A residual self-image of my online persona

I am fickle and callow and oft thought of as naive. Social media has worn thin upon me and I feel as if I'm dragging through the dregs looking for something most mornings when I wake up, eat breakfast, and plug in to the netherworld of false connections.
I read an article recently in New York magazine about our personal digital imprints and what happens to them (some might go so far as to say, "What happens to my online self...") when we ("...I...") die. People now live solely online and less so through personal ephemera, photo albums, journals, and such. Our children will click endlessly through our Facebook albums and Flickr accounts to find out what kind of people we were. Who were mommy and daddy? Are they the people making raunchy faces and lewd gestures at some house party or are they the docile folks in these posed, yet slightly hip sepia photos? Will my children search for this blog in lieu of physical journals penned by me and what the hell will they think of me because of it?
I strangely feel as if I'm looking into a fogged mirror and staring back at me is an otherworldly self whenever I see "my profile." People who I've barely met have somehow come to be my "friends" and it feels very queer when that thuggish high school drop out with whom you may or may not have achieved and altered state of consciousness when both of you were quite young wishes you a happy birthday. I feel semi-violated, almost as if a pedestrian wished me the same.
Too much is digital - books, movies, music, newspapers, magazines, photographs, communications, and even myself.

I am now a residual self-image of my online persona.

"A human being is a part of the whole that we call the universe, a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings, as something separated from the rest, a kind of optical illusion of his consciousness. This illusion is a prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for only the few people nearest us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living beings and all of nature." -A. Einstein

Life Goals

My ultimate goal: obtain at least 2,000+ friends on a social networking site (the powers that be only know that I associate with few of them), be tagged in 1,500 photographs, many of which look strangely similar and show me in lascivious or otherwise lewd positions performing overtly sexual acts resembling forms of cunnilingus. I also want to have a seductive profile picture, which would ideally show my cleavage. Now, since I have male parts, let your mind imagine my cleavage. I also would ideally like to forget every rule or grammar taught to me. Status update: Nathan Brown cant beleve wut happened wen i stepped out of da showa cudnt stop lookin at myself for an hour.
And, omg, where is the dislike button?!?! I want to dislike all of these conservative pundits (yes, that's you, Jack. You're just a mouthpiece) who post and re-post and re-re-post political articles because, of course, if you're not Liberal, well, we just can't have a thing to do with you. Geez, can't you see how much I'm doing by posting pro-Obama articles to my wall? I'm actually doing stuff to promote world peace.
And tell me this. Why wouldn't you, when I sent a request, and re-sent it when I noticed you didn't respond the first time (Argh, you lackluster boneless can of worms), like my cause? It's a CAUSE. This is serious. Do you like testing non-lethal, but chemically-laden cosmetics on dolphins? For Christ's sake, dolphins are the most intelligent animals, like, in the world.
Wow, thanks, Jack, for putting me one more step further behind from achieving my goal.

Some idle considerations for your idle reading pleasure

I've fought with it for far too long. I've come to realize that I live in one of the most gorgeous places I've been to. I'm extremely blessed and I use that word without any certain religious connotations. Some days I wake up and know that I could be the luckiest man in the world and other days it's a struggle to realize any personal worth.
I stepped outside today at around 8:30 and felt the nip of an oncoming winter. My breath hung like smoke around my face as I propelled myself on my bicycle to work. I set up a small card table outside where I work and started wrapping books in plastic book covers, drinking coffee and listening to This American Life. The chill in the air, the self-propellment, and working with one's hands. It's all hard to explain, but small things can mean a lot.
I reminisce a lot while I'm at work. I miss my friends from college and from Evansville. I miss playing my drums and creating music I love with people I love. The many months I have been in Durango have been spent in search of something. I want to know what I need to do and where I should go next. I can point out so many instances in my life where I've been extremely happy. I could recreate similar circumstances by going back to these places, but, as they say, "You can never go home again." Once these moments are realized, they are gone. Why must they be taken away? Could I go back to Bloomington/college, do it again and have just as much happiness as I did have? Can I go back to Evansville and pick my music back up where I left off?
But all of these are just idle considerations. What matters now is that I am still moving myself forward.
I'm learning Spanish and doing so quickly, which is motivating. The book club I started seems as if it is actually working and generating new interest in new members, and I'm reading/studying many things I never got the chance or opportunity to in school.
I also want to take a moment here to thank a man that has been a source of inspiration and admiration - John Linnemeier. He took me outside of the United States for the first time to Guatemala. That trip truly changed my life. He showed me how travel can be the most fulfilling action one can do. He showed me how to be happy and how to be kind. I don't think I've come across a more kind man and a more accepting one either. If you haven't yet, please take the time to check out his book on Amazon. I would also suggest you purchase it. It's a great read and very entertaining. The book is a collection of vignettes from the most interesting man I've met. Follow the link here: http://www.amazon.com/How-Average-Lived-Adventurous-Life/dp/1438912803/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1286996052&sr=8-2

Currently reading:
Italo Calvino - If on a winter's night a traveller
Henry Miller - Tropic of Cancer
Vladimir Nabokov - Lolita (for book club)
Just finished rereading Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoevsky

If you've made it this far, just know that I leave these things unedited and don't reread them. Maybe I should. I'm probably embarrassing myself.

Kids trying to be intellectuals. Rain comes and goes, but spills out torrentially on its scheduled hour. Been ill for nearly a week. Mucus hanging on for life so tightly to my uvula, it's suffocating.

Need something like a purpose. Boredom is creeping in through my nostrils and ear canals and lulling me softly to sleep.

George told me he has to start drug testing me. Randomly. I have to pee in a cup whenever it strikes this man's fancy.
I told him that'd be fine. I think I would pass since I consume no controlled or illegal substances; daily multi-vitamins are my drug of choice.
George said if he finds out I'm not doing enough drugs, he doesn't want me working there.
"Got to have drugs in your system to work here. Don't know how else you could stand it. I don't want any clean people working here."

Storytime:


George was working one day and some lady with an affected Texas accent walked in and asked for an old kids book, "Little Black Sambo."
"Yeah, I got it," he said. "Don't know why you'd want it."
"Well, ok. How much is it?"
"Twenty."
"Oh, now, that's a bit too much. How about ten," the lady asked.
George picks up the book and puts it inches away form the lady's face. He rips it in half and says: "Lady it's wroth more to me than my original twenty dollars to do that to you, you racist!"



One of my favorite things I've heard George say, though (he's a really intelligent guy, although a bit ornery):
"You can have enough Starbucks, McDonalds, Coldstone, and Sushi, but you can't ever have enough books."



Jarring subject change:
Liz's parents are in town. They took us to Mesa Verde, which is a massive national park. We purchased tickets for a tour of "the long house" at the visitor's center, about five minutes of driving into the park. Then, we drove about forty-five minutes into the park to get to the spot where the tour started. The drive consisted of about ten-thousand switchbacks, views of mesas, rabbit brush, junipers, pinons, and a massive line of SUVs in front of us.
We arrived at the covered picnic area to wait for the start of the tour. Standing there, you could turn in circles and see into the foggy horizon. Miles and miles of rolling desert land. A cloud system was blowing in from the east. I could see that start and finish of the rain it was dropping. To the right and left of it was arid, sunny desert. It was an intruder into the desert, but a most welcome one. Mesa Verde receives about eighteen inches of rain annually.
The storm stayed to our east and we went on our jolly way to the long house, a small community of sandstone-constructed apartments built into a massive curved-L amphitheater hundreds of feet above the dry gully below. Why the hell anyone would live there is beyond me. All those mysterious theories of the peoples' disappearance is full of crap, stories put out by the early railroad to promote tourism and sell train tickets. The people of Mesa Verde simply moved on. It's dry there. The land, sandy and rocky, farmed to it's full potential.
The railroad's story is way more romantic, although impractical and irrational at best. It was an awe-inspiring place; impressive in it's construction and it produced a lot of inquiries on my part about who lived there. These cliff dwellings were actually the last of a series of living spaces constructed by the Ancestral Puebloans who lived in the area. They were built around 1200 A.D.. Earlier spaces consisted of buildings constructed on top of the mesa and dated back to about 450 A.D., which shows that people were living in the area nearly 750 years before some idiot Native American had the idea to build a humongous city into the side of the mesa. Didn't think that one out did ya, buddy? Gotta carry all those fucking rocks down the side of a cliff.
Needless to say, the people who lived at the cliff dwellings didn't stay in residence for very long. From what the park ranger who led our tour said and from what seems most plausible to me, the people who lived here just moved out, went to better land.

There's a lot of beautiful land out here - so much to see. As a boy who grew up in the Ohio River Valley, my eyes and mind have trouble comprehending and fully appreciating the ever-changing lands out here. The dust sweeps over the mountains that seem to explode out of the earth. The wildflowers ornament the landscape like lights on a Christmas tree. The moon shines brighter than anywhere else in the world, like a hundred watt bulb in a denuded and lonely room. The people here don't become nervous and snap their heads as if on rubber bands away form you when you make eye contact. In the morning, God paints the sky with the brightest azure and heedlessly tosses a handful of cottony puffs of moisture into the atmosphere as a coup de grace to his daily masterpiece.

Verbal Diarrhea (I spelled diarrhea right the first time. That's a tough thing to do).

As I'm sitting here sipping my icy manhattan, I'm reflecting on the old man sitting in his Dodge pickup truck in the AC who had the audacity to comment on the sticker on George's door: "Veterans for Obama."
"Hey, you should really stake that sticker down," he said with a cheesy smile.
Get out of your truck and say that. Sure, I'll take it down and shove it somewhere you won't like.
Well, that's what George told me to say, but, man, that guy really pissed me off.

I've worked almost 60 hours this week, which includes reading. Finished "The Witches of Eastwick." Sure, it's chick-lit and no, I don't care. Updike is a hell of a writer who knows how to craft a sentence and use words to his advantage. Now I'll finish up "Dubliners" and move on to either Tom Robbins or more Bolano.

I want to start a literature and arts magazine in Durango, but I'm skeptical about how well it would go over and I don't know how the hell to begin the process. I'm working on some stories and I have ideas for more, but I'm hesitant to make them public. It'd be like opening a new wound and having some poke it if any criticism came around.

This weekend Liz was gone. I drank beer, ordered a pizza, and played video games. Testosterone does strange things to your body and makes things like that sound attractive sometimes. I often wonder what the masculine heaven would be? A dusty retro-patterned sofa with springs much too soft, a food preferably fried or salty, an erratically moving television show or movie, the lack of a need to move for hours, alcohol, a favorite band or song on very loud (which, in the case of the average male, would include music not suited to the average, semi-intelligent human's ears), the opportunity to glance at a nude female, and possibly more depending on what specimen of male we are discussing. Often times, they're vile, lewd creatures.

Anyways,







This is where I work.

Saturday 0600 hrs. - Helped set up bike racks and traffic cones for the Iron Horse Classic (one of two huge tourists draws in Durango. The IHC is a 50ish mile race up three mountain passes from Durango to Silverton. Cyclists are racing an old steam engine. If you don't beat it, you're either dead or morbidly obese. It takes nearly four hours for the train to get there).
Helped set off the 3,000+ cyclists in their different categories. The men with their penis envy and napoleon syndrome all clad in spandex and shaved legs and their carbon fiber aerodynamicized flashy-looking midlife crisis bikes (scarily enough, even some kids had these bikes!!!) - the men were all sizing each other up. Stone-faced. Leg muscles bulging and shining from the reflective grease smeared on their smooth skin. Every ounce of weight gone. Must. Be. Fast.

0830 hrs. - Home again. Eat pancakes with honey. I love Liz.

1030 hrs. - Arrive at Gouldine trailhead. Switchback after switchback after switchback after switchback after switchback up a mountain. We went nearly 3,000 ft. in about an hour and a half. Soaked with sweat. Trudging. Heavy boots. Winded. Can't stop though. We go a ways up the wrong trail. Moods sours. Turn around. Here's the trail. Shit, more uphill. Small steps. Sweating. Panting. Heart racing. I become discouraged and pout like a child. I can't do it, but I must. Stop go stop go stop go. She says we should turn around. Yeah right, I'll show her. Another ten feet. Repeat.
I think about the perfectly mechanized bodies of those perfectly calibrated men. Why can't I be like them? Why can't I have perfect skin? A beautifully Greek, statuesque body, which men would stare in awe at? Why can't I not break a sweat when doing aerobic exercise? I think about all my days of inactivity. The days I decided to burn up my lungs with smoke. The days of junk food. My years and years of not caring. Nihilism. I think about my dad. About my mom. About air pollution. Prescription drugs. And I cry. I cry and sniffle and trudge down the path. Reassurance doesn't matter. I'm too far down. It's self-pity. I realize this and chin up and look around. Where the hell are you, Nathan. In the most beautiful city you've ever lived. Listen to the birds, the stream, look at the gargantuan trees, feel the air, the water breathe the air here, look at her, look at you. Without the years of inactivity, the junk food, the dad, the mom, the hometown, the drugs you did, the high school, the old friends, the new friends, the past, the present, and the future, you wouldn't be you. Those perfectly musculatured beasts don't matter. They're not you. People love you and hate you for the same reason - you're you. Revel in it.

1600 hrs. - Home. Relax. Supper.

2000 hrs. - Walk to Carvers. Drink a beer that reminds me of one of my favorites from home. Three Floyds Alpha King. Talk with Liz about all my friends from years past and all the great ones I currently have. I miss them, but I laugh about it.

Mahalo - Nathan D. Brown.















Southwest Book Trader.














The three bears racing in the cruiser crit in downtown. The day after the Iron Horse, most of downtown is closed off. Cyclists do figure eights around downtown. It all is capped off with the cruiser crit, in which riders are encouraged to have fun and dress in costume. Durango is fun.