September 28th, 2013 The Highlands, Grand Tetons National Park

It's raining so hard right now. I'm sitting in a familiar place trying to re-cap, make sense…put myself in the proper present. I'm awake alone, drinking shitty beer. I'm in the Grand Tetons, in park service housing, a quaint little cabin at the foot of the Grand Teton mountain range. I finally have the time to sit and think and to be honest I want to crawl into my mummy sleeping bag…read my Oliver Sacks book, drift into another land of neuroscience and someone else's observations and research. But I can't. Rarely do I have time to be alone. Rarely can i just sit and listen to my own wandering thoughts. I've been, for the majority of my life, wandering, listening and wholly at the whim of others, their lives, their ideas, their plight, their whimsy. In a sense I am a parasite. I only get to be here in the Tetons because my friend is employed here. And so, I get to experience this time.

  Being able to have this time alone is a godsend. In the past month I have traveled vigorously…visiting friends in their lives, in their situations. what I have learned is that they do not sleep. At least when I am there. I have devoured the lives of many folks in a month, in my lifetime. I have tried unsuccessfully to document all of those people. To understand them properly, to tell their story though my journals and through photographs. I have realized at the age of 33 that this is not only maddening, but utterly impossible unless I discipline myself better or become addicted to amphetamines. Early in my life I realized I had a gift (or a curse) to relate to people to the point that they wanted to share everything with me. And I could understand them, each one of them, where they were coming from, what they wanted, what they were capable of and where they fell short. I was good at listening and providing an answer (sometimes harshly). I am not meaning to sound egotistical. Any of you who have spent time with me when I've been doing fairly ok, has had the time with me…the time where we sit and talk and I fill you so full of fire that you feel inspired.
  After so many years of listening to other people's hopes and dreams and failures and achievements I became exhausted. And I realized after my own life was pulled out from under me not long ago that I had been listening to others for so long that I had no idea how to take care of myself and had no idea what I myself truly wanted. I had it and I took it for granted in a sense. Fuck these mountains for making me think so much and making me realize so much. My body is so tired. I've been saying that I'm tired for a long time now. I don't know how to stop or to relax or just BE HERE NOW. I'm trying in this quiet moment and even now…my brain, will not let me be. Memories and ideas and thoughts and feelings are at an all time battle, clashing and exploding in my brain. The thrashing rain is not helping and I have to remind myself to SHUT UP and breathe. Perhaps this is why I listen to everyone else, not because I have a gift but because I am scared. So scared of my own wants and desires and aches and pains. Scared of what it is I think of. Perhaps listening to others is like watching television…a distraction from everything I am so scared of.
  Let's just get back to basics because that is easy. Experiences. Descriptions are always the best place to start. I can start with now and perhaps work backwards. The things in my head that I have to write down are so numerous and so full that the thought of doing that much work is harrowing. I need a month or so…but I do not have that. I have this moment, this hour or so. And we'll see how this unfolds. Let's work into this like hypnosis.
  I'm in a cabin. A tiny cabin in the Tetons. It is raining outside. The wind is blowing violently through the trees which are yellow and turning. It's autumn but feels more like the onset of winter. I woke up to snow two days ago that came down delicately. Now, nothing feels gentle. It is early. 9:30 pm. The elk are in their rut and even though it is raining I can faintly hear their alien bugeling. Bucks give out a throaty mighty screeching sound to call out to female elk all hours of the night. They are full of hormones and in serious need to reproduce and sound as such. It's a beautiful sound (at least to me) but it sounds almost desperate at the same time. It echoes all across the valley and it's primal and almost haunting. On a cold crisp autumn night it feels as though it moving through you. Now, it is muffled in the rain. Amongst the rain and the bugeling I can hear the slow hum of the refrigerator and I am reminded that I am in fact in a civilized dwelling with amenities. I may be in the middle of nowhere in one of the most beautiful preserved natural places in the country, but there is a stove, electricity, two toilets, a shower and the most comfortable bed I have slept in in a very long time. Elk may be trying to spread their seed outside and I'm sure it's snowing uncontrollably on top of the mountains, but I am warm and comfortable in this tiny little cabin built so well it withstands some of the harshest weather winter over winter. In a sense, I feel like this little cabin. Weathered and lived in and left when the seasons change.
    I've been carrying heartbreak and betrayal around like a heavy suit and over my travels the past few months that suit is finally worn down to rags, almost exposing the simple body I've been roaming around in my entire life. My body looks different and unfamiliar. I stretch my face in the tiny mirror in this little hovel and look for traces of my past, maybe wanting to hold onto the pain for a point of reference…trying to remember laying next to someone I knew I loved (for the first time in my life). Maybe I want to look into the  dead headlights of my eyes to search for a glimmer of the hope I used to posses, the undying pure love for every being that came into my existence. Maybe I want to see the toned muscle of arms that hugged anyone that needed it or didn't. I want to see the teeth behind the smile that came easily. I want to see the laugh lines around my loud and unnecessary mouth…the lines that were deepened by so much easy bellowing out. I don't see any of that. I see a face and a body that I don't know. A new structure. An older place. It doesn't look bad, just different and unfamiliar. I suppose I was scared before, even when I shared my life with someone I could not see the end with. I began to not recognize my face in his mirror. And I suppose I cannot hate him for setting me free and having to face that difference. In a very human moment of thinking I had found true love I guess i was hoping to have help to recognize a new face. Instead I put on garment after garment of pain. And I covered myself so I wouldn't have to face myself. And now I am in rags…almost naked.
  It's not as scary as I thought it would be. My body, my face, my reality, is so very removed from what I have known, but it is real nonetheless. And it is mine to carry all alone. I have no one to answer to. No one to succeed for. No one to provide for. No one but myself…perhaps these hours I am able to have alone will span on longer…perhaps they will stretch out for days or months. And perhaps in that time I can learn to take care of my unfamiliar self until it becomes familiar to me. And maybe I'll be able to understand what it is I want instead of being scared to the point that I don't even try to think about it let alone manifest it.
  It's stopped raining. The wind outside is gentle. I'm sitting outside on the wet wooden porch.

 The yellow glow of other folks lives are lit up in their tiny cabins along the way. It's cold and nice and I can hear that bugeling every so often. Those elk are screaming for everything they want and need. I'm jealous. I wish I could just yell at the mountains in my new found vulnerability. I wish I could shout out for every desire and hope I have within…and hear it echo all across this pure place…and see it find me in the morning the same way I see those bucks frolicking with their cows as the sun is coming up. I suppose I'll settle for the rushing of the river next to me…I'll keep moving along like those currents,  hoping to pick up what I'm supposed to find along the way. I'll keep gathering. I'll become bigger and better than I was before. I won't have to yell and scream to get what I want. The general enertia of keeping on will make it more apparent. And then I can give back again. Symbiosis.