what are you looking for?

david lynch on desire

“Desire for an idea is like bait. When you’re fishing, you have to have patience. You bait your hook, then you wait. The desire is the bait that pulls those fish in– those ideas. The beautiful thing is when you catch one fish that you love, even if it’s a little fish–a fragment of an idea–that fish will draw in other fish, and they’ll hook onto it. Then you’re on your way. Soon there are more and more and more fragments, and the whole thing emerges. But it starts with desire.”

moab, utah

some words on the original question of philosophy:

“Albert Camus wrote that the only serious question is whether or not to kill yourself.

Tom Robbins wrote that the only serious question is whether time has a beginning and end.

Camus clearly got up on the wrong side of the bed and Robbins must have forgotten to set the alarm.

There is only one serious question. And that is:

Who knows how to make love stay?

Answer me that and I will tell you whether or not to kill yourself.”

-from tom robbins // still life with woodpecker

buena vista, co

caring &&& sharing

greetings from colorado! here’s a video from an afternoon spent at the Christian thriftstore CARING AND SHARING. although i’m not quite sure how any business (or university, medical center, softball team, etc..) could meaningfully deem itself Christian, especially when its main goal is to acquire profits from shoulderpad dresses and used glassware. But maybe spirituality can look like 1.99 dish towels in a plastic Thanks4Shopping bag?

Caring and Sharing blasts Christian rock music and the employees wear ‘Got Jesus?’ tshirts. Adam found a rifle-shaped bottle of aftershave. Amie rollerbladed into a vintage dresser. Allison bought a National Geographic from 1974 and reports the drawings of early Native American tribes are “better than average.”

I love Sharing and Caring because all the employees are completely uncensored. It’s so refreshing. They’re blasting terrible Christian rock and quote Revelations as they ring you up, and they don’t care that it’s socially uncomfortable or possibly un-hip. I think that’s what I love about all of the smalltown, mountain top businesses in Colorado, some of them are completely unchanged since the day they opened— in culture, attitude, decor, music taste. In a world obsessed with adapting to the next trend, in the age of ‘upgrading’ everything from technology to beliefs, this is especially charming.

There’s a guy named Trader Tad who runs an antique store on the edge of town in Buena Vista. He’s probably in his late 70s and has hung a ‘Not For Sale’ sign on the vintage bed he sleeps on in the showroom. Last time I stopped in, he told me a story about sneaking up to the top of a mountain to stick a Texas flag in the ground and “howl at the creek with mah dogs.” His Nokia flip phone rang and he answered, “Hey you’ve reached Duffy’s Tavern. This is eight ball speaking.” He had to set down the phone because he was laughing so hard at his own prank.

On the subject of taverns, my favorite in town is the Green Parrot, a ‘locals only’ bar that we raftguides enjoy simply because we’re not really welcome. There’s a bar fly regular named “Two Toe Snakebite”– as a child his hand was bitten off by his pet rattlesnake. Now he uses his replacement pincer claw as a way to evaluate strangers. Upon meeting Two Toe, he sticks his claw in your face for a handshake and if you wince, you’re on his asshole list. If you shake back unaffected, he might buy you a Schlitz. You can usually tell when he’s on his seventh drink because at that point he’ll be waving his claw around the bar yelling, “I KNOW WHO I AM!”

I don’t care if Caring and Sharing blasts Amy Grant and tucks a salvation tract into your shopping bag. At least they believe in something and are bold enough to stay true to it. And I got some really great leather ankle boots there. Sure, they’re scarred up and water damaged. But Caring and Sharing saw some kind of remaining beauty in the old, tattered, worn, and they passed that along to me.

on living in Washington, D.C.

I was inspired to write about my time as a reporter in D.C. after getting completely hooked on Jonathan Franzen’s Freedom, a brilliantly dimensional portrait of modern American life. In this passage, Franzen compares D.C. to New York City:

“Washington’s all abstraction. It’s about access to power and nothing else. I mean, I’m sure it’s fun if you’re living next door to Seinfeld, or Tom Wolfe, or Mike Bloomberg, but living next door to them isn’t what New York is about. In Washington people literally talk about how many feet away from John Kerry’s house their own house is. The neighborhoods are all so blah, the only thing that turns people on is proximity to power. It’s a total fetish culture. People get this kind of orgasmic shiver when they tell you they sat next to Paul Wolfowitz at a conference or got invited to Grover Norquist’s breakfast. Everybody’s obsessing 24/7, trying to position themselves in relation to power.”

Oh good lord, so dead on correct. In D.C., I saw the invisible hand of the market clutching a martini glass. I saw early 20somethings running the country at cocktail parties and moving swiftly into a middle age, hyper-career-driven bloodbuzz along the way. There are blogs chronicling the fashion choices of Supreme Court Justices spotted out at pubs. Your answer to the following question will determine the length of every social interaction: So, who do you work for?

Perhaps most startling: the dating culture. The prime social mover in D.C. is smalltalk about the latest political controversy, which is highly influential on pick up line content. For instance, I was at a party outside the Beltway in notoriously conservative Arlington, VA, and a crafty gentleman in a bowtie introduced himself as Winston.

Never talk to anyone with a bowtie in D.C., they will be an ideologue wingnut. D.C. is about conformity, sensible haircuts, and pinstripes matching jacket to pants. Winston’s pick up strategy was to talk to girls waiting in line for the bathroom, where they had no chance of escape.

Winston: So, what do you think the role of government is in a free society?xx      Me: Uhh,XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX Winston: Are you part of the movement? XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX    Me: Recycling? xxxxxxxxxxxxx                                                                                                      Winston: The young conservatives movement. Who do you work for?              Me: Oh, I’m a writer.        XX                                                                                          Winston: Who do you write for?                                                                                          Me: I do mostly AOL instant messages.

Ladies! I believe Winston is still single and ready 2 mingle! Anyway. I actually did accidentally work for “the movement.” I was at the National Journalism Center, which was the same grant program Malcolm Gladwell (yes!) and Ann Coulter (fuck!) went through. I had to sign a written contract not to discuss my time there, but I can say it allowed me to enter a very interesting subculture as a reporter for the Washington Times newspaper, whose major financeer is the church of Sun Myung Moon. Yes, the Moonies, aka the glassy-eyed devotees who sold poppy flowers in airports. In 1982, Reverend Moon started funding the newspaper in order to fight communism, like a good Reaganite. I was connected to the paper through the National Journalism Center, which yes, is funded by the Young America’s Foundation. YAF also curates Reagan’s presidential home, and inspired the following This American Life episode. This is the story of how a few of my articles have ended up on such destinations as ‘ExtremeConservatives.com’

The Times newsroom is intense. It’s a sea of open desks and the only sounds are furiously pattering keyboards and whispered interviews. Correspondents and tip-droppers were ushered through the aisles of desks, offered coffee, and ducked into corner offices. The window shades were always pulled down in those offices. One day the office hush was broken because a guy fell down the stairs and broke his leg. He yelled every curseword he knew, which echoed across the newsroom. Reporters sprinted down aisles yelling and people stood up from desk chairs and waved their arms around. I was so relieved to see spontaneous human emotion and learn they weren’t extremely well-dressed androids.

I think I made a friend, the prolific reporter who sat across from me and specialized in writing about disease epidemics. His name was Bill, he quit smoking for years, until the Times announced they were ‘bankrupt and rearranging.’ This meant firing half of the staff. I’ll never forget the staff meeting. I’ll never forget what it means for newspapers to die. The exhausted reporters with families and mortgages, who’d put everything into their careers and were simply let go for being talented writers in the wrong industry at the wrong time.

One of my most memorable afternoons as a reporter was when I was asked to cover the 50th anniversary of the Job Corps, which later became this article, which received a single comment online. From my dad. When I went to cover the Job Corps event on Capitol Hill, I knew there was a robotics competition and I was also confused about which building it was held in. I ran around asking random hill staffers, “DO YOU KNOW WHERE THE ROBOTS ARE?” Then I realized I was there a day early.

But I will say that D.C. is completely inspiring, home to some of the most driven, street smart, and intelligent professionals I’ve ever met. Everyone has risen to the top of their field or is fiercely climbing to the top. The caliber of debate by experts in think tank sponsored seminars was world class. It’s every highschool valedictorian from Indiana, setting out to make a name for themselves like it’s the last roll of the dice. It’s no wonder careers are so important. In D.C, your career isn’t just a mindless paycheck-generator. It’s everything. It determines your social positioning, who you’ll meet up with for lunch, and how you’ll vote.

All of this to say, if you are very certain of a cause or career goal — D.C. is the perfect place for the young and driven. But if you find it difficult to dwell in party lines, don’t want to see nonprofit lobbyists shaking hands with politicians, can’t be entertained by John Boehner’s smoking habits and fluctuating tan lines, or disdain wearing nametags to happy hour functions–then I’d say that you might not love D.C. Or ‘the movement.’

In D.C., everyone smiles for photos.

road trip: seattle to colorado

i started my solo, 22-hour road trip at 9:45 p.m. This is what happened:

I can’t get over the absolutely stunning beauty of the Northwest. The green mountains of Idaho could easily turn you into an environmentalist or a mystic. The cliffs of Montana stretch into forever. Wyoming has ancient craters and sprawling fields. Colorado’s mountain raise up from the landscape like a surprise standing ovation. Whoa.

But most times I pulled over on the highway, I was met with national chain restaurants, Shell gas stations, and a stampede of casinos. Every time I saw a casino, especially in a predominantly Native American area, I couldn’t help but think about how bad the U.S. is fucking up. Where did these sad, neon-lit money traps come from? Who put them there? Old people feeding their last nickels into ’90s computer screens, smoking Paul Malls, and swigging down Miller Lite.

I was sad for these bored areas and solemn-eyed people sitting in truck stops. Yet, I’m reminded of Jamaica Kincaid’s essay on tourism:

“That the native does not like the tourist is not hard to explain. For every native of every place is a potential tourist, and every tourist is a native of somewhere. Every native everywhere lives a life of overwhelming and crushing banality and boredom and desperation and depression, and every deed, good and bad, is an attempt to forget this. Every native would like to find a way out, every native would like a rest, every native would like a tour. But some natives–most natives in the world–cannot go anywhere. They are too poor. They are too poor to go anywhere. They are too poor to escape the reality of their lives; and they are too poor to live properly in the place where they live, which is the very place you, the tourist, want to go– so when the natives see you, the tourist, they envy you, they envy your ability to leave your own banality and boredom, they envy your ability to turn their own banality and boredom into a source of pleasure for yourself.”

As I insert my judgment on these side-of-the-highway cultures, even if it comes from a well-intentioned sincerity, it’s really a form of elitism. Who am I to say these people don’t enjoy watching Kung Fu Panda II at the only movie theatre in town? Maybe Big Macs are pretty delicious in the middle of stretching telephone poles and vacant wilderness.

I’ll never forget the guy I met working at a Subway in Hardin, Montana. He had so much soulpower. Joy can be huge sometimes. He smiled eagerly as he pointed out several different electrical outlet options to charge my cellphone in. He warned me of flooding and recommended the Subway Melt. He was staying open a half an hour late to make soup for an ROTC luncheon the next day. He was in his mid-thirties with a wedding ring and ironed khakis.

Everytime I’m tempted to describe these out of the way places as ‘depressed little towns’, I remember there is a man at a Subway in Hardin, Montana who can’t stop smiling.

There is a man working at a Subway in Hardin, Montana who can’t stop smiling.