How was Japan? (I didn’t get any dreams from my third eye about it is why I am asking.)
Oh man, it was terrific. Feels like a dream. The lifestyle really suited me, at least as a student. As a worker I’m less sure, they have a pretty brutal work culture
There were big events with my now ex right as I came back, so that muddied things a bit
What did you study?
It was an immersive language program. It was hard. I made some really good connections though
I think at 26 I realised that it was just work. Then at 27 it was like a peak of youth. When thirty hits it’s really when the thrill of playing poker at the casino ends and you start to be more concerned about your winnings rather than the joy of play. Then that feeling of what I DONT have only compounds. The person though grows in and out of major paradigms. At 34 I am starting to actually be repulsed by feelings of youth rather than being tragic about not reaching those same highs. I’ve heard that people in their forties get over the feelings of not having certain “accomplishments” like, fuck it man — I’m glad I don’t have grandkids, my own business or that big house or that smoking hot 40 year old blonde smoking Marlboros on my payroll.
Poetry, man. I’m definitely looking at the winnings more than the joy, especially with costs rising while wages stay low. It’s like a big wave is coming and we’ve gotta build shelter fast. It sounds tragic to be repulsed by youth, but I understand the impulse. And I’m not immune to it either. Part of the human journey I suppose. My youth comforts me, the youth of others often scares or disgusts me. Kids were never on my list of priorities, and at this point it will probably never happen for me. I’m okay with that
Seems tragic for sure. Give it ten years reflection.
Just gotta keep on living
man
First Great Triumph: How Five Americans Made Their Country a World Power
This book is to better understand the beginnings of when America turned from a folk power to an imperial power that polices the world.
The Monroe Doctrine: Empire and Nation in Nineteenth-Century America
The reasoning behind the “jingoists” warfare and expansion of power.
Habits of Empire: A History of American Expansion
I purchased this book to better understand that beginning with the American Revolution that America had motive and intent to not only rebel against English colonial rule but to own colonial rule for themselves. From moving west ward, to trade in the west indies and diplomatic rule over South America.
We May Dominate the World: Ambition, Anxiety, and the Rise of the American Colossus
Once successful in independence, expansion and commerce compiles and consequences begin to weigh on the American consciousness.
When the World Seemed New: George H. W. Bush and the End of the Cold War
With the Cold War ended the victory of two world wars is complete. This results in a complete departure from our budding folk roots of survival as a nation to near absolute power on a global scale with the potential of absolute corruption.
How to Hide an Empire: A History of the Greater United States
In order to keep our diplomatically appealing and gratifying self-image of an underdog we keep our successes as the defining world power as secret and low-key from the world and ourselves.
A World Safe for Commerce: American Foreign Policy from the Revolution to the Rise of China (Princeton Studies in International History and Politics)
Through all of our world dominance there is a common strain of strategy that correlates with America’s commercial interests.
Having traversed junk land.
I wonder about my real life.
I think I might watch 1923 or whatever.
What else is going on?
Breakfast at 4:00 pm on a Saturday.
Where am I going to live in the fall?
Why do I work at HyVee?
How am I going to keep showing up at UPS?
So — no kayak today?
What else?
Fathers day is tomorrow.
CWS is happening.
There is a military parade.
Trump protests.
It seems like there are many prizes in life that people are chasing and I keep choosing junk.
Is everyone just chasing their next “high”?
What else?
Things are paid for.
Job security is flush.
Next mountain is a weird one —
I have to “leave” my mother.
Legitimately.
Not just cutting the umbilical cord or living independently but straight up/cut throat leave her to whatever god damn wolves are out there ..
Putting all the chips on McCoy.
Jude McCoy.
Which is a weird name.
If I cut the cord with my mother then why is my last name McCoy.
Therefore Murray.
Jude Murray McCoy.
All the chips on me.
Which is not something I understand.
If all of the chips were on me what would I do?
Well, fuck.
I can either undergo a smashed paradigm
Or build a little boat of cognitive decline
Ive got a boat!
The edge has become my capacity for boredom.
Of course, drinking would shake me from this stupor—
To commune with the spirits.
I exist in a state of delirium.
Goldie heart! Goldie heart!
For whatever reason I am off the grid and below the radar—
Remember, remember the sixteenth of November.
Survival mindset is wild,
Bullet still flying on the way to school.
6/21 - Watched Tarpon. Highlight of the year. First day of CWS finals. Didn’t go. Found a new Reyn Spooner shirt that I would like to buy. Florida keys.
In unease the earth turned itself inside out when its gravity fled. All of us fell off the earth. I was in Africa at the time and fell near an elephant. I made my way to her and stretched out on her stomach for protection from the polar cold of the high atmosphere.
I caught a couple of passing tomatoes to eat and a bottle of whiskey.
The earth used to be God’s body but he took too many wounds and abandoned it.
He left us with the husk we made of his body like a wasp’s nest.
Man shits his pants and trashed God’s body.
-Jim Harrison
