Porch Times

I get home from work and school. Damn it's exhausting. Mentally I am exhausted, my body tense and uneasy from sitting at my bench or in lecture halls for 12 hours a day. My head is full of plasmid maps, organic molecule diagrams, and trying to remember what I have to do tomorrow. Change the media. Start a transformation. Will colonies be on my plates tomorrow? Are the incubators sterile enough? How much ethanol could I put in my coffee before I went blind? A whirlwind of molecular biology, technical manuals, and Post-it note messages buzz in my brain.

Time to leave that all behind.

I grab a cold beverage out of the fridge. Today it is a glass of water with lemon flavoured ice cubes. I take my sketchbook and sit outside on my balcony overlooking the lawn and L Street. My chair has a soft worn groove for my bony ass to sink into. Feet on the makeshift coffee table I begin to let my mind wander on the page. Max comes out, we start to talk about our days, get the vaporizer warm, and plan out our evening.

That's the essence of Porch Times. Outside, with a good place to sit, a drink or snack, good company and good conversations.

The old people of a bygone era founded Porch Times. Get some iced tea/lemonade or mint julep, watch the world go by. Talk about war, recession, the youth of today, gardening, or gossip about the neighbors. A time for relaxing with friends, catching up, and strengthening community. People wander by and join in, others leave - ebb and flow. Too many people and it becomes a gathering. No, the moment has to be intimate.

It seems our generation has forgotten Porch Times. Caught up in the digital gestalt of Facebook and Twittering, texting people incessantly on the newest iPhone, these are the communities we create - a false network of face value friendships and threadbare conversations. Fast life, fast drugs, fast failings at good living. In the end what will our generation have? Bad health, large debt, obsolete gadgets, and the existential despair that comes with disconnect from others.

I repeatedly find that The Greatest Generation had it right, that for all the war, depression, and hardships they endured, they knew how to make the most out of nothing and not let life get them down. They had just as much free time as we did, and in talking to my Grandparents and various elderly friends I have, were much happier that we are now. It is interesting to note that whenever I visit with them it becomes a Porch Time. In my own weird way, I feel like Porch Times is a tribute to The Greatest Generation, both in it's simplicity, social function, and appreciating free time.

Porch Times is more of an attitude than an activity, a mindset that sets the pace of living. Keep it simple, keep good company, and relax.

Fear and Loathing at UCSD

This is the story of later in the summer of 2008, the last week of July I believe. I had come down to Southern California for the ComiCon with Max, and Lauryn gave us a ride down to San Diego. We all decided to start our morning with some LSD and wanderings around UCSD (University of San Diego) because of the cool architecture and lots of eucalyptus trees. Max likes to chip eucalyptus bark in his hands when he is tripping.

Max and Lauryn, at the beginning of our journey.

I can't believe my hair was that long. It really blows my mind. I had gotten a horrible sunburn on my face thanks to the Day Star - my nose was leaking gross goop. I also lost a lot of weight doing a lot of psychedelics and as such my pants didn't fit too well, so I constantly had to hike them back up, completing the whole ponce look I have going on here.

This is the Theodor Geisel (Dr. Seuss!) Library, which looks like a crazy spaceship from a bad sci-fi movie. We spent a good amount of time in there, being noisy and looking at old books. We found an archived collection of Popular Mechanics magazines from the 80's that cracked us up.

We left the library and came across a map of UCSD which was water damaged and really hard to read. I told Lauryn and Max that I couldn't read the map, to which Lauryn replied 'Why? Are you so stupid you can't read?' On acid, you lose track of the magnitude of things, especially with sounds, so I yelled at Lauryn 'YOU KNOW, READING IS REALLY HARD FOR ME RIGHT NOW OK YOU DUMB BITCH!' Which caused a group tour nearby to immediately go silent and watch Lauryn and I glare at each other for what seemed like ages until we realized what we had just done.

There was this crazy looking tree that was dripping a deep red sap, we thought the tree was bleeding profusely.

Making our way back to the exterior of the library Max saw the moon, which he called. It's his so no one else can have it. Looking around for something equally awesome, I saw the Cognitive Sciences building and called that. It's mine. Lauryn didn't want to call anything so we gave her the West Coast, which is full of brazen hussies. This turned into the adventures of the Moon Ambassador, the Cognitive Sciences Robot, and Western Hussydom playing around on the exterior of the library to escape the Day Star, which we were all allied against due to it's face wrecking capabilities.

The ground outside the library looked like the surface of the moon, which I excitedly told Max about. Glaring at me, and in the sternest tone I have ever heard him talk to me in, he said, "You wouldn't know The Moon's maiden beauty." and smacked the camera out of my hands.

There was some general wandering around, watching the gentle coastal winds ripple through the trees, appreciating the architecture of UCSD, and idle conversation. We went to the cafeteria shortly thereafter to get something to eat.

Eating while tripping is always really hard. First, you lose perception of time, which messes up the internal dietary clock immensely. Secondly, you lose your appetite. Third, nothing looks appealing. Case in point, we went to the Subway in the cafeteria for lunch. Standing in line, we had another magnitude problem. There was a guy eating a sandwich at a table, but his sandwich looked huge compared to him. We couldn't decide whether the sandwich was enormous or the man was really small, so Lauryn went and stood next to him for comparison. Unfortunately that didn't help. To this day it still really bothers us that a midget might have been eating a giant sandwich.

I looked at the sandwich fixings through the glass, and everything looked like insects or organs to me - I couldn't take it; the bright lights, the noise of people eating, the prospect of eating a sandwich full of tapeworms and grubs. I stuffed a wad of bills (it turned out to be like $60) in Max's hand and ran to what I thought was outside. Turned out to be a breezeway, which I stood in the middle of trying to clear my mind as people navigated around me.

Max and Lauryn somehow made it through the ordeal of ordering food and came out bearing sandwiches, proceeding to tell me the horror stories of dealing with the Subway employees. I couldn't handle hearing it, their descriptions filled me with anxiety and fear. The fear of people, noise, and connection started to bother me, and as I looked at Lauryn and Max, two of my best friends, I began to feel extremely distanced from them.

After lunch we all needed to cool down and the acid had switched into the cerebral phase. We sat on the grass and contemplated silently in our own heads. I remember thinking that I had no future compared to Max and Lauryn, seeing the life and environment of UCSD only amplified that feeling. I had earlier that month had an experience which helped me decide I wanted to pursue science over art, but what would I do? I was just a long haired drugged out depressed cosmonaut, drifting through the empty space of my life.

A lack of connectedness and purpose. That's what gives me the Fear. No matter how much I try I still come up short. That's what causes my Loathing.

The Beginning of Something Wonderful

During the summer of 2008, I spent most of my free time either taking psychedelics or studying astrophysics - sometimes both at the same time. The next couple of posts will be a recap of last summer, the stories, the journeys, and the experiences that shaped my path for the last year.

The summer started out with me finishing a very intensive semester of cellular and microbiology courses. The day after finals, I was in Claremont, CA with Max tripping on the best acid either of us have ever had. I attribute the wonderment and awesomeness of the experience to our lack of expectations - we had no idea how strong the acid was or had any real experience with heavy trips.

We started out watching Good Burger, a really stupid Nickelodeon movie from our childhoods. It was actually pretty entertaining, and as the acid began to kick in the movie became frighteningly hilarious. At one point, the antagonists (the rival burger restaurant) is poisoning the 'secret sauce' used by the protagonists. The poison they use is labeled 'Shark Poison'. Now, this really bothered us because why would you poison a shark? If you needed to kill a shark I would think poison is probably the least effective method. So surely there isn't a company manufacturing poison to specifically target sharks. Maybe the poison is developed by sharks, like in a poison gland? I am no expert on marine biology, but I don't think any shark excretes poison. Though that would suck, a shit wrecking shark...WITH A POISONOUS STINGER! We then imagined that it must be like rat poison, a poison developed for little cockroach sized sharks, scurrying about the woodwork. We imagined an Italian immigrant family trying to squish little sharks yelling "Get 'im with the boot Guiseppe!"

At that point we realized we were really, really out of it. The tree outside Max's dorm had begun to swing towards me, trying to grab me through the window, and Max's Union Jack flag had begun to bleed and drip off the wall. Time to go outside and get some air. Unfortunately there were fractals everywhere, and we were having a hard time maneuvering around them until Lauryn helped us to a grassy spot. I looked at Max, and the grass had taken root in his manly arm hair, making him look like a treant. Lauryn had a decidedly reptilian look about her.

The next thing I remember was going up to this girl Elaine's room to see a small kitten she had smuggled into the dorms from Mexico. She had a tie dyed wall hanging which was so brilliant and beautiful to look at. The only way Max and I could describe it was as if a man wreathed in multi-coloured fire was doing capoeta. We began joking that The Kitten Immigration Services would come to get it. 'La Migra de los Gatos Illegales' were a group of flak jacket clad kittens with rifles marching little kittens with sombreros and mustaches - who only wanted to taste American freedom - back across the border. It was so sad I began to cry, but that could have been my cat allergies acting up. I ran outside to get some fresh air, at which point Max and Lauryn came out laughing about La Migra. They asked my why I was crying and I yelled 'DON'T YOU FUCKING TALK ABOUT THE KITTEN MIGRA - IT'S TOO DAMN SAD!" And threw this metal pole Max had picked up over the balcony. I can't stand it when he has nice things that I don't have.

After the debacle of the Kitten Migra, we went back downstairs to sit on the couches and collect ourselves. Whatever crazy conversations we had are lost to time, but Lauryn left soon after for a recital. We were still really bothered about shark poison. More people came by to see what we were up to, all amazed that we were still functioning after taking acid.

Lunch came around, which was pitas and spreadables. The pitas looked like Pfaddenstohl hats (Germanic fairies that are little anthropomorphic toadstools.) It was sad that they gave their lives so that we could eat. I think that was the first time I started to think about where my food came from and the dynamic web of consumption. In addition to my experiences working at the morgue, it would later prompt me to switch to a vegetarian diet.

Honestly I can't remember too much more of what happened, only that Max and I talked a lot about people we knew, our childhoods, tautology, causailty, and plans for the future. As the visuals subsided we began to get more lucid and have deeper conversations, which we termed the cerebral phase of LSD. Lots of introspection, but your thoughts continuously spiral inwards, leaving you tangentally scatterbrained.

At some point during this phase, I looked at Max, who I had known since I was 9 or so. The last couple of years of our friendship had been turbulent, and I had doubted whether we would continue to remain friends after college, with us going to grad schools across the country or life taking us in some other far off direction. Sitting with him on a grassy hill, I realized that I would know this man until the day I died, that he was a friend for life. No matter how bad things got, I knew that Max and I would be friends - he is one of the most unique and dear persons I have ever known.

The world works in mysterious ways, and a year later I travelled with Max for a month in Europe. He came back to Salt Lake for grad school and we have an apartment together. Things are still rocky, but I truly love the man and couldn't be happier with the situation.

Grandma's Good Living Protocols

I have gotten a lot of requests about the term protocol and 'Grandma's Good Living Protocols'. Protocol comes from when Max was living in Compton, CA during the summer of 2008 while working for Mattel. He lived with a Finnish room mate, Jaako, who worked for the military defense company Raytheon. Jaako had some strange quirks and sayings, such as egging SUVs while laconically repeating "good...good..." He also watched romance movies as porn because "you get so into the characters and then when they finally bone it's AWESOME!" Nice enough guy, just had some wierd perks.

While I was visiting the two on my trip to the San Diego ComiCon 2008, we got into a conversation of wierd work jargon. (I worked in the morgue at the time, and there were all sorts of wierd terms we used.) Jaako would constantly be asked if projects he was working on were 'up to protocol' - or 'protocol' for short - always said in a really stern and authoritative voice. Max and I thought this was hilarious, so we began asking if everything was 'protocol'. When we made dinner, had to be sure it was up to protocol. Drinking a beer? Make sure it's protocol. Slaying a brown snake? No better time to review bathroom protocols. The word was inemic.

So after a long day of tripping and settling into the cerebral phase of good LSD at Grandma's Pleasure Palace in La Jolla we started talking about what it meant for something to be 'protocol.' We had been using it to describe pretty much everything, but being surrounded by the simple luxury of Jopi's house we realized that something can be good, something can be awesome, something can be essential for daily life - all without being protocol. For something to be protocol it has to be essential for good times and good living. The way Max's grandma Jopi lives is protocol to a T.

It's a slippery slope and a lot of gray area is involved in determining how protocol something is, and whether it deserves the title of protocality. Max and I have had countless debates discussing whether something deserves to go on this list, and it continually is added to. As Max and I have begun living together we strive to make our apartment as protocol as possible. Protocality hasn't become just an idea for us, but a lifestyle we strive to cultivate around us.

GRANDMA'S GOOD LIVING PROTOCOLS

• Good, healthy, organic food. Preferably grown in your own garden. Cook and prepare as much as you can yourself. Along with this is learning how to cook good food, whether for one person or ten.
  
• Rugs. Oriental is better than plain - must be soft for laying on and beautiful to look at.
  
• Good sound system. Music has the ability to transform mood and seeing how much I listen to, a good sound system is a sound (no pun intended) investment.
• A full/queen sized bed with clean sheets and soft blankets. Humans spend at least a third of their lives in bed, and having ample room is important. Must be big enough for two people, but not so big that when one person is in it that they feel lonely. Soft blankets are important for the winter (especially in Utah) and cuddling up.
• Good beer/liquor. Beer is delicious, and liquor can be as well. Never skimp on either. Buy local microbrews opposed to shitty Domestics. Brewing your own beer is also super protocol.
• A porch/balcony/outside space. This goes hand in hand with that most sacred of rites, Porch Times (another topic for another post.) South or west facing is optimal for sun.
• Things made out of natural materials like wood, metal, or glass and fabrics like linen, cotton, and wool. Plastic is a horrible material due to it's feel, cheapness, and artificiality - not to mention the environmental impacts.
  
• Books. It doesn't matter if you have The Lorax or A Kierkegaard Anthology on your bookshelf, but having books is important. It's tangible collective knowledge, reference material, and a comforting friend all in one. Having a good collection of books that have meaning and signifigance to you is essential for good living.
• Animals. Cats are preferrable since they are good companions, but unfortunately some people such as myself can't have cats due to allergies or housing restrictions. Max and I currently have a pair of hooded rex rats I rescued from a laboratory and they have been the most protocol pets I have ever owned. They are extremely intelligent, loving, and very low maintenance.
  
• A big desk/table. Max and I both like to have numerous projects going on our workspaces, and clutter is the enemy of productivity. A big desk with a few drawers for supplies or a big, old wood coffee table is preferrable.
• Learning to play a musical instrument. If you love music, at some point you must be a participant and not an observer.
• Good chairs/seats. Max and I both agree that the most protocol chair is an old 70's bucket/papasan chair. Unfortunately it is hard to get work done in these chairs as they are so conducive for relaxing and enjoying life. But good chairs are important for work, relaxing, and Porch Times.
• Good tea for the winter time. (Thanks Lauryn!)
• Learning a proper DIY attitude - learning to make your own food from scratch, learning how to repair and build furniture, and learning how to make and mend your clothing. (Thanks Lauryn!)
• Delicious ice cream and/or gelato for the summer time. (Thanks Lauryn!)
  

I'll update this list as I remember/new items come. E-mail me with any recommendations you have on things that are essential for good living.