Silent Soliloquies

The man knew better. He had reached that painfully pivotal point when it became pointless to try and continue. And yet, trying was the irony of it; trying something which must come effortlessly. The harder he tried the more he failed and recognition of this fact only made it worse. It was a cruel cycle for which success was not an option.

Synapses on fire with the urgency of an impatient child when all was wanted was to be left in peace. Eyelid-light while bodyheavy was not an unfamiliar dilemma to him. The best of enemies they were and surrender the only cure.

"Why wasn't a day just a bit longer?" he wondered. "Thirty hours should do it. That would surely solve daylight nights." A thought only adding fuel to the fire, "Which planet spins slow enough to allow my dense sponge to absorb on time? Are they missing anyone?" Once again, a pointless proposition knowing his curse would just the same turn this sixteenth into that alienated twenty-second.

Feet on the floor. Hand on the door. The dark cut only by electric, red, meaningless numbers. "At least the owls are awake" he muses. "Rodents aren't what I have in mind though." Everything but.

Far too late for coffee and too early for food. What to do. Twenty-four is short and forty-eight deliriously long. Comfort at this hour is a dream. A distant quixotic dream. Almost there. Always always almost there.

What's in a day?

Today is my birthday. The 37th to be exact. That number isn't significant to me other than letting me know just how many revolutions of the earth to which I have been a witness.

13,515 sunrises and 13,514 sunsets. More than many while less than half what the law of averages promise. Is that greedy or just hopeful? I'm not sure life cares.

I feel universally privileged to have experienced the things I have with the time I've been granted thus far. God-willing, I'll have the opportunity to see, feel, taste, smell and touch much more. Each and every experience is worth everything. Nothing is undeserving of our attention.

With the little I've come to learn about this world and the people in it, there is one thing of which I'm certain; the world is what you make of it.

If money is the goal, jealousy is the reward. Pass. If moments are all you need, all you need will be all you want.

Happy Birthday to me. Happy Everyday to all.

Bangkok Massage Soap Video

I've been reintroducing myself to this site since in internet years I've been away for eons. Looking for links, posts or pictures that may have been broken by server gremlins or things that may have been blessed by the Google gods. Fat chance there, but fortunately nothing was too out of whack.

Scanning my stats program, that allows me to see under which search terms internet surfers find this site, I found several "hits" resulted from the phrase "Bangkok Massage Soap Video." Maybe it was the same guy not quite convinced I didn't have videos hidden in my wordy pages. OR girl. I assume nothing. (call me) Whether it was the same click-happy person or several different ones, the result was the same; I wanted to see the video too.

Especially if I was in it.

However, I didn't remember any of that happening during my 2 hour layover at the Bangkok airport. At least, not all at once.

Looking for what this was all about and possibly a new bookmark, I copied, pasted and a click click click later, guess what? Sure enough, page three on an MSN.com search for the title's good-time terms yields yours truly; Lord of the Bangkok Soap Massage Video.

Now, I've been in this web game long enough to know all about keyword content and how the sillier a string of search terms parsed together the more likely a search engine will blow a sprocket and spit out anything with those terms in any order, but creepy nonetheless I'm considered a purveyor of said possibilities.

Remember on Sesame Street when the shady Muppet in sunglasses, trench-coat and hat would confuse its young viewers with sketches that started, "Psst, hey buddy. Wanna buy a letter K?" Well that's the image I have when thinking about my site popping up in this type of search. As if some trench-coat wearing guy on the corner of MSN and Main is saying, "Soapy Massage? Hmmmm, lemme give it a tink. Yeah sure pal, give dis guy a call." And hands out my business card.

Furthermore, am I now on a Foggy Bottom watch-list as well? Of course not, but if I'm dumb enough to string them all together in this post you can bet your soapy ass I am now.

Rest assured or disappointed, as the case may be, you will find one of my posts via the mentioned phrase, but the only thing getting soapy was my well traveled shirt in a Taipei airport shower in between flights. Sorry, no video. Oh, the Bangkok massage? What can I say...it was worth every baht.

So lets try something. Go ahead, search MSN.com and click. Maybe I can climb the rankings and oust the reigning web champ of suds-sans-slacks and future surfers can read about themselves right here. Boo.

Now, where was I?

It doesn't quite seem like yesterday. More of a yesterthen when the unfinished touches of this blog were forcibly left to dangle. I remember it happening with the intent to return. Set affairs in order when the time arrived. Disrespectful to that experience it was while maintaining a respectful distance knowing then wasn't now. Now would come later. That is always assured.

Thoughts needed to simmer. Chaos needed to bloom before it could wither. Prism-cut lenses needed to dull from a million sharp thoughts each of it's own unyielding color. Dull from the twenty/twenty grind-wheel so they may focus into a single full-on Technicolored laser.

Time has passed. Hard edges have rounded.

Rosey reds a bluer shade of orange.

Phaser set to stun.

Then is now.

Blog.

Blog-blog.

Bloggity blog blog. I never liked that word blog. It doesn't scream it though it certainly mumbles, blah. Words are important to me. Words are not meant to be barked from lip to ear as the crow's caw flies. Leave the noise to the lesser phylum. Without words we could only defer to the greater; as much as one can with a grunt. Careful. We are de-evolving right before our IMs.

Blog is a soured homogenization of the words web and log. By no means my sole target of technological irony, but for the moment, appropriate. It's cute, quick, cuts to the chase and saves valuable tick-tocks. Time is money honey, but money can't buy me love. Words are love. They separate us from them. They, literally, define us as a species. They can have an innate power, a feeling unto themselves. Purposeful. Vengeful. soft. They can ROAR or (whisper). In a word, a fantastical buzzzz word, onomatopoeia. So I ask you; who wants to write a blah let alone read one? I'll let your thumbs be the judge of that. LOL (OMG)

Let's be perfectly honest though. With well reasoned intentions I may have switched on a computer and mouse-clicked the correct combination required for a cliched travelogue, but life has a way of morphing regardless of my affinity for crisp corners. So let's get to the reason I'm posting now after a two year hiatus; more specifically, posting on this particular blah which was started only to journal my experience abroad as a volunteer. Put simply, sanitation for sanity's sake. My sanity and this blah's sanitation. More on that later. Maybe. Allow me to explain somewhat by making a short story long.

Prior to embarking on my first volunteer vacation I had followed the drumbeat, whistles and bells of most. At least, most people I knew. More than likely, you know them too. For me personally, growing up in the belt buckle of the bible-belt that is Nashville was great. However, I always felt the notch I resided in was cinched too tight. Same notch, different person may fit just right. Though I was uncomfortable, I didn't even know there was a problem. I didn't know there was a problem even though I felt everything about me was. Make sense? Exactly.

Displayed by family and constricted belt wearing neighbors alike, I knew the image of happiness. Try as I might to color in my pre-patterned life I could never stay within the lines. I railed internally for years that I must have been cheated by an all too oft xeroxed stencil or my crayon just wouldn't stay sharp. Wait, maybe it's the lighting. Never once did I think I could use a blank sheet of paper to draw abstractly, paint with mud, finger paint with blood, cut out paper dolls or even crumple up the whole show and origami a tissue in which to blow my nose. Options weren't optional. Not forcibly so, but by my own definition of that which just is.

I wanted to be one of the gang, part of the crowd and yet I always was fascinated by those who refused. I just couldn't wrap my head around them nor did I have the words. I looked. They just weren't in The Book. I frankly didn't understand the choices one had to make in order to become who they wanted to be as if permission was required. That sounds so silly now. Beyond silly. Pathetic seems to do it.

As much as I'd like to say the tumblers of the great riddle miraculously lined up one day or came to me in a dream, they did not. It has slowly dawned on me over the course of these past few years, that the life I'd been striving for had already been set in motion long ago without even realizing it. I only needed to believe in it. Or more to the point, myself. Through a series of serendipitous events, I'm able to look back and truly understand what it is I needed to do but more importantly, continue doing. This.

Saying, feeling and doing that which I want to do most without concern of opinion. Not just want, you should understand. Almost led. Guided. No, not destiny. That's for greeting cards and single solution events. It's serendipity man. I cannot justly express what that word means to me. Though, my dear reader, you know I'll try.

If you've ever experienced it. Profoundly experienced it. Then congratulations. No explanation required. If you've never experienced it all I can say is.... bullshit. Actually you have. You just failed to recognize it. It's all around you. An enigma wrapped in a puzzle. It has no solution though. It simply requires recognition but equally crucial is acceptance. Perhaps you did recognize it but wrote it off as a coincidental aberration. Don't do that. You're only cheating yourself.

According to Merriam-Webster, serendipity is defined as "the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for." Fair enough. However, it's one of those few words which can only be lived. Only then can it truly be learned. To me it's when previous and seemingly unrelated events in my life come together in such perfect harmony there can be no explanation for it other than knowing at that very moment there isn't another place in the world I should be.

Think about that.

It's an amazing and truly awesome feeling which floods you so completely your only reply is a smile. Not forced or posed, happy for a moment though you may be, but one that starts when it's quiet and you're alone. Giving you the deep and quiet confidence that only the truth of your existence can bring. Sometimes you recognize it on the spot and other times it's only in retrospect because you may have been too busy to have a moment to yourself. The great thing is, once you have your own serendipitous eureka, you also realize it continues to happen. Not always large but more like little roadsigns. Some tell you how far to the next rest stop and some tell you that road is a dead end and to bust a U. Once you tune into it like a perfect pitched heart, you expect the unexpected. It truly is a sixth sense.

It is this sixth sense which I now trust most. Far above the five. I know now it is what allowed the freedoms and resources at my disposal to come together for my initial trip to Sri Lanka. My eureka moment came on the heels of my first Sri Lankan sunrise. You really can't write them any better than it actually happened. Though dear reader, again, you know I'll try. I posted it earlier in this blogblah upon my arrival there two and one half years ago, but only the punchline. And that's exactly what most of us only see or are willing to see. The punchline. Especially when the joke is on us. It's the details of a story leading up to the punchline which make it meaningful.

My details are many and perhaps to you boring and since I'm not writing a book here I'll just share the pertinent ones.

The short of the long is I, along with my college roommate Jim, started a web site selling luggage and travel goods out of our apartment while we were in school. The second line of luggage we acquired was called High Sierra. It was this line of travel goods which really made our little company take off to a point where we could take it seriously. I left school, Jim finished his EE degree and we both devoted ourselves full time to this moonshot endeavor. A series of other web sites and a grey-market business of mine sprang from those meager beginnings and a few years later I found myself working solely from my home having traded or sold certain ownership rights in those companies. It sounds fancy, but don't let me fool you. I'm always running from or tearing down that which I create. I see a pattern. Eureka!

It's at this happily home-bound and autonomous point in my life that brings me within a plane ride of my life-truth. From the time I locked my leased door one last time, roughly two weeks is all I had to ponder what to do with my newfound freedoms. The answer came soon enough because on December 26th 2004 the Indian Ocean tsunami happened. Fast forward another few weeks and we land here. On this blogblah. I named it TwoWeeksOff because that's generally the time most Americans get each year for vacation, the length of time I originally volunteered for and it was also all the length of time I had to ponder what to do with the rest of my life. Right. Enough cutesy. I'm sure you can take a hint.

As you can read from my previous post previously mentioned, it was my first morning in Sri Lanka that I awoke in my hotel room when I realized I wanted to have a picture of my first visual impression of my surroundings. I was alone, could have been on Mars and everything felt, a term I didn't understand until then, surreal. Digging into my High Sierra backpack, I found my camera but also spotted a tag sewn into that bag which I had never noticed in the several years I had toted it around. The tag simply read, "Made in Sri Lanka."

It's at this point dear reader that each of us must decide on coincidence or serendipity. I assure you it's much more important than semantics allow. I may have been with you on the former had I not read something on one of my plane flights roughly 20 hours earlier. My guidebook told me that the island of Sri Lanka, formally known as Ceylon, was also referred to by Arab traders as Serendib, from which we get the word, you guessed it, serendipity. Because of this factoid, the discovery of my backpack tag was not lost on me forever.

Acutely lock-jawed for 20 seconds, I was then actually rendered weak-kneed by the sudden realization of everything which transpired in order for me to be standing in that very spot at that very moment. The backpack brand which allowed my luggage business to survive, thrive, stave off a creativity-crushing nine to five, and turn into other opportunities which ultimately led me to two weeks off that have never ended. The gravity of the situation was so heavy it felt as if karmic rain-clouds had held their payload my whole life waiting waiting waiting for me to look directly into it's eye so that it may pour this message directly into my soul. Serendipity was a five dollar word I had heard before but meant no more to me than any other term. Above all, the thing that really banged the gong in my brain was the fact that the first morning I awoke in the land which coined the term, I experienced it. Not just from that moment, but from years of moments which led to that moment. It's really the details of many years which makes the story personal, improbable and one that only the owner can cherish. Your story is already written as well.

Embrace it. Live it.

Mind you, I'm not saying I am destined to devote my life to any one of these details. Nor am I saying this guiding force only resides in it's country of origin, which waited for me like some self-fulfilling prophecy. While Sri Lanka will forever hold an indescribable love in my heart, I believe I was so entrenched in my life of futile rebellion that it took me that journey to wake up. It's not about the moment. It's all about the message. It's about the willingness to recognize and accept there are forces greater than ourselves showing and guiding us along. "This way", they say.

My sixth sense has awoken and fortunately shares my love of insomnia. Serendipity does not always comes in ribbons and bows. Sometimes it's a warning. Those are harder to spot. Maybe not spot, but to accept. You know, free will and all. It's the bitch that blesses. I still trip over speed bumps fully aware of the warning signs all around me. That's alright. Mistakes and wrong turns are the best way to find your way around this town. And what a town it is.

It's in following this time abroad, full of mystery and excitement of it's own accord, that brings me to the present. In one way or another I've always done what I wanted the way I wanted. It's the guilt trip of questioning eyes and misunderstood relations I've laid aside. Not in spite. No no no. Far from it. In peace. I've learned the lesson those burdens wrought. I have...emptied that backpack now that I have finally discovered the heavy truth it held. Each of our paths have only room for one and I am at peace with that. Walk two abreast on a single path and one or both get nothing but stickers and thorns. Single file is safe but the view sucks. Unless you're in front. Maybe our paths will one day merge in a grassy field or tumble off the edge of the world. Who knows. I've stopped predetermining outcomes before they happen. That's the recipe for disappointment and a mid-life crisis proves it. These days surprise is not surprising. It's expected.

What does all this mean in relation to this blogblah? Everything. It spring boarded me into something I always feared yet craved. Writing. Other than the usual 101 and 102s I punched out hours before due dates, this was the first time I had written for myself and well, I liked it. If for no other reason than to allow room for the voices in my head to breathe. I've decided the time is now to pop my cranial cork and play whack-a-mole on my grey-matter splattered keyboard.

On occasion, I put old fashioned pen to paper and enjoy it no doubt. Words take the tactile care of a hand-hewn home when there is no delete button. Several Word documents have found their way into My Documents file as well. But I kept thinking about this site. How it would be blasphemous to write beyond it's borders. Damn you Crayola! But no mas, I know your waxy tricks. Which has left me to pause and wrestle in thought, "if there isn't a better place to pick up where I left off than that blessed cursed site that taunts me in the wee small hours, I don't know where it would be."

(I suppose the site will be reformatted in due time to better suit it's reemergence. But not today.)

So from time to time, when the mood strikes me or inevitably the voices have another raging all-nighter, you'll see new words on here. Maybe another serendipitous story about why I now live on the beach in Florida and rent beach chairs and umbrellas to vacationers on their two weeks off. Oh yes. There are more. There are always more.

Real estate is all about the three L's. Life is the three S's. Serendipity - Sanitation - Sanity. Serendeputize your life - Sanitize your soul - save your Sanity.

Blogblah transition achieved. On with the show.

The late, great Hunter S. Thompson said, "Buy the ticket, take the ride."

Shotgun.

W.O.R.K. Works!

Wow, it's been a few months since I last posted but behind the scenes there has been a flurry of e-mails and phone calls. The amount of work and dedication to continuing the reconstruction effort in Sri Lanka by those I know has been amazing and that list continues to grow. From speeches and presentations to walk-a-thons and mud bog racing, volunteers are finding some creative ways to keep the donations coming in and continue getting the word out. The word is that a lot more houses need to be built because there are still hundreds of thousands of Sri Lankans living in tents and makeshift shelters.

As I wrote earlier, Jesper and I have been trying to put together a group to return in early 2006 to build some more homes. I'm happy to officially announce that home building project is underway! We have formed the non-profit group W.O.R.K. which stands for Willpower. Organization. Respect. Knowledge. We believe these are the 4 tenets required for a successful volunteer group and our motto is W.O.R.K. Works! We invite you to take a few minutes and learn more about our upcoming project at our new site Work-Works.org

Several members of our April group will be joining us again this go-round as well as many new faces who are anxious to experience what they've heard so much about. We can't wait to get started! In fact, we have started and with a bang! For this project to be successful we also need funding and lot of it. With our first foray out into the world of non-profit fundraising we came up with nearly $20,000 in cash and supplies! However, we need another $167,000 to successfully buy enough land and materials for 20 homes. Because a large portion of the island nation is currently reconstructing and there is only so much raw material and speed with which it can be prepared, costs have risen substantially since our visit. Now instead of $4-$5k for a fully funded home it is now close to $7k per home. But, whatever the cost we will meet our goals and do our best to meet their needs.

If you would like to be a part of our project and help us build 20 homes for 20 families then please visit our site and find out how you can get involved. There will be a blog on the W.O.R.K. site for us to keep everyone updated with our reconstruction effort so be sure to watch it for any news.

Somehow I knew my involvement would be longer than just two weeks when I stared this blog but this new project is far beyond my best guesses. I'm thrilled to be actively working towards returning and helping even more people than our previous visit. Even more exciting, I get to continue working with some great people and no doubt will meet many more.