My goodness, you look beautiful today...
OUR BLOG
You may start, as you do with many things, by making a list.
Item One: Locate the world’s most beautiful woman.
Item One-A: If you cannot locate the world’s most beautiful woman, look harder. A woman of this sort is likely elusive. You may have missed her.
Item One-B: Abandon hope. This is normal.
They say it is when you stop searching that you find what you are looking for. This is not to be believed. Searches are commonly misguided in the first place; surveillance teams scour the landscape for clues leading to the right answer to a wrong question. The world was many shapes before it was discovered round. Fantasy treasure fools many into leading entire lives devoted to its unearthing. A series of beating hearts, wasted on prospect.
The best discoveries are accidental. Atoms bouncing around in space, colliding to share valence electrons, forming the molecular bonds that comprise our most elemental parts. These are unplanned acts. They are that first expression of passion—how your probing tongue slowed to glance the lower lip of your lover, that quiver of submission in her parted jaw, etcetera—when you discovered it was not How far will she go? but How long can this last?. Discovery as invention. As chance cooperation. Your discovery will not be the answer you were looking for, but the question you never realized was there.
No search for the world’s most beautiful woman ends successfully. She will evade your exploration and undermine your expectations. The world’s most beautiful woman is a reaper of cruelty, the disapproving nod of a joke misunderstood, the scathing reward of finger to frying pan. Lust after her and end up lonely. Cup her water in your hands and watch it seep through your fingers. Disappointment is her remuneration.
The woman you find will not be the world’s most beautiful woman.
No.
The woman you will find will not be from this world at all. She will be alien. Her hair will not be comprised of keratin and dead skin cells, but of a carefully woven agenda of silken gravity, and it will slip through your fingers as an afternoon of chores slips a lover’s mind. Her brain lies not under a membrane of neurons, but beneath a mantle of speckled stardust, flecks of radiance tufted into a dense winding staircase of raw awe. And her face. Her face will not be a soft tissue envelope over a skull, but a landing pad for an endless line of besitos on a cool summer night.
The woman you will find puts the world’s most beautiful woman to shame. That is why, during your search, you could not find the world’s most beautiful woman. She was hiding, afraid of being exposed for what she is. Terrestrial, grounded. Common. A reproduced masterpiece of threadbare thoughts and consignment dreams. The world’s most beautiful woman is an orchestrated likeness of the planet around her. She is flesh wound together with a few quick orbits, then unraveled in eternal revolution. The world’s most beautiful woman is fleeting.
The woman you will find remains still as the world spins. It is her magnitude which fashions the spin. It is the world who orbits her. Your urges in her presence might betray your better judgment. You are too dizzy, a drunken fool with your heels in the air. You may have the urge to categorize this woman, to title her in some show of recognition for her supernaturalness. This is inadvisable. Great art cannot be summarized any more than great beauty can be explained. (The woman you will find is both.) She boasts undocumented detail in more cavernous array than the inscriptions of Chauvet, with more perseverance than the winds that tickle the enduring motif of Matterhorn.
To call this woman beautiful would be lazy. She is fortitude, she is kindness. She is the raw personage of prodigy, the yielding shelter of maternity. She is the hazardous boundary of the castle moat and the glowing innocence silhouetting the curtains of the Princess Suite. Try to rescue her and she’ll snap at you. Attack her and she’ll pirouette in polite dismissal. But study her long enough, attend to her mannerisms—how the crescent corners of her smile illuminate the stellar pores of her cheeks or when the lines of wisdom on her fingers stretch as they reach to rest between yours—do this with the utmost care and purpose, and she may admit you to stay, to appreciate for some time what the lazy man calls beauty.
Your original list did not include these items. But you cannot be blamed. You are but one atom, bouncing around haphazardly in space, on a collision course with the inevitable, atomic partner in bonding. Your chance cooperation.
If you find this woman in this way, cherish her.
There is nothing quite like her in the world.
When you return to your office after an evening workout and a Quiznos dinner, the last thing you expect to find is your office door swinging open in the breeze.
It was a Tuesday when it happened, at 7:45pm. No one was inside. No one was nearby. Only some random passersby, totally ignorant that the door to my work has been open to the world, leaving the contents unattended for the last two or three hours. Thousands of dollars of computer equipment, pricey furniture, and cash on hand. Not to mention all of my personal stuff.
I had left the office at 4:45pm this afternoon, eager to fit in a workout and a meal before an overdue phone conversation with my friend Mitchell. My two coworkers were still in the office at the time. They must have gotten distracted and forgotten to lock the door on the way out.
Such a thing is an enduring nightmare for an OCD person. Rarely am I able to leave the office without double-checking to make sure I locked it. I’m even worse with my car–I can’t seem to walk away from it without returning at least twice to make sure I didn’t forget to secure the old sack of metal. It is a well-known routine for the sufferer of obsessive-compulsive disorder, which makes it all the more horrifying when we witness someone else neglecting the very thing we spend so much time agonizing over. While I’m thankful not everyone has the overwhelming urge not to check their locks eleven times over each time they leave a place, it is hard for me to understand how on Earth a person could leave a door, particularly one which acts as the barrier between the outside world and the place of their livelihood, swinging open for all to see. If the office was left open overnight, surely someone would’ve stumbled upon the place. Between the steady local foot traffic, regular meanderings of street people from nearby, and nightly stumbling-through of drunks from the neighboring strip of bars, surely this unattended office would’ve made an easy killing for the arbitrary opportunist.
Come on, people, this is my home!
Of course, I can’t say this.
I can’t report this to my coworkers. What am I going to say, that I forgot my wallet and came back to the office at night to find the door whimsically ajar? It’ll be a challenge, but I’ll have to keep this a secret.
Fortunately, no one sauntered in for a look. Or who knows? Maybe they did and left, having found the place just too uncomfortable to bear another moment. Regardless, there is a touch of irony in the fact that after more than 200 days of taking great pains to avoid detection, I’d find my office a veritable “Open House” to the entire population of Los Angeles.
Yet no one is curious enough to notice.
And perhaps that’s the lesson behind this whole experiment: Everyone is simply too busy to see what’s really going on.
There is little better way to express one’s independence in America than hitting the highway on a spontaneous road trip. The freedom of an unmarked calendar. The upheaval of the workweek routine. The chance to meet new and interesting people.
Except, of course, when those people are law enforcement officers who take a disliking to you.
Last week, I drove east from Los Angeles to southwestern Utah, looping north to the mountains in east-central Nevada before making the long trip back home. Well over 20 hours of driving in three days’ time. A testament to the whimsy of a solo adventurer hell-bent on seeing new land–and an old car as reliable as a Somali mule. And the perfect itinerary for an introvert looking to check off a couple unhiked trails.
During my 20+ hours of driving, roughly 15 of which outside of my home state of California, I experienced no less than 4 uncomfortable run-ins with police officers. Four times where I was singled out as being worth examination by local cops. Or in cinematic terms (and since we’re talking mostly desert territory, I believe this reference is appropriate) that’s one run-in with the law for each of four back-to-back screenings of a Lawrence of Arabia during a Peter O’Toole movie marathon. Precisely what I call “too much”.
So what does the Highway Patrol want with little old me? On the surface, I escape many of the unfortunately traditional rural American bugaboos that might get a person profiled. I am relatively clean-cut. I have no visible tattoos or piercings. My vehicle is an unassuming. I smile a lot. I’m white. And below the surface, I’m legitimately non-threatening: I have zero criminal record and barely any traffic violations on file, either. In fact, the one time I received a speeding ticket was in Pottawattamie County, Iowa. When the state trooper pulled me over and announced our location, I summed up my innocence with a childlike reaction. “Pottawattamie County!” I exclaimed. “Is that going to be a problem?” asked the cop. “Do you have a record here?” “No, sir,” I answered, surprised. “I just have this license plate collection at home, and my Iowa plate is from Pottawattamie County. It also reads ‘HOODRAT’…” The trooper offered no reaction. “It’s a vanity plate,” I said, shaking my head. But he wasn’t in the mood for lightheartedness. The ticket ran me $160.
State troopers just don’t seem to jive with me. This weekend was no different. I’ll take each encounter separately:
1) Entering a National Park
It was 11pm and I just noticed my phone had service as I was entering the park. Having been to the park once before, I am familiar with the shoddy service in the area. So seeing that this was a fairly important email concerning my recent film project, I pulled over at the next wide shoulder to provide a quick response. Fresh out of urban living, prioritizing emails is a given. Particularly when they’re attached to career advancement. Plus, I didn’t know when I’d have a connection again.
Halfway into my six-line response, a policeman pulled up next to me.
“Everything okay?”
I looked up from my phone, producing it before him as I explained, “Oh yes, officer. I just got service for a moment and wanted to respond to a message before I lose it again.”
“Well could ya drive up to the pull-out ahead? You’re sticking out in the middle of the road!”
I looked at the tires. My car was about 20% on the road. A two-lane street with a speed limit of 25 miles per hour. No one was on it.
“Yeah, sure,” I responded. “There’s a pull-out ahead?”
“Yeah,” he said, sighing, incredulous. “It’s fifty feet up.”
“Okay, great. Thank you.”
He shook his head and sped off, reaching well over the 25 miles per hour limit.
I obeyed and crept up to the pull-out. Not a single car passed.
2) Parked in the same National Park
Twenty minutes later, I was finishing up preparing the back of my truck for sleeping. It was a warm night, around 80 degrees, so I took my shirt off as I arranged a series of mats in the truck bed. I was exhausted, looking very much forward to sleeping in the open air, under nothing but a blanket of stars. Surely, I’d fall asleep as soon as I hit the pillow.
I was almost done preparing my bed when I noticed that there was only one other car in the lot. “That’s strange,” I thought. “I wonder if–”
Just then, a second, different police officer pulled into the lot, circling around and stopping in front of my truck. I stood up to meet him.
“Have you got a place to stay tonight?” he asked.
Having lived in southern California for three years now, I have begun to identify the nuances of passive-aggression much better. So I immediately interpreted his question as “You can’t sleep here.” I responded in kind.
“Actually, I’m still looking for one. Do you have any suggestions?”
I was pretty jazzed with my reply, especially considering I was nearly comatose with fatigue. The conversation went smoothly from there, with the officer politely offering knowledge of a BLM site ten miles east where I could sleep in my car, then he bid me adieu. I had to respect the way he handled the situation. True, the BLM site was back quite a ways in the direction I came, far out of his local jurisdiction. And, of course, the BLM land he referenced was indeed closed when I got there–ex post facto internet searches reveal that this BLM site has been shut down since 2009–so maybe he was just a little, um, late in getting the news. But despite the clear message of “Get out of my town, hobo,” the man was at least polite about the way he spoke to me. That counts for something.
After an hour of searching for a safe place to sleep, and seeing that local hotel options were booked, I found a side street where I could pull over and sleep in the cab of my truck for a few broken hours. Hardly the pinnacle of my tenure of frugal travel.
3) Caliente, Nevada
After conquering my chosen trail, I headed to off to Nevada mountains. It was another difficult night, this one spent in the thin air at 10,000 feet, braving intermittent thunderstorms of unrelenting intensity. But I pressed on, waking at 5:00am for a pseudo-alpine start. I was back to the truck by noon, having reached safely reached my intended peak.
It was at that point I decided to head back to the office. The brief spate of wildernessing had rejuvenated me, and I was ready to be home and work on my creative projects. Plus, I was tired. Butt tired. And the office seemed like the best place for a good night’s sleep. So I headed south.
Caliente, Nevada, is one of many speed-trap-towns along the seldom-traveled Highway 93. Entering the town, one’s speed drops precipitously from 75 miles per hour to 40, then quickly down to 25. Whether the purpose is to keep the cars moving at safe speeds for the residents, generate revenue from distracted motorists who miss the signs and end up ticketed, or slow folks down in hopes that they’ll stop in and spend their tourist dollars, I can’t be sure. But it sure is difficult maintaining that speed on the open road.
The town hooked me, though. Evidence of extreme poverty–windowless trailers with garbage-strewn lawns–were interspersed with well-manicured public lawns and new streetlamps. It was as if the town had received a single windfall of pork-barrel funding before being re-forgotten into obscurity. A strange place. And definitely photo-worthy. So I started snapping pictures. I mean, shit, I was only going 25 miles per hour. What else was I going to do?
A minute after snapping the above photo, a police officer in a marked Explorer began tailing me. So I put away the camera, sat attention at 10 and 2, and executed one of the most difficult maneuvers a suspect can accomplish: acting innocent despite being 100%, completely innocent.
It wasn’t until I reached the city limits, where the speed limit increased to 40mph, that the officer turned off the road. It was then that I realized that my California license plates might be calling attention to myself.
4) Stewart Brothers Ranch Road
It reads like the address of an apple orchard. Perhaps a Baptist preacher lives at the end of its pavement. Or maybe next month’s Klan rally is taking place out by Jeb Stewart’s gazebo. It’s hard for me to say. But Stewart Brothers Ranch Road (pictured below, intersecting with Highway 93) seems like anything but a hotbed of traffic and activity.
So when nature called on Hour Four of my ten-hour drive back to cheery Los Angeles, I found this to be a perfect spot to empty my bladder.
Highway 93 is desolate. There are but a few hamlets along its searing flanks, and even fewer gas stations. One could go an hour without finding a proper restroom facility, particularly one that wouldn’t produce a few raised eyebrows courtesy of an out-of-towner looking to use their toilet without doing some cash-related business as well. Understanding this matter of etiquette–that bathrooms are generally for paying customers only–I generally decline to relieve myself at an establishment unless I’m buying something. Peeing roadside seemed A-OK.
I didn’t seem to be the only one with this philosophy. Numerous vehicles could be seen parked at the side of the road, their inhabitants taking leave of their air-conditioned cocoons to fertilize the local landscape. So when the urge struck me, I pulled off to the side myself. It was at the corner of a minor side street, or perhaps a driveway. The little road was unidentified, marked with only a mailbox and a stop sign, but I would later identify it as Stewart Brothers Ranch Road. Not a soul was around. Checking for cars in either direction, I deemed it safe to saunter to the other side of my car and relieve myself short of a fence.
The situation reminded me of being in rural Haiti a couple of weeks prior, having to be reassured over and over again that I could urinate anywhere, from someone’s yard to a school building. They even laughed when I expressed my concern that I wanted to “respect” people’s property. “But you have to pee,” they’d say. What sensible logic! So here, seeing no signs of life, short of a blur of a car that had just passed in the opposite direction, I saw no harm in initiating my release. After all, I had to pee.
And I did. For a moment. Until I saw something out of the corner of my eye. It was the car that had just passed. And it was making a U-turn.
Stopping a piss mid-stream is hardly a pleasant experience. But it was a mild urge in the first place and the stakes seemed high. So I stopped, turning back towards my open passenger door to feign action. I hoped that in doing so the car would pass. Perhaps I was just being paranoid, having already had a few run-ins with the law over my brief foray into the sticks. But as I heard the tires screech to a halt, I knew that the jig was up. Turning to the flashing lights of the officer’s Expedition, I acted surprised and cocked my head with a smile as he strode towards me.
“Getting out for a stretch?”
I wasn’t falling for it. No tramp with a pulse is going to flat-out lie to a man of uniform in his jurisdiction of remoteness, where the rule of law is but a he-said, she-said affair. My response was measured.
“Yeah, that and this (indicating a water bottle I’d just grabbed as part of my activity-feigning) and using the bathroom; it’s been a long drive and–”
“–Wait, here? You were going to use the bathroom here?”
My reply had only part of the desired effect, but the cop was baited. Without lying, I didn’t admit either that he’d caught me in the act. And in babbling about the confusion of it all, I established a cloudiness of thought that suggested my intent was muddled as well. Was I pissing? I don’t know. There’s so much going on that, geez, who can tell what’s right or left? The officer, however, had clearly made his U-turn with a strong intent. And he wasn’t afraid of making that intent known. I’d have preferred to enable his reservation, letting me go just as the officer in Utah did. But instead he was incredulous.
“You mean to tell me you thought this was a good place to piss. Here? People coming to get the mail? A busy road? You couldn’t wait til you got to the gas station up the road?”
It was 5:30pm on a Saturday, hardly peak mail-picking time. No one was on the road. There were no signs of active human life whatsoever. And, never having been to the area, I couldn’t possibly have known there was a gas station ahead of me. You know, in the future.
“I’m sorry, officer. I didn’t realize there was a gas station nearby.”
“Where are you coming from? I mean, did you come up 93 or 375? ”
“Um, I don’t know what roads I’ve been on, but I’m coming from the national park…”
The picture was getting clearer for him. I was a tourist who came to see his state’s land and, ostensibly, bring my tourist money with me. Though this clarification was no cause for him to relent. He was pissed at something, and he was damn sure going to give me a lesson on etiquette because of it.
“Well didn’t you just pass through a town? Wasn’t there a gas station there?”
He was literally asking me. He was so angry, he didn’t himself seem to know. Maybe it was a long day for him, too.
“I don’t know,” I said. I kept mostly silent, allowing him to vent his frustration on… whatever.
This went on for probably three or four minutes, which is a long haul in cop-in-the-middle-of-nowhere-is-pissed-at-you time. His wraparound sunglasses remained on his face, below his balding, white head, the entire time. I could see my reflection as he babbled on about etiquette, my arms dangling calmly at my side, wondering how a man protecting the social order in the only state in the union where prostitution is legalized in rural brothels can lecture anyone on matters of propriety, and do so with a straight face. Or maybe that’s why he kept the glasses on.
After acknowledging once again that there is a gas station ahead (3 miles in my future, to be exact) the police officer began to wear down, seeing that I wasn’t going to either take his bait to argue with him or say anything nearly as trifling as he. It is then that he got to his thesis.
“Look,” he said. “I get it. It’s rural Nevada. There’s nothing around and you’ve gotta go. Fine. But not here. I don’t come to California and start pissing anywhere I want to.”
Ah, there it was. My California plates. I had been profiled without a single question about my background or character. A Californian pissing on the Stewart Brothers’ fence, representing to this man some kind of cultural invasion on behalf of a resident of the most hated state in the union. It’s a state that typifies excess and redefines self-involvement, a reputation so notorious for disrespect that rolling through a stop sign has come to be universally known as a “California stop”. Our state diverts water from their rivers and our residents snatch up Nevada property to avoid our taxes. To this police officer, I was just another aloof Californian stomping on his flowerbed because it was convenient for me.
Ironically, had he interviewed me for a minute, he’d have found out I’m not particularly crazy about the culture in my hometown, either. I’m hardly so black and white about the place, but I’m definitely critical. So he was berating me based on false identification of a symbol. What’s more is that his solution only perpetuated the problem. The average gas station toilet uses nearly 2 gallons of water with every flush, further exacerbating the waste laid on Nevada resources and “sensibilities” at the hands (or dick) of another pesky Sunshine Stater. The flaws in the man’s logic were substantial.
Perception is a funny thing. The same person who in one area is perceived as a degenerate loner might in another be seen as a well-heeled socialite elsewhere. Anyone coming into a situation does so with preconceived ideas of how she is going to manage that situation. The same goes for people. We represent different things to different people. The danger is when we make strong conclusions based on those perceptions and then act accordingly and inflexibly. It is in those moments when we risk offending others, treating them unjustly, or simply looking childish.
When you approach someone and you think you have an idea who they are based on their appearance, based on whatever category you place on them, there’s a chance that you’re wrong. A good chance. If you act on that judgment, you might end up looking like this police officer did. Unprofessional, out of control, and foolish. He should be embarrassed with himself. I was certainly embarrassed for him.
The moral? Treat others with respect, tread lightly in rural America, and don’t lecture others about social etiquette if you preside over the law in the land of legalized whoring.
Happy trails, partner.
– TOH
Today, I celebrate 200 days of office living by taking a vacation! My current trip takes me to Utah and Nevada, an exploration of wilderness unparalleled except by my last trip!
I see plenty of news on the horizon (pun intended). Check back soon for details!
– TOH
The local Whole Foods is abuzz with activity at 9:15 on this Friday evening.
A woman in stretch yoga pants is milling in front of the salad bar, speaking in a presentational tone on her cell phone. Nearby, a young couple is inquiring about the availability of some pumpernickel bread at the bakery. The security guard stands watch at the door, eying an older gentleman in tattered trousers who has wandered into the produce section, caressing a mound of organic cantaloupe.
This is my default post-workout dining option on a weekend night. More often than not lately, I have chosen to go it alone. Most of my close friends have moved away from Los Angeles–I lose them at a rate of about one every ten weeks; I’ve kept track–which means I either have to effort to make new friends or blaze my own solo path. True to form, I default to the latter again tonight, avoiding what for me is the astronomical mystery of starting a meaningful conversation with strangers, especially doing so in a town that’s perfected the cold shoulder. So instead I hang back and act as the bystander. The observer. I may not work very hard at conquering my loneliness, but hey, I’m pretty good at embracing it.
Contrary to popular belief, I don’t believe loneliness is not something to fear. Everyone suffers from it at some point in his or her life, some perpetually. It is as ordinary as the common cold, yet the term carries with it a colossal taboo, this footnote of weighty import that seems to say, “If you’re lonely, you’re a failure.” Admitting to loneliness is akin to a guilty plea of loserdom, as if it’s an ailment which needs treating by some over-the-counter salve to numb the symptoms. A condition that requires, for lack of a better phrase, immediate attention.
But I disagree. I say if you’re lonely, own it. Revel in the symptoms. Use your yearning for connection and slow down to observe, to study your own actions and the actions of others. Watch how the awkward impulse for avoidance drives the eyes to look down, or the hand to reach for the phone, or the pitch of the vocals to slip ever so slightly, retreating into an airy bass murmur. The opposite is true, too. The outgoing lonely human, showing his eagerness to engage in small talk despite evident resistance, or her kind smile after a moment-too-long sharing of a gaze. There is the universal, lingered gait of early arrival, pausing to browse merchandise, free of the intent to purchase. These are all mannerisms of the lonely. And they are all too common.
Tonight, in the absence of companionship, I sit outside the grocery store with my meal and become a student of loneliness.
It is an unintentional perk of my home-free experiment, this routine of spending more time in public. Yet despite being around people more, I find myself more aware of my own loneliness. It’s a funny contradiction, this solitary existence in a sea of strangers. The “urban alone”.
I feel alien to Los Angeles in a way that I’ve never felt before. Alien to the isolated nature of the local car culture. Alien to the urges of conspicuous consumption. Alien to obsession with status, with love as its casualty. These are harsh criticisms, I understand. But they are criticisms that accompany my loneliness, following me through the city on a daily basis, trailing my otherwise chipper demeanor like a sunset shadow. Lately I’ve learned to accept those criticisms as deed, as fact, bartering the weight of their consequences for the freedom to create art without the burden of hope. The hope in sharing love any time soon.
In shedding that hope, I’ve emerged a freer person. One without expectations, for myself or from others.
I am lonely, yes, but I am far from sad. These lonely moments only serve to strengthen the heart, through observations of details that result in me empathizing with people I may not have otherwise noticed during the speed of my routine. I study people longer, attend to the root of their needs more thoroughly, and apply what I see to my own self and actions. Because of this, my heart is able to rebound more quickly from a lonely moment because I am more willing to slow down and share positive moments with others. I stop to smile at the cashier. I ask how she is doing, then I stop, look her in the eye, and listen. I want to know, because regardless of her reaction, what she says and how she moves teaches me a little more about how to attend to details. And with that information, I can better tailor my response to foster a positive interaction.
This, I believe, is a form of love. And so through the insight of observance, one’s love gains wisdom.
Tonight, as I sit, enjoying my evening meal, I seek that very wisdom. And I am soon rewarded.
Walking out to the parking lot are two young lovers, wheeling their groceries towards their car. They are walking, at first, in silence, their legs moving together in perfect synchronicity. They are unconcerned with their surroundings. Their gate is only broken when they redirect their walk around a moving car. Their direction moves directly downhill, and without a word they simultaneously pace to a jog, seizing the opportunity, turning to each other and counting to three before mounting their cart. The couple embarks on a wind-in-the-hair grocery cart sprint across the parking lot pavement, the passionate tension of their grips highlighted under the streetlamp’s jaundiced glow.
How beautiful, their smiles! How charming their whimsy, their coordinated understanding of one another’s intentions! How delightful the glimmer of light that accents the swell of hair buoyed by the breeze of animation, by the ventilation of their will. This is their love, revealed in this moment, the only moment. And this love is advancing forward. Literally and figuratively.
It is their investment in one another, and the payoff they receive from that investment, which has me admiring from afar. Here I sit, fixed on my stool. Alone. Very much lonely, but not without a smile, for I have fallen momentarily in love via proxy thrill, a vicarious affair with this idea of what I believe this couple must be feeling. Perhaps I haven’t lost this hope after all.
This is what I learn after stopping to observe. I find beauty in others.
It is no small task. It is often easier to point out life’s difficulties than to mine out the wonder in details. A past me might have been depressed that I was not riding grocery-cart shotgun with a vaulted eyebrow vixen of my own. Woe is he who is not at every given moment experiencing the ultimate that life has to offer. But the delight of others should inspire us, not bring us down. The value of a smile exceeds pleasantry, and the lesson of love observed sees the heart flourish, not fade.
Perhaps my tandem grocery cart ride will come soon.
Until then, sitting alone on a stool is just fine.
“It smells horrible in here.”
Carla walked into the office, letting the door slam behind her. She didn’t even remember to ask how I was doing. And this on a Monday morning.
“Oh my gosh, do you smell that?” she asked.
“Yeah, it’s weird,” I said, wondering what she was talking about. I could detect little more than a minor odor coming from the back storage area. I figured it was the trash, and noted that I should take it out as soon as possible. Carla wouldn’t relent.
“Do you think something died in here over the weekend?” she asked, moving towards the thermostat. “I’m going to blast the air for a bit.”
Shameless. She’d use any excuse to turn our office into a snow cave. I sniffed around again, curious what she was talking about. Then Beatrice walked through the front door.
“Oh god!” she exclaimed. “It smells like rotting corpse in here!”
Okay, I thought. This is a little ridiculous. As the two debated the source of the stench, I got up to step outside. Maybe a minute standing on the sidewalk would un-acclimate me to this apparent graveyard odor.
It was the first time I’d stepped outside since Saturday, save for one Sunday trip to the gym to shower, in order to remain indoors and avoid the unseasonable heat. Holing up in solitary bliss behind my desk, I alternated between sessions of reading, napping, and fantasizing that Aubrey Plaza might materialize from thin air. It was everything I could ever ask for in a Sunday. I felt completely rejuvenated.
Where have you been all my Sunday?
Wait.
I’m not an overly self-conscious guy. But making a quick assessment of the facts, it seemed likely that there was a small chance that I was partially responsible for this smell. For someone living alternatively, I maintain an extremely hygienic and meticulous level of cleanliness. Or so I thought. Living in such confined quarters presents plenty of room for error, and having admittedly missed my Sunday shower, it is possible that being cooped up for a bit could lead to some foulness of the air.
I stepped back inside, noted only the faintest of smells, and started to go over the details of the weekend. My clothing, my food, my waste. I start to take a mental inventory of all my belongings in order to determine whether or not I am in fact… the noxious culprit!
Let’s review the weekend together: The office had been cleaned on Saturday afternoon. There was no garbage present and the fridge remained clear of spoiled goods. No dirty clothes remained indoors. No wet shoes tracking animal dung or sewage. I had spent all Sunday in the office with modest air conditioning running (let’s say 77 degrees, on average). I showered Sunday evening and had no reason to sweat, save for my recent thread of Shani-sponsored nightmares[1]. A quick check of the armpits revealed nothing but a mild cucumber scent from my moisturizer.
The only aberration I could think of came this morning. At 6:30am I had taken the last of my pre-Haiti oral typhoid vaccine, a cocktail which hasn’t been the kindest to my digestive system over the past week, leaving me prone to the occasional atmospheric faux pas. Was it possible my bowel typhoon created a virtual greenhouse effect of stench in the two-or-so hours before Carla arrived? Could I be so stinky as to leave a mark so profoundly putrid, 30 minutes of full-strength air conditioning couldn’t combat its malodorous horror? Had I produced a stench so untenable, the peace of the workplace had been disturbed, leaving my colleagues fearful for their well-being?
Naturally, I am horrified that this might be my doing. Some macabre consequence of this typhus concoction, baked into a tainted miasma of reality somewhere between the Bukowskian and Shyamalanian recipe books. Surely I’ll be found out and immediately relieved of my duties, discarded amongst the rubble of urban sanitation which my Pig Pen integusphere now almost certainly resembles. I’ll never work again, never wed. My best bet is to commandeer my own shopping cart now, while I still have any belongings to salvage. At least I know of a safe place near the next-door apartment building where I can lock them up.
Okay, so perhaps that was a touch over-reactive.
As the morning continued, the source and intensity of the smell became less clear. Later, I again stepped outside for a couple of minutes to chat up a client and walked back into the office greeted by a dull aroma of, for lack of a better description, bleached pineapple cadaver. Just merciless. How could I accept responsibility for this odor? Troubled as my intestines might have been, this was not my doing. But what could it be?
We searched everywhere for the source of the smell, but to no avail. Eventually, we opened the door and blasted the air conditioning. And then we purchased lemon- and lavender-scented candles to work to mask it. Having scheduled a committee meeting in the office for 6:30pm, our priority was making the office livable for our evening guests. But the implication was clear: If the odor remained tomorrow, we’d have to call in the landlord for help. And this would seriously jeopardize my routine.
So what course of action do I take? Do I blast the air conditioning and break out the air fresheners, working to mask the whiff of death, potentially concealing an actual problem, in order to save my own hide? Or do I cooperate, sleeping overnight in the stale warmth in order to promote whatever odor might arise, despite the risk that the landlord may want to check the place out thoroughly and at his leisure?
Neither option is particularly inviting. But in a way it is exactly what I had been asking for: Intrigue and adventure. Well, not exactly what I asked for. Maybe next time I will be more specific…
– TOH
Intolerance is something that has always bothered me.
Growing up in a relatively confederate part of rural America, I was exposed to a fair share of ignorance and hate. I lived on the border of what were then two very rural counties, equidistant from each county’s flagship KKK headquarters. There were regular rallies, and although the scope of their strength was nowhere near what it had been decades earlier, the evidence of their legacy remained clear. The confederate flag was displayed prominently, from residential flagpoles to diesel truck antennae, and flying over a nearby stretch of interstate was the largest flag I’ve ever seen, confederate or otherwise, a massive rebel-crossed reminder of the controversial reality of its own dubious symbolism.
This is a current thing.
But it wasn’t only racial intolerance that prevailed in and around my hometown. This is a place where “faggot” as a derogatory term has remained a part of the vernacular, where the homeless are targets of routine random violence, where in a man in a Wal-Mart parking lot can be shot in the face after accused of being a Muslim. This is in 2013. Sadly enough, this broad stroke of anecdotal evidence could explain thousands of communities across America. And that, I always thought, was part of the problem. What about someone’s differences can make someone so angry, they’d want to hurt them, or even worse?
This is behavior with which I have grown unfamiliar in recent years. The urban centers that I have called home since I left my hometown in 2005 have been diverse and, relatively speaking, accepting. And Los Angeles, for all its faults, seems almost oblivious to a person’s ethnic makeup or DNA, focusing instead on the whether the threads that cover them up are stylish and appealing. Generally speaking, it is extremely rare to experience someone trying to hurt another person just because of their appearance.
Yet a few days ago, I witnessed one of those moments.
I came to the public library to get some writing done and research literature for an upcoming film project I’m working on. I also came to avoid the office’s cleaning crew. Since I am home-free, I don’t always have a place to go when my usual haunt (the office) is occupied. The library is a logical alternative. It’s comfortable. It’s quiet. It’s safe. I decided to make a day of it. I donned a rockin’ pair of low-tops and a smart v-neck, parted my hair in the off-center style of the day, and was on my way.
So after browsing the shelves for titles on colonial history, I passed a girl in a blue blouse who smiled at me. It was a nice gesture–it always is when you share smiles with a stranger. I continued on and found a seat in a row of individual chairs flanking the non-fiction shelves and began drafting a piece for this very blog. When I write, I lose myself in thought. I settle into a daze of ticker-taped ideas. I relax. And in moments in between inspiration, I fall asleep. So when I nodded myself awake at 3:00pm, I thought nothing of it. I just returned to my writing, a touch groggy but with refreshed perspective.
A few minutes later I heard faint snoring. Two chairs down, about twenty feet away from me, a man is hunched over in his chair, a book rested in his lap. Like me, he seemed to have fallen asleep. His snoring I could do without. But faced with this atmosphere of comfort and security, I could hardly blame him. A minute or so passed before the snoring ceased, which is about when two security officers walked up to a girl next to the sleeping man, mumbling to her something indecipherable before asking, “This guy here?” I heard her say yes. It was the girl in the blue blouse. The one who had smiled at me earlier.
When the officers asked him to wake up, the man apologized. The officers were kind enough, accepting his apology and moving on. This made me curious though: What if the officers had arrived a few minutes earlier? Would they have approached me, laptop in my lap, and asked me to wake up? I peered over at the man. He had since risen from his chair. He didn’t look particularly homeless. He dressed in jeans and a polo shirt. His hair was kept short and he had some facial hair, but nothing particularly scraggly. As I studied him, he picked up two large duffel bags and turned towards the door.
The duffel bags. Excess baggage. A symbol of a mobile lifestyle.
On the man’s way out, he stopped at the feet of the girl who had been mumbling with the security officers. She was seated on the floor, reading a book. His speech was just within earshot, and I could hear him ask, “Are you Marcela?”
“What.” she said curtly, not quite posing it as a question. I leaned over, trying to get a closer look at this girl. She wasn’t smiling anymore. I will guess that she was in her 20s, dressed conservatively for a sunny late-April day in Santa Monica. She had dark hair, pulled back in a pony tail, and spoke clearly and confidently. She appeared to be of Latin descent, the same as the man with the duffel bags.
“Is your name Marcela?”
“What are you saying?”
Her voice was sharp, cutting. Heads were beginning to turn in her direction.
“I just wondered if you are Marcela, you–”
“–Get away from me!”
“–You look like someone–”
“–Leave me alone! You are homeless!”
The man started to walk away. But the girl wasn’t done.
“I’m trying to read a book! I don’t want to talk to you! You’re homeless!”
The man was now almost out of sight, but turned back briefly with a look of disgust and confusion.
He didn’t say a word. He just kept walking. Then he disappeared behind the stacks, and the girl returned to her book. And everyone who had witnessed it returned to what they were doing as well.
But something about the exchange made me extremely uncomfortable. I could no longer focus on what I was doing. What gave this girl the right to talk to this man that way? This man’s approach was at worst awkward. His body language was composed and innocent, and his words somewhere between genuine and nervous. Yet her words were broiled in vitriol, steamed in hate, and directed at a condition for which I couldn’t help but identify. Her aim was not simply to get him to move on–in fact, once he did, her words became even more odious. Her aim was to hurt him.
But she had done more than that. There in that sterile security of the non-fiction shelves, this girl in the blue blouse resurrected from the library’s relative peace centuries of socioeconomic oppression. She took a term as broad as to include an estimated 100 million of Earth’s population–homeless–and branded it as a slur, hurling it across the room with the fervor of a mother grizzly bear who feels her cubs are threatened. Something inside of her made her hate this man. Something made her want to hurt him. And the biggest insult she could conjure was to say that he didn’t have a home.
I was raised to respect every person, regardless of their background, and to treat everyone with equal care and kindness, even if they wronged me. But I wanted to hurt this girl. My urge was to shame her for what she had said, to curse at her and spit in her face. My urge was to approach her, to encourage her to smile at me once again, then tell her I would so much as smile at someone so vile as her, and to let her know that I too was homeless. I wanted to make her regret her words.
The truth was, each one of my urges included something just as disgusting as what I’d witnessed. My instinct for justice was pure, but my methods in meeting that justice were hypocritical. My insults were just as nasty as hers. My physical intimidation even worse. Even a verbal confrontation achieved nothing but the further disturbance of the peace. Nothing I thought of was appropriate. Intolerance is rarely changed through coercion. Yet despite this I couldn’t let go of the feeling that I had to react. In the scheme of things, it may have seemed small, but I had to do something to stand up against ignorance.
So I wrote the following note, and I dropped it beside the girl in the blue blouse as I walked out:
“Dear Stranger,
Take care with how you treat others. Some day fate might not be so kind to you.
– Fellow Stranger”
Whether or not it had an affect, I’ll probably never know. But it felt like the right thing to do.
. . .
Addendum:
In 2011, over 30 homeless people were killed in violent attacks in this country. There has been (failed) legislation to include attacks on the homeless as hate crimes at the federal level. If you are interested in reading more about this problem, read the most recent NCH study on anti-homeless violence here: http://www.nationalhomeless.org/publications/hatecrimes/hatecrimes2011.pdf.
. . .
Thank you for reading.
– TOH
Despite my busy schedule as of late, I’ve found myself more able to indulge my impulses. Going for random walks. Leaving a social event when I’m tired instead of when I think it’s “right”. Revisiting my old routine of daytime naps.
This past week, I rekindled an old urge that, for some reason or other, I used to follow more often: donating leftover food to the homeless.
After a work event at the office this week, I found myself with the perfect opportunity. A variety of food remained in the office, from bananas and cookies to chips and soda. As time has gone on, after seeing that my coworkers–as socially conscious as they are–either throw leftovers away or allow said edibles to go to waste, I have assumed the responsibility of distributing the food to the less fortunate. This has been the case long before I set out on my journey through rent-independence.
So gathering a shopping bag full of items, I set out to find a proper home for the extra food. So I took one bag and headed north on my bike to my favorite sandwich shop. I had a few ideas where streetfolk might be lurking, so it didn’t take long to find one. He was an aging white man, perhaps 60, in thick glasses toting around a grocery cart stacked elaborately with belongings. I noticed him from a distance, sifting through a series of trash bins alongside a small apartment complex. So I rode towards him. When I got closer, I asked him if he was hungry.
“Yeah, sure,” he said, striding towards me. “Thank you.”
His vocal command was strong and his gait fluid. Had you put him in a suit and tie, he could’ve been my Classics professor. He accepted the bag and made his way back towards his belongings, before hesitating and turning back to look me in the eye.
“Do you know me?” he asked.
At first I thought it was a strange question. Something an amnesia patient might ask his brother from her hospital bed. As if the act of random benevolence was too baffling, it required explanation. He was sincerely curious.
“No,” I said.
“Oh,” he replied. “Well, thank you.”
“You’re welcome. Have a good day.”
And with that, I rode on to retrieve some sustenance of my own.
… … … … … …
Thanks to some distractions of the impulsive variety, two days later I found myself still holding on to the second bag of food. So I made haste to offload it, bringing it with me on a highway-happy workday down to the South Bay. But despite covering over 50 miles of thoroughfare, some through a variety of neighborhoods, I didn’t see a single homeless person. This, I admit, held an element of relief. If I saw no homeless people on the street, perhaps the problem was lessening. Or perhaps by some magic of irony, my desire to distribute free food was helping to eradicate the issue altogether.
Recognizing the unlikelihood of this, I pressed on searching for a recipient. It wasn’t until 6:00 that I spotted my first candidate. It was what appeared to be a skinny man crouched behind a grocery cart. Perfect.
I drove up to the cart, pulling up next to it while rolling down my passenger side window. I could barely see the man crouching behind the clump of stuff, and was trying to make out his appearance when I called out to him.
“Hey man, you hungry?”
The figure peeked out from behind the cache, and I began to make out his features. Your brain reacts quickly in moments of recognition, applying elements of visual cues to judgments about character in order to assess the status of a thing. Your brain, in most cases, also multi-tasks with unfathomable efficiency, following well constructed pathways to reach intended ends, and all without a single conscious thought. Its effectiveness lies in the ability to process thought while acting. Its vulnerability lies in the overlap on contradictory thought and action. This is why we sometimes bite our tongue while chewing gum. We are well aware of our chomping, but our brain is driving our tongue into the path of clamping pearly whites to meet a different end–to soothe itchy gums or satiate an unsettled nerve–before it can fire a synapse to stop the biting.
What am I getting at?
By the time I realized this guy wasn’t homeless, that his leather jacket was too trendy, his haircut too fresh, the stuff in his shopping cart too new, I was already asking him if he wanted something to eat. The look on his face was something between horror and confusion. This guy, who I soon found was just waiting for a friend to help him load his stuff into a car so he could move apartments, probably thought I was propositioning him. So before I could get an answer from him, I put my hand up and smiled as I looked down in shame, shaking my head as if I’d been caught in a practical joke.
“Ooooooh!” I said. “You’re not homeless!”
“Yeah, uh, no…” he replied.
“Very well then, my apologies!”
And I chuckled as I drove off, wondering if he had any idea of the extreme irony of the situation. Because here I am, totally home-free myself, offering food to a guy who’s on his way to his apartment. I smiled all the way to the next candidate, a man peddling at a highway exit. Only this time, I made sure he was in need of food before I asked.
I guess two out of three ain’t bad.
– TOH
Today marked my 125th day in the office. That’s 83 consecutive days after the few months hiatus between my current stay here and the initial 42-day experiment. And I’m happy to report that things are going wonderfully.
Save for the bi-weekly unpredictability of the cleaners’ visit, I’ve grown quite comfortable here. My routine is such that it’d actually be a bit of an adjustment taking on an apartment again. Really, the only thing I really miss is cooking. Oh, and dating. Since my initial outburst of pseudo-philandering, I’ve calmed down quite a bit. I’ve allowed my limitations to keep me focused on my art. I’m like a celibate monk, only instead of worshiping Christ I honor the gods of the guitar and keyboard.
Anyway, moving into an actual place remains a distant possibility. Maybe June 1st, maybe later. I’m too productive to care.
Plus, the idea of paying rent has not become any more appealing…
– TOH
This week saw my stay in the office eclipse 100 cumulative days.
So what is it like having reached the century mark milestone?
Well, from one perspective, it’s a lot like the first 99. I still wake up behind my desk, visit the gym daily, and take care that my routines don’t interfere with the general operations of my coworkers. I still entertain questions from friends and family about when I’m going to give in and move to a “real place”. And I still entertain those notions, wondering what exactly will be the tipping point, and if there might be a particular moment of epiphany that pushes me over the edge and back into orthodox housing.
There have been changes, though. If one tracked my every motion from Week One to this past week, one would find definitive changes. Let’s take a look at what those differences are:
1) Physically, I feel incredible.
Because of my daily trips to the gym, I am enjoying the best physical shape since I moved from back east nearly three years ago. This was very much an unintended consequence, as moving into the office in the first place had absolutely nothing to do with my fitness. And initially, I had no blueprint to use the gym for anything more than the round-the-clock showers.
Sometime in February, that all changed. Preparing for my upcoming Grand Canyon trip–I leave tomorrow to hike from one side of the Grand Canyon and back, a superhike of emerging popularity detailed here–I felt obligated to push the limits of my cardio and strength training. Because my workouts leading up to then had consisted of a weekly hike and a few pushups every day, this required extra focus.
That focus paid off. That is, until in early March I decided it’d be a good idea to break in brand new hiking boots on the steep 14-mile trail to nearby Mt. Wilson. Hint: Don’t do this. It’ll destroy your arches. To make a long story short(er), I ended up straining the tendon that runs along my 4th and 5th metatarsal, thereby grounding me from high-impact activity for the better part of the month. Being as the Grand Canyon hike was 4 weeks away, I considered this a minor catastrophe. So I did something I’ve never done: I took to the pool.
Over the past 4 weeks, I have gradually increased intensity of my swimming workouts to include nearly-continuous freestyle swims over a mile in duration. And because of this, the chemistry of my body began to change for the better. I began to crave healthier foods. My arms and chest started to feel bulkier. And my hormones starting working in overdrive. All of this has been fantastic. I feel fantastic. I attribute this, foremost, to the changes brought on by spending more time at the gym. If I had stayed in my apartment, I’d have never signed up for a membership.
2) My mood has shifted more from rebellious to adaptive.
My physiological changes have begun to fuel my social ambitions. In January, I was cultivating a PNW logger’s beard and dodging requests to attend social events. It’s a tendency to which I am predisposed. And there’s nothing wrong with it. In fact, grooming myself as more of a misanthrope (towards Angelinos, at least) highlighted a often-dormant revolutionary side within me, parts of which I intend on keeping around.
As of late, however, I have found myself more eager to adapt. I’m not any more in love with the image-centric culture here than I was a few months ago, but now I have a hormonal imperative. That is to be attractive. Subconsciously, this has worked its way into my routine progressively more over the past few weeks. Get a haircut. Buy a new pair of jeans. Trim the beard a little. Wash the car. Trim the beard a lot. Lay in the sun, get color. These were all urges motivated by a chemical urge to mate, causing me to subconsciously find ways to adapt to the greater culture. Even though I think that culture is largely full of shit.
3) I stopped being so concerned about whether or not I’ll get caught living here.
Perhaps this is yet another subconscious adaptation–a fight between the hormonal urges of my id to counteract the logical reasoning of my neocortex–but I have lately found myself less concerned with being recognized as a resident here in my office. While I would earlier on in the experiment go to great lengths to conceal my increased presence, waking up at 6:00am to evade potential early arrivals or limiting my trips into and out of the office during weekends so as not to arouse the suspicions of my neighbors, I no longer concern myself with being detected.
Over the past two weekends I have: folded laundry, packed for my trip, walked around in my underwear, and entertained a lady visitor. This is all suspicious behavior, if witnessed by a neighbor. (Like the guy who works next door who spotting me walking in casually on a Saturday morning with a Ralphs bag in tow.)
I attribute this bravado to three things: First off, the hormones. Risky behavior is most exhibited by men in their horniest years. And my recent exercise routine has me feeling better and my hormones flowing more freely. Secondly is routine. I’m accustomed to living here. I know how unlikely it is that someone is going to come nosing in on me, so I refuse to expend my energy trying to avoid it. And thirdly, a small part of me wouldn’t be averse to a change. At this point I have saved a good portion of my annual income, paid off my vehicle a year early, and bolstered my budget for the more important aspects of my everyday (meals and travel). If I’m forced to move into a place sometime soon, it might not be so hard to swallow.
I’d also work a little harder to look for that right lady to entertain. My early romantic successes, as recounted in this diary/blog this fall, have not carried over to present day. While I have hardly been exercising monkish celibacy, I’ve found myself less confident approaching women. I’ve found interactions with many women trail off, starting with a full head of steam but ultimately fizzling and evaporating away. What am I going to tell them? That they’re invited to watch 30 Rock at my mahogany conference table?
So I’m admittedly in a bit of a rough patch with the whole experiment.
The love life has been my biggest downfall as of late. Last fall I learned that I could enjoy relationships with women despite my extreme austerity. Recently, I found that austerity to have affected how I approach women in the first place. Funny what a difference a few months make.
So while joining the Century Club hasn’t brought with it any specific changes, the fact that I’ve been around the office so long is a change within itself.
Christopher McCandless, as made famous by Jon Krakauer’s Into the Wild, lived in the Alaska wilderness for 113 days before his tragic and mysterious death by (possibly poisonous plant-induced) starvation. Though hardly a template by which to live one’s life, McCandless’ journey of self-reliance and introspection has enough parallels to note. In his journal, McCandless writes his own eerie entry for his 100th day, foreshadowing his own macabre exit from his chosen experiment:
The preceding entry was written a few weeks after McCandless had scrawled the ironic “HAPPINESS ONLY REAL WHEN SHARED” note on his copy of Dr. Zhivago. Though I’m hardly employing the scientific method here, I wonder if there is a natural point at which man’s view of his conditional sufferings, even those which are self-inflicted, begins to shift. Just as the employer gives a new hire 90 days to acclimate to the job before offering benefits, might the individual too need a similar period of adjustment for a major life change?
I don’t have the answer to that. But it’s an interesting thought.
Thankfully, on my own 100th day, the stakes are much lower than those of McCandless’. But the sentiment is similar. When the time does come for me to change my situation, I’ll most definitely be ready for it.
– TOH