either that or i just really don’t feel like it when i’m tired and recovering from one of the worst allergy attacks of my life. demon cats. they’re everywhere, watch yourselves.

but yes, returning to the original point, i suck at good byes. i’m too much the sentimental type. so let me gloss over my final hoursi n nashville by saying that i had an awesome southern style breakfast and then waved goodbye to folks who’d made my stay in nashville one of the best times of my life. awersome sauce.

yes... sausage, eggs, fluffy-est pancakes evar... and to cap it, CHEESE GRITS

two englishmen and an oz woman walk into a bar...

with that… let me also skip over the ride. who wantsa know about the actual hours passed on the road? what is there to know but that they suck? yet cheap… and can sometimes be less of a hassle than airplane travel.

instead let me start talking about my time in hotlanta.

i think the energy coming off of the good byes at the nashville made me less down to hang out with hostel folks. you gotta understand… i was still being emo about the whole thing when i arrived in atlanta.

and boy was i in a terrible mood, none definitely to be hanging out with hostel folks. so what did i do? i went out to the only available restaurant/bar for a bite a mite of alky. at top flr, the food was good if overpriced, the drinks were interesting, even if their irish whiskey was wack, and their setting was very new york lounge reminiscent.

but more importantly, i’ll recommend the place’s patrons any day. i always go to locals, because locals are always in the know… but no group of locals so far on this trip have been as randomly open and just generally dope as this one. i met my first new vietnamese person, kim at the bar and from there we ended up on an odd-yssey of sorts.

we somehow ended up at the house of LaFace record’s lawyer. yes, that means this dude was the lawyer for outkast in its early days, as well as for TLC before no more scrubs. like whoa. platinum and gold records everywhere.

WATER = COLD

and BALLER mansion. so if it isn’t already weird enough drinking mango rum drinks and eating pigs in blankets, dude has a pool, with a massive slide. which i end up getting to enjoy. while an almost full moon shined its enigmatic countenance down upon us. how fucking weird is that? what set of serendipitous stoner angels must’ve colluded for that to happen? how dope is it that i left that night with my contact for the next night’s entertainment?

gorgeous and fay.

not tired at all, really.

jeebus. i have no idea how i ended up there. how the hell i ended up soaking wet in the pool. or even how i got home. or even why there’s this vague impression of having visited martin luther king jr’s house and church that’s stuck in my head. and it wasn’t even drunkeness… i was just so tired… from the night before partying, from the bus ride, from the cold i was getting.

so i slept in the next day.

you did not read about this earlier for the simple fact that i was having internet troubles like whoa in atlanta… and then i was just exhausted and already feeling the effects of demon cats when i got to pensacola. but i’m getting ahead of myself.

dope cuban food across the street from the hostel in atlanta. i recommend to anyone. good folks at the hostel as well… though i didn’t get to know that many folks.

after a hella late start, i ended up walking to The High, Atlanta’s art museum, after first checking out some local galleries. being from new york city and boston, i’m used to impressive museums… and while the high won’t ever top the met or mfa, it at least gives it a damned decent effort. i had a really good time there, enjoying art. which has always been one of my favourite past times. and of course, monet’s water lilies, which i didn’t get to photograph, were amazingly dope.

little local gallery in between shows

AWESOME use of found objects

who's that sexy beast in the reflection?

that evening, which was also a lot of fun and the entirety of my time in pensacola will come sometime tomorrow. hopefully, when i’m on the bus to norleans.

until then, i bid you adieu.

living is like a coke can, it’s bad for you, but sure is good going down.

it’s becoming inevitable that these things will become more and more similar as time passes. there’s only so many times i can remark about the beautiful things i see and the wonderful people i meet. it really is crazy, the more i see of the country, the more i realize there are awesome people everywhere.

today was a trippy day. me and my host jb woke up early to head out to the ed norris show at cbs radio, which is apparently a goddamn big deal in murland. they were both hella cool, and ed was hella dope to meet because he was a cop…

ed norris, me and dude who i can't remember

whoa, i’ll get back to that in a second, but i legitimately just had a long ass conversation with a french kiddo, entirely conducted through babelfish. awersome sauce of massive proportions. i just had to mention that.

but yes, ed norris was a cop in DC in the bad old days, so getting his perspective on the changed new york was really interesting. and dude trained kyokushin. come on now. how do you not love a dude who does one of the toughest martial arts out there?

whoa. i just had an entire conversation with the father of the kid through the awesome tool known as babelfish. that was a goddamn surreal experience, having multiple entire conversations through facebook. i shared some of my food. they shared some of theirs. we had coffee, and it was a goddamn good night. it is weird as hell sharing shin ramyun with a french family who’s never had it before. but honestly, how much more diverse and worldy do you get? freaking weird, but… the exact romantic ideal. that is what this trip is SUPPOSED to be about. i am so happy that this just happened. and at goddamn 4 o clock in the morning no less. though admittedly… it is a little scary that almost no one in that entire family spoke passable english.

the french family i shared my shin ramyun with and talked to through babelfish

c’est le vie. right?

but honestly… this has been an awesome time.

admittedly, lugging my huge backpack through the metro into DC and to my hostel was wacksauce. but that just means i need to pack better.

the hostel is hella nice. i am never going to be weary of staying in a hostel again. if you ever get a chance to stay at a hostelling international hostel, please do. they come with my recommendation. i liked them so much, i actually bought a membership today. and the bits and pieces i got to see of the national gallery were awersome sauce. les face it. i HELLLLLA nerd out on art. ESPECIALLY the impressionists. they quite literally set my knees aquiver, and the national gallery has an absolutely mindblowing collection of their stuff.

boston latin whaaaat?

yes, that it is a cezanne

saddest most amazing painting EVER. manet. genius.

this makes me so excited to see the rest of the museums, especially the archives. constitution! declaration of independence! duuuude. history nerd alert.

dc lounging. you know, candid shot.

and dude… jb introduced me to some folks in DC + one of my friends from dc showed up and it was awersome sauce. we hung out in chinatown. which is HELLLLLLa ghetto. but whatever. food was decently cheap. the bar we went to before had 50 cent chicken wings and decent drinks, so it made the chinese food that much cheaper.

that was all jb

dinner crew

i also got a chance to roll for the first time in my travels, at ryan hall’s dopesauce 50/50 bjj. all cool folks there. if you’re in the area, you should definitely roll through. and this is after i got hella lost on my way from the metro station, so you know it has to be good.

finally, night on the town with liz, the girl jb introduced me to, and megan, her friend. such cool, real, wonderful and beautiful people yall have never met. you envy me because i had the privilege of their company.

and they say food isn't sex

duuuuude. purty.

superlatives aside… the more days pass, the more i realize how blessed i am to be doing this. les just hope i keep feeling this way when i head down to nashville and know no one.

but whatever… i got two more days of DC left and i’m going to enjoy ‘em. oh and before i forget… if’n i see you on the road, please have a penny ready, cuz im collecting them for my empty lee kum kee jar.

life is like a durian… you gotta crack it open.

so after braving the vagaries and wilds of the chinatown bus, i was picked up by my friend JB. i’ve been kicking it in the annapolis, baltimore area ever since.

but before i go into the trip…

there’s hella i should be talking about that in this particular blogpost i just don’t have time for, as i am at mercy of internet schedules and scheduling around other folks. so let me just promise right here and right now that there will eventually be a hay qua and a kollab and a subsequent best/worst night of my life post. just not now. right now, i think the focus has to be this trip, with time spent on other topics coming when i have both the time and inclination.

now back to my odd-yssey.

there’s an elation in consummation. just that act of really and truly beginning something you’ve been looking forward to and thinking about. there’s also great nervousness, anxiety and no little amount of fear there, in the idea of setting out on the open road. there was such an exultation, a great ridiculous almost-illogical happiness in setting off on this journey with nothing but my gear and a hope that things would go auspiciously.

and boy did they ever.

my friend, another martial artist and a buddhist zen teacher dude took me to annapolis, which is where he worked. jesu christo… what a beautiful little town. honestly, i thought i had walked out of regular life and into some idyllic television show. tyhis was small town america at its best, this was what father dreamed of when he watched leave it to beaver and imagined america. what a quaint, wholesome town. and yes, i know i’ve railed against suburbia or whatever, but it wasn’t that… this was a real small town, with a main street and everything. most importantly of all for the particular character of the community, there was a very present aura of age, of history, of respectability and of significance that tied the scene together. this was exactly the type of thing i wanted to see, something ridiculously out of my realm of experience. clapboard windows and folks trawling for crabs right off the dockyards, the sense that almost everyone in the town knew one another and had known each other forever and a day. just the sheer cuteness of the architecture. the commemoration of the historical, but with novel twists.

and the people.

my god, the people. i do believe i’ll never find more kind hearted people in my life. there was such a generosity of spirit and welcoming compassion in the folks i met last night, it was ridiculous. here i am, hella tourist and stranger, yet these folks welcomed me with open arms and large drinks. just the way i liked to be welcomed.

but really though, meeting and talking with quirky, interesting people with life experiences vastly different from my own, that’s exactly the type of thing i wanted to do on this odd-yssey. and it’s been off to a bloody amazing beginning. they offered me advice and anecdotes, told me where to go in particular cities and what to do if unfortunate things arose. they told me their stories, which to me is one of the most vastly important and intimate acts in the world. hell, they even offered me, a complete stranger, places to crash and rides to my next location.

honestly, i still can’t get over the fundamental generosity of spirit i saw in these people. maybe it’s the cynicism i’ve picked up like a VD in new york city, or maybe it’s me just being tripped out by the sheer difference from anything i’m familiar with… but i am really really happy to be here with great folks and just hope that my journey just continues on in this fashion.

so yes, i am safe here in maryland. and happy.

see you in a few days.

oh and dude, crabcakes are bomb. oh and pictures will be up soon, with appropriately inane commentary.

life is like a box of chocolates, you gotta pay the price to get at the good stuff.

do you know how some people see sounds? they perceive music as an array of colours because of whatever strange connection has been made in their heads. though mostly this is is discussed in relation to the physical senses, i have something similar with emotions.

when i feel an emotion, there’s a tint in the back of my mind that colors everything. when i feel an emotion coming offa person through my physical senses, there’s a subtle flare of colour around them. it sounds weird, but it’s something i’ve grown up and kinda like. it’s unique. which seems to be a goal all its own in this city.

i guess why that’s the reason i describe poetry using the painter metaphor. we are painters, emotions are our paint, every subtle shadow corresponding to the exact nuance of a feeling. i’ve said it before, i don’t like using words like love or hate in my work without some sort of qualification. what kind of love? what kind of hate? what does it mean to have a hate for a person once loved? a hate born from seeing those you care about being hurt by the target of your disdain?

i’m still trying to convey that complexity in my work. it’s hard. one’s control of language, one’s technical skill is the tilt of the head that makes the Mona Lisa forever haunting. i’m learning it as i go, trying to build from traditions before me, but this shit ain’t gifted. it’s earned.

though, i do have enough of the romantic (the era, not the gift card) in me to see the poet as special on some level. maybe it’s my own arrogance speaking. but at the same time, there’s great technical illustrators that are still unable to convey any depth of feeling in their work.

i guess i’m rambling again.

my days have been stormy, the wind and rain that seeps into your bones and steals even the ghost of warmth or light from your being. then the tempest arrived, destroying the mud wattle buildings i’ve built up. now… the calm has come.

that specific calm that comes in the wake of devastation. the feeling of resignation that somehow still allows one to continue with one’s life. maybe the exact shade of emotion as the man who knows his cancer will kill him, so chooses to live his life as he wills. the specific gradation that belongs only to the boy who realizes that these three guys are going to kick his ass, so he might as well grab onto one and keep swinging. the swirling peace of a woman who is finally able to leave and be done, after too much time and investment in an awful affair.

—————————————–

colours

a mother’s love, an earthy red
oceanic in its depth
and temperament.

the feeling of the first nice day in spring
the pastel yellow of the sun
seen through freshly dusted douche goggles

infatuation is the whiteness of halogen lamps
haloed by a blinky, misty red, blinding
so that all else is relegated to the periphery

the satiated guilt of indulged gluttony
is the white of institutional light
reflected from the melting richness of vanilla ice cream left out

the contentment in the willingness to wait
is noon sun through a teal window pain
dust motes idly dancing

an adolescent’s frustrated rage
is the intense, pulsating red
of an infected cut

the frustration of hard work proved wanting
the sandy red-brown of the specific layer
of pit dug in the desert that is just kissed by moisture

a parent’s grief is a blurring
a twisted distortion of colour
that strips the senses of perception

the desire for cold vengeance, pallid
blue-grey of apprentice’s iron
fit for plowshares, forged into a sword

interpersonal ambivalence, the blue black green
of healing bruises, timorous
in its betweeness

quiet resignation is the ochre red
of dried blood, spilt and wasted
without recourse

a boy’s artsy-pretension depression, the cliched
inky blackness, thick with its self-imposed weight
a hungry dark, its smoky contrails reaching

my love for you, even now
the brown-gray of petrified wood, no longer alive
but always persistent

so i wanted to explain why i’ve been so quiet recently. up until this weekend, when i went back to boston to get checked, i had a chance of having cancer. that was obviously a damper on life. a rather large one.

it’s a great weight on my shoulders to find out i don’t have cancer. like you wouldn’t believe. going home and seeing friends and getting to roll with friends and participate in things that are so nicely comfortable was also sweet like nothing else. i couldn’t do it everyday though. i can only do boston in small doses.

just to remark on things i haven’t remarked on… thanks everyone who came out for my birthday which happened recently. it reminded me how truly blessed i am to have beautiful people in my life who always have my back… especially when i’m drunk and not cognizant of what is a stair and what is a person.

congrats to team ronin athletics for kicking ass at GQ. hopefully, i’ll be on the mats with you guys soon.

and finally… i’m embarking on a new artistic project that i’m hoping everyone out there can help me with.

introspective musicology: the soundtrack to our lives. we all have them, some strange mixture of karaoke classics, queen-level ballads, heart thumping hip hop and head banging metal. the purpose of IM is exploring how one relates to these soundtracks, how an artist can understand another, not through interaction, but through those tracks that the individual feels is significant to their lives. it is an examination to symbolic meaning, as well as how individual pieces can create a collective whole.

as such, the artist wishes for those who can to make a mixtape which the subject feels is an appropiate soundtrack to their life at that point in time. the mixtape should be no more than 15 songs and should encompass the entirety of the individual’s character, history and being, however the subject wishes that to be defined.

thanks yall. send me your mixtapes!!