Big Trip

Bags are (mostly) packed. Online check in completed. Coffee ingested. Cigarettes smoked.

I feel like everything is ready. I feel like I am ready.

I'm heading out to see my family out in Portland. See, when we first found out my mom was sick, Dad and I tried to figure out a way I could visit. You know, raise the spirits and give hugs and all that. But then he died so suddenly. He was arranging places we could sleep, things we could do.

Before he died, one of the greatest guys in the world offered to fly my family over there for free. He takes tons of business flights and has amassed more points than Kim Khardashian. I really don't think it's possible for me to repay this act of kindness and compassion, but I'm gonna try to find one (or more).

This past week has been really hectic at work, so I haven't been able to get into the travel groove at all. Haven't been a help to the wife, haven't been able to give advice to the kids, haven't been able to plan anything... Even now, I'm sitting here at work waiting for them to give me the go-ahead so I can race home and check bags and print out maps and all that.

I feel like I'm going to forget something.

I talked with my sister briefly last night, just to get a lay of the land and determine what I had to do immediately getting off the plane. She said I'll have to rent a car. Okay, no problem. But where am I driving?

I'll get off the plane, hopefully safe and secure, walk to the car rental place, get the keys, and then realize I have no idea where I am or where I should be. There is talk from the crazy guy about the world ending today, maybe I'm worrying over nothing, and in a deep slumber everything will be over as I'm hovering more than thirty thousand feet in the air.

I feel like I'm never going to be ready.

Attack the Darkness!

It's hard to define and describe exactly what playing RPGs with friends while growing up was all about. It was partially building my own personality, learning coping mechanisms, trying out hero capes, being able to play the villain without the moral implications... It was a lot like being in an editor group of a Choose Your Own Adventure book with six or seven other people, all vying for attention and praise while still allowing everyone easy access to the spot reserved for doing the right thing.

Not to say it was all selfish, nor was it always non-selfish, either.

Like I said, it's hard to define, but the point here is that I did it. I was in the same gaming group for, geez, twelve years? Longer? Most of that time was in one campaign?

Anyway, at this point in our lives, we're all older, we have more responsibilities. A lot of us have kids, ya know? We can't just set aside all that every Friday night to go hang out at someone's house for eight hours and have a group hallucination of elves and swords and magic spells.

But I think back quite often to the times when the dice would roll favorably and everyone would cheer. Sometimes it was almost better when something catastrophic would happen: the dragon won the day, the evil wizard would escape, or the gate to the underworld could not be locked. Sometimes having bad stuff happen meant that there was some sort of equality, some scales of justice that would tip to both sides. Also, it gave us something to do the following week.

Anyway, what got me thinking, and what got me writing: a bunch of us that played together in that same epic group were all at a wedding this past week, and someone said I should take over the role of our GM (the guy that makes the world go round in the game). I was equal parts flattered, thrilled, and scared to death.

A good game makes memories. A good game keeps the players awake at night thinking about strategy or methods to success. A good game makes the time spent worth it.

A bad game is just horrible and awkward and should not be spoken of.

So I've been thinking about it all this past week, dreaming up a world where there is a need for a group of would be heroes. I've been taking ideas from the stories that I've watched, read, and listened to. I'm trying to decide if I could pull it off, but more than that, if I could make a good game of it.

Anal Selection

People are like machines: we require fuel, we produce some sort of waste, we move around and do stuff; occasionally, we break and need maintenance.

I have a family history of cancer. Typically for the males of my lineage, colon cancer appears around age 30, and certain death occurs around 55. I don't know why, but there it is. It's odd, really, until about ten years ago, my own dad didn't know who his real father was. He found out about five years too late, his real dad died without really getting to hug his son as his son.

Anyway, the good thing that came out from learning the truth of his real blood line was the warning that came from all the women (who were still alive): get yer butt checked for cancer. Do it now.

So I did. I discussed the process with my doctor, he said I was too young. I insisted. He referred me to the local brilliant butt doctor who went in for the scope. Turns out, three polyps were removed, and all three were precancerous. Another few years, and I would have probably been doomed to repeat my genetic disposition.

The reason I'm sharing all this is that this morning, I got a call from that specialist's office. They informed me that my three year follow-up was due in January, but the brilliant butt doctor I saw before had retired. So I have to pick a new one. They rattled off like thirty names, all probably equally skilled doctors that can probe butts just the same as any other proctologist, but I don't know about picking one over the phone.

It's hell getting old.

Today and Forever

I'm confused. You see, for a long time now, I've been trying to figure out what life is really all about.

I've thought at times that life was just a joke. Some random set of chemicals and atoms got together and just started a chain reaction. Many many many years later, here we are, and some people try to put a label on it-- try to put rules against it.

Other periods of life made me imagine some crazy huge formula, as if everything was preplanned, predestined. There may be free will, but in the long run it doesn't really matter. Everything that happened to me was supposed to happen, and if there was a string of really bad shit, well, I was just supposed to have bad things happen to me.

Now, well, I still don't really know. I don't think anybody really knows, either. But something I'm going to try to do is to be mindful about what is happening. Knowing the reality of a situation and approaching each moment as it happens seems like a good way of handling life. Similar to the concept of one day at a time, but instead, I want to try one moment at a time.

So for right now, I am trying to focus on what I am typing. The feel of the keys beneath my fingers, the noise of my coworkers on the phone, the traffic from the highway muffled by the windows and walls of this building. The  thoughts roll through me (I don't even think about which key is the letter E anymore, it's like talking?), and they enter this blank white space. They take up virtual space, but they carry very very little physical mass. They may not matter in the long run, but for right now, they are the moment. They are the thing that is happening to me and through me right now.

Smoking Buddha

I tried it this weekend, I really did. I was standing outside smoking late on Friday night, and I really tried my best.

I started by closing my eyes and reflecting on my own physical presence. I blocked out everything but my own breathing and heartbeat for sound. I concentrated on my pulse, the in and out of air, the weight of my body pushing down on my legs: knees, feet, and all. I tried to think of nothing, and what that nothing meant. I felt the slight pain in my lower back from some strain now forgotten. I felt the power in my muscles and tendons. I felt the way my jaw wanted to hang loose from the rest of my head. The way my fingertips tingled slightly as my arms fell heavily against my sides.

I stretched out my conscience slightly, realizing and reality-izing things within twelve inches from my body. The front door holding the cold outside air out of my house behind me. The old wooden chairs sitting to my left. The ceiling of the porch above me.

Further out, five feet away, I could sense the plants around me, and all manner of tiny bugs crawling around the branches and leaves, some making a bed for the night, others just awakening to hunt in the darkness. A slow irregular dripping from days-ago rain falling from the roof into the roots of the yew to my right.

Ten and twenty feet away, higher and lower and farther out, even more insects and spiders creeped and plotted. Wind currents taking spores and scents away and closer. The trees in the front yard completing another ring in their inner-trunks, marking another year and preparing for a harsh winter.

Further away now (perhaps a mile?) I can hear the traffic from the closest busy street. The crickets, my god, they sounded like billions and billions of legs screeching against each other. A plane rocketed across the sky above me, unknown distance but moving fast. Inside the metal tube sat at least fifty beings, each with their own goals and fears and dislikes and secrets. All the people in all the houses around me, all of them preparing for rest, or perhaps preparing for a hunt of their own?

Even farther out, past the reach of life-providing air and water, past the magnetic shielding of the Earth and into the rocks silently plodding along in space. Out past the gas giants and stars and ice and gas and all manner of things out there. Out where it is silent. Cold and lonely, surely, but quiet and peaceful.

Then I opened my eyes and realized I was still here. But for a brief moment, I felt everything.