Colorado Love

It's hard to believe that in just two days I'll be walking through the front door to my house in Rochester a full week before they think I'm supposed to be. 

I can just picture the look on my mom and sister's face when I walk in, and I can feel their embrace. I can already smell that home smell in my nostrils and feel the warmth that is always in my heart when I'm not there.  It doesn't matter how far my travels take me.  I'm never too far from home. 

But it feels a little bit different this year.  Normally there is not really much that I have to miss when I go home.  Home is the only place I want to be on the holidays.  But this year there's a part of Colorado that's coming home with me. I'm going to bring it there and show it to everyone, show my family this love I have for Colorado, yell it out my window of my parent's suburban home, drive in the -18 degree whether with the sunroof open, screaming all the while.  I want everyone to know how I feel.  But they'll never understand until they see it.  All i can do is tell them about it and show it to them when it's possible.

I want them to see the voluptuous mountains that populate the area and witness the roller coaster weather that makes it unique.  I want them to look Colorado dead in the eyes and see just why it is that I love it so.  Only then will they understand that hidden underneath all of my complaining about this place is a wealth of happiness that remains hidden.  I really do hate this place sometimes.  I feel like it's the worst place that I could be and I wonder why I ever liked it in the first place.  But that never lasts long.  That cold chill that kept me from going out or opening my shades and kept me curled up in the corner of my room gnawing at my collar disappears and is replaced by this sunshine that would make New Yorkers jealous.  The world opens up to me again and my days are a dream.

There are times I just want to get away from it all.  I want to just hop in a car and drive off the planet and make my own nation.  I want everyone to leave me alone and I want to make fire by myself with just two twigs.  I want to drink my water out of coconuts and pineapples and I want everything to be the way I demand them to be.  But then I realize that this nation is not the answer.  Being alone is not the answer.  And having everything just the way you want them to be is a terrible bore.

I guess I'm coming to love the ups AND the downs in life.  The more heartache I feel and sleep that I lose and loneliness I endure, the more real I feel.  I realize that this isn't my nation, sometimes I have to drink my liquids out of a glass and even when I think I am, I'm not alone.

Scrawny

I started working out when I was thirteen years old, with my father.  We never really got along when I was younger but he would take me to the gym to "get some meat on my bones", as he would say.

I had been sporadically very active in Tae Kwon Do for nine years before I ever stepped foot in a gym.  I say sporadically because there were many broken bones along the way that hindered my progress.  I say active because when I was healthy I was there at least three days a week.  At first I loved Tae kwon Do.  When I first joined the Karate Kid had just come out and being in martial arts actually made me cool.  I liked to fight and I liked learning the weapons.  The school I went to in the Bronx put a heavy emphasis on weaponry and the fighter's instincts.  I loved every minute of it.  Before leaving the school and moving to Rochester I had already broken my first bone but came roaring back with determination.  The belt before black belt was what I had before entering the new school.

I never progressed further than this.  I won a couple of competitions but I could not advance because of my setbacks.  The style of Tae Kwon Do that the new school I attended was slightly different from the one that I started off at in the Bronx.  this slight difference made it so that I would have to start all over from the beginning in order to progress any further.  I kept my current belt but had to learn all of the katas for the other belts before I could advance to black. This was a little discouraging but not as discouraging as the era in my life that soon followed which I have since dubbed as my "broken" childhood days.

I started off with my left wrist then moved on to my right thumb.  Throw a clavicle in there and a nose and that was all in a two-year period of time.  It wasn't just the broken bones and the learning of katas that had kept me from achieving the supposed glory of a black belt.  The school was not as focused on the aspects of Tae kwon Do that I had loved.  Their focus was on flexibility and piece of mind and the fluidity of movements.  These are all things that I can appreciate now but could care less about at that time. Besides a new love had entered my life, and her name was football.

It started, for me at least with a game called "kill the man with the ball."  Clever, I know.  Basically some kid picked up the football and every one hit him as hard as they could.  My patented move was the close-line.  It was efficient and I liked the squeal it produced.  Many a fight were started because of that close-line but I didn't care.  It was fun. 

One day I came home clutching my right wrist in my left hand.  It was twisted sideways and looked like it was about to fall off.  I told my parents in the hospital bed that day that I wanted to quit Tae Kwon Do and play football.  They nodded their heads and assured me that I would sign up that year.  the next day was when I heard it.

"You're too scrawny to play football", my mother said.

"I thought that was just the morphine talking" my father added.

They thought the idea was ludicrous.  A skinny boy like myself shouldn't play a rough sport like that.  The answer was no at first.  My mother insisted that I finished my Tae Kwon Do and not be a "quitter".  But I didn't care.  I hated the new school and decided to boycott.  Every Tae Kwon Do day I came up with some brutal sickness or a lot of homework until finally she said:

"Well at least start going to workout with your father.  You're going to get hurt out there if you go out there looking like that."

And this was how it started.  We fought the whole time we were there.  I knew everything and my father knew nothing and I hated him telling me that I was not doing a particular exercise correctly.

"Keep your elbows stable", he would say, "Pretend your arm in a lever and the bearings are at your elbows.  That's the only part that can move."

"Concentrate on your bicep."

"Push yourself."

"You've got another one in you."

"Keep going."

He would push me to my limit and beyond.  When my body felt limp and there was not much else I could do he would help push the weight up for me.  i would go home exhausted and angry and not talk to him until we went back to the gym but we always went back.

I realized yesterday how much of an effect this really had on me.  I was on a squat thrust machine and I felt my leg start to feel like Jell-o and then I heard= something.  It was a voice from those childhood days when my "scrawny" body had become too weak to move on any further saying: "Come on Johnny, you got another one in you."  And I did.

Route 66

"My first feeling", Hunter S. Thompson wrote, describing Puerto Rico, "was a wild desire to drive a stake in the sand and claim the place for myself."  This is how I felt when I first arrived in Colorado. 

I've felt this way about many places in my limited travels.  I've felt like life could not get any better and that if I could just keep things the way they were that I would.  I would just bottle it all up and stay in my Utopia forever.  Myrtle Beach was my Utopia for awhile as was New York City even when it wasn't.  I'd have to say that High School sure felt perfect as well as my advanced training in the Army.  All of these are times in my life that I reflect on with great emotion and use as a guide stick to always strive for.  I'm always trying to remain in this constant state of bliss that is only felt completely once it has past.  The thing is, it always passes, seasons change, people move on and the Utopia is sealed and stored away along with the big moments like your first kiss and first successful potty trip.

I have a picture propped up on my kitchen table that I have always been fond of.  The picture, entitled Route 66, Arizona was taken by Andreas Feininger in 1953 has left me staring blindly into it's mysteries time and time again without revealing to me its secrets.  The picture shows a small town gas station along the highway off to the left side and the legendary route 66 centered on the bottom.  The majority of the remainder of the photo is taken up by a sky that is filled with scattered clouds that seems to extend an eternity. 

I yearn to be in this photo.  I think I have been in this photo before, maybe even recently, and whenever I get away from it I am desperately looking for how to get back.  Everything that I have ever wanted out of life is contained in that picture and I'm not sure whether this is tragic or heroic. 

On one hand the picture shows how open the world is and how glorious and exciting the future could if you took this highway.  The people standing on the side of the road just watch as you speed along through life and the country to lands of epic proportions and endless possibilities.

But on the other hand it symbolizes new starts and leaving something else behind.  If everything that I have ever wanted out of life is contained in this picture, loneliness and instability is inevitably parallel with the excitement and possibilities.  I often wonder whether this bird will ever change.  I wonder when I'll dig a trench and fill it with cement before sticking that stake into the ground... if ever.

You Talkin to Me?

"You're a walking contradiction", she said, and peered at me over the neck roll she rested her head on in front of me.

What did that mean?  Did she think that I was a lunatic and that I was going to blow people away with an enormous revolver and stab someone in the neck just like the walking contradiction of a character that Robert DeNiro played in the movie we were watching?  Was she saying that I don't ever back up what I say, like that all I spit out of my mouth were contradictory of my actions?  What did she mean?

"No, no, no,",  she giggled back, "I just meant that you're complex."

Complex!  I think this is a good thing but I can't be sure.  There are so many different versions and levels of complexity I could not be certain what she meant.

"I just mean that you're deep.  There's a lot going on up there.  And sometimes it's like you're two completely different people."

This wasn't the first time that I heard this.  In fact I've heard it three times this week.  The first person was a roommate of my friend who called me down one day to tell me that he can't talk to me when I'm drunk.  I'll attest to this  I do get rather stubborn when I drink and I hate when people stand in the way of any of my goals when I'm drinking and he happened to stand in my way so he said:

"You get very, very aggressive when you drink and I can't talk to you.  I swear to God it's like Jeckyl and Hyde."

Jeckyl and Hyde.  I think this was a little bit of an exaggeration but I liked the thought of it.  I've always had the suspicion that Dr. Jeckyl and Mr. Hyde was really about a drug addict or an alcoholic so it would make sense that I could be a version of the monster that he was.  I don't really see any problem with being a madman.  I mean as long as it's not all of the time.  So I like to drink and cause trouble and scream at the top of my lungs and get naked in his front yard.  What's wrong with that?  You want to know what's wrong with that? Nothing.  Nothing is wrong with that.  In fact I think this is positive behavior that should be encouraged and nurtured.  So I'm a different person when I drink.  Is that it?

Not according to my coworkers.  They see two completely different versions of me as well.  My boss told me today that he never knows which John is going to come in, the one who loves working and learning and running errands or the lazy John who watches TV all day and sleeps on the toilet for an hour.  And he's right.  I do have days when I don't feel like doing anything and don't and then there are days when I feel like doing a lot and I do.  Maybe she's right.  Maybe I am a walking contradiction.

I was watching "Reality Bites" for the second time today and I still can't figure out which of the two
boyfriends I relate to more.  They're polar opposites and I relate to both of them.  Now I know the world isn't split up into black and white but I should at least feel a lean in one direction or another, but I didn't.  I felt like I was exactly like one of them for a while then I felt exactly like the other than like the other than like the other. 

I don't make any sense.  I'm the most liberal republican you'll ever meet.  I'm the best actor/tech controller in the Army.  You should see how lazily athletic I am.  Everything in my room is organized and alphabetized except for my mind, which seems at times to just be a pile in the corner.  I'm not just two different people.  I'm like 33.  And they all run around up there like a herd of orangatangs, yes herd,
because that's the way they travel in my mind, except they swing on vines and go in all different directions.  And none of them knows where they are going.

Shiny Things

I like shiny things.  Not shiny, that's the wrong word, bright things.  I love bright things.  And I like them to contrast with dull things.  I love nothing more than to mix a bright thing with a dull thing and see what they look like together.  Actually I like dull things too.  I like cars in dull colors and houses and furniture.  But that's about it.  I like everything else to be bright and cheerful.

It's like it makes my whole world seem a little brighter.  I fall victim to the marketing ploys aimed at children all the time.  I buy surf laundry detergent because it has an orange base with a bright blue wave slashing through the side.  I bought my current shampoo because the fluorescent green against the black pleases my eyes.  I have the Sponge Bob Square Pants Colgate because it looked more fun the rest of the toothpastes.  And the toothpaste I bought before that I bought because there was a scratch and sniff on the outside of the box.  I'm an advertisers dream.  If a product looks more fun than the other products on the shelf, I'm going to buy it.  I went to McDonalds the other day because I saw a commercial for it.  And I didn't even like the commercial.  In fact I hated it.  All those stupid McDonald's commercials
that are trying to get urban drive me nuts.  Yet I still went out and bought a burger and fries and I plan on going back soon to collect their stupid
monopoly points. 

What is my problem?  Am I just mindless drone that can't escape the mindless programming that MTV and Nickelodeon and Disney, my god Disney! have pounded into my brain?  Am I an advertisement Zombie?  What happened to the days when all I wanted was to look like an old man?

I went through about a three-year phase where all I wanted to wear was old man clothes.  I loved knit sweaters and cardigans.  I liked the golf hats and plaid socks and the Clarks shoes.  I would only wear khakis or dress slacks or corduroy.  Actually I wanted to dress like Junior off of the Sopranos and it wasn't because of the show, the show wasn't even on at that point, I just wanted to look like an old man.  I thought they had a cool look.  A different style.  I wanted things to get back to the way they were in the twenties where everyone wore a suit and everything was in black and white, and brown, for some reason I loved brown.  I wanted the part in the middle of my hair and the hard gelled hair.  I wanted a name like Johnny Bullets or Diamond Dianni and one of those cars that were built like fortresses.  And what I wanted most of all was a Tommy gun, my very own Thompson automatic machine gun with its round magazine and skinny snout.  It was beautiful... inaccurate, but beautiful all the same.  Those were the days, when the Rainbow Room was full of stars and politicians and the rotating floor was light years beyond its competitors.

I guess things have changed.  The older I get the younger I want to be, the less I want to do and the brighter my world becomes.