Updates Hoooo!

Hello Peoples. Sorry it has been almost a month since my last post! Today could be considered ceremonious if we're feeling like it. After this short entry is complete, I am taking my internet modem back to Time Warner. No more internet for Alan; at least at my apartment. I'm counting down the remaining month in this sweet pad of an apartment. As my pictures will show (check out my picasa site! http://picasaweb.google.com/aldsmith3/SpringSummer10#) the porch I have had to hang-out on is second-to-none.

Things continue to go well besides the light dusting of snow we are receiving today. Excluding yesterday and today, it has been in the low 60s with plenty of warm sunshine. Hartman's Rocks, the place for mountain biking, camping, hiking, running, will be opening very soon and everyone in town is anticipative. I'm still looking for spring/summer work. Have a couple leads. We'll see where they go. I hope to move home in mid-July to spend a week or 2 with family and friends before I move to Boone, NC. Hope ya'll are well and I'll try to continue updating from the work computer.

In the meantime, enjoy a short portion from my recent piece. I've cut and paste 3 different sections so it's not a complete piece but it's a sampling. It is about substances and society. Enjoy:

Life has a way of extracting the happiness out of you. Liken it to a bee extracting nectar from a flower, but the twist is the reality and necessity of it. Many people choose to medicate with “happy” drugs –living in a false reality created by chemical messengers communicating to their bodies how they should think and feel. Happy drugs, that express constant emotion without much flux; effectively making the user a smiling zombie of sorts. You ought to laugh because you know that those drugs desensitize the taker to what really eclipses them: sadness; often cohabiting inside other emotions. Though, you hold your stones back because you admit you are a swimmer in the ocean of users.

*****

We Americans as a commonwealth rely on uppers, downers, lefties and the occasional right; day in and day out. Cold medicine, marijuana, Percocet, Ritalin, Alcohol, Ambien and coffee all exemplify the larger body of substances ingested hourly, daily and weekly. Look straight ahead; now behind and over each shoulder. Who do you see? Now find a reflecting surface. Did you detect the similar nature of life’s fellow occupants with your own? As hard as it is to admit our interdependence with these substances, the truth is cold and real. To sit there passively and say that what you read isn’t true is to deny on the most basic level: yourself. Honest thoughts try to admit that you have never ingested any substance orally, intravenously, or otherwise but your ears tune-in to the unspoken falsity and wire to your brain a collective realization. Turning the pointed finger back on yourself is humiliating, but good news is, others will love you if you love yourself for who you are – regardless of your chosen poison.

*****

While I do not suggest you go out and start using-up on what others are getting down-with, I do recommend however, that you take a look around and acknowledge. Both seen and unseen “users” are all around you. Are they lurking in shadow waiting to abduct your kid and sell him into sexual slavery in Hong Kong? No. They are the people you talk with at the bank, grocery store and public service/government offices. Now, before you go pulling Salem-esque Witch Hunt-stunts, breathe for a second. People are people and thus we do things just because we do; no intense or detailed explanation is needed. Basic human desires for plants, powders or liquids to alter their perception because of pain, grogginess, social reasons or other obscurities is inherent. We should strive to deal better with such things when we witness them in others. Turn the mirrors of your eyes back on yourself; then you’ll see it isn’t me…it’s you; it’s all of us.

One Love,

Alan

Where to Enter...

This post poses a problem from the start. I highly desire to update ya'll but how do I do it without drowning on and on about boring this, perhaps exciting that? Flow with me...

The road back to Colorado was long in length and time, but never boring in retrospect. Some may recall me lamenting for a few moments about the drab landscape of Nebraska; well a change of heart occurred. While this didn't happen during the trip, I came across a photo of beautiful forest in northern Nebraska and immediately recant my one-sided and underexposed opinion.

Flash back 8, maybe 10 hours earlier. The lights of E cubed were in my rear-view along with Champaign, IL. I was traveling mostly alone amongst a few dedicated souls, trucking their way to the next pick-up or drop-off. The moon shone bright over my left shoulder as my bearing pointed northerly. I can extract thoughts of feeling not so alone; the moon has that companionship about it. Like most things though, it was not to last. Before the sun's introduction into that part of late evening/early morning, I found the back of my eyelids satiation for my slightly sleep-deprived body. When I awoke, the bright orb star, colored a yellowish orange, was just beginning its tract up and out of the earth, from somewhere else. At this point, a unique situation presented itself: I was now heading due West, while on my six o'clock, the sun was ascending.

Picture for yourself the situation. Many, perhaps all of us have seen a sun-rise and its welcomed beauty, but have we ever found ourselves on the back side of sun-rise? To see the world illuminate as if a bright light were shinning from over your shoulder, brings thoughts of an unparalleled nature. At the time, my current thought train was held up, as if the conductor of the locomotive spied a potential danger in the track ahead. I was struck with a non-violent but surreal thought: the reversed perspective on a seemingly familiar event, item, or otherwise, elicits a new shade of understanding. Looking down at the ant, as he crawls across your kitchen floor carrying some booty of useful nature, you think how small he is; but the ant looks back and thinks how large you are. Is the ant really that tiny or are we just that big? Perspective dictates which answer fits.

Pregnant with that thought, think of a time in your life when perspective played out; where the chance presented itself for you to understand both sides of the coin. Would you go back and change the outcome? Nebraska is less boring glancing back to the moment. I know for sure reconsideration of perspective in my own life would change a lot of previously held notions of x, y, or z. Today will be yesterday and tomorrow will be today; guaranteed. Live not in the past, but reflect upon it's imagery to serve as a guide for where you are going. The reflecting pool of memory is a beautiful and individually-unique place, but keep focus on the larger body of water known as life, for it holds many unknowns - on the surface and deep down in the depths. At times your road will be traveled alone, with others passing, caring not to glance at you or your situation. Find those that cherish you and you them; share openly and honestly all you can.

Respect perspective. What's mine is yours, but what's yours isn't always mine. I definitely gaze rearward and think.........................analyzing things past overwhelms. I'm glad the road revealed to me a new perspective. The application of implications bore into me. I will not succeed every time I try, but I will seek to spectate the various angles, and then decide what, where, or why.

I leave not knowing where to exit. As a story begins, so does an ending. Whether or not it is finalized now or ever, is not important. How it shapes you in the process of being told is what counts indefinitely. Past is permanent. Future is impressionable. Make it as you may.


Alan