"Everything we hear is an opinion, not a fact. Everything we see is a perspective, not the truth."
~Marcus Aurelius~
My life is most certainly taking a new direction, and a very different chapter is now being written. In doing so, I find myself looking back over the last three years and contemplating the most important lessons that were learned along the way. Considering the drastic nature of my life's alteration from the "normal" course of the American existence, I figured I may withhold a few unique perspectives not detected by the American public. After all, I did flip the script as quickly as possible from a white picket fence, domesticated home life, "pillar of the community" career, blah, blah, blah...........to an off the grid, outcast, divorced, I-don't-give-a-fuck-anymore-and-am-moving-to-an-island lost soul. And it happened quickly. Now the dust is settling. As it does, I realize I have a bit of a mess to clean up in order to regain a stronghold on my attempts to take over the world.............not a problem.
But I also took a long, deep look over that edge that very few of us venture to, and when I did I realized one very important fact............there's no coming back once you look over and see what there is to see. I am sure I will eventually fall back into somewhat of a domesticated existence in the not so distant future (and yes, a drop dead gorgeous blonde has A LOT to do with that), but when I do, everything will appear different. I won't have to fight many of the pointless, menial battles people exhaust themselves with on a daily basis; I won't have to take the entire game very seriously; and I won't have to force that damn square peg into that silly wooden hole anymore. How did I come to these conclusions and find a way to let go of the massive weight of bull shit dragging us all down?..................I found the TRUTH, and it can be very, very dangerous.
“Sometimes the hardest part isn't letting go but rather learning to start over.”
~Nicole Sobon~
1. People in American Society are seriously fucking Butt Hurt - It truly is that simple. We have become a Butt Hurt Nation. What exactly do I mean by this?...........The shit we fret about on a daily basis is completely trivial and pointless. This is easy for a man to see once he has broken down his existence to food, shelter, and safety. At some point in our history we simply met all of the basic elements to comfortably survive. Once we did, our focus turned to things like "what color duvet matches the lamp shade" or "why are there only two pumps and not three in my venti americano dulche french vanilla cappuccino el graten and why is it overpriced by a mere three bucks." These are the things on the minds of people today. The scariest element to this entire cesspool of bull shit is that it is completely controlled and manipulated by the worst of the worst...........politicians and the media.
Don't worry..........The IC is not about to go on a political rant. I figure there is already enough of that going around. Personally, I can't rant about politics because from my perspective the entire system has failed and let us down, so I pretty much gave up on it and try to have the system impact my life as little as possible. Spending time with hillbillies deep within West By God rivah gorges makes this task quite successful. It is just easier this way.................for now. (Hear that Mom)
My rant comes about when focusing on the media. Once I looked over the edge, the media was the scariest, and yet most comical social variable to observe. It is comical because the manipulation and one sided approach to the entire presentation is absurd and could only be believed by people who are completely fucking retarded..............the scary part comes when you realize that most of America is completely fucking retarded.
2. A majority of the population within this Butt Hurt Nation judge by what they hear, not who they see, and by what you have, not by who you are - Oh, how I must thank the RVA paddling scene for teaching me this oh so important lesson. The situation within that socially corrupt circle of fairy tales and make believe is one that represents the most dangerous element within a community..............bandwagon mentality. Over the past two years a series of tragic and unfortunate events unfolded within that community that tested the moral fiber of each individual within the group...................very few stepped up and fought for what they believed in or for what was right. And now because of that, all must endure the tension and discomfort that I know exists when certain individuals are present among the group (myself included), and all must accept a conclusion that no one really believes. They are all forced to play pretend. That is their unfortunate reality, and there is NOTHING any of them can do about it.
And yet many still and always will judge me for the pieces that were written within this blog, the decisions made both before and after my divorce, and the blunt nature that I used to stand up for what I felt was right..............most of these harsh critics were once my closest friends. Many of them are people that I never once had a negative moment with, and whom I always respected and treated with the same dignity I would expect one to treat me with. But when shit hit the fan, these individuals listened to the rumors, and failed to think for themselves. Watching that plague spread throughout the community was very eye opening for me.............especially considering I was observing it from my own private Island and from a state of isolation. But it was also heartbreaking. Not because I lost friends, but because I chose friends that ultimately made decisions based on rumor and gossip rather than the TRUTH that always existed within our bonds that had been formed on the rivah. It broke my heart to know how poorly I had chosen my friends................Marcelle was always right about that one.
But more importantly, I found the TRUTH in friendship from those that stood beside me, and that has been one of the most rewarding gifts during this journey. I discovered my own identity through these individuals, because these were the people who saw the TRUTH within me............plus I discovered that I will never have a problem making friends. In the end, Lesson #2 is one of the more valuable lessons that I take away from the experience................not to mention calling people out was liberating as hell!!!!!
3. We all have more than we will ever need, and our failure to identify with this will ultimately lead us to never feeling like we have enough - that is rather ironic if you think about it. Once I lost everything and had nothing, I realized that I never really needed much of what I had, and yet I had always worried that I didn't have enough................guess what Mom and Dad; I have the two of you to thank for this lesson..........and the two of you know exactly why. I also see this unfortunate TRUTH in some of my friends, but it is something I am willing to overlook. Many of my friends do not understand or see that they were put into a position in this world to give freely, without the expectation for a return, and if they would just accept their position, they would find that freely giving without expectation is the most rewarding gift of all..............Tony Gunn taught me that one. Perception truly is reality, and we all have our own version of the reality of this world. Money makes up a lot of that illusion.
4. There are certain pillars to everyone's life that support true happiness. Because we all function under our own reality, each of us have a different set and number of pillars. The more pillars we discover and identify, the happier we become and the stronger our foundation stands. The key to this is to truly identify with your pillars, as opposed to simply knowing what they are. Many people play pretend with this idea their entire lives, and never truly understand or experience REAL happiness. In the past 3 years, I have identified with many pillars.....................TRUTH, love, children, nature, family, travel, writing, photography, and The Rivah. These are the aspects of life that I now understand to be of importance to me, and they are the pillars that I need to base the foundation of my future............this is what makes me so grateful for my experiences over the past three years. Looking over that edge is a powerful force in life, and I would have never been able to truly identify and understand the aspects of my life that are fundamental to my happiness had I not seen what lay beyond what we know as fact. I would have simply continued to go through the motions, like so many do everyday. My good buddy Prado, one of the illustrious HATERS of RVA, and a man who loves going through those motions, recently criticized my life by claiming that I once had everything and I pissed it all away, and that was his reason for judging me and negating our friendship in the end................first off, thanks Prado for proving how important Lesson #2 is. Second off, stop going through the motions buddy, and look deeper than what is simply on the surface. Need some help figuring that out? Here is a hint..............I WASN'T FUCKING HAPPY!!!!! But more importantly, the fact that I wasn't happy isn't anyone's fault. Not mine, or Marcelle's, or my family's, or anyone else's. It just was the way it was, and it is an unfortunate TRUTH which only hurt two people in the end...................Marlow and Quint. For that, I will never forgive myself.
5. "Time is a flat circle" ~Rust Cohle~ - TRUTH............everything comes, and everything goes. Anyone who doesn't experience change at some point in life never truly lived in the first place. If you truly want to live then here is my advice................cancel all your insurance policies, put everything that is vital to you and your survival in your car, and then burn your house to the ground! Trust me............you will learn how to live real fast if you do that, and you will also discover that life begins when we just let go. In 2011 and the beginning of 2012 I was a truly terrible and evil human being. TRUST me on that. The story will explain why in time.........but time is a flat circle, and over time, I found my soul (no Ginger jokes), and realized that I wasn't a bad person..........I had just participated in bad things and lost my way. In the end, losing my way turned out to be the most important thing that ever happened to me.............and in time the positive impact it will have on me as a father, and on my children and the characters they are molded into, will be revealed. Trust me on that.
I use to fear time. Every day I would wake up and fight time all day long............getting everyone out the door, fighting rush hour traffic, reviewing morning messages, meeting the mid day deadline, finding peace for a moment on my lunch break, making it across town in time for an afternoon meeting, finishing up the day in time to beat traffic to make it home before the boys went to bed so that I could experience a few moments to be a father with them, and so on, and so on, and so on. It was a battle that never seemed to end.........and one that I never seemed to be victorious in.
But time is a flat circle, and it is coming back around for me. I will never have the time back that I have lost, but what I do have is the future, and for that I am grateful. Marcelle continues to fight me everyday on my ability to speak with the boys, let alone see them again. Her hostility, ignorance, and selfishness have reached new levels, and at this point I have no idea why............maybe she will never let go, and never move on. Maybe we will fight this battle for another fifteen + years.........I can't predict the future. All I can do is let go, and that is exactly what I have done. I only hope that in time she finds a way to let go as well. Not for my own sanity, but for hers. She views our boys as trophies, ones that she can hold up high to proclaim her victory. I just simply want to be their father again, and in time, that will happen. Marcelle is the one who gets to decide how large of a circle time must travel before that happens. THAT is the REALITY of my life, regardless of the injustice that brought us to this point.
6. We must not sell out!!!! It has become a plague to modern society. I owe this lesson to DBP............Dirt Bag Paddlers was REAL because it was founded on TRUTH and art and a sense of community. It was an anomaly because it grew to something that no one ever expected, and it did it quickly. But the day the TRUTH of DBP was used to make a buck, it lost what it represented, and was ultimately destined to fail. It may always exist, and it may make a penny or two, but the TRUTH of what DBP was meant to be is gone forever. For that, I will never forgive Chicago Mike. You were better than that Mike, and so was DBP. In the end you sold yourself out, but you sold all of us out with you.
The Island Chronicles still exists as the TRUTH, and it is still free literature for the whitewater world. I have NEVER made a penny off of it, and I have continued to turn down any offers from Google AdSense or any other marketing companies that come my way. I have done all this while remaining extremely poor.......poorer than any of you could possibly imagine. There are changes coming to The IC, but selling out is NOT, and never will be one of them. The more we feed a system of lies and make believe, the less TRUTH we will ever experience for ourselves. FACT
7. Love, above all else, will always heal - Fact is, I was very unhappy. I was unhappy in my marriage, in my career, with the friends I had surrounded myself with, and with myself. Once again, this was no ones fault.........it simply was. Nothing was real. It all felt pretend. I never truly understood how little love existed within my world until recently. In my heart, the love for my boys existed alone for a long time, and when I lost them, my heart just gave up. Perhaps Marcelle truly did love me. That I will never know, and personally, I do not care. If it was love, then I feel sorry for the man she uses to replace me as the boys father.................and trust me, that is precisely her plan, and always has been.
I know now that I existed within a place that few have ever even visited. The last three years have been a tough gift to accept..............Chris Lawson once said to me that I was lucky to have the opportunity to experience a freedom that very few modern men are able to encounter in their lives................TRUTH! Experiencing that freedom opened me up to a world that I never would have been a part of if I hadn't taken some HUGE risks, and lost some key battles in life along the way. Had I failed to experience that freedom I would not have found the ability to truly love with all of my heart, the way I love someone now................it was the journey that gave me the ability to do exactly that. And the more I love, the more I am healing. FACT
8. Everyone deserves a second chance in life...................everyone! (Except The Fat Bastard. He already wasted his second chance)
9. Whitewater can save your soul - TRUTH. It has most certainly saved mine, and I am grateful for discovering the beauty of paddling and the TRUTH of our Rivahs. I have experienced more natural beauty over the course of the last decade than most people view their entire lives.............every paddler reading this understands what I am talking about, and I know every paddler reading this is just as grateful as I am for the discovery of whitewater, paddling, and the Rivah.
10.
Lesson #10 is harder to master than you would think, but if you follow the advice from Lesson #1 then it will make Lesson #10 much easier to be successful with..........a lot of safety meetings help to master lesson #10 as well. TRUTH
Personally, I stopped giving a fuck quite a while ago, which made calling everyone out incredibly easy and comfortable. I just never realized how many people would understand why I wrote what I wrote, and more importantly, I never realized how important it would become to write and say the things that everyone was thinking but didn't have the balls to say. I am convinced that if everyone took the approach that I have taken, and just said what was on their minds, bluntly, the world would be a much more forgiving place, and we wouldn't all be living in a Butt Hurt Nation.
“I despise the rituals of fake friendship. I wish we could just claw each other's eyes out and call it a day; instead we put on huge radiant smiles and spout compliments until our teeth hurt from the saccharine sweetness of it all.”
~Jody Gehrman~
And yet many still and always will judge me for the pieces that were written within this blog, the decisions made both before and after my divorce, and the blunt nature that I used to stand up for what I felt was right..............most of these harsh critics were once my closest friends. Many of them are people that I never once had a negative moment with, and whom I always respected and treated with the same dignity I would expect one to treat me with. But when shit hit the fan, these individuals listened to the rumors, and failed to think for themselves. Watching that plague spread throughout the community was very eye opening for me.............especially considering I was observing it from my own private Island and from a state of isolation. But it was also heartbreaking. Not because I lost friends, but because I chose friends that ultimately made decisions based on rumor and gossip rather than the TRUTH that always existed within our bonds that had been formed on the rivah. It broke my heart to know how poorly I had chosen my friends................Marcelle was always right about that one.
But more importantly, I found the TRUTH in friendship from those that stood beside me, and that has been one of the most rewarding gifts during this journey. I discovered my own identity through these individuals, because these were the people who saw the TRUTH within me............plus I discovered that I will never have a problem making friends. In the end, Lesson #2 is one of the more valuable lessons that I take away from the experience................not to mention calling people out was liberating as hell!!!!!
3. We all have more than we will ever need, and our failure to identify with this will ultimately lead us to never feeling like we have enough - that is rather ironic if you think about it. Once I lost everything and had nothing, I realized that I never really needed much of what I had, and yet I had always worried that I didn't have enough................guess what Mom and Dad; I have the two of you to thank for this lesson..........and the two of you know exactly why. I also see this unfortunate TRUTH in some of my friends, but it is something I am willing to overlook. Many of my friends do not understand or see that they were put into a position in this world to give freely, without the expectation for a return, and if they would just accept their position, they would find that freely giving without expectation is the most rewarding gift of all..............Tony Gunn taught me that one. Perception truly is reality, and we all have our own version of the reality of this world. Money makes up a lot of that illusion.
4. There are certain pillars to everyone's life that support true happiness. Because we all function under our own reality, each of us have a different set and number of pillars. The more pillars we discover and identify, the happier we become and the stronger our foundation stands. The key to this is to truly identify with your pillars, as opposed to simply knowing what they are. Many people play pretend with this idea their entire lives, and never truly understand or experience REAL happiness. In the past 3 years, I have identified with many pillars.....................TRUTH, love, children, nature, family, travel, writing, photography, and The Rivah. These are the aspects of life that I now understand to be of importance to me, and they are the pillars that I need to base the foundation of my future............this is what makes me so grateful for my experiences over the past three years. Looking over that edge is a powerful force in life, and I would have never been able to truly identify and understand the aspects of my life that are fundamental to my happiness had I not seen what lay beyond what we know as fact. I would have simply continued to go through the motions, like so many do everyday. My good buddy Prado, one of the illustrious HATERS of RVA, and a man who loves going through those motions, recently criticized my life by claiming that I once had everything and I pissed it all away, and that was his reason for judging me and negating our friendship in the end................first off, thanks Prado for proving how important Lesson #2 is. Second off, stop going through the motions buddy, and look deeper than what is simply on the surface. Need some help figuring that out? Here is a hint..............I WASN'T FUCKING HAPPY!!!!! But more importantly, the fact that I wasn't happy isn't anyone's fault. Not mine, or Marcelle's, or my family's, or anyone else's. It just was the way it was, and it is an unfortunate TRUTH which only hurt two people in the end...................Marlow and Quint. For that, I will never forgive myself.
5. "Time is a flat circle" ~Rust Cohle~ - TRUTH............everything comes, and everything goes. Anyone who doesn't experience change at some point in life never truly lived in the first place. If you truly want to live then here is my advice................cancel all your insurance policies, put everything that is vital to you and your survival in your car, and then burn your house to the ground! Trust me............you will learn how to live real fast if you do that, and you will also discover that life begins when we just let go. In 2011 and the beginning of 2012 I was a truly terrible and evil human being. TRUST me on that. The story will explain why in time.........but time is a flat circle, and over time, I found my soul (no Ginger jokes), and realized that I wasn't a bad person..........I had just participated in bad things and lost my way. In the end, losing my way turned out to be the most important thing that ever happened to me.............and in time the positive impact it will have on me as a father, and on my children and the characters they are molded into, will be revealed. Trust me on that.
I use to fear time. Every day I would wake up and fight time all day long............getting everyone out the door, fighting rush hour traffic, reviewing morning messages, meeting the mid day deadline, finding peace for a moment on my lunch break, making it across town in time for an afternoon meeting, finishing up the day in time to beat traffic to make it home before the boys went to bed so that I could experience a few moments to be a father with them, and so on, and so on, and so on. It was a battle that never seemed to end.........and one that I never seemed to be victorious in.
But time is a flat circle, and it is coming back around for me. I will never have the time back that I have lost, but what I do have is the future, and for that I am grateful. Marcelle continues to fight me everyday on my ability to speak with the boys, let alone see them again. Her hostility, ignorance, and selfishness have reached new levels, and at this point I have no idea why............maybe she will never let go, and never move on. Maybe we will fight this battle for another fifteen + years.........I can't predict the future. All I can do is let go, and that is exactly what I have done. I only hope that in time she finds a way to let go as well. Not for my own sanity, but for hers. She views our boys as trophies, ones that she can hold up high to proclaim her victory. I just simply want to be their father again, and in time, that will happen. Marcelle is the one who gets to decide how large of a circle time must travel before that happens. THAT is the REALITY of my life, regardless of the injustice that brought us to this point.
6. We must not sell out!!!! It has become a plague to modern society. I owe this lesson to DBP............Dirt Bag Paddlers was REAL because it was founded on TRUTH and art and a sense of community. It was an anomaly because it grew to something that no one ever expected, and it did it quickly. But the day the TRUTH of DBP was used to make a buck, it lost what it represented, and was ultimately destined to fail. It may always exist, and it may make a penny or two, but the TRUTH of what DBP was meant to be is gone forever. For that, I will never forgive Chicago Mike. You were better than that Mike, and so was DBP. In the end you sold yourself out, but you sold all of us out with you.
The Island Chronicles still exists as the TRUTH, and it is still free literature for the whitewater world. I have NEVER made a penny off of it, and I have continued to turn down any offers from Google AdSense or any other marketing companies that come my way. I have done all this while remaining extremely poor.......poorer than any of you could possibly imagine. There are changes coming to The IC, but selling out is NOT, and never will be one of them. The more we feed a system of lies and make believe, the less TRUTH we will ever experience for ourselves. FACT
7. Love, above all else, will always heal - Fact is, I was very unhappy. I was unhappy in my marriage, in my career, with the friends I had surrounded myself with, and with myself. Once again, this was no ones fault.........it simply was. Nothing was real. It all felt pretend. I never truly understood how little love existed within my world until recently. In my heart, the love for my boys existed alone for a long time, and when I lost them, my heart just gave up. Perhaps Marcelle truly did love me. That I will never know, and personally, I do not care. If it was love, then I feel sorry for the man she uses to replace me as the boys father.................and trust me, that is precisely her plan, and always has been.
I know now that I existed within a place that few have ever even visited. The last three years have been a tough gift to accept..............Chris Lawson once said to me that I was lucky to have the opportunity to experience a freedom that very few modern men are able to encounter in their lives................TRUTH! Experiencing that freedom opened me up to a world that I never would have been a part of if I hadn't taken some HUGE risks, and lost some key battles in life along the way. Had I failed to experience that freedom I would not have found the ability to truly love with all of my heart, the way I love someone now................it was the journey that gave me the ability to do exactly that. And the more I love, the more I am healing. FACT
8. Everyone deserves a second chance in life...................everyone! (Except The Fat Bastard. He already wasted his second chance)
9. Whitewater can save your soul - TRUTH. It has most certainly saved mine, and I am grateful for discovering the beauty of paddling and the TRUTH of our Rivahs. I have experienced more natural beauty over the course of the last decade than most people view their entire lives.............every paddler reading this understands what I am talking about, and I know every paddler reading this is just as grateful as I am for the discovery of whitewater, paddling, and the Rivah.
10.
Lesson #10 is harder to master than you would think, but if you follow the advice from Lesson #1 then it will make Lesson #10 much easier to be successful with..........a lot of safety meetings help to master lesson #10 as well. TRUTH
Personally, I stopped giving a fuck quite a while ago, which made calling everyone out incredibly easy and comfortable. I just never realized how many people would understand why I wrote what I wrote, and more importantly, I never realized how important it would become to write and say the things that everyone was thinking but didn't have the balls to say. I am convinced that if everyone took the approach that I have taken, and just said what was on their minds, bluntly, the world would be a much more forgiving place, and we wouldn't all be living in a Butt Hurt Nation.
“I despise the rituals of fake friendship. I wish we could just claw each other's eyes out and call it a day; instead we put on huge radiant smiles and spout compliments until our teeth hurt from the saccharine sweetness of it all.”
~Jody Gehrman~
Why do I post these thoughts now? Simple. My life is changing, my heart is healing, and I am moving on. 2014 is the last year of my Dirt Bag travels. (I can't let Ranger Dave continue to criticize me for being an unemployed bum) It is the last year of living off the grid, Dirt Baggin' from town to town, and bumming my way through life. And it is the last year of running from the pain that I have carried for a long time now. As arduous as these times have proven, and as financially taxing as they have been throughout, I will truly miss these days and this period of my life, for I know it will never happen again..............not like this.
However, The Island Chronicles will live on. Fact is, the three years of travels have given me enough stories to write about for the next three years. Not only are their plenty of incomplete stories, there are also stories that have yet to be told. At the moment, The Island Chronicles is deeply engaged in the tales of "Fear and Loathing in West By God", and the antics about to be described from Gauleyfest week will make anyone question whether having me back on the grid is a good idea or not..................personally, I question it too. The final week of that shit show will be enjoyable to write, and I can promise you it will also be enjoyable to read..................and as always, it will contain plenty of controversy and surprise.
The story of "The Rounds" is the heart of The Island Chronicles, and it is just getting started. The next few years of that tale will demonstrate the hidden change that occurred within me, and the danger of ignoring "The Epic Worthlessness that is Man" that exists within every man. Prepare yourself however, because once 2011 rolls around in the tale, the hero of this story takes quite a damaging blow, and you may never look at him the same way again............like I said, I was a truly evil person in 2011.
Finally, the story of what happened to me in the Fall of 2013 in West By God is incomplete as well. Week 25 was never written, and the story was never told. There is a reason for that. That tale contains the most surprise in the entire shit show of The IC, and will probably shock even my closest friends. Mostly every person who knows that story has advised against me ever writing it...................which is exactly why I plan to. The Island Chronicles survives on TRUTH, and as ugly of a tale as it is to tell, it is one that will help many understand just how far I fell, and how deeply I actually looked over that edge. The story of Week 25 will be the one story that defines my life and my character for a long time to come.
Take these words and these lessons for what they are................my perception, and nothing more. Falling apart is a scary thing to do, but the fear that exists from falling doesn't cultivate within us because we are losing it; the fear exists because we fight the breakdown. The breakdown can be beautiful, and emerging on the opposite side of the forest is quite an enlightening experience. Sometimes I look back and wonder what it would be like if I had never answered that email sent to me by the FSW all those years ago..........would I still be the same person I once was? Would I still creep through my day pretending to be someone I am not? Would I still pretend that everything was the way it should be, even if I know it is anything but? Would I still be looking in Marlow and Quints eyes trying to figure out where I fit in to the equation? These are questions that will never be answered, because they are situations that no longer exist. Once I looked over that edge, I was never able to look back again, and like I stated earlier.........once you fall far enough, you never quite come back.
"So just let go, because there's beauty in the breakdown"
~Frou Frou~
See ya on the rivah..........peering as far over that edge as I can. PEACE
Take these words and these lessons for what they are................my perception, and nothing more. Falling apart is a scary thing to do, but the fear that exists from falling doesn't cultivate within us because we are losing it; the fear exists because we fight the breakdown. The breakdown can be beautiful, and emerging on the opposite side of the forest is quite an enlightening experience. Sometimes I look back and wonder what it would be like if I had never answered that email sent to me by the FSW all those years ago..........would I still be the same person I once was? Would I still creep through my day pretending to be someone I am not? Would I still pretend that everything was the way it should be, even if I know it is anything but? Would I still be looking in Marlow and Quints eyes trying to figure out where I fit in to the equation? These are questions that will never be answered, because they are situations that no longer exist. Once I looked over that edge, I was never able to look back again, and like I stated earlier.........once you fall far enough, you never quite come back.
"So just let go, because there's beauty in the breakdown"
~Frou Frou~
See ya on the rivah..........peering as far over that edge as I can. PEACE
