Home

I took a trip to Germany a few months ago. I typed this on my phone between opera rehearsals. Today, as I was cleaning out my notes app, it caught my attention and I decided to leave it here to find again later.

I'm at the house in Weimar. Kind of ridiculous but now that I'm here I miss Oklahoma and everybody there. I'm beginning to realize that no matter where I am I find a way to long for a place that is somewhere else. I guess that's the dirty travel secret nobody tells you about. You start to leave little pieces of yourself in all the places you visit. As you get further and further spread out, it becomes impossible to ever be completely whole again. My love for places like Waco, Puerto Viejo, Weimar, New Orleans, California, and Hinton all coexist and fight for supremacy depending on which of those longings has been stoked most recently. When I'm hot in the Oklahoma summer I consider the mildness of the Costa Rican climate, and struggling with language barriers in foreign countries always makes me long for home.

They say you can't go home again, and that is the difficulty with letting yourself make homes all over the world. Being a tourist is tough for me, so in my head I make new "homes" all the time. I latch on to experiences; I let them be significant.

Me.

I am accepting of others.
I am casual.
I am compassionate.
I am enthusiastic.
I am expressive.
I am imaginative.
I am methodical.
I am pressure-prompted.
I am reflective.
I am spontaneous.
I am tender.

I apply logic.
I ask questions.
I initiate.

I like people.
I like theories.
I like open-ended things.

I think abstractly.
I think in concepts.

I value authenticity.

Hello. I'm John Carmack.

Culture

“We have to create culture, don't watch TV, don't read magazines, don't even listen to NPR. Create your own roadshow. The nexus of space and time where you are now is the most immediate sector of your universe, and if you're worrying about Michael Jackson or Bill Clinton or somebody else, then you are disempowered, you're giving it all away to icons, icons which are maintained by an electronic media so that you want to dress like X or have lips like Y. This is shit-brained, this kind of thinking. That is all cultural diversion, and what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears. And we are told 'no', we're unimportant, we're peripheral. 'Get a degree, get a job, get a this, get a that.' And then you're a player, you don't want to even play in that game. You want to reclaim your mind and get it out of the hands of the cultural engineers who want to turn you into a half-baked moron consuming all this trash that's being manufactured out of the bones of a dying world.” ― Terence McKenna

Banjo

Place: Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica, February 2006
Setting: An open-air bar on ten foot stilts that overlooks the ocean. Nighttime. I was in the bar with eight other people. Four of them were Rastafarian musicians playing a set. Congas, banjo, harmonica, and one of them was playing a "bass" fashioned out of a bucket, a mop handle, and some kind of thick string I couldn't identify.

I had acquired a banjo just before leaving for Costa Rica but had not learned how to play it. These guys didn't really know how to play either. The performance was more rhythm than melody, although it had a loose harmonic consistency to it.

I sat in the near empty bar, enjoying the music as the waves from the beach provided white noise in the background. The latin/Jamaican rhythm was infectious. Before long I was smiling, then nodding along, and finally grinning from ear to ear. I kept my eyes glued to the hand movements of the banjo player.

After about thirty minutes, the four musicians took a break. The conga player came to where I was sitting, pulled up a chair and sat down next to me. He produced a joint from some hidden space on his person and lit it with care. Finally, he looked me in the eye.

A deep, thickly accented Jamaican voice: "You play." It wasn't a question.

I don't know what I expected but it wasn't that. "uh... the banjo?"

"Yes, I saw you. I saw you watch. You have music, you have it here." He thumped his index finger twice against his chest.

I missed what he was saying to me. "I don't play yet, I'm about to start learning. You guys are awesome."

He regarded me, taking a drag off his joint and exhaling slowly. He never broke eye contact. "When we play again, tonight, you play with us."

I was nervous. I wish I had answered differently. "No, no, I couldn't. Let me learn, I'll come back. Maybe a year, maybe two, but I'll come back and play with you guys."

"Good."

He paused and took another hit off the joint. His deep Jamaican voice rumbled slightly as he exhaled the smoke.

"I will be on the beach."

He looked at the beach.

"I will wait with faith."

I went back last year but I couldn't find these guys. I'll try again next time. I still don't play the banjo, but now I realize I didn't have to. They just wanted to make music.

Me too.

Schöne

Today I met a girl. I met her on the train from Berlin. She was a lovely girl. Her name was... well, I don't think I know her name. I guess I never will.

I was standing on a train platform, waiting for the train to arrive that would take me from Berlin to Weimar. I was nodding my head to my music. I had my eyes closed behind my sunglasses so that I could hear the track better (a habit I picked up in my music studies). As the song on my headphones came to a satisfying resolution, I smiled. It was an easy smile, a comfortable smile, the kind of smile you might see me make after I've just had a delicious meal or accomplished some trival personal triumph like guessing where my keys are on the first try.

Still smiling, I opened my eyes and removed my sunglasses. I panned my vision over the train platform, taking in everything I could see one last time before a train pulled up and whisked me away to some other place. I was just about to finish my scan and put my sunglasses back over my eyes, and that was when I saw her.

She was thirty feet away, standing at my 10 o'clock. She looked about 5'5" tall; she had long, thick, strawberry blonde hair pulled back into a ponytail that swished between her shoulder blades. She had let her thick bangs fall over her forehead, a hairstyle not uncommon for a young German woman. Her frame was eye-catching, a feminine set of curves wrapped in a pair of tan jeans and a conservative brown tank top. She carried a small red satchel, its strap slung over her left shoulder. But I didn't see any of those things at first. No, the first I saw of her was her eyes. They caught my attention not because they were beautiful (though I should tell you that they were beautiful: an icy, pale blue, full of light and curiosity, nestled on either side of a petite and freckle-covered nose), but because they were looking right back at me. She was staring. I had caught her.

My smile, still on my face from the music I had finished only moments ago, grew into a grin. She let slip with a grin of her own and her eyes darted toward the ground. If my color vision would permit me to see flesh tones, I imagine I might have seen her blush. I held my gaze, waiting for her to look back at me. She did. Peering up from under her eyebrows, the pale blue eyes were illuminated by the bashful smile still decorating her face, lending them a warmth you don't often get to see in German women. We held eye contact for what seemed like minutes, though I know in reality it was only moments. I told myself to approach her, but that thought was interrupted by a familiar series of sounds: vibrating metal, brake pads, and a powerful engine switching from thrust into idle. My train was arriving. It was time for me to leave. I wondered if the girl was going to Weimar. I hoped she was going to Weimar.

The train stopped. Its doors came to a halt right in front of where I stood, as if the train were stopping just for me. The crowd (including the girl) moved en masse towards the entrance. As the girl came nearer to the doors, her eyes focused on the train but her body language was directed at me. She wanted me to say hello.

Her right arm was draped over her satchel. I walked up to her. As I came near, I extended my left hand. I placed my first three fingers on her forearm. Her head snapped in my direction. I saw her eyes again. Whatever it was I had planned to say, it was forgotten. I stood there for a moment, dumbstruck. I smiled again, stalling while I came up with something.

Got it! My brilliant opener: "Do you speak English?"

She grinned. "Yes, a little bit."

"Oh, good. Is this the train to Weimar?"

"Yes! You're going to Weimar?"

"Yes, you?"

"Mm hmm."

"Well hey, let's sit together and chat, we can be train buddies. You up for it?"

I sensed that I shouldn't have used an idiom. She seemed confused, but she nodded so I figured she had gotten the jist. I let her precede me onto the train. She turned to the left, into the first class cabin. My heart sank. My ticket was for the second class cabin. My great romance was over before it had started. I laughed aloud, wordlessly chiding myself for becoming attached to this anonymous girl after only a ten second encounter. Shaking my head, a grin on my face, I turned to my right and entered the second class cabin.

I found an empty seat and sat down next to the window. I put my bag under the chair. I leaned back and looked towards the door of the cabin.

The girl walked in, and I felt my heart thud in my chest. I kept cool, figuring she was headed to the bathroom or something, but she saw me and held eye contact. She smiled. I smiled back. I patted the seat next to me and she took it.

There wasn't a moment of awkward silence for the entire trip. I mean, sure, there were pauses, but they only served as paragraph breaks in an otherwise seamless conversation. We discussed all sorts of things. She amazed me with her knowledge. Her interest in history, her perspectives on art, even the way she talked about her dog, it was all indicative of a soul whose curiosity was only matched by the drive to see that curiosity satiated. We had read a few of the same books, though she had read them in German and I in English. She told me about some movies I should watch while I was learning German.

Three hours later, we arrived in Weimar. I started walking towards my destination, and she walked alongside me. The air was warm. The sun was shining. I felt content, and I continued to enjoy my conversation with the girl whose name I will not know.

We came to a point where our paths were separating. I asked her where she was going.

"Mm, I must go back to my school."

Hey, a college girl, I thought. "Oh, you're in school? What are you studying?"

"Study...? oh, no, I am not studying anything. I am in the ninth grade."

"OKAY WELL IT WAS VERY NICE TO MEET YOU BUT I'M AFRAID I'M IN A TERRIBLE RUSH HAVE A PLEASANT AFTERNOON."

And then I ran away.