In My Natural Habitat

Smelling What I'm Stepping In (And Seeing It Too)

On my way to work, a scent sailed across my sensory butterfly net. It put the "scent" in reminiscent. It smelled like some strange glue. I scanned my peripheral viewfinder and all I saw were fall leaves scuttling across the concrete. Instead of focusing on the scent itself, I relaxed my mind and let my thoughts chaperon me down it's worn winding staircase into the memory vault. The Morse code Corn Flake crunch of my steps through the naked trees' discarded garments were the combination to it's lock. A new scent entered my internal-nose, and a nostalgic post-it note flip-book began to animate, casting projection transparencies onto each block of the sidewalk.

I was transported to a Christmas scene at my Grandma's house in St. Louis, during the early '90s. My little brother and I were in our matching pajamas. I remember being so excited that I couldn't sleep the night before, and falling asleep next to my mom as I ate semi-sweet chocolate chips straight out of the bag. We even left milk & cookies out, for whichever parent would sneak in and play Santa for as long as it took to take a bite and a gulp late that night. The next block of the sidewalk flashed a frame of Nickelodeon "Gak", a gooey slime-like toy that us kids, for whatever reason, thought was fun. This stuff may have had the closest to what I could equate with the original scent which caused me to time-travel back nearly two decades.

Next, I saw Sonic the Hedgehog. Then a Revell polystyrene model of an old Star Trek spaceship. I saw my Grandma's shaking hands baking gingersnaps. I saw snow, and other houses on Winona Avenue packed so tightly together that you could reach into your neighbors kitchen to borrow a cup of sugar, back when the trees lining the street were still saplings. I saw my cousins, Josh and Casey, playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles video games. I could smell pies from a little pizza joint down the street, called Fio's, and see the steam rising from the square grids they'd been sliced into. I could feel the shaggy carpet tickling between my toes as I played with a remote control robot. Fresh squeezed orange juice. Rice Crispies. Hot chocolate, with marshmallows. Gift wrapping, everywhere. Walks to the 7-11 behind the house to play Street Fighter 2. Faberge Egg collections. Stained-glass windows. Ice skating rinks. A basement full of of old tools and surprises, with a distinct aroma of it's own, and an old calendar of scantily-clad mechanic girls. A fireplace, with stockings full of Christmas cheer. A magnifying glass that my dad taught me to concentrate sunlight through to create fire. An old desk, a metal stamp & paraffin to seal envelopes, a cool letter-opener, and funny shaped paperclips. "Strawberries", a delicious holiday snack my Grandma made, from a recipe that I still use to this very day. Then the sidewalk ended...

I'm thankful for all of those memories, and for being so meticulously and painstakingly designed that upon a breath's involuntary inhalation, a scent could kidnap me from my current place and time in order to take me somewhere sacred. It's good to dust the contents of our memory vaults, and discover fingerprints other than our own. I'm thankful for my Grandma, and the time I got to spend with her before she took her last breath, smelled her last scent, and was freed from the confines of her earthly body.

I wonder what it smelled like.

Santa Maria

Summer is always a good time to set sail on some sort of voyage. There's a silent tension undulating inside of you, as if you're a human rock sitting in the hammock of a giant slingshot preparing to be hurled towards unknown adventure. It's exciting, and your first time as a young adult embarking upon such an odyssey is certainly a necessary rite of passage. As you read on, you may find yourself reminiscing about your first excursion. Every one's debut trek is unique, sometimes bringing them only a state or providence away from home, and other times taking them across the globe. Mine wasn't as epic as traveling to Italy, New Zealand, Prague or Tokyo, but it wasn't a field trip to the science museum either.

The first time I fled the nest I must have been 19 or so, still wet behind the ears, and in need of different scenery. It was nothing particularly extravagant. It didn't require me to learn a second language. I didn't need a passport. I didn't have to line up a new job. I made like Fievel, and headed west. A good high school friend of mine, who we will only refer to as Vlade, had gotten into a pickle here in Nashville, and moved out to California to dodge the static as the situation simmered. He actually grew up out there. "When I was growing up in Cali, I was seven-years-old and went with my family to one of Rod Stewart's soccer games", I heard him claim on a few occasions. I even asked him about it again as I wrote this, and he still assures me it's the truth. With my first crummy j-o-b at Blockbuster no more (I was late one too many times, at least they didn't know I'd jacked shelves worth of VHS movies [before DVDs became popular]), I decided that Nashville offered nothing for me during that Summer. I had no responsibilities. No illegitimate kids or high school sweetheart. No career goals or motivation to do anything except live my life, my way.

I was good friends with Vlade, and either he invited me to come visit, or I asked him if I could. He was staying with his folks, so lodging and rations were taken care of. The plan was to just go out there and see what happens, maybe find a little job and just kick it (we did much more of the latter). As I recall, my dear mother payed for my Greyhound ticket, because I'm sure I had spent any money I had saved on teenage shenanigans. The night before I left, a girl I had been spending a lot of time with stayed the night and tried like hell to get me to make with the whoopee, but I kept it in my pants. I wasn't very experienced sexually, but it had been instilled in me by my mother and grandmother that sex was something spiritual and sacred, which I didn't fully understand, but believed in. After some hot & heavy second-base (rounding third) action and little-to-no sleep, she dropped me off at the Greyhound station early in the morning, and I boarded the bus with a few bags and an acoustic guitar, and a vessel full of anticipation.

I must have been so excited. I had my discman, Radiohead's "OK computer", Far's "Water & Solutions" and "Tin Cans With Strings To You", "Dredg's Leitmotif", and maybe even Tool's "Lateralus". These were all amazing albums to listen to during the large part of the bus ride that took me through the desert. It's as if those albums were the soundtrack specially scored for my journey. I remember buying a knockoff brand of Carmex called "Lip Ex" halfway along the trip that somehow turned out to be even better, nurturing my lips like a kiss from Aphrodite herself. It's all of the little things that remain engraved in my memory, which there's not even enough room to write, since after all... this is a memoir, not a novel. I I remember it being 102 degrees at a stop in Yuma, AZ. I remember eating a lot of fast food, and taking birdbaths in bus stop sinks to keep from smelling like a yak burp. I remember while the bus was boarding I'd sit in aisle seats with my backpack in the window seat and pretend to be asleep in order to bogart two seats, because nobody would wake me up on the off chance that it was another person's seat that I was about to sprawl myself across. I remember anticipating how much better the mexican food would be in Cali. I remember the radio stations being infinitely more kickass once the bus approached the West Coast. I still have poems and sketches that I drew during the ride, which took an uncomfortable two days total to travel. At one point our Greyhound driver fell asleep and ran off of the road, which created an awkward silence until we got to the next bus station. Scary. "I'm sorry folks, in all my years as a Greyhound driver, that has never happened...", he announced over the intercom, as if an apology could resurrect a busload of crumpled skeletons. I remember using calling cards to call the girl back home after every few stops, back before everyone and their children had cellphones. I remember the way the desert skies and landscape looked from the window, how vast and infinite it seemed, as if the bus could extend wings and transport me to another solar system. I couldn't wait to set foot of that damn bus though.

Santa Maria, CA was the destination. Comparable to Brentwood, TN, I think the closest big city must have been Santa Barbara. Upon my arrival, it was great to see Vlade after many months. Him and his folks picked me up from the station, and we headed back to their condo. I unpacked and unfolded the collapsible mattress that would be my bed for the duration of my stay. Little things were different. There wasn't so much litter on the streets. The sun seemed to burn clearer. The air was laced with an oceanic twist. Nobody had twangy southern accents. Hardee's were called Carl's Jr- I was like "what the fuck?". The architecture was different. Newer. There were also In-and-Out Burgers, Del Tacos, Whattaburgers, and Wienersnitzels (restaurants we don't have in Nashville). The climate was a cozy. The barbecue was a different style. The beach was only a short drive away. My muscles were in atrophy from the bus ride, so it was a bonus that the condo had a hot tub. I also had a mean case of blue-balls from fooling around with the ladyfriend back home, which I don't know how I bared during the two day bus ride. By this time the soreness was excruciating. I recall telling Vlade "Hey man, I gotta go upstairs and do something about these swollen testes! Cool?", and of course he understood that I had to take care of bidness. It was the most exquisite relief (release) I had ever felt. Now, finally, I was ready to unwind.

During my visit we took a trip to Pismo Beach, and caught a farmer's market in San Luis Obispo. Vlade's neighbor usually had really good weed, and although I was taking a break from smoking at the time, I'd grab some beer or whatever liquor we had laying around and we'd and go over there to hang out. I taught myself to play guitar, and also practiced playing bass during my visit. At night we would fall asleep listening to the Coldplay album "Parachutes" (their best), which was some of the most beautiful music I had heard before. I remember his neighbor had a porn magazine with a close-up on one page of a girl's vag, and the clit was so big that it had what was appeared to be a penis-head on it, which became known as the legendary "wenis". Pretty weird. One day I saw some pills in Vlade's mom's medicine cabinet, and we concluded that it was generic vicodin. I think I ate one or two of them, drank a little to catch a buzz, but then proceeded instead to sleep for a day or two straight without so much as getting up to piss or eat. Turns out the pills were amitriptyline in the wrong medicine bottle, so it's no wonder they knocked me out cold for so long. We would go to the hot tub and dismantle life, conversing, theologizing and philosophizing the world into smithereens. We talked about girls, circumstances back in TN, beliefs, traumas from the past, and at some point I even told Vlade that I wanted him be my firstborn's godfather (once he's born, of course). We would put in applications during the day and eventually get hired at a division of Lockheed Martin that handled supplying electricity to AZ, but by that time things were getting tense at the condo with his parents for whatever reason, so I decided that my presence wasn't helping things. I was only in Santa Maria for about a month before I felt that I had overstayed my welcome, and I was just about ready to go home. I had a girl waiting for me back home, and was starting to miss my other friends already...

It was time to return home.

Right before they dropped me off at the bus station, we ate at a mexican restaurant with a salsa bar, and I got a burrito the size of my forearm. The salsa was en fuego, so about an hour or two into my ride back to Nashville, I had a digestive fiasco bubbling, and bolted to the bathroom on the back of the bus. Not a pretty situation. I had arrived in Cali with blue balls, and left there with a red ass. Such a colorful way to come and go. Since that first travel westward, I've been back to other towns/cities like Santa Maria; from Turlock to Santa Cruz, Oakland to Long Beach, San Francisco to Berkeley, San Diego to etc. during tours doing hip hop music, as well as recording an indie-rock album with my band, Vessel, all while meeting all kinds of different people along the way. Mustache parties which led to naked hot tub parties, flying kites from the roof and sleeping in our recording space at Soundwave Studios, excellent sushi, independent movie theaters, black & white rooftop parties on Haight Street which were broken up by cops using percussion/flash grenades, pools at natural hot springs so hot that they'd boil you alive, dodging bullets to hit up taco trucks, filling medical marijuana prescriptions, sleeping on strange couches, rolling blunts on subway trains, finding skateboards unattended (yoink!), and buying alcohol for minors, and random hip hop shows are miscellaneous adventures that happened to me, when I happened to Cali.

But I'll never forget the first one, in Santa Maria, CA.

Frederick & Lucy

Chaos.
Franklin Tennessee's well-off inheritance beneficiaries and credit card wielding single mothers have the ravenous look of hunger swirling deep in their retinas. They stampede the storefront of a quaint little mom & pop's delicatessen, and the line from register to entrance bears resemblance to a crinkled spine of impacted disks. You grow perpetually numb to the collective chatter of record industry executives strategizing their artist's future into oblivion, old friends catching-up, and trust fund babies planning their travel destinations. The floor is traffic-worn as if a gaggle of worried mothers had nervously paced the wooden boards waiting for their daughters to come home from their date with some sketchy looking hoodlum.


Curiosity. Do these nine-to-fivers, house-wivers and just-staying-alivers pause for even a blip in time to give thanks for their provision? I know a fraction do, because I see them bow their heads to say a blessing. Or, is that just ritual and routine? Does that twenty-something couple near the hearth dine silently because they know each other so well that there's nothing left to talk about, or do they communicate through gestures, glances and mannerisms? You start to notice minute details that your conscious automatically dismisses as trivial, or insignificant. But you secretly horde them away in the sentimental archives of your memory. A sort of folk-harvesting whereas most would let the first frost smite the abandoned acres of these extravagant treasures.


Completeness. An elderly couple takes a seat by the window. Frederick and Lucy. These two aren't just riding out the remainder of their years, or waiting for death as they lose count of how many grandchildren carry on their legacy. No, this union of complimentary spirits must have splintered from the same Siamese soul, forged in celestial plasma from burgeoning star nurseries. His honest brow still held the same expression of awe as when he first laid eyes upon her all those years ago, and her gentle countenance still reflected the halo projected by the crackling fire of passion between them; the foundation they'd built everything on. Something strikes your attention. You notice Frederick reposition his chair so that instead of sitting across from Lucy, he's sitting next to her. Could he not bear occupying the space that was only an extra few inches from her? He couldn't? He couldn't. He needed to feel that much closer to Lucy. He needed to feel that much closer to home, and she reciprocates the longing. The rest of the world vanishes as if the Hollywood backdrop fell from behind us. Frederick and Lucy are the stars on this day. Not us. They neutralize the chaos. They quench the curiosity. And supply hope for completeness.