The skin of my yellow country teeth

Sometimes I take a deep breath, smile and tell myself that I may never go home.

I'm in Indonesia.  A poor Muslim country.  My days are easy and without structure.  I motorbike around looking for something different and worth remembering.  I meet new friends; some local, some from around the world.

I'm a few months shy of two years and still traveling.  I have no fucking clue on 'what I'm looking for' so quit asking.  I do know that I'm learning everyday.  Mankind is all the same.  Some rich; most poor.  If you have a smile you can go a long way.

I save my coke bottles and give them everyday to the guy pushing a massive cart.  He makes in day what I spend on smokes back home.  It makes me think.  I drink beer with westerners and question if anything really matters in the grand scheme of things.  It makes me think.

This is me.  This is now.  And I love it.

Random day in the life.

Since I don't do it enough, here's a random travel story.

Today is Christmas eve here in Oz.  I started the day with a split shift at the grand ole roadhouse.  Unlike past Christmas', it was just another day.  I made the whole season without hearing a Christmas song, seeing a tree or decorations.  I was proud of that until today, when I remembered who I was.

A guy in a wheel chair came in looking for a room.  We weren't suppose to sell any rooms, since we're closed tomorrow, but I talked my boss into it.  It's Christmas and he's in a wheel chair, right?  Then something great happened.  A random guy came up and bought said wheel chair guy a room and steak dinner.

I know what you're thinking, it's a mini-Christmas miracle.  Well the wheel chair guy was kind of dick.  I shrugged it off because I'm a dick and a I have two legs.

I did his laundry in our pay machines.  He complained and I complained.  I thought his point about not wanting to pay the three dollars for the dryer was asinine; I summed him up by the newer car he drove.  His clothes cleaned, I passed them off with a sigh of relief.

Later that night I saw the guy getting his wet clothes off the railing and offered him a smoke.  Turns out we are both merchant mariners.  He lost his legs in the line of work.  Something I could of done a million times with my dumb ass bosses.  We had a great talk about life and how travel makes you a better person.

While it's not a Christmas miracle.  It was something I needed.  Every time I want to give up and go home, something like that happens.

This is why I travel.

*Side note.  My bosses daughter asked me if we celebrated Christmas in the U.S.  I laughed and said, 'more than you will ever know'.

I would like to salute
the ashes of American flags
And all the fallen leaves
filling up shopping bags

Meeting People is Easy

I'd planned on posting a bullet point review on 2011 but decided against it after reading it and seeing it was a bunch of hot garbage.  Instead I'll just ramble and hopefully touch on some of the highlights.  Ah, the beauty of having a hand full of readers.

I'll start with the setting.  It's hot as fuck in Australia.  My A/C is broke, I'm listening to a playlist I made for a new friend, my bag of tobacco and a cheap box wine at my side.  Living the dream.

I try not to lie.  Australia isn't my favorite country.  It's too much like America only more primal.  Sometimes for the better but mainly for the worst.  But you don't learn and grow in the garden of Eden.

I've been here almost a year and have seen some amazing things.  Met amazing people and laughed until I threw up.  But I can't seem to translate those experiences onto paper.  Hopefully I'll tell the stories someday or just be content with what they've made me into.  Does that sound pretentious?

I got writer's block so I rolled a cigarette, sprayed the anthill in my bathroom and went outside for a walk and a smoke.

Ray Lamontage came up on the ipod and I thought of a friend back home in the throws of addiction.  He's finally back home at his parents house.  The sun set to Wilco's Ashes of American Flag.  I watched it wearing only shorts and felling the hot sand between my naked toes.

I'm content with my playlist.

Something I've learned from traveling.

When you meet someone from a different culture they see you in a different light.  All the quirks and personality traits your old friends have looked over for years are front and center.  What may be normal in your homeland is a a big flaw somewhere else in the world. 

When I was young I saw a picture of James Dean with his hands in his pocket and thought it was the coolest thing ever.  That picture, along with other things, has put me in the mindset to always have me hands in my pocket.  Turns out others see that as a sign of touching yourself.

Who knew?  Is there an universal subconscious at play?

I can't find the picture I was thinking about but this one is better.  It's from a 1990 movie called, 'Book of Love'.  At the time I watched this I only knew a little about Mr. Dean, but they did an homage to him through the main character.  And of course he had the that awkwardness that only comes with adolescence.  Note the grease stains on the wall...  It's more of my style.

I lost my mind long ago, down that yellow brick road

I like to think about random things.  I do it all day, everyday.  I'm stuck in the outback, a place I should be saving money in, only to find myself running in circles.  I know I'm not going forward and that's cool.  It's another chapter in my life.

When I am old a grey and think back on Australia, I will have many memories and emotions of the good times.  Hopefully Angus and Julia Stone will be the soundtrack.  I know it will be.

Then a heart of gold came on the stereo
Mr Young made me cry
Then all the colors of the rainbow
Fell in my eyes

I lost my mind long ago
Down that yellow brick road

Unlikely Japan

I have an obsession with vinyl records.  My sister calls me a hipster but I counterpoint that with 'I've been collecting since 1996'.  So I guess I'm a hipster hipster.  Single tear.

When I was a kid, my brother, sister and I would spend every Saturday with my grandparents and then Sunday morning, my Grandma Dee would take us to church.  My parents didn't go to church, so I had a balanced childhood of both worlds.  Good moral guidance for a kid and the choice of religion.  The last time I went to church was in 1999.  I was 18 and sleep walking through Army basic training, but that's another story.

A lot of the weekends I spent at my Grandparents, I was upstairs listening to my parents old records.  Beatles, Tommy James, Bee Gees, Johnny Cash and many others.  I still have those records and a 'few' more.  I keep telling my self they are an investment, while at the same time playing the hell out of them, depreciating their value.

I picked up this gem the other day and have it waiting for me back home.  It cost me less than what I would pay for a Hamburger over here.  I never heard of the B-side before.  Ah, the beauty of finding music.

As the youtube synopsis states:


This is a previously unreleased Wilco track (featured as a B Side on the 7 inch single for "You Never Know) called "Unlikely Japan". I would call it an early version of "Impossible Germany" but really, this is a totally different song. Recorded in 2003, it is sort of the missing link between "A Ghost is Born" and "Sky Blue Sky".

 I can't say what this means to me
I don't begin to understand

Moon Phases

It's night time here and morning in America.  Sometimes when I look up at the moon I wonder if my friends back home are seeing it in the day light.  Is it possible for the moon to be in two places at once?  I don't think so, but don't really know.  I have a lot of questions for science that I should just google but it's nice not knowing things.

Today is Thanksgiving in America, which make me think about my friends and family.  I miss them but can't go home.  Not can't, won't.  I only have one life and I'm going to do what I want too, which is to travel and learn about the human condition.  The more I learn, the more questions and doubts I have.

When he was six, he believed that the moon overhead followed him
By nine, he deciphered the illusion, trading magic for fact, no trade-backs
So this is what it's like to be an adult?
If he only knew now what he knew then

So it goes.

I'm at the point in my life that I think a lot about my grandparents.  I'm lucky to still have three of them alive but they're in their golden years.  "Chick" is in a nursing home with good and bad days, mostly bad.  Pop, who is at least 80, visits her twice a day and still drives cross country for his hunting trips.  The thing about my Grandpa and hunting is that in all the years, I've never known him to kill anything.  He just really likes to camp and cook outdoors.

"Dee" was just accepted into a retirement home/card playing house.  Most days she's still sharp but since Papa Charles died she's convinced herself that she's broke.  Papa Charles died 18 years ago.  I didn't cry at his funeral but loved the man with all of my heart.

Life is funny.  If I do have kids they will never know my Grandparents.  I only remember my Great Grandma Molly and her making making me fruit crepes in an old rickety house.  I've heard many stories about my great grandparents but Molly is the only one I can put a face to the story.  And no matter what story it is I always think about her in a moo moo dress and that creepy old stuffed toy lion in her living room.

In the grand scheme we're just rain drops in the ocean, our stories to be recycled and lived out by new generations.  I'm fine with that.

A fallen head of Buddha that a tree grew around.

Humble Boast (A moment of truth)

The thing about me and writing is that I like to write but I find it hard to share my feelings.  I come from a loving, generous family but I was raised not boast or to complain, just to keep you head down and make the most of what you are given.  I could expand on that thought but what I want to express is that for the most part, I’m not comfortable talking about myself.

The past 15 months I’ve seen and experienced things that have changed me in ways I can’t explain.  I’ve looked into myself and saw the best and worst of my qualities.  The saying, ‘you are what you hate’, has never rung truer.  While I despise racism I see myself stereotyping the local aboriginals through day to day transactions at the roadhouse.  It’s something I’m ashamed of but at least I see it and that’s the first step in change.

I also know that I can adapt and change.  While backpacking, through the eyes of social media looks like one big vacation, it’s not always easy.  Don’t get me wrong, laying on the beach, seeing the world and all it’s beauty, and having the greatest time of my life is golden but it’s not always easy.  I take pride in the frustrating times of trying to catch a connecting bus in Laos only to end up on the back of a truck with farmers and their family.  Being hot, tried and covered in sweat; arguing with the woman that will always hold a special place in my heart, only to end up next to a angry local in the back of the truck.  I could of kept being angry but instead I gave everyone some of my food and by the end of the trip we were great friends, if only for an hour or two.

I know I should write more but in the end I have my memories.  And when I meet someone that wants to hear them, I will speak my thoughts. 

Oh how time flies
With crystal eyes
And cold as cold
When you're ending with diamond eyes

innocence lost

I often wonder if I'll ever return to the time in my life that I really embraced an album like I did when I was fourteen.  No enhancements; pot or booze, just ears.  Maybe in my grey years.

The Breeze

Are you moving much too fast?
And the good times that just don't last
If you're always on the go
Make an angel in the snow
And freeze

Do you feel like you're stuck in time?
Forever waiting on that line
If nothing ever moves
Put that needle to the groove
And sing

Is it a dream
Keeping you awake
Is it the stillness that makes you shake?
If you need to know for sure (need to know for sure)
What's on the ocean's floor
You'll sink

Do you like things the way they seem
Or are you looking behind the scenes
Well if you gotta know
What it takes to make it so
Just believe

Are dark parts to your mind
Hidden secrets left behind
Where no one ever goes
Everybody knows
It's alright

Do you get dizzy
On the ground?
There must be something
Going around
What blows us here today
Will blow us all away

Breeze
Will blow us all away
The Breeze

Gotta live, gotta live in our town

I came into my own in a small rural Arkansas town, the town I lived in until I was 19.  I don't care to much for the town and only visit my family and Jacob but I have some amazing memories.  Memories that are all linked by music.  They're simple, boring and really have no point.  Kinda like the town itself.

Really great albums you can remember buying or hearing for the first time.  Live's Throwing Copper was the first CD I ever bought.  And one of the few albums I know every word to every song.  Neil Young's Mirror Ball was the first monthly cd BMG sent me.  I had no clue who he was and when I asked my mom all she could say was, 'yeah he's good, did a lot of drugs, I think'.

I remember my brother telling me I should buy Smashing Pumpkins' MCIS because it was a good deal for a double album.  My first house with Jacob and Alana and listening to U2's WAR on vinyl while Jacob was deployed on peace keeping mission in Kuwait.  A first of many deployments, none peace keeping.

I remember having to listen to Green Day's Dookie in secret because Adrienne promised her parents she burnt all her secular music at Acquire the Fire.  For those that don't know, ATF is a brain washing christain camp that told us to burn all our music and not to do the normal things kids do.  This is from their website: "ATF’s purpose is to bring thunderous volume and clarity to God’s voice and amass a generation of passionate radicals that engage a full-on assault on the kingdom of darkness."  

Yeah...  Watch the news people, nothing good ever comes from 'passionate radicals'.

I remember sitting in what must have been a bowling alley in South Dakota hearing Tom Petty's Mary Jane's Last Dance for the first time.  I can recall the conversation like it was yesterday and the fucked up carpet that only bowling alleys and strip clubs have.  Since I was on a church mission trip I'm pretty sure it wasn't a strip club.  That same mission trip we were banned from watching MTV because it was the devil and my youth director told me The Eagle's Hotel California was about the satanism.  Something I laughed about the other day when it was debunked at Cracked.com

Rivers and Roads

Now that I booked my ticket home I'm doing something that I'm not known for; planning.  Every backpacker that I traveled with was amazed at my ability to have no agenda, no clue on where I was going next.  It started a year a half ago at LAX when the ticket person told me I couldn't go to Vietnam because I didn't have a visa.  Who knew you couldn't get one on arrival?  This guy.  The blueprint was to meet Jen in Hanoi and let her help me map out some kind of master plan.  Turns out I couldn't get in and she was sick and had to fly home.  I landed in Hong Kong and decided to wing it. 8 countries later here I am.

My All Out or Get Out Farewell Tour:

•  Bangkok is the mecca of cheap tattoos.  I'm thinking about getting the tree of life underneath the dragon on my back.

• Cooking classes are must.  Jess and I meant to take some last time but never got around to it.

• Deep sea fishing.  I've always wanted to catch a tuna and eat it raw on the boat.

• Get my P.A.D.I certification.  Diving is cheap in Asia and the water is crystal clear.

• Get another suit in South Korea.  The one I bought in Vietnam is a little tight once I started eating western food again.

• Visit Burma (Myanmar).  It's one of the least developed countries in the world and it dead last in health care.  DEAD LAST.  I wanted to go last time I was in Asia but the government closed the boarders for so-called elections.

No Direction Home

I might regret it but I booked a flight home for April.  I really don't know why I did it, the subconscious can be funny sometimes.  I tell myself I can always go backpacking again but that window in life is closing.  Maybe I want to go home to see what I'm not missing.  I'm at that point in life that all my friends are making decisions and I can't for some reason.  Maybe if I touch the shore I can see the horizon?

I'm leaving Oz in early February and then heading off to Bangkok.  I'm not for sure what I'm doing but I know I have to leave Thailand at some point, so not to over stay my 30 day visa.  Maybe I'll go to Burma if the border is open again.  The last time I tried to enter, they closed entry because of the so called elections.  Gotta love a backwards ass dictatorship.

I do know I'm going to live it up on some Thailand beaches.  For those that don't know Thailand beaches are breath taking.  Just picture every movie scene you see with crystal clear water and locals bringing you fresh juice mixed with booze.  Or just watch the movie 'The Beach' on mute.  That movie kinda sucked but the book is good.  I bought it for a dollar in Bangkok.

At some point I have to reenter Thailand because I'm flying out of Bangkok and hitting up South Korea.  I never thought of going there until I tried to book a flight home and had a 6 hour lay over in Seoul.  I hate lay overs so I decided to stay 10 days.  I'm hoping South Korea will be special because that's where my Grandfather became a man.  I wish I had with me the picture of him sitting tiredly with his helmet at his feet, smoking a cigarette on some remote Korean hillside.  If I did I would post it because it was one of my favorites.  That ornery old man has some stories to tell and if you have a couple of hours, he'll preach your ear off.

After South Korea I'm flying into Cali to see family and friends.  Vegas is now looking in the mix and then it's back to real world.

Real world; Fayetteville or Denver?  Who knows?  I might not even make it home.

Black Crow

Favorite Australian band so far.  I love the Mythology of the crow.  Every culture see's it a different way.

Dance, dance, dance

My new toy.  26 pounds of heavy duty old school.  I found a guy on Etsy that restores old players.  He overhauled everything and rebuilt the speakers.

10 Tracks (Random Thoughts)

• My hands are burnt and cracked and  I can't make it through a day in the kitchen without adding a new scar to them.  I'm proud of my little reminders.  After the first day of working as a cook I wanted to tell my boss to schedule me only on the front counter.  I'm glad I didn't.  The kitchen is still kicking my ass but each day I'm getting closer to making it my bitch.

• Once again Wilco hasn't failed me.  'The Whole Love' is another soundtrack to a phase in my life. 'Art of Almost' is my new writing song.  I guess I would say it's progressive for Wilco but the fuzz guitar, snare drum and bassline at 4:40 is classic rock and roll.  'Born Alone' reminds me of a song I might sing in a Baptist church while on acid.

• The beauty of traveling is that every backpacker you meet has a portable hard drive full of movies and music.  After trading off, I now have over 100 movies and TV shows but I'm stuck watching Arrested Development.  It never get's old.  Hopefully the recent news is true and there will be another season and movie coming out soon.

• When I get a hold of someone's hard drive I always copy bands that I never heard of.  I have a shit ton of new music and some of the best are Australian.  If you get a chance, check out The Jezabels, The Grates, Angus & Julia Stone, Paul Kelly and Gotye.

• My grandparents are getting old and it makes me sad.  They are big part of who I am today.

• What's better than Pearl Jam?  PJ covering Pink Floyd.  Two of my top 10 bands.  Check out the emotion in this video.

Pearl Jam Performs "Mother" for Pink Floyd Week - Music - Late Night with Jimmy Fallon 

•  I'm glad Amanda Knox is know free.  Injustice and the lack of freedom are probably the two things I hate the most in the word; that and racism.

• I really want a joint right now.

• Have you heard Kid Cudi's 'Man on the Moon'?  I'm not a huge fan of Hip Hop but fuck this album is good.

• I just placed a bid on a badass record player on Ebay.  Damn I love a weak US dollar and a ridiculously strong Aussie dollar.  Kinda makes up for the $20 pack of smokes.

I'm on the pursuit of happiness and I know everything that shine ain't always gonna be gold
I'll be fine once I get it, I'll be good.

Dobie Gillis

I try to live my live by the mantra of, "I am who I am" and while Popeye said it first, no other cartoon character said it better.

In the past week, five people have told me that I look angry.  Random people that I don't know..  At first it was funny but the last one struck a chord.  Is that how people see me?  I know I don't make a great first impression and that's my biggest fault, but I'm not angry.  I'm a just a thinker, right?

No matter who you think you are, when people start to question your preconceived notions, you start to wonder.

I want to yell at the top of my lungs, "I'M ALWAYS DEEP IN THOUGHT!  IT'S A GOOD THING!

Halfway Home

The other day I made a five year plan for myself only to remember that's not who I am.  I have nothing holding me back in life and that's comfortable to me.  Being the analytical person that I am, I did however make a list of my options.  First, what is known; I'm going to stay at my current job for three months and save up money.  Here are my options after that.

• One of my best friends offered me an opportunity to invest in a new bar opening up around a year from now.  His current bar is doing great and everything points to the new one doing just as well.  Along with the investment opportunity he also offered me a place to stay while I get back to the real world and a job working at the micro-brewery he's about to open up.  What can I say, I have great friends who are like family to me.
• I could work and save money; and then lounge on the beach for a month before coming home.  Thailand, Fiji or Bali sounds good right about now.
• Another friend, that I call my brother, is moving to Denver and there's always a spot for me there.  I hear great things about the city and I wouldn't be far from the Great Divide; something I consider as a natural holy land.
• When I leave Oz I should have enough money to travel South America.  Machu Picchu has always been at the very top of my list of places to see and I have friends, that I've met along the way, living there.
• I can get a work visa for New Zealand and continue to work and live the dream and if I'm lucky enough, score a job as an extra on the new Hobbit movie.

So, there you have it... Fuck if I know.  I'm just going to keep on living and see what happens.

A comfort plush all laced in lead
Was sent to quell your sentiment
And keep your trembling sentinel hand at bay

Take

I'm settling in at my new job and while on the outside it's a perfect setting for a horror movie, it's not too bad.  Mount Magnet is bush country; a dry, arid landscape in the middle of nowhere.  The backpackers live in a motel like building with every two units sharing a bathroom.  My room is nice and I don't have to share a bathroom since the other room is left vacant because my predecessor hung himself in my bathroom.

That's right, the backpacker I replaced hung himself in my shower.  It's a little strange but death is apart of life. I guess I'm comfortable with death because my grandparents use to own a funeral home and one of my dad's many jobs was a mortician.  I understand death but I still wonder how he got to the point of taking his own life.  From what I learned he proposed to his girl only to be turned down.  So he went backpacking.  He was a loner at work and his room was scattered with drugs and razorblades.  That's all the information I have and I'm sure his life was more complex but now he's just a footnote in my life's journey.  Hopefully someone out there will honor his spirit with memories of the good times.