Mosswood Park

Coming home from work, I noticed the pink skies of sunset as I walked through the door. I couldn’t let it pass. There’s something about the moment as day bleeds into night that I feel I must take part in.

So I went to shoot hoops at my local park, Mosswood, beneath the lights. I got into a few games with a group of friends — solid athletes, recent college grads, good guys from Oakland. Two of them went to Cal Poly, my alma mater, and we bonded over that.

We chatted for a bit. I told them I was unfortunately leaving town. It’s hard to know what to make of a generation. I don’t hang out with early twenty-somethings very often. But I feel like they’re more understanding. Less callous than past generations, even my own.

It was super fun though. I was hitting threes. Felt solid on the dribble. It was the freest I’ve played in a while, and that’s why I played well. I was trying not to think. Shoot if I wanted to shoot, no matter how many times I’d missed.

My body felt good. I thought about when I lived in San Diego, and I’d pass a basketball hoop, and all I wanted was to shoot again without pain. I was in my early twenties. This couldn’t have been the end of my story, that my body would just deteriorate? That I’d never play sports again? It was impossible to believe, but since I had no answers, it was natural to believe it. What cause did I have to believe that things could ever change for the better? It felt like I’d fallen into a hole, and I had no idea how to get out. I was just stuck, and it killed me.

I can’t believe how far I’ve come. Playing pain-free at thirty years old.

I never lost faith. I knew one day things had to change if I just kept going. Day by day, I’ve been growing. Year after year of not knowing. I never counted myself out even though I felt it wasn’t fair.

Life ain’t fair. We let our challenges break us, or make us.

I used to be in pain every single day to varying degrees. Now I’m about eighty percent out of pain. It’s been about a year and a half since I started learning about mind-body symptoms, that my back pain is actually caused by my mind, and not a broken body.

Now, I simply surrender. There’s still pain there, but mostly when exercising, shooting hoops, whatever, I’m pain free. I’ve been working at a coffee shop, and I don’t have any pain when working, standing for five to eight hours a day. When I taught English in Japan, I’d have pain every day while teaching.

That’s progress, man. I have to remember that no matter how hard it gets, it was so much worse for seven years, stuck in the prison of my mind, not knowing what was going on with me.

It’s rarely easy, but I’m on my way. All there is to do is surrender. Accept. Allow. And face life.

Be the parent, not the child.

The teacher, not the student.

You feel sensations — they mean nothing.

Smile. There is no doubt. Your body is not broken.

I think of Kobe Bryant. I told myself I’d play basketball again for you, Kobe; for me.

Well, I’m playing again.

I know you’re lookin’ down, proud of me for never giving up.

This is my hero’s journey. I’m a hooper.

Beauty

I’ve been reading a lot. That makes me happy. It inspires my writing. If I can just take one thing from each book I read, it’s worth it. The one I’m reading, How to Stop Time, by Matt Haig, has taught me that it’s okay to write a foreign language without italics. That’s what I’m doing with the Japanese in my book. Italics creates an otherness.

This is ‘our’ language, and this is theirs. It’s all just language. I think that’s a cool way to think about it. Language as universal with different formulas. I’ve enjoyed reading Haruki Murakami, as the writing is simple. And maybe that’s because it’s translated from Japanese. I like when it’s clean, as that lets the beauty of the sentence shine.

Describing how I see the world, simply and beautifully — that’s what I strive for. Beauty isn’t just an aesthetic. It’s a rawness. A reality. A depth. Something is beautiful because it’s real. Because what’s real is beautiful. Life. Existence. The things we get to experience in our brief blip of time on this rock.

I think that’s the point of pain. Not pain inflicted on others. That’s not beautiful. That’s the opposite. The thing most ugly about life.

No, beauty is a surrender to the flow of life; often, the inherent pain of life. The natural way that things are and are meant to be. A way a tree bends, and grows, and sheds, and dies. The roar of distant thunder or the thrashing of the sea upon dark jagged rocks; the rain — the thing most beautiful to me.

Is a rainstorm as desirable as a sunny day? Perhaps to some. To me it is. It’s not the thing, but what the thing represents. That’s how we relate to the world around us.

The physical reality of a rainstorm is captivating, but what’s most profound is that the storm is an abnormality. It brings you to the present. And that’s all we’re here to do. Come to the now and experience what life has in store.

Why is it so hard to simply watch life go by?

The seasons change?

’Cause we want something from it.

Unsatisfied simply watching.

When that’s all we’re here to do.

The unknowable void of freedom

I’m gonna miss Oakland. The park. The lake. The gym. The people. You walk by somebody on the sidewalk and they look you in the eye and say hello. I just like the people here. They’re real.

They got pride in this city, pride in themselves. I’m gonna miss so many things. The coffee shop. The apartment. The tree-lined roads. The girl, more than anything. But I gotta look forward.

I just wanna make cool shit, hit threes and write books.

I have to write. When I don’t, I don’t feel like me.

Who cares about what you do it for, who reads it, any of that shit? This is for me. And man, it feels good. I feel fucking torn. Sitting outside on the deck, with the yellow lights twinkling, I just want to hold her. It’s like she’s the twinkling lights, the stars, and I crave her warmth. It doesn’t feel real. The life we had together will morph into something new, detached from one another; different lives. And that hurts.

Let the pain in. Feel it all. Let it roar through you, the sadness that you feel burning like the sun. I forgot who I was; I don’t even know. What can I do? What am I? I’m afraid. I know deep down that things will work out. It’s gonna hurt though. When you feel this deeply, things hurt. And that’s experiencing life. Letting emotion rip through us like tidal waves — unstoppable.

There’s nothing you can do. But we try to fight. We put up walls. We hold it in. Pain is shitty. We don’t want to feel it. But we don’t have a choice. Why is pain so much less preferred than its opposite? In the moments of pain, we feel something like an earthquake, shattering our present. But at least we’re there. We’re present in that moment, as I’m at my computer now writing these words. Because I feel something that I can’t ignore. The only way to get through it is to let it through. Bring it on. Break down the walls and lower the drawbridge. We’re not here just to experience the highs of life. We’re alive to experience the pain, because that’s what it means to be alive. Without pain, there are no peaks. I just don’t know if there’s a middle way. Feeling things as deeply as you can, yet returning, trying, with every fiber of our being, to a place of faith.

Faith that things will work out the way they’re meant to. That everything we go through, all the pain, is for a reason. And perhaps it’ll take a lot of time to get there. To a place to one day look back, and say, thank you. For every fucking thing I experienced. That was an adventure — feeling something so deeply; learning how to fight back against the darkness. It makes the sunny day of now so much brighter. I already feel these things. In the depths of my emotions, I can say look at what it took to get here. Now I gaze upon the next mountain, another vast and open sea, the unknowable void of freedom.

Planes

I see the headlights of a plane faintly in the clouds. Just lights. I try to imagine a couple hundred years ago, three hundred, and seeing an airplane in the sky? Being up there in the clouds, Looking upon earth. They couldn’t conceive of it. Planes in the sky defy the facade of reality. How are we not in absolute awe at all times?

And it makes me wonder, should I travel right now? I tell myself that this is a great time to travel. In between jobs again. On my own. But my dream life is not having to have a job. It’s traveling and getting to write books about what I experience. I’ll be traveling for the rest of my life. What makes me think this is ever going to stop? It’s only going to get better. You will achieve your dreams. You will get there. If you don’t aim too high, then you aim too low. I don’t want to be working for somebody else. I want to have adventures and tell stories and inspire people to live their own.

I could travel, but it almost feels like running away.

Right now, I have to focus on my book about Japan.

I need to get it done before I can move on. There is no perfect time to do anything. But I have an opportunity to make something. And to one day get to the life of my dreams, I must do what I’m meant to do now.

Grateful. Grateful for where I am, every damn thing. It’s all happening exactly how it’s meant to. Never stop believing that you will live the life of your dreams. So much to burn away — so much to become.

Tattoos

I look forward to being an eighty-year-old with anime characters tattooed on my arms, just to remind me I’m always a kid at heart.

I like that tattoos are a way of not taking ourselves so seriously. Tattoos are something that represents a time and place. Each one captures something. And maybe it’s something we don’t even know. But something inspired us. We went and put our faith in somebody else to give us a piece of time.

I got a tattoo to commemorate my time in Oakland, and I was talking to the tattoo artist about AI use in writing. How other tattoo artists have clearly used AI on their websites. And we just discussed how perhaps people just want the imperfect communication of human beings over the perfection of AI.

That gives me hope. A reason to lean into my imperfections. To be vulnerable, and to tell these stories in a way that only I can. And I hope that whoever reads them can glean something helpful, just a sign that they aren’t alone, that they may shine imperfectly too, that we’re all going through something. It feels that way. You’re not alone.

Tacos and ice cream

I’m leaving today. It’s been two weeks of in between; a very difficult two weeks. So beautiful, too. Magic. Life. And I’m here now, writing on the low table in the living room at the apartment. Just ran around the lake, my last run. Ran hard. Never stopped moving, and was moving quickly. Body feels good. It’s just insane, man. All of this. A fucking whirlwind.

I’m excited about the future. Yesterday was a beautiful last day in Oakland. Great workout at the gym. Solid last day of work — constant flow of customers, not a lot of downtime at all, and my last customers were two of my favorite regulars. I’m gonna miss that job. It had already become a home. A place where I made people feel welcome and warm. I enjoy creating that, similar to when I worked at a hostel. Taking care of guests.

Last night, I met up with some best friends, got tacos and ice cream and walked in the rain. A quintessential fall night, damp and golden leaves bestrewn atop the roads.

The boys got my back. Friends make this bearable. They are everything. So damn grateful; they’ll be here. Oakland will be here. And maybe I will be too one day. But for me right now, New York is where it’s at. Where I wanna be. Where else but in the energy. I hope to use the experience I gained in coffee to get my boots on the ground in NYC.

But now — now I hibernate for winter. I like that I can change my plan, not be rigid and say I have to travel now. No, man. The world ain’t leaving. But writing my third book — that is a step forward towards the life of my dreams, where I can travel and get paid for it — not travel to run away from the past.

Good people

Driving back to LA, what a day. I stopped for dinner, and the cashier asked me how my day was. And I thought about it and said, it’s been pretty rough. He asked why. I told him I was going through a breakup.

He was like, it’s gonna be all right. Been there, you’re gonna get through it. Just a good dude. Isn’t that a beautiful thing? Instead of acting like things are okay, being vulnerable, and allowing somebody else — a perfect stranger — to be there for you. The walls crumble, and we’re all just human.

I think I did everything I could. Life isn’t easy. But I’m doing hard things. Falling, trusting my voice, my instincts, my calling. Even though I have no idea where it’s all headed. I do not know what the next six months will look like. That’s how my life usually goes. That’s what I like.

The through line is a story. That’s the one I write. And next is publishing this Japan book. The only thing I have to do — all I wanna do. And it’s difficult. And there’s no ceiling. I found a thing. I’ll give it everything I have. It’s extraordinary. Everything about it.

At the gas station, another cashier was the friendliest dude ever, covered my twenty-six cents, enthusiastically complimented my new tattoo.

There’s a lot of good people in this world.