Welcome Back Rant

As my last post indicated, I tried moving my blog to Wordpress. I got it in my head that I was going to build a more robust site with "how-to" pages and other resources, but it turned out it was just too much work. I have little interest in taking on more commitments, especially ones that are technology-dependent. I also got sidetracked by Facebook for awhile, but I got sick of people posting about the mundane things in their ordinary lives. No offense to them, I'm just not interested. I suppose my life is plenty mundane, or at least odd and incomprehensible, to most of them.

Blogger gives me a release, without the complication of building a resource, and without the distraction and even greater complication of Facebook.

So I guess I'm back, and though I do try to avoid all-out rants, today I think is going to be a rough one.

Why today? I'm at work and wholly depressed, which isn't a big surprise if you've read anything I've written over the years. I have a high-paying job with wonderful benefits that contributes to a cleaner, greener world, my peers respect me, my work environment is low-stress and my employer is generous.

And I hate my job. I hate it in the way that a lover of fine dining might hate giving up juicy steaks, fine wines, crisp fruits, tender vegetables, crusty breads and silken desserts for the futuristic meal-in-a-pill. It isn't that it tastes bad, or that it lacks nutrition (assuming humans could actually achieve this), but rather that it tastes like nothing and leaves the soul malnourished. I feel like a suburban drone, passing the days not by the rhythms of nature but by the wholly artificial ticking of the clock. I feel unstimulated. Unmoved. Unmotivated. Pointless. Wasteful. Sad.

I have to get out.

My coworkers praise my work, my work ethic, and my good-natured personality. But I'm just going through the motions. My body is here earning money to pay everyone else to provide my "living," but my heart roams the forested mountains in search of something real.

I watched a movie called The New World last night. It was a little slow as it was more a love story than anything, but it put me in a mood. It reminded me (as if I needed reminding) just how f*ed up white people and Western society are and always have been. If I came ashore in America in 1607 I would join the Indians and never look back. They had it made. The mere fact that they managed to live on this continent for 14,000 years and not destroy it, and we managed to take it to the brink in just a few centuries speaks volumes.

I despise money and the clock and the calendar. I despise the Western social hierarchy, the greed and the gluttony and the backstabbing. I hate fashion and gadgets and everything that Pottery Barn represents. I hate that we're not only willing, but eager to trade timeless, unspoiled wilderness for a metaphorical minute of suburbia. I hate annual performance reviews and standardized tests. I hate car culture and television and processed industrial calories that pass as food. I hate human stupidity and I hate being part of the whole f*ed up system. I hate religion, especially the "big three."

All I want is to live deliberately. All I want is to hunt and gather and grow my own food, to build my own home, to laugh with friends, to breathe clean air and drink clean water, to walk among ancient forests and to wonder and ponder over the midnight stars. I don't need "stuff" beyond what I can make from what the forest provides. I don't need "culture" or "entertainment." I don't even need to own land. I just need to live with the land, and after I die let someone else walk in my footsteps. That's all. You know, the way most humans have lived for three million years. Is that so much ask? Really? I don't want fame and fortune, I have no interest in keeping up with the Jones', and you can keep your plastic suburban fantasy. I want to extricate myself from it entirely. If I don't do something soon I will go mad.

I've thought about going back to school and becoming a biologist, but even scientists often irk me. As Ian Malcom said in Jurassic Park, "what you call discovery, I call the rape of the natural world." I'm not at all comfortable with poking and prodding nature merely to see "what makes it tick." Some things, I think, are best left to the realm of the mysterious. I don't need to know what's happening on a cellular level inside of Clostridium botulinum, or even that it exists. Is it not enough to know that cooking certain foods keeps one from getting sick? Is it not enough to gain wisdom from observing and interacting with the natural world, rather than gain information by dissecting it under a microscope?

Why must I "get a job?" I'm not lazy, not at all. I love work. A few weeks ago I spent an entire day felling, limbing, bucking and splitting firewood in the forest using nothing but a double ax, an antique bucking saw and a maul. I used no fossil fuels except to drive my truck up in the mountains because I don't have and anyway wouldn't be allowed to use a horse drawn cart on modern roads. And anyway if it weren't for the "advancements" of society I wouldn't even need the cart or to cut down trees. Natives had small fires burning twigs and dung that kept them quite warm with no need even for harvesting firewood as we know it. Talk about efficiency!

That said, I'm not opposed to learning a trade. I need to work with my hands more. I need to walk and interact with things that are real, like wood and wildlife, not plastic and suburban cube-zombies.

When the weekend comes and I'm in the Rockies, I feel alive and happy and deeply interested. When the weekdays come I feel dead and numb, like my spirit is broken. Work is an endless procession of pointless days doing pointless work to live a life I don't want in the first place. How do I get out?

How do I get out?

Tell of Woe

Well it seems I'm in full-on blogger mode again, which means I've reverted to my Great Obsession.

It makes me want to laugh. Or cry.

It's finally snowing in Boulder. The wind is howling and we could get as much as a foot by tomorrow morning, along with sub-zero temperatures. Counting today I have four more days before I have to go back into the office. I plan to spend the majority of that time fireside knocking out a few books, doing a little blogging, and working on my novel.

So what brought my obsessive feelings back? Partly I wanted them to come back. I missed them, if that makes sense. I guess it's how I've come to define myself. It makes me wonder how I'd feel if I ever were to achieve my fantasy. I mean imagine you spent your whole life fantasizing of, say, going to Greece. Then you finally get to go. Upon returning home, what then? What comes next? Would you be satisfied thereafter? Or would you find that it was the obsession with Greece, rather than Greece itself, that you actually needed?

Partly my obsession was brought back by just not being at work. I haven't been in the office since last Wednesday. It's now Thursday of the following week. In the past week I've been to the Leanin' Tree Museum of Western Art twice, and that always catapults me back into hardcore Western fantasizing. It's one of the best little museums I've ever been to and the only art museum I've ever loved. It's in Boulder, it's free and open to the public, and it's usually very quiet so it's a good place to meditate on the things near and dear to my heart. And the art collection is amazing. Even my parents loved it. Often I'll go alone during some off-time when I'm sure to be the only one there and I'll spend an hour or two gazing into an intangible world that captivates me. Every sculpture, every painting is a moment frozen in time - yet they all tell a story, however brief, and give one a glimpse of what was and what would be, even if the stories are only based loosely on historical events.

The deep lines painted on an old Cherokee woman's face as she stares off into the desert at something only she can see; the cowboy about to be crushed by his sun fishing horse; the war party in the pale moonlight; the haunting spirit horse mourning the death of his warrior; the epic struggle between hunter and mountain lion; the tenderness of two cowboys at Thanksgiving in a rugged and unforgiving world; the packers after a successful hunt; breathtaking western landscapes with all their minute detail and a thousand things more. These images move me and haunt me; they fill my soul with something I can't get from the daily grind of "normal" life.

And finally, my obsessive feelings were brought back by getting out into the mountains. Rocky Mountain National Park is what keeps me sane, and it's not even the most perfect slice of the American West. That title belongs to Yellowstone, the only in-tact ecosystem in the lower 48 that still looks and functions more or less like it did before the arrival of the white man and all of his destructive ways. I think that when the day comes that I visit Yellowstone I won't want to leave. Wolves, grizzlies, wolverines, bison, untrammeled forests and meadows, snow-capped peaks and untamed rivers - Yellowstone is the last refuge of Wild America outside of Alaska.

For lunch today I sat down with a warm bowl of leftover homemade chicken soup: potatoes, carrots and dried oregano from the garden and chicken from a local farm. I served it with a leftover buttermilk biscuit I made from scratch for breakfast yesterday. In the glow of the Christmas tree I watched the snow falling outside, warmed by my soup and my thoughts. This is heaven for me, this moment.

I'm a philosopher. That's what I really am, no bones about it. I probably wouldn't make for an exceptional cowboy; I'm not reckless enough. I probably wouldn't make for an exceptional mountain man; I may not be tough enough. I don't make an exceptional analyst or businessman; I don't care enough. What drives me is a desire to become enlightened and to be inspired. What thrills me is to enlighten and inspire others. What comforts me is nature. What satisfies me is purpose.

I don't want to be a scientist; they care only for what makes a thing tick. I don't want to be a businessman; they care only for making money. I don't want to be an adventurer; they care only for the thrill of the moment. I don't want to be a politician; they care only for winning the game.

I think my calling in life is to be a teacher, a writer, a naturalist, a philosopher, and a non-academic historian. These things I am now, as much as I can be. I do want to know about science, I do want to have business sense, and I do want to understand the game. We need professionals in all areas I suppose. Thing is, I don't want to specialize in the activities. I want a bird's eye view of all of them, to understand how they form our world. I want to know who we are, where we came from, where we are going, why we do what we do, or don't. I want to inspire people to think beyond what makes a thing tick, to care for more than just money, and to realize that the game has no value but that which we assign to it. I despise the concept of money and accumulating wealth in monetary form. I despise the corporate ladder and the Western concept of "progress." Alas, this is the world in which I live, so I struggle to find a way to "earn a living" from the things I love, rather than from the unsatisfying activities that I know will work but leave me feeling empty. My body is clothed and nourished by my career success, but my soul is left destitute.

Let it snow, let it snow, let it snow.

Insert Title Here

I spent the better part of last week in DC. It was mom's 55th birthday and she's always wanted to go. There's no time like the present, as they say.

We had a really great time. I'd been to DC a few times but there's so much to see and do I still haven't seen and done it all. One particularly notable new DC experience for me was the holocaust museum. It was probably the best museum I've ever been to. It also ruined the rest of my day, and kept me pretty bummed until I hit the gym tonight and got some endorphins flowing. I don't want to lose my high so I'm going to leave this subject at that.

So Facebook. It's kinda lame. After the initial shock of being slammed with reintroductions to so many old acquaintances, it kinda loses its power. I've also found that some people seem to be friend collectors. They want to "friend" me (and hundreds of others) but never want to actually communicate. People are strange.

Seems like I had a lot of things I wanted to blog about when I signed on, and now I can't really come up with anything more than some random thoughts - none of which I feel like expounding upon.

I think it's bed time.

A New Blog

Do you have any idea how hard it is to get a decent blog address? Dern near everything decent is taken. That doesn't bother me so much as what HASN'T been done with all the good blog addresses. I probably tried two dozen blog addresses, and in 9 out of 10 the person who claimed the address hasn't done a thing with the blog since registering it. Some have been registered and sitting untouched for years. One gal managed to type, "How do I do this?" back in 2006 and hasn't touched it since. Fine, but in the mean time she's wasting a perfectly good blog address!

Anyway, this is my first blog on blogger.com. I'm migrating from iWeb. I'm a big fan of Apple, but their recent transformation of Dot Mac into (I shudder to say this generic, Microsoft-sounding name) "MobileMe" has had some issues. One of them is that I've been having trouble with a few features of the software, and some of my readers have been having trouble viewing photo albums. iWeb is also limited in that it takes some fancy footwork to be able to blog from more than one computer, and even still the computer you blog from has to have YOUR copy of iWeb on it. Several times I wanted to blog but couldn't because I didn't have one of my own computers handy. Also, iWeb pages aren't nearly as Google-friendly as Blogger and I wouldn't mind having more traffic just to see what the 'net can drag in.

I've considered copying old blogs from my iWeb site to this blog, but that seems like a lot of unnecessary work.