Zōkyō

The other day I tried to pinpoint the moment my life started. This life I am in now. How did this story start, anyway? At first I went back to getting on a plane to Asia, then I thought, actually I gotta go further back to that night in Vegas, then of course I had to keep going back to Allison, yet further to a full moon over the Black Hills, and yet back again to one particular sunrise, finally I thought it started on a VW in the ocean of grass that Kansas is. But wasn’t there an episode before that, one with with spiders on a roof? Yes indeed there was. That was the day that this life started. The day before that day was a different life, that was the night I opened the door to this life.

The Chronology of my story seems to pivot around epiphangelical moments, some dark and some illuminated, indeed all rights of passages. The sky is always a different hue before and after these days yet there is always the same thought, “today is not like yesterday was, and tomorrow will never be like today was… from here on out, everything is different.”

Those chapters need to be dusted off and reread from time to time, otherwise I just might forget that reinvention is not something that happens at particular moments in one’s life but rather, that it is happening at every moment. And the story is never finished…

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So basically the reason I had put off school, aside from wanting to ski, go to shows and just generally uninterested in going, I had no interest in wasting a a hunk of change studying something that I had no interest in, just for the sake of doing it.

But here I was 4 years later, the only cracker and the only one tripping (maybe) in a Las Vagas jail on a Satuday night. (I do want to get to that story one day.)

So I went back home to Tulsa, the mothership for some refuling and home cooking. I got my head in order (for the most part). Three months of old drunken friends and backwards mentality was enough and I soon set back out west for clearer waters, this time with a college acceptance.

And I did it and whatever, it was fun, it was easy. I certainly loved it and miss it now, and its storys will make it or already have into another journal another day.

But finally out and 27, I decided to accept the invitation of the Gurungs, the crazy strong, crazy calm Nepali friends I had been working with for the previous 8 years, and to go to their stomping grounds of the Himalaya. A journey I had been dreaming of my whole life. After enough research and reading and after having been convinced that I should also go to Thailand as well, it was time to buy a ticket. I decided to leave in summer and return by Christmas (although was aware of feeling of dissappearing forever). I called the Airlines and plugged in the dates. They told me I would be allowed a free stopover in Tokyo. I thought, “hmm…Japan?”

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I have been standing at the crossroads of my life for whole goddamn duration of my actual life. The crossroads themselves somehow have seemed more captivating than the notion of actually setting out on one of the paths. It always seems wrong for me to think of it that way. I have these fleeting moments of ecstasy just staring out into the abyss followed shortly by disappointment and perhaps fear of what I might find down one of them. There are always unanswered questions and it seems unbearable to choose faith over reason though Ive heard the former is stronger. Ive made my life a waiting room for my actual life. Its not enough to just be somewhere.

I had the most lucid of my dreams two nights ago. I even remembered to turn off the lights and oddly enough, they infact turned off. The map I had looked like an MC Esher painting and I kept falling into a new dream, the whole time aware. I was riding the clutch on the hill of consciousness and the dream state, idling forward and drifting back. Its somehow like my life too but I cant fathom how to make the connection.

What am I waiting for? The smallest step feels like a quantum leap. Have I ever really been “on to” anything…? The sitting, the counting, the doing of something that makes the mind stop and concentrate for one split second seems of value. But those moments are so few and far between. In the meantime, the mind doesn’t seem to shut up for a nano second, perpetually on hyperspeed cruise cruise-control. If I could just slow it down so I could see it, and focus on ONE thing. These things to me are always easier said than done.

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So if you wondering how I ended up in Tokyo Im gonna do my best to give you the abridged version but knowing me, I’d say fasten your seatbelts.

Its starts with a diabolical breakup about 6 years ago…

You don’t need to know all the gorey details (Episodes 1, 2,and 3) but lets just say it sent my life into a drug induced-swirling-down-the-toilet-debaucheric episode that culminated in an Las Vegas acid trip will take the pepsi challenge against any of Hunter Tompson’s. Its truly another story entirely, and maybe coming soon to a blog near you…

Though I wouldn’t trade them for the world, those chain of events, which perhaps were both my most apocolyptic as well as most enlightening hours of life yet, got me to thinkin’, “what the hell am I doing with myself?”

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The sun has come up and I haven’t slept. Its in the wee hours of the morning and I and working on a chocolate bar sized computer at a posh apartment in the hills of Omote-Sando. Why cant I sleep and what is gonna happen tomorrow? This keyboard is ridiculously small. I had a crazy dream a few nights ago. Its starts likes this…

So I had a night at home alone so I decided to make some curry and rent a movie. I put the rice on and headed down t Tsutaya where I wondered aimlessly for the better part of an hour, somewhat apathetically settling for the weeks “Top Choice,” Starwars III which I had already seen but wanted to see it again. And there would prolly be special features and that would be worth something.

So I got back to my house, threw the curry on and started the movie…when the opening text started rolling up the screen as it always does in Star Wars I realized it was in Japanese and I couldn’t read it and then proceeded to watch it in dubbed Japanese…which sucked and I changed it back and started it over.

Anyway, I watched it all and it was satisfactory. I went to the special features menu only to find there were no special features, which was hugely disappointing. I rented it to watch the special features. Trying not to feel defeated I opted to watch the entire movie again with George Lucas’s commentary playing over the film. It was late, so I put it on the headphones. I lasted about an hour and passed out on the couch with the headphones still on.

The movie had played all the way through and went back to the main DVD menu where the emperor was saying “Join the Dark Side” repeat “Join the Dark Side” repeat, “Join the Darkside”. Anyway I must have been listening to this on the headphones for 3 or 4 hours by the time I woke up. My god I had some wild dreams…I actually dreamed the I joined the Darkside.

I had to make a choice and I chose the dark side. I don’t remember much after that except that I was in a department store and there were 4 restrooms. 2 on one side of the hall and 2 on the other. “Good” Womens and Mens on the right and Dark Side Womens and Mens on the left. So naturally I went left. I was a little scared when everybody in the the restroom looked like the emperor with black hoods on. I thought, Do have to wear the hood? I hope not. Then I woke up.

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