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

note to self:

Never forget this fact and you may just survive this mixed up and crazy world.

Spring forward.

Grow, You expensive bastard. GROW!!!!

Many underestimate the importance of aesthetics.


I don't apply to the commonplace "if it ain't broke don't fix it" device.


I like to believe the Romans had it right:


 "Mr. Agrippa, Why do we need such a huge and elaborate rotunda and dome if its going to have a giant hole in the ceiling?"


"Why not? Itsa gonna looka nice!"


Why fear change if it is change for the better?


I look out my window and I see a great view and I think how can I improve this? I can't do much about the background, but I do control the foreground. What would make my day brighter and more productive?


With spring coming I decided on a cherry tree with its picturesque blossom and its intimidating dark red bark.


Sadly...I was told by my landscaper that these trees would not grow in this thinly veiled dry desert biome that we Southern Californians call home.


So instead as a close alternative went with a Japanese Red Leaf maple. I'm told it will be quite a sight. With spring coming I will bear witness to its beauty.


Today its leaves began to unfurl.

It BETTER look like this.

If this thing isn't inspirational and awe-inspiring I'm going to kick the landscaper straight in his ass.

-SCRaM

Mike From China

I met a very interesting man today.

An elderly Chinese man with a very interesting origin story.

Normally when a person plops down in my office I'm privy to more personal information than I'd ever ask for but today it was welcome. I have always been interested in the eastern culture and all the history and philosophy that it entails so when  Mr. Chen, a man born in 1923 wants to tell his story I am all ears.

As it turns out this gentleman is the descendant of a great general of the Ming Dynasty -The folks that brought us The Great Wall of China and the great effort to expel the Mongols.

Take that, MONGOLS!

His grandfather was the first Chinese student allowed to study abroad. He went into detail about the numerous vaccinations and health proceeding he had to go through in order to be accepted into France.

This man, who gave his first name as Mike because he was a victim of Identity theft, was a scientist. He went to an american school in Shanghai and when the Japanese invaded and began their atrocities during world war II he and his family ran. They traveled for months to escape the Japanese and just when they reached the dessert where they assumed they were safe they received word that it was safe to come home. When he returned his life as he knew it - his home, his school - was gone.  but Mike was determined as ever to get back to what he had started and found the means to continue to his goals.

Flash forward a few decades. Mr. Chen lives a successful life as a Organic Chemist with his wife and daughter. But once again political conflict gets the better of his nation and he is forced to run again, this time from the communist party. He soon tragically loses his wife and decides he needs to get to a place where his daughter can have a fighting chance at life. So he came to America. He assumed he would be able to get work in his field but soon found that since he was not a legal U.S citizen he hadn't many options. He took an under the table job where the boss promised to get him naturalized but in the process (unbeknownst to Mr.Chen) to cover his own ass for hiring illegal immigrants the boss had a service wipe his past clean including his degrees and credentials and gave him a new identity.

Mike knew 6 different languages, was a highly accredited Scientist in China , extremely organized and diligent and had survived 2 major wars just to have it all stripped away from him to do manual minimum wage labor for the rest of his life....

And he did just that. He worked day and night to put his daughter through an Ivy League college so she could have the bright future he was once promised and now she is very successful and has her own family. Through her success Mr. Chen found all the past injustices that plagued him to be worth the sweat and perseverance.

 He was in my office because now that he's retired he wants a quiet place to write a autobiography. He wants his Daughter to live a life with her family and not have to worry about the old man living in the spare room.

I did my best to set him up on section 8 so he could afford to move into a nice 1 bedroom apt and accomplish his final goal of logging his amazing story.

He made me realize a lot about the false ownership and entitlement that most Americans have in them. and the low level of appreciation we have for the tyrannic oppression-free life's we are able to lead. 

With all the interesting pictures he had painted over the last hour an a half of what was my workday bleeding into my lunch break the most interesting thing I could say about this man is also the oddest...

He had serrated teeth.

Rabies

When the Sun goes down in Central Park in the winter it quickly reminds us that it is our paramount source of outdoor warmth.

I was bitten by a Squirrel in Battery Park.

It was kinda fun.

I may or may not have the rabies virus laying dormant in me.

After about 3 months of procrasting I thought it might be beneficial to seek out long overdue innoculations. My doctor seemed to think I was joking about the vicious squirrel attack and shrugged off my request. So I promptly and ferociously bit her.

She then not only obliged my request but decided it would be wise to innoculate herself as well.

Moral of the story is: Even if youre a notorious procastinator such as myself you can still get whatever you want in life...so long as you bite people and threaten them with potentially fatal viruses.

Cheers.

I have a blog.

Hello.

I am SCRaM.

SCRaM I am.

Yes THE SCRaM.

All other Scrams are suffering from mistaken identity and/or amnesia.

Welcome to my blog.

I wanted to set up a blog to show faces I find in my daily travels. Like this little guy. I was to call it FOUNDFACE. I thought it clever. But before I set the blog up I decided Id check if its been done...and like every new idea you think you have, yes...it has been done...well. So I figure as soon as Im okay with following in someone else's footsteps (dont hold your breath) I will start said blog...but for now here is this...my blog. I don't know what I'll do with this yet but perhaps it will come together as I go.

Cheers.