Eleven.

There is this place I've been. A place to hide. Eleven years have come and gone and no one has found me. Until recently.

Taken away from me is my comfort.

This is good.

It is comfort that is responsible for all my shortcomings. Comfort begets, complacency, begets indolence, begets the fear of change which at the core is the fear of pain.

...so here I am. In my last days of a lengthy stay in this dollhouse I've made. Playing house for eleven good and bad years. Packing into boxes a 3rd of my lifespan, lackadaisically hand crafted to contour to all forms of comfort.

With every box packed and stored by the door waiting for the vulnerability of open air, with every cabinet emptied, with every picture taken off the wall, reality solidifies.
In 15 days this place (what's left of it.) will no longer be my home. Whats worse is In 15 days I wont be welcome here. A place I put so much of my time and effort into, from the biggest of issues to the minutiae of esthetics. I made it my life.

I gave too much to this place and in turn it tried to steal my life away. It tried to damage me mentally and physically. But I kept at it. And I did what I could for anyone who walked though my office doors because it was never about the business for me...It was always about the people.

But eleven years later a business man walks in and I walk out for the last time.

Enough was enough.

And when the dust settles all the effort I put forth for this place will be disregarded. They will drag my name through the mud. I am the scapegoat they so sorely need.

But I know what I've done here. And I know when I leave I take with me a part of it's soul. I am not about the bottom line. I am about the community that it effects.

But enough about the past. It does no good to speak of roads not traveled. The winds have shifted, as they have in the past but this time I am going with them.

I will go on to find wholeness. I leave the hollow in search of myself.

I crave discipline. I welcome new responsibility. I will redefine dedication. And my word will become more valuble than gold.

Being pushed from the nest will be the best thing that has ever happened to me. The pride of what this place once was is no more. Its ghost is buried under a landfil of redtape bureaucracy and unessesary paperwork.

I leave here and I dont have the slightest urge to look back.

Living versus Existing.

These last few days have been energetic.

I've been beaten.

I've bled.

I've stared up at the sky from the sea.

I'm bruised.

 I'm burned.

I've stared down the Sun from the mountains.

I have a limp.

I have blisters.

I've had a close encounter with an inquisitive sea lion.

My leg muscles feel like concrete.

I'm Sore.

I've spent some time below sea level holding my breath.

I stared at the harvest moon as it rose into the night sky.

I've spent time with my friends and family.

I found myself.

I lost myself.

I helped others find themselves.

I Helped others lose themselves
Highs

Lows

Oddities

and old friends

I wouldn't have had it any other way.

the small things in life.

Today the world is on fire

Sitting in the shade of an enormous (and somewhat out of place) pine tree somewhere in south Beaumont staring at the world as it burns.

Somewhere south someone or something started some trouble

If I shift my view to the north the view is completely dichotomous. Golden fields. A windmill in the foreground and the eastern big bear mountain range in the background. It looks like a Stater Brothers commercial.

North

2 monsterous (but sweet) pitbulls named Blue and Minnie sit beside me, not as enamored with the smoke filled southern horizon as myself but content in my company all the same. Due to the fires close proximity the wind is strong but warm and comforting.

Blue

Minnie

The sky is slowly darkens as plumes of black smoke roll off the landscape to the west. Blazing fire is rapidly making its way across the hillside toward this side of Highway 79.

 Entire families of  spectators in thier SUVs line up in the dirt field at the end of the road like patrons of a drive-in theater. All staring in awe at the natural beauty in devastation.

If the wind decides to shift in my direction things around here will get much less sereen and sureal. But that's not happening right now and since I've been told numerous times to live in the moment, here I sit. Content and entertained watching the world burn.

If by some odd chance the fire sweeps this way and burns my life away as I sit here enjoying my lazy Saturday I will be sure to let you know.

Cheers

-SCRaM

Lay-about.

OMGSOOOTIRED!ZZZZZZZZ

My my, dear mother Squirrel. How your job is ever so busy. The weight of the world's responsibilities on you furry little shoulders. Squirrel pups abundant. One for each teat. Nipping and gnawing and not concerned with your well being. My, how you need some sleep. But sleep is for the weak and you are not kin of weakness. You are a strong mother of squirrels. Only when your last pup is satiated and full of squirrel milk in it's tiny squirrel pup stomachs will you even consider sleep.

But be wary, wise mother squirrel. If you don't make time for sleep, sleep will find you. It is tenacious in that way. It may find you in your squirrel home or it may find you while crossing a street. It is the cousin of death and shares it's belief system.

We all must rest.

Dear Mother Squirrel, you are not exempt.

Zzzzzz Zzzzzzz Zzzzzzz

-SCRaM

Dream 032712: Exerperiencing Inevitability

Late.

 Night. 

5 freeway south somewhere near Lake Forest.

 It’s raining. Pouring really.  

I’m driving. My Pregnant wife Jamie is passenger and there is an old man in the back seat behind her. I don’t know who he is but he seems like he has a bad past. Like a street dog who was taken in by a good family. My beagle Juno is in the seat beside him looking out the window. Jamie is saying something about my driving. Maybe I’m driving too fast for this weather. The exits are blurring by like bright liquid light streaming past my windows.

I seem to be taking what Jamie is saying too personally. I’m saying something stupid like “I know how to drive!” Coming to the off ramp at Oso Prkwy for some reason I say “This isn’t a car, right? It’s a sling shot and I can only go in one direction as fast as possible” and while saying this I am seeing, yet missing, the sharp right curve ahead. I can adjust but that would steer me directly into the stopped cars ahead so I try to steer of the shoulder but all goes wrong. I feel the gravitational pull as the car spins out of control. It hits the curb and it its momentum causes it to flip side over side down into a ravine. I can feel the violent rolling so vividly.

When the car slams to a halt somewhere below the freeway the collision is softer than Id imagined it would have been. I don’t know what happened to my wife, my dog and the strange old man. I can’t turn to see them all I know is that I’m still strapped into the driver seat.  Out my window is a viscous mud bank that is slowly seeping into the car. I hear noises.

 I know I need to get up and get out to survive, but the impulse isn’t there. 

Something is wrong.

 I look at the flowing mud now making its way into the car via the broken driver-side window and everything starts to get a bit vague. A spreading vacuity between the severity of this situation and the hopelessness and calm that is slowly taking my consciousness away. 

Seconds before I black out completely I become aware of something above me working its way into the vehicle via the skyward passenger door.

The next time I open my eyes I am above it all. There is bright light coming from above and people gathered around. I sit up suddenly trying to comprehend the situation. When my vision clears I see that this isn’t the afterlife but the edge of a large sinkhole next to the freeway off ramp. 

Mercifully, the rain has stopped. 

Jamie is beside me me crying with her hands on my chest. I fear for her and the baby. I ask if she’s OK. She’s shook up but thankfully she doesn't seem to be injured in anyway. The old man is here as well, also uninjured. Apparently this man saved my wife and then came back to save me. I don’t even know how to begin to thank him. 

I’m still completely out of it. I feel disillusioned and child-like.

I look down into the hole. The car, a cream colored 4 door Porsche Panamera (that I must be borrowing since I wouldn't drive such a thing on a regular basis) is sinking slowly in watery mud on the north side of the pit about 25 feet below us. It must have landed with the front sticking straight up. It’s listing toward the driver’s side which is now completely submerged. If I was in there any longer I would still be there now.  

The passenger side window was slowly filling up with mud and I see Juno is still inside looking up at us. Without thinking I yell “Juno!” “JUNOO!” and hurl myself back into the pit. I land in the water on the east side and make my way over to the car. Everyone above seems to be upset that I jumped but my dog means so much to me I was in motion before I knew what was happening. I pull Juno out of the car through the narrowing gap. She is shaking and whimpering. 

We laboriously make our way out of the pit. The crowd that had accumulated was clapping but still looked at me severely. I let Juno down close to the rim of the pit she limps the rest of the way up. Her left front leg is hurt. IT hurts my heart to see her in pain.

 I get back to where Jamie is and collapse on the ground. Lying flat on my back I have a brief moment to let my adrenaline die down and as it does I start to feel pain in more than one place I look down at my body and for the first time I realize I didn’t make it out 100% like the rest of the passengers. I am covered in blood. Fresh blood. It seems that its mostly coming from my upper torso area. I turn over and look down into the pit. There is a muddy red trail mapping the path I took to save my dog and back. 

A rush of realization took control of my mind. Too many sadness's to bear. Too many thoughts you can only experience at the very end invade my fleeting consciousness as I lay back down and stare at the night sky. 

My wife is there crying, She is beautiful but soon she as well as all the colors and lights around me blur together in a bright ring on the edge of my awareness as the dark clouds above get darker and darker and push the light out completely

 until all is black

 and silent…

Then I woke up.

 

NOTE: I am usually very happy with vivid quality of my dreams. There are times when I just know it’s real and it isn't. The details are always finely tuned and there is just enough reality to create an alternate world hard to differentiate from our physical world even if I can fly or teleport or something of that nature. It’s what makes me look forward to sleeping. I even enjoy my nightmares because they are like a suspense or horror film you get to create while you are asleep.

But this....

This dream was different.

 It didn’t feel right.

 It was too real and I remembered more of it than I normally do. 

Because of this dream I experienced all the diminutive worries, feelings and thoughts that rush through your dying mind before your life ends and all is black. 

So much loss.

So many missed opportunities and failed accomplishments. 

The idea of my Daughter growing up without her father. I knew worry for those I've left behind and what they will have to go through in mourning. I felt so many things a human is not meant to feel until the end. 

It’s maddening.

 I logged this dream in hopes to take its power away in telling it. 

-SCRaM

Alternatives.

What if, when we allow our imaginations to run free as they will, without boundaries or the shackles of logic and rationale, we create alternate universes where the thoughts and possibilities imagined are created and move forth in their own space and time. We could be creating realities just outside of our reality that we will never experience.

As limited as the average person is in the knowledge of how we became and exist and considering that all the above average minds who could weigh in on the subject are drowning in vast oceans of their own theories I believe the possibilities are just as endless as they were when the first man stood upright and stared out at the black star strewn night sky.

The great difference that divides us from our prehistoric ancestry is our expanded frame of reference. It is our good fortune to see the trends that allow our imagination to soar to new heights. With the knowledge that only 60 years ago things like cell phones, laptops, mp3s and hybrid cars couldn't be considered anything more than science fiction. We gain the ability to imagine great things to come in the next 50 years. Personal flight, invisibility,teleportation, recombinate DNA for re-growing limbs.

I've strayed a bit in my own imagination but I digress. My point is that as logical as we can be its important to have an active imagination. Its what keeps our new digital world interesting.

Next time you get on a plane and the inevitable thought of the plane going down creeps in briefly I say go with it. Imagine the plane landing safely on a strange remote island. Look around at the rest of the passengers and decide who will be the leader, who will go crazy? Who will wait for the opportune moment to rifle through the luggage for tawdry baubles to steal. What would you do? Would you freak out? Would you start to build a hut? Would you get killed by a smoke monster? (you were expecting a LOST reference so who am I to deny you?) And the beauty of this whole process is that when you get bored you can just fly home or teleport there.

So I've illustrated my point but what if all that you just imagined became its own reality? Or what if by me imagining that imagining something makes it real in an alternate universe that it just became real thus making all imagined person places or things real from this point on.

Yes. I just did that for you. Now. Start populating those unfilled alternative universes.

Your welcome.

Cheers

-SCRaM