Sorrow's and Bullshit

As a result of my incessant bitching and seemingly unappreciative attitude toward life, I feel I must clarify the reasons for my first world anguish. Well, fuck you, because I don’t understand the source of my discontent any better than you. Back home I always have hot water, nice clothes, delicious food, unlimited entertainment, the ability to communicate instantly with friends around the world, heat when its cold, A/C when its hot, hundreds of types of good beer to get drunk from, dank weed to get high from, and with just my phone I can read nearly any fact or idea that any human has ever written or discovered about our world and Universe. And I’m a fucking white American guy. Yet too often I wake up with a heavy, hollow, useless spirit which pervades every fiber of my being. I lie in misery. 

In February, I left. I rode over Poland with a window seat, a numb ass and a full bladder. The path to the toilet blocked for hours by a fat, sleeping American. Our flight continued south through Europe toward war-torn Ukraine, and then, for the final leg, flew into the coveted heavens above Iraq and Syria, right over, yet out of reach of thousands of bloodthirsty, freedom-hating, brown people.

I arrived in Kathmandu on February 9 at midnight and met my ride from the volunteer organization (the Rural Community Development Project, or R.C.D.P), outside of Tribhuvan Airport. We quickly threw my shit into the van and went flying off into the dark, weird streets of the city. The driver, Sujan, with both eyes glued to his phone, wove with maniacal ease in and out of unmarked lanes into oncoming traffic. One hand typed away furiously as the other steered casually and honked without mercy. After a harrowing 15 minute drive we veered into the tiny alley which led to our final destination, a hostel run by R.C.D.P. The next morning I woke to the sound of stray dogs fighting and old women hocking phlegm. So I made it. My journey to Nepal and into the bowels of my mind had officially begun. Time to start clawing up away from all the sorrows and bullshit. But I guess part of the cure is searching for a purpose, which is why I’m here. 

I’ve also had this one thought which helps keep me moderately sane. Bear with me. Human beings are animals, built to survive. On Earth, millions of different animals have lived and died with one shared goal, survival. It took about 200,000 years for our species to figure shit out, but we human beings got really, really good at survival. Suspiciously good. For tens of thousands of years we hunted wooly mammoths, fought saber tooth tigers, and lived in the fuckin dark, but continued to thrive. Every second of human progress has built up to this day and provided us with our ridiculously lavish, modern existence. This is a day and age where I rarely have to think about actual survival. My only problems are that I’m spoiled, whiney and sad. Sometimes, however, I remind myself how ridiculously unlikely it is that I get to exist at all, much less that I get to exist NOW, in this era where knowledge, compassion and creativity are cherished on a scale never seen before on Earth. That shit blows my mind. I’m reminded that no animal in Earth's 4.5 billion year history has ever had as much potential to wake up tomorrow and go watch, listen, travel, read, feel, create, help, sing, play or love as you or I do. 

So yea, I should probably quit my bitching. 

The Buddhist's

An old Monk chanted softly and farted loudly as he walked by my door. A violent gust blew through the hallway. It was the never-ending wind that came with monastery’s hilltop perch. Not the wind from his ass. The devil had squeezed his hellish claw on my intestines since the night before, and night before that. For three days I laid on my rock hard bed, alone, and suffered through the food poisoning. My fucker inner-dialogue began to sing a song of hopelessness and doubt, and the Despair sunk in. 

The last time I wrote a blog I called it “Too White To Fail”, but I never explained what the name really meant. Some people probably assumed it was because I’m an arrogant douche, or a shitty racist, or possibly even an arrogant, shitty racist douche. Those assumptions, however, were only partly true. My last journey was blind search for purpose, born out of misery and driven by optimism. When I left that December 26th, I had no plan to write, nor any expectations for what may lie ahead. Writing on my iPad was just a distraction. That first night on the road, when I named the blog “Too White To Fail”, it was a simple reminder that I felt semi-capable of keeping my shit together. 

 I stayed in L.A. for 6 months, worked relatively hard, explored the city, drank countless two-dollar bottles of wine, smoked frightening amounts of weed, grew cynical, stopped writing, developed a thick spite-based Southern accent, read some books, tried to write again, failed, and ultimately wept like a bitch. Then one day I was walking down Rodeo Drive and had a strange vision that all the rich folks had turned into goats, screaming and clip-clopping around Beverly Hills each in a fit of cunty self-absorbedness. It may have been the drugs, but I wasn't taking any chances. I bought a ticket home. 

Naturally, I got home and got complacent. Within a week, I bought a puppy. A little dachshund I named Josie. Within two more, I got drunk and almost lost her. Since then, not much has happened. I mostly wallowed in self-pity and drank too much. Of course there was a failed relationship here and there, to spice things up, but these just helped stomp on the slivers of my optimism that remained. Things got bad. Again. Too much drinking and too many drugs took their toll. It was time to be born-again from the Misery and reignited by the Optimism, but it took a couple years for that spark to come back. So I went online and found an organization through which you could pay to “volunteer” teaching English at a Nepalese Buddhist monastery. It sounded weird, hard and far away. I was in. 

Now I’ve been in Nepal for two months and although I meant to write about my trip from the get-go, I didn’t. So here I sit in the dirty backroom/ opium den of a rural Nepali cafe, drinking my fourth or fifth homemade rice beer, among the goats and chickens, and tapping out what may be  a start the cure to my endless misery. I’ll try to write something again, hopefully soon, before another 2 years passes, about the perspective this third-world country life has given me, but I’m not making any promises.

Ozzy & The Unnatural Hillbilly

Finally, I found the balls to sit down and write. I haven't done anything too bizarre and what energy I've mustered lately was used to work on The Mouse War. I've been working hard peddling pesto and haven't had time for much else. I have, however, been traveling all around this city, from Venice to Beverly Hills to Pasadena to Burbank and experienced some of the funky, unexpected shit this city has to offer.

Fake New York taxis at Warner Bros Studio

One day I literally saw a hobo whip his dirty pink dick out and start pissing into the road and the next I met a guitarist from Nirvana (Pat Smear). Thursday, I was at Fox Studios setting up a market and realized I was parked in a reserved spot for Jake Johnson from the T.V. show New Girl. I'd never heard of him, but he's apparently some famous person, which makes stealing his spot almost worth mentioning.

The kitchen, where I pack and clean the supplies for markets, is in the alley between Beverly and Rodeo Drive, so when I'm not at a market, I'm working in Beverly Hills. The alley is also where the the valet parking is for all the high end shoppers; so when I'm working I regularly spot Rolls Royce, Bugatti's, Maserati's and just about every other absurd, exotic car you could ever think of. And of course I get to see the filthily rich folks who drive them.