It's all small stuff.
Sep. 16th, 2010 02:33 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camrogersIn a bar in the city, doing what I can to find markets for what I've written while away. I figure anything that saws the legs off however much time I need to put in pretending to be some guy in a suit the better for all concerned.
My roots are showing. The last time I dyed my hair I was sitting on the lip of a bathtub in a motel in Oxford, Mississippi, and April was the one doing it. We got it from a Walgreens. The same place that wouldn't sell us liquor on a Sunday.
Every day in this town hinges on booting myself out the door before gloom-of-stasis kicks in. I think Fateless and everything it steeped in did this. Years of sitting on my arse, trusting everything would work out, sucking it up, while the world passed me by. When all I'd ever really wanted to do was delete 9/10ths of my crap and hit the road. Or, at the very least, have a life that wasn't being undermined.
For now I'm equal parts joy and rage, the blending of which becomes sorrow if it settles. What I can't work out is if this is who I am now, or have always been.
One thing I like about travellers: you meet up, and straight off there's a sense of belonging. Everyone's got stories, advice, recommendations, warnings, tips, jokes. It's the great opener. There's a Couchsurfing meet that happens once a month at a pub on Brunswick Street. I need to get myself there.
Caught up with Alex. Some of the best conversation I've had in ages. Film, art, the way the structure of good art makes for a good life (economy of means, The Five Obstructions, the way restrictions serve as a funnel for all that's good in life.) Got to talking about Rolling Stone embedding a journalist with a recon team in Iraq, which led to the articles that led to Generation Kill. It was the first time, really, I came out and voiced a plan to eventually get myself into the same position. I don't know if that will, eventually, happen... but I like the idea. I liked the idea when I was ten. It was the second job I ever really wanted with my whole heart: war reporter. I'm not sure why, but I do know a lot of it has to do with that satisfying sense of 'fuck you' that drove me to performance and stand-up.
It does make sense.
This trip was me working out what was real: how I work, the mechanics of travel, of other cultures, my strengths and weaknesses. The basics, really. Next step is to graduate to Asia, then the Middle East. If I can do those two areas rough, then I'll think about the possibility of someplace like Afghanistan. The US military involvement in Iraq is done with, but contractors (actual buildiers, not Blackwater) are still there trying to improve things. There's a story there, definitely. Unfortunately it's a story right now, it won't be by the time I'm ready. If I'm ever ready. But I'd love to be there to see, understand and transmit the new skein of the place. Subtract the US military from that fabric and what does life become, both for locals and for the westerners hanging around trying to repair all that damage? Are they targets? Are they shunned? Are they welcomed?
Every person is a lode of stories - good ones - and they crack open if tapped at the right angle. I want to do that. I want to sit in the dust, inside a canvas tent, trying to strip and clean a camera, while a plumber tells me about his favourite donkey. Or a soldier telling me the way he bonded with his bomb disposal robot, and the day it was destroyed was the most devastating day of his life... that when command issued him a new one he didn't want it.
blithespirit pointed out that more reporters were killed in Iraq than in the whole history of embedded reporting. My response is that Iraq's over, and it's entirely possible that by the time I'm a competent and savvy enough traveller I'll either feel differently or some key factor will have changed. But I want to get in trouble. More trouble. I want to get scammed, get hurt, make a fool of myself, come out on top, have no idea where I am, adapt to the unexpected, be swept along by circumstance, make friends, have my heart broken, whatever you've got I'm buying. But I'd also like to get married someday.
Restrictions serve as a funnel for all that's good in life. The thing on my arm is my headband, my pillow, my dustmask, my scarf, my camera bag, my glass cloth. My keyring is my diary, my keepsake, my passport, my documents. My boots get my across glaciers and into restaurants. I'm most at home without one. I want to live 'til my skull is backlit with the flame of my vanishing life. I want to shout loud enough to be heard by the Gods and thereby live forever. I want to suck up the fact that no matter what I do that'll never happen, and do it anyway.
In short: fuck you.
Will it happen? I don't know. But right now there's a clear path toward it. Things could change that. A stable relationship might not survive a life like that. You've only got to see interviews with the people who live that sort of life. Half of them aren't even in the room when they speak. And then there's Margaret Moth. Holy crap, man... Margaret Moth. Strong, poetic, beautiful and - I've no doubt - damaged. Worked for decades, up before the guys, had her eyeliner on, her hair dyed, her camera good to go. She wound up getting shot in the mouth by a sniper. Didn't blame him. She knew she was in the wrong place. The first thing she asked her friend when she woke up in bandages was "Am I still beautiful?" I guess that's what I think of.
blithespirit said it sounded like a death-wish. It's not. It's not being invested in an outcome. Once you realise that it doesn't get much worse than what you've already dealt with, all you can do is shrug. Same when you've broken life down to its key elements and done your best to free yourself from insecurity and allthe knee-jerk hindbrain crap that runs pretty much everyone. Somebody once said "Don't sweat the small stuff, and once you've been shot at it's all small stuff." What worries me isn't being stuck somewhere without a ticket home, it's not whether or not I can speak the local language, it's not wondering if I'll be attacked... it's realising that not being able to pay a phone bill is stressing me out. That's what really gets me. Or the fear I'll get comfortable in a beige job that makes me hate myself. That every day I'll have to loop a tie around my neck.
What I like about Manhattan is that it's an island full of people turning what few things they're good at toward a variety of ends. Use what you have, play the hand you're dealt.
Maybe this'll happen, maybe it won't. Between now and then anything could redirect the flow, but it's a plan and I like plans. I like being at a point where it could happen, and I'm trying to make it happen. In the end all you have is the experience of a thing, and being here right now, in this moment, like this, is an experience in itself.
My roots are showing. The last time I dyed my hair I was sitting on the lip of a bathtub in a motel in Oxford, Mississippi, and April was the one doing it. We got it from a Walgreens. The same place that wouldn't sell us liquor on a Sunday.
Every day in this town hinges on booting myself out the door before gloom-of-stasis kicks in. I think Fateless and everything it steeped in did this. Years of sitting on my arse, trusting everything would work out, sucking it up, while the world passed me by. When all I'd ever really wanted to do was delete 9/10ths of my crap and hit the road. Or, at the very least, have a life that wasn't being undermined.
For now I'm equal parts joy and rage, the blending of which becomes sorrow if it settles. What I can't work out is if this is who I am now, or have always been.
One thing I like about travellers: you meet up, and straight off there's a sense of belonging. Everyone's got stories, advice, recommendations, warnings, tips, jokes. It's the great opener. There's a Couchsurfing meet that happens once a month at a pub on Brunswick Street. I need to get myself there.
Caught up with Alex. Some of the best conversation I've had in ages. Film, art, the way the structure of good art makes for a good life (economy of means, The Five Obstructions, the way restrictions serve as a funnel for all that's good in life.) Got to talking about Rolling Stone embedding a journalist with a recon team in Iraq, which led to the articles that led to Generation Kill. It was the first time, really, I came out and voiced a plan to eventually get myself into the same position. I don't know if that will, eventually, happen... but I like the idea. I liked the idea when I was ten. It was the second job I ever really wanted with my whole heart: war reporter. I'm not sure why, but I do know a lot of it has to do with that satisfying sense of 'fuck you' that drove me to performance and stand-up.
It does make sense.
This trip was me working out what was real: how I work, the mechanics of travel, of other cultures, my strengths and weaknesses. The basics, really. Next step is to graduate to Asia, then the Middle East. If I can do those two areas rough, then I'll think about the possibility of someplace like Afghanistan. The US military involvement in Iraq is done with, but contractors (actual buildiers, not Blackwater) are still there trying to improve things. There's a story there, definitely. Unfortunately it's a story right now, it won't be by the time I'm ready. If I'm ever ready. But I'd love to be there to see, understand and transmit the new skein of the place. Subtract the US military from that fabric and what does life become, both for locals and for the westerners hanging around trying to repair all that damage? Are they targets? Are they shunned? Are they welcomed?
Every person is a lode of stories - good ones - and they crack open if tapped at the right angle. I want to do that. I want to sit in the dust, inside a canvas tent, trying to strip and clean a camera, while a plumber tells me about his favourite donkey. Or a soldier telling me the way he bonded with his bomb disposal robot, and the day it was destroyed was the most devastating day of his life... that when command issued him a new one he didn't want it.
blithespirit pointed out that more reporters were killed in Iraq than in the whole history of embedded reporting. My response is that Iraq's over, and it's entirely possible that by the time I'm a competent and savvy enough traveller I'll either feel differently or some key factor will have changed. But I want to get in trouble. More trouble. I want to get scammed, get hurt, make a fool of myself, come out on top, have no idea where I am, adapt to the unexpected, be swept along by circumstance, make friends, have my heart broken, whatever you've got I'm buying. But I'd also like to get married someday. Restrictions serve as a funnel for all that's good in life. The thing on my arm is my headband, my pillow, my dustmask, my scarf, my camera bag, my glass cloth. My keyring is my diary, my keepsake, my passport, my documents. My boots get my across glaciers and into restaurants. I'm most at home without one. I want to live 'til my skull is backlit with the flame of my vanishing life. I want to shout loud enough to be heard by the Gods and thereby live forever. I want to suck up the fact that no matter what I do that'll never happen, and do it anyway.
In short: fuck you.
Will it happen? I don't know. But right now there's a clear path toward it. Things could change that. A stable relationship might not survive a life like that. You've only got to see interviews with the people who live that sort of life. Half of them aren't even in the room when they speak. And then there's Margaret Moth. Holy crap, man... Margaret Moth. Strong, poetic, beautiful and - I've no doubt - damaged. Worked for decades, up before the guys, had her eyeliner on, her hair dyed, her camera good to go. She wound up getting shot in the mouth by a sniper. Didn't blame him. She knew she was in the wrong place. The first thing she asked her friend when she woke up in bandages was "Am I still beautiful?" I guess that's what I think of.
blithespirit said it sounded like a death-wish. It's not. It's not being invested in an outcome. Once you realise that it doesn't get much worse than what you've already dealt with, all you can do is shrug. Same when you've broken life down to its key elements and done your best to free yourself from insecurity and allthe knee-jerk hindbrain crap that runs pretty much everyone. Somebody once said "Don't sweat the small stuff, and once you've been shot at it's all small stuff." What worries me isn't being stuck somewhere without a ticket home, it's not whether or not I can speak the local language, it's not wondering if I'll be attacked... it's realising that not being able to pay a phone bill is stressing me out. That's what really gets me. Or the fear I'll get comfortable in a beige job that makes me hate myself. That every day I'll have to loop a tie around my neck.What I like about Manhattan is that it's an island full of people turning what few things they're good at toward a variety of ends. Use what you have, play the hand you're dealt.
Maybe this'll happen, maybe it won't. Between now and then anything could redirect the flow, but it's a plan and I like plans. I like being at a point where it could happen, and I'm trying to make it happen. In the end all you have is the experience of a thing, and being here right now, in this moment, like this, is an experience in itself.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 04:58 am (UTC)I don't know, that *does* sound like a deathwish to me.
But, you know, whatever. I've never wanted to be a war reporter or what have you. I never wanted the beige either.
But there are ways and means of getting where you want to go. Henry Rollins goes to places like Myanmar and Iran and whatnot. He claims he does it without planning or preconcptions, just a willingness to see what's out there.
That said, most people wouldn't take Hank on in a fight.
I went to uni with Olivia Rousset. One moment we were hot-swapping editing rooms at uni (she was a bit older), the next she was on Race Around The World, and then suddenly she was on Dateline, standing in Abu Ghraib and winning Walkleys.
Life happens.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 05:07 am (UTC)That said, most people wouldn't take Hank on in a fight.
Seen him lately? Very different story. And a lot of people go to those places looking not so very different from myself.
It may be that I'm not cut out for this. Who knows? But I don't feel like I've that much to lose, and if I was ever gonna do this now is the ideal time. R's heading to Cairo routinely. Seems like a good way to get my feet wet. Go from there.
And yeah, life happens. It's just where I'm at right now. Remains to be seen what happens next.
It's not a death wish. Quite the opposite, actually.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 06:01 am (UTC)Yes. Saw him last tour. He's not a brick like he used to be, but there's an intensity there that's astounding.
Why not?
Egypt is fine. Different enough, and just dangerous enough.
But it's not Oman, or Yemen, or Turkey.
It depends on your perspective, really.
I'm completely thinking aloud here, but when are you heading to Africa.
It is entirely possible I might be able to get you a junket from London to Somali (Puntland).
In theory I have an open invitation to visit the wellsite, but last time they asked I told them in no uncertain terms I didn't want to die.
Because, there are African troops with machine guns and pissed of clans.
But, you know...
no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 06:13 am (UTC)That said Somalia has do's and dont's just like anywhere.
I'm aware of my green-ness. This isn't something I'll be doing next year. I need to get a fix on my ability to absorb basic level language, to communicate without language, the limits of my own resourcefulness, staying alert despite fatigue, having a basic SOP working unconsciously so fatigue doesn't mean I wind up forgetting or misplacing something basic (all of which ties into refining organisational skills), brushing up on basic psychology and NLP, some cultural study, and spending some time back home with my family to hopefully brush up on survival, hunting, animal dressing and mechanical basics. It'll be a good excuse to live cheap for a while and get closer to my dad and brother as well, which I'd look forward to.
Putting myself in harm's way (if you wnat to think of it that way) is only something I'll do once I'm certain enough of myself and the game as a whole.
Thanks for the offer, though, and I'll keep it in mind.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 06:20 am (UTC)I'm torn on things like this. I'd love to see places like Mali, Mauritania and Somali. And Egypt.
Even just watching shows like The Amazing Race make me yearn to travel more.
Are you going to get the crazy mountain man beard as well? :)
It's all really just an evil plan to get you killed. :)
no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 06:31 am (UTC)French and German are the two I'm studying for exactly that reason. Broadest coverage. God French sucks though. I wonder if I'll ever get my head around it without actually being in a French-speaking country.
Are you going to get the crazy mountain man beard as well? :)
My manliness is undone by a girlish inability to grow anything beyond patchy stubble.
Not that I know many girls with patchy stubble.
It's all really just an evil plan to get you killed. :)
I had wondered. But far be it from me to rob of you of being able to point and exclaim "Look what I did with the internet!"
no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 06:39 am (UTC)Maybe there are French immersion techniques? Or you could probably pick up some English tutoring work with native French speakers?
Aha. Fake beard it is then.
It's okay. I wasn't cut out to be an evil mastermind anyway.
I will set more approachable goals. I might poor boiling water on some ants or something.
(Hey, I just noticed a little bell icon using your style which isn't visible in mine. Curious.)
no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 06:46 am (UTC)There's a variety of ways to compensate. Some places have French-speaking nights where you just socialise, but entirely in French. Groups of people who want to learn French meet for 2-hour coffee dates and do the same. It's the way Jenny got a grip on Suomi: she just networked with the likeminded. I'll do the same. Gonna cut myself a break and start with German though. My brain's virginal when it comes to a second language and it needs to limber up.
RE Bell Icon - I think all styles have that, dude. It's party of the whole DW infrastructure.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 06:52 am (UTC)There was a time I was immersed in it and I could pretty much understand it even if I didn't have a clue what half the words were.
French, not so much.
The bell is just titled 'Track This' in whatever style I use. Just hadn't noticed it as an icon before.
The more you know.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 07:00 am (UTC)There was a time I was immersed in it and I could pretty much understand it even if I didn't have a clue what half the words were.
Jenny teaches languages for a living and described German as being the easy parts of English, while French is the hard bits. Which is bang on. I had a working grasp of German after two days. Not conversational, but enough that I could interact in a non-stilted fashion.
My problems is that I've developed a memory that's almost entirely visual. Unless I have that sort of a hook for something I have a hard time recalling it. Which makes a language like Suomi practically impenetrable because the word-shapes bear no resemblance to their English counterparts - if they even have one. Whereas German feels like intuitive codewords for English.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 10:43 pm (UTC)* Druckman and Swets (eds.) (1988) Enhancing Human Performance: Issues, Theories, and Techniques, Commission on Behavioral and Social Sciences and Education National Academy Press. doi:10.1002/hrdq.3920010212
* Sharpley C.F. (1987). "Research Findings on Neuro-linguistic Programming: Non supportive Data or an Untestable Theory". Journal of Counseling Psychology 34 (1): 103–107,105. doi:10.1037/0022-0167.34.1.103.
no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 02:34 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 05:27 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2010-09-16 08:33 am (UTC)http://www.metafilter.com/95748/No-Baggage-Challenge
no subject
Date: 2010-09-17 05:28 am (UTC)