into an on-site farm to table chefs coursing menu called De Kas. It is usually fully booked but we got lucky. The food was excellent but my friends don’t like vegetables so they struggled through the five course vegetarian menu. I blinded a glass of wine correctly with just my nose and that was pretty cool.
This dish was the group favorite as it consisted mostly of salt.
The rest of the day was really just spent walking around. At night the lights of all the compact but functional Dutch homes paint the canal with a mosaic of shimmering orange tiles. The houseboats line the canal walls, ornate with round windows and home gardens. The city is clean. We rode bikes, we ate some of the freshest sushi I’ve ever had. I managed to get my friends to try Salmiak, an acridly salty licorice that I have developed a strange love for. Everyone hated it. I used to bring it to school to hand out to my friends. In order to prove them how delicious it was I would eat one. So I now have a taste for it.
We arrived at the airport to board for Zürich the next morning. I told Everett that when I travel alone, I will typically just board with group 1 or 2 no matter my boarding group. I always sit in the window and nobody ever checks. I figure this is harmless as boarding by groups is a waste of time. Something clicked inside Everett and a fire of hatred began to burn deep within the 7th circle of his gut. Demons and imps spilled forth from the recesses of the Hades localized in his body. As this was a line I SHOULD NOT have crossed. Everett’s passion for waiting in long and arduous airport boarding lines sung from his lips. Everett loves monotony, boredom and wasting time. Inconsiderate, selfish, self serving. This is all that I became to him in that moment. His aim was to preserve the beauty of waiting in line and I was just another casualty along the way.
I boarded group one. I had paid for a carry on but the flight crew insisted they gate check the bag, I figured it was fine. I tagged it and placed it where they instructed. I double checked with them that the placement would be perfect. They ignored me. I triple checked and they said, “Do not worry. We will load your bag.” (They did not load my bag.)
A photo taken by a version of me who believed his bag was truly on this plane.
The flight was smooth and the plane was a testament of beautiful Swiss engineering. We met David at baggage claim and waited for our bags to arrive from our flight. I stared helplessly at the carousel. “No, not that one. This one? No. Maybe it’s on the next one.” My bag did not arrive. I spoke with a Swiss representative and filled out the missing luggage claim. His features were German and so was his appearance. The way he looked was German and so was he. The German looking man was of no help. Hopefully my bag would arrive soon.
Swiss trains are some of the best. They are incredibly clean, quiet and comfortable. The ride to Zürich was smooth and pleasant. We enjoyed Swiss-German food in an armory older than the idea of Gravity. Shoutout to that Isaac Newton guy for inventing that, otherwise food wouldn’t have stayed on my plate (maybe my bag would have flown itself.)
A scene of David aghast at the complementary Swiss literature found on this Swiss train.
Switzerland is incredibly beautiful. There’s a strange Disneyland feeling to all of its natural beauty though. It does not feel wild. We took a train ride to the “largest waterfall in Europe.” Clearly by technicality. The water was beautiful and the water was also $7. We ate at a Biergarten. I got a flannel from Salvation Army because I had no clothes still. The food was expensive. I was able to find a train route to the top of a mountain that overlooked the city. The first of two times I tricked my friends into hiking. We watched the sunset from a tower on the top of Zürich. It was peaceful. I couldn’t help but think about how I was half a world away from home. Before this, I almost did not believe Europe actually existed. A man paraglided while dressed in a polyester sarcophagus at eye level with us.
The sunset from the top of Zürich.
The next day Ilsa arrived! Malik is time blind so we missed a few trains but it’s okay because my bag arrived. After fetching my bag we rode a long train to Interlochen. We visited an actual waterfall, ate dandelions and fondu (only I ate the dandelions, they were everywhere and free.) Fondu is not as exciting as saying the word fondu is, it is mostly cheese. I put my feet in the cold ass Swiss water. The water is clear and blue and beautiful. Something about how blue it is filled me with a strange paranoia that I would be hoisted down to the Swiss-Lovecraftian (like regular Lovecraft but less racist and more politically neutral) depths by a writhing tentacle. But I was fine. I narrowly escaped with my life.
The waterfall and humans (adjacent)
We arrived in Zermatt late, hiking what felt like the entirety of half dome to reach our hostel. We realized it was too late to check in and so we prepared to sleep in the lobby. However, someone noticed our room keys taped to the front door at the last second. So we slept in actual beds.
Zermatt was very Swiss and surrounded by the beautiful alps. I ran with David and the route we planned for felt very formidable. The elevation change and the hills were killing me. I began to think, “I cannot do this.” When we arrived on flat ground the run was much more bearable and enjoyable. We chatted and grooved, the weather was cold and perfect for running.
For breakfast I had Swiss McDonald’s (because everything else was very expensive) and ordered 5 shrimp (yes pentuple shrimp) from a McDonalds in a land locked country. It was impressive and I did not get sick.
Shrimps.
We got ski lift passes and rode the lift up to a brief hike. The walk to the suspension bridge I planned for was iced over and so we played in the snow and turned around. I was able to deceive everyone into hiking the long way back into town instead of taking the lift. There were sections of trail that passed through small farms of sheep and goats. Everyone was bleeting back at the sheep and for some reason I found it really annoying. We passed a man who walked patiently and slowly toward Ilsa from a distance, and at the last moment turned to reveal he was brandishing a freshly polished axe. But Ilsa survived and so did we.
David and Jarrett block the path until we can solve their riddles spoken in unison.
I decided to partake in the delicacies of Swiss German culture for dinner: Jaeger. We walked to the top of a hill and talked about our lives while overlooking the town. The things I worry about feel so insurmountable when I’m at home and alone. But grated against the sandpaper of my friends. My anxiety become so much more palatable. I can chew the sinew and work through it knowing that at the very least I am not alone.
The next day we rode a train to Italy. As soon as we crossed the border even the weather was Italian. The architecture became immediately Italian, the signs, the children began to talk with their hands. Pasta leaked from the overhead luggage racks. An Italian man charged us $90 in euros for buying the incorrect ticket on a train to Milan. But he was nice about it.
Our first meal in Milan was the best pizza I have ever had. I had always heard that Italy saves the best for themselves and imports the lower quality goods. It is the truth. The food there is a reflection of the country; simple, but of the best quality. The only caveat is that it may try to mug you.
Milan was a gorgeous and modern metropolis littered with glimmers of old world Italy. Incredible food lined it’s alleyways packed with graffiti and pedestrians. Each meal was accented by a great but cheap bottle from nearby Piemonte. However, we stopped for Gelato late at night. While walking to the nearest train station, two eight-foot children gripped at our things and tried to accost us. In a swift moment of heroism, Everett killed both of them. I didn’t even drop my gelato.
The people of Milan are inconsiderate and did not vacate the street for my photo.
I had managed to arrange us to meet a man off of Italian Craigslist two hours away from the city. He crammed us into a small van and told us to hide from police as he drove us remotely into the wilderness. Certainly nothing would go wrong. His English was not perfect but he was a gentle and kind man. He was outfit in mountaineering gear. Creases of adventure and wisdom etched themselves into the canyons of his face. A single silver earring dangled from one of his ears and reflected off his polished head. He was like an Italian Mr. Clean but much hornier. He led us up a mountain and then alongside the chains that arched like velvet ropes off the limestone. The climbing was easy but I was just happy to share it with my friends. The summit offered a beautiful view of lake como and for a moment I marveled at it and though to myself, “Wow, I don’t have any cash to pay this guy.” So we pushed him and ran.
This is the where lies Giulio (the guide.)
Dinner that evening was certainly the best we had. I had a delicious fiochhi stuffed with goat cheese and something else. The bread was hand made, the wine was a lovely barolo and the service staff was composed of two of the most beautiful people on the planet. (I am a Manchester 11/10 but an Italian 6/10.)
The next day we took a long train to Florence and I wrote most of the way. After dropping our bags I was able to walk with my friend Connor for a bit (he conveniently was in Florence but on a separate vacation.) I didn’t have much time as we had lunch reservations at a place I really wanted to try and I really didn’t want to miss that.
This wall was constructed by the Romans, which is very impressive as Rome is very far from Florence. (This was before Lyft, and even Uber.)
The server was incredibly rude and I still think about that, but my wine selection was spot on because I’m the best and he is not. The food was excellent. We visited a church and museum and then I got a cappuccino because I was very tired. Coffee usually gives me a pretty intense wave of panic, but this did not happen. Maybe European coffee is fake so they can drink it 24/7. I saw a mirror wall and took a picture of it because I sort of want one. I swear nobody in Europe actually has a job.
We walked more. The city is also very pretty, for being Italian. I saw David’s (statue’s) tight ass and thought to myself, “I will make my ass look like that.” We stopped in the hostel for a brief rest before going OUT that night. Our hostel shared a wall with a recital hall and we heard a very pitchy dress rehearsal ensue before a very pitchy performance. So I did not sleep as I was to busy looking up how much it would cost to drone strike the recital hall.
At dinner I had an incredible blackberry pie in a historic Italian plaza under the Italian stars, in an Italian chair on my (soon to be) Italian ass. David (person) lit a cigarette casually like Johnny Cash and blew a cloud off to toward the street, it was really cool.
We moved on and listened to bad jazz at a jazz club titled “jazz club” and this is where I began to notice Florence is clearly a facade that Italy has put up to corall their American exchange students. Everyone was American. We went to Club Space and the music was American. There was quite literally a geriatric man in a MAGA hat dancing next to us. It felt like home. I leaned against a wall taking brief respite from the dizzying maneuvers of the geriatric conservative man, only to realize the wall was a door and set off the emergency exit. The bouncer pushed me out.
I stood outside and waited as the set was ending soon anyway. I befriended a man who kept trying to sell me drugs. He may deny our friendship as I did not buy any drugs but I believe we are friends to this day.
In the morning I hurriedly ordered pizza with Everett and walked to the train station; a common Italian pastime called ‘Pizza Walk.’ Due to landslides and not having much of a work week, many trains were delayed. We waited at the train station for a few hours. Ilsa did surgery on a grape (my ingrown hair on my arm) it was a success.
Dr. Ilsa operating quickly before the infection overtakes my body and leaves me dead at the train station.
Venice was kind of shitty. The food was not as impressive. The canals are beautiful and blue and the architecture is unique. But being a small island it has been blighted with a teeming westernization that engulfs each corner and leaves little character in its wake. Jarrett dropped his gelato and we watched a Catalinian man demand to see our feet in the lobby of our hostel. The occasional quiet alleyway was lovely in isolation, but every shop and corner really just looked the same. Every restaurant was the same. Everything was plainclothes and cargo shorts. It was clear to me that nobody really lived here.
I did see a large pink plastic frog in Venice and that was very exciting.
Istanbul was certainly the most foreign place I’ve ever been. The signs were predominantly in Arabic and Turkish and the people were less friendly. We checked into a very nice hotel and took a large cab to the Hagia Sophia. This is a place that truly blew my mind. It’s a place where European history can really be understood from.
Built shortly (500 years) after the death of Christ and predating the invention of gravity that made its construction possible. The Church has withstood the great schism of the Catholic Church, the conquest of Constantinople even the time the Eagles won the superbowl. It is truly a historic marvel. We went inside a similar and adjacent mosque constructed by Suleiman the Magnificent, the guy with the coolest name in history. Islam prohibits iconography. The inside of the churches is pasted with ancient Arabic, incredible geometry. This was a contrast to the picturebook-like interiors of European Churches. Illiteracy was high during the time of their construction so the information had to be digestible. I had no idea what’s going on though because in Turkey, I am illiterate.
We moved on to a drink at a boujee rooftop bar overlooking the city. This place truly felt so foreign and beautiful. But we were tired and had a long day of travel the next day so we returned home and began our rest by going to the gym. I got a nice Turkish chest day in and enjoyed the sauna with my friends.
Hagia Sophia (back) held upright by me (left)
In the morning I removed honey directly from the honey comb to spread on my bagels. A small Turkish woman sat on the floor of the dining room making bread for us. It was the height of luxury; slavery.
My final thoughts on Europe are that it is definitely a continent. Despite what others may say you can navigate it by train, plane and even car. It is located just north of Africa, and very far away from the US. It differs from the US in its geography, and it’s racism. It is a place where prostitutes can stand in red lit doorways and I, am too afraid to talk to them. It is a place where the people work less than us, and have more time for leisure. It is a place where the infrastructure is built to a human scale and the cities feel like they have contained countless human lives over many centuries. It is a place where the families are old and people pretend to care. It’s a place where I went with my friends and spent many nights starry eyed and doing the realest thing I know; trying to make each other giggle over wine and food.
On St Patrick’s day 2020 I was texted to hold off on getting ready for work and that our evening opening may be delayed. About 45 minutes later I was told I would not be working until further notice. I happened to be in the incredibly fortunate position of still being paid during quarantine, despite not actively working. Which as an early twenty-something is a dangerous request.
The first week of quarantine was spent in a drunken oblivion. Admittedly, it was more of a “three-drinks-til-my-tummy-hurts” oblivion but that doesn’t sound as mysterious or cool. The following weeks were spent enjoying the final summer break I’d ever get with all my college aged friends. Days were permeated by Minecraft and movie nights, culminating in Among Us and anxious ruminating about what the pandemic actually is. I worried pretty much endlessly about what my life would look like after. What would it like to get older in world with slimy tequila scented hand sanitizer?
Fortunately two friends and I (David, Andrew and later a third, Shane and many others) began a short list of things we wanted to do when quarantine ended. Hiking trips, mountain climbing, new hobbies and Ĝ̶̛̮̤͙̺͇̝͍͇̦̝̱̺̯̺̏͗̀̑͐̔͘͠Ṍ̸̹̼̆͛̇͝R̵̡̨̪̺͇̮̰̹̮̟̜͖͈̀̋̃̓̈͛̇͗͌̓͋́̑͘L̸̨̛̲̹̖͍̣̺̀̇̍̏̀̔̇̉̈̕͘̕a̴̫̲͖̯̳̙̽͊̍̾̉̋̽͛̊͒͌̓̕m̶͖̹̝͍̘̼̆̌̿͘͘.
I will outline two separate scenarios in which I acquired the Red Lobster. In one scenario the means of acquisition will be strictly legitimate and fiduciary; inheritance or purchasing. The second scenario outlines a scene in which I am gifted the Red Lobster through mystical means i.e. a genie (maybe not a genie because their mischief is unpredictable and it would take too long to describe the selections for my other two wishes.) or some sort of magical contract. Likely written in dragons blood (obviously to provide some kind of mystical binder of insurance to my ownership of the Red Lobster.)
Scenarios in which the Red Lobster was acquired by mystical means (but not likely a Genie) will be marked with an asterisk and written in a separate color*
Firstly, I will ensure that all the typical furnishings of a standard Red Lobster are present. There’s a contemporary north eastern Americana style to the interior of a Red Lobster (think exposed beams and sailing paraphernalia.) I would ensure after the purchase that all of this has remained constant and consistent in order to deliver the classic Red Lobster experience to my patrons.
** Firstly, I would have to spend some time processing the existence of magic. As a young boy I was treated very unfairly (in this world) for my belief that a dragon wizard may provide me with a contractual obligation to operate one of my uncle’s favorite restaurants. (I’m assuming because this is a parallel universe and real me is typically ahead of the curb like this too, like I knew Tesla was gonna be big. I didn’t buy any stock or anything but I just like definitely knew.) I would spend some time speaking to a therapist with a fairly thinly veiled code as to not arouse suspicion to ensure that if the dragon blood contract has any sort of Wizard HPPA rules I’m not violating them.
Secondly, acquiring a staff is important. I would list open hirings and offer a very competitive schedule; in order to let my employees know that their work is very important to me. Darden offers competitive benefits for full time employees as well which is not a consistent theme in the hospitality world. It opens the door for more people to work comfortably at my store in that they may continue to survive so they can work in my store.
** Secondly, after it feels like the understanding of magic is fully integrated into my life. I would enter the Red Lobster with a flashlight and my handcrafted Senchu Era Katana replica. The man who sold me the Katana at the mall did guarantee that a dark aura was shrouded over the katana after its construction to provide it warding abilities. I would sweep the Red Lobster for any mythical assailants. There may be one or maybe two goblins, and I would like to say that my backyard training has provided me with adequate goblin slaying abilities. But in earnest I think I would be much more afraid when faced with the real thing. Alongside that, I was vegetarian for two years. The idea of slaying a foul beast is a difficult one for me to take into consideration. I believe after I have slain the first of the two goblins, I may begin to sob. This will put me at a disadvantage for the next battle as my mobility will be impaired. However, I did spend one afternoon of my backyard training dodging the rocks thrown by the neighborhood kids while I was sobbing. I think his advantage and my disadvantage would cancel out. I would certainly beat and dispose of the second goblin as well.
Assuming I have acquired a diverse and Lobster-passionate staff (the negative form of this will be called Lobstinate I.e. “You are being Lobstinste right now.”) we will begin training based on Darden’s comprehensive hospitality training programs, and ensure that the monolithic service standards of Red Lobster are delivered consistently through my location as well.
**Thirdly, I would consume (with caution) any of the live lobsters in the tank. This will certainly provide me with magical abilities, I am assuming something along the lines of water or gravity magic. As lobsters are sea creatures but also know for their skills in anti-gravity.
We would begin with a soft opening, in which we assume regular service without much advertising. We will do this to troubleshoot any inefficiencies in our dining experience. We would follow up the next with our real Grand opening, inviting and encouraging the local community to participate and join us for our first week of service.
** Fourthly, given my newfound wizard abilities I would have to undergo a six fortnight vow of silence. The craft of magic is a very difficult one and requires tremendous discipline to master. Any distractions from the outside world could lead to straying from the path of knowledge and into a path of darkness. The opening of the Red Lobster acquired by mystical means would have to be delayed by about six months.
The first month of a business is usually one of the toughest but as long as the location is correct and we are receiving consistent visitors we should be operating slightly above the green as far as profit is considered. This ideally will continue to grow as our margin of error in food cost, guest comps and our guest count all become more beneficial in the winter months.
*fifthly, as a now powerful gravity and or fire wizard I can follow scenarios 1-5 of the Red Lobster acquired by financial means.
//Five Craigslist Ads for humans, seeking humans.
I love Craigslist. But not just because it is a convenient place to purchase and exchange goods. But because people like this exist. It’s easy to write off the context of this image as computer illiteracy. But what if it’s much deeper than that? I picture a shrouded man, an aged figure that is frail and weak and sun-bleached. A blue collar man, in a jean jacket and jeans and a white t-shirt, with a ratty old hat. The wrinkles on his face are deep and pitted and they tell a story of learning lessons the hard way. A wooden cage, make me an offer. What did the cage contain? Not important. Make. Me. An. Offer. Will I end up in the cage? Maybe, if you don’t make an offer.
This one is a loaded post and takes some dissection. Firstly, the title: ‘Teacher seeks pupil.” I’m sold. Moving forward into the post, we find that this sensei has a vested interest in saving the world, and not only the world but the life ON it. Not to be confused with the life outside of this world. This appeals to my empathy in fact I am part of the world, and there are parts of it I enjoy (mainly things like cubed cheese, fire ants, mixed use zoning etc.) So our author is knowledgeable, they know that what we need is a teacher, and there are stakes to this venture (i.e. the world.) Now for the logistics, you should be available weekly, the days are not important. You should be available, this is the world (and the life ON it) we’re talking about. You’re volunteering to learn ‘weekly’ out of your own generosity. “A multi-disciplined “curiccula” to be mosaically taught in schools, BUT on an incomplete basis.” This might be the vaguest thing anyone has ever said, ever. To follow it up with “Broad in scope but narrow in purpose.” Really sets the tone that this will mean absolutely nothing to anybody. I love it so much and it’s now a regular phrase in my vocabulary.
This one I actually enjoy in ernest. It reads like a love letter, and the fact that it is placed desperately in one of the largest cities in the world and among some of loneliest people in that city makes it all the more lovely. I picture a 1950’s dame, in a shadowy noir bedroom, writing this letter to nobody but the cigarette smoke and jazz filled room. Film noir to me has always been one of the most entertaining comedic tropes because I think it strikes such a deep little cringy chord in my heart. We can all agree that a standalone fedora is a cool hat, and that a chain-smoking detective with a hip holster and trench coat looks cool in one. But there are apparent differences between a 1950’s detective and my 14 year old self. We could both wear a fedora confidently. But I’d say the rest of the differences may have to do with how much time I spent picking flowers during baseball practice. (I say baseball for comedic effect, I was really in Tee-ball. They remove the tee later in the season so you practice hitting. Unless you are me. They knew it would just be less embarrassing for everyone involved if we just brought the tee immediately.)
If you lost your DVD. They found it.
I would like to conclude with this one. Craigslist is a lonely place, and every post has such an air of desperation enveloping it. Its addicting to me and I can spend hours upon hours reading through posts. I just imagine the kind of person who wrote it. I think I have a tendency to romanticize people in that way. I’m never bored of people watching, even if it’s just the cave paintings they leave behind on the bathroom stall of the internet (Craigslist.) Obviously to me, each and every post tells a story about someone who wants or needs someone for something and can’t get it by any other means. It’s easy to brush these people off as creepy or psychotic. I’d like to assert the opposite. These people are genuine and brave for being able to turn their soft underbelly up towards a world that isn’t made for people who fail at the ‘easy stuff.’ It’s strange that we all go along with all the vague messages in communication, business, education that are broad in scope but narrow in purpose. Its strange that while the majority of craigslist is “m/f searching for hot trash skanks.’ there are people who just wanna hang out, sell a cage or save the world among all that noise. I challenge you to take a look at your local craigslist community tab, read through it and be a bit more vulnerable to the unabashed, and maybe make an offer.
//Thanks for checking this out. A gift, below.
Firstly, I would like to thank you for reading this. You are probably my friend and a good one who wants to be supportive, or a good one who is too afraid to tell me I should just get a real job. Maybe you are a muscular someone, the moonlight is glistening off your olive skin while you caress a single displaced hair off my cheek, and maybe (just maybe) that moment between us will have felt like an eternity. Whichever person you are, thank you. I know it’s not easy watching someone spiral into writing a blog (and THEN asking you to read it.) But you’re a good friend remember. (and if you are not please call me back, God I miss your lush but powerful embrace.) So I guess to explain myself, this blog is an attempt at giving myself another creative outlet geared toward my goal of being a comedy writer. If this is the first you’re hearing of this, then you probably aren’t a good friend and you should certainly call me back. (see above for description.) So what’s the point of you reading this? Well firstly, I hope its funny. Even in like a “lets-just-encourage-him-because-we-know-he’s-bad-at-it-way-and-watching-him-fail-will-be-fun-for-us” way. Which is malicious, but I would respect it. Secondly, if you don’t read this blog I will kill us both. (I will find out if you did or didn’t with subtle quizzing in our regular conversation) So welcome to being a regular reader! I hope to continue to provide you with engaging bullshit to be read between sets at the gym, or on a train, or in bed! Maybe some of it will be insightful for you, (maybe some of it will be so insightful you will meet me on a moonlit beach, your muscles rippling as you approach and you won’t ever call me back etc.) Reading is boring though! So who cares. Just skim it if you want, I don’t care (outwardly.) So the gift portion of this article is in the form of the image above. I had it on my camera roll and I don’t entirely know why because it’s not my tire. But that tire is absolutely shredded and if you need an excuse to be late to something please crop that image. Use it at your convenience. It’s yours! To conclude, I have now thanked you, threatened you and encouraged you to lie (fun fact: I work with kids.) In this instance I do condone lying. Because I think it is absolutely asinine that we are demanded to show up on time if at all to certain things. Here is a list of things I think we should be allowed to be late to: class, work, therapy, romance novel book club and a briss. The concept of excused and unexcused absences in school always confused me. It never felt as though what I was doing really demanded an excuse. Consider the term, inexcusable. I have provided a short list of things we consider as inexcusable: Murder, Racism, My birthday…? So take the tire image. Be late to your nephew’s briss and sneak in the back and eat all the free snacks they leave back there. After helping yourself to a seemingly endless bowl of calamari, maybe consider to keep reading (or else.)
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