No perfect moments

There are no perfect moments. Every moment has infinite possibilities, so you just have to jump in, and embrace the imperfection. Every moment we are alive, we’re also going against life. Almost by definition, living means we’re also inching closer to its end. And we’re also always attempting to put things in order that tend towards chaos and entropy. We’re struggling to keep ourselves afloat, and exploit new resources, without being exploited or losing ourselves in the sea. We’re also trying to keep ourselves interested and entertained, while suffering under the illusion that we can win the ultimate battle. We can’t. The darkness will always win, as it should.

These are tough lessons to understand, and even stranger to try to live. It takes a lot to admit the paradox that perfection is unattainable in this life. We can’t reach it, because it would mean we had nowhere to go, and had nothing to strive for. In some sense, then, death is the closest to perfection we can ever get. Yet this need not be a morbid thought, because knowing it suddenly makes it possible to jump into the flow, and revel in the mess, while also letting go of the need to be perfect. We can have some fun in this royal disarray. We can throw our hat in the ring without knowing everything we "need" to know. We can also demand more for ourselves, even if we never get it, by simply stating those demands, making a declaration that “yes, darkness, you will win in the end, but in the meantime, watch me shine!”

It is with this attitude that I have decided to revive a writing process that I left hanging last year, at the very beginning of my definitive break with another set of illusions. It's time to just jump back in, whether it's the "best" moment, or the best summary I can muster.

In 2011, I gave up the illusion of having a permanent residence. I gave up the illusion of home, in the hopes of expanding it. After slowly shedding my skin over the last few years, and reducing my responsibilities down to the barest essentials, in 2011, it finally started to feel real.

To recap, the story goes like this: as the year began, I was living with virtually no money in the mostly-empty upstairs floor above my father, in the house where I grew up. I was wearing out my welcome, and falling behind on bills. I decided to take an advance for a photo job and lurch down to New Orleans to shake things up. I had been thinking that writing and photography might be my best ticket to a life on the road, and a career path of “getting to know the world better.” So I thought that New Orleans, with its famous Mardi Gras, might make an interesting first foray into this life.

Three weeks later, I was nodding with a newfound understanding. New Orleans had welcomed me, and schooled me. It is a truly marvelous city that must be experienced to be believed. Its traditions run deep, and are unlike anything else I’ve run across in the US. But after the beads and the jazz-in-the-streets had wound down, I got another type of schooling. On the beginning of my drive back to Columbus, I stopped by the abandoned Six Flags amusement park in East New Orleans. I simply wanted to take some pictures, but was surprised to find a dozen or more thrill-seeking punks and curious kids in the park already. Within twenty minutes, however, we were all arrested together for trespassing. We spent most of the evening being processed and detained in the infamous Orleans Parish Prison, which was about as unpleasant an experience as I ever care to endure. 

Luckily, I was bailed out by a stranger who was a friend of a friend, who also decided to lend the entire group some money. After getting out, appearing in court, and avoiding a conviction, I took a breath, had a good dinner, rode a streetcar, and started over. I filled up my tank with gas and drove east, spending my last $20-something on a Louisiana swamp boat tour before entering Mississippi. I continued along coastal Mississippi, where I learned another tough lesson. Since I had left Ohio, I had been playing a lazy game with a missing rear brake pad. Over a fifteen hundred miles later, the damage was too far gone, and my rear caliper gave out completely. From one moment to the next, I lost almost all of my braking power. Yet I still somehow imagined that I could “improvise” my way back up to Ohio by driving slowly and stopping as little as possible. 

In Waveland, MS, this illusion was almost shattered when I came within inches of smashing my windshield into the huge metal propeller of a boat being towed by a car in front of me. That’s when I said “enough is enough,” and pulled into an auto arts store to ask if someone could take a look at it. A back-yard Mississippi mechanic was called in, and even with him working in the store lot, and charging me far less than a shop would, using local labor, it still cost me more than $500 to fix. Meh.

I was wiped out, so I had to reluctantly ask my network of friends for financial help. What was worse, the repair didn’t quite take, and the next night, the caliper fell off again near Biloxi, MS. Luckily, I had seen how the caliper worked, so I soon determined that all I needed was another brake pad. The next morning, I drove my car gingerly to another parts store, jacked the car up, and installed the new pad. It worked. This, plus the infusion of enough gas money to make it home, gave me the freedom to weave my way through Mississippi and Alabama, hitting places I’d never been, like Selma, Alabama. From Birmingham, I began to wind my way back north to Ohio, where I fulfilled the obligation to photograph a wedding that had gotten me to New Orleans in the first place.

For a while, back in Ohio, I tried to sustain the illusion that I could maintain a residence by renting a tiny room room at a friend’s house. It wasn’t ideal, and the back yard of next house over was apparently the meeting point of all of Columbus’s loudest-mouthed scavengers, but I made do. I didn’t even have a bed, but the blackberry tree shared its fruits with us, and I had a place to cook, so I didn’t complain too much. After a month, however, the pressure of my poverty—and my strange, stubborn unwillingness to work—reached a breaking point. The second month, I had to sell some precious instruments just to cover rent, and I could feel myself resisting the coming of this new life. I didn’t realize how much I was clinging to who I used to be, but it didn’t matter, because the new life seemed to be coming whether I liked it or not.

In the summer, I drove some DJ friends around the US (as I’ve detailed elsewhere), and had all my expenses covered. On my return, I improvised for a couple of weeks, living out of my car and at friends’ houses, until I was flown out to Portland, Oregon to officiate a wedding for one of my oldest and dearest friends. I hadn’t intended on deliberately living out of my car, but it was the summer, and I had done some similar improvising in New Orleans, so suddenly it felt like a useful skill to have.

The real beginning of car-living by choice came at the end of July, after my return from Portland. I decided to make it a test of my endurance, and to help guarantee that I would not give into the complacency of Columbus. At first, it took some learning, so it felt unstable. I made a few beginner’s mistakes, like parking to sleep near the railroad tracks. My car's isolation attracted the attention of three police cruisers and I found myself making bashful explanations that I was locked out of my house for the night. 

Within a couple of weeks, however, I settled into a comfortable pattern. I spent many of my days at friendly cafés, and most of my nights sleeping (quite comfortably) in my car. I learned where to park and feel safe. Surprisingly, the best places are in residential neighborhoods, where there are many other cars. I would find spots where I would be somewhat “out of view” of house windows, park, switch to the passenger side for more leg room, put a firm couch pillow on the floor, recline the seat, crack a window, and enjoy the evening and the independence. Other times, I parked at the fringes of large department store lots, where there might be a handful of other cars, and a guaranteed clean bathroom to freshen up in the morning. I also started going to a grocery store that was open 24/7, and had a seating area complete with toaster and microwave, so I could maintain some semblance of home cooking. After realizing it was okay for me to be there, especially after buying my groceries in the same store, and becoming friendly with the night staff, I was not shy about showing up for my late night dinners. I also enjoyed exercising in various parks throughout the city. I visited a number of Metro Parks I hadn’t been to in my entire life. To keep clean, I usually showered at the houses of friends.

In other words, far from feeling like a bum, I somehow managed to maintain a certain standard of living without having a home of my own. I was well rested, eating decently (thanks to food stamps, which I finally decided to apply for in late August), presentably clean, and had plenty of places to exercise and hang out. I didn’t need much money, but I did start to bring in a few hundred dollars from odd photo jobs here and there. I envisioned myself getting back on the road by the end of September or mid-October at the latest, before the cold kicked in. I wanted to drive somewhere, probably to Michigan, or maybe to Nashville, or back to New Orleans, and just start this photography-traveling-writing life for real…

***

This is about as far as I got with my previous attempt to report on my strange, threadbare attempt at reinvention. My last post, in early September (“Learning to Crawl”), was rather grandiose, contemplative, and determined. I quoted Herman Hesse’s Siddhartha and conjured the ghost of a recently departed friend, Dan Sicko, to remind me not to take this life for granted. I put up a good front, and played the artist for one last time.

I resisted the idea of working any kind of conventional job, because I suspected it would tempt me to stay in Columbus longer. This is about the time I also had an image of wiping tables, doing the most demeaning type of work at a restaurant in the French Quarter. I remember realizing how stupid I felt for waiting so long to leave, because no matter how demeaning a job I would have to take in New Orleans, I’d be able to look up from my work and say to myself, “but hey…I’m wiping tables in New Orleans” rather than still being in Ohio, still living in the safety of the nest.

Around this time, I also realized that there was another thing that was “elusively obvious” about my relationship with Columbus. All the feelings of mediocrity, insecurity, and overcompensation that often haunted me about Columbus, were almost identical to the things that have haunted me about my own life. As a city, Columbus is still in the midst of figuring out how to be more than just an average place. It’s often been too closely defined by the scarlet and grey of its gargantuan university, and the simple designs of its clothing impresario named Les Wexner. I always found the city’s mediocrity and lack of vision (and in some sense, its complacent acceptance of its own averageness) maddening, and to be honest, a bit immature. After a moment when Columbus was in the spotlight, such as the 2004 presidential election, there would be a self-congratulatory pall in the air for weeks. It made me nauseous. Over the course of the 2000s, I had also noticed that the music scene had become more and more insular. There was a burgeoning scene, but too few bands seemed willing to test themselves on the road. Then, there was the rise of a number of festivals celebrating Columbus, which seemed a little too eager for my tastes, and arguably premature. A particularly galling moment was when the local rag published a piece on the “Columbus Hip-Hop” scene. But the problem was, there IS no scene. At best, it was a loose affiliation of related and unrelated artists. The term “Columbus Hip-Hop” just seemed like another immature (if understandable) journalistic conceit.

But now that my secret was out, I realized how much of my critique also applied to me. I had never really tested myself, or tried to prove any of my ideas outside of what I knew. True, I had traveled, but my vision was still very limited. All too often, I was just visiting people who I originally knew from Ohio. I was still in the Ohio bubble, more than I ever realized. New Orleans had opened me up to a new kind of life, not refracted through the Ohio lens, and I liked how it felt. But I didn’t know how to make it permanent and lasting. “Just do it” didn’t seem like enough information for me, especially since I didn’t feel like I knew how to take care of myself yet.

So I kept waiting. October came, and Halloween presented many fun opportunities for photo-taking. I managed to keep the car-living thing going. The cold actually made the car quite cozy, as I learned to use blankets and a sleeping bag. October turned to November, and I was still managing just fine. Then, in late November, we had our first freeze. I woke up under a pile of covers, after sleeping nicely, but with a car interior caked with frost. I realized that the experiment had to end.

At that moment, I lined up two gigs of apartment-sitting, which were cozy and comfortable, and also fun. I got back into cooking, big-time. But the complacency was still with me, even as I made tentative plans to take an ambitious drive into Canada and New England in the dead of winter to see friends and do portraits. The idea was to arc down from there, to stop all over the east coast and start the photographic journey. I hoped to do this roundabout journey in time to make it back to Mardi Gras, and even threw a “goodbye” event in January to sell many of my records and mark the occasion. Around this time, I also lost about a third of my life archive, when a storage space I was utilizing semi-legally was cleared out without my knowledge. I lost, among other things, almost every scrap of academic work I did in my entire thirties, mementos from over ten years of travels, an entire library of books, years worth of older digital photos, some of my favorite techno records (GAH), and worst of all, my cache of Super 8mm films (family films, and my own artistic films from the early 1990s). Right now, much of my life sits in a landfill on the south end of Columbus.

The devastation wrought upon me at that moment was of a singular importance. When I entered the dusty, musty space one last time, I was still so familiar with it that I was able to imagine, and almost touch where every box and object was (in a way, it’s still there, etched in my memory). When was faced without he fact that everything was indeed gone, I immediately realized the jig was up. I had played a game, and I had lost—badly. For once in my life, I was faced with an irrevocable consequence. 

But compressed in that moment, there was also a powerful realization. I felt every possible reaction coursing through me, equally. It was one of the strangest moments of balance I have ever experienced. Perhaps it’s as close to perfection as one can ever get. I was filled with everything at once: anger, self-loathing, shock, loss, grief, relief, acceptance, and the feeling that not only had I been freed of a large chunk of mess in my life, but I also had an opportunity to live “for real” this time, instead of hoarding a past that had never made me happy in the first place.

In typical Lunar fashion, however, I still managed to wait another few weeks before I got myself going. The difference was that I knew I was leaving. There was no way out of it now. I no longer felt the need to explain my departure, or answer specific questions such as “so, Ed, when are you leaving?” I just knew I would leave, sooner or later. I had also secretly admitted to myself that that the Montreal/East Coast Tour was probably unrealistic, due to lack of money and worry about my car’s iffy suspension (which I ended up getting fixed in late January). I had also hoped that a lady-friend out east would beckon me out for a special Valentine’s Day rendezvous, but that also turned out to be unrealistic. I reduced it to the baseline: I would need about $100 to get to New Orleans, and my deadline was the weekend of Mardi Gras (Feb 18-21, 2012). Somehow, after attending one more Sweatin’ event on the 17th, and doing all the things I love to do at a dance party—dance, take portraits, and mack on the young hipster girls—I found myself driving south an hour later. I had snuck out of Columbus like a thief, with only some $150 to my name, and a few small jobs yet to be paid.

I arrived in New Orleans a bit too late to really enjoy the full Mardi Gras experience. I was also inexplicably lazy on Lundi Gras and missed some major parades, and chose to write some of my first pieces about the city instead. After Mardi Gras wound down, it slowly sank in that even though I had managed to make my getaway, I had brought my bad habits and lack of “executive functioning” with me. I spent seven weeks in a holding pattern, living on next-to-nothing, and feeling subtly depressed, in the midst of sun, gorgeous weather, and an entire city to uncover. I was also staying with generous friends who welcomed me and offered me a real feeling of refuge. But instead of using this as a platform to build a new life, I played it safe again. I didn’t even try to find that French Quarter job with dirty tables to look up from. Instead, I returned to the fog-like behavior of endless social networking, planning to-do lists, sipping coffee obsessively, examining my failings on long walks, having nightly epiphanies, and then failing to do much about any of it.

It didn’t seem like it to me at the time, because I often felt like I was failing to make even the smallest inroads towards true self-reliance. I knew I was making the same mistakes, and I didn’t like it. But it’s only with the distance of three weeks in Maine that I can look back and realize that something deeper was sinking in. For one, even if I was being a mopey, overly-introspective, and lazy person, I was at least being that person somewhere else. But more importantly, I was working my way through the guilt of not having left the familiar confines of Ohio years and years earlier. I was finally working through what my low-cost, low-key life of living in Columbus had really cost me. In the midst of a strange, joyous, musical city, I was also learning to forgive myself, and also laugh at my own self-importance. As far as life projects go, it’s a good start.

It’s now been over two months since I reached “escape velocity” out of Ohio, and I’m surprised at how seldom I have looked back. The Facebook news feed, full of Ohio updates and event listings, seems largely irrelevant and foggy to me. It’s just another place to me now, although I can tell it is slowly coalescing into something. But I have little reason to go back, other than to revisit the people and places I left behind there (my father, for example, isn’t much of a “hang out” guy, so I don’t even really have that as an excuse). In those few weeks, I’ve even lost my temptation to “shame” my Ohio friends for the small-mindedness that I still smell from afar. It’s not my battle anymore, and negativity just gets in the way of what I do want.

Incidentally, the term “escape velocity” is an old joke among friends. It dates back to a dance party by the same name that happened in Kentucky in the early 1990s. The same friend who flew me out to officiate his wedding last year was also the source of the joke. If I remember correctly, he had been booked at that party to set up his trademark grab-bag of low-tech goodies (which included a monochrome green video projector). He had loaded up his 1970-something Datsun 300x and set off for the party, but the poor car—with weak compression, exhaust fumes leaking into the passenger compartment, and other problems—just couldn’t make it. For years, this was the source of enormous peals of laughter every time it came up. To this day, we make fun of him for not being able to “make escape velocity.”

Well, that friend eventually did get out of Ohio. He did it way before I did, when he moved to Portland, Oregon some years ago. He arrived there with very little confidence in himself, and he suffered a number of depredations that seem to haunt him to talk about today. But now, he is a man with a thriving business, a wife, and a child on the way. His life has started in earnest, at age…44.

In some fashion or other, it seems I’ve also managed to make escape velocity. I don’t know what shape it will take, or whether I’ll settle into some kind of reliable orbit, but as I sit here at a Denny’s in Portland, Maine, waiting several hours for the trains to start up in the early morning, I feel like I can look back on the last two months and honestly say one thing for certain: I did it. I got out of the familiar. In my seven weeks in New Orleans, and the three-plus weeks I’ve spent in Maine, I’ve already expanded the horizons of my life far beyond what was possible for me in Ohio. I will always be connected to where I’m from, because it’s where I was born, and it’s where I chose to spend over twenty years experimenting as a creative person. But I don’t owe Ohio anything anymore, and in a way, I am doing Columbus a favor by letting it grow up without me.

It’s because of this sense of balance and perspective, that I finally felt like I could legitimately revive the Happiest Man Alive. I am no longer talking about what I’m doing to do, I’m quite busy doing it. I don’t know if I’ll pull it off, but I am about to attempt a semi-improvised trip down the eastern seaboard by means of thumb, rail, bus, foot, or whatever makes sense at any given moment. I’ll be visiting a lot of those aforementioned Ohio friends, but I suspect I’ll also be making several new ones as the boundaries loosen. It’s also worth saying that I no longer feel the need for grandiose statements. I don’t feel much desire to turn this experience into an “epic,” or “project,” or anything other than an attempt to peel back one layer of skin on this here Earth. It can be a modest project, changeable by the day, as ambitious as it needs to be to say something. 

Perhaps in some way, my last posting on here, “Learning to Crawl”—written at the cusp of delving one last time into a kind of poisonous complacency that defined too much of my time in Columbus—was also the last gasp of an artist I always failed to be. Perhaps now, I am free to just be the artist that I am. With all my imperfections intact.

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Learning to crawl

I write this in my second week of my forty-first year. After spending most of my first week celebrating my birthday, going out dancing, and drinking to my health (i.e. a typical week for me ;), I've also been thinking about where I've been and where this is all headed. How far along am I in embracing this new life?

It's been over a month since I began the independent, itinerant phase of this "project." The project, in essence, is to learn how to generate my own career as a traveler-photographer-storyteller, mostly from the ground up.

After traveling some 11,000 miles in June and July (mostly on other people's dime), I've been surprisingly stationary for the last five weeks. Since late July, I haven't even left the city limits of my hometown of Columbus, Ohio. But it's been for a purpose: I've been trying to tie up some loose ends and figure out how to utilize Columbus as a staging area to prepare my launch towards the wider world. I've been doing this without a formal home, job, or reliable stream of income, and precious little to fall back on. It hasn't been easy, but it's all been by choice.

* * *

My chariot, my home, my '97 Accord.
Southern Ohio, March, 2011.

First, I feel the need to describe a few of the nitty-gritty details about how I've actually been living. In part, I want to give a sense of what it's really like to live like this, but I also want to reassure my closest friends (and my worry-prone sister, Sonya :) that I am relatively happy, healthy, and in good spirits.

After a few early stints of couchsurfing, I've pretty much given up on staying with friends. Having to coordinate where I was sleeping every night was exhausting in and of itself, so I've saved those offers for the nights when I've felt the need for comfort or company. This means that most nights, I've actually slept in my impromptu "mobile home"—aka the sleek, white EDLUNA car—in various spots throughout the city. It's not always ideal, but it can be surprisingly comfortable, especially as the summer nights have been cooling off.

As for meals, they have mostly consisted of the basics, made up of things I can get at the grocery store and that won't go bad too quickly. We're talking about sandwiches (PB&J, or sometimes sliced meats), dry snacks (nuts, fruit bars, and good potato chips), carrots and oranges, and lots of coffee, tea, and club soda at the various cafés where I spend most of my days. Sometimes, a friend will treat me to lunch or dinner in exchange for a portrait, or some stories of life on the road.

I've gotten my exercise by going out dancing, or doing a few basic Pilates and yoga-like exercises in the park. I've even gotten back into a kind of personalized Capoeira training, after taking a sixteen month break (after doing it uninterruptedly for about ten years before that). I've stayed clean by taking showers whenever there's been one available, or sponge baths when there hasn't. So despite my meager circumstances, I have managed to keep up my appearance as the same well-kept, fuzzy-headed, svelte-bodied man you've all come to know and love.

While figuring out the ins and outs of the itinerant life, I also spent most of August hustling. Much to my surprise, I was able to drum up just enough photographic work to squeak by (with the additional help of a few days of manual labor for a friend's custom tiling company). Naturally, some weeks have been better than others, and the ups and downs have sometimes been hard to take. I've also come to realize that I've got a long, long way before I understand how to do this "right." (For example, I still don't have a website or business cards, or the standard things a business is "supposed" to have. Likewise, my work habits are still not quite up to par...)

But somewhere along the line, I've realized that I have gotten a little better at talking to people about what I can offer. I feel a little bit more confident about my ability to bring in some cash. More importantly, while I've been learning how to climb this steep learning curve—most of which just has to do with figuring out how to organize myself—something like an "inner smile" has begun to show. Something is telling me that I am, at last, on the path of self-reliance and self-determination. I'm slowly on my way to being more in charge, and it feels good.

Or, to put it another way, I'm finally learning how to crawl. After years of avoiding it, I've started to learn what it means to take care of myself—not by recurring to defaults, or racking up debts I can't pay, or finding the easy way out, as I've usually done. Instead, I'm learning how to use my talents to move towards the life I want to lead. "Better late than never," right?

* * *

Through this process, I've also come to recognize a couple of curious, and inescapable incongruities. The first, and most obvious, is that my independence and self-reliance literally depends on my network of friends, acquaintances, and (sometimes) family. In a very real sense, then, my very livelihood depends on the ability to integrate myself into a wider community of people. I am a single entity, but I exist in a deeply embedded social context.

I've just begun to understand what this can mean for my future endeavors, and it surprises me to realize that I've actually been nurturing this community for a long time. I'm pretty sure this will be the key to what is to come, and it's exactly the kind of thing that makes it easier to understand the second oddest contradiction of my life: that I can somehow be a semi-celebrity in my own town, while living like a vagabond.

There are days, of course, that these contradictions wear me down. I sometimes wonder if I've truly lost my marbles. On some nights, as I recline my passenger seat and pull out the pillow to go to sleep, I find myself wondering: "Really? Is this the best I can do?" But that's really the least of it, because I am genuinely thankful that at least I have a reliable shelter. As for food, well, I've been smart about making sure I always have a few days worth of groceries to live on. But sometimes I run short, which can be a bit nerve-wracking. [An aside: two weeks ago, I finally broke down and applied for food stamps, and qualified for over $100 a month in benefits (woo-hoo!)—but as of this moment, I haven't been issued a new EBT card to access them. Pretty frustrating...].

Then there are the days when I am faced with the gut-wrenching prospect of only having $5 (or less) in my pocket. This happens all too often, and it forces me to make choices that I don't like or want to make: Do I use my last bit of cash to pay my "rent" at a café for the day, and then have nothing left for anything else? Do I buy a gallon of gas or a loaf of bread? Do I wash my dusty clothes at a laundromat, or wash my muddy car instead?

There are also those moments that are truly maddening, like when I'm out on the town, and I've managed to get a friend to buy me a drink (not such a difficult task during my birthday week). If they forget to tip the bartender, should I use my last dollar bill for that? Such are the conundrums that people with money can't really conceive of, and they are the source of most of my toughest headaches and heartaches.

Yet even in stress mode, when those moments of self-pity, doubt, complaining, and frustration inevitably arrive, I know there is another layer of understanding available to me.

For example, little by little, I am rewiring my perspective on money from a "scarcity model" to something else. I used to completely ignore the ways money worked. When I suddenly had it, I would always squander it. Yet I was also always terrified of poverty—and terrified of giving up the last of my money to pay for something—because I never really knew how to generate real money on my own. I still don't, and it might take me a long, long time to figure it out, but one thing has definitely changed: I am no longer paralyzed by fear.

Sure, I may be tempted to shut down, but I don't. I am beginning to realize that even feeling uneasy about what I am doing is probably a good sign, because it means I am not doing things the easy way anymore. My anxiousness is a sign that I am being realistic about what is really going on—"I'm fucking broke, and it sucks!" Yet oddly, this only strengthens my sense of purpose.

Those are also the moments when I've reminded myself that in many ways, I am actually pretty lucky. I live in a respectably safe part of the developed world, in Columbus, Ohio, in the good ol' US of A, in the early twenty-first century, where there are many resources at my disposal. I only have to learn how to tap into them. This is the age of the internet, "infinite abundance" (for now), longer lifespans, and infinite possibilities, so it's time to harness these, and not to be afraid to innovate. More than any other time, my life is in my hands.

In a way, this is the ultimate expression of a quintessential  American impulse: to define myself, to declare my independence from old ways of thinking, and to "walk the walk" (even if it involves crawling awkwardly first). And it's up to me to do it.

* * *

Siddhartha (paperback ed).

It's probably no coincidence that I found myself re-reading Herman Hesse's Siddhartha again last week, while basking in the glorious late-August sun. I found that I am not so different from the title character, someone from Buddha's time who is also in search of self-reliance and self-transcendence, but who is haunted by the subtle, nagging feeling that he will have to do it on his own.

He begins by questioning the rituals and customs of his own father, a Brahmin, wondering if he is just doing them more out of habit than to seek deeper knowledge. So he rejects his father and becomes a Samana monk, enduring years of fasting and depredation in the forest. But this doesn't answer his deeper questions. Even after meeting the ultimate teacher, Gotama (Buddha) in person, he more or less says "no thanks," and concludes that there are no magical formulas for finding one's way to true understanding. He renounces self-denial and decides instead to become more involved with the world. He becomes a rich merchant, a lover of a beautiful courtesan, and a reckless gambler.

His desire for self-knowledge eventually becomes dull, however, and he loses himself in this new life. Slowly, he becomes too sick with himself to continue, so he runs away from the life of worldly pleasure. He runs through the forest to a river, where he nearly gives into despair and considers killing himself. Instead, he hears the voice of the river—the holy Om—which helps him find his inner divinity again. He decides then and there to stay by the river, and ask the river ferryman to take him in. The ferryman accepts, and teaches him his trade, and how to listen more deeply to the river. Through this, Siddhartha slowly gains the ability to understand that all things are united, that all stories are one, that time is an illusion, and that it is all perfection. He notices this is the source of the old man's "inner smile," and begins to exhibit it himself.

The last time I read Siddhartha was perhaps three or four years ago. I'm pretty sure it was close to the time that I reached my true Zero Moment, in the summer of 2008, which I am now beginning to reckon as the actual beginning of this "new age." It didn't realize this before now, because I've spent much of the last three years my in a bit of a directionless fog, distracted by photography, ladies, and avoiding the bigger questions. This year, I've been distracted by the imminence of my current homeless-jobless-moneyless situation. On a long drive home from Chicago in July, however, I began to outline a more specific vision to guide me (which I will write more about soon). After gaining this newfound clarity, I have been able to look back and honestly say that even in my moments of greatest frustration in this new life, I am nowhere near the depths of despair and desperation that I experienced three summers ago.

I'll save that story for another time, but let's just say that I felt helpless, useless, and broken. I had moments of such utter self-loathing that my skin would crawl and my body would shake. I was also broke, heartbroken, and without the tools to find my way out. I was only saved at the last minute by a university stipend and a late/early inheritance, so I didn't actually hit rock bottom. True self-reliance would have to wait another three years, when I've more or less chosen to hit rock bottom.

All this suggests to me that there really is no further down to go than that, because even though my material situation is almost as bad (and maybe worse) than it was back then, I don't feel powerless about my life—at all. I don't think I can ever go that low again, because I recognize (as does Siddhartha) that it's not about possessions, or money, or security, or love, or even necessarily about health. It's all about that inner drive, the hunger to be, to listen more deeply, to recognize that you are always capable of being in charge of yourself, and taking part in something bigger—no matter what the external situation presents you with.

* * *

Of course, I'm nowhere near being "enlightened." The very idea makes me laugh. Sure, I may have learned a few things, and opened myself up more to the universe lately, and I'm finally on something close to the right path, but I'd consider myself lucky to be about a tenth of the way (if it can even be measured on such mundane terms).

And there may be dark moments yet to come.

Some night in the near future, maybe even tonight, I might finish partying and being frivolous with some leggy ladies at the club, only to come back and see that my car is window broken, my trunk is pried open, my computer is stolen, and whatever else. Yet even though I would surely despair, and feel stupid, or even shocked, I don't think I would feel defeated. I'm pretty sure that my very next impulse would be to accept the situation, and move forward anyway, however I could. Possessions can be replaced (and I've got most of my photos backed up offsite, so we're pretty safe there).

I also know that even seemingly negative events can often become rallying cries or opportunities to gather your community together to help you ("Hey Ed, I have an old MacBook I'm not using…" etc.). So what's really holding me back? Nothing—just my own hesitation. So I just have to get over that, and start doing. Having this vision to guide my life—of traveling, taking pictures, telling stories—I know that there is no longer anything external that can stop me from pursuing it.

But okay, so what if things got really bad? Like, what if—worst case scenario—I was diagnosed with colon cancer (as my dad's side of the family is prone to)? I have no real access to health care right now, and I worry about leaving a messy legacy of unfinished photos, writings, and archive materials behind. If this scenario seems far-fetched, it's unfortunately all-too-real. Just a few days ago, a friend and colleague of mine (Dan Sicko, renowned author of Techno Rebels: The Renegades of Electronic Funk, a history of Detroit Techno) died suddenly from complications of ocular cancer. This was only days after letting his community know that he had been diagnosed in 2008, and had been battling it on and off for years. He was only forty-two. (Remember, I'm forty-one.)

Dan Sicko, RIP.

So yes, this shit is real. The shock of losing Dan so suddenly is something that will take me some time to get through (and I can only imagine what people who were much closer to him are going through right now—my heart goes out to them!). But I think I already have part of the answer.

As far as I know, my death is not imminent, but I am pretty sure that even if it was, it would only be a matter of a few explanations (like what to do with my exquisite corpse, my records, my Facebook profile, and other miscellaneous items), and trying to leave at least some trace of my story behind (perhaps this very blog?).

Other than that, I don't think that my death would really matter that much. I think I could go out graciously. Why? Because, even if my time is to be cut short, I have found a purpose. Of course, I'd be sad if I didn't get to express that purpose as fully as I'd like to, and only got as far as the crawling phase. But then again, no one ever promised me I'd fly.

I thus feel like I've given myself a tremendous gift: I have chosen my purpose, and only death can take that away. It may sound overly dramatic, but until that moment when my end comes, I know I will always have infinite ways to inhabit the world and express that choice.

Anyway, since Siddhartha has been somewhat central to this post, it seems appropriate to end with a couple of passages from that book.

After his moment of darkest despair, and the awakening of his dormant spirit, Siddhartha realizes:

"Now, he thought, that all these transitory things have slipped away from me again, I stand once more beneath the sun, as I stood as a small child. Nothing is mine, I know nothing, I possess nothing, I have learned nothing. How strange it is! ... He had to smile again. Yes, his destiny was strange! He was going backwards, and now he stood empty and naked and ignorant in the world. But he did not grieve about it; no, he even felt a great desire to laugh, to laugh at himself, to laugh at this strange foolish world!"

[Herman Hesse, Siddhartha, Chapter 8, "By the River."]

In the last chapter, Siddhartha is visited by his oldest friend, Govinda, a fellow seeker. Entreating him to give him something to help him reach enlightenment, Siddhartha asks him to kiss his forehead. Govinda does so, hesitantly, but immediately experiences a kind of bliss.

"He no longer saw the face of his friend Siddhartha. Instead he saw other faces, many faces, a long series, a continuous stream of faces—hundreds, thousands, which all came and disappeared and yet all seemed to be there at the same time, which all continually changed and renewed themselves and which were yet all Siddhartha. He saw the face of a fish, of a carp, with tremendous painfully opened mouth, a dying fish with dimmed eyes. He saw the face of a newly born child, red and full of wrinkles, ready to cry. He saw the face of a murderer, saw him plunge a knife into the body of a man; at the same moment he saw this criminal kneeling down, bound, and his head cut off by an executioner. He saw the naked bodies of men and women in the postures and transports of passionate love. He saw corpses stretched out, still, cold, empty. He saw the heads of animals—boars, crocodiles, elephants, oxen, birds. He saw Krishna and Agni. He saw all these forms and faces in a thousand relationships to each other, all helping each other, loving, hating and destroying each other and become newly born. Each one was mortal, a passionate, painful example of all that is transitory. Yet none of them died, they only changed, were always reborn, continually had a new face: only time stood between one face and another. And all these forms and faces rested, flowed, reproduced, swam past and merged into each other, and over them all there was continually something thin, unreal and yet existing, stretched across like thin glass or ice, like a transparent skin, shell, form or mask of water—and this mask was Siddhartha's smiling face which Govinda touched with his lips at that moment."

[Herman Hesse, Siddhartha, Chapter 12, "Govinda."]

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Hitting the ground running

I ended my last entry with a sense of hope that my difficult moment of transformation was also a genuine opportunity to become who I really want to become. This optimism was tempered by a note of distrust in myself, and my ability to actually pull it off.

In the month of days since I wrote those dramatic words, I've justified both that optimism and distrust. I've floundered and flourished in equal measure.

My existence has continued to be extremely tenuous. I am now officially without a home, and my flow of income has remained almost nonexistent. Yet I've done almost nothing to change this, even though I still owe some money to friends, and my resources (i.e. things to sell) are running out. I have managed to get my bills down to a meager $150 a month (an amount that seems to arouse the envy of many), which covers my iPhone plan and car insurance, but I often have a terrible time coming up with even that much. This doesn't include other basics like food, gas, and whatever miscellaneous or unforeseeable expenses that come up, which thus far have only been covered by sheer luck and improvisational savvy. It's an inconvenient way to live, having to arrange couches to sleep on all the time, wondering when I'll get to take my next shower, not being able to order a drink at the bar, not being able to go "dutch" on a lunch date, and so on. The worst part is, I haven't been able to create a single real plan to get out of this situation. Instead, I often find myself fighting the urge to wish it all away, and pretend like I don't really have to deal with it yet. It's an inexcusable, irresponsible attitude to take on the verge of such an imminent disaster.

On the other hand, everything is as it should be. Every aspect of this is still under my control, and I know it's my responsibility to bear.

Besides, I can't entirely be blamed for not having time to put a plan together, considering that I've spent most of the last few weeks—indeed, almost all of this summer so far—on the move. Whenever I haven't been hustling (poorly) in Columbus, I've been dancing in Detroit, driving my two DJ friends on tour from El Paso, Texas to WIlmington, North Carolina (and other points between), partying in New York City, or spending a week out in Portland, Oregon (officiating a wedding, of all things).

Those marvelous opportunities to travel on someone else's dime are now over, but thanks to them, I can say that I criss-crossed the country, while eating well and experiencing the best of life—without having to spend hardly any money (as if I had any?). True, this taste of the nomadic life made it a little complicated to be a dedicated writer/blogger (hence the long delay in writing this), but it also taught me to travel and think on my feet again, and how to wrap my head around the odd incongruities of life—like sitting on a plane, in a first class seat, with only $14 to my name. I've even begun to see the plus side of being homeless in my own city, because it's bringing me closer to the many friends who have generously offered me their couches, guest rooms, and an ear to listen to my (self-imposed) plight. In turn, they're becoming part of the story.

Somewhere along the line, I realized that this, in fact, was the crucial hint I needed to complete the bigger picture. On one long night drive from Chicago to Columbus, by myself, this became a fully fledged vision of where I want things to go. I don't quite know how I'm going to get there yet, but it's enormously relieving to actually see what my life can be. I know that it will motivate many of my actions to come.

So what is this picture? Well, in some sense, it's something that's always been there. It's a direction my life has always been pointing towards, but I just couldn't perceive. In short, I want to be a storyteller. I want to be involved in life, to reveal things, talk about them, share them, and present them in a way that allows people to recognize themselves.

I'm clearly too irresponsible and inconsistent to be a "real" anything—filmmaker, professor, chef, journalist, graphic designer, EMT, truck driver, dance teacher, or Pilates expert (all careers that have crossed my mind)—but I think I am capable of telling stories of people who are. Or, at the very least, I can tell the story of me trying to tell their stories (oh so "meta"!). Either way, it's about sharing things, and putting them out there in a way that fascinates people and draws them in, much like Anthony Bourdain's world-wide food exploits or the subtle personal dramas of This American Life. So that's it: I want to get people involved in stories, and illustrate them with pictures. Cool.

Again, I don't know exactly how I'm going to make this happen, or how it's going to get me out of my current financial difficulty. But one thing's for sure: in many ways, I've already been doing it, in person, and on Facebook, without realizing that's what I was doing. Now, this very blog—and pretty much any step I take in that direction—is just another aspect of the story. Everything I do is part of this "new life" that I'm trying to create for myself, a life that is already underway. In that sense, I've already hit the ground running. It's merely a question of doing it better, with a more deliberate eye towards that bigger picture and the rewards that lie along the way.

Of course, being so new to my own life, there will inevitably be some stumbling. But everyone loves the story of someone who stumbles and gets back up again, right? Or as Kurt Vonnegut (probably) said, "Somebody gets into trouble, then gets out of it again. People love that story. They never get tired of it." So here we go, people. Get ready for some stumbling...

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Giving birth to myself

My first entry comes to you from a very personal place, as I pass through a kind of "zero moment" where I am being reduced to the barest, most threadbare levels of existence I've ever had to endure.

As I write this, I'm down to my last few days of living in a tiny, dingy room in Columbus, Ohio—with no proper bed. After I move my stuff into someone's basement or somewhere, I will be driving two DJ friends (Adulture and Ghosts of Venice from Second City Recordings, out of Chicago) around on tour in North Carolina and Tennessee for a week. This will no doubt be a great time, but upon my return I will have no place to formally be, and no money (or job) to set myself up somewhere else. This means that until something else happens, I will likely be eating many meager meals and sleeping on friendly couches (or as a last resort, in my car). If this isn't enough, I'll also be selling off what's left of my belongings, including parting with many of the books and music that have defined me as a person for the last twenty-or-so years. It's an odd feeling.

But this is not the part that really bothers me. Plenty of other people have had to ditch all of their things and start over, and I know that I've been putting off slimming my life down for far too long. As for my living conditions, well, I know I will handle it fine. I have always been a kind of traveler and "urban camper" at heart, so I can accept having to improvise for a while. I can also sleep pretty soundly just about anywhere—as long as the temperature's right, there are no bugs, and it's peaceful. And I shouldn't have too much trouble staying connected, since internet access has become easier to find at cafés, libraries, and the like.

It may sound surprising, but I don't feel much need to stay connected to my city of birth. Other than a couple debts I have to repay, I've freed myself of any real responsibilities here. And other than some of my fabulous friends who I will miss, there's not much here that I couldn't find somewhere else. In fact, this might be the perfect moment for me to start over somewhere else, or find some way to make something work for me while I'm on the road, as I've been talking about for many years.

Still, I can't deny that the daily strains and frustrations are beginning to get to me. Living on very little money is freeing in some ways, but it is also exhausting. It's nerve-wracking to have to measure every penny that comes in and out. And it's downright perilous to have nothing to fall back on, especially when there's no way to replace something that breaks or goes bad.

It's also disheartening (not to mention dehumanizing) to recognize how much of our society is based on a "transactional" mentality. I've always tried to sidestep this reality by looking for alternative systems or living in more communal situations, but they always end up breaking down (often over money). So here I am, staring at the reality of capitalism in the face once again. And this time, I've reached an inescapable conclusion: either I have to develop a head for business now, and make money by my own merits (and learn to love it!), or it's time to just give up and live like a bum—cardboard box and all.

There is another option, of course, which would be to look for a conventional job where I would be paid for my labor. But something deep inside me is telling me to resist working on someone else's clock until I absolutely have to. I've worked many menial, low-wage jobs, and a handful of higher-paying, higher-status jobs, so I know what work is about. As rewarding as a good job has sometimes been to me, I still feel like I have to learn to generate something for myself, rather than rely on someone else.

Speaking of relying on others, I know all about that, too. I've spent my fair share of time living off of various kinds of "handouts," such as university loans (which are currently in deferment), the generosity of friends and family (including a late inheritance which helped me live without working for a couple of years), and a few other trump cards. But this is not the time to go looking for another till to dip into—it's time to make my own till. This will mean confronting the system head-on, and biting the bullet until it works for me.

The problem is, I am not confident that I can do it, or that I will get where I need to go. I'm not confident that I have what it takes to build the life that I want. Poverty and adversity are one thing, but on a deeper level, what I am really lacking is trust. I don't trust myself, and I never really have. That's why I've played it relatively safe for most of my life. And now, I've waited so long to "launch" that I'm not really sure who, where, or what I want to be anymore.

Given this shattering realization, it suddenly becomes obvious that I've been heading towards this moment for a long, long time. Yet it's crucial for me to recognize that it also has the potential to transform me completely. After all, I'm the one who has allowed the slow dilapidation of my life to happen, one piece at a time. Whether or not I like to admit it, I've been in charge of it every step of the way. So there's also something exhilarating about this moment, and the realization that I have a chance to take full responsibility for myself, perhaps for the first time. In this, I realize that I am also being invited to "give birth to myself" in a more dramatic (and maybe, remarkable) way than I ever have before, as embodied by the eloquent words of Gabriel García Marquéz:

“Human beings aren’t born once and for all on the day their mothers give light to them; rather, life obliges them over and over to give birth to themselves.”

(Or, if you prefer, in the original Spanish:
«Los seres humanos no nacen para siempre el día en que sus madres los alumbran, sino que la vida los obliga a parirse a sí mismos una y otra vez.»)
—from No One Writes to the Colonel (El Coronel no tiene quien le escriba) [A nearly identical line also appears in Love in the Time of Cholera (Amor en los tiempos del colera).]

If this is truly my moment of rebirth, then it's also a brilliant chance to clean away many of the things that have held me back for the last twenty years. I have therefore started this blog as a way to write about the experience, and to keep myself somewhat accountable. Knowing that a few people are following me as I go through this might just give me enough of an impulse to keep writing, and to keep going, until the zero moment has passed and I am well on my way to living the life that I know I am capable of. I hope to do it all with a smile.

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