ADULT RUNAWAYS AND 927 UNION STREET

In 1997, in prelude to a harsh breakup with a girlfriend, I was in the small town of Brunswick, Georgia.  At the time, I was living in the historic district of town in a huge pink, wood chip, and rust colored Victorian pastoral at 927 Union Street.  I assume it’s still there though it’s continued existence has very little relevance to my story.

The house itself was enormous.  From the outside looking at the front it didn’t appear to be much, but the house was very long and deep.  Once you stepped inside, it was separated into 4 separate flats.  Each flat had something unique to it.  Mine in particular was a sun-room with 4 full windows in the front of the flat, and an outdoor balcony in the front of the house.  My flat in its entirety was likely about 2000 sqft.  (The house was enormous and there were still 3 more flats in the house and mine being the smallest of the 4.)

927 Union Street Brunswick Georgia USA

As if it were straight out of a Norman Rockwell print, the exterior gave way to an interior having never been remodeled.  It had heavy mud lathe walls with oversized moldings, thick with years and many coats of paint.  The once sharp corners were ridiculously rounded by many tenants before us.  The hardwood floors were worn with days you could remember the years by.  The traffic patterns, in the deep cascading indentions, clearly hadn’t changed much in over 100 years.  There were built in china cabinets with glass in the walls that did not close well due to the paint binding the hinges.  The windows in the front of the house were small, but on the sides of the house the windows were at least 13’ tall.  The ceilings were about 15’ high so that gave about a foot of wall space above and below each window.  From what I can recall there were maybe only about 3 or 4 feet between windows.  They lined the whole side and rear of the flat.  For an apartment of this size it was amazing that there were only 2 bedrooms.

It was a blustery cold December day with virtually no heat to speak of.  The coal fireplace that was there was had a large build up of creosote that could easily set the whole house alight.  However, that fear didn’t seem to bother the previous tenet as we found an entire stash quick start logs in the foyer coat closet.  I’d wonder around the flat, drink hot cider, and daydream of a life far away from there.

Being young and broke, I remember not having much in the way of furniture.  Our first get together at the house we all sat on the hardwood floors with a single candle. Later that turned into a couch, a coffee table, and a mattress on the floor.  However, I saw this entire event in life as a drab adventure.  I had moved here with my girlfriend shortly after my music career had come to a close.  Looking back on this experience, she was running away from a rather unfortunate legal event that took place while we were back home.  Never the less, in my youth, I decided to runaway along with her not considering any consequences.

We weren’t in this house 3 months before we broke up and I remember being devastated.  Young love always has its misgivings and I was certainly no exception to this rule.
During this time, a dear friend of mine named Marty came to stay with me.  On the weekends we would drive up to Savannah and visit a co-worker of mine from Russia, her boyfriend from Sweden, and their roommate from Ireland.  They were students of SCAD (Savannah College of Art & Design), but their stories of life abroad mesmerized me.  It was then, on a whim, I decided I would move to Sweden.

The idea of being footloose and fancy-free is exhilarating on it’s own accord.  Leaving out the gory details of the breakup, she had broken my heart beyond measure.  However, I simply decided just to keep to myself, save my money, and dream larger dreams.  We later made peace and laughed at our combined ignorance about young love, but our friendship never did regain traction.   Marty played a huge role in my grieving the loss of my relationship.  To this day, I will always love him for being like a brother to me.  He also is a bit of a runner as he has resided in Beijing, China for the last 8 years.

My memory and backstory in this case is almost cliché.  We all runaway from our own prisons we lock ourselves in.  It’s more a question of when. Even if it’s only a dream of doing so.  We are the very makers of our very own catastrophes.  While at the same time the lone builder of our own redemption.

As I’ve been living abroad in Costa Rica for the last 4 months, I’ve met quite a few “runaways” in all age groups.   Here in my little condo community the personalities range from owners, to eager vacationers, divers, photographers, locals, nut cases, tax dodgers, criminals in hiding, prostitution Johns, cokeheads, enough Quebecois (French Canadians) that Montreal must be half empty, and then a lone writer, ME.  There are no shortage of people running from failed relationships, job loss, home loss, and even people merely regretting they hadn’t done something in their life much earlier.  I’ve been to 22 countries in my lifetime, and in that time that I’ve learned that everyone is on their way to somewhere.

Consequently when I return to Georgia, the majority of the populous are still the same people I went to high school with.  The American South is like a vortex in this regard.  The people don’t change much; even some of the homes are still the ones I visited when I was 16 years old.  This is decidedly convenient for me.  Whenever the watercolor pastels of memory paint nostalgia into my mind, I just go to my teenage hometown.  Most of my friends had families early in life.  Some are terrified to leave.  Some escaped, and I’ve bumped into them across America.  The irony being most are on their way back to the South.  My point being that even they chose their destination long ago.  Albeit, the 3 towns they are scattered against like rocks in a tiny ocean have very few good occupations so the ability to escape becomes even more complicated, however not impossible. Their prisons are mostly stretched between love and money.  Their desires remain mostly homeward bound.

I made a post a few weeks back about “The Trap” by Wilhelm Reich.   We build our own traps and prisons.  Homesickness is merely a longing for an old prison.  Even prisons have relationships we long to return to.  While I would never want return to the relationship I had when I lived in that Victorian home in Brunswick.  I so loved that house.  However, when I lived there it was poisonous to my entire existence, but how I adore the memory of drinking hot cider in that old prison of mine.  It was familiar.

Through familiarity we lock ourselves in perception and hinder our future desire.  I’ve watched my fathers friends work their entire lives at jobs they hate to save for a retirement they never got to experience, because they were DOA.  I’ve seen people in 3rd world countries who have almost no chance of escaping their own life in tragedy have more hope than those in the West.  Our first world problems tie up our minds so that escaping our known realities to dreams we had as children hold ourselves back.  What happened to daydreaming?  We’ve built such prisons in our Western lives that people attempting to live their dreams is considered fool hardy. Yet, we cheer those that make their dreams reality.  We lose hope so quickly.  I’ve seen hopeless people, and in Western life, there is always hope for a different life.

I refuse to see “Runaway” as a negative term.  We all have dreams.  A runaway should be commended for thinking outside the trap.  Children runaway because they think they can runaway to better life.  The grass isn’t always greener, but the grass is most certainly different.  This maybe unacceptable as a child, but as an adult, why sit in a prison everyday wondering what is outside the door?  Don’t you think it’s about time you stopped running away from something, and start running toward it?

©2014 Christian’s Theory

Destination Where?

Destination where?

It’s true we all live in some sort of turbulence.  The air is not always graced with success, hope, and satisfaction, but just like basic physics; every action has an equal and opposite reaction.  Choosing drastic changes in ones life, even if for the better, doesn’t always lead to the readily seen, or pleasurable results.  It doesn’t mean they don’t exist, as with any dedication, perfection comes with a tremendous amount of persistence, work, and due diligence.

While traveling this past year abroad, I’ve found and met many people seeing the world.  Some more amiable than others, but moreover I’ve met hundreds of people who have no idea where they are going in life; wherever the wind blows is fine with some of them and others who require a defined direction.  To those people that know me personally, I’m sure I’ve appeared somewhat haphazard in my travels over the years.  However, there’s always been a method to my madness, maybe I’m too stubborn to look past my own ideologies and find contentment in more simple happiness’s.  Then again, maybe it’s my desire for the extraordinary, or the idea of destination unknown…  There is no question that I’ve had an interesting ride thus far around this globe of ours, and I certainly haven’t seen enough. 

"Lemme show ya something'!" 

One thing is for certain though; money clearly does not buy happiness.   That age-old adage has been proven true far too many times, from lottery winners, to even myself pre-2008 recession when I went from financially secure and solvent, backwards to paycheck to 4 days before each paycheck!

I run a forum on Couchsurfing.org called “What am I doing with my life?”  It has members spanning from teenagers to middle aged people in their mid 60’s.   I’ve personally watched many people transform their everyday lives into long held dreams as well as others who remain hopelessly stagnant.  While Couchsurfing is predominantly a shoestring budget travel oriented website, it is an excellent resource for simple philosophical conversations as well. 

As I do every year, I write an end of the year editorial, and as I’ve done previously, I poll social media on a couple of questions, and base my article on the data results I glean.   This year’s questions were:

#1. If you had only 6 months to live, what would be the most important thing for you to do in that time frame?

#2. If you could know the exact date of your death, but not how, would you want to know?

I had quite a number of responses. Well, 5 of which were anecdotal, or arbitrary responses that had nothing to do with the questions.  Surprisingly enough only one person said he would “go on a killing rampage and murder everyone he hates, and then go down in a blaze of glory”.    Now, personally, I don’t think that blowing people up like a religious whack job with a bomb strapped to his chest is a quality way to leave the planet, much less hurting others, but I should have expected that from at least one or two people.   I doubt he was serious, considering the person seems to be quite successful, and has no real issues apparent of concern, but who knows?  Maybe he’s a secret nut job, rubbing himself in peanut butter planning the next big Smucker’s Jelly Plant heist, but he’s not the point of my story. 

From a strictly mathematical position for question #2: 97% of responses said that they had no desire to know the exact date of their passing.  The other 3% either wanted to know the exact date so they could use their 6 months as efficiently as possible plus the 1 person who “wanted to go down in a blaze of glory” (possibly strawberry is his flavor of choice…).

The first question was considerably more complex.  91% of the responses were in regard to making sure they gave their friends, pets, and family the love they deserve in preparation before doing anything else.  Then the remaining 9% wanted to live their life free of the bonds fear.  Let me reiterate; that 9% gave the typical response “to live each day as if it were the last”. 

A few years ago, a US based movie, called The Bucket List (2007), starring Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman, portrayed a pair of unlikely would be friends dying of cancer, who go off on several adventures before they “kicked the bucket” and died.  Short of the movie being fairly well received, I’ve seen more people actually take a cue from Christopher McCandless (John Krakauer’s non fiction book “Into The Wild” and later made movie by Sean Penn) where the young McCandless seeking his own adventure unfortunately proved fatal in the Alaskan interior.  In McCandless’ final weeks, the only regret he appeared to have was not showing the people he loved how much they meant to him, and he underlined “Happiness is only real when shared” in his copy of Family Happiness by Leo Tolstoy, in his final days.

What surprised me, and has surprised me over the course of the last year while my own life has been in constant flux, is that it’s extremely easy to say, “Maybe one day I’ll do  (Insert variable here)”.   It doesn’t matter.   It absolutely baffles me that people assume that money will bring them happiness, and that time is some sort of limitless black hole that in our daily Western lives we will always have the ability to “eventually get around to it”.  “It”, being the variable.  “It” could be: Visit distant friends, see the world, get a different job, make a new friend, find something that’s missing, or find a solution to a problem long ignored, etc.

I always seem to harp at people and remind them that this life, is the only one you have.  As comic and musician Tim Minchin coyly states in a poem called Storm:

“I am a tiny, insignificant, ignorant bit of carbon. I have one life that is short and unimportant, but thanks to recent scientific advances I get to live twice as long as my great, great, great, great uncles, and aunties. Twice as long…to live this life of mine, twice as long to love this wife of mine, twice as many years of friends and wine…of sharing curries and getting shitty with good looking hippies with fairies on their spines, and butterflies on their titties.”

In the last year, I have had many great things to be grateful for.  While, even on grander days, I still attribute 2013 to be a not so pleasant year overall for me personally, but what I did do, thanks to a number of amazing people; was leave the US and relocate to Costa Rica for a time and spend time with my aging father and step mother, who when I arrived deeply needed my help.  I have been living each day exactly how I please, in the meantime I write with the deepest passion I’ve ever had, and eventually I will return from whence I came with a deeper knowledge of myself, my craft, and my father.   How could I regret any of that?

When I left the US 4 months ago, my entire life was put on hold.  I gave the majority of my possession’s way to charity, moved out of my condo in Washington DC, and due to my employer being the best company I’ve worked for allowed me to leave indefinitely till it was time for me to return.  (On a personal note:  I will forever be grateful to Tony & Tim for guiding my career path, and their compassion, and humanity toward me.  My employer never treated me like a number. Ever.)

In conclusion, people have told me a million times in the last 4 months; “I give anything to do what you’re doing right now”.  My response is always the same; ‘I gave EVERYTHING to do what I am doing right now, but you know what?  Not a single one of us on this planet are getting out alive’.   We meander, procrastinate, postulate, and pretend there will always be a tomorrow.   For millions globally, tomorrow will never come.  If you have a dream, or someone you love and need to tell them so —What the hell are you waiting for?  It never required a possible death sentence for a reason to follow through.  It’s 2014.  I’d like to say make your dream a reality this year, but if you haven’t started it yet, you need to live like there is no tomorrow today.  If you think you have something to loose, there is no greater loss than gaining the regret of not being what or where you want to be today.  

New Years Eve Sunset on 2013 in Playas Del Coco Costa Rica   ©2013 Christian Ernst Photography

©2014 Christian’s Theory

The Trap

After a brief conversation I had today, I was instantly reminded of a post I made 3 years ago, after a dear friend of mine, Mattias, shared a book with me.  

Every single one of us lives inside of our own self-made trap.  Our walls can have an indeterminable number of sides, some may even have windows looking into the world we wish to see, or a life we would rather have.  The only reality we actually own is the one inside, or outside of "The Trap".  

Instead of my regular Tuesday blog post, Today I will concede to Wilhelm Reich:

"It IS possible to get out of a trap. However, in order to break out of a prison, one first must confess to being in a prison. The trap is wo/man's emotional structure, her/his character structure. There is little use in devising systems of thought about the nature of the trap if the only thing to do in order to get out of the trap is to know the trap and to find the exit. Everything else is utterly useless: Singing hymns about the suffering in the trap, as the enslaved Negro does; or making poems about the beauty of freedom outside of the trap, dreamed of within the trap; or promising a life outside the trap after death, as Catholicism promises its congregations; or confessing a semper ignorabimus as do the resigned philosophers; or building a philosophic system around the despair of life within the trap, as did Schopenhauer; or dreaming up a superman who would be so much different from the man in the trap, as Nietzsche did, until, trapped in a lunatic asylum, he wrote, finally, the full truth about himself—too late. . . 

The first thing to do is to find the exit out of the trap. The nature of the trap has no interest whatsoever beyond this one crucial point: WHERE IS THE EXIT OUT OF THE TRAP?

One can decorate a trap to make life more comfortable in it. This is done by the Michelangelos and the Shakespeares and the Goethes. One can invent makeshift contraptions to secure longer life in the trap. This is done by the great scientists and physicians, the Meyers and the Pasteurs and the Flemings. One can devise great art in healing broken bones when one falls into the trap. The crucial point still is and remains: to find the exit out of the trap. WHERE IS THE EXIT INTO THE ENDLESS OPEN SPACE? The exit remains hidden. It is the greatest riddle of all. The most ridiculous as well as tragic thing is this:THE EXIT IS CLEARLY VISIBLE TO ALL TRAPPED IN THE HOLE. YET NOBODY SEEMS TO SEE IT. EVERYBODY KNOWS WHERE THE EXIT IS. YET NOBODY SEEMS TO MAKE A MOVE TOWARD IT. MORE: WHOEVER MOVES TOWARD THE EXIT, OR WHOEVER POINTS TOWARD IT IS DECLARED CRAZY OR A CRIMINAL OR A SINNER TO BURN IN HELL.

It turns out that the trouble is not with the trap or even with finding the exit. The trouble is WITHIN THE TRAPPED ONES.

All this is, seen from outside the trap, incomprehensible to a simple mind. It is even somehow insane. Why don't they see and move toward the clearly visible exit? As soon as they get close to the exit they start screaming and run away from it. As soon as anyone among them tries to get out, they kill her/him. Only a very few slip out of the trap in the dark night when everybody is asleep."

From The Murder of Christ, (1953) by Wilhelm Reich. 

Leaving the US and moving to Costa Rica

“Your mom has Dengue”.  A set of sobering words from my father via Skype in Costa Rica; I had already been well aware of the flu she had previous, but now suddenly the situation was more serious as she was already sick before, with a now crippled immune system.  In less than 3 weeks time, I would be sitting on a plane to give my parents a much needed hand in what many people see outwardly as a 3^rd world country. 

My parents had moved to Costa Rica 3 years prior to live a bit easier as permanent resident “pensioners”.  That said, Costa Rica has some of the most consistent weather patterns in the world, beautiful beaches, socialized and for profit medicine, and most definitely there is no shortage of North American expatriates living out the remainder of their lives here abroad.  The medical systems in Costa Rica are more than adequate, but if you’re from anywhere in the Western World, as with nearly everything here, much of it operates significantly differently, and learning the ropes is better done in advance vs. learning by necessity. 

After arriving here in early October, which is the last month of the “rainy season”, my longing for the dry days ahead in November through April is now slowly becoming a reality, and the North American & European tourists are now arriving in droves to the province of Guanacaste; the North Western Coast line that follows the Pan American Highway all the way up to the Nicaraguan boarder.

North Western Costa Rica

I found out quickly, that securing a long term residence here in Costa Rica literally gets harder by the day (if you plan to rent close to November).  As the tourists arrive, the thousands of rental properties that remain empty all year, which can normally be rented for a few hundred dollars a month (depending on the size & need of course) in the off-season, can command upwards of a few thousand a week based on location & size.  I personally went from searching for a place, finding a rental, and it being already rented by the time I drove 15 minutes up the road to view the property!  Needless to say, once I found a place (a small studio apartment across the street from the beach) that was actually available; I immediately decided to go back to the rental office to discuss price.  This small studio apartment (less than 500sqft), rents for $500 USD a month + utilities long term, or if you’re willing to spend the cash up front (I do mean CASH literally), you can get a smoking deal as everything rentable can be negotiated easily, but during the high season the rates are not so easily affordable for some.    

The flat I rented dropped down to only  $350 dollars a month if I paid the entire 6 months in advance in cash, plus the security deposit.  While to some this may seem like an exorbitant amount of money to pay out considering I don’t know how long I plan to be here, there are many who will pay 5x what I am paying total to stay only a few weeks in a similar space.  I certainly don’t have that kind of money as a writer, but I’m far from destitute, and still living on the cheap in one of the most popular beach towns in the world, Playas Del Coco.  Take into account, a North American version of “cheap” is considerably different than the local “Tico’s”.  My studio apartment maybe small, but it is fully furnished, pots, pans, dishes, sheets on the bed, cable TV, and is actually better than most of the efficiencies I’ve stayed in throughout Europe, or even on the eastern seaboard of the US.   Did I mention I am directly across the street from the beach and Pacific Ocean?

My new home in Playas Del Coco

I relocated here from right outside Washington DC, and I have previously been here to visit my family; so I had an idea of what to expect when I arrived, but I’ve only been here a month, and still have much more to learn!

The locals are polite and kind beyond measure compared to many other countries I’ve visited.  That said, I’m not entirely sure that “no” is even in their vocabulary.  They would rather bring you anything, but “no” as an answer… So you can completely expect random stuff occasionally.   Even at the local grocery store I came across this "complete" cooking seasoning.  Not only is it the only one you apparently need, but judging by the size of the container it's the only one you'll need FOREVER! 

Top Chef never had it so easy! 

One thing that stands out for me personally; I am constantly trying to better my Spanish and speak their language, but the locals at the same time desperately want to practice their English.  So, what happens is, even ordering a drink, or meal can turn out to be a mixture of English, Spanish, Spanglish, but however the majority of the young people in bars and restaurants speak FAR better English than my Spanish, and when you compliment them on how good their English is, they are always very flattered, say that their “English isn’t very good”, and then say “thank you for saying so”.  My 2^nd week here, I met a local “Nica” (slang for Nicaraguan) tour guide in a bar who prefaced his spontaneous conversation with me with, “I have a question for you, but please bear with me, as my English isn’t very good…” and then while I’m expecting some Spanglish; instead his vocabulary and correct grammar blew me away.  I have never met anyone in my life that says his or her English isn’t very good, and in that first sentence use the word “reciprocation”!

Needless to say, my adventure here in Costa Rica has only just begun. My mom is now mostly recovered from her Dengue Fever, and my father is back to being just as ornery as he’s always been.  Either way, I’m still around to help them out and enjoy a journey that is still very much my own to create.  I certainly have plenty to write about! 

Pura Vida!