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Year One

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Joy is what happens to us when we allow ourselves to recognize how good things really are.

Marianne Williamson (via purplebuddhaproject)

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Have you been writing anything as of recent?

I haven't. No excuses. Work has been crazy but I've had down time and things worth writing about. The next month figures to be one of the busiest of my life but I hope that when it is over I can start writing again. I miss it terribly

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"Mojitos. That's what men drink" - my roommate

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Wisdom begins in wonder -Socrates

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All last week I was wondering what the hell I was doing. I walk past like 30 homeless people and drug dealers on the way to work every morning. And I took a year off to write and travel and that was amazing and now I’m working harder than I ever have and that’s amazing in it’s own right, but what’s the point of any of it.  And then I received an e-mail from a guy I met in Joshua Tree.  A few friends went out to camp, and the first night we were waiting on the side of the road and a car came and I just jumped out in front of it.  They stopped, and rolled down their window. They had a canoe on top which I thought was hilarious in the desert.  They ended up camping with us on top of a mountain that night, and rather than sleep one of the guys and I ended up climbing another mountain while we talked about books.  I hadn’t seen or really heard from any of them since until I received an e-mail that changed my whole mindset. Things like this are the point of life. Here’s the e-mail:

So, I don't know if you remember me, but I'm sending this email to thank you. I just flipped the book Shantaram closed for the final time while sitting on a cliff overlooking an Icelandic fishing village. The mountains around me were like children, fighting for my attention even with my eyes buried deep within the pages. The beauty that was given to me from that book and the beauty that was surrounding me most definitely overwhelmed me with happiness. Now, that's not to say the book was a happy one, I had never cried while reading a book until this one and Prabakers death still makes me wince. Never have I read a book so full of... everything. He attempts to confront many of lifes questions and problems, and in most cases he seems to make a legitimate argument. His love is what was the most endearing part to me, the part that made the whole thing so fully engaging and it made the criminal human. He loved so fully, everyone that was right- the people in the slum, his friend Abdullah, his new Father, I think a case could even be made for the Eunuch twins- even when he never should have. He proved that love is truly the one thing in this world that has grabbed onto the steering wheel of life and taken us to our fate.So, thank you. You opened up a world to me, and brought the greatest literary character I've ever met- Bombay.On that note, FUCK YOU!!! I didn't want that book to end, and now I feel I'm gonna be slinking along reading books that will struggle to be as good or as enthralling as that one. - Your Joshua Tree friend-

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Some nights I like to walk the city. Late at night, when only the homeless are still out. Discussing the universe and what it means. Last night was one of those beautiful nights. I was with an ex-nasa scientist and we talked science and consciousness and love and how they all relate.

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I went to rock my nephew to sleep. When I woke up he was wide awake, still staring at me

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This guy was shot up near San Jacinto. The awesome people at the Coachella Valley Wildbird Center have taken care of him but they are non-profit and he needs expensive medical work so we are moving him to the LA Zoo which can afford to give him better treatment. You can donate to the people in Coachella Valley at http://coachellavalleywildbirdcenter.org. Send any good vibes/energy/prayers his way so hopefully he can survive and be released into the wild again.

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My most and least favorite parts of the day are sunsets. Most because they are long and beautiful and I sit on the deck and drink tea while staring at purple and pink hills for miles and miles. Least because I want someone to share it with and the nights here are lonely - Notes from my summer of solitude

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Soul travel

My parents split up when I was 17. I was 6,000 miles away at boarding school. When summer break came I returned to the realization that I no longer had a home. Fast-forward 7 years and I am living in Florence, Italy. My family is Italian – Sicilian actually – and I’d dreamt for years of seeing the old country. Maybe my yearning was a misguided attempt to discover a home, a safe place, I no longer felt I had. Back then I didn’t know that home is a place inside you more than anything else. Like the kingdom of heaven, or Mecca, or if you believe the mystics, the whole universe. I was too young and cocksure for any of that. So I was a man without a home. Florence felt like a place I could make home. I loved the architecture and the knowledge that I was walking the same streets that Michelangelo and Dante’s feet had graced. The stones of which, were older than my country. I quickly made friends with the other students. My girlfriend, Summer did not. When we had first arrived I had strongly believed that she and I would one day have a home of our own. But the longer we stayed the more I wondered. My new friends and I explored the city every day and quickly became regulars at gelaterias, restaurants, and bars all over town. Soon we would get a free bottle of wine just for walking in the door. At the end of the summer quarter my cousin, Jackie, flew out to travel with us. We had planned a two-week trip so she could see as much of Italy as possible. Our trip would culminate with five days in Sicily. Summer and my roommate and good friend, Jay, would be joining us. We showed Jackie as much of Florence as we could in three days and then left for Rome. Several drunken nights and hungover days of tourism resulted and then we headed south. In Naples, Summer and I got in a fight over how excited I was to spend time with Jackie. She was intimidated by anyone that gave me a glimpse at life outside of her. The spellbinding grip she’d had on me since the first moment I had seen her was beginning to loosen and with it my ties to my perfectly planned life. We made an uneasy peace before we jumped on the night train to Sicily. Sleep eluded me. Partly because of the drunken Neapolitans screaming out the windows at every passing town, somewhat because I contemplated a lifetime with the sleeping beauty next to me, but mostly because I was nervous. I had no idea what to expect. Would Sicily be like the movies? I hoped it was something similar to what I saw in The Godfather. No matter how many times my dad sighed and talked about the absolutely debilitating grip that power takes over our souls while we watched them, there was still a part of me that glorified the life those movies depict. I silently laughed as I thought about the times, as a kid, when I had gotten in trouble for refusing to rat out my friends. At dawn, I felt the train being disconnected as sections were being loaded on the boat. I excitedly woke everyone and we left our cabin to go up to the top deck. We started making friends immediately and soon one of the guys our age had bought us some arrancini for breakfast. I sunk my teeth into the fried balls of cheese, risotto and sauce and loved them immediately. Marcos told us that he was Sicilian and Spanish and was going to medical school in Spain. He was meeting his family at their resort home on some small islands off of the coast of Sicily. I fired question after question at him about what to expect. Fortunately he was a gracious host and never seemed annoyed. It didn’t matter that the boat docks in Catania and my family called the tiny town of Lentini, 30 kilometers south, home. When I saw the first speck of land ahead of us. I grew silent, a rare state for me. I felt a strange yet familiar feeling. A rightness. Not like being right in an argument, but that things were right. The way they should. I was exactly where I was supposed to be. I was home. I am sure that my feelings that day can be passed off as someone longing for something and finally attaining it. Maybe a linking between my personal history and family history. That may tell part of the story but there is more. Travel penetrates places within our souls that would otherwise be unassailable to us. Opens us, if we let it. Illustrates our connectedness to those of other cultures. Pulls the individuality that we of western cultures so highly regard straight out of us and reminds us that we are all the same. Our guttural utterances may not carry the same syntax, but the smiles, anger, love, fear, trust, brokenness, lust, and divinity behind them bear the same weight. It took traveling to Sicily for me to find that openness. The heaviness of family history is what finally pried the lid off of my emotional jar. It made me realize that I loved this beautiful girl but she was not the one for me. Helped me understand that there was no room in my life for anyone that wanted to change me. Showed me that if we look within, those open, safe spaces are there. Always available if we will only take the risk to release to them. Maybe we do not have to travel to find them, but I have found that it certainly helps.

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A tribute to my uncle Louie

My great uncle died yesterday. He was 93 and we weren't incredibly close, but, I can say that I learned a lot about legacy from him. He and his incredibly strong wife had two sons who since grown up to be very successful and people to admire. Uncle Richard is the head of a billion dollar organization but you would never know it. I have never seen an ounce of ego from the man. On Sundays in the fall you can find him cutting Christmas trees on his property for people who have no idea that he shapes healthcare. I can't say that I know much about Uncle Ken's career title because he also seems to be egoless but I know that he gives just about the warmest hugs a person can, and is full of fascinating stories about Africa, marathons, and wild road trips he's taken his family on. Both of these men married highly intelligent, educated, warm women that I love to be around. Aunt Judy is sassy and funny as hell while being incredibly kind and intelligent. Aunt Dee has the warmest smile ever and makes you feel like seeing you is the greatest thing that has ever happened to her All while also being the head of a school herself. They all sired daughters that are each one intelligent, strong, kind, beautiful, world travelers that parent, go to school, work, travel and find a way to make it all look easy. There was a son in there that I haven't seen in 20 years but whom I hear is as individualist and intelligent as everyone else in the family. I'm sure there are people that would talk about his legacy with the hospitals in Africa he worked in, or the ham radio groups he established, and they wouldn't be wrong, but I see the real successful work of his and his wife's lives being the three generations of healthy, productive people that I have the pleasure of being around regularly. This is the legacy that I have watched, learned from, and someday hope to emulate. So for that I am very grateful and so I thank you Uncle Louie for all of your kindnesses but especially the chance to witness a great family man. RIP

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Five things I learned from Rob

Today marks four years since one of the best friend's I've ever had died. In my experience, that isn't something that ever leaves you. I'm grateful for that. I would hate to not miss someone as important as Rob. There were many things that I learned from Rob. Here are a few: 1. Take care of your friends. Rob took incredible care of his friends. One time he literally threw my wallet on the ground so I couldn't pay for lunch. I picked it up and he threw it down again. That kind of generosity is rare and I hope to always treat my friends in much the same way whenever possible. 2. It's alright for a man to cry. I met Rob at incredibly painful points in life for both of us. Actually the first real conversation we had about anything other than basketball was Rob, our other best friend Brent, and I bawling our eyes out having one of the most real conversations I've ever been a part of in a friend's living room. We would make jokes about ourselves but I never saw Rob ashamed to show emotion. 3. Do a job that gives you time to do the things you want. When I met Rob I was working at a law firm with two of the finest people I will ever meet, but it always bugged me that Rob and Brent could meet for coffee at 8 every morning and hang out while I had to get to work. This was actually a semi big reason why I didn't go to law school. I am perfectly willing to work long hours, but I want to do it on my schedule. 4. The last one is something I've learned from Rob since his death. I really hate November. It sneaks up on me every time. I get sick and I'm stressed and I don't know why, and then I realize it's because I lost someone important to me. But I've realized that in a lot of ways I'm grateful. It's sort of a reset for me. I easily get distracted with projects and trips and now every November I don't really have a choice that I'm reawakened to what is important. And so I've learned that I can always readjust whatever path I'm on to include what is important to me. 5. Always be yourself. I have often felt social pressure to act a certain way. Especially at parties. But I remember one time, Rob, Brent, and I went a party at some friends house. Rob and I weren't feeling very social. I would normally have shrugged that off and talked to the people I felt I had to and flirted with the girls I thought I should. But when we got there, Rob said "let's go sit in the corner", and we did. We sat in the corner and drank coke and told each other stories, all the while ignoring everyone else. Now I always try to be true to how I'm feeling. And one of many things I miss about Rob. Brent and I were probably always this way, but it is something I only noticed once we started hanging out with Rob and is still true. Wherever we were, we were the loudest people there. At every restaurant we were always laughing and telling stories and bugging everyone else. I miss that

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Hiked in at night. Walked out of our cave in the morning to this view #joshuatree

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My history with, and future without the NFL and football

I’m going to start off by saying this is probably the weirdest thing I’ve ever written.  I have loved football for as long as I can remember.  I was wearing John Elway jerseys at the age of two.  I know more football stats than facts about any girl I’ve ever dated.  But the longer I see how the NFL operates the more I begin to believe I can’t support it or the sport.  From the brushing beatings of women under the rug, hiding concussion findings from players, to lying to players about their injuries it is becoming harder and harder for me to justify. 

  As I’ve gotten older, the things I find most satisfying are those that give me connection to the world and those around me.  Whether it’s sitting at a Dodgers game with Jon, Matt and Donny yelling and swearing ourselves hoarse, sitting with a glass of scotch watching a river flow by me for hours, or alternating working on business ideas and spirituality with Jeff, Brent, and Geoff.   Football used to do that for me.  I would sit with friends for hours talking stats and strategies.  But the more I read about high school players dying (3 last week alone), domestic violence, and concussions the less connection I get from football.  I very much believe that domestic violence, concussions, and death are all very connected.  I have experienced concussions myself.  The frustrating inability to recall names, events, and words I’ve known for much of my life.  The crippling depression that lasts weeks.  The agonizing hum that plays incessantly in my brain as I lay in bed with the curtains pulled and sunglasses on.  I can understand how men used to playing a violent game can, under these circumstances, lash out.  I can also understand how, after having hundreds to thousands of such injuries, these same men could decide that life was too painful to go on living. 

  I grew up loving the violence of football. I marveled at Ronnie Lott cutting off his dislocated finger so he could stay in a game.  At the age of twelve, playing safety, I hit one of my friends, shattering his collarbone and dislocating his shoulder.  Showing none of Christ’s love that I’d grown up believing in, I celebrated and bragged about this feat for years.  Told myself and probably those around me, that I was a “real man”.  Some men seem able to hit their neighbor and still love them.  I can no longer do that for sport.  I believe there are instances where “asshole therapy” is still a form of love, but never dished out indiscriminately at a defenseless receiver, at least by me. 

  All of this is to say, this is a confusing subject for me.  I am not making a grandiose claim that I will never watch another down of football again.  I’m sure I will.  One of the ways that I stay connected with friends and family alike is through fantasy football.  I would get a sense of enjoyment out of the Broncos winning the Super Bowl this year.  But it is going to become much less a part of my life.  The kids I hope to have won’t grow up with the sport forced on them.  If they grow up to love it, I will support them in that.  It is their choice.  But it won’t be because I sat with them for hundreds of hours watching and explaining the game.  I hope to avoid even the appearance of judgment towards my friends and strangers that continue to support football.  This is something that is personal, and that is all.  You should know that I’d been mulling writing about this for at least six months but it wasn’t until reading the retirement letter of one of my favorite football writers, Ted Bartlett, that I was given the inspiration to even begin this discussion.  He states his personal path on the issue far more eloquently than I ever could state mine and I’d encourage you to read it. 

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A story of first love

My first love was a great love.  The kind of love that when you’re young makes you believe you will only love once.  The sort of love that feels as if it could kill you in the good times, and torture you for a hundred years in the bad.  The kind of love that inspires you to see the beauty of the world at the beginning and to curse its evil at the conclusion.  I still remember the first time I saw her.  Sitting at Starbucks with her cousin.  She was the most beautiful girl I’d ever seen.  Dark hair, tanned skin, and just a couple of stray freckles.  Victoria Beckham was a poor man’s her.   I don’t know how, but in that moment I knew I would date her.  I didn’t introduce myself, not then, I was in a rush, and far too cowardly. 

We didn’t play games. Didn’t have to.  She saw me in my Led Zeppelin shirt and was instantly in as deep as I was.  Every free minute was spent together. She was three years younger than me.  But she’d seen more of life and not all of it good.  When you’re young there are no such things as warning signs.  She was as sweet as she was beautiful.   I built her a longboard emblazoned with a Canadian flag in Rastafarian colors for her birthday so we could skateboard together.   

That winter I lived in a huge apartment that was impossible to heat.  We kept warm with body heat, telling stories, and laughing until we cried.  Sometimes we cried until we laughed.  Telling of painful pasts.  Watching each other fight family over the phone.  I’d known since much earlier, but about five months in a worked up the courage and after one of her stories I kissed her and bravely screeched “I think I love you.”  “You THINK?” she exploded!  “You better KNOW because I fucking love you!”  I burst into laughter and begged her to believe that I knew that I loved her.  It was innocence. 

The next Christmas she was going to Fiji and I to Colorado.  It was our first time apart for more than three days in the 14 months we’d been together.  I remember sitting on my uncle’s steps as I struggled to pay attention to a Broncos game.  I couldn’t concentrate.  I realized that I missed her.  I’d never missed a girl for more than two days.  Then and there I decided she was the one.

When she returned I gave her the Tiffany’s necklace I’d been saving for her.  “Aren’t you proud of me?  I thought ahead!” I laughed.  She started crying.  “I got drunk and made a mistake,” she sobbed.  I held her while she cried for hours.  “Please don’t leave me.”  I left her with my brother.  Then I left to cry.  It was the first time I’d hidden anything from her.

We stayed together for two more years.  We spent time in Guam, Japan, Italy, and other places I can’t remember.  We still laughed but I never cried and that innocence was gone.  I’m not sure if it died in Fiji, or when I hid. 

I recently saw a picture of us on a beach in Italy near the end.  Our eyes are dead. It could have been all the wine, but I don’t think so. I believe that great love does that to you.  Either you fight like hell to keep your walls down and be open or you end up hurting each other so damn much that you can’t help but go numb.  It’s the beauty of love. If you both fight like hell when you’re in it you may not have to go through the agony of falling out of it.  If not, you hurt, and you learn.  Either way you win.

It truly was a great love.  The kind that years after inspires you to believe in love.  Teaches you how to love.  Takes years to be able to talk about. And sometimes just hurts like a son of a bitch. 

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Sometimes you have to surrender before you win

Shantaram