40 Days to Nowhere

5.17.25

hello, stranger –

so i've made a decision.  or more like had an epiphany, really.  in any case, about two weeks ago it hit me like a bolt of lightning that i was never going to get where i wanted to be as long as i remain stuck where i was.  and my office – and the future that i thought would come with it – has been nothing but a boat anchor for far too long now.  once i saw that clearly i started packing up that afternoon.

since then i've boxed up, reduced, simplified, and moved about 80% of the office to my house.  once i got a little more creative and efficient with the space it all began to fit quite well.  i think i’d been a little traumatized after merging my work and home life before, but the difference then was that i'd moved into an into my office – so was literally sleeping in a bed next to my desk for two years, all in service of a business that never came to be.  and this time i’m moving the desk into the house i’m renting, and out by the porch – where i like to sit and drink wine and watch the sunset, like i'm doing right now.  a much better situation.

but the lease on the office runs through the end of June, at which point it will be time to officially flip the page to a new chapter.  hopefully a better chapter.  until then though, this one still has to be written.  the work has to be done, and i have no idea where any of this will ever land, if anywhere.

maybe nowhere.  wouldn't that be just so fitting?  i remember when i first came up with the tagline for this project, explaining it to a friend at the bar.  you could never really be nowhere, i told them, because anywhere you go there you are, and wherever you are becomes – by default – somewhere.  so nowhere can only exist in the hidden space between where you are and where you're trying to be. it’s not so much a place, really, as it is a point in the journey along the way, only to be experienced by the version of you in between the one that started off on the trip, and the one who comes back.

that was the gist of it, anyways.  my attempt at flashing out the wisdom of windshield therapy.  you can never come back from a trip the same person as when you left, so you might as well travel with intention and come back a better version.  the more you get out of your comfort zone the more comfortable the world becomes to you.  there is a life-changing kernel of wisdom hidden in the person next to you, just one barstool down.  it's just up to you to find it.

etc. etc. etc. and yada yada yada.  i'm even tiring myself as i write this, but i'm sorry my friend, this season just didn't work out the way i envisioned.  not even remotely.  i dreamt about camping trips to the mountains, and roadside grills and hiking through hidden canyons to beautiful places to watch the sun dip beneath the horizon, or to look up at the Milky Way, as it hung overhead for the night.

but i guess life doesn't always work out though like the blueprint we have drawn up in our head.  and as if i needed any further proof of this, all I have to do is look around at the moving boxes around me on the porch.  but i still have the sunset, and the firm belief that it will show back up in the east in the morning.

until the day it doesn't though, we just have to keep on rolling forward.  that's the only rule to life, so far as i can see.  how we handle it is our own business.  and right now my business is pooped – i've been up in heavy move mode for two weeks, and dealing with other barrels and monkeys i don't even want to think about right now, let alone subject you too.  but i know that if I didn't take the time to sit down and just put pen to paper it would feel like i wasn't sharing the sunset with anyone at all, and i just didn't feel like suffering even one more little tragedy right now, no matter how small.

so i'm going to have to leave it there for now, and pick it up pick it back up when I can.  the sun is dipping behind the trees to the west, and there's still a lot to do for the night.

*****

5.25.25

happy Memorial Day, and i hope you're enjoying the official kickoff to summer.  i know back east that means the start of trips to the beach and traffic jams, but when i think back to the holiday weekends of my past growing up there, nothing specific comes to mind, other than me taking it for granted that it was finally time for mother nature to take her foot off our collective throats and let the good times roll.  here in cactus land it's the opposite.  the college kids have all graduated and left town, the temperature is climbing into the high 90s daily, and the streets are much emptier and quiet than they were just a week or two ago.  and for the most part the locals - of which i guess i am one now – are pretty good with all that.  yeah, it's getting hot, but stay out of the sun and you're fine, and - for a while at least - the adults feel like they can take back the city, so there's a nice relaxed vibe in the air.

i know that long stretches of triple digit weather is right around the corner, and the heat fatigue that follows isn't too far behind that.  but for right now things are pretty good.  in fact, i dare say they're great.  i have nothing in particular to point to for this feeling, other than the move i've been making is clearing out my office.  the more i clear it out the more it feels like i'm clearing out junk from my past that i didn't even realize was i was hanging onto.

it's been a process, of course – and the hard work is far from over.  physically speaking i've got just about all the major stuff moved from the office that i can, without leaving the place totally empty and useless.  but to make it all work i'm also having to clear out my mother's office to make space.  she left that responsibility to me in her will, and as passionate, organized, and sentimental as she was, it's almost impossible to convey just how much she saved, catalogued, and stored away in that 200 square foot space of hers.  it’s a daunting task.

she was a big fan of three-ring binders, and filled them diligently through the years - filled them with newspaper clippings she thought important, magazine articles that she wanted saved, correspondence with clients and colleagues, samples of work she’d done from 30 years ago, maps to places she’d been, maps to places should was hoping to go, and everything in between.  and then there are the pictures – oh lord, the pictures.  boxes and boxes of them, along with the corresponding negatives, spanning decades and every subject that she happened upon and felt compelled to capture with a shot, filling up an entire bookcase.  and all of it needing to be sorted through, reviewed, and – nine times out of ten probably – thrown into a garbage bag.

none of it’s a good feeling, but to make matters worse, i realized the day i started the clearing out that it was actually her birthday. Christ Almighty – as if i didn't feel bad enough already about what mounted to a dismantling of her life, i could only imagine the horror she would've felt about me doing it on her birthday. i spent a few hours sifting and sorting as much as the time would allow and saving what i could, that felt like a true sin to pitch.  but as time wore on and the hours passed like that i looked to the wall by the door and saw a photograph i’d never noticed before – black-and-white of her taking a shot of her own shadow against the wall.  it had a ghostly presence, and a beckoning way about it, and it unsettled me enough to call it a day and get the fuck out of there.

but if nothing else, it’s at least made me that much more ruthless when trimming down my own stuff as i make my move out of my office.  one man's treasure is another man's trash, and once you push past that instinct to convince yourself something is worth hanging onto the sense of freedom you get in return is almost always worth the exchange.  in fact ti feels like it opens up space for the things that are worth keeping.  and as i shifted through the remnants of my mother’s office i could see a similar tendency within me to capture and memorialize the things that meant a lot to me through the years, and whatever karmic weights that came with them, and decided i wouldn’t be building any museums to the past of my own.

easier said than done, of course – but so is everything.  i took a hike this morning, and felt the same way.  it was a short one, but a real grind to the top of the canyon.  a work out for the quads and lungs on the way up, and the knees and hamstrings on the way down back out.  coming off the couch like i have since these past few months i huffed and puffed and sweated my ass off.  but such as that was, i did all right – and as i climbed my way up i couldn't help but novel at the simplicity of it all – keep one foot in front of the other, take a rest when you need a break, and just keep going.  follow those steps and you’ll get there.

such it is with nature, such it is with life i guess.  it was the perfect start to the day, and a good way to clarify some things in my head.  nature, like everything else, can do that.  i saw a lot of other hikers with earbuds in on their trail, but i prefer the stillness of the mountain and how puny my thoughts feel against them.

after that i went to a friends for bloody mary's and a jump in her pool.  we had a nice lunch out after, and caught up on stuff for a long time, and now i've been sitting on the patio with one of my favorite bars, by the bubbling fountain and under the bougainvillea bush.  it's a pretty nice place to be, and to write – but I've been at this a while now in time to go.  there's a birthday party this afternoon that i've probably already missed by sitting here and writing – feels absolutely worth it to me though.

*****

6.2.25

thank God for rainy mornings.  a storm blew through yesterday and chased away the sunshine and the heat and brought with it one of those cool, drizzly mornings that are perfect for a lazy Sunday morning of lounging and sleep.  it was more than welcome for the area, and especially to me.  a reset day of calming rest was exactly what the doctor ordered.

it had been a tale of two weeks – polar opposite in every way – wrapped up into one.  and the funny thing is that it started off just fine – brilliant even, with how things seem to be going. sleeping better, eating well, getting back into a regular routine with exercise and treating the body right.  all good shit, and all helping getting into a good headspace after such a long, tough winter.  little things, too, just seem to be going right, in their random, helpful little ways – a clean bill of health from the dentist, an eye-opening video on YouTube, a good piece of advice from a colleague.  there are moments when life just feels like it is beginning to flow properly, like all the kinks in the hose are getting worked out and unraveled, and these little bits of good fortune come along as a friendly reminder that yes, there is some synchronicity to the universe, and if you can just ease up and let go a bit you can start to go with the current instead of struggling against it.

and then - of course - that's the time for someone to come along and throw a monkey wrench into the works.  and as per usual, it's always the person or thing you expect the least.  in this particular case, it was a random text from a friend who, for whatever reason, decided one morning to shoot me a line and let me know how disappointed they were with my lack of attentiveness to our friendship.  i happened to be in the middle of clearing out my mother's office at the moment, and was coming from someone who’d bailed on even coming to the memorial service.  talk about the exact wrong message from the exact wrong person at the exact wrong time.

it was surprising to me, though, the well of emotions that came bubbling up once this thing was uncorked.  it started off slow and for a while i thought it i pretty much had it contained.  but like a lit match thrown deep into a haystack the smoke continued to build and get worse, and by late afternoon my thoughts were ablaze, turning the world to shit – a hot, bright, world of bullshit frustration and disappointment and anger, with nothing but radioactive thoughts being piped in from the past.  i did my best to put out the flames, but for two days my headspace was on fire, ruining everything i saw or thought or touched, until finally i sat with it long enough that it burned itself out and i found myself able to begin to breathe easy again.

i sure didn’t see that one coming, but it was at least a teachable moment.  what the lesson is i'm not entirely sure yet, but at least i'm to the point of being able to get under the hood to look at where the sparks are flying from and check on the mechanics of it all.   if someone were to hit a raw nerve like that not that long ago i'd have spun out and not even known why, and probably pointed my fury in some random direction or clung to the bottom of a bottle, or both.  i’d certainly have missed seeing it as an opportunity it was to check in with myself and see what was going on.  not that it didn’t suck at the time – but i continue to take inspiration from Powell and his journey down the rapids, with his faith that they make it through to safety, and a better place in the end.  i guess just sitting with the discomfort of it all is its own kind of journey, and a hell of a lot safer than facing actual white rapids, even if it’s leading to white knuckles in it’s own kind of way.

and now it's the start of a new week, and a sunny, cool and beautiful day is starting to peek out from behind the clouds.  yesterday was a much needed day of rest – the low clouds were like banks of soupy fog drifting across the mountains, beautiful in their own way, and a welcome site in the desert.  i even found myself in the parking lot of an office building in the foothills that i once thought was going to be the future workspace of a business endeavor that never took off – yet another future that didn't pan out as planned, for one reason or another.  but it was a quiet place to get a shot of the cloudy day, and that empty parking lot seemed about as vacant as the expectations i once held for that future that never arrived.  just nothing but open space now, with no lingering ghosts attached to it, and whatever strings had once tethered that place to my hopes for the future had long since been cut clean by time.

as i drove away i thought about that, and how inflamed my world had been the last couple days, only finally to be simmering down to a manageable smolder again.  and i thought about my favorite poem by Khalil Gibran, where in the final stanza in his ode to defeat he pens the lines – “you and i shall laugh together with the storm, and together we shall the graves for all that die in us.”  beautiful words, and the exact right ones to carry with me back down from the side of that fog-soaked mountain and into the start of a fresh new week.

*****

6.14.25

well, we hit the century mark a couple days ago on the thermometer, and it looks like there's no turning back from here.  the dog days of summer have officially arrived to the desert.  it's time to downshift to low power mode, seek shelter in the shade at all times, and embrace the more nocturnal side sides of our nature.

fortunately for me a friend of mine left me the keys to her place, and it has a pool.  it's one of those above ground jobs that's only four feet deep that she bought for a steal for a couple hundred bucks on craigslist.  it has no shade right now, but i've got a sombrero that i bought from a gas station in Yuma and it's on the side of a mountain with no neighbors around, covered in saguaros and with cold beers in the fridge.  so it's a peaceful little setting to cool down and unwind, so long as you're not looking for anything too fancy - Hillbilly Hollywood, she calls it.

besides being hot, the news of the day is, of course, that it's flag day - that special day of the year when we can always look forward to military parades marching through our nations capital, while hundreds of massive protest against this regime pop up in every corner of the country.  in honor of it all i guess some psycho decided to dress up like a cop and assassinate a couple of state legislators in Minnesota earlier this morning.  this, all at the tail end of a week where the Marines were sent into LA to put a stop to two bozos doing circles around a car that got torched after ICE agents rounded up a bunch of day laborers at a Home Depot parking lot.

Oh dear Lord, it's gonna be a hot summer.  besides that, not much going on.  it was both alarming and depressing to hear about the lawmakers in Minnesota, but i've really been trying to stay tuned into my mental and emotional clarity lately, and not let it get hijacked by things that come up on the TV screen.  staying informed is one thing, being inflamed is another.  but i drove around a few hours later, to where throngs of people were lined up along the side of the park with their handmade signs, each and all of essentially the same in telling our blossoming autocracy-to-be just where they could shove their bullshit, and i honked and waved and they waved back, and it made me feel good about people again for a while.

but it was hot as hell out there today, so after that i drove out here for a little dip in the pool, and some peace and quiet.  i thought about bringing out a speaker so i could listen to some tunes, but decided against it.  i haven't been listening to music much lately, or podcasts or audiobooks or anything, really.  i've been much more interested in silence these last couple weeks, more than i ever have before, and everything else just seems kind of like a distraction.

it's not like I've been tuning everything out entirely, it just feels like lately I've been noticing more to tune into.  things i haven't been hearing before, or rather, we're just on a lower volume. like when i go out in the morning before my run - the sounds of the birds are all around, dozens of them, hundreds probably.  they're just all out, filling the air with their songs and this gentle harmony that’s so incredibly pleasant to let soak in first thing in the morning, as i walk down the road a mile or so and before turning around to begin filling my ears with the sound of my own breath, as i run back to my house with the sunrise at my back.

when i'm driving, too, or come back at home at night, the instinct to turn on the radio or flip on the news has been dialed back a great deal.  i'm not sure why exactly, but there is a peaceful quality to the quiet that i've been that i'm appreciating like I never have before.  i've had stretches of my life before where i've spent time meditating, which has all been fine but it often felt like something i should be doing, like push-ups or something, in order to dial into some kind of spiritual stability or something.  then when the half hour was up i'd be back to scrolling through my phone or flipping through my YouTube feed in no time.  looking back, it all seems to make as much sense is going out for a jog just to come home and eat potato chips on the couch all night.

not that there's anything wrong with a little downtime, or YouTube for that matter.  but as i've been going through this process of breaking down my old office and decluttering my life, i just looked back at all these things that i used to feel like I was supposed to do, all the time and effort put into learning this thing or practicing that, all with some future goal in mind of some sort of life that i’d envisioned, full of success and joy and abundance and peace, a life that always seemed right around the corner but always just out of reach, and i just feel a complete sense of exhaustion.  utter and total exhaustion.  as i pull the place apart, peace by piece, and empty out the space one item at a time, all i can see are the remnants of a former of version of myself, and all the hopes and dreams and frustrations and disappointments that came with it, and i want nothing to do with carrying that load anymore.

and so that’s my guiding light these days.  yes, the world is on fire, but that doesn't mean i have to be in flames with it.  not that i don’t care what’s going on, but there’s too much goddamned noise being piped in from the idiots and assholes of the world, and too much of that poison is a recipe for nothing but frayed nerves and mental exhaustion.  so i'm trying to be a lot more intentional where i put my focus, and not let it get hijacked by a lot of noise.  meditation is a great practice, but there's also a quiet piece to every day moments that are available at any time, which i'm beginning to see more clearly now that i think i have for a very long time.

and i’ve noticed a lot more moments of synchronicity lately, too, the more i’ve focused on loosening my grip on things and letting go.  small moments, like a nice phone call from a friend at just the right moment, or the roadwork finally finishing up across the street, or a great song being played on the radio at the hardware store.  these little things in life that help serve as a reminder that life can play nice too, so long as you can to let it.

one of the bigger ones has been a book that’s been sitting on the shelf and i hadn't cracked open for years now.  it caught my eye the other day because “being nowhere” was in the title.  it's about eastern philosophy and meditating, a subject i hadn't really been poking around in too much in recent times.  with all the digging through western philosophy and the stoic school of thought, i knew there was a great deal of overlapping insight into some fundamental truths.  but it has helped me remember that there are some things about the way life flows i haven't been thinking about the light that i could have, and how important a shift in perspective like that can be.

one of the metaphors that struck me was about how thoughts are just images coming from a projector and our mind is the blank screen behind them.  i don't know if this is a perfect metaphor, but it was for me at the moment. i suddenly became aware of how sorely my screen needed a rest, and for that to happen i needed the projector to start putting up a lot of fewer images of battles and life as a grind and a lot more of peace and ease, and things going with the flow.

so i suppose if someone were to look down upon the scene right here of me sitting poolside, in the shade with a Mexican beer and one hand and this pen in the other, with nothing but my bathing suit and a sombrero on they might assume there are more important things that i could be doing.  but they would be wrong.  the only thing more important to me right now than doing this is doing nothing at all, which is something i’ll be getting to presently.

*****

7.1.25

i was listening to a book by Rick Rubin the other day, and he said something to the effect of frustration is just an argument with reality.  he's a true creative guru and has a lot of profound things to say, but that one really caught my ear and stuck with me.  the greatest truths in life are always those that are so simple and direct that’s it like hearing something you’ve always known to be true, just never heard out loud.  and - of course - my natural reaction was “goddamnit!  if only I had known that earlier!”

ha!  well maybe the response in my head wasn't quite that ironic or hopeless, but it's been made pretty clear to me that this whole letting go thing isn't necessarily a natural strong suit for me.  but at least i'm finally aware of it, and can see clearly for the first time that i am aware of just what a fundamental aspect it is to the experience of this journey, this journey through nowhere.  for so long i've been so focused on building a better boat that could handle whatever strong seas it had to.  it hadn't ever really occurred to me that it was within my power to quell those storms in the first place.

not that i’m any damned good at it, or that i don't think there aren't still rocky times ahead.  but i think it's fair to say something has shifted.  over the last couple weeks, as i disassembled the remnants of my office, and all the time and energy and effort that had gone into it, and all the dreams and potential outcomes that never arrived that those things represented, i realize how little it meant to anyone else than me.  and then i realized i didn't really give much of a fuck about it now either.   it’s actually a good thing, once i got past the bullshit feelings of pride and resentment the threatened to swap the boat every time i packed up another parcel of my life, another coffin for the life i’d been trying to build.

but even in those last words i can feel the residue of the past sticking to it, and i remind myself to shake it off.  it's a process, i guess, but one that is playing out so gracefully in the other areas of my life it's impossible to ignore.  moments of synchronicity abound – the little YouTube videos that show up sync up so perfectly, the acupuncture treatment from a friend whose flower essence formula – taken by an eyedropper or four times a day – helped me from a particularly dark moment and into a feeling of support and alignment that i haven't felt in a long time.  so maybe the lesson there is when people come up short, there's always flower energy to boost you back up to where you need to be.

maybe… maybe not.  i can't even begin to pretend to know too much about the cosmos.  and i'd be lying if i told you that the thoughts i did have on it weren't centered around anything more than my own place in it.  but maybe that’s not such a dopey view to look at it from after all.  the more i explore the concepts behind how energy works, and the relationship between our inside and outside worlds, the more there’s a growing faith in this feeling of being able to actually write the script of this life by letting go of the bullshit stories of the past, that’ve been soaking into the narrative for so long now.

the other morning i came out to the porch first thing in the morning after i woke up, and had been thinking about things a bit in that foggy state before being really awake.  i took out some colored pencils and drew a simple diagram of a few circles that to me basically embodied the human experience.  this was everything, it seemed to mean that moment - although, as per usual, my excitability about ideas generated on my porch in my underwear should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

but i thought it was worth examining further, so i’ve run it by a couple people since.  it’s mainly been a tepid response, but i really didn’t give much of a shit one way or the other.   it makes sense to me, and a simple model of the human condition was all i was looking for, so use kind of like an instrument n the dashboard of life.  and to that end t it works for me, and that’s all that matters right now.  so i'll have to save that for next time, because i started this at sunset and it's past dark now, and it's been a long, hot couple days as i finished up all this moving, and just learned to really sever with the past.  and it's a process – not an easy one or a pretty one, but just know I've been sitting with it and giving it the grace it deserves, and all is moving in the right direction on this end.

i hope so for you too.  sorry that your penpal ended up such a mess this year, but it was necessary shit to go through, and so i know you understand.

… and if you don't, then i guess i'll just keep writing anyways, because there’s still some miles to go before this part of the trip is in the rearview… until then, be good, hope all is well and talk again soon.