Tag: winter work = summer play

time

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there was a moment this summer as i was contemplating if, indeed, time was flying while i was having fun or the tough days were dragging on. neither was true. time was just time and it felt natural (?) normal (?). i don’t know the word for it since time was created by time ass capitalist to measure and value labor (aka stolen time). so, since this is a leap year, and we just celebrated the extra day added to febuary, i though i would use this time to write about my thoughts on time.

whenever people hear about how i have chosen to live these past couple years, i get a range of responses, but a consistent one is “wow! you are living the dream!” and i must agree that i am. i am living my dream, for when they are white men with wife and child/children on a day hike, i really doubt that i am living the dream they imagine. i worked hard at carving out the many layers of living a life that gives me the space to be who i am as much and as often as possible, and part of that is a type of buying back my time. of owning my time. and in this process i have learned that the measurement of time by european capitalist methods is bullshit. i mean it serves a function and that function is bullshit. and i would like to point people to one of my current favorite books: a history of the world in 7 cheap things by raj patel and jason w. moore, a book i will be referencing a great deal in the foreseeable future.

let’s see if i can explain.

as a person who likes to hike/backpack/bike-tour on multi-day/week excursions (not thru-hike where i set an alarm to get up freaking early to make the miles to make the finish line by a finish day), i’ve found time moves (evolves? rotates?)…naturally. i wake as the sunrises, and fall into bed as the sun sets. sometimes a little earlier or later depending on which i wish to witness. or more simply, i sleep when i am tired. i eat when i am hungry, i race waterfalls, admire sunsets, and am amazed at every sunrise i get to greet…no clock needed. i have even been known to wake, pack-up camp just to decided to stay for another day and explore a side trail or listen to a river.

some days can be arduous, especially the full month + that i had heat exhaustion pretty much every-fucking-day, but they didn’t feel long, just exhausting. and those moments when the views blew my mind, and the water from a wild and scenic river was the sweetest water ever…they didn’t seem quick and fleeting…and the people i got to meet were a kind of elixir.

here is what i have observed, that time is just time. that thing we are told, and i have believed, that as we age time flies. or time flies when we are having fun. or a work day is just dragging on and on when it feels like drudgery. and mondays suck. but it doesn’t, or it doesn’t have to. my theory is that when we sell our labor to soul sucking jobs to pay for our lives in the hopes that when we get a vacation or we get to retire, and finally live our dreams. (p.s. i don’t know many in my generation and my socio-economic group, that believes we will get to retire and if i get to do what i want to make money, i don’t want to actually retire, but that is a different post)….wait where was i? when we get to live our lives as we want, with agency and without doing work for people who go against our values, morals, and sense of well-being, and we have the time and space (mentally, physically, emotionally) to do the things that excite us and feed our creative and spiritual nature…well time is just time. there is no need to measure it, sell it, borrow it from pto (i mean think of it, we have to borrow against pto-personal time off when we are sick, want to go to a family event, parents/aunts/uncles/grandparents/friends to school events for their kids, experience a solar eclipse, go on a bike trip…what the fuck, its our personal time all the time! you just pay us for some of it and then we get to eat and have a place to rest…) sigh.

but then i sit and meditate. ever sit and meditate for say 5 minutes? i follow my breath. i count in/out 1, in/out 2, etc then my mind is off and running down some rabbit hole of thought so i bring it back. one, two, three, four…just need to get to….shit! back to one… and those 5 minutes feel like hours. other times, i sit and my knees don’t hurt, i follow the breaths, i count to 10, and suddenly the bell sounds that 5 minutes are up. already? didn’t we just start? wow. so even all these times when doing something i choose to do (could be running, or writing, or whatever) measured time always seems different. even running a specific distance: one mile, 5, 10…) it should always feel the same, but it doesn’t. easy days go quick and challenges take forever….

my point? hmmm.

mindfulness. mindfulness is the point. it is always the point…(and “time” is maybe suppose to be measured on a larger scale as in seasons and solar rotations, phases of the moon and stars…

on this venture, time didn’t drag or fly or anything. i was doing what i want with my life and that is the point. sure, would i have liked more times with my friends? of course. would i have liked fewer moments of struggling with heat and elevation gain? yes. but i got to choose when to rest, when to stop for the day (as long as i had a place to pitch a tent), i got to choose the difference between pain and suffering. between how much i wanted to push myself in a given moment, or rest an extra day if i needed. i didn’t feel the need to go to work “sick” because i was out of pto or i needed the pto for a specific reason or i was out of pto because i was caring for a sick comrade.

this isn’t a piece of how capitalism sucks, but it does. we wouldn’t be measuring time if we didn’t need to sell it every since the feudal lords no longer allowed us peasants to grow/control the foods we plant on the lands we occupy.

i know, i know that capitalism is associated with democracy, but i regret to inform you that as far as labor goes, it is not. all we have is time, a life, this life and we must live it as we see best for us. the choices on how we live our lives needs to be ours and how we want and feel the need to contribute to our communities. and i am not talking about quantity of time we have with this life, but the quality.

i want my time to be measured by how i interact with nature and my community. like now is the time to plant….and harvest….and gather the medicine for….and to give thanks to the rain and sun and moon and all the moments that feed us and care for us and that acknowledges the transitions of our lives, not based on time but on when we are ready to walk, and to love, and to share knowledge, and to die. that we have never died too early or too late (i.e. suffered unnecessarily), but we lived our lives to the fullest. we live mindfully or perhaps it is heartfully.

so yeah, time shouldn’t be so complicated. if you have started a job and it feels like it is stealing your life and your time, quit! or go find another job then quit. well i guess i am choosing to live my life with limited funds, but wealthy beyond belief with experience and friends and family. the more i live the more i learn the less i “need” or maybe it is want.

the last 2 years sometimes felt like so much more than 2 years; they felt like a lifetime, because truly i have lived a full lifetime in these moments. i have changed in ways i can not imagine or explain. my patience for bullshit and excuses of ignorance for benefits is exhausting. but my love for life and relationships has expanded in ways i can not imagine. some of those relationships lasted for just a few hours, or a couple days, yet they have have fundamentally changed and my life will never be the same. and the people truly ranged from living on the streets to being financial advisors to the extremely wealthy, all of which have contributed to and reinforced my theories of the american economy.

so, back to time. i love measuring time by the sun and moon. by the tides. the windy season (as it is now in las cruces). the rainy season. the winter sports season. biking time (i.e. all the time), celebrations time, time for ceremony….none of which we need a clock or watch (what we used before cell phones), or a calendar. all we need is to pay attention. observe. be mindfull. or that is what i observe when i am mindfully paying attention to my life…

winter moons

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as i have written before, living a life on the move and mostly outdoors, has put me much more in tune with the rhythms, the ebbs the waxing the waning the rising and falling of tides moon and sun. i feel so much more connected and grounded in ways i never thought possible before. and perhaps, just as i begin to take it for granted, it catches me off guard. december’s full moon was no exception.

one night, walking to dinner a with a friend, the moon lit up the mountain with such awe, no picture i took could do it justice. the next morning, walking to work there was the moon still up, preparing to set on the other side of the valley, with the sun rising from the opposite ridgeline. i was enamored, completely at a loss for words.

around this time i was reading an article by craig childs (one of the few cis-male writers of nature and the wild that i can still appreciate and enjoy without wanting to crumple their papers and burn them in my mind). it was on traveling alone/solo. why he does it, very similar to why i do it. how watching the moon and sun rotate around us rotating around. and for some reason, i wrote this thing…i don’t know what it is. i don’t do poetry much. so i guess its just my outpouring of recent lunar experience.


i’ve learned to start my day by looking up. 
i leave my house at some point and i look to the sky
as kind of a reference point.
where is the sun
the moon
what are the colors
is there fog in the valley?
how deep is the blue?
the depth of the snow clouds
can i see across the valley
can i even see the valley?


i started looking up more 
or at least recognizing that i am
because i would see the moon in the early evening
and again in the morning
summer of the moon


this would happen to me in the pnw


in the summer


it seemed it never got dark
the sun up so early, before the roosters even
and wouldn’t set until…so late
the days so long
and now, here in the mountain town


of winter


the nights are the same and the moon the sun


i find that it gives me some kind of direction
i don’t understand it really, but i find a comfort in it


seeing the moon it all its stages tugs something deep inside me


maybe it is a kind of internal tide that is drawing something


something deep inside me out…i can feel it trying to leep


i wonder if the nocturnals of our world feel this as well


my guess


most likely


they feel it 
know it
deeper
than i ever will.


the vindication of gravity

i’m just going to leave this here like this.

i just invested in a new camera, look forward to new pics as i play with how i want to share my photo side more. i am excited to return to my photographic roots with something more than my phone. i’ve missed the way i have used a camera in the past to document and share all kinds of experiences. the next full moon, i hope to go on a snowshoe hike…its a supermoon (still don’t really know what that is supposed to mean. aren’t they all?) and a lunar eclipse.

here’s to a new year and new projects and new plans based on past lessons and challenges.

and the mountains came a callin’

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so

there i was

in wichita

ks

again

excited to spend the winter with friends and family and friends who are family.

i looked for work, i looked everywhere. i even looked into returning to food service and bartending. was actually a little excited by the idea of bartending again, but not food service. it is fucking hard, no joking around. and it is possibly, at times, the most demeaning job i have ever had. [so side note, tip = to insure promptness aka tip first service is according to tip not the other way around]. the bummer of it all is, i like to provide an atmosphere for folks to have a great social outing, but my income should not be determined but your mood. bartenders tend to get a little more “respect” socially but probably because it is seen as a male-dominated field. i could go on and on about this and i probably will one day, but not this day.

anyway, the jobs that i was able to find in wichita were low paying with limited available hours. not a great way to save for the next phase of the adventure. so one day i was searching for a possible active adventure summer job, and found a resort hiring in one of my favorite towns in colorado. so on a whim, i applied and got hired within the week….so much faster than anything i was experiencing in wichita.

so, soon i was headed to the bus station to denver, overnight in a hostel around the corner, and another bus to my new location.

i should linger a bit on the hipster hostel in denver. i really liked it, and most likely will stay there again if i need a city getaway…hey its possible. hostel fish is a converted brothel downtown. it is just a couple blocks from the greyhound station. downstairs there is a restaurant and bar, upstairs it hosts its own bar alongside the community kitchen. across the street is a fine brewery that often has a food cart next to it. both the brewery and the food cart are overpriced. however, this is all just a block or so away from a main street full of options from slices of pizza (advertising vegan slices) with live music to an irish pub. so i had one beer at the brewery post long fucking bus ride, grabbed a couple of slices, listened to some music, and night-capped it at the hostel.

at first the bartender at the hostel was kind of an ass to me, but then i mentioned something about the music he was playing, he was playing chastity belt, and he lit up! finally i found a venue to get past his fascade. he is a budding singer/songwriter who hosts an open mike there at the hostel. so we were able to chat about music and small stages and such.

 

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piano in the bar of the hostel

 

i was so excited about my new adventure that i couldn’t sleep, so i took another shower, the first was to get the grime of bus travel off me, (i like bus and train travel, but that last leg between pueblo and denver was extra grimmy for lots and lots of reasons). so my second shower was to relax my mind and muscles. i settled in to a meditation and finally slept…and dreamed so many dreams.

for the last month, my dreams have been full to overflowing of symbolism and metaphors. my snake dreams have returned, but have shifted. in one dream i sliced an amazingly wide snake, like so wide and dense it was similar in size to a tree trunk, the kind of trees you find in the pacific northwest….freaking wide! and i just sliced it so cleanly so smoothly with some sword…i could see its internal rings and workings…i can still see it, like right now while i reflect on it.

the next snake dream was more intense. i was wrestling or something with two snakes who were more rattlesnake/viper like. i finally got a grasp of them both, one in each hand, close to their heads. yet, not close enough to keep them from biting my hands in that special place between the thumb and index finger…that place used so much in chinese medicine. i was finally able to strangle them.

but this night, the dreams were of people i have intimately loved in the past. people i haven’t seen in years. each one i stayed friends with after the break-up, but our paths have taken us in different directions and we don’t cross paths much anymore. a facebook like or instagram check-in, maybe a random text message, but otherwise we have drifted in the sea of former loves. the dreams this night were so vivid. i could smell each person’s unique scent again, and remember all the curves and scars that told their stories, the tastes and textures…i awoke warm and happy and thankful for each one of those amazing people who have graced my life. as i venture to a town where i know no one at all. where i will be doing work i have never done before, for i don’t know how long, with so many unknowns… the reminder of being loved by people i never expected to have loved me in the first place, was a most excellent send off.

 

and that, my friends is how i ended up in this little mountain town. population roughly 12,000. elevation in the valley is 6700’+. there are hot springs all around, and the people are so nice. i work as a housekeeper for a property management/vacation resort company. i am the only white person who is not a manager. my coworkers are from mexico, ecuador, jamaica, haiti… i make nearly double what any job was offering in wichita, and more than what most jobs offered in portland when i left. and i am in a small mountain town. one of the few that is actually having snow right now. and i cannot believe how happy i am.

everyday i wake up, look out the window and smile. the view is always spectacular. one super cold morning i woke up (i live up on the mountain with a slight view of the valley) and as i gazed from ridgeline to ridgeline, the central valley was full of fog. it looked like a snow cover lake filled the valley. other days the snow and super blue sky, the aspen trees, the warmth of the cold…it fills me in ways i cannot describe.

 

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reminder that changes happen on the edges

meanwhile, i’ve been reading books like half a yellow sun and you don’t have to say you love me. to say they have had an effect on me is to say the sun is warm. i have been moved and changed by these books. i am having so many thoughts these days about how we treat one another. about the ideas we believe just because it has been passed down to us. what is it that creates so much passive hatred that we think is benign because we think it is just true? these are the things that grow systemic racism, bigots, and trumps. we can do better. we are known to do better. it is why our best sides can come out in times of crisis. we want to be empathetic, but our fear, our ignorance, our inability to listen openly keeps us from our better selves. what kind of people have we become? who do we want to be? who do i want to be? that is the question that i return to and ask myself on a daily basis.

 

what do i like about this work that i am doing? because it is hard physical work. i like that 98% of the people i work with, english is not their primary language. i get to hear other languages all day long. and not just the languages, the beautiful songs that they create, but i listen to the way they talk. it is not the same as english. the emphasis, the concerns, the history… the person i work with the most, when i don’t work by myself, speaks no english at all….and i love it. i love the way i have to really think about what i am saying and how…something i need to do better all day every day with every being i converse with. that and we work really well together, we laugh (mostly at me), and we actually communicate really well. [this is not just my ego and imagination. i found out that she is the one who requested to work with me on our busy days].

i have learned that many of the people i work with (pretty much all women), especially the one’s from jimaca, have families back “home” or working in some other part of the u.s. in the summer they go back to where their kids are. i know that at least one of them is a tour guide back home. most of the ones i work with have been coming back in the winters for the past 6 years. i am fascinated by this migration pattern. in many ways this is a major advantage to the mobile communication technology. one day i worked with one woman who talked with her mom back home for the 3 hours we were cleaning one condo.

 

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a river runs through town

speaking of beings i converse with…i have a 5-minute walk to work. every morning i pass the same person on a walk with a beautiful older dog (maybe a chocolate lab type canine), the dog and i recognize one another and run towards each other in excited greetings every morning…those 45 seconds are better than a cup of the best morning stimulating beverage. i smile the rest of the way to work looking at the sunrise reflected in the western mountains. not a bad way to start the day!