Funny how, almost three decades in to this life-thing, I still struggle with some of the same issues. I suppose that on many levels, we all do.

One good thing? They're more familiar with each passing. This time around I can recognize the odd mixture of excitement and melancholy of transition. It's still affecting me, still pulling my mind and my heart in different directions, but its face is familiar. I'm not struggling to understand the basics this time - instead I'm getting to nitpick at the nitty-gritty. I have a chance to dig into which directions I'm being pulled instead of just trying to hold all of my pieces together.

Most of my birthdays in the past ten years have taken place on the cusp of a transition. Some have been in the middle of nowhere, driving to the next adventure, just the road and my wandering thoughts. The timing isn't quite there this go 'round (I leave Boulder a couple of days after my thirtieth) but the craving that I have for the head-space of the road is strong.

I'll get to settle out my mind and the past few months (let alone the past two years) over the long road back to Minnesota. I'll have an entire summer on a bike to catch what the plains of Nebraska don't. I'll lay out my mind, map the twists and turns, and (perhaps) reorder it a touch underneath the big sky that I find so comforting.

Posted by noblehobo at 10:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

On the way back to the airport tonight, I watched the sun set low over the Mississippi River. This is not an unfamiliar sight - I've watched it many times in my life. Each instance manifested vastly different than the one before, sometimes subtle, sometimes drastic changes in the nuance of color, the shapes of the clouds, the heat of the evening, and in the long tail of dusk. Each one brief, powerful, and altogether its own.

Thing is, I wasn't the only one who watched that sunset over the Mississippi. I took part in a viewing audience of thousands - each one of us interpreting the scene in front of us as differently as one sunset from the next. Each one of us bringing our own baggage to the show, our own understandings, prejudices, daily troubles, victories, and more. All of us carrying something different to the same display.

As a worldly people, we share so many of these occasions - sunrise and sunset, sleep and dream, marriage, faith, birth, death... We share the physical manifestations of them, but interpret each differently from our own perspective, our own universe of perception.

We struggle in minuscule and massive ways to come to terms with these differences. We grow frustrated and argue, launch insults, mistakes, and wars. We grow willing to kill over how our different faiths interpret similar moments.

Sometimes, however, we find success. We mesh with a group, with a friend, a lover, and find communion of spirit, mind, or heart. Sometimes we only understand better - disagree, but know each other more deeply. Sometimes that simple act of attempting understanding is enough, and budding respect forms.

If I took anything from my Lutheran upbringing, it was the idea of unconditional love. The idea that while we, as flawed humans, might never be able to attain the perfection of it, there was no reason not to continually try. No reason not to strive to find that level of respect for everyone we encounter in our lives.

My Uncle David passed away this week. Today, we gathered family for his funeral. We traded our stories, swapped our memories, and smiled as we tried to imitate Davey's laugh. We will remember a good man - a strong man in family, friends, and faith, willing to offer much to those he cared for. Regardless of the myriad beliefs we carry for the afterlife, we all bore witness to a life on Earth well-lived.

We aren't offered a great deal of time here on this soil, not long to come to an understanding of our selves, let alone each other. Time is a ravage we cannot stop or slow. But we share that struggle, share the attempts to learn, to better ourselves, to ask the big questions and seek answers to the whys that we perceive. We grow together, laugh together, play together - we find ways to cherish what we have been offered, to hold close what time we have been given. We fight valiantly to maintain the flame of life in the here and now and shine the brighter for it.

During the service, a letter from David was read aloud. He had written it to my Aunt and their four daughters on the one year anniversary of his battle with cancer. It was proud, hopeful, thankful - powerful. He understood grief and joy, pain and pride, he offered fortitude for others and gratitude for the strength that he received. He offered hope and he offered peace. In the middle of our grief, as we listened to his words, David reminded us of a more ancient wisdom - the center binding a lasting strength:

"Nothing means anything if you do not have love for one another."

Posted by noblehobo at 12:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I forget, on frequent occasion, the beauty and need of escape. The pleasure that exists in the easing of a mind, in the focus on reveling in a present, simple moment.

I forget, because it is far too easy to get distracted.

Escape, as I understand and occasionally crave it, takes practice. It can take solitude or sensory deprivation, silence or self-control, a combination of many factors. What it can't seem to take is the constant influx of the post-modern world.

My great-grandparents watched the birth of cars into society, my grandparents, flight. My parents, television, and myself? Computers and the internet, email and cellphones, social networking, and Web 2.0. If you glance back at that arc - the technological development and adoption of the past century, there is an exponential curve evident. A curve leading to the ubiquity of electronic interaction, to Twitter and Facebook, Flickr and YouTube, iPhones and Blackberrys - the younger, more energetic, frenetic siblings of cellphones and texting...

Hold any modern smartphone in your hand and augmented reality sits at your beck and call. Constant updates from friends and loose connections fill your sight, enabled GPS tracks your location, automatically Twittering any friend within a mile of you, letting them know you'd like to meet up. Text messages meander in every few minutes, picking at the ether to see who is around, to say hello, to simply get the dopamine rush offered by a response. Google Street View shows off the restaurant front where you'll meet, with it you've looked beyond what your eyes can see. The photos you upload to Flickr are tagged with the location they were taken in, a friend missing out can enter the name of the restaurant and catch all of you there, texting at the goofiness of a smile, a new haircut... News sites and blogs (from the political to celebrity) have been modeled to read more efficiently on the small screen, now moving from RSS feeds into shorter data streams, grabbing the attention of the table next to you. Bills maintain a texting personality, a small @CellCompanyHere denoting your account due, a new service, an overage. Romantic interests flit in and out of contact, flirting in 180 characters or less, thumbs plying away on a small keypad, lower lip bitten. Job possibilities and contacts, acquaintances that know more about your life through Facebook updates than family do, all these pop in.

I've read that the average Sunday edition of the New York Times carries more information in it than an average person in the Dark Ages of Europe would have encountered over the course of their entire lifetime. I know that using a newspaper as an analogy is woefully past-due, they are nearly dead as an industry and we pack more information into most mornings than the Sunday paper. I know that whether or not it is of quality, there is a massive quantity of data available to us, literally at the brush of our fingertips, often at the forefront of our minds.

It's been said that dating is dead - that texting and flash-mobs of friends have lead to brief meet-ups, six-degrees-of-separation connections providing commonality, groups providing anonymity and a break to the nervous stress of a first meeting. We don't knock on doors to say hello anymore but we don't need to. Texting is akin to it - to unexpected distractions and moments, with the same ability to ignore as the doorbell, but more frequent, our immediate response more Pavlovian.

I am living in a world where the constant influx of information drives me, feeds all of us. A world where we are all far closer to the data stream than we may care to admit. A world where boredom need not exist, where an instant hit requires only to dip the toes in, to drink just a little of the digital froth.

So escape? I get distracted. I forget. Instead of escaping into my mind alone, into contemplative silence, into peace, I escape into diversion. I end up in a whirlwind or wild ideas and useless drivel, of heart-felt moments and half-assed thoughts... I end up in the whirlwind and forget to get out, forget to break free and let my mind wander, let my thoughts settle, do something with all the ideas consumed.

I forget to escape.

They're all tools. That's the true trick to remember. All the toys to access the information - just tools. And tools you can set down on the work bench.

Escape is this image: Looking out to the backyard from inside the garage, camera low, on the floor. Remnant objects of a project are strewn about, evening light streaming in, and dusty footprints move out toward the backyard. Panning up, the camera catches the hint of a silhouette in the setting sun, an arm unbinding a burden, tossing it aside. The silhouette disappears, leaving the yard, walking off, simply, to somewhere else.

Somewhere a little more quiet.

Posted by noblehobo at 8:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

It's come back to visit again, the old romantic burning - the feeling of longing attached to no particular target. It's a tie-in to whenever I half-settle, whenever I sit still in the presence of a place, knowing I'll be here for a spell, knowing I'll be leaving to wander again soon. The pangs of the feeling hold a familiar sway in a person's single days. Hold sway on the tired days when you aren't entirely sure which way to turn, when seeing a happy couple laughing together in front of you tugs fiercely at your heart strings.

Considerable portions of the feeling focus on the craving for love - it's tied into romanticism and relationships heavily. Portions of it fall to love of other types as well - to a love of a community of friends, of place, of the pursuits of ones life... When I am moving, wandering, driving - it's not running (I don't seek it as an escape) but the pace keeps many thoughts quiet. Only in the stillness and routine of a more settled life do I think about the future, about the love that I have, about the love that I want.

An Antarctic winter is steeped in these moments. By the end of that dark, I thought I had a fairly good handle on the longing-quiet, on the melancholy associated with it. In that I can see beyond it, I do. Becoming mired in it or lost in its depths is no longer a worry of mine. So far as not encountering it though? Life always offers an opportunity to be challenged again - I can't seem to avoid it. The universe of our growth is not so easy to run from.

What came first, the music or the misery? People worry about kids playing with guns, or watching violent videos, that some sort of culture of violence will take them over. Nobody worries about kids listening to thousands, literally thousands of songs about heartbreak, rejection, pain, misery and loss. Did I listen to pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to pop music?

Posted by noblehobo at 6:00 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

Sometimes accomplishing the small goals can reap major rewards. Not sure why, but sewing buttons back onto old favorite shirts, extending their life a touch, seems monumental today. I can't think of many items on the list (of things to do in my life) much smaller, or of a lower priority, but I feel like I'm tackling something greater.

Now, back to packing. I'm off to Boulder soon.

Posted by noblehobo at 5:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I've spent the better part of the last two months back in the United States bouncing between various worlds, helping family and tracking down friends, scheduling visits and hiking in places my feet have missed in the last two years.

It's beautiful and bizarre, inspiring and occasionally confusing to cram so much in, but tiring. I lack a home to rest and recuperate in, my own space in which to spread out my thoughts, to leave some resting safely while I tackle others or explore a tangent. No matter how much I might appreciate the various homes I stay in, couches I crash on, or offered beds, they are not mine... I need to take ownership of a space, to call it my own, for my mind to wind down and breathe easy.

Tonight, sitting in a favorite old coffee shop in Duluth, I am tired. Satisfied by the last few days, definitely, but tired and in need of rest. I've some temporary respites coming up, some brief stops that will help keep my head healthy while wanderlust still courses in my veins. I am certainly not done with wandering and traveling. I'm just starting to think that when I am ready to settle, when I am ready to remain in one place for several years or more, it will be due to a weariness with wanderlust, with a fierce craving for something consistent and solid that speaks with a louder voice. When I plunk down for a long spell, I'll be doing so with as much fire as my wandering soul carries now.

Posted by noblehobo at 3:38 PM | Permalink

One of the more transient (in the fact that it vacillates between abhorrent and wonderful) aspects of a seasonal lifestyle is the movement and connection of friendships. Relationships are forged fast and furious in a world of shared context - we have no need to develop commonalities between us - the worlds we work in are one and the same, freeing us to quickly dig into the meat of our personalities. We're left with solid friendships that, at the completion of a contract, no longer have a context to exist in. Instead, when we meet again a month, six months, a year, or more after our last connection, we are able to base our interaction on our friendship, and build the context, rather than the reversal of that.

It's a unique endeavor, and leads to collected friendships that are solid and strong, if frequently infrequent. I have committed, frequent friends for the period of the contracts (such as my last thirteen months at the South Pole) but after that, it's a new round of meet and greets. The consistency of a frequent friend over many years is something that I don't know. The strength of such a friendship? That I know for certain, just not the day to day of it.

Anywho, that's a ramble. For a good (not entirely kid-safe) interview about Antarctic life focused on the "tropical" realms of Palmer station, take a read here.

Posted by noblehobo at 8:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I harvest images, the tangents of idea and emotion, draw them into a cohesive narrative and build my life. We all do. We translate the empirical into a story, take disconnected colors, sounds, smells, tastes, touch and interpret on the fly.

This is not new, this is not a philosophy unexplored. It is worth reminding, remembering. It is worth savoring - that we create our own image, our own perspective, our own universe.

I have seen the sun rise over a land that only bears witness to it once a year. I have felt the temperature of its long, long dark. I have known the mourning, the fierceness, and the beauty of its silence.

And yet, if I could see the world through your eyes...

______

Reality beckons again. The upcoming summer asks for pragmatism in the balance between sleep, dream, nostalgia, and the day to day living that I go through. The sun, when the storms break, now casts shadows on the walls and I stop to wave at my mirror on occasion.

Our lives are picking up steam as we complete turnover documents, end-of-season reports, and operating procedures. We spend our days finishing up our myriad winter tasks and beginning the long slog toward opening the station. In one month we will turn our home over entirely, leaving it to some veterans and a great deal of new folk. Somehow we'll cram the collected knowledge of sixty people into three hundred fresh faces in the course of a week.

After that, it's a short walk with bags on our shoulders toward a running plane. I'll strap in and laugh at the antics of the people sitting across from me. With a slight bump and the stomach drop of take off, home will slide away into the fog of memory and into the present story of many others.

Growing distance to the sound of roaring engines will mask our voices but not our thoughts. In little over a month that slow move back into reality will start. In a little over a month I'll again face the unknown of a world outside of my dysfunctional South Pole family. Answers will grow more complicated and the spectrum of grays will deepen. I'll face a shrinking economy, politics as usual, the consternation of love, relearning home, and having to build a future.

I'll see my second sunset in a year. I'll breath deep the humid air of a New Zealand night and drink in the stars. I'll return to Minnesota to wood-stove weather and the somber light of an overcast evening sky on fresh snow. In the sharpness of inhaling the cold air I'll know memories of both here and there. No matter what I might face in that great unknown, my footsteps will carry the satisfaction that I feel in my life.

Posted by noblehobo at 2:24 PM | Permalink

Buried somewhere in the recesses, in the dark corners of history past they lay, treasures shrouded in the heavy folds of dark velvet, entwined in scents we both fear and hope for. We savor the edges of the music surrounding them but cannot hold the tune, cannot unwind the wrappings...

The mysteries of the paths we walked before now, the moments of a crossing with another soul, the uncertainty of a parting. Why, always asking why, always wanting the certainty of truth, the view through other eyes, the story as told to us not by us. The deep unknown unfolding to bring us to who we are, to rest at the edges of our souls. Always to taste the myriad mysteries that shape us but never to hold the answer...

We find life in the struggle of ambiguity, in the greys, in the fledgling moments before the clear light of day.

_________

As for the English translation of the above esoteric rant? A random memory of an ex-girlfriend, a bad breakup, and her apology a year later. The apology was bittersweet, though. It offered an acceptance of her actions and confirmation of mine but didn't reveal the the background behind why she had acted the way she did, only the regret.

The memory is a long time gone but all of us are built in part on stories similar. The acts of another person might define our lives and yet our knowledge of the logic and history behind the actions may never be complete. Unless another is offered to us and we choose to listen, we see the world only through our own perspective.

Posted by noblehobo at 2:26 PM | Permalink

You wish there were words to capture it - the fleeting feeling that lay on the edge of love and knowing, that holds for moments in the uncertain, before a leap into the dark. That stirring of life in skin that finds itself near another, the taste of wonder and hope. A lifetime wrapped into a smile. The quickly passing ease of laughter.

You would like to sum it up into a single word, even a simple phrase, but get the idea that it can't be done. An untranslatable feeling, a German word with no English equivalent; a human emotion that precedes language. Endless hours writing might be spent in an attempt to describe it. You would only be dancing loosely around the truth.

Instead then, of translating, you go back to your room and find music that carries memory. Similar moments from your past rise up in the ebb and flow of the songs you hear. With a knowing and slightly heavy sigh, you lean back and savor what you can. Patience and time, confidence hold you in knowledge of tasting it another day.

Posted by noblehobo at 2:02 PM | Permalink

Last night I started watching the show "Freaks and Geeks". While it wasn't my decade (the show takes place in 1980) it did a damn good job of bringing back the awkward moments of high school and junior high with a hint of humor. It amazes me how much some things have changed and how little have others. Time offers testament as to our true personality, differentiating between action brought on by a place and action brought on by the core of self.

I'm definitely more willing to tear up (or try to) a dance floor with a partner but still find myself hesitant to ask for a hand on occasion. I've found more lasting friends and far better understand what loyalty means yet I still seek to stay on the good side of as many in my community as possible. And while I'm a far cry from the star of the show or one of the cool kids I am very happily set to be the man that I am. Maturity and age, over ten years out from those days... Funny how they don't seem all that far back.

There's a strong bout of nostalgia floating in my head, a feeling I can almost, but not quite, grasp that contains the better memories of that time. Moments of laughter, sitting with a crush in the catwalk of the theater after a rehearsal; of watching the sunrise from the rooftop of a farmhouse after a party; of the school - silent and empty save our sleep-deprived mayhem at three AM returning from a speech meet; of the bus rides and late-fall afternoons of cross country tournaments... A want to return to the choir room, late at night after a musical, to sit and tell stories and dig up old songs; for the walks home with giant mugs of horrible cappuccino and philosophical discussions under the bridge; for rain-walks; for abandoned-barn dreaming time with my first love; for late nights staring at the stars, laid out with friends on the hoods of our beat up cars; getting kicked out of conferences in Minneapolis; the awkward party moments that lead to truth; the hopeless crushes; blundering dates with my first girlfriend; the great unknown innocence we tested daily; the run of the art department; the feeling of invulnerability paired with abject fear. I never did find complete confidence, never did get rid of the wariness of my peers and the cool kids, but I had a damn good time regardless, learned some lessons, walked with my head high, look back with laughter, and would gladly relive it in a moment.

Basking in memories of the easy days of high school, I decided to tear into some more history - digging into a pile of letters I've been intending to respond to. Forgotten to me was the depth of history in the box full of letters - not just correspondence but job applications, notes of past-future dreams, small gifts from good friends, a few pictures, and forgotten memories from the last five years of adventure. So much too, of that adventure...

Old letters are a drink, heavy-laden, prone to remembrance, nostalgia, and the good intentions of unwritten missives. I need not drink any red wine to feel that warm buzz-mix of love, regret, and hope. I only need open a box full of rag tag paper and penned scribbles.

The box (a Chaco sandal box - for my like minded friends) holds the story of the major loves of my life - a touch of each, missed in the packaging up of memories at the end of a relationship. It holds the ebb and flow of friendships, the birth, near-death, and healing of several over time. My family, extended and close, is carried as well, a strong note of the letters I've yet to write to my grandparents, my parents, my brother, and my sister.

It's the same feeling (or very similar) to the nostalgia for high school - wonderment at the life I've led thus far, at the bizarre, the amazing, and the painful. The urge to not let it go, the understanding that it has passed, and the shit-eating grin for the sheer, maddening joy of it all.

Posted by noblehobo at 1:19 PM | Permalink

We have a good deal of time available to us here. While we work (job dependent) anywhere from fifty-four to eighty hours a week, we are able to skip many of the time-consuming portions of life off-continent. There is no commute greater than a half-mile walk (most are no greater than a couple hundred feet), meals are prepared and cooked for us, cleaning is done weekly as part of the work day, we have no dependents immediately with us, and our personal possessions to care for are few.

Barring emergencies and broken equipment, when we finish up with work, we are immediately done and on our own recognizance sans responsibilities. This leaves plenty of time to think.

Add a ratio of ten women to fifty men in the winter isolation, and it becomes easy to not lose time to dating or the building of a relationship.

Casual dating is weighed differently here as we are all working and living shoulder to shoulder for the next six months. Relationships are similar. Romance moves at a curious speed over the winter, often more carefully than it does stateside, and definitely not in the hormone-fueled, camp counselor drama style of the summer season. Not everyone acts in this regard, but stable friendships carry more weight than casual risk.

Sans dating and/or love, however, and with the time available that we have, it becomes easy to step into the past and look at former lovers, to analyze and theorize, to play the "where did I go wrong" game. When I slip into that mindset, it never ceases to amaze me how different not only I am, but how different my former partners are. It's intriguing to look at their lives (those whom I've stayed in touch with) and where our paths diverged to where they are now.

There have been scars, healed now into interesting characters, and marks of the good kind, those that leave you stronger, more wise, more gentle and patient. There are moments of all manner that still hold a laugh, a wicked smile, or wincing pain. There are thoughts which lead to phone calls and the simple art of sharing that which you still can, of sharing the lives and memories you built together, and the feeling, unlike any other, the mix of respect, distance, nostalgia, lust, regret, and love all tied into the last few seconds before hanging up the phone.

There is silence too, of the nature needed to move beyond difficulties not worth overcoming, hard-fought lessons in forgive and forget, with the former still a work in progress. A silence more difficult than the myriad emotions left in friends turned lovers turned friends. A path not easy but one which the feet and the gut know is the right direction.

So what's the point of all of this esoteric rambling? Just that of looking back, of remembering and smiling at all the good and all the bad and the fact that I'm still here, still capable of love and hope, still laughing, and still dancing (any takers?). That of gratitude, for those I've been able to share the closest of human connection with, for those I still love, and for all the parts of the man that I am now that come from my past.

We certainly weren't perfect, we certainly didn't last, but we wrote our own unique story, left our marks on each other, and left our marks on the world.

And that is a thought that I can sleep on.

Posted by noblehobo at 1:47 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

A distinct memory: reading Desert Solitaire by Edward Abbey for the first time, drinking in the words that described what I had, where I was, resting in the sun, filtered through the boughs of massive pines, laying on the stump of an ancient Sequoia, fifteen feet off the ground, catching wisps of the breeze carried down from the mountain pass above.

Not too long now and I'll hit my twenty-ninth year. I've learned a great deal in my walk on this Earth but nothing so prevalent as this - that there is so little that I do know, that there is much more to understand, much more knowledge to gather and hold, and to walk in humble awe of that fact.

Posted by noblehobo at 10:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

There is great power in the world around us with which to heighten an experience, to gnaw away distraction and give clear credence to a truth. A soundtrack set with tense, stringed chords and abrupt, wooden clatter filtered tonight's thoughts.

Clarity, found not in an answer, but in a question. Clarity to be found in the cusp between possibilities, in the moment before choice...with pictures to the risks of either direction, a view both to immediate weight and the lightness of a wider angle, a pause for the still before the storm.

What, in our lives, is worth the risk of an ideal, the challenge in an idea? Select parts, specific pieces, or the literal involvement of the whole of self? Can one pursue a path for any length of time without the utmost commitment to the journey? With hedged bets and jointly sought alternatives, can the journey be complete?

What becomes worth reckless, hopeful, and soulful abandonment to an ideal?

Posted by noblehobo at 12:48 AM | Permalink

We played pub trivia tonight - tossing around answers to four rounds of questions in exchange for small shots at pride and a few beers. Good questions from a pun-favoring fellow, Adit. A perfect combination of humor and hubris.

Its easier to catch, as we get tired, our levels of frustration and ego - easier to catch in others. As we tire, we fail to hide our discomfort or annoyance, fail to hide (or be polite about) small disagreements. We stand our ground for the simple sake of doing so, for the credit (from no one in particular) of being right. We strive to bring others to our viewpoint much more so that we willingly work to understand theirs'.

I'm projecting here quite a bit, as the above I most certainly see in myself (we see that in others that we fear in our self). Still, the tendencies exist. The question is, as winter progresses, will we learn to observe ourselves, to catch our pride and frustration in the act? Will we miss the immediate action, only to notice it later? Or will we be oblivious entirely, creatures of our base natures, acting out without first formulating our responses?

The psychology of the unfolding months will be hard-pressed not to intrigue me.

Mary Roach puts it very well in the introduction to her book, Spook:

The deeper you investigate a topic like this, the harder it becomes to stand on unshifting ground. In my experience, the most staunchly held views are based on ignorance or accepted dogma, not carefully considered accumulations of facts. The more you expose the intricacies and realities of the situation, the less clear-cut things become.

_______________

On other notes, the windows are beginning to be covered to prevent stray light from our station to leak out and interfere with experiments sensitive to the visual spectrum. From now on, our views of the sky will be from the outdoors, our faces and minds exposed to the heavens and -90F temps. The wind is kicking at near thirty knots, and the front "sail" of the station (a giant piece of material bearing the US Antarctic Program logo) rattles away, sounding like the heavy rain of a thunderstorm.

Repairs were also performed in the New Power Plant (NPP) yesterday, requiring power to be conserved throughout station to balance the generator loads appropriately. Most of us worked in the dark, the soft glow of our monitors the only lights. I spent some time visiting with a couple of good folk over in the B2 science lab, laying on the floor in the dark, listening to harmonica, laughing, and singing whatever pop songs rolled into our heads.

There's something great to be said about the camaraderie that beckons in the absence of power, the memories we pile up of family and friends circled around candles during blizzards or august thunder storms. That gathering calls to mind the feeling of friends around a fire, philosophical discussion and banter around a woodstove, or a group huddle on a cold Michigan road in October, watching the Northern Lights flare up in the sky at the beginning of an epic backpacking trip.

Losing something so familiar, and finding that we do just fine without it, seems to bring up a smile, a playful edge, and more risk than usual. When the power goes out, I have an overwhelming urge to have a snow day - skip work, responsibility, and concentrate fully on something we oft forget about - play.

Ethan (from the link in the upper left) and Calee write about the dark a touch too.

Posted by noblehobo at 12:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Once, in the beginnings of a singular love, I traded two small clay beads for a sarong, worn by the woman I fell for that summer. We met beneath the moon and the white pines of the upper midwest, two figures in the night, shirking responsibility for that moment, for that pair of smiles. It would be several weeks until we saw each other again, each item in the trade filling a part in a long, unique story.

Over the following years, the sarong became a representation of her, a wrapping to letters, to memory as we traveled our own paths and dealt with the realities of a long-distance relationship, with the trials of a powerful love, play, and the difficulty of letting go.

It amazes me today, still, how many emotions are tied to the feeling of that material between my fingers - love, joy, fear, jealousy, pain, goofiness, warmth...

I no longer have that sarong - it has been placed away where powerful, beautiful memories need go if they are not to lead one's life in nostalgia. I no longer have it, but catch a feel like that fabric and

wham!

instantly back in those moments, reading letters over distance, a lover held close by something once held close by her, all the emotions of the arc of the relationship boiling in at once.

Like the barest hint of a smell or a sound - memory triggers that we cannot let go of, cannot ignore.

It becomes something beautiful to pass on one day in story - to self, to friends, to children, because, isolated, the beginning of the memory will never cease to be powerful and amazing.

It becomes something beautiful to learn to say goodnight to, to learn to treasure without holding on too tightly, to ease the grip of memory on the present, and to breathe deeply.

It becomes something beautiful to say goodbye to.

Posted by noblehobo at 12:17 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

yup. love.

that small grip of nostalgia to share moments with someone that no one else bears witness to. there's a want for it back and growing.

must be the moon or something. tough being a hopeless romantic at the bottom of the world.

funny to encounter the twinge after an evening of testosterone-driven movies in the gym (Gladiator and 300) but sitting in my room, with a moment to ponder thought and miss old friends and old lovers... my friend anna was right - i fall fast and hard because i spend most of my life looking for it.

the lyrics from the postal service song, clark gable, keep tumbling through my head.

a woman from minneapolis (friend of a friend) writes about this far better than i. www.zosiablue.com

Posted by noblehobo at 12:48 AM | Permalink

Late night, post movies with friends. The end of a swing shift day, slowly moving from the station to home at five in the morning. Gather up momentum, and find the way to your cold weather gear from the lounge. Notice the station waking up for day shift, construction managers already leaving their morning meeting. Get dressed, drop your goggles over your eyes, and step outside into the air.

Fill your lungs, your mind waking up at the in-rush of cold oxygen. Equipment operators are starting up their dozers and cranes, prepping them to warm during breakfast. Step down the stairs of Destination Zulu as a snowmobile darts past. The bracket-bracket-bracket of bulldozer tracks echos past ears and vibrates feet as you tread across the snow to Summercamp.

The sun, as always, is up.

Step in the door to J-9, quiet-like, and push through the dark, finding your room door by touch. Eyes adjust later. Two coats are removed, boots and liners come off, layer after layer drops. Wrap in a blanket, power up the computer, and sit back to ponder the world, life, and all the aspects of it.

Think of responsibility and obligation, of lessons that life offers, regardless of the contexts that you choose. Think of leaving behind disliked situations that carry lessons of responsibility toward others, and find similar lessons in new environments.

Smile at the breath of air that gathers from another person entering the Jamesway, fresh and cool, carried by winds across a desert virtually untouched save the blowing ice crystals.

Wonder what you have left behind, but ponder at the deep contentment that you feel for your present. Settle in to communication and what you can do versus what you want to. Realize that life carries such universal similarities because you are always looking at situations from your perspective. The context changes, the view does not.

Or it can, should we choose.

And what of those who push to change their view, what of those who are pushed until they have no choice?

Perspective, all perspective...

_____________________

I watched several episodes of "Band of Brothers" tonight, and came away thinking on the level of sacrifice, obligation, and sheer terror that the men of Easy Company went through. Thought of the larger picture, of the fact that it was young men, differing likely by only language and culture (maybe only a generation or two of history) killing each other at the behest of other men. Caught on the realization that all they had was each other, all they had to trust, to understand, to hold steady in a world gone mad.

That for those who go to war.

And here, so far removed from the story based on truth of Easy Company, are we so different in relying on each other? Certainly we are more relaxed, with our day to day lives not so terrifyingly at risk. We are allowed the energy and time to see greys, to find subtlety in black and white, to think before responding (if we so choose to utilize that luxury). We cannot immediately leave and find a new place, cannot escape those we do not like, cannot easily take a break when needed. And so we hold, to those we share this life with. We share the context, share the struggle, and share the knowledge of the life we lead, all without having to state it directly.

A far cry from those who fought and risked all at Bastogne, but we learn, we grow, and we trust.

______________________

We are responsible for each other here, so much more so when the winter begins. We start in the state of obligation, but we grow to respect and realize it.

Posted by noblehobo at 10:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

Obligation is an interesting emotion to note. In particular, why do we feel it toward others, toward other things? What leads one to feel it toward external aspects before feeling it toward oneself?

Can we control obligation? What does it take to become aware of our actions in its context?

Intriguing questions for to-be-pondered answers...

Posted by noblehobo at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)

life in antarctica is simple in that one's choices are limited. here in mcmurdo, life is simplified by having someone else choose and prepare your meals, your recreation and travel limited by weather and distance, your social options limited by space and budget. at pole, it is simplified even farther - social options and outings determined in the same closed environment as a summer camp.

as such, the human experience becomes heightened. there are far fewer outlets for people to escape to, far fewer distractions to look toward. you are forced, in essence, to deal with the minutia of being human at all times.

i was raised in minnesota, in a farm family where frustrations and personal opinions were not voiced overtly. as such, directness is still alien to me, and i am used to it in situations of anger and dismay. here, distant from distraction and exposed to personalities birthed in locations far from my upbringing, i find bluntness frequently. find it, and respond to it as i am used to in my life, as i respond to anger and frustration. i mitigate, search for empathy, and attempt to fix the situation, even at my own detriment. i am angling to keep the team satisfied.

this leaves me, on a regular basis, watching myself in the third person, wondering if what i'm saying is truly what i feel. and that is the key point - what i feel, what i want. the statement of, "know thyself" holds very, very true. one cannot be direct, nor deal with those who are, if you are standing on something other than solid ground.

it is a conversational pace that is new to me, even with as varied a background as i have. it is a mental process recently exposed to my view, through interactions with good friends from distant locations and continued exposure to a world outside my comfort zone. it's a damn good challenge and one of the most unique aspects of the upcoming winter.

so that's what works for me, or what needs to, rather, to find solid ground, to speak when i know what i want or how i feel, and to hold fast when uncertain. i've been working for many years to step back from my role as a mediator without conscious choice - this appears to be a continuation of that pursuit.

Posted by noblehobo at 4:48 AM | Permalink

sometimes, in the life of a hopeless romantic, come moments where you no longer wish to wear your life on your sleeve. moments where keeping the thoughts that you pile through at night in your own head becomes important. and sometimes, in the life of a hopeless romantic, you learn that's impossible.

so you do anything you can to let it out without revealing it - conversing in metaphor and distant example, responding in short, terse answers where friends expect you to ramble, hiding behind cryptic words and writing. and why? because it's somehow easier - you feel as if you aren't imparting your own problems on the world, dropping your own decisions and words onto another being, a friend. and cryptic writing? because it sells books. because people think you're a genius for dancing around simple points - they can fill in the blanks and insert their own life... and if that's a question, look at how well books like the alchemist or jonathon livingston seagull sell.

and then you hit moments with friends who jog you through the field of words and pull out (or trigger) a moment of clarity - often unintentionally, often when you're fighting to listen (really listen) to what they have to say instead of just waiting to tell your own story. clarity that may only lasts seconds but will ring for days. clarity that brings calm, brings laughter.

good moments.

Posted by noblehobo at 11:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)

there's the thought, as i sit floating around on the internet, the thought that is always at the forefront of my mind. the thought of an answer. the thought of needing to know.

i wish that there were a way to ease my rational mind's hold over my body on some days. my heart is fine without an answer - it knows inherently that life unfolds in the time and space that it needs - that life is an answer. my head, however, cannot let things just be. more often than not my brain requests that i beat it senseless in the pursuit of some clarity that never existed in the first place.

so i sit in front of the computer screen contemplating. i've run out of political news sites to ponder, have plowed through my friends' writings online, don't have any new email and am too tired (and in the wrong mood) to reply to any - i've basically run out of ways to waste my time. i could go watch t.v. but some part of me knows that's an escape extreme, one that i can lose days too. at least when i run out of internet (happens awfully fast these days) i become aware of the fact that i'm escaping from something and i can muster up the courage to leave the blue glow of the screen behind. that, or at least start using the damn computer as a creative tool instead of as a drug.

before that happens, though (the courage thing), i end up spending a few minutes with my fingers hovering over the keyboard, half typing, half not. stuck in the folds of my fingerprints lies a half-formed thought, the want to type just one more 'www' into the address bar, one more internet location before i let go. and i try. first www.losthobotravellers.com, then www.doesananswerexist.com, or the favorite - www.whatthe$%&*amidoing.com...

but there aren't answers to be had at any of those websites, just "error 404 - page not found" messages. it's too bad - the internet seems as if it carries the mystique of religious prophecy. that if you stare long enough, type enough addresses, and trigger the right searches you'll come across enlightenment, god, or at least someone with more answers than you.

enlightenment might be there hidden in the digital bits but if it is it will be found in the zen of the lacking answer, the missing path. god might well be there too but why bother searching on the internet when you can simply turn over a rock or watch a sunset. and someone with more answers? just different perspectives and you're that much more disconnected from them because you're only looking at words on a screen. which, by the by, is all that you are doing...

my fingers have floated over the keyboard long enough and no matter how many addresses i type the internet is still dead. i've come to a solution, though. it involves a friend, a walk, a smile, a laugh, trees, soil under my toes, sand, a lake, a breeze, the scent of fresh evergreen growth, the touch of a spring drizzle, the perfume of a former lover, the smirk that your best friend looks at you with even though she can't see you as you try to explain this to her over the phone, creation, a drawing, a random act of sculpture, a random act of kindness, dreams, sleepy mornings on the beach, good music, some travel, a candle, nag champa, old letters, new letters, old pictures, new pictures, a sauna, a song about scatterbrains, a comfortable pillow, great sleep, countless things i'll fail to name, nameless things i'll never understand, a sunrise, a moonrise, and a deep, deep breath.

it involves a power switch.

Posted by noblehobo at 9:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)

it's strange to me that i call myself a hobo sometimes - it almost carries a feeling of imposter to it. i'm not certain how the dictionaries define it at the moment, nor how hobos themselves might. i know that i have never ridden the rails, only rarely hitchhiked, and seldom slept or camped anywhere that i neither paid for nor was offered by a friend. maybe the nickname just stuck because it was a given one and wasn't my last name... i know that i am of a priveledged class - know that a great deal of my travels come to me virtue of my birthplace. i know a great many things and do not know a great many more.

frankly, i can sit and rationalize my current namesake however i want to. logic and english go hand in hand in that way. where english slips torward greys and the realm of abject beauty is in what i cannot rationalize. it lay in between the words that i write, in spaces deeper and more rare than we take notice of.

what lay unexplainable to me is my own heart. my wanderlust of head and mind and soul is masked from my conscious reality. "i don't know" permeates the drive behind many of my dreams - it stems from something greater than me - something of me and something that i am of. it is there, however, beating a relentless drive to wander - a moving need to continue to find things new, to try and again be open - always open (and it is a fight to do so) to what experience lay around the corner.

at some point in that eyeblink exchange of our youth for adulthood we lose our innocence and naivity to how we dream and search our surroundings. no longer is anything possible - a great deal becomes impossible and we cease to even try. somewhere we lose something incredibly important. if we are lucky, one day we find it again.

there is no harder thing for me to see than to watch the light of excitement go out of a friend's or relative's eyes. to see someone and have it become painfully obvious that their childhood wonder (however it might have manifested itself) has just disappeared is a dreaded experience. it's as if a bright part of their soul went to go and check out some random interesting thing and the rest of them failed to follow. it is a defeat - an early death.

we live in a priviledged society, yes, but we also live in a time that places the great weights of rationality and logic upon our shoulders. good tools these, to be certain, but not the only ones. it is a fight to carry them as a part of you - not as you. and if one falters in that fight, well, the five year old at play in his or her heart tends to die. the beauty and wonder of the world disappear into the tragedy of an industrially clean, post-modern life.

and there is so much to marvel at - so much to see. even as poorly travelled as i am (and compared to some i am) i've still seen great things. most can be found within feet of me in simple acts of friendship. a good conversation with a genuine friend always carries as much warmth as the grandest vista or most beautiful sunset. peter mayer, a midwest folk musician, puts it well, "the trick isn't to finding miracles; it's where to find there isn't one."

i wander, yes - i move and bounce from place to place. it is a manifestation of what is in my heart - of a young child filled with wonder and awe at the world. i am proud to call myself a hobo from this regard - to call myself a travelling admirer of the simplest of human interactions and the smallest beauties of nature. i travel and write because i don't know any other way to express the things that i bear witness to. if i do not express it - do not share the energy i take in - i will (very messily) explode. i am at home when i smile or laugh at the absurdity of the universe and it responds back to me just the same.

there are wide eyes in my head and i strive constantly to have them open.

i refuse to grow cynical.

i refuse to look into a mirror and no longer see hope.

i cannot but love fiercely.

and i like the name of hobo...

Posted by noblehobo at 7:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)