Alaska Miller

On a flight out of Charlotte I sat next to a demure lady. She agreed with my choice of diet Pepsi when the flight attendant came to ask. She took her nap while I wrote in my notebook and gazed farm tessellations being past by. When she came to and was bored we began. 

She’s a cognitive therapist, priding in working with children. She’s flying home from a conference for psychologists and she was a-buzzed about her work like I’m obsessed with wife-beaters on girls. She was excited and depressed with how it took a War at the human cost of soldiers and sailors suffering from PTSD to finally get the funding and attention needed to generate new techniques. She went on about what the front-line mental health professionals had to see day in and day out. She told me the names of the children she work with for the past six years, as in she’s seen these children for six years, sometimes teens until they’re into young adulthood.

One technique she’s tried, with great success in increasing communication and trust, is the toy figures. She asks the children, abused or traumatized from dysfunctional families, to just play with a box full of figurines. Cowboys and indians, army men, farm animals, people figures. She says time and again the heart breaking commonality that stood out was how they would pick out a daddy, a mommy, maybe siblings, and fences. The family members would always be boxed in by fences. The fence is the fantasy of safety and stability.

In 2005 I was sent to southwest USA to build a fence. In 2010 there are still boundaries issues.

Hurt goes deep. Let’s not pretend we’re all strong enough to move on.

Depressed, disappointed, and offensively desperate. Now, without boring you with details, I cleared three for three. Today as a present I have calmness and, well, calmness makes you boring but calmness is also the cash to keep you abiding. And abiding, dude, isn’t the only way but on earth when there far more endurable systems, beliefs, things, learning to abide saves you a lot of heartaches.

Maybe it’s not worrying about what gets lost in a fire… maybe it’s the fear I won’t find what’s really dear to me in the mess.

Like everyone I always fear what comes after when something good ends. It’s not about what I should do with myself after I’m alone — I learned to live alone young — but what do I do to restart?

I’ve started the process by cleaning. That’s what you do at 6 in the morning on a Sunday, when you realize you’ve lost control of your life and chocolate pudding isn’t enough. What started as a temporary room became an adorned home for a year going now. And what it’s adorned is just a box of things with forced meanings and vague memories.

——

Once a colleague called me up randomly, asked me for a favor. Am I, and will I, be able to show up somewhere to help a mutual friend? Being a sucker, I said of course. He alluded to what needed be done and leaked not a single word more, bring trash bags he concluded. He thanked me for not bothering to ask who we’re helping. I am a bag man, I have always been a bag man. Professionalism means discretion.

When I showed up I was told to brace myself. We both were writers and we both cringed when those words lingered in the air. The door would not budge without applying my body. Once inside the San Francisco efficiency all you can see were silver whippit canisters on the ground, they were everywhere, clinking like a Damien Hirst pachinko machine. What I was recruited for was to clean out a room left behind by a junkie. A junkie friend. A brilliant junkie friend with personal struggles that he ran from thirty short hilarious seconds at a time. 

It’s suppose to be harmless, the white kids back on the block would use it and get riled up before the Friday night football games and rammed concrete walls in their helmet until it was time to charge. I wouldn’t know, I was in marching band.

I’ve been told it feels like love, these little silver canisters. A deeply satisfying detachment from the physical world and person. Launch you into another dimension. Maybe somewhere more beautiful than sitting alone in a dark room, walking around on top of canisters, grinding glass cups into sand, not even hungry enough to gorge on trash. With Ministry playing. Ew, Ministry.

I kicked a few around me feet, it must be good if every other head shop in the Mission only sells them by the distributor boxes that comes in hundreds. A pallet of which ended up in this man’s house. Cheap considering there was no legal pot back then.

My friend and I spent the night clearing out all the little dream passes. Bagging them and then running downstairs and dropping them into the trash bin behind a Walgreens guarded by the bums in the shadows. By the time we used up all the boxes of trash bags I brought we decided it was a good time to take a burrito break.

What happened to him, I finally asked. 

He’s in the hospital. Yesterday he stood up and fell down. Doctor thinks he has vertigo.

Must be rough lately, I couldn’t judge.

He never asked for help with his troubles.

I nodded even though I didn’t know anything about his life. Finally I thought of something writer-y to say. The strongest ones never do, they think they can ride the lightning forever.

Yeah, he was happy before. But then she left. He’s been through a lot.

It’s hard to accept things we cannot change and it’s harder to give up thinking we know the difference, that was writer-y enough. I then sunk back into the best carnitas in town. I call it taco therapy.

Back at the apartment I rifled through the man’s life. The explicit instructions was to keep only things of value and toss everything out. I had a hard time following that. I imagine everything was of value, they’re all clues to a life of an older man high in his career, a good place. 

The polaroid of a young him standing in front of some track-prepared Jaguars. His collection of writing books. His posters commemorating him and his work. His guitar. His vinyl collection. His bills. His prescriptions. His tax returns. His computer. His rotting food. His expensive hi-fi setup. His old school camera. His pictures of her. 

I wanted to keep it all. I was young, full of empathy, I was afraid in the twilight of age I would easily forget and forgetting what I had would be the worst crime. I didn’t know when and how to stop in a junkie’s house. So I tossed it all. Not forgetting was why I ended up there in the first place. 

——

I don’t recognize the person I was when I came here and now as I go through my accumulated crap over the year I don’t know the person I became. The books betray me to be a geek. The business cards scattered all about make me to be socializing but I’m as lonely as ever. All the mail and envelopes means I’m irresponsible. And all the drugs… I don’t know how the drugs got there.

It’s just stuff, stuffed into a stuffy tiny little room like stuffing. I doubt it’ll even fetch four figures on Storage Wars. I came here with a plastic tub and my laptop, told myself I can always get more stuff and fulfilled my own fears which fed my disgust. 

The world is unlikely to run out of stuff in the long run. But they’re all of cheap quality. Three Apple mices lay by my hand. Trinkets, jujus, knickknacks on my desk. Clothes by the pound that need to be laundered. Shoeboxes of more crap cluttering everywhere. This is just the stuff I see.

You know how at a new restaurant, given overwhelming amount of options, you just end up standing there? The young risk trying something new, the old stick with what they know, and neither want to admit the urge of otherwise. When you rush you end up with something you don’t want, when you slow down and analyze you end up getting passed by. Paralysis of choice. That’s, ironically, by choice. You can decide, it’s not hard, but you lack the serenity to do so.

I was trained by the Corps to know hesitation kills. Critical decisions have to be made and they have to be made quick and you have to learn to live with the consequences. 

It’s easy to forget how to live hard when you get soft. That’s what they warned me when I didn’t sign my re-enlistment papers. I lied and told them I’ll keep that in mind.

Today I have that in mind. I’m not going to be afraid. I’m not going to be regretful. I’m not going to cave. I’m just going to start. Anywhere, somewhere, and don’t stop. Today I’m tossing. Today I’m cleaning. Today I’m going to restart and deal with stuff, both the seen and unseen.

Lit cigarette on the sill. I’m on a comedown. Explosions in the sky, all of a sudden I miss everyone. My bank account is nearing empty again, but I’m eating good, I’m staying warm, and I have change to spare. The adventure team jaywalked across the street with a pink tutu, crackheads just walk on by. The garbageman’s name is Joe, he only picks up recyclables, Jason runs the refuse. I beg and I beg and I beg but websites don’t give me what I need, what good is it for? Social doesn’t have curfews but still has a bed time. Live earthquake map is the only thing tying us all together. Summer is ending, I taught my mom how to drive this summer. Old habit of drinking just water stuck again. Where is that feeling of tantalization, I’m bored with it. I’ve seen this all before.

Around fall of 2006 the Marine Corps handed me papers to go home. Having done my time in the Carolina swamps freshly minted at 22 as a combat engineer that wasn’t sure if I could pair detonator to dynamite they told me go home after denying my first—of many—attempts to go to war. Slot’s full, they said, wait for the next cycle. Don’t worry, war will always be there they chuckled. Glad that became true.

So I took the ticket out and slunk back to whence I came up, the quiet burbs of Cupertino. Back to my old room with the bunk bed, my stoner buddies, back to my old life, drifting around. I had cachet though, I recalled. I’m a United States Marine. That meant something anywhere but where I was.

The overachievers roundly finished college and found exciting jobs being cube drones. Back then, before Y Combinator validated, before the tipping of nerd being chic, before startupping was trend du jour, before all of that society told us being desk drones was the best outcome. It didn’t even matter what you did as long as there’s a desk, a chair, internet, and a paycheck. 

Despite knowing that’s not what I wanted, that was why I dropped out of college, I somehow ended up doing the same thing. Living at home, in front of a desk, sitting on a chair all day, hooked on the internet, making no money, and dreaming about war. My mum nagged me all day to get a job so I did. I went down the street and picked a drabbly death star looking office building and walked in.

——

Apple chose an medium-grade industrial walk-up back in 1976 in Cupertino because it was convenient. It was orange orchards everywhere back then, fertile land for planting dreams. There was a windmill that locals took their grains to for grinding down the block. It’s now a Chinese bank building.

Back then only nerds walked in and out asking for jobs. That’s just what a garage startup in Silicon Valley was like. If they were smart they got to keep coming back and help out. Apple was a small fry fighting to convince the world worked through mail and telephones that the average joe blow deserved a $666.66 computing machine on their desk. Woz had no problem designing the computer but Steve had a tough time belying he’s capable of turning his cadre of misfit super nerds into a corporation.

I didn’t know any of this as I tailgated the random guy past the security doors. I just knew Apple was finally in exciting times again. Every empty commercial space in town has been snatched up. Every empty factory now have motor pools everywhere. Badgers walked wandered to every Yelp reviewed spot within walking distance during lunch. Times are a-changing, Macs are hot, and a new generation of users won’t have to live in shame like I did, spending my school time recess on the yard arguing over which was better: PC or Macs. 

The building I chose happened to house the support arm of the company. Across the street was finance and legal. Engineers and the higher ups had the reserved luxury of working in the mothership. It didn’t matter, I was okay with anything. So I asked people I saw and met about work. They looked at me like I was crazy. Then I figured out what was wrong, they were too young. I readjusted fire.

The nice lady looked trendy and amazing for the silvering she’s been up to. A framed letter thanking her for the 25 years she’s put in and signed by Steve Jobs was on her desk. She was a lifer. She smiled, perhaps reminded of the garage days, when I told her what I wanted and handed me a laptop she pulled from the Steelcase cube drawer. Fix all the HTML in these files so she can prepare them to be uploaded to a CMS. I nodded and sat in the cube of the guy on vacation.

At the end of the day I emailed her the files. She told me to come back in the morning. Then the next. Then next. I managed to cheat my way into becoming a cube drone at the soon to be most influential company in the world.

——

I loved exploring Apple’s campus at night with my badge. For every red horrendous beeps there was a green light openings doors somewhere. I was like a rat sniffing around every inch, I waltzed around different departments and studied cube decorations, took in the complexity of ideas and thoughts left over on whiteboards. 

Some desks had red PCB motherboards strewn about, some desks had vintage Apple posters, some desks were cluttered with broken iPhones collected for support engineering testing. To a kid that grew up in Silicon Valley, to a nerd that obsess about computer, to someone that marveled at how radically technology changes lives, this was where the magic happened. And it was all just so normal work place, where people integrated systems, designed products, wrote software, and made business deals—a corporation.


One late night while working on QA-ing help content for new iLife products I stepped out of the sterile lab I was in and took another walk. You hear the thud of the doors every now and then as late night bachelor badgers finally it quits and go back home but no one ever bothers you.

I was on the fifth floor of IL1, the atrium that you walk past the main entrance, overlooking the massive product ads when he walked by.

I’ve heard that happens. I’ve seen it happen before, during lunch once. He wore the same mock turtleneck and jeans, tapping on his iPhone, followed by three little girls eating cookies from the cafeteria. People open up the sidewalk and just let him on through, like a Mose parting the pedestrian seas.

He nodded and I nodded, unsure of what to say. Or if I should even say anything. Scuttlebutt was that the top floor of IL1 is forever Steve’s universe. He has a show room built so he can practice his presentation, have demos, and get things done. I imagine it to be much like what John Lasseter does at Pixar, endless hours of tweaking great things to greater things.

Great things, though, are done by irrepressible people. So I was shocked at the rusty and cramped words that came out of my mouth, “how, how do I get all this?”

He paused in walking away from me, turned around, and inspected. “What,” he must be wondering if it’s worth talking to me—and he sure took awhile before deciding. “You chase. Every day. And sometimes you’re lucky to do the right things.” Chasing I’ve heard of but it’s the sometimes that scared me straight.

You see I believe Steve lives in a different world from you and I. He chased his entire life to make his world controllable through good design, good products, and good technology. If I know anything about luck it’s that it’s not something that just happens, you chase it, and when you’re a great master of the universe you make it.

As a business hacker Steve made his luck, he made his chips to leverage, he made deals happen like Gaza depends on it. It was a fault many thought flawed, that the obsession tarnished what he made but great things are done by irrepressible people.

Every moment a constant struggle between two mentalities in my mind, thinking that either life is controllable or not. Some days I’m overwhelmed by what little I have control of but when I’m empowered by amazing technology my life is filled with watch cat videos, find cheap eats, look up how to get lost, record every aspect of every major moment of my life, and channel otis redding soul through two Chinese handmade earbuds at any moment then I’m powerful. And still thankful, as much as I take it all for granted now. By god, you remember when you were stuck with a StarTAC for a burner? Eww.

Namaste, bro, you’re pretty rad.

Younger me wanted to be okay, something I can hold on to and stock up on. Never mind I didn’t know what okay was. Okay manifested itself as Miller’s Outpost, JNCOs, puka shells, and denim. I did things others did, followed what others praised, and accepted what others valued. It hurt, and I didn’t know why so I was angry.

Sooner than I thought I grew and wanted something real, something with meaning and values, something that lasts. So I spent my time chasing real. Real is intangible, insupposable, uncomformable, unbrandable, unsaleable. But by god have people tried. Real need you to go far, real need you to go deep, real need you to work, real need you to be smart, real is comparable, real is makable.

And I said yes, I chased. I went far, I paid attention, I questioned, I wanted to be real. I did everything opposite of what others did, what others had. I thought it was easy—and it really is—when you’re alone, godless, selfish, and live in worlds that protected you from being exposed to something realer.

But we don’t live far, we don’t live as equals, we don’t live perfectly, so sooner than I thought here I am, realizing that instead of getting what I chased after I ended up growing up with only ideas. Of how it was, how it is, how it should be, and—when I’m loaded—how it will be. Many smart but lazy people can be found living in ideas, it’s rather addicting. You can’t be hurt and you can’t be judged because it isn’t you… it’s the idea that the weaker others are held responsible, for stopping you, for conforming you, for selling you out. This is what I thought was real, that’s what I held on to.

Meanwhile instead of ideas the others just lived. In godful and wonted lives. With faith and fidelity to the society few of us are lucky to be in. In a world of variable time, money, power, and respect that they chased and were duly or unduly rewarded.

And all I have are ideas blustered as real, with not even a degree to show for it, living in a world of incomparable people that didn’t put stock into ideas. 

So what am I chasing?

Real is mistakable. It’ll drive you crazy. Be careful and do.

Give it away.

Give it all away. Instead of entrusting your unearned wealth via taxation to a government that ignores the will of its citizens, conducting trillion dollar wars, willfully ignore financial investment rules—which these days has been corrupted where estate taxes are thrown out the window, prosecute people over marijuana possession, and grants free medical care to the select few.

Give it away so that others can have enough.

But no, it’s all about you and your nobility for protesting. Because instead of voting you want to wholesale outright reject the system.

Oh, honey, you’re as useless as Russell Simmons.

Do you know how fire works?

When you brush oxygen molecules with carbon molecules in a gentle manner, they will resist each other. Richard Feyman describes it as a volcano. Imagine carbon the volcano and oxygen the ball that travels up that steep hill. Sometimes it slides back but that one time, that one time an oxygen manages to cling to a carbon we get fire. A living, breathing, yearning force.

——

Four years ago the crazies gathered in front of the steps of Congress for a revolution march built around the liberty elf Ron Paul. They emphasized love aspect in the revolution. Because you can’t sell a revolution with gore. The event was organized by some random joe that later spent donation money on a blimp ad, billed as a march down the chocolate city to change popular opinion, to change policy, to change the country. 

Only the crazies showed up.

The ones that really believed they could change the world. The ones that really believed they want to accomplish something. And the ones that believed they accomplished. The ones that know the future and the ones that hawk prescriptions with a price.

But they showed up.

And they’ve kept showing up. Under different banners, at different times, and at different places. But what you can’t be sure of is whether a legitimate government cares the will of its people. But how could you?

What’s happening now in our eleventh year of the new millenium is entering into anness folles, or the Crazy Years. The last time this happened was Boardwalk Empire. Something is changing whereby everyone has a decision to make: do you see something wrong?

Some people won’t ever see the fire that’s burning around us, but there are those that do. And those people have been pushed too far. Over the past month we’ve seen the emotional response of disenfrenchisees in New York. That’s why those that only see logic and order don’t understand what Occupy Wall Street’s goals are and why those that see the fires reply back that’s not point.

Real world is maturing. Cyberspace is growing up. A whole generation of kids are now growing up with Facebook as their entire identity online. Behind them are a generation of kids that have apps and kids that have parents don’t even understand what an app is. Living in a world that will soon trust a Facebook profile over a government issued identification. But this has always been what’s happening, these fires that burn reliably over the years. Fed by aspirations, dreams, effort, and smothered by apathy.

Do you see the world burning around you? 

It’s always bene this way. You’re just now finally seeing it.

Getting away with the two dollar sale of bullshit that something is cheaper, faster, better, stronger, thinner, friendlier, simpler, smarter, cooler, nicer, hotter, lighter, darker, sleeker, sexier, manlier, hipper, truer.

New gets geek deconstructed instantly and laid bare while bloggers can work up to any soapbox in any format and size to declare.

But maybe then it’s also getting easier. To know, to do, to see, to try, to go, to be. Each giving us power to realize—that fear, of anything, isn’t that bad. That we have better insight about what’s scarier, riskier, or stranger.

The way things are now? That’s the deal. You wake up each day willing and able to play the game of games. Your time can be occupied with the pursuit of justice, liberty, happiness for all. Or for you only. That’s just how it’s made here in America.

She maybe imperfect, but she’s my imperfection.

Often days finding myself feeling more like P. T. Barnum looking at the world.