happy may

i can't believe it's may.

1 year ago, today, i was in portland OR celebrating RF. i pretended to be daft punk with my friend allie and the help of the go-gorila crew. the idea was conceived 1 year and 5 months earlier while walking through a buddhist temple. the idea became a plan over drinks in cambodia while playing checkers with a street kid. a day before RF began, matt king, josh brown, myself and a few others were having our own private party in the S.U. kids in a candy store. two nights later, everything came together. we only fooled one person. but i guess it only takes one. and since the rest were dancing like fools, i think it worked out.

7 months ago i was in denver CO with some of my closest friends in the world. i think we got even closer. i find it the least bit surprising that seeing the happiest day of two people's lives quickly becomes one of the happiest days of your own. on a personal note, i also had the best beer i've ever tasted in my entire life. vanilla stout made in a bourbon barrel. once at the wedding and once with jeff wermer, minutes after the shuttle bus had dropped me off at the brewery. the businessman i was traveling with were quite envious.

4 months ago i had my second new years in Japan. 1 month ago i started my 3rd semester of japanese language school. 10 minutes ago i finished smoking the same pipe i've had since my college years.

9 months ago i was sitting on a pier in beverly MA with my parents. we had lobster, muscles, and a few pints of PBR. i can't believe that it was the special of the day. $1.50 pints. lutz prices and a great view (not that the lutz didn't have a great view... it was just... well, different).

this is fun. i'm going to take it a bit further.

3 years ago (more or less) i graduated from college. it was the second time i shook hands with colin diver. the first was well over seven years ago when i interviewed him as a freshman. i scheduled an appointment, walked in and we chatted about the red sox. i thought it was really neat, but he thought it was a waste of his time. and it probably was.

on graduation day, i got to introduce my parents to les, a 70 or 80 or 90 year old man that inspired me to live. it wasn't just his stories, his language skills, and his travel experiences that got me wanted to leave america, it was also the egg salad sandwich he gave me one day in class. random acts of kindness. lesson learned.

a little over 7 years ago i graduated from high school. i thought i was old. i didn't know what i wanted to do, but i knew i wanted to live in portland oregon. two weeks prior to graduation i spent the afternoon in the parking lot smoking a pipe. i shared a cigar with bill britton. 4 years later we would met at the flether school of law and diplomacy for a summer session. i studied finance. he studied international relations. he was basically the same, and i'd changed a lot.

7 and a half years ago i was inducted into the national honors society. 7 and a half years ago and one day later, i didn't care. what i did care about, however, was that i'd worn nail polish and an ugly pair of pants. and it wasn't necessarily what i'd worn that made it memorable; instead, it was some of the teachers reactions. though some teachers thought i was mocking the establishment (which i certainly was), others thought it was kinda neat. and since i had most of the brothers on my side (brother tim paul, head of discipline at the time), i didn't have much to worry about. i wonder if they still remember.

i was also introduced into the french national honors society. i didn't speak french.

around 11 years ago i attended my first day of high school. i remember being scared of the football players in their black leather jackets and menacing beards. 4 years later, i laughed at the football players and their douchy chin straps.

over the past 11 years, at some point i've wanted to be the following:

1. a professional snowboarder.
2. a teacher.
3. a professor.
4. a professional video game something-or-other.
5. a sniper (this was before i realized i'd actually have to kill people... i just thought the training was rad).
6. a bartender.
7. a DJ.
8. a poet.
9. homeless (professionally).
10. a full-time gambler.
11. a stock trader.
12. a lawyer.
13. a trail guide.
14. an agent.
15. a member or an organized crime family (granted they were gentle and not savage).
16. a philosopher.
17. a musician (specifically hardcore // metal).

4 years ago, prior to graduating from reed college (and thanks to three years of wonderful successes and failures with friends), i realized that i didn't want to be any of those things. i just wanted to be me, and me wanted to go to japan. for whatever reason. it also had to do with an army ad that said something like "if your life was a book, would you want to read it? go army." i didn't join the army, but i got thinking about the first chapter and how i wanted it set up.

1 year and 4 months ago i was in cambodia with allie and a cambodian kids that tried to sell us some soda. we listened to stop making sense and stared into a 2 thousand year old lake (ok... i don't know how old it was, but i'm willing to be it was at least three times as old as america). 2 hours prior to this, allie was searching for a toilet and i was sitting on a rock. a 55 year old man walked up to me while i was listening to life after wartime on the speakers. he started dancing and said something along the lines of "yeah man, i'm really feeling it." i'll never forget that moment.

so why all this? why now? i guess it's because for the first time in a long time, i feel like i'm on a new path. for the first time in 6 years i won't be in portland for renn fayre. logistically, this is a good thing. flights are expensive and my current job doesn't have the grand ol' JET salary. symbolically speaking, i've made a break. there's a six year tradition that carried out for nearly 25% of my life (and considering i can only remember 75% of my life, it feels like considerably more).

new traditions. new experiences. i suppose i'm on that second chapter. or halfway through the first?

i have some goals and ideas for the next few months. most of them involve passing standardized tests and gaining some recognized credentials. i plan on moving back to america before my 26th birthday. aside from that, things are very, very up in the air. without the annual RF, the year just got a whole lot less cyclical. and maybe 2 hours ago that was scary. right about now, i'm ok with it.

happy may!