FOLLOW

so purely
there is no
question
because
there is no
defense

ON ITS OWN

in the stillness
how it unlocks
all the running

A SMILE AT LAST

     I don't know, I go on here (Facebook) for completely different reasons. The less interesting the better. Look, I have all sorts of friends on here that are doing all these amazing things but that's not what's interesting to me about it. I have a friend who's traveling around South America doing some sort of adventure travel work or something, I don't really know exactly. I know brewmasters, chefs, restaurateurs, architects, political activists, poets, musicians, actors, professors, comic book artists, climbers, painters, dancers, sculptors, models, comedians, photographers, writers, a couple glass blowers, a guy who's bicycling alone around the world, a magazine publisher/owner, a guy who makes the best goddamn bitters on the fucking planet. I know a guy with crazy eyebrows who studied film and was almost burned alive a couple years ago. Well, I guess he WAS burned alive but he was lucky enough to be standing near a pool. His hobby is collecting animal heads and boiling off the meat and hair. God knows what the hell he does with them. I know an engineer that works for the CIA who tells me things even I don't want to hear. I know a former Marine who fought in Fallujah and saw one of his buddies take a direct hit from an RPG. He said his legs kept running for some time without his torso. We're talking like 15 or 20 steps. Could you imagine? Just a pair of legs running across the sand! He's one of the sweetest souls I have ever known. He sends me private messages all the time about my boys and how amazing they are and he tells me he sees and understands my sadness and that it is beautiful and perfectly appropriate. I turned him onto Henry Miller and Bukowski and Celine. I told him the most important influence on my life other than Dylan was the movie, Crumb. He's now watched it almost as many times as I have. And he agrees, it is more Charles than Robert. He never stops thanking me. He's my biggest fan and I'm noticing more and more when I write, I'm writing for him. I knew a guy who was on the last days of his life but you would've absolutely never known it. He used to climb 5.13 (in the early 90s) and soloed big walls and he was always running those ultra marathons out in the desert. I know a guy who was driving to NY to open as a lead in his first play when he was hit head on and was literally ripped in half to where his spinal cord was exposed. Against all odds, he recovered and learned how to walk again and he went on to act and he took up drums and now owns a successful cookie company. I love all these goddamn people and I value their friendship. And is it just me, or does it not always seem that the funniest ones are those who've lost the most along the way?... It was just the other day I found myself really down and frightened for my family and so I went to go hike the mountain but there were so many people when I got there that I turned around and I found a big block of concrete on the side of the road and I just sat there, breathing, feeling the blood pump through my body. I tried hard to remember things, to gain some sort of foothold to continue on from. Finally, an image popped into my mind. I had just gotten back from Milan to find a big fat check from my agency and so I decided to take a break and fly home to Oklahoma. A few days into the trip, I borrowed my friend's car and drove out to Lubbock to see my sister and my mother. That first night, I heard a thumping sound and walked over to my mother's room and I could hear her crying and I knocked as I pushed open door and found her in her bathrobe, kicking the wall. "Mom, what's wrong? What's the matter?" She just kept kicking the wall. "Mom, what is it?"
     She finally looked at me and said: "You don't understand, Philby. Just leave me alone. It's just the way it is."
     I was watching some sort of strange little caterpillar type thing crawl near my shoe when another image appeared. It was from a time maybe a year or so after that first image: I had lost everything. I had quit modeling and had gained about 50 lbs. I had just gotten my first round of poems published. I was newly married (1st marriage) and I had gout and I had been tricked and failed and one drunken night I found myself walking along the West Side Highway as the cars raced by. I wanted to be back in Oklahoma. I wanted to climb again. I wanted to hang out with my best friend, Ron. But it was far too late for any of that. Trust me, it takes no time at all for everything to move on without you. I had nowhere to go. I didn't know how to do anything. I hadn't paid my taxes in years. Who the hell was I? Why was I walking along the West Side Highway in the middle of the night? Then all of a sudden, the whole thing just became hysterical to me. I started laughing and then I began singing the song, Oklahoma. "OOOOOOklahoma where the wind comes sweeping down the plain..." I started skipping and I sang it louder and louder, flinging my arms out in front of me. I sang it over and over again, just that first line and the next bit about the waving wheat that sure smells sweet. It was all I could remember. The cars flew passed me, honking, and I knew at least I was a person who felt things and meant things and what the hell else was there to be?
     A few more images came to me while sitting on that block. But then I figured I needed to get back home. I had just turned the corner onto my street when I got the Facebook notification on my phone that so and so had shared a link with me. I hit the screen with my thumb. It was from something called the PurposeFairy. The article was called "15 Powerful Things Happy People Do Differently". A smile at last!
 
   

YOU WILL NEVER KNOW

And all those stories you will never know if they are true. Did Ray Johnson and his friends really throw those kittens in that filthy pool, the one in the other neighborhood behind the Strandley's? I heard they duct taped their legs together and then one by one, they tossed 'em in. So I guess they just stood there at the edge, looking down at those blurry images at the bottom of that water? I definitely don't buy the other one though, that they buried a couple up to their necks and ran them over with a lawnmower. I can't imagine anyone doing that. But hearing those stories really shifted things in my mind. It wasn't long after, my mother went insane and I started having to stay with friends. And I guess around then is when I heard so and so fucked Mrs. so and so. Could you imagine? I mean, we're talking the 8th grade! Everyone said he had a big dick. Man, I really hope that's true. She was the hottest teacher I ever had. I still find myself thinking about that ass. I wonder what she looks like now? And then that time we were all out there under that street light, throwing those frogs up in the air. In the summer they would gather like pilgrims, staring up at the mass of june bugs whirling around the light. We'd pick 'em up and throw them underhanded and watch them wobble through the air. And then they would hit and we would wince and jump up and down and go: "Oooo!" or "Ahhh!" Their faces would be smashed and their blood was just like ours and sometimes their legs would break and they would go sideways when they hopped and wind up on their backs with their soft white bellies shinning in the light. And I was just about to pick up another one when we heard: "HEY, WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU KIDS DOING?" And we looked over and saw that disheveled man that had moved back in with his parents because they said he was too sad. He was standing barefoot in the grass by the curb, huffing with his hands on his hips. His eyes were bright red and his t-shirt was stained. He had a big round belly and long skinny arms. He never said another word. We all just stood there, looking around at the frogs as the june bugs flew around the light.

WAIT, WHAT?

"You ever hear of this guy, Carl Feldman or Fieldman or something? He died in like the late 70s or early 80s. He lived in Chicago I think."

"No."

"Anyway, I have some of his stuff at home. I'll let you borrow them sometime. Only a tiny bit of his work has ever been published. I think Sean Penn or maybe Tom Waits bought up the rights to the rest, I don't know. I heard someone's working on a documentary now. But there were only like three or four hundred ever printed. My friend, Dan, gave them to me as a wedding gift. They're just these cheap little pamphlets, saddle stapled, you know. You really gotta see this shit. This dude was fucking nuts. He decided to make his entire life a work of art, a performance. He left home at like 16 or 17 years of age and never spoke to his family ever again. He was terrible with numbers but he forced himself to work in finance. He did everything opposite of how he would actually live himself. He pretended to like cats. He hated baseball but he never missed a Cubs game. He ate mostly things he didn't like, you know, all sorts of stuff like that. You really gotta check it out. And so he was a straight man and he got married to some women, I forget where they met, but he didn't love her at all. But then, you know, they had kids and all of that, but then he decides to start having all these gay lovers on the side. And so at one point, he intentionally allows himself to get caught, you know, just to see how it would all play out. I mean, it's incredible!"

"I don't get it. I mean, like how,... I mean, what's the actual art?"

"His whole fucking life was a work of art! Everything! He believed in none of it! It was all a performance. He would listen to like just whatever pop music there was but he really loved jazz. But he forced himself to never listen to it. He never did anything for himself, he never once pursued anything that was inside of him. It's like he sacrificed himself for this crazy art piece."

"But what did he do? I mean, how is that art?"

"Oh, yeah, so, he just sort of did like these simple stick figure panels. They're like sort of penciled comics of just like this every day bullshit. And there's mostly just this mundane dialog that goes along with it. They say he recorded every encounter he had ever had in his entire life since he left home. Every word he ever spoke and every word anyone had ever spoken to him. But there's nothing else. There's no other thoughts on the matter. Nothing. No internal dialog or anything. It just is what it is. It's like the first real reality show sort of, but it's all a hoax in this incredible way."

"But wait, then how would anyone know he wasn't gay? You said he had these gay lovers on the side and all of that, I mean, I don't get it. It doesn't make sense. And then he had kids so I'm assuming he loved his kids right? I mean, I really don't get it. Or how would anyone know he liked jazz if he never tells you he liked jazz?"

"Hmmm, yeah, I guess you're right. That wouldn't really make sense would it? Yeah, cause if you have kids and you love your kids then that sort of messes the whole thing up? I don't know, I gotta really work on this. It's kind of a funny thing to think about though, right? Someone actually doing that?"

"Wait, what?"

"No, wait, I GOT IT! He writes this long letter for everyone to read after his death, a manifesto."

"Dude, you made that whole thing up? I'm serious, man, I think you really need to talk to somebody."

"Yeah, well, I can't find anyone around here that takes my insurance."

PHONE CONVERSATION WITH MOM 4/18/13

"Philby, I am your mother! I don't need to hear things like that! And listen to me, I do NOT want you writing that!"

"Writing what?"

"The thing about America's Funniest Home Videos."

"You don't think that's funny?!"

"No, I don't!"

"Really?! I can't think of anything that's ever been funnier!"

"Listen to me, I'm your mother! I'm telling you, it is NOT funny. You're the only one that thinks things like that are funny. Why do you think horrible things are funny?"

"You really don't think it's funny?"

"No, not in the least!"

"See, that's how I know when something's REALLY funny!... Hey, did I tell you about the Kenny Chesney suicide letter I wrote?"

"Ugh, PHILBY! I swear you're gonna..."

"Come on. You don't think that's funny?!"

YEAH, MAN, I KNOW

"You're talking about America's Funniest Videos?"

"Yeah."

"You said AFE."

"I said AFV!"

"You just said it again."

"No I didn't! I said AFV, Veee!... Hey, when did they stop calling it America's Funniest HOME Videos?"

"Yeah, I don't know, a while ago?"

"Why do you think they changed it?"

"I don't know, Google it. It's probably got something to do with everybody having camera phones."

"Hmmm. Yeah. Anyway, it's like totally fucking genius, man. I mean, most of the girls in the audience are like 14, 15, maybe 16 years old. They got 'em in these tiny ass skirts with their legs crossed way up high. You know, it's not like Hee Haw or something where the man at home is supposed to be lusting after the girls. I mean, they had real women on that show; it was all out in the open. Man, my father used to watch that shit religiously. And he hated country music... But this is so perfectly manipulated. For one thing, most women would never think that her husband would be sitting around, laughing with his family while at the same time he's trying look up all these young girl's skirts. Ya know, she wouldn't even want to know that. And if she did look over at him and get a weird feeling about it or something, he could just turn it around on her like: "Really, Kim? You think that's what I'm doing when we watch that show... with our KIDS? Nice. Most of the girls in that audience are like what, 14, 15 years old? What kind of monster do you think I am? Jesus!" And so the man gets away with it without any grief. It's like totally safe. And the family gets to spend quality time together which is good. And some of those videos are pretty fucking funny. We watch that shit all the time. And then the girls, ya know, and their family, I guess they think they might actually get discovered or something just for being on the show. I'm sure they would never think that there's a million middle aged men out there raping them with their minds. Everyone wins."

"Dude, you're seriously fucked up."

"Like you don't think these things are discussed in meetings? Are you kidding me?"

"Hey, man, listen, I gotta ask you something. What's with that shit you were saying on FB the other day?"

"What shit?"

"You know what I'm talking about."

"No, I don't."

"Look, man, I'm just telling you right now, you can say whatever you want on there, but if I see some shit we've talked about on there ever again, you know, I'm not gonna be hangin' out with you much. I mean, if Laura saw that shit, there's no way she wouldn't think that was me!"

"Oh, THAT shit! Yeah, sorry, man. I just, you know, I just fuck around on there. I try to fictionalize everything. It's like, you know, I just..."

"Yeah, man, I know."

TIME TRAVELERS

"Dude, fuck off... Wait, you're serious? You only get one chance, that's it."

"Yeah, no, I get it."

"And that's what you would do? Of all the places you could travel back in time to, that's what you would choose? You could go back and invest in Starbucks or Apple! You could go back and try to stop 911!"

"Well, yeah, I'd probably do something like that, but I'm just saying that's what I would WANT to do. You know, that's what would be the most exciting for me."

"Watching your wife have sex with one of her old boyfriends?"

"Are you kidding me? What could possibly be more interesting than that?!"

"Yeah, I don't know, dude."

THE STATE OF AFFAIRS ON 4/17/13

It wouldn't surprise me in the least to see basically anything anymore. If I were to run into someone I know and now their nose was where their mouth was and vice versa, I'd probably just go ahead and accept it without another thought. I could be in line at Rite Aid and see the old woman in front of me pull out a hatchet and begin hacking the cashier's face off and I'd probably just stand there with my basket of diapers, beer, and wetwipes, waiting my turn. There's no sci fi that has ever done it justice. I'm more baffled by my mailman than Jeffery Dahmer. I could easily look down and discover that my toothbrush is a screwdriver or that the contact I'm about to put in my eye is a quarter. I seldom look in the pot anymore after shitting because I'm tired of seeing those stupid turds. They never have anything interesting to say.

RUPERT

My grandfather's name was Rupert. He moved in with us while my grandmother spent the last years of her life, dying of Alzheimer's. He was retired Navy, a ham radio operator who served in WW2. Every year for Christmas, he would renew my membership to the Ranger Rick club. I would get a thin glossy magazine each month and a pack of 5 collecting cards of exotic animals I would then file alphabetically in this big green plastic box I was also given. But it wasn't until one day I asked my mother, "Why do I keep getting all this stupid stuff anyway?",  that I knew it was him. I'll never forget the look my mother gave me upon hearing that. "Nice," she said, "real nice. Your grandfather sends you those. I'll be sure to tell him how much you like them." She turned and walked away in disgust. I still have no idea why I said it like that. It was so nasty and it didn't make any sense because it was one of my favorite things in the world, getting them in the mail each month. Even when I got older, I would sometimes take that green box out and flip through those cards. Till the day my grandmother died, 7 days a week, rain or shine, my grandfather would wake up at 6:00 a.m., hit the bathroom, get himself dressed, quickly eat, and then he would go down to the nursing home where he would sit on a chair beside her all day until dinner. He would eat with us, watch a little tv, then he would go to bed. After my grandmother died, he decided to move back Florida. They found him dead not long after in the hallway of the brand new trailer he bought. His name was Rupert. Oh, I forgot I already told you that.

LATENT QUOTABLES

"Look, you wanna know the truth? I'm a total fucking sham. You think I actually believe in any of this shit? I think I could probably write some good songs if I wanted to but I just don't give a fuck anymore. Once you get it, the world really starts letting you have it. I don't have it in me to fight that kind of fight. Fuck it, ya know, I just want to keep making money. You know, I saw John Prine a couple weeks ago. Man, what a fuckin' soul! I could never compete with that. So fuck it. I write most of my songs while I'm taking a shit. My fans are a fucking joke, pretty much the lamest specimens this planet has ever produced. Have you been to one of my shows? Have you seen these creatures? Yeah, I gave up on everything a long time ago. Fuck it, I'll just keep doin' what I'm doing. What's the fucking difference? -Kenny Chesney.


"We often fail to take into account that it matters not the degree in the angle of our choices and our differences. Ultimately, given enough time, everything leads us to the same conclusion." -Adam Levine

"I mean, what the hell else was I gonna do?" -Pope Francis on deciding to become a priest. 

"Well, that's sort of the problem with almost everything these days. More and more, in order to do something, you have to totally do it at this extreme level. You pretty much have to become it at the exclusion of all else. And so you become it and now that's pretty much who you are. It's just not very interesting. It's really quite boring in fact. I'm talking, of course, in terms of talent and skill, ya know, things that have little importance. I mean, because really, I don't think there's ever been a time when so few people have had so little to say." -Miranda Lambert

IT NEVER LEAVES

     He received the news in Syria through a 2 day old Facebook message from his brother. He had been covering a heart wrenching piece for Al Jazeera about a woman and her 13 year old daughter who had both witnessed the torture and beheadings of the woman's husband, his 2 brothers, and the couple's 3 sons, ages 9, 11, and 16. He took a few pictures of them in the kitchen of their small apartment where the floors and the walls were still stained heavy with blood. He had asked the woman about that, about how they could continue living and actually eating with such a terrible reminder all around them. The woman looked down at the white plastic table where she sat and she reached a hand out and traced the edge of a pinkish smear with her long crooked finger. She smiled a painful smile and she did not answer.
     There were no flights out of Damascus so he hired a driver to take him to the Turkish border. He had no problems crossing through and he immediately found another driver to drive him the rest of the way to Hatay. He flew from Hatay to Paris, then from Paris to JFK. He spent the night at an old girlfriend's apartment in Williamsburg, a spunky little shit with big eyes and pouty lips and the most astonishing ass he had ever seen. She had been a gymnast in college and was getting her masters in journalism from Columbia. They met at KGB Bar after he gave his first reading from his first collection of short stories. The book was called "It Never Leaves". The stories were dreamlike vignettes about his endless travels in and out of war zones and regions of famine and genocide. Her name was Valerie and she was sitting in the front row while he read, tears rolling down her cheeks. They only dated for a little over a year as she quickly realized she could not endure his ever worsening depression. She loved him deeply and she loved his work and the way he wrote and saw the world, but it was all too much for her. Though he had been nothing but kind to her, his presence made her feel ashamed of the simple things she enjoyed in her life, like watching Sex In The City for example, or wanting to go out dancing with her friends. These were hard things to justify in front of someone who had just returned from Afghanistan. Though she feared she would never find anyone she would love and respect as much as him, she made the decision and told him over coffee one morning that she wanted to just be friends.
     Valerie was in London, covering the Olympics for CNN. Many years had gone by and though they rarely saw each other, they remained close friends, keeping up with each other through texts and emails or Facebook. She was the one that actually convinced him to sell his apartment on Delancey Street. His plan was to start looking for a house to buy somewhere upstate, in the Hudson Valley maybe. As convenient as it was, he had grown tired of the city. She thought it would be a good change for him as well. But he simply hadn't gotten around to doing it. He was always traveling too much to give it any effort. He was able to reach her from Syria. He had forgotten that she was in London. He really wanted to see her. She told him how sorry she was and she made him promise that he would stay at her new apartment, that all he had to do was get the spare key from her neighbor, Bill. She said she would let Bill know he was coming. He buzzed Bill and got the key and went into the apartment. The apartment was nice, a true one bedroom with modern appliances. There was even a balcony. He went into her bedroom and put his backpack down on the floor by the bed. For a moment, he just stood there, breathing. He then walked over to her dresser and pulled open the top drawer which had a few pairs of her panties and socks and pantyhose. "God," he thought, "I would give anything to be able to fuck her right now! That's it, that's all I fucking want! I just want to fuck!" He put his hands on top of his head and he closed his eyes and he winced and sort of whimpered. "That fucking ass! Jesus Christ! I wouldn't even need to fuck her! Just to look at that ass!" The thought of it angered him and he slammed the drawer shut, knocking over a picture. He picked up the picture and pulled the little cardboard flap back open. He placed it back where he thought it went and he looked at the picture. It was a picture of her and her father standing in front of the Flatiron building with their arms around each other. He had met her father once. The two of them really hit it off. He was a warm, caring man, a veterinarian from Kentucky. The antithesis of his own father. In conversation, he would often look down while he listened, rubbing his arms and nodding. Valerie's mother had died when she was in High School. She died in a car wreck on her way to one of Valerie's gymnastic meets. She didn't actually die from the crash, her car overturned in a work zone and she drowned upside down, buried up to her waist in the deep sludge of a freshly dug ditch. Valerie told him the story that first night she came home with him after his reading. He opened a bottle of red wine and they sat on his floor talking. "I don't know how you do it?" she asked him at one point.
     "You mean the work I do?"
     "Yeah. I mean, I understand, but to keep doing it for so long, to keep seeing the things you see."
     "Well, now I can't not see it. It doesn't matter where I am, I always see it. We're all a part of it."
     He finally pulled out his cell phone and dialed the number. His mother quickly answered. "No," he said, "I'm just now in New York. I'll be there tomorrow."

YOU EVER?

Hey, you ever find yourself at a bar and being forced to listen to some person you've never liked, although you don't really know them, tell a 1st hand account of a story that actually winds up being incredible and it even makes you completely rethink your opinion of the person, but then not long after, another night at the same bar actually, you meet another person who you really have no interest in talking to for no other reason than you don't like their hair and their glasses and the way they looked at you when you shook their limp hand but then through a few minutes of painful conversation you find out this person used to be in the same particular field as the original story teller and so now you at least have something to say and so you decide to relay the story and after you do, the person looks at you rather coldly, and says, "Yeah, that's just not possible." And you say, "Really?" And they proceed to state in undeniable detail, the many reasons why. And for some reason, YOU now feel stupid and the person simply moves right along talking to another person while you stand there, looking down at your feet, until you find a good moment to walk away. And then wouldn't you know it, right around then, the very asshole that told you the story walks right up to you with a big ass smile because now the person thinks you two are good friends and you are more repulsed by them than ever and the two of you begin talking and you bring up the story in a way that forces them to talk a little more about it without letting on that you know it is entirely bullshit but then all of a sudden you realize you had failed to listen to the beginning of the story because you were too busy being pissed off about being forced to listen to it in the first place and so you missed a very important factor that basically changes the entire equation and now you don't know what the fuck to believe anymore about anything and you wonder what else you've gotten totally wrong in your life and the person continues talking about something else while you nod and look around at all the other people drinking and talking and laughing?