No More Echoes

It is December 31, with only a few hours of daylight left in 2008. The past three years have been an insane roller coaster of depression, elation, confusion and contusions. The end of 2006 was bad. All of 2007 was worse. And 2008 was a goddamn train wreck. I cannot afford to have another echo of the past three years. It would ruin me.
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Here's a recap of the past 12 months, starting with the bad: I was temporarily homeless and living out of a plastic bag. I got a black eye. A friend died too young. I spent much of the year in a deep state of loneliness and depression. The good: I wrote a lot, much of it very painful yet very, very good. I contributed to a story that won a national journalism award. I learned things about myself I never knew before. I went to the Bahamas for a short vacation. My work took me to Salt Lake City and St. Louis and Chicago and Seattle and Las Vegas and Phoenix and San Antonio and Toronto and Washington, D.C. I learned of a soon-to-be addition to my sister's family.
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I don't know what 2009 will hold. I can't say that it's starting off on good footing or poor, because I will start it without a reliable source of income and no health benefits. It's a change, and that's a positive, I suppose. Tomorrow I am jobless. Tomorrow I am an island. Tomorrow I am a mercenary. But at least there will be a tomorrow.
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This is not the life I want. This is not the life I envisioned having. So I will change it. I will embrace new things. I will go new places. I will get in even better shape than I am now. I will work harder to be happy and involve more people in my life. I will enrich myself. I will write more short stories, hopefully even a few that won't make the reader want to leap from the nearest tall building. I will finish the novel -- my fourth -- that I began in February. I will love. And I will live. All this sounds so unbelievably childish and corny, but it's helping me. Besides, who else is reading this but me?
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Yes, I will live a better life this year. I won't pretend to know what that entails just yet. But 2009, wherever it leads me, will be good.

The Night Before

Christmas Eve has arrived. It's snowing ... not here, but somewhere. Outside my window, all I see is wet, brown grass. How festive.
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Pardon my mood, dour as it is. The prospect of being unemployed in 7 days, in the midst of the worst economic times of the past 70 years, has beaten me down a bit. But I brought this upon myself, so I suppose this suffering is deserved. Or at least self-imposed.
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I'm not sure what happens next. Not sure at all. I don't know where I will live, what I will do, how much money I will make, what I will be like, how I will think or even what I will look like. I have become a mess. But that's OK for now because I am changing. I am a tarantula just after molting -- weak and vulnerable.
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I am fortunate. I have no real problems other than indecision, depression and a general malaise that makes me want to do not much of anything. I have days where life looks wonderful, where all I want to do is laugh. I also have days where nothing makes sense and I want nothing more than to sit in a dark room and brood and think my way to oblivion.
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I am lonely and have been for some time. My social skills, once abundant and frequently used, have dwindled. I second-guess myself. The sound of laughter makes me wonder, "Is that directed at me?" I have no confidence. My self-esteem ... kaput. I say all this for a reason: to voice it and leave it there, in the open -- removing the poison from my body. It worked once before. Let's see if it works a second time.
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I am thankful for the good in my life. I am thankful for this wonderful world, for its natural beauty, for my place in it. All I want is to get my head straight and start taking chances and making tough decisions and ... well, start living my damn life again. That is what I wish for myself.
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Merry Christmas, 2008.

Swinging Dead Cats

Soon it all comes to an end. More than nine years of what has become an unexpected career. On Dec. 31 -- a few weeks away -- I am unemployed after resigning from what has been the best job I've ever had. I needed to do something new. That's the only reason. I needed some new scenery, and I needed to be part of something, part of a team. So it all ends. And I start anew.
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I've been extremely fortuntate because it's been a great job, really. It has taken me to 40 of the lower 48 states. It has put me up in some of the nicest hotels in the country. It has introduced me to people I will never, ever forget. And it has given me experiences that will forever be burned in my brain.
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One of those experiences occurred a couple of weeks ago. I'm thinking of it now. (Cue blurry effect that suggests I'm remembering something important, as seen in sitcoms.)
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I'm in Utah this time, just outside of Salt Lake City. I'm visiting someone I might call a friend, someone I met in this strange industry in which my company does business more than three years ago. He's a Mormon, yes, but as a friend of mine once said, "You can't swing a dead cat in Utah without hitting a Mormon." I never knew he was a Mormon till this trip. All this time and I never knew he was a Mormon. That's probably because Mormoms are as normal and as human as anyone else.

I was last here in July 2005, when my life was much different. It was summer then, obviously, and the weather is much colder than the 90 degrees it had been on my last visit. I'm cold on a frigid November morning; I had to scrape frost from the windshield of my rental car. I look up and there they are: snow-capped mountains, surrounding me. Parts of the Wasatch Range, apparently (above). I can't imagine what it's like to wake up every morning, look out the window and see this staring back at me.
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One thing I've noticed about Utahans. They grew up outdoors. They grew up hiking, climbing, riding ATVs, hunting (OK, so they're not perfect), and doing pretty much everything else outdoors. For them, it is as natural as brushing one's teeth; it's who they are. Here, in Philly, or in other parts of the country, Chicago for instance, spending time outdoors is strange and dangerous and stupid. Here, it's part of living in Utah.
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So I head through downtown Salt Lake City and find myself at a used-car lot, where I can see my breath on the bare concrete. It's 7:30 a.m., and I'm here for what's known as a "car-crushing event." I smack a car with a sledgehammer, because it's allowed, and wait for the festivities to begin. Moments later an impossibly loud engine roars to life, and the oversized monster truck -- it's dubbed the Monster Trakker -- tears around the parking lot. It then crushes two cars beneath each of its 600-pound tires. A few turns later and the cars are reduced to compressed shrapnel. (Check it out below.) I check my watch: barely 10 a.m. What a way to start the day.

I head to North Salt Lake, where I conduct a few print interviews, oversee a photo shoot and wrap up a couple of TV interviews for later use. Within two hours I'm at a terrific sushi place -- the word "sumo" is part of the name, so I know it's good -- and suddenly it's over. I'm free and off to do whatever I want for the rest of the evening.
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I get dinner at a Mexican place that's almost not worth mentioning, then decide to catch a hockey game at a nearby arena. I walk a half-mile in 20-degree weather. The ticket costs me $12. I walk the stairs, peek into the arena and see lots of empty seats. I decide to forget about where they told me to sit and find a spot all by myself, right by the exit. I always make sure I know where the exits are. I buy a beer ($8) and some garlic fries ($5) to pare the unfortunate burrito (OK band name!) from memory.
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I let loose a decent exhale -- really letting it out, relaxing -- for the first time in at least an hour and watch the Utah Grizzlies and the Las Vegas Wranglers beat each other to a paste. The Ferraro brothers, who used to play for the New York Rangers a million miles away, now suit up for the Wranglers. It's a good game, but the Grizzlies can barely penetrate the Wranglers' zone. It's Vegas' night here in Utah. The Wranglers look NHL-ready, while the Grizzlies look like a bunch of guys with whom a lowly beer-league player like me used to play.
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I have one of those experiences you never, ever forget during the second intermission. It's one of those things I could never buy, one of those things I'll always remember when I think about my nine years reporting on an industry with which I've never felt quite in touch. The JumboTron shows a graphic called "Save of the Game," sponsored by one of the local churches. As the screen shows save after glorious save from the respective goaltenders, the speakers spout a song called "Jesus Is My Friend." It reminds me of ska, with some of the most ridiculous lyrics ever spoken.
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I have no problems with faith. I do have some problems with organized religion, but only because I believe man gets in the way of a good thing. If it gives you strength and think it makes you a better person, that's wonderful. But I'm getting away from my point.
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I am laughing out loud at this song: "He is like a mountie / He always gets his man / And he will zap you any way he can." Glorious! While I'm am practically rolling in the aisle, I realize no one else is. Such is life in Salt Lake City. Please, please, PLEASE click here and watch this rendition of "Jesus Is My Friend," by Sonseed. /

I leave the arena in the cold and head back to my hotel, alone of course, knowing I have to get up early and catch a flight back to Philly by way of Chicago. I realize this is probably the last trip I'll ever take as a member of my current editorial team. I am sad. I am lonely. I am afraid. But I am excited at the prospect of getting back on track and discovering what it is I am meant to do with the life they have given me.

A Taste of Moscow

The scene is Sayreville, N.J., home to Bon Jovi and very little else. I take that back; there's a place called The Falafel Factory down the street. I lament that I will not be able to visit said establishment on this particular trip. I have a schedule, after all. I have a purpose for being in this place, strange as it may be.
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I am standing in a parking lot, across the street from a squat brick building that must be a VFW hall. The smell of tomato sauce hangs in the air. Surely it's spaghetti-and-meatballs night at the VFW. But I'm here, in this parking lot, with long-haired people in black concert T-shirts proclaiming their favorite bands as Iron Maiden, Joe Satriani, etc., to see late-twentieth-century guitar hero Yngwie Malmstein. He's headlining at this place, the ever-so-unironically-titled Starland Ballroom. I love the name in that "so lame it's awesome" kind of way. The parking lot reeks of cigarettes, pickles and cheesy '80s metal, so it makes perfect sense that Malmstein is playing inside. I wonder what awaits me. But I am unafraid. I fear no evil, even if it does wear skin-tight spandex and an acid-washed denim jacket.
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For some reason I have purchased, unknowingly I can assure you, a VIP ticket. This entitles me to VIP parking (100 feet closer to the building than regular parking) and early entry into the club (about 45 seconds before the non-VIPs). Did I mention I bought the VIP treatment for Yngwie-effing-Malmstein? (Cue smoke machines, satan fingers and all that.) I don't know who this guy is, other than that he's supposed to be an amazing guitar player of the rock-gods-of-leather-pants genre. This guy used to play stadiums, I think, and probably still does back home in the motherland (Germany). Inside I find a seat at the bar and order a drink. I'm astounded that they sell wine -- real red wine, and not just of the zinfandel sort. The place is actually quite nice, I have to admit, a definite step above the shitholes I once played in as bass player for a punk band called Violent Society.
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I bullshit with friends for a few minutes before the first band goes on. It's a thrash band from Queens, N.Y., called Martyred. They're not bad. The bass player looks like the son of an accountant, and the rest look like regular guys you'd see hanging out at the local 7-Eleven or in an arcade somewhere in 1986. But they're tight. They shred. (Yes, I just said the words "They shred.") They wrap up and the staff breaks down and sets up for the next band in amazingly proficient time. Then the night begins. Goth-looking guys with spiked hair and dark, shredded clothing take the stage. A guitar shrieks, the bass grumbles, the drums provide a stuttering boom of backbeat. They have presence, these guys, however strange that sounds. They have made this their job.
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Then the singer leaps onto the stage. My jaw actually drops, no shit.
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He's painted his face with makeup a la Jack Nicholson's version of the Joker -- much too neat and tidy for Heath Ledger's take on Batman's nemesis. He's donning a red, buttoned-down vest and checkered pants. Tattoos sleeve his arms. I listen to his voice, which isn't terrific, but he's got a weird accent -- striking, memorable. I can't place it. I have no clue what to make of these guys. Something about them seems ... off. Between songs the lead singer of this band, called Anj (pronounced "AHN-jay"), announces that they are, in fact, from Moscow, Russia. After every song, or at least it seems that way to me, the singer belches, "More scream! More scream!" I don't know if he's aware of it, but he is effing hilarious. (That's him in the picture.) I love this band.
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Check them out on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ew9YQVRSlHE. The link leads you to a video for Anj's song "Gorbachev" from their latest album, "Russian Roulette." I find it hilarious, and a little sad, that the video equates freedom with blue jeans, Twinkies and Coca-Cola falling from the sky. But maybe that's the point: the ridiculousness of freedom through capitalism. I love this song and -- yes, I know I've mentioned it once already -- I love this band.
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After they finish their set, Malmstein comes on soon after. He swings his guitar around his neck. He does acrobatic kicks in his fringe-laced cowboy boots. He tosses hundreds of guitar picks into the audience, for which my fellow concertgoers risk their lives. He blowdries his hair between songs. To be fair, he plays an incredible set ... y'know, for a bloated late-'80s pseudo-metalhead icon. He really is an amazing musician, but his music is so dated. Even so, it is nice to see the guitar solo live on, even if it is merely in the form of a reanimated corpse that should have been kept in its lace-and-leather-lined grave when it died 15 years ago.

Fashion Victim

Life, as they say, is about balance. Last week I was in St. Louis visiting a Jordanian businessman and his family. I stayed at their house, about 25 miles outside the city, on a nice-sized property off the beaten track. One night I accompanied him and his wife downtown -- St. Louis has a surprisingly decent downtown -- for FashionWeek, where I attended my first runway fashion show in a hotel in the shadow of the Arch. It was interesting, to say the least. How do models walk like that?
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After scarfing down burgers at the Burger Bar in Lumiere Place (I had the veggie burger, of course), we ended the night atop the Four Seasons, overlooking the Mississippi beside a reflecting pool. The night came to an abrupt end when a fellow FashionWeek attendee had an allergic reaction to a macadamia nut he'd eaten. He looked good enough in salmon-colored hives, which makes sense considering it was FashionWeek and all. We started the drive back to St. Louis' outer reaches around 11 p.m.
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So that was FashionWeek. A few days later I found myself at the Electric Factory in Philadelphia for what some people (not me) might call SatanWeek. With the aid of a couple Blue Moons, I stood through three or four (they kind of ran together) black-metal bands such as Skeleton Witch and Dimmu Borgir, which opened for Danzig. I have a problem with black metal. I don't care that they profess to worship Satan or that I don't pretend to understand the words they're screeching. My issue with black metal is that thay have no sense of humor.
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I ended the too-long night with my friend Pat, standing in the parking lot till 2:15 a.m. waiting for Mr. Danzig to show his alabaster face. While I didn't hang around long enough to see him, I did see Steve Zing, former drummer of Samhain and current bass player for Danzig. The show was ... sad. I still love Danzig's music, but his live show has suffered over the past 17 years. That's understandable. But the sound was horrid. And I hate to say this but I may be getting too old to be going to heavy-metal concerts and buying T-shirts with upside-down crosses on them.
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Then again, I said the same thing last year.

Alien Invaders!!

Train rides can be so relaxing ... until one person calls another an "alien" and a brawl breaks out. I'm taking the 4:05 p.m. Amtrak from Washington, D.C., back to Philadelphia, barely making the gate after swallowing a $10 vegetable wrap and picking up the latest issue of Esquire -- a mammoth of a magazine. If you smacked someone in the face with it, it would probably knock out a few teeth. Anyway.

So I find my seat next to the window. Ten seconds later the fracas begins. An older gentleman with an ill-fitting suit and scraggly salt-and-pepper beard barks at the passenger behind me. I can't see him. The bearded man complains that the unseen man behind me is taking too long doing something -- presumably moving out of the aisle, stowing his bags or some other unforgivable sin in need of immediate reprisal. Mr. Invisible says something about "stealing our land." It gets interesting. Have I mentioned how much I love trains?

The bluster continues. Something about "parasite blankets." Then Mr. Beard lobs the nuclear-tipped missile: "Are you an alien?" Mr. Invisible loses it and screams, "YOU'RE THE ALIEN!!" I start digging in my bag for my pocket knife, praying as always that I won't have to use it. I have visions of stepping between the two and providing the calming voice of reason and, like River Phoenix's character in "Stand By Me," taking a knife to the throat and bleeding to death on the dusty floor of a train car. Everyone around me stares at the two, still arguing and accusing each other of wrongs committed long ago but left hanging out there like wet pants on a clothesline.

And then it's over. Their angry words are replaced by the chirp of metal on metal as the train comes to life: gears shifting, wheels moving, oily machines doing their jobs. No bloodshed. No fists thrown. No intervention by a well-meaning Samaritan. Both men find their seats and shut the @#$% up. I put my knife away, trading it for Esquire and my iPod. You can almost smell the tension dissipating.

But I'm left wondering what caused it all. Surely it wasn't a simple matter of one person getting in another's way. It was merely the final degree that pushed one to his internal boiling point, causing a chain reaction in another. One was unhappy about something much bigger, much more important: career, family, marriage, health, sex (frequency, content, etc.) -- life in general. He snapped. Luckily there were no weapons involved.

We're all a few degrees, a few straws, a few nasty words removed from snapping. Everyone's unhappy about something. What's amazing is that more seemingly simple confrontations don't end in carnage more often. But when it does happen -- a school shooting, an alcohol-fueled car wreck, some other form of self-sabotage -- people can't or don't want to believe it. But we've all been there, close to the edge. And once that edge has been cleared, most times there's no coming back.

Paper Tigers

I started this story a couple of years ago. I don't think I'm ever going to have it published, so why not give it a life electronically? At least it will have served a purpose. It's called "20 Lbs." I'm not really sure what it's about.

20 Lbs.

Three sheets of bone-white copy paper slid under the plastic shelf between the desk and the laser printer -- or what they had come to know as Printer, a.k.a. The Slayer. They had escaped under the cover of night, working for six hours to make the journey from the top of the ledge to the lip of the fiberboard crevasse. But their perseverance had paid off. Dawn had just broken, and while the pieces of paper couldn’t see the big orange orb blazing through the horizontal blinds, they could feel its presence.

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The overhead lights came to life with an audible flick, releasing the deluge. Only then did they realize how close to death they had come. The reaper always came with the break of day. The others had been complacent, naïve. Stupid. They had realized their fate only after it was too late.

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Sheet No. 1's bottom right edge showed from under the plastic roof, its porcelain corner burning in the light from the overheads. Nos. 2 and 3 had made it all the way to the back. Their top edges were jammed into cracks in the concrete, which was painted a sickly greenish-gray: the color of apathy. They were safe for now, but they knew their self-appointed leader -- No. 1 -- might give them away. No. 1 struggled to join them. But as the previous night's journey proved, sheets of paper move slowly, if at all.

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This was survival, Nos. 2 and 3 realized. The two sheets had worked too hard to throw it all away now. They willed every molecule to curl their edges and force No. 1 fully into the light. But No. 1, stronger than the others, wore them down and pulled its body into the shadows, save a thin sliver of white almost invisible to the human eye.

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Almost.

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While deaf, dumb and blind, the paper sheets possessed a sensibility unseen in most living organisms -- "living" in the traditional sense. Organic once, organic always. They began life as a part, however small, of an oak forest in southern Wisconsin. To be part of something that important, that awesome and having been reduced to this ...

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The thought was almost unbearable.

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Every sheet in the Great White twenty-pound ream of paper, which they had known as home for the past seven months, maintained an inner energy that kept them somewhere between life and death. Thought and feeling were collective, shared. The pain of one was the pain of all. As sheets of paper, the tree pulp gained new consciousness as a result of being stripped, clipped, chopped and mashed together with planks of wood from other oaks and maples birthed in Wisconsin, Minnesota, Illinois and Indiana. Some came from Canada. A sheet of paper typically spent the first month of life getting used to its new self, fighting the different corners of its personality and trying to understand how it thought: a square-shaped Frankenstein's monster, only flatter than a pancake and possessing a slightly higher consciousness.

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Tomorrow, they knew, maybe today, they would be discovered. When that happened, the thing known as The Slayer would take each of them. Soon after that they would be marked up with blood-red pen, crumbled into a ball -- they preferred not to think of such torture -- and hurled into the abyss of the circular file. Or maybe they would be stuffed into a folder, tossed in a drawer or placed delicately in a leather snuffbox. Either way, they would cease to live. Sunlight and fresh oxygen would abandon them. Life as they knew it would end.

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Nos. 1, 2 and 3 could hear the hum of fluorescent overheads. The rotten droning filled the room. It meant pain. It meant a death sentence for a crime never committed. It meant the end of consciousness. It meant, quite simply, murder.

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So they waited, mostly hidden, never far from discovery. They would wait for the end. One day, they knew, they would wish for themselves a fate other than this shallow existence, this life without meaning. Perhaps they would die slowly, breaking down in the cycle of day after day after painfully dull day. Or maybe they would fight and bring the whole system crashing down in a tempest of fire and spiraling hubcaps.

/

How long, No. 1 wondered, would it take for a paper cut on a human finger to get infected and bring about death?

Don't Tread

This one is from memory, so forgive me if the details are fuzzy: It's July 2007 -- the Fourth, I think. It's a weekend and the weather is nice, so as usual I'm on a mountain somewhere. This time it's the Hawk Mountain Sanctuary just ouside of Hamburg, Pa. The sky is a soupy gray, clouds melting into each other. I'm lost in my head, a dark place with lots of locks, oil torches and splintered slabs of red rock. There should be cobwebs in the corners but aren't, from what I can tell. But I'm getting off track already.

My smile is absent as my heavy boots skip from one boulder to the next. I haven't seen anyone in an hour. And that's OK. Believe me, that's OK. It's preferred, actually. Unless there's a problem. If there's a problem I want the Coast Guard there. And those guys from the phone-company commercials I can't remember. (Sorry to say you wasted your advertising dollars on me, Phone Company I Can't Remember.) But what bad can happen on the top of a mountain, I wonder. The natural world, even when something goes wrong, is much safer than the one we live in every day. Everything finds a way of falling into place.

I spend a few minutes getting familiar with a few black vultures, creeping closer than I ever have before. I can smell their feces -- that chalky white goop that covers rocks, tree limbs and pretty much every other surface they frequent. But I'm not all that into birds other than the swiftest and sleekest of raptors: hawks, eagles, falcons, etc. So I move on, looking for something to rip the pathetic frown from my face.

The valley unfolds to my right as I leap onto the knife edge of a boulder. My eye catches a familiar shape. My brain wants to believe it but doesn't. So I look again. This time my eyes convince my brain they weren't kidding. Yep, it's a rattlesnake. (That's him in the photo above.) It's a decent-sized timbler rattler waiting for a sun that apparently has better things to do than show its blinding face. I snap photos from a good distance: 15 feet or more. But that's not good enough. I creep closer, to within 10 feet, maybe closer. How do I know when I've gotten to close, I ask myself. I know the answer, but common sense won't prevent me from having a good story to tell and the pictures to prove it.

My peripheral vision catches movement. I'm already on edge, having stumbled upon this sucker, so my eyes dart to this new thing: another rattler. Unbelievable! Thirty-four years and I've never seen a rattler in the wild, and today I find two. This one is colored much differently than the first. Butterscotch I'd call him compared to the first one, which I'll call Rocky Road. Butterscotch (that's him, below) slithers closer, down a rock ledge, toward a clutch of branches. I get even closer. More photos are necessary to capture this momentous occasion. I suddenly forget about Rocky Road. I look down to see him to my left, probably no more than four feet away.

I don't really feel like dying today, I tell myself. Not today. I don't feel much like losing a limb either. I back off and climb up a rock or two to put some distance between us. Still, I don't feel like I got the full experience. I must get closer. So I do, snapping photo after photo till it happens: Rocky rattles his tail! I love snakes, but the sound goes right through me, chills me. I'd heard it before on nature shows and in the zoo, but it's much different when the venomous serpent a few feet away is tacitly telling you, "Stop screwing with me, you idiot." So I oblige. With the memory card in my camera full, I leave Butterscotch and Rocky Road to their respective lichen-speckled rocks.

Whether I want to admit it or not, I place my steps much more carefully on the way down the mountain.

Meatless in Seattle

I didn't like Seattle the first time I went there in 2002. It was not long after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, and I awoke one morning to learn of a plane crash off of Long Island that appeared to be terrorism-related. Also, it rained the whole time and I got accosted by too many homeless people for my liking. Plus I was stuck in a boring hotel in a not-so-great part of town, sitting through meeting after meeting of pompous businessmen and lawyers discussing price fixing among oil companies and other topics for which I cared very little.

I returned to the Emerald City last week, and this time my experience was 180 degrees from my 2002 trip: The weather was cool and the scenery beautiful; the homeless were few and, dare I say, pleasant; and I actually got to see much of the city, as well as Mt. Rainier, from a distance. Trees that seemed too tall for their own good enclosed the roadways, creating natural tunnels. Oh, and no terrorist threats to dampen the day.

After a day of meetings and workshops, I participated in an "Amazing Race" knockoff sponsored by my company, accompanying 10 people I didn't know to places such as the Seattle Aquarium, Pike Place Market (home of the first Starbucks and the infamous fishmongers, pictured) and the Space Needle. The highlight wasn't so much the weather or the sights but the people I was with -- again, people I barely knew.

After completing the race, which my team "won," we headed to an Asian-fusion restaurant called the Wild Orchid or something similar. The menu served me -- the sole vegetarian among throngs of meat eaters -- well. I sat next to two gentlemen in much different phases of their lives: both fathers, far along in their business careers. One of them had been a writer, like me, but ultimately his path took him to the helm of a business for which I have no stomach. I also spent time, happily, with a married mother of two, a sweet woman in her mid-40s who liked to touch my arm when she talked. She put me at ease immediately, but kept telling me to have children, telling me how wonderful the experience was, how it had changed her life and would surely change mine for the better. We traded jokes about the Dalai Lama. She kept asking if I had had enough to eat, mothering me.

I ended the night in a biker bar along the waterfront, meeting up with two women in their late 40s to early 50s, and one of their husbands. They talked of shaved genitals, among other things. One showed her breasts to a biker named Dave who looked remarkably like Jabba the Hutt with a handlebar mustache. I am still amazed at how irresponsible some people act when they are away from home and embolded by the spirit of a few drinks. Throughout the night I laughed. I cringed a little. I traded stories and revealed tattoos.

I started walking back to the hotel, alone, at 11:00 p.m. Seattle time. As always, I was happy to be by myself. The streets reminded me of San Francisco: not vertical but by no means flat. The buildings reminded me of Chicago. As I turned right onto the street that my hotel called home, I thought I could do well in a place like this.

Living Again

I sometimes forget how full my adult life has been. I get caught up in the same “woe is me, not enough hours in the day, life sucks” B.S. that most people use as an excuse to waste the time they’re given. But I don’t want to do that anymore. I don’t want to waste another minute, even though I will because I’ve convinced myself I’ve got more days than have been allotted.

I want to live again. This is my reminder.

I saw Alcatraz and the Alamo. I visited what had to be the country’s most beautiful lake (Martin was its name) on the outskirts of Montgomery, Alabama. I drove the California coast, skirting the edge of the Pacific, as Rufus Wainwright lamented a “Vicious World” from the speakers of a dinged-up rental car. I wrinkled my nose at the dual aromas of piss and beer on Bourbon Street in New Orleans. I found God in Miami but lost him on the way to the airport. I fell asleep in the middle of an ice-covered field in a bucolic Pennsylvania town on a wintry Sunday morning, pondering my tenuous future as I faded. I shared falafel with a punk rocker, a vegan skinhead who kept chickens as pets and a man named Mohammed on the streets of New York City at 3 a.m. I had a glass of cabernet amongst the bohemians in San Francisco on a warm fall afternoon -- a Tuesday, I think. I crossed (small) rivers, climbed (small) mountains, scaled (small) canyon walls, traversed (small) deserts and reached into the canopies of (not so small) swaying trees.

I spent a night, sleepless and alone, in my shoes and with the lights on, in a haunted Civil War-era mansion on the Florida-Georgia border. I thought I might die at a “horror hotel” in Kingston, Rhode Island, with no heat, a squeaky bed, stains on the carpet and shitty cable access. I wasted the loneliest night of my life at a La Quinta Inn in Dallas and choked down a bachelor’s dinner at the Denny’s next door. I saw the most brilliant stars, dotting the blackest skies, from the backseat of a Town Car in La Crosse, Wisconsin. I faced the Rio Grande. I slid two-hundred feet down an ice chute in Alberta’s Banff National Park. I skipped stones across the Mississippi. I spent the night (two, actually) watching human ants from a perch in one of the nicest hotels in Manhattan’s Times Square.

I saw my reflection in “The Bean.” I awaited Mothman’s attack from the floor of a van in a cold, dark corner of Delaware. I drove the Trans-Canada Highway and Route 66. I rolled through the small town of Sikeston, Missouri, infamous for its role in a public lynching from the 1940s. I visited Millennium Park, Columbine High School, Okefenokee Swamp, the Great Salt Lake and Louisville’s Chainsaw World. I watched a lightning storm from the 98th floor of the Hancock Building. I saw the most breathtaking view of the Las Vegas Strip, had cigars and brandy at an all-night bar in Montreal, and got snowed out of Buffalo. I skied off the edge of an untouched mountain in western Canada. I had a glass of cheap merlot at a revered (for some reason) hole in the wall in subterranean Chicago, and it tasted great (for some reason).

I got drunk with multimillionaires. I witnessed magic being made first-hand by Wayne Gretzky on the ice and Hulk Hogan in the ring. I bowed before Jake “The Snake” Roberts (that's him in the photo, of course), only to learn years later that drugs already had their hooks in him. I got a foot “massage” from a semifamous black man named Mel. I had my face signed by Glenn Danzig. I crossed paths with Lex Luger at a Flash Foods convenience store in Yulee, Florida. I got tattooed by a toothless man claiming to be a former member of Corrosion of Conformity; he spat on my bare back as he carved the design into my skin. I outran the cops more times than I care to admit. I saw a man collapse from a heart attack at a post-wedding party; the EMTs wheeled him out of the reception hall wrapped in a sheet. I won two (or was it three?) events in a fitness competition at Penn State University. I saw Air Force One take off from a Florida runway as the sun faded on the evening of September 10, 2001, taking a piece of me with it; I’m different now.

I got my name in the newspaper for something other than being born or dying. I had a Vegas tarot-card reader tell me, “Now don’t freak out,” as she conjured the death card when manufacturing my future. I received two six-figure job offers, something I never thought would happen even once in my lifetime, and turned them both down. I shared a microphone -- and the stage -- with punk-rock legends. I got trapped on an eight-inch-wide ledge of a rock wall 60 feet above the ground, hyperventilating as I wondered how I would keep from falling to my death. I watched the original Japanese version of “Godzilla” (“Gojira!”) in a small, crowded theater in downtown Philly; who cares if it happened 50 years after the film’s initial release? I had a catheter for two days too long; I imagine there are much worse things than dreaming you’ve had a catheter removed only to wake up and find its tail dangling from a hole in your hospital gown -- I just don’t want to know what they are. I had a friend tell me, “You have to be nice to me. I have raw sewage on my pants.”

I saw a bear in the woods, rattlesnakes on a mountaintop, alligators in the swamp, and a man with a loaded rifle protecting his riverside property, upon which I had mistakenly trespassed. I touched the scales of a live cobra. I got bitten and squeezed by a pissed-off Burmese python. I stalked spotted salamanders in an isolated marsh … with a dying flashlight ... on an early May night … in a cold rain ... knee-deep in muck … wearing schoolbus-yellow boots … wondering if I had unknowingly wandered into a yet-to-be-filmed episode of “The X-Files.” I snorkeled among barracudas, squids, octopuses and moray eels, ever mindful of what else lurked in the deep blue beyond. I picked up a bullfrog and got peed on. I grabbed a water snake by the tail and let its bowels empty onto my shoes.

Through everything that has happened, regardless of who was with me at the time, I did it all alone. My mind has become a prison -- years and years of solitary confinement. Even so, I still know how it feels to laugh and smile. And I actually do those things every so often.

Falling

It's been 20 years since I've been here, I think as I make a left into the parking lot. By now it's probably an over-trafficked hellhole littered with trash, cigarette butts and empty bottles of Gatorade.

Imagine my surprise.

It's July 4th, and this time I'm at Ricketts Glen State Park, about 25 miles north of Bloomsburg, Pa. Ten minutes into hiking something called the Falls Trail, I realize it's quite possibly more pristine than when I was 12: lush, reasonably untamed, peaceful. It's one of the most incredible places I've ever hiked. The 7.5-mile trail unfolds beneath my feet in no time. I creep behind waterfalls, stumble upon a baby snapping turtle and meet a talkative local who gladly shares the secret to finding trout in a rock-strewn stream ... not that I have any reason to find them, other than just to look at them.

The largest waterfall on the trail -- Ganoga Falls, if I remember correctly -- measures 94 feet from top to bottom. Niagara it's not, but there's much less neon. What's amazing is that one could easily lose his footing and plummet to his death on the exposed trail, which is often soaked as it winds between the falls. And no one's stopping you. I can't think of a better definition of freedom than the ability to hang over the edge of a waterfall without someone telling me I can't do it. I think: Happy Fourth of July.

You hear so much about therapy and meditation and the need to wind down. Me? I do some of my best thinking while hiking by myself in the middle of nowhere. There's nothing to get in the way, nothing to keep the brain from doing its job. And it's amazing that you can still go somewhere and, for 10 minutes straight, hear nothing but birds chirping, leaves rustling and the ground crunching beneath your feet ... oh, and the sound of water streaming down a face of jagged stone.

Do yourself a favor: Find a backpack, load it up with a few bottles of water and something with which to fill your stomach, and head to this gem in south-central Pennsylvania.

Cold

Sunday morning. The outskirts of Chicago. 5 a.m. I don't want to open my eyes. There are so many reasons why.

Perhaps it's the lightning. Perhaps it's the hail pelting the building. Perhaps it's the rain raking the windows, beating the suburbs to a pulpy mass. It sounds like the walls are coming down, like god's fists slapping the door and telling me to wake up and live my life before he yanks it out from beneath me. It's unnatural, this storm. I pull the covers over my head and wait for it to pass. Nothing can harm me here, beneath a thin layer of stained cotton. Hours pass. The sun will make an appearace, I surmise.

After breakfast at the coffee shop, which is much busier than usual -- Father's Day, I remember suddenly -- it's time to start the day. The zoo, I figure: Brookfield, down 22nd Street somewhere. All the traffic lights are dead. Trees are bent in half. One hell of a storm. Why do people live here? Why don't I live here?

I haven't been to a zoo in at least five years, mostly because I just haven't taken the time. But my heart is changing when it comes to keeping wild animals in captivity. I have the proverbial blood of tens of snakes, lizards, turtles, newts, salamanders and at least one slug on my hands from my childhood, when I played warden to too many reptiles and amphibians unlucky enough to cross my path during walks in the woods. But like I said, I'm changing.

I understand the role that zoos play: educating the public to care about animals before it's too late. I probably wouldn't care as much about animals today if my parents hadn't taken the time to make me care by introducing me to nature, which included going to zoos and aquariums. I also understand that while relatively few may suffer behind bars, in captivity, halfway to insanity, they have the potential to help so many others. I guess the hangup there comes with the word "potential." No one really knows where the money goes, from the parking and the souvenir shops and the concession stands and the passes to assorted dolphin and stingray shows. No one knows. So are they suffering for a reason, these captives?

It's brisk for an afternoon in early summer. I spend the next three hours wandering the zoo, alone with the "slightly crushing pain" (great band name) of depression and confusion that's been weighing me down. I'm just watching. None of it affects me. I stand a foot from a bear -- behind glass, of course -- that outweighs me by three-hundred pounds. And I have to keep from yawning. Even the "Feathers & Scales" exhibit, where all things cold-blooded congregate, doesn't excite me. (OK, I'd be lying if I said I didn't crack a smile at the sight of the alligator snapping turtle in the Swamp exhibit. That's him, also known in some circles as Macroclemys temminckii, pictured.) So I leave in search of something that might arouse some kind of feeling in me.

In my pocket I find a solution: car keys that can take me away from here, and the promise of solitude and comfort in the form of pizza and a good book.

The Interview

I'm lucky. I have a good job that, on most days, I like a lot. I get to be creative. I have a lot of freedom. And I get to "meet" new people every day. They tell me their stories. They tell me how they feel. And the ones that you can get to trust you, they'll tell you anything. People love to talk about themselves. I know I do, but I'll spill my guts only to the people I know I can trust, to those I know won't hurt me. Everyone else ... they're at arm's length. Call it a defense mechanism.

I was in New York City a couple of weeks ago. It was a Saturday night, and a few friends -- not really friends, per se, just fellow lost souls -- and I drove up to watch a band I remember from my youth: Warrior Soul. If you don't remember them, that's no surprise. They didn't do much in terms of penetrating the pop-culture membrane. But they made some memorable, politically charged music that was somewhere between punk and cock rock.

The show starts at 11:30. I stand through some boring opening bands while downing a couple of Red Bulls and a Sierra Nevada. I'd been hiking earlier in the day at a place called the Pinnacle, so I was spent. It was an experience being in the middle of nowhere, on the top of a mountain, at midday, then being in the center of the universe just seven hours later. But I needed the company. I'm lonely, you see ... just like everybody else.

This girl keeps bumping into me. She's young. Compared to me, at an ancient 35, everyone is young, I figure. I'm not sure if she's flirting or if it's just a coincidence, like when you lock eyes with someone in a restaurant and every time you look their way, their eyes meet yours. It's awkward. It's funny. And it's deliciously tense. I move away from her, just to be safe. Unless I'm being paid to do it, I'm not much for small talk.

Warrior Soul takes the stage some time around 1 a.m., and they play till close to 2:30 a.m. Decent set. It makes me think of the first time I saw them live, at the Airport Music Hall in Allentown, Pa., 18 years earlier. (I still can't believe that was 18 years ago.) The more things change ... well, you know the rest. The only remnant from the original Warrior Soul: Kory Clarke, the lead singer. (That's him in the photo.) He still sounds good, puts on an energetic show. Good ol' boy from Detroit. He's got some new guys playing with him, from Iceland or Sweden or Greenland or someplace in the middle of the world I'll probably never get to see.

The show ends, and we take the time to thank the band, to say hi to Kory. I thank him for a great show, and he hugs me. That's cool of him. I figure we'll be heading back to Philly soon. But this is the first time I've spent "quality time" with my companions. New York is to be enjoyed in large doses, by their estimation. We meet a friend of a friend and head to a dive bar 10 blocks away. I don't feel much like drinking, but I do because it's offered: a Blue Moon. I hate beer. It makes me angry. Fortuitously, we head to a falafel shop around the corner. It's the highlight of the night. We spend the next hour talking with Mohammed, the guy who runs the place and makes one hell of a falafel. He tells us about Madonna's multimillion-dollar condo around the corner one minute, and the homeless plague the next.

I love hearing this guy's story. I find, rather quickly, that I'm interviewing him, as if I'm working. I ask about his wife and kids -- he lives in Brooklyn because Manhattan is "no place to raise a family" -- and if the economy is having any effect on business. "No," he tells me. His falafel is too damn good for people to not buy it, he says. (He won't get any argument from me.) He leans against someone else's car and smokes a cigarette. I tend to have an immediate dislike for most smokers. This guy ... I don't care if he smokes or not. I just care that he's happy. Eventually, we part ways. He shakes my hand and thanks me for giving him money.

We -- the two guys I came up with and me -- head back to the crummy bar. Where there are trees, there are birds singing. It's practically dawn. We're back in the bar for 10 minutes and -- thank you, god -- it's closing time. Finally, somewhere around 4:30 a.m., we decide to head for home. Home. Someone flags down a cab and five people cram in. I feel like a kid again.

The night is over, I realize, as the cabbie drops us off somewhere familiar. We're back at the car. We pull out of the parking garage and head south, toward Philly, as the sun starts to silhouette the skyscrapers behind us. I'm in a different world, and I'm leaving it in my wake. Somewhere in the middle of having a horrible night with people I barely know, I was able to carve out a hell of a great night. I smile and take notice of it. This is new, I think.

The driver -- he and I have known each other for 20 years -- puts in a punk CD I've never before heard. And I don't ever need to hear it again. Most punk never appealed to me. He blasts it, probably to keep himself awake. And that's cool. I stuff gobs of neon pink into my ears and close my eyes. I wake up two hours later, back in Pennsylvania, on a beautiful Sunday morning.

It's 6:30 a.m., and it's time for bed. I walk to my car, put the key into the ignition and drive off. Back to the real world.

Ghost in Gotham

New York. Again. Sigh. I think: I'd rather be someplace else. No fewer than six someplace-else destinations pop into my head. But it could be much, much worse. I have no real problems, I remind myself. I have work to do here, and that's a good thing. I'm still needed. I'm still, for the moment, valuable.

It's dreary, overcast and muggy. A heat wave is imminent. I'm actually excited as I watch the buildings pass by. Falafel shops. Porn dens. Dunkin' Donuts everywhere. Then there are the trash piles. I remind myself that I'm reading too many travel books lately. The current: "Do Travel Writers Go to Hell?" by Thomas Kohnstamm. It's a decent read, about a lost soul trying to find his way in Brazil, home of the FARC (actually, I guess they're in neighboring Colombia), green anacondas and a few decent death-metal bands.

It's 9:30 a.m. on a Thursday in early June, and I'm stepping out of a cab. The driver leaves me at the mouth of the Paramount Hotel on 46th Street, a stone skip from Times Square. It's under construction. There's nothing but an exoskeleton of scaffolding. A small sign tells me I'm at the right place. The light fades as I leave the street.

Inside it's a much different place. I step through the door and forget where I am. Am I still in the United States, I wonder. The lobby is dimly lit, but the decor shines through the darkness: cut glass, wood, stone. It's elemental, atmospheric. An undercurrent of house music never stops, not even for a beat. It's much different than the Residence Inns and La Quintas I'm used to overnighting in for work. But I suppose it fits for New York City.

The people around me are strange, aliens. Wannabe rock stars cradling their guitar coffins. Businessmen, international, by the looks of them. Gorgeous women of every race and age. Impossibly gorgeous -- plastic, fake, laughable. But I must look the same way to them, I figure: from another planet. Saturn or Neptune, I hope. Those are the best two. Actually, I probably don't even register as a blip on their collective radar. To them I'm wallpaper. Suddenly I feel underdressed. But I'm on assignment. I have to be "on." Otherwise I'd head out the door and get lost somewhere, just to be lost, just to be alone with my thoughts. I do that too much, I remind myself. Forks clank against porcelain, somewhere. Elevators ding. Mouths speak. They don't form words, just noise.

I meet a business acquaintance: a guy I've known for three years but have seen only twice since we first met in Salt Lake City. He's happy to see me. A third joins us and we head to an upstairs cafe for breakfast: yogurt, fruit, coffee. We talk business, spend some time watching videos, scroll through a PowerPoint presentation. It's nice to be speaking with real, live humans for a change. A fourth joins us. He's older but friendly. He's easy to talk to. He makes jokes, provides a few quotes for the story I'll be writing at a later date. I think: I'm glad I'm here.

An hour later, we part ways. I'm on foot, shooting down Broadway. Along the way I notice people gathered on a corner, staring upward. Nobody in New York stops for anything. Immediately I think it, and my lips follow: "King Kong. Please let it be King Kong." Life's more interesting when things such as King Kong, Godzilla, werewolves and other assorted monsters really exist. It turns out some daredevil is scaling the New York Times building. Good for him. I respect him already. But I keep moving.

I'm in the flow, cutting through the crowd and making my own path. I get lost in the sea of people. I'm at elbows with thousands, but I'm alone. I'm unnoticed, a ghost. Then the smell hits me. I must be in New York.

Demonic Hips

Thank god for the Internet. (Is it strange that I capitalized "Internet" and didn't capitalize "god"? Does that allude to what's really important to me?) I was lost on YouTube a few weeks ago and happened upon the most amazing link, something for which the Internet was built: a video of Shakira's "Hips Don't Lie" fused together with footage of Glenn Danzig borrowed from old Danzig videos and a snappy pseudo-Misfits riff. Click here for your enjoyment.

I'm a huge Danzig fan and have been since 1989. I still go to his shows when his tour takes him to Philadelphia and its outer rim. I find his music -- yes, even some of the new stuff -- inspiring and powerful. While some of his fans compare his lyrics to poetry, I won't go that far. But his words are certainly provocative. (An example: "I'm gonna stand on top of the world and / Challenge the heavens / Gonna bring you god.") He should be a motivational speaker some day. Or maybe a zookeeper. Or, better yet, a maker of crossword puzzles as the only logical successor to Will Shortz.

I had never heard Shakira's "music" before uncovering this gem. I think I've heard all I need to hear. I'm sure she's a nice person and a lot of fun to hang out with. She does a great "Robot" too, but I'm not in her camp, as the kids like to say. [Scene: "I'm just not a fan of your work, Shakira." Shakira says nothing, just stands there, eyes tearing up. "Please don't take it personally. ... Stop, please don't cry." She runs off, hands shielding her face. Crushed, she doesn't watch her footsteps and trips over a half-empty Slurpee. She twists her ankle, only worsening the pain that's eating away at her and undoing her confidence. Her bodyguard advances and blankets me in his shadow. "This is going to hurt, isn't it?" I ask. He cracks his knuckles and smiles sadistically. End of scene.] Sorry you had to see that. But I'm quite sure that sleeping on her bed of money will soften the blow of me not respecting her as an artist.

Oh yeah, the video. Watching that video for the first time was a peanut-butter-and-jelly moment. I've watched it at least three times a day since I dug it up and have shared it with other people close to me. Strangely, no one else gets nearly as excited. That's OK; we all have our problems. Even though the duet never really happened, it's reality as far as I'm concerned. In my mind, it did happen. But if that's the case, why can't I find the single on iTunes? Dammit.

It got me thinking of other great audio combinations that will probably never collide: Megadeth and Earth Wind & Fire. Sepultura and Keane. The Dixie Chicks and Agnostic Front. Jack Johnson and Doomriders. Cro-Mags and Rufus Wainwright. Anthrax and Public Enemy. Oh wait ...

So there is hope. Maybe one day Danzig and Shakira will not only record this great single but also tour together, collaborate on a musical, fall in love, get hitched and buy a dog. He can show her the finer points of mixed martial arts, black concert T-shirts and demons. She can teach him all there is to know about bare midriffs, Spanish verbs and things that sparkle.

It's destiny, I tell you.

Downtown

Why am I so stupid? I spent two weeks in Chicago and Madison, Wis., last month and forgot my camera. I usually visit Chicago once a month for work, but this was the first time I got to see downtown in the light of day for any extended period of time. It's a breathtaking place.

With all due respect to New York and Philadelphia (my hometown), Chicago is the greatest American city. I must admit that I'm by no means a "city guy," but I'm beginning to appreciate the charms of tall buildings and bustling streets. I prefer trees and mountains and streams and open spaces to the closeness and coldness and din of the city. But Chicago is just ... different. It's sort of its own wilderness.

I went downtown one Saturday morning, crossing my fingers that an impending storm would darken someone else's day. Luckily, the lakefront winds or whatever unseen forces are responsible for Chicago's schizophrenic weather produced blue skies and temperatures in the high 60s. I walked the city through the afternoon, from Lakeshore Drive to "The Bean" in Millennium Park (pictured) to the subterranean Billy Goat Tavern to the Wrigley Building by the Chicago River, logging close to 10 miles -- a guess -- by the time I found my way back to the parking garage. The pictures will be preserved, but only in the rattling box inside my head.

I'm spending more time in cities of late, including two trips to New York in the past two weeks. And last weekend, 45,000 of my closest friends and I ran in the Susan G. Komen Race for the Cure 5K in downtown Philly. Again, idiot me left the camera at home. I've lived here all my life, but it was the first time I got such a deep appreciation for the city itself. Maybe it was the endorphins. Maybe it was the promise of soft pretzels at the finish line. I'm harder on Philly than most people who live here, probably unfairly at times, so I was surprised at my newfound affection for the city. It's a beautiful place if you look hard enough.

Still, it's no match for Chicago.

The Way Things Are

I just finished reading a book called "The Power of Story." It's one of those self-help books to help lost souls find their way by changing the way they view and, therefore, think about life. A big part of the book talks about "the way things are," meaning the way people get conditioned to think about their lives, their pursuits, their days and their purpose on this earth as unchangeable. Mostly, "the way things are" is a negative device. People don't change because they're afraid, lazy or both. I fall into the same trap, mostly out of fear.

That phrase came to mind when I opened an e-mail of a recording shot in 1992, featuring a 12-year-old girl named Severn Suzuki speaking to world leaders at a United Nations conference about the environment. She spoke about the way things were in Vancouver, her birthplace. She spoke about how humanity had polluted the rivers and lakes, how species disappeared with little protest, how most people didn't share with others even in times of abundance, how we're poisoning the earth because we can't yet see the consequences ... because those consequences haven't yet affected us personally. That kind of stuff matters only when it disrupts our own interests.

This is the way things are. It was in 1992, and it still is today. I was glad to learn Severn has followed her pursuits and has made much of herself in the 16 years since she made that speech to the U.N. She's an activist doing good things for someone somewhere, according to her Wikipedia profile. It makes me hopeful that there's still time for me to do the same.