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The Death Of Jairo Lopez

The Death Of Jairo Lopez

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Or Puss In Boots: The Last death

Jairo Lopez is a man, men are mortal, Jairo is mortal. When I write that name I am referring to myself but it’s not me, it’s the version of me that slots into your mind when you hear that name. If you’ve never heard it before then an impression is already beginning to form. That impression can become complex and informed by real experiences but it will always be just an elaborately built network of associations you make of me. There are perhaps hundreds of Jairos living in the minds of all my friends and family each of them a little different, imperfect copies of me that come into conflict with each other as perspectives change. These shadow clones are not mortal, they are eternal in the way that ideas can exist forever. I carry in me the ideas of all the friends and family I’ve lost over the years, holding them arrested and transfixed in time as I knew them. They perform in scenes of my memories, ambiguous actors in dubious plays with the same start and the same finish but always different in between. I may pass on these productions to others who may not know the original versions, a hasty rendition of a badly transcribed opera. They may retell it to others still, each time it jumps from person to person the actors in the plays become less true to their creators until only ripples of emotions and colors are left. The imaginary people and memories are distilled to the very essence of sensory perception, crushed into the miasma from which our very thoughts spring and in which the selfhood sits.

In this way we are not mortal, we cannot truly die. As our physical bodies return to the Earth so do our spirits live on in the collective human conscious via those we have touched. If we all exist as a conjunction of mind, body and spirit then upon our death each of these realms are released, disentangled from being. The body persists through the soil, the spirit lives in the hearts of others, but what becomes then of the mind? It ceases to exist…it’s the true death and no one can experience it but me for my mind is uniquely and unequivocally mine. Or rather, my mind is me, it gives me the ability to be a self in opposition to the other and it is unknowable to you.

My body seems to want to keep reminding me of that impending death. This time it was a gall stone, one I was carrying unknowingly but which demanded its presence known to me via an incredible pain in my upper right abdomen. In a flashback to the events from my birthday three months previous, once again I was stuck in a public bathroom writhing in pain. This time there was an overwhelming sense of pain, which triggered the symptoms from before: nausea, lightheadedness, difficulty of breath. Public bathrooms are such wonderful things, truly you never know what you could be walking into at one. I don’t know why I felt more comfortable suffering in the silence of a stall while my friends waited outside, presumably starting to wonder if something had gone wrong as the minutes ticked by. Indeed they walked in at some point to ask if I was okay. But how do I explain the iceberg of feeling and symptoms I had experienced in the span of the last hour or so? The deluge emotions and thoughts passing by my brain as I bargained with primordial forces to absolve of me of the little demon pushing his way through my insides. How could I explain the reconfiguring of my limbs and stomach to ease pain if even slightly, standing up and sitting down again when I thought I would lose consciousness and fall to the floor? So I told them I had a stomach ache but was okay.

I couldn’t monologue at them all that I felt as I was still going through it. Even in the present I was projecting myself in the future talking about the very events I was going through. This is a technique (or coping mechanism?) I picked up from some of the long distance cycling I do. Disassociate from the present you and think about how future you will look back on the events you are going through. Perhaps this comes from a strong desire for the present to be the past, if only time could pass faster through a sheer act of will. Most notably when I projected my thoughts forward some version of me, now relaxed and past the event, was discussing perhaps with you dear reader about what happened that night in the bathroom stall, ipso facto I wasn’t dead. I didn’t believe I would die and yet are we all not one terrible accident away from death? But there’s a difference between being killed and dying.

Eventually the intensity of the pain passed through like a storm. As it faded I thought about how objectively I should have dashed to the emergency room because I knew this was not a normal pain regardless of the rationalizing thoughts I began to have. Again my mind tries to play tricks on me, after the pain is gone already it begins to erase the internal promises I had made to myself and to soften the freshly minted memories into a nostalgic film instead of a blueprint of my doom. I resolved to at the very least see my doctor the next day. Which in our current healthcare system is a bigger undertaking than I knew. I couldn’t see my doctor but I saw a doctor and phenomenologically speaking that’s the same so screw it. I felt fine but the next day I was told to go to the ER because I had signs of liver damage. My own liver betrayed me, so this is how it would be I thought, there is no mind over matter, only mind in spite of matter.

The hospital kept me for 4 days. I had to watch my tightly scheduled and varied days fall part into one haze of cable TV and liquid meals. Each time I had to cancel a meet up I felt a pang of loss for a moment I would never be able to live. It’s a small price to pay to make sure I could stay alive but that’s 4 days diverted like a railroad from good times city to bad times central. I’m not the first to make this comparison but it felt like a prison, sure I was free to leave at any point, but I didn’t want to keel over after my first slice of pizza back home. So I sat there as my world shrank down from the greater metropolitan area of Los Angeles into a single room in Harbor City. As my agency dwindled, my problems and obsessions also narrowed in scope. If you have not realized how used to living life in the abstract we are then stay at a hospital for a couple days. I read this example in Irrational Man by Barrett: when you think of 2+2 do you stop and take the time to prove the 2,913 subtheorems that allow us to come to the answer 4? No, someone else has done that for us so we are free to go trotting about telling people 2+2=4 like medieval math gods. Being in the hospital was like removing these abstractions from my everyday life. The best parts of the days where the meals, and I would make sure to keep the phone next to my bed so I could order exactly what I wanted from the cafeteria. And OH! that bloody phone, a cruel joke played upon me by Fortuna. Unbeknownst to me the phone I had did not ring, so for the first two days I was not able to make a choice, all they gave me was the most milquetoast meal available. Being robbed of these choices was of course where the feeling of imprisonment came from. My days involved meticulously planning when I would stand up from bed and use the restroom so I didn’t have to drag my IV and medical pole behind me. I would strategically read my book at regular intervals so I didn’t get bored of the TV or the book too quickly. At night when sleep would come I welcomed it as I knew it was the single fastest way to pass the time. Just weeks ago I was exploring the cradle of my family in El Salvador, poring over ancient Mayan ruins, and zip lining across volcanic jungles and now I was here warring with a telephone and planning when to stand up and pace my room. Outside this prison I never have to stop and think about these things, in fact each moment I can spend reading my book or catching a tv show is a breath of fresh air in a fast paced life. That is the power of abstraction.

My doctors informed I developed an infection in my blood probably caused by the passing of the gallstone. In an existential jape I was symptomless, apparently they caught it early enough that I suffered no ill effects. Are you still sick if you don’t feel sick? Even with the knowledge that I had the infection I didn’t feel any better about being in the hospital. Perhaps if I had just a tiny fever, enough to whet that drive for self pity I could have withstood the experience a lot more easily. I started a round of antibiotics which I ended up having to take home in the form of a long term intravenous line in my arm, with a snaking plastic thread laid deep in my veins. I had an access panel, like a Cronenbergian version of the tin man needing direct access to his inner fluids. You know what they say, you can take the man out of the hospital but you can’t take the hospital out of the man. It was all very inconveniencing but the sobering thought I kept having was that 100 years ago I’d be laid out on my back literally dying of a fever from an infection I could have never prevented caused by simple stone from a near obsolete organ blocking my bile ducts. Again the abstraction of modern life rears its ugly head, without antibiotics I would be withering away without a hope or a prayer in sight of getting better. It would be a violent, disgusting end no doubt as the bacteria in my blood slowly started to destroy all my organs one by one. Yet in our blessedly modern society, I was complaining that I never had a symptom at all. I thought about how many times I would be dead by 1800s society standards. That one time I had cellulitis in my leg, that second time it happened a year later, that one time after the car accident, this new gallstone incident.
Four times over I’d be dead, perhaps we should all keep an internal count lest we believe that thought terminating cliche: YOLO.

During my reading in the hospital I came across a passage from The Death Of Ivan Ilyich. The passage clearly resonated with me in the way that only a perfectly aligned moment in time can, so I ordered it and read it within the week. Ivan lives the perfect, complete life at least by the standards he has been taught. One day he bumps into the side of a table while decorating a room. An innocuous bump that somehow ends up gradually killing him. Needless to say my reading of this involved Ivan passing a particularly troublesome gallstone. He experiences physical pain at first but over time he starts to be tormented by his mental anguish until they become entangled and inseparable, the death of his body becomes the death of him. The pain in his side represents his inevitable death but it also serves as a beacon of illumination that cuts through the falsities of his life. He tries to go about business as usual, performing all the rituals that brought him joy and comfort before but the constant nagging pain does not let him slip back into complacency and he realizes that these things never actually brought him happiness at all they were only useful in allowing him to never confront his death and so to never confront his life.

As he begins to accept that he will die, the complete bullshit of every day existence angers him and he sees the masks all his friends and family wear. He feels as if he’s sitting next to this unknowable, eternal void that everyone around him refuses to see and which compared against the pettiness of their rituals do not matter. Playing Bridge with his friends was his favorite activity and as he realized he will die he stops caring for it. This is contrasted with the the fact that at his funeral his closest friend decides he wants to go catch a game of Bridge since the service ended early enough. Your friend’s death is not your own. What does it take to shake everyone out of the abstraction of ritualistic life? Coming close to your own death changes you, and although we know of it, when we meet it perhaps then is when we actually begin our lives. When you stare into that eternal, unthinkable void what will stare back? Ivan wondered if he had lived a good life, and he cannot admit that he did not because if he did it would require him to die a death of the spirit and reorient his entire existence.

Which at last brings me to Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (spoilers ahead I guess?). How could I know that when I dragged my little brothers to the theatre on Christmas morning I would be treated to such a deceptively Tolstoyan film about a cartoon cat. Puss In Boots is on his last life, a respectable 9 compared to my measly 5, when he meets death. He’s died in the same way that I have died, deaths that have been abstracted away not by modern medicine in his case but by fairy tale logic. At last he comes face to face with true death, literally in the form of a wolf. Unlike Ivan Ilyich he recedes into a false life where he is in a purgatory of rituals and adopts a mask in the form of a beard. This mundane existence is a death-in-life which compared to his previous lives is a shadow of his existence. Yet before he met death, he lived a life-in-death, never stopping to have real purpose or meaning because without knowing he would or could die he lived only in service to his legend, the idea of a Puss In Boots not his authentic self. He finally shakes himself out of his depression and latches on to the notion that he can regain his former existence by getting more “lives”. We know that he can’t ever do that though because after knowing death, he is irrevocably changed as becomes apparent in how he interacts with the characters going forward. He meets his former self at first metaphorically in the echos how he affected his former partner Kitty Softpaws and then later on more literally as all his previous incarnations are present to convince him to abandon his newfound morals. The change in him is clear as he does not recognize his present self in his former actions and he realizes he can never un-know this. The only thing he can do is stop fearing death and dedicate himself to a purposeful meaningful existence. Like Ivan Ilyich, he dies a spiritual last death so that he can begin life anew. Of course I see myself in the cat, trying to ease the burden of existence by continuing to perform in the theatre of Jairo’s life. While I don’t exactly feel like I have lived rudderlessly it’s a reminder that there’s nothing wrong with taking stock of life, taking a quick peek at the void to measure up against what you’ve been doing lately. The truth will always come out in that moment when you ask yourself, have I lived a good life?

32: The Birthday Dispatch

32: The Birthday Dispatch

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Boldly walking out the door in Lancaster. Apparently, an incredible tempting of fate.

I was born today 32 years ago. But before I go into the thoughts, mood and growth of the previous year I want to tell you how my day went. I always take my birthday off, there’s no force on planet earth that will convince me that I should ignore this day. If you know me then you know I hardly lack reasons or excuses to celebrate and yet in practice today is the most socially acceptable day in which I can wax poetic about myself and indulge in the obsessions that have driven me this year and all years. So like every year I was poised to have a self serving adventure through my laundry list of peculiarities. I watched Halloween Ends on Friday, did cheese tasting on Saturday, had the family party on Sunday and today (Monday) would be for my own brand of entertainment. I was all set to watch Tar, a film about the worlds greatest conductor and composer (a fictional one or else this movie would be called Williams). As you know I love music compositions, classical, film, or even video game related. So this movie was a great film to kick off the events of today.

I was sitting at the Alamo, which is one my favorite theatres to visit in the heart of DTLA because of their reverence for the act of watching a film in addition to the film itself. But of course I also go for the ever rotating selections of food, spirits and beers. Yet today I was sandwiched between two film goers enjoying a pizza and fries respectively. But to my nose it smelled like the olfactory dimension of a junk yard full of rotting corpses (to keep these metaphors topical). I knew something was wrong as my stomach began to churn and a cold clamminess swept over my body. The munching sounds my neighbors were making were calling into question my own reliance on my ears as sources of pleasure, and the damned smell haunted me every minute that the film played, needless to say I could not pay attention. Finally as the waves of nausea seized me I scurried to the restroom and sat upon the throne of shame.

I couldn’t help but connect the dots to the novel I had just finished reading, amusingly entitled Nausea. In it the protagonist feels a feeling he can only describe as nausea as he dissociates with the essence of things around him, entering into a realm where the universe is contingent, threatening to change at any second. I found it hard to philosophize over the feeling that seized me (at the time) but I can definitely say that in the blink of an eye my being was fractured into the various parts that make up my sense of identity. My body asserted itself as the dominating force of my existence, and my mind was left to try and rationalize what was happening. And it did, very quickly I knew I had some sort of food poisoning, and I mentally flipped through the decadent courses of birthday feasting I had done over the past two days and couldn’t pinpoint the culprit. Of course that was merely an exercise in passing the time as my body seized all my senses, forcing me to retreat inwards as I lay doubled over in pain in the physical realm. Its hard to believe in the mantra of the athlete, mind over body, at a moment like this for there was nothing I could do to cease the black dread that coursed through my innermost chambers.

Was this what 32 promised to be? It was as if my body pulled in the leash I was on, reminding me that I am a prisoner in this fleshy vessel and lest I forget, it is a slave to time and the condition of aging. Somewhere in between the mind and the body lay my spirit, quietly crying out in the desperation of knowing the problem but being able to do nothing except let it run its course. Though the rational, scientific reason for my ailment was food poisoning, spiritually I felt that I was paying the price for the Dionysian way I chose to celebrate the weekend. Both reasons are true simultaneously in the way that that your favorite movie can be the best thing ever and also complete trash.

I eventually employed the oldest trick in the book, the one I use to bicycle up GMR or up to Mt Wilson, I tried to ignore the pain. That’s a two way street though because if you’re not looking at the monster, you don’t know what it will do next. As I lay there trying my hardest to cross into the astral plane I felt the final lurches, the sudden cotton mouth, the radiating goosebumps where I knew my end lay. I got on the floor, hugged the toilet and waited. If it only it were that all my problems could be solved by simply expelling them with extreme prejudice from inside of me. The social anxiety that comes from being in a room full of strangers? Hurl it into a trashcan on a way into a party. The fear of death? Leave in the restroom of the nearest funeral parlor. The despair that your favorite breakfast burrito place has irrevocably changed its burrito? Loosely wrap it up in yellow parchment paper and toss it into a gutter.

A cold sweat gripped me and where before I wasn’t able to even stand without feeling the gravitational pull of the earth drag me down, I was made whole again as the inner dimensions of my self corrected course. I couldn’t go back into the movie after this episode, the whole world had changed. As I walked the streets of Los Angeles I realized that my favorite indulgence, that which I would have reveled in today: the delicious phenomenology of eating a pastry, of sipping a cocktail, of drinking a coffee had been robbed from me as my stomach made painfully aware as I tried to drink water on my way out of the theatre. In this state of un-jaironicity I was forced to accept that mind over matter is not true, but perhaps this was an omen to follow other pursuits.

The streets of downtown reminded me that the city is not a luxurious place. The luxury sits atop it, floating over the apartments of the middle class and the poor. Like a well made cappuccino: the rich, white foam floats above the coffee, and the grounds which have had their very essence removed in service of the drink have been unceremoniously tossed aside. If you are so unlucky as to find some inside the cup, at the bottom of the drink, who among us is hearty enough to enjoy them as the basic building blocks of your coffee. More than likely you spit them out and leave them on the sidewalk with the grime, and the dirt of those who the city is built upon.

Which brings me at last to my recap of 31, it’s the year I rediscovered my voice which lay dormant, and nestled in a web of films, books, and music hoping that the sheer volume and variety of them would impart some knowledge of my self to the universe. The more I read the less likely I knew this would be and even though these words exist in an imperfect format, one perhaps even more vulnerable to the ravages of time than good old paper, let no one say that I did not try to at least write some of my thoughts down to be handed down through the generations to those who wish to know an insane amount of useless trivia. I have found a titillating fountain of writing in the works of great western and eastern philosophers and those who wish to know what truly shapes the world and our times should start there. Learn about the introduction of the rational into the collective human consciousness, it’s never ending battle with faith, and at last its rejection in favor if the irrational at least when it comes to the question of “Who Am I?”. There’s nothing rational about being a person, we each exist as a separate and distinct entity, our mere act of living corrupting any overarching hypothesis for the explanation of mankind. Here I am sipping on a cocktail in defiance of my earlier bodily episode, knowing full well that I might re-trigger the stomach pains, but I (the philosophical I)exists first and I make the rules when it comes to how I shall suffer.

Okay but it’s called the Armageddon and it’s awesome.

Eddie Munson reminded me of what pure love of metal is, perhaps it’s not a lifestyle as I always believed, perhaps it’s a philosophy or perhaps it’s a religion. The individual’s battle against the tyrannies of the universe, the proclivity to unearth the skeletons under the bed, the altar of worship: the stack of amps, the darkly lit stage, the ritual sacrifice of sweat and energy. There’s much to be written about and my brain can only remain focused for so long before chasing the next croissant on my bicycle down a badly paved road on a hot day. Yet the smattering of traveling I’ve done this year made me aware that the wealth of context, history, and information out there will outlast and outlive any one person’s attempt at stitching together the whole of human existence. So in light of the impossible my goal is to do the improbable and stitch together the whole of mine own existence every hour of every day for as long as I can. Maybe 32 is an age where I am increasingly in service to my body but perhaps I can sharpen the mind, and the resiliency of the spirit as well.

IL Bidone

IL Bidone

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I had a dream a couple weeks ago that I can’t remember save for one detail. The titular theme from Fellini’s movie Il Bidone played at some point over whatever crisis I was facing in my dream. I have vague memory of rolling my eyes at the circumstance I found myself in. I felt something like a quiet exasperation, as if I was being made the punchline of the film playing out in my mind. Il Bidone is about this group of conmen and hucksters who very often cross the line from morally ambiguous to downright cruel. They pose as church members and city officials to scam people, usually farmers, out of their life savings and never look back. Yet, realizing that these are not lifelong careers some of the younger protagonists exit the life one by one as they set their sights on more stable enterprises. Except Augusto who cannot stop playing the role of swindler because he is addicted to the life, or perhaps more accurately, he’s not playing at it because he was born a con artist and will die one. Eventually Augusto in his immense audacity tries to con the very conmen he’s with out of the money they just stole by pretending to have a burgeoning conscience. The audience knows that he needs a lot of money to give to his estranged daughter so she can go to college, yet it remains ambiguous whether this was his hail Mary effort to get it for her, or whether he just would have kept it. The audience is left questioning his motives as he is left to die on the side of cliff, left there by his colleagues in thievery.

So why would these themes invade my dreaming mind. We’ve all heard of impostor syndrome, the feeling that you don’t belong and that you will be discovered for the phony that you are at same time as you are receiving what you feel to be unjust praise. It’s the other side of the coin to assuming roles in our daily lives, the acute awareness that we are not who we are pretending to be. To me this is a sign of a disconnection between the standards we hold ourselves to and the standards of others. As humans we shift in and out of various states constantly experiencing ourselves as the object of others’ gaze as Sartre would put it. This wrestling with the perception of you by others can lead to a tunnel vision: trying to be the perfect waiter to your customers, the perfect son to you parents, the perfect athlete to your coach. Yet since we are not objects but multidimensional beings setting our measure of success to perfection has already assured we fail, at least in our own eyes. So the feelings of inadequacy are our own creation, and I would banish them by simply admitting: Yeah I could be better but you know what, I’m already pretty damn good.

Yet if we take impostor syndrome one step further, are we con artists? That’s the real fear, that we are inadvertently tricking everyone into metaphorically giving us their life savings by placing their trust in us. If we decide that yes we are impostors and that we’re not gonna stop then we have crossed an ethical boundary which we can’t come back from. This border area between the ethical and unethical is where we wrestle internally with ourselves. Most of us would try to lower expectations, deflect praise, and admit failure readily in an effort to further distance ourselves from that borderline. Yet am I Augusto? Am I in for a penny, in for a pound? Self-advocacy can feel as if I’m walking around dressed up as a priest telling the people around me about how awesome the church is and how just with a little bit of money we can make the much needed repairs to the house of God. Then I take their money, ditch the priest robes in a garbage can and use it to buy Slayer records. Maybe the invisible line is between humility and pride. Being humble gives us the chance to accept praise while hedging expectations, being proud can be seen as boastful, unjust and sinful. Yet in the modern society we live in, being loud is often the path to recognition. Maybe that’s why the Il Bidone theme is so fun, because sometimes you gotta play into the con but not so much that we are left for dead on the side of the road.

Mauled By Tour De Big Bear

Mauled By Tour De Big Bear

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I recently rewatched JAWS for no other reason than it’s a great movie to watch in the summer if you’re not planning on going swimming in the ocean. Imagine my surprise when I proceeded to watch Jordan Peele’s NOPE and noticed the former’s DNA all over it. The first part of JAWS is the slow realization of the threat. Shark attacks keep happening and the only person who seems to care is Chief Brody. The mayor cares, but only insofar as it doesn’t affect the tourism money that pours into the island every summer. The central conflict in the first two acts is thus setup as a battle between the dismissal of the shark as a threat which represents a primal force and Brody’s attempts to convince the town officials that the shark needs to be reckoned with. As the officials continuously downplay the shark and hamper Brody’s ability to neutralize it the body count keeps growing, as well as the boldness of the attacks. Spielberg aims to show us that we continuously take for granted our roles as alpha predators in the food chain, when humanity grows complacent nature comes to knock at our door.

In NOPE (spoilers), the film follows a similar pattern with the key difference that the monster is summoned not due to complacency and greed but to humanity’s need for spectacle. Ricky Park cannot help but be enchanted by the danger of the monster, his past is inextricably linked with close encounters of the dangerous kind. As a child he watched a chimpanzee brutally beat his co stars within an inch of their lives then seemingly faced the monkey himself only to come out unscathed. He at once grows a false confidence and a need to recreate that traumatic event over and over in his life. It ends in tragedy of course as a central theme of the film is that you can’t tame nature. Once he entices the beast, and makes eye contact its predator nature fully unfurls.

In both films there is an undercurrent of unappreciation for nature and its untamable forces. So what does this long winded preamble have to do with my bike ride? I too have taken for granted the sheer size and viciousness of the course I signed up for. I looked back at my Strava post for 2021 Tour De Big Bear and I called it one of the hardest rides I’ve ever done if not the hardest. In the subsequent year I’ve done harder rides, and perhaps this gave me a false sense that I could tackle the 100 mile course this year. Don’t get me wrong I set my sights on it almost immediately, and set up what I thought was a decent training plan to get me there. Yet at over 8000 feet of climbing over 100 miles, at an altitude of 6000 – 8000 feet it is a formidable monster.

I knew in the weeks leading up to the ride that I wasn’t ready, my speed and performance on some of the most recent rides I did was just not enough to meet the 10 hour cutoff time at TDBB. Perhaps for this reason I started to tell my friends who were also going that I was not going to make it, and to please not wait for me or anything like that. I was sowing the seeds doubt early on. This was, correctly, assumed to be pessimism on my part. Yet I knew in my heart it was the truth. I had taken for granted the rigor and discipline training for this ride required. I found it very hard to stick to my interval workouts, especially after the disappointing results of my second FTP test. It was demoralizing to be doing these interval rides that were not enjoyable for me and seeing no payoff. So my training after became limp and half hearted. Throw in a couple vacations, small injuries, hot summer days and the writing was on the wall.

Philosophically speaking, setting the expectation that I was not going to finish was an effort to reduce the vulnerability I faced by failing. For me optimistically tackling a challenge and not succeeding is magnitudes of order more emotionally damaging than meeting my goal of failing. Yet the question remains whether I sabotaged myself by resetting my desired outcome lower. The flip side to that is that surpassing one’s goals also is a reward in its own right. A sliver of me held on to the hope that I would somehow disprove myself and complete the course, even if took me all 10 hours to do it.

I started off on the wrong foot already by giving my legs perhaps too much of a workout the day before the ride in what was supposed to be a low effort warmup spin around the lake I was trying to play catchup with my powerhouse cycling friends. I went to sleep with very tired legs and I doubt I had fully recovered in the 5 hours it took for me to wake up and get ready for the big ride. However I still started off feeling great, there’s always adrenaline coursing through you when these big events happen, plus being able to start with my friends sets a good mood. I think my ride to first aid station was pretty good, I wasn’t breaking any records or anything but I was on pace to finish if I kept it up. My friends of course dropped me within the first 5 miles but it was as expected. I saw them once more as they were ascending the second climb of the day from the first aid station and I was descending towards it, a pattern which would repeat itself 5 hours later. I made the same mistake as last year and had to pee so badly at the bottom of that hill that I waited in line with the rest of the cyclists who were trying to use the portable toilet, time wasted. On my way back up the hill and through the north side of the lake I was starting to feel the familiar signs of exhaustion: cramping legs, sore back, sore saddle. Yet these hit me a lot earlier than I am used to, no doubt the altitude was having its effect on me, my heart rate is of course elevated as there’s less oxygen to go around up there. After a couple salt tablets the feeling of cramps subsided and I stopped in for three pieces of bacon at the second rest stop because I couldn’t just ignore such a delicious treat.

Half the reason I kept going tbh

On my way to the third rest stop I knew that my faculties were significantly diminished, it was a relatively flat part of the course yet I was finding myself struggling to pedal and to stay abreast of pains accumulating in my body. At the third rest stop I indulged in TDBB’s famous rib stop and had a chat with Mike Manson who like me, valued just finishing a course over finishing it as fast as possible. I left asap as I didn’t want to spend too much time at the rest stops, still holding out hope that I might finish. Following this was the first big climb of the day, a 7 mile spin up to the top of Onyx peak. My goal here was to surpass last year’s effort since this was the last part of the 70 mile course. The good news is I did PR that climb but not by much, though on the whole I felt much better than last year where I remember struggling to make it even a mile, maybe it’s all a mental game in the end. Once I crested Onyx I stopped at aid station 4 where they advised me that if I took on the rest of the course at that time I might not make it. I definitely considered turning back and completing the 70 mile course instead. It didn’t help that I had to take an unscheduled break to deal with some uncomfortable stomach issues which I blamed on the incredible amounts of fiber Daniel had made us eat the night previous.

As I was deciding what to do I saw Mike again, who told me immediately that he was going to continue the course. I rallied with him and decided the course officials would have to come get me if worse came to worse. We began the descent to Jenks lake which was almost 9 miles. Partially through this descent is where I would spot my friends for the last time. Daniel in particular looked like he was suffering up the climb, a stark contrast to cool and consistent climbing he was doing earlier in the morning. The descent was electrifying as we reached speeds of 35 miles per hour down the mountainside. Yet my elation slowly blossomed into a dread as the road just kept going down and down. I realized painfully that the bill would come due as I had to make my way back up this mountain if I was to complete the course, which would be the hardest part of the whole thing. Here is where I think my spirit finally broke, I made eye contact with the beast and the monster revealed itself to me. I slowly began to accept and rationalize my demise. At the bottom of the descent there was yet more climbing to do around Jenks lake before I even got back to ascending up to Onyx peak. At the Jenks lake aid station me and Mike assumed we were the last people on the course, actually there were 3 cyclists behind us at that time to my estimation, but still not exactly on the right side of that bell curve.

I let Mike drop me here as I was suffering pretty badly. My need to stop kept growing more and more frequent as I was having trouble putting in a consistent effort up the side of the lake. Eventually I was passed by another rider and then a second who informed that I was not the last person on the course there was one yet behind me. I struggled my way all the way back to the bottom of that 8 mile climb and I took a rest on the side of the road. It was the last real challenge ahead of me before the finish line. It was here that the last rider on the course caught up to me. It was a sight you hate to see, a cyclist walking next to his bicycle defeated by the course. We exchanged “are you okay?”s and he told me his legs were destroyed as this was only his 4th month of cycling ever. I congratulated him on his ridiculous gumption as he slowly passed me on the side of the road where I sat eating my banana. There it was, at long last I was the last person on the 100 mile course.

By this point three SAG(support and gear) vehicles had approached me asking if I needed a lift out of here as they warned me that the remaining two aid stations head of me would be closing soon and might not be there by they time I rolled by. I turned them down saying I still had plenty of supplies and they moved on but not without recording my bib number in order to keep track of me. I watched as the cyclist walking his bicycle up the hill got into a SAG and took a ride back to the finish line. As I made my way back up the side of Onyx I was struggling, and was pretty sure I’d miss the remaining aid stations. My mind was made up to finish past the course cutoff at this point. The SAGs had other ideas though.

Two of them pulled up beside me and I was going so slow at this point that they were able to get off their cars and walk beside me as they tried to convince me to take a ride back since everything ahead of me was closing down and I would be unsupported with food or water in the heat and they further confirmed what I suspected, that I was in dead last. I told them no but eventually my exhaustion and their promises of being without water reminded me of my terrible experience trying to climb crystal lake three weeks previous. I eventually told them that I would go only if I could get dropped off at the top of onyx, skipping only about 6 miles of climbing and 1800 feet of elevation, they agreed and I took the ride.

Driving up the side of onyx in an air conditioned cabin I felt like an absolute fucking scab. I had broken the sacred pact between the cyclist and the road: That it didn’t matter how long it took as long as you finished. Passing all the cyclists still struggling their way up the mountain felt like I had betrayed them especially as they each also refused to take the ride. Eventually I passed Mike who was making much better time than I was. I was reminded of the shark cage fugue from JAWS, traveling in my own cage of sorts up the beast that I could not conquer, and like Matt Hooper I too was out of spit.

I was joined by two Japanese women who were also taking the ride to the top of onyx as they had underestimated the difficulty of the route, they were only skipping about three miles however. Once we got off at the peak they happily hurried back down the descent to the other side where the finish line awaited. I paused for a couple minutes just trying to wrestle with my perceived failure. True I skipped most of the hardest part of the course, yet the entire thing was a challenge to me. I had done much more than last year and in my mind I could have finished the 100 miles given enough time and water. Of course that’s true of any ride even if you crawl along at 4mph and stop a lot eventually you’ll be done. I decided to shake off the emotions for now deciding that taking the ride was smart from a well being point of view as I didn’t want to bonk and get stuck on the mountain without an exit strategy.

I proceeded to descend down the side of Onyx that I climbed 4 hours earlier, the usual elation of barreling down a mountain hampered by the feeling that I hadn’t “earned” it. There was about 16 miles of course left which is the second Strava route posted above. Half of it was easy and the second half involved about 700 feet of climbing back to the finish which was not the quick and painless effort I was hoping for yet much better than an 8 mile struggle of a mountain. As I was nearing the finish line Mike caught up to me. I thought he had blown me out of the water making it so far after I had taken the SAG ride, yet he informed that he too got taken by the SAG to the top of Onyx. I guess they were sweeping the course of stragglers. I felt better about my effort and Daniel and Will were waiting for us around the corner to the finish line to cheer us on which I greatly appreciated since they had been done almost 4 hours previous. At 9 hours and 30 minutes I finished a total of about 93 miles and 6300 feet of climbing which was still a climbing PR for me. I took it as a victory and yet I couldn’t help but wonder how much more I could have done in the extra 30 minutes before the cutoff. Will I be doomed to repeat my mistakes next year? Or will I saddle up like the holy trinity of Hooper, Brody, and Quint and blow Big Bear out of the water with extreme prejudice? Or Will I even attempt it again? It remains to be seen.

Dialectical Monism

Dialectical Monism

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I’ve talked on here about the concept of bad faith and the need for one to be authentic to ourselves. Half that battle is knowing who we are and what we want because those things are moving targets. The dissonance between those two realms of the inner and outer is what leads to unhappiness and un-fulfillment. Yet none of us are automatons with singular wants and needs, we are tapestries of desires and we twist and fold in on ourselves in a myriad of ways. Yet to simplify this paradox we abstract these internal battles into two opposing forces. All decisions can be broken down into a series of two choices: yes or no. This is at the heart of how we think, so it is no wonder that when creating computers we have embedded them with this sacred knowledge of yes or no, 1 or 0. Two opposing forces that build into a unified self.

Sometimes I feel my two selves at war, and the battlefield is my mind and body. Yet aren’t we always in constant battle with ourselves? There is the push and pull of time in every situation. If our decisions are the fundamental exercise of our existence and we cannot remain in a state of non-existence then time is both the cause of our existence and the measure against which we exist. The existential relief that comes from having chosen lasts only as long as the next choice remains looming in the distance. Putting off that next decision is at the heart of the human condition. It is the agony of consequence that keeps us in a state of complacency, an inactive participant in our daily lives. Yet if our biological imperative is to survive, then to live is to wage battle with ourselves over and over until we perish.

Under the tongue root

a fight most dread,

and another raging

behind in the head

These are the lyrics of Duel Of The Fates (before they got loosely translated into sanskrit), it’s a snippet from Cad Goddeu (The Battle of the Trees). The lines refer to the fight amongst a tree yet it applies to us as well. The roles we embody with our words may be in opposition to the self in our minds. The act of decision can sometimes feel like a violent rejection of one role or fate over the other. The song plays during a battle as the two greatest opposing forces in the Star Wars Universe battle to lay claim to Anakin’s future. Light vs Dark, Yin vs Yang, and yet ultimately unification through balance.

Last weekend I tried to do a bike ride that I objectively failed at. Having planned it very poorly I ran out of water on a hot day and turned back having done only about half of what I set out to do. The heat was exhausting and every second I was on the bike was a decision point to continue riding or to stop. The mounting pain, onset of heat exhaustion and mechanical troubles that I was facing were forcing me to keep deciding to continue as opposed to the state I wish to be in which is passive activity, the role of cycling. Yet is willpower more like a status check that may or may not fail you depending on the severity of the decision or like a reserve that whittles away little by little as you are forced to take action over and over? To be an athlete you must be able to tolerate pain, that is the nature of strength and growth. The athlete in me told me to keep pushing forward, yet the pragmatist repeatedly questioned why I was pushing to the brink of suffering. So who is my true self? In that moment the pain, doubt, and realization built to a crescendo and I knew then I was cycling in bad faith. Eventually I chose to stop and turn around. This is a microcosm of the decision points we face in life yet it illustrates the profound effects the simplest ones can have. To wit, having invested in my identity as a cyclist I feel like I have failed myself yet undoubtedly I made the right choice that day lest I ended up on the side of the road with heat stroke. Who we are is a conjunction of the forces that shape us and it’s important that our identity and our confidence must come from different sources.

There will always be me and the shadow of me, the me I aspire to be. There will be times when they are in opposition and times when they are in agreement, they both may grow or diminish but through constant reflection and interrogation they should always remain in balance.

District Of Columbia

District Of Columbia

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At 3:30 am June 22nd 2022 I awoke to the booming sound of thunder rattling my windows and lightning illuminating my room. At first I thought it was a car exhaust, a firework, or a gunshot which are all known culprits for waking me up in the small hours of the morning. But as I heard the rolling boom fade away I realized it was a natural occurrence. There is much fun made of us southern Californians and our over-reaction to real weather. Believe me when I say though that thunder and lightning of all things is so, so rare. Even more rare for me was the proximity of it, it felt like there were explosions just outside my window. I silently cursed to myself because of all the nights this night I was trying to get as much sleep as possible because I had a flight to catch at 7:50 am. The jolt, along with the adrenaline that came with it virtually guaranteed I would no longer be sleeping that morning. I didn’t know it but the thunderstorms would follow me all the way to my destination: Washington DC, and even further to Georgia, North Carolina, and Virginia on the second leg of my journey. Although the thought crossed my mind I chose not to dwell on this fitful start as an omen of what would come and before I knew it I was touching down on federal land.

From the national portrait gallery

Columbia is a personification of the United States because we love anthropomorphizing things, and it lets us assign optimistic traits to ourselves. Yet Columbia is named after Columbus who as modern revisionist history points out was more akin to the Americas’ first slave master than hero. Washington is a founding father and the first president of these United States, and perhaps most curiously…a Virginian. Thomas Jefferson, James Madison, George Mason and Patrick Henry were also Virginians and together they formed some revolutionary heavy hitters. They helped write the documents we still refer back to almost 250 years later. So I say it’s curious because not 85 years after declaring independence from Britain, Virginia declared independence from the United States along with the rest of the confederate states. It would seem that slavery was too precious to their economy to get rid of even though most of the rest of the world had outlawed it already. Economic concerns trumping humanistic decisions are a recurring theme in our nation’s history. We refer to ourselves as a democratic republic but our system of government might better be called Capitalism. If the government is a political machine running the nation then money is the lubricant, the fuel, and its necessity is the guiding force behind the whole apparatus.

Looking through our nation’s history in DC presents a problem, the danger of storytelling. Even here on this post I present to you my opinions, mixed with some factual evidence, laid out in a way that accentuates the jaded, pessimistic, yet still prone to inspiration mind behind these words. There are around 74 museums in the capital, they stand majestically side to side with a who’s who of massive federal agencies. Walking through some of them I found it interesting to see descriptions of Benjamin Franklin with addendums of how he used slaves make his inventions, or descriptions of how many slaves each founding father owned underneath their portrait. It would seem that we are at last trying to hold a mirror up to the story of our national identity. For how long though was all this subtext and context missing, left buried under the rug in order to present a satisfying tale of tenacity and doggedness against the tyranny of King George. I’m an avid visitor of museums and I like to do a depth first dive into the exhibits which often means I leave the museum unfinished as I’m forced out by docents. The museums in DC were vast, varied, and detailed and yet for all that has been written about history what has been left out?

Lincoln’s Death Hat

I sat in the very theatre that Abraham Lincoln was in when he was shot to death by John Wilkes Booth. Exclaiming “Sic Semper Tyrannis” he ran from the stage where now a ranger was telling us about his fate. The latin phrase was a reference to the murder of Ceasar and it also appears on the seal of Virginia. Presumably Booth believed Lincoln was a tyrant, abusing his war time powers against the confederacy. Yet how could Lincoln abuse his power against the states that had seceded from under his rule? Even though the Confederacy lost it hasn’t stopped them from unloading a slew of pro-confederate propaganda immediately after the war to this very day. The Lost Cause is an attempt to couch what was a pro-slavery war in romantic ideals and heroic deeds. I visited Richmond Virginia, the capital of the confederacy on the last bit of my trip and couldn’t believe our bloodiest conflict erupted basically between two capitals barely more than 100 miles apart. Statues of Robert E. Lee, Stonewall Jackson, and Jefferson Davis were barely taken down two years ago. Only recently has the nation started to take an active part in rejecting the siren song of a feel-good story. How long will we keep it up and how far will our memory go, after all when I visit statues of Alexander The Great I don’t think of the man, I think of the god, and his list of accomplishments and atrocities float through my conscious mind with ease and without emotional burden.

The memorial to the Korean War haunts me still

The history of our nation and of the world is riddled with bloodshed, revolution, and turmoil. The many monuments devoted to the countless wars since our nation’s conception make that obvious. On the third day of my trip the supreme court struck down Roe V. Wade and protests erupted immediately on site. The only way to get lasting, real change in the US is through tireless coordination and effort, by constitutional design. I can’t help but think though that as a democracy, a crowd of protesters is inherent with the threat of violence against elected officials. After all if there is a disconnect in what the people say and what those in power do then the system has failed and what’s the ultimate and final way to take back the power? How long can we build towards our idea of a utopia before it all bubbles over again and we are forced to regenerate the only way we know how?

You Suffer

You Suffer

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English philosophers, scholars, and musicians Napalm Death have continuously pushed forward the discourse surrounding the atrophy of the mind living in service of multinational corporations. Their debut album Scum harbors intense dissections of amoral corruption, guilt via complacency, mass media control, and the exchange and origin of power. I want to focus in on one song in particular though, the voluminous epic You Suffer.

Make sure you carve out a healthy amount of time for this one

Clocking in at 1.316 seconds, the song is pregnant with existential quandary. Let’s break the song apart into its different dimensions by starting with the lyrics:

You suffer, but why?

The first half of the song sets the stage and forcefully reminds the listener that they suffer. The key to interpreting this part is of course knowing of suffering. Napalm Death cleverly removes the glut of having to explain the concept by assuming the listener has indeed suffered and continues to suffer. This assumption condenses what would otherwise weigh down an already lengthy song into abstract layers that maximize the use of its time. The words have been carefully chosen to make their thesis clear. The listener is forced to either reject or accept the hypothesis that they suffer. If accepted then they will have fallen into the trap made clear in the second half of the song. If rejected then the listener has been at least forced to self-reflect on why they think they don’t suffer. The emphasis is because inevitably one comes to the conclusion that even if they are not currently in the throes of pain and hardship, they have known it in some form or the other. Again, because of the carefully chosen language, tense is irrelevant. In a general sense humans suffer, and being directly addressed by the song brings forth memories of personal suffering whether it be physical, mental, or existential.

The second half of the song presents the listener with the central dramatic question, “but why?“. The guerrilla transition from exposition to challenge only serves to increase the impact of the lyrics. The listener is indeed in the middle of recounting the times they have suffered, or accepting that they are currently suffering when they are sonically assaulted by the tour de force second half of the song. Napalm Death makes the listener reconcile their personal pain with causes of it. On the surface it’s a simple question but the effect is that it shifts the thoughts from external evaluation of the self into the inner evaluation of the self. The band knowingly posits the question that will lead the listener on a bread crumb trail to self realization. Whether the addressee wants to or not they will come out on the other side of this experience having gained knowledge of themselves positive or negative. Rather than providing an answer, the band provides fertile ground for self examination, especially via the instrumentation which I will cover next.

Through a clever grindcore vocal technique of combining words, Napalm Death manages to condense the exaggerated 5 syllables of the lyrics into a more respectable 4 syllables. In doing so they allow the rest of the band members ample time to explore the sonic dimensions of suffering. The drummer, bassist, and guitarist first choose to use their respective instruments to imbue the words of the vocalist with weight and gravity by timing their notes to the cadence of the lyrics. This extra punctuation disarms the listener having a counterintutive effect of narrowing their focus on the words by removing any nondiegetic noise. Finally near the end of the song as the final words have been spoken the guitarist performs a virtuoso solo that dovetails into a final sustained note. This note provides the listener with a sort of mutable vessel on which they can fill with the answer to the question asked by the song. This liminal space between the lyrics and the song’s conclusion is inhabited fully by the catharsis of the listener.

Like the philosophers of old Napalm Death have tricked their listeners into interrogating the nature of not only suffering but their own suffering. Furthermore by providing no answer but instead a space for a response they make sure the addressee takes ownership of it, there can be no deflection. So what is your answer? I think at the root of the matter there is but one: “because I choose to”. Yet reading or hearing these words is not enough for understanding, they must come from within, from your being. Then and only then will the journey to apotheosis start.

Fleeting

Fleeting

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I feel like it was five weeks ago that I was graduating college, elated, thinking I had my whole life ahead of me to make my mark upon it. It’s been almost 10 years since that and life continues to evaporate on sight. Where does it all go? Is it pooled up somewhere beneath the floorboards of my home waiting to be discovered? It’s 80% air and 20% chips. The more life I try to have, the faster it goes. Time dilation is a hell of a drug. Yet my purse holds but a meager three decades of life whereas others have lost more than that on a bet.

At a child’s birthday party last weekend I was acutely aware of the whole spectrum of current human existence. I’ll chalk it up to the first big event of the kind that I’ve been to since the great stop-gap of covid 19 but I could see the generational lines in the sand. The baby boomers were sitting, observing, and vibing with the kids, generation x was taking a chill pill and laying back as their children took on the duties of the party, the millennials were hurriedly looking after their kids and frantically making sure the festivities took place as planned, generation z was talking about the latest music and sitting in a corner laughing at tik toks, and the children…running around with boundless energy, ready to replace all of us.

I was there with my baby brothers who my father decided to have later in life. So I got a taste of what some of my friends are going through right now having to manage two walking, talkings ids. There was an octogenarian acquaintance of mine who I touched base with briefly since we hadn’t spoken in a long time and as we watched my little brothers marvel at the animals in the petting zoo he wasted no time delivering straight cold hard truths to me in only the way a man whose shed all pretense can. He told me how all the friends he went to high school with were dying, “that’s just the age I’m at.” I thought how crazy and distant that sounds, all my high school friends are buying homes, getting married and having kids. Yet I remember how quickly the last 10 years have flown by. When I was 15 I thought living on my own seemed almost impossible and here I am in the third decade of life in the blink of an eye spinning the plates of self-sustenance. All of a sudden it seems like getting to 80 and watching the world crumble around me doesn’t seem so far away. What’s the lesson here? Be present, self-reflect as much as you can, the saying goes that you don’t know you’re living in the good times until they are over but that sounds to me like that person never stopped for a beat to evaluate their happiness. Better yet, assume it’s always the good times and don’t ever stop making them so.

Benedictus

Benedictus

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At a bar last night some poor woman had the misfortune of asking me what I was currently reading and I proceeded to vomit half-formed ideas on existentialism, freedom, authenticity, and self-discovery at her. Today I realized I desperately needed an outlet lest the flood gates be open upon more unsuspecting bar patrons. Sometimes I loathe the question “what is it about”. Can you truly summarize such a dense work of prose in a sentence or two? (Spielberg would say yes) Yet as humans we are constantly compacting, contextualizing, and abstracting vast amounts of information. Not only that but it is the foundation of the creative process to absorb and produce. So, as my platform, this blog shall serve as the repository for all further fruits of my creative digestive track.

I have about two dozen half written drafts of posts I was inspired to write but subsequently got cold on. In fact I have about a dozen of them that have the preceding sentence written into them, as if such a sentiment holds the key to actually, finally publishing one of these damned things. But so help me God this is the one that will make it through because I’m deciding to keep these short and sweet. My problem previously has been to try and write thematically cohesive, well thought out essays (or stories) but really my mind has never worked that way. So today I am presenting my thoughts just as I currently have had them today.

I mention God because he is on my mind. And I mention he because he is the patriarch of the church as was made clear by the Great Mass I witnessed today. Mozart’s other great unfinished work was performed handsomely by the LA Philharmonic at the illustrious Walt Disney Concert Hall. As usual I was the only one there wearing a Sleep hoodie and a t-shirt and below the median age of 50. I’m trying to make classical concerts metal again but I’m fighting a losing battle I fear. The LA Phil was kind enough to display lyrics of the translated Latin up on the wooden beams behind the orchestra. For something that sounds so divine the lyrics are so boring. Oscillating between “we worship you great father” and “we thank you for your glory”. That’s not to say the music was boring though, quite the opposite, it feels rapturous to sit in that theatre and listen to the rich sound of the orchestra delivering some of Mozart’s most inspired writing. I could not help but wonder how he wrote something that could make me feel as if I believed in a divine being without actually doing so. To me, belief in God was never even a consideration so although I grew up Catholic, I wouldn’t call myself a lapsed catholic, I simply never was one. Which brings me to my other rumination of the day, that I am nothing.

The concept of nothingness as it relates to existentialism is a void to which all meaning can be ascribed to. Simply put (from a simple understanding I’ll admit) it means absolute freedom, infinite possibility because nothing has no attachments, duties, wants or needs. We are born nothing and we die nothing. Which sounds nihilistic but in fact is rife with excitement and opportunity…and anxiety. I sat at a coffee shop today to try and parse through this concept and after the last bit of caffeine ran its course I decided a bar was more suitable for the punk rock philosophers of the 1900s. A single beer can go a long way towards helping you understand the concepts of Being and Not-Being, nothingness, and time. So I was swimming in this philosophical milieu as I watched, experienced, the LA Phil play Mozart’s exaltation towards his heavenly father. If we are nothing, walking voids then naturally we try to fill that by collecting identities, roles, occupations, ideas. It would appear to me that God, the church, and any religion is the ultimate answer to that void, certainly the easiest to adopt since the processes and mechanisms have all been laid out for you by generations preceding. I can’t help but admire the creative work of geniuses that are moved by a singular focus and devotion to religion. Having that clear of a purpose is work in and of itself, but it’s not for me.

Imagine Mozart in 1782 composing a tribute to God, hoping his audience would worship in unison with his music reaching a height that neither would on their own. Enter me in 2022 using the performance as a springboard to ponder the absence of God and my ability to free myself from religious attachments whilst experiencing second hand spirituality. I’ll admit that this sort of intellectual hijacking is always a delicious treat when I am present of mind to notice it.

2016 hits the fan

2016 hits the fan

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2016, what can say about it that hasn’t been beaten into our collective consciousness already. It sucked for the world. On like a scale of things I didn’t think could happen, 2016 hit a pretty high note. Legendary musicians and actors dying left and right, a bitter and embattled election, more mass shootings, civil strife around the globe, Harambe. But it’s not all bad, Leo finally got an Oscar.  But I think everyone is well aware of that part of the year.

Things for me personally though have gone pretty well…for the most part. The first couple of months were rocky at best, but it led to great new opportunities, mainly my new job. My health is still a concern as well, though it certainly doesn’t seem like it. I’m not a fool, I know I’m pushing the “youth invincibility” thing too far already and I’m getting ready to take steps towards a healthier me again. Anyways people love lists at the end of the year right? (I’m people too I think). So here you go:

Top 10 things Jairo did in 2016 (In a particular order):

1. Landed a new job

Code Conf

Yep, you get number 1 right away. It’s awesome because it was finally a step in the direction of the career I always wanted when I was programming on those sleepless nights in college. My coworkers are great and they are very much focused not just on squeezing out great automated testing, but improving quality of all code and fostering a culture of testing. Having that shared focus really drives my inspiration and lets me get into that groove on a day-to-day basis. I’ve also been able to attend my first industry conference and a couple of meetups. Not to mention Silicon Beach perks are top notch 😉

10. Bought a House

Yeah that’s right you got the best good thing and the worst good thing right next to each other, this list doesn’t give a FUCK. Buying a house is painful. Half the time I wasn’t really sure what I was doing but you have to do your research as with all things in life. I can say I think I got the property at a good value, low enough interest rate on my mortgage, and Lancaster while being kind of on the wrong side of nowhere is an up and coming city that I think will propel the property value. So let’s avoid crashing the market again for a another century or so please. The house itself is great: 5 bedrooms, 2 bathrooms, a nice living room with a fireplace and chimney, lots of open space in the backyard, and the neighborhood is nice. Oh god…why am I talking like this.

3. Bought A New Car

I think I got really lucky here. For a long time my car of choice was a Dodge Challenger. I wanted it now while I’m still counted as being young because when I get it later I don’t want to hear any mid-life crisis BS. I wanted the blacktop edition, I had notions of putting a giant Punisher logo on the back or that Immortan Joe skull from Mad Max: Fury Road. I had dreams of driving it down desert highways, blasting Space Truckin’. Alas, it was not meant to be because in the end my sensibilities won over. There is no reason to drop a fortune on a base model Challenger when I can get a tricked out Chrysler 300c for an even lower price. Seriously, I’m still looking over my shoulder every day trying to figure how this baby was so cheap but so awesome. Leather interiors, heated seats, rear shades, rear cameras, media center, premium audio, all the bells and whistles. It’s such a comfortable car, makes the commute from Long Beach to Marina Del Rey a pleasure. And honestly anything was an upgrade from my 2000 Toyota Corolla with the broken stereo, broken indoor handles, and chronic oil problems.

4. Attended Riot Fest and The Misfits Reunion

 Jerry, Glenn, and Doyle

 

Never thought I would have a reason to go to Denver, but when I woke up one faithful morning to find out the classic Misfits lineup was getting back together I had a choice to make. Denver or Chicago? When you factored in housing and airplane tickets the choice was easy. Besides the Misfits the lineup was different for both dates and I’m still not entirely show which one was better but there was plenty to enjoy in Denver: Suicidal Tendencies, Chevy Metal, Jane’s Addiction, Bad Religion. We even managed to get out into the city a teensy bit for metal beers and food. But for sure the highlight was the Misfits themselves, they were on FIRE. It was like the lackluster Glenn Danzig covering his own misfits songs at the Legacy shows became someone who actually cared to put energy back into his performance. Doyle and Jerry crushed it and the set was and hour and a half of non-stop singing along. For sure it will probably be a highlight of my life not only this year.

9. Played Overwatch

That’s right, no thought being put into this ordering at all. I know what you’re thinking: wtf is a video game doing on this list. I would be straight up doing a disservice to the honesty of this blog if I didn’t put this on here because honestly…a huge chunk of 2016 was spent playing this game. I was a little turned off at the thought of an only-online, only-multiplayer game because Titanfall kinda ruined that concept for me years earlier. But through great peer pressure I purchased the game and never looked back. Blizzard’s steady stream of free new content and seasonal events keeps me coming for more. Now when me and my friends would usually be blowing money at the bars we tend to stay in and play instead. I know it sounds super lame but damn is it a money saver, the game has probably paid for itself a couple times over at this point.

8. Saw Bob Dylan Live

  Best photo I was able to get.

Seeing the main man Dylan in concert was….interesting. Bob Dylan is one of, if not, the greatest musicians of our time. His songs have influenced other musicians and the very culture of America for decades. So of course I wanted to see the maestro live. Especially since I had utterly failed at getting Oldchella( Desert Trip?) tickets. I definitely enjoyed the concert but I knew almost none of the songs and the ones I did manage to recognize had been vastly reworked by Dylan into completely different tunes. I guess there’s no reason to expect an artist to play what you want to hear but man I really would have grooved along to Positively 4th street. Regardless, it was definitely a bucket list item of mine and I would probably see him again if given the chance.

6. Saw The Who Live

That-what’s-it-now?

Speaking of Oldchella acts I watched solo, I also had the opportunity to see The Who tear up the Staples Center earlier in the year. It was so great, the old Englishmen have not lost their energy. Pete Townshend can still rip through the guitar licks like no one’s business. I wish I could have seen them with Keith Moon on the drums but in this day and age I’ll take The Who any way they come. Their music has always stood apart for me in the realm of classic rock greatness. They have the ability to construct really epic songs out of devastatingly simple riffs or can get complex as hell with several layers of synth and effects, and there’s so much energy in each member’s playing, it’s infectious. It was great to see them and I would jump on the chance to do it again. Another bucket list item checked.

7. Attended Punk Rock Bowling

 Flag

What do you do when you’re in between jobs and have a week off. Go to Vegas. I wouldn’t consider myself Punk by any means but I do listen to a lot of hardcore punk and crossover. The genetic identity of punk and metal really isn’t so different and the anti-establishment culture of Punk sits mostly well with me too. A lot of my friends were going to this too so why the hell not. It turned out to be awesome and a great way to relieve some of the stress that had built in the first quarter of the year. Going to Vegas is usually okay but being there with a bunch of punks and (I suspect) metalheads is what makes it next level great. It was like a little counter-culture takeover of the most mainstream party destination. Didn’t feel like I was surrounded by frat guys and old rich people anymore. I only attended one day of the festival itself and got to see the ‘Black Flag’ offshoot ‘Flag’ play their set and I could dig it.The icing on the cake was finally being able to see Rock Of Ages the musical.

5. Had a Rocktober Birthday

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This year I had one of the best birthdays in recent memories. Lots of bands were coming through L.A. on tour in the month of October, three concerts alone  on my birthday week. 6 in total that month and I went to all of them. Devin Townsend Project co-headlining with Between the Buried and Me, Meshuggah with support by High On Fire, Opeth playing a monstrous double set, Ghost, Tiger Army’s Octoberflame, and Tenacious D’s Festival Supreme where I finally saw Weird Al and Flight of the Conchords amongst other acts. Maybe you’ve noticed a pattern here but I love going to live music especially bands I like that I’ve never seen before or bands that put on a great show and having all these great bands tour in October was a great birthday present. I also had the most birthday-ish party in recent memory at the new house in Lancaster with good friends and family.

 

…and drum roll please, the second best thing I did this year was…

 

2. Visited the Pacific Northwest

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Took a trip to Portland and Seattle. My cousin lives in Portland so I got a nice little insider tour of the coolest neighborhoods and bars, But I think what we really explored in Oregon was the nature. We drove along the Historic Columbia River Highway and it was breathtaking. We ended up at Multnomah Falls and we climbed up the stairs a bit to see the waterfall then we retreated to the lodge for some drinks and appetizers. We had a rental car on hand so we drove from Oregon to Seattle (like a 3 hour drive) and just seeing the forests and rivers on the way was awesome, you really get a sense of the life people lead up there. Seattle probably deserves it’s own post here because we did a lot but the highlight for me was the EMP museum. They had so many exhibits that were so relevant to my interests I had a hard time seeing it all. There was a sci-fi wing, horror, fantasy, a dedicated Star Trek exhibit. There was an exhibit on the grunge movement, Jimi Hendrix, Indie video games, the history of the electric guitar. There was so much to see, I will probably have to go back if I ever travel to Seattle again. Seattle the city itself was great too,  we stayed on a tugboat that our host graciously took out onto Washington Lake for us one day. We also visited the Public Market, the Aquarium, took a boat tour around the city, visited the space needle, and the Starbucks Roastery.  It was a great experience.

Honorable Mentions:

Iron Maiden: finally the show I deserved after seeing them the last time where they played almost none of their hits 🙁

Watching Cannibal Corpse twice in a year: brutal.

Finally launching this website: I toyed with the idea of writing my own code from scratch for a long time but I got over it. I just need to write.

Camping at Catalina Island: I kind of hated it but it was an experience I needed to have.

Destination wedding at San Luis Obispo: The wedding party stayed in such a nice little estate in the hills, and the reception was in a barn on someone’s farm land. It was good times.

Black Sabbath: I saw the godfathers of metal on their last tour and I kind of regret not seeing them again on the second leg but oh well. they still sound so evil.

Bachelor Party at Lake Tahoe: It was awesome, and that’s all I’m allowed to say.

The Adicts Show: Probably one of the best shows I’ve seen and I was not prepared for it at all.

 

See you in 2017.