ReBuilding and Re: Recent Roamings

"The Hut"
by Fanny Howe

Up the hill is a hut made of sound
where two windows rhyme
and the tiles stay on
because they are nailed to a dream.
The dreamer wonders: Can this be mine?

The floor is solid and straight
and is amber from sap.
The walls don't leak or let out heat
from gray embers in the grate.

This is the original home
at the heart of brutalist design.
No storm can slam its shape apart.
No thief can carry it off.
It dwells in ashen buildings where the present sleeps.

*   *   *

This blog has been dormant for a while. I'm going to try to bring some life back to it. In my last post here, more than six months ago, I talked about having gone on a self-driven path of deconstructing my life and embarking out into the unknown for a while. For seven months I lived a nomadic existence, traveling around many countries and cities, staying as a guest in various friends' houses, hotels, Airbnbs, and an extended stay with family in Staten Island and Brooklyn. The trip sprung from, among other things, a yearning to plunge into the unfamiliar, test my luck, and experience the world after so many months in lockdown during the pandemic. In the aftermath of that extended nomadic period, I tallied up these numbers: in the lockdown year 2020 I slept in three different beds all year (the bed at my house and a couple places I stayed at during a roadtrip to Colorado) whereas in the last calendar year now I slept in more than 40 different beds in at least fifteen different cities in six countries.

While bouncing across so many places and living out of a suitcase for so long, I got into thinking about the feeling of and the meaning of home. Found myself thinking often about Gaston Bachelard's book, The Poetics of Space. Bachelard wrote, "A house constitutes a body of images that give mankind proofs or illusions of stability." (p. 38) Some houses grant illusions or proofs of stability better than others. I stayed in a few dumps and at least one badly insulated space during a couple weeks of frigid temps. I stayed in a sprawling mansion in Ireland where I didn't feel comfortable because of an unwelcoming host, I also stayed in a repurposed 19th-century military barracks in Ireland, a Martello Tower made of stone that felt extremely comfortable because of the generosity of the hosts. I stayed in a garage attic apartment in Texas where time stood still and I stayed in a barn in Texas where the metal-roof resonated from a heavy hail storm. The constant moving from one place to the next felt like a recapitulation of earlier departures from shells in my life---leaving my parents' house at age 21 to move to the other side of the country, years later leaving southern California to come to Austin where I'd never been before but have now resided for 11 years. Each time felt like a crab leaving its shell to seek out a better one (my sun sign is Cancer the crab). 

"The atmosphere is nailed together.

Limb marking threshold.

Each element struggles to 
make threat subservient
to shelter."
- from "Doorway" by Elizabeth Robinson

"I dreamed of a nest in which the trees repulsed death" 
- from Bachelard, Poetics of Space (p. 123)

During the height of winter I was living back at my parents' house in Staten Island by myself (they'd gone to Florida to escape the cold). With the recent memories of so many different homes and rooms in various places, I was centered back there at the home where I grew up and had first conceived of the concept of home. Bachelard in The Poetics of Space says, "In short, the house we were born in has engraved within us the hierarchy of the various functions of inhabiting." (p. 36) As much as I despise being in Staten Island, my old house still feels like home. The city is so crowded, the people are so angry, it seemed every time I went out someplace I had a hostile altercation with somebody, but the old house still feels like home and it feeds some inner craving for peace of mind when I'm there. 

Here's Bachelard again:
"The house we were born in is more than an embodiment of home, it is also an embodiment of dreams. Each one of its nooks and corners was a resting-place for daydreaming. And often the resting-place particularized the daydream. Our habits of a particular daydream were acquired there." (p. 37)

I've always been a homebody and my personal growth has involved breaking out of those habits to go far out into the unknown and find my way, find how I can build a new center of peace in the unfamiliar. As a kid I must have spent lots of time in the nooks and corners of my house daydreaming, but I could never have imagined the adventures that would ensue. Roadtrips spanning the width of the North American continent, piloting boats along the waters of the Mediterranean in the South of France, expeditions along the rocky coastline of Ireland, bike rides speeding through the alleyways of Barcelona, panoramic views from the hills of Lisbon, late nights partying in the village squares of Antwerp, connecting with the sky gods while perched atop the Pyramid of the Sun looking down the Avenue of the Dead in Teotihuacán far out in the desert outside Mexico City. 

When I was a kid I loathed having to go on family trips out to New Jersey to visit my grandma because the open spaces and relatively rural vibes of Jersey made me uneasy. I needed NYC's clusterfuck of intersections and delis and pizzerias on every block. That's what made me comfortable. Now I once again live in the middle of Texas where the city center is equidistant to me as farmlands with cows, my neighbor's yard has a friendly goat, and too much time spent in the crowded and cranky NYC boroughs drives me nuts. 

Rebecca Solnit in her book A Field Guide to Getting Lost writes: "Some people inherit values and practices as a house they inhabit; some of us have to burn down that house, find our own ground, build from scratch, even as a psychological metamorphosis." (p. 80) This was the process I went through as a young adult. And again years later, after I'd established a home over several years living in Austin which no longer felt satisfying, I underwent the same process again. Burned it all down to start over from scratch. Ashes make great fertilizer. The past year has been full of big changes and very little stability, it has not been easy but it has definitely been enriching. Again quoting Solnit, "he ceased to be lost not by returning but by turning into something else." (p. 71)

Spending such extended time staying within the hospitality industry (hotels and Airbnbs etc) you start to gain a deeper appreciation for little things that make a place feel like home and how a place becomes a home over time. Living transiently also affords one a chance to cut things down to basics, carrying around only what you need. Most of my belongings including my entire library, all my art, and most of my clothes were locked up in storage the whole time. I had a consolidated wardrobe, compact but versatile enough for different climates. I mainly carried around only the books with the highest ratio of insight and lexical originality-per-page, which I had decided are these two: Finnegans Wake by James Joyce and the epic poem ARK by Ronald Johnson. Those came with me everywhere. 

During my time in Europe I also read two nonfiction books by Nicholson Baker, Human Smoke: The Beginnings of World War II, The End of Civilization on the immediate developments that led to WW2 and also his most recent book Baseless: My Search for Secrets in the Ruins of the Freedom of Information Act, about the secret history of US military involvement with biological and chemical warfare. Both were timely and highly informative reads, and Baker's prose style is so easily digestible. The newer book Baseless felt like a sequel to Human Smoke, though at least with Baseless Baker regularly breaks up the revelations of dark and deeply upsetting information with simple and grounding stories about his dogs and domestic life. On the other hand, the cold facts and details of mass killings of Jews by the Nazis in Human Smoke seared my brain to a degree that I am forever horrified by it. I had to hide Human Smoke when I wasn't reading it because just looking at that book put a bad feeling in my gut.

This material was fresh in my mind as I rode around on trains and planes across Europe, looking at the scenery and thinking about the purpose of life, how flimsy and fragile it seems, how long the land outlasts us, how we should soak it all in and enjoy life while we can. Ultimately I thought of how sick and fucked up so much of mankind has always been with twisted ideology and racist hate. The same struggles for power, wars against tyrants, recur in cycles over centuries. How the endurance of hope persists despite it all. How we are all just looking for a place to call home, a shell within which we can grow and feel at peace. 

Looking Back on 2019 (Part 1)

Aztec Sun Stone seen at the National Anthropology Museum in Mexico City.

The year 2019 will probably be one I always look back on as an important year in my life. While it was an extremely busy period where my work life expanded significantly and bled its way into my personal life, complex projects keeping me up nights and perplexing me on weekends trying to solve tech company conundrums, I also managed to make time to surf the waves of my passionate interests to new heights. The peak of the latter was an adventure in Mexico City where I delivered a lecture at an international literary conference (the fourth country and fifth university where I've got to share my work as an independent scholar) and visited the Avenue of the Dead in Teotihuacan. I also got to contribute to some meaningful projects, had my first piece to appear in a book (link below), made a bit of income from literary work, and opened up new avenues for 2020.

In 2019 we also got a puppy---a sweet, playful, and loyal pit-shepherd mix who has transformed my life. I'd never had a pet before, ever. Growing up, my parents hated animals. My dad only refers to dogs as "shit machines." But I've always loved dogs. Our little tank boy ROA (named after my lady's favorite street artist) is a rescue we got this past September when he was 5 months old. He's huge and he has been a handful but he's kept me grounded and brought me an abundance of joy. Dogs are the best. A new thing I've learned is that one of the most peaceful feelings in life comes from simply laying on the couch at night after a busy day and watching tv with a puppy sleeping by you. For anyone paying attention to the news in 2019, the world is sort of in shambles right now, and for people like me who dive headlong into the news for weeks at a time it can get depressing and heavy. A big, energetic, playful and sweet puppy is a perfect antidote to that. Now that I have a dog I feel like dogs are essential, that dogs belong with humans and vice versa. They're not just loving and loyal and protective and playful, they're funny. Our boy ROA, when he's super tired he sticks his head under the couch and passes out. Here I'm gonna share a bunch of pics of our new doggy that we adopted this year (his full name is ROA Haymitch Flynndrino, I also call him Tank Boy and Baby Kangaroo), then I will share some lists and expanded thoughts on the stuff I did in 2019.

In Part 1 here I'll discuss the things I wrote and the places I traveled to in 2019. In Part 2, I'll share the list of books I read this year and Part 3 I'll discuss my favorite new albums from 2019.

The Indelible Sensory Imprint of Mexico City and the Pyramids of Teotihuacán

PQ perched on the Pyramid of the Moon overlooking the Pyramid of the Sun and the Avenue of the Dead in Teotihuacán, Mexico.

"In this twilight age of all the disciplines, in which beliefs are dying and religions are gradually gathering dust, our sensations are the only reality left to us. The only scruple that need concern us, the only satisfactory science, is that of sensations."

That's Fernando Pessoa in The Book of Disquiet describing the sensations of living in the city of Lisbon (a place I got to visit in 2014). Pessoa's poetic detailing of the sensory world of a modern city explored throughout The Book of Disquiet rung resonantly with my experience of Mexico City on a 10-day trip this past June. Looking back on that trip, it's the sensory experience that sticks out to me. Mexico City is such a vast, bustling, densely populated, and beautiful place. The experience of being there brings so much to bear on the senses that you end up filtering so much of it out so as not to get caught up in focusing on every little thing. As I've continued to digest the experience of being there, certain things that I overlooked or forgot about come floating back up in my memory.

Little details return, like the way the sunlight comes down through the trees. Mexico City felt like a metropolis inside of a jungle while surrounded by mountains on every horizon. It's a gigantic place with variation across each neighborhood, but the parts we mostly stayed in (La Roma and La Condesa neighborhoods) were so full of lush green, tall thriving trees that there was often a canopy for the sunlight to creep through. There were so many miniature parks with jungles of trees and plants alongside old statues and fountains. Giant, lush bougainvillea vines climbed lampposts and hung on electrical wires. Palm trees clustered together. Many of the buildings had porches full of plants like this place:

Scenes from Adventures in the Iberian Peninsula, Part 1

Back in April of this year, I had the privilege of traveling to Lisbon, Portugal and Barcelona, Spain for a two-week vacation with my girlfriend. Documenting that here is long overdue. Here are some pictures from that unforgettable adventure.

Lisbon's reputation for having a rich street art culture was part of what drew us there, so you will notice lots of street art photos here. We even went on a Lisbon Street Art Tour that was excellent.

A New Chapter

As the sun goes down on the final day of the year 2010, I'm researching and preparing for a new chapter in my Roam. Early next year, my lady and I will be moving to Austin, Texas. The Texas part does not sound appealing at all. Though I've never been in the state, its reputation doesn't make it a sought-after destination for me, especially not one I'd like to leave California for. But, the more I read about the city of Austin, the more eager I am to get over there.

The main reason for the move is my girlfriend's desire to attend a culinary school situated over there but it seems my own situation has had its walls cave in to the point where I've been desiring to get up and escape to somewhere else for months now. There's no doubt that I absolutely LOVE California. There is also no doubt that I cannot afford to live here right now, especially at a point where I'm ready to dive fully into my writing and see what comes of it. I also do not want to stay in one spot right now, I'm 25 and I want to see the world, experience different places, learn how to support myself as an adult in different environments, before settling down in one city, however beautiful that city may be.

I plan on writing a big post devoted to all the things I'm going to miss in San Diego. I feel like I haven't even scratched the surface of this city's treasures since I've been here and so, as a goodbye campaign, we're planning on taking a couple weeks to just see and do everything that we can here before heading eastward.

That fact, that I'm going a couple time zones eastward now bothers me a bit. After living in the Eastern time zone my whole life, California felt like Never, Never Land. I was always able to comfortably watch the entirety of any live sports game without having to stay up past 10 PM and, more generally, it always felt special being among the last people in the contiguous United States who get to see the sun before it sets each day. Right now, as I type this it's 4:30 and still light out. My livingroom window, which faces directly south, shows the bright glimmers of the sun's rays breathing their last breath of 2010 all over the small courtyard of my apartment complex.

At first, the prospect of heading back eastward felt like going backwards. In 2008, I escaped Staten Island and traversed westward across the whole country to settle in the most southwestern corner of the map and I had fantasies of moving further out to Japan after that. Instead, I'm going back eastward to be immersed in the middle of the mix again. Reading about things like the "Keep Austin Weird" campaign, the city's proud status as the Live Music Capital of the World, and some other cool facts on Wikipedia (voted as the city with best people in Travel & Leisure magazine), I'm able to be much more accepting and even excited about trying out the new city.

Apparently, Austin is also the most active metropolitan area in the US when it comes to reading and writing blogs and, as I plan to take this blog (and my writing overall) to the next level in 2011, what better location could I choose as the center of my activities?

*   *   *
Plenty of great happenings happened in 2010, not least of which is that this blog grew greatly in readership and content. I started it in late 2009 but barely wrote in it. It was 2010 when things really took off and I was mentioned on ESPN.com and the James Joyce Quarterly website. The posting content has slowed down a bit since then as I've devoted more of my free time to studying Joyce and watching too much basketball while my un-free time was spent at an increasingly stressful and low-paying job. Well, I'm quitting that job next week and will be devoting much work and attention to this site next year, especially once we get settled in Austin.

Here are the main writing projects on the agenda (what you might call "The 2011 Writing Projects on Which I Plan to Labor Resolutely"):

1 - The completion and presentation of my essay concerning James Joyce-Salvador Dali-Jacques Lacan. I am in the final stages of studying for this and will then bring it all together and submit it for presentation at the 2011 North American James Joyce Conference (for which, hopefully, I'll get to come back to SoCal). You can check out the early epiphanic realization that led to this essay if you read this post and scroll down a bit.

2 - My in-depth, chapter-by-chapter breakdown and study of Ulysses. I've been talking about this ever since I finished the book exactly 364 days ago. I've got plenty of notes already put together for it but still have a lot more work to do on it and this will be what I imagine I'll be working on most of the time in Austin. No matter how huge or awesome (or lame) it is, I will be posting the entire thing on this blog. People have told me that I shouldn't, that I should try to protect such work and copyright it, but I consider it to be a warm-up to the rest of my writing career. Same thing with the Portrait essay that's on here (and which is the prelude to the Ulysses project). I want to provide a full, in-depth, free online source to help people read and understand Joyce's amazing book. You can bet that I'll also be drawing in much of my other interests (like hip hop music) for the study and so it'll be a unique and entertaining experience.

3 - A possible book project with two of hip hop's best current lyricists. I won't delve into it though until it's official. But it's up there on the immediate agenda.

4 - When those things are done, the composition of my novel A Building Roam will then begin. The book documents my journey from growth in New York, migration to California, flutterings and sputterings in California, and eventual rise to artistic glory in....wherever the hell I end up.

5 - Of course, while all that is going on I will also stay active on here writing about sports, music, literature and a bunch of other stuff. With the addition of my iPad, I will try to document the move to Austin as much as I can because I imagine it'll be pretty exciting.

Happy New Year!