Blank Slate

There is a thick haze around the nearly pregnant moon tonight.  I don't know the cause.  I like to think its the smoke of a million stoners, getting blazed in celebration of tonight's festivities.  I like to think the combined smoke of my cigarettes and incense are contributing.

I know that none of that is true, but it makes me smile to think it.  Of course almost everything I think of makes me smile.  Even the most heartbreaking things.  I smile on purpose.  It makes it all taste better.

As I'm writing this, it is currently 8:57 mountain time, Wednesday, October 31st. For some inexplicable reason, I keep thinking today is Thursday.  Of course by the time many of you read this, it will be.  Funny how written communication is the closest thing we have to actual time travel.  I'm writing these words in my now.  You're reading them in yours.  We're connected in a spectrum that transcends actual time.

Neat.

I'm staring through the haze at that glowing silver bitch in the sky, and I can't help but get a little introspective.  She has had that effect on men and women for as long as there have been men and women.  I'm no different.  This has been for me, a year of incredible change.

If by the end of the year I am involved in no more theatrical productions, I will have done this year, the exact same number of shows that I have done all my previous years in SLC combined.  That's sad for past me, tiring for present me, and absolutely thrilling for future me.

For the first time since 2007, I have a job that schedulewise, actually caters to my real life.  I'm pretty happy about that.  The job itself is what it is...but I don't really care.  I've always said I could do anything as long as I'm afforded the opportunity to do at night what I'm on this planet to do.  I'm proving myself right.

This year saw the end of my second longest, and in many ways, most meaningful relationship I've ever had.  I understand that ending was necessary, but feel the effects of that loss no less.  I learned so much from that time with her and would not trade it for anything.  I think every real lesson comes with pain.  It's simply how this shit works.

So I've had a chance to re-learn myself.  Rediscover.  Realize that I'm exactly who I thought I was all along. Just...different.  More mature?  I don't think so.  I'm still plagued with an irrepressible Peter Pan complex.  I still have an insatiable love for all things ridiculous, outrageous, bawdy, and well...flat out stupid.  I'm still a big fan of bad decisions.  I still ache to do the things that will make great stories later.  I still don't give a red rat's fuck about all the things I'm supposed to care about.

I still love.

This year I've learned I am capable of emotional depths I had previously been completely unaware of.  I found that to be interesting.
I learned that I care even less what people thought of me than I had previously believed.  I found that uninteresting.
I learned that honesty with other people comes much easier for me than honesty with myself.  Which I found to be really quite entertaining once I gave it a shot.

Because of various circumstances, some that were decided, and some that simply didn't happen the way it had originally be planned, I have been living in the same apartment I've been in since 2008.  When we broke up, it was never a question that I would be the one to leave...but because of one thing...then another...then another and another and another...I haven't.  Earlier tonight I went to look at the new place I will be renting.  It's a room in a house, owned by friends I've known for a few years now.  Looking back over the course of the past few years, it all seems so serendipitous that I will be living there.  I will be living there.

This will be, to my knowledge, my last big change of the year.  I have occupied this space for over four years now, and in just a couple weeks, it will be just another memory.  It's strange to me how already I miss it just a little.  Everything becomes even more real, once it becomes a little bit real.  That type of reality is a sneaky bastard, that ever inches closer, but never while you're looking.  So tonight, hands were shook, hugs were exchanged, a bargain was struck, and a time was set when I would change the location of my bed.

And still I change.
And still I'm the same.

This is the year that my greatest tangible gift was a stick.
This is the year that my greatest intangible gift was loss.
This is the year I learned that I have x-ray vision.  I can stop time. I can accept the inevitable with grace, and I can say no to a third slice of pizza.
This is the year I became tabula rasa, and discovered that I'm the one who decides how to fill it.
I'm still deciding.
Every day.

Sleep tight floating feather

I don't dream.

I know the typical response to that is, "Of course you dream, you simply don't remember."  I guess that means my reply is something along the lines of..."Isn't that the same thing?"

If you have absolutely no memory of something happening, did it happen?

Is a thought about a unicorn a real thought?

Probably, but it has no value.  No meaning.  No existence by which it can be defined.  So yeah, I guess I probably dream, but since I have no memory of it, it's simply easier to say that I don't.

There are some, a few rare occasions that I do remember them, but not often enough to really be significant. Typically I remember turning off the light and putting my head on my pillow, closing my eyes, then turning off my alarm clock.  It all seems to happen just about that fast.

I think I've mentioned this before, but I guess I'll go into it again.  Those few times I actually remember dreaming...of all of them...ever...there has not once been a sex dream.  Not once.  I feel like I'm missing something.  My brain won't give me nocturnal porn, and I'm a bit upset about that.  I'd like to speak to someone in charge, but it seems there's a vacancy.

 In fact not only have I never had a sex dream, I've never to my memory even dreamed nudity.  No one has the decency to get indecent in my dreams.  So all that said, if I ever happen to tell you in conversation that I dreamed about you (I probably never will) you can rest assured that we didn't do anything sordid.  Dammit.

I have had math dreams.  Really weird shit too.  Absurdist math.  Non-math.  Theoretical no theory.  A lot of spirals and circles and shit.  I've also dreamed cartoons.  In fact many of the dreams I remember over the course of my life have been animated.

Really though, weeks...sometimes months will go by, and I will have complete zero memory of having dreamed at all in that time.

I have a theory.

I think I keep my brain, just as busy as my body during the course of the day, so at night when it's finally time to rest, my brain needs it just as much as the rest of me...and shuts down.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not pretending any sort of intelligence, or massive brain work going on.  I'm simply saying that my brain is always...always...going.  Like that goddamn battery bunny.

Mostly just daydreams.  Fantasies.

It's been postulated that we don't actually live in a Universe.  We exist as one fraction of ourfinite selves in this particular part of an infinite multi-verse.  That there is no real end to each dimension.  They just go on and on forever, and in each one, we exist...but following a different path for each major decision we've encountered in our life...and made differently.  In each cross dimension we may already be dead.  We may be more happy, more sad, more wealthy.  Married to different people.  Single.  Gay.  In jail.  The possibilities are really endless, when you consider how each decision in your life could have gone a different way.

I don't really believe this theory.  I have no reason to.  But that's just how I am.  I don't believe ANYTHING without reason to.  Really it's more simply stated that I don't believe anything at all.  I either know...or I don't konw...and if I care, I'll find out.  If I can't find out then I'll exist without the knowledge, but also without the belief.  I'm okay with that.

I like the theory though.  I don't believe it, but I like it.  In that theory, in that fantasy, in that other dimension that in fact I don't believe in, I'm with her.
When I dream, she visits me there.
When I daydream, I visit her there.
When my fantasies are given freedom to travel, she is my companion.

The reality is something quite different, and I have to live with that.  Here.  In this dimension.  In this reality.  This place that I don't have to believe in...because I know it.  I know it as my only reality.  I don't have to define it, I simply have to accept it.  Change what I can, if I want to.  Live with what I can...or can't...or whatever.

What is, is.  THAT is what is real.  That is the foundation for all other lines of reason, though, and progression.  We can't build on what isn't.  We can't form a truth, based on a fiction.  We can't create real, from nothingness.  This is how religion was invented.

There is nothing wrong with the fantasy.  The dream.  The fiction.  These things are necessary.  They do serve purpose.  They provide entertainment.  Escape.  Motivation.  Beauty.  Emotion in an otherwise empty abyss.  The problem comes when we lose the ability to distinguish.  The ability to function in a reality where those things must remain fiction.
 
Sometimes I like to imagine myself on a boat.  A world of unseen life below me.  A cosmos of undiscovered possibility around me, but my horizon, in every direction is empty.  There is nothing, and I am comfortable.  I am content in the near silence.  I am not concerned with anything.  I am at peace with myself.

Funny thing is, I really am at peace with myself.  Oh sure, I have a shitton of first world problems.  No more or less than anyone else I know.  I have my needs.  My longings.  My cravings.  These things don't separate me from anyone else, or make me unique.  I've just found my own way to compartmentalize it all.  To put each thing in its place.

When I need, or want, to address any given emotion, or event, or problem, or solution, I simply open its compartment, and observe.  Dissect.  Eat it with delight.  Taste it.  Consume it.  Then put it away again until next time.

I don't think I've said yet, what I originally intended to say.  I don't remember what it was.  It was something about dreams.  And the girl in them.  I guess I'm not ready to approach all that in my writing yet though.  I though I might be, but all my brains defenses went up.  All the alarms sounded.  All the walls came crashing up, and stopped whatever progress might have been made.

Maybe in my not-dream sleep tonight I'll remember.  Maybe I won't.  Maybe its just that thing that I want so desperately to talk about, and just have yet to find the proper medium.  Or person.

Maybe it will go away on its own.

Maybe the other me, in another dimension, is making love to her right this second.

Maybe I'll go smoke about it, and hope he's having a good time..

You just can't help it

The right earbud of my headphones is shorting out.  While walking to wherever I may be going, the sound will entirely disappear on that side.  In these moments, I feel like I'm doing the sidestroke in my own music.

As an entertainment tech I worked a LOT of shows.  I worked for a LOT of different entertainers.  I sometimes wish I would have kept a list, because sometimes I forget.  Oh well.

I worked for the Chippendales for a few years.  That was actually a lot more fun than I would have initially expected it to be.

I also worked with showgirls for a bit.

Rewind.

Growing up I was always, incredibly, HUGELY, intimidated by physical beauty.  It started I think when I was very young.  Before I knew or understood what attraction even was.  When I was but a lad, I had no problem telling people if I thought they were pretty.  It came easy to me.

As my formative years progressed, I found myself being shunned by those people.  I would be rejected flat by my young advances.  I was too young and stupid to know to keep that shit to myself.  The girls I liked didn't want to know or hear that I did.  I think I embarrassed them.  Naturally over the course of time, I took that rejection to heart.  By the time I had hit my middle school years, I was pretty much like any other pre-teen.  I was all to aware of, and even exaggerated my own flaws.  I found all the parts of myself I didn't like, and they became the focal point.  I became convinced that I was ugly.  I'm sure most of us have had that phase.  I'm not unique...but it did stick with me longer than I should have let it.

Even after I did grow out of it, I was still affected by it.  I took it to heart.  I had a very difficult time talking to girls, and the more attractive I found them, the more difficult it was.  And if they defied the set standard of beauty...you know...even prettier than the pretty ones...well...forget about it.  I couldn't even look at them.
No really.  I couldn't.  I was afraid they would catch me looking and be disgusted that someone like me, would be looking at someone like them.

I realize of course in retrospect that it was a lot of my own insecurities.  I was judging them to be a type of person...based on the type of person I thought I was.  It was a vicious little self destructive line of unreasoning.

This plagued me even through High School.  I didn't go to my Jr. Prom, because I was too afraid to ask anyone.  Every girl I thought was attractive...I was quite certain thought I was unattractive in direct proportion.  I wasn't allowed to date until I was sixteen.  It's a Mormon thing.  Didn't matter.  Even after I turned sixteen, and was now allowed...
Oh sure, there were a ton of people I would have pretty much done anything to even be able to say hello to...let alone date.  But I didn't.  I couldn't.
I harbored crushes of course.  I still remember every one of them.  Most of them developed because a girl would say hi to me, or laugh at a joke I told in class.  It sprung out of the fact that she didn't seem to be completely repulsed by my presence.  For me...at that time...that was simply enough.

I have of course over the past however many decades grown out of all that.  I was married to an incredibly gorgeous woman.  Have been involved in relationships with just...I dunno...really fucking pretty people.  So I'm not a complete social idiot.

Except I am.

I'll occasionally get lucky.

Or something.

Thing is though...it's still there.
And its strange.
I'm a fucking actor.  Personal rejection is a huge part of my life.  You learn to deal with it.  You learn to hear no.  You learn to hear next.  You learn the phrase... "Please come to our next audition"...so well, you can actually sometimes hear it, before the director even says it.  I'm pretty sure on some level, all actors have a VERY personal relationship with rejection.  It's part of what we deal with.  Constantly.  We move on, we hone our craft, we get better, we get roles, we get work, we get reputations, we act we act we act...and we STILL get rejected.  It's part of the process.

I still have a hard time talking to people.
I have never.  Not once.  Not a single goddamn time...walked up to a girl in a bar to strike up a conversation.  Pretty sure I never will.  I fucking HATE bars.
But I think you also see the point I'm making.
I don't really approach women.  It's just not in me.

But then I worked eROCKtica.
That was the name of the show.
7 or 8 gorgeous...absolutely in every way physically stunning girls dancing mostly naked to live classic rock music for 78 minutes.

There is no way to fully communicate how gorgeous these girls were.  Some had been NFL cheerleaders.  Most were professional models on the side.  All of them were of course dancers.  Just the height of what we have socially accepted as the epitome of physical beauty.

Naturally there was no way I was going to talk to any of them outside of whatever needed to be communicated for the job.  And I didn't.  In fact for the most part I even avoided making eye contact, lest they think me some sort of trollish pervert.

One day one of the girls came into rehearsal wearing a Denver Broncos jersey.  I couldn't help myself.  I remarked on the jersey, and that I also happened to be a huge fan of the team.  She smiled.  Replied.  We talked football for a bit.

Holy shit.  Not only was she gorgeous but she was a person too.

Kinda says more about me than it does about her doesn't it.  Some of us take a bit longer to learn the silliest of life's lessons.

A few weeks later, I was down near the stage after having set up for the show, smoking a cigarette.  One of the other girls from the show came over and joined me.  We smoked.  We talked.  It was all so...normal.  Not at all what I was expecting.  Just people smoking.  This became a routine.  Every night before the show, myself...other techs...and any number of the girls would hang out in our little smoking area, some smoking, some not...and just shoot the shit.  It was always just so nice.

The greatest shock to me in all of that...at the time...is that I actually became friends with pretty much all of them.  Not just work friends...but you know...friends.  They'd invite me to clubs...parties...we hang out...friend stuff.  With pretty people.

Wanna know something funny?  I had pretty much the exact same experience with the Chippendales too.  Different gender...nearly exact same experience.  I became friends with some of them.  Really...fucking..pretty people...and just little ole me.

It took me that long in my life to learn that huge of a lesson.  That people really are just people.  Its all relative, and its all arbitrary, and its all just exactly what we make it.  Except I learned something else too.

Beauty is.

Bear with me.

Earlier tonight I was just perusing my FB.  Going through my friends list.  Looking at pictures.  I eventually went through my entire friends list looking at at least the profile pic of every single one of you and realized something.

I am the luckiest motherfucker on the planet because

every one of you

every last goddamn fucking one of you

is gorgeous.

I have the prettiest friends in the world.

For a guy who grew up with all these petty insecurities.  Who claims so much to be intimidated by beauty, I've gone and surrounded myself with it.  I've put myself in the middle of the most amazing people I could find...and somehow...without even realizing...it just happened.

Beauty is, and you all have it.  In spades.  And I sit here...still just little ole me, and I am consumed by love, and quite frankly adoration for every last one of you.

I have this thing where I look at your face...and I smile.  I can't help it.  Every last one of you have contributed something to my life, that I can't adequately express gratitude for.  Really all I can do is

hopefully

return the favor somehow.

Self editing...

I'm kind of afraid of becoming a one trick pony here.  You see there are really only a couple things on my mind.  One of them I can't/won't talk about.  The other...well...I already have.  At length.

I am in serious need of distraction.

When I was younger, I would play the piano.  My parents had one, and I used to spend hours banging on the keys.  Don't get me wrong.  I don't make any claim to actually being good.

I had lessons when I was a kid.  Learned how to read music.  Which I can still do, if I take my time with it, but I didn't take to reading music like I took to reading words.  I had to work at it.  I'm quite lazy.  Plus I learned that I have a pretty good ear for it all, and that in all honesty just made it worse.  I could hear a song, and pick out a fair facsimile...so actually reading the music, and learning it right just seemed like way too much work.  So I became mediocre.

It proved a phenomenal distraction however.  I would just sit for the longest time.  Making music.  Learning songs I liked.  Singing along when I knew the words.

Mostly I liked creating new melodies though.  I really liked the process of it.  Then I'd come up with some dopey mix of words, call them lyrics, and have myself a new little song.  My god I loved it all.  I'm not claiming any of it was ever any good.  I'm just stating that I really liked it.  It was a great way for me to work out whatever was in my little skull nugget at the time.

I don't really sing either.  Oh I can carry a tune.  I can mostly hit the right notes.  I just don't care much for the sound of my own voice.  And my range is absolute shit.  I'm somwhere in the low tenor range...but can't really sing all that low...and can't really sing all that high...but those 6 notes in the middle...I can nail em every time.

I haven't honestly sat down at a piano in over a decade.

I really
really
really

need to do that again.

I have absolutely zero access.  I've contemplated breaking into any one of the millions of mormon churches here in my area.

They'd probably get mad at me though.

By the way.  I don't hate musicals.  I know a lot of people who know me think this is the case.  It isn't.  I actually really enjoy them.  In fact I will probably be taking in Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson this weekend...or next, and I'm really quite excited about it.

I just only enjoy them once.  That's it.  It really is...all I need.  I can read a book, or watch a movie over and over again, its true, but for me...and maybe...hell even probably...ONLY me...musicals only impact me one time.  Whenever, in my entire life, I've seen a musical a second...or third...or 85th time...it's lost its impact.  I don't feel the same way as I did when it was fresh.

I just saw the season announcement for Centerpoint Legacy Theatre, and it is the safest, most boring, most unoriginal, season I've ever seen announced.  There isn't a single risk on there.  There isn't a single new thing.  There is absolutely NOTHING to be excited about...and therefore, I have concluded that it is a theatre that I will NEVER give a single dollar to.  They will generate exactly 0 revenue from me.

I know that we as artists are supposed to support the arts.  I know we have some sort of obligation to...yeah...fuck that.  I do support the arts.  I do not in any way support pussy ass theatre that does not challenge, embrace, or explore.  If your only goal is to get butts in seats...I assure you...mine won't be one of them.

Sorry.
End rant.
Seeing that kind of season posted though...
really makes me angry.
I want to kick the AD so hard in the nuts, that his great grandchildren sing Alto for life.

I just wrote six more paragraphs about it all.  Since I stated already that I ended the rant...I deleted them.  Probably for the best, they were pretty vitriolic.  Not a lot of sugar coating.  I guess I just gotta get that shit out...

Maybe...

See that's my problem.  I don't think it matters right now what the topic is.  I could just as easily go off about politics, religion, early mornings, diet soda...almost anything.

The pressure cooker is pressed and I just need to let out the steam...I don't think the topic is even relevant anymore.  The things I need to say I can't say.  The things I need to do require a willing partner.  The things being bottled up inside me right now, do not age well...and all of my ways to usually get that stuff out...aren't working.

I can't write, because I can't focus.  I try to focus, and it all becomes so angry...and ugly.  I don't like angry or ugly.  I honestly don't...but I can't find my pressure valve.

I need a bath.

I need a piano.

I think that's it.

I just need a piano.

HOMELESS

That's what I am.  Okay, maybe not in the literal sense.  I do have a roof over my head.  I will soon have a different roof over my head, and still...still, I will be just as homeless.

I grew up in a small town.  1000ish people total.  300ish in my entire high school.  45 in my graduating class. I had amazing friends in my high school years.  People that I still hold so very close its insane, and yet...  It was goddamn Wyoming.  No matter how close you are to however many people, you are still going to have more than ample opportunity to form a relationship with isolation.  I did.  Its my best relationship ever.  It takes a unique kind of person to live in Wyoming.  It takes an entirely different kind of unique to CHOOSE to live there.  Once the choice was mine to make...well...I chose no.  For all the things I love about Wyoming, and there truly are very very many, the things I love most in my life...aren't there.  So I had no choice but to leave.  A piece of her came with me, and will always be there.  I will always think of myself as a Wyoming boy.  I hate cowboys.  I hate country music.  I hate all the things that are typically associated with Wyoming...but there it is.  Its who I am.  I was formed in her belly under open skies and cold wind.

When the impending apocolypse happens, whether it be Christian, Zombie, or Mayan, I will be able to pick up my shit...move to the mountains that I grew up in the shadow of, and live the rest of my days in isolated hermitry.  I have mad survival skills.  I can go up into the highest of the high wilderness, build my little shelter, and live off the land for as long as I need to.  I grew up learning hunting, fishing, wilderness survival, camping, backpacking, moving around, exploring, navigation (without gps), and in general living with what the earth provides, regardless how hostile the environment.  This is what happens when you grow up in a place where you have no choice but invent your own fun, and you have the biggest of all nature to do it in.  This is what happens when your father passes down a love of nature that he got from his father, that came from...well...you get the idea.  I was raised by mountain men.

I will probably die in a nursing home in Florida.

My father works in a mine.  Over 1000 feet underground.  He mines Trona.  You've most likely never heard of it, but you also most likely use its byproducts daily.  He works in the largest trona deposit in the world.  My dad, who is a Vietnam vet, and a mole, and knows and has taught me more about living in nature than any Bear Grylls bullshit I've ever seen, was a Humanities major in college.  Not only did he instill in me a great respect and understanding of the outdoors, he also gave me culture.  In Wyoming.  I learned from him also a love of history, civilization, art appreciation, music, mythology, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Shakespeare, Dante, The Beatles, and oh so many many other things.  Mostly from him, I learned to love learning, and to seek the things I loved learning about.  In my tiny little town, (pre-dating internet) the only way to do this was to go to the Library.  I did.  Often.  The more I did, the more I realized that when the time came, I would have no choice but to leave.  Although giving me the world, I had no access to it.

Since turning 18, I have lived in nearly every state west of Colorado.  Some places for a few years, others, no longer than a summer.  Eugene Oregon I lived in for less than three months...and loved every second of it.  I've seen the beaches, the mountains, The Grand Canyon, the deserts, the prairies, the casinos, the whore houses, the architectual achievements, the ghost towns, the ghettos, the slums, the hills, the bars, the clubs, the museums, the concert halls, the zoos, the stadiums, the lighthouses.  I have been lost on the back roads, I've been stranded on freeways.  I've couch surfed, and body surfed.  I swam with a seal once.  I've partied with showgirls, and rock stars, and chatted with movie stars and film directors.  I've eaten with comedians, and magicians.  I was once offered a freebie by one of the working girls at the Bunny Ranch.  I turned her down.  I've high fived sports stars.  I've smoked with television celebrities.

I've done all those things.  Sounds exciting huh?  In each their own moment, they all seemed rather...well...normal.

Now I ain't no Johnny Cash.  I have in fact NOT been everywhere, but I've been places.  I've traveled around a bit.  I've seen my share of shit.

I don't settle.

I can't settle.

I have never...not once...felt a sense of being home.

"You can't go home again."  - Thomas Wolfe
"Especially if you've never had one." - JayC Stoddard.

I have an insatiable wanderlust.  Its not even the joy of travel and vacationing that people talk about.  I honestly don't care about places.  I simply always feel the need to keep moving.  I don't know what I'm looking for...truth is...I don't think I'm looking for anything at all.  I just can't put my feet in the ground.  I can't tie myself to a place and call it my own.

The longest I lived anywhere after leaving Wyoming, was Vegas.  I was there for seven years.  I miss it.  I honestly do.  Vegas is in me now as much as Wyoming ever was.  But I think I've finally come to the conclusion/realization that I'm not going back.  It was actually a difficult moment for me, as I miss oh so very many things about it.  Oh so very many people that are still there.  Deeply.  People that I think fondly of on a daily basis.  Vegas however, for all the things I love and miss, is not my home.

Neither is Salt Lake City.

This week I am losing another, incredibly close friend to distance.  She is moving out of my life, and I'd be lying if I said the thought hadn't entered my mind to follow.  That however was passing fancy.  Fantasy.  Silliness.  Her life and mine are no longer twining, and although sad...it is simply the course that life takes.  Often.  Many times its been me the one that picks up and leaves.  This time...I'm the one staying.  C'est la vie.  Que sera sera.  And a whole bunch of other foreign phrases that mean essentially the same things.

For all the things I love about Vegas, SLC has nearly none of them.  I think that's why I miss Vegas so very much.  Its the intangible.  The untouchable.  The forever out of reach.  Like so many other things I've become accustomed to.  There are simply things in this world I am going to have to do without.  So what if it happens to be gambling and strippers.  There truly are many other things too, but since I know that's what most people associate Vegas with, I figured I might as well...


So.  Here I am.  In this town that I seemingly bitch about.  And the reality is...sometimes I really do.  I don't love it here.  There are so many things that bother me.  Of all the places I've lived.  Of all the roads I've traveled, SLC is the LEAST pedestrian friendly city of them all.  If you walk in SLC, pretty much everyone hates you.  Especially city planners.  And the transit system was pretty much thrown together as an afterthought.  Everything closes.  Usually early.  Unique food?  Forget it.  If you like chains, its fine...but if you want something a bit different...oh its here, sure...but you REALLY have to look for it.
It gets cold here.  Really fucking cold.  And I am without doubt, the worlds biggest pussy when it comes to the cold.  I shiver if its below 60.  I was built for Vegas weather...and even there, I'd bitch about the winters.
I could go on and on about all the various things I don't like.  I won't.  I didn't mean to turn this into that kind of blog.

Instead I'll simply say...

I'm staying here.

Now I don't know the future.  As previously mentioned, I am a wanderer.  I move around.  I am homeless.  I can be picked up and blown by any kind of wind...but I think in this case...

It's going to have to be a pretty strong wind.  If I got offered the dream job of a lifetime in some other city...of course my bags would be packed and off I'd go, but as I'm not looking or applying for any such job, the likelihood seems nil.

SLC is not my home.  I don't know that I will ever actually have one.  It is however, I've come to realize, my home base.  It is the place I've learned to hang my hat.  For all the shit I talked about NOT liking...there really are so many more things that I DO like.  Many of those things have names and lives of their own.  There are people here that I love.  There are things here that I feel I've yet to do.  To accomplish.  There are actors and actresses that I haven't yet worked with, that I so desperately WANT to work with.  There are stories to be told.  There are stories to discover.  There are stories to make.  I think for me...that all is going to happen right here.

So I sit on my porch.  I smoke my cigarette.  I feel the air penetrate me.  Violate me like a back alley rapist, and I laugh.  I didn't mean to be here, but here I am.  My wandering feet have stopped dancing for a moment.  I will still travel I think, but perhaps with more purpose, but less intent.  I know that I will never in my life consider this my home...but I do believe that there are things and people here that will make it more homey.  That will let me play here.  I won't ever settle, but I've come to realize, I don't think I'll ever settle anywhere.  So I might as well not settle here for a bit longer.  Perhaps til I die.


Or until a really strong breeze comes my way.