My idols are dead, and my enemies are in power.
Sometimes I get stuck in the past, processing a mountain one handful at a time.
But when I fuck right off to my little mountain, and process it one handful/shovelful/bucketful at a time, there's only peace.
There will come a time in your life when you will ask yourself a series of questions:
Am I happy with who I am?
Am I happy with the people around me?
Am I happy with what I'm doing?
Am I happy with the way my life is going?
Do I have a life, or am I just living?
Do not let these questions restrain or trouble you.
Just point yourself in the direction of your dreams.
Find your strength in the sound and make your transition.
I was the fifth man, rear backseat-middle of the uparmored Land Cruiser. My job was to look where nobody else was looking, unless for some very bad reason I had to feed magazines to everyone else, or climb over a dead guy and take his spot.
We were cruising through the Eastern outskirts of Kabul, down past the big firewood sellers and what I thought of as "Maersk Stadium" - a mudhole that local kids played a neverending rotation of soccer and cricket in, with the back wall being a huge triple-stacked row of filthy shipping containers in Maersk livery.
Something in my peripheral really grabbed me, and as I whipped around to look I saw, at about 3'oclock passing aft fast, an ancient graybeard on horseback with a trailing mare, dressed in finery that would have shamed an Ottoman emperor. It was just a flash, gone into the blind spot and then far away behind before I could make a sound. In that flash I saw that lost khan in a huge, fast gulp that took a long time to swallow all the way, and an even longer time to digest.
I think about him sometimes, about the absolutely bewildered look on his face, the fringe of his turban whipping in the dust storm of traffic, the way the horses were barely holding on, the reins held high as he held himself upright, high and back in the saddle, steadying the horse expertly even as he himself began to buck and flare under the stress of the fast-moving unknown.
Here is a man who has a reasonable possibility of having never seen a city, Hell, a building over three stories tall, in the 60 or 65 years he's been alive, and for some godforsaken reason has found some need to be there in and astride his finest.
Here is a man who is, in his element, utterly in command of himself and his environment. Here is a man who, as far out of his element as he can get, is one thick grey moustache hair away from absolutely fucking losing it.
I think about him, and I say to myself, "Me too, buddy."
Do not spend to much time thinking and not enough doing.
Did I try the hardest at any of my dreams?
Did I purposely let others discourage me when I knew I could?
Will I die never knowing what I could have been or could have done?
Do not let these doubts restrain or trouble you.
Just point yourself in the direction of your dreams.
Find your strength in the sound and make your transition.
I think about Miyamoto Musashi a lot.
Trying to learn about him is like trying to learn about historical Jesus. Going after them is like pulling a fossilized crab out of a rock, painstaking and focused labor with fine tools and a steady, patient hand. When you pick away the accreted myth, informed speculation, and absolute bullshit, there is only this transformed representation of some tiny, precious thing remaining to study.
Based on contemporary historical records, we know Musashi was certainly one of the most hardass warriors of human history. Even considering the vastness of unrecorded history and the incredible lives and feats lost to time and ignobility, he was a rare thing indeed. One of the most incredible fighting humans to ever walk the Earth, a master of the world in his time whether he knew it or not, though he certainly knew he was the greatest of his land.
He decided to retire while he was still of fighting age, to cease warring and reject ludicrous riches while in the glorious sunset of the prime years when experience was more than compensating for the loss of prime physicality. At that time in life, a man who is so minded can choose to double down on dedication to the discipline and see just how far he can truly go if it were to be his only ambition.
No.
He went up a fucking mountain, took one final disciple, and devoted himself to secluded philosophy and art, leaving his life's teachings plainly written, accessible, and roiling gold-black of depth, like the farthest fathoms of the bottomless sea.
He died, by all that I can tell, utterly satisfied.
I'm struggling with every crispy critter burned to the bottom of my fucking brainpan to finally walk away from war. To accept that I can walk fire and breathe lightning, but that to pursue it to the bitter end would be a lost opportunity.
I need to believe Musashi was right, or the second life will be squandered. I am choosing to believe it.
There will be people who say you can't - you will.
There will be people who say you don't mix this with that and you will say, "Watch me".
There will be people who will say play it safe, that's too risky - you will take that chance and have no fear.
You wont let these questions restrain or trouble you.
You will point yourself in the direction of your dreams.
You will find the sreangth in the sound and make your transition.
I get so mad sometimes that this is really the way, but it passes as do most things that do not stand up to scrutiny. I'm impatient sometimes, I get frustrated at things beyond my control, but I'm getting better about it.
I was talking to my brother, he told me about this guy who, after decades and decades of being a huckster televangelist got down to actually reading the fucking book, and he woke up. He realized that his entire conception of Christ had been filtered through, at the very least, specifically recorded historical events where a bunch of random dudes decided which scrolls to keep and which scrolls were just too much trouble to allow. He was free.
And, as my brother said, "What does he do? Immediately get out there in front of the marks and tell them about it."
He does the stupidest fucking thing you can possibly do, and with the zeal of the newly converted. He goes out and tells everyone that it's all made up, the Hell they've been fleeing isn't even real, and what they choose to do during their lives is entirely up to them.
Attendance plummets. The collection plate goes dry. There's an entire book to be written about the schism, where the congregants ended up, what they thought about it.
Chuck Manson said, "I was running from that!"
That about covers it, I think.
I'm over explaining to people that my entire plan is to run away to the mountains and live in a shipping container. Even some of the people who know about the other times I've spent living in the mountains in a shipping container sometimes have a hard time with the idea that that is really the complete picture. It isn't in service to anything other than itself, or, really, myself. It isn't a hobby or a vacation playhouse, it's just what I'm doing.
My dad quizzed me the other day, I think out of curiosity. What are you doing about foundations? How are you framing it? Are you going to be able to lift the timbers by yourself, isn't there someone that can help you? What about the plumbing? Do you need some kind of permits to do your own electrical? What about the inspections?
He wasn't surprised to hear that I had detailed answers, that I had a plan, that I was doing it the hard way and doing it by myself. He understood. Few do. For all our flaws and limitations, he understands that where others do not.
For those who know its time to leave the house and go back to the field.
Find your strength in the sound and make your transition.
- "Transition", Underground Resistance
I've been out there with a pick and a shovel and a rake, a tough little lowboy dump cart, and a pile of tinned herring.
I've been out there breaking my dick off for a whole day to make 25 yards of unobstructed path just to make it easier to haul logs and gravel and someday soon bags of concrete and the water to wet it.
I've been out there with a chainsaw piling up chunks of logs all over the god damned place so I can eventually move them to a big huge pile once there's a place for it.
I've been out there with rope and tarps trying to make some dry spots to keep my tools and maybe my narrow ass if it rains too hard for the nasty old standard issue bivy sack to keep me sound asleep.
I've been out there so I can be out there.