works of wanderlust

Tag: big thoughts

  • already not famous

    The one-wayness of fame has got me thinking this past week.

    Now, to be clear, I could all-too-easily frame this in a way that could come across as very sour grapes. I’m not trying to be sour about it, but rather just hold up an observation and say—huh, isn’t that a curious thing that we just sort of take for granted. Almost all of us do. Even me, mostly. Except when I get a thought stuck in my craw like: 

    Fame is unidirectional.

    —and weird and fickle and imbalanced in a million little ways and really a strange artifact of some aging post-democratic late-stage-capitalist hellscaape, if I’m being honest. But for my point today, fame is oddly unidirectional.

    And if you don’t make stuff maybe you don’t even notice.

    But chances are, and here’s the thing, you are almost certainly a person who exists and may be worthy of a certain share of attention for whatever effort it is that you make each day when you wake up and do whatever it is that you do to fill each of your days. Yet, chances are also great that whatever it is that you do—stocking shelves at a grocery store, helping people file their taxes, building kitchen cupboards, delivering hot food to people’s doors, or integrating complex banking software systems—no one is really paying attention.

    On the other hand, certain people—famous people—go for coffee and wear a fashionable dress and there is a societal tidal wave of attention thown upon them. They make something, anything, and we all watch the trailer or throw money at the thing they made or sign up for notifications about it and give it our raw attention even before we know if its worth that all because of fame.

    And like I said, you are sitting there reading that and thinking, well… yeah. That’s fame. That’s just how it works. 

    And I’m sitting here writing and saying that, well sure, I know… but have you ever thought about how incredibly weird and strange that is?

    And yeah, maybe you don’t even care that no one is paying attention to your life. Maybe even that’s an optimal outcome of your actions. No one fucking look at me, you’re thinking. 

    Now. to be clear. I don’t even want to be famous. (That’s me saying that, believe it or not.) I’m not aiming for some kind of widespread name recognition or the attention and adulation of strangers around the world. That whole notion creeps me the hell out and I’m actually a fairly private guy who would crumble under the pressure of fame and too much attention.

    Yet, there is a sweet spot somewhere between “literally no one notices or cares” and raw unflitered Taylor Swift ubiquity. I feel like with the quantity of effort that I’ve made over the years, the raw and unending production of effort that I put in—and here I want to tiptoe very carefully because I don’t want to say I deserve it or even that I’ve earned it, because I probably don’t and haven’t, but—there should be something more than nothing in this fame equation that we all take for granted. It’s just so unidirectional. 

    And to be fair, that’s not even really what got me thinking about this.

    I got to thinking about it because I was thinking about a piece of so-called advice that fluttered across my feed on social media suggesting that blah, blah, blah engagement in building a larger network of people was all about engaging back—and I thought to myself: you know what? The hell it is. Famous people, and here I mean truly famous people, don’t engage back. They are swamped by attention automatically. The rest of us claw for scraps.

    I mean here’s the thing: I watched Pedro Pascal’s dystopic sci fi zombie show but has he ever done me the honor of reading any of my dystopian science fiction? I listened to Rainn Wilson’s podcast and he seems like a great guy and would probably have enjoyed listening to a bit of mine in return. Did they tho?

    Tho even as I write it, and you read it, the whole premise sounds beyond absurd. Of course they haven’t—we’re both thinking it. That’s my point. The whole equation is unidirectional and we just take it all for granted. We don’t even question it, and you are likely shaking your head at the obnoxious notion I’m presenting. Who the fuck does this hoser think he is?!

    Brad, you’re yelling at your screen. These people we adore have worked their whole lives on a craft that has elevated them above the rest of us, they are the faces of industrial complexes of creation that have systematically built empires of high quality content for the masses to consume. It is their very purpose and they have earned our adoration and attention, you say.

    Sure.

    And I’m just asking why we are taking all of that for granted.

    Why haven’t we aspired to a meritocracy, even with the internet. Why haven’t more of us sought out unfamous voices with regularity? Why don’t we have systems that draw attention away even a little bit more strongly from the firehose of ugly fame and let a dribble escape for the rest of us? Or, if when we have made those systems in the past, why do we let them devolve into just another outlet for the already-famous. Arguably, social media could have been that but The Algorithms now decidedly shift attention to those who already have it, bootstrapping the pre-amplified voices into furies of inescapable commericalized, advertizing-laden sound so imbalanced that beyond a lottery of rare chance no one else can ever hope to be heard above it.

    That’s just how it is, you say.

    I know. I get it. I just—don’t.

  • Froze Up

    About thirty six hours before I sat down to pen this post the city where I live got hit by a small ice storm.

    I mean, technically, the weather service called it “freezing rain” but after an hour of that particular meteorological event (whatever one chooses to call it) every outdoor surface had been covered by a thin, slippery sheen of pebbled ice that sent traffic into chaos, all but shut down the city, and left people like me walking their dogs shuffling along the glassy sidewalks barely able to maintain a vertical posture.

    At lunch (when it was a bit brighter and bit warmer, but not any less icy) I took a photo of one of the boulders in a nearby park while I took the dog on yet another shuffling scoot around the same.

    It was as if someone had encased the meter-wide stone in a perfectly form-fitting layer of cold transparent glass, sealing the stone into protective, icy case visible from the outside but unexpectedly cold and smooth to the touch.

    What is your perspective on the culture of 2021?

    For some reason when I sat down this evening to write a response to my daily December question, I thought of this stone covered in ice, locked away in a little bubble of glass-like protection, visible to anyone who walks by but isolated and encased in something that prevents, at least without some kind of force, change or interaction from the outside.

    My whole world was covered in a sheet of ice for the last day and a half.

    Everywhere I look there is a slippery film that lets me look through and under and into the world beneath. But all I can do is shuffle along and feel the cold, slippery icy that separates me from what I really want to connect with.

    Funny, but the whole world — friends, family, people, everything — feels a bit like that these days, too.

  • Into the Woods and Fog

    I’ve been tangled up in a philosophical kinda-sorta feedback loop inside my own head.

    See, nearly two weeks before sitting down to write this post I ran a half marathon through the local wilderness. Anyone who carefully read that post may recall that I briefly alluded to a conversation I’d had with a local trail running legend while there. It was a few minutes, a few shared words, an hour before the race started.

    I don’t want to make a big deal about that conversation specifically, or name my interlocutor insomuch that this post comes up in a search somewhere, or even just pull him into this tangled thinking of mine anymore than I need to … because having followed him on the socials for a couple years (a) I don’t think he would be the sort of guy who would like that, and (b) that conversation is more of a catalyst for another bigger idea that I’ve been cooking in my brain, than it is the main idea itself.

    Autumn fog on a suburban park field.

    But nevertheless, I will fill in the gaps.

    If you are anything like me, you know that there are sticky ideas that occasionally gum up the works of the dusty corners of our minds. These may be ideas that are not worth actively thinking on day after day, but even so seem to wend their ways into and between the empty neurons of the subconscious mind and then simmer away in the background as if a spicy pot of chili in a huge cast iron dutch oven set atop some glowing campfire coals. Those thoughts are always there bubbling away, requiring the occasional stir or taste check, but otherwise independently cooking … until suddenly the chili is ready to eat.

    That conversation I have an hour before the start of the race is mostly a pep talk from a seasoned amature athlete, a local guy who has made good with his feats of endurance, has run and won many races around the world, and now shows up to volunteer at races so the rest of us can play in the trails. According to our chat, he’s tackling some incredible challenges in the next couple years, races of physical fortitude that I barely believe can exist, let alone be taken on by a mortal being, and yet there he is casually telling me about these incredible goals he has set for himself. All while he is offering me a genuine nudge of encouragement along my difficult (but essentially entry-level) ultramarathon experience.

    Then in the middle of that conversation he points vaguely towards the trail leading into the wilderness, a splash of autumn colour in the leaves wrapping around a narrow footpath that quickly disappeared into a twisting twelve kilometer endurance race route.

    “It’s really just about spending more time out there,” he says, and pulls his phone from his pocket, ” and less time on this thing. If more people just spent more time out there…” he adds vaguely, implying something or another. It is a bit of gummy thought for my brain … the onions for a simmering pot of mental chili.

    It’s a big idea, but maybe not even anything much more than an obvious one.

    I spend too much time on my device. I admit it.

    My phone screen is the first thing I light up even as I’m walking the dog to the back door for her morning pee. I nuzzle up with a tablet and the world news or the NYT crossword puzzle as I’m sipping my first coffee of the morning. I hunker down with a bank of glowing monitors eight-hours-per-day five-days-per-week so that I can do my job. I text. I video chat. I chill with the family to watch television. I sneak some time here and there with a dualsense controller in my hands to justify buying a six hundred dollar video game console. Hey, even this: I relax in my off-time by cranking words through a keyboard so that I can post a daily rambling blog here. Then I conclude my day listening to podcasts or audiobooks as I play my solitaire card game app for a few minutes before bed.

    Sure, I also ran nearly fifteen kilometers through the river valleys with friends over the last couple days, and the dog sees her fair share of local trails multiple times per week, but by far the most prominent way I spend my time … a fact I’m sure is true for so many others … is with a glowing screen in front of my face.

    I reply to my ultramarathoning hero with my own more specific suggestion, ironic in itself. “I’ve been watching this Youtuber …” I offer. “He’s this Australian adventure filmmaker who does some interesting videos on the clash of civilization and nature. His big theme seems to be that we’re disconnected from the world in this ineffable way and he’s trying to untangle that for his own purposes through humble self experimentation.”

    That Youtuber is named Beau Miles and (because his new book doesn’t ship across the ocean to Canada quite yet … at least not at a reasonable price) I am listening to the audiobook version as I walk the dog through the foggy park this morning, the crisp air biting at the tips of my fingers. The dog is delighted to scratch at the frosty tips of the grass, but at seven am I only have so much patience for that.

    We forge onward and through my headphones the autobiographic description Mr. Miles’ youthful yearning for a life of adventure, of tackling the big world in whatever way he could manage it, loops me right back to that conversation I’d had at the start of the ultramarathon a couple weeks before. Spicy peppers for my simmering mental chili.

    These are not new ideas. Arguably, I started this blog exactly for this reason: to answer this calling for a cast iron lifestyle, days filled with excuses to be outdoors, in front of a hot fire, cooking real food and feeling real terrain under my feet.

    Having this space creates obligation to post, which creates a need for subject matter expertise and filling, and that in turns drives me to put the screen down and do these things of which I write. Into the woods. Lighting up fire. Heating up iron.

    Out of the fog?

    That feedback loop I mentioned is a recipe for a spicy pot of chili that I can’t quite get right, though, no matter how much I simmer it in the idle coals of my own mind.

    These two adventure seekers unknowingly adding ingredients into that mix, one at the start of an epic race, the other from across an ocean (and through a screen of all things!) They are just two influences on the things I seek to do in searching to find an answer to a question I haven’t even been able to articulate let alone make headway towards such clarity … as much as I’m virtually certain that I’m not alone in that quest.

    What I do know is that there is a conflict between the simmering background thoughts and the stuff that is actively nearly-burning in the foreground. It is a rivalry between the stuff I need to do and the stuff I want to do, between what I am currently and what I could be some day… if I knew the trail to follow, the recipe to cook, or even just the questions to ask.

  • new old older


    young green leaves, rooted into
    rough hewn stump, anchored upon
    rich forest soil, draped across
    cragged heavy stone, wedged along
    ancient sweeping mountains, jutting from
    shifting geological faults, slipping around
    revolving green orb, floating in
    vast mysterious universe

    – bardo

    I have reserved some space on this blog each week to be creative, and to post some fiction, poetry, art or prose. Writing a daily blog could easily get repetitive and turn into driveling updates. Instead, Wordy Wednesdays give me a bit of a creative nudge when inspiration strikes.