Tis’ the autumn equinox & my birthday, throughout desert, woodland and sea. Countless experiences and memories, amalgamated in this old fuck you now see… Ok well, not that fucking old. I’m 51 years old today but I feel about 25 behind my eyes. I have the sense of humor of a 14 year old and the lower back of a motherfucker of around 70. I do love Autumn though, be it by birthright, preference or providence. Happy Autumn Equinox by the way. This time of year feels like both a leaving and a coming, and sure, both kinds of “coming” I suppose, that sag we feel after a frenetic build up. Ahhh, Autumn, the season of release. A long rest well deserved. Some idyllic scene comes to mind of a roaring fire and a fuzzy robe, sipping a steaming mug that may or may not have a wee dram of Jame-O in it. Shame I have neither hearth nor fluffy garb but fuck it, I reckon I can come up with the rest. Plus I’ve got this nifty Vietnamese fishermans disco hat, what more could a boy possibly want? I’ve also got this weird thing about me in which I somehow seem to feel Autumns approach in my bones. No I don’t mean arthritis don’t be a dumbass, I mean something else that I can’t fully describe. It’s like an ethereal pressure wave that comes and I feel it pass through the empty spaces between my molecules like a phantoms passing. It’s like an ache that doesn’t hurt, a flavor that doesn’t taste and yet lingers in the minds mouth and taints the breath of thought with an untethered scent of nostalgia about nothing. I can’t say I came upon this yearly sensation purely by my own sense organs or perceptual notions, I believe it was artificially inspired, by a natural sort of means. After I got out of the Coast Guard, 23 year old me said fuck it to the world and I sold all my shit and moved into an old decrepit yurt with no power or plumbing on an overgrown Gravenstein apple orchard near the Sebastopol Laguna in N. Ca. for a couple years. It was a delight, I pooped in a hole every day, I spent an entire winter building a massive earthen sweat lodge, I stared into the endless nights searching for a star upon which to hang my desperate seeking nature. It was a place with narrow pathways through the Himalayan blackberry bushes, populated by all manner of interesting characters. Crazy Tom who had half a stomach and lived in a broke down school bus and constantly said “what else can I say?” Ralph the heavy eyed contractor who painted his toenails and lived in the water tower, Nick who lived under a tarp next to his VW bus and wore only shorts no matter the cold, George who stood on his roof at night with binoculars cussing and gesticulating wildly at aliens, Kato and his pet rat nestled in an attic, and the other Ralph in the chicken barn who had a cat that seemed to subsist entirely upon his discarded jalapeño stems and bits of offered garlic. It was the other Ralph that probably ignited this ability in me to feel this one particular season, or so I like to think. When Ralph returned from Vietnam his brothers immediately dosed him with LSD so as to keep him askew from the predictable spiral which Vets of that era endured in the form of shitty public sentiment coupled with memories of the horror of war. I suppose it did him some good, he’s likely the smartest mother fucker I know, not on account of the dosing, but a powerful intellect steered towards the unusual can be a wonderful thing to behold. Anyway, it was the Autumn Equinox and my birthday, September 22nd 1995 (or 96 it’s fuzzy) and Ralph bestowed upon me a little gift in the form of a pill. I believe he said it was made by a Japanese chemist friend of his and contained some plant medicine from Africa that hunters would take before the hunt to become invisible to the animals. I mean, haven’t we all wanted to become invisible at some point? When I was really young I would wish to be invisible so fucking hard that I’d turn red and the damn veins in my forehead would pop out and I would fall down, to my 2nd grade teachers great dismay. Anywho, I don’t need to justify the actions of a 23 year old motherfucker living free and in nature and with a standard amount of youthful folly, aka dumbasery, so of course I swallowed the damn thing, to do otherwise would have been quite rude😉Now if you’re hoping to hear a tale of a thousand deaths and a thousand births and a white octopus inhabiting my lymphatic system that I burned out with a beam of light and crazy eyed wanderings through a forest of exponentially growing screaming trees with ripped clothes, the front of my shirt covered in blood from a purposely pulled tooth, well, I’m sorry to say that is not this tale. Perhaps I’ll tell that one another time😉. No, I simply walked around and it seemed that the line of demarcation between my skin and the prevalent current of nature, that being the Autumnal surge of course, grew somehow porous and man, I fucking felt it. It’s like when you smell mold and are transported in your mind to the Pirates of the Caribbean ride at Disney land. It’s like that but not. It’s like an aching nostalgia, it’s like the memory of a lost love re-ignited and undulating in the body, the wave of which doesn’t quite reach the mind. Anyway, yeah I know it’s weird but there you have it. Today I’m feeling it like a tickling undertow to the point that my soles are tingling, and it feels good. Today I crossed the half century mark and you know what? That feels good too. I never expected to live very long. In my 20’s I used to say that I’ve just incarnated for a couple decades to smoke a bunch of cigarettes then I’m out but life hasn’t let go of me yet and I’m glad. Quitting the ciggies maybe helped with that. So here we are at an alignment of sorts, the 1st day of Autumn, the day I was born and the day I did this fucking thing. This website that’s the fucking thing, I know it’s not a huge thing but I’m happy to start slow, maintain steady but humble beginnings. Can you believe I did this fucking website? Can you also believe there are collectively over a million folks following this shit I do? Wtf, life keeps getting weirder but I’m all about it. This thing I did, this website- is my birthday gift to you, just like a fucking hobbit. At least I think hobbitses do that, I’ll ponder it over 2nd dinner. All the photos on it are mine. If you haven’t seen them yet there are 2 videos on it about me (@Kristi INSERT WHO THE FUCK AM I) and one about this Rusty Eyeball thing (@kristi INSERT WTF IS RUSTY EYEBALL) and what it means and those are things that I’ve never really talked about before, at least not like that. It feels strange and vulnerable but also freeing pouring a bit of yourself out for all to see. I intend to keep unfolding this little website of mine, create hollows for folks to contribute and benefit from, like sort of an experiential mental health think tank. Transcripts of the shit folks like, writings, recordings and yes, I’m working on the damn book people keep bugging me about. (Thanks for bugging me about it by the way😊) What I’m most proud of though is that this whole thing is free to peruse and be a part of. I’ve never said yes to any of the many lucrative ad offers I’ve received from social media and I didn’t take the normal route of making a site just trying to make money off peoples suffering. I feel damn proud of that. I mean don’t get me wrong, I’ve got no beef with money, a mother fucker has to eat, I’m going on 28 years in the maritime industry, still dispatching for 12 hour shifts 48 hours a week and often feel like I’m missing out on half of my life with my family because I live 80 miles from the ocean and am away from home 4 days at a time then home for 4. But at least I don’t have loads of pressure to make this about money. But, that being said, if you just aaaabsolutely have to spend some damn money then fine, I have some swag, knock yourself out, it’s all on the website😉 The thing, for me, about making swag is that it’s fucking fun. If I’m not shitting some kind of art or media project out every single day then I get creatively constipated so a swag store is my backup creative laxative. I am 51 you know, you start thinking about laxatives and shit😉 Alrighty well this is already one thousand fucking times longer than I intended. I truly hope you like it here. I’m starting slow but watch me go, WATCH ME FUCKING GO! ⚡️👁️⚡️Toodaloo!P.S. I was previously unsure if I liked this hat but for the simple fact my Daughter thought it was some hideous fucking artifact, I’ve decided I love the damn thing. I don’t know where the hell I’d ever wear it but, fuck it. Redemption often comes wrapped in strange packages, sometimes they are packages wrapped in faux human skin, just sayin’. Toodaloo.